Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

She hesitated strangely, something weirdly cold seemed to flicker across her eyes before she went on: “When I saw your show on acid, the you that I loved was still there, was always there. But this other you—making points, always making points—with Hennering and Luke and Yarborough same as you were always making points on me at the end… That’s you too, Jack. It always was, always will be, and once I loved that too in you, when your enemies were our enemies… remember? Remember Berkeley and the night you put together the SJC? Not Luke, not the others but you bringing it all together, making points for a reason, and the way you stopped that riot with just your face and your voice? And watching you pick the Foundation to pieces, the way you used to pick me to pieces but the way you picked that fascist bastard to pieces, and got the show in the first place too, oh, that was Jack Barren, all Jack Barren, the Jack Barren that was meant to be. And I thought that maybe you hadn’t changed, maybe it was me, that I stopped trying to understand, somehow, afraid of power, afraid of safe dreams becoming reality, afraid of the responsibility of being a winner’s woman, afraid of the real sharks in the real ocean. If you were a cop-out, I was a coward, putting you down instead of trying to understand.

“Oh, Jack, you’re the only man I ever really loved, only man I ever respected, and I still don’t understand you, maybe I never will. But if you’ll have me, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying. I love you, I love you. Don’t say a word, fuck me, fuck me, darling, fuck my brains out, I’m tired of thinking, I just want to feel.” And she fell against him, arms around him, breasts warm and wriggling, thrust her tongue to the hilt unbidden through his still-tight lips.

He shuddered in quivering, helpless he-she role reversal as inverted déjà vu flashes mocked him, her eyes bottomless, open as she kissed him, Wednesday-night-vacuum-leaching-eyes of endless string of surrogate Saras becoming real Jack-and-Sara Sara, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Acapulco, night-breezes Sara becoming wet-dream California of the mind Sara becoming every Sara that never was in false memory banks of forlorn longing becoming Saras past, Saras future, flashing positive-negative white-out blackout reality-fantasy in and out of past and wet-dream future time with the rhythm of her liquid thrusting tongue.

Vacuum in the personality-center behind the windows of his eyes, his hands moved like disbelieving robots pulling aside the black kimono sheen, and her body naked against him—brown freckle in contact with left nipple mole above border of red-gold triangle secret second navel, tongue moving sweet spittle in long-remembered trail along the curve of his cheekbone, hot wetness moving in ear encircled by lips of bougainvillea musk breathing fingers dancing down belly smoothing his thigh in primeval rhythm—filled the void with Sara-flesh reality, image-ghosts fleeing down timelines as his hands closed on the massive breast present. Sara! Sara! It’s you, and it’s real! I’m Jack and you’re Sara, is all that matters—and he pulled her face to him as she rolled him off the pillow, naked under him on the straw-matted floor. Moaning into him as he kissed her tongue on tongue mouths moving in slow pelvic rhythm her hands at his ass kneading and urging, shoving him down between legs spread-eagled encircling caressing, mouth free now and screaming orgasmic rhythm: “ Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me…” And…

And…

And it just wasn’t there. Spent totally in the night filled with Carrie, in morning-after image-eyed return event—six years of desire-images come to a moment of reality, and in that moment of all moments it just wasn’t there!

He felt the cold moment of super-Freudian disaster spiraling around him—then Jack seeing Jack with maniac laughter. What the fuck does it matter, it’s me that counts, not my dick, got nothing to prove cockwise in this arena. I love her, is all and she’s here.

He slid his face down her belly, skin to chin-stubble, buried it in musky coarse-haired dampness, lips to wet lips tasting her body as her thighs gripped his cheeks his tongue went inside her rolling and coaxing with love and wry self-frustration, thrusting and moving in pelvic simulation as she rocked against him in asymptotic rhythm and went off in great groaning spasms.

Resting his chin on the bone of her pelvis, he smiled at her face across the luffing sail of her belly, breasts awry like puppy-dog mountains, her eyes met his across pink continents of skin-to-skin pleasure…

“Jack…” she sighed. “Oh, thank you, thank you…” Then she looked down at him with a fey knowing smile.

“That’s the best you could do this early in the day? Just out of curiosity what was her name?”

“Whose name?” he grinned in mock innocence.

“Miss Last Night. I sure hope there was one, wouldn’t want to think you were…”

“Give me about an hour to recuperate, and I’ll answer your question,” he said, moving up her body to face to face languor.

She laughed and kissed him quick, dry lips sated, but he felt the hunger there still his to command, taste of her still in him, and he felt it stirring through cotton layers of fatigue as she reached down to stroke it.

“Still in there fighting, just where I left it,” she said. And years melted away, and he knew she was back. “Take it slow and easy, we’ve got time,” she said, hugging him to her. And with a strange-style shudder he had never felt before, said: “All the time in the world.”

Haven’t done this since they made grass legal, Jack Barron mused as the hand-rolled as in days of street-corner dealer yore joint passed around the mystic circle—himself, Sara, some cat named Sime who was obviously after Sara’s ass, a chick calling herself Leeta or something (iron-blonde Psychedelic Church acolyte), and a hairy type known only as the Wolfman. Barron sucked deep, getting into the anachronistic nostalgia bag, husbanding whiffs of smoke as if the stuff still cost twenty bucks an ounce, still was illegal.

“Wow,” he said, drawing out the word in approved early ’60s style. “Don’t let the word get out, but this stuff has a bigger kick to it than Acapulco Golds.”

Sara laughed. “It should; there’s some opium in it.”

Barron smiled, felt a sardonic detachment from the others squatting on the straw-matted floor. From old head days, he knew there couldn’t be more than a taste of opium in the shit; you’d have to smoke about a pound of the grass to even get a buzz off O. But that’s not where it’s at, he thought, kick’s in the idea of opium because the stuff’s still illegal; you can buy pot in any candy store. So bring back images of danger with a couple pinches of O—pushers in the streets pay-envelopes police lock fuzz in the hall, Good Old Bad Old Days, where spice of the opium’s at. And maybe there isn’t any opium, just bullshit, what’s the difference, charge is the same.

“Hey,” said the Wolfman, “you hung on Acapulco Golds too? Funny how any old head that’s really been around a while digs Acapulco Golds. And we all know how long you’ve been around, Jack.” The last walking a thin line between genuine innocent affection and sycophant put-on.

Hearing the Wolfman voice the question he was always asking himself, Barron suddenly dug why Acapulco Golds were overwhelming best-seller in the Village, Fulton, Strip City ghettos, among old-time nostalgia-head potheads: my sponsor, is all. They’re sure getting their money’s worth out of Bug Jack Barron; smoke Acapulco Golds and you’re smoking Jack Barron, act of patriotism for Wolfman, for psychedelic-ghetto types, True Believers in Dylan-haired (gotta get a haircut, starting to itch) Berkeley bad boy, our boy kick-’em-in-the-ass myth.