by Marco Vassi
Another night I led a relaxation group, during which I offered to take one of the delicious young aspirants into the next room for a massage. She said, “Later.” But when she came around later, I was already negotiating with another young thing for the same treatment. So I took both of them to my chamber. And there laid them down, face down, side by side, naked and expectant, and slowly, with a low droning voice, put them into a light hypnotic trance. From there on it was pure pornography, fucking first one and then the other, my red robes flapping behind me, my holy man’s staff a symbolic phallus propped against the wall. Over my head was the sign I had made two days earlier when, after two weeks of celibate holymanship, I suddenly realized that all my energies were going into other people’s balling. It read, “Stop teaching, start fucking.”
The trip culminated the night of the nude encounter group. Once again I retreated into the mode that I knew best, understanding that no matter how hip or stoned anyone was, there was always a great pool of tension formed deep in the musculature and perceptual systems. And to unlock these orgone knots required little more than having people lie down, experience their bodies from the inside, release their breathing, and enter a yielding and passive state. Ethically, the leader in such a situation should then allow whatever develops to flower freely, and not attempt to structure it in any way whatsoever, but the scene was jumping with groovy possibilities, and I was quite willing to use my techniques for corrupt ends.
I was high on my own potency and on acid; I was high on the continual flow of energies coursing through the commune; I was high on the potential of the human species when it begins to really swing in a beautiful way. And I was high on the sight of a dozen naked women who looked to me as a guru and were ready to experience the all under my supervision.
There had always been an atavistic corner of my mind which harbored resentful fantasies of those men who have been able to command stables of women in sexual thrall, using them to make orgiastic murals the way an artist uses his paints. At a later time poor old Charlie Manson was to stare out demonically from the cover of the major magazines through having mounted the same kind of scene. Of course, the minute one human being uses another, in any form whatsoever, whether as a sex slave or as a corporate employee, he has committed murder. Since we all do this in one form or another, it seemed to me simply a matter of degree. If one were to be a sinner, he might as well go into it on a grand scale. Better a pirate than a petty thief.
That night I gave orders. No one was to remain in the house who was not participating in my class. Several left, and a dozen arrived. In all, seventeen people were ready to get experienced.
I began in chilling fashion, walking among them and glowering. Two or three who made foolish remarks or asked inane questions were rewarded by a blow from my staff. To my amazement, no one got up and wrapped the thing around my head. If one can play a role with enough self-assurance, there will always be enough of those who will take complementary submissive postures. I suppose that if I had had neither a sense of humor, nor an innate capacity for fucking up, I might have become a religious leader of some charisma. I have often wondered whether the main thing Jesus had going for him was a thorough commitment to his paranoia. Who else would speak of “loving your enemies”? Buddha never spoke of enemies. The notion that I was a species of Jesus has visited me more than once, and rarely have I been able to separate the delusions of grandeur from the realistic parallels. For Jesus was just a man; he knew no more about the nature of the universe than you or I. Even God may not answer the question, “Why is there anything at all?” He seemed to have one thing going for him: an ability to persevere throughout the most tortuous bendings which his febrile mind led him into.
I took down the hammock which hung over the entire living room, that cavernous space appointed with the barest essentials — a stereo, tie-dyes on the walls, a couple of roach clips. The assembly came to order. “We’re going to do this workshop in the nude,” I said, “so take off your clothes.” The men were eager but embarrassed; the women were more ready but more reserved. Among them were several of my followers from the Experimental College, and I was ruthless in collecting the proper amount of spiritual tithe from them.
I began in the usual manner, with everyone lying down. The difference now was that we were in a totally private space, everyone had their quota of drugs going through their veins, and I had a wild hair up my ass. I did not know what I was doing; that is to say, although I maintained my technical cool, I had no notion as to my purposes for going through with the scene. At another time, this might have made me wary; but as it was, I took it for evidence that my mind was truly operating in an uncluttered space.
The relaxation and breathing portions went well, and soon there were a number of bodies in total repose. I mentally leaned back to admire the way the candlelight played shadows over thighs and breasts, the way the pubic hair frizzled into sensuous valleys between the opened legs. I went around and pulled arms, lifted legs, massaged necks. I may have been mad at the moment, but the insanity manifested itself in a cool, detached expertise. It was the Adolph Eichmann of Esalen doing his thing.
I don’t know how the affair would have gone if I hadn’t begun hallucinating. Perhaps it would have slid into a friendly orgy, with some gentle and harmless fucking, the teacher taking the ripest plums for his private preserve, and letting the others fend for themselves. But I was struck by a reincarnation flash. Suddenly, I realized that I had done something like this before. I closed my eyes and saw myself as an Aztec priest. Thousands of screaming worshippers were massed at the base of the pyramid; the jungle sun beat down from an open sky. I wore a plumed helmet and a great cape; and in my hand I held an obsidian blade.
The inaccuracy of detail paled before the romance of history. It is another aspect of acid culture that the most illiterate young people can have racial flashes, coming clear from the archetypal consciousness, which teach them more about the smell and feel of an era than the thousand dusty tomes pored over by the PhD candidates in their molelike effort to understand an era by amassing detail. If the young acid head would study history, or if the historians would drop acid, we might have some true scholarship taking place, but none of that is likely to happen in America.
I stood there amidst the bare bodies gleaming dully in the Haight-Ashbury night. I spoke. “Everyone, very slowly, begin to feel where the center of movement is in your body. Find that spot which calls itself to your attention and begin to move from there. Let the stretch be slow, total, and complete. And when that stretch is finished, rest . . . until you find another center to move from. Do this until you are moving freely, rolling and stretching, coming to your knees or feet. It you roll over or touch someone else, let that be part of the experience. Accept everything that happens to your body as you come to a sitting position.”
And for ten minutes they did just that, going through all the predictable changes, the awakening of sensuality, the surprised delight that simple movement could be so rich, the flashes of rich sexuality, and the flow which comes from just being in a room with naked, beautiful, relaxed people. When they had all come to, I sat down among them. “I need a virgin,” I said.
There was a quick shuttling of glances. Clearly, it was an absurd request.
“Well, are there any Virgos in the room?” I said. One girl lifted her hand. It was Adrienne, a student who seemed to hold me in some form of blind reverence. “Lie down here,” I said, indicating the floor in front of me.
She lay down on her belly, her arms at her sides, her eyes closed in complete trust. Her face was full, her breathing relaxed, and her buttocks loomed like cotton candy cones. My throat became dry.
I looked at the others. “We are going to reenact an ancient sacrifice,” I said. “Just relax, and get the sense of a very hot sun burning into your shoulders. See if you can feel the sweat trickling down your arms, and the way the light makes your eyes hurt. You are staring up
at a very high altar where the priest of the tribe is going to sacrifice a young virgin for the health and prosperity of the people.
“Picture the girl, much like Adrienne here. She is lovely, heavy-limbed. She has never known the touch of a man’s lips, the ecstasy of a caress. She has never had the moment of sheer bliss when two human beings interpenetrate and become one body, one consciousness. She has never known love.
“She is frightened and excited. She is going to experience brutal, painful, swift death, before she has even begun to taste the juices of life. Never will she have her center penetrated by the firmness of a man’s passion. Never will she have a child sucking at her nipple. Soon, her wondering eyes will be closed forever as the black blade pierces her tender belly. And, as her soul flies to the gods above, the priest will tear out her heart and eat it, still beating and bleeding, before the hoarse cries of the multitude.”
As I spoke, Adrienne’s breathing became heavier. The others in the room came closer. There was not a one of them whose blood lust had not been touched. All the savage instincts, bubbling so close to the surface, had been given permission to burst loose, and they leapt about in a joyous dance. I had flashes of burning witches and Nazi storm troopers, I saw the sacking of libraries and the ravages of looting horsemen, I saw every viciousness and evil that man has ever committed in his blind rage. All the violence of the species burned in the room that night, and it was directed at the most innocent one among us, the virgin who had done no harm, and had no cause to experience this brutality.
Slowly, I turned her over so that her vulnerable front lay exposed. Her full breasts lay to each side of her torso, her chest rose and fell as her breath quickened. Her legs lay partially opened and her cunt lips twinkled from under the pubic hair. The tension had reached sublime heights.
I looked up into the imaginary Peruvian skies which had become so real. I said a silent prayer to the deities who hovered overhead, waiting for the soul of the girl, and then, with great theatrical slowness, I raised my right arm. I could feel, I had a sense-memory, of a heavy stone knife in my hand. The eyes of the others went half to the girl, half to my hand. I gritted my teeth, and with a savage cry, plunged the dagger deep into her bowels.
Cascading freakiness ensued.
Three of the women in the room cried out; one fainted. The men came halfway to their feet. Adrienne screamed, a long, piercing wail that curled the hairs on the back of my head. She folded in half, and for a split giddy moment of terror, I wondered if the power of suggestion from the entire group had somehow materialized a knife, and whether she now lay with a mortal wound in her belly.
Slowly, the spasm passed, and I saw with great relief that her skin was intact. A general sigh of nervousness ran through the room, and then Adrienne rolled over, to lie once more on her stomach. My palms were wet and my context was blown. All I knew was that there was a delicious naked woman in front of me, so flipped-out she was ready to relive being a human sacrifice just to be able to dig on the passing scene. So I did what an acid-laden Aztec priest and Zen monk would have done. I lifted my robe, lowered myself on her quivering form, and fucked her with rapid, mounting pleasure.
This was the signal for the festivities to begin, and within minutes there was yet another tangle of bodies on yet another floor, and my career as orgymaster was beginning to assume a distinct direction.
After that night, the scene at the commune fell rapidly apart. And I didn’t want to hang around to see the death throes. Half of the original core group had left, and I didn’t have the energy to keep the vortex spinning, to integrate the new people coming through. Crashers appeared at an even greater rate.
Three days later, I lay in the hammock, watching the fog roll in off the Panhandle, and leafing through the Barb. One of the sex ads caught my eye: “Swingers Club — an exclusive meeting place for swinging couples,” followed by an address and phone number. Without any conscious intent, I began making plans to move in the direction of North Beach, where the decadence had a more refined shape. That afternoon, after getting stoned with Tommy and reading The Pit and the Pendulum together, laughing uproariously at that tale of mounting horror, I left Waller Street and went to the freeway entrance to hitch downtown.
Tommy came with me, looking for a ride to Palo Alto. He was dressed in his usual Sherlock Holmes outfit, complete with checkered cape and hat. His general air of unreality, and the fact that he had no thumb on his right hand, made him a most peculiar hitchhiker indeed. “Tommy,” I said, “you don’t have any thumb on your hand; how can the people tell what direction you want to go in?” He thought a moment, and said, “It doesn’t matter. Every direction leads someplace.”
I left him standing there as I got a ride heading north, and had no knowledge that the gods of mirth were waiting in the wings and already snickering as I made my way to Broadway and the commercial wing of the sexual revolution.
5
The club consisted of the two top floors of a three-story building. On the ground floor was a belly-dance bar, with girls imported from Eighth Avenue in New York, and deriving ultimately from Brooklyn. North Beach was, of course, the publicized home of the beatnik era, and the City Lights Bookshop still hung in as a relic from the old days, with Ginsberg or Ferlinghetti or Snyder occasionally showing their faces, looking like refugees from a psychedelic Mount Rushmore.
The area is now mostly topless-and-bottomless, interlaced with pornie movie theaters and topped with the transvestite revue at Finocchio’s, where the tourists gawk in derision and hidden envy at their fellow human beings. The commercial-entertainment strip is surrounded by three utterly distinct areas. There is Chinatown, which provides, for all its bustling, an odd note of busy quietness as its members continue in their steadfast refusal to be assimilated. Thousands of newly arrived immigrants cough their lungs out in squalid rooms, while their more prosperous brothers operate the lacquered stores along the narrow streets. The young Chinese hoods, reacting against the hundred years during which their people have been the niggers of the West Coast, are letting their hair grow, and travel in small packs at night, snarling at the fat white faces along the strip. Next door lies the Italian section, with its usual complement of pizza places, espresso joints, and funeral parlors. And overshadowing all is the new Bank of America building, San Francisco’s first true skyscraper, defying the San Andreas fault, and announcing the power of American imperialism to Asia.
The swingers’ club was the mongoloid brain child of an ex-used car salesman, ex-masseur, ex-bouncer named Jim, who summed up within himself all that was wrong with the business mind of Western man. As usual, when meeting such people, my admiration for his ability to manifest all the ills of civilization within a single distorted personality far outweighed the trauma of spending time with him. Jim had a mind which was incapable of perceiving anything except in terms of its possible income. He spoke with clenched jaws, and with a fervor ordinarily found only in maniacal gospel preachers and politicians on the make. The one thing which saved him from being a total monster was his mammoth ineptitude, a pervasive inability to bring any project to a successful conclusion. Like other anal retentives, the energy he used to conceive his ideas obscured any grasp of larger issues, and he spent untold hours with pencil and paper, figuring out the smallest details of complicated schemes whose salient feature was their total unrelatedness to reality.
The idea took shape — coagulated, actually — when Jim met Harold, a fifty-five-year-old millionaire who sustained himself on the twin pillars of lechery and alcoholism. Harold was the son of wealthy and crusty old landowners before whom he lived in mortal terror. For his personal fortune of some three million dollars was tied up in lame-brained business ventures which threatened continually to fail, and if his parents learned of his life-style, they would cut him off without a penny in their will. He was without ready cash most of the time.
Harold was surrounded by leeches and sycophants, people
who understood that a fool and his money are soon parted. What it took them, and me, some time to learn was that this was such a fool that he was permanently parted from the bulk of his money, and had but the merest leavings to play with. He did nothing but promise futures, and this ought to have made me suspicious. But like the others, my venal vein began to throb, and critical intelligence became infatuated with this pigeon. Two in the bush got to seem mighty attractive.
This was the nature of the crew that populated the club. The essential idea around which the club was supposed to operate was a simple one, and in all fairness I must note that, were it anyone else but Jim running the place, it might actually have got off the ground. The Bay Area is peopled with thousands upon thousands of couples who, for one reason or another, have unsatisfactory sex lives and are ready to try drastic measures. They have seized upon the notion that more is better and, in one of the saddest marches since Napoleon approached Russia, have embarked upon a program of sexual expansion.
Now, there is a germ of validity in that approach. It is the same notion which fired Pan some fifteen years ago when he started Kerista. The difference lay in the fact that Pan had no fiscal motives involved in his scheme, although his mode of being warped had equally baroque ramifications. Pan is a great bear of a man, looking more and more, as the years go on, like an Old Testament patriarch. Since he has a brilliant mind, since he is thoroughly uneducated, since he is intolerably right-wing in his politics, and since he can chew LSD tabs like candy, he started a Utopian factory, spinning out the world’s most grandiose schemes since the days of the Socialist Utopians in the middle of the nineteenth century. His name should rank with Butler and Bentham.