Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2013 20:16:49 -0500
From: Jake Preston <jemtling@gmail.com>
Subject: Wayward Island 10

Wayward Island (Part 10)
How Roger Johnson took Jake to the Chippewa Shaman
By Jake Preston


      Reader restrictions: no minors, no readers who are offended by explicit
descriptions of gay sexuality. The story as a whole is a psychological study of gay
athletic hunks who love nerds, and the nerds who love them in return. The story
also deals with the problems faced by gay guys who live in rural areas. If these
themes don't interest you, there are many other great "nifty" stories to choose
from. Send comments and suggestions to jemtling@gmail.com. Jake will respond
to all sincere correspondents.

      *   *   *   *   *  *  *

	Monday morning. My ass was sore after a night with Ben Hasek-more
dreams came true than were dreamt. Thanks Ben, and little blue pills! I walked
bow-legged with the physical memory of him. I liked the feeling, but I knew I
would have to make it up to Red Feather, who spent the night alone at Mrs.
Ravitch's. The morning was busy. We loaded her art supplies and luggage into
my car, and drove back to the lodge. We knew we would have to make return
trips for more of her belongings, but we would do that anyway, since she wanted
to spend a couple days each week at her home in Hibbing. At the lodge, Randy
helped us as we divided her belongings between her room in the lodge and her
studio-cabin on the lakeshore. Randy had already shoveled a path through the
snow to her "studio," as we called the cabin. In the cabin, we hung five paintings
of nude males, some of her earlier Water Hole studies, which no one had ever
seen before.

      The rest of the week, it was me and Red Feather. He spent his days
working at the piano in the lodge, while I worked on a mystery at my computer.
We got exercise by shoveling snow off the ice in front of my cabin. The rink we
made was the standard size for hockey. The ice was rough in places, just right for
hockey skates, though it was a bit of a challenge for figure skates. We alternated
between both types of skating.

	Mrs. Ravitch called for a work-session on Wednesday afternoon. We got a
lot done. She gave each of us a paperback book with translations of plays by
Euripides. The first drama in the book was Alcestis. Mrs. Ravitch wanted us to
read the play, and meet again on Sunday afternoon. "Then we'll go over the play,
line by line," she said. "Red Feather will read Admetus's lines. Jake will read
Apollo's lines, and then Herakles's. After the first scene, Apollo disappears from
the play, but he's replaced by Herakles who is really Apollo's substitute. The play
as a whole is about substitutes. I'll read Alcestis's lines, and those of the Chorus
and other characters, unless we have visitors who want to take part." The
Wednesday session was informative, but my notes about it are in disarray. I'll
write about it next time. [Editor: this would be chapter 11.]

      On Thursday, I called Ben Hasek to tell him that my cousin Dave would
loan him a trailer for as long as it was needed. Dave said he would move it in
during January, so Randy and Sam helped Ben clear a space for it. Ben said that
Sam Black Bear had called and volunteered to start cutting logs the next week.
Roger would be there, too. Things were falling into place. "By the way, Sam and I
made a date for tomorrow evening, to watch Henry's hockey game," he said. I
wished him good luck.

      At the end of the day on Friday, Sam Black Bear and Roger Johnson came
over in Sam's car. I had prepared a venison stew, which simmered on the stove all
day so the meat would be tender. I served it with baked potatoes, and blueberry
pie for desert. Red Feather went home to Crane Lake with Sam. Roger stayed
with me. "No spanking this weekend, and no dildo," I warned Roger. My butt had
been bruised the week before. "I'll do that for you in the future, Roger, but not
this weekend." I promised a friendly correspondent, Gerrit S. from The
Netherlands, that I would get into more S&M, and I mean to keep that promise,
but not at the moment.

	"I've got something else in mind," Roger said: "A visit with Dark Eagle,
the shaman in Crane Lake who I told you about. He agreed to see us in the
morning. It might be a long day, Jake. Dark Feather said he would fire up the
sweat lodge."  	I knew what that meant. Dark Feather was prepared to accept me
into the tribe, based on my friendship with Roger. I would become an honorary
Ojibwe.

      I called Ben to let him know I'd be gone, and invited him and Henry to
make themselves at home in my cabin. "Tell Henry we've got an ice rink now, so
he should bring his skates. Or he could use ours. Mine are size 13, Red Feather's
are 9. I'll leave the back door unlocked. You and Henry can sleep in Mrs.
Ravitch's studio-cabin, if you plan to stay for the weekend."

      "You're inviting me to sneak in the back door again," Ben laughed.

      I asked how Henry performed in the hockey game on Thursday. It was
Hibbing versus Chisholm, a longstanding local rivalry. "Touché," Ben said.
"You've been talking to Sam. Henry scored three times. He was quick on the stick
and swung that puck past the goalie. Like father like son."

      "Good for Henry, Ouch! for Chisholm, and triple Ouch! for Sam," I said.

      "It only hurt a little while," Ben said. "Thanks to you, I knew what to do."

      On the way to Crane Lake, we stopped in Ashawa to buy gifts for Dark
Eagle. We decided on a Meerschaum pipe, a high grade tobacco blend, and
several boxes of kitchen matches. Outside of Orr, we detoured onto a gravel road
to visit the Vince Shute bear center. The bears were in hibernation, but I wanted
to see the structure. It was closed for the winter, and unplowed, so we parked on
the road and trudged through the snow. A flight of stairs led to a long gangway,
and observation deck from which people could observe the bears. It isn't a zoo.
The bears live in the wild, while the spectators are confined to the gangway. The
bears stick around for the food, which is set out for them every day. "We'll have
to come back in the spring," I said, "our whole gang, maybe on a Sunday on the
way back from church."

      At Crane Lake, a side road stretched for miles. Dark Eagle lived in a
modest log cabin in the woods, on a remote bay on Crane Lake. The sweat lodge
was near the dock, just like my sauna. I recognized it from the smoke and the
fragrance of burning wood. Dark Eagle emerged from his cabin to greet us. He
was gracile, a fit man in his sixties, with features of Indian nobility: high cheek
bones, searching brown eyes, a prominent nose, and long dark hair aged to
dignified gray in long streaks. His speech was a model of courtesy, which I had
come to expect from interactions with Billy White Cloud, Sam Black Bear,
Roger, and Red Feather. In the cabin he had no TV (like me, but unlike most
Indians), but he had Mr. Coffee expresso machine and served magnificent coffee
in his living room, where he sat in a rocking-chair while Roger and I faced him on
a "davenport" (a North Country word for a sofa). While he tried out his new
Meerschaum pipe, he asked Roger about the lumberjack business. Roger
mentioned that his boss was my cousin. He asked how long we had been friends.
"Just a few weeks," Roger said. "But our friendship has been intense, to make up
for lost time."

      "Friendship is timeless. Quality matters," Dark Eagle said. Proverbial
speech was part of his job. I was relieved to find out that the brevity of my
connection with Roger would not be a barrier to the sweat lodge ceremony-but I
got the impression that Dark Eagle already knew the answers the most of the
questions that he asked us. Dark Eagle returned the conversation to small talk. He
wanted to hear from me about my cabin on Wayward Bay, my work as a writer,
my homestead on Leander, and my friendship with Sam Black Bear, Red Feather,
and Billy White Cloud.

      "Ah, yes, Billy White Cloud," he said. "He does good work in the Mission
Church. It's good for the people in Crane Lake. The Chippewa see no
contradiction between Chippewa spirituality and Christianity. We hold to the
same god, but the service is different. Instead of communion, we have the peyote
ceremony, an ancient tradition brought to us from the Navaho in 1984," he
chuckled. "Our people are called Anishinaabe, the Chippewa word for Ojibwe.
Long ago, they lived on the Atlantic coast, and were neighbors of the Abenaki.
Gradually, over three centuries, the Anishinaabe moved eastward to their home in
the North Country. We call this migration the 'Anishinaabe Trail'. Our people
settled here when they discovered the grain that grows on water." He meant wild
rice. White men call us the Fort Boise band of Ojibwe Chippewa, but that's just a
government term. We call ourselves Zagaakwaandegowiniwag, 'Men of the Thick
Evergreens'. There are many independent tribes. Ours is called Waabooz, 'Rabbit
Tribe', because of its peaceful ways. There is no history of warfare between us
and the white men."

      "So the hierarchy goes like this," I summarized. "The language group is
Chippewa. The regional group is Ashinaabe, otherwise known as Ojibwe. The
band is called Zagaakwaandegowiniwag, Men of the Evergreens. We have about
3100 members. Our local tribe is Waabooz, The Rabbit, known for its peaceful
ways." Roger had told me this earlier. Fortunately for me, I had memorized the
names and rehearsed them with Roger several times.

      "You came to us prepared, Jake Two Spirits," Dark Eagle said. Still it is
my job to ask the source of your desire to become a Rabbit: whether it comes
from within, or from Roger Deer Path." I looked surprised. Roger never told me
that he had a Chippewa name.

      "The desire comes from within, but also from Roger Deer Path, and two
others," I said. "Of my four closest friends, three of them are Waabooz."

      "Roger Deer Path has already given you your name, Jake Two Spirits. He
followed the Chippewa tradition of friendship. Let me tell you about my own
namesake, Dark Eagle. I mentioned that many years ago, the Chippewa were
neighbors of the Abenaki, a tribe in New England and Canada. The story of Dark
Eagle came to us from the Abenaki, and was handed down by oral tradition for
more than two centuries. In 1775, the great American patriot, Benedict Arnold,
made a treaty with the Abenaki, who were allies with the rebels in the early
months of the Revolution. They sat together in a wigwam and passed the peace-
pipe, and in the fragrance of fine tobacco, like your gift to me, the Abenaki chief,
Natanis, stood up and gave Benedict Arnold the name Dark Eagle. Natanis spoke
a prophecy: 'Dark Eagle will soar above in the sky. Yet the higher he soars, the
more certain will be his fall'. The prophecy came true. This earlier Dark Eagle
became the greatest general among the rebel Americans, but he was betrayed by
government men, and by other jealous generals. Four years later he was caught
selling military secrets to the British. From white men's books we learn that
Benedict Arnold was the Judas Iscariot of the Revolution, but the Abenaki
admired him as an ally, and the Chippewa admire him as a true patriot. Natalis
bestowed a great honor on Benedict Arnold, repeated by Roger Deer Trail when
he honored you, Jake Two Spirits."

      Astonished by Dark Eagle's knowledge of oral tradition, all I could say
was: "Then I am grateful to Roger."

      "I'm expecting four Chippewa elders," Dark Eagle said. "When they
arrive, we'll have lunch, and after that, we'll get to your ceremony, Jake. The
elders are essential, because they'll spread the word in Crane Lake and Orr that
you are part of our tribe. The ceremony will consist of two parts. First we'll spend
time in the sweat lodge. This is informal. It's for socializing and friendship. After
that, we'll sit in a circle by the fireplace, where we'll pass the peace-pipe and
chew peyote. That part of the ceremony is formal, a prayer to the Great Spirit."

	The elders arrived in a van: Peter Brave Heart, Matt Asseban (Blue Jay),
Jim Beaver Trail, and Steve Waabooz (a.k.a. Rabbit). The "elders" weren't
elderly; they were guys in their thirties and forties. Steve told me was to drop the
Indian names. Some Chippewa use them only in ceremonies. I understood why
Roger never told me that his name was Deer Trail. Still, they insisted on calling
me Jake Two Spirits. Dark Eagle fried walleye fillets and hash-browns on the
stove. After lunch, we stripped down to boxer-shorts for a jogged through the
snow to the sweat lodge. (Roger had advised me to wear boxers; usually I wear
hip-hugging whites.)

	There were seven of us crowded on a low semicircular bench in the sweat
lodge. Arms rubbed against arms, and legs against legs. Body contact was taken
for granted. The informal intimacy felt comfortable. I sat between Peter and Matt,
and got a little horny. There was no formal ritual, just gossip about local events on
the Res and in Ashawa. I told my companions that I head read some articles about
sweat lodges on the internet, and the writers there said that sweat-lodge baths are
sacred and ritualized. They laughed. "These writers see something in one tribe
and they assume that we Indians must be all alike," Steve Waabooz said. "So
suddenly they're authorities on Chippewa sweat lodges because they saw a
Navajo ritual."

      They asked me to tell them about my life, so once again, Dark Eagle and
Roger had to listen to me talk about my cabin, my farm, and my writing. Roger
bragged about my posing as a model for Mrs. Ravitch's male nudes. "There aren't
any paintings yet," I said, but Roger said that the sketches and photos were
sensational. Roger described the sauna that I had built, and our custom of taking
steam-baths in the nude. I made a lame joke about Roger the Waabooz, "Roger
Rabbit," but none of the guys had seen the cartoons.

	"Maybe you'd like to get naked now," Peter Brave Heart suggested.

	"It wouldn't be the Chippewa way, would it?" I replied.

	For what happened next, I must explain that Dark Eagle listened silently to
our conversation. He only spoke when something of ritual significance had to be
said, and everyone deferred to him when he spoke. Our bath in the sweat lodge
was a religious exercise after all, though a casual observer wouldn't have seen it.

      "There are no rules for the sweat lodge that relate to clothing," Dark Eagle
pronounced. "And we're all friends here, Jake Two Spirits. Your white man's
spirit is as acceptable to us as your Chippewa spirit." He spoke as the Shaman.

	"I asked out of admiration, Jake Two Spirits," Peter said. "You have the
body of a Chippewa warrior."

	My Chippewa friends had another motivation, something they weren't
telling me. Why did they want to get naked? It wasn't about sex, at least not
directly. Maybe it was part of the initiation. Taking my cue from the Shaman, I
stepped out of my boxers. I stood in the midst of our circle and modeled a few
poses that Mrs. Ravitch had taught me. All the guys nodded complimented my
physique, but the unstated reason for their approval was that I had obeyed our
Shaman. To keep solidarity with me, Roger stripped off his boxers, too.  I leaned
forward and kissed him on the lips. They guys approved of that, too, for reasons
that were unknown to me.

	It was as if I were a Round Table knight on the Quest for the Holy Grail.
When these knights wandered in the forest, they happened upon strange
adventures that had some religious significance. The first example was a knight
named Melias. A golden crown appeared in his path in the forest, and when he
saw it, he put it on his head. Later a hermit chastised him for coveting a crown
that was not meant for him, and prophesied that he would get wounded in some
misadventure and be dismissed from the Quest. I realized that the sweat lodge was
a test, but of what? I wished I that a hermit would come along and explain. Roger
gave me encouraging looks, as if to say "Just be yourself, Jake, and you'll be
fine." Fortunately for me, being myself meant being a bit exhibitionist, so it
turned me on to be the object of their collective gaze.

	The heat got to us, so we went outside and wrestled each other in the
snow. It was playtime, with guilt-free groping, some of it quite intimate, just like
our boyish games in the sauna. Dark Eagle stood aloof, cooling his body with
handfuls of snow, but he didn't disapprove. We traded partners and rolled
together in snowy embraces, until each of us fondled all the others. During my
turn with Roger, he whispered in my ear, "You're a fun guy, Jake, that's all they
want from you, so keep it up."

	Ass-grabbing continued in the sweat lodge. I knew that these guys weren't
gay, but they were open-minded when it came to horseplay. I made the rounds
and got groped by all of them, and I wasn't shy about groping back. It didn't
bother me, or them, that I was acting gay.

      The exception was Dark Eagle, who kept himself aloof. Everyone
respected that he had a different role to play. When it was time to return to the
cabin, Dark Eagle told me that I lived up to my name. It dawned on me that he
was my hermit, explaining to me the meaning of the sweat lodge. "Living up to
my name" was oracular, though, a riddle, like the oracles of Apollo at Delphi. I
hadn't a clue what he meant.

	Back in the cabin, our boxers were wet, but Dark Eagle gave us bath
towels to wear. He went to his bedroom, and returned fully clothed in ceremonial
deerskin, with an elaborate eagle-feathered headdress, and beaded moccasins. He
called us together in a circle by the fireplace, where we sat Indian-style, except
that we each had the luxury of a cushion. Dark Eagle placed me directly across
from him. Roger sat at his right side. I sat between Peter Brave Heart and Matt
Asseban, my partners in the sweat lodge. Dark Eagle told us to get closer in the
circle. "Your arms and legs much touch the men on each side of you," he said.

	At Dark Eagle's signal, Jim Beaver Trail went around the circle
distributing a tray of whisky in tumblers. Steve Waabooz followed with a bowl of
pie-shaped peyote-chips. It was a most informal communion ritual. The guys
cracked jokes about getting high on peyote, as a reward for putting up with the
awful taste of these boiled cactus-chips. They looked like Mexican blue chips, but
thicker and fleshy. "How many should we take?" Jim Asseban asked.

	"Take three for the initiation ceremony, but a 'two spirits' ceremony will
follow, so take at least six each," Dark Eagle said. "Jake, you should start with
four. After the initiation ceremony, you can have more if your body accepts
them."

	The boys were right. The peyote tasted bitter. "That's what the whisky is
for," Jim said. "Chew it to a paste first, and wash it down with whisky." By the
time I managed four, the others had swallowed six.

      Dark Eagle lit the peace-pipe, the "calumet," he called it, smoked and
passed it round the circle, beginning with Roger. The calumet circulated three
times. By the third round, everyone seemed eager to help his neighbor with the
pipe. We got giddy and handsy, touching each other. The ceiling seemed to float
toward me.

      Dark Eagle stood up. This was the signal for giddiness to end, at least for
the moment. He chanted a prayer to the Great Spirit, in Ojibwe. Each time he
changed a line of the prayer, the others repeated it. I did my best to keep up. Peter
and Matt took turns translating the prayer into English for me. That's why I was
seated between them. They were experts at translating Ojibwe. This is what I
remember from the prayer:

	Great Spirit, we thank you for the blessings of friendship.
	We are called Waabooz, of the Zagaakwaandegowiniwag band.
	Our people are Ashibaabe. We belong to the Chippewa.
	You led our people on the Ashibaabe Trail.
	From the ocean to the Land of Thick Evergreens,
	Where deer play in the meadow and grain grows in the water.
	We thank you for Jake Two Spirits.
	By means of this ritual, he is joining our tribe.
	We thank you for Roger Deer Trail, who brought him to us.
	We thank you for Peter Brave Heart and Matthew Asseban.
	They are teaching the meaning of our ritual to Jake Two Spirits.
	We thank you for Jim Beaver Trail for serving this excellent whisky.
	We thank you for Steve Waabooz for serving the peyote.

Dark Eagle looked around the circle to make sure that everyone had been
included in the prayer. Then he continued:

	We lift up Jake Two Spirits, he of the warrior's body.
	Roger Deer Trail named him well.
	Great Spirit, we thank you for the blessings of friendship.
	We thank you for Jake Two Spirits, a member of the Waabooz.

	"That's the end of the prayer," Dark Eagle said. "The ceremony isn't over
until each of you has welcomed Jake into our tribe."

	We helped each other up, and walked around the room, woozily.
Kaleidoscopic colors blazed in the fireplace. Dark Eagle's body was bathed in a
color canon of light. The elders were radiant as angels. Matt Asseban was first to
embrace me. He yanked away my bath towel, more like a mischievous demon. "I
liked it better the way you looked in the sweat lodge," he said. I made no attempt
to retrieve the towel. Everyone copped a feel and stole a kiss. The boundary
between greeting and groping was a blur. I sported a hard-on that wouldn't
subside. The other guys did, too, but they had the advantage of a towel. Dark
Eagle approached me, and quietly asked how I felt. High as a kite, I said, and
feeling fine.

	Dark Eagle called us back to the circle. This time I sat nude between Peter
Brave Heart and Matt Asseban. They fondled my inner thighs on each side. Jim
Beaver Trail and Steve Waabooz circulated with more whisky and peyote. The
other guys took two peyote chips, but Dark Eagle said I should take four. We
exchanged giddy jokes about our erections while we ingested the peyote. I lay
back with one elbow on the floor, and stretched out my legs, as if to show off my
eight-inch throbbing cock. It got a few laughs, but more admiration. I spread my
legs apart and raised my knees, to show off a bit of ass. That got me some wolf-
whistles. Dark Eagle seemed pleased.

	Dark Eagle stood up. Everyone quieted down. I struggled to sit, but Jim
Beaver Trail and Steve Waabooz held me in place. "Now we come to the 'two-
spirits' ceremony," he announced. "It's to recognize the truth of Jake Two
Spirits's name. Roger Deer Trail named him well. He was the first to recognize
two spirits in Jake. His Chippewa-white-man duality is a sign of something
deeper. Jake has a masculine spirit, which is dominant in him, but also a feminine
spirit. We saw that in the sweat lodge. Men with two spirits have always been
honored by the Chippewa. They have been our medicine men, prophets, tribal
counselors, artisans, and interpreters of dreams, including dreams we haven't had
yet. The Great Spirit has given him gifts that are unknown to us, and perhaps even
to him. The signs are in the ambiguous sexuality of his warrior's body."

      At last I had my hermit. Dark Eagle explained the meaning of the sweat
lodge, and the ritual that came after. Under the influence of our booster-doses of
peyote, "gay" and "straight" categories disappeared. Peter Brave Heart fondled
my scrotum and perineum, and Matt Asseban pinched my nips, while Dark Eagle
chanted an impromptu prayer. The others repeated each line, and Peter and Matt
whispered the translation in my ear:

	Great Spirit, we lift up Jake Two Spirits.
	Earth Mother, we lift up Jake Two Spirits.
	We've received the gift of peyote, gateway between earth and sky.
	The sky floats around us in brilliant colors.
	Jake Two Spirits has shown us his male spirit:
	A warrior's body in Your image, Great Spirit.
	Jake Two Sprits has not shown us his female spirit.


Taking their cue from the chant, Peter Brave Heart and Matt Asseban seized my
knees and spread frog-legged me. All eyes gazed on the provocative display of
my ass.


	A seductive body is Your image, Earth Mother.
	Enter him now, Great Spirit, through the gift of peyote,
	The gateway between earth and sky.
	Enter him now, Earth Mother, through the gift of peyote,
	The gateway between earth and sky.
	Let the female spirit dance in this warrior's body.

Inspired by the chant, Peter Brave Heart inserted a lubed finger into my asshole.
Matt Asseban followed suit. They finger-fucked my ass in harmony, and
whispered the translated chant in my ear. The moment seemed timeless. One by
one, I looked each of the other guys in the eye. Their faces radiated multicolored
halos. Peter and Matt removed their fingers, but held me in place with my asshole
on display. The chant continued:

	Great Spirit, grant us your warrior's lust for Jake's female spirit.
	We've received the gift of peyote, gateway between earth and sky.
	The sky floats around us in brilliant colors.
	Jake Two Spirits is ready for sacrifice.
	Open the gateway to Jake Two Sprits.


    My body was laid out as if on an altar; my mind trapped in a borderless web
of visions. Closing my eyes, a liquefaction of unnamable lurid colors swirled like
the cosmos before Creation. I blurted out three random strands of peyote-induced
prophecy, spoken in the Ojibwe language. I opened my eyes to find Dark Eagle
kneeling between my legs, still dressed in ceremonial deerskin. He told me (and
the others) that Great Spirit has spoken through me, in an ancient form of Ojibwe.
He translated Great Spirit's words:

	"The cosmos is as it was. Creation is a dream in the mind of the Great
	 Spirit."

	"Body and mind are one. There is no duality."
	"Free will is an illusion. There is no free will in the dreams of Great
	 Spirit."

In retrospect, it seems to me that these utterances were one-third peyote, one-third
Ojibwe, and one-third Calvino, an unnatural pedigree. They could have come
from Invisible Cities, had Kublai Khan's empire extended to North America: Italo
Calvino with a Chippewa tinge. Even so, I can't account for my speech in a
language that was unknown to me at the time. Maybe Great Spirit spoke to
Calvino, without the aid of peyote.

	 The giddiness of my Chippewa friends gave way to wonder. They
hastened to cover my body with a red-green-brown-blue ceremonial blanket, as
intricate in design as the kaleidoscopic colors of my peyote-visions. It seems that
Great Spirit chose to reveal himself through Jake Two Spirits in prophecy, not in
the sexual orgy that the guys had prepared for. My body-attendants, Peter Brave
Heart and Matt Asseban, helped me into Dark Eagle's rocking-chair. They sat
fanned out in a semicircle, with Dark Feather opposite me. The peyote-spirit had
taken a philosophical turn in all of us.

	"Great Spirit is still in me, but he's finished speaking, at least for now," I
said. "I remember saying some words, without understanding."

	"The sign of a prophecy is that it must have an interpreter," Dark Eagle
said.

	"The prophecy made sense in a strange way," I said, "but what does one
do with it?"

	"When a Shaman utters an oracle, it's out of his hands," Dark Eagle said.
"It's up to the man who hears it to figure out what it means to him. Prophecy
doesn't have practical applications like reducing a boil on the skin, or rescuing a
cow from a bog, or predicting the next tornado. All that matters is that Great
Spirit reveals Himself."

	I rocked in the rocker. We sat together in silence, each of us visioning the
colors that Great Spirit had chosen for us. "Our visions are as abstract as sex is
specific," I said. "There is nothing to color. In the liquefied chaomos of color,
there is no boundary between prophecy and sex." I unwrapped my blanket and
bared my naked body. "Great Spirit says I must release the Chippewa elders from
the grip of their visions."

	Dark Eagle stood up. He put birch-wood into the fire, which sparkled and
popped as it lapped brittle bark. He took Roger's hand, and let him to his
bedroom. A minute later, Dark Eagle and Roger emerged dressed in winter coats.
They went outside to chop wood in the afternoon sun. "It would be wrong for us
to see this," he said.

	"This must be a comic moment," I said to Peter Brave Heart, Matt
Asseban, Jim Beaver Trail, and Steve Waabooz. I felt like an austere professor
who used to announce, "Now we will joke!" "Our time together must be
carnivalian," I said. Thirty minutes earlier, they were ready to bang me. Now they
looked at me in shocked disbelief, like timid students in a German classroom.

	I thought of a way to melt the ice. "Tell you what, boys," I said, "I'll take
you on in order of cock size, smallest dick first, then on to the largest. The last
shall be first, and the first last. Size matters, but not the way you think it does.
You all get together and decide the line-up." I laid the ceremonial blanket on the
floor and smoothed it out. I distributed the pillows at random on the blanket, and
lay in wait while the guys huddled by the fireplace.

	Serious turned silly when they compared cock-size, fondling each other
with gusto. I think these guys are all straight, but the peyote-spirit had erased all
distinctions between gay and straight. Two guys engaged in a jovial dispute about
their place on the cock-size hierarchy. Matt Asseban inverted male vanity,
claiming that his cock was smaller than Jim Beaver Trail's. Jim pulled Matt's
loose foreskin over his glans, and said that Matt's cock is longer when the
foreskin is counted. Foreskin shouldn't count, Matt said. Jim begged to differ.
Peter Brave Heart and Steve Waabooz settled the quarrel in Jim's favor.

	The line-up was decided. If you must know the score it was Peter Brave
Heart 6.0, Jim Beaver Trail 7.0, Matt Asseban 7.0 + overhanging foreskin, and
Steve Waabooz 7.5. The next question was whether or not to use condoms. "I
vote for bareback." "Let's play it safe. I vote for condoms." "Shouldn't that be up
to Jake?" "Maybe he'll let us decide." "If we all want bareback maybe Jake will
give in." "Why can't we each make our own decision?" "Safe sex is safer."
"Bareback feels better." "Do we even have condoms?" I didn't keep track of who
said what. They reminded me of the Four Daughters of God debating whether a
man should be punished by Justice or cradled in Mercy. If they had been gay I'd
have made them use condoms. Since they were straight and inexperienced, I
decided it would be safe to let them breed me. It was amusing to hear them debate
among themselves about something that was already decided. Interesting that
these guys never mentioned breeding as an issue. Man-to-man breeding is a gay
obsession, something straight guys don't think about.

	 I lay on the ceremonial blanket: sacred space even in carnival times-
especially then. When Peter Brave Heart approached sheepishly, I pulled him into
an embrace. "This is a Chippewa ritual," I said. "You must all stay on the blanket,
and you must fondle each other and participate in sex. You're not spectators." The
peyote-spirit allowed them the freedom to do so. I didn't want them telling stories
about the time they fucked a gay guy. The best way to prevent that is to assign
them body-kissing and cock-sucking roles as part of the story. That would keep
these straight boys quiet about what happened. Peter and I lay together in a 69 for
mutual fellatio that soon evolved into rimming. Jim, Matt, and Steve did the same
in six-legged jumble, in comic imitation of lovers getting ready to mate.

      When I was sure that they were into each other, I let Peter mission me
with his "breeding tube," as I called it. The boys were delighted at my briskness
in whisking aside their desultory debate about condoms. We lay on our sides,
Peter behind my behind, which he fucked intercursally. He came, not without
groaning on my part and moaning on his, when I let him mount me doggy-style.
"Off to the shower with you," I said when we were finished. When Jim fucked
me, I told Matt and Steve to take turns sucking my cock or kissing his ass,
depending on whatever anatomical parts were available.

	Umberto Eco, in one of his many books (I think it might be Travels in
Hyperreality), published an essay on pornography in which he says that its
signature feature is unedited, uncritical blow-by-blow description, which (I agree)
is boringly predictable. In a porn narrative, you can't get from point A to point G
without also covering points B, C, D, E. and F, even though those five intervening
points have no thematic interest and add nothing to the story. Taking my cue from
Eco, suffice it to say that one by one, four Chippewa elders were sated with sex
by the time it was their turn to retire for the shower. I went with Steve to the
shower, where we cared for each other's bodies just like two gay men would do.

	On the way home, Roger said that an event of political import had
occurred. He asked if I knew what that was. "Sure, I became an Ojibwe," I said.

	"That's true, but that's not the most important thing," he said.

	"I got fucked by four Chippewa elders?" I asked.

	"No, that's not it," Roger laughed.

	"What, then?" I asked.

	"Dark Eagle pronounced you a Chippewa Shaman, and the elders
confirmed it. You'll be invited to Ojibwe councils, where all the important
decisions are made."

	"Because I had sex with four elders?" I asked.

	"Because of the Ojibwe prophecy," Roger said. "Sex had nothing to do
with it. You could have refused the elders and told them to go home, and they still
would have recognized you as their Shaman, along with Dark Eagle. You didn't
have to sleep with them."

	"Well, as for that, Roger," I said, "you sure know how to show a guy a
good time on a date."