My Goddesses: A Memoir of the 70s

Her sweet and delicate scent is washed from me by sweat and tears, but still I hear her grief when I pause to breathe yet more of my own self-loathing.

Still I hear it.

The Goddess

Part III

Davi Bekke

The Goddess Chronicles

February 27, 1979

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Home is a comfy room at a traditional southwestern posada with a corner fireplace of adobe, and a stack of pinon firewood. The air is fragrant with the stove smoke of pinon and juniper. In this lovely, cozy place, I wish I was with Cherie or Kayla; both. Tomorrow I have an appointment with the State of New Mexico archaeologist; a coal mine permitting negotiation to begin. It may take a year to arrive at a workable compromise, so I'll spend a lot of time here and out on the Navajo lands adjoining Chaco Canyon National Monument.

So often when I'm alone and thoughtful in a lovely place, I remember things. Feel them. Some I'd rather forget. Lately I spend most of my life alone, and I think too much; remember too much. Cherie and Kayla are the ghosts that accompany me, haunt me; everywhere.

I think: We made love. So few words, those three. Like other things I thought I had mastered, I assumed I knew what "We made love" meant. Hadn't I done it thousands of times? And learnt how wrong I was, again. The story of my life: I ask God for a BIG drink of water to quench my thirst, and am suddenly dangling by the scruff of my neck over Niagara Falls. All my life I have asked for, prayed for, and TAKEN more of everything, then cowered under a bush while praying to have the "more" removed before it kills me.

So: you wanted water, sonny? You wanted "LOVE"?

I know now that it was a mistake to allow Kayla to insist on us telling Cherie together. Cherie is shocked and upset; feels conspired against. She says she doesn't see any great harm done, but tells me that night, quietly, that she would "prefer" private lovemaking be just between us two. Her understatement is generous under the circumstances, but I get the message. She knows, and she fears. I gratefully agree, and feel a slight reprieve of the doomed wretchedness of the afternoon. I didn't deserve even that, I know now. Much worse is yet to come. Perhaps even then I knew that, too.

Next day, Cherie leaves for work while Kayla and I sit at the table awkwardly finishing coffee and breakfast. Both of us receive a kiss, and a gracious but firm look of entreaty: please, no more.

The day following is better, and we begin to relax again with one another. To laugh, even about "It". We apparently agree to pretend that "It" was an accident, a misunderstanding. Our collective denial is childish and absurd, I know now, but it was soothing at the time. It lulled my regret for making love with Kayla; still some there - but not nearly enough.

My ego reasserts itself: God, I am so brave, so wise a man to have risked so much; ventured to the edge to stretch our envelope of comfort, to herd us toward a deeper love, a richer experience, a healthier life. Toward wisdom and freedom, evolution toward godhood. How wise I am; a truly great artist. The captain of the ship of liberation from the stifling "morality" of a previous age. I am a renaissance man. And my women, too. We go where none have gone before. It IS a dangerous, lonely, and arduous task, this enlightenment, but someone has to do it. God chose us, and She never makes mistakes.

Deep inside, though, my confidence in my own elevated rhetoric has all but evaporated. I am lost and frightened, but still pretending suavity and self-assurance.

You sneer, and I applaud you. I was, and maybe still am, a secret werewolf of the most treacherous and dangerous type. Dressed in lamb's clothing and smiling benignly, I no longer see in the mirror the reflection of my own sharp fangs; the carnivorous fire in my eyes. I eat grass, see? Not an all-flesh diet; preferably while it's still twitching and warm...

And yes; I am being hard on myself. I; WE, traveled by choice through a wilderness with no paths, no roads, no other human habitation, no signposts, no directions, no landmarks to take bearings from. None of us could plausibly deny awareness of the risks. And I had felt the earth lurch under my feet; seen the lightning miss by inches, smelt the ozone, and dodged by a millimeter a crushing boulder. For perhaps the first time in my adult life, I doubted my own navigational abilities.

I'd be dishonest if I evaded directly addressing what I felt, and what Kayla told me she felt, when "we made love" that morning. For just a moment afterwards, in desperation, I convinced myself that Kayla had seduced me, purely to martyr herself somehow. I'd NEVER at any time in the years I'd known her thought Kayla inclined to lying, manipulating, seducing, or martyrdom. I don't believe any of that now. She's a pure soul; incapable of that.

I vividly remember lying atop her; happy, soaking wet from my little ice-water bath. I remember - can still feel - my body awakening and responding to the tickle of her soft pubic fur against me. Her big gray eyes widening as I swell and stiffen. Baffled as she lies on her side, holding her hand out to me. When I touched my lips and tongue to her, as I had done literally dozens of times in two years or so; in play, in lust, in service, in heat; something changed. Something changed in what I felt, and it was immediately clear that this was different for Kayla, as well. We weren't exercising in halter on a track now, but running wild and free over green hills.

We made love. I still flush with hot shame as I remember that first time; the power in my hands, lips, cock. My drive to be in her deeper; tear her open; hurt her. Slake a terrible thirst with her blood, if necessary. Fuck her to tears, sobs, to begging; fuck her to death by orgasm. Intoxication with my power over her body; a power I had never felt before, with anyone. Shock and then terror in her eyes as she looks into the abyss and feels herself slipping; knows it is me pulling her fingers free of their final handhold. All she can do now is cling to the body that is driving hers. Our final extremity, her eyelashes wet; her face twisting into a mask of some indescribable torment as our bodies coalesce in fire. The searing sweet agony of my own orgasm in her. I hear her sob; we're helpless as naked children being sucked into a tornado as my body arches over hers; my soul shoots into hers. Our tenderness as at the end we weep, and my hands and tears try to comfort her in our anguish.

I still do not comprehend how our contented family came to this. Was this foreordained? From that summer afternoon when Cherie, Kayla, and I first lay together; touched one another together, it was a certainty, I know now, that Kayla and I would someday, if not that exact morning, make love privately. I had certainly thought about it; in the months after she arrived, I began to want her so desperately that I thought I was going mad. After Cherie, Kayla, and I made love that first time, I must have gone mad with an unquenchable thirst; and once I drank from that well, I only became thirstier.

Making love with Cherie began to pale; was no longer making love. It was sex: good, but mechanical; technical. Had I been lying to myself about how wonderful Davi and Cherie were?

Kayla told me later that she had wanted me from early on, and feared loving me. She engineered our first union, with Cherie. Despite having had both male and female lovers, she does not know an orgasm until once with a kind, patient woman. She had assumed that her body couldn't. Then her few female lovers, including Cherie, free her. Before the first time Cherie, Kayla, and I had sex together, she hadn't known even a gentle, loving touch from a man, at least. She had seen Cherie and I; heard Cherie cry out. Cherie told her, apparently in loving detail, what it felt like to have me in her; filling her, coming in her while my fingers stroked her clit in its little cradle.

Kayla watched, next to us, as Cherie guided me to bring her to an excruciating climax: my tongue; fingers; erection; at the edge of the bed so I could control my depth and angle; touching and licking her to the very brink of orgasm; slowing while her panting evened; repeating it until neither of us could bear another second. Cherie described her own awareness and excitement of Kayla being so close, watching. Sharing Kayla's excitement as she came. Kayla told me later that escaping our bedroom immediately afterward, she masturbated to orgasm in seconds sitting on the toilet. I imagined her thighs open, eyes closed, wet fingers touching herself. Toes curling; calves cramping as contractions overpower her; her body drenching in scalding heat. I believe she's telling me that she craves the heat and hardness of a man inside her. My strength possessing; filling her. We knew what came next.

And from then on I looked at Kayla dressed, Kayla naked; Kayla spooning oatmeal and yogurt into her generous mouth, Kayla in panties washing her face at the bathroom sink; Kayla climbing into our bed to sleep next to me, and I wanted her, so badly. I listened to her voice on the telephone, heard her love with Sarah or Saliyeh. When she and Cherie made love, I wanted to be the one holding her, bringing her to orgasm. I looked at her long, slim fingers; her high breasts against the inside of one of my motorcycle racing T-shirts. In sunlight, the golden soft down on her throat. Her soft, even breathing as she slept next to me; her warmth; musky scent. Even HAVING her; I wanted her more; wanted her for myself alone. I was in hell or heaven; nothing in between.

When the three of us were together in love, I silently, desperately, struggled to force myself to touch and love Kayla "normally", not be more than affectionate, gentle, and tender; Cherie would have known instantly. Perhaps she did anyway.

One afternoon in the early fall, days after our first "private" encounter, with Saliyeh, I hear Kayla crying softly alone in her room and I go in - innocently, of course - to console her. And when she turns to me as I enfold her in my arms, our lips meet; we groan simultaneously and clutch one another. Kayla whispers into my shirt; she will not look at me: "I want you, Davi. Please make love with me." And this time it is long and slow and so deep and sweet; nothing of the punishment, or cruelty. Just incredible sweetness and wonder. Touching one another with the wingtips of angels, while cherubs celebrate us.

My God; her silken light skin. The soft down on her flushed earlobes. A shivery sensitive place at the nape of her elegant long neck. The love, wonder and need in her fingers as she touches me. Her scents are intoxicating: shoulders, neck and breasts faintly musky; between her legs delicate flowers and pine; a hint of the sea which bore us. I love her nipples, stiff and sensitive. She says they are wired directly to her clit. We gather and hold one another; I have never needed so badly to be inside another's skin; never touched another with such love, tenderness, and empathy. We become one, as much as two humans can. Slow and sweet; exquisite. The tiniest movement causes a shudder or gasp. For us, the missionary position is perfect at the end. We make love to one another with our eyes as well as our bodies. Being in Kayla....she responds to the slowest speed and tenderness; care for her entire body and being; to love. Kayla entirely lacks studied "sexiness"; is not expert in any way; not experienced; not practiced or technically skilled. She does not say do this, touch that. But our eyes and breathing say everything, much more than words. Her orgasms are of stunning, almost mystical power and seem always a surprise to her; she is never sure that her soul isn't about to leave her body; that must be the origin of her fear. Together we explore her g-spot; Kayla melts into groans and spasms as I press both the rippled, thickened part that is inside her, and her clitoris simultaneously. If I gently suck on one of her nipples, too, the effect is almost painful to watch.

So intense. I whisper to her that I love her, I push the swollen head of my erection against the apex of her labia, where her little clitoris begs for attention. Just enough of that holds her over the fire; a bit more and she is immersed irrevocably in the flames. I love to keep her there, hovering between unbearable and absolution. She pleads; tries to push herself onto me; pulls back the little hood of her clitoris with her own fingers.

Everything about Kayla is innocent, vulnerable and sweet. At the moment of our penultimate agony, her body trembling uncontrollably, our joining ruling her entire body and being, we again surrender together; our arms outstretched, fingers entwined. Her silky tugging grip pulls me in deeper; I could not withdraw to leap from the path of a runaway train. At orgasm, her need is so intense that I am sometimes frightened for her. She clings fiercely, apprehensive but willing to go with me.

And there is always afterward this exquisite tenderness. Kayla's eyes overflow; she cannot look directly at me, but presses her lips to mine; then hides her face in my shoulder, wetting my skin. I cannot resist her softness of body and soul; her tears as together we marvel at us. "We made love". Jesus, Mary and Joseph. These are the most intense feelings I've ever experienced. I would die for this beautiful soul. She is strong, but so delicate. Both of us are feeling our way through a maze of potent emotions: joy, guilt, lust, fear, an extraordinary, overpowering desire. I am at times both frightened and exhilarated. I love, am IN LOVE, with Cherie, but with Cherie there was never the element of fear, torment, and forbiddenness between us as exists between Kayla and I.

After we make love, I briefly sleep sometimes, awakening in terror that Cherie has come into the house and is looking for me; calling.

We are far beyond innocent spontaneity, Kayla and I. This is the real thing: driven, loving, noble, shameful, completely beyond control, a runaway train. I am deeply ashamed of my gratitude that Cherie does not ask how things are between Kayla and I; it's doubtful that I could lie to her. In my head, I try this: "Kayla? Oh, it was just that once. Haven't touched her since then; except with you there. Anyway, I think she wants you, Cherie; you're the one we're all in love with. She's sweet, but not really my type". I don't think so; I'd break down in tears on the spot.

Meanwhile, my work on the historic and present distribution of Juniperus occidentalis - the common western juniper tree - on western and intermountain wildlands has attracted attention. I have yet to defend it before committee, but my major professor, Henricus Janssen, assures me that they will be very favorably disposed. By which he means that since my work has suggested, serendipitously, a control method that will reinvigorate millions of acres of rangeland across the west, AND save the public a bunch of money, I am assured of a handsome reception. Cal offers me a doctoral assistance; Oregon State a teaching assistance in plant community geography. In our flush of success, Cherie and I buy a new car. I am preparing my 500cc Behemoth to race; modifications I've never been able to afford. Cherie is promoted at her job: a forty percent salary increase plus a car and expense allowance for her travel around the northern counties. A difficult lute instrumental from the Baroque that has plagued me - Johann Sebastian Bach's Bourre' in E Minor, transcribed for the guitar - suddenly flows uninterrupted through my fingers to the flourish at the end, and I feel the old Lutheran smiling at me from his heaven.

We celebrate at La Fonda in town; friends from the university and the Retreat with us, a lavish dinner and party, Davi and Cherie the guests of Henricus and Bett, my biology guru and his wife. They innocently love Cherie and Kayla. Bett practices her Swedish on both women, neither of whom speak more than childhood words and phrases. My particular friend Barry is hilarious; makes a pompous, fraudulent speech loaded with obscure and lurid references, double entendres, puns. Even his wife Marta laughs at his antics.

Yet my heart is elsewhere; these triumphs that shower upon us are for me minor notes to a secret and compelling melody. Kayla is smiling, but strained. Am I the only one who notices?

When Kayla and I are alone together, NOTHING else exists. Every time we make love, it is painful and sweet; urgent; a fiery immersion. We cry out; we cling to one another in extremis. There has never been another in my life whose body so perfectly fits; envelopes mine. I love her depth, the way she grips me like a spongy glove, her silkiness, her heat and slickness, the scalding orgasm we share almost each time.

On a sunny afternoon, Kayla is reading on a bench in our yard; I lean over her and put my face into her hair. Pine, her feminine warmth, and a hint of musk; I am drunk with her scents. She leans her head back into my neck and shoulder, nuzzling; whispers my name. She swivels her body around to face me, puts her long fingers inside my shirt on my back. Her head tucks under my chin. My hands burrow under her tank top, bringing her nipples to instant stiffness. From her throat, a tiny, suspended whimper "Oh!", as I raise her shirt and gently nibble her. In Cherie's and my bedroom, I make her stand with her legs apart and one foot up on our low bed. From behind her, I tease her slowly almost to orgasm, one hand low and firmly against her tensed abdomen, holding her open; the fingers of my other hand inside her swollen, juicy folds; stroking her clit; coaxing her. Just as she groans and begins to rise onto her toes, I also put the tip of my hard penis against her vagina, and she draws me into her partway. Her orgasm begins to ripple through her belly and thighs; her vagina pulls at me as her legs begin to collapse. Her body strains forward, her hands come around to hold me. From the base of my own skull, a billion white-hot volts course down my spine and into the tip of my penis, and lightning shoots from me, up into Kayla's body, into her heart. She must feel my swelling and pumping; she cries out, and her wet greed pulls my love out of me.

Cherie and I love, too. I am respectful of our time and intimacy together, but increasingly, the familiarity of our bodies and touches feels routine. I try bravely not to compare, and I know it is not that Cherie is boring or ordinary, or that our lovemaking is less "good" than that of Kayla and I. I remind myself that when the desperation is polished away by practice, Kayla and Davi will cease to die in one another's arms every time we join. I will myself to believe that, with all my heart and soul. I recall a morning shave, interrupted by Cherie coming into the bathroom naked and lovely. Sleepy and aroused, as she often is in the morning, she comes up to me from behind, rubbing her nipples against my back, and her pubic mound against my hip. She begins to gently stroke my penis to fullness. God, how quickly I become brick-hard. Before I have rinsed the lather from my face, Cherie has made me sit on the toilet seat so she can squat over me to rub her slippery wetness back and forth over the tip of my erection. She comes quickly and hard with a fierce growl; her head back in ecstasy. My hands are around her slim back, a nipple between my lips. I come too; she is holding and milking my jet directly onto her swollen clit. She asks after we have collapsed, her onto me so that my ebbing erection is inside her, why I am crying. Because I love you so much, I say. And that is true: I love her; perhaps more than ever.

We all sleep and love together, in fact more often now. Saliyeh, too. Saliyeh knows; how could she not? She has seen, she's sensitive and subtle herself; knows right, wrong, and things beyond morality. Saliyeh sees and knows, all right. I feel her looking at me sometimes: probing, questioning, weighing; her haughty Queen of Eritrea features softened and troubled. Just once she says to me privately - only her mouth smiling - that if "we" were of her tribe, the women would overpower us in our sleep, tie us to a stake in the Horn of Africa's merciless sun, and stone us to death. She is smiling, but her eyes and voice are dead serious.