"Yes, I think they're lovely."

Jessica, blushed. "Thank you," she said, and then the group talked about someone else's body.

AGAIN the boy had mixed feelings about what was going on. On the one hand, it was very good that they were all looking at their bodies. A person cannot love and be loved until he loves himself; a person cannot love himself until he loves his body. That was fine--but it was again too easy. The boy honestly did not like Jessica's body, and could not quite believe it when everybody else said they did. What kind of honesty was this they were discovering? Was Esalen selling them a pack of lies about themselves that would send them back to the real world and sustain them for the next few days, or weeks--until they ran out of steam and had to come back to the Big Sur to be recharged?

The boy had found out that Susie had had a trip similar to her Monday night orgasm-childbirth trip only a month before. She had a third, alone with her husband, Tuesday morning. Was Esalen helping people out of one rut only to leave them stranded in another? The boy did not know; but neither, for the moment, did he care. He relaxed in the baths, happy about his own body, and thought perhaps that was all that was important for him.

There was one body in the group that really stood out -- June's. June was the one whose husband did not lay her enough, who could not have babies because he was sterile, and who felt that because of this she would never be a woman.

June had, the boy saw, not one body but two. Her first body went from the top of her head to just below her breasts. It was s slender, lovely, gentle body. Her neck and shoulders were soft and nicely rounded--her breasts were small, but firm and tender. It was on attractive, almost sexy body.

But below her breasts, a second body began that seemed to bear no relation to the first. Her stomach bloated out. Her hips, thighs, and legs were fat, ugly, repulsive. As he looked at her, the boy could see the absurdity of these proportions. Neither body bore any relevance to the other. It was as though there were a line, running straight across at the breastbone, that seperated one body from the second.

The boy knew very little about the kind of therapy that is practiced at Esalen -- but there was something about June's double body that made a great deal of sense. For each part of the body had its won emotions and desires. There is drive in the legs, lust in the genitals, tenderness and hunger in the stomach, pride and bearing in the chest and shoulders, attentiveness in the neck and head. And it seemed as though June had simply cut off everything below her breastbone. There was no tone in her lower body, no proportion--and with the physical cut off, all of the emotions of her lower body were cut off, repressed, denied. She did not feel like a woman--how could she, when she only had half a woman's body?

After a while, the group left the baths for lunch, but the boy stayed behind because he was scheduled to have a massage at 2 p.m. So for the next hour, he alternately lay in the baths, and out in the sun, yielding himself to the water, and then absorbing the great strength of the open air, feeling the mountains around him, feeling the ocean far below, sitting cross-legged on one of the rest tables, naked, naked and free, staring out into the endless time and endless space of the West.

HE WAS going to have his massage with Gabrielle. He had heard about these Esalen massages. For some people they were the most intense part of the five days; some has reported mystical, even psychedelic experiences during them. But the boy was skeptical; he had had massages before, and he did not expect that this one would be very different.

A little after 2 p.m. Gabrielle came outside to find him. He was in the baths, and since she had just finished a massage she wanted to rest for a minute, so she climbed in with him. He liked that, for Gabrielle-unlike the people in his group -- was very beautiful. She had very white skin, a lovely body, and a strange, intriguing, enigmatic, beckoning face. Yes, he liked that--and once again he began to sense the aesthetic rightness of the situation.

Gabrielle led him into her room--in which there was both a massage table and a double bed. The boy chuckled, dried himself off with a towel, and sat on the table, looking at Gabrielle. There was no need to talk. He lay down on his back, closed his eyes, and discovered that she had lit incense which was filling the little room with its beautiful, mystic fragrance.

Gabrielle did not dress, but remained naked. The boy liked that too; and as she began to oil his body and gently but strongly masssage it, he felt at total peace. What was most beautiful was that Gabrielle was not treating his body like a sausage to be pounded, not like some piece of meat that had to have a sauce rubbed into it to give it taste--but with respect, with great care, and with love. She did not say it; he did not need to have her say it; because her whole body was saying it; her arms and hands and fingers were treating his body with love.

It was very sensual, and his body showed it--but that, too, was fine, that was good. For as Gabrielle was giving him a massage giving him love, he thought that he, in return, could give her his body, totally, utterly, mindlessly, give her his body. That would be his expression of love--a love, like hers, which not words, only the body itself, could express. And he knew that she knew. This was not a job--although he would pay her for it. It was more than a job, more even than a ceremony--it was a ballet, a ritual, a kind of religion, and his part in it was as great as hers.

He opened his eyes only once during the entire hour and a half. That was when, as he still lay on his back, she stood over him and massaged his neck. He opened his eyes and looked up at her beautiful breasts, at her beautiful hair, and smiling a very, very broad smile, closed his eyes again.