The Reluctant Exhibitionist

by Martin Shepard

  XXIV-Tantric Road (continued)

  Wednesday, August 12

  Chris has the biggest cock that I have ever seen. It is so large, so fat, so long, that he finds it difficult, if not impossible, to fuck comfortably unless the woman has an exceptionally ample pussy. Eivor’s cunt was made to order for him.

  Chris, like Vincent, is a writer and occasional leader of encounter groups. Chris, like Vincent, is a very good friend. Chris, unlike Vincent, is reluctant to use this enormous tool of is.

  When he phoned yesterday I was doubly delighted. For one thing, it has always been a joy to spend time with him. For another, I welcomed the opportunity of befriending him. He has always been helpful, gentle, and kind toward Eivor and me, but has rarely asked for any “caring” in return.

  Now he was.

  A handsome, thirty-year-old six-footer, a former track star, a former pediatrician, a former encounter-group disciple at a well-known midwestern “growth center,” he had spent the summer withdrawing from people so as to complete work on a book he was writing. This novel, in the best tradition of the surrealistic writers—of Burroughs, Beckett, Kafka, Genet—required his inventing mad, absurd, inane situations and dialogue. It was taking its toll on him. For he could write effectively only by making himself temporarily batty.

  He looked forward to taking a breather, to visiting us. “I need to get out of myself.” What better way to help him get out of himself than by helping him get into someone else?

  Eivor and I invited Carol over to join the three of us for dinner. I anticipated a happy foursome. No sneaking off to fuck two by two, but a sharing, loving time.

  I had good reason for such expectations. For Chris was sexually primed by his prolonged abstinence. I looked forward to completing my unfinished business with Carol. And I knew that Eivor, caring for Carol as she did, would not object to my intimacy with Carol as long as she would be involved in some way. Eivor was also curious to experience what it was like when the Horse Man entered the Elephant Woman. (It’s strange how embarrassed women are over having super-large cunts. I find that a big pussy has so many more advantages than a tight one. For one thing, it’s easier to enter. For another, you can move about it in all directions. It’s softer, more succulent, more capable of swallowing you up. You can never penetrate its depths fully. It remains mysterious. Always promising something more. And even nonsexually, it’s so much more practical for bearing babies. Yet damned if I know any woman—Eivor included—who is proud of owning one.)

  But our evening didn’t work out the way I hoped it would. Not that it was a disaster. Just that it was half-assed.

  That was mostly due to the fact that Chris, Carol, and Eivor were all too passive.

  Chris expected Carol to be a “swinger.” And of course, she is not. She is basically a shy, passive housewife, as restless and as eager for adventure as most are, and requiring a bold man to bring her out. Chris had no tolerance for this. His unwillingness to play the part of the adventurer—indeed, his antagonism toward Carol’s quiet presence—built up an insurmountable wall between the two of them. And Carol was as reluctant to respond to me in front of Eivor as she had been in front of Andrea.

  We have some next-door neighbors who have an enclosed swimming pool. They come out only for weekends and have told us that we can use their pool in their absence whenever we wish. In an effort to break the stalemate by at least getting us all disrobed, I suggested that we go skinny-dipping. The others ambivalently agreed.

  Carol and I walked out first. The night air was particularly chilly. We got to the pool and waited a while, but Chris and Eivor never followed. I undressed, and Carol did likewise. I jumped in the pool.

  Dear God! I nearly froze my ass off. My balls rose up two inches in my scrotum, seeking the warmth and comfort of my trunk. My prick followed suit. What an absurd ritual to go through in an attempt to get a fuck going. I bounded out of the water and into Carol’s arms.

  But still the atmosphere was not conducive to love-making. The wind whistled about our shivering bodies. Carol kept thinking that Eivor would walk in momentarily and surprise us. And then, when she did relax, she was reluctant to let me enter her out of fear of becoming pregnant.

  And so, shivering, looking over my shoulder, half-worried, and half-free, at one moment erect and at another soft, driven not so much by desire as by my compulsion to culminate our relationship successfully, I nudged, stuffed, and finally maneuvered my uncertain cock into her. And after a stroke or two felt the orgasm coming. So I withdrew as I promised I would and came on her belly.

  I had entered her cunt all right, but I had not yet touched her soul.

  When we returned to the house, the living room was empty. My bedroom door was shut and I knew that Chris and Eivor were inside. I felt shut out. I wanted to go in and be a part of what was happening. Yet I also wanted to respect their wish for privacy. For I loved my wife and my friend.

  The discomfort I felt outside with Carol, who was acting “properly” once more while Chris was inside with Eivor, was relieved when the two of them emerged. We were all feeling a certain level of discomfort and so began to share our experiences.

  As it turned out, Eivor and Chris had been even less successful in getting it together than we were. They lay in bed, touched, hugged, and liked it—but never did get to fuck. Chris wanted Eivor to jerk him erect but was too passive to ask for it. Eivor wanted Chris to stuff her full, but was too timid and moralistic to initiate the jerking. So they lay there, holding hands, like the innocent adolescents they truly are.

  When Chris asked what happened to us, I replied, curtly:

  “Just about the same thing. We fumbled around but never really got into it.”

  I was aware of my gentle deception. I was still too concerned with Eivor’s potential for jealousy—still too fearful of her wrath—to own up to my penetration (as imperfect as it was) in the face of her not having been penetrated.

  What a brave adventurer I am!

  Thursday, August 13

  When I finished the Couples’ Workshop, I had casually suggested to Carla and Peter to give us a call if they were ever out in the Hamptons. I never anticipated that they might call so quickly. They spent the day and night with us yesterday.

  I had thought that Carla and Eivor would, having much in common, like each other. After all, they were both married to sexually curious therapists, both mothers, and both basically shy.

  How little I know my wife after all. Correction—I do know her well. For I know that she is predictable only in her unpredictability.

  She took an instant dislike, of a competitive sort, to Carla. “She’s not very bright … she’s not a good mother … she’s not very neat.” All of which may be true. But it is equally clear to me that some of Eivor’s friends are dull, sloppy, or leave something to be desired as mothers.

  So it was a most uncomfortable visit. It was uncomfortable in that I felt myself having to play referee, trying to protect my guests from my wife’s disdain while attempting to mollify Eivor over their unwanted presence.

  Again I felt a peculiar mixture of sadness, empathy, and contempt for Peter. For once more he was unsuccessful in his search for a security blanket. This time it was Eivor who turned him down, while Chris, Carla, and I went to the pool, ostensibly for a swim.

  Yet why should I pity him? He asked for what he was getting. Was it not his idea to pay us a visit? Why allow my presumptuously “other-protective” conscience to spoil the one redeeming part of their visit—that “swim” we had together?

  The night air was much warmer than it had been the day before. And after we all took a brief dip, we huddled together. It wasn’t long before I slipped my dick into Carla’s blushing cunt, while she, all innocent smiles and down-turned eyes, started sucking on Chris’ hefty cock. It was again a good, heavy, earthy, animal experience. Three weighty, chunky bodies entwined in the cool night air. Rolled up into a fucking, sucking, sighing ball of flesh.

  And we sucke
d and we fucked and we grasped and we gasped until we came, and the ball became undone. All we could do for the next ten minutes was look at one another, kiss, and laugh. It was funny. It was fun. And what could be said, anyway? It was a hard act to follow.

  Carla did, however, have one other performance to suggest after the last happy giggles had died away. She had seen a pornographic photo from Denmark showing a woman being fucked in the ass and in the cunt simultaneously. And she wanted to try it.

  So she pulled and sucked upon the two of us until we could try again, and, when we stiffened, leaning backward on her elbows, she propped her pretty little ass up, higher and higher, showing us that sweet, dripping, cum-filled cunt and the darkened patch of skin about her asshole. Chris was able to make it into her pussy, but my prick was not strong enough to penetrate her virginal bum.

  Looking back on that picture in my mind, I remain impressed by its wholesomeness. Though the photograph could well be duplicated in any porno magazine, we each approached one another with a degree of innocence, affection, and the kind of sharing of a forbidden experience that thirteen-year-olds bring to their first communal puffs on a cigarette while out of sight of their parents.

  How can anything that is shared, that feels so good, and is not meant to harm others, be considered obscene?

  My only regret was not being able to tell Eivor about it. How I wished it could have been possible for her to know of this adventure and accept me still.

  When I was first adulterous in the early years of my marriage and did not tell Eivor about it, my thoughts were, “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” Later on I wondered if I had the courage to share these experiences with her. And I did.

  Still later, after the mutual sharings went on for over a year, I began to ask myself if I were compelled to tell all out of a sense of guilt. Did I need absolution—or permission—for my pecadillos? Then, for a variety of reasons—that very question, the shit that “telling” stirred up, Eivor’s sugestion that we do what we wished but stop sharing it—I went back to keeping secrets.

  The way I figure it now is that it is not guilt at all. It is more a matter of wanting Eivor to love me as I am, not as I pretend to be.

  But I don’t know that she is any more capable of doing that now than she has been in the past.

  And I don’t dare shatter the illusions she needs to sustain her tenderness for me.

  XXV

  I would like you to like Anthos. Call me “eccentric,” a “fool,” a “charlatan,” if you will, but please leave Anthos out of it. Guilt by association (my White Institute experience to the contrary) has never made much sense to me.

  Anthos was not conceived, nor does it operate, as a center where one comes to get one’s sexual rocks off. Anthos was conceived and does operate as a place where people can explore their own attitudes and the vicissitudes of the human condition. And Anthos is open to any and all means that promote such investigation.

  As of this writing, Anthos does three main things. We sponsor workshops given by visiting experts in the “human potential” field, such as those that have been given by William Schutz, Harold Greenwald, Albert Ellis, Bernard Gunther, and many, many more. From these, both the Anthos staff and the public have had an opportunity to profit from new and divergent ideas and approaches to the problems of living.

  Anthos also offers programs for people in the helping professions who wish to sharpen their skills as group leaders.

  Finally, we conduct weekly on-going encounter groups in Manhattan. These groups are led by members of the Anthos core staff, which has numbered anywhere from five to ten people.

  Many professionals and nonprofessionals have offered their services to us as Anthos on-going group leaders. New ones are selected as old ones move on. Selections of new leaders, however, are never made on the basis of academic credentials. Rather, they are made on the basis of prior group experiences plus the first-hand judgments of our existing core group leaders who have watched potential newcomers work.

  No one gets rich at Anthos. All on-going group leaders (myself included) are paid $15 an hour during the time they work in groups (formerly, when I was in private group practice, I earned five times this amount). The only person who has ever drawn a salary has been our secretary.

  Anthos is a commune of sorts, although we live in different places. There are no capitalists. People earn money according to the amount of time they are willing and able to work in groups. Policy decisions are made collectively. There is no “boss.” We hold our own inner-circle encounter sessions periodically so as to keep ourselves open and, hopefully, to prevent the ossification that overcomes so many organizations.

  We do what we do because we enjoy doing it. And because we believe that what we are doing is effective. And we respect one another.

  Our group work differs from that conducted by most good, eclectic “psychotherapists” primarily in that it is considerably less expensive. We try not to price our services beyond the means of the ordinary citizen. And we never speak sweetly to people inside of groups only to cite them for “morbid pathology” after they are out of earshot. Our encounter leaders have the courage to call a spade a spade.

  But I want you to appreciate Anthos for more than that. I want you to appreciate it as a place where people struggle to hold deceit to a minimum, a place that allows you to be whoever you are.

  I want to tell you a story that illustrates what I mean.

  Last fall, when I finished writing Summer on the Tantric Road, I showed it to my associates at Anthos. I was less certain of myself then and planned to publish the book as fiction. I referred to Anthos as “Arthos” in the first draft.

  “Jesus, Marty,” said our director, lion-haired, shaggy-bearded, ex-account executive, Bob Kriegel, “Can’t you think of a different name? ‘Arthos’ is too similar. It won’t look good.” He tried to make a joke. “Call it Esalen, or Aureon,* or something like that.”

  Okay. Easy enough. Perhaps the book would offend many prospective visitors to Anthos. I changed the name to “Amonon.”

  “Jesus. Do you have to publish it?” asked Dave Schiffman, Anthos’ associate director. “It’s going to give us a bad rep. We’ll seem like a bunch of freaks. It can get us in a whole lot of trouble.”

  I told him that it was the most honest bit of writing I had ever done, that there was nothing I did that I was ashamed of.

  “I know, I know. But other people won’t take it that way.”

  “But how can you cut through that bind unless someone tells a story like this straight out?” I asked. “Not to tell it goes along with the idea that there is something wrong with what I did.”

  “Well, then. Can’t you publish it under a pseudonym?”

  Being friends, we agreed to disagree. But I was disturbed by the nature of our disagreement.

  What was happening? Here were some of the finest group leaders I had ever seen work, men who preached “saying what you feel,” asking me to change what I wanted to say.

  I felt trapped on a cosmic merry-go-round. Was this the White Institute all over again? Would concern with “image” overcome concern for honesty?

  I didn’t talk about the book with my friends at Anthos for the next six months. Then in April, Peter Wyden asked me to write my autobiography. I told them all about it.

  “Great,” beamed Bob Kriegel. “Tell it all. What the hell.”

  “That’s really nice,” said Dave Schiffman. “I’m really glad for you. I was on a bum trip last winter, but that image shit just ain’t worth it. I trust your integrity enough to know that it will be the right thing.”

  Steve Gelman, just as accepting as he had been six months earlier, simply said, “Congratulations.”

  * Aureon is another encounter center in New York City.

  XXVI-Tantric Road (continued)

  Sunday afternoon, August 16

  It was fitting that Julie should visit the Anthos retreat during this, my last workshop of the summer. For it was with
her that I lost my psychotherapeutic virginity.

  I had known Julie for many years, first meeting her through mutual friends. Later, we worked together on some anti-war projects. She was “intellectual” in the worst sense of the word—she was always using her mind at the expense of her body. Yet her beauty was such that, in spite of her verbal waspishness, I periodically attempted to bed her. Particularly summertimes, when Eivor would be at the shore and I was working weekdays in the city.

  But Julie preferred discourse to diversion. Our rare dates produced nothing but endless chatter. Each time I would vow not to see her again, until our next chance meeting (or the prospect of spending a lonely night in New York) brought us back together.

  Two years ago she contacted me, approximating fairly accurately our bi-yearly meeting schedule. I was her only doctor friend, and she wanted some dexedrine in order to stay up and study for some graduate-student examinations. Would I write her a prescription?

  We talked. I made my customary pass. I was again rebuffed for all sorts of abstract reasons.

  I sensed she was depressed.

  She was.

  Why didn’t she see a therapist?

  She had seen several in the past without much to show for it. Also, she had no money. Two dollars a week was all she had left after her expenses were met.

  I was starting an on-going group and planned to initiate it with a sixteen-hour marathon session that very weekend. Would she like to be a part of it?

  Yes. She would.

  For me, it started as a bold, yet logical, experiment. Bold insofar as Freud cautioned against treating people you knew socially. Because when he had tried it on a couple of occasions, it hadn’t worked out. And since then, tens of thousands of his disciples have unquestioningly followed his dictates. I among them.

  Yet logic finally impelled me to test Freud’s premise personally. For what was a therapist’s role anyway, after all the black magic and white magic, pomp and mystique were stripped away? It was to help people grow, learn, cope more successfully, and be more content. Haven’t many of us been so aided by friends or lovers? Haven’t we, in that capacity, given on occasion to others? Wasn’t Freud, after all, a man and not a God? Didn’t this shy Viennese genius have his patients lie on a couch instead of sit in a chair because he couldn’t stand being looked at? Could he not have had his own problems with intimacy? Wasn’t he as fallible as the rest of us mortals?