Kinflicks (78 page)

I began trembling with an emotion that could only be diagnosed as acute fear. ‘Is it possible,' I whispered, ‘that we could really screw ourselves up? Isn't this just as artificial a means for altering states of consciousness as LSD?'

He glared at me. ‘So you're chickening out, Ginny? I just wish you'd told me before I wasted four weeks training you.'

‘I'm not chickening out. I was just curious.'

‘Look,' he said, running his hand through his beard, ‘this is an ancient technique. The Ratnasara says, “He who realizes the truth of the body can then come to know the truth of the universe.” We've been giving all this attention to our bodies, not as an end in itself, but in order to use them as instruments for the attainment of moksha — liberation.'

I looked at him doubtfully, stretching my neck to loosen the uncomfortably tight ritual scarf. That may have been what Hawk had been doing, but I reflected that my motives were considerably less lofty. It occurred to me that I might have to be punished for my sacrilege by the guardian of moksha.

‘People have been doing this for centuries,' Hawk added.

‘But not me.'

‘Please
don't back out now. I've been preparing for tonight for over a year. It's all that's kept me going, Ginny. It's really my last chance. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to live with yourself once you're aware of the hideous things you, and most of your fellow humans, are capable of? I
have
to find a more hospitable dimension or I'm done for.'

Put that way, his face contorted with agony, how could I refuse? I nodded my go-ahead.

Hawk lit the candles. We sat in the lotus position in front of the low table and did 7:1:7 breathing for twelve cycles. Then we held our breath and concentrated on our muladhara centers, between the anus and the genitals, which we stimulated by contracting our anal sphincters and visualizing ourselves uniting, in our respective roles as cosmic consciousness and cosmic energy.

After we had repeated this a dozen times, Hawk tapped the bottle of Southern Comfort with his finger and said, ‘That.' Then he waved his hand around it as though he were a magician trying to make it disappear and intoned, ‘Hung.' He joined his thumb and ring fingers and gestured toward the bottle saying, ‘Namah.'

My only hope was that Hawk knew more about what was going on than I did.

Unscrewing the cap of the Southern Comfort, Hawk brought the bottle to his face and closed off his right nostril and inhaled. Then he closed his left nostril and exhaled. Filling the liqueur glasses, he handed me one, and we tossed down the sweet burning liquid in one swallow. He refilled our glasses. We each took a piece of bologna from the china platter and repeated together, ‘Shiva, Shakti. I purify my lustful flesh.' Then we ate the bologna, which signified animal life and bodily development, washing it down with Southern Comfort

Hawk refilled our glasses. We took a chunk of Chicken of the Sea tuna, which represented generative powers and aquatic life forms, intoned Om six times, and ate it, again washing it down with Southern Comfort

Then we took a saltine apiece, which represented grain and earth elements; after chewing it slowly, we tossed down another shot of Southern Comfort.

We repeated this procedure. The quart bottle of Southern Comfort was now half empty. I had the uneasy feeling that at other times, in different places, this ritual had been meaningful. But tonight, in Stark's Bog, its significance was escaping me.

We sat with closed eyes, meditating on our upcoming union. Then we tossed off another glass of Southern Comfort saying, ‘Kulakundalini.'

We drank jelly glasses of water. Hawk handed me a cardamon. We studied the coarse outer husk. Then we broke through the husk to the grain and contemplated the two symmetrical halves, joined to form a whole. We chewed them slowly.

Removing my rose negligee, I crawled over to the sleeping bag and arranged myself, while Hawk adjusted the bug lamp so that its rays fell upon my body, which was now bare except for the ritual neck scarf.

Hawk sat down next to me, the bell in his ear lobe jingling. He gazed upon my body with admiration and was supposed to be seeing in it the mystery of creation, the bejeweled vault of all riches, the begetter of the cosmos. It was this megalomaniacal attitude that Hawk had to achieve in order to distinguish our upcoming coition from ordinary vulgar human intercourse. The burden of the evening was riding on him. It was a lot to ask of him, to see all those superlatives in my somewhat flabby flesh, which was etched with silver stretch marks from Wendy's birth. I could see in his hairy face the strain of this leap of the imagination. He'd invested his all in the outcome of the next hour. What if we failed to attain whatever it was we were supposed to attain? If we did attain it, would we know that we had? I clutched the sleeping bag spasmodically, and my breathing became jerky from the mounting tension. A casual roll in the hay with a war hero was all I'd had in mind all those weeks ago. How had I been foolish enough to get involved in transcendence?

I tried to calm myself and think only about the energizing union of polar opposites, the harnessing of the blind life force, as represented by me, to material creation, as represented by Hawk. I breathed deeply, following the 7:1:7 plan.

Hawk placed his hand over his heart and muttered, ‘I am Shiva. I am She.' He knelt over me and gingerly placed his index and middle fingers over my heart, on the top of my head, on my eyelids, on the center of my forehead. He mumbled words I couldn't make out as he progressed to my throat, my ear lobes, my breasts and upper arms, my navel, thighs, knees, feet. And finally my yoni, as he chose to refer to my cunt.

Then he removed Ira's robe. His erection pointed to the heavens like a Gothic spire. He lay down on my right and waited for his breathing to switch. Mine had already switched.

We assumed the tangled ritual position by my raising my legs and his moving his upper body away from me and inserting his right leg between my legs. The result of these contortions was that his lingam, which was the Maithuna term for cock, entered me slightly. We both trembled violently as it did so, and my yoni contracted with excitement. We gritted our teeth and forced our hips not to move reflexively.

Initial impulses successfully overcome, we began the wait. We were to lie joined like this for thirty-two minutes, meditating upon the ineffable bliss of divine union, and visualizing the currents flowing across our bridge of flesh, at the end of which time something profound, unlike any previous experience, would occur. Samarasa. Nirvana. Transcendence of time and death. Participation in infinity and eternity. God knows what.

I lay still and pondered cosmic currents in the relaxed detached fashion Hawk had recommended. This was not difficult because I was very drunk from the Southern Comfort. Hawk's assignment, however, was more difficult. It was his show, and if be allowed himself to ejaculate, our act would become commonplace fucking. Perish the thought. His lingam was alternately wilting and then swelling like a tampon in a toilet bowl.

I opened one glazed eye and glanced at him. Beads of sweat were popping out on his forehead. He was red-faced from trying to swallow his tongue in order to forestall orgasm. My heart went out to him, but I didn't know how to help, other than to lie very still. I stroked his damp forehead soothingly. His grimacing face began to go slack, and he started the 7:1:7 breathing. I withdrew my hand and closed my eyes and floated on a seductive sea of Southern Comfort, visualizing the languid healing heat of a southern summer. I descended into a deep drunken sleep.

I awoke to sounds of sobbing. Squinting through a throbbing headache, I glanced around. Far more than thirty-two minutes had passed, I was sure. The purple glow from the mosquito lamp bathed the immediate scene — me, Hawk asleep beside me, wrapped in my legs, the littered board table. We were covered with dead mosquitoes. Then I noticed that Hawk's and my joined genitals were bathed in a
white
light as well. I followed the beam to its source, a flashlight. The holder of the flashlight was also the source of the wracking sobs that mixed with the pulsing croaks of frogs in the Pots o' Gold valley.

I strained my eyes through the dark. It was Ira.

“Back from your meeting so soon, dear?' I gasped.

He sobbed in reply. I gingerly removed Hawk's wilted lingam from my yoni and sat up and grabbed my rose negligee, which I had worn on Ira's and my wedding night. I was covered with goose bumps. The night air had turned chilly.

‘It's not what you think, Ira,' I told him, wincing as he turned the flashlight beam on my face.

‘What
is
it then?' he rasped.

‘We weren't having sex,' I explained reasonably.

Ira kicked over the board table, and the china platter smashed on a brick. ‘Jesum Crow, Ginny! I've been standing right here
looking
at you!'

‘Yes, I know it
looks
like sex, Ira. But it
wasn't.
You'll just have to believe me,' I pleaded.

‘No!'
he shouted. ‘I will
not
believe you, Ginny! You and your hippy friends — you think you can rip off us honest hardworking sincere suckers! You've been
using
me, Ginny! No
wonder
you won't fulfill your wifely obligations. I bet this has been going on the whole time we've been married. How could I be so thick as not to have
seen
it? You live off me — your straight idiot of a husband — and you carry on the way you always have with your weird friends!'

‘That's not
true,
Ira! I've
never
been unfaithful to you. And I'm not being now. This man and I, we were — uh — trying to transcend the bondage of our flesh.'

‘Oh
sure!
Call it anything you want, Ginny, but I've had
enough
! Do you understand? You've done nothing but hurt me and make fun of me from the first day we met. I want you to leave
now.
And take your freaky friend with you.'

‘Now?'

‘Now. This minute. Go to your friends at their commune. Go sleep with this hairy creep in the woods like the animals that you both are. Go anywhere. I don't care anymore. Just get out of my life!' He began sobbing again.

Hawk yawned and sat up and glanced around, blinking vacantly with his bell jingling. Gradually his memory started functioning. As it did, his face clouded over with anguish.

‘Oh
Christ
!' he wailed. ‘I fell
asleep
! Jesus, I
blew
it! A whole
year
and I fucked up! Oh
God!'
He looked around wildly, saw me, and moaned, ‘Ginny, we
blew
it! We fell
asleep
! Oh God!'

I nodded toward Ira. Hawk realized that we weren't alone, and looked up at Ira, who stood shaking with sobs. ‘Ira, this is Hawk. Hawk, my husband, Ira.'

Ira snarled. Hawk gazed up at him uncomprehendingly. Finally he jumped up and extended his hand, his southern manners rising to the occasion. Ira drew back his fist and slugged him in the face, knocking him down.

‘Now get out of my yard, both of you.'

‘What about Wendy? Children need their mothers, Ira.'

‘No
child needs a slut for a mother.'

Hawk and I skulked into the house, followed by Ira. As we entered the kitchen, Hawk, dressed in Ira's robe, his eye swelling shut, said sensibly, ‘Now look, Ira…'

‘Get dressed and get out of here,' Ira said calmly, taking a .22 down from the wall.

I dressed in a pantsuit and stuffed a few toilet articles in my pocketbook. I couldn't believe I was being kicked out, couldn't believe how few rights I had that would allow me to stay. After all, it was Ira's ancestral home, his town, his relatives, his furniture…his daughter? I had been merely a temporary fixture. Since I had failed to meet specifications, I was being disposed of. Until now, I had been swamped with remorse over hurting Ira, however unintentionally. But now I began getting angry. He felt
I
had used
him.
How about all the meals I'd cooked, the mountains of shirts I'd laundered and ironed just so, the bizarre sexual perversions I'd had to endure? Did they count for nothing?

I tiptoed into Wendy's room. She lay sleeping, all damp and flushed, her tiny hands folded into fists, breathing heavily. She was his, like everything else in sight. But unlike everything else, she was also mine. I would get her back. I leaned down and kissed her cheek. She sighed in her sleep and turned over.

At the door, Ira was clearing his throat, his gun resting on his hip. As we walked down the hall, he said plaintively, “Everyone in town always told me not to get mixed up with the Soybean People. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I could change you into a decent God-fearing woman.'

‘Well, I guess everyone in town was right, and you were wrong, huh?'

‘I guess so.'

‘Don't take it so hard, Ira. A snake will always be a snake, even if you put a chain around its neck and try to make it walk upright.'

It was past midnight. Hawk and I had slept for over four hours during the Maithuna. As Ira stood in the doorway with his rifle on his hip, we trudged away from the huge stone fortress and down the dirt road toward the Canadian border. We slept that night in a field. Hawk didn't speak. His face was a mask of mute suffering.

The next morning when I woke up I found Hawk lying staring at the sunny summer sky, his hands folded under his head.

‘Well! Where to now, Hawk?'

He didn't reply, didn't even appear to have heard me. I ran my hand in front of his eyes. He didn't blink. Slowly, he turned his head and stared at me without recognition. Unnerved, I repeated, ‘Where shall we go? The world is ours!'

He stared at me without answering. Then he resumed staring at the sky.

‘Hawk?' I asked anxiously. No glimmer of a response.