A Feast Unknown (23 page)

I strongly suspected that this was at Doc’s request. He was undoubtedly attempting to find the elixir, and he would have
wanted her to help him. The ingredients for the elixir might be in plants unknown or little known.

She said, “I might still be tied up in the tree house if I hadn’t talked him into letting me come down so I could walk around. After he let me lope around the clearing, like a dog on a leash, he tied me to the bush and tried to rape me again. Then he just happened to see the subhumans through a break in the vegetation; they’d been watching us all the while. He chased them, calling the male ‘Brother!’ and demanding that he stop and talk to him. Apparently, he winded the ape-man, or else the female couldn’t go any more. So the big male must have turned and fought and killed him, and then he returned to the clearing. He saw that crazy man trying to fuck me, and it must have put ideas in his head.

“That weirdo really thought he was you. And that he was king of the jungle and all that.”

“He wasn’t the first,” I said.

A number of questions directed my attention from her monologue. Even if the man were one of those poor devils who had brooded so long about me they had become me in their minds, how had he found my tree-house? And what about the body of the young Caucasian female which the others in the expedition had thought was Trish’s? What about the story of the natives who said they had witnessed the naked man’s raping and carrying off of Trish? And why had I been let loose by the Nine so near the house?

For the first time in this business, I began to consider seriously that I was being manipulated—or steered, at least—by the Nine.

Also, this sudden and compelling equation of killing with sexual intercourse could be a side effect of the elixir, and one expected by the Nine. Caliban had something similar and our father had been affected but in a different manner.

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“Are we really trying to make fifty miles a day?” she said hours later. “In this dark and in this tangle? When do we start swinging through the trees?”

“When we weigh no more than a monkey,” I said. “I know we can make that mileage. I’ve done it. Fifty miles in sixteen hours.”

She sighed wearily and said, “Doc could do it, too. But I don’t know about me.”

She was strong, and she was game, but the time came when I was half-carrying her. There were times also when she was sleeping while walking. Finally, I let her slump under a tree, wrapped her up in her poncho and blanket, and then lay down near her. I awoke with a start, as vibrating as a suddenly awakened animal, and had my knife ready to stab the intruder. I realized then that she was crawling under my blanket.

“I’m cold and lonely,” she murmured. “I want to snuggle against a warm body, nice male flesh. Don’t get any wrong ideas, you big ape. Besides, I’m too tired.”

She fell asleep and began snoring softly. I don’t see how she expected me not to respond, since my penis was jammed between her buttocks and, after a while, when she turned, against the hairy slit. But she was safe. Although her softness and roundness and warmth and woman odor were very pleasant, they did not have the normal effect upon me. I drifted off to sleep, thinking of Trish and of Clio, but dreamed of my foster mother,
kl,
the female of The Folk who had raised me as her own and as more than her own and whom I had loved as the only being worth loving.

I slept longer than I had intended. The sun was slipping through the arms of the great tree over us. I had to urinate, and, as so often happens in the morning on awakening, my penis was rigid.

Trish, awakening when I rolled away, looked down and saw it. Her eyes widened, and she said, “Doc!” and then, “Oh!”

What happened after this was not predictable. If I’d been asked what I expected would happen, I would have replied that I would rise and step behind the tree to avoid offending her, and would have urinated. And the piss hard-on would have been gone.

At this point I am tempted to discuss what is, to me, the impossibility of a “state”—such as a “piss hard-on”—appearing or disappearing. But I resist. Besides, my psychological difficulties with the English language, with all human languages, with the self-contradictory
Weltanschauung
of English, is described fully in Volume II of my memoirs.

I repeat. The expected—almost logical—course of events did not take place.

It was to be taken for granted that Trish Wilde would not be attracted by the sight of my erection. She was no nymphomaniac, as far as I knew. She had been through many days of extremely trying, even distressing, and exhausting experiences. She had been exerting herself on the first day of our journey to such an extent that she might well have preferred to die rather than get up out of bed. Neither of us had bathed; we reeked of sweat, blood, and jism. I was a stranger who, though he had rescued her and offered her no threat, was still a mysterious and possibly sinister person. She had been in love with her cousin for many years. She had recently been the object of attempted rapes by a crazed man and a—to her—monstrous half-human. Hence, she could be expected to regard copulation with less than eagerness.

Moreover, she was hungry, her mouth must have been dry, and she undoubtedly had to piss.

And there had been no time for any warmth or tenderness to develop between us.

I could go on. I have made my point.

On the other hand, I did remind her of Doc (she was to tell me later). And the long love affair had resulted in much frustration for her. She had not suffered absolute sexual deprivation with Caliban. Although he could only get his giant penis into her somewhat small vagina by causing her pain, she was still able to have an orgasm. However, she usually substituted fellatio for coitus. This was to his great satisfaction, because he did not really like coitus. In the beginning, she had been excited by the act but had been left feeling unsatisfied. Then Doc had conditioned her, with much practice, verbal tricks, and some hypnotism, to have orgasms when she sucked on him. In fact,
through his conditioning, she was able to have orgasms by manipulations of her nipples.

These climaxes were not, in some indefinable manner, as “satisfactory,” even though they were often intense. She felt a craving for his penis in her womb. The other acts did not bring the “closeness” she felt when he was between her legs.

The other element making for a still unsatisfactory intercourse with Doc was that his own orgasms seemed to be too dull. He never “went out of his mind” or out of control.

Only now and then, when she “sucked him off, blew the fuse on his cock,” as she so inelegantly phrased it, was he able to lose control enough to feel the exquisiteness he should feel. Afterwards, he seemed ashamed of the feeling.

All this I learned later, of course.

At the moment, she was aware of my erection, and yet she had been told I would get none as response to a woman. She thought her mere proximity had done for me what the active labor of the Countess Clara had not been able to do. She felt flattered.

And she may have felt that she was giving me something in payment for having rescued her.

Whatever the reasons, they impelled her to kiss me on the mouth and at the same time to run her fingers down my chest to the pubic hairs and then to close them gently on my penis.

It may be that she had been denied sexual satisfaction so long that she would have taken on any man whom she could respect. She was a very passionate woman, and she had not been entirely faithful to Caliban. In the beginning she was, but during the past twelve years, she had bedded a dozen men. This was one of the almost inevitable results of prolonged youth.

I thought of Clio, of the time I was wasting in getting to her, and of my unfaithfulness. I was out of the cavern now, and so our normal relationship was, theoretically, in force.

But my desire to find out if my normal sexual responses were restored was too strong. I had to know that I was not permanently crippled.

I turned to her and kissed her lips. Then I kissed her eyes and her nose and the tips of her ears and stuck my tongue into her ear and kissed the side of her neck and so on down to her large, firm, great-nippled breasts, where I stayed for some time while I inserted a finger into her vagina and gently slid it back and forth until she lubricated fully and moaned and then had a number of shuddering orgasms. I then kissed her belly and tongued her clitoris and the insides of her labia.

After that, she sucked on my dong, running her tongue over its head. I hoped that the erection was now due to her, not to retention of urine. Certainly, I felt as if she were responsible.

Getting into her was not easy. I had to push, withdraw, push again, get up and apply some medical vaseline from our medicine box, and get down and push again. Slowly, the lips opened, and the head went halfway in, and then all the way in. The shaft followed easily after that. She kept her eyes closed and several times groaned and clenched her teeth. Truly, she seemed to have an organ the size of a small ten-year-old girl’s. (I knew this from my internship while getting my M.D.)

I came several minutes after entry. Instead of withdrawing, I remained on top of her and left the semi-hard cock in her. She began to squeeze on it with her sphincter, which was powerful and, seemingly, tireless. It was like a weak but loving fist sending
telegraphic messages. My peter swelled up again, and I began going back and forth with her legs over my shoulders and my hands around her hips and under her thighs so that the tips of my fingers caressed the edges of her labia. The second orgasm did not arrive until quite a few minutes later. I almost passed out from the intensity; I saw great red jungle flowers shooting up from green stalks, exploding in scarlet, and collapsing.

Tears came to her eyes. She had had a “flaming” orgasm, as she put it.

I said I was happy, and I kissed her. She responded warmly. Actually, I was feeling guilty. It was not being unfaithful that caused this. I have never—deep down—seen much sense in this oath of fidelity when a man and his woman are separated for long periods of time, but I had kept my word because it was my word. And would have kept it for always if I had aged as other men do.

I was feeling guilty because I had spent time in my own pleasure instead of traveling as swiftly as possible for England, where Clio
might
be in danger.

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