CHAPTER 29
"I’ll tell her today," she said to herself, out loud and with a shy hand gesture; then poured another glass – liking to do it glass by glass ever since Lilith had gotten down on her, "Real down, Sister, I’m real down. You’ve got to stop all this drinking!" … Glasses turned into bottles turned into vats: she laughs seeing herself swell-up and become a large vat of wine or a big cistern of beer or a huge distilled bottle – "The bulb type" flits through her brain – a bulbous body – accompanied by "like when you were so fat!" meaning pregnant with the twins: of booze, liquor, witch’s brew, bad water: all words, all flitting, with them swatting at consciousness, entering a phase she seemed more to seek each day now, very aware to herself that she wants it, no longer those denials, the avoidances, the little games: Lilith had forced her – "Bitter? You bet I’m bitter, you bitch!" went unsaid; unconfessed; unfreed … sobriety: "What’s so great about sobriety?" she did fling, not at Lilith but at March, "When I’m sober I realize how short your dick is!" … but it never hurt him: can’t hurt him!: her lament, a lamentable lament: a cry – she accepts "whimper" … "You whimpering, miserable dried up old cunt!" … so why be sober to that and you and you and you? her finger pokes the air, her brain is perforated with each poke, not leaking out but sucking in, sucking in unconsciousness, sucking in the cool fresh breeze of black-out.
But she never told, because she never returned. Today, Cilla slipped inward in her own way; spread her soul and became a seeded egg for flowers on another dimension; slipped so far in that she was slipped out: Hallelujah! she rejoices as she finds herself secure: watching them, observing them as she has observed them before – Oh! she knows they never knew how observant she was: seeing green eyes where others saw none; catching the crudeness of the trick called "Africa" – was I the only one to notice the walls were made of bricks the exact size (she had measured) the precise size the infinitesimally precise size of all the other bricks in every college building? (she came to accept her singularity) … now, they wash her body, now they hold her hand patting it as if tapping out a message ("But only I know the esoteric Code!"), now they kneel beside her bed staring – how else to say it, staring, what some call peering – "Peering" she has heard it stated, heard it urged, heard it pronounced "the way to Truth" … but she knows that she is the only one who ever peered.
:how to tell her? That they’re all wrong. Not just wrong, that they’re Bad. As I’ve come to understand it. Not the jokester stuff of Zav. Not the fucked-brain idiocy of March. "And not your clit is It! foolishness, either, Lil or Lily or Prissy or whoever you are, Sister!" She rolls Sister like steam blistering the air the day Zav’s old monster transport broke down: sssssssssssssssssssssssssssttttttttttttt!
Let me tell you: you all think I was just a drunk –sure, let’s look at that: just a drunk! Sure, but that means all you are is not a drunk. I’m drunk with life, willing to let it inside me – Oh, excuse me, I forgot, first – FIRST TRUTH! – ha – life is drunkenness, not walking a straight line, not a balance – aw, Mark you were always too screwed in too tight! – it’s wobble and faltering and falling-down and wetting your pants and forgetting your body, there, that’s it: forgetting, you all try too hard to remember or to member, to put something together … don’t cry for me – Get away from my bed if you’re going to weep! – never had dignity, none of you, just like robots, think you’d all do well on a Martian Commune – goddess! I’m cracking myself up! …. Lil! Damn you. You ain’t his friend. Were you mine? Not his lover. Were you mine? So, you thought going inward meant he became you, his old metaphor crap, so you looked at me and said: Do I need him? … Awful stuff! Who was the alky, then? You took me like an addict takes the implant: continual injection, just playing with my clit, enwrapped in my clit, exalting my clit, examining probing pressing massaging driving me insane with pleasure but driving me – where?
"We have both. We have the cave and the torch! All he has is simile!" – how can I ever forget who was crazy then? … Why couldn’t I have shown you your mistake?
:black-out:
March played out the scene: tricking the kids into believing that he was struggling to master his emotions; but he wasn’t, there simply weren’t any.
Lilith was seated behind the family ring which circled the bed. Each child blew out a candle. It wasn’t night so it wasn’t dark. But a dusty shade, thick astral cloak settled over Lilith: swirled down from up there, gracefully rolled down her sides to her feet: black-out:
Zav folds his arms, tightens them, in his mind he is hugging Cilla: At last, he hears her whisper, slipping inside!
Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Page 40