Ancilla: Serialized Edition

The Magus (PART 2)

We sat in the cloud club section of the university auditorium for a traveling repertory company's performance of Die Zauberflote. What we miss in a close-up view we gain in good acoustics, which is just as well because neither a telemarketer nor a librarian can easily afford the more expensive seats. This, I think, had to have been as perfect a first date as one could get. A bonus is that I have established that he likes opera. Most of my acquaintances think my love of opera is insane, or at least a sign of some deeper character disturbance.

"I thought Monostatos was a bit much. So was the Queen of the Night, for that matter."

"You should have seen the libretto before Mozart edited it," he replies.

"It was worse? How could you get much worse than an evil, lustful Moor saying his blackness made him ugly, so he wanted to rape and kidnap the pretty white girl who wouldn't be interested in an ugly guy like him, which sounds like the plot of Birth of a Nation only too early and wrong setting, and a malicious queen with too much power telling her daughter that she'll disown her if she doesn't subjugate the hero, and oh, yeah, an occult brotherhood admonishing the hero and his sidekick to avoid women if they want to be enlightened?"

"It was worse. Rather in the same way The Taming of the Shrew was far more misogynistic before Shakespeare wrote his own version of the play, and The Merchant of Venice was even more anti-Semitic when it was Il Pecorone."

"Oh, well, at least the music was good," I say with a sigh as we climb the stairs to his apartment. I like the street his apartment building is on. It's a quiet residential cul-de-sac on the west side of town, without many other houses or other buildings on it. His section of the street is right across from a cemetery, and there are lots of trees, so the overall effect is almost park-like.

"That it was." He unlocks the door and lets me in.

I am now perched on his couch, drinking peppermint tea and feeling the unseasonably warm, cherry blossom-scented breeze that blows through the open window. I take in details of his apartment while he bustles in the kitchen - I'm failing dismally to be subtle about it, but he's in the kitchen, so that's all right, I guess. The living room decorations consist of bookshelves. All the shelves are used for books. Some shelves are double stacked, including all the shelves on a bookcase that appears to be dedicated to science fiction and fantasy trade paperbacks. I wonder if he would loan out his books if I asked nicely.

There's a magazine called Prometheus, lying on top of the issue of Gnosis and the issue of Yellow Silk. It seems to be a literary magazine of some kind. It looks interesting.

I pick it up off the table - which is really an ornately carved chest - and flip it open at random.

On the left page is a poem. On the right is an exquisitely rendered drawing of a bound and gagged woman. The placement of the ropes is elaborate enough that it makes me squint and turn my head, trying to figure out how everything was set up. In real life, it would be a sculpture with rope. My eyes flick left; the poem - which is beautifully written - seems to go along with the art. As I turn the pages, I notice a distinct and recurring theme to them.

Of course, it would be just this moment that he emerges from the kitchen carrying a tray of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

The awkward silence between us this time is very awkward indeed.

"Very artistically done," I say at last. No, I am not blushing. And I'm not stammering. That is not a stammer. Not at all.

He puts the tray of cookies down on a side table. In a quiet and careful voice, he replies, "That's the literary journal of the oldest BDSM society in North America."

"Oh."

There's a literary journal?

"Have you read the poetry of Swinburne?" I finally ask. "Some of his poems combined eroticism and pain."

"I'm quite fond of Swinburne," he replies.

"Same here," I murmur, willing my mug of tea to calm my hands, which are shaking. "It's amazing the things you can find in libraries."

My eyes lift and wander back to his shelves. Aside from the bookcase devoted to speculative fiction, there is also a stack of history and archaeology books - heavy on prehistory, early Near Eastern and Egyptian history, and classical Greece and Rome - and two cases contain texts on philosophy and comparative religion. A tall case in the corner nearest the couch is crammed with occult lore of various backgrounds.

One shelf at eye level has several books on Tantra and ceremonial sex magick. It also has a couple of non-occult-related texts relating to different activities also starting with the letters "S" and "M," which, while not mystical and esoteric, are nevertheless fairly mysterious, at least to me.

"You filed them with your occult books?"

"Yes."

Silence again. These silences are getting painfully tense.

I swallow past the dryness in my throat. "Why?"

"Because they go together. It's not unheard of; for instance, Gerald Gardner and Aleister Crowley were both notorious for it, each in their own way. Also, if you get into the histories and philosophies of various parts of Asia, you'll find a strong note of mystical asceticism."

"And you?" Stupid voice. Stop croaking.

"I follow an established Western mystery tradition, but there are some things that I make up as I go along."

I look down as I sip my peppermint tea. It's gone cold.

The quiet of the room descends again. My heart rattles against my chest. I breathe deeply and try to think about nothing, to let my feelings flow past and away, as they do when I sit zazen. I listen to myself breathe. I make my breathing slow and calm until the quiet of the room no longer hurts.

I'm extremely surprised that my reaction is so violent. There really is no reason for me to be shaken by the mere mention of sexual kinks in a conversation, or by their portrayal in written and visual art. It's not like I only just now found out such things existed. Of course, the man whose living room couch I am sitting on seems rather more involved in such matters than any other love interest I've had so far. No doubt that has something to do with it, although it once again raises the question of why I am trembling from nervous excitement. Why be nervous? That's silly...

Oh.

Not quite meeting me in the eyes, he asks in a small voice, "Do you still find me attractive?"

I put down the tea and rise from the couch. I walk over to where he is standing, put his face between my hands, and pull him close to me until his lips are touching mine.

"Yes," I whisper against his mouth, and as he reaches for me and encircles me with his arms, the room's silence becomes a heat I can almost touch.