Chapter Six

Chapter Six

"Brrr."
Paul shivered. The darkness was cooler than usual, almost as cold as at Josh's the other night. He locked the door and rode the elevator down. The dewy open air was even cooler. A faint rosy glow tinged the sky.
"Glorious."
Butterflies fluttered in his stomach. Paul turned on the music, patted his pocket to be sure the keys were there and set off at a brisk pace.
The cool damp breeze caressed his skin.
The same satiny sensation as in the dream.
“Keep those connections coming.” Clouds of breath hung in the still air.
Damp sprawling shapes of malaluca trees loomed from the darkness.
How pure and perfect to be swaying along in the early morning light, dream fragments coming through, music throbbing.
Pure like the clouds?
No! Pure for real. The way things are supposed to be. Organized. "Ship shape," Dad called it.
But that was discipline. What about having fun?
Fun was dessert, discipline, the meat and potatoes.
Didn’t he vacuum his one-bedroom apartment once a week (whether it needed it or not) and rinse off the dirty dishes and silverware before putting them in the dishwasher? Doing things the way they were supposed to be done (the way Mom and Pop had taught him) worked and kept him out of trouble.
Except for sex. . . and his older sister Antoinette. . . and. . . clothes.
His parents were formal and insisted he be buttoned up. Now, every chance he got, he wore loose comfortable clothing that didn't constrict.
Except for this damn jock strap.
Paul patted his swaying buttocks where the jock gripped, leaving red welts.
He’d been naked in the dream with gleaming smelly oil on his skin.
He shivered. Better quit thinking about it, getting hard again.
So. Go jerk off.
No way! Not first thing in the morning! Gotta keep thinking about the dream. Don’t want another acting out episode. Something’s gotta give.
Quit wearing the jock.
That made sense. The jock was already off in other areas, so yeah, why not?
Even in the thick of things, in the middle of statistics class or working a long line on the register in Eckerd's, the euphoric, light, crystal clear feeling would come. Then, breathing deeply, the way he did during the centering at Group, he'd join it; ease off and let himself slow down.
It was as if the Life Force itself was intervening, short-circuiting the discipline, saying he was O.K. and loved just as he was.
He was believing it, too, at least 10% of the time anyhow; sensing that without having to work at it, he was being guided toward both a great awakening and the fulfillment of his dreams. The sense of save-the-world urgency was still there, Josh seemed to feel it too, but more and more lately, Paul felt challenged, not threatened by it.
"All right!" he stage whispered, feeling the goodness of it, running through the cool damp air, the rosy glow spreading itself on the horizon.
It will fade, though. It never lasts.
So? It’s here now!
Whizzing onward, past the flowerless Poinciana trees near the big swimming pool, Paul wondered if those two fine-looking women would be out.
A woman had been in the dream. A goddess, magnificent and aloof.
Like Magda, but not like her. The kind of woman he’d always wanted. But thinking of Magdalena that way, as a sex goddess to be worshipped, wasn’t right. Magda was different. He cared about her, maybe even loved her.
But he did want to think of someone that way. Yeah.
If such a woman happened by in the course of his authorized activities, why not admire her?
Afterall, he didn't go out of his way searching. He didn't waste time. The radar was always on anyhow. Wasn't that what was expected? The way it was supposed to be between men and women? So why not look? Besides, South Florida provided a constant stream of feminine beauty -- Haitians, Latinas, Europeans and southern belles.
Once Paul’s radar locked-on to a carefully made-up face, the rhythmic flex of shapely calves or an artfully done hairdo; the woman’s pert impudently thrusting breasts or the gracious sway of her softly curving buttocks did the rest. He knew it was all illusion; but eagerly suspended disbelief. He allowed himself to be hypnotized by the shimmer, clothes, and make-up, to drift into fantasy, imagining the elegant women he watched from afar to be exquisite other-worldly creatures put on earth to fascinate and mesmerize him.
Were they aware? Did beautiful women know the power they had?
The ones Paul was interested in did. He knew they knew when they caught him looking, and he'd smile modestly and they'd give him that distant, superior look. They'd both turn away then. But at the first opportunity, he'd turn back.
He loved transforming the many attractive women he saw each day into the divine Female, aloof, self-possessed and fertile with possibilities. Watching them groom themselves in public, combing their hair, putting on lipstick; self absorbed and unaware of his admiration, was more than a pastime. It was communion.
Only women could change and transcended themselves in plain view. Only they were allowed to be attractive, vulnerable and open. Public places, trains, hallways and streets, were Paul’s temple. There, the chalice and host were raised and venerated. There, women, already other, became more so; both priests and what the priests worshipped.
But in the temple of the public place men could only admire the other, true worship had to be done in secret. For men, being opposite, were expected to only tolerate the feminine, not venerate it.
Maybe Paul’s need to worship grew from that rigid separation. Perhaps being enthralled was a way of meeting expectations; to simultaneously honor the feminine while separating himself from it.
Also, worshiping in secret required little of him. He didn’t have to work at being more open or intuitive. He could remain dispassionate and theoretical. It was like the wafer and the wine -- a ritual, something one did instead.
Yet sometimes, an otherwise perfect woman’s small imperfections, legs splayed a bit too wide or lipstick smeared on teeth, jarred him awake. Then he’d see her as only human, like himself, and the ritual’s magic was shattered leaving him with an uncomfortable, empty feeling.
But that never lasted long. Soon his radar would lock-on again, drawn by a pair of long tapering legs striding along, calve muscles flexing beneath black nylons. Or a softly glowing, artfully made up face surrounded by richly colored lustrous hair. A narrow ankle and shapely foot with high heeled shoe dangling from its toe tips. Or a relaxed yet gracefully erect posture with firm thrusting breasts. Or swaying, perfectly inverted heart-shaped buttocks in blue jeans. Then, hooked again, he’d be led through sexual excitement to an idealized experience of the Eternal Female -- forever beckoning, forever other, always unobtainable.
Goddesses. Divine beings requiring nothing more than worship.
That's what he was doing on his knees in the dream! What the discipline and ritual position were about.
Indeed. Kind of gives the radar and sex fantasies greater significance, doesn’t it? Make's 'em about the “Meaning of Life,” not just about getting off.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Forget it.
Okay. So the acting out . . . .
Goes with the sex fantasies.
All the way back to the earliest ones at age nine. Fantasies of secretly sniffing pretty girls’ bicycle seats. Or waiting for them to return, then convincing them to let him nuzzle their buttocks through warm smelly panties. Or those few weeks with his sister Antoinette. . . .
Ah, the good old days.
Now, the fantasies were erotic mini-series. With the same theme. Being forced to have sex with an arrogant and beautiful older woman. Someone in her thirties or forties.
She'd appear suddenly, in familiar locations, when he least expected her. Between the book shelves in the deserted third floor of the University library. Or behind the big cartons of toilet tissue in the darkened stock room in the back of Eckerd's Drug Store.
Sometimes she would speak. More often she would not. Speech was unnecessary in any event, for he was always ready, perfectly attuned to her. Always available. As their eyes met for the first time, he felt completed, as if he'd spent his whole life waiting and preparing himself just for her. She had only to gaze into his eyes to command him.
Once he'd satisfied her and this aggressive all-knowing female was done using him, she would take him to her spacious home in the suburbs. There, sure of her power over him, this irresistible, beautiful, older woman, now his beloved Mistress, would teach him the correct ways to please and serve a woman, keeping him with her, forever, as her sex slave.
Paul patted his rising erection. God! Even running and with Darth Vader's theme blaring!
But why those fantasies? He’d enjoyed straight sex since seventeen.
So? They were only fantasies!
The acting out said it was more. Something was desperate to do one of them -- to feel it, taste it, smell it. Maybe the fantasy with the big, thirty three-year old blonde in the library. . . .
Paul was erecting.
No! Think of the consequences! Give in and you might spend the rest of your life as an addicted sex slave, handed from one dominant woman to another in a shadowy perverted sexual underworld.
Yesss!
No! That was the point of the discipline and the busy schedule, to keep the fantasizing down.
Since Magdalena, it hadn't worked so well.
It was the games she liked to play.
Back and soaked with sweat, Paul stripped. The warm shower felt GREAT. The two women hadn't been out, but tomorrow was another day!
After a quick breakfast of Cheerios and vitamins, he put on his Eckerd's Drugstore "uniform." Standing in front of the full-length mirror behind the bedroom door, tucking the white shirt into the dark slacks, his mind wandered back to the jog and the shower. The two most enjoyable carefree parts of the day were over.
He sighed, feeling sorry for himself.
Well. . . . No matter, time for work.
Fixing the narrow red tie, Paul tried to buck himself up with an encouraging smile and a chipper, "Go get 'em, Boy-o!"
But it didn't help. Wistful for the warm shower, tireder than he ought to be, all he wanted was to float through the day.
"No coasting allowed! Strike while the iron's hot! You can do it, Boy-o!"
But maybe he couldn't.
As he drove east towards the drug store, Paul realized he was pouring more and more of himself into the dreamwork. He’d even skipped the morning run twice last week to stay home with Edgar Cayce and Ann Faraday to interpret a particularly conflicted dream.
Too much work. We’re close to a breakdown or a breakthrough.
But it wasn’t all work. Hadn't he met the woman he’d been searching for his entire life, the darkly sensuous strikingly beautiful Magdalena, on the job, at the Dream Group's Annual Fall Orientation?
Yes. And don’t forget Angela Saunders, too.
So?
But what about the music?

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

On my knees!
Paul rose and tried to concentrate.
How long?
He forced his straining eyes to focus on the microwave clock.
Five eleven.
Only a minute.
He looked absently at his diminishing erection.
"I've acted out!"
He shuddered, released his shriveled penis.
“If I'd been in a public place. . . . My God. Gotta tell Josh.”
Tell him what?
The professor's disappointed face flashed by. All Paul had were vague longings, tight muscles and a dry throat. Without recall, they were nowhere.
He willed his shaking hands to reach for the steaming mug.
Easy, Boy-o! Easy.
He took a sip. The hot liquid felt good.
Gotta remember.
Sure you do, and you will. Just lighten up a bit. Why not put some music on?
A muscle twisted in Paul's belly.
Music? Now?
Hey, what happened to that melody? Almost had it the other night at Josh’s didn’t ya?
"More important stuff to do. . . ."
Paul put the mug on the counter and went to the CD cabinet in the living room.
That’s it. But you want to finish that song don’t you. . . ?
He loaded a David Arkenstone disk and returned to the kitchen. As he saw his undershorts on the floor, a fragment of the dream flashed by. He shut his eyes and grabbed for it.
"Yesss! Thank you, God!”
The content was hazy, but it felt like the first dream, the one he and Josh had dated to Paul’s tenth birthday. Finally, another pay-off for the struggling and constant, “would the dreamwork ever be more than a hobby,” doubts.
The full scholarship from Miami International University’s Psychology Department including graduate courses, room and board at MIU's South Campus in Miami and a part time job at Eckerd's Drug Store had been the first pay-off .
Now this memory, nearly three years later, as the first draft of the Master's Thesis on dream communication was nearly complete, might be equally important.
Paul gulped the coffee and went to get his gear from the hall closet. He started suiting-up for his daily run. As the jock grabbed the tender flesh of his buttocks, another piece of the dream surfaced.
It was lewd. Lewd? Yeah, you know, dirty, scummy, disgusting.
Peaceful, too, though. O.K. Sexy and peaceful at the same time.
Themes. Josh says go for the themes.
Lewd-sexy and peaceful.
Sharp contrasts! But not in the dream alone. South Florida was full of them.
The power was contrasts. The dream wanted him to open to the contrasts.
Very difficult. The contrasts were so extreme they were already pulling Paul apart. It would be hard to open any more, and stay sane. Canals dynamited out of rare coral. Endangered Keys deer. Wounded manatees. New Florida Turnpike extensions slashed through virgin mangrove and saw grass. And tall coconut palms swaying elegantly above it all.
The boosterism and bluster, the man-made and God-made, collided head-on here. But for the threat of a hurricane, which neither Paul nor three quarters of the two million people here ever experienced, it seemed as if the man-made was winning. There was nothing but contrasts!
So what did it mean, getting pulled apart? What was the theme?
Letting go. It means, if you're holding on and being pulled apart, the only way to survive -- hold on -- is to let go. It's a paradox. A Zen thing.
Like the clouds.
Paul sighed remembering late afternoons on the Tamiami Trail, driving to school those first weeks in South Florida, with the cumulus clouds, majestic, high in the blue sky. They’d seemed above it all, disinterested observers, beyond the confused tangle on the ground.
But they hadn’t been, and it hurt Paul even now, to accept that.
The clouds were a part of it, not at all what they appeared. They too made a contribution to the nagging discomfort -- the perpetually clinging warmth and the pervasively frigid air conditioning, the bright glaring sunlight and the $90.00 sunglasses.
Paul shook his head and pulled on the jogging shorts.
The schools here taught in thirty-seven different languages! Imagine! People from Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Haiti, Thailand and Vietnam plus every Caribbean Island and every nation in South America were here. Sounds of so many different languages and vistas of so many different human features, hues, shapes and sizes, made even a casual walk an adventure.
But there was a scary side, too.
A sibilant presence hissed in the city’s aggressive urban hustle, trains, tall buildings and traffic jams; gnawing inaudibly but for the sudden violence, at the low-key touristy ambiance. Some coiled power slithered beneath the year-round school summer-vacation atmosphere. Vague and misshapen, it gave Miami-Dade county and its 30 cities a Graham Greene novel feel, like one of those provincial capitals in a Latin republic perpetually under a partial state of siege.
Of course, the power was everywhere, not just in the Magic City, but Paul thought it was closer to the surface here than in Pennsylvania. He’d even glimpsed its restless motion in the laid-back art-deco hotels on South Beach. Like a play within a play, the really good stuff happened behind the carefully managed scenes, just below the surface. Especially with the local politics.
Silence hung heavy, pregnant. The David Arkenstone disk had stopped. Paul's mind raced on.
Josh called that power the Life Force and said the ancient alchemists' injunction, "What is, isn't; and what isn't, is" -- best described how it operated.
"That means watch out for me, your habits, and most especially, your own thoughts,” Josh had said. “Take nothing for granted. This place especially. Miami's like an incubator for premature babies -- artificial but life giving. It takes things that would die if left alone, weak premature aspects of the Life Force -- fragile hopes, twisted dreams, lost causes -- and not only sustains them, but helps them thrive.
"The dream you're working on, the sexy one you can't remember, that's an example. You had that dream in Dundeen, right? But not as frequently or as intensely as here? It's this place. The same thing happened to me, when I first got here from Boston."
It was true. Paul pulled the sweat shirt on.
He was being seduced by geography; by the way this place ceaselessly offered itself and by the easy opportunities to experience the different in the familiar. This tropical place with its lurking potential and fecund otherness was incubating something in him. Had been for months. Now it was being born. He was in labor. His white, male, middle class consciousness, his major theme Josh would call it, the music, jogs, dream work, discipline and sex, was changing.
Paul stood. The jock relaxed its grip on his scrotum. Then, as he stooped to lace the other shoe, it grabbed the tender flesh of his buttocks.
Someone had done that to him in the dream. Disciplined him. He’d had to maintain a rigid, ritual posture on his knees.
Maybe it was time to skip the run and work this through. Acting out was . . . . No. Better to keep going. For some reason, this routine stuff is working.
Opening the CD cabinet, Paul clipped the Walkman to his belt, slipped the headset around his neck and stared at the neat stacks of self-improvement and music tapes. Dearth Vader’s theme seemed right. He slid the Empire tape into the player, adjusted the headset and left the apartment.