Chapter 6 #3
I waved him off. He complimented me on the trench. I didn’t ask if he had seen or smelled the smoke from earlier and maybe
I should have, but truthfully it was completely out of my mind, I was too exhausted from the day and happy he was back, eager
to laugh and get the news of the day, to think up names for the new donkey (Steven, Maurice, Donkey Kong) as we walked back
to the house together.
For dinner we ate the rest of a bone marrow we had been cooking off for three days. The fat slipped warm and buttery down
my throat, soothing it. A tight grip squeezed its way through my arteries, little bubbles of energy burning off, warming me
up. To be so aware of the world working within and without was a thrill and so much of my day was occupied with this, the
simple study of sensation. I couldn’t help but smile.
Later, when we were getting ready for bed, Simon came to me with the opened jar of gloopy herbs he had bought.
“I’m not eating that,” I said.
“You’re not eating it. You’re coating your throat with it.” He sat me down on the bed and sat in front of me cross-legged.
“Open up.”
“I’m fine now, honestly. Can I drink it as a tea or something tomorrow? I don’t want that right before bed. My cough is gone.”
“George. I’m your doctor.” Simon smiled. “You just put it in the back of your throat, leave it for a minute, then wash it
down. Here’s some water. The lady at the apothecary said if you gag, that’s good, that’s what’s supposed to happen.”
“Fine. I’ll be compliant,” I said in a mocking tone. Simon stayed in front of me and watched as I took the mixture and gathered
a scoop of it with one finger. Carefully, I stuck it in the back of my mouth, which was hard to do without gagging or involuntarily
swallowing it all. I caught a taste of it off the back of my tongue—an acidic, tart pepperiness—and winced and choked on it.
It went down worse than the bone marrow. The beeswax used to thicken the salve stuck to my tongue. I reached for the water.
“Here—” Simon took the mixture and moved closer. I resisted but he leaned in, close enough that I froze, defenseless. “Keep
your mouth open and don’t move.” He peered down my throat, dipped his finger in the jar, then slowly put it inside my mouth.
I flinched but didn’t pull away. His finger was steady enough that no part of it touched me until it was all the way at the
back and I felt a warm, single impression on the back of my throat.
“Slow . . .” he said. He held it there. My eyes watered.
“It’s supposed to sting a bit,” he said, but I felt the opposite.
A numbing coolness radiated slowly from where he was pressing.
My breath warmed the rest of his fingers, which touched against my lips.
We locked eyes with each other. We were used to physically tending to each other—like monkeys picking fleas from each other—but never quite like this.
There was such a calming vulnerability, a delicate invitation, an entrance.
Something unlocked inside me, something I had been meaning to say—something that was more than anything I’d have been able
to say if Simon’s hand hadn’t been inside my mouth. A silent address passed between us. Seconds of chance, doubt, and hope
ticked by. The smallest of smiles was on Simon’s face and that was all I needed to ease into one daring, blind leap, and slowly
close my lips over his finger. Our movements were symphonic: my mouth closing around his finger, lips puckering and sucking
as he gently pulled it out. I tasted the herbs again and finally got their notes of sweetness. Tip of finger touched tip of
tongue. Simon’s mouth was open in awe. We said nothing. Only continued to stare at each other. Two locked sets of eyes. Simon
broke away first, he looked down.
“Here,” he said, handing me the water. I took it and drank slowly. My throat felt chilled and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t
believe what I had just done. When I opened them, Simon was looking at me again.
Looked away.
Looked back.
Took the cup, set it aside.
Looked again.
“Let me see again,” he said. I opened my mouth and gave an exaggerated ahhh like a patient.
Simon inspected and nodded, content with what he saw.
“Good boy,” he said and gently patted my cheek, then caught himself, as if this was a step too far, and looked away.
He quickly added with a chuckle, “This makes up for the last time I had my hand in your mouth.”
“What?” I said.
He froze. His smile twisted and turned. He hesitated and frowned. “Come on,” he said. “I shouldn’t need to remind you.” He
made a fist with his hand and held it up to me. He watched me nervously and immediately I knew, I remembered. A vale of shame
went over his face. That first day. The men who had beat me, tied me up, and taken me in. He and Wulfric. Simon had been the
one who shoved his fist in my mouth. The way I had choked, bit down, fought back, and been hammered in return. My jaw was
sprained and stung for days. I still felt a pop every now and then where something had been dislocated and healed strangely.
I didn’t know how to react. I could see the vexing guilt in Simon’s eyes as he realized I had never completely made the connection
between him and that moment. I knew he had been one of the attackers of course, but the violence had been so extreme it was
like it was detached from specificity. I had forgiven him and Wulfric for the incident as a whole, but that was back before
I knew him like I knew him now, as a man sitting across from me, the only man in my life now.
Maybe I was too quick to appease him and sounded dismissive. “You were only doing what you were told.”
“I shouldn’t have been.”
“You should have. Otherwise none of this would have happened.” My words were feeble because what was this anyway? A stone hut on a muddy hill?
Simon wanted to appease and deflect as well. We both wanted to get beyond this, get back to something else. “Well, you took
a good chunk out of me.” He showed me his hand—there were small scars across his knuckles and thumb.
“Is that me?” I took his hand and marveled at the glossy little stars etched in his skin.
“Yep, all of them.” He laughed to break through the shame. We slo-mo reenacted what had happened. He put his open hand across
my mouth. I felt the warm calluses against my cheeks, the determined, eager fingers. I had bit him there and in retaliation
he had balled it into a fist, forced it in with his other hand and held it there from behind my head. He held the closed fist
right against my lips now. Tiny wisps of hairs on his fingers tickled my nose. My lips fit perfectly between the peaks of
his knuckles.
Playfully, I nipped his hand. I tried to line my teeth up with the scars. He laughed. We did this slowly in wonderment. Then
I closed my lips.
We froze. Simon’s hand relaxed. His fingers loosened as his knuckle stayed between my lips.
We stared at each other. Waiting. He held his hand there, then rotated it, running it across my lips, presenting his index finger now, unequivocally, which I took inside my mouth.
He moved it deeper. I wrapped my tongue around it.
He felt along the inside of my cheek, then out and around my lips.
We both exhaled at the same time and instead of the air expanding between us, it was as if it contracted, bringing our faces closer than they had ever been before and his lips coming over mine and closing as easily as hands over mouths, fingers between teeth.
We kissed. Sensations I thought had been left behind in modernity came flooding back and I needed him, I pulled him closer, his hands already slipping under my clothes, gripping, grabbing, I could have cried, tears threatening to pulse and break with the thrill of a man becoming exactly what I had wanted him to be.
A man of my own. But there were already tears, a saltiness I tasted. The wetness was not mine.
“I’m so sorry, George,” was all Simon could say as we pushed ourselves together, over and over again, as we kissed necks,
lips, cheeks, crying eyes. And I was so sorry too—that all this could have been done earlier, the long winter that had been
so long—as I rushed him out of his clothes, out of mine, interlocking our bodies and snapping together but pulling apart,
wanting to see every inch of his chest, the soft nipples, tight stomach, hard penis, arms reaching, legs wrapping, heads together,
bodies forcing a conjoining, a closeness that had been obscured by so many layers of clothes, of suppositions, unsaid dares
and whispered prayers.
Oddly enough, I felt loneliness as we sucked each other off—the sensation of loneliness lifting in and out of me, in and out,
of it breaking like a fever and realizing the imprint it had made across my whole life and how for all its weight and terror,
it instantly went fleeing into the past, into the future as I came and filled Simon’s mouth just as he did so in mine, feeling
the warmth coat our throats.