SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM Part 4 (Final Chapter)
By Dolphin Dan
*** WARNING *** This story contains descriptions of sexual acts between consenting adults of the same gender and of opposite genders. If it is illegal or morally objectionable for you to view this material, please do not continue.
*** This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is completely unintentional. ***
*** The poem "The Second Coming" was not written by me (obviously), and was, as is stated in the story, composed by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), in 1919. It is quoted accurately. ***
July 16, 1990.
Elections yesterday. It's official. The Communists will be back in charge as of September 1. Manorskzy won a four-way election but he doesn't have a majority. The National Assembly, which is dominated by parties other than the MCP, will be able to tie his hands a little bit. There was some more rioting, but luckily it was confined to the other cities. The Securitorsk has a pretty tight hold on Berzy after the Midsummer's Eve debacle.
I am getting sick of this country. I'm sick of the smell of cabbage and piss. I'm sick of my scratchy blankets and the cockroaches and the same bland taste of all the food. I'm sick of turning on the light switch and nothing happens--no power, nothing. I'm sick of seeing sad, desperate and angry people everywhere I look. We leave August 15, a month from yesterday. It'll be nice to get back to my real life.
July 26.
I haven't written for a long time because I wasn't capable of writing. It hurt too much. Now that the bandages are off my hand, I can at least write again, but it's still kind of painful. You'll see the handwriting looks pretty shaky. I think I broke something in my hand, some bones in my knuckles maybe. I just hope it heals all right. The doctors in this place are for shit.
I'll start at the beginning, but what happened to me was so sudden that there's nothing to tell about leading up to it. On the 17th, Tuesday, I was walking back to the Metropole from the cafe. It was about eight in the evening, and I'd had a few beers--I actually got talking to Radulesci for a change. Mara and Mill were nowhere to be found. As I passed the alley way these three guys jumped out of a jik, grabbed me and dragged me into the alley. Two of them had baseball bats. One of them had a rusty bicycle chain. "No, wait!" I shouted. "I'll give you my wallet!" I figured that's what they were after; crime is on the rise in Berzy and Americans are particular targets, because we're the only people around here with any money.
But these guys didn't want my wallet. "Fook you," one of them sneered at me, a dark-eyed scuzzball with slicked-back hair. He slammed that baseball bat right into my gut and I bent over coughing. Luckily it didn't last long. I got a hail of blows on my back from the bats. Every single one of them was like a firecracker going off inside my spine. Then they hauled me to my feet. To my credit I managed to throw one punch. I can't believe I even did that. But the guy ducked out of the way and my fist hit the brick wall--hence the damage to my knuckles. A second later the bike chain swiped me across the back of my shoulders. It tore my T-shirt and most of the skin off my back. The picked me up again and laid a couple of punches to my face. I went down, they kicked me in the ribs, and then ran away. Right before he ran back to their getaway car the one with the slicked-back hair spat in my face and said, "Vashni!" which is a Moesian curse word meaning faggot.
It was Radulesci who found me. He was on his way back from the cafe and saw a figure lying on the ground. I guess I must have passed out. The pain was absolutely unbelievable. My back, my head, my stomach, my ribs, my hand--everything hurt. I can't even describe it. "Dan! Oh my goodness, who have done this!" he gasped, trying to haul me to my feet. I realized something was gushing out of my mouth and didn't even know at first that it was blood. My head was swimming. "Do not worry! I get you to my apartment!" Radulesci dragged me into the Metropole, and to the ground-floor apartment where he lives with one of his mistresses. They laid me on a filthy old couch and the mistress--Sverbona is her name, and if my eyes weren't almost swelling shut, I would have thought she was damned hot--started to boil some water in a stained tea kettle. She swabbed my wounds with a hot towel and even gave me some raw meat to put on my eyes (I was already developing shiners on both sides). I couldn't breathe well and every time I coughed, which was often, it hurt. Sverbona made me take off what was left of my shirt and bandaged up my back. I lay on the couch, on my stomach, for quite a while with a wet towel draped over my back. I felt like one of those guys you see in the old sailing ship movies who gets whipped with the cat o' nine tails for stealing rum or something. Meanwhile Radulesci paced, his mobile phone in his hand, chattering angrily in Moesian. I think he was trying to figure out who did this--he must have connections with gangs of hoods in Berzy. I didn't have either the heart or the energy to tell him that I thought I'd been gay-bashed, which was what I assumed at first. Finally, about midnight, he helped me hobble upstairs to my room.
I had a really bad night. I couldn't sleep, but I lay on my bed and it hurt too much to move. In the morning there was a banging on my door. "Dan? Are you in there?" It was Mara's voice. I told her to come in. She and Mill both spilled into the room. They were shocked. I guess I looked pretty bad, with two black eyes, all these cuts all over me, and my whole body black and blue. "Go get some wet towels, and the first-aid kit in our room," Mill told his girlfriend, and she left. Mill went into my bathroom, wet a towel and came over to try to help me as best he could. "We met Radulesci right after breakfast and he told us what happened," he said. "I can't believe it."
"I've been better," I said meekly.
He came over and swabbed my head with the towel. He was really, REALLY angry. "I'm going to kill him," he grunted, though gritted teeth. "The jealous little shit--I'm gonna fucking rip his head off and shit down his severed neck."
"Who, Radulesci?" I said. These two words turned into a coughing fit, which was hellaciously painful.
"No, not Radulesci. Pauli."
I was stunned. "How could Pauli have done this?"
"You know what it costs to have somebody's ass kicked in Berzy today, Dan? About twenty bucks. He could have won that betting on a wrestling match downstairs. You know that life is cheap around here, man. And Pauli's capable of it. He's always going off on how he loves gangster movies--I wouldn't put it past him to do something like this. And he's pissed off. I didn't realize how badly he was pissed off." He looked hurt now. "This is all my fault."
"Dude, I don't blame YOU for this."
Mara's footsteps could be heard in the hallway now. "Mara doesn't know Pauli did this," he whispered to me suddenly. "Don't say anything about it."
So, they cleaned me up as best they could, changed the dressings on my back and that kind of thing. Mara kept saying, "We've got to get him to a real doctor," and Mill kept replying that Moesian doctors are butchers and quacks. When I hauled myself up to go take a piss, and it came out red, I knew they were probably right. I needed a doctor.
"The embassy," Mara said. "I bet they have an American doctor."
So we went to the embassy. We had to wait in a fetid little office, but Mara and Mill were sports about it, and never left me. One of the low-level consuls, a guy named Braxton, interviewed me. He wanted to know how it happened, if I had contacted the Moesian police, all that kind of thing. I told him I had no idea why they'd done it. I didn't want to get into details. I thought it better not to mention Radulesci or the circus in the basement, and certainly nothing about my personal affairs. Then they finally let the doctor see me. He told me I might have serious internal injuries and that I ought to get everything checked out. He also didn't have any faith in the Moesian health care system. "The hospitals are barely staffed at all," said the doctor, dressing one of the cuts on my back. "If you can make the trip, I think you ought to think about going home."
Somehow I wasn't prepared for this. I guess if I'd been thinking clearer I would have realized that it probably was the best thing to cut the trip short and head home. The University probably wouldn't want the liability of having me remain, and they'd probably send me home--my medical bills would be covered by the University's insurance, and it'd be cheaper for them in the long run to send me back to the States and get treated properly by Americans than to leave me in the hands of Moesian witch doctors. When I was sitting in Braxton's office, my nose bandage making me look like Bozo the Clown, he made the case pretty forcefully. "My personal advice to you is to get on the first plane back to the States," he said. "You can go home at any time. Your papers are in order. Just get your parents to buy a ticket back for you and go home and recuperate. The political situation's getting worse every day. The last thing I want on my hands is some crippled college student to deal with."
In the jik taxi back to the Metropole, all three of us--Mill, Mara and myself--debated whether or not I should go. "He's right, Dan," Mill said firmly. "You're in bad shape. What more can you do here in the shape you're in?"
"I'll get an incomplete for all my summer classes," I coughed, my ribs aching. It was a lame excuse, but in front of Mara I didn't want to say what I was really thinking, that if Pauli had done this, I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of voluntarily taking myself out of the picture--not that Mill would be motivated to go back to him anyway after this.
"So what? Your health is more important."
"I'll get better. I just took a couple of hits to the gut, that's all."
"You got the shit beat out of you, man. You could have internal injuries. It's too risky."
"I don't want those fucking thugs to chase me out."
"Who cares, Dan? This whole country is going to hell. Quit while you're ahead."
I was surprised, but Mara took my side. "Dan might be right," she said. "Why should he let a couple of thieves and robbers chase him away?"
The doctor had given me a bottle of aspirin and a bunch of extra dressings and such for the cuts, but there wasn't much more he could do. I knew I was facing a couple of painful, difficult days. Mara and Mill decided they'd come check on me often. There wasn't much more I could do than lay on my bed and watch TV. I started to think, maybe Mill is right, and I should just go home. Luckily I quit pissing red, so I figured something must be healing, but I still felt like complete shit.
Then one evening--this was like the 22nd I guess--something really surprising happened. On the 20th it got really hot again, and it's been like that since, adding another layer of misery to my already aching body. On the evening of the 22nd Mara knocked on my door and came in, bringing me some sandwiches, several Zlotnys, and taking it upon herself to dress my wounds (the ones on my back are the worst). It was so hot that I was laying there in just my underwear. While I doubt even if I was in good condition I'd mind Mara seeing me in only my briefs, in this context it didn't seem sexual at all--who could find me attractive in such a state? I've got bandages all over my back, huge bruises and red welts all over my stomach, I've got two black eyes and that Bozo the Clown bandage on my broken nose, and a lot of other little cuts and bangs on my arms and legs. But Mara pulled up a chair next to the bed, opened her first aid kit and started taking out bandages. "Roll over," she commanded me, so she could get access to the bicycle-chain tracks on my back. "You stubborn bastard," she said, swabbing the cuts with antiseptic. "Just between you and me I think you're crazy not to go home, but I kind of admire that you want to stick it out."
"I just don't want to be chased away by some fucking guys with baseball bats," I muttered. Aside from the stinging, Mara's hands on my back felt damn good.
"Chased away by Pauli, you mean."
I was surprised. "You know about it?"
"Oh, come on, Dan. I'm not as thick as Mill seems to think I am. I know the score. I can't believe either of us got involved with that freak. He's damaged goods. But he was gay, and accessible, so Mill went for him. I don't understand him sometimes." She had put the antiseptic away, and actually started massaging my back. I moaned with contentment. "Feel good?" she said.
"Mmm, yeah."
The massage was actually a hell of a lot more effective in killing my pain than the aspirin had been, even though I'd been popping them like M&Ms. And I had to admit it was turning me on. Mara's touch was really nice. My dick was starting to stiffen a bit. Suddenly I was scared. When the massage was over and I rolled over onto my back, she'd see I was hard. When all you're wearing is underwear it's difficult to hide something like that.
She kept moving down, massaging my lower back, where miraculously none of Pauli's hired thugs had managed to get in a shot with the baseball bats. For a split-second when she rubbed the small of my back I felt one of her fingers brush me right along the waistband of my underwear. My dick was totally rock-hard now. A few seconds later it happened again, and she touched me in the same place. Then she started moving down. One of her hands went into my underwear, massaging my ass. I couldn't believe she was actually doing this.
She stopped the back massage. "Turn over," she commanded softly.
There was nothing for it now. She'd see how turned on I was, and somehow I started do think she would like it. So I rolled over onto my back. My dick was poking straight up, straining the fabric of my briefs. Mara smiled. She gently began to feel me through my underwear. She rubbed my prick gently, and with her other hand massaged my balls and stroked the insides of my thighs. Then she took one hand away and started unbuttoning her shirt. She didn't take it off, but opened it just enough so I could see her two luscious tits hanging there, nipples hard, as ready to be handled and sucked and kissed as my dick was. Then she reached down and started to take off my underwear.
"Can I get on top of you?" she said. "Will it hurt too much?"
I didn't care whether it did or not. "No," I told her. "You might want to stay kind of upright, though. My ribs are pretty tender."
She took off her shorts. I noticed there was a wet spot in her panties. That got me really turned on. Mara was this complete fuckmonster--I mean, she had been at the beginning of the summer, at least--and she was engaged to be married to Mill, and yet, even all beat up and looking like Bozo the Clown, I made her wet enough to soak her panties. She stripped off the panties and then straddled my hips. She rubbed along her shaved pussy, and then used that hand to touch my dick and rub some of her own wetness on me. Then she did the reverse--she rubbed her thumb along the tip of my dick, which had started to leak precum, and wiped it on the lips of her snatch. Finally she lined up my penis, my tip just touching those lovely soft lips, and lowered herself down. I gasped at the warm, silky sensation of sliding into her pussy. She took me all the way to the hilt. She moaned and tipped her head back. I'm not as long as Mill, but I'm just a bit thicker than he is. Maybe I made her feel different than he did.
She started a soft circular motion with her hips, gently sliding me out and then impaling herself on my rod. It was incredible. It was the best sex I'd ever had with a chick. The lips of her pussy were very tight, but underneath them it was so silky and wonderful that it gives me a hard-on all over again just to write about it now. It was a really curious sensation, feeling all of that great sexual pleasure at the same time that so many other parts of my body hurt so badly. While she fucked me I reached up under her shirt--she was still wearing it--and fondled her tits, feeling her hard nipples floating the hollows of my palms. She started to pump faster. We were both panting. The iron frame of the old bed was creaking rhythmically. If Mill was in the next room he would certainly hear it. Finally Mara started bouncing up and down on me very fast and her breath got short. She was gasping, "Oh, Dan...oh my God, oh my God..." I grunted and squeezed her tits really hard, and I came all up in her pussy, shooting my sperm deep inside of her while feeling her muscles contracting around the head of my penis. She reached orgasm a few seconds later, prodding a finger inside of her lips to stimulate her clit even more. She gasped and held herself very still, her mouth hanging open, her eyes squinted shut. It was a really exquisite cum for both of us. At last she relaxed and pulled off of my wet, slackening dick.
"I've wanted to do that for a while now," she confessed.
"Me too," I agreed.
"I don't want him to know," she said.
It took me a minute to understand. "What, you mean Mill?"
"Yeah. I don't think he should know. He wouldn't--um, understand." She was putting her shorts back on.
This struck me as very strange. The way I understood their arrangement, Mill could have sex with any guy he wanted, but no chicks, and Mara could have sex with any guy she wanted as long as she told him about it. It didn't seem to me that Mill would be pissed off if a guy she was with happened to be the same guy HE was fucking. Indeed, if they did threesomes involving his boyfriends, what did it matter?
"Um...all right, whatever you say," I finally agreed.
She helped me get my briefs back on, packed up the first aid supplies, and then leaned over and kissed me. "Eat your dinner," she said. "I'll be back around to check on you later." And she was, but we didn't have sex.
I was totally befuddled. NOW what the hell was going on? Was I becoming some point of contention between the two of them?
If I thought that was weird, I hadn't seen anything yet. Two nights later--and two nights ago, the 24th--the heat finally broke with a rain storm in the middle of the night. It was so loud that it woke me up. I was doing better by then; the wounds on my back were closing up and at least it didn't hurt to breathe anymore. I'd had about six Zlotnys before bed; they killed the pain. So in the middle of the night I was still pretty muddled. I heard something that at first I didn't pay attention to. Then it came again, and I realized it was a knock. But the person who knocked didn't wait for a response. The door to my room opened and someone came in. I was kind of in that half-conscious daze between sleep and wakefulness. At night my room is really dark, almost pitch black. There are so few street lights in Berzy that the nights are always very, very dark. So I couldn't see who had entered. But I knew they were approaching, and whoever it was sat on the edge of my bed. "Who's there?" I said. I wasn't afraid, because I was pretty sure I knew the person, and likely it was either Mara or Mill. I felt a finger suddenly press vertically across my lips in a "shhh" gesture. I really had no idea who it was.
My mystery guest then hooked his or her thumbs under the waistband of my briefs and whipped my underwear off, pretty forcefully. I knew it was either Mill or Mara but still had no idea which one. But now I knew, guy or girl, they wanted sex. I have to admit it was kind of fun. I lay there and waited for the next thing to happen, and my dick grew hard, obeying the silent commands of whoever had come to visit me. I heard a kind of strange squirting noise. Then I heard skin rubbing against skin very rapidly, like someone rubbing their hands together. A moment later a warm hand came around my erection. It was slicked with some kind of gel. It had a chemical smell and I thought it was K-Y, but if not that certainly something close. With growing amazement I realized what this person wanted me to do.
When they started to get on top of me, I reached forward to feel the person, but the response was a sudden vicious slap of my hand. I recoiled. Whoever it was, he or she didn't want me to touch them, probably because if I felt either a dick or a pussy I would know who was here and they wanted to keep me confused. They knew I couldn't see them, and they knew I was half-asleep and had a lot of beers; both Mara and Mill had been with me at the cafe when I started drinking, and I'd been in their room drinking with them later. They were probably counting on me still being drunk--which, in fact, I was.
"OK, you don't want me to touch you?" I said. "Fine, I won't touch you."
The hand that grasped my dick felt a little forceful, so I wonder if it could have been Mill. Yet a moment later my dickhead was pressing against a puckered anus, and I didn't feel any hair around it, so it might have been Mara. Then again Mill has virtually no hair on his ass at all, and given his shaving habits he might well have shaved himself anyway--the last time we were together his balls were shaved, so who was to say he didn't shave his ass too? But, whoever it was, in another second or two I felt my dick sliding into them, surrounded by a wonderful tightness. I groaned. I really had no clue which of them it was. I hadn't buttfucked either of them, so I had no frame of reference.
My mysterious partner began to bounce up and down on me. He or she had drawn the covers up a bit on either side of me, and his or her legs were covered by them, so again I couldn't tell if the legs were hairy or not. Pretty soon I stopped caring who it was. My dick pulsed and throbbed inside the person's butthole. "That feels so fucking good," I moaned. Maybe in a way I was trying to goad the person into speaking so I'd know who it was. But they were very careful. Mara or Mill never said a word, never grunted, never panted. Any of those sounds were likely to give them away.
I don't think the person was pumping on me for more than a minute before I felt the inevitable explosion welling up in my balls. "I'm going to cum," I gasped. I had to tell myself not to touch them, and my arms were above my head, my fists clenching the pillow. "I'm going to cum in your butt. You want me to sperm in your ass, don't you?" The pumping grew more insistent, as if answering yes. I suddenly held my breath and my whole body tensed. My penis burst open and fired my hot spunk into the person's rectum. The beer, the sleepiness and the orgasm all swirled around in my head. Strangely, not knowing if the person I was having sex with had balls or a slot made the experience all the more enjoyable.
My partner didn't stick around to be identified. He or she got off me immediately and didn't touch me again. They just left me there, my dick slackening and covered with traces of cum and shit, and my groin slick with K-Y jelly. He or she stepped lightly into my bathroom and closed the door. There's no electricity at the Metropole at night anyway so he or she couldn't have turned a light on and revealed themselves. I heard the toilet flushing. Then the door opened, I heard more footsteps, and the door to the hallway opened and then closed. I heard the door to Mill and Mara's room open and close, so it was definitely one of the two of them. But which one? Mill is the obvious suspect, but Mara likes anal sex, and I've seen Mill bang her in the butt at least once.
I've had a pretty wild summer. I've been to a secret gay bar, I've bet on guys masturbating, I've been a voyeur, I've fucked a man, I've fucked a woman, and I've had the shit beaten out of me. But of all the bizarre experiences I've had, this one is easily the weirdest. I woke up in the morning naked and hung over, the lube dried on my skin and matting my pubic hair. My underwear was lying on the floor next to the bed. There were no clues as to who had visited me the night before. I decided I wouldn't mention the incident to either Mill or Mara. Whichever one of them had done it knew that it happened, but I suspected that the other didn't know that his or her fiance had crawled out of bed in the middle of the night and got themselves buttfucked by me. It would be a mistake to bring it up. It's a really odd situation.
I'm on the mend now. I'm not going home. In fact I haven't even told my parents that I got beat up. I don't want a lot of nasty questions, and even the most casual inquiry into what happened is likely to turn up something I don't want to talk about to my parents. I hope I'll be in presentable shape by August 15. I should be. But it's been a wild couple of weeks, that's for sure.
July 29.
Pauli got his. I finally went back to classes the other day for the first time since the attack. Pauli wasn't there and I heard he'd been out for a couple of days. Then yesterday he finally showed up. He had a split lip and a shiner on his cheek, and he flashed me a really contemptuous glance.
"Please tell me you didn't hire thugs to fuck up Pauli," I asked Mill later on.
"Do you think I'd do something like that?"
"I don't know. If you did, though, I want to you know that it's not what I want. I don't hate Pauli. He's just a mixed-up kid."
"It could have been Radulesci," Mill shrugged.
I'm not sure I believe that Mill had nothing to do with it. I'm not going to ask Radulesci. I don't want to know. I'm a little scared--with Pauli's gangster-movie mentality, who's to say he won't hire somebody to kill me next time? But I don't think Pauli is that nuts. And he's probably not rich. $20 to beat somebody up may seem like a bargain in American terms, but not too many Moesians have that kind of money to throw around. Maybe it's for the best. If somebody is looking out for me, Pauli will think twice about tangling with me again.
This whole thing is kind of sad. To add to the unpleasantness, Mill and Mara had a huge fight tonight. I sat in the closet and listened. My name was never mentioned, but Mara was upset because she's "getting the impression" that Mill doesn't love her, and his protestations of "Honey, of course I do" must have rang kind of hollow to her. They fought about their families and when they should get married and some incident that evidently happened last Christmas involving a guy named Jason (I couldn't tell which one of them had fucked him). It left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I shouldn't have anything to do with either of them. Before I started fucking them, they seemed to be doing fine. I don't want to be the cause of their breakup.
August 1.
At lunch today at the university Mara came up to me. "Come with me," she said. She led me down a hallway of the big university building and up a dusty staircase into the library tower. "We don't have a lot of time." When she said that I knew immediately that she wanted to have sex, and she wanted to avoid Mill noting she was gone.
The library tower is a pretty wild place. Since the revolution they've gone through the library and started to weed out a lot of the Communist-era books, especially history books that were very distorted. They've been storing a lot of the shit in the library tower. We got in there and Mara was unbuttoning her shorts. I'm not one to perform on command, but I had to admit it was hot, this forbidden little liaison. I got her up against a bookcase full of dusty copies of the Biography of Comrade Gaenescu, which used to be required reading. She brushed the head of my hardening penis against the hair on her pussy. I waited until I was fully hard and then jammed it into her powerfully. She gasped a little bit and smiled. I started to pump as hard and fast as I could. In about a minute and a half I was panting pretty good, and sweating, not just from the sex but because it's stifling hot in the library tower. I came forcefully and it felt absolutely terrific. She didn't cum, but she obviously enjoyed it. I slipped out of her and we started to re-fasten our clothes. "Come on," she said. "We've got to get back."
I feel very strange tonight. I'm here in my room, writing by candlelight. Tonight I just wanted to go for a walk. There's a great open field near my house in New Mexico, and I love to go there on warm nights and just look up at the stars. I can't do that here, because walking the streets of Berzy after dark alone is very dangerous. I miss it. I had an even stronger dose of that feeling of doom I felt the other night when Mara and Mill were fighting. Suddenly I can't wait to get back home.
August 2, 1990.
There's news, but it doesn't come from Berzy. Some kind of war has started in the Middle East. It was all over the television and the evening newspapers here: Iraq invaded Kuwait. Their army just marched right across the border and took over the country. Before today I'd never heard of the Iraqi leader, some dictator named Saddam Hussein, but evidently he's nuts.
Mill was pretty concerned about it. He keeps up on current events, and as we were having beers at the cafe he was browsing one of the few English-language papers available here, which was full of photos of Iraqi tanks rolling through the streets. "This is bad," he told me. "If Hussein invades Saudi Arabia, the United States is going to get involved."
"You really think it's that bad?"
"It might be." He sipped from his mug of beer. "Might be kind of good that we're going home in two weeks."
Home. I honestly can't wait. When I get back, I'm going to have a real shower with real soap, a pizza, and a cold beer. It didn't even strike me before today that I'll be leaving my friends. Mara and Mill have been my life this whole summer. It'll be odd to be without them. I wonder if we'll keep in touch.
August 5.
I'm back where I started. I'm writing this on the same cheap iron-framed bed I slept in at the Hotel Dansk at the beginning of the summer. "Good to see you back!" Lechleiter said, slapping me on the back. "What happened to your nose? Did you break it?"
First things first. The shit is really hitting the fan now. I had no idea this Kuwait thing was so serious, but we're hearing random gunfire in the streets of Berzy again and it all comes back to that.
There's always been a serious fuel shortage in this country. During the Communist era the government had almost all of its gasoline imported from Russia, but of course that stopped with the revolution last year, so the price of gas tripled and there's not much supply. But the price of oil jumped when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and now the Moesian suppliers of oil can't afford to import as much--which means gas lines and riots at gas stations and lots of abandoned jiks just sitting there in the street.
As if this isn't bad enough, there's lots of shit going on with the upcoming change in government. The Communists are getting ready to come back into power. All week we've been hearing about power struggles in the Securitorsk, and who really controls them, the National Assembly or the MCP. Well, the head of the Securitorsk resigned the other day, and it was decided that the guy the MCP was going to put in charge of the police forces would just go ahead and start a few weeks early. So now basically the Communists are in charge of the police again.
That's how we got thrown out of the Metropole. This evening Mara and I were eating at the cafe next door, and Mill burst in. He was in quite a hurry. "We have to get back to the hotel, pack up our shit and get the hell out of here," he demanded. "And I mean RIGHT NOW!"
"What's going on?" Mara said.
"I just got a tip-off. The Securitorsk is going to raid the Metropole in like ten minutes. We've got to get our shit. Now!"
There was no time to argue. We bolted. We literally ran back to the Metropole and galloped up the stairs. Mill said he was going out to get some Zlotnys when two Securitorsk officers cornered him in the alleyway. They warned him that the raid was coming and that the Americans who lived there ought to get out, or there'd be trouble. I barged into my room and just began snatching things up. It was difficult--my room is a complete mess and there's shit everywhere. When we started hearing a lot of commotion downstairs--the craps games were emptying out, and presumably the gay bar in the basement too--we knew something was happening. I flung all the clothes I could grab into my suitcase, grabbed this journal, my wallet, my papers, my passport and my Walkman. I didn't get everything, but I didn't care. I wasn't going to wind up in some Securitorsk jail cell.
We ran out the door, hauling our stuff behind us; I think Mara and Mill left some stuff behind as well. We got to the end of the street when Mill shouted, "There they are!" and we bolted for an alleyway. A couple of trucks of Securitorsk soldiers rolled down the street. They stopped in front of the hotel and swarmed out, guns drawn. It was a raid all right. A staff car drove up and the door opened. I couldn't believe my eyes--I was watching from the end of the street--when I saw none other than Comrade Podorevsky get out, dressed in a crisp new Securitorsk uniform. He obviously got his old job back. That's a pretty scary thought.
There's really nowhere else to go but the Hotel Dansk, and we all knew it. Trouble was, with the gas shortage we couldn't get a jik taxi to take us there. Mill finally stopped this guy with a horse cart and offered to pay him $20 US to take us to the Dansk. So we piled our shit in the wagon and climbed aboard. It was pretty bizarre.
We got away from the Securitorsk, but it definitely sucks that we're out of the Metropole. I have a feeling the sexual adventures I've had this summer are coming to a definite end. I can't fuck either Mill or Mara with Lechleiter watching in the bed next to me. But, we go home in 10 days. So I guess it doesn't matter much.
August 8.
Today was an eventful day.
Mill is a damn hero for saving Mara and I from getting arrested at the Metropole the other night. Comrade Podorevsky cleaned out the place pretty good. There were paddy wagons full of transvestites and gay wrestlers headed for the Securitorsk's central lock-up, and I shudder to think what's going to happen to them all if Podorevsky is now trying to clean up the city. But Podorevsky doesn't run a vice squad. The real reason the MCP wanted the Metropole raided was because it turned out Radulesci was a heroin dealer.
I guess it didn't surprise me. Mill told me about it. "Evidently he was running raw opium out of Turkey and processing it here in Berzy," he said, over breakfast at the Dansk, which was just as disgusting as I remember it being two months ago. "Ingenious, actually. You know how he was smuggling it out?"
"How?"
"In the potting soil. You remember we toured that factory where he crushes up old jiks and turns them into potting soil? Well, in certain shipments there was heroin mixed in with the dirt and the crushed cars. He's been making millions. My guess would be the Communists want to control that traffic now that they're coming back to power."
Then the other morning we open up the papers and find out that Radulesci is dead. They were transferring him to another prison, and a black car drove up, a machine-gun stuck out the window and sprayed a hail of bullets at him. The Securitorsk hasn't caught the gunmen, though they're looking for them. I'm shocked. Radulesci might have been a heroin dealer, but overall he was a good guy. He took good care of me the night I got attacked. And he was good to us at the Metropole. If not for him I would never have hooked up with Mara and Mill.
"Unbelievable," Mara gasped when we saw the news.
"It had to be the gangsters," Mill surmised. "Russians, probably. They must have been afraid Radulesci would rat them out to the Securitorsk."
I'll be glad to get out of this country. It's going to hell in a handbasket. I couldn't imagine that I'd be nostalgic for the way things were at the beginning of the summer, but Moesia's just a damned dangerous place these days.
Then later on in the day, while we were in classes, we got another shock from the headlines. Bush has ordered troops to the Gulf. Saddam's army hasn't moved from Kuwait, and no one is sure whether Saudi Arabia's next on his list. But it definitely looks like there's a war on, or there will be soon. With as unstable as Moesia has been since the invasion, I shudder to think what's going to happen here if a shooting war breaks out in Iraq. It's scary.
But yet despite all this something both wonderful and melancholy happened today. I had thought the sexual adventures were over, but they're not. This all bothers me, what's been going on, but today was really terrific--and sad at the same time. I was with Mara again. Probably for the last time.
Last night she came up to me and said, "Do you want to get together tomorrow? I've got something special in mind. Sort of a picnic. We'll find a way to slip out of classes. Meet me in the central square at ten AM. Don't tell Mill."
So this morning I cut out of classes and walked over to the central square. Mara showed up about ten minutes late. She had a backpack with her that looked like it was packed pretty full. She kissed me, and then thrust something into my hand. "We leave at ten-thirty," she said. It was a train ticket. We went to the train station (which is on the far end of the central square) and got on a smelly hulk of a train for a little town called Trojna, which is about an hour by train from Berzy. I had no idea what we were going to see there, but my dick started to harden in my pants when I thought about it. Mara wasn't taking me there just for a picnic, I was sure of that.
We got to the train station in Trojna, and she took out a map and we started walking. Trojna is this lovely medieval town that hasn't changed much in probably 700 years. There's a big stone church and the houses are quaint, and the streets are cobblestone alleys that lurch crazily to and fro up the side of a mountain. That's where we were headed, to the top. It was hot, so I stripped my shirt off and we kept hiking in the hot sun. "Where are we going?" I finally asked.
"It's a valley," Mara replied. "Mill wanted to see it, so we came here one day early in the summer. It's amazing. You won't believe it."
We crested the hill--we were out of the town of Trojna proper now--and then went through a little pass and found ourselves in a big grassy bowl-shaped valley. Indeed it was amazing. The whole place was littered with ancient, rusty military equipment. There were big wheeled guns, crates of ammunition, destroyed carts lying on their sides, old trenches that were grassed over, and even machine guns still on tripods looking lethal. Mara and I walked through this eerie graveyard. It was full of green grass and beautiful yellow flowers. Whatever war had occurred here, it was a long, long time ago. Yet the military equipment was just left lying around like the troops had gone off to lunch and would be back any moment.
"What is this?" I asked, awed.
"It's left over from the Balkan Wars," said Mara. "This was where the Moesian Army was encamped when they called an armistice. That's what Mill said, anyway. That was in 1913, right before World War One. They just left all this crap here."
We stopped at a little knoll that was full of weeds and flowers. I realized the edge of the wall had been built up with sandbags, and the plants had taken root from it. There were crates of old rusty rifles, empty cans, and all sorts of junk. But it was in the shade and it had a commanding view of the valley and, very distantly, the craggy mountains beyond. Mara took off the backpack and removed from it a large towel. She spread it out, sat down and began to take out the picnic lunch. "Come on, let's eat," she said. She had sandwiches made from real roast beef--not the stringy cardboard that most places serve. And she had a bottle of wine, Moesia's finest, which tasted like transmission fluid, but it was still wonderful. We ate and lay down on the towel and talked and laughed. We talked about the States and what we were going to do when we got home. She talked about how boring last summer was, in the Hamptons, compared to this one. It was wonderful to talk about stuff like that. And Mara was totally radiant. I really started to enjoy myself.
Finally we got down to business. We were lying together on the towel amidst the wreckage of this long-forgotten war, and I already had my shirt off and Mara was kissing me and caressed my back. "You'll have scars from that bicycle chain," she said. "But it won't look bad."
"It'll be a permanent reminder of my summer in Moesia," I said. "And every time I take my shirt off in public for the rest of my life I'll have to explain what happened."
She laughed. She cuddled closer against my body. She could feel me starting to get erect. She reached down and began to massage me through my shorts. I smiled.
"Do you prefer guys or girls?" she asked me.
"I don't have a preference, really. I like both about equally."
"Who's better in bed, me or Mill?"
I laughed. "Don't ask me questions like that. Even if I could decide, I wouldn't want to."
We started kissing. She gently unbuttoned my shorts. There was already a wet spot of precum soaking through the fabric of my underwear. She reached under the elastic band of my briefs, and as soon as her bare hand touched my penis I was suddenly overcome with lust. We tore our clothes off frantically. We swiveled around to a 69 position, and I moaned softly as I felt my hard dick sliding into her mouth. I spread her legs and began to tongue her pussy gently. As she began working on me forcefully, I poked my tongue between her lips, and stroked her clit gently with my finger. She moaned too and a shudder went through her body. The musky scent of her pussy, wet with excitement, was invigorating. My dick bucked and twitched in her wet mouth. We were both in heaven.
Neither of us let the other get to orgasm. Mara took my dick out of her mouth and stroked it softly; it was wet with her spit and my own precum. I knew it was time to fuck her, and she wanted it. I maneuvered around so I was on top of her. She spread her legs as far as possible, and I felt the wonderful wetness of her snatch against the head of my dick. She positioned me, helping me inside of her, gasping a little as I went in. Her pussy felt as wonderful as it had the first time. Then she drew her arms around my scarred back and pulled me close, and I began to pump on her, my dick tingling with every wonderful thrust into her vagina.
With the exception of the anonymous anal encounter in my bedroom the night of the storm, this was the best fuck I'd had all summer. I let Mara know it. I was panting and moaning, my whole body overcome with the waves of pleasure radiating out of my dick. Her breaths were getting short and her embrace became almost crushing, reminding me of when Mill had hugged me while he fucked between my thighs. I could feel my balls tightening up in preparation for the orgasm. I kissed her neck savagely. "Cum inside me, Dan," she gasped. "Cum, honey, I want to feel you coming in me. Oh God, Danny, I want to feel you cum--I'm going to--oh JESUS, YES!" She thrashed and gasped and I could feel her orgasm, the sudden tightening of her body. I lost it too. My penis felt like it totally blew itself apart inside of her, turning suddenly into a jagged splattery mass of hot liquid pleasure as I pumped what seemed like gallons of cum into her body. We lay together afterwards, our stomachs heaving, our hearts hammering. I looked up from her, brushed locks of my long hair out of my eyes, and surveyed our bizarre surroundings. The field was a lovely expanse of green and yellow, but the rusty skeletal remnants of the ancient war stood and hung ominously all around us. Our towel was spread out less than ten feet from an old machine gun, a bandolier of rusted ammunition still hanging from it. This was a moment I would remember for the rest of my life. I recall wondering suddenly if I was in love with Mara.
I pulled out of her, and we lay together for a while on the towel. I pulled my shorts and my underwear back on and she got dressed too though she left her shirt unbuttoned. The sun had changed position so we were no longer in the shade, and I reached for my sunglasses. It wasn't so hot today; it was almost springlike, not the hellish furnace of the deep summer. The sun felt good on my bare chest. A hum, the pleasant afterglow of sex, still vibrated from my groin.
I don't know why I said what I did, but I spoke up. "Don't marry Mill," I said.
"We belong together," she told me. "We understand each other."
"Are you sure you do? If you're all so understanding of each other, why are you keeping us a secret from him?"
"It's complicated," she said. "Sex has always been complicated with us. When you're dating a guy who's bisexual and who craves dick as much as he craves you, you have to make some--adjustments. Haven't your girlfriends had to?" She propped herself up on one elbow. "Or do you just not tell them?"
She had me. Jen, the last girl I dated with any regularity, had never known I was bi.
"But marriage is a big step," I said. "Are you sure you're right for each other?"
She smiled. "Do you know what our majors are?" she asked me. This seemed a strange question, out of context. "All summer I don't think we've ever talked about our majors. What's yours?"
"I'm undeclared. What has that got to do with anything?"
She ignored the question. "My major is English literature," she announced. "Mill's is European history. Does that surprise you?"
"I guess not."
"Mill has an amazing sense of history. He brought me to this valley, months ago. We made love on the ground very much like you and I just did. And then he talked about all of this--the Balkan Wars, the First World War, the Communists, Moesia, Gaenescu, everything. This is where the history of the twentieth century began. World War I started here in the Balkans, you know that, right? Sarajevo is barely a hundred miles from here. One teenage kid with a pistol--Prinzip, he shot Archduke Francis Ferdinand--started a fuse that totally blew up civilization. The whole history of everything comes back to that event. Mill told me about it, and I could see how fascinated he was by all of it. And you know what? So am I. You don't see that side of him, do you? Has he ever talked to you about politics or history or anything like that?"
If Mara was trying to make me feel inadequate, she succeeded. "No, not really," I replied.
Mara sat up. She looked over at the ruined military hardware surrounding us. "Mill and I have a vibe, Dan. It's more intellectual than sexual. What we've been doing this summer is all sex. We need you--both Mill and I need you. It's more than just fucking, but that's part of it. You, Pauli, Dmitri--you all have a role to play."
She had lost me now, but I began to realize that there was a lot more to her relationship with Mill than met the eye. Yet I felt myself strangely on the verge of loving both of them. What we had experienced this summer was romantic and exciting and wonderful. It was going to be difficult to give it up.
Mara reached for the bottle of wine and one of the cups we'd been drinking it out of. Pouring herself another helping, she said, "Do you want to know what my favorite poem is, Dan? It's by Yeats, W.B. Yeats. It's called 'The Second Coming.' Do you know it?"
I sat up too. "No, I don't think so," I replied.
Mara took a sip of wine, and then she quoted the poem:
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all convictions, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
I wasn't exactly sure what Mara was getting at. I pushed my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose. "That's...um, interesting," I said.
"There's more," she said, flashing me an insistent look. She went on:
"Surely some revelation is at hand; / Surely the Second Coming is at hand. / The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out / When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi / Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert / A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, / Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it / Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. / The darkness drops again; but now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle."
She drew a breath before speaking the last lines of the poem:
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
I didn't know what to say to this. Mara had a deep far-off look in her eyes, and it was sad. Here in this ruined valley we were confronting nothing less than our own mortality. I realized Mara loved Mill, and I was never a claimant to her love, any more than Pauli could have inspired love from Mill.
"Yeats wrote that in 1919," said Mara. "It was at the end of the First World War. He saw what civilization had unleashed, and he was afraid. But it's still going on. That's what impressed me when Mill brought me here. Everything that's happening now--the fall of Communism, this thing in the Gulf--it's still Yeats's rough beast, slouching towards Bethlehem. Civilization is crumbling, and we've got to hold on to what we have. I never saw things like that--I never thought of things that way--until I met him. You see, we understand each other, Dan. And I know you like me. I know you like Mill. But the best thing you can do is go home to New Mexico and try to forget about both of us. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Worry about yourself. I'll never forget you, and he won't either. But I will marry him, Dan. And I think you should be happy for us."
"Of course I'm happy for you."
"You don't sound too convinced."
We sat together for a long time. Then Mara started to pack up the picnic stuff. We hiked back to Trojna, caught the three o'clock train home and were back in Berzy by dinner time.
I realize now that something has changed in me. The events of this summer have been a learning experience, that's for sure. I can't help thinking Mara's wrong, that the differences between her and Mill are too much to be bridged. I also can't help wondering if she'd be with me, if she was not already with Mill. Maybe. Maybe not. But what does it matter now? Ultimately she's right. We all have to go home, and that'll be the end of it.
I found that poem in a book in the library. That's how I copied it into this journal. I've just read it over. It's nightmarish. But I wonder if Mara might be correct. Maybe we are all slouching towards Bethlehem, and the world we create is going to be a pretty dark and ugly one.
Kind of like Moesia itself.
August 15, 1990.
This will be the last entry in this journal. For one thing I'm running out of pages. For another thing, I'm on the plane home. All of us exchange students made it out of Moesia alive. Thanks to Pauli's thugs my nose is permanently crooked and I've got bicycle-chain marks on my back, but on the whole I'm probably lucky to have survived in that good of shape. My heart kind of hurts, though. I didn't think parting from my friends would affect me so bad, especially after Mara's farewell speech in the valley, but it did.
I won't go into much detail about how we left. We packed up our stuff, got on the train to the airport, and then waited two hours to get on the plane to Prague, because the officials had to check our papers and the fuel shortage meant the truck was late coming to refuel the plane. Mara and Mill seem to have papered over their differences, and they were chatting and glowing in each other's company just the same as when I first saw them. "We're going to keep in touch, right?" Mill said brightly as we waited in the squalid Berzy airport. I told him I would write, but I doubt any of us will. What we've been through is still strange.
From Prague we went to Amsterdam, and at last we were back in the Western world. We passed racks of newspapers--some in English--still raving about the Gulf crisis, which is getting worse with each passing day. I had a long layover in Amsterdam. I had to catch a flight to Chicago, and from there to Albuquerque. Mara and Mill were bound on a flight for New York. We waited together in the lounge, the three of us, none of us knowing what to say. Finally Mill stood up. "Hey, Dan, I've got something for you before we part ways," he said. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"Just come on." To Mara he said, "I'll be back in a few minutes, honey."
I followed him. As soon as I saw him approach the restrooms I knew what was up. "Hey, man, maybe we ought not to," I said. I was afraid of it being tawdry and squalid, and of ruining the great memories we had.
"Come on, don't you need a little lift before that long flight home?" he said.
"I can live without it."
He smiled. "Yeah, well, maybe I can't."
We went inside the restroom. In Amsterdam and most European cities, the toilet stalls are little closets with floor-to-ceiling walls, so people wouldn't notice two people in one together. There was one guy at the urinal, but he quickly left. Mill opened a stall and motioned me inside. I still wasn't too sure of this. The idea of a quickie in a bathroom doesn't really turn me on.
"Hey, man, I'm not too sure about this," I said.
"Shh," said Mill. He looked at me seriously. Then he leaned forward and kissed me. It was a very deep, very passionate kiss. He embraced me. My arms came around him. We squeezed each other tenderly for a long time, and our tongues danced in the wetness of our mouths. We parted. He unbelted his jeans, pulled them down, and then pulled off his boxers. They were the same mallard duck boxers as he'd worn that day we first played his game, the no-seeing, no-touching game. His dick wasn't fully hard, but it wasn't completely flaccid either. He stuffed the boxers into my hand, then put his jeans back on. "That's it," he said. "That's what I wanted to give you. A farewell kiss, and something to remember me by."
I smiled. The boxers were still warm from his body. I had to admit it was pretty hot. If he had wanted a blow job or to do something else sexual here I might have done it, but I was kind of glad he didn't. He wasn't going to dirty up what we had.
"Good luck with Mara," I told him. "You'll need it."
"I know." We hugged again. When we parted he tapped my hand with the shorts in it. "Put those in your pocket so Mara doesn't see them. They're her favorites, and she'll be pissed if she finds out I gave them to you. She'll know eventually, but let's get home first."
Something inside me wanted me to tell Mill that I loved him. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn't; but it seemed like the right thing to say. Yet I didn't say it. We kissed one more time. He caressed my cheek with his hand. "Take care, Dan," he said.
"You too."
We left the bathroom separately, but I caught up with Mill as we walked back to the lounge area where I had left my carry-on bag. I couldn't kiss Mara goodbye, but I gave her a hug. The warm ball of her boyfriend's boxer shorts was a lump in my pocket. I wonder if she thought it was me, getting turned on. "Goodbye, sweetie," I said to her.
"Goodbye, Dan. You take care of yourself."
I picked up my bag and walked away from them. I turned back and waved. But they weren't even paying attention. They were too busy kissing each other.
I unzipped my bag and stuffed Mill's boxers into them. It was a strange little gift, but at least it was something cool to remember him by.
I got on my plane, and here I am, writing the last words of this journal.
I'm almost home.
THE END
Stories By This Author:
Last Days in the Dorm /nifty/gay/college/last-days-in-the-dorm (A student stumbles into an encounter with an attractive Native American college student the night before moving out of his dorm.)
Lust In Iraq /nifty/gay/military/lust-in-iraq/ (A war-weary sergeant becomes infatuated with a young PFC recently transferred to his unit.)
Rip the Jacker /nifty/bisexual/masturbation/rip-the-jacker/ (An outwardly well-adjusted high school student becomes a serial masturbator, causing a tremendous stir in the community.)
Shifter /nifty/gay/sf-fantasy/shifter/ (A college student's sexual fantasies have the unintended effect of transporting him backwards in time.)
Wet Lucidity /nifty/gay/masturbation/wet-lucidity (An exploration of the link between wet dreams and lucid dreams.)