Mind Blower

Marco Vassi

INTRODUCTION

Were the Sixties put on earth so that Marco Vassi could happen ? Or was Marco Vassi put on earth so that the Sixties could happen? To read his classic works of erotic fiction and his masterpiece of autobiographical fiction, THE STONED APOCALYPSE, is to realize that the man and the era were created out of the same fire and primordial elements. It is not, however, enough to say that Marco Vassi was a child of his age. It could just as accurately be said that the age was Marco Vassi's fantasy, a fantasy so intense and compelling that it is impossible to read any of his books in one sitting: one must either jump into a cold shower, relieve oneself sexually, or go for a long contemplative walk to reflect on the profundity of his insights into human behavior.

Vassi had done many things before he became a writer, but writing was not one of them except for some translations from Chinese and critiques of manuscripts submitted to a literary agency where he was employed for a few years. He had also tried numerous identities on for size as he acted out and lived out the experiences that were to pour from his mind like water raging over the spillway of a dam. When in the late 1960 's "Fred" Vassi announced that he was embarking on a journey, his friends knew that it was not to a place but to a state of mind.

The state of mind was what came to be known as The Sixties, and anyone seeking to live in that state must enter it through the vision of the author of these works. In cartographic terms it was a journey from the East Coast to California, a trip that resonates with meaning for every student of The American Experience. Speaking metaphorically, however, it was a trip into the heart of life, love, laughter, horror, and sweet pain. Fred Vassi came back Marco Vassi, having recreated himself in the name of the intrepid voyager to the ends of the known world hundreds of years ago.

Heart fecund with all that had happened to him, he started writing the work that was eventually to become THE STONED APOCALYPSE, a book that captured in coruscating words what others of his generation were capturing so brilliantly in music.

With no source of regular income he tried his hand at what were then popularly known as sex novels, a genre of tame pornography that pandered to the fantasies of repressed males still mired in postwar inhibition. With the wide-eyed innocence and self-deprecating humor that characterized every venture he undertook, he showed them to me, his friend and a fledgling literary agent. He merely hoped to raise a few dollars with them. I told him that they were the most incredibly arousing works of erotic literature since Henry Miller, and arranged for them to be brought out by Olympia Press, Miller's publisher. Critics and reviewers confirmed my assessment. What distinguished his books from the rest of the pack was the application of Vassi's intelligence. He knew that the mind is the most erotic organ of all. He termed this fusion of mind and sex organs "Metasex."

For Marco Vassi, the liberation of sexual emotions, paralleling the liberation of so many others in the late 1960's and early 1910's, promised a new age of beauty, love, and honesty, and he lived his vision to the hilt—quite literally. For a long while it seemed to him impossible that this vision did not rest on the bedrock of reality.

But, in the words of Robert Frost, nothing gold can stay. The bloody hand of Vietnam and the corrupt fist of the Nixon presidency crushed the fragile beauty of the flower generation. The unbridled commercialism that became the 1980's captured and exploited the butterflies of Woodstock, enriching half of them and killing the other half with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Finally, the horror of a new scourge, AIDS, visited death upon the bodies of those who had dreamed of eternal love, irresponsible fun, and self-realization. It was then that Marco Vassi awoke from his dream of The Sixties. When he did, the virus had entered his blood. The first malady of any consequence to come along, in this case pneumonia, conquered his defenseless immune system and made short work of him.

Marco Vassi's body died, but not the body of his work, which lives again in these new editions. Like a rainbow over a bleak landscape, his dream of The Sixties shimmers above the depressing, sordid, and tragic decades that succeeded his. And ultimately, it triumphs over them.

Richard Curtis

For Ellen

with acknowledgements to

J. Krishnamurti

John Fowles

ONE

THE FACT THAT the ad was in the
Times
and not one of the sex journals made its wording all the more seductive: "Wanted. Sensitive male to serve as personal valet and assistant to master in arcane studies." A shiver of anticipation went through me as I dialed the number listed, and when a deeply female voice answered at the other end, all my senses were alert. I had overcome the prejudice against answering such requests when I realized that in a technological society the mass media served the equivalent purposes of court gossip in earlier times. She gave almost no information on the phone, and her questions seemed aimed to elicit responses that had more to do with what kind of person I was than what references I had. Of course, I wasn't really looking for a valet's job. I wanted to get in touch with people who were playing serious sexual games, as I was tired of the hit-and-miss sort of thing that happens through cruising. I played a hunch.
 

"I feel like my character's being read," I said.

There was a pause. "One of the things Doctor Tocco studies is the language of human sounds. Sometimes it is much more rewarding to hear how a person moans than to listen to their theories of life. Don't you find?"
 

Either I was projecting my hope or she was laying out heavier cues than I had expected. A certain wet, tension played back and forth through the wires that had little to do with standard electricity. There was a silence, during which a good portion of my past sped at lightning speed through my mind.
 

I am not handsome in any conventional sense. Too short for movie-screen masculine appeal, nonetheless I am blessed with rich, curly black hair, a subtle olive complexion, and the Scorpio nature. Through an interesting genetic quirk, I have an embryonic third nipple on the right side of my chest, a sign of passion among Mediterranean people. In all, my dominant vibration is sex.
 

I had long ago stopped counting how many men and women I'd been to bed with, and in how many combinations. Physical conquest was easy enough, and after a while I learned to shelve any emotional complications so that I always entered and exited clean. But except for very rare cases, there had always been a quality of intellect missing, an ability to join my partner or partners in fucking the same fantasy. No matter how often we came together with our bodies, I had never shared an image orgasm with anyone. And countless times, while sinking into comfortable semislumber with a satisfied fellow human animal, discontent still whipped through my mind like a winter wind, until I came to despair of ever knowing total union with anyone. Occasionally I would attempt some quasi-therapeutic approach, where both of us free-associated as we balled, but these efforts became so solemn that they ended in giggles. Yet somewhere inside me I knew that others must be wrestling with the same problem, and I resolved to find them. It became a quest on the level of an apprentice seeking a master alchemist, only the crucibles I wanted to use were human beings.
 

A long series of efforts led me to New York City where I began the game that had been recommended to me by a venal Theosophist: waiting, with utmost, unrelenting awareness. "Just stay tuned in to who you are and what you desire, and when you are ready, your teacher will appear," he had said in the proper cryptic manner. Already a number of avenues had opened, but they all turned out to be false starts, so I was trying not to be too excited about this one.
 

I snapped out of my reveries and answered her. "A moan is usually solicited . . . under pressure," I said, trying to conjure up images of leather thongs with the sound of my voice.
 

"If you understand that the only meaningful bondage is that which is entered into freely, you may want to meet Doctor Tocco," she countered.
 

I successfully kept the tremor out of my voice as we set up the appointment.

From the outside the building was a solid, respectable, 19th-century reconstructed brownstone. As soon as I went in, however, I met with that rarest of experiences in the city—total silence. A plaque on the door read simply: ISM. When I closed it behind me I realized that the place was completely soundproofed. I was led in by a secretary who was pretty in that glossy kind of way girls who work in offices affect. But she was barefoot and wore a great mu-mu that covered everything but her hands and head. It was made of a clinging material that stuck like plastic wrap to various parts of her body as she moved. It was clear that she had nothing on underneath, and by the time we reached the end of the hall I knew the size and shape of her nipples, her buttocks, her bellybutton. I got only a fuzzy flash on her face, fascinated as I was by the continual shifting array of body parts singled out for attention by the movement of the dress. As we got to the door to which I was being led, my mouth was dry, and when she turned to open the door I inclined my head a few inches to see if the cloth had caught between her legs. But just then a booming male voice called out, "Our young visitor wishes to see your cunt, Susan. Lift your skirt, please."
 

I was stunned by the double shock, first of having my barely perceptible gesture not only seen but announced out loud, and then of watching the girl at my side pull her dress up over her waist. I wanted to see who the man in the office was, but I was mesmerized by the sight of a totally hairless cunt pouting between two very full thighs. I looked up at her face and was astonished to see that she was blushing. Everything had proceeded with such rapidity that I didn't, until that moment, realize what an odd situation this was! It was all I could do to keep from reaching over and putting my hand on that soft totally naked pussy.
 

I heard a large scraping sound and turned just in time to see what looked like a mod Sidney Greenstreet hoisting himself out of his chair. He was a huge man, almost six feet tall and perhaps weighing three hundred pounds, sporting a walrus mustache and bushy sideburns, wearing a tailored satin jumpsuit in glowing psychedelic colors. He held out one hand, and as I shook it he said, "My name is Tocco. I have been looking forward to meeting you."
 

He led me toward his desk and I glanced back at Susan, who still stood there with her dress up. "Come along, Susan," he said. "Stand where our friend can see you." He sat me down in a chair facing his desk and Susan came to stand in front of it; now she pulled the skirt up so that her face was covered and I was presented with the sight of her breasts as well, placed high on her chest and hanging so that the upper surface was as delicately curved as a ski slope, and the underpart dropped like a ripe pear. Her nipples pointed up and were slightly wrinkled.
 

Tocco sat down. "I have dispensed with the formalities because I am certain you are the man I want. I have been informed by a number of my people that you have been seriously
searching
for some time now." And he put an odd, Ouspenskyesque intonation on the word that set my head spinning. "Our center is composed of people who have already passed through most of the preliminary states of sexual exploration and are ready for life."
 

The conversation was already going a bit too fast, and I interjected, "What does ISM stand for?"

He smiled. "Ah. That is the Institute for Sexual Metatheatre. We shall discuss the meaning of that title later. But for now, let us examine a specific example." He stood up and in brisk professorial tones continued. "The problem is, of course, that one tires very quickly of the variations on the physical. It is necessary to be free of the tyranny of form before form can be freely appreciated. Here at ISM we get very quickly to the point where no physical activity is considered peculiar or special in any way. And then we examine the psychological underpinnings. Take Susan for example." He turned to her. "Kneel!" he said. She knelt down. "Now, let us have your mouth."
 

With that she dropped the dress from her face; she opened her mouth and began running her tongue over her lips, then sticking her tongue out as far as it would go, and then letting her lips quiver as though she were imploring. "Sound!" said Tocco. She began moaning and begging, "Give it to me, please give it to me! I want it in the mouth!"
 

My first reaction was an erection, which Doctor Tocco leaned over the desk to look at as it bulged through my pants. "Well, take it out,” he said. "Come on."