Anson and Pol
The whole experience of the island had been like a strange fever dream, and the woman in the night, the sex, the strangest part of that dream. When it was over, when he was returned to the comparative reality of the Hidden Island, he did not wish to think on any of it. When, lying beside Ohean, he thought of the mysterious stranger in the dark, he thought that Ohean was the last person to tell. Perhaps, being Ohean, he already knew. Anson’s life had been a soldier’s life, the life of a prince, full of sex and sexual secrets and this was only another one. It might have stayed buried had Pol not been on the Isle, and a Pol who seemed changed.
“How much do you know of the Red Priests?” Pol asked.
“I know that women and men go to them, and they bless the land with their fertility,” Anson said. “I have heard that when women cannot conceive by their husbands, they do to the Red Temple.”
“And there are, in the countryside, the Green Priests. The same way the Monks of the Communion are celibate and preserve their bodies for God, these give their bodies away for the Gods.”
“We met the Greens in the Green Wood,” Anson reminded Pol.”
“They school them all here. Reds, Blues and Greens.”
“Then perhaps one came to me?”
“What is that?”
And so Anson told Pol and he said, “I did not know if it was part of the initiation or not. I did not know what was going on. I have not told Ohean.”
“Ohean is wise,” Pol said. “He is a sorcerer. I think he would understand.”
“I wonder if he should have to,” Anson said. “I did not know how much I felt a part of him, how much I wish to protect him, foolish as that sounds.”
Anson was about to go on talking, but he stopped.
“An,” Pol said while they sat in the glade overlooking the small lake, “I have been training as a Red Priest.”
“But I thought you were with Austin.”
“I think I am with Austin now. I think I wanted him to come with me to escape Kingsboro and a life that was not his. But I cannot say that I am with him. And, at any road, the more I train the more I see, and I do see that his heart is with another. Someone he loved long ago.”
“Well, pardon me for saying this,” Anson said, “but we all loved someone long ago. Can that really mean as much as you think?”
“I think it can,” Pol said. “And, besides, my heart is with my past, with myself, and that makes me want to go through that training. Austin and I began it together. We may end it… not apart, but on different paths.”
Anson considered this. He suddenly realized he hadn’t had a cigarette in a long time, and he craved one, but what he said was, “What takes place in this training?”
“Thinking,” Pol said. “The same way your magic training isn’t magic, my sex training isn’t sex, not really. It’s remembering and thinking. It was in remembering, in thinking, that Austin began to feel the way he feels, remember the love he had lost. That’s why it seems I will not always have him.”
“Would you have him if you could?” Anson said.
“I can,” Pol said, honestly. “I could always have most of the men I wanted by using my sexuality to bend their will. But that’s not what it’s all about it. I thought it was, but I am learning differently now.”
But it was Pol who took out the cigarette and handed it to Anson, and as they lit their cigarettes and sat by the water, smoking, Pol said, “Erek Skabelund is his name.”
“Huh?”
“This love of Pol’s life. Erek Skabelund.”
“Um,” Anson commented and inhaled. Smoke shot out of his nostrils.
“And your old love?” Anson asked. “Who is yours?”
“Sex,” Pol said.
“I will remember,” Pol had promised in the Red House. “I will put my mind back to the past and remember.”
Jasper said. “Remember what I told you long ago. There are Five great Houses, The Blue, the Grey, the Brown, the White and the Black. But there are the hidden orders and of their number is the Red.”
Pol could see himself, the boy he had been. He and Jasper looked into the three story house where the lights that could be seen shone dull through a red curtain. A nervous looking man was walking into it and there was laughter and the sound of feasting coming from the place.
“This is what remains of what once was. Back on the White Island, we enact the ritual and the sacrament, but here they do the actuality without ritual or sacrament. Once again the two will be made one.”
Pol did not say he did not understand, for part of him understood too well, but the truth was he was not sure he wanted to see more.
“He will be safe with me,” Cinder said, taking Pol by the hand. “Will the rest of you come with us?”
Ethwy and Wing begged off. Cinder, with his black hair that hung in wings on either side of his face, the days growth of black beard, and his full red lips, remained. If the others did not come it did not matter. Pol went with Cinder toward the house, the sounds becoming louder as they entered, but here it seemed like nothing but a rowdy tavern. There were more men than women, but that was usual, and in the corner, in their leather pants with their spiked hair were young beautiful men and Pol thought he knew why they were here.
One of them smirked and said, “Pretty young men. Come let us teach you something worth learning.”
It was Cinder who said, “I do not think this room is the reason we are here.”
“Oh,” one of the young men said, now more curious than amused by the sight of the two young men in robes with their hoods down, “You can’t be here to see the shows?”
“All sorts of people like the shows,” a passing server said, and Pol noted that even the servers here were beautiful men. “Do not judge.”
He pointed down the hallway to where, Pol had assumed, the lavatories were.
“There are the shows. You just open that door at the end of the hall. They aren’t free of course.”
“Of course,” Pol said, doing his best impersonation of urbanity.
“Five to watch the men in the boxes, ten to watch the play, fifteen to participate.”
“And then it’s forty to get yourself a boy for the night,” the first young man said. “At least that’s how I remember. Not that the two of you would need to pay. But then again, all sorts pay for all sorts.”
The young man shrugged.
Cinder and Pol went on their way down the hall, and paid the man at the door. He was surprised by their courtliness, or possibly by their youth and, as if it were a temple, Pol entered demurely, attempting to remain impassive, but he could not be impassive for long.
“God, what an ass! God, what a perfect ass!” a man exclaimed, and Pol heard him smacking said ass. “God I need to eat that ass. I need to be in it.”
There was a gausa screen, perfectly transparent for Pol and Cinder, but which would have showed his shape only dimly to the handsome, unshaved man with salt and pepper hair, shirtless, who was bent over the boy wheelbarrowed before him, scrambling out of his shirt while he moaned in pleasure:
“Oh fuck.”
“You like that? You like it? You like my tongue fucking your ass? You like that. You got a tight little ass. Goddamn. Are you ready to take my cock?”
“Give me you cock. Give me your goddamn cock.”
“You want that fucking hot sucker don’t you, bitch? Who’s a bitch? Are you my bitch?”
“God, I’m your bitch. Fuck me.”
“Are you ready for my cock…?”
“You probably wonder what’s going on right here,” Cinder and Pol heard a voice behind them, and fairly jumped.
It was the young man from the other room.
“You needn’t call me Sir,” he told them. “My name is Kirk, and I’m a punk. I fuck and get fucked by men for a living, women if they paid but… alas… this is not an enlightened society.”
As Pol watched the salt and pepper man pressing his cock deep inside the boy, whose face changed color with the pain, the force, and then the pleasure of the entry, Kirk went on, unaffected.
“Do you wonder what men like this do? Who they are when they aren’t doing this? It’s all very strange. I did this for my own reasons. Some do it because they need the money. These men…? These, I think, are ordinary men—”
“Fuck me! Fuck me!”
“You like that? You like my cock?”
“I love your cock. Give me more cock.”
“Ordinary men who came to the shows, watched the shows timidly, and then, perhaps, paid the five and then the ten and then eventually the fifteen to participate and worked their way up to this.”
The room was filled with the sounds of slapping, Kirk’s voice was the background to the amazed Pol as Salt And Pepper said, “Take this! Take this! Take my fucking huge cock!”
“And now here they are, living out their dream, believe it or not, getting paid for what they once paid to behold. Tomorrow morning Salt And Pepper will go back to work in some administrative building, and the black haired, pale beautiful thing will be—I know for sure—a star student at the university who keeps this part of his life to himself.”
“Oh, God!” the boy wailed.
“His name is Ollie, by the way,” Kirk said. “Salt and Pepper is called Calvin. To remember those things gives them a sort of… dignity.”
Now Ollie sat astride Calvin, riding him, churning him, the sweat going down his white body, pale, greenish now with its exertions while Calvin went red.
“Here… it comes!” Ollie warned.
“Give it to me.”
Now even Kirk did not talk. No one spoke as Ollie let out a strangled sound and, body jerking, semen dribbled and then shot like a geyser in one, two, three, and lastly a fourth lesser arc across Calvin’s hairy chest, onto his lantern jawed, unshaven face.
Calvin brought the exhausted Ollie to him, closer, closer now, and now he swallowed Ollie’s cock, sucking on it with relish, his eyes closed in ecstasy while Ollie’s head arched back, his eyes closed, in shared pleasure.
Calvin and Ollie were not done. When they were finally done, after their sex had gone to the edges of bondage, Calvin having Ollie kneel and suck him, hands behind his back, Ollie finally pulled Calvin deeper into his mouth, clasping his ass, and then they fucked again. The two of them, exhausted, covered in the liquid of each other, kissed and clung to each other, Pol stood watching, tears in his eyes, hands clasping and unclasping.
Kirk was still there, and Kirk was looking at him.
Pol heard Jasper speak, bringing him back into the present world even as he saw into the past.
“All was sensation, pain without story, song with no words, bliss without shame, bending, not breaking, yielding, ever yielding, might into weakness and weakness to strength, so in the fresh flood, let it begin.”
Pol blinked. He was watching the past, but not in it, standing in Jasper’s rooms, beside Jasper. He looked on Ohean’s father, almost afraid, but no… mostly reverent.
“Is that a poem?”
“It is The Poem,” Jasper said, and as he looked on the two lovers, for whatever they would be later, they were lovers right now, Pol said, “I think I see the beginnings of it.”
Pol looked back and saw himself, became himself again. The younger Pol, still standing in the sex house, sweat on his palms, the golden skin of his face red, his penis arcing up with hard desire, pressing at the fabric of his trousers under his robe, turned to Cinder.
“Should we go?” asked.
Cinder nodded.
Kirk had left them first, for he had work to do, but it was on their way out, almost to the doorman, that Cinder said, “If we came back in, we’d have to pay again, wouldn’t we?”
“I imagine we would.”
“I’m not made of money,” Cinder said, “and I’m not ready to leave.”
They had gone to three more shows. If Kirk was still there he would have explained that men looking for women had different houses, and the work and the life were different there, for none of the women graduated from enthusiastic viewers to participants. Here, there was all manner of ecstasy to behold, and still there were the plays which they had not seen, and the rooms upstairs where men went for hire.
They watched while a beautiful blond man was plowed against the wall by two short, barrel chested twins. They watched while a small bronze haired, well muscled boy demanded, after his first sex, “Put it in me again,” and a timid looking youth hammered him, pressing the boy’s face into the sofa while both fell into ecstasy.
On their way out, back in the cool night, they heard a noise in the alley and Pol turned to see their new friend Kirk, his eyes closed, his mouth open, being fucked against the wall of the pleasure house. Pol stopped to look only a moment.
In the room they took for the night, Cinder began to hum an old tune and Pol sang to it:
“I am feeling so many things,” Pol said. “I am stiff as a board. I’ve never felt like this.”
“You need to fuck,” Cinder said. “So do I.”
“We’re about to, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” Cinder said.
He pressed himself to Pol and kissed him, and Pol pulled him down gently to the bed. The need and the desire moved through them, and Pol realized, on some level, he had desired this with Cinder for some time. They kissed and touched each other slowly, took each other in their mouths. Pol gasped as Cinder’s tongue darted inside of him. In the end, he held Cinder’s face in his hands and kissed him, and he turned around and felt Cinder overshadow him. The head of his cock pressed inside of him painfully, and then rested in him. But once it was there, the rest of Cinder fit easily. Pol cried under Cinder’s touch. Like sun over water, the patterns of the lovers he had seen that night played with all the times he’d thought of Cinder, all the times he’d touched himself imagining that it was this boy right here doing it to him. Lust welled up in him, as he shuddered and, calling out, moaning like he’d been injured, he and Cinder quivered and, together, both came.
Anson
Early in the morning, Anson arrived at the great house where Pol stayed with Austin. It was warm in these houses and rooms had woven reed walls and curtains for doors. Anson push the curtain full open, and in the early morning light saw red candles burning feebly all about the room as if someone had forgotten to put them out the night before. The residue of myrhh and frankincense filled the chambers, mixing with fresh air from the open windows, and on the rumpled bed, naked and satisfied, lay Austin, face down, arms splayed, but Anson, who was not surprised by this was surprised to see that the man asleep beside him, on his side, was Ohean’s father, Jasper.
I do not understand this Isle, Anson decided. Everybody is fucking everybody.
But even as the older man—and who could say how old Jasper was—stirred and grunted, Anson moved away, letting the curtain flap shut, understanding it was his own prejudice welling up. For, in his life, how many nights had he spent sneaking to brothels, fooling around in alleys and in dark corners? Clearly this must have been Austin’s initiation as a Red, for there were the red candles, but still Anson was wrankled by the memory of the female figure who had come to him in the dark, sensing him to more deprived of human touch that ever. Had that been a mercy? What had it been? Was there some act of whoredom behind everything that took place here?
He heard them waking, and turned to leave. He was well on his way back to the house when he saw Pol and thought of asking where he had been. He did not, though. Instead he said, “It is time for us to be moving on.”
“Time and past it,” Pol said. “Where are you off to?”
“To join Ohean in Manwy’s chambers.”
He had gotten used to Nimerly’s room of state. It was humble in comparison to anything in Kingsboro, but held a reverence in its bareness and in the walls with their ancient frescoes. When he aarived, Ohean was already present.
“Pol,” Ohean greeted him, “Jasper has informed me you will remain here and be schooled in the Red Art.”
“It seems so,” Pol said, putting a brave face on things.
“We will miss you,” Ohean said, frankly. “But our journey south will, I think, not be an evening stroll.”
“I did not think it would be.”
“Still,” said Ohean. “I wish you could follow.”
“Ohean,” Manwy said, “before you go, I cannot make you, but I would ask you to take the Ethame.”
Ohean’s eyebrows drew together in a frown.
“The two of you are about to go into a deep journey, and in it, as Anson has known himself, you will have to know all of yourself. Knowledge and memory are as much powers as anything else, and you will not all the power the both of you can have.”
“I agree,” Anson said.
“Then so do I,” Ohean answered, though he did not look pleased.
As Ohean left with Anson on one side of him and Pol and Manyy walking behind him, Anson whispered, “What is the ethy…”
“Ethame,” Ohean supplied.
“It means The Memory.”
