A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  “I’m honored,” Jim laughed, a sparkle flashing in his eyes. “You look tired.”

  “Tired? I’m exhausted. Meetings. Marcie got threatened at the Student Union again last night. I’m trying to keep up with my classes. Sneaking over here today. You can’t believe how my dorm mother would just love to have me expelled for being in a man’s apartment. And my dad … my dad went absolutely crazy about that demonstration against Leander Perez. I mean, how can he object to protesting against a man who has concentration camps set up for civil rights activists? And … I don’t know … I’m just feeling lost …”

  A part of her wanted to explain to Jim what her participation and commitment meant. Jim was from New Jersey. Could he truly understand what it was like to be raised in a segregated South? The moments upon countless moments of differences in perspective, of racial epithets, of the folklore of prejudice. Forced to stop as a child to ponder the idea of white and colored water fountains and bathrooms and the movable bar in the public bus. All-white classrooms. The countless images of fear and shame—and knowing, even as a small child, that it was wrong. Jim understood the politics. The injustice of segregation. The intellectual arguments given by a growing number of radical black groups that it was pointless to die in a war in Asia for Vietnamese freedom, while blacks were not free in their own country. But could he really understand what it was like to be a Southerner and stand against the authority of generations—against family, neighbors, friends?

  “You know,” Jim tapped her glass with his own, encouraging her to take a swallow and mellow out, “it’s always tougher for those who lead the way. We’re changing things. Change scares people, and when they’re frightened, they get a little crazy. Tell me … why are you working for civil rights?”

  “I … I suppose it started in high school.” Kathy looked into space and saw a picture that was her own. “The children … the little girls … the ones killed in the church bombing. They televised the funeral. The anguish on the faces of the parents. It was a church, for God’s sake. Then, there was this Tom Paxton song a friend used to sing. About Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. Buried in a dam because they cared enough to get people to register to vote …”

  “Those are good reasons for drawing a line.”

  “But dealing with craziness isn’t the only reason I’m feeling confused. Not all of it,” she said, drinking deeply of the sour wine. “I stopped going to church, and there’s this great empty hole where things I always believed used to be.”

  “No God? Now all you have is yourself?”

  Kathy regarded him, a quick raise of her eyes to his, unsure of his meaning.

  He grinned and moved closer. “Look, you believe that regardless of skin color, a man or woman can have a vote. We’ve been duped into a war that was already bad when the French controlled Indochina. As for religion, why not slowly rebuild by choosing things that are right for you? The things you feel here.” He touched her chest over her heart. “We’ve all given up something important to make changes. Have you ever listened to Bob Dylan? You might want to hear this.” He went to a box near a record player and rummaged until he found The Times They Are a-Changin’. “Listen to this. I’ll start the album from the beginning.”

  As the music began, Kathy leaned forward, more relaxed, the wine effective. She chose another magazine off the table and read the headline. “Jim, what’s LSD?”

  He sat down and reached again for the wine bottle. “I don’t think anybody really knows. A powerful psychoactive drug. Some say it opens consciousness. Ever hear of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love? There’s this dude named Farmer John who’s invited Timothy Leary out to California to live with the Brotherhood.”

  “What kind of Brotherhood are you talking about?”

  “Farmer John’s got whole communities of people gathering together, taking LSD, and holding hands in big circles. Friend I know who just got back from Mexico told me about it.” Then he laughed, as if he knew why she had really come, and it wasn’t to discuss magazine articles. “Now, tell me again why you’re here.”

  Embarrassed that he had seen through her, she dropped her eyes to the floor. “Jim, I have to tell you …”

  “That you’re a virgin? Hey, it’s pretty obvious.”

  “Well, thanks,” she answered, her face burning.

  But she wanted him … or some part of him. Jim understood the things she was trying to understand. While she had been in a Catholic high school for girls, he’d been on the front lines of the civil rights battle. The knowledge he had could fill the empty dark places of her soul, and at the moment, there was plenty of room. Jim would be the new beginning. The foundation that felt right. And the pact she’d made with Marcie, to lose their virginity—who better than Jim?

  He ran a finger across her cheek, her neck, and to her cleavage, gently caressing.

  “Why do you want me?” she whispered.

  “Because I’ve never had a virgin before,” he told her honestly.

  “What about love? Do you love me?”

  “I love you right now. Today. After that, we’ll just have to take one day at a time.”

  “Okay,” and she leaned forward to timidly kiss him.

  His response was quick and fast, his tongue deep in her mouth. Frightened, she drew back.

  “It’s alright,” he murmured quietly. He laid her back on the couch, kissing her softly now.

  Kathy grabbed his hands. “Jim, I’m kind of afraid. I’m not sure …”

  “Shhh. It’s alright.”

  Nervously, she smiled.

  With this encouragement, he moved his fingers to the buttons of her blouse. When they were undone, she felt him unhook her bra. No man had ever seen her breasts, not entirely. Now Jim was under her loosened bra, pinching her swelling nipples. Before she could recover from the shock, he pulled off her blouse and bra so that she was naked from the waist up. Flustered, she closed her eyes.

  “Let’s go into the bedroom,” he whispered, pulling her gently from the couch.

  As he walked, he began shedding his T-shirt. In the darkened room, he pushed away his jeans. Kathy searched for something to focus on. Anything, except his very obvious erection. In the next instant, he was pulling at her skirt, shoes, and stockings, mercifully leaving her with her underpants, and laying her on the bed.

  Okay, so I promised myself to do this, she thought shakily. Only now I’m not so sure.

  In that moment, she knew those backseat encounters with the frat boys were nothing compared to what she was planning to do now. The intimacy overwhelmed her. Jim lay close, his body along hers, rubbing her hips. The ache between her legs heightened. Gently, he kissed her mouth, his hand moving closer to places not even she had touched. He passed over her pubic area and down her legs, brought his hand to rest between her thighs.

  “Touch me,” he whispered.

  Her sigh was heavy, shaking, and she began to caress his face and shoulders, felt the muscles of his arms. His nipples were tiny and hard like hers. His breath was in her ear. He took her hand, slowly placing it between his legs. Shocked, she hesitated and drew back.

  “Please,” he brought her hand back again. “Touch me.”

  And so she touched, nervous and unsure.

  Then with amazing swiftness, his hand slipped her panties off, slowly feeling between her legs, smoothing her wetness gently over her clitoris, until she quivered, her legs shaking uncontrollably. As he climbed atop her, she could not bring herself to open her eyes. All she could feel was his mouth, warm against her neck, and his penis, hard and searching. When he tried pulling up her knees, she awkwardly dropped them, until once again he lifted them and began to push his way inside. Kathy moaned, wanted to cry out that it hurt.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured, the words low, hot next to her ear, his arms tight around her, his body heavy, making it difficult for her to breathe.

  Slowly, he began to move, push, retreat, picking up speed, making it clear that she should lift her knees, confu
sing her with his signals, moving faster, until she wanted to scream.

  His searching became harder, deeper. A hot, tempting sensation teased her, interspersed with the pain. The new feeling was seductive, insinuating. What was it? But Jim was heavy and she would never have dreamed of moving in the way he did. After what seemed an unbearably long time, his quick breathing became a cry and his motions slowed until he was still.

  Kathy kept her eyes closed to him, wondering. Where was the pleasure she’d heard about? The gentleness that had convinced her to trust him lasted only as long as it took for him to get inside. Then, he was hard, heavy, having his way, while she was open, vulnerable.

  For a few minutes, he lay next to her, quiet, stroking her. Then suddenly, as if it were very important, he asked, “Do you know where my watch is?”

  Kathy shook her head.

  “I’m going to get up and look for it.”

  Minutes later, she heard water running in the bathroom. She sat up, wondering what she should do. Slowly, she began gathering her clothes.

  “Kathy,” Jim stepped out of the bathroom, “I have a meeting tonight. I need to get some studying done.”

  “Yeah, I have to go, anyway.”

  “Look, take your time. Get dressed. I’ll be at my desk.”

  “Sure. I’ll just … just use the bathroom. If you don’t mind?”

  From that shaky beginning, she had fallen madly, desperately, passionately in love with him. And for all she knew, he had been faithful to her throughout the spring, balling her once or twice a week, studying when he could, giving the bulk of his time to organizing. Being with him, she’d learned a lot about the management of a political organization—creating and xeroxing leaflets, distributing them with Marcie and a few others, typing, picking up poster board for signs, handling the administrative details of scheduling the rooms for meetings, filling out permits. While she ran the office, Jim conducted the meetings, made the majority of the decisions, gave the radio and newspaper interviews, and made himself available to talk to members at the Student Union.

  In mid-March, the weather became fair and sunny, and the entire campus was affected by spring fever. Even Jim had itchy feet and moved away from the coffee tables to sit outdoors under old oaks.

  Then, on a momentous afternoon, he invited Kathy to New Orleans for the weekend.

  New Orleans! All the times she’d slept with Jim after that first afternoon had been the same—furious necking, his hands across her body, his quick assumption that her clothes were his to remove. When it was over, she was dressing quickly, trying to get back to the dorm before curfew. What would it be like to spend a whole night with him? She wanted time to get comfortable with his body. Jim wanted her to fondle him, had even insinuated that she might kiss him on his maleness. At least now she knew to pull her knees up and the pain was dulled, but what about the other feeling, that other half-pain that made her wet, enticed her? All she and Marcie had to do was sign out to a friend’s house in another city for the weekend, and they’d escape both the dorm and their parents.

  Jim’s friends in New Orleans—Sarah, Mike, and Phil—lived in the Marigny, just outside the French Quarter, in one side of a duplex built on high pilings in case of flooding. The house had wooden siding with peeling white paint, a scuffed, gray-toned porch, and tall French windows with dull, green shutters facing the street. A shotgun apartment, it was called: one room opening into another, straight back, without a hallway, the better to circulate air in summer heat. The windows were covered with aged yellow shades, the walls bare and almost as yellow, the floors unpolished hardwood, and the furniture deteriorating. Sarah took one look at Kathy and Marcie and gave Jim a not-so-subtle, questioning glance, insinuating immediately that two raw college girls did not belong.

  That night, Mike picked up a guitar and began to sing, and suddenly, there was Marcie’s voice, filling in all the spaces around his in harmony. When the song was over, Marcie took the guitar he offered and shyly announced the name of a song she’d written.

  The world that Kathy was introduced to that night was one she had only imagined before. These friends of Jim’s lived hand to mouth, had none of the furnishings she had been brought up to believe were essential to comfortable living, and apparently didn’t miss them. As she sat through the evening, listening to their travels, suggestions of love affairs, political escapades throughout the South, and the ambitions of the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley, she began to realize that what was really important to these people was experience.

  “Hey!” Mike suddenly cried, “Want to smoke some pot?”

  Before anyone could answer, he was up and out of his chair, taking a plastic bag and a pipe from a loose floorboard.

  “Mike!” Sarah began, clearly trying to stop him. “I don’t think this is the time.”

  “It’s Friday,” Mike waved her objections away with his voice. “We have guests.”

  “I know,” she said, as if he should know too. The penalties in Louisiana for possession of marijuana were lengthy prison terms. If push came shove, which way would these girls fall?

  Without mincing words, Mike glanced up at her. “Someone once turned you on.”

  Sarah sighed and settled back onto the vinyl couch.

  “Sure,” Jim nodded, watching Kathy. “Light it up.”

  Mike filled the pipe with a mixture of leaves, stems, and seeds. Pot was too scarce not to smoke every part of the plant. When the pipe reached Jim, he toked and passed the pipe to Kathy. The smoke was hot, burning. She coughed hard, unable to stop.

  “It’s the seeds and stems,” Phil told her. “Harsh. You just have to get used to it.”

  Mike refilled the pipe once, then once more.

  “Take two or three tokes,” Jim said to Kathy, “that way you’ll really know what it’s like to get stoned.”

  The words were pointless advice, heard at a distance, because Kathy was already beginning to know. Disoriented, lightheaded, she began to sense her body in an unknown way. Anxiously, she pushed at the changes, groping her way back through clouds of heaviness to the world she knew. But the drug pulled her, mind and body locked in battle, seeking some kind of equilibrium.

  “Come with me,” Jim said, watching her face.

  “I … I can’t … walk.”

  “Sure you can,” he said, pulling her.

  Kathy didn’t want to leave Marcie and tried getting her attention, but Marcie had leaned back on the couch, her eyes closed. Awkwardly, she let Jim lead her from the room, feeling sick to her stomach. “I might throw up,” she mumbled.

  “Here. Lie down and breathe. Like this.” Jim took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That’s it.” He watched as her chest rose and fell in a slow rhythm. “Let go. You’re holding on to your ego. Your mind wants to explore. You’re disoriented because you can’t let go.”

  Kathy had thought about her ego before. The ego had been the main question of her philosophy midterm, but tonight, there was new meaning to the term, something yet unclear.

  “Just breathe,” Jim continued to whisper quietly. “Close your eyes. Listen to your body. Feel. Go with it.”

  Something strange was happening. Patterns on her eyelids! Only then did she remember how she used to look at the patterns behind her eyes when she was a kid. If you rubbed your eyes or squeezed them tight, you could get color and flashes.

  Another breath and she felt the tingle in her body. A sensation grew in her pubic area. The same sensation that suggested itself when Jim made love to her. She laughed, and her laughter sent blood flowing around her body. She went with it.

  In the next room, Mike picked up the guitar once again and began to play. One by one, the notes came to her, and she reached out her hand to touch them. When they hit her body, she heard them explode against her skin as green, yellow, red, or blue.

  Suddenly, she was thrilled!

  What a marvel! A wonderland of color, vision, sound, and feeling!

  The music passed over her as a w
arm, constant breeze from the Gulf of Mexico might have, caressing her body, sending thought after thought. Simple things, those she had always known but had never so truly understood before, and deeply sensitive ideas, new and newly touched on became clear.

  At some point she reached out to Jim. “Thank you,” she smiled, nuzzling up to him.

  “You like it?” he smiled back at her.

  She looked at him, laughed, and pulled him to her.

  “I know what you want,” he teased, rubbing her back, his chest hard against her breasts.

  The late spring night already tempted summer, and the room was warmer than the air from the open window. Matching their rhythms to the flow of Mike’s guitar, Kathy and Jim moved together as if dancing in slow motion. She had not moved with him before, and now they both began to sweat, perspiration mixing with Kathy’s smells and the strong scent of early blooming magnolia from the tree outside. For the first time, her clitoris was actively engaged, the feeling between her legs too sensitive, the enticement, the growing burning, would not be ignored.

  Slowly, she began to push with her hips, almost paused, the old prohibitions still on her. But this time, she couldn’t stop. Aroused as never before, she matched his rhythm, the fire building, engulfing her. Months of foreplay and longing exploded in great grasping pulsations, and she cried out into the colors on her eyelids, while Jim finished and fell onto her sweat-soaked hair.

  “Kathy,” he murmured softly, and this time, he did not let go of her.

  The sensations still pulsed through her body, rippling in waves, unbelievable, ecstatic, refusing to still themselves.

  So this is orgasm.

  Suddenly, everything made sense—art, music, literature. This emotion, this tantalizing feeling, this bonding of body and mind and soul had created empires or made epic heroes of ordinary men.

  Jim covered them with a crumpled white sheet, and she settled into his arms, slowly falling asleep. She had never slept in Jim’s arms before, comforted by the warmth of his body and the soft coziness of her first stone. For that, perhaps for that first turn-on, perhaps she could forgive him.