Chapter 4 - Sex on LSD. San Francisco, 1965
Terence leaves Michelle's room after six hours of passion, barely able to walk. He drifts out into the corridor of her apartment building in a spell-bound dream, his feet a clear inch off the floor and quite incapable of treading a straight line. He trusts to his automatic brain circuits to guide him through such details as time and space, whilst he busies himself with the playback of each delectable moment.

He was stripped of his innocence and cast out in the open with nowhere to hide. But he was not swallowed up by the ground or torn to pieces by wild-horse horizons. Instead he understood that he possessed no original sin to blush about. In any case, he was not alone. He can feel her touch still.

His carefully collected knowledge had fallen away the like pieces of a disintegrating jigsaw. Skin to skin there was a communication that he had never known. Who he was seemed to fall away like the skin of a snake and he's blissfully certain that he's barely scratched the surface.

Michelle took him and asked for no refund or receipt. She found him more worthy than any price tag he might have hung around his testicles and his self esteem swells like helium inside of him. This was no experiment that could be written up and analysed - the instruments hadn't been invented yet to measure these qualities and his only conclusion was that he wanted more.

Three hours to go before he could call round again and she'd be free again to explore the delights of night with him. How had she guessed that he might be worth bothering with in the first place? He examines his reflection in the window of the building's exit as he prepares to step out into the street. He still looks like a chump. But he's sure that some fundamental change has occurred and the effects of this chemical reaction will manifest themselves soon. Already his skin seems to fizz with appetite for life. Though that could just be the residue of the acid.

He had entered her with ease and he could only say that it was like coming home. She let him take his time to explore every moist corner for monsters in the dark that might be waiting to leap out with hidden, castrating teeth. And when he calmed down and understood in what a wonderful place he was, she was waiting to guide the way. Together they played the ancient game of hide and seek, giving, withholding and teasing the frontiers of what could be grasped and what they had to let slide.

His feet caress the ground through his shoes and he's strangely reluctant to let go of the exit's smooth door handle. The street breeze steals a kiss at his neck and he glances around to see if anyone else noticed. The pavement is full of cracks and fissures to be filled and as he walks his hand reaches for the ledges of open windows. He penetrates shop doorways and then withdraws without looking once at the merchandise on sale. He rubs his cheeks against the barks of trees and breathes exclusively through his lips, greedily sucking in each draught of oxygen - he reserves his nose for the rare flavours to be found in fresh leaves, musty hedgerows and the traces of her scent upon him still. Every few minutes he pulls his shirt over his head and inhales the unwashed scent of merged bodies that coats his chest.

But slowly realises that in a world become sensual down to the tiniest piece of teasing sand, he does not want to indulge in this alone. He checks his watch with sudden hope. Two and a half hours to go. Man, how can such separation follow that irrevocable union? His cherry has been stolen but this afternoon and already he is no longer whole on his own. Just what part of himself did he leave behind?

He guesses now that the whole game is based on this: once we have gotten the food we need our eyes look up from the plate in search of dessert. Sex seems to underlie everything he can think of. The eternities spent on appearances just in case that special person may be looking. The endless quests for power and prestige to claim homage from the desired. The yearning pregnant in every spoken word and the hope that alights in every eye when a new person enters the room. The endless emptiness rolling out in front, ripe to be pierced by sudden, torrid passion. The unbearable humidity breaking loose into monsoon.

But for all the posturing, schemes, traps laid and nooses pulled tight - what does it all come to? Is satisfaction nothing more than a brief impostor of sticky moments? For all the lifetimes filled with secret plots and ambitions for sexual fulfilment, just how many hours are happily spent with the penis finally inside the vagina?

And when does the ultimate moment ever resemble any of the wraith-like imaginings leading up to the encounter? For what brief spit in the wind is orgasm of the only consequence and then as dead as the lust that has fallen asleep. Roll over, light the cigarette and wonder who's going to sleep in the wet patch. Could that be it?

No. Terry guesses that the pain only begins there and all else follows. Empires erected, lands conquered, religions spawned and spread upon virgin primitives - all because of a good fuck or the lack of one. The Taj Mahal hoisted in to the sky by the architectural design of a Mughal emperor's burning heart. Churches and governments contesting the control of wedlock and intimacy with a licence. Influential families and dynasties writing present and future power matrices on the basis of a young maiden's inaccessible beauty. Blood mixed in sultry ceremony and hopes for the future floating upstream aboard vessels of warm semen. Kingdoms raised or fallen within the realms of draped bedroom chambers where only two could bear witness to events. Reichs founded upon the frustrated testosterone of angry young men, screaming for their right to be thrown to the front as cannon fodder. Cities ejaculating concrete skyscrapers into the heavens. And the ultimate three second orgasm to establish total domination: the Atomic Bomb.

But no, he promised Michelle that he wouldn't think about that until he slept. He continues along the street and people pass him without a second glance - one is enough to establish that he's out of his mind. He wonders to what wives, husbands and secret lovers they all come at night when sins are let loose in this snazzy metropolis. How many of these stern guys in suits will later be found stepping out of taxis in the red light district? How many of these pious housewives await the special knock on the French windows whilst their husbands are at work?

Everywhere poles, posts and pillars erupt out of the ground. Coins are placed in slots, keys in ignitions, engines rode, blank spaces graffitied, smooth glass shattered, tyres burst with pocket knives, silences punctuated with virile howls, car bodies sleek and curvaceous, smoke ejected from exhausts, hands grasping bottles, caps unscrewed, stools hugged between thighs, lips sucking at cigarettes - Man! How many hours to go? Two! How is that possible?

Terry walks off the street and into a park in search of respite from the incessant sex of the modern world. But here, too, stretch fertile undulations of grass, trees and thousands of creatures with nothing other than procreation on their minds. However, the pace is at least a little slower here and without the intensity of automation.

He rests himself beneath a large oak tree and places his spine up against the trunk. He clears his throat and sings in a raspy voice: "Mi-chelle, ma belle," but twigs and acorns shower down upon him from disturbed squirrels before his own ears might protest.

He sprawls out on the daisies, gazing up at the sky with dilated pupils. He wriggles happily upon the grass and allows the worlds to move before him. Galaxies sway and stars hold hands to sing sandman lullabies. Small birds fly down around him to bite his clothing in their beaks and then hoist him off the ground so that his head flops back with eyes closed in contentment. He's taken up through clean, clear air and off to the realms of cotton wool clouds. All is white and blue. Wisps and whispers of steaming cloud rise like jinns from their snowy beds and the whole place is wet with sunlight.

The cloud he lies upon moulds itself around him in enormous proportions, ridges to his sides acquiring curves and sinews whilst a large body of white stretches behind him with a shapely waist and billowing breasts. He opens his eyes to find himself a mere mouse-like figure on Michelle's giant body of puffed cloud.

He runs up and down each thigh in panic, trying not to fall into the gaping vulva below him and he must wade his way through pubic hair jungles, hacking and slashing at the sticky threads that attempt to pull him in. He scrambles up the waist and loses his footing to slide down her smooth stomach into her belly button. The walls around are too high to be climbed so he jumps up and down on the elastic floor, trampolining his way out and up to the ribcage. Here he mounts each rib like dunes in a desert until he comes to the formidable swell of the breasts. He dashes up the cleavage and then attempts the more gradual ascent from the collar bone. Still at the steepest point he's obliged to climb face down until he can at last take the steps to approach the erect nipple summit. He walks around the pink pillar, surveying his task and then decides to take a running jump, claiming handholds upon the top. Sweating profusely and long out of breath, he hauls himself up.

What juicy pink! What longing texture! Terry is inspired to set his lips to the nipple surface that runs a metre to each side of him but in doing so, he causes Michelle to release a moan of pleasure and all hell breaks loose. Her shiver of sensation hurtles him off her breast and down the ribcage with bruising bumps. He slides along the stomach at huge speed and sails off into the net of pubic hair.

The hairs waste no time in wrapping fast around his ankles and wrists, tight about his chest, neck and groin. He's pulled closer to the clitoris that pulses warmly as he's dragged along it and the vaginal lips open themselves in anticipation. He struggles bravely but in vain for each effort entangles him further. He's delivered to the gaping uterus that begs for insertion of flesh. His feet disappear inside with a squelch and he sinks without hope into this sticky quicksand.

He knows that once inside he'll never find his way out again in the labyrinth of caverns, passages and niches that compete for his attention. Screaming wildly he sinks down to his chest and his arms flay wildly around as his head takes its last breath and vanishes with a muffled yell. His clasping fingers stroke along the labia in search of a handhold but elicit nothing more than gasps of pleasure from Michelle, her lips closing over them with a smooch.

Inside Terry finds himself within an underground complex of caves and catacombs all lit in a glowing red. Juices run down the sides of the walls and everywhere is the smell of fish. He takes out a torch and a map to navigate his way through the damp corridors. So reluctant is all that he touches to let him go that he must yank his feet out of the floor with each step. He consults his papers at every turning but loses his footing each time moaning earthquakes shake the very foundations. The tremors continue with increasing frequency until finally he hears a distant rumbling noise. With an aghast expression he realises what's coming - she's reached orgasm and her fluids are rolling forth!

He sprints back down the way he came, whizzing around corners and charging down the aisles but all the while the thundering sound of her flood grows louder and nearer. He runs on, completely lost but knowing that it would be suicide to remain still. He turns the next corner and gasps as he beholds the full force of her tide gushing towards him. He sprints down the tunnel, barely a step ahead of the splashing wave that follows his heels, gaining all the time. He trips and is picked up by the charge of juice which hurls him along as he gasps for air.

He is utterly drenched and almost out of oxygen with long hairs wrapped around his face when he is swept towards a familiar dead end with a spark or two of daylight showing. Will he be crushed? No! It's the vagina and her lips gladly part to squirt Terry up and out through the atmosphere. Michelle's juices spray out with him and stain the clouds pink.

Terry's rise halts and, with a face full of terror, he begins to fall. Down he goes, straight through the clouds with marshmallows flying everywhere. Sparrows flutter around him excitedly but they allow him to plummet. The ground looms with an evil grin and so he closes his eyes and puts his fingers in his ears. He feels the sparrows land upon his eyelids and tug at his lashes. He struggles against the pressure as he rips through the layers of atmosphere and the ground looms. Finally, just as he's sure the end cannot be far away, he's forced to yank open his eyes to a flood of blue. Tentatively, he looks around and realises that he's still lying upon the grass, staring up at the sky.

He raises himself groggily and comes to terms with life on a steady Earth. His clothes are soaked with sweat and he takes off his shirt to wring out the worst of it. Shaking his head he dons his sticky clothing and checks his watch. Five minutes to go. Shit! He breaks into a painful sprint and hobbles out of view to leave the tree and the daisies to enjoy the afternoon sunshine alone.

Outside Michelle's door, he knocks and waits while his breath catches up with him from where he left it somewhere down the block. Michelle comes to the door with one insufficient towel wrapped about her.

"I was just in the shower." She says, "You, too, by the looks of it!" She places one hand on his bedraggled hair.

"Not exactly." He tells her, looking her meaningfully in the eye and then falling face forwards into her arms like a timbering tree.