CHAPTER NINE
"Okay! Everybody up for the blind stargazing! Clear your minds and wipe your behinds! We're gonna commune with the Big Buffoon!"
Andrea shot bolt upright in her bed. "What the fuck's that?"
Sean rolled over and rubbed his eyes and searched the ceiling. "Sounds like a speaker… "
"Stars are far, so's your cigar, your sex organs are under par… "
"Momma." Sean pointed. "Up there. Behind the curtain. A speaker. Christ, the Guru's got himself wired into our bedroom!"
"You're damned right he does," cackled the speaker. "It's two-way. You can turn me off, though. The switch is on the wall behind the curtain. Then I can still call you but you don't call me. I mean I can't hear you. You turn yourself off. You don't turn me off. It's kind of a world allegory. Anyhow, you are celestially invited to get your buns up to the blind stargazing. Right now. Over, under, in, around and through, and out!"
By the time they got up on deck there was barely a space to be found between the blanket-wrapped bodies strewn over it. The Guru was up in a crow's nest just forward of them with spotlights from the bridge playing on him. They found a place by the port rail and stretched out just in time to hear his welcoming speech.
"People, persons, and other various varieties and typical types of humanity! You laid out a lot of bread for this cruise, so I hope you dig it. Are the accommodations cool?"
There were affirmative cheers from the passengers.
"Funky! Okay. So the first thing we're gonna do, which is right now and also tonight and probably even today, maybe part of tomorrow, possibly… time is so damned confusing. Anyhow, what we're gonna do is called by the name of blind stargazing, which is what it is. The idea goes something like this. Hum-dee-dum-dum, Hum-dee-dum-dum. But that's just the way the idea goes. You do something else. What you do is-if you're not too tired or pissed off or horny or anything… " There were titters from the crowd. "… now as I was braying, you go when I say go. And what go means is that you close your eyes. It's the perfect word because what you really do is stop looking. That makes it easy to remember. But what have you been looking at?
"The stars. Now everybody who isn't looking at the stars, look at the goddamned stars, because if you haven't started you can't stop. All you have to remember is that when I say 'go,' you stop. Before I say 'go'-and I didn't say it that time, I just mentioned it-I'm going to talk about some other cosmic shit.
"Now for the next three weeks we're gonna be a little cosmos here on this row boat, and every cosmos has got to have rules. That's a rule. So the first rule of this cosmos is that there are no rules. Now the second one is the one I mentioned before, about nobody being allowed to stop something before they've started it. You might think that that comes naturally but it doesn't. What it comes down to is that you're never allowed not to do anything. I think you'll find that a truly useless rule. And the last rule is that the first two are not cancelled every time they go into force except on the direct authority of no one. GO!"
Sean and Andrea, lying on their backs beside each other under a blanket, snorted and guffawed and closed their eyes. There were ripples of laughter through the crowd. The night air was balmy and tangy and pungent with the crusty smell of sea salt Sean remembered once when he'd been eighteen; he'd got a summer job on a freighter. What he remembered most was the flying fish that flew into his porthole and joined him in bed one night.
He reached out and grabbed Andrea's tit. Better than the flying fish. It made him horny. The Guru hadn't said what to do if you were too horny. Could you blind stargaze and fuck at the same time?
"Everybody remembered what 'go' means?" the Guru asked. "Good. Now you didn't know what you were supposed to be doing before you closed your eyes, which is a perfectly good explanation of why none of you did it. But then the secret of wisdom lies in knowing what you're supposed to be doing before you close your eyes. Be that as it may, you were supposed to be taking photographs of the stars. Fixing their positions. Putting them in their places. Getting the pattern. Remembering that the big fat white one is so far from the little green knobby one. Now since you didn't know what you were doing, right now you'll just have to make something up. When I say, 'stop', you open your eyes and compare what you've made up with what's up there. The object of the game is to get the whole thing, right? Memorize the heavens. Now the little buggers up there keep moving around, so that's going to make a pretty tough job harder. I'm going to say 'go' a lot of times. I'm also going to say-STOP! For instance, I just said it. Did everybody stop?"
There were mixed mumblings from the crowd. From very close to Sean and Andrea there was a sudden shifting under some blankets and a high-pitched female voice, half irritated, half playful, squealed, "Freddy, is that all you ever think of? We can do that any time. Now why don't you just try to do what the Guru tells you? You could use some enlightenment!"
Andrea mimicked the voice with a whisper into Sean's ear: "Sean, is that all you can ever think of? You can put your hand on my tit and squeeze my nipple any time…" Her breath was a little choked because halfway through her speech Sean gave her nipple an extra-lively little pinch.
"If I can squeeze your tit any time, I can squeeze it now," he intoned in a voice obviously meant to be loud enough for the nearby couple to hear.
"See?" complained a voice from the darkness. "They're doing it, why can't we? Besides, the guy's got logic on his side!"
"Well I don't let logic tell me when I want you in my pants," the squealing voice replied. "And it's not now. Shut up and try some blind stargazing. Maybe it'll do you some good."
The Guru's voice was droning on from above. "Man was not meant to conquer space. He was meant to appreciate it. That's what you've got here. A course in space appreciation. Forget about a bunch of robots with short haircuts playing golf on the moon. What does a hole in one mean to the Eternal Spirit of the Cosmos?"
Sean pushed his hand down along Andrea's stomach, below the hem of her dress, and then pulled back up, hooking a finger to catch her panties where they were smallest. He wiggled the finger inside and probed the thin mat of hot corn-silk for the feeling of wetness and the always-shocking presence of an aperture.
His finger slid in. Andrea shifted her body to receive it and ran a hand across his chest. "If a hole in one doesn't mean this"-Sean curled his finger-"to the Eternal Spirit of the Cosmos, it doesn't mean shit!"
"I'll tell you something," Andrea replied, trying at once to absorb the pleasurable feeling of Sean's fingers in her cunt and to catch the Guru's words and follow his instructions. "I don't want to sound like that blushing young couple from Flushing over there, but I'd sort of like to try out the Guru's thing. I mean, I've got these weird vibrations that there's something special about the guy. Now that doesn't mean I don't want you fingering me in the meantime…" She grabbed his hand and pressed it enthusiastically into her crotch to demonstrate her point "But I also want to try this thing." She paused and they listened to the Guru some more.