STEVE VICTOR AND THE TIME MACHINE
It all started in a small Tibetan village. In studying the customs of these little-known people, Steve Victor met with the local Lolita, Miss Ti Nih Baapuh, and proceeded to break several Lamaist taboos regarding the art of love.
He might have been content to continue his researches with this uninhibited sexual dynamo, if it hadn't been for Papa Baapuh’s time machine. Once inside it, Steve Victor unbelievingly found himself catapulted into the lap of the Queen of Sheba in ancient Ethiopia. And a very obliging lap it was. In no time at all he was being propelled from one century to another — now an orgy with the Princess Julia in ancient Rome, now a quivering clinch with Eleanor of Aquitaine during the Second Crusade in Damascus.
It was quite a novel way of getting inside history and Steve Victor, always a willing scholar, decided To let himself go and make the most of it. . .
BACK HOME AT THE O.R.G.Y.
Ted Mark
1968
Chapter One
THE EVENING OF MAY 12TH, 1967, I SLIPPED BETWEEN the sheets of a bed in a Hollywood hotel, established contact with the world famous cinema sex-kitten Misty Milo, and proceeded to break several California statutes having to do with erotic practices between unmarried members of opposing sexes. Two weeks later I rode a yak up a Tibetan mountain located well behind the Bamboo Curtain, dismounted at a snowed-in tape to meet with a priestess of polyandry, and proceeded to bust several Lamaist taboos relating to sexuality. Some hours after my arrival I entered an elaborate palace in Northern Arabia, found myself face-to-face with the Queen of Sheba, and proceeded to shatter several Sheban mores designed to restrict queenly carnality.
The Queen of Sheba!—“Balkis,” to label her with historical accuracy-—-circa 950 B.C., or thereabouts—which is quite a “circa” for a mod cat like me who always thought H. G. and Jules1 dropped their time machines right between the gratings of the Credibility Gap2 . The Queen of Sheba!
Well, why not the Queen of Sheba? And why not Eleanor of Aquitaine? Or Julia, Empress of Rome? Or my own Grandma, for that matter? Why not, indeed!
In my line, you learn to accept what’s available. That’s only practical, because my line is sex. Also, my line is often my leisure. Little did I guess that evening of May 12th, 1967, that my leisure might become legend!
Steve Victor a legend! Now there was a thought! But not a legend in my own time. And that’s the story—the fantastic, improbable, unbelievable, impossible, ridiculous, incredible, insane, adjective-straining story!
Steve Victor is me. Maybe you’ve heard of me. I’m the man from O.R.G.Y. If you have, then you know that the initials stand for the Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth, a one-man sex survey outfit profoundly dedicated to latching onto research grants from those lucre-leaking foundations who finance scientific investigations. If you haven’t heard of me before, I might mention that I’m a man who enjoys his work.
It wasn’t work that night in Hollywood with Misty Milo; just sort of a busman’s holiday. The bus was going full speed down the freeway when the telephone rang. I jammed on the brakes to answer it, leaving the only other passenger somewhat shook up and disgruntled.
“Hello!” I honked into the mouthpiece-—and get the hell out of the way; you’re blocking traffic!
“Hostile-hostile,” the jaywalker answered. “What kind of tone is that to take with a dying man, Steve?”
“Dudley!” I exclaimed. “Dudley Nightshade!” I identified the caller. “How the hell are you?”
“Excuse me.” Misty’s voice drifted up small but indignant from beneath me. “Would you mind leaning on your elbows? You’re cracking my ribs!”
“Sorry.” I shifted position.
“And well you should be!” Dudley was indignant.
“That’s some question to ask a dying man! ‘How are you?’ You’ve got the kind of tact if you dated Helen Keller3 , you’d take her to a Technicolor movie and ask her how she liked the scenery and dialogue!”
“Same old Dudley!”
“Do you mind if I get out?” Misty wriggled. “I have to go to the john.”
“See what I mean? ‘Same old Dudley’! A tactful person would never use that word to a man at death’s door.”
“Go ahead.” I rolled over and Misty scrambled off the bed. “Right through that door over there,” I directed her.
“That’s not funny!” Dudley was indignant. “I could go like that—-poof!—just from talking to you. I should have known better than to call you. You have no sensitivity!”
“Why did you call me, Dudley?” It was a rhetorical question. My mind was on one million dollars worth of bare derrière jiggling into the bathroom. For real! Misty’s rump was her cinematic trademark, and it was insured by Lloyds of London for that amount.
“I want to die in Tibet. I thought you might help me.”
He was serious. The peculiar thing is that he had reason to be serious. I’d known Dudley for about six years, and for six years he’d been a dying man. Well, aren’t we all, you may ask? Don’t we all begin dying from the moment we’re discharged from that universal pop-up toaster, the womb? Isn’t it just a matter of “sooner or later”?
Yeah. But with Dudley it was different. Six years ago he’d martini’d away one of his kidneys. After its removal, the other one had started pining away with a carcinoma of loneliness. By the time science had really perfected kidney transplants, it was too late for Dudley Nightshade. He was too far gone. It was a matter of weeks, the doctors had told him, maybe months, possibly a year. Six years later the prognosis was the same. Dudley was a dying man; but his remaining kidney kept stalling.
Psychologically, this period of impending death was traumatic for Dudley. In regard to his health, it made him insecure. Indeed, if he hadn’t actually been dying, any shrink worth his Dream Book would have labeled Dudley a hypochondriac. Even given the reality, it must in honesty be admitted that Dudley was a kvetch. He was constantly moaning and groaning about his aches and pains, always in a tone of dread—lip-licking dread, anticipating corpse-hood.
A side effect of his dying, his concern for his health had weighted him down with possessions of a medicinal nature. Wherever he went his portable drug store went with him. Pills, capsules and suppositories, bottles, phials and inhalators, hypodermic needles, thermometers designed for every bodily orifice and enema bags, empty tubes for blood and urine, slides for smears, microscopes and stethoscopes—-all this and more accompanied Dudley wherever he went.
And now he wanted to go to Tibet. “Why Tibet?” I asked him.
“Nirvana. The Lamas have the secret. I want to die at peace.”
“Oh, come on, Dudley.”
“I mean it. Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but a man in my position can’t afford to be cynical.”
“All right. But what do you need me for? I have no reason to go to Tibet,” I pointed out.
“Yes you do.” He explained. Tibet is one of the few places in the world where polyandry-—the' practice of women taking two or more husbands—-is still practiced. That I knew. What I didn’t know was that Dudley had arranged a grant for me from one of the largest research foundations in the country to investigate polyandry in Tibet. Dudley was a biologist. He’d presented us as a team, he to study the anatomical responses of polyandry, I to survey the sociological scene.