Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 06:21:38 +0800
From: dirge <dirge@operamail.com>
Subject: The Last Supper of Beer (M/b)
Disclaimer: This story contains scenes of sex between men and boys.
This story is copyright protected, If you have any questions or comments
regarding it please email me. Thank you.
THE LAST SUPPER OF BEER
by dirge (dirge@operamail.com)
I am a from a long line of white men who are big and strong.
My great great great great great great-grandfather was a
Viking slaver. He had a ship with a single mast and a large
sale adorned with the silhouette of a sun wildly burning. My
grandfather was a baker somewhere in Minnesota, and my
father does odd jobs on an Indian reservation somewhere in
Montana. This is the reservation where I was raised in poverty
like my brothers the Indians.
I was laying in the back of my 78 Dodge pickup by a river
watching the midnight sky. It was the last night out for my
friend who was going to propose to his girl. Our supper
consisted of steaks and a pony-keg of MJD. I was drunk and
spinning. I put a mattress in the back because I knew I
wouldn't be driving home anytime soon. My friend Sam and
his girl Hannah were by the fire. I could hear them laughing
and then whispering. In my minds eye I tried not to imagine
what they were doing. Sam shouted that he loved Hannah so
that it echoed back off the clay walls on the far side of the
bank. Then I heard him ask her to marry him and she started
crying. I was so drunk that I puked over the side of the truck
and they both started laughing. I groaned because I knew that
I would be asked to be the best-man and that my throwing up
would be inserted into their proposal story for years to come.
This story is a complete work of fiction. Nothing is true. I sit
here as I type trying to think of words that can follow the
others in a semblance of understanding. This story is true. It is
more true than the fading ghost of a boy who stands behind
me. He has followed me for a long time now because I keep a
picture of him in my wallet. Truth is why I must be careful
with facts. I say that I was in Montana, but it could be Idaho
or Wyoming or Maine. It could be Maine. The river is real.
You can't make up rivers; they contain too many spirits, so
making one up would be a sin. It was the river W---. The
Reservation of my childhood was the R--- reservation, and
Sam and Hanna are pseudonyms or they did not exist. People
contain one spirit---two at most---so I can safely fabricate
them for the purposes of plot. Likewise, lets say Sam and
Hannah are for real, which they may not be, but let us say they
are. Lets believe that this story is true.
The river proposal happened at the end of a summer of El
Nino so the valley was like a kettle. The valley was hot. I
thought I might refer to it as the Summer of Grasshoppers, or
the Summer of Sin, or the Summer of Elderberry Wine. I tried
to think of all the things a summer can contain. Here, I've
made a list: mowing the lawn, sleeping late, getting drunk,
fixing the air conditioner, falling in love, falling out of love,
not falling in love but falling into despair, camping on the
badlands, at least one wedding, at lest two funerals, car
breaking down, sitting next to the broken down car and crying,
waking every night for a week at 1:18am because of the
falling dream, not falling into love, a Bar-B-Q, the lake,...
That summer my father was fierce, but he had grown older
and calmed to a silence that was more wild than his temper. I
was helping him rebuild a an old car for a local man of wealth.
It used to be that people would hush around him and the
mayor would come for political advice. A lot of the time that
advice was public relations with the R--- tribe who wanted to
place a tax on the city well. They claimed in their law suit that
the white man had killed all the buffalo and antelope herds,
corralled their people on a small reservation and converted
their children to Christianity. This was in fact true, but it
happened (the mayor claimed) a long time ago and now a tax
would be unconstitutional.
During high school I never had a girlfriend. I was popular
enough to get by. I had one real good friend who was very
religious and tried to bring me to Christ. It never took, but we
remained close. Some years after graduation I was talking to a
girl who had a crush on him. She brought up that she always
thought we were gay so she never tried anything. I told her we
were not gay and she hit her head like people do after they
realize the truth and it is too late. She had a baby from some
guy who wanted nothing to do with it or her. He was from
out-of-state and never came back. I guess I felt bad for her
because she was plain looking and I guessed it was the first
time she ever had sex. First one's a keeper. Maybe plain
looking girls are the most fertile.
Later that summer she asked me to marry her because she
needed a father and she didn't want to become an old maid. I
laughed. I never had a mother so why the hell should her kid
need a dad? And if she became an old maid it was for the sole
reason that she was plain and golfed too much. I told her this
(that she golfed too much) and she said she just did it to kill
time. I told her she wasn't my type which was the same as
saying she was ugly. I felt better after this until she started
crying.
I'm sorry, I said. She just sobbed. I touched her arm and she
tried to kiss me. I should have let her, but my hand, with its
own brain, came between my face and hers and she ended up
licking my palm like a loyal dog. Why would you think we
were gay, I asked her.
"Well you never dated and you were always together.
Everybody thought so."
"Have you ever done... thought about doing anything with
another girl?"
"No way." she said.
"Why not? Doesn't everyone think about it at sometime."
"Have you?"
"Yeah, I've thought about it." I was leading her on like this
because I thought if I could plant the seed of doubt in her
mind about my sexuality that might put to rest the marriage
idea. She didn't pursue it because of this fact.
My father's shop was on the corner of 9th Street off of Main.
This is a quiet town most of the time. There are some days in
early August when the county fair is happening that are more
lively. On the Saturday night of the fair Main Street is closed
off for a dance. The open container laws are suspended and
white man and red man drink together like it is the last supper,
the last supper of beer. One year the county sheriff, who was
supposed to be keeping order, passed out by the barbershop.
His deputies, the Doyle brothers, started looting the clothing
store owned and operated by the prestigious Harry Wu Esq.
Wu never drank because he was Jehovah's Witness, but he
did subscribe to Militia Monthly and Guns Unlimited. The
story goes that the older Doyle brother was trying to carry out
a rack of denim jackets when Wu pulled up in his Ford,
packing. He told the brother to drop it on the count of three or
he'd blast his knee-cap off. Wu said "one" and fired and the
brother went down like a pig to butcher, squealing. No one
filed charges on either account; the sheriff stays sober now
and the Doyle brothers still buy boots and chew from Wu's
store.
We were working on the car trying to fit a new high-rise
manifold. It was one of those late summer evenings that are
remembered mostly in soft blue tones. The garage door was
open and we had set out a droplight over a chair to attract the
bugs and moths away from our heads. Down the street Crazy
Mike's Bar was blasting a country song.
I heard it coming before I saw it. The driver jerked left and
pulled up, letting the big tires bounce to a stop against the
curb. A tall Indian got out. Dad wiped his hands on a grease
rag then on his chest. The Indian's hair was long and black
like the night to come. He wore logging pants and heavy
boots.
"Help ya?" My father said.
"Howdy," said the Indian, stopping outside in the swarm of
insects.
"Howdy." said my father, "Help ya?"
"Need to work on my truck. Won't shift."
"Probably the clutch."
"Expensive, eh?"
"Depends."
"Well I need it to haul wood next Wednesday." A boy got out
of the passenger side and stood back from the man. I
recognized him from around town. He was about twelve years
old. Unlike his father his hair was thick and wavy and his skin
was light.
"I can have it done by then." my father said.
"How much?"
"I can't say. Not a lot."
"OK, I don't have a phone. Can you drop it off at the end of
Old Gulch?" My father nodded. The man left with the boy
lagging behind. At Crazy Mike's he entered; the boy kept
going.
Old Gulch was about six miles out of town toward the buttes.
A stream discovered (or not) by Lewis and Clark dams up
down in a holler making a good pond to fish in. I went skinny
dipping in it once in high school. It was freezing but I think it
did the job of washing away a particular darkness. After that
the tribe bought it and posted it off limits to non-tribal
members. An article in the paper called it "Medicine Ground."
I believed it and hoped it stayed quiet spot. One shouldn't play
among ghosts without being prepared for the consequences.
The boy vanished and I knew he was going to make the whole
walk. I pictured him turning into a animal when he was safely
away.
...
I never felt white in my life. I always thought I was an Indian
or I would become an Indian. On reservations Indians move
like they did in their nomadic days when they followed the
bison. But with the advent of the railroad the bison were shot
and killed, mainly to decrease the native population. I can
close my eyes and think they move to the ghosts of those lost
herds. If the wind changes or the grass bends that means that it
is time to go. Their teepees have become Volkswagen vans
and trailer houses. Their hunting grounds are clearly marked
as tribal only. If the earth disappeared I think the ghosts-herds
they follow will become solar winds and the Indians will find
a way to move among the stars. I see great futuristic ships,
beautiful in their simplicity. Their sales are silicon-poly-fiber
material that stretch for miles in the void to catch the energy
waves of dying suns.
When I was fourteen my father was working as a caterer. His
specialty was pig roasting and goat roasting. We would set up
the pit at whatever function; I remember watching the impaled
animal turn slowly and brown, the smells wafting up and
about causing mouths to water and people to draw near.
It was at the end of one of these events that had been held for
a dead tribal leader; I had retreated back into the woods to get
away from the people. I've always sort of been a loner. My
mind is turbulent so I can't concentrate if I have to listen to
someone else. My dad was talking about politics and I was
feeling myself become the invisible son. An Indian named
Crow was walking beside me. I had not heard him come up,
but these were his woods. Perhaps he was a tree and he just
shifted into a man when I was close. I do not know all the
secrets of these people.
Crow drove race cars and lived part of the winter in Arizona
where he taught Spanish to Hopi Indians. My heart stopped as
he reached out a hand and touched my chest. We were just
beyond the border of the trees and I could vaguely see shapes
moving. I could hear them laughing. I could hear my father.
"You think your an Injun." he said. "You ain't no Injun." I
couldn't talk. I felt the energy move from his hand into me. He
was sleek like a mountain lion. Was that his spirit guide?
Would he morph before my eyes and consume me? Would I
cry out? "I saw you fight Charlie White-owl last year." he
said.
Charlie White-owl was a big kid who hated white boys. He
and some cronies caught me on Main Street. I saw the blow
coming like they do in the movies when they play the
sequence in slow motion. My arm went up and my right fist
collided with his face. I kicked him on the ground.
"He swung first." I said.
"I know." Crow said. His fingers were working across my
chest.
"I'm not gay." I said. He shrugged and started to undo my
pants. I felt the button catch. It was containing the last visage
of my modesty. For boys this is a crucial thing, like a marble in
their pockets -- a jewel theay are destined to lose. My pants
flipped open and with a discerning finger he touched the skin beneath.
He touched me in the way old women taste a custard to see if it is
sweet, the way they choose a squash making sure it is ripe, the
way a drunk knows his vice, the way an artist palms a brush to
determine its balance. I reached for him. I heard my father
start to tell a story about Vietnam. He pulled me down to the
forest floor where we were consumed by the flora and the
insects. When it was over Crow walked deeper into the forest.
He was naked and soon I could not see him from the
overgrowth. I dressed and went to help clean up.
My father was sitting alone drinking a beer. Paper plates had
blown out onto the large lawn and one was floating in the
pond where a duck was investigating. An old Indian lady was
sleeping under a tree. I tried to reconcile a time differentiation.
I could feel my cheeks were flushed and I still felt moist from
Crow's breath all over me.
"Where you been?" he asked me. It was the way fathers ask
questions of their boys when they don't want the truth. He
looked hunched and weak, like the old man I would know
years later.
"I went back in the woods." I said.
"You see anything?" he said. I shook my head. My clothes felt
like sandpaper against my skin.
"I thought I saw a dear so I went that way. It was nothing."
"You OK?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." I said. He looked at me like I was a piece of
glass resonating at a frequency close to terminal.
"Let's get it cleaned up." That was the last time my father ever
talked directly to me. I don't know if it was my doing or his.
Perhaps both. But the wall that went up was a hideous thing
that made us both safe. We instituted a don't ask don't tell
policy about our lives and let the years slip by.
When I went away to college I never called except at the end
of the spring term when I told him I was going to Alaska to
work at a cannery.
Alaska was lonely. The men were hard and angry. One man
named Red had an outstanding warrant in New Mexico for
breaking his wife's legs and running the handle of a toilette
plunger through her left lung. She survived and pressed
charges. He and I formed a cordial relationship where we
would stay up late playing chess.
Sometime after telling me why he was hiding out up there, we
were playing---I was winning, he asked me if I had a girl. I
told him no and tried to let the subject drop. You gay, he
asked. I looked at him wondering what he wanted from me.
Ain't nothing, he said. I ain't gay, I said. He stared at the
board like each square had a different movie playing on it.
I like boys, I said. He looked at me. I said it serious so that he
knew I wasn't joking. I said it with a touch of crazy in my
voice, the way straight guys say they like broads with big
boobs, and mean it. He nodded. He told me he had a son and
pulled a worn picture from his wallet. The boy had strawberry
blond hair and was smiling at the camera. He had Red's
dimples.
You like him, he asked. I said that I thought he was very
handsome. Red seemed pleased at this. He nodded as he
gently returned the photo to a pocket in his wallet. Rook to
Queen's Knight. Check. He won again. He was crying and
reached to hug me. I pulled away and he sat back holding his
head in his hands. His name was Nate, he whispered, He'd be
your age. That's why I broke her legs, she let him drown in a
swimming pool. I wanted to kill her.
I couldn't really speak. It's like when you're driving down the
interstate and you come on an animal that has been hit. It's not
dead, but it's beyond help. Most people keep driving---I do.
Maybe Crow would be one to stop and sit on the asphalt until
the animal kicked it's last. At the moment of death maybe its
spirit rises from the carcass, maybe he tries to catch it. Not to
hold it forever, but to help it through the transition to a purer
form of freedom. I wondered if it was the same with people.
Towards the end of the season Red and I were working the
line. The fish would come down and we had to sort them to
size. Some where too large to lift and we let them pass. It's the
kind of job where your mind starts to wander. If you get good
you can lose sense of place and time as your hands and arms
go through the movements. It was toward evening. No sun for
six days, nobody cared. My arms ached and my mind was
somewhere in the South Pacific---National Geographic style.
Your secret's safe with me, Red said. I looked at him not
really catching all the words. He smiled. Thanks Red, I said.
Yours too. See you for chess, he asked. I nodded.
He didn't come. A storm was blowing. I went to bed and had a
nightmare about running from some large animal. It just
wanted to eat me for no other reason than it was hungry and I
was prey. Mostly you only dream for a short period of time
each night, but I think that one lasted all night. I woke tired to
a gray morning. Red's bunk was empty. We found him in the
Cold House. He had put a meat hook under his chin and
jumped off a chair. Coroner said he probably bled to death.
That means it was a slow going and painful. I think he wanted
this. From his wallet I took the picture of his son. I still have
it. It's like a crucifix for me. I think he's my patron saint. The
patron saint of perverts. God knows we need one.
Red, Alaska and College passed like a summer rain. I ended
up back on the rez for a few months while I was waiting for an
out-of-state job to come through. My father was like a
stranger. I had forgotten his patterns. I woke one night to him
watching TV and couldn't ever remember him doing that
before. The only part of him that I felt was a remnant from my
childhood was the smell of his cigarettes and they way he
coughed from deep within his lungs. When I was a child I
thought a monster lived in the hallow of his chest and
provoked him on these fits, and his coughing was his body
trying to expel the demon. The demon never left.
...
We worked on the Indian's truck with a vengeance. We forgot
about the classic car that needed a bumper and fender. The
clutch in the truck was shot. I reached up and pulled down the
pressure plate like I was removing the heart from some big
animal.
"Damn." I said as a piece of metal fell by my face.
"Hot rodding." my dad said. "He popped it one too many I
guess."
"Yeah, tares em up."
"Take your lunch." he said. "I'll put it back in and you can run
it out this evening." I went to wash my hands with the orange
smelling soap. Part of the wall between us was that my father
treated me like an employee. I left needing air from the
proximity to him.
A group of boys had gathered on a corner. They were all
dressed in baggy pants and long t-shirts, their hair done short
and swept up in the front---a bunch like some hoodlum school
of equality. The Indian's son was standing in the center. His
large eyes trying to watch all the boys at once. He was dressed
in tight jeans and cowboy boots. His tank-top was tucked in
and showed the leanness of his body. One boy with blond hair
shouted, "Fuck you -- ya goddamned prairie nigger."
"Come get it white ass." said the Indian boy, shoving his little
chest in the air like a flustered grouse. The boy who was much
bigger than him stepped forward and let swing. The Indian
boy moved inside and belted him in the face with a slender
fist.
"Fuckin---" and the white kid went down.
"Hey!" I shouted. The Indian looked up at me. The other
white boys split. He was about to pounce on whitey. "Fuck
em, they're bitches. Lets go."
"Fuck you." he said, "This one's dead."
"Come on. They've got more friends. Where're all your
skins?" The boy shrugged. He backed off suddenly looking
small. "I'm taking your dad's truck back later. Want a ride?"
"K," he said. "Fuckin white boys can't fight." and spat at the
large boy's feet.
"I know I said." remembering the times I'd been creamed by
native kids. We fought because our fathers fought and there
was nothing else to do. When you were younger you fought.
When you got older you got drunk and fought. If you where
straight you got drunk, fought, and had sex.
We walked to the empty drive-in on the far side of town and
sat among the speakers. They seemed like an embossed army
of odd totems to the ebb of a certain era in technology. The
place was falling apart. A billboard advertising Bic razors sat
where the screen used to be. The grass hadn't been mowed; it
somewhat hid us from the people who never came by. The
boy's name was Paul Spotted-elk. He ate half my sandwich
and laid back with his arms behind his head, his coal hair
coming to his shoulders like a raven's wing. It contrasted with
his light skin and red lips. I told him this and he said his
mother was Irish and her last name was O'Manny. My eyes
traced the arch of his body as he basked in the sun. I was
about to ask him why he dressed like a cowboy when he said,
"You look part Indian."
"I ain't." I said.
"I see Indian in you. It got there somehow."
"I don't know." I said.
...
We rode in silence to the gulch with the windows down so the
wind would caress us. I was happy to be out of town. Paul
stretched putting one leg on the dash.
This is the part where the man reaches over and puts his hand
on the boy's thigh. Most men who would, only do this once in
their lives because, contrary to popular belief, such an
opportunity only arises once in a lifetime. The boy either
accepts or denies the action and responds accordingly. If he
accepts, the man is torn by guilt. If he denies, the man is torn
by guilt. We never learn the man's story as it is usually never
told accept in indeterminacies when he has passed on: a
collection of pictures in a shoe box, a series of short stories,
the letter to his family, the letter to a boy. Mostly it's never
contextualized, wives cry, children question, and he who was
a saint becomes a sinner. And so the dead shall sleep
forever.
The boy's story comes later in life when he has had
time to contemplate the good or evil of that one moment. The
forum for this is usually a Wednesday night guest speaker at
the First Baptist church. In attendance are large-haired soccer
moms, their bony fingers gone chalk from clutching the cold
word of God; their sons (who are to learn a lesson in this)
fidgeting, feeling a sudden curiosity about the soft of their
lower backs, or the slight of a tanned shoulder. Almost always
we learn that the man was a sad fellow and the boy was used,
his innocence plucked from his body like one plucks the bud
of a wild flower.
Paul looked at me so I had to look at him again. He laughed a
little to himself. He slunched back with his hand on his crotch.
"How you getting home?" he asked. I shrugged.
"I guess your dad is going to drive me back." He shook his
head.
They had a trailer house above the holler. A drilling rig for a
well was in the yard. A large lab came padding up to me
followed diligently by a three legged mutt. Paul's father was
sitting on a little porch with a beer in his hand.
"Hey, you brought my truck back," he said. I told him what
we did to fix it and how much the charge was.
"Shit," he slurred, "Fuckin too much money."
"Dad." said Paul.
"Shut up!." shouted the father. "Fucking white man just takes
everything." The boy looked embarrassed. "Get the fuck out
of here, Paul. I'm drinking tonight."
"Thanks for the ride." Paul said under his breath and bolted
down the hill.
"Who the fuck is it?" came a voice from inside the trailer.
"Guy who fixed the truck. Wants some money."
"How much?" asked the lady now at the screen door.
"One-fifty." I said. She went away and came back with a
check.
"Don't cash it till next week." she said. She had pale skin and
jet black hair. She looked good, hardened by whatever factors
hardened her, but good.
"Thanks."
"Wanna ride back?"
"No, It's a nice evening. I'll walk."
"Don't let the wolves gitcha." He shouted after me.
I heard the dogs barking behind me. To the side and below I
heard the stream sliding on the crust of the earth in long
meanders like a lazy wind. And there was also a lazy wind,
bringing the scent of the alfalfa blossoms from a field or so
away. My chest felt tight like you get during the sad part of a
book. I thought I might walk out of myself and become the
summer night. I felt my body drying like the husk of a June-
bug. Maybe it was the Medicine Ground that pulled me west,
or the ghosts of shaman that were walking beside me. I heard
the words Crow said that afternoon while my head lay on his
shoulder and we were both trying to reconcile our breathing
and our hearts. You might be some Indian now. I turned
toward the holler.
Paul was sitting where the stream emptied into the small
reserve. I walked over and sat next to him. We watched the
night pool waiting for it to rise up and become the sky, the
mosquitoes the stars. I wanted him to know I was there. It was
selfish. I guess I was looking for an impossible event. I leaned
toward him, my lips gently brushing his, then his cheek. I
kissed him. I had to bend forward because he just looked
straight ahead. Then he looked at me, or through me and
kissed me back. I pulled away and threw a rock into the liquid
sky. The ripples expanded from the center until they were
small waves lapping at our feet. Paul was looking at me with
those large eyes. I couldn't bring myself to look at him. He
tried to kiss me again. My lips were still and he pulled back
hugging his knees to his chest.
We heard his father shout a curse at his mother and the screen
door slam. A dog barked. I didn't know if it was the mutt or
the friendly lab. The truck started followed by the grinding of
gears. Paul rose and undid his belt. He kicked off his boots
and pulled down his pants. He was wearing a tight pair of
jockey shorts that he quickly shucked off. Then his dirty tank-
top. He was naked. I couldn't look at him as he stood next to
me waiting for me to see something. His presence was like the
Indian Crow, but softer. He was a boy, yet wild, or partly
wild. He was half broke like a sour colt. This made me sad
and I wondered where it had all gone wrong for him---or me.
He stepped into the pool like it was holy water, his ankles
disappearing into the oily blackness. I watched the water rise
to his calves, then to his thighs. He paused when the wet
touched the spot where his legs gently swooped up to become
his buttocks; he shivered. He didn't look back until he had
reached the center and the water was at his chest.
I thought of Red crying because the loss of his son. I wanted
to cry as well, but my eyes were dry. How long had I been so
cold? I tried to think back to when I petrified. I kept
rationalizing that I was born this way. That the odds are slim,
but it happens. One out of every ten, one out of every ten of
them. I just drew the wrong card and I was playing it through.
I had always justified myself as beginning half solid and
getting stiffer from there. I never liked to swim because I
always thought I'd sink to the bottom and rust away. I was the
kind of boy who spent hot summer days reading or working.
The lake represented a body of movement and I was the
antithesis of that.
A shooting star flashed across the sky. Paul looked up at it,
then he went under. I held my breath for him. The surface of
the water moving, then stilling, then still. When I could no
longer contain it, he burst up, his baptism complete. He looked
to me as if I were a lost soul at the end of time.
More clumsily than he I became naked and entered the water.
It was neither cold nor warm. As I went deeper I became the
reflected sky. Paul and I touched briefly. I was sinking into a
silence. I looked around and saw my childhood home. My
father was working, and then the stars, and I was back in
Alaska, and then the stars, and I was at college. I saw Crow
hitchhiking down a long road. I was wet. My lungs plunged
for air. I was floating up, floating up, and bursting into the
surface world. The water was ice on my skin. Paul was on
shore naked and laughing and I was laughing, coughing,
spitting, cold. Was I crying or was that the water from my
hair?
I stumbled back to the rocky bank. I picked up the boy and
embraced him---I, shaking in sobs. He wrapped his legs
around me. I hungered for the touch of human flesh,
something I had denied myself since I was fourteen. I saw the
night fleeing from me, to rob me of a moment, to expose me to
day. We kissed.
We rolled into a tattered old blanket and kissed. When I drew
back his brown eyes seemed to hold me in contemplation.
Never in my life had I felt more judged. I ran my hand through
his dripping hair. It smelled of smoke. He smiled at me and
sat up and pecked my face with his soft lips. His taste was
the earth and the wind and a boy. The bullfrogs croaked their
understanding. I heard a fish jump.
"Sorry about my old man." he said.
"It's ok." I said. I kissed his forehead.
"I want you to do me." he said.
"I shouldn't."
"Please. I've done it before." he looked toward the house that
was strangely silent after the cursing. That quiet still scared me. I
knew how Indians were supposed to be able to walk without
making the slightest sound. All I could hear were crickets
singing in what seemed to be the rhythm of my heart.
I reached my hand to the shallow at the intersection of his leg
and hip like Peter reached for the hand of Christ in the sea of
Galilee. He took it and placed it on his stomach. He moved it
down to where he was hard. I laid back and he worked his
way onto my stomach, his knees by my sides. In our cocoon it
was warm.
"It's going to hurt." he said. "Try not to jerk too much." He
put his head on my chest and worked his way down, guiding
me into him.
Most of the time it was he who moved. I wanted to kiss him
but was to afraid I might rupture something in him. He was
noiseless. I always thought that this kind of sex would elicit
sounds. I became used to the natural breath of night, the bugs,
the brush in the wind, the stream was like a third person in
some bazaar threesome. It gradually picked up speed and
slowed and Paul seemed to move in this same manner. After
awhile it was slick inside him, the fluids of our bodies
creating a film which he used. I tried to get creative and
thrust my hips while guiding his. He told me to stop, then he
sat up and started to lift himself up and drop down.
I came and he quit moving. He let me kiss him. Soon I was
hard and he began again. I heard the coyotes yelping their play
off in the valley. Their howls came closer and closer.
"You wanted to know secrets he said." panting, nipping my
skin like a pup.
They were running over us and by us. One stopped and
sniffed between our bodies. I was too scared to move but Paul
continued. When it was his time he gripped my sides with his
knees like Indian boys ride ponies. He trembled. I had the
pleasure of watching the rotation of the sky. A meteorite left a
path going toward Alaska.
I don't know when we fell asleep. I dreamt of my grandfather
on his slave ship. His crew was sleeping, he, the captain,
pondering the waters. I dreamt of a prairie and a campfire
where a man was sleeping. He was a cowboy. His heart lost
somewhere. A long time ago someone broke it open and little
pieces of the heavens glittered out into the breeze. He's been
looking for them ever since. I dreamt of a city that was empty
except for me. All the buildings were empty husks like June-
bugs stuck to the tips of wild oats in October. At the edge of
the city the ocean was washing away the pollution. I heard
waves, but the water was still like glass. I dreamt that my
father had laid down in his shop because he was too tired to
work on the rich man's car. He was crying and holding a
photo of my mother.
Predawn came with a cold that heralded the impending fall.
Paul was over me in the same position. I was in him and he
shivered violently. His lips were blue. I kissed them. He
kissed back. I never wanted to part. He urged me forward,
partly for his warmth, partly for his need. Once again we made
love the way wild horses run.
When it was over he rested his head in the crutch of my armpit
and I petted him. I traced each turn of his body onto the
canvas of my mind. It was the grumble of the truck that roused
us. Slipping apart, touching to see if we were still real,
sorrowfully dressing, reversing the night. He smiled wickedly
at me---those red lips--- and ran up the road to his home.
I turned. The pool was just water, dull and gray. Sometime
during the night clouds had moved in. A storm was coaxing
on the outer east blowing my way. I felt full. I felt that if I
opened my mouth a thousand blossoms of innocence would
explode from me like a swarm of moths. I followed the stream
out of the holler toward the old highway. About halfway to
town Sam passed me. He stopped and gave me a lift. Hannah
sat between us smiling. She had a book of bridal dresses. Sam
looked happy. He told me their engagement story that I was
there for.
...
Author's Note
If I have written a beautiful story from vulgar words, or a
vulgar story from beautiful words, I have done my job.
dirge