CHAPTER 14
The boys had just come off a rousing three day, wild drunk...Zav popping out of his "self-time" one night right after finishing his spaghetti and meatballs—"One more time!" He and Mark were off: getting off all over the place...Zav looking at Mark and Mark looking at Zav—" Live long and prosper! Whatever that really means! Ha-ha.".. clinking glasses: "Firk! May we live long and prosper, together!" A camaraderie of spirit not yet sullied by Mark’s Flow with Lil.
Three days of no-sleep, so it did seem like a joke. Only the official letterhead seemed to sober him up.
"Drafted?!"
"This is not supposed to happen? Can’t be!"
"Shit. No!"
Mark was incredulous. Hung Zav's letter from his fingertips as if it were a sheet of unrecycled, soiled toilet paper. His disgust was threaded with fright.
Zav just pressed his body further back into the fatness of the over-stuffed chair...seeking to be sucked into another dimension... pressing backwards and drinking forwards—Ten down, ten to go! as in his mind’s eye he shouted encouragement from the sideline—Drink. Drink. Drink. To Oblivion! A funereal melody cloyed the air.
"In Africa" had been and is a phrase of their life to date. It was like air. "The wars in Africa." Not just war, but multiple wars. Continuous. So complex. So ever-changing. Names of countries. Acronyms for enemies. Banner titles for victories. It was all a blur. And it was never but to be a blur. War had no solid meaning for them...they never had to pay close attention to it. Several years before they were to be Fixed...a time which they could hardly remember...it was then that the word was left off their vocabulary list. Not to be "in Africa" is what each thought was the reason they had been chosen to live in the Education Zone.
The running parental threat had been—"Bad boys go to Africa." Bad not specifically defined. Rather it stood for everything the rowdy youths wanted to do which their parents didn’t. But there had also been its use, later—"Boys not charming. Not invited to Couple. Shipped off to Africa!" Both had heard this recurring whip...from fathers, teachers and instructional films. "If she doesn’t Invite you...We welcome you!" This, an omnipresent ad run on the campus vine: all media...arms open, a medal-bedecked General, standing next to a battle camouflaged solider—young, a near or just twenty-someone who was not smiling, but standing proud, bolt-erect and fierce—the General drops an fatherly arm around the soldier, gives him a fatherly shake.
But as with anything used too often, the ads, the parental threats, the whole notion of "in Africa" just was ignored by the percolating sexual divines of teenage-hood of those taking The Course.
Yet, what the teachers knew, the Elders too, and all who grew into parenthood...that something so omnipresent as war was, proved, inevitably, also subliminally to be quite effective. Zav was shocked because few ever chosen en for the Education Zone flunked out.
Omnipresent yet trivial—In Africa was a media section all to itself. Like Sports. There were accounts of heroism. Of clever battle tactics. No deaths reported, which was, as murder, unknown to the boys...war: all was capture and conquering. Spiced with "Confessions of The Enemy." Stuff like that. Most ten year olds read every lurid story. Most eleven year olds were more anxious to be Fixed. Most twelve years olds simply worried about passing the test which qualified for The Course...which, itself, selected out as it selected in.
"Fixed and not in Africa!" A pube taunt to those not in The Course...one bandied about with goosebumps and dry gulps.
Now, something’s happening which, so it appears, no one has ever heard as having happened before. It was the silence...more soundless than the actual disappearance of their teachers and those deus ex machina Elders...it was their silence—that of the boys and girls...they simply could not speak about this to each other. Just stare. Usually from behind some numbing liquid shield.
Every bar was packed. Bodies stuffed and outside human forms splayed drunk on the sidewalks. "Packed but not stacked!" This was the most depressing slogan—unambiguous code that a bar was lacking girls...worse, at this moment, no one caring nor counting on a finger or two the girls, to a teat, Greenies...nor noticing the most shocking fact: "Sober Greenies!"
Odorously male and no music thumping—all slacked jaw and stone-eyed...collectively sodden but each incredulously facing the sobering reality of their peculiar fate.
"Everyone?"
Zav glances around, looking for a table; some spot, somewhere.
"Firk! Sure looks like it. The whole screwed senior class!"
Death Sentence—Fixed and in Africa! scrawled on the walls and written in fright on the eyes of soundless inebriates.
"Guy, something weird’s happening." Zav’s idiotically naked words afloat as he unscrews this day’s third quart of Tequila...who, before he can even salute the worm, vomits chokingly and explosively.
As the girls prowl the streets, every bar searched—Is this happening everywhere? If they hadn’t fully grasped all those lectures on "the collective body and soul," well, right now it was a handy phrase to help get a grip on the chaos.
"Did we all die and not-Ascend?"
Snagging a head-down, hurrying-by sorority Sister, "Do you know where Mark is?"
Ripped away in muted huffing, arms flying as if swatting flies, "No!"
Lil and Cilla hurry along, peeking, surveying in and out of familiar haunts; strange ones.
By the time they find their boys...who are shades beyond even their most historic and epic stinking blottos, both having bits of vomit indiscreetly exposed up, down, under and on top—absurdly looking like freckles.
Worse, Mark was at his usual madcap antics...challenging Zav to stand one-foot on the band-stand edge, teetering with two hands slobbering spitting spirits...Cilla gasps, but neither sees them nor hears them. Bravado: as he jumps to the dance-floor, flinging booze like ...few guys pay notice, fewer care—only their girls are frightened..."My buddy," burbled and blistered in drunken voice, "My buddy eats a mountain of hot dogs. Any takers?"
"Gotta beat ten in a minute," screams Zav, screaming at no one but at everyone...screeching screaming his last as he plunges face down, nose bloodying face down, onto the table. Soft whacking thud.
Stupid drunks, each girl thinks but does not say. Simultaneously, each reaches out.
"Mark," almost whispered, but, as if a magical word, it turns him towards her.
Lil stands next to Zav. Alights a finger upon his nape. Rock motionless. But as if just this nudge of hers carries potent energy, Zav slips away from her, slides and slumps—unconscious fingers grasping the table’s edge, almost ass to the ground, just a dead fish with eyes plunk open as he falls, sprawls full-bodied onto the floor...no tail wagging.
How they got them to their apartment is another story. All were people of average build and height, this making the girls—pound for pound—quite weaker than the boys...but they had tugged and pulled, lurched and bounced, heaved and shoved their way down the several streets...fortunately for all it was late Spring and all the ice had melted.
Lil—at a total loss—lewdly suggests, tip-toeing in front of their weakening eyelids, "French Maid!" It was a mark of the moment that this does not arouse their lechery...not a speck.
"If not boobs, what?" To Cilla; to the boys.
Neither responds to any kind of stimulation. Flies unzipped and fingers bowling. Nervously breathed promises of endless pleasure.
Both girls withdraw, bonded by a shared but equally strange emotion: disgusted fright.
"Zombies!"
"My gosh! Yes, but what’s happening?"
They snap on the Flicker to see if this is reality—really real?
Local News carries no reportage of any campus activity. Odd.
Half-hour later it is announced that there is commencing, as of this day, a total National News black-out on daily In Africa reportage. "This is really Bad." But they meant that for themselves...as potential Couples, that’s all.
Slumbering in their collective abandon, the boys mope about c
onfronting the facts. "Africa is Bad. It has always been Bad. Bad in a way you do not know, but must come to know. The males are all loaded. Their population is out of control. Disease ravages the cities and hamlets. For the first time in millennia, we are threatened!"
It is the General, in full regalia...earnest but stern—fatherly in the most demanding tone. "In the past we have fought them with the dredges, the failures, the outcasts, the heretics of our own society. We had faith in "fighting fire with fire." Bad against Bad...It hasn't worked. So, today, we must start to do otherwise. This is why you in the Education Zone are being called up. Be proud, for you shall, once and for all time, Save the World from Africa!"
As this terse speech terminates, so did both boys rise. So did hundreds, thousands like them. Up from stupor and all other phases of the collective trance. Awake! Rise from beds, saloon floors, ditches and back-seats—Rise up! fully stirred in heart and with an accepting understanding, not one in words, not one which repeated the speech, but in action—a common action, that of acting as One.
Zav looks at Mark. Mark looks at Zav. They nod.
"Together!"
That evening, it was all Tag Team, their first ever...though none in the foursome would remember the night. Zav never of Lil with Mark. Mark never of Cilla with Zav. Never.
Not for some time, anyways.
Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Page 14