Calendar Mystery 11: NEANISKOS
Characters:
Frank Zanetti, 24, detective sergeant
Sebastian Ericson, 19, artist
Father Andrew, pastor in the Church of St. John the Beloved
This chapter is for Tim. It's mainly about Frank's courtship of Sebastian, but to answer a question from another reader: Big Friendly' is a name given to Lake Superior by people living in Duluth. Big Friendly' was first used by a radio personality in the early 1960s. The nickname stuck. It's a dialect peculiarity; part of local color'. So far as I'm aware, no one outside Duluth refers to the lake in this way. As for the psychological motive behind the name, it's a special type of euphemism: something dangerous is given an affectionate name to lessen its fearful impact. A bear, ursus major', in Germanic was called Brownie', from which English gets the word bear'. Hamlet refers to the ghost of his father as Old Mole' and a fellow in the cellarage', deflecting fear by deconstructing the apparition to a real-life actor popped up from a trapdoor in the Globe theater. The internet will fail you on this one. Google-search euphemism' and you'll find examples of polite' language but nothing like Big Friendly' or Old Mole'.
Goran: goranbixo@aol.com
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Thursday, September 17, 2020 marked the start of a seven-week Ingmar Bergman film festival at the Student Union. Frank was a Bergman fan. He invited Sebastian to go with him to all seven films, beginning with `Virgin Spring'.
"It's one of Bergman's top three films," Frank said. "It's based on an old Swedish ballad about a young farmgirl named Karin Tore. Her father, Per Tore, dispatches her on an errand, to bring candles to the local church. On the way, Karen is accosted by two herdsmen and a youth. The herdsmen rape her and murder her. Then they take lodging in Per Tore's farm, being too stupid to suspect that this was the home of the virgin whom they killed. The rape-murder comes to light when they sell Karin's clothing to her mother. Per Tore takes a revenge that is pagan in its brutality, but later makes amends by building a chapel on the site of Karin's murder. This is where a spring bubbles up as a sign of her sanctity. That's it. The movie started a new genre: rape-revenge films, although at least one of them was only a `Virgin Spring' rip-off."
The film was held in the main lecture hall in the Biology building. At the entrance, Bergman fans were accosted by a demonstration of third-wave feminists carrying signs reading Bergman Rape-Apologist', Shut Down Patriarchy', and messages that bore no relation to the film: End Wage Gap', Our Bodies, Our Rights', and so on. The demonstration was led by Third Wave', Sixteen', a band of feminists organized by Marsha Newsome, the Assistant Dean for Equity in the Student Life' office on campus. The demonstrators failed in their immediate goal—to cancel the Bergman film festival—but they succeeded in their secondary goal, to establish `Third Wave' as a pressure-group on campus and in the city.
This was a first for Duluthians: A demonstration against a film festival. They weren't sure how to react. Some went home. Others walked through the wall of demonstrators and found seats in the lecture hall. Frank was the only person who tried to talk to them. He said that `Virgin Spring' was a film about how rape brings a terrible revenge, and he tried to summarize the story, but the feminists shouted him down. Marsha Newsome gave him a look of sociopathic hatred. She made a crude remark about Frank's "sleazy little friend, the privileged white male hermaphrodite."
"I'll never understand how `male privilege' works," Frank mused. "Do you feel privileged, Sebastian?"
"Only when I'm with you," Sebastian replied.
As the film began, the Third Wave interrupted by blowing horns and banging serving-spoons upon kitchen pans. The sound track was in Swedish, with English subtitles, but the noise from outside the auditorium was a huge distraction. Frank wasn't in uniform, but he went to the lobby, showed the demonstrators his badge, and told them to exit the building. Taken by surprise on this occasion, the feminists complied, but Frank knew that next time it wouldn't be so easy. "Banned by fundamentalists in Dallas in 1960. Almost banned by feminists in Duluth sixty years later," he said of `Virgin Spring'.
Afterward, he drove Sebastian back to his boardinghouse on the westside. As they parted, Frank said: "Look, Sebastian, I've got a book at home that you might like. It's about Bergman. It's called The Silence of God'. Very existential. I can bring it with me to the Bergman film next Friday, if you want to come with. I think they're showing Wild Strawberries'. After that, `The Seventh Seal'."
"I'd like that," Sebastian said.
Goran Bixo, the author, asked me to assure the Reader that when Frank said if you want to come with', this is neither a typo nor a grammatical error. In Swedish, sentences often end in prepositions, a dialect feature that diffused to English in northern Minnesota. Even though Frank is an Italian-American, he says things like if you want to come with'.
Sebastian had never been a `best friend' before. He liked the attention and was drawn to Frank's wild good looks. As for his package, for most guys it's what's up front that counts, but when he fantasied about Frank, his backside won all the points.
The next day, Friday, marked the start of another regular date for Frank and Sebastian. They attended Friday evening open swim' sessions in the college gym. Frank always wore a jockstrap and a dark red bikini that accentuated his package'. Mostly he swam laps, so his bikini display was rarely seen, but when Sebastian saw it, his gaze fixed on Frank's backside. Sebastian didn't own a jockstrap, so Frank gave him one of his. Over the jockstrap, Sebastian wore form-fitting shorts, and over that, loose swim trunks that distracted attention from the slenderness of his figure.
Every Friday evening in the pool, Frank and Sebastian shared a lane roped off for swimming laps. They started from opposite sides of the pool and met in the middle. Whenever Frank got to the side of the pool, he somersaulted under water and sprung with his feet for a kick-off. Sebastian imitated his technique. They synchronized their speed such that they always met in the middle of the lane, and performed their kick-offs at the same time. Other folks in the pool saw them as part of the scenery, their synchronicity a pleasant diversion.
Afterward, in the shower, their familiarity was limited to mutual glances. Straight men do that, too, sizing each other up/ For Frank and Sebastian, the duration was longer and both men welcomed the male gaze' that feminists find so creepy. Other guys in the locker room sized them up as an item' and left it at that. Is there life after high school? Sebastian learned that it gets better.
Next morning, Sebastian got an email from Frank: "Thanks for your company last night, Sebastian! Tied up today. Robbery at Hershberger's downtown. Free for church Sunday morning. I can pick you up in my patrol car. Let me know, Frank."
Sebastian sent a quick reply: "Sunday morning will be great! See you then."
It wasn't a `date', but close enough. Frank wore his uniform, as he always did in church because Father Andrew asked him to. He personified Safety. Folks in the congregation liked it. Sebastian sat between Frank and Chris in a pew near the back of the church. The testosterone level was so high that he felt a lump in his throat and he wondered if his companions felt the same. It moved him that these two super-guys wanted to be seen with the likes of him.
Father Andrew preached a sermon that would have got him excommunicated from most other churches. It was about some verses in the Gospel of Mark that had dropped out of the canonical Bible but were recently discovered in a letter by Clement of Alexandria in the second century AD. The passage related how Jesus raised a young man from the dead. His name was unknown, so Father Andrew called him Neaniskos', the Greek word for young man'. After the lad had been raised from the dead, Jesus spent a week with him at his home in Bethany. They slept together on the seventh night of his visit. Imagine the scene: Jesus and Neaniskos in a six-day courtship, followed by consummation on the seventh day. "In the Gospel of John, this story morphed into the tale of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead at his funeral, at the request of his sisters Mary and Martha," Father John said.
"Afterwards," Father Andrew continued, "Neaniskos followed Jesus as one of his disciples. They were lovers. We find Neaniskos again in the Garden of Gethsemane. When the priests came to the garden with a squadron of Roman soldiers, the disciples ran away, except for Neaniskos, who stayed at Jesus's side. When one of the Roman soldiers laid hands on Neaniskos, he escaped by stepping out of his tunic and ran away naked. After the Crucifixion, when Mary Magdalene and the other Marys visited the sepulcher, the only person there was Neaniskos, who told them that Jesus was alive, having come back from the dead."
That was Father Andrew's story about Neaniskos. When he got to the part about Jesus and Neaniskos as lovers, Sebastian felt Frank's hand on his hand. He responded by clasping Frank's hand. He turned to look at Frank, but Frank looked straight ahead at the pastor. Sebastian looked straight ahead, too, but their hand-holding continued until the sermon was over.
After the church service, Chris invited Frank and Sebastian to his place for Sunday dinner in the Victorian farmhouse. In the kitchen, they pitched in, helping with salad, potatoes, and veggies. Chris told them to lay four place-settings on the dining-room tale. The fourth man was Father Andrew, who arrived wearing blue-jeans, a red and black flannel shirt, and running shoes.
"If it was just three of us, our scene would turn raunchy, so I asked Father Andrew to give it a philosophical turn," Chris joked. Sebastian was surprised how youthful Father Andrew looked. Forties? He looked younger.
"About the same age as Jesus when he fell in love with Neaniskos," Father Andrew quipped.
"How old was Neaniskos?" Frank wondered.
"Nineteen, I would guess," Father Andrew said. "About the same age as our friend Sebastian."
"Father Andrew, do you believe that the historical Jesus really fell for Neaniskos?" Chris asked.
"I do," Father Andrew said. "But it does it matter? The important question is, `What does it mean?'"
"What DOES it mean, Father?" Sebastian asked.
"The best way for me to learn what it means is to ask you guys," Father Andrew replied.
"For me, it means that it's natural be to gay," Chris said. "Maybe that's why the `Bethany passage' dropped out of the Gospel of Mark."
"That's possible, as far as it goes," Father Andrew replied. "But the `Bethany' scene didn't disappear altogether. It resurfaces in altered form in the Gospel of John, where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead."
"How do you know it's the same story?" Frank asked.
"Both scenes take place in Bethany, in the home of a wealthy family where no father is present. So, Jesus plays a dual role, as a father-figure and a lover. And if we compare the `Bethany' tradition in the gospels of Mark and John, we find the earmarks of an oral tradition."
"How so?" Chris, Frank, and Sebastian asked in a collective voice.
"Well, in the Bethany scene in Mark, one sister asked Jesus to resurrect Neaniskos. In the gospel of John we find two sisters, Mary and Martha, who call on Jesus to help Lazarus. It's a principle in the study of folktales: `Wherever there are two or three, originally there was only one'. This implies that Neaniskos (in Mark) was earlier, and Lazarus (in John) comes in as a later version of the story."
"Which explains why the Neaniskos story was suppressed," Frank said.
"Possibly," Father Andrew said. "But the Gospel of Mark is a fairly beleaguered text. The ending is missing, and later manuscripts suppled two different endings. Bits and pieces of Mark went missing when the text was copied over time. Not necessarily to get rid of Neaniskos."
"Back to basics," Frank said. "I think that Jesus loved Neaniskos because Neaniskos needed him to."
Chris looked at Frank and Sebastian and nodded knowingly. Both men blushed. Father Andrew apprised the situation. "Why, Frank!" he exclaimed, "That's the most profound insight I've ever heard about Jesus and the neaniskos. Yes, Jesus can be whatever a man needs him to be if his heart is sincere."
Chris admired Father Andrew for the way he deflected embarrassment from Sebastian. Frank could take it, but Sebastian? He wasn't sure.
Sebastian idolized Frank, but doubted that romance was possible. Frank was out of his league. Now, he wondered. Maybe Frank is like Jesus and he, Sebastian, is Neaniskos.
"I must thank you guys for giving me the inspiration for next Sunday's sermon," Father Andrew said. "I've already got the title. It will be `Rounding Up Your Lover'."
"We'll be there next Sunday, Father," Frank said. "Won't we, Sebastian?"
"We will," Sebastian replied.
The next evening, Monday, Frank spent the night with Chris in a doubled-up sleeping bag in the loft of Sandy Point lighthouse. Frank acted out his identity as a `top', which necessitated them taking a rinse in the cold waters of Big Friendly in order to cleanse their bodies. Whether for sleep or for a second romp in the sack, the tale doesn't tell.
In any event, Frank felt the need to prove the might of his sword' on Chris's body. Back in the days of King Arthur, one knight proved' his strength `on the body' of another by jousting with a lance or a sword, Sir Lancelot coming out on top, except on occasions when he was bewitched by an ambisexual sorcerer, or a sorceress like Morgan Le Fey. Of course, these jousts can be interpreted as allegories of sexual encounters, by readers who need them to be.
But let us draw the curtain on certain anatomical details. If the only time Frank was permitted to fuck Chris was when Goran Bixo, the author, chose to write about it, their sex life would have been wretched, which it wasn't. Getting laid was the sine qua non', but on this occasion, Frank was Lancelot bewitched', wobbling on his high horse. The lighthouse was a hermitage', the setting for their discourse, and Chris played the part of the anchorite, a father confessor' experienced in gay sex, for in The Quest of the Holy Grail', anchorites are always former knights who had joined a monastic order. In the fictional Quest', if not in real life, this was the retirement plan for knights who managed to survive a career of battles and tournaments: life in a hermitage, giving absolution and advice for younger knights who needed it.
So much, then, for our playful conceit, offered in place of an explicit account of how Chris wrapped his legs around the thighs of his `Lancelot', accepting the gift of his nine-inch ramrod while waves crashed against rocks on the shore of Big Friendly
. Let's open the curtain on their conversation `in media res', at the moment when, after much hesitation, Frank declared: "Sebastian is after my ass."
"He told you that?" Chris asked.
"Not in so many words," Frank replied.
"What do YOU want, Frankie," Chris asked.
"Don't know," Frank said after some hesitation.
It wouldn't have been a big deal, were it not for the fact that Frank was a virgin, which is not quite the same thing as identifying as a `top'.
"Sebastian's just a kid," Chris said. "Not even twenty, and he's just found his magic slippers. He'll be moving on to other flowers in the garden, like a hornet."
"I know that," Frank replied.
"In his own almost-albino way, Sebastian is not unattractive," Chris conceded. "Not that looks matter between friends; but as Portia said about one of her French suitors in Merchant of Venice': God made him; therefore, let him pass as a man'."
"Sebastian's a `fem', but he's not a fop," Frank countered. "You're right about one thing, Doc. I never pictured myself falling for a fem, but I enjoy his company. I like being with him."
"Sebastian is an artistic genius. One day, he'll be famous. I'm sure of that," Chris said. "He's more than the sum of his parts."
"That's part of the attraction," Frank said.
"But there's more," Chris added, reading Frank's mind. "In a way, he depends on you, even though he's independent-minded. Just the sort of guy you get drawn to. Serve and protect.' Or is it Protect and Service'?"
"Opposites attract. Isn't that what you always say, Doc?" Frank asked.
"Opposites attract, within a certain range. That's the way I put it," Chris replied. "It's not for me to say whether he should be the guy who busts your cherry."
"Some guys think that Sebastian's a bit creepy. Even gay guys. I've seen it in their eyes," Frank said. "It's different when you get to know him."
"All the more reason why you stand up for him," Chris responded. "Anyways, you promised Vera you'd take him in hand. We both did, but it's not me that interests him."
"Hmmmm."
"You're a man of reason, Frankie, just like Amik Ziibaang says: Reason personified'. Count up the pros and cons. Pro: artistic genius. Pro: friendship. Pro: dependent on you, but minded to be independent. Pro: promises to Vera. Con: slender almost-albino; not your type based on guys you've had sex with before. Con: likely to leave you sooner rather than later, although if he does, he's sure to come back. Con: a fem' in appearance and manner."
"Maybe fem' isn't really a con', at least not in this case," Frank replied. "If Sebastian was a bottom, I wouldn't be tempted, but knowing he's a top, when I'm with him, I'm dazzled. Mesmerized by a cobra getting ready to strike."
"That's only because you're not a narcissist, Frankie," Chris said. "You're not looking for Apollo. You're not looking for a mirror image of yourself. Your decision boils down to logic. Either you want Sebastian, or you don't. If you want him, what more is there to decide?"
"Thanks, Doc ... I think," Frank's voice trailed off.
"Now that you've made up your mind, you should tell him," Chris advised. "Let him know that his dream will come true."
"I can do that," Frank replied. "We're going to `Wild Strawberries' on Thursday. The Bergman film festival."
Thursday, Sept. 24, "Wild Strawberries"
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