by Marco Vassi
Interestingly, the more she got into her new approach, and the more she told her patients that she was only experimenting, the greater the number of applicants she received. Fred, before he disappeared, cynically remarked that one often finds lines outside of movie theatres and whorehouses. But she had heard the unmistakable ring of jealousy in his voice, and wondered whether he was jealous of the people she had intimate contact with, or of her freedom itself. It led her to speculations on that peculiar biological reflex which has as its purpose and basis the production of children but which has been distorted into a social form, generally given the name marriage. In its context, two people play out the drama learned from their parents, with the result that one will find grown adults worrying about being home later for dinner or staying out all night, just as they did when they were teenagers.
“Through marriage, we turn ourselves into our own parents,” she thought, and shuddered at the hideousness of the process.
Lydia looked down at the nighttime city remembering that it had not been too long before, on a night like this one, that Marsha had taken her final bow, and shortly after that that Doctor Monroe had gasped and ejaculated his last. She glanced down at her watch. It was almost eight o’clock, time for her group therapy patients to be arriving. She considered the last phrase, taking each word in turn. “Group.” A cold term for a communion of people. “Therapy.” A stiff and formal expression for the attempt by people to become more human. “Patient.” So reminiscent of the hospital, indicating people who have been ill and are now quietly waiting to recuperate.
She shook her head. Someday she would have to clean out the whole broom closet of psychiatric jargon. And she was smiling to herself at the notion when the doorbell rang, realizing that a psychologist without his fancy words would be revealed as just another person trying to make a living selling ideas.
And what is an idea? An itching in the brain, a flurry of electrons along pre-patterned channels, an occasional explosion in an area not yet touched in a particular human being? Why is thought considered so remarkable, when it is absolutely trivial in relation to such functions as breathing, circulation, and digestion? There is no one alive but feels his or her fancies as precious and unique, so why does a conceptual elite become able to sell visions to a world that is hungry for bread?
“Why is it,” Lydia wondered, “that they’ve monopolized concepts? Can it work the same way with us as in the auto industry? There’s the Big Three: Freudians, Behaviorists, and the new Humanist Wing. The classical analysts, of course, have been King of the Mountain for some time, harping on the direct transmission of pure technique and rationalization and charging the most outlandish fees, sometimes as much as a hundred dollars an hour for a forty-five minute hour. The Behaviorists, carrying the prestige of academia and experimental psychology, along with the bias of being an American-based movement, have snared the big posts in the national psychological organizations and set much of the tone of the official publications. The third large segment, of which I am supposedly a member, started as a true alternative, spurred by such things as Esalen and the psychedelics. But now they’ve solidified into their own kind of authoritarianism, and have drawn their own lines about what they will and won’t allow. Theoretically, they’re open to anything, but in fact any given individual can be as persnickety as the most hidebound Freudian.”
The doorbell rang again, driving the whirling thoughts out of her head. The people who entered came in on a cloud of euphoric pandemonium. There was Nora Norwood and her husband Tom, who had finally decided to join his wife in what she had convinced him was the key to saving their marriage. Behind them came John Abbot, shrouded in hair. Followed by a dozen or so of the ones who had found enough value in Lydia’s approach to commit themselves to its process. They were chattering and laughing, like schoolchildren on a picnic. Some of that, Lydia realized, was nervousness, for the sessions had been getting heavy and they were apprehensive about what might be coming, but much of the behavior reflected simply good feeling.
“It feels like a family,” Lydia thought, and as soon as the word came into her mind she saw that she had latched onto an idea which brought together a number of seemingly unrelated pieces in the puzzle of trying to figure out just what she was doing.
Lydia led them into her office where the men set about moving all the furniture to the walls. Lydia pulled the drapes and locked the door. What they would be doing involved a high level of sensitive adjustment, and for that absolute physical security was necessary.
When everyone had quieted down, standing in a semicircle with Lydia as the focus, she spoke in a very low voice.
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to just what it is that’s happening with us,” she said. “As you know, I no longer think of myself as a therapist, and if I had to give myself a label, I would say I was a medium. And not a perfect medium at that. It seems to me that we are all trapped in history, forcing ourselves to keep pace with what the general consensus of humanity says is possible at any given period. In a sense, we can’t escape from time. Any person or group of people that goes too far too quickly will draw attention to itself and most likely be destroyed, either by bombs or by tourism. But why must we muddle along, pecking at the bars that confine us? Why can’t we at least blow a hole in the wall of the prison of history—and I mean the history that’s written into our bodies and minds—and find ourselves an open space to live in? That’s what’s been happening to me, and it has been incredibly thrilling and also very scary. Most of you have experienced the same thing in some of our private sessions. Our groups have gone slowly however, and mostly because I think we are all afraid of what might happen if we all opened up simultaneously.”
Lydia’s breathing had become shallow and rapid. She was building herself up to something, and groping for the articulation of what that might be. When the words came out, she was as surprised as anyone else in the room.
“I think that tonight we should work in the nude.”
A few sharp gasps punctured the skin of attention in which the group had been wrapped. The people looked around at one another, as though seeing themselves for the first time. Their clothing, taken for granted, put on each day with no reflection as to its meaning, considered merely as protection from the cold or ornament for the body, now hung on their bodies with all the ominous significance of a metal shield raised to protect against an enemy lance. There have been many definitions of what distinguishes human beings from other animals, and one of them might be: we are the only animals who wear clothes. This because we are the only animals who insist on living in climates which our bodies cannot survive in without the use of clothing, and because we are the only animals who consider the genitals shameful or glorious or private or almost anything beside what they actually are—merely organs of the body.
Seeing the response of mixed caution and anticipation, Lydia added, “If there is anyone who really strongly objects to doing this, I’m ready to listen to what he or she has to say. But I’d prefer it if we could just step over our inhibitions and get to the other side all at once. I think that until we’re all naked, our feelings about being naked are merely academic.”
“You start,” said Eileen.
Eileen was a Columbus Avenue prostitute who had read The Happy Hooker and become enlightened about her profession. She had since set about trying to rid herself of guilt for the kind of work she had chosen to do, something that began with economic necessity and blossomed into a real vocation. She was one of those rare whores who felt that just because she was being paid didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy herself and have as many orgasms as she liked. Her popularity was enormous, for most men are so insecure that they are less interested in their own pleasure than in making an impression on a woman. Eileen was a little over five feet tall, black, with a body that had all the fascination of a snub-nosed revolver. She had sought Lydia out and been seeing her for more than six months before Marsha�
�s suicide had spun the therapist off on her new path.
“I’m for that,” added Robert Madison, a high school teacher, a man of thirty-five, almost six feet three inches tall, and built like a halfback. He now kept order in one of the roughest schools in the city simply by his menacing presence.
“I’ve had more hard ons than I can count thinking about our dear therapist’s ass,” he said. “It would be a treat to finally see what lies between those well-packed legs.”
In reply, Lydia unbuttoned her blouse, slowly slipped it off, and stood before the others bare breasted and slightly breathless, her nipples wrinkled with embarrassment. She swallowed and then bent over to loosen her slacks and slide them down her thighs, until she stepped free of them and emerged without a bit of cloth on her body. She looked very tiny standing there, her breasts and pubic hair poking out like burial mounds on a plain of rolling hills.
“It’s such a small thing,” she said, “to stand naked, and yet, to be here like this in front of you feels like the beginning of a new way of being, a fresh start to civilization.”
“Or the start of a nudist colony,” said John Abbot from the depths of his hair. He was a musician who had not gone a day without some form of psychedelic drug for more than three years. The process had left him permanently detached, and his manner had evolved into one of lofty cynicism mixed with street earthiness and humor. After flipping his line out into the center like a cigarette butt, he peeled off his leather vest and pants.
“More than that,” Lydia said, regaining her sense of direction. “In a nudist colony everyone gets naked and then pretends not to be influenced by that. They sell themselves the myth of naturalness. But the opposite is true. For us, to be naked is to be unnatural. And that’s the first thing we have to confront . . . our awkwardness, our embarrassment, our small, muted excitements. Also, in a nudist colony, the people seem to forget that they have uncovered precisely those things that clothing is meant to hide. They walk around not noticing their refusal to confront the cocks and cunts flashing in the sunlight.”
She looked around. With varying degrees of alacrity, everyone else had begun to undress. Some of them made jokes, a few looked as though they were in church, the rest tried to be noncommittal. They all looked to her for clues, but she purposely did nothing.
“Don’t forget, this is an experiment,” she said. “I can dictate the conditions, but I have no idea of the result.”
The next five minutes passed in comparative silence as each person made his or her peace with the changes going through the group. Confronting one another without the shield of clothing, with its subtle distinctions of rank and prejudice and inverse narcissism, the people shifted psychic gears continuously to find the right tempo of relating. Some of the men, Lydia noticed, were sucking in their stomachs, some of the women surreptitiously checking degrees of breast sag in comparison to one another, a few shrinking into themselves by pulling their thighs tight, while one or two gazed with open erotic interest on the scene.
“I want to thank you all for being so brave,” Lydia said. “We are involved with one of our most pervasive taboos, one which strikes at the very animality of our being. Just for us to get this far is astounding. If someone told me six months ago that I’d be standing naked before a dozen of my patients, also naked, I’d have said they were crazy. Yet here we are.”
“When’s the party start?” John Abbot asked in a raspy voice. He was massaging his cock and looking around with a leer. His pantomime was greeted alternately with scowls and smiles, but Lydia took the incident as an opportunity to begin the workshop.
“Each of us will have a different fantasy to go with this situation, I’m sure,” Lydia said. “Maybe the best way to deal with these various visions is for us all to get down on the floor and disengage our bodies and let our hidden aspects become manifest.”
It was a process they had all experienced before, so everyone went very quickly into the basic meditative position of their approach. Lydia had discovered that while the cross-legged sitting posture had gained great vogue since the time of Buddha, it was by no means the only, nor even the oldest, technique possible.
Now Lydia gazed around the room. Seven men and five women lay in front of her. She had never seen so many naked people in positions of such relaxation and vulnerability before. She tried to go over her usual check points: the rate and depth of breathing, tension points in the face, residual twitches in the muscles. But she couldn’t keep her eyes off the cocks and cunts. What she felt was not specifically erotic, but a sort of prelude to excitement. She realized that her body was letting go its own tension.
She recalled a theory put forth by one of the orgonomists who followed Reich, that all the ills of society began during the Ice Age, when we were forced to put on clothing and formed the distinction between private and public parts. The simplicity of the animal disappeared. The brain which had become capable of imagination because of the enlargement of the frontal lobes found fertile ground for fantasy as soon as the genitals were covered. This gave rise to a curdled sensuality which soured every human endeavor since. It was an absurd theory, but the peculiarity of thought is that it conforms to any given reality, and the most intelligent people can accept the most idiotic rationalizations if the wind is right.
“Let all time and space fall away,” Lydia heard herself saying, and as in the best of all her workshops, she spoke more to herself than to the others. Shaw once defined a poet as a person who speaks to himself and allows others to overhear, and Lydia’s relaxation and fantasy monologues, at their best, constituted poetry.
“Now there is nothing between your self and yourself. All your badges of identify have fallen away. Your ages, your relationships, your clothing . . . even your genders have all become the accidents of existence. All that remains is the breath, the flow of air in and out. This is the rhythm of all creation, of everything that is. And as you breathe, be aware of the fact that it is not simply your breath, but the breath of everyone in the room. The molecules in your lungs will be expelled in a second and become part of the air that someone else takes in. Realize that we are all tiny flickers of temporary awareness within the body of the huge organism of life on the planet, and that this body is the most minute cell in the infinite and eternal Consciousness of which life is but a crude reflection. We are in communion with plants and birds, fish and insects. Everything alive is pulsing with breath. Everything alive is one life, one Awareness.”
As she spoke, she could feel a change in the vibration of the room. Not only the physical differences, although those were clear enough. The breathing had become very deep, and bellies rose and fell all around. But the feelings liberated by the breathing and relaxation were rising to the surface and coloring the atmosphere as clearly as dye in a vat of water. Nora was crying silently, tears coursing down her cheeks. Ralph was gritting his teeth in resistance. And here and there a sigh escaped, or a groan.
“Without any sense of the individual ‘I’, allow what you are to express itself,” she continued. “Whatever your feelings or thoughts or desires, let them be. Try not to hold on for, remember, there is no one there to hold. We are temporary and tiny, tiny and temporary, practically illusions in the great cosmic mirror. Even on our small planet, we are a young and perhaps doomed species. And each of us is a most insignificant member, an insignificant, tiny, and temporary fragment. All our judgments and attitudes about what we do and how we are are the most trivial ego projections imaginable. Be anonymous, be free.”
Lydia let them lie for five minutes, not saying anything. She walked around the room and examined each person closely. For one she might press her hands on the chest to loosen constriction, for another she might massage a thigh. She lifted heads and pulled arms and in general behaved like an engineer working on a complex and very sensitive instrument. Also, she was a bee going from flower to flower, carrying the smell and taste of one to the other, inseminating.
“When there is nothing left but a sense of breathing and pure sensation, then let that find its own expression,” she said when she had finished her rounds and was again standing in the center of the rough circle. “You can begin with sound or movement or both, and find out where the impulse takes you.”
For several minutes there was little activity. A few people just stretched their fingers or toes; someone yawned. But slowly, a larger pattern emerged. Lydia was familiar with this phase of the work. If she had let it go unhampered, sooner or later everyone would more or less roll into a fetal position, make various noises, roll around, indulge in a bit of touchie-feelie, and come to a sitting position, looks of imbecilic satisfaction on their faces.
But once again, she decided to tamper. She went over to her stereo and put Olatunji’s Drums of Passion on the turntable. She was quite aware that she was injecting a mood into a space of high receptivity, but she wanted something specific to happen.
“It’s not therapy,” she said to herself, “there’s no point in holding on to that ridiculous cover. It’s more like theatre, but much more risky than that.”
“I don’t know what it is,” she muttered out loud, “but I want some action.”
Who knows how the revolutionary is born? Discontents, insights in small increments like electrical impulses along a nerve until a certain charge is built at the gap and suddenly the spark jumps and the neuron snaps and thought is translated into action. But this is the province of everyone. Why do some people one day decide to risk everything, their liberty, their health, even their lives, to take the one action which puts them in direct tension with the basic entropy of society? Up until that instant, Lydia had walked the edge of serious transformation, but had remained within tolerable limits. Nothing that had happened so far was irreversible because it had remained on a one-to-one basis. But now she was going to inject an entire group with an unknown element. As she put the needle on the record, she held her breath.