DIONYSIUS
By
Rev Jesse Penfield Gibson, MDiv, DMin
Copyright 2017
DISCLAIMER: This story is fiction. Any similarities to any persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. This story involves consensual sexual activity between college students, both male and female, including bareback sex, group sex and bisexual activity. This story also has drug and alcohol use. If this is not your cup of tea, don't read it. If it is, enjoy.
Complaints and compliments to revjpgibson@hotmail.com
Remember to donate to Nifty to keep the stories coming.
TWELVE
Dylan made it back before Cass did. Since he had only rarely worn clothes over the last few days, he had less to do to unpack than he had thought he would. So he had a couple of hours alone to think about what had happened. It had been an amazing experience, one he wouldn't trade for the world. There were a couple of things that surprised him about himself. The first was that he felt no guilt or shame about it. His background and the teachings of the church should have left him wracked with guilt and shame. Premarital sex was wrong and shameful on its own and gay sex was beyond the pale. But he simply didn't care. It had been great and he knew he would be doing that again. Somewhere in the dim memory, Dylan recalled reading that 98% of all people will become sexually active at some point in their lives and now he knew why. He also knew why they laid so much shame onto premarital sex. Once someone has tasted that particular forbidden fruit, they go back for more. Nobody, it seems, has sex as a one off thing. He knew why: it felt too good.
The second thing that surprised him was that he hadn't fallen head over heels in love with Alex. He had affection toward him; he cared about him but he wasn't sure it was love. He wanted to have an ongoing relationship with him, to be sure, but the idea of Alex being monogamous was absurd. As it should be, Dylan thought. He would be insulted if he choose another boy to sleep with but the idea of him with a girl troubled him not. For his own part, Dylan knew that Alex would not be the only person he would ever want to fuck. All of the Dionysus boys that he knew of – Dave, Carlos, the twins, even Cass – were all bisexual or,in Dave's case, almost entirely gay. They were all good looking. He wouldn't mind doing it with any of them, perhaps not Cass. Cass was incredibly sexy and gorgeous but he didn't want to mess up their friendship.
Dylan was sleeping when Cass got there. Cass tried to be quiet but failed, waking Dylan up. Propped up on his elbows on the top bunk, Dylan peered down at Cass and said, "Did you have a good time?"
"Yeah, it was great, actually. I'm totally tapped out though. How about you?"
"The same. I could sleep for days. But it was great, beyond great to tell you the truth."
"What did you guys do?" Cass asked, slinging his clothes aside.
"I found out why people are so into having sex, for one thing." Dylan said with a sly smile.
"Really? You got laid?"
"Went through a box of a dozen."
"Seriously?" Cass asked. "That's cool, dude. You liked it obviously."
Dylan nodded. "Oh, yeah. I see what the big deal is."
"That is totally cool, dude. I'm happy for you."
"It was about time, right?" Dylan teased.
"Well," Cass paused. "It was time, put it like that. You were about to go crazy."
"Yeah," Dylan admitted. "So how serious is this thing with Nicole?"
Cass pulled off his clothes and pulled off his underwear. Dylan felt himself becoming aroused. He had seen Cass naked before in the shower and had thought that he had an outstanding body but the intimacy of being in a small room naked pushed a button. "I don't know," Cass said, crawling in bed. "Not too serious, I don't think. But I do like fucking her. How serious is this thing with Alex"
"I don't know," Dylan replied. "Go to sleep, stud. I'll see you tomorrow."
Over the next week or so, their relationship grew to be an easy give and take. A couple of nights, Cass slept apart, presumably with Nicole. Dylan slept over with Alex a few times, leaving the room to Cass. He gathered from hall scuttlebutt that on those nights, Cass and Nicole slept together along with another person or two sometimes. He was happy enough with that arrangement. Both of them were getting what they wanted.
Dylan found that he liked Alex's roommate and erstwhile brother, Simon, a lot. Of course, he was good looking: chocolate milk skin, great body, some evidence of a big dick. But he was far more interested in girls than boys it seemed, although he didn't begrudge Alex his pleasures. He was also funny and smart. Dylan had spent 4 nights over there and Simon would regale him and his girlfriend Shontae with stories of him and Alex growing up. Their mothers had been lesbian lovers so that had marked them out among the other kids as weird and strange, something young children hate. The response from Alex and Simon had been to draw closer. Their personalities complemented each other's and they had gotten into any number of adventures. It seemed that college hadn't slowed that down much as Simon was a dedicated hedonist, unashamedly. He was so free and open that it was impossible to not like him.
But there was still a quality of being on the outside looking in that bothered Dylan. He guessed that Simon was a member too and Dylan was beginning to resent the fact that he wasn't. He didn't mention it to Alex since he didn't want to seem needy. After all, he didn't want to mess up the good sex they were having. Then on the Friday before Halloween, Alex called him on his cell and told him that he was going to a Halloween party that night. It was less an invitation than an order and Dylan instantly decided to resist. He figured it was the same party that Cass had been preparing for all week. He protested that he didn't have a costume so it was out of the question. Alex assured him that he wouldn't need one. When Dylan pressed him for the details, Alex told him it was a closed party, invitation only, and it would be with the hardcore party people. Dylan assumed that meant Dionysus. Reluctantly, he agreed.
For some reason, he didn't tell Cass he was going. He thought he would just surprise him. He got to Alex's apartment just after 6 and saw that Simon was all ready dressed in his costume. He was going as a white boy, his face and body painted a sheer white with body paint. He dressed in khaki's and a button down and had a Trump button on. Alex was dressed in paint smeared Dickie's and a gray T shirt, his usual work clothes when he painted or did glass work. Dylan watched Alex as he gave a sugar cube to Simon and one to Shontae.
"What is that?" Dylan asked.
"We have one for you, too." Alex looked up. "It's LSD"
"Um, are you sure? I mean I'm sure that it is that but are you sure that you want me to do it?"
"This is the night to do it" Simon said as he put the sugar cube in his mouth.
Alex held out the cube toward him. "It's the next step on the road to ruin. This is one night to be as wickedly fucked up as you can be."
Dylan held the sugar cube gingerly in this hand. Alex popped two in his mouth. "Let it dissolve and then swallow it."
He did it, swishing the sugary mixture around in his mouth before swallowing. For better or worse, it was in his system now. He felt nothing though. He felt the same. "What's supposed to happen?"
"Nothing for a little while," Alex said. "Then a whole new perspective on life."
It took a few minutes to gather up their things, primarily for Shontae to find everything she needed. Then they headed out on foot. It was about a 10 minute walk, from one side of the campus to other, going past Dylan's dorm. Crossing Coleman Avenue, they met up with another wad of people and Alex and Simon stopped to talk to them. By the time they moved on, it had been more than 20 minutes since he took and Dylan felt the same as he ever did. Maybe ever so slightly anxious. Still, the dying of the day was particularly beautiful with long shadows and the coolness of impending night. Maybe, just maybe, his vision was a little more acute than normal but nothing more than that. They walked two blocks to the far corner of the park that fronted the Dub. It was a 2 story blue and white house. Dylan looked at closely. He had passed this way practically every day running and had never noticed the house at all. He decided it was an architectural gem and the light blue was perfect.
A guy in sunglasses stood by the door. Alex told the guy who Dylan was and the guy motioned them inside. Dylan looked around and saw a large, muscular black guy in the front yard dressed in fatigues. He seemed to be patrolling. They entered into a central hallway dominated by a staircase. In the large rooms to either side where knots of people talking and laughing, some were dressed in costumes and others weren't. Dylan followed Alex into the room on the left which was decorated in cheesy paper decorations, like they had in elementary school, and also had a punch bowl with smoke from dry ice bellowing out from it. Next to it was a silver platter with sugar cubes piled up. Dylan stood there, watching the dry ice smoke waft out. The everchanging nature of the smoke as it reacted to the movements in the air was fascinating.
"Don't eat the sugar cubes" Alex whispered. "Too much of a good thing."
Dylan spun around toward the sound of the voice and the whole room shifted, leaving contrails drifting behind them. I don't feel right, he thought. This isn't real. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be. The voices of the people talking were too loud and they weren't speaking in English. Or maybe they were. The colors were too vibrant to be real. He looked down and the grain of the hardwood floor appeared as water. Dylan jumped up ever so slightly just to see the ripple pattern of the floor. This is bizarre, he thought, otherworldly. He stomped again and again just to cause the floor to buckle and ripple. He looked up suddenly, realizing that what he was doing wasn't normal. He imagined that he was being stared at but shook that off. He thought he probably wasn't or maybe he was. Who knew? He wasn't paranoid exactly just very self aware. He was aware of his body too, the sensation of it seemed to be almost buzzing. He seemed energetic too, more than he should be. Not unpleasant but weird.
Dylan realized that he lost track of Alex. He thought maybe he ought to find him since he was here as his guest, in what he supposed was the very den of iniquity. He edged his way through the crowd in the room, hearing snippets of conversation that made absolutely no sense. He found himself back in the hall and, logically, should have gone into the other front room but he didn't. That room wasn't the one calling him. He needed to go down the hall instead.
In the hallway, just behind the stairs, rubber snakes were hung from the ceiling. Dylan hated snakes. He had a morbid fear of them and would gladly shoot a snake on sight, even a harmless grass snake. They were all evil, every one. He knew that they were rubber snakes and not real, what with the gaudy paint and lifeless bodies. It took him forever to negotiate around them to get to the room they guarded, the room he needed to get to. It wasn't fear he felt but respect. Lifeless though they were, the space they inhabited must be respected. He didn't want to disturb their deathless nature. Finally, he made it to the door and entered. Inside that room was dark as night. A disco ball hung from the ceiling, spinning and sending out little dots of light to speed recklessly across the wall. There was a recliner positioned just below the disco ball. Dylan sank into the chair and felt the weight leave him. He lost himself in the galaxy of light playing across the breathing wall. He felt as if the real part of himself was just slightly out of phase with the mass of matter that made up his body. He felt as if he was an inch or two away from himself, looking on with sympathetic fascination at the corporeal being that proclaim itself to be himself. He couldn't explain it but sitting in that chair, the boundary between self and not self blurred to almost insignificance.
Dennis the Judicial Council guy was standing in front of him. "The dog yellow and blue has the electric brain."
"Okay," Dylan replied. Clearly he didn't know what he was talking about. No dog has an electric brain.
"Did you come with Alex?" Dennis said, accentuating every word.
"Yes"
"Where is he?"
"I suppose within himself," Dylan answered. It seemed an extraordinarily silly question. "On Earth, maybe?"
"Monkey brain banana" Dennis said. He appeared annoyed.
"Banana" Dylan decided. A monkey brain wouldn't do at all.
"Stay here" Dennis said.
"Yeah" Dylan agreed. But the lights disappointed. Their very plasticity and regularity speeding around the wall seemed forced to him. He had to decide between the phony quarks of white light, all the colors of the spectrum forced unwillingly together, and the tedious trek between the snakes. Still trapped in indecision, Dylan saw Cass and Nicole walk in. Cass walked up to him, grabbed his face with his hands and stared deeply into his eyes, shaded by the darkness of the room. Then he smiled and they embraced. Nicole hugged him.
"How hard are you tripping?" she asked.
"I don't know. Honestly. There is a war between good and evil."
Cass was staring at a wall. "Who's winning?"
"No one. They fight forever," Dylan said, turning toward him, wanting him to understand. "It's death match between immortals"
"Yeah, that's true" Cass said. Dylan felt profound relief that he understood.
"Come on, we're going upstairs"
"Not the snakes again?" Cass pleaded with her.
"If I find out which fucking fuck put those fucking snakes up, I'll rip their fucking balls off," Nicole said, clenching her fists. "They're not real."
"I know" Cass said.
Still they were real in the sense that they did exist and, again, their space had to be respected. But now the whole house was ablaze in color and light. The geometric pattern in the baseboard was recycling and moving like a corkscrew. The rough ridges of the wall dripped and reshaped themselves. It was brilliant. Both he and Cass stared, their mouths agape, at the wall. Nicole forced them to move and obediently they did. At the top of the stairs, Cass sank down and sat on the landing, his legs between the columns supporting the banister. Dylan sat beside him. He watched the people below in clinical fascination. Some were playing their little, narrow psychological games, prisoners of their own id and ego. Some were undertaking their own comic opera courting rituals. Others were fellow travelers, lost in the beauty and the revelry of the moment. Dylan felt a kinship to them. But they were all fascinating.
"Where have you been?" Alex cried. He sank to his knees behind Dylan and grabbed him hard.
"Here and before that, there"
"I was worried."
"Why?" Dylan asked him. It confused him that Alex should worry.
"How you were handling it"
Dylan thought about it. How was he handling it? How do you handle the perfect clarity of seeing things as they really are? "I was handling it the only way I knew how" he answered. "Do we have to stay right here?"
Dylan struggled up and continued up the stairs beyond the landing. Cass followed him and they found Nicole at the top. They went into a bedroom. It was simple and plain but alive with possibilities. Dylan wondered how many people had made love of that bed and thought it an honorable thing. Nicole soon left and the three of them lay on the bed, very closely together.
"It was fear that did it. The whole point of religion is to explain the unknowable, what happens after death. Heaven, hell, the circle of life, all answers to the same question. But no one knows. So we create God after our own image. Those that are narrow and cruel have a God to suit them and those that are open and forgiving have a God to suit them." Dylan said.
"So it's not true at all" Cass replied, staring up at the ceiling. The music from down below was permeating up through the floorboards.
"Define truth. What I'm experiencing and seeing doesn't actually exist but it's true nonetheless."
"Yeah" Alex said.
He had no idea how long they were there in the bed together, their bodies, or at least the physical form of their bodies, next to each other, lost in the visual explosion and the reflected music. He was aware that it was coming in waves now. There were times when it seemed almost normal and then another wave of balls on hallucination. Dylan became convinced that he no longer wanted to be where he was.
"Why are we here?" Dylan asked.
"Metaphysically?" Alex asked, propping up to look at him
"Let's go"
They headed back downstairs, Dylan in an almost normal interlude. Of course, normal is relative. Compared to the other state, he was normal but not when compared to the mass of humanity. The party below wasn't raucous. There were no drunks yelling and screaming. In fact, it was subdued, with people mostly just lounging about, absorbed in their own minds. It was quieter than it had been earlier as the acid that they took had kicked in. Dylan lead them down the hall and out the front door. He emerged into the night air. The coolness and the rich dark purple of the night seemed inviting.
The guy at the door had his sunglasses off now. He looked at them and asked, "You leaving?"
Alex said they were. The guy said, "Jamel will take you."
One of the big burly men patrolling the outside walked up. The guy picked up his clipboard and asked Alex if all of them were going to his place. When Alex said that they were, the guy said, "He lives on Adams Street, directly across from the baseball field, 2426 Adams. Thanks."
They got into a Lincoln Navigator and Jamel took off, turning right on Coleman and then taking the left fork on Montpelier. He turned left on Linden and drove on the road that circled campus before turning back on Adams. He pulled up in front of Alex's apartment. "Thanks, man" Alex told him.
"Everybody gets home safe. That's what you paying for." Jamel said.
Once they were out, he turned around and sped off back to the house. They went inside and found a place to crash for a while. Alex turned on some music and they lost themselves in it. After a while, Simon and Shontae came back and after a few words went to Simon's bedroom. Eventually, it seemed as if the drug had worn off mostly and Dylan was tired. It was after 3 o'clock before he and Alex went to bed. Cass crashed on the couch.
Monday afternoon, Dylan had finished working out at the UC when he saw Dennis, the Judicial Council guy, sitting at a table sipping a smoothie and reading a book. Dylan went over to him. "Mind if I join you?"
Dennis looked up and motioned him to sit. "You were pretty fucked up Friday"
"Yeah, it was my first time doing that. You seemed pretty together, though."
"It was my turn to be on safety sitter duty. It sucks because that's the party I look forward too. Well, there's a similar party in January. You never have to be sober for both." Dennis said, sucking up his smoothie. He was being pretty casual about it. "If you hang around with Alex, though, it won't be your last."
"Can I ask you a question? Why did you join?"
Dennis laughed. "I could sit here and bullshit you by saying I don't know what you're talking about. That would be the approved way to do it. But I think you're past that. Boyfriends and girlfriends tend to find out, at least about the general outline of what goes on. So, I'll answer your question. Most of the members were on the Watch List, people that were recommended by other members. I wasn't. I was added by your roommate's older brother to the Spring Class. The Spring Class sweeps up the people they missed that should be members but weren't on the Watch List plus a couple of people that are added by officers for whatever reason. Mostly because they think we'll be useful in the future. It's not a bad trade-off. You get to have more fun than you should for a few years and then you walk away."
"But why did you join?"
"I came out when I was 15. People, like my parents or my friends, tolerated' it. They accepted' it. But to them I was still strange and different. They talked about me behind my back but, to my face, they were polite and correct. Then I found a group that doesn't tolerate' or accept', they celebrate it. They believe in epic experimentation, in finding yourself by pushing the limits of civilized society. You know, this is a pretty conservative campus. It is full of little Republicans running around trying to decide if they are better off getting a finance degree or an accounting degree. What I found was that the interesting people were members. That's why."
"Thanks," Dylan said. "That helps."
"Can I ask you a question? You do know that you are being guided toward membership, right? Alex is an officer."
"I didn't know he was an officer. No, I didn't really know that I was being guided toward anything but it doesn't surprise me. Thanks for telling me."
Dennis held his cup up in a mock toast. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."
Dylan got up and began to walk away. "Why did they pick you to be the one that told me? Wouldn't it have been easier to have Cass do it? You were sent here to do that, right?"
"Absolutely," Dennis said, smiling. "You're pretty quick. Because Cass doesn't want you to join. He's worried about your virtue. He thinks you are an innocent and he feels protective of you. Couldn't send Alex either because he's in love with you."
"So who's behind it? You?" Dylan asked. He would have had his money on Alex but apparently not.
Dennis shook his head no. "That's not important right now. What is important is whether we've chosen well. But time will tell."