Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
Part VII
Temple Builder
32
Nothing of the Soul
NOTHING is very important to me.
Let me try to rephrase that without getting too high or drunk. Nothing is more important to me than anything. I mean… Pour yourself a drink.
There was a woman on one of the islands of Southeast Asia—I don’t remember which one or if that’s even the next thing in this story. I just remember our time together.
After we left Tibet and I followed the river downstream to the sea, I bought or built—don’t remember which—another boat sufficient for sailing and trading along the coast and among the islands. We’d been sailing in warm waters, putting in at new ports and trading for new and exotic goods we took to the infinity room to propagate there. I remember it as a terrifically lazy time, often having a few of my beauties on deck with me and letting the currents take us where they would. I found a lovely beach and grounded the boat, hauling it up onto the sand and anchoring it solidly to a fallen tree. I opened the gateway and the girls came rushing out to play in the warm equatorial waters of the sea.
Of course, they were dressed as usual—meaning not dressed at all. Nothing. After all, we were on a secluded beach and there was no reason for us to hide from each other. Yes, I was naked as a jay as well. Every once in a while, one of the girls would break away from the others, grab me by the hand and find a place in the sand where we could make love.
As we played and frolicked in the sea, returning from one of my romps, I spotted a woman I could not remember seeing in the infinity room. She was beautiful—of course—brown-skinned as if she had spent all her life playing naked in the sun on this very shore. She was enjoying the company of my women as much as they enjoyed her.
“Bob, this is Ningrum. Isn’t she beautiful?” Pari called to me.
“Indeed! Ningrum, I am happy to meet you.”
“May I just call you Happy?” she asked.
“Well, you may if you wish. My name is Bob.”
“Oh! I misunderstood. Many names in this land are feelings or objects or actions. Like Full Moon, Magical Stone, Dancing in the Rain. You understand?” she said. How cute.
“I see. And what does your lovely name, Ningrum, mean?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
I was perplexed, but if someone asked me what Bob meant, I suppose I would have the same answer. Perhaps I was, indeed, Happy to Meet You.
“Do you live near here, Ningrum?” I asked.
“Here or nowhere. I live.”
I wasn’t sure we were communicating. I checked myself to see that I was speaking and hearing directly mind to mind. Occasionally, I found that I had spoken ancient Minoan to a person who only understood Hindi and I had not bothered to translate mind to mind. There seemed to be no problem with that this time. She blended well with the others—certainly with their mode of undress—and I openly admired her as they played.
There’s always been something a little mystical in my mind about girls and a beach. Perhaps it’s an archetype that we all tap into. Just think of being out walking on the beach and meeting a winsome girl with just the wind for a wrap, greeting you with open arms, falling to the sand to make love with the waves lapping at your feet, holding hands as you run in the surf. It’s the thing that television commercials are made of. Only it existed thousands of years before television.
I’d had my experiences. Of course, I’d never forget waking up on the beach at Cyprus with Aphrodite riding on my dick and bringing me right along with her on her ascent to pleasure’s pinnacle. But there were others as well. When I first arrived at Troy, I beached my little boat just about where the Greeks would land a few decades later. I made camp and was about to open a gateway to get some company for the night when I heard music coming toward me on the beach.
Did I tell you about this when I told you about Troy? No, I don’t think so. This was before all the events of that horrid story.
I had gathered driftwood and lit a fire, planning an intimate little party with Nimia and Josie. Anyway, I heard music—someone singing—coming toward me in the gathering darkness on the beach. I was always prepared for an attack, though I had no sophisticated weapons at the time. I felt I could protect myself and my companions pretty well.
As she got closer, the music faltered and I saw her silhouette approaching until the firelight just picked out the scantest details of a shapely young woman in a gauzy gown, looking at me cautiously. Cautious, yes, but not afraid. She continued to approach.
“Greetings, fair one,” I said. “Would you share the warmth of my fire on this cool evening?”
“You sound gentlemanly. Are you trying to deceive me?” she asked.
“Lady, why would I have need of deceiving you?” I asked. “I’m a simple traveler who has beached here for the night and hopes to continue in the morning. My name is Bob and I have journeyed far.”
“I can tell you have come from far away. And also that you are not what you appear to be,” she said. She moved closer into the firelight and I could see the gauzy dress was so light it was almost completely transparent. She was a beautiful young woman.
“What else might I be than what I appear to be?” I asked.
“Hmm. I’m not sure, but I know the gods would not have sent me here for an ordinary man. I have come to this beach under every full moon for five years, expecting to find you. I don’t believe you are ordinary at all,” she said. “Of course, when I began coming here, I was a mere adolescent with dreams of a great hero coming for me. But you could be a god or a demi-god. You might even be a monster, disguised as an attractive and brawny man.”
“Thank you for your compliment. May I say you are a very attractive and beautiful woman,” I said. “Please sit and tell me your story. Why have you been coming to this place under the full moon for five years?”
“Okay. I’ll tell you,” she laughed. “Do you have anything to drink? I think I need to be a little looser to enjoy the full benefits of this night.”
“I think I might have something. I’ve always had a weakness for loose women.” I reached into the satchel and Josie handed me a wineskin and giggled. I think I was the only one who heard that.
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m still pure. So far. I’ve been saving myself for you.”
“For me?” I asked, holding the wineskin for her. “Whyever for me?”
“Mmm. The story,” she said, wiping her mouth. “When my first blood came, my father took me into the city to dedicate me to the goddess. One or another of them. I thought my life was over. I would either die a virgin in some holy reclusion, or become a temple whore and part my legs for any and all who would enter. It wasn’t my father’s fault, exactly. I was a girl and an extra mouth to feed on a poor fisherman’s labor. I don’t blame him, really. Becoming a priestess of Aphrodite or Athena was an honorable vocation. Do you have any cheese to go with the wine? I’m kind of hungry.”
I reached into the satchel and Josie handed me a board spread with cheeses and dried meats and even some bread. The girl, whose name I had not yet learned scooted closer to me and helped herself to the spread.
“Who are you, by the way?”
“I’m Dora. So, as I was saying, I went into the city. I went first to the temple of Athene and the priestess took one look at me and shook her head. ‘You don’t belong here. The priestesses of Athene are virgins.’ I protested that I was a virgin and she laughed. ‘Honey, I mean virgins all their lives. You are filled with visions of the man who will take you. Go to the Temple of Aphrodite and talk to the priestesses there.’ So, I went to Aphrodite’s temple.”
“And did the priestesses of Aphrodite take you in?” I asked. I’d heard of them, but in spite of having met My Lady Goddess herself, I had never been to one of her temples.
“No. The chief priestess took me to a room apart from the rest of the temple and sat me down. Then a strange thing happened. It was like she changed right in front of me and I saw the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. ‘Child, I see what you want. You want a love that will forever be young and fresh. You want your hero to keep you like a princess and carry you off to his castle. You want a fairytale romance.’
“I’d never put my fantasy in precisely those words, but I guess she was right. As she spoke to me, I saw a vision of a brave and strong man sweeping me off my feet and carrying me away to his castle where I was pampered and loved for the rest of my life.
“I see and I am inclined to grant your fantasy,’ said the goddess, ‘but you must do something for me. When you meet your handsome prince, you must convince him to come and dwell in the city for some time. I will then bless you with all you have dreamed of. But you must have him promise to dwell in the city until his goddess comes to him.’ What could I do? I agreed and she told me that I was still too young and I must walk on this beach each month at the full moon and eventually I would find you.”
“Ah, My Lady Goddess, what have you put in my path?” I sighed. But what could I do? The simple tale was certainly directed at me. “What is the name of this city I must dwell in?” I asked.
“It is called Ilium and lies across the plain to the northeast.”
“Then it appears that my boat shall remain on this beach and I shall cross that plain in the morning,” I said.
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Then we can make love tonight,” she said.
She continued eating and sipping from the wineskin, but moved to sit on my lap as she ate. She punctuated her feasting with little kisses on my shoulder and cheek, occasionally landing one on my mouth. I feasted on her beauty, kissing her hair and her neck, and letting my hands traverse her body, parting the folds of her gauzy dress to fully expose the beauty beneath. Her breasts were a feast in themselves, larger than I expected and crowned with very sensitive nipples that I rubbed and squeezed. I found the heat of her sex to be open and well-lubricated, allowing my fingers to dance across her clit. At last, she put the cheese board aside and spread her legs wider welcoming my questing fingers.
“I think I’m loose enough, if you want to make me your lover and promise you will move to the city tomorrow.”
“I so promise,” I said. And with that, we stretched out on the sand and made love beneath the full moon next to our fire.
Dora was a relaxed lover, seeming to know what came next, but never to have done it. When I broke the barrier of her maidenhead, she gasped a little and then pulled me into her by placing her heels against my buttocks and pulling. I sank into her buttery warmth with a sigh and we began to move together. She was exquisite.
When we woke in the morning, she pointed out the direction to the city and I offered to take her in the infinity room, explaining that it was where my palace was and that she would live forever young and beautiful there.
“Oh, yes, please,” she said excitedly. “Take me away to your fairy castle. I’m yours forever now.”
Dora was a simple girl. She truly lived in her fantasy and may not have been able to tell the transition from the natural world to the infinity room where her fantasy was a reality. She never had the least interest in returning to the natural world as long as I had promised to go to Ilium. It was an interesting story she told and I thanked My Lady Goddess for sending her my way. I knew that someday she would call on me to repay her for her kindness. Ah well.
Back to Bali, or somewhere in that vicinity.
Most of my girls went back to the infinity room when night fell. A few wanted to stay out under the earth stars and make love for the night. Staying out for a night on this peaceful beach was fine with me, especially when Ningrum joined the party. She was sleek and sensual. She danced for us at our campfire and then taught the other women her island dances as well. I got right in there and learned the dances, too. I could feel the feminine energy pulsing through me and nearly transformed to a female version of myself.
But the girls wanted to make love and needed my dick. We made love under the stars on a beautiful clear night by the sea. I made a note to add stars in the sky in the infinity room. When it was safe, I spent my nights in the infinity room, but whenever I had girls staying out all night, I stayed with them.
Unless they didn’t plan to come back, of course. Then I bid them a fond farewell and provided for them in whatever way was appropriate. That had happened a few times. There are people in the world who have such a strong affinity to their home and to the earth that they simply can’t be happy anywhere else. Nimia and I had pretty much decided that wherever the infinity room was, it was not on earth. If that makes sense. When I discovered someone who was unhappy in the infinity room, I did my best to return her to her home.
That happened with Sahar, for example. She’d joined our happy throng back in the days when I was selling oil shares in Arabia. She’d been delighted to leave a cruel man who did not understand the difference between a woman and a pot of oil on the shelf. In fact, he treated the oil more tenderly. She was merely a slave in his household, meant to be used and shared with whom he would. I made her part of the deal when he bought his share and, though I freed her, she rewarded me energetically in bed. I often took her with me when I was touring a city. When I reached Jerusalem, she came to me, begging to be set free. It seemed she had been sold to the sheikh as a child and had always longed to return to her people.
Of course, I let her go. I didn’t own her nor possess her. She was with me after I’d set her free. It turned out that she had relatives still living in Jerusalem and her brother welcomed her to his home. It was a very touching reunion. He thanked me for returning his sister who had been stolen from the family when she was a child. She was not more than seventeen when I returned her, so it didn’t seem like such a long time to me. But I was happy to have the family reunited and left her with my blessing.
True freedom is to be able to choose our own bondage, as Lakshmi taught me centuries later.
Ah, but Ningrum. That was a different matter entirely. When the girls returned to the infinity room in the morning and I prepared to set sail again, I asked Ningrum if she would come with us and be part of my harem. We’d had a wonderful night as she pleased my girls and pleased me as well. I could still feel the sensation of her pussy gliding down my cock and milking my semen from me. I hoped she would join us.
“Let me show you more of our beautiful islands,” she responded. “I will sail with you for a span of days and then you may ask me again.”
“Noble lady, I welcome you to my little boat. I will greatly appreciate your guidance through these channels.”
“These channels of water and my own moist channels welcome you, Bob.”
And so, we set off sailing up and around the islands, stopping at larger ports to trade and talk with the locals. As we approached each port, Ningrum would give me a list of the kinds of things needed by the people there. I would collect appropriate merchandise from the infinity room, and she would assist in bargaining for local goods. She was a treasure and helped me turn a great profit in new items for the infinity room.
That there was a room on my boat that held all my women, my trade goods, and even pastures filled with animals, seemed not to faze Ningrum at all. She happily met any of my harem who came out of the room for the day and handed off goods to be taken back into the room. But never once did she express curiosity about the room or ask to enter it.
And at night, on the deck of the gently rocking boat, we made love. There are few women in the past millennia who could so completely absorb all the love I could give them. I had come to know some women with a profound intimacy that went far beyond the sexual pleasure we shared. Ningrum was not tempered with any limitations on her passion or her joy. It was as if she could immerse herself fully in me and leave all concept of herself behind. The feeling was like…
There was a time once—I believe it was along the African coast, but it could have been on a remote island or even have happened in the Caribbean—when I had made camp along a peaceful shore and my repose was disturbed by a woman’s call for help. The distress in her voice made me rush to her aid.
I found she was in a tree, and beneath her, a pack of wild beasts was circling, occasionally leaping up against the tree just inches from where she precariously perched. Don’t ask me what kind of beasts. I was too involved in the plight of the woman to decide what species was on the attack. I recall fangs and claws. They were difficult to subdue, even though I cast several sleep spells upon them. The last one seemed to work, but so well that Eisha, the woman in the tree, also was hit by it and instantly slept, falling from the tree. I barely managed to catch her before she landed on one of the sleeping beasts. They were beginning to stir already and I ran for the beach and my boat, casting off before the beasts could catch up with me.
Eisha sailed with me for a few days, pointing me to places along the shore where I would find paths to various villages and warning me against approaching others. She, too, was a voracious lover. It seemed that the more I loved her, the more she desired and if I stayed with her over long, she might seriously manage to drain all my love from me. I have since found that such women have been known in history as a succubus.
And then one morning when I awoke, Eisha was gone. I had no idea where, but apparently, she’d grown tired of our liaison and went to find another. Mostly, I remember her appetite for my love as something more than sexual, but an appetite for something she had been denied all her life.
Still, in the end, she was gone.
“You are not coming with me when I leave, are you?” I asked as Ningrum and I lay wrapped in each other’s arms on the deck of the boat. The moon was full and Polaris was barely a dot at the northern horizon.
“You have discovered my secret at last,” she sighed.
“I believe you revealed yourself to me, goddess.”
“I am only a very minor deity, but I do my best to protect the people of the islands and this sea,” she said. “And occasionally I pick up a stray seaman.”
“And you are not Ningrum? By what name should I call you, Goddess?” I asked.
“Ah. I am known only as She Who Looks Into Your Soul,” she said.
“Yet you told me your name meant nothing,” I ventured as she gave me understanding.
“I looked into your soul and saw nothing,” she said. “It was comforting to see such vast emptiness. I sort of lost myself in it.”
“Then I have become one with all and am therefore nothing!” I laughed.
“Except a very bad punster,” she laughed. “Oh, Bob, how I wish I could join you on your adventure and enter your secret chamber. For I see that your soul is empty because you have poured it out for your people.”
That gave me pause. The infinity room was filled with all sorts of people. “Filled” is obviously not the right word. There was always room for more. I hadn’t even met more than a tenth of those who were there because the others had been born there. In two thousand seven hundred years, the population had grown significantly. Even many of my concubines had children I didn’t really know since they were fathered by others. I thought I should possibly spend more time there and get to know them better.
I felt a strong desire once again to find a safe place where I could enter the infinity room and not come out. But if I didn’t physically protect the satchel in this world, anything could happen to it. Someone might stumble upon it and who knew what they might do. My people were far too precious to abandon them to whatever the world might bring. That is why I kept on the move, carrying my precious cargo on my back wherever I went.
Ningrum was not going to let me dwell on my thoughts for long. In a contest among the deities, she might not have been Aphrodite, but she had the body and mind of a goddess, and she used both to stimulate me and to join with me again. As I slid my cock between her moist nether lips and into her temple, my heart sang praises that there was in this world such a goddess who would love me.
In the morning, I could tell she was preparing to leave. She pointed me toward a port that was rich in spices and flowering plants. We traded and my women were excited about the treasures they brought into the infinity room. And each took a moment to embrace Ningrum and kiss her lovingly.
“Will you continue here, or will you flee to Olympus like the Greek and Roman gods have done?” I asked.
“There is no Olympus for those of us who have survived in this part of the world,” she said. “I was born of the sea and to the sea I will return. When people remember and call my name, I will rise again to comfort them.”
“It saddens me to think that a goddess has such a fate. I am merely a demon and have no home to return to either,” I said. “So, I continue to wander on the earth, caring for my people.”
“Oh, Bob, don’t sell yourself short. You may have been born a demon, but you are preparing your own palace. Is that not what your friend Issa did?”
“He told his followers he was going to prepare a place for them, but I thought the god of the Hebrews was actually taking care of him and whatever place they would go. He never seemed anxious to collect people for his house. I don’t know. We did not speak of that much in our time together.”
“You may think of yourself as a demon in this world, but your harem—and, indeed, your little world—consider you their god. Blessings on you, Bob. May the sea be ever kind to you and the winds blow you to your port of safety.” She kissed me again and I reluctantly let her go into her world—so different from mine.
As I set sail, it disturbed me that in all the islands I had seen no temple to the goddess. How would people remember and call upon her if they had no physical reminder of her presence? I decided to build a temple. But there was neither abundant rock nor clay to make bricks. Nimia and I spent several days reading in the library until we found a spell I thought would work. Then we set sail back to the sandy beach where we first met the goddess.
We were not expecting her to meet us there again, but all my women flooded out onto the beach to dance the dances she taught us. Then we began piling up sand, moistening it, and piling up more. From this I carved a castle of sand, a home fit for a goddess. Of course, sand is weak. It held its shape as long as it was just so moist and no wetter or drier. When we had built the castle, a home for Ningrum, I set about working the transformation spell that would turn the sand into stone.
We danced around the sand castle for Ningrum and then boarded the little ship to sail off to new lands.
I knew that wind and water would erode the monument over time. There was nothing I could do about that. But to this day, there is still a Castle Rock known amidst those islands.
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