The Televisionary Oracle (52 page)

“Well, I hope I get a bigger part in lesson two,” the real Jumbler complained good-naturedly as we rolled away. “How come Rapunzel gets to have all the fun?”

“The Eater of Cruelty shall be the father of the new covenant,” Madame Blavatsky replied with a portentous and scolding tone that seemed to misread Jumbler’s jest, “and the Pomegranate Grail the mother. But you had better get used to the fact that the girlfriend you picked is Queen Bee, Sex President, and Chief Anchorslut of the United Snakes of Rosicrucian Coca-Cola. Believe in her, Jumbler. Help her. Most of all, get used to sharing her. She is the Global Initiatrix of Fuckissimus. The Universal Love Slave.”

“Tell me more,” Jumbler said to Blavatsky, which I thought was curious. Up till then, she had shown little interest in any conceptions about my fate that didn’t originate with her.

“I cannot do that right now,” my great-great-great-grandmother replied. “We have run out of Drivetime momentum for the moment. The two of you must return to the hotel back in the Waketime. There is a lot of work to be done, and we must pace ourselves. This is but Day Two of what we will in the future call the First Seven Days of Creation. You are not yet ready for full-scale immersion in the Drivetime.”

Madame Blavatsky was weaving the golf cart across a densely packed section of the cemetery now, avoiding the tombstones but driving right over the flat grave markers. We were heading towards a giant Televisionary Oracle, the size of a highway overpass, at ground level on the far end of a field. Meekly I asked, “Is this safe?” The air smelled of mint candy and rum and cedarwood.

“Quickest way to get you back. Don’t worry.”

When Jumbler and I awoke on the morning after, back in the tear-stained bed at the Villa Inn, it was almost 2
P.M
. We were dressed as we were at the height of the tantric exchange that had propelled us into the Drivetime: black flannel pajamas for her, black velvet tights and tunic for me. It took me a disappointed minute to adjust to the fact that I wasn’t wearing my sacred underwear from Madame Blavatsky’s necropolis.

We didn’t groom ourselves with great care before making a foray to the crummy food market a couple of blocks away. We were barefoot and tousled and deliriously happy. It was amusing to witness the reactions of innocent bystanders as we foraged for our Ritz crackers, string cheese, lemonade, and celery. The latter was far from my favorite vegetable, but it was the only one in the store that didn’t look like it had been invaded by rot.

I might have preferred our conversation during those first couple of waking hours to have centered on our excursion into the Drivetime. I wanted to compare notes and analyze the meanings of the experiences we had shared. And Jumbler did agree to a modest exchange that made it clear her experience had been identical to mine. It was not merely a creation of my unconscious mind.

Perhaps driven by Madame Blavatsky’s parting words, though, she was mildly obsessed with questioning me at length about the story of my life as Rapunzel, which for some mysterious reason she knew nothing about even though she seemed so knowledgeable about my alleged other incarnations. I answered her inquiries happily, spilling out deep secrets about the circumstances of my birth, my upbringing as the avatar, and how and why I ran away. It was the first time I’d ever talked so much to an outsider about my history. My mothers had always forbidden such self-revelation.

Later, after we shared late-afternoon breakfast in bed, her interview finally ebbed. For a while we closed our eyes and were silent, my right leg and her left playing together.

“You are surprisingly receptive for such a flaming narcissist,” she said suddenly.

“How can I possibly be a flaming narcissist,” I replied, determined not to be offended though I had instantly gone rigid. Would this be our first fight? “All my life I’ve been trained—brainwashed, really—to believe that my life is devoted to serving all of womankind. More than anything, I want to be
of use
.”

Nervously, I lurched away from her to the middle of the bed and began running my hands through the thicket of my hair.

“Yes. I see that. I don’t mean to condemn.” She glided behind me, lifted my tunic, and began stroking my belly with her almost supernaturally feathery touch. “But all that stuff is really just skin-deep, isn’t
it? Your underbelly imprint is very different. And how could it be otherwise? You’ve never had any other experience except as a dearly beloved object of devotion. Day after day for many years, women who cherish you deeply have poured their life energy into you.”

“I can’t help that.” I was annoyed at her even as she was arousing a sweet warmth in my body.

“I know you can’t,” she said. “But what it means is that you have never had the chance to feel wrenching, gut-level yearning for anyone who makes you feel the way your devotees feel about you.”

“Oh.” Was it really necessary to discuss this now? I didn’t feel like defending myself, even though I had a good rebuttal: the memories, which had surfaced the day before, of my relationship with my birth mother Magda.

“And until you can add that primal emotion to the mix,” Jumbler continued, “all your service to the world will be one-dimensional. By rote. Uninspired. You’ll be a charismatic leader who’s programmed mostly to feel special about yourself, not to bestow great blessings on other people.”

I did not enjoy being told I was superficial, even by my beautiful new lover. I got up from the bed and went to the mirror to check the status of Dr. Lilith’s slash in my forehead. As I applied some cleanser, Jumbler continued.

“But I will say this, my dear. According to my tantrically trained reading of your character, you actually possess equal potentials as beloved and devotee.”

“And will you deign to teach me the path of the devotee, O Great Master Jumbler?” I said, daring to be sarcastic. “Will you lead me to the feet of the alluring idol where I might immolate myself in the fires of ecstatic surrender?”

“Gladly will I do this, O Great Master Rapunzel. Gladly will I offer my humblest parts to be kissed by the beloved avatar.” She stretched out on the bed, arching her bare feet in my direction.

“Ah I see. You yourself are the solution that you are recommending. You are the beloved who will cure my flaming narcissism.” I blew her feet a kiss, then returned to the business of applying a fresh bandage.

“My goal would not be to expunge your sense of yourself as the beloved one,” she said. “Only to add an additional sense of yourself
as devotee. As I said, you have extravagant potentials for both. And I think both are crucial for your ascendancy to goddess-like power and splendor.”

“So are you criticizing me or praising me?” I still felt slightly petulant. “Will you make up your damn mind?”

“I would like to quote now from the book that, with your help, I hope to write someday. It’s called
The Dictionary of Tricky Love
. Please listen to the definition for the term ‘radical intimacy.’ Ahem. Radical intimacy is a virtuoso art that requires me and my freaky consort to master two seemingly contradictory skills: naming and nurturing the highest, holiest, best in each other, and thriving on the fact that our relationship will inevitably draw out and ask us to redeem each other’s ugliest ignorance.”

“So what you’re saying is that the deeper you and I fall in love,” I replied, “the more uninhibited we’ll both feel about unveiling our worst qualities?” I had returned to the rumpled bed and was making grotesque faces just inches from Jumbler’s face. “You’ll get to spend lots of time with my inner gargoyles, and I with yours? And that’s a good thing?” I grunted like a hippopotamus and licked her hand sloppily.

“It is a good thing,” Jumbler murmured self-assuredly as she allowed me to chomp on her arm and shoulder, “because it will give us great ongoing practice at killing the apocalypse right down at the most microscopic levels.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” I allowed. “Each of us, even great masters like you and me, carry a little portion of the apocalypse within us.” I got up from the bed and retrieved a black felt-tip pen from a drawer. Slipping the back part of my tights down a little, I drew an oval on my left butt cheek and wrote “The End” inside. This was rather forward of me. Despite our wonderful all-night trance-dance, Jumbler and I had not yet been naked with each other except incidentally in Madame Blavatsky’s golf cart.

“Jung called our personal portion of the apocalypse the
shadow
,” she said, taking the pen and drawing an oval on the sole of her left foot. Within it, she printed “Do not look at this” along with a picture of a single eye. “It’s the unripe or wounded part of us,” she continued. “It becomes evil only if it’s repressed.”

“So in radical intimacy,” I replied, curling into the fetal position to
stare into the off-limits zone she’d just created, “I get to practice killing off the apocalypse in you, and vice versa? Sort of a corollary to Jesus’ plea to love thy neighbor as thyself. ‘Love thy neighbor’s shadow, and work with all thy tender adrenaline to summon its most constructive expressions.’ ”

“Hmmmm. I like that. But I was thinking more about how
I
will kill off the apocalypse in
myself
because I have such a high regard and attraction to you. And you’ll do vice versa.”

“So like when I suddenly turn into a jerk because my flaming narcissism has demonically possessed me, I’ll rise up with a banishing spell. ‘Begone demon, for I cannot allow you to trick me into hurting the feelings of my sweet groovemate.’ ”

I did the trick my mothers had always hated so much, which was to roll my pupils back so far in my head that only the whites showed.

“Yes, exactly,” she laughed. “You won’t just naturally assume that the demon to be exorcised resides inside
me
. Which in itself is so contrary to the style of the six billion apocalypticians on the planet that you might just shock armageddon into expiring right then and there.”

“I catch your drift, Professor Jumbler. Or is it Guru Jumbler?” I saluted then prayed then bowed to her. “As Jung said, we tend to attribute to other people the very stuff we hate and fear most about ourselves.”

“Radical intimacy means we kill the apocalypse at the source.”

“So what is your ugliest ignorance, anyway, Jumbler?” I asked slyly.

“Wouldn’t you rather have the fun of provoking me into accidentally leaking it at an unguarded moment?” she returned. “And there’s also the possibility that I don’t even know all the subtle varieties of my own ugliest ignorance. Maybe you can help me discover them.”

“As long as I also always tell you how beautiful and wonderful you are, too, right?”

“Exactly.”

The front half of Jumbler’s body was on the bed while she knelt on the floor and held my feet, one in each of her hands. She placed her tongue on the top of the middle toe of my right foot and kissed and licked very softly and slowly in a straight path up the front of my foot all the way to the spot between my ankles. She repeated the gesture with my left foot. Then she returned to my right foot and began again.
This time she murmured a wistful tune as she proceeded. I couldn’t understand the words, though I thought I detected syllables that sounded like Sanskrit. Whenever it came time for her to take a breath, she would keep her lips on my skin and suck gently as she inhaled. After she finished with this sweep, she performed the same operation on my left foot.

A third time she returned to my right foot. This time she added a new move. Instead of lightly sucking my skin on her inbreaths, she turned her head up and sipped the air. As she brought her mouth back to my foot, she made a delicate spurting sound, as if she were taking the essence of what she’d sipped and infusing it into my flesh. All the while, she kept singing her mysterious tune.

By the time she completed my feet and began applying a similar rhythm to my calves and shins, I was slipping into a most relaxed rapture. She continued with amazing patience, methodically but gracefully covering my entire body, removing my clothes as she wandered.

Then I was naked before her. It pleased me profoundly. I wanted to peel myself open for her, find ways to let her more deeply into me. I wanted her to wash over me, pour into me, turn me inside out and touch me in my oldest fantasies about myself.

“Come and find me,” I sighed. “Surround me. Fill me. Engulf me.”

A strange and wonderful feeling arose in the midst of this spreading expanse of surrender: a tremendous potency. It made no sense at first, and I held it at bay. How could relinquishing my will generate such strength? But as it continued to build, I accepted it, allowed it to billow. Confidence and authority surged through me crazily. I felt wildly powerful, as if I could do anything. This in turn cracked open a fresh intuition—a prophecy, really: that in the years to come I would indeed be called upon to take on assignments that would test me to my limits.

In the wake of this revelation, I wanted to plunge back into the Drivetime without delay. I longed to collect more clues about the destiny Madame Blavatsky had been unveiling. But I willfully held myself back. I didn’t want to slip over to the other side unless Jumbler accompanied me.

“How can I give you what you’re giving me?” I asked dreamily. “Let me rev
you
up too.”

“You can’t imagine how much you’ve given me by allowing me to worship you like this,” she sighed. I could hear the other world in her
voice. “More and more, I sense the truth of what Madame Blavatsky said about you. You
are
the Sex President. The Supreme Adept of the Fuckissimus.”

“But I want you to come with me to the Drivetime,” I insisted quietly.

“I’m almost there already,” she said. “Lie on top of me.”

I helped her take off her clothes. She lay down spread-eagled on the bed.

“Crucify me with your love, girl,” she whispered. “With all your most furious gentleness.”

I eased myself down onto her, matching her pose in every way except for my head, which was face down on the bed to the side of hers.

“Visualize that I am you and you are me,” she said. “Imagine that you are me feeling Rapunzel’s thighs on yours, and Rapunzel’s breasts on yours, and Rapunzel’s arms on yours.”