Steel Beach

"Water comes out of a tap, that's all I know."

"Don't pretend ignorance with me. Water comes from the rings of Saturn, is boosted in slow orbits in the form of big chunks of dirty ice until we catch it here and melt it. Or it comes out of the air when we re-process it, or the sewage when we filter it, then it's piped to your home, then it comes out of the tap. In my case, for the pipe substitute a man who comes by once a week and fills my barrels."

"All I have to do with it is turning the tap."

I pointed to my tank sitting on the sink. "So do I," I said. I patted myself dry and started rubbing cream on my skin. "I know you're dying to ask, so I'll tell you I bathe every third or fourth day at the hotel in town. All over; soap and everything. And if what you've seen horrifies you, wait till you need to relieve yourself."

"You're really into this, aren't you. That's what I can't get over."

"Why all this sudden concern about my standard of living?"

That one seemed to make him uncomfortable, so we were quiet for a while, until I had finished wiping off the cold cream. I couldn't read his expression well in the dim light, looking at him in the mirror.

"If you were going to say the people who live in here are losers, save it, I've already heard that. And I don't deny it." I opened an oval lacquered box, took out a powder puff, and started applying the stuff until I sat in the center of a fragrant cloud. On the side of the box it said "Midnight in Paris."

"That's why you don't belong here," he said. "Hildy, you've still got worlds to conquer. You can't bury yourself in here, playing at being a newspapergirl. There's a real world out there."

In here, too, I might have said, but didn't. I turned to face him, then put the straps of my chemise back up over my shoulders. It was more of a long vest, really, made of yellow silk, snug at the waist. In addition to that I still had on my best silk stockings, held up by garters, and maybe a trifle here and a whimsy there. He crossed his legs.

"You once accused me of being not so good at people. You were right. I'd known you for years, and didn't know you had a daughter, didn't know a lot of things about you. Cricket, there's things you don't know about me. I'm not going to get into them, it's my problem, not yours, but believe me when I tell you that if I hadn't come here, I'd be dead by now."

He looked dubious, but a little worried at the same time. He started to say something, but changed his mind. His arms were crossed now, too, one hand up and playing self-consciously with his mustache.

I reached behind me for the little purple vial of patchouli, dabbed a bit behind my ears, between my breasts, between my thighs. I got up and walked by him-quite close by him-to the bed, where I pulled the big comforter down to the foot, plumped up the pillows, and reclined with one foot trailing onto the floor, the other on the bed. The girl in the painting behind the bar at the Alamo is in an identical pose, though you would have to call her plump.

I said, "Cricket, I haven't been in the big city for a while. Maybe I've forgotten how things are there. But in Texas, it's considered impolite to keep a lady waiting."

He got up, almost stumbled as he tried to get out of his shoes, then gave that up and came into my arms.

Kitten Parker, the male manifestation, was nude, supine, cruciform. I, the female manifestation, was also nude, and in lotus position: shoulders back, legs folded with the soles of my feet turned up on my thighs, hands loose and palm-upward in my lap. My knees stuck out to the sides and my weight barely made an impression on his body-that's right, I was impaled, as the porno writers sometimes put it.

Those writers wouldn't have been interested in this scene, however. We'd been there, unmoving, for going on five hours.

It was called sex therapy and Kitten Parker was the leading proponent of it. In fact, he invented it, or at least refined it from earlier versions. What it was, was a type of yoga, wherein I had been urged to find my "spiritual center." So far my best guess as to its location was about five centimeters cervix-wards from the tip of his glans.

I found this frustrating. I'd been finding it frustrating for going on five hours. See, I was supposed to find my center because I was the yin, and because I was the novice. His center wasn't material to the exercise, he knew where his center was though he hadn't told me where yet; maybe that was lesson two. His contribution was to bring the thrust of his enlightenment, also known as his yang, or glans, into contact with my spiritual center, or rather I was apparently supposed to lower the center down, since deeper penetration was clearly out of the question. Maybe what I was feeling wasn't my center at all, maybe it was just a vaginal suburb, but it had taken me going on two hours just to entertain the notion that maybe, possibly, that might be it, this little place inside me that seemed to want to be massaged, and I wasn't about to go searching for it again.

So I thought about that might-be-center, willed it to move. It just stayed right there. I began to wonder if his yang was anywhere near as sore as my yin was getting. And if this whole thing would prove to be a yawn.

Actually, the only center I really cared about was the one every woman knows how to find without a road map from Kitten Parker: the center of sexual response, right up there in the cleft of the labia, the little-girl-in-the-boat, and that little girl had been sitting there, becalmed, hands on the oars, rowing her little single-minded heart out, swollen and excited, for going on… well, just over six hours now and the little slut was pouting and resenting the lack of attention and had been for… yes… and she didn't like that one bit, no she didn't, and she was just about to SCREEEEEAM!

CUT TO

INTERIOR – OFFICE OF THE PRIMALIST

Lots of ferns, lots of leather, violent paintings on the walls. The PRIMALIST faces her patient, HILDY, who, red-faced, watery-eyed, has had just about all the therapy a person can stand.

HILDY

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

PRIMALIST

That's better, that's much better. We're starting to get through the layers of rage. Now reach even deeper.

HILDY

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

PRIMALIST

No, no, you're back to the childhood peevishness again. Deeper, deeper! From the soul!

HILDY

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

PRIMALIST

(slaps HILDY's face)

You're really not trying. You call that a scream? Ooooooh. Sounds like a cow. Again!

HILDY

YAAAH! YAAAH! YAAAAH! YAAAAAAA…

PRIMALIST

Don't give me that lost-your-voice crap. You're giving up! I won't let you give up! I can make you face the primal source.

(slaps HILDY again)

Now, once more, with-

HILDY kicks the PRIMALIST in the belly, then knees her in the face. The PRIMALIST goes flying across the room and lands in the FERNS.

CUT TO

CLOSE SHOT – PRIMALIST

Who is bleeding from the nose and mouth and is momentarily out of breath.

PRIMALIST

That's much better! We're really getting somewhere now… hey! Where…