by John Okas
“Whatever love and romance in my future, I nevertheless could not escape my past. I started thinking how I might hedge my promise to love, honor, and obey all women. Ulysses’ ghost persevered, persisted in talking over my shoulder, whispering in my ear. Now that I could fly, we made the rounds of the local villages together. In my warped, illogical way I figured that if I came into town on the air, I would be taken for a Bhooti-Santa, and as such, the Equal of Heaven, and could pick up sweet and simple milk maids to my heart’s content. Indeed they were open to my approaches, and made no demands. And when flying time came I was able to drop them, rather than have them drop me. I had more than I wanted, yet less than I wished for. Where was this Dog Goddess in the prophecy?
“Then one day, through the ghost of Ulysses who still had the key to the museum, I saw the picture and heard the voice of a new woman in the Homeric bed. Bharani, it was you, doing your prostrations to the dogs. I heard barking, and your distress signal plainly, like destiny calling. I was transported, head over heels with love and at the same instant Ulysses’ unhappy ghost dissolved into the light.
“As you will come to know, we Poongis are gluttons for both metaphysics and sayings. We have a saying for everything. For example we say, ‘If you are trundling in an oxcart and you lose a wheel you won’t get hurt much; you can refasten it and be on your way. But if you are flying like a bird and your wing falls off, you’ll have a hell of a time surviving the crack up.’ What we mean is having touching experiences and producing meaty motion in faraway bodies is not without great danger. Cloudhopping with such frequency, bouncing from three to thirty-thousand feet, is a good way to catch a death of something. There’s cold, sleet, rain, snow, dizziness, some high and mighty mean breathlessness, and changes in air pressure, too. Also, to come to you in the physical way I’ve had to stretch my meat as much as my imagination. And no sooner was I back single, in my ordinary mortal coil, than I’d hear you making another long-distance pass for me again. I am bound by more than my vow never to say no when a woman calls. I worship you, sweet adorable Bharani. I am spellbound and can’t resist you. But this love has me spread thin as air. And now I can see what it’s done to you. You could have been burned to a crisp if I had a power surge.”
Sarah, stupefied though she is, looks down at her skinny arms and legs, her bony shoulders, and her sunk-in gut. She feels the burn on her back, and her hair which is matted and coarse.
The rumble goes on within her and without her. “From now on, instead of extending my meat, I’d like to send a double that is more implied than direct. With an intimated form, it should be possible to send and receive my message safely. Never fear, the word will be plenty suggestive. But this medium needs all the help she can get channeling my signal. Instead of this one-on-one coupling, being cornered with your perfect, sweet receiving end only, Bharani, I’d like to get together with a group. I want you to organize a reception committee for me, one-for-all and all-for-one, in this bed.”
When the overwrought peach hears this she is loud with a protest. “Oh no!” she says, loudly.
“Have faith, Bharani, our contact will be increased rather than diminished. Once I’m doubled, out of my body, the jump up to tripled, quadrupled, quintupled and so forth is no great problem. In fact, because each receiver helps with the transmission, it’s easier for me to be in more than two places at the same time. When I come the effect of my presence will not be divided but multiplied. So keep a home fire burning for me, have some snacks and cold beer, the universal signs of friendship, on hand and I’ll be by Friday night at nine sharp, your time, for a prayer and a cozy fire-sign bedtime story.”
Another storm, the presence passes, and the raw pancake color returns to Keinar’s face along with her hoot-owl voice. Unlike Sarah the medium seems none the worse for wear after being a vessel for such formidable energy. Madam Keinar is a professional: cool, detached and used to handling hot air—or taking it in odd places. “Oooh, whee, Sisters, did you hear him?” says the medium, squealing a bit with delight. “You were half-right after all, Sister Laudette. A ghost was indirectly responsible for the haunting of this wide berth. But didn’t I tell you it was some Horny God? Lord Z Bharavi is nothing less than an Incarnation of Old Blue Face, the central figure of Mahabharatan myth, an Avatar of the Creator, the Great Preservative, and the Destroyer, the Ancient One, the Guru of Gurus. You see, Sister Sarah, because Sister Laudette and I were present Lord Z’s power and the intensity were divided so our eyes could adjust to the flames. You could begin to see your feelings with definition. Am I right?”
Sarah looks at Keinar with anger, denial, and amazement. She is crushed and curls her stony lips. “What visitor? Horny God? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Keinar says, “How wise and powerful he is! How romantic! No wonder you are gone over him, Sister. He’s got some Hot Tuna there. And he pays you the highest respect by calling you Bharani, for in Mahabharata ‘Bharani’ is the Seed Sower’s counterpart, one of the names of the Goddess of Wisdom and Compassion. To have such a sublime character in his Terrific form making contact in the flesh is very exciting. A dominant male begging to have the charisma fucked out of him; not every circle of women gets a such a solid representative of the Horny God to sport with!”
Again Keinar emphasizes the dangers of direct copulation between meat and metaphor. Sarah, hating the sermon, sinks back into bed and begins to pray.
Patches, Toto, Cerberus, Asta,
come through with the mass of your wooly master.
“Tooooooot!” But for all her whistling, there is no answer to her couplet. She sobs deeply, dismayed.
“Everything is going to be all right, Sister Bharani-Sarah.” Keinar assures her, talking into the curtains that now separate them. “These inside spookings are never easy to let go of, but you’ll see, it’s all for the best. In the end you’ll have both your Purple Haze and your mind. Sister Laudette will make the arrangements. I will come back here Friday night with a group of women who will lie down and all take a share of the Lord’s prayer and message. Already Lord Z Bharavi, great Sperm Whale that he is, teaches us a lesson. Less is more, everything is exhaustible. Seedy as he is, the Horny God is being overextended by you. These out-of-this-world goings-on between you two have got to stop. You’ve got to see you’re being consumed by them. Don’t expect your visitor will come again to you alone. Now that we’ve opened up a safe channel for him, he’ll most certainly use it. Friday, Sister Bharani-Sarah, that’s … the day after tomorrow! Not so long to wait.” Keinar tries to be reassuring.
Sarah gets under the covers, shivering. How can weekly fireside chats take the place of the ever-ready ultraviolet excitement? Cold, she crosses her bony arms over her rib cage and holds herself closely in the big horse crib, already feeling the pins and needles of withdrawal. Not getting an answer from the Monkey Sage puts her heart on hold and her soul on the blink. She musses and fusses, but remains, for the first time since she has been in the house, unvisited. “Damn you! Miss Lord,” the cold turkey curses. “Now look what you’ve done! It’s all your fault for letting this witch doctor up here! I don’t care what Harry says. You’re fired.”
Laudette is not at all sure they should be having any commerce at all with the Horny Z God. It sounds an awful lot like the devil to her, but her amazement at what she’s seen overrides her caution. Indeed, with this medium they are getting to the bottom of something. She may have some good news soon for Sir Harry. “Never let’s mind that Sugar,” Laudette says to Keinar, “she doesn’t know her own good from a hole in the head.”
“Good,” says Keinar, “Then I’ll see you Friday night. You get the beer and I’ll bring the fruits and nuts.”
Fruits and Nuts
Laudette has seen that the beer is cold and the home fires are burning hot in the bedroom hearth when the fruits and nuts come marching in. Friday night, March third, nineteen thirty-three, at thirteen minutes after eight the wee Klare Keinar, wearing a chicken b
one necklace, arrives with her squadron of Nussbaum Street irregulars. Ten women of uneven body type and from various walks of life comprise the reception committee. There are three fruity astrologers and two vegetarian diet nuts, together with a tarot card sharp, a psychic housewife, a literature student, an artist, and a professional woman. None of them will give a name.
Harry, looking handsome in his smoking jacket, is not a believer in the mystical way. He judges things by appearances and takes the fruits and nuts at their face value: seedy, flaky women he would never dream of as women. When they make a stop in the kitchen to collect the case of beer Laudette has been keeping in the ice box, he watches with mirthful condescension. He nudges Laudette, takes her aside and says, “Miss Lord, I’ve always believed in only what I can see with my own two eyes, but now that I see this bunch of bananas, with a case of beer, no less, on their way upstairs to chase the devil out of my wife, maybe I can’t even believe my eyes. Is it my imagination or are they weird?”
“No sir,” whispers Laudette, shuddering a bit when she thinks of what she has seen with her own two eyes, how it came in from the fruited plane, parked its hot rod in the medium’s ear, and spoke to them all in a mysterious voiceless voice that made all sorts of naughty suggestions. But she feels it best not to stir up Harry’s disbelief with the story. After all, she thinks, this is somebody else nibbling on his Cupcake’s ear. “No, no, sir. It’s not your imagination. But weird things call for weird people, strange brews for strange blues. And they’re not going to chase any devils out of Sugar, but show her how to live with them.”
“Oh Sister Laudette!” The medium calls down. “Please hurry, it will be nine o’clock before long, and we do need you to make ourselves feel at home.”
“Why I’m surprised at you, Miss Lord!” Harry teases. “Counting my Cupcake, that makes an uneven dozen! Are you turning into one of these witches too? What would the Dipster say?”
“He would say that Emanual wants us to take care of the sick even if what they have could be catchy. Now, Sir, I mean no disrespect, but I must be going upstairs.”
In fact Swan is a good judge of wine and caviar. He knows something about the lineage of prize racehorses. He can appreciate the charms of beautiful women and the mechanics of sports cars. He has, under Sarah’s deceptive influence, become increasingly well-rounded in his recognition and enjoyment of great music. But for all this, his opinions on the subject of the occult are worthless. The fruits and nuts, odd as they seem, are ripe in the spirit, and presently they are coming to meet a being in defiance of reasoning by the purely physical, rational, and scientific method.
Led by Laudette the coven files in. Sarah is right where she’s been since Keinar left, in bed, behind closed curtains, in the mood for indigo, with the raggy old robe pulled up over her behind, sobbing because her couplets go unanswered.
Lucy, Lacy, Lucas, Lance,
don’t let me down, hey, give me a chance.
Chow Hound, Marduk, Yama, Ned,
keep these bitches away from my bed.
The medium calls a huddle. She speaks softly. “Sisters, this is Sister Bharani-Sarah. Getting mixed up with this meataphor has driven her half-mad and half-vegetable. You must help me tie her to the bedpost, and no matter what she says don’t let her loose. Otherwise she might disrupt the transmission, hurt herself, or even Lord Z. When the Broadcast comes, if we all do our share, the amount we each get will be healthy rather than poison.” Then relying mainly on Laudette’s strength and entirely on her authority, they pull back the curtains, and seize Sarah. Sarah kicks and screams but she is so light and weak that Laudette and the others have no trouble sitting her up. Using satin sashes from the curtains across her arms, breasts and abdomen, with pillows to cushion her back, they tie her to the bedpost. Keinar prays over each knot.
“Not only are you fired, Miss Lord,” Sarah spits, “but when this is over I’m going to have you arrested.” Then she begins to shout for Harry. At Keinar’s insistence, she is gagged by having a small apple pushed into her complaining mouth.
To help her raise the broadcast body the medium bids the sisters to each fill a cone-shaped glass with beer and bring it to her, one by one. None have seen such a thirst. Even though the beer in those glasses, an even dozen plus one for the road, amounts to several quarts, it disappears into the pint-sized medium as if there was never any beer at all! When she is finished drinking, the tipsy Sister Klare takes her post at the bed’s foot, catty-corner from Sarah, and tells those silly geese to pour beer for themselves and then line up in a vee with her, the medium, in the middle, five on one side, five on the other. Laudette takes her place off the left wing-tip, by the infuriated, kicking cold turkey’s side, to soothe her. “Hush, hush, sweet Sugar,” she coos, even as she raises her round with the others as a toast to the inner springs and waits for the guest of honor.
On the dot of nine Keinar says, “Whether you’re naughty or nice, pick on someone your own size.” Then she braces herself for the storm. Again there is the flash of diamond clarity, but this time the hovering presence is not one, but thirteen beatific crystal goose eggs, one for each of the coveners’ left ears. Sarah’s heart wrenches. She cries in anguish, gnashes her teeth so hard that she bites clear through the apple gag and begins to mutter doggerel, trying to egg all ovals to her. She calls, “Come Dingo, Ringo, Patches, Pariah. Come Bingo, Jingo, Snatches, Messiah. Come Danzer, Pranzer, Donder, Blitzen …” before Laudette stuffs a handkerchief into her mouth. At that moment the egg by the medium’s ear bursts apart, and there, in an explosion of colored lights, red flames, purple smoke, jewels, bones, and flowers, one-thirteenth the size he was the other day, is the dancing Lord of Death, Z Bharavi. When the devilish-looking monkey in his spectral form begins to park his red hot rod in Keinar’s ear she is not bowled over as she was the last time. This time the medium is already well-oiled with brew and has a whole reception committee in place. Each Sister assembled will take a share. With the Horny God’s whole body less than a half a foot long, his prick no bigger than the tip of a woman’s pinky, his ram has a more tolerable effect. The medium’s eyes do bug out a bit, her body twitches as she remains at her post, and she groans as if in some discomfort, but she is nevertheless able to take it in stride. Her mottled flesh remains undissolved, even as a clear violet light, a cool purple haze, surrounds her, and her face glows with the presence of the flaming figure within.
The fruits and nuts have never seen such things. They become uneasy and begin to babble to release their butterflies, for they fear, with the floating presence of identical crystal eggs over their shoulders, the same fate is in store for them. Perhaps they should untie Sarah and call an ambulance for Sister Klare. But Laudette, who has seen worse pass, knows the worst is over, and encourages them to stay the course. Intuitively she understands Keinar’s approach: to free Sugar they all have to become a little spellbound themselves.
The medium’s mouth spawns a garble, a whisper soft and breathy, a low beastly growl. No distinct words, yet a message is received privately and heartfelt by each of the women that reminds her she is there to modulate, adulterate the monkey’s broadcast so that it has less violent consequences on any one individual. Pulling together they toast, and drink the beer to take the edge off their nerves. Sarah, although she hasn’t had a drop to drink, feels her ear buzzing with warm feelings from the flickering tongue of fire on her shoulder. One lick and bang, thunder, the deep rattling organ pipe fills her head. The impact, tempered by the medium, watered-down by the others, is just enough to fill her with a groggy delight, much to the pleasure of the rest of the slumber party who are there to catch the overflow. One by one the bubbles burst. Each woman has feelings just strong enough, like a moderate amount of alcohol, to loosen her inhibitions and prod her mind to make her own personal connection to kingdom come, to take her own leap up mentally and embrace His High Holy Rollership’s charge. The bed is big enough to hold a horse. Laudette and the other fruits and nuts, drowsy from b
eer drinking, no longer agitated but lulled by the prospect of being tucked in by this rumbling thought blanket go down physically with their share of the heavenly-pitched pipe. They sink in, falling around Sarah, making themselves at home.
The playwrite who wrote that all the world was but a stage and we the players is kin to the poet who imagined all the world as a bed, and we the sleepers. As sure as fact can be stranger than fiction, one might be more awake when one is asleep. And as surely as this voice is no voice, a ring of sleepers’ minds tuned to the same extended dimensions of meaning can receive a delivery beyond language, that faculty basically weak and ineffective in defining the extrasensory.
As the women lie back half-asleep the hard male body from beyond makes his meaning plain to each in a blanket of sounds, images, and thought patterns, complex projections of inner voices and lights, figures of speech that are as literally figures as speeches. Under the charm of the charismatic presence, rolling with the thundering organ within, each feels herself a beautiful woman, a goddess with and without mercy.
The mind-to-mind contact with Lord Z opens up a whole new world of meaning for Sarah. The double talk helps her get over the hump rather than under it. She feels the grace, compassion, and love of God, and, getting, she can give. For the first time she experiences sharing love with her sisters.
The party, now soul sisters, semi-tranced, mutually propped up, drool gibberish, gag and moan in their swoons. Each mouth slides into nonsense response, similar to the mumble jumble from the medium’s lips. With thirteen sleepers muttering syllables, some slurred, some staccato, to the unravelling skein of their dreams, oohing and aaahing over the organs in their minds, if that bed had the poetic license to speak it might have said, “Now I’ve heard everything.”