MY ELVISH BOYFRIEND (12)
By Dolphin Dan
*** Warning to Nifty readers: this concluding chapter is a bit somber and there is not a lot of sex. Skip it if you like; I'll be back with another story in the SF/fantasy category in a few weeks. ***
At the end of the summer of 1996, the gap between my junior and senior year in college, I returned to the U.S. and University of Texas Austin after spending half the summer in Varandikar, the elvish homeland, with my longtime boyfriend Ernemion Maundelow. After I got back I crashed emotionally. I loved Ernie immensely, and I'd become addicted to him sexually. Both were very hard habits to break. In October, after I was back at school, I went to the student counseling center on campus and began seeing a therapist. I told her the whole story of our relationship, minus the details of our sex acts, and I mentioned nothing about magic. She said, "It'll take you a long time to get over this, Dan. You will get over it, but it will be a long road back."
I heard very little from him. In the holiday season of 1996 he mailed me a Christmas card from him and his family, which showed a photo of him, his elderly mother, and his sisters Garaada and Cornuda standing in front of the farmhouse. This card took so long to arrive I didn't receive it until February 1997, three months before I graduated college. After that there was just nothing. In his defense he lived on a farm in rural Varandikar that had a telephone line that worked intermittently, and this new contraption called the Internet was still completely unknown in the country. And I moved to several different apartments in a short time, so if he tried to write me letters they didn't arrive.
On a Sunday night in early May, just two weeks before my college graduation, I started to feel very sick and suddenly developed very severe abdominal cramps. My roommate took me to the emergency room. The cramps were so painful they almost split my head apart and I shit the hospital bed like my body was trying to expel something. They diagnosed it as particularly bad indigestion and after a few hours I was fine, but it was a very strange episode. I didn't think very much of this incident until later.
I graduated college and began working dead-end jobs, most involving computer programming and coding. At first I worked in Austin but then later moved to Silicon Valley. In 1998 while living in Sunnyvale I got a boyfriend, Ryan, and we moved in together. I was not totally over Ernie, but I was trying to move on.
In the fall of that year I was browsing around a used bookstore in Palo Alto and came across a very old and tattered paperback book with ancient elvish runes on the cover. The title was "The Book of Elvish Magic" and its author was anonymous. The particular edition I picked up had been published in 1968 and had a foreword written by Nigel Tensworthy, the British author who wrote the book "The Elves and Their History" that I read in high school when I first met Ernie. I recall Ernie was incredibly angry to find me reading that book; his family apparently knew Tensworthy in real life and hated him. I stood there in the stacks and read the introduction. In it Tensworthy said that this book, "The Book of Elvish Magic," was a traditional text of folk sources that had been written down perhaps 150 years ago but never (before 1968) translated into English. He did the translation. He also mentioned that the book had been banned by every single government of Varandikar since it first appeared in the middle 1800s. Naturally I bought it and read it cover-to-cover in the next few days. I even looked up Nigel Tensworthy on the Internet and was surprised to find that he had died only a few years ago in Paris where he apparently lived in exile.
Anyway, "The Book of Elvish Magic" was surprising. It described all the known elvish spells, most of them sexual in nature. It was like a laundry list of the things Ernie had used on me. Make someone fall in love with you, check; use a spell to enhance their sexual pleasure, check; Ernie had told me himself that he used a spell called "niolojnadho," a spell of obedience, to get me to do what he wanted sexually. This spell was considered evil because it could be used to rape people. (Just to be clear, I never felt like Ernie made me do anything against my will). There were also spells to keep someone asleep, a spell to induce wet dreams (called love trances in elvish), and a spell to make your partner feel like he or she is being penetrated even if there's nothing physically there. Apparently elves could masturbate themselves, or others, without touching them. Now that would be a cool power to have!
The most interesting thing was a description of a pregnancy spell. Whether it worked or not was disputed, but in the old days elvish men would use it on their wives to try to get them pregnant. The fascinating thing was that, even if the recipient of the spell didn't actually get pregnant, there were stories that women sometimes experienced terrible pains, like that of childbirth, nine months after the spell had been used on them and sometimes even bled from their vaginas as if they were giving birth. I went back to look at a calendar and discovered that my emergency room episode with the cramps had happened on May 4, 1997. That was exactly nine months after the night in the Belenta hotel room when Ernie asked me to pretend like he was getting me pregnant. Obviously he had used this spell on me.
Years passed. The only friend from high school who I kept in touch with was Jenna, the girl who had pretended to be Ernie's girlfriend at Bellhampton High School. She'd long ago ditched Craig, the college-age guy she was seeing then, but she evidently had a thing for older men because she married a University of Washington archaeology professor who was nearly 20 years older than she was. One day in the spring of 2001 I got a large manila envelope from Jenna, who mostly kept in touch by phone and email. I opened it and found a copy of Archaeology magazine, dated January/February 2001. There was a post-it note on the cover with Jenna's writing: "Look at p. 46!" I turned to that page and was astonished to see a photo of Ernie Maundelow atop a two-page spread with the headline, "A Farmer's Lucky Find Sheds Light on Varandikar's Medieval History."
The photo was incredible. Ernie looked older and had put on weight; he was also wearing glasses. In the picture he was smiling and holding in his hands a glass box full of glittering coins. The article was amazing. Last summer Ernie, who the article first identified as "a simple farmer from Proscot, Varandikar" before using his name a few paragraphs later, was removing the stump of a dead tree from the farm when he happened to discover a couple of bronze coins buried deep in the soil. Investigating further, he uncovered a cache of thousands of coins, a lot of silverware and some jewelry that had been buried a long time. An archaeologist came from the university in Belenta and they exhumed the find, which they determined had been buried in 1348, the year the Black Death struck Varandikar. At that time many elvish villages were targeted by the boyachim (non-elves) in a series of pogroms where tens of thousands were killed, often burned alive. People blamed elves and Jews for spreading the disease by poisoning wells. This cache had probably been buried by someone fleeing the persecution but who was probably a victim of it and never came back. The Varandi National Museum paid Ernie a handsome reward for the treasure. I was happy for him, and happy to see him. Jenna and I talked for a long time on the phone about it. Her husband, who didn't even know who Ernie was, had been reading the magazine and pointed out the article to her. It was an incredible coincidence.
The reward for the treasure meant that Ernie and his family were no longer living in poverty. He must have got a phone and a computer, because a couple of months later I received an email from him. He said things were much better on the farm now though there had been some sad moments. His mother passed away in 1997, then Garaada and eventually Cornuda got married and moved away. With his mother gone he had finally come out as gay and was living with a man, Kenash, actually a distant relation, a fourth or fifth cousin. In fact I had met him: he was the young man who won the wrestling match I wagered on at my send-off party. They wanted to adopt a baby, but same-sex adoption was unheard of in Varandikar so it was hard. I was happy for him that he'd found someone. There was no discussion of us seeing each other in person again though we did keep up by email.
Every time I got a message from him, though, I felt a little sad and guilty. I couldn't forget what Garaada had written on the paper she'd given me the day I left the farm. I didn't know whether I should tell Ernie that I (and others) knew the date of his death. Ultimately I decided not to, as it would probably violate some deep cultural taboo. The years ticked away. I rationalized it. Maybe it wouldn't happen. How would Garaada know for sure anyway?
It was interesting that back in high school Ernie had been so careful to keep his homosexuality a secret because in later years he became quite a prominent and outspoken member of Varandikar's gay community. In 2005 he was one of the founding members of VAME, the Varandi Alliance for Marriage Equality, campaigning for gay marriage. This was actually brave and dangerous because the country was still very conservative and homophobic. Do you remember when I first arrived in the country and I saw a political poster in the airport of a very Nazi-like politician and the slogan "ONWARD TO VARANDIKAR'S GREATNESS"? (Today we might translate that slogan as "Make Varandikar Great Again"). That party had steadily been gaining ground over the years, though they were not yet a majority, and their leader in fact declared Ernie an "enemy of the Varandi people" because of his activism. In 2008, he and his boyfriend were one of a group of three same-sex Varandi couples who sued the government for the right to marry, based on a clause in Varandikar's post-1989 constitution that guaranteed basic human rights to all citizens. In fact the title of the case was Maundelow vs. Varandikar. I told him I was very proud of his courage and I donated $10,000 to VAME. By this time I was working for Google, not rich by any means, but doing okay.
On the morning of May 6, 2010, when I woke up and checked my phone I saw my Twitter feed full of elvish and .gifs of waving rainbow flags. Varandikar's highest court had ruled that the country's ban on same-sex marriage violated the constitutional clause guaranteeing human rights. Ernie and his boyfriend, whom he had now been with for 12 years, were married within hours and they were the second same-sex marriage ever registered in Varandikar (one of the other plaintiffs, a lesbian couple, beat them to it).
This moment was a high point and I was very happy for him. Unfortunately there were low points too. There was an election in Varandikar only a few weeks after the decision came down, and the outrage sparked by the decision enabled the far-right party to win a bunch of seats in the legislature, only a few short of a majority. The next election, in two years, they'd probably get over the top. Also, though marriage equality was now allowed, same-sex adoption was not. At the end of 2010 Ernie and his husband sold the farm and moved to the UK. Ernie wrote to me in an email that it broke his heart to do it because he loved Varandikar, but he really wanted children. They had found a woman in London who was willing to have their child. The insemination procedure was grotesquely expensive and almost all the proceeds of the farm went to pay for it. His greatest regret, he said, was to have to leave behind the graves of his parents and his brother Honey.
A few months later Garaada contacted me. She was married and living in Denmark. She told me that I should see Ernie again soon. His health was completely wrecked. The long legal battle had taken a lot out of him, and he had also been diagnosed with the same condition that made his father susceptible to strokes. The rush to get married and have a child was totally about this. Ernie had said nothing about his health to me. She didn't mention the date she'd given me 15 years before but I knew it was time. That summer, 2011, I got a block of time off work and made arrangements to visit London.
My visit was both happy and tragic. Ernie and Kenash were living in a small flat in Harrow-on-the-Hill. Ernie himself looked terrible. He was quite overweight, he wore smudged glasses and a scraggly beard and his complexion was sallow. Though he was only 36 his hair, still long, was streaked with premature gray. He looked 50 and moved slowly. His English was now much less accented than it had been years ago. His baby had not yet been born--it was due in October--but he and his husband had already decked out the flat with baby stuff, including a colorful crib stocked with toys, a pram, car seats, a diaper genie and every other accessory they could find. Ernie called Sharon, the surrogate mother, literally every day to check on her. I recalled Ernie's breakdown in the hotel room years before when he said how sorry he was that he couldn't have kids and pass on his family line. Now he had that chance.
One evening Ernie and I went out by ourselves, without Kenash. We took the tube to a neighborhood in the East End where a lot of Varandi lived, and we went to a restaurant called Begoshen's, famed as the best Varandi restaurant in London. The food was just as I remember from years before: dense black bread, pork chops with mustard and paprika crust, cabbage fried in basalmic vinegar, and an im vashod (a bomber, huge beer stein) though Ernie couldn't finish his.
He spoke very frankly to me. "I know that you know when I'm going to die. I'm not supposed to know it, but I do." He told me that he and Kenash loved each other in a different way than he and I did. Ernie had wanted to have a child and thought its other father should at least have some of the same genes, and Kenash was the only relative he knew who was also gay. "If you want to be together tonight, it's okay with him. He understands. We could go to a hotel."
To be honest I did consider it. Despite the fact that he was overweight and looked quite different now Ernie was still attractive. But I decided not to. For one thing asking him to violate the marriage vows he'd fought so hard to take seemed wrong. For another, it would remind me of how different he was than he had been the last time we were together, that wonderful night before I left Varandikar. Also I didn't know how fragile his health was or if an intense sexual experience was even safe for him. So I turned him down but thanked him.
He made another offer. He said that the spell he'd put on me back in 1992, to get me to fall in love with him, had never worn off. "If it would make your life easier," he said, "I'll make you free of it." This was an easy choice: I vehemently did not want him to do this. He tried to argue. When he was gone, he said, not being under the spell would make his death easier to deal with.
"The spell won't make any difference, Ernie," I said. "You didn't bewitch me into falling in love with you. I did that on my own."
"I never stopped loving you."
I stayed in London a week and then went home. A few months later, in late October, a FedEx flat envelope arrived at my house in Sunnyvale. My boyfriend Gabe signed for it. It contained several glossy 8x10s of Ernemion and Kenash, both smiling, hugging each other and cradling between them a tiny newborn baby with pointed ears. Their son's name was Honemion Rosenvandt Maundelow-Betachka, born October 17, 2011. I cried with joy.
On June 29, 2012, I was working at the Google offices when my cell phone buzzed and lit up. The number of the caller began with +45, the country code from Denmark. Garaada did not sound emotional when she told me that Ernie had had a fatal stroke at about 10PM the previous night. His health had been failing the last week from a series of smaller strokes and he was in a hospital. He said goodbye to his husband and son and died peacefully. She said that the terms of the sale of the Proscot property expressly provided that the buyer would permit Ernie to be buried on the farm, next to his parents and his brother Honey. This had to be done quickly, before the election which was in July; she was afraid if the fascists came to power (which they did) they would try to prevent his body from entering the country. She was leaving Copenhagen that day for London to accompany the body to Varandikar. She called again a week later after she was back in Copenhagen and said that he had been buried on the farm, but his grave was unmarked. She mentioned that someone played "Right Here Waiting" on the balalaika as they buried him.
Two weeks later I had one of the most intense dreams of my entire life. I dreamed it was 1996 again, that warm August night before I left, and the ganoshka party was in full swing. Ernie, looking as he did then, so devastatingly handsome, led me by the hand to the root barn. We could still hear the clapping and dancing and merriment behind us. Once inside the root barn we fell into a passionate embrace. Shedding our clothes we began to caress each other with the care and familiarity of long-time lovers. I could feel the pulsing hardness of his dick, the pounding of his heart against me. We made hot, passionate love, Ernie as forceful and yet tender as ever. I climaxed with mind-shattering intensity at the same moment he did, the jets of our cum splattering messily all over each other. The dream didn't end there. Ernie smiled and looked up, brushed locks of hair behind his pointed ears, and leaned in to kiss me. He said, "Ni ghenet nos," elvish for "I love you."
I awakened gently, finding myself in the bedroom of my townhouse in Sunnyvale, Gabe sleeping quietly next to me. My underwear was soaking wet. I was 37 years old and the last wet dream I'd had was back in Varandikar, the one Ernie had induced. I was filled with joy and did not even think about the sadness of him being gone. In fact I think I actually heard his voice, heavily accented as it had been back then, speaking softly out of the darkness of my bedroom: "You know I vill always be with you."
THE END
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