The Televisionary Oracle (2 page)

Sorry. I’ll stop now. I silently apologize for sculpting her out of my private raw materials. In real life, she’s probably a single mother scratching out a living through a combination of welfare payments and a typical Santa Cruz under-the-table job like scraping barnacles off boats down at the yacht harbor. Of course this is also weirdly attractive to the part of me that yearns to save the world by erotically nurturing all the world’s most psychically wounded (yet physically beautiful) women. In the interests of objectively reporting on the current state of my lust, though, that’s not the specific version of the divine feminine I’m in the mood to lose myself in today.

I command myself to take a tantric breath of fire. It’s amazing how profoundly my imagination can blind me. As the first flush of my testosterone-fueled fantasy subsides, I realize I’ve encountered this siren on at least three previous occasions, each time in circumstances where my receptivity to her charms did not fully combust due to my preoccupation with making a spectacle of myself. The first meeting was the night she jumped on stage during one of my band’s shows here at the Catalyst. I was histrionically imitating a homeless person and screaming out the paranoid lyrics to “Get Out of My Head.”

But as I yanked on a long shank of my hair, which was secured in a topknot by a white sweat sock, this wacko babe wearing a baseball uniform—the same voluptuary who now stands before me in the
women’s bathroom—grabbed the guitar player’s microphone and tried to outshout me, chanting, “Brainwash yourself before somebody nasty beats you to it” until one of the bouncers ushered her off.

I also remember seeing her at a performance art ritual, “A Happy Birthday for Death,” which a friend of mine staged for about sixty pagan hipsters in a cemetery at dawn a couple months ago. As the sun rose, I caught a glimpse of Gorgeous Sphinx doing a dance on top of a sepulcher to the accompaniment of harp, tabla, and didgeridoo. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t stop and stare because I had a major role in the proceedings. I was playing the goat god Pan, complete with furry leggings and horns strapped on my head. My job was to dance obscenely and blow my panpipes and offer everyone sips of wine from my goatskin and in general stir up an orgiastic mood.

The third time I saw her was a month ago, at a party thrown by a local newspaper that carries the stories I write now and then. I was entertaining a gaggle of yuppie drunks with a rap about how I was a dream doctor; that if they prayed to me before they went to sleep, I would make a house call to their dreams and surgically remove the demons from their nightmares. Absolutely free! No further obligation!

Suddenly a green-eyed woman with stunning auburn hair elbowed her way through the champagne-swillers. Though I had never talked with her before in my life, she announced, “You said in my dream last night that I should not under any circumstances play soccer in bunny slippers at dawn in a supermarket parking lot with a gang of sadomasochistic stockbrokers who’ve promised to teach me the Balinese monkey chant. I’m extremely grateful for that advice, and I wanted to do something for you in return. Please accept this talisman. I made it myself.”

Whereupon she handed me a purple origami in the shape of a bull’s skull and disappeared.

“Are you lost?” she says now, here in the ladies’ restroom, her tone a perky blend of sarcasm and affection.

“Doing some undercover political work,” I say, trying to sound enigmatic but self-effacing, cocky but harmless. “Slipping some benevolent propaganda to the feminist masses.”

She scans my graffiti, then turns to the mirror and stares my reflection
in the eye with mock gravity. “Stick out your tongue,” she commands.

“Huh?”

“Stick out your tongue. I want to examine your tongue.”

I’m in no mood to be rational. Besides, I’ve just announced in my personal ad that I want to be of service to strong, mysterious women. I thrust out my tongue.

“You don’t have anywhere near a ten-incher,” she laughs. “It’s maybe five at most.”

Am I dreaming? Is it possible this person is one of the rare grownups who likes to play as much as I do? My heart feels a warm, tickling rush as I dare to imagine that my initial fantasies about her might be accurate.

“My tongue always becomes exactly as long as the woman I’m with needs it to be,” I reply, pretending to be defensive. Her next statement will be crucial. It’ll tell me if she’s prepared to join me here in a spontaneous act of performance art, or else retreat into a boring old literal conversation.

“But if it’s true that you’re a macho feminist, I would think that you might want to demonstrate the strength of your convictions by wearing women’s clothing.”

Eureka. Please O Goddess in heaven, let this woman be the kindred spirit she seems to be.

“My therapist has strictly specified which fetishes and addictions are good for me,” I jive. “She says for now the only feminine garments I should wear are lesbian pumps.” And in fact I do have on what are called in Santa Cruz “lesbian pumps”—lavender hightop Converse sneakers.

“Uh-huh. OK. That is an acceptable answer. By the way, I should tell you that I have been sent by the Feminist Bureau of Standards to determine whether you meet the certification requirements. Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?”

“I’m eager to prove my worthiness.”

“First question. You say you’ve got a roomful of books on the Goddess revival. Then give me a capsule summary of the importance of Marija Gimbutas’ work.

“Question two. You say you’ve incinerated all your patriarchal imprints. Then give me a very practical example of a way it’s changed
one of your relationships with an actual woman.

“Third question. Let me feel your face. Hey, I thought you said you’re stubble-free. I’d never let you slide that sandpaper across
my
cheek.”

There are few exchanges with
any
beautiful woman that I don’t find at least mildly erotic. (Whether this is a sick compulsion or a gift from the Goddess is still in question.) But when the beautiful woman is also skilled in the art of improvising irreverent psychodramas, mere titillation evolves into atavistic hunger.

Before responding to her test questions, I decide to make a preemptory strike. I will alert her to the possibility that my testosterone could at any moment boil over and sully my standing vow never to objectify any woman, ever, for any reason—even women who’re begging to be objectified. My egregiously selfish, gloriously empowering, accursedly sickening, ecstatically inspiring TESTOSTERONE might, at any moment, assume its priestly shamanic disguise and attempt to transubstantiate Gorgeous Sphinx into archetypal Goddess food—that is to say, sneakily objectify her in a
spiritual
manner.

By the way, I am in awe of everything I just said. I inwardly genuflect in rapt admiration of my ability to confess my male sins in such a way as to make myself more attractive to women. Somehow I have been chosen by the Goddess—I alone of all the men I’ve ever known—to have discovered this brilliant technique of transcending the assholeness which is my legacy as a male—by
capitalizing
on it.

I take my felt-tip marker to the bathroom mirror and carefully print at the top, “Official Document Ensuring That All Further Interactions between the Male and Female Will Be Fully Consensual.”

Gorgeous Sphinx grows a mocking grin of horror on her face and stage-whispers, “My hero! Thank you so so very, very much for your oh-so-courtly courtesy and romantic old-fashioned respect. You’re worried, aren’t you? You’re afraid you’re going to commit an act of sexual harassment against my poor, defenseless female person. How flattering. I appreciate your sensitive concern for my delicate feelings … 
Now quit waffling, bitch, and say what you fucking mean!
”

She slaps her thigh histrionically and doubles over with guffaws.
With her head still inverted and down near her knees, she edges her way towards me and begins to tie my shoelaces together. Blissfully stunned by this brazen act of prankful intimacy, I don’t resist.

Trying to recover my composure, I shuffle back to the mirror to write some more. “Whereas, the male and female parties to this agreement earnestly desire to speak freely, but also recognize that the male, despite his most earnest efforts, has yet to fully debug himself of crude patriarchal metaviruses which could cause him to unintentionally hurl lust-bombs at the aura of the female.”

Then I draw two lines for our signatures, and sign my name on one.

Gorgeous Sphinx takes the marker from me and signs her name with her left hand. “Rapunzel Blavatsky.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to subtract points for your residual patriarchal metaviruses,” she says solemnly, “but your admission of guilt has awakened in me a possibly idiotic compassion which may well aid your cause in the long run. On the other hand, however, I’m getting impatient for your erudite discourse in reply to my three questions … 
you goofy slut!
”

A new attack of chuckles convulses her, and she slaps me on the back like a drunken ex-classmate at a high school reunion.

I take my Swiss army knife out of my jeans and open the biggest blade. I turn on the water faucet and squirt some of the yellow soap from the dispenser onto my hands. Soon I’m engaged in a primitive scraping of the stubble from my face. To show off my reckless poise even more, I don’t even look in the mirror to guide my hand.

“Let’s see,” I begin. “Marija Gimbutas. Maverick archaeologist who for forty years doggedly tracked down ancient goddess figurines from under the soil of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, singlehandedly digging up the concrete proof that up until four thousand years ago, God was a woman—and a woman with a big fat ass at that.”

“Good, good. Though at the Bureau of Standards we prefer ‘plump buttocks’ to ‘big fat ass.’ ”

Rapunzel is now facing away from me, hard at work drawing and scribbling on the wall with my felt-tip pen. I’m freshly invaded by the musky coyote scent of her grandiose hair as she squats down. That and her bouncy, muscular body language beam a wave of rubbery heat directly at my knees, which in reply threaten to crumple.

“Now as to your second question, Rapunzel. About giving an example of how I’ve incinerated my patriarchal imprints. Let me tell you about the laws of making love I learned from my lesbian girlfriend, Lourdes.”

“You’re a brave fool.”

“Here’s the first law: Whatever you, as a man, might think is the proper length of time to keep up a particular stroke or maneuver, take that and at least double it. Don’t just rub your cheek against her belly for a couple minutes and then move on to swabbing your hair against her thighs. Continue doing that cheek and belly thing forever, like you’re playing the childhood game ‘Slow Motion.’ ”

As I speak, Rapunzel’s creation is taking shape. It appears to be a cartoon strip.

“The second law is this: Figure out a way, using your imagination and magic, to get your thrills as much from giving your companion pleasure as you do from receiving pleasure from her. Remake your body, do whatever it takes, so that you have the sensation, when you’re stroking your lover’s erogenous zones, that you’re literally touching yourself.”

“And have you actually mastered these two laws yet?” Rapunzel interrupts.

“Well, I’m still working on the second. But the first is thoroughly ingrained.”

“Uh-oh. Sounds like I’m going to have to take a few points off for not putting your money where your mouth is, my friend.”

“I understand. But maybe you’ll reinstate them when I tell you the other three laws. All of which I have perfected.”

“I’m open to an appeal.”

“The third law is that the top of the tongue and the underside of the tongue have very different textures. You should use them to create different effects.

“Fourth law: It’s a wise soul who sings songs into his lover’s flesh; who literally places his lips against various parts of her body and croons away.”

Rapunzel shuffles over while still squatting and presses her mouth onto my left hand. To my delight, she sings a few lines from one of my songs, “Television”:

Finished with her guerrilla action, Rapunzel sidles back to work on her artistic masterpiece.

I continue my presentation as if I’m unfazed.

“The fifth law is most important. That’s this. There are hundreds of erogenous zones to choose from, all created equal. A fully democratic allotment of sensitive nerve-endings. The back of the knee needs as much attention as the tender spot where the underside of the breast joins the chest. The lobe of the ear and the crook of the shoulder demand equal time. And don’t neglect the place where the top of the thigh makes the transition into the butt; it deserves as many kisses as the nape of the neck.

“I should also mention a crucial corollary to the fifth law:
Every
part of your body should eventually caress, soothe, fondle, rub, and vibrate against
every
part of her body. No exceptions!”

“Elegant,” Rapunzel says. “I think the Bureau of Standards will be impressed.”

I’ve finished, as well as can be expected, ripping the whiskers off my face. The whole time I’ve delivered my monologue, my companion here in the restroom has been working. She steps away now, apparently satisfied, and I examine the piece in detail. It is indeed a comic strip. It features a male character with long hair and a wiry build, sort of like me.

In the first panel, the dude is shown bowing down as if in prayer or homage to a creature that has the body of a vulture and the head and breasts of a woman. A dialogue balloon coming out of the supplicant’s mouth says, “I’m your humble serpent.”

In the next panel, the vulture woman is aloft, carrying him away through the air. The mode of transport is unusual. Her buzzard beak is grasping the most sensitive part of his anatomy. The balloon emerging from his mouth says, “I always wanted to be stolen.”