China Becoming pt.1.1: Time and Sexuality

8.8.2008
Waves of time permeate across Beijing’s darkened sky-scraped horizon. A warm wind blows upon our bodies, tracing our skin with an invisible effigy. A light flickers upon our naked figures, folding and unfolding with time. I trace the length of Marguerite Donnadieu with the efficacy of a surgeon, so that I may open her body to mine, so that I might pry open the perfect creation of an imperfect creator.

We are but outer shells intensely lost within one another, our minds, given, gone to the catacombs of history. There is no context, no ghost, no learned experience; merely the surface of two caressing bodies, as if we were an image of all lovers, mummified carcasses, anxiously looking, kissing, touching and feeling our ways in the darkness and up the banks of the primordial ooze, eventually surrendering ourselves to an impossible immortality or an inevitable finality.

A television broadcasts a light upon our flesh, a distorted montage of the Opening Ceremony, the blueprints for some intoxicated dream of patriotism and globalization: Manchu bannermen, Shaolin monks, a veiled salute to the godless idol Mao, a giant panda two hundred children wide grazing in a sea of red, the smiling Hu Jintao coddled by a whitening Bill Clinton.

All this history laid out, naked, on the flesh of my lover, like a bountiful feast. I want to eat time, to be nourished like a god, on the ambrosia of the universe.

The world’s politicians, celebrities and athletes, one-by-one are imagined on the curve of my lover’s breast, a nipple to nurse the ninety-one thousand representatives of the world, to teach them, as a mother would, about pain and pleasure. Humanity’s mythologies, its psychologies are retold through the shadows of her sinews and echoed through the cage of her ribs. I imagine four billion eyes, gathered in between the crevices of her skin where her ribcage protrudes, gazing at the grand narrative of humankind projected upon her breast. To kiss her breasts would be to suckle the world.

And so on the curve of my lover’s breast, in the midst of the Middle Kingdom, on the 116th parallel, that imperial axis from the heart of which two successive dynasties ruled the world, finally the Chinese promise, two-thousand-two hundred and twenty-nine years in the making, of all-under-Heaven, at last.

To kiss her breasts would be to nestle all-under-Heaven in the arc of my lips.

Across the horizon, a flash of light. A silent thunder splits the Beijing skyline, followed by the echoing roar of a dragon. A dragon along the north-south axis, that same axis upon which ascended and descended the last Ming emperor, Zhu Youjian, hanging from the rope that his eunuch had tied from a tree just outside the Forbidden City. Two hundred and eighty years later, it was Puyi’s turn, the last of the Qing, expelled from his throne whilst his palace was ransacked by Feng Yuxiang’s warlord army. Did he notice the tree, whilst being escorted out from the Gates of Supreme Harmony for what was his first and final time, and think to himself of the impermanence of all things? Was it the possibility of immortality or the inevitability of the end?

The Maoists uprooted the tree, to replace it later with another – a gesture to man’s struggle against the impermanence of all things, particularly dynasties.

Something must be said for time and space, for time and place are essential to the aberrations of Chinese pseudo-psychology – a limp cocktail of Taoist methodology, folk-cosmology and Marxist paternity. On the eight-hour after the sun’s zenith, of the eight day, of the eighth lunar cycle, of the two thousand and eighth year of the anniversary of the birth of someone else’s lord and saviour, we are present, struggling against the impermanence of all things.

On the same celestial axis that the Chou, some 3000 years before, had outlined the canonical layout for all dynastic cities, the Olympic Green stands cosmologically in line with Zhu Youjian’s noose, Puyi’s ransacked palace and a grandiose mausoleum dedicated to another prince of fate, Mao Zedong, tyrannically sitting on the south side of Heaven’s gate, Tiananmen Square.

That is the beauty of the universe – the patterned quilt in which the German poet Schiller weaved his philosophy – that a thread can be traced from the innocent musings of the two year-old Emperor Puyi to the earth shattering terror of Mao’s guilt-ridden Cultural Revolution. It is thus the vocation of the philosopher, the theologian or the rain man to weave-in the patches of the quilt and sew up the holes of the universe. Beijing is but a microcosm of man’s imperative, to align time and space in accordance to the infinity of the stars. With so many stars, so many places to navigate, one can never be at a loss. And just as the heavens unite us cosmologically, they do chemically, for we were all once just dust and matter, awaiting time and space to emerge, to merge, like the treads of Zhu Youjian’s knot.

It was the memory of Mao, the godless idol that they wanted to resurrect in the spring of 1989, to pull his trace from out of the netherworld and into Heaven’s Gate. They wanted to channel the great leader, the people’s Chairman, the rightful inheritor to the Marxist Tao, in order to resist, as he would, the Chinese Communist Party’s capitalistic reforms. Instead, they were given his successor’s tanks; ears and mouths crunched to the ground, they were still not heard.

Now the tanks have gone, to be replaced by rollerblading children and Kazak tourists. But still their ghosts remain, unremembered, but not forgotten, like Marx; like the Party’s official policy on Mao, unremembered, but not forgotten. As the French poet filmmaker Chris Marker had once said – who would have spent an entire lifetime in search for the machinations of memory – ‘History throws it’s empty bottles out the window.’

On this hour of history, on this day of China’s grand opening, like those tanks in 1989, we are consuming flesh.
Today more historic than the eight hundred and fourteen thousand days since the first Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, the first imperial son of China, for whose indefatigable determination to unite ‘all within four seas’, China is named. The Chinese promise, all-under-Heaven, in the arc of my lips.

In the arc of her hips, the television projects its phantasmagorical tattoo, cemented in the embrace of our bodies. On Marguerite’s skin, the amassed history of China, a red moon, its celestial paradox of waning and waxing, of wanting to be both opened and closed. The dream of red mansions, the Middle Kingdom and her lovers, all together for a cataclysmic orgy on this day of days in the wake of natural and manmade calamities. This French woman and a half-caste man, two sets of bodies: China and the world, simultaneously inhabiting one another, all-under-Heaven. Our limbs, for better or worse, an impossible tangle.

If scars will not heal, then one must learn to love them, to fetish over them. And so my lover pulls her hand back upon my shoulders, cupping the tendon from which, for some, in all men angel wings had once grown. Pulling me tighter, closer, she cuts her nails deep into my back, glaring into my eyes to watch me resist, to witness pain silenced, so that she may comprehend that which we all practice our whole lives to withstand. That is, the pain that forms the existential scar for some that holds the same value as God does for others. It is the same pain Zhu Youjian amassed his courage against as his eunuch tied that final knot, connecting together the threads of the universe.

On a fateful day in 1924, did Puyi see the scar on the tree left by that grave knot? Surely the story had been lamented to him on dozens of occasions as an omen to his own dynastic decline, an era the imperial tutors were surely aware of. Did he learn to love his own particular brand of the anxiety that fills the being of all men? Did he learn to love the inevitability of the end?
At the threshold of pain and pleasure, when the heart beats at an irregular pace and the anxiety, which from my pours emanates every day, blankets my entire being, Marguerite pulls my sex close to hers.

Heavy drops of rain pound the window.

[to be continued]

Dirty Dirty Auden

The recent anthology The Best American Erotic Poems – selected and annotated by David Lehman – begs the question of Americans and eroticism. As poet and literary critic Dan Chiasson puts it in his entertaining essay in the New York Times Book Review, such an anthology comes down to "best metaphorical labia! best profane blazon," which more or less pins down the existent of America's brazen erotic. And so in this contest, Chiasson gives it to the good old Anglo-American W. H. Auden's "Platonic Blow," which, as Chiasson proclaims, "is the dirtiest verse written since Rochester - I can't even talk about it here."

So for the sake of metaphorical labia and profane blazon everywhere, we shall talk about it... here:

The Platonic Blow
W. H. Auden

It was a spring day, a day for a lay, when the air
Smelled like a locker-room, a day to blow or get blown;
Returning from lunch I turned my corner and there
On a near-by stoop I saw him standing alone.

I glanced as I advanced. The clean white T-shirt outlined
A forceful torso, the light-blue denims divulged
Much. I observed the snug curves where they hugged the behind,
I watched the crotch where the cloth intriguingly bulged.

Our eyes met. I felt sick. My knees turned weak.
I couldn't move. I didn't know what to say.
In a blur I heard words, myself like a stranger speak
"Will you come to my room?" Then a husky voice, "O.K."

I produced some beer and we talked. Like a little boy
He told me his story. Present address: next door.
Half Polish, half Irish. The youngest. From Illinois.
Profession: mechanic. Name: Bud. Age: twenty-four.

He put down his glass and stretched his bare arms along
The back of my sofa. The afternoon sunlight struck
The blond hairs on the wrist near my head. His chin was strong.
His mouth sucky. I could hardly believe my luck.

And here he was sitting beside me, legs apart.
I could bear it no longer. I touched the inside of his thigh.
His reply was to move closer. I trembled, my heart
Thumped and jumped as my fingers went to his fly.

I opened a gap in the flap. I went in there.
I sought for a slit in the gripper shorts that had charge
Of the basket I asked for. I came to warm flesh then to hair.
I went on. I found what I hoped. I groped. It was large.

He responded to my fondling in a charming, disarming way:
Without a word he unbuckled his belt while I felt.
And lolled back, stretching his legs. His pants fell away.
Carefully drawing it out, I beheld what I held.

The circumcised head was a work of mastercraft
With perfectly beveled rim of unusual weight
And the friendliest red. Even relaxed, the shaft
Was of noble dimensions with the wrinkles that indicate

Singular powers of extension. For a second or two,
It lay there inert, then suddenly stirred in my hand,
Then paused as if frightened or doubtful of what to do.
And then with a violent jerk began to expand.

By soundless bounds it extended and distended, by quick
Great leaps it rose, it flushed, it rushed to its full size.
Nearly nine inches long and three inches thick,
A royal column, ineffably solemn and wise.

I tested its length and strength with a manual squeeze.
I bunched my fingers and twirled them about the knob.
I stroked it from top to bottom. I got on my knees.
I lowered my head. I opened my mouth for the job.

But he pushed me gently away. He bent down. He unlaced
His shoes. He removed his socks. Stood up. Shed
His pants altogether. Muscles in arms and waist
Rippled as he whipped his T-shirt over his head.

I scanned his tan, enjoyed the contrast of brown
Trunk against white shorts taut around small
Hips. With a dig and a wriggle he peeled them down.
I tore off my clothes. He faced me, smiling. I saw all.

The gorgeous organ stood stiffly and straightly out
With a slight flare upwards. At each beat of his heart it threw
An odd little nod my way. From the slot of the spout
Exuded a drop of transparent viscous goo.

The lair of hair was fair, the grove of a young man,
A tangle of curls and whorls, luxuriant but couth.
Except for a spur of golden hairs that fan
To the neat navel, the rest of the belly was smooth.

Well hung, slung from the fork of the muscular legs,
The firm vase of his sperm, like a bulging pear,
Cradling its handsome glands, two herculean eggs,
Swung as he came towards me, shameless, bare.

We aligned mouths. We entwined. All act was clutch,
All fact contact, the attack and the interlock
Of tongues, the charms of arms. I shook at the touch
Of his fresh flesh, I rocked at the shock of his cock.

Straddling my legs a little I inserted his divine
Person between and closed on it tight as I could.
The upright warmth of his belly lay all along mine.
Nude, glued together for a minute, we stood.

I stroked the lobes of his ears, the back of his head
And the broad shoulders. I took bold hold of the compact
Globes of his bottom. We tottered. He fell on the bed.
Lips parted, eyes closed, he lay there, ripe for the act.

Mad to be had, to be felt and smelled. My lips
Explored the adorable masculine tits. My eyes
Assessed the chest. I caressed the athletic hips
And the slim limbs. I approved the grooves of the thighs.

I hugged, I snuggled into an armpit. I sniffed
The subtle whiff of its tuft. I lapped up the taste
Of its hot hollow. My fingers began to drift
On a trek of inspection, a leisurely tour of the waist.

Downward in narrowing circles they playfully strayed.
Encroached on his privates like poachers, approached the prick,
But teasingly swerved, retreated from meeting. It betrayed
Its pleading need by a pretty imploring kick.

"Shall I rim you?" I whispered. He shifted his limbs in assent.
Turned on his side and opened his legs, let me pass
To the dark parts behind. I kissed as I went
The great thick cord that ran back from his balls to his arse.

Prying the buttocks aside, I nosed my way in
Down the shaggy slopes. I came to the puckered goal.
It was quick to my licking. He pressed his crotch to my chin.
His thighs squirmed as my tongue wormed in his hole.

His sensations yearned for consummation. He untucked
His legs and lay panting, hot as a teen-age boy.
Naked, enlarged, charged, aching to get sucked,
Clawing the sheet, all his pores open to joy.

I inspected his erection. I surveyed his parts with a stare
From scrotum level. Sighting along the underside
Of his cock, I looked through the forest of pubic hair
To the range of the chest beyond rising lofty and wide.

I admired the texture, the delicate wrinkles and the neat
Sutures of the capacious bag. I adored the grace
Of the male genitalia. I raised the delicious meat
Up to my mouth, brought the face of its hard-on to my face.

Slipping my lips round the Byzantine dome of the head,
With the tip of my tongue I caressed the sensitive groove.
He thrilled to the trill. "That's lovely!" he hoarsely said.
"Go on! Go on!" Very slowly I started to move.

Gently, intently, I slid to the massive base
Of his tower of power, paused there a moment down
In the warm moist thicket, then began to retrace
Inch by inch the smooth way to the throbbing crown.

Indwelling excitements swelled at delights to come
As I descended and ascended those thick distended walls.
I grasped his root between left forefinger and thumb
And with my right hand tickled his heavy voluminous balls.

I plunged with a rhythmical lunge steady and slow,
And at every stroke made a corkscrew roll with my tongue.
His soul reeled in the feeling. He whimpered "Oh!"
As I tongued and squeezed and rolled and tickled and swung.

Then I pressed on the spot where the groin is joined to the cock,
Slipped a finger into his arse and massaged him from inside.
The secret sluices of his juices began to unlock.
He melted into what he felt. "O Jesus!" he cried.

Waves of immeasurable pleasures mounted his member in quick
Spasms. I lay still in the notch of his crotch inhaling his sweat.
His ring convulsed round my finger. Into me, rich and thick,
His hot spunk spouted in gouts, spurted in jet after jet.