Give Me That New Religion

The things I had to do to get an article. But this was something new, something I’d never done before, and it had been as hard as I thought—painful, yes, but arousing and uplifting in knowing that I could, in fact, manage it. It wasn’t just the guy under me and the guy on top of me on the divan next to the Roman baths in the 10th Street Baths, both with their dicks in me, playing me like a calliope, but now an older, banker-type of older guy, probably distinguished looking in clothes, but now revealed as gaunt and wrinkled, was holding one of the legs I had spread and raised around the buttocks of the guy on top of me and was sucking my toes.

A few more pumps from the guy on top and then he was finished, pulled out of me, rolled off and was gone. The guy under me wasn’t much longer until he was done too. I had met both of them in the gym connected to the Turkish bath complex at the 10th Street Baths. They were both bruisers who showed interest in me as I was checking out the equipment there—both of the gym and the guys using the gym. Both, separately, had winked at me and said they’d see me in the Roman baths. Both did, and it wasn’t until then that I realized they were a tag team, working together. It was all fodder, though, in some toned down a bit way for the article I’d write for the Gay Men Nation magazine. The article was one of a series on baths in the Northeast—the northeast of the United States, that was.

I needed a bit of time to recover after the guy under me had pulled out and disappeared, so I didn’t leave the couch right away. Banker Daddy was still sucking my toes, and I think he was contemplating moving into position and taking his piece of me too, but I’d had enough for now, and, giving him a little smile and gently pulling my foot of his mouth, I too rolled off the couch and headed for the showers. I had enough material on this place for my article now. Indeed, this was my third visit and the article was nearly completed.

Banker Daddy followed me into the locker room and stood there, naked, watching me shower and dress. He wasn’t fat or ugly; he just was old and wrinkled. He was in erection, though, and there wasn’t anything wrong with his length or girth there.

“I was rather hoping—”

“I’m sorry. I just need to be moving on,” I said, cutting him off. He’d be in the article in some fashion, and I wouldn’t be mean about him, but I really didn’t need more material for this article.

With an audible sigh of disappointment and resignation, he turned, went down the row of lockers, and opened one. I could see inside and guessed I’d been right about the banker connection. The clothes looked expensive—and formal enough for a Wall Street Banker. If so, he was a long way from home. But if he came to the baths to suck young men’s toes, I guess he’d want to go a long way from where he worked and lived. That’s the sort of thing that would be in the article—not pejoratively, but a note of realism.

He took out a wallet, and took what looked like five hundred-dollar bills out.

“I don’t want to do it here, but I’d like you to go to a hotel with me.” I guess that explained his hesitancy in the Roman bath—the limits to which he’d let other guys see what he wanted from a guy.

“Now?” I said, but then I added. “I’m sorry. I’m not a prostitute. That’s the first time I did anything like that—what you saw back there in the baths. There’s a reason. I just can’t tell you what it is. I’m not a prostitute.”

He smiled and took two more hundred-dollar bills out of the wallet. “It’s the East Village Hotel. I already booked a room, hoping I’d see someone like you here. It’s very discrete. I’m even more interested if you’re not a prostitute.”

I had my rent coming up. I’d just graduated from journalism school at Columbia, and, though I had a job, it was on contingency and I just didn’t know where I was going from here. I had expenses—bigger expenses than I had income at the moment. I wasn’t a prostitute. This had been something I’d done to research an article, but . . .

I lay on my back on the bed in the East Village Hotel room, naked, with my butt on the edge of the foot of the bed, with my legs bent and raised, the Banker Daddy gripping my ankles in his hands, holding my feet to his face, and licking the soles of my feet and sucking on my toes. At the same time, he had his dick inside me and was rocking back and forth, fucking me. He had a very nice cock, and his kink was interesting. I’d be able to write about it somehow, in some article or other.

I wasn’t a prostitute. Having seven fresh hundred-dollar bills, straight from a bank, in my wallet didn’t mean anything. I was doing research. I was a writer for a magazine, doing research.

* * * *

“Congratulations on your graduation from Columbia.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” I said, my first thought being whether he realized that the degree I’d just taken was a Masters, not a BA. Does someone graduate when they take a Masters, I wondered. I’d have to look that up. Regardless, he’d taken me by surprise—snuck up on me, he did. The publisher of Gay Men Nation rarely addressed me at all, certainly not recently. My eyes involuntarily went to the other end of the open floor, to the glass-walled editor-in-chief’s office—to Gordon Jameson. Yes, he was there, looking out onto the floor. At me? At Miles Fitzpatrick talking to me?

“Call me Miles,” Fitzpatrick said, but there was something in his tone that told me I’d better not try to be that familiar with him. “Now that you have your degree, do you have any ongoing professional plans?”

He wanted to know if I was going to be leaving the magazine—on my own. What did he know? What did he suspect? “My Masters in journalism?” I asked, proud enough to want to pin that down with him. “I don’t know. Nothing at the moment. I was so busy working on the degree—and working here too—that I haven’t given it much thought.”

“Well, do so, and keep us apprised of your plans,” Fitzpatrick said, and then he was moving on, turning his head this way, with a word here and a fake smile there as he worked his way back to the glassed-in office at the other far corner of the working floor, across from Gordon’s office.

Gordon was still standing at his glass wall, looking out onto the floor. At me?

Miles and Gordon were the “brass” of the magazine—also the owners, although I got the impression that Miles Fitzpatrick actually owned the place—and maybe, quite possibly, probably, owned Gordon Jackson as well. They had distinctive titles, but in practice they both were the senior editors, working their separate areas and assigning the stories there. Miles, a short, dark, sour-faced Bostonian, dripping in money and sartorial splendor, handled all but the sports and physical side of the topics we covered. Those went to Gordon, tall, strapping, black, outgoing, charismatic—the top to Miles’s bottom.

And that’s what was important here. The two were a couple. Miles was in control at the magazine. It was his money, his drive, his experience. But, in bed, it was Gordon’s drive and experience—with Miles. How did I know that? Everyone at the paper knew it.

And I’d been caught in between. The question was, did Miles know that? At some point he surely would. And when he knew it, my ass was out of here. I’d managed to hold it to get through my Masters. I guess I was saleable now. I’m not sure I wanted to go, though. It wasn’t just Gordon. I liked covering this beat. I liked some of the surprise side perks that came with it—like the visit to the 10th Street Baths earlier today. I wasn’t the most outgoing person. I handled that by making it a requirement of the job and roleplaying. But I have to say it floated my boat. I’d be hard pressed to get into some of the interesting positions with men I could by working articles at a gay men’s magazine. It hadn’t been me who started it up between Gordon and me.

A couple of men in suits arrived on the floor and were guided back to Miles’s office. He sat them at a conference table in his glass-walled office, with his back to the work floor.

“What did Miles want?” Gordon was standing next to my desk, an arm draped over the top of the cubicle where it opened onto the aisle. He looked casual and oh so god-like. Everyone around me was aware he was there. They were all looking busy, but they all had their antennae up. He was the light of the office anyway. They’d all be aware of where he was and hoping he’d given them a little attention. But I was antsy whenever he gave me attention in the office. It was like they all knew Gordon was humping me and were waiting for an explosion from Miles.

But of course they all knew Gordon was humping me.

“He just wanted to congratulate me on getting the Masters,” I answered.

“And?” Gordon was smiling. He was doing it for the troops surrounding us and trying not to reveal their interest. I could tell the man was on edge, as wary as I was.

“And he wondered if I was thinking of leaving now that I had an advanced degree.”

“You don’t have to, you know. I can handle Miles. He’s less in charge here than it appears.”

I could believe that. But I didn’t want to become the weak corner of a power triangle.

In a louder voice, Gordon said, “Are you still working the 10th Street Baths article?” We were giving a reason for him to have stopped at my cubicle. That article came in his portfolio. I was writing it for him, by assignment. I caught what he wanted me to say in the look he gave me with his eyes.

“I’m almost done. Just one more visit, I think.” I didn’t need any more visits to the baths to get this article completed. It was as good as finished already. I could see that he wanted me to continue, though. In a louder-than-necessary voice, I said, “I was thinking of going back there while taking a prolonged lunch today.” He smiled. I’d caught the signal and said the right thing. He was slipping an envelope onto the top of my desk, not looking at it, so no one monitoring us would know it was being passed.

He smiled. “Good, so maybe I’ll have a draft of the article tomorrow.”

“I can do that,” I said.

“Good,” he repeated and then he turned away, working his way back to his office, stopping at this and that occupied cubicle for longer than Miles had, giving more genuine smiles, talking of articles in preparation at greater depth, joining in freer laughter. Gordon was the heart of this magazine—important to it in ways Miles would never be able to be.

When the attention from the floor had followed Gordon or was focusing on what Miles might be discussing with those suited men in his office, I opened the envelope—and almost laughed. I wasn’t surprised to find a hotel room key, but it was a bit amusing that it was for the same hotel, the East Village Hotel, I’d just been in with Banker Daddy. I did chuckle when I checked on the back of the hotel card also enclosed that gave the room number—same floor, if not the same room. Maybe it was one of the hotel’s by-the-hour rentals.

* * * *

I was kneeling on the bed in room 628 of the East Village hotel, naked and facing the headboard, when Gordon Jameson entered the room, stripped, crouched behind me, and buried his face in my ass while reaching under, handing my cock, and stroking me. I moaned and writhed under the big black’s attention as he came up on the bed, mounted and penetrated me, and fucked the shit out of me. He was the biggest man I’d ever had—in every way.

I writhed under him and panted and groaned as he entered and stretched me. I never was open enough for him at the beginning. With his dimensions I don’t think I’d ever be able to—this despite having been doubled earlier in the day. But the process of opening to him was glorious, the pain-passion of it taking me soaring into the stratosphere. When he was saddled, he moved his big, black hands around to cupping my pecs, his thumbs thrumming my nipples. I shuddered, and, after he began to slow pump me and I was rocking back on him in synch with the fuck, we became one, smooth copulating machine. He was just so big inside me, though, that my legs went to rubber and I collapsed, flat on the bed. He rode down on the bed with me, stretched flat on top of me, putting me in a full Nelson with his muscular arms, completely trapping me under him, and, only his buttocks in motion, bowed my torso back to him, staying deep inside me until he had ejaculated.

* * * *

Back in the office late in the day I saw that Miles Fitzpatrick saw that I had returned and came out onto the working floor. He was walking toward me, a slight smile on his face. Panicked, I looked toward Gordon’s office, but he wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t there. I’d left him snoring in the bed at the hotel. I was in trouble. I didn’t know precisely how much trouble, but Fitzpatrick looked entirely too pleased with himself. I knew it would be a lot of trouble.

“How is that article on the bathhouse on East 10th coming, Dillon?” he asked when he reached my cubicle. He draped his arm over the top of the cubicle right where Gordon had done the same earlier in the afternoon. Some other reporters were still dotted around on the floor in their cubicles. They were listening in as much now as they had earlier the day when Gordon had been there, I knew, but rather than leaning in, they were leaning away. Miles on the floor was taken as a threat by all—the direct opposite of the effect Gordon had when he walked the floor.

“I’m just finishing up,” I said. “I got all I needed on the last visit this afternoon.” I’d brazen it out. I even had a notebook to show him of material supposedly collected today, if Miles wanted to check it.

“That’s great to hear,” Miles said. I didn’t like his smile at all. “I think you saw that I had some visitors earlier this afternoon.”

“Yessss,” I said.

“They were lawyers for Father Francis. Fushin Lu. Do you know who Lu is—who once was Monsignor Francis?”

“The Catholic cardinal in Taiwan who was defrocked for his sex views?”

“Well, he wasn’t quite a cardinal, but yes. He was the Catholic archbishop of Taipei in Taiwan who showed no remorse for there being homosexuality in the Catholic Church, refused to prosecute his priests accused of sodomy, and has broken away and formed his own church—which accepts, in fact encourages, homosexuality among priests. The bottom line is that we, of course, have wanted to do an in-depth feature article on him and his church for Gay Men Nation. Those lawyers this afternoon came to agree to that.”

“That’s great news,” I said. Where was this going?

“Father Francis has built a monastery as his headquarters church on a mountaintop in Vermont. If you’ve finished this article, I’d like you to take on that article. You’ll need to be imbedded at the monastery for the duration. You won’t have to become one of the monks, of course, or do whatever they’re doing, but I’m sure it will take a couple of weeks of research.”

“I’m not the least bit religious,” I said. “Perhaps you should give this to—”

“All to the good,” he said, smiling. “Then there won’t be a lot of hocus pocus in the article.” I’d almost named someone else—someone I was afraid might take my place with Gordon while I was gone. It was unworthy of me, of course. And it was perfectly within Fitzpatrick’s right to assign me a new article to research and write. It was a meaty topic. I should be happy with it.

“When?” I asked, resigned.

“You could leave tomorrow morning. I have Jim in Human Services working on the details. He’s getting you a rental car and has been making the arrangements. Check in with him before you leave tonight. You can be on the road tomorrow. Here are the notes I’ve made for what we want from the interviews. Good-bye and god speed.”

The slightly sneery smile had deepened. He had already turned to strut back to his office as I was saying all I could say, which was “Yes, sir.”

Oh, yes, he knew what was going on between his boy, Gordon Jamison, and me. I suppose he could just have fired me. I’d never been to Vermont. I didn’t even know what direction it was in from Manhattan. I was wild about it when I learned it was north rather than to the sunny south.

* * * *

It all happened quickly and I didn’t have a chance to talk to Gordon, let alone ask him if he could intercede and stop this. He had taken a night flight to Washington, D.C., on business. I could only guess that Fitzpatrick had been the one who came up with the business Gordon suddenly needed to attend to in Washington. I could only admire how good Fitzpatrick was at engineering a split-up.

He had been right. When I went to Jim in HR before going home, he had it all laid out for me—keys to a rental car; a packet of money, more, he said than I would need because all of my needs would be taken care of at the monastery and there wouldn’t be much of anywhere to spend money outside of the monastery; and the directions for getting there—some 250 miles. It probably would take me the best part of six hours to get there—some of the roads there weren’t the best—so I should leave before lunch the next day. Fitzpatrick had also provided everything I needed in the background packet and my letter of introduction to Father Francis. It seemed like this had been in the works for longer than since I’d seen the lawyer suits in Fitzpatrick’s office that afternoon.

I wondered how long Fitzpatrick had known Gordon had been fucking me. How long had he been planning to get rid of me? I was only on assignment, though, not fired. I wondered how Fitzpatrick planned to keep me away from his lover permanently. Didn’t he know that Gordon would just go on to someone else? Maybe he did. Maybe I was a bigger threat—a threat of something more permanent with Gordon. I’d have to think about that. I hadn’t thought about winding up with Gordon permanently. Maybe I should think about that while I was gone.

Jim had been right. It took the better part of six hours to get to the top of the mountain outside of Cavendish, Vermont, in the south-central, mountainous area of the state from Manhattan. Most of that time was the time it took to get out of the city and then the time it took to climb the remote mountain the monastery perched on. The rest of the drive had been pleasant. I did know how to drive—I wasn’t a New York boy; I’d come to school here from Indiana. But I hadn’t driven in years. The further away from Manhattan I got, the more amenable I became to this obvious shunting aside. Gordon wasn’t the only big-cocked man in the world.

But, shit, what a nice cock he had on him, and before him I hadn’t realized how much chocolate men aroused me.

The afternoon was late, but the sky—and, noticeably the air—was clear when I got to the top of the mountain and the breathtaking view to other green mountain tops around this one was well worth the tortuous climb up the narrow road zigzagging alongside the mountain slope. Once on top, the monastery itself loomed ahead of me, somewhat Asian in aspect, at least three stories tall, all blank wall and huge wooden door in the center, with what windows there were all being near the top, below battlements. The fortress sides—because it couldn’t be denied that the monastery was an inner-directed fortress—were newly painted an ochre color with rough wood trimmings in large chunks.

The building obviously was newly constructed. It was set against the opposite downslope, jutting out over the abyss on that side. On this side it was surrounded in three flat stretches. To the right was the parking area, neatly asphalted and marked, with trees planted beside every third parking space. Beyond that was a tall iron fence enclosing an Olympic-sized swimming pool. To the left of the building was a field with a soccer patch laid out. Young men, all in good shape, were coming off the field as I arrived. They had played just in loincloths and soccer socks and shoes, but some were already off the field and were donning cassocks.

So, these must be young priests of this new religion, I thought. What was notable was that their cassocks weren’t all black or white—they were of the whole rainbows of colors. It looked like those young men were entering the monastery through a door at the side but I presume it was the front door for me. That door was a huge two-paneled, heavy wood doorway the width of a two-car garage. There was a smaller door cut in it, though. As I took my suitcase out of the rental car and walked toward the gate, I saw that there was a sign over the larger door. It said “AmorHominis,” Latin for ManLove. From Fitzpatrick’s notes, I knew that this was both the name and central function of this new offshoot church. Taking a deep breath, I raised my fist to knock on the door, but it opened on its own.

A young, blond, good-looking priest in a powder-blue cassock, to match his blue eyes, opened the door to me. “Mr. Dockery?” he asked, and when I nodded that that was me, he ushered me inside. He, like the other priests, or monks, or whatever, I encountered there spoke as little as was needed at the time. He motioned for me to follow him. He obviously knew who I was and who I’d come to see. He did take my suitcase from me and set it aside, near the door, saying, “You will find this in your room when you need it.”

As plain and austere as the monolithic monastery building was on the outside, on the inside it was richly decorated and Asian in feeling. At the center was an open courtyard. Three stories of cloistered colonnades ran down each side of the courtyard to a more substantial, taller building at the other end. Rooms led off the covered passages at the side. On the front wall, where I had entered, the first story was a covered passageway. A blank wall went up two more stories. There were winding staircase at the two front corners—as there were at the two far corners—leading up to the battlements lining the three walls of the enclosure behind me and to either side. There were landings on each floor. In front of me, at the end that hung over the side of the mountain, was what obviously was the main building, with the chapel at the top.

The architectural style was ornate traditional Chinese décor, in wood, painted vermillion, white, and green. I suddenly was in an eighteenth-century Chinese temple. The central courtyard was floored in sand, and tubs were set around the periphery holding sweeping Japanese maple trees and other Oriental plantings. The center of the courtyard obviously was for exercise and ceremony, though. When I was being led around the side, under the colonnade, I observed young monks, in loincloths or less, paired off and wrestling Roman-Greco style—or in some Asian form of that, for all I knew. All of the young men were handsome, all were fit, and the ones I could observe naked, all were in erection. I had little doubt where these exercises would lead to in one of the rooms—or cells, or whatever they called them here—on the second and third tiers of the passage ways on either side of the compound. Fitzpatrick’s notes had clearly told me that this sect believed in free love, gay style. That was to be the focus of the magazine article I was to research.

It was evident as we passed that the rooms on the first floor were for work or study. The rooms were commodious, some twenty feet in depth and as much wide.

The goal of my walk behind the young, blond, blue-eyed monk I learned was named Brother Ignatius was the central building at the other end, and, more precisely to a lower level in the tower. We entered on a level that, beyond the foyer, appeared to be one large lounge, maybe forty feet wide, with closed-off rooms to the sides, and fifty feet deep. Staircase at each side of the foyer led both down and up. Seeing me looking up the staircase at the end we approached, Brother Ignatius provided an explanation for what lay above us.

“The next floor up is the refectory—our communal dining all, flanked by the kitchens, he said, and above that, at the top, is the chapel. But we’re going down.”

And that’s where he led me, down into stone-walled, concrete floored depths, the next level looking like it was a gymnasium with support facilities off to the side. The next level below that was where we stopped. Guiding me through doors, Brother Ignatius led me into what was an elaborate Roman baths, but decorated in Asian style and with traditional-scene Chinese murals on the walls. When I had an opportunity to look at the murals closely, the art depicted men cavorting with and having sex with other men in ancient Chinese settings.

At first, all I saw in the cavernous baths area, dominated by a pool in the middle, the water of which was reflecting in swirls on the room’s ceiling, were two young monks, one in a yellow cassock and the other in lime green, moving around the chamber with towels over their arms. The one in yellow, an Asian, saw us at the door, and Brother Ignatius turned me over to him, saying that he was Brother Michael. As he was escorting me over to where a couple of wrought iron chairs sat, three-quarters facing each other, with a matching table between them supporting a bottle of wine in an ice bucket and a couple of wine glasses, the monk in yellow went to the side of the pool and that’s the first I knew that someone else was in the baths.

The man, naked, rose up from the pool at a shallow spot—and rose and rose and rose. He was nearly seven feet tall. He was slender of body, but tightly muscled, and he was Asian, completely bald, but with bushy dark eyebrows above dark eyes that were piercing, reaching out and possessing me fully as he gazed at me from where he rose in the pool. Even without saying anything, I knew this was Father Francis, or Fushin Lu, or whatever he called himself in his new religion. And I also knew that he was in complete command of all around us. I gave a little shudder as I felt his presence swirl about me and envelope me.

His sense of command and an aura of the sensual extended down, from his hard pecs across his flat belly and into his slight, black-haired bush, in the majesty of the man’s genitals. His cock in repose between his slender, but tightly muscled thighs was a good foot long. The man was monstrously hung. His balls were meaty and hung low as well. The man was a bull.

He moved slowly, unconscious of his nudity, from the pool, the monk in yellow meeting him at the lip of the pool and putting a towel around his shoulders, beginning a process of patting the man down. Father Francis stood there, stretching his lightly muscled arms wide, showing a wingspan that complemented his height, and continued gazing at me with a half-smile on his face as the monk dried him off. Then the man glided—I can’t say walked, because he moved as if he were floating on a cloud—over to where I still stood, at the grouping of the two chairs separated by a small table. The man made no effort whatsoever to cover or hide his prodigious sex as he moved. He gestured for me to sit in one of the chairs.

“Mr. Dockery, I presume? Dillon? A journalist from the gay men’s magazine come to reveal my movement to the world? The man who I hope will be pulling my autobiography out of me as well. Please sit. I hope you had a pleasant journey to us. Wine, or should I have something else brought? It may be too early in the day and our interview to indulge in drugs. Later perhaps.”

“Wine is fine,” I said, stammering, put on edge by both his command and his sensuality, which he made no effort to cover, as I sat in the designated seat and slipped the writing tablet out of the case I had carried into the room. I didn’t know what he meant about an autobiography, but I decided to leave that for now. “And, yes, I’m Dillon Dockery from Gay Men Nation.”

When we were settled and it was obvious that he was going to wait me out for a beginning—and that he was just going to sit there, naked, monstrously hung, and without a shred of self-consciousness about how he was receiving me, I found something to say to get started—because I had to.

“This is quite a facility you’ve built here,” I said.

“One has to start somewhere,” he asked, pouring the wine for us now that I had broken away from his probing gaze and had said something. “I have been fortunate to have had no trouble gathering adherents. All of them very beautiful young men. I presume you have noticed that.”

“Yes, I couldn’t help it,” I answered.

“None more beautiful than you are, Dillon. You know, your Mr. Fitzpatrick had to provide photos of you before I would agree to this article. He told me you were a submissive.”

So much to any idea my relationship with Gordon wasn’t known to Fitzpatrick.

“And I only agreed then,” he continued, “because I also have need for help on my autobiography and I received copies of the articles you have written. All quite competent. You are beautiful enough to be a monk here, you know. I see you swathed in gold. Your hair color is quite striking, and it’s gratifying to know it is your natural color.”

This was too heady for me. I was being completely forced off my pins. He spoke so forthrightly and openly. This man had been in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church? I didn’t know what to grasp at. He’d seen my photos? What was that about being a natural blond—but, of course, I was.

“My photos?”

“Yes, you have a beautiful body.”

“My naked photos?” The only one who had photos of me naked was Gordon Jameson. But, shit. Of course. Fitzpatrick must have been snooping in Gordon’s telephone.

“Yes. I understand you are gay. I assumed so before I was informed of it. You work for a gay men’s magazine so you must be. Mr. Fitzpatrick assured me you were. You are, aren’t you? You are a casual submissive? We only allow men who go with men to stay at the monastery. For this magazine article interview, you could stay down in one of the nearby towns, but if we are to work on an autobiography, you will have to be here for quite some time and will have to be comfortable staying at the monastery. And, of course, I will have to cover you. You couldn’t understand the essence of me if I wasn’t inside you. Even for the magazine interview I think I will have to bed you.”

Shit, this is moving fast. I looked at his foot-long cock, swinging between his thighs, reaching for the floor as we sat there, sipping wine and acting like this was all natural. But it wasn’t really swinging free now. He was getting hard—and, if anything, longer. He was occasionally touching himself, giving it a stroke. What he was saying—the image and prospect of it—was arousing him. I couldn’t say it wasn’t turning me one too. I had to cool this down.

“Yes, I’m gay,” I said.

“And you will engage in casual sex?”

“Yes.” I attempted to move the conversation back to the substance of the interview. “I’m not religious, though, so I don’t basically understand how your movement fits in as a religion—and a Christian one. I understand you insist that you are a Christian sect and that it’s this insistence that has the Catholic Church so apoplectic about your movement.”

“Of course, we’re Christian. We’re closer to Christ than either the Catholic or Orthodox churches are. You aren’t naïve enough to not realize the sexuality of Christ and his band of men, I hope. The Protestant churches, of course, are completely off the beam.”

“Maybe we should begin with the name of your movement,” I said, becoming marginally more comfortable with this arrangement now that I could get to the meat of the article. The thought of meat, however, made me look again at the naked man’s crotch. He definitely was in erection now and was holding it in one of his hands. His hands were slender, the finger long, sensuous. He had two rings on each hand, one on his right thumb, with a large jewel in it. Jade? For the first time I saw that there was a jade bead, of considerable size, pierced into the bulb of his cock as well. I shuddered at the thought of how that would feel inside me. Did they bareback here or use condoms? Would that make a difference in how a bead that size felt inside? My eyes moved up to his. He was looking at me and smiling. It was as if he could read my thoughts.

Holding his prodigious erection pointed at me, he said, “My partners do enjoy this.” He was, of course, referring to the bead.

I took a deep breath and continued, fighting for control. “As I came in your entry door, I saw the name of your movement over the door—AmorHominis; ManLove. You use the term ‘amour,’ rather than the Christian usage, ‘agapi’—which is more in the vein of charity—love of God for man and of man for God, as I understand it. You didn’t even use ‘philia’—brotherly love.”

Father Francis laughed. “You’ve already been doing your homework, haven’t you?”

He was doing more than cupping his cock now. He was stroking it and working the slit in it with the pinky of his hand. This was very disconcerting. I know I was noticeably affected by it—squirming a bit in my chair and I’d gone full hard. He was giving me benign and slightly amused looks, like he knew exactly the effect he was having on me.

“You have hit it directly,” he said. “The work I have intentionally used is ‘amour.’ Sexual love. That’s the essence of our movement. The Bible was written in a time and by men in which men having sex with other men could not be directly referred to. But it’s there, in the Bible, the purity of the Jesus movement. Jesus’s apostles were all men. Those claiming to follow Christ have been trying to bring women into the movement in recent centuries, but it’s not there, in the Bible, even in the guarded way the story could be given then. Jesus’s band was one of men. Jesus’s beloved, even in the book, was a man—a younger man, John. The essence of following Christ is in giving yourself to Jesus, physically, totally—or, in the absence of Jesus until he comes—to his representatives on Earth. I am one such. Paul, the one who made the church, based on the teachings of Christ, understood this. And this was because Paul himself covered men. That too is alluded to in the Bible. The pure movement of Christ is one of ‘amour’—a sexual giving and taking between men of the fellowship. Each man in this monastery gives and takes from others—all here have taken me inside them, regardless of how they couple with other men, or they wouldn’t be here.”

“That’s a lot to absorb and think about,” I said, knowing my voice felt tight. “Perhaps, for the moment, I should—”

“Do you wish to come into the pool with me now, or are you tired from your journey and need to be taken to your room to refresh yourself and rest until dinner.”

“In the pool?”

“Yes. Have you ever been fucked by a man in a pool, the flow and buoyancy of the water around you aiding in your two bodies working together to achieve something beautiful?”

“I think a rest, yes,” I said. “But didn’t you say I would have to live down in the town during the interview unless I was working on your autobiography.”

“Now that I have met you, I am sure I wish you to be here with us in the monastery—and I am equally sure you will be working on my autobiography.”

All righty then, I thought. But he was more sure of this than I was.

He signaled to the monk in the lime green cassock, the one who I’d been told was named Michael. “Later, then. We will see you at dinner. I can give you an hour and a half twice a day of my time and attention—until the article is finished and we can see about moving into the autobiography. That should give us about an hour for the work in each session. During the autobiography phase, of course, we will have to be more intense. You will have to be in my bed—although others will be there too. Brother Michael, would you please show Dillon to the guest room we have prepared for him.”

And that was that. Father Francis had stood, turned, and walked toward where the monk in yellow was patiently standing in the background as Brother Michael came forward to guide me to the guest room.

I was so discombobulated that I left my case beside the chair and had to be guided back to the baths when we were half way to the third tier, where the guest rooms were. When Brother Michael and I entered the baths, the yellow cassock of the young monk who had remained there with Father Francis, was off and puddled on the floor. The monk himself, naked, was standing but bent over, grasping his ankles. Father Francis was draped over the young priest’s body, the palm of one hand on the young man’s belly and the other one wrapped around the monk’s cock. Francis was slow fucking the young monk with a foot of hard cock that was taking him fully in long slides. The monk had a grimace on his face, but his expression was one of ecstasy as well. I supposed in his religion this was a high honor to be chosen to take Father Francis’s shaft.

Father Francis turned his gaze to me, quite clearly conveying that “this could have been you—in the pool.” I shuddered and turned away, realizing that it would be me sometime, somehow, before the next morning.

Brother Michael retrieved my case for me and guided me back out of the baths, giving no indication that anything unusual was happening in the chamber at all.

I had to suppose that it wasn’t, in fact, anything unusual to be happening in this monastery. I shuddered again at the thought of what Miles Fitzpatrick had gotten me into here, but I was embarrassed that I had gone hard and was still hard when we got to the guest room, which was quite large, very well appointed, and came with an en suite bathroom.

I obviously wasn’t hiding that I was aroused, because, after showing me the amenities of the room, which, because it was on the third level, had two windows with very nice views of the surrounding mountain scape, Brother Michael pulled his cassock over his head, sat at the foot of the bed, and spread and raised his legs, offering himself to me.

I thanked him, tried to let him know that he certainly was a desirable young man, but told him it had been a very long ride from New York and I really did need to bathe and rest before dinner.

He took the rejection in stride, accepting that it only was because I was tired. I couldn’t say I wouldn’t avail him or someone else—quite certainly Father Francis—of a coupling later. But this time, at least, it appeared that both Michael and I were of the same persuasion. If he had offered to fuck me, I can’t say I would have declined. As it was, when I got into the shower, I had to take care of myself while recalling my introduction to the charismatic and mesmerizing Father Francis.

* * * *

He had me fully in his embrace, Father Francis three-quarters on his back on his luxuriously appointed bed in his commodious quarters across the courtyard from my guest quarters on the third level. Where my side of the monastery complex had windows overlooking the surrounding mountainous Vermont countryside, though, Father Francis’s bedroom had a covered balcony running the full length of his bedroom, sitting room, office, and mammoth bathroom layout. No expense had been spared in outfitting the richness of his quarters, hardly what one would have thought for the leader of a monastic order—but Father Francis was in no way the usual leader of a monastic order.

I was stretched out over his body, torso to the side, but my legs over his midsection, my pelvis raised from the leverage of my bent legs, feet flat on the mattress of either side of his thighs. He was holding my back into his chest with one arm slung over my chest, the hand reaching down to grasp and stroke my cock. His other hand was under me, his long, slender fingers rubbing my ball sac and the underside of my engorged cock as his thumb penetrated me, the gemstone of his thumb ring rubbing the rim of my hole.

He was holding me immobile other than the gentle rocking of my buttocks on his thumb and stroking of my cock up into his other hand. He would hold me there, edging me, taking his time until I ejaculated, and then he would fuck me with his long, long cock, with the jade bead in the bulb. We had been here several times before in the two weeks since I’d arrived and we’d kept to the routine of two interview sessions a day, morning and evening, for the Gay Men Nation article, with some fifty minutes for work and forty minutes for fuck. I had succumbed to him the first evening I had arrived at the monastery, being quickly overcome by his charisma, sensuality, and command. I had been completely defenseless to him. The last three nights, he had taken me into his bed and taken me to exhaustion in myriad sexual positions of the Orient that I’d never even imagined were possible.

Nearly every day he’s fucked me in the monastery pool, too, and the sensation of doing it in the water was every bit as arousing as he’d told me it would be.

With a shudder and a deep groan, I came for him—again and again, the man god being able to pull more of a climax out of me than I’d ever experienced before. Then and only then did he take his long erection in hand and rub it over and over my hole, punishing my rim with the jade bead in his bulb, as I hyperventilated and begged him to fuck me and, at last, enter me strongly and deep, ever so deep into the soft core of me. He fucked me and fucked me and fucked me.

As we lay there, in a loose embrace, afterward, he said, “You have what you need for the magazine article now?”

“Yes,” I said, “and it’s written. I just have to file it and I’ll be finished here.”

“You won’t be finished if you agree to write my autobiography. If so, this can go on and on. And I’ve offered you a permanent place here too, in the brotherhood of this monastery—as one of my AmorHominis priests.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “I should go file the magazine article now.”

He did not stop me from rolling out of his embrace and off the bed. I reached down to pick up the gold-colored cassock that had slipped to the floor when he pulled me into his bed, and I walked around the third-floor colonnade to my own bedroom, which I hadn’t occupied for the past three nights. There, I transmitted the finished Gay Men Nation article on the AmorHominis movement back to New York on my cellphone and texted a short message, sending it to Miles Fitzpatrick. I could not bring myself to send it to Gordon Jameson: “Article filed and I resign. I will be writing Father Francis’s autobiography.”

Fitzpatrick had won. But I didn’t give a shit. I had a gold cassock now. Also, with drugs and having a good doctor on staff, I was enjoying how that bead felt as I was being barebacked.