Chapter 9

Hunger made a sizable dent in the cheese and the fruit, but Natty and Joseph had bought enough to share with the guests who arrived individually over the next couple hours. The last to arrive was Adam, and he proved to be the only person Natty felt uncomfortable with. After a half an hour of his careful glances and outright stares at her, she took Joseph aside to a spot in the corner of the sizable room where they could be discrete and let him know of her discomfort. He surprised her by bringing Adam into the conversation.

"We can't afford secrets," explained Joseph to a shocked and dismayed Natty.

"What's going on?" asked Adam using the quiet tones Joseph had used when asking him to join them.

Joseph explained Natty's sensitive distrust towards men and her resulting anxiousness in participating. "You've been staring," Joseph told him.

"I can't help it. I'm sorry Natty, but I've never seen such a beautiful woman before; it's like a magnet for my eyes."

"Thank you, Adam, but you should know I'm not into boys. Candy is my girlfriend."

"I don't know if such things matter when the orgy happens," said Adam, "but Sarah is, well, was my girlfriend and, uhm, Jordan is my boyfriend. If we're talking truth here, I'll tell you up front I would love to, uhm, love you, touch you, kiss you, feel you, everything because you look luscious and interesting and exciting and I don't know how it will all play out, but it's pretty spontaneous and people might be, uhm, involved with people they didn't think they would be involved with, I can definitely testify to that; it's what brought Jordan and me together, but if it means I can't participate, I'll do my level best not to touch you."

Natty nodded tentatively, not looking completely convinced. Joseph decided on a solution. He spoke up so all could hear him. "Everybody listen. It has come to my attention that any one of us might be in a situation in the middle of our orgy wherein he or she might be uncomfortable or afraid or feel violated, and we can't have that happen. We will have a safe word to be yelled out by anyone who feels this way. It will be 'cavalcade' if that's okay with everyone, and if someone yells it, we stop immediately, discuss the violation and either resume without the objecting participant or cease the orgy all together. Is that acceptable?"

Everyone agreed, and Joseph was relieved to see Natty looking more comfortable, mouthing a silent thank you and even pushing her body against his arm in a subtle hug, placing the back of his hand against her warm pubis. The hug excited him, the feel of her body and her particular smell excited him, and when his cock rose up with surprising quickness, he felt her knuckles rubbing just where the ridge of his cockhead was hidden. He imagined tearing off her clothes and fucking her right then and there, something he had never felt before, or at least not with such clarity and force, and he sensed he was falling in complete lust for this impossibly sexy and breathtakingly beautiful woman, and knew it had to be the most inappropriate reaction since that was the last thing she would want. While debating whether to tell her of his dangerous reaction, Candice commanded the floor.

"Everyone, this is the first official meeting of Joseph the Love Monk's Order, so I now call the Order to, uh, order. Is that okay Joseph?"

"Joseph the Love Monk?" Joseph responded. "I don't know."

A tumult of agreement quashed any thought of changing it. "Better than the Fuck Monk, wouldn't you say?" said Candice, and everyone laughed, even an embarrassed Joseph. "Okay, who wants to take notes?"

Carol raised her hand. "Just speak up, no classroom conventions here," said Candice.

"Sorry," said Carol. "I've been a polite student all my life. Anyway, I studied shorthand, and I need practice."

"I never knew you were thinking of becoming a secretary," said Joseph.

"Neither did I, but my mother insisted and it's something that could be useful, such as now."

Candice handed her one of her smaller sketch pads, which was still quite large. "Now we need to decide to organize the Order or if the Order needs organizing," she said.

"Let me just say one thing," said Sarah. "Since Joseph has come into our lives, there have been some remarkable changes. One thing is you, Candice. I've never seen you talk so much and with such force and confidence. We all know how brilliant you are artistically, but except for when the trio has gotten together, Jordan and you and I, it was rare to hear you talk. I think we should encourage it by making you president of the Joseph the Love Monk Order."

"Any objections?" asked Candice, and when there were none she said, "Thank you Sarah."

"If you guys don't mind, I'd like to say a few words," said Joseph. No one objected and most wondered why he would even ask if they minded; they would do anything but mind if Joseph said a few words. "You guys are amazing. Carol, I hate to burden you, but this might take awhile." Carol checked her pencil, smiled and nodded. Candice grabbed a couple more sharpened pencils and gave them to her. "I hope I'm not that long winded," said Joseph. Everyone laughed.

"Surrounded by such remarkable people," Joseph began, "it just amazes me that you seem to be following me, like I'm some kind of leader of a sect, a sex sect at that. Most people of intelligence, you and I included, would imagine such a thing impossible among the brilliant people in this room. Accepting responsibility for having followers is something I've thought about early on in my development of my peculiar philosophy, especially when it began to expand beyond my own thoughts and my own monkish exercises. I knew from the beginning I wasn't interested in fawning blind followers, but active and responsible participants who could separate their interests in my ideas and processes and activities from their everyday lives, and when they did participate with me, would help me continue the development of the ideas and exercises and processes and goals. Each one of you is remarkable in your own way. Let's start with Carol, the least known of the group to everyone except myself. She has a shy brilliance, never shouted out, but remarkable once let out. She is a librarian extraordinaire, able to research every subject, know where the resources are, find the page and the passage and bring the subject into clarity, whether it's at work or at home laying in bed and talking. I see her as our researcher. Then there's Adam, a remarkable athlete as good at swimming as anyone in the state, who captured the heart of Sarah, a beautiful and brilliant young woman who could choose anyone. Because I haven't had the fortune to sit and chat, I don't know his mind as well as others here, but his longtime relationship with Sarah is proof of intelligence. What I do know is he his eminently likable, with many friends who seem dedicated to him. I see him as our communicator, our advertiser if you will, our salesman. Natalia is again unknown to most of us. Obviously she is extraordinarily beautiful in a way that is unquestionable, unlike most of the rest of us, a classic, culturally profound beauty. As the image of us, she would be inescapably attractive. Aside from that she is a remarkable playwright, able to form ideas and present them through character and language on the stage, which would be a wonderful tool of expressing ourselves to the world. Jordan is a remarkable performer and a songwriter, and he would create and perform the music of us, as well as being a central figure in Natalia's plays, being a fine and truthful actor. Sarah is the cheerleader of the group, finding what's best in us and proclaiming it to us and the rest of the world. In always proclaiming the best in us, I see her as an organizer, taking the most resistant matters and with the power of optimism transforming them in the most progressive and appealing manner into existence. If she's willing, I want to work with her in organizing my notebooks, my mess of thoughts into a cohesive doctrine. Furthermore, perhaps with the assistance of Adam, if we do face any obstacles legally or otherwise, I see her as the one who turns the opposition away or even encourages them to transform into supporters. Candice is of course, along with leading our gatherings, our creative visionary both through art and through her imagination. And she is the key to what my message is all about. It sounds like I'm creating a sect revolving exclusively around my philosophy, but I'm not. As everyone can see, Candice creates art too controversial to be seen by the public, especially considering her social status as a minor. This is going to sound incredibly ambitious, but I want us to create a unity of creative support; I want our gatherings to be not just meetings of bodies to create cosmic orgasms, but places to communicate our current work and to create a network to bring various projects to completion, whether it's forming my notebooks into a cohesive book and getting it published or finding a place in which we can show Candice's work without risking social repercussions or supporting Jordan in making a musical film or bringing Natalia's plays into production or whatever it is that each of us is doing being supported and successfully completed.

"Whatever drew you to me, you should know what you're getting yourself into. I've been a loner most of my life. My father moved us from house to house all over the United States since I can remember, and if I was good at making friends it might have been an adventure with lots of characters along the way, but I've been shy and reserved and basically crawled into my own little world. The advantage was I spent much of my time studying, expanding my horizons within the space of my desk or bed or my projector if not the world outside. In essence, I became my own subject, epistemology and ontology, the nature of thought and being in my narrow existence. Carol helped me escape my invisibility to the rest of the world, she and her group of friends let me into their clique and she let me into her heart. At the time I was studying Eastern philosophy with my usual thoroughness, drawn as any horny teenager is to the Kama Sutra and Tantric Buddhism and when I was at last no longer a virgin thanks to Carol, everything seemed to click. The first simultaneous orgasm gave me what I thought was an experience as close to enlightenment in the Buddhist sense as I had gotten. I began developing exercises to amplify the experience, bringing those experiments to bed with me and Carol. When I accidentally stumbled into an orgy, the orgasm I experienced blew my mind, and I wanted my mind blown. It also ended my relationship with Carol and her friends who were the participants except for Carol; they felt ashamed I guess and Carol was jealous even though I only told her about my sleeping with her friend Dana. Alone again, I delved further into the experience I felt at the orgy, spending day and night contemplating it and any way I could make it happen and mapping out a methodology to amplify the experience when and if it did. Out of my constant thoughts, my obsession, I developed a way to contemplate while participating in the world, a sort of dual consciousness. The day it fully developed, when instead of snapping back and forth from one focus to another like blinking in REM sleep I was able to hold a dual conscious continuously was in last Thursday's class, and unexpectedly it manifested itself in, I don't know how to say it exactly, a magnetism, a projection of confidence that for some reason proved to be irresistible and, uh, sexy. What I'm trying to convey to you is I don't think it's some kind of mind control, and the minds in this room certainly seem strong enough to resist it if it was, but it is a concern. Like I said at the beginning of my endless speech, I want to bring people the joy of experiencing these cosmic orgasms, but I don't want to be a shepherd leading passive, unquestioning sheep, and the fact that you are the ones here beginning this Order makes me believe my hopes are being fulfilled. If you would allow me to step out of the room, I will let you discuss what I said and if you feel I've somehow used you or controlled you, even if I didn't intend it at least in a forced way, I won't be here to interfere with your decision to continue or discontinue the Order of the Love Monk."

Silence ensued while Joseph got his coat and walked outside. There was a pond behind Candice's house, so he walked to its edge and watched and heard and smelled and touched fecund nature in front of him.

Candice looked out through the glass of the screen door, watching Joseph walk behind the house. She turned to the group. "I loved him before Thursday," she said finally into the silence. "I fantasized about him and was fascinated by him since he first came to school last year. We've been making love for over a month. Maybe the orgy wouldn't have happened if he didn't exude such a horny presence, and I might have felt a little foggy in my thinking that night, but it was the most amazing moment of my life."

"Being lured or coaxed or forced has nothing to do with me being here," said Carol. "But it was the orgy and his consciousness astral projecting, expanding beyond his body amongst the other bodies and into my bed and into me. It made me want him again and let me have my own experience with cosmic orgasm which I wouldn't have missed for the world. It was ... indescribably delicious. Joseph has a powerful mind or a powerful soul, but I don't feel lost in it."