by Bev Jafek
“Oh, yes!” said Sylvie. She was breathless. “Sooner!”
Without a word, Alex took her hand and rapidly led her out of Casa Battló. I think I am going to find that sex maniacs can be adorable, provided they are women, Sylvie thought.
RUTH AND MONSERRAT were standing outside of Casa Battló for one last look at its facade. They had already seen the interior and also visited another building designed by Gaudi called La Pedrera. A few hours had passed since Sylvie and Alex had left.
“Well, my love, what do you see now in Gaudi?” Monserrat asked.
“I see a message from the universe saying that all life curves like a wave, turns spherical and comes from the sea, a scientific fact made into a bakery confection with astounding ingredients: dragons, waves, worms, tides, bits of masks, textures of flesh but also rich cloth like satins, brocades, and amassed spider webs. What have you seen?”
“That and more in the confection: cushions, origami, beans, confetti, a big ice-cream cone in that tower in front of us, at La Pedrera columns like stamens of flowers or legs of crustaceans and a house based on the image of the wave and the spiral. It would seem impossible for the whole world to be incorporated into a house, but this is precisely what Gaudi wants to do.”
“Now you really have me thinking or rather seeing, you absolutely brilliant artist!” Ruth said. “There’s more; you’re right: bubbles, eerie musical instruments I do not know playing sounds of life underwater, animal cries by the seashore, that immense metal profusion of spider-webs that serves as a doorknob at La Pedrera, those chimneys on the roof that look like children of the gods of Easter Island, a light fixture as a million webs assembled and draped by a fashion designer, the annihilation of the most common human symbols—the cross, the symmetrical arch and pillar. It all says humans, you can only go so far, achieve so much. I am here not to conquer but to encompass you, unify you (which you badly need, breaking into fragments of thought so readily); but more, I am here to astonish you and make you laugh, as an infant does when it is surprised. I will tease you, tantalize you. I am childish laughter incarnate in stone.”
“Oh my, now you’ve really got me thinking as well as seeing,” Monserrat said. “Yes, the buildings speak and they say, you think that I am art, but I am nature looking back at you. How could you ever have thought that you control me? It is I who make you strive for meaning, create symbols and art, but here’s my real trick: I take them all back and render them into myself, my body that is the world. Yes, I will tease and tantalize you, even tickle you. I will laugh with and at you.”
“It reminds me of the Gaia hypothesis,” Ruth said, “a scientific theory that the earth is in fact alive. All of its life processes, taken together, comprise a living organism with its own evolutionary path. More than any other artist I know, it is Gaudi who unleashes this idea. He astonishes and delights us but more, he reminds us of a primordial memory we had as children, when we truly believed that all we saw was alive. Animism becomes not a primitive concept, but a modern one.”
“You are an absurdly brilliant woman, both a scientist and an artist!” Monserrat said.
“You’re making me into the artist,” Ruth said and thought, Sylvie did that, too. She was a major spark in my transformation. I gave her so much but I took from her, too. I wonder what is happening to Sylvie at this moment.
“THAT I WANT very slowly, my maniac love,” Sylvie at that moment was saying to Alex as Alex began to undress her. Alex had taken Sylvie to a hotel she chose for its name, “Pension Dali,” its eighteenth-century windows, its cheap price suitable for artists and scholars, the noise outside the window since it was somehow at the center of the world, and because the room was filled almost entirely by a very large, very soft bed, exactly where she wanted to be with Sylvie.
Alex instantly understood that Sylvie found it erotic to be undressed and this, in turn, she found erotic. She kissed Sylvie’s thighs and moved her hand into her underpants while lowering them slightly and then returned to removing her brassiere. I will take hours at it if she wants it, Alex thought as she kissed Sylvie’s breasts, which were even fuller than she had imagined. She felt a tremendous energy and knew she could fill many hours in all parts of the ritual of love. She was as slow, reverential and naked as a poem before this woman, nearly denuded, that she so loved and desired. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, and you have the body of a Hindu goddess,” Alex said.
“Which goddess am I?” Sylvie asked.
“Parvati,” Alex said and began to kiss Sylvie’s shoulders. “You’re definitely not Durga. Ultimately you are Uma,” and then Alex was lost in Sylvie’s breasts and navel. The underpants were now gone and Alex caressed Sylvie’s genitals lightly, which caused her to groan.
Then Sylvie laughed. “You’ve forgotten to take your own clothes off, my maniac love. I’m doing my best with these buttons, but I am failing due to a monumental distraction.”
“You made me forget; it was your goddess-like power.” Alex shifted her efforts immediately to her shirt and pants and then was rid of them all at a remarkable speed. Now she is very clever in desire, Sylvie thought. I like that.
Then they were naked and free together. Alex’s hands were everywhere, caressing and kneading Sylvie’s skin, relaxing every muscle of the body she worshiped, needing only to feel its most intense response. I should roll over on top of her, Sylvie thought and then forgot. “What do you like best, my goddess?” Alex asked.
“You. Lie on top of me, first. I want to feel you completely.” Alex smiled and uttered an “ah” of pleasure. Sylvie felt the whole weight of this woman who was so much taller than she and the hands that were everywhere, exactly where she responded most and then carefully, lightly. Sylvie forgot everything but these adept hands and the tall body that loved and adored her. With her arms and legs, she embraced this body that felt magnificent to her and began to respond.
This woman is no maniac, Sylvie thought; she perfectly channels her desire. You are a complete surprise, my love. You seem to be hearing a slow, ancient rhythm, a deep drum, a crude pipe, the sound never to be ignored. You’ve mesmerized me with it. I’m already breathless and making sound, not loud, not yet. In time, Alex circled Sylvie’s labia with her knuckle and then took her clitoris into her mouth while lightly caressing her nipples. Then Sylvie’s cries began.
The ritual of love was repeated again and again, in many different ways. I’m not stopping until she passes out, Alex thought.
RUTH AND MONSERRAT were walking barefoot on the beach of the Mediterranean late in the afternoon. They had seen two giant outdoor sculptures, and Monserrat was very interested in Ruth’s responses to them. They passed directly beside a sculpture by Rebecca Horn that looked like a tall stack of black boxes leaning over slightly. “I’d call it ‘The Leaning Tower of Boxes,’” Ruth said, “and it makes me think of the Ka’ba portrayed in a realistic light with religious weaknesses exposed. There’s inherent mystery in not knowing what’s inside a black box, especially a tower of them. So, it can be placed here on the seaside like the Polynesian island gods. White boxes would never have the same effect. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“Yes,” Monserrat said. “I’ve seen these city sculptures so many times that I no longer respond to them. Your thoughts are very unusual.”
Later, in the distance they saw a very colorful outdoor sculpture entitled “Barcelona Head” by Roy Lichtenstein. Again, Monserrat pressed Ruth for her reaction. “I’d call it ‘Neon Lipstick Barcelona.’ It looks like a pleasure boat becoming a man becoming a woman becoming a dervish becoming polka dots and stripes becoming pop art. Of course, you could just call it pop art. It says wild fun, excitement, hedonism, a part for both men and women, the world turning around in your head, all in a beautiful city on water. It’s closer to what Barcelona really is and probably more famous. As two giant artworks by the sea, the colorful head is a lively lighthouse guiding you toward the city whereas the black box tower is a silent god l
ooking out to sea in search of older truths.”
Monserrat smiled and said, “I am starting to think of you as Odysseus as well as a guardian.”
“I can think of nothing better than to come home to you.”
They put their shoes on and then walked around in Barceloneta, the old fishermen’s district. At sunset, they stopped at a restaurant with outdoor tables and ordered dinner and a bottle of the local wine. A cool breeze was now blowing in from the invisible Mediterranean, and they enjoyed the subtle presence of the sea through the more intimate senses of smell, touch and sound.
“Yes,” Monserrat was saying as they touched their wineglasses. “It is the most wonderful toast, ‘to the beauty of life,’ krasna život. I have never heard of it before.”
“I am a collector of wonderful immaterial things,” Ruth said. “In time, I’ll show you my whole collection.” They laughed.
“How do you know this toast?”
“I learned it from a young Czech-American woman whose grandparents were from Prague and Bohemia. She had somehow gotten herself stranded on Cape Horn, a horrible black rock of an island that is technically the beginning of Antarctica. She had missed a ferry back to Ushuaia, my hometown in Argentina. Katia and I were on the ferry that fished her up. She was drinking from a wine bottle in her backpack and yelling the most furious, ornate and original curses I’ve ever heard; and I’ve heard plenty of seamen’s curses in my time. They were literary, mythic, Biblical, and eschatological. Her mood changed remarkably when we rescued her, of course, and then Katia and I had a long conversation with her on the way back to Ushuaia. She was a fascinating woman from New York City who wanted to visit the end of the world, as most travelers to Ushuaia do. She was on a trip around the world, alone and on the cheap, which is not the safest way to see the world, and she intended to use her material in a novel about a woman wanderer. She heard the toast in Prague and said it was common throughout the Bohemian countryside. We all agreed that the Czech people had originated the world’s finest toast, which is one step in achieving the finest attitude toward living. In Ushuaia, we get all ethnicities and states of being, as is no doubt true of New York City, perhaps the top and even the capital of the world. I don’t want to take you to Ushuaia, though. It no longer feels like my home. Patagonia is still the place of my most important work, and I love it for that reason. But, I don’t want to go back unless I decide to carry out more studies, which doesn’t appeal to me now.”
They looked at one another silently. This moment is perfect, the first step in a wedding, both were thinking; and they knew one another’s thoughts. They looked at the streets, which were charmingly narrow and built solely for pedestrians. They were filled with small bars and restaurants that in turn were fertile gardens of human intrigue and hedonism as the night came down. Lanterns were being lit, and the space was so close that they could see other streets and lives branching away from them. Lively at dusk, it would become magical at twilight with the invisible but increasingly powerful presence of the Mediterranean and its phantoms of history.
“This is one of my spherical moments,” Ruth said. “I can feel the whole past and future of my life. I have come from so far away—grief and the end of the world.”
“Is this your home now?”
Ruth reached over the table to hold Monserrat’s hand. “If you say so, yes it is, though it’s still hard to believe my luck. My life actually began in Germany during the last months of the Holocaust. I will tell you about it sometime later. This moment is to be savored.”
They were silent again, looking at one another for a long time, completing a wedding in their thoughts. “What would you like to do next?” Monserrat asked.
“Stay for the twilight, look at the sea for a moment; then return to your house. I want to love you with more than my eyes. Without intending to, you’re flirting with me, like the Mediterranean.”
“I will be delighted to give you much more than a flirtation.”
A marriage bed, they both thought.
ALEX SUDDENLY FOUND herself in Sylvie’s arms, head cradled, being kissed on her eyelids and cheeks. It was the most pleasant thing in the world, but then she was shocked to realize that she had no memory of how she got there.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You passed out, just a few minutes ago,” Sylvie said, smiling. “I’ve been taking very good care of you.” Alex then remembered everything. “You made love to me for hours and hours in every way imaginable. It’s dark outside, probably around nine pm or so,” Sylvie continued. “Then I just touched your clitoris and labia and you went off like a roman candle. You came many, many times. It was lovely. Then you passed out.”
“This has never happened before! Wow! Did you . . . did you . . . ?”
“How can you even ask? I’ve had more orgasms this afternoon than in my entire existence before today. You’ve broken all the records. I passed out several times, too, but you brought me right back. I decided to let you sleep. I was sure you needed it, and you looked so sweet. If you’d been conscious, you would never have let me just cuddle you like a baby. You were too determined to break all the records.” They both laughed.
“God, I’m hungry! I feel like I’ve swum the English Channel,” said Alex.
“I’m ravenous! I was the English Channel.”
“Let’s clean up and have dinner.”
A short time later, they both took a last look at the soft, giant bed where they first became lovers. As they left the pension, the desk clerk looked at them nervously, then seemed relieved. They laughed. “It often sounded as though I was a serial murderer, killing a whole harem of women, one after another,” Alex said.
“Yes, I remember. But, when the noise lasts all afternoon, they must know it’s not murder. Maybe it’s hard for men to understand since what they do doesn’t last that long,” Sylvie said. They laughed again.
They chose the nearest corner restaurant with outdoor tables, ordered a large dinner of several courses and opened a bottle of the local wine. For the first time in the day, they felt the presence of the Mediterranean; a cool, dark breeze was flowing over them. They were relaxed with one another for the first time, too. The city was completely dark and lit intimately with lanterns. The unique pleasure of being new lovers in a cosmopolitan European city was theirs; it was hard-won and it glowed in the richness of an ancient Mediterranean night like a many-faceted gemstone admired by lovers over thousands of years. It was a perfect moment and they were silent, only looking at one another.
Eventually, Sylvie spoke first. “I’m curious about a few things. Are there words for some of the things we’ve been doing all afternoon? I’m familiar with cunnilingus and oral sex, but not the rest of it.”
“Which particular thing that I loved doing to you?”
“You did something that feels just like a man’s penis. Ruth did that, too. What was it?”
“There’s no word for it, but I just used three fingers, maybe four, for that unnamed thing.”
They smiled and remembered. “What about what we started out doing? Ruth did that, too.”
“There is a word for that, tribadism, but don’t look for it in the dictionary. It’s not there.”
“Ruth has photos of some female bonobo chimpanzees doing that.”
“Wow, X-rated science photos. Then it should be in the dictionary, but of course, it’s not.” They laughed.
Then Sylvie leaned closer to Alex and whispered, “When my legs were over your shoulders and you were making love orally, I felt something in my vagina that seemed to be bigger than a penis. What were you doing?”
“There aren’t any words for it again, but I put several fingers from both hands into your vagina and used the rest of my hands massaging your labia.”
“Ruth never did that.”
“Actually, I’ve never done it before, but that’s where you seemed to be responding so much. I worried that I might have hurt you. You really screamed. Some women even use a fist,
but I would never do that. Please tell me if I hurt you, and I will never do it again.”
“No, you didn’t hurt me at all. I just thought there was suddenly a train in my vagina.” They both burst into laughter that was nearly uncontrollable.
When they were silent again, Alex asked, “Why didn’t you ask Ruth these questions?” She stared in fascination. There is something very deep there, she thought.
Sylvie looked away. “Ah, Ruth . . .” she said. “I am . . . sort of . . . in awe of her. She is the strongest person I’ve ever known. I couldn’t . . . question anything she did except as a joke, and that didn’t take me very far . . . I just couldn’t ask her.”
Alex sensed disturbance and tried to draw Sylvie away from it. We have all the time in the world to know and love one another, she thought. “What did you like best?” she asked.
“I liked all of it. But, you are a bit of an enigma. I wanted to do all that to you, too, but all I actually did was touch your clitoris for a few minutes.”
“I get very, very turned on by making love to you and feeling you respond. I’m in the middle of an orgasm the whole time. It gives me an incredible amount of energy. I can do it for hours. Then, when you just touch me, I have a bunch of orgasms until I feel sleepy. I’ve never passed out before, though.”
“So we both broke the record,” Sylvie said and smiled. “I’m all for new experiences.” She looked at Alex mischievously. “The night is young.”
“You want to go back to the hotel?” Alex asked in disbelief.
“No, let’s see the city at night. We missed it in that hotel.” She still looked mischievous and something else for which Alex couldn’t find a word. She suspected it was not in the dictionary, even a French one.
After finishing their dinner and wine, they left the restaurant and continued exploring the city, with Sylvie’s impulse as their only guide. She now became the mentor. Afterwards, Alex always called the night that followed “The Fantasia,” and it was perhaps the most amazing experience of her young life, something always to be remembered, never to be repeated or understood by anything but a smile.