CHAPTER 7
The bond between Priscilla and Lilith had also grown, stimulated by their shared views on Courting and Fixed boys. "Boys" was how they were taught to call them, implying a playfulness if not a sense of subliminal superiority. The Course, for them was also simply that they could have "All the boys!" they wanted...a guiding slogan of their sexual training, the élan of Courting. "Take as many as you like! As often as you like!" Always riding a chuckle or a gleeful look shared by teacher and students.
Both girls had few questions to raise, at least not in the early years. For who could repel the command to "Play!"? To stop childish frolicking simply with your sisters and girlfriends and open-wide the world of playing with boys—to enter the Game?
"Boys" with whom they had sand-box and kick-ball played now and then but with whom as both transformed found that they, themselves, were Play...this, the Game.
For this they had patiently, thoroughly, and expectantly prepared. The Course claiming one year apart for both sexes, not a total segregation...they danced, they played...but a mental, spiritual isolation. During The Course girls were taught about boys and boys about girls. They were each taught the same "The Grand Story." Again, the practical import—not the whole meaning—of "The Ascendancy." Again, few even vaguely intuited that there was a "fuller" Story of which they lived but a part.
Few knew more than the Gathering Day rendition of The Ascendancy. For them it was not a matter of a church or a religious sect, for, indeed, there were no such divisions, only the Gathering Day as, in itself, the expression of their spirituality. Theirs was a heritage of centuries past which "Once Upon A Time" issued forth in a "Revelation." There being no need to discuss an Apocalypse or a "Latter Day" for there was no sense of "former days." It was simply Revelation, all effecting "The Ascendancy" which defined both the Beginning and the End of The Course.
The songs they heart-stomped and shouted to the rafters; the murals festooned in every Gathering room; the theater presentations in dance, eloquent elocution, visual stimulation; the annual festivals and picnics ...in every sense, dramatic and comic, they were fed this Grand Story.
"Ascendancy" was insight—Generation: a New Sight, a way to see the other in ways they had not seen, although many had flirted with the hormonal mysteries before The Course. Who hadn't been bewildered by a racing heart or sweaty palms upon seeing a naked body: a breast, a penis, a movie of adult delights...yet, how little they did know by thirteen as most were totally boggled by the instructed vision and reality as the first weeks of The Course unfurled.
Insight: a sparse interpretation of the fuller vision given to them was grounded in the reality of the spiritual character of sexual intercourse. "Spiritual" meaning "full sexual presence" as it was harbinger of the fuller Galactic Embrace. Not an intellectual concept, nothing ethereal, for what The Ascendancy primarily effected...and was effected by...was the release of human energy into palpable creation. This was a creational First Story as palpable as the enticing flesh of the female or male next to you. ("Creation is you!")
This practicality was quite attractive...fascinating in its mysterious aspect...to nubile and bone-creaking bodies which were growing in every direction: outward, inward, upward and downward. "Downward is the opposite and contrary of Ascend. It will take you your whole life to grasp this," a heavy sigh but one exuding an almost giddy optimism, "but there is a pull downward which defines the pull upward." Young Priscilla missed the meaning of this...pubescent Lil did not. Downward is Bad.
Lil had reason to pause as this word was mentioned...to remember her first encounter with the downward pull—with "renegade individualism" as her elder Aunt phrased it: "aimless masturbation." "Girls, are fated, are trained to detect Bad!" ...Lil jotted in a corner of her notebook. She would not share this with Priscilla. Maybe never?
"Bitch!" he had shouted. "Only animal imagery," she says to no one.
Their practical, erotic focus was to be always not downward but upward—on "The Ascendancy." The Grand Story described a time of cosmic, sidereal change—one altering, expanding, imbuing from quark to atom to molecule to cell to flesh to mind to spirit. Most astoundingly...but accepted almost glibly...it caused an actual relocation of the Earth, itself, in time and space. "A new reality. A new day. Dimension. Axis. What we celebrate on Gathering Day. That we are a People whose bodies and souls are One. As we touch one, we touch the other. As we Play so do we Ascend."
A formula from Gathering Day catechism:"We ascended. Each and every individual. We are now a collective people, a communal "I." We are each and everyone Earth-body, planet creators."
Repeated over and over during The Course are the core verities:
"Mother and Father created Male and Female to Play."
"To Play and so create the world, the total universe."
"As Mother and Father have created, Played us, so do each of us become gods and goddesses."
"There is life on this world, this Earth, and we are called to be creators of eternal pleasure by Playing on other worlds and filling the universe with the holy flame of erotic Coupling."
The grand vision they were given was that of the infiniteness of the cosmos. "The dead planets...they are dead, waiting for you to give them life! For you to Play! To become First Male and Female—Parents. Throb!"
"Live Long and Prosper!" carried a coded message and it was to be given to that boy with whom they would eventually Couple—become First Male and First Female. Until that person...How or When or Where he would emerge, neither knew...until that boy could hear the hidden message, that he was her god so she his goddess, until then they were wont to fling themselves wildly into the erotic Play search. Until this secret message was acknowledge by their Play-mate, it was fitting and proper that other girls could share the boy(s) the others had brought tonight!
How eager they became, within this vision, to Play with the boys!
At thirteen, Cilla and Lil were primed, ardent to learn the full breadth and depth of Play. With open hearts, curious minds, and feral bodies they swooped down on the first pack of boys each found.
Cilla confided: "I wanted to ask, Why are the boys Fixed? but it seemed...silly."
"Someone did ask in my class, and the teacher said, Don’t ask! Tsk! Then all of a sudden she burst out laughing— ending with fingers locking lips, tossing the key away, and conjuring a smile none of us then knew as Cheshire."
"You know what we all heard? That boys are going to become females—at Coupling. Even so, if they are good at making babies, then they become goddesses. Heard that, too?"
"That, and we have to teach them how to be fathers. They’re so wild!"
"Geesh! Me too. I almost asked my Dad once, but thank Our Mother I never did. Imagine!"
"Oh, yeah!"
In The Course the boys were told, "Girls are like green apples. They can be picked, but they need time to ripen before they can be eaten." It was a simple and time-worn simile, but as always, it still needed much pedagogical interpretation.
Exasperated, one teacher Mark remembers, almost shouting, aping the action he spoke so forcibly about, "You need to hoe the ground. Yikes! Are you a thick-head? Were your parents farmers?...Hoe the land! Yikes! Your penis is your hoe. Do I need to say more?"
Mark especially liked that image—penis as hoe.
"What was it like?" her inflection left no doubt...the first time!
Cilla grimaces. Places her hands aside her temples; lets out a moan.
Lil chuckles, but is also empathetic, deeply feels Cilla’s pain.
"Someone told this guy, Saddle up! And I think he forgot to tell him how to dismount!" A deep-bone-crushed groan, shared by both.
"Just how many Sisters have that story! It’s amazing."
"It gets worse." She raises a hand to halt Lil’s comment. Cilla wants to fully share—empty—this memory.
"He must’ve flunked The Course...I don’t know. But he had this thing about "Getting it five times my first night!" Can you believe that? So, what
does he do? He brings along another guy. Know why? They calculated how long it took to "re-load"...I know, I know, but he did really say that! Maybe it was the only way he could get himself up, I don’t know, but you know how we were trained," Lil duets it silently, "Do what you must! So, it’s one on me, then the other, then he’s back, then the other...you get it clear. It hurt like hell! I wanted to say, "This is Play! And Playtime is over!" But I was too happy, too dumb-broad Greenie happy just to be Playing, and making them happy! Cripes!"
Early on, it soon became clear to both girls that the boys had been taught "things" they hadn’t. However, each was a quick learner, a fast study.
Lil—"I’m sure, yeah, looking back, they wanted us to be ready for mothering. Not shy away from Coupling. For the unexpected. All the demands on our bodies."
"Possibly." Unpersuaded.
"It took a couple of older guys, two on their "Last Games," right before their Twentieth—they helped me figure it out, not that they intended to do so, however, no."
"And...?"
"One was deeply Bad. I’m sure of that, now. He was a great lover, at least in foreplay. Smooth. Comforted me. Pleasured me first. Adored me." Sighs wistfully. But the full memory knocks her sober, "What a trickster this guy was! I’m all absolute clay in his hands and he starts talking about pre-Ascendancy sex. I had hardly heard about such, so I wasn’t paying much attention. He was getting hot and talking fast about some Dumb Adam’s rib and Dumb Adam’s cock...then he’s right over me, right there with his cock—a nice fat one I must admit!— wagging it at me, so I’m thinking Suck him...but what does the bastard do? He masturbates right onto my breasts, splats right onto my right cheek. I was stunned!"...Cilla is perplexed, a bit fascinated..."I mean I would’ve hand-cranked him or sucked him dry, but it was more than masturbation, there was this look in his eyes, a deep burning, an anger, and I knew he wasn’t beating himself—he was beating me! It was horrifying and horrible." Lil had to stop. She always had great difficulty in even remembering what happened next.
Cilla leans over and puts her arms around her; draws her head to her shoulder. Lil sighs deeply, but does not cry.
"He looked at me. Stood there totally naked. Limp penis. Not taller than me. Not threatening, not going to strike me...which I would’ve not have known what to do, anyway!...just there, I see him, frozen in time and space, and a voice... I didn’t see his lips move... a voice rose all around him, like that—"I am the life-giver!" Great Mother, I’ll never forget ....!"
It was a strange evening. Cilla could feel it; feel Lil getting strange. But it was, as such, oddly engaging; warm.
What could follow that story? Nothing. And nothing did. They had been instructed, prepared to deal with Bad however it might manifest itself—"Do whatever you must!" This command secreting that knowledge primal and sacred—"Special," it was termed...given only to Sisters.
The two...somehow, propelled by what binding force?...got up and went about the day. The hour being dinner, so they went into the kitchen...began breading soy-chops, chopping greens and reds peppers, some carrots, some nuts, composing a hearty spinach salad...then, thawed out some flash! baked potatoes.
They ate.
Lil brewed some coffee—Cilla’s favorite: Viennese. Cilla cut the chocolate cake she had brought over not too long ago...Not stale, as she sliced.
Evening set, and a time to continue unfolded.
"They never prepared us right—maybe we couldn’t be prepared, I’m not sure, but about the boys not wanting to talk...just buck and firk and Play and Play, all hands and tongues and "Round-the-World"...energetic little firkers, aren’t they?!" Both laugh...its a shared rippling laughter which takes them deeper.
"But this guy. He wanted to talk. I felt him brimming over with talk. But I knew I didn’t want to hear."
"Why’d he leave?"
"Don’t know."
"Have you ever seen him, again?"
"No." But said with a hitch of hesitation which makes Cilla also hear a Yes.
(3 counts: dead-beats.)
Cilla’s curiosity is burning her. "You have, haven’t you."
Lil inhales her question, but exhales nothing but a "Hmmmm."
It’s another cup of coffee and another slice of cake.
"Not him. But someone like him."
Cilla waited...but then she knew! Bad.