Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Read online

CHAPTER 2

  Cilla opens the box. A present a day all week. "Advanced Courting"—like Lilith, she had heard the stories; now, a reality!

  She knew it was him, though he didn’t sign his name. Unusual. "Not even initials." Just a message, the repeating message, "You are my Smoky Angel!"

  "Terrible!"

  She laughs a small, mothering laugh. "He’s not the poet. You have the poet."

  Cilla could hear him humming, "You are my Smoky Angel," as he wrote...writes cleverly...she likes clever. Yet, she intuits that this is the reach of his artfulness. Not like the pages of impassioned—"Incomprehensible, but impassioned!" she said to Lilith—poetry: "torrential avalanche" from Zav.

  Today, a necklace. Silver chain with a modest stone, modestly sized but at once bold, brash, intense: alluring. She looks up in her "Gems of Love" and spies it, "Peridot!"

  "He sent you his eyes. Get it?"

  Cilla giggles giddily. Hands the gift to Lil. Cilla lifts her hair. Lil closes the snap.

  Inside: peering.

  "Quite the Romantic, Mr. Accountant!" as the door shuts.

  "Just drive," Mark over-rides—mildly commands, with satisfaction at his private triumph, sounding cool and non-committal.

  Who’s the Romantic? Who’s the Seducer?

  Sure, Zav's the poet but does his lines have hooks? Smirky inner grin. Mark wonders if Cilla has been hooked by his lines, his gifts. He is smugly pleased with the images of fishing... reeling her in. Although he's not exactly following the approach taught in "Advanced Courting," he's confident that giving her gifts net his quarry more than Zav's effusive poetry. Poet! Ha.

  Seeking to impress her with his cleverness, Mark went back and forth over whether to sign his name. He didn’t want to ask Zav. Not anyone. They’d all had the same Courting training: Rules and Protocols— at least he supposed it the same. But Who cares? What counts is that Mark is about "The Game" in the way he has long been planning. Now, Courting will never be as Courting has been!

  Mark—seeing in his mind’s eye himself wading into the river, casting the line, controlling the play, reeling in. Methodical. He didn’t utter the word, but felt it. It was as methodical as he wanted it to be, as it must be. Sensing Courting not so much as Game but as War. The training stressed "Play!" but he would be "Master"...will be. "War," this conquering image. "Master," this capturing word. He did not utter them, rather embodied them as in murmuring self-congratulation he wraps each gift/ First day, a flower, just one. "Yellow rose." Meaning to him not just love, that traditional message of the red, but yellow—"Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree!"...meaning, "I’m coming home!" Right from the start, he had to tell her, make her hear loud and clear, that she was his— had to be his. She must come to realize that she has been waiting for him...only him— Fate. He was possessed and obsessed by this. It is how he defined but deviated from Courting.

  "Even if she doesn’t get it all, right now...." He wanders into an enveloping fantasy. She is waiting for him at home, coming home each day, she there, "Having to be there!"—submissive. With a steely clamp of his jaw he ties the ribbon of the first day's yellow rose.

  Second day, a brooch. "Tasteful," said Lil, admiringly. Cilla pins it above her heart. How did he know? But he hadn’t. It had been dumb luck. "This, the only one you have?" as the scrunched faced old hag wizened, "Yup." So he wrapped it in blue. A silver brooch with a carved angel, one that looked oddly ancient: "Pre-Ascendancy?" Impossibly not— and with intent wrapped it in blue. This gift more directly messaging that she "Is my angel. Smoky Angel." Not trying to capture smoky, rather stressing the angelic blue of heaven. "She’ll get it." And she does.

  Third day, a bracelet. Small beaded ebony chain with pearled flame. "Delicate," Cilla whispers. Lil was out. She presses the clasp. Lifts her left arm to dangle the opalescent flame in front of her eyes. Inexplicably, she snaps her head back—a primal reflex fearing fire—the shimmering flame licks at her wrist! Cilla gasps, and within the gasp the illusion retreats. "Oh!"

  Fourth day, a scarf. Satin. Black. Blindly black. Dressy. It is so striking that Cilla can’t move herself to take it out of its box.

  "Wow," Lil utters, eyes glued on the same darkened depthlessness.

  It is Lil who lifts it from the box. Unfurls and fans it in front of Cilla’s eyes. Deftly, the merest of a twist with a flip, she slips, ties it around Cilla's neck—deep forest cascade of caliginous water.

  As it lays there, lays so "Beautiful!" secrets Lil, lays so strikingly against her long white neck, a neck which her mother calls, "Your treasure, hon," a neck which drew men to kiss: grandfathers and fathers, even brothers, especially lovers...the scarf kisses her neck, but as never kissed before— Cilla shudders.

  "Are you going to wear them all?"

  "Not any."

  Lil understood...then, she didn’t.

  Mark was clearly eager to see her. His eyes consumed her but she couldn’t discern whether or not he was seeing her; noticing.

  Naked: Mark had her everyway covered—it was his hand to Play.

  "She’ll pretend it’s not you," Zav had said; felt he was forewarning. Felt that Mark wasn’t ready for one like Cilla. Not that Zav knew Cilla that well, only as he figured from Lil’s remark, "Women are coy." The puzzling tales from "Advanced Courting" were coming to life.

  Zav had been right. But Mark had, also, been more primed than Zav could have ever expected. For Mark knew his Fate. She’s the one!

  So he had prepared to be enigmatic. Even if she had worn one thing or carried the singular rose, he would express nothing, nothing disclosing, not even mild curiosity. Even if she had worn everything, he would have ignored all, not even commenting with polite banter. Zav could not have understood: "Be her date, not her lover. Make her suffer!" A cloud of unknowing.

  Mark wants her to suffer—not incapacitate her, but control her through intricate anguish—constructing a web. He could never let her know him as simple or easy to understand. Not be predictable. Had to keep her off-balance. More than mysterious; aloof. Trump her!

  His was an impulse quite in character with his temperament. Mark, no anarchist. Mark, no Rule vigilante! No. Rather, it was his rule-keeping that compelled him—true compulsion...a doing without self-knowing. He moving beyond Courting mores and morality, into the realm, the essence of his being. If he had reasoned, he would have calmly and coolly discoursed: "Pleasure is our Game—the credit. Suffering is the debit." It was a matter of columnar balance.

  So he craftily prepared to make her suffer, "Anyway I can," as he finishes buttoning his shirt, combing his hair. Fate!... unheard, un-uttered, understood umbilically.

  "I’m just dying," groaned with expiring sigh. Lil brushes her hair vigorously, eyeing Cilla through the shared Ladies Room mirror.

  "You?" She daintily dabs her forehead with a touch of a hand-towel. "Me. I’m the one who can’t figure." Turns to face Lil, "It has to be him. Doesn’t it? Smoky Angel?"

  Lil shrugs a Maybe. Maybe he’s a kook ?.. Shut-up; ssssh, no advice!

  Zav sits one out. Watches Lil dance with another. But that’s not it. No, he’s sitting out because of the moment, what he calls "A poetic moment." Feeling—not always requiring a glass of the Muse’s blood—feeling his fingers twitch. "Writing fingers," he holds before him, indicts them—a pencil, thick, child-size, soft lead, almost a drawing pencil, jotting on his pad, this time watching Mark and Cilla, not Lil.

  But he cannot write, no, not at this moment. He can only record. For he cannot describe what he has never seen before. Images. Words. Sounds. Scribbles. Jottings on his memory slate.

  ...in a crowd, but all alone. just two. one orbiting. the other swinging the other in orbit. like a yo-yo. around the world. walking the dog. asleep. like they’re asleep. no, everyone else is asleep. no one is watching!. ...he enwraps her in roses. head to toe. yellow roses. cocoons her. carries her off. she is naked. he decks her out in jewelry. precious stones and gold and silver: drapes her and drapes her.
scarfed, full body wrapped—mummy, death-black, wrapping into shimmering veil of sightless ebony shiver...untill she disappears! —takes her eyes and gives her his: twin gleams, life-flushing greens, verdant. beams locking each inside the other: cyclops...from the cocoon of roses she peeks, wings forth, flaps, but no flight, has molted, no longer a caterpillar, but, But! —she is chained to him, she does fly about, circles, whirls...it is her heart which is chained: chained by his desire, lustful desire: pearlescent flames of cool, cold, frost-biting ferocity—a painful cry, a tortured scream! Unbearable!...Zav jolts, lurches forward, hands flat on the table, sweating profusely, hard-breathing...chilled: in his mind just one word, "Chilled," title for a poem?. ..Lil returns, laughter still on her lips. Mark and Cilla return: "Live long and prosper!" Mark winks: emerald glint, smiling a wicked lick as he shocks Zav with this knowledge, his special knowing: chilled

  Lil catches the zing between the guys; Cilla's still bubbly and zoned on Mark. Something's happened, but what?

  Wow, to herself. Muted. Adding bubbles to Cilla's giddiness. All at once eager for their sisterly late night chat.