Wayward Island (Part 18) How Jake became Alcibiades and another oracle was given By Jake Preston
Reader restrictions: no minors, no readers who are offended by explicit descriptions of gay sexuality. The story as a whole is a psychological study of gay athletic hunks who love nerds, and the nerds who love them in return. The story also deals with the problems faced by gay guys who live in rural areas. If these themes don't interest you, there are many other great "nifty" stories to choose from. Send comments and suggestions to jemtling@gmail.com. Jake will respond to all sincere correspondents.
Donations to Nifty keep juices flowing and fires burning. Click "donations" at the Gay Male Stories headnote.
The mystery of the 'Manoomin agonde' oracle was incentive enough for Dark Eagle to visit Ashawa. I took him on a tour of my homestead, which differed little from other farms in the region. We picked our way through the brambly woods along Rice River, and wondered if it had been sacred Cherokee land in the past. Because the ground was marshy there, the growth of trees was stunted, except for flourishing willows and cypress. Among the younger generation of trees stood the ruined trunks of Norway and white pine, signs that the land where we stood must have been dry at one time. "The course of the river must have changed at one time, maybe a century ago. There are two or three places upriver where this could have happened. The terrain is so fragile that a beaver dam would have been enough to make the river change direction."
We visited my cabin, played with Ma'ingan and Daisy, and visited with Red Feather, who invited Dark Eagle to join us at the Symposium discussion in Mrs. Ravitch's studio that evening. We went to Wayward Island Resort early, so I could show him Mrs. Ravitch's "Water Follies" in the lodge, and other paintings in the studio. He was particularly interested in the naturalistic portrait of Red Feather and me in "Apollo and Admetus." I expounded on the rich history and mythology behind these paintings. "Modern America has lost its faith in mythology, but at least it's preserved in paintings and books," Dark Eagle said. "I fear that for the Ojibwe, much as been lost."
"Much of Greek mythology has been lost, too," I said. I told him about our painstaking effort to reconstruct the original myth of Apello and Admetus.
In our discussion about Symposium, we got to the part where Socrates defines love as the desire to possess beauty. In the Platonic mode of thinking, "beauty" implies "absolute" beauty, but what does that mean to men for whom universal absolutes are unattainable? Socrates identifies beauty with wisdom: true love is expressed through philosophical discourse. For everyone else, love is expressed through sexual desire for specimens of beauty that are imperfect, but real. The dialogue reached its most serious point, and it almost looked as if Socrates would bring it to a conclusion with a paean to Wisdom-and that's when Alcibiades crashed the party, entering unannounced with a party of dancing revelers.
Mrs. Ravitch showed us a painting by Anselm Feuerbach, who depicts Agathon as a gracious host, welcoming Alcibiades and his company at the pillars that supported the porch to his house. "A German painting, done in 1869," she said, "but Feuerbach got it wrong, misled as he was by a German Romanticism that idealized all things Greek, and failed to see Alcibiades as a Lord of Misrule whose uninvited appearance disrupted the philosophical dialogue; disrupted it, yet continued it in a comic form that is more profound than anything said in the earlier parts of the dialogue. In fact, Agathon never greeted Alcibiades at the porch. He was seated at the banquet, and surprised when Alcibiades came in and placed a garland of victory on his head. No doubt it was a garland made of grape vines, a symbol of Dionysus, for in this scene, Alcibiades IS Dionysus. Who else would dance about the streets of Athens with a troupe of naked revelers? And then, to add to the comedy, Alcibiades sees Socrates at the feast, rips the garland in two, and puts half of it on Socrates's head. This, I think, will be the subject of the first of five paintings in the Alcibiades series."
"And the other four?" Henry asked.
"Well," Mrs. Ravitch said, "Alcibiades says he's in love with wisdom, but because wisdom is unattainable (like all universals), he has transferred his love to Socrates. He imagines that Socrates must love him, too, because, as he says, 'I had a wonderful opinion of the attractions of my youth.' Like the other speakers in the Symposium, Alcibiades gives a speech in praise of love, but his took the form of a story about four attempts that he made to seduce Socrates. These seduction scenes will complete the historia of the paintings."
We read the text, and imagined the paintings. First, in the gymnasium, where nudity was compulsory, Alcibiades got to flirting with Socrates but was disappointed when the old man was unresponsive. It was funny because Socrates is compared to Silenus, the oldest of Dionysus's satyr-companions. And he is compared to Marsyas, a flute-playing satyr who was flayed alive by Apollo as punishment for challenging him to a musical contest. What was his fault? He dared to suggest that the flute, his invention, was a better musical instrument than the harp invented by Apollo. Socrates is, so to speak, an ugly old skinless goat- god playing a double-flute.
Second, in the palaestra, Alcibiades challenged Socrates to wrestling matches, groped him brazenly, and tried to get Socrates to return his groping. Again Socrates refused his advances.
Third, Alcibiades invited Socrates to private dinners in his home, just as an older erastes would do for a prospective eromenos. The comedy is in the reversal of roles: the younger man attempting to seduce the older. Alcibiades tried to get Socrates drunk on wine, but no matter how much wine he drank, Socrates remained sober, and chaste.
Fourth, at one of these private dinners, Alcibiades entertained Socrates late into the night, and prevailed upon him to spend the night with him. He succeeded in getting Socrates in bed with him, but his seduction still failed.
"And that's why Alcibiades says that "the pang of philosophy will make a man say and do anything," Mrs. Ravitch concluded. "Love is a quest to possess beauty, and because beauty is wisdom, the love of wisdom is a desire to possess... ugly old Socrates!"
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," Henry said.
"You're right, Henry," Mrs. Ravitch said. "I believe that Keats was thinking of Plato's Symposium when he wrote that line.
Henry: "I think that when Alcibiades shredded the garland and put half of it on Socrates's head, and complained about Socrates's chastity while pretending to praise it, that was a fifth attempt at seduction. Shouldn't there be a sixth painting, since there were five seductions?"
Mrs. Ravitch looked amazed. "I never thought of that, Henry, but of course you're right. It would round out the narrative with a conclusion."
Dark Eagle hadn't read Symposium, but he understood the point well enough: abstract concepts like love and beauty elude definition, just as Socrates eludes seduction. He was intrigued by what he took to be Greek mysticism; even more by Mrs. Ravitch's Socratic interactions with Henry. Mrs. Ravitch reviewed the cast of characters who would model for the paintings. I would be Alcibiades, a nude Dionysus-figure in all six paintings. Two of Alcibiades's rowdy entourage would be mythical figures: Silenus and Marsyas. The other revelers would be modeled by any volunteers. Tom would be Agathon, the tragedian-and-host in the first and sixth paintings. Randy would play Aristophanes, while Gary, Ben, and Sam would model other Symposium guests. Who would be Socrates?
"It must be Dark Eagle," Mrs. Ravitch said. "He has a rare Stoic face: the persuasive face of chastity in the throes of erotic seduction." We all looked surprised. "Of course, you'll have to model nude in three of the paintings: in the gymnasium, the palaestra wrestling scene, and in Alcibiades's bedroom." No one but Mrs. Ravitch would have the nerve to ask the austere Shaman to model as a male nude for some paintings. Dark Eagle did not refuse. In fact he was pleased. I knew why, and so did Mrs. Ravitch: ever since the nineteenth century, Native Americans have been gussied up in Indian costumes for photos and paintings. This was Dark Eagle's chance to turn the tables, disguised in the nude as the iconic Greek philosopher. The closer I got to Dark Eagle, the more he resembled a mythological trickster.
"This will be another Anna Ravitch production, full of deep mysteries," I said, "not the least of which will be the identity of Socrates."
Oberlin College's spring semester ended in the second week of May. Gary had to return to Duluth, so Red Feather went with him. Together they picked Chaim Haiam up at the airport. The college boys (so we must call them) stayed at Gary's home, and returned to Ashawa on Friday. Red Feather alerted him to our Sunday visits to Mission Church in Crane Lake, and dinner in the Wayward Island lodge. Red Feather was surprised when Chaim said he would like to attend. "Why wouldn't I?" Chaim asked. "Just because I'm an observant Jew doesn't mean I can't go to church if I want to." The truth is that Chaim had been reading books about Ojibwe culture, and studying the language. He was up for anything in Crane Lake and Orr. He spent time reading short stories in English by Amelia LeGarde, and comparing them to the Ojibwe originals that were printed at the end of each book: Real Wild Rice, Manabozho and the Bullrushes, Shemay, the Bird in the Sugarbush, and Aseban: the Ojibwe Word for Raccoon, among others. Given his Jewish background in the study of Hebrew texts, he was accustomed to the rigors of language analysis. On legal-size paper, he wrote down Ojibwe and English sentences side by side, memorized the Ojibwe passages, and teased out the grammar, not an easy task, since Ojibwe is a mildly agglutinative language in which phrases and sentences sometimes look like long words. I started spending time with him, explaining the grammar and translating words that weren't in his Ojibwe dictionary. We got to be friends.
That Sunday our party of church-goers visited the Vince Shute bear sanctuary: Randy and Billy White Cloud, Ben Hasek and Sam Black Bear, Henry and Red Hawk, Roger Johnson, me and Gary, Mrs. Ravitch, Red Feather (who played piano as usual), and Chaim. We climbed the scaffold and counted as many as thirty bears feeding or basking in the sunshine of May. We could have seen something similar in the Ashawa garbage dump (well, maybe not thirty bears), but for Chaim it was an exciting novelty, though not as exciting as the acquaintance that he and Red Feather made with Olaf Bjornsson, an exchange student from the University of Oslo who was in his first week as a summer intern. His college major was conservation. He came to Orr to study the habits of bears in the wild. His academic assignment was to prepare a research report based on his observations. My gaydar buzzed when I saw this handsome, slender, blond Norwegian boy in conversation with Chaim and Red Feather, but I don't trust my gaydar. Chaim seemed drawn to Olaf, but Olaf was drawn to Red Feather. Maybe it was a gay attraction, but for Olaf it might have been a chance to make friends with an Ojibwe. We'd know soon enough, for the three of them made plans to hang out later in the week.
Later, at the lodge, I asked the college boys, "Do you know what Bjornsson means in norska?" They didn't. "It means Bear's son. Olaf, the student of bears, is the son of a bear."
"He doesn't look like a bear," Red Feather quipped.
The next week, Red Feather and I had a court date in Hibbing. We took Chaim and Olaf with us, to show them the sites: the open-pit mine, a Bob Dylan exhibit, and Mrs. Ravitch's home, across the street from Hibbing High School. We skipped the Greyhound Bus Museum. Chaim and Olaf were witnesses when Red Feather became Red F. Preston.
Life went on, beyond our little circle of friends. The Crime Lab in Duluth analyzed the videocam images that Red Feather and I shot on the night of arson at Professor Gustafsson's cabin. The arsonist could have been Deputy Nelson, but it was too dark for a clear picture. There was no proof. There never seems to be, in North Country criminal cases. I thought about Harvey Aldrich, the millionaire from Connecticut, whose murder was whitewashed as suicide. An outsider coming into a narrow-minded rural society has little chance at justice at times when justice is needed. Once I visited his gravesite in the Ashawa Cemetery, a mile from my farm. There was no stone, just a bronze plaque with his name.
We had better luck with my images of the arsonist's vehicle. The license plate number was traced to Willy Elbo. It was one of the used cars that he had for sale at his dealership in Ashawa. This was enough to question Elbo, but Gary decided to wait for additional evidence. I quarreled with Gary about this (I admit it). The license plate should be enough to put Elbo away (so I thought), so we could end our self-appointed patrol-duty at Ben Hasek's cabin, which was becoming onerous. In his role as the ever-methodical, ever-patient Detective Matthews, Gary went to Elbo's used car lot on a Sunday afternoon, when no one was there, and photographed the suspicious vehicle. "If I bring in Elbo now," Gary said, "it'll end up as a case of insufficient evidence. Not only would he get off; any further investigation of him would look like harassment. He'd become the Mayor of Wayward Bay in reality, not just in his own mind. Trust me, Jake, there's more to this case than I can talk about, even with you."
Dorothy Elbo visited my cabin more often. She never took the road: she walked through the woods along the lakeshore. Usually she came alone, while Willy was at his dealership and her son was in school. Sometimes she came with her son. More often than not, I was at work at the farm, so she ended up visiting with Red Feather and Chaim, and sometimes with Olaf. They had become a threesome.
In the studio, Mrs. Ravitch worked on "Alcibiades and Socrates," all six paintings simultaneously. Chaim and Olaf thought Mrs. Ravitch was awesome. They were frequent visitors, except on occasions when Dark Eagle had to pose nude. On those occasions, Mrs. Ravitch locked the studio and put up a sign: "No Visitors-Genius At Work!" Below this message she scribbled, "Please do call again." Posing for an artist is boring, even for an exhibitionist like me. We welcomed visitors whenever they were allowed.
Because of our duties in the studio, Dark Eagle and I spent a lot of time naked in close body contact, and experienced more than a few "masculine hyperfunctions," as Mrs. Ravitch called them. The gymnasium-scene was innocent enough: the only sexual innuendo was me ogling the ageing body of 'Socrates', intended to be more comic than erotic. By contrast, the wrestling- scene in the palaestra was a grope-fest. We kept at it until Mrs. Ravitch was satisfied that we had found the right moves. It was absurd, of course: my pretense at wrestling with an old man who, as anyone could see, was physically weaker, but the hardest challenge was this: Alcibiades needed to be horny with an erection, while Socrates had to be flaccid and unmoved by the younger man's advances. This was no problem for me. After intimate contact with Dark Eagle it seemed natural that we would have sex. The problem was Dark Eagle, whose cock jutted rock hard like mine, demanding satisfaction.
Mrs. Ravitch hit on a solution. "I'm going to the lodge for a coffee break," she said. "You boys work this out while I'm gone. You've got half an hour." Dark Eagle proved to be as masterful as any bottom-boy could want. He demanded oral service from pits to cleft and everywhere in between. He flipped me on my abdomen and pinned me to the floor while he fucked intercursally. His ramrod took a huge revenge for the long delay that it had endured. Yet with all this erotic excitement, he left my cock untouched. We were careful to preserve my erection. We were, after all, on the job! Eromenic submission to Dark Eagle became a routine in of my role as Alcibiades, who was less chaste than Socrates on occasions when fucking wasn't essential to the performance of our duties as models.
Alcibiades complex: the desire of a gay man to bestow sexual favors on men who are weaker, smaller, less comely, less confident, less independent, and/or significantly younger or older than himself. This was manifest in my relations with satyr-like Randy, with Red Feather (dependent on my support), and now with Dark Eagle. A man with Alcibiades complex is an exhibitionist (like me): he likes being eye-candy. I received erotic gratification by posing for Mrs. Ravitch's male nudes, and in my role as Two Spirits in Crane Lake. A man with Alcibiades complex is inclined toward promiscuity, experienced by beneficiaries as sexual generosity. Usually he's an athlete who gets the greatest sensation of his physical strength when he's topped by a weaker partner. This feeling is as strong in me as it is in a body-builder who ignores his peers while choosing partners from the ranks of admirers.
The word "complex" is misleading. It implies psychological disability, but a complex is a liability only when it's obsessive. For example, a boy's natural affection for his mother is called an "Oedipus complex" when it's tinged with jealousy for his father-but only an obsessive boy would murder his father in the hope of marrying his mother. Then there's the "Orestes complex," a child's natural inclination to side with the father at times when he's hen-pecked or abused. Women (more often than men) experience a "Clytemnestra complex," a desire to punish a spouse for the abuse or death of a child. The Achilles complex: an impulse to risk anything, even death, in pursuit of ambition for glory, or fame, or power, like marines on a battlefield. There's an Odysseus complex: taking revenge on enemies who betrayed you behind your back. An Antigone complex: speaking truth to power at great risk. Almost any psychological condition you can think of is represented in ancient Greek drama and epic.
Some people say that I suffer from "Narcissus complex," defined vaguely as "self-love," or the satisfaction that a man takes in his own good looks. Alcibiades described himself in this way when he planned his seduction of Socrates: "Now I fancied that Socrates was seriously enamored of my beauty, and I imagined I'd have a grand opportunity to hear him say what he thought [about me], for I had a wonderful opinion of the attractions of my youth." But the Narcissus complex has nothing to do with self-satisfaction, and a man doesn't have to be comely to suffer from it. For the point of the myth is that Narcissus rejected love with both men and women. He rejected a beautiful youth named Ameinias, and he rejected marriage with Echo. Put another way, Narcissus rejected all social bonds. For this he was fated to drown in a river at the sight of his own reflection. The Narcissus complex is rejection of the friendship and love offered by others. It comes from self-loathing, not self-love.
My Alcibiades complex is rather extreme. I know that. To misquote Alcibiades (not entirely out of context): "I've been bitten by something worse than a viper's tooth. I've known in my soul, or my heart, or in some other part (use your imagination) that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than any serpent's tooth: the pang of desire, which will make a man say and do anything." Instead of 'desire', Alcibiades said 'philosophy', love of wisdom, but philosophy was a displaced form of desire for the love of a homely old man named Socrates. "Know thyself," Solon said; wisdom from the archetypal lawgiver of Athens. Solon is quoted often as the last word on ancient Greek psychology. But for the Greeks, "Know thyself" is not a conclusion. It's a beginning that leads to the care of the self. The next step is parrhesia: the uncanny disclosure of past mistakes and present flaws. As Henry David Thoreau once said, to establish a firm foundation with a new friend, show him your weakest side first. That's another gay writer I would have slept with, if I could have done: Henry David Thoreau.
Which brings me to my love affair with Gary: he doesn't meet any of my "nerdy" requirements. He's sixteen years older, but we're equally matched in height, body type, fitness, sex appeal, gainful employment, and independence. No one but me thought our coupling was unusual. Gary didn't "cure" me of my Alcibiades complex, but he proved that my obsession wasn't overwhelming. Even so, here I was, getting fucked by Dark Eagle!
Red Feather, Chaim, and Olaf were frequent visitors on the farm. For Chaim, a boy from Brooklyn, the setting was exciting and new, even after his freshman year in Oberlin, a village surrounded by farms. The forest was grander still, unlike anything he had ever seen. For Olaf the attraction was wildlife: bears, deer, foxes; timberwolves seen by the glint in their eyes across a hayfield in evening; a beaver dam on Rice River at the north end. I didn't know much about their love-life, except that Chaim and Red Feather were a couple who sometimes met with Olaf in a threesome. I was surprised when Red Feather came to me with an unusual problem. "Chaim and Olaf have been talking about the three of us losing our virginity together. The only problem is that I've already lost my virginity. What should I do?"
"Have you told them?" I asked.
"Not yet, but I'll have to," Red Feather said. "I can't lie about something like this."
"It's not so bad, Red Feather," I said. "I thought that you guys would be deep into sex by now. When do they want to have this three-way deflowering party?"
"They're waiting on me to agree. Chaim would be disappointed if he knew the reason for my cold feet."
"Tell them you'll give them an answer in two days," I said. "This is a problem for Dark Eagle."
I explained Red Feather's problem. Dark Eagle was amused, but sympathetic. "Male virginity is a physiological myth, yet it's the subject of gay fantasies," he said. "If a man is deflowered and then refrains from anal sex, in three or four weeks his pristine condition returns. If this is so, and if virginity is psychological, I see no reason why Red Feather's virginity can't be restored in a peyote-ceremony. Any qualms that Chaim and Olaf might have would be allayed by the opportunity to take part in an Ojibwe ritual." Dark Eagle could be disarmingly practical, even in matters of ritual.
"Is there such a ritual?" I asked.
"Of course not," Dark Eagle said, "but it wouldn't be the first time we've made one up. Ritual exists for the Ojibwe, not the Ojibwe for the ritual."
Red Feather accepted my offer to handle his problem myself. He agreed, so I summoned the "college boys" to a meeting. I broke the news about the sling- tag game in which Red Feather was more or less pressured to sacrifice his cherry. I didn't want to minimize virginity, so I refrained from mentioning that male virginity is a physiological fantasy. They wouldn't have seen it that way. Instead I told them that the peyote virgin-ritual would restore Red Feather. "This is accepted even in Christian tradition," I said. "Most Christians believe in the eternal virginity of Mary, even though she had a husband and gave birth to children after Jesus. And Catholics honor some women saints who were restored to virginity by a miracle. The peyote-ritual will be just such a miracle." To press the point further, I read a passage from Philippians 3: 13-14, in which Paul compares the faith of a Christian to a footrace: "forgetting what lies behind and pushing forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal." "This means that we should forget about things we wish we hadn't done in the past, and look instead to the future. The surest way for a runner to lose a footrace is to look back at runners behind him. If he does that, his opponents will pass him by. It also means that we should help others to forget the past and look to the future. That's what the peyote-ritual will do for Red Feather."
Chaim and Olaf agreed, and were pleased to be invited to an Ojibwe ritual, a prospect that obviated the need for chapter and verse from Philippians, but I poured it on thick. It was important that Red Feather believed it, too. "It will be a private ceremony in Crane Lake, on Saturday," I said. It will be Red Feather, Chaim, Olaf, Gary, and me. I warned them that it might take all day. We would repeat a familiar scenario: gifts of tobacco, chocolate, and whisky for Dark Eagle; frolic in madoodiswan-the sweat-lodge; consumption of peyote-chips; passing the peace-pipe; prayers to Manitou; a prophecy from jisakiiwin-the 'tent- shaker'-to confirm the blessing of Manitou, the Great Spirit.
"What is jisakiiwin?" Chaim asked.
"It means tent-shaker," Red Feather replied. "The jisakiiwin is a Shaman whose gift is oracles from Manitou. Dark Eagle does not have this gift, but his prayers to Manitou enable the jisakiiwin. When rituals are held in a wigwam, the wigwam shakes while jisakiiwin makes his prophecy. We'll be in Dark Eagle's cabin, so there won't be any shaking."
Our improvisational virgin-ceremony was the Ojibwe equivalent of a "low church" ritual, so the madoodiswan frolic turned erotic. No genitalia went ungroped, no butt unfondled in the sweat-lodge, and in the cold waters of Crane Lake, while Dark Eagle sat apart in shamanic austerity. When time came for the ritual, Dark Eagle surprised us. He led us on a trail through the woods to a ceremonial wigwam made of birch bark, nestled in a grove of majestic Norway pines. Everything we needed was there: peyote-chips, whisky, calumet, tobacco... and lube. "The lube is for Two Spirits," Dark Eagle explained. "We'll need to prepare his body to receive the Great Spirit's oracle. Manitou speaks through the second spirit of jisakiiwin."
Dark Eagle's words puzzled Chaim and Olaf. Gradually they realized that I was jisakiiwin. They looked at me, astonished; even more astonished at peyote's bitter taste. Dark Eagle rolled out the round ceremonial carpet, and explained its symbolism for the benefit of Chaim and Olaf. He chanted an Ojibwe prayer to Manitou. Red Feather and I repeated the chant, line by line. Chaim repeated some of the chant with us. Having studied Ojibwe, he recognized some phrases, and made a noble effort. In the absence of Steve Waabooz, I translated the chant into English as best I could. By the time we finished passing the calumet three times, peyote-colors dazzled our vision. Dark Eagle chanted a prayer, appealing to Manitou to restore Red Feather's virginity. Red Feather and I repeated the chant. Chaim tried, but he could not, lost in the confusion of kaleidoscopic color.
I crawled to the center of the green carpet and lay flat with my abdomen over the red thunderbird, a sign of the Ojibwe people. "This is for Gary, only for Gary," I said. Gary applied lube to my ass and his rigid cock. He straddled my thighs, locking my legs together, and thrust his cock into me. He fucked long and hard. When he oozed himself into me, I orgazzed too. Jizzy aroma filled the wigwam and was experienced as a synesthetic radiance of purple and blue. "Manoomin agonde," I cried out. A breeze whistled through the Norway pines, and the wigwam shook wildly. Was it the wind? Or the effect of peyote? I repeated the oracle: "Manoomin agonde." The wigwam shook. I said it a third time: "Manoomin agonde." The wigwam shook again.
"The ritual is complete," Dark Eagle said. "Manitou has spoken through Jake Two Spirits. All that remains is to understand its meaning."
Gary helped me back to my place on the carpet. I was woozy, and needed his help. Everyone looked at me. "The oracle has been spoken," I said. "It's up to those who received it to understand its meaning."
"Manoomin agonde means Rice River. We've already agreed about that," Red Feather said. "Rice is in the water, Rice River. But what does it mean, and why is it repeated three times?"
Dark Eagle: "It means that Manitou will make Himself known at Rice River, and when He does, it will be to Red Feather Preston, Chaim Haiam, and Olaf Bjornsson."
"But we're not even Ojibwe," Olaf protested.
"Manitou sees only the heart," Dark Eagle said.