37
_________________________
Everyone who is in
love will
experience
an
extraordin
ary
disillusio
nment
after the
pleasure
is finally
attained;
and he
will be
astonished
that what
was
desired
with such
longing
achieves
nothing
more than
what every
other
sexual
satisfacti
on
achieves,
so that he
does not
see
himself
very much
benefited
by it.
_________________________
Leaving the group room did not clear the muck from
Philip`s mind. He walked down Fillmore Street assailed by
anxiety. What had happened to his arsenal of self–soothing
techniques? Everything that had for so long provided him
structure and serenity was unraveling—his mental
discipline, his cosmic perspective. Struggling for
equanimity, he instructed himself: Don`t struggle, don`t
resist, clear your mind; do nothing but watch the passing
show of your thoughts. Just let thoughts drift into
consciousness and then drift away.
Things drifted in all right, but there was no drifting
out. Instead, images unpacked their bags, hung up their
clothes, and set up housekeeping in his mind. Pam`s face
drifted into view. He focused on her image, which, to his
astonishment, transformed itself by shedding years: her
features grew younger, and soon the Pam he had known so
many years ago stood before him. How strange it was to
descry the young in the old. He usually imagined the
opposite trajectory—seeing the future in the present, the
skull underlying the unblemished skin of youth.
How radiant her face! And such astonishing clarity!
Of all the hordes, the hundreds, of women whose bodies he
had entered and whose faces had long faded, melding into
one archetypal visage, how was it possible that Pam`s face
persisted in such remarkable detail?
Then, to his amazement, sharper memory snippets of
the young Pam slipped into view: her beauty, her giddy
excitement as he tied her wrists with his belt, her cascade of
orgasms. His own sexual excitement remained as a vague
body memory—a wordless, heaving sensation of pelvic
thrusting and exultation. He remembered, too, lingering in
her arms for much too long. It was for that precise reason
he had regarded her as dangerous and had resolved on the
spot not to see her again. She represented a threat to his
freedom. The quarry he sought was quick sexual release—
that was his license to blessed peace and solitude. He never
wanted carnality. He wanted freedom; he wanted to escape
from the bondage of desire in order to enter, however
briefly, the true philosophers` will–free clearing. Only after
sexual release could he think elevated thoughts and join his
friends—the great thinkers whose books were personal
letters to him.
More fantasies came; his passion enveloped him and,
with a great whoosh, sucked him from the philosophers`
distant observing grandstand. He craved; he desired; he
wanted. And more than anything, he wanted to hold Pam`s
face in his hands. Tight orderly connections between
thoughts loosened. He imagined a sea lion surrounded by a
harem of cows, then a yelping mongrel flinging himself
again and again against a steel link fence separating him
from a bitch in heat. He felt himself a brutish, club–wielding caveman, grunting, warning off competitors. He
wanted to possess her, lick her, smell her. He thought of
Tony`s muscular forearms, of Popeye gulping his spinach
and chucking the empty can behind him. He saw Tony
mounting her—her legs splayed, her arms encircling him.
That pussy should be his, his alone. She had no right to
