Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2022 22:21:28 +0000 From: bhuvanesh21 Subject: The Brokenhearted Pederast 1 Hello readers! The following story contains graphic depictions of sexuality between men and boys, although they are meant to be read as fantasy/role play between consenting adults. In addition, I must add a disclaimer; for those of you familiar with my work, this will be very different from my other formulaic stories. This is a story primarily about a character, about woundedness, and about a return home. It is a story about a fantastical realm where pederasts wield magical power, and apprentices seek their tutelage. Our protagonist is a magician of fantastic power, capable of walking on the rays of the sun, raising the dead, and so on. Although there may be sexual and romantic elements, and grief over a boy's love is at the core of it, it is not as much for your loins as it is for your heart and your dreams. This story has many explicitly Buddhist overtones. As always, please write comments to bhuvanesh21@protonmail.com FOREWORD: We pederasts are not all the same. Life and love treat us very differently, and find us hope and tragedy in diverse forms. There are those of us who: 1. Find love or sex or both in youth, with another boy when we are both in the springtime of our lives; oftentimes these pederasts never know similar love again, and look ever backward to a vision of a past impossible to touch. 2. Find love or sex or both in adulthood against the laws of the land, with a boy who is willing enough or perhaps not so willing. Sometimes, these men are monstrous, and deceive themselves into thinking their coercion and deceit were "nature" taking her course. 3. Find love or sex or both in adulthood within the laws of the land, with a boy who is pretty enough and has the halo of youth; still, these lovers are frowned upon and ostracized and their love is fraught with strife. Sometimes these boys grow into men and the love remains between the two. 4. Find no love, nor sex, and wait and pine and suppress their lust and suffer. And suffer, and suffer, and suffer. Regardless of his choices, the pederast has a long hard road, few chances for respite on the journey, and great hardship if he seeks the love that dare not speak its name. What happens when a pederast is broken-hearted? When in spite of all the obstacles and hindrances, he manages to find love--and then loses it? This is a tale less of lust and more of sorrow, less of passion and more of redemption, less of chasing and satisfaction--and more of recovery and coming home. THE ORANGE GATE Dew hung from every leaf of the Laurel Mountains, and through it, scattering frigid droplets all over his feet, a lonely figure walked. He passed through dense ivy and overhanging moss, leaning on an ebony staff. He was handsome, but haggard: his long brown hair was tied back in a bun, the grey robes that flowed from his arms were spattered with the mud of the road, and he had dark circles under his eyes. A set of mighty prayer beads hung from his neck to his waist, carved of fragrant sandalwood. About his shoulders was a mantle of purple brocade. From his shoulder hung a great calabash gourd. Orange henna stained his fingertips. All these things marked him as a magician. He broke out of a dense clot of amanita mushrooms and onto an ancient highway set up on a concourse twelve cubits higher than the surrounding woodland. There, the magician sat down, resting his back against the stump of a tree. He removed a gourd from his side, and a small cup, and poured some thick black tea. A few months ago, he would have been drinking whiskey, or the miruvórë of the elves. The magician was a drunk of the worst stripe, dependent on gallons of ale and liquor every day just to keep himself from trembling. But he had changed. In the winter--with the help of a boy, and the help of a Goddess, he had broken the addiction's back. Now, he was going to the Orange Gate. To be done with all this sorrow and madness in the East. To seek Aparagodaniya, the western continent, the land of his birth. He got up after a minute, cracked his back and knuckles, and carried on. His destination was but another hundred yards away. At the top of a flight of broken stairs towered a ruined mass of orange stone; a hump the color of saffron, with a single arch in the middle hollow like a keyhole. The outer structure of the gate was shapeless, ruined by time, but the interior of the arch was utterly smooth and unspoiled. Lovely to behold, orange as the sky at dawn, the inner arch was a testament to the magic of some ancient people long dead and forgotten to all those but the Magician and his kind. Letters lined the archway, twisted and spiraling overhead. Vestiges of their magic remained; rainbow coronas glimmered at the edges of certain vowels and consonants. When the magician was beneath the archway of the gate, he tore up weeds and roots that covered the ground and after a few minutes, revealed a magic diagram carved in stone. "You Dandelions are persistent," he said, grunting as he tore some from the clefts in the rock, "if you can make a home even in this bloodless stone." At last, the rock was bare. The magician stood at the edge of the circle, and poured clean water over it. Then, a pinch of gold dust sparkled in the air. Then, he anointed the circle with frankincense oil, lit an oil lamp, and set it at the center of the diagram. Standing at the edge, he repeated ancient words of incantation. Nú vaknar þú Allt virðist vera breytt Ég gægist út En ég sé ekki neitt Á skóna bind svo Á náttfötum hún? Í draumi barst hún Ég hrekk í kút En sólin, er hún? Hvar er hún? Inní hér? With each line of the verse, the ground trembled. Stones clattered from the upper reaches of the gate, and the sky darkened. And as the magician completed the last lines of the incantation, the world changed. Before, where there was a forest, replete with mushrooms and mossbanks and thick-forested glens, now there was nothing but a lunar desert. White sand blew in the magician's face. The sky above was not day, but deepest night beneath a full moon. Stars glittered. The planet Mars dared the moon to dwarf his bloody light. A frigid wind blasted through the arch, and the magician unfurled his brocade cloak. Before him, resting on all fours, lay a massive creature with coral-red fur. Her eyes were great golden shields, split down the middle with irises black as the void of space. Her breasts, each the size of a cow, rose and fell as she breathed a sigh of greeting, and claws the size of swords retracted from her mighty paws. She was, as you have I hope discerned, a Sphinx. "Namaste, Jadugar," she said. Greetings, sorcerer. "Greetings, Goddess of the Western Gate," said the magician. "Do you recognize me?" *I recognize you , child of the West,* the Sphinx said. *In Aparagodaniya, you were a favourite of Tempanog. In the East, you are called Omniscience. In the West, you are called Aricapa. What would you call yourself?* "Broken-hearted," said the magician. What is your lineage?" "I am the spoiled grandson of the Dakinis of space." *What is your aim?* "To return to the West." White sand blinded him, and forced him to avert his gaze and cover his face with his cloak; the Sphinx laughed and retracted one great claw to scratch a line in the stone of the diagram. *Never shall you cross this line, unless you pass my test.* "I am ready." *Solve my riddle, and pass unscathed. Fail, and I shall devour you.* "I have no mind for riddles," said the magician. *Too humble?* asked the sphinx, frowning. *Or too cowardly to trust thy own wits?* "Too clever to take the bait of a hungry old Titan." *Very well,* the Sphinx said, smiling ruefully. *Then I shall weigh thy heart against thy aims." "My aims?" asked the magician. The sphinx closed her eyes. When last I saw you, you came aquesting. You came from glory and mastery in Aparagodaniya, the twelve kingdoms of the West. You came in the full blossom of Youth. You stood tall, with sun-reddened cheeks and thick hair, a sword in your right hand and sorcery in your left. The blessings of the Bodhisattvas ripened in thy footsteps, and the mantras of the Dakinis were upon thy breath. How quickly men wither and weaken! Sad child of the West, a century has wasted your youth, weakened your muscle, and given you a bleak-eyed stare. Did you at least accomplish what you came into these lands to achieve? "Much to my distress," said the magician, sighing. "I am not sure." He had not anticipated a goddess forty-thousand years old to shame him for aging poorly. Nor to come to the gate of the West and find himself barred by his own sense of failure. *When last I saw you, your heart was leaden with sorrow. Now, I see you again, and your heart is leaden with sorrow. Is it always like this with thee?* "I hope not," said the magician. *Why were you sorrowful before?* "I was sorrowful before because a century ago I was learned, cunning, strong, and handsome, but had never known the love of a boy." *And you came to the East in search of a boy?* "Yes." *Did you find one?* "Two apprentices have I had," the magician said. "And two apprentices have I lost." Ah, said the Sphinx. When last I saw thee, thy heart brimmed also with devotion to the Goddess. Thy eyes looked upward to the feet of the Bodhisattva. Thou quested for a teacher accomplished in the holy Dharma. Didst thou find a Perfect Teacher? At this, the magician was silent. The sphinx hissed. Come forward then, she said. And I shall weigh thy heart. To see if thy aims were accomplished. If this quest to the East has been in vain. Do you consent? "Yes," Aricapa said. Aricapa, the rainbow magician, opened the breast of his robe and pulled his left arm from its sleeve. Dark hair covered his forearms and even his shoulder. He pulled his robe back. "By this sacrifice, may I free all beings from samsara." You shall not die here, little bodhisattva. Plenty of years of trouble await thee. The sphinx retracted her claw, and the tip of it touched the magician's solar plexus. Red light seared from her claw, and with an excruciating precision, she cut beneath his ribs and plucked his heart out like a cherry on a fork. It glistened in the moonlight, and pumped blood in vain. She spoke a syllable of power, and a golden scale appeared in mid air. Upon one plate of the scales was a turquoise feather, as if from some peacock radiant beyond any fowl of the earth. The Sphinx placed his heart upon the other plate. The scales tilted a moment, and then the feather dropped back down, far heavier than his heart. "What does this mean?" asked the magician. *Thou didst not accomplish thy aim, Aricapa.* "My aim was to find a perfect Guru, and to find a worthy apprentice. I have found candidates of both, many of them! And all of them have disappointed me--or I them, or both! I had the greatest and loveliest apprentice in all of the twelve kingdoms, and he did not love me a fraction as much as I loved him. I have faced tragedy, and betrayal, and sorrow, and discouragement, and addiction, and death, and I have overcome all of it--just to drag myself to this gate and try to return home. How can my heart not be heavy enough?" *Heavy or light, you must gather more merit. Seek the Sage. Seek the Paladin.* The sphinx smiled. At once, his heart disappeared from the scales, and he felt it beating in his chest once more. The stars wheeled overhead for just a moment, and then once again, Aricapa stood in a dense and verdant forest, alone. Now, however, it was midnight. He sighed, turned away from the gate, and walked down the broken steps. He raked his mind for any thought of what to do next, but he was stumped. Bewildered. Stuck. There was nothing to do but seek a Sage.