Venus Envy, page 30
As he walked in and out of the bathroom, the closet, and back and forth to his chest of drawers, she followed him, talking all the while. She even followed him to the front door.
“Frank, Frank! You’re having a mid-life crisis.”
“I’m too old for a mid-life crisis.” He opened the door, walked out, and shut it behind him.
Libby yanked the door open, standing there framed in the light from inside. Her mouth was open but nothing came out. Frank started the engine and drove down the driveway.
Mercury pushed the off button. “Guess we got more than we bargained for. I hope you’re not upset.”
Frazier replied. “No. I wish he’d left her years ago.”
“Venus said, “But he’s done it now and that’s what matters.”
Venus held her champagne glass to the light. “Trust the people you love. That’s the future.”
“Huh?” Frazier was surprised.
“Trust them. Kenny wants to grow and learn. Your father is making changes the only way he knows how, and he’s finally going to fight for his own happiness. Your father will be fine. Mandy has made a practice of counseling courage. Well, she can practice what she preaches. Everyone creates her own future. So don’t worry about it,” Venus said.
“Okay, okay, but I do worry about Carter’s divorce.”
“Divorce is absurd.” Mercury downed his champagne.
“Divorce exists for the lawyers.” Frazier reached for her Coca-Cola.
“Well, the lawyers belong to Apollo.” Mercury smirked.
“No, they don’t. You can’t assign everything you don’t like to Apollo.”
“Well, they don’t belong to Dionysus or Pluto, although they’ll be as rich as Pluto eventually, because in America everyone sues everyone else if they live long enough.” Mercury nestled a scone between Frazier’s breasts. “Champagne and scones. Think we’ll start a fad? Beats champagne and strawberries—I mean, everyone does that.”
“Right now none of us here claims any lawyers. I will, however, claim any human being who seeks beauty”—she paused—“in any form. If a little lady in Bumfuck, Texas, crochets an afghan, I claim her. I even claimed the people who painted by numbers back in the fifties.”
“You are a generous soul.” Frazier laughed. “My mother went on a flower arranging kick so you’ll have to claim her.”
“It’s difficult to claim Libby but I do give her credit. She has a good eye and she’s passed it on to you. Poor Libby, I wonder if she’ll ever get it.”
“Get what?” Frazier twisted her head to see Venus more clearly.
“She’s so busy trying to insulate herself from experience that she’s becoming sterile inside. People have devolved into props for your mother. Do you know how horrible life would be if you could understand everything, control everything, predict everything? What a ho-hum. Better never to be born.”
“I subscribe to logic more than my adored companion here.” Mercury placed his hands on Frazier’s shoulders and massaged them. “But she is right. There must be mysteries, rich and enticing mysteries.”
“I think I stumbled on a big one.” Frazier snuggled into his strong body. “Like why I am here.”
“Mystery, myth, and magic” He kissed her ear.
“Perhaps the mystery is inside you. In which case you won’t bore yourself.” Venus considered another glass of champagne and then gave in to the urge. “Sex is certainly a mystery, and love an even greater one. Remember, Frazier, accept what you can’t understand.”
“Are you telling me to accept my mother? To accept those boneheads at home who are just dying to ask me why I’m a lesbian?”
“You’re a lesbian?” Mercury mocked her.
“Actually, no. I’m myself.” Sparks crackled in Frazier’s green eyes. “I’ll love whom I choose and work as I choose and as long as I treat people with respect and politeness I don’t think what I do is anyone’s goddam business.”
“Well, why did you become a lesbian anyway?” Mercury merrily teased her. “After our megasex I think I have a right to know.”
Frazier shifted herself so that she was now sitting inside his legs, face to face. “I became a lesbian out of devout Christian charity. All those women out there are praying for a man and I gave them my share.”
Mercury whooped with delight as Venus laughed too. “At last, the religion makes sense to me. Oh, how saintly you are to deny yourself, my sweet.” Mercury raised his glass in a toast.
Venus refilled Frazier’s and they clinked glasses again. “But you will play with us, won’t you?”
“Mercury, I would be thrilled to fuck you in any century, any continent, any, uh, transformation.” Frazier lowered her champagne glass and put his penis in it.
“Ah,” he sighed as the bubbles burst on his cock, “that’s a deal.”
“Venus, let’s dip your breasts in champagne and lick it off.” Frazier now put her champagne glass under Venus’s left breast while Mercury did the same with her right.
“That tingles,” Venus purred as they licked off the champagne.
“Here, roll over.” Mercury tenderly pushed Frazier facedown on the bed. He poured some champagne in the small of her back, licked it up, then dribbled a little between her legs and licked that up too. “Better than ambrosia—oh, far better.”
“God,” Frazier moaned.
“Yes,” they both answered.
She rolled over and beheld these two stunning specimens, perfection beyond perfection. Then she laughed, as did they. “If only I could find a human being who would play like we’re playing.”
“You might find one. I doubt you’ll find two, at the same time anyway. When humans go to bed in threes they consider it kinky, not loving. At least these days they do.” Mercury’s mouth drooped a bit.
“You’ll find someone. And the right person is always under your nose.”
Frazier suddenly stiffened. “I have to get home to Curry and Basil.”
“Don’t worry. Your kitty and dog are being taken care of—really, we wouldn’t do that to you.” Venus reassured her.
“I’m so glad. All this talk of love made me think of them. Perfect love.”
“Animals. Yes.” Venus smiled.
“Not barracudas,” Mercury said.
“Who do you know who keeps a barracuda for a pet?” Frazier lifted her right eyebrow.
“Neptune.”
“That doesn’t count,” she told him. “He’s the god of the oceans. I mean, he probably keeps fiddler crabs and moray eels too.”
“Ever notice how every other fish restaurant in the world is named Neptune’s Catch, Neptune’s Glory, Neptune’s World, and on and on. I’d hate to have restaurants named after me,” Mercury noted.
“You’ve got Western Union,” Frazier told him.
“Quite right too.” He smiled. “You know all this hot sex and cold champagne have made me drowsy. Ladies, if you’ll forgive me I think I’ll go to sleep for a little bit.” He rolled off Venus onto his side and was out in a second.
“They usually fall asleep after they come.” Venus sighed. “It must be a greater effort for them, you know.”
“We did gang up on him.”
“Lucky devil.” Venus reached for Frazier, pulling her toward her. “Comfortable?”
Frazier snuggled against Venus. “Uh-huh.” She thought for a moment. “Do you believe people are straight or gay?”
“No. That’s a silly concept, but then you people think in polarities these days. That’s very destructive. You know—good or bad, white or black, happy or sad, man or woman, straight or gay, young or old. It’s too simple, plus those ideas are not necessarily in opposition.”
“Yes, but I think some few people are really gay and some few people are really straight.”
“Poor darlings.” Venus sighed. “But think of it this way. The human animal has a wide sexual range. The erotic possibilities are endless. Most of you are vaguely bisexual, although that knowledge is viciously suppressed. Right?”
Frazier thought a moment. “Yes, I think it’s true that we’re much more complicated than we realize.”
“But there really are people who are absolutely straight and people who are absolutely gay.” Venus brushed Frazier’s cheek with her fingernails. “The purpose of the heterosexual person is easy to see: propagation of the species. The purpose of the homosexual person has been obliterated by you all down there on earth but it’s plain as day to us.”
“Well, what is it?”
“To serve the heterosexual. The totally gay person is designed to support the heterosexual. If everyone is involved in bearing and raising children, a delightful though exhausting process, nothing would get done apart from that. The community would fall apart.”
“What about old people? They can help with the children,” Frazier wondered out loud.
“Hey, when we started out, you all didn’t live very long. Not in the numbers that you do now. Old people weren’t a driving force in society and even with your longer life spans, elderly people can’t keep up with children.”
“That’s true.” Frazier nodded.
“Child-rearing must be done in the prime of life. Well, it’s vital for the survival of the race that a small proportion of humankind in the prime of life not raise children. Those people, the stone homosexuals if you will, should perform the services needed by the others. It’s essential for the species.”
“You mean, like medical care or the arts, stuff like that?” Frazier’s voice vibrated with fascination at this logical concept.
“Oh, that goes without saying. But cast your mind back ten thousand years, or three thousand if ten is too much for you. Better yet, go to the fifth century B.C. Athens. The war with Sparta. Already society had begun to shift, shall we say. But think of all-out war. The first line of defense should be the homosexual men. The second line of defense should be unmarried heterosexual men. The third line of defense should be lesbians. The fourth line of defense should be married men, and the last line of defense, obviously, should be the mothers. Humankind is developed to protect the children.
“And the reason lesbians are the third line of defense and not the second is sensible. The ovary will work regardless of whose body it’s in. The egg is always more valuable than the sperm. So it’s not wise to jeopardize any more eggs than you have to. I mean, one million men can die but if ten are left, let’s say, and one hundred women are left, you will survive. Biology.
“It’s blissfully simple, really, but then you all have just cocked up everything. Men and women were built to depend upon one another and to work as partners. Look what you’ve done to that.”
“I didn’t do it,” Frazier protested.
“Didn’t mean to sound accusatory,” Venus apologized. “But, darling, what a mess on terra firma. You can’t have a true partnership if one partner is more equal than the other, shall we say? How can people open their hearts to one another, be close, if one holds the whip hand or the checkbook over the head of the other one? It’s absurd.”
“Couldn’t you come back to earth and help us out?” Frazier pleaded.
“And be turned into a movie star? Not on your life.” Venus yawned.
“Tell me one more thing,” Frazier begged.
“If I can.”
“Do you think gay people, those people who are totally gay, do you think they are more creative?” Frazier felt drowsy herself.
“I think if Michelangelo were straight, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white with a roller.” Venus’s laughter floated out the window to dissolve into the song of the nightingale.
58
THE DELICATE YELLOW OF ROSEBUDS ATTRACTED FRAZIER. She much preferred the understated roses to the bright reds that most people seemed to prefer. Venus created gardens of unsurpassed harmony on her country estate, and much as Frazier wanted to wander through the rooms of Sans Souci, she decided that she should wait for her hostess to give her the grand tour if she had the time. What Frazier wanted to see was Venus’s art collection, since she assumed the goddess would possess the finest paintings from the centuries.
A lone gardener, his head turned away from her, expertly nipped at the rose stems. When she approached him he faced her and under the broad-brimmed straw hat was the imposing visage of mighty Jupiter.
He put his fingers to his lips. “Shhh.”
“How did you know Venus was asleep?” Frazier wondered.
“I didn’t. I don’t want my wife to find us. She’s a dutiful partner but she doesn’t understand me.”
Frazier smiled at the age-old line. “You like roses, I take it.”
“Yes. I even like the humble geranium. Plants possess their own intelligence. They elected to stay in one place and let life come to them. Animals elected to move and go to life. Very simple really.” He snipped another stem to promote growth. “Are you enjoying your stay with us?”
“Oh”—Frazier blushed—“I don’t know when I’ve had so much, uh, so much of everything.”
“There’s more.” He smiled with such light that Frazier had to shield her eyes.
“Sorry. You’re so beautiful I forget that you’re not one of us. I have a weakness for humans. Leda was fetching and Io and Europa. I loved Callisto, too, very much and Dionysus’s mother, Semele, was a glorious woman.”
“How can you remember all your amours?”
Jupiter laughed. “I had an affair with Mnemosyne—Memory, in English—and she gave birth to the Muses. I remember everything. Now don’t get the idea that I’m fickle or a ladies’ man. I’m not but I have been around for thousands of years and well …” He removed his hat, and his graying hair, close-cropped like a Prussian officer’s, gave him even more of a virile appearance.
“What happened to your long hair?”
“A wig. For the portrait? This is so much easier.” He ran his fingers through his hair.
“Are you interested in life on earth?” Frazier accepted the peach-colored rose he handed her.
“Sometimes. Things aren’t the same down there. You people have calluses on your souls.” Her puzzled expression caused him to explain. “You want answers for every question. You are overstimulated, yet emotionally malnourished. You are bombarded with nonstop information but the information is useless. You’ve lost your passion and soon you’ll lose your sense of humor. People who need to feel safe every second of every day can’t laugh. I used to feel sorry for humans. Then I became angry. Now, I’m bored—but not with you, my dear.”
“May I ask you an unphilosophical question? A little fact. I’m not too good at philosophy anyway.”
“Anything.” He kissed the rose in her hand.
“Do you remember killing Rachel Redington on August 11, 1843? She was an ancestor of mine, only twenty-three, and she was sitting on the porch shelling peas. She had the metal colander in her lap and a storm came up suddenly and Rachel was struck by a bolt of lightning.” Frazier’s voice rose in anticipation.
Jupiter rubbed his close-cropped beard—the long curly beard was a wig too. “August 11, let’s see. I do recall a pretty woman. Virginia summer.” He brightened. “Wild pitch. I felt terrible, but then again she was spared living through that vile war you had in the 1860’s. What in the world made you think of that?”
“My mother. We have this gigantic genealogy book and when I was little she’d turn to the page about Rachel Redington to prove to me that anything can happen to anyone at any time and I’d better damn well watch out. Scared the bejesus out of me. Oh, I didn’t mean to use that name.”
“Quite all right.” He beamed benevolence. “You have nothing to fear in life, not you, not anyone, because every bad thing that you think can happen to you will—but not always in the form you imagine. Your valor is in overcoming these trials. I myself had to battle my own father and his Titans. I didn’t know what would happen but I knew if I didn’t fight, everything really would be lost. Never ask for an easy life. Ask for courage. I’ll give it to you if you but ask.” He draped his arm around her shoulders.
Although Jupiter was putting the moves on her, a game Frazier knew well, there was something paternal, kind, about him. “I’ll remember that. Mnemosyne.”
“From the sewer to the stars. Life goes on at all levels simultaneously. Once you understand that, you’ll know there are no contradictions. None. What appears to be contradictory is just two levels of life colliding. See, the whole picture and every object, every person, is in place.” He strolled with her through the garden. “Don’t seek to understand this. That is for the gods. We’ve given you the gift of life. Yours is to enjoy it. If you’re sour, if you’re lazy, you’ve betrayed us—and yourself. Joy, Frazier, joy!” He lifted his arms upward and a flock of Venus’s white doves twittered out of the trees and flew around them to return to their nests.
“Venus is telling me the same thing—in her way.”
“Wonderful soul, my daughter.” He reached down and held her hand, swinging their hands as the tiny pebbles crunched underfoot.
It wasn’t until Frazier glanced down that she realized they were walking on diamonds, with a few rubies, emeralds, and sapphires thrown in for color. She stooped over to pick one up. “Incredible.”
“Here.” Jupiter took the diamond from her hand, knelt down, and picked up two more. He squeezed them in his hand, fashioning them like clay, and handed her an exquisite emerald-cut diamond of seven sensational carats. “To remember me by.” He stood up.
Speechless, Frazier stared, transfixed by the pale fire in her palm. “It’s … overwhelming.”
He roared, “I’ll show you overwhelming.” And laughing, he enlarged himself to such a height she couldn’t see his face. His penis, quickly hardening, cast a shadow on the gardens. Jupiter reached down and pulled out his member, as big as the Empire State Building. He rubbed himself a few times and sperm squirted across the sky, except it wasn’t white; the ejaculate filled the azure blue with a rainbow of glittering colors. He instantly reduced himself, drawing alongside Frazier as the colors, iridescent, melted into one another. “Better than fireworks.”
