Paradise Lost

“Of course, it is only the eventual reprieve that makes an orgasm enjoyable at all.”

On screen I see the train has been delayed once more. Beyond the roof of the station, a heavy downpour falls onto the tracks. It is late afternoon and only us two, sitting side-by-side.

“Depression, guilt, suicidal ideation… these play precisely the same role, precisely the same function as sexual release,” the stranger continues. “It is all merely a break from the status quo, a chance for our minds to escape themselves and explore alternative modes of existence, to be another way, if only for a time. There is nothing to a pleasure – to any feeling, really – that isn’t fleeting. Without a home to return to, our feelings cannot ground themselves, there is no clear point of departure and we become all muddled up on some sort of eternal voyage; unnatural…. I learned this too late, obviously.” He moans lightly, twitches and grabs his leg hard. After a pause he composes himself, clearing his throat. “But this just makes my insight all the more valuable.”

Beyond impenetrable gray all-glowering dull assimilation, there is divine beauty and apotheosis. There is an expanse of sun on cloud so vast I wouldn’t comprehend, there are stacking billowing megastructures of orange and pink and white, there is sky blazing brilliant triumphal blue behind it all. A world of serene beauty exists up there, even as I stare. Perhaps indeed it is divine, perhaps after it all some part of us really does float blissfully up there, incorporated made cloud, floating then for eternity in the most magnificent, sacred beauty, at rest among brilliant colorful cloud. Perhaps every breath we release wafts up there, constituted into atmosphere and there is me, and with the last we bring mind, we breathe our sense of self finally to join the rest. When finally we have the strength to let that last breath go, when we lay down to rest across the tracks and a delayed train crushes it out of us, it floats up and we are complete up there, and we too are made sacred and blissful, beautiful. I hear the rain of gray tap on metal rooftop and I hear stranger speak.

“Now I know what you’re wondering: doesn’t ‘orgasm’ just become your new baseline?”

I am, in fact, wondering this.

“Well,” he chuckles, “I’m afraid it’s not so simple.” 

His lilting chuckle strains through cigarette throat and how comforting. I want him to say my name because it will sound like my grandfather. How long it’s been since someone has said my name and it’s really meant something. How much it would mean for grandfather to speak my name aloud.

“See, your ‘baseline’ is really established when you’re a child, long before you’re old enough to think about it, or have any – err – rational thoughts on the matter… to make an informed decision, that is. I’m talkin’ your need to be productive, your desire for approval, for thrills, for love: it’s all firmly established – and I’m talkin’, set in stone – by the time you’re, say, ten years old.” His fingers rubbed each other. His arm stretched across the back of the bench and indeed he must be impatient, but he wants to share. “Y’know, these adrenaline junkies and ‘wanderers’ and whatnot, they’re lying to themselves. They say they’re used to some certain kind of whatever – lifestyle, y’know, what have you – and that they need more and more, bigger and bigger thrills and journeys because it’s just how they live, y’know, because they’re in a perpetual cycle of evolving risk that they can’t escape. It’s denial, it’s bullshit.” He moans again, a little louder this time. “Those basic, baseline needs never ever change, and people who get all swept up in the carnal delights of various sorts are only trying to deny this, they’re trying to define their core needs in away that suits them – their aesthetic, their philosophy, what have you – rather than seeking to understand the needs they’ve been strapped with. Schmucks, the lot of ‘em… y’know, they wonder why they’re never satisfied, why they always need that next fix – they can’t see that what they need is what they’ve always needed, since they were, y’know, eleven years old. And so they’re always chasing the next orgasm, the next adventure. Never ends well… hindsight, y’know….” He trails off and his entire body quivers in violent ecstacy. He scratches his chin and moans deeply, with his mouth closed.

If I were a bird, orgasms would possess a pure, sincere, all-consuming pleasure because I would never think to question the imperative underlying it all. Not one part of me would question the pursuit of carnal release, and it would be total. I would pursue sexual partners with abandon, without fear of rejection. I would come without restraint and it would be perfect, and then I would fly beyond overcast, beyond gray into the kingdom of heavenly beauty that waits above. If I was a bird in the kingdom of heavenly beauty there would be nothing for me to land on, nothing to perch on, and soon I would return to this world. Indeed it is only by breathing, by expelling that internal essence and inching closer to cathartic final release, that I can achieve permanent, everlasting bliss. Is this how the god-fearing think? Awaiting death like a delayed train; impatiently worshiping the end of it all, certain. I can’t remember if grandfather ever spoke my name. To the infant, perhaps, before floating up toward blissful permanence. How can I be certain it would sound like him? Does his voice still live in my earliest memory? 

“It happened in the Dutch countryside,” the stranger begins again, a little somber, and I see on screen that indeed the train has once more been delayed, and indeed this will not make a difference. My breath is purified by the rain before it joins cloud above.

“It was at a house party – a farm party, I suppose. Real rager, y’know, they cook the stuff out there so it’s really powerful shit; moonshine, too. Nasty shit, and everyone speaking Dutch and it’s just a rager. So I guess I ended up in a sortofa barn… orgy… yeah, that’d be the best way I could sum it up. And so there’s this one guy that I’m kinda gettin’ along with – matter of fact he seems to be gettin’ along real well with everyone present, it’s the damndest thing – and he kinda gestures to me to follow behind some hay bales, so naturally I follow. So he gets me there and I’m not entirely sure what to expect – well, I have some ideas I suppose.” He moans louder than ever before; it is high-pitched and breathy, and he has to take a moment to compose himself. “‘Scuse me. So anyway I follow him behind these hay bales, and he says to me in this really thick accent, ‘it can last forever.’ And I’m not really quite following so I point down to myself, y’know, and I kinda say ‘the boner?’ But he just smiles wide and says ‘no no, the end, the orgasm.’”

Ending without end, the stability we long for: permanence made real. This earthly joy is hollow, it expands and fills us up, and when it leaves – as it sometime must – we are made empty, we feel its passing so. What joy is this? What happiness is this, that brings sorrow in its wake? ‘It can last forever, the end.’ Indeed it is so. Nothing lurks in its shadow, no sorrow follows in its wake: here is eternal release, here is the absence of sorrow and loss and false joy. To float unfeeling in the swirling majesty of primordial cosmic beauty, to be one with all. Speak to me now grandfather, speak me into oblivion. Tell me how you saw death and say my name aloud. I will know your voice and find something in it before I lay myself gently across these tracks and find final, everlasting release.

“Well, needless to say the idea of that much orgasm intrigued me. I was pretty deep into the orgy scene at that point, y’know, and the idea of never coming down, of finding permanent sexual release, well I mean that’s pretty much the dream, that’s what we’re all after, y’know? So I nodded my head, of course I told him ‘yeah,’ I told him ‘go for it, I’m in,’ y’know, wha’did I know…. So he tells me to turn around, and I do, and he places a hand on each of my shoulders. I’ll never forget looking down to see that he had so much dirt underneath his fingernails –” he clutches the back of the bench and wrenches his head straight back, enraptured, moaning halfway, unable to release. He comes back quickly this time. “And his hands were all calloused and rough, and I just remember thinking what a relationship this guy must have with the earth, y’know, what intimacy and control over… life, growth. So he bends me over, anyway, and it’s pretty good and all – I mean the guy definitely knows what he’s doing – but then just when I’m getting really close, when I can feel it – err, y’know radiating all over, the pleasure – he pulls out all of a sudden. And it’s the damnedst thing, but he shoves one o’ them calloused hands up there, damn near up to the elbow. And I don’t think I can take it, y’know, it’s a pretty hefty hand – a real farmer’s hand – rootin’ around in there, and I didn’t think my body can handle it, but by then the pleasure was flowin’, y’know, flowin’ real good, so I just kinda let it happen. I’m not really sure how to describe the feeling, but… he really kinda got up in there pretty rough, and it just felt like… my body was the soil, my body was the earth, and in my fertile body he planted some freaky kinda seed –” he moans and bites his finger. “And the pleasure… well it ain’t stopped since.”

I see on screen that there are no more delays and it is time. My name is pleasure; I am true pleasure manifest, grandfather. You have spoken me at last and now I will fade and become nothing. Earthly pleasure pleases none but tortures with its absence, finds ultimate release only for itself and dies. I am the seed you planted, grandfather, I have carried the DNA you worked so hard to leave behind, and now I require end, to wilt back into soil and spread far apart into nothing. I walk past roof into rain, and it is cold on this body that will be nothing. Each breath brings me closer. I jump below, where tracks are, and lay down at last. Rain hits my face and I shield my eyes, so I can see my breath in the cold. It is leaving my body in little fog patches and it is floating slowly upward.

“I can see now that change is the only true orgasm.”

The stranger sits now, with his legs dangling from the platform, and still he speaks to me as I lie on the tracks. Still he speaks in grandfather’s voice to me. I close my eyes and listen and wait. The train is getting close, loud, vibrating.

“Y’know, I wasn’t seeking eternal pleasure. There was never gonna be a thrill big enough to satisfy – I’ve gotten the biggest, y’know… its been about thirteen years of orgasm…. I wanted a relief from all this, but a temporary one. I live now in a constant state of pure ecstacy, and the simple fact is that… I’m not satisfied, y’know? Those base desires that I’ve always had, they don’t go away, and I – heh – I can’t really escape ‘em, just by coming all the time, feeling amazing all the time. Y’know, paradise wasn’t the feeling itself, it was the escape from home, that would always end in return. All I’ve done is lost the means to escape; y’know, I’m in a constant state of escape now, I’m nowhere. It is eternal bliss. It is empty.”

I sit up and feel the rush of train blow wind on my back. The stranger is gone. The rain has stopped.