Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 19:53:55 PST From: angerhead@hotmail.com Subject: A True Man A TRUE MAN by angerhead@hotmail.com PROLOGUE Rick: In dreams I can remember the past so clearly. But those days of breasts wandering frequently into my hands are long gone. Sitting here, I can feel my bones rotting, flesh withering. The crystals once so fertile in my mind have vanished, washed out to sea just like all my broken dreams. And like dreams they are forgotten, not mourned because they no longer fill a space in my memory. Clear it all out like a computer... like an exorcist evicting a demon. Bring all these memories out or I am sure the wall of shadows will grow too thick in my soul, too heavy for any hand to budge one brick... to dislodge one fragment I...I am one whose time has come. Remember those days... sirens flashing, handcuffs snapping in place on my wrists. My rage had reached outside its boundaries, namely that of my own mind... extending into the physical world to torment another human being, yet I had been so numb for so long that I felt no shame. Now as I find my life drawing to a close I sense these sensations have resurfaced. This is my very own Atlantis, and what an amazing construction are these emotions of mine! How long has it been since we have been acquainted? The days were so young and unknowing, hidden behind clouds... so many years ago. Certainly you come to me to hear my tale, as if my mouth could still share the poetry it once so freely unleashed upon this world. A crane lifts the sun into the sky in my mind, an intense orb of illumination that burns away all the fog. And oh!, if only it could burn away the pain I feel when these aging memories are revealed. The dust dances off the coffins. Hear the creak of ancient bones as each sarcophagus is opened from within. Like mummies these thoughts crawl forward. So pain-ridden, these memories! Long ago...it feels like a century has passed. Let me take you back. Although I may be balding and curved like an S... my skin marked by all the adventures I have had, there were days when even water was young... and so was I...standing straight and handsome, blond hair flowing with such apparent health from my scalp, and the most seductive sapphire eyes and tan skin to ever be owned by a male of this species. Chiseled abdomen, muscular arms, a back which had muscles that rippled like ocean waves, legs that could support a god's weight and indeed I was a Greek god, so mighty in presence. My hands and mouth both had their ways of pleasing people... people of any gender...but we are going further back to explore the most ancient of all ages, prehistoric days during which my mouth pleased no one, but my hand often pleased myself. These were years when my loneliness accompanied the page so I would not be alone and bored. If I must be lonely then at least let me not be bored. So we can now take these words and use them as our time machine, because words are powerful creatures... strong enough to carry us all forward or backward in time. As it is, we are going back. No longer is it so close to the century's end. 1997? no, thank you. 1984? fall much further back! 1972? well, closer. 1969? middle of the road. 1943? Well, it is here that all my energies collapse. Fade away. This is the year I turned fourteen. World War Two was just coming to its end. I had just discovered how lonely and angry it was to be me. (My other torment was too many hormones to burn, but these topics will all be covered.) Right now let me reset my mind to recall that mindset when my bones were stronger, my ego more fragile, and the days (much like now) could not pass quickly enough. Go back there with me, listeners, if you care to share the pain with me. ACT ONE Scene One Rick: In the beginning, I was shy. A word never left my tongue unless it was demanded. Were these sentences pearls of wisdom, gems of true beauty? I thought not, yet teachers and parents all admired the collage of syllables that weighed down the air when I chose to speak. My peers must have found genius in my words as well, because their fists of jealousy assaulted me quite often. Yet I cared not, worried not, because I was not going to let their hatred beat me into new shapes, remold me to their liking, as if I had been born without a mouth... without a brain. If I were to let my spirit crack under the weight of my fear, then I would have clipped my own wings. And what was I doing, letting their gestures send a flame of fear to burn the infinite crystal forests embedded in my mind? I had to fight, I had to harden myself somehow. There must be a technique which I can use, some device that can function simultaneously as weapon and shield. Upon that dusty path I set, a road that would lead me to my Excalibur. I began my search. Scene Two Rick: Been traveling for months and no sign of salvation. Throat parched, lips cracked and bleeding. Delusional rage absorbing the days. When I stumble and fall a century passes before I hit the ground. Yet there is no pillow of leaves to soothe the anguish. Just a gathering of angry stones. Where do I find the place to either store my misery or numb myself before I commit suicide? As I crouch there groggy on all fours, I see a crimson pearl fall and splash across the stones. My skin has ruptured, my fluids are flowing out of me. Recollections of afternoons when spirit was young and full of strength, with abilities... to fly with eagles, to bend everyone's will. But the sun is closing its hazy wisdom, no longer burning me into blindness. And it lets me drink the lies that you breathe. Some people have only to awaken to escape their nightmares. Sleep is my retreat. No job, no money, no love, no friends to call my own. In this town there are secret agents out to get me. My name (Rick Sodden) is carved into the hearts of the dying. I should have been born to run with the wolves. Fourteen years of loneliness. Where can I hide my pain away? No, not today. My travels must end now as the sky tucks away our light. Denied again, still holding all my rage in my head. No outlet yet. Fall asleep to drift, to shudder during moments when the waking world nearly calls me back to my life. Scene Three At school I hear them making sport of me. This corner is dull and dusty and dead. I choose to be here because hugging close to shadows will save me. And they cannot see my eyes as I study a rare beauty named Mary, an angel destined to eternally look fourteen. She has porcelain charm. She does not hear my breath, does not acknowledge the temperature increase which should register when this body heat of mine rolls off me and pours into her. My only saviors are recess and English class because during recess I can physically hide away from my classmates, and in English I can escape as well...only this time the hiding place is in my head. Our teacher, a gentleman named Mr. Krendall, is the one who gives me all these joyous treasures to behold... all these poems of Byron and Dickinson, poems he recites to I alone, because it is his company which I seek during recess, and he has taught me to love Hemingway and Dickens. So today he holds the last hope for my salvation. In its weary last seconds class crushes another day. Let the others file out. Soon it is just the two of us, his knowledge so brilliant that it lights up Mr. Krendall's skull as if it were surrounded by a halo...as if he might be an angel. As I approach his desk, blinded by his light, I look away from the glare to notice pretty Mary fixed in the doorway. When she notices me looking the seal of her lips breaks to release a smile, a gesture meant only for me. Our souls connect on this thread when my own mouth expels a grin. Oh!, what joy! My heart crashes against my ribs. (Certainly we all know how this feels.) And with no more gestures and not even a single word, she is gone...vanished and the smile has been stolen from my memory. Mr. Krendall: Rick, your eyes show footprints of sorrow. Why did you stay so late in the classroom when you should be outside, letting yourself run home and revel in the presence of your youth? Rick: Mr. Krendall, your wisdom glows within me. I can only aspire to get within 1,000,000 miles of your greatness. But you know I have gained no friends at this place, where depression coats the walls and misery fills my seat. Sometimes I get the sense that my mental baggage is am excessive amount for a boy of only fourteen to have to carry. My question for you is, how do I destroy this misery? How do I erase it from this world? Mr. Krendall: Well, my boy, the only choice you have is to let your spirit shine, let your words and wisdom shake the brains of your peers until they are dizzy. As long as you let your true self show, there will be no hassles. At first people may act cold, but given time the barriers they use to hold you back will dissolve. Rick: But what if I lack the nerve to speak? Mr. Krendall: Until such a time I recommend you grab paper and pen so that you may unleash your pain, let it burden the page. Paper can withstand all sorts of anguish. So spill your inner demons out on paper, just like a true poet should do. Rick: A poet? You think I could make a decent poet? Mr. Krendall: Rick, I know you hide yourself, smear clay all over your body and bathe in mud to cover your reality. But my eyes have been trained to elude such disguises, and beneath your costume I see another Byron, another Tennyson, another (dare I say it) Shakespeare. Rick: And with these words fondling my brain I got myself pen and paper just as Mr. Krendall had suggested. Scene Four Rick: To record, to retell, to report! Oh! all these lives are mine to hold in my brain and criticize. Let me bash them from the safety of my skull. So we shall now hear the detailed tales of a high school " reject," a kid like me who lost his cool because my personality was not like putty. I could not be bothered to be that way, reshaping myself every time some new fashion or fad hit the scene. Wandering those lonely high school halls, full of shadows and torment all meant for me, I had to tolerate it all. Hairy monkeys tugging their dicks and flaunting their muscles and tossing their footballs and girls wanting to lick their balls... and not one thin thread of conscience in their head. Such lovely girls, I thought, letting these apes demoralize/degrade/rape them! A jock being intimate with a girl is like a monkey in a sacred graveyard: the result is total demolition of that which someone else holds as holy...yet this opinion of mine was forced so swiftly to come crashing down. Because I tried...gave it my all.. strained my willpower to attempt to become the beloved of one of those poor cheerleading bimbos, who always had a string of fluorescent complaints to insult their jock fuck-friends. And desires! Oh, could these girls ever so banally (and yet at the same time eloquently) speak their desires! " I wish I could date someone who isn't so wild, so aggressive, so macho, such a jerk... you know, a nice guy." A nice guy? Excuse me, but did you say A NICE GUY? I know all about being a nice guy, okay? I know all about coming home to sit alone and explore your dreams and analyze yourself, asking questions like: " why am I such a loser?" And I often wonder why they never dated me. Better yet, why did they never see me? Like a ghost I approached them and was not heard when I spoke. They passed through me, carrying away only an invisible ectoplasmic stain and an unexplainable chill as evidence that I had been near them. Yes, those girls with their lipstick, their egos, their beauty... Ah yes, their BEAUTY so perfect and so BRILLIANT on the outside. Yes, they radiated such intense illumination. How was there any way for them to see how shallow they were? Cheerleaders, princesses, and at the other end of their spectrum there were the SMART GIRLS who were also somehow too good for me. A higher intelligence so guys left them alone. No male wants a girlfriend that may be smarter than him... except me. No matter how the constellations may be arranged or what cracks the patterns may be taking when you read the oracle bones, it is not going to change the way my Stonehenge is arranged. I would love you if you would let me, you lovely studious female, but even you push me away... even you feel you have the right to be picky. And therefore by shunning me you prove your intelligence is not so 100% superior as you would have the rest of us humans believe. You believe yourself to be above me...out of my league... and in thinking so you prove that you can slip into airhead mode. Either that or you use the " fear factor" as your excuse. Smart Girl: Oh...oh, no, relationships scare me. Rick: Do they? Well, from Mr. Krendall I have learned to walk into the flames of my fear. And I have come out feeling stronger, more resilient. ***** With these words, my friends, you can tell how high school went for me. All I hope is that these words, these memories, have created a connection between us. I think you might have found you have similar memories... like, for example, let us recall those monkeys so favored by the student body and teachers alike, those brainless jocks who possessed only motorized skills. No power of rational thought could ever penetrate their thick-layered skulls. Only in jocks do we find such a dense cranium! Sitting at lunch, off on my own, I can remember... Jock: Hey, you gonna eat this? Rick: Well, yes I... Jock: Huh, what's that? You're gonna give me da rest? Thanks. Rick: Hey, get your damn hands off my... Jock: Now gimme your money and your pride, everything you got. Rick: I've got nothing. Jock: Don't lie to me, four-eyes! Narrator: An eruption of punches makes our poor protagonist Rick feel more at home on the ground... his left eye persuaded to swell, his nose broken and bleeding. The pattern of the blood as it hits the ground almost mimics...so nearly conveys the sadness that burdens Rick's weary bones, so brittle from the beginning and getting even closer to snapping as we speak. Rick: And so you see the beatings I took while the student body looked on and laughed, yet they did not do this separately. They laughed as one because their bodies were hollow shells. Lacking a soul meant that if these creatures looked the same on the outside, then they really were all the same one, like-minded beast. So the student body monster looked on and chuckled as I was broken and bruised and cried myself to sleep. Scene Five Rick: But why? Why cry my way into dreams when the student creature laughed? Because the student body was something I never had the chance to touch. The beatings never caused a tear to slip its salty way past my eye. Loneliness did what physical abuse could not. For me to just share a thought would have been enough to break the stars open wide, so wide. Let their celestial secrets rain down upon me. The connection between two human minds of the opposite sex, a connection that spells out my unspoken wish... a dream word spelled out in my head, one syllable, glowing in psychedelic torment in my brain...only my brain carries the word of LOVE, not my heart... not this broken angel halo eclipsed by fragile youth that attempts to protect a fragmented spirit. You talk to me of eagles exploring the purple skies of tomorrow, while Martians are digging the graves of the elders. They unearth a sacrificial table upon which Egyptian dream-realms once sacrificed themselves. My head split open suddenly fell victim to a disease which I created and gave to myself, a disease for which I do not see fit to create an antidote. Martians...they shrink themselves down to the size of electrons and infiltrate my mind, studying my thoughts... haunting my memories. Venusians hear rumors that their mortal red enemies are located in my brain. They come with weapons, a detail which the Martians unfortunately overlooked. And the red ones are annihilated. And I say, thank you... oh thank you for ridding their extra weight from my frustrated brain, already reeling and confused and strained by this life. Venusian Leader: Why do you see fit to thank us? We have killed them only to replace their evil with our own, because we seek to destroy your kind by this infiltration. Even as we speak, microscopic Venusian hit squads are invading every last one of your race. Men and women... parents...grandparents... wives...husbands...children... not even babies shall be spared. ALL OF YOU DESTINED TO DIE! Rick: Well I will not allow that. You can tear all the others apart. I care not for them, as they care not for me. But I will save myself, work myself, build my muscles... build my resistance. This is war. Although it has not yet begun, the outcome is already decided. I have won because I will it to be so! YOU WILL NOT BEAT ME! I am sick of the days of letting people beat me into nothing. Here is where it ends. Venusian Leader: Do whatever your feeble mind thinks it will take to banish us, but you will never lose our company. We will travel the highways of your veins and arteries because we are going to begin this internal decay at your feet and work our way up to your head ever so slowly, negotiating our path in blood. What fun would it be to destroy your mind and therefore your existence? Rick: You sadists! I will find a way to purge you from my body. Narrator: And so this war began. Rick's arms, flabby and unused for so long... two flaps of flesh decorating his bones... were so sore after his initial visit to the weight room that, once he was done, Rick feared he had strained too much... worried that the tendons had ripped away and that he was helping finish the Venusians' work all the more swiftly. His legs and abdominals felt similar flares of agony, yet nothing happened as a result of the pain other than a dual metamorphosis on Rick's part. Weight melted off him. Signs were soon visible that he was going to become a stud someday soon. Yet the evil demons plaguing his capillaries did not vanish. Then, one day as the sun made its bed with caution not to wake anyone, Rick's thoughts were of a lovely lady named Lisa... while he lay in bed, wrapped up in both the dark and his blankets, a pair of shorts being his only attire. Rick: Oh, how she curves and lives and breathes a waking dream for me, a young man who has for 16 years gone untouched. World War Two cripples the other side of the world, yet here nestled safely in my teenage world I feel none of this. All I can sense is this anguish of denial. Yet...beneath the fabric of these shorts I can sense something stirring... it is that rather odd piece of flesh, a thin long rod hardening now as my thoughts turn to Lisa. And I realize she is not beyond my reach. All I have to do is recreate her in my mind, naked (or as I imagine she might be when naked) and ready to pleasure me. Venusian: No! Do not do what you are thinking or else that god which you worship and fear so obediently will cripple your joy in the fires of Hades! Stop this, stop this! Rick: But why do you shout so? And what of this nervous stutter I detect in your voice? Scarcely had this thought of masturbation entered my head when you spoke up. Ah, you have sailed through my body right down to my groin. If I were to ejaculate now, you would come gushing out with my fluids. In this case, I shall put my hand to work! And Lisa, unbeknownst to her, will help me purge myself of you! Narrator: And so Rick lowered his shorts. His hand and mind went to work, imagining Lisa's mouth engulfing his hard flesh, her tongue licking the purple swollen head. In fantasy Rick sees her breasts in his hands and his tongue attacks her nipples. She falls to her back, legs spread, and he so easily slips his cock into her...and as if he were the most experienced partner he is thrusting in and out. Soon in an explosion of white heat Rick ends not only his fantasy world but also the torture visited upon him by the Venusians. They flood out of him screaming curses, but Rick can only laugh. Rick: As I said, there are no more days or hours, minutes or even seconds left in which you will find me letting other people break my spine. Narrator: The next day Rick gave Lisa a dozen roses because it is her beauty which helped him to banish the Venusians. Not expecting anything from her, Rick simply gave her the roses and climbed into the clouds. Little did he know how intrigued she was by his gift, and here we see the seed planted...soon to bloom into life, and when it does... we will see what Rick has become but until then we join him again and again and again as he repeats the careful strokes of self-love, because Rick enjoyed it, and his body was spawning so many hormones that he had to squirt some out every now and then. Of course this became quite frequent, yet all while Rick was experiencing his masturbation phase he was still working out, still carving the fat away from his body. At long last, he was no longer ashamed to be on the " skins" team when a game of basket ball was announced in gym class. Men and women both admired his physique. Men came to ask him how he had done this miraculous shrinking, and women came to tell him how attractive his hardened body was. Beneath it all, Rick was still shy, so none of these ladies found peace beside him. He did not locate happiness inside them. Rick never said a word so he continued to experience the incredible joy of masturbation afternoons, doing it wherever he could: his bedroom, his bathroom, his shower... even the school bathroom once... because he lived in a state of virginity and his cowardice made sure there would be no change of address for a long time. ***** High school, so full of shame and conformity passes. Now it is time to move out, experience the real world. Rick: College, a collection of buildings alien to me. Names in my head. are erased and soon to be replaced, I hope, because my list of friends had been expanding while my senior year of high school unraveled itself...but now, the last year of that lifestyle has been spent (and wisely, I feel) so I must push forward. 18 and a freshman again. This is the same road I have traveled four years ago, yet there are subtle changes. Subtle from where I stand now, but if I squint enough to look I can see in the distance that the obstacles this time around are more varied and difficult. Hello to my roommate. He too possesses a chiseled body and blond hair although my skin contains a slightly deeper tan. His eyes are a hollow and mysterious brown, while mine are a glowing, innocent sapphire. Named Ted, he is lucky enough to have a girlfriend whose beauty blinds me. Already I can imagine my cock burrowing into her. But I store these thoughts away to be explored later. Organize my belongings so carefully as if I were constructing another galaxy. And I fall into skies that lack stars, find myself blinding demons that came crawling out of my wardrobe to steal my fingers. Without fingers, how can I record my pain, remove it from my mind, and stick it on the page? Where are the angels, the bolts of holy justice to defeat these monsters? This should not be my task, and yet no one assists me. No mortals can know the position I have been given. Days fade away. Wisdom pushes through the haze. Professors and their eager equations, lying on the page just waiting for me to replace the variables with some exact numbers so I can put myself through the paces and prove once again what genius possessed their creators as if their skulls had harbored reincarnated spirits...the gods of mathematics. Yes indeed, what brilliance has graced our planet! Now gone, dead but it is recycled. The grand wheel always turning. Each generation has its poets. When will mine appear? Give it some time, and I will. I will wait and wade through the tissue paper as I continue to pleasure myself, despite all the beautiful wonderfully warm teenage female figures into which I could excrete my DNA. A closed mouth will always keep me lonely. Every day I have a gap between classes ...12:30 until 4... and Ted has class from 1 until 5... so as long as my stamina is completely enriched, I can see myself finishing some very fulfilling masturbation sessions. But I hope there are not many of them to experience. Something tells me my life is going to change soon. Soon, very soon...I hope. ACT TWO Rick: Still a teenager, 19 to be exact, yet my life is changing, as you shall see. Scene One Rick: Finally, I appeal and my mouth is open. Observe that street corner upon which I stand in my memory yet I do not stand alone. Lisa is beside me while the summer coats our smiles with emptiness, steals the sheep we once used to count our way to sleep. Yes, the same Lisa whose image I used to rid my body of that Venusian hit squad. Apparently the thorns on those roses must have pricked her soul because that gesture of mine has been constantly reflected in the lake of her mind, or so she tells me. Lisa: Why did you give me such a gift? Rick: Because...of all the faces I happen to see during the day yours is the only one which I have judged to be possessed of true beauty. It is as though billions of women were given mediocre or hideous appearances to give you all that collective beauty... compiled so splendidly in your face and body. Lisa: You cause such color to rise in my cheeks as your words are sewn into the tapestry of my mind, fixing the image of your face in the fabric of my life. Your muscles, rippling like the tide drifting into the beach. Your hair, so healthy that it is like Samson's. Your eyes, carrying the true beauty of the essence of man. your spirit, glowing like a sun and just as large as that globe which we know to give us life. Rick: I would feel such intense happiness pouring into my soul if you and I could perhaps spend a majestic evening alone...in only one another's company, a night like the poets used to adopt as the topic for their love songs, a night like that one during which Romeo revealed his love to Juliet. Lisa: Yes, my dearest Rick of the angels...the answer is yes. Rick: Upon this adventure we did indeed depart. The noise of nightmares did not bother me when she was in my arms. And my poets had finally arrived...born, but not yet come around to writing. Some of them wrote in prose, but this was a very thin way to disguise the crown of poetry adorning their heads. Ginsberg, Keruoac, Burroughs... between these three who needed more? Here I had my three wise men. Let them come and crown me king because I was born this fateful day. And Lisa is my gift. Who could beat such a token? Not even unearthing King Tut's tomb (before thieves saw fit to rip the magic from those walls) would be able to top this as the most amazing of all gifts. No longer did I feel as if I were falling into my own doom. Like water, days spent with Lisa were impossible to hold. they slipped away. This time around, there were no regrets about the way I spent this time... just waiting until she offered herself to me. My first woman opened herself to me when I was 20 and 1949 was busy seeing a pregnant East Asia give birth to the People's Republic of China, and an evil madman's iron hand extended over his country, just like Hitler had stretched out his appendage to salute his audience, so distant and confused because there was no solution to their WW I defeat other than blame and madness followed. Lisa was there before me, her lips and face and entire being melting into mine, while her hands traveled like cars around my back, my shoulders, my hips, my buttocks. My curious digits were magnetized and fondled her breasts... going so deep as if she were the earth itself. Break the crust, the second layer. Go right to the core! Skin on skin! My notion of God and religion had been depleted, nearly faded away by the time Lisa and I stood alone in that room so I felt no Catholic guilt...did not feel as if I were committing a sin. If it were a SIN, did such morally-wrong deeds always feel so good? I decide to seek out the answer by experimentation. Soon my hands were peeling her shirt away, as she did so with my clothing, to admire (and to better explore) each others' torso. The pale heaven of her breasts and stomach... Lisa: The eternal glory of his shoulders and arms, alive with tense muscles... the dynamic warmth of our bare skin touching...all five senses wide open and receiving sensations whose exquisiteness had been unknown until that day... Rick: Yes, that day upon which I so carefully stripped away her entire outfit just like a sculptor chipping away the excess stone so that he may find the statue that waits underneath the shell. And the reality of her (when combined with memories of the fantasy) was beautiful. Lisa upon her back, legs spread, perfect upside-down triangle of pubic hair. My fingers found the opening so carefully hidden under the hair. No blueprint existed for me when I pressed my tongue into that hot pink landscape but I did a fine job of exploring, as Lisa's moans indicated. Fingers thrusting in, pulling out, while my tongue ever so skillfully assaulted the hard knob of muscle which was her focal point, the button to push to activate her pleasure. As I licked away, Lisa was shoving her hips up to my face. One particular thrust was enough to let me know the climax had arrived. Lisa: Once I felt the orgasm wash over me like rain, I got Rick on his feet while my knees supported my weight. His jeans were so eager to release his swollen cock. When his pants were at his ankles, the penis was awake and pointing at my face, bobbing in anticipation. My hand helped it settle down temporarily, but its owner was beyond hope. Rick was burning, his excitement leaking out through EVERY PORE, so I let my lips separate and take his purple-headed cock into my mouth. As my jaws settled around Rick's penis, he asked me to be cautious. Rick: My excitement was concentrated completely and directly, with no dilution, in my penis. The slightest bit of erotic touch could have sent me exploding into her mouth. But she knew how to control every spasm of joy. Eventually, however, I could wait no longer. Lisa: I got on my back, separating my legs to let him enter me, and he did so wonderfully. Rick: It was as if I were an expert. After a few thrusts following entry, I found the urge to empty my testicles, and the muscles in my cock twitched violently as the fluids left me. Lisa: But the connection we shared was so much more than this. Rick: Music, literature, philosophy, social and moral debates...on these and so many other topics we either agreed or we were able to quite easily explain our views to one another to see the world in a different way. Once it was so mysterious and terrifying to think of someone sharing so much, and yet here it was happening. Lisa: We were a fusion of spirits, two people bound as one at the spiritual level. This is how I saw it. Yet Rick's interpretation was taken from the reading of a different oracle. Rick: Quite clearly we were a " good couple" to a point. She viewed us as two people who destined to be metaphysical Siamese twins. I had always seen us as two mountaineers scaling a Mt. Everest. Once we reached the top, it was our goal to see if we could tough it out there together for the rest of our lives or if we would have to head back down into the rest of the world. Lisa's decision that we were meant to live forever together sent the shadows of fear scurrying through me. Much sooner than I had hoped, the intense star that burned inside me for her started to lose its fuel and its shine. With the illumination so quickly vanishing, what was I to do? Having never had a girlfriend, I was unsure how to handle the end. Why did this have to be my burden? Ted had been dating his girl for 3 years, and there had not been one sign that his love for her was being mysteriously depleted. Sometimes I may be fooled in life, but I have got to train my eye to spot these illusions faster. My life can never have one fragment of good luck. (At least that is what teenage nihilism had me believing at the time.) I considered: " What would happen if Lisa and I were to call it quits?" Then I would be alone again, yet avoiding loneliness and solitude was no reason to keep dating someone. So I had a heavy choice ready to crush me as it dangled over my life. And I never wanted to hurt Lisa, yet I knew some blows cannot be softened. Scene Two Rick: Days, they know the speed which the human heart desires. They know how to pass as quickly as light, and they can crawl to extract as much torture from each second as they possibly can. And they tell her... tell Lisa...words have to spill so slowly from my soul. But her intuition knows something is amiss. As I casually release these waterfall truths, they crush her... they burn like flames and she releases her own waterfalls. Oh, her eyes... her eyes are the source of all my misery. Why is the blue of this iris so much deeper now? Sorrow sorrow no glory in destruction why why my eyes scan the world and I see everyone else shares happiness with their other parts but why why don't I lover her anymore? Why can't I love her anymore? Why do emotions just simply dissolve without explanation? How can I just wake up and decide I do not love her now when my feelings were so intense just the other day? Such mysteries are depths of ourselves, the oceans of our soul, that not even we can know. Not even of ourselves to know, our own secrets, locked away from all of us. We cannot solve the puzzle. Where do the shadows lie? They lie within us... they lie to us. God shares no whispered words down here anymore. His dreams have all died with Him and slipped away like I do... falling, fading, tumbling and curling, twirling and swirling... swirling away down the whirlpool. I am being sucked away. My own hideous nature is ripping me apart... Oh, but why must I feel hideous just because my feelings have changed? So I attempt to say, " Let's please try again," but the words do not ring true. The pain reverberates even deeper into her soul and she hates me... she hates me. ANOTHER HUMAN HATES ME wants no part of me not even friendship wants to sever all ties (like the doctor cutting me from my mother) cut me hurt me bleed me now bleed me now I am vacant and dreary, floating before nothing... the great almighty Void. (what intrigues me the most about this void is how much I resemble it on the inside.) Empties out, a pod with no peas. you can see through me like water like clouds. too thick to dream fall under the illusion begin to exploit the magi stealing all the queens -from every deck of cards I own- (I am left incomplete) You steal pieces from my soul! You steal the love I had, the love I wanted to keep for her! Now look at her, my poor Lisa... so devastated, so bitter and hopeless... feeling as if I were the only one for her... as if there will be no other love to fill the vacant chambers of her heart, her spirit, her mind... and in turn I too am left shuddering, shattered in my spirit like a building whose support beams have been erased by time. Falling, falling... turning full circle... pain like this is circular. Always going round, never ending... nothing to break this misery apart. MAKE IT STOP! I feel so hollow inside when I look at this disaster, and now summer is crawling toward me... too shallow, too quick, too soon. Do not behold my sorrow, my shallow soul. Only five feet deep and I still cannot explore its depths. Summer, with its tendrils of gold; there is naked flesh to assault my senses. Bared to taunt me for good...forever. Engraved in my mind... no, burned into it... not exactly like beauty but so distant like peace... daring to see myself in the mirror. I see puffy, heavy eyes. Tears damage flesh like acid. Burn me forever. (they will they will) No time to redeem. Lisa explodes in a rain of fire never to succumb... never to fall victim to my brittle words again, yet I must be strong... must stick my way through this. Shall I save my head and disappear? Shall I change my ways and call me queer? No, I just have to hide the deadly tears that threaten to turn the tides, change my mind, make a choice and must hold fast. Summer is coming. This year, this love, this pain, will pass. Scene Three Rick: How mysterious are the ways in which we lose our broken, unwanted memories. Who throws the switch that kills the illumination which just a moment ago exposed every aspect of this anguish to torment my soft brain? I care not. Narrator: Now we join Rick as the summertime burns majestic patterns across his hands. Although this is summer for other people, for Rick it is spring. He has been reborn. Once again happiness has opened in his soul. The petals of this precious flower spread throughout his veins, setting them in a luminous state, turning them to glow psychedelic colors. Perhaps his anguish was made of water and the summer heat has made it evaporate out of his system. When he thinks of Lisa he remembers a relationship that caved in upon itself like a building so aged and decrepit that its roof could not even support the weight of a sparrow. No longer does he feel the sorrow or the regret of severing the rope that held taut between their two spirits. Now on days too humid to measure out in terms of how it corrupts his dreamy brain, Rick is leaving just a dusty memory back where he used to be... in his room, on his bed, the sheets pulled up to become his shield against the world while he masturbated stale love into the fabric of the air. Oh what wonders he thought he was missing, and how correct were these assumptions! Because now at night he roams the dull city streets, waits his turn in line as the burden of the air is lifted from his spirit... and all this just because he sees a scantily-clad beauty swinging her sexual magnificence under the sky to let all the gods see her hips moving, flowing so gracefully... echoes of rivers smoothly melting into the sea. Stiff scent of whiskey, no wine to gently coax the pallet. Liquor hitting these teenage minds... solid as a brick. A sliver of sacred parchments will tell all these men, carved out as muscular as any Greek demigod, that Rick has at last hit his age of release when one no longer needs to fear the authenticity level of a fake ID. And we, we sit home stale and rotting while the young have their way with one another... but still Rick has no lover. It seems as though his appeal started and finished with Lisa. Unfortunately the heat of desire often swells in Rick's groin, pressuring him to do something... and he always does the same thing: lets the weight remain on his tongue, goes home...masturbates. Yet tonight, however, the results shall not be the same. Whether Rick holds back his vocabulary or not does not make a difference tonight. Here comes this angel, this exquisite link to the days when we were created in God's image... days when we were perfect. Amber is the name uttered upon the moaning lips of those who dare to sweat alone beneath their sheets and dream that they could ever be with her. Her face is the mask which certain men place upon their loved ones when the time comes to bare everything... the legs, the chest, the buttocks, the shoulders... because she is the desire which most men share as they wander this humid subterranean darkland. She sees nothing but the flaws in this men... sees the skin of that first apple still caught between their teeth. Amber: Too perfect, I think...I know I am too perfect to dwell upon them...to let my voice linger in their ears. Rick: Look at this one, passing like a breeze. Wind and this lady are so alike because I can never hope to hold either one. Might as well exercise this liver of mine. BARTENDER, ANOTHER BEER! Narrator: To Amber his voice is the sound of another angel speaking. She looks to see Rick's hand extended across the bar and imagines it has stretched itself out to reel her in. Amber: Who is this creature, the likes of whose beauty I have never seen? I must not let this night end unless his name penetrates my ears. Narrator: Trembling in her motion (she has never trembled before) Amber starts to approach Rick who, seeing her draw near, feels earthquakes shaking his intestines just like two old friends shaking hands. Oh these tremors, they know they are welcome here. Many years have passed during which they made their home in the dark warmth of Rick's gut, just waiting for a stimulus to awaken their mighty grip on his body. And this quaking disturbs his spirit because although the chi, the inner spirit or energy, dwells throughout the body, its main doorway... the sacred gate, the eternal path... is the stomach. And if this entrance is unfocused and unsteady, how can it accept more chi? Rick: Focus, focus! Oh, so nervous in this time of need. All the desperation flows in to fill the void where my strength and mild charms once supported my bones. Oh God, even the marrow has been drained away. I feel the fuel of anxiety occupy my time, my days and dreams of miscommunication. Be careful. She is carrying her beauty, her halo, her prism, (all aspects of herself) in your direction. Yes, this is true... but this does not mean she is approaching you. Narrator: Regardless of his knowledge that being obvious is one of the main turn-offs when searching bars for women, his eyes are anchored to her... weighed down like a Mafia rat when the cement on his feet drags him to meet the Lady of the Lake where she sleeps at the bottom of her watery bed. He has to know, has to see if she is going where he thinks she is, and when Amber allows her beauty to gather up in his eyes like tears, Rick realizes the truth. Suddenly he can feel the world again. Queasiness claims his stomach as its territory. Yet despite his illness he can sense unease also rents an apartment in her body as well, and this realization comforts him. Amber: My voice may quiver, it may be weak... yet I must know what might your name be? Rick: To share it with a beauty like you would be like regaining purity so we could all once again enter the Garden of Eden. My name is Rick Sandburn, and if the inquiry is not so rude, I would like to hear this fine young lady utter her name. Amber: That name which covers the entirety of me is Amber Sladen, and to be here talking to you is like knowing I have a home guaranteed in Heaven. Rick: Thank you, miss. Narrator: We could follow this scene so daring and dripping with eroticism, but the words exchanged were many and my time will not last forever so I will swiftly inform you these two soon were sharing a dance and then a bed... yes, Rick the king of masturbating... prince of loneliness... was given permission to lie naked with the queen of the bar scene... the princess of so many fantasies. Only one night was able to record their passion, and what a night it was! Rick's tongue was so diligent when he finally decided to massage her clit, and that is the only skill a man needs to be famous: superb mastery of giving a clit a tongue bath. Amber, being unable to store all her intimate details as well as being a very popular woman, will soon tell of her adventure with Rick...and she does so. With the release of such information women start flocking to him. Every night the condoms one can find in Rick's garbage can have been blessed. Their skin is carrying the majestic vaginal juices of some women so beautiful that it seems as if we are a society of Helens, which can be seen as nothing other than ironic because Rick's hometown is Troy. Rick: Summer and I, we both came. We both fought a hectic battle to hold back my excitement on that night when amber approached me. I remember it had been raining that night. And it is no coincidence that on that night my life changed. Baptism, baptism! REBIRTH!!!!! For years, my feet had burdened the ground, carrying the weight of a loser... a nobody, a ghost. 2 years here and now I have finally started to live. Unlock the gates, ladies! No longer are there days when my youth is crippled and those pretty girls hide their vaginas in their arrogance from me because the word has spread (like so many legs) before me that I have a mystical tongue that extracts sensations from the center of womanly nerve endings which no other man even knew existed. Yes, I have carefully navigated this warm, pink flesh, so expertly steering my tastebud ship. I have survived the jungle so often threatening to gag me. It wanted to choke out my life, to rip out my heart... to hold it aloft and say, " Here...here, ladies, is your pleasure-god's end!" But I have conquered it all. So many orgasms have found their genesis at the tip of my tongue. How many, you say? I do not care to count! Narrator: And as his fame grew, the number of friends in his life followed... young lonely men whom he once resembled, yet now he has very little patience with them. Oh all the little Ricks of the world, your prototype no longer has any interest in thee. On several evenings his words burned with threats of physical corruption if these Rick clones would not part ways with him. And here in these occasions we are able to see Rick is no more. Just a shell. Hollow is this man. Emotions no longer various, just black and white. Here we start to witness the fall of the Rick that was, a kind spirit, so friendly and giving that he stood out in the crowd of deception which is, sadly, the world we fill. Rick: Leave my side, you burden of acne and misery. How am I expected to thrive when you interrupt the flow of my life? Just a distraction, a joke waiting for someone like me to deliver the punchline which hangs silent in the air, impatient, a ball of potential energy longing to be spent. Well, let me help it to realize its goals in this world: to mock you, to create that perfect moment when your ego is weaker than all other creatures on this Earth. Narrator: Laughter flows from beer mouths. Ah, Rick, you are a hit...quite a card, this young man... but he has no heart. He has to be shown humility again, but it takes so long to come around that he has a chance to explore the pits of inhumanity much deeper than anyone should ever go. Scene Four Narrator: So here we see a delicate picture: Rick and his new lover, Tira... a true angel blessed with her transitory bones to carry a wonderful elf. Caring, gentle, beautiful... not the kind of gift that ought to bestowed upon the Rick we now know. Rick: Fragile flower, do you think I have the time to care for you... the time to learn how to maintain my balance while on the tips of my toes so that I do not damage you? The world is a magician set to make every second vanish! Life is too fast for me to bother learning how to respect you, or love you, or care for you, yet you on the other hand must be one with me every night. Upon the blackboard of your heart the chalk must always display what pleases and infuriates me. If I disturb the molecules of the air with the weight of your name, your brittle voice must have an immediate response. Whatever I want, you are to get (or give) and promote no questioning and no protest to m desires. You are mine now. you have no self to defend, no personal desires to satisfy. All my wants are yours, all my thoughts are yours. Women's liberation occupies their world, but we live in our world. So come here and kiss me, dear (as if you could possibly say no!). Everything is going just fine, as long as you and I both agree even the tiniest particle of dust in my nose is a tragedy that could ruin the world, while destruction of your spine would register no more importance than a passing breeze. Narrator: And so you can see on to what dark paths our tragic Rick has stumbled. The streets he wanders now are steel and selfish, so devoid of light that he cannot even see his reflection when he passes the display windows of department stores, reflective machinery that puts more than the interior's merchandise on display. All glass has the ability to act like a mirror, and these windows do not defy their brethren. Cocteau believed one could walk through mirrors if only the chance were taken. And these windows so often repeat a historical image that the world aches for Rick to see, a revitalized image of the days when his soul was softer and, despite his solitude, he saw more joy than he does now. These windows show the Rick that once was, when he used to write poetry that sang to the universe... Past-Rick: I am that sawmill which pressure could have closed. How much can we spend to wine and dine extrapolated metaphors? You break my creatures, devour my forests, and where is the place that remains in which I may comfortably remove my clothing and bathe, wash away all the hopes and dreams that will never be realized? Corrupt your truth, dead and wild youth. I am a wizard stealing spirits. God, yes...broken spirits grazing the days of moral vanity. Whiskers growing too thick. Break me into sticks and stones so that I may be used, when you put this man upon the chopping block, to grind him (your enemy) into the dust. His Word no sane man would follow. The misery and the ecstasy of it all becomes apparent before the fall. Tooth, decay for me because the pain sends sense back to my life... sends me back to living a dream crashing down upon itself. Creak and crack and shrivel of bones when your winter schemes make you forget your summer dreams. Having been lost, no sun will ever come to melt away this snow so heavy, chaining my limbs to nothingness...yet I cannot move, cannot breathe. Easter comes too soon, it seems. I try to stay awake, but the wisdom won't keep me. I try to stay asleep, but the nightmare's intensity makes this old brain of mine beg me to wake up, so I do...and when I look around, I am a captive to the discovery that my bed is burning and I am the focal point... the yearning, the desire, the main goal for which the flames are blindly searching. But too quickly, too soon, I drown and in these waters I make my haven... make myself become a merman and remain, escaping the flames. Never face the pain. Narrator: Ah, life! What games you play! How well-equipped were this young man's faculties! Hopefully he shall soon regain himself as sure as the summer will repossess the continent. Turn, turn...oblivious to me, oblivious to us all. Do not extinguish unless this tale is shared. The world must hear. Hear, do you? A young woman crying. This would be the one for whom Rick so easily displays his lack of respect. Tira, alone in her room and so confused by her boyfriend, and wondering... Tira: Is this how we love, how we hold and caress another human's soul? By declaring that the soul's owner might as well already have returned to the dust from which she spawned? Is this love? I have never known love, yet something tells me this is not it. All his kisses and caresses and ecstasies of release into my womb mean nothing. If they have any definition at all, it certainly is not love. So why does he pretend? Why bother to deceive me, making me think I am loved? Narrator: Of course Rick is unaware of her plight. But he is calling her even as we hear Tira question his love. Rick: I have come to the realization that you and I are not matching halves of the same whole, so we shall stop trying to shape ourselves as suck. Love cannot be forced. It should work naturally. But I must let you know this relationship does not end because I feel there is some flaw in my soul. No, it is you whose eyes do not glow, whose beauty is not radiant, whose talk bores me. Brutal honesty is what you need to give you a wake-up call. Had you not bored me, you would not be destines to cry yourself to sleep tonight alone in that bed of yours which suddenly feels to big...too empty. Narrator: And like some evil specter, it is a puff of smoke which masks Rick's disappearance. When the smoke dissipates one can view the expected scene: a young woman's spirit full of holes... a World War city aftermath, nothing more...nothing less. All hope gone...shattered, a crystal ball which nobody and nothing can mend. Tira: Oh if only I could destroy him as he has destroyed me, but I do not even have the strength to reach out and put this receiver back on its hook. All I have left within me are the tears which now tread lonely paths down my face. Once they are gone, I will have nothing left. Rick has taken everything from me: pride, joy, spirit, self-esteem... not even my tears can be spent and have the honor of saying, " No, I am definitely not a victim of Rick's." Even these were taken by him and branded as his own. Narrator: And what of our Rick? How does he feel now that he has ruined Tira? I will ask the reader to remember now how devastated and tormented Rick was when he was unable to avoid a catastrophic break with Lisa... but where is he now? Rick: Dimly in the background I could hear them saying Tira was transforming...becoming an alcohol sponge all because I dropped her so casually like a rock, as the saying goes. But I barely heard the remark because this new girl (whose name I have already forgotten) was quite a screamer. Never has my penis raised a woman's volume so high. But here is the first, glass shards exploding across the floor and if she were here would Tira take a sliver of that glass and cut her wrists? I would not be bearing any surprises in my mind if she did so. Would she smear the blood across my lips in an attempt to give me a sense of shame? For a dull moment, I wonder, but I never care. At any rate, a second later the thought is completely gone. The girl's screams of ecstasy are all my brain pan can hold. Girl: you must be Samson, every part of you a wonder of human development! Oh, how lucky a girl I am to be here naked while this perfect sculpture of bone and muscle ravages me! Promise me, promise me you will love me all night long! Rick: To you I say I promise only one thing: to unleash my semen (worth its weight in gold to you), and that is all. Girl: Who do you think you are? Rick: I thought I was Samson, as you so recently said. Girl: What about giving me that glory of the female orgasm? You promised to deliver at least that pleasure! Rick: So often have I heard people say promises are made for us to break... and besides, you have fingers. why not achieve that glory by your own hand? Narrator: With that, the insensitive Rick drifts off at age 21. Oh, so soon the redemption will come...but first Rick has a surprise to uncover for himself, and then...a further descent. ACT THREE Narrator: Before you proceed, reader, take caution that we are now entering unpleasant territory. Imagine 1954 as a thriving ocean of Rick's mid-twenties but also recreate the dread he feels once he makes a certain discovery. Scene One Narrator: And here he is now, our protagonist Rick, waiting to see the doctor and skimming a magazine while he sits so handsomely in his black shorts and white T-shirt. Rick: When I peruse the pages of these sanitized journals (so clean in this medical hell) I never expect to find anything that interests me. Perhaps a cigarette ad showcasing beauties who do not smoke scantily clad...smiling...deeply tan and ready-made for a masturbation session. But today, no beauties, no books or records reviewed that are at all interesting. What to do? Study one more page, and if I see nothing then the magazine must sleep in its bed, the waiting room's coffee table of Egyptian lore, carrying so much literature... words jammed with meanings which the slippery nature of language always denies them. Chemical formulas to create a hit song or a perfect poem. Empty dreams to muffle my screams when I turn this last page (guaranteed, or so I thought, to be my final bore) and then I see him! Positively the guardian of a doorway to a channel of myself which I never knew existed. Sitting here, my cock flaccid, I suddenly find myself getting hard when I see this man. My blond pubic hair ripples as my cock stretches, moves this way and that straining to get out and see this man. His body chiseled, his skin tanned so perfectly... oh if only I could... (STOP THAT! THROW THAT AWAY!) Some inner force reprimanding me So I toss the magazine down on the table. Quick are my hands to cover my bulging shorts. I ask this inner agent what its name is. Police: We are the Homo Police, son, a force which your conscious mind does not know exists. Despite our title, we are really more like the CIA of your brain conducting unseen operations to make sure any homoerotic thoughts are crushed before they can touch your waking brain. Zeus and all the tales he has for you are nowhere near as earth-shattering as the gay moments your brain experiences. Do not fear, everyone has them. However, to be honest you have been having them much more frequently. You do not know this because we have been killing your desires and your dreams to protect you, but it seems one desire escaped our capture before we could execute it. So now you have discarded the picture which stimulated the desire long enough to make its presence known. Do not fear anything. This is just a phase. Right now you have had so many women that your Subconscious Mind is asking you, " What now? What next? This body has done almost everything one can do with a woman or two. Soon those last few possibilities will be explored... and then what? Try three women at once? No, even this body knows its limits. That would be too much to handle. What are the alternatives? Some are too horrid to even contemplate. Who knows what horrors Rick could bring upon his flesh as punishment if he were to ever intimately touch a child, a corpse, an animal, or bodily waste! But the same sex... here is an option which, deep within the labyrinth of Rick's mind, does not cause an outrage." What this means is part of your psyche believes homosexual encounters is the direction in which your sexual evolution should now progress. But we know this would tear your sanity apart... make you crazy. We are the torches lighting the path of repression just like our pistols illuminate the atmosphere when we kill your homosexual longings. Fear not, brave Rick, as we order this homoerotic urge to step out with its hands up! Narrator: Indeed a struggle just like this was rattling Rick's poor head. The urge came out and spoke. Urge: But I was only seeking the path to the next level... just wanted to help him. Police: Raise your hands or else we will add more holes in your faggot ass! Urge: All right, I will comply. Please, no violence. Spare me. You know it, you feel it, you can hear it in my voice: the fact that I will not cause any harm or put up a fight. Police: Yes, we know. You faggots will bend over for anyone. Narrator: That should have been enough of a clue, but the poor urge was rather dim-witted. the fog of its handicap did not part fast enough. Seconds after the light paled its skin, the Homo Police came on full-force. Bullets too numerous to count tore the urge to pieces. When the last shot finished ringing, both the urge and Rick's erection had vanished. As far as reality is concerned, external circumstances change so frequently. Nurse: Rick Sandburn, the doctor will see you now. please follow me. Narrator: This young lady is his guide. Rick studies her figure. Her attire holds her so lovingly. To himself Rick says: Rick: Wow, look at this woman's ass! How my hands would love to squeeze it and run up the front of the outfit to hold her breasts. Narrator: Of course these thoughts are so amazingly heterosexual that they nearly bring a tear to the eyes of Homo Police everywhere, even those who lie slumbering and oblivious, waiting and resting unless their assistance is called. Police: Good boy, Rick...now you are starting to learn how it's done! If only it were socially acceptable to give her ass a good swat, then we would definitely encourage it. However, we suggest you just take it easy now. We have to recover from this awful event in which you nearly slipped up. Narrator: Oh, but how little do these police know that soon more thoughts will escape their traps, no matter how carefully laid or how numerous. And Rick will have to wonder... Scene Two Rick: Am I a gay man? or no? Oh no, I hope not... despite all these miserable fantasies that clutter my brain. Please forgive me, my panic is not justified because the phenomenon is simply known as bi-curiosity. Only a momentary distraction, I hope yet I cannot avoid the other event occurring which is my magazine searching. And how vast this media is! Look hard enough and ample information will fill the screen of my eyes and the dreams of my longing mind. So why, why have I been looking so hard for homosexual magazines? (Not the easiest to find in 1954, mind you.) When I finally found a few, why did I immediately search out the contents page to see if there was any erotica? And why, I ask you, why did I discard any magazines that lacked hot burning love fiction? Curiosity, my mind says. But then why did I let that one man who had been standing beside me take me to an alley where he read me his favorite story while masturbating? The way he read the story was enough to get me to obtain orgasm despite my fatigue... despite the fact that anyone could have walked by and seen what was happening. And I came much harder than I ever had with any woman. Narrator: So this is how recent events have left our Rick, confused and hurting and hateful. Rick: It is their fault, those men who lie with men... all their fault. With their tricks and lies they are tempting me from the shadows of my closet. Cowards all, just give me a chance. I will make them pay! My spirit is in tune with opportunity. Just let them approach me and I will unleash m fury upon them, so vicious that they will know enough to hide their sick pleasures away whenever I come around. My friends told me they were going to wait outside the Cable Company downtown because it is a gay bar. They were going to wait so they could take some stumbling homo drunk and wound him. I say: why wait until he is drunk? I plan to march in there and start a brawl! Narrator: As the story goes, however, there are no flailing limbs or bloody fists or missing teeth or bottles breaking when Rick enters that gay bar. Instead we find a bar stool, so eager to support someone's weight, is holding none other than Rick in check, his face elevated at the right height so that other men can detect his beauty. Blond hair, blue eyes... a winning team here. Many men approach Rick, but his cold shoulder drives all away. They detect the fire filling him inside. All of them know the rage he is feeling. A young man... only recently has he discovered he might be gay, yet Rick is still uncertain although he is practically forcing himself to be straight and exclude all thoughts of men. Rick: No brawls because first I must study the enemy... must know them... must wear my friendly mask, pretend to be one of them. Homo Police know my mission, and they give me all their support as I seek to find the perfect specimen for my revolution. Oh, these fags are so easy to mimic! No, I cannot do this because I am not sure if I can duplicate them so easily because the task is not difficult or maybe because it is not hard to copy them when you already are one of them. Narrator: This torment keeps ripping at Rick's brain. As these days pass, you can almost feel his struggle building inside him. However, internal tensions can be held only for so long. Somehow they must seek an external release, as we shall soon see. Scene Three Narrator: Once again, we are at the gay bar with Rick. He is taking a drink, tilting his head back so that his eyes collaborate with another man's, both sets of orbs sharing the same plane of existence. Little does Rick know, this man has been watching him all night, wishing they could share a bed. Rick gets up to use the facilities. While facing the urinal and pissing away all his dreams, he does not pay attention when the creak of the door disrupts the air, clashing with the hum of the lights. Why should he be cautious? Just another drunk who has to vomit. But this turns out to be a drunk quite unlike any other he has met, because suddenly Rick feels warm, masculine lips press into his neck. Hands reach around, intending to touch his penis. Rick: Foul creature! Faggot beast! I'm going to rip the life out of you! Narrator: A spin to the left is all Rick needs to send his elbow crashing into the side of this would-be lover's head. He goes stumbling away, but Rick does not let it end. Fists and feet are almost resurrecting his teenage angst. The gay man crumbles while his body is constantly pounded by kicks and punches. He knows this pain all too well, and the low self-esteem he owns makes him believe he deserves this treatment. but we all know... all of us who claim to be human beings, anyway... that just because he desires different ecstasies does not make him deserve such a thrashing. Homosexual: Please, cease! My limbs and my soul are already weak! I have made an error! Please, let me be! Rick: Err you did indeed! Now feel this wrath! Narrator: Needless to say, our protagonist's fury had raised quite a few decibels, causing a commotion which friends of Rick's prey decide to investigate. Unnoticed by the assailant, these other gay men enter the bathroom to find their friend broken and crying, and at this point they just as invisibly slipped out of the restroom... (RING RING RING) Operator: Yes, how may I help you? Friend: Violence! Fists connecting with weary bones! Tell the police to make their way to the Cable Company as soon as they can! Narrator: Once the destination is given, it is not much longer until sirens are wailing outside the gay bar. Rick emerges from the bathroom, still oblivious to these occurrences, and sits down to get another drink when suddenly he is pushed violently up against the bar, patted down, pinned to the spot, and inadvertently handcuffed while he is told... Officer: You have the right to remain silent... Narrator: And this whole speech continues, winding...unwinding forever and then before it seems too real to be true, judgment day arrives. Rick stands before a jury of his peers who wear alien faces and bleed kaleidoscopic dreams. There is no salvation to drink here. Judge: By the pounding of this gavel I will bring down upon you this punishment, just as I bring this wooden head down upon this counter! FIVE YEARS, STATE PRISON! Now leave my sight, foul human...if you can even be called such. (BANG BANG BANG) Rick: So, as easily as that I am tossed into the zoo, no women to hold me or tell me everything will be all right. No one cares, no one knows my name. Scene Four Narrator: Now we have a gray-walled life to live... Rick has been put in jail because he let his anger burn him too much. We now join him and his thoughts as his sentence slowly whittles away at itself. Five years to sit with killers and rapists. Rick: I think of prison as a mediocre place to dwell. At first my fear was bloody dreaming, endless streams of men ready to leave traces inside me. But there was a saving grace for me. My first night here, every inmate somehow found out why I had joined them. Evidently this news made their ears sparkle. They found inspiration in my actions. On my second day I was standing all alone in the shower when I heard numerous footsteps clearly carrying foul intent. I figured my rape was inevitable, so I turned to face my assailants...to look into their eyes, memorize every bend and twist in their faces so that I will know on whom I should get revenge when my days of power rise again. They all stood there, faces trapped behind these granite walls for so long that they have become stone. No smile could break rock, at least none that I have seen. The one I took to be their leader (a short, withered, yet iron-willed man whose head glows like the sun) points at me and roars. Leader: Turn off the water, we must speak with you! Rick: What was I to do? I was trembling so badly my hands could not work. When I looked back to face them (after turning off the water), they had all moved closer to me like one being...one collective. the bond which had developed between them would not let them move as one. Leader: We heard why you are here. Rick: His voice like thunder, his stare like lightning. Leader: We heard you broke the bones of a gay man like some blasphemous bastard would shatter a sacrificial altar, and we came to ask: Is this true? Rick: Yes, this man tried kissing me which is an action I would not (and did not) request, so I had to thrash the lesson into him quite thoroughly. Narrator: A brief pause comes, to serve no other purpose than to give Rick more time to be nervous. The inmates look around at each other, then back to Rick. Rick: Suddenly there is an eruption of rock as the stone-skin of the leader cracks to reveal a smile. All other inmates follow suit. One of them starts to laugh, and soon the air is corrupted by this sound, which I cannot decipher...does it contain joy or malice? Is it maniacal? My answer comes when their leader steps forward, actually able to separate from the collective, and extends his hand for me to shake. Leader: Congratulations, friend. Rick: I tentatively shook his hand and all the others cheered. Many more handshakes followed, as well as some hearty, well-intentioned embraces. Eventually the celebration ceased, and the leader imparted some knowledge upon me. Leader: Now that you have won our acceptance, you need not worry. This jail is your playground. You need not fear some midnight rapists or a knife in your side while you sleep, and you may sleep as long and as heavily as you wish. No one will disturb you now. Rick: At long last my fears were dissolved. I could wander the gray halls freely, and yet I was not free to leave them. Despite the fact that I had spent so many evenings with so many women, there were no visitors who could steal a piece of the sun for me and sneak it into the prison. Certainly I am free of fear. No reason to worry about rape or death, but I had to possess all other fears: what majesty would life contain once I was out of there? Will the clay pot which holds the beauty of life have been shattered, and all that precious magic slipped away? Even when I walk the streets free again, will the world be my prison then? I am not so sure. The suspense weighs me down, makes me too numb to speak my dread. What a waste my life has been. Rotting inside me. No more spirit left. Going down like a rocket. Bleed insanity, bleed away until I have nothing left. I know the names of so many people and none of them are here to comfort me. None of them were there to say good bye when the judge gave me my term. All my life has led gradually to nothing. So what am I worth? Nothing. What do I feel? Nothing. What makes life worth living? Nothing. It seems apparent what I must do when I get out. Nothing, because that is my only alternative. ACT FOUR Narrator: We left Rick last while he was sitting in jail, discovering that the current meaning of his life was less than satisfactory. Here comes the burden which we must all face. Imagine... five years have gone, and it is now 1959. Once more we see a familiar face haunting the streets: familiar because it is Rick, and he is hunting sanctuary. He was released to find he had been evicted from his home. Now, with hardly any money, no job, and no place to live, Rick is doomed to wander the piss-stained downtown streets. If he were a ghost this might be the neighborhood which he would be condemned to haunt. He is a lost soul. Scene One Narrator: We join Rick once more, his sensor unfocused and his spirits dead. At every door where he used to find friends he now finds strangers either because they have moved or because they shut the door on him, their memories of him somehow deleted. Rick: Here I am and have been quite a long while today, sitting here and knowing this is not what one calls a grand transition: from jail cell to street corner. Oh how I hate these hours! Because I know the pain burning me is a tear which I have made in the souls of others. I suffer now for what I made them suffer so long ago that it seems like another lifetime. Oh, why couldn't it have been someone else's life? Why did this have to be mine? Perhaps the gods have swapped memories or physical bodies between myself and someone else. Yes, a celestial joke played on my unknowing brain. Wait...what nonsense am I thinking? As mind-numbingly awful as it is, this is my life and these are my memories. And there is still that cringe of rage when I see a man and my blood boils in ecstasy. I rise, I think of jail, and I force the pain to disappear. Women, where are you? Please come and be my proof that I am not gay. Or maybe show me that I am bisexual! Someone help me! Narrator: His cry echoes into the night. No response; he is alone. Rick: Oh, what am I to do? What to do? Such a life is not worth living! Perhaps I shall throw it all away! Narrator: And so he stumbles his way to doom, eventually finding a bridge which allows him access to cold water, and he plummets into it. Were there no kind souls to hear Rick's weight break the skin of the water, he might have died as he wished. As our story goes, he was rescued. The vision of this savior causes quite a strong response from Rick, as we shall now see. Scene Two Narrator: Hours later, he awakens in a hospital so white that it seems to be Heaven at first. Then Rick realizes this is still Earth, his body still containing his soul. Nurse: Hello, how are you? Rick: Feeling cold... worse than a graveyard. Nurse: D not worry, we have you in our grasp and soon our hold on you will restore the warmth. Rick: Thank you. And who, may I ask, was the one who decided to save me? And there in the dim light by the window I can see my savior taking shape to be... a man. Not breasts and a vagina, a pair of cock and balls. This was my savior, and remains so, glowing in the light... a prism refracting the glory for my eyes to behold. My life has been cracked so often by women. Now I realize what a tragic misdirection my life has been following. Men have always been there for me, never women. Women have always pushed me away, made my life a lonely and hollow one. Men have always come to my rescue. And here in a shining set of teeth and humanity we see a literal example of a savior. Of course I do realize my hands have not always had a sweet flavor for the ladies to enjoy. That is why they left me to send myself into the body of a tree where the harpies could rip away chunks of me and eat my bark-flesh while laughing. Women of this nation... no, of this world...I beg of you to forgive my confusion because all along I have known my own truth and hated it, but now I am willing to accept it: I AM GAY ! Once my limbs and brain, so numb, have healed I will reenter the world and make amends. No longer is my mind crippled by blind hatred. Narrator: The savior, whose name is Arnold, approaches the bed and holds Rick's hand. Arnold is vibrant and glowing with strength. Rick's power is only a flickering light now, but he is returning. Arnold: I am glad to see my efforts to save you have shown you back through the veil which separates life and death so that you may still share common ground with the living. Narrator: Rick returns the grip with equal intensity and knows what he must do. Once he is free to explore the new world in which he now lives, Rick must return to that point where it all began: the gay bar where his angry fists gave birth to trouble. Rick: All four chambers of my heart are pumped full of gratitude Narrator: Soon his time will come. There are amazing waves of joy ready to shock his body once Rick hit the scene he once so loved to hate. Now we shall flip forward in our storybooks, passing the days which the healing process has to devour to nurse Rick's body back to health. Every day the savior visits. They share one another's company, and then Arnold bares himself to Rick: total truth unobstructed and unapologetic. He brings Rick some flowers an so eloquently says: Arnold: Rick, when I saved your life it was not purely a stranger's devotion to another human being, although that certainly was part of it. But to bare it all, I must let you know I am gay. My eyes have studied you, followed your every move. If you ever felt the weight of a shadow staring at your back, it was me. As for why I share this now, it is because I ask of you one great request: just one evening of love, of you and I sharing a bed. Narrator: On this day of glorious revelation Rick has been released from his sanitized prison. Now he is free to do as he pleases, and he already has an idea how to occupy his time. Rick: Yes, Arnold, I shall go to your home and show you just how much joy churns within my heart. Oh, such joy because you saved me. My life was so pointless until now...so wasted and directionless, and I was stumbling and blind... but you touched your thumbs against your eyes and gave them sight. Narrator: With that said, his lips briefly find Arnold's and a spark of desire forces Rick to pull away from Arnold. Both men are uncomfortable in their clothing so they head out. Destination unknown? Perhaps for others but for lovers like these two, the final point on the trip is right here: Arnold's hotel room. Rick: Love me he does, and love me he will once we enter that room and seal out the world. Scene Three Narrator: And here it is... the driveway, the parking. The whole world smells of spiritual rebirth. Rick and Arnold head upstairs, holding hands and ready for love. Rick: Nervous...so scared with a twitch to occupy my time and accompany my feelings. This was to be my first man. The moment his door closed, Arnold turned to me. His mouth located mine. And oh the lips of another man caused constellations to scatter through my body. Heaven and Earth combined inside me as our tongues explored new life. He wanted me to remove my shirt, so I did and his mouth went to my nipples. Soon we were on the bed. My cock was already erect by the time he unraveled it. Then suddenly I felt his tongue politely licking the head of my cock. Seconds later, he took my whole length into his mouth. Overwhelming joy assaulted my brain. At long last I knew the joys of feeling another man worshipping my cock with his mouth. It did not take long for me to release into his throat. Arnold: Please pleasure me in kind, my dear. I have wanted to feel your hands and mouth upon me. Rick: With that he stood up while I sat on the edge of the bed facing him. I got his pants down to reveal a beautiful cock, erect, excited... happy to be free. This was the first time another man's cock had been so close to me. I blushed at the sight of him. Arnold: You possess the beauty that could melt many a man to come. Rick: Under the weight of these words I took him into my hand, handling his cock as I would my own. It was clearly enough to please him. After a while, though, I realized it would take more to bring him to climax. It would take what I feared the most: his cock in my mouth. No desire ever existed in my life for me to taste another man's semen. Yet he assured me to have no fear. Arnold: I will pull out of your mouth and deposit my seed on the floor. Rick: Then I remembered all those times when I had been a bastard...when I had forced women to swallow... so I told Arnold to cancel the request, told him to hold my head in place once he started to come. I wanted to have his sweet, sticky seed in my mouth because sooner or later I would be destined to taste it anyway. And with that I took him into my mouth, felt the stiff rod pass between my lips. At first I was unsure how to handle him, and my lack of coordination accidentally raked my teeth across his tender cock. He gasped in pain, and I apologized sincerely while nursing his injured pole with my hand. My lips and tongue also serviced him back to health. Soon his moans of pleasure were returning, and he spoke to me. I have never heard such words of passion burn through the language of this mighty nation. Then, in a moment of pleasure extending beyond the amount which his flesh was able to hold, I felt his cock jump in my hand and mouth as the semen erupted. His balls released into my throat, the nectar which so few dare to taste, and I hungrily slurped it down, feeling sensations which only the most perfect dreams contain. Arnold: Lips and tongue of an angel, my dear Rick. So lovely for me to behold yet I could never dream to hold you all my own. Narrator: His lips gently kissed Rick's cheek. Arnold explained with words to dazzle the ear that Rick had quite an interesting new world to explore: the dwelling place which he now shared with all gay men. Arnold: I do not wish to hold back a beauty like me. In your soul you are an eagle so fly away... see all you can... but please, I ask of you at least keep me safely tucked away in your dreams. Rick: Another kiss on my cheek, one more lover to my name, and he was gone from me forever. Left no number or address. Once again I was alone to feel the world draining me away. Closing my eyes did not keep this trend from going out of style... but within a blink of twilight a door in my memory creaked open. Suddenly I had the drug to remedy this situation. Narrator: Shower and shave, teeth thoroughly brushed, Rick is ready only one hour later to conquer the doorway and his loneliness. No more!, he realizes. He is alone, not lonely... relationships never fit the gap in his life. They were too large. A quick burst of passion and semen is all he needed. No need to carry an anchor like love. His limbs are not yet strong enough for that. Without further ado galaxies are crossed and conquered. Beneath his feet they become dust and sarcasm to which no one owes any debt. Soon a man (whose muscles are like gargantuan steel constructions) is checking Rick's age and giving him permission to cross a threshold once so full of antagonism, now crushing him in a warm embrace of love. Palace of dread is now home of potential pleasure. A place from which he once studied the enemy is now a throne which gives Rick time to observe a crowd of gorgeous men. Not only does he study, but he is also studied, as before, only this time he is more receptive to the pick-up lines and offers of alcohol. He settles his joy upon one man in particular, glowing like a halo, a man whose name is Jerry... 5'10", 175 pounds, with short wavy black hair, deep brown eyes that carve out mysterious patterns in Rick's brain, forever cursed to be cryptic. Not too muscular yet not a blob of sloth, Jerry had unknowingly netted Rick. This discuss the usual bar introduction banter of one thousand millenniums. then, without warning, our protagonist lets insecure Jerry realize how much luck he possesses by saying the following: Rick: Listen, I have an itch which can vanish only if we leave this place. Jerry: Ah, it is this irritation on the inside which is so hard to relieve, yet you claim to have already found a way to resolve this ache. What might leaving this place do to erase your torment? Rick: Lean close so that I may deposit the answer in your ear. Narrator: Jerry leans forward and Rick tells him this most wonderful of all answers: Rick: If we leave to embrace ourselves in the comfort of your home or mine, only then may I have your taste in my mouth, my heart, my soul. Narrator: Under the stars Jerry's mind moves into suggestion mode. Jerry: My place is free of all hassles: I live alone and not too far away. Rick: Then I think we should drink this last drink to pleasure that awaits us. Narrator: The alcohol flows down dark caverns to fill a need. Loosen up, Rick, to share yourself more freely with this stranger. Soon they are naked and alone, these two men who know what mannerisms please other men. Cocks, hands, and tongues all seek out electric sparks of joy. They are found in abundance. One trick after the next executed in sequence promotes Rick to orgasm. His cock is in Jerry's mouth, while Jerry fills our protagonist's jaws at the same time... both men lose their seed to one another. Sleep arrives after a shower. Jerry drifts away on a sea of peace while Rick slips out the door. And so ends this second adventure into Rick's new world of homosexuality. He comes away feeling more satisfaction than he ever felt while lying with any woman. Scene Four Narrator: We come to a point where narration can be broad and brief because more important goals lie ahead. As nights pass the number grows...the number of men who share Rick's ecstasy. Carefully, though...the list does not extend too long or increase too quickly. His pleasures are only masturbation and oral love. (Though we must note Rick often wonders what it is like to give or receive anal joy, yet he does not attempt either out of fear that he will give or receive pain.) Happiness is his to hold as he experiences these brief but thoroughly satisfying nights spent dwelling in the world of men. These are his first few close encounters with the gay kind, who have always been his kind yet until now were completely alien to young Rick. Once they spawned a rage in him so deep and strong that no cage could ever control the beast. Now, with three words forming on his lips... " I am gay"...the monster has been destroyed, sentenced to an eternity in a vacuum. Where there is no breath to be drawn, there is only death to be found. Weeks pass and only fragments of Rick's life are of any concern to us. Lacking a roof to cherish his name, Rick seeks employment. Despite his young rage appearing in legal records, our protagonist finds himself recruited as an employee at some electronics company, designing future toys and other various games. The wage he earns deposits into his pocket more money than all the jobs he ever had. Life once again possesses its retina-burning shine. Rick looks past the glare to see a future he can embrace and adore like a lover...yet, for a while, he has no lovers. Suddenly, Rick feels an urge emerge from his heart, not his loins. Where once there was no need to fall asleep in someone's arms, Rick now starts to notice how empty his bed truly is. His heart now hopes to not beat alone any longer, and soon Rick is hoping that a fellow employee can fill this gap, a gorgeous man named Marc Sommers. ACT FIVE Narrator: So now we move in our magnifying lens closer to see Rick as he tries to uncover the truth, meaning whether or not Marc is also gay. One syllable could shatter the dream; the word " no" haunts Rick at night... even when he is awake it sends shivers trembling through his bones. For the record, Marc is a gorgeous construction of bone and tissue, his tendons and ligaments draped over his limbs in perfect harmony. Six feet tall, 170 pounds, beautiful tan, shoulder-length bronze hair, incredible brown eyes that make women and gay men alike hope he prefers their company. Marc's money has given him the wonderful opportunity to own his own universal weight set, and it is far from collecting dust, as anyone could see by studying his impressive physique. Within his smile there is hidden a charm that could topple kingdoms and dissolve mountains. But all we must hear about him begins, as it always does, on Monday morning. Scene One Narrator: Rick's office...clearly a man's office because his desk is a cluttered mess...he is having a trial by fire or at least it feels that way in his gut. Somehow three of his projects have all gone five thousand dollars over budget, totaling up to $ 15,000. If he does not find an error in his calculations, then he owes that money to the company. Needless to say, this is money Rick does not have. He has dared to raise his hand, gained the nerve to admit when he needs help. Someone suggested he seek out help from Marc, and so in a voice shaking like California Rick requested the help from his object of desire...and Marc agreed. Soon he was going to enter Rick's office. And just as Rick realized this, the door to his office squeals to announce the joy of this beautiful man joining our protagonist's company. When Rick sees him, all his worries fade away like the memories of nightmares. Marc: I am here to repair the fracture in your conscience that gives you so much worry and fear. Rick: And I thank you so sincerely for your aid. Narrator: Marc leans over Rick's shoulder so he may view all the data while Rick explains it to him. His scent, his looks...the mere fact of the man being so close disturbs Rick's ability to concentrate. Rick senses that Marc can detect this uneasiness. Soon Marc is at work, helping to save Rick from prison. Within fifteen minutes the disappearing money is once again found, and Rick sighs in relief. Rick: I have no idea what I could do to repay you. Narrator: And fire mixed with glory burns strong in Rick's mind when Marc responds with this statement: Marc: A date...one evening, one dinner... with you would be a fine payment indeed. Rick: I...I have to inquire if your request means what I think. Marc: Come closer, and I will tell you what my request means. Narrator: Whispering so gently into Rick's ear, Marc lets out the fact that Rick has so desperately wanted to be true: yes, Marc is gay. That night becomes the first gay date Rick has ever had. It ends with a perfect good night kiss, and that is all. Weeks pass. It is clear that this first date's destiny is to become the first of many. Destiny is fulfilled. Out of all the men who have shared Rick's company, Marc has earned the honorable title of being Rick's true first boyfriend... yet they do not share any physical love. Marc: I am frightened to share myself with you, Rick, because in the past each time physical love was initiated, it wound up becoming the only focal point of the relationship. A hollow shell to dwell in, dear. So I fear that it might happen again, and I do not want to lose what we have. Narrator: These are the very words that Marc speaks to our protagonist one evening when Rick is trying more valiantly than usual to make his way into Marc's pants. For weeks Rick is refused. He has to return home, always alone. Sometimes he finds himself reliving his teenage masturbation afternoons, only this time they take place at night, when the dark holds him close and Marc's apartment refuses his touch. Poor Rick, unable to enjoy his man yet also unable to enjoy any other because love has hatched...love for Marc. One night Marc finally allows Rick to sleep at his apartment, something which he had not previously let occur because there was the danger that sexual desires could overpower Marc's will. Rick is asked, however, to sleep on the couch. He is not happy with this arrangement, but at least he is one step closer to reaching Marc's bed. Over the course of the night, Rick cannot help masturbating. He makes sure that his semen leaves no marks when it erupts. But his sense of hopelessness, as it has been said, is being diminished. A week after sleeping over is approved, Marc moves on to allowing Rick to sleep in the same bed, and now Rick knows luck is all he needs. The first night, nothing happens in bed, but that is predictable. Our protagonist still manages to fall asleep smiling because he knows his good old trickster ways will be enough to finally win the prize he has desired for so long: the naked company of Marc. Fast approaching is a day which has granted Rick majestic release from the prison that is work, although Marc still has to go slave away. Rick plans to use this as the day to break all barriers. He makes the game plan, and every night he carefully reviews the plan. Soon it achieves an almost holy state of perfection. All Rick has to do is wait, and he can do that with ease. Scene Two Narrator: An evening comes when Rick, crammed with anticipation, is lying on Marc's couch, ever so patiently awaiting his beloved's return. He is wearing a white T-shirt and black sweatpants...not much but enough to conceal his motives. The front door is now swinging open to give Marc a chance to escape all the daily hassles burdening his body. His jacket and tie are removed, as well as his shoes. Marc...gorgeous collection of human anatomy...is unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a white T-shirt similar to Rick's. His lips make a temporary home on Rick's mouth. After his shirt is completely off, Marc heads to the bathroom, located in the hallway just opposite the bedroom. He tosses the shirt and then, as an afterthought, his socks into the hamper. Marc's last task is to undo his belt, which he leaves in his bedroom. Finally he joins Rick on the couch. They kiss and cuddle. Rick: Long has been this empty day. Your presence, so sorely missed, bruised my mind. Now you are home, and the wounds are healing. Marc: All day long I could not help but constantly remember your eyes, your lips, holding your hand. Rick, it is true...more true than any established fact ever was... I love you. Rick: Oh, Marc, when I feel these words slip through my ears there is the definite urge to respond in kind, and so I shall, by saying it is I who love you in return. Narrator: Cuddling in silence, the two men enjoy the love that fills the atmosphere. After a few minutes, Rick decides to set his plan into action and raises his head. He kisses Marc and stands up. Rick: I hate to leave, but a quick bathroom visit is now required. Marc: Hurry back to me, because you know how much I want you back in my arms. Narrator: With one more kiss, Rick vanishes. For a while, Marc sits there in solitude, allowing the worries of the day to fade from his mind. After a while, he notices Rick has not yet returned. Marc: Oh dearest, I am wondering if you are having any trouble. Why have you not yet come back to the warm embrace of my heart and arms? Are you all right? Narrator: Despite his loud, clear voice Marc's inquiry goes unanswered. His feet and soul both bare to the elements and worry, he gets up to investigate...only to find Rick is not using the toilet or bathtub...or even the sink. Standing in the bathroom door, the light still on, Marc does a 360 degree turn so that his eyes now gaze into the bedroom. And it is in there that he catches a glimpse of a figure on the bed. Who else could it be other than Rick? A voice confirms the shape's identity. Rick: Love. come into the room. And please, on your way, could you just extinguish that light? Narrator: Marc does as requested. By the dim light of the radio clock Marc can make out Rick's outline. He can tell Rick is lying on his left side, totally nude...wearing only a smile as the saying goes. When Marc approaches the bed, Rick sits up. Now he is facing his love. Although Marc wants to resist, the fact of Rick's naked body is making the blood flow into his penis, causing it to rise. Marc: Rick, dearest, tell me just what you think you are doing? You know how I feel about this. I am frightened to let myself enjoy these pleasures. Rick: You should really face that fear and defeat it. my beloved. Narrator: Rick puts his hand out and rubs the bulge that is steadily growing in Marc's pants. Rick: Besides, it seems to me that certain parts of you are not afraid. Where your body goes, why not let your mind follow? Narrator: A long, intense gaze into Rick's eyes tells Marc how he should handle this situation. Marc: You know something, dearest? You are correct...absolutely correct. Narrator: With this declaration it is obvious Marc finally sees things the way Rick hoped he would, and this brings a smile to Rick's lips... the very same lips which Marc kisses as he joins Rick on the bed. While both men go to the task of removing Marc's pants, they share a dozen such kisses but in this case, quantity does not in any way diminish the quality. Now only Marc's T-shirt and boxers remain. Although the shirt is quickly peeled away, Rick finds himself pushed on to his back before he can even touch the boxers. Now his cock is being thoroughly explored by Marc's tongue, flicking across the head, running up and down the sides, pleasuring the balls. Rick squirms under the weight of the pleasure he feels. Suddenly Marc stops, and he rises up on the bed, now kneeling between Rick's legs. Marc: I want to observe the pleasure which you give to yourself. Narrator: With that request Rick's hand goes to work, and he is a master...moving slowly, long strokes up and down his cock. Marc: Now could your mouth pleasure me? Rick: First my eyes want to see the object my mouth will accompany. Narrator: Marc stands before his lover while Rick sits on the edge of the bed, still lightly caressing his own erection. Then with great ease Marc drops his boxers to reveal a fully risen, incredible penis...not incredible in size but in beauty. Rick gasps and blushes at the sight of it. Rick: Oh, my eyes enjoy this sight and my mouth is most eager to pleasure this cock. Marc: Well then, by all means do as you please. Narrator: Rick absorbs Marc's lovely cock into his mouth, orally loving it in a way he has never previously loved... but unfortunately the pleasure of Rick's attention is too much for Marc to take. Seconds later he is squirting his seed into Rick's mouth. Rick looks up at his lover and sees sadness haunting Marc's eyes. Marc: Oh, dearest, I apologize so greatly for this quick end to our love. Rick: Please, lover, feel no shame. We have all the time we need to make up for it. Marc: At least give me the chance to help you achieve the same height of pleasure. Let my tongue love you. Rick: No, dearest, that is all right. We should get some rest. Worry not about my pleasure...not right now. Marc: I do sincerely love you, Rick. Rick: As well as I love you, Marc. Narrator: They kiss. After a quick run to the bathroom Marc comes back to bed. Both men fall asleep completely nude and in love with one another. But when Rick next opens his eyes, it is not to see the morning as he once knew it. Instead, he awakens to quite a surprise. My words are weak in explaining this. We now give the narrative reins over to Rick, because it is his story to share. Rick: Long and hard have been the hours I waited to see this man of mine naked, and apparently they were a strain for him as well because he exploded so soon after my mouth touched him. But my love is strong enough to overlook these not-so-perfect first moments of intimacy. In my heart I knew this lover of mine would eventually make up for his excess excitement. All we needed now was rest, a chance to rejuvenate and bathe in the warm grip of sleep. And we did, letting sleep's silken fingers curl around us. Let me tell you, such wonderful rest was never known to me. I had dreams, visions of myself and the man beside me, our love held eternal inside diamonds. The tide tried but could not erode our memories or our lives. Love's strength conquered the ocean... conquered even death itself. " Oh, Marc," I whispered to my beloved, " you are the face which I long to see when my eyes flicker open from sleep." And indeed I would see him, although not how I expected. Let me explain the morning. It was a beautiful, peaceful sleep as I have said. When I awoke the time was made unknown to me because the shades were still drawn and the clock was on the other side of the bed. Had I not sensed Marc's presence behind me, I would have turned to look. Yet when I realized he was there, I also knew life was imitating art... and anyone who has ever read Clive Barker's Imajica will know exactly where my story is going. I was asleep, and had woken up, on my right side. Marc was nestled up against me, his mouth tenderly and gently pressing kisses into my neck and shoulder. His right arm had somehow slipped beneath the weight of my body and wrapped around my waist without rousing me. It also came to my attention that Marc's left hand was down low, slipped between my legs by its owner and lovingly caressing my inner thigh. Soon the pleasing touch came to a stop, and my leg was being slightly readjusted... pushed forward then gently...almost cautiously...lifted, so as not to wake me. At first Marc's reasons for doing all this were a mystery to me. Then, suddenly, I felt his hips shift...moving forward, and I realized so quickly what was happening. While I lay there, so innocently sleeping, Marc had taken the virgin passage. He shifted my leg to ease his initial penetrating stroke. I had always shied away from this, fearing the pain, but there was none. In fact, it was like no other sensation I had ever felt. His lips still explored my neck, unaware that I was awake as he continued to push his manhood forward, sinking into my hindquarters ever so slowly, so gently. There was no concern on his part about where his pole was going, no shame in that he was putting his cock in another man's bottom...just the fact that I was the person he loved, and he wanted to make love to me in the most intimate way he knew how. I could feel his excitement throbbing through the flesh which so eagerly (yet cautiously) entered me. There I lay, held captive in a warm embrace, all while the man I loved gently inserted his erect penis into my yielding anus. He was still unaware of my open eyes until I sighed to let him know. His progress nearly came to a halt, but I pressed back, inviting him in all the way. If he were ever curious about how far he could take this, I satisfied that wonder by thrusting backward and taking him in up to the hilt. I felt a strange warmth on the cleft between my buttocks and realized the heat was flowing from his sac, which was now resting against my backside. I found the thought of this extremely arousing... to have him so close to me that he was inside of me, a part of me. We lay there together like that for a while. my hands went up and down his strong arms, exploring him and my own body as well...even reaching back and down to the place where we were connected. Every part of me felt so complete...so alive. My anal muscles relaxed and the rest of me followed, and I felt as thought I was falling into a beautiful circular explosion of light...and the center of this circle was the very same opening through which Marc had entered me. At the touch of his cock inside me, hitting my prostate, my own member grew hard. Marc: Lover, might we be able to change our position? It would be much easier for me to make love to you if I were behind you. Rick: With this request I gracefully went on to my hands and knees. Marc was momentarily unable to keep up with me, and his cock slipped from the grasp of my rear. Already my anus missed its newest visitor...which had been an intruder at first, but had ever so quickly become a lovely and well-received (and cherished) guest. Please, come back...oh, do make yourself at home! Marc: I slipped out by accident but when my eyes caught sight of that lovely, tan, well-rounded bottom turned up in the air and waiting for me to re-enter it, I aimed my throbbing cock and pushed it back inside Rick's tight ass...sliding the entire blood-gorged shaft into his hole all the way to the hilt with no remorse in sight. Having done that, I started to make love to him. Rick: One hard, manly thrust put his cock right back where he and I both wanted it. The sharp spear of pain brought on by his re-entry quickly vanished as Marc grabbed hold of my hips and let me know what it was like to have a real man inside me... his hands holding my ass steady as he continued this violation. His cock pistoned in and out of my welcoming asshole while my world gradually disappeared under that familiar haze of light. My anus was completely enjoying the visit this penis was giving it, and I was aroused beyond any of my wildest imaginings. Who would have thought it would come to this? Here I was---formerly one of the most notorious, close-minded, ignorant gaybashers ever- engaging in the most pleasurable act of sodomy performed by two homosexuals, and on the receiving end no less! Well, some things certainly do change, and this was one of them... the pride I felt surging through me as I raised my buttocks into the air for this man to pleasure with his cock... to feel his mighty rod plowing into my rectum. His hand sought out my cock but I put mine there first, encouraging him to give his undivided attention to fucking my ass. His cock showed my hole no mercy, and although Marc was roughly thrusting himself in and out of a very tight hole, I was feeling nothing short of wonderful...receiving only the most glorious pleasure as his amazing hardon kept poking me in the rear!, slamming up my poop chute!, oh how terrific to feel him laying the pipe!, and making me take it in the pooper like a trooper!, embedding itself again and again in my tender asshole. And I couldn't help smiling at these silly thoughts...but I was thinking silly because I was happy...happier than I had ever been... happy to be here in this bed on my hands and knees while this beautiful man made love to me. God, how right it felt to have my asshole loosened up so another man could sodomize me. And how wonderful (and lucky) that it was this man! I screamed out to him, a simple cry of " yes, yes!" as he fucked away at my accepting ass. " Oh, show me you love me," I said while looking back at him, " show me how much you want me. Give my asshole the fucking it deserves." My talk spurred him on to drill my ass even harder. I wanted him so badly, and I had him! His relentlessly ramming cock was making my asshole tingle. As it plunged in and out, I suddenly remembered it would all end when Marc released his semen. And that was what really turned me on: that not only was there a beautiful cock fucking me in the ass, but there was also a man attached to that cock who was intent on fucking me until he came. My hand moved faster and faster the more I thought about that load emptying into me. Marc's monster of a cock kept thoroughly exploring my ass...the same ass to which he had gained such easy access, my sphincter having offered no resistance, not signaling me to wake up but instead allowing the knobby head to enter, followed by the strong, throbbing shaft. All while he fucked me, I kept shouting " yes!" The pleasure became too much for me to handle, and I found myself squirting hot cum on the bed sheets below me...and what a sensual onslaught I felt...to feel him banging my prostate as the fluids left me...the beautiful explosion of pleasure I cannot even begin to explain...except to say that it felt as if the gates to the Garden of Eden had been reopened for me...and only me. The feeling was extraordinary, denying comparison to any other pleasure I had ever felt. My ejaculation came to its amazing end. Now all that remained to occur was Marc's orgasm. I looked back at him to examine this man, the one I loved, as he made love to me. I enjoyed the view...his eyes closed, mouth slightly agape, breath heavy, sweat pouring down his chiseled torso, his hands firmly clamped on my hips to hold me steady, his groin moving back and then forth until he was pressed flush up against my buttocks, his balls slapping my ass. Marc opened his eyes to see me, and I smiled at him as he slid his cock so passionately in and out of my rectum. Marc: Oh my dear God, this is so wonderful, so glorious, so beyond words. The sunrise is nowhere near as beautiful as the grip your anus has on my cock. Rick: " That is because you are in the process of taking my virginity," I told him...and it must have been the expression on my face, as well as this statement, which triggered him off because, as swollen as his cock already was, I felt it expand even more... stretched to the breaking point. Marc's testicles had been holding back, but the dam broke. He was now blasting geysers of thick hot semen into my warm, receptive ass and with each squirt I told him, " Thank you." Upon hearing this Marc smiled. It was a pleasant surprise for him, making the last few bursts of his orgasm even more pleasurable. It made him proud to know he was my first. After the last squirt Marc moved to pull out, but I reached a hand back to grab hold of his spent cock and urge him to stay. He was more than happy to give me what I craved. He stayed in there a while, long enough for me to feel the semen slipping out around his cock. I was pleased even when I felt him soften inside me and eventually slip out, my backside so very reluctant to let the visitor go. Marc fell on the bed beside me while I laid on my stomach. He caressed my buttocks, home of such intense pleasure that I wanted him to pay another visit as soon as he could. Marc: My dear, I wonder if you are sore at all? Let me check. Rick: He pressed a finger against my opening, and there was indeed a slight bit of soreness. An hour or so later, even that was gone. And this, ladies and gentlemen, was my first experience with anal intercourse. Scene Three Rick: And so it came to me after great yearning, this sweet and eternal love which I shared with Marc. Our love was beautiful every night that he entered me when we tumbled into bed, exhausted from work but not so disheveled that we could not open up to one another... although I opened more for him. My commitment to him knew no bounds, as I will illustrate in these two love scenes which will now be slipped into your brain by my prose. I hope you will appreciate my sharing and not find it to be beyond the limits of good taste. There was one night, I remember, when Marc was having so many troubles at work that he was frequently suffering from two afflictions: chronic headaches and insomnia. At least, these were two physical ailments. There was one mental problem, and it was the culmination of all the stress which life had set upon his back. Marc was starting to doubt every choice he had ever made in his life, including the conclusion he had reached at age 25 about his sexuality. My lover was no longer sure if he were gay or not... and this brought our love life to a brief and indefinite end. He would not even join me in the same bed during this period... until, one night, I brought him out of it, as you shall now see. It was late one summer night. I awoke overheated and sweaty. I stripped down to my underpants. Hunger started gnawing away at my gut, so I grabbed a bathrobe and headed out to the kitchen where, to my surprise, I found Marc already seated and eating a midnight snack. We made eye contact, but his usual smile was absent. I started to make myself a sandwich at the table. We did not talk...we hardly even looked at one another. " Marc," I said," we've got to talk...this just isn't right, what you're doing to me." Marc: Enough with the melodrama! Stop acting like a drama queen. Rick: His words split me open like a sore not yet healed as he got up and headed for the doorway, intending to go back to nbed. I pursued him, catching him in the archway and spinning him around. The fire in my eyes did not phase him, but I did not caree. " Marc, how can you let this be? Don't you remember the love we have been sharing for all this time? Are you going to throw it all away just because life has given you some trouble? Why let these worries keep us apart?" There we stood facing one another... me wearing a bathrobe and white briefs, while Marc had on a pair of pin-striped pajama bottoms and as far as I could tell that was all he had on. In the past he had been pulling away whenever I tried to touch him, so I knew it was better to keep my distance, but I could not help myself. Before I even knew what I was doing, I leaned forward and planted a kiss on his lips as I had so many times before, but this time it caused a great rage to come rolling out of his body. Suddenly Marc struck me across the face and I went reeling backwards into the dining room. I stumbled, fell to the ground...confused not only by his blow but also by the fact that I had actually kissed him even though I knew such touch was not welcome. I tried getting up, but his hands guided me, not my own... they clamped on to my waist and dragged me to my feet. Then Marc pushed me into the dining room table. The top half of my body pitched forward and I was bent over...helpless. Marc: So, you still insist on me being a faggot, do you? Well, let's see how you like this. Rick: And here is where the road to recovery began. Marc forced me to bend over the table. Suddenly I felt my bathrobe lifted up and my briefs yanked down to my knees. My ass was exposed to him. Peripheral vision let me see the pajamas drop to reveal his tan skin...a purple-headed cock full of lust ready to plunge into me. Marc paused to wet his finger and push it into my anus. I could have escaped but desperately did not want to. Marc: Now this is a nice ass. You are going to enjoy this, faggot. I'm gonna abuse your tight asshole. Rick: With that his finger was withdrawn, and I waited. I heard him spit into his hand. He was rubbing the saliva all over his cockhead. My robe was thrown up like a dress, my ass bared to him and waiting for pleasure. Then, without anymore fuss, he pushed the tip of his cock into my ass. Despite his threats during these moments of penetration, Marc was quite sensitive to the tightness of my ass. He was quite the gentleman as he carefully negotiated his way into my rectum. Soon he was completely embedded, and that was when this stud grabbed me by my hips and started to fuck me like the little bitch I had become. His pulsating flesh passed in and out of my tight ass while in front of me my cock had sprung to life. Once again I was alive in the glory of being Marc's bottom man. Marc: Take this, you faggot...take all this hard flesh up your ass. Rick: And I did...oh yes, did I ever love this man taking me like an animal. He had smacked me, ripped down my underwear, and rudely thrust the entire lenght of his manhood up my ass. The brutal swiftness of it all turned me on, and he knew it. So I had to tell him, had to let him know... " Come on, you stud...fuck my asshole. You think you're humiliating me by shoving that dick up my ass? That is right where I've been wanting it for these last few weeks. So come on, fuck me...fuck me like the stud you are...that's it!" And he did a glorious job of fucking my asshole...plowing right away through my massive ejaculation I had that sent my semen spraying on to the floor...his rod still ramming away at me until finally with a massive grunt he released into me, and I felt his warm breath on my neck as he leaned over me to kiss my ear. Marc: I missed this. Rick: " Me too," I whispered. Weeks went by, our lovemaking frequent again...then not, but this time it was just fate and timing that kept us apart...busy schedules. Before we knew it our six month anniversary was upon us, and we spent a night on the town...first to see a romantic movie and then to drink our fill. By the time we left the bar, Marc was fine but I had slightly exceeded my limit...enough to reach the point where the world was spinning. When we got back home I wanted to pass out right away, but Marc would not let me. Instead he sat me on the couch while he lit a candle or two then put on some romantic music. A moment after the notes filled the air, he was by my side again. I used his body as my pillow, my life support, my anti-nausea drug. I felt his lips on mine, his hand exploring my crotch, and I knew what he wanted...but I felt I was unable to give it. " I do not think we can share this tonight because alcohol has sent me spinning," I mumbled, but Marc just shook his head and kissed me again. Marc: I cannot allow that substance to set you adrift in the land of sleep because I am going to make love to you. Narrator: Before any protests can be made his lips are on Rick's mouth. Marc's hands peel off our protagnosit's shirt. His belt is their next goal. Soon Rick has been stripped naked. Marc licks all over Rick's body while removing his own shoes, socks, and belt. Then he scoops Rick up into his powerful arms and carries him to the bedroom. While necking and kissing, Marc unravels his tie and unbuttons his shirt. Rick sits on the edge of the bed, and Marc pushes him flat on his back. He removes a condom and tube of K-Y from a nearby dresser, setting them on the bed while unbuttoning and unzipping himself. The pants fall away to reveal boxers that are filled to the brim with an amazing erection. Rick looks into Marc's eyes and sees a stern, determined look that says: I am going to take you, I am going to make sweet love to you all night long. Marc finishes removing his shirt and pants. Now he rips open the condom and tosses the wrapper aside. He does not remove the boxers yet. Marc: Raise your knees to your chest. Narrator: Once Rick follows this order, Marc opens the tube of K-Y. He puts some on his hand and then massages it into Rick's backside. Rick is all smiles, but Marc maintains that stonefaced look of a man with a mission. After a while, he stops rubbing Rick's anus and slowly takes off his boxers. Rick squeals at the sight of Marc's penis, enjoying the look of the erection as it bounces in its excitement to enter him. He helps Marc roll the condom over the beautiful cock, thanking God that such a lovely dick likes entering men. Then Rick lays back and brings his knees to his chest again. He rests his legs over Marc's shoulders. Now Marc leans down and gets to work. Rick looks down and sees Marc's lovely ball-sack dangling. This new position is quite interesting, Roger thinks to himself, and while he is thinking this Marc takes his hardon in his right hand. He steadily guides it toward Rick's waiting and anxious rear end. Soon Rick is once again feeling the glorious presence of his lover's cock being gently pushed into his asshole. The sensation is so familiar now, so full of pleasure, and so welcome that his anal muscles eagerly loosen up to accept the stiff rod. Rick: Nothing feels more wonderful than the initial push when the head of that cock pops into my rectum. And then the rest of the shaft follows suit, forcing more and more of my anus to loosen up so I can accomodate the entire length of my lover's cock. That is what Marc is doing now...gently sinking his gorgeous rod deep into my ass...pushing so my rectum will take it all, and believe me I want it all! Now I feel his beautiful hairy balls touch the crack of my ass, and I know I have taken his whole length. Now he starts to move that lovely prick of his in and out...slowly, lovingly at first. Sparks set off inside me as I feel his dick caressing each anal nerve ending while he fucks my rectum into submission. He takes his time with my asshole and I love him for it...love having his cock pole my rear end, making it learn to love a big hard cock thrusting into it. Marc keeps a slow pace for quite a while, then gradually starts to increase his speed. I tell him, " Go ahead, I'm a big boy... I know how to take it up the ass." He must believe me, or else he would not pick up the pace so easily. Now his cock is happily gliding in and out of my ass at a steady rhythm. Marc's eyes are fixed on watching his dick as it fucks me. My eyes are studying his face, watching how turned on he gets when he sees his very own cock entering my ass. Marc: What a warm, soothing home your rectum makes for my cock. Rick: You know I always appreciate it when that cock comes in and just makes itself at home. Narrator: By this point Marc has gained quite a bit of speed. Now his whole shaft is slamming in and out, banging Rick's prostate while the bottom man strokes his own erection. There is not one second of pleasure missed by either partner. Rick: I know how badly you want me... I can feel your cock throbbing inside my tight backside. Make love to me exactly like you imagine yourself doing...make love to that sweet, tight ass. Push that cock all the way inside...so deep inside me. Narrator: His own words are enough to push Rick over the edge, and he finds himself shooting a great load across his stomach. Seeing this sight in turn sets Marc's orgasm into motion, and Rick can feel the condom expand as his lover's load empties into it. EPILOGUE Rick: So there you are, now proud owner of my entire life story, or as much as I think would be of interest to you all. There you are, and here I am, sitting here reminiscing for your entertainment while I grow old and withered in a gay man's body. The days are long gone during which I used to feel ashamed that this gay man's body was my body. There it is: my life story... too much, or perhaps not enough, but it has been told nevertheless. For those of you who wonder: did he find true love with Marc? Do they still share their hearts with one another? The answer is a happy and resounding yes. Throughout the years our physical love life has grown stronger and more adventurous, but these gay sex moments do not cry out to be retold to you. They do not add to the story, but they might detract from it, so enjoy the sessions you have been able to read here...but I will say that this lover is the mightiest one I could ever have hoped to receive, meaning his intellect and his body are both strong and admirable. No one else I know has ever had such a complex, philosophical mind (or such a magnificient cock). Now my story must come to and end, hopefully giving you a sense of optimism. My life has had its share of mountains and valleys to travel, yet now I have finally reached a plateau. Everything has evened out. On the verge of the twenty-first century I embrace my lover at night. We know what it means to dwell in one anothers' souls and yet still retain your individuality. Feel no more sorrow for me. My pathetic teenage days and my misogynistic days and my gaybashing days and my suicidal days have all come to an end. Now all there is...all I know...is peace. At night while drifting off to sleep, I always hope and pray that everyone in this worl will also someday discover just exactly who they are...will come to know themselves, and love themselves, and experience such sweet bliss as this. THE END