“What’s a Guru?”
“Nothing much,” Penny quipped. “What’s a Guru with you?”
“Guru you too!” Bix snapped back. “Don’t be funny. Tell me what it is.”
“It’s an expert Yogi—one qualified to teach the art of Yoga.”
“Maybe we should start out with something simpler,” Bix suggested. “After all, I’ve never done this before.”
“I’ve never been made love to by a man before, either,” Penny pointed out. “But I don’t just want to neck, or pet, do I? Let’s face it. Yours is an extreme case and it calls for extreme measures. The ‘Lotus Loga Position’ sounds like a good bet.”
“What does ‘Loga’ mean?”
“It means ‘union’,” Penny told him, consulting a footnote. “And that’s what we’re after, isn’t it?”
“What sort of position is it?”
Penny studied the diagram. “It looks sort of like you twist your body like a pretzel,” she told Bix. “It says here that in American slang this is known as the corkscrew position and it’s recommended to relax the body for sex.”
“Okay,” Bix said resignedly. “I’m ready for corkscrewing. What do I have to do? Get a cork first?”
“Let’s be serious. The first thing you do is screw up your body.”
“Haven’t you got things a little mixed up? I thought it was your—”
“Now cut that out!” Penny ordered. “Just let me arrange your arms and legs and all the way they show you here and then relax.” She went over to Bix, pushed him to a squatting position on the floor and then began bending his limbs and twining them as the book indicated.
“Ouch! Hey, like I don’t swing that way.”
“You will when I get through with you,” Penny said grimly. She ignored his protests and arranged his arms and legs until he did indeed resemble a pretzel. “There.”
She surveyed her handiwork. “I think that’s right. How does it feel?”
“Like the inside of a boa constrictor,” Bix told her. “I can’t move a muscle.”
“Well, that’s how it’s supposed to feel. Now just relax. Close your eyes and concentrate on the inside of your eyelids. Be perfectly quiet. Soon you’ll attain Nirvana.
Bix followed her instructions. He closed his eyes and was completely still for about fifteen minutes. Then, slowly, his eyes opened and stared unseeingly. Good, Penny thought to herself, he’s in a trance. He’s reached Nirvana. I’ll just let him stay there for a while and then snap him out of it. She sat back and waited. After another fifteen minutes, she approached Bix, held her fingers under his nose and snapped them. Immediately, his eyes took on a look of awareness.
“How do you feel now?” Penny asked.
“Great!” he said in a tone filled with awe. “I really feel great. You know, there’s something to this scene after all.”
“That’s wonderful,” Penny said. “Do you feel relaxed? Tranquil?”
“Man, do I ever!”
“And do you feel the urge for sex?”
Bix’ eyes bulged out of their sockets and devoured her delicious young body. “Yes-yes-yes! Let’s go-go-go”!
“Well, come on then,” Penny purred. “What are you waiting for?”
“Yes-yes-yes!” Bix strained his muscles, but he didn’t succeed in moving an inch.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m stuck! I can’t get out of this blasted position. You’ll have to help me.”
Penny walked over to him and looked down, studying him the way a sailor contemplates a particularly intricate knot. Finally, she reached down and grasped the ankle looped through one of his armpits.
Bix screamed in agony. Somewhere outside, a dog howled back.
“I guess that’s the wrong place to start,” Penny said. She dropped the ankle and picked up his hand, trying to untangle it from his crotch.
This time Bix screamed so loud that a wine glass shattered in the kitchen.
Hastily, Penny again released him. “If you keep screaming every time I touch you,” she pointed out, “I’ll never get you untangled.”
“I can’t help it. It’s agony.”
“Let me try it again.” Penny started at the top, trying to manipulate his neck to free it from between his knees. This time Bix’s howl was answered by a covey of fire engines rushing to answer what their drivers had mistaken for an emergency alarm. ‘
“It’s no use,” he moaned. “No matter where you touch me it feels like you’re ripping the flesh right off my body.”
“But what’ll we do?” Penny asked. “You can’t just stay this way forever.”
“I don’t know,” Bix said in a voice filled with panic. “I just don’t know. But do something. You’ve got to do something.”
“But I don’t-——Wait a minute!” Penny had an inspiration. “A chiropractor. That’s it! I’ll call a chiropractor. He’ll be able to untangle you.” Penny found a Manhattan classified telephone directory and called the first name listed under “Chiropractors”.
“Tell him to hurry,” Bix yelled to her.
“He’s on his way over,” Penny soothed him as she hung up the phone. “Just be patient.”
“As if I had a choice,” Bix moaned.
A little while later the doorbell rang. Penny put on the mink to cover her nudity and went to answer it. A moment later she returned, followed by a middle-aged Chinese man carrying a medical-type satchel.
“This is Dr. Kim Asutra,” she told Bix. “He’s the chiropractor who’s come to help you.”
“Yes. I am the chiropractor who has come to help you,” Dr. Kim Asutra said helpfully. He stared down at Bix’s contorted body and shook his head in amazement. “How, dear sir, how did you ever manage to get into such a position?” he asked.
“It wasn’t easy,” Bix groaned. “I had help.”
“You certainly are all tied up in knots,” said the Oriental impassively. “Did the lady help you?”
“Why, yes,” Penny admitted. “How did you guess?”
“Confucius say whenever a man is tied up in knots, look for the beautiful woman in the picture,” Dr. Kim Asutra said, bowing low to Penny.
“Why thank you. Tell me, did Confucius really say that?”
“No. I believe I really heard it in an old Charlie Chan movie. Yes, I can still see Warner Oland smiling inscrutably and waving around the rewo1awah.”
“Never mind being inscrutable,” Bix protested. “Can you unscrew me? I’m beginning to feel like a Chinese puzzle.”
“Ancestors frown on such stereotyped remarks,” Dr. Asutra said coldly. “Just have faith that this humble practitioner will do his unworthy best to solve your difficulty.”
“Then stop being so damn unworthy,” Bix said. “It makes me nervous. Stop being so humble and get to work.”
“Our day will come,” Dr. Asutra murmured to himself, reacting to Bix’s rudeness. But outwardly, he retained his Oriental calm. “I am here to serve you,” he said, bowing to Bix. “Cantonese style,” he couldn’t help adding to himself. “Now, let me see—” He scrutinized the tangled mass of humanity before him. “Ahh, so-o-o,” he said finally. “Here is the key.” He reached down behind Bix and twisted a vertebra in the center of the trumpeter’s back.
Bix reacted like a Chinese torture victim. This time his scream of agony set the dogs of Greenwich Village bolting for Houston Street in a flight of sheer panic; his howl was unworldly and the canines knew it. Inwardly, Dr. Asutra smiled with pleasure.
“You fiend!” Bix said when he was able to speak. “You did that deliberately!”
“Of course.”
“But why?” Bix asked, almost in tears just from the memory of the pain. “Why?”
“Try to move and you will see.”
Gingerly, Bix wiggled a finger. For the first time since going into his Yoga trance, he was able to do so. He moved his arm and it slid smoothly free of the mass of tangled flesh. “Hey!” he grinned. “What do you know?” He twisted slightly and his arms and legs became identifiable once again. He got to his feet, beaming. “Gee, Doc, I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.