Chapter 47: Dreamslipping
“Love as if you are no one’s enemy.”
They stand six paces apart and bow slightly as they say it. He folds his hands in prayerful gesture and then opens his palms, raising them high, looking intently, passionately at her. She, with hands at her side, steps towards him, coming to rest within his alluring gaze. He lowers his hands and cups her breasts. Slowly, they move towards each other, he inclining and she stretching up on her toes. They kiss.
Released, she turns and from the fireplace mantle takes off and sets in front of them a candle. Thick, three of his fingers thick and blood-red. Although she has blues and whites and all colors, today she selects as she feels, a darkling rose petal of the universe. Lighting it she says, “As we see our light, so let us recognize that it is but the center of our darkness.”
“Right. Truly.”
He touches her face, fingers slightly dipping and dotting her flesh like soft raindrops.
They make present the enemy each seeks not to become.
“You are daughter of Eve, my enemy.”
“You are son of Adam, my enemy.”
Then he places the hibakusha straight up on a small, round wooden block whose sides are inscribed with their names, gouged in trembling letters, stiletto scored.
Against the wall, as the candle brightens, is cast the hibakusha’s quivering shadow. It makes present a form, one of Her, a goddess. Flash! Aaren detects Her presence, feels Her tangible touch, the room warms, for a moment Aaren is transported, bewildered, aghast, frightened as she looks around and all is devastation, she’s seen pictures of Hiroshima but never smelled the stench of burning flesh as now, the emptiness of the air as if it itself were dead, the bodies, just bodies everywhere, she turns, She comes, fingertips under Aaren’s chin, “Daughter, heal the earth!”
Strangely, this most abstracted of metals, twisting between dimensions, delivers ethereal presences from . . . from where? Out of the hearts and souls of the hibakusha? Whatever its source, it fills the wall tonight.
She has come. They accept Her shadow.
“Love as if you are no one’s enemy.”
He has come. They accept His shadow.
“Love as if you are no one’s enemy.”
They kiss again. Then together bend and settle, sitting down touching her calves to his thighs, she pressing inside him, he like mountain cave, she like mist floating in on a brisk wind.
They sit quietly together, listening to each other breathe, consciously alert to the many little presences of the other.
Breaking their brief meditation, he picks up a peasant’s shawl which is in arm’s reach and draws it around them. It is damp with smells of past enactments, and its roughness matches their own state of desire: its fibers are coarse and uncolored, its state, raw wool.
She invites him. “I desire to become you ... I desire for you to become me.”
He responds. “I desire to become you ... I desire for you to become me.”
She’s a bouquet of flowers his arms have swept, magically, from out the air.
He’s a roar of thunder she’s drawn from the sky and tamed with sweet cooings of endearment.
For an unmarked stroke of time they sit, slowly allowing the other to fill up their senses. He is drawn by a faint scent of lilac, an indulgence she allows herself. This entwines with a slight aroma of herbs dancing on her softly hued black hair. Both mix with the dusty odor of her blouse, the residue of her day’s work at the school. It is her: Aaren in all her subtlety and complexity.
For her, it is his size that always impresses. Jared’s presence settles upon her like a cape. It’s as if he emerges from the floor, rising, hovering above, and his manly odor is all about her. It’s a mingling of naked heat and musty early evening manliness. Yet, now as always, she finds distraction in his eyes. They betray his mounting impatience. He’s burning tonight!
For him, her foot, still booted, resting high upon his thigh makes him shudder. He slips off her short furry mukluks, strokes her up and down, ankle to calf to thigh. He loves the swoop and naked line and up-rushing arch. It’s that which is source to her liquid movement. Liquid Fire!
In his mind’s eye, Jared is watching her walk in front of him and as ever he flushes from the sway of her. She moves as if about to take off—fly-up and away into the clouds.
He leans towards her blouse and unbuttons it. One at a time, while pulling the bottom out from her skirt. Having loosed her, he lets his arms fall away, so that she knows he wants to observe her, behold her with eyes admiring, lusting, hungry.
He patiently tracks her as she opens her arms and causes the shawl to drop and her blouse to slide fully open. In another practiced motion, she unclasps and frees her bra, half naked, ever a mite of flesh in comparison to him, but with every slight motion making present her inner vortex of yearning.
She stands, fully undresses, letting the blouse fall away, the skirt drop. He picks up her blouse, glides it over his face, rubs it into his beard, inhales her essence.
She invites, lures him. “I am candle ... I seek the matchmaker ... for I need fire.”
He kneels before her, struggles to discipline his hands—they seek to betray his iron self-restraint. Her mere presence easily sets him off on a wilding wide-awake dream. He is drowning in a torrent of erotic juice. His whole body is sodden, drenched with the sperm of a desire so strong he fears that his hands will disengage from his arms and tear her to shreds. He’s mad with desire to have her. Possess her. Penetrate her. It’s as if his toes are ten little cocks ... his fingers ten medium ones ... his tongue a larger one ... and his bodily self so large and gargantuan a penis that he bawdily laughs at seeing himself pull it up and position it atop her southern mound, there positioned like a phallic cannon all ready to Boom! But he has worked and labored to master himself and be here as heartfelt sculptor not as a fuck-warrior. He has, all day, warded off the many temptations to simply take her, have his way. He dispels, Fuck the bitch!
Wait for the moment! he reprimands himself. Through sheer strength of will he holds at bay the churning, ravenous monster moaning throughout his belly. Belly. Grrr, I want to eat her! I want to be in her belly!
The moment comes: As agreed, he repeats now what they’ve chosen to chant and image themselves with – I love you. I am not your enemy.
“I love you. I am not your enemy.”
“I love you. I am not your enemy.”
They do this to make present what is novel and fresh between them. Chant it because the sexually violent ways of the predatory Warrior are always there in their minds and hearts, as past is ever present and future ever past, and all must be acknowledged before they can be dispelled.“I love you. I am not your enemy.” Through this shared mantra, Aaren and Jared make conscious the sexual violence of the predatory Warrior. He who dominates and conquers her. Rapes. Who trivializes and casts off the females after she has quenched his sexual desire. Booty. Who obliterates any memory of Her or her as all he can see is Him and himself. You are my flesh. You came from my rib!
It is the mantra of a fresh beginning. It enables them to exit the mythic world in which they grew up. Together, they want this. To start anew. Be fresh bodies and souls, each for the other.
He half disrobes, exposing a heart-heaving chest, with thick pectoral muscles that flex and delight her. He kneels down again, kisses her, embraces, sighs. Standing back up, she un-girdles him, assisting as he steps out of his trousers, then both kneel. They kiss lightly, several times, then tear into a passionate dive, deep and deeper.
She pulls back, “Whoa!”
He says, “No whoa!” and eagerly tugs her back. But then he freezes. For she tenses, has a hand on his chest pressing lightly, holding him back. Her eyes are closed. Lips shut. It comes to him that his small act of lustful snatch has evoked a past act of violence—a strike at her person.
Both are on hold. They loom. He struggles with inaction. He wants to know her heart. He whispers
, tenderly, “I am not your enemy.”
Within an awakening smile, she drops her hand, then places both on his shoulders. His fear recedes and they settle back and play a little. She runs a hundred nippy kisses like skipping stones on a lake around his lips and over his cheeks and down his neck, finally stopping for a large smacking suck on his neck. She kids him, “Oooo, a hickey for sure!”
It is time. He takes her hands, holds them and indicates with a head nod that he’s inviting her to bed. She flirts with her eyes blinking a shy, “Me?” He glares back a firm, “Yes, you!”
They lay down within the flickering candlelight and frisky splashes of moonbeams. Like jigsaw puzzles pieces they are a fit, one for the other.
He begins gently and tenderly stroking her body, all her length and fullness. She is eyes closed, allowing herself to be washed by the soothing energy flowing from his palms. His gentleness eases the tensions of the day and sets loose couriers to parts of her heart and soul announcing that the time is now ready to move with him to the next dimension.
He rolls her over and initiates a more serious search for her inner self. He begins to deeply massage her. This greatly pleasures him because it is a knowing of her that completes what he felt when he first called her Liquid Fire.
For him, she, her body, her skin is a great pleasure. As he presses a calf, hot sluices shoot up his forearm. As he tends her feet, taking each toe by toe and balling his hand to work the small of her insole, small fires flare-up, slowly, one by one burning a pathway zig-zagging up and through and all over the inside of his chest to his heart, fingers and palms radiating intense heat, he feels connected to her organs, as if moving through precious channels in her feet, touching from this lowliest of her earthly parts the fleshly innards which carry her intimate passions and store both her cool and fiery emotions.
As she relaxes, lets down her guard, his cock becomes primed to the point of self-propulsion, and it is here that he looks at her, helplessly, vulnerable and knows “One strike!” just one strike and “Take no prisoners!” and into her like a rampaging Warrior he could dive and from that dive delve into her passions through panic and fear and steal her booty! Take her prized womb and spurt all over it with his flags of conquest, ten thousand soldiers of sperm at his single behest ... he has to turn that violence of capture to capture himself, to let her have her body, not take it as booty, to feel the fullness of his cock and then slowly and carefully suck it back into his inners, re-deposit it in his erotic Cauldron, let it simmer and brew, so his crazy self of discipline agonizingly laughs, It’ll be better the second time around!
Grrrr, he aches! Tenderly, she’s aware of his long-suffering. Yet it must be so, for if they are to reach beyond, they must first find a balance—one of pain that carries deep pleasures. Quietly steeled, she has herself labored to trust his exploration and become each time increasingly more relaxed and vulnerable, pliable and submissive. Open—submissive to the greater force that they have conjured together. She knows that this simple body-wandering ritual is what he needs. That it evokes that something from beyond himself which puts him in touch with other phases of himself. It’s a ritual that holds him steady, for she knows the scorching wind that whips around him, and she knows she is this wind, she is not fooled by her own howling, that which she once acted out when at him with slash of stiletto, that which scarred him on his soul as another had upon his face, all this she knows, so now together they are a terror and as a terror the vendor of the most stupendous violence, more bombastic than any Weatherman booby trap, they together work towards the moment, drawing the darkness around and within, swirling it as to make fire, and she is at him as flint sparking against flint, her flesh is his kindling and he moves to her back, fierce fingers so delicate upon her, she is fully aware that with one snap, “Just a twist of his wrist. Exactly, he is that strong,” that’d she’d be dead, for she has been murdered within his embrace—finds ancient Sarah glaring at her in fright as Jared embraces as if she were the Lamb of Sacrifice—and she knows that he knows and that he trembles knowing that it is he who has the dagger always as part of him, his body being the dagger and the bludgeon and the axe, fully the Warrior’s instrument of murder, so does he find but they are finding it together through this ritual and their shared quest, this insight, this harrowing feeling that mingles dread, desire and delight at the instant moment before entry of each into the other.
“What is it that you see?”
He says, “Your heart in my hands.” Greedily, together they drip her blood into their mouths, she licking his arms and sucking the drops from his fingertips and together they return the heart, restore it as they enter, cock and cunny.
“Come touch my heart with your knife of flesh,” she invites, and he enters her deeply, feeling as if he is slicing her with his cock, entering he sees her halved and her heart throbbing, “Come touch my heart with your lips,” and he kisses her heart, “Come fill my heart with your blood,” and he sees the connection, himself sliding as penis attaching as artery and coming inside her filling her with sperm and she, “My heartbeat is your cock pulsing,” and he cries—sound like a sharp blurt as a rusty lock snaps and cracks open, then his tears puddle upon her breasts, his head now lies exposed upon her chest, she almost dead from his weight but holding him to herself with soothing pats, long and short, calming wild beard hairs and the Medusa flight of his head hairs ... he falls quickly into a depth of sleep marked not by time but by sensations.
He feels himself being bathed, as child in the baptismal font, as back one mystical day LSD-tripping in the Minnesota Northland floating in a lake with late afternoon sun and all the world glistening and he the lake, so it comes and he awakes so aware of the immediate, so sharply cut off from her, feeling the full weight of his frame and edge, he bolts away from her, Gasp!
Within this Gasp! she is all and more and he nothing and less. A mere carrier of dying seed, a seed that only lives as she so haughtily selects just one, a single servant, a slave to her passion for life, to impregnate her. In this Gasp! all that the Warrior fears is so deeply revealed to him, and he knows why the Male God lies about his body being the birthing body, why males fear the worship of Her through her body … Gasp!
Yet, it is exactly this for which he has come. Exactly this that all his time Inside has prepared him for. She is now his way to find their shared Inside, their intimacy.
He steadies his breath and slowly moves a hand towards her head, placing his fully stretched left hand upon her, sensing that he could palm her like a basketball, he works fingertips upon her scalp, moving like a tap dancer stepping this way and that over the long filaments of her raven hair, some matted by perspiration, he dabs at her forehead with his discarded tee shirt and rolls her back to front and kneeling upright, arms raised, he yells, “I am not your enemy! I am your dreamer!”
Enthused, he thrashes his arms about, jumps up and Whoops! into a wild dance, prancing from one side of her to the other, making unintelligible noises. “Whooos!” and “Booda boodas!” She giggles, he stops. “Funny? This is funny?” He plunges down upon her, faking as if to land on her but rolls with her back and forth lightly tickling, squeaking tiny laughs, for they have slipped through the comic knot, the absurd, the plunge into the giddy and the giggle as necessary moments of distraction that allow the fury of their passions to settle down. Settle but not die down! Rest a bit. All merely the pause before their quest begins, again.
For their quest is yet done. All has been but prelude. They are now poised to move beyond being sexual athletes whose “love-making” is all Fuck! and “mutual masturbation” and being sexual objects, erotic toys, one for the other. They know that moving beyond can only rise from within themselves. They seek whatever it takes to transform into, to birth and be birthed as a new body, as a coupled body. And it is working, for he has already added to their mantra a key that unlocks one more doorway through which they walk into a coupled freshness. “I am not your enemy. … I am your dreamer.” r />
I am your dreamer.
They know that they want to stretch their bodies and souls for more. To become a fuller body: coupled, cosmic, fresh. They know that they must dream this body. It comes to them, mutually voiced, “Dreamslip. Beloved, let us dreamslip!”