Mojave

A shimmering vision, like a psychedelic cinema, of us lying IN one another on a neon beach at the water's edge as a mountainous hot wave arches over us, then crashes down. The wave becomes the scalding lava as we knew it would, and in that searing flood we are dissolved at once.

Pain! My life and soul I feel gushing hotly from me. Agony. Our bodies are afire; lightning crackling from me, deep into her body, out to each of her nerve endings.

I realize with a shutterblink of shock that we are DYING now; this is death. We cry out and clutch one another: I hear from trillions of light-years distance - billions of spirits and beings and galaxies away - my own hoarse groan and her final desperate convulsive sob. We are melting through the blanket, into the sand; into the ancient layered rock beneath. Burning into the core of the earth.

And then the cosmos hurtles apart in a blinding, rending flash of flame, and a peal of apocalyptic rolling thunder like the canyons and mountains of an ancient planet falling into chaos and ruin.

The last echoes of the death and rebirth of the universe echo back from a trillion miles away in the void.....

Our deaths, and the deaths of all; then peace. Oblivion.

We awaken a little in another more familiar world as the heat of the dying fire ebbs, damply entangled in one another's arms and legs like a pair of sleeping kittens. There is sand on my lips; her sweet scent on my lips, too. I stroke her satiny abdomen, her nipples with my fingertips; cup her vagina in my hand to feel her heat and wetness: hers and mine; ours. My finger glides slickly into her, and Wendy sighs and mutters something softly as I cover us with the blanket. Her eyelids flutter heavily; then mine, too. Sleep comes again at once.

* * * * *

Morning. The sun is up over the faded roof of the old Wagoneer, lovingly nudging us toward wakefulness. Sounds.

Clink! Giggles.

I sit up and the blanket falls away from my shoulders. I feel faint, slightly nauseated, and disoriented for a moment. Wendy moans, and without waking, strokes my leg with her fingertips. A shadow falls over us as Marta, smiling shyly, brings to me and puts in my hand a steaming cup of aromatic coffee, a hint of cinnamon and bourbon. I sip it, burning my tongue a little at first. Nothing has ever tasted so good before.

This desert world, ours; hemmed in by mountains and bright blue sky, is clean, sharp, and colorful. Nothing has ever looked so good before. I stand and stretch, the warm sun caressing my body.

Tae Ho Quan Hotel, Singapore. March 1987