It was not always true That I could say the truth, But what I saw Some dangerous mornings
Left me with a dread of the sun.
All I had to do Was stand still And the earth rolled under me Taking me where
It was decided I had to go.
But not by me, No. If anyone had asked I would have told them so, Crying. And the times I did
No one listened.
The loom, the web: the intersections -- of moments, of personalities, of words, of bodies. Not in the beginning, perhaps. But later. In the middle of things.
Tom wondered how they could work so harmoniously together to create such great disharmonies.
Daylight was falling with the sun as it fell behind the far-away mountains. Tom looked around wondering if Federico would remember.
It seemed like he didn't when he came back. He was bright and gay: his affectionate self, but he did not act in the least way like there was anything even a little special. Yes, he looked good, but he always looked good; anyhow, he was not even dressed as if he were aware, even a little bit, even for a moment, that it was a special night.
Tom had been disciplined enough by Federico's fluid temperament not to show his disappointment and certainly not to say anything.
So he had been companionable through dinner, but not exuberant. For fear of hitting a forced note he did not try to be.
Federico noticed suppression in him, nevertheless.
What is it that troubles you?
Tom looked at him, torn between two equally unpleasant choices.
Tom looked down. He was unable to keep looking at Federico. He felt his gaze piercing him, and he was frightened.
Look at me, Federico said.
Tom raised his eyes slowly and guardedly, stiffly, if the attitude of stiffness can be attributed to the eyes.
You haven't succeeded yet, have you? Federico said, gently taking hold of Tom by his jaw, very gently, tenderly, with real love and dedication to him.
Federico was bent on making Tom into the man he knew Tom could be, the man he wanted him to be.
Tom knew that, too. He was sure of it. He was grateful to Federico for it, and he loved him for it, and he hoped, always, to live up to Federico's expectations, which he knew he was unlikely to be able to do without Federico's help.
It's hard. I have a lot to overcome, a lot of emotional landscape I have to flatten.
I know, Federico said. And right now you thought that I forgot and you were sulking.
As Federico spoke he passed his outspread thumb and index finger down from Tom's jaw along the semi-circumference of his neck to his clavicles and then he took hold of one of Tom's nipples through the black cotton of his tightly stretched t-shirt.
Tom looked at him.
It's painful, the way I need you.
It's that strong?
It's that strong.
Not strong enough.
Not strong enough?
No, Federico said. Not strong enough. Not so strongly that you are able to forget about yourself.
Tom was silent.
Federico pressed his lips to Tom's and touched them with his tongue. It was like turning a key in a lock. Tom's lips parted. Federico entered with his tongue and touched the roof cavern and slipped around the ivory teeth.
Tom felt himself surrendering, submitting, yielding. He became obedient as Federico took him and entered him and rode him like a magnificent equestrian.
Tom lay in his arms later, smiled, and said, Thank you.
Thank you, Federico said, smiling, too. You are amazingly beautiful.
Tom rose, swelling his slender torso with a deep, circulating in-breath. He touched Federico's cheek gently with his soft fingertips and moved a feather's breath near his lips.
I love you, he said.
It turns me on so much to say that.
Their breaths yielded to kisses and they held each other close in the kisses until they separated and fell asleep. But in the morning they looked into each other's eyes again and felt the sun rise again.
The radio was playing Ethel Waters singing Here I Go Again as Tom sat looking at Federico as they both sipped coffee.
Do you know what I think? Tom said.
What? Federico said.
I think I want us to formalize our roles. I want to be your slave. I want you to be my master.
Being a slave does not mean you don't have any wants, Tom added, catching himself in a contradiction and needing to explain it.
No.
No. It means that it is irrelevant, whatever I want. In order to accomplish enslavement I must become transcendent. I must transcend everything I associate with myself. I can only want what my master wants with all the intensity of his spirit driving me. I must become a consciousness attuned to my master rather than attuned to myself. I am, only because he is. The only chance for happiness is complete submission, self-obliteration. It's very religious.
We'll see, Federico said, how religious it is. Go take a shower and make yourself presentable, Federico said slapping him on the rump.
Yes, sir, Tom said, taking their coffee cups to the sink and leaving them there.
Freshly shaved and wearing only a black silk thong and silver nipple rings, Tom stood at attention, facing Federico and gazed into his eyes and felt him pouring in.
Federico was opening a space inside Tom that had never existed before and filling it.
Tom smiled with a joy that overpowered him.
Their lips met.
Once, when God was not looking, Lucifer slipped into the gear-house of heaven hoping to see how God made everything run, how the separate parts of the creation could interact with each other and create the complexity of the world. Lucifer loved complexity. God did not. He was far more intrigued by simplicity.
So it was not in ignorance or from inattention that God let Lucifer slip into his gear-house. God was sly. He knew Lucifer would come away with nothing. Despite his intellectual power, his tirelessness, his awful ambition, Lucifer still would know nothing. It was in his nature not to know. That is what made things complicated.
Once, after Lucifer had lost himself inside, absorbed in trying to figure out how the machinery worked, God swiveled the huge wheel in the door to the gear-house, like the wheel locking a vault, and shut Lucifer into the gear house.
Lucifer felt a strange shiver of energy in his wings, and they stiffened, as did the rest of his body and he felt a desire for God unlike any desire that God, according to his strictures, wanted to cultivate.
But God's strictures, like the scriptures that set them forth, did not give a hint of what he was really about. He ached with frustration with his unsatisfied love for the creation. It was an erotic love, and he did not understand it. He had not realized he was creating such a bond consequent on creating the race of man. It was his world. He had given it away. Now he coveted it.
Of all the angels playing and singing in devotional dances around him, it was only Lucifer of all of them who could see that far into God, who knew that about God. This was the knowledge that cast him on and gave his rebellion fortitude.
Why are you denying the nature of your creation? Lucifer cried to God upon his thrown one dewy misty morning evening when all the stars shone through the firmament and the spirit of divinity infused everything there was.
God smiled quietly at the indecorous nature of his creation without thinking once what it might say about him.
Tom was shivering. He did not see that there was anything sexy about having to stand in the backyard while it was snowing in only a t shirt and jeans.
It was inevitable that he'd come down with a cold. But he did not. Federico said he would not get sick. It was a command as well as an opinion.
And he did not ever mention the episode of standing barefoot in the snow, but somehow his body felt tighter, straighter. He liked the feeling. It made him tingle and he became more unself-conscious than he had ever been. His step when he walked had become firmer, more graceful, more charged with energy.
We are at our best as allies in the conspiracy we wage against us.
Federico could not contain his anger and Tom said no more. He watched silently, stupidly as the sunshine of his presence dimmed behind this dark wind. Explosive gusts were aimed at him and he held his breath waiting for them to pass rather than be drawn into a miasmic chaos confusing and unsettling him.
In one instant, everything can blow away.
It was not very different in the morning. The air was hard to breathe.
Federico had gone off for the day. It seemed like he had. He did not say. He did not say anything about that or about anything else. His silence inactivated Tom's capacity to speak.
Now, Tom was alone and out of touch with that erotic exhilaration that drove him through the day like the tintinnabulation of strong coffee along the strings of the nerves, like a bright pillar of fire leading him.
Federico smiled and the boy's heart turned on. He felt himself drawn to him.
Federico needed a rest from Tom. It had not turned out as he had expected. He felt locked in a role. Although he was alleged to be the master, he was, by that role, forced into the role of serving Tom by being his master.
He took the boy in his arms.
You are beautiful, he said.
The nearness of their lips turned into kisses. He felt the boy melting into him, and he felt himself melting into the boy.
Will you come back to my place? the boy said between kisses.
Yes, Federico said.
They left Benny's and walked with dizzy happiness westward, past Eighth Avenue all the way to the river.
Alan had a small studio on the eighteenth floor. Through glass windows the height of the walls they saw the elephant back of the Hudson as they stood passing a joint back and forth.
Do you have somebody? Alan said, special.
I have somebody, Federico said, who was special, but now I'm not sure.
What do you mean now you're not sure? Alan said, wondering if Federico were saying something about how he was beginning to feel about him.
Just what I said. I have my doubts about whether...but I'm not sure you want to get that involved in what's going on in my life. We did not come back here for that, but...
But nothing, Alan said, taking a gentle hold of Federico's crop of thick and strong almost black hair.
I came back here to know you, in whatever sense of the word.
If I let you kiss me again, Alan said, waiting a beat, casting a deep glance straight into Federico's eyes and smiling with an inviting mouth, will you continue saying what you began?
Strangely, Federico found himself between laughter and tears, quietly amazed and grateful at this manifestation of the human. He leaned over and kissed the boy on the mouth. Alan opened his throat and took Federico's breath deep within him and let it mix within him with his own breath and then breathed the new breath into Federico's lungs and diaphragm.
They could not stop. Kisses led to pawing and clawing and scratching and biting and writhing until the magnificence of their bodies broke in waves of orgasm.
Their breathing subsided and they gazed contentedly at each other.
Now tell me, Alan said.
Federico smiled and moved to kiss him, but Alan put up his palm.
First the story, he said. I remember what happened last time.
There really is no story. I do have a companion. Even before I met you, I began to feel that it was over. Now that I have met you, I know the difference between two ways of feeling.
Does that say anything? Federico said with a self-mocking smile.
Yes, it does, Alan said, touching his cheek and without a shade of mockery in his voice.
Tom joined the gym to get into good shape. To empty his mind. To be fit for the next thing that came. To settle his stomach. To beat despair out of his body the way you beat dirt out of a rug.
But what did getting into good shape mean?
Tom did not know it then, but it meant getting beyond himself.
He was not in bad shape. When Federico left, he started working out again. Tom had begun working out in his teen years. He did it by himself, surreptitiously. After school, in his room, before his parents came home, his sister fixed to the television set in the basement.
Then for a while, he had stopped.
Tom came on as a nerd in gym in high school and college. He was defiantly un-athletic. But alone in front of the mirror, he combed his hair and stretched and tightened his body. He was hungry to catch a glance at the person he wished he were, the person he saw occasionally in the lean, the muscled, the lithe physiques of one boy or another, at school or in the subway, or just out of nowhere.
I'm going to take you beyond yourself, Greg said, suddenly placing his hand on Tom's belly.
Although this sudden, unexpected touch and these words surprised him, Tom did not blinch but proceeded to do as he was being told.
It was his sixth session at the gym, Friday night of the second week, after going three nights a week.
I've been watching you, Greg said. Breathe, and start the work-out again.
Tom raised stiffened legs forty-five degrees and then another forty-five degrees until he could really feel it in his belly.
You describe a perfect right angle, Greg said. Now hold that position as I count to four and then slowly, to my count, let your legs go down to the floor, slowly, keep your toes pointed, feel it in your balls, and then we'll repeat it.
Tom could not see him so intensely were his eyes focused on an invisible beam that extended from them and made them gaze as if inward. He just followed the voice as it led him through a series of grueling and exhilarating exercises and exertions for the next hour.
At the end Tom stood up. Inside, his body felt like the soft tissue was tight and springy like steel. Tom looked at Greg, really seeing him for the first time. He was a work of art.
Greg smiled at him a smile of approval.
Get a shower, he said
As Tom was showering Greg walked in, bronzed from head to toe, naked and smooth and wrought like the marble of one of Michelangelo's heroes.
Not the grand granite rocks baring their stony fronts exposed in a field of snow were so beautiful as his naked chest.
He took the soap Tom was holding and turned him round, first washing his neck and shoulders, then his chest and nipples, massaging him with lather. Holding his belly with one palm, he ran the other palm up and down Tom's back, pushing off where the cliff of his rump begins each time he got there and pushing back upwards, taking Tom to a taller posture every time.
Tom was breathing freely and deeply. From behind Greg soaped his thighs and massaged the fork of his body, cupped his testicles, and slowly worked his way to the cleft and lathered him there and Tom felt his finger enter him.
He held Tom from the inside with his thumb and forefinger.
I will take you beyond yourself, he said, slowly releasing Tom and drilling his hard cock into him.
Tom gasped as he felt himself breaking apart, and the ground fell out from under him.
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