by Rob Brezsny
As I’ve been contemplating the wedding float, an amusing fantasy has sneaked up from my subconscious mind. In the parlance of the tantric code Jumbler and I have developed, I am seeing in my mind’s eye a vision of myself shepherding a tender thunderbolt. From the perspective of the English language, though, I am holding a hard cock. It vaguely belongs to a specific male who will soon be playing an interesting role in my master plan.
This is, I reiterate, happening in my imagination. I have never actually done such a thing in waking reality. My dear disembodied Rumbler and I messed around a lot in the Televisionarium when I was a teenager, although even there I never partook in what Rumbler has recently become fond of calling “wang dang doodle.”
It’s also true that Jumbler is not just a woman. With her amorphous gender—testicular tissue mixed in with a uterus and ovaries, plus a rather sizable pearly root (tantric code for clitoris)—she’s a little bit of a man herself. And I have enjoyed thousands of erotic exchanges with her: marathon eyegasms, shamanic bellylaugh climaxes, crown chakra fluttergasms, and so many other varieties of bliss it would take eons to catalogue them with the detail they deserve.
Still, by most standards, I am a virgin in the realm of heterosexual sex.
And I have most definitely never held an actual erect penis in my hand.
In a few hours, that changes. Later tonight, to celebrate the ancient feast of Beltane, the May Queen will consort for the first time with a May King. The Chief Shamanatrix of the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail will take as her temporary husband a man who has been initiated into the mysteries of menstruation. I emphasize the word temporary. In my role as Global Initiatrix of the Fuckissimus, I plan to draft quite a number of temporary husbands in the coming years. Through it all, however, Jumbler will remain my freaky consort.
I should be clear, though, that I do not intend to be merely a nirvanic vessel of the Great Goddess during my direct engagements with tender thunderbolts. I will not be motivated purely out of duty to the noble goal of killing the bad apocalypse and resurrecting the good one. Carnal curiosity is a feeling I am most definitely not ashamed of.
I gaze with pride and joy back at the funeral parade snaking behind me. Almost everything I dreamed of has come to fruition. All the floats seethe with spooky but uplifting rituals which the crowd can’t help but yearn to participate in. In addition to the themes I’ve already named, there’s the display representing the “Proud to Be Humble” contingent of the Menstrual Temple, a group which for one dollar will kiss volunteers’ naked butts (or fully clothed if they’re too modest) while listening intently to them brag about anything their heart desires and asking them good questions to spur them on.
Behind that one is the “Videomancy” booth, where Burgundy, our resident oracle, is responding to seekers’ requests for divinatory advice by flicking on a good old-fashioned (battery-operated) television (not a Televisionary Oracle) at just the right cosmic moment to capture the random phrase on a random channel that will supply the necessary guidance.
There are two roving Menstrual Temple therapists who aren’t confined to a float. Anna and Firenze are wearing T-shirts that advertise their special services to anyone in the crowd who asks: “Casting Love Spells on Yourself” and “How to Read Your Own Mind.” Now and then they also sneak in stage-whispered promos for “How To Stop Thinking About Yourself All the Time.”
Krista, five floats back, is giving “Emergency Dance Lessons for the Ecstatically Challenged.” The rhythmic, writhing strains of Feminist Orgy Network provide her soundtrack.
Near the end of the parade, though I can’t see them right now, Calley and Goolagaya are demonstrating “Laughing Sex Tantra” with the help of the Menstrual Temple’s answer to the inflatable doll, our eight-armed, ten-foot-tall scarecrow with a fully functional Televisionary Oracle in her belly. A little later, as we draw closer to the cemetery, the two chortling sexperts will begin initiating audience members into the mysteries of the reverse striptease, the art of playing strip poker with the sacred Menstrual Temple Tarot deck, and many other tantric specialties I’ve cooked up during my explorations of the Drivetime these last five years.
Among the performance art spectacles here today, I muse with pride, there are no crucifixes bathing in vats of urine. No chocolate-smeared comediennes jamming yams up their butts or tattooed torture experts lancing their chests with sharp steel rods (ho-hum) or midgets with strap-on dildoes smashing piles of televisions with sledgehammers. Ours is mischief after another manner.
Though I should confess that it’s not entirely original. There is another artist, the self-proclaimed “demonically compassionate” lead singer of World Entertainment War, who seems to have tapped into the same vein of sacred blasphemy that I have.
I grab the microphone and command the crowd’s attention. “I’m ready, beauty and truth fans,” I proclaim. “Are you ready? What do you say we start heading towards the crux of this lovely crock of bull. The question behind all our other questions. The holy probing fun that shatters all weak-hearted conceptions. Help me out here, my dears. Lead me unto rosy red temptation. What chant is the Goddess horniest to hear? Where do all our explorations lead tonight?”
“What exactly are you doing to kill the apocalypse?” yells the crowd, spurred on by all the menstrual lingerie models here on the lead float.
“What?” I say. “What artifacts are you using to chill the cops’ lips?! What does that mean?”
The cry goes up again, more forceful and precise this time. “What exactly are you doing to kill the apocalypse?”
“Oh, now I understand you. ‘What exactly are you doing to kill the apocalypse?’ As in, ‘What progress are you making in your all-out war against the silliest form of death?’ Though to be truthful I hate to even dignify it by calling it death—it’s such an insult to the concept.”
I glance over at the Televisionary Oracle screen here on the float. It’s the scene of a mushroom cloud sprouting from the end of Jesus Christ’s erect penis, as if in an ejaculation, then breaking away from his body and floating skyward, only to morph into a giant psilocybin mushroom, which billows and blooms and bursts into a rain of thousands of smaller mushrooms. They fall to earth, where they are welcomed into the upturned mouths of women of all races wearing lingerie over their khaki soldier uniforms.
“So who’s first to testify today?” I call out. “Which of you beauty and truth fans wants to name the murderous love you’re invoking to slaughter the goddamn fucking end of the world?”
I’m not worried if there’s no one brave enough in the audience to leap up on the slowly-moving float and take a shot. There’ll be no dead time. All the menstrual lingerie models lounging on the beds have prepared spiels to deliver.
For a moment it looks like a middle-aged woman carrying a toddler is about to come forward, but she chickens out. I turn around and wink at Monika, the youngest member of the Menstrual Temple, who liked one of my texts so much she agreed to memorize and perform it.
She’s a big-boned, handsome dyke. Her menstrual lingerie consists of a velvet burgundy teddy under a see-through yellow tunic and sky-blue suede hotpants. I hand her the microphone.
“There’s a German actor named Udo Kier,” she begins. “He’s a specialist in playing villains. I read an interview with him where he just about jacked himself off bragging and swaggering about his own idiotic nihilism. ‘Evil has no limit,’ he sneered, as if he were the first genius in the history of the world to arrive at that piercing insight. ‘Good has a limit,’ he blustered. ‘It’s not as interesting.’ Here’s what I have to say about that: What a hackneyed, pompous ass! Though it’s true most of the journalists in the world seem to agree with him. And I’m obviously in a minority in my belief that evil is a fucking bore. But how dare Udo Kier or anyone else proclaim that ‘good has a limit’ when there are so few smart artists and thinkers who are brave and resourceful enough to explore the frontiers of goodness?
“Which is where I co
me in,” Monika raves on, wrapping up her rant. “The way I’m killing the apocalypse is by studying really hard, working every day, to synthesize compassion and lust, irony and sincerity, bright enthusiasm and righteous rage. I’ve pledged not to automatically assume negative feelings are more profound and interesting and real than positive ones, or that pessimistic opinions are smarter than the optimistic kind. Amen and hallelujah, forever and ever. So mote it be.”
As scattered cheers ripple from the crowd, a volunteer comes forward and clambers onto the float. He looks Native American. Dressed in a denim jacket, he wears his long black hair in two braids.
“There are two kinds of vision,” he says carefully. “Hard eyes and soft eyes. The first is when you have such fixed concepts about a person or thing that you don’t truly see it as it stands before you; you only see your own ideas about it. The second is when you strip away all prejudgments and view the person or thing freshly, as if God created it just a moment ago. When you use soft eyes, you’re constantly amazed at how different the world is from what everyone says it is. When you use soft eyes, your capacity for killing the apocalypse becomes prodigious.”
As quickly as he came up, he disappears. His rap is perhaps too subtle for the crowd to get worked up about. There’s no big burst of hoots and applause. Myself, I loved it.
I sneak a peek at Jumbler. Her face is a mess of mixed emotions. Knowing how her mind works, I’m positive she loved the guy’s testimony. But I’m also aware of how ambivalent she feels about men right now. It’s not a rational thing—she’d be the first to admit. It’s a gut reaction to the prospect of her boon companion breaking the alchemical seal to consort with a strange lover.
Among her feelings, I happen to know, is the certainty that the man I have chosen to be my first temporary husband is not good enough for me. He’s too loud, too crude, too … manly. I’ve actually had the same inklings myself. I’m nobility, for Goddess’ sake, and he’s a peon. A talented peon, perhaps, but a peon nonetheless. Now and then, in harmony with the thoughts Jumbler carries more fixedly, I feel like I’ll demean myself by letting him think he’s important enough to touch my body with his own.
I first saw him last December. Though I rarely go out to hear live music, Monika had been bugging me to see the Sacred Sluts of the YaYa GaGa, a five-woman group that plays goth-tinged funk. I accompanied my friend to the Catalyst, where the Sluts were opening the show for another band.
I liked them, though they were too unsubtle for my tastes, with giant phallus-shaped candles burning atop their amplifiers and numerous songs with S & M themes, though I did laugh profusely when they played “Bend Over Boyfriend.”
But it was the headlining band, World Entertainment War, that cracked open my doors of perception. The two women in the ensemble were smart and sexy, with far more soul, I thought, than the Sluts. And the male lead singer, who I found out later has appropriated the (presumably) ironic nickname of “Rockstar,” was absolutely, inscrutably worthy of great study. On the one hand he was doing an excellent rendition of the orgiastic god Dionysus. I mean, he truly seemed to be in a matriarchal version of ecstatic trance, dancing and singing not with the typical rockstar’s macho-bully squall, but with a graceful abandon that led him through an irresistible quick-change panorama of receptive and inviting moods.
At the same time, Rockstar was making fun of all the ways he seemed to be taking himself so seriously. For instance, during a song called “Thunder in the Earth,” he periodically burst out of a yoga-like series of erotic movements to perform goofy flails and stumbles that sort of wrecked the sexy mood, but you didn’t mind because it invoked a playful innocence that took the edge off the potentially overwrought mojo.
For another for instance, about halfway through the show, he disappeared from the stage while the band began a song on which the two women sang wordless vocals. Halfway through the piece, Rockstar emerged wearing only a red jockstrap stuffed with ten-dollar bills, then jumped into the crowd and pressed the money against audience members’ foreheads. If dancing had made their skin sufficiently sweaty to keep the bills glued on, they got to keep them. Otherwise, he snatched them back. Finally, he leapt back on the stage and proceeded to dance provocatively as he donned, item by item, the uniform of a corporate CEO, down to the red power tie. “I performed the Reverse Strip-Tease Potlatch,” he proclaimed after it was over, “in honor of the unsung suffering of the filthy rich.”
I liked the way this dude piled up his metaphors in great big heaps. The scent of the Drivetime wafted from him.
Then there were the lyrics. I found almost all of them fascinating—highly unusual for me, being the picky, judgmental critic I am. “Pray to You” was one of my favorites. To the accompaniment of a sinuous rhythm and a Middle Eastern scale, Rockstar and the main female singer (they shared the spotlight equally) sensually intoned these lyrics:
Those were the days when everybody prayed
to the god with the biggest penis
Those were the times when only one word rhymed
with Isis or with Venus
It’s a mystery
why history turned out to be a cover-up
We’re so sorry
Allow us to offer up a remedy
Pray to Her, Jesus
Pray to Her, Buddha Allah
Pray to her Zeus Jehovah Shiva Horus
The Sacred Sluts, who opened the night, were sacred in name only. They exploited the term without, apparently, knowing much about its meaning. I’m an expert on the subject, so I know.
The members of World Entertainment War, on the other hand, created certifiably sacred space. They were also, for anyone who had the eyes to see, playing with real occult themes that I’ve never seen any professional entertainer refer to—let alone in a beer-stained rock and roll nightclub. “As above, so below,” one of the core mantras of Western mysticism, was a chorus refrain in one song. Another piece, “Snake Dance,” spoke openly about the alchemical and yogic principle of building an immortal “light body” by raising the sex force out of the genitals and up to the crown chakra.
About a third of the way into the “show,” Rockstar even pulled off a somewhat disguised, comically mutated, but unmistakable version of a ceremonial magick rite, including all the elements you’d find in any self-respecting hermetic or pagan order. At this point I lost all doubt that he had been trained in a mystery school himself.
I left the Catalyst feeling nonplussed, not the least reason being that I felt a glimmer of attraction to Rockstar. For the first half of my adolescence I’d fantasized about having boyfriends, and I’d had an active relationship with my disembodied soul brother Rumbler, but since I met Jumbler the male gender had become an amorphous mass in which no individual face drew my attention. As I developed the details of my work in the world, I made plans to heal and correct the ravages of men’s sickness, in part by taking on the role of “High Priestess of the Global Jiggy Snake.” But I never felt any magnetic attraction to an actual guy.
Of course, I questioned my fascination with Rockstar. Wasn’t I intrigued, simply, by his art and its implications for my own work? There was no need to imagine seeking a personal connection with him, especially since it was likely that his public persona was nothing like his private self.
When I bought all the recordings he and his various bands had made over the years, and when I began attending every one of his live shows, I told myself I was merely researching the career of an artist who might be able to teach me something. I used the same rationale when I showed up at the library to pore over old publications that might have reviews of his shows and records, or that might contain the little articles he writes. But as I uncovered more and more evidence of how artfully he had integrated his occult ideas into pop culture formats, it became more difficult to resist trying to arrange to meet him.
The front of the funeral parade has just left Pacific Avenue, turning right on Water Street and preparing to make a quick left on River Street. I’m glad
to see the crowd has not thinned out. As the afternoon wears on (and maybe because intoxicating substances are taking effect), we’re having no trouble getting volunteers to climb up on the float and testify about how they’re killing the apocalypse.
“I invented the eleventh commandment,” exults a thin woman with a slinky red satin dress on, “and I obey it always: Thou Shalt Not Bore the Goddess!”
“I’ve taught myself to think with my heart and feel with my head!” says a young man with delicate features and hair down to the middle of his back.
“I’m visualizing and praying that sometime soon we will see a headline on the front page of USA Today that says ‘Why Do 95% of the World’s Women Never Get Their Orgasm Experience?’ ” This testimony comes from a rowdy-looking redneck woman in her forties.
A school marm with an introverted-looking face but whose blouse is unbuttoned to her solar plexus says with pride, “I’m teaching eight-year-olds to honor and work with their dreams. Every morning, when their visits to the other side are still fresh, I ask them, ‘Where did you go last night? What adventures did you have while you were sleeping? I bet they were better than any movie or TV show you’ve ever seen.’ Together the kids and I remember the other world we live in. We honor the shades which have become so vengeful, so apocalyptic, because of the patriarchs’ neglect.”
Some rants are just silly, but I’m grateful for them. “I plunged butcher knives into accordions,” says a grizzled poetry chick. “I hijacked a UFO and abducted some aliens, sold celebrity sperm on the home shopping channel, strolled around the mall with my sweetie wearing matching nipple rings peeking through our matching see-through plastic S & M blouses, jumped rope while wearing high heels, and spanked the devil with a ping pong paddle. But most of all I avoided thinking about winning the lottery while making love.”
One of the most unexpected statements comes from a well-dressed older woman. “I’m celebrating the successes of patriarchy. Because I believe the only way to get rid of it is to love it to death. I’m praising the masculine. Hooray for suspension bridges. How’d they ever figure out how to make those things, anyway? Hooray for chemotherapy; I’d be nothing without it. Actually I’d be lying under six feet of dirt right now. Hooray for all the dead white men who wrote such great books. Kept me from getting bored. That’s all I have to say.”