the stars he'd placed on the insides of his eyelids stayed where they were after his eyes opened. He envisioned himself lying in bed sometime in the future, half asleep, getting a sudden glimpse of the sky that was so complete and so accurate that he couldn't know whether he was inside or out. Maybe the Guru really did have something going for him. Anyhow, it was a sure thing-he could feel it in the tips of his fingers as they rubbed over Andrea's clit and delved into her hole-that Andrea was somehow spellbound by Baalow Nee. It was strange. The more the sky made sense to Sean, the more the Guru's rambling speeches did.
When Andrea rolled onto her side and reached for his crotch, indicated that it was his turn to do nothing but enjoy, he suddenly realized that the contrast between the huge empty lifeless void overhead and the warm regularly breathing body next to him made it all seem more purely and completely sensual than it ever had before.
She unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants and eased her cool fingers into his underwear. It all seemed too casual, yet so significant. He concentrated on not trying to get excited, not trying to call up images that would help his cock get stiff and ultimately produce a gusher of sperm, but on appreciating the physical contact itself for what it was; the stroking of fingers on a particularly sensitive muscle, the coaxing forth of nerve-impulses that were intrinsically positive.
He felt very close to Andrea. He suspected-he was almost sure-that because they were both engaged in concentration on the same external things-the stars-in the same way, their thoughts and reactions to their sexual activities would be almost identical. In fact he did not ask her. He didn't want to break the magic silence that had overcome the crowd on the ship's gently rolling deck. But in fact he was right
He was mesmerized. He felt his cock swelling of itself and oozing fluid in a slow, thick stream.
It seemed as if, under the continuous, relaxed ministrations of Andrea's fingers, the channels that normally burst open all at once for a brief instant of climax were opening slowly, regularly, and somehow staying open. He was maintaining that feeling that came with the usual rush of orgasm over many seconds, many minutes.
Andrea's educated fingers circled the tip of his cock. Her whole hand wrapped around it and stroked softly, lazily down. She ran her fingertips down over the hairy sack of his balls to his asshole, let them play there for a second, and then sent them on a return journey. She pressed her thumb to the underside of the tip and jiggled it up and down against the slimy flesh. It was simply and totally delicious.
'Okay, you freaks!' the Guru screeched, breaking the mood like you'd break a match stick, 'time for the next ditty, which consists of making yourselves look as ridiculous as you are. Now that's damned near impossible, but I'm sure you'll all try your best. I think you'll agree that J look just about as ridiculous as I am-certainly much more ridiculous than any of you-but that doesn't exempt me from the doings, which I'm going to do too. Doo-too-tee- doo.'
Banks of colored spotlights flashed on and bathed the deck in mottled patches of red and purple and green and orange and blue and yellow. People rubbed their eyes and sat up. The blushing young couple from Flushing stood up and Sean and Andrea got a look at them. The girl was perhaps twenty, with a slender, slightly sway- backed figure and a pretty, innocent-looking face framed by a pixie haircut. She wasn't much taller than five-three but her legs, encased in tightly-fitting faded jeans, were exceptionally long. Her husband, was baby-faced behind his wire-rimmed glasses, shy in manner, about six feet tall, slender, with a carefully groomed head of dirty-blond collar-length hair. As they turned to watch the Guru descending from his crow's nest on a scary-looking metal ladder she poked him and whispered loudly, 'I don't know whether I'm going to like this, whatever it is.'
From then on things moved with the speed of light. Mei Ling and the black woman who'd been with her at Folk City supervised the distribution of countless pots of finger-paint of every imaginable color. The Guru's professional wrestler-types circulated through the crowd placing ash-cans full of beer on ice everywhere. Sean, and Andrea made the acquaintance of Mindy and Josh Rudolph, 20 and 22 respectively, of Main Street, Flushing, and together they listened to the Guru's final speech of the night, which he delivered from a podium in front of the swimming pool.
'I take it you have all grasped the idea of the essence of the essence of the idea, which is related to the paint. Also to your bodies, onto which the paint is to be applied by anyone who happens to come by and apply it. Now anybody who came on this cruise to get rid of hangups that might be hanging them up right now should do something about it, which would consist of either running for cover or standing around watching-until you get nailed anyhow-or painting a picture of the aforementioned hangups on someone else's body. The last is naturally the best, because it ties in with the ridiculousness of the human condition and therefore completely to be sneezed at. But if you think you'd blow your nose trying to force the issue, then go back to your cabin and wait for the horse that comes before the cart, which will be the systematic un-hanging sessions starting tomorrow. Tonight it's assumed that we're out here on a boat all by ourselves with no mommy or daddy or cop or priest or president and we're in a democracy here, which means that everyone's just as silly and bent out of shape as everyone else. The trick is to make out that you're sillier than anyone else. You might look on it as an act. It's not the real you that's getting your dork painted purple with green polka-dots, it's just some actor in a play that you happen to be playing the part of that actor in. Now that's all gratuitous assumption, but of course what isn't in the long run, so the idea is to make the long run short and vice versa. Get it?' He finished his oration by pouring a pot of chartreuse paint over his head and doing a back-flip into the swimming pool.
About half the people on the deck-mostly older ones-ran for cover.
Joints began circulating through the remainder from some unknown source.
Mei Ling and the black woman started tearing off each other's clothes. Virginia Vagina and the Princess appeared with their cohorts and streaked through the crowd, naked tits flopping, buns jouncing, whooping and screeching and mooning people and getting paint sloshed on their asses for their trouble.
Mindy Rudolph tried to break away and get to her cabin but her husband wasn't having any of it. He doused her with a bucket of lemon-yellow and started tickling her.
Joanna and Andrea fell on Sean and in a second he was naked, thrashing around while they tried to paint his dick purple with green polka-dots. John stuffed a cigar-sized joint into his mouth and he quieted down. Joe Lee, who'd disappeared for a while, returned in the company of an Amazon they'd seen earlier in a pair of pink hot-pants and matching halter. She was gorgeous, stacked, but also about six-two. Joe set her on John. She picked him up from behind and held him while Joe, with the help of a bleached-blonde middle-aged lady who appeared from nowhere dressed in what looked like three layers of mauve saran wrap, depantsed him. The lady promptly divested herself of what there was of her outfit and sat on John's face. He had a quick snack while she painted dainty little circles around his navel. Virginia Vagina pranced up and sat down on his dick, amusing herself by dabbing little flower-like blotches on the middle aged lady's long, swinging tits as she humped.
The wide-eyed young poet who'd thought his verse sounded like Walt Whitman's came upon their party while wandering through the crowd in search of sex. He timidly began unbuttoning Andrea's blouse as she and Joanna put the finishing touches on Sean's dick. Andrea noticed him and stuck out her tongue. He staggered back and she leapt up at him. She wrestled him to the deck, ripped off her blouse, and stuck a tit in his mouth. He lay there sucking in ecstatic bewilderment while Joanna relieved him of his clothing. 'What's say?' she asked. 'Want to do this one yellow with red polka-dots?'
Mindy Rudolph, half laughing and half crying and generally confused, fought her husband as he tore at her blouse and yelled, 'It was your idea to come on this cruise, not mine, so why don't you just do what the Guru says? You could use some enlightenment!' Sean watched with some interest as Josh succeeded in getting her blouse off and freeing her pertly upswept breasts. They bobbled high on her chest as she fought for breath and tried to cover them.
'I want to go back to the cabin!' she shouted. 'I want to… '
Suddenly she stopped and stared up toward the bow. The Guru was winding his way toward her, traces of chartreuse paint in his hair. He was good and naked, and someone had painted fuzzy brown fishes and scaly-looking golden bears on his chest and thighs. His lower legs, from the toe-tips to the calves, were painted to look as if he was wearing a gaudy pair of unmatched knee socks, one blue and silver, the other orange and black.
Josh let Mindy go and she just sat numbly clutching the remnants of her blouse to her chest. The Guru affected a hesitation-step and drew up before her. He frowned contemplatively. 'I have sensed a number of unserene vibrations coming from this area.' He took no notice of John, whose head was still wedged between the middle-aged lady's ass cheeks and whose dick was still the sole possession of Virginia Vagina, nor of any of the others. Mindy was too stunned to do anything.
'I see,' the Guru intoned with dignity, 'that you think you do not want to expose yourself at this little… tea party, and yet you also think you do. But you think that you should think that you don't. This is what we call a
