Christina

There is something about eastern mysticism that has always fascinated me. I'm a pushover; I guess, for anything ornate, anything baroque, anything that celebrates life in all its gaudy detail. So when Xavier called me from Los Angeles to invite me to the Hare Krishna festival of the chariots, I reacted as I might have to an obscene phone call from Roger Vadim: -- with a gush of sensual enthusiasm that I could not have hidden if I had wanted to.

"You really should come, Christina, " Xavier's clear tenor voice cajoled me. " with your taste in male tonnage, a parade of bull elephants ought to be right up your alley."

"Besides," I said, ignoring the raunchy undertones that I had come to expect from Xavier, " it'll give the Krishna's a chance to atone for all that miserable pandering they do at major airports."

We both laughed --- it's an old friendship, Xavier's and mine, one that dates back to the days when I was little more than a rich man's daughter.

"So you'll be there?" he said.

"With bells on."

"How appropriate," he said dryly. " And don't forget your roller skates."

Two days later I was comfortably ensconced in Xavier's beachfront penthouse, with it's marvelous view not only of the pacific, but also of the marina del rey channel and its seemingly endless parade of sailboats. Xavier had invited a few friends, taking care as always to mix professions, backgrounds, and countries of origin the way a fine chef mixes spices. Dr. Silvia Carlson of Gutenberg, perhaps the worlds foremost expert on industrial pollution and a Nobel prize winner twice over, was there, and she was counter pointed by john bel geddes, president of pantheon oil, while tai kwan do master Claudio Galliard of Uruguay argued the fine points of his craft with Louisa Chen, producer of fifty eight karate movies and demonstrably the most successful filmmaker in Hollywood.

I must admit we made a striking party as we strolled along the strip of asphalt which bordered the beach and which Xavier insisted on calling a " boardwalk ". Louisa was wearing a traditional silk outfit that had been in her family for twelve generations, while Silvia and I had chosen hand painted adaptations of tea dresses from the royal families of the tsaidam basin, hers had a dragon motif, and mine a floral pattern inspired by the gardens of mang-yai. The fact that the Krishna festival was based on an Indian holiday that had nothing whatsoever to do with china mattered as little to us as the fact that all the women in our party were taller than all the men

The festival itself turned out to be everything Xavier had promised. Several dozen elephants promenaded down the boardwalk, dressed in mirrored trappings, which seemed to reflect the gaudy banners under which they passed. Krishna riders with topknots streaming comically in the stiff ocean breeze guided the elephants to a grassy area, where tents and booths had been set up in imitation of the feast of Ramadan. Brentwood lawyers in Sperry topsiders mixed with the artists and sixties leftovers who are the main inhabitants of Venice beach, and these two groups in turn vied for space in the free food lines with the bums and winos for whom the festival was a serious source of nutrition.

The Krishna's were feeding everyone. A few plates of their charity passed under my nose, and the aroma of holy poverty was enough to make me want to stop eating for a month. I was far more interested in the stage that had been set up in the middle of the park, and in the several dozen glassy eyed Krishna's on it who were chanting and occasionally jumping up and down in unconscious imitation of Bessie griffin and the gospel pearls. I had to admit it, the power of the chant was entirely real, and, though the Krishna's did not know it, their orgy of the spirit was being translated in my body into an undeniable and equally powerful desire for an orgy of the flesh.

I could feel the chant, feel it as a palpable pressure in my belly, as a spider with a thousand legs dancing down my spine. I had not made love in several days-- Xavier prefers the attentions of men, while gallardo and bel geddes were habitual abstainers, each for his own reasons -- and now my body was responding to the chant as if it were a lover, taking the insistent sound inside me as if it were a strident, rock hard penis, letting it ply my soft insides with the sweet massage of the paramour. My fingers lay resting along the outsides of my thighs, and it was only with the greatest effort that I kept them still, kept them from attacking the already tingling flanges of my overwrought pussy.

Unconsciously, I closed my eyes and groaned out my desire. The chant, the bells, the mass of raw emotion in the voices of the singers, even the wind from the pacific, were combing to become what amounted to a symphony of lust, and my body was being played like some exotic instrument, like a magic lute that a Hindu god might use to arouse his priestess to a fever of immaculate yearning. I floated in my imagination to the palaces of panjim, where a swarthy prince brushed his practiced lips over the stiffening tips of my breasts, and then onto the caves of malabar, where a bandit chieftain ravaged my aching cunt from behind.

Soon it would be too much, I knew. If I didn't escape the throbbing power of the chant I would in a matter of minutes be straddling some open mouthed hippie while the matrons of Krishna went screaming for the police. I had to get away, to calm the swelling urges in my loins, and perhaps, if I were lucky, to find some real satisfaction in the arms of a man of bone and blood.

I practically ran from the festival, from the maddening echoes of the chant, knowing Xavier would understand my sudden disappearance and even wish me well. Xavier knew me better than anyone in the world and would know the effect that such a powerful experience would have on me. In fact, many times it had been Xavier himself who had discreetly provided me with a lover to calm my ragging body, to still the sensual trembling that even the slightest emotion could cause in me.

In my frustration and my desire for something immediate in the way of release, I rented a pair of roller skates and roared off at top speed down the boardwalk. I had been an excellent skater as a girl, and the soothing, graceful motion of speed skating came back to me almost instantly, so that I was able to power through the crowds without touching anyone with anything more than my passing breeze. The faster I went the cooler and more manageable became the flames in my burning body, so that by the time I reached the row of outdoor bistros at the far end of the boardwalk I was ready to relax and enjoy the interesting, though sexual, entertainments that Venice beach has to offer.

Scarcely out of breath, I stopped at one of the sidewalk cafes and ordered tea and beignets while I watched a pair of satin bedecked, bell draped folk singers wailing in a language that could have been Iroquois but was probably some patois from an album of the holy modal rounders. An eight-year-old girl rode by on a unicycle, nearly running over a withered Jewish lady who was talking to a roller skater dressed in a batman costume. The spirit of festival inspired by the Krishna's had bought out the circus performer in everyone, it seemed, and now that my desires had been squelched -- for the time being, at least -- I was quite content simply to watch the impromptu parade and pretend that it was all being staged for my personal amusement.

After a time my eye began to drift down the boardwalk, scanning absently along the rows of proffered oil paintings and Balinese basketry until it lit on a spot some twenty yards away where a large crowd was beginning to gather. The wall of people that had been drawn to the spot prevented me from seeing what the attraction was, but my curiosity was piqued, and I could not have avoided becoming part of that crowd even if I had wanted to. I've thought about it many times since -- how radically my life was changed by that purely chance attraction, how, had I been anywhere else among the infinite number of other places there were to be at that moment the warp of my existence would have taken on a entirely different texture and direction. But such speculations, charming and piquant though they may be, are in the end entirely useless. Things happen because they happen, that's all.

Go back far enough in time and kill a butterfly, and you change the entire history of the world.

I paid my check and walked slowly down the boardwalk to the spot where the crowd had gathered. The ring of people by this time stood about three deep, so at first all I could see was an occasional blur and flash of white in the center. As I sought a better vantage point by means of demure little stabs of my elbow, the crowd began to part for me, first grudgingly, then graciously. It's not hard to notice the extra courtesy that physical attractiveness seems to inspire in people who are ordinarily quite surly.

By the time I reached the inner row of watches I could see what it was that had drawn them so inexorably. It -- he, I should say, for the masculinity flared from his body like a firestorm from the surface of the sun -- was a mime, a man dressed quite simply in a black dancers body suit and with only the barest suggestion of the white facial makeup that creates the mime's artificial pallor.

I will never forget that first glimpse of Paul, even though my mind is now like a photo album replete with images of him in various past attitudes and arrangements. He was simply and without doubt the most alarmingly gorgeous man I had ever seen, and this despite the fact that my personal treasury of men holds some of the world's most dazzling heartbreakers. But none of the devastatingly good looking men I had known up to then had Paul's magnificent integration, that smooth flow of physical unity that submerged the beauty of each individual part, each rippling muscle, into a whole so glorious that the body became a river, or a graceful ribbon of waterfall plunging from peak to pool.

But I must admit it -- my thoughts at that first moment were anything but poetic. I was hypnotized, yes, by his sheer physical presence, but the part of me that was already under his spell was definitely located below the waist. The minute I saw Paul -- and he was at that moment in repose, gathering his forces of concentration for the beginning of his next routine -- a jolt of purely sexual energy tore through my body, and the insides of my thighs were almost instantly salved by the first creamy signs of my prurient interest. The only thing coherent in the way of thought that I could muster at that moment was -- I'm going to come just looking at this man.

Then, to make matters worse, he started to move, although move is an entirely inadequate word to describe what Paul really did. He moved the way the hands of a watch move, or the way a flower opens, imperceptibly, as if his body had somehow learned how to slow down the currents of the brain, the very junctions between nerve and muscle. One would have needed time lapse photography to prove that he had moved at all, and yet what he did left a suggestion in the brain of the viewer, a sort of slow motion streak across the back of the eyes like a diaphanous trail left by a jet that crawls through the sky at 40,000 feet.

Paul's routine, it soon became apparent, had to do with nothing less than being born, with the silent majesty of life's first great stretch. It was at the end of that stretch. During which he made all of us believe that he had completed the growth of a lifetime in no more than about seven seconds, that our eyes met for the first time, and the randy energy that was still coursing through my body was obviously transmitted directly to him. I knew it happened, I could see his eyes register my unmistakable message of desire and transmit it in turn to wherever he filed such things for future reference, and yet he did not miss even the tiniest of beats in his routine. He continued with the slow motion extension of his body that seemed to signify the growth of us all, stretched and literally grew before our eyes until we all could have sworn he was at least eight feet tall. At that point he suddenly switched to a high-speed motion, leaped into the air, and popped an imaginary basketball through an imaginary hoop with a strong and graceful slam-dunk.

This move was equivalent to the hypnotist's snap of the finger, and the crowd awoke with a collective and delighted laugh. Paul swooped into a low bow amid the generous applause, bringing to my mind the image of a medieval master proudly faking an attitude of submission to the court.

When he finally raised his head again, his dark blue eyes caught mine for a fraction of an instant, and he in turn released what I now know was only a small sample of his own churning sexual energy. He allowed the corners of his mouth to rise slightly in an almost imperceptible smile, and then quickly turned his attention back to the mass of his audience. But my eyes had seen, and my body had read the message in that smile, and a knot of anticipation began to form in my chest, which was heaving as if we had already made love for three days running.

Paul now asked for requests from the audience, eager to prove his ability in the highest practice of any art -- improvisation. I could not have kept quiet under any threat of injury.

"Spread yourself on a piece of toast, " I said.

He knew, of course. He knew that I was asking him to spread himself, not like butter on a piece of bread, but like a smooth, slick oil over the contours of my burning body. He understood instantly, and took up the challenge of my invitation with easy confidence. His body literally dissolved before my eyes (I was by then quite unaware of the presence of the crowd), spreading into a form that managed to be almost entirely amorphous yet throbbingly muscular at the same time. His ' bread ' (the ground) and my body became one -- he was as aware of it as I -- and I could almost feel him pouring himself over me, onto me, into me, suffusing me with the hot lotion of his glorious sex.

Almost.

By the time he had finished I would have gone with him anywhere. If he had no place to go, I would have made love to him there on the asphalt, in the very heart of the crowded festival. I would have offered my body as public testimony to his skill, as a sheath in which to place the sword of his essence, as an urn for the oil of his steamy masculinity.

Luckily, no such public display on my part was necessary. Paul used the butter on toast routine as an excuse to end his show (prematurely, no doubt, as his interest had obviously made him as impatient as I was), thanked the crowd politely for the donations that fell like rain into his hat, walked over to me, and without the slightest hesitation took my hand.

"Paul Bayard, " he said simply. (As if I cared! his smile was already causing delightful little stirrings in my abdomen.)

"Christina van bell," I managed.

"Uh - oh," he said, that wonderful smile vanishing momentarily.

"Can't even get past the introductions without problems these days, " I said, recovering myself somewhat.

"What's the matter?"

"Two word last names make me uncomfortable," he said, beginning to look a little sheepish. " The ' van ' probably translates as 'millionaire's daughter ', and the 'bell' as 'hands off'. "

"You've already had your hand on me for at least thirty seconds," I said. " Do you hear me complaining?"

He looked down and raised his eyebrows as he realized that he had not yet let go of my hand. Embarrassed, he let it fall loosely from mine. I grabbed it back immediately.

"You can't get out of this now," I said, wondering if he would be the type to be scared off by an aggressive woman. But already I was finding myself unable to stand being out of physical contact with him, and I knew that caution was going to get me absolutely nowhere.

I was relieved to see his beautiful smile return. " I wonder if I'll ever want to," he said in a voice so low I could scarcely hear him.

But hear him I did, and it was all I needed. We both realized, I think, that all the pertinent decisions had been made during those first few meetings of our eyes, that now -- for today, at least -- there was very little left for us to do outside of pure consummation. The touch of his hand in mine was sending frantic little messages screaming through my nervous system, and that interlocking of hands, so innocent in appearance to any outsider, was quickly becoming a terribly exciting form of foreplay.

We turned, still holding hands, and began to walk up the boardwalk, our direction carrying us away from the main flow of the festival. I was not in the least concerned about Xavier and the rest of our party -- he knew me well enough not to worry about such inconsequential items as sudden disappearances. Besides, the little stroking of Paul's sensitive fingertips along the palm of my hand were already driving me crazy with desire, and I knew that no mere social obligation was going to prevent my seeing this thing with Paul through to the finish.

"Where are we going?" I whispered, felling the butterflies of sensation stirring ever more rapidly in my insides.

"To my place," he said simply. " To dance."

He didn't need to say much more. " His place " turned out to be a concrete and dry wall studio on one of the charming little court streets off the boardwalk. It was immense, and brilliantly white, and absolutely unadorned, giving the impression that it served as some kind of temple to its tenant. And once we were well inside, I understood that that was precisely what the place was, a temple. Not so much to Paul himself, but to the beauty inside him, which he had the good grace to realize was his only inasmuch as he had the privilege of choosing how to express it. It was as if he had left his place as bare as possible so that his living space would not pose any sort of distraction to the great business of his life, which was to turn silent movement into its own form of music.

There was a bed in one corner of the enormous room, a box spring and mattress supported by an arrangement of pipes that was obviously homemade, that could have easily looked salvage-yard tacky, but that with Paul's touch could pass very easily for the state of the art in high-tech interior design. He led me over to it without a word, and we sat down on the edge. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer, and I could feel my puss lips rubbing softly against one another through the silky juices of my ever-growing excitement.

"Is this the dance floor?" I said, looking deeply into his eyes and placing one of his hands gently on my throbbing breast.

"This is a cage," he said. " If you want true release, you have to start in a cage."

With that he began to slowly unbutton my blouse, taking each button like a trophy, with sure, practiced hands and at a measured pace. His deliberateness was already driving me wild, and in my anxiousness I punctuated each little space between unbuttonings with delicate little nibbles at the nape of his neck. Our knees were touching as we sat facing other on the edge of the bed, and I could feel a hot current of sensation arcing across them. I fought a growing urge to simply plaster myself against him, to grab his rock hard cock in my fingers and plow it into my dilating cunt, to pounce on it and wring the juices from it and leave him there in his 'cage' sapped and quiescent. I fought the urge because I knew that Paul's way was better, that his delicate teasings and careful probings would inspire in me a slow growing chain reaction that would ultimately drive me screaming to that place deep inside me that was the source of all sensation.

By now Paul had unbuttoned my blouse down to my waist, and the shock of cool air hitting the surface of my tingling breasts made it seem as though Paul himself had a thousand fingers. Yet he had still not actually touched me. With my bare breasts now exposed, I never wear a bra, and take all warnings about sagging breasts in middle age as a sign of jealousy from the bra bound, he began to blow ever so lightly on them, little circular breezes that circumscribed the two deep pink aureole and that made my nipples spike and harden as if reaching out for the maddening touch of his fingertips.