Daring with Monks by Tantra Bensko	Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion

When morning came, they knew they had to fulfill their promise. They rose a little reluctantly from their couches at Jenny’s house. Cody rose early and was beaming.

Bhaktinanda looked good in his robes. I was glad he hadn’t chosen to wear his sweatsuit this time, as robes would be much more interesting in public for the game. His robes were not the same as Chaitanya’s, as he had not yet progressed as far in the organization, and thus didn’t yet have to do the Tandava dance at the cemeteries.

He had looked quite unlike a monk on our journey when we spend the night at the rest stop, and we all found places to lie down beyond the fence. He had worn my serape and he felt so goofy in it, he put on my homemade mask of my own face as well. He was a good sport.

Both these guys were way more fun than most would think monks could be. Took themselves far less seriously than the Indian monks in the organization. Still that morning they kept muttering “We should be doing our meditations. I hope this doesn’t take too long... Okay, Kundra, what if just one of us plays it... Okay, is doing one round of it enough?” They had become little old ladies.

By the time we had played for a good while, almost every time doing the dares rather than having to answer the question truthfully, as that was just way more fun, Chaitanya opted for the truth instead of the dare. “So, have you ever had sex, and if so, what was it like?”

Cody gave me an enigmatic look.

“No, but I haf heard dat it is nice.” Nice. What a sweet way to describe it. He had just done the dance that combined destruction and creation yet he had vowed not to explore his physically creative juices.

I was sure everyone he told he was a Tantric monk was envious of him, imagining he got to have sex for hours prolonged by the Tantric trick of non ejaculation during orgasms. I knew so many women must wish they could be with both these monks and practice the mystical arts of Tantric sex with them. Yet Chaitanya was almost like a child in that regard. I was sure some of the advanced practices had their own adventurousness to them in the sexual realms.

Chaitanya and I had bonded immediately when we met the year before at the Tantric headquarters, and he had taught me things, showed me around where there were only other monks and nuns. I could only be traditionally taught by a nun, but I felt my real insights had come from him. He was far more welcoming and warm than any of the nuns and had a much better sense of humor. And I was glad, as always, to go beyond the usual role of the female being restricted to the female territory.

Our friendship had always had an element of play, and we had never ventured into any overt flirtation, but there was a sense of magnetic pull, a brightness to our eyes when we talked with each other. An intimacy that came when we sat together in the little room I was assigned, as he explained to me about how the monks and nuns didn’t even masturbate, and how all of us were encouraged to take showers in the correct form to avoid being turned on. And were supposed to wash after using the restroom in a prescribed manner for the same purpose.

I could see the advantages of it for people like the monks and nuns who had become celibate, though it seemed like a waste to avoid the ancient Tantric methods of masturbation. Still, my way was not everyone’s way. I was not a lust bunny, but my heart was afire with love and its spiritual potential.

I was honored that he was able to recognize that I was a legitimate Tantrika and my teaching was important. I could feel a kind of energy around him that was exciting and it came I was sure from all the exercises he did, like the Tandava, that built up his psychic reserves and made them clean and sparkling and powerful. Not wasting that energy on sexual pursuits was a way to keep it intact and usable not only for enlightenment but for helping out people all over the world as he traveled around. We were both mendicants. It made me want to get closer to him.

It was time for our last couple of dares, and as Chaitanya and Bhaktinanda were loosening up, getting into the zany spirit of the game, they were getting better and better. I was proud I had made them play it as it was a way of keeping my son completely entertained, and it was our last morning together before he went back to the ordinary world.

We tried to keep all our interactions as hearty and creative as possible. Cody and I had nearly exploded with fun through playing Truth or Dare in the Walgreens around the corner from his house. It helped ease the pain of seeing him walk off, crying, towards his father’s square house with the manicured lawn. We had played Truth or Dare more times than we could count in all the other random locations, everywhere there were willing participants, which was often. My friends were generally great fun for him.

Cody devised a dare for me. Our hilarity was intensified by how much we knew we were going to miss each other while he went to the next semester of school. “Okay, Mom. Make chicken noises into this microphone.” I didn’t question it. I made the most raucous, over the top, out of hand chicken noises I could make for a good ten minutes.

He stuck the tiny tape recorder into my pocket. Then, grinning, he took his miniature dead, plucked chicken key ring and tied it into my hair at the end of my hair wrap. It was a symbol of his real companion: he was a boy who was pretty stuck on his full-sized rubber chicken. He would ride with it sticking out the windows.

Once, we had used it as a baseball to swing at a Peenie Weenie, which is a weenie shaped, doubled water balloon. We’d met two strangers in a restaurant where he had taken in his chicken, and ended up in the parking lot playing chicken ball until the water broke. The mini chicken was dedicated to the memory of all the fun we’d had with the real chicken, which was getting so dirty it was obviously time to let it fade away. I would be the new chicken that day, and do it up right.

As instructed, I walked into Walgreens, with Cody and the two orange robed monks walking along behind me. I acted completely unaware of the loud chicken noises coming from my pocket, as I was sure no one could really tell where they were coming from.

Most people were trying their best to look as if the world were still a mundane, predictable place, where nothing out of the ordinary would ever happen. I wandered around, watching people’s faces try not to grin, their eyes wondering, some faces getting red in their effort to look nonplussed.

Then there was a loud bang behind the film counter. I looked more closely, and saw the woman working there had fallen down laughing. Her laughter grew louder, and two others joined in unseen.

All of us walked out calmly to plan our next attack.

Cody and Bhaktinanda decided to bend the rules and conspire together on the finale. They left the van to talk it over.

Chaitanya and I were left sitting there alone, our last morning together, too. We were sitting comfortably next to each other in the back of the van, and out of the blue, I became aware of the energy emanating from him. It felt Tantric, filled with light, his sexuality transformed for all those years into pure power, pure radiance. It made me think of the Tandava dance, said to be the volcanic life force bursting forth.

We often lapsed into meditation together, and as we waited, I closed my eyes and let myself float among his frequencies, enjoying them, but growing slightly uncomfortable with what a turn-on they were.

What was this? Was he doing something? I felt such a strong connection with him, as if the outer layers of our auras were kissing passionately but with meanings far beyond romance. I had no intention to sit there and grow aroused, but it grew. I could feel myself throbbing not only in my erogenous areas but in my soul, outside my body, and with my eyes closed, I saw very white light that began flashing.

I tried hard to control my breathing so he wouldn’t guess. That would be soo embarrassing. I didn’t move my hands from my sides, or move my body at all. Were the others coming back? Would it be detectable? What if I made noise? What if I undulated? The luminescence was growing, the creation that followed the destruction seeming inevitable. It was the opposite swing from the cemetery.

I opened one eye slightly to see if he had noticed my reaction. He was meditating next to me, looking serene. I touched my forehead, which felt hot, and that made him open his eyes. “It’s steaming up in here a bit, isn’t it? Must be getting colder outside,” he suggested.

Bhaktinanda and Cody showed up, thank goodness not any earlier, and we resumed the game. I felt lightheaded and surprised, but even more ready to throw myself into the festivities.

Chaitanya was to go into Walgreens and buy invisible food. They looked smug. We went in behind him to make sure he didn’t cheat.

He took a cart and started quickly and subtly pretending to throw things into the cart, when no one was watching. Anyone would have just thought he was pushing an empty cart around deciding what to buy.

Cody prompted him, and he got more serious. He set the cart aside, and went to the diapers section. He pretended to grab a large bag of diapers, and stuffed it under his arm. He walked along next to people who probably wondered if he had had some accident to make his arm stick out that way.

Then, he went to the magazine rack and pushed the invisible diapers up higher under his arm, and pretended to take a magazine down and hold it in front of his face, reading it, turning the pages, furrowing his brow. He would make a great effort to turn the pages, as he had the diapers under one arm, so it was a very acceptable dare routine. We all tried to look inconspicuous in our surveillance of him. We tried to look serious and unconcerned.

Then, he went back to the cart, and put those things in it, and walked around the store, grabbing more things. All our other dares in Walgreens were starting to add up, the robes, my hair wrap, my tall handsome son’s vivacity, all attracting attention. Chaitanya started towards the check out line, and as he was getting in line we heard a mild voice on the intercom:

“Security to the front. Security to the front.”

He stayed in line, with a kind of bold, determined humor against the stodgy enemies of eccentricity, and we walked around as if we were looking for things, but staying ready to defend him if need be. There was the slight rustle of movement from the back of the store that our ears were attending to. Were we going to be caught?

It was his turn in line, and he pretended to take each thing out of the cart and set it on the counter. People behind him were starting to stare. The woman behind the film counter was beaming. We’d made her day.

As Chaitanya put the last item on the counter, the large, sluggish clerk asked, “Can I help you?”

Chaitanya felt in his robes where a back pocket would normally be, and looked surprised, saying “Oh, gosh, looks to I forget my vallet. Sorry. Vant me to put dese thinks back?”

“No, that’s okay.” The rustling from the back of the store was gaining on us fast, and without looking back, we all walked out the front door right behind Chaitanya, and straight to the van, and closed the prefabricated doors of the ordinary world behind us.

Copyright © 2009 by Tantra Bensko

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