Persistence of Vision Read Online Free PDF

word, it is too ripe with connotations. Hut I had these connotations myself at the time, so I was relieved to see that =
    it was not an orgy. The ones I had been to had been tedious _
    and impersonal, and I had hoped for better from these people. 7
    Many wormed their way through the crush to get to me and meet me. Never more than one at a time; they were constantly aware of what was going on and were waiting -a their turn to talk to me. Naturally, I didn't know it then. Pink j sat with me to interpret the hard thoughts. I eventually used her words less and less, getting into the spirit of tactile seeing and understanding.
    No one felt they really knew me until they had touched every part of my body, so there were hands on me all the time. I timidly did the same.
    What with all the touching, I quickly got an erection, which embarrassed me quite a bit. I was berating myself for being unable to keep sexual responses out of it, for not being able to operate on the same intellectual plane I thought they w were on, when I realized with some shock that the couple next to me was making love. They had been doing it for the last ten minutes, actually, and it had seemed such a natural part of what was happening that I had known it and not known it at the same time.
    No sooner had I realized it than I suddenly wondered if I was right. Were they? It was very slow and the light was bad. But her legs were up, and he was on top of her, that much I was sure of. It was foolish of me, but I really had to know. I had to find out what the hell I was in.
    How could I give the proper social responses if I didn't know the situation?
    I was very sensitive to polite behavior after my months at the various communes. I had become adept at saying prayers before supper in one place, chanting Hare Krishna at another, and going happily nudist at still another. It's called "when in Rome," and if you cent adapt to it you shouldn't go visiting. I would kneel to Mecca, burp after my meals, toast anything that was proposed, eat organic rice and compliment the cook; but to do it right, you have to know the customs. I had thought I knew them, but had changed my mind three times in as many minutes.
    They were making love, in the sense that he was penetrating her. They were also deeply involved with each other. Their hands fluttered like butterflies all over each other, filled with meanings I couldn't see or feel. But they were being touched by and were touching many other people Page 12

    around them. They were talking to all these people, even if the message was as simple as a pat on the forehead or arm.
    Pink noticed where my attention was. She was sort of wound around me, without really doing anything I would have thought of as provocative. I just couldn't decide. It seemed so innocent, end yet it wasn't.
    "That's (-) end (-)," she said, the parentheses indicating a aeries of hand motions against my palm. I never learned a sound word as a name for any of them but Pink, and I can't reproduce the bodytalk names they had. Pink reached over, touched the woman with her foot, and did some complicated business with her toes. The woman smiled and grabbed Pink's foot, her fingers moving.
    "(-) would like to talk with you later," Pink told me. "Right after she's through talking to (-). You met her earlier, remember? She says she likes your hands."
    Now this is going to sound crazy, I know. It sounded pretty crazy to me when I thought of it. It dawned on me with a sort of revelation that her word for talk and mine were miles apart.
    Talk, to her, meant a complex interchange involving all parts of the body. She could read words or emotions in every twitch of my muscles, like a lie detector. Sound, to her, was only a minor part of communication. It was something she used to speak to outsiders. Pink talked with her whole being.
    I didn't have the half of it, even then, but it was enough to turn my head entirely around in relation to these people. They talked with their bodies.