CHAPTER 43
“The voyage is into unmarked territory. All we have are negative maps; tricky stuff. Maya. Illusion. Words and Stories which makes us disappear. Abandon us. …All we’ve done—all of us...you may not like my saying this—but all we’ve done is fuck each other. Cocks and cunts. Fingers up assholes. Been Tricks! …We’re just a weird type of celibates.”
No one had liked what Bertha said, but so much of their life had been about not-liking. “May you live in interesting times”—a Chinese curse.
Celibates. It was hard to accept. That they had never really “had sex” or “made love” or “been intimate”…just fucked. Mutual masturbation: “Because we don’t really sleep together. Not as to dreaming. No we come, get off, shoot our wad, count our orgasms...then abandon each other—dream Adam and Eve all over again! Why?”
“It’s all the Shade Mother wants. Just seed. Her triumph is artificial insemination. Who’d’ve grasped that as the mythic act? The sacred ritual? Of The End Time!”
“Reducing the cock to a syringe. Ha.”
“Controlling. Mechanizing. Not just the seed but the egg. Everyone’s a surrogate—our unique type of celibacy!”
Dalores: “I fully understand—no, feel—more, was empowered by the Shade. Frank was going to be just mine. My own cock. No one else’s. I needed the kids, and he was useful. Can’t not admit that. Confess it. Just saying it makes me giddy!” Whew.
“When I looked at a guy, all I could see was cock. Phallic imagining. That’s it.”
“Didn’t you ever want to screw another guy? Never?”
“Sure. We all have those fantasies. But it’s just that, screwing. The penis as a screwdriver.”
“I thought I gave you the Go on that?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“You screwed my butt. Why not Jack’s or Sarge or some pretty-boy?”
“Who says I didn’t?”
Lonny: We wanted to father Dalores’ babies, but the issue was mothering. Did we trick ourselves?
Alicia: I didn’t care about the babies. I wanted Frank.
SunBlossom: Hmmm.
Janet: I had Frank by not having him.
Pat: Whew! Are we nuts or what?!
Family—we came back to Family. It had heat. It had perversion. It had turmoil and violence and quiet sleep in the nursery. It had skin. Above all else it had skin. And skin was our map. We realized that.
Our male was not fathering. Our female was not mothering. We were not even children. Just Orphans. Abandoned. Strays. More to the point: Alien Offspring. “In this vale of tears…” Blah blah blah.
It began with marrying. Husbanding. Wifeing. Four-Squaring.
Four-square—parents and children: mom, dad, brother, sister...not nuclear but truly nuclear—fission, fusion, elemental heat, the breaking of bonds: ionic. So they knew that they were not only “children”—that they had come from the Biblical Dream which dreamt them as God’s Little Ones: Innocents…Innocent, yet Evil: “Evil in the sight of God!” Thrown out of the Garden—Why?
To find their Good and Evil—all that Innocence wasn’t. To find it in a new sense of parenting, not the dependency of woman upon the man...not where the female is derivative of the male, and the male simply expressing submissive femaleness.
Four-Squaring meant for each and every one to become for each and every other one a mother, a father, a brother, a sister.
But as it started with Adam’s Cock (“Do you believe this Rib Story? Clearly, it was his cock!”) so it had to start with Frank’s cock. His Biblical wand of patriarchal potency. For indeed it was, is a matter of power—of potency; of potentia.
Potentia—potency, power—possibilities...as such “Sacrifice!” Not in their consciousness but through their actions. As Adam’s cock had been given to them by the Shade Mother, so is it Frank’s cock which must be reattached, integrated, re-membered with the Snake—that of Him which speaks with Her.
“Men can have multiple orgasms. When they do, it’s then that they find their female.”
Multiple orgasms—having Frank be married to them all: each and every one. Having no way to turn except into an embrace, into a clutch, into a lick and kiss and fondle. Imagining not just the come, the spurt, the jerk and masturbatory ejaculation but the cascades of his presence, his potency, his intimacy...wearing down time and space by having him intend so many, all at once, being faithful to everyone...loving every aspect of them as female—identifying and confronting and cracking open all that floods from Her in Her many manifestations as shes—the Corn Sisters.
He turns this way: Dalores spreads her legs.
He turns that way: Alicia arouses his cock.
He walks: Bertha flashes her boobs.
He talks: Pat goes down South.
He eats: Red Fox slathers her fingers in honey.
He sleeps: Janet hovers, incanting above him, about him, within him.
He dreams: Lonny scampers across the green grass—bare-assed.
Frank is endlessly coming...flowing...squirting...flooding, watering…baptizing them. Every imagining moment is them. They dream him...deep sleep with him...drawing from out of him the potency of Adam, before.
They meet to discuss—as if a poetry reading with commentary: “Who as Her am I when he is like this? When he is Adam, before?”
“We’ve worn his dick down to a nub—male clit!”
But they knew it wasn’t about Frank, but about themselves. Their imaginings. Their wearing down themselves as much as Frank, wearying so that they do break the bonds of space and time, split open their skins, crack open their slumbering brains, and as they lay down: one to one, one to many...they fall, slip, glide, step, jump, careen…flow into deep sleep—collecting the unconscious...impregnating themselves.
Female—womb and tomb: this we know. His dick lets me know, that. My hot pussy lets me know that, too. But when I spread, I’m wings. The sky is my skin. When I arouse, I’m the wind. Flowing. Unbounded. Everyone’s breath. Part of every man and every woman. I’m parent of all. When I flash, I’m glint and dazzle and the fleeting. Not serious. Like babes at play: puppies chasing their tails, falling all over one another. When I’m South, I’m the inside, the cup, the bottomless pit. Everything is mine to consume. I’m devouring power. All is sucked into me! With honey I’m the Queen of Fairies. All come to love me, my Sweetness. My sisters. My brothers. Little children. Old people. I am food. And as I’m eaten so I am full. When dreaming there is no boundary. No heaven. No earth. The skin is totally fluid. His being is my being; my being is his being. Breathing is the breath of all. No flesh except as marker. No identity. Just imagining and reimagining. Being totally fantastic. No rules. Totally out of whack. Confronting cruelty and evil and all that the Shade does bring—but being able to handle it. We’re meant to dream together. This is how we begin, my Sisters, by dreaming, to voyage upon the deep sleep. And so when I scamper it is all play. Playfulness. Wanting to flee but wanting to be caught. For in catching, so I’ve got him. Playfully revealing my everything. Baring my soul.
Male—in this foray into deep sleep Frank is their catalyst, more the remnant potency which Adam was before Eve came. It is the house which is this before. Before sex was only genital...before there was a difference between male and female—when males had babies as their females birthed...back to when deep sleeping was the joy of discovery: exiting flesh, reading it as map, reading the map of one’s beloved as Moon and Sun dissolve into Dream...before…Eve—Her, Her daughters—“It’s all the same!”—this is how they accepted themselves. Accepted their complicity in the laying down of Adam into deep sleep and cutting off his magical cock—this the Snake. Leaving him with only a poker, a prodder, “a fucking tool”—so Bertha cackles!
“Who among us wants it to be magical? Really magical? To know us in our many ways, our guises, masks, to know our magic?”
Miranda: “Where did this evil come from?”
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SunBlossom: “Evil?”
Anna: “It’s just one way of cooking Evil and Innocence, don’t you see that?”
Dalores: “Yeah, sure, but it’s more. For it’s not just abstract, it’s real. Who hasn’t felt it upon their body? Paying the price for the Warrior. Do we really want to continue to create Eve—night after night after night?”
“Maybe we should ask Frank how’s it for him?”
Maybe.
“Swords into plowshares? Hmmm. That’s playful. But it’s not like that.” Big chest-filling breath. “In my mind I just liked the notion. Have to admit, it was everything from titillating to “dirty” to just madness. Having all of you! Each and every one—whenever, wherever—God, what a rush! …But I had to fight it—was I just your sex slave? Something in an experiment—a white rat?! …But I admit—confess—I enjoyed it: madly, wanted to—intellectually: kept telling myself, justifying it intellectually,” suppressed chuckle, “but I did want to figure out what sensuality was, to be had by you, each and every one of you when I wasn’t potent, not in the knock-her-up! way, but in a way which was all of me…you gave me that: exhausted me…I had no fire, sometimes...no lust, no drive…but you found me, found a way, found these other males,” pauses a hard minute, almost holding his breath forever...a burble of anger, “Dalores…sword into my heart, watching her—watching you!—couldn’t stop the sense of betrayal, the feeling…then,” sets his jaw, clenches a fist, “then, being betrayed.”
Was that Good? Was that Bad?
Betrayed—because you were searching for your fuller feminine while all I was doing was getting my dick whacked or slurped or whatever! Sure, male fantasy, but it was like I was not worth your real time, your full time, time to explore me! …At its best I felt like a sacramentum—that tidbit from the Bishop’s bread which was circulated throughout his diocese—in ancient times, whatever, it’s my way of thinking! …Aw, shit, I took your breasts, your mouths, your asses, your hands, kissed you, humped and jumped and rolled and all that…but I only felt like Adam, like I had just one miserly part of you.
Goddam it! As hard as I tried I was only cunt and only making babies...you were fucking me, you as Adam, me as Eve…we just changed skins!
“Golly gee, but we had to do that, didn’t we? Had to get so besotted that we could start out again. Isn’t that what we all thought we were doing? Are doing?”
Dialectics?
“SunBlossom, are you really ready for this?”
For what?
“It’s over. We’re through. We’ve been like just playing around with all this. Haven’t we? Who has really opened to deep sleep? How could we—none of us changed our ways that much—not even you Dalores. Maybe you more than any of us, Dalores. Maybe you’re the one who’s betrayed Frank more than any of us?” Bertha.
Flaming Swords! In everyone’s dreams...preventing entry into deep sleep...chasing out those who scaled the walls. They woke with anger. They sat down to eat breaking storm. The air they breathed was searing hatred. There was recrimination and denunciation and bedlam. “Bitch” and “whore” and “motherfucker” and “asshole” and “cocksucker” and—stake any place on the scatological line and you’d be right.
Liar! Liar! …You’re all Liars!
Their bodies trembled and revulsed and puked and spat and turned ice-cold—they glared acidly upon each other.
Their dances became fuckless orgies...split into minor brawls—“lovers” they brought in, men and women, they stole each from the other...Alicia crashing in upon Pat just as her jackboot came and throwing herself upon him, sucking him, carnivorously...Miranda ripping up Karen’s photo album—right in front of her face, tearing it to shreds with spite...it was months, possibly six, The War had ended, “War in Vietnam Ends” but the holocaust continued...Khmer Rouges of the soul—so they attacked their own; purging; murdering; laying waste…Sally was actually injured by a practical joke of Kunja’s—tore loose a muscle in her eye...no one knows who stole Janet’s prized pots, but more, no one seemed to care...Dalores just withdrew, took the children and played Mommy...drugs were about, not just Jack’s two brief visits while on parole but Red Fox was actually found with a needle stuck in her arm and blood spotting all about—if Frank hadn’t been there, who would have called the ambulance?
So they dropped their own anti-personnel bombs...paid little heed to the horror of carpet bombing…it was all seen so clearly by Anna: fast-food all about, Chinese take-out cartons strewn here and there, cockroaches using them as hotels...pizza boxes and dry crusts hosting ant conventions under beds and couches and bean bag chairs...she had stopped cooking, the oven was sterile…during all this, only Lonny maintained a separate peace, she, somehow—Is it that I am Crone? Too old for them to even care?—somehow could walk between them...pick up some debris and chat with one, then another...she who held it so lightly together...Bertha and SunBlossom just rarely came…Frank, however, slept well, slept deeply.
Truly: How did they all stay together? Why wasn’t anyone killed?
Let’s just say that it is the house...that presence which is more than place and space and address. House as deep sleep locale: a flux within The Well, a harboring of the Conundrum, a launching pad towards Magnificence.
How little they knew that their deep sleeping—despite their conscious analysis and pessimistic conclusions!—was now being so actively, realistically acted out. Little knowing all the presences of Her—and Him!—which had returned...had begun to replenish.
SxZ: Why don’t they get it?
Dreaming together was not what they had anticipated—not intellectually, not emotionally, not practically—but it is what they received. “Beware Gods and Goddesses bearing gifts!” …They were ready, knowing it or not...they were ready to begin.
To laugh robustly.
Frank, himself, was there, every moment if not minute. Delighted—he had to admit to himself—at the passion of their play: Alicia wrestling Pat, pulling hair, scratching...Lonny throwing a potted plant across the room, just missing Bertha...Anna arming herself for her continual food fight: not letting anyone into the kitchen for two days running—it maddened him with delight, all their new selves, presences, odors, all their swearing and hating and fucking and shitting on each other...all their weirdness, ah, the queerness of the moment: he felt himself being pushed back, falling out of the Dream, actually waking up finding himself on the floor, sprawled, spread-eagled…“Damn, it’s just gotta be time!”
So having been stimulant for their fertile imaginings—being their Common Bread...their sharing in the Fuller Body—he with whom they first began to deep sleep, so he, himself imagines raising anchor and setting forth on a voyage...but for the instant moment he calls out: cries on the wind, “Crew!”