Buy your copy today!

Return to chapter index

More words from Rob:

Images are Dangerous

How I Got Started in the Horoscope Writing Business

Did I, furthermore, reel with debilitating embarrassment at the age of nineteen when my astrologer pointed out she'd calculated my horoscope wrong, and that I had therefore spent three days and nights camping alone in the White Mountains of New Hampshire meditating on aspects of my destiny which did not exist? I did not reel. Rather, I heehawed and forgave myself on the spot.

Now, however, here in the kitchen of India Joze at 2:35 a.m. on a warm spring night, as I ply my new trade as janitor, my near-perfect record of unshockability comes to an end.

I've just fixed myself a big plate of gado-gado with lots of peanut sauce, plus a dessert of strawberry cheesecake. It's time for my break. I've been scouring and mopping and scrubbing for over two hours.

As I begin my stroll from the main refrigerator towards the dining area to sit down, I hear scuffling from the door at the rear of the kitchen. I curse myself. Shouldn't have left it open. Dave, the guy whose job I took over, said he'd never been bothered by bums strolling in looking for handouts in the middle of the night, but it seems I won't be so lucky. I set my feast down on a counter, grab a butcher knife, and skulk back to investigate.

But it is not a grizzled homeless dude hovering in the doorway. It is a vision of bizarre loveliness. As I gaze upon it, my knees become the consistency of squid, and I half-crumple to the floor. An exotic blend of adrenaline and lust fountains out of my heart with such a sudden gush that I wonder whether I'm having a heart attack.

It's Rapunzel. In extremity. A grinning crazy pretty witch doctor from the pages of Vogue. A New Guinea supermodel on LSD.

She has woven giant silver seedpods into her disheveled auburn hair, which is half-piled Louis XIV-style on top of her head and half-streaming down. Somehow, a white and gold Pope's mitre decorated with a picture of a vulture balances tentatively on top. Her long hula skirt is composed in part of mummified snakes and animal tails. Her belt is a chain of shrunken heads with a suspicious resemblance to recognizable characters like Joseph Stalin, Ronald Reagan, Dan Rather, Carl Sagan, and Mick Jagger.

On top she wears a pinstriped baseball jersey which is a more colorful version of the one she gave me in the Catalyst bathroom. The first couple of buttons are unbuttoned, revealing a black lace bra beneath. On the left side of the shirt is an embroidered logo. The title, however, is not "Menstrual Temple," as I might expect, but "The Eater of Cruelty." Accompanying it is a depiction of a winged angel digging in a garbage can.

On the other side of the shirt is a large pocket with a brooch bearing a photo of one of my heroes, Antonin Artaud, the French playwright. Below the photo is a caption that reads, "Use your nightmares to become rich and famous."

Lustful fantasies are immediately going full bore. I'm lying on top of Rapunzel, swimming madly as I pour my soul into her green eyes. But I'm also surging with a less familiar emotion: loving tenderness. My longing to bless her and give her presents is so strong it's scary. Am I really capable of feeling so sweet and soft and open-hearted? I just barely hold back my tongue from saying the words that are forming in the back of my throat.

I'm amazed at how affectionate I feel towards you, how excited I am by your funny power. I love the way you change me. I love the way you crack me up.

My dream woman has brought props. In one hand is a black bag similar to the kind carried by doctors who used to make house calls. In the other hand is a broom made of the trunk of a young tree with the branches lopped off. This tool hangs over her shoulder, and a gold bucket dangles from the end of it.

"Hi," she bubbles, "I'm Pope Artaud, Chief Tantric Janitor of The Eater of Cruelty."

I monitor the sparkling twists and turns of the wild mind behind her eyes.

"Do you need any help in scouring away your karma tonight, Osiris? You don't mind if I call you Osiris, do you? Seems like a more fitting name than 'Rockstar,' especially now that you've given up music for the janitorial life."

She has come close enough to swish the broom back and forth over my boots.

"Or would you prefer to alchemize your psychic crud indirectly, by cleaning the hell out of this grungy kitchen?" She waves her arm with a flourish, like an assistant on a game show showing off the new car that could be won.

Teach me to understand what captivates your imagination. Don't hide anything from me. Let me listen to you talk for hours. I want to help you name your genius, coax it out, build it up. I want to be your muse.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," I sputter, "but I thought you were the Supreme Arbiter of the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail."

"That's my other gig. Tonight I'm Pope Artaud, Spiritual Head of all Tantric Janitors."

"Pope? But why not Popesse? Doesn't Pope mean father? Better yet, why not call yourself High Priestess?"

"You should know by now that I can change into any gender I need to be. Those strict definitions of man and woman are the patriarchy's specialty, not mine. My archetypes are mutating."

"I know what the Theater of Cruelty is," I say. "I've been an Artaud fan since I was practically a toddler. But what exactly is The Eater of Cruelty?"

I'm going to pump her with questions, keep her talking. I want to bask in the majesty of her presence for as long as possible.

"Let's say it's the janitorial wing of the Menstrual Temple; the group that gathers the raw materials for the Menstrual Temple's eucharistic rituals."

"You must know," I say, "that Artaud himself would have considered the real Pope a mutilator of the heart. It was Nietzsche who called Christianity a religion for slaves, but I'm sure Artaud would have agreed. Aren't you blaspheming Artaud by associating his name with the enemy?"

Take all you want from me. Show me your secrets so I can help them bloom and thrive. I want to be an expert at responding to your longing. Let me be the one who gives you yourself.

"We're as opposite to Artaud as Artaud was to the Pope," she harrumphs as she sweeps the floor, heaping up a pile of food scraps I've missed. "Only we're also opposite to the Pope. That's the great thing about being a tantric janitor -- you're opposite to everyone, even yourself. You get to blaspheme all of creation, especially the things you love best.

"And we especially love Artaud. That's why we take what we need from him, throw the rest away, and become the Anti-Artaud. We've transmuted his dark religion into a joyful game he'd never have approved of. Although, to be perfectly frank, we've been around for many eons before Artaud ever came along."

"And how exactly are you the anti-Artaud?"

Rapunzel reaches down into the midst of the pile of garbage she has accumulated with her broom. She plucks out some unidentifiable shred of black scum and holds it up to her lips as if to take a bite. At the last moment, just as I'm about to come to the rescue and snatch it out of her hand, she gives it a big smacking kiss and hurls it back over her shoulder.

"To Artaud," she says, "the world was God's abandoned rot. We think he didn't see deeply enough. The rot's there, all right, but the splendor's hidden inside it. We Eaters of Cruelty like to go rummaging around looking for all that good stuff. The treasure in the trash. The gold in the lead. The manna in the junk food."

Rapunzel heads into the bowels of the kitchen, carrying her black bag, broom, and bucket. I paddle after her.

My bliss is to follow your bliss. I want to feel your nerve endings in my body. I want to sense your endorphins billowing in my brain.

"I have a feeling," I say to her as I lean against a table, "that this has something to do with you telling me to get a job as a janitor."

"Tantric janitor, to be exact. But I didn't want you to get distracted by the sexy tantric part until you mastered the janitor stuff. And by the way, I didn't tell you to get a job as a janitor. I made you an offer contingent on you becoming a janitor."

' From her black bag, Rapunzel removes a pair of red silk boxer shorts.

"Go ahead and change into these," she says. "They're more fitting for an aspiring tantric janitor like you. Don't worry, I won't peek. Go over there behind the cutting table."

I get up to obey her instructions, not sure I want to be so exposed around her but determined not to resist the will of the high priestess.

"The English word janitor is from the Latin word janitor," she says loudly, "which meant 'doorkeeper.'"

I'm receiving a lesson in etymology as I get nearly naked with a woman I passionately desire?

"Janitor is derived from the Latin word janus, which in its generic use meant doorway or threshold. Janus was also the Roman god of doorways, of beginnings, and of the rising and setting of the sun. He was portrayed as having one head with two faces back to back looking in opposite directions. "In this sense of the word, every shamanatrix in the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail is also a janitor in The Eater of Cruelty. We hang out in the thresholds and root around for the beauty buried in the gunk that collects there. Where the coming meets the going. Where the contradictions are greatest."

"Because menstruators are threshold-dwellers? In what way?"

"Menstruators are right there on the edge where death and life meet, with their unfertilized egg dying and the next egg beginning to ripen at the same time."

"I can see how menstruation would actually be a good metaphor for all thresholds."

"Yup. Though the Drivetime is probably the ultimate metaphor."

"And Drivetime is what? The 4 to 6 p.m. rush hour?"

"The Drivetime is our term for the wormhole that connects the Dreamtime and the Waketime. It's the tunnel you inhabit -- the hypnogogic state -- as you flow back and forth between the two realms. The Great Inbetween. The mobius strip-like seam at the heart of the tantric yabyum."

"I love that place."

"I know you do, which is why you've got so much potential as a menstruator."

"So tell me more about this Drivetime of yours."

"It's the condition you embody whenever you master the art of simultaneously inhabiting both of any two polarities. It's the joyous celebration of contradictions. The attitude which is always loyal to both sides of every opposition. The power spot where you agree with everything you disagree with and disagree with everything you agree with -- and vice versa."

I've finished removing my janitorial duds and slipping into the shorts. I leave my old clothes folded in a pile on the butcher block. As I return to where she's sitting, Rapunzel pulls out a vial of dark red liquid and holds it up so I can see what's written on it: "Dragon's Blood." She screws off the top and applies some of the viscous stuff to her finger. Then she pulls down my waistband a bit and daubs a red triangle about three finger-widths below my navel. My hormones are in danger of electrifying.

"Rowdy ruby glissando," she chants, closing her eyes. "Rowdy ruby glissando. Rowdy ruby glissando. Rowdy ruby glissando."

She reaches into her bag again and pulls out a tampon. Well, no, it's not exactly a tampon. It's a tampon and tampon applicator that have been modified into a toy flute, the kind you play by sliding a smaller cylinder in and out of a bigger one. Rapunzel demonstrates the technique, playing a loopy version of "Pray to Her," a World Entertainment War song.

"Another threshold metaphor," she says, handing me the thing, "is the archetype of the Great Mother Goddess, known by the ancient Greeks as Demeter. It's through her womb that we are all born into the physical realm."

"I had a past life reading once where the psychic saw me curled up in the fetal position inside the belly of a woman as big as the planet Earth."

"Yes, well, that was real, wasn't it?"

"As real as a red wheelbarrow, in my book. More real, actually."

"Red wheelbarrow?" she says, lifting a lovely eyebrow. "As in the poem by William Carlos Williams?"

"'So much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens.'"

"The beauty of ordinary things."

"Yes," I declare, feeling my own power returning. It is getting a little old, isn't it, for me to exude such relentless deference towards Rapunzel. And I can't imagine that she could find it attractive.

"But also," I press on, "it's a poem about the sensory world as the ultimate reality. The red wheelbarrow is Williams' symbol for the modern dogma that what you see is all there is, baby. Ain't no such thing as spirit or soul. And don't you go muddling up your brain trying to believe in such nonsense."

"I catch your drift," Rapunzel says. "And yes. The twenty-five-thousand-mile-circumference womb of Demeter is definitely more real than the red wheelbarrow."

"So you and I do live on the same planet after all." This is a daring flirtation.

"And then there's Demeter's daughter Persephone," she says, "the Underworld Queen. Also more real than a red wheelbarrow. She leads us over to the other side of the veil, either through dream or trance or death."

Uh-oh. She's fiddling around inside her bag again.

"Though to be honest," she says, "Demeter and Persephone are two faces of the same Goddess. One is the doorway in and one is the doorway out. As if the two together made up Janus the cosmic janitor."

"Sounds like the Hindu goddess Kali, too."

"Exactly. Kali is another Drivetime tutelary. Both womb and tomb, nurturer and destroyer."

"Though Kali's reputation is more as a destroyer, right? I read a hymn to her once that was titled, 'My Delight Is on Your Cremation Grounds.'"

"Propaganda, my dear. Vicious propaganda. Would you base your understanding of African-American folks on the rants of a white supremacist? The Drivetime-deprived phallocrats who're in charge of writing history have just never been able to get the hang of a divine intelligence who goes both ways. It's true that Kali burns heaven to the ground every day; it's true that she cracks your heart open and steals everything you own. But only so that you'll be empty enough to have room for her subtly stupendous gifts -- which, by the way, include immortality and the ability to make love forever."

Rapunzel has laid down seven objects on the table. Like the flute, they began life as tampons, but their destiny is taking a different route. Rapunzel begins weaving them into my hair, turning them into curlers.

"Got to fix your hair for your date later on," she chirps as she works.

"What date is that?" I ask.

"Don't want to spoil the surprise, but here's a clue: She's got a twenty-five-thousand-mile-circumference womb."

"OK. Will you chaperone us, please?"

"If you're good."

She grabs a cannister of spray-on oil from one of the cook's stations and looks as if she's about to apply it to the areas she's bundling around the curlers.

"I must deny access to my hair with that noxious beauty aid," I laugh, playfully wresting the cannister out of her hand.

"I understand your concerns," she says evenly and goes back to putting in the tampon curlers. Am I fantasizing, or was that a test to see if I would stand up for myself? Maybe my ballsier attitude has caught her attention.

"So, Rapunzel. What's a practical example of living in the Drivetime?"

"Well. Do you know the books of Michael Harner? He's the pop anthropologist. A low-budget Mircea Eliade with more gnosis and less academic bullshit. Harner tells of conversing with a Jivaro shaman in Brazil who makes no distinction between his experiences in Dreamtime and waking life. One moment the shaman is describing how he used his magical powers to fly to a remote mountaintop cave and bathe in the medicine of a liquid rainbow; next moment he's talking about the delicious rabbits he caught while hunting yesterday, or the exceptional talent his wife's sister has for farting during solemn ceremonial occasions. This is one example of a person who knows how to live in the Drivetime."

"What's the difference," I interject, "between that and, say, the high school kids in Pennsylvania who got killed while imitating what they saw in a Disney movie? I guess they didn't make much of a distinction between fantasy and reality either. Just like the actors they saw, they played chicken by lying out in the middle of a highway at night and waiting till the last minute before dodging oncoming cars. Difference was the actors didn't actually die."

I hold up a shiny pan to catch a glimpse of my reflection. Don't exactly look my best. The growing bunches of rolled-up hair give my head an extraterrestrial shape.

"I'm sure you've also heard," I press on, "about how every time an actor portraying a doctor performs a particular kind of surgery on a popular soap opera, real doctors begin performing that same surgery at a dramatically higher rate in real American hospitals. All the poor jerks that thereby get unnecessary gall bladder surgery have a certain resemblance to the Jivaro shamans too."

"Well, that's very astute, Osiris -- considering you don't really know what the hell you're talking about." Rapunzel cackles brightly, without a trace of hostility. "Certainly there is a superficial resemblance between the Jivaro shamans and the Pennsylvania high school fools. For both, there's a conflation of dimensions, an overlapping of worlds. The difference is that the Dreamtime visited by the Jivaro shamans is a real place. It's an objectively existing realm."

"I wonder if the Jivaro dudes could tell the difference between a Dreamtime red wheelbarrow and a Waketime one?"

"On the other hand," she says, ignoring my quip, "the kids in Pennsylvania were suffering from what you yourself call 'the genocide of the imagination.' They probably lost the ability to visit the real Dreamtime long about the three-thousandth televised murder they saw back in kindergarten. No, what overlapped their waking reality was, you might say, Faux Dreamtime. Once the entertainment criminals genocided their poor imaginations, they became eager receptacles for the withered hallucinations of Faux Dreamtime -- deposited in them by those same entertainment criminals."

My infatuated fantasies have officially leapt to the next higher octave. Rapunzel is incorporating some of my own ideas into her rap, ideas I've proclaimed loud and strong from my bully pulpit as lead singer of World Entertainment War. "Genocide of the imagination" and "entertainment criminals" are virtually my trademarks. She also used them a few days ago when she invaded my home, true, but at that time they were merely fodder for her derisive attacks on me. Now she's weaving them lovingly into her analysis. I take this to be a sign that even if she does harbor serious criticisms of my work, she also regards it as interesting enough to steal from.

The implications of this make me giddy with greed. It means her potential is not just as a lyrical lover, not just as a challenging consort, but also as a rowdy partner in crime -- a true equal with whom I can whip up twice the creative trouble I already do. I picture us sneaking out together at dawn to steal the garbage of a Bay Area celebrity, maybe Robin Williams or Adrienne Rich, and auctioning it off at an impromptu "Garbage Sale" during one of my shows. I visualize us collaborating on a rock opera about the Menstrual Temple and performing it at weekend-long salons which also include workshops on the Drivetime and rituals designed to foment holy mischief. I can even imagine us writing a book together. It could be called How To Make Smart Love with Your Best Friend.

"Drivetime is a hard-earned luxury," Rapunzel says as she steps back to admire her hairstyling efforts, "available only to those who've cultivated a vigorous relationship with the True Dreamtime while at the same time maintaining a practical grip on the very different rules of the Waketime. But oh is it a luxury."

"What the hell are those noises?" I say suddenly in response to sounds like voices and banging chairs out in the dining area. I'd heard them before but rationalized they were merely my overwrought imagination. Now they're getting too loud to ignore. "I'd better go check."

Rapunzel grabs both my arms and forces me to stay. "Don't worry about it," she says. "I invited a couple of friends in with me. They're out there straightening up."

"But how did they get in without me seeing them? The front door's locked."

"Never mind. It's time to get ready for the next part of your menarche." She reaches into her black doctor's bag. "Here's the rest of your menstrual lingerie."

The costume she hands me consists of emerald-green velvet knee pads, a satin plum-colored vest featuring an embroidered image of a vulture, and black satin slippers.

As I put on the rest of my outfit, Rapunzel leaves the kitchen and goes out to the dining area. A moment later I hear an explosion of many female voices doing that funny amazon ululation-cum-war whoop. My imagination gets goose-bumps.

Rapunzel returns and takes my hand.

"The Menstrual Temple's welcoming committee awaits you," she says invitingly. She walks me out of the dingy kitchen. Where the dining area begins there is a long, narrow red carpet, newly placed.

The room has been transformed by the addition of eighteen to twenty women, who're sitting at the tables. As I arrive, they applaud and blow me kisses. Though they're all ages, they have in common a slaphappy sartorial sense. I see a rainbow beret sprouting pheasant feathers and a khaki military shirt paired with yellow velvet overalls. There's a gold brocade frock coat and bulbous red clown nose and green silk pajamas and black chiffon skirt that looks like it has a bustle underneath.

The restaurant has mutated in other ways. Stretched across the back of the main room of the dining area is a banner that reads "The Eater of Cruelty Cafe." Below it is a neatly hand-drawn poster listing "Tonight's Specials":

Breakfast of Amazons Cereal with Virgin's Milk

Rosicrucian Coca-Cola

Black Market Pudding from Below the Abyss

Vinegar Tears of Lame Angels

Loamy Ouroboric Christ Resin

Tender Adrenaline Ice Cream with Ancient Spider Webs

Sphinx's Bath Water with Chthonic Plum Ganglion

Licorice Ash of Incinerated Testosterone

Rowdy Ruby Glissando of the Silk Lotus

The images on the screen are like those of intense dreams. At the moment, Abraham Lincoln is giving Mother Teresa a big wet hickey on her bare shoulder as they lie outside a Disneyland-like fortress called "Drug City" while an African grandmother dressed in a turban and a tuxedo holds up a sign on a stick that reads "This Bud's for you, Uberwoman."

When I arrived earlier tonight, the tables were covered with white linen. That has been replaced by red satin. Each table now sports a fanned-out deck of large Tarot cards, as well as an oversized silver goblet -- about the height and heft, I fantasize, of the goblet used by the giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

"Here at The Eater of Cruelty Cafe we refer to that particular story as Jill and the Beanstalk, Osiris," Rapunzel says to me, although I haven't said what I was thinking.

"How could you have possibly known I was thinking about Jack and the Beanstalk?" I wonder.

"I have a telepathic homing device that turns on whenever I'm in the presence of a person who's ripe to have her archetypes mutated," she replies. "And I hope you'll forgive me if I use the feminine form as the all-purpose pronoun. Of course I mean to imply that my homing device also turns on in the presence of a person who's ripe to have his archetypes mutated. But you can't imagine how important it is to use 'she' and 'her' to refer to generic humanity. It could literally be a factor in whether or not all human life disappears from this planet in the next thirty years."

"I'll buy that," I say. "I've always wanted to save the world."

"Good, good," she approves. "I'm always looking for more soldiers to help me kill the apocalypse."

Rapunzel ushers me to a table in the middle of the room where there's a woman I recognize. It's impossible, but I do. She's Jumbler, the Norse leprechaun androgyne from my superdream. There's the same thick, flaxen helmet of hair, the pale skin and turquoise eyes.

A Napoleon-style hat made out of aluminum foil wobbles on top of her head. She's also wearing pointy green velvet shoes and a red leather pouch with a silver buckle cast in the shape of a bull skull. This all contrasts with her sheer black mesh catsuit, which is garlanded by organza ruffles decorated with intricate paintings of red and black vultures.

"Hi, Jumbler," Rapunzel coos to her, confirming that this person has the same name that she did in my superdream, "you look like you're in the mood to kick the apocalypse's butt tonight."

Jumbler places her two thumbs and two index fingers together, palms held up and spread out, and greets me with a perverse toast: "May Persephone annihilate the rotting patriarchal imprints within you -- without killing you. Somewhere over the rainbow, may She inspire you to resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity."

She reaches into her pouch and produces an egg. I'm too startled to stop her as she reaches over, pulls forward the waistband of my shorts, and breaks the egg against my belly. The oozing slime only enhances the erotic fever I have been nursing steadily since Rapunzel's arrival.

"And may Persephone dissuade him," Rapunzel adds with a giggle, "from being just another boring example of the patriarchy's crowning achievement: the hate-everything-that-doesn't-adore-me and fuck-everything-that-adores-me hero."

Jumbler's greeting is scary. I don't like her broken egg and I don't like her violent references -- "without killing you" in particular. Better not complain, though. Don't want to alienate Rapunzel's buddy on our first meeting.

As soon as we've eased into our chairs, a visitor from a nearby table glides over. A handsome, weathered woman with shoulder-length brown hair and a cracked smile, she looks about forty. She's holding a guitar and wearing a decal-bedecked black leather motorcycle jacket over a hunter-green satin mini-dress. One of the decals says "Menstrual Minstrel," which she proceeds to illustrate as she sings us a short ditty that consists entirely of variations on the phrase "The penis is just a clitoris suffering from delusions of grandeur." Rapunzel plucks out the tampon applicator flute that I'd stored in my vest pocket and plays along.

"What'll it be, televisionaries?" she asks us when she's done singing, pulling out a pen and notebook.

"Breakfast of Amazons cereal? Rosicrucian Coca-Cola? Tender Adrenaline Ice Cream with Ancient Spider Webs?"

"Just the cereal for me, Artemisia," Jumbler says.

"Do you have the Unicorn Ovaries with Dragon Mucus and Sacred Cow Memories tonight?" Rapunzel says straightfacedly, whereupon Artemisia nods. "Good. And why don't you bring me a quart of Moon Flower Brine, too, OK?"

An aroma I'd been subliminally aware of before has now crept into my full awareness. How to describe it? Sweet almond blended with musky goat and wet feathers and vinegar mingled with rose. It's not coming from any particular direction. It's just in the air.

Jumbler chooses this moment to pinch me hard on the arm as she makes a throaty aside close to my ear. "Everyone in this place happens to be menstruating at the moment. Except you and me, of course. I'm a hermaphrodite. Don't know what your excuse is." She cackles at this comment.

"You know how it is," she adds. "Women who spend a lot of time together get their periods synchronized."

"What should I bring for the sperm pod?" Artemisia asks Rapunzel sardonically, ignoring me. "Is he in the mood to eat?"

"Let's not call him any bad names tonight, sweetie," Rapunzel says, sticking up for me. "He needs our love and support. Besides, he deserves a little credit. He did read The White Goddess long before it was hip. He has Marija Gimbutas' photo in his wallet, and I dreamed that he once had a sexual fantasy about Gertrude Stein. I even heard he's got 'Listen to Women for a Change' tattooed in a very private place. This one's special. He's ripe. Maybe even a true Lesbian Man."

"Woooooooo! You gonna give him the full treatment?" Artemisia whistles. "Persephone-style immersion? The Honest-to-Goddess eucharist?"

"Could very well be," Rapunzel replies. "I'm proceeding with the Rowdy Ruby Glissando of the Silk Lotus spell."

"Yow! He must be a hardy one if that's his starter plan. Guess you don't want me to bring him any appetizers that might spoil his appetite, then."

"Yup."

I assume this exchange has been scripted ahead of time. It's flattering to contemplate the possibility that all these women have plotted and rehearsed tonight's festivities solely for my benefit. Though I'm also daunted by the responsibility of having to live up to such an immense gift.

As Rapunzel and Jumbler have a whispered exchange that is not meant for my ears, I examine the Tarot deck on our table. It's a bizarre hybrid. One side of each card has a mutated replica of an old baseball card with categories of statistics unlike what usually appears: "Ecstatic Prayers" instead of "At Bats"; "Sacred Pranks" instead of "Runs Batted In." My childhood hero, Al Kaline of the Detroit Tigers, appears in one image, except that here he's wearing a helmet with the horns of a bull protruding and a necklace of vulture figurines. Looks like he has amassed a good number of Ecstatic Prayers, but has been less prolific in the Sacred Pranks department.

On the other side of each Tarot card is a surrealistic photo collage of a female deity garbed in lingerie, below which is a written text. Al Kaline, for instance, is paired with Medusa. Though she has her usual writhing green snakes for hair, she's portrayed as a smiling, pregnant fashion model striding down a runway. The title at the top of the card is "Medusa the Sexy Mama," and an accompanying text, credited to Joseph Campbell, reads, "She is Black Time, both the life and death of all beings, the womb and tomb of the world; the primal, one and only, ultimate reality of nature, of whom the gods themselves are but functioning agents."

I've become aware of a twinge in my lower belly. It comes and goes, throbbing in a slow rhythm. I can't imagine the cause. No food has gone down my gullet for hours.

"So," Jumbler says to me, "would you like a Tarot reading?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Jumbler shuffles the deck several times, then has me draw a card. It's the old shortstop for the Washington Senators, Rocky Bridges. He's dressed in a loincloth and is depicted leaping over a bull in the manner of the athletic maidens of ancient Minoan culture.

"Ah yes," she sighs knowingly. "You are now on a rocky bridge between your old life and the new. You are perhaps leaving behind your role as rockstar and crossing over to the other side of the abyss. I say perhaps. There seems to be some doubt. The going may be rocky. Here, draw another card." This time I get Early Wynn, a pitcher in the 1950s.

"Yes. I see the problem. You are unfortunately seeking an 'early win,' a premature victory. Something about cheating. Fraudulence. You're trying to skip some steps. Cross the bridge without really crossing it."

I freeze. Could Jumbler have sensed that I'm being less than honest and complete in carrying out the program Rapunzel designed for me when she invaded my house? That though I've suspended the band's operations in order to take on the job as janitor, I'm not really planning to make it permanent? "Take two more cards," she demands.

I draw Hall-of-Famer Nap Lajoie and an obscure old-time player I never heard of named Kid Maddox. "Ah. I see. Kid and Nap are telling me that you are not performing your kidnap with a pure heart. I think you know what I am talking about -- the self-abduction the avatar suggested you undertake. Do you see? Your kidnap must be done with 'la joie' -- for joy alone. Not with covert agendas. Not with an acquisitive eye. And it must be done as 'mad docs' would do it -- crazy doctors. The cards are advising you to trust the inscrutable wisdom of the wacky healer. Do not imagine that you know better than she who was born to administer the sacred prank medicine."

I look at Rapunzel, the most interesting beautiful woman I've ever known. Along with her pregnant silence, her amused but intense gaze tells me that she ratifies her friend's oracle. Guilt descends upon me, and worse, fear that I've irrevocably messed up. If she really knows that I've only been pretending to execute my self-abduction, will she cancel delivery of what she called, back in my bedroom a few days ago, "the majestic gift beyond my ability to conceive"?

How could she not be peeved to the point of ending it all right here? Look at the lengths to which she has gone to stage this evening's performance art event for my entertainment. There can be no question that she takes my "menarche" very seriously.

I am filled with the desire to atone.

I promise myself that if she forgives me for my deception, I will do what I should have done right from the start. I will completely, not halfheartedly, die to my old life. I will unconditionally quit the music business. I will renounce my quixotic but ultimately futile efforts to maintain my purity in an institution that makes it impossible. If nothing else, this will ensure that I'm in line to have more of the superdreams Rapunzel somehow delivered to me a few nights ago.

"Now pick one last card," Jumbler adjures. "This will be a picture of your soul's purpose. Of the glory you might possibly attain should you make it to the other side of the rocky bridge." I draw Chick King, outfielder for the Chicago Cubs.

"Chick King," she intones tentatively. "King Chick. Chick King. King Chick."

She closes her eyes and pouts in concentration. Her eyelids quiver.

"I've got it," she beams finally. "It seems your new career as a tantric janitor is ultimately destined to be in the service of King Chick. Notice it's not Queen Chick, but King Chick. King Chick means, I think, that you are destined to help chicks overthrow this overly manly world. Ever hear that expression, 'Behind every great man is a woman?' You're going to be a man behind a great woman."

"So, like, I'm going to marry a woman who becomes President of the United States?" I ask.

"More like you'll be a muse for a woman who becomes President of the United Snakes. Now why don't you read the texts on the backs of your cards. They will provide additional oracular insight."

On the reverse of the Rocky Bridges card is a picture of a goddess who resembles the Hindu Shakti. She's dancing on top of an altar whose central feature is a large silver bowl. The title of the card is "Shakti Mutates the Blood Archetype," and the text, credited to Vicki Noble, reads: "In the real old-time religion, the sacrificial altar was graced with an offering of menstrual blood, gift of the priestess. It was understood to have special power to propitiate divine contact. Later patriarchal religions preserved the idea that blood is charged with sacred potency, but replaced the menstrual offering with the shed blood of a murdered animal or human."

Artemisia arrives and pours red wine from a carafe into the goblet on our table. She also leaves a bowl of cereal and pitcher of milk for Jumbler, and a big mess of purplish green blobs and reddish brown gravy for Rapunzel. There's nothing for me. Despite my desire to improvise within the framework Rapunzel and company are providing, I consider speaking up and placing an order. Hunger is beginning to assail me. I wonder if the aches I feel in my belly are hunger pangs?

"So King Chick, tell me true," Rapunzel says, interrupting my meditations. She picks up my right hand and places two popsicle sticks in it. Half of each stick is stained blue. "What exactly are you doing to kill the apocalypse?"

I don't know what to say.

"Huh? Huh?" she probes playfully when nothing flies from my lips. "Have you got any bright ideas about how to liquidate armageddon? Try rubbing those popsicle sticks together. They're my special magic wands. They could help." She shows me the proper motion.

Not too long ago, in the days before I met Rapunzel, my answer to her question might have been something like "I'm making subversive music that undercuts the ability of the entertainment criminals to genocide our imaginations." But in the wake of my apparent resolve to renounce the music business for good, I'm stumped.

"Would you like some clues?" Rapunzel teases.

"Just get me started," I plead, rubbing the sticks diligently.

"How about if you said, 'I'm resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity'?"

"I'm resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity," I repeat, injecting mock histrionics.

"And how specifically are you doing that?" Rapunzel quizzes.

I decide to risk a daring move. I'm going to be vulnerable and humble, but with a feisty edge. What I mean is that I'll really try to inhabit a state of humble vulnerability, not merely perform it as I have so often done in the past. My earliest insight about the seduction game was that women are attracted to men who confess weakness, but all these years I've used that as a crafty technique without actually doing it with complete sincerity. Back in the women's bathroom at the Catalyst, when I first met Rapunzel, was a perfect example. I pretended to be a self-effacing sensitive man even as I secretly billowed with pride.

In my defense, I should note that there has been a good reason for me to keep an ironic distance from the "sensitive man" act. The only version of it I've ever seen in other men is the one motivated by a frowning, judgmental radical feminist in their superegos. It's a whiny form of humble vulnerability, in other words, enforced by shame and guilt. But in the breakthrough I'm having here with Rapunzel, I can envision a spunky, truly masculine kind of humble vulnerability. It would emerge from my lust for life, not my fear of being a bad boy in the eyes of my inner matriarch.

Fascinating to contemplate the possibility that only by being more of a real man can I incorporate a healthy form of feminine behavior.

"One way I'll resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity," I respond finally, "is by admitting how terrified I am of receiving big beautiful gifts from amazing women like you. Not just terrified. Embarrassed. Deathly worried I don't deserve them. Am not worthy of them.

"Then there's the part about how weak and needy the big beautiful gifts make me feel. Not my usual self-sufficient self. And maybe the worst burden of all is the responsibility of having to give in return. I'm always convinced I can't possibly match the blessing."

"You fantasize that you're inferior to me," Rapunzel says understandingly. "You're afraid I'll think you're a stingy narcissist. In your eyes, I seem to have almost too much to give, much more than you, and you subconsciously resent it." She says this with sympathy, as if she's sorry, not angry.

"And yet to your credit," she continues, "you refuse to imitate the billions of men whose masculinity has been poisoned. You don't blame me for your fear and resentment. You don't withdraw into numb aloofness and try to punish me with mysterious silence. Instead, you struggle to change your feelings, to be a real magician. The problem isn't with me, after all, and you recognize that. You don't want to bully me into giving less."

"Yes, exactly." I feel like she's reading my mind again.

"And I can't think of anything that is a more potent weapon in our war against the apocalypse," she concludes.

"Thank you. I'm honored by your recognition."

I'm not sure I've ever used the word "honor" non-ironically before now. It stings a little to be so sincere. Besides which, as if to prove my confession, I've been pinched with the discomfort of receiving the enormous gift of Rapunzel's approval.

Momentarily unable to deal with my feelings, I turn my gaze to the rest of the dining room. Two women at one of the tables are peering intently at me, while the others seem occupied in playing cards with the Tarot decks. I'm surprised to see that a large but rather lovely shamanatrix in her twenties, a lesbian if I know my physiognomy, has doffed most of her costume. All she has on is a "skirt" that's nothing more than shreds of newspaper hanging from a belt, and a makeshift bra composed of two sewn-together floral shower caps. No undies! Two other women, including a fiftyish pixie with very pale skin as well as an exotic-looking mix of maybe Eskimo and African, have also lost their shirts. One reveals another strange "bra" made of two small gargoyle masks connected with a rubber band and the other a "teddy" that seems to be made of round slabs of baloney sewn together.

"I can think of another way I am resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity," I bubble.

"She's taking notes," Rapunzel smiles, pointing to Jumbler, who pulled out a notebook a while back and is scribbling intently.

"I'm a good listener, but with an edge," I begin.

"You mean you get people to open up so you can use your sharp intellect to probe them, to push them to think deeper thoughts about their secret feelings?"

"Well, I suppose that's one way to describe it, yes."

"Sorry. I guess I wasn't being a very good listener, was I? Go ahead and say what you mean in your own words."

Wow. Rapunzel's being contrite.

"I'm forceful in the way I shut up and get my own opinions out of the way," I say. "I make an aggressive effort to be warmly receptive to what the other person is saying. I fight to ensure that I don't fall into acting like a know-it-all."

"I see. Using your masculine will to serve a feminine agenda."

"Yes. And the other quality in my listening is ferocious curiosity. I ask really good questions. Not just because I want to do people a favor, either. I mean I do want to do them a favor, but I also get a personal thrill from it. It's hard to explain why exactly."

"It's your way of making love to everyone. You send your feelers into their psyches and stir up their juices. You imagine you're impregnating them with your influence."

I've never thought of it this way, but again I feel like Rapunzel has understood me perfectly. I'm aglow and abashed with the notion that she might actually be attracted to me.

Riding my success, I flash on another thing I've always hated about average, boring, "sensitive man"-style vulnerability: Neurosis is its crowning testament. To be vulnerable in this way not only requires nonstop pretentious solemnity; it also seems to lead mostly to expressions of negative emotions.

Why, Lord, why? Why is that if a man lets down his guard and disavows the macho, in-control attitude that is the curse of his gender, he seems inevitably driven to confess his failures, his grief, and his weaknesses? I have nothing against doing this some of the time. But right now I can imagine a more celebratory style of vulnerability in which I might gravitate towards delight, too; in which I would feel an eager and innocent desire to be overwhelmed by beauty. What if becoming vulnerable could fill me with wild reverence?

"I've thought of another way I can resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity," I say bravely.

"By perfecting the art of being a staunch feminist with a raging hard-on, right?" Rapunzel laughs. "Sorry," she adds quickly as she sees my eyebrows rise. "My telepathic powers are out of control tonight. I just couldn't help myself."

I wouldn't have used the words she did, but she has indeed zeroed in on my unspoken thoughts.

"I would prefer to describe it," I begin, summoning my eloquence, "as blending unbridled virility and sweet sensitivity. To be, ahem, compassionately horny.

"Be a big red hot man," she puffs, raising her shoulders and making a macho face, "all rebellious and restless and ambitious. And be a soft, warm, nurturing woman" -- here she softens her features and goes all willowy -- "dispensing thoughtful blessings with loving kindness."

"It would be interesting to see if I could actually be both at the same time," I muse.

"Are you familiar with the concept of the epicene?"

"Isn't that like being androgynous?"

"No, the difference between androgynous and epicene is exactly my point. Androgyny is a melting down of the gender distinctions into a single fuzzy neutral blah. But the epicene person -- the model citizen for the Drivetime, by the way -- is one who's both fervently masculine and vividly feminine. Not the grey, odorless pall that comes from eliminating the contradictions, but the magenta menthol spermatic emerald clitoral saffron that comes from weaving the contradictions together with their full pungent glory intact."

"You're so smart, Rapunzel. Thank you. I can't ever recall a feminist woman telling me to trust my lust."

"That's one of the ways I am killing the apocalypse. By helping a few select lesbian men realize how important it is for them not to shame their testosterone."

On the one hand I'm flattered by this last statement. On the other hand I'm deflated. There are other men she's courting like this?

"I'm still afraid I take it too far, though," I blurt. "I guess I don't even have to say this aloud since you seem to know what I'm thinking. But ever since I can remember, I've been addicted to fantasizing about mass orgies. With me as the only man in a sea of women."

I'm amazed to hear myself confess such an embarrassing secret. I can only imagine that I really must be undergoing some kind of initiation -- not at all like the ceremonial initiations I've undergone during my work with my occult school, but like them in the way that it's stripping away my usual defenses.

"Yes. Interesting quirk," Rapunzel says.

"I never thought of it as a quirk," I protest. "I assume it's what most men idealize. I mean, isn't it every guy's dream to make love to an endless variety of perfect women? Something about the DNA commanding him to spread his seed to as many young, fresh, beautiful hosts as possible."

"But that's not exactly what your fantasy is. Your orgies are not the exclusive domain of young, fresh, beautiful hosts. There are a few very plain women in there. I've even seen a crone or two."

"Now how could you possibly know that? Just from studying my Wailing Wall? Or have you been spying on my meditations?"

"You'd be surprised what I can do with the help of our sixty-six-million-year-old technology. A portable sample of which is right over there. We call it the Televisionary Oracle."

Rapunzel is pointing towards the mud and stone television.

"So with the help of your magic box you sneaked into my psyche and found out I sometimes stoke my orgy fantasies with a handful of women who aren't supermodels?"

"Sort of, yes. Which is why I can say with confidence that you definitely don't trust your lust enough. Because if you did, if you exorcised the shame you've allowed to infect your orgy fantasies, you'd really jack up your ability to resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity. You'd shoot out to the frontier of an even more sublime taboo."

"What taboo could there possibly be beyond that? Beyond the desire to be a lone Dionysus with a gang of horny women?"

"The desire to be a lone Dionysus with a gang of horny women of all shapes and sizes and ages. A lone Dionysus who does not choose only the prettiest, youngest, most supple horny women to run away with into the woods. Who longs for and is available to all women."

Uh-oh. Red alert. So gradually I haven't realized it, most of the shamanatrixes in the room have removed major parts of their elaborate costumes. Were they playing strip poker with those Tarot cards? Vistas of flesh are exposed, along with a wealth of often comical lingerie. These are not stylish items from a Victoria's Secret catalogue, but bikinis made of brightly colored band-aids and yarn, camisoles with attached moss and Christmas tree icicles, and lacy nursing bras with rubber shark puppet mouths where the flap opens.

Furthermore, many of the women are now peering at me with some mix of sweet, sultry, and sympathetic expressions.

I will myself to deepen my breathing as I scramble to assess my feelings. My rational mind knows that if this were any other situation, I'd rate two of the women here as full-on sexy to me and maybe six mildly attractive, while most of the rest I'd feel neutral about except for two that arouse my repulsion. But I'm so far gone from my normal state that my old evaluation system does not hold. To my amazement, I feel a preposterous lust for every single woman here.

Or have I merely had my esthetic exploded by the prodigious titillation and by Rapunzel's quasi-hypnotic suggestions? Have all my habitual responses been rendered irrelevant?

"This potential of yours, to be an all-purpose Dionysian muse, is one of the qualities that makes you so deserving of your own personalized menarche," Rapunzel explains soothingly. "It's also a valuable asset for storming the precincts of the Drivetime."

"To long for and be available to all women?" I stammer.

"You want to live in the Drivetime full-time? Where nothing needs to be true and everything is sacred and Goddess is a tenderly lascivious prankster at your service? Then tap into your hidden talent for being as lusty towards everyone and everything as you are towards me. Meditate on how to rev up your testosterone until it's in love with great grandmas listening to talk radio in nursing homes and chubby Guatemalan peasant women pounding laundry down by the river."

"But if I'm equally carnal for everything," I protest weakly, "if there's no difference between my desire for you and my desire for the grandma in the nursing home, doesn't that make me a ball of mush?"

"Exact opposite of that. You can never be a ball of mush if you're stoked with gargantuan levels of passion."

Rapunzel has undone the rest of the buttons on her baseball jersey. All the other women in the room have abandoned their chairs and are doing yoga asanas or tai-chi moves. My eyes are in crisis mode, frantically reaching out to engorge the epiphanies of breasts and butts jiggling as bodies stretch. I flash on the myth of Semele, who was burned to ash upon beholding Zeus in his dangerous glory. Except that the roles are reversed here. I'm Semele.

The most limber of the teasers, a pretty young Asian woman wearing only loose white silk shorts, is doing an absurdly salacious yoga pose that might go well on a "Girls of Penthouse Workout Video." Balanced on her shoulders and neck, she thrusts one leg out sideways and one out straight, both parallel to the floor. She rotates slowly, like a graceful breakdancer.

In my altered state of exploded lust, though, she evokes no more shivering blithers than any of the other women in the room. I'm equally turned on by the woman with a thick scar on her cheek and a big crooked witch nose, and the forty-something matron with cellulite and sagging breasts that have obviously nursed several children. I seem to be in bloom with the state of omni-horniness that Rapunzel said was helpful for living full-time in the Drivetime.

Rapunzel motions for me to get out of my chair and come hither. I obey. She grasps me around the waist and pulls me down to sit on her lap. Peering down, I have a perfect view of her breasts surging in her black lace bra.

"So what do you say," she murmurs as her bouquet of fruity, musky aromas spills over me, "that we take an inventory of how well you're doing on the project of achieving gargantuan passion?"

I'm hungry for the real goo, I think to myself, for the sauce and the splash and the balm. I seek the true lust unguent that binds and burns, that cures and incites.

"Tell me now. Be frank. How, in your heart of hearts, do you feel about hag marks on your luscious females? Look around here at the holy host of menstrual geniuses for reference. Do you honestly, no bullshit, have a divinely inspired affinity for thick black hairs sprouting from nipples and navels and maybe even chins? How about pimples on the butt? Stretch marks on pendulous breasts and big noble witchy noses and week-old stubble on shaved legs? Did you really, truly mean what you wrote in your personal ad at the Catalyst, 'All my patriarchal imprints incinerated'?"

Keep me close always to your real maw, rolling in the rose dark behind your lids and lips, under the thigh and over the fear and into the sweat and the fur, between the breasts and spirit straight to the taste of your shivering moist soul.

"What I'm driving at, my dear, is this: Do you truly and without any reservations pledge to place yourself under the influence of the mysterious chemicals of real women? Or will you continue to harbor, under cover of your feminist rhetoric, hypocritical urges to love only a narrow simulation of the Goddess' panoramic beauty? I think it's time you took a stand one way or the other. Not just with your fine words. But with your actual body. Know what I mean?"

I want to be awake to the actual low rumbling of your rant and shadow, stretching to hear the strong old medicines of your tongue, pulsing limbless in waves of your lunatic hair -- staring, face loose, into your molten pores and through to the generous dreams of your glands.

"In other words, beautiful, what kind of man do you want to be when you grow up?"

The thrill of the menstrual dark will be my secret salvation; the uterine quiver will be the best hysteria of my obsession.

"I vow to love the hag marks as much as the beauty marks," I speak aloud to the gathering, feeling as if I'm channeling the spirit of an Irish bard, who a psychic once told me I was in a previous incarnation.

"I will swoon for the bumps and the dangles and the wobbly foibles just as much as I will for the smooth, sleek swivels and the taut, trim treasures. Therefore I now and forevermore renounce my worship of the slutty madonna fetishes passed into law by every shit-hoarding religion, and the man-made surrogates called bitches on pedestals, and all the leached, face-lifted, fanny-tucked, depillatoried, silicon-enhanced Olympian cyborgs who pride themselves on having the freshest feminine smell in the history of capitalism. I renounce them all. Forever and ever, amen. Awomen."

Wow. Where did that come from?

Rapunzel smothers me in a big hug and then maneuvers me into a position where she can kiss me on the belly. "May you find the treasure in the trash, the gold in the lead, and the manna in the junk food!" she exclaims. The room explodes in a chorus of ululating Amazon yelps.

"May you use your nightmares to become rich and famous," Jumbler adds amidst the cacophony, her arms stretched upwards in a V like a baseball player who has just smacked a game-winning home run.

"Because you can have anything you want," an older woman pitches in, "if you'll only ask for it in an unselfish tone of voice."

As the hubbub rages on, with others calling out odd slogans, all but Rapunzel work to push the tables to the periphery of the room and form a circle of chairs around me. Eventually, everyone sits down. I am now astride Rapunzel's lap, surrounded by mostly naked shaman-atrixes whose gazes are directed at me.

Jumbler, who is still fully clothed, fetches a curious object from the altar against the back wall. It's a crown made out of willow branches, woven grass, lilies, copper and silver crayons, and a Tarot card which shows the goddess Athena in a "Menstrual Temple" baseball uniform. Jumbler ceremoniously places the contraption on my head.

"Congratulations, initiate," she says, "and welcome to the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail! I am very pleased to inform you that you have won a free value-pack of prizes worth three million years of vacation time in the Drivetime, plus the psychoanalysis of your diamond wand, a fabulously useful new organ of perception where your pineal gland now sits, and a reserved monthly space in the menstrual hut of your choice!

"And that's not all. As an added special bonus, you have been selected to be a contestant in the Fuck Your Friends Dating Game. One of three lucky shamanatrixes is going to win the privilege of escorting you through the rest of your menarche. Are you ready to play?"

"Can I take my curlers out?" I say with exultant meekness. "Rapunzel said I only had to keep them in until it was time for my date."

"Of course," Jumbler smiles, and begins removing the tampons from my hair. "By the way, Osiris, I want you to know that the Fuck Your Friends Dating Game is reserved exclusively for Love Geniuses who have demonstrated a potential for juggling rugged individualism and radical intimacy. Think you can handle that?"

Radical intimacy? Don't know what that is, but with Rapunzel as muse I'd be highly motivated to master it.

"I have always wanted to be a Love Genius," I say.

The Asian woman of the sexy yoga pose fame produces a brush, and she and Jumbler tease my hair into a fright wig. Meanwhile, Rapunzel leads the other women in a spritely version of the World Entertainment War song, "Dance Your Monster." Artemisia plays guitar.

"Do you realize," Jumbler notes after they finish, "that the last time an actual male was called on to be in the Fuck Your Friends Dating Game, the ancient Sumerian city of Ur had not yet been built?"

"Considering how big an occasion this is, then," I say, "I think I should clean up that egg you anointed my belly with. I'm sure my date would appreciate it."

"Certainly," Jumbler says boisterously. "Let me get you a sanitary napkin." She hands me two maxipads from out of her red pouch. They're delicately decorated around the peripheries with lozenges, double-headed axes, snakes, and butterflies.

As I pull back the waistband of my shorts to begin the mop-up, I'm taken aback. There is a trickle of blood emerging from the exact spot where Rapunzel daubed the "Dragon's Blood" back in the kitchen. It's blending with the slime of the half-dried egg white. This must be related to the mild cramps I've been feeling off and on.

I wipe the red streak away with one of the maxipads and watch the area for a few moments. The dribble returns, but very slowly. I guess I'm in no immediate danger of bleeding to death. But how did it happen?

Jumbler and Rapunzel are seeing the ooze that I am.

"Are you having any cramps?" Rapunzel asks eagerly.

"A little," I report.

"Rowdy ruby glissando!" Rapunzel announces loudly, and again a cheer goes up from the assembly. "Just in time for the Dating Game!"

"Without further ado," Jumbler proclaims when the hubbub dies down, looking at me with glee, "let's introduce you now to the three friendly Fuckfriends who'll vie for your favor. One of them will be your date!"

"First up we have a thirty-five-year-old genius with Ph.D.s in both music and physics. A major Pythagoras fan, she just happens to be the one and only quantum physicist on the planet who has mastered the art of lucid dreaming. Her Fuckfriend code name is Wealthy Anarchist. She regularly plays violin in accompaniment with the music of the spheres, and she claims her guardian angel looks a lot like Malcolm X. Here she is!"

A Jewish woman with blonde hair teased out into an explosion that must exceed the afro I'm now sporting, Wealthy Anarchist is wearing nothing else but the largest pair of white cotton underpants I have ever seen. They're far too big for her actual butt, so they're always on the verge of slipping off as she wriggles around in her chair. She lifts the waistband up and plays peekaboo behind them briefly. Then she picks up a knife from one of the tables and pokes through the cotton. She rips apart a hole wide enough to fit her face through, and delivers her spiel.

"I'm a disgruntled postal employee looking for a zombie love slave or lonely bank teller to share erotic fantasies about IRS audits and root canals."

Everyone in the room shakes with laughter, especially Wealthy Anarchist herself. When she recovers her composure, she continues.

"Just kidding. Actually, I'm an angel-wrestlin', magic carpet-ridin', sky-kissin' lover of architects who moonlight as exotic dancers and vegetarians who sneak pork chops. So please don't confuse me by being simple."

Again, guffaws whoosh through the room. I'm beginning to like this woman.

"No, really," she begins again. "In absolute actual fact, I am an inveterate xeroxer of my own butt who's seeking a like-minded cynical optimist for clowny adventures like trading clothes and rollerblading out to the nearest bridge for a no-holds-barred spitting-into-the-wind contest. Wouldn't mind if you were also into pursuing a career in killing the apocalypse, cultivating weird companions, collecting the relics of female saints, and exchanging frequent piggyback rides."

I glance over at the stone and mud television -- excuse me, the Televisionary Oracle -- as Wealthy Anarchist talks. The screen now shows the top half of a naked woman sitting behind a news desk and holding a sheaf of papers, as if she were a newscaster. With voluminous auburn hair and bushy eyebrows, she looks like she could be Rapunzel's twin sister -- except for a few other details. She has blue skin, for instance. And eight arms, like some swarming Hindu goddess. Her body seems to be on fire in places, though she shows no signs of alarm. And every now and then she thrusts her impossibly long tongue down and out to the bottom of her chin.

This is not a cartoon or computer animation. The blue goddess appears absolutely real, as does her towering gold crown, which is surmounted by what looks like a sentient eye.

"Thank you, Wealthy Anarchist," Jumbler is saying. "Our next Fuckfriend is a forty-two-year-old painter who claims to be a direct descendant of William Blake's housekeeper and a junk dealer who once punched Charles Darwin in the nose. She regularly dreams she's a tree with its roots brushing the sky and its branches nuzzling the moles and worms. Believe it or not, she also claims to be a close personal acquaintance of the magic bunny rabbit eyes that watch you around the clock in the mirror attached to the ladder to the underworld you built inside your dreams when you were five years old! Code-named Personal Growth Addict, she was recently elected to serve as Keeper of the Mysteries of the Difference Between Wise Pain and Dumb Pain."

It's Artemisia, the menstrual minstrel. She has clamped red rubber clown noses over her nipples, and her thick brown pubic hair is manicured in the shape of a bull skull.

"I've eaten food without imagining the hands of the people who grew it and picked it," she begins with mock mournfulness, her eyes downcast and her posture slumped. "I've loved my own pain more than everyone else's pain. I have sought out the most unoriginal sins and cultivated the most boring problems. Do you love me yet?"

As she asks that question she turns her eyes up and gazes at me with demure fervor, pouting her lips and winking. Many of her compatriots around the room are giggling.

"I've gotten free cable by hooking into the main line illegally," she continues, averting her eyes again and drumming her fingers against her belly. "I've bragged that a priest said I would burn in hell when he didn't. I've failed to ridicule humorless authorities whose dogmas I agreed with. I've underlined all the important passages in TV Guide and secretly fantasized that life after the apocalypse would be more interesting. Do you love me yet? DO YOU LOVE ME YET? DO YOU LOVE ME YET?!!!!"

As Personal Growth Addict giggles out her final refrain, she leaps out of her chair and skips over. Before I can respond, she straddles me where I sit on Rapunzel's lap, jamming her breasts against my face.

Jumbler is quick to intervene. "Not allowed to unduly influence the contestant with heated displays of physical affection," she says sharply as she fights to peel Artemisia off me. "Against the rules." Meanwhile, however, Rapunzel is swaying back and forth as she tries to tickle me in the ribs. When Jumbler yanks Artemisia off my lap, all four of us barely avoid toppling over.

Once Fuckfriend number two is led back to her chair, Rapunzel gestures to Jumbler to fetch the mud and stone TV against the wall. She does, setting it on the table where I'm sitting. It apparently does not rely on electricity to function.

The screen still shows the blue goddess with eight arms sitting behind a news desk. I say "screen," but it is much more than that. It's as if another dimension or two has been crammed into the usual three, and somehow depicted on a two-dimensional surface. The screen doesn't even look solid. More like a small vat of liquid crystalline mercury. The images roil and swarm as if bubbling up from a cauldron. I start to reach out to touch it, but Rapunzel grabs my hand and places it on her thigh.

"For our final Fuckfriend," Jumbler announces, "we have a special treat. Code-named Philosopher Queen of the Underworld of Fun and Games, she is celebrating her sixty-sixth million, two hundred fifty-fifth thousand, one hundred thirty-seventh birthday today! I don't think there'll be any argument when I describe her as the planet Earth's most primordial tantric janitor! Not to mention that she's by far the most experienced virgin in this or any other dimension, and when I say virgin I of course don't mean sexually naive but rather complete unto herself. Needs no other Fuckfriend to be happy, really, but enjoys liaisons now and then nonetheless.

"And now, riding the fallopian holograms direct from a permanent yet secret orgasm just north of all our medulla oblongatas, I'm proud to present for your approval the Philosopher Queen of the Underworld of Fun and Games!"

Rapunzel twists a knob shaped like a five-pointed star at the bottom of the Televisionary Oracle. The sounds of music and speech emerge, as does -- am I hallucinating? -- a wave of aromas.

"This is a perfect moment," the blue goddess murmurs in a voice that is soothing and thrilling at the same time, reassuring yet full of insinuation. The music playing in the background is a weave of women's voices. It's like a Gregorian chant sung with the lush and dissonant harmonies of Bulgarian choral music.

The smells emanating from the blue goddess have a rich and piercing effect as well. How to describe them? The English language is stingy in providing words to capture odors. Citronella is one strain in the mix. Cognac. The inside of a new car. Vanilla. The liquid acne medication I used as a teenager. A new box of crayons.

This cacophony of fragrance penetrates my head through my nose but does not stop there. It snakes down and out in all directions, as if my entire body were filling up with a sweet, earthy, liquid smoke. The feeling is unmistakably erotic, yet not in any way I recognize.

"This is a perfect moment," the blue goddess singsongs, "because I'm stoking up my most healing pathologies for you. I'm getting ready to unhex all the black magic you've practiced on yourself -- if that's what you want."

A fresh wave of aromas invades me, circulating in figure eights from the spot behind my nose down to my thighs and back: warm maple syrup blended with menthol and sandalwood and freshly cut grass and piles of linen.

"I'm practicing," the blue goddess continues, "so I can get better at being your invisible playmate and your anarchistic anima and the anonymous celebrity who lives under your bed -- if that's what you want.

"I'm doing everything I can to turn myself into the menstruating coyote angel helper who wants everything that you want -- if that's what you want.

"So. What do you want, anyway?"

Pervaded by the exotic aromas, agitated in a most soothing way by her voice, thrilled by her beautiful face and the flames flitting harmlessly on her voluptuous blue breasts, I am in a state of grace and emergency. My entire body is doing a perfectly extrapolated imitation of what it feels like for the male sexual organ to go from tumescent to erect. I do not just have a hard-on. I am a hard-on.

"Be specific," the blue goddess encourages. "Tell me everything. What exactly would you like more than anything?"

I surprise myself with how simple my response is. It's a formulation that makes me feel once again as if I'm channeling the Irish bard: "I want to be the man behind the woman who overthrows the world."

"The choice has been made!" Jumbler spouts, jumping over to shake my hand.

What's she talking about? I appreciate the way the blue goddess has enhanced my already altered state, but I'm not quite ready yet to select her over the other two contenders. In fact, I might prefer an actual woman to a disembodied image.

"My fellow shamanatrixes," Jumbler rants excitedly, "in an unexpectedly snap decision, Osiris has chosen Fuckfriend number three to be his dream date! The Philosopher Queen of the Underworld of Fun and Games! Thank you so much, Wealthy Anarchist and Personal Growth Addict, for lending your exuberant grace to our proceedings." She twists a dial on the Televisionary Oracle, pumping up the volume of the Bulgarian Gregorian chant music.

"I protest!" Artemisia shouts out suddenly. "I appeal! The Philosopher Queen hypnotized him with her smellovisionary beams! She cheated!"

Artemisia hurls herself across the floor and yanks me free of Rapunzel. In seconds she has pushed me to the floor and locked me in a wrestling hold. I'm on my back. Her chest is pressed down on mine while her left arm coils around my neck and her right arm is looped through my crotch.

"You're my love bitch!" she yowls. "Say it! Say it! Say 'I'm your love bitch.'" She has her hand close to a very sensitive part of my anatomy, and I'm in no position to resist.

"I am your love bitch," I shout. "I swear I am your love bitch."

"He is not! He is not your love bitch!" Wealthy Anarchist leaps into the fray, tugging hard on my arm in an effort to drag me away from Artemisia. "He's my candy sucker."

The two women are using me to play tug-of-war. Artemisia is yanking on my right leg and Wealthy Anarchist on my left arm.

"What the Hades are you talking about?" Artemisa screams with gruff laughter. "What's a candy sucker?"

"A psychic told me he and I have a special destiny," Wealthy Anarchist shrieks back. "Together we will set the world's record for longest time a cherry Life Saver is kept intact while passed between two people's mouths. Fifty-seven hours! We'll be famous!"

I catch a glimpse of Jumbler and Rapunzel standing side by side a few feet away. With goofy grins on their faces, they're clapping rhythmically.

"Love bitch, candy sucker," they chant. "Love bitch, candy sucker, love bitch, candy sucker."

From behind them, drowning them out, comes a series of high-pitched cackling caws. It's the Asian woman, who follows her crow calls with a shouted announcement: "No one even asked me if I wanted to be a Fuckfriend!" She maneuvers towards me, pinwheeling her arms and unleashing shoulder-high karate kicks that barely avoid hitting some of the other women. Finally, she throws herself down to the ground near me, landing softly in a position from which she could do push-ups if she so desired.

"As the duly-elected Rabid Nibbler of The Eater of Cruelty," she bellows, "I hereby claim the right to bite the lesbian man's gluteus maximus!" She clamps her teeth on my butt, not hard enough to break the skin but strong enough to send half-pleasurable, half-painful ripples through me.

Meanwhile, Artemisia and Wealthy Anarchist continue to struggle for supremacy, dragging me this way and that. The Asian martial artist follows along, sometimes letting go and chomping down at a fresh location on my hindquarters.

The woman with the scar on her cheek and the big witch nose comes forward to stake a claim.

Kneeling at my head, she grabs me by the hair and peers down into my face.

"How do you identify a bull dyke?" she demands to know.

"What?" I laugh.

"How do you identify a bull dyke?" she repeats more loudly and slowly.

"I don't know what you mean," I sputter above the noise and confusion.

"She kick-starts her vibrator and rolls her own tampons," she reveals, pulling my hair back and forth a few times in punishment for my ignorance.

"When you order a Bloody Mary, how can you tell if the waitress is mad at you?" she asks, giving me a chance to redeem myself.

"I give up."

"She leaves the string in."

"Of course, I should have known."

"How can you tell a Polish woman is having her period?"

"Don't know."

"She's only wearing one sock, of course."

She bends her head down and begins kissing my face tenderly. "As clever as you are, honey, I'm afraid you need an intelligence upgrade," she whispers between smooches. "I'm going to have to smother you with IQ-boosting joy bombs."

A short, thin Arab woman with wire-rimmed glasses joins the crowd. Her first act is to sip the trickle of blood leaking from the spot below my navel. Then she takes a deep breath, presses her mouth against my skin, and blows a big, sloppy, trumpet-like sound. Again and again she performs this music. Liberal amounts of her spit accumulate on my skin.

Another shamanatrix, the Eskimo-African woman, shoves her face right up against Witch Nose's face. Only she's not kissing, she's talking.

"You've got to promise me that you will always be unpredictable but trustworthy, OK?" she prods. "Mysterious but loyal. OK? Ever-fresh and a little tricky but kind and thoughtful, too. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

I nod.

"I want you to communicate clearly," she says, "but always keep me guessing what your next move is going to be. Promise me. Resurrect the beauty. Resurrect the masculine beauty. Promise me." Witch Nose covers my mouth with hers as I try to say, "I promise." This prompts Eskimo-African to scold, "Say 'I promise' into my mouth, too."

She gently shoves Witch Nose out of the way, then covers my lips with hers and mumbles, "Promise me." Which I do. Witch Nose moves on to kissing my neck and shoulder.

The large young lesbian arrives at the pile-up for a piece of the action. She grabs my free hand and places my thumb firmly in her mouth.

"My thumbsuckomancy reveals," she prophesies after taking my digit back out, "that in the future this new menstruator will be famous with the Goddess for his ability to awaken masculine mojo in the female psyche. He will not be threatened in the least when women are strong, but will in fact be totally turned on by it."

She thrusts the thumb back in for another divination. "Ah, best of all. He will master the impossible art of achieving rapture without losing his desire. Of surrendering to climax and still wanting more." This announcement rouses the excitement in the room to a new pitch. Whoops and cheers break out.

"So does this mean," gushes the fiftyish pixie, "that once he's done seducing me he won't lose interest? Does this mean he understands it's his holy duty to propitiate the edge where satiation and longing co-exist?"

"Orgasm without ejaculation," the lesbian says jubilantly. "He'll learn how different they are. I predict he'll learn that his bliss can go on forever when he doesn't give in to the urge to splurge."

"Won't just roll over and go to sleep!" someone cries.

"Epicene bliss!" exults another.

"Stroke like a man, come like a woman!"

A few feet away, Rapunzel is now utterly bereft of clothes. She begins speaking to me with her gorgeous body, never once taking her kind and seductive eyes away from mine. At first it's the Russian cossack dance. With her arms folded across her chest, she squats down and kicks out her legs like an athletic madwoman. Next she does a willowy, slow-motion series of devotional poses, as if she were a Hindu temple priestess addressing her god. Then she adds a clowny animal dance, rubbing her belly and licking her chops as she bares her teeth and growls affectionately.

As she finishes, she glides over to me and places her forehead against mine. Rubbing back and forth, she soaks my skin with her sweat.

"I want us to write a book together," she sings into my ear, the warm flow of her breath thrusting me past every inhibition. "I want us to trick the masses into enjoying sacred entertainment."

Maybe half the women in the room are touching me: kissing my neck, fondling my hair, biting my butt, massaging my foot, sucking my thumb, trumpeting into my stomach, lightly stroking my arm. All the others are holding hands as they slowly circle around us, murmuring a song in a language I don't recognize. I can't quite see what the blue goddess is up to -- there are bodies between me and the Televisionary Oracle -- but I can hear her singing along with the rest of the women, and I can feel new waves of fragrance all the time.

At last something like an orgasm arrives. I don't recognize it at first. It's a whirlpool, not a spurt. Like an implosion, it gathers but does not discharge force. Billowing, throbbing, coiling, its center is not even my genitals, but rather my heart. Soft volcanic waves erupt there and split into two streams, one spiraling up and one down my spine. Both then circle back to plunge silkenly into my heart again, where the cycle begins anew.

It's as if my heart were being inseminated. An image percolates up into my mind's eye: a spermatozoa piercing the membrane of an ovum.

I feel a relaxation so profound that I realize I've never really relaxed before in my life. As the love medicine begins to take effect, an age-old narcissistic ache -- pay attention to me, see me as special -- begins to ease dramatically. With this realignment comes a wave of self-forgiveness. I feel a raucous but merciful laugh rise up and threaten to dissolve my ancient habit of taking everything so damn seriously. Yes, I have a fine sense of humor; yes, I can mock myself with the best of them. And yet I'm embarrassed to admit that I've always remained fiercely attached to how meaningful all my idiosyncratic opinions are. Like the patriarchy itself, I've been fixated on the early, infantile stages of individuation: What's helpful or attractive to me I've regarded as good; what's useless or boring or repulsive to me has been bad.

But I sense that this pathological crime against the ever-fresh creation -- hallelujah! -- is ready to die.

As my heart orgasm swirls on, I conceive of a kind of freedom that has been invisible to me before. It would require me to stop careening back and forth from moment to moment between "I like this" and "I don't like that." Instead I would be equally open and equally skeptical towards all things, whether I have an emotional affinity for them or not, whether they reinforce my world view or not. I'd be objective but also tender. I'd be liberated from believing my biases are ultimate truths, but without taking on the psychotically detached way of knowing that is the hallmark of poisoned masculinity.

What if I can learn to feel deeply enough to love my enemy? I mean really love my enemy, not just give lip service to tolerating him because my moral code tells me it's the right thing to do. What if I can truly summon a warm sympathy -- motivated by a lust for life rather than a shaming superego -- for anyone or anything that has no power to increase my personal pleasure?

And it will all have to be done without giving up my discrimination. I want to have the critical thinking of an authentically objective scientist (I'm thinking of Max Planck or Richard Feynman) blended with the vigorously nurturing, emotionally smart compassion of a skilled psychotherapist.

I'm crying. I've been crying for some time. The women who were ministering so aggressively to my pleasure have taken a break, and I'm lying on the floor surrounded by them. Now and then one of them leans over to kiss my tears.

Someone has turned the lights down low in the dining room. The only illumination consists of a few candles and the glow of the Televisionary Oracle.

Rapunzel lifts the magic box and sets it down on the floor near my head. The blue goddess seems to be gazing at me with loving calm.

"Place yourself in a comfortable position," she tells me. "Breathe deeply and let confusion and remorse drain out of you. Let yourself unwind and surrender with a wild abandon you have not experienced since you were a child.

"As you inhale, become aware that your heart's beating is fueled by thermonuclear chain reactions that originate on the sun. As you exhale, imagine that every instant of joy you've ever experienced is resurrecting itself as an image of a snapdragon opening at dawn.

"Can you surrender this profoundly? You know you can. Allow yourself to feel more at home in the world than you have ever felt before. It's as if your soul were sending secret transmissions to you from the end of time. As if you were able to be both dead and alive at the same time.

"Now begin your prayer to the avatar. Not with the gesture of clasping your hands together, as if you were shackled. Not with a bleat of submission or whine of greed. Do it with uproarious reverence. Bestow upon her the dazzling grace of your disciplined exuberance."

And so I find myself kneeling before her at last, my inscrutable queen. My hands rest just above her knees as she sits on the throne of heaven, which to the naked eye appears to be a wooden chair in a restaurant. She jiggles her legs up and down waggishly, inviting me to play.

"Oh wacky priestess," I pray, "you who dare me to think of you as an irresistible siren even though I have seen you kiss a rotting shred of eggplant dredged from the kitchen floor: I have been sent by the god of lesbian men to assist you in burning heaven to the ground. Accept my raunchy yet righteous supplication!"

I butterfly my lips on her feet as I murmur, swelling not with pride but with giddy appreciation for the privilege. As I slither my hair and face on her legs, I become aware of the hint of stubble, suggesting she has not shaved in a while. My bottomless excitement deepens in response, and I surge with confidence to know that my adoration does not require her to be a perfect idol.

"Oh scary genius," I pray, "you who are so mysterious I sometimes can't tell the difference between your talents and your deficiencies: I will call you the queen of wabi, after the Japanese word referring to a beautiful flaw in a work of art that endows it with far more value than if it were merely perfect."

She impishly squeezes her knees against my ears and rains a flurry of swats down on my head. I visualize the slowly whirling spiral of violet and red gas that was the primeval solar nebula -- our solar system before it was the solar system -- and I muse on how every moment in the evolution of that masterpiece has conspired to bring me here now for the purpose of making the avatar laugh as I worship her with my love.

"Oh luscious maestro," I say, "I would help you sell the rights to your life story to a major Hollywood studio if it were within my power. I would lobby to put you on the cover of Time and Newsweek. I would wangle you a contract to do endorsements for Nike. I would pull strings for a city street to be named after you, and a mountain, and a thousand-year-old storm on Saturn."

I reach my hands underneath her hips and gently slide her towards the front of the chair. Lifting up her legs, I drape them over my shoulders. Her silk lotus, previously half-buried in the throne, is now billowing towards me with the blazing radiance of a thousand suns and the cool moisture of a thousand moons. I inhale the life-breath of this cosmos. It's tinctured with the aroma of amber and pomegranate juice and smoldering sage and carved pumpkins and the wood of a violin and the leathery sweetness of the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose fragments I once sniffed in a museum.

"What did the rubies say standing before the juice of the pomegranate?" I whisper, quoting the poet Neruda, as I lift my head to gaze up into her green eyes. I'm ecstatic to find no self-consciousness there, and this releases me into the gift of losing my own self-absorption.

I muse on the memories of other tantric rituals I've enjoyed. All too often, my ego has been on full alert, lusting to impress my partner at the expense of our souls' more mysterious agendas. In those other times and places I've wielded the jade stalk with impeccably wild precision, suavely jiggling the pomegranate juice free from the grotto of the tiger lily, lodging my tongue of blue fire against the starry veil, blah blah blah -- all the while spraying my mind's eye full of pseudo-immortal pictures of what a vivid Sex King I am.

Not this time, though. All my greedy grasping is gone as I bring my supplicant's lips and tongue to the rosy fluting. My breathing is regal, saturated with humble confidence that I am worthy of this blessing.

With slow-motion wave upon wave of mercurial spirals, I honor and enjoy Rapunzel's silken furrows. There is no hurry. I have all the time in the world. Only after I satisfy my craving to taste the entire bouquet do I hold the satiny pearl gently between my pursed lips. "Namaste," I hum, "I greet the Goddess within you." Sometimes I keep my tongue softly erect as I swirl it around the heart source. Other times I sup and nuzzle, swirl and flick, shimmer and trill. Throughout the celebration, I invoke all my powers of love, visualizing a cornucopia spilling out a thousand gifts for her: green velvet gloves, a canoe made out of jewels, a sad donkey clown piqata full of crickets, toasters made of pure gold falling through the sky at the end of magenta parachutes, a going-steady ring from a vending machine at the drug store, a protective gargoyle from the Chartres Cathedral, an antique hammer and sickle, a strawberry chocolate cake baked in the shape of a question mark, fistfuls of sparklers, a bottle of holy water from the River Jordan, photos of lightning on a giant poster, ruby slippers, a map of human DNA drawn up by the Human Genome Project, a refrigerator magnet cast in the likeness of the Dalai Lama, and a mask of her face fashioned from purple day-glo Play-Doh.

Read Chapter 43