LEARNING TO FLY

My website is finally operational. Three long months! I may even make enough money from it to pay for all the charges I've incurred as well as the monthly ones to keep it going.

http://www.macmillanbooks.com is now a working site. It has all of my novels and collections that you can order. I understand the gate company and credit card company want your 1st born, last born, and your mother's virginity; but maybe you'll be willing to cut me some slack and use it. I promise that there won't be any manual recounts or legal delaying manoeuvres to prevent you from ordering <G>.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Father Ralph smiled at me as he seated himself in the chair across from me. I sat on the couch. I thanked whatever star had decided to tell me to straighten up the house. The dildo was bleached and back under my mattress. All the tin foil and dirty raincoats were under coffee grounds in the garbage can. The nice, normal, middle-class Edwardses lived in this house again - father, son, and mother.

"Henry and Jimmy told me what you boys have been doing since yesterday."

I colored and looked at the twins standing on either side of the priest in surprise. There were some things I thought needed to be left out of the confessional - namely, the who the confessor committed a church-defined sin with. Especially when that who was me. I reined in my galloping fears hard, taking command before I gave them to the priest across from me and let him beat me with them.

"What did they tell you?" I managed calmly.

His smile broadened as he sensed a sinner trying to worm his way out of culpability. "You've relieved each other sexually several times - you three boys and one of your friends."

"Relieved?" This was starting off sounding like the mush Henry used to rationalize doing what he wanted to do to Jimmy. I allowed myself to wonder briefly what new twists of thinking the church had come up with since this same man patiently explained to me when I was twelve that jerking off wasn't a bad sin, except that it could lead a boy into far more sinful thoughts. I was willing to bet that `relieving each other' qualified in Rome as a somewhat more sinful thought than he seemed to be cataloguing it.

"Mark, we're men here," the priest slipped easily in, sure of his superiority. "We don't have to hide behind trees as Adam and Eve did when God came looking for them."

"I didn't know God was looking for me, Father."

"He's always looking for each and every one of us, my son." He managed to smile beatifically.

When I was twelve and thirteen, I thought his smile was beautiful. I loved Father Ralph as only a boy can love what he thinks is holy and beautiful. But that was before he went out to Montana for a year and I realized holy mother church was neither holy nor very maternal.

"Like I told Henry earlier, I'm not interested in hearing sermons, Father," I jumped in, cutting him off. "You pretty obvious want to talk to me - so, why don't we can the shit and get to the chase?"

The smile fell from his face. Father Ralph wasn't used to Catholics who weren't unhappy with having fallen away from holy mother church even for a moment. It took a lot of the wind out of his sails. "Mark, you and the boys here engaged in sexual activity yesterday."

"We did?" I had porked both of them - that should have kept them quiet.

"Mark, we're all men-"

"Father, you just used that line. What is this all about?"

"I'm concerned for your immortal soul."

"I'm not. Cut to the chase, Father."

"You're making this all very difficult."

"I'm trying to get you to stop beating around the bush."

He sighed, probably counted to ten, and squared his shoulders. "All right. Any sex act outside of marriage is a sin, do you remember that?"

"I remember a lot of shit I'm trying hard to unlearn as I face up to reality."

"This is reality - God's reality. But there are sins, and then there are sins-" I remembered a line far too similar to this one from his lips when I was twelve - back when he was talking to me about jerking off. Helping a friend out - someone you're bonded with - by providing him a receptacle for his lust. That's a worse sin than masturbating - but it's nowhere as bad as enjoying that lust. By lusting for such a coupling itself. Or by parading your own lust before others.

"Venial and mortal sins, Father?"

He nodded.

"So, it's almost okay to suck a guy off as long as you don't get off doing it?"

He frowned. "You make it sound venial, Mark."

"And letting him fuck you is almost okay as long as you don't blow a load while he's doing it?"

"Mark!" Father Ralph's cute, boyish face was ablaze.

I realized I liked blowing the man's fucking mind. "Come on, Father. You're splitting hairs and we both know it. You want to make sex sinful - but then you divide it up into different grades of sin. You want anything homosexual to be even more sinful than fucking a girl - but there are all those gradations again. Why is sex sinful, Father?"

"Because God instituted marriage for man that he might harness his animal lusts - and find his spiritual home. Anything outside the boundaries He put on us is a sin."

"This is sounding more and more like trying to decide how many angels can sit on the head of a pin to me." I smiled at him and didn't feel at all pleased or happy - except that I was bugging him. "You said we're all men here. Okay. It's damned natural for a guy to get a hard-on. I guess you'd say that's his animal lust kicking in - but it's as natural as the birds and the bees, Father Ralph.

"Jimmy here decides he'll help out his brother who very naturally is hard as shit. He sucks him off. He's probably scared as shit that first time, but he does it. Henry likes it and he does too. One thing leads to another, and he's letting Henry put his cock in his ass. They both like that too - but they're scared as shit too because they've got some priest telling them it's all wrong to get off on getting it on with the same sex-"

"Monsignor got me first," Jimmy mumbled. "I showed Henry what it was all about-"

"Shut up," Father Ralph hissed, turning to glare at one of the perfect example of Aryan youth beside him.

I stared in amazement at the change in Father Ralph. I had thought him beautiful since I first met him. But, at this moment, he was a rabid dog snapping and growling at Jimmy - and just as ugly. And as frightening. "You've been inducted into the brotherhood of Christian Soldiers."

"So, Father Ralph's buddy, Monsignor Robertson, fucked you the first time," I said to Jimmy. "And you showed Henry something a whole lot better than a hand job or, even a blow job?"

He nodded abjectly.

I grinned and turned back to my parish priest. "How many young guys here in northern Virginia have you inducted into this queer shit, Father?"

"Mark," the youth pastor of St. Thomas Henry hissed, turning to glare at me, trying to intimidate me with his anger.

"That won't work, Father. I'm not a twelve year old worshiping at your feet any more. I've grown up. I live in the real world."

"Real world?" He laughed. "The world of Satan? Mark, your soul is in real danger of eternal damnation."

"Why? Because I don't click my heels together when you tell me to? Because I see the world as it is and try to live in it the best I can, enjoying what I can?"

"A world without God?"

"I don't mind God being in it," I answered quietly. "Only, He hasn't told me to stop doing anything I've been doing."

"He has. The church is the voice of God."

"More like the voice of men, Father. Your Monsignor Robertson fucking a very under-aged Jimmy here, you with the boys who didn't know any better and let themselves get too close to you. Sounds like pedophilia to me"

He stared at me. "You're talking heresy."

"Because you say so, Father?" I shook my head. "I've got a brain. If there is a God, I suspect he'd like me to use it instead of blindly following some other man. That's a lot better than a man who fucks young boys and convinces them it's all right as long as they don't get hard or come while he's getting off in their ass."

"I don't have to listen to you defile me," he growled, pushing himself out of his chair. "You're close to being an abomination, Mark Edwards. Your soul will burn in hell if you don't accept God in your life now."

"Your God?" I asked. "The one that lets you and Monsignor Robertson get away with getting off on young boys?" I smiled grimly. "You're a pedophile, Father Ralph. Your Monsignor Robertson is too. You fuck little boys.

"You don't give them a chance to decide what to do with their sexual needs. You use them and leave them confused as hell - or you give them some crazy explanation that won't hold water if they ever really try to think it through." I smiled as I rose and looked down into his face. "I don't think you can judge me, Father Ralph," I told him. "I don't think you're sane enough to see anything like it really is."

"I'm going to leave," he growled, his face white with rage. "And I'm going to have a long talk with your parents about getting counseling for you-"

"And I'll tell them, the papers, and your Bishop you"re fucking the kids you"re supposed to be helping.'

"You'll never be able to prove that."

"Maybe not." I grinned. "But the press won't care. All I've got to do is tell them is you got to me when I was a kid."

He stared at me for long moments, trying to scare me. When he knew he couldn't intimidate me, his face fell - the facade of righteous indignation shattering. He turned to Henry, a beaten man who knew he was bested. "I'll find you another home by the end of the day. I'll have you out of this den of inequity by this evening-"

Henry glanced over at Jimmy, communicating with him in a way I didn't see. "I don't think so, Father," he said quietly. "Mark isn't really bad at all." A small grin tugged at his lips. "He's pretty nice."

Father Ralph looked from him to Jimmy and back at me. He sighed finally. "It's only until the end of the week. Just don't let him lead you further into sin. You're clean now - but you've got to learn from your mistakes too."

"We'll be good, Father," Jimmy told him and I was surprised he could keep his face straight as he met the priest's gaze.

"You weren't very respectful to Father Ralph, Mark," Henry told me as I returned to the family room from showing the priest out. His voice was somewhere between being accusatory and a snigger.

"He wasn't very respectful to me," I answered. "I don't get turned on to people coming into my house and telling me what I can and can't think. That's especially true when the fucking bastard's floating in some La La land and is hellbent on convincing me his fantasy is reality."

"Are you that sure he's wrong?" Henry asked, probing me.

"Look. I get hard just thinking about cock - about sex." I grinned slyly. "I'm getting that way with you two just in the room and we aren't even close to doing anything. I haven't been struck by lightening. I haven't grown horns and a tail. I'm just Mark Edwards of Falls Church VA but I know a hell of a lot about myself I didn't know last week. Things I like to do and have done to me. I just can't believe that makes me evil or bad.

"You guys beat each other if one of you gets hard while the other one is banging his ass. I just don't see it-" I remembered Frank getting off on the paddling earlier. "Not if it doesn't turn you on," I appended.

"But if it's wrong, you've got to get rid of the devil inside you somehow," Henry mumbled suspiciously.

I faced Jimmy. "You like cock, don't you? I mean a hard, throbbing one lights you up real fast-" He reddened but nodded. "Does that make you any less a person than some guy who gets hot for tits?"

"We aren't talking about being more or less a man, Mark," Henry interrupted. "We're talking salvation."

"Salvation. If God makes me so that I like cock, does that mean he won't accept me like I am?"

He stared at me, trying to work his way through the inconsistencies I had found in Christianity a long time ago and, when I couldn't find a way to gloss over them, I stopped going to church.

"How're you going to know if you're saved, Henry? God telling you or some man telling you?"

He reddened but still couldn't come up with an answer for me. I plowed on. "So if God accepts you as you are - and you're a pretty good guy who just happens to like cock - are you saved or do you have to have some church leader define how you stand with God?"

Silence grew between us and Jimmy made a decision for himself. Henry finally said: "I'm going to have to think about this a while." He pushed himself from the chair and looked at his brother. "You want to come to the room with me?"

Jimmy smiled sheepishly. "I think I'll stay here with Mark."

Henry blushed but said nothing as he went to the room.

"You want to get into something?" Jimmy asked as soon as he heard the door close.

"Do you?"

"Yeah. I think that'd be pretty nice."

"Are you going to have Henry trying to beat the devil out of you afterwards?"

"That can be sort of arousing." He grinned. "I might have him work my ass over now and then with our paddle - but that'll just be for fun from now on." He slipped his sneakers off and stood to unbutton his shirt.

I smiled back, pushing my shoes off and pulling my t-shirt over my head where I sat. "What're you up for?" I asked.

"Just about anything. But I'd really appreciate a good fuck first off - one that gets me off."

I laughed and lifted my ass off the couch to push my shorts and briefs down my legs. "If you're hell-bent on being an abomination, Jimmy, you're going to have to learn foreplay goes before the fuck," I told him as I stood up and held my arms out to him. He came into them and smiled as his lips started for mine.

I did not look to be a happy trooper when Frank appeared at the sliding doors and looked in on the twins and myself. I got up and let him in. "Something the matter?"

"Yeah." He looked down at his feet and, as if on command, they crossed the threshold. "I've spent half the afternoon under Rafe. And we're here with the Hitlerjungen," he said softly glancing at the twins behind me. "Who just happen to be naked and looking good enough to start tasting."

"They aren't that bad." I grinned. "Actually, they're a lot of fun once you get to know them."

"One part of them especially," he frowned. "Shit, how can you be so fucking happy being queer? Dropping your shorts at the first sight of a dick?"

"It takes a brain operation," I dead-panned but couldn't hold it. "And some really outstanding friends.'

He almost smiled. "My parents would kill me if they found out - and Rafe. Jesus!"

"Who's going to tell them? Me? The twins?" I paused to give the carrot I was about to hold out to him the effect I wanted it to have. "Was he good?"

"Yeah, he's good. He's humongous and he's got staying power." His face dropped. "I guess I understand how Luke must have felt now. You're queer and some guys know it; they aren't bad looking - so, why not?" He glanced at the twins on the couch behind us and smiled tentatively. "Let's go get me porked some more," he mumbled.

Jimmy patted his end of the couch as Frank approached and I smiled as my buddy veered toward him.

I sat back down in the chair nearest Henry at the other end of the couch.

Jimmy had accepted himself despite Father Ralph's attempts of the afternoon. He liked cock and accepted it. He was going on from there, starting with his fixation with Frank - or, more probably, his extra skin.

Henry was the one having problems.

I didn't know much about the two of them: how they ended up in the church camp this Monsignor Robertson operated in Montana, or what had happened to the two of them from then to now. Henry was obviously the one who had held them together. He had taken charge and dominated his brother out there on the fields of amber. From the little they had said so far gave me the idea that was rough on the kid he had been.

He accepted the bullshit this Monsignor Robertson drilled into their heads - from the racism to the convoluted ideology that permitted a guy to get fucked but prevented him from enjoying it. He bought it hook, line, and sinker - becoming a kid who became a man with a mission.

He bought it; but I was sure he didn't really believe it. When it was the fact of every day existence, he lived it - just as Jimmy had. But, out of the camp and among people who faced reality every day, his acceptance was collapsing. Like Frank, he was having problems accepting that. Unlike Frank, he had a lot more hooey to slough off before he could reach out and accept reality.

Jimmy was more like me. When he had to accept what he was, he bit the bullet and went with the flow. Liking cock meant a lot of the other things he had been taught was bullshit. He was able to slough off most of that, again going with the flow. In a real sense, he was better prepared to accept reality than Henry was - just as I was over Frank in that regard.

I grinned to myself when I saw Jimmy's fingers find their way to Frank's knee and, after a moment, Frank's hand went to his thigh. Henry frowned, watching the same action I did.

"We can't just let ourselves go," he grumbled as Jimmy's hand kneaded Frank's thigh closer to the hem of his shorts. "Hedonism is humanism and that's a denial of God."

Frank was following suit, a bulge beginning to appear in the front of his teal Inc's that went so well with his olive complexion and white t-shirt.

"Henry," I said, pulling him out of his mind set.

He looked over at me and I almost got lost in those ice-blue orbs.

"Nothing's all black and white. Jimmy gets off on sex. You, Frank, and I do too."

"That wrong. It's abomination."

"What's wrong with it?"

"God punishes us for it - like he did the Sodomites."

"Has he punished you - or Jimmy?"

"No," he answered slowly.

"The Bible says he made us in His image. That includes gays like us-"

"I'm not gay. I can't be!"

"You sure like ass. You even like cock," I shot back and he hung his head. "If he created us in His image, is he going to reject us because we follow our instincts?"

"We're supposed to control our animal instincts - making ourselves more like Him."

 "Why? Guys who get off on girls don't get that drilled into their heads - they get told they're committing a venial sin and are given three Hail Marys or a couple of Our Fathers as acts of contrition. Why are we committing a mortal sin when we follow our instincts?"

"I don't know," he mumbled.

"What about the priest that humped Jimmy that first time - probably both of you? He was the man in authority and you were miles from anybody. You probably weren't any older than thirteen, either. Are you going to tell me his sin wasn't any worse than the guy who gets between his girlfriend's legs?"

"He-" He shivered. "It was a punishment. Jimmy did something wrong. I-" He stopped, unable to voice that memory.

"Sex shouldn't be a punishment." I smiled, remembering how good cock felt, how a tight male body hot with desire under my hands felt. "It's too good to be a punishment," I added with feeling.

"If we subtract what we like from what God tells us to do," he tried, pulling more of some sicko's thinking out to air, "we're denying God. We're denying God's plan for us."

"Who sets out this plan, Henry?"

He stared at me. "God does," he said finally.

"Does he? Did he tell you it was wrong to relieve an Indian, a black, or a Mexican? Or did some man?"

"Monsignor Robertson explained God's plan for the world and how we were his elite soldiers to bring his plan to man."

"A man who fucked you when you barely knew what to do with your meat told you all this?" I gazed at him. "I'll bet when the Monsignor Robertsons of this world rule they plan on putting queers on deserted islands like that crazy Senator from North Carolina does." I smiled bitterly. "That'll include you and your brother along with Frank and me. And they'll go on, messing up the heads of little boys while they're starving you and me in the concentration camps we'll have been put in."

I put my hand on his thigh and he stared at it.

"This is going to be wrong," he mumbled uncomfortably a moment later. On the other end of the couch from him, our companions weren't interested in our dissection of ideology. Jimmy had Frank's pole worked out of the hem of his briefs and riding his thigh. He was stroking it slowly while he nibbled at my buddy's nipples through his t-shirt.

"Will it?" I asked and Henry stared at me, working through all the confusion that had been put in his head for years.

"I don't know, Mark," he signed and reached for my leg. "I hope not. I hope you're right - because I've been wanting this since Jimmy came back to the room this afternoon with a well-fucked ass."

He stood and came toward me. "I want sex," he said huskily. "I want to suck dick and get fucked all night long and stop planning for a tomorrow that makes less and less sense." He knelt between my legs, unzipped my shorts, and began to ease them over my ass.

"Tomorrow comes and we've got to be prepared for it," I answered as I raised my ass and felt both shorts and briefs move past my cheeks. "But there sure isn't any reason why we can't enjoy ourselves while we're waiting for it to come."

He looked up at me and I smiled. My cock was hard in his hand and waiting.

He pushed between my legs, spreading them, and wasted no time before trying to swallow what was still my favorite part of myself. I moaned as he fielded my ballsack, already enjoying the joy ride we were starting on.

As I was shutting my eyes, I saw Jimmy had Frank out of his clothes and was on his back with my best buddy leaning over him. He had Frank's foreskin between his teeth and was pulling it over its cockhead; Frank was simply sliding his lips down the boy's cock. I started to settle back, letting the lapping of the sexual waves rock me and lull me into orbit.

I opened my eyes to watch the close-cropped blond head bobbing on my cock and feel Henry's fingers exploring my chest. I wanted him too. "Let's get where I can do you too," I mumbled softly, pulling his face off me.

I moved to lay my legs against the back of the chair and my head hung over the front. "Come back here,' I told him when I was situated.

Frank was now lying back against the couch, humping Jimmy's face, his eyes squeezed shut as Henry returned to me and buried his face in my balls.

I reached out and grabbed both his cheeks to pull his cock to me.

I was floating between reality and whatever it is that complete involvement in sex does for a guy. Between Henry's legs, I saw Frank go rigid and pull Jimmy face all the way down on his tool.

Henry's balls started riding his shaft close and tight but he had enough of me past his tonsils he wasn't doing anything but moaning liquidly. It was as happy a sound as the one I was making.

"Tie me up," Frank told Jimmy across the room from where my twin was busily showing me his version of the fine art of sword-swallowing. "I want you to fuck me."

My hands were on Henry's ass, guiding him as my fingers kneaded his cheeks. He went rigid, every muscle tense, his cheeks flexed, and his cockhead tried to reach my stomach. He raised off me slightly and grunted as he shuddered into orgasm.

"Jesus," Henry mumbled, burying my nose in his balls and shooting ropes directly into my gullet.

Moments later, he was pulling away from me even as I instinctively tightened my lips on his rod to hold him. I got his last rope even as I was licking his cockhead before I released it.

"That was awesome," I told him as he collapsed to his knees in front of me.

"Yeah," he grinned, bending over to trail his tongue over my chest onto my abdomen.

"Shit," he grumbled and sat up on his haunches just as he found by belly button. I looked up past his still hard cock at him and saw his frown. "I was enjoying it."

"Why the hell shouldn't you?" I groused, wanting some consideration where I thought I needed it most right then.

"It's wrong. It makes me queer - an abomination."

Frank moaned loudly and Henry glanced over his shoulder to see the black-haired man leaning over the couch, his hands tied behind him, and Jimmy slipping his pole into him.

"You want to do that to me?" Henry asked and I turned so I could see behind him.

"You want me to?"

He looked down at his erection and nodded.

"You want me to tie you up and fuck you?" I asked, establishing just what it was he wanted.

Again he nodded.

I twisted around to sit up and my eyes met his, searching them. "You want it, Henry - or do you think that's what you deserve?"

He looked at me questioningly. "I never thought about it like that." He glanced back at Jimmy moving slowly in and out of Frank. "I want it, Mark," he said, making his decision.

"I can make it more interesting if you want," I said huskily, remembering how both Frank and I got off on the dildo and how my best friend got off on being spanked.

"Let me take this in small doses," he chuckled. "I'll just stick with being tied up this time, okay?"

I hurried to my room and retrieved the clothesline from under the bed. When I got back to the family room, Henry had moved beside the other boys and was watching his brother stroking Frank into orgasm and both of them grinding against each other. "Want to watch?" I asked moving in beside him.

He shook his head slowly. "I want you to fuck me. I want to come with your dick in me-" He shivered. "I want to suck on Frank's dick too," he added softly.

"Anything to please," I said brightly and took his hand. It took no time to tie it to its mate behind him. I rubbed the line against his cheeks and he shuddered. I reached around his hip and found his cock dripping. "You liked that, didn't you?"

He shut his eyes and nodded.

"Spread your legs a little," I told him and looped the line around his meat and balls, running it between his legs. "Get down on your knees!" I commanded and took his arm to help him get into position.

He stared back at me as I looped the line around each ankle several times, securing him. "You want it, don't you, Henry?"

He nodded.

"Slurp on Frank's meat while I get a rubber on me and, if you do a good job on him, I'll give it to you."

He ducked under Frank's body and Jimmy eased the tightness of the rope on Frank to give his brother free access to him.

I pushed myself to my feet and found the bag of condoms where Frank's twin had left them.

Jimmy was giving Frank a slow fuck - long strokes where he pulled back the entire length of the shaft until the flange escaped the assmuscle and slipped gently back in so Frank could feel each ridge along that shaft as it entered him. Frank was just moaning with the pleasure.

Henry had his ass hiked in welcome to my return and his cheek rode Frank's abdomen as he rode the rocking motion his brother's movement was giving Frank's dick.

My buddy's face was turned toward me as I knelt behind Henry, his eyes glassy and his lips opened, mumbling incoherently. I put my cock in place and reached around Henry's hip as I pushed into his welcoming ass.

He was hard and drooling. On my downstroke, my fingers pressed against his balls, telling me my twin was already close. I grinned at how hungry he was and leaned over his back so I could kiss Jimmy.