The Sensual Mirror (14 page)

Julia didn’t know what to do. To look or to look away; both were perplexing. Meanwhile, Gail’s figure pulsated almost imperceptibly, and Julia was drawn by its vibration. She lay with her right arm crooked up and over her, the forearm serving as a pillow for her head. Her left arm was by her side, relaxed. Gail’s right leg was raised, bent at the knee so that the angle between it and the left leg, stretched out flat and long at the edge of the couch, was enough to cause Gail’s cunt to appear as the merest hint of black and pink beneath the thatch of thick, curly pubic hair. Gail’s breasts fell, as large breasts do when a woman is lying down, to either side of her chest. Julia’s glance returned more often to Gail’s nipples than to anywhere else, for they were perfectly smooth purple discs, the tips long thin stems now drooping slightly. Gail was breathing deeply, her mouth was open and her eyes, hot mirrors, showed Julia the image of herself.

“Gail,” Julie said, her voice breaking.

“Why shouldn’t we be naked with one another?” Gail said.

“Gail . . . “ Julia repeated.

“Why shouldn’t we love each other, and fuck each other, and tell each other what’s in our hearts? Is that something that only a man and woman can do together? Who said that, Julia? Who made that law?” Gail smiled abruptly. “Have a seat, sweetheart. Make yourself at home.”

Julia’s eyes focused sharply and the lines of her face went straight. Something like anger flared. She brought the cigarette to her lips, sucked in the harsh smoke, and blew it out again almost at once. With her free hand she pulled the top lapels of her housecoat tightly together, all at once a prim matron putting a young man in his place.

“I don’t know that I want to continue this,” she snapped.

Gail leapt from the couch, her movement so quick, so unexpected, so seemingly opposed to the law of gravity, that Julia almost fell over backwards.

“Well, how shall I do it?” Gail shouted. “Do you want to be taken by force? Is that the way a man would do it for you?” Gail pulled the cigarette from Julia’s fingers and flung it into the fireplace.

“What’s so precious under here?” Gail grabbed the edges of the housedress and yanked so violently that Julia’s fingers were pulled loose from their grasp. Gail tugged and pushed, stripping the robe from Julia’s shoulders, and then, in a single sweeping gesture, peeled it off entirely, dropping to her knees to complete the movement.

Then Julia was also naked. Her eyes flashed fire but her lower lip trembled. She pressed her thighs together but her arms remained at her sides, the hands doubled into fists so that the pectoral muscles flexed and pulled her breasts taut. The two woman froze in those postures of defiance and revolt, of tender violence, stunned that they had come so far.

The presence of clothing is so fully conditioned an aspect of our lives that its simple removal is enough to be considered a major shift in identity. Whether it is done conventionally, as among nudists; or aggressively, as with stripteasers; or casually, as among people who have lived together for a long time; or radically, as with streakers; no matter what the mood or approach, the event is significant. Because it reveals what are called the private parts, the parts that shit and piss, the parts that fuck and fart, the parts that bleed and ejaculate. So deeply ingrained is our involvement with clothing that a multi-billion dollar business has sprung up based on nothing more extraordinary than photographs of women examining their vaginas as though they had suddenly chanced upon a totally unique discovery. A human being is not free to walk the face of the earth naked, and that is all the comment that need be made upon the entire human condition.

Julia relaxed by degrees, and in a few moments she was standing there with something approaching naturalness. Gail shook her head, amazed at her temerity. She rose slowly to her feet.

“All right,” Julia said, smiling suddenly, “‘we’re naked. Now what?”

“Now we can take it easy and enjoy the rest of the evening,” Gail replied. “We don’t have to do anything special. This is interesting enough, so far.”

“Well, if we’re going to actually hang around in our birthday suits, then I suppose I’d better make a fire,” Julia said.

“Fine,” Gail told her. “And I’ll make us some proper drinks and roll another joint.” She glanced at the stereo. “Jesus, I wish you had some music with a bit of beat to it. This is like having marshmallows poured in my ear.”

“You never criticized my taste in music before,” Julia said.

The two woman looked at one another wonderingly. Gail snorted, a huff of gruff merriment. “We haven’t even been to bed together yet.” She frowned. “Maybe sex does open the door to disrespect.”

“But there’s the radio,” Julia added quickly. “You might find a nighttime FM station with some rock.” Julia smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” she added. “Martin didn’t like my taste in music either, but he never had the balls to say so. I don’t mind if you lean on me a little bit. In fact, it feels good to have somebody really relating to me and reacting to me and not afraid to shake me up a little bit.”

“OK,” Gail said. She went over to the console, turned off the stereo and switched on the radio. She spun the dial to 102 .7 and at once a smooth, raucous guitar, backed by a throbbing base and sinuous drum, slid out of the speakers, changing the mood of the room. The place became darker, more vital, filled with nuances the way a wood is alive with sounds and sharp hidden eyes at night. Julia had turned to begin the makings of a fire, but when the music came on, she glanced over at Gail. Her friend was standing in front of the amplifier, her back to her. She was swaying slightly, doing a tiny dance to the sounds. Julia’s eyes were drawn to Gail’s ass, a tight, soft, vibrant organism that had sprung into life, and was signaling in a language of basic gesture and primitive meaning. Julia could feel the unmistakable urge to go across the room and put her hand on the dark inviting cleft that now shifted and spoke like the shadow of a stick on the sandy bottom of a shallow stream.

But Gail spun to one side and moved off into the kitchen, her voice trailing behind her. “Vodka tonic all right with you?” she called out.

“Fine,” Julia shouted, her own voice snapping her out of her reverie.

She bent down and built the basic structure of the fire carefully. Rolled up copies of the Times, strips of cardboard, thin splinters of wood. She lit it in four places and in seconds it was blazing easily. She put thicker pieces of wood on top, and when flames had begun to curl around their edges, laid on three thick logs. She scooted back, and sat with her shoulders against the couch, feeling the warmth of the fire begin to caress her skin. It was fairly obvious that she and Gail would make love. It had happened suddenly, without warning. Nothing in her life had prepared her for it. And yet there it was. She thought she could guess what it would be like, reasoning that one didn’t have to drink to have a notion of what drunkenness was. She was curious, a bit turned on. But this was already at a level once removed from Gail’s immediate presence. And some arcane voice inside her, one which rarely spoke because it had not been listened to since Julia was five or six years old, before she had had her sense of magic destroyed, now tried to whisper that what was about to happen was enough to rock the very foundations of civilization as it had been practiced for more than ten thousand years. Julia had no political consciousness as such, and women’s liberation was something she vaguely associated with articles in Cosmopolitan. In that sense, she was on a par with countless lesbians for whom the act of physical intimacy between women is a perfectly private affair. The radical middle, that group who understood that the issue is not having sex, but the freedom which having sex implies, would have smiled on Gail and Julia that night. Yet neither of the women had any inkling of the historical ramifications of what they were doing, that this night was both a product of and a movement in the growing awareness that the heterosexual bond, unqualified by homosexual love, and resulting in the rigid, terse, tense form known as the couple, was a relatively rare manifestation, and ought to occur only in those instances when it is consciously chosen by mature individuals who find it organically congenial to their needs, temperaments, and values. To have such a thing imposed ruthlessly upon an entire people is a kind of cultural fascism so profound that those who point it out are inevitably seen as some kind of crank. Among the Indian tribes on the continent, all forms of social erotic forms existed. The European wiped all that out and forced monogamy upon everyone, including such gentle rustics as the Mormons, thus crippling not only those whose inclinations might be toward other paths, but even the true monogamists themselves who had to bear the guilt born of association with the dictatorial decree.

For Julia, now, however, there was only the warmth of the flames, the insinuating insistence of the music that the pelvis must be moved, the mind must be shaken loose, the heart must expand. And in a few minutes there was Gail, beautiful, young, smiling with a universe of friendliness and warmth. Gail carrying a tray with two chilled glasses and their transparent bellyfuls of cheer, a tray with another marijuana cigarette with its ticket to realms of telepathy and sensual fulfillment.

Gail sat down. Julia watched her the way a cat looks at shadows. It was extraordinary to look at the hundred common gestures that a person makes, and to see them without the protective coloration of clothing. I really haven’t seen anyone in my whole life, Julia thought. I’ve just seen their clothing. She watched the slight jiggle of Gail’s breasts, the folds at the tops of her thighs as she bent over, and always, the hypnotic center, the living cunt.

They each picked up a glass. “Here’s to . . . what?” Gail said.

“To now,” Julia replied without thinking.

“And then,” Gail added.

Both women hovered around the edge of a smile and sipped at their drinks. The liquor did its job of instant loosening as the alcohol was absorbed into the bloodstream and made its way to the brain. Gail put her glass down, and lifted the joint up, her eyes questioning. Julia nodded, her expression that of a mischievous smile.

“Will we regret this in the morning?” Julia asked.

Gail lit the joint, inhaled, passed it to her friend. And once again the ritual was re-enacted, the formal decision to sail on a carpet of sensation into an other-wordly realm in which the concerns of chronological reality lost all substance. The solid world of the morning newspapers, of men in terrible machines killing other men, of a species run amok with its technological toys, of dreary routines in offices five days a week, of small pleasures, of absurd ambitions, of anxiety, of telephone calls from parents wondering why you haven’t been in touch. They would flee all that, even for a brief time, escape into their minds, find an infinitude of curlecues with which to distract themselves.

Gail took a lungful of smoke, leaned forward, put her lips on Julia’s open mouth, and exhaled, forcing the breath and grass into Julia’s body. It was done so deftly, so effortlessly, that the transfer had taken place before Julia realized that the movement was actually a kiss. Her chest exploded with heat, with the totally unfamiliar sensation of having someone else’s breath in her lungs. Her lips began to tingle almost at once. Gail’s eyes smiled into her own.

Julia took a toke, and then Gail, who repeated the mouth-to-mouth resusciation. But this time their mouths stayed together longer, their lips clung, and when they parted it was with deep sighs.

“I don’t know,” Gail said, replying to Julia’s question. “I won’t regret this. This is the most beautiful moment in my life. If I were a man I’d ask you to marry me.”

“I’m already married,” Julia said.

“And I’m engaged,” Gail added.

“I guess it’s hopeless, then,” Julia said.

The joint was finished.

“What about them?” Julia continued after Gail dropped the tiny roach into the ashtray. Her head was already beginning to swim. But it was with precisely that kind of disorientation that she wanted to talk about her situation, to know it from the point of view of unreasonable perspectives. “What about the men?”

“Martin’s your problem. As far as Eliot is concerned, I’m going to tell him that I know about you two. And I’m going to tell him about tonight. And I’m going to make him understand that my relationship with you won’t take second place to my relationship with him.”

“Will you marry him?”

“If we can keep out separate places,” Gail said with sudden conviction. “I like my apartment, I like my life. I don’t want to have to change who I am because I get married. And I want to be free to see you, to spend nights with you.” She glanced at Julia, a sudden flicker of fear in her eyes. “Unless I’m presuming too much. Unless this isn’t as important to you as it is to me. I can’t tell you what this means. But it’s like I’ve only been seeing out of one eye. And now I’ve taken one of my blinkers off. Do you understand? I’ve loved you for three years. And now you’re here, naked, lovely, and we’re free. Free! Do you think I would ever give that up? Would you?”

Julia shook her head slowly from side to side like a small child denying that it had done the naughty thing it was accused of. “No,” she drawled. “Anything or anyone that told me I wasn’t free to love you totally would have to be evil.”

“I’d like to marry Eliot,” Gail continued. “I would like his child. I would like to travel the world with him. I would like to pass the years knowing him. But not at the price of my liberty, my individuality.”

“Maybe we could do threesomes,” Julia said, and the minute she said it she put her hand over her mouth as though she had just belched. “Oh dear,” she said. “Did I say that? I usually don’t talk when I’m stoned. I can begin to see why. The words just bubbled up.”

“Well, maybe we could,” Gail replied. “Right now I feel like anything’s possible. What the hell. We’re free, aren’t we? The earth is our home, isn’t it? Nobody gets born a ruler over anybody else. Why the fuck shouldn’t we do whatever we want to? Who’s stopping us?” She had raised her voice, slipping into a kind of parlor oratory. She was voicing the question asked by every radical human being ever born, the question that cuts at the very heart of the senile dictator called civilization.