CHAPTER 8
That what they knew about Life wasn’t what Life was about did not concern the four, as it has never deeply concerned adolescents of all time. All they wanted to know was about the next day at the most and the next ten minutes at the best. They were Life...all juiced! Their minds on idle while their hearts and passions were throbbing. "More! More! More!" Heavy breathing.
Their teachers...seasoned veterans...knew that their boys and girls were forgetting more than they were being taught. That words, concepts, images...hard and soft, literal and metaphorical, plain and oxymoronic....(Sigh!) "Only time will tell!"—a credo of depthless optimism.
The Cauldron. They were immersed in it a three distinct times...leveraging the probability that one would stick and two totally miss. The guys and gals reminisce about how they were first stirred.
At Seventeen, Lil: "Twenty-odd. Hard to count, with masks and all the make-up. Not at first even suspecting the switcheroos. Not even believing it when I was undressing one! Blast! Triple Blast ...The legendary Erotic Jokester!" (What you see is not always what you get!)
Cilla: "It was enough just to begin. After all that time in early Courting, getting to where it took some time. Now, back to the flit and the fly-away!"
Lil: "Exhaustion. Was that their Game?...It seemed like it. So much craziness! To get to the border of blacking-out. My worst drunk was never like this! Saints Alive!"
Mark was there...entering the room with Zav.
Zav: "She just sat there. In one spot. For hours! Every guy who came in, she painted in gold. Every inch. Chomping on dicks and swallowing them whole! ...I, I stood in line. Can’t say...what can’t I say? My mind kept echoing the chant: You are all One. One male. One man. One cock. Each other. But, but I just wanted to crank it off, by myself, in front of everyone!...What’s not crazy there?"
Mark hesitates; lets his jaw hold shut. The tale tingled his ears; no longer hesitatn—"Not that I hadn’t been with a guy or two on a romp. Me and several girls, too. But...what was it? A type of pleasure I never had? Or never wanted? I was really burned. But when she jacked me and creamed me, I thought my toes were shriveling up and she was sucking me down, deep down inside her!...Guy, let me tell ya, if that wasn’t an ascension, I don’t know what is." Quiet...humbled...an exhausted ending.
Zav: "The music would stop. Birds! Then we were all set upon the birds—pheasants and doves and hugely-crested cockatoos...colors unimaginable! It was quick hit-and-go. "No nesting!"—
even though, I admit, I wanted to stay. Never wanted to stay so much! Actually, it all began to piss me off. I think others noticed. All that did was getting them all to push me off quicker!...Shit, was there a conspiracy in there?" Almost an honest question.
Lil: "Never knew when it ended. Just did. Bodies everywhere. The room was hot. Smelly and hot with flowers thickly perfuming everything, almost like a heavy rain. It wasn’t until we started showering that I counted."
All together, checking each other out..."Switcheroos?"
Zav smirked. Mark was stolid. Lil blushed. Cilla famously rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue...everyone shared a loud tee-hee!
Lil: "The Second was my best. I really lost it there. Every dick was a great one! I could’ve stuck one in my ear I was so cock-happy. Maybe it just takes time, but I had never liked just one and certainly not two or three...just too much chatter, too much male boasting. Boys wagging their tongues when their dicks were in dry dock!"
Cilla eyes assert: Believe me! Listened.
"I was into my ass. I mean deep. I can’t explain it, even now. But I just wanted it in, so damn deep in that it’d come out my mouth. Couldn’t shake that image Fraticelli gave us...the cock as tongue!"
"The pictures!" Cilla blurts out, as if stabbed and in agony.
"Goddess, yes, the pictures!" Both girls laugh raucously.
"So?"
"So?"
Each waited for the other.
Cock up my ass.
They had to be drinking for this one. Solid juice.
"I had a mask. Don’t even remember. But the smell! Gabriel and Moroni, why didn’t this seem an easy ascension?"
Mark laughs, uneasily; shifts the conversation to a serious point.
"You want to Couple?" said in that way of recalling how the teacher had prodded them, "You want to Couple? Then you have to know...become fully embraced."
It was what they knew the Cauldrons were supposed to be, to effect. Total Pleasure. What the boys called "The Max" and the girls, "The Wow!"
"If I didn’t know I’d have my way the third time...guy, I tell ya, I almost flipped out."
"Shipped off to Africa?!"
Both guys laugh, uneasily, with excess relief...that wanting to die laughter.
All in all, thought Mark, I’d take "69" as The Max, any day. Not sharing this with Zav—Why? The only time he didn’t feel like making Cilla feel pain had been when he almost told her, "You’re my Smoky Angel!" But he didn’t then. Pain was The Max he'd give her.
"I love to lick clits," as if reading his mind!
"Okay. Don’t ask me to go on! Asshole. But I want you to know the switcheroo is Bad. I believe that." I don't care what my Dad said.
"You missed the whole Mother-Father awful point!" Mark was almost glee drunk.
Yeah?
"We’ve gotta select one. We gotta be selected. You gotta be Many before you’re One. Not the other way round." He ended with unexpressed smugness.
(Popular rendition of Rule 13: "Being One is its own switcheroo!")
"I’m there. I feel them."
"Not understand?" Cautious, investigating.
"Never!" Whispered conspiratorially.
"Live Long and Prosper!" they burst out in wicked delight.
"It’s just that downward thing, guy, don’t let it get to you. They say it has to be there. So we can go upward. Okay? You Okay?"
Mark heard, but couldn’t move. Catatonic. But no self adjectives.
Zav is alone, in that Mark is snoring badly and baldly, broadcasting from his locked door bedroom.
"What is, is not," the words stream through his head..like the back-stroke. Is it all switcheroo?
That’s all he really thought he knew. About himself. About the world. About all this— Courting and The Game and The Cauldron and what was to come...Coupling. Especially, the girls. They feel they’re ready. This he could sense. But ready for what?
Is he ready?
Am I ready?
Is any guy ever ready to Couple? Bad.
Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Page 8