I let the feelings of sorrow wash over me, but by now I was able not to let any mood destroy my sense of inner center. And in a while I found myself growing quite cool. I sat way back on the bed, away from the three of them, and lit a cigarette. By this time Susan had moved up to sit on Scotty's cock and was riding her cunt on him hard, her ass jiggling like a water-filled balloon, while Ellen tried to get Scotty to work his fingers into her cunt. In an instant I attained an astonishing clarity. I saw the three of them as children playing at some absurd power game, each one trying to get closest to the heart of the action, and the heart of the action being no more than the place where the greatest activity and awareness took place. But they were not cooperating to create that center, they were blindly following their urges, and then jumping around like tadpoles to wherever the ripples formed.
I saw what had happened with me. I had helped to form such a whirlpool where my mouth met Scotty's cock, and the two of them had jumped into it without insuring that I wasn't pushed out. And then another center formed which itself broke apart, and Susan redefined it by playing one of the strongest cards, cunt covers cock, and in so doing, had pushed Ellen out, who was now trying to work up a center of energy with her cunt and Scotty's fingers. From where I sat, I realized that a little bit of a conscious understanding of the process could allow us all to contribute fully and build an energy machine which would allow us all to take from it as much, and more, than we gave.
I was about to say something to them about it when I realized that words only destroy flow in such situations. Instead, I threw my cigarette away and moved down to cover Ellen's mouth with my own. Momentarily she pulled away, but I was insistent, and in a few moments her center of energy moved away from her cunt to her lips. I poured my entire being into her through my tongue and breath, and she responded by sucking at my mouth like a child at a nipple, drawing me into her, licking at my lips, clutching at my hair with tiny clenched fingers.
As she came alive to our energy, Scotty's hand began to be able to discover her cunt. And now that she no longer had the panic that I had felt earlier, the fear of being left out, she could be indifferent to her cunt. His fingers moved slowly to her lips and, jerking with a life all their own, leaped to grasp her cunt with the suddenness of one grabbing for the silver ring on the carousel. She moaned as he touched her, and her moan reverberated into my mouth. She slid down a bit, and let her cunt open wide and wet to surround his fingers, covering them with the sticky fluid which signalled her growing passion.
The movement from Ellen's cunt electrified Scotty's hand and arm and body, and connected with the sensations where his cock lay buried in Susan's churning snatch. For a minute or so we hung suspended in that space, currents running from woman to woman through Scotty, and from man to man through Ellen, until we all felt the need for closer union.
I moved down to cover Ellen's body, and while Scotty held her lips wide apart, I moved my cock into her dripping hole. I felt the hardness of his fingers rub against my prick as I slid into her, and when I was totally imbedded he pulled his hand away. Ellen let out a deep sigh, and drew her legs up to let me enter her deeply.
There was a long moment in which there was no movement, and then we all opened our eyes and looked at each other simultaneously. Scotty and I were gazing at each other, while Ellen and Susan stared into one another's eyes. Then our gazes swung around, and Ellen and I matched eyes while Scotty and Susan locked looks. Finally, Susan and I saw our eyes, and Scotty and Ellen came together.
I felt as though my ego had dissolved and come together again, but now it had four faces instead of the one, and it was impossible for me to tell the difference between any of us. In the realest sense of the word, we were all one person. And anything one of us felt, all of us felt. The room seemed to hum with a soft vibration, and we were lifted by a kind of psychic elevator which took us from the world of mundane perceptions to a world where everything was washed clean, and was always fresh, always being born, always coming into awareness of itself.
I moved back until I was raised halfway off the horizontal, and put my arm around Susan, who sat astride Scotty's cock. Scotty put one arm around Ellen. And suddenly it was as though Susan and I were fucking Ellen and Scotty, and they were a single male-female creature, with cock and cunt, as we were, and there was no difference between us. Simultaneously I was aware of Scotty and myself as men, and Ellen and Susan as women. And with that, the whole closet of costumes came tumbling open, and every last possible sexual role or attitude or fantasy sprang into view, washing away all labels and preconceptions and notions of what sex is about, while leaving untouched the simple reality of who we were in those bodies at that time and place.
And then we started to move. It was impossible to tell who was moving with whom, or how. It was as though we were a small boat on a large sea, and the sea began to roll under us. We had no violation and no choice but to sit there and allow ourselves to be moved. As soon as I understood that, I let all sense of responsibility go; I let all sense of thought go; I let all consciousness go. I moved into a state of awareness where there was no longer any split between what was happening and the
who
that it happened with. Everything was process.
Then the richness began. Feeling Ellen's superb and gooey cunt kissing my cock in wet sucking laps while watching Susan's cunt descend in shuddering sloppy roles on Scotty's radiating cock. Putting one hand on Ellen's chest to cup one nipple in my fingers, while leaning over to suck Susan's tit into my mouth. Watching Susan and Ellen come together and match the rhythm of their mouths moving into each other as counterpoint to the thrusts that Scotty and I delivered to each of their cunts. Looking deep into Scotty's eyes and flashing the male vibrations which danced back and forth between us.
Incredibly, it was possible to be male and female, to be bi-sexual, tri-sexual, and quadri-sexual; to be a male lesbian and a dirty old man and a timid little girl and a sadist and a transvestite; to be, in short, every last one of the roles which sprang from all my conditioning and training, which poured forth from my genes, which lay in everything my grandmother and grandfather had ever done; to be all the gods and goddesses and all the forms of the racial unconscious which continually works out its great drama in the pages of history and in the breath of every living moment; to be the entire earth, every mineral and animal called Michael. And then to know that I was the stars and the galaxies; to be, at once, the ridiculous panting sweating brave creature in that room and the entire essence of Being, all in one incredible blinding moment, and not to lose, in the glory of the moment, sight of the pain and shit and fear and decay and violence which made part of this strange animal called Michael. And then to know that I was not just Michael alone knowing this, for Susan and Ellen and Scotty shared the rhythms, were part of the same voyage, this blind seeing journey through time-space and eternity to feel their bodies rolling with mine and to sense that we were the same organism, like the children at the river's edge had been; and to watch our heads open, to know as solidly as I felt the bed under us that all of us knew the same thing, that all of us
were
the same thing; and as the realization dawned and grew bright in me, our eyes all met at the center and there a white glow appeared. A fire went on in our minds and we began to smile, not a smile that was attached to anything, but a smile that took its own shape around the curve of what was happening, as the energy balled up and gathered more energy to itself, and began to dance like a candle flame, and then to expand, until it engulfed us and filled the room and went beyond. My ears filled with the sound of a great choir and I saw that all of us were singing, no words, but a wide deep joyous sound that poured from our hearts and was nothing other than the primal sound, the first movement of creation, the surge of love.
And then we fell from the cliff edge, and holding one another, still moving and singing, we sailed out into the blue blue space, pulsing with love and freedom, until our bodies could contain no more, and simultaneously, with a great vanishing cry, we all came convulsing wildly into one another's arm, to fall into a great darkness where there was nothing but the silence, moving in immense mysterious ways that were, oh! so beautiful.
EIGHTEEN
WE SLEPT FOR a while, then got up to dress. There was an odd moment of awkwardness, the kind that might ordinarily have slipped by as unimportant. But after what we had just known with each other, it was impossible not to notice all the currents among us, even the tiniest. It is from these small discrepancies in the flow that the larger blocks to communication spring, yet we always seem to be so busy doing everything else other than paying attention to ourselves and one another, that we have lost the sensitivity to one another's changes which alone gives us a chance to avoid the hostility, confusion and pain which wracks all human society and culminate in war.
Scotty looked up. "What's happening?"
"I don't know what to do next," I said.
There was a short silence, then Ellen said "It's like I feel we should stay together, but at the same time I feel the need to get back into myself."
"That's it," said Susan.
We all looked at each other. The vibration of our orgasm still throbbed in our bodies and in the air, and none of us wanted to lose that moment of blinding union. But it was gone, dead, only a memory now, and life pushes on, always. Yet, neither did we want to lapse into some mechanical routine where we would lose the fine edge of perception and empathy.
"Let's sit back down," said Scotty, "and ride this until it ends."
We dropped our clothing and got back on the bed. I felt an urge to speak, but there was nothing to say. The others seemed to feel the same. So we looked at one another. In that time and space odd shapes began to form. The ways our eyes moved, and the subtle language of our bodies, and the thoughts which rolled through our minds, all were amplified in an obscure - fashion, so that the room came alive with messages, but it was impossible to tell who was saying what. Then I became aware that there was no effort to communicate on anyone's part. Each of us was just sitting there doing his own thing, and letting expression flow as easily as water moves downstream. All at once there was a collective sigh of relief. Suddenly, there was nothing to do, nothing to say, nowhere to go. The moment was eternal, each moment, from moment to moment, and there is nothing but the constant awareness of it as it presents itself, always immediate, always fresh, always true.
Susan said, "How long can we sustain it?"
I answered, "The question is, how long will it sustain us?"
This was the final confrontation, after each of us had tried as hard as we could, after we had worked and suffered and striven to find some answer, some solution, the universe simply stepped in and let itself be known. Suddenly I saw my entire life as a child's game of attempting to alter the course of the inevitable. Here I was, a mortal, vulnerable animal, sitting on the edge of a great hunk of rock, hurtling at fantastic speeds and in dizzying interpenetrating cycles through a mysterious black universe, with no one anywhere to give the slightest hint as to who I was or what anything was about, and in this condition I had been attempting to exercise what I solemnly had called my free will. I took a mental photograph of the cosmos and breathed a silent prayer: "Thy will be done."
And with his impeccable timing, at that very instant, Tocco threw open the door and stepped into the room. He was dressed in a white tunic with a short broadsword slung around his waist. Around his shoulders hung a purple cape. He wore a great golden helmet topped by a yellow plume, and on it emblazoned the initials: ISM. He let his impression sink in and then smiled. "Allow me to introduce myself," he said. "I am Isador Tocco, M.D., Ph.D., and Charlatan, currently Director of the Institute for Sexual Meta-theatre."
Susan looked at him open-mouthed. "Tocco, you're stoned," she said.
Tocco stepped in further and with a wave of his arm said, "I see you people are having a seminar."
Technically, that was true. After I had seen Tocco last, I hung around the grounds for a while, not knowing what to do. It seemed that no more lessons were forthcoming, and no one seemed particularly interested in involving me in anything. I wondered whether I was getting a brushoff, and started to think about leaving, when one morning I woke up with the feeling of being at home. Then I realized that I lived here; it wasn't merely a school. There was nowhere else I wanted to go. I thought of the world "outside", with its stupidity and frigidity and lack of truth, and I knew that I was with people who had become like a family to me, or rather, like a tribe.
And then I understood what ISM was about. There was no research going on that was destined for publication in any journal. Everything that happened was geared to changing people in a radical way, mutating them so they lived their lives in a totally new manner. And once this happened, these people would want to stay with each other, doing all the simple ordinary things of life, but with heightened awareness and wider consciousness. Life here, after all, wasn't so terribly different in its forms than anywhere else. People ate and slept, talked and fucked, fought and loved. Rather it was a quality of richness, of fullness, that permeated everything; and this was the crucial change. I remembered an old Tibetan line about, "The highest art is the art of living an ordinary life in an extraordinary manner." Here there were no hidden games, our social roles were the stuff of our interaction and we knew it, so we learned to play the game well. And the ineffable, as always, was able to take care of itself. There was as much true mystical experience in one of ISM's orgies as in all the sit-up-straight meditation monasteries in the world.