The Televisionary Oracle (66 page)

I look at Rapunzel, the most interesting beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Along with her pregnant silence, her amused but intense gaze tells me that she ratifies her friend’s oracle. Guilt descends upon me, and worse, fear that I’ve irrevocably messed up. If she really knows that I’ve only been pretending to execute my self-abduction, will she cancel delivery of what she called, back in my bedroom a few days ago, “the majestic gift beyond my ability to conceive”?

How could she not be peeved to the point of ending it all right here? Look at the lengths to which she has gone to stage this evening’s performance art event for my entertainment. There can be no question that she takes my “menarche” very seriously.

I am filled with the desire to atone.

I promise myself that if she forgives me for my deception, I will do what I should have done right from the start. I will completely, not
halfheartedly, die to my old life. I will unconditionally quit the music business. I will renounce my quixotic but ultimately futile efforts to maintain my purity in an institution that makes it impossible. If nothing else, this will ensure that I’m in line to have more of the superdreams Rapunzel somehow delivered to me a few nights ago.

“Now pick one last card,” Jumbler adjures. “This will be a picture of your soul’s purpose. Of the glory you might possibly attain should you make it to the other side of the rocky bridge.”

I draw Chick King, outfielder for the Chicago Cubs.

“Chick King,” she intones tentatively. “King Chick. Chick King. King Chick.”

She closes her eyes and pouts in concentration. Her eyelids quiver.

“I’ve got it,” she beams finally. “It seems your new career as a tantric janitor is ultimately destined to be in the service of King Chick. Notice it’s not
Queen
Chick, but
King
Chick. King Chick means, I think, that you are destined to help chicks overthrow this overly manly world. Ever hear that expression, ‘Behind every great man is a woman?’ You’re going to be a man behind a great woman.”

“So, like, I’m going to marry a woman who becomes President of the United States?” I ask.

“More like you’ll be a muse for a woman who becomes President of the United Snakes. Now why don’t you read the texts on the backs of your cards. They will provide additional oracular insight.”

On the reverse of the Rocky Bridges card is a picture of a goddess who resembles the Hindu Shakti. She’s dancing on top of an altar whose central feature is a large silver bowl. The title of the card is “Shakti Mutates the Blood Archetype,” and the text, credited to Vicki Noble, reads: “In the
real
old-time religion, the sacrificial altar was graced with an offering of menstrual blood, gift of the priestess. It was understood to have special power to propitiate divine contact. Later patriarchal religions preserved the idea that blood is charged with sacred potency, but replaced the menstrual offering with the shed blood of a murdered animal or human.”

Artemisia arrives and pours red wine from a carafe into the goblet on our table. She also leaves a bowl of cereal and pitcher of milk for Jumbler, and a big mess of purplish green blobs and reddish brown gravy for Rapunzel. There’s nothing for me. Despite my desire to improvise
within the framework Rapunzel and company are providing, I consider speaking up and placing an order. Hunger is beginning to assail me. I wonder if the aches I feel in my belly are hunger pangs?

“So King Chick, tell me true,” Rapunzel says, interrupting my meditations. She picks up my right hand and places two popsicle sticks in it. Half of each stick is stained blue. “What exactly are you doing to kill the apocalypse?”

I don’t know what to say.

“Huh? Huh?” she probes playfully when nothing flies from my lips. “Have you got any bright ideas about how to liquidate armageddon? Try rubbing those popsicle sticks together. They’re my special magic wands. They could help.” She shows me the proper motion.

Not too long ago, in the days before I met Rapunzel, my answer to her question might have been something like “I’m making subversive music that undercuts the ability of the entertainment criminals to genocide our imaginations.” But in the wake of my apparent resolve to renounce the music business for good, I’m stumped.

“Would you like some clues?” Rapunzel teases.

“Just get me started,” I plead, rubbing the sticks diligently.

“How about if you said, ‘I’m resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity’?”

“I’m resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity,” I repeat, injecting mock histrionics.

“And how specifically are you doing that?” Rapunzel quizzes.

I decide to risk a daring move. I’m going to be vulnerable and humble, but with a feisty edge. What I mean is that I’ll really try to inhabit a state of humble vulnerability, not merely perform it as I have so often done in the past. My earliest insight about the seduction game was that women are attracted to men who confess weakness, but all these years I’ve used that as a crafty technique without actually doing it with complete sincerity. Back in the women’s bathroom at the Catalyst, when I first met Rapunzel, was a perfect example. I pretended to be a self-effacing sensitive man even as I secretly billowed with pride.

In my defense, I should note that there has been a good reason for me to keep an ironic distance from the “sensitive man” act. The only version of it I’ve ever seen in other men is the one motivated by a frowning, judgmental radical feminist in their superegos. It’s a whiny form
of humble vulnerability, in other words, enforced by shame and guilt. But in the breakthrough I’m having here with Rapunzel, I can envision a spunky, truly masculine kind of humble vulnerability. It would emerge from my lust for life, not my fear of being a bad boy in the eyes of my inner matriarch.

Fascinating to contemplate the possibility that only by being more of a real man can I incorporate a healthy form of feminine behavior.

“One way I’ll resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity,” I respond finally, “is by admitting how terrified I am of receiving big beautiful gifts from amazing women like you. Not just terrified. Embarrassed. Deathly worried I don’t deserve them. Am not worthy of them.

“Then there’s the part about how weak and needy the big beautiful gifts make me feel. Not my usual self-sufficient self. And maybe the worst burden of all is the responsibility of having to give in return. I’m always convinced I can’t possibly match the blessing.”

“You fantasize that you’re inferior to me,” Rapunzel says understandingly. “You’re afraid I’ll think you’re a stingy narcissist. In your eyes, I seem to have almost too much to give, much more than you, and you subconsciously resent it.” She says this with sympathy, as if she’s sorry, not angry.

“And yet to your credit,” she continues, “you refuse to imitate the billions of men whose masculinity has been poisoned. You don’t blame me for your fear and resentment. You don’t withdraw into numb aloofness and try to punish me with mysterious silence. Instead, you struggle to change your feelings, to be a real magician. The problem isn’t with me, after all, and you recognize that. You don’t want to bully me into giving less.”

“Yes, exactly.” I feel like she’s reading my mind again.

“And I can’t think of anything that is a more potent weapon in our war against the apocalypse,” she concludes.

“Thank you. I’m honored by your recognition.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever used the word “honor” non-ironically before now. It stings a little to be so sincere. Besides which, as if to prove my confession, I’ve been pinched with the discomfort of receiving the enormous gift of Rapunzel’s approval.

Momentarily unable to deal with my feelings, I turn my gaze to the
rest of the dining room. Two women at one of the tables are peering intently at me, while the others seem occupied in playing cards with the Tarot decks. I’m surprised to see that a large but rather lovely shamanatrix in her twenties, a lesbian if I know my physiognomy, has doffed most of her costume. All she has on is a “skirt” that’s nothing more than shreds of newspaper hanging from a belt, and a makeshift bra composed of two sewn-together floral shower caps. No undies! Two other women, including a fiftyish pixie with very pale skin as well as an exotic-looking mix of maybe Eskimo and African, have also lost their shirts. One reveals another strange “bra” made of two small gargoyle masks connected with a rubber band and the other a “teddy” that seems to be made of round slabs of baloney sewn together.

“I can think of another way I am resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity,” I bubble.

“She’s taking notes,” Rapunzel smiles, pointing to Jumbler, who pulled out a notebook a while back and is scribbling intently.

“I’m a good listener, but with an edge,” I begin.

“You mean you get people to open up so you can use your sharp intellect to probe them, to push them to think deeper thoughts about their secret feelings?”

“Well, I suppose that’s one way to describe it, yes.”

“Sorry. I guess I wasn’t being a very good listener, was I? Go ahead and say what you mean in your own words.”

Wow. Rapunzel’s being contrite.

“I’m forceful in the way I shut up and get my own opinions out of the way,” I say. “I make an aggressive effort to be warmly receptive to what the other person is saying. I fight to ensure that I don’t fall into acting like a know-it-all.”

“I see. Using your masculine will to serve a feminine agenda.”

“Yes. And the other quality in my listening is ferocious curiosity. I ask really good questions. Not just because I want to do people a favor, either. I mean I do want to do them a favor, but I also get a personal thrill from it. It’s hard to explain why exactly.”

“It’s your way of making love to everyone. You send your feelers into their psyches and stir up their juices. You imagine you’re impregnating them with your influence.”

I’ve never thought of it this way, but again I feel like Rapunzel has
understood me perfectly. I’m aglow and abashed with the notion that she might actually be attracted to me.

Riding my success, I flash on another thing I’ve always hated about average, boring, “sensitive man”-style vulnerability: Neurosis is its crowning testament. To be vulnerable in this way not only requires nonstop pretentious solemnity; it also seems to lead mostly to expressions of negative emotions.

Why, Lord, why? Why is that if a man lets down his guard and disavows the macho, in-control attitude that is the curse of his gender, he seems inevitably driven to confess his failures, his grief, and his weaknesses? I have nothing against doing this
some
of the time. But right now I can imagine a more celebratory style of vulnerability in which I might gravitate towards delight, too; in which I would feel an eager and innocent desire to be overwhelmed by beauty. What if becoming vulnerable could fill me with wild reverence?

“I’ve thought of another way I can resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity,” I say bravely.

“By perfecting the art of being a staunch feminist with a raging hard-on, right?” Rapunzel laughs.

“Sorry,” she adds quickly as she sees my eyebrows rise. “My telepathic powers are out of control tonight. I just couldn’t help myself.”

I wouldn’t have used the words she did, but she has indeed zeroed in on my unspoken thoughts.

“I would prefer to describe it,” I begin, summoning my eloquence, “as blending unbridled virility and sweet sensitivity. To be, ahem, compassionately horny.

“Be a big red hot man,” she puffs, raising her shoulders and making a macho face, “all rebellious and restless and ambitious. And be a soft, warm, nurturing woman”—here she softens her features and goes all willowy—“dispensing thoughtful blessings with loving kindness.”

“It would be interesting to see if I could actually be both at the same time,” I muse.

“Are you familiar with the concept of the epicene?”

“Isn’t that like being androgynous?”

“No, the
difference
between androgynous and epicene is exactly my point. Androgyny is a melting down of the gender distinctions into a single fuzzy neutral blah. But the epicene person—the model citizen
for the Drivetime, by the way—is one who’s both fervently masculine and vividly feminine. Not the grey, odorless pall that comes from eliminating the contradictions, but the magenta menthol spermatic emerald clitoral saffron that comes from weaving the contradictions together with their full pungent glory intact.”

“You’re so smart, Rapunzel. Thank you. I can’t ever recall a feminist woman telling me to trust my lust.”

“That’s one of the ways
I
am killing the apocalypse. By helping a few select lesbian men realize how important it is for them not to shame their testosterone.”

On the one hand I’m flattered by this last statement. On the other hand I’m deflated. There are other men she’s courting like this?

“I’m still afraid I take it too far, though,” I blurt. “I guess I don’t even have to say this aloud since you seem to know what I’m thinking. But ever since I can remember, I’ve been addicted to fantasizing about mass orgies. With me as the only man in a sea of women.”

I’m amazed to hear myself confess such an embarrassing secret. I can only imagine that I really must be undergoing some kind of initiation—not at all like the ceremonial initiations I’ve undergone during my work with my occult school, but like them in the way that it’s stripping away my usual defenses.

“Yes. Interesting quirk,” Rapunzel says.

“I never thought of it as a quirk,” I protest. “I assume it’s what most men idealize. I mean, isn’t it every guy’s dream to make love to an endless variety of perfect women? Something about the DNA commanding him to spread his seed to as many young, fresh, beautiful hosts as possible.”

“But that’s not exactly what your fantasy is. Your orgies are not the exclusive domain of young, fresh, beautiful hosts. There are a few very plain women in there. I’ve even seen a crone or two.”

“Now how could you possibly know that? Just from studying my Wailing Wall? Or have you been spying on my meditations?”