Chapter 6

In the blinding bright white kitchen of Joseph's home, his eyes suffering from the contrast of a long brisk walk in suburban darkness, his mother was waiting up for him dressed for bed in a long soft cotton nightie and a robe sipping her chamomile tea at the kitchen table. A smile crinkling her strong, handsome middle aged face, she told him that Carol had called and to call her back whenever he got home.

"It's after midnight," said Joseph thinking it odd his mother would even suggest he should call his ex-girlfriend at such an hour.

"I told her you might be in late and she insisted it didn't matter," said his mother with a shrug as she stood, drank the last of her tea and walked past her son into the entryway. "You do what you think best. I'm going to bed."

"Goodnight, Mom."

"Get some sleep for once; I was hoping you could catch up what with you not working tonight and your working tomorrow night after school," she said, shrugging her shoulders again. "Ah to be young," she sighed as she walked into the hallway leading to her and his father's master bedroom.

The plastic phone hanging on the wall of the kitchen sat inert and unresponsive as he stared at it. Mirroring his mom, he shrugged and unhitched the receiver and dialed a number which he had dialed often enough over the four month relationship with Carol to have it readily available for his fingers to push the exact sequence of numbers without thinking, a sequence programmed into the nerve and muscle complex through rote memory to the point where it wasn't memory but pure unthinking action which hadn't had time to wither away with the passing months but would be an unreachable code if left unpracticed after a few more months unused. With the final number pushed, he decided he would let it ring no more than twice, and even that many times made him nervous knowing her parents were early risers and thus early to bed even if Carol insisted they were oblivious to the world once asleep.

"Joseph?" said Carol before the first ring ended, even before there was much of a ring at all.

"Is everything alright?" asked Joseph.

"No, I mean yes. I'm sorry if I worried you and I'm glad you called me right away so you wouldn't worry more than you have to. You just got home?"

"Yes. My mom told me you called as soon as I was home and that was only a minute ago."

"Wow, you must have been worried."

"She said to call you no matter how late it was, so I figured I better not wait a second longer than I have to, it being after midnight and everything."

"Of course. You're going to think me crazy but I had a vision of you this evening and it ... uhm ... it made me need you so much I couldn't resist calling."

"What was it?"

"God, Joseph, it's insane. After all the wonderful times together talking and being warmed by the comfort of our conversations, and hating you because of your wayward lust..." Carol stopped talking abruptly and uttered an ambiguous noise, either a rattling sob or a burst of laughter.

"Are you okay?" asked Joseph.

"I'm ... fine," said Carol between what unquestionably was laughter.

"What was the vision?"

"It was like you were inside me in both senses of the word. You were me or I was you and you were ... at the same time ... you were inside me, from behind. We never got that far except your finger but it wasn't your finger inside me, you know, anally, it was ... Oh god Joseph, you were cumming and I felt myself being filled by you and your cum and it made me so horny the way you were cumming, you had never cum so much and with such, I don't know, intensity and it made me cum and afterwards I wanted to find you and feel you naked and feel you inside me where you had never been inside me before and feel your fingers tugging on my nipples and your fingers rubbing inside my pussy and rubbing my clitty as I was rubbing it with you and I'm cumming right now, oh my god, oh fuck, oh Joseph I need you."

Moments of panting and recovery were filled with visions of Carol masturbating to orgasm and the images tightened the crotch of his jeans as he stroked the growing, excited expanding bulge of flesh there.

"When was the vision?" he asked. "Was it at 9:30?"

"Yes. Why?"

"That's amazing. But I don't know if you want to know."

"Tell me. I can't be jealous of you even if I wish we were still together."

"Did you ever talk to Dana about what happened that night?"

"No. We don't talk anymore."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

"Maybe not in the way you think. I'm sorry you lost a friend because of me. I'm not sorry about fucking her. Do you want to keep talking?"

"Okay," she said timidly.

"I wanted to tell you about that night, but you wouldn't let me. I understand, and it's my fault our relationship ended then. If I had revealed my philosophy to you before it happened one of two things would have resulted: either our relationship would have ended sooner or you would have expected and understood and maybe even embraced and shared the experience. If it ended earlier, I would not have experienced the most important moment of my life, so I'm glad it didn't."

"And the time we would have lost wouldn't be so important?" Carol challenged.

"I wouldn't want any of our time together to not have happened. You were a great friend and a great lover, no question. You were my first, and I couldn't imagine a better person to share the experience of first love and first deflowering. I mean that, okay?"

"Okay, Joseph. I feel the same."

"I was afraid to tell you about my philosophy because I was afraid you would think I was perverted or insane."

"I already know that," said Carol with a giggle.

"I'm glad we're not talking face to face right now because I know your insatiable sexiness would seduce me into silence and I need to talk, to tell you what I'm all about. So that night, Dana and Tim and Mary and I had an orgy."

"What?" exclaimed Carol too loudly for after midnight. She quieted down, but her voice was straining with the intensity of shock. "Oh my god; Tim and Dana and Mary! Together! Fucking! I can't even imagine it. Oh my god."

"It just sort of happened, and it ended my relationship with all of you all at once. I think they were embarrassed by it. But I wasn't. It was everything I had hoped for. Are you still with me?"

"Barely. Can you hold on a couple minutes? I'm going downstairs and steal a large shot of vodka from my parent's stash."

"You don't drink," said Joseph.

"Rarely, but I need to numb my mind if I'm going to keep listening to you."

While waiting, Joseph contemplated the time. His mother was right; not getting to sleep soon would probably make for a long and tiring day tomorrow and by the time work ended at one a.m. he would be exhausted, but he knew the conversation was more important than a sleep deprived day. He needed to tell Carol his philosophy, and more importantly, to share his excitement about her vision and its unexpected ramifications, that not only was the moment of multiple simultaneous orgasms a means of generating selfless bliss, but it also generated a powerful transmission of the soul at that moment, sending consciousness out into the world to be received by those receptive to it.

"I'm not drunk, but I am slightly numb, so mission accomplished," said Carol breathlessly. "Tell me about the orgy, but spare the details."

"It's not about the details," Joseph said.

"Maybe when we're in bed together, the details could prove useful."

"It's a date, my kinky Carol."

"Tomorrow?"

"I'm working."

"Afterwards?"

"We're talking 1:30 a.m."

"I bought a car."

"I have some place we can go."

"A fellow worker?"

"Yes."

"A woman?"

"Yes."

"I should hang up."

"If you want, but I hope you don't. It's important what I have to say. It has to do with your vision."

"You were at an orgy tonight. I sensed it, other ghost people in the throes of orgasm."

"Really?"

"Just faintly, like a mist, all but invisible, but felt."

"Yes I was. Do you want to hear my philosophy?"

"Okay."

"This may take awhile."

"I'm not tired."

"Me neither. When I first met you, I was studying Eastern philosophy, mostly the various sects of Buddhism but also Hindu and Tao and Shinto, looking at the process of enlightenment or godhead or nirvana, the development of the soul towards perfection. It was our first simultaneous orgasm that put me in a heightened state of consciousness, a cosmic conscious."

For the next hour, Joseph presented his philosophy to Carol, and she was fascinated. She shared the experience to a lesser extent: the emptying of the senses during powerful orgasm and the vacuum being filled with freeing and expansive unconsciousness.

Sleep finally overcame Joseph's mind and the whirl it went through revisiting the day and wondering about the next at about 2 a.m. Like a gargantuan storm cloud bustling with electricity and wind, sending down its violence to the earth to blow away any calm and then having that funnel of wind rise up and the cloud move off, quieting and becalming in its distance, Joseph's mind rumbled and stormed and peaked explosively then slipped away into unconsciousness. Will Sarah express her love for him in school in front of the cliquish peers or will she keep the secret and pretend her relationship with Adam is unchanged? Will Carol come to the restaurant and leave with him and Harriet, the waitress and occasional sex partner? Will his lack of sleep make these events difficult or make it easier to go with the flow or ride the horse in the direction it was going so to speak? The thoughts resolved themselves in the inevitable and uncontrollable logic of the Doris Day song "Que Sara Sara," whatever will be will be, and resolved, the peace of mind became oblivion.

As far as Sarah's exposure of her changes in her relationships with Adam and Joseph at school, she took a middle ground, a sort of clandestine intimacy with Joseph; seemingly accidental touches of hands and body and loving eye to eye exchanges that lasted a fraction of a second longer than a normal accidental moment; just enough to get two hearts excited, a noticeable quickening of the blood. At the same time she leaned into Adam when they were together close enough to trade secrets.

The conversation between Sarah and Adam was about when they would meet. Sarah was eager to find out if the previous evening events had changed Adam, had made him a better, more sensitive and less selfish lover and she was surprised when he denied her request to meet after the football game, Adam telling her he had things to do, but didn't mind as much when he asked if he could see her the following day; the next day being a Saturday it would allow them more time for lovemaking.

The study group's presentation on Bangladesh went well despite Joseph's lack of sleep. He was thankful that they had decided Jordan would present most of it, leaving the other three to fill in on specifics as if they were the experts on those specifics though that was actually a pretense, the group shared equally in the information presented. Joseph did take a moment before class to meditate and the calming action woke his mind to that place of multiple foci he had found the day before, reinvigorating him and dissolving the cloudiness of his brain, giving him that confident air the rest of the group had found so overwhelming sexy, and the way they glanced at him even during the presentation revealed it was still affecting their attraction to him. Because of the football game, they figured a repeat of the previous evening's events was doubtful, but their horniness forced out the question of a late meeting of bodies which Joseph regretfully denied them, telling them he had to work. This was a quick conversation happening in whispers while the next study group set up for their presentation.

Carol arrived around 11 p.m. at the family oriented delicatessen where Joseph had worked as a busboy since the end of August. Despite the late hours and the full schedule, creating many a school day following little or no sleep, another reason Joseph was interested in developing his mind, lifting his concentration levels through the blur of tiredness like he had done that day, working at such a job which, at his young and unskilled age, could maximize his limited earning potential, the purpose being to stash away enough money by the end of the school year so he could follow his philosophical quest as a monk pursuing his orgiastic enlightenment and perhaps to give new people similar experiences and teach them to develop those experiences to find their own blissful heights. Being a social outcast or at least a loner most of his life, he doubted such a journey would result in cultivating a following for his philosophy and his teaching, but with the responsiveness of Sarah and Carol he wondered if, along with his own continuous development towards amplifying the enlightenment moment, he had always at a subconscious level, at a level close to the surface or even floating on the rippling space between consciousness and the subconscious hinting at and directing conscious thought, pursued his philosophy and sense of purpose with such unflagging determination and obsession in order to bring it to others and to have them follow him. The image of a flock in which he was the shepherd was particularly distasteful to him, comparing anyone willing to hear his teachings and develop their experience of blissful enlightenment through his philosophy and exercises to animals with little will of their own or intelligence; he was certainly not interested in being involved with or being followed by such a creature, yet to bring some of his fellow beings willing to listen to him and follow him to a cosmic state of mind gave him a sense of fulfillment and completion, at least imagining it, since it had not happened except perhaps Sarah expressing a glimpse of it. The sheep factor gave him a new idea adding to the seemingly new idea but probably old idea unrealized of disseminating his philosophy to a group of followers: he would codify his processes, and not only the process of developing and improving the moment of enlightened ecstasy, but the process of making the mind capable of multiple foci so that instead of some sheepish worshiper blindly and lovingly obsessing on him and losing interest in anything else, a follower could achieve more intelligence and more will and a greater confidence and would never truly be a follower except in the moments of studying his philosophy and practicing his exercises.

Thinking was not an important activity for a busboy; it would not be on any list of duties or accomplishments on a résumé, but as Joseph's thoughts fluttered through his mind and created new thoughts or brought up old thoughts his attention to his duties to the waitresses and the customers was undiminished. He was working with the dual foci, and it was making his confident presence stand out, which, like an extra in a movie or a non-speaking role on stage was not appropriate to the job. Noticing the attention, he did his best not to make too much noise stacking the bus bin full of plates and glasses in the busy restaurant, careful to remove plates when everyone had finished their food, offering refills on water and coffee only when it seemed needed. It was the waitress who was in charge of service, and it was the waitress who needed to be seen in the best light to encourage the best tip of which, though only getting ten percent of those tips, still would help his purposes as well. Trying to be the behind the scenes busboy was not doing much to diminish his attractiveness to the customers, especially the females, and even more to the waitresses who spent hours under his spell.

The waitress most affected by his presence was Harriet, a thin, nervous blonde in her mid twenties with large pale blue expressive eyes who had been a hippy, a speed freak and a junky in a past life she was eager to forget, with a dead boyfriend, an ex-husband, an abortion which had scarred her insides and a miscarriage which had scarred her mind. Having been a waitress for four years, she had learned to quiet her nerves and her transparently emotional face around her customers with moderate success, but still made them uncomfortable enough to end up with less tips than her colleagues. Joseph befriended her early in his time at the delicatessen, sitting with her at the bar in the back one night after closing as she sipped from her free after work drink while he was discussing Buddhism and Tai Chi and meditation and yoga when she asked him how he could be so calm when she felt like a whirling dervish, it having been a particularly busy night. Telling him she probably just needed a good fuck, he took the bait and they drove to her apartment in South Minneapolis and spent the rest of the night fucking and talking and relaxing. In fact, as she would tell him on another occasion, she had never been as relaxed in her life as she was after a night of making love with Joseph, and he was a witness to the results of his therapeutic sex: her face when she relaxed was radiant and beautiful the way a woman looks to a man when he's in love with her. Their age difference and the density of her past experience made a relationship beyond the bedroom impossible, and they made a pact as soon as Harriet saw love in Joseph's eyes, reiterated by him when he saw love in her eyes to avoid considering their relationship anything but friendship and good fucking and letting those loving moments be unique and separate from their friendship.

So that Friday night, with Joseph's confidence beaming out to the world turning the women on, Harriet's thoughts were full of images of his naked body and his pleasuring touch and his vibrating tongue and his long thick steel hard cock driving her to ecstasy, thoughts that flitted through her mind on other occasions, most frequently on nights they had planned to get together after work, but never as relentlessly and powerfully. Her face was flushed, her mind was distracted and her pussy was juicy enough for her to feel the dampness of her panties squishing as she walked. During a lull in the busy night, with the pretense of taking a smoke break, Harriet dragged Joseph into the toilet, pushed him onto the commode, pulled off his pants and underwear, placing his pants under her knee, suckled on his cock until, with thankful quickness it lengthened and hardened, shucked off her panty hose and sodden panties while Joseph stroked his cock to further hardness, sat on top of him, guided his cock inside and rode him. She leaned down while still impaled and grabbed his underwear and stuffed it into her mouth to stifle her moans. Sliding his hands under her work shirt and inside her bra, he squeezed her nipples, knowing their sensitivity and the pain/pleasure threshold she needed to bring herself to orgasm, and then removing one hand, he placed it at their conjunction, pressing her clit so it was sliding against his cock as she lifted herself up and down. He knew it wouldn't be long before she reached the crest and soared over the edge, so he closed his eyes and concentrated on the pleasure her pussy was giving his cock and the smell of her pungent prodigious libidinous fluid. His underwear was muffling her elongated sigh as her fingers pressed his fingers against her clit and she rose and fell with three quick motions before pushing back against him with all her might and he could feel the trembling pulses of her interior and he let go of his cum and filled her already full pussy with his sexual essence enjoying the intense pleasure but not allowing himself to journey far into his blissful oblivion. She arose from his dwindling penis, its withdrawal making a quiet pop. Grabbing paper towels, handing him a couple, she used the rest to dry off her wet and sticky thighs and pussy. Handing him his underwear with a beautiful if slightly embarrassed smile, she kissed his lips and his forehead and said quietly, "Thanks, Joseph. I needed that."

"I could tell," said Joseph, putting on his clothes. She was lighting a cigarette when he looked out to see if anyone was in the hallway, and luckily no one was. "I'm bringing a friend tonight," he whispered.

"Me too, I think," said Harriet. "Oh boy, so we're finally going to have our orgy!"

Joseph had noticed Harriet flirting with a customer, a good looking man about her age in jeans and a tee shirt looking casual but clean with short dark hair and a short stocky body and a friendly easy going smile, reminding Joseph of the magnetic adage about opposites attracting. She had led him to the back bar area minutes before their quickie.

When Joseph returned to the floor, he spotted Carol looking around nervously. When she spotted him, the nervousness dissolved into a big smile. Joseph's heart skipped a beat. Her plain slightly pudgy face looked beautiful to him, and she was dressed up in a frilly, old fashioned home made dress, the kind kids at school would probably tease her about or at least deride behind her back but Joseph found endearing in its reflection of her childlike and yet sophisticated and sexually adventurous nature, that is, her pure originality and uniqueness. Before he could greet her, Lois, his least favorite waitress, grumpy, gossipy and complaining but with a charming façade that reaped plenty of tips of which she was less then generous with Joseph, asked for her order, Carol having put down her menu which she had been too distracted to study, cuing the ever efficient Lois to approach her. Realizing Carol wasn't prepared, he reached the table simultaneously with Lois.

"Are you having dinner or desert?" he asked Carol, Lois turning to him with a secretive frown.

"I guess desert," said Carol.

"The apple strudel is excellent, especially with a scoop of ice cream, wouldn't you say, Lois?"

"That's definitely a favorite," said Lois.

"Okay and a cup of coffee with cream and sugar," said Carol quickly to get rid of the waitress and have Joseph to herself, at least for a moment.

As soon as Lois was gone, Joseph said, "You look lovely."

"You too, Joseph. You look amazing."

"I can't sit with you. Take your time, but once you're done I'll move you to Harriet's section. Lois gets a bit testy when her tables are occupied for any length of time."

"But then I'll be taking business from Harriet," said Carol.

"Harriet won't mind. She'll love you. Maybe you'll meet her new friend. We're hoping he'll decide to join us for the night."

"God, Joseph, this is so crazy I don't know if I should jump up and kiss you or run for the hills, but something inside me is making me stay and its not my brain."

"Somewhere in the vicinity of what you're sitting on?" There were people around and if they were paying close attention, what the two young people were discussing could be decoded, but Joseph and Harriet were comfortable with the vague suggestiveness. Carol squirmed, nodded and blushed.

"Girlfriend?" asked Lois when he returned to duty.

"Ex," explained Joseph. "Don't worry, she'll move to Harriet's station when she's done." Lois nodded without a thanks, but when he walked away from her, she admired her busboy's body, deciding to wake her husband up when she got home and make him fuck her while she fantasized his loosening flesh, especially his flabby ass, was Joseph's fine firm flesh.

Soon after Harriet escorted Carol to her section, serving her a fresh cup of coffee, Frank joined Carol. He was sipping on a Margarita, not the first obviously from his flushed face and his languid speech, but he was still sober enough to have some clarity. He offered a taste to the underage girl and she sipped, enjoying the sweet tart coldness. He poured half of it into a water glass and they sipped and talked.