The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  “It’s called Iraq these days,” I correct her, “what little remains of it. So the work’s important now? Before, you called it boring.”

  “Important. Boring.” She shrugs. “It is what it is.”

  Ana and I reload our plates and my mind flits from worry to worry, finally settling on the telegram handed to me in the English faculty office today. Unless you are a finalist for an Oscar, the chances of receiving good news by telegram are something like one in twenty-three. This one didn’t beat the odds. It was from my old drinking buddy, Jeremy: “CONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY CONCERNING DEBT.”

  I don’t know why telegrams don’t say stop anymore.

  “I hope you can finish the squid,” says Ana, surrendering her fork and plate. “I’m done.”

  “More wine?” I say. “There’s gin, as well.”

  “You’re not getting me drunk again.”

  “No? Last time, you agreed to marry me. I thought this time we might decide on the silver.”

  “I did not agree to marry you,” says Ana, falling back against the cushions and pressing her bare feet against my thigh. Her feet are slightly cold, and I set down my fork to warm them with my hands.

  “Julian, Julian, Julian,” she sings, stretching languorously. “What am I doing spending my precious free hours with you? If you and I are a logical match, I’m Ann Boleyn’s hand maiden.”

  “It is a bit surprising,” I admit, surveying the curves beneath the black kimono. “But it feels pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

  She smiles. “Did you like our little morning tantra session?”

  “If that’s what it was.”

  “Call it what you like,” says Ana. “We were paying attention to what we were doing, that’s all.”

  I slide one hand beneath the kimono. “It was considerably more than that’s all. It seemed almost… I felt that I’d encountered an information source.”

  Ana looks at me in surprise.

  “Or not,” I say. “No, definitely not.”

  “What kind of information?” she demands.

  “I just felt that I was in the presence of knowledge. Nothing specific. I just couldn’t find my ignorance anymore.”

  I glance at Ana. “Or not.”

  “Julian! You found the Library? In your very first session, you found the Library?” She laughs. “You continually surprise me. My God, if you ever harness all that random devilment roiling around inside you—really, you’ve no idea.”

  I can’t resist hiking the hem of the black kimono just a tad. Her panties, too, are black.

  “So,” says Ana, smiling. “Whatever will you do? You’ve been addicted to chaos and failure your entire life, at the very least. Now suddenly you’re invited to the dance. You’re invited to ecstasy. Will you accept?”

  I begin to reply but Ana interrupts, “Don’t answer too quickly. Ecstasy comes at a terrible price, Julian. You have to sacrifice everything. All your clever little neuroses. All your comforting self-sabotaging behaviors. Your favorite stories about yourself. Everything that keeps your notions of reality propped up—it all goes. You are being called to utter transformation, Julian, and quite honestly—what are you doing with my foot?”

  “Sacrificing everything to ecstasy.”

  Having lifted one of Ana Manguella’s lily-white feet, I’m now making proper use of it.

  “Relax,” I tell her. “I’m a ninth-degree master of Nepalese Foot Reiki. I don’t accept students.”

  Ana giggles. “Let me.”

  I release my hold on Ana’s foot, and her toes begin to explore my mid-body in more minute detail. “Is this it?” she asks.

  “It depends on what you’re looking for. If you can manage the zipper with your toes, I’ll be forever in your debt.”

  “You’re already forever in my debt,” replies Ana. “And I’m telling you something important. You. Julian Mancer. Are being called to ecstasy, and it’s not an easy calling. Just pay attention. That’s all anyone can say. You’ll figure it out. Or else you won’t.”

  Her toes fail the zipper-pull contest, but the effort parts her kimono. My hand slips beneath the black undies. Ana surrenders her legs, letting them sprawl. I enjoy watching the broad face relax into an absent smile as my fingertips describe the beginnings of my favorite mound. Careless minutes pass, my fingers neither provoking nor seducing, not hurrying toward an outcome of some kind, nor going straight for the crux of the matter but only referring to it ever so indirectly.

  “The dishes… ,” says Ana weakly.

  “Let them wash each other.”

  Ana releases a sigh and the cares of the day, and her hand reaches lazily for me. I move closer, letting the white fingers discover the contours of my pleasure. Searching blindly for the zipper-pull, Ana’s fingers find it. Now her fingertips are in my hair, probing without hurry. I track the arcs of their tiny explorations, their unhurried discovery of the beginnings of my arousal. My eyes meanwhile enjoy the subtle change in Ana’s expression as her finger pads squeeze those stirrings, release them, squeeze them again. Almost imperceptibly, Ana tilts her pelvis, and I feel the warm, sharp tip of her pleasure against my middle finger.

  “Softly,” she whispers, and I realize that excitement has gotten the better of me. I refocus. By tender degrees the moment re-opens. Again my lover and I are adrift. My eyes close, and I imagine the balmy sun at the window once more, but the warmth I feel is within, pulsing from my awaking center. The left-hand path, tantrists call it, letting the fire of pleasure burn away all else until you are present with truth alone. If you can be fully transparent, it’s said, you pass through its single eye into the vast non-differentiation.

  Ana Manguella’s knowing fingers reach a bit farther to tug at my attention until I’m no longer sure what I was thinking about. I watch the white hand reach greedily into my trousers as the black kimono parts a little more to reveal a sleepy nipple. Ana stretches, and for a moment her whole body shudders. Her hand, meanwhile, closes around the shaft of my pleasure and roughly pulls it through the teeth of the zipper, evoking from me an involuntary ahh-rrrgggh-hhhh. She snuggles into a more comfortable position, and the circle of her fingers and thumb tighten around me tauntingly. “Mmmm,” she murmurs. “Adult pleasure. Don’t you love it?”

  I’m too engaged to presently reply. What we are doing is, I believe, called petting, widely considered the province of hyperventilating teens and doddering seniors. Zipper moment aside, however, I must report that I find this activity completely enjoyable if not debased. Maybe it’s just the abundant and adamant presence of Ana Manguella that makes of the simplest crumb a full banquet. As though on cue, she and I bring our fingertips to our mouths, wetting them generously. A moment later, we are both ahhh-ing at the glow building brighter at our pelvic centers. Or center. I’m not sure I can separate that out just now.

  “Slowly,” she whispers, and I realize I’ve gotten carried away again. We each let our hands rest for a moment, and I refocus, letting my erection slowly fade. Again I am aware of a warm glow at my center. The mere act of noticing, I note, has the effect of blowing gently on that coal. Intrigued, I focus on the friendly orange-tinted warmth within my, within our, pelvic cradle whose center seems less an endpoint than a beginning. But of what, exactly?

  “Grrd,” says Ana.

  She’s right.

  And I was wrong. About everything, basically.

  “Congratulations,” I say weakly. “You’ve disproven it.”

  “Disproven what?” she mutters.

  “It.”

  “Ah. It.”

  We resume our gentle probings, and again I’m dissociated from thought, from self, I’m rescued, pulled from the wreckage by Ana’s small white fingers. I know quite well that the moment of climax likely waiting some half-hour in the future will in no way be superior to this moment, the two of us sprawled here on the sofa, smelling highly of squid, just petting away. By that time, that future moment, all the tasty little thresholds will have been savored a
nd eclipsed, and it’s these, the little thresholds, that deliver us into the hands of sweetest of surrenders. Very soon we’ll be hammering away like a couple of power tools, but will the experience have this same broad edge?

  We’ll see.

  Certainly Ana Manguella is right about one thing. I am summoned to something beyond what I’ve thus far known, something with no interest in my excuses. Perhaps this should concern me, but Ana’s fingers are working magic. A fitful erection now heliotropes toward her like a rhododendron. But wait. Now fighting the impulse to turn my whole body toward hers, I open my breath and let my awareness plummet into the glowing warmth at my center, curious as to what that inner portal might open unto. I can’t quite make my way there. Finally I admit that I’ve left my body in an awkward posture. The growing discomfort is draining off bits of my attention. Reluctantly I take a moment to rearrange myself, at the same time loosening my pants.

  “Take them off,” says Ana, reaching clumsily to unbutton my shirt. I find my movements slow and awkward. Finally the last of my clothing is jettisoned, and I see that Ana’s kimono has vanished as well. Our limbs re-entangle on the leather sofa, our hungry flesh soaking up every detail of the other.

  Suddenly. Inexplicably.

  A deep pang of vulnerability convulses me. I find myself gasping. I’ve never felt so open before. So exposed to what I most fearfully want.

  What if she just leaves me here? Splayed in my wantingness?

  Really. What does happen to me if the clock strikes twelve and this flaming chariot becomes a pumpkin and a disappearing swarm of mice? Could I survive losing this? Innocent of answers, I let the questions ring in my bones. I let them course through me like a quavering sob, and I realize that ecstasy requires more courage than I might have supposed. I open even wider, my mouth hungrily reaching for more, more of myself, more of Ana Manguella, more of this scent, this terror, this deadly secret craving. Maybe if I can just be with these terrible questions, just feed this nakedness, my horrid wantingness one more moment…

  Ana’s ragged breath takes on a slightly guttural sound. Her one hand still grips me. The other directs my fingertips to exactly where she wants them, at the same time offering darting touches to her own pleasure. I surrender, roll onto my side, bring my middle closer to hers, and she makes a desperate sound. I watch the white fingers go again to her mouth, and my anticipation builds as her wet hand sleepily seeks me out. I re-wet my own hand, summoning the thicker saliva at the back of my mouth, and both our hands return to their touching. My moan becomes a giggle, and hers replies. We’re kissing each other sloppily. For a magical moment I’m not entirely sure which one I am, whose body I touch, which of the tangled hands is mine, to whom this hot breath belongs.

  “Bed,” gasps Ana.

  “Bed.”

  It takes us a while. Each of us falling-down drunk on our own endorphins, we half walk, half roll toward the bedroom. Finally Ana throws back the covers. I’m only partially on the bed when she wraps her upper body around one of my legs and begins circling her chin against my scrotum, inhaling my scents. I feel the peppery warmth of her breath as Ana wolfs down my body’s every secret, half-kissing, half-licking the outline of my balls—and not for my pleasure, I note. This is her own little indulgence, her own brute theft. In reply I press against the soft white face aggressively, shivering with excitement from the random touches of her tangled hair. Still nuzzling, Ana wets her tongue and pulls it slowly along the underside of my penis until her mouth has captured me.

  “Ooh-ooo-ooh.”

  I enjoy the warm wet embrace of the small mouth, the fine-textured details of its arriving and departing, arriving and departing. Maddened, I shove Ana Manguella against the bed and fall on her like a ravening wolf, attacking her mouth with mine. Almost violently, her hand seizes my penis and throws her body against it. I thrust rhythmically but not yet deeply, letting Ana place me here, there, now at the center of her pleasure, now just above it, now at the warm opening of her body, now in the forest of hairs at one side. “Nnn-mmf,” moans Ana, and I kiss the moan. She shifts her weight to one hip then the other then tosses me to one side long enough to lift one of her knees, exposing her ass. Ana’s hand shoves me against the tight ring of her anus, her wet mouth smothering mine with hungry kisses as the grip of her anus softens at the center. I begin to press against that soft opening, but her hand moves me. Now I am at the wet mouth of her vagina. Forest of hairs. Clitoris. Ring of the anus. Clitoris. Vagina. Clitoris. My thrusts become more savage, demanding the warmest depths of her. Mocking me with a laugh, Ana deflects my thrusts to one side then the other. I insist. She pants. It is a honey-dripping eternity before the hand places me at her exact center. I stab deeply, pitilessly, using my hips to penetrate deeper, and Ana’s mouth emits a voiceless yelp. Both her hands rise trembling into the air, palms open and imploring.

  I’ve got her now.

  I unleash the Unphailing Phallus, rolling my hips devilishly from side to side, twirling the head inside her. Ana’s chin rises toward the ceiling, her neck muscles bulging. I exaggerate the twirling motion, and a gargling sound erupts from her throat. All at once, her body spasms, contorts, and flails, the white breasts spilling this way and that. At this sight, I discover another three-quarter inch of erection and use all my weight to drive it into the unknown depths of Ana Manguella. At this, her eyes pop open in surprise and she ceases breathing altogether.

  A timeless moment.

  As I watch, spellbound, Ana’s fingers, still spread in the air, describe unknown mudras of transfiguration. Still not breathing, her face opens in a smile I’ve never before seen. The white teeth are lovely, and I suck on them furiously, the innermost chamber of Ana Manguella gripping me ever tighter until, at the last possible moment, her deepest recesses open to admit me to an even deeper warmth. Into that bright inner space I tumble.

  Everything vanishes in yellow-white brilliance. I hear the distant baying of a curly-coated retriever. I think that’s me. A higher voice replies in a perfect fifth. Now all hell truly breaks loose. Desperately my knees grip the bucking body beneath me. Ana, her eyes raging, is trying to throw me into the sky. The yellow-white brilliance throbs ever brighter until a blinding flash erases pretty much everything.

  I try to ignore the gently fluttering intrusions of the photon belt. Or is the bedsheet tickling my nose? Soon I know I must send out emissaries. In such a sprawling and uniformly luminescent reality, its farthest edges just vaguely sketched in, one arrives only gradually at the true comportment of things. Yet one does sense within the general tumult a sensation quite alike unto fluttering.

  It has taken me quite some time to arrive at this plateau of comprehension, my senses having recently been blown to the farthest reaches of the Schnoid Belt by a relentless force loosely termed woman.

  “Aaay gawder someep,” utters Ana Manguella, semi-conscious beneath me.

  “Mnnn,” I reply.

  I know exactly what she’s trying to say but am presently no more capable than she of arranging it. Clearly something must be done. There seems to be a colorless fully opened eye at my center now, viewing me from every perspective at once, which I find somewhat bothersome. Then there’s the matter of the emissaries. The trouble with sending out emissaries, as you know, is that they seldom return and if they do, they never look quite the same as before, their beards coarse and sun-bleached, their eyes pleading as you try to understand who they have become and to what end. Not to mention how to glean from the oh-so-gentle flutterings exactly what it is they mean to say.

  Ana tries again. “Aay gotta eh sommeep.”

  Clearly, she too has noticed the intrusions. Ana lifts her head off the pillow long enough to groan, “Julian. I’ve got to get some sleep. Do you mind terribly?”

  “What? I have to leave?”

  “Glrrn,” she says. Fumbling for the bedside clock, Ana activates her alarm. A moment later, she’s out.

  “In this condition,” I say to myself, “I am suppo
sed to cross an international border?”

  With a sigh, I pull the covers around the white shoulders of Ana Manguella, kissing each in turn. Actually I think I kissed the left one twice. I give the right shoulder one more, and the world lines up more or less straight again. Now to see if I can get myself into my clothing with a minimum of blood loss. It’s a situation.

  After a shot of straight gin and an unsteady trip the bathroom, I discover myself badly dressed in the center of a lamp-lit street. A nippy wind has appeared from nowhere. I should have made it two shots of straight gin. Clutching my shirt collar, I make my wending way to the corner to flag an approaching taxi—or am I writing my name in the air? The taxi stops nonetheless.

  “Train station,” I tell the driver. “Careful of the fluttering.”

  Minutes later, I am aboard an empty train hell-bent for the nearest raw edge of the Chinese mainland, where I soon discover that the Immigration turnstiles are padlocked for the night. A bilingual sign informs me that they will re-open at five. It’s not quite four. Blearily I take a seat in the florescent-lit waiting room where four Chinese men sprawl in plastic chairs, nearly horizontal. Two are trying to sleep and smoke at the same time.

  Mechanically my left hand goes into a pocket and comes out with my journal. I am just lifting my semi-sharpened number-two pencil when a man chooses the seat at my left. I look up to discover a face at once familiar and unwelcome.

  “Please allow me to join you for a moment,” says Agent Raul Velázquez. “I think you may remember me.”

  I close the journal. “Where’s the shiny gold badge? No, don’t tell me. You’re off-duty.”

  Velázquez nods humorlessly. He is dressed in jeans, a navy polo shirt, and a spotless denim jacket. “Mr. Mancer,” he says, “I need to discuss something with you that has no connection to any matter concerning the US State Department. It’s completely off the record, in fact, and must remain so. Yet it does concern the security of our country and the safety of your own person. May I continue?”