Angela’s mind went back to that very public impreg on the quad in the blazing sun. Ms. Agawa had checked that box on the application stating that she didn’t mind if her impreg was witnessed by others. A few women, when being interviewed by the Pre-Coitus Committee, went further: they wanted to make theirs a “fertility celebration”. Making a ceremony out of insemination by the Sire had its intriguing aspects, and maybe it could be done if Kai-Kai “went on tour”, as Elaine put it once, being flown out to faraway places, primitive cultures that had existing fertility rites, which could be modified for his visit. But as far as Semillas was concerned, the Local Affairs Committee had long ago set the appropriate policy: such women were told that impregs were not thought of as public events, and that if they wanted a crowd, they would have to fly the spectators in themselves and arrange it in a place that was not disruptive. This stopped any fertility celebration in its tracks — except for two, which Angela couldn’t help but attend.
One was back in November, and she found it unexpectedly moving. A woman from Nepal (the first from her country) had written a “service” for her impreg, attended by her parents and grandparents, husband, a few friends, and a priest who recited from the appropriate Vedic text. It was set up in the woods behind campus, discreetly out of view, but a handful of Kai-Kai’s friends swished through the fallen leaves and watched from a distance, along with a few Project people. Kai-Kai stood to the side respectfully, having allowed the Sanskrit letters for Krishna be painted across his chest (क र ष ण), and when bidden approached the woman who lay back on a table encircled with candles and incense sticks. His bare skin, goose-pimpled in the crisp sunshine, stood out among the flowing white robes of everyone else except the “lady”, dressed in beautiful scarves of red and yellow. A different chant had been arranged for everyone to recite for each step of the coitus: contact between glans and vulva; intromission; full pitch (not far — the woman’s vagina was fairly shallow); a much louder chant when she reached orgasm; another, almost shouting, at the “moment of effectuation”; and quiet murmuring as the couple caught their breath and separated. Kai-Kai’s face was appropriately solemn throughout; even his polite low moan as he prepared to ejaculate seemed to be in time with the chanting. Excess semen was then tenderly wiped off the Sire’s penis and wrapped in a special shawl. Angela looked around and detected more than one pair of surprised and moist eyes among the spectators.
There was a story behind that impreg. The Nepalese, as the Effectuation Committee was well aware, were proud of their Tantric sexual tradition. This included semen retention, which they practiced to an extreme degree; Angela was amazed to read that some of them believed that the man should never ejaculate except when impregnation was specifically intended. There were men who had ejaculated only a couple of times in their adult lives, and others whose last was years ago, and who intended to never ejaculate ever again, even though they still had regular sex with their wives. The ideal was for them to stay on the very brink of orgasm for hours sometimes, without ever enjoying the fulfillment, so that their wives could have as many orgasms as possible. In that culture this was the mark of a good husband; a man who “wasted his seed”, even once during the whole marriage, was considered selfish and vulgar.
To Angela this was all new knowledge and it seemed very unfair, as well as unbelievably frustrating for the men. She thought of how puffy and painfully distended Kai-Kai’s testicles became at the weekly inspections, after being kept on the brink for not even an hour. The aching testicles on those men, denied relief for years, must be ready to explode. It was the opposite of Kai-Kai’s life outside of those inspections; for him, ejaculation was compulsory seven times a day. How did one of those men feel, having an orgasm inside his wife to produce their last child, knowing he would continue to build up semen and sperm the rest of his life without ever being able to release it? . . . Yet the Nepalese were a patriarchal culture, women restricted to subservient roles, or housekeeping and childrearing. Orgasms were for women only. Men spent their days in constant sexual frustration, their always-erect penises rubbing against their clothes with every movement, or twitchingly choking back ejaculation inside their wives who were spasming with orgasm after orgasm, orgasms they could never enjoy themselves, not even once, but in return, they enjoyed all the power. Were Nepalese women happy with this bargain? Did they mind being subservient in exchange for multiple orgasms every day? Maybe they did. She had read of feminist-minded Nepalese who considered Tantric sex to be sexual “vampirism”, hoarding Yin energy for the man’s use, and therefore unfair to the woman! Angela had learned a great deal of tolerance for other cultures; it was a requirement for working in the Project, and as in so many other things, Kai-Kai’s attitude helped a great deal. His cheerful open-mindedness defused most culture clashes. But this Tantric business seemed too much for her to understand.
As for the impreg by the Sire, the Nepalese realized they couldn’t make Kai-Kai abstain from ejaculation for any appreciable period, given his strict schedule; but at the impreg they wanted him to make a gesture of respect for Tantra by climbing up to the edge several times before finally delivering his seed. Word of this got around, even to the last person to get wind of Sire Project rumors, namely the Sire. Eager to accommodate other cultures as always, Kai-kai threw himself into practicing Tantric restraint. The result was a coffee party set up by Mrs. Schreiber more or less by popular demand. In the Schreibers’ living room neighbors and friends sat and watched, enjoying the excellent lemon cake, as the boy was deep-throated by Mrs. Kimura. Poor Kai-Kai gritted his teeth and grunted with the excruciating strain of holding back. It was fitting that a thunderstorm broke out; the lightning and thunderclaps, and then the loud heavy rain outside, were a counterpoint to the boy’s gasps and strangled agonized cries.
Mrs. Kimura revealed unexpected sadism, using all her skills and showing no mercy; when it was clear the boy was “getting close“ she accelerated the back-and-forth of her head as the penis tunnelled all the way down her snug, rippling esophagus and then almost all the way out, then back in again. In a surprise twist, she even hummed at the critical moment, a guttural, low-pitched frisson which clearly drove the boy all but crazy. Her partners in crime, trying their best to push him over the edge, were Jillian Owusu (who sat next to Kai-Kai in Freshman English class) applying feathers to his testicles, and Mrs. Daverson pulling his butt cheeks apart for all to see and tonguing his pink, mint-flavored anus. Kai-Kai had been asked to make some kind of signal each time he reached a “crisis”. This he did by holding his head and urgently whooshing his breath in and out, eyes squeezed shut. But the boyish moans and choked gasps were constant.
Being the Sire, the adolescent had learned control, and never succumbed, pulling himself back from the brink 11 times. Finally Mrs. Kimura, winded and exhausted, stood up and declared Kai-Kai the winner, holding his hand up as he blushingly accepted the applause, pre-cum still dripping from his fully erect, quivering penis. Afterwards Mrs. Whitebear and her daughter Apokni, who was in Kai-Kai’s Creative Writing class, applied ice to each swollen testicle to ease the pain of vasocongestion.
Fortunately Kai-Kai would not be like those poor Nepalese men, kept on the edge but forever denied relief; in fact his next impreg (Petula Hetherington, a 38-year-old Kenya-born nurse from Leeds, England) had been in the audience, listening to others tell her, “You’re lucky — look at that buildup, think of the huge load you’ll get!” It being not quite the appointed time, she took the naked boy on a walk around the block, first getting her umbrella, the thunder having subsided to a quiet rain. Of course the naked Sire never used an umbrella, and when they got back he was plastered wet all over. He waited in the foyer until the little rivulet of water stopped dripping off penis. Then his wet bare footprints followed her across the living room carpet to that special table in the living room. She received an extended ejaculation from the Sire as everyone watched, finishing their coffees and watching his anus to count the contractions, either sixteen or seventeen, depending on who you asked.
“That was the longest orgasm I’ve ever seen you have, Kai-Kai,” the boy’s proud mother said later, over dinner. “Thanks, Mom,” he replied, shoveling in another forkful of mashed potatoes. Angela had been invited to stay. Besides Angela there were two other guests, Professor Nia Chakravarty visiting from India (an old friend of Mrs. Schreiber’s from their college days) and that day’s I-6, Mary-Tom Wakie, a white 31-year-old mother of four from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Ms. Wakie had a charming accent and obviously loved to eat, at least until she heard the boy’s mother say, “You probably didn’t notice, but Apokni had her flashlight app centered on your anus. We were all expecting a big one. We counted sixteen contractions.” Mrs. Schreiber often “gushed” (one might say) about the quantity, intensity and yield of her son’s orgasms, so important to the Project and to the human race.
“Yeah, it went on quite a bit,“ the Sire replied, a little absently. As usual he was not thinking of himself. He was thinking of what he could do for the (as yet unnamed) Nepalese lady using the self-control he had demonstrated during that “contest” with Mrs. Kimura. Evidently he had even surprised himself. “I wonder how many times I can make that lady from Nepal come. Those ladies must have multiple orgasms all the time. I want to give her a whole lot! My load can wait!”
Ms. Chakravarty had to put a damper on adolescent enthusiasm. “It’s not quantity that matters,” she said with as gentle a voice as she could manage. “Many men new to Tantrism see it as some kind of game. They treat the woman like she’s a, well, a pinball machine.” “A what? Oh . . .” The boy at first did not understand the historical reference, but then remembered. “It’s more a matter of intensity,” the older woman explained, “which has a spiritual element to it. I’ll send you a link.”
Kai-Kai seemed puzzled, though not as much as poor Ms. Wakie, who seemed stunned by the conversation and lost her appetite. Fortunately she got back into her comfort zone when she was served pecan pie, a Southern-style dessert Kai-Kai had made specially for her visit. When it was time for her to arrange herself on the impreg table, she was more at ease, enough so that she could say, “Y’all won’t see multiples from me, I reckon . . . I’m just a one-time-and-it’s-over girl.” Which got a laugh from everyone.
Angela didn’t know if Kai-Kai ever got around to reading the materials Ms. Chakravarty sent him, but as it turned out they were all getting ahead of themselves. Whether the Sire should really go through with the requested “Tantric” procedure during an actual impreg was not a foregone conclusion. The question had been much debated among several Committees, and was the subject of some fiercely opinionated memos. No consensus having been reached, the question was referred to the Board, which decided to turn down the request; adopting a cultural / religious sexual technique for the purpose of this one impreg would set an unworkable precedent. The decision was communicated through official channels as tactfully as possible. Fortunately the Nepalese understood this position, and were satisfied with the ceremony which ultimately took place.
The most troublesome aspect was the involvement of the Chinese, who were always concerned, to the point of paranoia, about anything touching their part of the world. They had been having their usual trouble with Tibetan separatists and were suspicious of any endorsement of Tibetan practices or nationality, despite the assurances of the Nepalese ambassador who had to be called in. The Chinese even sent a representative to make sure the impreg was in all relevant respects similar to the 50 or so they had previously observed. Angela saw her with the other spectators in the woods, silent and expressionless in her business suit as she watched the couple reach their climaxes.
Angela was in the Project Boardroom when Kai-Kai was told of the Board’s decision to not allow a Tantric impreg. The boy wasn’t even invited to sit down as he stood nakedly and respectfully in front of the formally dressed adults sitting around the big oak table, having put down his bookbag, hands at his sides.
“You mean, you want me to just . . . give her my load?”
“Yes, Kai-Kai,” Dr. Spaatz said, “though of course with your usual attention to the, uh, lady’s arousal and orgasm. But your assignment is to ejaculate inside her, nothing more.” Dr. Spaatz had a cold; she coughed, then continued in her scratchy old woman’s voice, which had an edge of condescension in it, as if she were giving instructions to a child. “Do not bring yourself to the brink of orgasm and pull back. Just ‘come’.” By means of consolation she added, “We all believe that your skill set has benefited from those exercises in self-control. When we read the report on your, uh, contest with Mrs. Kimura we were very impressed.”
After a slight pause, Kai-Kai replied quietly, “Thank you, ma’am.” The boy got his bookbag and left, trying to hide his feelings; but his disappointment was reflected in the dispirited whispers of his bare feet echoing down the hallway.
They sat in silence for a moment; then Ms. Chayevsky of the Psychological Committee said, “We could have handled that with somewhat greater sensitivity.” There was a murmur of agreement, which pleased Angela. But then Mr. Raskin of the Security Committee said, “How did that kid find out about this in the first place?” Ms. Henson, of the Local Affairs Committee, who lived down the street from the Schreibers’, rolled her eyes. She repeated a common complaint. “It’s not right to hide the Sire Project from the Sire. He powers the entire colossal enterprise.” A common image that people had in their minds, of the Project as a kind of giant machine, dependent on the semen fuel that Kai-Kai ejaculated into it seven times a day. “That sounds all very righteous,” Mr. Raskin retorted, “but didn’t you notice how disappointed the boy was? If there was tighter security, we wouldn’t have set him up for it.” As irritating as Mr. Raskin could be, he sometimes had a point.
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