Lucas

Lucas

I adore him.

He is a rugged man. He is a cultured man. He is a handsome man. He is a well-wrought man. He is a powerful man.

I worship him. I melt when I think of him. I prostrate myself before him. I caress his thighs. I lick his boots.

I tremble when I think of his power.

He is severe in his demands and swift in administering discipline for infractions or failures. But once you understand what he requires, once you have overcome the frailties in yourself, the weaknesses and inhibitions that might hinder your ability to serve and submit, it becomes clear that there are few men who are his equal.

He is a man who has the ability to fold you entirely into himself, to protect you from everything, including yourself, and to give you a sense of certainty, clarity, and, yes, of bliss. Devotion to him seems less like a duty than a privilege. To be disciplined by him turns punishment into a reward.

He had found me at a time when I was consuming myself with rage. Everything, everything made me angry. Encounters with other people always ended in an argument and, more often than not, in a fit of misdirected venom erupting from within me, like lava from a volcano supposed to be inactive but with a hidden molten core.

I shook and my blood quivered for hours after such explosions.

I was sipping espresso outside a cafe in the rue Vieille du Temple, unable to stop my mind from grinding on about regrets and resentments that clung to me like barnacles that no amount of scraping could loosen. I was looking at the crowd flowing past, lots of tourists, knobby of knee, flabby of, well just flabby, wearing again at forty, fifty, and sixty the same kind of clothes they wore at four, five, and six, dressed in tasteless colors like graceless children in hideous summer vestments. But every now and then someone would go by who belonged in another world. I was consumed by frustration and longing.

God damn it, I cried out in English to the big-bellied American in Bermuda shorts and a rust colored football jersey who banged the metal leg of a chair sharply into my heel as he pulled the chair back to lower his bulk into it. Can't you fucking look at what you're doing?

Sorry, bud, he said with a stupid smile. Guess you gotta be careful where you put your feet.

I'll put my feet up your ass, I said, but a man I had not seen prevented me from going further. He calmed the offended American and defused the encounter. He took hold of another chair, one alongside mine. He smiled at the American, and with a shrug, he raised the palm of his free hand and wordlessly told him to drop it.

Shaking his head the American said, They warned me about France, but he retreated and sat with his back to us secure among his friends at his own table.

The handsome stranger sat down beside me.

He's not worth it, he said in French.

I know that, I answered.

Then why do you waste yourself on him? he asked. Do you want to get beaten up?

I don't know, I said as I stared at him dazzled and in awe. Then bridging my forehead with thumb and three fingers, I looked at the cobblestones on the road and bitterly shook my head.

It was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to charm and fascinate and draw him to me. But all I could do was withdraw. I hated myself.

Look, he said.

Yes, I said.

And listen.

I am, I said.

You're too loose, he said. You've got energy and grit, but no discipline.

He was speaking in English now.

You are blown here and there and anywhere by every wind. You need to be anchored.

Anchored? I repeated.

Anchored, he said.

You mean kept in one spot with a chain and a heavy weight? I asked grinning.

When necessary, yes, he said, with complete seriousness, not joking.

But...

Don't respond to something I tell you by saying 'but,' he said quietly.

Obviously I did not have to stay sitting next to him. I'd put a two euro coin on the round marble top table already, and I was as free as I would ever be to get up and leave.

But I did not. I stayed seated and I kept looking at him. He was extraordinarily handsome and he was frightening. That was evident immediately.

Every angel is terrible. There was something terrible about him in the absolute power to compel that nature had vested in him and which he wore effortlessly. We were bound to each other from the bottom of our being. I was bound to him whether or not he was bound to me. That's what was frightening. He was something I knew I could not avoid.

It was danger, and this time I couldn't get away from it. I was in his grip before I knew his name.

He took hold of me gently, cupping his palm around the back of my neck. I turned to face him, and as I did he brought his lips to mine and the culmination of my gesture became his kiss.

That he wanted me gave me the sense that I had some worth. I gave myself up to him.

Rue Vieille du Temple branches off on the right as you are walking towards rue de Bretagne into rue des Rosiers. Not far from that corner stands a small, three story eighteenth-century house.

His apartment had high ceilings, marble chimneys, ornate molding, and parquet floors. It took up the entire top floor. In the front the windows gave out onto the street and offered a panorama of rooftops and sky. In the rear, they gave onto a splendid garden.

And if you don't pass your exams? Lucas said, picking up the thread of our conversation as he poured out some brandy for us.

The money stops, I go back to New York, and work in my father's costume jewelry factory.

And, I'm afraid that's what's going to happen, I added. I am unprepared.

Unprepared.

For the exams.

And for going back.

For sure.

You don't want to do that, go back to New York and work in your father's factory?

No, I said, I don't.

As I said, you like to get beaten up.

He raise his glass as he spoke, as if toasting and then put it to his lips.

I looked at him in confusion.

He nodded for me to drink too in acknowledgement of his toast it seemed.

The brandy burned my insides.

How did you allow it to happen? he said.

I was silent.

What happened? Lucas persisted. About school?

I don't know, I said. I guess I fucked up.

You fuck up a lot.

Yeah, I admitted.

I want you to take your clothes off now, he said.

I was standing by the window looking into the street.

Take off your clothes.

He spoke with a tone of command in his voice that excited me. It was impossible to disobey. I unbuttoned my shirt, pulled it off, loosened my belt, undid my shoe laces and stripped down to my black boxer briefs. I was tight.

Leave those on. It was an order casually uttered. I like how you look in them.

I blazed with pleasure and shame at my own vanity.

Yes, Sir, I said, intending a funny flash of mockery to keep my balance, but the words came out differently.

Bring me that silver box from above the fire place, he ordered.

Yes, Sir, I said, this time with no thought of making a joke of it.

He held my arms over my head in one hand at the wrists while he tongued and bit my nipples.

I melted. I dissolved. I was powerless.

He raised himself and kissed me on the mouth, commanding entrance by the force of his tongue, as he continued to hold me by the wrists. With the other hand he probed me and entered deeply into me with his fingers.

He raised my legs over his shoulders and I embraced him with them. He stretched his length above me and penetrated beyond the ring of pain into the crystalline globes of ego-destroying pleasure.

I decomposed into shimmering circles of blue and gold cosmic dust.

He rang inside me like a city of bells, like all of Amsterdam, like a countryside full of gonging, clanging, tolling steeple bells banging out a head-spinning cacophony of joyful tintinnabulation.

The Gare de Montparnasse was overcrowded with throngs of soccer fans. They were all dressed alike, exactly alike, in red jerseys. They hooted, clapped, banged noisemakers, and chanted cheers. They made waves of sound swell and vibrate inside the volume of their voices. They gave energy an aspect of matter. It took up space in the terminal.

Lucas and I were there because we were going to Chartres to see the great cathedral. I was afraid they would not let me in because of how I was dressed. I would not have dared say that to Lucas. It would have possibly suggested that I did not trust his authority or that there was a hesitation in my obedience.

When I began to live with Lucas, he kept me naked. When I had to be clothed, when we were going out or a stranger was in the house, I was only allowed to wear torn clothing.

Indoors, when Lucas wished, I sometimes wore a leather thong. The thin strap which connected the front pouch to the waist band continually stimulated the hole though which Lucas entered me.

I had been with him for half a year and had responded well to his training. Why would I not have? I had messed everything up. He was the center of all order. I had been aimless. He transcended purpose.

He was a powerfully commanding man and from the start, I worshipped him. I loved him to extinction. Submitting to him, being controlled by him, obeying him all excited me. I was the piano to which he gave meaning when he played his appassionata on it.

He had not often chained me, and he had seldom had to punish me. And sometimes he punished me not for a fault, but simply because it was part of the nature of things that he punish me. When I did vex him, his vexation was more painful to me than the punishments he administered and the penalties he imposed.

To go without the sweetness in his eyes was worse that standing like a statue, naked in an alcove, my hands behind my neck, tiny clamps on my nipples and a tight ring snug at the base of my cock. When there were visitors at such times as I was like that, they fingered me as they had never been allowed to when they looked at Michelangelo's David or Dying Captive in a museum.

For the trip to Chartres, I had on jeans that were ripped at the knees over a leather jock, an olive colored t-shirt with a rip exposing my right nipple, Pakistani water buffalo sandals, and a collarless, zip-up, brown, leather jacket, unzippered.

Lucas wore all black, boots, leather slacks, a long sleeve, ribbed cotton pullover and a cotton velvet jacket, black and tapered at the waist.

With a firm arm round my shoulders he guided me through the crowd to our track. He composted our tickets and we sat on the upper deck as the train plowed out of Paris into the green and brown countryside, past Versailles, on to Chartres.

Not far from the railroad station, stands the great cathedral with two spires which do not match rising above its Gothic front. The massive stones soar above the earth and become, the higher they rise, the more delicately wrought, until stone is worked more finely than filigree or damask lace.

A young man sat on one of the long marble steps leading up to the church porch. He was staring at us as we approached. He was beautiful, perhaps not yet twenty, and glowed with freshness. His skin gave off light, like a bowl of early summer fruit. He had thick dark hair, dark perfectly arched eyebrows, high cheekbones and full lips. He needed a shave.

Lucas made a point of walking up the church steps directly in a path leading to him, and when we were near him, sidestepped just enough to pass him but near enough to rub his head with the friendliness with which you would pat a dog you passed.

Hey, the young man said in English.

Hey, yourself, Angel, Lucas answered him with a big grin. You all by yourself?

Yeah.

Alone. That's not the way it ought to be. Where you staying?

Camp out, ride the train.

What's next?

Hitchin' to Paris.

And?

See what's there.

Come with us. Nick won't mind, he said, pointing to me with his thumb. That's where we're going after we've seen the cathedral. Been inside?

Not yet.

Come with us then, Lucas said, stretching out his hand for the boy to grasp and stand himself up.

No one stopped me from entering, dressed as I was.

We walked through the cavernous, vaulted, stone cathedral, glowing golden from the candles lit throughout and reverberating with the deep blue and luminous red that formed grand patterns in stained glass windows.

Lucas put his arm round the boy, guiding his attention to a detail of stone filigree crowning the marvelously wrought semi-circular stone wall in the ambulatory behind the altar. He whispered with warm breath in his ear and it spilled onto the enthralled boy's neck with such heat that he was not sure the man was not kissing him on the side of his neck.

Afterwards, as the sun set, we sat in the square outside the cathedral, still lost in admiration and drinking Grimbergen.

The boy was coming home with us. He was awestruck by Lucas, more by Lucas than by Chartres, and he was trying to hide it. But he was blissed out: one hand round his beer glass, the other invaginated in Lucas's palm.

On the train back to Paris he slept sprawled out on the seats across from me. Lucas from his seat at the window turned to look at me and make sure that I was aware that he had seen me gazing at the beauty stretched out in front of me.

Say thank you, he said.

Thank you, Sir, I said.

Lucas established a household for the three of us, a menage a trois.

The boy and I were both in need. I had not gotten through the semester at the Sorbonne, and all bets were off for me ever having anything near the life I wanted to have if I went back to the States to work for my father. They'd get me married somehow to a lovely young woman I would grow old with and make miserable, just as she would be my torment. Lucas allowed me to stay in France by inviting me to stay with him.

The boy Lucas called Angel had left America during the last year of high school. He did not want to register with the military even if there wasn't a draft. The whole idea of soldiers or even universities gave him the creeps. He wanted to be on the move and he got himself to Europe. He was fortunate his Italian mother got him put on her passport when he was born. He could travel pretty easily now because he had both an American and a European Union passport.

And he could stay put wherever he wanted to, too.

Lucas told him to stay.

There's nothing in this arrangement that you need to feel threatens you, he said to me, as he sat with Angel and me, in a small room off a long drawing room.

I looked quizzical.

Come, he said, here.

I stood up and walked over to him. He stood, too, and approached me. He took me in his arms and pressed his hard body against mine and gave me a kiss that took hold of something essential, of my very identity, and made it his.

Then he put me aside. With the slightest gesture, slightly raising his index finger, he indicated that I remain where he set me and quietly attend.

Angel, he said.

Just as a moment ago I had answered his summons. Now the boy approached him. Lucas kissed him as he had kissed me. I watched. I knew this boy had as much value to Lucas as I did. I knew that I was of no more value to Lucas than this boy was. Yet as long as Lucas demanded my service, in however apparently demeaning a capacity, within myself I sufficed and was satisfied.

If I were going to care about exclusivity, I was going to have a lot of suffering and pain to endure.

A current of excitement shot through me.

Then Lucas beckoned we take each other, the young man he called Angel and I, in our arms. As we held each other I felt the strength of his body pressed against mine, and that made me feel with great sharpness the strength of my own body and the force of my desire. I felt desire for the boy as strong as the desire that Lucas felt for him. I knew that and realized how great a pleasure Lucas derived from possessing him and spending himself on him.

He was allowing me to experience what I was not going to have again.

By the magnetics of our own being Angel and I were drawn to each other and our mouths pulled us into a kiss.

Lucas let us go to its depths. Then he stopped us.

You have tasted of the sweet fruit that after this is forbidden to you.

So it was. We looked at each other with hot eyes and longed to clasp.

On a snow-heavy evening Lucas posed me in an alcove in his bedroom as Michelangelo's 'Dying Captive' with my head thrown backwards in an agonized and ecstatic swoon.

I stood in the alcove like a decoration in a Cocteau movie. And that was the last notice taken of me that night although everything was performed in front of me, within my sight.

Lucas beheld the boy and powerful desire rushed through him and grasping appetite propelled him.

He took command with his gaze. He brought the boy close to him and claimed him with a binding kiss.

You understand, Lucas said.

Yes, I think so.

You belong to me.

I knew it the moment I saw you.

Lucas bit him with a kiss and held him in the palm of his hand slowly massaging him at the fork of his body.

He took him in his orbit and held him with his gaze as he very slowly moved in and out of him turning him crazy with the need to be penetrated.

Watching them, I trembled like a quivering string. I overflowed my banks. I came without touching myself, still, keeping the statuary pose.

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