Sucking Sherbert Lemons

by Michael Carson

  “I er... “ managed Benson.

  The man reached out and took Tribes of the Southern Sudan from Benson. He opened it and soon found the pictures of the tribesmen. He seemed to know his way around the book and confirmed this by saying, “He’s my favourite.”

  He held out the book to Benson, and Benson found himself looking at a very angry tribesman who seemed about to throw his spear at the photographer. The man’s penis, caught by a fast exposure, arched like a rainbow in front of him; his face was relaxed, the narrow eyes hinting at great arrogance, arrogance which Benson thought was entirely justified. If he had one like the tribesman, he would be extremely arrogant too and parade it round the place. He’d never go into the cubicles at the swimming-pool to change. No. He’d towel his back and let it swing, and bask in the admiring glances of envious less-favoured men; he’d enjoy medicals and not go crimson when told to lower his pants. He’d be able to satisfy girls then! It was clear that with what he had they would say to him, “You’re no good!” and go away, but if he had one like the tribesman, they would fall at his feet. Gwen Watford, Lucy, and Rosalie Crutchley would follow him around like puppies and stand at the front porch asking him if he could come out to play. And, best of all, he wouldn’t have to chase other men. It would be so convenient! Everything he needed would be right there in front of him with no effort required on his part ... like breakfast in bed. Oh, what a good time he’d have!

  Then the man slapped the book shut and gave it back to Benson. He did this by taking Benson’s arm, raising it, popping the book under it before placing it at his side and giving it a light squeeze. Then he said, “You’ll get a lot out of that, young man.”

  “Yes. Er. Thank you.”

  “Are you taking it out?”

  Benson had not thought of that. “Well I don’t...”

  “Oh, I should if I were you, dear,” the man replied. “Any number of beauties in there to play Tonto to your Lone Ranger.”

  Benson looked around fearfully and thought of Brother Michael. “How do you mean?”

  “I can see you’re a coy one, dear. ‘How do you mean?’ she says!”

  And the man walked away taking tight little steps. Benson watched his departure, mouth open. The man walked past the librarian at the counter who smiled and said something to her companion who giggled and said something back which made the librarian laugh a laugh which echoed through the quiet library. The man pushed the door of the library open, then, turning, flashed a smile back into the library. It reached Benson but passed the librarians who spluttered with giggles. Then, aiming an arched look at the girls, the man disappeared, leaving the door to swing to on its own behind him.

  Benson fled from Travel and Anthropology to the safety of Local Interest. There he thought to himself, “He knows! How does he know? Do I look funny? No, it must be because I was there looking at the books. He must do the same thing. But what cheek to come up to me like that! Just like Brother Michael!”

  In order to compose himself, Benson browsed through Build Yourself a Bungalow! and decided that he thought he knew why modesty had become important in the western world. It wasn’t Adam and Eve, he decided. It wasn’t the virtue that everyone said it was. No, it was just shame and fear at not coming up to the exacting expectations of onlookers. Women were modest because they didn’t want the world to see that their breasts were floppy and that they had fat bottoms. Men wore pants because they didn’t want people to laugh at the size of their penises. After all, it would be dreadful for a fellow to go into a grocer’s and have the assistants giggle and whisper, “I don’t think he’d be much good in bed!” Yes, that was why people wore clothes.

  When he had regained his composure he made his way to the counter and checked out Tribes of the Southern Sudan.

  “You’re not going to walk through the cemetery at this time of night are you, dear?” It was the man from the library. He had been waiting for him.

  “I prefer to go this way,” replied Benson flatly. He kept walking.

  The man walked with him. “Well, suit yourself. I like a man who knows his own mind.”

  They walked on. Benson wanted to ask the man what he wanted, though he knew. His erection was making it uncomfortable for him to walk.

  “Haven’t I seen you before somewhere? In the cottage, maybe?”

  “The cottage?” asked Benson. “Where’s that?”

  “Don’t you know anything?” said the man archly. “The toilet, the public convenience, the comfort station!” He effected an American drawl. Then he stopped dead in his tracks. “That poor President Kennedy! What a waste. What a waste!”

  “Yes, it’s very sad.”

  “Well have I?”

  “Have you what?”

  “Seen you in the cottage?”

  “No.”

  He took hold of Benson’s arm. Benson stopped and turned towards the man. Then his hand felt through Benson’s brown Beatles mac and touched his erection. As he was doing this he asked, “I wasn’t wrong, though, was I?” And feeling him, he smiled and said, a feminine simper in his voice, “No, I wasn’t wrong.”

  Quite suddenly, he removed his hand and started walking again. Benson followed and asked, “How did you know?”

  “Takes one to know one, dear.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Benson for whom the cliché was as novel as a mango.

  The man shrugged. “I mean that I knew as soon as I saw you. When I saw you having a vada in the dinge section, I said to myself, “Andrea – my name’s Andy in real life actually, dear – Andrea, I said to myself, there’s a gay one if ever I saw one.”

  “A gay one?” asked Benson.

  “A homo, a pouf, a queer, a gay-boy. You really were born yesterday, weren’t you, dear?”

  They were approaching the hedge that divided the non-Catholic from the Catholic side of the cemetery. Andy chose this place to suggest that he and Benson went off among the graves ‘for a little grope’.

  “Certainly not!” exclaimed Benson. “I’m a good Catholic!”

  Andy sighed noisily. “Another one! Well you don’t have to worry, dear. This isn’t a mixed marriage.”

  Andy headed off among the gravestones. “Come on!” he hissed.

  “No!” Benson replied in a whispered scream, but then he added, “Not here. Let’s go to the other side of the hedge.”

  They walked along for a few more yards. “Will this do you?”

  “All right.”

  And Benson followed Andy among the graves.

  They got to a quiet place and Andy started to undo the buttons on Benson’s mackintosh.

  “I like your mackintosh. It’s up to the minute is that.”

  “Yes, my mum bought it for me in town. She wanted me to have a navy one but I insisted on this one. The Beatles wear ones just like it.”

  “Very nice.” And he was undoing the buttons of his trousers. Benson stood frozen and forlorn. The bodies of non-Catholics turned in their graves nearby.

  “St Andrew is the patron saint of fishermen,” observed Benson by way of polite conversation as Andy struggled to release Benson’s erection from his underpants.

  “You don’t say? Well I bet St Andrew never fished out anything like this. You’re a well-built boy! What’s your name by the way?”

  “Er ... John,” lied Benson.

  “Yes. Well built. Very nice indeed.”

  “Do you really think so?” asked Benson, cheered.

  “Yes, I really think so.”

  “Can I see you please?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Andy quickly undid himself, reached for Benson’s hand and pulled it to him.

  Benson was rather disappointed to find that Andy was not hard, neither did he come up to Benson’s exacting standards. As if divining what Benson was thinking, Andy said quite matter-
of-factly, “Sorry about that, dear. Still, what I lack in size I make up for in technique.”

  Andy got down on his knees in front of Benson and kissed his erect penis. Benson put his hand over it and said, “Don’t.”

  Andy pushed his hand away and spoke to Benson from a kneeling position. “Look, dear, this is what I do.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Benson.

  Andy sighed, “Oh for God’s sake shut up and enjoy yourself!” And he took Benson into his mouth and began to suck on him in a way that Benson had always reserved for Strawberry Mivvies.

  For a short moment Benson surveyed Andy in the gloom below him. But only for a moment. Soon he was intoxicated by the feeling Andy’s mouth was giving to him and he let his hands stray down to the man’s head. He took hold of his hair, gripped it tight and pulled Andy’s head towards him and away. Andy moaned his approval of this and Benson, now a total stranger to himself, out of himself as he had never before been, moved his hands to Andy’s ears. He grasped them gently and directed the other’s head in ways which sharpened the pleasure-pain of each moment. He moaned and listened to Andy’s muffled moans and the fart-like slurps he was making with his embrace. He felt that he was coming, but coming in a way that he had never managed in the past. It was as if his whole body and blood and soul would squirt itself through the tiny opening at the end of him. Opening his mouth wide, throwing his head back, he gazed up at the opaque, amber-tinged sky. He stopped breathing and tottered in ecstasy on the brink. Then, with a growl, he came and came and could not stop. Andy did not withdraw. Indeed he could not have withdrawn even had he wanted to, so tightly did Benson’s hands restrain his head.

  It was over. Cold flakes of regret began to settle on Benson’s blank brain, but they did not stick. He let Andy go and watched as he stood up. But he did not feel revolted. Neither did he seek to run away. He even laughed when Andy observed, “Now that wasn’t too bad, was

  it?”

  “No,” he managed. “It was really nice actually.”

  “You needed that. Christ, you needed that, dear!”

  Benson frowned his disapproval at that mention of his ex-Friend in such a context.

  “I must get on home. My mum and dad will be wondering what’s happened.”

  “Can I see you again?”

  “Well er ... I don’t know,” replied Benson uncertainly.

  “They all say that! Why do they all say that?” sighed Andy theatrically.

  Benson thought for a moment. Once he’d been to Confession – what would he say? – Andy would become an occasion of sin for him. Still, he could always meet him again in order to convert him from his sinful ways. Yes, that was what he’d do.

  “Do you know the back of the Prom?” asked Benson.

  He got home. The new porch light had been switched on to greet him. It was only ever put on when a family member was out at night. This did not disturb Benson much. He was, in fact, rather worried because he was so unworried. This indeed was a new experience, a new twist in the puzzling conundrum of his life.

  Keeping Tribes of Southern Sudan hidden, he decided just to poke his head round the door of the lounge and tell them he was home. Then he’d go upstairs, wash, hide the book, and come back downstairs. By then, he reckoned he would have regained his composure completely.

  His plan was foiled, however. There, seated in his dad’s chair was the new curate at church, Father Hanlon. He cradled a cup and saucer, Mum’s best, on his leg and held a plate with a scone on it in his left hand. Mum and Dad sat on the settee.

  “Come on in and say hello to Father Hanlon,” said Dad cheerily.

  “Er ... good evening, Father. Will you excuse me for just a minute? I’ll be back soon.”

  “Don’t be long!” Mum sang out.

  Benson ran up the stairs and into the bathroom. He pulled out his penis and washed it thoroughly. It was red, blushing from all the attention. He put it lovingly back into his trousers. He could not for the life of him understand why the usual pangs of guilt and depression had not descended upon him. It worried him strangely. What had just happened in the cemetery should have sent him desperately seeking absolution. He should be thinking how to accost Father Hanlon before he left the lounge and get down onto his knees in front of him. He should have started making promises of the ‘never again’ variety to the sky on his way home. He had not. Why, he had not even made an Act of Contrition!

  He washed his face and brushed his teeth. It was all very peculiar. After leaving Andy at the gate of the cemetery he had skipped home with a spring in his step. He just rather resented the presence of the priest downstairs. He would have to postpone bedtime and the pictures in Tribes of Southern Sudan.

  His face was caught by Dad’s shaving mirror. It magnified it hugely. He looked deeply at the face and thought it no bad sight, all in all. He needed a shave, that was certain. Well, he’d get round to that all in good time. But, he decided, he really quite liked his face. Almost handsome.

  “What are you doing in there?” It was Dad’s voice.

  “Sorry, Dad. Won’t be long. Sorry.”

  Dad went into the lavatory and Benson went downstairs to meet Father Hanlon. Unafraid.

  “It’s a bad time, Mrs Benson. A very bad time,” Father Hanlon was saying as Benson entered the lounge. “It’s nice to come and see you and know that there are some good Catholic families still around.”

  “Well I don’t know about that, Father. Still, we try, don’t we, son?”

  Benson nodded.

  Father Hanlon placed his cup and plate on the coffee table and turned towards Benson. “Are you settling down to your schooling again all right, young man?”

  “Yes, I think so, Father.”

  “And you don’t miss the Brothers?”

  “No, not really. Some friends there but I don’t think the life was for me. I decided I didn’t want to teach.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  At this point Mum stood up and started to collect together the dishes. She loaded them onto a tray and said, pointedly, “I’ll just go and wash these things up.”

  She left the room, and Father Hanlon slapped his knees and leaned far back in his chair. “Well, it was really you I came to see actually,” he said.

  He seemed amiable enough but Benson found himself winding up again and had the distinct feeling that something was up.

  “I thought we might have a little chat. I’ll get to the point straight away. I received a letter from Father O’Callaghan at the Novitiate. In that letter he mentioned the circumstances that had caused you to leave St Finbar’s.” The priest saw Benson’s reaction and continued, “Now it’s nothing to be worried about. I shall not say anything to your mum and dad about it. The reason Father O’Callaghan wrote was, I think, because he felt a little guilty about you. He didn’t go into the reasons, but that was the impression I got. Anyway, I was just wondering if I could be of any help...”

  It was a question, but Benson did not have the least idea what to say in reply. So he just shook his head slowly.

  “What I mean is ... are you having any difficulties in that direction.”

  Benson knew what Father Hanlon meant. It struck him as slightly ironic that he should ask that because, only last week, Benson had been to him in Confession and told him what the problem was. Then the priest had said that he must learn to master his flesh or his flesh would master him. And he must have known it was Benson talking to him through the grille.

  Benson watched the priest’s discomfiture. The anxiety had left him. He felt cool again. For a short moment he allowed himself to go back an hour in time to the cemetery and think of Andy on his knees in front of him and the feelings he had kindled there in the dark.

  “I think I am growing out of that, Father. It was probably just a stage. I do have problems but
that isn’t one of them,” he said in a steady voice.

  Father Hanlon looked relieved. “Can I be of any help to you with these problems? I’m here to help.”

  “No, you’re not! You’re here to mess me up!” thought Benson. “Well, yes. I do have some problems with some dogmas of the Church, Father.”

  “And who doesn’t? I know I do. Which dogmas cause you most trouble?”

  “Hell, Father.”

  “Ah, yes. Hell. And what is it about hell that you find particularly difficult?”

  “I cannot reconcile the God of Infinite Love and the God of Infinite Justice, Father.”

  Father Hanlon leaned forward in his armchair and nodded.

  “You see,” continued Benson, “if someone killed my mum I would be terribly angry. Were it in my power I would seek retribution for the killer. Perhaps I would throw him into fire. But in the end I would forgive my mother’s murderer. Maybe after fifty years or five hundred years. Anyway, within some finite period... “

  The priest stroked his chin with his left hand and frowned down at it, nodding.

  “And I think that my eventual forgiveness of the murderer is a virtue, is good. Goodness in me I am taught comes from God. Yet God, who tells us to forgive ‘until seventy times seven’ does not follow His own rules.”

  “Well,” replied the priest, “if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you are not God. His ways are often mysterious. I would only say that hell is mentioned repeatedly in the Gospels. It cannot be ignored. Your Catechism says: ‘They who die in mortal sin will go to hell for all eternity.’ That is clear enough.”

  “Yes, but that’s the problem.”

  The priest looked nonplussed.

  “You see,” continued Benson, “I see hell as a betrayal of the Love of God. It is my duty as a Christian to seek to make Christ my Friend. But how can I do that in a proper spirit if He will turn away His Face from me forever? We are told from our earliest days that we are prone to sin. But if we die in sin, that’s it and He gives up our friendship and is content to live in the delights of heaven while I languish forever enduring horrible torments! I just can’t accept that.”