Descend to Heaven

And I knew that if at that moment I were to tilt her face up and kiss her with what I was feeling, there would be no way she could resist.

It was just a hug, a friendly hug, yet never was there a hug that contained more sexual tension and aching potential than that simple embrace. She didn't move against me, didn't suggest or invite or do anything, but suddenly the true depth of my desire for her rushed over me like a wave and left me dizzy.

But I would not do that to her. Not yet. It was too fast, too confusing, and these feelings were too special, beyond the crudeness of simple sex.

She released me and got into her car, keeping her eyes down to avoid mine. She started it up and put on her belt, and with one last little wave of her mittened hand, pulled out of her spot and drove away, and the snow and the night took her. 

Chapter Two

I was a chemist and biochemist up until a few years ago. I was a troubled child they tell me, moody, quiet, and always vaguely dissatisfied; driven by a strange and quiet hunger to know and to master. I could have easily come to self-destruction as a teen and adolescent, as so many of my friends did, but instead I was pushed by a stubborn curiosity and a need to know into science and literature. I wanted to know who I was and what I was doing here and what these feelings meant, and while I was no stranger to drugs and alcohol and the dissolute life, I knew there were no real answers there, only more questions.

I was quiet, driven, and intense, and I wanted answers. I needed to figure things out, one way or another. It seemed like the only worthy goal in life

These days I see all these new parents frantic to give their kids a leg up and make them intelligent by buying them books, and apps, and videos, and it makes me smile. You want to make your kids smart? Make sure they're unhappy. When you're unhappy, you spend all your time trying to figure out why.

I read a lot. And when books and literature proved a dead end, I put my mind to science, to the biochemistry of the brain. I wanted to put myself at the juncture where blind, unfeeling matter somehow arranged itself to create life and awareness, the miracle of consciousness, a new dimension to the other four. More than any other problem in science, this was the place where the miraculous happened, and I wanted to be there in the thick of it.

But things are simple when you're young. On the way to my goal, life tripped me up and battered me around. I had experiences. I fell in love, several times, and got burned. I knew joy and heartbreak and frustration and depression. I never finished my Ph.D. People I loved died, and new people came into my life. I got caught up in all the complications of life, and life had its way with me: bitch-slapped me and put me through the wash. In the end nothing was clear.

I ended up working in one tiny specialized corner of biochemistry, teasing apart the secret life of plants, far from area I'd dreamed of. I became disenchanted with this way of knowing, this trivial, niggling, molecular bean-counting. I began to despair that science could ever tell us anything.

And so I returned to the humanities; to the far edges of the humanities, the pseudo-sciences of astrology, mythology, religion and spirituality; esoterica, legend, lore. These things were true with a different kind of truth than I'd found in science. These were emotionally true. They felt right. I began bringing my mythology books to work, my books on primitive religion and the history of God. My work suffered as I lost interest.

And then science and I parted ways and all went downhill. Laid off in a department reorganization and feeling the lack of my Ph.D., I couldn't summon the will to pursue another position in biochem. I immersed myself in studies of magic and spirituality and began writing and contributing to internet sites and magazines.

There are many fools and much nonsense in the field. But there among the shards of garbled quantum physics and misunderstood neuroanatomy are a few pearls of wisdom, and more importantly, a new (or rather, old; very old) kind of truth to give light and depth and savor to life.

All this is by way of saying that as Ana drove away, I stood in that snow-blown street and felt the dark levers of heaven creaking in the night; celestial gears engaging as our two mechanisms found a way to enmesh; chains tightening, belts snapping into place.

Such things exist if you believe they do, and they were as good a way as any to explain what I felt happening between Ana and me. There was something big and important working between us and drawing us together with an inevitability that I could feel but not yet explain.

I gave Ana her Friday evening and her Saturday too. When I called her on Sunday, her younger sister Alex answered and told me she was in church.

Well why not? I'd already seen the crucifix around Ana's neck and accepted it as part of who she was, and just because I was a cynical atheist with classical neoplatonist leanings didn't mean I expected her to be. Also, the thought of her kneeling in a black lace mantilla with candle light sprinkling that earnest and innocent face, in a gown cut low enough to reveal what I knew would be an insanely overripe and sumptuous cleavage, was by no means unpleasant to contemplate.

In fact I found a deep satisfaction in the idea of Ana's Christianity, because just as I knew she'd have a fresh and devastating cleavage, I knew that her brand of Christianity would be of the tender and loving kind, intensely motherly and female, the kind that honestly forgives and comforts and opens itself to embrace the sinner. Because there was no doubt in my mind that despite her sweetness and purity, she would make an even bigger sinner out of me.

And wasn't that more than half the attraction right there?

Surprisingly, Ana returned my call later, probably after her family's dinner. I hadn't expected her to call back, mainly because I'd just called to chat and had told her sister it was noting important. But apparently Ana wanted to chat too, because we were on the phone for more than an hour.

At first, after the initial small talk ended, she wanted to talk about her pain, her hurt and uncertainty, and from the way she talked it seemed obvious that she had no other shoulder to cry on. I don't know if she was fishing for reassurance, but that's what she got from me. I couldn't help it. I honestly couldn't imagine where a man could find fault with her.

She cried for a bit but I made her laugh. I got her to forget her sadness enough that she excused herself to get a glass of wine, and then another, and the wine and her gentle tipsiness built a kind of shelter around us. A special, intimate space for just us two.

Ana made me high. Talking to her, I wasn't myself. I was funny, I was encouraging, I was positive. I thought I was being that way just to cheer her up, but no. Something in her drew it out of me. Not just her hurt and pain, but something in the way she was made me want to comfort and protect her. It wasn't that she was especially needy or solicitous; it was just something about her.

It was the same quality that allowed me—encouraged me, even—to be so honest and straightforward with her.

"You need to sleep with me," I told her at one point. "You really need to let me make love to you."

That's the kind of thing I meant. I would never have said something like that to any other woman. With her it just felt like I was advising her to get more exercise. It was a statement of fact.

"Oh no, Orrin. I could never do that. That's a bad idea."

She answered me in the same open and objective way I'd done with her. But now she went further.

"That only messes things up for me, like it messed things up with Ethan."

Ethan was her ex.

"How did it mess things up with Ethan?" I asked.

It was an intensely personal question, and I knew it. But I really wanted to know what made him leave her. And I also wanted to know just how personal I could get.

"It's just hard for me," she said. She hesitated, but it was only to find words. "I guess I'm too demanding or something. Or unresponsive. He said I didn't respond like other girls. He said he could never please me because I'd never let him. He said I didn't co-operate, so after awhile he stopped trying. And I think that was the end. He found someone else."

"You never told me that," I said.

"Why would I? It's too embarrassing, and too painful. I've never told anyone."

Suddenly she snapped at herself. "And I don't know why I'm telling you this now. Why do I keep on embarrassing myself in front of you? I hardly know you!"

"You know me, Ana," I said. "You know me so well it scares you. And you tell me things because you know you can trust me. I'm your complete opposite. I'm so opposite to you it's like telling things to a tree."

"No," her voice was soft with contrition. "It's nothing like telling it to a tree."

We went out again Wednesday night. To the movies again, to a movie neither of us really wanted to see. I ate popcorn out of the box she held on her lap, and if she understood the symbolism, she didn't show it. Popcorn gone, I put my hand over hers on the arm rest and she didn't move. At a not-particularly-shocking shocking moment in the movie, she jumped and grabbed my hand. I laced my fingers through hers and left them there.

Whether she was so wrapped up in the movie that she really didn't notice or whether she was just faking such intense concentration, I don't know, but I've never felt someone need her hand held as much as Ana did. At a not particularly sad sad part of the movie, I saw her crying.

The levers creaked, the stars enmeshed there in that dark theater as they had out in the street and under the sky.

I took her hand again as we left the movie, and she didn't object. She didn't say anything, and neither did I. We walked to her car in silence, and there I let go of her so she could get her keys. She unlocked her door and turned to me and said, "Thank you", and that's all she said. Again I stood in the street and watched her drive away.

I lived in a small apartment in a coach house behind an old building. It was small and pretty dilapidated, but it was in a great neighborhood that was rapidly being rehabbed, close to the lakefront and the zoo, and surrounded by hip and trendy bars and restaurants that sprung up and changed hands with alarming speed. I stayed out of those for the most part, but the feeling of life and bustle on the streets was palpable, and something I always enjoyed.

To get to my place you went down some obscure stairs to a big iron gate painted Chinese red. That led to a dark passage under the building that brought you to a small cement courtyard, then it was up a long flight of stairs and into my place: 2 bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bathroom, all old and unimproved, but perfect for my use.

I had shackles fixed to the doorway that led to the bedroom, and on the lower sides of the jamb too, at ankle height. There were more shackles affixed to the walls in the living room: one behind and above the sofa, and a set lower down on the wall near the space heater too. There were chains and clips on the headboard and frame of my bed, and though they were dusty now from lack of use, I still kept them. A box beneath the bed held most of my gear, my cuffs, stretcher bar, sex toys and the like. They were probably dusty too. Needless to say, I didn't have much company.

I'd tacked up esoteric charts and posters in my living room so I could sit there and study them, or just look at them and dream. There was an astrological wheel showing the properties and relationships of all the signs, a Kabalistic Tree of Life, a simplified chart of the Tarot with all the trumps and court cards explained, and a drawing of the celestial spheres as envisioned by the Neoplatonists.

I studied these the way I used to study the big Periodic Table of the Elements that dominated another wall, but instead of looking for trends in ionic size or density or melting points, I now looked for relationships between types of human and the astrological sign, or between changes of all sorts and the Kabalistic sephiroth, the manifestations of divine energy. I'd look at the celestial spheres and plot the soul's journey from Saturn (natural law or limitations) down to the sphere of earthly existence, a journey it would have to retrace on the body's death.

Did I believe in this stuff? No. Not in the way I believed in my Periodic Table, as being factual and testable and predictive. But I believed it in another way, as putting a human lens over the madness of existence and presenting another way of understanding.

Ana was a Scorpio. And I'd pulled the exact time and place of her birth out of her and plugged that into an app that determined her natal horoscope.

Her moon was in Cancer, and Capricorn was her rising sign. That meant she would be intensely passionate and emotional inside, but in a quiet and unobtrusive way. She would present herself as reserved, efficient, and ambitious, but inside she'd be a roiling stew of emotion.

So you can see now what I mean about believing this stuff and disbelieving at the same time. I wouldn't wager anything on her natal sign's being an accurate predictor of her true nature. But once I'd read all this, can I say it didn't influence the way I acted with her?

Once you read your daily horoscope, even if you think it's complete bullshit, can you say it doesn't change your expectations for the day, maybe just a little bit?

It was on a Tuesday night that she finally came over.

She called me about 7, very upset. Ethan had called her and said some hurtful things, and she wasn't handling it well. She needed to talk to me, face to face. I suggested a bar downstairs, but no, she didn't want to talk in a bar. She wanted to come over. She wouldn't stay long. She just had to see me.

I had to buzz her in when she got to the gate, and when she got upstairs, she barely commented on the place; she was too desperate to talk. She was wearing what must be her standard after-work outfit: jeans and a blue sweater, high boots with sensible heels.

"Don't mind the place," I said as she entered. "Bachelor's quarters and all that. Sit, sit, and tell me what happened."

Ana took off her leather car coat and perched tentatively on the edge of my sofa. She began worrying the shredded tissue she held in her hands.

"It's Ethan. He called me. He said some really terrible things! It's bad enough that he doesn't love me anymore, but does that mean he has to hate me instead? Why would he say those things? What did I ever do?"

I offered her a drink but she declined. She didn't want tea either, but I went and put the kettle on anyhow. She just wanted to sit on the edge of that sofa with her knees pressed together and shred that helpless tissue when she wasn't blotting her eyes with it. I brought out the box of Kleenex from the bathroom and set it down for her.

"What did he say?"

"He called me a frigid bitch. He said no man could ever love me because I was a frigid, self-absorbed bitch. He told me he thinks I might be gay, a lesbian. He'd told me that before, too. Why would he say those things?"

"To hurt you," I replied. "He thinks you didn't respond to him. To some men, that's a huge insult to their masculinity, a metaphorical kick in the balls. They take it as a grave and personal offense."

She shook her head in disbelief and finally put the shredded tissue down and took a fresh one. "I just don't know," she muttered. "I just don't know."

"Well?" I asked. "Were you?"

"Was I what?"

"Unresponsive."

She opened her mouth then closed it. "I don't know. I don't think so. I mean... I don't know how other women are, or how they're supposed to be. I wanted to be good for him. I did whatever he wanted. But when he touched me... I don't know. It was like he was following a script: touch me here, touch me there... "

"So you never felt connected?"

"Connected?" she echoed. "No, I guess not. It was different at first, but once we got married... I felt like I was just a bunch of buttons and switches, and when he pressed this button, I was supposed to do this. When he threw this switch, I was supposed to feel that. But I didn't feel much of anything, and the less I'd feel, the more I'd worry, and that would make me feel even less.

"He'd get mad. He'd deny it, but he'd get angry at me, and he'd make the same kind of sound in his throat he did when our old car wouldn't start."

She looked up at me in sudden realization. "That was it," she said. "I felt like a car with him, an old car that wouldn't start. But I couldn't help it."

The kettle whistled and I went into the kitchen and made two cups of tea and brought them into the living room.

"You know that's not the way it's supposed to be?"

"No. I didn't know. Ethan was all I really knew. I mean, I had boyfriends before. But they were just ...boyfriends."

How disconcerting that my mind chose this moment to fixate on Ana's breasts. This sweater was thinner than what she wore when we went to the movies, and tighter too. She was always chesty, but in this sweater her breasts were a feature, a bosom whose weight and succulence I could just feel with my eyes. They pressed against the sweater with an eager insistence, as if they had a mind of their own.

I was suddenly inspired. "Here. Give me your hand. I'll show you."

She put her hand out before she asked, "What are you doing?"

"We're going to see how frigid and unresponsive you are. A simple test."

I took her hand and held it face up, then rubbed my thumb over the palm. Her hand lay in mine like a little bird, warm and relaxed, the skin wonderfully soft and tender. She flinched at first, but didn't pull away. I could feel her nervousness.

"Just relax it, Ana. I'm not going to hurt you. How does that feel?"

"Feels nice," she said. "Kind of tickles."

"Uh huh." I lightened my touch and kept on stroking. "The palms of our hands can be very erotic zones, or they can be dead as door nails. Did you know that?"

She gave a nervous giggle. "No. I didn't."

I smiled, thinking there were probably lots or erotic zones Ana didn't know about.

"Yes," I said. "It depends on the people involved, and their sensitivity to one another."

She nodded dumbly.

"What's that picture on the wall behind you?" she asked. "The print."

I knew which one she meant but I turned and looked anyways.

"That's Persephone, Demeter's daughter in Greek mythology. She's being abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld, and taken down to the land of the dead."

In the picture, Hades had picked her up and held her with his arms around her ass, and was carrying her off as Persephone struggled so vehemently that one breast was exposed.

I was still caressing Ana's hand, and her eyes had a glazed and distant look.

"Oh! I've heard of her. Demeter was the goddess of wheat, and it's because Hades locked her up in hell that all the plants die in winter. But Persephone comes back every spring."

"Yeah. That's one interpretation."

Ana looked at me.

"Another interpretation is that Hades took Persephone down into the underworld to fulfill her destiny and make a complete woman out of her, that before he kidnapped her she was just a frivolous youth. But when she came back, she had a woman's knowledge and depth and was suited to be a goddess."

She turned wondering eyes to me. "I'd never heard that," she said. "How did he do that?"

I smiled and squeezed her hand. "Attention down here, Ana. We can talk later."

She brought her eyes back to her hand in mine, concentrating. She was leaning forward slightly, knees together, gazing intently as my thumb moved over her palm. She probably wasn't aware of how her breath was coming faster and more shallow, but I was.