The usual disclaimers apply. This is copyright material.

For readers who've just arrived, it's Cambridge and it's November 24, 1956, around five in the morning before The Game (with Yale, for the uninitiated), and after a hot date with his French prof, our narrator is getting some sleep at last. But in that sleep . . . what dreams may come . . . must give us pause. As he's finding out.

At any rate, this is an amusingly (I hope) lurid dream sequence. I'm blaming all those dreadful Sax Rohmer and H. Rider Haggard novels I devoured as a youth for the Fine Writing. Enjoy. No more excursions to the Land of Nod in episode nine.

Comments to dorsalslit@hotmail.com. Thanks for the feedback.

CUMMING OF AGE AT HARVARD. PART EIGHT.

I stepped into the darkness. The door into the Chapel closed behind me as silently as it had opened. A patch of moonlight entered the chamber from a square crystal skylight high above, and, after my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I saw that the Chapel was a perfect twenty-foot cube with black basalt walls and a slate floor. Then the moon went out. A light flickered in the distance, and I stepped over to the opposite wall where, in a central alcove and on a stone plinth, a white wax candle burned in a heavy silver candelabrum. But not with the familiar golden candle-glow. This candle burned an intense scarlet.

Try as I might, I couldn't look away. I could only stand before it, transfixed, feeling the power of its deep red light. The longer I stared, the more sharply the light exerted control, as if my will were becoming one with the flame. Without knowing why, I unbuttoned my 501's, pushed them down my thighs, and stepped free. And, without looking down, I knew that my cock was thickening, lengthening, also as if in obedience to the will of the flame. Naked now, I picked up the candlestick and, instantly, the Chapel filled with the sound of rushing winds. Only the sound, though. I felt nothing, and the candle flame burned more steadily than before.

I felt lost, bewildered, afraid. Nothing about the situation made any sense. But in a weird way, it seemed reasonable for me to be here, in this place. I held the candelabrum high and walked slowly about the dark chamber. Carvings in the stone, hard to make out in the distance, decorated the walls near the top, up where you'd expect a cornice. I raised the candle, peered hard, and then knew what I was seeing high above me.

A carved frieze of large, erect cocks crowned each of the four walls. Dozens of identical penises, upright, each with its frenulum to the front, each bearing the same uncomfortable peculiarity: three thin skewers piercing its skin, horizontally at regular intervals. However bizarre a sight, the frieze seemed familiar, and I knew that--somewhere or other--I'd seen something just like it. But now my memory wasn't working, so I gave it up and let the red candlelight take me where it would.

The door to the Chapel had vanished, and now a black marble staircase leading steeply down had appeared, its surface gleaming scarlet with reflections from the candle I held high. I began to descend and, as I did, felt a solid heft and swing to my genitals. Glancing down at the black stairs and at my crotch, I saw the reason. I wasn't erect, but my cock hung large and heavy, three times its usual size, dark brown with a deep purple helmet. My scrotum was nearly the size of a bull's, darkly pendant, and it slapped against my thighs with every step of my descent.

As the crimson light and I descended, the sound of the wind diminished, then died away. The steep stairway still went into darkness and silence, and our descent continued for what seemed a very long time. Then we faced a black wall deeply engraved with the alchemical symbol for Taurus, the bull. The red light intensified. The four notes I'd heard outside the Chapel sounded, and the wall parted to reveal a spacious, low-ceilinged circular room.

At regular intervals around the perimeter, nine seven-branched silver candelabra projected from the basalt wall, each supported by a muscular living arm unattached to any human body. The arms moved slightly from time to time, and the room's shadows followed suit. A soft but deep humming sound vibrated from somewhere below. In the center of the room stood a low, square block of black marble--an altar of some sort? Or a catafalque? At each corner of the block a slim silver pillar ran from floor to ceiling, and at each pillar stood a human figure.

The chamber glowed from the golden light of the sixty-three candles, and my eyes took awhile to adjust. Four notes sounded again, apparently a signal for me to approach the altar and its four sentinels. The scarlet candlelight led me to the center of the room where the figures, guardians of the altar, met my gaze. Up until now, ever since I'd entered the Chapel I'd felt isolated, simply a passive, dumbfounded observer of my remarkable surroundings. No more. Now as the four naked youths and I exchanged looks, I felt comforted, even beloved.

They seemed about my age, slim, well-built, radiant. The two pale guardians might have stepped from a Renaissance painting--a Correggio Ganymede, a Caravaggio St. John. The two darker youths hinted at a more exotic background in their coloring and carriage. The taller of the two smiled and beckoned me to him. More muscular than his fellows, he wore his hair in a thick black braid down his back. His green-black eyes complemented his olive skin, and a dusting of dark fuzz lightly covered his cheeks and upper chest. I recognized him--a Fayum mummy portrait returned to life.

When I approached, he placed both his hands on mine, then took from me the candelabrum that had guided me here. He spoke in a melodious voice, "I bear the light--call me Lucifer," as he placed the candle on the altar. Dispossessed of the light, I felt drained and empty, but the guardian embraced me, touched his cheek against mine, then turned me to meet the other three youths.

As they moved forward, I noted, besides their beauty, three things: each had shaved pubes, each wore only a broad black leather band encircling his ball sac, forcing his testicles to emerge tight beneath the band, and each bore a distinctive object.

"I bear the cup. Call me Zagreus," said the first of the three youths, light-skinned and blue-eyed. Golden hair fell about his face in tight ringlets, and his legs were covered with fine yellow hair as well. He held out to me a cup of gold. I took it and saw that its decoration, in repouseé, consisted of intricately knotted serpents that seemed to move beneath my fingers. He motioned me to drink, and after I'd drained the cup of warm, red, aromatic wine, I noticed with some alarm that the Greek letter theta, for thanatos, was engraved on the bottom of the cup.

The youth who called himself Lucifer gestured that I was to recline on the black marble slab and helped me to do so, so that I lay with the candelabrum at my head, the four silver pillars at each corner of the square. The altar's surface radiated warmth, and I sank slightly into it, as if it were soft black leather. He placed a crimson velvet pillow under my head, a crimson silken pillow under my buttocks. "Are you comfortable?" he asked. I nodded my assent as another youth approached.

"I bear the balsam. Call me Cyparissus." His closely cropped copper-colored hair set off his green eyes, his delicate white skin, his large brown nipples. He carried a silver box set with scarlet stones, cabochon rubies, carnelians, garnets, and carbuncles that glowed dimly in the flickering candlelight. Smiling, he placed the jeweled balsamarium on the altar beside me, opened its lid, and with his forefinger anointed my eyes, my ears, my nostrils, and my mouth with a pale, fragrant ointment. Then with his thumb, he placed an orange unguent on my nipples, my penis, my scrotum, and my anus. I spread my legs, raised my knees, and thrust my hips forward on the pillow to allow him easier access to my secret parts.

As I did so, I saw with astonishment that a mat of dense hair was spreading on my belly, down my thighs, creeping up my chest. As I watched, tendrils of coarse black hair emerged from my crotch and pubic region, and above, around my nipples which were themselves hardening and broadening. Thick hair spiralled around the base of my cock, and my chest and thighs grew as shaggy as a beast's. Every place Cyparissus had anointed began to tingle, to vibrate with quick life. The heavy cock that had appeared on my body began to pulse into its erection. I could feel my testicles moving slowly about, repositioning themselves in their taurine scrotum. My anus burned, yearned. As I lay there, drowsy and happy, I felt it relax, then contract, then relax completely like an anemone opening to the warm tropical sea.

My entire body gave way to the sensations flooding it from every anointed portal. I began drifting to Elysium. My penis had achieved an enormous size, swelling well past my navel, moving like a thick snake up my abdomen towards my chest, still growing and, as it continued to enlarge, leaving a trail of sticky moisture on the thick fur now covering my belly. Dimly, I grew aware that yet another youth, the most comely of the three, had neared my side. The darkest and youngest of the guardians, his jet curls clung tight against his head, his lovely long penis shone pure black.

"I bear the cords. Call me Libertus." He proffered his gift on a crystal salver: four thickly braided scarlet ropes gleamed like silk in the candlelight. Then he placed the salver upon the altar. Each of the four young men took a cord, then stepped over to one or another of the silver pillars at the corners of the slab on which I lay. And now each of the youths stood proudly erect, his penis pressed tightly against his hairless belly, his testicles tight against the leather band that restrained them from pulling up into his body.

I relaxed against my pillows, giving myself up to whatever was to come. At each wrist, at each ankle, I felt the soft ropes circling and drawing tighter. I watched lazily as the two guardians at my ankles moved my legs farther apart, spreading them toward the corners of the slab. The other two youths held my wrists while I moved my arms over my head toward the opposite side of the altar. Then each youth attached a rope to one of the silver pillars, again firmly but not tightly. I was spread-eagled on the black marble, helpless, happy. The humming noise filled the chamber, and the nine candelabra moved slowly to the sound.

My penis had stopped growing and lay pulsing on my stomach to my slow heartbeat. God, it was huge. The bell-shaped purple glans had swollen to the size of a clenched fist, and the shaft--now a deep mahogany--was as long as my forearm. Clear fluid dripped from its slit onto my shaggy chest. My tab of foreskin, engorged, fell to one side of the frenulum, and my ball sac lay on the slab's surface between my spread legs. As I watched I could see its testicles slide slowly toward my body as the scrotum began to pull up. I was no longer simply "I", but the bearer of massive, expectant genitalia awaiting some consummation known only to themselves.

The two youths at my feet still smiled, but their gaze was fixed on my altered body. Their smiles had become fixed, their eyes glassy, their breath short and sharp while their own genitals, of a goodly size but dwarfed by the appendage on my body, pulsed in rhythm to my own penis. Then I became aware of another presence in the circular chamber, a shadowy figure approaching the slab to which I was bound.

Lucifer and Cyparissus had moved together to stand at one side of my feet, their arms about each others' shoulders. On the other side of the altar Zagreus and Libertus embraced at the waist. A solidly-built bearded man appeared between the two couples at my feet, his dark eyes lightly exploring my body, his gaze like a lover's touch as it moved about my passive, open figure.

He, too, was nude except for a pendant on his chest bearing, again, the alchemical symbol of Taurus, the bull. A blue tattoo encircled his left nipple. His body exuded kindness, confidence, but his shape remained strangely indistinct. What I saw most clearly was a large coffer he held before him and then placed upon the low altar, between my outstretched legs. The coffer seemed ancient, battered, its dark gray metallic surface discolored by age. The figure spoke in a resonant voice. "I bear the image. You may call me Ophiuchus."

The four guardians joined hands behind him as he opened the semi-cylindrical lid of the container, taking from it an object wrapped in the folds of an ancient Coptic fabric, worn and many times mended. Unwrapped, the object appeared to be a rectangular box, lacquered black and crimson in an intricate pattern. This, too, Ophiuchus placed upon the altar. Then after a long pause, he opened the inner box. The four youths, as one, stepped back. The humming sound grew even louder.

The officiant, for that was clearly the role of Ophiuchus, lifted another cloth-wrapped object from the lacquered box, removing its white samite covering to reveal a deep green cylinder which he cradled lightly between his open palms. The jade cylinder, perhaps a foot long and three or four inches in diameter, bore a regular pattern of stylized scales carved on its surface. A golden cap set with a single vermilion stone tipped one end of the thick rod. Ophiuchus closed his eyes, as did the four youths behind him, and intoned softly,

"Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco.

Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco.

Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco."

At the first intonation the cylinder glowed with a faint emerald light which grew brighter with each subsequent repetition until, by the third and last, the cylinder had suffused the entire chamber with a pulsing verdant dimness punctuated by the sixty-three candles in their nine candelabra. The humming sound faded away, and in the sudden silence Ophiuchus spoke loudly,

"Et Draco factus est."

The silence fell again, and as the jade cylinder slowly lost its illumination, an astonishing transformation took place. While the six of us watched, the jade became flesh, lengthening, thickening, softening, until Ophiuchus held a living serpent in his hands. Involuntarily, in fear, I pulled against my restraints, which tightened against my struggle. Then, with no choice but to be attentive, I sank back to observe the serpent as it moved in the celebrant's grasp. Four feet in length and of a thickness much greater than my wrist, it writhed gently, coiling and uncoiling about the arms of Ophiuchus. Its head, roughly triangular, quested about and then seemed to settle its gaze upon me. Its golden eyes captured mine, and from its mouth issued a scarlet bifurcated serpent's tongue--but broad and thick. Instantly all fear left me as I admired its beauty. I felt myself opening to the serpent's unstated intention. My monstrous penis sensed a purpose in this ceremony.

Then Ophiuchus named the serpent.

"Ecce Ophis."

And placed him, warm and smooth, upon my chest. He rested for a moment in that shaggy nest, then moved upwards, coiling about my neck until his head was near my now-closed eyes. His tongue flicked the aromatic ointment that Cyparissus had placed on my eyelids, and as it did so, I had a sudden vision of myself, as if from a distance, bound to the altar. I saw with immense clarity, through closed lids, Ophis and his soft, heavy presence, then the dark chamber with the priest and his four attendants, and finally, circling beyond the altar, sixteen powerful men whose attention was fixed upon the ritual taking place before them.

Ophis flicked my ears, first the right and then the left, and as he did so, I could hear with sharp animal clarity. His soft flicks were a secret language whispered just to me. The humming sound vibrating in the chamber was now the sound of soft chanting by the sixteen magi surrounding us. Then the serpent's tongue touched my nostrils, and the odor of sandalwood and frankincense drifting on the air of the chamber, mingled with the serpent's warm scent of rivers and forests, penetrated my sensorium.

Ophis touched my mouth with his tongue, and my lips opened to give him entrance, my jaw relaxing as his warm, fragrant tongue toyed with mine. I tasted a sweetness of cinnamon as he tongued the back of my throat, and I opened to admit as much of him as I could. As I raised my head from its pillow in an effort to take more of him into me, I felt the stirring of the serpent on my lower body. Then Ophis withdrew to move further down my chest and lap at each of my nipples in turn.

At first paralyzed by the new sensations shooting through my body, I pushed my chest up and against his tongue as it licked more insistently, first the right nipple--hardening, growing erect and ever more sensitive--and then the left nipple. The left nipple. That was the one. Just as Ophis's attentions to my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth had brought those senses to a life I'd never dreamt of, so now with Ophis's tongue at my left nipple I was approaching a sensual awakening of my entire body that had been unimaginable before now. As I writhed deliciously under his ministrations, I felt a tentative soft touch of his serpent tail on the flared corona of my bull-cock . It throbbed violently in invitation, and, in response, Ophis's long body wrapped coil after coil around my slow-pulsing organ.

His head and magnificent tongue left my chest, approached my wet, oozing glans, and flicked strands of precum from its piss-slit. As he did so, the coils encircling my penis tightened from base to head, from base to head, sending waves of ecstasy everywhere in my body while milking more and more clear fluid from the beast that grew from my shaggy groin. Ophis lapped eagerly at my essences, his tongue vibrating my flesh-tag and the frenulum from which it sprang, tightening and loosening his body, until I thought my senses could bear no more. I heard myself pleading in a tiny voice, "Please. Please. Do me. Finish me. Please. Dear God. Please."

Ophis responded by lapping more of the sticky streamlet of precum emerging from my engorged cockhead, then moving his head down to my scrotum--licking, licking, licking his way around my ball sac, teasing my testicles with his ever more necessary tongue, lapping my perineum, driving me farther and farther out of myself into a place beyond words or names or identities. As my scrotum pulled up and my balls began to enter my body, I was possessed by an urgent craving--that Ophis take me, make me his own, totally. And as his almighty tongue moved closer to my anus, my need overcame me.

Ophis knew. He stopped his movements. I could hear, intensely, the chanting of the sixteen, smell and taste the intoxicating odors filling the chamber, feel Ophis's lithe form caressing my waist, see his emerald head and his golden eyes focused upon my anus. Everything else had vanished or had no meaning. Time seemed to have stopped. Everything was in suspension.

Then I felt a single flicker on my anus. Pause. And another. And another. This was the signal for my brown-pink rosebud to open, to begin to blossom and to live. While my cock continued to drool and pulse, all sensation began to concentrate on my anus as it flowered into life. Again Ophis knew. His tongue lapped circles around my virgin hole while it bloomed open. I had no more language, nor needed any. My need as I whimpered and pulled against my bonds was simple and ever more urgent. Completion. Fulfillment. Ophis in me.

Ophis knew I was ready. His warm, moist organ probed and slowly, softly, cautiously, beautifully entered me. The four scarlet ropes binding me to the altar fell away, and I was suspended with Ophis in a place beyond everything. He was no longer the serpent and I was no longer I. My beloved was mine and I was his. This was fulfillment. We were wholly one in our now-divine forms. As I embraced the radiant man that had been Ophis and he caressed me in return, I felt both our cocks shoot forth wave after wave of warm life, and we sank together into ecstatic unconsciousness.

But then, quickly, consciousness flowed back. I was falling alone, deliriously, down into darkness and cold and the noise of excited voices. I could just make out one familiar sound, a commanding voice in customary full cry:

"You meant that bastard's still in bed. It's fuckin' noon. Let's get the fucker up, and I mean NOW."

And I barely had time to yank the cum-soaked sheet over my nakedness when the door burst open. There stood sweet old Steve, the stocky ex-Marine, in great, good, foul-mouthed spirits. So much for erotic dreams. Real life returned with a rush. Sun poured through the open window. Boy, was I cold. And hungry. And sticky.

"Come on, asshole! Drop your fuckin' cock and grab your fuckin' socks. We've got a fuckin' ballgame to go to!"

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