Excerpted from Beat Boy

Mark Ewert Asleep New Year's Day, 1989 by Allen Ginsberg

In 1988, when I was 17, I flew out to the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado with the express purpose of sleeping with Allen Ginsberg, the world’s most famous living poet. To be more specific, I wanted to sleep with Allen so that I could join my life to his, thereby speeding up my own ascent into personal and artistic greatness. At the time, Allen was 62 years old, and I knew from reading his poetry how attracted he was to teenaged guys. In the following TRUE STORY, I have just introduced myself to Allen, and we’ve agreed to meet later that same afternoon, with the understanding that we are going to have sex.

(This is an excerpt from Beatboy, my memoir-in-progress about Allen and the other famous people to whom I “joined my life” Enjoy.)

After a desultory meal of fried tempeh in a bun—my stomach’s too jumpy for me to do much more than pick around the edges—I head back towards Allen’s. I mount the stairs and knock on his front door; he lets me in. Once again, Allen’s dressed in blowzy, white, pajama-like clothing. Stepping further into the apartment, I see that it too is suffused with whiteness: the sunshine of high noon slicing up the living room into a thicket of angles, as it streams in through the plate-glass windows.

Allen looks at me questioningly and cocks his head in the direction of the bedroom, upstairs. “Well, shall we?”

I say, “Okay.”

And then it’s like a wind is pushing us up up up the staircase—a hastening of the inevitable. Allen leads the way. He’s clasping both my hands in a lovers’ knot.

The bedroom is primarily bed—a broad, king-sized mattress neatly made up with clean white sheets. A writing desk against one wall displays a ream of blank paper, one of those school composition journals with the mottled, black-and-white covers, a clutch of fountain pens, an ink bottle, and a box of kleenex. Above the desk, the room’s one small window stands open. Through it, breezes bat like kittens’ paws, catching and belling the short curtains; warm puffs of air fragrant with the smells of summer: grass and pine and sun-baked soil. Allen unclasps his clunky wristwatch and drops it on the desk, causing a few pens to scatter. He faces me expectantly. I guess I’m supposed to take the lead now.

I guide Allen to the foot of the bed, and gently push him onto his back. He sighs and shivers with delight...so let’s be a bit more daring I hop onto bed behind him and cradle his head in my hands. I give his skull a little tug so that his neck will fully extend, which seems like the kind of thing a sexy...masseur-type guy would think of. Once his neck is unkinked, I carefully rest Allen’s head back down on the pillow. Then I worry: Did I go too far, just now? Is pulling on his head too weird?

But Allen’s looking up at me with the starry eyes and blank smile of a baby with gas. An expression which in this case, unfortunately, seems a bit cutesy and self-satisfied, as if Allen were thinking, Aren’t I amazing, to let myself FEEL pleasure so deeply?

On the other hand, I’m beaming right back at him, intoxicated myself that I seem to be playing the part of ‘young swain’ so successfully. To an outside observer, we’d no doubt look like lovers gazing at each other raptly, but actually, we read in each other’s expressions only signs of our own depth and goodness. Oh well.

However, as I peer down at Allen—intent as the mother in a Mary Cassatt painting—I do take the opportunity to really look at him for the first time...and am rewarded with a flush of physical attraction that I wasn’t expecting to feel! Wow, I think, he’s actually really handsome kind of!

Supine in the sunlight, his head has a craggy dignity, like the face of a god on an ancient coin—Zeus or Dionysus. And he’s definitely got the lusty, bearded satyr-thing going for him...

The moment I establish a lineage for Allen, a historical precedent for the way he looks, any remaining doubts about having sex with him fly right out the window. Don’t I want to be a part of history, too?

“You’re very handsome, Allen,” I tell him. “You have a kind of...noble, heroic look to your face.”

“Yes-s-s-s,” says Allen slowly, astonished by my sagacity, “you’re right, I do look noble and heroic. How intelligent of you, to notice that! Most people your age wouldn’t have!”

Time to distract Mr. “My Egotism Knows No Bounds”! Glancing at Allen’s forehead, I suddenly remember how my Dad would tickle-torture me when I was a kid—pinning me down and blowing tightly-focused little breaths on my head until I’d go crazy. —Ah ha!

Just as Allen’s drawing breath to say something else, I cover his eyes with one hand. Gamely he goes limp, and shuts up—happy once more to concede control. I hover over him and purse my lips. Then, I graze his brow with zephyrs.

Allen groans! Twitches! Shudders! “Ohhhhhh!” he moans. “Angel kisses!” —Nice.

I continue tickle-torturing him until I start to hyperventilate, then I flop down beside him to catch my breath. After a moment, Allen leans over and tells me eagerly, “Do you know that when you were doing that it’s like you were blowing directly onto my brain?”

God, I’m such a good lover all of a sudden—it’s like I can do no wrong!

Let’s up it another notch: kissing.

I haul myself on top of Allen, push-up style. His lips are firm and puckered, emerging from the crinkly hairs of his beard like what I imagine a vagina must look like. I lower my face down to his, exquisitely slowly, so that we can really FEEL our energies mingling—bringing my lips down so that they just barely brush his, not even a kiss yet, just...contact. My eyes are closed. I keep us suspended there, right on the edge.

And then I part my lips, and fuck his mouth with mine.

Allen returns the fervor, doubled, which spurs me on further. His tongue is bumpy and slabby, it looks like square pieces have been sliced from it at random. And on his tongue’s left side, my own tongue encounters a hard, raised nodule, like the pellet from a BB-gun embedded in there—what is that? None of this is gross though, it just adds texture. Allen’s mouth tastes like some sort of mouthwash too, kind of old-fashioned and medicinal, but again, not unpleasant.

After several minutes of hard-core frenching, Allen pulls himself free. “Oh!” he cries, unable to constrain the urge-to-describe a moment longer: “Candy!”

Wow, I think, he really is good with words ‘Candy’! That’s the perfect way to describe kisses from a boy: sweetness, youth, innocence, mouthfuls...

Emboldened, I begin to take off his shirt. Suspensefully, I undo each plastic button: strip-tease. I slide my hands under the shirt-flaps and splay them open, baring Allen’s torso as if shucking an ear of corn. I skate my hands up his chest--the skin is cool. I place a hand over his heart and pause dramatically, as if calling upon the spirits to help me pump cosmic energy into Allen’s body. Cupped in my hand, his breast is soft and quivery, like a pudding with little hairs on it. Inside its cage of bone and flesh, I feel his heart softly juddering.

Now it’s my turn for a little word-play. Remembering a term I once came across in Tolkien, that always sounded cool, I say, “Allen, you are a greatheart.” I enunciate the unusual word carefully: “You are a greatheart, Allen.”

He looks at me like I’m the rooster who quoted Percy Bysshe Shelley. “Yes-s-s,” he says, with wonder, “yes-s-s, you’re right! I am, I am a great heart!” He makes it two words. Gazing off into distant realms of Destiny, he says, “And that’s what I try to be in the world—a great heart.” Then he brings his attention back to the here and now, and looks at me again, still marveling. “How wise of you, to see that!”

I pause respectfully for a beat, then change subjects by putting my hand on his crotch. That quiets him. Through the fabric of his pants I feel his erection, a short hard rod that I knead with the heel of my hand. I unzip his fly and withdraw his dick. It stands up proudly, perpendicular to his belly, just three or four inches tall. Not too threatening...

Still, looking down at the swollen head, I ask myself if I’m really going to go through with this. But the skin looks so tight and glossy, I do wonder what it would feel like against my lips... Hmm, smooth. Well, while I’m down here, why not pop the whole thing in my mouth, see what that feels like? Hmm. Kinda filling, in a satisfying sort of way...

Gee, I guess I am going to blow him after all.

I suck Allen’s dick for several minutes and, really, it’s not that bad. On the other hand, I am getting light-headed. I find that breathing while giving head is difficult, plus, the intense self-consciousness of the last 40 minutes—“In Bed With Allen Ginsberg”—has really worn me out. I just want to get off and go to sleep. God, I’m so selfish!

But I stop blowing him, and lay back to rest. Allen doesn’t chastise me, but instead transitions himself from passive to active. He ministers to my body, doing a lot of the things to me that I did to him—like the blowing on the forehead, and the portentous hand-over-the-heart thing—but he’s not as good at them as I was, he’s kinda half-assed. On the other hand, the moment he gets my dick in his mouth, I know that I’m hopelessly outclassed. He blows me with one hand wrapped firmly around my cock, sluicing me up and down while his head bobs frenetically. After a few minutes of me bucking and thrashing in pleasure, Allen glances up.

“If you use your hand like this,” he explains, coming off my dick and showing me the wet sleeve he’s made with his fingers, “you keep your lover’s penis covered the entire time you blow him, so that it never gets cold. Also, this way, there’s never a moment in which his entire shaft isn’t receiving stimulation of some kind...which demonstrates mindfulness and compassion for your partner.

“Now you try,” he adds.

Ugh, I’m so tired! Plus, I absolutely HATE the fact that now there’s technique involved, a right way and a wrong way to do things. I knew sex couldn’t be that easy. I knew I’d fuck everything up somehow...

Deeply depressed, I try to blow Allen like he blew me, but—sure enough—my timing and coordination are totally shot. Instead of the fluid, synchronized movements that Allen used, my mouth goes up when my hand goes down and vice versa, and I’m almost in tears. Plus, I’m gagging really badly. Allen cheerfully calls out blow-job suggestions, but they only confuse me more. Finally, I just give up.

Thankfully, Allen doesn’t seem too upset. Still chipper, he resumes blowing me as if there hadn’t been an interruption, until he brings me to a truly shattering orgasm. My eyelids seek to drag me down into sleep, but it’s only common courtesy to help Allen get off, I’ve screwed up too much already to shirk now. Allen pumps his dick with gusto and asks me to pinch his nipples, cup his balls, and look into his eyes while I kiss him, all at the same time. It seems impossible to do with just two arms, but somehow I manage it, and Allen finally cums. I’m sure his orgasm was a lot less fun than mine, but he’s smiles and sighing happily, so I guess everything’s ok. We wipe ourselves off and then curl towards each other, ready to nap.

Just before we both drift off into pleasant, afternoon dozing, Allen bestirs himself. “This,” he says, indicating our quiescent, satiated forms, “is the ONLY way to teach. Just like this—one on one, in bed. The ancient Greeks knew it. That was how all the great philosophers instructed their pupils—after sex, when the mind and the heart are more open.

“Whatever I do out there,” he continues, waving his hand in the direction of Naropa, and the world at large, “the things I say in class? That’s not teaching, those are just words—the neurotic chattering of the ego.

“Real education only happens between two people,” Allen tells me. “Through intimacy.”

 

© 2005 Mark Ewert - Contributor's Bio