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August 6 I was in bed, the mirror up, still transcribing Tape 3; the night I'd made it I'd been talking about a fact, it, but, having lost my way in a string of appositives, had failed to say and then been unable even to remember what it was. What I had been talking about was that I could, given my pot, my coke, and my fantasies, now satisfy myself, which I considered a plus, but that I thought it a minus that I tended to feel let down when, infrequently, I could not stay or, more rarely, even get hard. The it was my erection; my sexuality was penis-centered again, as it hadn't been since I had become a quadriplegic.
After writing I started to record Tape 5A, my hand resting on my stiffening sex, my breath's metronomic steadiness the steadiness of tension mounting and response restrained. Nearly a minute passed before I began to sing. Lee, let me touch myself for you, let me touch myself for you and show you how I can be touched. I continued to Lee, described my love for her, the position in which I lay, and, still singing, ended: I've gone without your juices on my cock where they belong too long. I need you. . .— My voice ascended as I said I needed her, but I was then silenced by my awareness that Lee and I would never make love if I were doing coke and that, without coke, what had happened to me vis-à-vis Lee in 1978 had happened to me vis-à-vis everyone, including Lee, by 1988. Undrugged, I was available to no one. The silence stretched nearly a minute and when I continued I did not sing but spoke: --if you are there for me. Confused instead of excited by my words, I turned off the recorder; I lay back, let that thought go, and was almost immediately rewarded with blissful sensation.
I soon paused to do another line. Coke insists on itself. The drug counsels now and now and now, more and more and more, when less is better and less than that better than that. None best? Obviously, none best; but my experience I believed contradicted that. I'd tried and would try again to enter the Love Note experience without cocaine. I'd failed and would fail again. Might Love Note, written, draw other quads to try the drug? It might, which worried me; still, I thought my effort to write was how I best kept faith with my best self. How would my singular affair with me and the cocaine use on which it depended ever, short of death, end? It might if I were to fall in love with a wise and lucky woman who did not use coke? (One year hence I would fall in love with Faith's friend Raythen. Nineteen years old and the mother of three, she would be the first woman in more than two years to whom I wanted to make love with or without the drug. It never happened, though I courted her whole-heartedly.)
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August 8, two days before Faith, Throck, and I were to go to Godwin, Throck and I were in the living room by the ramp down from the kitchen. I'd done some lines and been writing several hours, was about to go for a late-afternoon cruise.
"I was hoping to have something to show you before you left," I said, "but I'm leery of having first draft read. A lot of times it says flat out the opposite of what I mean it to."
"Maybe you should wait till it's finished," he said.
"Good advice," I agreed, and dropped the subject. Each of us was willing to accept the other at his word, not pry, irritate, question, or argue. I wondered how much time we'd need to become intimates, guessed an eternity or two.
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Angus, Hettie, Dee, and I were doing lines in my bedroom the night of August 9. I was in bed and uncovered. Joe had gone home earlier, about nine, and at a little before eleven Angus left the room.
"Do you need any help?" said Hettie, preparing to leave. I spoke before noticing that she'd given me the opening I'd long been seeking to talk to her and Dee, who was sitting on the bed beside me.
"No. I'm fine. Thanks."
Angus and Hettie soon called goodnight and Dee and I were alone at the end of a night for the first time all summer. The right thing to do, I thought, was to ask her for the mirror. I wanted nothing so much as to hear me ask.
"Is there anything I can do?" she said.
"Faith'll come down."
"I can do anything Faith can."
Please Arthur, please, I begged, talk to her. Accept her, please.
"That's okay."
I was amazed at my reticence, and didn’t understand it. I was sitting up, leaning a little forward, balanced on my arms. She stood by the head of my bed. I lay back, then lifted up using my trapeze so she could straighten my pillow. The mirror stood in the corner away from the bed. The pillow in place, I rested back, and she leaned down and kissed me; she purposely avoided my lips, but I put my hand on her face and gently pressed.
"Your lips," I said, and she kissed me on the lips, not a long lingering kiss but a soft kiss which lasted several seconds. "One more," I said, and we kissed again, as long.
"No," she said, pulling away. I leaned toward her more, keeping the kiss going, and she relented, let herself kiss me back, then pulled away again, said, "Stop," and I did. I had o'erstepped? Yes, further than I would have had I asked her to set me up, which was all I'd wanted, for her to set me up and know what I did nights, when she and Joe and Angus and Hettie were away.
She was gone now; Faith had tilted the mirror toward my genitals and positioned my spread knees. I hadn't known the extent to which my failure to ask Dee to help me would confound me. I should have asked. The kiss had broken all the rules the mirror would have and had failed to attest my trust in her. I felt I'd missed a chance; felt, even, I had wronged her. I should have asked but knew I made mistakes and that I must, we do.
I did no more coke, had a hit of pot, lay back, shouldered the tape recorder, and, with gratifying effect, told my absent friends what I would share with them before I left in September. Expressing my intention is making me come and come and come and come. Making me? Letting me come and come and come and come. My words flowed, calm and calm and calm and calm.
A little later I spoke to Lee of Faith. There had been Lee, there had been Jane, there had been Marjorie, and now, differently, was Faith. I didn't think I could have picked four women more suited to my needs at the times that we were with each other. P. is of the line (my voice broke as I came again), could have been chosen by a spirit guiding me. And I began to dance. My hand danced and my hips thrust and my penis pointed to the ceiling, and with my thrusts, my hips not moving from the bed, I moved, Lee riding me. My voice went high. It was never loud; there were people in the house.
Lee had asked in her letter for me to think of her when I went to Godwin, where we'd fallen in love. I sang, thick-voiced; made love with Lee, who would dream it and forget or not. I took the recorder from its perch where I could speak into the mike and put the box between my legs with the mike toward my erection, still strong enough to be above the horizontal. I spoke: Lee, hear me beating off. (My voice on the tape was distant, its vowels inaudible.) I increased the pace of my genital aerobics, then stopped abruptly and there was silence for ten seconds, twenty. I took deep heavy breaths as I retrieved the recorder, my mechanical familiar, and again perched it along my supine form. Moaned, coming, sighing, ohhh, surprised, surrendered. Lee, Lee, Lee, hear me, hear me, ohhh, f*ck me, f*ck me, f*ck me. A few seconds after my last groaning whisper, I sang, melodious: And if we never do make love, still I know--and the tape ended.
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To access the Chapter 14 of LOVE NOTE click here.
To go to the THE HEALING & LOVE NOTE DISCUSSION FORUM click here. I want to hear almost anything you are willing to say, including whether you have had similar or contradictory experiences. Criticism of my behavior and beliefs is also solicited and will be (more or less!) welcome.
This post has been edited by Coach: 30 July 2006 - 08:40 PM
