People are pressing outwards from the lodge, like cheese through a grater.
We’re saying our goodbyes, each one tender and dear. Tears shone in our eyes when Miriam and I hugged one last time. She’s been my colleague and confidante, and I wish I’d been a better friend. Same with Davina. My dalliances with the Mormon prevented me from putting energy into being a true friend. I’ve been unavailable, detached, and secretly happy to keep some distance between us.
The Christians are trying hard to conceal the joy of their deliverance. They’ve been airing the place out preemptively, keeping their angelic smiles fixed in place as they sweep and hurry us to the door.
Ariel, Judah, and the family conspired to lighten the mood yesterday by playing a little prank on the Christians. They hid Noam, the littlest, in a laundry basket and covered him with a large pile of sheets. When Peter came to pick up the basket, Noam shot out at him like a vicious blond Velociraptor. Sheets flew, Peter shouted, and Noam roared triumphantly over his prey. That did such a good job job of scaring Peter that he hid the the garden for the rest of the day, taking his aggression out by over-pruning some under-prepared Rhododendrons.
This morning, Moshe and I hugged goodbye in the gravel driveway along with everyone else, so our hug wasn’t as delicious as I would have liked. Naturally, I try to inject sex into every hug that I share with every guy who isn’t related to me. Oh, how I love making a public hug secretly sensual! It’s just a little risk-free mind-fuck, just enough to titillate both of us.
It’s a delightful exercise in transferring energy without moving a muscle. The second chakra will spin slowly in a controlled weave: in and out of center in a flower pattern, but the thread is not pulled tight. The weave is very loose and also precisely placed, to keep the energy flowing cleanly within the confines of propriety. Let the feeling of sex rise in your spine, and then release it like a warm flood into the areas of your body where you’re physically connected to your partner. A heave of the breasts on a deep inhale cements the message, but it’s not really necessary. The rush of blood to the lips makes your voice thick and low, so sigh or say a sweet little something.
To draw him into you, the hug’s squeeze comes from the center of the body (i.e.: the energy highway of the sushumna*, which carries the sex-energy generated by the second chakra), not the periphery. So, rather than squeezing in with hands and arms to get closer, press the heart up. The arms linger just a quarter of a second too long… let a voluptuous heaviness add languor to your upper body; peeling away almost reluctantly while the fingers drag across skin.
It does take some finesse to make that action look innocent from an outside perspective: it’s a slow drag and a quick release, like tape unsticking; like you don’t want to get caught. And then the reward: a quick look up through the lashes, and he’s dropping into your gravitational pull; thirsty pupils open wide.
Given a little privacy… well. A hug can be orgasmic for me.
I gave Moshe that public treatment, same as all the other men, but I let my gaze hold his for an extra moment. I thanked him for our time together, and he gave me the same look that he’d been throwing my way since that naked afternoon: fiery and probably significant, but hidden and incomprehensible behind his round glasses. Silly boy. Was there something that he wanted to say to me? Did he ever realize how much sex he could’ve had if he’d just asked? Was once too much?
They all eventually left, shedding into the deepening autumn.
The countdown calendar has been removed from the large notice board in the foyer, along with all of the other adorable reminders of who we were as a group: the ‘mila tova’ box, the list of movies that one really should see, the chore chart, the Shishi night potluck sign-up sheet… All that pattern of black on white; lines of connection, gone. Gone, leaving the neutral brown corkboard behind like freshly-dug earth.
I’ve made my farewells to that secret spot of mine along the impossibly blue river. It is such an idyllic spot to smoke and meditate and masturbate. That small patch of coarse green grass between the rocky riverbed and the wayward willows was my refuge when I just need to be alone. I did a fair amount of disappearing in order to get those refreshing hours that I spent in nobody’s company but my own.
I saw a heavily bearded young man come down to the river for a bath from the campsite yesterday. He wore yellow swimming trunks, and went into the chilly water with no hesitation. When he got about waist deep, he paused and relaxed his hips to face down-stream. I couldn’t see his face where I was, in plain view on the opposite bank of the river, but I could feel his deep pleasure at pouring warm piss into the bubbling current.
The lockdown has flowed past us and through us, rinsing us clean of our old selves. I never thought I’d find such happiness in sharing a home with 21 people. The Coronavirus is so much bigger than those it infects physically. It’s purged us of our certainty, which was always a falsehood. Without that false structure, we’ve been exposed to our quiet insides, and those that care to listen to that vast silence are learning a wild, loving way of interacting with the world.
I knew this time would come: when I stride through the empty and silent hall to the family’s room (Room 4 – I have arrived!), where I’ll smoke by the open window with the heater blasting and sleep like a king on that decadent down pillow. One last night to savor perfect solitude.
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