Psychic Anthropophagy

Elena watched Marek. He was sprawled on the sofa, absorbed in a battered old paperback. A cheap production from the rotating rack in front of a station discount shop for printed matter. A remedy against boredom on the train. An object designed to bridge stretches of time that could not be put to better use. A factory-made thriller that did not deserve the name travel reading. Elena was surprised by Marek’s modest demands. She was almost disappointed. She herself did not allow cheap fiction into her life. Every book had to meet the standard that had taken root in her as a young girl. She was certainly no intellectual, but that did not mean she lacked standards.

Elena called herself to order. Perhaps hidden within this trash were narrative gems that only a genius could uncover. To the police detective gone astray, there was no question that the bestselling author Marek Lorenz was an exceptional phenomenon in every respect. He was worth every risk, including the destruction of her marriage as the consequence of her infidelity.

There lay a man who made her heart beat faster simply because he was breathing. Desire announced itself. She had rejected so many lovers because it had become too much for her. But with Marek it never became too much. Sex with him was many things, including a shared prayer of breath. Together they followed moods, let themselves drift, were caught in currents, enjoyed the lightness of moving through a pleasant flow. It was so much, and it was never enough. Every climax was a precursor. The orgasms differed in intensity. Elena liked to remain for a while in a cooling pool of pleasure after the ecstasy had passed. Sexuality and eroticism were sources of strength. They required cultivation. For Marek, sex and qigong formed a unity. He truly was an extraordinary lover. Exceptionally skilled. Profoundly experienced. These were terms Elena had never before associated with physical love. She was certain she would never again find a man capable of taking her so completely into himself.

“I want to feel you inside me,” she said.

Marek looked at her insolently. He did not hide his mockery. His grin struck her like a blow. He shamed her, and suddenly she suffered terribly from that shame. In that moment she had completely lost the sovereignty of the bourgeois person she was. Well-built. Well-educated. Well-married. Equipped with a respectable family history. She did not have to tolerate anything from anyone. If Marek had already had enough of her, then she did not want to burden him for another minute. She wanted to stand up and leave without a word. But she was frozen in place. Stiff as a board. Unable even to move.

“So, so,” Marek said, “that is what you want. To feel me inside you. Of course, one could also put it differently.”

The cruelty had an almost physical substance. It was as intense as perfume applied far too heavily.

I certainly don’t want that anymore, Elena wanted to reply. But no word came out. Silent and rigid, she remained trapped in her embarrassment. She thought of the last message from her husband. She had ignored it the way one rejects an unwanted call—with an angry, though silent, comment.

Now I matter to you again, after all those years of indifference.

Her own indifferences and adulterous romantic delusions had just slipped from her mind.

I insert Jörg’s message here:

I am writing this to you in my desperation. I miss you as if I could not breathe without you. You promised that we would Skype at around nine. I am longing for the appointment and relying on your punctuality.

Elena had let the appointment pass. She had deliberately forgotten it, just as she had learned in childhood and adolescence to erase unpleasant things from her memory. A shrug as an apology. Time and again, such a cup of bitterness had passed her by. No one could truly be angry with her sweetness. No one wanted to accuse her of malicious intentions.

But now she was thirty-seven and a senior-ranking police officer. She shared property with Jörg and the fate of involuntary childlessness. So none of this was acceptable anymore. The next moment, there was nothing left of shame or remorse. I will spare you the details. Marek was a magician of the most insidious kind. It was easy for him to make Elena forget in his arms how cruel he had just been.

“My words swim to you on deep currents of breath, my beloved.
We lie beside each other after our swims, breathing deeply and wonderfully refreshed. My fingers play across your arms, you turn toward me, and I love your desirous gaze. You bend toward my ear and whisper our word for fucking, both shamelessly demanding and tender, while you loosen my bikini top behind my neck and expose my breasts. Your fingertips awaken my buds, wander toward my center and awaken the pulse that presses my hips against you. My hand slips into your swimming trunks, my warm heartbeat surrounds your cock, and I feel your desire growing. A rippling welcome moistens your fingertips inside my bikini bottoms. I turn around, you move the fabric aside, and shortly afterward you bless me with your coming. The sun glitters unfiltered on the Eder. Salty pearls of love on our lips.” M.

Physical union is not a goal in Daoist practice. It is a path. A communion of energies. When one can consciously allow one’s Qi to circulate along the inner pathways, this is called opening the Microcosmic Orbit. To open your body is the first. In the free flow of vital energy arises a feeling of warmth, clarity, and often subtle pleasure. Experiences of this kind initially occur by chance. The aim is to become able to evoke them deliberately. Elena’s erotic range expands through increasingly refined fusions of Qi and libido. With Marek she experiences sex in a way she has never experienced with any man before. Without inner resistance, she expands her repertoire — she expands herself.