Robert Onopa - The Pleasure Tube

The light shifts to yellow-white again, fades, and I find myself transported to a beach. A beach? I wonder, reach out and touch the sand. Its grains slide between my fingers, smooth, weightless as dust. I inhale—salt-rich air. I turn and Collette is lying on her side on a mat, boosted up on her elbow. She seems as vividly real to me as she did on the day we lay just this way on the beach of the island off Vietahiti; the surf is booming out at the reef with a deep roar I can feel in my bones. I reach out to touch her—she seems real, but my hand passes through her arm with a tingling sensation—not Collette, but a holographic representation.

“What would you do?” the specter of Collette asks in an eerie, hollow voice. “What would you do if you were utterly free in time?”

“I’d put myself somewhere pleasant,” I answer, laughing because I know we’ve had this conversation once before, giddy at the sound of my own voice, queerly unreal. “I’d put myself right on this spot.”

A feeling is spreading throughout my body, a rich, warm, pleasant feeling, a feeling like orgasm, but broader, wider, suffused into every limb, reaching into every part of me, permeating every cell.

I reach out to touch Collette again, concentrate—focus my eyes, move my arm slowly. There is a sensation in my hand, a sensation like the soft touch of her skin, but cooler. The moment of touch extends itself, seems to last forever as the warmth grows inside me, seems to lift me higher and higher….

I have no idea how much time passes—the moment of touch modulates, all my sensations undergo a shift through odd, funny exchanges with one another. I taste the color pink; a moving pattern of lines sounds like running deer. Then a series of scenes begin to pass through my mind, complete with all their sensations. One instant—or is it hours?—I am holding Collette for the first time, feeling the warmth and weight of her, the firmness of her back muscles, their modulation as she moves against me; then I am reclining with her on the soft loam of woods in broken sunlight, hear the murmur of a stream, feel the soft caress of her hand stroking the back of my neck, my shoulders. And then I am turning in my cabin, watching the window/wall open into another cabin, Erica turning simultaneously, Erica’s smile wide and arms rising; then I am moving toward Collette in the cabin, to music that is everywhere, above, beneath, beside me. Again I am pressed against the leather seat of the Ferrari as the car, its steering wheel in my hands, curls with smooth adhesion around the hairpin; the thrust of its acceleration coming out into the sun goes on forever; and I am sitting with Collette, her lips full and shiny, her loose hair backlit by the sun, her face inches from mine, the odor of gardenias everywhere. The experiences seem simultaneous, yet each has a full integrity, seems separate, through swimming in the soft bulk of the Pacific over an involuted reef, walking through the green mansions of palace gardens among rainbow blossoms and clucking, iridescent blue peacocks. At times they seem distant, at times so present in each detail the effect is overwhelming. In one sequence I bite into a piece of filet and see the fibers snap as in a blown-up picture, follow the process of its saturation with saliva, the chewed bit sliding with a scraping sound down my esophagus and falling with a splash into the cave where gastric juices swarm over it like foam from a wave. Collette hands me a glass of red wine and I smell sugar, grapes, the sunlight of the vineyards; she wipes my lips and the sound is like skis on fresh snow. And then I am watching myself from a distance again, the Ferrari from above a smooth blur of red, bright in the sun. The pleasures amplify, intensify, in these and other ways. The pleasures seem to grow, a surge of pleasure which, like my first moment of touch, extends itself, sweeps me away, loops me into whirlpools of memory, timelessness, sensation, a rush I have never known.

The scenes recur, roll into and through one another, green mansions and blue water, the curves of a woman, the sweet freedom of flight; they go on and on, I am in and out of them, they roll on and on.

The sky above is motionless, a sea of stars, snow at the Milky Way. The Crab nebula is overhead. I look up, and in looking I begin to feel the sky widen and begin to fall through it—falling into it, falling among the stars as the infinity of space opens before me like a window, like a door. I can feel the blood coursing through my veins, the rhythm of my heart the rhythm of my body.

A sound nearby. Collette steps out of the dark, naked, glistening with sweet oil, her breasts jutting out. She kneels before me, and when I quickly thrust inside her, she wraps her arms around my head and only her fingers move through the hair on the back of my neck. A series of jolting shocks pass through my groin, a stream of delight which does not seem to belong to me but takes the last breath from my lungs, continues, continues, continues.…

Finally Collette rises to her feet, sends her arms outstretched to the stars; the low fire gives her a golden glow, her skin glistening with the sheen of the fragrant oil as the light plays over the curves of her body.

“A goddess?” she says softly, tenderly, looking at me with a gentle smile. “Yes. And you are a god, Rawley.”

She laughs, wrinkles at her eyes, holds out her hands. “You are a god.”

Her eyes are jade-green, striking. Her broad face is framed by black, loosely waved hair. Her tongue touches the edges of her teeth as she laughs. I kiss the soft hollow between her shoulder and her neck, chocolate skin lushly warm, smooth, soft. She moves from me, whirls away, stops. “You think this is all? You think we’re finished?” she says breathlessly, Collette says breathlessly. “Oh, Rawley.”

Her eyes are jade-green, striking. Her broad face is framed by auburn, loosely waved hair. Her tongue touches the edges of her teeth as she laughs. I kiss the soft hollow between her shoulder and her neck, pinkwhite skin lushly warm, smooth, soft. She moves from me, whirls away, stops. “You think this is all? You think we’re finished?” she says breathlessly, Maxine says breathlessly. “Oh, Rawley.”

I see Massimo’s face, broad and radiant, the radiance seems to come from deep within his bones, his eyes smiling, his lips cherry-red, his shock of white hair and white beard brilliantly white.

“You belong to a new age,” he is telling me. “Go in pleasure and in peace.”

Each scene comes again, recedes, these and others, they shimmer through one another, whole scenes and fragments freeze, their images recombine: green mansions, summer wheat, the gulf of space, a sun of ice. They freeze again for a time I have no sense of, then expand into vivid swaths of pure, electric color, roll on, memory and desire mingled into a timeless rush of ecstasy and delight, roll on and on….

Then there is a jolt, a jolt like no other. It shakes me whole and violently, fixes itself in time to the thumping of my heart, reverberates intensely, then reverberates again. It is outside me, a severe jolt as from a ship, a jolt through the recliner, through my body, a jolt of massive weight and inertia.

For a moment I don’t know where I am. My heart is thudding in my chest, my blood is racing, a terror laces through the incredible sense of well-being that I have, my body feels lusciously pleasant but for the throbbing in my hand, the fright in my heart. I am struggling for consciousness, struggling to bring my dislocation under control. I feel the light pain my eyes as I open….

“Wake up,” Collette is saying, holding a glass of orange juice to my lips, her hand shaking. “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong with the ship, there’s an alarm. Werhner called down from the dome.”