Are You Experienced?

by William Sutcliffe

  I could tell that Fee was wound tight with stress, and though she didn’t want to admit it, she was obviously pleased to see me. She stared at me for a while, puffing on her joint, before passing it over and beginning her story.

  ‘It all comes down to this guy. He’s called Ping…’

  ‘Ping?’

  ‘… and he’s the teacher of Intimate Yoga on our ashram. Anyway – we’ve been there twice before, and this was our third visit of the year, and each time we’ve been, Caz has developed more and more of a thing with Ping. Anyway – this time, we take Whatsername with us, introduce her to Ping – and it’s not as if she doesn’t already know about the Caz-and-Ping thing – and… and… I can’t go on.’

  She went silent and stared into space with her lips pursed.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well – to cut a long story short, we were in an Intimate Yoga lesson, and Ping was helping Liz… I mean, Whatsername… to locate her centre, when Liz starts moaning in a completely inappropriate way for a novice. I mean, she was obviously faking. We’d only been there a week. Anyway – Whatsername starts moaning like a cheap slut, and the pair of them just stand up, hold hands and walk out. Now – because Caz can sense Ping’s moods, she knows exactly what’s going on and she waits a few minutes then goes to the private-tuition room. And… and… I can’t go on.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘And. What?’ I said, eventually.

  ‘Well – imagine Caz’s surprise when she pokes her head round the door and discovers that… that… they’ve gone Tantric.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘They’ve gone… Tantric.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘You don’t know what Tantric is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tantric meditation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, there are sixteen chief meditative states, and each of the five main schools of thought divides the sixteen into three main categories. The Red Hat and Yellow Hat Tibetan schools follow a basic subdivision…”

  ‘Please. Forget the other fifteen. Just tell me what Tantric means.’

  ‘It’s not one of the sixteen, silly. It’s a whole school. It’s one of the five.’

  ‘Fine. Are you going to tell me what it is now?’

  ‘It’s very hard to encapsulate in a sentence, but it’s basically the striving for nirvana through the ultimate centring of the sexual self.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Basically, you meditate by having sex.’

  ‘So when you say that Liz and Ping had gone Tantric, you mean that they were shagging.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘Jesus! That’s unbelievable! You took her to this place, and within a week she fucked the Yoga teacher.’

  ‘Do you have to be so crude? The point is, Caz is on a bit of a knife-edge at the best of times, and the whole thing just tipped her over.’

  ‘Over what?’

  ‘She had a collapse. Just – oh, it was terrible. She saw the Tantric going on and started screaming and smashing things. Then she took all her clothes off and ran around the entire compound, saying offensive things about the usefulness of meditation. Eventually, one of the spiritual helpers had to put her in a strait-jacket.’

  ‘A strait-jacket?’

  ‘She’s fine now, though. I mean, she’s not fine. She still hasn’t spoken or anything. But she’s not dangerous or anything.’

  ‘That’s awful. How come they’ve got strait-jackets in this place?’

  ‘Oh, apparently it’s quite common. The pressures of a strict Yogic regime can get to some people. There’s nothing wrong with Caz, you know. She just needed a rest. So after we got thrown out of the compound…’

  ‘They threw you out?’

  ‘Of course. You can’t have mad people running around when you’re trying to meditate, you know. It’s for the good of everyone. Anyway – I decided to fly her down here so she could just relax on the beach, away from all the crowds. Then, once she’s got her faculty of speech back, I’m going to take her home. I think if we went home like this, it would upset her parents.’

  ‘Right. This is… it’s terrible.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, she looks like a zombie.’

  ‘Yeah, and we’ve both got to start university in… in around a month.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘A bit over, actually. I mean it’s going to be hard enough for me to get reacclimatized to Western culture. Just the thought of wearing Western clothes makes me feel all itchy – they’re so restrictive, you know – but for Caz… I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s she meant to be studying?’

  ‘French and Spanish at Bristol.’

  ‘How’s she going to do that when she can’t even speak?’

  ‘It’ll take a while, but she’ll be fine. When you’ve been living with lepers, this kind of thing seems like nothing. I mean, you’ve got to put things in a proper perspective.

  She’s still got more than any Indian could possibly wish for.’

  ‘That’s rubbish.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the underbelly. You don’t understand what a huge privilege it is just to be Western. Financially, I mean. Spiritually, of course, we’re utterly impoverished. That’s why we’re prone to this kind of breakdown.’

  ‘But… she’s… how long has she been like this?’

  ‘Oh, a few weeks.’

  ‘And all because Liz shagged Ping.’

  ‘That was just the final straw, but basically, yes.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I mean it’s stupid really, because Ping slept with everybody.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was part of the tuition, I suppose. If he thought you were getting somewhere, he’d help you go Tantric’

  ‘What – even you?’

  ‘No – I deliberately didn’t let him find my centre, because I wanted Caz to have a chance to get there first. She’d had her thing for so long that I kind of hoped if I acted coldly towards Ping, he’d get the message and concentrate on Caz.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘No. That’s the tragedy. He concentrated on Liz. By the looks of things he found her centre quicker than he found Caz’s knee.’

  ‘Centre? Is that – like – your…?’

  ‘No. Don’t be disgusting. Don’t you know what Intimate Yoga is?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’

  ‘It’s a way of finding the central point of the bodies’ energies through the laying on of hands of a qualified Intimate Yogi.’

  ‘Laying on of hands?’

  ‘Exactly. He teaches the whole group the basic position, then, while you’re meditating, he comes up to you one by one and manipulates you into position. When you’ve found a perfect balance and are at peace, he lays his hands on, and together you locate your centre.’

  ‘Where was yours?’

  ‘I never found it exactly, but it was somewhere here.’

  She crossed her legs and sat bolt upright, then placed the fingers of her right hand a fraction above where the pubes would have started.

  ‘Wow! Is that where everyone’s centre is?’

  ‘It depends. It’s different for each person.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Fat old people have it on their shoulder, and young nubile women tend to have it bang on their clit.’

  ‘You are such a cynic. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.’

  ‘This guy’s a genius. Where was Caz’s centre?’

  ‘You can’t ask that. It’s a very personal question. If you know where someone’s centre is, you know an awful lot about them.’

  ‘Go on. I won’t tell anyone. Where was it?’

  ‘Look – she never found it exactly.’

  ‘Roughly. Where was he looking?’

  ‘Well – she only vaguely located it, but they did manage to pin it down to somewhere here, in the crook of the elbow.’

  ‘
See?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Nothing. Just that he didn’t fancy her. Let’s face it – who wants to get in bed with a skeleton.’

  ‘She’s not deaf, you know. You’re being very hurtful.’

  ‘This Intimate Yoga guy is a genius. It’s like – people pay him, and all he has to do is grope them, and they go away happy.’

  ‘He is a genius, as it happens, and he wouldn’t even understand the concept of groping. His mind is on higher things.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I’m going to have to learn how to do this.’

  ‘He’s a highly qualified man. You have to study at the International Headquarters of Intimate Yoga for at least five years before you get a teacher’s certificate.’

  ‘International Headquarters?’

  ‘In San Francisco.’

  ‘This isn’t just one guy groping women in a shed in the arse-end of India?’

  ‘It’s an international movement.’

  ‘That’s incredible! So all over the world, at this precise moment, there are hundreds of women being Intimately Yogaed.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘What an amazing thought.’

  Ranj then reappeared, and pulled me aside to tell me that he’d just met the East Sweden Women’s Handball Team, who were taking a break from their tour of South Asia, and that he’d arranged to meet up with them on the beach for a midnight Punjabi lesson.

  ‘How many people are there in a handball team?’ I said.

  ‘I dunno, but there’s seven of them. That might include reserves.’

  ‘You’re incredible. Fee – do you want to meet up later for a midnight Punjabi lesson? This is my friend Ranj. He’s the tutor.’

  Fee’s face brightened up at the sight of an Indian. She gave me an impressed smile for managing to befriend a local.

  ‘So… you’re… David’s… friend?’ enunciated Fee, in the style of a 1950s Blue Peter presenter.

  ‘Fuck, yeah. He’s a stormin’ geezer,’ said Ranj.

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Fee, blushing.

  Don’t you think you’ve had enough fun for the moment?

  The weird thing about our midnight Punjabi party was that I ignored the how-to-identify-different-parts-of-Swedish-anatomy session, which took place amid much squealing, and ended up spending the entire time talking to Fee.

  Now I know I hated her guts from the first instant I laid eyes on her, and I know she’s a fake and a snob and a basket-case, but I have to admit that in the circumstances, I started finding her attractive. I think it might have had something to do with Caz’s breakdown. Fee’s over-the-top public-schooliness now had the edge taken off it, and she had picked up a sad, slightly subdued quality that was quite a turn-on. There’s something about unhappy women that always gives me the horn.

  Fee seemed to have given up on most of the spiritual crap, and the two of us could just sit and chat about everyday things, only mildly put off by Caz’s presence. She said that she was only wearing the sari because the ashram had made her give away all her old clothes, and she hadn’t got around to buying any new ones yet.

  After we’d been talking for an hour or so, while we heard Ranj linger over an utterly implausible number of Punjabi words for ‘nipple’, a flirty edge started entering our conversation. The sound of the lapping ocean, the moon shadows from leaning palm trees, the distant music drifting down the beach and the nipple-talk all combined to produce an atmosphere heavy with the urgent need for copulation.

  ‘How long were you and Liz going out together?’ asked Fee, slightly coyly.

  ‘A while.’

  ‘Was it… good?’

  ‘What – sexually?’ I said, with a slight pout.

  She shrugged.

  I did a few instant calculations, deciding that a ‘no’ might make me sound like a bad lover, but a ‘yes’ would sound like a brush-off. The truth would give me away as the world’s most spectacular loser.

  ‘It was OK, but I’ve had better,’ I said, impressed with my powers of diplomacy.

  ‘What was… wrong with it?’

  ‘Oh, you know Liz. She’s very pushy. Not…’ I put my hand on Fee’s leg ‘… exactly what you’d call a sensitive person. And that came out in her love-making.’

  ‘I hate her,’ said Fee. ‘I hate her more than anyone else in the world.’

  ‘I’m not too keen on her myself.’

  ‘I wish I could… could…’

  ‘Duff her up?’

  ‘Yes. Duff her up.’ This sounded stupid in Fee’s accent, and made us both smile.

  ‘You know what would really piss her off ?’ I said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well – me and her aren’t, like, an item any more, but she’s still a very jealous person, and if I went off with someone else, it would really get under her skin. ‘Specially if it was someone she knew.’

  Fee looked at me, blinking twice, but basically looking dead into my eyes. I held her gaze, smirking slightly.

  ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ said Fee, leaning forward a touch.

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think I’m saying?’ I said, also leaning forward.

  ‘You tell me what you’re saying, and I’ll tell you if I think that’s what you’re saying,’ said Fee, leaning forward some more. There was now about an inch between our lips.

  ‘I think you should tell me what you think I’m saying, then I can tell you if that was what I was actually saying,’ I said, leaning forward by about half an inch.

  ‘It looks like we’ve reached a stalemate, then,’ she said, filling in the remaining space, and placing us lip to lip.

  The only courteous thing to do in the circumstances was to snog her.

  She was, without doubt, the worst kisser I’d ever had the misfortune to tangle with. I felt as if my tongue was being vacuum-cleaned and put through a washing-machine spin cycle at the same time.

  I was rescued from serious tongue cramps by Ranj suggesting that we all head back to the Kovalam Ashok Beach Resort to raid our mini bars. A few of the Swedes bottled out, but Ranj crammed into a rickshaw with three of them, I shared another one with Fee and Caz, and the seven of us drove up the hill to our hotel.

  After we had gunned down the contents of my mini bar, Ranj took the three Swedes next door, and I stayed behind with Fee and Caz.

  ‘So – here we are, then,’ I said.

  ‘Here we are.’

  There was a silence.

  Since there didn’t seem to be much to discuss, I walked over and kissed her. In order to keep my oral mutilation to a minimum, I tried to undress her at the same time, which turned out to be a process rather like unwrapping a mummy, and wasn’t exactly something you could casually do with one hand while trying to get your other hand into the bra. I eventually came up with a technique where she stood still, and I walked round and round her with an ever-swelling bundle of cloth, kissing her each time I went past her face. This was perfectly entertaining, but I didn’t feel it exactly made for great foreplay.

  We finally ended up on the bed, dressed in only our pants, doing the old writhe-around-and-grunt-a-lot thing that you do when you’re trying to pretend you’re turned on. When Fee started making the grunts that you do when you really are turned on, I started to feel a bit embarrassed.

  ‘What about Caz?’ I said.

  We stopped for a moment, sat up and observed Caz, who was sitting bolt upright in a chair, staring at the opposite wall and rocking slightly faster than usual.

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Fee. ‘She’s not even looking.’

  ‘Can we just leave her there?’

  ‘What else can we do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Doesn’t it make you feel a bit weird?’

  ‘Not really. I’m used to it.’

  ‘I’ve never been watched before, you know.’

  ‘We could put her in the bathroom.’

  ‘No – that would feel worse.’

  ‘She’s not
actually looking. Besides, you might find it’s a turn-on.’

  ‘All right. I’ll get a condom.’

  ‘No. Don’t.’

  ‘What – are you on the Pill?’

  ‘No. I want to have non-penetrative sex.’

  ‘Non-penetrative sex? What the fuck is non-penetrative sex?’

  ‘Sex without penetration, obviously.’

  ‘How can you have sex without penetration?’

  ‘You do… other things.’

  ‘It’s a contradiction in terms. Like non-bike cycling.’

  She shut me up by snogging me a little more, then giving me a blow-job. This was all quite embarrassing, because whenever I opened my eyes, I kept on seeing Caz. After a while, I noticed that Caz wasn’t even staring at the wall any more – she had swivelled round and was staring right at me, her eyes slightly narrowed and red with anger. It’s genuinely off-putting to have someone stare you in the eye while you’re trying to enjoy fellatio, but fortunately Fee’s disastrous snogging technique. made for fantastic head, so my concentration wasn’t too badly dented, and I ended up coming right in her mouth. She instantly spat it out on to the carpet, which I thought was a bit rude, and asked me if I had any chewing-gum or sweets. The only thing I could find was some hash, so we had a joint to get the taste out of her mouth – which was a relief because all the sexual vibes evaporated, so I didn’t really feel I had to return the favour.

  ‘Are you sure Caz is all right?’ I said.

  She was still staring at us, her eyes now even redder, burning with what looked suspiciously like psychotic fury.

  ‘She can’t really sleep in an upright position, unfortunately. Is there room in here for her? She doesn’t take up much space.’

  ‘I suppose so. But you go in the middle. I don’t want to go anywhere near her. She looks nutty.’

  ‘Don’t worry. She’s probably just tired.’

  We finished the joint, then Fee made me turn my back while she undressed Caz and ushered her into our bed.

  The following morning I was woken up by the sounds of an argument coming through the wall.

  ‘No, no, no. Absolutely not,’ a man was shouting. ‘This kind of thing cannot be permitted. We are not some kind of cheap brothel. You people have no morals.’