Ada spent most of her young adult life hating her mother for not showing her the love or even the attention, any kind of attention, that a parent usually extends to a child as they are growing up.
Her mother had been knocked-up and left to fend for herself before Ada was born. A trauma, a shock, so destructive, that it left Ada's mother empty of all feeling and therefore, Ada's life's empty of all the needed emotions that a child must have to mature and grow into a healthy, happy, giving adult.
Ada's first sexual experience is the seduction by her Uncle Peter when she is ten years old.
It isn't until many years later that she learns to love with freedom from having to control every last degree of emotion she feels.
The story of how a self-destructive young woman develops into a warm, giving whole person, through the unremitting love of another young woman her own age, is a story that is both deeply moving and erotically descriptive.
CHAPTER ONE
Already, Ada had been living with her aunt and uncle for two months. She was a beautiful ten-year-old, full of a somber sadness because she was taken from her mother. She never knew her father. All she was ever told about him was evil and harsh. But she could see in the eyes of her mother that bitterness that comes from having been duped and dumped into the world with a child who had no name.
Even then, when the light of her room had been turned out, she lay in bed, assuring herself that nothing so terrible would ever happen to her. She would be in charge. She would be the one to inflict the pain. She would never be the victim. She'd had enough of that already.
Her somberness, like a black veil had made her more attractive to her uncle, Peter, who was an independent man, not shackled by the fact that his wife lived in the same house. This was the night he chose. His desire for this young niece had reached its zenith. He walked through the hall, closing his bedroom door behind him on his wife, admonishing her not to disturb him by getting out of bed again and he made for Ada's door.
Slowly, he turned the knob. Ada was still awake and aware that the dark was being penetrated by the light of the hall. Nevertheless, she feigned sleep, waiting to see who would be coming into her room. She lay very still, even when Peter came to her bedside. He sat quietly near her side.
"Are you awake, Ada?" he whispered to the dark of her ear.
Ada turned, moaning as if being awakened. But she didn't acknowledge his presence. He could feel the warmth of her body heat sneaking out from under the covers and he could smell her young, innocent fragrance. He wanted to touch her, to put his head down in her long, black hair. He wanted to feel her baby's skin softly under his hands.
"Don't you want to wake up for me, Ada, sweetheart. I want to talk to you a little."
Still Ada remained motionless. She was thinking, knowing what he had in mind. Not the full reality of what he wanted from her, but when he put his hand to her hair, she knew she liked the feeling of his tenderness.
Now, she knew, if she let him touch her, she would have him in her power. She could let him be gentle and kind to her, and he would refuse her nothing. She sighed. Her eyes were closed but she could see under the lids that his face was filled with warmth. She turned her head a little closer to his. She raised her body and moved to his direction.
"I want to make you feel good," he said, "make you know how happy I am that you are here, living with us. I want you to know how good I'm going to be to you. You don't ever have to be afraid again, because I'm here now, and I'm going to take of you, as though you were my own daughter."
Ada sighed again, liking his words and his soft caressing of her hair and face. She knew that she could keep her eyes closed, that she didn't have to answer him, that he was a man, and he knew all about her feelings.
She would let him be in charge. She would give him that power. If she stayed very still, he would be the one responsible for what happened. Then, whenever she chose, she could lead him around by his nose, making him her sweet slave. Whatever it was he wanted, she would let him have it. But she knew, in her mind that whatever happened, now in this dark room, with this smiling and soft man touching her, that her life would be forever imprinted with this memory.
"Let me sec your pretty softness," he moaned. His excitement was reaching a peak. "Ada, oh, little baby, Ada." Over and again he said her name softer and softer into her ear. She could feel his face flushing with heat. His hands began to tremble as he raised the blankets covering her. He didn't want to touch her body carelessly. He was only inches from her body, moving his hand along the raised covers. There, there was where he wanted to put his hand the first time he touched her. There, where she would at once be stunned by the difference in temperature between her body and his hand.
"I want to love you, Ada. Please let me love you." Now he was ready to move his hand low and slowly between her soft thighs. "Look how nice it feels." He moved farther up on the bed, resting length-wise along her small body. He touched her lightly, moving closer and closer to the center of her, the place in her never touched before. There was no tangle of hair, the child was smooth and silky as the day she had been born.
This was his desire.
Ada lay there, letting him explore the insides of her thighs, feeling a rising heat from the center of her.
Slowly, he inched his way to the soft bud of her undeveloped vagina, and in a moment, he inserted his finger between the soft lips.
"See how nice it feels." he repeated. "How soft you are, baby, little baby." Over and over again he called her baby.
Ada felt that now, with his hand between her legs, she was a woman. Now, when she saw his helpless, longing face, she realized that that was the place of power. Here was where she would drive all the wanting men. She had the ultimate power. She knew it.
"Look, how you weep for me," he said, touching the young flowing sap between his fingers. "How wet you become for me, sweet child, baby." And after minutes of moving his fingers on the outside of her smooth mound, he brought his finger to the darkest of all places a woman carries with her. Now, now, he thought, he would circle the opening, would gently and silently steal inside it, feeling it for his pleasure. What pleasure, he moaned, as the thought of a few minutes of the future rushed him. Soon, any minute, he would remove the covers, remove his clothes, remove all the obstacles that lay between him and this silent, oozing child.
Soon, he would feel the immensity of his long body against the smallness of her.
He moved over her, already primed, his swollen erection stiff and hard in anticipation. Ada stirred, positioning herself flatly so that he could crawl over her, hover and finally rest his arms to either side of her.
Then slowly, all the while calling her name, he rested his body fully on hers. His swollen staff fell deftly between her slight thighs and he slowly began to move. The friction between their tender bodies began to mount. He sighed, again and again, all the while, Ada, lying there still, grew more and more convinced that this was the most wonderful secret she had yet learned. And for him, her uncle, because he taught he, because he took her so tenderly into his arms and into his heart, she would be good. No matter what happened, she would not speak out, she would not feel anything but the blanket of his warm body and the constant movement and friction of the hard, warm thing between her legs.
Would he penetrate her this first night? Could he be satisfied with the intromission between her sweet thighs? No. Here was a man, magnificent in his movements, a consummate lover of young girls. His discipline was his pride. He could wait and wait, go on and on, over and over, before he lost control of his passion. He would, this very night, take her completely, sweetly, slowly, all the time in the world at his fingertips.
He gripped himself, moving off her body slightly, moved down again, resting the head of his staff at the tiny opening. He circled, slowly, gently, every movement lost in time, hours it seemed, round and round, waiting for the opening to enlarge itself, waiting for tenderness of his movement to be swallowed up by the child's desire.
Ada lay silent still, but there was no denying to herself that she felt things happening to her, inside. Small spasms and twitches began to center themselves in her small vagina. More and more, she wanted to grasp this pleasure inside her, high up where the spasms that moved through her entire body would firmly hold on to something. Her mind was swimming, all the new feelings flooding over her, one after another. No time to think, to wonder, only time to feel. The intensity of her desire overwhelmed her. She knew that she mustn't lose control. She knew that she could give herself completely, in the dark, to anyone, who whispered and whined in her ear. Deeper and deeper he penetrated her. Wider and wider she opened herself to accommodate him. This was where the answer was, she knew. The dark had brought her the gift of new and wondrous feelings. No pain, no tearing, no crying, nothing but the exquisite pleasure of finally belonging to someone. To be joined, fused together with this man who was her uncle made her feel totally safe and protected.
Now, totally immersed inside the child, Peter lay perfectly still. He wanted to teach her, wanted to mould her into the kind of woman that a man loves to love.
"Now feel me inside you, sweetheart. Bring all your feelings to the inside of you, where I am. Let yourself pull on me from inside. Close all your sweet, young muscles around my loving stick."
Ada could feel the huge intruder inside her. It didn't hurt, but she felt it stretching her, making her bloated and swollen with him.
"Don't move. Not yet. Keep trying to open and close your muscles around it, Ada."
Ada did this. Over and over, she tightened her muscles, then relaxed them, and slowly but certainly, desire mounted within her. She felt she could outline the look of his penis, even with her eyes closed, so intimately had she felt every part of it.
Now, when he was sure she knew the motion, and had begun her education into the art of loving with simple muscle exercises, he waited just another few minutes and then he began to move.
"Now, Ada, I'm going to slide out a little, then back in a little, and you tell me if it hurts you at all. Of course, baby, you know I wouldn't want to hurt you, and it shouldn't hurt you by now."
He was right, Ada thought. No pain. Nothing but new feelings, all pleasant and interesting.
Now the movement grew in tempo, faster and faster, Peter moved in and out of her, still gentle, still caressing and careful not to hurt her.
Ada sighed. She liked these feelings very much.
Peter's body began to tighten. Ada felt the wetness of his body pressed against her. She felt the trembling in his arms as he supported himself, trying not to place his great weight upon the child. When suddenly Ada felt his spasms, she thought that something was wrong. Her uncle was sick, he was moaning, crying out loud, jerking his whole body in convulsions.
Then it was over. He lay still on her. Ada began tightening her muscles again, loosening them, but the hardness was gone. But the night, the new night, with all kinds of new thoughts and feelings, had just begun for Ada. For hours after Peter left, she lay there, in the wetness of his climax, wondering and calculating how she could best turn the events of the evening to her full advantage. There would be another night and another she knew, with Peter. He would guide her, teach her so deftly and profoundly the art of love that she would soon be a goddess of love. Every movement, every motion, from now on, would be calculated for its fullest effect. She would never be helpless again, never without something to offer in her own right.
CHAPTER TWO
Three years had passed. Behind Ada were the long evenings with Peter. She held a special place for him in her heart even though they were now separated, Ada's mother coming to reclaim her daughter once again.
Ada never forgave her mother for deserting her during her childhood. It seemed to Ada that her relationship with her mother was simply a series of tearful goodbyes. Separation after separation.
Each time she was reunited with her mother, her anger grew considerably. She didn't understand the economics of raising a child, the same to be dealt with for having a child who was called 'bastard'.
Now, after securing herself a job and an apartment in the city, Ada's mother, Lily, felt at last that she could have her only child by her side forever. Now, she was ready to give her all the love and attention that she had been forced to contain, in their long separations.
Ada's heart had turned to a black stone where her mother was concerned. She couldn't respect the hardworking woman for having been left with the short end of the stick. She would never let a man use her, impregnate her and then desert her. Never.
Lily's motherhood was over-zealous and over-protective. She smothered Ada with her love, with her questions, with her sad philosophy of life. She saw no good in any man, no good in friends, they would all desert you, she declaimed.
Ada turned a deaf ear and heart to her mother. She furthered and encouraged her suffering. She deserved it, Ada thought. She had gotten herself and Ada into this, and even though Ada had been laying out plans to protect herself for the rest of her life, she knew she would eventually suffer the sins of her mother, too.
Ada was attending an advanced school in the city, already skipping two grades, her brightness propelling her forward. In school she learned to write poetry, to read and speak French, which she threw herself into with flourish, feeling French to be a secret code that only a few could interpret. In her diary she wrote in French, knowing that her spying mother would be reading everything she wrote, wanting to know everything, every movement, every friend, every thought going through her mind.
Ada resisted it all. She never grew close to her mother. She never allowed an ounce of affection to come from her. She stayed out late, never answering her mother's questions, where were you, who were you with, and so on.
Nothing. She would get nothing from Ada. That's what her mother had given her and that's what she would get in return.
But school, that was a different story. Here Ada poured out her creativeness, her charm and affability. Here she was a star, beautiful to behold, dark and exotic, every inch of her feminine and alluring. She didn't fail to attract the attention of her teachers and schoolmates, although she didn't make many friends among her peers.
She was too advanced in her emotional and sexual growth for them. But her teachers, fascinated by the beautiful Ada who never smiled, whose sadness was heaped upon her like the weight of the world, rallied around her, trying to understand what made this child so sullen, so mysterious and yet at times, so out-going, as though she had forgotten the role she was playing.
Gloria, star teacher of English, decided to make Ada her special case. She would get to the bottom of this child, open her up all the way, make her young and carefree, if she could just get Ada to trust her.
She began by inviting groups of students out for coffee, first to restaurants, and finally to her home. Ada would go along sometimes, but would remain in the background, never speaking much, certainly never showing that she was enjoying herself. Week after week, Gloria invited the students to her home. They enjoyed her. She was funny, made them laugh. You could talk to Gloria, she was understanding, and all teenage children had some problem or another.
As Gloria went home one day with three of her students, Ada included, she wished that the other two would leave. Perhaps that's why Ada never spoke to her. Perhaps she was shy or a very, very private person.
Perhaps if she could see Ada alone, that would break the ice.
When they were all about to leave, Gloria turned to Ada and said, "Do you have to get home just yet?"
Ada looked at her mutely, making Gloria repeat herself. That was a tactic that Ada had learned early.
Usually when she got someone to repeat themselves they would rephrase their question.
"Stay a little while longer, if you can. I want to talk to you."
Ada had heard that before. Could it be that Gloria meant that she wanted to whisper in her ear, make love to her as Peter had?
Ada turned from the door to go back into the apartment. The other girls gave a fleeting glance with suggestions of a little hurt that they had not been asked to stay alone with Gloria.
And the door closed, and Ada returned to the couch where she'd been sitting earlier.
"I can't figure you out, Ada." Gloria began. Actually, she didn't know exactly what she was going to say to Ada, but she was so taken with the sadness of her eyes, she wanted to kiss them closed, have them open again new and sparkling.
"You seem so sad, so tragic. And I know that can't possibly be true. Why, you have so much vitality in your writing, so much sensitivity, that I know you are aware of so much around you, yet you seem hesitant to participate. Why is that, Ada?"
"What would you like me to say to you?" Ada began. "I am this way for reasons I cannot discuss with you.
It's better only to know me on the surface, for you would not like what you would see, if I let you see it."
"That's nonsense!" Gloria replied. "Unless you trust someone, you will never be able to grow outside of yourself. I know what I'm talking about."
I was once very much like you. Our thoughts get so muddled, that they go round and round in circles, never stopping, never changing, never growing, because we don't allow any other influence to affect us. I'm trying to suggest that I'd like to be your friend in important ways. To share with you whatever it is that is making you so unhappy. Won't you let me help you feel better?"
Ada had heard that before too. By now, all conversation for Ada had taken on other meanings. Her introduction to sexual activity at such a young age had colored all words, all actions. Everything she experienced was filtered through that early experience.
"No one can make me feel better. This is the way that I am forever to be. As elusive as a wind. I inspire you now to help me, but I really don't need your help. I like the way I am. Nothing about me is known to anyone.
Everyone feels sympathetic towards me, seeing the sadness on my face. My sadness is the only thing that makes me happy."
"How can that possibly be true?" Gloria exclaimed. "How can a child of thirteen years be saying the things that you are? What makes you so wise, so mature in your ways?"
"Things which I can never let you know about." Ada answered.
"Isn't there anything that I can do to get through to you, Ada? Isn't there anyway I can make you reach out to me?"
"If you want to reach me, you'll have to reach out to me yourself. Perhaps I can make you feel better if you think that you're helping me. What would you like to do for me. Would you like me to lay my head on your breast and cry?"
"That may not be such a bad idea," Gloria answered. "Perhaps, if you did cry you would feel better and would not seem, and I say seem, so unneeding of other human beings."
"Well, then," Ada moved closer to her, "let me help you feel better." And in a moment she'd put her head on Gloria's breast and lay very still. Soon, Gloria put her arms around Ada, gently holding her, rocking her back and forth. She began to stroke her long dark hair.
Ada knew that she had stirred Gloria. Had made her feel helpless, useless. She knew that few people could stand to feel that way and that all she need do, was stay perfectly still and let them rescue themselves from that feeling while they fell into her trap.
"Ada, don't you need anyone? Isn't there anyone that you love, that you'd miss if they would leave your life?"
"No one."
"I could love you so easily. There must be many people who love you. Why can't you respond to them, are you so hardened against trusting anyone?"
"I trust you as far as I trust anyone, perhaps more. I don't let just anyone hold me in their arms."
"Do you let others hold you? Have you had any experiences with boys?" Gloria asked, whispering into her ear.
"Boys?" Ada laughed to herself. "Not boys, they're not capable of approaching someone like me."
"Well, then," Gloria continued, "what about women?"
Ada understood immediately that Gloria, could not make the transition from boys to men. Therefore, she knew, she must be speaking of her own inclinations, women. Now, everything was crystal clear. Now Ada could move on more certain ground.
"And you?" Ada asked, "have you had experience with women?" Even though she had not answered Gloria's question, she realized that Gloria was so immersed in being affectionate that she probably would not notice.
"Don't ask me questions like that, Ada." Gloria tightened her grip on Ada. "Can't you feel what I feel? Does it make a difference, age, sex, any of those things when you have someone in your arms, and you feel warmly towards them?"
"It makes no difference to me." Ada answered. Now she moved her face so that she was staring into Gloria's eyes. "Would you like to kiss me?"
Gloria didn't stir. She continued to look into Ada's eyes, when suddenly, involuntarily, her eyes rolled and she closed them tightly.
"Oh God, don't tempt me! I must be crazy to be sitting here with you like this! Ada, I think I'm the one who needs help."
"Then let me help you." Ada said, moving her face closer to Gloria's lips. Slowly, so slowly, with her eyes open, watching the face of Gloria as she passively waited for Ada, Ada put her lips on Gloria's. This was the first time that Ada would kiss a woman. What would it feel like? Would a woman be more gentle than Peter?
Would she teach her anything about love-making?
Lips on lips, Ada felt the familiar heat rising from Gloria's face. She was taken with her. Ada could do anything she wanted now, there was nothing to stop her, nothing to turn her back.
Suddenly, Gloria lost her passivity, and she grabbed Ada by the shoulders, making Ada think that she would be turned aside, that Gloria was about to push her away, when Gloria kept her grasp tight and brought her weight to bear on Ada, pushing her backwards onto the couch.
"My God, have you any idea child, how much I've wanted you?" Gloria said, her voice breaking up into panting sighs. "I should be, and could be shot for what I'm doing, but there's something about you, I still don't know what it is. I'd risk my life, my profession, my relationship with my own lover, just to know you, to love you, Ada."
"That's nice." Ada said, dryly. Gloria couldn't see Ada's face by now, she was smiling. "Tell me how you want me. Tell how long, how much, what you've thought."
"Later." Gloria said. "Later."
If she let Gloria stop talking now, she would ruin her response to her. Everything hinged on the first meeting Ada knew. The time to train her lovers was the first meeting. They must learn to do everything she asked.
"Now!" Ada demanded, and then more softly taking Gloria's face into her hands, looking directly into her eyes. "Tell me now, baby, how much you want me."
Gloria was helpless in the girl's hands. She could see that Ada was resolute in her demands. She wanted her so desperately now that she would do anything to please the girl.
"The first day I saw you, that first time, I'd never seen any student like you, so dark, so sullen. I wanted to reach out to you then. But all the while I was having coffee with all of you, inviting you back here, I was fooling myself. Making myself think that I wanted to help you, when I was really looking for you to help me. I need your love, Ada. I don't know why. You're just a child, but such a strange child that I feel you're somehow older, wiser than me. You know more than me, don't you? I'm just a foolish woman who doesn't know what the hell is happening to me."
Ada answered her rambling: "You mustn't talk about yourself that way. Why would you be foolish to love me? Don't you know what's happening to you? Let me tell you," she teased.
"Now," Ada began, "you have your lips on my neck, you like the way I smell, the way I taste. You want to put your tongue in my ear, to wet me, going in and out. You want to hear me moan, 'oh, baby', I'm moaning for you, do you hear me?"
Then Ada began moving, slowing turning the center of her body harder and harder against Gloria. She started sighing, low at first, but building in crescendo until she was sure Gloria was half out of her mind with desire, "Undress me." Ada commanded, softly. "Take my clothes off my body, slowly, kiss me every time you see my skin. Kiss every part of me. I want your lips all over me, take me, take me, now!"
Gloria was beside herself. Never had she experienced this before. Never had she been instructed what to do. Never had a child so completely taken over her mind and body the way this child had. She was trembling. Her fingers wouldn't be still. She fumbled with the buttons on Ada's blouse.
"Help me. Please help me, Ada."
"I'll help you," answered Ada, brushing aside the feeling of contempt that welled up in her for Gloria. "I'll most certainly help you." Ada stood, taking Gloria by the hand and lead her into the bedroom.
"I like this room." Ada said, "This is where I want you to make love to me. This is where I want to feel your hands all over me, feel your lips on my breasts." She started to undress herself while Gloria sat on the edge of the bed, totally under Ada's control. It was as though each time Ada spoke, Gloria fell more and more deeply into some kind of trance. The realization that she was with a special child, a child whose power was unquestionably greater than anything she had ever seen before made her shudder somewhere deep within her. Now it was too late. Ada was dancing before her very eye's, dropping each piece of clothing methodically, exotically in front of her. No turning back now, no stopping this feeling of abandon. Nothing could come between them now, so close were they to that moment when the bed would fill with both of them and the day would die with the sun, and tomorrow everything would be changed.
"Music," Ada demanded, "we must have music!" Ada knew that to mix memory and music was a very important ingredient in taking hold of a lover. Each time her lover would hear a song, a strange feeling would sweep over them, unconscious even, not remembering that they had heard that song with Ada, but somehow, Ada would come to mind, the desire for her, the memory of her.
Gloria immediately obeyed. "What kind of music would you like?"
"Where are your records?" Ada asked.
"Here." Gloria said, pointing to the record case, on top of which her stereo sat.
Ada chose something she considered appropriate to the mood. A woman's voice began to softly croon from the speakers.
"Now everything is perfect. Except for you, Gloria. Why are you still sitting there on the edge of the bed.
Don't you know how to undress yourself?"
Ada was purposely making her feel like a child, taking complete control of the situation. Gloria jumped up, went to her closet and began disrobing. Ada, meanwhile, turned the lights off, pulled back the covers on the bed, pulled down the shades, and slipped in between the sheets.
"Where the heck are you? Does it always take you so long to get What you want?" Ada sing-songed her words. "If you're not here in two seconds, I'm going to feel that, you weren't telling me the truth after all."
"Here I am, all ready for you." Gloria was feeling better now. Her decision was unalterable now. Now she could settle down to it, knowing that her fate, as far as this child went, was sealed. She gave herself completely over to her, to the mood, the moment and the magic.
Ada took Gloria in her naked arms. Their bodies were one on the other. Ada stirred beneath Gloria, rubbing herself suggestively into her. "What do you ladies do together in bed?" Ada asked, wanting to return to being passive a while.
"You'll see what we ladies do, right now!" Gloria gritted the words out between her teeth.
She flung the covers back, off both their bodies. The afternoon sun, peeking out from the sides of the shade threw shadows across their bodies. Gloria went immediately for the darkest one, between the legs of Ada.
Raising her body completely off Ada now, Gloria let the cooler air come between them. She moved her head down, down past Ada's budding breasts, stopping slowly as she reached her belly. She lowered her head, bringing her tongue to Ada's skin. First hot breath, as she breathe out, then cold as she sucked her breath in again. It made Ada tremble, made her abdomen jump and spasm with each new assault. Gloria's tongue made its way further down, avoiding the sparsely covered mound of the child to a place inside her thighs.
She made the edge of her tongue sharp and wet and used it deftly, exploring all the surrounding flesh which held Ada's vagina captive. Then, without any warning to Ada, Gloria wet her tongue and slipped it carefully and gently in between the outer lips of Ada's vagina.
"Ada, baby, Ada." Gloria sighed between her lips, liking the taste of this child.
Ada lay there. She was pleased that it felt so good. It excited her to see her teacher, Gloria, between her legs, at her command. She watched Gloria. Every expression on her face was catalogued, for future reference.
Gloria began to make wide strokes between the cunt lips, first up, then down, always wetting her tongue, making sure that the hot and cold breaths coincided with her movements. The music lent itself so well to this, Ada thought. Gloria was loving her in time to music. As the music slowed, Gloria's tongue slowed, became more elaborate in its gestures. When the music became more intense, she battered Ada's clitoris more harshly, sometimes taking the nub of it totally into her mouth and sucking up on it until it was between her teeth, then she would slowly let it ooze out again. She could feel Ada responding, moving, hear her sighing. She was on fire. Again and again, she stroked Ada with her tongue, following the tip of it with her mind to the furthest reaches of that new, uncharted territory. Hot and cold breath, slow and fast movements, soft and intense music, everything added up to something that Gloria could not put into words. The more she made love to Ada, the more she wanted her. Somehow, nothing quenched the fire within her.
When Gloria was sure that Ada was lost in the dream of lovemaking, Gloria moved the two fingers of her right hand to the opening of the vagina. The wetness there was a mixture of the two of them. She inched her fingers forward, inserting one and then the other at the extreme outer opening. As she moved her tongue in a sweeping gesture upwards, she could feel Ada's clitoris jump in response. To that tempo, Gloria began her way inside the girl, letting every spasm draw her fingers further and further inside.
Ada was talking now, saying things Gloria could not understand. Ada was speaking in French, then in Spanish. Whatever it was she was saying as she tossed her head back and forth, Gloria didn't care. It sounded beautiful. A dream. That must be it, Gloria thought. I'm in a dream. There is not a child here, it's only my wish, my dream.
But the truth was, Ada was there, and would be there, again and again, driving Gloria to the edge of the dream, making her wild with desire and sending her passion into places Gloria never even knew existed.
"Yes! Yes! Inside me! That's where I want you. Go deep inside me, let me swallow you up. Come into my dark soul, come deep, deep inside me." Ada commanded.
"My God, how can you be this way, you mix heaven and hell inside me, Ada."
"Only heaven, now, Gloria. Only heaven. For us, hell is always waiting. Come to heaven with me now.
Forget about hell, about everything but me. I want you, completely, forever to myself."
CHAPTER THREE
Ada moved in and out of her relationships like a shadow. Everyone who met her, wanted usually to know her, intimately. She would oblige many, especially if she could get something from them in return. Only Gloria, as the next three years flew by, still meant something to her. Gloria's helplessness over her, her desire to do anything for Ada, made her too good a thing to simply thrust off. She kept Gloria around, doing other things that Gloria was not aware of, but probably was guessing at. By now, Ada had become a practiced and consummate lover herself, capable of satisfying the most cynical of her lovers that she was really something else. She made her lovers feel that no one, at any time, had ever had that effect on her, that they, without exception, were the best she had ever come upon. Their egos flew. Here, this growing woman, beautiful in each movement, was at their feet in adoration. Ada, little did they know, told them each the very same story, gave them each the very same motions, kissed them each the very same way. No one was essentially different to her. Except Gloria. Because Gloria was somehow linked to the love that Ada had withheld from her mother. But she didn't give much time to that thought. She let things happen, as they may.
One encounter after another, men falling deeply, passionately in love with her didn't faze her a bit. She took what she wanted from them, and just as suddenly as she overwhelmed them, she left them, disappeared, never to be seen by them again.
Pain. That was her primary motivation. She wished to cause them pain, deep unabating pain in the loss of her. She would make them feel what she once felt, for her mother, because in her mind, they were ultimately responsible for the separation of her mother from her. She would make them long to see her, one more time, just as she had spent her childhood in tears and partings. They never knew what hit them. Nothing had ever been wrong in her relationships to them. They never fought, never commanded her. She had her own way in everything, and suddenly she was gone.
All the egos burst. No place to solace themselves. No reason, no knowing why, only suddenly she was gone.
Hell. She peopled it. Sent them to it personally. They would bum forever there, the unfinished passion of their love for her consuming them eternally.
She liked the thought of that as she slid into a seat across from Mike. He was different, she knew.
Somewhere in his wide and innocent eyes she saw salvation. He would save her from going home again to mother. He would take her in his arms, as inexperienced as he was, and she would make a king of him. He would marry her, she decided.
"You know," Mike began, "I've never met anyone quite like you before, Ada."
"You probably won't again, either, Mike. I feel as though I met you for a special reason, that you will be very special to me. Don't ask me why, but I believe in fate, that somehow, the two of us, sitting here together is no accident. Don't you believe that things happen because they're fated, Mike?"
"I do."
Ada had Mike saying the words already. I do. He said. She knew that for him, she would be a catch, par excellence. She was already finished with high school, now she was about to enter one of the finest colleges in the country.
This unpracticed boy, she thought, looking at her through misted, love eyes, would never know the truth about her. She could never love him anyway. She would control him, make him love her till the day he died.
He would be the one she would bless with her body and love-making, all to himself he would have her, for a while at least. But only when they married.
Mike married her. Their wedding attended by each of their families. Ada's mother felt relieved, knowing at last that her 'bad' girl was about to settle down, raise children, after she finished school, of course. Her husband, almost finished with school himself, soon to be a professional, making good money, taking care of her in style. She could see that Ada's husband loved her intensely. She wondered why her daughter was lucky enough to get a man like him. Lucky enough to have everything at her feet, not like her own life, filled with disaster and despair.
"I hope you will appreciate this fine husband of yours, Ada." Lily warned. "I can tell you, they don't grow on trees. Just keep a good house for him, make sure his stomach is satisfied, and you'll have no problems. I'm telling you this for your own good. You "have a way of avoiding the responsibilities that go with lasting relationships, you know."
"What do you know?" Ada hissed back at her. "You never had a husband. That's all I ever heard you say.
What do you know about taking care of someone. You can't even take care of yourself. Now, leave me to myself and my relationships, and let me finally out of your life. I think I never want to see you again."
"What are you saying? You can't mean that. I'm your mother, not one of those fly-by-night friends you pick up then drop again. You'll never be free of me, I know. I made you, I raised you, for whatever good only God knows, but you are part of my flesh, and we will never be separated. We never were. Even when I was forced to leave you, you were a part of me. I'll walk out, peaceably, but you can't put me from your mind, so don't even try. Somewhere, where only God sees, we're made of the very same stuff, you and I. It's not love that binds us, but pain. And every time you feel it, you'll remember me. I'm the pain inside you. My life is your pain, and no matter what I do in my life, I can never erase, not even for one moment of time, the shame of what I did. You are the living proof. You are my child, the bastard! Count yourself lucky that this man will have you."
"Your head is stuck in the forgotten past, Mamma dear. No one but you cares about my lack of a father.
Your face is my sorrow. You are the one to blame, it's true. And for that reason, I want no more to do with you. I want to start a new life, with a new man. No past, no sorrows creeping up to overwhelm me anymore.
As soon as I lose you, I lose my connection with the past. I want no part of it."
Ada's mother smiled at her tightly from the corners of her lips. She nodded her head, slowly, back and forth, then stepped back, turning completely around, and walked away from Ada for good.
"How does it feel to be Mrs. Michael Carter?" Mike asked, placing Ada from his arms onto their marriage bed.
"It feels wonderful. But you feel even better," Ada answered, taking his hand and placing it on her mouth.
She began to slither her tongue in and out between his fingers, using the wetness inside her mouth to mix with the salty taste of his hand. She took one finger, concentrating on it with her tongue, moving the tip of it slowly up and down on it, licking around the base of it. He began to get the suggestion. It was too wild for him to imagine. Was his wife telling him that she would do that to his penis? He wouldn't have to ask her?
She would just do it?
Yes. Lucky fool that he was. His initiation had just begun.
"Come over here, baby, where I can feel how hard you are for me."
It was as though he was retarded. He couldn't understand any of her words. He was swimming with his victory. The idea that his very own wife was a love slave, a brave, unafraid woman ready to jump at his every whim.
"Ada. Ada. Ada." That's all he could say. Not very imaginative, she thought. When will someone say something new. Why are people so willing to be led in love and love-making. It can become very boring this way, she mused.
"Honey, take your things off, now." She ordered. He would just continue to sit there, she knew, unless she said something. "Let me help you a little." Still dumbfounded, Mike was useless. Like a baby he waited for Ada to "First, I'm going to take off your shoes, is that all right with you."
"Sure."
"Here's one shoelace, and now the other. What a good boy you are, did you tie these yourself? "
"Stop putting me on, Ada."
"Putting you on? Baby boy, I haven't yet begun. But when I put you on I can promise you, you'll never know it."
"Huh? What does that mean? I don't understand what you're saying."
"I'm saying that you're the biggest, handsomest, man in the world and that you're my husband, and I'm going to make things happen to you that you've never even dreamed of. And I'm going to start right now, as I unzip your pants I want you to take all thoughts out of your head of anything else in the world except me, and my mouth. I want you to concentrate on what my mouth feels like, when I put it here, right here."
In one quick movement, Ada circled Mike's penis with her lips, teasingly, blowing hot and cold breaths on it.
She wet her tongue and slipped it around and around his hot, hard staff. She came off it, moving her tongue down and up the length of it, agonizingly slowly. She made him tremble with her rashness, her boldness in the handling of him.
How could he be so lucky, he thought to himself. She was the most beautiful girl in the world. She was the best there was, at everything. Why had he been the one she chose?
Mike would never have that answer, and it would haunt him for the rest of his life. But for right now, his mind, his intense energy was bound up in the present. There was no time to think of the future now, not with Ada's lips on his cock. There would never be a future if he could keep her there, only now, oh, God, now!
He exploded in her mouth.
"How did you do that?" He asked her.
"A magician never explains his magic tricks. It's against the code." Ada laughed at him, tousling his hair with her fingers.
"Honey, that was really something. If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a lot of experience at this."
"Silly boy," she said, still messing his hair. "Everything I am, you've made me. Anything I do, I do because you inspire me to do it, and to do it in that precise way. Don't you know what you do to me?"
"No." he answered, innocently.
"Well, lover, I'm about to show you, whenever you're ready."
"I'm as ready as I'll ever be." he said, looking at his swollen penis rearing its head again.
"All the clothes come off this time, okay with you, Mike?"
'This is the first time we'll be together, naked. I can't wait to see your beautiful body, honey. Hurry up, let me see you." he said.
Ada did as he bid. She hurried undressing, but became slower and slower as she came to the personal articles. She danced to the radio, turning to her favorite station, then bounded back with the beat of the music.
"Hey, are you going to dance for me, too?" Mike said in amazement.
"Anything you like, baby boy. Anything at all. That's what I'm here for. To please my big, strong man."
Mike lay back on the bed, waiting to be entertained by his wife's dance. She was good, he thought, really good. She could be a professional dancer if she wanted to. My god, all these talents, and she said they were all his. He was too lucky. Something must be wrong. I can't be so completely happy with everything. Well, why not, he thought. We were just married. I suppose we stay happy for a least a couple of years. Well, he thought of his friend's marriages, maybe not for years, but if this can last for months, I'll take it anyway it comes!
Ada was moving her lips and groin suggestively now. Grinding and bumping to the music, knowing she was turning him on like nothing ever had before. More and more she excited him from a distance. She wanted him in a frenzy by the time he touched her. She came closer and closer, moving her breasts into his face, then quickly turning them from him, moving back again, away from him. He smiled and smiled. Wow! The guys would never believe this. And he wouldn't tell them anyway. There were still some things that were sacred. And what went on between him and his wife was nobody's business but theirs.
Ada was completely lost in the dance. She forgot Mike was on their bed, waiting for her. She remembered this music. She had danced with Gloria to it. She had-sung it in Gloria's ear, driving her up the wall with lust for her. Her thoughts were her own, no one would ever take them from her. They comforted her, returned to her when what was current was unimportant, and right now, on this, her wedding day, the dance she did coming nearer and nearer to Mike, was somehow taking her back, away from him, from this special day.
He sensed it! She was somewhere without him. He knew it. Where was she? What was she thinking?
"Ada?" He called to her, trying to break into her reverie.
The years of his life would have her name etched into his mouth, always the question mark following. What would happen to them? Where would they be in time? Ada would be lost to him, one day, forever. But he couldn't know that now. Not on this special day, his wedding to the most magical girl in the world.
CHAPTER FOUR
Michael Carter remained deluded about his wife, Ada for the next two years of their marriage. His routine was fixed, his desire to provide for her unswerving and his love for her -growing day by day, stronger and stronger. Ada taught him everything she had ever learned about love-making. His own character changed subtly but definitively. He began to believe, with his wife's coaxing, that he was no mere man, but a superman, capable of feats in bed, and out of bed that mere humans were incapable of. His desire grew that he should become 'a perfect man'. A man, given the opportunity to achieve, spurred by the righteousness of his quest, that his magical lady deserved the very best, if he did not achieve, in Mike's mind, was flawed, imperfect, not deserving of the gifts he had received through Ada.
Without knowing it, he had laid the perfect groundwork for his own self-deception.
When Ada said she was going out with her girlfriends, Mike could do nothing but trust her. It never would occur to him to question her. She was ideal, the woman with everything, the woman who made her man believe himself to be a king.
Meanwhile, Ada, flitting from one relationship to another outside her marital one, reveled in her freedom.
She had duped him perfectly. There was no way in the world that he would believe, even if someone shouted it in his face, that his wife was a loose woman.
His life was filled with the constant satisfaction of Ada, in bed and out of bed.
She thought nothing of it. It was due to her. She took it for granted. It kindled her contempt for the stupidity of men, that their egos, so willing to be filled with fantasy, with conquest, were the perfect targets for deception.
But Mike couldn't complain. For as long as it lasted, he was the happiest man on the face of the earth.
Sexually, he was in a state of constant excitation. Even after two years. He saw the marriages of his friends crumble and die before his eyes, saw their sexual unsuitability, felt sorry for them and dismissed the thought of it as something outside of him, never to happen to him and Ada, ever.
"Hi, honey." Ada said on the telephone to Mike.
"Hi, sweetheart. Where are you?"
"I'm over at Pam's, baby. What are you doing?"
"Waiting for you, of course. You know how much I miss you all the time."
"Yeah." Ada said, getting ready to drop the bomb. "Listen, honey, I don't think I can make it home tonight. So if you can, get yourself something to eat, and I'll see you tomorrow. Okay?"
"You won't be coming home tonight? How come, honey?"
"Well, I'm beginning to feel trapped in a rut. I need to spend some time with my friends, to get away from you for a while. You understand, don't you?"
"I don't. No. I can't understand what you're saying. Don't you love me anymore? Are you tired of me, or what?" All this Mike said with a hurt, quiet voice.
"You know I love you, honey. It's not that at all. It's just that I need my own time, time away from you. You know, some couples take separate vacations. Well, occasionally, you'll find, from now on, I'm going to have to spend some time away from you. It's just that I think, if we want to save our marriage, I have to do something drastic."
"Save our marriage! I didn't know it was in danger. I knew nothing about the way you feel. Help me to understand what's going on, will you?"
"Listen. I can't talk about it anymore. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"No. It's not okay! Ada, you're my wife, not my girlfriend or anything. You belong here, with me. Please come home. Let's talk about it."
"I'm not about to argue with you, Mike. You'll just have to accept my way of working this out. If you insist on giving me a great deal of difficulty over it, I may even find that it will be difficult to get home tomorrow. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Let's just be grown-up people and deal with it maturely. See you."
Mike heard the click on the other end of the line. His mouth was agape, poised to say something in return to Ada, but the opportunity had been abruptly brought to a close when she finalized the call by hanging up.
He began pacing. What had happened? What was wrong? Had he done something to hurt her? Had he not done enough to please her? Was she perhaps sick? Maybe her friend Pam was a bad influence on her.
Maybe Pam was trying to break them up because Pam wasn't with anyone, was lonely and needed somebody. He would kill Pam. How could Ada do this to him? Didn't she know how much he loved her, how much he needed her? Ada, Ada, Ada, was all he could say, slapping the brow of his head every now and then in utter bewilderment.
It was over for Ada. She never intended to come home again. Mike tossed the night, thinking he could get through it, that she would be there tomorrow. Tomorrow. He would sleep and then it would be tomorrow.
And tomorrow Ada would surely come back to him.
Men are such fools, Ada thought, seeing in her mind's eye, the picture of her husband pacing back and forth, trying to figure out this move of hers, trying to understand her next move.
How boring of him, she thought, to be so patient with her. No self-respect. Once a man loved a woman like Mike loved her, there was no hope for him. Now that she had gotten what she wanted, a place away from her mother, an indulgent husband, money in the bank, and school nearly completed, she decided that her move was perfect for the present time.
Besides, she was moving in a new crowd, theatre people, actors and the like. Interesting for awhile, she thought.
Gloria had fallen by the way these last two years, Ada not having much time to continue that relationship along with all the others. The constant change of lovers was important to her. She couldn't stand being with any one person for too long. Mike was different, easy to handle, willing to give her everything he had, and more than anything else, he was innocuous. She knew when she left him that he would not be vindictive towards her in any way. That was important to her, naturally. Her mother, even Gloria, warned her, more than once, that the kind of pain she inflicted on people, the kind of confusion she left them in, one day, one fine day, might backfire on her.
She might find herself dead. Murdered by a spumed lover. A crime of passion. It was in her blood. One day a murderer would smell it out in her, she would carry out her painful plots, and before she knew it, she would be, at last, staring into the face of Death.
She made it a point to pick her lovers out of a group of mild-mannered, gentle people overall. She was smart, she played the angles. But, as her mother warned her, she was too smart for her own good. One day, she would be old and ugly, alone and unloved. Her mother was waiting, she felt, living to see the day when Ada was defeated. She wanted both of them to be buried in the same mud of despair.
Never. Ada swore. Never.
Mike couldn't have been sweeter when the end came. He left her everything, the apartment, the furniture, her gifts, gave her money, all on the chance that she would agree to see him, sometime. Nothing definite, Ada told him, but she wouldn't freeze him out totally.
A week near the beach would be nice, Ada thought, when Mike had finally packed himself up and gotten out of the house. In spite of everything, Ada had a great weakness. She could not stand to be alone. It drove her out of her mind when there was no one looking in her face, touching her body, admiring her. She needed constant attention.
Since Mike was gone, she would have to do something about making sure that there would always be someone at home to welcome her, even if it wasn't a lover at this point. Perhaps a girlfriend, someone she could sit and while away the time with talking about everything, lovers, jobs, professions, anything that occurred to her.
She would work on that this week, but for now, she was not about to stay at home this first night after Mike's departure.
Bridgehampton. Her girlfriend had invited her to spend a few days with her there. Why not go there?
She boarded the train at Penn Central. She would get there early afternoon. She would sit by the window, watch the world go by and dream about things. She found herself writing. She was writing to a woman she had met a few days before. This woman, however, was no stranger to her. She had seen her before on the campus of her school. She knew, over a year before, the moment their eyes had met, that this woman was somehow to be very special in her life, but for the moment it occurred, it chilled her. She actually avoided running into this woman again because even when Ada would see her from a distance, it reminded her somewhere, deep inside her, of something she had forgotten, and certainly didn't want to remember.
Nevertheless, some meetings are fate, as Ada was known to have made mention of earlier in her life, and when one of her good girlfriends brought them together, Ada didn't fight her attraction anymore. She would be a good filler, for the time being Ada thought. Sort of reminiscent of Gloria. Well, she would see.
She wrote and wrote, then destroyed what she had written. It was no good, she didn't like to put things which were personal down on paper. Then, someone would always have it, could show it to her, could make her remember her words, words that she used without meaning usually.
In Bridgehampton she met a young actor, immediately initiated him, looked around for other excitement, but the idea of the woman back in the city kept creeping into her mind. Maybe I really want to see her. Maybe I should. How simple a thing it would be. Just find a telephone, Ada. Call her up. What are you afraid of?
Nothing has made you afraid before. What's wrong with you now?
All these questions remained unanswered to her. She didn't want to know the answers anyway. It was more exciting to her to be finally in the dark about something, not to be completely in charge, in control of everything. After all, it made things exceedingly dull.
Ada thought of the conversation she'd had with the woman the first time they really met. It centered on the woman's name.
"Zoe. That's my name," the woman had said.
"I've never met anyone with that name before." Ada said. "What does it come from? Does it have any special meaning?"
"Of course," Zoe answered, "You'll soon find after knowing me awhile that I fit my name to a tee."
"Why? What does it mean?" Ada iterated.
"It comes from the Greek, first of all, and more importantly, it means LIFE!"
"Life? Well, my name, from the Hebrew, means I'm of 'noble rank'."
"Yes," Zoe said, "I can see that in your bearing and in your beauty, of course."
"You can?" Ada asked.
"Of course, child. I have been aware of you for over a year now and you have more than my admiration for your beauty, you know. Most of the women who attend this school absolutely talk of you as though you were some form of aphrodisiac, turning even their heads with your sensuality."
"You flatter me." Ada suggested.
"Not at all. I tell the truth. Therefore, there must be some reason why you have been given this magnetic quality you possess."
"Do you really think so?"
"I'm certain of it. Just as my name means life, and the experience of life is the most important thing to me, the idea that you should be beautiful, more beautiful than others, that you should be treated specially, differently, is probably very important to you. Your name is very important. We must always study people's name, to find a deeper meaning to their existence, if only so much as the dream of the parents when naming their child."
"I like the way you talk," Ada said to Zoe, "I'm not sure I'm always going to agree with what you say, but I must say, you're more interesting to me than the run of the mill around here."
"I think you'll find that we will be very important to each other."
"Are you suggesting something?" Ada coyly asked Zoe.
"Naturally."
"Listen," Ada began, "I just dumped my husband of two years, I'm really pretty fed up with relationships and I'm just looking to have a good time. Do you know what I mean?"
"What's your idea of a good time?" Zoe quizzed.
"Well, I'm off to the Hamptons for a while. That should be good fun."
"I'm sorry I can't keep you here a while longer. Before you go however, would you like to have dinner with me, say tomorrow night?"
"Tomorrow? That sounds good, but I don't think I'll be able to see you after that again."
"Why's that?"
"I don't know. I just sense something about you, something so intense, that it frightens me, in a way."
"Remember my name? It means LIFE! That's probably what you sense about me, my vitality overwhelms a lot of people, but with you, I don't expect that will happen. In an odd way, I feel that you somehow balance me, that you are my counterpart. Of course, I'm talking off the top of my head, and you shouldn't take me too seriously, because I sometimes carry on esoterically. Actually, I like you. I think you like me too. And I think we can have some fun together. What do you say about dinner tomorrow?"
"I already agreed to that, but nothing more Zoe. Remember that, will you?"
"I'll remember everything, Ada."
CHAPTER FIVE
The dark blue Lincoln Continental pulled up to the curb. Zoe could see Ada, waiting in the hall of her apartment building. Immediately upon seeing Zoe, Ada's ordinarily somber face burst into a broad smile. Zoe thought to herself that Ada must have thought that she wouldn't come to get her, after all.
There was a lot that Zoe could understand about people in general. Her background was very heavily into literature, and she used to say that if you wanted to learn about life, all you had to do was to read. It didn't make a difference whether the stories were true or not.
The fact was, that a writer created things sometimes from his life experience, and sometimes from his fantasy. More often than not, it was a mixture of both. But the important thing to remember was the fact that if a writer made something up that didn't yet exist, it would shortly thereafter. She knew that people were basically imitative. That they sought out models from whom they could copy their own ways. Zoe was hoping that she would be a good example for Ada to respond to. Ada seemed on her way to a life of dissipation, a life for Ada with a trail of broken hearts behind her, that she had personally destroyed. Zoe took each step with Ada seriously, because she knew that nothing ever happened that didn't have great meaning.
"Good evening," Zoe said, looking at the beautiful Ada. "What a pleasure it is to see such a refreshing sight as your face after the dismal ride through this dirty city."
"It is pretty bad, isn't it? I don't notice it much anymore. Either I'm away or I'm indoors, where I'm safe, so it really doesn't much matter. I'm just waiting to finish with school and all so that I can get out of here once and for all."
"Where would you like to go?"
"Oh, probably I'll end up in France."
"France?"
"Yes. I speak and write French fluently, of course. A relative of mine may very well have set up a job for me there when I finish with school next year. I'm so excited by the prospect of living there, I can hardly wait for the time to pass."
"Never fear. The time will most certainly pass. Of that you can be sure."
"Everything sounds so final when you say it. Are you a cynic or something?"
"A cynic with the name of LIFE! That would be a crime, wouldn't it?"
"I don't know. Are you still excited about life? Sometimes, it's everything, everything I can do to keep from going insane with the sheer boredom of it all. Do you have a remedy for that?"
"Certainly. There's a remedy for everything, waiting to be discovered by anyone who seeks it."
"That doesn't tell me a thing."
"Well, when I have you all to myself, over dinner, over candlelight, in the dark and beautiful surrounding of the finest restaurant in the city, I swear I'll tell you everything."
"I can't wait."
Ada stared at the profile of this dark, alluring woman, seven, perhaps ten years older than her. She found her exciting. Something about the way the eyes glistened, the way she spoke so directly at you, the way she made you feel warm and secure when you were with her.
The car was like a luxury boat. The silence inside the car comforting. All the noises of the city sealed away from them. Only the two of them of all the people in the world. Why were they together? Where were they heading besides to a pleasant dinner on the town? Somehow, fate worked its wonders in strange forms.
Ada, Zoe knew instinctively, was somehow closely aligned to a kind of deathness. Her need to leave her lovers, suddenly, irrevocably, to leave them empty, with no recourse, why had she turned from a love of life to this strange, almost evil girl who forsook the idea of love, perverting it into something of her own creation?
"I understand you've had many lovers." Zoe began over dinner. The salad was crisp, covered with a delicate oil and vinegar dressing.
"Many. Yes." Ada answered her, waiting for Zoe's next question.
"Why do you think you've had so many?"
"I don't know. I guess I just get bored easily. I need constant change, excitement. Don't you ever become bored with your lovers?"
"Perhaps I'm more cautious about their selection than you."
"No one can be more cautious than me, Zoe."
"So, you must select them because you know you'll be soon tired of them, you're saying?"
"I don't know. Is that what I'm saying? I mean, I pick people I know that there is no danger of my falling in love with, so that ultimately, I guess, I'll be safe from the very things which I usually inflict on them."
"What's that? What do you usually do to your lovers?"
"Well, usually, at the height of their passion for me, I leave them, without a word, without a warning. I just quit the scene. I seem like a dream to them. Don Juan believed it was the way to have undying love. Once you reach the zenith of your passion, there's no where to go but down from there."
"Is passion all you're concerned with?"
"Well, it is the thing, you might say, I've more or less concentrated my powers on for most of my life."
"It strikes me as strange for you that you would be so open with anyone as you are with me in this discussion."
"As a matter of fact, it is odd. I'm a firm believer in mysteries. No one should know anything about anyone, if they could help it. It would make life so much more fascinating." They were having a good time together, a good talk together. They went from the subject of love and lovers to literature, psychology, sociology in addition to the moments when silence pervaded their table, they looked silently and soberly at one another, needing to ask no questions about what each of them were. Their meal turned out to be perfect in every way. Ada was unaccustomed to such a formal atmosphere and such elegant surroundings, though she most certainly aspired to it.
Time to go. The car was brought to the door of the restaurant and once behind the wheel again, Zoe took command.
"Would you like me to take you home, or would you like to come up to my house for a while? Anything you choose is all right with me."
"Well, I do have a friend staying at my place, and I'd like very much to see yours. But please, I don't know what it is about you, but you make me feel weak, and I don't want anything to happen between us. Will you promise me?"
"Of course, I promise you." Zoe never lied, she always kept her promises.
The doorman opened the door for them, biding them a good evening and smiling. Zoe walked briskly through the large, well furnished lobby to the elevator that was made of beautiful panelled wood. Zoe inserted a key in the penthouse apartment and the elevator lifted off.
They were high above the city, with terraces around three sides of the apartment. The whole floor was Zoe's. Ada realized that this woman was somehow very successful and knew how to live comfortably.
After being shown the more public areas of the apartment, Ada suddenly asked, "Where's your bedroom?"
"My bedroom is in this direction." Zoe said, placing her hand on Ada's back lightly and leading her into the room.
"How lovely it is!" Ada exclaimed. She liked the way the light of the night city filtered through the shades, the way the glass to the terrace reflected the warm colors of the furnishings of the room.
"Do you like my home, Ada?"
"Very much. I guess it isn't hard to get used to this way of living, is it?"
"Like everything else, you get used to it, it loses its novelty. The same thing that happens with you and your lovers."
"There you go, talking about my lovers again. Do you have a fixation on them?"
"Of course, I don't. I just thought that it was interesting the way things always interrelate to each other. Don't you find that fascinating too?"
"I just love the way you think. I think in a short while you would have me climbing up the walls, trying to understand you."
"The more you know me, the simpler I become. The same, I guess goes for everyone."
"And now," Ada began, "I suppose you're going to tell me that you'd like very much to get to know me better, too?"
"I might say that, but I don't think I'd mean it the same way that you do."
Ada went to the large, round bed, jumping up and down on it with her backside a few times, testing its resiliency.
"Feels really comfortable." She said, shifting a coy eye at Zoe.
Zoe was not about to be taken in.
"Listen, why not make yourself comfortable in here, since you like this room so much, and I'll bring in something to drink for us. All right with you?"
"Sure." Ada said, "So long as you remember our earlier conversation."
Zoe disappeared into the kitchen. Ada looked around more carefully now. This was everything she wanted, but what made her so reticent about an involvement with Zoe. She was rich, beautiful, intelligent. What was wrong? Ada was beginning to get a gleaning of the answer when Zoe walked in again.
"Here you are." Zoe said, handing Ada a long, iced drink.
"What about you, what are you drinking?"
"Only your words and your eyes, tonight, my dear." Zoe answered playfully.
She propped up the pillow so each of them could rest their heads and they began to talk intimately, throughout the night.
The lack of sleep, the drinks, the beauty of the surroundings, all of these made Ada fight giving herself to this woman, who made no real attempt to capture her.
All night, throughout the conversation, the music playing, the long looks, the only thing that Zoe did to Ada was to caress her long flowing hair. Zoe could see that Ada was only steps away from letting herself be taken, but she wanted to wait, to purposely remain apart from a sexual encounter so soon with the girl.
This girl was different, she knew. Not used to thinking or caring about the other person. Never really wanting anyone, really.
"I'll take you to the train station today, if you like." Zoe offered Ada.
"Thanks. But I made myself a promise that I wouldn't see you again after this one time. You know, I like to keep my promises. It teaches me that nothing is really so important after all."
"The logic of that escapes me. You must be very tired, dear."
"I am. But I love not sleeping. The effect it has on my perceptions is better than any kind of drug I've ever tried. Sometimes I don't sleep for days at a time. Then, oh God, life seems like it's being filtered through one of those lenses that distorts images. I seem to be floated endlessly. Sometimes, I don't know how I got to some places, and there are whole days that are lost from my memory. I love it. Time flows together like a liquid. I don't have to be real anymore, just a movement, floating in space, never to settle anywhere."
"So you are a poet, after all." Zoe exclaimed. She loved to watch Ada talk about herself so unselfconsciously.
"It runs in my family, you know." Ada answered. "My mother fancies herself a poet of sorts, but I suggested to her that the best poets only live very short lives, but she didn't take the hint. I guess she wants to hang around to see me get mine. The way things are going, I don't think she'll be disappointed."
"What are you saying, Ada? You foresee some dismal end for yourself or something?"
"End?" Ada looked off, through the windows, staring into the light breaking into the night. "Looks like the beginning of a new day, and the end of our lovely evening together. I really enjoyed myself. It was very different with you."
"Come then, I'll take you home and then to the station to catch your train."
"Okay." Ada conceded, too tired to fight what was best for her anyway.
"Goodbye, then." Ada murmured in a low voice at the station. I won't forget what a good night we had. You'll probably forget about me in a matter of days, won't you?"
"I told you, I remember everything."
"Well, forget about my coming back. Make believe that I never existed. Believe me, you'd be better off."
"I'll make those decisions for myself, thank you, young lady." Zoe chided Ada.
"Well, it doesn't really matter anyway." And with those words, Ada boarded the train, Zoe turned and walked away.
It was only three days later, when in her office, Zoe's secretary answered a call from Ada.
"I'll take it, in my office." Zoe moved quickly from the hall into her tastefully furnished office.
"Hi! Where are you, Ada?"
"I'm still out here, in Bridgehampton. I'm really having a good time. I met this guy and I slept with him last night. He's an actor doing a revue in one of the clubs down here."
"That's nice. Good to know you're enjoying yourself." Zoe was waiting. Why had Ada called her? What would she eventually want from her?
"Listen. What are you doing? Why don't you come down here and spend a few days. It's really nice by the beach. Besides, I'm really sort of lonely. My friend that I came to stay with, she's going away on a camping trip tomorrow, and I'll have to either come home or stay somewhere else. Can you get away, do you think?"
"You know, I haven't heard a better suggestion in weeks. I'd be delighted to come down. Let me arrange things at my office, pick up some clothes, get some money from the bank, and I'll probably be able to drive down this afternoon. How does that sound?"
"Sounds great to me! I love you. You're so spontaneous. You just do what you want, don't you?"
"Don't you? Doesn't everybody?"
"Listen, Zoe. I'm staying at this address. I'll be waiting for you this afternoon. I can't wait till you get here. I'm so glad you're coming.
Now I won't have to go home."
"See you later, Ada." Zoe said, hanging up, moving quickly, getting herself together to leave.
"I'll be gone for a few days," she said to her secretary, "maybe a week. I don't know yet." Out the door, finished with the bank and picking up a suitcase, Zoe settled into her Lincoln, drew up all the windows, sent the antenna up, turned on a station with Ada's kind of music, and lit up a joint.
I'm travelling, she thought, on my way to see a beautiful child with the touch of death somehow circling around her. She grew more relaxed with the joint. The music seemed more and more mellow. She gave herself over to the thoughts of Ada. Sixty, seventy miles an hour, like a crawl in her car, the movement and speed hardly registering itself in the padded and finely balanced cockpit.
The afternoon was beautiful. She could see that as soon as she left the city proper, the smog of the city disappeared. Even though it seemed clearer, she knew the truth. The pollution was still out there, now surrounded the world, no place left on the earth that man hasn't invaded with his terrible toxins.
The ride hypnotized her. She drove on, on past Bridgehampton, past Amagansett, all the way up to Montauk. When she reached Heather Hills, the fog had rolled in from the sea, dipping itself onto the earth, kissing it then moving off. The other-worldliness of the view sent a chill through Zoe. Somehow, Ada was death, and she was life. This would be their struggle. Zoe felt that she might never come home again, that Ada would probably kill her, that the forces that drove Ada to cause pain were ultimately greater than the force of life, for life, that Zoe was capable of.
No. It's the grass. It's making me see things that are not really there. Ada is just a simple girl. Hurt. Hurting back. What could be simpler than that. Why the fuss? The big to-do about this one girl. Zoe had known many girls, women before. Why was this girl different?
Before she could answer that question, the island had forced her car around and she was approaching Bridgehampton for the second time, from the other direction.
As Zoe pulled her car in the driveway, she saw Ada, like a little country girl, sitting on the steps of the house, waiting for her.
Without a word, Zoe stepped from her car to the smile on Ada's face. Ada took her hand, tugged on her to let her know that she wanted Zoe to follow her, and they walked.
Two blocks, three maybe. No one passed on the way. She kept her hand in Zoe's until the sound of the sea rushed into the ears of them both.
Ada kept pulling Zoe along. Suddenly, they were lost in the midst of a thick fog, surrounding them on every side. So complete was their cover that when Ada moved close to Zoe's face and spoke to her, her words fell to the sand, as though they were dead weights. There was nowhere for their words to fly, except down, between them.
This is another world, Zoe thought. I'm not really here. Suddenly, Ada moved to her, put her arms around her and kissed her, slowly and passionately on the mouth.
The kiss lasted a lifetime.
(The sea was there somewhere, but neither of them could see it. They only heard its incessant roaring and breaking against the shore.
It was more than Zoe had hoped for. And more than Ada expected when Zoe took her completely into her arms, lifting her, and carrying her to a raised dune, where she set Ada down, so near to her that their bodies touched length wise.
"Make love to me, please!" Ada begged.
"Here? Right here? Right now?" Zoe said, smiling, at Ada's earnest passion.
"No. Not here. Someone might come by. Take me home."
"Where's home? Back there? Isn't anyone else there?"
"Yes. We'll have to find some other place."
"Okay. Let's go now. I'll see if I can get us a room somewhere, away from the crowds." Zoe was successful, of course. She was successful anytime something was important enough for her.
They signed the register. Went upstairs, walked into a room overlooking the sea, with a beautiful full bed before them.
"Come here," Zoe said, taking Ada in her arms. "Now I have you, alone and to myself. Now, I'm going to find out what this strange magical hold it is you have."
Ada lay back on the bed, waiting for Zoe. Zoe was romantic. Something about the way she looked at you, those eyes of hers, Ada had never been so taken with anyone's eyes before.
When Zoe put her fingers on the naked upper arm of Ada, running the tips of them down the whole length of it, she could see that Ada was closing her eyes. Her breathing became more and more irregular. Zoe watched everything closely. Not that she wasn't enjoying herself, but she had long suspected something about Ada which she knew she was about to find out in the next few minutes.
Zoe began to kiss Ada's neck, lingering with her tongue near her ear. Ada began to squirm. "Oh, baby!" Ada began calling.
This didn't go off too well with Zoe. She knew that love-making had to do with timing, with things building up.
It was impossible, she knew for Ada to be so fired, so immediately.
"Make love to me, hurry, hurry!" Ada commanded. "I want to feel you inside me. Now!"
"Hey!" Zoe began softly in her ear, "I want you to take your time. I'm not in any hurry, are you? We just got here, baby. I want to get to know every part of you before I tackle the most intimate. Will you slow down a little, for me?"
Ada stopped, looked at Zoe's eyes and couldn't resist the gentleness there.
"Take your sweet time, lover. I'll just lie here, waiting for you to get good and ready."
"Making love is an art, you know, Ada."
"You don't have to tell me that. I got witnesses who'll swear that I invented it."
"Let's see what you know." And Zoe put her lips on Ada's in a long, deep kiss. Round and round, their heads circled each other's, like two dancers in their movements.
When Zoe felt that Ada was sufficiently ready, she began her seduction of her breasts. What breasts, Zoe thought. Young, firm, ripe. Ready to be kissed, sucked up into the breath, twirled amid a swirling tongue. Her nipples rose to the touch of Zoe's tongue.
Ada began sighing, murmuring, moving fitfully sometimes. She was ready to show Zoe that Zoe was exciting her, that she wanted her.
Zoe moved her lips down between Ada's thighs.
"Oh my God! That's where I wanted you to be from the first time I saw you!" Ada was raising her voice now.
Zoe's movements with her tongue inside the lips of Ada's vagina were slow, and thought out. Zoe was an expert at this. She knew what a woman's response should be to each flick of her tongue.
Ada grew louder and louder in her expression of passion. Her movements became more powerful in their thrusts.
Zoe circled her tongue around the opening of Ada's cunt. She darted her tongue, in and out, round and round the widening hole, each flick eliciting a moan from Ada.
Then, bringing two of her fingers right under her tongue, wetting them profusely with her own spittle, Zoe wedged the two fingers in the opening. Stretching them apart, she began to go deeper and deeper inside Ada, stretching wider and wider till she was fully embedded inside her.
The tips of her fingers explored the terrain. The smooth, dampness of it made Zoe close her eyes, only the sensation of her fingers important to her now.
Without moving in and out, she massaged the deep area of the dark of Ada, with rhythmic expertise. She felt Ada expand inside, grow so swollen that her fingers were forced against each other, squeezed into a tightness that was almost painful.
Suddenly, Ada began coiling her body, like a snake in her movements, rotating her hips round and round, finally pouncing on the fingers with such force that Zoe could feel the opening of her cunt slam against the base of her fingers.
Ada's movements accompanied her loud grunts. After minutes of the methodical motions, Zoe could feel that the inside of Ada became very huge, so that her whole hand might fit into her vagina, or a baby head might suddenly come rushing from the womb with room to spare.
Still licking her clitoris with her tongue, moving in and out of Ada with her fingers, Zoe seemed to take Ada to the brink of a shattering climax. "Oh God!" Ada was screaming, "Oh, my dear God! You're so good! So good, baby. There's no one like you. Oh baby, baby!"
Ada began to rattle, to shake, her body breaking out in shivers. In one quick motion, she coiled her body, and lunged at Zoe's fingers, nearly breaking them off.
Then silence. Breath being sucked in in long, sighing gasps.
It was over. Zoe had tasted the art of love with its goddess.
Ada looked at Zoe. She had performed well, she thought. Zoe would be pleased with her response. She reached to Zoe's head, still between her legs and drew her up to her face. She closed her arms around her body.
Zoe positioned herself so that she was speaking into the ear of Ada. Ada expected any moment that Zoe would tell her how much she loved her.
"How long have you been frigid?" Zoe asked her, matter-of-factly.
"Frigid?" Ada's eyes opened widely, a hint of terror sneaking out the sides.
"Yes, baby." Zoe answered.
"My God, don't tell me that you think I'm frigid!" Ada was almost in tears.
Suddenly the dam broke. Ada's body wracked convulsively in tears. Loud sobs overwhelmed her.
Zoe took her in her arms, rocked her gently, holding the back of her head with her hand.
"That's good, baby. Cry. Cry. It was a magnificent performance, you would fool the best of them. Cry, baby.
I'm going to change it all for you."
It was common sense, Zoe knew. Ada never in her life trusted anyone. Her sexuality, while it was refined and stunning in its presentation, only served to fool everyone, including Ada, who, her tears the witness to her suspicion of her own frigidity, showed it self to be nothing more than a polished act.
"Zoe," Ada said, still sobbing, "I can't believe it! I can't but I know it's true. How did you know it? AH this time I've been hiding the fact from myself. All this time! But you knew it! You!"
"Yes, baby. I knew it."
"But how? What did I do wrong?"
"Wrong? You did nothing wrong. Don't you see, sweetheart, when you can't trust anyone, the last thing that our minds allow our bodies is the complete abandonment of outer control. If you can't trust, you can't be free to feel all the wonderful things that giving yourself completely, letting yourself rest in the hands of another can do for you."
"Will you help me? Will you help me trust you, help me to love you, you, you're so different. You know me, better than I know me. Help me Zoe, help me, please."
"You got it, baby. And you got me. Let's not worry about it anymore. In a little while, perhaps a few weeks, a few months, all this will be in the past. You will learn to trust, to love. First, of course, there must be many, many hours where we'll just sit here, together, talking. I will show you myself so completely, demonstrate to you that revealing yourself to someone, so long as they are not destructive, can be the most rewarding thing you'll ever know."
"Thank God I met you, Zoe. I know you'll change my life, and maybe, maybe someday the black stone that is my heart will turn from dark and cold into the warmth and love that shines at me from your eyes."
CHAPTER SIX
The courtship between Ada and Zoe was just beginning. Now that the air had been cleared, the truth made known, Ada was like a different girl.
Her depression, which she had carried around with her since she was a small child was lifting gradually under the guidance of Zoe, who was patient, wise and loving in her approach to Ada.
Ada would arrive at home, find a dozen flowers waiting for her, from Zoe. It's true what they say about flowers and ladies; it absolutely seduces them into a mellowness of feeling.
Always, there would be a note enclosed. Zoe would usually make reference to 'things mattering'; that nothing was insignificant, that each thing had a reason, and the more closely Ada looked into her life, the things in her past, the more she would learn of herself, the more she would feel secure in her being, the greater her ability to be spontaneous would be.
"After all." Zoe would say, "that is the true measure of health and the fullest enjoyment of life, to be spontaneous!"
And the more you trusted yourself, the healthier your responses became.
Ada was a quick learner. She listened attentively to everything Zoe taught her. She placed her mind and her body at Zoe's disposal. More and more, Ada could not stand any separation between them.
"I feel so lost when you're not with me. What am I going to do?"
"That's only natural, in the beginning. But soon, you'll learn very well, that those things about me which make you feel safe, you can imitate as well. You'll adopt them for yourself, and you'll face every situation with a part of me present in you."
Their lovemaking was filled with new and wondrous explorations. Zoe showed Ada that every spot on her body was an erogenous zone. That the touch of someone who loved you was bound to be different from the random caresses of strangers.
"Relationship is the most necessary thing in love-making. Sure," Zoe continued, "we may even be brought to climax on a one night stand, but the nature and ultimate satisfaction derived from the encounter falls short of true fulfillment and is short-lived."
Ada felt herself, for the first time in her life, falling in love. In was no wonder that she was. For the first time, someone was showing her how to love herself. How to respect the things she felt, to give vent to her true emotions.
"Otherwise," Zoe stated, "if you keep the truth from yourself, you can never do anything about setting things right. The first thing you must do is to acknowledge what it is in you that is wanting, or in need of tending.
Then, armed with self-knowledge and determination, and someone who loves you, hopefully, there's nothing so difficult that can't be improved." Zoe took more and more time from her work to be with Ada. She took Ada to school each morning, discussed her classes with her, showed the interrelationship between what she was learning there and what she was learning in Zoe's arms.
"Everything is interrelated! That's the great secret of life! And the love of life comes when you begin to figure out the relationship of one thing to another."
Time was all Zoe knew she needed with Ada. She knew that she would have Ada with her only so long as it took Ada to become strong and convinced within herself that she could handle her own life, without elaborate preparation, without the sham and calculation she had come to be so dependent on.
Most of their talking took place in bed.
For Ada, it was a wonderful place to be, with Zoe.
Zoe was by far, the most exquisite lover she had ever had, for Zoe took the time and the trouble to bring her mind to the same place as her body.
Ada finally knew, that without her mind's participation, her body was lucky if it experienced the half of what was going on.
The moment she would come into Zoe's apartment she would head directly for the bedroom, disrobe and place her body on the bed.
Zoe would smile.
'Teach me something new today, will you, baby?" Ada would say.
"More? You want more? Are you sure you can handle what you already know?"
'Try me!" Ada dared.
"You asked for it!" Zoe answered, leaping from the floor onto the round bed.
"What are you going to do to little me?" Ada teased, acting like a little child.
"I'm going to look at you, without touching you. I'm going to speak with you so explicitly without words, that you are going to have one of the biggest climaxes you ever experienced."
"Without touching me?" Ada looked dubious.
"Without touching you." Zoe iterated.
"Well, begin then. I am ready if you are."
Zoe placed her body above Ada's, to the side, propping herself up on one elbow. She stared deeply into Ada's eyes.
Something in their color, Ada thought, something hypnotic, entrancing. Then, she began to see that stories were told with the eyes. The eyes, she had heard, were the mirror of the soul. She was peering into Zoe's.
What peace, such great waves of serenity emanated from her eyes.
They lay there, a great silence covering them.
Ada began to stare, forgot about blinking. She began to think of Zoe touching her. She could actually feel her lips kissing her neck, her hot breath giving her chills along her back.
She could feel the hair on her arms rising, standing straight up, trying to get closer to Zoe's body.
She began feeling a tingling sensation in her feet. A slow movement of pricking feelings moved further and further up her long, slender legs.
In the center of her body, that great place where every feeling of intensity came together in a musical sequence, she felt her clitoris jump.
Once, twice, the spasms in her clitoris became uncontrollable. Over and over, the waves of warmth licked over her body and ended in her eyes and her eyes were focussed on Zoe's.
Her mind began to swirl. She was in a vertigo. Round and round she flew. She felt her body raise itself off the bed, as though she was suspended mid-air without any support.
She refocused on Zoe's eyes. She would swear that their colors somehow exploded, that the brown and green of them began an outward movement, that her pupils opened so wide, that Ada was falling, flying through them.
Then she began to quiver, her whole body released itself from its tautness, unwound and exploded.
Ada whispered her moans. Whispered her sighs. She was not sure she could believe what happened to her.
She was not sure if she was still a part of the real world or whether Zoe had taken her to some distant planet, where the mind was all that was necessary to feel.
Immediately, she fell off into a deep swoon.
Zoe remained in her position, stroking her hair gently, lovingly.
When Ada came to again, about fifteen minutes later, she saw Zoe, still above her.
"What are you?" She asked, rather innocently, certainly in earnest.
"What am I?" Zoe asked.
"My God. Do you know where you took me? Do you have an idea what happened to me?"
"Of course I do. Didn't I tell you what I was going to do to you, where I was going to take you?"
"I didn't believe you. I'm sorry, but I just didn't believe you. How can you make such things happen?"
"With your trust in me, that's how I make them happen. Now, even when you say you don't believe me, your mind know better."
"Put your arms around me, hold me." Ada pleaded, wanting to be a part of the body that could perform such magic.
Zoe loved holding her, loved touching and teaching her. How long would she have her, she thought. How long before all Zoe's secrets were hers, to have and hold as her very own?
"Zoe, I love you." Ada said, meaning it for the first time.
"How could you not love me?" Zoe answered imperiously. "After all, my name means LIFE! Never forget that! Loving me is loving life and that's all I could ever wish for you, Ada, my darling."
"I'm still not so sure about life, but I am about you, Zoe. I can't stand to be separated from you, even for a minute. What should I do?"
"Miss me when you are separated. Look forward to seeing me. Dream of me when you sleep. Always carry me somewhere inside you, with you. You are a part of me now, as I am a part of you. We are never really separate, you know."
Those words, Ada thought. Those words; I've heard them before. Where? Where?
"When was the last time you spoke with your mother, Ada?"
Of course! That was where Ada had heard those words. Her mother had spoken them to her the last time they saw each other, at her wedding to Mike.
"My mother? Why do you bring up my mother? I don't want to talk about her, no less think about her. What made you ask me that?
No. Don't tell me. I don't want to know. But I think it's all very strange." Ada was talking to herself, thinking out loud, under her breath.
"Now, calm down, baby. I know it's a very sore point with you, your mother, that is. But what's the sense of avoiding the issue any longer? Unless you resolve that most primal of relationships, you will be prey the rest of your life to anyone that comes along who can push those buttons in you that are still connected to her."
"I have no connection to her! None! She doesn't mean anything to me! She doesn't fit anywhere in my life and no one can use her against me!"
"Now look at that anger you're displaying. Do you have any idea of the amount of energy it takes for you to continuously repress that anger. Don't you know that those kinds of feelings you harbor about your mother ultimately drain you and make you incapable of fully being a part of any real experience? Always, as long as you let it fester inside you, your mother will be like a sitting time bomb in your head, using up your energy, making you afraid, anxious, when you don't even know the origins of your upset."
"Please, baby. I can't talk about her. I, I... HATE her with all my heart! With all the heart that's left in me, that is!"
"Hate? Ada, I'm glad you said that. Hate is such an important word. Once I can see the demonstration of your hate, I immediately know how much you love."
"Love? What does love have to do with hate? They are opposites, you know."
"Sure. You can't have one without the other. Horns of the same bull, they say. For as much as you hate your mother, that is as much as you love her, even though you may not have been free to express that part of it.
Perhaps that was why Gloria was one of the important relationships in your life. Perhaps that is why you are with me now."
"No. Don't say such things. My mother has nothing to do with the way I feel about you. "
"Doesn't she? I say to you that without what you feel about your mother, you wouldn't be here with me today.
That's why I ask you about your mother. I would like to meet her. After all, she was responsible for us getting together, ultimately."
"Well, suppose I listen to you. Suppose I am angry at my mother. Suppose you could put an end to that.
Would that mean that I wouldn't love you anymore?"
"Ada, what it would mean is that you would, for the first time in your life, be free to choose whom you would love, instead of being drawn to people out of some unexplained, unworked-out problem from your past."
"Make love to me. Forget this conversation." Ada suggested.
"Every time I talk to you, touch you, don't you understand, I am making love to you?"
"I know. I know. I just need to constantly be touched by you. It reassures me."
"There's nothing I like better than touching you. But I want you to be fully here with me, whenever I do."
"I'm with you. All of me is with you." Ada swung her body closer to Zoe.
Zoe took her again, in her arms. She moved over her, covering her with her body. Now, both of them lying flat, one on the other, Zoe began to move against the center of Ada's body. She took her hands, placed them on Ada's breasts, kneading them, slowly.
Ada's nipples responded immediately.
"If only you could make love to me forever, Zoe." Ada whispered.
"I will. I will. I'll always be making love to you, Ada."
The friction of their bodies increased in intensity.
Zoe removed one hand from Ada's breast, threw it over the side of the bed and grasped a vibrator in it.
"What's that?" Ada asked, not seeing the object before.
"Something for both of us." Zoe answered.
She placed the vibrator between their vaginas, positioning it so that the most powerful surges would be felt on both their clitorises.
Zoe turned the button that turned the power on. It was adjustable. A low whine emanated from the machine.
"Oh, that feels good!" Ada said, liking the closeness of their bodies, knowing that both of them now were feeling the same things.
"It's going to get even better, baby." Zoe countered.
She ground herself gently into Ada, moving up and down slightly on the machine between them.
The constant vibration of the machine on their clitorises was thrilling for them both. Zoe turned the speed up.
Faster and faster the vibrations came, sending electrical currents throughout their bodies.
"So good! So good!" Ada kept saying, over and over.
Her eyes closed, but Zoe could see that they were rolling inside her head.
"You like this, don't you? Don't you, baby?"
"Umm." Ada's reply.
"Do you want it faster? Harder?"
"Yes. Yes. Faster, harder. Anything you say. Do it! Do it!"
Zoe knew that she herself, was close to climax. She wanted to come, wanted to feel them come together.
She moved expertly, moving like a dancer on Ada's body. She felt Ada tighten, knew that her climax was a moment away. She waited.
Both of them, bursting together. Their bodies bounced off each other at different spots as both of them let all their spasms overtake them.
"My God! That was fantastic!" Ada said. "I never came with you before. I want to do it again and again. I love the way you tremble in my arms. Sometimes I forget that you need to be satisfied too."
"Don't worry about me. My satisfaction is you, sweetheart."
"But I do. I've probably neglected you, you know."
'There's so much else to take care of that I haven't given it a second thought."
"Well, start thinking, cause now I'm about to turn the tables on my teacher. Get over here! Under me!" Ada commanded.
Zoe did what she suggested. She was waiting to see what Ada would do to her. She had never made love to her before.
Ada started with kisses. Kisses all over Zoe's body. Zoe lay perfectly still, drinking in each exquisite brush of her lips on her body.
Ada kissed her full breasts, first one, then the other. All the while she sighed, liking the new experience of taking the lover that had taken her.
She moved her hands beneath Zoe's thighs, slipping them finally under her buttocks. She lowered her head and found herself in the dark, the dark of Zoe, the place she had never been before.
"Oh Zoe, you should have told me. How wet you are! How long have you waited for me to stop being so selfish?"
Zoe didn't answer. She was enjoying the fruits of her patience.
Ada's tongue snaked itself out, slowly at first, finding the furrow between the wet lips of Zoe's vagina.
"Uhmmm," she mewed, liking the taste of this woman.
Faster and faster she moved her tongue until she discovered something hard, and growing larger on the upper part of Zoe's cunt.
The clitoris! She had actually found the clitoris herself! A major achievement for a novice. She worked more slowly now, realizing that the seat of pleasure was in this tiny space that the clitoris encompassed.
She brought the tip of her tongue to it sharply and drew it back. Her lips rested against the vagina so that she could feel that each time she directly touched the clitoris, the clitoris backfired and struck out in the opposite direction. She began to see it as a game. She would send the clitoris a code, tapping it with her tongue.
And the clitoris answered back! What a remarkable thing. God really knew what he was doing when he put a woman together. Each time the clitoris jumped, she could feel the opening of the vagina tighten.
She organized her actions. She placed two fingers at the opening, flicked the clitoris with her tongue and sure enough! the vagina began to draw the fingers in.
Spasm after spasm, created by the stimulation of the clitoris drew the fingers in totally.
How deep, how dark and floating it was in there. Why, Ada thought, it's like the universe. All birth and life comes from the universe and all life on earth from the very, place she had her fingers.
It was a revelation to her.
Everything meant something, she remembered.
We take too much for granted. Each person had the stamp of the universe in their very body. The only way to be grateful for this exquisite gift of body was to revere it, to respect it, not only your own, but other's too.
"Oh, Zoe, you're beautiful. Beautiful!"
Zoe was having no problem feeling her beauty. Her body was flushed with the heat of love. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel the color RED all around her, swallowing her up, making her part of an energy that had no body, no form, only feeling.
"Ada." She began. "Ada."
Ada wouldn't believe for a moment that Zoe would only speak her name. That was all the others could do.
Call her by her name.
"Yes, baby?" She answered Zoe.
"I want to be inside you, move yourself for me, come close to me."
Ada obeyed. She kept her wet fingers inside Zoe, moving her body around completely.
In a moment Zoe had penetrated her, to the back of her deep canal.
Together they moved, in and out of each other, looking into each other faces, kissing passionately sometimes, squeezing each other's breasts.
When they exhausted each other with their mouths, their arms and hands, kisses and caresses, they were ready for more talk.
"You'll have to forgive your mother, you know that, don't you, Ada?"
"Forgive her for what? I wouldn't waste my time on her. She's not worth the effort."
"Look. It's a very simple kind of thing, once you understand the basics of it. As long as you go on hating and being unforgiving, you'll never really be free of her. You'll forever be a prisoner of her as long as you refuse to acknowledge her importance to you."
"But she's not important to me. Why are you making such a big deal over her?"
'Think of it this way. You say you hate your mother, that you wouldn't be caught dead, in effect, bearing any kind of resemblance to her. Well, I'm telling you that the longer you fight being anything like her, the more you come to resemble her, like it or not. You see how your mother's distrust of people found a home in you?
You see how unable you were to really feel anything because you were unable to trust anyone? Don't you see how remarkably alike you are in character?"
"Don't say that! Do you want me to end up hating you, too?"
"You can't hate me. I'm going to make it impossible for you to hate anyone, if I work very hard at it."
"Boy! You are one hell of an idealist. Do you think it's so easy to erase hate from the face of the world?"
"Easy? God, no! But it's not impossible. It just means, if it were left all to me, that I would have to put everyone where you are right now, into my loving arms, and talk their ears off, just as I'm doing to you.
Eventually, I'd wear them down. Eventually, they'd give in. They'd scream out, 'I LOVE EVERYONE!' finally, and I'd probably have no reason to go on living after that, my job would be done, I'd take off my mask, get on my horse and ride into the sunset."
"Silly girl!"
"Hey, beautiful, how about something to eat?"
"Yeah," Ada said, slipping her feet off the bed, "that sounds great. What you got?"
"Besides myself?"
"I don't mind the same meal twice in a row." Ada's eyes ogled Zoe.
"Well, I have something else in mind, frankly, my dear." Zoe jokingly answered.
"And what might that be, my lady?"
"Something substantial, something to quell my voracious appetite."
"And after you eat, you hungry animal, I'll be like the birds that land inside the open mouth of the alligator to pick their teeth clean. You wouldn't snap your mouth closed on me, would you?"
"Unless we get something soon, you may become the very stuff between my teeth!"
"Okay. Okay. I'm ready. Let's go."
"Making love with you really works up an appetite. It's a good thing I remember that we're supposed to eat food once in a while."
"I love not eating," Ada began, "just like I love not sleeping. It does really great things for the head. It's like being stoned constantly."
"Speaking of being stoned, have you noticed what grass does to you when you make love?"
"Not especially. I could take it or leave it when I make love. Now that I've learned what I have from you, I could probably never smoke again and I wouldn't miss it in the least."
"Well, it is good to turn on an appetite." Zoe reached a joint out to Ada.
"If I smoke now, after two days of no sleep and no eating, you'll probably have to carry me downstairs."
"What would the doorman say?"
'Tuck him!"
"Him too!"
"Oh cut it out!" Ada was almost completely dressed by now. Her small size five body looked good in the tight, dark slacks. She wore a blouse that accentuated her breasts.
"Where can I take you looking like that?"
"Like what? What's wrong with the way I look?"
"Absolutely nothing! In fact," Zoe stepped towards Ada, "I'm about to change my mind about going out."
"I thought you were hungry, Zoe?"
"I am, but, I have a better suggestion."
"What's that?"
"I'm going to call up that service that sends a cook to the house, with all the food, and prepares you a meal."
"Zoe, you're crazy!"
"No I'm not. They serve you breakfast in bed usually. But I'm sure they would have no objections to serving us dinner in bed."
"Well, it is almost time for breakfast you know."
"Is it?"
"Yeah. It's a quarter-to-six. Don't you see the sun about to break?"
"Tell you what. Take your clothes off. Get back into bed and I'll place the call and come right back."
"You got yourself a deal!" Ada said, looking forward to bed again with Zoe.
'They'll be here at seven-thirty. What a delicious menu. They even supply you with flowers on the tray. They think of everything. And the best part of it all is that they clean all the dishes and quietly slip out."
"What can we do these next forty-five minutes?"
"What do you think? Lie down girl. You're about to go to dreamland again. I have your ticket right here." Zoe pointed to her mouth. She searched out the slot and stuck the ticket in.
"Oh baby, what a ride! Is this going to be a trip around the world, I hope?" Ada was joking, but enjoying.
"Anywhere you want to go in forty-five minutes."
"I'll close my eyes." Ada said. "Surprise me."
'Today, we're going to take you on a trip to the pyramids." Zoe said, raising her head from Ada's thighs.
'There are so many secrets in these dark caverns that are yet to be discovered. Let's see, what have we here?"
Zoe inserted her fingers into Ada's cunt.
"On the other hand, they have discovered another entrance. I believe that entrance is here." And she took her other hand, placed it underneath Ada's rump and entered her anus.
"Now, these two priests, or whatever they were called in those days, were ea.ch walking along their separate corridors when one of them decided to tap the great stone wall to see if he got an answer."
She pressed the fingers in the vagina and the finger in the rectum together, tapping against their walls.
"When the other priest heard the tapping, he thought it was a miracle. He had never heard the tapping before. And he began to tap back. Tap, tap. Over and over they tapped to each other, neither of them knowing that on the other side was the very same guy he had just eaten breakfast with."
Zoe could tell, from her train of thought, that she was hungry.
"Anyway, these two guys were having such a good time, thinking about all the wonderful things they were going to tell their friends waiting downstairs in the priest's quarters." Meanwhile, of course, Ada was going out of her mind with pleasure. She loved Zoe's stories, especially when she told them to her while they made love.
Her climax was close. Zoe could feel both the channels twitching spasmodically. She wanted to bring the story to a close at the same time that Ada would come off.
"When the two priests couldn't contain their discoveries any longer, they each made for home, downstairs.
As fate would have it, the first person they ran into, was each other. One priest said to the other, 'Hail Mary,' because he was in a hurry, you know, and the other answered, 'Hi, Alice. You'll never guess what just happened to me!"
With that, all hell broke loose with Ada. She came and came, not even stopping to laugh at Zoe's bad joke.
She kissed her tenderly and lovingly, full on the mouth, making Zoe shut up.
The bell rang.
"Breakfast is served, just about." Zoe said, scrambling up to get the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ada could feel the hot sand between her toes, almost burning them. What was she doing on this desert?
Why was she there? She didn't know. All she did know was that when she woke, the sun was beating hot and heavy on her head. Where were her clothes? She was naked. Naked in the hot sun. She could feel her body, blistering, burning, turning red right before her eyes. She looked all around her.
There was nothing. Only sand. No shelter. No place to run. No one to protect her.
"My God!" she shouted. "Where am I?"
There was no answer.
Only the sun and the sand.
She walked, pulling one foot then another from the sand. It was trying to bury her, she thought. Each time she placed her foot into the sand again, it seemed to go in deeper and deeper, "Zoe? Zoe!" She screamed.
No answer.
Zoe had deserted her.
Now she was finally alone. Her life hanging on her arid breath.
Miles and miles of unending desert.
Where was she going? Which way to walk? She didn't know. She kept walking.
A speck, far in the distance. She saw it from the corner of her eye. What was it? Was it coming towards her, coming to her, to save her to take her out of this killing sand?
As the speck grew larger, Ada could see that it was a black man on horseback. His horse seemed to float over the sand, no struggling, no problem for the horse or the rider in the heat.
"Help me!" She yelled, long before she knew the man could hear her.
The rider came closer and closer. His costume was colorful, long flowing robes with intense colors.
"Help me, please!" Ada shouted again, waving her hands in a frenzied motion.
Finally, the rider was almost beside her. He didn't slow the motion of his horse. She stood there, watching him come closer, until he came so near that he reached out his arm and swooped her up, circling her waist with his arm.
He placed her in front of him, facing him.
He didn't speak.
Ada was frightened. She noticed that the man never looked into her eyes, but peered continuously past her.
They rode for what seemed to be hours. He didn't stop, didn't speak, didn't offer her water. By this time Ada had begun to relax, to realize that her greatest problem for the moment was one of thirst.
"Please, may I drink something?" She questioned the man.
The rider still did not respond to her.
Suddenly, his robes fell away, uncovering his huge erection. Because Ada was already facing him, he didn't even have to change his position. And without speaking he somehow conveyed the idea to Ada that she should take his penis and place it inside her.
She reached for it hesitatingly. He didn't move.
She put it at the entrance to her womb.
The horse cantered up and down while the penis inched its way inside her. The fit was the tightest possible.
The gentle rocking of the horse made her feel great pleasure, but the face of the man remained motionless.
She forgot about the heat, her body blistering.
In and out, ever so slowly, so gently, his penis moved inside her.
It seemed he had been inside her for hours. She never peaked in her desire. The burning and pleasure of the hard staff remained constant. She remembered her thirst.
"I'm thirsty, please." Ada said again.
Suddenly, the rider shot his semen inside her. She could feel its hot thrusting force reaching far up inside her. At the same moment, her mouth was filled with a sweet, satisfying liquid, something she had never tasted before. Her thirst was gone.
What does this mean? She didn't understand the power of the rider to quench .her thirst with his ejaculation.
They continued their ride, when suddenly, Ada could see that they were approaching a small pyramid.
A pyramid? Am I in Egypt? Have I been caught up somehow in the story Zoe was telling me? What's happening?
All these questions she knew better than to ask the rider. The rider was somehow not human. That much she knew. Even though he was capable of giving pleasure, his heart, if he had one, was not in it.
They dismounted at the base of the pyramid. He took her arm, still peering past her and led her into a passageway.
The heat of the day disappeared once inside the pyramid. In fact, Ada's naked and burnt body began to chill when it was struck by a strong wind blowing through the pyramid. She didn't know where the wind had come from, since there certainly was no wind above, but she didn't expect that anything would make sense to her now, so lost was she in this adventure.
The rider led her through a maze of underground caverns to a large room where four other black men, magnificent in their body structures, were seated on stone thrones.
The rider spoke to the leader.
Ada didn't recognize the language, nor even the root of the language they were speaking.
In the center of this room was a slab stone table. The leader raised his arm. Ada recognized that it was a command to her to get on the table.
She obeyed.
Now, all the men, including the rider came around her. Her body was hurting from the sun and the long ride on the horse. The leader took a gun-like instrument from his belt. Ada closed her eyes, waiting for the undertaker.
He set a few dials, pointed the nozzle of the instrument at a wall and suddenly a burst of color lit the entire room. He adjusted the color, then turned to Ada, pointed the gun directly at her and bathed her body in the color.' All the searing pain disappeared in a moment. Her body felt as though it had been completely rejuvenated.
All the ordeals of the desert were gone from her, in one short moment. It was a miracle, she thought.
The leader turned off the ray of the gun, replacing it in his belt.
He lowered his head, directing his mouth for one of her breasts. His mouth surrounded her nipple.
Ada felt as though the fluids in her body were all rushing to this one nipple, where the leader was now sucking in rhythmic gestures. As he sucked her breast, his face changed color, first a rose red, then a deep purple and finally a cool blue.
This was not really happening to her, was it? People's faces didn't change colors, not even when they sucked the sweetest nipple in the world.
Now, each of the other men, in turn, came to the same nipple and sucked in the same fashion.
When the last face had turned from red to blue, the leader said something to them and they all disrobed.
Motioning to Ada to rise, the leader came behind her, took his stiff rod, inserted it in her anus.
Another came before her, grasping his penis in his hand, and without a sound inserted it in her vagina.
Another, his body rising from the ground a foot, inserted his penis in her mouth. The last two, each of them coming on either side of her put the tips of their penises into each of her ears. With one hand a piece, they covered her eyes.
There was no pain, no pleasure even. They all remained in that position, perfectly immobile.
Ada felt like a pin cushion, penises sticking into her everywhere. She couldn't see, for their hands covered her eyes, but she could feel the entire room, as though as great electrical discharge was about to take place, flash light, intense light all around her.
Then, as though somehow someone had said, 'Go!' , all the penises spurted their fluid into her at once.
All her cavities were filled with what she thought must be their semen. What were they doing to her? What did they want? If only she could understand what was happening.
In a moment they all backed away from her, bowing to her from the waist as they stepped further back.
Somehow, their attitude towards her had changed. She began to understand. She was their receptacle.
Somehow, whatever it was they shot into her, whatever was in that fluid of theirs made her different than before.
What ritual had she been a part of? What would this fluid do to her? She felt no pain, no unnaturalness.
She stood there, musing. Then she began to notice a subtle change in the aura of her body tone. It was as though energy was escaping from her body, surrounding her in a shield of warm light.
Oh no! She thought. What have they done to me? How can I walk around like a glowing light? People will think me very strange.
She heard a great rock sliding. She turned and to her amazed eyes, she saw Zoe, standing in the mouth of the door.
"Zoe!" She yelled. "Zoe! Where are we? What's going on?"
Zoe didn't answer her. She walked towards her, bowed in front of her and backed away. She was slowly receding from her.
Ada stared at Zoe in disbelief. Why wasn't she speaking to her? What was wrong? Oh, Zoe! What was happening?
Then Zoe brought her hands together, softly at first, then again, loudly, causing a resounding slap to be heard in the large room.
Through the great door four women came, dressed in flowing robes. Each of them carrying a tray with what looked like gauze to Ada.
Gauze? She thought. What are they going to do with that? Slowly, the realization began to hit her.
They're going to wrap me in that stuff! I just know it! She felt like running, like screaming, but when she opened her mouth to do so, no sound came from her. Just like a dream, she thought. A horrible nightmare, when you scream, the terror chokes your breath off.
She was right! The women headed straight for her.
Ada looked pleadingly into Zoe's eyes, but Zoe was still peering beyond her, intent on the action of the women.
They motioned to Ada to replace herself on the table. She obeyed.
So far, she remembered, she hadn't been hurt. Nothing bad had happened to her, and besides, Zoe was still there, even if she wasn't saying anything to her, she trusted that Zoe wouldn't let anything awful happen to her.
The women began by rubbing all the fluid of the priests ejaculations all over her body. Their liquid was so profuse, it was dripping from her body. As they smeared her with it, she could feel her skin tighten, not painfully, but noticeably.
Then they took the rolls of gauze and began by binding her feet with it. Round and round they turned it, covering her ankles, her calves, her thighs, till finally they reached her torso. Before the women bound her vaginal area, each of them walked around to it, bent their head and ritualistically kissed the dripping area with their mouths.
Then, before she knew it, they were coming to her neck. All at once, they stopped, bowed and walked from the room.
Zoe approached her. As she walked towards her, she clapped her hands together twice, very loudly, and Ada heard a great rumbling coming down the outside corridor.
For a wild moment she thought that Zoe was about to speak to her. Zoe looked at her, directly in her eyes.
Oh Zoe! Ada was beside herself.
The rumbling stopped at the mouth of the door. Ada turned her body, with some difficulty, and saw that they were wheeling in, on a large wooden-wheeled cart a kind of sarcophagus, a huge stone coffin.
Ada was about to panic. She got the drift of it all. It hit her square on the head. They were making a mummy of her! They were going to bury her in that, that thing!
She looked fitfully at Zoe.
Zoe looked at Ada, and winked.
She winked at me, Ada thought wildly! That must definitely mean something! But what? Is she telling me to go along with them, to become a mummy for them? It was too much for her. She couldn't make out the message of the wink.
Zoe herself finished winding the gauze around her neck and face. Ada could feel that she was binding her loosely, and that she had no trouble breathing.
Then, she felt Zoe's lips on. hers, through the bandages. Her lips, the pressure of them, they were warmly familiar to Ada. She tried to prolong the kiss, tried to show Zoe that she was kissing her back, but Zoe pulled away and Ada was left in the dark with only the sensation of her own bound body from head to foot.
Finally, after what seemed like forever to Ada, she felt herself being lifted and laid into the great stone sarcophagus.
It was all over. This was it. Zoe had kissed her goodbye. That was the idea of the kiss. The wink? The wink meant nothing, except maybe to calm her down and have her accept her fate with dignity.
These were her last minutes, she knew. She would soak in every sound she could, since they would be her last.
She felt a jar against the coffin, stone against stone. The lid, they were placing the lid over her, she would be sealed up in this thing forever.
"Zoe!" she tried to scream, one more time, "ZOE!"
"You said the magic word!" Zoe said, scooping Ada into her arms. "Here I am, baby. What's wrong? Were you dreaming?"
Dreaming? Yes. That was it! I was dreaming, Ada thought, still not able to shake the effect of moving back to reality so quickly.
"Zoe! Thank God you're here! You're talking to me!"
'Take it easy," Zoe said, still fondling her, "calm down. Everything's all right."
"I was so scared. I was going to die."
"Wait a minute. First, wake yourself up a little more and then tell me your dream from the beginning, okay?"
"I don't know if I want to, some parts of it were so terrible."
"There's nothing terrible about dreams, really. They're just secret codes to our real thoughts. Maybe if we can figure out what they're saying, it will help us in our waking lives."
Ada sat up in bed, taking about an hour to relate the dream, in all its details, with all the feelings she remembered having.
Zoe listened, fascinated.
Ada could see Zoe's eyes, the mirror of her mind, clicking away with resolutions to the secret symbols.
"Well, what does it all mean, Zoe. Why did I have such a dream?"
"I can't tell you what everything means, precisely, but I can generally give you an idea of it. Are you ready?"
Ada could see that Zoe was collecting her thoughts, looking for the best way to present it to Ada.
"Now, during all the sexual scenes, do you remember feeling explicitly sexual?"
"No. Not at all. Things were just happening, but they didn't make me feel anything really. Not pain, not pleasure."
"Well, sweetheart, doesn't that remind you of your real sexual life, until you met me, and were at last able to really feel?"
"Yes. Yes! That's true. They were just rituals, performances, no one was really sexual!"
"Right!"
"But why did the rider, when he came inside me, quench my thirst?"
"The rider was keeping you alive with his sperm, right?"
"Yeah? "
"Well, it's very much the same thing as your decision that the only way for you to get through your life, the one thing that would make it possible to survive, would be that you become a consummate lover, right?"
"Yes."
"But still there was no feeling involved."
"Uh huh."
"Now, when all the men put their penises into you, you used the word, 'receptable'. You felt as though you were a receptacle for their ritual. They were filling you with a liquid which somehow made you glow, shine like a lamp. You felt energy coming out from all parts of your body."
"Yes."
"Now, try to make the jump to this next thought with me. You thought you were dying, yet all they seemed to be doing was using you in some kind of fertility rite. Do you understand? At the moment you thought your own death was imminent, you screamed my name. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, yes, go on!"
"Well, Ada, tell me, what does my name mean?"
"Your name? Oh my God, your name means LIFE!"
"Precisely! At the moment you most feared death, you called out for LIFE!"
"That's right!"
Ada was wildly excited. She had been made to see something that hit her very deeply inside somewhere.
"So it wasn't really you in the dream, Zoe, was it?"
"No, it wasn't. I was only the symbol for life, because you remembered somewhere that that was the definition of my name."
"But why did I think I was going to die."
"It's not so much that you were going to die, really. It's that your unconscious was probably telling you that, once and for all, all the dead feelings you've had, all the inability to relate to things while they were happening, in effect, were over. That part of you had to die, so that the real you might be reborn. They were symbolically filling you with the liquid of life, don't you see?"
"Yes. Yes. I see!" Ada reached her hand to Zoe's face and stroked it tenderly. "I love you so much. You've made me understand myself, even made me begin to like myself, a little. You're so brilliant. What can I give you in return for all you've done for me?"
"Just keep calling out my name, remembering what it means, and mean it! Go after life, grasp it in your hands. It's the only chance you'll get at it with your own name, Ada, and your own beauty."
"You know what, Zoe? I'm not even tired, after all those men making love to me, for you to touch me now. In fact, that was the one disappointment in the whole dream. If I was really going to die, that the last thing I had from you was merely a kiss."
"Here's another, and another!" Zoe said, kissing Ada all over her neck playfully.
"You looked good in those robes, you know, high priestess!"
"But of course, my dear. And you look delectable in nothing!"
Zoe pulled back the covers, bearing Ada's beautiful, young body. She saw Ada's face become very serious, very loving.
She laid down beside her, moving her mouth onto hers and kissing her long and sweetly. Their tongues vied for position with each other. Zoe pushed her tongue to the roof of Ada's mouth which always resulted in the same response. Ada's hips began gyrating, moans came slipping out between her lips.
Zoe moved her hand along Ada's neck, caressing it gently, over her shoulder, onto her firm breast.
"I love the way you touch me," Ada said, lifting her lips from Zoe's, "I feel your love for me, flowing from your fingers."
"And my fingers are flowing down to where you're flowing for me, baby."
Zoe moved slowly, tempting Ada's body to jump up at her wherever she was being touched.
Finally, at the wet mouth of Ada's beautiful cunt, Zoe slipped her fingers, surely, deftly into place.
"Swallow me up!" She whispered to Ada. Ada moved, inching herself onto Zoe's fingers. "I want you so much, so much. My light! My life!"
"Close your eyes, baby. Tell me everything you see when I go inside you. Tell me everything!"
Ada did what Zoe asked. Her eyes closed tightly, she felt Zoe slipping deep up inside her. All kinds of floating lights came before her shut eyes. They moved, spun in close, then moved away again. Suddenly, vibrant colors flooded before her, oranges, yellows. She knew what red meant when she saw it.
"I am going to come if you don't stop. Don't stop! Don't! I'll come again and again for you, Zoe, only for you!"
"Again and again," Zoe reiterated. "I'll never stop wanting you, again and again!"
"Oh my God! Here it comes! Oh Zoe, it's the biggest, the best one yet! How can they get better and better and... "
Zoe held herself very still as Ada's body broke in waves, rattling her every inch. Each shutter accompanied with a loud, musical sigh.
If Ada dreamed again that night, she wouldn't remember. The force of her coming sent her into a world where what was real was better than the dream.
CHAPTER EIGHT
For two years, Ada and Zoe had been living with each other, quite happily. Ada gave up all the need to control things, the need for power that had once been so important in her life. Now, with Zoe, in their beautiful apartment, with their country home, their trips to the Continent and all, Ada was at last, finding that life could be not only pleasant, but beautiful. It was the fact that she was finally sharing it with someone. That someone loved her, and that she loved them in return.
Her education, one of the best investments she had made in herself, was beginning to pay off.
Ada had situated herself in a good, professional position as a marriage counsellor. In this capacity, Ada's own personal experience was used to the fullest. Even the counseling services had broadened their scope by taking on gay couples in addition to straight or heterosexual couples. Her life was coming along nicely.
She was happy at home, happy and work, and doing something for others.
Today, Ada was in her office, awaiting the arrival of a new couple, about to start in therapy.
Precisely at one o'clock, a tapping came at her door, she stood, walked across the room and opened it.
A young couple, no more than twenty-three years old, presented themselves wordlessly. Usually, each couple felt a little shy about finally admitting that they needed help from outsiders. But, when faced with the eventual end of their relationship, or seeking that outside help, those with courage usually chose the latter.
"Hi," Ada started, "come on in. Make yourselves comfortable."
They smiled, half hoping she wouldn't really be looking at their foolish grins. They separately looked around, sought out a chair and sat down.
"Well, Mr. and Mrs. West, isn't it?"
No one spoke. They nodded their heads. "Well, we know you're here for a reason. Shall we get down to it?"
"Well, doctor, or is it Miss?" the husband began.
"Doctor will be just fine." Ada answered, her Phd. hanging on the wall.
"It wasn't really my suggestion that we come here. It was really Ann's idea. Wasn't it, Ann?"
"I thought we were going to say to the doctor that we both decided it would be the best thing, George?"
"Well, I know, but," George looked at Ada, "you know, it's not easy for a man to come here and tell another woman that he's having a problem with his marriage."
"Of course we know it isn't easy. In fact, it takes great courage for you to come here. That's why people who do usually find it very helpful, because basically they want an end to those problems that face them and are doing something about it by walking in this door." Ada said the same thing in each opening session.
"Well, to be frank, doctor, I think the problem is not really mine, at all. Ann keeps trying to push it off on me, but I resist it. and rightfully so, I think. We don't have much of a problem about money, or kids, we don't have any right now, but Ann seems to have this problem about sex."
"Uh hum." Ada answered.
'That's not altogether true, now, is it, George? Why you know that I have always made myself available to you, whenever you wanted me, like a good wife. You can't say that I've failed you in any respect as a wife, now can you, George?"
"Well, you haven't really failed me, sweetheart. It's just that with you, making love has become like the Wednesday night special at the Burger Stand. I can always anticipate what and when and how it's all going to happen. It has become so tiring to me, that I don't look forward to it anymore, and at the same time, I wouldn't dream of going out with anyone else, cause you know I love you, honey."
These people had obviously been trying to work things out at home, Ada thought. They're not uncomfortable talking to each other in front of me, they have their problem defined and they're looking for a solution.
"What have you got to say about that, Ann?" Ada asked.
"He's a good man, my husband. He loves me and I love him. It's just that that part of our life is a little more difficult for me to get used to than the others. And there's nothing I wouldn't do to try to please George, that's why I decided we should come here."
"That's very good. It seems as though you have a basically healthy, mutually respectful relationship, and that's a very good base on which to work. But let's get down to the details. Let's find out why all the zip has gone out of your sex life. Tell me about it, if you will. Either one of you may begin."
"Well," Ann began, "I don't work, doctor. I stay at home, tidy up the house and take care of the errands and shopping and so on, what I guess, every normal housewife does. My husband, George, that is, comes home usually tired from his job, did you tell her what you do, honey?"
George nodded his head.
"Anyway, I have George's dinner ready, usually I try to give him a substantial meal, for a working man, you know, and after dinner, I give him his paper and help him get comfortable on the couch in the living room. If there's a ball game on, George will usually ask me to turn it on for him. Naturally, even though I don't work outside the house, there's always a great deal to do inside the house, and I'm kept constantly busy by cooking, cleaning, rearranging furniture and the like. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, doctor. You're a woman, I know you understand."
Fat chance! Ada thought. Zoe's maids took care of the house and they ate out every night. She wouldn't be caught dead in a relationship like this one.
"Go on," Ada reassured her.
"Well, then when George decides it's time for him to go to bed. I've just about finished up the dishes and straightened up and by the time I get ready for bed, George is almost half asleep. " George winced.
Ada noticed that.
"Now, you know it's true, don't you, honey?"
"Yeah. Yeah." George answered resignedly.
"And then what happens, when George wants to make love that is?" My, she certainly is long-winded, Ada thought, thinking about opening up a window for air.
"Well, then he usually turns to me... oh, this is embarrassing me... well, he says to me, something like, 'How about it hon?' And sometimes, I just don't really feel like it, but I do anyway. And that's about it, doctor."
"I'm sure there must be more to it than that, Ann. While I talk to George, why don't you think on it awhile and see what you can come up with?"
George sat up in his seat, paying attention now because Ada was about to address him.
"Mr. West, what do you think you would say to your wife if she said, 'No.' That she didn't want to have sex with you, instead of saying 'Yes', and not meaning it?"
"Heck, it would probably be a lot better when she said, 'Yes.'"
"And what do you think your wife would do if instead of you saying, 'Well, how about it, hon?', if you turned to her and said something like, "Boy, I'd really like to fuck the hell out of you!"
"Oh my goodness, doctor. I think Ann would throw me out of the bed, wouldn't you, Ann?"
"Oh doctor," Ann began, "the one thing, way back in my past, I don't remember how old I was, but I heard my mother and father, well, they were doing what I later realized was having sex... and I heard my father, who never cursed at the table or in the house or anywhere, for that matter, cursing up a storm. The panting and cursing were so intertwined in my mind, I'm afraid it left a very deep impression on me. But one thing George never has done, he's never cursed at all. But now that you mention it, I feel excited by the very idea that he would say something like that to me."
"Well, go Fuck her, George!" Ada would submit her bill at the end of the week.
That was an easy case. Maybe the next one would be more interesting.
Ada had a way of putting her finger on the point of things. She didn't like to mince words and she didn't like to bleed her patients dry, either. She believed that the sooner you got them out, the better off we'd all be.
After all, nothing was that difficult anymore. She had learned all that from Zoe.
The next couple rapped on the door.
"Come in." Ada said, too tired to get up.
"Are you the doctor?" A young, handsome man questioned from the doorway.
"Yes, I am. Are you the patient?" Ada asked in return.
"Don't call him patient!" His wife yelled. "That's why we're here. He pops off in less than a minute!"
"Come in, won't you, both!" Ada offered.
'Thanks, Delores, I won't forget that one!" Alfie looked at his wife menacingly.
"Thanks, doc." Delores said, pulling up a chair for herself. "Sit down, stupid. The doctor said to sit down!"
'The doctor did not say to sit down. May I sit down doctor?"
"Of course."
"Anyway, " Delores began, "what can you do for us, doc. He's god-damn impossible. I'm so horny, I climb the walls every night. He gets real hard, I think, this is going to be it, this is going to be the night when I get mine, and before I have a chance to realize that he's even inside me, the stupid fucker blows his wad, and I'm left hanging, as usual."
"Do you love your wife, Mr. Roxy?"
"Love her? Sure I love her. Who wouldn't. She's really a good kid. I wish I could give her a good time, but I blow it every time. She's getting really sick and tired of it, as you can see. She didn't use to talk like this to me, only since we've been married, and I've had this little problem."
'Tell me, Mr. Roxy, does your wife ever give you a blow-job?"
"Heck, no. She's more interested in getting it inside her juicy pussy than her juicy mouth. Besides, she's always so busy mouthing off, telling me to be cool, be cool, Alfie, don't blow it, don't blow it, keep it going, that she'd probably bite the head right off!"
"Delores," Ada turned to talk to her, " your husband loves you, too much in this case. The reason he prematurely ejaculates is that you apparently excite him so much just prior to the act that he can't contain himself. My suggestion to you is to get him to not love you so much. Probably you could manage something like that, since you seem to be well on the way to it anyway."
"Well, can't you suggest anything more concrete than that? I mean, what should I do? Should I poison the mother-fucker or what?" 'Why not just try keeping your mouth closed. That is, if you didn't speak at all, he would probably experience that as a rejection of him and that would definitely cool him off. He would probably become so angry at you, eventually that he would use his penis as a weapon to make you open your mouth, making you beg him to stop fucking you, to finally come so you could rest."
"Oh my God, that would be too much to ask for!" Delores railed.
"Yeah, doc," Alfie added, "that's like asking the sun not to shine, you know what I mean, making her keep her fat trap shut!"
"Just for that you bug-eyed bastard, I'm never going to say another word to you after this one."
"Are you going to shut up too?" Alfie asked, looking forlorn.
"Uh hum."
"Well, shit then, what am I going to do with this erection?"
Ada stood up, pointed to the couch in her office and walked out the door, shutting it behind her.
Alfie took the cue. He walked over to his wife, grabbed her roughly, pulled her up and over to the couch.
"Stick this in your mouth!" He said, unzipping his fly and pulling out his big dick.
Delores took it in her mouth. She liked it. It tasted good. It was her honey's anyway, wasn't it?
"I can't believe it... I can't believe it!" Alfie kept thinking about the fact that his wife had shut up, forgetting all about his erection. But it stayed hard and firm in his wife's mouth.
"Up on the couch, woman!" He commanded her.
Again she obeyed him, without so much as a whimper.
"Pull up that dress and lower those panties, now!" Alfie was feeling forceful.
Ada was in the bathroom urinating.
"Okay, girl. Are you ready for the big ship to hit the port? Here it comes!" And he rushed her with his cock, shoving it inside her with one, huge thrust.
"Ugh," Delores, the air knocked out of her, said.
"Don't start, even with those little words, you hear?" Alfie warned her.
His erection was, for the first time in their relationship, powerful, masterful, all the superb adjectives one could find to describe it.
He kept it up, he kept it coming into her, out of her, over and over.
She loved it.
She came over and over as he rammed her, feeling his new sense of manhood rise out of the closed mouth of his wife.
Ada knocked on the door.
"Just a minute," Alfie yelled. "I'm almost done, almost!"
He kept pounding at her furiously. One, slam, two, slam.
Finally, he conceded. Nothing was working. He couldn't come. His erection stayed hard. But he couldn't come.
Ada knocked again at the door.
He stuffed it, as well as he could, back inside his trousers. The bump was noticeable.
"Come in." He finally said.
Ada walked in, looked around, saw the satisfied look on Delores' face, then to the bump in Alfie's pants.
"Now the shoe's on the other foot, as it were. " She said to him.
He looked down at his crotch.
"See you next week." Ada dosed the door on them.
Ada picked up the phone. Some sanity. She needed some sanity.
"Hi, baby!" she said to Zoe on the other end.
"My love! How's your day been?"
"Same thing as usual, they walk in they walk out. What fixes up one ruins the other. It's a strange world, isn't it?"
"A wonderful world," Zoe said, "because you're in it!"
"You always have such nice things to say to me, darling. And thank you. I received your flowers at the office this morning. I'm looking at them right now."
"Just to remind you that beauty is a temporal thing. But once we've seen something beautiful, it will be infinitely beautiful because we remember it that way."
"I can't wait to see you, you know." Ada was getting that sound in her voice.
"How many more appointments have you got today?"
'Two or three. I don't know. Should I check my book?"
"No darling, it's not necessary. Give me a call later on and I'll be by to pick you up, all right?"
"Love you."
"Love you, too."
She hung up the telephone in time to answer the next knocking at her door.
More of the same.
"Hello. Have a seat, I'll be right with you." she said to the couple going over to her couch.
She walked out to get a cold drink of water. Wanted to remember Zoe's voice on the telephone before getting involved again with another weird couple.
She walked back into her office, saw the couple on the couch into a heavy petting scene.
"What seems to be the problem, here?" She said, neutrally.
"Well, if you call this a problem doctor, it's that we just can't stop touching each other." He kept feeling his wife's tits.
"From the first time we met, the moment we touched, we haven't been able to stop. We're like a drug to each other. Our families are fed up with us, they said they don't want to see us till we get over this part of it, that we were ruining the minds and morals of our younger relatives and that we're making a public spectacle of ourselves." All the while he spoke, he was rubbing his hand between her legs, she was moaning, opening her legs even wider.
"What can we do, doctor?" His wife said simperingly, pulling her lips off his.
Ada looked at them. They were cute, she thought. Better to be like this than the others, but I guess it does get in the way of everyday life.
"I have a remarkably simple solution to this." Ada said definitively.
She walked over to the couple, asked him to accompany her to the other side of the room and took him to a socket in the wall.
"Now, what I'm going to ask you to do may sound crazy to you, but after all, you do want a solution and I have it. Just do as I say and I can assure you that everything will be fine in a few minutes."
He nodded his head. He couldn't take his eyes off his wife, she, still panting in the corner, staring at him, waiting for him to come back to her.
"Now, give me your right hand index finger."
He complied.
"Now, your left hand index finger."
Again, he complied.
"Lean forward."
He leaned forward, bending towards the socket.
"Now, without further ado, I want you to place one finger in this hole and the other finger in this one.
"But... but.." He began.
"Look. You're paying me for my service and knowledge. Do as I say!"
Placing his fingers in the sockets, the man naturally felt a strong, electrical shock knock him half-way across the room.
"You see, you're not dead. I simply altered the frequency on which you oscillate. The problem, you see, is that you and your wife were operating on very much the same frequency, and unfortunately, when the match is that close, it can be very difficult to separate the two entities. However, I'm sure that now you will find that while an attraction still exists, it no longer will be so overwhelming and demanding. You'll receive my bill in the mail. Goodday."
Oh no, Ada thought, looking at her appointment book, she still had two more appointments for the day.
She looked out the window. The city was covered in a mist of pollution. The air inside her office was recirculated air, stale, hurting her throat. She wanted to retire.
The knock came again.
"Feel free to enter." Ada ordered.
'Thank you very much. Doctor? I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Anthony Paine, and this is my wife, Regina."
"Pleased to meet you both, I'm sure." Ada answered.
"You were, of course, recommended to us by someone we think very highly of, and is a professional in the same field as you, I might add."
"That's very nice to hear. May I ask who that might be?"
"Of course. His name is Doctor Timothy Panter, I'm sure you know of him."
"As a matter of fact, I don't. It makes no difference to me however, if it makes no difference to you."
"Well, I was sure that he would recommend someone that he knew personally."
"In this case, I'm afraid your assumption was incorrect."
"That is very disturbing."
"Disturbing?"
"Why, yes. It's a very difficult thing for my wife and myself to entrust the personal story of our problem in copulation."
"Well, I hope that you'll feel perfectly comfortable with me. Would it help you if I told you that General Brown is a personal friend of mine?"
"General Brown of the Browns?"
"Uh hum." Ada said, lying and making up his name.
"Well, in that case, if it's all right with you, my dear?" He said, directing his question at his wife.
"Perfectly." She answered in a meek, high voice.
"May I ask what it is that has brought you here?"
"You may." The gentleman answered.
"Well, what is it that has brought you here?"
"Innumerable things." He answered definitively.
"Shall we begin to count them?" Ada queried.
"All right." He answered.
Ada gave up with him. It was worse than pulling teeth. She turned to his wife, hiding in the corner of the room.
"Won't you sit a bit closer?"
"Oh no! " Her husband answered immediately. "You see, I can't stand it when she's less than three feet from me. I become very agitated."
"Will you accompany me?" She looked directly at the gentleman.
"Now, give me the left index finger of your hand... "
CHAPTER NINE
Ada saw the dark green Mercedes and stepped towards it. Inside, smiling, looking at her walking down the street was Zoe, there to pick her up, as promised.
"Hi baby!" Ada said, opening the passenger door wider, until she was sure that Zoe could hear her over the noise of the city.
"Good evening, my little chickadee. How was your day? You looked absolutely bushed."
There was silence inside the car. The car was one of the places of refuge from the bustle of the surroundings.
"I'm afraid I shocked myself today." Ada began.
"Good. I'm glad you haven't lost the capacity for that." Zoe answered.
"No really. After all the couples I've seen over the past six months with problems, it amazes me that one couple will have the exact same problem in reverse from another. There are no strict rules that anyone in this profession can follow. Each circumstance, while they may fit into a general grouping, is really unique. I may have to tell one husband to cut out cursing from his vocabulary all together, while I might have to encourage it in another. People are so idiosyncratic. It's a wonder, the way each of our words is colored by our own particular experiences that words do, generally, have the same meanings, although the range in depth is phenomenal. It's like using the word 'red' to describe a color to someone who is color-blind. He knows what you mean, maybe, because he's been able to distinguish it in his own particular way, but he never really experiences it the way that someone who is not color-blind does."
Ada continued her musing while Zoe concentrated on the words and the roads.
"I shocked myself today by suggesting that a young husband use curse words in approaching his wife sexually. I actually used the word 'fuck' in my suggestion. And you know, I have no particular need to use or respond to curse words. It's always very interesting to me when a couple discusses their marital relations when they specifically discuss the sex act, what words they apply. Some say, 'we made love' and other say 'we had sex'. Immediately I know something about the profound nature of their development."
"That's right, Ada. Words are all we have, really. And every one of them, used by any one of us, is extremely important. We reveal ourselves all the time, with each sentence. Fortunately, or unfortunately, most people are not listening, really."
'There must be a way to straighten ourselves out, before it's too late." Ada sounded depressed.
'Too late for what, dear? For humanity, for you and me? You really needn't be so depressed about it. The one thing that is on our side is the enormity of time, and in time, everything has its chance to be, even for you and me. I'm just thankful that I can enjoy my life with you, be exquisitely aware of the gift we both have in having life, so it doesn't really matter ultimately what is to come. It comes for a reason, as a result of what went before it. But as for me, I try to do my part. Wherever and whenever I can, I do what I think is, for the moment, the good or the right thing to do. Of course, the problem with that, with knowing what the good or the right thing is, that it is constantly changing. That is ultimately, the onus of being just. To be just is to be in the moment, knowing what, and as many things are affecting the situation and then taking action accordingly."
"You mean all I have to do is worry about right now, this very moment and I'll be a lot better off?" Ada asked.
"You needn't worry. That's the beauty of life, once you understand it. If you are in the moment, there will be no time, towards the end of your life when you will look back on it, feeling that you have somehow left something unfinished, that your mission, or your purpose in life has eluded you. That's when the idea of dying becomes fearful. On the other hand, to live in the moment is all that is really required of you to fulfill the demand that your life has not been given into a receptacle not capable of fully appreciating it's very greatness. Listen to me going on."
"You know, the thing that really sets me to thinking is the power which my very position as a councilor implies. People today, more and more of them, all more and more confused by the demands and pace, by the escalating deterioration of the culture, of the environment and on and on, are desperately seeking an answer for themselves, not only in terms of their changing roles and the growing permissiveness of sexual expression, but more than anything, they are looking for a definition of meaning to life. Each of them, of course, must discover their own meaning, in whatever way that is available to them, but the danger is implicit in their willingness to follow, without, for the most part, knowing fully why, large numbers of people who subscribe to this particular religious leader, or that particular political figure. Why, people have nothing, it seems, but to give the power they have in their own lives, for their own use, to others."
"Ah ultimately very dangerous thing, Ada. If we could only realize that nothing has any power over us, but that which we give it. When a man is hanged for his patriotism to his country, when they declare that they will take his life from him, the enlightened man answers that he is giving it, offering it. They take nothing from him, except that which he is willing to give."
"But it's so difficult for me sometimes," Ada spoke aloud, "to remember these things. Sometimes, the sheer inundation of information, the couples who come to my office for help, in a constant stream, the view of life that I necessary learn from all their points of view, it's difficult for me to remember what I am doing in the midst of it all. I feel my patience growing thin, I want to shout at some of them, push them up against the wall, yell in their face. Of course, I haven't done that yet, but I'm very often tempted to."
"We probably should close this conversation and think about this evening's activities, but, before we do, I want to tell you a story about an old man that lives very much in my heart and in my everyday life, especially when I feel the things that are so difficult of which you just spoke. The old man, a rabbi, really, about three thousand years ago, wandered from town to town, admonishing the people to take care, to observe the changes in their attitudes, their disrespect for self and others, their avarice and greed, their brutality.
In every town, the people would gather around him, listen to him for a few short minutes and then would begin to heckle and jeer him, throwing whatever objects they could afford to part with at his body. The man continued to speak in spite of it.
One day, the man found himself in another town, speaking as usual to a crowd who was unsympathetic and hostile. In the crowd this day was a young boy, only ten years old, who listened to the man, watched the crowd's response to him, and learned. After the crowd dispersed, the young boy approached the old rabbi and asked, "Excuse me, teacher. May I ask you a question?" The old rabbi, of course, said yes.
The boy continued, "You come to our town, to other towns like this, you say the same things, over and over, good things, to be sure, but in every town, the people hate you, make fun of you, try to hurt you. My question, after all this, is why, in the face of this, do you continue? After all, even a boy like myself can see that it makes no difference to them whatever it is you are saying and that you cannot change them!"
The old man put his hand on the boy's shoulder, patting him kindly and said; "My son, it's not so much anymore that I wish to change THEM, but I wish to keep them from changing ME!"
"What a beautiful story, Zoe. The sense of it is profound. It makes me feel better already. The simple truth comes around to the very same thing that all the great philosophers of time have discovered, that to your own self, you must be true. And with that in mind, life becomes so much more easily understandable."
"Amen!" Zoe said, closing the conversation and letting the silence surround them. All the words, spoken in the closed cab of the car, entered their bodies from every vantage. Now, it was a part of them, both.
"I have a surprise for you tonight, Ada."
"I love surprises! What is it, tell me, tell me!" Ada answered, her face flushing with excitement. When Zoe said she had a surprise, you could be sure that it would be.
"Well, remember you always wanted to come down to my offices, to see what it actually was I was involved in?"
"Yes. Yes." Ada answered impatiently.
"Well, tonight I'm going to take you to a lab that I'm affiliated with just outside of the city, where the research team I've been a part of has been putting together some very interesting experiments."
"Experiments? What kind of experiments?"
"Oh, there are quite a few, but one, in particular, I know you'll be very interested in, and I've saved it till now to show you because now I know it's perfectly safe. I wouldn't want to expose you or myself to any needless danger."
"So tell me, what is it?"
"Wait till we get there. Control those ants in your pants, my dear!"
"Really, Zoe. Sometimes you talk to me as though I were 10 years old!"
"Well, the truth is, you were ONCE ten years old, weren't you? And that is an irrevocable part of your experience. So, for all intensive purposes, you STILL ARE ten years old. How do you like that logic?"
"I love it. And I love you, you know." Ada reached across the seat and found Zoe's thigh. "What would my life be like without you?"
"I've told you before, I don't really matter anymore. I'll always be with you, now that you've known me. Just like you'll always be ten and eleven and twelve years old, right?"
"Right." And that was the end of it.
The air smelled and looked cleaner to them both as they left the city proper.
"Just because it looks cleaner, don't be fooled." Zoe warned Ada.
"I know it. I can't believe that in the middle of winter, with the winds blowing our lips into chapped states, that the air is unhealthy to breathe'."
"Well, it's just one more thing that we all have to start thinking about, and doing something about. It's one thing for most people to hear about bad conditions, but when we all begin to get sick, and we are beginning to really get the effects of it now, when people start dropping before our eyes, then it may already be too late."
"So what are we going to do, Zoe?"
"Breathe as long as we can, I suppose. And make every breath count!"
The ride relaxed them, unwound them. They rode in silence for the next fifteen minutes.
Zoe pulled the sleek car into a long driveway, surrounded by well kept lawns.
"Here we are, sweetheart!" She proclaimed. "It's beautiful here. So quiet. My God! Look at the stars! I forgot that there were such things anymore, living in the city."
'That's all right. The stars haven't forgotten about you!"
Zoe parked the car in a space reserved for her.
They walked to the building, Zoe searching through her pockets for the keys to the lab.
"Got them!" She said, jingling a huge set of strangely shaped keys in different colors.
She unlocked the first door.
Inside, a guard with a gun nodded to Zoe. Zoe led Ada through what seemed like a maze of hallways, stairs.
She would never find her way out she thought, if Zoe weren't with her.
"Here's the surprise!" Zoe said, stopping in front of a door marked, "Experimental Space"
"What does that mean? " Ada asked Zoe. "You'll see, you'll see."
They entered. The room had many other doors inside it and a very complicated looking control panel, all electronic. Ada didn't understand any of it.
"See that room over there?" Zoe said, pointing to the one in the left corner that said, "Dress."
"Yes."
"Go in there, take off all your clothes while I set all the controls. I'll be with you in just a few minutes. Oh, before you go, here, take this pill right now. It's very important to stabilize your body functions. Here. It won't hurt you."
"I know you wouldn't give me anything that would hurt me. Oh, Zoe, I'm so excited. What's going to happen?"
"Remember about those ants, will you?"
"Okay, okay. I'm going." Ada walked off dejectedly.
Turning the dials, Zoe took time to digest a pill herself. She turned on this system, adjusted that and after a few minutes joined Ada in the "Dress" room.
"Why do they call the room "Dress", when you "Undress" in here?"
"Are you trying to make conversation with me? What difference what a thing is called anyway?"
"You're right. I'm just trying to keep my mind occupied lest it become too anxious to discover what your surprise is." Ada answered.
"Now, while I'm undressing, I want you to walk through that door and then you'll see another. Open the door slowly and just let what will happen to you, happen to you. No fighting it, okay?"
"Promise!" Ada said, dying to start on her adventure.
"See you in a few minutes!" Zoe waved Ada off.
Now, go through this door, Ada thought, and then there will be another one. Yes. I see it. There it is. Zoe said to open it slowly, so slowly it goes...
Her hand touched the knob, she began pulling the steel door back.
Her body, suddenly lifted itself two, maybe three inches off the ground and the room began to suck the rest of her inside.
She floated into the room, now a foot off the floor. The room was huge, the ceiling itself a part of a great dome rising more than fifty feet into the air.
She spread her arms out, her body began to rise higher and higher.
Weightlessness! She was in weightlessness! How was it possible. She must have air to breathe. Where was the air coming from for her to breathe. The pill, the pill must have something to do with it!
It was like flying, floating gently in this great cavern of a room. It was a beautiful feeling. She was free. She could persuade her body in this direction, then that. She could stop all her own movement and simply rest on an indescribably soothing cushion.
She heard a click. Turning her body around she saw Zoe, naked as she was, enter the room, floating fast towards her.
"Zoe! This is wonderful. What a surprise! The best I've ever had in my life!"
"And now, it will become even better, for you and I have been chosen to be the first women to make love under these conditions. We are making history, my darling!"
It was a new world, a new way of looking at the act of love. There was nothing between them, no bed, no rug, no floor, nothing between their floating bodies but the expression in their eyes for each other, the great love that they would express for one another through the medium of their bodies.
Zoe took hold of Ada's body, began kissing her legs. She turned her slightly. Their bodies rolled in space, over and over, in slow motion. Zoe could kiss her everywhere, almost in the same instant. No difficulty in changing positions.
Ada felt Zoe's hands take her gently around either side of her waist. Zoe floated up to her face. She looked into her eyes, long and lingeringly. She moved her lips on hers. Their eyes closed, their lips pressed tightly together, their bodies rose, descended, turned round and round, endlessly floating. The feeling of complete peace was upon them.
Zoe moved her hand down Ada side, onto her buttock. She caressed the taut cheek of Ada. She moved her hand to her thigh, then found the inside of her leg. Her fingers went to the place in Ada where they were at home. She slipped herself inside her.
Ada felt herself swollen with Zoe. Zoe was inside her, she was outside her, all around her, filling her in every way with every wonderful feeling Ada had ever imagined that love was. She was full of Zoe!
Zoe pushed her body slightly from Ada's, still buried deep inside her.
"Look darling!" She exclaimed, "I hold you with only these two fingers inside you! I float with you, go with you anywhere that our love takes us, under any stars, in any time!"
Ada was complete. She never wanted this night to end. She wanted to fall and fall through space, Zoe inside her, coming to her mouth and filling her lips with her kisses and her wet, wanting tongue. She wanted to turn and turn, to burn with the desire in her that Zoe extinguished then relit, moment after moment with her.
"Oh darling!" Ada whispered, floating her hand between Zoe's legs. "Let me feel you too! Let me be a part of you, inside, where you are such a part of me!"
Zoe offered herself. They were able to twirl their bodies, never once leaving each other's hold on the other.
They dreamed, danced and flew the night away.
Like two ships in the enormity of space, they found each other, linked and loved. Nothing would separate their memory from each other. They were home.
CHAPTER TEN
One night, Zoe told Ada another story about a woman who was far ahead of her time: At first she did not speak, preferring to listen to the others behaving like animals.
Finally, she had had enough.
Her voice rang out over the crowd as she commanded them to be still!
Now, you have to remember that thousands of years ago, women were thought of as little more than chattel.
They barely could raise their voices in the privacy of their homes let alone in public.
The rabbi turned to stare also at this brave woman. He knew she was gifted with a rare spirit and he wanted to see what someone so gifted would look like.
To his amazement, she looked like all the other women in the throng. What made her so separate, so unique was her ability to speak out.
Now, the crowd turned their anger away from the rabbi and directed it at her.
"Shut up you slut!" they hissed.
"Look at her!" they said. "She is no better than a cow, yet she has to mouth off!"
The woman bore their slings and arrows.
"You can all go fuck yourselves!" she shouted. "That which is in me cannot be sullied by your ignorant tongues!"
At this point the crowd got out of hand.
A tall young shepherd grabbed her by her tunic and dragged her to the front of the crowd.
"I deal with sheep all day long," he told the crowd. "Do you want to know why?"
He paused for dramatic effect.
"Because they don't open their mouths!" he shouted. "All they do is go BAH! BAH!"
The crowd listened attentively.
"And I say," he continued in his deep, young voice, "BAH BAH! to this rabbi and especially BAH BAH! to this woman!"
The crowd burst into applause. Their lives were so dull. (This was before the invention of television). They took solace in this live amusement and sought to run it into the ground.
The women were the most vicious.
"She should be home washing her husband's clothes!" they shouted.
"She should be home baking bread!" others added.
"She should be home making babies!" cam still another voice from the angry crowd.
The woman's face was tear-stained from the pain she bore being held so tightly by the neck by the young shepherd. But she did not cry out in her pain, she bore it stoically.
The rabbi sought meaning from this experience and all it could conclude was that people were full of shit.
"Don't you realize?" he yelled at the crowd. "That as you demean this poor woman, you cheapen yourselves!"
"Aw, go get fucked," someone shouted.
But the rabbi could see that they were sore ashamed.
"You people are hopeless!" he shouted. He looked at them imploringly. "Don't you want to be happy? To know what it is to be content in your soul?"
"Your act is getting tiresome!" another man shouted. And the angry crowd began to break up.
Soon the rabbi found himself alone with the woman they had scorned and jeered at.
"You and me, babe," he told her. "We're the only ones that can see the truth. That separates us from them, but it doesn't make us feel any better, does it."
She looked at him long and steady.
"Maybe we should team up," she suggested. "Maybe two would be stronger than one?"
"I don't know,", the rabbi said. "Remember what happened to Sonny & Cher?"
"But we're different!" she protested. "THAT WONT HAPPEN TO US!"
But the rabbi was not convinced.
"Can't we just try it?" she wanted to know. Reluctantly the rabbi agreed.
They went on the road together, trying to bring the word to the people. In some towns they were more successful than others. Soon they became famous.
People wanted to write their biographies. Others wanted to interview them. They found their pictures on every stone tablet that went to the carvers.
It began to go to the young woman's head. She started buying clothes, wearing a lot of make-up, and in general, not behaving like a spiritual person any longer.
Finally, one day the rabbi decided to have a long talk with her.
"Mildred," he said, for that was her name. "I don't think we can go on like this much longer. You are not the same young woman who spoke up so beautifully from the soul that day I met you."
"What do you mean?" Mildred asked, fluffing her new hair do.
"You know damn well what I mean!" the rabbi shouted. "Look at you! Even now you are sitting in front of the mirror admiring yourself like a vain slut! Have you lost the desire to look into your own soul, or are you afraid of what you might find there?"
"Get the fuck out of my bedroom!" Mildred shouted. "I'm sick of you! I don't need you! I can have my own show!"
Shaking his head sadly, the rabbi left her room, and her life. He went on the road by himself, but he was met with the same dismal failure he had embraced prior to meeting up with Mildred.
As for Mildred, she became a star. Crowds followed her wherever she went. Little children asked her for her autograph. She had reached the zenith of her powers. But she was not happy. Though she mouthed the platitudes of a righteous life, her own private life was a mockery.
Her ratings began to slip with the masses. Vainly she hired new writers, but her words fell empty and flat on the audience. Soon she got the word from her managers.
"We're not booking you for lectures in any more towns," they told her. "You're all washed up!"
Mildred tried to find the rabbi. She walked from town to town, calling him by name. But she received no answer.
Meanwhile, the rabbi was getting a lot of sympathy from the fickle folk who followed these things. Though he was not admired, he was not exactly persona non grata, either!
One night, as he sat in his tent after giving a large lecture to an empty hall, he heard the flap of his tent raise.
"Who is it?" he called out. "Who is there?"
He received no answer for his troubles.
As he turned to look, he saw the ruined sight of Mildred.
"My God! Mildred! What happened to you?" he yelled.
It was true. Mildred, once a fine specimen of female beauty looked as though she had been washed on a rock in the river Jordan.
She ran right over to a mirror.
"What do you mean? I look all right!" she said, peering at herself, trying to notice what time and high living had done to her face.
"You may THINK you look all right," the rabbi said. "But you look horrible!'"
"Starting again, huh!" Mildred screamed. Here she was, willing to beg his forgiveness, willing to admit how she had strayed from the straight and narrow, and all the rabbi could do was castigate her.
"I came back here to you for a reason," she raged. "But you're just at it again, the same old thing, still jumping on my case!"
The rabbi looked at her sorrowfully.
"Forgive me," he said quietly. "But you bring the worse side of my nature out. Maybe that is my true test," he realized with wonder. "Maybe you're my nemesis!"
"Who is she?" Mildred wanted to know.
The rabbi laughed gently and put his arm around Mildred's back.
"Don't try to soft soap me," Mildred said. "Fucking around, behind my back, huh?"
"No, no," the rabbi said. Actually he hadn't been laid in years. Sex was not something he spent too much time thinking about. He was too busy playing with his mind instead.
But feeling Mildred so close to him was beginning to turn him on.
He fought against the fleshy desires that were rising in him, much the same way his cock was rising underneath his tunic.
"Down cock!" he suddenly shouted to himself.
Mildred instantly dropped to her knees in front of the rabbi. She fumbled through his robes, seeking out his staff of life.
Finding it, she seized it eagerly in her hand.
"My!" she exclaimed. "You really are hung!"
Never in her wildest dreams did she think the rabbi as possessing a tool as impressive as this!
She stuck it in her mouth and began to suck it greedily.
The rabbi almost collapsed. He had forgotten how good it was to get a blow-job! Wow! he thought. How could I have been so up tight that I couldn't allow myself sexual congress every now and then?
If only he could combine his spirituality with his sensuality, he would be a complete and total human being. A book was forming in his head as Mildred continued to suck and lick his gigantic prick.
He would call it The Sensuous Man. He hoped he would get around to writing it. He would be a best-seller, he was sure of that. He could take the money it would make and open a clinic for unwed mothers or some other noble cause.
Mildred was really getting into sucking his cock now. She was rubbing it all over her face, smearing what juice there was on it all in her hair, her eyes, her nose, even her ears.
The rabbi looked down at Mildred playing with his prick. He was sorry he had yelled at her. Now that they were back together, even more intimately than before, he would try to make it all up to her.
"That's it!" he told her. "Right there!"
He closed his eyes again with pleasure. He never dreamed she was such a great cocksucker! But why not?
It had been his experience that a person who was outspoken in life was pretty much the same in bed. He thanked his lucky stars the day he found her.
He was going to come now. He felt his sperm roaring out of his balls on its way into her mouth. He wondered if she would swallow his come and then decided there was only one way to find out.
Seizing her firmly by the head, he held her to him while he shot load after load of creamy white come down her throat.
Mildred hadn't been expecting this! But she swallowed it greedily, lest she choke to death and end her career.
The rabbi stood still for a long while. His knees were weak and he had to catch his breath.
Mildred got off her knees and went to the little basin of water in the corner. She rinsed out her mouth and returned to the rabbi.
"How about it?" she asked him. "Do you think we have a chance?"
The rabbi smiled benevolently at his young charge.
"I think we have as much as chance as anyone else!" he told her fondly.
Mildred jumped up and down like a little child that had just received permission to stay up past its bedtime.
Clapping her hands in glee, she then laid a big hug on the rabbi.
"You're the greatest!" she told him. "You're A Number One! You're the Top!"
Then she launched into a song and dance routine that the rabbi realized they could incorporate into their act.
And so they were on the road again, trying to convince large masses of people that they should be more loving and kind with each other.
By modest standards, they were largely successful. Therefore they acquired enemies.
The Pharaoh sat in his castle, getting the latest reports on his people from his advisors.
"Who is the rabbi freak with the chick Mildred?" he wanted to know.
The advisors looked at each other, afraid to meet the Pharaoh's eyes.
The Pharaoh wasn't any dummy. He saw the sneaky way they exchanged glances and his suspicions instantly went up .3 on the Richter scale.
"Out with it!" he charged them. "I want to hear everything!"
Finally, the eldest statesmen cleared his throat.
"Well, your highness," he began, "they seem to hold great sway over the masses."
"Oh yeah?" the Pharaoh asked. "And why is that?"
"Well," the statesman continued, "they really got their act together."
"What the fuck does that mean?" the Pharaoh snapped. "How is it that they have been allowed to create a following?"
He was furious. In all of his thirty-five years he had not been able to create a following. He knew he was hated throughout the land and it annoyed the shit out of him.
He had done everything to improve his image.
He had gone out on Sundays in his chariot, visiting various small towns, shaking hands with the crowd, getting out the vote.
Not that he really needed the vote. He was king by virtue of his birth. And that was at the root of his problem.
He didn't feel he deserved to by king. He wanted to be a commoner occasionally too. But he had lost the common touch through lack of exercise.
"Write me a new speech," he told his head speech writer. "Put a lot of exclamation points in it. Give me a fable to tell. Something to keep the people amused. Make it good or I'll get rid of you and you'll go back to shoveling shit in the royal stables."
The speech writer thought privately to himself that he would rather shovel shit than write it, but he said nothing.
"Did you hear me?" the Pharaoh yelled.
"Of course, Your Highness," the speech writer replied. "I was only trying to create a gripping opening paragraph for you."
The Pharaoh smiled. He knew the speech writer was lying, but then, all the people underneath him lied. That was their function in life, to LIE BENEATH HIM!
"Okay boys," he said. "This is it! I'm going to launch a massive campaign to discredit these two charlatans.
I'm going to take over this society, grab it by the reins, so to speak, and ride roughshod over the whole countryside." His aides tried to suppress their laughter, but it didn't work.
As they rolled about on the palace floor, gripping their sides in their painful glee, the Pharaoh stared at them.
"What the fuck is this?" he raged. "Am I surrounded by a bunch of donkeys?"
But they were laughing so hard, they could not formulate an answer for him.
The Pharaoh rang the golden cord that was attached to a huge bell over his throne.
The bell crashed to the floor and broke into a thousand pieces. Now the Pharaoh was really going off the wall. He had no respect, he had no bell, and he was hungry as hell.
"That's it!" he screamed at his aides. "This is fucking it! If I ever see a breakdown like this in the palace again, you'll all be on the street begging for crusts of bread!"
His words had a sobering effect on the men and they rose to their feet, their faces red from the exhausting laughter.
"Get me a woman!" the Pharaoh snapped.
All the men wanted to present him with various women they knew. They felt that if they could pawn their girl friends off on the Pharaoh, they could learn things about the Pharaoh that they could use against him.
They reached into their pockets and produced hand-drawings of their girl friends. Then they launched into various descriptions of the sexual capabilities of the girls.
"No!" the Pharaoh yelled. "Get me Mildred!"
The aides looked at each other aghast. How would they get ahold of Mildred. Everyone in the kingdom knew she was sucking off the rabbi.
It was common knowledge, as a matter of fact, that Mildred had never even gone out on a date with another man since rejoining the rabbi.
"Yes," the told their king. "We will get you Mildred."
Then they all ran out of the room and met downstairs in the corner bar.
"Holy shit!" the eldest statesman said. "How the hell are we going to get ahold of that chick!"
He ordered a round of drinks for his underlings. after the liquor hit their brains, the Pharaoh's request didn't seem so difficult after all. The drunker they got, the more sure they become of their plan to kidnap Mildred.
"We'll keep her in a closet for a couple of days," they mused. 'That'll break her down, but good!"
"Yeah, maybe we can all rape her before we turn her over to the boss," another one of the men said.
The waiter came over to the table. He knew the men were from the palace, so he was not as rude to them as he would have been to any other group that was making such a mess of his joint.
"Do you guys want the check?" he asked them.
They all got into an argument over who was going to sign for it, trying to curry favor with the Pharaoh.
"Well," the eldest statesman said, "seeing that I'm the only one on an expense account, I think I should get it.
You guys can leave the tip."
Once that was decided, they all stumbled drunkenly out into the street.
It was dark now, someone had lit the torches however, so their path was visible, even to their blurred vision.
It had been decided that Raol, the youngest of the Pharaoh's advisors should go to the lecture Mildred and the rabbi were giving that night and kidnap Mildred.
He liked his assignment. He knew it was very important for his political career to carry it off successfully.
There was no doubt in his. mind that he could do it. He even thought of fucking Mildred before the Pharaoh got to her.
He said farewell to his companions and headed off in the direction of the lecture.
The tent was packed to capacity that night. There were only Standing Room Only tickets available. Raol bought one of these and took his place in the back of the tent.
When Mildred got up on the podium to speak, Raol was struck instantly by her beauty. Desire welled in him like a fountain, shooting higher and higher in the regions of his brain.
I must have Mildred, he swore to himself.
My God! He had never seen such a desirable creature in his life. She even made his wife pale in comparison, and if there was one thing Raol had, it was a gorgeous wife. Dumb, but beautiful.
Mildred, he could see, was far from dumb. She was brilliant. What she was doing sucking that old rabbi off, was completely beyond him.
He listened to her speech carefully, making notes on what she said in order to incorporate it into his own speeches for the Pharaoh. When she used a particular phrase that caught his fancy, he would make a note of it in the little black book he always carried with him. Soon he found himself copying verbatim every thing she said.
That Mildred is amazing! he thought with real admiration. He thought she must have royal blood in her somewhere. How else explain her phenomenal charisma over the crowd.
Then again, the crowd was so dull, they probably would have gathered to hear a donkey fart on stage.
Then Mildred sat down to wild applause. Raol found himself clapping and cheering as wildly as everyone else in the huge tent.
When the Rabbi got up to speak, Raol almost fell asleep. Everything the rabbi said about peace, brotherhood and love was true, but it made him feel so guilty, he yawned.
How would he get Mildred off the stage? She was staring at the rabbi as though hanging on, mesmerized by every word that dripped from his hoary lips.
If only she had to go to the bathroom! He could sneak about back to the ladies room and kidnap her.
He began to concentrate on her genitals.
He exerted every ounce of his being into pretending that he was her bladder.
You have to go to the bathroom, his thoughts said. I am full. You must empty me. You've heard the rabbi's speech before. You don't have to hear it again. Go and take a piss!
Raol was getting exhausted from all this concentrated effort, but he was rewarded in a few minutes when Mildred started crossing and uncrossing her legs.
Wow! Raol thought. The power of the mind is truly an amazing thing. When man learned how to unleash its untapped power, why they would probably invent toilets and things like that!
He himself had invented a toilet, but he hadn't figured out a way to flush it. He had the blueprints at home.
When he had shown them to the Pharaoh, the Pharaoh had laughed so hard he almost fell off his throne.
"Are you putting me on, or what?" he had roared. "THAT THING WILL NEVER GET OFF THE GROUND!"
"It's not suppose to get off the ground," Raol had replied, hurt. "Forget it," he added under his breath.
"Keep working on it though," the Pharaoh had encouraged him. "Dig deeper! Dig deeper!"
Raol followed Mildred to the outhouse behind the tent. He saw her enter the ridiculous affair and he waited patiently for her to come back outside so that he could capture her then.
When she stepped out into the darkness, Raol was on her like a shot. He clamped his hands around her mouth and pinned her arms behind her back.
She fought like a wildcat, kicking, biting, pushing. Everything she could think of to preserve her life she tried except praying.
That was her first mistake.
Raol carried her off easily towards the palace. He was big and strong. She was big and strong too. But not as big and as strong as Raol!
As she struggled against him, he felt his cock get large, engorging itself with blood. He felt like throwing her on the ground and raping her right then and there. But maybe, he rationalized, he she got him with his pants down, she could make her escape. He might never get a chance to kidnap her again, but he would always have a chance to fuck her!
Therefore, Raol pushed his fleshy desires aside and dragged her into the room where the Pharaoh sat on his throne, paring his fingernails and whistling the latest hit tune.
The Pharaoh looked up instantly when he heard the commotion of Raol and the struggling Mildred.
He was glad television hadn't been invented yet. This was better than a movie!
"Good work!" he told Raol when Raol dumped Mildred at the foot of the throne. "I'll see that you get a proper reward for your extracurricular activities."
Raol smiled. He didn't mind working hard as long as he would be rewarded for it.
Mildred looked up at the Pharaoh. She was no longer frightened. She had always wanted to go to the top, and here she was!
"On your feet, my child," the Pharaoh commanded her.
She raised herself off the floor and stood before the Pharaoh.
"I see you're not a child any longer!" the Pharaoh gasped.
Mildred smiled.
She recognized the look in the Pharaoh's eyes and knew he wanted to fuck her.
That was cool as far as she was concerned. She was getting tired of sucking the rabbi off. What she needed was a firm, hard young cock shoved up her cunt.
Boy, her life was certainly getting interesting ever since she met the rabbi that day in her home town! When she thought how varied and interesting her life had become compared to most of the girls she had grown up with, she almost wept with joy.
"Tell me, Mildred," the Pharaoh began, "how is it that you and that rabbi are able to sway great masses of people?" he asked her.
Mildred's face became serious.
"I don't know," she answered.
"What?" the Pharaoh gasped. "Do you mean it isn't a trick?"
"No," Mildred said. "It's isn't a trick. I mean, it isn't anything that you can go to school and learn, if that's what you mean. I guess it has to be born inside you."
"Hmmmmm," the Pharaoh mused.
Maybe that's why none of his speech writers could invest him with greatness. Maybe he was just a low life.
"Couldn't you teach me" he implored.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"I can't teach you how to be great," Mildred said, "but I could probably teach you a few things in bed!"
The Pharaoh didn't want to discuss sex right now. He was annoyed that she had brought it up so casually.
"I know you're fucking around with the rabbi," he said. "Do you think that accounts for the two of you getting your act together so beautifully?"
Mildred thought about that. "It could be," she mused thoughtfully, "I never really made that connection before."
Raol was listening to this exchange with amazement. Never before, in his entire career at the palace had he seen the Pharaoh converse so freely with a subject. He loved listening to this conversation.
The Pharaoh suddenly became away of Raol's presence.
"You may go now," he said curtly.
Raol shot the Pharaoh a look of open hatred, disguised as open admiration.
"Yes Sir!" he replied smartly.
When he was gone, the Pharaoh turned his attention back to Mildred.
"Have a seat," he offered her.
And then, he did the most amazing thing.
He climbed down off his throne!
Taking two huge fluffy pillows from the supply he kept in the comer, he plopped two of them on the floor and indicated to Mildred that she should sit on one, while he sat on the other.
Once they were comfortable settled on the pillows, staring at each other, the Pharaoh continued his line of questioning.
"Do you like me?" he asked pitifully.
Mildred didn't answer right away.
"Well," she finally said, "I don't have anything against you personally. You seem like an okay person to me."
"How about my subjects," the Pharaoh continued. "Do they like me?"
"Absolutely not!" Mildred said. "Actually, they hate your fucking guts!"
"But WHY?" the Pharaoh asked. "Why don't they love me?"
"I'm surprised at you," Mildred said, sounding like a Jewish mother. "No one ever likes a ruler. It's the price you pay for being over them."
"You know you're absolutely right!" the Pharaoh exclaimed. "I never thought about it that way before."
He was quiet for awhile, with his thoughts. "Maybe I should give up the throne," he said at last.
"Don't go jumping to any hasty conclusions," Mildred advised. "Believe me, Jack, it's a cold, cruel world out there. You'll just be one of the hating instead of the hated. Don't you remember what a wise man once said?" she asked him.
"What?" the Pharaoh asked Mildred. He was fascinated.
"It is better to be feared than to be loved," Mildred said simply.
"How come?" the Pharaoh wanted to know.
He sounded like a little boy to Mildred.
"Love is treacherous," Mildred said, "it can turn to hatred so fast you won't believe your eyes."
"That's right," the Pharaoh said, "could you believe when I married my first queen she was madly in love with me. After she lived with me for six months she hated my guts."
"Unfortunately that happens to a lot of marriages," Mildred said quietly. "That's why I'm not married."
"Do you want to get married?" the Pharaoh asked her.
"Are you proposing to me?" Mildred asked. If he was, she wanted to understand it right up front. None of this mickey-mouse testing bullshit.
The pharaoh blushed. "I don't know," he admitted. "Actually I should have a wife. To help me rule the roost, so to speak."
Mildred's mind raced. To be Queen! Of the whole country! Gosh, she was sorely tempted.
Then she remembered the old rabbi. How could she leave him behind after all he had done for her? She would never enjoy being queen knowing that she had made a jester out of the rabbi.
"I would love to be your queen," Mildred told the Pharaoh. "But under one condition."
"What's that?" the Pharaoh asked. He was afraid she was going to ask for half the kingdom or something.
"The rabbi," Mildred said quietly.
"What about him?" the Pharaoh asked annoyed. "Are you in love with him or something?"
"It is a kind of love, of course," Mildred said quietly. "Unless you can understand how I feel about him, we could never have a relationship that worked."
"You mean you want him hanging around the palace so you can suck his joint or what?" the Pharaoh asked.
He didn't like the idea at all.
"You don't have to be so crude," Mildred snapped. "Don't you see what a great speech writer he would make for you?"
That had never occurred to the Pharaoh.
"I like the way you think," he told her. "You're a smart chick."
"I didn't get to where I'm getting by being a dumb cunt, that's for sure," Mildred said without modesty.
The Pharaoh leaned closer to Mildred.
"Could I see your tits?" he asked her. "Why?" Mildred wanted to know. "Have you got a hang up on big tits or something?"
"Yeah," the Pharaoh said. "So what?"
He was going to have a lot of fun with Mildred. Not only was she built like a brick shit house, her mind was built like a skyscraper.
Of course he had never seen a skyscraper. But he could imagine what a pyramid would look like if it was three hundred stories tall covered with glass.
Mildred loosed her flowing robe and her two tits spilled out practically in the Pharaoh's face.
He gasped. Despite the fact that her personally kept three thousand concubines for his own sexual amusement, he had never seen a pair of knockers like the ones Mildred had.
"Could I suck one?" he asked her.
Mildred didn't answer right away. She knew the Pharaoh wouldn't buy the milk if he could get the cow free.
Even though she herself wanted his mouth on her tits so bad she could feel it, she controlled her present desires for her future gains.
"When I'm queen," she told him, "you can suck on them all you want."
The Pharaoh felt his desire welling up inside him to such an extent that it threatened to engulf him.
"Well, let's get married right away." he suggested.
"Don't we have to take a blood test?" Mildred, the Practical asked.
"I'm the king!" the Pharaoh shouted. "Kings don't get venereal diseases!"
"Are you kidding me?" Mildred shouted.
"Kings axe the ones who started venereal diseases!"
She quickly explained the history of venereal diseases to the astonished Pharaoh.
"The hell with it," the Pharaoh said. "We ain't taking no blood test" He jumped off his pillow and clapped his hands for a guard.
"Get a high priest up here right now!" he ordered. "On the double!"
The guard disappeared and in a few moments a priest made his appearance.
Mildred was marvelling at how fast things could get down when one had power and money.
"I want you to marry us," the Pharaoh instructed the astonished priest.
"Again?" the priest asked, aghast.
"Knock off the editorial," the Pharaoh snapped.
"Wait a minute," Mildred said. "I think we should draw up a written contract to include my stipulations about the rabbi."
The Pharaoh reluctantly agreed to her proposals. He would do anything right now to fuck this Mildred. If she ever bored him he would divorce her by clapping his hands three times and chopping her head off.