Souvenir - 6. "Je savais que je t'aimais avant de te rencontrer”

"Je savais que je t'aimais avant de te rencontrer!” He said breathlessly as his ecstasy passed from his tender and sweet body. His sun-fire eyes held me and were riveted to my soul in an unbreakable tension. Our hearts beat so fast that I was sure that they should burst and commingle in the resultant gore. So intimate a contact would not have waxed strange at all to my mind. This was an unknown pleasure to me and one I could never have foreseen or made strategies to overcome.

Translated from the French, Adrien’s words ravished me far more deeply than had his sweet and supple érotique. He said to my soul: “I knew I loved you before I met you!”

He said it with a kind of alarm as if he’d just awakened to Buddhist enlightenment. He looked just as stunned to say it as I was to hear it. What stunned me more?

I felt the very same way!

The very fact that he said this to me while still pressed against my flesh with his own and with the perspiration of our efforts still running in rivulets down our fevered skins only made the truth of his words all the more penetrating. The fact that I was still sublimely penetrated by Adrien’s physical expression of carnal love when he said this seemed to add indelible nuance to his already over-sensitizing French. Inside me, with the words, I could feel more of himself inseminate inside of me as if to make a peculiarly potent dot upon a markedly large exclamation point. The resulting shiver in his body and loss of muscle control as he collapsed completely into the hollow of my neck only served to dot my own exclamation with my own potency.

Into his deliciously close ear I could but whisper: “I have been waiting for you all my life!”

This earned me a nearly inhuman whine of want from Adrien coupled by a softly pressed kiss onto the skin above me clavicle. Of all the physical pleasures afforded to me that night none were more ecstatic than one shivering kiss and the following breath of life that pushed around my neck as Adrien snuggled into me more deeply.

How instantly it aroused me, after such vigorous exertions in love, was testament to the vim of my youth and to the unsurpassable inducements of my masterful lover. Adrien’s every move upon and within my carnal sheath was studied and practiced to bring about the greatest pleasure possible under Heaven. I would dare to say that Heaven’s rewards would be put to test by the ardency of Adrien’s all encompassing and passionate lovemaking.

As we had both continued to fulfill each other’s deepest and most carnal needs I was to be surprised by an ability Adrien possessed that no other person I’d previously ‘played’ with ever demonstrated. Nor was I too meet another upon my few and brief encounters I was to have with other men in my waning years after this golden era of my life.

We inverted our positions as I had been supine and in a receptive position not unlike how a woman might present herself to receive. With laughter like children at play we wrestled a bit upon the bed in a mock struggle for supremacy. In this I was much reminded of my joy with Lucas and Wil in my innocence.

Adrien, much stronger than I, could have easily returned us to our former ‘appropriate’ positions, but then ‘acquiesced’ and came to be below me and I mounted upon him. His difference was that he enjoyed being inverted with his back to me while resting upon his slight rippled belly. This position presented his nethers to me as if by some erotic default whereby I was lying above him and quite incapable of avoiding even the slightest of penetrations into his luscious insides. By rule of pure human mechanics I was to find my arousal quite sandwiched within the cleft of his pertly muscular bottom. With the inducements of his increasingly ardent erotic gyrations I was to further find myself in touch with the lips of his ‘shameful’ orifice. The fire of my sex was ignited in a way I had never experienced before as I had always found myself receptive sexually.

“Faites usage de mon onguent, s'il vous plaît. It is beside you upon zee bed, oui?” Adrien panted at me. I knew of what he spoke as he had been so studious in applying it to my hungered nether-mouth from before. It was a lavender oil made of some sensuous elixir who’s saponaceous character made the movement of flesh upon flesh as frictionless as warm ice. Never had I experienced such an ointment. It left one to tingle most delightfully leaving me to think it had stimulating effects of an aphrodisiac nature. Upon my most sensitive organ it worked to galvanize my hardness to the point of steel. Within Adrian it had the same effect it had on me when I had been receiving. It opened him and caused him to writhe in a most delicious manner. Between breathless utterances and catlike arching of his spine he begged me almost pitifully to engage him.

Neither of us were capable of denying the other in any way, shape, or form imaginable. So, I delicately eased myself into his succulent constriction only to have him lunge back upon me with breath stealing violence! With a shout of surprised ecstasy I found myself within the confines of my beautiful lover enduring an ache of pleasure so intense I still have few words to describe it!

“Oh my God . . .” was all I could sigh in a shudder. Having been virgin in the way only a boy can be, I had never experienced sex on the giving end of things. I found the experience most exquisite! Interestingly, Adrien likewise seemed quite enamored of his situation:

“Oh OUI, mon Seigneur! S'il vous plaît, défaites-moi! Tourne-moi!” He had groaned in wonton defilement!

Thus was this new power I had discovered in Adrien: he was capable of intimacy with me in all ways! His sex was versatile in a way that taught me a complete versatility of my own! What sex was to be had Adrien was sport for, by Eros!

To wit, fortunate were we both that:

Number One - The walls of my flat were thick and stood away from any adjoining flat.

Number Two - That I had hurriedly sent my house staff away so that we could enjoy this intimacy in our privacy.

Fortuitous indeed was this as Adrien’s boyish squeals and haunting moans were enough to wake the dead or entice the ghosts to join him in his caroling. As much as he enjoyed the inducements of my submission, the more he enjoyed my sexual dominance. It was instinctual in the end. His body’s movements in our dance together drove me near to madness with sensations so intensely pleasurable as I was sure to lose all my humanity not unlike the Mr. Hyde character of Dr. Jekyll’s fame. Never had I felt such animalistic ferocity brought on by the sheer hunger for physical release. I drove into him until tears were in both our eyes. Upon my blast-cannon’s explosion of lust I was indeed weeping from the sheer intensity of physical feelings and emotional release. We fell together laughing and crying as one. Never had I experienced anything of that nature before then and, frankly, my first time with Adrien would not be equaled again entirely, not even by him. Indeed, we had better and more practiced intercourse in the brief time we had together after our initial ‘consummation’, but that was never anything to equal the first time making love to the one you truly love. That is an experience enshrined in it’s own moment and preserved best in memories forever held. Again, I could not believe Heaven to be nearly as fulfilling as that first night with Adrien. It was as if all my dreams of happiness had been utterly and completely fulfilled by him that precious night.

Yet, the best part of our first evening together was not the sex, though that was quite extraordinary, but the delectation that followed. Resting with one another in bed and under cover we nested together in each other’s warmth while a cold rain fell outside. I remember the sublime beauty of merely hearing the rain tinkle against the window-glass while candles and a hearth fire burned for our benefit. The air without was, no doubt, chill and raw as Father Winter was already raking his claws against London’s climate. This touched neither Adrien or myself wrapped as we were within the warmth of our fire and the more perfect warmth of each other’s arms. We rested in silence, I with my head upon Adrien’s breast with him tucked gently beneath me, the silk of his fine body hair causing our twinning to be frictionless without unguent. His arms wrapped around me holding me gently in place next to his thrumming heart.

He broke our reverie just enough to reach for his cheroot and a match which he used to light his aromatic cherry stick of finely dressed tobacco. We shared the same cheroot as we lay together. I savored the sweet and burning tang of the smoke that satisfied much better than a pudding might. I came to love cheroots of Adrien’s purchase. They always coupled well with cognac and I have often, in the intervening years, been quite interrogated as to where I come buy these magnificent calorieless repasts. I never tell and I greatly admire them not only for their satisfying taste but for the fact that they have assisted me in keeping trim most of my life.

But my taste for them would not be quite so sharp if I’d tried them first in any other way. Where I tried mine first, in Adrien’s arms on a rainy night on the opening night of our years long carnival of ‘unnatural’ love, lent a special flavour to my cheroots from then on. I would expect it to be the same effect a mince pie might have on a baker’s son. Such flavours in and of themselves are all very well, but it is the memory attached to such a smell that is the savour. Love comes with the scent and taste as, for what my friends at Oxford assure me in their studies of the brain, these two senses are the oldest in our evolution. They reach back into a place in our souls that is primeval. An animal craving that is as fundamental as the life that cherishes it. The love in these senses is old and deep in our baby-minds and so anything that touches the smell and the taste can only tell true feelings left inside. Smell and taste never lie and never confuse. When you smell the one you love or you remember that love, through that smell or taste, you know that what you had was REAL!

So, every time I smoke my cheroots, I am called back again to that first night I was in bed with Adrien which became the lynchpin of my existence. The measure by which every other standard of happiness must be measured.

Smoking, he began to speak in French to me as he was so comfortable to do. I could much better understand him in the French as he was better able to make his feelings precise and clear to me. I am a Francophile in this regard, I suppose. Like I made mention before, I admire French in its ability to illustrate emotion far better than can English.

(In the French: “Ah, my Beautiful Friend! How is it that I came upon you out of time and out of all of space? You, for whom I have been looking, I found so readily upon my first hour here in London. The call to find you here was a true and complete one to have made it so that I could find you so quickly.”) He punctuated this with a delicate kiss upon my forehead which stirred his body giving rise from him that scent of him. By instinct most animal I found myself bury my foolish face into the flesh of his muscular chest. I shamelessly inhaled and breathed in all of him which caused dear Adrien to chuckle at my expense. I found myself look up into his face languidly with a look that must have been equally diverting as Adrien went from mere chuckling to scoffing.

“Mon Dieu, Mon Seigneur! (But, you have this most precious expression upon your fair face! It delights me in such unexpected ways. I cannot help but to laugh!)” He reached down and gathered me up into his arms and pulled me into a wonton kiss of perfect lusciousness.

“(Ahhh, but you arouse me once again and completely, Adrien D’Saint Michel. I could but dine upon you with relish!)” With this I nibbled behind his ear ‘ferociously’ making a complete wonderful fool of myself by my growling utterances. This sent Adrien into paroxysms of boyish giggles and hilarious snorts. His carrying on as he attempted spastically to edge away from my ticklish assault sent me to laugh most heartily. Playing with Adrien in this way had become the treat of treats in a way more desirous than sex in many ways. Only rarely had I the recourse to play with someone with such joyfully innocent abandon. Not even with my ‘play’ at Eaton had I been able to engage in ‘horse play’ as it might be called today. Such exertions were frowned upon most harshly at Eaton and in the preparatory schools before college. Play of this kind was ‘unbecoming’ of ‘budding gentlemen’ and so it was inhibited almost completely. In this way, Adrien, in fact, taught me to play. He taught me how to enjoy life and to savour every moment of it without reserve or regard to etiquette.

“(I enjoy to hear this laughter coming from your heart, my Cedric.)” Adrien had said with soft affection as he stroked my hair as he might a child’s. I also delighted that, for the first time, Adrien had called me by my first name and not by my titled appellation. By doing both things, he elevated me from being a ‘lord’ to being a human being. What is more this my first name, a name I was never fond of, Adrien promoted to high French. ‘Said-rik’ sounded so much better than ‘seed-rick’ for some reason. I took to pronouncing my first name in this way from then on much to the chagrin of my Peers.

“(By your pardon, I would relate it to the joyful laughing of my beloved younger brother, Brandon.)” Adrien said to me most quietly. Then I heard something that quite chilled our warm embrace. I heart Adrien stifle a snivel. I looked up to see a single tear trickle down his high cheekbone.

“Oh, my! Whatever is the matter this time?” I asked quite startled. I was not at all used to a man being so open with his emotions. Adrien seemed to show all his feelings to me without any guard. I was later to learn that he could do this only with me and that he had done it on this night in memory by instinct for the first time.

“Brandon was zee very picture of joy, mon chéri. He would always greet me upon ma coming ‘ome from ma work or school. ‘Mon Frere! Mon Frere! Voilà!’ He would run into ma arms and I would hold him like so . . .” Adrien illustrated his tale by enfolding me in his arms as I was to gather he did for his younger brother.

“(In my arms, heavy as he was, he was light, you know? He was light as a feather! His hazel eyes would sparkle and he would tell me many things of his little day. The grasshopper he caught. The croissant Maman had made with so much butter. The wars he would fight with his friend Gerard who was his very best friend. Alas . . .)” Adrien, I remember, put his chin upon my head as if to embrace me from my top as well as my sides. He planted a kiss upon my mess of hair before freeing me of his chin. I was to presume that he did this also with his dear little Brandon.

A silence passed that was pregnant with unsaid thoughts and feelings. I felt I was to hear of something deep and painful to my new heart’s delight. I was correct in that assertion:

“You speak as if your brother is no longer this child of whom you speak. Did his sweet disposition change upon his entering puberty, perhaps? It would be no surprise. Many a boy-child of my acquaintance changed from boisterous and playful to taciturn and churlish upon the seating of manhood.” I had mused in way of comfort, I suppose.

“Non, mon Seigneur. For my little Brandon there would be no coming of zee age. (The river took him at the tender age of nine. It was upon a picnic we were enjoying along the Lys and Brandon loved to play in the water. I was too busy ogling the pretty boys and girls to watch my own little brother properly. An under-current took him so quickly that he did not even have time to call out. He was gone as if he had never existed. His ice cream white body was found down stream by two miles. It was a very bad day. Very bad.)” Adrien said with profound sadness and I turned in his arms and reached for his face which had a haunted expression.

“Oh, by all that is Holy, Adrien! I have no words. That . . .” I found that I couldn’t continue and became choked for words as the tears came to my eyes. Adrien hugged me close, but his eyes were dry, interestingly. We were now blooded in our souls with our shared stories of woe. The bond in love between us that was growing apace was reaching out to the hurt places within us to heal the wounds there. Love’s touch, so much like a fine physician’s, probes the heart to find the ills and then works to burn them out with a glowing warm radiance.

To know true love is to know healing and an end to past sorrows. True love recreates and renews life and casts it into a new mold.

Adrien was the answer to all my prayers. He was the meeting of all my hopes and he was the dream I never had the imagination to dream myself. How, in one short night, did we fall into each other’s souls like the two halves of a whole that were finally met? What divine reward had I won to deserve such a blessing? Then, he said to me, just as I was musing upon these things: “(Our love was preordained. I feel, as if, perhaps the Hindu and the Buddhists speak true. In some previous life we were known to each other and that perhaps we have known each other’s souls agelessly through a succession of lives: one to the next, to the next.)”

“You may very well be right, my sweet Adrien. It is the only way I can account for the fact that . . . . I feel that I’ve known you since birth! That you and I were never strangers and that when our eyes met upon that train, only this early afternoon, it was like I recognized you and that I had found you once again!” I responded but did so in such a confused way.

“(It must be so then. It must be that we are known to each other and so where is there need to ponder upon it any further. We are together ‘again’ if you wish to think of this in that way. Some things are best left as mystery. Let us merely enjoy what we have found in each other. Train your rationalist mind to an understanding that love and faith are wedded and faith cannot exist where reason attempts to assert it’s pride.) I gasped at the astute nature of Adrien’s final statement to me before we drifted together into the soundest sleep of our lives.

“You are a wonder to me, Adrien D’Saint Michele. Indeed, all I can do is believe in what I am feeling now and avoid madness for madness must be my lot for accepting what clearly is beyond understanding.” I said as I felt the weight of sleep pull upon my eyelids.

“(Then let us be mad then, my Beloved Cedric. We shall be more sane in our madness than the mad are in their sanity.)” and with those noble words Adrien and I slipped off into dreamland and there I can only figure that we were together as well. Together in our shared dream.

The dream of love that survives beyond death and lives again, and again, and again!