Tanet

GENTLE READER, if you had come across a small folder of yellowish-old paper covered in a scrawled German hand and written in faded-brown ink, would you not want to know the contents? I did. It took a while to get used to the idiosyncrasies of certain letter-forms in Sütterlinschrift. My eyes opened wide at what I could make out.

For my own pleasure (and possibly yours), I set myself the task of translating the elaborate language of yesteryear and its eely-long, wriggly sentences – because the story to be revealed was so novel, so curiously erotic, and so highly sexual that I could not resist it. The undated manuscript bore no author’s name.

At times, the character Pemberton seems to write in the first person; at times, there is the narrative voice of an observer. But distinctions sometimes blur. I believe I have managed to preserve that mysteriousness along with other such features as raised my temperature and heightened by longing for knowledge about the distant (mythical?) rite involved.

I regret to report that an accident with the original caused it to be destroyed. All that remains is this, my version.

My previous stories may be found here: https://www.gaydemon.com/stories/authors/cooper/

I welcome your responses to this particularly, and others you may find worthy of your attention.

* * *

The Text

Although Pemberton fucked the young fellow gingerly, considering his age, the boy, as he came, shook like a marionette on the ends of its strings.

From the start, Tanet had been steadily animated. He tensed, he seemed to collapse. He pressed back. He relented. Seemed to savor penetration. Then, to dislike it.

* * *

No, he didn’t. That was somebody else. I’m so confused. But my memory’s otherwise clear, I think.

* * *

Was he asking himself why, Pemberton wondered as he plied Tanet’s beauty. Why was he submitting so readily? Why to me in particular – or was it to tradition? My age, no barrier perhaps – but many years his senior? He had opened easily yet I knew the experience was unfamiliar.

His mother had said as much when she entreated me to take his flower, freshly bloomed. At least, I think she did.

* * *

To Pemberton, at sight, Tanet was poetry not botany. Little more than five feet in height, his honey-hued body had whispered gentle metrics and euphonious rhymes. It moved as though vague images danced within.

Half a smile beneath heavy-lidded eyes, topaz-dark and luring.

Soft, his voice had murmured like a brooklet, “You have come for me?”

“Yes, per request of your mother.”

“Then that is enough. It is my time. May I show you the way?

At Pemberton’s kind regard, Tanet stepped to take his robed man by the hand. His Chosen One. With no words, he led him along a path shaded deeply by age-old banyans and aromatic eucalyptus. Darkening swirls of ferns interwoven with vines, knarls of roots licked here and there by dancing spots of sun, the whir of dragonfly wings gossamer to ears – their company.

Had either looked back, he would have noticed the path which followed their steps closed behind to cover sandy surface and strewn pebbles.

The enchantment included Tanet’s touch, mere fingertips to Pemberton’s, as they walked past glistening buds as yet unopened but, like Tanet, verging to be.

Do I need words from him? Pemberton wondered. No, for sidelong glances sufficed to heighten senses of special place and personal presence.

Thin white linen draped the obedient lad’s elegant, yet-to-be-toned shoulders to flow around gliding steps. Sandaled toes peeked occasionally forward in silence as the pair processed into the forest’s depths. Their pace, dreamlike, quiet enough that faint rustles of the boy’s gauzy attire could and did caress Pemberton’s ears gently.

Before them, revealed by an opening to the sky in the canopy of plentiful greens, stood a small pavilion of gem-set marble, housing, it appeared, on its raised dais, a low couch only.

The single word, simply spoken: “Here.”

Tanet stepped to the sparkling geometry of his pavilion’s elaborate, inset floor – and turned.

“My arms welcome you.”

Sacred dignity marked Pemberton’s approach. The moment, solemn, noiseless.

Waiting, a stilled but living forest…for moments now and until.

* * *

Duty lay ahead – to release lovely Tanet from the encumbrance of virginity, to free him from its captivity so that the world of sentiment might be opened to him without his learning of, from, or about sin and evil. Innocence such as belonged to this boy was pure, fragile, of celestial sweetness. Delicate care was to be taken in nuanced stages that no damage would mar the age-old ritual enactment. Divine were its precedents.

With innate understanding, each shed what clothed him. Naked, they faced, eyes intent. Two downward strokes of the Chosen One’s pale hands on Tanet’s cheeks meant to adore from his knees as a suppliant.

That he did.

The throbbing flesh of the Chosen One’s ‘key’ hovered before Tanet’s mouth and nose. Both dilated in a simultaneity of intake, responding naturally to the presence of symbols representing implementation to come and transforming aromas. Free will united with commitment the deeper Tanet lapped at what was destined to go elsewhere and drew into widened nostrils its faint, intoxicating timbres. Sandalwood and cinnamon, coconut and cardamon – blended perhaps by divination?

Initial anointments issued from Tanet’s mouth. From his throat emerged also syllables of sound belonging to no words in any man’s vocabulary. Breathily indistinct, unrecognizable as song yet communicative. Song to come?

Lyric-like vibrations seemed to reverberate in the corrugations of the precious boy’s palate. Their tremblant rapidity counterpointed undulant flows from the budded surface of his ebbing, flowing tongue applied to Pemberton’s frenulum and skin-sheathed urethral conduit. Anatomical awareness, however, belonged to neither celebrant’s consciousness. Forming was a sensate mirage shared by the spirits of both, seen by inner eyes.

It melted in passion’s rising heat.

* * *

Tanet stood before his Chosen One. Palms raised in salutation, he stepped back, turned, and moved gracefully toward the dais. On a foliate pattern inlaid centrally into the crystalline floor, he knelt, knees and ankles aligned, toes down, tender soles exposed, and torso extended away, arms beyond, hands flat, black-curled head to one side.

To be taken in, focused upon, savored by sight alone – flawless rounds framing a circle of contracted, pristinely formed muscle blushed by a shade of coral which attracted and invited more than visual admiration – touch, to verify smooth hairlessness’s simple beauty, and contemplation, to visualize the power to be accessed by a Chosen One’s parting it for man’s love.

As he neared the presented symmetry, Pemberton observed luminous sheen overall and anointment’s discrete gleam in the location to be sacrificed. True, the augury that had brought him here in readiness! However slight, such doubt as he may have harbored, aerified at the prospect ahead. The most worship-inspiring altar ever to be contemplated.

Fingers splayed to encompass loveliest curves. Thumb-whorls played outward strokes light as flies’ feet. Susurrations of breath answered at youthful pitch. Sensitivity at its utmost.

Alert to the gentlest circlings of his center, Tanet lifted his head at a new touch. For that, thumbs spread him. Something else, blunt, he seemed to realize. Cushioned but firm, it pressed.

Pemberton’s moment. Tanet’s. Their honor, bespoke of old, compelled loving act.

Peacefully, Tanet parted for Pemberton’s passing the outer curtain of his inner world. All senses coalesced to nourish the burgeoning growth of oneness in spirit and deed. With eyes closed against distraction, the unseen article of physical connection slipped in easily and slithered forward – slow, certain, liminal. Dawn of a kind importantly felt rather than needlessly seen.

Thousands of sensors in Tanet surrounded thousands more in Pemberton’s corona and came to nascent life as they contacted through the coupling’s thin-spread colloid of oil, saliva and mucus. The fit was perfect, the transit comfortably tight, widening both with increased, inward movement. Centimeters became inches – measurements of passage, not of feeling. With no more momentum than that of a benevolent gastropod, Pemberton sank within. As he ensconced himself in Tanet’s recesses, time ceased its reckoning. Only breaths broke the silence. This was sanctuary.

Adoration, important to worshipful devotion, preceded action. But action must proceed. Oracles of old decreed turnings of great wheels to assure Nature’s regenerative continuity, cyclicality to be re-enacted by ceremony at fixed periods innately and entirely masculine. A single pair, chosen and groomed, ultimately to be aware only of their destined duty to resuscitate life itself through manly love.

Thus, Pemberton commenced. Tanet, cognizant of the necessity to accept, held his place. Smooth glides fostered awareness that a smile grew on his lips. Shallow were Pemberton’s strokes before flowing further along the lad’s incomparable channel to thrill both. The rider and the ridden, in full pursuit not of what they desired but of what they yearned to be, fused in molten surrender to forces greater than they.

Superb in creamy unity and gradually recombinant humanity, they parted. Tanet’s arms responded to Pemberton’s reach from behind, to their help in bringing the former altar to boyish stance. Embrace meant the man’s palms kneading Tanet’s chest and the boy’s buttocks nestled by mature genitalia.

Instinct guided Tanet’s turn. His face to Pemberton’s sternum, Tanet felt the heart beating beneath his cheek, accepted the man’s arms encircling him, anticipated hands tracing the lines of his back, and was inspired when they touched where he had bloomed.

Without knowledge that he interrupted a thought of Tanet’s, Pemberton spoke softly, “You’ve lost none of my gift.”

“It is invaluable.”

Pemberton drew Tanet into a kiss. They searched mouths with tongues eager to discover secrets there. None was to be revealed by means that mundane.

A voice inside their minds reminded the twosome to complete observance of what had been ordained. Guided unconsciously, Tanet again led the Chosen One, this time to the dais under the pavilion’s now apparent dome. There, beneath pearl-studded ultramarine, he reclined and beckoned to Pemberton by spreading legs and lifting their shapeliness to imply – nay, suggest – they be lifted further, high as necessary.

“I welcome you, Chosen One, to join me a final time in the love that only we are granted by Nature’s good.”

Tanet’s long, curiously worded, rhythmically delivered sentence, took hold. Its chanted tone caused Pemberton quavers of excitement in his head above, in his viscera below. Summoned, his sex hardened anew. For there, recumbent, waited purpose and pleasure.

Latin words remembered from studies when a boy himself – Quam Pulcra Es (How Beautiful Thou Art) – floated as unsung song in his mind while he contemplated the destiny promised by Tanet’s radiant body and supernal soul.

A step to the white stone platform, let Pemberton regard its slender columns and quartz-flecked dais ere dwelling on the sight of Tanet, legs and gaze upward. From his position at midpoint, the Chosen One moved left to begin a care-filled circuit.

This newest altar and its living means of communion seduced his sight. Loveliness pervaded reflective contrasts, unmoving marble with flexing flesh. Tanet breathed. Light bathed him differently – honeyed highlights, tawny shadows defined silky skin, articulated bodily forms; black, soft curls, eyebrows, and lashes refracted midnight blues; shades from a mixed spectrum of mochas and reds articulated scrotum, penis, nipples, and lips.

From above, Tanet’s lips called for kisses. Pemberton braced hands on the dais to lean across and touch together their inverted mouths. Tenderly, as one might a child.

Leftward steps took him midway the other side where his tongue could touch the rise and fall of Tanet’s navel. A kiss there lingered.

At the far end, Pemberton paused in the uncanny quiet. His feet felt a marble step previously unseen. Had it just materialized – for his use? He took it and knelt forward. Tanet’s hands turned fingers up to guide the Chosen One’s key once more into its twice-anointed lock.

A single motion, smooth as some gesture of Terpsichore’s, granted to Tanet all of the one chosen for him, inside and over him, enclosed by arms and ankles. Joined thus, the dance of their love began.

Tanet’s hands drifted from Pemberton’s shoulder blades to his backside. They enjoyed initial stirrings and encouraged furtherance. The stroking hinted a melody of gentle intoxication. As Pemberton drifted back and forth, the two basked. Love’s luxury.

In Tanet’s dilating pupils could be read a lover’s message. That asked for more. Tanet’s lids drifted down with the increase in Pemberton’s rotating pelvic undulations. The bliss of being loved – it overtook the beautiful boy. Suffused as well, the Chosen One. His view up close of a crease-free brow, alluring lashes, glowing cheeks, and classic nose left a single feature to be admired, Tanet’s parted lips.

Those lips opened wider with increasing breaths to signal approval and acceptance. With adoration in mind, Pemberton’s mouth meshed with Tanet’s. And guided by the forces of enchantment, the pair’s tryst shifted from what might have been taken as sublunary love-making to the realm of spirit. Every bodily touch – taste of lips, caress of tongue, pressure of hands, thrust of passion – transfigured as aesthesis in the highest.

Aeolian harps’ misty tangles of tones, called into life by subtle breezes of no known source, assumed melodious lines. A kind of music began. Songs never sung sang faintly, wordlessly to accompany the rolling, roiling rhythms of forces forging together an expression of ever increasing, rapidly accelerating reinvention of abandonment to love’s whirling dance. Currents flowed. Visceral elation emerged as mingled sighs, moans, cries.

Unleashed, glands exploded, paralyzing ecstatic participants into quaking oneness – from which the seizure abated like a receding tsunami. Swept away, tiding back, ebbing, flowing. Enabling awareness once more of Nature’s surround, of its arboreal, edenic green augmented by blossoms of every hue opening to look benignly, approvingly, celebratively upon the matchless peace which legend-driven love’s actions bestow upon two such males as select Tanet and chosen Pemberton.

They separated.

Both rose.

Fingers linked, they stepped from the pavilion to take one another’s leave.

With ritual detachment, they faced.

Both smiled.

They turned – Pemberton to the path opening for him, Tanet toward the pavilion which was disintegrating into sparkling dust. From the ground upon which it had arisen, there sprang a wondrous tree with heart-shaped leaves.

“Hello, Bodhi,” said Tanet as he sat beneath with folded legs and outstretched arms and, with bounty around and above, receded into shadow the way memories do that are beyond retention except as legend.

* * *

Pemberton did not know where he was. He remembered, only in shards, what had happened – but when was it? One thing, he was wet. In the dark, he felt his sheet. Soaked and sticky. A hand beneath searched and found his stomach and cock puddled with ejaculate. A wet dream?

No. Couldn’t have been. He’d fucked some boy, he was sure. Yet his memory was uncertain. Where had the boy come from? Why had he been recalcitrant?

Pemberton puzzled over his failed memory.

Sudden light blinded him.

“Oh, Mr. Pemberton, you’ve soiled yourself again. The orderly’ll clean you up.”

“Nurse?”

“Yes, of course. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll just swab your arm for this morning’s shot. It’ll clear your mind like yesterday’s. The doctor will be along to hear your latest dream. You’re our best patient. Now I’ll open the curtains and let in some real morning light. Say, what’s this on the floor?”

“I don’t know. What?”

“My-oh-my, a long strip of white linen.”

* * *