SMACK

Tibet is a gold-leaf, incense haze of soft, yielding flesh. It looks
like a cliff-top monastery in Lhasa, the highest plateau in the world.
This should be a story of brightness where the City of Sun exudes a
light so blinding that the reflections from buildings and trees hurt
the naked eye. Instead, this is a story about a room, three people and
a hunger.

The room...
is tiny. Airless. No natural light. Balanced precariously on a chipped
saucer in the centre there is an aromatic candle, its flame fighting
to penetrate the gloom.

The floor is covered in scratchy, worn, rattan squares. There are
patches where they do not quite meet and if you should accidentally
stumble and shift one of the squares, your feet will be blackened with
angry fleas. Beside the candle, there is a peeling, gold-leaf Buddha,
about two feet high, his countenance eerily vivid in the shadowy
darkness. Its eyes seem to guard a yellowed, fusty mattress with
moth-eaten feathers spilling from its sides.

When you breathe, there is only incense and ritual and urine filling
your lungs with despair. When you speak there is only the muffled
sound of your own voice where the world cannot hear, cannot see.

Three people...
sit cross-legged on the floor in the spartan room. I am a mousy
nineteen years old with mountain climbing legs and sun-weathered skin
beyond my years. My dark, shoulder-length hair falls in unruly
tangles, a protest against perms, river water and three months without
a comb. I smile uncertainly as my eyes fixate on the candle flame,
trying to escape the moment.

Ariadne sits with her knee touching mine. She is the willowy blonde of
television commercials. She is twenty and gay and her long hair hangs
in a neat pony tail. We have trekked together for months now because
we were both hitching in the same direction one day. Was it China? Or,
was it India where we met? The foreign voices and hard bunks blur
until there are no clear snapshots of our travels, just a vague sense
that once there was a time when Ari and I were strangers.

Leaning over the candle is a wizened, little man in tumeric-coloured
robes. The flames dance across his brown-stained leer as he smiles at
us with anticipation. He holds a blackened spoon over the flame. An
offering and a bribe. He nods at each of us, gestures towards the
mattress. The Buddha stares.

Ari rises and stretches high, her impossibly long limbs out of
proportion with the minuscule size of the room.

"Please do it," she begs.

Her movements seem calculated, yet there is an edginess beneath the
facade. One side of her face twitches when she speaks. Her toes curl
tightly when she reaches for her halter top and removes it with a
single, fluid motion.

The old man licks his lips as her breasts spill free, revealing no
demarcation line with the rest of her skin. The beaches in Bali have
left their golden kiss. With practised precision, Ari drums her
nipples with the tips of her fingers till they extend forth in ruby
glory. I look at the floor. Sway uncertainly. I have seen Ari naked.
We have shared double bunks. If my flesh had needed hers, my interest
would have been piqued by now.

I am sitting in a spartan room with an old, deprived man and a girl I
do not even particularly like. Our paths simply crossed because we
were travelling the same way. Now, my soul is for sale.

Ari reaches behind her head, releasing her hair so that it tumbles and
frames her face with an angelic halo. Her hands play up and down her
thighs, sliding under the crotch of her shorts. She reaches out,
touches my hand. I am repelled by the gentleness of the contact. She
clasps my hand tightly, pulls me upright. I stare over her shoulder at
a wall I cannot see.

"Please?" she asks again.

She has curled my fingers over the top stud of her shorts.
Mechanically, without looking, I unclasp the three studs. She expertly
tucks my hands into the waistband and helps me lower her shorts to the
floor.

My arm accidentally brushes against her most private patch of hair. My
stomach lurches with revulsion. I close my eyes and seek a space where
there is laughter and beer and cock. When I open them, my cheesecloth
dress lies puddled on the ground. I am standing nipple to nipple, hip
to hip, in a statue freeze frame with another woman.

The fingers that had drummed her own breasts now caress mine. A goose
bump chill weakens my senses. It is a soothing, worshipping
exploration such as I might exact upon myself.

"He wants you to touch as well."

I glance at the man. He is solemn and expectant, still heating the
spoon. His robes have been parted to reveal a thin, elongated cock. It
seems to lack rigidity. I squirm at the thought of its semi-flaccid
length worming its way into my pussy. I say a silent prayer to the
Buddha icon that I might be spared this duty. It continues to stare
with hollow resolve.

My trembling hands move with sudden determination, encompassing each
of Ari's breasts in a desperate clasp. To my surprise, they bounce
back, springy and soft against my palms. Her flesh is warm like winter
scones. I can feel the steady rhythm of her heart. I press harder, so
hard that her breasts are squashed back into her chest, excess flesh
squeezing out under her arms. I know it hurts. I look into her eyes.
There is a need in them. A blank, bitter need that is separate from
me, the man, the room. Her eyes watch the spoon.

Ari's lips embrace one of my nipples, suckling dutifully on my less
than abundant offering. I follow suit, contorting my head to the side
and pulling one of her heavy breasts upwards. I sink my teeth into the
pliant mound, shocked by the taste of blood that trickles onto my
tongue. Ari registers no hint of pain. I cease to bite and content
myself with sucking around the aureole, forming tiny red circles that
will eventually ache and bruise.

In my whole life, I cannot remember ever being lifted. Not as a child.
Not by a boyfriend. Ari lifts me like I am one of the feathers in the
tattered mattress and lays me down on its lumpy softness. My temples
throb. Height sickness. The musty room. The nearness of cunt.

With a dizzy intake of breath, I am aware of Ari's fingers in my hole.
She has mounted me in a sixty-nine position and I do not want to be
the recipient of a kiss from her pungent pussy lips. I have no choice.
They grind against my mouth which I keep stubbornly closed. To my
horror, I feel a welcoming slickness which allows Ari's fingers to
slide into my hole unabated.

My teeth hurt from the pressure of Ari's body against them and I
relent with a small, experimental flick of my tongue. My nose, my
mouth, are covered by Ari's pink, dripping slit. My tongue is
confused, but not repulsed as it licks at random clefts and mysterious
bumps. I reluctantly drink the acrid brine which weeps from her cunt.

I jump when I feel the first wet lash of tongue against my hardened
bud. Most of me does not want this. A small part of me now craves to
finish it.

There is a chant inside my head. It resonates as though in a temple, a
prolonged reverberation that becomes louder as ten gongs, then twenty,
then a hundred are struck in perfect unison. Then there is silence.
Nothing. Nirvana.

The hunger...
shakes Ari's whole body as she climbs away from me and crawls towards
the man. He has finished the ceremony, prepared the sacrifice.

Ari sits before him, tying the strap of her halter neck around her
upper arm. I have seen it before. Glint of needle.

The man now takes his fading, snakey manhood into his bony hands and
squeezes the head. A jet of cream squirts into the air just as silver
liquid fades into Ari's vein.

In the morning, Ari has gone. Our paths are no longer the same. In the
end, Nirvana is only the illusion of a spartan room and a glazed,
fallen goddess rocking on her knees, paying homage to the Priest of
Smack.