‘I’d love to see, or smell, anything you want me to.’
‘Careful,’ she teased, quickly kissing the tip of my nose. ‘A girl might take advantage of such an open invitation.’
I settled into a comfortable chair and watched her perform a ritual of preparation, quite ready to be taken advantage of in any way she wanted. She moved amongst her shelves and implements like some improbable alchemist purifying from the gross to the subtle, measuring powders and oils into a pair of heated thurifers. As a final step in the process, she scraped tiny amounts of resins into the mixture, using a spatulate knife with the bold confidence of Van Gogh working his palette. A silken, ghostly vapour began to rise from the censers as she finished and knelt beside me, grasping my hand.
‘What do I do?’ I asked, already becoming more lightheaded.
Again she laughed, musically and with just a hint of prideful anticipation. ‘Oh, just do what comes naturally. But first, just breathe.’
Thus began our first ‘trip’ together. I must perforce use the terminology of the sixties, for these shared rituals with her would acquire the ceremonial quality I later saw amongst dedicated acid-heads trying to synchronise their vibes before the molecules reached critical mass: choosing the records to play, the swatches of cloth to rub, the psychedelic artworks to peruse, preprogramming themselves. Yet no matter how many such events I witnessed, I doubted that many of them had the opium-eater intensity, the sheer sensuality, of the chemical adventures I shared with Virginia.
After a few breaths, I could feel the changes starting. On one level, I was quite aware of my surroundings - I was in a big shed in the backyard of a most unusual family farm, part of me still worried that her mother might come in and create a scene - but on a higher and more resonant plane of consciousness, I was drifting into another place altogether. No, we were. This was not simple ‘smell’ in any way; the carefully mixed aromas permeated my entire being, and those fifty million olfactory receptors were all kicking into overdrive.
We were now in a mental and perceptual space that evoked a windswept seashore: ocean breezes, tangy yet not exactly salty...warm white sand...weathered timber with a faint tarry resonance. I felt utterly at peace, yet fully energised, my skin so sensitive it was almost painful. Her hand burned exquisitely. Her face, at that moment, was that of a Pre-Rafaelite Madonna - transfigured with beauty, but also smouldering with desire. When I bent over and kissed her, our flesh melted into one essence. How we moved from that first kiss into her bed, I cannot remember. We were following currents that flowed outside of normal time.
She was still a virgin, but she knew, instinctively, what to do, and at the time I could only marvel at my good fortune. That first sexual encounter made every other in my young life seem callow and fumbling. By simply responding to her movements and words, by following the hidden instructions in her small cries and moans, I did the things she wanted, when she wanted them, and inhaled for the first time the scent that would be the most precious of all: the deep marine sweetness that rose from between her flawless thighs.
How long, how many times, we made love, I do not know. The entire night was a continuum, one long unfolding melody of touch, taste, texture. She and her magic became my only reality. At some point, of course, we passed into sleep, tightly spooned against each other, our shared moisture drying like new skin layered over the old.
She woke me at dawn. My mouth was dry, and my body reluctant to move. She brought me a cup of coffee.
‘You should probably go before it gets light. Before Mother gets up. As long as we don’t flaunt ourselves in front of her, she’ll mind her own business - I often spend the night here, if I’ve been working late - but it wouldn’t do for her to find us in the same bed.’
I accepted that explanation; why not? I still felt a little trippy and disoriented, but I also felt like the luckiest young stud alive. Whatever the ground-rules were, I would abide by them - anything, anything at all, to prolong this idyll. As I groggily pulled on my shoes, I looked at her in wonder, observing the preternatural brightness of her eyes, the bruised, endlessly kissed flesh of her wonderful mouth, and asked: ‘Why did you choose me? I was a stranger who just happened to wander into your life. Surely every guy within a ten-mile radius of here has come to court you.’
In perfect seriousness she answered: ‘I chose you because you did just “wander into my life”, at exactly the right time, and in exactly the right place. That’s how all of the women in my family have chosen their mates: by instinct. That’s how my mother found my father, twenty years ago - one day, he just appeared in The Gardens, looking for something to cure a sick horse, and as soon as she saw him, she knew. It was the same with me.’
I should have thought long and hard about those words, but now that the spell was wearing off, and the light was growing brighter outside, I accepted the more mundane imperative of getting my horny young ass out of there before her mother appeared and accused me of deflowering her daughter. One last embrace, a willing promise from me to return next weekend, and I was gone, into the dewy grey dawn, circling around the house through groves of cobwebbed bushes and backing my car, as quietly as it would go, away from The Gardens.
Until that moment, I had entertained vague plans of getting a summer job while living with my parents in Charlotte; classes were over for the year, and I was in fact one of the last students still inhabiting the dorms. On the spur of the moment, I decided to stay on campus and register for some elective Summer School courses, just so I could be closer to Virginia. My parents made no objections, and coughed up the registration fees without complaint, even though my sudden dedication to academic betterment probably puzzled them.
So the summer went, and then, in September, I began my Senior year. My course-load during the summer was light, and I was so full of energy, so overflowing with vitality, that I began writing my first novel. By mid-July, I had fifty thousand words on paper, and was taking new chapters with me when I drove to The Gardens for my weekly trysts with Virginia.
Our meetings assumed the quality of ritual: I would arrive in the late afternoon, we would take long walks in the woods and fields surrounding the old house, eat the supper her still-invisible mother prepared for us, then adjourn to Virginia’s quarters. At her request, I began to read my book to her, and she always listened intently, encouragingly. And I, in turn, followed, as best I could, the progress of her own research and experimentation. At some point in the evening, always, she would prepare one of her aphrodisiac aroma-cocktails and we would begin to make love.
In my mind, gradually, a fantasy began to take shape: we would marry and I would live with her in this beautiful place, writing my books while she tended her beloved plants. This was a vision she seemed to share, and if it differed from my own in any details, she never spoke of them.
When I later became so cynical about the drug-and-music culture of the sixties, it was partly because nobody I observed during those years enjoyed a ‘trip’ comparable to the ones I took with Virginia. She was a virtuoso in her field, all right. Sometimes the set-ups were as simple as lighting custom-rolled sticks of incense, and other nights they were quite elaborate. She used censers, small fans, a kind of vapouriser, some glass gizmo that resembled an alembic, even a rotating fragrance-wheel with different pockets of compounds that spun slowly past a fan pointing in our general direction. I never knew beforehand what the conjured ambience would be - delicate and evanescent (putting us in the mood for slow, patient, Tantric sex), or raw and earthy (turning me into a young stallion and Virginia into a growling, insatiable, slut) - but it was always powerful, all-consuming and filled with wonder.
Her mother never interrupted us; if I had been thinking straight, I would have wondered a little more about that. Instead, I simply accepted it as part of the pattern. Her mom would not be the first parent I had known who voluntarily chose to ignore the evidence of her daughter’s sexual activity. As long as she didn’t actually catch us ‘doing it’, Mother could pr
etend we weren’t. Or so I reasoned it, and Virginia said nothing to indicate otherwise.
Months rolled by. I studied enough to keep up my grades, continued pounding away at my novel, and measured time’s passage only from one visit to The Gardens followed by the next. I remember only one moment of personal friction during the entire autumn of 1964, and that was when I casually said to her: ‘There’s a really good concert at the college next Friday night. Would you like to come with me?’
Her eyes grew hard for a moment, and her smile forced. ‘I can’t do that. I belong here.’
‘But don’t you and your mother ever get out, go into town, even for groceries?’
‘Mother’s not able to travel, even a short distance. When we need groceries, someone brings them to us.’
‘But your mother is an adult - surely she can take care of herself for one evening! I mean, Jesus, we’ve been seeing each other for almost eight months, and I’d like to show you off to my friends.’
Suddenly her nostrils flared with something close to anger, an emotion I had never before seen on her lovely face. ‘I told you Mother is not well! Why do you think I spend so much time in this place? Just so I can make cow-laxatives and sleeping teas for the local granny-ladies? I’m working on something that might make her better, and I can’t just interrupt that work. I make time for us on the weekends because I love you, but I love her too, and I’m dedicated to helping her, as much as it’s in my power do to so. You’ve got to understand that.’
By the time she finished speaking those words to me, she was actually trembling. I did not know why my simple request should have opened a fissure in the hitherto perfect surface of our relationship, but obviously it had, and the very thought sent an icy tendril of fear through me. At all costs, even if it meant accepting some fairly eccentric attitudes on the part of my beloved, I wanted to preserve the idyll we shared...forever, if I could.
There was another uneasy moment on the weekend before the start of Christmas vacation. I had kept in touch with my parents with regular phone calls, but had neglected to pay them a long visit since the end of Summer School. As much as I would have preferred to spend more time with Virginia, I knew it was incumbent upon me to go home for Christmas. She understood, or at least gave the appearance of understanding. And that last night before Christmas break, she made love like a madwoman.
In the morning, as I prepared for my now-customary predawn departure, she kissed me rather sadly and said: ‘I’ve made something for you. Keep it with you, and when you want to remember The Gardens, or me, just open it and smell.’
She handed me a pot-pourri bag about the size of a tennis ball, closed off with a drawstring. I started to open it and take a sniff, but her hands prevented me. I marvelled briefly at their strength, wondering whether I could have forced them open without having to break some fingers.
’Not now!’ she said fiercely. ‘When you’re away, and when you want to be reminded of me. Only then. Promise me.’
Of course I promised her, as I always did, without really thinking about it.
* * * *
Rather to my surprise, I enjoyed going home. I had not spent a night in my room in almost a year, and I was pleased to rediscover some of my own artefacts. I also renewed contact with some high school friends, one of whom had just been drafted into the Army and was feeling decidedly nervous about it. I started reading the papers and watching the evening news again, and became uncomfortably aware of the widening war in Vietnam, of the first wave of student unrest, of the seismic disturbances looming in the world of pop music, fashion and attitude.
On the night before Christmas Eve, I and my friends held an impromptu high school reunion party at someone’s parents’ vacation home on the Catawba River. Two dozen ex-classmates showed up. We rented two kegs of beer and every other person in attendance, it seemed, brought either a bag of pot and a pipe or a cigarette case full of pre-rolled joints. I’d smoked before, of course, like virtually everyone else I knew, but it had been almost a year. By spending every Saturday night since May with Virginia, I had missed most of the partying around the college, and, of course, she and I had no need of dope - the stuff we inhaled was every bit as potent as any cannabis.
So I took a few sociable tokes for auld lang syne. And then a few more. Pretty soon, I was stoned as a bat and so were most of the others. As we all got higher, the inhibitions got lower. I began to notice that one of the girls was coming on to me - a peppy little brunette, ex-cheerleader, on whom I’d had something of a crush during my Senior year. She hadn’t paid much attention to me then, probably because she was the main squeeze of the Student Council President, but her priorities had obviously changed during the interim. She had heard that I was writing a book and wanted to hear All About it. Under the circumstances, I was happy to oblige.
One thing led to another, while the party-buzz swirled around us and the Rolling Stones growled on the record player. Before I knew it, her hand was on my knee and she was leaning closer, an unmistakable predatory gleam in her eye. Part of my mind was already rationalising: I was not, after all, engaged to Virginia, not in any formal sense, and I was tempted not just by my previous adolescent lust for this girl, but by the looming chance to put some of my newfound sexual expertise to the test. Ten long days remained of the Christmas break, enough for me and the cheerleader to have some good times, not long enough for any real commitment.
While I was marshalling these arguments, I was also acutely aware that I needed to piss like a racehorse. I excused myself, promising to return soon. Don’t go anywhere, I said to the former Miss School Spirit. Oh, I wasn’t planning to, she chirped.
But the bathroom was occupied and there was a line. So I sneaked out the back door and wandered down to the boat dock. The night was cold and clear, windless, and the sudden drop in temperature had a momentary sobering effect. I went to the edge of the dock, unlimbered, and enjoyed a long meditational pee, fascinated by the concentric ripples I was making on the slick, black, surface of the old river.
Then here came Old Man Conscience, just when he was not wanted: Virginia and I had made a commitment to each other; I took her faithfulness as a given - after all, I had never seen another young man in her company, nor heard her speak of any - and she obviously felt the same where I was concerned. Our lovemaking had been epic, deeply satisfying; there had not been a routine moment. Did I really think the cheerleader had anything new or exciting to offer, other than the guilty pleasure of novelty for it own sake? As I zipped my fly, the cold of the winter night suddenly struck me deep and I began to shake. I knew, with utter certainty, that if I went back inside and consummated the evening’s flirtation, that Virginia would know. No matter how many showers I took, she would be able to smell the effluvium of another woman on my skin, in my blood. To Virginia’s hypersensitive nostrils, the coldest ashes of guilt would leave a murderer’s spoor.
Resolved to be strong, I reached into my pocket and took out the pot-pourri bag she had given me. Just before re-entering the house, I stood in the shadows, untied the drawstring and took a deep hit. In these ingredients, somehow, magically, she had trapped the essence of our nights together. Memories flooded me with painful immediacy: nocturnal gardenias, jasmine, roses, the scent of sunlight in Virginia’s hair, the roseate milk of her skin after a night of love.
I staggered back into the muggy warmth of the house, into the reeking banks of cigarette and pot smoke, and with my first breath became violently disoriented: as in ‘bad trip’, my senses going into hyper drive and taking me places I did not want to go. I held on to the side of a kitchen counter and tried to fight down the nausea that threatened to engulf me. Perhaps it was just a chemical reaction between Virginia’s pot-pourri and the marijuana fumes, or perhaps my own perceptions had grown much keener than I’d realised until that moment, trained (so to speak) by all the olfactory adventures I had experienced in The Gardens.
There was a garbage can nearby, and I could smell everything in it: stal
e beer in the bottom of cans, wet cigarette butts, old popcorn, coffee grounds, the brown remains of a salad. Even worse was the vile, urinous stink of a litter box tucked away beneath the kitchen table. One of the revellers walked by, on his way to the beer kegs, and I could smell the failure of his deodorant, the sulphurous wisp of a silent fart. And, with shocking and disturbing intimacy, the rusty odour of tampons. I could look around the crowded living room and tell which of the girls was having her period - including, I was surprised to learn, the one I had been flirting with.
My system could not process any more of this unwanted information. I retreated into the backyard and violently puked all over some azalea bushes. The stench of my own vomit made me even sicker, and for a moment I thought I was going to pass out. Gradually, however, the cold air washed the worst of the smells from my head and I began to crawl out of the mood. I knew better than to attempt another reentry; what if I had a flashback and disgraced myself in full view of my friends? And as for the cheerleader, all desire had been quelled by that sickeningly intimate whiff of her menses - not to mention the fact that I was now liberally splattered with up-chuck.
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 59