Saints+Sinners

by Saints

  “No!” exclaimed Quinn, reaching out into the air between them. “Do stay. I welcome yer forwardness. I need it. If ya must know…I rarely risk visibility in Jurassic, but tonight…tonight I…”

  “Tonight you were lonely.”

  Quinn looked up into Bill’s eyes. “It’s been half a year, ya see. How long can a body go without? The headiness of the upcoming referendum…the posters all over town and the news every night on the telly with handsome young couples hugging their embraces…well…my excitement got the better of me, ya understand. Just to be in Jurassic, to sit amongst my fellows, imagining possibilities with this one and that. Possibilities I could take home after, to fill the imagination and…and my hand, if you’ll excuse the crudeness. Not that I expected actually to engage in suggestive conversation with a stranger, let alone invite one into my home. But you…an American…”

  “You mean, a non-Irishman.”

  “Yes, a man not from these parts.”

  “No risk I’d interfere with your life.”

  Quinn nodded. “For 25 years I lived with a partner and they never suspected, the fathers at school. Half a year ago, Seamus died from a blood clot in his leg that went to his brain. I told them the sudden loss of my ‘brother’ addled me, so they let me take off half a year to get my head in order—they know compassion, ya see, those fathers, in their way. Tomorrow’s my first day back.”

  Bill pursed his lips in sympathy, took a tender step close. Quinn reached up to Bill’s shoulders, stepped in for the kiss Bill intentionally gave him. With their lips pressed together, Quinn released into Bill’s mouth a high-pitched, beer-scented whimper. Quinn’s tongue probed Bill’s mouth, as if frantically searching.

  With a tenderness rare for himself, Bill used his lips to guide the kiss from desperate to gentle. Of course Bill had no genuine interest in this disturbed man, but he’d long been a believer in the solidarity of the oppressed. In compassionate brotherhood. In the moral duty of out men to nurture less fortunate closeted ones. This wouldn’t be his first sympathy fuck.

  Without loosening his grasp, Quinn sidled Bill to the brown sofa opposite the fireplace, lay back pulling Bill on top of him. Quinn kissed and tongue-thrusted and clutched at Bill’s shoulders, at his back, grabbing tight as if to merge Bill into himself.

  Bill lifted his head. “Whoa, boy. You gotta let me breathe. You’re a hottie.”

  Quinn grinned so broadly that upper lips retracted over gums, revealing crooked upper eye teeth. “I’m nasty, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, you sure are.”

  “Say it. Ya must say it. Talk dehrty to me with yer American porno movie accent. Hot hot.”

  “You’re a nasty nasty boy.” Bill found himself getting turned on. So maybe this wouldn’t be as much sympathy as quirky pleasure. “You’re the nastiest boy I ever met.”

  “Yessir, yessir. I am. Nasty nasty.” Quinn wriggled with delight. “Tell me what ya want, my Da,” Quinn hissed through clenched teeth. “Say what ya want from yer nasty boy.”

  Yeah, Bill could get into this. He slid off the sofa, kicked off his shoes, removed shirt and jeans as Quinn stood and tore off his own. Both men naked, Quinn fell to his knees, took Bill into his mouth, grunting.

  “That’s it, nasty boy. Like that.”

  Quinn moaned.

  “Take your Daddy like that.”

  There was no charity now in Bill’s reaction. He grabbed the back of Quinn’s head, pulled so hard that Quinn gagged and gasped, yanked himself back, stared up at Bill with eyes that gleamed nearly red. Bill shuddered, looked away, his gaze falling onto the sofa wall, onto a painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—the Savior’s hair wavy to the shoulders, his bleeding heart vulnerable on the chest and exposed.

  Quinn grabbed Bill’s hands, pulled them down onto his thick nipples. “Squeeeeeze yer boy’s titties, Da. Squeeeeeze me.”

  Bill did.

  “Harder. Harder…Aaaah,” moaned Quinn. “Yess. Yess.” He flicked his tongue, murmured in raspy whisper, “Wi-ckehhd…wi-ckehhd. So wi-ckehhd.”

  Bill yanked the nipples taut.

  “Ohh,” moaned Quinn. “Dehrr-ty…dehrr-ty. Ahh…Yer a dehrr-ty dehrr-ty man…Yes…yes…fil-thy.” His tongue repeatedly flicked and slurped. Thurp thurp thurp.

  Quinn shoved Bill onto the sofa and spat on him, sucked him deeply in and out, over and over, then lifted Bill’s legs and plunged his tongue deep, pulling back to whisper, “Perfec-tion.” Lick lick. “Oh, the taste of dehrty perfec-tion.” On and on in a trance-like state, all as Bill himself felt entranced, eyes rolling back. Quinn’s tongue thrust. “Please, Da, please let me join in yer perfec-tion…” Probe probe. “Our perfec-tion. Christ’s perfec-tion.”

  Bill shoved Quinn back, leaned in and bit his nipples hard as Quinn moaned, grabbed Bill’s middle finger and yanked it behind himself, begging Bill to “put it where it belongs, where it belongs. Make me perfec-ted. Perfec-ted. Take me, Jesus, for I am yer own. Impale me, sacrifice me on yer holy cross, pierce myself as Yerself were pierced, make me holy, yer devoted slave in eternity, forever burning in the hellfire of the undeserving and wicked.”

  Bill slid his finger into the moist tightness. “Yes!” said Quinn. “Now feed me yer host.” Suck suck. “Give me blessed cum-union…” Suck suck. “Give me! Give me!”

  Bill couldn’t hold back, shuddered, clutched Quinn’s head to himself as he spasmed and grunted.

  Quinn gulped and moaned.

  Then he held Bill in his mouth softly.

  Then he slid Bill out with a kiss.

  Naked and still on his knees, Quinn gazed up at the Sacred Heart of Jesus hanging above Bill, clasped hands in prayer, murmured, “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”

  Bill leaned forward and held him while Quinn continued to murmur prayer with the solemn calm of the confessional.

  After Quinn finished, they sat side by side on the sofa, Bill holding Quinn’s hand. “I don’t know what to say,” said Bill honestly, agenda-less and somewhat sad.

  “I thank ya for that,” said Quinn, his face relaxed. “For yer indulgence.”

  “I should be thanking you.” Bill kissed him on the cheek. “Would you like to talk? Maybe tell me about your…your late partner?”

  Quinn withdrew his hand from Bill’s. “I’ve got to wake early.” Quinn stood, reached to the floor for his clothes, the universal signal to tricks that it’s time to leave.

  They dressed in silence. Bill again hugged Quinn, who stood with arms limply at his side. “I don’t feel right just leaving,” said Bill. “Will you be okay?”

  “Saint Oscar watches over me.”

  Bill stroked his cheek. “Quinn, your openness…what you shared of yourself…I’m a little speechless.”

  Quinn gave a weary grin. “I’ll remember you, my American porn star.”

  Bill gave a light kiss on the lips and lingered, Quinn allowing him without encouraging.

  “Take care.” Bill left, headed down one flight to the white-walled vestibule, heard the apartment door click closed behind him. Deadbolt.

  Outside, in a bit of afterglow haze, he crossed the avenue and paid momentary homage over the iron fence to the statue of Oscar Wilde, recalling snippets of his plays and wit, his imprisonment on account of love that, for good practical reason, had dared not speak its name.

  In a series of cool breezes, Bill walked toward his Jury’s Inn Christchurch hotel, replaying the evening’s encounter. What had he just experienced? In a matter of minutes, that strange man had revealed so much of himself to Bill, depths Bill would never have expected to be permitted to see.

  The journalist in him wanted to describe this experience, to show Americans the Irish pain Bill had just witnessed, whether singular or universal, Bill couldn’t know. Yet he must respect Quinn’s privacy.

  No breeze now, just stillness in the bruised-blue night sky. Solitary grey clouds.

  Bill shivered in the dry chill.

  Muffled sounds of drinking buddies as he
passed this pub, and that.

  By the time he reached the imposing Dublin Castle whose cobblestone courtyard, he’d read, would host hundreds of revelers awaiting the marriage referendum tallies in a mere few days, Bill felt a surge of writerly inspiration, and began structuring the article he’d traveled here to write: he would present lengthy descriptions of the referendum process, of course, and the historical struggle to achieve marriage equality. He’d recite obligatory vote tallies and exit poll statistics, would include extensive quotes from ecstatic young couples about to tie the knot and from joyful parents whose children will have just gained social legitimacy. He’d even try to include diplomatically phrased quotes from shocked and dismayed priests. And then, in honor of Quinn, yet without referring to him except in thought, Bill would conclude the article with a rally to awareness that, as glorious a harbinger of future freedom as this marriage referendum truly was, it had arrived too late for centuries of couples living fearful hidden love, too late for widows and widowers grieving in silence alone, too late for lonely individuals knowing romance only in safe imagination recesses, too late for women and men suffering damage beyond repair, for people like Oscar, living carefreely only after death and only now, in rock-bound effigy.

  Arundel’s Name

  Jamieson Findlay

  SAVE OUR TREES

  Can you imagine Camp Fortune robbed of its trees? Can you conceive that magnificent amphitheatre of hills of which Camp Fortune is the centre, and in which the members of the Ottawa Ski Club take so much pride, left unsheltered, stark naked, in all the ugliness of its bare, windswept rocks?

  What can we do about it?

  We could buy the land with the trees on, and keep it as such if we had the money.

  We are launching a tree-selling campaign so that every one of our members may have a share in this good work…One tree of any kind, with the exception of maple and pine will cost you 25¢. A maple will cost you 50¢ and a pine $1.00. Buy a tree and you will receive a numbered certificate…

  From The Ottawa Ski Club News, Ottawa, Canada, February 1928

  * * *

  Arundel. The name was a jump spark between the major chambers of Connor’s worn heart. He couldn’t explain its effect on him. He knew nothing about the woman, but her name was that of a gypsy queen, or a girl-god from the pagan past, or a flamenco-dancing contessa, or one of the female daredevils who rode the diving horses off Atlantic City’s Steel Pier, soaring fifty feet into the water, and doing so with such tight form that neither girl nor horse suffered so much as a scratched cornea (usually).

  And he had come to know her name only because she bought a tree.

  Connor had become involved in the tree-selling campaign of the Ottawa Ski Club. Why, he couldn’t exactly say. A transplanted Southerner, a refugee from Prohibition, he figured he somehow had to make a home out of this city of ice and snow. Selling trees seemed far preferable to actually going outdoors on skis. Since he had access to a printing press at the American Legation, where he was posted, he was put in charge of making up the certificates of tree purchase. A tall limber widow named Lilly Standish ran the campaign—Lilly the ski jumper and society lady. She collected the money for the tree sales and gave Connor the names of purchasers to put on certificates. And when the buyer happened to be female, Lilly always insisted that the lady’s full name be inscribed.

  “Women always have to take the last name of their husbands,” she told Connor. “Why should they give up their first names, too?”

  And so, when Connor printed off the certificate for tree purchaser no. 37, it was made out not to “Mrs. Basil Grey,” but to “Arundel Grey.” Arundel Grey, princess of fire, siren out of the water, fisher of men’s souls from her moon-ship! And he’d be able to give her the certificate personally—Lilly had insisted on it.

  Imagine his wan and disenchanted face when, at the next ski club tea, he sought out the woman and found her to be as drab and uninspiring a matron as ever made Christmas cake without the cognac.

  “Thank you for saving our woods, Mrs. Grey,” he said stoically, handing her the certificate.

  In her heavy tweed skirt and sensible wool cardigan, Mrs. Grey looked plush and protected. No mythological fire shone from her soluble blue eyes, no hint of a horse diver’s pearlescent light. She seemed the sort of woman who would devote herself with minimal complaint to the interminable care of an elderly relative. Her cheeks were full and her mouth decorous; she had a small heirloom chin and the imminence of another. Connor could not guess how old she was—maybe early forties. Whatever her age, she had probably looked like this for years.

  She glanced at the certificate and flushed.

  “Something wrong?” said Connor.

  “It’s just that you put my…Christian name on it.” She hesitated over “Christian,” as if that wasn’t quite the right word.

  Connor blinked. “Yes?”

  “I usually go by my married name.”

  Connor nodded; she looked as irredeemably married as a woman could look.

  “That was Lilly’s doing,” he said apologetically. “You know Lilly.”

  Mrs. Grey reddened again and looked around the room. Connor wondered if Lilly’s suffragette leanings made her uncomfortable.

  “I’d be happy to change it if you want,” he added.

  Mrs. Grey quickly slipped the certificate into her handbag. “No, that’s all right. It’s just…” She looked around again. “…Only my very close friends know my Christian name.”

  “Well, more people should know it. It’s a beautiful name.”

  She gave a small folded smile. Her face changed subtly when she smiled: dimples appeared, a meander of light went through her eyes, and she lost for a second her air of dowdy wholesomeness. Connor wanted to see this effect again, and so added: “It sounds like a name with a story behind it.”

  “I suppose everybody’s name has a story behind it,” she said.

  “But your name sounds like it comes from a myth or a…chanson de geste.”

  She breathed out a timid laugh, and Connor caught the faintest whiff of mint—a clear scent, not fusty like everything else about her. “Well, it’s just…my name. Anyway, thank you, Mr. O’Flynn. Your accent is very unusual.”

  “I’m from New Orleans.” N’ohlins.

  To Canadians, Connor’s phrases often seemed to dip and rise as if riding a magnolia breeze: “one of a khand,” he would say, or “a fine cord-yawl man.”

  “New Orleans!” she said. “And you’re a skier?”

  “No, no, I’m too warm-blooded. I just help out with the certificates. And you?”

  “I’m taking the Saturday lessons for married ladies at Dome Hill.”

  The married ladies, thought Connor dolefully. According to Lilly Standish, who taught the group, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves without their husbands.

  “You’re a wild bunch, I hear,” said Connor.

  Again Connor caught an eddy of light in Mrs. Grey’s eyes, like a brandy flame in a darkened room. “I’m learning so much,” she said, and flushed again. “You really should take up skiing yourself, Mr. O’Flynn. It’s so healthful.”

  “Yes, well…enjoy your certificate, Mrs. Grey.”

  To think that her name was such a gush of raw beauty! In her cardigan she seemed no more breasted than an Easter Island idol.

  * * *

  The next night, surrounded by souvenirs of home—parade doubloons from Mardi Gras, an old straw hat, a small cap-and-ball revolver once owned by his Confederate-soldier grandfather—Connor poured himself a glass of bourbon and picked up the latest issue of The Ottawa Ski Club News.

  News from the Eastern Lodge: On Saturday night, Stobie Milhouse ate 11 Italian sausages, downed 5½ beers and then stole 2 ski poles—because somebody stole his! If you took Stobie’s poles by mistake, please contact…

  Connor leaned back, eyes half-closed. Arundel Grey. She wore so many clothes; she smiled in such a folded way. If only she could get in touch with her true
name, her true nature. A chanson de geste was indeed hidden there, under that winter caparison of wool, under that whalebone corset…for he was sure she wore such a thing.

  Don’t forget our Wednesday night ski hikes to Dome Hill Lodge, which is as good as Yankee Stadium with ice cream, soft drinks, and a big orthophonic to play your favourite dancing records. Also a hot dog stand.

  His thoughts fell away from the page; the bourbon worked on his creative faculties; and there was Arundel Grey standing before him, wearing the same amount of clothes, but with eyes half-lidded and humid-soft, like a hot August sky.

  Want to try some parlour skiing, Mr. O’Flynn? she said.

  He got up from the armchair, wobbling slightly.

  Parlour skiing? he said.

  Yes, it’s perfect for beginners. And the great thing is…it doesn’t require many clothes.

  Smiling, she turned around so he could unbutton her gingham dress. Very quickly she was out of it, and underneath (as expected) he discovered a corset—the elasticized kind, not whalebone after all. Black stockings were attached to the corset with garters. He stood still in wonder: she had a body. A bit Rubenesque, but really not bad at all, in a seventeenth-century way.

  He suddenly wondered what she would think of his body: whenever he caught a mirror glimpse of his naked torso, he felt he had all the musculature of a coat hanger. But she took his hands and put them on her hips, and with him standing behind her they practiced what she called “the jump turn” amid bouts of giggling, lowering themselves and swiveling clumsily, and pausing to take frequent sips of bourbon. She had drawn up her hair at the back, and at her nape were impossibly fine, light-tawny hairs; they made him think of the tiny lines on old maps that indicate wilderness, or the steepness of mountains. He began kissing her neck passionately.