Thoreau Bound, page 12
“It started with Aphrodite,” he said, “the irresistible goddess of love. Zeus her father had forced her to marry a lame and ugly inventor named Hephaestus. Yes, to his wife and to women he was unappealing, but to the gods he was worth his weight in lemon-strawberry sgroppino. So clever was Hephaestus that he once forged female robots out of gold — they could talk, and move, and cook, and help him with every aspect of his work. But that did not solve his problem: he worked too much and ignored his sexy wife. Whenever Hephaestus left home for his workshop, Aphrodite gladly flew into the arms of Ares, the powerful god of war.”
Mother-nun shouted, and then ordered her eleven girls to cover their ears with their hands. Panzano sipped a steaming brew from a small ceramic cup.
“Greek coffee,” he said, smacking his lips. “It is so thick that you drink it and you eat it. ... What was I telling you about?”
The nun named Volutta spoke out.
“Hephaestus was so busy working in his shop,” she said, “that he didn’t notice how his wife Aphrodite was working with Ares in bed.”
“Thank you,” said Panzano. “Now Ares had a servant named Alektryonas, renowned for four reasons: he rarely slept, he could smell things far away, and his eyesight and hearing were especially keen. Ares assigned Alektryonas to stand guard outside the bedroom and warn the lovers just before Helios — the Sun-god Apollo — would rise every morning above the sea. But one morning Alektryonas fell asleep. Apollo rose and spotted the dalliance, then ran to tell Hephaestus right away. The inventor used his skills to weave an invisible net, stronger than steel, which he attached to Aphrodite’s bed. The next morning, when Ares and Aphrodite embraced, their wild thrashings brought the net around them, and they were trapped, naked and unable to move. Hephaestus called all the gods to come to witness the fine site, but instead of being outraged, they laughed, and enjoyed seeing Aphrodite in the nudie. At last, when the lovers were released, Ares transformed his servant Alektryonas into a rooster. As punishment for his lapse, his job forevermore would be to crow every dawn when the sun rose, to wake up the world’s lovers, and give them a chance to run home.”
Mother Whackanzakis screamed, flailed her arms, suddenly charged at the storyteller with surprising speed. Panzano was saved from a thrashing only because the nuns grabbed her robe and begged her to forgive. A shrill ship’s whistle blew. The boat’s assistant captain raised his left hand — his wristwatch gleamed in the sunlight — and then announced that the boat would not depart on time. He advised all passengers to amuse themselves with conversation and reading, food and drink, stories and songs.
Panzano dipped a chunk of bread into the honey pot.
“Whatever we have to face we will need a good meal,” he said. “And the slower you move, the farther you travel. So have patience and pass the pasta. ‘Il mondo è di chi ha pazienza — the world belongs to the man who is patient.’”
Mother Whackanzakis and her eleven nuns pulled long needles and wool balls from beneath their robes and then began to knit. The audience applauded to thank Panzano for his story. And then the crowd cheered after a woman’s voice shouted joyfully:
“Thoreau, dear Thoreau! Tell us more of your wonderful tales.”
12
The Night of the Locusts: How Ten Amorous Gypsy-Women Ruin My Plans for A Quiet Evening
Is a life of adventure still possible in our disintegrating modern world? Or is the Hero a relic to be observed — a few minutes per week — on the walls of the musty museums, or in the pages of books obsolete?
Katerina raised my hand and pressed it firmly underneath the dress of Meli, and rubbed my hand on Meli’s trembling breasts.
“That’s what we call stacking the deck a bit, Katerina,” I said.
I stood up, trying to win a little time. I removed my hand from the woman’s body, but the hand still tingled and felt like it was burning up. I wiped the sweat beads from my cheeks and temples. The breasts felt so warm, so soft, so intellectually stimulating. It was very, very, very difficult to think.
“What about babies?” I said. “You don’t want nine little Thoreaus in diapers following you around these hills, do you?”
Katerina held up the lemon halves and a cup of olive oil. I recalled having read studies that claimed that as a contraceptive, olive oil and the lemon had never failed.
“Do I get a cup of tea with that lemon?” I asked.
“Thoreau,” Katerina insisted. “No jokes now. There is not time for jokes. Night is a woman: she likes men to wait for her, and she does not like to wait.”
I noticed the hourglass and then realized that my window for procrastination was slamming closed.
“Ah, the hourglass!” I said. “Shaped like a woman. The symbol of love, and the symbol of harmonious sexual union. Open to each other, each lover at the same time gives and receives.”
Tired of talking, Katerina thrust her hands to her hips then glared into my eyes.
“Thoreau! Shut up and decide!”
To refuse, would be to slap these fine women with the cruelest of insults. Would they think that they were worthless, ugly, and unlovable? Would their oily love for me turn rancid? Would they curse me and despise me for the next ten thousand days? And would their opinion of the male species, which had already reached rock-bottom, blast down even deeper and lower through the rocks? ... What I really wanted was a prolonged sexual relationship with one woman who loved me and who I deeply loved. On the other hand, if I survived this night, my consciousness would be expanded, my erotic inhibitions would dissolve forever, and my sexual horizons would be enormously enlarged.
I kissed Meli, then kissed Romantza, then kissed Thalia, then kissed six other pairs of luscious lips. Such joy was there, in those glowing hills of Crete, that moment in the night I smiled and shouted “Yes!”
“And you, Katerina?” I said with a hearty laugh. “For one unforgettable hour tonight, do you want to be my wife? ... Decide!”
The answer hit me as soon as the question was complete. Katerina slapped my cheek.
“You are funny, Thoreau,” she said, with a friendly smile. “Just be good to my girls. That’s all that matters to me.”
Katerina rubbed my body with olive oil, rose water and scented herbs. I was led to the pile of blankets, strewn with flowers and soft leaves, which would serve as the marriage-bed. The cicadas turned up their volume and were now whirring passionately, like thunderous applause from the all-powerful gods.
Lovingly, slowly, tenderly, the stars swirled in the sky and the great night passed. By the time the moon fell and the black sky turned purple deep, nine bodies, one by one, had shared my polygamous bed. Nine bodies, a thousand kisses and caresses, and nine times nine ecstatic screams. At the end of each and every hour, when the last grain of sand had trickled through the hourglass, Katerina came to gently separate the entangled lovers. First the two bodies would be unglued. Next — as the just-loved woman grasped my hand with all her power and murmured to me all the joys her heart contained — Katerina would cut a lock from my bushy hair. Finally, Katerina pried our hands apart, and pressed my lock of hair into the woman’s lonely hand. At last, after each hour-long spell of erotic play, and each tearful separation, Katerina cleaned my face and body with damp cloths, then whispered advice to the next new bride.
For the last time, Katerina wiped my forehead, then squeezed my hand between her hands.
“You gave them so much happiness, Thoreau. So much wonderful happiness. And you, eh? You had a good time, too! What do you say, Thoreau?”
We laughed together. I sat up beside her.
“But what did you say to make them laugh, Thoreau? They were all laughing and they wouldn’t tell me why.”
“What did I say? Each woman is beautiful in her own way, so to each woman I say something unique.”
Katerina’s face inched closer to my face as she lowered her shining green eyes.
“What would you have said to me?”
“The truth. I would have said the truth, with a humorous slant. You are the beautiful queen of all the goddesses. I am the sky-god who wants to sleep with you. But you refuse me, because you cannot realize how beautiful you are. So I change myself into a rooster, a billy-goat, a male-lion, and a bull.”
Katerina laughed as I crowed, bleated, snorted, roared. She kissed my hand, grasped that hand that had been kissed, and then led my hand across her scar-crossed face. I stroked her hair with a touch that spoke — far more sincerely than words — how truly beautiful she was.
“Katerina, tell me. What do you wish for?”
“That my girls live a long and happy life. That someday we will find a house and a garden and stay in one place. That men will stop telling all their lies to women. And that men will always believe the lies that women have to tell to men.”
She gripped my hand and placed it against her cheek.
“One more thing — don’t laugh at me now. I wish that this morning will last a hundred years. What do you wish for, Thoreau?”
Once more I touched her hair.
“For now, I’m in paradise, and in paradise only a fool makes a wish. For later — can you blame me for being hungry? — one ripe banana would hit the spot.”
Katerina’s face, usually calm as the rocks now looked as shaky as the sea.
“Thoreau, hear me. Life is a gypsy with two quick hands: one that gives and one that takes away. You weel ... understand us?”
I looked deep into her eyes that swelled with tears.
“Understand?” I asked.
Did she mean, ‘know’ them, or ‘forgive’ them? But then in one terrible flash I understood. I understood everything. A wave of sadness washed over me and left me chilled. Old Hope’s words rushed to the rescue: “Nothing earthly lasts forever.”
In a few sharp moments I recovered myself. The unbearable sorrows of young Thoreau were routed by the incomparable joys of the night.
“Katerina, I think I understand. But tell me exactly what you mean.”
“A bird must be a bird,” she said. She stroked my forehead, stared into the night-sky, then sang softly from a Cretan song.
“Not the flowers in the warmest Spring
Not the sky, not the earth, not the sea,
Not the scent of the rose, not the birds who sing —
Nothing is beautiful unless you are free.”
When she stopped singing, my fingertips touched lightly her quivering lips.
“Katerina, I understand.”
She wiped her face. She too, had conquered a sorrow and had now recovered herself completely. She sat up straight and proud.
“I am better now,” the woman said. “Sky-god: did you lie like a man when you said that I was beautiful?”
“I said you that you are very beautiful. And I swear it to my brother stars.”
Katerina threw off her dress, laughed wildly, pushed me down onto the blanketed bed, then jumped on top. Her warm breasts pressed themselves impatiently against my chest.
“And you want to marry me,” she asked, “for one whole hour?”
“I do. Till dawn do us part.”
She grabbed my limp love-organ, shaking it back and forth, like a rubber stick.
“And is there any lightning left in the thunderbolts of the great skygod?”
Before I could laugh or answer she passionately kissed my lips.
“Ah, good!” the woman cried. “There is still some lightning.”
I flipped the hourglass so that the sand began a-flowing, but Katerina stopped Time by turning the hourglass onto its side. My hands rubbed their way up and down the curves of her smooth legs, her firm bottom, her strong back, her round shoulders, her tremulous breasts.
“Katerina,” I said. “There’s not enough time for talking, I know. But there is one more thing I want to tell you.”
I wiggled my tongue at her like a lizard, then licked her lips, then tenderly seized her attention with a kiss. She remembered the lizard on the rock and we laughed and laughed about the beast, and her opinion that not all monsters are men.
Katerina’s hand stroked my face. Her eyes were bright and her voice spoke with a new tenderness.
“Tell me, Thoreau,” she whispered.
The woman’s shoulders felt soft between my firm and gentle hands. I kissed the tips of her perfect breasts, then whispered into her ear.
“Not all.”
“Not all what, Thoreau?”
“Not all men are monsters.”
The cicadas were still singing their wild songs of undying love. Lesser stars had faded, but bright Venus faithfully glowed. The morning sky, the sky unending, covered the new lovers with kisses of fabulous light.
13
How Nudism Becomes Thoreau, and How Thoreau Becomes A Nudist
The gods on Mount Olympus love to make troubles for a man, then laugh uncontrollably as they watch him squirm.
When I started to wake up I was lying on my back, eyes closed, mouth smiling, hands locked together behind my head. Memories, sweeter than grapes in honey, swirled through my exhausted body and rejuvenated soul. Night of rapture, morning of tenderness! Naked bodies, warm skins, ridiculous positions, ticklish touches, luscious lips, titillating tongues, rapt faces, glowing eyes, secret whispers, astonishing requests! All these had gushed and mingled between the wildest outcries and the most passionate screams.
“Women,” I murmured, “are the only hope to save the world. These liberated women have liberated me.”
The morning’s sunshine massaged my skin in sensual caresses. The deep smile on my face declared that the happiness it manifested would live for longer than I could guess. I remembered something that Katerina had told me a few hours before.
“You know, Thoreau,” said Katerina, as her lips brushed against my cheek, “that the girls and I wander everywhere on Kreetee. Last summer we saw ruins. Stone temples, marble columns, painted urns, a statue of a naked god, Apollo. Now, all the girls are laughing and saying: ‘Thoreau looks like the statue!’ Without your clothes, you know, you are more handsome than that god. Why do you hide yourself underneath those rags? You say that you care about women? Then give them the joy of something nice to see. Starting today, for our husband Thoreau, no more ugly clothes!”
I laughed at Katerina’s raw advice. What breezy sayings bubble from a woman’s lips! What windy promises babble from a man’s!
Weary eyelids, shut and stuck together, did not want to open, did not want me to leave the touching memories behind. Too soon, they seemed to say, to rise and face the day. As more sultry memories drifted through my unsuspecting mind, a warm tongue began to lick my face. Meli? Romantza? Thalia? Katerina? Which one had dared return to steal more joy than her allotted hour? ... I reached out to stroke the head of my angel unknown.
Foul-smelling breath — a rare blend of old sneakers and decomposing snails — swamped my twitching nostrils. My hand — that groped to find offending lips and planned to seal them with a kiss — brushed against a thick-haired head and then a beard.
Fright! For a moment I visualized Meesus Capeetaleest, the horrifying woman in the van. Then some relief, as my fingers failed to find the flabby triple-chin, and curled instead around a bony horn. The creature bleated three times, then uttered a loud whining cry of “Baaaaaaaaaah!” A coarse nose snuggled against my nose. Again and again my cheeks were licked by a slobbering tongue. My eyelids — each one felt as heavy as a wooden door — forced themselves to open up.
The head and eyes of a huge he-goat were studying me, staring with a curious and gentle gaze. I had long believed in the rights of animals, in vegetarianism, in the equality of all species — humans should respect all living beings. And last night, my sexual horizons had been expanded by a pack of Gypsy women for whom sex was a natural enjoyment, and nothing is ever “bad” or “wrong” as long as there is agreement between eleven consenting adults. Yet despite this universal compassion and freer sexual mores, at he-goats I drew the line.
Bleating profusely, the friendly beast scampered away to hide behind the nearest tree. My nude body sprang up stiffly from the rocky ground. The dying bonfire beside me smoldered and smoked. Laceless sneakers stood adjacent to my bare feet. The spectacular hills and valleys all around, which last night rang with reckless laughter, now sat as silent as the senseless stones.
Nothing! All gone! Everyone and everything no more! The women who swore they would love me forever. The blankets that had been our marriage bed. The feast of food. And all my clothing, books, and gear. Vanished. Evaporated. A tear in History’s unseeing eyes. Gone, gone, gone!
A tugging in the much-used area below my waist captured my attention, and I recalled a 12th-Century horror — during the gelded age of Abelard — then remembered the groinly-popular Bedlamerican ritual where revengeful women severed male penes then served them under glass. Rolling my eyes up to the blue sky, I slowly unrolled the eyes, then hesitantly glanced down. Tied with the sneakerlaces — and now dangling drolly around my extended love-organ — hung one large, mushy, black-skinned, rotten banana. My love-organ looked embarrassed but perfectly intact.
I stepped into the beat-up sneakers, untied the knots in the laces, then disengaged myself from the overripe banana. Running to the top of the empty hill, I cupped my hands around my mouth then shouted with all my might.
“Katerina!” I yelled, surveying the barren lands and shaking the crescent-shaped fruit. “Katerina! Katerina! Katerina!”
Not even an empty echo bothered to reply. A breeze from the south blew cool whispers through the silvery olive leaves. The belly-laughing bleatings of the goat were the only answers to my hopeless cries.
With the plastic-covered tip of a sneakerlace, I pierced one small hole through the crow-black banana skin. I gripped the fruit like a flute with both hands, pressed my lips to the hole, squeezed the banana, then sucked the fermented liquidy mush. After the meal, I preserved the banana peel by folding it into a sun cap, tying it securely to my head. If nothing else edible turned up by nightfall, the vitamin-rich peel could be eaten raw, or — with luck and a cooking pot — boiled and consumed as a savory soup.
Mother-nun shouted, and then ordered her eleven girls to cover their ears with their hands. Panzano sipped a steaming brew from a small ceramic cup.
“Greek coffee,” he said, smacking his lips. “It is so thick that you drink it and you eat it. ... What was I telling you about?”
The nun named Volutta spoke out.
“Hephaestus was so busy working in his shop,” she said, “that he didn’t notice how his wife Aphrodite was working with Ares in bed.”
“Thank you,” said Panzano. “Now Ares had a servant named Alektryonas, renowned for four reasons: he rarely slept, he could smell things far away, and his eyesight and hearing were especially keen. Ares assigned Alektryonas to stand guard outside the bedroom and warn the lovers just before Helios — the Sun-god Apollo — would rise every morning above the sea. But one morning Alektryonas fell asleep. Apollo rose and spotted the dalliance, then ran to tell Hephaestus right away. The inventor used his skills to weave an invisible net, stronger than steel, which he attached to Aphrodite’s bed. The next morning, when Ares and Aphrodite embraced, their wild thrashings brought the net around them, and they were trapped, naked and unable to move. Hephaestus called all the gods to come to witness the fine site, but instead of being outraged, they laughed, and enjoyed seeing Aphrodite in the nudie. At last, when the lovers were released, Ares transformed his servant Alektryonas into a rooster. As punishment for his lapse, his job forevermore would be to crow every dawn when the sun rose, to wake up the world’s lovers, and give them a chance to run home.”
Mother Whackanzakis screamed, flailed her arms, suddenly charged at the storyteller with surprising speed. Panzano was saved from a thrashing only because the nuns grabbed her robe and begged her to forgive. A shrill ship’s whistle blew. The boat’s assistant captain raised his left hand — his wristwatch gleamed in the sunlight — and then announced that the boat would not depart on time. He advised all passengers to amuse themselves with conversation and reading, food and drink, stories and songs.
Panzano dipped a chunk of bread into the honey pot.
“Whatever we have to face we will need a good meal,” he said. “And the slower you move, the farther you travel. So have patience and pass the pasta. ‘Il mondo è di chi ha pazienza — the world belongs to the man who is patient.’”
Mother Whackanzakis and her eleven nuns pulled long needles and wool balls from beneath their robes and then began to knit. The audience applauded to thank Panzano for his story. And then the crowd cheered after a woman’s voice shouted joyfully:
“Thoreau, dear Thoreau! Tell us more of your wonderful tales.”
12
The Night of the Locusts: How Ten Amorous Gypsy-Women Ruin My Plans for A Quiet Evening
Is a life of adventure still possible in our disintegrating modern world? Or is the Hero a relic to be observed — a few minutes per week — on the walls of the musty museums, or in the pages of books obsolete?
Katerina raised my hand and pressed it firmly underneath the dress of Meli, and rubbed my hand on Meli’s trembling breasts.
“That’s what we call stacking the deck a bit, Katerina,” I said.
I stood up, trying to win a little time. I removed my hand from the woman’s body, but the hand still tingled and felt like it was burning up. I wiped the sweat beads from my cheeks and temples. The breasts felt so warm, so soft, so intellectually stimulating. It was very, very, very difficult to think.
“What about babies?” I said. “You don’t want nine little Thoreaus in diapers following you around these hills, do you?”
Katerina held up the lemon halves and a cup of olive oil. I recalled having read studies that claimed that as a contraceptive, olive oil and the lemon had never failed.
“Do I get a cup of tea with that lemon?” I asked.
“Thoreau,” Katerina insisted. “No jokes now. There is not time for jokes. Night is a woman: she likes men to wait for her, and she does not like to wait.”
I noticed the hourglass and then realized that my window for procrastination was slamming closed.
“Ah, the hourglass!” I said. “Shaped like a woman. The symbol of love, and the symbol of harmonious sexual union. Open to each other, each lover at the same time gives and receives.”
Tired of talking, Katerina thrust her hands to her hips then glared into my eyes.
“Thoreau! Shut up and decide!”
To refuse, would be to slap these fine women with the cruelest of insults. Would they think that they were worthless, ugly, and unlovable? Would their oily love for me turn rancid? Would they curse me and despise me for the next ten thousand days? And would their opinion of the male species, which had already reached rock-bottom, blast down even deeper and lower through the rocks? ... What I really wanted was a prolonged sexual relationship with one woman who loved me and who I deeply loved. On the other hand, if I survived this night, my consciousness would be expanded, my erotic inhibitions would dissolve forever, and my sexual horizons would be enormously enlarged.
I kissed Meli, then kissed Romantza, then kissed Thalia, then kissed six other pairs of luscious lips. Such joy was there, in those glowing hills of Crete, that moment in the night I smiled and shouted “Yes!”
“And you, Katerina?” I said with a hearty laugh. “For one unforgettable hour tonight, do you want to be my wife? ... Decide!”
The answer hit me as soon as the question was complete. Katerina slapped my cheek.
“You are funny, Thoreau,” she said, with a friendly smile. “Just be good to my girls. That’s all that matters to me.”
Katerina rubbed my body with olive oil, rose water and scented herbs. I was led to the pile of blankets, strewn with flowers and soft leaves, which would serve as the marriage-bed. The cicadas turned up their volume and were now whirring passionately, like thunderous applause from the all-powerful gods.
Lovingly, slowly, tenderly, the stars swirled in the sky and the great night passed. By the time the moon fell and the black sky turned purple deep, nine bodies, one by one, had shared my polygamous bed. Nine bodies, a thousand kisses and caresses, and nine times nine ecstatic screams. At the end of each and every hour, when the last grain of sand had trickled through the hourglass, Katerina came to gently separate the entangled lovers. First the two bodies would be unglued. Next — as the just-loved woman grasped my hand with all her power and murmured to me all the joys her heart contained — Katerina would cut a lock from my bushy hair. Finally, Katerina pried our hands apart, and pressed my lock of hair into the woman’s lonely hand. At last, after each hour-long spell of erotic play, and each tearful separation, Katerina cleaned my face and body with damp cloths, then whispered advice to the next new bride.
For the last time, Katerina wiped my forehead, then squeezed my hand between her hands.
“You gave them so much happiness, Thoreau. So much wonderful happiness. And you, eh? You had a good time, too! What do you say, Thoreau?”
We laughed together. I sat up beside her.
“But what did you say to make them laugh, Thoreau? They were all laughing and they wouldn’t tell me why.”
“What did I say? Each woman is beautiful in her own way, so to each woman I say something unique.”
Katerina’s face inched closer to my face as she lowered her shining green eyes.
“What would you have said to me?”
“The truth. I would have said the truth, with a humorous slant. You are the beautiful queen of all the goddesses. I am the sky-god who wants to sleep with you. But you refuse me, because you cannot realize how beautiful you are. So I change myself into a rooster, a billy-goat, a male-lion, and a bull.”
Katerina laughed as I crowed, bleated, snorted, roared. She kissed my hand, grasped that hand that had been kissed, and then led my hand across her scar-crossed face. I stroked her hair with a touch that spoke — far more sincerely than words — how truly beautiful she was.
“Katerina, tell me. What do you wish for?”
“That my girls live a long and happy life. That someday we will find a house and a garden and stay in one place. That men will stop telling all their lies to women. And that men will always believe the lies that women have to tell to men.”
She gripped my hand and placed it against her cheek.
“One more thing — don’t laugh at me now. I wish that this morning will last a hundred years. What do you wish for, Thoreau?”
Once more I touched her hair.
“For now, I’m in paradise, and in paradise only a fool makes a wish. For later — can you blame me for being hungry? — one ripe banana would hit the spot.”
Katerina’s face, usually calm as the rocks now looked as shaky as the sea.
“Thoreau, hear me. Life is a gypsy with two quick hands: one that gives and one that takes away. You weel ... understand us?”
I looked deep into her eyes that swelled with tears.
“Understand?” I asked.
Did she mean, ‘know’ them, or ‘forgive’ them? But then in one terrible flash I understood. I understood everything. A wave of sadness washed over me and left me chilled. Old Hope’s words rushed to the rescue: “Nothing earthly lasts forever.”
In a few sharp moments I recovered myself. The unbearable sorrows of young Thoreau were routed by the incomparable joys of the night.
“Katerina, I think I understand. But tell me exactly what you mean.”
“A bird must be a bird,” she said. She stroked my forehead, stared into the night-sky, then sang softly from a Cretan song.
“Not the flowers in the warmest Spring
Not the sky, not the earth, not the sea,
Not the scent of the rose, not the birds who sing —
Nothing is beautiful unless you are free.”
When she stopped singing, my fingertips touched lightly her quivering lips.
“Katerina, I understand.”
She wiped her face. She too, had conquered a sorrow and had now recovered herself completely. She sat up straight and proud.
“I am better now,” the woman said. “Sky-god: did you lie like a man when you said that I was beautiful?”
“I said you that you are very beautiful. And I swear it to my brother stars.”
Katerina threw off her dress, laughed wildly, pushed me down onto the blanketed bed, then jumped on top. Her warm breasts pressed themselves impatiently against my chest.
“And you want to marry me,” she asked, “for one whole hour?”
“I do. Till dawn do us part.”
She grabbed my limp love-organ, shaking it back and forth, like a rubber stick.
“And is there any lightning left in the thunderbolts of the great skygod?”
Before I could laugh or answer she passionately kissed my lips.
“Ah, good!” the woman cried. “There is still some lightning.”
I flipped the hourglass so that the sand began a-flowing, but Katerina stopped Time by turning the hourglass onto its side. My hands rubbed their way up and down the curves of her smooth legs, her firm bottom, her strong back, her round shoulders, her tremulous breasts.
“Katerina,” I said. “There’s not enough time for talking, I know. But there is one more thing I want to tell you.”
I wiggled my tongue at her like a lizard, then licked her lips, then tenderly seized her attention with a kiss. She remembered the lizard on the rock and we laughed and laughed about the beast, and her opinion that not all monsters are men.
Katerina’s hand stroked my face. Her eyes were bright and her voice spoke with a new tenderness.
“Tell me, Thoreau,” she whispered.
The woman’s shoulders felt soft between my firm and gentle hands. I kissed the tips of her perfect breasts, then whispered into her ear.
“Not all.”
“Not all what, Thoreau?”
“Not all men are monsters.”
The cicadas were still singing their wild songs of undying love. Lesser stars had faded, but bright Venus faithfully glowed. The morning sky, the sky unending, covered the new lovers with kisses of fabulous light.
13
How Nudism Becomes Thoreau, and How Thoreau Becomes A Nudist
The gods on Mount Olympus love to make troubles for a man, then laugh uncontrollably as they watch him squirm.
When I started to wake up I was lying on my back, eyes closed, mouth smiling, hands locked together behind my head. Memories, sweeter than grapes in honey, swirled through my exhausted body and rejuvenated soul. Night of rapture, morning of tenderness! Naked bodies, warm skins, ridiculous positions, ticklish touches, luscious lips, titillating tongues, rapt faces, glowing eyes, secret whispers, astonishing requests! All these had gushed and mingled between the wildest outcries and the most passionate screams.
“Women,” I murmured, “are the only hope to save the world. These liberated women have liberated me.”
The morning’s sunshine massaged my skin in sensual caresses. The deep smile on my face declared that the happiness it manifested would live for longer than I could guess. I remembered something that Katerina had told me a few hours before.
“You know, Thoreau,” said Katerina, as her lips brushed against my cheek, “that the girls and I wander everywhere on Kreetee. Last summer we saw ruins. Stone temples, marble columns, painted urns, a statue of a naked god, Apollo. Now, all the girls are laughing and saying: ‘Thoreau looks like the statue!’ Without your clothes, you know, you are more handsome than that god. Why do you hide yourself underneath those rags? You say that you care about women? Then give them the joy of something nice to see. Starting today, for our husband Thoreau, no more ugly clothes!”
I laughed at Katerina’s raw advice. What breezy sayings bubble from a woman’s lips! What windy promises babble from a man’s!
Weary eyelids, shut and stuck together, did not want to open, did not want me to leave the touching memories behind. Too soon, they seemed to say, to rise and face the day. As more sultry memories drifted through my unsuspecting mind, a warm tongue began to lick my face. Meli? Romantza? Thalia? Katerina? Which one had dared return to steal more joy than her allotted hour? ... I reached out to stroke the head of my angel unknown.
Foul-smelling breath — a rare blend of old sneakers and decomposing snails — swamped my twitching nostrils. My hand — that groped to find offending lips and planned to seal them with a kiss — brushed against a thick-haired head and then a beard.
Fright! For a moment I visualized Meesus Capeetaleest, the horrifying woman in the van. Then some relief, as my fingers failed to find the flabby triple-chin, and curled instead around a bony horn. The creature bleated three times, then uttered a loud whining cry of “Baaaaaaaaaah!” A coarse nose snuggled against my nose. Again and again my cheeks were licked by a slobbering tongue. My eyelids — each one felt as heavy as a wooden door — forced themselves to open up.
The head and eyes of a huge he-goat were studying me, staring with a curious and gentle gaze. I had long believed in the rights of animals, in vegetarianism, in the equality of all species — humans should respect all living beings. And last night, my sexual horizons had been expanded by a pack of Gypsy women for whom sex was a natural enjoyment, and nothing is ever “bad” or “wrong” as long as there is agreement between eleven consenting adults. Yet despite this universal compassion and freer sexual mores, at he-goats I drew the line.
Bleating profusely, the friendly beast scampered away to hide behind the nearest tree. My nude body sprang up stiffly from the rocky ground. The dying bonfire beside me smoldered and smoked. Laceless sneakers stood adjacent to my bare feet. The spectacular hills and valleys all around, which last night rang with reckless laughter, now sat as silent as the senseless stones.
Nothing! All gone! Everyone and everything no more! The women who swore they would love me forever. The blankets that had been our marriage bed. The feast of food. And all my clothing, books, and gear. Vanished. Evaporated. A tear in History’s unseeing eyes. Gone, gone, gone!
A tugging in the much-used area below my waist captured my attention, and I recalled a 12th-Century horror — during the gelded age of Abelard — then remembered the groinly-popular Bedlamerican ritual where revengeful women severed male penes then served them under glass. Rolling my eyes up to the blue sky, I slowly unrolled the eyes, then hesitantly glanced down. Tied with the sneakerlaces — and now dangling drolly around my extended love-organ — hung one large, mushy, black-skinned, rotten banana. My love-organ looked embarrassed but perfectly intact.
I stepped into the beat-up sneakers, untied the knots in the laces, then disengaged myself from the overripe banana. Running to the top of the empty hill, I cupped my hands around my mouth then shouted with all my might.
“Katerina!” I yelled, surveying the barren lands and shaking the crescent-shaped fruit. “Katerina! Katerina! Katerina!”
Not even an empty echo bothered to reply. A breeze from the south blew cool whispers through the silvery olive leaves. The belly-laughing bleatings of the goat were the only answers to my hopeless cries.
With the plastic-covered tip of a sneakerlace, I pierced one small hole through the crow-black banana skin. I gripped the fruit like a flute with both hands, pressed my lips to the hole, squeezed the banana, then sucked the fermented liquidy mush. After the meal, I preserved the banana peel by folding it into a sun cap, tying it securely to my head. If nothing else edible turned up by nightfall, the vitamin-rich peel could be eaten raw, or — with luck and a cooking pot — boiled and consumed as a savory soup.
