My dear sisters:

I have been asked to give a history of my experience with Priapus, and my part in the revival of his ceremony. I trust that this account will not leave the walls of this sorority house. Here, as best I can recall and recount it, is the story.

When I was in college in the early seventies, it was a very different environment than it is today. We were all so much more innocent than girls are now.

I chose this college because it was, at the time, a very ordinary college in a very ordinary Eastern college town. There were six sororities then, each with a different reputation. There was the academically oriented one, for what would now be called "nerds." And there was the one that catered to female athletes. There was also one that was rumored to be the "Lesbian" house and another for freethinkers and hippie-types. The girls in the fifth one seemed to think of nothing but marrying well, to the most affluent and well-connected dates they could find. And lastly, there was ours.

Our sorority was the "artsy" house, as indeed it is today. All the art majors and drama majors aspired to join it. When I was tapped to pledge them, I was so happy. I'd heard that their initiation ceremonies were a bit unconventional, not to say weird, but when I asked the "senior sister" about it, she wouldn't give me details. She did say that while there might be some element of a sexual nature, there wouldn't be rape. I would have complete control when I did whatever I had to do. I had to be content with that.

The initiation was held in the large room in the basement, next to the furnace room. I was led into the room naked except for a blindfold. There were five of us similarly attired. I was a virgin ... not an uncommon thing for a college freshman back then, although almost unheard of today, I'm told. There was a short speech welcoming us, and then our blindfolds were removed.

I noticed that the other pledges were nude as well. We were very self-conscious of our nakedness, holding our arms in front of our breasts in an attempt to preserve some of our modesty. I was particularly self-conscious about my nipples, which were (and still are) extraordinarily long and get hard with the slightest stimulation.

The other members of the sorority were also naked, but displayed little of our modesty. Indeed, most of them were masturbating themselves, bringing themselves to sexual arousal, for reasons I couldn't yet guess. The senior sister, an arts major named Esther, had enormous breasts, which weren't remarkable to me except for the fact that she had a ring in her left nipple. Several of the other women had tattoos in areas that were concealed by everyday clothing. These things were quite rare back then, particularly among upper-middle-class white women. I wondered nervously if I was going to be tattooed or pierced as well, as part of the rite, but then I noticed that some women didn't seem to have any such adornments.

Somebody passed around a bottle and I took a swig from it. It was a strong sweet wine. The bottle was followed by a fat marijuana cigarette. When I hesitated, one of the older sisters said, "Go ahead. It'll be OK. It'll help you through the rite." Then she took a hit from it, inhaling deeply as she shook her long brunette hair. She handed it to me with a smile, and I sucked in the pungent smoke. Luckily, I'd smoked a few cigarettes by that age, and was able to retain the smoke without discomfort. I exhaled, and felt the effects of the drug seep over me.

We were led over to an area dominated by a large object, the size of a sofa, draped in a sheet. Joan, one of the junior sisters, grabbed the sheet by the hem while the Esther intoned the ritual of initiation. It was the usual stuff about swearing fealty and devotion to your fellow sisters, and promising never to reveal the secrets of the sorority, and so on. We all murmured our agreement to these terms. And then Joan whisked the sheet away.

This exposed a statue of a recumbent satyr, carved in gleaming white marble, polished to a high sheen. He lay on his back, propped up on his elbows, his head thrown back and his mouth open. But one part was not gleaming white, but a sort of rusty brown. It was his phallus. It was long and slender and very dark in color, and the brown stain extended down into his groin. It had a gentle curve, and an oversized head, about the size of a golf ball. The outside of the statue's hips was also dirtier then the rest of the statue, a sort of cream color, and it was polished to a smoothness even greater than the rest of the statue.

"Behold Priapus!" Esther said. "He will accept you into our company. Submit to him, as I do!" With that, she straddled the statue, situated her vulva directly over its crotch, and impaled herself on the phallus. Meanwhile the other girls were chanting:

"Priapus, accept our sister Esther.

She is your willing servant.

She consummates her devotion to you with her body.

Grant her beauty, grant her luck, grant her your protection."

Esther masturbated herself on the statue's phallus for the entire duration of the chant. Then she relinquished her position to the next most senior girl. The chant was repeated word for word, except for the substitution of each girl's name for Esther's. When it was done, it proceeded down the line until all the sisters had coupled with the statue. One of the girls was menstruating, and pulled out her bloody tampon before coupling with the god. I suddenly realized why the phallus was brown: it was stained by countless years of the blood of menstruating women. And, no doubt, the blood of countless maidenheads being torn.

One of which was to be mine. I was still a virgin. "So this is how I'm to lose my cherry," I thought. Well, better now than never. At least I would have something to show for it ... through initiation into a company of fellow artists whose respect I craved, instead of being fucked by some jerk who didn't know when to stop. And I realized that when I finally made love to a man, I need not fear the pain of having my hymen torn. So I submitted. The effects of the marijuana were becoming more pronounced, and by the time it was my turn, I silently thanked the brunette. I lowered myself onto the phallus and felt that huge cap pressing at my entrance. And then I forced it into me. There was a twinge of pain, but the marijuana and wine made it more tolerable. I felt the cap slide up my vagina, then down again, as I gingerly moved my body back and forth, feeling the blood trickle down the inside of my thighs. I heard the girls chant "Priapus, accept our sister Virginia..."

And then it was over. I was next to last; the girl behind me saw the new blood on the phallus and smiled, and then performed the rite with an easy grace that showed us that she was no stranger to sex. I heard Esther say something like "That concludes the ceremony." The lights went up, more wine and grass was passed around, and we initiates hugged our new sisters. The air was sexually charged, and some of the girls were pairing off with each other, while others went back to Priapus to fuck themselves to orgasm as the others hooted and clapped. I was feeling too uncomfortable to participate, but shared in the general good feeling.

Over the years, I participated in three more such ceremonies. There was no further discomfort, and I enjoyed the feeling of that phallus filling me as the girls chanted the litany. And, like many of the girls, I visited Priapus for private sessions of my own, independent of the initiation rites. This was usually when I came home from dates still sexually unsatisfied. I had finally been having sex with men, but found that once they came into me, their energy suddenly evaporated, leaving me still horny and eager for more. But Priapus would stay hard as long as I wanted, and never failed me.

I discovered that the phallus itself was not marble, but ivory, imbedded in the marble statue. That was why it didn't have the cool touch of the rest of the statue. Neither was it warm, of course, but it seemed so in contrast to the rest of the statue. I would let my breasts hang down and rake the satyr's chest, feeling the cold stone on my nipples. I would kiss that cold mouth, and clench and polish those cold hips with my thighs. Eventually, I found it easy to masturbate my way to orgasm on Priapus's cock, perhaps inflamed by the thought that countless other girls had done so over the years, and would again in years to come.

But that all ended with my graduation. I moved to New York, where I took my new degree in Dramatic Arts to Los Angeles and tried to make a living with it in the film and television industry. I succeeding in getting many minor roles in forgettable movies and soon-canceled series, but never hit the big time. I moved back to New York to try my luck in the theater, with similar results. After a few years, it became apparent to me that I would never be able to count on my talents as an actress to feed myself. Instead, I accepted an offer of marriage and had two children. I found, as many wives and mothers did, that the pressures of my new position sapped my libido. Our lovemaking became less and less frequent, and eventually died out altogether.

When I was in my fifties, my husband left me for a woman in her twenties. I couldn't really blame him. She was good for him in many ways, re-igniting his virility as I no longer could. Our divorce was as amicable as could be expected und the circumstance, and his alimony tided me through until I obtained a real-estate license. I made a good living at it, since it was at this time that real estate prices were skyrocketing, particularly around New York City.

But to get back to the story: a few years ago, I attended a sale of art ... more of a flea market, really. Among the various things for sale was an object that was exhibited in a case with a tag that read "Ceremonial (phallic?) object. Provenance unknown. $250.00 OBO." I recognized it at once. It was Priapus's phallus!

It was just as I remembered it, except a little darker. It had the same slender curve and enlarged head that had pleased my vagina so many times. I noticed a long pin extending from the phallus's base, an extension of the object itself. In contrast to the rest of the piece, the pin, or peg, was the color of slightly burnt cream and absolutely straight. It must have been shaped to fit into a corresponding hole in the statue itself.

I talked with the owner and found that he had acquired it about five years ago from another collector. He had hopes that it might have some archeological value but found that, without some record of its origin, it was useless. I offered him a hundred for it.

"That's half of what I paid for it!" he protested.

"And twice what it's probably worth," I replied. "If you buy something whose provenance you can't document, you always take a chance that you'll lose money. Just be glad you only lost a hundred." But he wouldn't accept my offer. After much haggling, I talked him down to a sale price of a hundred fifty, and it was mine.

That night, I obtained some pot from a friend of mine in the community theater where I still acted and directed from time to time. I bought some cigarette papers from a convenience store and, with shaking hands, rolled my first joint in twenty years. I took a hit and found to my surprise that it was much stronger than the pot of my college days. Two hits were enough to get me really stoned. And then I had a glass of wine, lay naked on my bed, and masturbated myself with my new toy. I didn't climax. Something was still not right; perhaps my libido had ebbed to the point where a climax was no longer possible. Or perhaps I needed the rest of the experience, complete with the statue. But my session with the phallus was still pleasurable and reminded me of my college days.

And of course, it got me to wondering what happened to the rest of the statue. That is how I came to be once again at the door of your house. It was summer, and the house was deserted except for the senior sister, whose name was Amy, and a few other girls who had stayed the summer.

It was Amy who answered the door and let me in. She was a buxom woman with dirty blonde hair and an easy smile. I identified myself as a sister of the sorority and she greeted me cordially, although she requested some verification. The sorority library had a set of yearbooks from my years, and I showed her my pictures, which she compared with the one on my driver's license. Satisfied, she hugged me and welcomed me back as a sister of the house.

She told me something of the intervening years of the sorority, which were not good ones. At one point in the late nineties, it had actually been closed down for a few years, its charter suspended. The reasons given were drugs and prostitution.

"All that stuff about prostitution was bullshit," Amy said. "But the drugs, that was real enough. A few of the sisters, including the senior sister, were dealing big time. Meth, acid, heroin, you name it. The college finally had to do something to convince the town that it was "dealing with the problem," so it shut us down. When we got our charter back and re-opened four years later, it was with an entirely new set of members."

"So there's nobody whom you know from before then?"

"Not a one. You're the first. I think that they all heard about the closure, and figured that it was permanent."

"And all the stuff that was in the house? Furniture and artwork and stuff?"

"It was all gone. The college contacted a lot of the artists, and they came back to claim it and take it away. The rest got sold at auction, to pay for the legal bills. The only thing left was that old statue in the basement."

My heart skipped a beat. "A statue?"

"Yeah. A statue of a faun or satyr or something. It was too big to move. I don't know how they got it in there in the first place. Maybe they built the house around it, I don't know."

"May I see it, please?"

"Sure. But it isn't worth anything, if that's what you're thinking. We had it appraised, and found out that it was a crude nineteenth-century copy of a crude fifteenth-century copy of a classical sculpture, probably Roman. And it had been damaged."

"In what way?"

Amy snickered. "His dick is missing. The original had a big dick, according to the pictures we saw. But it's missing on the copy."

She showed me to the basement, and there he was! The same old Priapus, except that where that beautiful brown phallus used to rise from, there was now only a hole. A hole, I realized with a shock, into which my new toy would fit perfectly.

"That's not the only thing we found in the basement," Amy said. She showed me a panel on the wall, on which there was writing. But the writing didn't make any sense; it was gibberish.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"It's a message in code. Tina ... one of the sisters ... cracked it this summer. Now we know what it means, but it doesn't make sense."