When I was about 24 I was working as a reporter for a paper in NJ. I could travel to and from work and my apartment by this new superhighway. After a while I also learned a back way. It took me through a town called South Bound Brook. This was set within a cluster of hills, so it had the feeling of a mountain village. The place seemed truly forgotten by progress of metro NYC just a short drive away. Since I usually took this route home at night, it was especially desolate. It was a little town scattered over about a quarter mile. In the midst of it was an ancient Orthodox cemetery. The monuments were large and tall, ornate, kind of Russian or Gothic.
Once I drove by and thought: I wonder what it’s like to masturbate here. It took me a while…maybe I drove past 10 or 20 more times, till finally…my desire made up for any courage I was lacking. It was about 1 am. No cars moving now that mine had stopped; the roads were pin silent. I was horny and I knew what I wanted. I stood there facing all those souls, into the darkness, disappearing as if into a mirror. In my dialog with myself, I whispered about it feeling especially good if I were naked. There was a little dare in there though I understood, and slowly slipped out of my shoes and socks, my bare feet on the grassy graves along about the fourth row in. It was midsummer and the air was still warm. I slipped out of my jeans and underwear, allowing them to fall to the ground. I then slipped off my shirt. My cock was reaching out, fully strong and tense in that pleasant way. I licked my palm and masturbated standing, allowing myself to moan into the feeling of doing so…of allowing and I bent my knees a little, death all around me, living spirits too, memories of ancients, of a burial service at each of the graves into the earlier century. I moaned at my own death.
I stood in the strength of my life, bare feet on the gravetops, some of the spaces covered with crypts where the body lay entombed in stone on the ground. I felt those souls melting back into the earth.* I lay down and relaxed, I lay naked on the grave of someone, the grass cool against me, aware of the skeleton laying beneath me. And I surrendered to the waves of my pleasure as I pumped my penis and allowed my breath to heave. I was not drinking my semen at that time; I wanted to but wasn’t ready, or I would have. My emotions crested as I allowed myself the pleasure of and curiosity what it would be like to be dead. I gave way to the undertow, moaned out my existence and spurted all over myself, my back arched and my belly heaving with release, my knees up and parted, stretched taut. My neck was pressed down into the grass, so much did I release to this beauty. Some spurted onto the ground and the rest cooled on my chest and belly as I lay there, breathing to calm myself, relaxing gently into the night.
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*at that point i paused to write an email to nancy ward. this is what I wrote:
good evening madame thresholder
I was feeling something I’ve understood for a while, though have only gradually admitted to myself. it’s that I want to be buried rather than burned when I die. I love the thought of slowly rotting in a tomb or in a grave. I want my bones to be seen, my skull, my empty, scattered hands. I want to rot with a mouth full of my seed.
I shudder with pleasure to think this could be.
Nancy replied:
Dear Eric,
That, in my opinion, is an enlightened view. I realize cremation is a tradition for some but for the rest of us it is quick, cheap and easy. Our culture has an aversion to dead bodies and because of it we miss an opportunity to step into the sacred where even the air we breathe conspires to help us connect to the divine.
I just helped a family have a home funeral last week. It was for Mr. Rivers a friend and neighbor who lived on a floating home in my marina. He was Irish through and through and the idea of a home funeral seemed just right to him. At one point a few hours after he died I noticed that his jaw had gaped open when he went into rigor. I suggested if someone would sit behind his bed and rub his jaw it would relax and come together. One of the neighbors, a man in his 40’s, said he would and pulled up a stool and started to work. I sat in a chair and watched as the tears just streamed down his face as he rubbed and rubbed while Irish music played in the background. It was an intimate and powerful moment that we shared in community. Who wouldn’t want that?
Thank you for the opportunity to tell this story.
xoxo
N