Sacrament
Conclusion
When he was young his favorite movie was Quo Vadis. He grew up reading the Bible early because Mama read it all the time, and he would envision himself like early Christians, huddled in a room around the sacred mystery of bread and wine, body and blood. It never seemed like that in real church. He would picture the darkened mysterious places where hunted down Christians originally gathered, the room, fusty with the light of an oil lamp and the heat of bodies, people listening to Saint Paul or Peter or Whoever, doing something holy and different, hidden from the rest of the not understanding world. On a night like that, Eutychus fell asleep, sitting in the window, and the Book of Acts says he fell out of it and Saint Paul went down and revived him.
It was nights like that, and days too, when those souls threw cloaks over their heads and in secret houses, out of the way gardens and catacombs, they scratched the sign of the fish and spoke of Jesus, and Max never ever felt this sacred urgency in real church life. The churches of his childhood were built like space ships, made of pale and ugly wood. They didn’t even look like churches, filled with bad folk guitar music and annoying white people, and even though the priest would lift up a wafer and say, “Let us declare the mystery of faith,” there was no mystery, only bad bread and bitter wine and the same life.
It was only in those first times when he saw the symbols, ice cream cones, euphemisms, wandered into backrooms, passed behind the doors of bath houses, that he began to get a taste of that ancient mystery. Darius never once questioned the sacredness of their queer lives, the sacramental joining of bodies, the kneeling for new revelation, and as he and Max and Jamal sat, squatting naked, while Max cut down the meth into fine lines, and he took out the homemade device of a water bottle with a tube in it, and then the blow torch, he felt like they were in a true communion, on their way to the most sacred of rites that would take them out of their ordinary selves with their ordinary limits. Three was enough. If a fourth came it would be messy. Max heated up the metal part of his device and the left over residue became white smoke rising, He put it to his nose, pressing down the other nostril, and inhaled, then opened his mouth when it was too much, exhaling what was left. He heated the metal tip of and handed it to Darius who, almost trembling, slowly snorted his line. He was not neat like Max, he always made a mess of his and snorted smoke again and again. He nearly vomited at the acrid taste and knew he’d had enough. As Darius settled down to take in the high, Max heated the device for Jamal.
He was sitting there, legs open, body pulsating, caring less than he already cared, and in the distance the El rumbled down Thorndale. He took out his marijuana vape, then switched to a regular one. He cracked open his soda as he saw smoke trailing out of Jamal’s mouth while he slowly blinked. Slowly they smoked, and slowly they drank, and slowly the heat rose within them until, finally, Darius put down his own vape. Body pulsing, head swimming a little, he narrowed his eyes until they found the large bottle of poppers at the foot of the bed, and he reached for them. He shook them, closed one nostril and gave the strongest inhale he could. Carefully he closed the bottle, and body trembling, he crawled on the floor, on hands and knees, toward Max, opened his brown thighs, lifted his penis, and took it in his mouth. He knelt, fully, draping his arms over Max’s knees and closing his eyes as the drug took effect and Max grew in his mouth.
Inhaling lines was the perfect metaphor. When you put that burning metal pipe to the white lines and they turned to smoke, disappearing up your nose, the other lines in life, so firm and often so hard melted away. That’s why Darius was soaring in and out of his head as he swayed back and forth taking in the dimensions of Max’s cock, sucking him with intensity as if that penis were the only thing in the world. The thick boundaries of the sarcastic relationship between friends disappeared as Max, harder than ever, still not having come, raised his stiff penis, and taking a hit from the poppers, Darius’s eyes widened as he sat down on him, Max boring deeper into him as he pulled himself down. Jamal, sitting on the floor, his knees up, watched as he drank ginger bear and then, as Darius sat, riding Max, Jamal, curious, never having been quite as close to Darius as he was to Jamal, crawled to Darius and quickly swallowed his cock.
Jamal was in the shower, and Darius was sitting under the large window, legs open, still naked. Nude, Max plodded to the refrigerator and brought back two bottles of water and a cigarette for each of them.
Max sat down on the sofa and they were both smoking as the shower water shut off.
“The beach?” Max said.
“I wasn’t planning that, but then I wasn’t planning this whole day. So, yeah.”
“We should go up to the botanica off Francisco.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
Max thought of saying, see, and now Michael’s not on your mind. But of course that would have only put Michael back on Darius’s mind. Max felt relaxed, more than he’d felt in the last twenty four hours, and he was in general a pretty relaxed person.
When Max was fucking Darius, he understood. He almost understood when he’d been fucking Jamal. When his whole shaft stretched out and pleasure like lightning ran slowly up his urethra and glowed on the tip of his dick. He remembered fucking once, and the moment he’d jismed, despair, panic, the bullshit off life he’d been trying to escape overwhelming him even as he came. Even as the semen shot from his jumping dick he’d felt the darkness and confusion and maybe this is what men were running from, but today, as Darius groaned under him and he buckled up and down spilling his load inside of him, the moment of ejaculation was the moment of relief, the breaking of the three day fever, an incredible joy.
Jamal came out of the shower, drying his white boy body, that ass that was little and round at the same time, that long back, those thin legs. Hair plastered to his head, face like a Girl Scout.
“You guys are great,” Jamal said. “You’re like my fucking family.”
“Literally,” Darius said, reaching for a cigarette and sitting, Indian fashion, while he lit it.
“I’m gonna leave you some LSD and some shrooms. You okay with that?”
Max, putting his glasses back on, held his hands out and attested, “We would never complain about being given drugs.”
Leaving off his old underwear Jamal pulled on his black jeans and a red tee shirt he’d borrowed from Max, and then pulling his fingers through his hair, he kissed them both on the cheeks, swung his book bag over his shoulder, and throwing his arms around them and murmured, “I love you guys so much.”
He headed out the door and to the Thorndale stop.
He’d been gone less than a minute when Darius said, “Okay now… I think we both fucked him.”
“I think we all fucked each other,” Max said. “Which is a fair and equal distribution of wealth.”
“Well, yes,” agreed Darius, who was long used to Max’s statements, “but what about Kayla?”
“Kayla?”
“Yes,” Darius said. “Your goddaughter. His girlfriend.”
“The one who never calls and never visits? What about her?”
Max, who was pulling a long white kaftan over his naked body, looked almost contemptuous as his head popped up from the old robe.
He picked up his cigarette and puffed again.
“Fuck Kayla.”
Max was a complicated man, who did not believe in complicated relationships. He was straightforward in love, hate, fucking and everything else. It wasn’t like the other day when Michael, having called and been sent away, showed up. When he had taken them all to breakfast and then begged for them to talk and the talking had ended in kissing the kissing had ended in bed, and what was more, Rulon and Alex had been there to see it. When they were getting dressed, and when they had walked around two for a while Michael finally said:
“So what do we do now?”
“We…” Darius said, “go home. By which I mean, you go to your home in Wicker Park, and I go to my home.”
“But what happened today…”
“We had great sex. And then you bought me milk.”
“We had great sex, and then I bought you milk,” Michael agreed in a tone that made it mean a lot more than when it came out of Darius’s mouth.
“And” Darius said taking the jug from him. “I appreciate that.”
“But….”
“But nothing.”
“So where do we stand?”
“As friends,” Darius said.
And then he said, “Did you think that telling me you were marrying someone else, and then us having sex and you getting me milk would change something? The only thing it means is that you’ll cheat on them the way you cheated on me. Which makes you a cheater.”
“Maybe it makes you a cheater too.”
“No,” Darius said carefully, “it just means I’m indifferent to your fiancé.”
He thought a minute and said, “I suppose it also means I’m still attracted to you, and I like sleeping with you. And for that… thank you.”
Darius thought a moment and then told Michael.
“I should say good night and go inside, and leave it at that.”
But then he kissed him.
“I’ll leave it like that. And… hope you have an excellent wedding. God help the groom.”
He had closed the door and shut it behind him, locking it, and for a brief moment he assumed he’d have Michael on the brain and thoughts of him all night, that part of him would run back and chase him and they’d start up some affair. Even right now, Michael was just walking slowly to the elevator, and then he would walk even slower to his car—not the greatest idea—and take a long time to drive back to Wicker Park.
But all of those thoughts only lasted a second, because he was not alone in the dark living room. Under the white moonlight, he saw Rulon Nelson’s long, naked body swimming the sofa, shoulders lifting and falling buttocks clinching and unclinching as he clutched Alex’s shoulders and deep sighs came from Alexis’s mouth while Rulon, mouth opened, eyes like black pinholes, fucked him.
Darius’s pulse was in his mouth. Sex made him tremble like this. Didn’t it make everyone? Wasn’t this why people were afraid of it, why they hinted at it, talked about but maligned it all at the same time? He had been a virgin far too long, a person who had not done things, walked away from doing things, being places, thought there as something to be said about innocence. But now he was himself. He didn’t care if people thought he was dirty. He didn’t want to miss anything. He didn’t mind being called a perv. His ass still hut from being fucked by Max. He could still taste Michael in his mouth. He slipped off his sandals and padded to the refrigerator. He put the milk away in the refrigerator, making a brief light, a brief noise. While he heard scrabbling and moaning, repeated thumping and an exhalation from the sofa, Darius went into his room quickly then came back. It wasn’t like TV or in the movies. They fucked slow and deep as death, sometimes in a hurry, Alexis crying out, Rulon’s shoulders and back white blue in the moon, Alexis rising on hands and knees, and Darius pulled out the easy chair which only made a little noise. He opened his Hawaiian shirt and pulled down his shorts. Snorting poppers, he stroked himself. He grew larger in his hand, feeling the trickle of nut from the head of his cock. Blindly it seemed, mouth open, Rulon looked on him. Alex’s head was bent as he pressed against Rulon, but Darius and Rulon looked on one another and, at last, Darius shrugged and his shirt came off, he pulled down his cargo shorts. He went naked to them. He ran his hands up and down Rulon, down the small of his back, over his ass. He gasped as he felt Alexis take his penis in his mouth. At the same time he kissed Rulon hard and felt his rough tongue in his mouth. This trinity lasted for a moment, before Rulon went right on fucking Alex and Darius moved away from them.
“Don’t worry,” Rulon said to Darius between slow fucks as Alexis gave a long, low moan,, “you’re next.”
The way he said it made Darius shudder so hard he almost came. Instead he only nodded, and went to his bedroom to find the glass pipes, the blow torch, the last of the ice they had begun the day before yesterday. On the futon, Rulon and Alex sank back into lovemaking, hidden by a cloud over the moon, and a sigh, high and heavy that was Rulon’s, came from the bed after another gasp of, “Oh, fuck!”
Michael and love and having a fiancé who cheated and cheated on his new fiancé with you was confusing. Sitting here naked in the aftershocks of lust, cutting up ice to smoke it and end up fucking till the sun came up, never was.
THE END
