Mojo - 10. Chapter 9: Wonderful Vagaries of Fortune

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Chapter 9: Wonderful Vagaries of Fortune

I had rarely seen him so happy; you’d have thought Gordon loved his ratty old gym bag more than the money sewn inside.

‘Whatever,’ I thought. The weight of it – and the two other bags I hefted – made me adjust the shoulder straps. Assauer was equally burdened, but he also carried the file box. This was all the loot we were trying to picket-fence at the Rose Bowl; I think that’s the term Gordon had used.

We’d sent my boy off to get carry-out food for us to eat back in our motel room.

But we’d been careful, and not parked my ex’s car anywhere near the Saga Motor Hotel, in case someone, anyone really, came looking for us. And this time we were semi-lucky to park about two blocks away, on a side street bordering Pasadena City College. Currently we were walking through its twilight setting, admiring the leafy green trees all around.

I told Assauer with a grin, “Not bad parking tonight, brother. Beats that night we had to park all the way by Grant Park.”

“Yeah, that was a bit of a hike, but we never would have seen it otherwise.”

He meant a building, another college in fact – The California Institute of Technology. “Why. Bring back memories?” I laughed, but he did not. Of course it brought back memories to the both of us.

We’d both grown up in the German equivalent of the Midwest – me in a small town in the Hartz Mountains, and him in a slightly bigger town to the southwest. We arrived on the same day of orientation at TU Braunschweig, or The Technical University of Brunswick.

 

I still remember it. He was so carefree, or so it seemed, laughing with the class coordinator, so I went up to him and asked about his major.

“Mathematics?!” I scoffed, half-joking.

“And you, Mr. Wiseguy?”

“Ah, I’m studying the far superior English.”

Then he really laughed, grabbing onto my arm, and I joined in, thinking I liked the feel of him on me.

We both quickly found out our goals were to slide by with the minimum work required. “Why stress out when all we want is a pair of teaching certificates,” he told me, and he was 100% right.

So, we started slacking together. First after class, in his rented attic room while we smoked weed and dashed off our assignments. But later we’d wind up going out for döner kebab late in the evening and prowling the tough thoroughfares of Braunschweig looking for trouble – usually with an ice cream in our hand. More often than not, we found none, but sometimes drunk kids would stumble out of bars and we’d ‘help’ them to the tram, while also helping ourselves to a few Euros from their billfolds for expenses, like our Jägermeister and pot.

One night, when we decided to stay in and indulge in these alcohol and THC-laced luxuries, I let slip that in high school I’d had a string of boyfriends, but only really kept them around until the sex became predictable.

I didn’t think anything about my statement until I took a shot and glanced up to see a pall had come over his face.

“What, Assauer…?”

“Um…. So, you’re—”

“Yeah. Thought—”

“No, it’s cool. It’s just that I’m Bi. Broke up with my longtime girlfriend when she saw me kissin’ on a boy last summer.”

“Oh,” I chuckled.

Slowly he then revealed that although he’d fucked several girls, he’d never felt much for any of them, so was holding out for the right guy to try it the other way.

“Whoa, brother. I’m flattered, but just so you know, you won’t be fucking me. I’m strictly a top.”

I was the only one laughing.

“Who said I wanna top?”

“Oh. Okay. If I see a nice, strapping boy, I’ll send him your way.”

“Yeah. You do that.”

Truth was, I liked Assauer. Even though his outlook on things was a bit too positive and upbeat for my personal taste, he was mellow and we clicked naturally enough together. However, I wasn’t ready to shift quickly out of the friend zone. Sure, his good looks and taut physique caught my attention, but how much of a spark was there really between us…?

“Hey, Idiot.”

“Huh?” I looked over at my companion.

“Where have you just been? In your head?”

I felt myself grin, adjusting the shoulder straps again. “In our past.”

While I wasn’t paying much attention, we had walked through the campus and come out along the side of the college’s palatial main building.

We turned and started to stroll under a canopy of trees. These were planted like a unifying allée, while off to our right, a block-long reflecting pool with water jets provided cooling sounds and moistened the air.

“Our past, like when we met?”

“Yes,” I said. “When we first got into trouble, and first got together too.”

“Ha-ha,” he chuckled so softly it struck me as unlike him; it was tender and nostalgic. “When I first played Hercules to your son of Neptune?”

“No…. When I first played Muscle Man to your Antaeus and slew your heart.”

He was silent, looking away, and I knew I had gotten to him.

 

“Come on, Kohl! I’m starving.”

“You’re drunk,” I replied, grabbing his jacket and tossing it to him standing by the door. “It’s late. You need to wear something, Schnapsdrossel.”

He slipped on his coat, laughing freely as I slid past him to get to the door out of his flat.

He kissed me.

Assauer had just reached out, placed a hand on my cheek, and kissed me on the lips with loving ease.

He left me there and called me a slow poke as he jogged down the steps without a care in the world.

Maybe for him the kiss had been brotherly, but for me – judging by my internal compass – I suddenly had a new course to follow.

Later, after another set of piping-hot gyros wrapped in foil from the best of the center-city stands, we walked, joked and ate. It was late, so we were pretty much alone, but with each step, with every bit of shared mood and happiness, that something new in me grew.

By the time our wrappers were tossed aside, we’d come to the plaza where water sloshed and played at the feet of “The Wrestlers,” a neo-postmodern statue of Hercules and Antaeus grappling.

We stood and admired the beefy acres of naked man flesh – after all, this image of the ancient strong-man lifting an equally fit stud in his arms had been a staple of homoerotic taste since the Renaissance.

The debate whether the pair represents a couple at the moment of la petite mort, or of an actual extinguishing of life via ecstasy has been offered up for debate for centuries. Obviously, the queer-honest mind knows it’s never been a real question, but just one of those fake ones of doubt hetero-enforced myths use to suppress or deny same-sex artistic expression is all around them.

But none of that mattered to us, for the night we stood under them, the moon was projecting a shadow from the defeated man’s arm over the top of our heads, as if the surrender of one man to another was the paramount form of bliss. And, it was.

I took Assauer’s hand in my own, and his jolly grin faded.

He drew into me, and this time, I kissed him. There was nothing fraternal in my tongue forcing its way in, nothing brotherly – expect in the Classical sense of lovers – about how I felt.

He panted and gripped onto my ass.

It was after midnight; we were alone, young, drunk and randy – and on the verge of love – so I tugged on his hand and led him to a narrow alley just to the side of the fountain.

“Kohl….”

I shushed him.

“I’m – I’ve never—”

I stopped up his mouth with kisses as I undid his jeans, compelling them to fall around his ankles.

He moaned into my mouth, so I slipped my hand between the white cotton briefs and his smooth-as-a-baby’s ass.

Not quite the novice he pretended, he had meanwhile unzipped me and brought my hard dick out into the night air.

As my finger toyed at the entrance to his hole, he slid his hand around my cockhead, making it long to get inside of him.

Moments later, he had me pushed against a wall, on his knees, taking my dick halfway down his throat. He may not have fucked with guys yet, but he sure had played flutist with them.

I closed my eyes, letting the sound of the fountain and the sensation of Assauer’s lips overwhelm me. There was no doubt about how I was going to cum tonight, and I felt it was time to take someone’s virginity.

After pulling him up, and kissing him thoroughly, I turned him around, spread his hands on the wall, kicked his ankles apart, and pressed my dick along his ass crack.

I leaned in close to the back of his ear. “Want this?”

“Yes.”

“Want it…now?”

“Oh, God, yes.”

I spit on my fingertips and worked it into his hole, which dilated greedily while he cried out in pleasure.

More lube from my mouth went to my cockhead, and then I was positioning it straight for his inexperienced heart.

I slid in and waited, expecting some resistance, but Assauer straightened his lower back and drove his hole on my dick to the balls.

Instead of him sighing like a bitch, it was me doing it; he felt so amazing. Tight, yes, but also giving and needy.

It turned me on so much, I latched onto his waist and fucking pummeled him good.

My eyes had to close, partly from the adrenaline in my blood, but mostly because of the fullness of my emotions.

I barely was able to get out “Cum…. Okay…?”

He replied by grabbing the base of my thighs and forcing me to go as deep as I could.

That’s when I lost it, and took his man-on-man maidenhood to the nth degree. We were bound now, by blood, and would be to some extent forever.

After we had fucked like wild tomcats in a public midnight alley, within earshot of the Hercules and Antaeus fountain, Assauer took me back to his flat and dragged me willingly into his bed.

Late, and tired as we were, we still lay there chatting in each other’s arms until it turned into a make-out session for an hour.

I could hardly keep my eyes open anymore, but his sucking of my rock-hard dick, and pleading for another ‘bedtime load’ made me climb on top and fuck him like every good-wife deserves.

He kept watching me with his intense blue eyes, and although it was a grudge match – had to really fucking slam him to coax my cum to the forefront of my dick – he loved every moment of it.

In the end, I seeded him twice because I came and just kept going; it felt that good. I couldn’t help myself, and when finished, felt weightless as I drifted into his arms.

We became fuckbuddies after that, and within a month, I had moved in to fuck him nightly.

Soon after, we both referred to one another proudly in public as our boyfriend, and it was all due to that wrestling match in bronze and moonlight.

“You okay?” he asked.

I realized, by following his gaze down, that I had a huge erection in my jeans. He must have been thinking of the same scene, because his hard cock was very evident too under denim.

I told him the truth. “I did, you know.”

He knew what I meant. “Why do you think I’ve done all the things I have for you, Kohl? Yeah, I know you did.”

In my mind, a silly equation presented itself: Gordon’s love of his ratty old gym bag was analogous to Assauer’s affection for me. ‘Both worn,’ I considered, ‘and a little threadbare, but once you’re attached, I guess condition doesn’t matter.’

We continued walking on with a smile. It felt good to still have my ex in my life.

˚˚˚˚˚

Scents of cilantro, lime and carne asada surrounded us.

The TV was on, playing some soft-o chick-on-chick porn that Assauer had found on the motel cable. Even though halfhearted girl-grunts provided the white noise of the background, me and Gordon barely cared, as the three of us had our burritos and were happy.

“What do you call a girl,” I joked through a mouthful of rice and beans, “who goes down on another chick willingly?”

“Dunno,” my ex said.

“Well-paid!” my boyfriend explained, and me and him burst out laughing. Gordon got where I was going.

“Yeah,” I said. “You couldn’t bribe me enough to even touch one of those with a ten-foot pole.”

“As if you’ve got even a ten-centimeter ‘pole.’” Assauer was proud of his witticism.

I turned to Gordon, smirking. “He sure liked it well enough, and he’s not one to talk about massive schlongs.”

“Shut up,” Mein ex laughed, because he knew I was right.

Suddenly there was a rapping on the door. It was so faint….

“Turn that off.” I motioned to the TV, and Assauer found the remote; soon the sounds of commercial muff-diving were on mute.

The knock came again, and the three of us stood. Whatever it was, I was sure it was the last thing we needed.

Gordon stepped close to the doorframe. “Who’s there?”

My mind flew to seeing Hojax’s pistol, in its box, in the drawer of my bedside table.

A deferential female voice replied, “It’s me. You left something at the Rose Bowl Flea today.”

My boy came back to us, and we shrugged at one another. Did we lose anything?

Before we could think another thought, the door opened, but strangely, we didn’t see the woman’s hand near the handle.

I grumbled at Gordon: “I thought we locked it.”

“We did,” he said in a harsh whisper.

The girl in the doorway was dressed like a dude, and had a hoodie veiling her eyes. She hovered at the threshold. “I will tell you, but may I come in?”

Gordon immediately told us, “I don’t think it’s a good idea—”

“Yes, come in,” I said to her.

She entered, closed the door and lowered her cowl. As soon as I saw her face and long hair, I had a feeling—

“My name is Psyche. You met me and my boyfriend, Eros, at the fair today.”

Yes, that’s right. That couple asking oddball questions right before our encounter with the uptight sailor-boys.

“How did you find us?” Assauer challenged her.

Her gaze fell on the women making out on the TV screen. She replied calmly – too calmly, “You may think you’re hard to track,” she added creepily, staring us down, “but The God has eyes everywhere.”

I wanted to laugh; what was that? Some Saturday, late-night B-roll movie line?

Suppressing a chuckle, Gordon asked, “Which god?”

“He of the olive and elder; the Great Blue-Gray One; He of the rustling leaves and sun-dappled blossoms.”

‘Okay,’ I thought. ‘At least we know we’re dealing with a nut job.’

“What do you want?” Gordon curtly asked.

“To return something.”

Psyche held out her hand and produced Trọng’s cufflinks. “You left these behind.”

My boy grabbed them, muttering, “More like you and your boyfriend left them behind in your pocket.”

I chided my boyfriend. “Be nice, Gordon.”

Assauer laughed at our bickering, the ass.

The religious freak stepped to the end of the bed closest to the window. “I am the personal assistant of Parthia, she whose sacred rite you interrupted that day in Los Angeles. She wishes to have a word with you about your inadvertence.”

“It wasn’t me!” Gordon blurted unhelpfully.

Me and my ex glanced at one another. I think we both felt this day had been coming for some reason.

The woman continued, “You needn’t worry. Parthia merely wants to put things right again, and to learn what nature of daring young men Destiny propelled across her path.” A weak grin followed.

“One second,” I said to the loon, then gathered my companions’ shoulders into a huddle.

“We need to ask her to leave,” Gordon ventured.

“I agree,” said Assauer.

I poked my ex’s chest. “I’m not so sure. They won’t quit until we give in, so now’s as good a time as any to do what they want, and put this incident behind us.”

When we straightened up and glanced over at her, Psyche was texting someone, her long hair falling over one shoulder.

“Um…miss,” I started. “It’s nice you and, Eros, was it, returned our stolen property and all, but we’re more than sorry about seeing what we saw that day in the sex club. And we can assure you—”

She held up a finger. Her phone was vibrating, and so without another word, she went to the door and opened it.

A gorgeous woman, indeed the very same one from the sex club stage, stood there in a flowing dress. To her side waited a young teenage girl with a cellphone; that one tossed her blond bob and chewed gum noisily.

“I am Parthia, High Priestess of the Great One, and this is my pet, Lolita. May we be invited in?”

“No!” Gordon shouted, and I reacted by restraining him at the chest.

“Yes, please do,” I said. Gordon threw my hands away from his body in disgust.

Assauer appeared ambivalent, but in my mind it was clear: this crap needed sorting. And besides, why be afraid of three women, one no more than a teenybopper of about seventeen.

They glided in, with Lolita closing the door behind them.

The priestess was younger than I had thought. Her long dark hair was pulled back, and up close, it was easier to tell her handsome, almost man-like features were South Asian. Perhaps she was descended from Tamil or Sri Lankan roots. Her bearing was dignified; her voice, deep.

This noble carriage was contrasted all the more only a moment later when she engaged in typically female dramatics: going on a crying jag, sobbing like she couldn’t breathe, gripping onto her ‘pet’ for support. After this, the woman gave up and tossed herself like a ragdoll across my bed.

We regarded one another coolly. This Parthia person may have been used to manipulating cult-addled brains, but quite frankly her tears – if indeed there were actually any – did nothing for us, so we stood around, waiting for the performance to come to an end.

When her emotional buckets had emptied themselves, she stood with the help of Lolita and Psyche and came to us.

“The aftermath of your defilement of our sacred rite has been a sore vexation onto me personally. That night I took to my bed with violent shaking and chills – I thought it resembled malaria or Tourettes, I know not which – but through my tears I implored The God to show me the way. When I eventually fell into an exhausted sleep, He did, via a dream.”

“Look, ma’am,” said Assauer matter-of-factly, “we didn’t mean to—”

“Have no fear, gentlemen.” Parthia intoned her phrases with freeze-dried composure. “I seek no vengeance, only to show compassion for your youthful indiscretion. For unawares as you are, you have no concept of the inexpiatable abomination you have committed.”

“Huh?” Gordon said.

Lolita, the other teenager in the room, explained through a popping bubble: “She’s come to work things out. Duh!”

My boy got snotty in return. “Then why didn’t she say so?! Double duh.”

“I did, my dear, sensible child,” Parthia told Gordon. “I did say it in my own way.” To me and Assauer, she continued, “I want bygones to be bygones….”

“But…?” Assauer, consummate conman, knew there was more to ‘this scene’ than hugs and kisses.

“However, it’s not entirely up to me. With your permission….” Parthia seemed on the verge of fainting, but recovered – miraculously – and went on. “That night, after the corruption of the ceremony, I took masses of Diphenhydramine and slept fitfully. The God appeared to me and showed what I must do. He guided me to seek you out, and have you assuage the onslaught of my malady by a secret method revealed only to me.”

My boyfriend put his hand around my waist. “I don’t know, Kohl. Sounds shady as fuck.”

Lolita burst out: “Watch your manners in her presence.” POP!

Gordon bowed to the girl with fake deference.

The priestess continued, “And yet, my insomnia and wasting condition are not my primary concern. My main worry is for you. Fear that you remarkable gentlemen, as you so clearly are, will divulge the nature of the ritual you spied upon – in your imperfect understanding of it.”

I scoffed to myself, ‘Imperfect understanding?! She was about to get Catherine-the-Great’d by a donkey.’

As if somehow reading my mind, she stepped closer and laid a frigid finger on my chest. Her even-keel tone took on an edge as she added, “What you’ve seen in your blindness not even all the members of our society are allowed to witness. We fear you will mock our Faith, and try to deprive us of our holy religious liberties.”

‘Gott im Himmel,’ I thought. ‘Horse-rodgering is hardly the same as nuns refusing to educate kids on condoms and the birds-and-the-trees, but once you open the door on taxpayer-funded “Religious Exceptions,” you have to let all the crazies go on a rampage, no matter what they wear on their head.’

Parthia turned her attention on Assauer, who now that I looked at him seemed a bit mesmerized. I suddenly recognized that same glazed expression as the one he had that day in the sex club.

The priestess chanted softly, prayerlike to him, while Lolita and Psyche suddenly appeared rather ‘devout’ at her words too.

“The wind’s blast may rage,

And the leaves stream away from the trees

Before the first of the violent frosts.

It’s then that birdsong falls silent;

Then the randy pulse of the beasts,

So lusty in spring, goes dormant.

‘But I,’ sayeth The God, ‘But I,

The lover of all things holy,

Refuse to bow to the temporal,

The changeable whim of the seasons,

And the mere drive to brute dumbness.’”

So saying, she fell into another crying jag, assisted back to the bed by her attendants.

The girl-on-girl porn still played, but we hardly noticed.

“Time for another group meeting,” Assauer said.

We jammed ourselves in the little area outside the bathroom door. We did this so we could keep the room, the women, and our loot within easy eye-shot.

Gordon led off. “I don’t know about this.”

“Your boyfriend’s right. This don’t smell legit.”

“She looks harmless enough,” I said.

“What!”

“Calm down, honey. Don’t get your noose out of joint.”

“That’s nose out of joint.”

I puzzled a second. “Flaming nostrils…?”

“Flaring—”

“Will you two. Shut. Up. This is not the time.”

“Right. Look, the point is,” I said, “this donkey dick thing’s been hanging over our head.” I glanced at the cult members. “Sure, they’re a little coo-coo, but we let them do their voodoo, and then we tell them to shoo-shoo.”

“Um…” Assauer was relenting; he could see my point.

Gordon though…. “This is nuts. We need to just shove ‘em—”

“All right, ladies,” I turned and answered. “We’ll help you with your little problem. We are, as you say, sensible after all.”

“Kohl!” My boy grabbed my arm.

“It’s all right,” I reassured him. Also, Lolita and Psyche stared down his protests.

“And you?” inquired Parthia of my ex. “What do you say…?”

“Yeah.” Assauer shrugged, stepping forward. “Let’s get it over and done with.”

I was just about to add ‘How bad could it be,’ when the cult leader’s mood turned on a dime. She rose from the bed like a spirit possessed and approached us while cracking her knuckles. “Who do you think you are? Some Picaresque anti-heroes in a tawdry graphic novel?! Do you think you can just blunder your way into other people’s realities without consequences? Without punishment?!”

I wondered, ‘Pick-a-who…?’

“But you said,” Gordon stammered, “you weren’t looking for revenge.”

The mad woman cackled “I’mmm not,” and then proceeded to do a mime performance of laughing at me: one hand over her mouth; the other used to point from an arm’s length at my face and crotch.

Suddenly, she was done. She clapped sharply. Psyche went to the door, opening it to reveal ‘Eros’ – her burly beau from the market – and another equally beefy and pissed-off-looking dude with a devil-face goatee.

They crowded into the room, each of the men latching onto me and Assauer’s arms; the gum-popping tart grabbed my Gordon.

Mr. Devil-Chin tightened his grip on me, pulling back uncomfortably on my inner arms, drawing my elbows too far. I winced, but then saw the madwoman step up to me. She opened her mouth and smeared a wet kiss over my lips and tongue. It sickened me, and her lipstick tasted gross.

She pulled back, looking maniacal. She then brushed the hair out of my eyes and pinned it back behind my ears. “I’m glad we’ve struck a bargain,” she said, “but make no mistake, if you had not volunteered for the trial, or even failed to let us in, tomorrow morning would have found a gang of Eros and his friends to make you more than regret it.”

The dude laughed behind my head and jammed his knuckles in my lower back. Parthia returned for more disgusting wet-horse smooches, and I glanced at the bedside table where the gun was. It might as well have been in Egypt for all the good it could do me now.

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