There is no accurate way to describe what happened. It was as though the universe opened. I straightened and felt like a streak of lightning frozen at the instant of highest impact. I was all energy, all creation.
Again, however, Tocco began whispering in my ear. "That's all very well, Michael, but you are still Michael, lying on a rumpled bed, semi-delirious with pain and dope, having a great cock shoved up your ass."
"No!" I voiced involuntarily. "I am Baal!"
"Hah!" he shouted, almost deafening me, and flipped me over. Startled, I lay on my back, and Samuel grabbed my legs and pushed them back. Once again the popper was shoved into my nose, and left there until I had inhaled all of it. Again I soared off, past caring who I was, or where. All I knew was the overwhelming sense of . . . ? The sense of. . . ?
There was no word.
I closed my eyes and lay back to let Samuel begin his terrible long entrance into me, when a great weight covered my face. For a second I was startled, and then I realized that it was Tocco sitting on me with his full weight. I began to suffocate and tried to escape, but there was no getting away. Mounds of soft flesh moved down on me inexorably. I yielded, and went wild. I began to lick and suck and gulp. I didn't know what I wanted. It was sheer frenzy exploding under the engulfing ass. And as I bent to reach for more, the huge cock began to drive into me.
I was certain that I would be split apart. The pain was excruciating. I screamed at the top of my lungs, but the cry was muffled. And the more I screamed, the more the weight bore down on me. I gasped for breath and each gasp filled my mouth with flesh and hair and the rough stinging taste of asshole. And then I went under, like a man drowning. I gave up all hope and caring whether I breathed or not, and with that, the pain stopped, and I started to sink into a deep, deep sea of sensation and imagery.
I opened my legs and in a last embrace took in everything, all the pain and joy and yearning and loving and hating and being that it was possible to feel. And the cock just entered and entered. It went into places where I had always stopped in the past, where I had been afraid of being damaged. But now I welcomed it. I could feel the bones at the bottom of the pelvis separating. I thought, "My God, at last I am really being had." Tears came to my eyes, for this is what I had always wanted, to be filled, to be completely filled. And as I thought that, Tocco moved up and then leaned forward and put his cock into my waiting mouth, my mouth that had been longing for just that sensation, just that contact. And I knew that this time I wouldn't gag, that I could allow him to plunge as deeply as he wanted. And he drove deep and far into my throat.
My mouth filled with the foam of churning saliva; my ass went liquid and warm. I could feel my breast heat up and my bowels become loose. Another popper went into my nose, and my heart filled with gratitude.
Oh, thank you for understanding, for knowing, for not waiting until I had to use words to let be known what I wanted
. And as the drug took hold I sailed off into a place beyond all power of description. And as I went out, I saw, as though standing by the sidelines, the figures of Christ and Buddha and Einstein and da Vinci, each in a place where no human being had been, each equally far out, each totally different. I knew now that I was going somewhere no human guide could help me navigate.
The music of Beethoven crashed in my ears, and as the glorious strains of the
Gloria
from the
Missa Solemnis
rang out, I saw the single last outpost—a great Gothic castle at the edge of the void. There, Gurdjicff strode the walls with his great bald head and flowing mustache, wearing a perpetual scowl, carrying a single banner that said TERROR. He looked up as I flew past, a look of pity in his eyes, then he smiled and saluted with his hand. And I was free.
And somewhere in that freedom, I felt the great throbbing in my body, the pulsing of cock and heart and brain, the hot cascade of sperm, and the single realization which sang like all the choirs of mankind combined in one shout. LIFE it rang, and LIFE. And then, just at the moment when the seed should have landed, when all of this should have come home to be planted, in a searing blinding insight of jagged pain, I felt the hollow emptiness within me where there should have been a womb waiting with its fertile egg.
"No!" I cried, and in pain bit my lip clear through.
A long time passed; Tocco got up and Samuel pulled his cock out. I lay there, breathing heavily. And then Tocco leaned over and put a cold compress on my mouth. There was a great weariness in his eyes. "So, Michael," he said, "we have reached the center, haven't we? You've found what you've been looking for, and learned that you can never have it."
I looked at him in wonder. "How did you know?" I asked.
He sighed; he lit two cigarettes and held one out to me. "I'm afraid that it has been obvious since I first saw you. But that isn't saying too much for my powers of observation. This may bring you down, but your crying need for a womb and baby in your belly is almost universally widespread." He got up and began to pace. "Do you want to hear this now?" he said. I nodded yes.
"The history of the world since the advent of the patriarchy has been one long, bloody quest to fill some aching gap in man's makeup, and we have tried with war, with art, with science, with phallic rockets to the moon, and still there is no satisfaction. It doesn't take too much intelligence to understand that what we have been looking for is something we can't have."
"But that isn't the only quest," I said, "We are also looking for an escape from death."
"The only escape from death is in the continuation of life. The ego dies, there is no way around that. But life itself can continue. And it is to our everlasting shame that we are too greedy to be content with the continuation of life simply, that we want to make it ourselves and rob women of their essential glory. Soon, the scientists (and again he spat out the word) will be making babies in test tubes. And all meaning shall disappear from the species forever. We will have become sterile."
"Am I a homosexual?" I asked, puzzled by his words.
"Oh, you idiot, everyone is
at least
a homosexual! That has nothing to do with it."
My head began spinning. I lay back and suddenly realized that I was trembling. We had gone from orgasm to discussion so quickly that I hadn't had a chance to savor what happened. Now I let go, and let myself feel the delicious afterthrob in my asshole and the tang of sperm in my mouth. I began to stretch luxuriously, and yawned. For an instant I felt like a cat, then like a woman. Even my face melted into soft lines, and then the realization struck me. I looked up.
Tocco was staring mercilessly into my eyes. "No, Michael, it is too late for that now. You can become as soft as you like, but never will you be able to have the full fantasy of being a woman. You can pretend, but you know that you are not. You can dress up, and have empathy, or play out the roles you have been conditioned to play. But the seed of awareness grows in you now. From now on, whether you suck a cock or fuck a cunt, it will have to be as a man."
I grew disgruntled. "You make it sound like a John Wayne movie."
"Oh, no," he said, "it's not that easy either. I am not talking about any image of man. But you will have to come to terms with what it actually means to be the male half of the species, and not have any notions of inferiority or superiority, but simply the ability to examine the issue. And you will have to do it on your own. There aren't many real men around to learn from."
"Are you a man, Tocco?" I asked.
His face grew soft and he smiled. "Michael, from where you are, you can't even begin to understand my sexual problems." And for an instant his eyes opened and I looked to plunge deep into his soul. All I could glimpse was a sense of incredible height, and rumblings of a power far beyond my ken. Then the inner door closed, and he was simply Tocco again.
He put his hand on my knee. "You must be tired now, and I will let you rest." He turned to Samuel, but I interrupted. "Uh—can Samuel stay?" The thought of having that cock in me again made me giddy.
Tocco smiled one of his rare Cheshire-cat grins and said, "Why, that's entirely up to Samuel."
Samuel and I looked at each other and I felt myself go weak again. No matter what the metaphysic was, I still wanted to be fucked, and I could tell the feeling was reciprocal. Besides, there was an almost full box of poppers by the bed, and I wanted to take it on my stomach this time.
Tocco put on his dressing gown and began to leave the room. At the door he turned and said, "Be careful, Michael. Now that you have begun to understand the difference, the true difference, between the man and the woman in you, you can no longer take refuge in your fantasies of faggotry. You will be able to see through all that socially-conditioned nonsense. And you will be making real decisions from now on, whether your primary vehicle will be homosexuality or bisexuality or heterosexuality. But I have a suspicion that your synthesis is a bit more subtle than any of those, and you should tread delicately for a while. The more conscious you become, the more weight your actions carry. But for now, by all means, enjoy yourself."
As Samuel lowered himself onto me and I put my legs around the backs of his thighs, I could see Tocco sailing out yelling a cheery "Carry on" over his shoulder.
TEN
DURING THE FOLLOWING week I walked in Tocco's garden of delights, letting my body heal, and thinking over everything that had happened. It was like a friendly village. From time to time I would see people I knew, but knew only through having shared some more or less bizarre sexual experience with them. Already, however, the notion of strangeness in sexual matters was leaving me. My prejudices were melting off very quickly, or so it seemed. Before coming to ISM, I had considered myself quite liberal, and was tolerant of all forms of sexual practices. But there still lurked in me feelings that some kinds of sex were more "natural" than others. I was moving past that, and also past the notion of anything's being all right between two consenting adults. It now seemed silly for adults to consent to anything unless they had the fullest awareness of what they were getting into.
I also noticed that, in moments of lying about, I no longer conjured up sexual fantasies in the way I used to. Part of me regretted the loss of the ability to sink so completely into unreality as to forget the actual universe. Yet what I gained more than made up for it. Even the sky and flowers and the faces of the people around me looked sharper, more alive.
For a while I pondered over my last experience, and wondered whether I should consider plastic surgery, actually having a cunt built in. The thought was thrilling and I pictured what life would be like as a woman, but the lesson had been driven home fully, and I knew that I would only become a mock-woman, a physiological mannikin whose barrenness laughed at the outward forms of sexuality. For the first time in my life, I seriously asked myself what it meant to be a man, to be a woman. So much of what is considered sexual difference is socially determined, and even the biological differences were largely a matter of hormones. There was something more, and to sum it up with the simple line that women had babies and men didn't seemed reductionist in the extreme. Yet there it was. As with everything in life, the solution to one mystery just opened new ones, and the quest for understanding never ended.
Further, I was aware that whenever in the past I seemed to have latched onto a truth, it turned into its opposite, struck its tongue out at me and left me shaken by the wayside. It appeared that I could know what was true, but that it disappeared the minute I tried to formulate it. In his pamphlet, Tocco had written, "The damnable thing about reality is its total unwillingness to be defined by the limited faculties of man."
Meanwhile little surprises cheered my days. One afternoon, as I turned a path in the wood, I came upon seven teen-agers, three boys and four girls, bathing in a stream. They invited me to join them, but I pointed to my bandages and regretfully declined. I sat down to watch them, for they were exquisite. There was not the slightest pretense or hesitation about them, not the smallest ripple of concern or questioning. They enjoyed their bodies and made no metaphysical bones about it. Once again I regretted that I was born in a time and place where the intellect was, for some obscure reason, considered to be man's crowning achievement. Such a contention seemed pretentious in the face of the golden breasts and flashing buttocks dripping with water, the open eyes and laughing mouths. I felt a sensuality that was not yet sexuality, as the girls ran and splashed, their cunts opening and closing as they moved. The boys were magnificent, with firm and unmuscled bodies, full asses, and young cocks that seemed ready to drip with sperm.
It was a hot, murmuring day. When they had played in the stream a while, they came out and flung themselves on the grass. Their cries and shouts died down, and a heavy buzzing languor settled over everything. There was a growing sense of oneness, not of a mystical or otherworldly variety; but the stream, the trees, the birds, the achingly-blue sky, the white bodies, the grass ... it was all a single, all a blend of complements which had no purpose but to perfect one another in the total picture. I began to feel drowsy and found myself sinking into the rich grass. They day seemed eternal, and images of ancient Greek scenes danced before my eyes.
I put my face close to the ground and saw that it was teeming with life. Ants and odd bugs and worms chugged about as in a busy city. My eyes grew heavy and it felt as though everything was moving. I blinked, and realized that there was actual movement, all around me and in the bodies which lay at distance. The bodies were rolling ever so slightly, contracting and expanding, sending subtle messages to one another through breathing and tiny movements of the muscles. Suddenly I saw that the seven of them were not so much a group of individuals as a single organism. They rocked like that for a long time, and then the movements began to get larger. They rolled and kneeled and stood and lay down and rocked and shifted in a slow and purposeless dance. Or it seemed without purpose until the pattern emerged, and the pattern was union. Gradually, wordlessly, without a jarring gesture, they were joined.