ourosboros

      Kat was expansively tight. In her addled illuminated state she felt fortunate to have actually read something on false memory. So, while her playwright husband Kit Pico pontificated to his theatre pals upon the financial merit of being "outed" by Bose Hadleigh, she sat in a wicker peacock throne on the veranda of their Caribbean beachfront queen anne restoration and held her own court. Chilled, pure, undiluted Absolut vodka had oiled that part of her brain still attached to her tongue. Gabbing glibly about image implants and nonesuch, she felt her words tripping forth like quicksilver. Like drunken Elmer Gantry she could orate on anything! Yadda-de-blah. To the point of boorishness. Her psycho-babble was world class. Her bio-babble was cutting edge. Post-hip. And yet, her audience of fedoras and scarves, cigars and spliffs, two by two, quietly dwindled as things picked up in the botanical salon. A techno-tango pounded from the CD system. Two Key West men were pealing clothes from a giggling Jamaican creole creature in a floral sarong and a lime-green No Fear tee-shirt. The guys wore navy-blue wife-beaters and short khaki shorts. Both had buzzcut pates and pencil-thin sideburns. Tanned and buff to perfection, they flashed their six-pack abs and the crowd roared. The sarong was the first garment to drop as the seduction swept across the gleaming hardwood floor. Boom-bah-boom. When they uncovered her cafe-latte chest the two valentinos shouted: "Nazimova!"      Jutting without so much as a jiggle, her small conical breasts consisted mostly of aureole and nipple. Instead of a penis she owned a vagina with an enormously erect clitoris. Her ruddy little man in a boat. The CD changed to Eiffel 65 and everybody got kissed.
      From her enclave Kat could see that Kit's birthday bash was on the right track. Old farts snorted cocaine from mirrors while kids on the side, already rolling on Ecstasy, mescaline or GBH, danced with blow-pops and glow-sticks. Kat smiled to her lone listener.
     Almost a crone, the woman wore black leather, carried a switch-blade and went by the name of Speedboat. She was a wizzened white-haired veteran of CBGB's and Max's Kansas City and could now pass for Iggy Pop in that Crow movie. Thirty years ago she would have struck you as a doomed souless siren of decadence haunting the halls of the Chelsea Hotel. A noir-ish suberranean adept in rock poetry, absinthe and death. She fancied herself Salome. Demanding heads, all ex-lovers, New Yorkers of exquisite androgyny, glamorous and pouting: as if Nico were a man. Their motto--SUCK ANDY WARHOL'S COCK!
     Sitting now with Kat she thought about how jumbled her recollections had become lately. What was real? What did "real" mean? She "remembered" scooping out all their bicameral minds, slurping and laughing with graveyard mirth, bobbing for those perverse apples beneath dancehall lights. Cold strobes. Her jet hair shining with electric-blue luster, a midnight patina, straight and long, over one ghastly shoulder.
     "Looks like it's just you and me," Kat sighed.
     Yup."
     Speedboat could just about taste Kat's mind. It was a crystal dissolving in a spoon. In the meantime she savored a sip of Brooklyn Ale and a nick of Stilton cheese.
     "Can I get you anything?" Kat asked. "I'm such a crummy host."
     "Nope."
     The mob carrying on inside seemed to ascertain to Kat the de-evolution of species. Alluding to it with a nod, she sniffed, "Hell is other people. Eh?"
     "Nah," Speadboat replied with a plume of Garcia y Vega smoke. "Hell is oneself."



                                                                                     *


     Speedboat's scrutiny moved lovelingly from Kat's flighty super-ego to her well-grounded body, what could be seen of it, at play within a paisely earth-mother tent. She visualized a voluptuous, zaftig eden of flesh. And realized she was aroused. Moist in that special way.
      Kat's bomblast of auburn curls led Speedboat to imagine a smaller explosion of pubic hair of a same color and texture. Mossy and fine. And she remembered a certain quality of light slanting in the afternoon, diffused through a lush thicket of australian pine. Sea-breezes played upon that secluded bosom of dunes, behind the cabana where she used to go and hide and be with herself when a young girl.
      I'm a monster, she thought. I have scars and tatoos where my tits should be.
     

                                                                                           *

      "So how did you come to know my husband?" Kat asked.
      "There was the coffeehouse scene down in the Grove. Back when Tom Rush, Vince Martin and Fred Neil were folk music icons."
      "Don't know them."
      "Before your time. In fact I'd say your husband is before your time."
      "Yeah yeah," Kat agreed with a faux yawn. "Old enough to be my dad."
      "Anyway, I was doing the bohemian thing down there before moving to New York. There were poetry readings. Dada. Beat. We're talking late Fifties, early Sixties. Comedy gigs kicking The Establishment. You won't remember Mort Sahl, but a lot of locals aped him. Downbeat guys. The jazz was terrific. Ira Sullivan was El Jeffe. Hot, cool, you name it, he played it."
      "What about Kit?"
      "He was there. Faded jeans. Hawaii shirt. Straw boater. And the damndest broken-down cowboy boots you ever saw."
      "Not all in black, like now?"
      "Nope."
      "Had a goatee, though?"
      "That he did." Speedboat chuckled.
      "How did you two hook up?"
      "He posted a casting call on a cork board. Play was entitled "The Orchid Mutilations." It required a bouncy female to show her tits. Word around was this was just a jolt of gratuitous nudity to satisfy the wanker playwright. Nix nix."
      "How did Kit take that?"
      "Went bonkers. Got arrested one night running starkers down Key Biscayne."
      Kat whooped. "He hasn't changed much!"
      Speedboat belched. "I could use another ale."
      Kat got up and returned with two frosty Whitbreads. "So, you auditioned."
      "Certainly did. Had great tits."
      "How did the play go?"
      "It didn't. The venue was the coffeehouse. Sparky the owner said anything goes. Naked me especially. He could care less that the play also called for male anal battery. Up your arse! Bang-o!"
       Doing her best Claude Rains, Kat gasped. "I'm shocked. Shocked!"
       Speedboat could abide no longer. She placed the palm of her right hand upon Kat's left knee, and said, "I doubt anything shocks you."
       "More. Tell me more. You said the play didn't go."
       "Kit dug up this loopy woman from one of his classes to play the female lead. Older, maybe thirty. The right age for the role. Oh, god, what a nutjob. She was a method actor. So what happened? She dredged up so much mental trauma with her Stanislavsky she had a nervous breakdown. I'd say her personal history had far more drama than Kit's stupid little play."
       "Don't recall Kit ever mentioning it."
       "You never will, sugar."


                                                                                         *


     The lawn was placid. A crescent moon sailed among scudding clouds like a scythe through wheat. Hat- snatching breezes rattled through seagrape and boughs of australian tea trees. The women descended a pebbled path that wound in a byzantine course toward the strand. They passed a gaggle of teenagers wearing wide baggy togs and goofing around with laughing gas.
      Kat tittered like a schoolgirl. "Wait! I have a better idea."
     "What's that?" Speedboat purred while stroking the back of her new friend's gown.
     "We should crank up the spa. Have a zen bath."
     "A hot tub? I dunno." Speedboat smoothed the front of her black Patty Smith jersey, pressing ever so gingerly her flat bosom.
     "Oh, come on, wild woman. Don't tell me you're shy!"


                                                                                                 *


      Kat stripped with all the aplomb of a Bunny Yeager naturist. Speedboat was still clad. The spa water swirled with aeromatic herbs and salts, fragrant and warm.
      "Last one in is a wet loon," Kat taunted.
      Speeedboat doffed her jeans and panties. She kept her jersey on. She joined Kat inside the womb of the tub.
      "Ohhh. Ahhh. Okay--"
      "Wonderful, isn't it?"
      Speedboat grinned as the years melted from her wintry body. "Oh, yesss--"
      "May I smoke one of your cigars?"
      "Certainly."
      "Sorry to ask you to get up."
      "No problem."
      Speedboat ascended from the tub with a gush. Kat keenly observed how water cascaded from Speedboat's gaunt haunches and dripped from her white pubic pelt. She commanded, "Take off your top."
      Speedboat stood brazenly on the deck like a Bronze Age Scythian amazon warrior. She defiantly hoisted her jersey and flung it away.
      "Look all you want."
      Where her breasts had been were circular tatoos, densely intricate jade green mandala-like inkings that camouflaged the scars.
      Winged serpent motif. Eating its tail.
      "I've seen that design before," Kat whispered.
      "The dragon worm ouroboros." Speedboat returned to the bath. "Cigar you wanted."
      "Light me."
      Their eyes locked. Glittering in the flux.


                                                                                      *


      Silver mane and goatee. Kit resembled Buffalo Bill Cody. He preferred the old-fashion flamboyant style of long hair, eschewing the oh-so-tony ponytail. No white buckskin. No ee cummings. He wore a black ensemble from Cavin Klein. At the moment he stood akimbo in the center of his library, lost in rosy thought. Had been searching for Louise Brook's "Lulu In Hollywood" when he came across two paperbacks bound together with a rubber band. "La Batarde" by Violette Leduc and "She Came To Stay" by Simone DeBeauvoir. Each shared cover art celebrating feminine nudity.
      Tom offered him a tumbler of Meyer's rum on the rocks. "This how you like it?"
      Accepting the drink with a dreamy smile, Kit replied, "Yes, it is."
      Tom launched the interview. "Tell me, then, about your next play. Does it concern arrangements among gay men and women who marry--"
      Kit narrowed his gaze, aiming down the ridge of his aquiline nose with near-sighted ferocity. Focused best he could, he shot Tom "the look."
      "Anything you've heard about my wife and me is rubbish. Malicious rubbish."
      Tom wrung his hands. He was miserable. A sweaty chubby man who wore clothes badly, he was making a mess of his olive cargo safari suit. And the interview. "I believe you misunderstood the subtext of the question."
      "Oh, cockswill!"
      "But I have in my notes--"
      Condescendingly Kit gestured for Tom to sit. Pure theatre, he shook his hair, gargled rum, watching Tom squirm. Then he shrugged. "Alas, youthinks the lady doth protest too much."
      "Yes."
      "Marvelous. Now effendi, let's begin anew. What magazine are you with?"
      "I'm free-lance. I sent queries everywhere. One gave me the green light. Semio-Stage."
      "Jesus God."


                                                                                           *


      The locusts were all gone from his part of the house. It was 3 a.m. The wee small hours. His sacred time for writing. His office was dark as obsidian. One dot of light from the miniature desk lamp led the way into the labyrinth of his mind.
      The Sony Discman crooned to him alone.
      He fondled the plastic CD case. Incredible things, he thought, these compact discs. At a time when his vinyl collection of jazz albums resided in Valhalla.
      Lets Get Lost. Chet Baker looked so sexy in those clinging chinos. Bare-chested. Just enough muscle tone. Photographed in 1953, the year Sinatra essayed the role of Private Maggio in "From Here To Eternity."
      Sinatra was boss. Singing from the well of loneliness, a crooner to touch one's existential soul.
      Kit never wanted to fuck Sinatra. Chet Baker, on the other hand, was a dreamboat.


                                                                                           *


      Speedboat's tummy convulsed in a rosary of splendid little orgasms.
      "You go, girl," Kat said, pausing, looking up.
      Speedboat smiled, bringing Kat's face to hers. The kiss erupted like a volcano. Lava flowed from their deepest recesses.
      They were making love on a beach towel spread in the tall bermuda grass alongside a hedge of croton. Secluded beneath the stars.
      Speedboat kissed Kat's tummy. "Luvya, sugar."
      Blue Nun liebfraumilch chilled in a bucket of ice.
      They clinked glasses.
      "Excellent!" Speedboat smacked her lips.
      "Goes well with fish."
      "Hah, you wicked thing!"
      Their laughter wafted toward the mahogany forest.
      "Know something?" Kat offered.
      "What?"
      "Up yonder was once a stadium for Carib sports."
      "Where they played lacross with heads in sacks?"
      "No!"
      Squealing, giggling, kissing.


                                                                                              *


      Kit loved the confines of a spotlight. Stagecraft.
      Surrounding darkness comforted him. Beyond it, nihilo. He had no fear of nothingness. Fearing it was futile. Gazing into the brilliant spot of light from the lamp, he may have been gazing at the moon mirrored in the crystal water of the gypsy's silver bowl.
      A vision arose of lusty angels writhing in tantric ecstasy. Great winged yogin with hideously erect penises were compiling a forbidden sex guide from a defeated corner of heaven. Unbridled mortals joined with grimacing bald nifilim in this comedy. A pungent odor of semen and anal grease assaulted Kit's nose.


                                                                                              *


       Suddenly there was a sharding of glass on the veranda and his trance was broken. He heard the women laughing. He got up and listened through french doors. They were trying to be quiet, but something had struck them as terribly funny.
       Speedboat whispered, "No! He'd spank us both!"
       Tonight his women were like children. He delighted in their impishness and stood there a long time. When he was sure they were gone he clicked off the light and strode out to the starlit lawn and sat in the old rattan chair. A frangipani hovered overhead, clacking.


                                                                                         *

      A purple haze lay abed the sea at dawn. The sun rose with flamingo pink flourish, spray-painting everything in pastel hue. On the coquina seawall Kat and Speedboat sat cross-legged with demitasse coffee. Wearing black caftans, sleeves ruffling in the breeze, they resembled nuns from a distant occult order. From a straw beach-basket Kat brought forth a calabash pipe, ornately carved, feminine.
      "Best ganja on the island."
      Perfectly tamped, the cannabis burned leeward without a hitch.
      "Mmm, not harsh at all."
      "This is my moon-lodge blend. It has magical properties."
      "You're a lovely lady. Kit is a lucky man."
      "I'm the lucky one."


                                                                                           *


      They found him happily laboring upon a nearly finished sculpture.
      "I didn't know you sculpted, old chum."
      "Not many people do, Speedo."
      The figure stood lithe and gangly, in a style influenced by Giacometti's metal.
       "It's you, luv."
       "It's a frigging stringbean!" Patting her hips, Kat commented, "I'm no stringbean."
       Speedboat stroked the clay shanks and fingered the delta of venus like a blind woman reading Anais Nin in braile.


                                                                                             *


      The warm water of the spa swirled about his loins. He held his penis and thought of bratwurst. That was not helping his erection.
      Come on, ya li'l wanker.
     The presence of someone else descended upon him like a cobweb.
      "Hey, Speedo. Come sit."
      She tiptoed to the edge of the tub, guaged the water temperature with her hand, and slid in. Her nakedness was new to him.
      "Wow."
      "I'm something, aren't I?"
      "You were always something."
      "Go ahead. Touch me."
      "I remember when you used to jiggle for me."
      "Touch me right and I still jiggle."
      He kissed the tatoos of her chest. He traced the scars with his tongue, then nuzzled her armpits. Her natural scent was a drug.
      "Oh, sugar," she sighed. "I love you."
      From the garden Kat watched them. She plucked one of his prized orchids and mutilated it.