A Wedding Ceremony

It was hot at the time of the ceremony; hot all night, not just during the day.

The ground in the ceremonial area, dusty at the best of times, was turned to fine powder by the dancer's pounding feet. The dust hung in the air and formed a dome around the naked black dancer; his muscular legs pounding a staccato irregular rhythm into the parched earth whilst the audience of women chanted and swayed.

The females sat in a broken circle around the dance area, percussive musicians completing the ring. The women were decorated with tribal finery. They were naked and powerful.

Fires, lit at dusk for illumination, heated as well and after sunset the dance took on a spectacular, sinister air. This diurnal fluctuation of pace and mood was of central importance to the day and night long dance into married life. It confirmed and reinforced the cycles of ebb and flow which pervade every aspect of life.

Over the time of the ceremony the drummers, the musicians, the audience of the women of the tribe would all grow weary with the dancer. The urging, the taunting, the teasing would wane. The whole event would assume a dragging, grinding air. Pain and fatigue resonated, hopelessness permeated every aching pore of the performer. Skepticism and spite shimmered around those who would see him fail early. The dancer retreated, stupefied by exhaustion, to the safety of ritual chants and pleas to ancient spirits to provide the energy for him to reach the next peak which it had been told would come.

The stories of the dance were told to young men at initiation time; a time of enlightenment, of change, of revelation. To perform the Dance was not impossible, in fact it was within the abilities of all, but it was endowed with the status impossibility and this myth, this bluff was the test of a young man's courage and resolve.

The myth leant importance to both those who danced and those who would take the dancer as their husband. The stories, the lore, had told that the dance caused all to stoop into the depths of despair, but they had also promised that all who persisted would be born through this test; all would blossom from the drought of exhaustion into a raging, whirling blur of light and heat, and sweat, and dust, and laughter... and pleasure.

Only the fear of failure dominated; only faith in the lore would guarantee success. The men had to prove stamina and worth, but only to the limit of normal human endurance. To dance to immobility was all that was required for honor. It did not matter that they failed into unconsciousness; to have given that much was enough.

Legends were made of those who endured intact, and of those who dare not try; those single men who occasionally became gadaicha men; mystical men. Mysticism and restraint cloaked them from injurious gossip. Insanity was the only other safe escape from the agony and eustasy ot the ceremony of the joining. These were the blessed, who wandered unrestrained though any ceremony, male or female, pagan or Christian; not revered, but never damned or harmed.

It is during the night that the last of the lulls of spirit occurs. At about three o'clock in the morning, the energy of the dancer is at an all time low. He drags his aching body around as if made of lead. Sweat streaks his body; dust adheres. It was not uncommon at this time, for the young men to stumble and fall to the dusty floor. The collapse was traditionally followed by a humble gesture from the women, who would circle the dancer and bear him up. But tradition will always yield to passion, and in fact, in the flickering firelight, the fingers of the women would dig into the weary flesh of the exhausted dancer in a relentless ritual kneading of his tired muscles.

In time with the music, the circular group would turn and sway, tossing the seemingly lifeless body of the exhausted dancer gently between them, the dancer having resigned themselves to their frailty; given themselves over to exhaustion. That moment of defeat would not be forgotten though. A husbands social standing was irrevocably founded on it.

Hands pulled and tugged at the muscles of his thighs and stroked firmly down his back. They plucked at the smooth glowing muscles...they nipped and pinched his genitals...

The women watching this display of virility were normally bound by strict traditional codes of conduct, but tonight, they were nameless and faceless. Some of the audience in the heady years of adolescence had admired and maybe even pursued the dancer. Some: the most daring, may even harbor secret intimate memories...special memories... Now was their last chance. Now they enjoyed impunity from the harsh tribal punishments for adultery and improper behavior. At the ceremony, all was earthy, pleasurable and good. Some nips and pinches lingered, some bit hard and bruised...some would take the opportunity in the rhythm of the dance to slide a smooth muscular thigh between theirs, to crush slick folds of flesh to him. To leave their scent on him.

This powerful display of base desire gave the dance its power; its energy and majesty. This empirical lust and longing, sanitized and stylized is expressed much more demurely in gentler cultures, cultures who, envying what they have lost, reflect with regret on the cost of their civilization.

The darkest time, both physically and emotionally, is just before dawn. The dancer moves as if in a trance, and to an inexperienced observer would appear drugged or hypnotized, but despite this there was a growing feeling of elation amongst the women audience. The feeling is contagious and invigorating. The pace of the dance quickens slightly.

The weary musicians sense the change of mood. Aching arms and swollen fingers beat harder on the skins of the drums, brass symbols began to chime with more vitality. Smooth ebony skin glows and pulses. The tempo of the dance increases further as the first, almost imperceptible, shade of dawn stains the nocturnal clouds above distant coastal hills.

The women in the circle who until now had remain seated other than to revive a fallen dancer, stand and sway with the music. As inevitable dawn was their return to normal strict tribal law, the end of their freedom. An exciting urgency drives them now, they sing traditional songs of longing and regret for themselves and for the man about to marry. The songs are both circular and cumulative. The lyrics repeated and developed, the language and expression becoming more and more explicit with each repetition....

"Oh how sad that this one would never again be free to taste the fruit of many flowers.

"How unfortunate were the young girls of the village to be denied this fine specimen of manhood"

The women took it in turns to escalate the crudity of the chant, each trying to out do the other as they danced in the most evocative manner around the man. As he showed signs of arousal, the women shrieked with delight, and danced in a stylized and curiously erotic fashion: thighs parted and hips pressed forward, thrusting themselves at the man. Occasionally, one particularly persistent woman would get close enough so that the rigid arching penis would jab between their sweat stained thighs, causing the dancer to whirl away

As his excitement grows, a change of rhythm dictates another facet of the ceremony, and the dancer moves along the waiting line of women as they pass around a gourd of water. Filling their mouths, they each blow the water noisily out onto his straining penis in a precession of showers. Some women, overcome with the powerful eroticism and careless of indignity let forth a spray of urine, wetting the dancer as they gyrated around him; shrouding him with their scent.

The climax of the ceremony comes as the sky turns crimson with the day. The exhausted dancer, overcome with relief and arousal surrenders himself to his own climax, letting the seed spill unabated as he dances wildly, showering the women about him, much to their delight and, if tradition was to be believed, good fortune.

It is at the climax of this orgy of sound and movement that the bride appears. As she emerges from behind a specially constructed woven palm leaf shelter, the ceremony falls silent.

She has spent the night drifting in and out of sleep to the sound of the ceremony, being oiled and massaged by the older female members of her family as they impart on her the knowledge of their years in stories. Her smooth ebony skin is glowing in the blazing dawn. She is naked wearing only a simple traditional head dress made from the shiny red seeds of the Rain Tree. The beads flow from the crown of her head; around, and so framing, a serenely beautiful face and down between her breasts. The end of the string was a polished conical seed pod, intricately etched, and nestling lightly against the crease of flesh between her thighs; a flower whose petals were completely naked; shaven in a symbol of her innocence.

It is a steaming, panting congregation who shuffle aside to create a clear path between the bride and groom. Both people move forward, and meet at the edge of the dusty ceremonial dancing ground. The bride stands on a clean woven fibre mat. She is absolutely pristine. The dancer stands in the centre of the dancing circle, panting but immobile as a bull before the final lunge. He is exhausted from his exertions; pungent with both his own heady perfume and the scent of others.

"You have now seen the pleasures of being available to many women. Do you still want to give yourself to this one alone???'

"You have seen him at his lowest and most debased, do you still want this one???"

The respective fathers hurl the questions as if they were accusations.

The dancer steps slowly from the dusty wasteland of the ceremonial ground onto the clean mat. The girl leads her exhausted partner to the plaited palm shelter. The couple move with dignity, grace, certainty and...strength.