This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments.

Love It or Leave It

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Fifteen

(Thursday, October 6th, Friday, October 7th)

With Jennette finally gone, and things starting to appear to be under control, it is already past eight in the evening, the dishes are done, Maman has phoned and determined that everything is as it should be, and Raph and I now have time to concentrate on us. We have hardly had one waking moment alone, since Vicky picked us up on 24th Street across from Kensington Avenue Baptist Church, yesterday. Now, we can afford to take a good chunk of time for ourselves.

I'm still dressed in Raph's sweat suit and he has put on a sweater over his t-shirt and we sit down under the big tree in the back yard with our backs resting against the wall of the neighbor's garage, hidden in the shadows with our well-deserved joint.

Raph rests his left hand on my right thigh, as he passes me the dope. "I definitely wouldn't want to be near your mother, when she gets served with that restraining order." He giggles at the thought.

"Yeah, she'll definitely lose her rag." I take a deep toke and hold it. "But considering the shit she's been dishing out lately, I just couldn't care. You know, if Dad would call and tell me that she'd just died, I wouldn't care. I'd probably laugh, if she were to get trampled to death by elephants at the Swope Park Zoo, but other than that, I wouldn't have any reaction, whatsoever. I just couldn't give a flying fuck what happens to her." I take another toke and pass Raph the joint.

Before he inhales, he wants to know, "When did you start hating her?" He takes the first of his two.

"I don't hate her, Raph. I'm indifferent to her." He squeezes my thigh to signal that he understands.

"Hmm, yeah, hatred is much too positive." He giggles again. It only dawns on me now that he is joking, when he takes his second toke looking thoroughly impish.

"Absolument, mon amant, you are so right. Hatred is much too good for that tacky old bitch." I have to scratch the back of my neck; just the thought of her shrill, abrasive voice makes my skin crawl.

"Now, that is bitter, Dan." He is trying not to exhale and talk at the same time.

"Damn right, it's bitter. That woman has only thought of herself since time immemorial. Remember the Halloween party she promised us, when we were in the fifth grade?" I inhale too deeply and have to cough.

"Oh, yeah. Now, that was embarrassing, when all the kids showed up after school and she'd locked us out and pretended that she wasn't home." Raph gives off a weighty sigh and shakes his head.

"Or how about the first time, you were going to spend the night, and she'd gone out and bought khaki-colored sheets and pillow cases, because she didn't want you to ruin her white ones?" We giggle and sputter and snort and laugh out loud until a neighbor yells for us to quiet down. I quickly take the last toke, put out the joint and give it to Raph to swallow.

"And, you're never going to let her forget that, are you?" He kisses the back of my hand.

"I've got it all planned out. I'm going to have her buried in a khaki shroud." I snicker.

"Do they even have khaki shrouds?" He giggles. I snort. "Pssst, the neighbors."

“We can always have one made out of those fuckin’ khaki sheets of hers. And with two holes in one of those pillowcases over her head, she’d look like a member of the Ku Klux Klan with serious laundry problems.” Snicker. Snort. “Pssst!” We try to put a lid on the merriment, but it just doesn’t work. We have to go in because we’re making far too much noise. If someone calls the cops, we’re screwed.

Inside, he locks the back door and still almost laughing takes hold of me. "Do you know what I want?"

"Anything, Raph. Name it."

"I want to go upstairs and have you fuck me for the first time on the blanket.” He becomes dead serious. “And then tomorrow, we burn it in the incinerator, just like they're going to do to Mack."

"Whoa, that's heavy." I give him a quizzical look, as we start for the stairs. "But if that's what you want. We'll do it. Mind if I ask why?"

"It'll round things off. Level things out." He smiles a little sadly and switches off the dining-room light. "I love you so much, that it sometimes makes me ache to think of what you've had to go through, and that you couldn't tell me about it." He then lightens a little and becomes assertive. "I'd like to have that chapter closed, for your sake, for our sake."

As we reach the top of the stairs, I accept the fact that we do have to destroy the blanker to rid our relationship of Mack. I hope it works. We close the drapes in our bedroom, and I slowly remove his sweater, t-shirt and jeans, that he'd put on this morning in such a hurry that he'd forgotten his underwear. I let the sweat suit drop to the floor.

Reaching under the bed, I pull out the blanket roll and contents. His eyes widen at the box with the enema bag and the bottle of glycerin. Knowing that this is entirely new territory for him, I explain while removing the utensils from the box. "This is an ordinary hot-water bottle. We'll put warm water into it, along with some of this. It's glycerin. And when we let the mixture run into your rectum through this nozzle, you'll have to hold it for as long as you can and the glycerin will make your bottom open up and empty. Then we repeat the procedure, shower, and we're all set."

"Can we do it to you, first?" He reminds me of the second-grader who sometimes overestimated his own courage.

"Of course. It feels good." I pull him by the hand to the bathroom. And before he knows it, we're finished, dried and lying on the dusty blanket.

"Lie on your left side and pull your right leg up to your chest, leaving your left leg straight. That's the ticket." I position my mouth at his entrance and taste the sweetness of Raphaël mingled with glycerin. He moans and relaxes a bit more. I lick and penetrate him with my tongue; his erection is palpitating in rhythm with his heartbeat.

Vaseline is next. Tongue and one finger make him growl. "Does it hurt?"

"Are you fucking crazy?" He pants. "Keep going."

My taste buds are experiencing warm, sweet grease, glycerin and petroleum jelly. My nose is registering the intoxicating mix of testosterone laced with Raph's fresh perspiration. His copious lubrication, oozing out of his prick tastes of briny jam. I slurp it loudly into my mouth and spit it onto his hole, spreading it with my flattened tongue. My head is starting to reel.

Although this is only my second time with my tongue in his entrance, I know for sure, that this will become a regular occurrence. My hormones are raging. With more grease, my second index finger takes the place of my tongue, softly stretching his opening. His growl becomes louder. "Are you alright?"

"I think I might faint." He gasps. "But I'm okay."

"Do you want a break?"

"Yeah, sometime next year." He tries to laugh between pants.

I lube my dick and kneel behind his hips. His hole is slightly gaping, so he's ready. Slowly, I roll him onto his back and licking the soles of his feet gently place his legs over my shoulders, and I meet his hole. I slide into him up to the crown of my glans. "Take deep breaths, mon petit." He complies and sucks me in to the hilt.

Since my cock curves upward when fully erect, it brushes his prostate. Slowly, taking our time, we find our rhythm. He lets me spread his legs more. Taking them off my shoulders, I suck the toes of his right foot, while holding him by the ankle of his left. We bend his knees gently to his chest, making penetration deeper. On the out stroke, he whimpers. On the in stroke, he growls.

We slowly increase the speed, and he asks me to do him from behind. Positioned in front of me, he takes the lead, clamping his rectal muscles around my cock, slapping his muscular cheeks against my pubic mound.

Fucking himself on my prick he works himself into a frenzy. He arches his back and keeps pumping; I take hold of his nipples from behind and he screams my name. I feel his orgasmic spasms from inside his ass, but he doesn't slow and doesn't stop until he hears my grunts.

Still panting deeply he turns around and licks the sweat off my chest and neck. He spins me so that my back is facing him as he runs his tongue the full length of my spine, ending at my hole. The feeling is dizzying, more than I could ever have anticipated. Now, I know what he meant when he'd said that he might faint.

The room spins. I feel his long middle finger, lubricated with his own saliva and jizz, push into my ass next to his tongue.

Not coming out of his frenzy, he finger and tongue fucks me until my bladder releases a small acrid stream. When he sees this, he pushes me back, kisses me deeply, locking his lips onto mine as he squats and strains, adding my sperm from his gut to the jumble soaking into our ritual blanket.

Succumbing to sensory overload, we collapse onto the woolen pallet. We're still kissing and moaning. He has to fart once more, using my hand to massage his leaking hole.

"Are you alright, mon petit?" I inquire cautiously, remembering the post-coital depression that Mack had had.

"I'm great. More than great. And you?" He licks my fingers.

"If the room stops spinning, I'll be fine." I laugh.

"Now, I know what intimate means. Un-fucking-real." He props himself up on one elbow. "Do you think that I'll be able to walk tomorrow?"

"Can't make any promises, Wild Man."

Since we are both still soaring on adrenalin, we take a lengthy hot shower together, massaging each other until the water goes cold. We return to our bedroom and fold the blanket for the last time. Raphaël runs down the stairs and returns with a brown-paper shopping bag.

"You know, this feels forbidden, sort of like burning the flag, or something." Raphie chuckles as he stuffs it irreverently into the shopping bag from Jones' department store.

This statement jars my memory. "You told Jennette that we would leave the country, before you'd let some rich old lecher pay her fees. Does that mean that you have thought about leaving the United States?"

"Yeah, frequently." He looks at me quizzically and then the grave look of concern worries his handsome face. "Would you be okay with that?"

"Yeah, of course. I may have to leave at some point, anyway." I take his hands and kiss them.

He nods solemnly. "You worried about the draft?"

"Yeah."

"But if you have British nationality, you don't have to register, do you?"

"That's the complicated part. I can't choose to be only British until my 21st birthday, or so I’m told.

“Until then, I'm a duel national. And I'll have to register for the draft here, as nominally an American, when I turn 18. That'll be in less than four months."

"Shit. There must be a way around this?" His expression tells me that he is rapidly considering the options. "If you were to travel abroad and needed a passport, could you get a British one?"

"I'm sure, yeah. I'll just have to get my dad's permission. But, according to him, I can get an adult passport, since I'm over 16. But I'd like to check that out with the consulate." I sort of see where he's going with this.

"And do the fascist warmongers at the draft board know that you may be a foreigner?"

"Probably. That's why Dad has to send in those Alien Registration Cards each year. So the feds can keep track of us. But being a foreigner doesn't make any difference."

"You don't mean to tell me that they can draft foreigners?"

"They can and do, Raph. You know that English guy, Richard, from the Rotunda Theatre?”

“Yeah, of course.” Raphie shakes his head.

“Well, he works at the British consulate, and he told me that they've been having a lot of trouble with the Selective Service trying to go after foreigners, like in the middle of the night."

"Fucking police state." He growls shaking his head angrily.

I surround him with my arms and feel him shaking with rage. "I have never seen you like this, Raph. What's wrong? You sound kinda like my Dad." I try to make light of the situation.

"Sometimes I feel so fucking hopeless in this country that I could go nuts. In Missouri, you and I can go to prison for two to life for loving each other, and if we move to Kansas, they can even cut off our nuts, according to Jennette.

"If it hadn't been for my great, great, great uncle, Pushmataha, the head chief of the Choctaws, who was buried in 1824 with full military honors as a Brigadier General of the US Army in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, and who fought along with General LaFayette and Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, this country would still be a fucking British colony, no offense Dan."

"None taken." I kiss his neck to demonstrate that I mean it.

"And right after they gave him a hero's burial, Establishment rewarded the Choctaws by forced deportation along the Trail of Tears, so white people could take over their lands. Just like Joey said."

"You mean that it wasn't just one of Dad's stories?"

"As far as I know, it sure sounded like he knew what he was talking about." Raphie licks my neck and his cock twitches and starts to grow. He draws a deep breath. "And what still pisses me off, if it hadn't been for a lot of work carried out by a lot of my Osage relatives, including my great-grandfather, this fucking city wouldn't even exist, but yet I wasn't allowed to start school at Ashland Elementary because I wasn't white enough, even though we live only five blocks away."

"Where did you start school?" I'm embarrassed that I don't know.

He sneers bitterly. "At Benton. 'Cause it was so nearby, only 19 blocks."

"And how did you get there every morning?" I circle his entrance with my middle finger.

He grits his teeth. "Sometimes, I walked." Then he sighs in relief, as I start scratching his back. "Usually Maman took me in the car, since we were privileged. But not privileged enough." He lies on his side, so I can continue scratching.

"And even though, someday soon, you won't even be a citizen of this country, and I'll more than likely be a second-class citizen all my life, we are required to let ourselves get shot at in senseless wars, supposedly for the freedom of this, the greatest country on Earth." He farts again.

"You know, I feel like I'd be fighting for the privilege of going to prison for life and getting my nuts cut off because I love you. Now, if that ain't something worth fighting for.

"And, every time I hear white politicians, like LBJ, talking about civil rights,” Raph is starting to get himself into a rage. “I think I'm listening to an old West snake oil salesman. Does anybody actually believe this bullshit?"

"Hey, just like every Anglo-Saxon protestant knows: you have to be white and 21 to be free."

"Will you take me with you, when you go?" He places his head next to mine and holds me so tight that I have trouble breathing.

"Of course, mon prince. Wherever that may take us." And I realize that I have no idea where that would be. We lie on the bed, not letting go, but letting ourselves drift off in a secure hug. He has been through Hell and back today, through no fault of his own. And just before drifting off myself, I relish in his scent, knowing that I never want to miss this. I couldn't make it through the day without him.

***

The morning sun is bright behind the drawn drapes, and the door bell is ringing, as I slip on the sweat pants and run down the stairs. Raphaël is still in a daze, so I go to see who's there.

"And a good mornin' to ya, Lad." Dad seems happy enough as he stands on the front porch carrying a large cardboard box. "Brought ya some things."

I hold the screen door open for him, and he kisses me on the cheek in passing. He waddles to the bottom of the stairs, sets down the obviously heavy box and opens the top. He lifts out Maman's covered casserole and takes it to the kitchen.

"The rest of the stuff is yers, clothes, school books and the like." He looks as if he would like to busy himself with something but can't seem to find anything to do.

I smile to myself, because this is his usual pattern, when he wants to talk about things and can't think of how to start. I hug him from behind. "C'mon, Dad. Out with it."

"Can ya get me some coffee, first? Can't stand that shite, yer ma serves."

While I'm still holding my father, Raphie slumps into the kitchen. He looks through still sleepy eyes, and without as much as a grunt, he comes over to hug Dad and lays his head on his shoulder. "Morning, Joey. I've missed you."

"Ya sound like ya can still do with some sleep." He tries to shift his weight, so we release him.

“What time is it?” Raphie lets go, puts the kettle on and squints at the kitchen clock. “Oh, for Christ's sake, it's six-thirty. No wonder that the alarm clock hasn't gone off, yet.” He gets three mugs out together with the coffee can. When he turns on the oven to bake the bread rolls, the oven light shines on his still naked body. He looks down at himself, looks up surprised at us, and on his way to the stairs, he yells: “You could have said something, Dan.”

Dad laughs. “That musta been one helluva night, Lad.”

Now it's my turn to blush. “You have no idea.”

Although he chuckles, I can tell that something is weighing on him. When Raphie returns, he starts, but looks apprehensive about what I might say. "I'm leaving Mildred." He gives me his stern Irish look. "You kids are all grown; I've done my duty, and I just can't take any more of her crap."

"Finally!" I shout and hug him again. "I'm proud of you, Dad."

"Wha?" He seems stunned. "But she is, after all, yer ma."

"That doesn't give her the right to abuse you like she does."

"I dunno what ta say." His voice brightens, he looks years younger. "Well, then, that's one down and only three to go."

"Was that the hardest for you?"

"Aw, ya know it. We've never had a divorce in our family." Dad takes a deep breath and straightens his back, and actually looks glad to be alive.

The water is boiling, and Raphie has already put the rolls into the oven. He brings the steaming coffee mugs into the dining room. "Congratulations, Joey." He sets down the tray.

"Thanks, Son." He takes the coffee and blows across the mug. "So, let's move onto the next point.

"Dan, I think that all this shite about Mack is about to blow up." He looks at me seriously. "I want you ta get a passport, in case you have to leave quickly. Busby is sayin' that you could get anywhere from two years to life. And--”

Raphie interrupts bitterly. "--and if we get caught in Kansas with his dick up my ass, they'll cut our fucking balls off."

"What?" Dad is caught off guard. I don't think I have ever seen him so totally surprised.

"Our lawyer, Jennette Volker, told us that if you're convicted of sodomy in Kansas, they can castrate you."

"I just knew the feckin' Jayhawkers are a no-good lot. Another good reason to get the Fuck out." Dad takes a sip of his coffee and grins with satisfaction. "Anyway about yer paperwork. As long as ye're under 21, ye're covered by my residence permit."

Raph and I look at each other, as if experiencing a déjà vu situation. I look back at Dad. "Have you talked to a consular officer?"

He nods. "Mr. Ashton will be expecting you this morning at eleven. Don't be late now. It's Friday and yer public servants are no workhorses. You'll need four passport photos, which are different from the ones yer Yanks have. So here's the address of the photographer on the Plaza, who does mine." He gives me an embossed calling card along with five twenty dollar bills. "This money is to pay for the pictures, the passport fees, and for ya to give to yer mother fer room and board."

"My mother?" I can't believe that he thinks I would go back to live there. "Hasn't she been served with the restraining order, yet?"

"Aye, Mildred has." He grins as if he's about to come out with some huge revelation. "I meant that nice lady, ya've always considered yer ma, Madame Mongrain."

I laugh with relief. "And what did Mildred do, when she got served?"

"How does yer generation put it? She went feckin' ape shit."

Raphie chuckles as he goes to the kitchen to return with the freshly baked rolls, butter and jam. "And where are you going to be livin' now?"

"Let's get through the business, first, Son. And then we can start talkin' about me."

"There's more?"

He nods solemnly. "The next part is about you Raphaël." He looks as if he's not sure how to approach this. "I've known ya for a very long time, Son. And I also know that nothing and no one can separate ya from Dan. Now, if we get Dan a passport, it means that he might have to use it. And again, that would probably mean that he’ll never be allowed back into this country."

Raphie looks emotionally stranded, he tries to smile. "There's no question, Joey. I'll go with him."

"What I'm gettin' at, Raph, is that most countries don't cater to yer sexual preferences." He straightens his back somewhat, as he takes another sip of coffee and bites into a roll. "It's bloody outright illegal, most places."

It is slowly sinking in that Dad not only understands but accepts what there is between Raph and me. Apparently, he also knows what the complications can be and is willing to help.

"So?" Raphie becomes defensive. I wonder what Dad is getting at.

"I've been doin' some research on me own. And after that playwright, yer man, Oscar Wilde, was released from prison, he pissed off to France. Now, according to my sources, the French haven't had a ban on homosexuality for damn near two hundred years."

"Your sources?" I look at Dad and try not to laugh.

"My sister, Françoise, the one who went full Frog," He glances quickly at Raphie, and since there is no reaction, he continues. "lives in Paris. I talked to her last night on the phone."

The only thing that blitzes through my mind is: 'That must have cost a fortune.'

Raph seems to sense where this is going, as he takes a roll and butters it. "So, you're saying that I need a passport, too?"

"Correct, but it isn't so easy in yer case. Soon, ya'll be 18 and will need permission from yer draft board to leave the country. And with the things going in Vietnam the way they are, they probably won't let ya out so easily."

"So, what are you saying, Joey?" The edge in Raphie's voice is back.

"I'm sayin' that if I adopt ya, ya can claim citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies and also hold a British passport, like Dan, and yus'll be able to escape over the Canadian border together, if yus have to. But like our Dan, ya'll never be able to come back. And for me to adopt ya, we'll need your ma's permission, since yer still a minor. Does she know about yus?"

I've never seen my Raphaël look this crestfallen as he sits there, shaking his head, with tears starting to stream down over his cheeks.