John Haskell - American Purgatorio

Someone had built a sweat lodge just down a trail from the house, and people would leave the area around the house and then return later, hair wet and faces flushed. I joined a group — one man had a flashlight — walking down to this sweat lodge and what it was was a stick structure like an igloo, covered in plastic, with a fire outside. Red-hot rocks were brought from the fire into the tent and doused with water. About six or eight people were sitting cross-legged in the sweat lodge, all naked and sweating, and when I saw Feather standing at the entrance, steam rising off her body, her hair braided like the famous Indian chief she was emulating, I didn’t fall in love because I was still thinking about Anne. But I saw her beauty. Even from a sidelong view her nakedness revealed a beauty of purity, or a purity of beauty, and yes, Anne had purity, and she also had a sense of humor, but while Anne was uppermost in my mind, I was somewhere else, not in the upper regions, but somewhere below that, in my belly, which was feeling unusually taut as I took off my shirt and my shoes. When I was completely undressed and about to step into the tent, expecting to see Feather either fully or partially dressed, there she was, still naked, still standing outside the igloo entrance, still dripping from the steam. She was standing in front of me with her cowlick hair, and I was just bringing my eyes down from her hair to her face when she kissed me. She sort of jumped up quickly, and kissed me on the lips, and then she walked away.

What that kiss had meant was something I tried to figure out, turning it around in my mind. And when I took my turn in the steam tent, sat in the circle, watching the rocks glowing in the center of the circle, and when I thought of the person who’d kissed me, when I pictured her, it was Anne. As the heat radiated off the rocks, the images that came into my mind were images of Anne. One image especially, of her, innocently standing on the rocks at a tide pool, letting herself get splashed by a wave, and her thin yellow shirt getting wet and transparent, and then her turning to me.

After the sweat lodge I went back to the main celebration, stood with my cup of punch, a little away from the main group physically, yet feeling oddly connected to the general hubbub.

And not just to the people.

I wandered down a pine needle path away from the house, wandering along until I came to a tree. Slowly, I approached the tree, stood close enough to smell the tree, and listen, and look at the tree, not as a thing but as another life. I began to feel a tenderness for the tree. The old gnarled bark seemed beautiful to me, expanding and contracting in front of me, and the life of the tree (the force that through the green fuse moved) seemed visible to me, and when I touched the tree, put my hand against the hard bark, I could feel the yearning and sadness of the tree.

Or my own yearning and sadness.

Whatever it was it seemed to be pure. I wanted to talk to the tree. I knew that talking to a tree was not a normal thing to do, and yet I felt like reassuring the tree, comforting the tree as it stood before me. Longing is the desire for something unattainable, and while I couldn’t afford to long for Anne, because that implied unattainability, I could — and did — feel longing for the tree.

I stayed there awhile and then I walked back to the tent. Feather and Fletcher were inside the tent, sitting cross-legged on the sleeping bags, their hands on each other’s thighs. They invited me in and Fletcher told me about the LSD in the punch. Which didn’t matter to me. I sat down, also cross-legged, creating a triangle inside the tent, and we didn’t speak. The party voices were audible in the distance.

Fletcher turned toward Feather and looked at her. And then he looked at me. I looked at him and she looked at me, and we were all looking at each other in a way that made it unclear who was looking at who, or whom. Either way, there was a lot of looking going on. And at some point Fletcher slid across the sleeping bags, and with his fingertips, he began touching the base of my neck, pressing against my spine and spiraling his fingers down the bones of my back.

In the car, when they’d talked about sexuality, they’d talked about a desire that transcended mental and emotional and even physical accoutrements. They’d talked about the possibility of reaching that place of untainted desire, and now it seemed they were practicing it.

My encounter with the tree — the smell of the pine sap was still sticking to my fingers — had left me calm and surprisingly peaceful. As Fletcher continued kneading my back I was facing Feather, who was sitting very still, looking at me, letting me look at her, and something in her look, or the permission in her look, let me change her, or try to change her, into something else. And it wasn’t that Feather became Anne, or that the bones in her wrist and the hairs on her arm became Anne’s bones and Anne’s hairs, but because I wanted Anne, even though she was Feather, I was feeling the excitement of being with Anne.

That’s when Fletcher left the tent. He nodded to me as if he was giving me something, giving me an experience or a wish, or giving me Feather. He seemed aware of what was happening. He said, “If that’s what you want,” and what he was doing by saying “If that’s what you want” was stepping aside. I don’t imagine it was easy for him, but he was trying, I think bravely, to live the principles he advocated. Then he left the tent.

When he was gone Feather turned so that she was facing me directly. When she’d adjusted her position so that she was sitting close enough to reach out, she did. Our eyes were fixed on each other and she reached out, took my hand, and placed it on her heart. It wasn’t exactly her heart because it was higher than her actual heart and more toward the edge of her chest, so that beneath the material of her shirt — between my hand and her heart — I could feel the outline of her breast. She was saying, “Feel my heart,” and although that was something Anne would never say, I wanted to feel the heart, and feel the person, or radiance even, emanating from that heart.

Because in my mind it was partially Anne’s heart, it was also Anne’s breast, and I felt something stirring. I felt the stirring of desire, but every time I tried — or thought about — acting on this desire, I thought of Anne, and then the desire faded. And Feather seemed to understand this. It didn’t seem to be a problem for her. I was all part of weeding out impurities. She was willing to accept whatever my so-called impurities might be, without judgment. And because human experience is full of complexity it’s possible to have simultaneously conflicting impulses.

Which I did.

I say conflicting because certain of these impulses — about what I should do, or ought to do (or about Anne) — were holding me back, separating me from where part of me wanted to go. And the reason I didn’t follow these impulses and break through any membrane was that I wasn’t convinced I wanted to go there. I was dreaming of passing through to the other side, but at the same time I wanted to stay on the side I was already on. I was still with Anne or the memory of Anne. I knew that memories get superseded by desire, and because I was worried about losing Anne, I held on to her memory, in my mind. And I wouldn’t say that I was fighting a battle between memory and desire, because memory also was desire.

All the time I was thinking this my hand was shivering.

“It’s just a breast,” she said.

“I’m fine,” I said.

And something about my saying that brought my attention back to my hand, feeling the heat from her body, the softness of the flesh, and the structural framework of the body beneath that flesh.