Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2018 01:42:28 +0000 From: revjpgibson@hotmail.com Subject: Home in the Woods chapter 14 A HOME IN THE WOODS By Rev Jesse Penfield Gibson, MDiv, DMin DISCLAIMER: This story is fiction. Any similarities between any persons, living or dead, is coincidental. It involves bisexuality on the part of teenagers, including intergenerational sex, as well as drug use. If this offends you, please reconsider your browsing choices. If it appeal to you, enjoy. Complaints, compliments and comments to revjpgibson@hotmail.com Please consider donating to Nifty. I have and you should too. It costs money to run the archive and there are few other places that would house stories like this FOURTEEN The courthouse on the square had an almost Italian look to it, complete with cupola on top and made of bronze colored brick. They had a stall on the corner, actually on the opposite side of the square from the rest of the people selling produce and next to a flower dealer and in front of a man singlng and playing a guitar badly for tips. A year ago, Nate had been a homeless gay boy trying to figure out where to sleep that night and trying to hustle up a meal. Now, he helped sell the produce. He took a lap around and saw what everyone was selling and knew that their product was superior but they got less business. It was prejudice, pure and simple. They were labeled a cult, devil worshippers and witches. Sometimes they were dealt with by people with outright hostility. Nate was showing a young couple the purple potatoes, the ones he had helped plant in mid February. There was a man talking with Mama Ruth but Nate could only hear snippets. He wasn't bad looking for an older guy, probably in his 40's maybe Nate thought, a bit of a gut but fair skin and auburn haired. Even Ian noticed that and joked that it might be his real father. After an animated but friendly conversation, he left and Nate went back to business and didn't think about him again until he showed up as they were packing up to go back when he showed up with a duffel bag to go with them. "in you go, Professor" Ian's older half brother Colin said, helping the man in. Nate looked at Ian. "You're coming with us?" Ian asked. His tone was neutral, neither mean nor friendly. Nate recognized it as being a less hostile version of how Ian had treated him. Kelley smiled. "Yes. Your mother, she is your mother?" "No" Ian said. "But I do what she says" "Sorry. ANyway, I teach philosophy at the University, just started there this year, the philosophy of religion, and I had some curiosity and she invited me to stay a few days with you all" "Philsophy of religion?" Nate asked "Yes" The Professor answered, adjusting himself and his bag as they sped down the road. "I was curious about Wicca and Luciferianism, left hand path religious beliefs" Nate didn't know what that meant but he eyed the man suspiciously. Ian, though, loosened up and started grilling him on philosophy, wanting to talk about Rabelais and Alasteir Crowley and the like. The professor seemed just as eager to talk to Ian as Ian was to talk with him. But Nate remembered Adonis's warning about Ian: his desire to question everything, to understand everything was dangerous when it all depended on magic, which is more fragile than people think. That made him wary. When the truck pulled up to the house, Nate jumped out and made Ian come with him. "We don't have to tell him about meeting Adonis, having sex with him. He won't understand. It isn't like it is here out there. I'm not saying we can't talk about Adonis, about what we believe in but not everything. Not the forest" Nate said. "Yeah" Ian said. "We know not to tell outsiders the whole deal up front. We didn't tell you what the forest was, did we?" "No" Nate admitted. They hadn't. Eva had steered him toward meeting Mattie and things had gone from there but not until he actually went in the forest did he learn that it was different. Over the next several days, Ian spent time with the Professor, happily talking and learning as Nate stayed away and tried to tempt Ian away, fearing what the Professor represented. But then, as he was working on his own personal garden, with a few pot plants growing inside the tree line, the Professor came up to the cabin. "So, you're the high priest of the cult of Adonis?" "I don't know" Nate answered. IT wasn't like they had a heirarchy or even a priesthood exactly. "Well Ian thnks so." "I think maybe everybody is their own priest. Priesthood of the believer" The Professor smiled broadly. "Evangelical christianity? Surprising. But in your faith, you worship with sex?" "We worship by livng" "I'd appreciate a chance to go" Nate looked at him suspiciously. He seemed genuine but that sometimes can mask sinister intentions. "There are more boys than girls and it's participation only. NO bystanders. And it's not like Mama Ruth with WIcca or the Men's Camp with Lucifer. We're still figuring things out. And we are having a good time, partying" "I'm bisexual and I'm not going so I can be a creep or a pervert. I'm interested. In how a boy who grew up in a strict evangelical home became the founder a new religion, even if it's small, among other things" Nate looked down. "He was gay. That was enough" It was down at the creek and it was more a party than anything else. Just like what they used to do but now it is honoring Adonis and Dido. There was wine and moonshine and pot and 2 dozen kids, more boys than girls as Nate had promised, hanging around talking and laughing. Nate sat on the side of the railroad track watching, seeing Ian talking with the Professor down below while Eva stood off to one side. She seemed suspicious too, Nate thought. He saw Jack coming up toward him and that broke the moment. Nate smiled. He liked Jack, his little brother (if you could call someone you have sex with a little brother). Off in the distance, he saw Karl coming up the creekbank from the woods. Nate got up and moved toward him, taking Jack by the hand and leading him down. "How goes the woods?" Nate asked. "Good. Wanted to check out the party though" Karl said. Nate thought about it. He had always thought it odd then when you were in the forest you couldn't hear anything going on outside and never heard a train. They come through, he knew now, but at night or when no one is around. He could hear the trains passing through, feel the vibration of it passing so they did come but he had never actually seen it. So he wondered why Karl could hear the party. "Getting wild child pussy?" Nate said, teasing him. Karl nodded. "Yeah. But I'm ready, you know. Just waiting for the next one to come. Once you go, you're there until the next one comes. Like me for you. You for Liam. Liam for Ian" Nate thought about it. "Liam had all ready left when I got there" "The forest knew I guess" A voice came from behind him. "You talk about the woods like it is a creature" the Professor said. "It is" Karl answered. Nate turned to look at him and knew. "Come on, I'll show you" The Professor nodded. Nate took him by the hand and led him down the creek, which only had knee deep water but the Professor was khaki's while Nate was dressed on boxer briefs in the hot summer night so the Professor had to strip down to his underwear, also black boxer briefs as if he had fished them out of the chest containing his and Ian's clothes. Nate led him upstream into the dark and eerie woods, the black water flowing and the moonlight hidden by the tree canopy and the Spanish Moss. Around a bend in the creek where the water shallowed out. "They were there. Belus, Belit, Adonis, Dido and Molchos. And it doesn't matter if they were real or not. Hallucination or not. What Adonis means to me is that I am whole. I am complete. I am what I am supposed to be. And I can be at peace with the world. Amd I can celebrate life by sharing my body. Giving and taking pleasure" Nate said, reaching out and cupping the Professors crotch. The Professor sighed. "You're a beautiful boy. I was attracted to you from the beginning" "Yeah" Nate said, leaning in toward him to kiss him. Their lips met and pushed together, tongues meeting, the boy running his hand up the man's torso. He was lean mostly but not fit, with a bit of softness in the middle. Nate pushed him back against the bank, still kissing him passionately. He began to paw at the underwear to liberate the Professor's cock. "Wow. It was too much ask for that you liked older men" the Professors. Nate didn't reply. He had his reasons. He wasn't sure when he knew but he was certain of it. The cock came out and he was unsurprised to find the Professor uncircumcised. The almost carrot colored pubic hair pushed its way out of the fly. He has hard, about average length and girth and it was all very familiar. Nate opened up and took him down. All the way. The foreskin pressed down and the head exposed, his tongue flicked at that while he sucked on it and his lips clamped around the dick made seal as he slowly slide them back along the shaft. As he came back off, he kept the head in his mouth and sucked hard as is kissing the glans. Then he pulled the foreskin tight up and nibbled on it a bit with his lips as it gave it a slight little turn, just to stimulate the cherry red tip. Then he pulled off and took his balls into his mouth -- knowing that Ian liked having his nuts played with -- even as he looked at the cock, almost splotchy with purple which Nate thought must be like all red heads. "That feels so good. Ohhhh..." The Professor moaned. "Oh, yeah. Yeeeeaaahhh" Nate fell on his dick, all the way down and then began to suck him hard, up and down fast, his hand around the root of it, jerking him even as he bobbed up and down. The other hand went to the balls, tugging on them as he blew him. Nate's tongue went wild, swirling around the tip of the head. The Professor began to sigh some in deep ecstatic pleasure. His balls were tightening up. Nate knew it wouldn't be long. He was growing wiser in the ways of men. It didn't matter. He didn't stop. "Oh yeah" The Professor said. Nate knew he was close and took him all the way down again only have him let out a loud moan as he did. On the way back up, the man unloaded a thick load, bitter and slightly salty, in Nate's mouth. He was panting as Nate stood and watched him. The Professor smiled and motioned him closely and kissed him, taking Nate's whole body in his arms, cradling him the way a true lover would. "You're taking Ian with you" Nate said. It wasn't a question or a demand but a statement. Nate knew it to be true without having to be told. "He's smart and he's curious and he wants to know everything and see everything and explain everything. He'll be better out there than here but be good to him. I love him." The Professor nodded and Nate thought he wiped his eye when he thought Nate wasn't looking. It was late in the night as Ian explained why he had to go. Nate didn't argue, just listened as Ian tried to rationalize it and make it right, torn by a desire for the wider world and a desire for the closeness of a little cabin in the woods with a boy and a girl. Nate mentioned that he needed to make it right with Eva too and Ian promised he would but Nate doubted it. He understood the conflict inside of Ian but he thought it was for the best but he couldn't say to his lover that he should go away when a big part of Nate was rebelling at the thought, desperately wanting the whole thing to be over and for Ian to stay. The next day, Ian left with the Professor in the truck promising that he would be back but Nate was certain he would never see him again as a young man. Eva was with him and was sad but, despite months of sharing a bed together and a lover, the thing that had connected them was gone and Nate knew that it meant their relationship was over too. There was a person he wanted to seek out and Eva helped him, taking him to her, the woman they called Grandma. She had a old dog trot house and was on the porch in a rocking chair, fanning herself in the summer heat. He walked up to her and introduced himself. "I know who you is" she answered. "You the boy that's got it all figured out" "No" Nate said, earnestly protesting as he stood in the sunshine and dirt. "Not by a long shot" "Come on up and sit. You got questions for the old woman" He climbed the prefab cement steps that didn't really fit the house and took the other rocking chair. "Can more than one person be all the same person?" Nate asked. She chuckled under her breath. "For instance, are you and Mama Ruth and Eva all the same person?" "Maiden, mother and crone? You think it's that easy?" "No. But I think it's true. You may not be exactly the same person but you kinda are." "But that ain't the person you asking about it, is it boy?" Grandma asked pointedly. "No" Nate admitted. "A redheaded man and a red headed boy?" "Yeah" "Now that's different. He made the choice he made and it is what it is. He left here and went there. He has to live by their rules" Nate looked down, profoundly sad. "I get that they are the same person. I knew that all ready but does the Ian I know, is he still there or is it just the grown up? Is my Ian still my Ian or not" The look was sympathetic. But she did not answer. "Does the magic here change time?" "That's what magic is, boy. Changing things from what they are to what they should be." "LOve really does suck. Did he know who i was, the Professor?" She shrugged. "Who did he go to?" Nate thought about it. It was him. It was to his younger self and then to Nate. That made him feel better but the loss was real and it hurt. In the end, though, people come and go, they live and die, come into your life and out. But going back to the little cabin was depressing and lonely. By the next morning, Nate was questioning why he was there. It had not been meant to be permanent and he no longer knew what his purpose was. He went back and thanked the old woman and then went to Mama Ruth and asked her if they would take him to the interstate tomorrow. She had offered when he first came and now he was taking them up on the offer. He was continuing on his journey. It was time.