CHAPTER 28
"Look, haven’t you figured it out, yet?"
"It’s always figuring to you, isn’t it?!"
"Yeah, maybe, but you’ve always read me wrong." He wished that he had put a sneer into that, but it came out too confessional.
"Come on! Toot! Toot! and all this Blast! crap from Lilith lately. What’s happening, the whole world’s falling apart?"
"Ooops! Maybe things are really going Bad." He did manage the slash of sarcasm. Why do I want to kill the bastard?
"I need a thirst. You?" not waiting for an answer; moving into the recreation area, up to the Big Wet; pulling out two; lately, Zav’s taken to thick, almost molasses-like meads … Mark’s, as always, just piss.
It had been the break in action that he wanted. Ascended assholes! There was as much bitterness in the drink as in his heart. He wished that he could swim up the murky stream and slide into the bottle – smart enough to know that he simply wants to escape!
"So, you want to know what’s Ascended?" coming on a self-amused air. Not intended but for his own amusement, "I’ll tell you," accepting the bottle, "Greenies. That’s what, Greenies!" licking his lips with the words in between deep sucks on the glass teat.
Zav grimaces: one of those half-grimaces which isn’t sure of itself: What to say? it conveys.
Finished before Zav is quarter-down, letting the empty swing from his hand as he talks: "It was always them." He stopped, not that he wasn’t sure who them was, rather, the short sentence said all that he had come to learn is male wisdom.
Naw! – but Mark’s ears were plugged.
Like the cork it was: "I figured it out, right away. Just in pre-Courting classes. That there was NO balance." Huge sigh; hand raising bottle wanting to slam and shatter it – Zav feels the feeling: "That there never was even the slightest intention to balance." Flips the bottle onto the couch; any couch; that the couch caught it was incidental: he turns and looks at Zav, a look which flips into a stare, a stare into an effort to peer … but all he does is impale himself!
"Freaking boobies!" shouted as he stands up and stomps his way to the bathroom.
Door slams.
"Sex without having sex – did I miss something?"
Mark was long gone. Zav had been puttering around the house – he knew Lil wouldn’t be home tonight. Just in how she left: distracted.
It was a one-man play: he grasped that he was its only audience – but, then, he didn’t; for him The Embrace was ever-present.
Arms in motion, legs walking about, at times a pace, others a strut, sitting up, sitting down, in and out of a room, catching the display of remarkless sky and day: no adjectives except for his own condition: Bad.
Xer certainly understood – and the play commenced – You doubt that? That runt. Yeah, you didn’t think I remembered, but I do, everything. Adjectives. For everyone. Tall. Short. Brown skin. Black. Real green eyes. Small teats. Thundering boobs! … Ha. But I gotta admit, so I will, that’s not it. But it was a clue. I mean, if I willed it, it happened. You knew that, didn’t you? Sure. If I stared and peered, it happened. Lilith became Lillian or Lily or Prissy or whomever I wanted. That’s what’s freaking out my bud. Sure as hell freaks me out. I don’t care if I should’ve been prepared. How the hell can something as cryptic as that crap had prepared me? "Sex without having sex" – who the hell? … and The Embrace is now fully present: he can see them, Shit! he says to them; right-arm extended, finger-pointing: because I willed you here! (Do I want to hear their applause?) Ah, Gods and Goddesses, it’s all simile and metaphor. Ain’t I smart?! … But if I’m so Smithy smart then why aren’t they all Ascended? … He wills them to disappear. They do. He wills himself to disappear. He does.
Mark wanted the greenest of Greenies. Looking for one who hadn’t bled yet. Not that he had litmus paper, "Insert. Pull out. Read." Ha. Not for the body, what he had was for the soul, the spirit – Hell! I hate words!
"You know," glaring down at her, fully clothed, but as naked as he has been able to make her, "You know, you’re to do whatever I want." He knows she is too green to grasp any kind of subtlety; to compare him to anyone else; to have discussed what he was doing now with any other Sister because she hadn’t done anything like this – Oh, Mark was beside himself with … with: in his own mind, the mind now also March: "Evil," without an exclamation; he wants this to be as Evil as he can make it; having come in the last while to grasp why such a notion as Evil had never been dreamt by The Embrace … "No Original Sin" – how truly stupid were we? "That’s all there is, babe. That’s all there is," is what he was saying to himself as he smiles at her and she smiles back, excited that such a wonder is happening to her, that she has been Selected – so he told her – to advance quickly, to surpass her classmates, to move into the Higher Realm, to bring to life a Greater Truth … words and ideas which she had no familiarity with, no understanding of, which were new to her: but he, "Ancient One" as he disclosed; whispering to her with the sweetest of tone, in a breath pure wonderment as his words open her eyes, opens her soul – his touch, the gentlest of caresses of her cheek – delighted she is; ready for him; ready to do as he requests ….
Zav had penned it on a Friday morn; had it to the calligrapher and back in time for their weekly Moment. Friday nights were as he could not remember them never being. The night for Coupling time; reserved. Not that they didn’t Couple other days or hours or minutes – Blast! Toot and Toot! he playfully purses his lips and swats his hand in exultation: they had Coupled in a rhythm without description … he exhales deeply this Moment as he reads: the words appearing and resting in their briefness: "I and you are metaphors. We, simile."
Lil read the note; put it down too quickly: Zav was mildly shocked more than hurt or confused. It was then that he realized her Ascension.
Mark chanted, evoking the magical presence: "You are nothing," as she lays there, blissful in her baredness: a nakedness which he peeled back into fully-bare, pushed towards invisibility; "You are everything," as in the ritual of the Moment: in her, out of her: each penetration and withdrawal intensified by his liturgical words: words which eroded the separateness between them: she as a female, he as a male; she as a woman, he as a man: "Nothing," "Everything" … her bones ached, her flesh was beyond raw, the searing pain had ceased, there was an absolute jolt of numbness: her body had long ago ceased to be her body: his in and out of her had ceased to be but the ebb and flow of her own presence, a presence which was slowly, but of sharp awareness, slowly being consumed – Oh, she had had images of seeping, of wetting, of being cloaked, but these had fallen away as her arms had, as her breasts had disappeared, as her backbone had been absorbed by his cock: not denied to her was this: his serpentine swallowing, of herself as being sucked into and through his cock: which was to him, "Innocence!": her offering herself as she had been trained, been taught, Do whatever, and how was she to know, they asked, asking themselves what hadn’t been asked for beyond Memory: the Embrace of The Embrace feeling her dissipation, her etherealization, her misting up and into a puff which March inhales, upon her expiring breath: Prissy so smug! so confident as females had always been confident! Too confident! he laughs in the suck of his final breath: a tiny laugh: yet with the tinniest of tinys does he Ascend … what only The Embrace is present to: March’s Ascension which is Mark’s Descension: to the evocation and the presence of Evil: Pure Evil: "You are nothing," final words; his Amen: he watches her Obliteration.
Zav mulled over Xer’s presence. Did he want a Smithy? Was it important the he be Catholic? "How can I ever know?" riding exasperation; irritation; annoyance.
"You got to stop thinking about that. It’s gone. Over. Blast it away!" herself irritated; annoyed.
"Blast this! Blast that! Is this what it all comes to? For you. This, your Ascension? That there are only New Truths? Each day. Moment. What is it? Anything you want to be a Truth, is that it?"
She shakes her head in that "Mommy’s said a thousand times not to do that" shake; toddler li
stening for the hundredth time and not getting it.
Okay. He wills them back; this the last time he ever wants to be present to The Embrace. Okay. I’ve studied. More than the others. You had something to do with this, I know. All this poet stuff. What can it be but your Memory. Really mine? No sex, and all that? Something you wanted me to work on. Hell – and there is a Hell, you know. (That makes them squirm, he thinks; thinking that they know his every thought; but maybe, not? Hmmm.) Hell is other people – what Ancient One said that?: someone of you gave me that; sure, Heaven is other people too. That’s what Mark would say: who among you thought that?
The girls; women; females – see, it’s this Original Sin stuff. Theory. Theology. Fact. Whatever. Who am I sounding like, now? Ha.
I got there, you know it, I know it; that’s why you’re here. But this is what I’ve got to say. What is my message. Why I’ve summoned you back: Hear this – she didn’t get it. Lilith. Prissy. Whatever woman. Inside you – you guys, you gals: whatever your presences. Understand, no, let’s watch, watch together … peer with me:
:it all has to be there. That’s the rub! Lifting off the layers, flimsy layers here in the warmth: Prissy’s blouse; now her bra: pressing her palm against her breasts, delighted by its warmth; slipping off the skirt and the slip; panties, stockings; undressing and in the undressing so herself, at least her desire, allowing her Sister to roll back the layers: with her tongue rolling back the words which have separated them, rolling them back and inhaling them like clouds which are drawn down as fire from the sky: kisses and tender licks of her frightening neck: a touch of flesh which is pure light: it rises, it falls: the slightest touch of the tip of her tongue and there is an aura which surrounds them, bathes them: into her eyes which have widened into doors: into and through: down the flow of her flesh, kissing her breasts, fondling them, finding there a thousand kisses from a thousand Sisters: touches of desire, touches which have traveled long distances: miles: sighs: light years: tremblings … upon her belly, which is upon her belly, for every touch of her is a touch of herself: this the revelation: this the Ascension which is not word or thought among them during this Moment: this the inseparableness; the Truth that there is nothing but Unity, nothing but Oneness: that there is no male as metaphor; no Couple as simile: it rings from the rafters, this announcement that "Zav is nothing!" not a thing: not a sperm: not a zygote: not a child: not a presence: just a way of Remembering Her: of being Memory of Herself: this one self: this singular self: this Only Self: Without Which There is Not Other: into this otherlessness is Lilith/Priscilla/Lily/Prissy: all of which is Zav/Xer/March/Mark: all Otherless … the thunder is unleashed: the clitoris is rubbed – That’s the rub!
("The female is but only Switcheroo!")
Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Page 39