Free The Gentle Degenerates by Marco Vassi

solitude, for irony, for disdain.
    And so, who am I? There is no answer to this question. There is only the continual asking and the dizzying stream of suggested response which are no more than gestures in the grand pantomime of Shiva. Here I sit with two dreams beckoning, and there is no way for me to know what to do except watch myself as each day passes, and learn to know where I go and what I do. And one day I may learn how the whole thing turns out.
    I stayed with Regina for the whole evening, and later went back to my place, where Kathy was waiting for me. Kathy was more or less living with me at the time. Her old man Jimmy, had just split for Pakistan and she decided to come crash at my pad. We had fucked a bit, but she was still hung up over Jimmy, with whom she had been living for two years. Besides that, she was bisexual and came on very suspicious of my own bi trip. She had just been in Sonoma for a few days, seeing some people. We were very glad to see each other, and decided to turn on. She laid her trip on me and I told her about the scene with Regina.
    “Far out,” she said. There was a long silence. “Would you like to meet her?” I asked. She smiled her wicked smile, the space between her two front teeth very suggestive. “It might be interesting,” she said. “She’s got a nice cunt,” I added, “if you can get it hot.” She stood up. “Might be worth a try. I haven’t had a woman for a while.”
    I got up also. “Maybe you and I could work out a few things this way too.” The decision made, we threw on our jackets, and went over to visit Regina.

five.
    LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I had been raised with the myth that we first make decisions consciously and rationally, and then act on them. A great deal of experience went into teaching me that we come to decisions out of a vast complex of motivations and conditionings and influences which range from pre-natal trauma to the position of the stars. The course of action is, as it were, set independently of that thing we laughingly call “will”, and all our rationalizations are simply excuses we give ourselves to make us more comfortable with whatever it is we have to do anyway. With that understanding, I once and for all dropped all efforts to try to understand why I do things the way I do.
    On the way over to Regina’s I pondered the situation. Here were three people largely unsettled and confused about life. Each had tried to come to terms with his or her condition in the single most damaging manner: linking up with someone else who was equally fucked up. The matter was compounded and the ensuing situations brought forth the usual tedious round of hostility and lack of communication and recriminations. Now Regina and her old man were about to split up, as had Kathy with hers, as had I with my woman of several months earlier. Why then, I asked myself, was I acting as agent to bring together yet another menage?
    There was, of course, a cornucopia of answers. The ones which came most readily to mind were mischief and messianism. Part of me was excited “just to see what would happen”. Yet another part, having dutifully read Stranger in a Strange Land, was on a communal family trip, and almost immediately I had visions of Kathy and Regina and me living in happy orgiastic community, and then adding on other water brothers and water sisters, and me, probably, operating as the man from Mars. I think it took the form of madness I then affected to breed the self-confidence to pull such tricks off.
    We went into Regina’s and I entered first. She saw me and her face lit up. Then she saw Kathy, and her mouth tightened. “Hello,” I said, pointing to Kathy, “this is the other women in my life. I thought it would be nice if the two of you met.” This was clearly a ploy to force recognition of the principle that there should be no jealousy, and we could all be open with each other.
    The predictable moment of awkwardness lasted but a brief second and then