Alright, hey everybody out there. This is Elias and what is following is the first chapter of my first story. So be nice, ok? I mean, this is not my native language, but if I want this to be read, I better not write it in Raeto-Romanic or Laos or whatever.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
To be on the safe side of things I also herewith declare that YES this is a GAY story, about a GAY youth on its way to adulthood. Although the word gay doesn't seem to appear a single time in the first chapter of the story: don't let yourself get confused, relieved or impatient
Some graphic narration of sexual conduct between strongly consenting GAY MALE human beings might just be on the way for one of the next chapters.
Neither my soul nor the soul of this story can be saved from eternal hell and, considering that hell's gonna be a pretty hot place full of nice gay people -- none of us wants to. So please spare your flames, I don't want to put on the teflon suit every time I open my inbox.
This story is (nearly) entirely fiction, any similarity to existing persons is definitely existing, yes, but if YOU, among Billions of internet users think you have found one, consider that the chances are 1:1.000.000 that you are wrong. So let's scrap that.
As I mentioned above, the first chapter of the story doesn't really have to do about anyone being gay in any way at all. I didn't really plan to do it this way. It kind of just turned this way under my hands. So be patient. I already cut the introducing story as much as possible, trying not to maim it in the process. I am in doubt about the outcome, so I would be really grateful for some feedback.
If you feel you want to share some thoughts about the story, if you have some good criticism to offer, some suggestions, or complaints about too few sex scenes with heavy equipped guys getting spanked and calling each other dirty names, just about anything that comes to your mind: do email me at eli_schwarz@yahoo.de
Now go and enjoy the story
THE MOUNTAIN
Chapter one
For "Anshun", my dear teacher and Thomas from Berlin, my gay godfather
The hawk soared up into the air, his brown wings glinting golden against the pale blue sky. For a moment I stood mesmerized and watched it gliding effortlessly on the mild morning breeze. Then the feathered predator seemed to spot something in the valley below me. It folded its wings and like a brown flash it stroke down on a hidden prey, somewhere below where I was standing. One moment later the hawk returned, unsuccesful but with the unbroken pride of a true hunter. It let out a cry and caught in the spell of its sheer untamed beauty I answered.
A surge of wild joy, of unlimited freedom surged through my veins. My blood sang a wild song, a tune far older than the few years I had counted yet, far older even than the so called civilization I was trying to escape. A roar escaped my mouth, ancient and primitive like the fierce battle cries of the long lost mountain tribes that were among my ancestors.
The hawk vanished behind the edge of the mountain, slowly the pulsing rhythm in my veins subsided and I turned towards the path in front of me. I had left the timberline behind about one hour ago and slowly even the last crooked dwarf pines were subsiding, leaving only small patches of grass that struggled to keep alive between sheer rock.
The path forked off and I stuck to the left, avoiding a small weather base of the Swiss military on the mountain top to my right. There was a lot of scree around close to the top and I had to concentrate on where I was treading. The air was getting a lot thinner than I was used to and in the early morning hours it was still chilling. The last 500 metres were quite an exertion, but when I got to top of the ridge, I was repaid for everything.
The view was just about taking away what was left of my breath. The sun had just risen and was bathing the Alpine range around me in a soft golden light. There was still some fog below me, floating in the valley like delicately drawn feathers of a milky white. Further down glinting in bright silver I could see the Ticino that was flowing down towards the Lago. My mind was filled with peaceful tranquility that had been unknown to me in the rush of the last 8 months.
I felt like the lost son, finally come home.
I guess at this point of the story it might be time to introduce myself. My name is Elias Schwarz, male, 21 years old at the time these things happened and a first year student at the Berlin college of Asian Culture & Arts.
Now you might want to know what I was doing here, all alone on the chilling top of some Swiss mountain top, while somewhere in the distant North, on this very Tuesday morning, the rest of my college course was brooding and sweating over their exam sheets.
Well, the truth was, I had enough of it all. When I had graduated from a small high school close to the Lake Geneva, I didn't follow the rest of my peers that headed straight for university. Instead I decided return to the country that had been my home for the better part of my teenage years and visit the man, that had taught me all there was to know about "toowan" -- the long spear -- and "laow" -- an equally dangerous kind of rice whiskey.
Krew Anshun was a tall thin man in his late fifties. He lived in the hills in the East of Laos, close to what they call the "Samriem Tongdaeng" -- the Golden Triangle. Well, of course he always said, he lived in the high mountains, but being Swiss, that was the one thing I did know better. He got known to my parents about 10 years ago when my dad still worked in the development aid. He and my mum had been sent to Laos to help the government in their struggle against the drug trafficking in the region.
The idea was to encourage the local villages that stopped growing poppy with the money of Swiss subsidies.
In these days Anshun was the man behind most of the illegal opium and whiskey smuggling in dad's district. Yet for some weird reason, they became friends and on a long night with a lot of (illegally distilled) whiskey and (equally illegally imported) cigars, dad conviced Anshun that he could make even more money using the Swiss subsidies to plant potatoes and apples in the cool climates of the hills -- and sell them with a nice profit in Thailand, where the apples from the North were a sought delicacy.
So Anshun agreed to help my family with their project, though he continued smuggling his whiskey into the South -- yet now in crates marked for apples and groceries by a Swiss development agency. As the time passed, a strange bond of affection began to grow between Anshun, the lonely fox, more often drunk than not, yet even more sly and quick after each glass of "laow" -- and me, the scrawny Westerner kid, too tall for my age and always with trouble in my wake. Looking back, I guess, it was because we were both lonely, him by profession, that made him a respected and well-known, but better to be avoided man in the region and me by birth, my wheat blond hair and white skin making me a natural outcast for the neighbourhood kids.
Slowly Anshun started to take me under his wing. When I had finished the home schooling classes with my mum, we went fishing together or he would take me to his house in the forest. First in his slurry thick English, later, as I understood more and more of it, in the local dialect, he told me stories about the Laos of his ancestors. Magic tales of the Giant Naga snake, living the Mekong or old legends of heroes and princes of kingdoms long forgotten. He made me memorize every one of them -- and I always begged for more.
Then came the day, around my 13th year, when he started to teach me to fight with the "tuwan", the long spear and favourite weapon of Phra Naraya -- an ancient warrior legend and idol of my childhood years. Greedily I soaked up everything he taught me and under his guidance I slowly developed, from the srawny, shy kid I had been to a youthful lad, bursting with energy and life. Time flew by and I grew up happily, forgetting that there was a world beyond the horizons of the emerald hills and magic tales surrounding and guarding the dreams of my youth.
Yet, when I turned 17, my mum suddenly decided it was time to think about my education. The development project had turned out to be a regional success, things were running smoothly, but there wasn't enough money to expand the project onto other provinces. So, to my complete disbelief and horror, my parents decided to move back to Switzerland, so that I could complete the 2 years of high school that I had left.
It would be too much to describe my last weeks with Krew Anshun in the Eastern hills, the tearful goodbyes and the painfully dull empty feeling inside me, when I returned to the grey late autumn of Switzerland. I'm not quite sure how I managed to survive the following winter, the strangeness of coming "home" and finding everything weird, cold, out of place. My heart didn't beat the same rhythm as the rushing, ever busy, ever working, ever consuming -- just so WESTERN -- world around me.
And I don't think, I would have made it past the first year, without going insane, if it wasn't for spring. And the mountains. With the first warm rays of spring sun, I discovered the land of MY ancestors. And every weekend I would spend hiking, trudging through snow fields, walking over rocky scree or soft fragrant forest earth.
In a way, the mountains have saved me. When I bent down to taste a drink of a brilliant mountain brook, when I stepped out of the dark of a pine forest and came onto a bright meadow, shining golden in the midsummer light, when I stood on the top ridge of a mountain, spreading my arms like wings and singing my song with the wind -- those where the moments, I truly felt free of all my bounds and these moments gave me the energy I needed to go on and work my way through the treadmills of my high school.
So as I said, after graduation, I decided -- with the somewhat reluctant, yet understanding blessing of my parents -- to return for some time to the emerald hills of the "samriem tong", and 2 weeks later I sat in a plane to Vientiane. It was Krew Anshun that picked me up at the airport with the same old Rover jeep - meeting him again was like merging with a long missed part of my own self. It was also Anshun that took me into his house, as his godson -- though now he welcomed me as a young man, not a child anymore, not yet an adult. And thus changed the ways he taught me. The lessons of the "tuwan" continued, as did the neverending supplies of tales and legends, yet now I was allowed to add the tales of my ancestry into them. And so the legends of the European Middle Ages, the tale of my people, the Helvetians and many more were shared on long evenings with ample supplies of rice whiskey to keep our voices smooth.
But apart from the "laow" -- the whiskey -- there were other, more sophisticated things I was to learn.
Anshun's bussiness had blossomed over the years, still he seemed to have even more time at hand than before. Never did I see him in a hurry or rushing to get things done. Once I asked him about the miraculous spring of his tranquility. Winking he looked at me, bent down and whispered:"Samadhi, my dear godson, and the knowledge that it is all samsara -- the great illusion..".
And that was the day he began to teach me highest of his virtues -- samadhi -- the meditation and the knowledge of the Eightfold Path of the Buddha.
I spent one precious year in the house of Anshun and every day of it would be worth a new story, yet for the one I am going to tell, it is enough to know, that the time passed too quickly and soon it was time for me to leave for Europe once more -- and enter my new life at college. Yet this time I felt more prepared for what was going to come. With the invincible vigor of the youth, I felt ready for all the challenges that were to come and I was going to conquer my own place in the world.
So I left the green peace and isolation of Anshun's magic hills -- and entered the grey pulsating, ever industrious concrete swamp of Berlin. I had chosen the German capital, because, being Swiss I already spoke German and they had the most renowned college for studies of Asian culture. When I got there, the city seemed like one big construction project to me. Even now, 13 years after the Reunion of the two Germanies, everywhere old structures were torn down and replaced by new ones. Even throughout one of the biggest lows of the German economy, the city seemed to radiate an aura of upswing. New palaces of the modern elite, giant malls, and temples for big enterprises and national or foreign politicians, were erected everywhere and the people in the street were always in a hurry to get somewhere important.
Normally I would have considered living in this city suicidal, but, strengthened from my time with Anshun, I was foolish enough to think I could survive inside that kind of environment.
I should have known better. There are no mountains in Berlin.
Things were alright during the first few months. I had found a small place in a condo close to the campus. The courses were interesting enough and I was doing pretty good. At first I freaked out most of the other guys in my courses, as I already brought a quite extensive knowledge about Asian cultures with me and wasn't shy to show off any of it. But I was friendly to everybody and everyone and soon I was even finding some friends among them.
Then things went downhill very rapidly. I don't know how it happened, but it started silently, a nagging feeling inside my head, that something was missing. The noises of the city, the traffic, the cold business way of people, the grey concrete and glass walls of Berlin seemed to clamp down on me, taking my breath, suffocating me under a pillow of daily life.
I tried to continue to "function", but I guess at that point it was already to late. I kept on leading the daily routines of my life, but when I was sitting in my classes I had stopped listening, when I was talking to my friends, I was smiling on the outside, but inside of me there was nothing but emptiness. I walked through the crowded streets of Berlin -- and surrounded by people, I felt lonelier than ever before. Everything seemed so shallow to my, the daily rituals of consume, the chit-chat of people not bothering to listen to each other, after one year of learning to regard reality as illusion I found myself imprisoned in illusions but with no deeper truths to seek.
Soon my classmates and some of the professors that had taken a liking in me began to worry, but I resented their efforts to help and coldly I sent them away -- only to draw myself closer into my witch circle of isolation.
That was the time, I started drinking. Not like when I was with Anshun, as a companion of a joyful night, or as my German friends on their night parties. Mostly I drank alone and with the same destructive force that overcame me on the few times that I still touched the tuwan, the long spear, that Krew Anshun had given me as a goodbye gift, when I left Laos a million years ago.
In June I was sent once again to a appointment with the college deacon and my tutor professor, a small, bald man in his forties, with thick eye glasses and more worry and sympathy in his eyes than I could have beared without hating him. I was told that the credits I had earned for my midterm-paper and the other assignments were so poor, that the college could not allow me to qualify for my final exams this terms -- I had either the choice to retake the course next October -- or drop out now. Oh, and regretfully they also had to inform my parents about their only son's misdemeanors. They understood that my parents were quite surprised and oh yes, of course were very worried and that my mother was on her way to Berlin and would arrive until the evening of the next day.
My parents. Due to a huge amount of luck or whatever you might call it, when things go right in a really wrong way, I had been able to keep them in a merciful state of ignorance. Until then that is. And empty and dulled by the streams of liquor as my heart was, at the thought of meeting the sorrow and disappointment in the eyes of my mum, my insides turned to burning ice. My mum, who has always tried to teach me, that the world was a beautiful place, a place of hope and worth living in and fighting for. How would she bear the news, that I had given up the fight?
I couldn't sleep that night, yet I didn't touch any liquor either. And by the time the morning sun was turning the sky into a palette of blue, gold and rose, I knew what I had to do.
So I turned and fled. I wrote a letter to my mum, trying to explain things to her, telling her not to worry -- which sounded ridiculous the moment I put it to paper -- that I was sorry, but before things could have a chance to get better I needed some more time to think. And there was only one place to go, one place where I could find out what I was missing inside. I signed the letter, kissed it and taped it to the door of my room -- then I made my way to the mountains.
And now I am here, standing on the top of the ridge, breathing freedom and feeling alive the first time since I have left Anshun and the emerald hills. But still something is missing.
Confused with my own feelings, I try to listen. Listen to the breeze that is carried to me over the Alpine range. Listen to its voice, my voice, but I can't make out the words. There is no fighting something you can't name. There is no finding something you can't see. I don't know what I am looking for, but I better go and search for it. Before it is too late and the weight of my future is crashing down on me.
More confused than ever I make my way down to the valley. Tonight I will rest there, and brood about the enigma inside of me -- and hope that tomorrow will bring me an answer.