Mystery Calendar 15: SEBASTIAN AND THE QUARTERBACK
Characters:
Sebastian Ericson, 19, artist
Tom Dorsey, 21, quarterback and captain in the college football team
Father Andrew, pastor of the Church of St. John the Beloved
Johnny Cristo, 40s, owner of Cristo's restaurant, near the harbor
This one's for Dave again, with thanks for moral support and comments!
All Saints' Day found our merry crew of companions in church at St. John the Beloved: Chris Josephson, Frank Zanetti, Peter and Simon Red Crow, Vera and Sebastian Ericson. They had outgrown the need to crowd together in a single pew. Sebastian sat by himself at the end of a pew on the opposite side of the sanctuary, because Father Andrew had asked him to help collect the offering. He took a seat near the aisle to which he was assigned.
In the midst of the customary `hymn-sing', Sebastian became aware of a man standing to his right, in the aisle. Sebastian stood so the newcomer could sit to his left. "I have to take offering, so I need the aisle seat," he whispered. Only then did he realize that the newcomer was Tom Dorsey. "Welcome," he said, and shook his hand.
Skip to the sermon.
Father Andrew had promised to follow up his sermon on `Rounding Up Your Lover' with a new one on David and Jonathan. "I've been moved by the Great Spirit to speak about Jonathan and David. We've talked about them before, how they were lovers. How David is the model of warrior-kingship whilst Jonathan is the hero in their love-story. During their farewell meeting at the Ezel Stone, it is clear that David needs to go into exile to survive, and Jonathan gives him permission to leave.
"Greater love hath no man than this: that he give up his life for a friend.' Most people think about war buddies', how one soldier risks his life to save another, but there's another way. Jonathan gives up his life with David. Live without David drove Jonathan a little crazy. He fought like a berserker in battles against Philistines and got killed doing it.
"We've talked about these things, but we haven't talked about `Jonathan's Heroic Fitness', by which I mean his fitness for love, which is the title for my sermon, which I will give you extemporaneously, as the Great Spirit impels me to.
"The Bible gives us a profile of David as handsome and ruddy, an unconventional warrior, a sort of `wild man' in the court of King Saul. We know him by epithets: David the shepherd, the armor-bearer, the harpist, the psalmist, the king's son-in-law, a commander in King Saul's army, and later an exile, and then a king. David is known to us by descriptors and epithets, but in the absence of a physical portrait, Jonathan is known to us by his actions.
"Jonathan's heroic status was already established before David arrived on the scene in King Saul's court. He led his warriors to victory in many battles, but First Samuel describes only one: the battle at Michmash. It's a form of synecdoche, a part for a whole, in which the story of Michmash represents Jonathan's courage in all his battles. Benjamite warriors were also famous as `slingers', a skill that David, as a shepherd, shared with Jonathan.
"The Philistines had massed a great army on a rugged hill called Michmash. King Saul had a much smaller army on an opposite hill, separated from Michmash by a valley. Jonathan knew that his father wasn't much of a military strategist, so he went into action on his own, accompanied by a young armor-bearer.
"One of our gay theologians, Theodore Jennings, says that Jonathan's armor-bearer was also his boy-lover, but he says that about others, too, including David when he was King Saul's armor-bearer. That's unrealistic, but my main objection to Jennings' hypothesis is that it diffuses the love-connection that binds Jonathan to David. In the world of King Saul, Jonathan and David stand out as heroic warriors and lovers.
"Under cover of darkness, Jonathan and his armor-bearer crept up the hill of Michmash. During their ascent, Jonathan defeated a great number of Philistine warriors. His armor-bearer followed and finished them off. When they reached the top of the hill, the Philistines retreated in wild disorder. This was a species of heroic overplus found only in folktale: A hero single- handedly defeats a whole army, slaying hundreds of enemies.
"It should not go without saying that Jonathan was a Benjamite. Warriors from the tribe of Benjamin were famous for military training that taught them to fight ambidextrously. Jonathan could slay an enemy warrior with his left hand as easily as with his right. This explains how he could defeat so many Philistines in their garrison on Michmash."
During this discourse, Father Andrew made eye-contact with twelve or more people in the congregation, as any good preacher would do to give his sermon a conversational tone. Sebastian noted his frequent eye-contact with Tom Dorsey. Was it because Dorsey was a newcomer? Or was it because he was seated with Sebastian? When Father Andrew launched into the final point in his sermon, it was as if he was speaking directly to Dorsey:
"Why did the author of First Samuel select the Michmash story to represent Jonathan in military action? Because the Michmash story is designed to prepare the reader for the love-story of Jonathan and David. Jonathan's triumph at Michmash proves his heroic fitness, his fitness for love."
After the church service, one of the congregants asked Father Andrew: "If David and Jonathan were lovers, who was the top and who the bottom?"
Dorsey cringed, but Father Andrew thought the question was appropriate. "The biblical signs are ambiguous," he said. "When King Saul rebukes Jonathan at the feast of the new moon, he accuses his son of shaming the nakedness of his mother', which might imply that Jonathan was the bottom. When he and David bade farewell at the Ezel Stone, David fell to the ground three times, which some scholars call a sign that David was the bottom. After Jonathan's death in battle, David gives a funeral oration in which he praises Jonathan's love as greater than the love of women', which could be taken either way."
"What do you think, Father?" Dorsey asked.
"I think that at the beginning of their love affair, Jonathan came on to David and his courtship met with a favorable response. Then, as time went by, Jonathan taught David the art and science of archery and they spent time together on military missions. David became the more passionate lover. As for top versus bottom, that sort of thing evolves during a long-term relationship. When gay love turns spiritual, both lovers are willing to compromise on whatever erotic desires they had earlier."
Sebastian had come to church with Vera that morning, but he left with Tom Dorsey in his twenty-year-old Chevy. Tom was not wealthy. "I've heard rumors about rich alumni giving cars and money to football players, but I haven't seen a penny," Tom remarked, and added: "I've got no complaints. I'm on a four-year football scholarship. It's seeing me all the way through to my degree in speech pathology."
"Why speech pathology?" Sebastian wondered.
"I like to help people," Tom replied. "Besides, there's job security. Every school district in the state is required to have at least one speech therapist. Still, I've heard that the number of college men on sports scholarships is less than it used to be."
"A year after Title IX, the college eliminated boxing, fencing, and baseball," Sebastian said. "I heard about that from Chris Josephson. It was early in the 70s. They couldn't recruit enough women into sports, so they evened the male-female ratio by getting rid of male sports. And the ratio in college these days is two girls for every boy," he continued, quoting a Beach Boys song.
"Well, it's not that bad yet," Sebastian smiled.
"Not that bad, unless you consider that gay men are overrepresented. Maybe by ten percent," Tom replied. "If you take gay men out of the equation, then it's `two girls for every straight boy'."
Sebastian laughed. "The college doesn't think that's a problem, and neither do the straight boys. My theory is that every college administrator tries to run the college that she remembers from her time as a `freshperson'."
"Lunch at Cristo's?" Tom asked, changing the subject.
"Okay."
Johnny Cristo did a double-take, seeing Tom Dorsey at the entrance to his restaurant. He recognized Dorsey from photos in the sports pages of the `Tribune'. At first, he assumed it was coincidence that Dorsey and Sebastian arrived at the restaurant at the same time. When they sat side-by-side at the counter, Johnny realized that they came as a pair. He told his waitress at the counter that he would wait on them personally.
"You boys just get out of church?" Johnny asked, knowing that Sebastian was a church-goer.
"Yeah, St. John's," Sebastian replied.
"Good game you fellas played against Bemidji, a week ago Friday," Johnny said, looking directly at Dorsey.
"You were there?" Dorsey asked.
"Yeah, I follow UMD football. I drove to Bemidji," Johnny replied. They took a few minutes to talk football.
"How do you guys know each other?" Johnny asked.
"That's a complicated story," Sebastian grinned. "The short version is that I've been doing charcoal sketches of football plays."
"Sebastian does lots of adventure scenes," Dorsey said. "Ojibwe powwow dances, hunting scenes, a daring rescue operation in the Boundary Waters. All of them true."
Over a bowl of chili with crackers, Tom asked Sebastian about the tale of David and Jonathan: "Father Andrew said that he had preached about them in earlier sermons, so what's the story line?"
"I remember it well," Sebastian replied. "First Samuel reports two conflicting stories about how David came to King Saul's court. In one version, David was a shepherd who was recruited as a musician; he provided Saul with relief from fits of depression by singing psalms and playing his harp. In the second version, David was a giant-killer. The tale of David and Jonathan is a continuation of the Goliath-story. After David slew Goliath with a slingshot, he had an audience in the throne-room with King Saul while Jonathan was seated next to the king. David asked permission to return to his home in Bethlehem. The king said no, and Jonathan rejoiced, secretly, for he had fallen in love with David at first sight.
"Jonathan and David were heroic equals, but opposites. Jonathan was the ideal knight of chivalry, whilst David was a `wild man' who strangled bears and lions in the woods. And because David needed a mentor in court, Jonathan took him in hand and led him to his private chambers.
"David had come to the king's court wearing the rustic tunic of a shepherd. This would not do. Jonathan could have given him clothing from his wardrobe. Instead, he disrobed and gave David the clothes off his back. Stripped naked down to his loin-cloth, Jonathan also gave David his personal weapons: his crossbow, and the sword that he had used to cut down the Philistine garrison at Michmash. That's how their love affair started. Jonathan offered his body, as well as his clothes and weapons. David accepted the gifts.
"Jonathan had a skill that David lacked: archery. Jonathan gave David his best composite crossbow, and spent hours training him in the best practices of an archer. The crossbow lessons were real enough, as archery is difficult and requires many hours of practice, but archery also served as their `cover story' to explain why they were always alone together in some distant clearing in the forested foothills.
"While all this was going on, King Saul conceived a hatred of David that seemed irrational. Some folks say that Saul was jealous of David's military victories. Others say that the king suspected David for having treacherous designs on the throne. David had a political advantage for being a Judahite, a member of Israel's largest tribe, while Saul was only a Benjamite, a member of the smallest tribe. These were secondary reasons. The primary cause of Saul's hatred of David was his knowledge that David was Jonathan's lover.
"Seen in this light, Saul's hatred of David was homophobic, but rational. How often does it happen that a father learns that his son is gay and projects blame on the boyfriend?"
"That's quite a story," Tom Dorsey remarked. "But I've heard it said that these ancient cultures had no abstract terms for homosexual' or homosexuality'. If that's the case, how could King Saul hate David on account of his son's homosexuality?"
"Father Andrew talked about that problem, too," Sebastian replied. "It's true, he said, that the Hebrews had no such abstractions, but homosexuality' was latent in their culture as a covert semantic concept', which means that homosexuality' was a non-lexicalized concept that influenced the way stories were told. A covert concept' is like a magnet hidden under a table. Imagine a heap of iron particles on a table top. If you move the magnet, the iron particles move with it. That's how `homosexuality' operates in the story of David and Jonathan."
Johnny Cristo had eavesdropped on their conversation, as much as he could amidst the busy clatter in the restaurant. He heard enough to know that they talked about same-sex romance. "I've got a proposition for you guys," he said. "Give me some football scenes and maybe some outdoor adventure and I'll hang them in the restaurant with price tags."
"It would have to be new stuff," Sebastian replied. "Tom's been a model in three sketches and one of them is private. Your commission would be 20 percent. Tom and I will spit the rest, 40 percent each."
"Let me in on the secret about how you met and I'll settle for 10 percent," Johnny countered.
"We'll bring you some sketches on Monday after hours, and see how it goes," Sebastian replied.
They left Cristo's.
"Where do we go from here?" Dorsey asked. "I've got a roommate, so we can't use my dorm room in Pine Hall. No privacy."
"How long have you known?" Sebastian asked.
"For as long as I can remember, my dad and my older brothers talked trash about gay men. They didn't know they were talking about me. I learned fairly early how to act straight," Dorsey said.
"Football is to you is as archery is to Jonathan," Sebastian mused.
"You could say that," Tom reflected. "Football paid for my education, and people think I'm good at it, so I can't complain. But my teammates would turn on me if they knew I'm gay."
"What if they see us together? Wouldn't that be dangerous for you?" Sebastian asked. Sebastian knew that in the minds of straight people, gay men were `fem', and he looked the part.
"Unlikely to happen on the West side," Tom said.
"Let's go to my place," Sebastian suggested. "Third floor of a boardinghouse, just a few blocks from here. I can show you my paintings and charcoal sketches."
That's what they did. They looked at a dozen or more sketches, including a draft of the `scrimmage sketch' depicting the footballers as nudes.
"I said before that you're a good guesser," Tom said, pointing to his avatar in the sketch.
"What do you mean?" Sebastian asked.
"The foreskin, silly!" Tom replied. "How did you know?"
"I didn't," Sebastian replied. "I was idealizing your body, that's all."
"Would it be too forward of me to ask, I mean, well..." Tom stammered.
"Whatever you want, Tom Dorsey," Sebastian replied.
"I'd like to get naked for you," Dorsey said.
"Like Jonathan did for David," Sebastian replied.
Tom often got naked in front of fellow athletes in the locker room. This was different: private and sexualized. When the last stitch of clothing came off, Dorsey blushed. Sebastian didn't notice the blush, as his gaze was fixed on Dorsey's midsection. Sebastian made a big deal of Tom's musculature, and he did so in a way that exaggerated his own `fem' aspect. That made their scene all the more erotic, especially to Tom.
Sebastian resisted the temptation to grab Tom's dick, even though it was throbbing. Instead, he passed his hands over Tom's body, admiring his muscles. A pinch of Tom's nips elicited a deep sigh. He stepped close and pressed both hands on Tom's butt-cheeks. He ran a finger down Tom's cleft, all the way to the hole. He cupped Tom's balls, and thrust a hand between his legs, pressing a finger against the hole. He fingered Tom's foreskin, wet with pre-cum. He fondled Tom's shaft, eliciting a deep moan. He motioned for Tom to lay back on the bed, and detailed his body with a massage. He flipped Tom over and detailed his backside. A fingertip wriggled in his hole. "I want this," Sebastian said.
"Yeah, baby," Tom replied.
Sebastian got naked. Tom helped him out of his briefs and explored his body, zeroing in on his dick. His whiteness and slenderness appealed to Tom in a way that seemed to prove the attraction of opposites.
Their love-making ratcheted up a notch with mutual fellatio. Mutual axillingus. Mutual ball- sucking (There ought to be a term; something like teste-' or scrotu' plus `lingus'. But there isn't.).
"No woman sucks cock as good as you," Tom said.
"I'll give you a blowjob before this day is over," Sebastian promised.
Sebastian positioned Dorsey with his ass at the edge of the bed and knelt between his legs. "It wouldn't be fair to pop cherry that's never been kissed," he said. He snorted poppers and rimmed Dorsey's cleavage and hole. Dorsey moaned at the unexpected pleasure, which they repeated in different poses.
Sebastian's `Sunday surprise' came when Dorsey lay on his back, propped his butt on a pillow, and spread his legs. Sebastian's knelt in the cockpit, eyes gleaming with lust. Dorsey looked anxious, but determined.
"You've thought about this, haven't you, Tom," Sebastian said, and added: "For everything there must be a first time."
"This is gonna hurt, isn't it?" Tom said.
"Quite a lot," Sebastian replied. He inserted a lubed finger into Dorsey's hole. He coated his dick with lube. He leaned forward and kissed Dorsey's lips. Their first kiss. No need for words to describe the triumph that Sebastian felt when he drove his cock inside Dorsey in three sturdy strokes. Dorsey's groans and outcries were music to Sebastian's ears, like military bugles announcing the conquest of ass.
Dorsey knew that his pain was a source of pleasure for Sebastian, and urged him to dig deeper. He remembered a red sign in the locker room that read, in black letters: NO PAIN, NO GAIN. Sebastian's mastery of his body was outstanding when he alternated between huge humping thrusts and a gentle massage of Dorsey's anal canal. Punch-fucking and screwing in various positions added spice to the scene.
Dorsey didn't protest when Sebastian examined his hole: "So many changes happening in side you, Tom," he said. "Sphincters stretched. Anal canal reconstructed to fit the shape of my dick. Your little brown slit rounded into an aureole with a rosebud peeking through."
Dorsey orgazzed and the fragrance of jizz aroused Sebastian's desire for breeding. He flipped Dorsey over and fucked furiously until he poured semen into Tom's butt. Sebastian may have looked the part of a fem, but knew how to breed.
After showering in the communal bathroom on second floor, Tom Dorsey and Sebastian were nonplussed when they ran into Jesse Kovic on their way back upstairs. Jesse did a double-take, as he recognized Dorsey as UMD's quarterback.
"What are we doing? Do you know?" Tom asked while they rested their heads on a single pillow.
"I hope we're deciding to become lovers," Sebastian replied. "If we do, don't feel tied down to me. A gay man needs variety, especially when he's just found his magic slippers."
"Were you surprised that I let you fuck me?" Dorsey wondered.
"Pleasantly surprised," Sebastian replied.
"David the giant-killer, that's you," Dorsey said.
Sebastian grinned, self-satisfied, and mused: "There's always a special place in a man's heart for the guy who popped his cherry."
"I can understand that," Dorsey said.
"Don't come out to your teammates," Sebastian cautioned him. "They'll betray you on the football field. If you need gay friends, you'll find them at St. Johns or Sandy Point."
When Sebastian fondled Dorsey's dick and felt its hardness, he kept his promise and gave him a blowjob. The first spurt of semen came in such a strong shot that it landed on his uvula and slid down his throat. Sebastian held the rest of Dorsey's load on his tongue. He showed it to Dorsey before he swallowed. They drifted into sleep.
During the week that followed, Sebastian and Dorsey met when they could to work on sketches and make love. At 8:00 PM on Monday, they arrived at Cristo's with the sketches. Johnny Cristo closed the restaurant an hour early and they looked over Sebastian's five new sketches, plus the three scrimmage sketches' that he had exhibited at the Halloween festival. Cristo tagged the new sketches at $300 each, frame included. He tagged the three scrimmage sketches' at $1,000 for the group. Cristo had also organized some news clippings about Dorsey and mounted them in a frame. In less than an hour, the pictures were up on the wall, ready for the next business day.
"I like the sketch of Tom shirtless in a canoe," Cristo remarked.
"Dorsey sat on a short stool in the bathtub to pose for that one," Sebastian said. "It's a communal bathroom in the boardinghouse, so we had a couple of spectators, but no one asked us to leave."
"Next time, give me a couple nudes. Who knows? Maybe I'll buy them myself," Cristo said. "And now, boys, we're done here. If you want, you can visit my apartment upstairs and we'll smoke some weed."
When they finished passing around the first marijuana cigarette, Cristo asked if Sebastian and Dorsey were ready to tell him how they met.
"It was the day before Halloween," Sebastian said. "I was at the football stadium on campus, sketching the first `scrimmage' scene. I studied five players and drew them nude, as I always do before sketching in the uniforms. That's the way I work, to make the clothes look realistic."
"As long as we're sharing secrets, let's get naked," Cristo said. "Then we'll start a second round of pot."
Sebastian was about to object, but Dorsey had already tossed aside his shirt and tee-shirt, and was stepping out of his blue-jeans.
"The briefs, too, pal," Cristo said.
All three men got naked and sat in a triangle on a carpet in front of the hearth, passing the second pot cigarette clockwise.
Dorsey resumed the story: "One of my buddies, I think it was Chase Hudson, saw the sketch and called Sebastian a queer. Some of us roughed him up. We marched him into the athletes' locker room, stripped him, tied his hands, and stuffed him into a locker. The lockers in the athletes' room are twice the normal size, and Sebastian is rather slender, so getting him in there was easy."
"I was rescued by Frank and the Red Crow brothers, Simon and Peter," Sebastian said.
"The next day, at the Halloween festival, I took four teammates with me, up the Sandy Point lighthouse. We watched the powwow dances from a window in the loft. We swigged merlot from a bottle, until the bottle fell out the window and smashed on the anchor below. That's how we got caught," Dorsey said. "But Sebastian persuaded Frank to let us go. We cleaned up the broken glass and left the festival. Except for me. I stayed to watch Sebastian dancing with the Ojibwe."
"Why, Tom, you never told me that!" Sebastian exclaimed.
"I was interested in your sketches," Dorsey said. "Then I got interested in you. Next morning, I went to the service at the Church of St. John the Beloved, hoping I'd find you there."
"And you did," Sebastian said.
"After church, we had lunch at your place, Johnny," Dorsey said.
"I remember," Cristo remarked.
"After that, we went to Sebastian's boardinghouse and became lovers," Dorsey said.
Triggered by pot and erotic memories, Dorsey and Sebastian sported erections. Johnny Cristo got a bottle of Herradura from his liquor cabinet. They passed it around, swigging tequila. At the sight of Dorsey fondling Sebastian, Cristo got erect and fondled Dorsey.
All three men were high on pot and tequila. Their triangle broke into a tangle of naked bodies, with barely enough order to start a third round of pot. The pressure of lips against nips and tongues over torsos gave way to three-way fellatio. In the confusion, Cristo ran a hand into Dorsey's cleavage and Dorsey felt his fingertip wriggle in his hole.
"Got any lube?" Dorsey asked.
"No lube," Criso replied.
"How about olive oil?" Sebastian suggested.
Johnny Cristo returned from the kitchen with olive oil. He found Dorsey waiting on his back on the carpet, his head cradled in Sebastian's lap, his butt propped on a sofa pillow, motioning for Cristo to mount the cockpit. Sebastian applied olive oil to Dorsey's butt-hole and Cristo's shaft. Two minutes later, Cristo was busy humping Dorsey, who groaned and cried out. Cristo pulled his cock out, only to apply more olive oil. When Cristo flipped Dorsey and fucked him doggy-style, Sebastian got behind them and fucked Cristo. Not quite what Cristo had in mind, but he let it happen. What choice did he have? If he had resisted, his connection with Dorsey would be broken.
Afterward, they slept in Cristo's bed with Dorsey in the middle. How often Dorsey's sleep was disturbed by a hand on the shoulder and cock up the ass is unknown to me, but you can be sure that the next day, after his classes were over, he retired to his room in Pine Hall, the physical memory of cock twinging his sphincter when he slid into slumber and dreamed of some future seduction by Sebastian, Johnny Cristo having served his purpose as a prop and faded from his consciousness.