Nude Encounters 1 of 3
(The first encounter isn't really Nude, only naked emotions. The second is really nude)
DIARY 7241
11/9-10/1965
AUREON ENCOUNTER I
Get to the train just on time, and on looking around, find that Estelle isn't in the train, so I figure she's gotten a ride up with Streitfeld. The day is cloudy and overcast, but the trees have fully turned on the slopes of the Palisades, and there are patches of vivid red among the dun, dark green, and dirty orange leafed trees. Again the anticipatory nervousness hits me about 10 minutes south of Irvington, and the train stops and I walk back to be greeted by Estelle, who gets on at Riverdale, and introduced to Joe, who's a fuzzy-haired, brown eyed fellow who seems more than a little drawn to me.
On the platform are the assorted mingling of people waiting for the non-scheduled, despite Estelle's pleas to the contrary, transportation to Tarrytown House, There's Estelle and Joe and Harriet, a mousy little girl with protruding eyes and teeth and small beauty, and a group of three who seem to know all about each other: indeed they turn out to be three of the leaders, John, plump and self-contented looking with his bulky sweater and pipe, Debbie, engaged to John, vivacious in a plain way with her stringy, middle-parted hair, and Penny, buxom and attention-getting in her miniskirt and dark blue stockings on maxi-legs. The last is Miki, a gamin-type with a skull cap of black hair and large dark eyes staring out of a gaunt concentration-camp face.
After the cold fuss of waiting for taxis and signing in, it turns out that I'm staying in the King House, the large white house that Mary and I stumbled across early the last Sunday morning. Joe's there, too, as is a large, pleasant-looking, reassuring fellow whose name is Jim. We walk across the leaf-strewn paths together, and they pump me about the last weekend, worried about what is in front of them. Joe's upstairs, and Jim's down the hall from me. Put things away and prepare to go back to the tennis house. Jim's door is partly opened, so I knock and get invited in, and he's putting things away, says he requested being alone in a room, and in a few moments we're over to the tennis house.
There are many people in the basement assembly room, and I settle next to Joe, Jim next to me, and Miki comes over and we chat about her, mainly, her job with Phoenix House, where she's been six weeks as the assistant to the director of re-entry, and she has the highest praise for the three-night-a-week encounter groups that take place in each of the three houses in the Upper West 80's. "One guy's on the hot seat, and someone else is just ripping into him, tearing him apart, and the inquisitor seems so solid and sure. But in a few minutes HE'S in the hot seat and, God, he's all hollow."
When she goes off for coffee, Joe and I chat, and he's just quit HIS job recently in order to be a professional photographer, and I tell him my story and we're struck with the similarities in our positions. His interest in me still seems real and intense, but there's nothing about him to attract me, so I'm happy when Hal Streitfeld calls the room to attention.
He's a very unprepossessing person and speaker, looking soft and uncomfortable in his red velvet pullover which is too short for his body, and shapeless gray trousers under shapeless gray hair over a shapeless gray face with glasses on.
"Aureon was founded in January, 1967, when a group of us decided that we could emulate Esalen in the East." He described his professional studies, and went on to say that he'd been through classical analysis, but hadn't benefited much from it. "I wanted something more, so I looked into the Gestalt theories of Perls, but was sad to find that as solid as these people were professionally, they were pretty messed up in their personal lives, Perls and Schutz and the others. Then I was associated with Alexander Lowen, and got something out of his theories of bio-energetics. But still I wanted something different, so I went to the classic Reichean approach, which is just about what they use at Esalen---the body-approach. There were modifications to the Reichean group, which was affected by the techniques of Synanon groups. But then there'd been work in encounter groups for a long time: at National Training Laboratories, Schutz at Esalen, TRW Systems. I'd been to them all during six weeks at the Coast, along with nude workshops and whatever else they had to offer. I wasn't satisfied with any of them, and then ideas began popping in this group of Kaz's that we were all in. There was a theory of types developed by Sonja and Lynn, which we've grown to call the Tackett-Carl Theory of Types. What you do is put yourself into a type, but I'll let someone else describe that to you."
There was chaos for awhile as the group of eight leaders talked among themselves at the front of the room, then Sonja spoke up.
"I guess I'm elected. Lynn and I began to notice things about each other, and we began to formulate ideas about what made us what we were. As time went on and we told others in the group about our ideas, they seemed to work, they seemed to be right, so we worked on it further and came up with our ideas. This will be the first group that will use these ideas, so in a sense all you are sitting in on history. We call the two types Control and Withdrawn. The control types run Western society: they're articulate, reasonable, very structured, are noted for a lack of emotion, and they operate under a fear/anger dichotomy. The Withdrawn type is not structured, is nonverbal, can be typified as being "warm and soft," and they're governed by a love/pain dichotomy." Sonja was obviously the control type, her mannish looks in short severe haircut, only the bare minimum of makeup made her eyes look hard and calculating, and she spoke directly and emotionlessly.
Lynn sat next to her, expressions flashing across her face differently from one minute to the next. She fidgeted in her chair and looked around the room, smiling and frowning as the impulse took her. She chimed in enthusiastically: "It's said that the control type build the world, while the withdrawn type ENJOY it." The audience laughed.
"The control type usually thinks of the self," continued Sonja, "while the withdrawn type senses their oneness with all life. So the control type is a solid type, hard and unmoving, whereas the withdrawn type can't be pinned down, is just a gaseous sort of entity. That's why control types fear death, because it means the death of the self, but withdrawn types are everyone else, so they're not so concerned about death---they'll keep right on going even after they die. The control group sort of operates out of their mind, while the withdrawn group is more or less operating out of its emotions, out of sex.
"Everyone is the same type as their mother." Here a flurry of whispers rocked across the room. "And most married couples are opposites, so you tend to be LIKE your mother, whether you're a man or a woman, but you all tend to marry your fathers. The goal of this sort of therapy is to get in touch with the opposite side of your character. Trouble results from the separateness of these two halves: our task is to integrate these two halves, to put the personality back together. Children are intact, complete, but somewhere along the way the two people get separated out, and that causes conflict and pain."
There was more discussion from the members of the group, and the point was made that the types REVERSE when people get to bed. It seemed fairly clear to me that I was control, and my mother was certainly control and my father withdrawn, and I seemed to be more like the withdrawn type in bed, so it all fit. During the discussion, it seemed to go on too long, so I suggested that people shouldn't be too worried about making the wrong decision, because the other members of the group could easily detect an interloper and these would be "thrown out of the group."
At this Miki crowed at me and announced that I was definitely a control type, as if I didn't know. By then it was 12:15 and time for lunch, so Miki and I chatted off to the lunchroom, and joined Shirley and Lynn, who seemed to be lesbian lovers, who were a pair, obviously. We talked about how easy it was to absorb their theory of types, and how interesting the groups promised to be.
Back at the assembly room, we divided into the four groups depending on Male or Female, Control or Withdrawn, and surprisingly the groups ended up split evenly, despite the fact that "Withdrawn" seemed a negatively loaded word, but possibly "Control" was an equally negative word for the withdrawns.
Then we counted down for which of the four sets of leaders we would join, and I figured that 2 were the two girls, but goofed and found it was Debbie and John. I fussed and fretted, though Miki and I were happy to find each other in the same group, but I quickly brainwashed her into wanting the girls' group, since the girls had originated the theory. Consequently, when Hal asked if anyone was unhappy with his group, three in John's group raised their hands, and I seemed to catch a disappointed look in John's face as my hand went up. But I hastened to assure everyone it wasn't against the group I was in, I was only FOR another group more. Finally with a bit of shuffling I got into Lynn and Sonja's group, while Miki stayed in John's. We later agreed it was pretty good that we stayed separate, since we were such like characters.
Off we went to T3, which was a too-small room with 17 chairs packed against the walls in a tight circle, and only one window for ventilation, though we did have a bathroom. We sat around and did nothing but chat for a couple minutes until the two girls came in, and they seemed too terrified to take command of the group, but finally we started giving self-introductions, first names only, until someone wanted to know why only first names.
"With a last name like Zolnerzak, what good is hearing the last name?" I chimed in, and everyone got a good laugh about that.
There was another awkward silence, and the girls brought up the topic of being a peer-group, so everyone could say just as much as anyone else. Then they decided to try one of their devices, and asked for a volunteer. Everyone retreated into his seat, and they wanted to know "Volunteer for what?" Norma was the one who asked this question, and they coyly said, "Volunteer and you'll find out."
So she did. She began telling us about herself, how she had been married for 25 years, raised three children, then started working three years ago in art direction, and was now art director, but she felt uncomfortable in her job, since she didn't think she was doing a good job. This went on for a very long time, and then it got around to her husband, and Lynn decided that she hated her husband.
"Stand up in the center of the room, clench your fists, and say 'I'm angry,'" said Sonja, rather peremptorily.
"You want me to stand up and say---that?" asked Norma, nervously.
"Yep." Norma stood, looking concerned, and started to say "I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry," but however she said it, it was wrong. She was to put her feet wider apart, say it louder, say it deeper, say it more slowly, say it with more expression, say "I am angry," and however Norma chose to do it, it didn't work. Gradually I got the same feeling for her that I had for myself before during the Gestalt Therapy. I was terribly uncomfortable myself and for her, and her throat began getting sore, and she began to cough and choke, and she insisted on using a whining head-tone, and the girls didn't have enough sense to bring it down into the thorax.
The attempts kept on and on, and Norma's face grew worn and pained from the efforts at shouting. At one point she said, lowly, "Goddam you, Lou," and I suggested that THAT might be better for her to say, but they ignored my statement. At another point John came out with a statement something like mine, and Sonja, with real anger, shot back that she didn't appreciate the attempts of certain people in the group to undercut their method. They were perfectly qualified to do what they were doing, and we should all sit back and learn from it: THEY were the leaders. I was taken aback, as was John, and Norma looked unhappily around the room for some sort of help.
She really did try to perform as directed, as I had tried, but she really didn't know what to do. Finally she reported her embarrassment at being a failure and taking up so much time, and after somewhat over an hour they allowed her to regain her seat. At one point later she made a comment, but her comment was cut off by some curt reference to her inability to work, so she ended the session in a deep depression, feeling with those who were acting out their angers and hatreds, but afraid to open her mouth and say a word. "I felt that the entire group was against me," she said later.
The group had turned over to Ted, who had said that HE was angry, and we began to hear his story. He had been married for six years, but it was breaking up now, even though he didn't want it to break up. In one final argument, his wife was sleeping with another guy, and said that the other guy had given her so much pleasure: pleasure he couldn't give her because he had such a small penis! He shrank into himself as he said this, and the group unanimously branded his former wife as a bitch of the first magnitude. But he said he didn't want to lose her: he didn't have ANY friends of his own, he only knew people he met through her, so when she'd call, and they'd talk or go to dinner or go to a show, he enjoyed their company. He had liked art and such when he was a child, but decided it was too feminine to continue.
"Do you want to get at your anger?" asked Sonja.
"Yeah," he said, standing up self-consciously with his hands on his hips in such a fragile way that I guessed he might at one time, maybe now, have some doubts about his masculinity in general. His efforts were somewhat better than Norma's, leading to some sort of touching of his feeling as he kept his hands on his hips and screamed downward into the floor, as if vomiting some foulness from his mouth. His voice got more and more strident from shouting, but they egged him onward, feeling there was more to come out. Finally they detected pain, and he wept for a few minutes, then ended up saying that he felt pretty good. They made him say that around the group, and his face actually brightened up and he rather bounced around the room.
"OK, who's next?" Sonja looked shortly around the room. "How about you?"
Elinor said OK, and began to tell about her college training to be a nurse anesthetist, and how she ran away from home, with the patrols finding her in Maine and returning her home. When she finished, she again went away to Europe for 3 years, fighting in the Army in Israel, acting as a nurse, and feeling very good about it. The group oohed and aahed at her experiences, then she returned to the city to see her family, and the first week she was home her mother fell down a flight of stairs and was now bedridden. General hisses from the group. She'd leave home immediately, she said, if she weren't worried about her 19-year-old brother, who was flunking out of school, was a pot smoker, and was threatening to come to no good. The consensus of the group was that she had to lead her own life, and she didn't have to run very far away, just get out of the house, so that her brother could still get in touch with her if he needed her. She got to some kind of anger, and sat down rather pleased with herself.
Lynn looked over to Sonja and said "You look in bad shape."
"I'm very much fearful about what I heard. I keep thinking of MY mother."
"Do you want to try the hate device?"
"Yeah---ohhh, I'm so fearful."
I was rather disgusted with this: after all, we were here for OUR benefit, and we had to submit to a new theory of therapy, and now we had to listen to the troubles of one of the leaders! By this time Sonja had drawn herself up to her full five foot six and THREW an enormous shout across and downward, raising up on toes and bending over as if hit in the stomach "I HATE HER."
Again and again this screaming shout was ripped from her throat, and she stopped, gasping for breath, while Lynn gave forth the typical, "OH, oh, oh," like the mewing of a tiny, empathetic kitten. They went through a few more series of screams, they tried another device, and Sonja started crying.
"Oh, gee, oh, Sonja, Oh, look at her," whimpered Lynn. "Oh, she's so vulnerable now, oh, Sonja, oh." And she raced from her seat to embrace Sonja tightly, saying Oh, oh, oh, as she caressed her. When she went back to her seat, Sonja stood, swaying slightly, glassy eyed, and Lynn again said, "Oh, Sonja, you're SO vulnerable. Can anyone give her love? Who can give her love?"
Estelle jumped up from her seat and caressed Sonja, and Lynn kept up the rather sickening running drivel of "Oh, isn't that nice, oh, oh. Estelle, can't you just feel the love Sonya's giving out? Oh, oh, isn't that wonderful?" When Estelle sat down, Lynn again requested the love, and it almost settled into a "let's go around the room and love Sonya" bout. Some who went seemed rather reluctant to do so, though some simply felt their hearts go out to Sonya in her need, and went up to her. But Sonya, being the control type, seemed entirely too self-contained to need THIS much love from the group; she took in the embraces in a rather perfunctory manner, though there was an intensity about the Lynn-Sonya embrace that made me suspect there might possibly be more than an intense friendship over a long period of time behind the emotions in their hugs. In the same way that Lynn looked around the room for the next hugger, Sonya also began almost challenging those who hadn't given her love, and I found myself, as I became numbered among the smaller and smaller group who hadn't gone up to her, of two minds. I really didn't feel that I LOVED Sonya (thoughts come to me now: maybe because she WAS too much like me, and Steve's comment from last time: Maybe he doesn't like HIMSELF too much), but she seemed to be needing the show of love for some reason, even if it was only to show the group members what THEY could be getting if THEY opened themselves to the group as she had.
At length I decided that I would go through the motions, somewhat as a prescription might be followed, and see if the motions might produce an unexpected reaction. So during a pause I stepped up, feeling quite unself-conscious, and embraced Sonya. She soaked up whatever feelings I offered to her, and I couldn't resist whispering in her ear "I envy you for what you just did." She didn't react, but during the embrace gave off small sounds of appreciation which I could hear for each person who hugged her. But I suppose I did get some sort of good feeling from holding her in my arms. If only the feeling that I COULD follow through a prescription and get SOME sort of feeling, rather than self-disgust, out of it. When I went back to my seat, it was with a feeling of something good done for reasons that I didn't have to investigate to trust.
There was some encouragement to the holders-back in the love-feast, but Norma, particularly, stated that she didn't feel like doing it, didn't see anything to be gained from her doing it for the wrong reason: just to please Lynn and Sonya, and so she wouldn't do it. The group turned slightly frosty toward her at this point, and she said she felt not a part of the group, afterwards.
There was an almost embarrassed silence afterwards. They looked around the room to see who could use the help, and possibly asked if anyone felt they wanted to say something.
"I want to say something," said Estelle, eyes still twinkling from her crying during Sonya's recital and screaming. The group turned toward her accommodatingly, and she began to ramble on about feeling sorry for a number of the people in the group, but that her husband complained that she was never really HERSELF because she spent so much of her time crying for other people. She said she could cry for Ted and for Norma and for Sonya and for Elinor, and she felt that she didn't have anything inside herself that she could point to and call HERSELF. There were a few questions back and forth, and it was made clear that this was a typical statement from a withdrawn type, who felt at one with the world. Her mother was obviously withdrawn, her husband was an obvious control type, so the theory held up for her.
As the conversation went on, she became increasingly uncomfortable, until she started saying things about herself: SHE was holding down a difficult job, SHE felt sorry for people and wanted to help them, SHE had feelings which other people didn't have. And Lynn sympathetically pointed out that it WAS she who had these feelings, and Estelle began sobbing aloud, burying her head in her hands, shaking with tears. "That's YOU that's crying, Estelle," said Lynn, "you're crying, no one else is crying, and you're not crying for anyone else." Ed reached over to put his hand on Estelle's back, and her sobbing died slowly away, and there was a bit more talk, aimed chiefly at making her realize that SHE was a person with demands and hopes and fears, and even though she could certainly feel sorry for other people easily, she DID have a feeling of self, she DID have some contact with something inside her that she KNEW was a part of herself, and of no one else, and the circle about this time had to break for lunch.
I was feeling uneasy in the group. I'd thrown in some suggestions about handling Norma, and at one point Lynn threw her hand over to me and said "Keep quiet" in a manner which I thought was entirely too "put-down" for my taste. So when the group got up for lunch, particularly when I thought it was 11:30, and questioned why we needed two hours to get back at 1:30, and they told me it was already 12:30, I left quickly and went off to find Miki. We chattered about the groups, and went off by ourselves into a corner, taking opposite corners of the table, which I realized would discourage another duo from taking seats with us.
We were wrong, however, when Shirley and Lynne sat down with us, and they appeared to me to be lesbian lovers, and this seemed verified when they reported having lived together for "years" and one was control and one withdrawn, and they appeared to know each other very well indeed. The one across from me gave off such "possessive" and "We don't need YOU" radiations about her roommate and me, respectively, that I felt my initial impression was correct.
We talked about nothing in particular, about the place, about my former weekend, about my book, about Miki's job, and about the weather and New York, and the food, good again, thankfully. I went back to the room feeling even more out of it.
This session I sat next to the window, since I felt that the cold air streaming in, being the only ventilation in the room where they kept the door closed to keep down the noise to the other parts of the building, was too much for Lynn who had been sitting there before. Lynn came in rather early and sat two seats over from me, and began talking in general about anger, and I said, rather too loudly, probably in order to press the point I was making "And I sure got angry with you this morning for cutting me off." She looked at me mildly, unsmiling, and didn't continue the conversation.
After everyone was gathered, there was again a silence, and John leaped into the gap with the feelings that I had had. He said he didn't understand what was going on, and even felt that some of the techniques and devices used were against any sort of good feeling in the group. When there was no support for his point of view, I leaned forward into the group and said "I felt the same way, and I was angry with myself for not having brought it up before." Quite off the bat, Sonya launched off at John: "I've felt this whole negative attitude from you from the beginning. We've been in this business long enough to know that we're doing a good job, so we don't even need the support of the group to feel right in what we're doing. I feel you're trying to undercut (the word had a sharp, vicious edge in her voice) the group, and I don't like it."
"Maybe one of the reasons John spoke as he did, as I wanted to," I said, nervous about talking, yet forcing myself to say what I felt, "is to find if anyone ELSE in the group had the feeling that things weren't going quite right. I wasn't sure what was going on, and I wasn't sure if anyone else in the group shared my feelings. The only way to find out is to ask." I paused and looked around the room, but it was almost as if the group was unaware that I was asking for support, let alone showed an inclination to agree with me. "But now that I see that no one agrees with me, I'll keep quiet and see what happens."
John added a thing or two to the conversation, but both Lynn and Sonya again jumped on him, going as far as to say that no one was forcing him to sit there through the rest of the session, and he somewhat backed down, said that at least it was interesting enough to hold his interest, and that he would stay.
"OK, then, let's get to someone who wants to work," Lynn said this rather abruptly, and again my feeling were hurt. [This is messed up, since I described lunch AGAIN when I should have described dinner. When we broke for dinner, I was chatting with Jim about something, and he said he was interested in my showing him around the place, so we went over to the Biddle House and I took him downstairs to the bar, showing him the bowling alley and card tables and pool rooms. I didn't have any money, since I'd left everything in the room, so I asked him to stand me to a daiquiri, while he had a scotch on the rocks. We talked about his business, which as an MC turned out to be mainly connected with alcoholics, using Antabuse to turn them off alcohol with a physical displeasure if they drank while taking the pills. I told him about the LSD experience in Canada, which he expressed interest in, and then Harriet or Priscilla or someone joined us at the bar, and after talking 15 minutes with us, told us that her trouble was that she stuttered, and we both laughed long and loud at such an absurdity, after which time, as if to prove it to us, she stuttered a number of times. Then it was time (announced from the bar) to go up to dinner, and Harriet and Jim and I went up together, having been joined by Enid, a fat unpleasant woman who said that her group hated her, and that she was going to leave. As we sat down at the table, her talk made it obvious that what she wanted was every man to pay attention to her, and she wanted to be hugged. We saw someone at the other table hugging, so I told her to get to her feet, and I hugged her vast expanse with pressure and reassurance. She didn't, thankfully, turn obscene in her clutching, but she sure got quite a bit out of it, and then Jim owned up to his turn, and even Harriet hugged her, but not before Enid made quite a bit about "Not yet, I want those OTHERS to last." She tried to monopolize the conversation during dinner, and positively ignored Harriet whenever she said anything. Then Estelle joined the group, and we all ate with the typical New York conversation buzzing around the table, sometimes with cross conversations making a hash of talk in general. THEN we went downstairs to the session I'm in the process of describing]. Everyone felt somewhat logy from the quantity of food, and I expressed my impatience to Lynn for the slowness of the whole process.
"Well, let me tell you a little about myself. I'm always impressed about the amount of blame the poor mothers and fathers take in the process of therapy, but I guess I didn't have any great shakes for parents, either. One of my earliest memories was when I was about six years old, my mother came screaming into my room, to sit on my bed, holding a carving knife, shouting at my father to 'Push it in, push it in.' I just sat up in bed and cried, and maybe I feel a little bit guilty about that because I almost WANTED him to push it in, since it would end the terrible quarrels that were always whirling about my head. I couldn't do anything about them, but I always felt that maybe I COULD do something about them, but just didn't know what it was." During this recitation there were expressions of amazement and sympathy from the group, and Lynn broke in "You mean she PURPOSELY came into your room?"
"Yes, so I could be a witness, I guess."
"Oh, boy, that's great. Go on."
"Well, there was never very much love in the family, so when I graduated from college and came to New York, I was glad to get away. But then living in New York wasn't as good as it could be, because, thanks to my mother, or whatever reason, I'm a homosexual, so I always had to be very careful that my business life---with that grand company IBM which always worries so much about such things---was concerned about covering up my private life." I rambled on for some distance into things, with various reactions from Lynn and Sonya and the group, and at one point Mort, sitting beside me, butted in with something that wasn't appropriate, and I got turned off.
Lynn saw this, and said as much, strongly, to Mort. I quickly took the chance to say "Mort, I know exactly how you feel, because I felt the same way when Lynn stopped me when I thought I was right, but SHE is right, you DID turn me off just then." Mort rumbled into a silent position, and I continued.
"Your mother USED you," Lynn said, "and I'll bet you feel angry with her."
"It's funny that you put so much stress on anger," I said, maybe fighting for time, "because friends of mine have told me lately that I don't get as angry as I should under certain circumstances, so when this was directed toward the expression of anger, I felt it was going to be good."
"OK, why don't you try the device. Just stand up in the middle of the room, and shout 'I'm angry.'"
I'd watched Norma's difficulties, and felt that she just hadn't let her voice carry her away, so I determined to shout just as loudly and as full-voiced as I could. Ted seemed phony, and I remembered the hideous session my previous session when I felt entirely false, so I stepped to the center of the room determined that such terrible things weren't going to happen again. I started rather quietly, but quickly built up into a roar, my fists clenched, my stomach and diaphragm clenched with the intensity of my shouts. After the first two or three shouts, with Lynn sending up feedback such as: "Keep your head up, that's it, put your feet wider apart, that's it, bend your knees, connect with your hips, PUSH it out"
"I'M ANGRY. I'M ANGRY! I'M ANGRY!!" And at a certain point the emotion caught and I found my face contorted not so much from my intentions to appear sincere, but from the release of the anger. I stopped when I ran out of breath, and Lynn said that I had a lot more in there, and that I should keep on going. I did that, with her shouting, "Yes, yes, yes, OK, OK" after almost every one of my shouts.
I'd begun to sweat, and by the time I finished the third round of screaming, I could feel my stomach changing position: it didn't have a lump anymore, but there was a different feeling which would turn, in the following days, to a terribly sore diaphragm. This time Lynn told me that I should go around to each person in the room and shout "I'm angry." I found this not too difficult to do, but some of the people, like Roland, stared back at me in a way that made me suspect they doubted me, so I got angry at THEM and I shouted back at THEM with real anger in my voice. When I got around to Mort, he retorted: "I'M angry." This seemed to be effective, so we shouted at each other a couple of times, and when I got to Lynn, she was sitting in her chair with her Carol Burnett-quizzical-great-intensity stare on her smiling face, and it seemed to me that I was doing it right.
By the time I collapsed in the chair again, I felt about drained out, but Lynn kept on with the needle, saying, "I think I saw a little pain under all that. You're angry, but you're hurt too."
"My mother had her problems, it wasn't the easiest thing in the world for her to put up with a husband who drank and gambled and stayed away all the time. She'd always painted my father as the villain, but I began to see that there were two sides to that story." I began to soften my voice, maybe to save it from the strain from the shouting, but again she leaned forward, pain showing in her own face.
My mind wandered now, not quite sure what to say, but sure that I wanted to say something. I told them about returning from Canada and the scene with my mother, and my making her tell me she loved me. "But of course she loved me all the time."
"That's not necessarily so. From what you say, it might be YOU that did the loving, and got nothing back." I didn't particularly care for this argument. It seemed too much like Hammer's "Anything you did, or anything you want to do, is OK." It excused me of everything and put the blame entirely elsewhere. I'd always thought that what I needed for some sort of stability was some putting DOWN, not building up. Was "too close to perfect" already, and I didn't think I needed any more encouragement that I did things right. But there it was, and though I tried to argue out of it, Lynn seemed to have won the argument by directing that I say "Nobody loved me" to each person in the group.
I was aware that my face was preparing to cry through my recitations, and my voice got more and more choked, but since I felt there was nothing to be gained by muddying the conversation with tears, I held back the tears, but Lynn evidently felt that they should come, because as I repeated that phrase, it didn't so much become TRUE as it became a very sad statement whether it was true or not. I remember that I said "I'm searching desperately for someone who HAD loved me during that time," but Lynn adamantly insisted I repeat it. The emotion built in my voice until I couldn't speak anymore, my eyes filled with tears, and Lynn made some more of her small animal sounds until finally I choked with sorrow and lowered my head and sobbed aloud, feeling utterly wretched, feeling, though I didn't want to, unloved and sorry for myself for having been unloved.
Lynn continued to make the soothing noises as I stopped crying, and I could hear the sniffles and the sobs coming from the people around me, but I was so far removed from feeling objectively self-conscious that I didn't even bother to see who was crying with me. I took a bit of time to come to myself, and sort of felt myself basking in the attentions and emotions of the group, but I didn't mind the silence and I didn't mind the attention: it seems that both were wanted for that space of time. Then Lynn again said that maybe I should get back to some more anger.
By this time I was trembling, and I didn't want to, but she had come through with such effects, that I was willing to do anything she asked. I tried the anger thing again, but it sort of petered out of its own accord, and she seemed to agree that I'd reached the bottom of the anger. But I hadn't seemed to reach the bottom of the sorrow, and I mentioned that, when I said I thought I'd laid the ghost of my parent's possibly not loving me in the LSD sessions in Canada, but Lynn indicated that the pain was there, as was the anger, and both had to come out. Then when I sat down I was feeling pretty good, and a small smile was crossing my lips, and she felt that I needed some sort of encouragement, so she told me to stand and say "I did it."
I was still not questioning her directions, so I stood and said, with some feeling of joy "I DID IT!" "Good," she said, laughing, now try saying "I'm a man."
"I'm a man. I'M A MAN!" And I said it once or twice more, then looked smilingly down at her to tell her I never doubted THAT. She seemed to accept that, and redirected the "I did it."
Partly to please her, partly to please the group, partly because I actually felt pretty good, I started chuckling as I sat down in my seat, dripping with sweat. "Oh, how good you look," said Lynn, beaming. "Oh, oh, you look so open and loving and vulnerable. Who'd like to show what they think of him?"
But I guess she said this AFTER she'd showed me what SHE thought of me by jumping out of her seat with a grin and almost bringing me to the ground with a bear hug, her large teeth gleaming in the direction of my jugular vein. I squeezed her and thanked her, and then stood back and waited for the others to come up to me. Judy was one of the first ones, and I felt inundated by flesh and various appurtenances to hold that flesh in some sort of female shape. Her face was wet with tears and she murmured some silly things about how manly I was and about how good a husband I would make. This was reasonably significant to her, as it turned out, since she took pains to talk to me after the session the next day and reinforce what she had said, and she also refrained from hugging many of the others who had come to some sort of emotional climax. She seems to have come out of herself for me. Then there was Estelle, and Ted didn't seem too held up about doing it, so maybe my thoughts about his repressed homosexuality didn't hold up too well. Jim was touchingly sincere, and John held so long and with such determination that I began to suspect maybe HE would have something to say about such urgings when it was his turn.
Sonya's caress was undifferentiated from my caress of her---she seemed to apply a "cop-out caress" whenever necessary, but that certainly sounds like my dislike of her coming out---and again the feeling that she's "like" me. NO, dammit, that's not true; I think of myself as being MORE sincere than she is. She's doing it as a job, and to impress people with the goodness of their technique, while I'm doing it because I think I'll get something out of it, and that's the reason I GO to these things.
The others came and went in a blur: Barbara was teary and small and tentative, Elinor was teary and smaller and not so tentative, making some sort of remark about my masculinity. Mort was stupefying with his bulk, and Ed was sort of encompassing, with compassion. Judd came up with a good encounter, and I was rather sorry he didn't stay around the next day. Gordon and Norma didn't come up, and Rowland sat with one of the most dejected expressions on his down-turned mouth I'd ever seen.
Though I didn't know it then, my shirt was wet and wrinkled before the hugs and clasps, but now the entire shoulder and chest area was pink and lightly red from the makeup of the girls who had caressed me. I felt like framing that area of shirt as a medal of merit, a badge of recognition, as memento of the group. The breeze from the window was uncomfortably cold, so I moved to the other end of the room, to get some water, and to get out of the breeze.
Mort wanted to work next, branching off his return anger to my anger, and his session was appalling in its lack of technique. Most of the time I sat in my chair, bemused by my own experiences, but in the background I could hear Lynn and Sonya accuse Mort of doing everything wrong on purpose, and even when he sincerely tried to follow their directions: "Push from here, stand like this, shout like this, now accent this syllable, now accent that syllable," and when he seemed to do everything wrong: "I'm angry, I'm very, very angry, I'm extremely angry" and walking backward and forward in a sort of ritual dance.
Toward the end they looked at him in some sort of disgust, as if he were a laboratory animal furnished to them for experimental purposes, and the particular animal turned out to be not what they wanted or expected at all. Finally, unfinished and unhappy, he sat down, feeling justly that the group was tired with him (and with Lynn's and Sonya's handling of him), and that they should go on to someone else.
They went on to Barbara, even though they realized it was getting close to their quitting time of 10:30, and it ended that Barbara told her story in the evening, then went through her "cleansing" the next evening. She once or twice alluded to the idea that "my story will make these other stories look pallid," and in some way it did: for sheer personal ruination of a life, this was one of the more terrible.
It started when she was 18, and began feeling sick, wanting to get away from a hideous family: on the one hand her mother told her that her father was some sort of animal, a monster with disgusting sexual practices, and she'd better be on guard, or he'd be going to bed with her, too. On the other hand, her mother would describe their sexual practices with pleasure, almost masochistically telling the details of the intercourse. She feigned mental illness, and she was so skillful in that that she was committed to a mental institution for three years. During this time she went downhill, wanting (yet thankfully not getting) shock treatment, other forms of torture, and even toyed with the idea of a lobotomy. The group gasped and groaned throughout her story, and she seemed to get a pleasure out of adding whatever garish embellishments she could to make her story seem even more incredible.
She had always felt pain, and when she got out of the hospital and went into some teaching jobs, even though she did extremely well in the jobs, she was always in pain, always had headaches, always had illnesses which she had to cover up. Doctors wouldn't believe her, wouldn't prescribe medicines to her. Then she committed herself again, and there began an incredible string of aborted analyses with various doctors, some terminated because she moved to a different hospital, some terminated because the practice of the hospital was to change doctors every three months, some terminated through illness and death of a therapist. She would become attached to one and begin to make progress only to have him taken away permanently, as described, or temporarily, when her current favorite was sent to Vietnam for two years while she struggled on alone. Her life sounded totally hideous, and the group was almost horrified by this small, white-blond girl sitting in front of the group, calmly describing the flagellations she received from the world and from herself.
Sonya and I were seated on either side of Barbara, and I'm sure we were both aware of the strange peek-a-boo games we were playing by looking at each other just past the side of Barbara's face, and even through her distorting glasses, but neither Sonya nor I, being control types, admitted to any sort of feeling about this happenstance, and this seemed to make me dislike her more.
When the session was over at 10:30, I had the talk with Judy, but was so exhausted (and so frightened at the prospect of someone else dissecting my experience of the evening) that I quickly left the tennis house and went over the hill in the rain toward the King House, undressed, and was in bed at 11, wondering who and where my roommate was.
I tossed and turned and thought and was uncomfortable in bed until about 12:30, when Carl Silver came in and we chatted just a bit, and after he was asleep I managed to fall asleep. I now wonder whether there's any significance in that? Ordinarily, in ANY sort of relationship, I'm the last one to fall asleep: other encounter groups with shared room, sleeping with friends, or during sex encounters. Strange.
Up later than I'd thought, still raining dismally outside, and I got ready for the day and woke Carl, and we talked on a little bit more, but by then it was 8:15, and breakfast was supposed to start at 8:30, so I left him to his shower, packed and checked out, and went into the breakfast room, where Joe motioned me over to a table where he and Sonya-older-woman were finishing breakfast. He and I chatted a bit, then he left and I made conversation with Sonya. She was Elinor's friend, and filled me in on the fact that Elinor and Steve (call him that) were now staying in HER house, and it made the house brighter, but she wished she could get away from the "good Jewish mother" image enough to smoke pot, or maybe even start dating and get married again, as she'd been divorced for about a month. Later I talked to Elinor and was told she didn't tell the group about Steve because he wasn't part of the problem for Elinor, though he was part of the problem for Sonya, because "she's got this stud in the house, and doesn't know how to look at him." Says something interesting about both of them.
But they both appear to be extremely well off, and so whatever problems seem to have been connected to financial difficulties: moving away from home, traveling, separating bedrooms, etc, were certainly easily surmountable.
Back to the T3 room, and Barbara sort of assumed she'd start, but she didn't. Judd and Gordon, the older fellow with the Inca-knit fishing cap, didn't show up, and Sonya "regretted" that they hadn't gotten to them yesterday, though there was a tone in the back of her voice that she implied she really didn't MIND not getting to them if they couldn't stay for the full session.
Before the start of the session, Norma sat down next to me and I told her I really felt she had been with the group toward the end of the evening, when I saw her crying for Barbara and me, and she repeated her feelings of alienation from the group, saying that she wanted to come hug me, but she just couldn't do it. I told her my feeling about Sonya's hug, and encouraged her to merely make the physical motions to hug me. She vacillated for a while, then did so, and I managed to talk her into my sort of admission "Oh, yeah, I FELT something from it, and it WAS worthwhile: it's just that I WANT to do it, but I can't." I told her I knew exactly what she meant, and encouraged her to work again: that the group was angry with her because she hadn't gotten anywhere, and would be even more FOR her if she DID get somewhere.
So Norma started out the morning, going into a long discussion about her husband, the Jewish stand-up comic who was good in bed, and now, after 25 years of marriage in which she didn't like sex, she liked sex, but didn't take it from her husband. We went into this, she broke through to some sort of feeling, and the group gathered around her and gave her love.
Ed was singled out next, and he amazed the group at two different times, and by this time the group was really hanging together, first by saying that he was an ex-Catholic priest, and then by saying that the girl he was about to marry was an ex-nun. He seemed reasonable well-assured, managed to get quite angry at the hierarchy of the Church, and at his friends who could no longer be his friends because they couldn't come to his wedding, and again the group showered him with verbal approval for his strong, considered actions, and sneered at the Catholic Church for putting its best members through the most horrible somersaults because of an outmoded, rigorous, dogmatic approach to the changing ideas of God and Good.
Claire came in at this point, sort of another Norma, being very intelligent, wanting to be a professional, making good in a business, then getting married and having three kids, and having a life oriented around "the swings in the back yard." Amazing how many people there are who on the outside have absolutely everything: intelligence, charm, wit, a good marriage, riches, children, even love in the family, but they want something more, or they can't be happy with what they have, sometimes (as in the case of Norma's sexually attractive husband) pushing away exactly what they WANT with both hands---rather in the line of my book writing?). She rather charmed the group with her cute smile, and when she had gotten through to anger, there was an actual lightening of her face and posture so that the group could sincerely say that she looked GREAT. She jumped up and down a few times, saying I feel great, and it certainly looked good on her, or on anyone.
By this time it was time to break for lunch, and when I got to the table, Norma and Barbara and Ted and Claire were sitting talking enthusiastically, and Norma motioned me over as if I were the only possible person to join the group. That makes one feel good. We again had a discussion of LSD, and Barbara started coming uncomfortably close by "admitting I'd won" in an argument, saying that LSD was just like drinking, and just as harmless, clinching the case by saying "If I had a party, where I wanted some friends to listen to some new records I'd gotten and liked, I wouldn't serve drinks, I'd serve pot." She made a not-veiled remark that she'd even love to come to the party.
After lunch at 1:30, we figured we had only Jim and Barbara and Rowland and Judy to go, so it seemed to be determined that we'd get through them all. But Barbara took an ungodly amount of time, with by far the worst device: she had to get down on the floor and "move your arms and legs up and down, smoothly and rhythmically, and roll your head back and forth, then make a sound like a kid having a tantrum." There was more difficulty with the mechanics of the device than with the emotions, and more than twice she had to have the wastebasket handed over so that she could spit out some nauseous material from her upset stomach and her dizzied head. The device really didn't do too much good, and finally the breakthrough came when she stood on one side of the room and, after discarding standing straight up and looking at other people, looked at her mother perched above the bathroom door and screamed "I hate her." After what was literally hours she did come through to some feeling, and we could go on to others in the group, but in a way her breakthrough was the most compelling, since she'd been SO fouled up for SO long, and she did seem convinced when she said "I've been clear, all these years." She's sort of tied herself in to me, remarking about my anger a number of times, and Lynn referred to me once or twice. At one point Lynn directed her to ask me a rhetorical question, but I wasn't quite clear it was rhetorical until Barbara asked me, and then it was obvious I wasn't supposed to answer (like "How could I have done such a thing?") when Lynn said "Now ask Elinor, now ask Rowland," etc. At some point they expected response, as when Norma had to ask everyone "Could you love me?" and everyone would murmur they would as they hugged her, except someone like Mort, who rumbled back "If you could love ME." Encouraged by this, I tried to help her along in her anger, as Mort had helped me, by echoing "Angry!" when she began to flag during her shouts, when Lynn's echo had died out.
The volume of sound put out by both Lynn and Sonya during the weekend was incredible. Sonya's diaphragm must have had Samson's strength and Job's endurance, and she used it all weekend in a huge, throaty roar which didn't diminish from one session to another.
Then we went to Jim when it was about 4:30, and I was so sorry [[[[oh, that was after Rowland, who said he was an alcoholic, and Norma and Jim and Rowland and Sonya got into an argument, finally resolved by Sonya's insistence that Rowland's TONE made "alcoholic" a term of disgust, when Norma and Jim finally wouldn't be dissuaded that "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." Sonya so much seemed to want to establish it wasn't true---as she would have loved to dismiss the presence of pain, calling most of it psychosomatic---but she had the tendency to call ALL of it psychosomatic, and I couldn't help remembering Larry Ball's bitter statement about arthritis in his parents' pain, and thought that Sonya would love to be able to prove THAT mental, too. But maybe she's right, wouldn't it be wonderful, as in my LSD experience, when I "knew" there was no pain or war or disease. Rowland also recounted a wonderful marriage, and a career filled with triumph as counsel for the ACLU, pleader before the Supreme Court, and he felt terribly embarrassed (embarrassment is only repressed sexuality, Sonya would say with a snort)---they had many catch phrases like that: every minor emotion was repressed major emotion, was it embarrassment which was repressed joy? "Feeling sorry for" was bullshit. Suspicious would probably be repressed hate, fear has something to do with repressed anger, etc.) when someone he'd gotten off tried to thank him. "I wanted to beat out the government, and had, and now this guy wanted to thank me." He now had a going practice, yet he tortured himself by not taking the Antabuse as he should, but expending his emotions a dozen times a day by saying he'd maybe take one only when he was forced to drink, but he was seldom forced to drink, so he seldom took them. In the end, he avoided drink, but at a tremendous cost. He managed to get very effectively angry.]]]]]]]]]] he didn't have much time.
His story lent itself to quick analysis: he was a strong, successful medical doctor who loved his wife, and loved to have sex with her, but they now had three children, which he thought was enough, and she wanted more. They'd been using contraceptive devices cheerfully when a priest told them they couldn't, but now that the encyclical had come out against them, they couldn't use them, and his wife started practicing deception and not telling him when her period were, so that the only "safe" time was just before her flow, when "she would get the premenstrual tension" (which Sonya quickly said was psychosomatic, and some other woman agreed with her), but that was one of the poorer times for sex, so they ended up having it three or four times a year, much to his dismay.
The group berated the Catholic Church and its influence again, and he got ready for anger, getting to it very quickly, squatting down to the floor in the "fullness" of his emotion, and giving me the shitting analogy for my THERAPY PARODY. He seemed pleased and relieved, and his "go around" had him saying "I'm a good man." And the group heartily agreed. He simply seemed so strong and straight and sure and handsome and pleasant and fatherly---even Sonya was sucked in by calling him and her the only two control ones in the group, which I took as a compliment---as if control types had to be some sort of superior people in every way, and he was the only one beside her in the room who merited such a badge of approval. But again this reveals much of MY mental state.
And we even got to Judy, who had been "doll-like" according to Sonya, and again I didn't like their treatment. They seemed to INSIST that she must hate someone. She described herself at 7 as going to "the compost heap" and crying at something her mother did, and for the next half hour they tried to get her angry at her mother. "I'm angry" didn't work, though she tried it until her throat was sore. "I hate her, I hate her, I hate" said jumping up and down and flailing her hands, like a seven-year-old's tantrum, didn't even get to anything, even though it went far too far. I did SO feel like shouting "Maybe it's possible that ONE child doesn't hate it's mother?" Even though they might have been Quakers, as hers were.
Finally Lynn had an inspiration (hopefully based on my question about whether she was sick when she was a child), and told her to shout "You make me sick."
"That's right. That's exactly what it is," said Judy, amazed at the rightness of the statement. So she jumped up and down and said it a number of times to the group's satisfaction. It was getting close to 7 pm now, and everyone (except Sonya and Lynn, to appearances sake) was getting tired, and we could hear the conversations outside the door of people who were waiting for someone in the room. Then Lynn connected all her problems to her cunt, and made her go around the room, twice, saying "I have a beautiful cunt," and Judy said how happy she was that she'd read "Manchild in the Promised Land" recently, or she wouldn't know that the word meant. That's the type of girl she was.
When it as all over, everyone hugged everyone, I hugged Lynn with feeling, and at one of these times she made me happy by commenting that I had a nice body, and hugged Sonya only because I felt I ought to, and she was rather cold in return---but that could get to all sorts of analysis. My ride had left, and Norma said I could go with her.
The ride back was long and frustrating, because Estelle didn't know where we were going, and Norma wasn't familiar with the way to Estelle's, but she was finally dropped off, beseeching Norma to come and visit her. Norma, admirably, didn't want to, and told her she was too busy to think of seeing her. Harriet was left off at 97th, and she seemed to want some sort of caress from me, but hell I hardly knew her, so I said goodbye and got back into the car taking deep breaths because again I felt the strange carsickness (probably from lack of food?) on the way down that I'd felt before.
We drove down the West Side Highway, talking of this and that, mainly about how similar we were, so that when she insisted I call her at Helena Rubinstein for lunch, I took her at her word, and did so later.
Got back about 9, feeling terribly tired, and I ended up going to bed at 10, feeling nauseous, but thankfully when I got into bed it went away.
I really shouldn't wait so long to finish these things, as it's now November 21st, which is eleven days away from the experience, really too long.
DIARY 7280
11/21-23/1965
NUDE ENCOUNTER WORKSHOP
(application information not entered)
On my application for the Nude Workshop I had written to Estelle: "If there's any chance of someone driving out to the Circle H Ranch, I'd like to be able to get a ride out with them." When the acceptance came back, there were driving instructions to the ranch, but nothing about public transportation, so I phoned Estelle and she said no one had asked her about that before, but that she'd look it up. When I called back for the information, she hadn't looked it up yet, but suggested I call either Ralph B. or Ben R., who were going out from the vicinity of Manhattan, and I might be able to get rides with them. Then I read the ground rules, particularly the ones about secrecy, and I felt strange about calling these people whose names would then be known to me.
I returned the call to Estelle, telling her about my worries, and she gave me the information about the 3:30 bus which gets in at 5:10, and the 4:45 bus which gets in at 6:35, available at ticket window 26 and that the bus leaves from gate 35. I also took the number of the Circle H Ranch, because I recalled the trouble Estelle had with the transportation from the station supposedly furnished by Tarrytown House, and how she had to call them each time. She said that these others would be taking the bus also, and she would make sure that the 4:45 bus was OK, that getting in at 6:35 for the session scheduled to start at 7 pm was satisfactory. Since I had all the time in the world, I would have preferred taking the 3:30 bus and traveling in the daytime, seeing some of the countryside in western New Jersey, but since the car was only going to meet the bus once, I would get on the later bus with the others.
My first intimation of trouble was at ticket window 26, when I asked for bus information to Glen Gardner, and was told that the bus left at 5:30 and got in at 7:30. This didn't seem right, so I quoted the times and gate number, whereupon she got down the schedule and decided I wanted to go to Clinton. I hadn't recalled the name Clinton at all, but the time was getting on to 4:45, and I figured that good old Estelle had goofed again, but could hardly get the times wrong by coincidence, and I must be destined to Clinton. Buy the tickets and when I get to gate 35, I attempt to call Estelle, but the phone is busy, so I present my ticket to the driver and board the bus, trying to see who's bound for the Nude Weekend.
No one looks obviously Aureon type, so I sit in the back of the bus and while away the two-hour ride filling in the lists of likes and dislikes, so rudely sent me on the same day I was to leave, so I had only enough time to pack a box of Pecan Sandies, hardly a substitute for adored hot fudge sundaes, and three or four records, including "Macarthur Park," Wagner's "Rheingold and Walkuere," Mahler's "Second Symphony," and "Batuque." I also packed the suitcase with my air mattress, a blanket, paints (poster) and paper for "Doing," and Life magazines about the wild world and the US wonderland, and the two posters about Lake Nahuel Huapi and the Urubamba River.
The bus passed many stops where people didn't want to get off, and yet it failed to make up the half-hour lost in traffic getting into New Jersey through the tunnel. Feel rather strange when no one else gets off the bus at Clinton, but there's John's restaurant, so I telephone the Circle H Ranch.
"Hello."
"Hello, is this the Circle H Ranch?"
"Yes, it is."
"I guess there's been a mix-up---I'm with the Aureon group, and there's no car waiting for me at John's Restaurant."
"But that's not supposed to be until tomorrow."
"You mean they cancelled the first session?"
"That's right, everyone's coming tomorrow."
"Good old Estelle, she didn't tell me."
"She's awful. Since you're here, you might as well come out. Hold on."
There was a muffled conversation in the background. Then she got back on the phone. "Earl has to take Patty to the doctor's, so he can come and pick you up."
"OK, how long will it be."
"Oh, right away."
"No, I mean will I have a chance to eat dinner here?"
Another muffled conversation. "They won't be there for half an hour."
"OK, I'll eat here then."
I did so, and in about 45 minutes the yellow station wagon with the H in a large circle pulled up outside the closing diner.
"That woman's been more darn trouble," Earl stated as we pulled away from the restaurant. "First she called us up and said they wanted to take over the whole park for the weekend. Then they said they wouldn't allow anyone else in the pool. Later on the group came down to 15, and then there were only seven guys coming. They cancelled the first session---"
"---and didn't tell me about it---"
"---but now I hear that it's up to 17 again."
"That's too big; it'll never work."
"What do you people DO anyway?" By this point he had left Patty off at the doctor's, and we were sitting in the wagon waiting for her to come out.
"Aureon sort of wants to take people who are well and make them better." And we launched into a long conversation about the necessity of living life as it came along, enjoying everything as it happens, not worrying too much about the future, not letting the past hang over your head. Everything Aureon stood for Earl seems to have anticipated in his private life. He and his wife had lived a footloose life for a number of years, reveling in nudism, helping a number of locations here get started, and they finally decided to build something for their OWN. They went about it with a healthy unconcern about possible problems, ran into all sorts of difficulties which they solved by force of hard work and effort, and regularly listened to the warnings of the legally minded that the venture couldn't possibly work, or if it worked, they would be bankrupt in a number of months.
Circle H Ranch was over four years old now, and they were still going.
"See this hand?" he asked, holding up the right hand, which was all right, except that it lacked the last three fingers. "I was cutting into something, and was looking the other way, worrying about something else, and 'whit' they were gone. I looked down and raised my hand and walked a couple of miles holding onto my arm so I wouldn't bleed all over the place, and everyone thought I should be sorry about it, and cry. Well, if crying would bring back those three fingers, I would have cried for five years, but I knew that crying wasn't going to do any good, so I didn't do any crying."
On and on we talked about the philosophies of nudism, the philosophies of Aureon, how he hated Estelle for changing her mind so much, and how much the world could stand the correcting put forth by nudism, and by listening to the wisdom of the Hansens. Patty came back to the car, saying that she hadn't gained any weight, and that the baby would be born in a month.
That was the first time I realized she was pregnant. As the conversation went on its rambling way, Patty sitting back and simpering her red lips in a style obviously learned from Marilyn Monroe movies, it also became obvious that she wasn't married, and the fellow who had gotten her pregnant didn't want to marry her. As they carried forth the conversation, it seemed the most natural thing that she was living with the Hansens during her pregnancy, and she would keep the baby and probably continue to live with the Hansens, but I thought of her pallid face five or six years from now, maybe the mother of two or three children, someone to laugh at, someone whom no local fellow would dream of marrying, but might likely dream of fucking some night when all the neighbors were asleep.
The station wagon lurched along the road, driven at quick time by a driver entirely familiar with every twist of the road, confident that there would be no traffic now that the hour was past nine. The streets of the tiny towns were empty, and they lamented that they had to go "all the way to ____" if they wanted any activities, such as dancing and bars, on a weekday night.
Then the conversation got onto the farm on which she lived as a child, where she had to milk twenty-four cows every morning and every night, where she had to swing the hay down from the loft, and there was always something to do, so that she was willing to go to bed after an early supper and rest for the next back-breaking day.
Earl contributed his bit about the difficulty of making sure the feed went into the silo evenly. You had to keep changing your footing every second, sweeping the feed about by moving the hose which fed it in, or in a very few seconds you'd be buried in the grain and that'd be the end of you.
With a final swoop up and down the narrow black-topped road, we pulled into the driveway, through the stone arch, and up against the white rail fence around the house. Down at the house, Lucille met me with a harried look like old Mrs. Cannito on 70th Street, and we commiserated about the stupidity of Estelle, and I had to tell her on a couple of occasions that Earl had already told me about that particular faux pas.
Again we were talking about the nudity idea, and she mentioned that she wouldn't even allow a swimming suit in their pool, and I mentioned the ground rules that stated we might be able to wear the suits, and that set her off onto another tirade against the "Or-EYE-on" group that had the nerve to request special favors from her nudist camp, and then didn't have the courtesy to send someone down to see what the place looked like. She said she was raising the daily price per person from $12 to $15, and we both moaned about the high-sounding value of $150 that Aureon extorted from its members for the two days.
"Want a piece of Coconut Cream Pie?"
"Sure." And she cut an enormous cream covered slice from the 12-inch pie and plopped it onto a plate, where I duly forked it into my mouth, proclaiming that it was good indeed, since I liked it DESPITE the fact that I didn't like coconut. She tried to push coffee onto me, then asked if I wanted milk, which I accepted.
By this time Earl decided to make himself comfortable, and had taken off his clothes slowly, in seeming ignorance of their own rule that people are to be either fully dressed or fully undressed, but that underwear or transparent clothing was prurient and not to be worn. He sat about in his underwear, admittedly in his own kitchen, for about five minutes, but then they came off and he stood in his hard 40's, chest out and hairless over the bony ribcage, legs smooth and straight, cock circumcised and somewhat the same color as the rest of his skin, as if the "darker skin of the penis" didn't apply to nudists.
I say trying to look casual in my chair as he stripped, noting that Lucille's eyes hardly wandered from his face, but that when he turned around she permitted herself a leisurely survey of his posterior. I half expected Lucille to undress, possibly with a high-pitched yip of delight, and I would have felt thoroughly out of place. But she didn't, merely sat at the other table, talking with me. Somewhat later John wandered in, naked except for a towel thrown over his shoulder which I thought purposefully covered his genitalia, but it couldn't obscure the marvelous definition of his pectorals and the brawny size of his upper arms. He took a slice of pie and a newspaper over to one of the green plastic-covered booths and silently took care of his hungers, and I noted with pleasure the straight lines of his torso falling into the bumpy region of the midsection, then falling directly, no roll of fat at all, into the shadows between his legs. His face, when I thought to look at it, was unpleasantly large-featured and dull looking, with floppy lips, bulging eyes, and receding chin, but the body which was below it furnished the fantasy with delightful images.
Patty was in the living room watching television of the cowboy variety, and Earl joined her to watch some detective story which they discussed avidly. Lucille and I stayed in the kitchen, where I finally took off my sweater, and talked about everything and nothing, their single run-in with a negro couple whom everyone liked except the man who left, stating "No nigger's gonna look at MY wife," and they were perfectly ready to ban negroes for financial reasons if too many members took it into their heads to quit because of the negroes, but they moved out of the area so the question never came to a point. She described the difficulties they had keeping the crowds balanced: they could have hundreds of single fellows if they allowed them, but everyone who signed up had to be a couple.