The Knowledge of Good and Evil
Although Jed, Rebecca and Aimée had considerable experience with The Knowledge, they all acknowledged that it was never the same on one level, and exactly the same on many other levels.
Elliott was well-known for saying “I never met a psychotropic drug that I didn’t like…” and LSD, Psilocybin, Peyote, and Mescaline were at the top of the list.
He had been wanting to try it from the minute he heard about it.
Chianna, on the other hand rarely even smoked weed, except as an enhancement to a particular ritual or ceremony, and on occasion, for sex…just not much recently.
The onset of effects in terms of the participant’s awareness of what it was that they were experiencing might initially manifest itself as either auditory, visual/perceptual, mental/intellectual/philosophical, spiritual, or physical sensations and awarenesses.
The amusing thing is that whatever door opened first, it was a choice, or rather an invention devised by your psyche, to call attention to itself long enough to distract you so as to awaken you from your dream.
Often, the telepathic awareness was well upon its users before they realized it, especially among people with a history, or common experiences and consciousnesses.
Of course, ever since the four of them had rolled into the Fourteenth Colony, Anticipation, even when offset by the slightest degree of uncertainty, had preoccupied their attentions.
The If, the How, or the When remained a common question to be determined, even as they contemplated it, unable to take anything for granted, despite the fact that they knew intuitively what each of them thought, felt, or even hoped.
Or, at least what they intended to accomplish. The truth is that nothing had remained the same within or around each of them, despite the fact that once separated, their own cognitive assessments, memories, and feelings about each other, good or bad, still remained.
Snapshots of memories, more likely than not, in arrested development, as the rest of their lives went speeding on by.
Was it possible “..to love like there’s no tomorrow, and still not cry when it’s time to go?”
How about when it’s time to go back?
“Well, at the time that was how I felt, but so much has changed since then…” is not just a cliched movie dialogue; it’s probably spoken somewhere every day, along with “…it’s not you, it’s me…”
Even when you think you know how you’re going to feel about reuniting with a long-lost love, when the time comes, it may feel different; something separated the two of you the last time, and they may not recall how you two parted as fondly as you do.
However, the likelihood of anyone traveling that kind of distance under the dangerous conditions of the road should rule out the likelihood of revenge or resentment motivating anyone in this group.
How many times have you run into an old flame, only to be rebuffed, as if you were never really friends in the first place? It only takes once….
Some things however, were certain; Chiana’s attraction for Jed, which was hesitantly reciprocated, although everyone could see how Jed seemed reluctant to do anything to hurt Elliott.
As their perceptions continued to become more heightened, the giant elephant in the room was Jed, Chianna, and Elliott.
Once they came to grips with the fact that even their efforts to hide the infatuation swirling around them were in vain, the greater the potential for essentially hurting Elliott even more…by patronizing him, underestimating him and injecting Guilt to poison the moment.
And yet all of them watched as each of them catapulted through a series of understandings and insights communicated by a simple glance or an expression passed between the three of them, almost in an instant.
Elliott did not want to cause Chianna to censure her exploration of her feelings for Jed, as well as her attractions on a physical level, so although they usually participated and shared everything together, they agreed to be open and honest…separately, for now, just now.
But still she felt that somehow, she was not being fair to Elliott, so much so that Chianna even suddenly blurted out how Elliott was probably going to have his hands full, just “properly entertaining” the other guests, as a good host should.
Chianna suddenly realized that she was willing to encourage her husband to occupy his attention with whatever combination of three of his closest past lovers, two of which, she suddenly realized were among “the great loves” of his life, just to indulge herself in something that she did not want to ignore or deny herself.
“The Three Greatest Loves of his Life” of course, referred to before he and Chianna met. Back when he first became a sentient adult, Elliott’s “Three Winds” were the constants in his life…indeed, they had been his muses, but he didn’t even realize it until they were gone.
April Tremski was dead. It had been years since Aimée or Leigh-Anne had been a part of his life, and for a long time, it had been sadder, and meaner for it.
Then he met Chianna. She gave him children and a sense of purpose. As they fell into and out of Love, he began to understand Stability in ways that would have been incomprehensible before he chose to devote his life to his family, to put their safety and care above his egotistical indulgences in self-expression. She was, and would forever be The One True Love of his life.
And of course the friendship between Elliott and Jed was deep, so when it was Jed who shed a single tear as he looked at both Chianna and Elliott, it seemed obvious that everyone would open their hearts sincerely to each other in both love and trust.
It only took an instant, and the uneducated eye would have barely noticed any of the almost imperceptible expressions that passed between them, and yet the rest of the group understood what they had just observed in the complete absence of words, quite eloquently.
Ever since they had arrived, Elliott had noticed that there was an odd sort of ambivalence reflected in some of his most trivial exchanges with Aimée. She was quite guarded, which he interpreted as being either reluctant to give Chianna any reasons to regard her as a threat, or because she was realizing just how much she didn’t want to experience the heartaches of the past again.
She had been down that road before.
She had also experienced rejection before; and Elliott knew that it’s hard not to find the initial exhilaration of reunion suddenly replaced by resentments from the past.
She and Rebel had an amazingly intuitive relationship and it was Rebecca who wasn’t reluctant to be seen as the more aggressive of the two (with the implication that it was a group package), which might (they hoped) make the opportunity irresistible.
“Back in the day…” Aimée had been Elliott’s “Chic Magnet”. It may be an arcane and sexist term by today’s standards, but the truth was that she lead more women to his bed than he ever did alone, at least at that time.
Aimée had an appreciation of other women that was uncanny. It wasn’t just sexual, because she really craved to know the friendship of another woman that rivaled the friendship between Jed and Elliot.
Even though they did not have sex with each other, on many occasions, they had shared one or more women together.
At times, they realized that both Aimée and Elliott compensated for their other insecurities with their considerable sexual prowess; that somehow because she feared he might grow tired of her unless she provided “the other woman” and he feared that he had to be “the stallion” that would keep her insecure and guessing, even mistrusting her own interests as a distraction from his feared ordinariness.
But in truth, they both were extraordinary people in extraordinary times. So much so that years later, they would pity anyone who hadn’t walked in their shoes.
It had been a long and crazy ride, tragically, beautifully doomed by the simple fact that back then, it was already written that in the absence of resolution, it would become finite.
Each of those lives had their own agenda, and the train was about to leave the station.
Because he chose not to make a choice, he got none.
Since Rebel also had developed a very good understanding with Chianna, they teated each other as sisters as far as Wicca and the significance of the planetary convergences occurring this weekend, but they both sensed that there was more to it than that.
Rebel later said that she figured she would “wait for the swelling to go down” before they explored the deeper and more esoteric aspects of the Moon.
She and Chianna both knew very well that each other’s agendas could reinforce themselves without conflict, and she was not shy about calling it to Chiana’s attention.
Rebel had every reason to have been the most jaded woman to ever live. As a porn star, her meteoric rise from the barefoot, superstitious, illiterate poverty of tidewater Virginia to Hollywood by way of the Adult Film Industry was tragically predictable to the point of appearing to have been scripted.
Yet although she was not shy about acknowledging her pain, as well as her toughness, her blunt frankness hid a very soft, tender heart.
When she met Elliott, she had already lost her money, gotten her heart broken repeatedly, and no longer worked in the Sex Industry. Despite this, she was surrounded by lackeys, hacks, hangers-on, and parasites. She also was in danger of becoming addicted to opioids to counter the pain caused by a reaction to the silicone that had leaked from the breast enhancements that she felt she needed over the course of three separate, increasingly larger implants.
Now, she was so self-conscious of them that she never let anyone see them in the daylight. Anyone willing to spend the money to see them on film had well over one hundred opportunities to watch them grow dramatically, and she did not share the same modesty about her pussy.
When they had originally gotten naked yesterday after their showers, she had kept a very short cut-off tank top that was stretched so far that it was already nearly transparent.
Elliott had made no attempt to hide his attraction to her back then, but it all started with a few simple acts of kindness, and words of appreciation, rather than transparent flattery that must have made him so irresistible to her.
He never tried to initiate any sexual advances despite numerous opportunities and innuendos, even when he was clearly as aroused as she was.
She had heard it all before, and done it all before (for money), but for Love, if she could have done it all over, she would have done it all over you. She was derisive of men who thought that they could seduce, conquer, or tame her, but Elliott had really gotten under her skin by not trying.
She could only stand so much of his seemingly guileless, compassionate detachment before she essentially threw herself at him.
Oddly, though he found her dark, smoldering sexuality very attractive, when the moment finally forced itself upon his consciousness, the fact was that he just didn’t have the heart to refuse her in her moment of weakness…
(Admittedly, the transition from pity to animalistic hedonism was almost instantaneous.)
It was a very short-lived romance, but the sex was breathtaking and the friendship they developed was uncanny, although when he moved from Florida, he made no attempt to contact her again.
He never did, not with anyone. He found that reminiscing about the past inevitably led to profound depression.
He dreaded even cleaning out an old desk drawer, for fear of reliving the longing, and the angst, or perhaps even the realization that he missed it so much, and remembered it too fondly, considering how much he complained and found fault with it for not living up to his expectations while he was living it.
Elliott might reminisce from time to time, but he was completely disinclined to look back, let alone go back, which sharply contrasted his present situation as it was unfolding before them all, and yet he was enthused and energized by it.
But the true mystery…the wild card was of course, Leigh-Anne.
Elliott was not even sure if she had ever realized how much she had intimidated him in so many ways.
She was focused, determined and direct, where he tended to be vague, evasive, and fickle. At the time, it was clear that she cared deeply for him, and there were many times when she seemed to be the only person (other than April) that he trusted not to try to manipulate him with psycho-drama.
It was right then that he suddenly realized that the abuse he had suffered as a child had convinced him that as much as he craved to find his equal, he consistently sought out the damaged, co-dependent women whom he eventually would grow bored, or annoyed with only to reject and sabotage everything between them.
He never intended to be a predator, but Sex was the one thing that seemed to empower him, to compensate for his endless imagined shortcomings and get away with playing the fool until they left him.
That was part of the problem. He often thought that she could see through his most elaborate ruses. She wasn’t so gullible as to drink the Cool-Aid and he didn’t believe in himself enough to think she could actually fall in love with him.
Sometimes, “back in the day…” he perceived mixed messages when she would drop off the radar for awhile, only to reappear just as sweet and affectionate as ever, but if she was ever truly enthralled by the Infatuation of The Crush, she never let it show…or maybe Elliott was too blind to acknowledge it.
Sometimes just the realization that you may be in the presence of your equal is enough to intimidate a man who’s not up for the challenge, even if he knows he will regret his cowardice later.
And now, he wasn’t even sure if he understood why she was here at all.
No one could want a better or more competent friend. There was a curious undercurrent of what he perceived as a sly sexuality which he found most endearing. There always had been.
Last that he had heard, her ranch in Arizona was a truly self-sustaining operation; enough so that she believed that she could be spared for “awhile.”
Before the Crash, she had become a very sophisticated world traveler and bon vivant, but as far as he knew, she traveled more or less alone and there were few mentions of her spouse, one way or the other.
And yet, there was no mistaking that familiar pull, that feeling that somewhere around the next corner, they might suddenly find themselves in each other’s arms again, all the while wondering…“What?!?!”
At times, it had seemed that some kind of cosmic forces were at work, trying to keep them from connecting…like walking hand in hand around their campground at night during the Wild Hog Festival, afraid Elliott’s wife would suddenly catch them…or having Elliott’s mother-in law show up at his place in the middle of the night while his wife was spending the weekend in Jamaica with “a client,” demanding to know what was going on…or years later, when she came to visit him at his hotel, only to find him exhausted, with a high fever.
Certainly, it was no coincidence…yet here they were again; it would be dubious to discount whatever it was that had drawn them back into each other’s sphere of influence.
It was a delicious game of cat and mouse. He knew she was observing everyone else, including him, sizing the politics of the moment.
It was at about that time that Elliott suddenly became aware of just how transparent everything and everyone were about to become.
“Share this smoke with us now, so that our words shall be carried straight to Heaven, and there shall be no lies between us.”
(Ceremonial pipe blessing of one of tribes of the Indigenous Peoples, unknown origin)*
Namasté
नमस्ते
Chazz Vincent
copyright © March 12th, 2021
Fish swim with the tides, in and out of the lagoon as it empties itself, receives from, and flows back into the sea.
*ALL REFERENCES TO ANY PERSONS CONFIRMED STILL LIVING IS PURELY CO-INCIDENTAL…AND THE DEAD ARE TOO BUSY LAUGHING AT US TO CARE.
(Author’s note: This was a phrase that I heard often when I was a child, but I don’t know from where it actually came.)
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