Decided to see Peggy, from my couples’ workshop, in the afternoon, before the film showing. She was eager to have me. We met at my office, talked, stripped, fucked. But it was banal.
As with so many sexpots, her pussy didn’t match her presentation. It was dry and tight, in spite of her eagerness in serving it up. Like Andrea’s. Give me a sneakily quiet girl, anytime. At least until the next femme fatale comes along to tempt and to fool me again.
But why lay the blame on her? I was equally culpable. Still sick, every time she brushed against my belly, I winced.
She tried to arouse me again by sixty-nining me with her talented tongue. But it was more like a farmer milking. Suck and pull as she might, she stood more chance of erecting a cow’s udder than my uninterested cock.
Trying to have a sexual scene with a belly ache is like asking Tom Seaver to pitch with a sore arm after only two days of rest. You can’t expect a decent performance.
The most eventful part of the day for me occurred when we left the office and stopped at a Chinese restaurant. I managed to eat half a plate of her vegetable chow mein. And in spite of the pain involved in doing so, it was the first meal I had downed since Sunday that I did not throw up again.
XXVII
“It’s too superficial,” said Elaine Markson, my literary agent’s assistant, on first reading Summer on the Tantric Road. “You haven’t developed any of the characters.”
“The only character I’m interested in developing is myself,” I answered.
“But that’s superficial too. When you’re in bed with these people we don’t know what’s really going on in your head—your thoughts, your conflicts, the reasons for it all. Instead, all you do is describe the surface.”
“Yet that’s all there is to it, don’t you see? A fuck is a fuck is a fuck. I’ve come to realize in my old age that all of that thinking about fucking, all of that search for meaning, all of the conceptualizations, interpretations, self-consciousness people go through in bed is nutty. It’s our thinking that fucks up our love-making. For me to write like Alexander Portnoy talks would be a lie.
“I am sure, that among all of God’s creatures, man is the only one who carries his head alongside his genitals. Can you imagine a bull elephant wondering whether or not he should ball a particular cow? Do you think that a stallion wonders whether or not he will give the mare an orgasm? Can you imagine a moose worrying that he might loose his erection? Do you think that a female gorilla ponders on whether or not the male of the species will ask her out for another date before deciding whether or not to fuck him? Can you picture cockroaches and hummingbirds thinking about Oedipus complexes before getting it on?”
I really enjoyed that rap. I had convinced myself, but had not, apparently, convinced Elaine. She is one of those bright, pretty, big-breasted, hard-minded, soft-bodied, Jewish intellectual career women who live in the Village, raise their children, and know what they know. And she was not about to let me verbally seduce her or intellectually overpower her.
“It requires more,” she politely but firmly said. “The reader will want to know more about Julie. Who is she? What does she really want? Similarly with Peter and Carla. Why did they come visit you so soon? What was actually going on in their marriage?”
“It’s still the same thing, Elaine. You’re still looking for explanations of events. Anyone can go on about anything. Interpretations can get ‘deeper’ and ‘deeper’ until, like when you’re peeling an onion to get to the ‘deepest’ layer, the onion disappears. That’s the psychoanalyst’s game—not mine. What appears on the surface is as true an explanation of events as any other, so far as I’m concerned.”
“Well, I think if you present the Tantric Road in its current form, you’re going to appear to be little more than an unethical adventurer.”
Unethical indeed. What are ethics anyway? When I was a young psychiatrist I “treated” a much younger lesbian. An attractive girl, she was incredibly shy and frightened of people. Once, in order to overcome her anxiety at a party, she had overdrunk and passed out in the bathroom. She was revived by an older girl who was a lesbian. Not only was she revived, but she was put to bed, undressed, touched, massaged, licked, and fondled. And it felt good.
Thus was her sexuality established. Had a boy similarly revived her, her direction in life might have been different.
Her homosexual activities, however pleasing, caused her much anxiety and much guilt. She had made, when I first saw her, several suicide attempts. As she came to accept her liking for women, her depression and self-destructive behavior ended. She was no longer trying to avoid homosexuality but instead was now trying to enjoy the pleasures of heterosexuality.
But this was difficult. Her fear of being penetrated, her conceptualization of what that meant, made her act peculiarly with her male dates. Yes, she liked to kiss and be fondled, but no, she couldn’t permit herself this enjoyment because the man might then tear her asunder. And she wouldn’t tell her dates of this dilemma because she felt that it might cool their ardor. For her to succeed in knowing the pleasures of being intimate with a man, then, required her being with someone who would be content to stop and wait at any point along the way—even at the point of penetration—should she be frightened.
I found her attractive enough to be reasonably certain I could get it up and in her. And my sex life and my love life were satisfactory enough so that I could readily restrain myself at any point. In short, I knew (regardless of anyone else’s interpretation, I KNEW) that I could do the job.
Yet I did nothing of the kind. I didn’t even discuss the possibility with her. Why? My concern for my reputation, of course. After all, I was her therapist. And therapists are not supposed to fuck patients. All of my teachers said so.
My experiences with Julie, however, made me question what my teachers had taught me. She was a friend, then a “patient,” then a fuck. And she got more out of her involvement with me than she had gotten from the analysts she had previously seen. In addition, my experiences at the White Institute made me realize that many of these previously respected teachers had little personal experience with the subjects they taught.
So I decided to learn more about the subject of patient/therapist intimacy by doing a book about it—a book in which I randomly interviewed people who had had such an experience. What that book, The Love Treatment, taught me, was that fucking between doctor and patient was like any other transaction between doctor and patient. It could be good, bad, or indifferent. It was not the act itself that mattered, but the context in which it was carried out that counted.
And that objective research in the spring of 1970, gave me the courage to do subjective research during the Tantric summer months ahead.
Ethics! There are many levels of fucking someone. That homosexual girl that I did not screw received a far greater “fucking” at my hands than did Julie or the others I’ve mentioned.
XXVIII
I still think of the charge that I am “superficial.” It is not Elaine’s comment only; it ran through the remarks of many of my detractors at the White Institute.
Last week I had lunch with my mother. She was, of course, distraught. We talked about my father, her husband. I sought to console her by telling her about the actuality as I saw it.
“It’s silly to be depressed, mom. Dad’s alive, not dead. You act as though he weren’t here.”
“I could take my own passing more readily than his,” she sobbed.
“But don’t you see, he feels the same way about you. So there’s nothing to be sad about. Besides, all you have to do is see him and talk to him in order to feel good—because he is so accepting of everything, because he is in such good spirits.”
“You don’t know what’s going on deep down inside,” she gently and tearfully chastised me. “He’s such a wonderful man that he’d never let it out, but you can be sure he feels pained.”
“If he did, I’m sure he’d tell me,” I simply said. “We’ve always been qui
te honest with each other. No secrets.”
Later that night, lying in bed with Judy, I told her of that conversation. Talking with her so often opens the door to other ideas. Again, more thoughts spun themselves out inside of me.
I presumed to know my father better than my mother does. Particularly because I listen more, without prejudgment. And yet, I know him as a son. She knows him as a wife, and knows him, perhaps, in ways I know not.
Why is it, then, that I feel he feels well, and that she feels he does not? Is it because he is the screen that we project our own feelings upon?
When a man tells me he can accept his death and not be saddened, I can accept his statement only if it makes sense to me—only if I can see myself reacting the same way. If I am told something I am not familiar with—as when a convict tells me he likes to kill people—I am less accepting. I try to analyze his statement away, I look behind it, I reinterpret it. And yet my doubts do not make his statement any less true.
So when my dad tells me he is feeling good in the face of death, and I believe him, I feel that I too might feel the same way when my time comes. But my mother—looking for a “secret” feeling, looking behind his statement—will not.
When I was younger, and more suspicious of myself, I was much more suspicious of others. I was, I guess, a better psychoanalyst in those days. I deceived a lot and so I saw others doing likewise. I had hidden agendas in my dealings with people, and so I looked for them in my patients. If I was hung up on my mother, so were they. It was just like being Freud.
But as I came to trust myself, as I came to live on the surface, I also began to accept others at face value, at least until they proved me wrong. But they had to prove me wrong. I was not interested in looking for the deep, damnable evidence, not interested in adding to their neurotic doubt about themselves.
And so I must confess that “depth psychology” bores me. In the most derogatory use of the term, it is the most superficial therapy of them all. Cocktail-party chatter. “Deep” theoretical rationalizations for events long since passed. Current justifications for unfulfilled desires. Hours spent in a therapist’s office to get one-up on life, attempting to insure a happy future, trying to outfox the Great Fox.
Not for me. I prefer my superficiality, my sticking to the surface of things. I would rather be a healer who heals by not seeking out hidden pathology.
XXIX-Tantric Road (concluded)
Thursday, August 20
I have decided to consult a local physician after all. My weight loss now amounts to ten pounds. My abdomen hurts whenever it is touched. Since I haven’t turned yellow, I presume that hepatitis is not my illness.
More than ever, I am convinced that I suffer from some terminal disease. Other than life itself, that is. And yet, strangely, I feel I have the courage to accept it. After all, none of us ever makes it out of this world alive. If life is measured in terms of experiences had as opposed to time spent, then I have outlived a good many septuagenarians.
What I will miss most of all is the opportunity to see my children grow and develop. Not being around to guide and protect them. My lovely, lovely sons. I cried out of compassion for their missing me. Vanity? Undoubtedly. But with a good deal of concern for them as well.
I was told to go to Southampton Hospital tomorrow for some laboratory tests. The results will be available early next week. I only wish it were sooner. Not knowing whether I am doomed immediately, or can play again until some future date with death, is unsettling.
When I returned home, Eivor questioned me about what the doctor had said. I told her. She remained sarcastically dubious about all of my symptoms, treating me as if I were some sort of psychosomatic case.
For a moment I almost looked forward to dying. Just so I could hurl her scorn back in her teeth. “You ungenerous bitch,” the scenario would run, “You’re wrong. I am dying.” Then, with remorse and guilt, her tenderness would return. I would lie in her arms and erase the remembrance of Phillip’s prick.
Tuesday, August 25
The tests came back. I apparently had a sub-acute form of hepatitis, after all. Little surprise, then, that I wondered where the yellow went.
I told Eivor. Was she pleased? You bet. Her lack of compassion was vindicated.
“I knew there was nothing wrong with you,” she brusquely commented.
Even before the results were in I was beginning to feel somewhat better. Some pussy would undoubtedly speed my recovery. But Eivor was still having none of me.
I phoned Carol and asked her to meet me tomorrow afternoon in the park.
Wednesday, August 26
Our encounter was set for noon. By twelve fifteen she had still not appeared. I began to taste the emptiness of disappointment.
I walked over to the swings and sat on one. The great oaks and maples cast down their shadows, breaking the midday heat. The swing began to rock slowly. I began to realize how infrequently I gave myself up to the joys of quiet noThingness—of unplanned meditations, of re-experiencing the richness of childhood activities, of swinging on a summer’s day.
Pumping the swing once or twice, I was flying, to and fro. Quietly. Peacefully. Listening to the sounds of insects and an occasional car passing down the rod.
The park was all but deserted. No tennis players in the noon-time sun. The only other souls were a mother and her infant son, playing some thirty yards off in a sandpile.
I wondered what she thought of me—a grown, six-foot tall, middle-aged man—sitting and swinging.
I swung until it seemed an effort, then got up and started walking toward my car. As if on cue, Carol arrived.
She had a long drive. She was sorry to be so late. She would like to get something to drink.
We got into my car, drove to a hamburger stand and ordered some Cokes. Then back into the car again and out to Long Beach.
Long Beach is exactly what the name implies, a crescent-shaped, pebbly beach on the Peconic Bay, just north of Sag Harbor. Bathers confine themselves to a small area in the center, a few hundred yards wide, where the ground is somewhat sandier. The left arm of the semicircle is dotted with private summer homes. To the right exists a deserted rocky shore from which a steep cliff rises abruptly.
I parked the car on a quiet side road along the right bank. We got out and started walking.
I looked forward to making it with Carol. Her quiet acceptingness fit both my mood and the hot stillness of the day. I was tired of the hassles I found myself in with Eivor. I didn’t want to fight with anyone. Just some simple touching, simple loving, simple tenderness would suit this weary traveller fine.
I broke out some joints I had rolled before I left home. We lit them and smoked, still walking, farther and farther from the sights and sounds of people off in the distance. We said very little. I slipped my hand halfway into her shorts, by the small of her back. The contact was delicate. I could feel her hips moving.
We were finally so far from the swimmers that they appeared to be just flesh-colored dots in the distance.
I spread a blanket at a point where the cliff met the shore, where some soft earth provided a suitable space to stretch out on. We sat down. We undressed.
My mind was spinning both from the grass and from the heat of the day. Two quiet, mad, naked creatures about to make love, sitting in a deserted oasis in one of America’s summer playgrounds.
I touched her or she touched me. I hugged her or she hugged me. I sucked her or she sucked me.
We twisted and rolled about on one another. And yet, neither of us moved at all. Sweat poured from our skins wherever they met. On this shadowless stretch of beach, the sun and the heat were everything. Pleasant yet unpleasant. Warming yet oppressive. Sensual yet asexual.
I would take immense pleasure from the yieldingness of her being, from her kisses, from her flesh. I was the masseur of the Dowager Empress of China. I was a lioness with her cubs on the Serengeti Plain. I was Pan, playing with a maiden. And yet, I could not erect and fuck her.
<
br /> Like two beings fused into one we were the prick inside the great warm cunt of this earth and sky.
But my prick itself would not stir.
Twice we had these long, drawn-out rubs, kisses, caresses, licks, strokings, and suckings in the summer sun. For what seemed an eternity. And twice, when the cock had to swell if we were to get even higher, poor Peter failed to do his thing.
Was he on his own swing? Off in his own little playground?
Twice I emerged from our wet/sweat embraces feeling over-baked—my brain and my flesh fried by the solar energy—and went into the bay for a swim. To cool off. To come back to life. To emerge as ME. To wake up friend Cock. To hopefully, finally, get it together with Carol. But to do that, I knew I had to get out of the sun. And out of the universal consciousness that the pot had induced.
We put our clothes back on and went walking down the beach toward a boat ramp extending from some empty home on the cliff and into the bay. It formed a low bridge over the beach as the shore sloped down to the water. It had been well over an hour now since we had smoked, and my head was beginning to clear a bit.
We bent down and started to walk under the ramp, when I sat down on the rocks below. I pulled Carol toward me. She seemed surprised.
I kissed her, with the water lapping at my toes and the shadows cooling off my head. Enough time and space and clarity and shade and coolness to appreciate this darling girl below me. I kissed her more firmly. My hands slid around her waist and under her shorts. She hesitated for a moment, but then let me pull them off.
My fingers brushed against the cheeks of her butttocks and then more firmly entered its cleft. And moved around from behind to front, approaching her cunt from the bottom.
She began to generate a rhythm. The rhythm of the bay waters moving slowly and softly at my feet. And her ass and her cunt began to roll and stroke and brush my cock to life. I glanced down to see her soft, good, used belly and her rich, dark-colored cunt hairs slide and move against me. Lovingly. Hungrily. Drippingly. Heatedly.
The Reluctant Exhibitionist Page 18
