The Gentle Degenerates (14 page)

At such moments of turmoil, the first thing I reach for is chronological time. I looked at the clock. It was five-fifteen. It was afternoon. It was Spring. I was in New York City. On the planet Earth. I remembered my name.

I stepped back, and looked at Carol while remembering myself. I could no longer con myself. The truth was manifest, and I had to cop to it. I would always be living in this moment, making this decision, understanding this mystery. It was like the Sufi story of The Eternal Return. Only, the Sufis knew something the existentialists don’t. They refer to that which returns as: The Friend.

Fatigue! My eyes burned in marble-eyed staring. I had lost all sense of my body as a biological organism. I had been up for fifty-two hours, and all of that time spent locked in the house with Carol. One night, after getting very stoned and fucking, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of total despair. Yet it brought with it a peace, a kind of quietude which was like a balm. I understood my total worthlessness in a stroke, and for the first time was able to take a total breath without the feeling that I had to prove something by breathing.

It was two weeks after Carol moved in, and this brings the story to a close. After our night of mutual revelation, we honeymooned for five days. There was not a word, a gesture, an idea that either of us could create which the other could find fault with. Every smile, every roll of her hips, her quirks, even her farts, were precious to me. And time and time again we would find ourselves looking deep into one another’s eyes, until we became aware of what was happening, and became embarrassed.

The head tripping we did was phenomenal. And the fucking became phantasmagorical. It was like pure acid, but mostly we were stoned on grass and truth, a winning combination every time. The house seemed to be filled with people every afternoon and evening, while we had the nights and mornings to ourselves. How dear this little madwoman became. I pictured us a George Burns and Grade Alien. It was a vacation, I didn’t care what happened. It was all dizzying and glorious. I stopped doing hatha yoga in the mornings, I went up to almost three packs of cigarettes a day, I became skinny. I slept no more than five hours a night. And I hadn’t felt so healthy, alive, and clear-headed in a very long time.

Then the dam burst, and the energies which had been whirling through the cyclotron of my consciousness brimmed and spilled over, and suddenly it was as though the atomic pile had been activated, and the whole reactor was about to explode. It is difficult to describe such moments to those who have not experienced them. It is as though the mind becomes a vacuum and the entire universe, real and conceptual, comes roaring in in a single rush. It often results in unconsciousness, or panic; but sometimes it turns into a speed satori. All elements of fantasy and reality are kept in a constant dizzying rapid dance like swords flung in the air by a juggler. The situation becomes so complex, and the rate of events and their realizations is so fast, that one must forget all about attempting to use skill to keep everything from crashing down; one goes into no-mind overdrive, and follows the Tao which, a pleasant stream a while back, had suddenly become a thundering cascade of white whipping water.

The fucking we did the night the double all-nighter began was very bad. I couldn’t scrape up enough sperm to satisfy an artificial insemination bank. My cock was so sore that it hurt to get a full erection. The hole in the tip was red and chafed. But lust still bubbled in my belly, and I attempted to rouse my cock to yet another round.

But, for about the twentieth time in my life, the organ rebelled. It said, “Fuck fucking, I’ve had enough.” Carol was ready to be turned on, but wasn’t really hot yet. We played a few desultory foreplay games and subsided. In all honesty, I wanted to sleep, but I saw Carol’s breasts lolling around on her chest, and her cunt making very small motions, and I began again. This time, as she lay, legs spread apart, knees up, I began trailing my fingers up and down the insides of her thighs, causing little shudders to run over her skin. I traced a meandering path to her cunt area, and tickled and teased all around the lips, especially in the most sensitive spot between the cunt lips and the crack which separates crotch from thigh, the place where the pubic hair is thinner and finer, where a kiss is felt reverberating through the entire body.

Then gently and with increasing speed, I began spanking her cunt, tapping against it with my fingertips and cupping it with the palm of my hand, letting it fall out and into me. I pressed my knuckles against the tender blades of flesh and slowly inserted one finger into the opening. I kept it at the very bud, the pink closed door to the inner delights. Her cunt began sucking at my finger. I don’t know how she did it, but there was a definite engorging taking place, as though she were a fish gaping at food. I could feel the grainy passage contract, pull my finger inside, and then relax and open again. Each time she did it my finger was drawn in further, until I was reaching into her deepest part and riding out the small convulsions taking place in her pussy. She became very wet, and my finger made sloshing sounds as I brought it back and forth, in and out of that enchanting lower mouth.

I got up and hung over her, supported by one hand, balancing on my toes, and brought my cock up to her cunt. I placed it right next to the finger still moving inside her, and as I pulled my finger out, I slipped my cock in. To use the vernacular, it was all peaches and cream. Sweet salvation of pussy! Creamy deliciousness of soulful cunt! Oh beautiful ladychild of the eternal randiness! I cupped her cheeks in my hands, and then the changes began.

The first thought that came to mind was Carol’s story that she had been a hooker for a night, and on another occasion had been used and beaten up by a pimp. I noticed now, as she fucked, that she had only put her right leg around my left leg, and was pushing her other hip up and down. It became obvious that she was not only a hooker, but that she hooked to the right! I let the political implications of that pass, and concentrated on the sociology of the phenomenon.

It gave her great control over her movements. One leg was braced against the wall, while the other served as a lever. The weight being lifted was her right hip, and the fulcrum was her cunt. But it was not a stationary fulcrum; it moved and surged, it pleased and demanded. She was able to move her cunt onto my cock from an infinity of directions, and then have it penetrate as deeply or lightly as she wanted. She could ripple the inside of her vagina, and would shift the angle of her pelvis to send me thrusting into different levels of heat at the core of her cunt.

I began to indulge in the prostitute fantasy, treating her as an object, as a person who had no essential worth except in terms of her masochism and passion. I plied both sides of that psychic street. And of course, she went wild behind it. In acting the way I was, I allowed her to take her own trip fully. There was no way of knowing whether her fantasy reciprocated mine, for that happens quite often. But our bodies moved in perfect harmony, and that’s what seemed of most importance.

Then, she surged up, brought her entire cunt up off the bed, and offered it wholly to my penetrating, ravaging cock. I fucked straight into her. And she began to writhe, to grip my cock with that churning tunnel, and demand the sperm from it. She was sucking me off with her pussy, insisting that I come in her symbolic mouth (or is a mouth a symbolic cunt?). At just that moment, my faithful tool went soft. The pressure was too much for even its brave heart, and it collapsed into half its erect size. Carol didn’t seem to notice. At this point, as long as there was minimal penetration, the feeling of pubic bone hitting clitoris, and the thrashing of a male body above her, she could climb her own stairs to orgasm. But as she grew in heat and intensity, I shrank from her need. I went from being the dominant thrusting force to a shrinking and meek failure. Impotence had struck again!

Paradoxically, at that moment I went into Reichian spasms, the vegetative energy making my spine ripple and my pelvis shudder rapidly. I went with the flow and felt myself bucking in her arms and fucking her cunt with spontaneous movements. She did something very rare for her; she threw her legs into the air and let me have the full view of her upturned exposed pink twat, begging me to penetrate it right to the pit. And I had nothing to effect the penetration with.

I cursed myself and just sank into her arms, spent. She went through rapid changes and then relaxed, letting me drift into her. If I had had any sense at that point, I would have just slipped into sleep. But I felt as though I had some kind of debt to pay, some obscure bond I had to meet. And so I got off her, lay by her side, and began fondling her breasts. My action was so contrived, so mechanical and unfeeling, that she was immediately turned off to it. I hit the panic button; the one thing I had been able to count on with Carol was the fact that I could turn her on at will, any time. And now even that was failing. It should be clear that by this time perspective had fled over the horizon of anxiety.

I lay back, and silently begged her to go down on me. But I suppose the astral plane was socked in with fog and she didn’t respond. So I subsided, and we lay there a long time. Slowly she began massaging my thighs, working her hand up to my hips, across my belly, and down into my pubic hair. She worked all the way to the base of my cock, stopped, and removed her hand. She repeated the cycle a dozen times, each time grabbing the cock for longer periods of time. It was maddening. She was toying with me and my head was in a place where I could see it was real. I didn’t have the energy to direct her in any way. I could only lie there and hope she would be good to me. After the last time around, there was a long, long silence, and then, decisively, she moved her mouth down to my cock. I smiled with relief, and awaited the blow job with tingling anticipation. The wet warm engulfment took the head of my cock into itself, and I felt myself melting into the sensations. She worked as though her mouth were filled with glue. It was a slowly, sticky kind of cocksucking, and totally delicious.

I let her suck me like that for what seemed almost a half hour, enjoying the sight of her lips stretched over the hard flesh pole, and the way her ass moved as she sucked, and the tickling of her fingers at my balls. Finally, when I sensed her tiring of it, I brought her up to me, turned her over, and penetrated again into her cunt.

This time she was cold to me. She turned her face to the side. And her cunt moved mechanically, ruthlessly. I let her vent her rage, riding out the rough storm, and when she began to become exhausted, I picked up her rhythm and carried it for her. This set off the spark which triggered the explosion. We exchanged roles back and forth a number of times, and then I began kissing her cheeks, pulling at them with my lips to bring her mouth around. She resisted, and suddenly I remembered the story that whores would never let you kiss them on the lips. My experience had been almost exclusively with Japanese whores, so I didn’t know whether the story was statistically correct or an apocryphal myth. But my imagination cared not at all for such sophistries. What would it be like to have a whore give up her mouth? I wondered. It would be a kind of offering of virginity.

I moved her face to face mine. She squeezed her eyes shut and refused to let her lips get soft. I lowered my mouth to hers and began kissing her gently. At first, she did not respond, but then began to acknowledge the kisses, and then to return them. Her lips parted and she moaned, a short gasping sound. Then I brought my cock into focus, screwing it into her in a helical swirl. Her cunt and entire pelvis shifted around the motion, like water in a balloon which is jiggled from below.

The action at our mouths and the action at our groins conjoined, and suddenly we were fucking in both places at once. What happened in her cunt was reflected by her tongue, and what happened to her lips found an echo in her cunt. Soon we were exchanging deep, passionate kisses, groaning and slobbering over one another, and then pulling back to let our mouths barely touch so that our breaths could commingle.

She moved her body faster, now really hitting her cunt into me. Her mouth was totally wanton, holding nothing back, letting itself take its full trip. We blended, and we headed toward climax. There was no hesitation now, no fear. This was the home stretch and we were running neck and neck, running well. Oddly, it was as though we could already see the finish line we were heading toward. And while this robbed the act of its mystery, it infused it with an equally powerful intelligence.

I recalled Jim Morrison’s words, “This is the end, beautiful friend . . . no safety or surprise, the end . . . I’ll never look into your eyes again.” Orgasm was simply that point on the matrix where our curves crossed and we died to ourselves and one another. It was a phase to be gone through and, phenomenologically, it was merely of a different texture from other experiences, but not more significant. I had pushed objectivity to the point where even orgasm paled beneath my glance. Or was I being merely pathological? I remembered Rudhyar’s description of the fully evolved Scorpio, who is able “even when the flame burns most intensely, to remember that he is merely the keeper of that flame, and is not to be consumed by it.” With a groan, romanticism died within me, and I felt an infinite pang at its demise through exposure.

The climax was, so to speak, anticlimactic.

And immediately afterwards I was disgusted with myself. I had done something wrong, following Hemingway’s dictum that a moral act is one you feel good after. Then the despair hit, and I let everything go. For a brief instant I felt peacefully dead. At last and of course, this was what I had been dreading all my life, and desperately seeking: the quietness of the grave. And then I came out of it to the game-world, but refreshed, stronger, and clearer.

Then the trip began. It was as though we were tied to each other. We had no obvious reason to be with one another physically, but neither of us could stand to have the other out of sight for more than a few minutes. We couldn’t sleep, for fear we would lose one another. When I had to leave to buy cigarettes, she came with me. We went for a walk through the East Village, where I kept a complete control over her, refusing to let her camp it up on the street. “You’re walking with me now,” I said, “and you’d better behave. You’re acting like you’re doped. That’s merely an affectation.” She looked at me with resentful admiration. Then I began to see her clearly, perceiving her essence and how her personality manifested itself around it. I saw all the history of her life and of her people. Once, when I had asked her why she felt doomed to self-destruction, she said: “I made up my mind to make myself as happy as possible wherever I am, and I just let myself go where fate takes me. I am the Fates.”