Aztec Autumn

was being fashioned by the gods, while she was still within her mother's womb, the kindly goddess of love and flowers and connubial happiness must have said:

'Let me endow this girl-child Ixinatsi with one small uniqueness in her female organs, so that when she grows to womanhood she can perform akuareni with mortal men as joyously and voluptuously as I myself might do.' It was indeed only a small alteration that the goddess effected in Cricket's body, but ayyo! —I can attest that it added an incredible piquancy and exuberance when she and I joined in the conjugal act.

The love goddess is called Xochiquetzal by us Azteca, but is known as Petsikuri by the Purempecha, including these island women. Whatever her name, what she had done was this. She had set Cricket's tipili opening just a little farther back between her thighs than is the case in ordinary women. Thus her tipili's inner recess did not simply extend straight upward inside her body, but upward and forward. When she and I coupled face-to-face, and I slid my tepuli into her, it gently flexed to fit that curve. So, when it was fully sheathed inside her, my tepuli's crown was pointing back toward me, or, rather, toward the back of her belly's navel button.

In our Nahuatl language, a woman's body is often respectfully referred to as a xochitl, a 'flower,' and her navel as the yoloxochitl, or 'bud center' of that flower. When I was inside Ixinatsi, then, my tepuli literally became the 'stalk' of that bud, that flower. Just to realize, in my mind, that she and I were so very intimately conjoined—not to mention the vivid sensations involved—heightened my ardor to a degree I could never have believed possible.

And, in her arranging of Ixinatsi's feminine parts, the goddess had provided, for both Cricket and myself, yet a further enhancement of the joy that comes in the act of love. The slightly rearward placement of her tipili orifice meant that when my tepuli penetrated her to its hilt, my pubic bone was necessarily close and hard against her sensitive xacapili pearl, much more tightly than it would be with an ordinary woman. So, as Ixinatsi and I clasped and rocked and writhed together, her little pink kinu accordingly got caressed, rubbed, kneaded—to excited erection, then to urgent throbbing, then to paroxysms of rapture. And Cricket's increasingly heated response naturally heated me as well, so that we were equally, gleefully, dizzily, almost swooningly exultant when together we came to climax.

When it was over, she of the prodigious lungs, of course, got her breath back before I did. While I still lay limp, Ixinatsi slipped into her den under the tree and emerged to press something into my hand. It glowed in the moonlight like a piece of the moon itself.

'A kinu means a loving heart,' she said, and kissed me.

'This single pearl,' I said weakly, 'would buy you much. A proper house, for instance. A very good one.'

'I would not know what to do with a house. I do know—now—how to enjoy akuareni. The kinu is to thank you for showing me.'

Before I could gather breath to speak again, she had bounded upright and called across the tree trunk, 'Maruuani!' to the young woman who lived in the shelter on the other side. I thought Cricket was going to apologize for the doubtlessly unfamiliar noises we had been making. Instead she said urgently, 'Come over here! I have discovered a thing most marvelous!'

Maruuani came around the root end of the tree, idly combing her long hair, pretending to be not at all curious, but her eyebrows went up when she saw us both unclothed. She said to Ixinatsi, but with her eyes on me, 'It sounded—as if you were enjoying yourselves.'

'Exactly that,' Cricket said with relish. 'Our... selves. Listen!' She moved close, to whisper to the other woman, who continued to regard me, her eyes widening more each moment. Lying there, being described and discussed, I felt rather like some hitherto unknown sea creature just washed ashore and causing a sensation. I heard Maruuani say, in a hushed voice, 'He did?' and after some more whispering, 'Would he?'

'Of course he will,' said Ixinatsi. 'Will you not, Tenamaxtli? Will you not do akuareni with my friend Maruuani?'

I cleared my throat and said, 'One thing you must realize about men, my dearest. It takes them at least a little resting—between times—for the pole to stiffen again.'

'It does? Oh, what a pity. Maruuani is eager to learn.'

I considered, then said, 'Well, I have shown you some things, Cricket, that do not require my participation. While I regather my faculties, you could demonstrate the preliminaries to your friend.'

'You are right,' she said brightly. 'After all, we will not always have men with poles at our bidding. Maruuani, take off your loincloth and lie down here.'

Somewhat guardedly, Maruuani obeyed, and Ixinatsi stretched out beside her, both of them just a little way from me. Maruuani flinched and gave a small shriek at the first intimate touch.

'Be still,' said Cricket, with the confidence of experience. 'This is how it is done. In a moment you will know.'

And it was not long before I was watching two supple, shining sea-cuguars doing the contortions of coupling—much as the real animals do it—except that these were much more graceful, since they had long, shapely arms and legs to intertwine. And the watching of it hastened my own availability, so I was ready for Maruuani when she was ready for me.

I repeat, I was in love with Ixinatsi even before we did the act of love. I had already, that very night, determined to take her and her little girl with me when I left the island. I would do it by persuasion, if possible. If not, I would—like a brute Yaki—abduct them by force. And now, having found out how uniquely and wonderfully Cricket was constructed for the act of love, I was more determined than before.

But I am human. And I am male. Therefore I am incurably, insatiably curious. I could not help wondering if all these island women possessed the same physical properties that Cricket did. Although the young woman Maruuani was comely and appealing, I had never felt any desire for her, certainly not what I had felt and still felt for Ixinatsi. However, after watching what had just occurred, and being aroused by it to an indiscriminate lustfulness, and with Ixinatsi unselfishly urging me on...

Well, that is how my stay in the islands came to be indefinitely prolonged. Ixinatsi and Maruuani spread the word that there was something more to life than just working and sleeping and occasionally playing with one's self—and the other island women clamored to be introduced to it. Grandmother's scandalized objections were shouted down, probably for the first time in her reign, but she became resigned to the new state of affairs when it effected a noticeable increase in the workers' good spirits and productivity. Kuku enforced only one condition: that all akuareni be confined to the nighttimes—which I did not mind, because it gave me the days for sleeping and regaining my stamina.

Let me say here that I would not have obliged any of the other women if Cricket had evinced the least jealousy or possessiveness. I did it mainly because she seemed so happy to have her sisters thus enlightened, and seemed to take pride in that being done by 'her man.' In truth, I would rather have restricted my attentions to her alone, for she was the one that I deeply loved—the only one, then or ever—and I know she loved me, too. Even Tiripetsi, who at first had been shy and uneasy about having a man in residence, came to regard me fondly, as other little girls elsewhere regard their fathers.

Also, and this is important, the other island women were not physically constructed as was Ixinatsi. They were as ordinary in that respect as every other woman I have coupled with in my lifetime. In short, I was so infatuated with Cricket that no other woman would ever measure up to the standards she had set. It was only because she wished it that I lent my services to the women at large. I did that more dutifully than avidly, and even instituted a sort of program—a petitioning woman every other night, the nights between being devoted to Cricket alone—and those were nights of love, not just loving.

It may be that because I had seldom lacked for women—and certainly did not now—I had become somewhat jaded with the commonplace, and the very newness of Ixinatsi was what vitalized me so. I only know that the sensations shared by her and myself kindled in me fires that I had never felt, even in my lustiest youth. As for dear Cricket, I am sure she had no idea that she was physically superior to ordinary women. Nothing could ever have made her suspect that she had been so god-blessed at birth. And, of course, it may be that she was not the only female in human history to have been thus endowed by a goddess. Possibly some aged midwife, after numberless years of attending a numberless multitude of females, could have told of having sometime found some other young woman similarly constructed.