I knew had swung in hammocks for months on end waiting for the magic mushroom to mature. I took the plunge.
Before leaving for Tom’s I phoned Rachel to convey my anxieties.
“You’re going to have a super time,” she assured me, “one of the most fabulous times of your life. Lucky thing. Phone me and tell me how it’s going. Better still, come over. Leonard is in town. I’m sure he’d love to see you.”
“I’ll phone and let you know,” I said, reassured. I crossed the threshold of Tom’s living room as though stepping on stage for my big performance. Tom, detecting my stage nerves, said he wouldn’t take any mushrooms so that I could rely on his sobriety. Tom radiated a Rock of Gibraltar dependability. He was raised on a farm in Saskatchewan drinking milk straight from the cows. I swallowed the mushrooms with total confidence.
By the time I phoned Rachel I was deep into the delights she had promised. Tom’s spartan living room was alive with paintings composed of tiny points of light, with music becoming dancing sound, with colours singing in a rainbow arc. I was the heart of a magic lantern.
“Rachel, everything is beaming diamond light.”
“Beaming diamond light,” Rachel repeated.
“Tell her to bring it here.” It was Leonard’s voice.
Tom and I arrived in a cocoon of silver snow flakes while I was at the peak of my trip and sat by the log fire splashing warmth in colours of gold. The room, usually lovely, was exquisite with its Indian table composed of tiny pieces of mother-of-pearl, radiating light, like a chest of jewels. Irving and Leonard sat on the pale gold sofa and I knelt beside them gazing into their faces, exhilarated by my crystal vision. “What do you see?” Leonard asked.
“I see a spiral of words dancing from your mouth on to the table where they wind among the jewels, fill with light and then sparkle into Irving’s mouth and dance back into your’s, leaping higher and growing more luminous each time they pass.”
Rachel, Irving and Leonard took turns asking, “What do you see?” and then began adding their visions to mine, in a shimmering cascade of words until the words began to rotate in a kaleidoscope of images, brilliant upon brilliant, our laughter whirling in the air like sparklers spinning, spiralling up and up, riding my contact high. Tom remained apart, blinded, unable to enter the magic circle as it sped faster and faster.
Suddenly Leonard raised his hand. The kaleidoscope stilled. His voice echoed from a solemn cavern deep within him. “Friends,” he said gravely, “I must reveal to you a problem I have, which I was unable to share until tonight.”
“The problems of Leonard Cohen, a legend in his own time, do not exist,” Rachel chanted. “A man who can have everything he wants, success, money, fame, women, is no longer entitled to have problems.”
“Can you have all the women you want?” Irving asked, his mouth pursing with admiration.
“Yes. It’s like magic. I enter a crowded elevator and point. When I reach my floor the woman I pointed at follows me.”
“And that’s a problem?” Irving intoned. “I should have such problems. It sounds more like a paradise.”
“Yes, that’s a problem. Because now that I can have any woman I lay my finger on, I can’t make love to any of them. I haven’t been able to have an erection for almost a year.”
“You,” Rachel gasped, “guru of love, every woman’s rising star, the man with the golden organ. You haven’t been able to have an erection?”
“Yes,” Leonard said, his eyes dark with shame. “I’m a fraud.”
Suddenly I felt a wild exhilaration. “On this night we have the power to magic your erection back.”
Leonard had laid his finger on me. His response was immediate. As though pronouncing a prophecy, he said: “Tonight shall be remembered as the night the erection of Leonard Cohen returned to earth.” His voice resounded with the power of miracle. “Henceforth virgins dressed in white will light candles to commemorate the miracle, proclaiming, ‘Leonard Cohen’s erection is alive. Magic is afoot.’”
Leonard, the orgy master, cracked his whip and the sparks burst into flame.
“We shall have an erection competition.” He was inspired, intoxicating. “The men will stand side by side, penises exposed. The ladies will dance naked before them.”
He spoke like a medium manifesting a vision. And we all submitted like novices to an all-enveloping spiritual mystery. “I have never won anything in my life. But tonight I shall be the winner, my competitors will bless me with success.”
He proceeded to conjure up the dance.
“First you will move sensuously, encouraging, coaxing erection. Woman as seducer. Then your dance will become a ritual of growth, of procreation. The goddess dancing a fertility rite to encourage a fruitful yield. The men will partake in a ceremony of manhood, a contest of virility. The first man to achieve erection is the victor.” He wore the robes of prophet.
Leonard put a record on and lit several candles. The music glittered in its own elaborate choreography through the firelight and candlelight. Rachel peeled off her clothes, eager to partake in the ritual. She adored Leonard and loved yielding to the power of his baroque imagination. Besides, refusing him would be like the tides refusing the moon. She became a beautiful sprite, surrounded by an aura of light. I removed my blouse, my breasts powerful in my hands, but retained my skirt, swishing silk against my thighs, my purple stockings and my Chinese slippers winking sequins. Leonard graciously permitted the transgressions. Three limp penises lined up against the wall. Tom’s eyes were downcast, like a Samson, his hair newly shorn, or a cowboy, fresh from the prairies, suddenly naked in Sodom or Gemorah, not daring to behold the twin wickedness, yet fatally drawn to the decadence, an Adam doomed to partake in sin. Leonard’s white skin stretched porcelain thin over a slender frame, helpless on the cross of his body. Irving was an immovable mountain, his limbs thick tree roots, planted firmly in its base, his legs astride, a Colossus ready for battle.
Leonard raised his arm signalling Rachel and me to dance. We moved first like belly dancers in a harem, navels flashing, bodies rubbed in perfumed oils. Then we became Everywoman, the temptress, the enchantress, dancing a timeless seduction. I see Rachel become Eve, then Helen of Troy, then Lolita; I am Cleopatra, Mata Hari, Jezebel. Breasts, belly, thighs, rocking, swaying, tempting invisible maleness. Hips pulsating deep into the journey of seduction, searching for the golden stud, Adam, Caesar, Christ. Then slowly into rituals of fertility, kneeling, blessing the earth, arms lifting in spirals from earth through rain and sun. Palms reaching to the sky in an invocation of growth.
Leonard watched like a caged bird, its beak open in a silent mating song. Irving watched, steeped in poetry, and Tom like a displaced cock unable to crow. Rachel and I danced together, a ballet celebrating the female, withdrawing from the male, the mesmerised trinity deaf to our rhythms, their penises cobras who had forgotten how to be charmed.
Then slowly, very slowly, I danced to the sofa and folded into the gold, beckoning Leonard and Irving to either side of me. Tom sat facing us bathed in redemption as Rachel sensing his discomfort climbed into his lap and perched on his knee, smiling like a child in the Garden of Eden. I felt newly born, my body fresh like morning sunshine, but with an ancient miracle, the power of healer. Beside me Leonard’s penis lay like a broken bird. Carefully I took it in my hand. As it nested in my fingers, I saw its mouth open and begin to sing.
