We of the Western world live under the influence of Lilith - ironic, considering she has been largely hidden from us. But when James and I began reading the Bible again, we found her there, between the lines. According to Genesis 1, God fashioned man and woman from clay, telling them to "be fruitful and multiply." Then in Genesis 2, God causes Adam to fall asleep so that he may make him a mate. He takes a rib from Adam, makes Eve, and presents her as his "helper". Obviously the two versions do not jibe, and Lilith is what happened in the interim. According to other Hebrew scriptures, God first created man and woman: Adam and Lilith. Lilith had her own mind and refused to be subordinate to Adam, citing that they had been created at the same time of the same material. Lilith, whose Hebrew name is Adamah, the feminine word for earth or soil, is probably derived from Belit-ili, a Sumero-Babylonian goddess, also known as Lillake. When Adam tried to force his wife to lie beneath him (the "missionary position"), she cursed him and flew away to the desert. After Adam complained, God gave him a more submissive wife, Eve. From the start, the Bible dispenses with a goddess figure and replaces her with a frail female.

Our Bible reading soon brought us to the story of the Fall from Grace. In the Garden of Eden, Eve tempts Adam to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and Recognition. Eve was offered the apple (or fig) by a serpent (a symbol of goddess religion). To our surprise, we found much medieval art depicting the serpent with the face and breasts of a woman! It is Lilith, trying to open Eve's eyes to her condition. Lilith, a woman secure in her sexuality and aware of the freedom that comes with carnal knowledge, would not have sanctioned Eve's disempowering relationship. According to the story, once Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they became ashamed of their nakedness, were cast out of their earthly paradise (Eden), and condemned with all subsequent humanity to eternal toil (tilling the soil, etc.) and suffering (the pain of childbirth). Eve's actions became the justification for the damnation of the flesh, the subordinate position of women, and "original sin" from which no one - not even newborn babies - can escape. The message is that God = good and Eve = evil. These first stories served to eviscerate the cosmogony of the agricultural cultures and partnership values of ancient times and establish the hunting and herding cultures with their dominator mentality. The sacrificed lamb of the herdsman Abel, for example, was favored by Yahweh over the harvest offering of the farmer Cain (Genesis 4). The hierarchy of the Indo-European invaders had to replace the more egalitarian structure of settled agrarian communities. With women under control, men could insure the transference of property through male lines of inheritance.

From archaeological finds of "mother-goddess" sculptures (25,000BC) to the recorded histories of ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Minoan, and Indus River valley cultures (3500BC), it is now evident that goddess-centered religion was predominant throughout most of Earth's known history. In matrifocal farming communities, women passed power, position, and possessions from mother to child. Whereas paternity might be debatable, people always knew who the mother was. Along with supplanting goddess symbols and practices with those of the new god, certainly the hunter-invaders would have needed to establish patrilineal inheritance. In order to do this, a woman's sexual freedom had to be bound up in monogamy. The Sumero-Babylonian ancestor of Lilith, goddess Belit-ili, exalted female seductive arts in the sacred sexual rites of the temples. Belit-ili also was a patroness of childbirth and protectress of babies. In the new androcratic order, however, no longer could a woman (or goddess) assert rights over her body, her children, or her work. As Simone de Beauvoir states in The Second Sex, "Woman was dethroned by the advent of private property." In her book, The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler describes the shift that occurred millennia ago in our history: "The power to dominate and destroy through the sharp blade gradually supplants the view of power as the capacity to support and nurture life. For not only was the evolution of earlier partnership civilizations truncated by armed conquests; those societies that were not simply wiped out were now also radically changed. Now everywhere the men with the greatest power to destroy - the physically strongest, most insensitive, most brutal - rise to the top, as everywhere the social structure becomes more hierarchic and authoritarian. Women - who as a group are physically smaller and weaker than men, and who are most closely identified with the old view of power symbolized by the life-giving and sustaining chalice - are now gradually reduced to the status they are to hold hereafter: male-controlled technologies of production and reproduction."

What happened to Lilith? As a representation of goddess-based cultures, she ruled the mysteries of the life cycle: birth, life, sexuality, and death. She understood planting by the moon, giving birth and mothering, the practice of solitude, and the process of transformation (as a snake sheds its skin). Such a world view ran contrary to the new religion of Yahweh. So Lilith was relegated to the night, which now became a frightful realm. Described as a night demon, she was blamed for erotic dreams, nocturnal emissions, stillbirths, and child-stealing. This woman chose the wilderness over a marriage, her own sexual rights over docility, and her freedom instead of subjugation to another. So threatening was this image of woman that she was virtually removed from Judeo-Christian mythology except as a warning, a bogey-lady. Many a medieval man and woman would lock their windows lest the "Night Hag" (as she was called in the Bible) swoop in to terrify them.

James and I felt compelled to tell Lilith's story. It is in so many ways every woman's story. The conflict between Lilith and Adam has been perpetuated for the last 3000 years of man-woman relationships, with the Adam-Eve model offering no equitable solution. The great religions of the world provide shaky ground for healthy relationships because of an age-old sexual inequality. Venus and Mars would have to embrace the male-female conundrum by embracing Lilith, Adam, and Eve. That is what James and I set out to do.

It was not easy. James' painting flowed and improved with each piece. I had many changes that I would suggest to the paintings-in-progress, which he for the most part took. My contemplation of Lilith, however, led me into the dark corners of women's psyche that she inhabits. James and I clashed over some artistic decisions, and I found myself remonstrating that I needed more time alone. Rather funny that is, considering how much time apart we usually spend. His 20-year career as an artist and lifelong tendency as a loner had already established our separate spaces. Still, I felt I needed more, and we agreed on my having some nights alone. Truly I was brooding with Lilith.

I delved into books on women's history, which opened my eyes even more to how much our world view is, in fact, "his-story". Over 25,000 years' evidence of agricultural, Goddess-worshipping societies has been eclipsed by the last 3000 years of male-dominated civilization. I read Lilith's story and many others. As I read accounts of the Dark Ages - witch hunts and the Inquisition - I would often have to put the book down. It was too appalling. In 1487, the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) was published in Europe. In it, Jakob Sprenger and Henrich Kramer, two Dominican friars, explained to the powerful men of their day all they needed to know in order to identify, torment, and kill "witches". Naturally, the homes, land, and possessions of these women became booty for themselves and/or the Church. The new profession of witch hunters overran every town and hamlet, looking for suspicious signs (hailstorms, failed crops, miscarriages, illnesses) and then rounding up the "perpetrators". They believed calamities were caused by the "evil eye" - the powerful glance of a woman. Grandmothers, pregnant women, even little girls were brought to torture chambers to extract their confessions. Professional "prickers" used a small needle to find "the witches teat". If a light prick into a mole, skin tag, or genitals did not elicit a cry, then witchcraft was confirmed. Otherwise, the women were tortured until they confessed to consorting with the Devil. During subsequent weeks chained in a dungeon, innocent people would be tortured again and again to name the members of their witches' coven. Out of their minds with pain, women named friends and neighbors, branding them with now official accusations. Many died before that point.

If a woman exhibited her Lilith nature - living alone, owning property, being playful at work, healing the sick, criticizing her husband - she was accused of being a witch. Accusation was as good as a death sentence, for she had no right to her own defense. Women were raped and branded, had their fingernails ripped out or legs crushed, and were violated in the most sadistic ways so as to extract their confession. With or without it, they were burned alive. I saw how the Inquisition, arguably a money-grab, was the vehicle through which sexually-repressed men tortured women. Modern psychology shows that sexual repression leads to aggression and hostility: generally sadism in males and masochism in females. Leonard Shlain, in his book, The Alphabet vs. the Goddess, maintains that the sudden rise in European literacy rates due to Gutenberg's printing press (in 1454) resulted in the left brain running amok and mass psychosis. Here was an institutionalized reign of terror that lasted 500 years and killed hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of innocent people.

So obsessed were the witch hunters that they even killed cats, which were known as "the witch's familiar". (Even today people consider black cats bad luck). Exterminating cats resulted in a population explosion of rats, which carried the plague. Nature, with its inexorable justice, rewarded the Inquisitors and their society with the Black Death.

The belief system that created the Inquisition survives still. I thought of the foot-binding of Chinese women, the circumcision of African women, the stoning of Moslem women for the crime of showing their ankles in public . . . these images echoed the unfolding environmental disaster of modern times: the continuous rape of Mother Earth that I witness on a daily basis. At the root of it all is the lopsided emphasis on male domination and the absence of women's freedom and wisdom.

As I was writing the first poem (for "Daughters of Lilith"), my chest filled with congestion and I felt slightly feverish. It lasted for days. I did not feel that I was sick, but that I was experiencing a long-suppressed grief. Rage came through in the poem I wrote. James rejected my first draft as too angry and militant. "Remember, Becca?" he told me. "We are doing this work from a loving approach. We said from the beginning the only way we could even broach the topic of equal relationship through sexuality was to present it with beauty." I knew from his rantings about goddess culture and the oppression of women that he felt just as passionately about injustice, so I did feel understood by him. But the injustices done to Lilith and 600 generations of her daughters were overwhelming me. I felt their pain. Neither my poetry nor my practices could contain it.

As James and I submerged ourselves in the tragic condition of Man and Woman during the Goddess's hiatus, Lilith clawed at us, like a drowning person who fights to the surface to breathe. Nothing James did could console the grief I was feeling, and I could not tend to him in the exacting process of painting, either. After a night of frustrated lovemaking, James awoke the next morning with the revelation: "The 'Father' has failed". We cried together for Woman who has been denied and for Man who could no longer carry it all alone. The world has suffered our dysfunctional imbroglio. We re-dedicated our warrior and mother talents to let Lilith come through us as she wanted to be portrayed. Our invoking the Great Goddess, the First Woman, was shaking us with a heavy dose of reality. As it ravaged us, we marched forward, led by our visions of Mars and Venus, to bring Lilith forward with all the love in our hearts.

The poetry emerged torturously. Was it a writer's block, or had the tragedy of Lilith slain my muse? One night after witnessing my state, James suddenly perceived the entire Lilith series as one work, one continuous narrative. He rearranged the paintings hanging on my bedroom wall. Changing the order of the paintings then presented a coherent picture. The last piece, which was only an idea at the time, became the first one. The third piece became the last, and so on. Each of the five pieces revealed themselves as chapters in a story we were to tell. How astonishing that the paintings hanging on the wall held this new myth within them! Now we knew why one took place "Under the Apple Tree", why Adam appeared for his "redemption", and why Lilith wanted the crowning piece inside her "Sanctuary". It may seem amazing to the reader that we could produce the art without knowing fully what we were doing, but in Venus and Her Lover this is very often the case. As James puts it, "I am only the piano player!"

As if a switch had suddenly been turned on, I could write again. I re-wrote "Daughters of Lilith", and James approved of the tone of the writing. The day after completing that poem, my congestion cleared up. My health returned. Each poem that I wrote was another step higher as I climbed out of the pit of my despair. James and I continually conferred on my writing and his painting, like two troops pulling each other through an obstacle course. If it weren't for our home life that hauled us out to do chores or play with kids, we might have been totally consumed by Lilith's pain.

When the smoke cleared, there were five works of painting and poetry - there's that tantric number 5 again! And we discovered a new myth - enacted with Mars, Venus, Adam, the Serpent, and Bacchus - to bring Lilith forth. May our presentation of her story speed the healing of an old injustice.

§§ The Lilith Series, in order: "Goddess", "Daughters of Lilith", "Under the Apple Tree", "Redemption of Adam", and "Sanctuary".
§§ "Father as Failure"
§§ ADAM, EVE, LILITH

Photo shoot: 27 december 1999
puerto rico

In the evolving friendship I share with Shakti, we have known each other like sisters, as lovers, and as teacher/student. During her winter visit to the islands, we got together for ocean swims, beach walks, and meals, our conversations always coming back to the common ground we share as strong women, edge-walking hedonists, and spiritual seekers. Shakti also was happy to check in with the progress of our work, believing as she does in the value of sex positivity (Her car back home is emblazoned with a bumper sticker that declares, "Pleasure Heals!"). Basking in the sun at the beach, we talked seriously about the world's predicaments, while sucking on fresh oranges and grapefruits. Turquoise Caribbean, salty sun-warmed skin, tart golden citrus . . . these are delicious moments in my memory.

Due to the closeness we share, our intimacy flows naturally. For this photo shoot, as it turns out, I would have to count on her ability to keep the energy moving. As we kissed and caressed each other, I could hear James exclaiming, "Ooooo!", echoing the sentiment of my own comment, "Yummy!" At one point, it was sounding like a symphony of "Oooo!" and "Yummy!", and Shakti decided those were perfect names for James and me. "I can see it now," she said, "Venus and Her Lover, by Oooo and Yummy!" We were all buoyed up on erotic feelings and good humor.

Throughout the photo shoot, I had felt somewhat reserved, and as it progressed, instead of thawing, I felt myself freezing up. Something inside me rose up and took control of my body. While my mind was at play with the beautiful scenario, my body at times was present, but at other times it was not present. Something else was deadening my feeling. I did not want to feel like that, but I did. Were Shakti and I going too fast? Was it too hard for me to let go in front of the camera? Was James' presence in some way inhibiting me? I took great comfort in James' support, but he said later he did not feel acknowledged by me. Shakti said she felt like my body was in shock. She kept in touch with where I was and responded gently and accurately.

When Shakti is sexually charged, intense energies come through her. I have seen it before, and I find it very seductive. Whether or not she was conscious of it, she was channeling something directly into the core of my being. It just so happens that some of these shots were destined to become portrayals of Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Death and Transformation. We had invoked her, and she was there.

With hindsight, I now realize that is what happened. Shakti, tantra teacher that she is, delivered messages to me about my sexuality. I was reacting as if a sword was goring my first and second chakras. Perhaps Shakti had touched that part of me that had suffered a shock. I had been unaware of this before, and my trusted tantric friend Shakti was the one to reveal it to me. She had played a similar Kali role with James a year before.

§§ "The Tantra Lesson" describes James' Kali experience with Shakti.

Post-session
This photo session was to be the basis of my own inner work for the following months. James was understanding in giving me time alone, so I could devote myself to meditation and breathwork, and in giving me gentle attention in our love-making. What was frozen inside me? I wanted to get past the "guardians at the gate" that were shielding my first and second chakras. What were they keeping from my awareness? I felt I was keeping a secret even from myself. Whatever the cause, I wanted to get to the core of my sexual issues.

Margo Anand, a well-known teacher of tantra , would say that I had bumped up against my "genital armoring". Any massage therapist can tell you that our bodies carry tensions, emotions, and memories. When we swallow our anger or suppress tears, for example, where exactly do we think they go? For men who were circumcised as babies or who furtively masturbated as teenagers, and for women who have faked orgasm or undergone abortion, the attendant pain, guilt, fear, or self doubt can become lodged in the pelvic area. If a woman has a selfish, hurried lover, her vagina may react by blocking out the whole experience. Of course, the psychological armor that blocks pain will also block pleasure. Lovemaking will then require more athletic foreplay, or the reverse: the lightest stimulation to arouse true erotic sensations. We do not have to be victims of rape to have installed genital armoring. Just receiving disapproval of our bodies taught us that there was something "wrong" about our genitalia. Our embarrassment or disgust when we even talk about our sex organs indicates genital armoring. One of the vignettes from the play The Vagina Monologues repeats the word "vagina" and its synonyms; I think it does a public service getting us used to simply hearing the words! In our society sex is taboo. From this fortress a million "dirty jokes" have sallied forth.

Whatever the cause of self-protective blocks - whether from childhood traumas, our sexual habits, or karmic influences - the path to healing is through a re-integration of the pelvic area back into our bodies and sense of self. Genital massage can re-sensitize this most sensitive part of ourselves. In addition to working with breathing and meditation, I devoted time to self-pleasuring, a practice I usually neglect when with a steady lover. Affirming safety and ease, I methodically massaged my yoni, letting each part of it relax to my touch. Next I invited James to give me a vaginal massage, keeping my focus on breathing and relaxation. There are sex therapists and tantra workshops that teach these techniques. Margo Anand, in her book, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, and Mantak and Maneewan Chia, in their Healing Love through the Tao series, offer step-by-step exercises to heal our ravaged sexual centers.

After the troublesome photo shoot, my personal therapy exposed emotional blocks about my material security, terrifying imagery of my yoni being split with a sword as a blood sacrifice (past memories of tribal justice or of the Inquisition?), and grief over pain in the womb of the Mother as well as the womb of the Earth. I did deep breathing through these shocking visions and affirmed the healing power of the Goddess.

With so many Venus influences in my life, I have obviously chosen sexuality as a means of expression and growth. Just like everybody, I have to make my journey of personal liberation through my own tangled jungle of past wounds. This lifetime I determined to be conversant in sexuality - an appropriate language for my mission during these sexually-repressed, and painfully unenlightened times on Earth.

§§ "Kali Strikes Again" for the photographer's perceptions of this photo shoot
§§ The Kali Triology: "Birth of a God", "Birth of a Goddess", "Newborn Hearts"
§§ KALI

Photo shoot: 27 december 1999
puerto rico

I've directed and have shared the camera in other photo sessions but this was the first time exclusively as photographer. This session came on the heels of the "Ode to Sappho" painting and prior to the start of the series on Hindu goddesses. When our friend Shakti came here on a Caribbean vacation, the three of us openly discussed having a three-way loving session. Becca preferred that I would be included, but Shakti preferred I wasn't. So we all agreed we hadn't reached that stage of our relationship. Later I suggested to Becca and Shakti that I would like to photograph them for the Sapphic aspect of our project. I had shot a few of them together in California the previous summer with great success. Feeling comfortable with the idea, they both agreed.

Shakti totally allowed and accepted my presence, appreciated my anchoring, and made me feel very much at home - oddly enough moreso than Becca did. My professional responsibility with the art project made me want to direct certain poses, but I gradually reached the point where I wanted to put the camera down. Even its click and barely audible whir sounded too loud to me. More and more it simply became an intruder. These two sensuous women were often so beautifully enthralled with each other that I just wanted to watch sensuous femininity unfold before my eyes. Seeing each of them giving and surrendering their sexuality was a big thrill for me. Sometimes they would have me in their arms or hands while I watched them kissing their yonis or mirroring what one was doing for the other. I also had the privilege to fulfill a fantasy or two of my own. Needless to say, there's nothing like the real thing, and that's exactly what I had the pleasure of experiencing that afternoon.

As Becca's lover, I can read her slightest glance, how she sets her jaw, when she carries tension in her shoulders. Today, I could see, Becca was experiencing some awkward times going in and out of herself. When a wave of passion rose up between her and Shakti, at a certain point Becca would back off instead of riding it as she knew full well how to do. Why did she put on the brakes? Why was she resistant? All I could do was to simply be present and see her through. She was obviously dealing with as much as she could handle. Becca could no longer continue, and we ended the session lovingly. Kali had struck again, and I was honored to be there.

§§ The Kali Triology: "Birth of a God", "Birth of a Goddess", "Newborn Hearts"
§§ For Becca's version of the photo shoot, see: "Kali's Double-Edged Sword"
§§ KALI

When we do presentations of Venus and Her Lover, invariably our audience is affected in a strong, personal way. It seems to shoot straight into people's core beliefs about sexuality, man-woman roles, security, freedom, and their essential self-identity. This should come as no surprise, as the process of creating it subjects us to the same forces. Unlike our audiences, however, we who are participating in the project take a direct hit that does not let up.

I have always considered myself relatively sexually liberated. The key word here is relatively. Although I may be the most responsible, open-hearted lover I know, I have certainly not reached my ideal. I have my own baggage from my traditional upbringing and the society in which I live. Venus and Her Lover ferrets out my stuck places and turns the spotlight on them. I have watched James undergo the same exacting procedure. It is like we are lying naked on an operating table while the Divine Surgeon opens us up, reaches in, and then pulls out our inner ghosts and gremlins. "Look what we have here!" the Metaphysical Doctor says, "This won't do!"

Currently I am under the care of Dr. Kali. Although she has an enchanting bedside manner, she can be hell when she wields that scalpel! Since the photo shoot with Shakti, Kali has been dancing on my ashes, taunting me to pull myself together into the joyous, free woman we both know I can be. But first - I have to get rid of those gremlins. I go through feelings of emptiness, sorrow, and even a physical ache in my yoni. I want to become whole, but at times the pervasiveness of my afflictions overwhelms me like a thick fog. At times I feel lost.

Small comfort it is that I know this is all part of the tantric process. The more I open to the kundalini roto-rooter, the clearer I will be. No wonder tantric adepts kept the practices secret, required that initiates apprentice with them, and safeguarded the techniques with dire warnings. And James and I are nowhere near the esoteric levels of tantra - its high magic and supernatural acts.

Be that as it may, we are undergoing transformation and putting it on display. Although I pen these words in a private diary-like monologue, there will come a time when they will become, literally, an open book for all to see /judge /criticize. Our most intimate actions laid bare on canvas and my attempts to verbalize our struggles are, at this moment, our own little secret, and also - through the legerdemain of art - being shared with you right now. A key element of art, I believe, is its ability to touch the deeply human (as well as the highly spiritual) in each of us. Never mind that my ego would like to lead you to believe that I have got it totally together all the time. The truth is quite a different picture. I am a work-in-progress . . . continually in progress. The artists I most admire acknowledge that fact about themselves through their work, the subtext being, "Hey - we're all human! Relax and go with it!" John Lennon and Yoko Ono, for example, unrolled the trials and shortfalls of their relationship through their music. When John vented his feelings singing "Jealous Guy", "Cold Turkey", "Woman", or "(Just Like) Starting Over", millions of listeners learned from their process. And many of us took courage from it.

When I withdraw into myself, as I sometimes need to, James feels my absence. He is supportive of me, yet when I am troubled, it can be hard for him to paint. When James is in his studio, he is so full of us that we flow through his brush and onto the canvas.

Although there is no blame, and we communicate during these times, I nonetheless feel responsible for the slowed pace of our project. James has no desire to pressure me, but being away from the canvas makes him anxious. He is driven to it by the loving emotion we share.

He is so sensitive, and reacts to situations by wanting to care for me. I am sensitive, too, and react by retreating into myself. We both agree, however, to stand up to the challenges of producing this body of work. And so the collaborating artists must find their way.

photo shoot: 22 march 2000
puerto rico

As photographer, it was a rare and ecstatic experience to press the shutter and otherwise assist in the session of Becca and James (playing Venus and Mars) with my wife (playing Saraswati and Lakshmi). Becca and James prepared for the session by getting intimate, so we excused ourselves in a corner of the room and did the same. When passions were sufficiently kindled to bring authenticity to the shoot, my wife joined them and I grabbed the camera. While the sensuality in the room was high, the focus remained on recreating divine interplay and support. I was struck by their playful innocence, the focus of James and Becca on each other, and respectful lack of attention directed toward either my wife or me.

This combined to create a safety from which truly holy images could emerge. As an aromatherapist, I noticed the spicy, musky scent of divine lovemaking. For me as photographer, the images of the three tantricas, joined by their gazes and intent, is indelibly ingrained on my memory.

The idea for this photo shoot was born the previous autumn, on the Day of the Dead. The morning after our European debut at Mago Merlino Teahouse in Florence, James and Rocco were sitting drinking tea, reminiscing about our performance and talking about the future of Venus and Her Lover.

"So what do you need to finish your work?" Rocco asked.

"Well, we seem to have most of the major mythological traditions covered . . . except for Africa," James answered him.

"Oh, I can't believe you have never had an African model!"

"Yes, we've shot pictures with an African woman, but they didn't turn out. We still need an African model," James said.

"An African woman! An African goddess! Mars needs an African goddess!" Rocco declared, waving his hands in the air.

At that moment, a woman's voice called into the teahouse. "Bon giorno! Bon giorno!"

"Entra!" ["Come in!"], Rocco called back, rolling his eyes. "Becca must have left the door open when she went out, and now we have people off the street coming - . . ."

Rocco stopped short. In strode a lithe, long-legged woman, her black hair bulging out of an orange batik scarf, her skin the color of chocolate. Though she was thin, her hands seemed thick, as if they held a knowledge of their own. She flashed a broad, white smile, and said, "Hello. I'm looking for beedies . . ."

"The cigarettes?" Rocco said, and nothing more.

So the woman went on, "Yes, it's a holiday and everything is closed. I saw the hookahs in your window . . ." The two men stared silently at her. She continued. "You know, I live just around the corner from here, but this is the first time I have ever seen this place. What is it?"

"This is Mago Merlino," Rocco said grandly. "A teahouse! And you are an African woman! James, do you see? An African goddess!" Rocco burst out laughing. "James, show her your erotica! Show her your portfolio!"

The woman took a step back and looked at the duo quizzically. As James had become suddenly shy at the vision of the beautiful black woman before him, he picked his words cautiously to explain the whole situation. He did not want to scare her off. Here was this lone maiden with two wildmen in a den of tea . . . "When is Rebecca coming back?" James wondered anxiously.

Keely, an African-American photographer who supported herself as a massage therapist, listened. "How strange," she finally commented. "I was working at my computer, and it's like something commanded me to go outside. I didn't even realize where I was walking. I can't believe I never saw this place before!"

Keely never got her cigarettes, though she did get a thorough introduction to Venus and Her Lover. While she flipped through our portfolio books, Rocco praised our art and elaborately recounted our Halloween Eve presentation.

"And now they need a beautiful African woman!" he told her. "You, Lady, are a beautiful African woman!"

From this straightforward commencement, Keely, James, and I developed a friendship, which culminated on this early spring day in Bagni di Lucca. We had arrived at the idea of Keely portraying Oshun, the Yoruba orisha (goddess) of the river, love, sensuality, and beauty. Learning about Oshun incited Keely more and more, and she came from Florence for a visit bringing brass jewelry, amber, and cloth to play the part of the goddess.

Since the Lima River was frigid with snowmelt, we chose warmer waters for our photo shoot. Dr. Nittamo Montecucco, the head of the healing center Villaggio Globale, granted us free time in the hot thermal baths, and our good friend Satyamo Hernandez agreed to be photographer. A musician and theater performer, Satyamo brings sunshine into whatever situation he enters. Both Nittamo and Satyamo, as sannyasins and adherents to Osho's approach to tantra, had been cheering on Venus and Her Lover since our arrival in Italy.

We began with invocations to our ancestors, Oshun, and the local Angel of the Waters (among others), and with a heart-opening ceremony. Following James' direction and Satyamo's creativity with the camera, we performed different poses, but it seems we mostly frolicked in the water. James, Keely, and I had agreed to play sensually but not sexually, and an exuberant mood overtook us. While we had all opened ourselves to the higher purpose of the photo shoot, it was Keely who was most visibly transformed. She lifted the pitcher, poured the water, and swirled through the tub with the fluidity of the river itself, her laughter splashing through our marble chamber like playful sunbeams. When I closed my eyes, I saw a golden hue, which makes sense: Oshun loves orange cloth, amber beads, and brass jewelry, and gold is the color of Aphrodite. At the end of a couple hours, we floated contentedly in the healing hot water and in the feeling of teamwork that we had forged. The spirit of Oshun was there, too, and we were full of gratitude that she had come to play with us that afternoon.