Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality

by Francis Kroncke

CHAPTER C

  He liked playing the game. Better than any athletic competition, firking afforded a battleground for true conquest. There was something which struck him deeply: to his core, a pleasure his mind could not, would never name - from his first to every one thereafter - he made them yield, more, Total Surrender. In some way expose, betray their nakedness wielding an instrument of violence: word, fist, bite, yell, slap, scream, frantic gasping for air - he liked that best: himself as a choke, peine forte et dure: every ounce, every drop of sweat of his two-hundred-fifty-five pounds pressing them - special holds for each size: the tiny ones he’d cover like suffocation, sweeping their arms and legs inside his, his chest flattening their faces; others he’d adjust: wrapping like a constrictor, fingers gripping and shutting and mangling, toes digging in, nails gouging relics of these with whom - he laughs at the moment and ever at the moments of memory - "With whom Death does us part!" ... for it is Death he meets on the battlefield of their flesh, against Death he fences, his broadsword whirled and plunged, cracking upon their heads: north and south: his noble-head cracking open, spitting upon them, for he spits at Death - March struts back and forth at bed’s border, circling her: territorial marking: she, Death in all Her disguises, tricks, foolishnesses - "Fool!" he screams, he speaks, he fiercely grins at her: she now dead, as dead as total exhaustion and total treasure plundering, as dead as one alive can be whose body and soul has been pillaged, resoundly firked: March, Victor!

  The game was best played with girls. "Girls" being those yet virginal or at least "poorly firked." Meaning, for March, that they’d been penetrated: stuck, rammed, probed, creamed - but not really firked. They knew nothing of yielding; of the war the game was: of conquest. He could tell it in their eyes: which looked at him not knowing him as Enemy!

  Priscilla. He liked the absolute idiocy of it all! Almost the Trojan Horse; the Maiden in the Tower letting down her hair ... ambuscade: drawbridge of open-arms: Only dumb broads! but in his mind he does not see her this way. Dumb: only after he has made them so. Lied to them, fooled them, seduced them - he making them do what they don’t know they’re doing! But, here, now, never having had a note, an invitation: Bait?: it delights him no end. All throughout the day it made him think about her - and so he knew her strange power, for he rarely thought about any single girl for more time that it took to re-live his conquest. But, Priscilla - he did not know her; none of his buddies did ... "Has to be from Smith, where else?"

  When should I go back to that bar?

  Priscilla had chosen Joseph Smith Seminary because it was - despite The Communio’s denials, which few accepted as other than half-hearted false-humility - because it was "the source," meaning, where all the high administrators and upper hierarchy were schooled. Priscilla did not fancy herself a candidate for any future honored position, rather, she simply sought her Eternal Husband.

  When her family talked about Smith - and they had from her earliest years, "You’re a Smithy - I can read it in your eyes!" - such talk never mentioned The Chalice. But once at Smith - from the first moment she and her roommate Lan had a private minute - all she heard about was, "Those boys from The Chalice!"

  What Lan revealed - just within the first five chatty minutes! - was everything Prissy’s family did not want her to ever know. Not know in detail, and, certainly, not come to personally know - "They’re Cats!" said with a gasp and flutter, head jerking a bit this way, then that, to see if anyone had overheard: not fear, but naughty excitement! - followed by, "And we’re allowed to meet them!" Giddiness and empty-headed tittering. Prissy caught Lan’s silliness but, just as quickly, wondered what it all really meant: Catholics?

  Priscilla had mastered the answers; received high grades on First Day, but she had never pressed to understand, just pass the course; be promoted.

  Cats, to her - and to all about, even the Catholics, themselves - were a remnant sect from before "The Grand Mormon Ascendancy," now some two-hundred and ten-years celebrated. All knew that they were, once, "universal" - as the students were told is the definition of the word catholic - "Almost, as the Saints are, today."

  Not too much detail was conveyed in First Day classes, and as the centuries passed, the rendition became quite abbreviated and stylized, though such was not a pedagogical insight of the day. Few First Day charges cared but little about the meaning of what they were hearing.

  "Catholics" - even the Catholics had this in their "Approved" version: approved by The Communio - "Catholics were the first Christians to preach the Word around the world. They had a vast empire which ruled both souls and states. Their error was a doctrine called "Original Sin." They held that humans were born alienated from God. That the erotic Embrace was the cause of this terrible primal Sin. This lead to several other perplexing errors, most notably, salvation by faith alone, and Jesus as an idol. Believing that only Jesus was god - One God. Incomprehensibly, they held that Jesus was not married. This lead to a most peculiar practice called celibacy. They denied the erotic Embrace! Only the males rose in their hierarchy and were priests. One, called "The Father" or Papa was elected to rule. They did not know Our Parents! As is proper and just in the Harmony of All Things, the Catholic Error and False Teachings are those from which we, Mormons, have Ascended."

  What was not talked about were the relentless waves of persecution: spiritual genocide. The century-and-half Holy War waged from Salt Lake which rivaled the Catholic’s own "Holy Crusades" of a hegemonic period none in Priscilla’s generation (nor those just past her grandfather’s) ever came to study. "The Latter Days" was a Holy War - as every Holy War ever was (as The Communio so wisely comprehended) - which was, simultaneously, secular. Though there had been - and, possibly, because there had been - twelve seamless successions of Mormon U.S. Presidents, each, who upon leaving secular office was elected to The Communio - though and because, as such, The Ascension was, itself, both secular and holy.

  It was an Ascension, as the word implies, "To a higher Order. Not just moral, but physical. Not just spiritual, but dimensional. In the world, but not of the world. We, Mormons, are a different body; a sacral flesh. We are Holy Family." Words readily understood by young minds, for they were words heard from the first hour of First Day. Yet, words not grasped in their once full power, for their obverse: "individual," was no longer comprehended as it had been before The Ascension.

  The Communio knew - and it was their First Holy Obligation to encompass all knowing, secular and sacred - The Communio knew pre-Ascendancy individuality. That is why they allowed this remnant band of Catholics to co-exist with Smith.

  Not that they were Catholics as Catholics had once been: "Never!" - and it was not in the consciousness of these post-Ascendancy Catholics to grasp either what they could have claimed as their past glory nor what they should claim if they did know of this past glory - for their existence was not to perpetuate Catholicism as it was to effect "Final Ascendancy."

  Final Ascendancy - an Old Truth now a New Truth taught on First Day, but even more, what those elected to The Communio came to experience as their sacral mission and task: what was being revealed as the new definition of "Saint."

  :experience - "What was the experience of Original Sin?" The first question posed to a candidate for The Communio. Why those who said, "Dreaming," said so was a mystery to those who, themselves, had answered with this word. It was proof - if proof was ever really needed - to Communio members that they had, indeed, Ascended, and that - Forsooth! -The Ascension was continuing.

  Dreaming: meaning as all - Such a mystery! - spoke of "The sin of Original Sin." Not knowing the long-forgotten Augustine, nor his equally vaguely remembered reincarnation, Fraticelli Smallcap of Martian lore, but knowing the horror of what Ascendancy was not: for it was an Embrace, indeed, a Holy Embrace, the Scaral Erotic Embrace. Divinity being known only as male and female coupled - but, more, for they were wise to why there was to be a Final Ascendancy: that they, themselves, lacked a knowledge, were awaiting a final revelation: knowing,
that there was more than just the erotic Embrace, that there "must be": Harmony - "It is fitting, right and just!" - there must be a Fuller Fire, a more Shattering Intimacy - "Something!" which was Promise.

  Within The Communio the language and practice of communal dreaming was ritual and fulfillment. Communal: locked in physical Embrace, embracing in imagining ardor: present to visions and insights, of transformation and transubstantiation ... indeed, transubstantiation: "Exactly why we still plumb the soul-history of these Catholics," said as first explanation to new Communio members. "They had bread and wine. Abominations which etherealized the cock and cunny. Yet, preparation for The Ascendancy." For The Ascendancy, itself, was a transformation which was also a "change of substance," indeed, "A transmutation. The genetic imagery is useful. We are not them."

  Yet, they continued to look like them. Apparition. They could even sexually couple and produce off-spring, though this was carefully guarded-against, mainly, through the disinformation campaign which convinced The Cats that they needed condoms to realize the full pleasure of intercourse! That, plus clandestine sterilization of "that statistical number" which was too stupid to remember to properly sheathe their erotic swords.

  What had been revealed - even before The Ascendancy: called "The Old Truths" - was that there was no Original Sin. Meaning, no bodily separation from the Divine. More, that each believer was a Saint, and each Saint was destined to become a god or goddess. Even more - and this is what did effect The Ascendancy - as the dream, the vision, the revelation of "Original Sin" had kept Catholics earth-bound, so the new dream, the ascended vision, the final revelation of Eternal Marriage destined the Mormons to be truly "universal" in the sense of inhabiting the universe - even most astounding: of becoming god and goddess, an Eternal Family, seeding and populating other planets.

  It was not that the Cats stilled preached this Original Sin, rather, that they dreamed it. As they coupled, it thrived as their Celibate Fire. "Their desire is for themselves, not the other. Somehow having sex without erotic Embrace!" It was in their peculiar genital-Embrace that they waged a war, a war at once earthly and celestial, a war to slay themselves, to prevent themselves from Ascending. Such was an unimaginable truth - a "New Truth" of the Ascendancy, itself - unimaginable to all except The Communio: they who had the guidance of the Urim and Thummin, itself, manifesting "new sight" anew through The Ascendancy. As these Catholics bedded down: what had not Ascended still breathed.

  "Sacral Fire" - one phrase spoken, now more often, inside The Communio.

  The Chalice, then, was a finally controlled experiment: Divinely mandated in The Harmony of All Things. The Communio accepted its continued existence as a humbling purification. "That it exists reveals we’ve still work to do!" What The Communio was about, then, was Final Ascendancy.

  How was it to occur? Communio members searched their sacred books, plumbed all secular knowledge, maintained an invasive network into every bed-room, and gathered to dream.

  In their communal dreaming - this the most profound of New Truths - they shared the vision, accepted the revelation, responded to the demands of Harmony: that they must maintain and sustain the un-Ascended till - and they accepted with blessed resignation - sustain them until Final Ascension: "A dream yet to be dreamed by our Final Parents." Again, a New Truth of The Ascension: that as there had been First Parents so there will be Final Parents - the last in the line of the unAscended, the first in the line of the Final Ascension.

  Smith and The Chalice: themselves, mysteries of a Greater Revelation. At once, the mundane lives of boys and girls; at once, the profound manifestation of The Ascendancy.

  Priscilla had nothing working inside of her: nothing of mind nor reason, not of logical or even poetic flight and fancy, nothing which could comprehend nor explain why she was Courting March. She simply knew: as she eyes herself in the mirror, adjusting the scarf Lan has loaned her: a jet-black, inky slink which - at its moment of touch and lay - ordains her bewitching!

  As against her neck: smooth unto marble sleek, blemishless and elegant as pure ivory - a neck which has always set her apart: watering the knees of men, ancient and young; a neck which, much like her card, her invitation to March, was daring - more, puissant - in its simplicity.

  She knows that this neck is for him: Only him!

  March enters the bar: on the hunt.