The Saline Solution

by Marco Vassi

  We all let out a sigh at the same time. Janet turned and said, “Wow, four orgasms in my head.” And Jessica twisted around, moved up, brushed her mouth lightly against mine, and said, “You are beginning to understand.”

  I got up and went to piss. When I returned, Jessica and Janet were sitting cross-legged facing one another, doing a dance with their arms. Kay was nodding out in a rocking chair in the corner, and John was snapping his fingers into the non-operational fireplace. I stood next to him for a moment, and suddenly a spasm of aching longing seized my groins.

  “So this is what it is like to be a woman,” I thought. I groaned out loud and leaned halfway over. John turned to the girls and said, in a cockney accent, “Hey, me mate ‘ere got a case of ‘ard nuts. Now you females ‘ave been fussin’ and fondlin’, but you’ve left this poor chap all knotted up. Now, oo’s gonna take care of him?”

  The night lost its boundaries. We were committed to total purgation, but I was the only one in the room who understood that. To them, it was just a flippy night out, an extension of the party, while down my veins whistled the winds which rocked the trees where witches howled at the stars. We were moving, and moving. Through the sky, through the system, through the galaxy, through the universe, through time, through space, through the mocking smile of eternity. And we were always crumbling, always at the edge of extinction, like frantic candles doomed from the moment they are lit.

  I stared into the swirl of flesh with eyes that saw too much.

  And Jessica slipped inside my mind. For a raging instant of sheer fury I attempted to crush her body with the massive doors which guarded my palace of perception. She answered with the tiniest and most ineffable of questions. I crashed down the gates of pain.

  “If you want me, you have to swim the moat,” I said. The others blinked their eyes. I turned to them. “Intimacy comes from release, not from practice,” I said in explanation.

  Janet took John’s clothes off. She organized an experience, having all of us slap and caress and rub his body. The sight of his cock inflamed me, and I caught myself from leaning forward and taking it into my mouth. Just that afternoon I had dipped into the Ansonia Baths for a quick steam, and spent a rapturous ten minutes sucking a ponderous eight-inch cock, revelling in the sheer sensuous joy of it, realizing that I had ultimately erased all value as to the concavity or convexity of the sexual organ I put in my mouth.

  I put on Josh White’s Prison Songs and we did a number on John’s back. But I soon grew bored with the endless titillation to no end.

  “Listen darlings, I’m tired of all this Esalen nonsense. Are we going to get to it, or shall I go to sleep?”

  Unreal, unreal, reality reeling. I crawled up past Jessica and lay down against the backrest of the couch. She lay on top of me and Janet sprawled out beside John. Very soon, we were all nodding out. I got uncomfortable and went to get a drink of juice. Jessica stirred. “What do you want?” she said. “I want to piss, I want to drink, I want to smoke, I want to fuck, I want to sleep,” I said, “in that order.”

  Perhaps it was my act of impatience which short-circuited the festivities. But it didn’t matter. Chronological time passed no matter what we did. The abortion of an orgy seemed of no more consequence than the abortion of a baby. Everything which begins must end. So why start anything in the first place? Now that my cock was quiescent, I had no regrets. I went into the john and sat down for a long time. I read An Illustrated History of Love, and when I went back into the bedroom, the four of them were asleep. I put two pillows on the floor and stretched out, prepared for a lengthy vigil.

  I didn’t move. I didn’t pull a single string on any plane of consciousness. And I was surprised when Jessica got up and came to lie next to me. Part of me didn’t want to touch her. I was exhausted.

  For the next half hour she licked my body. I filled up with an old sadness and longing. It had been many years since I had hung so nakedly between need and pride, and this girl-woman next to me was maneuvering me into the classic position of love’s pain, suggesting that we tie ourselves together and go stand at the edge of the cliff. At this point, I could still master the nuances of the game. But I had no confidence in my ability to sustain the tension. I was losing interest in all the pockets of expression left open to the denizens of a dying world.

  She moved up until her eyes were on mine. She silently implored me to let her in. But at this moment Lucinda was tossing in her nightmare, while the baby burned in the docket, on trial for his life. And here was the judge wondering whether to despoil another human being. A young, hungry, soft girl who didn’t understand how strong her need for destruction was.

  And then, with the delicacy of a cloud scudding from in front of the sun, the matter became unimportant. It wasn’t me against her, not now, but the two of us caught in a scene written to a scale far beyond our abilities to comprehend. What difference whether I fucked her or not, hurt her or not? When you’ve destroyed one human being, you’ve destroyed us all. And it is possible to acquire a taste for the process, growing more subtle, able to play hide-and-seek with one’s motivations, pretending to oneself that one is in love again, or simply seeking sex again, while the unrelenting hidden purpose is murder.

  She had only her panties on and I was naked. I could feel our complementary vacuums raging inside and between us. We kissed and my mouth clamped onto hers; I sucked the air from her lungs and rolled my tongue deep into her throat. She brought her hands to her chest like a puppy begging for food. Her hair kept swirling between us, getting into our teeth and eyes. I whipped my head back and growled and she rolled face down. I came up next to her and ran my hand over her ass, feeling the thin cotton fabric slide over the mounds of flesh. Neither of us made a sound except for the deep regular breaths which made our heads buzz.

  I reached down between her thighs, feeling the irresistible curve of flesh formed by her cheeks, and ran one finger against her cunt from the outside of her panties. The cloth was soaked with her secretions, and I felt my chest melt as I rubbed and prodded deep between her legs, massaging her cunt lips, cupping her entire pubis with my hand. For a very long time we did nothing but concentrate on the joyous waves of fulfilled yearning which flowed from the heat of the inside of her body and the tingling of my fingers.

  She came to a climax as I pushed down and caressed her clitoris.

  We rested awhile and then she reached down to grab my cock in her hand again. She squeezed it tightly, all the while pushing against my belly with her elbow. It was as though she wanted to rip the thing out by the root. It seemed clear to me that just then she really wanted me to be a woman. But no matter how feminine my soul, there was still the cock to contend with. And we blended at a nebulous moment of decision to get the stiff thing out of the way in the most organic manner possible, to force it to ejaculate.

  I slipped her panties down to just below the bottom line of her buttocks. I tugged to get them down further, but she grabbed my wrist. She looked into my eyes, screwing her head around over her shoulder, and flashed me a negative signal. She was saying no!

  I suddenly remembered similar scenes many years ago with Connie, when I had wrestled for hours attempting to resolve the yes-no conflict within her. It had been one of the headiest forms of excitement, but it could be countenanced only as long as it was understood as merely another variation of the Game. When it became a sub-game in its own right, it grew tedious.

  I waited a moment until she had stopped holding me back, and when she was lying quietly again, I raised my body and lowered it onto hers. My limp cock nestled at the base of her ass, and I rocked back and forth until it grew hard, and I could feel her responding. I lifted up and changed the angle of approach until I was between her legs, the head of my cock nudging at the tip of her cunt lips. There was no fever in me at all. Mostly, I didn’t want to lose the immense silence which enmeshed us both. More than anything it was important to keep the utmo
st mutuality, that she know exactly what I was doing in my body and in my head, and that I feel every subtle response and initiative she made. In short, it didn’t matter what we did, so long as we hummed together.

  I pressed deeply into her and she pushed back against me, her buttocks fitting perfectly into the hollow formed at my groin. When she lifted so high that her thighs left the floor, I slid one hand under her. The feel of her flesh was electric. The top of her panties cut into my balls, stimulating me more than her fingers could have done. I pressed my cock into her from below, not penetrating her, but making the head of it ride down the length of the wet lips and into the clitoris. She twitched and moaned a bit.

  “I am consciously doing this and you are consciously doing this and we are riding the edge of ecstasy and communion,” I said into her ear, and then plunged my tongue into that ear, causing her to bunch in the middle.

  As I got more heavily into the actuality of our mutuality, she became hotter and wetter until she collapsed in a series of small shudders which marked another climax.

  I waited for several breaths and then gently entered her. She flinched, and I froze. That was where she was frightened. I let the pressure of my organ just rest in her until she was comfortable with it, and then relaxed my muscles, letting my weight drive me into her as far as our position would allow. She let out a long sigh. I suddenly fell deeply in love with her.

  “Stop that,” I said to myself, but it was too late.

  “Jessica,” I said.

  She brought her ass up so that my cock would enter her more fully, and then she started to grind against me, bathing me with the full lusciousness of her gift, the access to her body and the openness of her heart. I felt the entire length of her, legs against legs, back against belly. My arms lay at full contact along her side and one hand still cupped her cunt as my cock slid in between my fingers. The utter fragility and purity of the moment melted all my reserves.

  She was yielding herself up, sucking at me with her cunt, shooting the heated pleasure into my cock. I rested my forehead on her skull and blended the electricity of my brain with hers. Once again, for the first time, there ceased to be a me and a her, there was only the act. It seemed as though her body was sobbing with joy.

  She brought her pelvis up, back, and down in a circle. Each movement away pulled at all the nerves in my cock, making the blood rush to the sensitive tip. Each movement toward me had me sinking slidingly into her, touching the pit of her cunt, sending the current into her belly. At one point between in and out, Lucinda’s face bloomed in the darkness, and the entire room rocked on its hinged foundation.

  I cried out and then felt the beginning of my orgasm. I changed gears in my consciousness and continued to ride the cresting wave with unflagging awareness. She felt it also, and tuned herself to receiving the substance I was about to have explode from me. This was to be my orgasm, but shared by both of us.

  Just before I came, she spread her legs the slightest bit wider, and opened more fully to me. With a long silent yell I let my physiology run its course, and my body bucked into her with all the padded fury of a mammoth ferry slamming into its slip. We strained at the peak until I had released every last spasm, and then she sank to the floor, her cunt contracting wildly and spasmodically.

  We drifted off into the state between wakefulness and sleep, into the area of thought-dreams. I felt some slimy force rousing itself in me, and the sickeningly familiar symptoms of withdrawal flared up in my belly. A terrible mixture of anxiety and revulsion. I looked at the existential monster sliding up from its foul corner of the soul and caught its full ugliness in my gaze. For a long long time we stood locked in deadly energy combat or struggle. And with a sharpness that brought me to my knees, a blinding flash of yellow light exploded above our heads, and the beast dispersed in its shadow.

  Jessica stirred at precisely that instant. “Oh,” she said, “you’re here. Thank God you’re here.”

  “I almost slipped off,” I said.

  She twisted her body under me so that I now lay in her embrace. We locked gazes and shared the afterbreath of fear, the knowledge of those who have felt the cold touch of the Alien at the moment of perfect intimacy. Her body was solid under mine. We copped out to perfection.

  I got up off her, lay by her side, and as she cuddled to my chest, we fell asleep.

  My last thought before unconsciousness was a resolve not to let myself make ecstasy into a diversion. Lucinda’s abortion date had been set for less than ten days away. The reality of that child burned more fiercely than the highest diamond peaks of all transcendent sexual enlightenment. Everything that had happened during the night was the effect and the cause of the same birth that now huddled in the tenuous protection of its mother’s womb.

  XIV

  “Well, there are so few things left for you. You might as well attempt being noble.” Lucinda’s voice had the edge of a cat’s mating yowl. We had been back in the city for a week. I had reached that point of inner desperation where time scratched across my consciousness like fingernails across a blackboard. I was caught in a matrix of self-conscious gestures, aware of the awful imminence of our situation, and incapable of doing anything but accelerating the proprieties.

  I had just been invited to another party. John and Janet had dropped acid with several other couples and were now enjoying a mass naked freak-out, up and down the levels of their ground-floor pad, with its murky basement and surprising garden. But Lucinda held me with her need. Outwardly calm, she leaned dangerously into hysteria. I wondered about suicide, but felt no vibrations in that area. Leaving her now would be to turn my back on her pain.

  I said no to Janet.

  “I understand what you’re doing,” she said, and I heard the solid thud of her words chugging out from the welter of acid energy. “You are my brother,” she said.

  Lucinda lay across the bed, her eyes closed, her mouth half open. I saw myself go over to her and simply take my pleasure with her lips and tongue. Technically, she was about the best blow job of any woman I had known, and as good as all but a few men. I found myself thinking, “If I stay here tonight I not only get a chance to be noble, but I get my cock sucked too.” I wondered whether I was despicable.

  I hung up and lit a joint. Lucinda joined me. We got high very quickly, with fine flourishes of rushes in our heads. At the end of empire the rulers are granted grand gestures while the plebes celebrate annihilation with drugs. If this is the last time ‘round, it is the time for bitter laughter.

  “Francis is henpecked,” I said.

  “You lie as much as he does,” she said.

  “And I don’t like that girl of his. That’s all. She just gives me a bad feeling.” I began pacing up and down.

  “Francis is just playing the two of you off against each other,” Lucinda said.

  I looked at her. “When the foreplay goes out of a relationship, it’s a good bet that the tenderness is gone also. Why aren’t you more aggressive? It might have been possible if you were more aggressive.”

  “You said you didn’t want any problems from me. I’m just here for when you want me. In a woman, aggression is abandon. You ought to know that.”

  I sat on her chest. My cock dangled over her face. “Do you want the baby?” I asked.

  She took the limp organ between her teeth and flicked at the tip of it with her tongue. It got hard. She leaned back. “Yes, I want the baby,” she said.

  “Then why don’t you have it?”

  “I don’t want to raise it by myself. I don’t want to be left alone in this apartment having to take care of a baby. You aren’t going to stay around.”

  I leaned forward and came to rest on my elbows so that I was crouched over her. I dropped my cock into her waiting mouth, and as she sucked on it I thought about what she had said. But the impossibility of coming to a decision which wasn’t a bad one, coupled with the growi
ng sensation at my crotch, soon dispersed all cohesion. I fucked her in the mouth for about ten minutes, pushing into her throat to make her gag and then pulling out, leaving her gasping at the experience of pseudo-terror she had just had. I hit against her lips, knowing they would be bruised for hours afterwards, and each time she smiled or spoke, the throbbing ache at her mouth would trigger this entire scene to mind.

  “Beverly used to vomit all over my cock.” I said. “She would go down so hungrily that she kept gagging until she threw up. And then she would keep sucking until I came in her mouth.”

  My words inflamed Lucinda, and she lapped the length of my cock with broad strokes of her tongue. She was beginning to go wild a little.

  “There were three women beside yourself who were the best,” I mused out loud. “Beverly, Wendy, and . . . “ I paused. “I can’t think of her name,” I said. “And I really dug her. That’s sad.” I tried to picture her. “She was short and she used to teach bellydancing.”

  Lucinda stopped abruptly, caught by a thought. “Did they fuck as good as you do a man?” she asked.

  “As good as I do a man? Them, as women?” I was puzzled.

  Lucinda got exasperated. “Oh, do they do it as good as you! That’s all.”

  I thought about it a while and she snuggled back into my cock. “They were as passionate, but not as inventive.”

  She brought her legs up and hooked them into my elbows. I leaned forward and her cheeks caved in with suction. “You certainly suck a lot,” I said. “I mean, as opposed to lick or bite.”

  “Is that good?” she said, her mouth still full.