CHAPTER 26
"I just don’t feel great … certainly not Great!"
"Can you see the wisps of grey in my hair?"
Cilla cowers – at least how she conveys her response to Lilith, not looking away, but not being there.
"Okay," with all the controlled frustration possible. "Priscilla. It’s just that you’ve never been exalted by cock." Not stopping; knowing that Priscilla doesn’t want her to stop if stopping means a response, "All the Courting. The Coupling. The Tags. You have to understand," pause; finger twirling a grey strand, left-side, "come to understand that we’ve had sex without having sex." Stop.
"Isn’t that what you once said was Zav’s poetic crap?"
"True. Guilty! but on Mark’s terms!" coming to sit down next to, "So, I have to tell you this story. I call it, "Slipping inside." Just let me make it simple. Then, it can get complex." Calm voice, yet one punctuated by the stealth of a trembling secret: "It’s when I got exalted." An instant recoil; but smiling, amused, "Yeah, when Xer got what he always wanted!"
Cilla was conflicted; the doors had no knobs; Lilith had swallowed all the keys! … Oh! she wants to be Prissy at this Moment.
"Pay attention. Zounds, this is a Bad Story!" gleefully.
"Think back when we all left the Education Zone. Remember that? You gotta remember that! … The South! … No matter." She looks her Sister straight in the eyes as she begins:
Long, long ago, in a far away Zone, a woman woke from her afternoon nap …. woke and felt like making love, but not just making love, no, she had this itch, a chilly feverish flush and she knew it was that time. See, there were these times, Great Moments, so to speak, and this woman, she knew one was here: the sixth decade. Sexta - the root imagery delighted her!
So … she pulls the black-out drapes on the torrid high-desert sun. She pumps up the breather to lure a chill into the room. She puts on her flannel nighties, furry booties, and lets down her hair, flocking it to spread fully across her shoulders: fallen snow.
As pitch-dark as she could make it: stuffing towels into sun-peek crevices, layering, hanging, draping others like eye-patches blinding the room, then she lit candles all around.
Squat reds with thick flapping tongues
Tall, elegant virgins on hand-carved pedestals - four of these, the Four Directions - dove-tongues.
One candelabra at the highest point upon a faux-highboy.
A nest of votives - humorously black: offerings from a sacred campfire.
She creates her own shadowy heaven set with flickering stars and virgin moons and fleeing stellar phantasms.
A fist of sandalwood incense sticks: artfully air-painting streams of bewitching smell.
An anointing dab of almond oil upon her breasts.
Quiet jazz-razz in the background; mostly pre-Ascendancy piano. Some strings. No horns.
She stands in bedroom center and twirls herself slowly around, once to the left, once to the right, all the time imagining the world outside: outer space: so creating it - gloomy, snow-thick gusts, ice fangs attacking the neighbors’ roofs - an alien, hostile, fearsome world: below-zero heart-beat threatening.
Imagining inside: all becomes warmth: hot breath warm; snuggling, nesting, caving. Body-heat warmth.
"Now, where’s he?" She means her husband; she knows he’s at work, but that’s not it: the question is more than that. Let’s call him Xer! (Hey, their name is all the same!)
She wanted to do it The Northern Way. It was a game they played - at least had played often back then, up there, across the map, "x"ed somewhere near a cliff atop a Mighty River - not playing it here in the South – but, see, yes, they’re south and by salty water, an ocean, call their spot "O" – and since they had arrived, now, how many years? almost ten - cripes! they had never done it "up North," as it also was called.
The Northern Way was a game for the deep winter. Especially the overcast days. When the sky, itself, was worn like a heavy, thundering buffalo blanket, one draped across her back, feeling it, fingering it, settling it here and patting it there upon her shoulders: those mornings she rose and realized that the earth was still asleep, more: deeply dreaming, yet more: sedated under the thick woolly gloom of sunless sky ... but it wasn’t for her - for us! - to be sunless - in fact that was why she played the game: "Grope! Grope!" she’d croak as she threw the bed’s blanket over Xer’s head - he wakes knowing the game - responds in gravelly morning voice, "Grope. Grope.": instantly amused – she laughing, giggling, squiggling towards - Goddam! Xer always swore to himself when first aroused: cursed mutedly and then let her have her way, no matter what, no matter which day, what time of the month, whenever, when she came with Grope! Grope! Xer knew that they were about to "slip inward" - Not just great sex, he had shared with … (You know it has to be March!)… with March: on the beach, an ocean beach, somewhere, once a month, drinking and doping, "Guys night out!" - it had opened a serious conversation neither had intended but which still raged on, argumentatively, adversarially ... "Inward. It’s like being peeled. She does it all blind-eyed. Like a mole, she says, doesn’t want to see me. Just licks and sniffs and rubs and ..." he plopped off into dumbness, his mind talked but his mouth didn’t move; two minutes and March was agitated, "Go on! What happens?"
Xer grimaces, grins, exhales, shakes his head so shaking off his buddy: How to simply say,"The Northern Way?"
"Lily!" It was Xer’s high-pitched, cracking falsetto, mocking Life with Father’s "Vinnie, I’m home" home-from-work greeting. From the first day of their marriage he had so cracked himself up as he entered the house: just love this little silliness!
But as he halted to adjust to the coolness - "What was it? 105 today?" said, as he left his work-out, to the receptionist. She playfully dabbing her cheeks. Even though it was by the ocean, and even though it was a dry climate, they lived just too far inland-east and a spiral hike uphill-north to not make one-hundred and five a walking sweat. Small beads had popped open on his brow, just minutes ago, as he stooped to pull an odd weed or two, then three, four – a dozen! - from the flower-beds they had planted this Spring. So, he had expected the coolness. Looked forward to it as his thirst did to a frosty brew. Over the years, had adjusted to his body’s reaction: sucking in the breather’s coolness just like his frozen carcass sucked in the North Country’s furnace solar heat - but he had not expected it to be, "Cold?!" A shiver: Gods and Goddesses, what’s she up to?
"The O Way" – ("Called it that instead of Southern. Don’t know. Like Northern seemed wet, but South dry, so she wanted the water. Anyways, it’s her story.")
"O’s live on the beach. It’s that simple." March uttering one of his many profound insights, this time sociological.
"Houses are irrelevant. Like lizards under the greasewoods - just a temporary shelter. Out of the mid-day sun. That’s all."
Maybe.
But Lily and Xer had adjusted. It took a couple of years. But they did make it to the beach. The O Way being so much more than "literal March" could have conjured - and which Xer had not shared with him, back then.
Nakedness. But not just as to clothes; not just disrobing. But a nakedness like at birth: umbilical. "The O breaks - my water - and we’re born anew." Lily had said that with such calmness, such quiet discovery in her voice that it made Xer chuckle - "Why are you laughing?" a stab of pain - "No. No," he was ever sensitive to her over-sensitivity to his - to her - queer fits and snorts of laughter.
"No. Not you. Me. ... How could I’ve been so stupid?"
That night. At its moment of their mis-fitting each other, so did the newness which "The O" was open to them.
The truth of the beach.
March’s unplumbed profundity: Houses are irrelevant.
As the water dribbled, first, at their toes. As it licked, in time, their calves. As it slurped their full torsos as they ignored the rhythm of the sea: each rising and falling in its distinct tempo ... the water they allowed to encroach, to come as the alien breath it is, to breathe them in
, take them upon its lips, sip and slip them in upon its tongue, wash them around in its mouth - temptation so magical that they could not resist: Swallowed!
"Drowning in each other." Did they both speak this at once. Or was it the O?
"When you wear the O, you need not nakedness."
This insight came months later. And when it did, so did they fully grasp how profoundly they had mis-understood The Northern Way.
Xer hesitates before turning the master bedroom handle. Not a hesitation as in fear, but one as in preparation. His mind reaches out with astral senses to contact her, she behind this door, she tapping her arcane, esoteric Morse Code upon the cooling degrees. Can I ever be ready?
Gropegropegropegropegrope ....
………………………………
"Are you listening?" irritated; hopeless.
"Grope," croaks tinnily; smallness; mustard seed; dry tear springing.
………………………………..
Slipping inward. The singular motion of deep winter. Ever inward. Into the tinniest of spaces. Seeking refuge from the greater world. Reducing one’s space. Reducing through clothing; furring one’s self; layering; with only eyes visible: ski mask, gloves, boots, ear-muffs, bear-skin hats - only lips forsaken, even eyes can be goggled ... inside, there is no thought to the house as tomb or womb or cave or coffin: no thought, just survival, and those who survive are - "Slip inward, Xer. Let me slip inside you."
No eyes. No quick hands. No buck and fuck. No watching the clock. No ears to hear but what is muffled.
All is breathing. Waiting for her breath. Receiving his as the tempo to her melody. Hearing with the cheek. Drifting upon the heart’s pacing desire. Heat seeking. Inching closer; microscopic. Ever cautious. Cautious not to miss her or him. Not to miss a molecule, an atom of desire. Breathing so that theirs is a common breath. Upon her cheeks. Upon his lidded eyes. He breathes a longer exhale. She is eager to be drawn in upon his inhale.
Skin. What they know, what they have practiced: not as boundary but as boundless. They kiss. Lips gently pressed. Docking. With precision. Fully touching lips. Slight breathing. He is ecstatic that she has found him! She is pleased that he has come!
Their lips key the moment. Lips which have kissed a thousand times, yet not once! Not this momentous once.
For it is their lips which are magical. Ever so deftly touching, ever so humbly pressing: their hearts open. Their hearts call each to the other. Their hearts break like waves worshipping the embracing sand.
Water. What else? The crudity of the physical: "bags of carbon based water" – Star Trek’s legendary amusement. They need not the humor. For as the water in the font blesses the infant with sacral thirst, so does their skin so liquefy.
She rose to this day seeking to drink him. To slake her soulful thirst with his presence. She had imagined him all day in this worshipful way. She did not need to pause to question whether he also so rose. She knew her magic. She had come to trust his responsiveness. His thirstiness.
105 outside! So, there was but a tie-less shirt to discard, sandals to kick off, pants flung aside, and before he could, so did she, vaporize his briefs!
With March he had kidded himself about "like a lever" – he’d see her breasts and he’d become steel – "Never fails. What? A thousand screws and I’m still "automatic" … Christ Almighty!" But especially her touch: "Not just hands," and here is where he loses March – "Stay literal. This metaphoric stuff is just crap. You can’t measure sentiment!" Oh, well. – "Her touch" meant more than the words, was indeed even beyond metaphorical, was magical – How?! – Gropegropegrope … no thoughts as she kneels before him, bewitching him with her blinded eyes: hands, lips, body, soul reaching out to him, stroking him, slipping herself over him, swallowing him, raising him so that he rises from her mouth as totem, extending from the bottom to the top of their inward world: staking the cosmos, staking himself deep down within her, she, as he is staked, letting loose of all her skin so that she unfurls, flutters out into cosmic breeze, and as she flaps and whips in this inward space so it is their spirits which unveil themselves, this the deep, the Great Nakedness they seek: that of the ocean which is in clapping harmony with deep winter.
Groped; groping: blind-eyed, two moles snuggly in their keep: body-warming.
:inwardness – her toes he kisses, prostrates: presses against his forehead, calls her to walk upon his intellect, to explore the pathways of his imagination, all he need whisper is "Walk!" with quiet enthusiasm, in prayerful worship – she hears and so expires, dies to the flesh of even this room, of the scent and non-sense and senselessness of it all: she walks exploring, she ambles in this their day-dreaming, she flows with him – "You are so powerful!" she wants to say, but doesn’t – for she is also fearful: dread of innocence, awe-struck, he humbles himself imagining so that as she meanders and inquires she comes to the waterfall of his heart, admires it, stands beyond it, wants to lift her flasher and take a snapshot … but she cannot stand apart, No! – as she gazes so does she float through the air, and it is his tongue upon her thighs which is his desire drawing her, magnetizing; it is his quiet kisses upon her cunny which is sweetly sucking away her impassioned breath – she is drifting inward: his hands cup her breasts, his fingertips wildly cheer and madly abandon themselves to the pleasure of her beauty, her guileless, lustful pleasuring, for it is hers as it is his pleasuring, his fondling of her hidden self – for she has always hid from him, so she knows, now so she knows he knows! – he is skinless, he is tongueless, he is handless, he is cockless!
:inwardness – she cannot but worship him! For it is this for which she has come to be so that they may be. Worship him and unearth that of herself which is sacral flame: vent, discharge, erupt! So did she know the first time she stroked him, aroused him, took him groping into deep winter. For it was she who is stealing him. As the thief rustles through the everyday to find the hidden spot, so had she stolen his treasure. Sniffed; licked; rubbed – erased the line of his flesh: no longer outer, only inward.
He who she knew – this an amusement to her, her own unabashed titter of mirth – knew that he didn’t even know what his treasure was! The goldenness of inwardness. … Simply satisfied to share with her his orgasmic treasure – so was he quick to disrobe – Ha! – so was he quick to become bare and to bare all of himself, to share with her what he, back then, thought was his inwardness: his intimate self as homunculus; seedy … but she couldn’t settle for cock, she couldn’t settle for his settling just for cunny. No! Greater Nakedness. Fuller. Robuster. Is he not conscious? Or not unconscious? Questions which she quickly dismissed, for it was as natural to him as to her, so she realized the first time he had slipped inward to her that dismal February day … "He just has more clothes," said to herself upon watching him after this first magical day: "Males have more clothes." And she laughs as she pictures the Proto-Classical Sculptures with the fig-leafs. "So many fig-leafs," cast out to him as they left the Walker Art Center later that same day.
"Yeah."
Did he have to say – to confess! To proclaim! To bare! – anything else?
………………………………………
Cilla listened to the end. Beyond The End. Which she knew, knew by the breath within her, this new life: more than seed, more than egg: a flower – rose, stood up and felt the uprush of rising as if impelled by groundly exhale, this her plant self, with long roots – Oh! she could see now, see back and then, see into every movement of every motion of Mark who truly was March-dead: as dead as all her children have been … Oh! she aches … just there, without movement: aching being her being, but a good ache, the parturitional ache, but this time inward, not outward, implosion, not … "My cock!" she delights: Cilla is intimate with Lilith: Cilla has Zav Big, slipping inward … "Now, to hit my Mark!"
Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Page 36
