CHAPTER 15 STOP
Together.
The boys thought it meant all of them: my cock is ....
Until there was not even time for a good-bye.
A knock on the door. Two military types. Mark and Zav not knowing, at this point, how to interpret military dress and cosmetic.
"You are to come with us." Iron-rod.
Just that. Why had the girls left and not slept-over? A question not plumbed for causality or even random synchronicity. "Twenty minutes," a final reprieve, not a courtesy. Half-naked: Mark and Zav were too spooked to do anything other than move awkwardly about like prisoners. "Shower." Flustered as to what to pack: "Not that," flat-voiced over and over as each started to pack clothing, toiletries, a book, a picture: "Not that."
Within twenty-two-and-one-half-minutes four guys were seen driving away from Zav and Mark’s apartment.
Deserted.
As their last look back at town - their Collegeville - what struck each one, and what was acknowledged by a glance and a gulp, was that everything – once again! - seemed normal. The streets were abuzz with students: seniors and all. Greenies were about: flamboyant as targets. The sun shone brightly.
What?!
More weirdness: none of their questions were answered, possibly not even heard, for there was a glass guard fencing them off in the back-seat - Sound-proof? both wondered; no voices from the front. Just a drive for several hours: The Civic Area.
Whisked out. Whisked in. Be-whiskered, showered, again, and left naked with a bundle of fatigues on bunk-beds: top and bottom. Zav plopped into bottom, totally unzipped. Mark got dressed, quickly.
For an hour or so they do not speak. Don’t even look at the other. Just took a place, some imaginal place where each felt secure.
"Fifteen minutes," whatever it meant, shouted with a rapping on the door.
Both counted every second.
"Mark. Zav." Clipped syllables; a hand-extended; shook. Brusque movements. A notebook opened. Only a General. Maybe the General? Looks like him, anyways.
"Gentlemen," formal smile, magisterial - neither of the boys had ever before met a magistrate - with eyes that reconnoitered: moved across each so that each felt like every aspect, every detail of their being: of mind, body and soul was being checked and a mental check-list marked.
"Gentlemen, I’m proud to meet you." Mysteriously sincere.
Mystery. A word, for the boys, more literary than spiritual. Not that they hadn’t paid some attention on Gathering Day, at least enough to know that "There are things known and unknown," but never having had to pay much attention to that Unknown. Until now.
They sat. One side of the conference table; he on the other.
"Boys," not condescending, just referential, "You’re going to be shipped to Africa." Penetrating eyes. Piercing. Mark and Zav feel pierced; like two fish caught with the same spear. Without a breath, expanded, "I’m proud to say that you," and an eye for Mark and an eye for Zav, "are going to be shipped to Africa. Proud." Hands palm flat, resting from table edge forward.
"Proud. Because I’ve never had boys like you before. But you know that, don’t you?" Not a question, not a pause. "You know what type of boys I usually send off, don’t you?" Again, no pause. "Bad," hands-withdrawn, arms-locked, serious eyes, "Bad boys. But that is what today is about. Congratulations!" Brusque. A surprising exclamation. The General stands, almost propels his chair into the wall, stabs across the table, poke-shakes the hands of the still seated boys: malleable, soft-clay boys: perfunctorily swivels in military arc: is out of the room before their mutually held breath releases its choke-hold.
"Bad!" flits through the door before it can shut, flits on the bouncy sleeve of a diminutive adult, not military, flouncing into the room, right arm gesticulating, uttering non-verbally, his word repeated two times: "Bad! Bad!" right up to a lumen, unnoticed till now, at the far-end of the room, lit up with a flick of his laser wand: holographic with neural throbs - empathetic, sympathetic, like a wave - what is there flows through the boys like waves being sucked by beach.
Again, "Bad! Bad!" He turns to the boys: "Well!" as he rolls up his right sleeve: smocked and loosely robed, neither had seen a teacher or a counselor so dressed - What else can he be? - they neck-pivot towards him: flesh and brain, yet it is their soul which he seeks: "Deacon, just call me Deacon." - A fool’s wink of his eye? Not anything his voice betrays; he turns towards the lumen.
"Bad. It’s all a matter of vision. A vision quite secular, though once hotly religious. A vision over which dead-bones still rattle like sabers ... A vision which has triumphed, as visions do, by the magic of forgetfulness."
Mark is totally lost; Zav intrigued.
For hours, a world unknown, or if somehow known, not known as so now revealed. Words, phrases, references - at best vaguely known, at worst: arcane, esoteric, abstruse - causing each to rub his eyes, massage temples, wring fingers - mental gasping, spiritual bewilderment: only trusting in the self-confidence of Deacon - the smoothness of his delivery, the almost serenity of his over-all poise, presence: because he knows, they know, so they know - Ah! the ultimate pedagogical feat!
Especially "religion" and "secular" - the words upon which all seem to pivot, return to, clarify - yet, totally mystify these two who have never applied either word to themselves or those around them!
"Mormon - once a word sliced with hatred, riled with venom, slashed with abominations. Like witches of yore, they were slaughtered. Sacrificed on the altar pyre of The One True God." Pictures. Flick clips rattling by. Charts. Inundating their minds. Things they had never seen. Of temporal ages they had never heard. A history unknown: "Most Grand! The Grandest of Grand Stories!" ... Deacon rhapsodized, flowed on with barely a single pause to roll-up his sleeve a tad more or to turn towards them to see if they were dozing off - he didn’t care; was confident that this exposure, this immersion would work what needed to be worked within them.
"Mormons. Who, millennia ago, were the vehicle of The Ascendancy. Not that they all Ascended. No. The messenger does not always hear the message." At this a full-solid pause; so shocking in its abruptness that the boys almost stood up, as if an alarm had rung.
One. Two. Breaths, and Deacon is back at the races. "More about them later. What’s important, here, is for you to know there have been times and periods almost without number and all with numberless visions. In these periods what is called religion - this described and defined the vision. The Liberty Zone we now inhabit was once a Secular Society. This was a religion with a vision of being religionless. ("What?!") It was, so they called it themselves, The End of Religion. Yet, there were roots, some which we ourselves share, in religions: called Puritan, called Olympian - these all of which look terribly alike to us today - it was these religions from which we Ascended."
"Were they Bad?" Zav blurts out, shocking himself. Snapping Mark from his narcotizing doze. Without a hitch, Deacon turns towards him and says with an eagerly affirming voice, "Yes!"
Bad. "That is what today is about," had said the General, so Deacon veered with Zav’s question and was off lecturing on Bad.
"Bad. In a way you must now work hard, study hard, think hard about. Wake up!" shouted at both of them: Mark jolts a torpid eyelid; Zav his spiritual.
Within a hand-clap: "Bad meant more than a downward feeling. It meant what was called Evil. Evil was ... hard to say without using their words, but think of everyone at a Cauldron avoiding you." The boys can’t raise the image. "I know that’s impossible to you. But ..." pressed for a way to explain it this first time, "Suppose every time you penetrated a girl that she only took but did not give," stated but followed with a forehead wrinkling series of unspoken question marks???????
"No balance?" The words clung onto Mark’s columnar image. "There’d be no balance? No bottom-line. No ..." but he couldn’t push himself to visualize it. Deacon was pleased that Mark, almost, got it!
"This is what is happening in Africa." Knowing pause, fully conscious of the felonious
act about to be committed: "Do you boys know where Africa is?"
It would take days - ("Maybe they never got there?") - days and days and more days for the "reality" of the vision to seep and settle. It couldn’t fully settle with this first discovery: such was expected failure: "Africa is here." Without more than that, Deacon clicked off his wand and left the room.
"Here?" only Zav whispered in absolute amazement.
Mark rubs his eyes.
Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Page 15