by Marco Vassi
The fantasies of faithful fatherhood had taken a long while to snap under the terrible pressures of human reality. Sexually, the hunger to be had by a man grew in my mouth and in my bowels. Lucinda couldn’t fill that role. At times I would attempt to get her to sit on my face and pin my wrists down and grind her cunt into my lips and teeth. But she didn’t have the energy for that, and she didn’t have a cock. A few times I almost cried out to be fucked, but some force trapped the words in my throat. I needed male energy.
One afternoon, as I was sitting quietly on the sand, panic seized me. I felt trapped. No more men. No other women. Locked in the toils of a Freudian family, but now as the father instead of the child. I shrank in horror. And yet so insanely was I gripped in my own image of how I thought I would like to try being, that I couldn’t break out of the prison I had built myself.
Lucinda’s body began to seem like a coil of flypaper. Her skin became porous, sucking. For ten days of that period we fucked three or four times a day. Long intense dance dramas and depth contests. I was Sisyphus trying with focussed anguish to get the stone balanced on top of the hill once and for all. And I reached right up to a bare millimeter of the exact top, lifting the ponderous machinery of our personalities with us. I was wrung dry of sperm and energy and desire, and she was squeezed tight in an effort to suck the final drop from me. I pulled out of her cunt and crawled up so that my cock slid into her half-open mouth. She lay inert for a moment and then doubled up at the waist, covering the length of my prick in a single gulp. I sank into her throat and began to rock back and forth, jerking off on her tongue. I fucked her for a very long time, in her mouth and throat and head, so deep and so hard that the sperm exploded into her windpipe and she coughed and sputtered, and when she had come to, deliberately spat it out.
That night I stopped being faithful. And I began to question the wisdom of letting the baby be born.
She apologized sincerely, and after that dutifully swallowed every drop of come I discharged into her mouth, but that was not the same as when we were innocent of the way in which we were meant to destroy one another. Once we had removed ourselves from the struggle to become, sex lost its urgency.
Francis and Bertha were making let’s-fuck eyes at one another across the table. Lucinda announced her decision to go to bed. The people in the next room had vanished. I walked down to the beach, lay on the sand, and got lost in the stars. I pulled on my cock slowly until it stirred and waited for whoever else would come down to the beach, wanting. I wondered what relationship there was between the erection in my hand and the astonishing universe expanding in searing blackness before my eyes. Reality and fantasy are never quite so right as when they are motionfully intertwined with all of their externals in one another’s internals and diddling and sniggling SNORK WHEE THUD again.
III
“Krishnamurti is a moving hypnotist.”
Bosley’s voice dipped in easy cadences at the other end of the line.
“But please, darling, I need you to fuck me,” I said.
“Ouugh. So free!”
He put me off and put me down in that gentle teasing way which made him so exciting. Lucinda was due back in the evening, but I was ready to swing in to the city and spend a day with Bosley. The man mood was on me again. And I wanted to yield, not to analyze. After all the years of battling with labels, I knew that any attempted judgement of sexual behavior was stupid. And yet there was no peace. Was my desire for men an escape from my inability to make it with a woman, my fear of having a child? Or was my repeated effort at marriage a refusal to face the fact of my basic homosexuality? Instinctively, both bisexuality and celibacy seemed evasions. There was nothing for it but to continue the daily process of observation and struggle, finding out where my impulses led me.
“Why won’t you let me come over?” I said.
“You’re getting like a sad old whore.”
“That’s all there is baby, the rest is just talk.”
“Well, then, let’s talk business. What exactly do you want?”
“I want it slow and heavy, like the beat in the Mighty Quinn. You know that kind of ride?”
“Honey, this is me you’re talking to. Umm, go ahead, I’m listening.”
“A long time for mouths, maybe a half hour. Just for kissing, for lips, for teeth, your teeth on me, and tongues, then tongues, and breath. And feeling the heat in my chest burning, making me dizzy, making me weak in your arms. I rub my body against yours, squirm against you. Oh darling, please, let me hold myself against you.”
“Take your time.”
“You then, biting my nipples. You grunting in my ear. You licking the soft flesh on my inner thighs, making my knees tremble. I get small like a baby, helpless in your arms. You inserting your finger, moving it deep into me, slowly, letting me feel you, and feel that you feel me, and holding me like that, suspended, squatting, hanging, impaled on your hand, black pleasure, and your mouth on my . . . on my . . . “
“Were you going to say ‘cunt’, baby?”
“Oh yes, my cunt.”
“That thing you got there is a cock, sweetheart. You ain’t a woman. I don’t like cunts.”
“Don’t push me away.”
“Suck it.”
“Yes, make me go down on you. Such a long time on your cock. Sliding my tongue in the hollow of your throat and licking your hard chest, tasting the salty sweat on your belly, lapping over all your skin, into the musk of your hair, and finally having your heavy beautiful cock in my mouth. For such a long time. Slippery warm thing. Mother’s nipple. Father’s censored place. The soft of the ridged rim. The bulk of it in my throat, gagging, gagging, suck, oh my Cock, oh my most Eternal Cock. Whimpering, Shuddering. And strength from you burning onto my lips. Let . . . me . . . lick . . . it. . . . Fuck me in the mouth, stuff your cock in my mouth, put your ass on my mouth, hit my mouth . . . “
“Baby, you off inside your head again.”
“Then bring me out, make me real. Take control of me, use me, hold me. Slide down so our bodies feel the length of each other. Put your hardness between my thighs. Feel me open. Feel my legs part and raise up for you. Put it at the opening. Fuck me. Fuck me in the ass. Do it now.
“Oohhhh, Jeeeessssussss.”
“It’s all yours. I raise my ass so your cock can more beautifully sink hotly in. Your eyes burn into mine. I can’t hold myself any longer. I am slipping and slipping. Oh, excuse me, let this wave of rapture pass.”
“That’s once. You gonna come a hundred times tonight before I’m finished.”
“Stupid prick, it’s not you who does it, it’s me. I let you make me come.”
“Get on your belly, bitch.”
“Yes, now I can’t defend, I can’t hold back. Your knees come in against the backs of my knees. How you strain into me, how your cock excites me. You slant it up, and then thrash to each side, and then slant it down. You cover all the inside of my hole. You fuck me thoroughly. Jolts of electric fire run through me. My fingers twitch and I bite the pillow. I am being fucked. I am being fucked. There is nothing in the world but being fucked. Now you call me. You have me look into your eyes. I look back over my shoulder, my neck bent like a bird’s, and your wet warm mouth covers mine. My legs open more, and I can feel you between them; you push your pelvis between my cheeks; I feel your hip bones against my ass, your cock inside me, inside me. I am naked to you. Open and bent, my cunt completely empty to your thrust. My cunt. My breasts are punishers for your hands, my mouth a receptacle for your spit, my eyes the record of my thoughts. You know it all. I am you. I have incorporated you. You push me to my knees. You hit hard at the deep tender spot. I feel pain. I hurt. I beg you continue. I push into you. Oh, snarling black animal at my neck. Oh, fuck me now. I give you now. Fuck me now. I have me now. And all the sounds I make into the night as you gyrate and erupt inside me.”
There was a long s
ilence.
Then a low laugh.
“Baby, you are too much.” He paused. “But I just can’t make it today. When are you coming in to the city next?”
“Maybe ten days.”
“Call me,” he said. And we hung up.
The problem is confusion. What is one to do with a club foot of salad? All my attempts to deal with living as a problem embroiled me in technology, either of metal or of the mind. And I couldn’t find the relationship between seriousness and silliness. The leaders laugh, but they have no humor.
I sometimes want and sometimes do not want. When I want, I move toward the process of consumption, romantically known as sharing. I seek out those people who have a complementary need, and we service one another’s vacuums. This is simple commerce. All the rest of it is soap opera for the slaves. Obvious truth, distorted by the masters, comes to seem contemptible in the face of sanctimonious official lies.
What was I to make of my shamelessly flinging myself at Bosley? What relation did that have in relation to my relation with Lucinda? With her, in the beginning, the pattern was classic: giving-and-giving, giving-and-taking, taking-and-giving, taking-and-taking, and mutual isolation. Every exchange we had, from fucking to fighting, fit this paradigm. The honeymoon period released in us enough energy for me to see the structures clearly. But she got sloppy, and I got lazy, and our days lost their sharpness.
It was becoming clear that I was interested in the dynamics of interaction with people, and the accompanying changes within myself, and it made almost no difference who the other person was, so long as he or she maintained a certain level of energy for the period we were together. In short, the person was not important, merely the person’s effects.
When Lucinda and I began fucking, there were always fireworks. The first penetration past the tightness, the joy of the discovery, the plunge into virgin virginity. Then there was the race through the Kama Sutra, working out all the possible acrobatics. “Look, you get into a full Plow posture, and I’ll support myself on the windowsill, and enter you from above and behind, and oh?! oh! OH!!” and etc. And when we had finished with all that we were left with the boredom which attaches to the stick when all the ice cream has been licked off. Then, no matter what rationalizations came to the fore, it was simply time to get it on with someone else, fresh energy, new variations. I had come a long way away from simple values.
My consciousness seemed to have become the product of the story. To me, life was a book, was a film. I lived in the physical centers and the mind. The only emotion I didn’t find vulgar was cosmic sadness, ultimate poignancy. And I have had the full spectrum of advice, from intimate friends to therapists to gurus, and they said things like, “You’re schizoid,” or “You’ve lost touch with the Other,” or “You’re afraid of your feelings.” Yet, what of it? Can I be other than I am? Not all birth defects are physical. To be crippled in the emotions is as real as to be crippled in the limbs. One does not say to a man with a paralyzed leg, “Why don’t you run?” Then why does one ask of a man with a heart hardened through too much sensitivity shattered, “Why don’t you weep?”
Francis came downstairs.
“And you’re even colder than I am,” I said.
“Bertha’s sleeping late. What shall we do?” he said.
We set out to walk to Cherry Grove together, three miles down the long strand of white sand and stunning blue sky with clouds, and the constant swish of wind and tumbling of waves. The Grove was the cultural center of the Island where the homosexuals had claimed a township of their own.
“Can you imagine what it would be like if all the homosexuals were given a state, say, Wyoming, and could set up whatever kind of society they wanted?” I said.
Francis smiled to himself, setting up the projector in his own mind. “The first overwhelming mood would be one of exhilaration,” he began.
“Right, the seeming freedom from all sexual restraints, the new sense of purpose, the rapture of discovering a sanctioned identity.”
He nodded. “It would probably come together under some charismatic leader, a gay Lenin. MetaFag. The queer Moses.”
We came to the first house which marks the beginning of the Grove after the long stretch of government preserve known as the Sunken Forest. The vibrations changed drastically, instantly. The people lying on the blankets in this area were not pretending, as did the denizens of the straight sections of the beach, that nothing was happening except what could pass muster on a family TV show. Here, the sense of presence was palpable. Everyone was aware of being there, and how he was there, and how he saw others being there, and how they received him. A constant flutter of extremely subtle communications in the most sophisticated body language went on all the time. The air was charged with attentiveness. My skin bristled. I looked over at Francis.
His face was set in a mask of unperception, as though this were merely a place to look at, not to relate to. I wondered whether he were actually straight. His drawings denied it, as did occasional oblique comments. I assessed him physically, and found, to my surprise, no intimation of sex. I couldn’t penetrate my own condition to sufficient depth to know to what degree I was suppressing desire. Given our extraordinary closeness, fucking ought to have been the natural conclusion, yet we hardly ever even touched. Perhaps it was a tacit understanding on both our parts that the absolute lack of sexual involvement is what allowed our friendship to continue.
“The entire sociology would be arranged differently,” he continued. “There would be almost no provision necessary for children, and the nature of education would change radically. Time would tend to disappear.”
“I wonder whether the sexes would be integrated?”
“There would be no overt or legal discrimination, but a subtle sexual apartheid would insinuate itself, and male and female ghettoes would come into being.”
I grew excited. “Imagine the scenes when the new nation begins. The wild and open cruising, the public love-making. Total euphoria.
Francis drew in a sharp breath and seemed to snap to. For the first time he registered his surroundings. “So this is Cherry Grove,” he said.
“You sound disappointed,” I said.
He looked over at me. The obvious had suddenly become seductive. There was nothing to stop us now from stepping into the act itself. Then there would be no barriers. And perhaps the problems with the women would dissolve. Yet, as we hovered at the edge, a blinding sense of impossibility paralyzed our wills, and we said no to the new, refusing to transform it into the old.
“It’s better not to even bother,” he said. “I need one person at least that I don’t have to pretend sexual passion to.” He paused. “And anyway, you’re not my type.”
We cut in from the beach and walked down the boardwalk in silence for a few minutes. “And then,” Francis began again, “they discover that they still need people to take away the garbage, and that they have to put together some form of monetary system, and they have to get into the whole supply and demand hassle with food, and that they have hostile neighbors.” He paused. “The rest is history. The bright ones learn how to get the stupid ones to do all the shitty jobs. They gather power and hypnotize the rest with the rituals of government and religion. And they find that they are addicted to hatred and violence and lust and guilt and jealousy and all the sins which are part of the human heritage. There is dissatisfaction. Radical groups challenge the established authority. Heresies arise. And a new voice is heard calling for the rights of bisexuals to be respected. But MetaFag dies and the faggot Stalin comes into power. Executions happen. Happy Homoland becomes another tyranny.”
I laughed. “Imagine how things would have been if people like Trotsky were gay and . . . “
Francis turned and pinned me with one of his steely looks. “Oh, Trotsky was gay,” he said. I was caught up short. It seemed stupid to wonder whether he was putting me on. I took him
for a tour of the bars and scenic sights, and for a walk through the meat rack. But he got very uptight, and we left quickly, to trudge three miles back to Seaview.
When we got back to the house, Lucinda had returned and was in a panic. But it was general, and she had no way of letting herself know how she felt. I was too taken by the scope of the day to notice where she was at. She latched on to me and made herself unpleasant in unspecified ways. It was as though she were a child and just wanted to be picked up and held. But at the time I didn’t see that. That’s the whole of the matter. I just didn’t see what she needed. And she was unable to ask.
We began bickering, and then arguing. I went into the bedroom. She followed, and within seconds we were shouting at one another. I began to walk out. She grabbed my arm. “Let me go,” I yelled. “Don’t you see my state? If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to hurt you.”
A revelation crossed her face.
“You want to be hurt, don’t you?” I said. “Well no,” I shouted, “I’m not going to play that game, I’m not going to beat you up.”
I turned to go and again she grabbed my arm. I went blind with rage. I flung her from me. She threw herself at my legs. I yanked her head up by the hair, lifted her bodily, and threw her back on the bed. She fell on her spine and lay there for a moment in total open confusion. I felt a charge of sexual energy. I leapt on her and slapped her very hard across the face, two times, three times. And then I jumped back and ran from the room.
I stayed away for over an hour, and when I returned she was wiggly and warm, wanting to cuddle. I was, in turn, properly gruff and tender.
It is appalling the way in which we mechanically trip through the most tawdry scenarios. And still there is no escape. Knowing what we do seems to have no effect on our continuing to do it. What if I killed her one day in just the same manner I had beat her up? Such things happen. The single most apparent item in the jumble of our interaction is the fact that the ante is continually being raised. There are more convincing ways of travelling through the void than on a see-saw.