Ch.16 Separation and Unity : Part 4 : Jacqueline's Liberation

Danella talked to Jacqueline. After Danella had shared the full communion of the bodies with this Prancirian married couple she spoke to them of her thoughts as they lay together in peace on the marriage bed. Mireau had come, since that night when he had been introduced to communal love, to understand and agree with Danella's ideas, but Jacqueline was new to the full mind of the Priestess.

"I have been watching you Prancirians. Only the artists and the sensitive people expound the sadness of life. For they appreciate what you are missing. Other people don't seem to know or to care. They just go through their lives accepting the rules handed down to them unquestioning, unimaginatively. Just the touch of a woman can change the day of a man. To be touched and seduced by a woman would transform life. The touch of a man can likewise transform the grey of life for women, if only they would allow that mere transitory pleasure. Why don't they realise the instant meeting of tongues and bodies can be an end in itself. Instant pleasure which could be available to you all. Instead of the loneliness which pervades so many of you. The waiting, the wasted efforts in the pursuit of romance or of understanding. The false god of 'Love' who keeps women so closed and uncharitable and men so possessive or so desperate. All this personal seclusion is so unnecessary. You would all benefit so much from the communion of sex. Your distant attitude towards sex keeps you apart from each other. True understanding could occur but instead the opportunity is thrown away by your reserve towards each other."

That night in the privacy of the bed she should have shared with Mireau, and might later when he returned from wherever he was, Jacqueline thought deeply about what had happened. She had been very aroused at the memory of Danella's beautiful body being pierced by her husband's hard stalk as she watched from the door. She had thought herself safe from discovery as she rubbed at the moist irritation of her vagina. Her flesh had seemed more tender and more sensitive than usual as she became deeply aroused. She became tender and sensitive as she thought of the events of the day. Feeling her body through the folds of her night-gown with her hands she slowly moved her fingers towards her genitals and rubbed the area slowly, imagining that it was her husband's hands upon her, as Danella looked on from the side caressing her breasts.

She lifted her night-gown to her waist, gripping herself even more firmly, imagining the two of them making love to her together again. She raised her hips towards her fingers as her breathing became stronger and faster. The orgasm came gradually in a prolonged process of succeeding spasms. Afterwards she admitted to herself that she was more excited by the scene she had participated in and the thoughts that Danella had put into her head than she should have allowed herself. there was no denying it. Danella's new world of sexual gratification seemed to be opening something long repressed within her. She recognised her desire for the other woman, and her desire to be with more than one lover. She saw that she would like to experience other men again as Mireau was probably experiencing other women at this very moment.

Jacqueline began to enjoy her life again. Before Danella's introduction of her to the new life of sexual adventure she had suffered as a victim of a wayward husband who did not care enough, and of the social rules which never had offered her a way to find other friends to share the mutual pleasure which she desired, but could not find with any but her husband. The ability to find and enjoy pleasure by nature within each human being, but inexplicably denied to them except within the confines of monogamy. She realised now that Mireau had only been taking for himself a small part of what nature had provided for him. She understood now, having also tasted what was outside of it, that monogamy was unnatural and far too restrictive of human nature. There was no need for such unnecessary restriction in a mature and developing modern society.

Jacqueline seduces Philippe

The man lay in black clothing, his head flung back. His dark brown hair caught the light and made him look alive even though he slept. She went closer and stood over him. Her heart blazed, she had lived so long and abstained for so long, most of her life, apart from one small wounding indiscretion, until now, her new life, when she had been given the keys to her freedom. Was it the man she had danced with in her dreams (in the heavenly palace)? She had never seen his face clearly, but this could be the one, a beautiful manly face, the one she had always longed to kiss.

She bent down towards him, her long hair brushing his face. She put her finger to his pale closed lips. Locked in sleep he did not move, eyes remained closed. She wanted to do what she had always wanted to do with men. The desire had not changed, but knowledge and confidence had. The experiences of these last days had changed her forever. New friends had come into her life and set her on a new course. The old fears had withdrawn their claws. She had been brought into a circle of love and oneness which she had not even dreamed about, but it gave her the key to those dreams which she could not reach before. Danella and her husband, and Valery, and Philippe, and the others. They had made it possible for her to know that she was desirable, that most men would want her, if only she could thrust herself upon them. Each in turn and together had entered and explored her, taking honest pleasure in every part of her. They had finally proved to her that she was wanted, that she was what she had always suspected herself to be - desirable to men.

And now she could go out and find men for herself. No longer need she hold back in obedience to what she had thought was the privilege of the opposite sex. Now she was privileged also. Indeed she now knew that many men were no more privileged than she had been. They too wasted their lives in impotent squalor, not daring to ask for what they so needed, becoming old without ever having known real confidence. She knew now that she could go out and ask whenever she chose, and most men would give her exactly what she wanted, without the need for great persuasion. Therefore she did what she wanted, took what she could take, with confidence.

She lowered her face to his face and set her mouth on his mouth. She pressed her tongue between his lips, clean and as fresh as fruit. She tasted him as if she had never kissed before. She held his face between her hands and drank him in. now she felt her kiss returned, his warmness invading her as he awoke and understood that his dreams had come true. His hands slid over her, all around her shoulders and over her breasts. She lay against him feeling all of his body under those clothes which attempted in vain to protect him against her. Then she pulled back for a time, pulling on his clothes, unfastening buttons of waistcoats and shirt, relieving his body of its last defences. To his naked body her hands returned, hungry for his warmth. He tried to resist as she removed his clothing, wanting to feel and hold her but concerned not to allow himself to be washed from the firm security of tradition and duty.

He had been taught well. A woman should be selected after careful deliberation, she should be respected and not invaded by the male until the time was right. This was all too quick. A woman of his dreams was upon him before he knew he was awake. He knew her by sight and by brief conversation, but he knew her too little for this. There was something wrong. A woman was not the one to seduce. She would always wait until offered or chosen. She could charm or flirt, but his gentle assault was unknown from a woman. He felt drawn up by it. How could any man resist the onslaught of a woman. It was just that so few women ever attempted any kind of onslaught. He was in shock for this changing of roles. He should hold back and calm her manner, allow her to consider the dishonour to which she might send herself if she had not properly weight up the consequences of her actions. He tried to hold her but she was like a sea creature, diving and darting around his body, dragging and enticing his body into her depths. His resistance was half hearted and futile. He wanted her really. It was so rarely that dreams could ever come true. He could hardly believe he was awake. He must enjoy the dream while it lasted. A woman could change so easily. She might show warmth, occasionally, but she could easily change to frozen, and he might never have the chance again. To his mouth she brought her breasts. He drowned in them, basking in her scents and her aliveness. Her limbs writhed in his clasp, thrashing with her pleasure. It was she who had started this, who drew his organ into the sweet refuge of her mouth.

The walls between their souls became thin. Jacqueline began to feel that she could slide across to any of the others at will, and they could slide into her. Philippe was the first to cross it. Jacqueline held back, paralysed by her prudery, thinking even now that it would be an intrusion to join with a man's soul when he was married to someone else, a violation of so much she had been taught. She sat immobile amongst her contradictions, too inhibited to follow the new creed she had come to espouse. Philippe however, realising at last that nothing prevented him, slipped into her body, like a raider in a sacred temple. Jacqueline's natural response was to try to shield herself from him. She did not want Philippe to discover her physical desire for him despite the penis which already plundered her deep insides.

After some time of embarrassed mental resistance she ceased to resist. She had prepared herself for this, to bare her soul and open fully her body. She allowed herself to feel the swell of his penis. She allowed the true communion to begin, the merging of selves in a wider common soul. She found herself in the caves of his inner self, which sought commission and sharing. It was not an image she had had of him before. This man was not self assured, where he had appeared to her very self assured. She had treated him as a perfection to be viewed from a distance, the most beautiful man she knew, but could not have, even more perfect than Mireau. But she had come to view Mireau as attainable, as hers and particularly so after years of marriage, despite his infidelities. Philippe had never been attainable. His beauty was to be admired at and gazed upon at a distance. He belonged to someone else. But now she was being invited not only to blend with him, in animal carnality, while others looked on, but to fuse with his inner self. This man was tortured and tormented by life, seething with the indignities and stresses of his daily toil, driven by anxieties and a sense of entrapment in a world he did not want.

She went deeper. Whores lapped at his passages and innards, keeping sensitive the skin of his inner walls so that he felt the tension of erotic motivation at all times. Lascivious Angels tugged at his heartstrings and beat their wings through his arteries. He burned with the pure flame of ecstasy, which lived within him in ever lasting conflict with the exterior discipline of the 'real' world which bound him. He met her without fear joining with her in joy. She saw that he was a name who would now at the slightest provocation have entered willingly any female. For some few years she had viewed him from afar and secretly lusted for him. If she had ever known of the inner lusts which boiled up within she would surely have approached him like a moth attracted to the light long before. Now they engulfed one another, penetrating and supporting each other. Here sharing her with herself was the real Philippe who for some years had been a distant object, her ideal and subliminal goal. This perfect incarnation of beauty was now within her and open to her in complete sharing.

And what of herself, invaded more deeply than ever before by this stranger and by the others who crowded around waiting for their turn to join with her. He was reading the hidden pages of her mind, finding the hidden lusts that had been within her for so long now and finally came flooding out. He was right now exploring the sanctity of the libraries of her brain, where her images of every man or woman she had ever considered beautiful were stored. He would find his face among them, in foremost position, and not just his face but every ripple of his muscles, and the slightest imagined bend of his leg, the imaginary size of his penis, never flaccid.