But it was hard to say, really, exactly what was bothering Joe. He would tell her she was trying to run his life. Well, she mused, maybe she was trying to impose her will on him. She didn’t want to, certainly, but it was hard for her to weigh whether she was or no. She had discovered one thing. Her escape had been one from something rather than to something else. She had run away from the twin beacons of Harlem and Long Island, but she had not reached anything satisfyingly conclusive. The life she and Joe had become involved in had not yielded anything particularly characteristic. Actually, a lack of values predominated. Perhaps this very lack of values, Anita reflected, might be enough—for the time being, at least—and give her a chance to breathe, while she could discover what she really wanted, what niche in life she could comfortably occupy. For the first time, Anita felt she should think of her life with Joe as a temporary thing, and not as an end in itself.
She let her gaze rove about the room. Judy was passing out the cigarettes-no sooner offered than eagerly snatched. These people, Anita thought. The ones who said: This is the life, this is what it’s all about. They were wrong, she felt. They had to be wrong. They made such a great show of not caring what other people thought, and yet they were so desperately concerned with coming on strong. In rejecting the values of a society they couldn’t cope with, they had made the drastic mistake of setting up their own society—every bit as illogical as the one they had rebelled against. And they had bowed to their own society’s false values while they had rejected a little too vehemently the false values of the repudiated society.
And there Anita stood, dead center. And not knowing which way to turn, because no path seemed open. Where next?
“Anita—” Joe began.
She turned.
“You going to smoke, baby?” he said, his tones gentle.
His face played with a smile. Her failure to open the doors to the sky via marijuana amused him more than it annoyed him. His half-teasing, half-coaxing commentary continued.
“You don’t have to, baby. But you better not breathe too deep. All these people smoking, they’ll get you high by being in the same room. Just a little high, but high. And with the wine you’ve been drinking you just might get an edge on. A little burn, like. You want that to happen? What do you say, baby?”
Lee Revzin, the poet, was lighting up a joint in the corner. He held the flame to the twisted end of the cigarette and drew in deeply. Then he passed the joint to a girl with long red hair whose name Anita did not know.
“Or do you want to go home?” Joe asked. “You could pick up your marbles and go home, baby. Play it safe. Go all the way home, to grandma. You might dig that. You could tell that Ray Rico cat what a wild life you’ve been leading. Impress the hell out of him.” He was being very nasty now and the words hurt her. But still she knew that he did not really mean them. He had wanted to make love before the party and she hadn’t felt like it. So he was taking out his frustrations on her, whipping her with his unsatisfied maleness. She did not like it but she could not blame him for it.
“I’ll smoke,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really.” But why? She asked herself. She didn’t want to. Or did she? And if so, why? Maybe to share more of his world. Maybe to sink herself further. Maybe because she needed him more than she wanted to admit. Maybe because, for some irrational reason, she was beginning to feel something for him she didn’t want to name. Maybe love.
Joe held a joint between his thumb and forefinger and smiled at Anita. “Hemp,” he said. “Tea, gauge, grass. A million names for a million games. Let’s blow up, little girl.”
He lit it and took the first drag, then handed it to her. She needed no instructions. She had seen him do it and she had watched Shank.
So she took the cylinder of marijuana and put it in her mouth. She drew the mixture of smoke and air deep, deep, deep into her lungs. It did not taste pleasant and she wanted to cough. But it was a sin to cough, to waste the smoke forever, so she held on to it. It stayed down until she had to let out her breath, by which time he had passed the joint back to her for another drag.
The high came gradually, reaching Anita before she became aware of it. Living with Joe in an environment of which marijuana had been part of the day-by-day routine, she had grown to believe that pot itself was largely a state of mind, that the weed affected you only if you worked the effect up all by yourself. A sort of auto-hypnosis, the way she had understood it. As a result, the effect marijuana now had upon her was rather startling.
She closed her eyes and thought, nevertheless, that she could see. An illusion, of course, and she recognized it as such, but it was nonetheless enjoyable. Her body felt dynamically alive, every muscle a substance she could see, hear, feel. She listened to the blood rushing through veins and arteries, and quivered to the softness of her enveloping clothing. A record, loaded with flamenco music, played full blast, and she not only heard each note but the space between them as well.
She felt Joe’s hand on her arm and her whole body wakened to his touch. Suddenly she wanted him, wanted him more than ever, sex more beckoning than it had ever been before. She itched and throbbed with desire.
“Joe…” She muttered.
His arms circled her from behind, his hands kneading her breasts. It occurred to her that everybody could witness her and Joe, but it also occurred to her that she did not care. The sensations were delicious, far more so than they ever had been. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut, and every square inch of her tingled with the joy caused by his wonderful, marvelous hands.
“My sweater, Joe,” she said. “Take it off. Touch me, touch me, it feels so good, so fine, so wonderfully fine, and I’m high, I’m way up in the air, way way way up in the air—”
Joe took off her sweater, the air cool on her bare breasts.
The air.
Then his hands.
She even imagined she could sense the pattern of his fingerprints as he fondled her warm breasts in his warm hands.
It felt divine.
After several eternities he released her. And, her eyes still clenched tightly shut, she felt him spin her lazily around to her back.
Then, as he crouched over her, her mind reeled. This is vulgar, she thought. This is common, not ladylike at all. What would Grandma think? She would disapprove.
But her sensations were so overwhelmingly exhilarating…
Anita knew what was happening. Joe was removing her slacks. Not ladylike at all, but so nice…
And then Joe was really making her, through and through, and it wasn’t right because there they were in a roomful of people and everybody could see them, movement by movement.
But it felt so good, so velvetly good, and her hips were humming like a dynamo and trying to behave like a centrifuge, whirling, swirling with her good man who felt so good, good, good!
And it got better and better and better until the sky fell in and the world blew up in a shower of stars—you hear me? Stars, stars all over so your body could smile all over at the sight of all your secrets flowing out…
“Let us consider the semantics of Hip,” Lee Revzin said. “Let us take the words apart and see the interior of the star-spangled world. Let us probe the quintessence of hipness and reduce a subculture to words.” He was seated in an armchair. His eyes were closed, his head angled back. He spoke in a loud, clear voice and did not pause for breath.
“The Hip does not make love,” he went on. “The Hip makes it. To make love implies a dualism of motive, a double effort involving two people. So the Hip does not make love. He makes it. It is individual. It is coeducational jazz with an organic goal in mind. It is Reichian, Wilhelm Reichian. Let’s all have an orgasm, boys and girls. Let’s make it.”