Chapter 11
Heather and Lenny came into the living room after a while, and Sara and I were still on the floor, resting. like us, they were both naked, but it didn't seem to bother them. They walked in casually, Lenny with his arm slung around Heather's shoulders. The evidence of their fucking was quite apparent. For some reason, Lenny must have pulled out of her cunt just as he came, and came instead on her belly. I could see the blob-like streaks of his sperm where Heather had failed to clean herself. It reminded me of tiny gobs of clear glue.
Although we were all naked, I seemed to be the only one bothered by it, and I slipped on my jeans. In front of Lenny (or was it Heather?) I felt embarrassed for them to know that I had fucked Sara. Why should I feel that way? Didn't they do the same thing as I?
Lenny bent down and kissed Sara on the cheek. "How was it for you?"
"It was fantastic," Sara told him. "How was it for you?"
He shook his head and smiled, letting her know how fatigued he was. "Heather was everything you said she was. She is some fuck."
My head was spinning at the words. It was all so bizarre!
"Did you like Sara?" Heather asked me, sitting down next to me on the couch. She seemed truly concerned.
I didn't know what to say. I mumbled something about her being very good, but I don't think it came across very intelligibly. I think she was waiting for me to ask her if she enjoyed Lenny, but I'd be damned if I were going to ask her that! I really didn't want to know.
We sat around for a while longer, and smoked two more joints. It was as though nothing had happened. The only evidence, in fact, to suggest that this part of the night had been any different from what went on earlier, rested in the fact that three of the four people in the room were stark naked. And they didn't act naked; there was no self-consciousness, no embarrassment. It was as though they were fully clothed, and at complete ease.
Sara began to yawn, and Heather said she was tired. We decided to go to sleep. Lenny and Sara slept on the living room floor in sleeping bags, and Heather and I marched into the bedroom. The sheet was stained with sperm on my side of the bed, and I cleaned it off with my handkerchief. It was cold against my naked flesh, and I had to force myself to lay in it. Heather climbed into the bed and snuggled against me. For a moment I thought she wanted more sex, but she kissed me and said "good night." She was understandably exhausted. We fell asleep, arm in arm, almost immediately.
Sara and Lenny left the afternoon of the following day. They had other friends to visit, and promised they would stop back on their way home. Although I wasn't jealous (or so I told myself), I was glad to see them leave. I couldn't adjust to their presence; certainly not after what happened last night.
After they had gone, the house was fairly silent, as if it too was exhausted. Heather had cut classes, so decided now to work on a paper due for the end of the semester. She worked in the kitchen on the table, while I sat on the living room couch sulking moodily and trying to pass time by reading. First I looked through some books, then I found a pile of underground newspapers. I turned to the Personal Column in the back, and I found one of my own advertisements for Xanadu. Finding it made my day perfect. Just perfect.
"What's the matter, Steve?" Heather asked. She sat down on the couch next to me. "You've been so quiet all day. Is something bothering you?"
I pretended to be fascinated by the newspaper, burying my eyes behind the page. "Nothing's wrong. Why do you ask?"
Heather shrugged. "I can sense it. Something is eating at you."
I must be transparent, I thought. First Harvey and now Heather. I can't hide anything any more. Everyone can see right through me
"You're crazy," I said, making a stab at laughing it off.
Heather's voice was quiet and serious. "Don't lie to me, Steve. If we can't have an honest relationship, then I'd rather end it here and now."
The threat was there even if she had said the words softly. She meant what she was saying.
"What makes you think I'm lying?"
"I can feel it. When people are dishonest with each other, it's the easiest thing to know."
I considered telling her the truth, but I felt ashamed and embarrassed. How could I tell her I was jealous?
I guess she sensed my conflict, so she added, in the same quiet tone, "If you feel you must lie to me, then that's your decision. I can't force you to tell the truth. I can only take myself away from those lies."
I struggled with that. "It's difficult for me to..."
"Is it about last night? With Lenny?"
I nodded. "Yes."
"What about last night. Put it in words and tell me so I can know how you feel. I care how you feel, Steve. I won't laugh at you or get mad."
I thought for a moment, thinking of all the things
I wanted to say. But I knew none of them would come out as I planned them, and I got angry.
"But damn it!" I said, putting down the newspaper. "Why did you have to do that? Didn't you care how I felt?"
Heather looked confused, as though she hadn't even considered what I was talking about. "Are you jealous?"
My anger cooled in guilt. "No. Not in so many words. But hurt ... a little. I thought we had something, you and I? Something special. Some kind of communication between us. I felt it. I thought you did too."
Heather's face was serious, soft and interested. "I did feel what you're talking about. I still feel it. You're a very special person to me, Steve. Very special."
"Then how could you do that! Fuck with him so cold bloodily!"
Heather thought for a moment, enlightenment slowly dawning on her features. It was as though she suddenly understood what I was talking about.
"I think our problem is one of communication," Heather said finally. "It's a philosophical gap between us."
Now I was lost. "I don't follow you."
"It's a difference in philosophy and life-style," she explained. "You're older than I, and I guess that's probably part of the problem. I think we see sex as two different things."
"Go on."
"I think you're confusing sex and love, and that's fine, if that's your thing. But you can't see everyone else through your values always. It gives you a lopsided view of what's happening."
I didn't like being lectured about sex, and I resented it. If she knew who I really was, I'm sure her opinion would be different. Why I've fucked more women...
"I can separate love and sex," I said. "I've been doing it all my life."
"I'm sure you can, with people who don't mean anything to you. But can you separate it with someone you love?"
Why did she say that? Why did she use love? Did she think I loved her? Did I love her?
Heather thought for a moment. "You see, Steve. I can separate love from sex, even with someone I feel very strongly about. To me, sex is a physical, pleasurable experience that should be enjoyed. You would no more turn down a delicious meal offered to you by a stranger, than I could turn down an invitation to make love with that same stranger. I can view sexuality the same way you can view eating as a sensual, amoral, physical experience. I suffer no guilt when I fuck just as you suffer no guilt when you eat."
I could agree with her philosophically, for wasn't that what my life at Xanadu has been about? But in practice-applying it to people, people I cared for-I wasn't so sure it would work for me. It seemed wrong. It seemed immoral. Just as I sensed how wrong it was when Sara and I were sitting on the floor together while Lenny and Heather were making love, and she didn't seem to care-this seemed equally wrong. But they didn't caret They walked around naked in front of each other, and they just didn't give a fuck!
"Sex," Heather continued, "should be free and honest and shared whenever and with whomever you feel the desire. It should never be a possessive thing, for that's what destroys love. It's like a cancer, eating at a relationship, until it turns something beautiful into something ugly and malignant."
She was wrong. I knew she was wrong. "But people who care for one another," I said, "owe something to each other."
"You make love sound like a debt that has to be paid back with interest. It's not. You don't buy it, you give it. Freely, with no strings attached. Sex that is used to "buy" something, even love, is corrupt."
It was as though she knew me; knew who I actually was. I'd spent my whole life "buying" things. I thought of Xanadu, and Harvey and Diane and the redhead who got paid three hundred dollars a week plus expenses to get fucked up the ass. I had even tried to buy Heather's glass flowers. For me, buying was a way of life. Perhaps that's why I couldn't understand.
"I come from a different generation," Heather said, reaching across the gulf that separated us by touching the side of my face with her gentle hand. "For us, the world is a very cold and killing place."
"You're not the first ones to see it that way," I pointed out.
"No, but we're the first ones who tried to change it in kind. Always before there had been despair and people grew cold and cynical. They returned coldness for coldness, killing for killing because there was no other way.
"But we found a way. We returned love for coldness and compassion for killing. We rediscovered human beings. We touched one another. We communicated through our love. And sex was our language. It was our symbolism for touching another human being. If I stopped making love, it would mean that I stopped loving. It would mean that I didn't care. And I do care. I care enough to "touch" people and be touched back by them. All people. People I feel for. It's the only way I know I'm alive."
"It seems to me that it's you now who is having difficulty separating sex and love," I remarked.
"No, I'm not. Because the sex and the love I'm talking about are different from the things you're talking about. You're talking about physical sex and possessive love. In my world, those terms cancel out one another. Love that knows limits or centers itself in one receptacle is not love. Love that is jealous is not love either."
"I thought sex is like eating a feast for you?"
"Only in that I experience no more guilt doing one than you would doing the other. I can accept sex as a part of my life-like eating. I can know how very important it is, like eating, again, but not be overwhelmed by its significance each time I practice it."
"But don't you see what you're doing?" I said, feeling my frustration return. I struggled to convince her. "You are trying to turn sex into something mystical. Something spiritual. And it's not!"
Heather listened carefully to my words. "Perhaps I am. Perhaps it is a mystical thing. But, in another way, in a way of acceptance, I'm trying to make sex more humanistic. Fucking should always be an open, honest act of physical pleasure. More than anything else, it should be that."
I didn't understand it, so I attacked her. "And that's why you fucked with Lenny?" I asked, cruelly.
"Partially," Heather answered.
"And what's the other part?"
"I fucked with him because I wanted to," she said, returning my cruelty.
That hurt, and I retreated to lick my wounded ego.
"You're wrong," I said after a moment. "You're whole attitude is wrong. It's a rationalization for promiscuity. A fucking license."
Heather smiled softly, with no malice, just interest. "And I think you're wrong, Steve. You have a very old-fashioned attitude about sex."
I struggled to compose myself. How could she say such a thing? To me especially? If she knew that I was the owner of a sexual estate, where I did nothing but fuck promiscuously, she would not think me so old-fashioned! I was a swingerl I wallowed in sex!
I made my living from sex! How could she be so naive?
I thought of the newspaper I had just put down.
"And I know what your trouble is," I said, picking up the newspaper and flipping to the page with my ad. "You're naive and idealistic and blind to a man's real nature. He's a beast, I say, an animal. Not a god."
Before she could respond, I held the ad in front of her face. "And what about this?" I asked, triumphantly. "Is sex like this honest and open?"
She pulled her head back so that she could see. "What is this that you're talking about?"
"It's an advertisement for a club," I explained. "A sex club, called Club Xanadu. But what it really is is an orgy house. A place where perverse men and women go, paying one hundred dollars a year, so they can fuck in peace. Weekend orgies for a price. Is this sex noble? Is this open and honest?"
Heather read the advertisement. "Sure," she said. "Why not? People have a right to enjoy what they want as long as they don't force it on others. If these people want an orgy, and are willing to pay for it, I say why not? It's healthy and pleasurable, even if it is slightly commercial."
"You're crazy!" I countered angrily. She didn't know anything about it. It was my club! "It's a dive! A dump! A high-classed whorehouse!"
Heather shook her head. "You really are a prude, do you know that, Steve?"
I sputtered, unable to get my words out.
"Sex," Heather added, "is what you bring to it. And not what a club or a society forces onto it."
"No, you're wrong. A club like Xanadu capitalizes on man's basest drives. It sells for a profit something that society prohibits, just like a junk dealer makes a profit by selling heroin. And it's just as immoral, for while these poor fools who pay their money are searching for ecstasy in fucking, the owner of this club is raking in money and power. It's a con. It's a..." I searched for the strongest word I could think of. "It's a business!"
Heather shook her head firmly. "You're wrong, Steve," she said simply.
"I'm not wrong, and I'll prove it to you," I answered, sensing that I was fighting for much more than our disagreement. My whole life seemed to be suddenly at stake.
"How can you prove it?" she asked.
"We'll join this Club Xanadu!" I said. "We'll go to one of the orgies, and we'll test our theories. And then we'll see who is correct."
"What about the money? I thought you said it cost a hundred dollars?"
I stilled her. "I have the money."
Heather gave me a long, probing stare, but she didn't ask how or why I had so much money.
"Agreed," she said finally.
The moment we agreed to go through with it, I was gripped by a gnawing thread of anxiety. I couldn't shake the feeling, and it stayed with me night and day, right up to when the time came to test our beliefs. Right up to the night I returned to Xanadu.