Personal Jesus

Before reading this, and one would suppose it would be rather important for someone who has not read the previous chapters, I will include a little scant context. This is part of a series, or perhaps one day, a chapter in a book. But I digress : our protagonist, or antagonist, whichever is more befitting, finds himself, having just contemplated his mortality and morality, in Rome, on a school trip. He is sharing a room in an Italian monastery with his three male friends. To elaborate however would be obsolete. I hope you enjoy it.

***

These were the kind of things I thought in bed, and this time especially, they were a lot less frugal than average.

I really had no idea how I did it this time. Indeed I’d joked about it with John Doe and even he’d said that I would have to be extremely fucking lucky for it to ever happen, even under a blue moon. But happen it did, and the moment Leon Tenoch asked if he could come into my bed, he may as well have been asking Salome. I couldn’t refuse, he wasn’t any old Tom, Dick or Harry, and I’d had three Tom’s, one Harry, and suffice it to say, plenty of dick.

It was not that he was fat, it was just that instantly I compared him to John Doe. Doe was a lot taller than me, but by some miracle or curse he was one and a half stone lighter. An old man at work had told him that if he were to stick his tongue out that he would look like a zip. Incidentally this same old man told him that there were only two smells of fish in this world – and one of them was fish.

Leon easily had three stones on Doe, but it manifested not in fat, but in soft doughy muscle. He had an African tan which made his skin smooth and warm, on account of the fact that he had no body hair either.

I felt his soft blonde hair. It was a dye job, and it seemed to snake its way all over both pillows, like a Medusa head. Were it the only thing that was snaking in that bed, then perhaps I wouldn’t have realised with such sheer immediacy what it was he wanted, but years of training had taught me otherwise. Some would say it was my forte bedding seemingly straight boys, and for the most part it was fun. But coupled with a deficit of the intuition of repercussion I was a sitting duck.

In an instant and a lifetime his hands were everywhere. Soft puppy hands that made me feel so guilty but so good. He had once told me that yes he was a virgin, but he’d had a shitload of oral. In my mind he was already fucked.

The whole situation, the Jack Daniels, the cheap continental cigarettes and the face down picture of Jesus Christ made it a some trashy bible-belt motel. I loved it, and I hated it, and myself because I realised that I was a walking cliché.

I was now everything I’d ever embellished about myself : the bad Catholic school boy who lured the unwitting into the depths of despair with his fast and loose ways.

I was a David LaChappelle picture, played to a 60s girl group soundtrack. But I was neither famous nor beautiful. He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss. I was smudged and swollen from crying, and my breath was sweet from WKD. I wondered how it had ever got to this.

It was all too perfect, a farcical satire in my honour ; shagging a drunken boy in a monastery – in Holy Week of all weeks !

At least I took some consolation in the fact that it most probably wasn’t the first time this place had seen any gay action – it was the home of a Catholic priesthood for chrissake.

But Leon had tired himself now. I say we shagged. It’s so much easier to round up, and more eloquent than saying that I jacked him off for a while whilst he fumbled around trying to undo my boxers. Sexytime – the Boratean compound would perhaps have been more appropriate. But we did kiss. Even in the lowest pits of inebria his kisses – his normal cannibreath replaced with heady whiskey tongue – his kisses melted on my gums like candyfloss.

He snored. Not the ridiculous, cacophonous snores of a drunk. But small snores, like some little drunken angel. He surely was beautiful, but I had no desire to wake him. I had neither the strength of will nor the means, because I still wasn’t sure whether or not John and Caulfield had heard us. Either they had fallen asleep, or they had chosen to write off the night, and me.

Self-loathing took its regular post as chambermaid that night, so I half dressed – boxers and zip-up jacket and smoked Caulfield Crouch’s holiday cigarettes – some dirty continentals called Fortuna.

On a trailer trash throne of dirty white plastic, cheapo sun-lounger, sat by the covered over pool, nothing was more peaceful or confusing in the world.

‘When in Rome’ was a phrase to be much overused this holiday – despite the semantic misgivings.

***

The morning after the night before, and Leon Tenoch woke me up – not purposefully. He was disentangling from our single bed, my uncomfortable, straw mattress, Midnight Express bunk. He always was the hardest person to wake up, but ironically when other were trying to sleep he took big elephantine step, considerably louder than warranted for his size.

He got up. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

Went for a piss. Stomp. Stomp. …

Brushed his teeth. Stomp. Stomp. Faucet. Brush.

And then, with a hint of panic and reprisal, and what seemed to be wholehearted honesty, told us all, namely me (because he realised where he had woken up), that he didn’t remember a thing past ten o’ clock last night.

STOMP.
STOMP.
STOMP.

Oh. So I did have a heart after all. Now I know why I suppressed it all these years.