Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 19:39:04 +0000
From: Java Biscuit <javabiscuit@hotmail.com>
Subject: Arjuna, chapter one

This is a story involving teen/adult, male/male graphic
sex and not intended for reading by minors. If you are a
minor, or this type of material is illegal where you live,
please stop now, and go read something else! This story is
a fantasy meant only for the purpose of pleasurable
reading.

Other stories of mine can now be found in the prolific
writers index.

Feedback, always appreciated, may be sent to:
javabiscuit@hotmail.com


Arjuna

by Biscuit


I was a tangled ball of yarn searching for enlightenment
at seventeen. At least that's what I thought I was doing
when I left New York for California to study with a guru.
Of him I won't say much. He didn't do me any more harm
than your average preacher or priest. I don't believe in
his teachings now though I turn to mantra, to meditation
when I'm scared or sick. Nothing wrong with that. It's
the rest of it I've washed my hands of.

Arjuna is the spiritual name I got and I've kept it. The
mythical Hindu warrior. Hard to make everybody switch
back to my real name after begging them to stop using it.

Fresh from New York's High School of Music and Art,
with a couple thousand dollars to my name and a mantra
scarf wrapped around my neck, my destination was
Oakland. The scarf was a gift from the boy I loved and
there lies the key of my spiritual journey. The scarf, my
going away gift, was as soft as a puff of air. Perfumed
with incense and more importantly, though I wouldn't
have admitted it, the scent of him. It was his own scarf
he'd given me; thin silky cotton, printed all over in
Sanskrit characters. I could envision him wearing it while
he meditated and imagine that it was permeated with his
warm skin smells. It was supposed to aid the wearer in
meditation. It did. My meditation on him.

Bhakti was his name. Two years ahead of me in school,
a fellow painter with a serious bent for Eastern religion.
Straight as the edge of a razor, but the kind of sweet
straight guy who looked with indulgence on a kid with a
two ton crush. He had wavy brown hair practically down
to his waist, a kind broad-featured face, and a body to
die for. His torso and sculpted legs would have looked
at home on a gymnast. I could hardly see him in the
summertime, stripped down to shorts and a tee-shirt,
without dissolving into a puddle of lust.

It was a big high school, crammed to the gills with kids
who'd been freaks in their junior highs; artists and
musicians. I'd thought I'd find kindred spirits there and
come out of the shell that even I realized I was living
in. Instead, I found it just as hard to fit in. The values
were different but the cliques and social structure were
just as rigid as in any school I'd been to. Just as hard
for me to penetrate. I was afraid of the girls who came
on to me and downright terrified of the guys.

Bhakti and his girlfriend Mianne took pity on me in my
freshman year and kind of adopted me. They became my
best friends. She was a music student, a fantastically
gifted violinist. She knew I was desperately in love with
Bhakti and it drove her nuts; not because she was jealous
or threatened, because she thought I was wasting myself
on him. She thought I was adorable and was forever
trying to coax me into going out with girls or boys she
knew.

That I was probably gay, if I'd just get on with it and
be anything, was unspoken knowledge in my family. I
wasn't so much the baby of my family as some kind of
appendix, separated by nearly a decade from the rest of
them. When I finally got around to saying something
to my mom and my sister, their reaction was relieved.
The classic, "Thank God, we were afraid you didn't
know," type of thing.

My brothers were both grown and gone, one of them
twelve years older than me, and the other ten. My sister,
only nine years older was the closest and had been living
openly as a gay woman since her early twenties. My dad
was dead. He'd died of a heart attack when I was ten. My
mom and I lived on our own after that. We stayed where
we were, living in a place that was harder and harder for
her to afford. At first she was too paralyzed by grief to
know what else to do or where to go and then later she
stayed to see me through school.

As soon as I graduated her plan was to move to Cape
Cod. That's where my sister, Heather, had settled down
as a school teacher. Provincetown was one of very few
places she could do that safely. The little bit of money
my mom still had would go a lot further there than in
New York.

I'd been welcome to go with her but she was resigned
to my decision to take time off on my own. The whole
question of college was an awkward one. It would have
to be art school -- I sucked at everything else, and it
would have to be on loan or scholarship if I could
manage it. I'd gotten lectures from my brothers on
the bad road I was heading down. The oldest, John,
was also a teacher, living in New Jersey. The younger
one, Bruce, was making a name for himself as a lawyer
in the world of consumer protection. I felt like they
loved me but in very distant way. I was a curiosity,
a pet my mom had brought home that they'd never
quite taken to. The truth is, my mom and I were both
kind of scared of my brothers. She and I had evolved a
life together that was very casual and very different
from the household they'd grown up in which had been
governed sternly by my dad. By the time I was born my
father was always on the road, a salesman. I felt like I
hardly knew him and then he was gone for good.

So there I was in California. If it was the road to ruin,
as my brothers thought, it was a deliciously warm, and
to me, a very exotic road. The air, the light, everything
about it seemed smaller, softer and sweeter than New
York. I found it hard to think of Berkeley as a city.

From the start I was nervous but excited. Determined
to reach enlightenment in record time and burn the
lust right out of myself with the fire of meditation. At
the same time, I kept to myself the secret dream that
Bhakti would fall in love with me when I proved how
worthy I was.

A friend of Mianne's, a gay woman named Jerrie, put
me up at her place in Berkeley. She lived on an odd cul
de sac where the houses all seemed to be rented to gay
women. Which she was. She thought I was too cute for
words and I warmed up to her instantly, used to the
loving attention of women. I was the soul of androgyny.
Five foot eight and slim with cascades of blond hair; the
only one in my family to get the full shot of my mom's
Swedish genes. Only my hazel eyes and generous mouth
reflected my dad's Eastern European origins.

Rachel, Jerrie's girlfriend was a little less crazy about
me. I don't think she liked how much Jerrie fussed over
me and in the mornings brought me coffee in bed. Their
couch. Both of them were students at Berkeley.

Not surprisingly, it was Rachel who found me a place
of my own. A room in a boarding house on the border
of Oakland and Berkeley. She also helped me find work
through a place called the Center For Independence; a
service network for people with a variety of physical
handicaps -- challenges, I guess it's more appropriate to
say. Rachel was a nursing student. She worked there, at
a much more intense level than I would. But there were
jobs I could do for people, like cleaning, cooking;
errands I could run for them.

There's another thing I was at seventeen. A virgin.
Sometimes I thought it was because the guy I wanted
didn't want me. Sometimes now I wonder if I wanted
him because I knew I couldn't have him. I was scared
of being with anyone. Either way, I was as pure as the
driven snow -- unless you count all the ways I was defiled
in wet dreams. So pathetic. I was a living breathing riot
of hormones and didn't even let myself masturbate. I was
trying to redirect my energy upward to a higher chakra;
those mysterious non physical centers of the body. A
misguided teenage saint.

The Berkeley ashram enthralled me, the scent and
sounds of the place so much like the meditation center
in New York that Bhakti had taken me to. Bigger and
more colorful, alive with the presence of the guru. I
thought of Bhakti almost continually, imagining how
pleased with me he'd be if he saw me bowing at the
feet of our teacher, if heard me chanting. When I left
there at the end of my first evening program I hardly
noticed the two mile walk home to my new place,
floating on a cloud of pleasure. I didn't even smoke a
cigarette and thought that maybe the power of the guru
was finally going to help me give them up.

This is it, I thought. I'm really living my life now and
doing the right thing, I told myself as I walked the
eucalyptus lined streets. My boarding house faced a
pocket park that spanned a square block. Most of the
big homes on that street were probably apartment
houses but the grandeur of them impressed me.

The house had eight rented rooms in it. Two shared
bathrooms and shared kitchen. All guys. The owner
had told me flat out, no female overnight visitors were
allowed. I mumbled something about it not being a
problem. Jerrie and Rachel had helped me move my
few things in and had stayed to visit the first night,
making the small space seem warmer. It was a furnished
room. There was a double bed, a big scarred Mission
style desk and chair, and in the space between them an
old armchair.

Jerrie had given me a lamp and a plant and some linens.

So far, on my own, I'd snuck through the house like a
thief, afraid to use the kitchen and nervous in the
bathrooms which I noticed were not too clean once I
took a good look at them.

That night, more calm than I'd been earlier, still high
from the ashram, I headed up the stairs to the second
floor landing where my room was in the middle, facing
the park. There was blues music playing, a scratchy
guttural voice backed by guitar, coming from the room
next to mine. Over the sound of it, as I fumbled for my
key, I heard a deep-voiced sob that shook me.

The shocking sound of a man crying, anguished and hard.
My heart throbbed in alarm and I jammed the wrong key
in my door in my rush to get away from the sound.

The door to my side swung open and there he was. The
music, and air as rank as a barroom's, heavy with smoke
and liquor, poured out from behind him.

He had no shirt on. A guy in his twenties, in cutoffs and
construction boots with heavy socks. He had a beer in his
hand. He was big and he was solid, his bare upper body
heavily muscled though smooth. He wiped at his eyes, a
sob choking out of him even as he looked at me.

"Oh man," he said. "I ... heard you come up. You're ...
shit, I'm sorry, man. I thought you were Jeff."

"You okay?" I asked, nervous enough to wet my pants. I
wanted to get away from him in the worst way but I didn't
know how to not be polite. His longish dark blond hair was
pushed every which way, like he'd been running his hands
through it.

"Fuck." It came out of him like a thin whine, not even
like he was saying it to me, a gasp of pure misery. He
shook his head and retreated into his room. I shuddered
as I closed my door behind me, feeling like there wasn't
enough distance between me and him.

There wasn't. Through my wall I could still hear him
crying. I'd never heard a man cry. I knew he had to be
drunk and he looked like the somebody who could beat
the crap out of me with one hand tied behind his back. I
was scared and at the same time I felt like I was failing a
test -- both by being afraid and by offering no comfort at
all. I sat frozen on my bed, steeped in my mantra, praying
he would stop.

Then I heard the music get louder and quieter again and
the click of his door. Almost holding my breath, I listened
for the sound of him on the stairs. Nothing. The knock at
my door sent me shooting into the air even though I'd felt
it coming. Oh God.

Shanti Om, Shanti Om. Fuck.

I opened my door a crack with my heart in my throat and
there he was, red eyed, frowning, an empty beer bottle in
his hand.

"I'm sorry, man," he said. "I ... I just, I thought you were
Jeff. I'm Freddy. Do you like blues?"

"I guess I like it okay," I said, trying not to sound scared,
as if like a dog he'd smell it on me and attack. He almost
smiled, a small sort of crooked smile that got dangerously
close to more tears. Oh God.

"I've been drinking," he said. "I shouldn't. Do you have
any beer?" He kind of held up the bottle like I'd need to
see what he was talking about.

I shook my head.

"Do you drink?" he asked, leaning into the door frame.

"Um, not much, no."

"That's good, really good. You shouldn't." His brows
kind of furrowed as his eyes moved over my face. "You
know you look really nice." I think I blushed, at least I
felt my face getting warm. I didn't know what to say to
him, what he meant. "Real nice," he said, "I mean you
look like a nice boy."

My eyes dropped to avoid his direct gaze, ashamed that
I'd thought he was coming on to me. I might have been
able to deflect an outright pass, instead I found myself
looking at his bare chest, the curve of his pecs and
smooth brown nipples, the contour of his stomach, and
I felt a bolt of heat strike my groin.

"Thanks," I mumbled, mortified. He was very good
looking, in spite of, or maybe even because of what
crying had done to his face, making his blunt features
tender. The breadth and richness of his body sent my
hormones into overdrive.

He couldn't have stopped to sniff a flower more ready
to be plucked than I was.

In the next second he was touching me; his hand, rough
with callouses, slid along the side of my neck. He stroked
me lightly and pushed back my hair. Freddy wasn't the
first person to want to touch it. It drew people's hands.
Mostly women touched my hair, carding the shoulder
length weight with their fingers, or like Jerrie, ruffling
my bangs. I savored it as a kind of touching that was safe.
But when Freddy did it, it wasn't safe at all. A shiver
passed through me like ticklish fire.

The rest of him followed his hand into my room. He
couldn't have seen my hard dick from the way we were
standing but he didn't have to. I was incandescent with
lust. My need as palpable as his, though so different.

Freddy wasn't gay. Maybe he was bi. Mostly, he was
very lonely and struggling with alcohol. When he was
drunk, he often cried. I had no way of knowing that. I
thought he was a man in a singular crisis of pain, turning
to me in his hour of need.

He swayed heavily into me, surrounding me, crushing
me in strong arms and roughing at my face with whisker
stubbled cheeks. His eager swollen mouth dragged open
across my lips and I kissed him with my heart pounding.
God. He tasted sharp and bitter in those first few seconds,
but my mouth was flooding with spit. All I wanted was
more of it as his big tongue plowed through my mouth.

"Fuck," he groaned, nearly lifting me. "You're sweet,
baby, so sweet." I was near coming in my jeans from the
feel of his big basket crowding my crotch. His cock seemed
huge though it only felt semi-hard, spongy, rubbing at me.
We hit my bed, the springs crunching under us, the empty
beer bottle thudding to the floor. I was pinned by his
humping weight. Sloppy, desperate kisses. His hands were
in my hair. My face was getting raw from the burn of his
whiskers but as much as it hurt it thrilled me. I shot off
like a string of firecrackers, writhing under him. My hips
nearly lifted him up off the bed, in spite of his bulk grinding
into me. His weight was no match for the power of my first
come, wrung by a flesh and blood lover. Clothes still on, my
shooting dick trapped in my pants, it didn't matter. My first
time with a man, with anyone.