Satan Wants Me by Robert Irwin

without taking an exam in Latin. Obviously he was in Cairo at the same time as the Master, but I do not know what he was doing there. He has a huge collection of books on the wall behind the armchair: occult treatises like The Kabbalah Unveiled , 777 , The Key of Solomon , The Rose of Mysteries , but also a lot of classic English literature like Milton, Marvell and Browning. I have also noticed some rather odd titles, like Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden and How Boys Bathe in Finland . He is obviously a bachelor and he keeps that horrible black labrador for company – more like a demonic familiar. Sally is sure that Felton is a poove and that he wants me for my skinny body. I was thinking that that might be the case, but so far the only thing he had got for his hundred pounds was an inspection of my diary. But then it occurred to me that reading someone else’s diary was a bit like sniffing someone else’s underwear. Dead pervey.
    Pervey. It was the thought that did it.
    ‘I want kissing lessons.’
    ‘What?’
    For once I had succeeded in surprising him. He was looking at me as if I was mad. Which, of course I was. I wanted to retract what I had just said, but the demon would not let me. So the next thing which popped out of me was,
    ‘Cosmic, Ron and Alice are all getting lessons from Laura in occult kissing and I am getting left behind. I want you to give me the same lessons that they are getting.’
    Alas! Felton was surprised, but not shocked. I was freaking myself out. Was I really hungry for a fat old man’s kisses in Swiss Cottage? He rose slowly from his chair and motioned that I should stand too. I had to come closer and since I was taller I had to bend to let my mouth touch his. One of his hands went up to my hair. Then his long tongue was in my mouth, like a snake coiling about and making itself comfortable in its lair. Not so much a kiss, it was more like he was sucking and draining my mouth of saliva. Even so I got a little of the acid taste of an old man’s saliva.
    We drew apart, while he explained that the next time we kissed, I had to take a long pranic breath – apana , the down-breath – which would reach down all the way to the muladhara or root chakra , which is located between the anus and the testicles and he reached between my legs to show me where he meant. We kissed again and I was concentrating like mad on this oriental breathing, so as not to think of him. And again and again. In between kisses he was giving me little lectures about the transference of energies through the mouth, the left-hand practices of certain Red Cap Lamas and the lighting up of the chakra points in the body. I was going dizzy, from the bizarre breathing rhythms and the sheer horror of it all. For his part, he was having difficulty in breathing – either because he was overexcited, or because of his cold. So after only twenty minutes or so we stopped. However, he was making ominous mutterings about future lessons concerning the Mors Osculi and the Obscene Kiss.
    Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. But at least it cannot have been much worse than kissing that corseted old bag, Laura. If I knew more about Tantrism than I do, I would have a better idea of what is coming next. Sally knows more about Tantric sex than I do. Last year she was talking about training to become a temple prostitute. Cosmic claims to be in love with Laura, but he just says these things to shock – part of his I-love-ugly-old-people bag.
    Then Felton sat down and flourished a handkerchief and wiped his mouth and blew his nose. Then, after having debated with himself for a while, he decided that my diary was worthy (though only just worthy) of being consecrated. Together we consulted the ephemerides tables to see if the time was propitious: Saturn chiefly in the ascendant; Mercury triune to the ascendant; Saturn and Uranus triune to the moon and Jupiter sextile to the Moon. It is a conjunction not without its problems, but it definitely has a