Piano Study

Previously in this devious contrivance for writerly and readerly fun, you met characters basic to its unlikely plot, witnessed piano talents progressing extraordinarily, and had to wait to find out what you will below. Worry not that you may not know the pianos, technical matters, and music being referenced. Those are real. Must be to lend credence to the ensuing, fantasy-generated action. Believe in fiction!

Please rate this when you've read it and, if you like, leave a comment. Everyone who places stories with gaydemon.com appreciates being here and having reader's encouragement. Truly, F.C.

Michael Psmith’s name, posted on the practice schedule at the Federated Guild’s National Competition Finals, caused other competitors to peek when he tried first the American Steinway then the Hamburg Steinway. No pieces. To the amazement of those spying, he played no pieces, just the chromatic scale in thirds, contrary motion, at a snail’s pace, ultra legato, every tone matched. His ears were cocked for attention to the result of his ideation of the sound of each pair. His choice: the Hamburg instrument, its “voice” being closer to what he knew than the American style.

Michael’s rounds one and two – consisting of pieces for those stages before – swept him to the last round where complacently acquiesced judges and assembled audience were greeted with this entirely new program: Sweelinck Fantasia 4 (FVB II), Hindemith Second Sonata, Czerny Ricordanza Variations, Brahms Scherzo, Ravel’s Ocean Barge, Friedman’s Distant Princess, and the Strauss-Dohnanyi Treasure Waltz.

Applause and cheers flooded the auditorium. Ramses and I sat silently, inconspicuously in the last row, miming applause while listening to the nuances of audience reaction to our Michael’s dignity-laced, slight bows. When there was no let-up, Michael strode back onstage, sat down, closed his eyes for silence, and began in the deceptive quiet that introduces Liszt’s March of the Three Holy Kings.Building steadily over the next quarter-hour (!), he brought the piano along and took it beyond what it had ever been made to do. Tones of canyon breadth and ocean depth, phrases that reached for and penetrated the heavens themselves. Liszt’s colossal chordal ecstasies reverberated through floor, walls, ceiling, even the foundations below ground.

Tear-streaked music lovers screamed, threw programs up, grew hoarse en masse, pummeled palms until hands went numb. A few blinks of their eyes. They looked at the stage. Empty. Michael had slipped unnoticed behind the curtain.

I heard someone say, “It’s a wonder there’s no blood on the keys after that.”

***

Fists tapped lightly on our shoulders. Michael. “Let’s go. I think I broke a nail during the Liszt. Anybody got a clipper?”

Without a word, Ramses whisked out a small nail snip and worked on his teacher’s thumb.

That boy’s showing more mettle than ever – owing to Michael’s tutelage.

The two settled closely on an outside bench, hands held. Michael did not want to return to the auditorium. It was up to me when the time came for the jury’s results to be announced.

Announcement time came. I heeded the call for “Michael Psmith.” Immense curiosity followed as I walked onstage to accept the top prize for Michael.

I explained, “Michael is receiving medical attention for one of his fingers. He and I as his teacher appreciate more than can be said that his break with precedent – the Liszt encore – did not disqualify him. He sends you his love and appreciation for this honor.” I made a show of shaking hands with the jurors and other officials, used my tear-dampened handkerchief to brush over the surface of the piano’s keys while people buzzed about possible blood, showed that there was none, and made for the stage door unnoticed, check in my breast pocket.

Michael and I were good at escaping well-meant, essentially meaningless blather after events.

***

“Oh no,” Michael said, his mouth full of the last spoonful of his banana split. Ramses looked up from his and from the spoon he held, dripping chocolate sauce on the formica. I put down my glass of cold water. “Look up there.”

A flat-screen TV mounted on the diner’s wall showed a talking head beside a still-shot labeled “Michael Psmith.” A line of text appeared beneath:

TODAY A YOUNG GENIUS OF THE PIANO PULLED A DISAPPEARING STUNT AFTER SLAYING BOTH AUDIENCES AND JUDGES AT THIS YEAR’S FEDERATED GUILD COMPETITION. HE AND HIS TEACHER – my name was mangled – CANNOT BE FOUND. NEWS MEDIA FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY WANT INTERVIEWS. TOP CONCERT MANAGEMENTS VIE TO BOOK RECITALS AND RECORDINGS FOR MICHAEL PSMITH. ANYONE WITH KNOWLEDGE OF HIS WHEREABOUTS SHOULD CONTACT….

Fortunately, the bus station was close. Baseball caps from the convenience store next to Trailways were Ramses’ idea. The kid’s thinking. Michael’s was worn forward. Ramses insisted that mine be backward. Our disguises! While we adjusted them in the men’s room, Ramses’ cell-phone played America the Beautiful.

“Hi, Dad. … Yes we saw it. We’re leaving on the next bus. Please meet us – you know when. … Is there a tenant yet for our garage apartment? ... That’s good. They need to hide for a few days. … That’s great. You’re the best. Give Mom a kiss from me, okay? ... Love you. Bye.”

There being no one else in the men’s room but us, I pushed Ramses into a stall and delivered a kiss he would never be able to forget. One hand found the back of his head to stabilize it, my other went to his crotch which I squeezed so hard he could not come despite his fresh erection. I said, after a breath, “Tonight we love – you. Both of us.”

Michael’s rather sore fingers held Ramses’ during the bus ride. His head lolled on the boy’s shoulder. I sat upright, and thought – as is my wont.

***

The Córdovas were hospitality itself. They fed and let the three of us retire across a pretty, backyard garden to their garage apartment. Ramses showered.

Michael used his cell-phone to call home. He assured his parents that they need not worry about him or us. They understood that inquiring busybodies were to be told that he needed rest and had gone into retreat. Yes, he would probably play publicly. “Say that I will when we’ve renewed my forces.”

I told Mrs. Psmith, “Our Michael showed everyone the core of the music he performed; or, I should say, revealed in his winning performance. Trust that I will see to his well-being and commit myself to his continued ability to merge with music like no other.”

“You know best. It’s ultimately about love, isn’t it?” she said, knowing my answer.

“It is. Our love for music and for each other.”

“My husband said so. Thank you for confirming it. Sweet dreams.”

“They can only be. Michael’s an angel, you know. Good night.”

***

Ramses’ dripping body did its best to remain in position as I toweled him all over.

Michael whistled the Ad Nos melody during his shower, a particularly thorough one.

I showed Ramses two broad rubber bands, each an inch in diameter, from the apartment’s desk. “These will cinch your scrotum. I’ll put them where they go. Do not speak. Merely let yourself breathe easy. You understand the need for trust.”

Bulging eyes riveted as my hands stretched one band in a circle broader than his touchy scrotum and let it contract next to his body. The sound he wanted to make remained inside his throat.

“Good,” I said.

I spat onto the other before opening and slipping it below the previous band, then pulled at him until his plump testicles were taut in their sac. He winced, but managed to exhale and to accept. Arms, as they had been conditioned at the piano by Michael, hung loose.

Very good, I thought.

Michael smiled as he worked his towel vigorously. “The love we share, we’ll share with you, Ramses.”

“Our special brand of love,” I added, patting underneath his balls. “Let touches raise your consciousness.” No need to impose the term Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on him.

Perspiration broke on his brow. Michael used a swipe of the area to moisten his fingers and palm of one hand. That palm massaged the soft tip of Ramses’ swollen penis while my fingers manipulated the tightened skin which compacted his balls. A wink at Michael and he began to tease nipples with his teeth and tongue while I simply retracted his foreskin and touched Ramses’ bud.

The first seizure of the night caught him off-guard. He grit his teeth, twisting every way that he could, fighting what could not be stopped – and experienced his first non-ejaculatory orgasm since early puberty.

The bed received his trembling body and ours. Consolation – in the form of words, phrases, sexless kisses, and Ramses’ arms drawing our heads to his – required time.

“Music has climaxes that must be choked – sometimes several, as in a Mahler symphony – before the great one that settles everything,” my softest voice told him.

“Remember the final pages of Ad Nos?” Michael spoke from Ramses’ other side. “They must exceed all earlier climaxes in the great work. They must be its ultimate orgasm in sound. You felt that, didn’t you?”

“Oh…yes. You wiped me out with that.”

“No, I didn’t. The combination of Liszt and Busoni did. My role was to get out of their way so that their work could happen.”

“Those rubber bands impose on your anatomy. But they are necessary if you are to learn about control. Do you remember when that call came in from the Competition? When Michael was inside you, did he let himself go?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. There wasn’t time. You brought the ’phone to him for his interview and took me.”

“But, when earlier you rushed to embrace me, the heightened stimulus of the event caused you to fire off. You wasted your climax selfishly. It was not shared. We know that was not willful. You couldn’t help yourself because you didn’t – and don’t – know how. With us, now, you have the opportunity to learn.”

“Are you up to it?” Michael ran his nose over Ramses’ eyelids, which had been closed as he sweated, uncertain about himself.

“How can I know?”

I answered, “Let go. Relax. Hush. Listen.”

Michael took his place. Knees pressed Ramses’ shoulders to the bed, his testicles, low in their sac, drooped on the sixteen-year-old’s forehead. Michael reached for Ramses’ legs to pull them his way and apart. I approved and Michael began singing the introduction to the famous Tchaikowsky Concerto.

“Ta-da-da-da-UMPH!”

My middle finger skewered Ramses and slowly pulled back during…

“Ta-da-da-da”…

…and plunged back on “UMPH!”

“Ta-da-da-da-UMPH! UMPH! UMPH! UMPH! UMPH!” Each, deeply fingered.

Then I waited, readying my cock.

For the big theme’s arrival to the downbeat, I slalomed through Ramses’ sphincter and into his rectum and kept pace with the steady rise and fall of melody, bottoming into him at the beginning of each bar and continuing through each dynamic-raising iteration until our boy had experienced his second, clinch-jawed, arid orgasm, his cock in Michael’s grasp.

Faint, Ramses lay, stomach heaving, his torso arrhythmic with tics. Solicitous for his care, we shared wiping him down.

Barely conscious, he responded to my instruction to roll over. I reached through the apex of his legs and groin to force down, painfully it seemed from the grunt he made, his stiff erection such that its inflamed tip and bound balls were visible. Michael took my place.

Ramses recognized Michael’s cock entering him. To the soft song of the second movement’s flute solo, he gathered the stoking messenger of peace within his inner folds and did his best to caress what caressed him. Bliss relaxed him. Arms to either side displayed palms up, moving as if something were needed there. As Michael fucked, I bent over the closest and began to lick.

Fingers felt for my prehensile organ. I chose to suck on one at a time in rhythm with Michael’s singing of the luscious tune. Involuntarily, Ramses arched his butt up for Michael’s slow penetrations. Moments of sheer pleasure at the cooperation of melody and body. What was happening – an unbelievable rush of nerve attention in his anus. An anal orgasm! He had no idea such could happen. Back there. Not in his genitals! They were not involved.

To see him shake like that complimented us both.

On his back again, Ramses came back to plebeian existence with two utterances: “I was inside the music” and “My balls hurt.”

“No, Ramses, the music was inside you. As for your balls, I’m sure they do annoy you – with purpose.”

His brow knit.

“With you, even when you perform tomorrow for us in your living room, there’s a good chance you’ll climax too soon. It’s tough not to when your control lapses often.”

“So restraining my balls – that was so I’d learn how it felt not to give in to my urge to climax?”

Michael engaged him in a kiss so loving that Ramses did not know I had removed both bands. It occurred to me to use my tongue to lave his relaxed scrotum such that, when I sucked with mouth opened wide, his testicles filled my oral cavity.

“Shhh….” Michael retracted his lips to say, “He’s massaging you there to return the circulation. Does it to me after ball-play.” Before Ramses could do more than gasp, Michael retook his mouth for more kissing. Fingers pinched a nipple.

Ramses’ unattended cock burned from the spurts he could not stop.

Hands to his face in embarrassment, he turned red.

***

Morning came. We three walked in the Córdova’s back door and were greeted by appetizing aromas and, “I was about to call you.”

“Mom and Dad, I had the most wonderful night. We all did. Now we’re hungry!”

“Darling, show our guests to the dining room. We won’t be crowded.”

During dish washing, I manned the sink while Mrs. Córdova blushingly dried and put away things. Her husband commented, “We had some calls. Two, actually. People who were looking for you. I asked why they were calling me. Told ’em I didn’t know anything – wished ’em well – and hung up.”

Ramses and Michael returned from their respective bathroom visits.

Four listeners heard Ramses perform his pieces on their cheap Chinese imitation of a Korean brand-name piano.

Eight eyes turned to me. “Michael, you’re his teacher, not I. What say you?”

“Give us an hour. I will teach Ramses a new piece.”

***

Sixty-five minutes later, after I had exercised in the apartment and completed my ablutions, Ramses sat composed and proceeded to play despite his instrument’s tinniness. A reasonable facsimile of an ancient Greek youth dancing nude appeared in my mind, as Satie’s Gymnopédie made its poised way in the Córdova’s living room.

Michael beamed at Ramses. To his pupil’s parents, he said, “Before last night, your son could never have done that.”

“It didn’t sound hard,” Mr. Córdova said defensively, wondering why he felt odd inside, a bit flustered.

I lifted a hand, “Sir, to play it after a single lesson as your son just did…” – I turned my gaze on Ramses – “…is an achievement verging on the sublime.”

The house was ours while Mom and Dad went to work.

***

We brought Ramses into understanding marvels by convincing him: that he needed to be awakened and exposed fully to discover new paths of learning; that necessary procedures moved along in currents, flows, and gushes; that if he surrendered his self, he could be taken by and with us via the vehicle of his body and mind into the meaning of music.

Michael accepted Ramses’ spermatic offering orally, moving thereupon to inseminate him anally. It was as if I were not there with them in the Córdova’s living room. Thus Ramses understood how inspiration flowed in. He glowed.

The beauty of their exchanges preceded Ramses’ assimilation – within forty minutes – of Bach’s F Major Invention. So high ran his spirits that he begged for more instruction (“while my brain is so alive and my rectum’s still tingling”).

He received from Michael Chopin’s G Major Prelude, a sage choice. That mere thirty-minute encounter produced in the pupil pure glee at his left hand flowing effortlessly (slowly, of course) over complexly continuous figurations under melodic fragments expressive of happiness. He had learned both parts together, simultaneously – another first. Sensitive boy. He cried.

“I will not allow your tears – or any other of your precious bodily fluids – to be wasted,” Michael said, sipping from Ramses’ cheeks.

We left naked Ramses to practice for an hour.

In the apartment’s bed, it thrilled me to infuse Michael. Him, to be infused. In order, we locked eyes, lips, tongues, and arms possessively. Practiced ease took his legs apart and brought them to the back of my legs as I slid into his gluteal cleavage, sought its welcoming portal, torqued through, and filled him.

Mutual sighs signaled readiness. I felt him clench with certainty, relax, clench again, relax, in preparation for our mating ritual.

By thoughts of mind and pulses of body, we advanced from the most basic probes and acceptances, meeting with measured intensity and letting the exercise build. He sensed my every movement and I his satiny passage’s every secret. Acceleration was inevitable, but controllable. We slowed to savor each other, ratcheted to celebrate – never in the same ways. Love’s practices had infinite variety in the face of imaginations as attuned as his and mine.

Creaks from the bed broke into our unheard rhythmic mergings and separations as I delivered series of plunges for release into Michael’s depths of the life force he needed. Transcendence receded. We, who had been astral, were again among the mundane – both radiant and invigorated.

“Wow,” Ramses exhaled, his mouth and eyes wide, a hand on his excited crotch. “That was the real thing, wasn’t it?”

Perturbed not in the least by the boy’s witness from the door, I used my teacherly tone, “You have arrived, dear boy, at the very moment for what is to be the next experience of your improving life. Don’t look like that. I’m serious.”

“I….”

“I have seeded Michael so that he can enrich you a second time today.”

Ramses’ eyes trained to my raising Michael to his feet and to my hand offering him Michael’s place. The teen froze. I nudged Michael, whose erection only strengthened as he reached out in Ramses’ direction.

“You have retained my donation from earlier, haven’t you, while practicing this past hour?”

Ramses nodded. “Yes, Michael, every drop. But that was two hours ago. I practiced until there was nothing left to do.”

The two boys focused on my drippy, drooping penis – as if considering its engagement for twice the announced time. Each must have had his own perspective. Ramses, I suspect, recalled being drilled to Tchaikowsky’s Concerto.

“Ramses, Michael understands something that you have not before: length is the force that makes things long. I’m not speaking in riddle. My length in my beloved’s rectum enables our union to last a long time – for hours even.”

“It’s true, Ramses,” Michael said. “Come now. Believe. Lie down. Take your place. I am renewed, and will take you further than before – to refresh you. There’s work ahead, more than ever – for which you need to be readied.”

Neither realized we had eaten nothing since breakfast. I brought glasses of water for the three of us. While we drank, I spotted the two rubber bands on Ramses’ narrow wrists.

“You have conserved those, I see. Forethought is good. Michael will help to secure you again. Although he will not aim for your prostate, stimulus there cannot be avoided. You are not yet able to control your reaction, yet you must not come freely when the spirit hits. Not today. Not if you are to profit as we mean.”

Obeying me, Ramses lay against the pillows as Michael banded his scrotum more tightly than I had. “You didn’t come just now – did you?”

“No, Ramses, it gave me great pleasure to refrain in order to serve you.” Michael’s hand was between Ramses’ spread legs, rubbing his perineum and testing his anus. Michael smiled, “You spoke the truth. You have not lost my gift. I’ll add to it so that you can absorb all that you can as you are.”

I took the hint, “Ramses, given time, your rectum ingests micronutrients from fluid deposits there: protein, some carbohydrates – enzymes, vitamin C, trace amounts of calcium and zinc, even fructose. Vacuous recipients expel right after sex. What losses.”

“We’ll not let you make such a mistake when you have so much to gain to aid your music,” Michael told Ramses. “I tell you this based on my own knowledge, having been amply and often provided for by that man there.”

Appreciation spread on Ramses’ face, although I could not ascertain whether it came from the information or Michael’s fondling of his ball sac.

“And I will find something for us to eat in your kitchen,” I said, donning my pants.

“Mom made sandwiches,” Ramses said, “and there are apples in the ’fridge. Maybe some cake.”

***

The Córdovas were dumbfounded by their son’s after-dinner performance of Bach’s Invention, Chopin’s Prelude, and the larger work the afternoon’s stimulus had enabled, Chopin’s Military Polonaise. The last set toes tapping. Apparently, the parents wanted to dance.

“What is your secret?” Mr. Córdova, blowing his nose, wanted to know.

I pointed to Michael, “Ask your son’s teacher.”

“Secrets cannot be told. Such secrets as we have…” – his gesture included Ramses and the two of us – “…are shared without words in teacher-pupil relationships.”

“Folks, it’s getting dark. The cover of night will see Michael and me back to my place where nosy people no longer expect us to be. You have our gratitude for treating us so well. I will tell you something that I’ve not shared with either of these boys. Under Michael’s care, Ramses is showing progress with such talent as he has, progress that I originally doubted to be possible.”

Startlement stopped heartbeats.

I continued, “Let Ramses go with us. I’ll show him a way to come for lessons and provide him with a few things to raise the level of his present euphoria and keep him centered. He must not lose what we’ve given him last night and today.”

Neither Córdova was quite sure they understood. Indecision showed. Ambivalence.

“Mom, Dad, this is important.” He wriggled his jeans-clad bottom on the piano bench, holding our loads.

“A moral imperative,” I said.

Mrs. Córdova sighed, “How many lessons a week should he have? My husband and I are worried about the money.”

“Find it. He should see Michael three times in every period of seven days.”

“But….”

“We’ve imposed on you long enough. Our appreciation will be shown by the extra interest we will take in your son’s tutelage. Come boys, let’s walk quickly so that Ramses can get back for a good night’s rest here, in his own room.”

We walked abreast, Michael’s left hand in my right. He hooked the little finger of his right hand in a loop of Ramses’ jeans and directed Ramses to hook his left’s little finger similarly. Thus joined, our trio passed along our route unseen.

Greatly excited by his first, personal plug – placed firmly by Michael – and hard as a rock on his way home, Ramses felt sure his rectum could retain vital material substance there during sleep. He smiled as the prospects of an additional gift – the washable ball-stretcher and scrotum pouch in his pocket – trickled into his mind. And glad beyond measure no longer to be a student of that awful woman who was his former teacher.

“Hot Damn,” the night air heard him say.

Discover my novel on Amazon: Young-Edwin-Eros-Art-Cooper

My other stories are here on GayDemon