Wayward Island (Part 6) How Jake and Red Feather Discussed Carlos Fuentes and Went Hunting 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.
The cabin was silent. Randy and Billy had gone. They left a note on the kitchen table: "Thanks for great evening. Randy --- at the lodge. Billy --- at work. Talk soon." I started coffee in an old-fashioned percolator on the stove. I lit a fire in the hearth. I mixed up some eggs with cheese and leftover turkey, ingredients for omelets. Red Feather woke to the fragrance of coffee, or maybe it was the sound of me stirring eggs.
"Morning, beautiful!" I called to him from the kitchen. "Breakfast in fifteen minutes, okay?" He stumbled into the bathroom. When he returned, I poured the omelets into the frying pan, and popped English muffins into the toaster. "We can eat by the fireplace, where it's warmer, seeing as how we're both butt naked."
In "Una Familia lejana," Carlos Fuentes --- the Mexican author --- describes an episode that symbolizes the cultural relations between white men and Indians. A famous Mexican anthropologist, Hugo Heredias, was visiting the home of an aristocratic friend, Count Branly, in Paris. Heredias and Branly had adolescent sons who became more than friends. One day in the Branly mansion, Hugo and the Count happened upon their sons having intercourse on a sofa, in a porch overlooking the garden. It was a brutal copulation. Victor Heredias lay face down on the sofa, his hair tousled darkly in contrast to the golden curls of André Branly, who lay over him. The mestizo body of Victor contrasted with André's European luminescence. Instinctively, Hugo Heredias tried to end their embrace. More than their bodies, it seemed important to him to separate their hands, which were locked together. As Branly told the story much later, the scene was like a painting: from the groin downward, the two boy's bodies seemed metamorphosed into a tangle of leafy branches and vines. Mostly he remembered André laughing and smirking, while Victor looked at him with searching brown eyes, pleading for compassion. But it was Victor, not André, whose body-language told the fathers to leave them alone: "Don't interfere with something you can't understand, because it comes from a place far away." Perhaps it was fated from the earliest history of life, at a time when the difference between plants and animals was only beginning.
I told Red Feather about this episode in "Una Familia lejana," by Carlos Fuentes. It conversation over breakfast. He said he would like to read it. "I think I might have it in English," I said. Later, I looked but couldn't find it, so I read parts of it in Spanish, and translated, rather awkwardly.
"Is it true that most Mexicans are mestizo?" Red Feather wondered. That's what it looked like to me, riding the metro trains in Mexico City. Each day I was there I saw thousands of Mexicans. They all looked mestizo. "A beautiful look, and not an obese person among them," I added. "They lead a healthier lifestyle. The biggest meal of the day is breakfast."
"We could do that," Red Feather said. "Not that I have any complaints, Jake. I'm not ready to put you on a diet."
"I suppose it's a cultural convention, what Carlos Fuentes did. He put André Branly on top and Victor Heredias on the bottom," Red Feather said, returning to "Una familia lejana." "A colonial symbol; naturally it's the Indian who gets screwed."
"We know better, don't we?" I said. "We're post-colonial." I reached for the red valentine-medallion hanging from Red Feather's neck-chain. "UNSTOPPABLE TOP": I read the inscription slowly, as if for the first time.
"When I first saw you in church, I thought you were a god. I couldn't take my eyes off you," Red Feather said.
"I noticed," I said. "The attraction was mutual. Surely you knew that."
"Maybe we should do it the way André did it to Victor," Red Feather said. I lay face down on the sofa. Red Feather crept behind me. Brutal copulation left us breathless and sated. "I'm still waiting for our legs to turn into branches and vines," he joked.
Were it not for Billy White Cloud, Red Feather would have been alone in the world. Billy was a mentor, but Red Feather thought of him as a substitute father. They had never lived together. He had few prospects in life, unless he could cultivate the musical genius that God had given him. That wouldn't happen in northern Minnesota, where the only musical school that had any claim to distinction was religiously oriented. If his future seemed harsh in the North Country, how much worse on the Reservation!
We drove to Ashawa. We had errands. First came the hardware store, for hunting licenses, ammunition, and gun oil. The store had hunting gear, including some red-checkered jackets, but we decided to check out the co-op clothing store first. I bought jeans, slacks, shirts, socks, underwear, whatever clothes he needed, including a red-checkered hunting jacket, a warm red hat, and boots. I bought a few things for myself, too, so as not to make Red Feather feel conspicuous.
For lunch we went to the Red Loon café, one of the town's tw restaurants. It was on the first floor of the Red Loon Hotel, and had large windows overlooking the parking lot. Red Feather recognized four Chippewa men from Crane Lake, seated at a table across the café. They knew him by sight, but they didn't know his name. One of them waved. He waved back. "Those guys are curious about me being here with a white guy," he said. "If they only knew." I knew several people from Ashawa and from nearby farms. Four times during lunch, we were interrupted by folks who came to our table to say hello. Each time, I introduced Red Feather, and said that he was the musician in Reverend Billy White Cloud's church in Crane Lake. The men from Crane Lake got more curious when they realized that I was well-known in the town.
Red Feather basked in the glory of being seen in public with his lover. This was imprudent, but I understood it. "Red Feather," I said, "I still feel the physical memory of you up my butt."
"Really?" He beamed with pride.
We spent the afternoon at target practice with our .22 rifles, in a clearing in the woods. It was cold, but sunny. I taught Red Feather how to shoot. We practiced until he got comfortable with shooting. We set up plastic milk-cartons for targets, on tree stumps and logs. Occasionally we replaced them, but not often, as neither of us were crack shots. We reviewed safety rules, too—mainly, the importance of keeping the guns unloaded until it was time to use them. "Most hunting accidents happen because guys walk around in the woods with loaded guns, and not always sober," I said.
Red Feather needed space in the cabin for privacy, a place to keep his things, and a place to sleep when he didn't want to sleep with me. I gave him the loft. He didn't mind sharing the space with my books. For the first time, he had access to his own computer.
In late afternoon, in the fading daylight, I drove Red Feather to the lodge. Uncle Tom was there, but Randy had gone to Crane Lake. I introduced Red Feather, and asked if he could play the piano in the lounge. Of course he was welcome anytime. Tom had dinner guests at three tables in the restaurant. I helped him in the kitchen, while we and the guests listened to an impromptu concert of Chopin, Liszt, and Mendelssohn. "He's pretty good," Tom said.
"That would be an understatement, seeing as how he has no formal training in music," I said. I made a proposal to Tom, that maybe he could host a Christmas concert, perhaps as a fundraiser for the Mission Church in Crane Lake, if Red Feather were willing to play. Tom agreed. The restaurant got busy, so I waited on tables, while Red Feather provided musical entertainment. Some people who knew me wondered why I was working in a restaurant. I told them that I was just visiting the owner, and decided to help out when he got busy. By eight o'clock we sat down to dinner with Tom. We talked about the Christmas concert, and set a date on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas.
When we departed the lodge, Tom handed a package to Red Feather. "It's from Randy. He said it's for your eyes only, Red Feather."
"I'll respect that," I said.
That night we prepared for bed by washing each other in the shower. "It's a love-ritual. Each of us takes care of his lover's body," I said. It was foreplay, too. Soaped up hands and fingers went into every cranny and over every inch of flesh. Rinsing was accompanied by body-kisses. We dried ourselves. He told me to close my eyes. He removed my silver chain and replaced the pink medallion with another. "You can look now," he said. The heart-shaped medallion was colored robin-egg blue. The inscription read: "ORAL SLAVE." Red Feather put on a matching medallion that read: "ORAL MASTER." We looked at ourselves in the bathroom mirror: a handsome jock hunk labeled "slave" and a short slender Chippewa labeled "master," with matching labels in robin-egg blue.
"I think we make a cute couple," I said. "I'm ready, Master, if you want to lead me into our den of slavery." Red Feather took my hand and led me to the bedroom. He pushed me to my back on the bed. He leaped on top of me and began kissing and biting my torso from shoulders to pubes. He retrieved the nipple-clamps from my top dresser drawer and fastened them to my nips. Even when he played the role of my Oral Master, Red Feather loved kissing my body
"Time for some slavery," Red Feather said. He lay on his back. "All right, Slave, I want you to kiss and lick every inch of my body from head to toe, front, back, and sides. You can start with the front. Top to toe, my hunky Slave."
"Thank you, Master," I said. I kissed every inch of his face and tongued his ears. My lips and tongue made a progress down his body, from neck to shoulders. I went down his arms to his fingers and sucked each one in my mouth, right arm first, then the left. He tugged my chain gently to sensitize my nipples, and he fondled my cock while I went to work. I licked every inch of his chest and teased his nipples. Master Red Feather yanked my chain and told me that he had forgotten about his armpits. I licked and bit his right armpit. He held my face in close. I did the same with his left armpit. I licked his belly and tongued his navel. He held my face in close to his navel. I tongued his pubes, his cock, his balls, his perineum. I kissed his asshole. "Master, I beg permission to rim your asshole later; permission to save the best till last," I said. Red Feather agreed. "Thank you, Master." I ran my tongue down his left thigh and leg, down to his foot. I sucked on his toes while he wiggled them in my mouth. I ran my tongue up his leg, back to his crotch, and repeated my oral ministration to his balls and his cock. Then I ran my tongue left leg, sucked his toes, and ran my tongue back to his crotch. We embraced and kissed. Red Feather turned over. I tongued the back of his neck and shoulders and his shoulder blades. I chewed on his armpits from behind. Systematically, I licked his back, going from side to side so not to miss an inch. When I reached his butt, I licked his right cheek first, then his left. I used both hands to spread his cheeks, and ran my tongue up and down his crack several times, and tongue-fucked his asshole each time. I ran my tongue down his right leg, all the way to his feet. I licked the bottom of his foot and sucked on his toes again. For his left side, I started with his toes and his feet, and ran my tongue up his leg to his ass. He knelt doggy-style with his legs wide apart while I licked his crack and rimmed his asshole.
With every move I made, Red Feather moaned and praised my performance. "You're a good Oral Slave," he said. Whenever he said that, I said "Thank you, Master." He was lovin' it. So was I. Red Feather lay on his side so I could rim him from behind. He lay at the side of the bed and I knelt between his knees and tongue-fucked him. Operation Oral Slave, we called it.
"Permission to blow you," I asked. "Yes, Slave." "Thank you, Master." Our role-playing was getting a bit silly, until Red Feather shot his jizz in my mouth, a big load. I held it in my mouth for a few minutes, and opened my mouth so he could see it. Then I swallowed.
Red Feather praised my performance. He told me to lie on my back. He knelt between my legs, and told me to jack myself off. He said he would help. "Let me know when it's coming. I want a taste of your jizz, too."
We took our time. While I jacked myself, he pulled at my nipple-clamps, and ran his hands up and down my torso. Red Feather could never get enough of the sight and touch of my body. The hornier I got, the more I told him about how I loved his mastery of my mind and my body, how I loved having him as my top, how my body belonged to him. When I was ready to cum, he took the top half of my cock in his mouth. I moaned and yelped in a powerful orgasm. Red Feather followed my example. He held his cum in my mouth and showed it to me. It was a big load of bull's milk. Then he closed his mouth, but he didn't swallow. Instead he moved in for a kiss of the lips. He thrust his tongue in my mouth. I tasted my cum as it ran into my mouth. We each swallowed our share of my bull's milk.
Preparing for sleep, I lay on my side. Red Feather snuggled beside me, with his back toward me. I put my right arm around him and massaged his chest and belly. I fondled his genitals. We exchanged notes about the taste of bull's milk. "Liquid venison, with a dash of honey as a chaser," I said. I must have had venison on the brain. He thought that I was muskier, with no honey-chaser. "I guess every guy is different," Red Feather said. "Not only that," I said. "The same guy can be different at different times."
Red Feather was a traveler in sleep. There was no predicting where he would be in the bed. Whenever he woke, he snuggled close and held me in a proprietary embrace. Twice during the night, Red Feather woke up horny. Both times he humped me from behind, furiously breeding. We didn't say words. We just fucked and went back to sleep. I didn't complain about Red Feather being stingy with his jizz.
Tuesday, after breakfast, we put our rifles and ammunition in the trunk of the car and drove to Tamarack Swamp. "We probably won't see other hunters here," I said, "but the swamp-water is frozen so it should be easy to walk through the swamp. We probably won't see deer in the swamp itself, but if we walk a mile to the north, there's a meadow. That's where we might get lucky."
In the meadow, we encountered a herd of three or four deer, but they were too distant to get a good shot. I told Red Feather to try his luck anyway. He shot his rifle, and the deer ran away. A half-hour later, we saw the same deer. I took a shot, and they ran away. To be honest, I missed on purpose. I didn't want to show up Red Feather. But I probably would have missed anyway. At noon we decided to go home. We agreed to come back the next day. If we struck out again, we would hunt on my abandoned farm on Thursday.
We stopped at the Red Loon café for lunch. Red Feather liked being there with me. I knew that. "If we get lucky deer-hunting tomorrow, I'll show you how to prepare the carcass," I said. "Growing up on the farm, I learned how to break a deer. If we don't get lucky, I don't mind. Being with you is good luck enough."
"Thanks, Jake," Red Feather said.
"Still, I hope we do get a deer," I laughed.
Once again there were folks in the café who came to our table to greet me. From our red-checkered jackets, anyone could tell we were hunting. They wanted to know where we had been. "Tamarack Swamp," I said. Two guys suggested other places where we might have better luck. I introduced Red Feather as my hunting partner. Two of the men from Crane Lake were there too, and noticed that Red Feather and I were together again. Red Feather spent the afternoon at the lodge, playing piano. I spent my time writing.
That evening, I suggested that we take a sauna, unless he had something else in mind. Red Feather laughed, and agreed to the sauna. "I've got some ideas, but I wouldn't want to use them all up during our first week together." After a light dinner on leftover turkey and fixings, we lit the sauna, cut balsam boughs, and had the joy of each other in the steam. Red Feather loved massaging my body with balsam boughs. He wanted to fuck me standing up, using soap for lube. I told him I thought it would hurt, but I would do it anyway. "If you manage to get your dick inside me, don't stop, just keep on fucking, no matter what I say," I said.
Red Feather used just enough soap to get his cock past the barrier of my sphincter. After that, he thrust his way in easily, but it hurt like hell. The sharp burning pain reminded me of the time when Randy busted my cherry. I howled and groaned and told him to stop. He would stop for a minute, and then go at it again. Fucking me unlubed was a different sensation. It brought him a powerful orgasm. I felt relief at last when his bull's milk lubed my ass. "Thanks for that," Red Feather said, panting. "I know it was a sacrifice on your part."
"Well, you're the unstoppable top," I said. When we got back to the cabin, Red Feather gave me a full-body massage by the hearth. He used baby oil. He jacked me off slowly, with olive oil. Once again, his touch inspired me to speak words of love. Red Feather looked at me lovingly, and spoke with his eyes while I babbled on about he was my dom and I was his sub. I borrowed a line from Randy. I told him that every time he bred me, his DNA entered my bloodstream and he became part of me. The more of your DNA I've got in my body, the more my desires merge with yours, I said.
Wednesday morning found us in Tamarack Swamp. We trudged across ice and crispy swamp plants, back to the meadow. After an hour, we saw four deer. Red Feather took his best shot. The deer ran away, but one of them fell—a well- antlered buck. We carried our prey through the swamp to the car. It was a struggle, but we worked together and got there. We fastened the carcass to the top of the car. A surge of triumph came to Red Feather. "This is better than sex," he said.
We stopped at the Red Loon café. I knew he wanted to show off the buck on the top of the car, and the stallion at his side. Some folks came up to our table to congratulate us. They asked where we had gone hunting. The two guys from Crane Lake were there, too. They seemed to take an interest in me and Red Feather. One of them approached our table, and introduced himself as Sam Black Bear. He wanted to know all about the buck. The other guy followed—Roger Johnson. "Not an Indian name, but I'm Chippewa," he said, as if we couldn't tell. I invited them to join us for lunch. "It's on me, anything you want," I said. They did. I introduced Red Feather as my hunting partner, and as the music minister at the Mission Church in Crane Lake. This was news to Red Feather, but I said that I had just given him a promotion. "It was Red Feather who shot the buck," I said. "He's a good shot, and a very good hunter." Sam and Roger were lumberjacks. They were working in the woods near Lake Ashawa, and became regular customers at the Red Loon café.
"Do you know Dave Preston, then?" I asked.
"He's our boss," Sam said."
"He's my cousin," I said.
Sam Black Bear was more out-going than Roger Johnson. He asked if we planned to "prepare the venison" on our own. I was intrigued by his euphemism— a nobler expression than "butchering." He offered to help with breaking the deer. It's a lot of work, so I accepted his offer, and gave him directions to the cabin. I told the guys that we had a license for a second deer, if they wanted to hunt with us. They couldn't do it during the work-week, so we agreed on Saturday for the hunt. In the meantime, they would come to my cabin after work today. "Just leave the buck on top of the car," Sam Black Bear said. "We'll unload it for you." I offered them dinner, and a sauna if they wanted one.
On the way home, I told Red Feather that I would give him three gifts to celebrate his success in the hunt: first, the .22 he used to shoot the buck; second, a coffee mug depicting a hunting scene, inscribed "Deer Hunter"; and third, I would have the buck's head and antlers sent to a local taxidermist, for preparation as a trophy. It was an ancient custom in Crete (I explained to Red Feather) for a slightly older man to choose a younger one as his hunting partner and lover. The older man, in Greek called the "erastes," taught hunting skills to the younger man, who was called the "eramenos." The terms are based on Greek "eros," sexual love, but the relationship is about hunting and manhood, not just sex, I said. For the Greeks and Cretans it was a coming-out ritual, and it began with an abduction, "just like I abducted you from the Mission Church with the help of Randy and Billy." After success in the hunt, the "erastes" was required by tradition to give three gifts to the "eramenos": a drinking-cup, a warrior's gear, and an ox. "I guess the buck-head was the closest I could get to an ox. He was required to give other gifts, too, personal gifts, which is why we went shopping in the clothing store. That was part of the ritual, too."
"I know those terms from Plato's `Symposium'," Red Feather said. "But "erastes" is a top, and "eromenos" is a bottom. We've got the roles reversed." Red Feather had read as much as he could about gay sex. Plato's "Symposium" was an important text. He knew it well, as he proved later when we debated about it.
"Sometimes tradition goes by the way, when Nature makes her own demands," I said. "The heart wants what the heart wants." I had already purchased the coffee cup. It was waiting for him on the kitchen table. We would have to wait a few weeks for the taxidermist to prepare the buck-head.
When we returned to the cabin, I showed him the passage about the Cretan hunting ritual, in Strabo's "Geography." Strabo wrote in the first century BC, I said, but he was quoting an earlier writer, Ephorus, from the fourth century BC. It was pleasant to imagine ourselves following an ancient ritual from the Greek world.