Passing Strange Ch. 01: Lust Goddess

And how would I know if I find it?

We've only gone a few yards when Gina stops and listens. After a moment, Wendy and I hear it too. A faint melody, barely audible above the rustling palms.

On my previous two visits, I'd been drawn by the sounds of love-making to the clearing that was more or less in the middle of the grove. Tonight is different. We walk for a long time, too long for this small grove, but we never get any closer to the music, which seems to be from some kind of flute.

When the melody finally does grow louder, the sand has turned to rocky soil with the coconut palms giving way to tall pines. Soon, a steep and craggy hill looms into view. More like a Greek Mykonos or Hydra than French Martinique. A winding footpath leads to the crest, where there's the flickering glow of a fire.

This can't be happening. But it is.

I'm about to ask if they want to continue when I feel it. Shivers running down my spine, butterflies in my stomach, a warm tingling between my legs that has my cock slowly unfurling. It only takes one look at the gleam in the their eyes to know Gina and Wendy feel it too.

We climb the hillside under soaring pines, and smaller trees that I don't recognize, until the path brings us next to one. The trunk is ancient, gnarly and twisted with young, egg-shaped fruit hanging from the branches. Olive trees.

The scent of burning wood is on the breeze. Reflected firelight dances in the upper pine branches, and we hear the crackle of flames. Overhead, a stream of red embers floats toward the hovering full moon.

At the summit, clothes have been discarded on both sides of the trail. Some folded neatly, others hurriedly dumped in messy heaps. Wendy tosses her pareo on the ground, with her sandals and thong piled on top. Gina and I take the time to fold our things into bundles. In the pale moonlight, the girls' naked bodies are as perfectly proportioned as a pair of classic Greek sculptures. Wendy, the eager wood nymph, Gina, the mysterious Delphi oracle. Moisture shimmers on their thighs. Their nipples are twisted taught and stiff. So is my cock.

We walk onto the flat brow of the hill, and the beautiful French girl, the Lust Goddess with the dark, soulless eyes, greets us. I avoid her eyes, but can't help but remember how my hot cum glistened on her full lips last night after Wendy and I found her fucking in the grove.

" Suis moi," she says, leading us toward the bonfire where a ring of naked figures are holding hands.

I recognize the curvy red-head with bright green eyes, and her lover, from this morning, as well as the two cute and slightly chunky college girls. There are some other women I haven't seen before, and three young guys whose most remarkable feature is not so much their ripped musculature, as their rock-hard erections.

Beyond the circle of light, a small figure with wiry hair, a dark beard, and a lascivious expression, reclines on a tree stump blowing into a set of Pan pipes. The old Greek blanket is spread across his lap, but it's not big enough to conceal hairy legs that are bent at an unnatural angle. Or that where he should have feet, there are cloven hooves.

The thing about overpowering lust is that it represses all those warnings from the logical, critical corners of your consciousness. Little things like, what the fuck am I doing on a Greek hilltop covered in olive trees under a full moon in the Caribbean surrounded by naked strangers holding hands around a roaring bonfire while some dude dressed like a man-goat plays the flute?

I hear those words, but they mean nothing. They provoke neither anxiety nor fear. All I feel is a white-hot sexual longing in my gut. Does it occur to me that only hours after the most powerful, soul-wrenching orgasms of my life, I should be a little sated with sex?

Not at all.

The Lust Goddess starts us moving clockwise. Somehow, I know her name is Natalie. The same way I know the red-head and her lover are Fiona and Virginia, and the two nubile college girls are Mary and Patty. There's another tall, willowy blond who could easily be Gina's sister, and I'd bet my right nut she's from Atlanta and her name is Debbie. Same with the the brunette with a pixie haircut and gymnast's body. Her name is Rhonda and she grew up near Philadelphia. Nothing weird. I feel as if I've known them forever.

We fall into a rhythm, and move together in time with the sinuous flute melody, Natalie adds a little hip grind on every third step. When I imitate her, the sensation is immediate and electric. A spasm that begins in my brain and ends with my cock bouncing and twitching without any physical stimulation, save the warm breath of the sultry night wind.

The tempo of the music increases, and with each turn of the circle, Natalie changes her movements and we all follow along. It is primitive and ritualistic and supremely arousing.

As the melody nears a crescendo, we clap with the beat, and then Natalie steps inside the circle, displaying herself in ways that under any other circumstances would be flagrantly obscene. But here it's as natural as Tom's Organic Toothpaste.

Soon she is kneeling, her lips wrapping around each passing cock, her tongue lapping the wetness from every girl's sex. After three more turns of the circle, she throws her head back, fixes her eyes on the full moon, and chants an incantation, " klaatu baraada niktu."

Without Natalie, there are twelve of us left in the circle, and as we look to the moon and chant " klaatu baraada niktu," a flock of Great Herons passes directly between us and our nearest celestial neighbor just as the scorching melody reaches a climatic finale.

It's all such an uncanny coincidence that I feel a new shiver echoing down my spine. One that provokes what I can only describe as a mini orgasm. My cock pulses and fires a single volley.

I'm not the only one.

There is a spontaneous chorus of whimpers and moans, and we reach out for each other, first to keep our balance, and then to satisfy an insatiable longing for intimate contact. Gina and Wendy fall into each other's arms, mouths locked in an inseparable kiss.

I find myself in a hungry embrace with Fiona, who wraps her arms around my neck, her wild red mane filling my field of vision as she pulls herself up my torso, then slides down onto my cock, which glides effortlessly deep inside her. Within the blink of an eye, twelve naked bodies become six groping, copulating pairs.

Sometimes even when you're sure you know where the story is going, when you think you understand the characters, their flaws and motives, when all the symbols, motifs and foreshadowing are an open book, sometimes even then the storyteller reaches out and grabs you by the balls with an unexpected twist.

Well, tonight there is no twist. Just a space where myth and magic, wonderment and lechery, buildup and climax are two sides of the same ancient coin. A place where contradictory opposites hang in a delicate complementary balance.

Still, I am completely unprepared for what happens next. I think we all are.

I am gazing into Fiona's sea-green eyes. Eyes may be the door to the soul, but they are also a vastly underrated aphrodisiac. An erogenous zone unlike any other. There's an entire universe of sparkling, rippling mystery hiding in Fiona's green-flecked irises.

On this crazy Greek hilltop that's somehow been transported to the French West Indies, there is myth and magic and erotic mystery all rolled into one incomprehensible moment. A moment that begins with Fiona's soulful eyes flashing like emeralds in the moonlight. Then turns on a dime as they grow darker than coffee. Darker than chocolate. Darker than night itself.

And it's not just Fiona's eyes. Something has sucked the moonlight from the sky and reduced the flaming bonfire to cold, black cinders. In the blink of an eye, we are immersed in an empty void where not even a stray pinpoint of starlight penetrates. And without vision, there is only sound, and smell, and touch.

The flute is silent. The fire is as still as ice. Even the trade wind has gone quiet. This empty space is filled only with the sounds of lust. The whimpering, rasping, chafing, and squishing noises of our desperate rush to gratification and release. So desperate that even a little thing like blinding darkness does not deter us.

Without light, the ever present symphony of subtle aromas intensifies. There are the minor notes of fresh pine, acrid smoke, cloying earth, and pungent sex. But there is a new dominant tone. A complex fragrance that blends the stink of matted fur, the smell of burnt patchouli, and the sweet fresh scent of morning Lilacs.

This odd combination of fragrances is the first clue to the feral presence that moves in the narrow space between us. Is it Pan himself? Or something else? Something even older, and more elemental than a Greek god? It brushes my hip, cold and formless, and leaves a wet and sticky residue behind.

How will it satisfy its lust? The answer comes soon enough.

It's either Mary or Patty, one of the two plump little ones with small breasts and thick waists, who screams first. Not from pain or fear. But pleasure. A pleasure too sharp, too hard, and too searingly profound for mortals to comprehend. Pleasure beyond the limits of endurance.

Pleasure begets pleasure. Fiona's teeth, at least I think it is still Fiona, sink into my neck, her fingernails rake my back, and her womb clamps around my cock like an iron fist. Her cry fills my ears, drowning out all the other rising shrieks and wails around us.

God knows how long this goes on. A minute? An hour? A month? But as soon as the cries of passion subside to muffled grunts and whimpers, another scream of exquisite agony punctures the night, and like some demented pack of mating wolves, we howl anew. Whether by sound, or smell, or some super-pheromone, the hunger of this unseen entity infects us all. With libidos unbridled and passions inflamed, we suck and fuck like the end of Time is at hand. Which, perhaps, it is.

Then Fiona is gone. Where the liquid fire of her sex had been, my thrusting cock finds only empty space. Somewhere Fiona's scream pierces the darkness and even before its echo dies, we are all giving voice to an unbearable pleasure that consumes us. When the furor fades, Fiona returns. Her body slick with juice and sweat, her dripping cunt desperately convulsing on my cock, wanting for something that is beyond my power to give. I explode inside her. For an eternal instant we are one. Our bodies merge and our souls take flight. We fly with angels.

Then we tumble helplessly into the black void.

My body shivers with exhaustion, head resting on the heaving cushion of Fiona's warm breast, her heartbeat violently reverberating in my ear. Despite all this chaos, or perhaps because of it, a realization hits me with the force of a satori. A "gateless gate" opens on a brief instant of existential understanding.

In that one moment, I know. I recognize our plight with shimmering clarity. And it's not just mortals who are trapped within the prison of our own obsessions. The ancient gods are no different. It is written in all our DNA, as inevitable as birth and eventual death. It is the destiny of all sentient life.

And it is simply this: We are all the prisoners of our own narrative. The plot turns on the same three themes. Sex and myth and magic. We all live the same story, told in a billion different ways.

It may not be your answer. But it's mine. Maybe not the perfect sweet spot between Yin and Yang. But it feels as satisfying as a life well lived.

Then darkness takes me.

—

A pair of cooing Doves, and the morning sun in my eyes, bring me back to this waking world. Wendy and Gina are wound together beside me in a naked coil. The sheets are wet with cum, some of it probably mine. The room smells of hot sex, and it's not a subtle fragrance.

Last night is still a confused jumble, and will remain largely so. But I see the room safe is open, and empty. Which means we're back in my bungalow. Somehow we have returned from Olympus, or Cthulhu, or wherever last night's alternate reality took us.

To tell the truth, I'm actually relieved to see the old Greek blanket is gone, and my left nut is intact. I had no concept of the powers we had invoked. Or perhaps we were the ones summoned into their dimension? Either way, I realize my silly bet with myself could have gone horribly wrong. Thankfully, I lost Pan's blanket, but kept my balls.

I don't know much more about science than some vague, media-inspired anxieties about asteroids, incurable viruses, and climate change. But I do know a full moon when I see one, and that the Spring Equinox usually happens around March 21, which was yesterday. I also have a suspicion that these two events don't coincide all that frequently. Wikipedia confirms it. Last night was exceedingly rare. Unlikely to happen more than three or four times during a human life span.

A nasty cliche occurs to me. Oh, my, God! What have we done?

I recall an old movie, Roger Corman's, "The Dunwich Horror," where Sandra Dee's deflowering on an ancient alter above the Massachusetts coastline before sunset on the Solstice, or maybe it was the Equinox, will open the portal to a hideous and evil, H.P. Lovecraft's "Old Ones," who hunger to return and wreak havoc on humanity.

Is that what this is all about? Have I abetted the end of mankind? There's one comforting thought. There were no virgins on that hilltop last night. Hell, there probably isn't an adult virgin to be found at a Club Med village anywhere. Ever.

Last night was more extreme Bacchanal than ritual sacrifice. Maybe Pan can only sneak over to our side on rare occasions and, like a lot of us, he figured Club Med is a good place to get lucky.

Poor Pan. For all his phallic potency, he's just like Wendy, Gina and I. Trapped within our own perceptions. Shackled by our senses to inescapable imperatives as surely as the moon is locked within its orbit by the invisible force of gravity. Sex and myth and magic. The invisible forces that bind us to our past. That shape our future. The invisible hand that writes the stories of our lives.

With that thought, I head for the shower.

When I return, Gina is awake and in a panic. She's forgotten about Johnny. I remind her he spent the night with a new friend's family and we still have time to meet them for breakfast and take Jonny to the Mini Club. Gina sighs with relief, and I can see the wheels turning as she tries to piece together the events of last night. She's still in a bit of a trance, and her expressions alternate between dreamy smiles and confused frowns as the memories slowly return.

"Do you think," she asks, reaching out and holding my flaccid cock with her warm finger tips. "We can go back tonight?" I've been hearing that question a lot lately.

"Sure," I tell her, before breaking the bad news. "We can go. But last night isn't going to happen again for about 20 more years."

"Why? What do you mean?"

I show Gina the almanac on my phone screen. "Yesterday was the Spring Equinox. It was also a full moon. They only coincide every couple of decades."

"And you think?"

"That whatever magic we've been messing with won't be back again for a long time."

Gina has that same crestfallen look as when I told her she needed to learn baseball-speak if she wanted to get inside Johnny's world. "I suppose it's for the best," she sighs.

"Daddy," Wendy says sleepily, lifting her head above Gina's hip. "Let's fuck."

"Hold that thought until we get back," I tell her. Wendy nods agreeably and drifts back to sleep.

The three of us do return to the clearing in the palm grove that night. So do most of the others. Someone had pinched a couple bottles of table wine, and we hang around wearing clothes, drinking and trying to make sense of what happened yesterday.

When it's obvious there will be no repeat, people began to drift away in the same little groups that we arrived in. Wendy, Gina and I spend the rest our nights at Club Med in a slow burning ménage-a-trios, exploring just about every sexual permutation possible among three people.

Back in New York, I hook up with Gina most weekends, and once a month or so, Wendy comes down from Boston to join us. We've never come close to matching the sexual intensity of those two days with Pan's Blanket. But there's a bond between us that is like gravity, locking us in the same orbit regardless of who else drifts in and out of our lives.

And I know it's totally fucked up, but I've really come to accept being Wendy's love Daddy.

Who wouldn't?