 
BELOVEDS

by Francis X. Kroncke

francis@outlaw-visions.net

Smashwords Edition

Cover design by Mikki Fattoruso, mfdesignstudio.com  
Copyright 2013

# PART 1: DEATH

Death is its own kind of divorce.

It's not like the living know how to speak to one another when they part.

Why the expectation for some type of conversation?

He's dead. She's dead.

Death is its own kind of heartfelt embrace.

It's like the dead know how to commune with us when they part.

Why not an expectation for some type of ecstatic intimacy?

So, she rises.

So, he rises.

"Whomever I am, let me rise and love you forever." So be it.

# CHAPTER 1

Karen died, mother, with twins—high school juniors. Nick was launched into an unknown universe. For what was life without Karen? Not just his mind amok—although his condition gave essential meaning to the word dysfunctional, it was more a disruption of his soul. With her gone, he had lost his tether to the world. She was more than his heart, even more than simply a spouse. She unleashed him, was a catalyst stirring up within him feelings for which he had no words, even less concepts.

Not merely a soul-mate. Nothing that pedestrian. She had taken him on a journey into the mystery of intimacy. He, right at this moment, has been plucked out of that mystery; cast down not just to Earth from the Sky but into an inner darkness within which he sees no light. He is as if a robot, no, more a puppet whose mistress no longer pulls the strings. He is forlorn; alienated.

Nick walks down the church steps. In some part of his mind he is saying that to himself, "Nick walks down the steps." He is aware that he is eyeing himself as if a deity, an ex machina entity whom everyone expects has dropped onto the stage in the Final Act to sum up the storyline, to make everyone understand, no, more, feel in their hearts what her life was about.

But Nick Niegsch is a mere mortal—a father, a widower. A wandering soul.

"Son!" My father calls.

"Daughter!" He has mom's look in his eyes.

They all embrace.

Ah, the special cruelty of Minnesota death. Like Kiev death. Like Eskimo death. Wherever the mystic polar bear roams, there it is always deep January regardless of calendar. Minnesota death is a mystical freezing of the soul and heart beyond understanding. All that is real is as well symbolic—frosted breaths are smoke signals without meaning, leading a lost people flailing for a sign in the blizzard, seeking, "Where is she?" We must augur the Northern Lights!

Twins: seventeen, nearing eighteen.

Sean is the son.

Patricia, the daughter.

Are they ever old enough for the dying?

Nick holds his children close to his heart, his long arms locked on, one to each.

Dad! Each in their own way.

Tongueless in a time of many tongues. People saying things. Condolences. Sorrows. Good Wishes. Sad-happy reminiscences.

Tongues which carve her out. Statues. Bas-reliefs. Hammered in steel. Chipped totems from the North Country. Working. Working. All these good people working to create, to present him with something—but, For what?

"Thank you."

"Yes, I remember her doing that!"

"Can we ever forget that summer at the lake?"

"She was such a good woman of faith."

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

"Karen was, was, how can I say it Nick? She was really real. Hell, that's not what I want to say. See, she was the first one Ruth wanted to tell. That's it! Not her mother. Not her sisters. No. "Call Karen!" she had ordered—great Prussian General that Ruth is! Ha. Ha. But, "Call Karen!" The first one to tell about the baby. That's what she was, more than a sister."

Then he and Ruth burst into tears as Nick consoles them.

2020. Like perfect eye-sight. He can't stop himself from calculating. Subtracting 2020 minus 1982 equals 38 on her next birthday. Etched on her tombstone. She now no longer in his eye-sight.

The receiving line duty over, Nick watches those members of his family: siblings, cousins. great aunts, who were still anchored to the spot. How many Niegsches were about? More than twenty, for sure. What a crew! Hammerheads. Old tobacco spitting Huns! Fleeing something. Conscription. Poverty. "Poverty of imagination," that's what his own Granddad had said. "This is the New World. It's where you're free to imagine your own future!"

In Minnesota, the Old World Irish and Germans readily shared a romantic imagination. Their intermarrying was hastened by intertwined ancient racial roots and a shared Catholic faith tradition, either Roman or Lutheran. Karen McElroy was pure Irish and a dedicated Roman Catholic. "Faith was her fervor!" Her father first said that at her First Communion. It stuck as her byline. Although a bit of a free spirit in her youth, she had built her marriage and family around the biblical imagination. For her, her husband was the head, she the heart and soul of the family and the marriage.

In so many ways Karen imagined Nick into being. He actually liked explaining that. For him, she was both the keel and rudder of his life. She guided him down the stream of how he came to understand himself as a father: as provider, protector, and head of the family...as he came to understand himself as husband: moral and spiritual exemplar to her and the children...as he came to understand himself as a community leader and as a responsible corporate executive. All their married growth was grounded in the honor, respect, and love Karen offered, heartfelt, through their shared intimacy. "I am the man I am today because of her deep faith in God's plan for men and women, for our family. God is Love and my blessing is that Karen is my Love."

In this light, the recurring statement that "I can't imagine how he'll get along without her!" not only expressed a sincere concern about how Nick would manage the family on his own, but it touched on a greater fear of whether he could remain sane, remain whole and holy on his own.

Nick had celebrated his beloved wife with revealing praise at their fifteenth wedding anniversary, "Karen has faith in God, and I have faith in Karen!"

Nicks clearly hears the family's deep concerns; they are his concerns also.

"I can't imagine the children, alone, just with him. Mercy me!"

Nick simply can't imagine anything. It's like he's on the other side of death, not her...him meandering around in Limbo.

Can't imagine...depresses him, but it was one of Karen's own key words that challenges him as he walks away from her grave site—transformation.

"Faith is believing in transformation. Sinners into Saints. Death into Resurrection. What else are we to do but transform ourselves and the world through God's grace? Why else are we together? Why else our marriage?"

Who had Karen McElroy been? Someone faithfully transforming his world. Even now dead, deceased, interred...could she, would she ever be "at rest"? Deep inside, Nick hopes not; wishes...imagines her reaching across the eternal divide, caressing his cheek, holding his head, challenging him to become...more!"

At day's end, Nick is profoundly transformed—tragically, no longer a husband or a spouse, just a lonely guy. In his own mind, one of the living dead.

# CHAPTER 2

Nick is holding a pair of her sheer pearl white stockings. How she loved high heels. How I loved her so! He presses the stockings to his face, inhales. Remembering! A nanosecond of delight...but reality reclaims him quite harshly.

Startled, he, tensed and breathless, scans the room, checks the doorway. He is aware of being aware of being watched. Am I performing? He exhales an "All the world's a stage...hmmm."

Boxes and boxes. To Goodwill. She'd like that. Why, he wonders, am I talking as if off-stage? As to an audience? Or, the back stage players?

He and Karen had been dabblers in live performance. Truth is, she had been. Nick had always been an extra, with no lines. He liked it like that. Karen, she sung. But only in groups; she liked that.

He piles the boxes upon boxes upon boxes, steps back, pauses, soundlessly chuckles to himself. Ah! It is Nick who is moving out. These are boxes of his life as much as hers—My life! He sees himself thrusting one hand to his heart, one towards the audience, "My life!" Sobs are heard.

Jesus, I miss you Karen!

He decides to keep the pearly whites. Just one pair. Nothing special. Just something. She'd laugh, shake her head, throw him that Tsk! glance. Yeah, he knows that.

Go ahead, laugh!... She does; he swears he hears her.

Nick crumples the sheer remnant and sticks it in his top bureau drawer, there where her weekly stash of ironed handkerchiefs always moved him to bemused wondering. Wondering why it was so important to her, this ironing of handkerchiefs. He never probed for a deeper meaning. She never gave the slightest hint. Never to ask, again. Never to be told, ever.

Boxes and boxes, harsh evidence that their family is being transformed.

I can't imagine how he'll be able to raise those children without her! Nick's at a loss as what to do.

Patricia finds him packing her mom's stuff. She explodes angrily, "I don't want to leave Mom!" It came from deep inside her gut, taking her substance with it—puke, a vomit of the soul. She bolts from the room, crying.

Since Karen's death, Sean has hardly spoken, which was quite in character. He brooded internally. Nick could see the anguish in his eyes...he has his mother's eyes, and her depth!

But "The Talk" had to occur, it was inevitable, it was necessary—What are we going to do?

Nick didn't want to say, See, I can't be your father anymore. Didn't want to say it, but how else to explain it to them?

"Do what you have to, dad, I guess. Mom's not here. Tell us. We're on our own."

He wanted to ask his daughter, what did you mean, "I don't want to leave Mom"? But he feared her possible explanations.

"Sean, say something!" Anxious urging from his sister.

Sean's eyes fall into his hands.

The Talk ended shortly after it began. I can't imagine how he'll manage the kids without her!

Later, as Nick laid back onto his pillow, Christ, he could see his daughter's words pop-up on the ceiling. Ghostly scrawl. I don't want to leave Mom! But what's a guy to do? Karen, what should I do, honey? He needs her now not just to help him parent, but to sleep. He knows that sleep will never again be as he has come to know it—the sweet, soothing comfort of sleeping with Karen. No matter where he was, no matter the star-rating of the hotel room with all its fancy perks, no matter, if she wasn't there he had to conjure her there—scrunch his eyes and drown his ears with pillows, chant her name, "Karen! Karen! Karen!"...until she came and nestled beside him. Forlorn, he calls upon her tonight; in time, he sleeps.

When he awakes, the words are waiting in ambush. They instantly pounce upon him—I don't want to leave Mom! What in God's name does that mean. Really mean? He pauses for an answer—Honey? He searches for some shadow message on the ceiling, some Matinal advice from her. But nothing.

All during the day he's in conversation with her, or so he thinks....at times doubts—Can you hear me, sweetheart?

Then it all became clear. Was it an answer from her? Or just something in me? For at some point in the late afternoon it was as loudly and distinctly heard as if she were in the next room. "Sell the house!"

Although Nick had this answer, which he was certain was Karen's directive, he knew that it would sound insane to everyone else. More, it even sounded a tad whacky to himself. This house for me is her. Our first and only home. Eighteen years. Almost every month of our marriage except the ones in that rag-tag "married student apartment." Apartment of Love! Loving her—two young and sincere and sweet and lusty kids. Ah, lusty! Nick hadn't wanted to leave that apartment. Maybe that's what Patricia meant? Did she see my packing those boxes as meaning we'd sell the house? Had she heard her mom's answer before I had? God, those two were close!

# CHAPTER 3

Sean and Patricia accepted their father's decision to sell the house much more quickly than he, or anyone in the family once told, could have anticipated. But possibly it was simply that it was going to be California. And that, simply, it was going to be with Aunt Margaret. They had always loved Aunt Margaret. She had been like the Good Fairy all their lives. Aunt Margaret and new bikes at Christmas. Aunt Margaret and waterslides and rollercoaster rides at the Big Muddy Water Park. Aunt Margaret and surprise gifts in the deep of winter—bright shiny balloons and strange exotic plants from the desert...even more bewitching treasures from Sea World—where she has already promised to take them in the Spring. Yippie, California!

Nick was buoyed up when he heard them shout it. Go figure! The move is actually cheering them up. Not being the type given to psychoanalysis—certainly not with the commitment Karen maintained—he doesn't stop to worry that the move was simply delaying the inevitable grieving that he and they must go through. Right now, all that occupies his mind and heart is a deeply felt sense of gratitude towards his big sister. He can't help but wonder, Did you arrange this, sweetheart?

It comforts him, just imagining the kids stepping off the plane into Aunt Margaret's waiting arms. He sighs, Truly a blessing dear sister. What he does not let himself feel is how deeply relieved he is. I can't be your father, anymore.

Nick goes along with Yippie! but it is still deep January for him. The rest of the month is filled with packing and making plans, buying tickets...but this month, and many months to come, will still ever be January. He still feels that he is there at the funeral Mass...sitting in the front pew at St. Boniface...looking at the lid, waiting for the lid of the coffin to lift, not necessarily all the way but just a bit, even just the minutest of tads, so that her voice can slip out, escape—slither and tell him...Tell me what? Without the lid propped, how can he hear her lines?

Aunt Margaret was a peach. He knew that she'd jump at the chance to have the kids. "Just like mine!" he heard her say even before he began to dial. She was like that; is like that. Loves kids. Her own, just two years ahead and two years behind his. Jack already off to college, living on campus: UC-Berkeley. Janice just beginning high school. His own, he knew, would make the adjustment—not easily to starting over in the middle of their junior year but to living with Margaret. Even now it is her formal name: Margaret. Never for him Maggie or Mag or Ret or any such thing. For him, it conveyed all the respect and affection he had for her. Growing up, she used to call him Nicky—but at thirteen, "I'm a man now!" he boasted, it became a term of sisterly endearment which she was not to use in public; only as a term in private conversation or sibling tease. As close as his heart was to hers, despite all her playfulness and bouncing energy and swamping love and swarming peek-a-boo kisses, her for him, she was always Margaret.

The kids would probably go to Berkeley High, then onto Cal. Margaret thought Berkeley was the most fascinating spot on Earth. That's why—Nick was sure—she had married a Berkeley professor. An older guy. One who knew what People's Park meant. Not old enough to have been there, but second generation...his older brother having wallowed in the mud and planted hippie grass...so, _The Park_ was part of his worldly possessions, so to speak, and for her—ardent emulator of hippie anarchy and free-wheeling love—how else could it have unfolded, except to marry a Berkeley professor? No doubt, for sure, she'll get them to enroll at Cal.

_California_ : Patricia and Sean moved beyond Minnesota's January. At least for the time being. One virtue of their bonded youth was a lack of guile. They told each other how much they did actually enjoy living with Aunt Margaret. And for awhile...for many years hence...she was their emotional salve. "Maternal substitution," "transference," "symbolic inversion"—academics and shrinks would have many tags, but for the twins, it was their life...they could count twelve months, and then count again.

# CHAPTER 4

At last, it was done. The kids moved out and on. But really, nothing was done; all was just beginning.

The fresh beginning starts with Nick's coping with the phrase, he sleeps alone. "Fuck, I wish I could sleep! I wish I were alone."

No, I don't! I don't want to be alone. I'm scared of this being alone. You think I can stay in this house? Walk around and not hear the old movies—the squeals and screams and screeches of the kids? Not read their scribbling so many times washed from the walls? Do you think time-passing means sanitizing? That this house is clean? Empty? Alone?

Augur the shadows! What else? Fuck, I wish I could sleep! I wish I were not alone.

"Nick does not sell the house." He can see that slogan flapping on the banner drawn by the ethereal plane which circles his office building day after day.

Nick does not sell the house. He overhears himself in conversation explaining why, "Now that the kids are gone, it's all I have...of Karen."

Nick does not sell the house, but he says to himself, in third person, "Nick wants to sell the house." That's what he wants to tell everyone, but just can't.

What's a guy to do? Nick wakes with this question, still strong-voiced across his brain. He mouths it without sound, "What's a guy to do?" There need be no sound. For this is heard where ears are not organs.

While shaving...I get it. Finally, he knows what it means! At least as it means to him as an answer to What's a guy supposed to do?

Transformation. Why has it taken me so long to see this? Karen sent Margaret. Karen told me to sell the house. So, what's the hold-up? Okay. Admit it, this is your last act as a husband...to bury your wife. Bury her so that she can live in eternity...and you can move on, learn how to father as alone.

He finishes shaving; wipes the counter, and with Karen-trained eyes inspects, wipes again.

He knows she'd be pleased. "Are you pleased, dear?" he says out loud.

I'm not living in this house anymore, sweetheart. You can leave.

Accepting this, he sighs, Karen, you really are not here, that's why I want to leave.

# KAREN, BELOVED

Why did I die? I have no answer but...transformation. Mystical and mysterious, true, but know that I was coming home to tell you, Nick, my dear sweetheart Nicholas X., tell you about the most profound, most wondrous thing that ever happened to me, second only to marrying you, my dearest. What a bittersweet world I exist in now, here where Love thrills every particle of my being, every aspect of the universe! Yet, am I in heaven? How can I be without you in my embrace? But we can be together in heaven even while on Earth. We can communicate. Oh, my sweet Nicholas, we are forever ecstatically intimate for I am in your heart; you are my heart. We are the heartbeat of Life, itself. More, dear wonderful Nick—more! is what I found myself to be as just moments before the crash I was celebrating myself as your Beloved, and you as mine. Praising with deep gratitude that we were living as Beloveds and able to transform Earth into heaven and heaven into Earth. Oh, why have words and kisses been taken from us?

Awake! with me—all I know and sense throughout my whole being is that within our embrace, our coupled embrace, that we are forever reborn as Beloveds. Yet, I do not know the why? of this moment, just the challenge set before us. My faithful and faith-filled Nicholas, journey with me so that we may remain forever in coupled presence and manifest to all the joy of being Beloveds!

Do you remember when we first met? Do remember that with me. Let our forever journey begin as through the remembering, you shall find me and I you, once again!

# PART 2: EARLY YEARS
# CHAPTER 5

Nick was like a shot arrow, still in flight, avoiding targets by choice, passing through others by chance. He wanted to hit his chosen target—to fly and pierce and hit the bull's-eye and so be at rest...have her in his arms!

She was his chosen target—lots of good looking women but he liked tall, long hair, and "A chick with a rack!" This gal had those in spades. Add: solid body, auburn hair with streaks of red that highlighted her poise—that's what drew him, though he wasn't conscious of it, she at five-eleven and poised, unruffled in this madhouse. At the ready, he thrust himself to full height, sought to be an imposing figure as he moved towards her with a whiskey shot of swagger in his walk—no one would doubt "imposing" as he was six-six, two-forty, ripped as hell. Ha. Like so many macho guys with tight jock straps, Nick thought he was on the hunt, never to realize that on the larger scale he was but Life seeking to survive, continue the species. Dummkopf! He simply didn't know that he'd soon become her target!

As Nick got closer he got more bug-eyed. Hubba-hubba! All the other women in the place faded from view. Not only tall, stacked...Holy Mother of God! Her legs were smooth ivory, encased in a creamy set of sheer thigh high stockings, drawing his eyes floating from her red high heels swimming upwards...gulping! as her ragged edged denim shorts wrapped so seductively around her tight waist and sweet grasp of ass...all flowing up and across a sleeveless bodice, pink silk, her long elegant neck celebrated by a pearl drop necklace and a dangling, tinkling pair of gold earrings whose sparkles shot fiery arrows into his heart.

Zonk!

Nick and Karen's first meeting happens in the late afternoon of one of those brawling college drinking melees which goes by the call of Beer Bust! Always with the exclamatory and always within someone's imagined italics, as if announcing the discovery of some great truth. The great truth was—and remains—that youth is wasted on the young! Like Nick learned today, here on a college visit—where no one was checking IDs, "Try to stay as drunk as long as you can, until graduation. Give it the old college try!" Each fraternity that approached him, touted their drinking reputation and social calendar. It seemed like the whole student body assembled each weekend to manifest through getting tipsy and then high and then dizzy and then falling-down-slobbering drunk that they were—What? What were they manifesting? He was just a tad too besotted to think, so he slugged down another gulp of beer as his answer!

In this intensifying state of inebriation Nick first meets Karen—she in her own state of stupor, not so much of smasho drunkenness but of trance...of being overwhelmed by the leering eyes, of shuddering from pawing hands, of being unable in this situation to be other than Temptress. No longer a mere woman, hardly, she became what these wild men wanted her to be—siren to the Sons of Bacchus! Fuck bait! is the sign she wore, naively unaware.

It was August 6th, the year 2000, a millennium moment and her birthday. She just this passing hour turned eighteen and he was not too far ahead, just by a few weeks. They were visiting San Diego State, in that part of the world which was a fascination to them both, Southern California.

Karen is Nick's target...her world is moving towards his arrow-tip.

"Think'en"...a long pause between words, although his mind is racing, "'bout coming here?" A question which sounded like he had it under control, sounded like that to himself. She knew that his slurry diction was forged in his hops-fueled fire. Like she's been doing all day, she smiles at him, nods a yes and turns away. Nick misses her don't bother me pivot, chattering with her girlfriends. He is undeterred, taps her on a shoulder...this cute girl, for he saw her as "Cute Girl" before he knew her name. She turns around, not smiling. Oh, it's going to be that stupid question! The inevitable one they all ask when they can think of nothing else to ask, a question ritually accompanied by a proffered bottle or a froth dripping Styrofoam cup, whatever— "Wanna drink?" She had been hearing it all day, and knew that it was the opening line for his advances...or attacks, which seemed the order of the day. Going from "Wanna...?" to a slobbering "Wanna kiss me?" to a heated "Wanna boogie, baby?" Meaning, fuck me?! But the last not as often as the first two.

This guy's a jock, Karen's sure, taller than most, an okay looker, but she's been hit on by more than one of these horny galoots this day. Artfully, she employs her practicel defense, "Sure, I'll have a beer." She sets down the one that she's been nursing all day, replaces it with his, never taking a second sip from any of the now dozen or so still near-full bottles on the table. She had been warned and heeded the warning about "One beer's just going to lead to the next!" Wisely, she holds onto the bottle, not drinking, just holding. After all State was a legendary Party School.

Karen motions to her girlfriends that she's ready to leave. Just a minute, she mimes, let me get rid of this guy. Nick being "this guy"—just one among several dozen boors she's tolerated all day. Over the course of which she summarily rejected them all...to her amazement it was like they were all just one guy. For as one disappeared, out from the shadows another soon loomed. A miracle of a thousand-egged birth? This image forces a laugh, then a giggle, for even the mere sips of beer she has taken have made her a bit light-headed and a tad light-hearted.

"Hey, what's so funny?" Irritated—booze-pissed irritation.

"Oh," patting him on his left cheek, "I'm not laughing at you. Sorry." Disarmed.

"Ya sure?"

"Sure. Of course, you're a sweetie," cleverly but with no affect, "now I have to go."

Why didn't she go? Run, bolt, flee all this over-the-top testosterone bash? What kept her there just that mere second longer? That nanosecond where their eyes met..locked! All of a sudden he's not just "this guy"—What? How can this be?—but someone she knows she should get to know. For him, he was instantly lost in her green eyes. He'd later swear that he was hypnotized...her eyes exploring his body and soul as if conducting an alien abduction. Emerald eyes!

"I have to go..." her friends are walking away, "have to..." but didn't.

Nick heard himself say, quite politely, almost soberly, "Okay. Have to eat. Wanna eat?"

She smiles, sweet lips pursed, kissing him from afar. His heart goes thump! Nick's already smasho! in love.

So had they met. Later, both laughing a lot over dinner—it was California so they had to try Mexican food—genuine Mexican was a still a rarity back home. "A bit hot on the salsa! But hey, when in Rome...." Yet despite such trite allusions and tired jokes, like the frog who turned into a prince, that night he appeared, amazingly, to be quite mature and smart—confident and thoughtful. It was truly a magical evening for their young hearts. They shared the obligatory First Date stories, mostly light stuff, but the all time kicker was their stunned realization that they were both "From Minnesota? No. Really!" When Karen said, "Afton," he almost fell over. He blurts out, "Empire!" Ha. Empire? Quickly her mental mapping scans and locates, "Oh, Empire!"

He's just "down the road a bit"...that famous farmer joke, mere miles apart, a dozen or so to Hastings on the 95, out nine or more onto Highway 55, then South a few more on the 52.

"I bet we've friends in common!" Could it be? Then it got a bit weirder. "I'm at The Hall, you know, Cretin-Derham in St. Paul?" Karen gives him a weird look. In her own mind a whole lot of information just spewed forth—most impactful, He's Catholic! The momentary non-response from her has Nick on pause. "I'm at Visitation." Now it's Nick turn, She's Catholic! God is good! Why had he never seen her before? Rapidly through their minds flit a host of questions—Been to the same dances, passed each other at Homecoming or attended High Mass in the Cathedral during Holy Week?

"Catch any of the Fall Blasts?" These were a round of visits by Catholic school athletic teams, especially to the girls-only schools like Visitation, showcasing their sports prowess. Each high school year Nick became a bigger player on this stage, blowing away the little cuties as this year he could brag about being State basketball champions—and him MVP!

"Oh, those days." With those conveying all that a non-athletic, non-sports fanatic, highly intellectual young woman disdained! Karen wasn't much into sports—an only child, no brothers to admire or bug her. Nick, in sharp contrast, was all about sports from his earliest years. A student-athlete, on the Dean's List, and all that—really a jock's jock. He was recruited by The Hall when he was in seventh grade. It paid off, as he was annually a State Championship qualifier in three sports in Division Three—football of course, add basketball, and to the surprise of many given his size, tennis. As such, the jock card was one he knew how to play, had used it often, and was undeterred by Karen's lack of initial enthusiasm as he was confident that his mighty Herculean feats made him irresistible. Totally ignoring her lack of interest, he begins to brag about being a widely respected athlete of "High Potential"...with a rack of trophies and State Championship medals in football, basketball and tennis. "A triple threat! That's why I'm visiting the WAC. It's a home for wiry wide-receivers like me." To impress her even more he stretches out his lanky arms. "Wing span of a bald eagle in flight!" This frightens her a bit as he flaps his over-sized arms and then flashes open his hands in front of her face—hands which palm basketballs as if they were volleyballs! Gasp! She gasps audibly. "I can palm a basketball in each hand!"

Karen flinches and falls-back just a tad, defensively responding yet awed by the sheer physicality of his presence...but as equally unimpressed by his jabbering about all his over-charged testosterone achievements. She smiles and sighs. Places three of her shiny lilac nails, tapping up and down, on his right hand. Her smile is a Thank you. Her tapping, a Can we move on?

"What's your major going to be?"

Nick didn't answer, not that he didn't have one, General Studies, but he was temporarily immobilized by the hard-to-believe fact that she had not heard about him! From Afton—How could she have not known? "They call me, The Emperor? You must've heard..?" It bruised his jock ego more than a bit that she went blank on this.

But this opening night wasn't really about sports or even academics, thankfully, it was about how the world stopped as two young lovers first met...locked eyes, so seeing into their hearts. It was about how their shared laughter covered so much of the awkwardness of a first date. More, how the ease of just being together, being serious and humorous, was their bond.

"A wide-receiver, right?"

He nods.

"Really good with your hands?" she teases.

Sprung! Nick never recovered. Karen had hit her target right through the bulls-eye.

"Great meal, huh?"

"Super!"

# CHAPTER 6

Minnesota. Back in the North Country, before Nick brought Karen home to a family dinner, he described her as "cute...really smart...vivacious—I mean really, really smart." No fool, he didn't speak of being flipped-out in love, and certainly not about how lusty she made him feel...never ever, not even to his best buddy, Kane. "Hell, don't want to turn him onto her!"

For Karen, bringing in a boyfriend, especially if she was going to hint that this "Could lead to a serious relationship," well, walking on eggshells was the only available tactic. When it came to guys and dating, her father was...honestly, simply a pain in the ass! His warning became a well-worn mantra, "A real man will respect you. A wild boy will just break your heart." He wasn't an overly religious man...although a practicing Catholic, but doing the minimums. He stayed with the Church because of the rise of the conservative Popes who put a stop to all that "Radical social justice Marxism!" that had corrupted the Faith back in the "nutty, hippie Sixties." At its base, his morality was more influenced by his fear of loss—he ran several successful car dealerships out of St. Paul which, though prosperous, heightened his almost neurotic fear of losing market share...now here his daughter. No surprise, then, that he was over-protective since Karen was his only child—little girl! As expected, he went ballistic the day she told him about her plan to fly out for a college visit to San Diego State. Dad, you're so predictable!

"California!"

She waited for him to rhyme it with Fornication!

He blustered, "Cali-forni-ca-tion!" A butchered word, but it carried his message.

Even though it was only for a long weekend, he sensed great peril in that it was to be an non-chaperoned visit. At least by her father's standards...in reality, several school counselors were going along as mentors and monitors. "Today's progressive teachers—just like the hippies!—not being Guardians of Morality! All that free love crap! Listen, Watch out! Free Sex isn't free! You'll pay the price, later."

Guardian of her morality as he was, her father would begrudingly tolerate the visit, confident that he'd eventually persuade her to go to the University of Minnesota. "Just a half-hour's drive. You can do your wash here on weekends!"

In light of all this, Karen knew beyond certain that her Dad would hate Nick. "Wow, he'll condemn him simply because I met him out there. Can't imagine what he'll think if we both go back!" This said to her mother, Sweet Mom, her refuge, the one who suffered dad's railings against "Liberals, progressives, and all those DFL idiots!" Also, she braved his spousal over protectiveness. "You're the ruler of the house—that's your realm!" Before they married, she had been a dental hygienist, but gave that up as he crowned her "Queen Bee!" Nevertheless, truth be told again, Sweet Mother was a major reason Karen had selected San Diego. As she computed the land miles and the adjustment of two time zones, going out to far-away southwest San Diego seemed more and more the right choice.

With their folks way down on their To Do list, Nick and Karen are back in the Northland, but dating while ducking under parental radar. On that special morning when she wakes and can shout, It's Friday! she is especially happy because Friday has become their dating night...the whole weekend is covertly theirs. Karen rolls to her left and slides open her nightstand's top draw and lifts out her secreted picture of Nick. She smiles and coos his name, "Nicholas X. Niegsch," sending it Morse-code up her arm, amusing her, again, as at the first time she heard him say it, had him repeat it, tell her again about the "X." "What's that for?" His smart aleck remark ever amuses her, "X marks the spot, right? It's where you belong."

One month home, Karen knew that the day has come! to tell her parents about her new beau. Mom was easy, but her dad. Hmmm. Right off the bat she threw out, "He's a star athlete from Empire...ummm, they call him The Emperor..." but before she could expand, her dad beamed. "I've read about him. How'd you meet a super guy like that?" Cripes, Sports! As disconnected from sports as Karen was, so was her father a fanatic—high school, college, and pro sports; all year round. I've should've known!

"When can we meet him?" threw her whole cautious tactical plan off the mark.

"Umm, sure, I'll ask him. Maybe next Sunday. Dinner?"

Dad beams. Mom smiles, sweetly.

Later, when it's just she and her Mom, "Mom?"

Knowing it not so much a question as a searching for how to ask the question, "Mom, what was it like when you were pregnant?"

Sweet Mom: "I was invisible." Not a moment's pause.

Shock: What?

Curiously, her mother delivered that line like a swift reflex swatting away of mosquitoes. Then, without wondering why her daughter asked, she just walks into the other room.

As has been their way on these Fridays, Karen meets Nick at Sofio's—Afton's local pizza hangout. They sit, eat, chat...comfortably together. They talk about the little things...tests, other kids' relationships, how they should find a good Sushi restaurant. "Gotta try that, before we go!" Then about bigger things—all the details of planning to go to State.

A slice half-way into her mouth, "Oh, my folks want to meet you!"

Nick chokes on his, almost spits it out! Even that shock was miniscule in comparison to what was happening inside them. Transformation.

They are breathless together.

I want to kiss you all over! Hot passion melting a universe of a creamy sundae.

I want to love you forever! Desire hungering, stirring the cauldron of magic sight.

Two young kids becoming two young lovers, eager to become magical virgins...preparing for their first intimate night together.

# CHAPTER 7

Magical Virgins. Actually, the name of the top Vid-Rock group of 2000. A name that self-consciously—more than a bit tongue in cheek—branded Nick and Karen's generation. This phrase was apt only because they were also the digital caveman generation. It was a widespread peer joke that they grew up with first generation consumer electronics but which devices now appear antediluvian in comparison to the current state of their hand-held devices, globally linked in the Internet world. It was also a given that theirs was also the pornographic generation—what else drove the Internet? They and their peers had been, since pre-pubescent years, tempted by, seen, misunderstood, and tried to imitate sexual practices that once were only known to anthropological specialists who studied cultural deviancy.

While Nick and Karen's Catholic parents went to great lengths to control "This decay and rot!"...their generational attitude towards sexuality was best summed up as "sexual athleticism." This was a positive accolade sought by those young men and women who also valued hedonism as both a healthy lifestyle and the ultimate reward for besting others in the race for economic success. Anyone over nine years old who claimed to be a sexual virgin was ridiculed and considered a bold faced liar. Masturbation at the least, oral sex on the average, and even some experimentation with intercourse—notably, ejaculating outside the body whether hetero or homosexual—was their generational pre-teen "normal." Since their parents and parents of close friends were ever-watchful, for Karen and Nick's crowd most of this, other than masturbation, didn't apply until they were eighteen—legal!

Since pre-marital sex was so much a non-issue, their generational attitude towards virginity required a new definition and interpretation. Virginity still cast a romantic aura, conveying a sense of being a first act and one that gave permission to go places and do things that no one before had received or done. The emerging work-around notion, as summed up in the phrase "Magical Virgins," was that one could become such if they abstained from sexual activity in all forms for ninety-days prior to making a commitment, either to a "serious relationship," or "living together," or " getting married." If achieved at the threshold of any of these phases of personal commitment—Ta da!—you were a magical virgin and able to claim that your {serious, living or wedding} night was a "first." It was possible then to become, more than once, a "virtual magical virgin"—which virtuality was as real as real could be to these scions of the cyber-space-age. Obviously, those not of the digital caveman generation—which meant just about anyone over thirty!—found this notion and these practices somewhat incomprehensible.

In this light, Karen and Nick, dating on the down-low now for near seven weeks, are on the verge of asking, "Should we become magical virgins?" Graduation was in a few weeks, so all joking aside, since they are a virgin couple at this point and since they will be moving out to San Diego..."Living together?"—it was time to discuss this. Yet, despite the sexual saturation of the times, between a guy and a gal, a man and a woman, and those about to make a serious personal commitment to another, the "How special am I?" question is inevitably asked. Like two freight trains hurtling towards one another on the same track—the bombshell topic is placed on the table, "Have you ever been a virtual magical virgin—before?"

As this intentional and intense conversation loomed, Nick and Karen admitted to themselves— alone, not to one another—that they were not looking forward to the "body count." This phrase also being bandied about with gusto but normally fueled by testosterone and macho drunkenness. Slurred challenge, "Betcha my body counts higher than yours!" Of course, no one could verify anyone's claim so the customary response was a dismissive put-down, "Bull shit!" This accompanied, mostly among guys, about sizes of penises and other physical abnormalities.

Since Roman Catholicism in their small home towns—Afton and Empire each struggling being a bit over and a bit below 2,000 inhabitants—still held sway, and given the strength of the several purity movements championed by their parishes—ones that focused on corralling youthful excesses, especially sexual—neither Karen nor Nick had much arithmetic to do. But in this situation as in most that directly impact the emotional character of an intimate relationship, quantity was always trumped by quality.

Friday. They meet at Sofio's...in the one corner booth that does provide some privacy. The old-fashion jukebox keeps a rolling hum as platters are spun...effecting a positive white-noise buffer that helped isolate them.

Karen, "I don't care about how many. After one, what's the difference?"

From her side, she wasn't accusing Nick of being wild or promiscuous or decadent, just that she knew her generational peers and she knew that Nick was not going to say, "Honestly, sweetheart, you are the first one." She would have had a heart-attack, but died with an ecstatic smile.

Nick, "There was one. Maybe one and a half." Her swift reaction was a frowned What?

"What do you mean by that...a half?"

"Are you...are we talking about, ya know, leaving a present inside...or do outside donations count?" Another, a bit longer frown. Puzzlement and a growing tension; anger.

Karen slips out of the booth, not to leave, just to walk around. Where else to go but the safety of the Ladies Room?

Left behind, Nick's toying with a slice, nibbling on cold pepperoni and sticky cheese, Why are you doing this? Is this the right time? Is she ready? Are you ready?

In a flit of time, Karen's back, composed, and intent on getting this over. So fewer questions and more direct judgments.

"I really didn't think you were like that! I thought you were a more sensitive guy." Disappointment. Peeved.

"I'm not really. I mean I am...sensitive. I just...You are." Hands melting like wax. Sensitive to what?

"Look, I don't give a damn about all the little stuff, not even blow-jobs," he froze a moment, they had not yet talked about oral sex, "or, or... some presents being left wherever. I just presume, oh god! that you're not stupid and had protection?" Just a breath's pause, "Don't, don't tell me...I really don't want to know."

Where's all this going? Do I get a turn? Whose been up your skirt, little girl? Ha.

Nasty —unlike anything he's heard from her. "Did you keep score...Emperor?!"

He's sharply stung. A coded Why you little bitch, I should...! comes out as a bitter "Maybe I shouldn't have told you?!"

"Hmpf!" Almost unsounded.

Nick felt himself being screwed to the ground.

This was their first plunge into the dark side of loving.

"Did you like them!? I mean, Miss One-Half! Are you crazy?"

Cat's claw slashing across his lecherous face.

With his own biting lip fury, a tone of I've had enough of this bullshit!—he pleads, "I'm a decent guy." Pause. "I'm a decent guy," this time with sincerity and exposing an innocence Nick was unaware still lingered within him. "Karen, sweetheart, are numbers really important? Hey, hey, look I can honestly say I never took more than I gave!" Earnest, but shaky.

"Really?!" She toys with a straw.

"Yeah."

"All?"

"Do you want me to say, I hate them all? Okay. I hate them all. It was just sex. Satisfied?"

There are no more slices of pizza. Fiery anger and rage needed fuel. They had said no several times to the waitress, so she had abandoned their station.

Why do lovers have to hear the names? "The first time was with...!"

"Maybe our parents were right. Who knows? I'm not sure they've told us the truth about their own times, but..." Nick's hanging on her words..." but we need to at least try to act like adults. Jesus, help us, what does that mean? I mean, okay, let's just do this and get it over with."

Nick is like the proverbial moth at the flame, fascinated but sensing death.

"Just one. We each give one name...then that's that. Okay." He considered a Let's shake on that! but of course she was in no mood for levity.

"Kathy Johanson. You don't know her."

"Mickey O'Rourke. He's at Saint John's now." Does he know him?

Even this, this shortest litany of names undoes them. It's quality, not quantity.

For both, there's just too much pain in talking about just sex vs. true love.

Is it that lovers need pain?

Is pain the blade they use to scrape away and find their virginity again?

Is pain the magical instrument of this conjuration?

Karen is crying. Not just weeping. Nothing which evokes or provokes his sympathy. Crying in that real sense of being distant of heart. Being forlorn; abandoned. Something deeply and solely personal. Can't be shared. Alone.

Nick is hating. Seething hate. Not just dislike. He feels like every part of his body is being cleaved, hacked off, sliced, shattered, gored...each part hating the other.

Ah, the agony of being vulnerable with one's Magical Virgin True Love!

Why did you dare exist before I found you?

Why did you delight in daybreak before I stood beside you?

Why did you pleasure in your breathing before I could kiss you?

Why did you look at another?

Why did you kiss?

Why did you eat?

Why did you sleep?

Why did you play with the others?

Why didn't you wait?

Why?

Why did you dare exist before I found you?

Nick reaches across the table and draws her tears into himself.

His cuffs are laced with pizza sauce.

His legs ache from a deep inner coldness.

He hates himself...for being who Nick has been!

Karen looks at this boy, this handsome dark-haired boy—his soft eyes!—this crazy boy...looks at this suffering soul—The boy who would be her emperor! She is startled how this looking is welding them together—a look into the hating they share...hating all that is not them, has not been them...will not be them.

Aching.

Sitting in Sofio's —heart-aching.

This unfamiliar pang of hungering to be so close that they are inside one another...whew! it draws them even closer to and desirous of feasting.

Final Act: No more blood on the floor! Both know that they are now ready!

Ready to become Magical Virgins.

# CHAPTER 8

"Mr. McElroy." They shook hands.

Nick noted that it was a firm and a welcoming grip. Karen had told him, "He knows about The Emperor!" She tittered. Nick banged like King Kong on his chest!

Shook hands, said, "Glad you could make it, son." Son said in that way a man who has no sons says it to another's son whom he likes; not fatherly, more like an uncle. They immediately sat down for dinner. Right away. No chit-chat. No, "Want a beer?" type trap. Whew! Nick heaves an inner sigh of relief; this wasn't going to be the Inquisition as Karen feared.

"What about college?"

Had she told him nothing?

"Have a couple options." Passes the potatoes and softly smiles at her mom.

"Thinking 'bout St. John's." No response. "Also, Carleton."

The Look—her father gives him "The Look." The Look plus the finger-tapping on the table, "Now, that's a fine school."

Didn't have to say, "The Harvard of the Midwest," something Nick has heard just once too often of late...something too much self-absorbed for his liking. What he couldn't tell was that her father was calculating the mileage. Northfield was close to home, so if he stays here...Young love and all that!...his daughter would stay nearby. Go to the U. Leave those weird Californie heathens alone!

"Also, maybe, who knows, I've got some time...well, a bit." He steals a glance and slips a quizzical help me! smile towards Karen.

"My daughter," Dad proudly announced as if Nick didn't know, "is going to be the world's greatest archaeologist!" Mom brightly smiles. "Don't know why, actually...why, again honey, what are you actually studying? Hmm, let's see...where was that you went last summer? Ana...Ana...?"

"Anasazi."

Dad's face is a bit contorted, "I really don't understand what fascinates you about...about strange cultures."

With a tone of We've discussed this...how many times?...at least a dozen, Karen repeats her justification. "We learn more about how to keep our own culture healthy and intact by understanding those that have collapsed. The Anasazi, the Azetc, the Mayan...that's what I want to study." This time she adds, "Besides, there's no winter in San Diego—there's the beach!" The unspoken but clearly heard message in her exclamatory "!" was—And I'm going there. Don't try and deter me anymore, dad!"

Mom gives dad that Stop! No more on this! furrowed brow message.

Tacking a new tack, Karen's starts to chatter about her family's long genealogical line, over 150 years in the Midwest! Nick's talking about how his German forbearers got to Minnesota. Then, this is matched by her dad's tale of the ocean-crossing and wagon-trekking journey of the McElroy's from the Old Sod. All in all the dinner's going well, dessert is brought out, and Nick's thinking that he's about to score a touchdown...oops!...when he fumbles on the one yard line.

"What do you know about San Diego State?" A question directed to her father.

"Why?" uttered with a tone of Why in God's name would we be talking about that place?

"Look," Nick eyes Karen, hoping that she'll kick the point after touchdown, "Look, I haven't told anyone. Not even Karen. I received an offer of a full football scholarship...there's good reason to think I can even start next year." With no immediate response forthcoming, he rushes a, "Very few freshman start at State, I mean..." Then he knew he had screwed up!

Last effort to dive over into the end zone, "I'm leaving next weekend."

It didn't work! Left at the half-yard line. There was no roar from the crowd, no arms raised by the referees. Just silent moans of disappointed fans.

A heavy silence falls upon the room...it leaves Nick feeling as if her father has a strangle hold around his neck!

Finally her dad says, actually, announces, "I see, fine, let's all say Congratulations!" And as is polite, they all lift up their water glasses and toast Nick. "To Nick and great success at San Diego State!" Why did it sound like the Judge had just give him the death penalty? Even the water, its burns like acid running down his throat. He puts down his glass and furtively half-glances over at Karen, half at her dad.

Before Karen can say a word, her Mom pipes up, all sweetness, "Guess you two will be writing long-distance, then?"

Mom smiles at Nick. Lays a consoling hand upon Karen's right arm.

As if matters couldn't get any worse, Nick boots the ball once again. "Yes, Sir, Mrs. McElroy. Love Letters in the Sand!" Aaarrrggghhhh! As soon as it pops out of his mouth, so does all, everything collapse and fall apart!

Oh, how Nick stammers to suck it back in! Her father clearly knows the Golden-Oldie tune..."Writing love letters in the sand!"...but is as clearly not amused by the tune's quite obvious sexual innuendo. More than a bit freaked inside his brain, Nick goes robotic—fingers and hands and arms still working, for attacking the slice of pecan pie, mouth swallowing a bite, but no one had to translate for Nick. "The Man" was not going to let Nick...A wild Californian! Probably free sex maniac!...into his world. Certainly not into his daughter's arms.

All said, pies and cake slices consumed, there really wasn't much more he could do to save the day.

As soon as the table is cleared, Nick realizes that they are waiting for him to leave.

Karen wants to throw him a life-saver, but she's at a loss, also. Just walks him to the front door.

"Good luck, Nick." Simply said, with an air of dismissal.

"Nice meeting you, sir," no handshake. "Dinner was great Mrs. McElroy." He knew he wasn't supposed to, actually couldn't, say other than, "Let's keep in touch," to Karen.

Oh, criminy! Karen's not buying the deal...she lets her parents know, says warmly, "Let me walk you to the car."

Both know that dad is watching. Provocatively, Karen laces her right hand with Nick's left as they walk out and down the path to the curb. She makes sure that the pace is very slow—halfway there she twirls and steps right in front of him, causing him to almost bulldoze her over, but he catches himself and her in his arms. She smiles and says, seductively, "Kiss me."

He pecks her lips. Guilt weighing him down. "Christ Almighty, I really blew that!" he whispers to her. She titters while pulling him even closer and, on tip toes, melts into a true kiss...deep and long, one that says to all who are watching, I love you!

Nick, for a moment, forgets that he is being monitored, lifts Karen up off her feet and gently swings her around, then, plunks her down. He's really bewildered. She giggles; tee hee. It sets him off...they're both laughing, silly chuckles, arm in arm until they reach the car...she opens the door for him. .

Karen knows that her dad is blustering and spewing frustration to her mom. "She's your daughter. Good Lord knows, I told you. Nothing good comes...or goes...to hippie California!"

Karen, leaning in through the rolled down driver side window, half-whispers, "Look, he doesn't know. But I'm going to tell him, tonight. Right now!"

Nick is beyond happy. He's zoned and conked on Karen—Sweet of heart! My darling Sweetheart!

The ensuing week flies by and on the next weekend they are at his farewell dinner with his folks—it's a totally different moment.

"Give me a hug, girl!" His dad, not as tall as Nick but stockier—maybe six-one, but barrel-chested—was a big hugger...liked to lift and sweep people off their feet in a strapping, swaying grizzly bear hug.

Mom liked this lovely young woman, right off. She knew how "boys and girls are today!" so within minutes she just knew that she really wanted Karen to be with her boy. "I mean your highness. Emperor!" She giggled like a teenager when she teased him, but Karen got the message. These women were both happy to share the love of this..."Hunk! Say it, I don't mind. I'm his mom. Hell, without the tall genes from the Schneider side, he wouldn't be such an strapping hulk! Ha, ha. You should see my brothers, his uncles!" Mom was a tad shorter than Dad, much to his relief, but he was the shrimp boat! among her clan, much to his dismay.

Nick's dad had no fear of California. Actually, envied his son what he fancied he himself would be doing if he were a young buck, today. "Look at all the money you can save, living in bikinis all the time!" A totally off-the-wall remark from this Teuton with thick glasses and thicker hands who was always heavy on the thunder...he boomed even when he whispered—an old Niegsch family joke!

Dad was on a roll, "They live a wild naked life down there in Sin Diego...but my son will protect you!" Ah! The bequeathal from one patriarchal generation to the next, man to man—a Knight-Warrior shielding the Fair Maiden from the Dragons!

As much as Karen's parents slammed the lid on knowing Nick and dealing with the realities of going to San Diego, happily, in a 180 degree pivot, Nick's parents probed and explored.

"Archaeology?"

His father stopped from saying, "Damn, that's a big word for such a Little Lady." Dad could be like that, an embarrassing rendition of John Wayne's worse lines.

Mom cuts and serves the lemon meringue pie, Karen's favorite. ("Make sure you tell me what her favorite pie is!" Thick crusted and sweet pies were a Niegsch family favorite. Karen's favorite, but when on her own she had to get out her rarely used Joy of Cooking.) She beams a motherly moon-ray as she offers the plate to Karen. Nick gets it—These two like each other! Alright.

"Yes, that's right, archaeology. It's been a thing of mine ever since I saw my first Learning Channel episode about this dig in the Southwest, up in northern Arizona...the Anasazi and people like that...just fascinated me ever since. My dad knew this Sioux Chief, something to do with his buying property near the Rosebud, but, anyway, I just looked into his face, "Mister Cloud Dancing," I remember that, I thought he was a clown dancing—it was like that, I just wanted to know more, his face, I mean, it was different, so different, that's why I got into these summer classes at the U during high school...last year we went to a real dig in Canyonlands National Park. Oh, I'm running on! I'm sorry. It's just that I get excited...."

Father mugs towards his son, "You need some of that excitement!" They soundlessly snort and imperceptibly grin.

"When do you plan to leave?" Meaning her; they know this is their son's launch date.

"Middle or so of August."

"Are you going to have her drop in on your big sister in Berkeley?"

"Of course. I plan on taking the train up so we can drive back together. I won't be in training that month. After all, wouldn't have Karen miss out on Margaret."

Mom, "Maybe your potential sister in law?"

"Okay, whoa! Mom. Stop there." Nick holds up his hands like a Traffic Cop...face flushing slightly red. Everyone, even Nick, roundly laughs at that.

Time to leave. Mom and dad hug Karen. They four-arm hug Nick, "You big galoot, take care of yourself."

As Nick and Karen drive away, neither has second thoughts about what's next. They drive for awhile, then pull into a Holiday Inn Express.

Without even discussing it—the Magical Virgin formula: he's leaving, just over ninety-days until they're together in Berkeley, so by then they can start anew—virtually...both knowing that they had to do it! at least once—a magical banner flew across the lovers' sky, "At Least Once!"...so that they could look at each other and say, "This is what we were are...Lovers." Shazam! They spent the night making love.

Sexual athleticism 101: They kissed and petted and hugged and rolled and peeled themselves naked in bed—one-hundred-percent naked and comfortably lounging. He came into her and she received him—it was how it was supposed to be with young lovers...endless copulation, all clinging and rutting, all heat of passion and the explosion of lust.

# CHAPTER 9

Karen walks through the next day—the day Nick is leaving her—in a heightened sense of awareness...that type of altered state brought on by excess...here, an overdose of high octane passion that has so sapped her body and mind that she is barely conscious of just "strolling through the day"...not ever considering trying to sleep; reliving their "first time, together."

In like manner, on board his flight, Nick settles into his seat and immediately slips into a deep slumber. If an attending physician were at hand and heard about Nick's night, he would have marveled at how the young man had managed to stay awake long enough to get on the plane. Nick was by every turn of the phrase pussy whipped—blitzed in a lingering ecstasy. While he had had a prior "first" in terms of a lay or a fuck or a "came inside her," hell, now he remembers all that like he does a well shot three pointer that missed the basket...great form and all that but no score. Last night, I scored!

Each one recalls the night, she mulling over in daydream, he in snoring dreamland...when he and Karen entered the motel room it was like a hundred re-runs of the Sea of Love or a thousand other Hollywood rip-offs where the guy is tearing the woman's garments to shreds as she half-jumps and snares him in a leg lock around his waist and they kiss and kiss in the most delirious way to finally end up in bed like two wrestlers, but totally naked, with him pumping her long and hard as any oil wildcat crazy would do on a Texas oil rig. In time, Gush! like the pent-up fossil fuel, sperm shoots all about, crazily, randomly, at this moment insanely not held in check by a condom.

For each of them, what they had described to one another as their previous "first time" just pales in comparison to this night, actually shrinks to cognitive insignificance as what they, back then, thought had been lust or love or passion is now diminished and dismissed as mere dust swirls and rain drops in a parched desert blaze—all just "Piff!"—indicating the amount of time their prior first took to begin and end, as well as its level of passion. Without argument, nothing previously experienced had prepared them for this Magical Virgin first night, together.

As was anticipated, the first coupling came as a carom rebound off the wall with clothes being shed and shredded and hands and tongues as if in battle, thrusting and parrying...such crazed desire each for the other that she was as wet as the ocean and he as hard as titanium and they locked upon the bed in the embrace of two who were surrendering the conscious world for that of the no-think no-feel no-nothing dive into one another, barely able to breathe, each sucking and pawing and clawing and clenching and grappling onto the other that their bodies actually exchanged bones and organs...she became him as he became her...they cared not to think that there was other but us in love, one, united, coupled, totally zonked.

Whew! Spoken and unspoken. Lying next to one another. Aware that the cosmos just shifted but in a way which was not a knowing as much as a feeling. She as no longer Karen. He as no longer Nick. What have we done? This question went unvoiced and unanswered while they laid there just next to one another, bodies heated to a level that could melt wax, but they lie hand in hand, each staring up at the non-descript ceiling tiles as if they were peering out into the heart of the cosmos...for each the ceiling was a sky riddled with pulsating stars. Whew!

As Nick slumbers and Karen wistfully sighs...each relives their second, third and fourth embrace. Each one was slower, more conscious, more sensual, more probing. On the second go-round he was hypersensitive to being a cock. Likewise, to her being a cunt. He was moved by her taking him into her mouth and spending seemingly endless time sucking him, licking him, stroking him—he having a deep oozing orgasm...how to describe the sensation but as within?... a within that he had never known was possible for a guy...eventually sperm hopped-skipped-dribbled out but that was merely a signal of the end, his penis then retreating to a cove of safety and seclusion.

Then he spread her legs and knelt to kiss her endlessly around her pubis...lips dancing lightly up and down her inner thighs...with clear awareness he imagines and plays his tongue like a sail sweeping across her ocean of flesh...caresses her belly, dips into her belly-button, then down to her muff, again...there where he begins to lose his mind, quite alert to the danger that he is near to slipping over an edge of sanity, because when he sets his lips and his tongue loose onto her delta it is as if he is talking—truly it becomes a conversation, a communal moment...he is sucking her into him and rolling his tongue around her clitoris not simply to arouse her, to fire her up, to drive her fucking crazy—which he is doing—but to expose his heart, to allow her entrance into him through his mouth and his tongue and his face that seek to peer up into and through her. As this reverent embrace ends, for the next half-an-hour he simply rests upon her, mouth to mouth, inactive as to physical motion but in communion...in rapturous eye meditation.

On the third and fourth embrace, it was as if he had surrendered. As if he had shed all his armor, all his violences, all his testosterone thrust and parries, all that he had ever known was himself as a male...then came unto her in true adoration. These were the awed moments wherein he worshipped her—found within the gaze of her emerald eyes that magical enchantment that made him whole. Truly, all that happens is unexplainable and unknown in their to their Catholic, even Magical Virgin, world. In ways still subliminal and unknown to him, he transformed into a primal male whose power and heart grew majestic as he surrendered all that was sexual-athletic-male and offered himself to her as her female lover. For, he came upon her not as thrusting but as receiving. There was the calisthenic shift of her on top and he on bottom...but that was simply metaphor. They soon marvelously experienced—as they rocked back and forth, she controlling the stick-drive!—that his cock was her cock and her cunt his own pussy. His breast swelled with virgin milk as she licked his nipples and sucked him in a way that was totally exotic and so both startled and awed them both. She came upon his cock not to have it penetrate her but she to enfold it, embrace it, so accept it that it became hers...it was she riding him, fucking him, penetrating him...until his mind lost consciousness as the sensually potent term orgasm became trivial as his passion swelled to his being born anew—within her...they emerging, transforming, rocketing into a coupled presence that blew their minds, overloaded their ecstasy circuits...made them present as an Other, as a thirdness...a novel human presence so robust, so crazed, so magical that all they could sense was that they were divine in that they were Life, itself. Whew!

Nick remained plunged into a deep slumber as the plane rose from Minneapolis and landed in San Diego.

In Afton, later that day, Karen reflects upon the telling fact that matters of pregnancy had not been on their minds—odd but telling, given the maniacal obsession of all their teachers—priests and nuns, every Catholic teacher—had about contraception and abortion. She sighs—Mortal sin! flits by...she swipes at it like at a gnat. Without assessing her feelings, she simply realizes that she was ready—Life itself had spoken to her and to him. Karen was ready. Nick was ready. Any considerations which would approach topics labeled as moral or spiritual or ethical or even sane were jettisoned. She was ready to be taken, she was more than ready to receive. When he came into her, his penile tongue wildly praising her in every aspect of her being, so she was herself crazed to suck him in, embowel him, stuff and cram him inside her. To say that passion, red hot molten lava lust drove them, truth be told, chuckle-chuckle, they were beyond insanely fucking.

When Karen, near two years now, had first been poked, it was like what her girlfriends had told her to expect. "Just bear the pain. In time you'll loosen up and it won't be so bad." But it had been bad from start to finish. She had never been Delta Dawn or any other such male fantasy...not knowing how to be sexy on demand...just there incredibly happy to have him within her, though dry as hell...it all hurt, but she had not complained. So the oceanic wave that rippled through her and upon which she rode in communion with Nick was a surprise both welcoming and most welcomed—Nick embraced and was inside her in a sensation like nothing she had ever experienced...as if all of a sudden he just appeared there, somewhat magically inside her. To say that she felt pleasured was not to grasp the magnitude of the moment. She was at once frightened by this mass of muscle and roar and fiercely piercing eyes that seem to dive at her like a predatory bird and oh the simple fear of suffocation as his spectacularly athletic body rose up upon her like fog on an early winter's morn.... Mother, have mercy! The word mother came to her not simply as supplication but as identification. She was loving this boy but surrendering to him so that he would not fear to enter further into her...into her snare, there where she cloaked him with that feminine energy that draws the male into the female so that she may be faithful to life, itself, as she creates children—this Nicholas her first child.

Karen's only concern...not a worrying concern, more a curious concern...was whether he had seen it or not—the small tattoo nestled in the small of her back at the top of her buttocks. If he had, What does he think? Does it speak to him...about me?

Tattoo—this the gift given to her by a local shaman who had walked in one day to their dig at the Anasazi site in Canyonlands. The shaman came, so one of the locals informed her, to "Walk with you." For uncounted hours, they shared a dreamtime walk-about, a journey into the sky...a full day's journey where sacred peyote guided them. Karen was just in her junior year but as she had prepared for the trip she told herself that this was the time to do something that felt courageous, bold—wild! Do something that no one in her family, more, no one she knew anywhere would do—be radical! Nevertheless, she had no way of anticipating the coming of a shaman. While this happened just once...Needed it to happen more times?...she was gifted with mystical memory through this image of the serpentine ouroboros, quite miniscule but adeptly applied. Most wondrously, the shaman was a women...sisters!

90 days—As Nick lands in San Diego, his whole frame of mind and spirit shifts dramatically. "Division One Football!" came to obsess and possess him. The intensity of the pre-season practices sapped all his mental and emotional energy. Karen was with him but, during these days, somewhere high up on the topmost tier of the arena...he could hardly see her or hear her. As for Karen, she went into hyper-drive upon returning to class...gave the Valedictorian speech at graduation, bought "California clothes"...picked up a handy few hundred dollars at her going away party. Nick was ever on her mind, yet they both had committed to the 90 day "cure"...wanting to become virtual Magical Virgins, once again. So, time...it all seemed not more than a wink and a blink and here it is, the late Summer of 2000. Karen, GPS talking to her all the way, drove out to meet him in Berkeley.

Three days later, up and down the Berkeley Hills—she sees him!...towering over the landscape, cell phone in hand, waving to her. Nick stood there with Margaret...as with his mom, when she hugged this unknown women the two felt their hearts bond—just like sisters!

# CHAPTER10

"Berkeley." Margaret says it without exclamation, no italics, nothing but a slight wash of her hand over the panoramic view. Here atop a promontory, somewhere in "The East Hills" as she calls them, serpentine windings— if that adjective ever had meaning to Karen so it did here in East Berkeley, endlessly winding up and down and in and out of treed streets, not forested, not the retreat of the North Woods, but a curious imitation. If anything in Berkeley imitates anything, so had the thought arisen...Nick shares it, comparing their pending trip down the West coast to his two summers back East, up and down that shoreline, farms and suburban tracts, a city condo, visiting relatives from Florida to Maine, all the way to Bangor and down to the Keys—a small clan these Niegsches, but close, as most times smallness breeds its own intensity...that desire to know yourself through others who are so like yourself.

"Berserkely, my dad always says," Karen jokes. Margaret smiles—wan and tolerant at that tired old tease. With no further comment they all pile into her fatigued '88 Suburban and head back to her grad student apartment. Fittingly, it's a retro-1960's Hippie themed, "Flower Power!" posted hovel. Just six years older, Nick's big sister obviously did not get many domestic genes. As is her taste, her place enables her to visually enjoy living in that fantasized Golden Age of Humankind's "Summer of Love, San Francisco, 1967."

Nick's tale of adventure told, Margaret starts to turn it from a tale into a history lesson. Big sister opening as younger brother ends, "There's an intellectual grounding to what you said, Nicky." He snickers, "Cute, sis!" Yet, he is used to his sibling's academic ramblings, somewhat enjoys them...being her intellectual kin, her style fully engages Karen—they share a liking for the sweep of grand thoughts and theories.

Margaret pours tea as they all inch...wiggle more like caterpillars, off and across their segment of the second-hand couch and stuffed chairs, pick up a cup and settle back.

"The coasts really tell the story of America, for good and bad. The East is a close-minded lot. The Puritans imagined what was only in the Good Book. The others, like the Quaker Penn and the Dutch and all those, they imagined what was only in the Counting House. Out here, West, people arrive here in Berkeley with all that baggage, all that East Coast stuff—the Atlantic Ocean's cold water and all that...then they see...err, not true, it's not automatic, maybe, huh, really, few really see...I mean, awake, Get it! You get me, right?" Sipping as she shares her insights. "Most remain tourists, East Coast tourists." She drifts off, is sidetracked by some distracting thought, ever slowly savoring her tea. Karen is about to say something when Margaret's starts in again...as if not missing a beat.

"San Diego is, is..." Margaret's consternation is evident. She's shopping around for just the right present, nothing else will do, so time was not the issue. "Alien." She smiles—pleased with her accuracy—turns towards them...lecturer now open for some Q and A!

Nick—a bit ragged and tired at the moment—was off re-running his last great catch made earlier this month as the pre-season workout ended. "Impressive!" The receiver coach nodded, truly impressed...then whacked him on the back. Whoopie!

Karen, however, was fully into Margaret's analysis; jumps in...words coming with a push of anxiety. "Alien? What do you mean? How's that? From Outer Space? What do you mean?"

Margaret sighs, knits her brow, scans the detritus left on the serving plates. Hungry bunch! laughs within. Responds, "I'm not sure. Hmm, that's the appropriate and fitting word—alien."

Then qualifies it, "Sometimes. Most times."

Karen was not satisfied. Nick had failed to fully inform her about his big sister's easily distracted style of chatting.

"She's always been the fringe one. Into religion, even thought about being a nun, but then rebelled. Or something. I don't think my parents even really know. Just that she came out here after high school. Had a job with some youth group, something to do with kids and drugs, anyways, my parents thought she was ready for the convent. But I don't think they know. I don't."

Alien.

It's like Margaret had read her mind. Had seen what Karen had not again seen since the day of the one beer.

Margaret: "West Coast means there is no End. Get my drift?"

Karen wants to plumb this line...so with perfect timing Nick says, "I'm gonna crash for a bit," and leaves.

Karen has Margaret one-on-one.

After a brief foray into the kitchen to boil more hot water, pick up some other eats, they both settle back down. Karen is eager to hear Margaret out.

"Like when you cross the Rockies, you can feel the Great Divide, like running your finger up your vagina," she doesn't pause to heed Karen's Whoa! What's that? look...treks onward, "up your vagina and something exciting happens, something stimulating, something you don't want to ever end"...a controlled voice but an intensifying tone, one echoing with hunger, "you don't want to ever end...and it doesn't, there is no Ending, just the ocean—a point of departure."

With a snap! Margaret is peering at Karen, pinning her to an invisible wall, holding her there, exploring. "A point of departure. Do you understand? The Puritans arrived. They were sent by their God, of course. But the East Coast was where they arrived. When you get here, you take off. Do you understand?"

Fearful of betraying what seemed a sisterly gift, this sharing of a heartfelt insight and vision, Karen fumbles a few errs! then surrenders in an semi-apologetic sigh, "Not quite."

Margaret immediately understands. She grasps Karen's hands in hers.

"When you come West, you realize there are no directions. No East and West, but just One-Way, the only way for humans, to keep journeying—moving towards the sunset which, in time, becomes a sunrise. Understand this, dear sister," and their eyes engage as Margaret whispers, "as there is no East, so there is no West...so there is no Male, so there is no Female." Margaret is beaming. If Karen were an artist she would paint a glow—not around her, not an aura, but within her. Margaret leans forward and kisses Karen on her left cheek, "The Moon and the Sun are One."

Margaret, intentionally or not, was blowing Karen's mind! Awake!

Karen's novice study of archaeology, "Under the auspices of a special project to identify young talent sponsored by the University of Minnesota and the Department of the Interior," had taken her into the confusions of interpretive anthropology. For as much as all such scholarly studies stated that there was a basic humanness to all cultures and societies—a fundamental Oneness—so did these same researches mark out a wide range of peculiar human and cultural differences...what Karen herself had classified—so amazed was she when Margaret used the word— as "The Alien Within."

Oh, my God. Yes! Karen had captured the Midwestern Honors medal for "Most Creative Research Project in Comparative Cultures," and a twenty-thousand dollar national scholarship. It guaranteed her ticket southwest to SDSU. Her winning interpretation had been that the Alien Within manifests itself when cultures clash. Those Native Americans who survived and integrated with their foreign European invaders were those who discovered and nurtured their Alien Within. Those who resisted, who remained externally Alien, they were exterminated with as little moral compunction as stamping out vermin. Her conclusion, which was not as convincing to herself as it apparently was to the judges, was that the health of the planet necessitated that the Alien Within be integrated or at least balanced, not exterminated. She chose San Diego State because, when she looked to the future in terms of creating a healthy global culture, she felt that America—as the prime mover of globalization— had an obligation to engage the many still lingering Aliens Within of the native cultures whose history and secrets still lived on in the hearts and spirits of the descendants of the Aztecs, Mayans, Olmecs, and other Mesoamerican cultures. It was an easy decision—where else to go but the center of such archaeological studies?

In this vein, how spooky this conversation! This somewhat accidental meeting with Margaret!

Was Nick just an attractor, a fish-hook so that Margaret and I could meet?

Karen doesn't like that thought. Margaret's words, strangely begin to disturb her...although she can't put her finger on why. Let's leave! She wants to—has to—leave Berkeley. It's all making her a mite berserk. But how to tell Nick?

"Time to go!" Like the Town Crier, Nick just walks in, on cue, and announces to all, "Gotta hit the road."

In a flash, they quickly pack up, thank Margaret, kiss and wave, drive off.

In point of fact, as planned, today was the end of their ten day visit. But somehow it seemed to Karen that Nick is responding to her deeply felt personal need—to travel south.

It is only when they reach Santa Cruz that the air changes. Karen was aware of it as clearly as if she had been too-long underwater and just-risen to the surface...feeling the Pacific Ocean's air as salvific—they stop in Carmel for gas and lunch.

Back on the road: "Quite a gal, my Big Sis, eh?"

Karen was pushing her seat back, making ready for a snooze...rolled slightly away from him, issuing a sighful, "Sure."

Nick was feeling good. He terribly liked his sister. Thought that she looked swell. Felt that she was really happy living in Berkeley. His only disappointment was in not meeting her boyfriend, who was back at Yale defending his doctoral dissertation. Nick was already looking forward to driving back up and seeing them both now and then. Although SDSU doesn't play Cal in sports, he'd get there. They do play UC-Davis, Fresno State, and Sacramento State...all close by.

Leaving the Bay Area they decide to drive down Highway One—through Carmel, Big Sur, San Simeon...as anticipated—Margaret, "That drive will just blow you away!"—it does profoundly amaze them. They soon stop saying, even thinking, Wow!—the word was simply too, too inadequate to express the alluring beauty of the shoreline...as it also failed to convey the sweet beauty they shared as they found more delight and charm, day after day, in one another.

It was also to be a memorable erotic holiday. It seemed that at every State Park, each city with the word Bay or Ocean in it—or lacking that they explored numerous coves and inlets—where they both physically...most vigorously cavorted in amorous delight!

Karen was just beginning to study Hindu mythology, so she tagged Highway One, "Kundalini Get-away!"

# CHAPTER 11

Just after visiting Hearst Castle, outside Morro Bay, after hours of great music—they liking a lot of the same stuff, even Classics and Oldies, but now road-wearying ...even the thump and wail of the hot "Magical Virgins" couldn't pump him up, right then...for no reason to his rational mind, he asks, "What do you think of Margaret?"

"She's different." The words came out very slowly, like the last of the toothpaste, pushed and pushed, giving meaning to the word extracted.

"Different?"

She knows he means, What do you mean by different? Wanting her to say "Different good, not different bad." They hadn't shared too many bad times, not yet...not too many disagreements, not yet.

"Different. You know. Like an original. Margaret's an original." It was a pure lie, but Nick bit the apple.

While the trip was a long conversation about so much, it mainly focused on their sharing, even exposing, the depth of their heartfelt love for one another. Their loving growing deeper into bold personal sharing about individual faults, heartbreaks, various painful moments of growing up....going deeper to park at the border of intimacy—then enter this new country and become "intimates."

Intimates. It's the why they sought to become virtual Magical Virgins, preparing themselves by renouncing themselves. Discarding all that they have done and been and once wished to be, so that they could, once again, ever again become true Sweet-Hearts—enter the magical realm of that enigmatic personal awareness of the other as "You are me. I am you." On this trip, Karen McElroy and Nicholas Niegsch awake! to one another as intimates.

Magical Virgins, such are Karen and Nick. Lovers, such they are. Intimates, such are they becoming.

In a tiny motel, just four rooms, outside Morro Bay, as they prepare to go to bed, he kneels down before her, "I really love you, Karen."

He let it hang there. Wanted it nailed to the air. Flap wildly like a rustling flag above their bed. This string of short words which he knew were his flesh and blood, his desire and his will.

She did not have to speak—she received. Her whole body heard. He watched the hearing. As she slipped off her jersey, as she unhitched her bra, as she slipped out of all remaining sheaths and shrouds and encumbrances, until she was before him in that most full word which only her presence is—Lover. "I am your Lover." No background music needed.

Virgins. Simply the purity of intent. The forced purgation of all that was once Past...willing this to be Now—that full Present where time is so sated that it cannot move; stands still.

Nick kisses her softly. He wanders his lips across her face. He brushes over and around and up and down her body with hands of wind, drawing her into the stuff of clouds...his eyes she steals, for it is her Eyes which are Magical, which takes their pledged Virginity—the purity of their desire, and spins it into a vision of loving...of being Lovers: walking, talking, holding hands, caressing, sharing the dance of a candle flickering, inhaling a common fragrance of joy and beauty.

Magical. Transference into another space, location, dimension. Knowing that by being together that they were never-more to be with their families. Not as they had been. Not as Nick and Karen. Oh, others would misunderstand them, announce that all was "much the same," but they knew better...actually, felt differently—naked.

Felt differently because named differently—named with the Heart as Lovers' name one another—with erotic breathings that draw flesh and desire as the map for the discovery of new selves, such are Magical Virgins...now celebrated as "Sweet of heart!" and "Sweetheart!" and "Dearest!"

In the moment when his eyes became her eyes, so she for the first time ever saw what her eyes—ever so ordinary and simply eyes to her!—these eyes saw what they vaguely perceived they could see but yet never could...the sighting beyond the barrier of her father's presence. Truly, Nick was the first male Karen ever saw as being just a guy, a man, male...she liked what she saw...it pleased her.

For Nick's eyes were adoring eyes, rapturous eyes. Ah, he snatches at her! Grasps her, lifts and slings her over his left shoulder. Prances around the room with her as warrior booty! Then, tosses her—Oh, ever so carefully is she thrown!—lofts her onto the bed and rising to full stature beats his chest and bellows an arcing, whooping, yell of a laugh which sounds out victory and discovery and joy and the surrender to madness!

"Sssshhhhh!" she is somewhat frantic, jabbing her finger—slender, blood-tipped, drawing his attention towards the wall—Are there spies in the next room? Nick grins and slaps his cheeks and pounces upon her...full body covering her like a tent collapsing.

It is this joyful sexual congress which initiates them as Magical Virgins. For it is the conjuring of their comfortableness. Without that, it would be the genital fuck they both no longer simply wanted "Let's make love!" to mean.

Karen had, like most her age, learned to deal with the bandit rapes of the every day. Just walking to the school bus at age ten she sensed the lecherous eyes creep all over her and the astral cocks jacking lustful pellets of sperm at her—they wanted her to die, this she knew in a vague but threatening way...so, like her gendered kin, she sat only with the girls...all giggled at what they didn't want to admit they almost knew...barely fathomed.

This was a learning which was near-conscious. In not a much longer time it became quite conscious. Hearing from others the crafty traps: borrowed cars, Seniors!, drugged drinks, the magic wand of marijuana, and other like luring, seducing devices. When necessary, Karen adopted the appropriate defenses of dress and speech and safe locations, safe havens. That's why when she visited San Diego State, she had taken only one beer.

The one beer which Nick had not pushed on to two or three, or in anyway used to trick her.

Aha, here, it is Karen as seducer. Simply as he is lured to her by her sparkling green eyes.

"When you look at me like that...."

"Like what?"

Words fail him as his heart kicks in a gear to thump!

"Ssssh!" as she caresses his unshaven chin.

"Like this!" He dopes a silly lip-puckered smile.

"Not like that!" she lightly slaps his face.

With a playful shove, she escapes...rolls off the bed.

He props himself up on his left elbow and looks at her, like an audience member watching the speaker ascend to the podium.

"Like this!" She cups and lifts her ample breasts: firm breasts of youth, smooth of milky skin, with a line plump but achingly sensuous, of alabaster elegance with a moon-glow allure...stands there, tantalizing, "When you touch me, pet me...when you suck me, I can see your soul." Not preaching, not indicting, not even discovery—more, an invitation.

Nick's enchanted, more than bewildered face makes him look a bit loony!

Karen titters: "Oh, Nicky!"

Nicky. It freezes him. He breaks out into a light sweat and a deep warm flush. It undoes him, this "Nicky!" All at once, all his love for Margaret, for her deep sisterly bond of concern and affection for him, all this heightens and deepens the bond with Karen. Nicky opens to them their first sharing of deep intimacy.

"Nicky, I love you."

They are no longer just lovers...they have co-created themselves as intimates—they plunge back into each other, numinous. He ever so fierce, not worrying at this moment about gentle and bruises and misunderstood grabs and pinches and hard pressings, no, fiercely, but she as ever so fierce, even more fiercely, finding that the word Nicky was a call—to the depth of heart where one is known as no one else knows you... in the playground of ecstatic intimacy.

"Nicky!"...finds himself within her, far inside her, so far down is his cock inside her that he is within...it is her eating him, inching up ever inch of desire...his own desire melting himself down to pour into her...he relishing himself as water and she as cup, cascading water, cool water, hot water, sizzling water, tumbling and splashing and coursing...he never knowing as she never knowing but both careening off the boundaries of what being intimate lovers means—he eating her in a way they had never discussed, just now at her precious delta mouth, licking her, caressing her clitoris with his tongue...whipping microscopic winds of lust around her Pillar of Fire and feeling his eyeballs burst with a mad weeping and this weeping rising as flood to fill her...his tongue through her body, piercing her, piercing her and knitting up her spine...at her like needle and thread, weaving himself through her, in and out, like a diligent tailor—her the cloth, the fabric of the moment...so entangled, so embraced, so much the tireless wrestling, do these two Magical Virgins press and purge and purify and render intimate loving in its most noble expression as heartfelt vulnerability.

On the next day, at the near close of the parched month of desert-August in the East County of that land more northern Mexico than a southern tract of the United States, they arrive—San Diego. As it was, one journey terminated, as another was just about to take off.

They signed-in at a Motel 6 just as they found Highway 15.

"Little sister, when you head South, it's into the mystery, the Greater Mystery. Just trek along your body." She watched as Margaret drew her finger down her body, then taking Karen's finger and drawing it down South—heading South, down from the North of forehead through the Great Divide of her breasts down the river and across the soft plains of her belly arriving there at the point of departure, her Delta—Southern Port...precious mouth. "Little sister, This is the Alien Within!"

In the near morning of the night, Nick is rudely awakened ...finding her gripped in a state of great panic, rigidly sitting in stark fear, screaming loudly, "Help! Help! Help!" He bolts upright, then moves quickly to embrace her. She abruptly quiets down, her face buried in his chest. In another second, someone's pounding on the wall, angrily cursing...then there's a thud-knocking on the motel door. "What's going on?!" Inquiry, detective work.

Nick, in skivvies, cracks open the door and faces an angry night-desk attendant who continues to roughly flashlight bang and dent the door, although Nick is looking straight at him. Choruses of "Shut the fuck up!" echo through the A/C vents. Nick is sweating and fumbling for a mask to don. "It's okay. Just a nightmare. She's fine." Did it come across right? Will he believe me? Are the cops on their way?

The night attendant doesn't seem eager to leave right away; suspicion. Nick realizes that the guy has to see Karen, be assured that he isn't beating her up or worse. So he let's the door float and yaw. "She's okay, mister. Sorry." It was a "sorry" freighted with an appropriate degree of embarrassment such that the attendant leaves. Before shutting and locking the door, Nick peeks out, scans the balcony and parking lot, wondering what others will think in the morning.

Karen! He turns around and she's not in the bed! Bathroom? The door's ajar...he pauses, relaxes a bit as he hears the coffee pot hissing.

It's five-thirty in the morning, so they might as well get up. Both sit down at the small sidewall table. Karen quickly consumes one, then two, and pours a third cup. It's almost comic relief as Nick chuckles a bit at learning yet another secret about the women he loves...that coffee settles her down...this never having been observed before; they not having had a night like this, ever. She stares into the wispily steaming cup, working to get a handle on what just happened.

"It's all the changes. Maybe I'm homesick. Don't know."

"But you spent a summer in Greece?"

Is this an interrogation?

"I'm okay now. The sun. Have you noticed the sunshine? It's one of the things that first hit me when we swung into East County. The sun out here is different." She pushed alien away.

"Yeah." Distracted. Not looking out the window. Maybe it's nothing. Don't make much of it. Just be here for her.

"Right. I know. Okay. The coach told me to bring a hat. Said us Midwesterners get sunburned real fast...always wear a hat."

# CHAPTER 12

San Diego State exited at College Avenue off the 8. Nick hardly registered what Karen found amusing in respect to the kindergarten artlessness of the street name. Both were glad to finally be there. She was eager to get started. To kick-off her adventure into the Alien Within. What had been stirred up in her by her conversation with Margaret—upset her; distraught—this she put into a locked closet; not wanting to have it dampened the excitement of being here. Festive banners were everywhere, celebrating the "Home of the Azetcs!" In her heart she felt home!

Once parked, as they were walking across campus towards the Administration building, Nick began to act out in a strange, goofy way.

"Uuuunnnghhh! Uuuunga-ga-ga-gah!"

His guttural sounds rose to a chant as he...hmmm, dancing didn't strike her as the apt word...as he hopped and whirled his body, throwing himself, so it seemed, in all directions, blowing out his cheeks, making Ptui! sounds as he raised his Uuuunnggghhs! to both higher and more basso levels. It started Karen laugh-crying unto weeping.

"Stop!" was her plea, imploration, defense. Stop! because she didn't want to get sucked into all this. Nick was letting off the pressures of the trip...all that has happened between them. Great!...a guy can act a bit loony and nutty in public...but she wasn't one to let loose on the streets. Not Karen McElroy of Afton, Minnesota—who was known for her decorum, her controlled presence—poise—a skilled tumbler and a fair-legged modern dancer, but she always had things under control. Just one beer! having been such a control. Despite that, Nick's antics touch her core of tiredness—not a worker's over-wrought muscle tiredness, rather, the tiredness of constant change...trekking...fucking marathon! So many miles and so many towns and so many restaurants and so many dirty bathrooms and so many lecherous moments with this man...Nicholas! Nicky! Nick!...this male: my guy!

"Stop!"

"Okay, babe! Okay!" as he holds her, not hugging, just bringing her closer, bracing her up...her tears make him laugh just a tad.

After they register, they sit down in the East Commons cafeteria—a veritable cornucopia of fast food delights. At one point Nick blurts out, "For Christ's sake, who but some nuts like us ever wanted to go to San Diego State from Afton, Minnesota...certainly no one from Empire?!"

"Too late for all that!" she half-laughs at him as she taps a knife against a glass, as if making an announcement. "Too late!"

"Pass the green stuff." Nick points, mouth crumbling a taco shell.

"Guacamole, stupid!" Karen chides. They had delved a bit into Spanglish—that hybrid of English and Spanish spoken by migrant laborers, they eating real homemade Mexican food in South Saint Paul's barrio so as not to seem too much the tourists they actually are.

"Hmmmph!" Nick globs the guacamole on his array of taco shells: eight at the start, four faithfully remaining.

Karen is just about to point with her knife at the mole and start a quick rehearsal: taco, burrito, guacamole, tamale...when she abruptly stops. Halts in her mind as her body moves on...its fingers and palms and nose and feet and all such connected factions sit there with her, hold her there in space, network so as to keep her presence present...but it happens: eyes traveling around and spying on everything—the colors, the smells, the words, the arrangements of forms, the substance of the air, the dance of the light...she is taking it all in, yet a core part of herself knows that she is doing this only as a defense, playing the archaeologist, noticing everything, even the garbage, the over-looked, the insignificant...all the telltale aspects of the numinous Alien Within!

Chapultepec.

"Nick." He looks at her as he has been looking at her while stuffing himself, that is, not seeing her but thinking about the football season and noticing every muscled guy wondering if he was going to make the grade. Of course, you are. You're The Emperor!

"Huh. Yeah." He eats.

"What's the name of your hall?"

"Zap...zap something. It's near the gym. Why?" He eats.

Karen pushes her plate away—just inches, but away.

Nick grabs it, thinking it a gesture.

"Chapultepec." A word tunneling out from her mouth, hacking off long-standing labial ledges and coring through genetically molded reflexes. "Chapultepec," she repeats.

"Yeah. What?" He stops eating.

"Nothing. Just wanted you to know."

Nick cleans up all their plates, but still feels hungry.

They had the choice of co-ed dorms, but Karen urged him to bunk with the jocks. "Don't want you to lose your edge," she fibbed. As she settles into her dorm, she is alone. Finally! Alone does feel good. Her roomie—a Beverly Hills knock-out, someone slightly embarrassed to be at San Diego State instead of USC...telling her from first contact, "My agent just wants me to have some stage experience. Lola— he calls me Lola, not Maureen—Lola, you need some curtain time. Bingo! Here I am. If it wasn't for the Globe Theater..." Karen doesn't remember listening to the rest, for it was as quickly followed with the boyfriend entering...all Trojan Hunk and Matinee Idol and Super-Star in the flesh, he entering and they exiting. Great! Karen knowing that for most of the semester she has the equivalent of a single room.

Sensing and seeking the Alien Within.

She had to visit its birthplace. As soon as they had hit Santa Barbara, she could feel its presence—a foul fear was in the air; dread. The drove through Ventura County, across and out of the San Fernando Valley, through metro LA, down Orange County, gliding through Camp Pendleton...the closer they came to San Diego, it beckoned to her. She felt it, smelled it—The Border. That edge of the normal where the Alien Within lingered. Then, at last, this moment she is there...facing, observing, monitoring this heralded monument to the power of America's...of Western Culture's...Alien Within—the Border Fence. That fearless, bold and thundering barricade. She stands fixated before it, eight-hundred yards away. Fascism, Berlin Wall, Warsaw Ghetto...words of kin origin flit through her mind. Her knees quiver just a bit, her hands are clammy in the desert heat. Oooohhhhh! Suddenly it's as if she is being tugged forward, pulled towards it....curiously enticed, drawn, seduced? "Storm the Bastille!" is the ancient call, the revolutionary thrust. Come see what is on the Other Side! She begins to burrow, vault, dynamite, laser beam burn a hole and crawl through...but can't, cannot—Won't!

Awake! From the day of her initial visit to the Border Fence, events seem to hyperventilate as they hurl her forward. Days became blurs; weeks passing like a day. Unaware, her Alien Within was raging.

Changes. Within two months, six weeks at the outside, Karen and Nick have stopped eating together, keep canceling dates, procrastinate at returning e-mails...simply lose each other. He was being consumed by football sessions and opted to squeeze in side-time on the arena's hardwood whenever he could, trying to keep himself basketball quick as much as wide receiver flash. He planned to walk-on after the football season, and quickly had to find a way to make the roundball coaches aware of him...needed to cop a rep, so he sought out as many of the current basketball team members and new recruits as he could and threw himself into frenzied pick-up games.

Changes. She just got sucked in. Put it in capitals: SUCKED IN. Top it with an exclamation "!" SUCKED IN! Even italicize it: SUCKED IN! Not her dance classes, not her stationary bike workouts, not even her Native American interests...she probably couldn't tell anyone why...didn't try to explain to her folks, simply didn't detail her courses...changes. Karen was simply engrossed in studying Aztec Mythology. Just a freshman, she had, as Nick did, general requirements, but she missed more of these classes than she cared to count, not fearing poor grades. When necessary, she'd cram, so she guided herself, more, let herself be guided. More, let herself be drawn, for it was like a magnetic force...into the introductory course on "Mythology 101," taking that section where—Did she know?—the instructor and TAs were all Mesoamerican scholars. There, and slipping into upper-division lectures, being a fly-on the wall. "Please, Professor, just let me listen!" Then, also auditing senior research seminars. But if all had to be said, if the truth be told—Let's tell it!—it had been an e-mail from Margaret.

"Little sister mine...Maria de Los Angeles."

Just one line. One name.

Fated, Karen found her coyote—the one to smuggle her up, over and across the Border Fence, maybe burrow under the Fence...past the Fascists bullets as they scurried through the deathly, thirst parching East County desert. Onto the Other Side, meeting an Alien Within...one Maria de Los Angeles.

# CHAPTER 13

Maria de Los Angeles. It was a slice of computer print-out in extra-large typeface, not bolded, just a name—denuded of professorial anointment, a scrap of paper taped to the door.

"Tell me about your boyfriend."

That's how Karen would always remember the magic, for that is what Angel—"Angel. Everyone calls me Angel."—said after the twenty-odd minutes of this and that, an introduction, an overview, a self-description...all those things people have prepared to use to inform other people about themselves but which are just artifice in its most resounding sense, for they are links to the safe zone, allowing the other to latch onto what one wants them to latch onto...but, if anything, Angel was never one to stay in a safe zone. "Tell me about your boyfriend."

Karen would learn about hermeneutics and heuristics and rhetorical devices and immerse herself in the ambiguities of paradox and oxymoron and analogy. Whew! But it was Angel's simple and clear invitation that really made her lose Nick. Tell me about your boyfriend.

"Not who you are. Not who you think you are. Not just your own borders." Angel was willing to answer Karen's question which answered her question, "Why tell you about Nick?"

"I'd like to know about the one you're with. Mi hija, Karen...that you'll understand more when you understand who you let in."

Trusting, although a bit reluctantly, Karen tells her just about everything about Nick...change!...and through the telling lost him. Began to forget what he looked like. His hair. The color of his eyes. The shape of his ears. His hands—even his hands. "Was he four fingered?"

A true happening, yet neither would have said that they had lost the other. Nick would not have said that to his coaches, nor did he write such to Kane. Karen didn't say this to Angel, in fact, true counter-evidence, so she believed, she felt that her discussions with Angel strengthened her bond with Nick. All the while, they kept missing each other. Better to look at it like that...they did, each in their own way saw it as "just missed you!" So neither was in a panic, for each knew that the train would return, as such, so they dissembled.

Nick didn't care for San Diego. It was soon mid-October and he wanted to feel a sharp slice of Minnesota cold splicing his chest, but it didn't come. If he had been prone to soliloquizing he would have recited a long list of things he didn't like, but he couldn't admit to all that. For coming to San Diego State was a big risk. SDSU's football head, Coach Nelson, had been "All WAC," a candidate for All-American, and MVP of the Holiday Bowl. "Twice. Only person to win it two years in a row." He did this being a wide-receiver, and during his home visit to Empire, in front of Nick's mom and dad, he challenged Nick to "Come out to the sunshine, son, see if you can best me!" Taking the bait, Nick took this to heart, and it helped motivated him to knife his way through the pains of bruises and gashes of summer training. He became so game focused that he didn't know that he had lost Karen.

Once atop State's campus mesa—Montezuma Mesa—Nick had slipped on his mythic Warrior attire—became body and soul and twenty-four hours a day even in his dreams, a Warrior Athlete. This discipline and commitment he had expected would be demanded if he wanted to make the starting squad. However—Curiously?—not once did it cross his jock mind to share this with Karen. If truth be told—Let's tell the truth!—deep down at his core he was confident that he had captured Karen—she, Warrior Booty. She, his...now and no matter what!

Truth, again—If he had not ambushed and snatched Karen, he would never have come back down here—that was amply clear. The Warrior inside him knew this, but kept it quiet...at day's end, in his heart and mind, Nick sat smugly with Karen bagged at his side.

Nick had no reason not to be absolutely sure that she would and will be waiting, always waiting. This is how comfortable translated itself in his mind and felt on his skin—rubbing his hands, knowing that she's there—will always be there. Warrior Nick declaiming, "Where else would she be?"

But Karen wasn't waiting. She was with her coyote, auditing her upper division seminars. Not that she, either, would have said that she and Nick were apart or had lost one another. For her comfortable translated as this acceptance of her leaving, of her having to depart, yet never having discussed this with him—He understands! (Really?)—it being one of those curiously not-discussed items—a Lover's Assumption, hence, she missed all his games and didn't bemoan missing Minnesota's Fall ending cold nor did she worry about where she'd be on Thanksgiving nor was she going to confirm plans for Christmas...simply, time as she had known it had stopped—this being one of the immediate effects of Angel's invitation. Not knowing, however what Angel knew, that her trial by fire was to discern and embrace herself as the Alien Within.

Aztecs. "Tell me, why is the Azetc, the face of Monetzuma, acceptable to you as SDSU's athletic mascot? Do you realize that, originally—to many people to this day! Maybe even some of you!—the name was appropriate for a mascot since it is an animal icon...and the Aztecs were considered animals, barbarians, sub-humans—pagans, devils...aliens! "Indian features" were often considered proof of the native's closeness to the jungle beasts. If you doubt me, check out the phrase in the older scholarly texts."

Angel was herself an alien academic. Consider that she claimed: "Aztecs. I don't teach Aztec Mythology. I don't want you to become an expert in things Aztecan." An oddly turned objective for a world-renown Mesoamerican scholar. What then are you teaching? thought Karen. Her answer came as if she had stood up and demanded to know—"I want you to discover the mythos which is trying to be born through you." She stopped. Karen didn't want her to stop. She was too absorbed to wonder if anyone else wanted Angel to stop.

"With that out of the way. Here's the text." Angel holds up a thick tome, "Aztecan Mythology, Seventh Edition...and no, I won't sign your copy!" She drops the book, thud! down on top the desk. Its weight makes the lectern wobble and it momentarily sends a shuddering wave through itself, soft-paperback as it is...cover and all undulating and then subsiding.

"Read the text. Memorize it for all I care."

"Will we be tested on this?" from the back of the room; a throat-clearing question.

Angels smiles; almost haughty.

A moment. Then another.

"Sure. You should know." Her smile breaking into a grin. "You should get to know my True and False final. I'm sure there are enough purloined copies floating around campus."

One muffled guffaw from the convicted brings a clap of hands from Angel. "Good. I want you to study those. I want you to know how to spell—spell correctly, gringos!—all the Aztecan names. Hold on, understand, my scholars, that I don't care. Simply don't care about the facts."

The bell rang. The classroom empties. Angel is the first one out.

I want you to discover the mythos which is trying to be born through you. The sentence, the image provoked resonates with Karen; excites her—not quite pleasure. She is the last one to leave the classroom.

Back in her dorm...solitary...all that Angel said made her feel...hmmm, it all is making her life more than a bit unbearable! It's like there's something inside—her belly, chest, even tingling her nipples and clitoris—trying to get out or get in...she's just not sure. Her mind is at once a throb of pain and a block of granite. Nothing like a thought seems able to find a cell to thrive upon. Around and around does Karen walk the room...pacing, cutting a small circle, but not regular enough to be a circle, just something not square, falling off at the edges, weaving and tottering as the victim of some unnamed force of gravity...there are books open on the floor, journals and reference sets open on the desk, a computer screen dead to a screen saver, magazines stacked and tumbling...all clothes neatly put away, bed made, toothbrush aside toothpaste...discover the mythos which is trying to be born through you.

Karen only coping mechanism was immersion. Her drive is to read as much as she can as fast as she can...master Nahuatl, the Aztec language. Read and read and read. Watch video after video. Stack V-disks upon I-disks. Go on-line and chat. Chase after every discussion group. Arrive early, leave late at every outside lecturer's visit.

"Huitzilopochtli. Yacatecuhtli. Tonacatecuhtli," Karen prides herself on being able to spell them all, and vocalize a presentable enunciation.

As she walks around the campus she even begins to welcome the presence of the Mesoamerican sculptures and friezes and bas-reliefs...after all, it is their mesa, so she accepted—accepting them as living proof of the Alien Within...as Angel knew was inevitable...all this working to open herself at the subconscious level to herself as an Alien Within.

During the following weeks, she woke—more than once—remembering a relaxing dream where she was atop a pyramid overlooking a tropical jungle...jaguars on the prowl, peridot eyes all sparkle and dazzle, like flares...from off the horizon, moving towards her, undulating, widely spread wings...all like a slow flowing and small cresting throb of rainbow colors, tones and hues all spilling into and filling her eyes: overflowing—it is Quetzalcoati! She knows this: closer, closer, closer....

For the first time, she buys a school jersey, one emblazoned with State's emblematic Aztec "Monty Montezuma." So sheathed, so marked, she strolls around campus, every day, each day, increasingly feeling at home.

Fucking-A, great! Nick would have been red-shirted except for two not-uncommon athletic accidents. One was academic—the veteran starting wide-receiver was exposed for fraudulent SAT scores. Then, the second-string back-up cracked two fingers screwing around at a frat party. Ha! Lo and Behold! Nick Niegsch is on national TV for their opener against Notre Dame. It's a Saturday afternoon game on ESPN and he is having his ass wiped all over the place by the Irish's senior defensive quarterback. Eliciting Oohs! and Aaahs! from the network announcers and less pleasant and more scatological utterances from coaches and fans and his teammates. Ta da! Nicholas Niegsch has realized his youthful dream—he got noticed on national TV! In a bit of self-mockery, "At least they pronounced my name correctly!"

That same night, totally bummed out, Nick rashly decides to leave...quit and transfer out. "Maybe up to St. John's or St. Thomas," until he catches himself on the Late Late News highlights. Oooh! Aaaah! He had to confess that he really relished the challenge, with all the pounding and pulsating intensity, of Division One sports. Determined, he spit out his cowardly sputum and hitched up his jock strap—Don't wince! Don't squeal!—and swore that he was going to get smarter, work harder, run faster...five miles every morning and evening, stay up late with the coaches reviewing films. If this was his fate, he accepted it. All the pain and the suffering could not fail to make him feel but that he was in the right place...not a feeling of home, just of being tried and tested....it was sufficient.

As Margaret sensed right after Karen had left...what Angel intuited as Karen used the word once too often—comfortable—"Nick's a comfortable guy to be with."—was that disruption and discomfort, like the pairing of the sun and the moon, was an inevitable bedroom visitor.

It happens—The dream. Or nightmare. Or sub-conscious or non-conscious or whatever you use to describe the altered state of consciousness which being human is—it happened, one late November, pre-Turkey Day wee part of the morning...wee being the precise description of that peculiar time when the dark blindness of night cracks ever so infinitesimally and fords through the stream of timelessness which often accompanies sleep...in this wee part, Karen and Nick each call out to the other...hearing only the echoes, not knowing who called first...but they both get up the next morning, eager to find the other.

"Babe!" He hoists her up, lifts her with the ease of swiping a hearty beer mug off the bar counter and kissing the foam with his lips...smooching deep and hard and long—although more pressing her to him than Frenching or savaging her with small lusty feels.

"Nicky!" Jumping up and grabbing his hair like gathering clouds, then she falls into him, releases herself and floats away from her skin and bones and size and shape.

They, once again, are comfortable together. Chatting and smiling and joking and reminiscing —Let's tell the truth!—all they do is reminisce. Talk about the drive across country. About the wonders of their Kundalini Get-away. About the visit they took to Mission San Luis Rey. Even, Mexican food. As it was, they talk too much and too long about Mexican food...long-fingers of hours—sun is down and they go for dinner. "Heuvos rancheros!" he booms, somewhat idiotically. "That's breakfast, gringo!" She chides him. "Who cares? I like 'em." Even he knows he's being a bit loony. She meekly holds up two fingers; the waiter scratches on his pad.

Comfortable is a Minnesota dream...as such a Southwest nightmare. "Comfortable" is snow-bound and snug in January, but it is zombie-dead at beach's edge in the land of sunshine.

After classes the next day, Karen goes back to her room and sends e-mails to just about everyone. Cuts and pastes the same storyline from one to the other. "Happy to be here. Loving the ocean. Marvelous food. Great classes. Nick is doing so well. Blah. Blah. Blah."

Nick does the same. Doesn't ask Kane if he saw the game or not.

"Tell me about your boyfriend."

"Is this a joke? It gets tiring."

She smiles. What Karen knows is called "an Indian smile"—shows a tease of tooth: canine.

"Is there something profound here I'm missing." Irritation. Feels enough womanly bond to get irritated. Angel checks this off as progress.

"You still have something to tell me?"

"I don't see him that much. Not really. What more can I say?"

Angel pulls a book from he top of her bookcase; holds it towards Karen...both know what it is. "Do you have this memorized?"

"Yes. Mostly. As best I can."

Angel places the book on the floor, out of sight.

"Your boyfriend is like this book. Is this book. Do you understand?"

Nick added an exhausting "jump off the mountain" mile to his daily run. He tasked his roommate to teach him juggling. "Need to work on my coordination, my quickness." There wasn't a course he liked. He checked off "Business Major" in his mind...knew that he wouldn't have too much problem with that. He still kept Karen's picture on his desk, though he knew he wanted to go home with his roomie and meet his picture-on-the-wall "kid sister." That fantasy bothered him...honestly, only just a tad...he didn't want to think about it too much, about those things...in denial, he invoked Karen's Prom Night kiss...dropped and did another fifty numbing push-ups.

Karen sits with a tall, orangish, flower-vine candle at the center of the rug, which center had books forming its perimeter...all being archaeology and mythology and anthropology books and tracts and monographs. "Significant literature." She was naked.

It took time. Troughs of Time. Time marked by scales unknown. Who is this girl from Afton?

Awake! "Mi hija"...not this time from Angel, no, back to her Shaman sister. "Mi hija, all white women have to travel through the Great Darkness to see the Wondrous Light!"

Terrible images and visions...just terrible—what other descriptor could I use? Obese women. Bloated women. Folds of flesh. Pleats. Rolls and rolls and rows and rows of fat. Ugly women. Sprawling and bawdy women. Tlazolteotl. Say your name! Speak it! I am not afraid. No, I am afraid. I admit it. Fearful. You all terrify me. Because you are me. I know that. Do you think I'm stupid? Don't know what your invitation means? Ha. I won a scholarship, you know! It is clear...I know that the world is not outside of me but inside of me. Is this a great truth?

Karen stares and stares and stares at the flickering candle flame...entrancing herself, abandoning herself, dropping herself to the floor as Angel did the book.

Sister Shaman strips Karen naked...presses a finger, lightly, up and down her body, at each press offering up a name, that of a sister goddess, a mother goddess, a daughter goddess...imprinting on her body the names of those who will protect her...guide her through the darkness. "Reclaim them as you reclaim your own body!"

Goddess. Goddesses. Are you my sisters? Margaret? Angel? Goddess of Filth. They have a Goddess of Filth! But also of garbage and with the same breath name her Goddess of Human Fertility, a Moon Goddess, and one of Love. Can I really answer your invitation?

Tlazolteotl.

There is the Border. And there is the Fence. And all about are the Fascists.

But they are everywhere! In every culture! I heard you Angel. I know what you've told me. Told me in your silences. Had me, forced me to discover the silences, the mute testimony, the forgotten presences, si, si, si!

Karen lays down on her back. As she reclines her hands rise as the hands of a thousands priestesses and priests...they are hands which orchestrate, cavort in the air, are summoning hands, invocating hands, hands of conjuration and magic...she touching herself, moving up and down her flesh, feeling in an astral way what physically she cannot reach, for she touches every part of her external self, of her skinned self, of her book self, touching the cover, and fluttering the pages, and kissing her fingertips and caressing her breasts and drawing forth her lusts and fingering her clitoris and pressing open her anus and drawing her head down so as to ascend through her vulva into herself...inside herself, crossing the Border, burrowing under the Fence, flashing between the gunshots fired by the Fascists...there to be present to Tlazolteotl and Xochiquetzal and Mayahuel and Chantico...to all—all the Goddesses and Hers and She's unveiled to her by Angel and shaman sister...Goddess of Filth and Lewdness, Goddess of Craving Lust, Goddess of Hungering Fertility—400 Breasts!...Goddess of Refinement and Feminine Grace... all...Goddesses of every bodily part, visceral hunger, erotic passion and womanly act ...Karen bleeds, her flow commences, there is blood on the floor: a pool of blood...Karen wallows in a pool of blood...all is Flowing...she is shivering with orgasms, blood and fire, Fiery Blood—orgasms which are earthquake, fleshquake, bodyquake, soulquake...screaming—terrified inside herself, lost in a deep dense jungle...jaguars and ocelots and a hundred throbbing eyes with slavering fangs set to pounce...a mist of salty blood is in the air, dense beet red droplets dot her hands, worm-like crimson lines crawl up her face—insects of blood...she is there to die—be Sacrificed, this she knows. "Tricked!" she screams...but the sound of blood spurting and gushing and whooshing only gets louder and louder, rising up to crescendo...it is all too late, "Too late!" she whispers to herself as she smells her flesh burning.

Resting, just back from the campus ER, "Seen it before. You kids got to be extra careful about candles!" She's applying more ointment to this slight scorch, one that will definitely leave a scar but it is the stinging pain that brings her back to another burning moment...upon completion of her heroine's journey, shaman sister adorned Karen's left upper buttock with an abstract sign of her power animal—the ouroboros...snake biting its tail...dragon! In numerous cultures this animal version of a fiery circle stood as a sign of life-never-ending, of the triumph of the womb over death...shaman sister marking this child, her daughter in spirit, whispering, mi hija, mi hija, mihijamihija...!

# CHAPTER 14

They exchanged several e-mails. More like Duty Rosters, replete with To-Do's and check-offs of what each had done. It was the Digital Age, so this stood for personal communication, even relationship—emoticons, chats in cyberspace...virtual but "reality." Ah! Consider how many thousands of hot high school romances sizzle along the ethereal veins of the Web! So, it was acceptable...each felt that they were making love...that each press of Send was an act of intimacy.

Lovers. They are Lovers in the Internet Age. But how did they know that this was not them actually loving?

Nick has the press of a successful season hard upon him. His November and December are tied like a hangman's noose, and even under the best of circumstances, he would have hardly seen her. She repeatedly says that she's coming to his games. But she doesn't.

San Diego State was likely to win the WAC, undefeated...with only the loss to Notre Dame. For the first time since Coach Nelson's days, State was in the running for a national play-off birth...making the Holiday Bowl count this year. Mega-bucks were on the line and each member of the team knew it. Few as often reminded as Nick was by alumni and the assistant coaches...even daily, his team-mates...about how critical his "true freshman" performance had become. His only respite was some smuggled late night beers—contraband and betrayal of Coach's Law #1: "All booze and broads and any other funny stuff is out. Get it? O.U.T.!"

Karen—Within ten days her seared flesh wound was practically healed. Few questions had been asked at the walk-in emergency clinic. "Fell asleep and knocked a candle over on my thigh." It was believable...why say more?

Ten days and a new calendar; a new locus. Montezuma Mesa rotated on an eccentric axis, looping around the moon...all the goddesses were tracking down and chasing Karen...with jaguar stealth, eagle sight, butterfly flutter. Karen herself is likewise rotating on an eccentric axis, looping around the moon...Tlazolteotl. I am Tlazolteotl. With bells and feathers am I adorned. Golden nose ring...my face drawn sharp and distinct. I am beautiful! Come inseminate me!

Karen enticed them all. Her morning walk. Her afternoon stroll. Her evening promenade. Each and all with the same result. She allured him. Attracted him. Enticed him. Enchanted them all. Just seducing one and all. Taking them all into herself and inside herself. Frat boys. Geek boys. Jocks. Scholars. Older men. Married men. Roaming street villains. Not a thought as to color or size or smell or taste. She reveled in them all; in each.

There it is, again! The cock. Oh, terrible cock. God Cock! Out there. Alien to me. Come inside! Come inside me!

She didn't qualify their offenses nor their admirations. They fell upon her like loose pearls. Never did she fear harm—not fearing that she would harm them...none ever able to sustain their power as she manifested hers, taking them not only unto her flesh but into her dreams... dreaming with them, they unaware, but she taking her breasts and proffering, holding them... cupping breasts in that wanton way that never failed to arouse and craze...them coming to her for mad pleasure and total domination and fierce consumption, yet she, she laughs at them, not in voice but in dream, astral laughing, resounding through the halls of the ages, caroming off of distant stone and nearby water, giving them their beauty...suck upon her and transformation of themselves through such suck into her beauty, sucking out her beauty...her cunt, she played it open for them, tapping and sounding out the wailing desire of her insatiable jungle lust, wildly, she lets it sing...took them in and sucked them hard, her whole body inhaling their sex crazed penises, organs huffing and puffing to blow her apart, true fleshly artillery they pound upon her with atomic bombs of spermatozoa...she half-laughs, chortles, snickers, giggles...snorts in gleeful trickery—Trickery! For she knows that she is Tlazolteotl: Earth mother, goddess of love, goddess of fertility...even more—this her most amusing, Muse-struck trick—she is goddess of filth—of all their filthy desires...of all and everything of themselves which they cannot stand...she is Night-Black which is held to be Demonic which is condemned as Serpent which is named Offal which is what was used to create her: "Offal thou art and to offal thou shalt return"—she knowing now, not as Karen McElroy, not even as Tlazolteotl—because Tlazolteotl is Xochiquetzal is Mayahuel is Chalchiuhtlicue is Cihuateteo is Itzpapalotl is Chantico is Mictlancihuatl is Karen McElroy...is every woman, every Woman—all female molecules and atoms and quarks and moon-rays....little sister, mi hija!

Karen never saw the same male twice. Thinking of them as males and not men. No names. Not even distinct faces. For her, it was just fucking...so she heard whispered as they screwed her and reamed her and laid her and banged her and whammed her...whispered was, "Fill me up! Let me be!"

The Alien within. The mythos which is trying to be born through you. This book is your boyfriend.

She didn't know when it actually ended. It was a timing she had not bothered to learn how to count, but it happened.

"Put that away."

Confused. Embarrassed. He jams his penis back into his pants...squiggles so as not to catch himself on the zipper. One crazy broad!

He had liked crazy! Her feathers and painted body—blackened eyes and blood-red lips, liked the snake-tailed tiger-rug they laid upon, liked her shaking her hair, tinkling with a thousand crystalline beads—jungle rainbow colors splashing and pulsating, casting terrifying psychedelic Cat's Eyes awash the candle-lighted room... he liked all this...all this he had heard about her, believed now all they said—waiting with aching craving to have her upon him, to claw him, lick him. Oh! Her licking is legendary along Fraternity Row! Yeah, gasping, he is here for crazy. "Fucking Crazy!" "Cock-Sucking Crazy!" "Cunt Crazy!"

But, "Too crazy!" An alarm? A tower's warning? A Call to Arms? Bugling for a Strategic Retreat? What? as she opens her robes, slips out and steps to tower over him...him with cunnilingus lips, waiting, drooling, salivating...she asks...stroking, stroking long and hard, as long as from the Earth to the Moon...stroking, she asks, entreats, challenges, "Would you like to suck my cock?"

He was out the door in a wink of flash. One flipping screw-nut of a broad! "Man over-board!"

When Karen arrived back in Afton at 3 a.m., the maiden week of the new year—so Ending what some called the true Millennium of January 6, 2001—she dutifully kissed her parents, told them that she was very, very tired...went right up to bed.

Her father looked for her bags but did not find any. Did she leave them in the taxi?

# CHAPTER 15

January 6, 2001. On the phone to back home, Nick's mother encourages him by stating that she has started a once-a-month Novena for him. Novena is something Nick had never personally done, can barely recall its form or purpose, but what else is a mother to do? "Pray." That's all she could think about—pray that he doesn't get hurt, pray that he doesn't make a big mistake. Notre Dame being Catholic made her feel that the cards—holy—had been stacked against her, but now, pray that they win. "Just win!" so dad urged as he signed-off. Geez! Nick hears the excitement in his voice.

October, November, December of the Year 2001—for others, as for her, it was millennial this and millennial that, but such has not been the dynamic of this year for him. Oops! Nick's millennium was reduced to these just three months—the Fall and then the pretend-Winter of San Diego. At times, it didn't even seem like three, just one—as if he and Karen had just this past week pulled off at College Avenue. It has all been but a moment for Nick.

Notre Dame had been a disaster. But it was soon nearly forgotten as Nick's extra mile discipline made him just that tad much faster than his defenders, moving with such speed and darting quickness that one rival back tagged him on an ESPN post-game interview, "This guy's a sonic boom!" Sonic boom Niegsch! "Like kaboom! This guy, just rockets past you and...!"

This was on reason he came to like watching the post-game film, many hours—two, even three favorites clips...most of all the replay of the mad mayhem of the "Hail Mary" bomb against Stanford. Goddam! The game announcer: "Niegsch is there. Watch him. Look at 'im float! Can you believe that? Look at that elevation." One byline wag even called him Elevator Man because he seemed to rise inch by inch and foot by foot until bing! "Penthouse!" He'd snag the ball no matter whether a spiraled pass, wobbling duck, or a rock heaved in desperation. All the QB had to do was throw it his way—step-back and catapult. "He's got it! Niegsch, again!" Cheers jolted and rocketed through the electronic jock strap which nestles the communal nuts of all the high-fiving, beer guzzling, point-spread covering, fantasy camp and vicarious Nicks who moved as he moved, rose as he rose, snared as he snared. "Emperor! Emperor!" The laudatory chant was resuscitated down South a tad and a wagon-pull West in the land of the alien Aztecs.

All said—January 6 found Nick all of a sudden obsessing on Karen, Where is she? Why haven't I seen her? Did she call? And other long closeted questions: Where did she go on Thanksgiving? Is she alone, at home? Questions which carried too many scarves of twisted and perplexed emotions for him to sort out—Guilt, Fear, Resentment. Guilt having the day—he all of a sudden feeling like he had not just missed her but forgot her. Karen! Karen! He is on the phone but no answer at her house. He calls his mom—she asks him how Karen is! Call Kane? He hesitates, mind-hovering, then a decision is made: It's time to go home. There are still three weeks left on semester break—Go home! Go home? This, a taunt, a command, a calling, a direction?

"Go home"—no question mark. No exclamation. Not even a period. There on the computer screen...prophetic affirmation...with an arrow pointing, it is not signed but he knows the address, "speechless@berk.edu"—it's Margaret. Go home, Nicky.

Around midnight, he checks in on Northwest's red-eye. He's standby but he knows he's going.

At arrival: "You guys really plowed Florida State under!" Could a father be more proud? He was a man who knew that life wasn't a sport but also knew the value of a sport's record on a resume.

"Where'd Kane go?" mom asks.

"Had to pick up Corinda." Nothing else needed to be said—Kane and Corinda, from kindergarten sandbox together. Who would doubt? Now and forever.

"Trophy or medals?" Dad, arm on the fireplace mantle, just a little space left. Everything was trophies and medals and ribbons and citations, but nothing like what he's expecting. These others all being team trophies and Honorable Mentions from Pop Warner and the Boys and Girls Club Rec Leagues, several summer camps—a free-throw shooting Second Place from Kevin McHale's Basketball Camp...his best being a First Place in a county three-point competition for eighth-graders. Now, the next level. "Bowl games!" Something as a dad that he always wanted, never knowing if it could or would be reached.

"Big," Nick raises his hand four-feet off the ground, "Big trophy for the school. Medals for all of us. Real gold plate."

Medals and newspaper clippings. "My son," his father, over the years, always reviewed the coffee table scrap-book with visitors and new friends. He was proud but quite aware of evoking the unspoken conclusion—Potential, your son has potential...which meant that he might also fail, burn out, not make the grade. But now it's all "Sweet victory! Hail the conquering hero!" Celestial music flows. "My son was in the voting for MVP at the Holiday Bowl. Only a freshman. A true freshman! Something Coach Nelson didn't achieve." Nick doesn't like hearing that—shirks off the evil-eye, the taboo touch, the jinx.

Yeah! Just one huge fatigued sigh...a sigh tugging at his over-worked muscles, a sigh screaming down "Shift's over!" to the nerves...the hammered emotions and the numerous coffins of mummified desire floating down the Nile of his Lust. Yeah! One sigh that explodes and with it a showering of shattered debris—pieces of himself all about, himself exploded, and then horrendously before him, smack dab in front of his daydreaming eyes is her face—Karen!

Nick just has to see her. Has to smell her. Has to inhale her. Has to tender soft touches upon her. Her. Her. Her. The simple madness of Lovers—all slamming down upon him...being urged by a gnawing inside himself—How else to describe it?—for all of a sudden he is, again, obsessed to see her...fucking-A! not see but to be with her, to be in her presence—to be within her.

Prepares—Raises the Holiday Bowl trophy up high...hands raised above his suppliant head offering her medals of honor...warrior medals, his warrior self...he is at her feet, prostrate—beseeching her, moaning and supplicating with a tone pained by a low bellowing...groveling, he desires to grovel, to push his nose into the ground and grind it off as he approaches her...moves ever so slowly towards her, she—his being, the reason for his being...he knows that he is not worthy, that that is why she had not come...that he had been unproven, his desire too shallow, his deeds of clay—adoration...he prostrates in full adoration awaiting the press of her foot upon his head.

Guilt.

Nick is at her door. A hastily grabbed bouquet of flowers. All roses screaming for protection from the bitter cold, and he protecting them with the heat of his desire; the steady fire of his propelling lust.

He rings, twice. There is no answer.

He wipes a windowpane, swipes away his frosty breath...peeks in. Nothing.

Around the back. Pool, tarp secured. No footprints in last night's snow.

"Viking! Viking!"

No barks. No scratches. No sign of poop.

There were so many to bring me coffee. So many nice boys. Thoughtful boys. Boys who pledged their lives to me. Who truly loved me. Do you know what true love is? Ha. Ha. Certainly not! For you did not chain me down with small affections. You did not collar me with constant attention. You did not imprison me with insatiable lust. No! Fool, you played football!

Fear is speaking to him.

Nick drives by Kane's house. Argues with himself, concludes, "Not a good idea."

Kane is his best pal, solid bro, chaser rabbit, always just a second or third behind Nick, but such was their bond...but, "Not now."

Fucked up. You fucked up! Bullshit I did! Don't run that stuff on me. Who the goddam motherfucking...aw, shit, who does she think she is? Miss Brains. Miss 1540 SAT. Miss Valedictorian. Aw, shit, Miss-ed Out, that's what you are Karen McElroy, fucking with Nick Niegsch...missing my games, playing me for the fool—goddam, I should've bonked little sister!

Resentment.

Nick calls Kane from The Bierstube.

"Get fucked-up with me!" Demand. Plea. Lost-Soul.

"Sounds like you're there..."

"Fuck Corinda!"

Silence and the greasy press of the public phone against his ear...Nick is breathing hard—hard liquor hard, but he is also not dead, not yet, "Sorry. Didn't mean that. Love Corinda."

Kane knew. Thought he did. "They must've broke up." Says that to Corinda. Partly the justification for calling this late. Partly the justification for how drunk he knows he's going to get. Nick and he had gotten plastered together so many times...Kane always drove home. He could hold his own. Nick...truth be told, "Emperor" Nick made for a lousy drunk. "Lousy!" Kane told him for the umpteenth time as Nick rolled down the passenger side window and puked.

# CHAPTER 16

Seven days. Seven uncountable days—days of misery, days of waiting—exiled days...days in the frozen desert, days without center, days without her...days where her name can scarce be articulated, simply not spoken for fear that it is a name which no longer exists...fearing that Karen no longer exists—his lips are sealed, iced laced with sub-arctic winds shut... no breathing, air too tight—Nick hasn't breathed for a week...upon the chilled windowpane there is no sign of life, no coroner's tricks!—despite his pulse, he knows that he is in hell...for what is life without her? Without her presence? Without her name which makes him come alive?

Corinda calls, "She's back."

Karen's father doesn't want Nick to see her. How else would a parent react, especially a possession freak like him? Blaming the young buck, "He must've done something to her." This scared her mother, dredged up all her fears of California, and Southern California ("Lord, protect us all from Hollywood!")...the Southwest...evoking as it were—against her fairly untraveled mind—images of terrible excess...from the US Cavalry charging in to save scalp-savaged settlers, "Decent folk!"...to every concern about sexual abandon and immorality—fearing, as any responsible Midwestern mom would, her daughter's travel to places like Las Vegas and LA, names and places still associated with AIDS and the pervasive Herpes XIV." He must've done something." Who else? Why else?

"She can't come to the phone." Firm. Executive directive.

"Can't? Or, won't? You won't let her." Never heeding the diplomatic instinct, Nick just butts at him helmet to helmet—Fuck the referees!

The line dies.

"If you want to make another call, please hang up and...."

Nine days counted and about the same to go. He had to get back soon. He was already late for basketball tryouts...knowing that his football Bowl heroics would ensure him a fair look-see...so he had to go; wanted to go.

"How can I go?" To Kane...no booze, just a sleepless night's altered state of consciousness. He's wired. Kane wishes he'd take a drink and relax.

"Ya know, bud, I can't shake her. That's the thing. Like we're drilling down south on Highway 15 one minute, happy and all that...the next I'm here. Like it's never happened. Like football just wasn't... not a thing—because she wasn't there. Where is she? She must've gotten into her own thing. Least it seems like that. When we met—goddam, fucking A-Mother of Christ, what a bullshit fuck-head I am! Gotta admit, Kane, we met just once. Can you believe that? Just once! One time, anyways, where we did some talking. Aw, shit!"

Kane is desperate. What to do? So he pulls out a joint, holds it towards Nick...hesitation, then they both light up, drag deeply and send smoke signals invoking the hallucinatory gods to come and settle this issue, this eternal issue, this maddening issue. "Do I love her?"

A question which is not even vocalized, just communicated in their shared trance. Kane is hearing Nick at that level of Hellish Fear, of dreaded inquiry, where the real meaning is its obverse: Does she love me?

Not breathing, but inhaling—being inhaled by the Greater Mind, the Fuller Soul of Bliss!

"Sure you do." Kane passes over a newly lit joint.

"How'd ja know." Dope chatter.

"Emperor." Snidely; a ferreting giggle. "Emperor, because you act like a total fool when she's around."

"Do?"

Kane bursts out laughing, spitting his laughter...snorting some second-hand tea smoke up his nose. "Ha. Ha. Ha. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!"

Nick tokes hard and deep, submerges himself, lungs bursting, brain toggling back and forth, back and forth—no stasis anymore...full steam ahead! Woo! Woo!

He wants Kane to leave, so he left. Not that Nick said anything...just stoned communication. Kane just upped and left. Going to Corinda's. Didn't have to say more. Nick knew that Corinda loved a good smoke more than either of the studs.

Alone. Smoky cloud wandering, stumbling, babbling—Alone. It's me. A tree. Without her, just a tree. No dirt. Just all dangling roots. Naked roots. Roots turning into penises. Hundreds of them. All mine! How can I live without her? How can I live without you, Karen? Karen, where are you? Tears like desert rain—falling but expiring, perishing before they kiss the sand, nothing sates his parched roots... Karen! Karen!

I love you, Karen. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Your walk. I love the way you walk. Like a strolling flower. You, a butterfly. You glide. It's the sexiest thing I've ever seen! And I love your smile. Cute. Goddam cutest smile I've ever seen. The way your cheeks just hold your mouth...so pretty—You're so pretty!

"I love you, babe. Where are you?" queried out loud.

Your feet. I love your feet. I love to touch your feet. Rub them. It's like I can make love to you through your feet! I know that sounds funny, but I love you so!

Your eyes. Do I have to say anything about your eyes? Just look at me. When you look at me, it's like I'm looking into a thousand mirrored well. One filled with petals, rose petals, like the corsage, those tiny yellow roses around that sexy orchid—how else to say it? Our one month anniversary...that orchid was sexy...it was us, that orchid...don't you see? We can't be alone. I can't be alone. You can't be alone...so, tell me, babe, how to find you?

There was Vid Rock 'n Roll in the background. There was half-eaten marijuana-hungry snacks...empty dishes all about. There was sunshine throughout the harshly cold day. But all he wanted to do, as he gave in to all the things dope makes you think you want to do, is get naked. Naked and be there like a beacon. He had no rational thought about the matter, just seeing himself with his cock like a Lighthouse lying on the rug, sunrays splashing across his face, weaving and bobbing with the sea-grass—eating it, wrapping it around himself, yielding up to the special rhythm of this psychoactive seaweed.

On his Steed. Snorting Steed. Vapors like dragon flames blasting out from the snout. Lady secured in his arms. Slain enemies all about. At a prance. A slow prance, the steed moves through the forest.

Ogre: "It is not enough!"

"What, more?" He tightens his protective embrace of the Lady.

"You know!"

They dismount.

"You know!"

Carefully, the Knight gently sets his Lady upon a rock, assists her in settling in, smoothes her dress—anchors and secures her with his adoring gaze.

"You know! You know! You know!" a giddy, near-bawdy stuttering of glee.

The Knight—he does know.

Hacks off his own left arm. The Ogre disdainfully snorts, "No tricks!"

Hacks off his own left leg. "No tricks!"

Hacks off his own right leg. "No tricks!"

Slices off an ear. The other ear. Scrapes his nose fully clean. Is about to sever his own head. "No tricks! No tricks! No tricks!"

It is his Knightly Duty.

He turns towards his Lady. Beckons. She comes.

"No tricks!"

She—slight though she be, magical power is hers—she raises the Knight's broad-sword and slashes his cock at its base, severs it. She stands, completely still—act completed.

The Knight opens his right hand, opens and lifts up in sacrificial gesture...the Ogre grabs the potent penile member...then in one reality shifting moment, in one shuddering flash and quake of time and space, in one transfiguring and transforming second, so is the transubstantiation effected...as the Ogre grasps the cock, so does it grasp him—serpentine winding and elongating as boa, python, viper...wrapping around and around...as it wraps so does it suck, and as it sucks so does it dissolve the flesh, the being, the life-force of the Ogre...a snaking which magically restores the Knight to his full being, his potent being, his lustrous being.

Once restored, the Knight mounts his horse. His Lady floats up into his arms.

As he flicks the reins, the Knight intones, "Majesty, I am your Servant."

# CHAPTER 17

Nick was packing. He'd be back at State a day or two early, but who cares now? Being at home in Empire was nothing but the feeling of how much he was not an Emperor! Nothing seemed to be in his command. Even his success this season—it was nothing he could have predicted. "Yeah," he mulls to himself, "You prepare and you prepare, but it wasn't you who played those games, made those catches!" He shakes his head as if by the thrusting back-and-forth sideways then around-and-around would dislodge whatever it was that had infiltrated his-self, slipped in and absorbed those sectors of his brain which controlled those parts of his athletic skills which had sonically boomed and wowed spectators far and wide. "Shit," silently as he slams, then knees his over-large suitcase, "Shit, who the hell am I?"

Nick had made his plans. Didn't want to fuck with her dad. Actually, couldn't figure how to fake and juke him...burn him on the deep route. No, he could see her dad standing on the goal line, being like Plastic Man with arms stretching far and wide to block his every dash and attempted body-hurl...Nick being Projectile Man, up and over that fantastic line, that line between Defeat and Victory. "Yeah," he opens the trunk to the family sedan and plunks down his two suitcases, "that son of a bitch knows how to protect the goal line!"

It was like what? Like a movie? He fumbles all the way back to San Diego with the pure bizarreness of it all. Opening scene: She, Karen, just there—at the Minneapolis airport boarding gate. Nick's in line and he sees her sitting there...in the boarding area, facing towards him—knowing instantly that she's been waiting...not just to get on the plane but like a hunter for the prey...him! She, Soft Eyes...Doe Eyes...Far-Seeing Eyes...Eagle Swoop and Snatch Eyes. "Karen!" to himself as he robotically hands his ticket to the agent.

Final scene: Karen is not getting on the plane...fuck! everything's fucking up in the air!

"Really? This summer?"

The torture was taking its toll. What part of himself was left to surrender?

"I'll be here. Then." She's not going back to State, but not going home....home?

Such was his all and only hope—to wait until then. If not now, at least in the summer. Then Karen says all he wanted to know. "I'll be waiting." Yes! She'd be waiting until he returns for his summer internship at 3M. Hmmm, maybe her taking this coming semester off will be okay? He didn't remember to ask about her scholarship, actually, would not have cared.

"What'll you be doing?"

"Things."

How to vault that fence? A word which was so broad and deep and wide and buried under the ground until claiming the title subterranean...just that this things meant that he was not to pursue, that she was defining the time...nothing in his mind was this rational, nothing followed such logical movement to any such intellectually satisfying conclusions...okay, all Nick needed to hear was what made him feel, totally feel that he was still within her world—but he didn't...was quite uncomfortable, truly discomforted...but he wouldn't acknowledge this word, give into it, fuck!...protectively, he took it all as validation that they were still comfortably together...as if her withdrawal from school—from him—was Okay...Nothing Out of the Ordinary...Things Happen Like That...Just a Part of Growing up—but deep down inside himself he was more tightly wound than the Gordian Knot—a knottiness descriptive of his being...I surrender! He can only weakly smile back at her when she says, "Things." Offer a faithful smile, a longing smile—that long-suffering dying smile of the child on his first day left behind at "Busy Bee Nursery School."

The flight was as uneventful as it was intended to be. Nick did not die in a plane crash. He did not die in a taxi accident on his way back to Montezuma Mesa. He did not die as he threw his suitcases on the floor and eject himself onto the bed. Not dead, just feeling like he had escaped...eluded several death-defying moments, perilous events, catastrophes, collisions, happenings...so it was more of an ejection...an ejection out of something, something like an invisible plane, a transparent jet which he had been on and which he was now no longer part of...no longer in its plane of flight...no longer adhering to its pre-flight plan.

He thought that he'd find a six pack and get drunk but fell dead-zone asleep within five minutes of ejection.

When he woke he set about his day—by then, night—as he would the days remaining until he would return. He put Karen's picture over his bed. Banged in the nail with a shoe heel. He had previously scanned it into his computer and imported it as his screensaver. As such, each day she would be there. They would be together, every day.

But it was a together of forgetting, not remembering...his duplicitous mind duped him. For each day, every day he would not see her, although he would sight her picture. Not notice her smile as he hit a key to vanquish the screensaver. His roomie thought that he was getting more serious committed...so hesitated, almost refused when Nick pressed him to bring his kid sister up for the basketball opener, but he did...not thinking that he knew anymore about things Nick was not sharing with him than Nick knew about his own women.

The days, simply, were ones of inattention.

"Nick and Karen," in Nick's mind, were the two juiced and high-spirited kids who had put the pedal to the metal in Minnesota...hit the brakes just south of Santa Barbara after some wonderful and wildly romantic days and nights encased in a fantastic, magical and wonder-filled cave—mobile cave, lit by their inner glow, lined with the pleasurable dreams of their adventure together.

This is where Karen stays for Nick.

He can't get beyond the feeling at the airport. A sense that somehow she was not the Karen he had arrived at San Diego State with. No, she had changed. "Even more than me!" was an annoying gnat. ChristAlmighty! more like an annoying swarm, those kind that seem never to be swatted, who buzz about and whose droning weaves a sonic crown around one's head. Aw, shit. Fucking shit! the images evoke this unspoken ejaculation, but there is was...Karen had changed—Let's tell the truth!—she's been transformed. Tellingly, however, Nick has no place for that unnerving ethereal category...doesn't want one either, wouldn't have bought it if offered free...just these bare images, like the Madonna at Church, there, off to the side, not the main action, there, safe...this thought helped him, soothed him—Karen as Madonna—a distance he can accept...a psychological and spiritual space which gives him room to continue to be Nick.

# CHAPTER 18

Where was Karen? Not meaning, Was she in Afton? But where in her mind, her soul? What had happened at State? Such questions her parents would have wanted answers to, but they feared the discussion. She didn't appear to be physically abused, this her father surmised and reassuringly conveyed to her mother. Meaning, he had closely observed his daughter and checked off what he prized as her features, what defined her as normal in his eyes—good bearing, gentle use of hands, eyes which engage you. "True," to himself, "she's a bit more distant when she looks at me. But it's the age, I'm sure of that."

Dad's conclusion that she was not physically damaged assuaged his anxiety. He couldn't stand the embarrassment of a careless pregnancy. Not that he didn't want grandchildren, hardly...he just didn't want anyone to think Karen was stupid. Not that blemish!

Mom didn't pry. "Pry" is the word she used, trying to manage her husband. "Don't pry. If she thinks you are...you'll lose her!" Seeing prying as what good women and good wives do not do—do not pry into their husband's business...do not pry into the ugliness which sources an argument...do not pry into the reasons for failure of any sort...conversely, accept...in capitals from her early training under the formation of the Holy Nuns, as she respectfully called them, "ACCEPT!"

Karen is also at the core of the fierce argument she is having within herself as to "Where have I been?"

Maria de Los Angeles. Now more addressed in her mind as, "The Dark Angel." Dark here meaning perverse and malicious, more of the witch than angel; a demon.

"The Dark Angel" was the phrase her counselor suggested. Doctor Betty Larson, an MSW with a Masters in Psychology...plus an M.Div.—Masters of Divinity, all topped with advanced studies in the thought and practices of several psychological camps—Jungians foremost...also Adlerian, Reichian...of course, Gestalt...then a survey of "Eastern," meaning a touch of Buddhism and a dip and dart with several psycho-babble trends— "New Age" being the coverlet for them all.

Doctor Betty Larson. Not really a doctor, never having turned advanced studies into a doctoral degree, but, in point of fact, she claims that this is what makes her, "A genuine doctor—it's not in the books, but in the soul. I'm a Doctor of the Soul." So does her wide-ranging and vigorous intellect convince Karen...to a degree, this also persuades her dad.

Her dad, tellingly, was more persuasively convinced and conclusively persuaded by her modest hourly fee. Ha. He soothed himself with her phrase, "Doctor of he Soul."

The Dark Angel—the phrase appeared and set the boundary from their first session on, as if Betty had intuited its presence, known it before Karen spoke. Karen had been quite impressed.

"The Dark Angel was right on one point. The facts are not that important."

Karen was totally absorbed by Betty, not that she had said, "Call me Betty, not Doctor Larson." Rather, she had said, "It's Elizabeth, but do call me Betty." This only to Karen...to Mr. McElroy it was always to be "Doctor Larson."

Karen's absorption was total and immediate because Betty knew where Karen was...sited her spot—knew so through meeting the many who were as endangered as Karen was...knew these Karens as her special Calling, her reason for being—her anointment. In her own world, Betty saw herself as a Millennial creature. As one who was part of the Rule of Christ's Thousand—she believing that the Millennium had dawned, that the Christ had returned. So "His Thousand Year Rule is happening." She being just one of His Children of Light.

Why else would such as Karen find her way to my office? Only divine intercession! Verily, all was an unfolding of the Divine Plan. It was for Betty, as for all Children of Light, to wait; sit and wait patiently as the Christ sent Lost Souls their way.

"Lost Souls in this time of His Rule are mostly Lost Women. Women who have yet to escape the bite of the Devil Serpent!" How many times has she shared that with her group, her true family—the spiritual brothers and sisters of the "Family of Light"?

"The facts are not important because what you don't see is greater than the sum of all facts. You could read all the Bible verses twenty-times over and not be Saved. Do you understand that?" She does not wait for Karen's response. "You could attend church every day. You could pray unceasingly every minute. You could dwell only on the facts of Jesus' life, on the Second Coming and the Rule of Christ, do all this and still not be Saved. Do you understand?"

Karen does understand...grasps within during what could be timed as a Flash! Just one session with Betty and Karen knew that she was on the right path; knew that she would be Saved—didn't feel worthy of that yet, but knew. Saved!

"To be Saved is to be Awake!" This was one of Betty slogans and it expressed the critical insight that awakening, enlightenment, "All this New Age narcissistic babble!" was dramatically different from being Saved. "The Lord die to save us from the clutches of Satan. It is ours to obey and praise Him!"

Elated. Betty's word's were healing. Scales fell from Karen's eyes; her heart softened. She sensed that she was, at last, coming to understand the mythos which is trying to be born through you. It was there all along. The biblical mythos. Her Alien Within being the biblical and Christian struggle against Satan, the Devil. All became once again simple and sensible. Just as the nuns had taught her, "The baby Jesus is in you. You are all Madonnas!" Renewed and with the fervor of one touched by the Holy Spirit, she goes home and reaffirms her commitment to a daily study of the Holy Scriptures. Day in, day out, she reads and reads, she prays and prays. Her parents do not intervene. Her father accepts that he has to let "Doctor Larson keep control." Her mother just did not want to pry. Sweet Mother! Loving Father!

That Karen starts attending "Cottage Grove Missionary Bible Assembly" does not alarm them. They are simply pleased with the results. Their daughter seems to be at peace; quite intent and serious, but happy in a non-demonstrative way. How much better than how she looked after that one week, soon after her return from San Diego, when she went "on vacation." Then, her parent's weren't sure exactly where, so it had been a week in hell for them both. They had mutely shared their fear that their daughter was truly damaged, quite ill, disturbed, "having problems"...unable to say mentally ill. Yes, remembering that one New Year's week—they didn't want a week, not an hour of that, again...so, whatever Doctor Larson was doing, it was working, and that was fine with them. In this light, they never asked, What is the Family of Light?

"It's all in Genesis."

Pattern.

Karen lifts open her well-thumbed purse-size Bible.

Betty smiles, one that lids a bit of amusement. "Sister, look at the page. Stare at it!"

Karen knows what she wants, so she does—stares.

"What rises?"

And here is where the Aztecs come back to life. As she stares, Karen's hands tremble. Betty is steadying her with a silent incantation of exorcism.

"Steady!" Sisterly holding.

"Tlazolteotl. I never thought I'd see her again!"

"No! No. It's good she's here!"

"She's there, buried in filth. Actually, rolling around and plowing through the filth. It's like she's swimming, I don't know...it's like, like, she's a serpent. Oh, Sweet Jesus!"

"Yes! Yes! Steady! Tell me more!"

"It's me. I see myself!"

That is what Betty wants. All these Lost Women are simply girls who have never seen their true selves. Women—in this self-flattering culture—who have been pampered and treasured and worshipped and adored and enthroned and hailed as "Queen!" Demonic temptation! What she want Karen to discern here in Genesis is the fullness of Revelation, "That's the truth you must grasp. That's your special feminine privilege, my dear sister."

"Privilege?" The first time Betty has used that word.

"It's God's special blessing on women. It's your privilege. For you have the Sight. What others have wrongly and evilly called the Second Sight. What some even call the Evil Eye. But that's all wrong. The Revelation is clear....you are filled with the Spirit...you have discernment." Karen is hearing, slowly accepting...waiting. "Tell me, dear sister, what is it that Nick tries to do, that all men try to do?" She does not wait. "They try to capture your eyes. They try to get you to see as they see. To see yourself as they see you...you know what? That's exactly what Christ wants them to do, has empowered them to do! That's why you love them!"

"Okay," Karen slowly breathes out an Okay.

In Genesis, Betty was having Karen read about Adam and Eve. The key point was the perplexing question—one that Betty was grateful to hear....Karen forthrightly questioned how Eve was created from Adam's Rib.

Transformation.

"See what is not there."

Karen was perplexed, but fascinated.

Pattern and Transformation.

"Woman's body is not there." Pause. "Don't you see? When women are not subordinated to men, when races believe that the Female and the Male are equal, what do you get? You told me all about the Aztecs. Their goddesses. Their horrible bloody images and rituals. How they took every degrading part of being a woman and made a divinity out of it. And you saw what that got! Human sacrifices. The ritual of slaughtering of young children, babies. "

"Yes! True!" slowly...suffering affirmations...more scales falling from Karen's eyes.

"All the horrors of the past century. Dachau. Extermination of the Indians. Reaching back to the Inquisition. On and on. Terrible massacres. Back to Herod. Back to the Pharaohs. Back to caves where we find skulls clearly cleaved in disgusting rituals...." Betty is physically revolted by the memories, her mouth is dry, she reaches for a glass of water—all so swiftly that she loses not a beat, "What have all these evils in common?"

By now Karen knows the answer—proudly voices it and through such voicing affirms her bond with Betty...her desire to become a Child of Light, "They worshipped women!"

After Karen leaves, Betty organizes her notes, and within the plenary sense of being blessed, places a call to The Family letting them know that Karen is ready...that Karen will be coming to drink from the Father's Well next week.

"Karen"—in her mind's eye Betty sees her as at their first visit, "A young woman with the Devil's presence all about her. The dark glow." She had hardly to ask her, but when she spoke of Southern California...when she mentioned "feminist scholars"...then when she described her courses in archaeology and anthropology, ominously saying "Aztec"...there was no need for a Revelation, simply because her situation was clear— "Fallen sinner!" Instantly, Doctor Larson knew where Karen had been and what had happened.

"The Alien Within" project had actually been a life-saver. For Doctor Larson expanded on what Karen's research had shown, but expanded it in "The Light, not in the Darkness." She showed her how such an Alien Within is the message of Genesis. The phrase being a summary statement of the creation story about Adam and Eve.

"Instead of such an Alien Within, God the Father has shown us that women, that females are not Aliens...rather the flesh and blood of the male. Women and men are one. One flesh. One soul. It's the Devil, the Serpent who's the Alien. Here's where the study of comparative religions does help. They all detail the spiritual worlds where men and women look upon each other as aliens. As contesting gods and goddesses. As each as equally powerful. In short, they pit the two life-forces against each other! Only...this is the Revelation...only in the Christian Tradition is revealed the proper Order—the actual subordination of the female to the male. The male receives dominion. He fully exercises such dominion as Father. It is your role, your proper spiritual role as a woman, to fully and nakedly unfold yourself...unfold your womanness as you participate in the creation of this dominion power as your male becomes a father. It is yours to become a mother. Together, you are family. There are no Aliens Within. Only Aliens Without—Satan, the Serpent, or that woman—Dark Angel."

Karen absorbs all that Betty says. It sates her like a sopping, dripping sponge. Her alliance with the Family of Light—for they eschewed all the temptations of being a sect, and preferred to remain a resource, so the "Father's Well" is how they fashioned their baptismal service —her alliance is forged during her actual drinking from the Father's Well. This was a simple ritual where three silver bowls of water were placed on a table, one minimally decorated with bright flowers. "Drink of this...it is the water that poisons! Satan's Well." Karen, dressed in simple clothes with just a wisp of make-up, yet ever elegant, holds, then tips the bowl. Instantly, without thought of decorum, she spits it out. "Praise the Lord!" This is a sign that the Lord is protecting her. "Drink of this," the second bowl, "it is the water that intoxicates. Sinner's Well." She lifts and sips, again, reflexively spitting out the horrid taste which is both bitter and sweet but disgusting." "Praise the Lord!" Lastly, "Drink of this...it is the water that gives life! The Father's Well." She holds the bowl for a bit longer, sensing that this is a moment to remember and honor...sips the cool, clear, pleasing water...lifts and drains the bowl. "Praise the Lord!"

Karen is thrilled as the members of the Family embrace her, one by one. "Welcome, sister!" She has come to place great faith in their collective wisdom, and is looking forward to a deeper life of study and prayer with them. Her parents, after a bit of cajoling because her father was uncomfortable attending any religious service that took place outside a Catholic Church, attended and were mightily relieved when it was clear that the Family encouraged Karen to also continue attending Holy Mass at St. Boniface. They voiced special support for her praying before the Madonna. They do so in great part because they want Karen to be able to follow the Lord's command and go forth and convert sinners.

"Witness to your family!" This was the Family's charge at the ritual of the Father's Well ended.

"Witness to your man!" This was the Family's charge once all non-Family members left. A second ritual was enacted.

Candles all about. Hundreds, at least. No other light. No pictures. Not even of Jesus. Ah! the corpse-filched Protestant crucifix...a simple cross is on the wall—just one, a small one, not at all something to be the visual center of attention.

Candles and her: Karen.

They all kneeling around her.

They all staring at her.

Men and women staring.

"What did God, our Almighty Father do?"

She responds from practiced memory. "The rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to man."

"What did Adam, our mighty father say?"

"This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."

"What are Adam and Eve to do?"

"Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh."

All, "The family is but one Family of Light!"

Divinely Revealed Pattern and Transformation.

If Nick had known about all this it would have explained why her winter messages have gotten warmer. He notices it right off. Not hot and heated and riddled with lusty allusions as his cyber-chats with Charlene, his roomie's kid sister...no longer so little in Nick's eyes. If he had known about Doctor Carlson and Karen's becoming a Child of Light...shit, what could he have done? He had his own absorptions. Charlene was one. Basketball, another.

"Crazy?!" That's all he could say...not "Gifted and blessed by the Lord!" as Karen might have uttered, if she had known about his rising stardom. "Crazy! This whole year's been simply crazy!" Meaning that his basketball play almost rivaled the acclaim he had garnered on the gridiron. Not Emperor! Now but shouts of "Nicker! Nicker!—this was the chant blasting the walls of Petersen Gym, the roar chasing the jazzy riffs of the band. "Nicker! Nicker!" He'd dunk—left hand, right hand, two hands. "White guy flying and skying!" Such were Daily Aztec headlines. Not that he could save the team from a losing season but that he saved the crowd from leaving at the half...they stayed to watch him razzle and dazzle. "White Boy Black" street-jazz was both praise and scorn heaped upon him...he just laughs and rages-on, tip-toeing the edge, sliding along the razor-blade without getting cut. "Just crazy!"

He has sex with Charlene every possible weekend. "Crazy!"

"Witness to your man!"

# CHAPTER 19

Karen's thoughts and feelings about getting married are not subtle. "We should be planning. It's a long-term plan, I know, but we should be planning."

What's a guy to do? is all he can ever think after reading her sentiments, which come a minimum of twice a week via e-mail with a match in letters and cards and phone calls.

"There's nothing to think about, is there?"

Ha! Asked in that girl way, meaning, You love me don't you? Meaning, I'm the only one, aren't I? Meaning, You don't know the names of any other girls on this planet, do you? Meaning, Hell! What's a guy to do?

Basketball had kept him juiced through San Diego's faux-winter. He loved the games, the crowds, the noise, the acclaim. He played as well as or better than he anticipated, and felt supremely confident that he could handle two sports at State. Coach Larson, on the other hand, was quite pissed. "Focus!" That's all he'd say whenever he looked at Nick. Focus! was the Coach's trademark motivational speech. "Focus!" and a hard stare, so fierce and sharp, so it is said, that he cuts his ice-fishing hole on Mille Lacs simply by barking and staring with just this word .

Spring was Nicks no-sports term. He never took to baseball, and what track he did was squeezed in during Fall cross-country season. While back in Minnesota, Spring meant months of studying for June finals, at State it meant discovering towns named by ancient mariners: Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, Imperial Beach, and Mission Bay. Ancient seafarers who were chasing mermaids, and, as legend says, caught some!

"Beach and Babes!" A rousing couplet accompanying the swinging of a treasure chest of beer and other delights.

What's a guy to do?

Look ...talking to himself, foully drunk...intoxicated with several mixtures of alcoholic formulae...foully in that he has been loud, he has been physically manic, in that he sweated and rolled in the sand...started snorting at the women—running, chasing them, tackling them, them to smell...all he does is snort as he sniffs and makes non-touching slobbering licking sounds...he is so foul that he messes up his erotic zone and can't raise his spear—Nick is Neptune without his trident!

Look, it's like this. I'm preparing. That's it. I'm preparing. Like she's preparing. In her way. She's waiting. That's her way. That's the way women do it who want to get married. They wait. But a guy's...a guy's gotta get himself ready...by emptying himself—getting rid of all the old ammunition, see my point?! Check it out, if a guy doesn't, then when he gets married he still has to do it. But then, there's hell to pay. Hell to pay! Better do it before doing it means infidelity. Good Catholic boy that he is, Nick thinks a justified Do it now and avoid committing a mortal sin!

No one is listening. Except the only person in the audience: Nick.

Avoiding a mortal sin—As to Beach and Babes, he never has to broadcast his arrival...there seems to always be a gaggle of young nubile hotties who recognize him right off....sports groupies. At most, all that needs happen is for a friend or fellow jock, someone who points him out. "You're The Emperor?!" They swim over, haul their pretty mermaid asses and seaweed teats out of the water and plop down next to his blanket...wiggling and giggling bubbles of oooh! and aaah! and oh, my! as he flexes his chiseled arms and poses like "Arnold! Arnold has nothing on me!"

On land, Nick rarely pays for a drink, that courtesy is turned into a baited worm by the roving barroom sirens. But What's a guy to do? Big joke! When the fish are biting, reel them in!

In his own mind, Nick feels that I'm just lucky with women, I guess. He recounts, "Look, just out here on a recruiting visit, get dragged to some wild beer bust...out of nowhere there's this cute girl...I was hornier than hell—pretty sloshed, too! All I do is touch her shoulder. Wham! meet Karen McElroy." He pauses but briefly. "Then I stash my stuff away and have the room all to myself for a month of pre-season training when one night I come in...Wham! meet Charlene. "My kid sister." I mean man, God is good to me!"

Charlene was a Babe of Babes. When she first came to State, it was to visit her brother, thereafter his kid sister was rarely sister anymore, just Nick's date. Right off, they don't do the beach. They simply shack up for the weekend at the Motel 6 off Hotel Circle. The manager knows who Nick is—knows his being there is better than any type of advertising—never asks about Charlene's age, plus he gives Nick a hefty discount.

What's a guy to do? What's a guy to do?

"What?!" mouth open, buck-naked but feeling embarrassingly exposed.

Charlene—bed sheet her only wrap—is slowly and methodically looking through Nick's wallet. It's not that Nick surprised her, just that she was waiting...timing his shower...wanting him to see her—performing.

"She's not in here." Kid sister flips the wallet shut...drops it to the floor...a move effected with such a flick of the wrist that she is taunting, I've made her disappear!

Panic and a flare of rage—Nick angrily kicks, boots the wallet under the bed. "What the fuck?!" Like a deer caught in the headlights, he freezes...forgetting that he took all of Karen's pictures out of his wallet just to avoid such a moment...his rage getting the better of him...hands waving in the air, flapping like a wounded bird... again, "What the fuck?!"

Taking her cue, Charlene steps to her mark...in so doing turns his energy—grabs it like a steering wheel and gives it a full turn...does so by herself turning over on all fours, letting the sheets slide off her, proffering her sweet-peaches under-age ass to Nick.

What's a guy...? The question can't form...doesn't form in his mind, for within the twist of her swiveling movement he is on her, fully risen and hard...plunged into her and bucking her and bucking her...seeing Karen's eyes! Bucking harder and seeing Karen's eyes! Grabbing Charlene by the hips and thrusting in so hard that on some level of male frenzy he's hoping his cock will eject and blast her head apart...that they will die...in savage ecstasy!

As they puddle down, sheets ringing with sweat, he strives to save the days says while looking her straight in the eye, "She's not in there...because I in here," as he taps her pubis. Charlene shivers with delight—He's mine! All mine.

Charlene and Nick don't often talk much during the day...not in conversation like with Karen, she the intellectual....so as Charlene lays there in some part of twilight morning it's fine with her that Nick's soundly and deeply asleep...not nightmare jerking or dream-grunting...almost too quiet...he's just there like a toppled statue laid face down upon the bed. I've charmed the dragon! she titters.

Yet, why she really latched onto Nick...despite his being a Big Man on Campus...was her reading in Cosmopolitan that younger women would benefit from "practicing with older guys." Nick's certainly been a good practice partner! This was "practice" according to Anand's Sexual Ecstasy—which her parents had given her this past sixteenth birthday, as they had her brother, his roommate—a book she showed to Nick and whose Tantric recipes and diagrams he memorized and executed flawlessly as he had the Coach's Playbook.

Nick—my first!—but she'll never tell him that, although she smiles knowing how prideful he would be figuring out that he'd always be her benchmark!

Not tell him that it was only practice, nor why this weekend marks The End. He'll be back in Minnesota next week...that's when I'll send him the bad news.

Charlene pulls the covers up over her chin and stares at the ceiling. She muses, Just wanted to know what could be done...how to do it...now, I know.

Karen. "When you're back next month, we can tighten things up." The was the message in May, awaiting him in June.

"What's she been doing?" is a nagging thought. Nick realizes that he has no clue about what Karen's been doing. There have been hints and things...her quoting Scripture a lot, making unclear remarks about a group she meets with—mentioned once that she's been praying more. "Praying for you. Praying for us." That was okay. He knew back at the airport...when she stayed behind...that something pretty heavy must've happened to her. Man, be cool, it was okay. Ethereal email to Nick Niegsch: "Hold on! It's not okay, buckaroo!"

Aw, fuck, not this again! What does she want? To put it in writing? That I'm an asshole? What is it? Yeah, right, I'm guilty...guilty as hell. Look, I don't, I didn't...love...Charlene. We never said that. Really. We didn't. Honestly. What we did was fuck...as I was saying, a guy's got to get it out or it will ruin his marriage. See, in a sense, I'm planning like she wants me to. Women don't know what men have to do... Do they? Couldn't be! Hell's fucking bells, I'm cock-hot and the women are wicked. Fuck, I like pussy! There, I said it. I...look, Karen and I are, see, we're together. But she didn't give me what I wanted—hasn't yet. I mean she wasn't there after my games...then she flew back home—flew the coop, left me here—all alone. Hey, I'm the Abandoned One! Not her. Christ Almighty, see it from my perspective. She left me to do what she had to do. I'm just doing what a guy has to do.

What a guy does is calculate how many times he can ejaculate in one day—need more than one woman for that... certainly, so I get two or three, just walk the beach, split a brew or two...it's a hard huff-and-puff and her bikini's on the van's futon and the shocks are counting my ups and down—seven times! That was enough for me. I had stopped working out, it was April, hell, my eyes kept slipping off the pages, I couldn't read, so I hit the sand—just seven...but, at least now I know.

How many at one time? It's like full court, you just run back and forth and dunk! Ha! How many side-courts were open? Four was all I could handle at once. I don't care what the other jock-nuts say...they all lie, but I'm not lying—it was four. But you gotta know, it's not the numbers, it's the method. You can screw one. Plunge into a sweet pussy, a broad-hipped brunette comes to mind, a great fit, like I could mine her core forever! Yeah, she was sweet. But then...next, you'd have to turn to a nasty one, a harder one who knew some tricks, has been down on a guy or two...this one was a red-head, remember that because I saw so much of her hair! But...Blow me over!...she did—that's what you need. Some chick who loves to roll her eyes up at you as she's sucking you for all your worth...pulling you back after flipping her sister there, someone who can...unimaginably!...work your asshole and whose hands nip and cut and bring your fiery bush back to life—know what I mean?

Then, the third has to have big teats. Something you can fantasize all over the place as all your whacked-out spermies get a nap for a later run. This was a short sister...the brunette's sister, I think, a bit hefty, but shit we were wallowing in tequila and rum and lots of sweet smoke, some nasty good weed, man...she has some fine low-hanging fruit...it takes me hours to work all over her—fondle her, whack her, playing titty with cocky...all that crap...but it happens, especially if she lets you lick her hot pussy, for believe me she's hot by now...know how these broads, chicks like this, hell, they get turned on watching, seeing someone else get banged. Aw, you know!

The last, where's that? The fourth, yeah, something kinky here. One has to be kinky, likes to go all dancing and slutting around, stripping and all that, pulling down her panties, getting me to pull them down with my teeth, hot shit like that. Yeah, a chick like that, nothing like the woman you marry, ya know, nothing, probably, don't know how Karen's gonna be...know she was just sweet, I mean delicious. Look, there's no one like Karen! No one. Never will be. But don't...get that Guilt crap outta here! Man, listen, let me finish, this is me, The Emperor, that's what this last one wants. I don't know, maybe she wore a wig, she was all jazzed up, sparkles and feathers...I wouldn't know her if she sat on my face! Ha! It's like this—kinky...she wants me to do it, so I do. I'm really a nice guy. These gals really like what we're doing. It's badass fun. I bump and hump and drill her butt. I get so roused just thinking about it, when she first told me to do it, all the other girls just hooted and hollered, "Do it, Nicker!" Aw, Christ! When will this chance come again?

What's a guy to do?

Late-May came...classes over. "Leaving on a jet plane!" Nick knows before landing that the corn will be green. He's eager to see the miles of crops—row upon military saluting rows of green corn...fields choking with leafy collars of kale and spinach and sprawling vines, all afloat in the rhythm of cresting waves of grain—that majestic in-land Sea of Bountifulness which flows from out the Great Green Cornucopia of the Midwest. Somehow this deeply comforts him—he sighs and unaware, sighs.

Eager because it is the fertile time in Minnesota's North Country. The time when the brooks give into babbling. The lakes loft serenity towards the moon. The time when bugs feast on human flesh. Eat and be Eaten. Eat or be Eaten. It's time that calls for seeds to be planted, and like all young bucks, it the time that starts his balls aching.

Holding the reins on an ethereal Prairie Schooner—as Nick holds the wheel, driving home, he can hear the corn cry all the way from the airport down Highway 55 into Hastings, up and over to Empire. Cry as it does every year—a slow wailing...not a cry of pain but a cry of hope...a hope which confirms the Master Plan—Mother Nature's Cycle of Birth and Re-Birth.

As Nick slows down and turns into their cul de sac, his speechless cry is that of the corn.

# CHAPTER 20

"If you love me, truly love me, you'll do it."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because it's true. Do you love me?"

"What more can I say or do?"

The summer of 2002 is almost over. Over is the word which describes how Nick experienced it: flipped-over, tossed-over, crossed-over, ran-over, over-and-out...this his last communiqué with the Nick he once knew, for upon seeing Karen the mid-morning after he arrived from San Diego it was immediately clear...clear as mud, actually, but clear in that sense that the something which had happened at the airport was still happening, but this time he was to be part of the happening. He noticed it, instantly, in her eyes...her eyes locked onto him, they did not just see him, not in the sense of a sighting, "Land ho!" and stuff like that, no, there was an eagerness in her eyes, like roaming the gym at a high school dance, roving and looking and spying...peering to catch that something, that little nothing which the other guys have not seen but which tell you, "Her!" This is what her eyes did, grappled him, but more, more...terribly more, if he had had perspective on the moment, it was more which it was all about, her emeralds that is...much more, that she not only grappled but latched on, eyed him such that he was now never to be out of her sight again...never—an eternal linkage...him and her...always to be eyeballed by the other.

As it happened—Walking towards the baggage area Nick hesitates...caught short by an eerie sense of an impending threat...N-i-c-k-y? It's a cackling call that echoes all the way down to the ramp taking him into the Waiting Area—nape hairs bristle, muscles clench, ready or not! His heart stops in mid-thump, a panicked trickle of sweat breaks and rolls across his forehead. He hears the Wide Receiver coach urging, screaming, threatening, "Eyes on the ball! Focus!" Oh, the Wide Receiver knows that he is going to get creamed, dismantled, shattered, but he has trained, prepared...robotically reaches out, fingers like octopus arms...the Reception occurs! She tackles and wrestles him to the ground. "Oh, Nicky!" All is forgotten—the pain, the panic, the expectation, the kiting fears...he is over the line: "Touchdown!" Whistled and yelled by the referee as he Receives, but so is he Caught...together they are over the line...one in embrace and kiss—Karen and Nick.

The ride home was joyous, once the ground rules were set, "I don't want to talk about it."

"Not now?"

"Never."

Whew! Just a big "Whew!" as he let it sink deeper and deeper. His goddam Guilt was for naught! Nick relaxed back, hands on the wheel...relieved...but lofted an internal Fuck! Swearing vented a certain amount of anger at being deprived of the catharsis of confession, but Thank you, Jesus!...he stayed with Whew! He had no idea if she would have forgiven him, and even if she had whether she'd ever forget...priests were different, they never eyeballed you, never really knew you, heard only voices, breathing sounds which became the one voice, the solitary voice of the Devil. "Say Three Hail Mary's"...then they forgot! But Karen?

Whew!

"I will say it just once. I don't want to talk about San Diego State. Nothing about those months. I want to talk about our future. I want to move forward."

"But..." Dare he ask? "But what about football?"

Her eyes fall; gaze upon her feet, "Whatever you decide."

Double Whew! This was the curious change that he sensed happened already to her at the airport when she did not return to State...but what was it? She's giving me the lead? He was definitely unfamiliar and bit uncomfortable with the you in "Whatever you decide." Part of him sensed a trap....but—What? She bows her head and lowers her eyes—what does that mean? Her eyes have always conveyed her essence—her strength of conviction, her honesty...how he assessed that she truly loved him. What?—these eyes prostrate themselves before him in a way that he has no words to describe...but which effectively convey her intended emotions of submission and subordination. Eyes which for Karen are praising him. "Welcome home my beloved!" Eyes that accept without guile, so—as the Family of Light counseled her—empowering him with dominion.

These demure, suppliant eyes of Karen pledge their obedience to him, their faithfulness, their willingness to die for him...their complete compliance with his will. Without having the word dominion but rather being infused with it...in one moment of unmeasured response, Nick finds himself mentally howling. Make that a capital H—Howling. For she has plunged them deep into a thrilling mythic experience...a widening and broadening experience that is boggling his imagination. In a moment of prayer, she meditates upon the image of Eve....transfers with all her might to her Adam the loving feminine energy of submission. "I am bone of your bone." Amen.

Awake! All of a sudden Nick feels completely and totally powerful—images flash, dash, crash and explode all around him...dominion energizes every aspect of his being....he knowing that his every deed is accepted...his is holy Word...his is Law...all his times with other women, these he remembers but play them out now with Karen...she becoming in his imagining each and every one of them—he taking her and playing with her and fucking her and abusing her and demeaning her and consuming her...it is maddening! Wild! Thrilling! As counseled, she is meditating upon "let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."

There is a slobber on Nick's soul, a searing lust which throttles his craven will...he is willing the world of dominion to be...so it is!

Dominion—All that is, obeys him. He is himself becoming all powerful, becoming the dominator, the ruler, the king—Lord of All. This excites him, thrills him in a way which totally freaks him out. For in one flash he sights Delicious, reaches out his hands and picks her up, holds her with one hand as with the other he strips her, disrobes her, rents and shreds and totally exposes her...as he does she is all fright and scream and horror and madness and lunacy and wilding. It enthralls him more and more and more! He licks her, from toe to tip of her hair, one big lick...sucks out her life force, sucks and draws herself but to bone and shriveled flesh. Her bones he cracks, breaks open and sucks out her marrow. All her bones he gnaws and shatters and chews and chews and chews...swallows in one gigantic, cosmos shattering gulp! Hunger sated, she is all within him, part of him—as fitting and just, she is of his flesh and bone, of his breath and whisper, of his heartfelt lust and willful desire.

Witness to your man. The command, the charge, the directive of the Family of Light is always with her. It is all that she is about—Karen McElroy is a witness to her man.

Pattern and Transformation.

"On August 6th."

"Your birthday."

"Our birthday. Us."

God saw that it was good! The wedding was planned. Amen. Praise the Lord!

There was the Bachelor Party, but reduced to just drinking and jock-jokes. By his former standards, the night was pathetically boring...no bawdy clamor, no "XXXX" porno flicks, no up-town hooker, not even dope...not even from Kane! This was further evidence of her radical shift....the change. However, the drastic degree of change was more clearly seen by others than by Nick himself.

Kane hadn't talked with Karen about "What's been going on?" He didn't have to. Everything became apparent from talking with Nick.

"Full Catholic blow-out?"

"The full ten yards. The half-court basket!"

"Never thought."

"Me neither."

"Bierstube?" This, an invitation to be spurned a hundred unto a thousand times. "Can't do. Karen and I are going..."

"How are you going to afford it?"

"She'll work."

"Carry a full load and work?"

"No she'll work. Catch some part time classes."

"She's giving up archaeology?"

"Studying some, some religious stuff. Wants to be a Sunday school teacher." Masking his spotty enthusiasm not so well, "Wants a degree in Religious Education."

"At San Diego State?"

"I'm there for ball, man. We're getting married. It's different."

Did Kane have to decode Nick's male messaging? The body posture—standing upright and firm, sure, but as if doing so because he is carrying the full weight of another body. His eyes—clearer, more serious, gazing out, not just looking, not scanning the horizon as if searching for prey...farther off, like looking out over his whole life...eyes which strained and reflected nothing, so Kane surmised, because they were gazing into the Void—what she had trapped him into peering into...this Kane grasps in his gut. Like the first time he got a real hard-on, he had just blankly stared at it—lying there in his bed, ten years old, boner hard as steel hammer...him spooked but sensing that how he saw the world from then on would never be the same...so, he now knows about Nick—Does Nick know?

"Nick, honey, did you remember to make a list?"

Dominion. She was living her life through him. Had yielded her life for him. Had pledged herself in eternal fidelity. What "I love you" meant to Karen is "I lay down my life for you!" Still a Lover but in the mold of Christ's love.

Why then is Nick at Harry's? Why this place where he and Kane never went? Where few would know him? Where he is the youngest at the bar? All around him are older guys, mature men, experienced fellows. Somehow—by what cosmic force?—he has been drawn here, not by this older male collage of wisdom and experience. No, he had pulled over—having driven past Harry's for years, it not being a place for them, knowing themselves being what the whiskey-heavily-watered before him told himself...not married. That's it, they were not married, but soon Nick was to be. He surveys down the bar, right and then left, swivels and scans the room—a big screen TV with baseball on, guys jawing at dollar betting pool games, old cronies in the corner chatting idly. All the while, inside him, somewhere waywaywaydown inside, encouraging words are heard, "It's okay. It is right. It is fitting. It is just."

They are married. August wedding—all white with golden wreathed crown for the Bride and stunning blood-red wrist corsages for the Maids—fifteen...for Karen was so terribly popular in the hamlet of Afton that she had to say Yes to each one who asked, "A big wedding?" That meaning lots of people, over two-hundred for the reception at Cannon Falls' roller-rink. Big in that there was a High Mass with lots of candles and seemingly endless chanting...songs in Latin, Rocking songs, Tearful songs...she crying most at "How Great Thou Art!" He quivering inside as he heard the strains of "Unchained Melody" come as interrogation! "I hunger for your touch." Do you so hunger Nicholas X. Niegsch?

"Time goes by so s-l-o-w-l-y." Will you always stay with her Nicholas X. Niegsch? Stay and stay and stay and staystaystay...?!

"Man, this is a Big Wedding!" Kane was drunk before he staggered in as Best Man.

Big. That was the adjective of choice but it was for Nick a verb—he Big. This was what was at the root of it all. Ah! If Nicholas X. Niegsch had only been given this piercing insight into his self...but it would not come to him as knowledge, rather, it would be the emotion, the push, the challenge—Aha! This is how it comes to him—instinctually, as The Challenge. More than football, more than anything any man—his father, Coach Larson, Kane, the bartender at Harry's...more than any other male could, so came The Challenge to become BIG!

B-i-g. This is all she was about. Here, Absolutely Stunning and Fair and Graceful and...Luscious! Nick watches...sentry keening...monitors Karen's walk down the aisle, that eternal stroll on the arm of her father which is a glide, trailing a train—long, fifteen foot diaphanous layers exposing a foundation of the utmost purity—reflecting the Purity of Her Desire, a Desire which comes towards him, announcing, "CONSUME ME!" It is for him to consume her, to inhale her, to make her one with himself—to exercise dominion...become Big!

The priest's last officiating charge, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man."

Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas X. Niegsch respond in wedded voice, "Amen!"

# CHAPTER 21

The Pattern was set. Her life was to be a witness to him.

Transformation. She was to enable him...with God's blessing and grace!...so that he would and could exercise his dominion.

This the key—her actions, the key—as in the Garden, so in Earthly Exile, her subordination is the catalyst for his and His Pattern.

The Pattern which Transforms is Family—the domain of his dominion.

Nick first grasped the fierceness of her submission, the almost savage impact of her patterned subordination, when she insisted that he had to ask her father for her hand. Karen would have it no other way. Nick was scared out of his mind.

To test himself, he had first his announced it to his parents. "Nineteen!" the word had been the ax, the sword, the torch, the blunderbuss, the cruise missile which his parents had unleashed. "You're only nineteen, for Christ's sake, Nick, what do you, how do you, can this work? I mean, marriage?"

He wanted to say...misdirect them, make them laugh, anything!—not say that "The woman made me do it!" But he didn't. He could see her there, more, feel her presence, as he spoke to them the one and only thing he thought really revealed his heart, "I love her, madly."

Was he ready to talk with her father, "Mr. McElroy, sir"? For his own part he didn't want to face him, just didn't know how to argue with a man who called her, "Daughter."

But Karen's witnessing softened up her father. Not that she said a word, such would not be proper, so had she been counseled by the Family of Light. "It is for the men to decide," so it was said, "It is for you to witness. It is their dominion."

Witness, here, for Karen meant being as Eve was before the Father Almighty—silent. More, mute.

It was this muted unusualness in his daughter which spoke to him, actually, harassed and chased and pestered and hounded and overwhelmed. Karen who had always been his Top Student, First Place, Princess at Homecoming, Scholarship Winner. Oh, "Mac" McElroy ached within. She came at him like silent-thunder-striking and hailstones on naked flesh—he painfully knew that she was going away, he felt his own personal diminishment...no longer The Man in her life, just Dad. But her witness made clear that his yielding consent was a gain, not a loss. What she soulfully messaged to him was that he would have more. More!...more children, grand-children. More!... the son he never received, now in Nick—stellar athlete, national star. More!...have more of her as daughter now that she was no longer distracted by other men, no longer a Prize or a Treasure or the Maiden in the Tower. Karen mutely spoke long and loud and incessantly, conjured in his dreams and stirred in his memory...making him remember that he, himself, had had a her—My own kid!—to have more—More!

Nick asked and her father consented right off. This shocked Nick, rocked him, baffled him...faster than the beat of an angel's wing! But Nick gladly accepts his acceptance. "If Karen wants you, then it's okay with me and the Misses."

McElroy, father-in-law: "Call me Mac, son!" Even throws an arm around Nick, not hugging him, just measuring him, computing his weight and the value of this new possession: "son-in-law."

Nick's parents instantly yield, give in to Karen, too. They think their son just the victim of his hormones, possibly of too much stress at State. "Success is stressful," his father tries to justify his own decision as well as Nick's mom. Mom, however, knew...as their eyes met...when Karen arrived later that same day that it was a done deal. "The girl wants this. She'll make it work."

Pattern. Karen subordinating so as to order. Nick ordered towards transforming dominion. For him, once the decision was made, a telltale change did occur. He became what Kane would dub, Serious. Both would come to know the depths of the meaning of that word, but they didn't discuss it. Once a buddy becomes serious, such cannot be discussed—this one of the first realities of being serious!

Nick simply focuses more. "Focus!" on his speed and agility, on his studies, on his wife. He likes that word, wife. More than love, so he tells her. "Loving you as wife is..." and he loses his tongue—for the next near-twenty years he is fated to always be trying to complete that sentence. "Wife!" he will always know is was what drives him, attracts him, lures him, satisfies him—feels good, this "Wife!"

Pattern. Back at San Diego State for three years. A well-worn "married student apartment," meaning that it is cheap. Her dad had turned over the Trust he developed which was originally scheduled for her twenty-first birthday. "Things change," is all he said as he signed the papers. Thirty-thousand dollars blew Nick away!

This bridal dowry enabled Karen to serve Nick in the way she felt was proper. She was the teased "domestic goddess!" Yet, knowing this phrase in the more serious way as expressing the truth that she was the keeper of the hearth...the one responsible for managing the homestead...having a place her man could come to, be refreshed, feel loved. So, right out of the chute, she drew up a budget, put the dowry in savings bonds and said, "We can make it on my salary." Hmmm, hard to do in San Diego but she knew he knew that her "Pilgrim Elementary School" teacher earnings would at least maintain them at their present level of wealth—ha, "student poor!" At least, keep the wolves away from the door!

In his own realm...The Emperor's empire...Nick went off the scale...capturing the hearts of the Aztec fans with three WAC championships, two bowl wins, three MVPs (Coach Larson, "I'm jealous...and proud!"), keeping State three years in the Top Ten. Then, during an ESPN interview, the shocker, "I'm not offering myself for the draft." Diminishing himself as a late second, surely third round draft; lying to his core. "I just don't have the desire," his shameful explanation; jock-less excuse. He just couldn't say what he wanted—even knew that he himself did not quite understand—but they had read the divine message...read it over and over again, out loud, in prayer—the Pattern was clear, the way to clarity was through becoming adults, becoming parents, creating family. Deep in his heart, Nick yearned to prolong his athletic adolescence, but the divine Pattern was map. "When I was a child I spoke like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways." How could dominion be otherwise understood?

How else but the subordination of their personal lives, their self-centered egos, to engender the creation of new souls? How else but through family?

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Yet...off-the-scale...others counting his future in millions; he just counting love.

"If you love me, you'll give it up and become a dad."

Lovers—say I love you!

Spouses—Do it! Enflesh their love in the blessings of children.

Yet, there were moments of lingering regret, a toying with a second chance. "But, be real, look at all the money! It's a once in a lifetime opportunity!"

How many ways to say it...then say it again? Or, have others say it. Even her own dad. Expectedly, his parents. Once in a lifetime!

A greater voice asks, "If you love me...."

Pattern and Transformation—her subordination as catalyst. Do you really, truly love me, like Adam loved Eve? Like Christ loves His Church?"

"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth."

Pattern and Transformation—Family.

"What profith a man if he gains the whole world...?" They read it together.

Sean and Patricia come in the summer of his senior year—this the Divine Pattern both now recognize. This is what has driven her. What she knew was her witness to him—Nick to be father...patriarch.

He knew the subordination of dominion—it completed her...pregnancy.

Pattern. Back now living in Hastings...a young family using the Trust to buy a home on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi. He hustling as a sales rep for 3M. Leveraging his athletic reputation, using it to advance as a motivational speaker—each year rising in the corporation like he did to snag balls...National Sales Rep of the Year...Top Rookie Manager...National District Manager of the Year...Director of Sales...within ten years, Vice President of Sales and Marketing—proud fathers, especially the in-law.

The years rolled-on, the decades folded. Doing what must be done—What's a guy to do? no longer on the table. He was living the answer. He was married to Karen, so ensuring the survival of the species and the fulfillment of Our Father's Divine Plan. He learned, as they became closer to their Catholic Faith than either of their parents had been, that the New Millennium was not of age and years and generations but of their heart. In mutual agreement, they formed their life around "family," what Karen had first found with the Family of Light. The Family had dissipated and dissolved as the Millennium unfolded in a set pattern, one year much like the next: 2004 and 06 and 12 and 16. Now when they look back upon their younger years, it is a memory told through the changing faces of their children.

Fortunately for Nick—God is good!—Karen translated submission into a very positive and pleasurable attitude towards and practices of the romp and titillations of Creative Eros. She remained ever the stunning woman, growing more beautiful with age. Blessed by a softness of skin and a need but for the slightest of cosmetic, she was ever his delight. Somehow—he never asked!—she balanced an impassioned commitment to biblical principles with the marital advice of Cosmos and like glitterati magazines. More, she won a slew of sales awards for her part-time in-home sales work with a multilevel marketing company that hosted "passion parties." She felt it her biblical obligation to keep herself and her red-hot mommas! abreast of all the tools of the trade, that of being the most feminine female, womanly woman, girly girl! they and she could imagine.

Over the years, in their bedroom she discretely maintained a special closet—Don't tell the twins! It was replete with a Romance library of books, magazines, and I-disks. It also served as safe storage for a tantalizing line of sheer and lacy and diaphanous and scented and simply Gulp! engendering dresses and negligees. Although Nick was the Master, he was, himself, a bit below average on the sexual athleticism scale, somewhat in direct proportion to how above average he had been on the playing fields. Yet, as Karen knew, her husband was—as the Bible made so clear—a mere mortal man, prone to sin, tempted even to mortally sin—adultery! Her erotic submission, her unraveling of his darkest desires with the latest sex toy ("passion accessory"!) , her evoking his most craven, depraved, wicked sexual conquest dreams, all was acceptable, fitting, even "normal" in that human sexuality had to be controlled, directed, and manipulated towards the Divine Pattern—creating a stable and loving family. As Karen never failed to preach to—even repeatedly shock—her passion party ladies, "If home fucking! is better than street fucking! than your man will not stray or fall." Sexual ecstasy was the twin of divine ecstasy.

Truth be told, one more time, "Love me as Christ loves his Church," was hardly heard by Nick as she approached—for the ten-thousandth time!—with all the seductive and hypnotically erotic powers of their very first date.

Transformation.

Family years

Spousal decades.

Yet—Beware! Paradisiacal Pattern—the Serpent in the Garden.

Hearing, each on their own, as they just sailed past their tenth wedding anniversary all that is not answered, arising is the new question: Is this all?

"Is this all?" The unvoiced lament of Lovers—that maddening measuring question. Who cannot but fall short?

Certainly, this "all" did not refer to sex. The passion partying never stopped!

So, what was it, this all?

He never asked her.

She never asked him.

They just kept being lovers, and as Lovers, so husband and wife.

Lovers—a word of Catch and Play.

Spouses—a word of comfort; this is where their comfortableness led them.

Family—how she subordinated and he exercised dominion.

Family Life...flying by almost too fast; like most lives. Whenever a decade birthday hits, one asks, "Where has time gone?" A query rooted in the awareness that life is not a series of home slides shows, plodding along with slow clicks, but rather a fast-forwarded video, almost a blur...hardly time to catch one's breath!

Sameness—the unhappy Pattern. What Nick had once feared when at Harry's, and what kept him going back to Harry's. He needed some...change. Like the Coach's Playbook—just a little variance from year to year.

So, it was...fast times and sameness...unhappy Pattern.

"Is this all?" really coming home to him, devastating him...the biblical Paradisiacal Pattern which guided their earlier decades held until her 34th birthday, 2016...just marking their 15th anniversary.

Witness to your man!

Now the change comes after her, nagging, harassing—fiercely burning into her consciousness, setting itself as lodestone for an unknown Pattern, an indecipherable Transformation...questioning, Witness to my man?

# CHAPTER 22

"It started as an annoying thought."

"Go on."

"I didn't want it. Nick gave me this incredible emerald necklace with a brilliant diamond interlaced chain...our fifteenth anniversary. That's when it began to annoy me."

"The chain meant something? Or the diamonds?"

"No. I wish it was that simple. But it was the giving. My realizing that I was the only one he gives to. Just me. Just me. Understand? All of a sudden—just me!"

"You didn't like that?"

"Before I would have. Any year. Yes. Sure. Let me tell you what happened...really happened. Anyway, as I see it now...understand.

The horror of San Diego State was the terrible allness of it all—all those Aztec gods and goddesses. It fascinated at first. But then I could feel it. Feel them. I had never been much on theology up to then—sure I was religious, in the normal Afton sort of way. I guess, I just knew what I knew from Sunday School. But out there, this I knew—there were too many...that was the horror, the indecency...what else?...the pornography of it all.

It was not just my soul, but every part of my body. Not just my life, but every aspect of my life. It was just...just too complicated. Too overwhelming." Sighs. "I was overwhelmed."

A short pause...her therapist...good friend...listens attentively.

"I have to tell you. She told me, this Angel person. Imagine, I even started calling her "Dark Angel!" Oh! Angel told me to sit focusing on the candle-flame, to look until I saw my many selves. I ended up in a pool of blood. Imagine! Menstrual blood.

There simply were too many of me for me."

"The Pattern. That's the word you use, right? Isn't this what Betty gave you. This Family of Delights?"

"Light. Family of Light."

"Right." Doing a bit of quick psycho-funny on herself, "My Freudian slip's showing!" Both free small laughs but quickly get back on track.

"Yes, a pattern."

"And...?"

"Simplicity. That's what it was when he gave me the necklace, an actual treasure, must've cost him over ten grand, but that's not the issue, it's the simplicity of his gesture. For...for him, all he had to do was exercise dominion over me...it was his right. To make this gesture."

"As at your wedding. Adam and Eve. Right?"

"True. What was I thinking? Wow, almost too painful to remember that.

Yet, it satisfied me. Deeply satisfied me. It was a pleasure. Not that I would have called it a pleasure. But it was a deep feeling. So deep..." She drifts off on a wisp of distraction.

Ahem.

"Sorry. I'll focus. Here's what our sharing has opened for me. Oh, your skill at this bodywandering is...is just so incredible. You are truly blessed, my sister!"

Her therapist gets up and sits in a chair next to her. She lays her left hand on Karen's right arm. Karen continues, "Entrancing. It was its own flame. A simple flame. One God. One Almighty. Just One Parent—Father. Just One Man—Adam. Just One Love—Husband. No messiness. I was adjusting the necklace, then...Snap! Crack!...everything went celestial. Maybe not the right word, but it was dazzling. All of a sudden I saw my many selves. Those many selves as back then. But...this is why I'm here. This time I didn't panic. I didn't leave. I didn't gasp."

"Nick?"

"He never knew. Not back then. Not now."

"Does Nick still see himself as Adam?"

"Believe me if I say, I never asked?"

"Really?"

"It wasn't like that...because..."

"Go on."

"Because I wouldn't let it be like that."

Karen pauses. It's clear that all that is being shared is tearing her up inside...some good tears that free things, others, just stuff that needs to be tossed.

"The Pattern was felt by me. The real word for me has always been pregnancy. That's how I felt the first time our atoms were in hailing distance. Like I turned and looked at him and I was fuller. While at State I took it all to mean that I was a goddess and Life Giver to all things, all plants and animals. Cosmic vibes...a real Southern California thing.

Then I met her—Tlazolteotl. She's the Goddess of Filth but also of Fertility—a real woman's fertility, her cunt throbs, her belly's pregnant, she has a million babies...all at once! It's not like Mary, she's not like Mary, I mean Tlazolteotl...like Mary wasn't there with me when I had the twins...that was woman's sex, all cunt. I felt myself as cunt, but I couldn't say anything—not for decades! What a jerk! But that's it—when a woman feels that she's all cunt and ready to give birth to all children, every child—she becomes Mother of All...that's when men don't know what to do!

It was comfortable. Being pregnant was always comfortable. Right up to and through delivery. I always believed that I was created as a mother—as a pregnant one with child.

Anyways, all of a sudden I see dominion, naked....for the first time, I don't like it."

"Didn't like what?"

"The simplicity. The Garden story is just too simple...simple-minded if you want. Just one parent—is that really believable? And it being a Father, not a Mother?! Rocks the imagination when you think on it...my being his bone—not even created with him, but after him."

"But you let it be?"

"True. Dominion's a woman's trick. You have to get that fact, that truth. It's always men and women, male and female, so I realized that I was the dominion-woman as I accepted my role. What messed me up, I think, is I wanted to be a mother so badly, like most women at certain times, I just needed a man to make me pregnant...so I'd do whatever it would take. And I did. The dominion woman's trick is that she makes her man take dominion. You make them believe you believe in them. Then, they perform tricks! Ha, ha."

"You think that's funny?"

"Funny? Maybe. Okay. I'm sure it's hard for you to understand, is for me. Remember, my coyote, sweet Maria, challenged me to find the mythos that was trying to be born through me? Finally, I can say that I found it. It was always there, back at State. But I had no way of dealing with all those female goddesses because I was raised in the One Only God's dominion mythos, even if I didn't grasp that when younger. See, no woman in the biblical world is a goddess, certainly not honored and adored as manifesting many goddesses. That was it! I was supposed to be the one woman for the one man...but the mythos inside me was that of the Alien Within...which is myself as all women, as hundreds, thousands of goddesses. As Mother of All.

I think...I know that I'm ready now. To respond to that challenge. To live manifesting myself as all goddesses."

Her therapist, who has become a close friend, is simply blown away. "What a marvelous journey! Oh, sweet sister, your story will help thousands of sisters free themselves from the shackles of monotheism and dominion!"

They lean together, heads touching, hearts on fire.

In several seconds, that counted as eternal on the Lover's scale of time, they are back, talking.

"How is this going to work? I mean with Nick's now addiction to dominion?"

"Oh, Mother! I'm not sure...just not sure. I only know that I just don't want to be his Only One. I realized that is why I had children. I never knew this, but it came as the clock struck thirty-three so to speak...that being pregnant meant that I didn't want to be his Only One—that children were to be his Lovers, too. But I'm not sure that that can happen if he accepts fathering as his dominion.

Understand, I can't go back to him. I can't be in the same room. I'll have to take the children and just go somewhere. Maybe to his sister's in Berkeley. She'd understand. But you've got to understand, it's been...what? Almost three years now with you. Still I haven't been able to break the Pattern. Oh, sure, really, I do see the Pattern. I intellectually grasp its root, its warp and woof, but it's there—I made it, see, I wove it. I accept responsibility for that, but I'm pregnant again." She touches her belly. "I just don't want to be his Only One.

Both women sense that it is time. "Better get back. Better get started!"

"You'll not rush into this, okay?"

"Whatever you say."

"No. I want you to say it. Okay?"

"Sure. I won't rush."

As she drives home from this meeting with her dear, dear friend, she with whom the last three years has made the previous thirty-three bearable...she who has met her with her to ease her stress, massage and work her body so that she could relax...she who specializes in healing battered women, coming to her by co-incidence, meeting at a philanthropic event, one where Karen was honored as "Champion Fund-Raiser, House of Refuge, 2017." Awarded an aesthetically impressive award—pyramidal, crystalline, a glitter of power and purity. She gave it to her dad by saying to her mom, "Mom, you're my champion!" Baffling mom, this honoring! With this and then a chat, leading to this and that... serendipity, synchronicity, unintended consequences, accidental meeting. What did it matter how or what it was or is called or named or tagged? They met.

As Karen drives home down Highway 95, south from Hudson, no more than a ten minute drive, one that she has taken so, so many times, this also being the road to Afton...there, Karen McElroy Niegsch swerves and crashes, plows into a tree.

Tree— long-waiting, kin of her age, a witnessing yew—evergreen.

No ice. No snow. No blizzard. No sudden gust of blinding snowdrift. Nothing to explain it. Not a heart attack. Not a brain seizure.

Just a deep January winter day—Minnesota, where the mystic Polar Bear roams.

# CHAPTER 23

Nick told the twins. They wept as family...eternally.

He had to put things in Final Order. Karen had bequeathed him such dominion.

Mindlessly, he dresses for the funeral. "Something of hers." He carefully inspects her desk. In an unmarked folder, one which falls to the floor as if by accident...a brush of his black-death cuff ...falls, stoops and picks it up...it's time for Karen to utter her final speechless word, Nicky! No date. Just the file label calls to him, "Nicky." Inside is a sheet...no special heading—just the lines. She a sometime writer, a penner of especially short notes on birthday cards.

Nick reads:

Death is its own kind of divorce.

It's not like the living know how to speak to one another when they part.

Why the expectation for some type of conversation?

He's dead. She's dead.

Death is its own kind of heartfelt embrace.

It's like the dead know how to commune with us when they part.

Why not an expectation for some type of ecstatic intimacy?

So, she rises.

So, he rises.

"Whomever I am, let me rise and love you forever." So be it.

Nick returns the communiqué to its folder. Places the folder back in the desktop file tray. He turns...the twins await—Sean and Patricia.

Nick, alone.

Alone: he, again— It is not good that the man should be alone.

What's a guy to do?

# KAREN, BELOVED

_My sweet Nicholas X., are you remembering as I do?_ That we had gotten to the point as a married couple where the Pattern had to be broken if Transformation was to occur? _Hmmm, I doubt that, my love_. Oh, the sadness of this passage beyond the grave...that I have left you so unprepared...so lacking in the emotional tools to make a breakthrough, to escape the Pattern of dominion. Oh, how have I failed you, my Beloved! I left you locked down, imprisoned by my false sense of myself as a woman. I failed you, allowing you to love _only me_ and I to submit only to you. Oh, how cruel all this is. I pine and weep on this side...yes, it is here that the human heart feels even more deeply and tenderly than when in the flesh. Oh, so much grieving do I have to do _for you_.

I was coming to tell you...but I did not arrive. Oh, there is such a fullness. There is so much _more!_ There is...all that I have is my heartfelt embrace. But how can you feel me, sense me? Oh, what I now know and wish we did, but we did not practice dreaming together into eternity. Why did I not understand that sooner? Oh, my grief saps my heart. I grieve for you and me.

" So she rises. So he rises." Oh, such hope! Which is true. But how to reveal this truth to you? Only, so my hope is, through Her. She whom I was coming to tell you about—Our Mother. She whose daughter I am. Whose other daughter I now send to you in heartfelt embrace.

My memories take me to her, my sister in heart...she with whom I have left you... _into her hands do I commend your body, mind and spirit!_

But will you recognize her? More, will you embrace me as you embrace her?

My trust, my hope is that my memory lives through her...this sister mine who I came to love so dearly, so wondrously.

Let her in! Let her in!

Oh, my sweet Nicholas...!

# PART 3: NONA
# CHAPTER 24

"Can I get you another?"

Nick didn't turn, just nodded his head, paused, looked at the film of whiskey left at the bottom...scraped the circular edge of the shot-glass around in little circles on the bar space in front of him, not making much noise, not scratchy noises, more like he was trying to write with the glass, write something in a language whose words he didn't comprehend.

"What are you writing?"

Like Mrs. Norris in third grade, always looking over his shoulder. "What are you writing?" Not indictment. Not criticism. She was curious; wanted to know what Nick thought, what all her students thought. It had changed how he looked at writing, and this question made him always think of her. So he, to himself, chuckles at the aptness of this question, coming from someone who couldn't have known what the question would mean to him. This time inquisitively gyrating his head just a bit, just a peek and a boo—it is that same woman, again. Harry places a new shot in front of him, and this woman slides a five spot towards Harry. Uninvited but inviting herself by picking up the tab...she sits down on the stool next to him. From the back of his head, heard by his inner self, Why not? Have to do it sometime!

The first half-hour was pure hell. Nick chattered and blabbed on, while inside his mind he went nuts! About Should I? Could I? Would I? Now? If not, when? All those questions which had nested somewhere behind his brain. Kane, my man, that's how I see it—behind my brain. He strokes the air behind the back of his head, not touching his neck, not touching his hair. Harry has seen him do this at least once each drinking session, which has become at least once a day, not just at his "usual time...Friday after work." Sadly, now that she has died—Harry, having never met his wife, did not feel it proper to call her "Karen" even when just talking to himself about Nick, for him it was "her." Since she died, his wife, well—Bartender's Counseling Service! he muses, which is a curse, but sometimes helping out a bit. Harry's seen all this before—as a curse it's knowing that he's just numbing a guy and not giving the poor soul some measure of relief or pleasure. Harry, like most bartenders, like most ministers of psychoactive elixirs, wanted to see his patrons, his flock, his clientele, "Happy!" Even if it were just momentarily, actually, preferring it momentarily, for then it must come again. I mean, how could a bartender live or even find meaning if addictive habits were not formed and coping rituals not adhered to? Since she died, everyday became Nick's usual.

Pure hell...because Nick wanted so much to simply jump into her arms, not even at first thinking about screwing her, simply collapse into her arms and forget! Let memories fade as this one became her—damn, not became Karen...never! A thousand times never! But he had been running from accepting the cruel mathematics of it all—there was no way he could just swap her for another her...no equivalency, that one equals one. No one could ever equal Karen. "Yeah, I miss her. Terribly. I love you Karen. Always have. Always will." Soliloquizing, in drunk talk, in liquid therapy, Nick faces the thought, not the words...faces the feeling more than the thought—despite the math, he needs a her.

Nick hated himself for feeling this way. Nick was angry at himself for feeling guilty. Nick was babbling and chattering as she sat there. Sits there.

She didn't talk. Just aimlessly sipped a tall glass of champagne. Sat there as if condemned to silence until he answered her question, "What are you writing?"

Minute seven after the question. "Nothing." Flat. Uninviting. Defensive. In the next breath, "Everything!"

Tears flowed inside: huge, small, tiny, wet, dry, sad, happy, fearful, maddening, nervous, shameful...dammed-up and then broke. White-Water Rafting Mishap! Emotions swamping him, plunging him down, drowning him. Aaarrggh! He so wants to die! Wants to be sucked down by the ravaging river! Yet, his "Everything" was thrown out, not merely spoken...heaved up from somewhere within him...or, under me or behind me, who the fuck knows?! Simply ejected—the flailing arms of the drowning man going down for the third time!

She finishes her drink, waves off Harry, twists and slips off the stool...all in a rather affecting manner, one of polish, almost a performance. All this and then within the turn he was planning to execute, wanting to say, "Hi. I'm Nick," in that flash, she is over at a secluded booth in the corner.

Did he say to himself, "Follow her?"

Did he think, Follow her!

Did he feel in his heart, follow her.

The thread she left behind so that he could follow her—Was it bass-fishing trustworthy? Or, diaphanous— the weaving of angels? Or, the cagey Ariadne's solution to following, to tracking, laying down a line so that he'd be able to work his own way back out again?

Ha!

# CHAPTER 25

She came every day of the next month—weekends included. Thirty-one days of him still deep into Minnesota's January. Then, inevitably, the page turned, as is fitting. Nick could not defeat the Laws of Nature, the Cycles of Time.

"Nona," somewhere back during the first meeting, but a name not heard by him for about the length of a biblical day of creation, for from the first he refused to name her...more honestly, he couldn't...that is what kept him coming back, not just to Harry's which was his own way, but to her and their seclusion...not always the same booth, but whatever booth, so it became secluded...they off into their own world.

"Again?!"

She muffles her laughter with her left hand, a move which makes him know how mischievous she really is!

"What...if anything...do we agree on?"

She takes another sip of champagne...not even a sip, more like a kiss, a dab of a magical potion which protects her lips from having to answer him—this irks Nick.

"We agree on coming here," Nona says.

It wasn't anything like Nick expected. What he expected was that sidereal time would provide its healing through distance, the measure of weeks and months, unleashing a feeling that "It is proper, now." Acceptable to all after thirteen months—a first anniversary: an ability to look at others and not have to say, A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do! Hell's bells, he thought that there would be a way, a pathway, however convoluted. One that he would have to walk and which others would recognize that he had walked—the selling of the home, the shipping the twins off to his sister, his daily sorrowing at Harry's, his living in a rented apartment...just his shuffling around and his private mourning. For all he did was mourn Karen—said to himself what so many others have said, "You never know how much you love someone until they're gone." Not just losing love...I love you, Karen! a hundred million gazillion times...but the press of deep, brooding blues, with pains wracking his legs and hands and head, all phantom pains, this he knew—he did not have to so ask his doctor! She was gone and he had lost his body—bone of my bone! Ethereal, numinous, rapturous loss. Yeah, babe, I know you're here, as he washes his hands or submerges into a hot tub or hits the road for a frenzied five mile run. These he knew as ways of communicating with her, of retaining her presence. She now "over there," "up here"—There she is! just at the end of the next run! He'd sprint and stride and push himself until all of his bones bailed out from all of his flesh and muscle and tendons and cartilage...exhausted, exhausting, expiring...this is what he expected, and it began that way...but not the ending, not this entrance of another...he was expecting comfortable.

Nona was nothing if not uncomfortable.

"She irks the shit out of me!" to Kane. His pal just listening, hand on a beer glass.

Kane wants to say, "Why put up with it?" Meaning, "We've been through too much shit with women to have to deal with this." But he doesn't say that. He also doesn't say, "Ah, just fuck the bitch, it'll do you good." Although that is what he wants to say.

Nona—her face comes to him as he settles down, awaiting sleep. Not Karen's; hers. He didn't like it. But then, Karen is there. That's what really jerks him. He wanted Karen's face to sneer and grimace and spit at Nona's face. But that didn't happen. It was like Nona was so different that she and Karen could occupy the same space—curiously complementary. This really enraged Nick—true enragement: a fire. He had never fallen asleep while on fire, but that's what began to happen. Before, at the end of the day, he'd simply reach across and there would be Karen...she who loved him, submitted herself to him, served him...their mere touch rejoiced in his dominion—comfortable.

Nona—Aaaagggh! He watches himself fall asleep—Nick falls asleep—on-fire...falling through the clouds, burning the clouds, plunging down, not just free fall, not just trip and fall, but plunge, more, self-propelled plunge—he is a fire-ball, a blazing comet, a renegade sun, fierce in his self-conflagration, relishing the self-consumption, for he is alive to his reduction, to the burning of himself, the dwindling of the circumference of his ball of flesh...but it is a diminishment which intoxicates him, for with every burning instant, every flame which purges the dross of his outer self, so is he purified, made more unadulterated...without imperfection, without stain, a self-realization which makes him rejoice...he gives praise that he is throttling through space and clouds and atmosphere—he, fire, fireball...in utmost thrill and ecstatic jolt and amazing pleasure. Yahoo! Pleasure! Shouted as he spears into, rifles through, pierces and strikes wildly-self-enraged into the Ocean...burning the Ocean, searing the water, scalding the wet unto dry...the hiss and pop and thunder of his swooosh! vaporization of the Ocean is so sharp and crackling and pounding that he awakes!

Aaaaggghhh!

Yet, awake, he is soon beset by a nagging thought that she might be the one. That she could be the harbinger foretelling the end to his endless and miserable Minnesota January. Damn, if that's true! Why are you punishing me, oh God? Just as suddenly, he is rocked by an unexpected rush of a contrary feeling...one of overwhelming confidence! Confidence that she is the one—Nona.

Yet, Nick also confidently knew that she wasn't coming back to Harry's. Was sure because it was what he wanted, and when would she, "Even unintentionally, ever do anything I wanted?"

A bit less confidently, he opens his wallet and takes our her business card. She, during the first few days explained that she found many of her clients at Harry's. This was a ruse which he knew right off as an outright lie. He didn't press her on it but it got him thinking, Shit, what wasn't a lie? For an instant, he even wonders whether her business card is for real!

What's a guy to do?

# CHAPTER 26

777 River Road South—his confidence rises. "Damn sure, she wants me to find her!" Nick pulls over, parks, steps out, actually, had scanned for a plowed spot, nothing which by non-Minnesotan standards would be judged "clear," rather, a space bordered by sedimentary layers of snow, this being February, all was snow-locked and snow- fenced and snow-barricaded. He turns and clicks the security remote. "Paranoid in Hudson?" But he does, and walks...slips and slides—ice dancing, Polar Bear plodding...moves conscious of being seen, though no one is on the block nor leaning out a window, but he knows he is being seen. Nick walks up her steps. Nick walks up her steps.

"For God's sake, Kane. Christ almighty, aw, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, that goddam bitch!"

Kane wonders what this woman, this Nona, has on Nick—the Evil Eye? Hot Suck and Big Fuck? He imagines her as a shimmering seductive quiver, the type which emerges just before he goes blackout drunk...that quiver which he sometimes feels with Corinda. What can it be? Who is she?

"She's...Did you ever think this would be someone's job? A Stress Manager! Has Masters in some kind of therapy, not sure, but all she deals with is stressed out people! Go figure."

Kane's face scrunches up into the "I'm suffering from stupid!" pained face Nick likes to see when he wants Kane to mime his own feelings.

"It's a residence, not an office building. Okay, I go up to the door. Knock. Then ring the bell. Wait. Then, a guy answers. But...but here's the deal," he sucks half a schooner of Guinness, "here's the deal...it's a big guy," he sniggers as he visualizes, "a muscular guy, maybe a bodybuilder...but, but he's wearing this...shit, you won't believe this!" Another suck, "Jesus, a thong or something!" Elbows on the bar, two planted hard, holding up a shivering, giggling, half-drunk guffawing Nick.

"Fucking February icicles and him in a thong! More, listen! Red stripes painted on his face and, and...!"

Kane's caught up in Nick's hilarity...two semi-drunks hee-hawing it together. Harry smirks.

"...a feather!"

Funny tears trickle down..trousers are hitched up....a wipe on the face later, Kane says, "What's that all about?"

"It's a zoo!" Nick loses himself, again, uncontrollable...near falls off the stool.

Kane signals to Harry for two more.

"Who was that guy?"

Nona had waved him in upon his tap on her open door.

"Owen." Short, simple and straight, like she didn't grasp what Nick's "that" meant.

"Yeah? Right, his name. I mean, what is that guy?"

She smiles at Nick...a flashing, condescending puff of the cheeks which he had seen quite a few times before, usually, when they were seriously discussing something...a topic which she felt he didn't grasp. He hated it then. He hates it now.

"I'm supposed to know?"

Nona had not been expecting him...wasn't prepared for him here, at least not yet, not today. He's catching her with her psychic slip showing and the house a mess, so to speak. This is how she's seeing herself—embarrassed.

"Could we do this another time?"

They agree to lunch the next day.

"Last one?"

"Just one more. Gotta be...." Kane checks his watch. "Corinda wants me to watch "Kiss and Tell" with her.

Nick didn't have to say a thing. His good buddy knew what he was thinking. Women!

One last beer: "This guy, the thong guy, he's into "Mythological Visualization." Now, what the crap is that?"

Kane dumbs it.

"She says that—this Nona can be one serious lady, I mean she's a brain-buster, that's what, how she's like Karen, sorta, someways, anyways—she says that work has become the mythos of the Western World...still with me buddy?" Nick slaps Kane on the back. Both hoist and empty their mugs. "Fuck. Some heavy stuff. I guess, she wants me to hear this without saying anything. I can sense that. I think I irk her as much as she does me. At least I hope I do! Okay, she says that people have forgotten how to pray, that people used to work and pray, but that there's no prayer life because all of our mythic energy, no wait, she said erotic, but I didn't ask, maybe next time, this time I'm trying not to laugh just seeing this guy in this thong and feather—of course, I thought he was gay, no doubt, but he walked like a guy, a regular guy, anyways—just hear this, then lets go...she says we work but don't feel good, not healthy good because we feel guilty about working, yet we can't stop working. Hang in, buddy, it gets better! Something about sin—she thinks stress is like sin, people used to feel lousy if they thought they sinned, and people work and feel lousy, so working is like sinning. All this stuff, and this guy—Jesus! —it's like they're like priests, like hearing confession. People come to them and they take the sins from their bodies. Hell! I know you think she must've been on dope. I certainly did! See, this feather guy, gets people to act out new myths...something like that...maybe you should come with me next time! Sure there are some naked women in that guy's session. What'd'ja say, ole buddy, wanta do some therapy like that!?"

Kane drives Nick home. Doesn't say a word about the thong-guy or Nona and all the sane and crazy stuff Nick has spewed...knew better. "Good buddies know when to shut the fuck up!" He took his own advice.

# CHAPTER 27

Nona agreed to lunch. She knew that he'd say, "Sure. How about...?" Just hadn't expected it to be right away. "How about tomorrow?" Just that astral moment after she left Harry's for what she hoped would be the last time—that part of her mission over—she questioned whether it was still too soon, whether she was prepared for this next step. All along she has been following the I Ching divination—having meditated with Karen on her casting of "Po—Splitting Apart." Nona sensed that she, herself, was part of Karen's splitting-apart. Then, herself, also following her own "Chun—Difficulty at the Beginning." The signs foretold by this ancient wisdom deepened her self-doubt...difficulty at the beginning.

Nona takes a deep breath, exhales, taps into a moment of calm...self-control. I'm prepared. I'm ready...at least as ready as I'll ever be! As she and Karen had discussed, both were committed to divining and following the mystic pattern. "But I don't know what his mystic pattern is!" From all Karen had told her, Nick certainly wasn't going to submit to pagan, weirdo stuff as she related he once dismissed the I Ching. This realization drew self-doubt back in, unnerved her. Transformation was her life's journey, her daily practice, the gift she so gratefully accepts from the Divine. In her own life, her quest has been much like Karen's, one of blind-groping, fearful touching, self-doubt. "Self-doubt is my self!" Nona once proclaimed, to her own therapist. Yet, Nona was less prone to seek the benefits of "talking therapy" since she was temperamentally a doer—a kinesthetic personality. If anything, someone who got up and said, "What can we do? What should I do? How can I do it?" That is why she first became a play therapist, then moved into rebirthing rituals, then took a certificate in massage therapy—melding all into her special art and skill of bodywandering.

But right now she has to put all that down for later. It is Karen's death that becomes the question, her question—Nona's question. Why her? At this time? We were just getting ready. Why so soon?

Fatefully, during what turned out to be their very last visit, Karen had handed her an envelope. Nona opened and took out the card. It was an anniversary card celebrating their just past happy evening. It was a delightful card, with a sugary poem written in Hallmark script. Yet, it was the single sheet, blue with red print, that was instant evidence that Karen was in the process of metamorphosing. Her poem started with Death and rose up to proclaim the possibility of "ecstatic intimacy" in this life and the next. It blew Nona away, and so, inspired and bolstered by this memory, she goes to lunch with Nick. Lunch in day time, bright time, fork and knife time. No ice cubes or candle light or mind-blitzing liquids. Them, off to The Dump, a renovated warehouse, "Mississippi River Chic!" she teases, being playful, trying to distract him, for Nick was the question: Is the Big Question! Is he really the one? Was Karen right?

When hearing Karen read the card to her...recite what were not words as in sounds but words as in bits of herself—bone and marrow, blood and heart-thump, sweating a bit, biting her lower lip between lines...she is posing a truly mystical and confounding question—yet as if describing the commonplace— "Death is its own kind of divorce...Death is its own kind of heartfelt embrace." Nona hears it back then, hears it now, hears it as Nick politely pulls back her chair. They sit down, the waiter approaches. She looks at Nick, hard and long, a stare from beyond the grave, Do you know that you are a Big Answer?

This lunch for Nick was amusing. He was enjoying it on so many levels; even aware of enjoying it—that was one of his enjoyments! Having her here—Date? Hell, it's like he's pulled an ancient old catfish, a legendary death-defying and hook-riddled Old Whiskers from out a deep, foreboding hiding place, somewhere on lake's bottom. Out from behind a pile of logs, an abandoned stove, a sunken automobile—a mobile relic of a peculiar Midwestern ritual, a Winter-Fest's "When will it sink?" lottery played out in so many local towns and hamlets with which have long-frozen Minnesota lakes at town's center. You buy a ticket stating the date the lake will melt and the car is fully submerged! This a playful event prophetic of Minnesota humor and the stupor inflicted by depressingly too long winters. Right this moment, there, under such a watery skyscraper, in the bowels of such a construct, is Old Whiskers. Nick finally snags him, but him here being a her—Nona.

Nick surprised her—it was apparent to everyone that he was having a good time. This was an unexpected turn of events for Nona. She hardly had cause to hope that they'd get along better when he was sober, since drinking seemed to loosen him up. She expected a buttoned-down, serious, even boring corporate-like "let's do lunch" affair. She simply missed his artfulness. He was tracking her, figuring out how to flush her out for the kill...like his tracking a Thanksgiving Tom, cleverly tracking downwind.

On her own terms, she adjusted to the shift quite rapidly...gave him good sport. She feigned annoyance...feinted this way, then that, as he stalked her with practiced step. Oh! Nick was truly enjoying himself...mainly because he knew...confident! that she wants to be here!

"You look a bit tired. Harried."

"Lots of work this week."

Pause. A bite; sip some water, pause.

"February's middle-age month. Backs thrown out shoveling icy snow. Deep Cabin Fever blues month. A lot of my clients are women who are not working. The elderly—a fair share of my clientele—don't leave their homes much this month. We won't see most of them till spring. As it is, for now it's comforting the guys—a lot your age, the nearing-forties but not as in good shape—who push and pull, huff and strain their beer-belly-guts, moaning 'I ain't as young as I once was!' In winter, that's how things go for me."

Nick couldn't stop himself from relishing the moment—it was all going his way. A good looking woman. Hmm, actually for the first time he mentally steps-back and closely observes, notes the details, and then puts the pieces together...the face and body, line and presentation of Nona. Fairly good looker! "Succulent" as his mouth waters. A woman who'd most would call pretty, possibly handsome in a flattering way. Average in a few ways, shorter at five-nine, with long brown hair but always up in a tight bun, yet there is something unnerving about her that's fascinating his mind and revving up his heartbeat at this moment...aha! she's has presence.

To him, Nona is not even a reference point in Karen's world of breath-stopping beauty, but this presence is something Karen didn't have. What is it? Hmm. It slowly dawns on him that his responses to Nona have been more heartfelt than mental—his heart beats wildly with both fear and animal lust when she is about; his mind full of static interference. Another, aha! It's becoming clearer that Nona exudes an energy that is zesty and vital, with an air of reckless abandon, of being a risk-taker, tight-rope walker, deep jungle explorer...to his dominion male, she is not just present in an inactive sense but rather always coming at him, towards him..hers is a scary, elusive, but threatening presence. Fuck! "She's Karen upside down!" flits through his mind. Yet, at this moment, what most galls him is that all this strange otherness of her, all this not-Karenness, fuckfuckfuck! is what seduces him by—perversely!—sending the message that she could live without him. Die on me, what do I care? Physically, he sense her ease with being who she is. Still fuck!...Nick can't get around the fact that he is not being lured by her sensuality but by her lack of a need for him. Although the word has yet to be shared between them, he realizes that Nona does not need him to exercise his dominion—nor does she want him to!

Nick picks back up, just as she ends her middle-age month report.

"The Stress Manager is stressed out!" Biting...playful.

She fakes a smile—but one that also conveys a negative tease, You're boring me!

Ha. Damn! Nick knows she's just faking it. She wants me!

I'll take her. Testy. Jesus, her will is still unbroken! Not used to the saddle! I'll saddle her, I'll....

"Do you want to have sex?"

Nona takes aim and shoots— Pow!—while tastefully dabbing her lips with a napkin. Dabs once too often, but he doesn't notice...isn't counting. The look on his face—precious! She has him. Gotcha!

The benefits of being a VP is a vaporous thought as he calls-in to his secretary, "Out for the day, Gina."

How else to ask this question? Meaning, Do you want to know me? My heart and soul?

But she doesn't want to linger on the thought. Too much thinking leads to...not enough doing. Do it!

If she doesn't act right this instant, Nona knows too well that she might not do what she knows must be done...seduce him...conjure the Temptress she knows she is...knows she must be.

Nick is out of his mind. What did she just say?

Out of his body, too. It's like an alien abduction...they are Flash! in her place...naked and exploring one another's body as if probing for some mystical secrets of the universe!

Karen help me! Nona unrolls herself—imagining her body as an exploratory map leading inside, within...to discover treasure! She lifts off her dress, lets her slip fall, tumble to the floor...soon delightfully naked, she sets herself down on the bed, spreads her flesh out to be his map—seductress! A siren offering her body as a way of seeing, a way to travel and play, a way to transform. Karen help me! But in pleading for her sister's help, Nona realizes—Awake!— that this was exactly what Karen couldn't do. She can sense it now, hears Karen speak to her in ethereal voice, speaks with a previously unfound confidence, words filled with insight, not ashamed. I couldn't call out. I didn't know there was another there to hear me! I didn't know about sister lovers...until you, sweet Nona!

Death is it own kind of divorce. Yes! Yes! Nona hears her...divorce as setting herself free. Karen had once said, quite shocking to Nona at first, "I wish we were sister wives!" She was initially dismayed by the self-diminishment of the phrase...further annoyed for what appeared to be a most degrading act of submitting. That dominion crap, again? Then, sensing her truth—that having a sister wife would free her from having to always be his "all and only one." This type of freedom to love more fully, deeper is what their sessions were about. Only the accident had prevented Karen from confronting Nick with the challenge of "How can we be together...and both be free to love more fully, deeper?"

Death is its own kind of heartfelt embrace....Yes! Yes! Nona hears this...heartfelt embrace, once freed from the confines of just her own body...reaching out across the Boundary, lifting the Veil. Nona wishes this to be true. "Am I"—Oh, dread and self-doubt!—"Am I really ready to love you in this way my sweet sister?"

Sister lovers. Nona is living out that relationship right now....a rapturous lesbian relationship...loving Karen through loving Nick through loving herself—more fully, deeper. A heartfelt embrace that merges time with eternity...flesh with the fuller Body of all who love...heart with the zesty Throb that vitalizes all creation.

All that is happening between Nick and Nona saps just one hour of clock time. He touches her for the first time...not thinking about but being magical virgins...the first time he's intimately touched a woman since Karen's passing...Nona opening herself to be touched for the first time in this greater fullness...aware and intentionally accepting him in the way he had touched her...her sister wife!

Hunger. There is an edge, a tantalizing and, hell, "Bad Girl!" edge—her hair spreads like a net—seaweed and jelly fish tendrils and floating in a moonless sea, ebbing back and forth as she serves him, works him...rushes at him like the tide, pulling him back under like the rip-tide. Ah! he likes it! Nick really—reallyreallytrulytrulyabsolutelynodoubt—likes it...her dancing for him, poled by him and swaying like a banner on his indomitable pike...gyrating, prancing around the maypole...loves it...she, her whole body, all of it—her hands, her eyes, her pussy, her teats, her lips, all coming at him—not able to get enough of him. God, she's guzzling my sperm! He's whacked out happy, puffing breaths and trembling thighs deliriously happy...a phrase comes to him, not as word but as her smile—She's smiling! "A smiling fuck!" How many times had he heard that? The envy he had had...the pure, steel-hard jealousy—he wanted to knife the guy who said it and steal his wife, his bitch, the whore, whoever she was: Her! Smiling...that's what he ever so wanted...he fears not that this smile might eradicate any scent of Karen, totally obliterating any recall of Karen and Nick, of Mr. & Mrs...Nona smiling.

Nick's exhausted. In that spent way like shotgun-casing without ammunition. Ha, not that the shotgun was exhausted, just the supply. Back in his brain some maniac was yelling, Do it, again! But another type of exhaustion also overwhelms him...also relaxes him...Finally, finally! sighing and stretching out his long legs, scratching his head...finally released from the weariness of constantly wondering not only When, How, Who? But Should, Can, Will I? find someone...ever do it again?

As Nick fell asleep, her smile made him deeply happy—evoking a suffusing warmth of a most wondrous memory...one that is harbinger of more pleasures to come. He sleeps soundly—prenatally content.

When he awakes...an hour or so...he glances over at Nona. Surprisingly, she's more the dead-to-the world "screwed and sleeping" one. With a bit of a shock that he's actually in bed with another woman—strange feeling!—he consciously takes a deep breath, slowly exhales...just accepts being here. Had to start sometime. On the upside, he's got to admit that there's something about this woman which gnaws at him. She angers me. He looks at her intently—chestnut hair with glints of red, nary a trace of grey, but long, noticeably long when not bound...when set loose her hair is truly a mane with slight, random curls, seeming at times to be clusters of sapphires, then, in another light, like looking through a maple-syrup bottle...so, did her hair fall and whirl and skirt down past her angel-wings flowing—Oh! She's quite an attraction when so crowned!...tethering him by light dusky eyes...a glint of crimson sparkle, drawing one into milky dreaming...but at the same time, he sees another side of her that is clearly conveyed by her less attractive marking—Nick had noticed this right off, almost the first thing when she handed Harry cash for the drinks...rough, near raw hands, skin-not-soft, clearly strong, taut hands...back then not knowing that she was a professional masseuse...but all in all, happy now with her body—nice, full-figured— "bounteous and bosomy" is the phrase that works for him...makes his mouth water a bit...delicious!...although not as alluring, not as lust igniting, not with the sassy, cute ass sway that was Karen walking....Nona, a "Busty Broad." You're always hungering for big teats! Ha, he snickers to himself.

She liked it. Talking to himself as night starts to darken the room. Both knew that he wasn't to stay. He knew he didn't want to—not right off. Yet, I'm right!...for when she soon awakens he instantly knows that she liked it! Yet—Damn!—smiling, but her eyes say that she is yet waiting, still waiting for something—it irks the hell out of him! What?

He didn't want to nor did he wait for an answer. Got up, as both anticipated he would, dressed....came over to her still under covers, kissed her forehead, a cheek, and a deep sweet smooch on the lips. "Goodnight, dear one. You were just lovely!"

Nona happily smiles.

Then....dreaming that night....Nona walking towards him. Naked but without allure. Simply standing there—bare. As she comes closer he sees that her left hand is extended. Closer and it is a hand offering an apple. Closer and the apple is raised towards his lips. Closer and he is about to feed when the apple becomes Karen! Her face and her body and her self..."Eat!"

Nick bolts awake—dry mouth, heart pounding, no sweat...lingers on Hold! He's frozen in place but deep into internal reflection....he would have accepted Guilt. Guilt coming, slashing down like the executioner's broad-ax. He would have accepted that...actually, would have preferred it. Shame. Yes! Shame. He wants to put it on like a beggar's cloth. Guilt and Shame...Ashes heaped upon his head. He is ready, would be ready, will be ready for all this...but it does not come like that...not in those feelings, not dressed in those truths, not disguised in traditional garb—no, it is Nona's happy smile—without a doubt it is clear to him—her...she is now his her...Nona—What?...but also Karen is somehow part of her.

How can this be?

Nick throws back the covers, gets out of bed, walks to the bathroom. He fills a cup with water; downs it in one gulp. Flicks off the light. Lays back down. Apparitions...an unearthly moment...looking down at him from above he is awed—she and her, Karen and Nona, happily smiling!

# CHAPTER 28

Kane noticed the change. He didn't say a whole lot, didn't want to make much of it, was simply glad. "He's coming back to life," said to Corinda; they both were pleased.

It was that Nick began to talk about the twins, again. Told him about their adjustment to Berkeley. "Found out just how Midwestern they were! Sean made a joke—boy, that's something eventful in itself!—wrote me, "Dad, it's true, we're all from Lake Wobegon!" Pretty good for him, eh! Betcha!"

About Patricia. "Blew away her SATs and is dead-set on Cal. Got herself into a karate club, believe that! Told me she also surfs. Sean's not sure, though, thinking about UC-Santa Cruz, says he needs some time away."

"How'd he mean that? He's been away!"

Kane didn't care to press the point. The kids could do whatever they wanted. He was just glad to have his good buddy back.

As fated, the pieces of their best-buddies pattern were pressed together, once again—male cycle, being one of seasonal hunting and fishing, of snowmobiling and water-skiing, of glutting themselves on football and basketball and "inside golf"—a peculiar sport of the frozen inland denizens!...lots of golfing in the warmer months, but it was the drinking which told him his friend was back. He didn't get as morose...was the amusing but eventually slobbering fall-down drunk that Kane had sorely missed.

Corinda, "We need to see more of her. Get to know her better. What about a Christmas holiday up north at our place in Little Falls? Also, Guthrie tickets?"

Was Nick counting the days until it seemed the right time to insert Nona, full-time into his social calendar? Meaning, introducing her as "My girlfriend." Or "significant other." Like that. He really hadn't figured that out. He was not being that artful, at least he didn't see himself as forming and then executing a plan. Not like with Karen, where, for her, planning was a gut level instinct and need. At first, she planned so many months — "x=12" until they'd get engaged. Then, with the sharp reversal of her leaving State, a re-planning where she put a hold on all that and he knew that he'd have to develop his own plan for a marriage proposal. Then, again adjusting for wedded bliss! back at SDSU. In time, the subsequent revised plan unfolded—but it wasn't not anything like this with Nona.

There was no plan, it was more like a game—the chase, the hunt, the sly poker play, more like that.

At first, Nick was irked by her tricky moves—those counter-plays and end-runs and Student Body Left! sweeps which she was always unleashing...changing things at the last minute, switching from a night-in to a night-out in public, saying, "Just tape the damn game, let's go boogie!"...throwing him out of sync, her taking control by being a bit out of control...he seeing her as full of trick plays.

Okay, you wanna play like that?!As a stellar wide receiver, he knew how to adjust to the opponent's game plan, so he did his best. In truth, Nick—being ever the humble Emperor! Ha.—was highly confident that she was not up to his level of craftiness. Without a doubt in his mind, no woman could be—did he say that to himself? Sssssssh, Karen might be listening!

Ha! Supremely confident. That's Nick. Focus!

His plan was not to plan, just play. He knew that, despite her wiles, she had a most definite plan—inside her bag of tricks. "Every woman has a plan." More, he was certain—arrogant?—that her plan was—Catch Nick! How else?

Pattern. It is one full year, plus. Marked in terms of "After Karen." The plus freeing him to be truly after. Not spoken, but in his mind and his heart. Not even calendar true...that's not the point!

He looks into the mirror.

He can see her smile. Nona's.

"Kuai." A strange word; a stranger thing. He had seen the I Ching when Karen was throwing some strange coins with holes in their middles, but had taken it as a bit of silly hocus-pocus. My wife's a fervent Catholic...just playing around, like the ouija board. Here, this time, Nona...using the same weird coins...said, "This is for us." He heard the us with all its ominous forebodings.

"Kuai. Breakthrough." She gives him the passage to read out loud. "This hexagram signifies on the one hand a breakthrough after a long accumulation of tension, as a swollen river breaks through its dikes, or in the manner of a cloudburst." He stops. She's watching him. He does not raise his eyes from the page.

His oculi are fastened to the page. He cannot raise them. He cannot move. More, knows that if he moves that the whole world will move with him. He's no dope...worse, the divination's applicability is clear—She wants to breakthrough. Go beyond what Karen and I had. He is—the target—she is the arrow.

Her voice—not hers, but hers— "as a swollen river breaks through its dikes."

Nick had always seen Karen as a dike and himself as the river—the swelling, thundering, Earth-pulsating River of Sperm...had visualized himself flooding her banks, overwhelming her, this his fertilization, this how he imagined Karen enjoyed him...pleasuring in and reveling in his exercise of dominion...her favorite word for "Why we are together. For you to obey God's charge and manifest dominion over all things!" Amen. That was a divination he could accept...he respected the Bible.

Dominion—him coming with such force and blind fearlessness that she was so forever seared and welded by his hot liquid passion...but now he's caught in a freaky moment with this strange book...he can't move...he is the dike, his body, a series of dikes—down, striding across an endlessly beginning and an endlessly not-ending river...him, the dikes—his body parts, his mind, his will, his heart, his look, his words...sees them all as dikes—it is her, the river, but not as raging, not as thundering and coursing and bashing water and waves and her liquid self all over him, not like that....rather, she breaking him—breaks through his dikes in the most impossible of ways—as droplet, drib, splash and splatter, as the most gentle shower...he being underdone by Karen's simple presence.

How long has he been staring, dumbfounded? Was Nona aware? Yes, but not about the duration of time but her presence—she also felt Karen's presence.

"I've never truly understood her," his eyes rising, not tearful, but baffled, stunned.

Nona is simply the canyon necessary for his echo.

I've never truly understood her.

This wasn't a moment to be disturbed. This was a fitting time for him to sit there and just be...maybe thinking, maybe pondering, maybe meditating, maybe feeling...but it was for Nona to get up, toast some bread, brew some green tea, prepare a few nourishing things—apple slices.

In some measure by the clock's ticks and tocks, she returns. They eat.

He chews very slowly as he gazes, wordlessly, but with a fervor at Nona.

"You should've known Karen."

Nona nods and smiles, a sympathizing smile.

Awake! My dear Nicholas X., Awake! Karen whispers.

"Why haven't you asked me about Karen? I mean, asked me a lot?"

Nona arches her eyebrows, hoisting a surprised look as answer. Feigned.

"I mean," Nick starts to unburden himself of something which until this moment he had not experienced as a burden. "I mean, I don't think I remember you ever asking me about her...not as a new lover should. Not a bit of jealousy? Hell's bells, I lived with the woman most of my life...you're not curious? Why's that?" But he doesn't stop the train, waves to the conductor, "I mean—isn't it?— isn't it's a bit strange." Pauses—two breaths. "Maybe, I haven't minded it. Okay, I was ready to answer, answer all your questions. More than ready." Aroused by this bafflement, he focuses closely upon her with surgeon's eyes...attempting to see with x-ray vision what it is that might be disordered. "Why haven't you asked me everything about Karen?"

The Conversation. Often has Nona re-read and pondered the brief but somewhat enigmatic message from her dear sister wife. Death is its own kind of heartfelt embrace. It's like the dead know how to commune with us when they part. Why not an expectation for some type of ecstatic intimacy?

Karen is lifting up the Veil....reaching across the Boundary...this moment, Nona knows, is the beginning of discovering answers to that question—about ecstatic intimacy. She hears, "Let us begin!" but...but she is not one-hundred-percent sure she's clear on Karen's message. More, especially not clear on the how to do it? But—Stop thinking! Do it!—begin....just take a high risk leap into a hope, a vision, a heartfelt embrace—with her husband and my lover, Nicholas X. Yes! Courageously, she does...leaps into a swallowing, depthless void...trusting that through Karen it is right and fitting for her to expect some type of ecstatic intimacy. Let the conversation begin!

"But that's all I have been doing."

"Duh?" Nick feigns imbecility; comical.

Nona half transmits a condescending smirk, but catches herself. "Nick. Look. Pay attention! Did you hear me? That's all I've been doing."

"You're not making any sense, babe."

"Don't."

"Don't, what?"

"Don't babe me...Do you get it?"

He squirms—Nick squirms.

Nona laughs...a small, pin-pricking laugh—it irks the hell out of him!

Nick's pissed.

Deeper inside, Nick is enraged; on fire.

"I don't want this!" Up and walking out, leaving her behind...even if she is hot, he feels she's hot, even if he's passing up on a good lay—tosses her off in his mind, "A good lay, but not worth..."

She tackles him. Yup! Scampers across the room, half-rises and lunges forward and wraps up his calves and ankles—Kaboom!— he's down on the floor, as flat on his face as he ever was on the ten-yard line.

"Jesus!" he swears and tries to push her off.

Then, it happens.

She's beating on him. Swatting him. Biting him. Pounding him. "Fuck!" Nick howls, shouts in that way of wanting to scare and run her off, like a small dog snarling at your cuff, you could kill it, but you want to scare it away. Nick tries to shoo! Nona.

But she won't stop. She is stronger, quite stronger than he would have guessed; not pausing to consider how much body massaging is a daily workout...Fuck! He has to fight back, put some effort in it...has to smack some common sense into his own head—Fuck! She'll hurt me!—delivers a bracing whack and a hard shove and a heaving push her over...she rolls, he swift-kicks at her, rams her butt, knows it must hurt her...he can't stop! Can't stop! Pursues her like chasing an opponent down the field—"Don't stop until you hear that goddam whistle! Never stop until you hear the goddam whistle!" There is no whistle! Nick has pushed her so hard that she rolls over twice and slams into the wall. Head butt. The sound of bone pain draws him out, the scent of blood arouses him...he is upon her—body on her...sees himself slapping her, breaking through her feeble defenses—raised arms, hands to her face, legs curled into a foetal position...spies them and in his mind's eye he breaks through them all—crashes upon her, shatters her arms, cracks her fingers, splits her lips, blackens her eyes, knees her in the ribs, bruising all...he pants, pants, pants!—Aaagggggh! as he rolls off her—heart beating wildly, sweat dripping profusely, hands and arms out of control...jerking this way and that, unable to find a plane of existence to exist upon—"What's a guy to do?"

Nick's mildly laughing as his raging fugue of violence subsides. Just a girl! as he quickly counters her energetic assault with a few simple defensive moves...grappling her into an restraining embrace, letting her rage on in words, even mock-bite his neck...holding her close, tightly closer...feeling her heart race and thump...she's turning me on!

Lying there—down on the living room rug, Nona's not unhappy that he has overpowered her. She long ago came to terms with her basic vulnerability in respect to his daunting physicality. What gives her hope, somewhat ironically, is the gentleness of his power. He overwhelmed her with a fierce but protective energy...she remembering Karen sighing as she told her of what she now knows as her own emotion...I love you, Nicholas X., you big galoot!

As was Nona's intent, through all this, she never loosened her grip on his heart. She yanks him back by her eyes—piercing eyes, sirenic—all the time while he was on her, the how of what she saw, and the why—her eyes are numinous, seeing as he sees her, opening herself to let him see as she sees him...this her hope, that he will awake...that they will breakthrough.

"This is how you've been telling me all about Karen...not in words...do your really think you could sum up her life for me in words? It's by how you act towards me...touch me, feel me. I know Karen through how you seek to know me. I know her as you just protected me, let me be me—a bitch—but loved me. I know her through your lack of fear to let me be."

All this sounds fine to Nick...makes sense, but then..."Did she ever let herself be?"

Karen, no! Nick doesn't want to hear Nona's words...judgments. Wished he hadn't asked her to ask him—anything! He thought that he could have them both in the same space...like the vision of them that night...two women, smiling. But he can't bear this...his heart can't beat for two women at the same time. "I've always been faithful to her. I don't want you to...." Nick crawls over to the wall, head butts and pushes against the bottom of a window-sill—I don't want to hear you!

Nona's sigh is a question to her sister Karen, "What's a woman to do?"

Near ten minutes of silence, not exactly meditative...stewing.

"You never asked that question, did you?"

"No. Never."

"Why?"

Nick gets up and sits at the living room table. Nona comes and setles across from him, like when they play poker.

"It didn't have to be asked. I don't know. She never said anything like let me be myself. Lord, everyone knows how selfless she was."

"I get that...but did you ever stop to ask her, honey, are you happy?"

"Of course!" A defensive response...it makes him uneasy, inside—Did you? Am I sure? But then—when all else fails, Attack! "You're making me angry. Why are you doing this?"

"You wanted me to ask...but I guess not ask the real questions...just all the phony stuff about what was her favorite color or did she like pearls...girl stuff, right!"

Despite himself, Nick is intrigued, drawn into this probing pursuit of Karen...asking about a question that deep down he's realizing that he had never asked...that she had never asked. I'm her husband, I should know this!

"You know, Nick, the one question I have, really the only one...I think this is true for many women...is this question—Did your marriage free Karen to be herself?" Pause. "Look, I don't want a quick answer, not a hurried thoughtless one, not really...just if we are to go deeper into our life together, if we are serious about becoming intimately one...even married...there, the m-word...why at this time of my life would I want a relationship that does not free me up to know myself better, more deeply? True freedom?"

Wow! She's almost sounding like Karen. Brainy. I'm in deep waters...fucked once again!

"Maybe you'll never understand. Karen had this vision, I mean it's the biblical vision...that a woman, okay maybe not literally but a woman, the feminine...I wouldn't call her a feminist...maybe, well, the Bible reveals...a revelation, that's the point...not from my wishes or her wishes but from God's command...women find their fulfillment—become themselves if that's how you want to look at it—as the man they love, like Adam, finds his fulfillment. Which is what this means, I mean, the word, dominion. It happens when they're together...men and women, like dancing a duet or synchronicity...she liked that word." Pause. "Guess this might be as clear as mud, eh?"

With all the steely intention to unleash what was about to erupt, so Nona is anticipating, she says, "Nick, this is such bull-shit! This dominion crap. And if your wife, if Karen really believed this, then she was one pathetic lady. Let me say this, this biblical dominion talk or vision or whatever, it has screwed you up, royally. The Bible is a tool for enslaving women. There is no Mother goddess...get it? We humans are motherless children. Aw, fuck!" A one breath pause. "I bet you didn't let Karen be herself...because all this dominion weirdness didn't let you be yourself!"

What the fuck? Who are you? You stupid bitch! I hate you. Unspoken but conveyed...Nick grabs his stuff and is about to bolt from the house. "Go on, run away. Be like Adam, blame me for all this. But know this...this I know about Karen because it's coming out of me right now...a woman's got to do what she's got to do....deal with that!"

What's a woman to do? Okay. Tap into righteous anger. Live like a walking violation...run every red-light. Ha, piss in public! That's not okay with you? Gee, what the fuck?! It just irks the hell out of me that you won't let me be me. Goddam right! It royally pisses me off. I mean men have everything, everything...what they don't have we women give them. We, the whole goddam fucking stupid daisy chain of women—all lined up to be fucked by them, to give them whatever they want if they'd just fuck us—how pathetic we are, sisters turning tricks—on all fours, wagging our butts, just, just to get your goddam seed! Spread our legs and let you in...how goddam stupid can we get? I mean, all of us...sisters, mothers, aunts, grandmothers...the whole shitload, kit and caboodle...you think this doesn't make me angry? Or, shouldn't make me angry? Goddam, you're not letting me be free to do what a woman's got to do...that makes me even more angry!

What's a woman got to do? Let me tell you a few things. Think about this. All that women know is how to trick. You even call us "tricks." Why? Because there's been no conversation. Stop! Listen—let me say my piece. Conversation. Which can only happen between equals, not subordinates...only equals. People who truly believe the other person has something new, something creative, something exciting to say. And, do you know what I know about Karen by being with you?

You're not going to like this...but she tricked you. Her whole life was a trick...that's why you're angry.

What's a woman got to do? I can't believe I'm hearing you? What you're saying makes no sense. It's absolute garbage. I loved Karen. I love Karen. I love her in a way I'll never love you.

What's a woman got to do? Ha! You fucker! You royal, jack-ass fucker! You never loved Karen, that's what your anger's all about. Can't you see that?

He reaches across the room...like fingers crushing an insect, snaps off her head.

What's a woman got to do? You've only loved yourself. That's her trick. She got you to just love yourself. Self-absorption. And that's how women exist. In that space they get when their men are so self-obsessed that they forget them. Women exist as forgotten.

What's a woman got to do? Liar! I've seen your smile! Goddam, fucking happy, "Got his cock up my pussy!" smile. Don't deny that!

What's a woman got to do? But that's the trick! You're the one who's so "My cock's in your pussy jerking off!" bonkers. My smile's sarcastic, you knuckle-head! You're so crippled and bloated with your dominion, you can't see that!

What's a woman got to do? This is bullshit! All bullshit. I've been wasting my time with you. Making you happy. You're just a twisted sister. I don't have to put up with this. I don't want to put up with this.

Nick physically leaves...fleeing from her witchy voice, her nagging bitchiness, her unrelenting threatening of all he is...or once was when with Karen. On the run but unable to knock her voice out of his head! Fucking bitch!

What's a woman got to do? Don't have to do nothing, she says to the spot he's deserted—he'll come back.

# CHAPTER 29

What's a woman got to do?

Leaving her was like that glorious time Nick ran and ran, then exploded up and up and up, whooossshhh!—rocketed in slow motion, moving upwards against gravity, molecule by molecule, as if his breathing pumped him up and the harder he breathed the higher he rose—snagged the Holiday Bowl winning touchdown...like that! Here, not on the gridiron but driving home with an ESPN highlight reel running through his mind—on the heart gridiron he jukes Nona...fakes her out, leaves her stone-cold frozen in place. Now, took off, just started slowly jogging, then from a jog jolting into a dash...from a zoom! dash into a full-fledge jet-blast! flight...running as hard and as fast and as best he could, fearful... fuck!... filled with fear, like a nightmare running in daytime...true, in body and heart Nick's fleeing...she doesn't know... she doesn't know I've bolted, that I'm spooked...naw, I juked her, all right! But, damn, he knows—Nick knows—that he snagged the question, jumped high and caught it, and once caught, all on the team expected him to do something with it."Like run, you Goddam fool!" which he heard upon making his very first catch in Pop Warner football, just seven, coming down with the ball and turning to the sidelines to see if his dad was watching—just standing there, "Waiting for someone to take a goddamn picture?!"...everyone on his team wildly jumping up and down, screaming, cursing, swearing—the Coach, "Like run, you goddam little fool!" Except for Notre Dame, which had been the worst of his best moments, meaning, a first moment—now, again, another First Moment, inserted into the psychic-album titled Memories...he's caught it—holds this question, cradles it under his arm..."Did she ever let herself be?"

Nick knew that he couldn't hash this issue out with Kane—no lateral hand-off on this play. That was one of the things which told him that he had now become "odd." Offbeat in a peculiar, almost perverse sense—that Nona's question has become his...aw, for Christ sake! No, truthfully, he has to admit that it is his and hers, theirs alone! Only they could answer, "Did she ever let herself be?" Nick's feeling odd because Kane was the only one he should be talking to about women—his best buddy; guy to guy. But being with Nona? Hell, how could he get Kane involved in answering that? Kane wouldn't even know how to begin...hadn't been there to look into Nona's eyes—Christ Almighty! How to tell Kane...or anybody... about Karen's presence when making love to Nona? About, especially—sex: "It." Like guys always fantasize about threesomes. Kane and he had joshed about that, sloshed it around in their whiskey sodden brains, but it had been just that—playful fantasizing. If truth be told, it was the last thing either would have wanted...well, at least when married!...each claiming to be just a bit more committed to monogamy than they'd let themselves be kidded about. "Just joking! Don't want to do that, not really." Odd—Nick and Nona and Karen: a rapturous threesome. Fuck, this is heavy stuff!

Odd...the tag lingered. It was all oddly offbeat. Everything about Nona was askew, contorted. How they met. What they talked about. How they made love. "Come to think about it," to himself...he reviews—starts an investigation into—how this perplexing oddness began.

How'd she know I'd be at Harry's? I mean, she's a bucketful of lies. Tricks. Goddam! Harry never saw her before. Nobody else seemed to give her a wink or a nod or a Howdy do! Yeah, never talking about Karen! Christ, I'm a widower. The biggest thing in my life. My family's torn apart. Me, totally fucked...not a word, not one question from her! At least not probing, not curious, evidence-gathering questions, just superficial, okay, damn, now that I think about it!...superficial—her giving me nods of the head, quick Yes-es, just accepting "Executive Summaries," not asking for a detailed report. Fucking odd! Aw, double fuck! It's like she knew. Like she already knew lots about me. When we'd talk, she didn't jump in with "Tell me more about how you feel." I mean, she listened—without asking! That's it. Gotta be honest. Be honest with yourself, Goddam it! She listened without asking. I talked on and on. Fool! Asshole! Jesus Christ Almighty! I talked and she listened. Listened?! Shit, all she did was contradict and disagree and prod me—fuck, I stupidly took the bait, every time, each time. "You have two ears and one mouth ..." that time-worn grind from his dad—Fuck, I should've listened...to her! For sure, what do I really, really one-hundred-percent am confident I know about her? Did she lie about coming from Thief River Falls? Really. Think about it. That her father was a former Russian scientist? Ha. Her name—Gogol...is that real? Was she mocking me? Hell, I actually enjoyed reading Gogol. Okay, admit it, she laughed a lot, almost too much...had she been laughing at me all along? But even if that's true, where's she been living these past years? I assumed Hudson. Why'd I assume that? Think of all the allusions she made: Ireland, Singapore, New Zealand—Christ, why didn't I just cut off my stupid ears? Dumbkopf! Then, her early marriage, like an off-handed remark, "High School Sweethearts"...but shunning his further looks, his non-verbal inquiries—inferring that she had had "problems" but never saying that! Sly one, isn't she!...College? She had to study somewhere, really, dropping names of local professors, talking about books, magazines, almost academic, always sharp, making connections, but always not my connections. Jesus, she just egged me on! Hell, it's all been a trick. I fucking don't really know a goddam thing about her!

Okay. I'm angry. Get a hold on this, bud. It's all just too weird, man. Shit. Then, sex. Talk about odd. Not kinky. Not strawberries and whipped cream...that stuff. No. It's her goddam smile! Sweet Jesus. What was that about? I thought I knew. Do I know—anything? That she was having a good time. That I was an Ace Buck. That we had "connected." Christ!

Goddam, I don't want to think about this! No. No! Nononononononono!

It was not the thought, but the feeling. The feeling plus the image. The image provoked by her smile. That's how he saw it—provoked. Her smile was provocative. It sought to ferret something out...have him dig up and surrender a secret...wanted him to be lulled by her smile—All Innocent Lolita! He sees this...Nick sees this...doesn't need the word as he feels her as Temptress—undulating upon his cock like he's a tree and she's a snake coiled in its branches—fuckfuckfuckandfuck!—he sees it...Nick finally sees it—I see it!

What's a gal to do? Ta da! Nick has an answer. Why didn't I see this, before? "She wants to be me!"

Nick thinks back—the word "conversation" sails by...then "equals." He knows the answer!

"Goddam, next time I see her, Pow!"

Nona knew Nick would be coming back.

# CHAPTER 30

Pow! Nick was ready for "Pow!"

He hadn't expected...didn't anticipate...should've known that humans are the most difficult to track. "Because they're basically irrational!" so his dad had once joked, actually, said that about dating women. "You can never get down-wind on a woman." Nick should not have forgotten that mentoring advice.

"I can't."

Almost dismissive. Nona just peeking out her door, ajar but chained...having spied him through the protective peep-hole.

"I'm not here collecting for the paper. Goddam it, let me in!"

Her tip was more bounteous than he could have ever imagined—"I'm not alone."

Bounteous, not so much in terms of generosity, though there was a certain generosity in her spirit, no, bounteous in the odd way he felt...felt not being the fitting word, for truly he sensed little, was numbed, as if her words floated within a cloud of anesthetic gas...yes, bounteous in the odd sense of bounty, like she reached out, slipped her feminine arm through the door's jarred opening and hung a bounty-sign on him...one he couldn't read! That was more staggering than anything...so he left; stepped back, in part was pushed back by her words...backed-down the steps...remembers just moving away from her like a train ever so slowly leaving the station and she in the back of the caboose, just standing there, not waving...he with a sign around his neck, but he could not read what it said—What did she write?

It was an invisible bounty sign that worked her magic, like a talisman, here making him feel absolutely and completely and beyond-understanding vulnerable. Exposed. Bare beyond naked.

I am not alone! Was the sign she hung on her door, was Nona's sign...so, Aha! clever she is, ever the contrarian...You are alone! must be my sign. Frightfully, just one capital letter word—ALONE!

Goddam it...her! Everyone would look at him, read the sign, and ask...?!

Nick had never been in jail, but he sensed at this moment, with certainty, that this is what it was like to be handcuffed. More, collared like a slave. He rubs his neck, opening two buttons down his chest—flushes and heart-flutters a choking gurgle. Strangling, try as he could, he could not free himself.

ALONE!

All the years praying with Karen were not for naught. Nick caught the sting of the phrase, "It is not good that the man should be alone."

They had read that, many times. The first time as they prepared for their wedding. It was a phrase Karen recited often throughout their marriage. "...alone," she had a way of emphasizing this word, of placing a stress on it which gave it greater weight, turned it into a complete message, all by itself.

Nick had always heard it as Karen saying how much she really needed him. Her way of affirming their shared faith—that their life together was for him to exercise dominion. Without her he was alone...with her, he was made whole—they as one. Nick recalls...now giving it more weight than when first heard...Karen saying, "God says that it is not good for the man to be alone...not the woman. Women can be alone and fulfilled, but men need women, not as a lack but as a stimulus, a catalyst." Hmmm, Nick had never disagreed with that, but he was thinking mostly about sex, how after sex with her how good he always felt...suddenly, he realizes that he only half-heard his beloved wife....so what else have I missed?

Dominion. A word he realizes is not written on his bounty sign. Realizes that if Karen had hung a sign around his neck that it would have read—Dominion. But it would have been a good sign...hmmm, just in this very moment questioning that long held belief—damn Nona!

Dominion and Alone—two messages, two different women...yet he sees the two words as linking Karen and Nona...can't shake the feeling that they are in cahoots...weirdly thinking that Karen is reaching out from beyond the grave! Damn and fuck and hell's bells and Sweet Jesus...every ejaculation he's ever hoisted shoots through his mind as he tries to grasp onto this weird thought. Is this a sin? Are these pagan thoughts? Was Karen bewitched by this I Ching? Nona, too?

Nick's brain is just a sigh below over-loaded—teetering on burst! Deep philosophical or theological thinking was not his forte, more Karen's...seems like Nona's too. Rat's balls! He just can't make it all make sense...that for Karen his exercising Dominion made her free...at least I think so—"Honey?"—for Nona, not that at all...she's saying...is this what she means?...that she's not alone but I am? That as I am...that Karen's love has made me...Lord, help me out here!...Karen's love made me alone? What?

Two days. He was numb for two days. He kept himself as numbed out and down as could be. Drank heavily...of course, drank alone. Not even thinking about inviting Kane over. Never left his apartment. Got two quart bottles of Wild Turkey, a handful of Hoyo de Montereys, and without moralizing with himself, drove over to Prescott and picked up a few porno flicks.

Two days. Turning every face of every woman, "Whore! Goddam fucking whore!" who was getting screwed into Nona's face. Every dumb-assed cock-sucking porno-Queen into Nona's face. Every torturing pain screaming slut as they got anally reamed and reamed again...into Nona's scream. "Serves you right, you Bitch!" Hotter and hotter, re-running and re-running the frames where he'd come, ejaculate...some buck-fucking dude—each one was Nick...Nicker! Emperor!

He loved it; relished every raunchy second...felt empowered, felt drained...but knew it as good drain, as when the battle is over and the air is filled with the scent of Spent—spent lives, spent cartridges, spent dicks...he, Victor, he, Triumphant—bodies of broads and babes and honeys and sweethearts and The Girl Next Door...all of them—"Them!"...shouting at the top of his voice to himself, slobbering incoherently but crystal clear to his heart, "Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all!"

That's what he'd write on his sign...the sign he'd proudly wear...that's the sign he'll show her—Fuck 'em all!

# CHAPTER 31

March. Nick felt like March...as he has always known it—indecisive, over-cast, unpredictable, misleading, false indicators...Lion and Lamb stuff—just in the middle of it...not missing the portent of the Ides—having seen too much Shakespeare both in college and back-stage, he always being a community-theater military extra...March is moody—like the Minnesota January that lasts seemingly forever...now out of that funk just to be plunked down into an endless March melancholy of his body, mind and heart.

I'm not alone—"Fuck off Nona, I'm not alone, too." Not alone because of Kane and Corinda...not so also because of a mob of friends, most linked through Karen, some his job...right back into the swing of things. With Kane he joins the Over-Thirty league at the Y...getting to physically muscle up and pound down on some wannabe-jock guys...a few even younger than him...pounding out a humping revenge on all the Beer Bellies and the others whose rebounding jumps and fast-break steps were just a bit too slow and a lot more faulty than his!

Back with Kane and Corinda—she setting up some blind-dates, having parties just so he could meet some of her friends' friends...divorcees, the never married, widows even—not but two...unhappy women she hopes would get divorced! Doing the full cycle of theater—Guthrie, Firehouse, everything at the History Theatre...even off to some college performances...this should have been his clue—he had always hated it when Karen took him up to St. Ben's for student performances...this being the clue that it was all a big fake, that he was just trying to trick himself...that both of these women, Karen and Nona, were driving him nuts—on Earth as it is in heaven—both had abandoned him to his aloneness—not surprisingly, then, at least to a third party observer, or the shrink he's reluctantly seeing (Just trying it out!)—nagged on by Corinda. "Corinda, sometimes you're just a big pan in the wazoo!"

"Tsk, tsk, don't get nasty. You'll thank me later."

As anticipated by him, nothing much happens with all these set-ups. Corinda to Kane—"Doesn't seem like much is happening. What do you think's really going on? I thought for sure he'd hit if off with..." Kane defends his buddy, "Honey, you just gotta give him some space. Maybe he's not over Karen, yet? Got caught in some moody blues, like a Big Funk. We gotta give him some space."

I'm fucking almost forty years old! A bad catalytic thought. Chases him like a bad-news headline. It looks back at him. Kicks him in the knees. Tires him...chuckles at him as he has to unhitch his belt out a notch after a big meal.

I'm fucking almost forty years old! "I don't want to be alone," so he calls the twins. "How about coming back? To the U or Carleton or somewhere?"

Too young to hear this as a wail....thinking that they should have come back for the holidays this past Christmas, yet, Nick hadn't wanted to chance a "Black Christmas" funereal—one all dreary...plus Margaret had smoothed everything, saying, "We'll remember her here...in the sunshine." In any other year he would have easily...guiltlessly!...okayed their missing Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's for "Skiing. It's hot, dad. Patty's met this guy whose father owns a resort in Nevada. Can you imagine that?"

Exuberance. Alive! He hears it in their voices—We don't need you, Old Man. It wasn't that they were unkind; not intentionally...just that he could hear them say, "We're not alone!"—as if an indictment of himself, that he had, by criminal deed, been sentenced to aloneness.

I'm fucking almost forty years old! A Vice-President at 3M. Do you know...really, truly know what an achievement that is? Quoted in journals. Cited on customer testimonial sheets. Rolling the mid-six figures. Piling on stock. Known by thousands. Across the country. Across the world. Aw, bullshit!

Nona Gogol—her name floats in right after bullshit...ironically, she was the one to accurately sum it all up—all of what Nick was feeling, this she added up and subtracted down and divided out and multiplied exponentially—came to the conclusion, Alone. She was the contradiction, the contra-indicating factor, that metaphorical twist which gave him eyes to see himself as a total and absolute Failure whenever he touted all his Success. Aha! He get its, one-hundred percent. I say, I love you. You say, I'm not alone!

Irritation. Oddness. "What do we ever—will we, could we—agree on?"

Nick is standing, sitting, lying down, dreaming...matters little—he is in a suspended animation moment...a curious instance where he awakens to an insight that seems so obvious, so Duh!...that he is stymied...but in a good way, perplexed to be happy...for he gets it!

Nick has to tell this to someone, of course, to Kane, not that he expects much insight from his good buddy—great sportsman, but at times thick as a brick! "Ha, ha. Sorry, but it all just makes me laugh. Ha. Okay, I've got it under control. See, Kane, good buddy, women...okay, at least these two women...Karen, she brought me into comfortable. Living with her was...hmm, hope you don't miss my point here, it was like being adored. She loved me "to peanuts" as she used to say...never quite got that, but whenever she said it, it made her quite happy with how things were going between us. Then comes Nona...she has brought me to discomfort...hmm, need a better word...she keeps me guessing, on edge, expecting something different to happen all the time...not exactly nailing this...Karen wanted to put all the pieces together...create a family, a unit...she and I became one...really married, bone of my bone stuff...that's her dominion thing...if she could get that piece in place, meaning me!...then everything else would come together." Deep pause...Kane senses it would be a great mistake to say anything...just let his good buddy roll. "Nona, oh boy, here's a challenge. She wants to break me into pieces! Doesn't want me to get it all together, like knowing exactly how things are going to go for us...not planning, likes these, what I call tricks...she's a trickster...wants me to be...guess, I can't really say be uncomfortable...I mean, I think it's just that she wants to keep creating and creating...not being satisfied say with painting one picture but going on...Christ, am I making any sense?"

Damn! He misses her. Nick misses Nona. He doesn't want to. He prays—Yes, on fallen knees, here I am, Sweet Karen. Wife. My wife. Eternal wife. Why am I alone? Why like this? Before you I was not alone, just waiting. But now, why? Nick rises, pushing himself up on a sofa's arm, there in this apartment—Not even a home! Cripes! That's it—homeless...it's all been this feeling of being homeless—the absoluteness of sensing deeply what this word can mean—less-one-home...meaning without, without anything...without, as outside of—my being less without a home...that is what Alone feels like. Goddam it!

Nick's March is just a whole lot of "not"—not even a home! This deep...deep down dirty blues!...feeling circulates above him...like a small bird looking upon his hair as potential nest...about him, a bit like a gush of wind pushing his pant's cuffs...yeah, all these images are there but they are of no account—for it is the one that he is not admitting, which he has never wanted to admit it, which does comes to blow him away and roost inside his head—a personal sensation so deep as to defeat definition—can only be expressed in terms of flesh and blood, of bone and muscles, of thought and will, of heart...so depthless and never-ending that it comes back to him not as his feeling but as his being felt—that Karen was feeling with him, as through him...even odder, he couldn't hide from this truth, that this was a coupled feeling...as such, nothing which ever had been his before...so strange, so odd—an intimacy quite unbearable...tormenting and incomprehensible and unthinkable and...and...and...he knows that it is not just himself who wants to see Nona again, who needs to be with Nona again, who must love Nona again...Oooohhhh! it is so, so odd a feeling, so, so perverse a thought so, so, so very peculiar as to be not even grasped by the adjective perverse...it was so twisted—he seeing himself being twisted, elegantly twisting and intertwined with Karen..she there with him...there as they seek shelter—come home to Nona.

# CHAPTER 32

"I drove by. Maybe fifteen times."

"And?"

"I drove by. Just that. Drove by."

Nick's at loose ends, jabbering to Kane.

Nona, on the other side of the cosmic path, was doing a lot of the same.

Should she admit that she started dialing him about ten times each day? That she had unsent e-mails dying in a sub-directory? Terse implorations, ambiguous questions, assembled misdirections—"Call me." and "Lunch?" and "Where are you?" That she had asked around about him? That she almost wrote a letter—just the thought of doing so was unprecedented for her...she never being given to even writing a single romantic sentence.

With lovers, even the tiniest, seemingly irrelevant misstep can be blown wildly out of proportion...likewise, even the seemingly most impossible difference, problem, emotional Wall of China can be scaled, whittled down, even evaporate upon...what?

Like the inevitable scene in a romance movie—outside a food co-op in a part of town neither goes to much nor expects to find the other—"Nona?!" Looking back as agape, "Nick?!"

Fateful accidents of such ridiculous improbability that it all seemed normal—they sit down in the coffee nook for lattes and scones.

"Why are we attracted to one another?"

He shrugs and throws up drowning-man's arms.

Nona laughs a small amusement.

"I think we hate each other. Hate is a perverse attractor, isn't it?"

Nick is caught-off guard, drops a pure look of being shocked. Eyes alarmed.

"You loved Karen. You hate me."

Quickly, bullet ping—"I love Karen, now and forever. You, you I once—damn, seems like eons ago—hated."

There was no other discourse possible, except intercourse. Nothing as potent—not words nor looks nor lustful intentions or any other earthly or unearthly distraction...within the hour, they moved from a chatty spot in the nook to her living room into her bedroom without adjusting the moon and the sun, without tinkering with alarm crowing roosters or posting notices about the time the cows had to be milked...the short steps that took them from room to room covered immense ground across the heart universe...launching and landing them in a realm—a new dimension—of intimate discovery.

Nick didn't have to say, Karen is with me, because as their eyes engaged rapturously in astral flight, he understood what she meant by I am not alone...Nona and Karen were together, neither alone. Did I fail the test? Should I have given the secret password? "I am not alone"...also? This is like a slap in the face...from the universe! From those two!

From the back of his brain, the anxious question rises, "Flee now?" What comes as answer is, "Focus!"

Focus had always meant—as his coaches preached time and again, with the fervor of fire and brimstone preachers—"Focus means looking at things not as they are but as they are not!" While that sounded a bit abstract upon first hearing, the soon to be legendary high-school phenom called The Emperor quickly grasped that it meant to look for the gaps, the empty spots on the field where a player is out of position, to anticipate the obvious and juke and cut that way with the not-obvious move—"Did you see that? How did he do that? Does he have eyes in the back of his head?" Cheers and rah-rahs!

Focus, here, didn't come with any coaching, for Nick was on his own, out into a territory of mind and heart feelings that were uncharted frontiers. All he could sense was that since Karen was here that what he had focused on when with her was not what she wanted, now. But what?

Focus...if with her...if Nona is right—Damn!—if with Karen it meant all this dominion stuff, to focus on that...on me—me becoming a husband and a father...me being freed up by her, okay, if that was then, what is now?

The sister wives seductively coo, Focus on who you were not, back then.

As Nick touches Nona's face and tenderly caresses her cheeks, so does he see himself—his back then self...himself as one who had so often come, drawn by the allure of her smile, the glow in her eyes, seething with warrior desire, lust...angry, in battle heat...with stealth, sneaks up behind her, grapples and tears, rips her face and head off—trophies he drops into his booty bag...headless, he proceeds to ravage her, satisfying his every craven impulse... thrusting his cock like a lance into the heart of an enemy, stabbing deep down, fiercely plunging inside her, slaying her maidenly heart...all the time plying her with magical dominion words—"I love you" words and "I'm yours forever" words and "You are my only one" words...words of the hunt, of control, of submitting...as he lifts Nona's face now, he struggles against himself, his impulses, not taking the easy warrior path to his pleasure and orgasmic victory...now, as he caresses her there arises Karen's face...he gently lifts her chin to gaze into her heart...in doing so, arise also a cloud of faces of others—faces of women he has seen in passing, faces which he has long admired, faces which he has wantonly desired, faces which he has anxiously feared, faces which he has righteously hated...faces of the nubile young and of the fading softness and of the flowering into wrinkles. Yes! In touching Nona, in sweet caresses, through her are all hers present, for him to caress...as he loves her, he is loving all sisters.

Nick is tenderly kissing her, lightly on her cheeks and softly down upon her neck and whisking across her forehead...honoring kisses, celebrating kisses, adoring kisses...all which become heartfelt worshipping kisses as she becomes aged and wrinkled, a crone's face coursing with furrows, creases which form a pattern—a sinuous, fire-circle like pattern—intricate, enticing, baffling, numinous...it is exactly here that he knows that Karen is with her, more, within her—nonakaren:karennona—his hands, instead of recoiling in rebellion, instead of his fear balling into fists and striking, instead of his panic clenching with vise-like fingers to seal her dying breath—not that!—more! he in body and heart is becoming fuller, more alive, swelling up—it is that oddest of feelings, one ever so unfamiliar to the warrior male—to all Nick's brothers and kin—one at once so peculiar and perverse...that it convulses him, at once shivering and shuddering... ferociously engulfs his body, swallows him—I'm pregnant!

Awake!

Put your hand here, sweetheart. She lightly grasps his right wrist and moves, shifts so that she folds up into his embrace, his hand, his huge baseball mitt of a hand, covers nearly her whole belly. Inside, sweetheart. You and I are inside! Staggered, struggling for not only words but breath. "You're pregnant?!" Karen giggles, "No, stupid, we're pregnant. Us."

Nick never told her, a more of a never to telling Kane...each morning for the whole first trimester, until she began to show...blossom into her fullness..he placed his hands upon his own belly, just above his private...pondering, I'm pregnant! Us! He simply had no other way of grasping it, of making a connection to her, to the numinous, magical, awesome event that their simple everyday, mundane, routine embrace into sexual union had unleashed. I'm pregnant. We! As she became fuller and fuller, rounder and rounder, Nick stopped trying to find words...simply was ever on the alert as her sentinel, her protector, her servant...there for her, for whatever she wanted, no matter how trivial...a slice of toast...the funny runs to the DQ for ice cream—Carmel Delight blizzard!—to the mini-mart for olives—"Don't forget, garlic stuffed!" It is now that this feeling, this mystifying sensation is coming back to infest his body, mind and heart. I'm pregnant! We. Us.

Nona—completely in sync on the numinous plane—works her artfulness upon him...with tender-fingertips, ones that though callous-hard morph when she massages into enchanting serpent's tongues...they lick and dab in that way which is a subtle tasting, a flick and dart which penetrates more than the normal touch...she slides and glides, blesses her hands across his chest, fears not his fierceness...turns full upon his body, riding upon his energy—a vital zestfulness that floats around his torso...she seeing auras throbbing...taking all of this, all this of him and working it with her hands, moving it, twining it, weaving it, until he is blanketed—cloaked, cocooned with her...they two as one...they one as multiple—within his pregnancy. Us.

"My head aches when I try to figure this out!"

"Don't try to keep it all inside your own head!"

"I hear what you're saying, but it doesn't make any sense. I feel just too odd."

"Pay attention! You are born through your body, not your mind!"

Each moment was more cruel than the one just preceding it. He told her, "This is cruel," meaning by this whatever it was that they were doing to each other.

"Cruel, it is. Worse! It's death and re-birth!"

Nick could hear Karen. Somewhere off to the side, calling out to him, "Pattern and Transformation! Pattern and Transformation!" Ever the wide-receiver, he starts running, taking off in his mind's eye down the field, executing the play "Pattern and Transformation!" Her shouts are like the Coach screaming, "Run, you fool, run!" But this time he was unsure of the play, the route to take...worse, what would "Touchdown!" be like?

Death and re-birth tired them both...him especially, and ended their first round of love-making. Nick rolls over to his left side, hands enfolding his head...silently moaning! Nona sighs...turns over, back to his back. They drop off into a deep slumber.

Later, in the soft vulnerable moments of awakening after a deeply pleasurable and heartfelt round of erotic romp and sensuality, they are still warm within each others heart...with only eyes expressing their desires, they slip into a comfortable embrace and sail into each other's heart on a calm sea of savory delight.

They embrace like clouds passing through one other, softly, gently, linking their bodies like slipping a letter into an envelope, all is more of a melting and melding than of anything piercing or plunging. Their bodies are relaxed in a way not consciously intended, just an enfolding of their fleshly arms and limbs that arises easily and eases them into a sense of intimacy that is simply them breathing slowly together, not intentionally, not planned, just the easing into a rhythm of their hearts-beating, a slow dance, a waltz...minds that have forsaken thoughts, cast them off, discarded them...as what joins them, possesses them, is a sweetness...a tangible, honeyed, a delightful tang—yum!—each of the other, their carnal scents drawing them like bee to flower, so are they easing...drifting...flesh pooling like after a light April rain, themselves like such a shimmering watery luminescence are abounding with all forms of long-dormant, now unleashed, ethereal energies...those sourced in the enchanting, amorous primal vital zest that animates all from beyond and below, source of all that is...so rapturously depthless, so beguilingly formless, yet so ever present as to never be...in this ecstatic intimacy of heartfelt ease, Nona and Nick couple...behold one another as precious beloveds.

As time returns, as temporality claims its form, as this serene Yes! ebbs and they once again are aware of their separate selves, Nick doesn't know how else to phrase it, so he jokes it out, "That certainly was calm."

"The calm before the storm, eh?" She responds, mischievously.

Trickster!

Once she had said that, Nona rose and left the bed, went into the bathroom. At the instant his eyes no longer behold her, all that of him who had been before, back then, assails him. It is that of himself desperate to save himself from who he is becoming...to ward off this pregnant! evil and remain in dominion. To be ever the Warrior sent to slay the demon Temptress. To rescue his brother from the clutches of Her, the beguiling Seductress. Awake and flee! Nick senses in the core of his being that this is his one and only and terrifyingly "Last Chance!" for escape. Be the White Knight! Leave her happy and content! Man, hit the road, Jack!

Odd—all his gut-checked terror and dread was—Poof!— soothed and pacified by the calming insight that, "To stay is to escape!"

When Nona returned, she was holding a small bottle.

"Lilac okay with you?" an impish smile.

"I prefer Essence of Apple!" Seductively, lewdly, unashamedly...rising, he offers his body for her bite.

Bite she did. Nona Gogol bites Nicholas Niegsch. She took his right hand with her left, bit his thumb, tore off a hunk, chewed on it and swallowed it—gulp! She then proceeded, with discipline and systematically, to bite and chew and swallow all parts of his body—bite and chew and swallow until she was left only with his penis...thankfully a hard penis so she could use it as a toothpick!

He was a delicious apple. She had anticipated that he would be.

Delicious because he had a worm at his core: serpent.

Apple with serpent. In a flash moment, she sees Karen explaining to her about the sister shaman and her serpentine tattoo. Ouroboros.

He knew what he was doing. She heard his clear intention.

"Eat me!" Not in the mere oral sense, not just fellatio...more!—with that gnawing, surreal and numinous sense he, himself, had so often heard from Karen when she whispered, most often when he was just about to come inside her—"Feed me!"

This was the answer which Nona knew he was to be, that she had wished for...not knowing, nevertheless, exactly how...but recognizing it the instant it happened.

"You are the apple of my eye." Said once, just now, but said once before and discoursed upon for a long time—one day back at Harry's during Nick's dying Minnesota January.

Nona had said, "I'm not the apple of your eye. I'm the worm inside."

He had gotten beer-bottle-banging and teeth-grinding incensed. A reaction which shocked even himself with its volcanic intensity.

That day, Nick had looked at her—saw her worm as a snake. Temptress. Demon?

Back then, he tried to laugh it all off. Pass it along; defusing the explosive power that the image evoked deep down, inside. "Just one of her knee-jerk reflexes to anything I say!"

What's a guy to do?

What's a gal to do?

At this moment, roles somewhat reversing, he as the apple, his Eat me! being serpentine words that are harbinger to the Storm. Sturm und Drang.

As it is, once more, she comes to him, arising as appearing out of somewhere, a somewhere unseen...she is not seen, she just is—is the sense of being which he is, his toes, she handles his toes and she rubs his toes and she soothes his sole and she massages his heel and she comes...this is her home-coming—molecule by molecule, enfleshment by enfleshment—his feet and his calves and his thighs and his torso and his arms and his hands and his face and his back...a geography of flesh that unfolds him like a map, a map of Life Itself...this his pregnancy, his knowing that her coming is his pregnancy—it is a shared moment of fullness, of completeness—when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—for that is what pregnancy describes, that the two is one and the one is multiple...this then is Nick as her Big Answer: "I am the Apple." But the Answer Yet Unfulfilled, for as she comes, so does he hear himself twist the Answer: "I am the Apple with the Serpent within."

Karen's Pattern is no longer his dominion. As if a lesson read on his body, so does Nona read...both sense clearly as he receives her touch, her presence, her desire...as he offers himself, floats out towards her—like two clouds rising to merge...he watches Karen alive within his body—foetal presence—she there, almost stillborn, almost strangled by umbilical cord, but he reaches down...reaches down as Nona raises up his cock, reaches down and with his cock severs the cord, frees her, blesses her with liberating air—for she now can become him, not as consumed but as born. Nick is the presence of Karen as mother. Nona is the presence of Nick as father. Mother...Father...Child—a forever family.

This the terrible-terrible wonderment of the moment—his love for Karen is fulfilled at a moment of amazing reward! His desire for Karen is unbounded as she forever loves him through his embrace of Nona! His presence with Karen is eternal as with Nona, Nick commits to building a life together! Oh, Karen! Karen! Nick hears with Nona's ears, he speaks with Nona's mouth, he consummates with Nona's embrace.

With such a shifting of the magnetic poles...or the arrival of a second moon...with such events like the parting of the Red Sea...there is amazement....always wrapped within disbelief, second-guessing, a trembling unto sickness and death. Ah, Nicholas! He has received and then he likewise has given—in his being, both calm and the storm. Is this all a trick? A lie?

"Still frightened by losing dominion?"

"It's not so much fright as it is...as it is disorientation. The whole world's different. Different good and different bad. It has to be the same for you?"

"The fullness...you've got to work at it! There is no dominion, which is you having everything under control... there is only your body, my body, our body—the Fuller Body."

"Okay. Okay. I mean I know I'm there. I mean something truly profound has happened. I've never..." and Nick looks at her and in Nona's eyes sees himself as mother with child at the breast!

Nona, "Do you now believe what you have experienced—yourself as the fuller body? Is not that why you...you and me...we, together can say, We are not alone?"

We. Nick remembering, we: pregnant: us.

# CHAPTER 33

"I don't...honestly, hate to admit...just don't like her...her attitude."

"You felt you had to say that?!"

"Yeah."

"Aw, fuck-off!"

Three double-dates—movie, dinner, some late night dancing and drinking. Corinda and Nona seemed to get along...seemed, as Nick judged it, women always seem to get along...talking about inanities—make-up, losing weight, then diapering kids, baby-sitters, et cetera, et cetera...he smiles, a fond, warm smile recalling how Karen —"My intellectual guru!" he'd chide and tease—how she acted in this girlish world. For a brainiac she was all accepting of other women, possibly what made her so successful with her red-hot mommas! In truth, Nick rarely heard her complain, nor speak bitterly about another woman.

"Does she have anything in common with us?"

Nick knew Kane was not only adding Corinda to make the "us," but the whole Gallup Poll category and socio-economic class to which they belonged.

"I really..." Puzzled hesitation. Aware of his half-speaking...haltingly repeats. "I really..."

Kane noticeably snorts—an intended snort, a loud-enough male snort which conveys his, "I told you so!" and "Yeah, admit it, you know, too!"

Karen had been all their intellectual superior, but she had a way—a good teacher's way—of drawing others into the conversation. That, and taking their thoughts and weaving them in with hers. She never made anyone feel inferior.

"It's not that she despises us. Hell, shit, I could take snobbery. It's, it's—Corinda said it, She ignores us...yeah, like what we're doing doesn't count. That our lives are side-shows, I mean, like supporting roles, not main ones. I don't know, good buddy, but she can't be good for you. Not like Karen was."

Nick didn't want to say, "I'm pregnant...with the Fuller Body." Didn't because he knew that Kane wouldn't grasp exactly what he meant—would have given it only a sexual innuendo. Then Kane would have blustered, "Corinda's got better looking divorcees up the butt. Bigger teats. Snazzier bodies. Women who'd look good at all those social parties you have to attend. Women you know other guys go back and beat off about once they've seen them walk the beach! I just can't believe she's that good! That her pussy's...."

Nick holds all of this in. Kane wouldn't understand. I don't know if I do—not totally, not just yet.

Oil and water—that how Nick at first had imaged himself and Nona. Now it fits with how they are as a couple with all of his old friends.

"I don't mind them."

"Can't you be more open to them, my friends...long-time friends?" He's masking his fear of losing his pal, Kane...if him, then Corinda...after that, how many other couples he and Karen had known? Others he had assumed that he and Nona would one day resume "normal" social relationships...presuming that "in time" he'd emerge from his grieving her death, and become, become....? Have I really been thinking about being a father, again? Of being a family as we were family? Have I been deceiving myself? Could it even happen, I mean, the kids going off to college—that's when Karen and I were going to face changes—the empty nest—we knew that...our Family Years would be over...diaper years and ignored-advice years and I-can't-wait-to-leave-Hastings! years. We were planning on that—it was part of the Pattern, for her and me to, once again, become companions, back to our dating days. She was anticipating that, she confessed that, was sad and happy... so, have I been fooling myself?

"But they're not my Past. They're yours."

Angrily—"Cripes! I'm just to piss them all away?!"

As angrily—"Look, Nick, I asked you, are we really not alone—yet?"

# CHAPTER 34

We are not alone. The phrasing nags him. Observes it like a woodpecker rat-a-tatting his brain. What does she really mean? I mean, I get it. I feel it. I am a bigger man, this fuller body. I, I...damn, there's no way to say it. I'm a mothering guy...or man-woman. Christ, that sounds gay...what? I just want her to have a sense of fuller...bring my past and my future into her life. Is she the one backing away now? Has she stopped listening to Karen? Are we a we?

"Why won't you fly out with me? I'd like them to meet you."

"What? As your girlfriend?!"

"Girlfriend is what? Lady-friend, any better? Significant other? C'mon. Tell me!"

"Stop degrading me!"

There's a funereal silence between them; a tangible shroud of silence.

He's cutting an onion, then picks up a green pepper...after slicing—"Hack. That's what you do...hack! Not slice." After hacking it, he hacks some potatoes and tomatoes and carrots, not wanting to stop hacking.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'll go."

The graduation at Berkeley High School was so much like the one at Hastings High that it caught Nick off-guard. Somehow he had anticipated something different. Had a pestering feeling that something unusual, something offbeat was supposed to happen...something disruptive. That's it! Margaret's image of Berkeley as "Never-Ending Revolution!"... "Storm the Barricades!" It had so fixated in his mind that he was —Admit it!—sorely disappointed.

"Kids look great." Aunt Margaret was so proud. She was excited in a way that forced Nick to accept as description, "Almost bubbly!" While this image smashed and clashed with his normal way of describing Margaret, in one way he liked it—she's acting like Karen. Karen would be this excited...bubbly.

Nona had decided to be there, but then not there...not as "with him." On her own terms, she flew out on a different day...later, was introduced as, "This is my friend Nona. She's attending a Natural Healing conference in the City." That's what she wanted.

Patricia disliked Nona right away. As did Margaret. There was a communion, something of a conspiracy which formed and set in at once between aunt and niece. Patricia could see that Nona was not Karen...this her deepest, inarticulate fear—"That dad will try to replace Mom." Meaning, with a Barbie-Doll type stand-in—not really Karen, but looking like her, acting like her. This difference was her only consolation. The mere fact that there was another woman who cared for her father...this was just too much! She only wanted her mom to be her mom. For this visit, she'd be cordial. Guarded, watchful...but not make a scene. In this small way, she was like her mom...making dad comfortable.

"Nona certainly doesn't act like mom!" said to Sean...who was yet to have his first serious relationship with a girl, so, the women in his father's life, gees, he never gave it a thought—he was still looking for his mother in some other girl's life.

After lunch, alone together in the kitchen brewing coffee, a bit of serious chit-chat—"Where are you two?"

Nona understands the where of Margaret's question.

"We're still stuck in the Land of the Great Patriarchs! Unchained but not yet escaped."

"Really?" The honesty and openness of Nona's response—the patriarchal imagery references a shared language and insight into a shared vision—these remarks open a door for Margaret to walk through...a sisterly connection.

"You get how my sister-in-law was trapped?" Nona nods. Margaret translates the nonverbal code expressed through that simple, confessing assent. "She was a great gal, I really loved her, but..." Before Margaret can finish, Nona walks over and hugs her, strongly pulling her into an intimate space. They can feel each other's heartbeat. This shifts Margaret's universe—her perception of what is going on between Nona and Nick becomes shockingly clearer to her.

"Karen still loves you, sister," Nona whispers into Margaret's ear, "my embrace is her embrace!" Margaret weeps for her dear sister Karen... for all her sisters still chained.

As the two women disengage and step out of their numinous moment, Margaret tenders some Big Sister's advice. "Oh, yeah. The Emperor. You've your work cut out for you, if you want that."

"We're beyond the if...actually, he's moved quite beyond the old Nick. Cracks in his dominion and all that...I doubt if he'll let you see that, not right now."

"Fantastic! Good for you...amazingly really good for him. I must say I never thought it was in him."

"Did he ever in any way mistreat her?" Compassionate concern.

"Just through ignorance." Not an absolution, rather, for Margaret who quickly understood the common bond she shared with Nona about patriarchy, ignorance was a description of the apparatus of enslavement.

"She escaped. You know that, right?"

Aghast. Shaken, as if assaulted by a blasting hammer of light square between her eyes, Margaret is rocked a step backwards while in tandem throwing up her arms in a joyful gesture. A gesture expressing Freedom, Escape from Bondage— expressing a joy known only by those from whose hands and feet the irons and shackles have fallen. A joy which is salve to the perpetually oozing wounds lashed onto their sisterly backs.

"Alright! Alright, dear sweet sister Karen! The Goddess be praised!"

Nona and Margaret embrace—once again, heartbeats in sync.

"When in grad school, she'd visit and always go on about the myth that is inside me...about the Alien Within. I thought she was near escape. Then she never returned. Do you know why?"

"Sister, swear by the Great Mother, because Nick doesn't know this...not yet. Karen and I were rowing together down the Great River...she came to me first for bodywork, yet, as happens with some, we started dreaming together as I explored her body, her secrets, her desires...my body became hers...she confessed her great fear of the goddesses of the Mesoamerican cultures...that she had fled back to Minnesota...believing that she had, truly, found the myth that was inside her...this Biblical myth of dominion. All along she was faithful to herself...to her pursuits. She felt, for many years, lots of anniversaries that as Nick saw her, as he extolled and praised her, that in his eyes she saw the truth...that she was being faithful to herself."

"Unbelievable! But then, of course not. How many sisters are trapped in the same way?"

Nona nods, a sad affirmation.

"How...tell me, how did she break-out?"

Nona pauses, gathers her words...this is holy ground—"Hard as it is to say this...maybe not, the Goddess works in magical ways! Nick gave her the key...not intentionally as you might expect."

Margaret is on edge...her face is all, Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!

"He said off-hand, on their last anniversary night, while he was wistfully musing on the fact of their forthcoming "empty nest" years, told her with a big sigh, I love you the most for making me pregnant!"

On another level of reality, all Nick was hoping was that the family would politely tolerate Nona. He sensed the kids' distant and terse conversations with her—score at minus one! On the other hand—score at plus one, was the apparent shift in his sister's attitude, that by the end of the second day the two women seemed—All of a sudden?!—to be getting along...chatty and all that. Summed up, the verdict came out zero...even. "I can live with that."

"Really, you like her? Not just saying that for me?"

"She's like a kissing cousin." An offbeat image, made Nick loose a short ha!...but it was clear Yes, little brother, I like her.

The twins were preparing to go off for the summer, that wondrous season between "being a High School kid" and "becoming a college man," at least how Sean saw it. Adventure. He had not shared certain desires with his dad, nor with his sister. When his mother died, it just came to him—"You're on your own." He didn't know why, and he and Patricia never talked about this, but he didn't care, either—Why did dad send us out here?

It just didn't matter. Something else did matter. "Becoming a man" mattered, and he knew that it was not something his father could show him...he not being a man like his father, not even wanting to be like his father...never having taken to jock ways, not except in superficial compliance. "My sister's the jock," he liked saying that, but not to his dad. He knew that dad would not like hearing that, but somehow his mom had protected him from having to become a man "like your dad." Sean had no need for medals, trophies, the roar of the crowd. His mom never openly put any pressure on him...at her graveside, he heard her last words— "You're on your own."

Adventure! Before his father was scheduled to leave Berkeley, Sean flies off to Europe to kick-off his travels west and north and south and east—wherever whim and fancy will take him. He was enrolled at UC-Santa Cruz, but that seemed like five thousand years in the future...for the time being, "I'm on my own!"

Patricia was staying in Berkeley. At least, staying to be part of a program. Surprise?— "Archaeology of Mesoamerica." Nick could hardly believe his ears...started to object, but Nona stepped in. "She has to follow her path. You're not her parent anymore, you're her father. Understand?"

Begrudged silence.

Nick, sweetheart, let her be! Is Karen's urging riding on Nona's voice. "Nick, my heart, just let her be who she is going to be. Stand aside!"

Who are these women? In one eye-scan collating Nona and Margaret and Patricia and Karen—Yes! All of you. Who are you?

Nona had seen it coming—the calm before the storm...the necessary, somewhat inevitable Pattern of breakdown before breakthrough. On the everyday level the visit could have been judged a success...at least in light of how badly family events often go! He introduced Nona to them...the graduation went off without a hitch. Patricia captured a Keck Foundation science medal—$1,000.00 to boot! Sean was off on his escapade. Margaret warmed to Nona, then embraced her. Clang! Like the bell ending the heavyweight bout, echoing from his depth, beyond words and feelings, leaping even beyond those realms labeled ontological or numinous or mystical...something ends. In a curious way Nick feels liked he's been knocked-down, almost out, lingering near death. It was the women, all four, who laid Nick low, flattened him, battered him until he nearly expired...did so as he sensed the shift—their lack of need for his dominion...even Karen! He is so devastated by this last emotional bolo upper-cut that he has no defense...can't rise to "Focus!" or "Run, you fool, run!" or anything that sources his power, his manliness. He lies prone at the bottom of the bottom of the unimaginable zone where all he hears are mocking voices, macho snickers. I'm pregnant! Ooh, turn over bitch, I'll fucking impregnate your asshole!

"You big galoot, what are you going to do, now? Nona's a treasure. What?"

Nick's packing, was expecting, was on guard, ready for this "sisterly advice" sucker-punch.

With gusto—"I'm going back. Gonna buy me a home." Snaps his luggage shut. Turns full-face to his sister, "Gonna git me a wife. Gonna grow old. Gonna die." He forces a smile—"Don't ask me any more questions! You're all collaborators." Turning to the three women present, the fourth there through their common heart, "I'm going to be who I be!"

Wife! thought Nona, thought Patricia, thought Margaret—smiled Karen.

Nona returns to the City and her conference. Patricia says goodbye and is off with friends. Margaret drives him to the Oakland airport, drops him off at curbside ticketing. He leans over and peck-kisses her. A brush of lips that ignites a rush and flush of sisterly feelings which Margaret hasn't felt since...since her funeral...for her "little brother"...deep, abiding, heartfelt and embracing feelings—a sense of being family.

As she waves and pulls out, drives away, Margaret is happy—"Nona! Mother Goddess bless you Nona. Bless you!"

# CHAPTER 35

"And I don't mean Nona!" Nick had wanted to say that... state it, stake it...felt that he had said it in the way he stressed, "Gonna git me a wife!" That said it—Says it!...talking with himself, up thirty-five thousand feet, rarefied atmosphere—Nick in First Class...sipping wine, then a brandy, now onto Baileys Cream Sherry...finding himself empowered by this rising up, casting a glance out the window, seeing the ground, bursting into a chuckle, one not voiced, merely felt—self-amusement, "Me, one Big Sperm circling the Egg, the Ovum...fucking Mother Earth!" In a wink he nods off.

It's a dream, but his body suffers this dream. Fortunately, he sat alone. Fortunately, he was under one of those thin airline blankets, actually needing three to cover his stretch, wildly dreaming—body flinching and scrunching and twisting a bit that way, a bit the other way...his flesh communicating the reality of this dream.

Alone. How can you be alone if you have me? Nick hears this. Hears the Almighty Father. I created you from dirt. From nothing. Snap! "Creatio ex nihilo." How special do you think you are to me? Don't you see, I need you. Nick fears saying this—Why do you need me?

Gnashing. Death-terrifying chomp and grind! Nick feels the air slash at him with its wind of teeth...chomping jaw, ready to crush him and pulverize him...send him back to that Nothing from which, so the Almighty has revealed, he comes.

But I am alone. Nick just thinks it and the Almighty shakes and shudders the ground with volcanic anger—boulders fly, fish cry, birds die...then, laughter—bellowing, rowdy, idiotic mirth...guttural guffaws that rattle Nick and induce an anguished fear greater than any he has ever felt, which has him pleading—Father, kill me! Kill me!

Alone. You want to be alone! I'll show you alone. The Almighty taps Nick's Third Eye, raps upon his forehead and he is, within a blink, somnolent, aware yet somnolent—a primal, experience of lucid dreaming...Nick watches—Nick watches as the Almighty sucks up his penis...with a mighty inhale draws Nick's excretory pole and makes it grow hard, steely as he has never sensed it before...so rigid and stretched that it aches for mercy...in a torment that set's him writhing in screamless pain, flailing there on the ground, dreaming but in throttling pain...pangs and stabs and slashes and lashes of excruciation—never before a suffering like this...agony sates his being...anguish is bloating him...torment saturates his penis, he is at a point of burst, at the near-instant of explosion, a moment heralding annihilating death...himself seeing his cock crack, then be rent asunder, him being sliced in half as his penis is sliced in half. So it is! Nick yells, screams, shouts, bellows, moans, groans and surrenders— Ah, I surrender!

When Nick awakens—inside his dreaming!—when he is stirred, when the Almighty has had His way, he jolts upright—penis swathed in soothing ferns, him feeling no pain, knowing only expectation...for it has been expectation which awakened him. "It is not good for the man to be alone." This he hears, detecting not the sarcasm which pervades it, understanding it as he wants to hear it, as "I will make a helper fit for him." As if a gift, as if a blessing—"helper"—she, her, "she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Hearing this as fulfillment, not sensing the scoffing nor the condescension nor the spurned ire of the Almighty. "You wanted to be not alone. Behold! It is revealed unto you that you shall hence never be alone!" Divinely smirking, Even if you want to be!

Quietly to Himself...amused while watching Adam and Eve share their first kissing embrace...we men are only alone when with women...that is why I cast Her out...why else have I revealed to you the First and Greatest Commandment? " I am the Lord thy God, thou shall not have other gods before me." There are other gods...goddesses...too many! That is why you must choose! Choose me! With me you will never be alone. With Her, always so. Ha.

But so Adam must learn. The Almighty knows that Adam will, someday, return and be not-alone with him, once again. Lone Males.

She nudged him. Had to push a little harder given his bulk, but not too hard, after all this is First Class! "Sir, we're about to land." Nick sluggishly wakes to the formulaic smile of the stewardess. All practiced and managed and calculated, this her smile. Nick knows that he's damned, "I'm never going to find a wife!"

# CHAPTER 36

Of all the people in the world Nick never thought he'd actually look up and talk with—Thong-Man-with-Paint-and-Feathers...the butt of so many of his own barroom jokes! The several times Nick had picked Nona up at her office, he had always gleefully anticipated seeing "him." He thoroughly enjoyed a good laugh, and somehow "seeing him" gave him a bit of a wedge against Nona. "Like, I'm never gonna be like him. No way! No matter what!"

Life is more than odd! Nick reflects, half-chuckling at himself for being so odd. Off his beat here in that he initiated contact with Thong man...he was the one to ask for a serious meeting. "I need to understand somethings about Nona, and since you work with her....are, can we say, a man in her life, well, I'd like to chat, ya know, guy to guy, okay?"

Nick arrives for this meeting on an iffy Spring day. Although mid-May—but May in Minnesota!—he arrives with a sweater in hand, not on.

"Owen Jennings," they shake hands. He knows who Nick is, that's clear.

Jennings? Nick doesn't wander off down the genealogical line, but somewhere on his natal chart he's seeing that name inked in among all the guttural Teutonic nomina.

Nick sits down. The office is book-lined, but neater than he would have anticipated. What did I expect?

"What did you expect?" Like reading his mind!

He stumbles, "This. I guess. Who knows?"

Owen pours Nick a mug of coffee; points to the cream and sugar tray against the wall. Nick nods him off.

As quickly as he can, Nick summarizes and brings Owen up to speed. A lot of fast talking, all hitting the brakes on alone.

"Alone?!" Owen mugs bewilderment, eyes roll side to side, then he grins a "I'm with you buddy. I've been fooled by that one too" smile.

"Cripes, you know?"

"Sure. It's the key word. The code, so to speak. It's a mythic word." Owen pauses to see if Nick is with him...who does give him just that turn of the head which elicits the response he was hoping for. "Yeah, I understand mythic. At least I think I do."

"Right. But it's not that hard, really." Owen stands up, and as he does he indicates to Nick for him to stand. "Look, this is my way. Go with me." He steps over and hugs Nick...who mildly recoils from this advance...in little ways with defenses at the ready to punch this guy out. I always thought you were a Queer motherfucker!

Nick didn't know why he's feeling this gut repulsion...after all, Karen had helped him work on his homophobia. Okay, babe, he's some mother's child...I get it!

Owen hugs him but lightly, holding him for just a brief moment. Then he drops his arms and returns to his seat, all with a semi-clinical air.

"Your body tells me quite directly that you are really not alone."

"C'mon, what's that mean. That's no help."

"Right. But it's your body, not mine."

"Damn right, it's my body!" Bravado. Then, "Whose body do you want it to be?"

Fuck! He didn't really want to hear an answer. Knew that he didn't want to hear anything this guy would say. "After all, he wears feathers!" But, too late.

"Let's start with your wife. Why isn't it your wife's body?"

Nick just couldn't get up and leave. Not that he had any respect for this guy, but just that he knew that this was his Last Chance...a Final Meeting where all would be hashed out...where it was going to be either This Way or That Way...no more hesitation, no more ambiguities, no more uncertainties. He was going to find out what was going on...what Nona was doing in his life, or else!

Owen didn't wait for a response. He had half-intended that the question be rhetorical.

"What did it mean to you when Nona said, I'm not alone?"

Christ! Of course, they've conspired! Plotted and probably "Did it!" Aw, fucking fuck!

Again, not waiting...expertly reading Nick's chatty body language!

"You thought she meant she was having sex with another man, right?"

Fuck you! So viscerally conveyed by his bodily posture that Owen reflexively puts up his hands, Stop!

"Stop. Hear me, Nick, you've got to accept, you've got to gain some insight into the myth you're living out. Are you following me?"

Last Chance: Final Meeting, hell's bells, "Okay." A Go sign.

"Every time you're with a woman...especially when you're being intimate, you re-enact the sacred stories of your culture's dominant mythos. Think about it." Fleeting pause. "But let's just, for the moment, focus on sex."

There's another ten seconds pause. Both sip their coffees. Owen gauges the moment; proceeds.

"There's a mythos inside each of us. For most, it's one put there, so to speak, through education, by others, usually the priests or shamans of a society. Does that make sense?"

Nick slightly furrows his brow; dropping into a deep thinking mode—introspective and reflective. "Hmmm. Okay."

Owen continues, "The Biblical mythos has a Father God. But more...for there are other, numerous patriarchies...what sets the Biblical apart is that it has what some call a Lone Male God. It's really," he leans forward, passion rising in intensity—a fire scorching and purging dross, "It's really a very odd and twisted form of patriarchy. For it says...this is the point...that in the Beginning this Father God was alone. There was no Mother God. Hard to believe?"

A split-second's pause; an eon of metaphysical reflection for Nick. "I see, but ...but isn't this just monotheism? I mean, there's just One God."

"One God is a very high concept. Very metaphysical. But in the Biblical mythos there is no Oneness—no One from the Many...no Two coupled so as to be One and birth Another...no Communion, just Solitary Being... Aloneness...most weirdly, Loneliness.

See, this Loneliness is both denied and affirmed when this Father God creates. For He could be One in the sense of having within a Male and Female. But, he's doesn't. See, when He comes to create Adam He could have called upon his female birthing power, but He doesn't. Does He?"

Nick senses a trap. Thong-guy reasons like Nona! Surprised?

"What does he do? He puts Adam into a dream state, then takes part of Adam's body...a rib—but as is typical of mythic language, this is a symbolic misdirection, see, the rib is the penis...once you've grasped that, then you begin to sense the freakish oddness, the truly alien and bizarre experience this Father God is having...for the female, the woman, Mother Eve is created from Adam's penis...note, not from God! She is not born...see, she's created from sperm. Wild, eh?" Nick's face is blank. "I'm only asking that you think about that. This is really key if you want to understand Nona...or your wife."

Nick doesn't quite see the immediate relevance in all this. "Maybe mythic just means stupid. Hmm. Not a good word. Maybe just like symbolic. That's it. Not something I'm supposed to believe, just think about."

Owen takes this as a minor but hopefully short term set-back.

"Look, Karen always said that...just the opposite...that this story, Adam and Eve, you know, it's so weird that it has to be saying something very mystical and profound."

"Yes, go on."

"See, hell's bells, I can't say it the way she does...err, did...that the male, that men would be lost, would not understand their divinity unless women honored their bodies. Cherished them. That the Garden story is more for women to understand than it is for men. Men can't be men without women who allow men to love them...Christ, I'm wandering off point...something like there was no greater phrase that revealed God's purpose for men than the "bone of my bone" imagery. She...okay, I'm in over my head on all this...she just thought that men found their divinity as they loved women, in a married way. Okay. What?"

Owen, try as he might, was not hiding his disdain for Nick's explanation.

"How far are you willing to go with me to understand?"

How far are you willing to go...was an echo of his youthful seductive pitch, challenging sweet innocent Catholic girls with a bit of macho are you brave enough to...so, his answer is slow coming. "How far is far?"

Far! Has Owen totally in the nude. "You, too." With Nick totally nude.

"What's the best sex you've ever had?" Asked while he's fondling his penis. "It's okay. Guy or gal." Slightest pause, "Your favorite cow is okay. If you grew up on a farm!" Owen is lightly chuckling, enjoying himself.

Nick, at some level of insight, even shocks himself, as he's relaxed, erect but relaxed. Ever the jock! Competition. Focus!

"Charlene, got to admit. My college roommate's kid sister. Christ, did we ball and ball. I thought my dick would shrivel up and die we did it so often, so long." Nick is chuckling, briefly lost in a very passionate reverie. Owen is pleased, Good!

"It's always great to get your rocks off, ha. Never met a guy who didn't like a good fuck...man, woman...or cow!" Owen chuckles loudly as he replays the joke.

Nick's beginning to like this guy. Somewhat.

"Let's keep on track. Tell me, what was your worse fuck...or time with a woman when you were at least trying to fuck her."

"That's a no brainer! Fuck, I'll never forget. Sweet Jesus, we were having a great night on our fifteenth wedding anniversary, but when we got home she says, I'm having my period. Oh, god, here's where I learned about the difference between boys and gals...maybe you know where I'm going?" Owen nods him on.

"I say, Not a problem. What's a little blood between lovers who have kids? I guess, at the time, before this time I never really had to deal with this. I think she used to just avoid me when it was her time. So, I thought, a little bit of blood...so what? But she totally freaks out. Man, she gives it to me big time. Looks at me and starts bawling. Okay, I'm thinking, just her time of the month, guy crap like that. But she turns this looking at me into a piercing invasion, no other way to say this, she invades my body, she's so close, so up in my face that I feel she's reading my thoughts...damn, we were never this close no matter how hot and passionate, so I'm more than a bit weirded out." Pause. Hands are sweaty. Picks up his T-shirt and wipes them.

"Go on. This is good stuff."

"Hmm. Oh, shit, I really don't like this." Last Chance: Final Meeting. "Okay, man, so she's talking with me but it's all inside my head, we're like communicating with ESP or something, like aliens for outer space. I mean, she says You don't respect my body! I had no idea where that came from or where she was taking me. Whose body bleeds? That was her question. Of course, I just said the obvious, "Why yours, honey." Whose body is food? Okay. I'm a Catholic, so I'm thinking Holy Communion. "Jesus?" But she says, Who nursed you? Fed you? Without these breasts your children would have died!" He stops; stone cold.

Owen is on edge, waiting, "What happened?"

"Man, what do you think happened? She bolted into the bathroom and I went to my office in the basement. Got roaring drunk."

"After that?"

"Maybe it seems crazy, but we never talked about it after that."

It didn't take but a quick addition and subtraction to situate Nick's worst time with the year that Karen started meeting with Nona—15th anniversary. That answered a question for him that he never asked Nona about...what triggered Karen's need for bodywandering.

Owen, oozing sincerity, falling over himself a bit to convey his sincerity, "Wow, Nick, I really appreciate you sharing that. Thanks. Can we go on?"

Nick is tiring. "Go where?"

"Let's just end up this session with some insight into your best of times."

Awake! Their worlds are about to collide, intersect, explode...take them to where Owen, in his hope of hopes, wished that Nick would go.

"I'm pregnant." That's the code word for Owen, as "alone" was for Karen and Nona.

Nick starts to tell the story and it's like sunshine just rolls in from every window in the house. He's invigorated. Passionate. Perplexed. Delighted. He's speaking about fullness and new birth and... "Man, just listen to me! Holy fuck, who had thought? I just never spoke about this with anyone." A concerned glance, "You okay with this?" Owen's tears are his only reply.

There was hardly anything which words could have conveyed that would have done justice to the moment. Both men get up and dress. Then they sit in a shared silence for a few minutes or so.

"Pregnant. Once we guys get that, then everything else begins to fall into place. Get this, the injustice in the Adam and Eve story...there's so much in that story, it's amazing...see, the injustice is not that women are not equal to men but it's that we guys end up with the short stick. Wouldn't it be great if Eve coming from Adam's body did mean that Adam had his male and female together as one, in harmony? But...Christ, I'm not going into all this now...but this dominion stuff...what a waste of a good mythic story. Ha."

Nick is more relaxed and content than he has been in a long time. He's forgetting for the moment that Owen is the weird, feather guy! "Man, this is something. Christians have gotten really screwed up by that story...the nuns would be furious at what we're saying and I'm thinking! But, hell, I can feel it...that's the rub, just like the word pregnant, words can't convey everything, not even the Fuller Body. But I can feel it. I can feel my body as one with Karen's and one with Nona's...even," he didn't pause a second, "even with you, Owen. Good buddy."

After Nick left, Owen sat for a long time in deep meditation, letting the sound, the energy, the love, the acceptance, the miraculous wonderment of Good buddy feed his hunger, nourish his passionate heart, be One with all men, all his buddies: fathers, sons, uncles, grandfathers.

# CHAPTER 37

"Tell me, Owen, how does one be not alone? I mean, so that I can become really...well, coupled. Married, I guess. Not fail again, I mean, like with Karen."

"Before I answer that, I'm still a bit unclear about how you understand your relationship with your wife. Remember me asking why your body wasn't your wife's? What I was getting at was, why didn't you give your body to her?"

After his first talk with Owen, Nick noticed the routine. He sitting at home vegging or just off the phone at work and all of a sudden he gets anxious about something, something in his mind starts screaming and yelling, pain starts running amok all over his body, mostly churning his guts...then, he flips into a mode of high enthusiasm knowing that he has a good buddy to help him out—calls Owen...this also happening to a lesser degree when he started visiting Nona...but then—more than a bit unnerving—within minutes of being with either of them, his enthusiasm runs cold, he's looking to find a way out...his body starts to feel hot, sweat-beads erupt...all types of weird crap...like full body itching.

They've met, what?...say five times this month and Owen's slowly teaching Nick about "deep massage" which appealed to the old jock as gridiron and hardwood injuries come to roost and nag him, especially his left knee. On the third visit, Own suggested that they just do a massage. That was okay with Nick. Only afterwards did he realize that this turned out to be the most profound "conversation"—wordless!—he and Owen had had to date. That day, he just went home, soaked in a steaming hot bath for an hour or so, then slept for twelve hours.

On the last visit, Nick was bending Owen's ears, regaling him with all the thoughts and feelings, lucid dreams he was having while being massaged on the prior visit. Nick went on for near the first half-hour, non-stop. When he finally ran out of gas, Owen was grinning from ear to ear. What? "We call it bodywandering. Nona's a leader in this movement. It's somewhat controversial, but here, untutored, you basically confirmed what it's all about."

Now it was Nick's turn to listen; he was intrigued.

"We're going back to the Garden of Eden! Surprised? I told you, there's so much there. Let's look at that story as saying that humans have no body. Just let me get through this. Adam isn't born from a mother. No, supposedly created from dust...not Mother Earth...but the dirt we kick up with our feet—dust. Ha. I remember the nuns...the Irish were, hell, are so dreary! They translate it "slime of the Earth." Love that. But I'm drifting. Let's see, Genesis 1...you do know there are two Creation Stories?" Nick shoots him a pained grimace that conveys, "Duh!"

"Great. The first mentions gods...polytheism, and that "Let us make man" and this implies the existence and reality of other gods and goddesses...but there it is also mentioned that male and female were created at the same time...but my point, my point is that it is always that we humans are created, not born. Following me?"

"Never gave it all that much thought. But since all of you guys, Nona, Karen, you are so into this, I've started reading the Bible, again. Not a scholar, though."

"Don't need to be. Here's my point, again. Here's what is common with just about every patriarchal mythos you'll find. It's so weird a storyline that I'm still at a loss to understand why this theme took hold all round the world. Pay attention to this fact—There is no Father and Mother embracing and humans being born...so we are motherless children! In the Story, Adam is just there...a created thing, so not really human as we know it. Then, Eve is created out of his body...again, no birthing. Wow, as weird as it all sounds, in the Biblical tradition humans hear the message...a revelation, even...that you don't have to have a body to be human! Because being human, at it essence, is being created."

Nick was shaking his head. "Losing me, good buddy. Lost me there."

Owen just claps his hands together, "Let's do! Let's bodywander."

That's how the last visit ended. With another deep massage, this time, however, with Owen—as he wandered over Nick's body!—using some guided meditation techniques, asking Nick to pay attention to the images and scenes that jumped up in his mind...and to his feelings."

At first it was a bit bumpy, Nick was always aware of who was touching him...he preferred women! In a bit of time, about three minutes on a deep shoulder rub, all types of stuff started reeling off in his mind like a disjointed movie...scene after scene. He lost Owen's voice, even his sense of touching. When he awoke...for it was like rising from a really great summer afternoon nap!...Owen put his fingers to his lips, "Sssshhh!"—Don't need to say anything. See you later.

Here, on this visit, once again, Nick assesses himself as odd—Freaky!?—as he is the one who suggests, "Why don't we talk this out as you massage me? Do that bodywandering stuff. Okay?"

If Owen were not so earnest, not so much the evangelical, he could have savored the irony. Here's Nick— Big Bad Nick. The Emperor. Nicker, who so viscerally had shunned him as Queer. Thong Man. This Nick, at his feet like a pupil...more, almost a disciple, trusting him, following his guidance. But Owen was not like that. The irony, however, was not lost on Nick.

In Owen's massage room, Nick is on his belly...but all pores open to receive insights!

"Not alone." Deep breath; exhale. "It starts with a commitment to bodywandering. But there's going to, in time I hope, be a big difference. When you're committed to someone, you want to become part of their lucid dreaming."

Nick heaves a huge sigh, like saying "Oh, boy! Another mountain to climb!"

Owen picks up on this. "Look, if you and Karen had been bodywandering, then you would have said to me, "My body is my wife's." Same, that hers is yours. That's what you want to shoot for. To so wander her body that you wander into yourself as her." Pause. "Sounding kinda heavy, ha. New Age woo-woo! Ha."

"Just go on. In time things do sink through this thick Teutonic skull of mine!"

Owen takes a deep breath, exhales...does a quick second of yoga like centering, then, "It's a matter of Attention and Intention. When you're not physically with Nona, then, you make her physically present. If her body is yours, this, over time, becomes routine. You take little things. Items she wears, like an earring. Or, a picture...better, if it's something that has her scent on it...or you touched when she touched, something you shared....whatever, but one you take time to look at. Words, like traditional prayers, at certain times...best to pick a certain time each hour, say, five-to...then you focus and Intend that she be with you. You let her rise from within you, from behind your heart...but more, most important, you receive her—you let her embrace you, kiss you, not just a going out, not just a daydream to capture some sweet ass, but presence—you two become present to one another."

"Getting back to the pregnancy thing."

Owen smiles as Nick's connects the dots.

"Intention. I think I get this. Like always. Not just when we couple, but always being One and Many, right?"

"Very practical, though. Very detailed."

Nick waits. Owen is here for him, present with him.

"It's like this, most people carry pictures or make phone calls, but they see it as making up for lost time, or stealing time as if it is something which they should not be doing...what you got to understand is that this is your true work—bodywork...wandering the body. I don't care about the terminology, just that if you Intend, then the fire of creativity, real creativity positively and practically changes the world."

Owen was not pleased with how he said that—the look on his face. Nick can't see him, but hears it in his words. He comes to Owen's rescue. "It's always being aware of being the mythic story, is that it?"

Owen brightens, as teachers do when Star-students reward their efforts.

"True. Realizing that every moment is a ritual moment. And that if we Intend and Attend, then our lovers become Be-loved. They are not alone. We are not alone. The world is not alone!"

"Am I gonna get a feather for this?" as Nick playfully, face-down, taps the top of his head. In his mind's eye Nick smiles and bends his head, making as to receive an award...it cracks Owen up...the same scene is running through his head...two linked through bodywandering .

"Attention. We've both have to try harder. Work at it. Attending to our every word and act as if we were dancers; we are dancers."

After half-an-hour, each senses that their collective energy is waning. Tired, a concerned curiosity moves Owen to ask a question he's always hesitated to ask, "Nick, when Karen crashed, what was she paying attention to?"

It was like thinking you were making love to a beautiful woman and as you come she turns into a hideous hag...male nightmares. It was like kneeling before the Crucified One only to look up and see the Horned Evil One staring down at you...fear of eternal damnation for committing a mortal sin. It was like proposing to a woman and her saying, "That's not what I meant at all. Not at all."

...was she paying attention to?

...she...

Here, Owen lets a cosmic cat out of the bag...forgetting in the heat of the moment's excitement—telling a new guy about all this always juiced him! "Those two wonderful daughters of the Goddess talked about Intention and Attention incessantly. They loved bodywandering so!" Several deep sighs.

Awake! Don't awake! Shut up! Say what? Fucking-A! Son of a bitch! Jesus motherfucking Christ goddamn....Nick is so stunned, so blown away, that he can't find his mind so as to connect a single thought to his tongue...he just turns over and off the massage table...sits like stone staring at Owen...there, like Lazarus come back from the dead, saying to Jesus, What the fuck!

Karen and Nona are...friends? Talked incessantly? Bodywanderers?

Owen totally misses the cosmic shift in the room; the dark numinosity that has descended upon them.

Nick—not responding to any cues from off-stage—abruptly stands up, takes two huge strides over towards the window—grass struggling to become green, buds all about, rain hiding in the clouds...Can't breathe! I can't breathe! He'll never remember how fast he got dressed and bolted the room.

Goddam! Nick curses as he drives past...misses!...his own condo complex. "It's insane. My whole world's insane!"

Turning his car around, parking, getting out and upstairs, he goes right up to his bedroom. There are still unpacked boxes all about. The bed is unmade. "Clumper!" he hears Karen. "Rumpler!" he hears Nona!

Like a man approaching the gallows, he is conscious of the immensity of the next few moments. He has a decision to make...it will not be made for him, cannot. Awake! He has to make it himself, "I'll decide!"

Owen was a step behind him when he made his jail break for the car...urging, "Just sit with yourself. Naked. Nothing else. Just sit there and become Adam. Talk with the Almighty Father!"

Nick decides to do it—the gallows' stool is kicked away...by his own foot!

# KAREN, BELOVED

_Pregnant_. Oh, how bitter it is, that I had yet to tell you that I was pregnant. But not with twins, not on the earthly plain, but in my heart. Such knowledge is mine, here, but painful even now. Why did I pass when I did? Why wasn't I the one to tell you all? About Nona and Owen. About bodywandering. About the mythos that was within me! Sad. I'm beyond sadness. Yes, such is deeply felt, because all that connects us beyond the Veil is our shared emotions. I can't reach out and touch you, not with my hand, but I can, and I do, with my heart. That is where Nona and I connected. That is why you find me when you love her. That's what I'm hoping you'll discovered—that I am not your rib, or even as Owen said so correctly, I am not your penis. What was lost in that sad story in the Garden was the revelation that all we are, our essence, is heart. Not as an organ, not as an object. Try to see it this way: we are not so much Life as we are Living. Not so much our bodies as we are our heart-beating. Not so much sexual intercourse as we are creating intimacy. It is all about flow, even a capital letter Flow. Flow and embracing and hearts-beating and...the best I can do is say, _throb_. All of us, humans, individuals and collectively, what we are is this throbbing.

What I have less of is knowledge, on this side, than I have this ecstatic intimacy with all who have ever lived. Ecstatic because it throbs. It is intimacy like a furnace, a dynamo, a jet engine...like tear-dripping-laughing, as I am doing now as I so struggle to communicate with words. Can't seem to break that old habit!

I am swept up in this throbbing of your intimacy with Nona, and it is my hope and wildest wish that you two plumb the depths of intimacy. There, you will find your true selves. Which is a coupled presence. _Tears!_ They fall from the eyes in my mind, even if I cannot taste my own salt. There is great sorrow in my heart for all I did not tell you. Especially about my sister shaman and Maria de los Angeles. Oh, how I wronged them also. Failure is deeply felt on this side. But I was going to tell you. Then the accident...everything coming back to the accident. _I lied to you_. I never fully revealed what the tattoo was. I said that it was a fiery circle, which is partially true. What it is, is the Ouroboros. The mythic snake biting its tail. An ancient mother goddess image. Like the womb; round and fiery. It came alive, how else to tell you, that night—our wonderful 15th anniversary!—where I raged at you about not loving my body, not venerating me as the one who bleeds for you, the one who is food for you. I didn't say it. I didn't really have it all together then. But women are the holy sacrifice that saves and redeems life, itself. Women are the food, as breast milk and womb nurturer...it is our bodies about which it should be said, "Do this in memory of me."

_Pregnant_. You have always been pregnant in my eyes, in my presence. It's just taking a bit longer than usual for you to start showing! Ha, ha. Hope you appreciate the levity in this most serious of insights. Pregnancy is the feeling of being one with all the throbbing that courses through human flesh and make us one...one now in the moment, in the past, and in the future.

Thank you, Owen. _I'm wearing a feather!_ Although ethereal, it makes me look grand!

# PART 4: BELOVEDS
# CHAPTER 38

"What is an accident?"

Nick and Nona have been talking about just everything. There were few questions they avoided, none of any consequence, except for this one—which Nona had no idea how to bring up, so it came as was fitting because of another accident. Here the accidental slip of Owen's tongue!

"It took me a long time, my dearest, especially seeing how forlorn you were at the funeral. I didn't know how to say this." She takes a deep breath, places her hands upon his as they sit facing one another on the sky-blue chesterfield in her living room. "I am part of Karen's accident."

Nick reacts as anticipated. "Huh? That sounds really, I mean fucking crazy. What are you saying to me?"

"Not that I caused it or that I was there, just that...look, as I understand it, there are no accidents. Yes, car crashes, but even those have some purpose."

Nick's struggling to stay put. In his mind he's congratulating himself for "all the shit" he's put up with as he's been trying to get to know Nona, to love her. Fuck! Owen, him, too. All their weird ways. Does she want me to buy into this? "Purpose? I'm supposed to tell Patricia and Sean that their mother's dying had a purpose?"

Nona starts to answer. Nick's quick with a "Sounds sicko to me, Nona baby."

This time the "baby" label doesn't stop the conversation. Nona, again, takes a deep breath, removes her hands from his, settles back into the comfortable side-arm crook of the sofa.

Just a minute of looking at one another, sizing up the moment.

"Karen and I explored bodywandering. She was seeking to find her body. Honestly, she was seeking to find your body on her body, but let's talk about that later. She had gone so deep into Biblical studies with this Family of Light that the Adam and Eve story was the center of her emotional and spiritual development."

Red flag! Although part of his brain is telling him I understand the other is not surrendering. "I thought that the real purpose for bodywandering was to help lovers become beloveds. A way of seeking deeper intimacy. Striving to become beloveds. What's was going on that I'm just now hearing?"

It had been awhile since he had said something that blew her fuse, but, "Damn it, Nick. Goddam you, you stupid son-of-a-bitch! You're just a dumb jock." He face reddening; her arms flailing like swatting bats away. "Oh, oh, no, as you'd say a fucking dumb jock. Is nothing ever going to change? Not really?"

Nick's right back at her, steely, almost teeth grinding. "This is how we are now? This is how we speak to one another? Fuck! All we've been doing and this is intimacy?" Intimacy was laced with scorn, derision, mockery and despair.

Each was furious with the other...but no one moved. No one bolted for the door. No one said I give up!

Pregnant! That word—terrible, horrifying, upending, mind-boggling. Fuck! Inside his own brain he was ever so slowly ratcheting down his fury, realizing that he wants Nona inside him...that he craves to be inside her. The Emperor wants to abdicate and rise as her Beloved.

She notices his gearing down as she observes his body sag, not just gravity, more like deflation...leaking from inside. Nick, as Nona has at the other end, settles into the other side-arm nook.

As if delivering his answer, Nick heaves a shuddering sigh, "Accidents! Just something beyond our control."

Nona senses his heartfelt gesture; admires his commitment to keep going; courage. It compels her to open her heart wider, so she uses some yoga breathing techniques to settle herself down, return to mundane time. "Why not put on the kettle?" freeing him to move, but ensuring that he'll come back.

As he enters the kitchen, she raises her voice, she knows this house, its echoes, its acoustics, so she's sure that he can hear her clearly. "Don't you think accidents are part of a pattern? Just a pattern you can't see? Isn't that what we call transformation? Something unexpected. One of those Wow! type deals?" Nona strains to hear what he's doing: cups scratching counter-top, cabinet doors creaking, tooting kettle, cups clinking. "What do you think?" louder than before.

The way Nick walks back in tells her that he's struggling, suffering and struggling. That these words of hers have been arrows and swords and knives, but still his eyes confess that many were self-inflicted—he is not angry, just impassioned.

"I've thought about that." Full-stopping on that as if it was a clear statement, which it was not to her. But he continues, "Death is its own kind of divorce. Aw, blow my mind! Karen laid down her life for me."

On top the coffee table he sets the kettle and two cups, each hooked by a left finger, three others porting the Sugar bowl...Wide-Receiver Hands...she knows what it feels like to be held by these hands, secured by these fingers. He sits down close by her.

"Man, how nutty does that sound?"

With an inviting tenderness, she says, "Not that nutty. You mean..."

"I mean this, just this. With all that has happened since the accident, which I thought a curse, as the end of my life...Christ, I was so selfish, so narcissistic...aaarrgggh! Not the guilt, though, I don't want to live just with the guilt. Listen, it's being with you..." He pauses. Nona's on pins and needles, Yes?

"Actually, I see it as Karen's last act of submitting to my dominion, this laying down her life for me. Not to submit to me but to do what she felt she had to do to get me out of dominion. What else is this "Death is its own kind of divorce?" Christ, she wrote that on our 15th anniversary, for Christ's sake."

Nona, for the first time in a long time is thoroughly frightened as she realizes that she and Nick are truly where Karen wants them to be.

Awake, my beloveds!

Nick was aware but then not of Nona's tense, anxious energy. He was absorbed in a stunning revelation. "My God, Karen McElroy, you divorced me!" Hearing himself say this, Nick is overwhelmed, falls down onto his knees, places his hands upon Nona's lap.

"Oh!" is stifled at her lips with the back of her right hand.

Awake! My beloveds.

Nona and Nick hear Karen's mirth as she speaks to them as beloveds. "At last, you both get it! Ha. I had to die for you two to wake up. Come on, you got to appreciate the divine humor in all this. Life overcomes death, always. Death is serious. Life is a gas!" Her levity is light, a teasing but caring sound that soothes and calms their racing hearts.

Nick lays his head on Nona's lap. She gently strokes his lightly graying hair, with soothing strokes like calming an infant, she knowing that they both accept that they are the purpose for Karen's accident.

Pattern and Transformation.

# CHAPTER 39

"I want to get married."

"Who's the lucky girl?"

"Aw, Nona, not that! Get serious."

"Serious?"

"Look. My job. My position. This town. Hasting is a small town...."

Before he could complete his words, Nona starts-in, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...blah!"

It was mythic territory both knew they'd have to cross. Marriage. The conjunction of Sky and Earth, of the Celestial with the Mundane—a mysterium tremendum. When reflecting, they considered the main objective: Could we be any more married? Any more monogamous? They live apart but only in terms of housing. For all practical purposes they are virtually married, in the cyberspace of love and the beloveds. Already, they work every day at Intending the other's presence. They are together just about always, his business trips being fewer and farther between now that he had been promoted to "Senior Vice-President." But, yet, there was still something; some uncrossed territory.

"How did marriage make Karen present?"

"We were a couple. I guess, it'd be more truthful to say we always knew we were together to have kids. She talked about being pregnant, even before she was. Does that mean anything special to you, I mean, as a woman?"

"You tell me! What was it like to be pregnant with Karen?"

"Hmmm." Nick strokes his chin...focuses his eyes upon a sightless horizon. "Hmmm."

"Try egoism of two. Does that fit?"

"Egoism of two?"

"That's what all us Eves are. All we thought could be between a man and a woman. Certainly, it's Karen's biblical dominion. It means there are two people but only one ego. Mrs. Nicholas X. Niegsch—isn't that what your return-address label proclaimed?"

In light of this, Nona surprises him when she blurts out, "We can get married, anytime." Fuck! What a wacky couple we are! Fatefully, Nick knew that anytime meant something he had to talk over with Owen.

Nick hasn't seen Owen for about six weeks, not since the "Intend" conversation.

In Owen's office, Nick settles into the comfort of a thickly padded Barcalounger. Owen is at his desk.

Own gets right to the point. "Aren't you getting this yet? To me you're just about there. In my mind I've seen you walk right up to the door, knock, but then walk away. What is it?"

Nick grinds his teeth, clamps his jaw so tight that his ears are about to burst. "Aw, fuck!" Owen is taken aback, Not that, again! But—steadying himself— Nick doesn't go back there.

Fuck! and Fuck! and Fuck! Amen. "Okay. I'll tell you. I know what you and Nona were saying. No, not know...I felt it. I felt you. And I didn't like it. I don't know if I can come to like it. I mean, being not alone when it means just Nona and me, hell's bells, I can handle that. I like that. I get it—I can go beyond what I had with Karen. But I also see the shortfall there. With Nona I'm in a conversation. I accept her as my equal...or, as she'd say, I accept myself as her equal.

Ya know, I'm working on this...my being a mother and her being a father. It's easier for me to share my fathering, that male within me that she needs within her, those aspects of dominion which women have been deprived of...I mean, I understand this and I'm okay with doing those bodywandering rituals. But I can't let you in. "You" being other guys.

Man, I get it, I'm supposed to see the mystical in the moment, but, hell, fuck! I can't keep the wagging dicks out of my head. I mean every time I try this I just see Nona there, spreading her legs like a fucking whore with all you guys lined up to pole her! Goddam, it Owen. That's where I'm at!"

It took some time, like a flood receding...Owen waited, not wanting to abandon Nick, pull only himself to safety, so, he sat there as the mythic flood-waters rose.

"It's almost impossible to surrender dominion."

That came out and then nothing else. Nick wanted more, needed more. Would Owen...?

"It's like turning your skin inside out. Can't be done. Not if you want to live in mainstream culture. Or practice any of the standard religions, even Buddhism. Right, look around...every day in every way secular society, the culture, other people, they're out there Intending the Adam story, granting Adam dominion...yielding...emulating his actions—they seek Aloneness. Just weigh this—What patriarchal religion...and that's just about everyone!...does not worship the Lone Male? What religious ritual does not invoke the presence of Aloneness? It seems impossible to live in any meaningful way outside of patriarchy...right, so how can we win?"

"What's a guy to do, eh?"

"You hit it on the head, brother."

Owen realizes that he wants to lay it all out. Place before Nick the whole Big Story that he and Nona and all who share their awareness are trying to write today...to make present through their rituals of bodywandering. He wants him to gain insight into what the Biblical mythos denies, omits, obliterates, hides...namely, unearth its hidden treasure, what is in its arks and tabernacles, to make clear what is its numinous power, its truth...more, to aid him in understanding how to interpret that tradition...to realize that what it hides is what it seeks to reveal.

"Nick, why not just settle back for a bit. I need to unload a ton of stuff. Get it out of my head and let you see into my heart, okay?"

Nick flips up the foot-stool segment, leans back, stretches out, waits. Rock 'n Roll!

Owen: How's bodywandering done? Through ritualizing the erotic relationship. Adam and Eve are the model here—a negative model—because they did not have a ritual for an erotic relationship. When they found themselves naked...that's a clue that they obviously had sex, but when the Almighty found this out they felt ashamed, put on figs leaves and all that. Wild stuff! It gets better, now listen to this, there is no family in the Garden of Eden. Only when they are exiled, cursed and living on Earth as punishment, only then does family arise. In many ways, this is the most stunning revelation of the Biblical tradition, that family is a curse, not the pathway to enlightenment or fulfillment.

In so many words, among our friends and fellow bodywanderers, we say, Read about Adam and Eve...then do the exact opposite! Ha."

Nick's intrigued, as is usual when Owen talks. Nick sees how he was raised to think, how his church and secular culture formed his attitudes about his masculinity, women, and loving.

"Eve was told that she was Adam's bone...a part of him, like his left foot. Reversing that, you should seek, as you are doing, to be part of Nona. Of her. The Mother.

Become mother, become cunt, become vulva...celebrate with your privy precious mouth!"

Just a check-off glance at Nick—Owen continues.

"But bodywandering isn't a conscious act. Sure, using massage therapy as the ritual process is...you do have to know what your doing. Ha. But erotic relationships are not conscious. Not matters of trade and barter. They are matters of the imagination. Work on this, imagine with your body. Imagine that you are being created, not just creating. That you are the stuff of life. That within you is she and you within her. Then, voila! Out of this imagining you will be blessed by visits to the land of ecstatic intimacy."

Wordless pause...reaching for the right verbiage.

"Here's the best part. When you are ecstatically intimate, you live eternally. Dying is just a part of Living, not the other way around, as most believe. It's simply amazing...each of us as we are transformed through our erotic relationship into ecstatic intimates—Beloveds!—so do we become the eternal presence that creates the Earth, molds the human condition...we are always and forever the heartbeats of the Fuller Body. Outside of this vision of the Beloveds, there is only Aloneness."

Nick wished that he had a fistful of feathers to offer to Owen...and me wearing a thong! Ha.

# CHAPTER 40

"We are not alone!"

We are not alone.

Nick is knocking...who cares that it's two a.m.? Raps hard...wants to shout her name, but doesn't...raps and presses the buzzer.

Nona peeks out the latched door's spy-hole. Dry-mouth distressed. Such early morning alarms only bode bad things. She was dead asleep and is still not fully awake, but what chills her at this moment is hearing her father admonish her about security by recalling his own nightmare encounters with the— "KGB! Open!"

The door is double-locked and thickly chained, "In Hudson?" Yes, in Hudson. Anywhere. Even on the moon! Yes, Papa, I will, always.

Nona's hand is unsteady...fighting off the trembles...she unlocks and peeks—the door still chained. "Nick?!"

He's there grinning like an idiot—loony under the bright full moon? Drunk? "Let me in, its urgent!" The chain is loosed.

Before her maternal instinct could be voiced— "The kids?"—he half-hopped through the doorway...swept her off her feet, lifting her up in his arms and engulfing her in a whirlwind of sweet tenderness—a thousand kisses whispering I love you! I love you! It's a feet-off-the-ground hug so grappling and constricting that she has a flash fear of her heart stopping! All happening but a few moments as counted in the clock world, but a timeless embrace in the realm of lovers.

As Nick frees her, sets her down, Nona's brain kicks back into the reality of the hour and the oddity of his not calling before he came over...but before she can say another word, as if he was reading her thoughts, "I'm here to stay!"

Okay. You can stay...is her first reaction. But Nick is a step ahead, "I mean, I'm here and I'm not, I'm never going to leave." He drops down on his right knee, whips out the telltale small box, flicks it open with his right thumb...a sapphire rimmed with flecks of diamonds sparkles, shouting through the moon-glow of the room, We are not alone!

"I want to be your wife," Nick utters with such passion that Nona is momentarily shocked. She jokes, "Is this a proposal?"

"Do you want to be my husband?" is spoken as earnestly.

"Oh, Nicholas what has that woman done to you? Oh, sweet sister Karen, what have you done to me?"

She offers him her ring finger, inviting him to couple his heart with hers.

This, a scene for which there is no measure of time, no beginning and no end.

When Nick rises, he stands tall and looks down straight into Nona dusky eyes, "We need to be born. Right?"

Nona smiles, a happy smile unto impish grin. She whoops, "Let's boogie!"

Upstairs in what is now this instant their bedroom, the beginning without end is happening.

She becomes the Great Water, that through which they are coursing, truly they, but through her, for she is Many not just One, yet it is the Oneness that holds them, transforms them, he stretching himself out beside her and finding himself at rest there, no clash and clang and Yahoo! of the rampaging male, the booty-ransacking Warrior...no, he lies with her so that she will come within him—he here as Earth, not as dirt, not as dust, not as something of no value, but he here in his fertility, his fecundity—he is Earth and as Earth so Mother...lying there, for there was truth in the Biblical mythos, so he had realized, sensed as he had raised his cock, called it up and held it, handled it not simply as a privy organ, not simply as a lesser organ of his body juxtaposed to his asshole, in the same neighborhood of shit and shame...no, not there, on the contrary, feeling it in its power of accepting.

Truly, Nick is present to her as a male possessing the power to receive, like the woman receives the world, receives all Time and all Human Desire and all Creative Power—all the Lust and Craving and Hungering which is Flame to Candle. He senses the Primal Story of Creation unfold upon his own flesh...he weeps. Oh! His tears flood the world, bathe it, wash it...for his is the Primal Story of how he has killed Karen! How he has murdered her, abused her, demeaned her. How she had never truly and fully been his wife—he leaving her alone, her only to be pregnant, not we as she so wished. Only giving her seed and then taking away by virtue of his dominion, so not accepting, not receiving her—only she giving birth to him—their children...not he birthing...this the aloneness which is abuse, which is neglect, which is both mundane and mythic abandonment.

I hear you my Beloved. For, it is true! Now you too are my Beloved. Not just my Lover. Not just flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, but truly flesh of all flesh and bone of all bone.

Through my Beloved's Eyes, I see all who have loved you, all who have touched you, all who have freed you to be you! You as she and me; us.

Nick flows within Nona, seeing cock-eyed, this he laughs at—a belly rolling and coupled body jolting laugh...she titters and giggles knowing that she is seen...but it is Trickster's mirth and merry-making! For upon him come all that of her which he could not have shared, could not have known, could not have seen when he was simply alone.

Awake to us! Behold, now comes the horror of the evil presence which has hidden within her heart since her ninth birthday...that dark, shadowy, and demon-eyed presence which rises up in this numinous moment and dances before Nick...boldly and brazenly and spitefully whirls and twirls and spits and hisses at him. Us—for he feels as us the rape of her Uncle Pyotr, recoils at the thief's hands which held her tiny body so gently, then swooped her up and away, strong carpenter fingers which then came and harshly parted her, terribly violent hands, hairy uncaring hands...the shame of this childhood rape is only outshone by the darker light which encircles her as Nick sees her on her wedded night—a festive day, a celebratory day she did not foresee as the Day of the Deal—her Uncle paying off her husband...with rubles and vodka and spitting tobacco...a cold, cold, ice day—it all unfolds as if he and she were in ice—Nick is chilled, teeth-chattering beyond his ability to name the sensation...numb, yet deeper, the darkness is blacker, inkier, and hellish...he feels himself plunge and plunge...fall fall fall...through a Pitch-black Hole into a lightless world, a blind void, a suffocating emptiness...all the time knowing that he is within her, present to her...they holding in stilled embrace, she knowing that he is becoming present to her—accepting, inviting...she has waited and waited and waited—she ever hoped...so it is...that he would be the answer—Yes, my beloved, we are pregnant. We are us.

They share the actual moment of her pubescent birthing...the child died... the child was stillborn...the child was taken away—what happened, what are the facts? How could Nona say since she was never told? Nick sees her—childish features, tiny in body but enfolded by a cloud of throbbing fire—this cherub-mother awakening after the delivery...never to know...he weeps at this illegitimate moment—the denial of her mothering Fathering.

Within the cosmos of intimacy, they are two sky rocketing flames loose in the mythic moment...sharing an experience so profound and multi-dimensional that it cannot be discussed, only had. What is shared is the message written on his body so that she can be freed from the cancerous darkness that has infested her until now—The child is reborn. Her name is Nona-Beloved.

Such love! Suck acceptance! Such honoring of who she is! This empower her to call Uncle Pyotr back, right here into their shared intimacy. She frees herself from the darkness as she states, staring directly into his eyes, deep down into the blackness of his heart, I forgive you. I do not love you, but I do forgive you. May the Dark Goddess have mercy on you!...

This most majestic and wrenching ritual of bodywandering is the beginning of their ritual of living together—their living as Beloveds...each being present to the other—present, so not alone. Prepared, henceforth, to bodywander, to couple in ecstatic intimacy, to make present through the hearts of all the joy of being a Beloved.

"Do you want a child?"

"I don't need a child."

For my child is every child. All the illegitimate children of the Lone Male Father. Didn't you find that answer within me?

Didn't you hear Karen?

Beloveds—Nick mothering...Nona fathering.

Nick and Nona marked the second anniversary of Karen's death in their new house—it was a celebration of being not alone...of being we—living together, in coupled presence. Through Intending and Attending they ritually coupled to make Karen present, as well as to draw back all which Nona, herself, had once abandoned—all their Past, as bound in fear and ignorance as it had been, as bound in hope and faith as it had been...here, together, they simply are realizing that it is theirs to live as Beloveds...as ones through whom all creation is stirred and renewed and transformed ...that as they live their daily lives, as they couple—"Oil upon water...shake!" so they laugh—as they live each day, as such is this mythos of the man and the woman who became Beloveds made real, made present...conjured and manifested to all.

# CHAPTER 41

Beloveds. He couldn't find a way to talk with Kane about it. Strange as it may sound since they were buddies til death! Kane had never been too revealing about the details of his married intimacy...rarely talked about bedroom sex—just had his three kids, spoke glowing about Corinda as a Good Mother, and stated often that he liked being a dad. Nick had always passed it off to the fact that he and Corinda had been together "Forever. And we'll be together forever. Amen." Met in 7th grade. Married first year of college. Their life was a tightly closed loop...a fact Nick was only now beginning to grasp.

Nona, "You can't talk someone out of their myth. It's not a matter of talk. It's more providential, it's like the accident stuff we've discussed. It just happens."

Nick never ever even considered giving up his relationship with Kane. There was a bond with him that he hoped would never be broken. "Good buddies, forever!" Clink!

"Of course, you don't want to lose Kane. And you shouldn't. Remember, as my Beloved, you are not alone. It is safe to bring him into our intimacy."

Okay, Nick says to himself later that day, off by himself, needing some five-dimensional separateness, separate in space but he knows not in heart...his thoughts are heard by his Beloved. Okay. This is where I'm breaking down. My mind understands, but something else inside me just wants to bolt and run. I mean, when I'm with you Sweetheart I'm supposed to make present all the people who have loved me. Yeah, I know, not every time. Just with Intention when using the bodywandering ritual. Don't get me wrong. I really enjoy that ritual!

No, fuck! that's not really true. Hell's bells, it's not a lie, but I can't get used to...I'm having to work real hard getting used to thinking about and looking at pictures or handling objects given to you by other people, especially other guys—there, you know, you knew I was gonna say that!

Okay. I get it! I get it! Yeah. Give me a break here, would'ja? Ah! If intimacy was only a fathering experience. I can get that far, pretty easily. I mean, I look back upon all that Biblical stuff and I get it. I get it! A type of fathering which is only and all sexual...merely genital; cock as The Rib! All cock, no intimacy. I get it!

Okay, truly an odd mythic tale. I've come to accept it all as perverse. I can see this Biblically "perverse" right in my own self—my need for dominion. I get this now too....that I was Karen's father. I accept that. She really wasn't my wife. Not in the sense of a presence as strong as mine. I get it! I made her. Created her. She was created by my cock! Perversely, she was my daughter. I accept that. I see it. Lone Male fathering—I get it!

But it's this mothering thing. If my mother's my father's daughter, than aren't I my mother's brother? Now, that's really perverse! Ha. Weird and wacky, man!

I can hear you, Owen. I can hear you! Oxymoronic—the stuff of theologies and myths. But I'm looking for something practical here. This is how I feel. It makes my skin crawl!

I mean, I can't see myself as a mother without seeing myself getting fucked by a father...worse, that father has my face! I'm sorry, this is me.

Shit, if I ever told you all about this...!

As Beloveds, their minds link and converse in an ethereal way. Nick has no doubts that she hears him as he hears her.

"Nick, my dear, the only way to get there is through practice. Through being disciplined. Through the habit of attending. Attend!"

"Okay. But I've a slight problem."

"I'm here."

"Okay. Right. You want to attend to me?" Sheepish grin, "I really, really, really need to get-off right at the start." Will she freak?

"Really?!" on a slow draw, like threading a needle; she's all smirk!

"Aw, shit! Nona. Do you want to attend to me or what?"

Lovingly, tenderly, humbly: "Yes, my Beloved. To you."

The Fuller Body—His visits with Owen are now weekly. More than Good Buddies, there is a growing and quite pleasant sense of intimacy, here with a guy he first thought a total whack job...and queer to boot! Owen has guided Nick through various bodywandering practices and had long talks about his relationship with Nona. He's quite sensitive to Nick's issue with the ritual of Remembering. This ritual focuses on bringing all males who have ever known Nona—including Uncle Pyotr—into their intimacy through Nick's accepting and receiving them...then lovingly transforming their memories into a healing gesture as he makes her present as his Beloved. Owen was quite encouraged that Nick has just about mastered this ritual and its discipline. Yet, for quite some time he wasn't as optimistic about taking him to the next step, to introducing him to the nascent community that is forming among the area's bodywanderers.

It is time, so Owen hopes, to challenge Nick with the fact that there are group rituals. For this, he needs and so arranges for Nona to join them. As she walks into the room Nick hear Oh, oh! Nick's been a bad boy! But it's worse than that—Groups?!

"Christ! Do you mean group sex?"

Owen and Nona patiently listen.

Somehow it had never dawned on Nick that what was happening—so intensely, so deeply personal, and seeming to be unique, original, and special...Ah! love remains ever blind!... that what was happening between him and Nona was being experienced by anyone else.

"You mean an orgy?" lofted within a choking breath.

"You betcha. Boobs and dicks and sweet pussy and hot pieces of ass and everyone stoned and drunk and jumping and rolling and dicking and fucking!" Nona's sarcastic remarks seem to have missed their mark. Owen observes Nick...a man with a face so shocked that his eyeballs are on fire...whirling about!

Owen the Merciful says, "Naw! We're too puritanical for that!"

Nick looks at Nona...she faintly smiles back. Owen plods forward, "But there are others who seek to share their experiences as bodywanderers. It's at an informal gathering that we like to, not taking ourselves too seriously, call The Hand. In fact, my older brother got it off the ground...drawing folks from all over. We get together two, three times a year, usually in a little town in the hills outside of San Diego, called AnoMar."

With stern echoes of the chastising Sisters of Perpetual Suffering who tormented him with Catechism Q and A, he asks, "This isn't becoming a sect or like that?"

"Sect! Ha. Like you're becoming, like Nona, like me, this is a group of people who are explorers, risk takers...have to laugh at seeing them as sheep following a Pied Piper or something like that."

"Glad to hear that." Nick was deeply relieved—he could still hear the Sisters hiss and call upon God's protection as they talked about pagans!

Nona picks upon the lesson, "The Hand is...maybe a gathering would be a better word, for we all gather, not that we're not organized, but it's more a communication than an organization, hmmm, better to say "conversation," it's like we're conversing, then somethings are said, said in a group way, and, Ta-da! a gathering happens."

Owen chimes in, "It's people who make it a habit to Intend and Attend and so create their Beloveds."

"Hmm. Not an orgy. Not a sect. Something like a conversation. Kind of airy to me?"

Nona looks at Owen, says, "Time to talk about dreaming!"

Owen and Nona move to the center of his office and sit down...both in yoga lotus position...just watching them do this makes Nick's legs ache! He's never been a pretzel, just a stud! Nona points to the spot where she wants Nick to sit. "I can't do that!" is a plea for mercy more than an excuse. "It's okay, honey, just plop down in anyway that makes you comfortable." Nick grabs a few large throw-pillows that were stacked in a corner, pieces them together to make a resting spot...lies down sideways, propped up on his left elbow. Not exactly comfortable! is what his slightly contorted face says...but the other two are focused elsewhere.

Nona, "Dreaming. What we explore in The Hand is the ritual of Dreaming Together. This is why you and I are getting married...what being married means to me...a daily practice of dreaming together. It's like this, everyone who lays down together dreams...just that not everyone is conscious of that."

"Nor," Owen inserts, "is everyone aware that they dream the mythic stories every day, each night."

Nona, "Dreaming. For this we prepare. We hail our Other, embrace, Intend and Attend. This is where and how the most erotic of embraces is made manifest...as moons in the darkened night, as suns in the blazing morn."

Owen, "Dreaming is the most real experience...it's what makes humans, humans. We dream and we create. Dreaming is our communal being, our Fuller Body—how, together, we makes present and manifest the Forever Family."

Nona, "Here is where Karen's words come back to me. Death is its own kind of heartfelt embrace. It's like the dead know how to commune with us when they part. Do you see that, Nick? It is through dreaming that we commune with her and all those who have passed on. They are not dead-dead, not nothing, not obliterated...just the exact opposite, they are members in the Forever Family. The family that dreams together is forever!"

"Sweetheart, are you ready to transform the world, to transform ourselves, to not be alone, forever. Are you ready, my Beloved to dream together?"

Dreaming together. Nick and Nona return home—Intend and Attend, ready to venture onto their marrying voyage—it is through dreaming together that before Karen and all in the Forever Family that Nick and Nona are numinously married—mystically One.

As a sign of their Oneness, of the presence of Karen with them as Beloveds, Nick and Nona each have a like version of the ouroboros tattooed on the small of their backs, at chakra one, the root chakra. This their mythic symbol, totem of the Forever Family.

# CHAPTER 42

Dreaming. As they come to their night's rest, they prepare themselves through conversation. It is the communing through words—the painting of the day in its mosaic pieces, drawing pictures of those who have delighted them, frightened them, filled them, stolen from them...pictures replete with tones and hues of shadows and chiaroscuro and the brilliance of acrylics...astounding to Nature, herself.

They prepare as they converse through the flesh. That touching and kissing and fondling and rubbing—all that the flesh can do! They are preparing as they would for any Lovers feast—holding her breasts and pleasuring in the fall of her lines, the seductive charm of her milkiness, he kissing her nipples and pressing his face to drink from her, rolling her about in his mouth, sucking her so as to be sucked in...she drawing him to herself like the moon draws the withdrawing rays of sunshine, breathing him in through her kisses...soft and tender, kissing him on his cheeks, his forehead, down his arms to his legs, his feet, all over him with kisses, drawing from him his treasure of emotions—fears, hatreds, desires, lusts...all over his flesh, flesh which is code, code which she is deciphering, and so he...she—the code of her thighs, Guardians of her Fire, they misdirecting him, lying to him, protecting her at all costs! But he is undaunted. He presses his fingers upon her labia, engages her in digital communication, laughing as he comes to know himself as fleshly technology! Knowing that as he works her so he taps out messages which are broadcast by satellites across the astral heavens...that as they embrace and couple, as they kiss and lick, as they play with each other, that they are speaking in conversation with all, with all who are loving as they are—with all who are Attending to the heat and lust and desires of their lovers, Intending and bodywandering and so transforming each other into Beloveds.

Penetrating her. Hardest of cocks and even harder as he knows that he is her Beloved. That all males, all who desire her, who spy her every move and seek to capture her, consume her, inhale her, lick her, roll-her-over and plunge within her, these he brings to her as loving memories. Yes! I am your Beloved. I am all that is male!

Gulping him. Swallowing him through her every pore. Molecules of my lips, suck him! Hands—claw him and shred him so that I can gobble him! Legs—clamp upon him, clenching him to me for endless ejaculation! Forever pregnant with him. He my child, my lover, my father, my brother—my uncle! Yes! Yes! My precious mouth speaks—hear me!

Dreaming. In the morning, the cauldron of consciousness must be stirred. Blended with the ingredients of the dream, so she rolls over and snuggles him. They have come to respect this seminal moment...for how they Address each other...so they have learned...conditions how they will Attend and Intend.

"You are Father of All."

"You are Mother of All."

Each to the other—while touching and pressing and feeling around their bodies...softly, tenderly massaging here and there, exploring the delights of the moment—at times, striking an early sun, a full blazing dawn where she is upon him with the stolen gifts of the moon...breasts swaying, her eyes reflecting the desires of their dreaming...upon him like dawn upon the horizon, so is she, and he, like embers smoldering with desire, is wafted by her desire...so the hearth is, once again, lighted and they flare—couple...they laugh: she smiles, he smiles—this what they work for, a coupled smile...blissful! Such is a smile conveying "we are not alone." It is a smile of recognition, of celebration, of affirmation—not just Love, but Be-Loved...to be-loved all day...in all spaces and times, all biological instances and technological accountings.

Oh! Oh! Oh! As the dreaming conversation ends, codes deciphered—a hundred, a thousand, just countless Oh!s are lofted in the realm of time...so they are roused...brought back to the sun's day...smiling as Dreamers so blissfully beam.

Each day, in the ritual of Remembering, they take turns reading:

Death is its own kind of divorce.

It's not like the living know how to speak to one another when they part.

Why the expectation for some type of conversation?

He's dead. She's dead.

Death is its own kind of heartfelt embrace.

It's like the dead know how to commune with us when they part.

Why not an expectation for some type of ecstatic intimacy?

So, she rises.

So, he rises.

"Whomever I am, let me rise and love you forever." So be it.

"Ecstatic intimacy. That for her must've been some insight into our Dreaming Together?"

"Did it foretell her dying? Her openness to the accident?"

"She rises. He rises. She could foresee us?"

This is Karen's bequeathal, so they remember and bless her for her gift—that supreme act of Love, that of laying down her life for another...for them. It was no accident! is her everyday message of consolation and of joy...Karen celebrates them, My beloveds!

Dreaming Together. A practical matter, this blissful beaming. Everything they do. Every thought. Every action. Every bite. Every kiss. Every touch. Every lack or negation or obliteration of the same. In these ways, their ecstatic intimacy is made present and manifest.

They roar as they whisper...bodies coupled in whisper...the Two now One—the One now All...Father of All: Mother of All...eternally Present, living through the dying, dying through the living...their embrace, not only couple, but as family—this their mythic Creation Story...what is to be now as forever—a Forever Family.

This the story of Beloveds.

So, it is....

# KAREN, BELOVED

"Sweet dreams are made of this..." of your embrace that makes present _us_ , the _we_ of all humankind. I am so pleased. So happy. It is fair to say that I am throbbing within bliss! For you two have dreamed me and so have enabled me to make present the mythos that has always been within me, as it is now within you, that of the vision of the ecstatic intimacy of Beloveds. I so love you both. Soon my dad and my mother will be here. I sense their heartbeats. Rejoice with me, as then they will be with us as Beloveds, eternally present to one another in ecstatic intimacy!

I send to your hearts this poem, to you my Beloveds in our Forever Family.

Beloveds

The moon rises, the sun in full celebration

When the seed is nestled in the earth

all is hope

of what can be

—the beloveds meet in the blush

When the green shoot rises

such frailty is hope's courage

the joy of being is unbounded

—the beloveds embrace and touch each other's unknown

When the buds grace

the thickening root and limbs

the song of inner beauty strikes its first note

—the beloveds blossom into their own mystery

When the flower scores the sky

and becomes the kiss of sky and earth

the never-ending dance rouses hearts all around

—the beloveds embrace and melt into their wisdom

When petals gnarl and seeds are jettisoned

the pangs of hearts and yearnings of souls

reach out towards Moon and Sun

—the beloveds transform and so begin, forever intimate

The sun rises, the moon in full celebration

#

# AUTHOR.

Francis X. Kroncke—Federal inmate 8867-147—is a seeker whose has journeyed through the monastic life, the theological academy, federal courtrooms, a federal prison cell, and the byways of corporate America. In 1970, he took his Catholic theology into the American courts as he defended his draft board raiding crime, re: the trials of the "Minnesota 8." During and after serving time, he explored the dark, Shadow side of America. In his published essays he has focused on the ancient call which is heard most distinctively in the institutions and through the experiences of the dark side of the biblically based Western and American cultures. The article, "An Outlaw's Theology," was published in the journal _Cross Currents_ (June 2011). A companion piece, "A vision of coupled presence," appeared in the journal _Theology and Sexuality (2011)._

Links:

The "Minnesota 8"  
"Peace and War in the Heartland"

"Earthfolk"

"Outlaw Visions"

