Nude Encounters 3 of 3
Paul called us back to himself to explain the next gambit: we were to again separate into our groups, forming a tight circle with arms linked. Then one person was to leave the circle, swing to the person to the right, and be lifted and rocked and embraced by that person, who would then transfer the lucky person to the next one in the circle, and then receive the following one from the person to the left. When they had completed the circle, they would become rockers, and everyone was to go around twice. There were small logistical problems: for instance, it was impossible to keep arms linked AND pass someone around in a circle, so there was some frantic arm-linking when it wasn't practicable. Again there was a problem when the ladies went in over their depth. And Flo would whirl huge people like Jaap around so fast that she would stagger under the load, and be up to her nose in water, having to relieve her rockee so that she herself wouldn't drown out of her depth. It might have worked with an experienced group, but with us novices, it tended to break down into convulsive, embarrassed, unwarranted laughter.
I enjoyed taking Ralph and Bernie around in the circle, but before I had a chance to latch onto Jaap, Paul was calling us out of the pool: some of the girls looked terribly cold, so we all had to go up to the house for the next installment. It seemed silly to have to get dressed, but the frosty air outside demanded it, and we toweled ourselves off, mostly silently, and went up to the house.
There the clothes came off again, and we were back into our little groups, sending people out of the room that we didn't like to deal with, and Paul suggested we arm-wrestle to get our conflicts settled. But arm-wrestling turned out to be a horror. Everyone would wrestle everyone else to a dead heat, which caused Ralph and Flo, Jaap and Mary, and Bernie and Mary's husband no small amount of trouble, because the former were always certain that they should be able to get the upper hand, but the latter wouldn't give in, much to the chagrin of the supposedly stronger. I felt awkward doing it, and Mary's face, determined and pinched, was decidedly unpleasant to be lying next to, and I impulsively gave it up.
About this time Betsy was standing next to Paul, who was dividing his attention between the two groups, and seemed not to be concerned when a non-revolving conflict came up in the group. Wanting to favor no one group, he did both groups a disservice. Suddenly there was a wail from Betsy, and she was bending over in physical distress, sounds coming from her mouth, while Paul was seated next to her, holding her around the waist, shouting into her ear. She may have been shrieking some formula like "I'm ANGRY," but the effect far surpassed the words used, and both groups stopped what they were doing to see, finally, some sort of breakthrough. When she had gotten her anger or fear out in huge gulps of sound, she collapsed around his supporting arms and settled to the floor, sobbing loudly, then more quietly. He patted about her for a bit, then went back to berating the other group as she knelt there, collapsed and sobbing.
We looked over as if we wanted to do something, and Karen said we should, but when no one did, she went over and offered the consolation of "That's OK" and caresses, and led her back over to the group. With one such breakthrough, we wanted others, but everyone seemed determined that someone ELSE would have the breakthrough. Jaap here came in for his share of condemnation for his smart-aleck nature, and he'd only sit there, smiling his inebriated sort of smile, and with that disclaim any responsibility for that which he did.
It was the same with the marrieds: no matter how much we vilified them and screamed against them, they sat there, naked and defenseless, with only a fixed smile on their faces, looking up at their attackers with eyes filled with hate, but responding with voices which were perfectly in control.
"God damn it! I can't take it any longer; why do you just sit there? How can you take it?" This was Karen, jumping to her feet, body contorting with the strength of her words. Then, suddenly, there was a shout from another corner.
"God damn YOU, Karen, are you off on that shit again?" It was Ralph, face distended with his shouts, while Karen looked at him as if she were about to burst into laughter.
"What's eating you, you bastard?" she screamed back at him, nonplussed.
"That's all you can do, shout your guts out. But all you want to be is the center of attention. I hate it when you're like this. It's such a phony act. Oh, Karen, you're so fuckin' phony." Ralph delivered this last sentence in such a parody of a Brooklyn faggot that I could hardly resist bursting into laughter myself, but that would have directed the group in turn onto me, and for some reason I didn't bother to identify at the time, I didn't want that.
"I don't like what she's doing to the group. We gotta good group, and she's fucking it up with her smirk. Look at that smirk, look at that face. Do you hate me, Mary? DO YOU HATE ME? Then why don't you SHOW it?" Karen was adding frustration to her anger, and I feared (hoped?) that she might even spit down on Mary from her height.
"I don't hate you, I feel sorry for you," said Mary, controlled and quiet.
"Oh, what a fuckin' cop-out." Karen was blazing back, "I feel sorry for you," satirizing Mary's puny voice. "Why don't you get MAD at me?"
"I'm not mad at you, so why should I get mad at you?" To Mary, this seemed perfectly logical.
"Why?? Why did you come here? Yeah, that's a good question, why did you come here?" But by this time Paul had seen what was going on, and came back with a shout of his own.
"Well, why did YOU come here, to yell at HER?"
Karen stood, quivering, her ass vibrating with rage. "She's messin' up our GROUP."
"Shit," said Paul, "If you think the group's messed up, why don't you look at yourself and see why YOU'RE messing it up."
"Yeah," sniped Ralph, from the sidelines, and the heads turned to him.
"You too, buddy; you're not exempt," shot from Paul, and an angry silence settled over the group. The other group was in the middle of some problem, too, and Ben's and Rachel's voice could be heard in angry exchanges.
This was true throughout the evening---one group would stop short, everything dropped, when the voices would raise in anger or hatred from the other group. There seemed to be no privacy, no aloneness, and I began more and more to hate the whole evening, and myself, too. If I wanted something different from the group, I'D have to speak up into the group, and then they'd probably attack me.
Then the whole series of questions about group therapy raised themselves: Why DO people come to them, just to show off their dirty laundry in front of the group? But the other groups had been so much better, the group feeling at the end was something palpable. There was no feeling except animosity and disgust with the members of this group---even those who were saying something were saying things that the other members of the group didn't entirely agree with, yet there were no words of opposition raised. Everyone was sitting on their asses, waiting for someone ELSE to come to a breakthrough, so they could be compassionate and loving, yet no one was willing to undergo the physical trauma of having a breakthrough themselves.
Everyone sat around feeling superior, and that was another thing I had against the group. Betsy and Bernie were all therapists, and Jaap was connected with it, too. Dave and Mary married were too disgusting to think about, and Flo and Karen had so much experience with the devices and with groups that everything was planned, nothing was spontaneous. There could be no surprises, they couldn't be taken unawares by a different kind of technique, they were above it all. Superiority was polluting the air, and Paul's superiority stagnated the situation even more.
At last, when a morose silence had settled over the group, Paul came over and took a hand with Mary. "Let's try something, Mary. Think of someone you were angry with."
"Oh, but I never get angry with anyone," cooed Mary, looking up with her eyes which I had come to call snake-like, above all and without regret.
"Well," said Paul, when the hisses and "Shit"s had quieted down, "try to think way back, maybe when you were a kid, when you got very angry with someone."
"But I said I never got angry with anyone," said Mary, feigning blankness.
"Maybe sometime when you were out with your husband, maybe when you were shopping, maybe---when you were shopping?" asked Paul, as if he caught a measurable flash from her eyes, an identifiable quiver from her lip.
"Well, there was ONE person who tried to cheat me---well, not really cheat me," she disclaimed modestly, as if she shouldn't have used such a strong word with her pristine lips, "but maybe I did get---a bit riled at him."
"Let's see if we can't get a bit riled at him again," said Paul, pulling a set of cushions from the side of the room. "Look here," he pointed into the center of the top cushion, "and see his face here, and you just talk with him."
Mary hassled around for about ten minutes trying to understand the device, until almost everyone was convinced she was willfully misunderstanding. Her husband sat off on the side, the fixed grin souring to a malevolent leer, but that was more in my imagination than on his face. At length, with the group again almost spitting on her in their disgust, she began to speak to the pillow.
"You really shouldn't have done that. You know I wanted one that would work that way, and you sold me one that didn't work."
"That's it, that's it, now get angry with him," Paul grimaced from behind the set of pillows that he held, edging forward on his flabby butt.
"You just shouldn't have done that. I'm going to get angry with you," said Mary, gesticulating as she would at a naughty child, her voice getting higher and more pinched, until it was a sort of Beulah Witch nasal horror.
"Really get angry. Really get angry." And from the side of the ring, others began chiming in "Come on, Mary, get angry. TELL him what you think."
"You didn't want to give me my money back," she said, rising to a whine, tossing her head stiffly about, but it seemed as part of a game.
"You tell him."
"I'm going to get angry with you."
"Don't say it, GET angry with him."
"I'm REALLY going to get angry with you."
"Your fist is clenched, do you want to hit him?"
"Why, no, I don't want to hit anybody." Almost any comment she would make would raise an angry groan from the group. She was so willfully OBTUSE!
"I think you do, Mary, I think you do. Why don't you try it," said Paul, edging further toward her, and I vaguely hoped he didn't get his balls caught under him as he slid along the floor littered with rugs and cushions.
"You mean I should hit the pillow?" She jerked her head forward like a living remnant from Tobacco Road.
"Hit the person you're mad at, Mary. Don't you see him in the pillows?" This was a mistake on Paul's part.
"Why, no, I don't see anyone in the pillow." Mary seemed to be let off the hook, and raised herself from a crouch to a straight sitting position.
"Try and see his head in the pillow, Mary, just his head."
She stared fixedly at the pillow, a frown of concentration on her forehead. "Do you see his head on the pillow, Mary?" asked Paul.
"Well," she said, hunching closer to the pillow, "not really."
This nonsense went on for a couple of minutes as a few group members excused themselves to go to the kitchen for a drink, to relieve themselves in the john, or just to beat their heads against the wall. Then, after a long pause of concentration, Mary leaned forward and put a fist, like THAT, onto the pillow.
"Try it again, Mary, try to see his face in the pillow." Paul ducked down behind the pillows, bracing himself for what he hoped would come.
"Onh," she said, pushing her first into the pillow, more like she was plumping it to lie on it, rather than getting angry with it.
"See his face, talk to him."
"I'll hit you, I'll hit you in the head if you don't give me my money back. I'm angry with you, I'm REALLY angry with you. So I'll hit you." At last she began to get into the rhythm of the device, her fists doubled up and she began laying into the pillows. The group leaned forward: at last! "You give me my money back. You cheated me." The group almost cheered. "You really did." The group moaned. "You're not a nice person," whunk. The group DID cheer.
"Harder, Mary, harder. Get your back into it."
"You cheated me," she chanted, hitting with one or the other hand on each "cheat." "You cheated me."
"You hate him, Mary. Say you hate him." The first time this was tried, she sat back up and drew her hair away from her face. "But I don't hate him." Then Paul had to go back to step one, and again she had to admit she really didn't see his face too clearly in the pillows. But the second, or the third, time, it had its effect.
"I hate him, I hate him, I hate him," she said it faster and faster, punching with her arms sideways. "I hate him, I hate him."
"See his face, say 'I hate YOU.'"
"I hate you, I hate you," and suddenly her hands flew above her head, and she brought them both down, hard, onto the pillows. Paul shifted his position slightly so she wouldn't beat him over the bald spot in the middle of his head.
"Talk to him. Why do you hate him?" His voice was distant, behind the pile of cushions.
"I hate you. You cheated me, give me my money back. You're a crook, you're a thief." The group leaned forward avidly. She was getting into it, she was getting carried away by her hatred. Her whole body was swinging with the blows, her breasts swinging back and forth with her blows, her tiny pinched butt raising off the floor with each blow. "You gypped me, you took my money. I hate you." Her pounds became frantic, in earnest. Paul brought up one knee to protect himself. One pillow was torn away, another rammed into its place. She was furious. "You cheated me," she shouted, "give me back my ninety-eight cents, you crook, I hate you."
That was the clincher. The group fell backwards onto their elbows in aghast amazement. Ninety-eight cents?? THIS was the fuse to her anger? My God, what would she do if he'd cheated her out of a dollar and a quarter? Even Paul had a slightly dazed look on his face.
She continued to beat on the pillows, strength pouring endlessly out of her wiry body, again and again and again. This was the energy she had for control, this was the energy she held herself in with. Energy poured out, with the group coming back in to shout "Again, again," and when she stopped, shaking, Paul roused her to do it some more, and she did it some more, until her blond hair was limp around her sweating face. Then she stopped.
"So, you CAN get angry with someone," said Paul, in triumph.
"Oh, well," Mary said, self-deprecatingly, "I did that because you wanted me to." The group roared its protest, cursing her for her stupidity and obtuseness, and I think even her husband laughed. But the attention was quickly withdrawn from her, and that was brought up later, when Paul said, bitingly, "Just look at her, sitting there, eating up the attention. She loves the attention you're giving her, don't you Mary?" Mary wasn't quite sure how to answer the question, so she didn't. "If you want to give her more attention, go ahead. See, she loves it." Mary sat, somewhat dazed, blinking at Paul. "She'll eat it up all night. If you want to make her the center of attraction all night, she'd love it. Right, Mary?" Unblinking Mary sat. And the group got the idea and gratefully ignored her for the rest of the evening, except to give her a cutting remark like "DON'T give her what she wants," when she tried to make some comment for the group. With such a defeat, she never really entered into the activities of the group again.
After a bit of this, we went down to the pool again, but there were no devices, only people playing in the water. Some got balls, and I threw them around for awhile, but mainly I sat in the shallow end and felt the hot water pouring out on my backside, and looked blurrily at the others shouting in the pool. "God, such a waste of time," I told myself.
"Then why don't you do something about it," I retorted.
"But then I'd have to shout, and scream, and who needs it?" I said.
"OK, if that's the way you want it---" I left the sentence unfinished, but I knew what I meant.
Then, back at the house, for awhile there was dancing, but no one felt like asking any of the girls to dance, and Natalie mainly stepped haughtily among the cushions, looking like some huge-hipped woman from the dawn of history, her long hair loose down her back, her small breasts swaying with the music, her face aloof, knowing everyone was watching her. I got up for a bit to dance with Betsy, but even in this perfectly permissive atmosphere my can couldn't swing the way my fantasy wanted it to, so I had to be content with my typical no-stop shoulder-shrugging waddle on the floor.
We soon tired of that, and sat back down on the floor, looking for all the world like a cocktail party at which everyone took their clothes off, expecting a ball, but no one was willing to "entertain" the others. Paul tried a few anger devices, but they fell flat. It was like a wedding at which the bride's mother dropped dead from joy.
"What's going on here, why doesn't something happen!?" This was from Bernie, who sprang to his feet and shouted to the room in general. The music stopped as if at his command, heads swiveled, as did asses, to put him into the center of human attention. Silence. Paul looked at him.
"You're all so DEAD, you're all so afraid of YOURSELVES." No one said anything. Silence.
"Why doesn't someone SAY something?" Bernie's voice cracked, but no one smiled, no one shook their heads. Everyone sat, and waited.
"SAY something!" He circled the room, staring at each in turn, and each stared back. Oh, they all knew this game.
"What would YOU like to say, Bud," said Paul, bringing another disadvantage into the foreground: he didn't even know everyone's name.
Bernie stared at him. I knew how he felt. It was his nickel, and now that he had the attention of everyone in the room, he didn't know what to do with it. I shuddered for him the same way I shuddered for myself at my first group experience, when I found myself the source of the room's diversion for a few moments, and the responsibility of keeping all those people interested, intent, amused, involved comes crushing on your head.
"I---I---". His voice wasn't so loud, but his eyes were wilder, seeking for help from the people who stared up at him from their seats on the floor. He was standing, they were seated; he was in command.
Paul had asked a whispered question of someone in our group, and said, "What don't you like, Bernie?"
"No one's willing to SAY anything, no one's willing to DO anything."
"I asked you before, what would YOU like to say?"
"That's the trouble with this whole place," said Paul, getting to his feet, as if to start another series of devices.
Bernie, threatened, held the floor. "OK, I'd like to work."
"What would you like to work with?" Paul sat back down on the floor.
"I'd like to get some feelings out toward my mother." There was a pause, his eyes were hidden from me behind two circular reflections of lights from his glasses. "I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, I HATE her." The familiar litany of the group therapy session trotted through the night. "She always tells me what to do. Leave me alone, Mother, leave me ALONE." Again his voice cracked, but he went on.
"Nag, nag, nag, that's all you do but nag. Why don't you get a better you, Bernard, why do you wear such funny clothes, Bernard, I don't like those glasses you're wearing, Bernard." For the moment I tended to wish he'd listen to his mother just a little more. "Do this, Bernard, call me, Barnard, where were you last night, Bernard? Mother, I want to live my OWN life." "Own" was a howl that seemed to strip all the phlegm from his throat, and the further yells were slightly hoarse.
"You've made me afraid of women, Mother. I can't even have sex with women because of what you did to me." Bernie was now in the middle of the floor, eyes and fists clenched shut, stamping his foot like a petulant boy.
"Oh, Mary, listen to that." The Brooklyn faggot voice was from Ralph, sitting in the corner with Karen, holding onto each other in their nudity.
"I hate you, Mother, because you've always tried to hold on to me. Now I'm afraid of holding onto women, afraid they'll bite my cock off, or something." The words, even in the context, sounded embarrassingly obscene.
"I WANT to go to bed with women, I really do," he went on, and I wondered why no one in the room later seemed to realize that he was having problems with homosexuality. "But I'm afraid, I---"
"What did I heard when you said 'afraid'?" asked Paul. You sounded like a little child. Would you say that again, and sound like a little child, being afraid? "I'm afraid," he said again, in a wondrously whining voice.
"I'm afraid, Mother, I'm afraid. Mother, I'm afraid." He stopped, looked up for approval, and said "That's not quite where it is, but I'd like to work some more."
"OK, OK," said Paul, "we've got all the time in the world." He scratched his head. Try going back to 'I'm afraid'."
"I'm afraid---"
"No, that's wrong, let's go back to 'I hate you, Mother'."
"I hate you, Mother, I hate you---" Again the litany, as the people stared up, Pat across the way with tears streaming down her face, Arnie with a look of disgust on his face was staring at Paul. Rachel was leaning forward, looking as though her fat cheeks were about to dissolve into tears she was willing to shed for Bernie and his plight. "---I hate you, Mother."
"Something's wrong," Paul interrupted.
"You're right," said Bernie, "that's not where it's at."
More devices were tried, and Bernie again got the panicked look that everyone was listening to him, and he wasn't entertaining them very well.
He listened to his record, to the flute playing the long descending notes. "I AM that flute, and, listen, it's so above, it's crying for sorrow." The flute reeded on, calling. "Oh, the poor flute, how lonely it is," said Bernie, sobbing deeply, "and how lonely I am" He asked Karen for help, and he caressed her in the middle of the floor, trying to get through to what I didn't know. Karen thought of some devices for him to try, and ended up with the "Breathe deeply, breathe deeply," and his voice got more and more choked up.
"Oh, Bernie," she said, sobbing, "I can see it all inside, just let it out, just let it out." He began to drag in deeper breaths and leave out more air, but he appeared only to get dizzy from hyper-oxygenation. Finally, in some sort of desperation, he pushed her back to the floor, saying she wouldn't do, she wouldn't do.
"What's wrong, what's wrong," Bernie said, turning back and forth. For the past few minutes I thought I knew what was wrong, though I was fearful about acting on it. He didn't want Karen, he didn't want a woman, he wanted a MAN; he wanted the solid comfort he could get from a MAN'S arms. But, God, what if I was wrong, what if I got up and tried to hold him, and he looked at me in a funny way and said "What do you want?" or something? But it DID seem to me that he DID want a man: he was standing, swaying, moving one foot, then another, not wanting to sit down, wanting support, but not the support of Karen, the girl in the whole room to whom he was closest. I had to act!
Motion stopped me thinking, and I was on my feet, looking not at anyone but him, and I think I may have said "Come on, Bernie," and opened my arms to him. He looked not so much at my face as at my body, and fell into my arms. He didn't clasp and unclasp my back as before, but hung on as if I were the only safe spot from the tides whipping about his feet. And he began to cry, cry from the gut, deep hard sobs which had been held down for a long, long time.
"That's OK, Bernie, that's OK. Everyone here's OK, and it doesn't matter what you do." I closed my eyes, forgetting everyone in the room.
"Oh. Oh. Oh." He hung on, sobbing, crying wide-mouthed sobs of a child with down-turned mouth.
"It felt good to say that, didn't it?" I felt that if he could admit that he liked guys at least as well as he liked gals, it would be an accomplishment, a breakthrough for him. "There's something else to say; say whatever you want to say, and it won't make any difference, except that you'll feel good when you do say it." I opened my eyes in desperation at the way I said that, but I didn't know what else to do. There was Rachel, with her Mother Earth bosom heaving in pity for Bernie, wanting to replace me in his arms. I frowned and shook my head. He doesn't want you, woman, he wants ME!
The sobs continued, abated, and he stood, swaying, in my arms. I still wasn't looking at the others in the room, fearing to become self-conscious, fearing to be embarrassed, but I caught glimpses of tear-stained faces. Tears were among the most contagious elements of these group therapy sessions. I tried to convince him to go further into himself, but he came out of his sobbing, acknowledged my presence, and signaled that he was through. Bernie talked on for a bit more, then sat down, and the spotlight moved elsewhere.
Here and there the spotlight moved, and Ralph got up to be angry, and Karen made fun of him, just as he made fun of Karen when it was her turn. Flo worked through to some sort of feeling, her black eyes flashing as she screamed out better than ever Elizabeth Taylor could "I'm angry, I'm angry," and she seemed to be angry at everyone in the room.
By now it was 6 am, and Paul announced that we'd have a quiet session for the next hour or two. We could do what we wanted, but please don't sub-group. Some went out into the kitchen to pick up some long overdue food, and some few of us debated having our own little group, but we were all tired, and, one by one, pair by pair, we got into sleeping bags and blankets and onto cushions. Bernie paired up with Karen, and Ralph perforce had to take Flo, and across the room there were other pairings, such as John and Pat, and a stifled silence of coughs and rustlings came over the room. I sat up to watch, but my eyes got heavy and I lay down against a wall, and in a moment Betsy came over, snuggled down with her head on my pillow, and closed her eyes with a tired sigh. My hand was up at my face, and she gently laid hers in mine. After a while, lying there, feeling quite sure that I had never had the chance to sleep, the sounds of the room began to become terribly distinct: I heard the snores of two or three people rising and falling in some sort of familiar harmony, there were slight rustles as people shifted in their sleeping bags, there was the deep sigh of an indrawn breath, a cough from the corner.
But it seemed vaguely familiar, as if I had been there before, as if I had heard this before, as if I had lived this once, or many times before. As I listened, the sounds came to my ears even more distinctly, and there was a certain CRISP quality to them, as if the air had suddenly gotten clearer, and transmitted the sounds more exactly.
I frowned with my eyes closed: when had this all happened before? Then I remembered: in Canada, under the influence of LSD!
With this thought, I opened my eyes, half expecting to see the pink room in which I experienced the blast of LSD, but the timbered ceiling, the paneled walls, the figures on the floor belonged to the people I had talked with through the long night and morning. I knew where I was.
Then other sounds began to come to my ears: the cluck of chickens in the coop, relayed through the speaker phone on the kitchen post; this was the sound of a farm, and my experience in Canada wasn't on a farm. Then there were more long-drawn sighs from the floor, and I took them as sighs of exasperation with my slowness---somehow all these people were waiting for me!
But that would be nonsense! I was here with a nude workshop, and it had nothing to do with LSD. Something about that sound passing through my mind made me rethink of my Canadian experiences, and I began to think: but there also everything seemed familiar. Then another sound crept in, a quiet crackling sound like the noise of water falling onto a roof, dripping into the gutters, falling onto the bushes outside. But it hadn't been raining, had it? Last night---but last night seemed far away, and I looked at the windows getting brighter, and I thought that dawn was coming.
Then there was a sickening swirl in my mind, and I rocketed down a loop of thought which was terribly familiar: down, light, truth, love, God, I sped down the groove of a record which seemed to crack apart, showing enormous forces of light behind it, showing through the crack: I was coming again to the Great Awakening of the LSD session!
By this time I was nervously tense and awake, listening to everything, looking at everything. Ben was raising his arms into the air, slowly and hypnotically, as if doing upside-down pushups, and his legs bent at the knee, appearing in my range of vision. That had happened before! Someone coughed on the floor next to me, and THAT sounded as if it was supposed to happen next. A rooster crowed and I again heard the distant, fresh sound of rain, and I trembled at the thought that it was happening again. What was happening again? The rush down the groove to the source of everything: my mind galloped ahead---so THAT was a peak experience that I'd forgotten: being reborn under LSD.
I hung onto the phrase "peak experience," because I hadn't heard of that in Canada, so it was something that couldn't seem familiar, and there were other things which couldn't be familiar, and I thought of Earl and Lucille Hanson.
But wasn't Earle's face the face that I'd seen cross Phil's face, wasn't Carl's face the most BASIC male face of all: strong, clean-shaven, lean? And suddenly Lucille's face was the woman's face, wrinkled yet young and alive, that Joan's face would settle into during the pot party when I relived some of the LSD experience. AND THEY WERE MOM AND DAD!
My mind raced ahead of my rebirth, and to being taken up by Mom and Dad, yet they were here, they loved me, I knew who they were. And this was the Garden of Eden, here with the roosters crowing and the hens clucking, with the rain falling outside (but the rain isn't falling, is it?), with the sounds of anticipation in the dimly-lit room around me. Someone was whispering above my head, and again there was the silken rustle of a sleeper---but were they really sleeping?---in a sleeping bag.
Peak experience, that's different, but, I thought with a gasp, I'm now progressing down the groove toward a peak experience, when the crack in the record opens wide and the light shines through, when I expand to fill the universe. THAT'S what a peak experience is, and I've had them before, I'll have one now, and I had some vague thought about trying to keep experience AT that peak, and live in the bright light forever.
But I remembered my description of my peak experience, after love, when everything was just there, and it could stop, there, and I wouldn't care. But stopping was death: living forever in a peak experience was death, and I thought of the strangeness of dying here on the floor during a Nude Workshop, how ironic that would be, I thought.
No, I screamed in my mind, I don't WANT to die. Let's look at it again. Again Ben raised his arms, ghost-white, into the dawn air. Yes, dawn and sex---I thought to the nude bodies all around me---and guilt and masturbation and being an adult, it was all around me, and it had happened before.
Then I realized the truth. TRUTH! That had come up before! Everything WAS the same! This is just another cycle! Suddenly I felt tremendously depressed. You mean I've failed again? I thought, with great pain. You mean that these seeming years between LSD and here are only part of some dream, and I'm still on the LSD couch, coming around to remove my mask for another time? How long could this possibly take?
As I raised my head to get a better look at the room, I felt a hand in mine, and remembered Betsy, who had fallen asleep next to me, and had put her hand into mine, falling asleep that way. I looked down on her, and she seemed some great archetype, too, with her blond hair falling onto the pillow on which she was lying. Maybe that's another Joan-figure; I'll shake her and she'll look up and she'll be Joan.
The light through the window got brighter. But this wasn't the bedroom I had lain in before, neither the LSD bedroom or the hotel bedroom with the hall light coming through the transom, or the dawn light coming through the far window with the chair beneath it. But somehow the feeling of doubt seemed familiar, and I felt convinced that this was another loop through the cycle, I was moving toward another peak experience. What had Paul said about getting to a peak experience? When I feel ready for a breakthrough, I should play my record. The record---the record of Mahler's Second---THAT had been in Canada, too.
The noises in the room increased in clarity and sharpness, and I went through records, yes, I had gone through them before, and sex and homosexuality, and growing from a child to an adult: was this a workshop in becoming an adult? It had all happened before; it was all for my benefit, and for a crazy moment I felt like jumping up, shouting for Paul to put on my record. I lay my head back down on the pillow, afraid to be noticed, afraid to go any further into the peak experience, for the peak experience was death. I had to think this through.
But thinking it through was antithetical to the experience: never mind, I had to get things straight. Then, with a rush, the familiar images went past, with some new ones clarified: PARADE, that was a central idea, there was a parade, with a band and music, and I thought: CIRCUS, that was another word, and as if witnessing the start of a parade with banners leading off, I saw the tin sausage form from the LSD session sweep before me, and I heard the crinkle through the sounds of snores and rain, and more words which had been confused before became clear: Straidee, Straidee-eye, and Straidee-eye-eedie, these were somewhere there, like names of cereals, or invocations to super-deities, or the declension of an other-world noun. Had I heard these words as a kid, I wondered?
Again there was the pink parade of puzzle-pieces into the box, going decklety-decklety-decklety, dancing on the lime-green background like a crayon cartoon animation. THAT'S what it was before. And the roosters and hens were there, and this is the day one of earth, and it's all for me, and Earl and Lucille are my parents, who love me, and are waiting for me to grow up and join them in their super-world of happiness and light.
And the light is coming, the light of dawn through the window. Dawn! That was another important factor, and after the parade passed by, there was the thought of a clown, and Arnie, holding a blanket, stepped over me, and I saw his balls dangling, and I thought of homosexuality, and that was a factor. What other factors were there? Sex and male-female relations and truth and God and light and snores, everything had been there before. But these were words---that was something else, and the crack gaped wider, I saw another glimpse of the peak experience, and I felt an enormous fear.
It WAS all being repeated. It HAD happened before. This was another reincarnation, another rebirth, everything had happened, yet nothing had happened to change it, and I had to start over. I had done something wrong, and I had to start over: I hadn't reached nirvana, a peak experience, so I had to die in order to be reborn. [[[[[Even now, as I type, I see a foggy idea: I fear death now, fearing to die as being imperfect. But if I die imperfect, I have to be reborn, to live again at an attempt to reach perfection, nirvana, the white light. To die imperfect is to die in fear and be reborn; to die perfect is to die without fear and never to be reborn. It seems so contradictory---I have a fear of dying to be reborn---it could mean I have a fear of living. Maybe, since by constantly worrying about dying, I have little energy for living, and thus cater to my fear by living little. In life (the life of perfection) there is death (the eternal death of one who MAY die forever, having reached perfection, nirvana). In life (the life of fear) there is no death, since I am reborn again. So I fear death, but as long as I fear, I'm reborn, but as long as I fear, I don't really live. It's as if God asks ONE life from each person, and if he doesn't live ONE life during one lifetime, he gets another lifetime to try again. That's enough for now]]]]]
Again I thought of the LSD experience, that had ended centered around my father, and I had seen him and tried to tell him I loved him. I thought again of the hand I held, and remembered that she had five children, so this was a mother, MY mother. I'd worked through Father, I now have to work through Mother. That seemed right.
I wanted to write this all down, make sure I remembered it all, but it would become just another record, and I should stay away from records. I should break all my records---but that's what I'd said before, that had happened before, even though I hadn't had any records when it had "happened." I vaguely visualized myself standing up and breaking Mahler's Second, or waking everyone to hear it.
The room got lighter, and I looked at my watch, remembering that time had gone before, but the hands said 6:30. Later I looked, and they said 6:55, so things there were consistent, I wasn't completely off the track. But Earl and Lucille, the roosters and the rain, Dawn and the record and the feeling of the peak experience, these were suddenly confusing, and I didn't know what I was. I was in New Jersey, but all maps were nonsense. I was in therapy, but therapy was nonsense. That had happened before too.
There was always Betsy. She hadn't gone away, hadn't moved, I could use her to find what was what. A fear and a panic were beginning to build up as everything seemed to be "as remembered." I feared that Betsy would awake and it would be Joan.
I moved upward, keeping a constant pressure on the hand. I have the distinct impression that I looked at her and called her "Esther."
"Betsy?" She looked up, bleary-eyed.
"Yes, Bob? What is it?" she said, and I had the confidence and trust in her to know she realized something was wrong.
I groped for a question to ask her, to see if this had happened before, to see that I wasn't making this up, that I wasn't back in Canada. I wanted to ask her something that neither she nor I would find "familiar," because if she said something that struck me as "familiar" I would be lost in a half-world forever. "Do you have five children?"
"Yes." She was puzzled, but didn't press me further then.
"I'm sorry---I---I'm having some trouble telling what's real and what isn't. Do you mind if I talk to you?"
Without words, she boosted herself to a sitting position, and motioned that I should put her head in my lap. I looked up into her face, shadowy and lined in the early morning light, and she looked strikingly like Jeanne Moreau, but then she changed into the very image of my Aunt Helen, as she talked, and the corners of the mouth turned from down to up.
"I---I guess I had a dream, that all this happened before, and I wanted to make sure I knew where I was." I sounded stupid, and said, "I'm going to be talking nonsense for the next few minutes, but I'm very confused."
"You can talk to me, Bob," she said quietly, looking seriously down on me.
"We came here last night for a workshop with Paul Bindrim, and we have a quiet period now, is that right?"
"Yes, that's right."
I felt reassured, though I still heard the familiar sounds, and I began to fear that she was part of the group waiting for me to succeed, or to fail again at this test, as I thought of it. My mind raced through sex and love and hate and fear and---as someone farted---farting and hitting and pissing, all this had happened before.
"Why did you ask if I had five children?"
I laughed with relief, because I surely hadn't expected or remembered THAT question. This WAS something new, and I felt enormously relieved to hear it. Finally I could begin to tell the line between dream and reality, between past and present. I told her as much as I could about the LSD experience, but during the telling I was disturbed to look up into her face and see it changing slightly in the early-morning light. First it had the grim, downward turned mouth look of Jeanne Moreau, and then when she lowered her head to look at me, and her light blond hair fell around her face and the folds increased under her chin, making her look somewhat fatter of face, she was the very image of my Aunt Helen, even to the overly-enunciated words pushed out through teeth which seemed to be clenched. But she so comforted me, and the image of myself nursing at her breast of course passed through my mind, that I studied her face without panic and with interest, telling her my story.
But still the room seemed ominous, and when she said "Let's go get coffee," I recognized that as THE way out of my dilemma, and we moved into the kitchen, where I marveled how the sounds of roosters, so obviously not part of the New Westminster scene except through other bird cries, those of crows, and yet so convincingly part of "What I've been through already." The marvelous powers of the mind for self-mystification are staggering to someone who tends to believe, less and less, perforce, in rationality and logic.
I explained my problem somewhat more logically to Betsy sitting over hot cups of coffee, and I thanked her most profusely for being so understanding and wakeful for me during a rough time. She seemed very pleased to have been able to help me. There was some interaction between her and Paul when I was having trouble, but it was merely a verification on her part that he was sleeping, so I presume she wanted to get him over to help out with me. Flo was bustling around the kitchen, and she came into the conversation, and Karen came in from outside, positively dewy with freshness and aliveness, and she talked with great pleasure about walking down by the stream, enjoying the dawn and the freshness and the life outside. She just glowed.
We talked for quite a time, though Betsy quickly began to droop because she hadn't gotten enough sleep. Then Lucille and Earl entered, looking with anger around the room, and Earl wouldn't talk to anybody unless I tried to ingratiate myself with him, but he was even gruff with me, so deep was his anger. Lucille was more understanding, saying that I was welcome anytime I wanted to come out, but she'd be found in Hell before she let another Aureon group, or ANYTHING foreign to her, use their property again. With that, they began to bustle around for breakfast.
Sleepers awoke in various frames of mind, and we all sat at the table on little napkins, said to be "the way to do it" among nudists, and Jaap entertained us with tales of his childhood, pervious encounters, and previous nude experiences. There was even a slight bit of friendliness toward Mary Married, who came to the table looking just as pale and tight as the night before, and we all said it was nice when she said she was feeling better.
Flo decided that the western music coming from the record player wasn't to her taste, and when no one at the table objected, she turned it off. Earl heard the silence and put it back on, taking umbrage that he couldn't have the music he liked in his own home. He was willing to be annoyed at anything, but Flo didn't get him into an argument, which was wise.
Then, about 8 am, it was time to go back into the living room, this time as one large group, and talk about the day. We went around the room, each person saying his little bit, and then it was obvious that some people still wanted to work. Flo stood up for two or three whopping screaming sessions, though with her makeup and expertise with the devices, it seemed more of a put-on, yet the words she was saying were true, and many of the observers were duly impressed with her.
Karen tried to work again, bouncing her energies off Flo, but Ralph again berated her for being "on that kick again," and Paul took a hand and said that RALPH might benefit from some working. He tried, throwing himself around the room trying to cry, and then Paul wrestled him down to some mattresses, and tried to make him cry like a baby, but it only sounded like a motor trying vainly to start: "a hahn---a hanh---a hanh, aha, aha, AHA, a-a-a, aaaaaAAAAA," but the motor never quite turned over, and finally he was out of breath from one continued expulsion of air, and he had to gasp and start over. Toward the end he would start kicking, and his cock was flopping all over the place, and my position about knee level permitted me a good view, but from a therapeutic point of view it was a lousy try. They spent a good deal of time on him, got through to SOMETHING he said would be valuable, but it sounded like a cop-out, and they went on to the others.
Arnie came in for a bit of a hard time: he'd been thinking he was adjusted, but he reacted to Jaap, and said he was afraid of Jaap hugging him, since he had some homosexual problems, too, and Jaap and he caressed in the middle of the floor, trying to work things out. Pressures built inside Arnie, this time rather skillfully manipulated by Paul, and Arnie began howling on his knees, trembling and crying with anger and fear, and it appeared to him that there was still a reservoir of pain and feeling that he hadn't tapped, and he looked down at Paul, saying softly: "You mean it's not over? I have more to go?"
Paul said what was wise: "It looks like it to me, doesn't it look like it to you?" and Arnie slowly, with a horrified look on his face, nodded his head in stunned agreement.
Toni tried working, trying to reach the frenzy of anger which Flo had reached, but again physical weakness and lack of stamina played a part, and soon she was hoarse and reaching an emotional climax based more on the idea that the group HAD TO HAVE IT before it would leave her alone, and it came out rather staged and flat, though she, like Ralph, insisted that she got something out of it. I was sinking into a greater and greater depression.
When we got around to Natalie, she began cooing and talking to some of the people in the group whom she began to criticize, and suddenly Hal leaped to his feet. "Shut up, Natalie, God damn you! I don't care WHAT you wanted to say. You always take that tack." "But I---" was all Natalie could get out. "SHUT UP, I said, just keep that filthy mouth shut. I've had enough of you, do you hear, enough."
Natalie pulled herself into a sitting position and began combing her hair, her face impassive except for her eyes, which had closed to two slits, through which she looked up at Hal, running her comb through her loose hair. "I---"
But she couldn't do more than open her mouth. "SHUT UP, I said, or so help me I'll crack you so hard you'll never say anything again." The volume of Hal's voice more than filled the room, and there were no other sounds beside that, save for the tiny rustle of comb in hair as she continued her toilette. "I know what you're trying to do, you ball-eater, and you're not going to get away with it this time." Thoughtlessly, again she opened her mouth to say something. "Don't say it, or I'll ram this fist down your throat, honest to God, I'll do that." She apparently believed him, and her eyes opened wider as her mind shut off and she thought only of the spectacle he was making of himself, body taut with rage, white hair flying, spit spewing from his lips. I was flabbergasted by the outpouring, but I could never again think of him as a silent, shy, wishy-washy individual without a bone in his back.
Then Pat became the center of attention, and her tear-stained face soon came in for the same sort of reviling that Mary Married's face did. Karen and Flo tried to egg her into some sort of anger or tears, and Pat kept saying that it was useless. "What good does it do to cry? I've been crying for myself for three years now, and it hasn't done any good."
"Look at you now, your lips are trembling, and there ARE tears in your eyes, even if you won't acknowledge them. Then why don't you CRY?" Karen and Flo almost alternated their feeling toward Pat.
"What good will it do? Why do you want to see me cry? What satisfaction will that give YOU?" Pat sat, trying to be calm, her face twisting around her words.
"But what satisfaction will it give YOU? That's what we're thinking about," said Flo and Karen almost in chorus.
"I don't GET any satisfaction in crying. If I want to change, I try to change, but I don't sit around crying about it." I was inclined to agree with Pat, but then it became apparent that, like Mary, she was angling for attention. Flo caught this, and shrugged her off.
"OK, do what you want. If you don't want our help, we'll leave you alone." Flo put her head down on her hands on her knees and stared in front of her.
Somewhat in the same vein as Mary, who had to have the last word, Pat said, "Good, just leave me alone."
"OK, we'll leave you alone," said Flo, looking up venomously.
"Fine." Pat stared back at Flo, obviously not willing to let Flo best her, including the childish thing about having the last word.
"Well, then, shut up," growled Flo.
"Shut up yourself," pouted Pat. This could have gone on forever had not Paul forced the focus to move elsewhere. It went around the room, and John Gooneyguy said his bit, and he figured he'd improved in the three years he'd spent in analysis, but Paul asked the group to give their impression of John, just as he had the group do for Natalie, and it was obvious what the consensus would be: he seemed stiff, withdrawn, shy, but when he did speak, it tended to be with arrogance. I saw a bit of myself in that, but closed my mind to the thought.
Ben took his allocated portion of the time, but saying that he thought it was a very good group, and bringing up the time last night when he was seated on the floor, fur on his lap, listening to "Scheherazade," and eating kumquats from a large Mason jar, while looking at some pictures of dancing girls he had in his lap, causing us all to laugh at his audacious self-assurance---and partly at the banality of the peak experience, but one man's peak experience is another man's boredom, was another point which was made.
Fat Rachel didn't say much, since she'd sort of abdicated from the group.
During the morning we went back down to the pool, running across the yard naked in the sunlight, leaping into the pool with roars of eagerness that made the place look more like Coney Island than the Circle H Ranch. Paul was taken up with Betsy, for much of the time, and the one device was rather silly: we'd stand in a circle, boys facing in, girls facing out (and Bernie, bringing up his problem, got into the facing-out circle, to even up the group), and eyeball for about two minutes, then do whatever wanted to be done with the hands, then whatever wanted to be done physically.
Rachel was difficult here, her eyes pleading with me to be taken as just any other woman, not as an oppressively fat woman. I reached down and kneaded her buttocks, but she whispered in my ear "Don't do that, or you'll make me hot." And I didn't want 250 pounds of hot Rachel on my hands. Flo beamed back at me, talking away as if there were no prohibition on it, and we chuckled and ducked each other. Karen again said how she liked my eyes, and I didn't get a chance to get around to Bernie, because Paul decided that free time was best for us now, and he went back to Betsy.
They were embraced at the side of the pool, Paul's back contacting the pool wall, just to his neck, so that Betsy had to rely on his or her holding her head out of the water. They moved scarcely at all, and I watched to see telltale ripples of sexual motion fanning out from their shoulders, but I could detect none. For an hour they remained, eyes closed, sometimes with heads together at the cheek, sometimes bending down to rest the lower part of the face on the neck. I wanted to interact with Betsy, and I felt left out and rejected, so again I sat against the side of the pool and let the hot inlet water push against my back.
Arnie and I had an exchange, where I said that I thought he was holding back from the group, just sitting there observing, and I said I knew I had a tendency to the same action, and I disliked it in myself as much as in him. We had a rather moist goodbye-session afterwards, based on information exchanged in the corner of the pool.
By that time we were all exhausted, and it was crawling toward 1 pm, our self-assigned quitting time. Participants were getting dressed bit by bit, and everyone was sorting out their own possessions, searching for records which had been misplaced during the night, and grabbing quick glasses of grapefruit juice from the cooler in the kitchen.
As a last statement, I requested a ride back to New York for myself and Ralph and Karen and Flo, who had left it in my hands, and John Gooneyguy volunteered to drive us back if we paid for part of his rented car. But when we got ourselves together, and Betsy said we were going with him, she said she didn't like the way that he drove, and got Paul and Hal to say that they'd take us back with them, since it seemed, increasingly, a matter of life and death to ride with John.
My trunk was already in his trunk, and I told Karen that since she started the idea of changing cars, she should talk to John. I stood off to the side as it got increasingly obvious that he was being done in, and with reluctance he took out his wallet and gave us back his money, while Flo got herself into some hideous story about Paul giving a lecture at Judson Hall tonight, which turned out to be the wrong night, but she said "Oh, but he asked us to sit through a dress rehearsal of his talk," which didn't convince anyone, and I stood by, saying nothing, wishing it was all OVER.
I claimed my hug from Jaap, but it turned out rather embarrassing, and I'd wished I hadn't done it. Bernie and I exchanged addresses when he said he'd love to be able to come to New York and spend a weekend there WITH someone. Earl and Estelle wished me good luck, and said that if ever I wanted to come out, even if I didn't have a girl, it was OK.
Forgot the duet between Bernie and me in the pool: we went down to "say goodbye" to the pool, and stepped into its steaming heat once more. He had gotten dressed already, and I had only a coat on, and I tried to hug him beside the pool, turning it into something more than an "um, um" session, and even began to get hard, but he said he was uncomfortable: someone might come in, and he didn't want to literally break one of the stated rules of the marathon. In fact that was one of the local jokes through the two days: whenever two people were obviously getting involved, there would be some sort of remark about "Humph, look at THAT subgroup over there," or "Subgroup!" more simply.
He and I again shook hands in the parking lot as he drove off, and I waved extra-friendly to John Goodguy as HE drove away.
Hal and Paul are holding forth in the front seat of Hal's bus when we take off, the wrong way, toward the city, and the terrible threesome are in the middle, with me and Betsy in back, trying desperately to make conversation about her job, her apartment, and her other group sessions which have turned out very well. Paul is telling loudly of his taping session with David Susskind "If he has any OUNCE of self-respect, he COULDN'T show it the way it was taped" (though he did, sometime in January).
We stop off in Jersey for something to eat, and Karen lags behind to say "You know, I really dig you, we'll have to get together." And when she makes some sort of comment about she and Flo and Ralph being inseparable, I think kindly about exchanging names and addresses and phone numbers with her. The food tastes good, since there's been nothing to eat since breakfast, and it's about 4 pm, and we talk and laugh about the new pleasure emporium on Broome Street, and Paul's peyote experiences in Mexico, and Hal's adventures with women in his office. Karen says "Yeah, there was the time I found the box of contraceptives in the boss's drawer" and Hal comes back with, "There ARE times when a little therapeutic fucking is just demanded," and it sounds like such a SHITTY admission.
We're back into the car and into the city, and after the wine we pass back and forth over the seats, I'm feeling tired again, letting a silence over the back while Paul and Hal carry on about their business. I try to keep to the feeling that they're merely two men who are trying to make a living in a field which had little to do with actual accomplishment of a physical nature, and they were even on the forefront of investigation of this field, and no one could EVER know for sure which way the "best" therapy lay, or even what could be termed the "best" for any individual. But I couldn't help leaving the bus with a terrible taste in my throat, especially since I asked Betsy what she was doing that evening: would she like to come up to my place for a talk later?
"No, Bob," she said, with a slight pause, "I'm going to spend the night with Paul in his hotel."
"Oh, I see," I said, trying desperately not to show my disappointing disgust at their action. I shouldn't have felt it; it was obvious from their closeness in the pool, and other rationalizations: they didn't help. I looked at Paul as a conniving self-seeker, I looked at Betsy as a victim of circumstances, though I DID rather fantasize that his income could make a great support for her five kids, and I wished her luck if she decided to marry him.
Karen and Ralph and Flo looked for their own cab, which I let them take first, and waited a good long time for another to come, and got home feeling very tired, as I hadn't really slept for the past two nights. Home at 7 to find Paul waiting for Azak and Dwayne.
I called Karen again, when she was taking LSD and feeling lousy, and I went down to talk with her then. Called her a few days after that, and got some curt statement that she and Flo were doing advanced physical exercises, but "If I ever got down to the Village, be sure and drop in, and she was often in the 57th Street area, so she'd come to see me." But as of February 18, when I'm finally completing this, she hadn't contacted me, and I hadn't contacted her.
Walter Joseph was totally surprised to find that Florence M. knew me, and he'd known her for 15 years, though three husbands and three kids, and she was a nice person, and wasn't it a coincidence that we'd met at Circle H. Isn't it a small world?
Bernie finally came up to New York for a weekend the first two days of February, the highlight of which was a dancing session at Table-Tops and much psychological thought. Then he wrote a card back, saying thanks, he'd had a good time, but he thought there were still things for us to talk about and he'd be back up.
I didn't feel like another until AT LEAST I'd written up this, and when the second Aureon encounter came along only one weekend after my arrival back from Ohio, I didn't feel like going to it, and somehow the idea of Aureon, especially since they began charging $5 to "Friends of Aureon" to just get the catalogs, I had a lousy feeling in my mouth from the last leader, the last group, and the institute itself, so I'll just wait around until "the shoe pinches harder," and I'm again led through devious trails back to a group encounter.