The Gentle Degenerates (12 page)

Our heads were in perfect tune. There were no thoughts in our minds, simply the flow of abstract patterns of energy shuttling between us and forming a coherent tapestry of our consciousness. Our bodies blended and joined. And then, with a cry, I experienced what I had not known since I was nineteen, when for the first, and almost last, time I fucked a woman with whom I had no reservations, whom I trusted totally, and who later betrayed me. I felt my heart burst, and wave after wave of sadness and joy flowed from my deepest part and bathed her and buoyed us up.

In a stroke I saw the shallowness and childishness of all the fucking I had ever done, how I had played the games of cosmic consciousness and pretended to be a debauchee. This was different in its reality. It was people, it was on the planet Earth, it was dirt and sweat, it was mortality and limitation. And it was glorious.

Her legs went up slowly and languorously. Like two supple arms they embraced my waist, and her cunt opened like some mammoth cave. Deep deep and deep, black and violent and soft, tender and eternal and home. I cried out her name again and again, pouring all I had into myself and into her, and she received and reverberated. We became the amplification of one another. And from a great distance, yet from very close, a long sighing slide began, down a great snow slope, fast and powdery, clean and light, and we sank plunging down the incline to a great edge, where in each other’s arms we hurtled free into space.

At the summit of our glide, I was suddenly and immediately in her arms, on my bed, with all the fears and suspicions, the memories and inhibitions, the realization that she was a stranger to me, and with a full breath I swallowed the totality of the moment and felt the scalding heat coursing through my veins, my limbs trembling. I was totally free of all control, and the energy which coursed through me was the total life force which lay bottled in my tenseness. Now it was flapping and flying, and as I let myself go, she began to cry, a great yearning “yes” which filled my ears and thundered through the room. It rose in volume and intensity until it sounded like the primeval OM. And in a sustained burst, I let loose the full load of sperm churning up from inside me, into her incredible cunt, which like a sensitive and conscious mouth, kissed and held and sucked all the fluid from my cock, and swallowed it deep into her vagina and even symbolically into her womb.

We clung to each other for a long, long time, and then slid into a peaceful oneness, male and female undifferentiated, simple humanity breathing and throbbing in a delicious afterglow. Slowly we parted, and I rolled to her side. And after a few minutes I opened my eyes to look at her. I couldn’t believe her vast beauty, the sheer thereness of her. And at that instant, Regina died inside me.

Carol stayed with me for two weeks. It was the most hectic, confused, and glorious period of time I have ever spent with a woman. Her madness increased in proportion to the degree she trusted me. And I lost all perspective on what we were doing with one another. In the evening she would walk past where I was sitting, her ass a provocative outline against her jeans, her breasts hanging inside a shirt always opened at the front, and no matter what I was doing, I would reach for her. At times she was mocking, laughing at me all the while she pulled me in; and again, she could be unbelievably hot, suddenly falling into my lap and rubbing my face with her breasts, grabbing my cock with her hands and massaging it until I squirmed with pleasure.

We must have fucked about three times a day. I had no sense of time or duration. All the switches were open and both engineers were asleep at the throttle. The train was plummeting at high speed straight ahead, and neither of us cared about destination or result. This was some thing that I had been starved for. A woman who, despite all her hangups and weirdness, was totally open and gave of herself without hassle and without strings attached.

During that time I let all my affairs go, not doing any writing, not seeing too many friends. Once Regina called and she sounded like a total stranger. She began talking about the house we would live in and the glorious weather on the Coast, and it sounded like a dreary article from a gardening magazine. I remembered now, all the fights, all the spitefulness, all the meanness of our relationship, and whatever had been good about it faded from view. I was extremely cold and curt and told her I didn’t feel like talking, that I would call her back. To my surprise, she simply acquiesced, taking my words at face value. Ordinarily she would have whined about the shortness of the conversation, and tried to interest me in another round of talk. My antenna quivered. “Is anybody there?” I said. “Only Michael,” she answered. “Who’s Michael?” I wanted to know. “Oh, he lives a few houses down. We were just sitting around getting stoned, and we were going to do some nude sunbathing in the back when you called.”

Hot lava ran down my chest. I couldn’t believe my ears, nor could I accept my own reaction. Just seconds earlier I was rollicking with Carol, all thoughts of Regina relegated to the distant past. And I was ready to dismiss Regina on the phone without a spark of warmth. And now, suddenly, I was seething with jealousy. I saw the two of them lying in the grass, the hot sun baking their bodies, sweat forming pools in her navel. I could feel the heaviness of the air, hear the droning flies, and sense the overwhelming sensuality of the moment. Perhaps her arm would move and her hand touch his. She might begin to pull back, and then decide to leave it there. The electricity would flow sharp and detailed between their fingers. There would be a long low moment while decision hung in the air, and then slowly, deliberately, he would roll over, covering her body with his own, and bring his mouth down on her trembling lips.

“Are you making it with him?” I asked.

“Nothing’s happened,” she said. “We’re just friends.” She paused. “Do you want me to make it with him?”

Two currents ran through my mind. If I said “yes” I would sever her in one stroke. But then I would have to live with that fantasy. And if I said “no” I would be lying, because all I cared about was putting down the phone and getting back to Carol, and didn’t really care what Regina did.

“Do what you want,” I said.

“All right,” she said. And then we hung up.

Conflicting emotions stormed beside me. How could it be possible to be jealous when there was no love, nor even any desire? It was not Regina as a person that bothered me, but the idea of Regina, Regina as a symbol. But a symbol of what?

The day passed in a jumble. And that night I went to one of those encounter groups which have become all the rage. I usually fled them like the pox, but I had run into Marsha, an old girl friend, the week before and she convinced me that her group was hip enough to be worth going to.

I had seen enough of the Esalen technique to be suspicious of anything having to do with programmed exposure. These workshops invariably involved the use of “leaders”, whose task it was to structure the physical and psychic environment in such a way as to predispose certain kinds of events. And within that, there was a forced unanimity of experience and expression that I could only honestly label as fascism. There was no doubt that the groups could turn people on, and even served as a medium for therapeutic insights. On occasion, as in the case of Fritz Perls, the individual was actually given a mirror in which to see himself more clearly. But hanging over all of these so-called growth centers was the spectre of Grossinger’s, the suspicion that these were really fancy cruising grounds for the discontented middle class, and that for a stiff fee, people could come to feel and be felt, play head games, experience emotional catharsis, and in general indulge in a kind of open theatre. My major objection was that not one of these places had the honesty, humor, and historical perspective to see those aspects of their scene which were ludicrous, or dangerous, or merely degenerate partial residues of what once had simply been good living. Ultimately, it was the vulgarity of their instant intimacy and their putting a price on emotion which repelled me.

My masochism level had been running pretty low, so I dropped by the benefit weekend that Esalen held in New York City, where they raised over a hundred thousand dollars in two days by holding mass meetings of more than two thousand people at a time, leading them in ritualistic encounters. It was there I met Marsha, where she told me about her own group.

The two of us went out to smoke some grass, and then went back in to prowl the halls and dig the scenes. We watched Esalen’s chief guru arrive, unshaven, booze on his breath, and a cigarette hanging from his lips. In the great hall, some fifteen hundred people were told to “close your eyes and go inside,” and then “open your eyes and drink, drink in the face of your partner.” In another place a huge woman in a tent dress led a small army of people in group shouting. They all raised their arms in the air and chanted, “I take responsibility for myself, I take responsibility for myself.” Then she read, and had them repeat, the Gestalt Prayer, which begins, “You do your thing and I do mine.” The mixture of political form and pseudo-religious sentiment was making the air too thick to breathe. It was like watching a rally of psychic storm troopers, and I realized in a flash that Esalen was the Tibetan hierarchy of our time. They were setting the tone for the nation, and that no matter what kind of a revolution took place, no matter whether the right or the let took over, Esalen would remain privileged, giving massages and hot baths to the elite of whoever was in power.

We went into the lobby where several hundred people were smiling like crazy and embracing like socialist commissars of agriculture. Every now and then a real spark of sexuality would flare up, and the couple involved would jump back with a start, as though they suddenly realized that the touch-feely games they were playing had an actual basis in reality. These were the sensual counterparts of academic intellectuals. They liked to play with the notion of things, but ran like squirrels when the things themselves were made manifest. I had no real anger for the rubes who were spending seventy-five dollars each for a weekend of being processed through the superficial mill, hoping desperately for some magic to be rubbed off on them; but I was furious at the Esalen hucksters who blew into town to mop up a wad of money, promising visions of sensorial paradise and giving little more than two teenagers would find with each other on a date in the park. Lonely men, lonely women, husbands who no longer wanted to fuck their wives and wives with dried-up cunts, all of them milling around with bright gazes and leaning postures, wanting to be picked up, wanting to be plugged in, preying on the vibrations—this was the emotional cul-de-sac of a dying civilization. And it fit the proper historical ironic mode that as Americans, they didn’t even have the style and passion to make real orgies. Even decadence had become plastic.

I left in disgust, a thousand “groovies” ringing in my ears, and made a date to go to Marsha’s group. The night I arrived there, I was pleasantly surprised to find that all the people were sitting around as though they lived there. There were four women and five men, including myself and the leader. It is odd to use the word to describe Larry, because he didn’t “run” the group; he simply served as its focus and let the energy find its own forms.

Nothing spectacular happened. We rapped a bit, and a few of us told our stories. At one point we got into a massage thing, and just enjoyed solid physical contact with one another. I flashed on two of the chicks, and the three of us got into one of those circles, with arms around each other’s shoulders, heads touching, and each of us moaning Om to dig the group vibration. I realized that I was playing the Esalen games, but this was something we came upon easily and spontaneously. There was no social director telling us where to put our hands when, and suggesting what we should feel. It was just people getting into each other.

When the group ended, Al offered to drive the three of us downtown, since he was on his way to Brooklyn. Joyce and Connie and I piled in, and halfway there, I asked them over. They agreed, and in a short while we were spilling into my apartment, with a surprised Carol greeting us at the door.

Carol was in an odd mood that night and immediately split to the kitchen, where she began typing and yelling to herself. The others, not knowing her, were uncomfortable with this particular expression of insanity. We smoked some dope and put on some music, and settled into an easy rhythm. The talk turned to sex, and the mood turned to sex. And suddenly the proposition was hanging palpably in the air, and no one could pretend not to see it. Connie looked at the rest of us and said, “Are we all going to ball together, is that it?” We nodded quiet assent, and while the three of them began taking their clothes off, I went into the bedroom to bring out a mattress.

When I returned the three of them were standing awkwardly. This was another of those times when there was greater interest in the fact of the act than in the act itself. I imagine we were taken by the idea of an orgy, while the orgy itself seemed a mere vehicle for the theatre we had in mind. I put the mattress down, undressed, and the four of us sank to the floor. I turned to Joyce and Al took Connie in his arms. Joyce was about thirty-five, and she look as though she had been through all the scenes, the kind of chick who starts the evening by getting pissed on in the shower and takes off from there. Her breasts had the sag and stretched skin of a woman her age, and her cunt was totally raunchy, with pendulous lips that seemed permanently bruised. I couldn’t begin to imagine how many cocks had been inside her. We wasted no time on any preliminaries. She lay back and opened her legs; she was already wet. I moved on top of her and plunged right into her pussy. It was an immediate turn-on. Her experienced cunt began to surge inside and grip my cock, massaging it as she pushed her pelvis into me. She closed her eyes and her mouth dropped open. I put my fingers between her lips and she started biting and sucking them, moaning in a low purring sound.

I looked to the right and saw Al’s large bulk lower itself onto Connie’s thin body. Connie was one of those chicks who put up a kind of superficial defense against fucking,but once they are into it, let go completely. She didn’t have orgasms in the conventional sense, no great surging come, but rather a continual rippling opening, a sensual movement of the cunt that seemed like a dance and could go on for hours. She was best when a man had one of those fatigue hard-ons, when there is no real urge to come, but a low-level excitement which keeps the cock hard. Then her cunt was like a mindless mouth, feeling the cock churn inside her, reaming every inch of her pussy. She didn’t get very wet, but gave off enough lubrication to keep the slit tight and slippery. Now she brought her knees to her chest and exposed her cunt fully. She looked up at Al, who began grunting and banging his weight into her. “Oh fuck it, fuck it baby, fuck my cunt,” she said. At her words, Joyce turned on and started to grab my ass to pull me deeper into her.

For a while the four of us rode like that, Al working his tool into Connie and me sloshing around in Joyce’s brimming twat. And then Carol walked into the room. She seemed frantic and went about pointedly ignoring us, although we were aware that she was totally aware of us. It presented a slightly surrealistic picture, and the four of us continued our movement, but with a kind of suspended animation, as though we were waiting to see what Carol would do. For a moment I imagined she might join us, and then, to my astonishment, she switched on the television.

An old Western came on, and the sound of cattle thundering across a prairie assailed our ears. It was too funny, and we began laughing. At that, Carol let out a yipping yell and went tearing back into the kitchen where she started pounding furiously at her typewriter once more.

We all looked at one another, shrugged our shoulders, and started in again. This time I was ready to come. I reached over and put one hand on Connie’s breast, and began to massage her nipple. She moaned and spread her legs wider for Al to sink into her. Joyce had gone catatonic. She was just lying back, ready to take whatever I gave her, letting her cunt be an open receptacle, trading movement for sensation. I turned my attention to her and wondered again at the nature of woman. No matter how old or young, how sophisticated or naive, no matter what race or education or situation, when it came right down to it, woman was just cunt. When she took the cock inside her, she became most what she essentially is, the vessel, the chalice for the sperm of life. And the body and personality attached to the cunt are simply the trappings, the nicety of setting.

The two women crying out, Al working furiously to ream Connie’s cunt, and me swimming in Joyce’s experienced box, we pumped and thrust until I could feel Joyce rippling under me, and my cock answered the call by summoning the sperm up from my balls and shooting it wildly into her. At that, she jerked her whole body forward, grabbed onto my shoulders, and sucked at my cock with her pussy as the orgasm raked the inside of her body. Simultaneously, Connie threw her legs completely back, so that her ankles were practically at her knees, and then grabbed her feet with her hands and spread them apart. Her legs made a wide split V, and she looked like a diver doing a somersault off the high board. Al came up on his toes so his entire torso was off the floor, and he crashed into her, her sobbing and loving the punishment. He started to make a coughing grunting sound, and pumped harder and harder until he lost all control and his body flopped and convulsed into her like a great fish jerked up on land. She took him all in, pulling at his cock, drawing the sperm deeply into her, stretching her body as wide as she could to engulf him entirely. He came for a long time, and then subsided and sank onto her. She wrapped her legs around him and licked his throat and face, running her hands up and down his spine and taking handfuls of flesh to pinch and pummel.