Oh my. That was an ordeal. We've just had our second kha-rat with our Nokhon friends. The first one was such a wonderful experience that we have all been holding our breaths with anticipation, assuming that this next one would be even better; more erotic, more dramatic, more fun, more inspirational, more magical... As you can tell, I'm setting this up for disappointment. Or rather, I'm describing our disgruntle for what should have been love and magic, uncountable orgasms and spiritual fulfillment. What we got instead was a chill and a chilly realization of just how frail our human bodies are. Although we really shouldn't complain, it wasn't anybody's fault that the weather was too harsh for us: we're only human. Our squatch friends had no problem at all with the rain and the wind and the just-about-freezing conditions. But they are built for it, we are not. Us all out there in our Mother Meadow, anticipating an experience like the last Full Moon, naked and horny, stoned on shyøma and khos, all expecting another nice warming orgy. But we couldn't take the cold, we'd only get sick. Or maybe we wouldn't, squatch antibodies tend to cure colds and other various ailments, but it was almost too painful to endure. Humans are too fragile. Oh, we had lots of sex anyway, the shyøma worked just fine. But that's not the main reason I was there-- I tell myself-- I was hoping for another cosmic revelation, like last month. Oh, I wanted to meet Mayala's ghost again. I wanted to feel my mind immersed in everyone else's again. But those things could not happen because I was incapable of enduring what it would take to get to that point of the ceremony. Perhaps, without those epiphanies, I feel a need to justify my immoral behavior with so many males, perhaps I feel ashamed of succumbing to such indiscriminate sexual abandon. Or maybe not, I wasn't actually with any man I didn't like. I enjoyed Art again and again, like a good wife. But I was also very generous to Doug, not so much good-wife-ish. Even Felix Sinsley made me feel pretty good. As for squatches, I do like Dabronat so much that I had to have him inside me many times, and big fat Dambaraggan too. Okay, I really should be ashamed, but I don't seem to be able to muster it up. And this was only October. Unusually cold for this time of year, but November and December are coming and they may be much worse.
Art and I had to give up on the kha-rat around 1:00 am, amazed we had held on that long. We broke and ran back to the house to share a hot bath. Felix and Sara came with us. There was no shyøma effect remaining under those conditions, since we had no female squatch with us, and suddenly it was embarrassing to be naked with them, so we all got dressed and had coffee. Early in the morning Adam and his band left in the S&F tour bus; they're driving to Los Angeles to do a concert at the Rose Bowl. The girls and Pokey had to give up on the kha-rat just like we did, jumping into the bus to get warm, which was all packed and ready to go. But they had to wait for Adam, Magga and Masnia to join them, since they were able to ignore the cold and the rain, continuing with their social kha-rat duties. Finally they were ready to go, the idea being to get an early start, but when the Nokhon girls got into the bus they brought a fresh blast of shyøma with them and everyone became distracted by their passions once again. They stopped by the house to say bye-bye, so we all got a fresh whiff of shyøma and went back inside to entertain our guests, Doug and the Sinsleys, some more.
But living with Nokhons is only about sex orgies for a day or two of the month at the Full Moon, the rest of the time we are concerned with more mundane matters. Really. I mean, who has the time? Art, Doug and I seem to have become responsible for the daily functions of the entire Nokhon Nation Project. This was/is Adam's baby, but that makes us like grandparents who find themselves suddenly babysitting a lot. Not that we don't want to, I think some kind of grandma-instinct takes over and you suddenly love all these brand new creatures. Nokhons are big and strong, but so much like little kids, newly born to our way of life, rather lost in our culture, needing to learn language, adjusting to our food. Art and Doug have taken on the masculine roles of teaching and regulating the practical details of our very special community. I have taken on the feminine duty of nurturing them. By nurturing I mean giving them what they need, not only to survive but to enjoy their life here among us. I make them clothes, not to teach them prudery but so that they can walk into town without frightening or offending anyone. I feed them, with fruit and vegetables from our own garden here on the Hacienda. Yes, they have lived for millennia on raw foliage they find in nature, but I can't help wanting to enrich their enjoyment of life (while avoiding salt or sugar). I suppose I have become somewhat of a fanatic about the purity of food. If I think about what the commercial food industry has done to Americans, I get angry, but at least I can try to protect these innocent Nokhons from ever getting hooked on all that poison. Our "civilized" way of life is based upon food for money, which is fair enough, until it becomes food for profit, which ends up selling a product that tastes better (so you eat more!) but costs less to produce (so there's a bigger profit). The food business is by default bad for food, the eventual cost of the product is mostly for advertising expenses. Oh, I'll stop ranting now. But diet has become a central issue if we want to eat together with our Nokhon friends: for us it is a socializing communion, but which they have no tradition for, since they just pluck a fern and gobble it raw without ceremony. They also have neither tables nor chairs, so a cozy family dinner never happens. But they certainly like it when we invite them to eat with us. The entire concept of preparing food, presenting it, enjoying the taste and the experience of sharing, all that is new to them. So I've been trying to develop a cuisine that we all can enjoy, which is a challenge. Nokhons eat unmodified natural plants, while we are accustomed to food both cooked and spiced. We are used to meat, to them dead muscle is disgusting-- as are cheese and eggs. Also, to most Americans, artificial crap tastes good: mmm, Cheetos, Cheerios-- salt, sugar, chemicals, oh boy --but to a Nokhon those things taste like cardboard dipped in gasoline. But then, we have an equally hard time chewing and swallowing thistles, ferns and stinging nettles. It's just that some foods are so much better when cooked-- such as potatoes or kidney beans or pasta-- that we have won some Nokhons over to expanding their tastes. Our veggie lasagna is a major hit, as is Chile Con Frijoles. Popcorn gets their attention. Mashed potatoes drives them into a frenzy. We also came up with a universal breakfast everyone can enjoy: our own blend of Squatch Muesli.
Humans usually take it with milk or yogurt; Nokhons tend to eat it dry, by the handful. They like the crunch-crunch-crunch. Boiled oatmeal-- especially with butter and raisins-- is also becoming popular, although most Nokhons still prefer their oats uncooked.
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