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Subject: ASSM: Unspeakable Love (caution)
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	"I once slept with thirteen guys in a four hour period."
	Bea shrugged a little while she spoke, and didn't look up 
from her pasta.  I stared at her until I realized I was staring, then 
I glanced at the people behind us to make sure they hadn't overheard.  
I fumbled with something, the crushed red pepper or the straw in my 
Dr. Pepper.  
	"That..." I started to talk, but a cough aborted the sentence.  
"That's pretty...I mean, that sounds like an exhausting evening."
	"Morning.  I was cutting school."
	"You did that in high school?  You were a pretty wild kid, 
huh?"
	She looked up at me, her irridescent blue eye-shadow gleaming.
	"Benny, that was last semester.  Roman history?  The day
I told you I'd meet you for coffee after class, but never showed 
up?"
	When she said that I felt like my skeleton suddenly
turned to dust, my unsupported guts flopping to the floor; or 
like I'd been blindly strolling, then suddenly slipped off the edge
of a dark pit.  I was so stunned I couldn't even fidget intelligently.  
I sat there motionless, dumb-founded, gazing at the deeply-carved wooden
table, the wild jumble of initials, cusses, pledges of love -- all those
generations of unrelated grafitti seemed to express my fractured 
emotional state well.  I wanted to look at her, but I felt like I'd start
crying out of jealous rage if I saw her face at that moment.  So we were 
silent.  Pinball machines, pool balls, other patrons, including a group 
from a fraternity at the back of the room -- was it them? were they the 
thirteen? -- took the place of speech for about two minutes.  
	"I haven't done it since, though."  
	She was chewing pasta again, and I finally looked up at her.  
Our eye contact felt cold, awkward.  The thought flashed into my mind 
that I must look like a helpless, pleading puppy to her.  She swallowed,
then her eyes shifted like they were beads on an abacus.  
	"Not with thirteen, anyway." 

* * *

	"What's the big deal?"  My friend Tanya tried to console me
later that evening.  "I mean, is she pregnant?"
	"I don't think so."
	"Well, then, there's no problem."
	"Well, that's not exactly true," I said.  "I mean, the problem
is, we'd already started dating.  We had a date that morning, in fact.
While I waited for her at the cafe, she was in bed with a dozen guys.  Or,
who knows, maybe in a dozen different beds spaced not too far apart."
	"Had she promised not to see anyone else yet?"
	"Tanya, thirteen fucking guys."
	"Had she promised not to see anyone else?"
	"No, damn it, but that's not really the point."
	"You're puritanical!  That's so...oh, wait: I get it: You're...
yes, yes.  It's The Male Fear.  Look, Benny..."
	Tanya squared to face me on the couch, and put her palms on
my shoulders.  She was close: her nose almost brushed my chin. 
	"One of those guys -- at least one -- had a penis that was 
gigantic compared to yours." 

* * *

	"Jesus."  
	"Uh huh."
	"Thirteen?  In how long?" 
	"Four hours."
	"God almighty."
	My friend Pete looked up toward the sky, incredulous, and
laughed.  
	"So you can see why I'm, I don't know, uneasy about dating
her now."
	"Well..."  His eyebrows were embedded arches in his forehead,
almost merging into his scalp.  He seemed truly amazed.  A couple of
female students walked toward us, and he stopped talking until they 
were past.  
	"Yeah, talk about sexual gymnastics.  I can sympathize; you
really gotta wonder what motivates stuff like that."
	"She's got a different issue for each one of those guys,
I bet.  I mean, women who allow themselves to be used like that
have real psychological problems, right?"
	"I don't know for sure.  In all fairness I'd have to talk
to her before I made a judgement like."	
	He turned to me intently.
	"So can I get her number?"
	
* * *

	"What do you think, Bliss?"  
	The orange tabby purred on my lap, tranquilized by the 
afternoon sunlight.    
	"Do you think she was lying?  I mean, maybe she said that to 
test me.  If I could overlook something like that and still
want to see her, still be emotionally open to her, then, you know,
my feelings for her must be pretty genuine.  Does that make sense?"
	My housemate's cat wanted to sleep on the theory.  I wanted
to act on it.  Aspen College only had about four thousand students,
and if Bea was telling the truth, her past partners constituted a 
substantial percentage of them.  I figured it should be pretty 
easy to find someone to corroborate her story, if it was true.
	Deep, reddish light drained out of the sun into my bedroom like
blood from a deep wound, staining everything red, making Bliss's 
marmalade colored coat seem to swirl.  I visualized Bea's apartment, and 
recalled numerous bits of evidence that suggested an extremely active
social life: the cast she had kept from when she broke her leg skiing, 
which, I had noticed, had "get well" wishes written all over it -- not a 
millimeter of it seemed to be free of handwriting; the enormous phone list
on her refrigerator, which seemed to consist of about eight pages of 
single-spaced type; the desk in her small room, which had dozens of 
snapshots on display, either in little L-shaped plastic frames or pinned
to the surrounding walls.  I remember pointing at one guy, whose shot 
seemed prominently displayed; he was posed in bathing trunks, his stomach 
muscles distinct and lumpy, as if a family of pigmy gophers was burrowing 
under his skin.
	"Who's that?"  I asked.
	"That's my brother."
	The guy in the photograph had very light blond hair, blue
eyes.  Bea was a brunette, and her brown eyes merged into black.  I 
gestured to another photograph, a badly focused shot of a red-haired 
guy sleeping with her heart-shaped velvet pillow under his head.
	"Who's that?"
	"Oh, that's...my other brother."
		
* * * 

	I ran into a guy who was in Roman history with me and Bea,
and who I had seen speaking with her a few times before class.  He
was sitting alone at a table next to the cream and sugar stand.
	"Hey," I said, tearing a couple of sweeteners over my
coffee.  He looked up at me without recognition.  
	"What's up."
	"You seen Bea?"  
	He thought for a minute, then said, "No."
	I feigned a look of concentration.
	"You look familiar.  Didn't I meet you with her at a party?"
	He shook his head slowly.  
	"You sure?  You know her, don't you?"  
	He laughed, then said, "Well, kind of."
	"Right, I guess you could say, who doesn't know her."
	"The better question is, does anyone?"
	"Are you serious?  Do you know how many guys she, uh, to use a
euphemism, `dates'?"  
	He reached for his coffee.
	"Yeah, I know.  I was at one of her carnal-census things.  I 
remember you now; you just look different with your clothes on."  
	I grinned a little, nodded.  I had certainly never joined one of 
her love-feasts, but he was tired of not knowing who I was, so he assigned
an identity to me: I had become one of those naked strangers to him.
	"But just because we were in the same room naked doesn't mean
we know anything about each other.  And just 'cause we both had turns
on the girl doesn't mean we know anything about her.  She's into all the
sociological aspects of group-love; all those survey forms we had to fill
out and all that?  The screening process?  The ironic thing is, maybe she 
gets to know us really well -- I can't say -- but none of us get to know 
her really well."
	"Is that why she does it, do you think?  She wants physical 
intimacy but without the dangers of other people knowing her too well?"
	"Man, look," he tilted his head back, gulping the rest of his 
coffee, "I'm not into the psycho-babble angle.  To tell you the truth, 
I just wanted to get laid.  It'd been, like, eight months.  I wanted to 
be wrapped in pussy, I wanted my rest my head on tits.  Maybe you 
should just interview to her."
	He rose.
	"I've tried," I lied to him, "but she said she doesn't want to 
violate the integrity of her research by discussing it before the results 
are thoroughly assessed."
	"See, I think that's weird.  For me the results were simple:
I blew my load.  But you know what?  I don't think it was worth it.
I think I really degraded myself.  Imagine if she had a conscience
she could honestly reflect on herself with?  Can you imagine how she'd 
feel?  It's not healthy behavior; it's fueled by neuroses, and acting
them out just grinds them in deeper.  Group sex is a sick thing.  I 
admit I was just desperate.  I wish I hadn't been."  
	He began walking away.  I stepped over to take his table,
and noticed what appeared to be a fashion magazine under the table.
	"Hey," I called after him, grasping the magazine from the 
ground.  "Did you leave this behind?"
	"Oh," he stepped forward quickly, "Thanks, man," and snatched
it away from me.  In the fractional second that the magazine passed
from my hands to his, the image on the cover burned itself into my mind
at multiple levels: it was only after I sat down, opened a book,
and held my mug to my lips that my brain sorted it out.  The magazine's 
name was written in dark Gothic print, La Mort Elegante, and it showed 
an attractively made-up woman, extremely pale and lean, lying in a lacy
sheer slip on a bare surface.  Despite the girl's alluring self-
presentation, there was something dissonant about the image, some
sort of tension.  Not only were her eyes closed, the girl's body seemed 
extremely stiff; her limbs seemed heavily planted on the plain surface 
under her.  
	Then it hit me: She was lying on mortician's table.  She was a 
corpse.  It was a necrophiliac porn magazine. 

* * *

	I realized I was avoiding talking to Bea about her extreme
sexual gregariousness.  
	"Yeah," Tanya said, "You're afraid that she'll ask you to join 
her with other guys.  Then you might find out that they're sexually
better than you.  You're afraid that when it comes right down to it 
you're sexually third-rate."
	"No, I'm just trying to digest it.  I'm not sure if I can
date her if she has these behaviors."
	"Look, Benny, I'll let you in on a little secret.  Women 
are not naturally monogamous.  That's because individual men are 
never, ever sexually adequate.  Women's sexual needs are enormous;
insatiable by single men.  That's why women are often so reluctant
to know their own sexuality, why they're often sexually repressive; 
they don't want to realize that whatever monogamous relationship
they're in, it'll never fulfill their libido.  In fact, they'll never 
satisfy their sexual drive unless they rebel against our society's basic 
rule that monogamy is good, polygamy bad.  That takes a lot of strength
and courage.  All females are, at their basic nature, like queen
ants.  And our hearts are big enough to love many, many males.  But
you men are puny, limited.  It's sad, it really is.  The dictate
of nature is totally un-egalitarian; men are inadequate and replaceable.
No wonder they're so stupidly aggressive; they have to compensate for
their sexual nothingness."  
	"Come on.  Sexual nothingness?  That's absurd."
	Tanya chain-lit another cigarette, smoke enshrouding her
face as she puffed.  
	"Nope.  I'm serious.  Men have a completely different attitude
about sex than women.  For women sex is largely about pleasure,
but also it's about giving life.  Women are able to give life.  This
threatens men, since they know that the life the women create, the
child, will replace them in the woman's heart.  Men want to dissociate
the life-impulse from sex because that deprives women of their power.
That's why all men -- I know you're going to have problems with this,
but try to keep an open mind -- all men are, at their core, 
necrophiliacs.  What they really want is a woman who is dead."
	I couldn't believe what she was saying.   
	"Necrophiliacs?"
	"When men dominate women, cut off their freedom, stifle
them emotionally, imprison them in house-wife roles -- it's all 
symbolic killing.  Men want dead women; since they have to provide
for women, since they're natural hunters, they're comfortable with
death.  Being alive for a woman has a whole different edge than 
being alive for a man: for women life is eternal, because they
create it.  For men, it's a threat, something they oppose as hunters, 
but can never master.  Women are about giving life.  Men are about 
destroying it.  Women are life.  Men are death."
		
* * *	
	
	The guy at the coffee shop, the guy with the necrophilia 
magazine, had mentioned that Bea seemed to approach her orgy as a
sociological experiment.  He had mentioned a survey, forms she had him
fill out.  I decided that on our next date I'd broach the subject to 
Bea with reference to all that, as if I was curious about what she 
learned from the experience in terms of sociology, or whatever field she 
considered her group sex to be in.
	We went to a show at the Galley, our local rock club.  The
crowd was dense and energetic, boisterous and dressed up like erotic
banners.  The tortured feedback of the band and the intoxicated,
garbled cheers of the crowd limited our communication to exclaiming things
into each others ears.
	"Want a drink?"
	"What?"  
	"A drink?"
	"Yeah!"  
	When I returned from getting her a third drink, she had abandoned
our table.  I scanned the crowd in front of the stage -- on their feet,
but too packed together to really dance normally -- and since she was
shorter than most of the other patrons it took a moment to find her. 
	When I saw her, I had to combat an urge to leave immediately.
As I downed my drink, and then hers, I watched her frolicking 
lasciviously among a crowd of strangers: rubbing against bodies at random 
with her shoulders as well as her large, braless breasts; allowing her 
arms to brush people at every angle, not turning to glare at strangers 
who thrust against her from behind, but instead leaning back into their
motion.
	A muscular guy with a crew-cut and a tank top stepped
over to me.
	"Are you okay?"  
	I guess I must have appeared pale and intensely uncomfortable.
Maybe even nauseaus.  
	"Fine," I shouted back, not making eye contact with him.  He
paused, then smiled and held out his hand.
	"I'm Gary."
	I stared at him for a second, then returned my focus to Bea's 
lewd antics.  A couple of times I lost sight of her in the tide of bodies,
but in general she seemed most drawn to the hardcore punk-rockers who
were doing a mild slam-dance in the center of the throng.  After a while 
she appeared at my side with a very broad smile: lipstick smeared, hair
dishevelled, the two top buttons of her shirt missing.
	"Hi!"  She called out, now quite hoarse.  
	"I'm going to go," I said.  She hesitated.  I didn't know if I'd 
spoken loud enough for her to hear me, but then she grabbed my hand
and started heading toward the exit. 
	"You were awfully friendly with about thirty of those 
people."  I spoke bitterly, after repressing my jealous fuming for the
first two minutes of the walk home.  She looked at me with an appalled
expression then stopped walking.  I continued for about four paces, then 
sighed, threw up my arms, and turned back to her.
	"Are you accusing me of something, Benny?"
	"Accusing you.  Okay, no.  I'm just saying that I don't like
your behavior.  I object to it very strongly."
	"I don't believe this."  It sounded like it, too; she sounded
genuinely surprised and dismayed.  
	"Look,"  I lowered my voice a little, embarrassed to be arguing 
with a lover out in public.  "I just want to know: was that, all that 
stuff you did back there, was that somehow...acceptable in your mind?"
	Not to answer my question but to express some blend of pity
and disappointment, she shook her head, sadly, and folded her arms.
	"You know, you sound like a cross between Ann Landers and a 
central American dictator.  Benny, I have no problem sharing my love with 
multiple life forms.  My heart is not limited by numbers."
	"What do you mean, `life forms'?"
	As if giving up on the conversation, quite possibly giving up
on me, she began walking. I followed.
	"All life is one.  Living organisms are physically distinct,
but spiritually identical.  Part of exactly the same force that orders
the universe."
	"I don't know what the hell you're getting at."
	"I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of sharing my 
affection with non-humans."
	"Oh, my god."
	"You know, you could at least try to broaden your horizons
a little.  Anthropocentrism has had a profoundly destructive impact
on our planet."
	"So...when you say you like the idea of sharing your love
with other species, what do you actually mean?"
	"Well, for example, I'm planning on driving to the plains
of northern Wyoming this summer and dating a herd of antelope."
	She studied my face for a moment.
	"Oh, come on.  You're threatened by that, too?"

* * *

	As usual, Tanya seemed to have no trouble grasping this.
	"She's experimenting; learning how the love-stereotypes in our
society don't do justice to the complexity of her inner experience.
That's amazingly wonderful, isn't it?  The willingness to learn the
truth about oneself, to learn what our economically-driven society
finds inconvenient and so struggles to conceal and repress?  Benny, you 
could do it, too.  It'd make you a more evolved person.  Why don't you 
get in touch with your innate male love of dead things?  Why don't you 
go to a morgue, or--"
	"Oh, for chrissake," I cut her off angrily, and turned toward
the door. "That's fucking insane, Tanya."
	She paused, then said with utmost compassion, "Benny,
please.  You shouldn't be threatened by the idea of knowing yourself
more deeply.  Whoever you are -- whatever your nature is -- it's 
all good."

* * * 

	Martha Beaulieu's was no ordinary tombstone.  It was elegant, and 
really distinguished itself from the others.  It was six inches thick -- 
good, solid granite -- and stood just about to the level of my waist.  The
stone was rose-colored, perfectly smooth and polished.  The face of the 
tombstone was decorated around the edges with floral curves and splashes 
of extraordinary detail and artistry.  Most of the other tombstones had 
lettering that was so ornate that it required scrutiny to read it, but 
hers was simple, so precise it almost seemed to speak to me.  I was 
really dazzled by her -- well, by it -- and as I kneeled close to the 
stone to read the epitaph, it was as if I could feel a gentle presence 
in the ground beneath me.  
	Disappointingly, her epitaph was in French, which I couldn't
read.  I gazed at it for a while anyway, absorbing the beauty of the
headstone, the absolute quietude of the cemetary.  Wind swept autumn
leaves past me.  The air was clean, richly scented.  I put my 
palms on the cool grass around my knees, then lay on my back.
	To tell you the truth, I felt more comfortable there than I did
in most groups of people.  The stillness captivated me, and the sight of
all the tombstones seemed oddly magical: even rows of marble slabs 
extending out in every direction, each with its own unique character, 
each cushioning the eye with a compact shadow.  I thought of each one as 
a doorway to another place, somewhere peaceful, warmly tranquil.  
	I'm lying in a cemetary, I thought to myself.  I closed my
eyes and felt the surroundings flow into me.  This is wonderful; I'm lying
in a cemetary.  I touched my chest with my fingertips, felt my heart
beat.  Somehow the fact that I was alive there was thrilling; it was as 
if in the midst of all these symbols of death, my own living energy 
seemed augmented.  And I adored it.  Soon my carressing fingers moved
down, and tilting my head back, gazing at Martha's tombstone above me, I 
unzipped my pants.  My penis was already erect, and I held its warmth 
gratefully.  
	After I ejaculated, I lay on my side with a blade of grass in
my teeth.  My feeling of intimacy with myself was profound, yet I did
not feel at all alone; I was sharing an experience with the mysteries
that lay inhumed all around me.  Society's fear of death is all misplaced,
I thought to myself.  Love is just as much a reality in death as it is 
in life.
	And with the experience of those days, I finally began learning 
about love.

	The End

	http://members.aol.com/Siskur/rhet.htm

		
	


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