Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 21 - The Music Festival Part Two: Searching for more perfects

This is Episode 21 of the serialized version of the novel, Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s Retro Florida Techo-Pro-Life Love Story and Conversion Journey. These 52 episodes are presented here free for you every Friday. You can buy the paperback version from Mike Church’s Crusade Channel Store (at a lower price than Amazon!).

Or you can start reading at the Table of Contents: here

The Music Festival Part Two: Searching for more perfects

During the sixth band, Habanero, the entire crowd of muddy people moved in a circle around the center camera stand, as the singer had directed. Some ran. Others crawled. They trampled those struck down, but some dragged them along to continue the orbiting quest. They sloshed in the puddles as the drums beat and the singer shouted his proverbs within the songs. Felicia and I hung onto each other. Shoeless, we tread over mud, brown bottles, cups, shirts, headphones, and plastic detergent bottles. During the circular march, the rain ended. The near-equinox sun had set behind the gray.

***

Several couples combined for the first time. The alcohol unburied passions that otherwise would have been inhibited. Passions flamed in inverse proportion to the sun, as if to replace the star as it sank behind the western clouds.

During the intermingling, Winnie always found Maureen. They clung to each other’s presence, sometimes speaking and laughing with someone else, but always returning to where the other stood. They illuminated when they were a pair. With Winnie near, Maureen forgot her fear of inflicting boredom on someone.

At dusk, Maureen sat in a reclined chair with two other girls, all pursued with the least zeal. Winnie stood against the railing on the other end of the porch for a couple of hours, talking to Scott Rodman. Maureen looked over once as Winnie distorted her face behind him. The two friends had often laughed at his delusional esteem for himself. The smokes kindled this ego. He appeared confident Winnie would spend the rest of the night with him.

The night blackened around them. Maureen’s eyesight clouded, and Winnie and Scott hid under the darkness. Maureen occasionally heard their voices and laughs between waves.

Maybe she should disturb his efforts. She could walk there on her way inside the house. Does Winnie remember the outcome of falling into his arms? A surge of energy lifted her from the padded chair. Her step was unsure in the misty dark.

She approached them. They were backed up to the railing. Scott’s arms locked around Winnie’s waist from behind her.

“What is it?” Winnie asked. Maureen spun and walked into the house, but she must have glanced a second too long at the new couple. Scott chuckled behind her.

Inside the house, she flopped onto a puffy sofa. She knew sleep would come soon, and in her hazy thoughts, she even said her nightly prayers. Please, Mary, ask God to save Winnie from that man. Then, Maureen carelessly focused inward. She cursed herself. Why did she resent their pairing? Did Winnie’s virtue or well-being concern her, or God? Or did she sacrilegiously ask God for help because she coveted Winnie for herself? Yes, the charms of the others bored her. She wanted to talk only to Winnie about many things. She wanted to laugh at Scott with her.

Weariness enveloped her as she tried to immerse into the soft cushions. Unless she roused soon, she would sleep. This would end her night. Her eyes closed.

***

As the seventh and final band, The Wrath Grapes, played in the dry darkness, mud caked on us like clothing. Besides this grime, I had only my boxer shorts and a money clip attached to cover me. Felicia had only similar shorts and a brassiere. The night sky lulled us to fatigue as we sat on the cooler her vanished boyfriend had carried in. The noise of the last band droned around us as we stared into the humanity bouncing in the dirt to the thump of the drums.

During the final encores, we lost the energy the chemicals provided. “Let’s leave,” she said.

We dragged each other to the gates of that generation-defining festival. A most challenging journey awaited us: two miles to vehicles, which the rain had undoubtedly stranded in ditches filled with the silt cover of the dump.

“No, this way,” she said. “The shuttles are still running to the hotels. There’s one leaving. See? Over there.”

We jogged a hundred yards over another marsh, surely crossing paths with snakes and raccoons. We reached the bus just before it left. As the chemicals diminished in me, my affections for the blue-eyed Pole grew. Unencumbered by the inhuman substances, I could finally see her: the flit of her eyelashes, the shape of her shoulders, the white of her private skin contrasted with the bronze of her public skin, its tiny raised pores.

She slept standing in my arms. After the bus reached the hotel complex, the other kids moved toward the inexpensive motels. I carried her muddy body into the empty five-star hotel.

She slept in a plush lobby chair as I arranged our room.

“You need to take us,” I said as the staff stared. “It’s off-season.”

In the room, she awoke with a start. “Oh, where are we?” she murmured. “A hotel? Jonathan?”

“I’m here.”

***

“Are you okay?” Winnie asked.

“Hmm? Yeah.” How long did I sleep?

“C’mon, we’re making a bonfire on the beach.”

“Okay.” She still lay there, eyes closed.

Then she felt herself lifted into the air. Winnie eased Maureen down to her feet and continued embracing until her legs were stable.

“Let’s go,” she said. “You carry the boom box, and I’ll find marshmallows.”

“Where’s your friend, Winnie?”

“What a jerk! He’s hitting on Lisa. He kept going on and on about how great a walk on the beach would be. That’s all he talked about, besides himself.”

As the winds whipped in from the dark waters, the two descended the wood steps out to the chilly sand. The fire already raged. These last children of the second millennium shared the final smoke, drank the last bottle of beer, and danced to the High Priests on the portable player. They gyrated without partners. Maureen leaped and writhed with the cadence, as her music training had demanded. Her tiny frame favored the quick movements of the music. No moon, so only the crackling fire illuminated their night.

Many of the girls surrendered, found partners, and dashed off with them into the dark breakers, down the shoreline, or up the stairs to rooms. Two by two, they left the beach for the comfort of the beds. Some simply dozed right there. As Maureen sat holding her knees and watching the bonfire dwindle into a benign ball of orange, alone, Winnie slid next to her, still close, facing away from the embers.

“Would you like to take a walk?” Winnie whispered.

Maureen checked the view of the stars, then breathed. “I don’t know, Winnie. Kinda scary.”

Winnie wrapped her arms around her and moved to kiss. Maureen turned her head like a schoolgirl, but returned the hug with more passion than she thought she had.

They lay down wrapped together. Was anyone looking? Was God?

Maureen had never felt so distant from Him. She moved off a bit and proppednher head on her hand. She watched Winnie succumb to the womb-like surf and nod off.

***

I woke the next morning after eight hours of worry, sleep, and sex. My career was in ruins. My only happiness was in females. I knew it was somehow wrong, but didn’t realize why. I didn’t know the great span I had placed between my self and my Creator, but rejecting my pleasures for such an idea seemed delusional.

I stood, away from the bed. Before me lay the sleeping Felicia, fully cleansed, fully rested, fully depleted, of the chemicals of the previous day. I found the hotel’s complimentary pen and pad and scrawled my ideas in human language. My soul poured out the swirls on the paper. I captured her for eternity with the words. How could I view this body, this beauty, this life, with vulgarity? I had when I had lived in the mountains. For those girls, like Paula, I held merely a common lust to complete the act to gain the attention of my peers.

In this moment, I grasped that my creating, from nothing, through words somehow, was helping me, again, only feebly, to know the First Creator, of us, God.

Why was completing art more worthy? It was generating life for this body in front of me, not only immortalizing it, but giving it any life at all, so far removed from the deaths that always overtake us. The act was stunning to me, not to be like God, but to help my knowing Him by imitation, although the means were so wrong.

“Good morning,” she said. She squinted at me. “What are you doing?”

“I’m writing a poem about you.”

“What about me?”

“About your face, your voice, your legs, everything.”

She opened her eyes. “Like what you see?”

I completed a verse.

“Don’t mention my name. My boyfriend’ll kill me.” She smiled. “Put your pen down and come here. This is too weird.”

I continued to write. “Let me read it to you.”

“No, that’s okay.” She crawled closer to me.

“Look at you. You don’t even care that I don’t like your art?”

I accepted the approach of sin, in a proud rebellion against rules, without knowing the pain I caused in other worlds and the lengths to which I was fleeing from eternal love, even in this striving to know God by creating like He does.

***

Maureen’s stomach tingled as she woke. She knew their friends were leaving early. The day was hers and Winnie’s, alone.

The house was disordered. Their maturity respected the byproducts of someone’s labor enough to not demolish, even by accident. But their youthfulness disregarded the order the owners had established for the things of the house. Straightening the clutter was Winnie’s duty. After the cars had trailed away, she began her re-arranging and cleaning.

“Let’s go see the beach in the morning,” Maureen said. Winnie’s face lit up.

They walked on the beach and chatted, and enjoyed the first scarce chilly breezes to reach the area in the daytime in months.

“I wish my body was as thin and perfect as yours,” Winnie said. “Why do you wear a one-piece? And you can eat whatever you want. You’re lucky.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I’ d be a blimp if I didn’t do my aerobics and stop my meat intake. My mother and grandmothers were… big-boned.”

Maureen longed for a physique like Winnie’s. She knew she could hold more respect from others. Winnie’s body was curvy and round, while she knew hers was linear and flat-chested. Even Winnie’s face was round, her lips pouty and full, her golden eyes bulging, her eyebrows arching, her nose pug. In contrast, her own face was angled, her lips thin, her green eyes too close, her small nose tapered upward. Winnie’s light brown hair curled and accentuated her roundness. Maureen’s dark hair was short, some of it tied in the back with a barrette, some of it hanging straight to her neck.

Soon the innocence of the morning waned. The heat of the afternoon approached. It was the last stifling burst for the year, as October began. Maureen’s soul had been enlivened. The source was not yesterday’s indulgences of alcohol and smokes, which only hindered her. Her stomach glowed from the presence of Winnie. They could speak on nearly any subject. Their state in society’s hierarchy was similar. They both served booming industries in positions that failed to use their intelligence fully. This and their recent travails with love always led them to the other for conversation and pastimes. Whenever their emotions gushed, the other provided sincere empathy.

As the heat developed, the water invited them. They stepped near it, but its comparative chill repelled them.

“We’re going in!” Maureen shouted. She pulled Winnie’s arm and flung her into the water knee-deep. Winnie kept her inertia and swung her around farther into the churning water. A wave surprised them and immersed them. For a while they splashed and grappled one another. They shrieked and laughed in the saltiness.

They returned to the house. Now to clean. Maureen opened the entertainment center, found a work by her favorite composer, and placed the silvery disk into its player.

They scoured and sponged for the next few hours, surrounded by Brandenburg Concertos. One room at a time, they erased the stains and removed the litter of the previous day’s frolicking, just as the music chased away yesterday’s cacophony of beats and wails. Ammonia, bleach, violins, and flutes met the smudges, spills, and echoes of screaming rock. The house soon smelled of cleanliness and held a consonance.

They finished the master bedroom last. The pink and yellow room had a fifteen-foot ceiling. Late afternoon near-equinox sunlight streamed through the pink sheers and reflected off a satiny bed covered with pillows. The ceiling fan spun, fluttering the curtains and pink light that filled the room.

“Looks like we’re done,” Winnie said. “I need a shower.” They were still in their swimsuits. Saltwater still matted their hair. Winnie walked into the wide bathroom off the bedroom and tiptoed to the shower stall. Water began raining on the tile. Winnie left the shower door open. Maureen turned quickly and started to put away the mops, dusters, and rags.

After Maureen’s shower, they wrapped themselves in enormous downy towels. Then one girl sat on a stool and painted her face, while the other dried and brushed the seated girl’s hair.

They searched for the other’s femininity, a goal decried yet practiced by their mentors. They tried to bring it out so they could admire the other even more. They sprayed perfume on their bodies and into the air as a Mozart opera emitted from speakers in the den.

Maureen looked at herself in the wall-sized mirror. She knew she lacked the splendor they desired. She was shaped too straight.

“Do you think guys appreciate all this work?” she asked Winnie, who was shading her face with angles at the makeup table.

“I don’t think so,” Winnie said. “It’s like they only want the sex act. They want to get it over with. I don’t feel any admiration or emotion from them. They want to own what’s underneath this towel, use it, consume it.”

“But there’s someone out there for you,” Maureen said. “Look at you. You’re beautiful.”

“And they always handle us so rough. It’s been so long since I’ve had a tender kiss. Do you know the kind I mean? The kind that’s soft and gentle. You never forget it because it’s... soulful.”

“I understand. It’s hard to describe though.”

“I miss them.” Winnie sighed.

Winnie cried as she sat there, and quickly the makeup ran off her cheeks.

“Winnie, I’m sorry,” Maureen said.

Winnie shook her head. “It’s not your fault,” she sobbed. “Not even close.” She wept again, with three louder sobs. “I’m just not what I thought I’ d be. So much is missing from my life.”

“I know what you mean, Winnie.”

Winnie crawled to the bed as if to grab a pillow to cry into. Then she stopped.

“Do you remember after I told you Kevin died?” Winnie asked. “When you hugged me for so long, I thought you were never gonna let me go. I hadn’t felt that secure and content in a long time. It was our embracing.”

“I know, Winnie. That was nice.”

“And I was very happy today. This weekend’s been wonderful, thanks to you. Do you think you could hold me again, like before?”

Maureen nodded. They meshed in a hug, there in the pink bedroom.

Winnie put her nose and cheek and lips into Maureen’s neck as chills iced down through Maureen’s legs.

At some point, both dozed off, until mourning doves cooed for the approaching dawn. Once during the night, Maureen thought she heard bushes rustle and footsteps, outside the open window. In the morning, Maureen woke with a terrible thought: the view of others, as one is taught to have.

“Winnie?” she said. “Do you think we just...?”

“I’m not sure, Maureen.”

***

“Researching in his mind and memory, he draws forth, he generates such notions of things, such reasonings and discourses, as may best improve his beloved in virtue. Thus he arrives, of course, to view beauty in the arts, the subjects of discipline and study; and comes to discover, that beauty is congenial in them all. He now, therefore, accounts all beauty corporeal to be of mean and inconsiderable value, as being but a small and inconsiderable part of beauty.”

Plato, Symposium (210D) [Plato, The Symposium of Plato, (Floyer Sydenham and Thomas Taylor, Trans.), Prometheus Trust, 2002 [Online] Available from: https:// www.prometheustrust.co.uk/Diotima on Love.pdf [Original 385-370 B.C.]

Next week: Episode 22 - The Cafes and Bars: Capturing Beauty

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