New Story

Avant-Propos

My novel, "Young Edwin - Eros - Arts", in as lively and as believable a fashion as possible, accounts for sexual discovery, exploration, and maturity among four talented youngsters (two 18-years-old and two 16-years-old) and a considerable cast of older persons, the majority of whom are men. 

Interracial (Caucasian and Asian) and inter-generational, the "chemistry" among these persons defies accepted standards by its overarching positiveness, its humor, and its graphic portrayal of sexual expression (physical and emotional).

I invite your curiosity. By way of sample, here is a passage in which an 80-year-old emeritus professor of Sociology explains to his two 18-year-old housemates why they need not worry over the question one has raised about their possible homosexuality:

“I have to tell you there are some differences to be aware of and a bit of history you need – about sexual tutelage. What I’m going to describe lies outside the norms of present-day Europe, America, and Asia.”

Looking in Edwin’s direction, he said, “Uncommonly, you have been guided by adults onto the path of sexual accomplishment. That general principle, well documented, was in effect over a broad area of the world for many centuries. Your father Salil, Afzal,” Dalton shifted his gaze, “had in mind something of the sort when he wanted to put the two of us together, you the younger man with me an older man. I am, in fact, the man who gave your father his sexual introduction and, in piecemeal fashion, a certain amount of subsequent instruction, man to man. Such a sensible idea.”

Azfal’s nod confirmed that he understood.

“Adolescent males have brains that develop slower than those in females their same age. Judgment is not sound. Decisions often are made which may, and generally do cause misery later. A fully mature male remembers what it felt like to be adolescent, knows how the hormones rage, and what to do about them. The midst of the male body craves action which the brain above cannot logically operate. But, a female’s body and brain generally mature earlier, with the result that their feelings are spread throughout their bodies, not localized. Early mating with the opposite sex is a terrible idea for the reason that the male cannot control himself from rushing to impregnate the object of his coupling. Babies are born to hopelessly mismatched people. Dramatically bad, emotionally terrible circumstances tear ill-formed relationships apart. Innocent babies suffer the consequences. Right now, in this country, the divorce rate is over fifty percent. What fools we are. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should be telling you the history you need to know, so that you will feel right about what we are doing.”

“I’ve never felt better, Dalton. Last night was…rap-tur-ous. I still feel the glow. I’m fine with what we are doing,” Edwin said.

“Me, too,” chimed Afzal, “I’m fine. Yes.”

“Not the point, me hearties,” Dalton boomed, pretending to swing a cutlass. “There was sense which prevailed in ancient Greek society and again in the Renaissance, sense which got lost when that damned, so-called-saint Augustine of Hippo deemed pleasure so sinful that the Middle Ages got the contamination like the Fourteenth Century got the plague, and enough of it surfaced again in the two-faced Enlightenment that it remained to infect the Nineteenth Century such that they had to invent a new word, homosexuality, with which to isolate people and to pave the way for a highway of persecutions in the Twentieth.”

Edwin cautioned, “Calm down. Get your breath, Dalton, and don’t talk so fast.”

“Sorry,” he paused to take in air. “It’s infuriating to a scholar of human interaction how the noble status of mankind’s sexually balanced behavior got wrenched into categories deemed not merely sinful, which was bad enough, but unnatural and perverse. Result: natural inclinations and actions riddled with guilt, tension, anxiety, even horror! Generations upon miserable generations have been so sexually stupid as to allow the ever-spreading viruses of Christianity and Islam to crush reason and to add to the excuses for interpersonal human failure.”

“He’s red in the face,” Afzal observed with concern.

Edwin dashed to the kitchen, “I’ll get him a glass of water. Dalton, don’t talk until I get back.” When he returned and the winded man had swigged a few gulps, Edwin remembered a line his aunt used to use when someone had gotten hot under the collar during a fit of criticism: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

Spoken when the man had just taken another mouthful, Edwin caught the spray – Pfffft! – full-face. Laughter broke out between Afzal and Dalton at the sight of Edwin a-drip with water.

“Come here young man,” Dalton growled, “and bend over my knee.”

“Oh? You really want me to? You know it’ll turn me on. Are you sure?” he asked coyly.

The look on Afzal’s face was priceless. He could barely form the idea that Dalton might spank Edwin and that Edwin would like it. 

“All right, all right. Take your seat. Perhaps later,” he lifted his arched eyebrows. “I’m not through. And don’t get my sofa wet dribbling all over the place. The result of all my research and writing has altered nothing in our society, alas. Let me tell you….”

“Please, before you go on, tell me: Do you think we are homosexuals?” Afzal wanted to know.

“Wet Edwin and dry you? Certainly not. As far as I know neither of you has ever sought a partner of either sex. You’ve only had one, my dear, and that’s barely started. Edwin’s had several collaborators but he never went after them. Well, me maybe. Let me put this another way. Sex between the two of you is not your predilection, it is simply your opportunity – and a most practical one at this point in your lives. Good grief, do yourself a favor and drop that dreadful word ‘homosexual’ from your vocabulary. It’s not needed in this house.”

“Thank you.” Afzal sat back, encouraged, and dabbed his boyfriend’s face with a handkerchief.

“As I was trying to say, there are cultures centuries old in which what you are learning to do was and is, in a few cases even today, a stepping stone to the standard of maturity for men. No adolescent male is excluded from a year or more of daily oral insemination by his assigned older man among the Sambia people, not if he expects to rid himself of the femininity of childhood and to be able to marry. The same is true for about a year and a half for adolescent males of the Kaluli and Merind-Anim tribes, whose elder men inseminate their charges anally once or twice per day to accomplish the same ends, qualification as a man and readiness for marriage. Elders of the Keraki people used to practice anal copulation with boys up to the advent of puberty. Degrees of force add to the impact of the lessons being taught. I’m certain that you, Edwin, have felt the truth of that principle during your months with George. Right?”

Afzal went wide-eyed when Edwin replied, “Yes.” That talk about spanking…. Now this. I’ll make him tell me later.

“If I understand, Dalton, the reason you are describing these primitive practices,” Edwin said with focused attention, “is to establish the notion which we already accept, that initiation to sexual practice by elders of the same sex should be norm-a-tive.”

Noting Azfal’s apparent further astonishment at the sentence which had just come from his new boyfriend, Dalton decided not to notice. Hmm…more of those perceptive powers everyone’s been talking about. “Why of course. I don’t think it’s the sperm deposited down a throat or up an anus that accomplishes anything that isn’t symbolic. The stomach acids digest it and the anus will ultimately expel it. Sperm contains a few proteins which may be taken into the system and the rectal walls may absorb some of the additional moisture involved, but the stuff is, in the context of the male body, merely waste. If you think about it, sperm is profligately wasted in the female except for that one tiny swimmer that manages to enter a single egg. The tribal training practices I mentioned provide young males with sexual experience at the crucial time in their physical development. They learn to receive passively in order one day to provide dominantly. The technical term in the field is ‘masculinization.’ Important feelings are involved with each transmission, both psychologically and physically. Meaning accrues through repetition and progressive ease with the acts.”

“Becoming a man is getting easier,” Afzal kidded, squeezing his Edwin’s leg and his own sphincter.

“Don’t think that such traditions are exclusive to the Melanesian part of the world,” continued Dalton, looking the other way. “The Siwans of the Lybian Desert in Egypt used to lend their sons to each other for masculine love affairs, and may still do so as far as I know. Afghani men consider boys to be feminine until through adolescence and, despite Islam, use them anally with the complete conviction of acculturated male entitlement.”

Afzal looked up in wonder. Edwin listened with acute interest.

“The ancient Semites – Persians and Babylonians for example – and more recent Turks and Indians, like certain old Arab societies found young males addictive, wrote odes of praise to them, and cherished their relations with them during the body’s transformative years with as much intensity as did high-class Chinese, including emperors, and the Japanese samurai. Marriage to females was altogether apart from the male experiences. It followed.”

His audience all ears, Dalton carried on in his inimitable, professorial manner, “One can deduce from these and many other peoples around the world that desire in general, sensual enjoyment, and sexual pleasure lie naturally at the roots of such behaviors. No taboos against them are found in the earliest Hindu religious texts for example, nor in the Buddhist sutras. The compilations we know as the Bible and the Koran are the sources for admonitions against same-sex unions, even the briefest. But, in Western Christian monastic society there were sanctioned same-sex commitments not unlike marriage and, in the Koran, paradise is described as providing for martyrs endless orgies with female virgins and youthful boys as numerous as ‘scattered pearls.’ Why, only a few years ago it was reported by The Advocate – a gay newspaper (Did you know there were such things? Well, there are, or were.) – reported that a Muslim cleric issued a fatwa endorsing sodomy as a means of widening the anus in order to pack it with explosives to kill bystanders in a suicide bombing. I recall his words, ‘Jihad comes first, for it is the pinnacle of Islam, and if the pinnacle of Islam can only be achieved through sodomy, then there is no wrong with it.’”

Edwin told Afzal during the astonishing lull which followed that pronouncement, “The first time Dalton entered me, I thought I would explode.”

“And in the end, there was nothing wrong with it,” Dalton’s sing-song silliness parodied the alleged author, Abu al-Dema al-Qasab. They all laughed.

“Anyway, that’s enough for now. See what you can rustle up for lunch and I’ll make a few phone calls.” He shooed them away and picked up the telephone.

Safe in the kitchen, Afzal implored Edwin to tell him about the relationship with George Tanner. Was it passionate? How would he describe it?

“I never imagined or expected passion as a part of my apprenticeship to George. I accepted the situation. George has passion behind his coldblooded, iron-will facade, but I know it’s there. He just doesn’t show it much, nor does he know much of anything about love, if what’s happening between you and me is any indication. He and I both used the word a few times, but…. Forget that. I haven’t figured it out. Little things anger him. Dalton has more self-control than George, and he is loving and actually more passionate. It’s hard to put into words. Then, there’s you. My passion for you is, as my aunt says, ‘off the charts,’ because it’s not imagined. It’s real. And really real because I love you. My great fortune is to have been brought in to meet you and to be loved by you.” His voice cracked, “I haven’t been in love before.” He drew Afzal to him for a gentle kiss.

“Before we met,” said Afzal as if on cue and in his best British-school manner, “I never thought much about love. I just wanted to practice sex because my father promised me that. I love him and my mother. They’re very sweet. When our sort of people get married, both families have agreed. The groom and the bride have been matched by the eldest members on both sides because that assures compatibility and leads to love. The old system of having time to practice sex, my father says, gives the groom lots of experience without the risk of pregnancy. With you, I’m safe, and thrilled, and happy, too. I want to learn everything you can teach me about sex and about love.”

“But we’re same age. In the traditions we’ve been hearing about you should be with an older guide. I’m ignorant about love, too. I do know a few things about sex, though, and I can teach you those.”

                                                                             *

You need not read the novel in order to enjoy the developing story which follows. But you can always rectify the situation. Here’s a reminder.

Prologue

Only a few months were involved – those of Late Spring, Summer, and Autumn.

Young Edwin Owen had turned eighteen, had been apprenticed willingly, it can be admitted, to George Tanner, a man more than twice his age, and had emerged from that demanding tutelage as a prodigious talent in a rarefied area of art. With no ambition for accolades, the youth earned almost instant national attention, received invitations for appearances at prestigious museums, was pressured to enroll for an undergraduate university degree in which he professed little interest, and entered easily if unusually into a marriage which would have made news had it been known to more than the precious few.

Much, in fact, about Young Edwin – the double name used only by the aunt who had raised him – was guarded closely by his most intimate associates. Loyalty, you know.

Here, his story moves from the beginning of a New Year through seasons of the maturing fellow’s ever more individual, vivid encounters with older and younger figures who play key, if unexpected roles in his metamorphosis from wunderkind status to troubled maturity. It is a journey chronicled joyously and uniquely in these pages

As with its predecessor, Young Edwin – Eros – Arts, the present undertaking employs real, altered, and invented quotes to set perspectives before each chapter. Existing communities and institutions as well as purely fictional ones provide environs for characters’ actions with no intent to imply anything beyond that. Judgments made and opinions offered about cultural mores, local ordinances, and national laws belong to the story’s situations and populace and are unintended as comments beyond present confines.

No end of pleasure marked the creation of this sequel.

* * *

 Everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a Winter.

Thomas De Quincey

* * *

Let us love Winter, for it is the Spring of genius.

Pietro Aretino

* * *

Weaving Winter’s Skeins

Tom Loft arrived in a sweat at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in his roommate’s Honda, summoned

by elderly Dalton Brawne’s “We’re back.” The announcement had been thundered stentoriously through the static of Immigration’s overused payphone. “Come rescue us. Please.”

Amid the bustle of passengers and vehicles, January’s wind was too penetrating for anything except quickly cramming luggage into the car’s trunk. Tom’s sweat was freezing despite his butch pea coat and wool scarf. Everyone piled through the car doors and slammed them, gratefulfor the heat inside.

Thirty-something Tom, maneuvering away from the arrival terminal’s snarl of vehicular traffic, asked the boys in the back seat, “Did you have any idea what Illinois cold is like?

The two Malaysian teens, silent, shivered in silence. Unspeakable, they thought, teeth clenched.

Seated between them, bright-faced Young Edwin Owen cracked, “Before the plane, we were in short sleeves or less. Sarongs, can you believe?”

The rearview mirror caught the blondish head’s smile and the grim faces of the cold, dark-haired, light-caramel-skinned brothers, Afzal and Shantanu Chaudary, their teeth chattering. In disbelief, they stared forward. Not a word from either.

Up front, big, hardy Dalton Brawne plunked heavily beside to the driver. “Tell us some news, my dear. What’s been going on in the old burg? Holiday happenings of note?” He let his eighty-year-old voice rise coquettishly. Ever the dominating role-player.

By the time the quintad reached Dalton’s Oak Park driveway, Tom Loft stopped effusing. He summed, “The cats are out of the bag, as you now know. I’m having the best time. All the sex I’ve ever wanted. George tunes me up and Roger finishes me off.”

“You’ve been ‘exercising,’ then?”

“Honey, I’m being exercised,” Tom sighed, “to my heart’s content.”

“More likely, your bottom’s content,” was Dalton’s snort.

Shantanu – Shan, as he liked to be called – and older brother Afzal looked toward the driver, astonished. They giggled in embarrassment. It seemed the proper Asian thing to do.

In a whisper, Edwin confirmed that Tom’s long-time lover was co-worker Roger Dawson, “as handsome a black man as you could imagine.”

Doors were opening.

Edwin wondered to Shan, “Mmm…shouldn’t we unload?”

“I’ll help,” said Afzal, the group’s ever-cherubic livewire, as he bounded out. “Hurry. Open the boot!” Certain Britishisms lingered from private school education in Malaysia.

Most of the big suitcases and carry-on bags were removed. Only Shan’s things were left where they were.

* * *

Boosting the house thermostat while admonishing his “lovelies” to hoist their luggage upstairs, Dalton hustled Tom into the kitchen to help with hot cocoa. “Are you really happy?

“Oh yes. The boys don’t need to know but I’ll tell you something about your friend George Tanner.”

Eyebrows arched more than usual, chin lifted, lips pursed expectantly, Dalton turned from his stove.

Tom, busy at his task of quartering marshmallows, leaned toward him, “He likes to watch Roger screw me, which Roger doesn’t mind – and sometimes after Roger’s gone for his shower, George grabs wild seconds.”

“Any trouble keeping up such a pace?”

“Not with all of us having to go back to work on the exhibits and other projects at the museum. Roger and the team are building some things – display cases – and George is up to his ears in the usual docent matters. But,” he preened, “we’re thinking of making it regular for weekends.”

“What have you left out?”

“You know, the belt, ropes, and…things.” Tom responded, smiling slyly toward the elder’s tilted head. “George likes inflicting pain, then screwing a whimperer. I’m good at whimpering. He really gets off when I suck my thumb, too. Freaky, no? That’s new. God, it feels so good!”

The clamor of shoes on the stairs preempted further revelations.

Dalton’s cocoa heated everyone as did warmth rising from the house’s old furnace. Coats came off as the friends began a lively, disjointed, censored, jovial account of their holiday time in George Town, Penang Island, West Malaysia.

Tom flipped a wrist, “We know all that stuff about the snake temple visit, the wonderful dinner at you guys’ family,” he indicated the brothers, “Shan’s play, the newspaper articles, and the bathing suit photo session. All that.” He turned emphatically to Edwin, “And about your picture-swap with that famous artist. And the drawings you made of nearly everyone.” To the brothers, he said, “Your father e-mailed us now and then, you know. Even about certain of your, ah…uh, sexual championships.” 

Events that took place during the recent year-end holidays in Malaysia had made it to Chicago – in timely fashion. Some of them anyway. The brothers, Afzal and Shantanu Chaudary, felt embarrassed.

Dalton broke the uncomfortable, momentary lull with a mischievous, “Bet you’d like those details.”

Afzal dug his fingers into his brother’s knee. Uh-oh.

“For sure.” Tom enjoyed their startled faces. “Howsomever, considering the state of Shan’s hair, we’ve got to get him taken care of by Roger before you-know-who (your aunt, Edwin) whisks him off tomorrow, and maybe check a few other things – like his new outfit. We hear it’s something else.”

No blush appeared on Shan’s face. Rather, he sat quite statuesquely tall, composed himself rather like an actor playing a role, licked the marshmallow from his upper lip, and responded, “It fits.” The remark’s terseness suited his sensuous appearance and persona under construction. He had returned to the States wiser than before.

Dalton dispatched Edwin to get “our star’s bag of accessories and whatnot from my suitcase.” He clarified, “We thought it’d be easier for me to explain certain insertive devices if Customs snooped into them.”

A nervous giggle escaped from Afzal, “But nobody even looked.”

Shan said not a word. Tom swallowed his urge to snicker. His bottom did twitch.

* * *

An old man in love is like a flower in Winter. 

Portuguese Proverb

* * *

Divisions of Labor

“We do not daunt ourselves in the face of decisions made ‘for the best’ nor let what we face daunt us. We cope.” Dalton was certain. Definite. Professorially so. The leader had spoken.

Thus, the situation – post-hot cocoa, with Tom as witness – had been put to the young men who were making their mid-year entries into official academe – Young Edwin Owen and Afzal Chaudary, both eighteen, at the University of Chicago; Shantanu Chaudary, sixteen, at Treydon High School in Indiana.           

In a sense, these decisions had been made for them by trusted others – immediate circles of friends, broader numbers of acquaintances, close family members, boyfriends, and one’s husband. All pledged support to the least problematical, Afzal and Shantanu, and to the most challenged, Young Edwin.

                                                                             *

His mirror image regarded him from the bedroom wall as he considered the circumstances of exams for orientation and placement at the University, the subsequent choice of courses to pursue, the continued cleaning at the Art Institute of friend Duane Wilderforce’s recently discovered, incomparably-rare skyscape by Caspar David Friedrich, his forthcoming foray to speak in Cleveland and the planned necessity to finalize a surprise “Corot” painting based on some of that Museum’s drawings (a project initiated prior to vacationing in Penang Island’s lush surroundings). The new canvas must satisfy both the occasion of addressing in public for the fourth time the matter of his Corot “research” (before a paying audience) and to create fresh material to include in Indianapolis reporter Nick Charleston’s Cincinnati-funded documentary. Charleston’s interest was both professional (it could boost his career) and personal (his attraction to Edwin had a strong sexual component). The commission: an hour-long TV feature about the teen phenomenon who had been thrust dramatically into a narrow part of the large world of art.

And time was short.

During Edwin’s absence, the Art Institute, where he held part-time employment courtesy of patroness Thelma Altshuler, had received requests for Edwin to guide more tours. Among several were repeat requests from the local Mensa group and Theological Seminary. They had been receptive before. And highly responsive. Necessarily, he wanted to conceive something special for them.           

Alas, unresponded-to e-mails expressed Nick Charleston’s desire to spend time with him. The newsman had charge of the forthcoming documentary. That encounter he could postpone until Cleveland. The gallery tours could be put off for a month or two with the help of Alice, curator George Tanner’s secretary in the Education Department.

His mind was jumping around. What’ll I do with George? George Tanner, he could never forget, had provided intensive guidance in museums and between the sheets back in the Summer. Where to place priorities? None of these prospects consumed Edwin’s imagination as did his husband-inspired passion for a quite different project.

Shantanu Chaudary’s image – a mysteriously seductive drawing made at Thanksgiving – was to be realized in paint. A great Belgian linen canvas, Dalton’s gift, should not have to wait. Nor the chest of paints he had been given by friends. The array of brushes, also gifts, beckoned, virtually unused. The attic space itself – where strong Winter daylight filtered through brightened dormer windows – how inviting was that? His personal place, where thoughts could soar freely and no one but he might dictate the work. Could he manage the painting with his other tasks and the necessity to take his coursework at the University? He worried.

The face in his mirror wore a concerned look. Another face appeared alongside.

“I see you’re thinking,” said Dalton, a large hand placed comfortingly on his maturing husband’s youthful shoulder. Edwin relaxed into the embrace and sighed, listening. “Here’s what we’re going to do for a start. While you and Afzal are off proving yourselves at the University, I’m going to make some changes around here this week. I hope, with your help.”

Edwin looked back, “Changes?”

“You and Afzal need spaces of your own to work. I’ve assigned him to the new computer in the library. He is, at this moment on-line, finding a proper computer for your room and a desk. He says your old laptop’s inadequate. You should confine its use to your lectures. We’ll move things around. The bed here is going. I’ll replace it with a king-size thing I’ve read about. Its features include various speeds for vibratory relaxation and who-knows-what other applications. The furnace people will be in for a tune-up. They’ll run a duct to the attic so your cute tush won’t freeze up there between now and Spring. And I’m….”

“When did you think of all this?”

“On the plane, while you were reading or snoozing. I was awake a lot more than you know.”

Edwin scrunched into his far older mate’s arms, “Dalton, don’t change too much on my account. Please don’t spend a lot of your money. You already have given me more than I merit. I have some money of my own, and I can ask Aunt Aggie to help. I worry about you.”

“That sweet face watching us? I want its frown to melt away.”

One of Dalton’s hands kneading his chest, the other dropping over the front of his pants, Edwin’s body sprang to conscious attention – in the mirror and in the room it reflected. A tongue in his ear sent ripples of pleasure all over. Edwin called loudly, “Afzal, Afzal! I’m being attacked by a monster up here. Help!”

Ruses of the sort never failed to alleviate the tensions of the three housemates – ages sixteen, eighteen, and eighty. No one mentioned the big canvas or Shantanu’s portrait.

* * *

Placement exams behind Edwin and Afzal, curricular requirements and available class sections determined weekly schedules for coursework. Afzal’s line-up required less specialization than Edwin’s. The academic advisors for each helped, although Edwin’s inquiry about a course in John Greenleaf Whittier was met with disbelief by the English Department. “We’ve never had a course in Whittier,” they responded.

“How shortsighted,” the prospective student observed. Word of that made the rounds.

“Whittier?” The chairman wondered, “Why?” – and shook his head.

Edwin opted against American Literature. Rather, he registered for a lecture-style survey called Masterworks of European Literature in Translation and an English composition class. Consideration of a math course was postponed until a later term to gain a course in studio art and a Seminar in the Middle Ages with Professor Nataly Hananian. Dalton needed no reminder that she had been “the one who brought that admissions dean guy into my day with all those other professors.”

Gossipy accounts had echoed in academic circles of that six- or seven-hour oral art history exam conducted in turn by experts in ancient and medieval times, the Renaissance and Baroque, Classical and Romantic, and early modern trends. A video of the would-be freshman holding his own against the professors had circulated to other key persons in Chicago, including a cultural writer who was composing an article about the phenomenon and his curiously astonishing successes out of nowhere, it seemed, at the venerable Art Institute and at museums in other states – Indiana, Ohio, and Massachusetts. Media attention had cropped up nationally. What to make of him? – fluidly voluble in public, approaching taciturnity in private with strangers, seemingly shy and self-deprecating, yet secure in himself without apparent ego. A most uncommon eighteen-year-old.

Two morning classes for Edwin, two after lunch, the schedule was perfect. Afzal, too, had two in the morning, but three in the afternoon. They determined to ride together in both directions, meeting midday for lunch in a cafeteria.

Workable,” Dalton pronounced. “I’ll have supper for us every day by, say, six. Then we’ll see….”

* * *

Winter makes the air cold

and the blood hot.

Anonymous

* * *

In Winter enjoy.

William Blake

* * *

Treydon Reunions

In snow-caked Treydon, Shantanu learned that swimming in the Hoosier State University pool was not possible before the Spring Term. Shocked – in fact, strickened, as if his world had suddenly collapsed – he looked to his American “Auntie,” Agatha Cobb, and her friends from next door, Anne and Erich Wolfe. They had greeted him effusively. He asked, “What’ll I do?” Since the couple counseled and taught at Treydon High School, they were central to everything Shan had done and would do there. Anne was prepared.

She purred, “You’ll have use of our gym before school every morning. You know, for running, for your own exercises. Plus, we’ve worked it out for you to have gymnastics or calisthenics or whatever it’s called,” she smiled broadly, “a class which was recommended by Coach Adams himself. By the way, here’re his instructions for what he called dry-land swim routines that he says will be really good for you.” She handed the sheets to a disbelieving Shan.          

New to him, the terms: squat jumps, lunge jumps, regular squats with arms overhead, lunges with side twists, front plank taps, side plank rotations, flutterkicks, and Supermans – What the Hell are those? A short paragraph of instruction accompanied each task named. He would read all that later. At the printout’s bottom was a listing of on-line video links, demonstrations of techniques. Exciting!

Erich, an arm protectively around his wife, joined with, “Your friend Caswell’s going to do them with you. Captain Wright’s even agreed to check up on you two to make sure they’re going okay. Isn’t that nice?” He didn’t wait for a response. “You’ll have your math and English classes as before. And, of course, there’s the play to rehearse. Caswell did his part with Jesse while you were away. What a nice young man that preacher’s son is. Actually, they both are. And we know how you feel about Jesse.” He hugged Anne, who added, “I think your sweet Jesse knows the whole play. We hear he’s even read another Shakespeare play.”

Shan listened intently. His swim team friend, Caswell Carter, had been a study partner in some subjects and his math tutor during the Fall, as Indiana Hoosiers called their Autumn. The best swimmer at Treydon High, Caswell would prove invaluable company in what might otherwise be lonely gym sessions. Jesse Boyd, the diminutive sissy whom Shan once accidentally knocked down and whose feminine beauty had broken through the Malaysian’s heterosexual front – how Shan longed for their reunion.

“You forgot what he gets when the weather gets better,” Aggie intruded.

“Oh?” Anne’s voice soared as if she were asking a question. It came back to earth with, “In April, you’ll be allowed to take Driver’s Ed. You and Jesse together.”

She omitted mention of the basement which she and Erich had devoted so much time and planning to equip beyond its previous functions, her husband’s many massages for Shan’s developing body. New opportunities for skin, muscles, and release of various tensions awaited. Soon enough, he would find out. Not, however, about her new vantage-point from which to view the activity – a prelude for her to the sex she and Erich invariably enjoyed.

* * *

Shan’s supremely svelte corpus – priapic, erotic beyond measure – took sixteen-year-old Jesse Boyd’s breath more now than before. The perfection standing naked, arms slightly forward, hands opening, surpassed the memories he sustained of his idol’s appearance over so long an absence. Unsettlingly handsome and more statuesque than before. Poor Jesse stopped dead, his mind racing. He’s taller! Broader! I’m the same. When no other words would, a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the other play he had read during the holidays, came to him. He blurted it, eyes lowered, in his ever-dulcet, girl-like voice, near tears, “At mine unworthiness, I dare not offer what I desire to give, and much less take what I shall die to want.”

Shan caught the drift. “Jesse, you – unworthy? Look at me. I’m the one dying of desire.” He regarded his whopping erection, “And you’re the reason. The reason I’m here. I came back as much for you as I did for school. I don’t want anyone or anything the way I want you.” He touched an ear lobe. “Remember that line we learned in Shakespeare’s sonnets? – ‘Blessèd are you whose worthiness gives scope.’ Now close the door so we don’t disturb Auntie, and come here, my worthy.”

To show his mastery, the Malaysian called upon every subtlety he could recall about the ways Edwin had taught him to honor such devotion. He made love to small-statured Jesse more tenderly than ever. When his increased size proved too great for his boyfriend’s mouth, he kissed Jesse, saying, “It is enough to have you in my arms.”

Jesse dissolved.

Outside, frigid air held Nature in chill thrall.

Inside, Shan’s bed’s softness welcomed them to its warmth. Pressed into his lover’s breast, Shan’s head released its intoxicating aroma with each graze of teeth upon Jesse’s plump, hardening nipples – instants which stifled Jesse. The sensual overload of Shan’s long fingers feeling between Jesse’s hairlessly smooth thighs stopped the boy’s heart for a beat. Or two, perhaps three. Rapid breaths increased his desire. Joy and trepidation mixed at the idea of that huge organ coursing into his body. Jesse’s anticipation heightened. Dizzy with love, his thoughts and feelings twirled as Shan teased his way to the puckered entrance.

Urgency flooded Jesse. The extreme edge of passion enticed from his mouth mewls his idol had not heard before. Shan realized, in a touching moment, that Jesse yearned to have him. He stretched out to renew his kisses of that most adorable of faces, lips fighting to remain gentle as his tongue sought entrance.

Jesse, returning every kiss, his vibrant eyes full of heat, struggled physically and emotionally to say, “I didn’t practice with my mouth while you were gone, but I did, you know, down there, in my other place. Where’s a condom?” He blushed, and fell back, knees bent and apart, to welcome his boyfriend.

An hour and two condoms later, Shan wiped away Jesse’s tears, cleaned their bodies, looked at the clock, opened his bedroom door, saw no light coming from Auntie’s room, closed the door, pinched the single candle that was guttering out, and slipped himself around the sleeping form of the boy he now could admit that he loved. He pulled up the bed clothes. Neither shifted position as the night passed. Sounds only of deep contentment which neither heard.

* * *

To be continued if reader response merits. 

There is much more to this new story.