CHAPTER 6
So had it begun. Their lives. Marking back to these months, his junior, her sophomore, marking not just their lives together as a couple but their lives as a family: collective, extended family, coupled as a foursome in a curious way like trains linking...a claw and a clasp and a clunk and a chugging forward.
Mark and Zav had both just turned twenty. It was as eagerly awaited as thirteen had been. Back then it was "The Course" and the green light to "Courting"—have sex...all that you wanted, whenever you wanted, with whomever you wanted.
To uninhibitedly jump naked into the rimless pool of women-flesh. As much and as many as you could grab as you dived under. Deep down into the watery embrace of "females." At least women who weren’t twenty. For twenty was the next stage, the mark hit for entering "Coupling"—marriage and having babies... and all that".
Men were unFixed at twenty.
There was always bragging when recalling the Fixed Years. Preferring for the first years to call it "Being Fixed" rather then "Courting"—a term deemed too romantic, too gushy, but one which came back to them at seventeen, which was not a new level as much as a turning-point, a fine-tuning, as in "sighting the target." But..., Ah! those Fixed Years!
"A hundred, no more, no less. Set myself a goal. And kept it." Zav could almost believe Mark. Knowing him now this full year as not just a linear thinker but as the quintessential accountant. One who pleasured to fill in the boxes in sequence: columns-rows. Check them off. Could see him forever—On another planet!—working a spreadsheet with names and dates and data about each and everyone.
"For my rookie year, I couldn’t get past foreplay!" He sounded ironically wounded. "They’d start stroking me and I’d rocket to the moon." He was working hard to suppress laughing at himself as he once-was. "When I got enough control, I couldn’t get past fellatio! Gods and Goddesses, I must’ve ended up hand-firking more broads than any man alive!"
Zav rolls his eyes: Great bar-room trawler, this one!
Mark was just getting himself worked up...he liked his own yarn!
"By sixteen, I’m so good I could break two of them before I pulled the trigger!" He sips at his beer, "What was it like for you?" but he really didn’t mean this as a question to be answered, just a way to keep Zav, or anyone, still on the line. "I mean it changed in the last two years. Maybe not for you. Did this happen?" A serious tone. It nabbed Zav’s attention.
"I realized I was being used. Know what I mean?"
Where’s this going?
He took a long chug. Paused. Looked beyond, not at Zav. Spoke in that way which reached something inside of Zav which he wasn’t aware Mark was reaching.
"Do you know—Truly know?—how many men just one woman can have in a night?" A flush of unexpected innocence.
Zav almost got out an answer.
"This Mirabell. She was the first to tell me, no, brag, bitch! I felt used before I even screwed her." Anger neither paused to handle. "She told me she had just had five guys this night!" Halted. Not looking at anyone; listening to himself. "Then said she was just an apprentice. Apprentice?!"
"Bitch!"
"What did she mean, apprentice?"
"I don’t know. Was too bewildered to ask. Too, too embarrassed." Brain-firked is more like it!
There was a bond forming, swelling, engulfing them.
"I’ve thought of this."
Mark—Has he heard me? Still locked in upon himself.
"That’s what poetry means to me, guy. That what is, is not. Are you with me?"
Surprising Zav, Mark answers in a clear, controlled voice, with an alert, "I’m with you."
This is how their bond grew. It was based on the simplest attraction, that of diametrically opposed forces. In Mark’s world there was simply the grid, the spreadsheet, the columns for plus and minus. It made all of Zav’s puffy and mystical and airy and magical language—"It’s all metaphorical, fellow, that’s it!" —made all that clear to him: "Plus. Minus. Always one with the other. Never without."
So, the poet and the accountant bonded; welded joint.
("Bullshit!")
Zav felt impelled to share. He was responding to Mark’s curious energy, his alien way...was himself lured to drop some data into one of the columns. "Am I plus or minus?" But what difference does it make?
"Something like that happened to me...really. It was an older woman. Ya know, just a week or so from her twentieth. Me, just after my first Cauldron. Damn, if it hadn’t been for that, I would’ve never touched her. I think, I'm sure!...I was her last greenie." Greenie weenie, he did not utter! "Taunted me. If I hadn’t been so stupid, I would’ve been pissed. But I was green. Toot! Toot! weren’t we all!"
Both doused and aroused their cocking-fire with spirited flammables.
"She must’ve had someone who was Bad. Don’t know. Really confused me. She’s the first one to call me "poet"...before I even started reading. That’s what "poet" means to me, I mean what I saw that evening, what she made me."
"Shit, Zav, what’s the fucking point?" Garbled and paced in funereal beat, Mark was getting oiled and nasty, this the first and last! sign of his impending sloppily soused drunkenness.
Zav had learned, quickly, how to avoid him when this alarm sounded, but tonight he wanted to hang in.
"The point’s, she screwed me! ... Screwed me up good. Fucked my mind. Played me like the harp. Picked me, string by string. Plucked out my soul, guy, believe me."
"What’s the fuck she’d do what’s the fuck she’d do what’s the fuck she’d do?!" screamed as he threw one empty, then another...Mark was up and headed for the hard stuff: Ouzo.
Zav was rocked. It was the same fierce energy. As on that night. But now, instead of avoiding Mark, he couldn’t wait to share...shit, to drain!...the bottle of Ouzo.
Within the half-hour: ardently drunk. Racked and soused and having kicked at the furniture, burned a bushel of incense, stunk up the place with stupid-drunk vomit. Moroni!! goes round Zav’s head. Firking Moroni! Firking Toot!
"She kept you? What was she, an Amazon?"
"Wasn’t her strength. Fuck, I’m no schwarzeneggar but no broad can keep me down." Sloppy, dribbling speech—each decoded into clear text.
"But I couldn’t leave, guy. Like that. Like I’d never been firked like that. Like," he puked, a small puddle, into a blanket: no need to pause..."Like she wanted me there. Not like the others. Ya know, we had the green light. Just ask. They couldn’t refuse. It was Rule Number Three. They’re there for our pleasure. Capital P, ole fart face Oblonsky sez. Can hear him, "Capital P, my boys. Mother and Father calls you to capital P Pleasure!"...Hell, we knew the girls liked it—didn’t we?" Not wanting an answer. "We’re Ascended! Gods and Goddesses. Building-up our love to cosmic love. Like vitamins and exercise. We’re needed to firk, daily. Ain’t we Ascended?!"
Both had passed out. Hours. Wretched sleep, but not for the sharing.
Zav woke. The smell was foul; he dry vomited. His head was dead. "Shouldn’t have done this," but it was a lecture he would not finish. Got up and went to pee.
Mark was in dreamland. But somehow still hearing Zav. Still watching Zav as he tells his story...in his dream actually seeing Zav, actually feeling as Zav feels...being a poet!
"You are my baby, you know that?"
"You’re a babe yourself, lady."
"No." She slaps his hand; odd. "My baby," as she strokes her belly.
"I’m safe," Zav leans towards her, to assure her.
"No male is ever safe," uttered with a twist he did not, could not catch.
"No. No. Look, I’m safe. Trust me. I always use rubbers, just in case of miracles!" and he half-snorts a laugh as he says "miracles"...dangles the shriveling condom in front of her face.
She lays back; eyes staring at the ceiling. All he need do is tap her knees and she’s his, again.
"Understand," as she slowly, ever so slowly widens her legs, "Understand, you’re my baby." Words as he penetrates, "I’m not your babe!"—he
rs.
Zav’s okay. Almost the words which woke him up. Waking up, catching the many pains of his body, his bones, his gut. Instantly catching Zav in soundless motion cleaning up the room: heavy clouds of orange blossom incense suffocating foully; liberating a moment’s displeasure.
Watching Zav. Still like the dream. "What she said," he wanted to testify, "I understand that. She knew my Game was really just beginning. That the roles were being reversed. She was being moved from asset to liability. Coupled. Get it?"
He knew Zav got it.
Now, to get Cilla and Lil. Hmmmm.