example. That old banker-type Harold-the one with the crazy wife Grace? I saw Virginia Vagina giving him an underwater blow-job in the pool today. He was standing in the shallow end smoking a joint and watching that wild-eyed young poet from Sasketchewan shove bananas from the rigging into his wife's pussy! Now you can just bet what the guys at the Club would say if they heard about that. And yesterday there was that meditation session that went for six hours and then turned into a Wesson-oil party… '
'I'm beginning to suspect you're right,' Sean agreed. 'Although I still have my reservations-chief among them being that mystical power, which just about amounts to magic, doesn't make any sense. I know you get tired of me trying to explain everything in terms of clever planning or hypnotic techniques or psychological knowledge or just plain old charisma, but I still hold out my reservations.'
'Let's see what you think after the InterFuck Quotillion tonight. Remember the first night half the passengers split from the blind stargazing at the first mention of flesh? Well you know damned well it's become standard practice for women not to wear anything above the waist, and if someone can shove bananas by the pool side without anyone at all screaming-or even staying in their cabin-something heavy's gone on.'
Joanna came into the bedroom where they'd been talking. Andrea was changing her guitar strings now and popping peyote buttons. 'Hey-John's gone off with Joe to go down on that Amazon. She claims she hasn't been satisfied yet and they're going to see if a group effort can lick the problem. I'm alone and horny.' She flopped down onto a bed. It had become standard policy in their suite not to wear anything at all and Joanna had not deviated from it. She spread her legs and looked casually at Sean. 'Want to pop me a quick one before we go to the dance?'
'Sure.' Sean kept up his discussion with Andrea, who took no more notice of the proceedings than she would have if Joanna had asked Sean to pour her a drink. He crawled up to Joanna's open cunt and dangled his dork in front of it. Joanna took the responsibility for rendering it serviceable. 'Ever since you told me about that weird thing with the storm,' he continued, 'and what the Guru said that night at Folk City about heavy rain, I've really been perplexed. I mean that shit with the fortune cookies was weird in itself, I suppose, but coming in the middle of all that other stuff… ' His voice trailed off as he concentrated on fitting his cock into Joanna's hole and getting the rhythm going.
'Mindy believes it,' Andrea pointed out, 'and she should know. And did I tell you Joe's been taking down some of the things the Guru says and looking at them from a philosophical point of view? He says he's started to get some idea of a coherent system out of it, but it's incredibly complex. He's getting really excited. He even told me he's thinking of changing his dissertation topic and writing on the Guru instead.'
'Instead of what?' Sean asked as he gave Joanna an extra hard pump and slipped his hands under her buttocks to squeeze them and lift her.
'I forget. Something really vital like the syntax of medieval adverbs.'
'Hold it a second,' Sean said. 'Joanna's getting off.'
Joanna kicked her legs straight up and Sean reached under her to curl his fingers across her clit. That always drove her crazy. 'You got it, baby,' she breathed. 'Right on the button. Unh… Unh… unh.' She gave a quick, hard thrust, wiggled a little, then relaxed. 'Wow. Thanks. That was nice. You didn't want to come?'
'No. I'm saving it up for the big event.'
'That's funny,' Joanna said. 'I'm working it up for the big event.'
Andrea looked at her watch and threw her guitar into its case. They made their way upstairs. 'I hope these damned peyote buttons don't made me too sick to sing.'
'Don't worry about it,' Sean counseled. 'If you puke into the microphone the audience'll just think it's Rod and the Staffs idea of a new kind of instrument. The barfing throat. Hell, if that shoe-shine boy can whap his pud on the top of a Shinola can and call it percussion, you could pee into the sound-hole of your guitar… '
They reached the ballroom floor and, as was her habit, Andrea took out her guitar and prepared to enter singing. Tee into the sound-hole,' she repeated. 'Where have I heard that before?'
'In another book.'
'What?'
'Book. Book. Look, look, my heart is an open book… I… love… nobody but you.' He started singing and Andrea recognized the corny old song immediately. She started strumming chords and they waded into the seething crowd of naked bodies wailing their heads off. Sean, just behind Andrea, suddenly had a flash of deja vu. Andrea was wearing just what she'd worn for their first date.
The idea of the dance was simple. Andrea played and sang danceable music; the Guru, guiding light (and lightning rod) of Rod and the Staff, stood on his head beside her leaning up against a vertical plank drumming the air with his fingers. Behind them the shoe-shine boy-actually a red-faced alcoholic of 57 culled from among the Bowery's finest-sat whapping the aforementioned pud on the aforementioned Shinola can with a microphone two inches away. He was really quite good. Then there was the kitchen hindrance; one cook beating a hard salami (a carrot; a head of lettuce…) onto a cutting board, one bottle-washer rhythmically shooting water from a hose into a colander, and one waiter rapping on crystal glasses with a wire whisk (and breaking half a dozen glasses into an ash-can at the end of each song). Out on the floor before them couples coupled and uncoupled and recoupled, the men naturally inserting their penises into the vaginas of each of their partners in turn. The object of the game (ideally) was for each male to dance with each female, or verse vicea, in the course of the Quotillian, and with that in mind everyone was provided with a little chart featuring 491 numbered squares-the number of passengers, 982, being equally divided between males and females. And each person displayed her or his own number after her or his own particular fancy. Sean and Joanna and the rest were counted among the passengers and had their own numbers. Joanna naturally had John write hers in magic marker across her right ass cheek. Sean had his in little silver paste-on stars on his chest. No one was really expected to make it to everyone else but just for fun-or so you could say 'I fucked 192 people in one night,' and be accurate-people were supposed to check off their partners' numbers on the charts with little pencils, also provided.
The band struck up and things were underway. Even though Sean had become inured to just about any kind of strange happening whatsoever, the sight of 982 naked bodies overwhelmed him.
The ballroom was immense. As far as Sean could see there was nothing but flesh. Near him a portly, balding man of thirty-five or so bowed to a slightly pudgy, freckle-face girl, displayed his erection, and promptly won her favors. She was nearly as tall as he was and it didn't take much knee-flexing for him to fit his rod into the delicate pink folds of her practically hairless crotch. They whirled away pirouetting elegantly. Others weren't so lucky. As couples coupled all over the place and Sean approached an almost-skinny fragile-looking blonde, he noticed a tall, rail-thin man trying to couple with a short, definitely fat woman. Friends laughed and kidded them as the man stooped, hunched, squatted and maneuvered, and she tried to climb into the air on her tippie-toes. 'Why don't you get a joint put in the middle of it,' one suggested. 'Go down and then come up.'
Sean and the blonde made contact. She was very helpful about grabbing his cock and circling it around in her hole and shoving it way up in. 'Jesus,' she shuddered when she stood with his rod up her quivering and quaking, 'I don't know whether I can dance like this.'
They took a few steps and then saw another couple composed of a tall man and a short woman-the woman a little lighter than the other one and really quite svelt, with a flat ass but enormous boobs-who'd bit on the obvious solution, which was that the man should just pick the woman up and walk around balling her. It made for a strange dance, but a great fuck. Of course it led men to decide to put the women down after a while and just go at them on the floor, but it was allowed by the rules that that was dancing anyhow.
Sean learned that the blonde's name was Clarice. He picked her up and started banging her up and down off his hips as though she were a paddle ball. He promptly tripped over a couple engaged in a sixty-nine on the floor and barely managed to descend avoiding injury to anyone. 'We may as well stay here and finish up,' he told Clarice, sucking on her extraordinarily wide and pale nipples. She agreed.
From the stage Andrea sang and looked down at the scene-it had to be one in a century-for about an hour. Under the influence of half a dozen high-quality peyote buttons it looked as if a bulkhead had given way and a sea of people had flowed in out of a Hieronymous Bosh painting. Everywhere she looked there were cocks slithering in and out of cunts, people locked in passionate embraces, mouths sucking tits, hands grabbing asses; there was laughing and grunting and wailing and moaning, slapping and sliding and grabbing and gliding, bopping and hopping and humping and slumping, bumping and balling and catching and calling… Finally Andrea broke off in the middle of a staid rendition of a traditional foxtrot and started rocking to the tune of the Jerry Lee Lewis song, 'Slishin' and a Splashin'.' 'Moanin' and a Groanin', Humpin' and a Bumpin'… '
