Escapades of a Porno King

by George Alexander

  Some kind of vague recollection of his college days intruded upon him. He realized that the way in which he was thinking was a sort of modern, psychologized version of something he had read once. He thought for a while, staring out at the sand as though the name of the philosopher was written there some place. Finally, it came to him. It was Kierkegaard, who talked about a sort of aesthetic life. He especially remembered the famous section of one of Kierkegaard's books called The Diary of the Seducer. He knew that Kierkegaard wouldn't have approved of him, but that was all right, because he wasn't very interested in the rest of what Kierkegaard had to say—he was simply fascinated by that one idea, and the way that it connected to his thinking. He wondered if it would really be possible to design your life like a great work of art, so that all its events fitted together in pleasing patterns. The trouble was, when you were finished, you wouldn't have anything—you wouldn't have a painting or a piece of sculpture, or even a bit of music that could be performed again.

  Jack suddenly broke off these speculations. He didn't know why, but he felt that there was some reason why he should look up. As soon as he did, he realized that the lighting had changed, and that there was some kind of dark element somewhere in what had been a brilliantly sunny day. He searched the sky, and was amazed to find at first that nothing had changed—until finally, looking far away on the horizon to the west, he detected a low, vague, gray area. How in the world he had been aware of it before, he could not say. But it was obviously an approaching storm. The wind was blowing out of the west, and if Jack knew anything about tropical squalls, he knew that it would be upon them shortly. Perhaps a subtle change in the temperature of the air had made him aware that the storm was coming. Or maybe it had been some kind of mysterious sixth sense.

  He did not feel unhappy at the prospect of a storm. He knew that wind and rain and clouds in the tropics could be very beautiful. He suddenly realized that the reason was obvious—they came unexpectedly, there was the famous calm before the storm, and then, with only the barest of preliminaries, they took over the entire atmosphere with a tumultuous, beautifully orchestrated symphony of sounds and feeling and sights. It was almost sexual, the way storms came and went, building to crescendos and then tapering off into light drizzles, leaving the ground glistening and damp.

  He got up and walked at a fast pace up to the house, anticipating telling everybody about his discovery. It was as though he was nature's messenger, coming to tell them that they were being given a present. He walked in the front door, and found the scene, which had been chaotic on his departure, had calmed down considerably. Sal, his fine, athletic frame enmeshed with Gretchen's, was the only really active person in the room, Gretchen simply lying submissively under him and enjoying being fucked in a passive manner. The rest of the people were doing what people normally did when high on mescaline—staring at things around them, listening to sounds, were thinking to themselves, or carrying on rapid conversations in low tones punctuated by frequent laughter.

  “Hey, everybody,” Jack said, “I've got a surprise for you—there's a storm coming.”

  Jack was fascinated by people's reactions. Predictably, Joan jumped up and ran out onto the porch. “Where?” she asked, obviously as enthusiastic as Jack himself.

  Cindy, on the other hand, seemed apprehensive. “Do you think it will be very bad?” she asked. “I hear that these tropical storms can sometimes be very destructive...”

  “Shit,” Dale said, from across the room, “this house has been here since God knows when, and it'll take more than little wind to blow it down. The only way it could be dangerous would be if it was a hurricane—which it's obviously not, because this isn't the season—or if you got caught out in a storm in a small boat. But I don't think any of us are going out in the boat right now. It ought to be really nice. I'm going to go out and run around like a crazy man in the rain.”

  The rest of the people were equally divided in their reactions, Janice lamenting the loss of the sun for even a short period of time, and Al Frederickson running up to the attic to see if he could see how long it would be before the storm arrived.

  Jack wandered back outside, wondering whether it was just the mescaline that had made him so conscious of how different everybody's reactions were, or whether he was just becoming more aware of those things lately anyway. He turned his attention to the horizon, and saw that already the size of the gray patch had increased greatly. He was surprised to find it relatively isolated—it wasn't the whole sky that was clouding over, it was just a part of it, and all around the storm front, there was still sunlight. It seemed as if, out here on the ocean, even a storm had to be careful to preserve its individuality. The spaces were just so vast.

  The wind freshened, and the leaves on the trees began to flutter, turning their pale undersides up toward the sunshine which still brightened the landscape of the island. Jack usually was not aware of all of the leaves of a given tree as being separate things—he usually felt them as one mass, with a very complicated structure. But now, each one stood out by itself, and each blade of grass, as the wind blew across the lawn. The temperature had fallen probably five degrees already, and as he looked out over the ocean, past where the waves broke on the barrier reef that surrounded the island, he could see the water getting choppy. The ground swells were being decorated with little peaks and ripples, as the wind carved them up into complex sculptures.

  Jack noticed a naked figure among the bushes at the side of the house. It was Candy, carefully picking a pathway for her bare feet over the rough ground. Framed against the frenetic activity of the leaves, Candy no longer seemed—as they all had seemed earlier—to be an integral part of the landscape. It was alien to her now, and her pale body seemed strangely vulnerable. She looked out of place. Jack heard some people come up behind him, and turned around to see Joan, Cindy, Sal, and Dale. Soon, the rest of the group had gathered there on the lawn in front of the house, and they stood almost as if watching a parade, watching the storm get closer. In the city, Jack realized, you knew when it was raining, and you knew when it wasn't—but all you cared about was the size of the drops and the strength of the wind. Here, he could see that each storm was different. He decided that they must all have distinct personalities of their own. As the first small clouds of the storm, the advance guard, slid in above them, Jack began to get the feeling that this particular storm was a rather warm, friendly—although playful—one. The wind rustled the leaves on the trees, but did not tear them off. It flapped the cloth of a few old canvas chairs sitting on the porch, but it did not blow them over. The sun, which was rapidly being obscured by the advancing clouds—Jack was astonished at their speed-threw a sort of ghostly silver-pink light on the highest points of the cloud formations, making them look like sky scrapers in an eerie sunset. Jack had the fantasy that the clouds were a great city, floating by above them, and that they were down in a deep shaft beneath the metropolis, gazing up at its streets and buildings from underneath. But it took him no more than a second to realize that the buildings were constantly tumbling down, and rising up again in new shapes. Gradually, the city dissolved, and now the storm seemed to carry with it no more than a feeling, a vague atmosphere, like the atmosphere at a restaurant, or the atmosphere of a museum, only this was the atmosphere of a storm—and not only that, but this particular storm.

  Suddenly, the storm was not a distinct thing anymore, coming toward them on the horizon: it was there, all around them. The rain swept in, large drops splatting noisily on the roof of the house, and with a less distinct, fuzzier sound, on the ocean. The winds dropped suddenly, and the rain fell straight down. Everything was completely calm. But the main part of the storm was still to come. Jack stood on the lawn, his feet planted in the wet grass, his arms folded, gazing up at the sky. He realized that the dampness had made him just the slightest bit chilly, and sensed that the rest of the members of the group had felt the same thing. Those who were really tripping heavily, like Janice and Sal, reacted by da
ncing around in circles to shake off the momentary chill. Some of the others began to huddle together a little bit, forming a small cluster on the lawn. As the wind began to blow in earnest again, and the eaves began to fly more wildly, the group's level of excitement seemed to grow—but it was divided in its expression by the two groups. About half of them were now dancing around, listening to the splat of their feet on the soggy turf, and the other half were bunching up more tightly together, stroking each other and becoming intertwined. Jack stood on the outside of the huddled group, observing. He realized that he sort of felt like the host at this event—he had discovered it, so to speak, and now felt he was responsible for pointing out to everyone what a good thing it would be. Suddenly a funny image struck him, as it became obvious that the dancing figures were circling around the huddled group. It looked to him like the cowboy movie, with the settlers drawn up in the middle of the great plains, their covered wagons in a circle, and the Indians circling around them, whooping and shooting from their horses. The thought struck him as so odd, that while the slant of the rain increased, and the drops began to drive in on them harder, he went over to the huddled group, knelt down, and pretended to be aiming a rifle at Janice, who looked at him with puzzlement for a second, but when he pretended to shoot her, and quickly swiveled his imaginary rifle over toward Candy, who had joined the dancing group, she caught on immediately, and began to prance around, hands in front of her as though she were holding the reins to a horse.

  The wind was buffeting the island now, and throwing waves up against its shores, as it tossed the surf over the barrier reed and whipped it up into new waves again. There was sort of a rhythmic, reciprocal pattern to the interaction of island and storm, with the slim trunks of the trees bending and straightening again, perfectly and automatically adjusted to every gust of wind, and the waves rocking up and down on the shore. The tempo grew: the rhythm quickened, as the gusts of wind came more frequently. The air was charged with excitement. Rolls of thunder boomed out in the distance, and flashes of lightening flickered high in the clouds. Now the island seemed to be the center of a huge conspiracy of activity, as nature charged its atmosphere with sound and light. The sky looked like a painting of the last judgement; Jack could swear that a bolt of lightning would tear the heavens apart, and the dark and mysterious forces of eternity would be revealed. He could not imagine, if such a thing happened, what would come spilling down onto them with the rain, but suddenly had an image of the world simply turning inside out, like a huge balloon inflated and the reversed, and imagined that it would soon be blown up again and everything would start all over. But he realized that this didn't make any sense, and the image passed.

  Now everyone in the huddled group was playing cowboys and Indians, and the dancers were gyrating in ever stranger fashion, as the wind whipped them into a frenzy. The attack of the storm upon the island paralleled the attack of the dancers on the huddlers, and a weird metaphorical drama, Jack felt, was being acted out. Occasionally a dancer would venture up to within a few inches of the huddled group, only to jump frantically away again when he imagined himself shot. Now the original circling motion changed an in and out motion, and the group of dancers reminded Jack of a bellows, pumping up and down, as it advanced and retreated. The naked bodies of men and women, completely given up to the ritual, flew about, white flashes against the background of greens and blues and greys.

  The storm was rapidly reaching its height. Rain drops were pelting the frail bodies like soft hail stones, massaging them all over in cool, silvery liquid. Puddles of water had formed in low places in the lawn, and the wind made tiny ripples on them, mimicking all the waves on the ocean. The thunder sounded louder, making the earth tremble, and the wind howled through the trees almost violently now, providing a melody above the rhythms and harmonies of thousands of other low, indistinguishable noises.

  Jack and the others could sense that the storm's activity was reaching a climax, and that soon after that, it would be gone. Their activities too became more charged with energy, more fraught with meaning. Suddenly, Sal launched himself into the middle of the group of huddled figures, sprawling out over them as they crouched on the ground, and sliding down between them. Then, one by one, in rapid succession, like gunfire, the other dancing figures suddenly rushed inward and threw themselves on the pile. Bodies, their skins slippery with the rich rain, rose and fell and tumbled over in chaos, and Jack found himself buried and completely lost in a writhing mass of flesh. He felt himself being stimulated, stroked, challenged, from head to toe, as people's bodies slid over, under, and around him. He felt a pair of hands grasp his dick with a firm but tender touch, and begin stroking up and down on it. He reached out, completely oblivious, and, feeling a leg, moved his hand upward to its crotch. He did the same with his other hand, and then he felt a pair of buttocks sliding down his own legs, onto his foot. He wiggled his toes and, felt them squirm into a wet, warm cunt. Close to him, there was suddenly another cunt, and he thrust his head toward it, burying his face in the loose, welcoming folds of slime. Meanwhile, his hands had reached their destinations, and he found himself, somewhat to his surprise, holding somebody's dick in one hand and somebody's cunt in the other. All the while, someone continued pulling on his cock, exciting the flabby flesh into a hard, rigid weapon.

  The whole pile of bodies was squirming in and out now, and mud was beginning to ooze up from the soggy ground beneath them, smearing arms and legs and backs with long strokes of brown. Jack knew that they must be tearing up the grass, making a huge mud hole, but that didn't matter much—the grass would grow again, and quickly. He was amazed that, with all the confused twisting and turnings, no one was being squashed, or smothered, or bumped. But somehow, as the lightning flashed, and the wind whipped across them, and the thunder filled the sky with noise, they were all becoming inter-connected. Now Jack felt himself being heaved up and down in a regular rhythm, as the network of bodies began to function together. Usually he would have thought of the whole thing in terms of in and out, or up and down—but everyone was moving in all directions. The complexity was incredible. There was no way to characterize it.

  Incredibly, Jack felt his foot sliding even further into the cunt that had slid onto it. All the toes were submerged except his little toe, which he felt rubbing against a hard, nubby clitoris. With his right hand, he continued pulling on somebody's dick and occasionally let his hand wander down to goose the balls which hung from its base in their loose, floppy sack.

  Someone, somewhere, began to imitate the sounds of the wind. But it wasn't quite imitation-it was sort of harmony. It was a low moan, long, and regular, that kept up the wind's howling when the wind died down. Now others took it up, and there was an eerie, primitive, pervasive expansion of the storm's music out from them and into them, as if they were having intercourse with nature itself. Jack felt as though the entire horizon had contracted upon them, and was squeezing them ever more tightly together with its own overpowering force. He felt himself beginning to come, but this time the feeling was not spreading out from his genitals—it was starting at every part of his body and moving toward the center. He could feel sensuality in his fingertips, in his toes, in his lips, nose, ears, and over every part of his flesh. Electric impulses, like the electricity in the clouds, flickered from person to person, traveling across the group with lightning like speed, and rebounding again, amplified with every transmission. When the pitch of this magical, primitive, pounding and yet gentle force of sensuality had reached such intensity that it could no longer continue to mount, there was a sudden explosion. Spontaneously, Jack felt the sperm gushing out of him like oil from a new well, and at that very instant the hand which held someone else's dick was covered with warm, sticky white fluid. The moaning wail, the mimicking of the storm, that had issued from the group and served to make their weird orgy much like an ancient tribal fertility ritual, broke suddenly into a confusing, overwhelming variety of individual noises—grunts, screams, groans, cries, and
heavy breathing. The mud was flying everywhere, the water was dripping and pounding them everywhere, the wind shrieked its approval, and a tremendous clap of thunder acted as a final expression of what they and nature had done together.

  Suddenly the driving rain melted to an easy, warm drizzle. The wind seemed to stop dead in its tracks, and above them the clouds, once solid, heavy, and dark, began to break into pieces like a pane of glass. The towering thunderheads inarched on out over the sea, soldiers who had conquered and moved on. Jack and the others lay resting on the soggy grass, gradually pulling away from each other and becoming themselves once again. They were almost dazed by their experience. Jack himself, when he had left New York, had known that he was entering a different world—but he had not known that there was such a world as he had just briefly entered. It had been, despite its sensuality—or perhaps because of it—an almost religious experience, and although Jack had long since ceased to believe in the teachings of any of the structured and formalized and dogmatic religions, he had often felt that there was some kind of experience possible other than that of eating, sleeping, reproducing, and dying. It seemed as though the parts of his ordinary brain, which ruled his everyday life, had momentarily been blasted apart—and lost contact with each other—and now he felt them gradually gravitating back together again.