"So there are universal laws," I said, more than anything because Baccha had stopped talking. He was looking at me now; he had been doing so as he explained. Now, his gaze was intensified by his silence with a force that lowered the hollering of the other denizens of Whitewood Park, free-use property of Whitewood Church, which was just across the street.
"Yes," he said. "Like, even when a chick is acting all dominant – we recognise that as masculine behaviour right? But there's no such thing; it's just a word, a label. It sure is a convenient label though, one that happens to convey some of the truth. There are numerous pairs of such polarities in existence."
Sipping generously from the sinister concoction of Slurpee and King Robert II gin, Baccha rested his head against the bark of the tree and added with the calm of a man describing the weather, "O goddess, it would be preferable that we say, existence is possible only because of these numerous pairs of polarities."
He'd been slipping into these O goddess's intermittently, and not entirely with tongue in cheek. Cherishingly too. A girl could get used to this.
I had my head on his lap. I reached for his wrist to check the time. Four. Somehow we managed to spend the entire afternoon right here, going back and forth like this. As soon as we got up we bolted, taking a bus down here for the freedom of open air and the tranquility of a large body of water. Had it only been last night that we all returned from our respective portals, back to the garden? Only last night that I asked Baccha to come back to my basement room, so that I wouldn't have to be alone?
Basic pairs of polarities. Dual aspects of the same thing everywhere. Male and female. Inhale, exhale. Internal external. Coldheat. Baccha and I, in my bed, huddled close. In the dark, surrounding shadows hovering above the blanket that covered us.
"Like angels and demons," I blurted out.
"Ah yes," he said, pointing a finger down, hovering it precariously over my nose. "Both are creations of the mind. Isn't it funny how people always see demons, or as I prefer, daemons? Predisposed to feeling some malevolent presence, as if angels are snobby creatures trying their very best to avoid us! Very telling about the general state of humanity, I'd say."
I nodded, looking at his lips pursed together like that. Fucking occult nerd. So cute.
"So, made by the mind, fed by emotion. Like Babadook?"
"Exactly," he said, pleased. "Good girl."
I scrunched my nose. Just like that, I was back in my basement room. A van throttling by, sounded like it was on its last wheel. Overhead fan creaking louder than a wall clock. Since when did fans creak anyway?
He had his arm around my waist, palm resting flat on my belly. The air of his exhales like a balm on the skin, soothing all tension in my neck. We were lying in the very early hours of morning acting like teenagers, playing chicken, see who'd cave in first. Sure, we were tired. Maybe he wasn't a hundred percent sure if he wanted to cross this line. We were bros, beanie bros. We used to joke that it wasn't gay if it was a threeway. Now there we were, I was the chick. And I wanted to leapfrog over the line. And while I wanted to scream for how absurd it was that we were drawing it out like this, in a way, I was also grateful. This whole experience was like a second puberty. So it made a crazy kind of sense that I got to go through the strange hormonal journey all over again, but from the other perspective. Shy girl, soft touches, a man she could trust to help her come into bloom.
I turned around meekly and kissed him. His hand crept up to the side of my face then; I felt every one of his fingertips tap-dancing across my ribcage, shoulder, neck. Suddenly he pulled back, and already disappointed, I actually thought that he wasn't feeling it.
"You're kneeing my balls," he whispered. You can use that when you write your own romance webnovel, reader.
I was snapped out of the reverie by Baccha brushing the Slurpee against my arm, cigarette dangling from his still-pursed lips. Lips I had tasted, over and over, from black night to blue dawn to right now. Gah, help. "So what, they're all egregores?" I said, sitting up and facing him.
He nodded. "But not all remain so. The majority of them develop such a degree of autonomy that they're able to tear away from their supposed masters and feed off others. This happens when the unsuspecting intellect just cannot see that the object of its terror is actually its minion, its creation, and instead grants it absolute power. By the by, did you know that the best way to banish a demon is to make fun of its shoes?"
The look I shot him must've been goofy, because he laughed and put his arm around me. I was close enough to his face that I could see the days-old scruff on his chin. And this morning, when I'd woken up first to find that his arm was around me just like that night after the Invisible Scorpion. I was trying to move my hand up to feel my face for stubble.
"I've got my morning wood pressed right up against your ass, and that's what you're concerned about?" He'd said, voice sounding like sex.
But we hadn't gone that far in the night. Neither of us pushed. That would be a whole other bridge to cross, at least for me. I still didn't know if I wanted it. There was a lot to think about, and right now I didn't really want to think . . .
"Actually," I said, "Tell me about Frank and binding shadow predators by eating them."
"Okay. Binding's external in many magical traditions, yeah? Chains, chalk-and-salt circles, giant mason jars. Who has time to lug all that shit around?
The shadow predators appear to be scary because we perceive them as an external threat, right? Well, the world is mental according to The Kybalion, and our merry gang decided that these punk-ass cut-outs were nothing more than figments of our troubled psyches running amok. So all we had to do was acknowledge and internalize them, right? We decided to skip the psychobabble, all the dark night of the soul stuff, and just literally digest the entities.
I mean, this all sounded neat in theory, but you can't begin to imagine how shocked – and thrilled – we were when it fuckin' worked!"
"And the selfie you took?" I said, "Was that like the final seal or something?"
"Nah, I just like collecting them. Hoping to string up a massive slideshow we can exhibit at conventions. Frank Eating Thru the Years."
"You guys get the same trip each time you step into the portals," I said, "are they gateways to a parallel universe?"
"The portals are bubble realities. Self-contained, queer mix of astral and physical. 4th-dimensional rules apply, which is why anything you thought of, there was a good chance it would've manifested."
Seeing how confused this made me, evidently, he added, "This wasn't apparent to all of us on the first go, you know. We pieced it together a little more each time. According to Tantra, each thought carries a vibration. Hence the shrooms; they made us sensitive to the texture of thoughts. The negative ones felt like sandpaper, and we'd swerve the simulation around in our favour by harnessing thoughts that felt more like silk. The sad case of Jon Hodkins aside, the portals have been a wonderful training ground for attention control. The magician must be sovereign in the control and focus of their thoughts and the direction in which they are allowed to flow. This became especially prudent once we were certain that each of our bubble realities were formulated upon our personal points of stagnation, or unresolved emotions. This, along with the binding method we've chosen, actually recalls the Rubedo phase in alchemy, where the lower self is digested to fuel the higher self."
Occult. Nerd.
"It has to take some kind of a toll though, right?" I said. Mushrooms and portal fatigue aside, after the binding Frank had looked about as well as a Deadite. A lot less articulate too.
"My personal belief is that it takes a toll if you say it does. Frank is a little more worn out this time, I spoke to Lisa this morning. Until digestion is fully completed he's basically a living cage for something spawned from the darkest corners of the collective unconscious. Literally shouldering the burden for all humanity. But it's nothing he can't handle."
I turned my head to the side, looking at the joggers and people walking their dogs on the track that winded round the lake. A cadre of obviously late middle-aged women occupied the centre of the plaza. They were practising what looked like tai chi ("Qi gong," said Baccha, when I pointed it out to him, "slower movements, see, and they're harmonising their yin with the help of the plants"), each circling a potted plant slowly, arms fanning out and twirling invisible ribbons.
Then my eyes wandered to the lone tree that had somehow taken root in the heart of the lake. Not only for its size, or the surrealism of the sight, as this was no mangrove, no swamp tree. This solitary stalwart resembled a member of the oak family, and its bark was so thick, practically a living fortress, that I would hardly find it surprising if this fine and odd specimen was over a hundred years old. It was submerged up to where its branches began; heavy, sprawling limbs that stretched skyward with no discernible design. Note the distinct sound its lobed, fingerlike leaves made each time the wind hit – a dry, leathery clatter. Again, an impossibility, for any regular oak could not survive even a few weeks of such flooding of its roots. And yet, to all intents and purposes I admit that the word 'impossible' no longer sat so comfortably in my vocabulary.
And the lake! Oh, plain now it was to see that it was filled with Nature's tears, and my, how arresting to see all She had wept, for the dance of life eternal. And the women wove vigorously around their personal mini-oaks now, the wild women-kin of the watering hole. Do you not see, reader, that it was all in celebration and in love? (The clattering of leaves? the clattering of stilettos!) In love with what, you ask? Why, with dying. For it was woman who knew best of all that life was inseparable from death. That's why we love to receive flowers; what better symbolisation at the end of beauty's shock, to lay to waste that final recognition in the disposal of the mess of withered petals and tarnished stalks.
Sorry, got a little carried away there. It's this Slurpee-Gin, I tell you. Baccha got off easy by speaking in extracts from a Tantric text. I get the joys of hallucinating trees and narrating in 18th-century gothic.
But yes, I saw how things must be connected, every object and entity a strand entwined in the cosmic carpet. Twisting out from the cosmic carpet too. I remember reading a study about a crew of meditators affecting reality on a big scale. They focused their loving attention and intentions on a war zone nearby, and less bomb strikes were recorded, presumably because of the raised vibrations. Every bit matters in its own way, a change of one is a change of all. And this was why despite the untold legions of creepy, dark entities out there still, Frank's agony ensured that humanity slept just a little more soundly last night.
"Believe it, the shadow predators are here for our benefit," I heard Baccha say. "You've already said that we can't view them as adversaries. But it's not even about the labelling; they simply aren't."
I nodded, and then, without really knowing why, followed it up with "we're all in a dream that someone else is dreaming." And we really left it at that. How often does kinship and mutual depth of understanding get a chance to develop between two parties that one of them could offload a statement like that, and not be asked to quantify what they meant?
"Ah, I don't think that's quite right," Baccha said just then. Whoops.
"Most people have identified the dreamer," he continued, "and they call it God, or Source, Tao, Nature. We just might never know why he is, nevermind the fact that using 'he' or any other pronouns failed to adequately described what we're talking 'bout here."
This was familiar enough philosophical terrain. Lemme just drag the old Epicurean paradox out for your easy reference:
If God is willing to prevent evil but not able, is he then not all-powerful?
If he is able but not willing, is he not a malevolent wanker?
If he is both able and willing, whence comes evil?
If he is neither able nor willing, why call him God?
"You sound so cocky, I bet the mighty Left-Hand Path has got it all figured out?" I said.
"You bet wise. Even without the benefit of schooling, simple observation would lead most folk to at least two basic premises. The first is that what on the surface appears as evil, serves a distinct function as a source of friction and the catalyst for the soul's ignition. Think about a perfect world, fully soaked in light and love, no evil: there would be no movement. What, we all just hug each other constantly and boogie to the celestial music? Some kind of never-ending Coachella without the travel hassle? How quickly would you get bored of that?"
As he paused for a swig I thought of an Alan Watts clips. In it, he postulated that if you were god, you'd start off by giving yourself every possible delight. That would take up some time. After I don't know, only a couple billion years of such treats, you'd finally begin to feel a little dulled by the constant pleasure. Hard to imagine, I know, but try. So then, you, as god, would decide to throw in a little challenge for the next ride. And what a thrill that would provide, to suddenly not have things go your way, see all the myriad ways they can develop! Like a delightful surprise in a video game. And each time, you'd get used to it, master it, so you upped the ante. So on and so on, until the current state of affairs, until the life you were now living. You been around a long, long time, and I wouldn't believe all the things you've seen, except I do.
"Fear, chaos, destruction," he continued, "these are the predators of the universal jungle which force us, its prey, to evolve and resume our rightful place as reverent souls. It's the hardest fucking role in the game to play, evil. Viewed this way, Judas would be the hero of the crucifixion."
"You read any Borges?" I said, raising myself from his lap.
"No, why?"
"One of his short stories has a theologian who argues that god was really Judas Iscariot, because the true ultimate sacrifice would not have been to die on the cross, and then be loved forever, but to actually betray the son of god and forever be hated throughout eternity.
"And the fact that the world refuted his thesis was the ultimate confirmation, ordained by god to protect his secret."
"Fucking right on," he said, face flush with boozy awe, "now that is some Illuminati-level balance. God, not only as arbiter of all the greatest positive stuff, but also the cruelest most heart-tearing ills."
"Got a copy in my room," I said, feeling coquettish. "It's yours if you want it."
"You're not trying to lure me back to your den, are you?"
"Whatever for, when I've got you trapped right here?" I said, both my hands on his thighs. He leaned forward.
"Returning to the topic at hand, O goddess," he said slyly, as I resumed my restful position with my head on his lap, "if the Supreme Being were to step in and crush evil every time it reared its messy little head, wouldn't that make us a pretty impotent assembly of fucks?"
"Spiritual lobotomy," I said.
"Exactly," he said, "save someone and you smash the opportunity for self-mastery. Left-hand magicians don't try and prevent a storm from happening; we learn how to ride the lightning."
"Exciting as all this sounds, O dreadlocked one," I said, batting my lashes when he stuck his tongue out, "super empowering, really, but each mention of the Left-Hand Path reminds me of Aunt Constance, and what she said. That I had to choose."
"The Right Hand," he said, shaking his head, "these white magicians are all so certain that they're on the right team. You know, I really can't believe your aunt is one of them. She's such an outlaw figure, and yet when it comes down to it she's just as rigid as the Protestants with their work ethic, coupled with the Islamic view that everything's only a test. From some kind of a pervy, bastard daddy god who's out to spank us."
"So we're not being tested?"
"Why would we test ourselves? Sure, we might want to see what we're made of, but to have real penalties? Gimme a break. No, dear girl, there is no test component to the Creation. Life is not an exam, but an experiment, a play. Torment can be explained away as a measurement of the causal body, where the karmas are stored. Things that you did before are stored and affect how your current life is going. But that's it, and once you know it anyone could wipe the slate clean. A little self-awareness is a very powerful thing."
You know babe, I once had a conversation with a Muslim friend, this exact spot. I don't know why, but every time it was just us two he'd launch into a miniature madrasah, tell me about the history of the Quran, the advanced science of the Islamic world, all about Iblis and the end of the world. And I was always game to listen, even if he's really just trying to showboat that he's on the winning side.
Of course he never knew about my chosen, uh, course. Never even occurred to him to ask. And maybe better that way. I mean, if he talked this much without knowing I was a magician . . . anyway, this one time he had begun spieling, and I took it all in as we handed a joint back and forth, bright sunlight hitting all the different shades of green in the leaves.
We were so different, he and I. He was just as divine, my brother cell in the spectacle. But he had bought into the illusion. Shit, maybe I had bought into the illusion. But at least my illusion doesn't begin with me condemned and finish off with a fucking apocalypse where I enter either eternal suffering, or an everlasting party with exactly all the depraved shit I'm supposed to have avoided on Earth. You know?
So I casually asked him, 'Hey guy, god is everything right? I mean, if he's not everything, then he's not god right?'
And my friend was like 'Yeah man, yeah!'
And I said to him 'So the shit I took this morning must be god too. The Israelis are god too.' And that did it, he got all red, you could smell the pot smoke coming out of his ears. Fucker was short-circuiting right in front of me. It's part of his script. Everyone conforms, or immediate jihad. Tell me that's not a slave dogma, girlie."
He'd been looking straight ahead as he spoke. Having fallen silent, I guess he was now studying the group of elderly women and their qi gong. Maybe he was thinking about that friend of his. I suppose they weren't so chummy anymore. What a life. That friend had every right to believe what he wants to. That's what freedom is. Baccha knew this too, for sure. But fucking think about what you're propagating, about what you're accepting as your belief system. And if you're going to force everyone else to follow something your culture forced on you . . . well, reader, I think you can see how bored we must have been after a trillion years of unmitigated bliss to have come apart this fucking hard. God as a delightfully broken mirror.
Baccha shook his head slowly, dreadlocks swishing about. He reached for another cigarette, offered me the pack. I turned it down; I honestly didn't feel like smoking anymore. Strange aftereffect from the portal experience.
"We have the cake," he said "and we eat it, and then we shit it out. And we accept that it's all good, it's all divine. From cake to shit it's god, baby. And it's us. Any external deity is a projection of us. No more distinctions."
"So," I said, dragging the word out, "what does this mean exactly? We have a licence to live, free reign to do anything?"
"Almost," he said, "Tantra and the Left-Hand Path get a bad rep, people thinking it's all hedonism and orgies. But, like that Borges story, maybe it's that way to keep the fools out. Because those practices that use intoxicants and sex, you're not performing them for the purposes of enjoyment, that would be egoic. That way ends only in attachment and suffering. Surely you've picked up by now that all the pleasure in the world's never enough?"
I had. No amount of booze, drugs, porn ever left me feeling truly satisfied. If and when I stopped, it was because my body had simply hit its limit. When you thought about it, this applied to anything, from gossip to cigarettes, food to TV shows.
"A comfortable but mediocre life with minimal losses, but just as little wins," I said.
"Or a potentially abundant one filed with both joy and grief. Adepts of the Left-Hand Path are taught not to participate in those so-called devious practices, or any activities really, from the ego. We seek to evoke our chosen deities, our higher self, whatever it is, the greatest part of us. At all times, we aspire to become walking offerings, in perpetual communion. Without internal purity there's a great risk of madness, addiction, and worse. It's a common axiom that the Left-Hand Path can get you where you want to be quicker, but the road is treacherous.
The price of admission is this: every moment you're required to remember that you are always knocking on death's door. That is true renunciation. Not that death is to be feared; it is personified and deified. Awareness of the reality of one's inescapable doom is the pillar of life, it is the compass that will guide you to doing your True Will. And conversely, taking birth is the thing to be feared, only because the conscious ego forgets that its karmas are the reason for its being here in the first place."
"Now you sound like you're pitching for the winning team," I said.
"Please. Pitches betray bitches. People always find that which they are meant to find.
This whole show is rigged anyway. The universe is the ultimate double agent and con artist. It leads you to magic and mysticism, oh do all these things, it says, and you will be able to subvert all the fucked up plans the world has in store for you. You can have it all!
But at the end of the rainbow it tells you, well, shit, guess you gonna have to go through it all anyways. But hey, you got to work through your dark stuff, you even know that you're both the dream and the dreamer, and you can never really die. And now you're a magician too, congrats."
He picked up the Slurpee cup and peered into it.
"It's empty," he said, mildly disgusted.
"What do you feel like doing now?" I said.
"Doom II and ared velvet chocolate bar."
"Wow."
"I know," he said, getting up and pushing his hands down the front of his pants, and flicking off errant leaves like missiles.
"I've got the PS1 port of the first Doom," I said, accepting his hand. "I don't think your second desire exists yet."
"O goddess," he said, "I don't need the physical experience to be satisfied." He pointed to his head.
"Ah," I said, "because you're crazy!"
We started walking towards the plaza, where the trash can was. The women were still going at it.
"Maybe I'll join them," Baccha said, "revolve around the trash."
"I dare you."
"It's like you don't even know me," he said, "I have no shame. Remember that time I lost a bet and had to stand in the middle of some shrubbery waiting for people to pass by so I could spin slowly and spray water from my mouth and shout I'm a sprinkler!"
"One of my fondest memories of you," I said, leaning in to brush against him one more time.
Unfortunately for Baccha, as soon as we reached the can the ladies stopped their revolving. Each raised their knee to almost a right angle, and began circling the pointed foot about the ankle joint.
"Go on then, boy," I said. "Show me how you ride that lightning."
"I can do it, I can do it!" He said, spreading out his hands as he struggled for balance standing on his right leg. Left leg raised, foot rotating. He couldn't do it.