55. Lesbian Steak

Good Friday was good, like it's supposed to be; Kent didn't say anything, but he didn't eat or drink between noon and three. He did start watching the clock at 2:24, though. He got thirsty. And hungry. Dang Episcopals anyway.

Jamie made a big dish for supper called "Lesbian Steak," an ancient and affectionate joke about women vegetarians. Kent had never heard of tofu, but when Jamie told him it was spun soybean milk, Kent ate it right up. Jamie said, "Maybe it came from here, buddy."

"Coulda been." The sauce was the key, of course; it always is with Amazon Steak. They went butch and femme for the whole meal—and not the way you might think.

Jamie took it to mean Kent was available—and he was, but every bit as macho as before.

On Saturday he asked if Jamie wanted to go watch Purdue baseball, a doubleheader against Minnesota. The Boilers were still in a tight race for the conference championship and the weekend series was big. Jamie was sorely tempted, but he ended up deciding to stay home. He thanked Kent for giving him the chance—Jamie'd only been to five games all season, always on the weekends, but he didn't feel right about breaking Holy Saturday, even for a crucial doubleheader. Christ was crucified; Jesus was dead.

But the Boilers swept the Gophers and Kent came home ecstatic.

That night he took him back to Lafayette for the Easter Vigil, with its first fire, a procession indoors and a brass quartet; Kent was filled with excitement, because all the decorations were back. The Celtic cross, the frontal, all of it—plus a brass band!

***

He went to Kessler Chapel on Easter Day; Jamie stayed home to roast a leg of lamb from a local farm that John Wesley'd turned him on to. Jamie told Kent to invite J.W., his girlfriend Sandy "and the next six people you meet after church." Kent did, and they ended up with a bunch of firefighters and cops, girlfriends, wives and a husband. It was a wonderful day; Jamie had never done a whole leg of lamb before, but the food was great and the visiting was better. They had a little wine; it was Easter, a celebration.

What most impressed Jamie was the mutual admiration between Kent and his officer-cousins. They may or may not have liked Gay people, but they liked Kent and they liked eating, so they liked Jamie too.

That night their sex life changed again. Kent stopped resenting Jamie as if he were some impossible angel on earth; he wasn't, Kent had met the real God—and though he couldn't describe him, he knew God wasn't a blondboy with a bubble butt and 59 starving needs.

Kent stopped being addicted and just fucked him, open and smiling, slap-ass and silly; they grooved on each other, shouting and free. There was lots of "Daddy" and "Chipper," and yes, that collar played a central role; Kent got Jamie to say how much he loved belonging to him, that he couldn't live without him, that he'd never want anyone else—and in truth he never did.

Afterwards, sweaty and wet, Kent said, "I shouldn'ta done what I did. I'm sorry. That attitude. I was wrong."

True. But Jamie said, "It doesn't matter, sir. I love you. Man oh man!"—Kent's favorite exclamation.

Maybe they started to talk like each other, an upgrade for Kent and a downgrade for Jamie. Maybe it was "The Americanization of Emily."

They'd been married a few months now; they weren't complete strangers, and the more they found out about each other the harder they fell. Jamie wanted a Centurion; the sergeant wanted a servant boy.

An outsider, a moralist, might have criticized them for their "dominant/submissive" sex, if that's what it was. Kent dominated, Jamie submitted, but a lot more was going on than that. It took place in a context of real love.

Further, Kent was raised to be a prince—but he'd never quite got there. Jamie showed him how, by loving and supporting him, serving him, obeying him—and noticing that sometimes the emperor was buck naked and making mistakes. The bank was an example; Kent let Robert ride roughshod over him for no better reason than "my Dad hired him."

Kent needed to go higher; Jamie needed to go lower. Looking like he did, talented as he was, acclaimed everywhere he went, constantly pulled toward show business but desperately running the other way, he didn't need elevation, he needed to know where the ceiling was, so he didn't bump his head and get hurt.

The same was true of Kent; looking like he did, talented, enormously popular, constantly pulled toward sports but desperately running toward his intellect, he needed elevation so he could stop putting a ceiling over his head.

Jamie needed limits; kids always do. Kent was right that Jamie was still a boy; half of what Kent did wasn't for his own egotistical self, but for his boy. Jamie brought out the ego in him, that he'd never publicly expressed before; it isn't considered polite or attractive—and Kent was conscious as a player that he was in the fulltime media eye. But he was born to be a Kessler man, even if he never managed it until they found each other. Maybe getting out of baseball and taking a low-class job that made him think—policing, when people look down on cops—was the role he was looking for.

Every firstborn prince is meant to be a king—and Jamie was the one who crowned him.

Jamie was more complicated—Gay and all, domestic violence, the weirdness of U-High (and Columbia's worse), most of all getting pawed all the time, as if anyone and everyone had a right to put a hand on his body—taught him how high he could go, and made him worry where the ceiling was. An Emmy award for taking off his shirt?

After Rick and the unrelieved tragedy of young illness and death, Jamie needed someone to take a little care of him, to put a hand on his neck, "Go here, go there," or otherwise he'd have gotten so grandiose he'd have melted like Icarus, thinking he could fly to the sun.

He couldn't. He was a Jamie, not the Dalai Lama. He was a Hoosier and a cocksucker, a battered child with an anxiety problem, who just woke up from a coma. He needed directions, "How do I get out of here?"

So he found a cop who gave him directions. And when he fell for that cop he went right down. Kent didn't teach him to go down on all fours, he did that on his own; Kent just added a puppy tail, don't leave him like you found him, show him something new.

There can't be any shame in going down on a man when you know that in the next moment he's probably going down on you.

Everyone needs to be lifted up with a giant ego stroke, and everyone needs some limits set.

There's no inherent shame in Gay life; that's just religion and politics. When you can stick it to him like he sticks it to you, you're equals—and the sticking isn't revenge, it's a gift.

Jamie and Kent fit together. They weren't always perfect, but the parts fit together just fine.

That's the aspect of Gayness that Straight people haven't quite figured out yet, because obviously their parts fit together perfectly—plus they can make babies, miraculous creatures like JJ and Cherisse and Little Kent.

But Jamie wasn't into babies at all. He worried about overpopulation. He'd get on his soapbox, "Ten billion people by 2050! The earth can't sustain it, we'll end up like Easter Island, where overpopulation caused human extinction. The one and only commandment of God that people have ever obeyed is 'Be fruitful and multiply.' Everything else God's ever said they ignore—but that one they always get right!"

Kent didn't mind that Jamie liked his wooden box. As they walked away from Hyde Park Square the boy muttered, "Half of Catholic theology's predicated on 'Be fruitful and multiply.' As if they need fucking instructions. They don't!"

Kent didn't mind at all; he knew he could shut him up with one good slap on the ass. Then he'd toddle behind like a good little boy because he was Just That Way.

Kent believed in intellect, but not in too much thinkin'.

Once Jamie found the ceiling he lived up there; the king looked up to his prime minister, who always offered his hand and a way up.

They were made for each other. They fit together like a man and a man.

Or like a macho boy with a macho man; there wasn't much unusual about them, once you've met a few Gay guys. Puppy loved his Papi; everyone loved his Papi. Kent had simply learned to be masculine without being a jerk, thanks to Kessler Manhood Training™, designed by a woman, Miss Evangeline.

James Earl was far the best teacher, though, and Kent was the best pupil. In spanking lessons, he and Joey used to practice on each other so they'd know what it felt like physically and mentally; how much was too much, and how much was "more more more."

Kent used to love beating Joey's ass. Joey didn't complain that much, so why not?

Jamie, though, was different, all boy from birth, so pristine that no one ever laid a hand on his butt or the Queen Herself would crack down.

Kent came into same-sex late—but he knew the minute Jamie walked into his state police post. For all his swagger and strut, the outward appearance of macho, those eyes said something else: not grown yet, innocent child, Indiana Nice. Kent knew it wouldn't take much to get a finger inside that mouth, and it's not far from there to sticking it up his butt.

But to do it without getting bit or calling out the Royal Air Force (all Anglicans think they command the RAF), he had to be the best possible Kent. The price of admission was excellence, the exact demand an ex-Major Leaguer most needed, because if you cater to a ballplayer he starts spitting sunflower seeds all over the dugout. He starts being a jerk, which is against the rules in Kesslerville.

So yes, it took three months, then Kent got a finger in his mouth. Then it was all Papi from there. And Jamie was willing to enter into Dom/sub, a Kessler man's secret craving, without pretense or hullaballoo, because he was honest like a child and because Kent had already come through for him. Trust is what led to Sir.

It wasn't an incest fantasy; more like JJ going gaga over Spider-Man.

***

In the days ahead they got looser than ever before, especially when Jamie told Kent that Easter lasts 50 Days and they'd need a ritual to commemorate every one of them. Kent grinned and said he knew just the thing.

As to their fantasies, fetishes and perversions, they were no one's business but their own. They always treated each other with high regard, and if somebody's butt turned red, or somebody's boots got shiny, or some chains and ropes came out, or someone got seriously wet, you didn't hear it from them.

They were married—even better, they were free, they were honest, they had each other.

They lived those 50 Days in joy. Besides, Jamie'd bought lots of new towels. Kent looked at the credit card bill and laughed. "We needed them," Jamie insisted in that imperial Anglican way.

Kent all but fell out of his chair; the Duke of Gloucester was dripping wet and needing towels. "Hey, who am I to say you can't?"

They came into their own and they did it together. The Centurion and the pais found their mates, and they went at it in every room in the house.

How many rooms? Fifty, perfect. They lived their Easter ritual and celebrated for fifty straight nights.

Kent loved God more and more. And every time he saw Jamie's ass he wanted to fuck it—so he did.

The boy said, "Jesus went to that wedding in Cana knowing just what would happen—and he danced."++


© 2011 Josh Thomas, All Rights Reserved.