I glared back at him, a typical wifey severe expression designed to clobber the husband into submission, as I said, “James, just relax into it.”
“I don’t want it! Respect that,” he affirmed, and I could tell by the finality in his voice that he meant it.
“Fine,” I said, “You can sit this one out.”
What was his problem? I tried to quickly dispense with my impatience with James, reminding myself that one of our fundamental rules was that no one had to do anything they did not feel like doing. Personally, I loved eye gazing. I relished quiet communion with my gentle, sincere farmer, my passionate Italian lover, my Wild Woman red-haired sister, and of course, my Mars man.
For the next exercise, Cleo and I had put together a bag of tricks, and laid Santo down on the covers. “Now close your eyes, and just receive,” we instructed him. Out of the bag we pulled peacock feathers, rabbit fur, sheepskin, a loofah, a massage roller, as well as bottles of essential oils of different scents.
So there was Santo, blindfolded, lying naked on the covers, as we swished him with feathers, lightly sprayed cool scented water, flicked him delicately with a riding crop, playfully pinched or kneaded his skin, and fed him chilled grapes, chocolate, and tangerine sections. Then we began massaging him. This was a totally new experience for Santo, and he later described it: “When I had four hands or eight or 48 or whatever it was, that was the moment for me. There was the feather, the fur, the sounds, the tastes, the smells... I just decided to give myself over to it. I didn’t have to do or be anything. That was a big pair of snips on a ribbon – a moment of being absolutely present – trust in a group of people – surrender of ideals, Catholicism, beliefs – it was me finding out who I was, bringing me back to me, my gut feeling as a child... This was me, and everything was OK.”
We each took turns receiving and we ended with Cleo lying naked and blindfolded before us. Her body responded to our touches with “Mmmm” and sighs. She spread her legs, arching up her pubis, and Santo and I just looked at each other, as if to say, “Doesn’t that look like an invitation to you?” So I began caressing her yoni with my hot breath and then my tongue, as James and Nicholas each began sucking on a breast, and Santo thrilled her with his deep kissing. There we all were again, in the swing of hot, hot sex, tumbling into one another’s embrace.
Later in the evening, after Cleo and I had both had our share of orgasms with our favorite lingams, we all lay in each other’s arms.
“I’m still horny,” James whispered.
“Me, too,” Santo confessed. Of course. Our men had performed the whole night without ejaculating.
So I stood up over Santo and James, who propped themselves on pillows next to one another. Turning away from them, I bent over so they both got a full view of my yoni and ass, and began fondling myself. I grabbed my ass cheeks in my hands in rhythm to the music, and then delicately opened the folds of my labia, leaning toward their faces. “Oooo,” James was moaning.
Cleo jumped up. “Oh my God, look at this!” she exclaimed. “I’ve got to get my camera. Look at these two guys jacking off to Becca’s beautiful bottom!”
“No pictures!” Nicholas cried, as he rolled away from the scene and onto the sofa. He lay there with the leather crop across his chest, watching.
I continued my yoni dance turned away from them, guided by their moans and their rising rate of breathing. Then, within a minute of each other, they both let out a yell, releasing their ejaculations.
Santo and James both laid their heads back, leaning on each other, eyes closed, grinning from ear to ear. The two of them described later how close they felt to each other at that moment.
Nicholas was in the kitchen preparing tea and dishing up goblets of peach sorbet and frozen raspberries. When he came into the living room, we all sat up in front of the fire, for the dessert and conversation course.
Cleo spoke. “Santo and I are leaving in a couple months, so maybe we might want to plan our next few Coterie sessions, and talk about how we want them to be.”
Nicholas peered into his teacup as he said, “I need to tell you something. I have decided to run for City Council. It’s time we had a green voice in city government, and we have to work on a sustainability plan for Taos’ future.”
“Congratulations, Nicki!” we all exclaimed.
“That means,” he continued, “No more Coterie for me.”
“What?!” I gasped.
Cleo said, “I don’t get it. You’re running for City Council – good! But what does that have to do with the Coterie?”
“I can’t run the risk of anyone finding out. Haven’t you noticed? Sex scandals are what bring down politicians. It would finish my career before it started.”
James countered, “No offense, Nick, but you’re not exactly Bill Clinton. CNN reporters are not waiting outside to interview you about what you’ve been doing in here.”
“OK, I’m no Bill Clinton, but look at what happened to the man in the highest office in the land – toppled by a blow job!”
“Nicki,” I said to him, “There’s nothing wrong with having a sex life. And remember, this is Taos. People are used to people mingling, and knowing that it’s none of their business.”
“Becca, you and James are so into Venus and Her Lover, you need to get out of your studios more! This town is mostly Hispanic – people who have traditional Catholic weddings – and even the Indians and the Anglos – no one accepts orgies!”
“Orgies?!” James exclaimed. “Do you think we’re just having orgies here?”
“It doesn’t matter what you call it, James! To everyone else, these are orgies – perversion – and I’m not going to sacrifice doing something really important for my own sexual pleasure!” Nicholas said.
Seeing the stunned look on my face, Santo said, “Becca, James, amici, for you sex is something natural. I understand. But in the business world, in politics, you cannot be so free. I understand what Nicola is saying.”
Cleo watched Nicholas for a long minute before speaking. “And Prudence? Does she have anything to do with this? Have you been able to tell her about us?”
Nick held a spoonful of sorbet in mid-air while he considered his answer. “Look, Prudence is a school teacher. She could lose her job if she were associated with a sex pervert –”
“Sex pervert!” James interrupted. “C’mon Nick! What the hell?”
“So you haven’t told her about the Coterie?” Cleo asked.
“No, I haven’t. And now there’s nothing to tell. It’s so much easier if she knows nothing – she would never understand – and for my career, it’s just time for me to leave this behind.”
Distraught, I said, “But we’re a part of you, Nicki, and you’re a part of us. What you’re saying is that she would not understand – and you’re willing to leave behind – a part of yourself.”
Nicholas looked at us grimly. He said, with finality, “It’s the way of the world.”
When we got home that night, James and I had much to talk about. Finally he explained his reluctance during the eye-gazing part of the evening. “Today I recalled something that’s been hidden away, a terrible secret from my past... It’s hard even now for me to talk about. But Becca, I remember being raped by other men, when I was maybe 14 years old. It was in a room – I don’t remember the place or the people – and the men took turns with me.”
“Oh James,” I said, hugging him. “You remembered just today? Who did that to you?”
James nodded. “I don’t remember the details, but I remember how they made me bend over. Their faces were in shadow.” He sighed. “I couldn’t talk about it tonight... I wanted to be more present with everyone, but it was hard at the beginning. Honey, that was why I was so adamant about not wanting to be intimate with men, on any level. I tried to let you know, but basically you ignored my request, so on top of everything, I felt disre
spected. When I remembered, I felt shocked and sick. So there you have it.”
Now I understood where James was coming from. “Oh, James, I apologize. I didn’t know...” Then I asked him, “Do you think the freedom of the Coterie jogged that memory loose?”
“Maybe,” he replied. “You remember the night that Santo sucked me? It felt strange to me, but I kept telling myself, ‘What’s the big deal? Just go with it.’ So I did. Maybe that experience made a connection to a very bad memory. And now that I remember it, I’m going to put it in the same place I put my back pain – away where it can’t do any more damage.”
James and I held each other under the down comforter of our big bed. “Maybe you can heal that old memory of rape with a new experience of love. Pleasure heals...” I said.
“Well, if anyone knows about pleasure, it’s you, sweetie. And there’s nothing like sex to peel away the layers of the onion, if you want to get to the core.” James nuzzled his face into the crook of my neck, and I stroked the head of my troubled warrior. Rape, one of the Dominator Culture’s most effective tactics, had touched even my Mars man.
“Dulces sueños,” I said to him, truly wishing that his nightmarish memory would be healed and he could enjoy the peace of “sweet dreams.”
We kept in touch with each other and saw each other at parties, but the Coterie did not meet again. Santo, Cleo, James, and I did get together. We invited Nicholas and Prudence to dinners, but there was always a reason they could not attend. Santo and Cleo sublet their house and moved to Montréal. Cleo and I talked on the phone nearly every week. Nicholas ran for City Council but did not win, though he raised issues that the other politicians had to address.
I missed my lovers. Because I did love them, I knew I had to relax my tension around their absence and accept the evolution of our relationship. Breathing in and breathing out, expanding and relaxing in love...
From Montréal came reports of French wine and lingerie – and promises we would get to sample them – and one day a two-part email from Cleo and Santo. Here is what Cleo wrote:
“I think that polyamory might work best in an expanded environment, when people and times are open and beneficent and fearless. Now, since we are obviously living in a contracted period – the end of the world no less! – I think that even enlightened people are craving safety and quiet and retreat. What’s odd about this, what fascinates me, is that why, at a time when we need unity and unconditional acceptance and love, why is just the opposite happening? I think there is no time in history the globe has been so divided, seems like it’s every aspect... well, maybe except the Internet.
“This separateness, this divisive kind of energy is happening all over the world. So of course we’re going to feel it in our little family, and then especially someone on the front lines, like Nicki, will feel it first and strongest. On his part, I think there might have been some fear about losing the election or losing Prudence. Still, I supported Nick in his decision. He did what he had to do. I consider myself to be rather fearless but, still, the flow is taking my energy, not in a fearful way, but certainly in an inward direction. Quite frankly, for me, here in Montréal, I’m finding this inward focus to be exquisite in its fineness.
“And I have my memories of our little family that really comfort me – so much fun and love and trust that we shared in the Coterie!”
Santo wrote:
“Since the Coterie, I notice I am now more aware of people – I look in their eyes and see someone trapped in a body. It’s helped me to be kinder. I look at the woman behind the counter at Southwest Airlines and think, ‘Why would I want to yell at this person?’
“Everyone wants to be touched, to be loved. Even the people who say they don’t, want it. If you’re lucky you find a person who truly loves you. But then, the love expands, and you have a group of people willing to touch you, to love you. If this keeps happening, then who the fuck is going to fight in Iraq?
“Around the men at work, I feel like I have a little secret... I feel enlightened in a lot of ways, liberated. By experimenting, I realized the conditioning we’ve had... conditioning is the root of all evils in a lot of ways. I was raised Roman Catholic, and then to find pleasure in sucking someone’s dick, but it wasn’t just someone – it was someone I loved. It’s not easy for me to say – it’s harder for guys to make that step. I know I’m not gay, I’m hetero, but now I feel more centered, more balanced. It’s pleasure and love when we’re all together. With you all, I learned that I can drop conditioning and 2000 years of sexual oppression if I choose. It’s not etched in stone. We have choices. Barriers aren’t there unless we choose them to be.
“With the Coterie, I began to I think of myself not only as myself, but as part of a group. I consider the feelings of others. I mean, I started out with a girlfriend, and then all of a sudden I had a boyfriend and another girlfriend and a boyfriend. How did that happen? I have a broader identity. I became part of something instead of an isolationist in life.
The Coterie has helped me learn more about unconditional love. I was forced to be open, and trusting, willing to sacrifice everything that I was taught – for a moment of truth.”
Completion
One day, James came home early, at sunset, with an announcement. It was toward the end of the yellow season. Chamisa, the olive-green scrub brush that covered the mesa, was transformed into populations of feathery paintbrushes dipped in globby yellow paint and set on their handles on the ground.
I had just gotten back from a hike up the mountain, into the aspen groves. Indians called the aspen trees “quaking leaves.” Leaning against the white papery bark of an aspen, or lying on a carpet of fallen leaves, I had gazed into the treetops. They were quaking, quaking yellow-amarillo-yellow dabs of leathery sunshine, glowing against a deep blue sky. I could smell the damp sweetness of leaves just beginning to rot into the earth while overhead they were quaking, quaking, stroking my aura and coating it in yellow. Lying there, I thought, “How in love I am with this mountain!” and I felt loved back. To receive a yellow blessing like that was the special gift of autumn.
This evening was another kind of gift, and it had been nine years in arriving.
“I finished it!” James declared. “’Climax – Create a More Pure Love’ now exists. I have completed the last painting of Venus and Her Lover!”
With great emotion, we hugged and laughed. While James was showering, I dug up a bottle of Champagne we had been saving and popped the cork. Walking the glasses of bubbly into the bedroom, I found my man already in bed, and fast asleep.
The last thing he had said to me was, “I hung up my brushes.” We did not know then, but rendering those 64 paintings had burned him to a crisp: so much so, that he would not pick up his brushes again for another six years.
Unveiled
James wanted to celebrate, so we aimed at his 60th birthday in November, rented a gallery space, and sent out invitations. James’ family flew in from California, as did our art patrons Paul and Monica from Florida, and Cleo and Santo from Canada. From Puerto Rico came friend and fellow environmentalist Sandra, and from our Hawaiian ohana we received Amalia, Jura, and Mark. Rocco and many others sent messages.
The invitation-only, big event was Saturday night and billed as “The Party’s Over – Let’s Party!,” meaning James had finally completed his commitment to illustrate Venus and Her Lover (“The Party’s Over”) and was ready to celebrate that and his 60th birthday (“Let’s Party!”). The following day we opened the show, entitled “Unveiled,” to the public; The Taos News helped spread the word by doing a story on us.
With the setting of the sun on the snow-frosted mesa, we switched on the marquee in front of the Bareiss Gallery as a beacon to our guests. Well over 50 people arrived, carrying pillows, hors-d’oeuvres, and bottles of wine, and dressed in sexy outfits. They marveled at each other’s daring or style of dressing and strolled past the eig
hteen paintings hanging on the walls. For James and me, simply standing in the middle of the room of powerful imagery was deeply gratifying. In one corner the triptych waited, draped in white sheets and lace.
At 8:00pm we began the program. Standing at a podium graced with red and white roses, long-time Taos arts activist Feeny Lipscomb introduced us. “James and Becca understand what it is to support community, and we are so lucky to have them here for all they bring to us. They are true artists.” Then I faced the assembly, describing for them our globe-crossing journey as well as the spiritual lessons we had learned about the power of invoking archetypes. After that, I walked around the gallery, standing before four different paintings and reading their accompanying poems.
Next James took the microphone to speak about his devotion to his painting process. I sat nearby, marveling at how far he had come from his initial protestations years prior that he was ineloquent, too shy to speak in front of a crowd, or too rough or unkempt in appearance. I watched the artist stand proudly to declare the value of his work.
“I’ve been looking forward to this for years,” James said. “Not just finishing the paintings, not just this Climax painting, but one part of it in particular. In the painting you are about to see, there is Mars, after his last battle. He is done with fighting and aggression. Oh, he’ll still stand for justice, he’ll still protect Venus, but he is now a warrior of peace. In this painting, you’ll see Mars laying down his sword.
“I’ve been a fighter all my life. One battle after another. It was so intense for me to create this scene, ‘cause I knew I was painting my own destiny. And I knew I was painting it for all the wounded warriors out there in the world.
“This is the strongest statement I could make. The biggest accomplishment for the Warrior is to lay down his sword. As John Lennon and Yoko Ono proclaimed: War is Over, if you want it.”
When he finished, I had to swallow the lump in my throat to be able to speak. Standing up to the mic, I initiated the ceremony of the Grand Unveiling. I retold the myth of Isis and Osiris: how Set betrayed his brother Osiris and tried to destroy him, first by sealing him in a sarcophagus which was tossed into the Nile, and then later, after Isis had retrieved and revitalized Osiris, by cutting his body into fourteen pieces and scattering them across Egypt. Isis, devoted wife and healer, recovered and reconstituted all the body parts except for the phallus, which was devoured by a fish or a crab.
Venus and Her Lover Page 25