The Gentle Degenerates
The Vassi Collection: Volume III
Marco Vassi
For Rennie who helped me feel the pain
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come back from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.’
From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. ELIOT
Intimacy is as frightening as freedom
–Richard Fichtel
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 1970’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
THERE IS LOVE, which is neither personal nor impersonal; and there is sex, which is either personal or impersonal. We love, and want to fuck. But we fuck, and so often love disappears. The activity of sex is not difficult to come to terms with. We understand our bodies, we learn how to let go, we strive for pleasure, and learn how to give-to-get. The Indians catalogued the positions and the techniques many thousands of years ago, and the Tibetans made Tantric Yoga, the yoga of sex, into a vehicle for enlightenment. A few millennia and half a world away, scientists of the West have measured heart rate, blood pressure, and changes in color of the asshole during the sexual act.
But this is all descriptive, even statistical. The problem is in the nature of sex, its essential quality. And how does it relate to this very difficult problem of living together, of making a marriage, with its traps of staleness and jealousy, its pitfalls of hidden hostility and of compromises which erode the integrity of both partners?
The story begins one winter afternoon at Kennedy Airport. The plane taking Regina back to California had just left the ground, winging into the grey sky, and suspicion set in. It bit into my stomach and filled my mind with acrid fantasies, hateful visions of betrayal and diabolical control. Within minutes after her departure, she ceased being a person to me, and became a force, an influence on my life. The games we played were tolerable and even exciting when we were together, but apart, they seemed grotesque. And in the face of them, I had promised to join her within a month in Mendocino, where we were to buy a house and begin a life together.
I got into my car and drove back to the city, the sleet beating at the window with a rampant chatter. Winter was visiting its usual punishment on the city, tearing at the streets and bleak buildings with vicious winds. It suited my mood perfectly. As I drove, I noticed that the caked blood at the root of the nail on my middle finger was turning brown. It was just a few hours ago that she had lain in my bed, her cunt hot and wet from excitement and the flow of her period. We both knew that she would be leaving in a few hours; we both realized that we might not be seeing one another again, despite the fervid promises, despite the exchange of rings, despite the aching need we had for one another.
We fucked as though it were the last time. I wanted to swallow her whole, to possess her fully and finally, and simultaneously to destroy her, to make it impossible for her ever to do this with anyone else. When I slid my finger past the dry lips and met the slightly moist bud which opened to her inner cunt, it was both a caress and an intrusion. My eyes flicked to hers and a look of total calculation passed between us. Deep within her a subtle change took place, a shift in mood to counter what I was feeling. I could read the message. She would let me fuck her, but I wouldn’t be getting any more than her flesh. Her emotions and thoughts would stay guarded. I had a sudden impulse to kick her out of the bed and let her go begging, but my cock was already hard and, as usual, it overrode all intelligent strategy in favor of the immediate tactic.
I acquiesced to the ploy and withdrew behind mechanical activity. I rubbed my finger in and out of the now moist slit until I knew she was minimally prepared for entrance. Without any grace, I hoisted my body over hers and placed the tip of my cock against her cunt lips, and slowly entered her resentful box.
There was no warmth to her, just a clammy acceptance. I pushed all the way in and received a small response, a physical reflex any cunt would make when a cock entered, no matter how detached the woman was. I began to feel the solidity of her, and I slid my hands down her back to cup her ass and pull it toward me. She moved slightly, adjusting the angle of penetration, and I flushed with the melting and yearning sensations that fill me whenever I fuck; but this time I refused to go with them. Too often I had been the detonator which blasted her out of indifference, bringing her to a climax, and been left hanging after her orgasm. Now I concentrated all my sensation in my cock, and got into an impersonal ride where the only thing that mattered was friction. Heat bubbled in my balls, and I began to buck into her, slamming my pubic bone into her pelvis. It was the time when I would normally hang loose, waiting for her to find the rhythm so we could dig it together. But now I just took off on my own trip, and the excitement of it spread to her thighs. Her legs went up and she dug into my shoulders with her nails. Her mouth slackened, and tiny moans fluttered in her throat. She rolled her ass under and lifted her pelvis beneath me so that her cunt opened deeper to my thrusts. But just as she began to get into the motion of it, I began to come. I let everything go and felt the ripples sweep up and down my body, making my legs tremble and my spine waver. My head snapped back and I cried out as a full load of sperm splashed from my cock into her waiting pussy.
I sank down on top of her, and a small sigh of disappointment escaped her lips. I smiled to myself. If she wanted to play tight-asshole while we were fucking, I would match her moves and win. And just as I thought that, a deep cloud of sadness passed over me. What was I doing? This was Regina, the woman closest to me in the world. Why were we playing these spiteful games?
I had known her for two years. We met on the Coast and lived together, on and off, half a dozen times. Both of us had been married, and done enough live-ins to be wary of all the traps of marriage, of any bonded relationship. We were also consummate game players, and loved to have an audience. In fact, we were never so much together as when we operated as a team in the face of others. Very early I learned that, unless we were careful, we could use each other up in short order, and drop the relationship to go look for other scenes. And we were both tired of shopping.
The desire for security and intimacy is subtle and strong. The animal that I still am wants a solitary mate, faithful to me alone, which no other male can plunder. When I suck Regina’s nipple into my mouth and savage her breast with my teeth, I see her face melt, from the tense lines of the independent thirty-year-old, the self-sufficient school teacher, the mother of a small boy, to the soft, open lines of a gasping teenage girl reaching for her first kiss. Then all the liberated notions of my political training fade at once, and a single primeval cry rises in my breast—”This is mine!” And that is what feels right, the possession, the access. I want no one else ever to know that moment of heart-tearing bliss when all the beauty that is Regina bursts forth, as her lips open and her mouth invites my mouth, as her cunt goes soft and yearns for my cock, as she rolls her head from side to side in a kind of gentle refusal-which-accepts, a refusal of the joy and ecstatic flow now coursing through her limbs and sending cascades of images crashing through her mind.
It is that more than anything which arouses me, which drives me to heights of mad lovemaking and need. Within her is an eternal “no”, an unchanging center, forever virginal, which always tempts and asks to be won over. Perhaps that is what woman is, but with Regina, who understands herself so well, that constant denial lives at the surface, at the edge of her movement and talk. This is the persona she projects, that of a cockteasing bitch, and inside the woman cries for liberation from herself.
I have the key to her inside, and the key burns around my neck as it dangles from a chain of experience. It is like some medieval drama, and perhaps it is, for no matter how sophisticated I have become, I have not lost the fires of my genes and the scars of my history. I descend from the Italians, and in my childhood learned of the world through the eyes of priests and feudal barons, now disguising themselves in twentieth-century suits on the streets of New York. My entire attitude toward women was formed in a place where women ranked little better than servants. And Regina is my lady, complete with chastity belt, a pan-frigidity to keep out other men when I am not with her.
She knows this and smiles about it. Part of her enjoys the game, so long as it remains a game that does not threaten to overwhelm the entire relationship. And it pleases me, until she begins to play her half of the scenario, taunting me with hints and half-smiles of adventures she might have had during my absence. Often I come home ready to fling open the door and find her in someone else’s arms. I keep my schedule flexible so she can’t be sure of my comings and goings. When I arrive I look into her eyes and at how she walks. I kiss her experimentally. I smell her hair. From these tests I can tell what the percentage of assurance is that she has not betrayed me. As she goes about her things, preparing dinner or reading or telephoning a friend, my eyes burn through her pants to feel into her ass, her cunt, to caress and probe all the skin of her thighs and breasts, psychically sniffing, licking, looking for clues. She retaliates by provoking me, sending me double signals. Before long the air is charged with excitement and lust. Then the tension breaks, and we find ourselves standing, gazing at one another, faces open, tongues moving, hips grinding subtly, eyes flashing. And then we are in one another’s arms.
But it is more complex than simple jealousy, for I know that she is largely faithful to me. It is I who desire more. I also want her to be totally wanton, to pick men up on the street, to bring them home and there to strip and spread her legs on the bed, offer her juicy throbbing cunt to them. I want her to be without limits, to plunge into all the degradations, to swim in them. I want her to be a whore, with all the sluttishness and brash honesty of a whore. I want Regina to be free. And I know that in our civilization sexual freedom comes to a person only when he or she has tasted deep of licentiousness. Only in this Pilgrim’s Progress through the Perversions is it possible for a human being in our time to emerge into full actualization.
I swing back and forth between the opposing needs. Two nights before she left, we fought. It was one of those cold knife-edge arguments that has neither tears nor rage, nor the honest clash of physical violence. And as I became worn down by it, feeling my defenses crumble and the sense of aloneness rising inside me, she saw the manhood waning and struck with her strongest weapon. “I feel wild,” she said. “I feel like a wild nymph.” I looked at her bleakly. She went on. “When I feel this way is when I have adventures. I remember once I was fighting with a lover who said I couldn’t satisfy him sexually. I walked out and went folk-dancing. I met Dan. He didn’t say a word, he just nodded at me and I followed him out to his motorcycle. He took me to his place and fucked me all night long. I enjoyed it completely and my cunt was sore for two days afterwards. There wasn’t anything wrong with me.”
I heard the words and they were like razor cuts inside. Excitement at her wantonness burned through my need to have her pure. I collapsed and felt as though I were coming to a panic-filled dead end. I lay down and curled into the foetal position, nursing my hurt. Regina flashed the scene immediately, and without missing a beat changed from White Goddess to Earth Mother. She came over and put my head in her lap, and stroked me until I filled with warmth and gratitude. My eyes became moist even though I realized that she was playing carrot-and-stick with me. I fell asleep like that, resting on her thighs.
Later we got up and went to Brooklyn Heights for Syrian food. We strolled on the Esplanade and watched Manhattan doing its night-time scene across the river, growling in power and speed, ablaze with light. It got very romantic and it was like first love all over again, holding hands and holding one another tightly. We went home in a cloud of euphoria and headed straight for bed.
We took off our clothes and moved into one another’s arms without a hesitation. I was bubbling over and she moved with a joyful, steady beat. She lay back, her ass in my hands, pumping her cunt into my cock, and I melted into delirium and spasms of sweet melancholy. This was us fucking, Regina and I, and she was giving me her all. I possessed her as she wanted me to, and I alone received the center of her love.
Yet running counterpoint to all the pleasure was the thought, “Only because you copped to her game, and only because she continued to find you accessible. If she had gone out by herself for dinner, might she not have met another man, a man with glowing eyes and hot hands, a man who could see the little girl inside her and offer her a proper lollipop? Once she had said to me, ‘I’m a sucker for anyone who sweet-talks me,’ and again, ‘I let him fuck me because he told me I was beautiful at a time when I had forgotten I could be beautiful’.”
The fantasy took hold. I saw her now, still fucking, biting her lips in passion, her hands fluttering a tattoo like pigeons’ wings along the man’s back. Yet the man wasn’t me. It was any man who happened to fill this particular slot at this particular time. I looked down at her. Her eyes were closed. Her lean dancer’s body rippled and writhed under me, as she sucked at my cock with her now sloshing cunt, and put her legs around my thighs in that most intimate of all embraces. Her entire ripe body began to open, and I wasn’t sure it was me she was opening to. There was just man, just the male, only the cock.
Torment burned through me as the sensations of sex forced me to move. I lost my breath and my ribcage became sore. I cried out, “Regina,” and yearned for her to respond to me. But all I received was an impersonal caress. “Don’t stop,” she said.
I bounced immediately from sorrow to anger. The bitch! She was betraying me while she was in my very arms by nullifying me, making me a stud to rub herself on. I was past all notions of reason or logic. There was pure feeling, and the thoughts which that feeling fed. She was worse than a whore, for a whore makes no pretence of sharing, while the slut lying under me wooed me with promises of love and fidelity. Now she seemed filthy, and all my hidden hatred of women burst through and flooded the experience of sex. All she wanted was a male animal.
And so I became that animal. From inside me growls rumbled up and through my teeth. I hunched my back and pinned her down, as though I were a great cat about to slash the throat of a deer. I bit into her flesh, nipping at her jaw and shoulders and chest. She bucked and dug her claws into my back. Pain matched pain. She opened her eyes in confusion, and for a full second she didn’t recognize me. She floundered in her responses and I screwed up my eyes to smile wickedly into her face. She saw that she had been caught and two rays of hatred shot back at me. I laughed in exultation and slapped her across the mouth. She screamed in anger. “Fuck you, fuck you, I’ll kill you!” she cried.