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Minutes before sunrise August 16, 1975, thirteen years ago today, Shell (whom I had just seen in Godwin) was pissing in the front yard at Wurts Farm. His father was to pick him up at 8 A. M. and they were to proceed into Canada to a family reunion at Shell's draft-resisting younger brother's. The farmhouse was packed. Shell counted as police car after police car, three troopers to a car, appeared from the direction of town; moments after he counted the fourteenth and last, he was handcuffed.
Lee had arrived the preceding day and was sleeping in my single hospital-bed beside me; she'd finished the classes needed to graduate ten months ahead of her high-school class by spending the past two summer vacations in summer school. She waked to see three men she had never seen at our bedside dressed for the out-of-doors and armed with shotguns. My attitude toward the farm, particularly my refusal to think of it as mine, baffled and at times annoyed her, and she thought the drug laws merely silly, did not share my view that they were significantly oppressive and should be contested with civil disobedience. When she was released from jail the next day she returned, said good-bye, and left Wurts Farm forever. There was no coke here then; of the fourteen at the farm when we were busted, only Shell had ever done a line. There was pot aplenty, "acres and acres" according to a headline in a Syracuse paper. Those were the days (as are these).
Tonight, August 16, 1988 (I'm actually writing this paragraph March 6, 1990), in bed, the mirror up, I was transcribing the tape I'd made August 9 as an insert for July 30. Again I noticed that my taping, notebook work, and typed first-draft were coming together. I lay back, the recorder as usual on my torso, and was soon in love with Jane. I talked to her and knew as I talked that I could give myself to her so she could take me as she wished she could and, once upon a time, our love still young, had, incomparably. I'd doubt again that we could be so simple, doubt it tonight before I slept, but for the moment I knew no uncertainty. Hot [dry] sperm spurted through my hand just now as I was talking to you and imagining our love unblocked. She was kneeling over me, her head above my groin, her groin above my head. I sang: You look into the mirror and see your face above my sex. I paused, then spoke. You are so swollen and so wet and smell so good.
When I continued twenty seconds later I was again singing. And when you want me focused all on you, as in our time I was, I will feel again what my body will through yours. I want to feel with you and have you feel the love you are. My voice went high: I burst--and higher—again into my hand.
Now I merely spoke, simple, to my friend Jane who loved me. Oh babe, my love has been so blocked, everywhere;--(I’d been correct when I'd guessed I could talk aloud and tape, right to bring taping into my mirror nights. Too, I had been wrong about the need immediately to transcribe the tapes I made. I needed notes, not chapters, and the tapes were excellent notes.)--but on these nights it isn’t blocked, flows free and fresh and frolicking.
After a pause I spoke prosaically, not as lover but as craftsman: I need a really sensitive mike when I get to Tucson so I can pick my voice up better. Right now I'm holding the damned tape recorder on my shoulder steadying it with my right hand. My left hand is around my hard-on, which is jumping. I don't want to have to be holding the recorder like this when you [Jane] join me as I feel the love.
I stopped speaking to better let the feeling be and grow, moaned a minute later, sighed, and after still another minute whispered, still to Jane:
So good now babe. I lift my penis up and let it drop, lift it and let it drop, lift, drop, lift, drop; and each time I drop it it stiffens further and its angle to the bed increases. Oh I want to show my love to you; and afterwards, in an hour or a day or week or year, we'll talk of fantasy and feeling--a talk (I laughed) I'd like (of course) [Color=red]to tape.
It was late and the recorder off. Each night I had, some time, to stop doing the drug, turn off the machine, break my link to Writerfellow and prepare to sleep, though sleep was often far off when I did so; often I would soon find more to say. Now I made a typical late-night addition, something I'd not said earlier come clear again. Typically, I again failed to say it well and came to cut it.
_____
I was in my office working when Faith came to the door.
"I think Ellen threw away my Pent Houses," she said, obviously irked. "I kept them in my room, never left them just lying around. I used them for figures to practice drawing! She shouldn't be going into my room anyway!"
"No," I agreed; "she shouldn't."
I talked to Ellen, and she said Brian had thrown away the magazines so the girls wouldn't sneak into Faith's room and look at them. In bed that night as Faith was putting up the mirror I told her what Ellen had said.
"I'm still angry," she said.
"It's still annoying," I said.
"But I don't mind his throwing them away as much as I would have her. And I did use them."
"You know," I said, "if you want a model, you're welcome to stay here any night and use me."
"I've thought of coming in some night," she said. "Maybe I will."
If she did I hoped I'd speak.
Alone, I wrote in my notebook. [color="green"]Monday D. on lips. Tonight on lips. Change. Nice. Did Dee notice that two nights in a row now when we met we'd kissed each other on the lips? Was this how it would be? Where might it lead?
_____
To access Chapter 15 part ii click here.
To go to the THE HEALING & LOVE NOTE DISCUSSION FORUM click here. Has your genital feeling been affected by SCI? If so, how? I want to hear almost anything you are willing to say. Criticism of my behavior and beliefs is also solicited and will be (more or less!) welcome.
Edited by Coach, 14 August 2006 - 06:42 PM.
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