The Book of the Blue House

Derek

The wise ones say that even to be seen is to be changed and to be altered from one's natural form, thus why love is generally in the dimmest of lights, for desire flowers like mushrooms. Only in total darkness, free of all seeing and being seen does one stumble into the true country of desire, and discover at last, true lust and true freedom…

- The First Azul Treastise, by Ammanzabad of Dura

Almost a month before this day, when Derek Annaker, aged twenty-four lay passed out in a bed next to an equally passed out Connleth Ipwick, had been the beginning of his fourth year as a Blue Priest. Three whole years since the day he had come from his consecration and out of the notivitate that was for some weeks, for some months and for some a year. Once upon a itme he had been at the Black Door, lost and not knowing what was going on, just like Conn when he came to the White. Only when Derek had come, he was sure that in the end, he would be a priest.

He was exhausted, which was why he was drooling onto his pillow, and his hair was in his face. He would have made a pretty sight to any of the men who came to the temple seeking him, he thought, and then he realized on some level that he would have indeed made a pretty sight, for he was a pretty man. What was more, men were not allowed to seek a particular Blue. They took whom the Master of the Day sent them.

The work of a Blue was not easy, for it was not work you could only give your body to. You were, in the end, a priest, and the very oldest kind of a priest, far older than the white robed priests in the minsters who swore celibacy and offered the body and blood of their nameless version of God, but didn’t know that before you could do this, you must offer Him up in your own body, your own blood. A Blue Priest had to always be present, fully present to the need, the desire, the fear and the hurt in the men who came to him, and this took much out of one.

The Blue Temple expelled no one. In addition to the priests were the novices and the dependents, not to mention the vagrant, the homeless and the pilgrims, and no one in that vast building had to work very hard to prove they belonged. To remain counted among the priesthood, with the rights of a priests one only had to offered himself at least three times in three years over the course of a decade, Derek had thought what a minor requirement that was. And, indeed, most Blues easily fulfilled it. But it was only in his first year he realized how easy it would be to stop if one were not called to it. Not all sex was pleasant, not all men were pleasant and, of course it was about you or even about their immediate pleasure, but about their need, about their healing. You were not there to fulfill yourself or gratify shallow fantasies. Sometimes, though, you fulfillied yourself by accident, but this was holy work. However, as Derek had ruefully reminded himself just a few hours ago, when he trudged upstairs to his apartments and stripped for the shower, even holy work, even the Great Work, was work.

These upper level, beginning with the third one, belonged to the Blues as sleeping quarters. The first floor was the stoa for pilgrims, homeless and guests. The next level as well as certain isolated parts of the third floor and even the fourth, were where the Blues received the men who came to them. There were some smaller houses where one’s bedroom and the room where you had sex with supplicants were the same, but not here, not in the Great Temple. The temple was built like two buildings coiled together and only in certain places connected, so that the halls and passages which the supplicants entered did not connect to the stairs, floors and hallways of the Inner Temple for Blues and their friends, the Dependents of the temple, of which Conn was now one.

Three types of people came to the temple, four really, Derek supposed sleepily. There were the poor and the vagrant and traveling, and the guests who were fed in the kitchens, and there were the men who were looking for sex, but not the kind of sex that came from a prostitute. There were the worshippers of Adaon the Blue God who came in through the Red Door and came right up to the Great Sanctuary. Certainly there was an overlap between these groups. And then there were the young boys who came ot see if they should indeed be priests and entered as novices through the White Door.

Those who came through the Sacntuary, often came to offer themselves to priests or to offer themselves to the God through lying with a priest. True, all the sex a Blue priest had was a sacred act, for the Blue Priests, but when worshipers came to a priest in the Sanctuary, the devotee was worshiping as well. For them, they went into the special rooms behind the image of the God in the part of the Temple open to the air surrounding a great pool. There they worked the ancient sex prayers and the ancient magics that were the last things a Blue learned before his consecration, the solemn reminder that he was not a street whore, but a man of God, and he had better elevate his whole self for the sex act. Derek had been in the sanctuary rooms all last night. There had only been three men, one of them a little more than a boy, a seminarian from the White Temple looking for understanding, but still sex was sex, and Derek was weary. As he lay dozing beside this golden skinned, bronzed haired boy, he thought it was nearly time to take the bath of purification, but this morning all he could bear was a shower and sleep.

This is why when he saw Conn cleaning his room, the last thing on his mind was Conn as a sexual person, and living in this house, where sex was not a shame and the human body nothing to be afraid of, Derek had so freely undressed. Very early in his training, like all Blues, Derek had been exposed to the bodies of men which he both longed for and feared, and exposed to his desires. Very early he knew that if he wanted sex it was easily to be had, and so the bodies of his brothers, and of all men were lovely and to be treasured, but the flesh was not threatening, and though everyone had what they needed and had their own rooms, life in the Blue House was fluid, and most of them did not care to be alone, and so Derek, who had long stopped sleeping in his bed, forgot it was there, and seeing Conn, naturally assumed Conn would sleep in the same bed with him.

It was only now with noon so close that Derek Annakar began to come to himself, remember that this was a boy who did not live in the Temple and that he must have thought this all a little strange. What was more, Derek was by his nature, a creature of desire. If Lorne were here, or Cal, they might have awaken and began the giggle and play that led to orgasm, but now Derek said, feeling his own urges reassert themselves, “Conn, Conn, wake up.”

The ivory skinned boy with his green eyes and reddish brown hair blinked, and Derek said, “It’s nearly time for lunch. You should shower.”

Conn stretched under the blanket, and in the darkness climbed out. Derek looked over his fair body and thought, if Conn were to make a move he wouldn’t stop him, but her certainly wouldn’t begin things.

“You go through that door. It’s a private toilet,” Derek said, sitting up and frankly looking at Conn’s chest, at his hollow stomach that descended to his sex.

“There’s towels and clothes and soap. If you push thr door on the other side it is the shower I share with Lorne. You….” Derek was able to look him up and down, not without appreciation, but not with greed either, “look about Mickel’s size, He’s across the hall. I’ll ask if you can borrow some of his clothes.”

For some reason, maybe because of the dark, Conn wasn’t embarrassed about being naked and he said “I brought clothes.”

“But when’s the last time you cleaned them?” Derek asked, climbing out bed and thinking how nice it would be to climb back in. “No,” He said reaching into the clothes pile and pulling out some light trousers which he slipped on and tied with their drawstring. “You get in the shower. I’ll get you clothes.”

When Conn had come out of the shower, he found that Derek had neatly folded draw string trousers, underthings and an over shirt and socks on the commode in the little bathroom, and he had even put out lotions and hair oil in case Conn would want that kind of thing. He did, more than he had guessed he would after the long journey down south and his cracked hands and dry skin. He wanted this bit of luxury after the absence of ameninites, and now he he heard noise on the other side of the wall, he was glad Derek had brought clothes to him here so he would not have to present himself to anyone else in a towel. The intimacy of the darkened room where he had stood before Derek seemed gone now ,and this was not his house or his temple and he did not have the same aplomb about his body as did Derek.

When he came out after brushing his teeth with the brush left for him, the common room had his wheat haired sister and she seized his wrist and kissed him merrily then said, “And here is Cal, and this handsome dark stanger,” a broad shouldered, tall man red brown in color with thick lips and strong nose, “is Lorne, whose bed you were sleeping in and whose room this is, and this is Matthias,” she said, pointing to a small man with blondish hair almost completely shaven, “who lives at the Purple Kirk but always finds himself over here.”

“He finds himself over here,” Cal said, “because of a certain girl with wheat colored hair and twinkling green eyes.

Nialla thumped Cal in the arm, but Jon, though he colored, said, “I won’t deny it.

They were in the midst of laying out food on the floor as if it were a picnic, a bottle of wine, Conn assumed, and a jug of milk, a fresh loaf of bread and a whole cooked, but cold chicken, a wheel of cheese, and several little jars of what Conn supposed he would have to wait to see, Jon set down the cups, and the door opened and in came three handsome boys in blue and a large middle aged woman darker than Lorne.

“Is it time for food?” the woman demanded, and turning to Conn said, “You must be Connleth.”

“Does everyone know I’m here?”

“Yes,” the woman said, holding out her stout hand, “And I am Obala.”

They sat or knelt or folded their legs under themselves to eat and Cal said to Derek, “Would you lead the blessing over the food,” and Conn remembered that, yes, these men were priests.

Derek bowed his head and spread his hands over the food, and Connleth did not remember what he said except that he added, “And thank you for Connleth being here. This room hasn’t been so clean in ages.”

And then, laughing they set to eating. It was not a quick meal, which is how Conn had always thought of lunch, the thing rushed through before you returned to work. And before it was done he found himself saying, “Well, then what is a dependent?”

“Oh, it’s not a very nice word, is it?” Cal said.

“I think it’s a great word,” Lorne differed, “because a proper house is dependent on dependents.”

Derek laughed and said, “If you look at it that way, then it’s a great word.”

“Dependents,” Nialla said, “are all those attached to a large household. All great temples and minsters have them. Some large actual households.”

“We are like guests who never leave,” Obala said, chewing on her bread.

“That is exactly what we are like!” Nialla decided.

“It’s not,” Derek frowned. “Guest don’t clean up messes or cook food.”

“But we’re not like employees either,” Jon said, chewing on his bread. “I know that I voluntueer to do the cooking at the Purplekirk, and I take care of the older monks, but it isn’t like a job, not really.”

“The dependents are the extended family of the temple or household,” Derek said. “They share our lives and this becomes their home. It is an option for a homeless person or a traveler. Say you are coming to a city and you are new, you drop in here, and by our vows you are a guest. After a few days, you begin to find ways to make yourself useful. Conn did it in the first hour he was here. There is no set job. You are just part of the family, and family pitches in. The dependents of the house use to be called the Children of the House. There is no proper house without children.”

“And all over this city, anyone who needs a roof over their head can simply show up at minster or a temple and find one?” Conn said.

“Not only this city,” Cal said, his mouth full of the apple he was chewing. “All over.”

“What kind of world would it be if homeless people just walked the streets and had nowhere to go? If people couldn’t find jobs or be looked after by other people?” Lorne murmured, “Such a thing would be uncivilized. A country where these things happened…” the Blue priest shook his head, “would be no proper country.”