A Queer Utopia, Continued: House of Refuge, Chapter 4

4 Brightsong

Arrowshot woke me not long after dawn the morning before Full Moon.  We had work in the shop and instructions to give his apprentice before meeting the others headed up country outside the Longhouse. A rucksack of bread and cheese and a corked bottle of ale sat by the kitchen door that Bracken had filled for us the night before. The walk would take two hours , not counting stops along the way.

I’d hardly slept the night before.  Yarrow’s face drifted before me every time I began to doze. The curl of his hair across his shoulder. The fall of the tunic across his chest. The thought of his arms around me, as they’d been that summer four years before. The feel of the stubble on his face against my cheek as we’d embraced before he left after the Coming-of-Age.

My dreams of what could happen between us up country had no more substance than the mist drifting down that morning from the hills toward the lowlands. I knew no more of the House of Refuge and the ways of its men than anyone else, man or woman, who’d never been there. I had only the story of Cernunnos and Gil that Firesong had told us, and the light it had kindled in me--though not, its seemed, in any of the other new men who’d come of age that day. There’s deep wisdom in the reverence around the secrets of Refuge--and almost always pain in learning them, at least briefly, for those who come longing for a life of companionship with one beloved down below.

At mid-morning, six others had gathered before the Longhouse for the trek--four of them men I knew only by  sight, the youngest perhaps ten years older than me, and friendly with the three others, who were around Arrowshot’s age.  The four were deep in conversation with one another.

I’d never have expected to see Amberleaf. He’d come of age with me; and was one of those who’d exchanged smirks the night of Firesong’s story. Next to him stood his older brother Bowstring, who I knew had made the trek before. Amberleaf looked up, met my eyes, ignored my smile of welcome, looked down again. Bowstring nodded to us both, but made no move to speak.

Arrowshot put his arm over my shoulder.  “Gathering for the trek isn’t always a friendly occasion,” he said. “Don’t be put off by it. Some men need the length of the walk to leave their life here behind. Some prefer to make the trip on their own. We’ll likely find at least two or three townsmen up country who’ve already set out on their own. ”

A few minutes later, with no more than a nod to one another, the eight of us set out--the strangers in the lead, then my father and I, Amberleaf and Bowstring twenty paces behind. As we crossed the bridge and took the uphill road, the distances between our three parties grew. The road rose, and the mist grew thicker, until it might as well have been just the two of us turning along the switchbacks.

“Your first time at Refuge will be full of things you didn’t expect,” my father said. “It is for nearly all of us.” He hesitated, then went on, “Being with Yarrow won’t be like your times together down country.”

I imagined I knew what he meant and smiled. Images of Cernunnos and Gil, sitting as Not-One-and-Not-Two, flooded my imagination. He went on, “You’ll have a guide this afternoon. Every newcomer does. Not Yarrow,” he added. “A newcomer’s guide is never the man he’s come up to visit.”

I puzzled over the anxiety I heard in his words. Did he imagine I didn’t understand that the call of the Staghorn Lord was the love between man and man? Did he imagine it wasn’t love of Yarrow and Yarrow alone that had set me on the road this morning? I needed no guide but Yarrow to welcome me.

As we walked on, it came to me like the shape of a mountain looming out of the mist that I had no idea who my father visited at Full Moon, other than Yarrow and Firesong. That Arrowshot had a life up country, if only at Full Moon, of which I knew almost nothing. Did he sit in embrace with a man whose name I didn’t even know as Cernunnos had sat with Gil, as I longed soon to sit with Yarrow? What did my mother know of this other life, in her good cheer at his monthly departure? And knew even less of her visits to Women’s Haven. This, too, was what it meant to have become a man.

The mist began to burn off about halfway through the trek. The road ran across a broad meadow dotted with great boulders. The four men ahead of us had already entered a sloping savannah of oaks at the far side. Then came another steep rise and three streams to ford. By then, the sun had flashed through, and shadows lay across the road. Around the bend after the third stream, the road levelled out again, and just ahead of us lay the gate of Refuge.

Arrowshot led us to a flat stone a few paces from the road and slung the rucksack from his shoulder. As we settled, Amberleaf and Bowstring overtook us. “We’ve enough for four,” my father offered.

“We ate just before we left,” Bowstring said. “Thank you, but we’ll head on in.”

I was just as glad to have our meal together, at the end of the journey, on our own. The stone under us now radiated the warmth of the sun, and we shed the quilted doublets we’d needed below.

“I didn’t expect Amberleaf,” I said.

“Their cousin is here,” said Arrowshot. He smiled and added, “You said no one else from your ceremony would come.” He broke the loaf, cut a slice of cheese for me, and took a swallow from the bottle. “Do you remember a new man named Willowwind?” he asked.

I thought back through childhood. “I must have been about seven. He came with us upriver for the Outerlands trading and helped steer the barges back down to town.”

“He took Refuge the year you turned eight. He’s never come back down country. I’ve asked him to be your guide this afternoon.  Asked him before,” he went on, “because I was certain you’d want to come.”

I remembered the smiles that had passed between him and my father that day, the hands laid on shoulders and on arms. And understood at once.

But yet had no words to acknowledge it. We ate in silence for a while. I heard laughter beyond the gate, and Arrowshot nodded toward it. “It’s important for you to understand that everyone who goes through the gate is son to the Staghorn Lord for as long as he stays. In Refuge, Yarrow is not your uncle. I’m not your father there, you’re not my son. Those are the bonds of the life down country.The other side of the threshold, we’re brothers.” He looked at me. “Does this make any sense?”

“I think so,” I answered.

“It’s why neither Yarrow nor I can be your guide, nor Firesong. Every newcomer learns the ways of Refuge from a man who hasn’t been part of his life down country.”

But you’ve picked mine for me,” I blurted out. “Your friend.”

He met my eyes. In his, I saw tenderness and more hesitation.“Yes, my friend.” He drank again from the bottle and offered it to me as he began wrapping up what was left of the rest. “He’ll be waiting for us at the workshops. But first let’s see if we can find Yarrow.”

The gate was rough, two unhewn cedar trunks sunk into the ground, with the trunks of two thinner, younger trees lashed horizontally with hempen rope, one above the other, to form a lintel. From these hung several dozen bands of cloth, all brightly colored. We had to part them to enter. My  father paused and turned back to them just as we’d passed through the veil they formed. “These belong to all the men living in Refuge,” he said. “At Winter Solstice every man takes down his old banner that’s faded with the year’s weather and ties one anew. Or once in a great while unties the old one and makes the decision to go back down country.”

As my grandfather had, I thought.

Arrowshot went on. “As we passed through, all these men took us as brothers, for as long as we’re here. Cernunnos took us for his sons.”

My heart leapt up at this simple act and my father’s explanation. Yarrow had touched me, through his banner. As had Firesong, and Willowwind, and the half dozen other Refugetakers I knew, or had heard of. And another thirty men I hadn’t met. My stand stirred along with my heart.

Inside the gate, the road led another thirty paces through a cedar grove and then opened out into a broad courtyard. Large buildings flanked either side, and yet another gate faced us, with a fountain beyond it and the facade of a third hall. Walkways led off between the buildings, and beyond the one on our right I heard the pounding of a hammer and the rasp of saws.

Towering beyond the gated hall at the far end, I saw, for the first time,  the upper branches of the Great Tree.

At the steps leading up to the door of the hall on our left, Boswtring stood with another man, their hands on one another’s hearts as they talked. The man he was with saw us, smiled, and placed his palms together before him in welcome, before turning his attention back to Bowstring. My father returned the greeting, and looked sidelong to me in encouragement to follow his lead. Two more men came down the path from the sound of workmen, carrying three long boards to the hall on our right.

One of them was Yarrow.

Carrying the planks into the hall and emerging again, they turned to each other on the verandah. The other man laid his hand on Yarrow’s heart as Bowstring and his companion had done. Yarrow reached up to cradle the man’s neck, and their foreheads touched. Only when they’d released each other did Yarrow look up to see us.

For a frozen, endless moment, I felt only confusion. And then Yarrow broke into a broad smile and ran across the courtyard to us.

A Queer Utopia: House of Refuge, Chapter 3

3 Arrowshot

Just ahead of me, Yarrow walked beside Brightsong the rest of the way to the banquet hall, my brother’s hand continuing to rest lightly on my son’s shoulder. At the door, he squeezed Brightsong’s arm gently. "We'll have more time to talk at home," I heard him say. I could feel Brightsong’s flustered excitement. He’s adored my brother since he was old enough to walk; and Yarrow has not only loved the boy but been in love with him since the summer before he went up country. I’ve seen their bond grow all the stronger over the last years for the briefness of their reunions when Yarrow has come down from the hills. It was clear to me since before Yarrow himself took Refuge that Brightsong would almost certainly go up country in his turn.

The din in the banquet hall swelled as the whole town poured in. I saw Yarrow take Brightsong by the hand to lead him toward our places at a table near the far side, threading his way among families gathered around their sons, and young men and women mooning over one another at the prospect of First Beddings soon to come. Bloodroot  already sat next to Rush, in the seat assigned him with our family now that their Bedding had been arranged. Next to Bloodroot in turn sat my wife Bracken. 

Yarrow parted from my son to find his place among his fellow Refugetakers, the brothers whose kinship had replaced the blood ties he’d left behind. In their midst sat Firesong as eldest among them, flanked by the others in order of their Refugetaking. As Yarrow settled in his seat, I saw Yellowwood lean to whisper in his ear, and the two of them breaking into grins.

I moved through the hall receiving the congratulations of neighbours and took the seat waiting for me between Bracken and Brightsong. She took my hand and leaned toward me. “You must be as exhausted as I was yesterday,” she said.

“It’s not as long as whatever you all get up to in the Roundhouse,” I said. “But I’m ready for a good night’s rest.”

“If either of us will be able to sleep for the noise in the street,” she said. “Last year it was nearly cockcrow before everyone settled down.” 

“It’s fewer new men this year,” I said.

“Don’t be too hopeful,” she answered. “ It’s the women teasing each other that will wake us past midnight.”

The servers came around with loaves and the first steaming bowls. She smiled and leaned in closer. “Next week won’t be much better, with Rush and Bloodroot likely awake till dawn in the next room.”

“It’s sweet to see them so excited about each other,” I said. “There are worse ways to be kept awake. Do you suppose they’ll stay so devoted?”

“I hope so,” she said. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather she was with.  And they’ll make beautiful children, if they get that far. As beautful as the ones we made,” she smiled.

“Are you sorry they’re grown so soon?” I asked. 

“Gods, no,” she laughed. “I’m ready for life without watching over them. As for Brightsong,” she went on,  leaning in yet closer to keep him from hearing  where he sat to my right, “if there were any doubts before today, seeing him with Yarrow ended them.” 

I felt a rush of warmth in my heart, and a stirring in my loins, at the thought of the love we’d seen budding for years between my son and my brother. 

“Will you take him up country with you at Full Moon?” Bracken asked, mischief in her eyes.

“Gladly, if he wants,” I said. 

“He’s his father’s son. Of course he’ll want to,” she grinned.

I grinned back. Not every man is blessed to have a wife who feels so little jealousy over his trips up country. In the nineteen years since our First Bedding, she’s never made a fuss about Full Moon. She’s kept the house and watched the children on her own without complaint--just as I’ve done when she’s gone up country to Women’s Haven at New Moon--not as often, but when Shekinah and Rhiannon have called to her. The love we felt for one another from the start has thrived for how lightly and open-handedly we’ve held it. Forbidden though it is to tell her any more about what happens at the Refuge than she can tell me about Women’s Haven, the hints we drop to each other have become a game that excites us both when the fire between us needs fuel.

She glanced across to the tables of the Refugetakers. “Firesong looks frail,” she said.

“You notice it more for not seeing him since he came down last year,” I said. “I’ve seen it month to month. But yes. This may be his last visit. He’s said as much.”

“He’s the last of my grandmother’s generation,” she said. “Saying goodbye tomorrow will be hard.”

“It probably doesn’t help much to tell you how happy he is. And what good care Ashroot takes of him.”

“It does, and doesn’t,” she said. “You know he taught me to climb trees? I adored him almost the way Brightsong adores Yarrow.”

“You’re still the first in town he comes to greet when he’s arrived,” I said. “And the first he asks after when I see him at Full Moon.”

“Sometimes I wonder why we can’t all just be together, all the time,” she said.

“Think about what it would be like, after a few months or years,” I said. “Think about how our own lives would have been different. Maybe like the story of the Six repeating itself.”

She sighed, brushed my cheek with a kiss, and turned to Rush and Bloodroot as they sat giggling together, and beginning to tease them about it.

As she turned, I felt Brightsong’s hand on my arm. My beautiful son. And, I was sure, a son of the Staghorn Lord, waiting to be twice-born. “I want to go up with you this month,” he said.

“I imagined you would,” I said and then hesitated a moment. “And I know how happy Yarrow will be to see you again so soon.”

“I think I’m the only one this year who will,” he said, and blushed.

“I’m willing to wager others will find their way up country eventually. At least once or twice.” I paused and then went on. The lad seemed to need the encouragement. “Every man goes when he hears the call, if he hears the call. Some never hear it. I’ve gone every Full Moon since before your were born, save just before you came and the three months after.”

He looked across the hall. “Yarrow heard it early, and strong,” I went on. “As did your grandfather.” 

It was time for him to hear. “Do your know your grandfather lived in Refuge for two years before Killian and Rashni called him back down across the river?”

The surprise in his face gave way to a broad smile. 

I longed to protect him from the heartache he was likely bound for, learning what he had no way yet to know of the life up country. I couldn’t predict what he might feel when he saw for himself but could imagine pain and confusion, seeing the longing in his eyes as he gazed across the room toward Yarrow. But no way to avert it. It sent some men back down country, as eventually it had my father. “It’s in our line, Brightsong,” I said. “It’s your inheritance.”

The Mystery is Not Made Clearer

...by repeating the question, nor is it bought with going to amazing places.

--Rumi

House of Refuge: A Queer Utopia, Continued

2 Brightsong

We'd received our instruction by torchlight in the Longhouse, one night a month from dusk till dawn,  since before most of us had had his first seedflow. Our classmasters always started a lesson by asking what we knew. Only later would they gently correct what we'd often gotten comically wrong from swapping inaccuracies and half-truths with playmates as our bodies and those of our sisters changed, catching glimpses of adults coupling through doors left ajar, experimenting among ourselves.

One simple lesson a night always became a game we'd play till exhaustion got the better of boyish excitement and we'd all collapse like a pile of puppies on the cushions spread around the Lingam on the dais. Soon after the start of our instruction, the classmasters began by turning the simple fact of our hard stands into a game: who rose fastest and highest --taking the sting of possible defeat out of the exercise by almost always coming in behind us themselves; seeing who could hold the weight of an apple hung from a cord. Later on, we learned to breathe deeply when touching ourselves; the varied subtleties of shaft and foreskin, ridge and head, balls and sac; the experience of waking up in a puddle of seed when they set us the challenge of not milking it out of ourselves for a week; what it was like to touch our bungholes and work a finger into them; how to bring ourselves almost to the point we couldn't hold back from seedflow, then stop and feel the flow of heat up our spines.

A grown man knows his own body, our masters told us. Between your legs lies the exposed tip of your heart. When you sleep with a woman for the first time, you'll never give her pleasure wholeheartedly if you don't understand the pleasure you can feel within yourself, by your own hand. Don't try to fly before you can walk. The wonders of women's bodies and how to touch them came mostly in our last months  of instruction. Then ways for men and women to feel pleasure together and still not make a child before they wanted one. In between the lessons of the body, we learned the chants for the births, weddings and deaths of sons and brothers and fathers and friends. We learned the circle dances for Equinox and Solstice, the Cross Quarters and Full Moons.

The House of Refuge story was one of our last lessons. It wasn't the classmasters who taught us that night, just a month before our Coming-of-Age, but Firesong, the oldest man living in Refuge. He was my mother's mother's uncle; my father named me to honor him. He came down from the House to teach us leaning on the arm of the younger man who shared his table and sometimes, I knew, his bed.

 He settled himself into a chair in front of the Lingam and looked around the half circle we formed seated around him. His white hair was gathered back taut from his temples, bound at the back of his head with a scarlet ribbon. Gold bangles glinted on his left wrist in the candlelight, and a gold ring in his ear. He accepted a cup of water from his companion, set it down on a low table at his side, and began the tale.

“In the First Days, when Killian, his brother Cernunnos, and their sister Rhiannon rose out of the earth,  and Rashni, her sister Shekinah, and their brother Gil descended from the peak of the mountain, they met by the River. Rashni saw Killian and loved him at once, and the Six made their home together.

“Flowers sprang forth where Rashni walked along the banks. Wheat shot up overnight from the soil where Killian had crossed the fields. Their joy in one another made the land fertile. They built a house with room for them all, and for sixteen months, the Six lived their life in common.

“But as time passed,  Killian and Rashni’s joy in one another made theheart of Cernunnos unquiet. He had lost the companionship of his brother to Rashni--just as Shekinah had lost the companionship of Rashni. He lay awake, tormented by the sound of Killian’s lovemaking that nightly opened the wound of his loss. He rose, and by the light of the Full Moon he crossed the ford of the river and walked up the slope toward the hills.

“As he passed,  trees burst into flower, and flowers turned to fruit hanging from the branches in a single night, but he had eyes for none of this. His face downcast, he glanced neither to right nor left, and imagined himself alone in his grief. He saw neither his sister Rhiannon, nor Rashni’s brother Gil and sister Shekinah at a distance, each making their way by an isolated, winding path across the same rising terrain, unknown to the others. In the midst of a meadow, he sat down, huddled into himself, and wept. As his tears fell to the earth, fragrant herbs sprouted around his feet.

“He made his way again to the house in the first light of dawn. But as he crossed back over the river, the grief in his heart turned to stone, and crossing the threshold, the love he felt for Killian lay cloaked in resentment toward him and toward the woman who had stolen him away. So also, the bitterness of Shekinah for the loss of her sister Rashni, and the loneliness of Rhiannon and of Gil, crept into the house like a smoke that curls across the threshold and poisons the air inside. So too, Killian and Rashni grew impatient with the others, only half-comprehending the causes for the discord that had come into their life together.

“Nine months passed, and Rashni gave birth to the twins from whom in turn all the People spring by first begetting and first birth. As Killian and Rashni turned further  inward toward one another, and toward the children, their sisters and brothers wandered further afield. And in the light of yet another Full Moon, crossing the river and going up country once again, his heart aching for Killian, Cernunnos found Gil. Seeing one another anew in that light, their passion for each other was kindled, and their souls entwined to become one. The heart of Cernunnos softened once again, and the heart of Gil was came back to life.

“From the fire of their hearts and loins sprang all the pleasure that a man may feel within himself, and that men may feel with one another. Settling onto the grass, they embraced each other in the position of Not-One-and-Not-Two: Cernunnos sat with his right leg over Gil’s left, and Gil sat with his right leg over Cernunnos’ left. Pressed together from cock to forehead, they shared their seedflow for the first time.  From midnight until dawn, it ran in rivulets from where they sat, belonging to them singly no longer, but indistinguishably to both, and from it as it mingled and flowed, all around them sprang up a garden. Vines grew up the trunks of the trees and hung with sweet grapes. As they went on rutting for each other, from their foreheads grew the horns of stags.”

Firesong fell silent and looked slowly and deliberately around our gathering. Some of us looked down, unwilling to meet his eyes. Some returned his gaze with neither embarassment nor particular attention. Two boys smirked at each other and snickered, until they fell silent under his glare. And then his eyes met mine, and softened with a recognition surpassing the kinship that bound us together as family. Mercifully, he seemed not to notice that I had to lean forward and pull the fold of my lunghi up to conceal the stand I’d sprouted while listening to the tale.

At last, he went on.

“Of Shekinah and Rhiannon, our tale tells no more. Just as the tale of Women’s Haven tells nothing of the garden that sprang from the first great seedflow of Cernunnos and Gil. By the light of day, they fed on the fruits of their garden and began to build for themselves a hut from stone and branch. By the waning moonlight of each night, the joy surging from their bodies sustained the garden they had created. As the walls of that first House of Refuge rose, vines thickened over the stones, fixing them in place without mortar, and strengthening the roof.

“Descending at last once again to the house across the river, they saw in the eyes of Killian and Rashni alarm at their appearance.  As they entered the house, their staghorns knocked against the lintel. When they tried to put on fresh shirts, they snagged on the sharp tips. So they took to going naked from the waist up, until winter came on, when they wrapped themselves in loose shawls from shoulder to waist. By the next summer, the twins as they grew began reaching out to grasp their uncles by the horns, and squealing in delight to rise into the air as they held on while the two men spun around the room.

“But every Full Moon, Cernunnos and Gil would return to the House of Refuge they had built for themselves and one another, and to the garden that their passion had made, to nurture it again from dusk to dawn with the seed their joy in each other brought forth.

“And this was their undoing.  For under the Full Moon nearest Autumn Equinox, as they made their way along the winding trails that led up country, Killian had set out as well across the river with his bow in search of game. And as they approached the garden by their separate paths, Killian, mistaking Gil for a stag, pierced him through the breast with his arrow. Gil’s life ebbed away as Cernunnos held him in his arms, but not before he asked his beloved to bury him in the place where they had found their joy in one another.

“As Killian approached and saw what he had done, he threw down his bow and fell at the feet of his brother. Together  they wept over Gil’s body until it grew cold with the rising of the sun, and together they carried it to the midst of the garden, dug a grave with their bare hands, and as the sun sank again toward the west covered the body of Gil, who had descended from the peak of the mountains, with the earth from which Killian and Cernunnos had arisen. And from that day on, Cernunnos refused to return to the house where Killian and Rhiannon dwelt, though Killian came up country, and gradually the hearts of the two brothers opened to one another again, yet never again as they had before the slaying of Gil, before the love between Killian and Rasni had flourished.

“In this way many years passed, and still Killian came up country, and still Cernunnos declined to return, until at last his brother persuaded him to make a visit to the river house. As they set out to descend to the river, Killian was first to turn his face toward the trail down country. But sensing after a hundred paces that his brother had not followed, he turned again,to see that Cernunnos’ feet had taken root into the earth above the body of his beloved. By the time Killian ran back to embrace him, the white hair across his bare chest was thickening into bark, and leaves had sprouted from his stag horns, which now began to branch and lengthen.  His human face remained. As Killian gazed into his eyes, he saw that it was become at once the face of his brother, made young again, and the face of Gil whom he had slain, until the bark closed over it as well, and he planted a last kiss on what had been the lips of his brother and of Gil.

“From that day to our own, men who have felt the call of Cernunnos and Gil have gone up country at the Full Moon, to gather around the Great Tree, then going down again to the life of Killian and Rhiannon, or else to take Refuge and make their lives with the men who become their brothers in the Staghorn Lord of the Dance.”

The Only Sane Option

Sometimes, the only sane option is giving up church for Lent.

For the forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, much of what you’re likely to face in many congregations is a variation on “Daddy, we’re really sorry. Please turn back into the good parent.” Personally, I’d had enough of that by the age of five to last a lifetime, though I wasn’t healthy enough to recognize it till my late twenties.

It doesn’t have to be thus. The Ash Wednesday service can manifest a singular beauty and intimacy. Done well, it affirms that our mortality, seen through a different lens, is the gift that allows us to recognize our life as a fragile and infinitely precious treasure, not of our own making.

“Repentance” is a lousy translation of the Greek word metanoia, which ought to mean something more like a transformation of the mind. Every time I hear “repentance” as a gay man, I pick up the whiff of Jerry Falwell, the 700 Club, Westboro Baptist Church, Anita Bryant, and on and on. And on.

The Anglican church I attend in Toronto is a wonderfully inclusive place, in a well-meaning liberal kind of way.  A rainbow flag’s been draped out of the baptismal font with the best of intentions this Lent--though I confess my gut reaction is “Gee, that’s so straight of you.” But the language of the services for the last three Sundays has reverted to the rehearsal of a catalogue of our misdeeds.

I’m just not feeling it.

I knew this morning that I’d find my friend G, a smart, progressive former Roman Catholic priest, at the early service. I can always count on him to get it when I share my misgivings around the stock church language and ritual detail. I know his own struggles to stay connected with a flawed tradition resonate with mine. He’s the best of fellow travelers and a source of strength.  

I timed my arrival for the end of the service but walked into the middle of Communion, with most of the congregation spilling out randomly from around the altar and down the chancel steps into the middle of the sanctuary. I took a seat at the back, hoping to find G free on the spur of the moment for a late breakfast.  And then the last hymn started up, a West African song introduced by a wonderful riff of Nigerian highlife guitar twangs and accompanied by a bunch of eight-year-olds on tambourines.

Despite my conscious effort, I hadn’t missed out on the service. I’d arrived just in time for what I needed from it, after this group of seventy or eighty people--some of whom I’ve know for twenty years, some of whom I recognize by face, some of whom not--had celebrated Mass on my behalf.

I connected with G in the middle of the usual schmoozing vortex. We adjourned to the breakfast joint down the street and spent two hours commiserating, somehow shoring up each other’s conviction that being part of the frustrating mess of life in a congregation is still worth it. Comparing notes on movies we’ve seen recently, especially Call Me By Your Name. (Timothée Chalumet---OMG; Armie Hammer, hot, yes, in dude-bro mode, but what were the screenwriter and director thinking?) Mooning over the waiter,  back from two months away with new piercings. Agreeing with each other that the priest in charge of the parish would look great in a kilt. Talking about what a good Lent could look like, imagining ways to suggest something better for next year.

A pretty good Third Sunday in Lent, all told. I guess I don’t need to know how I’m going to handle next week for another seven days.

Queer Utopias, Continued: House of Refuge

Earlier in the winter, I serialized a novella that dreamed of a parallel world, not too far from our own, and celebrated intergenerational polyamory among differently abled men.

Here is the first chapter of a story about another world, farther from the one most of us live in. I hope you feel welcome in it, and that you come back next week for the second installment.

House of Refuge

1 Brightsong

"Today, you are a man," my father Arrowshot said, in a voice that carried through the whole Longhouse. He was bearing witness of it to nearly every man in the town, from the seventeen-year-olds who'd had their ceremony the year before, up to men older than my great-grandfather. I thought of my twin sister in the women's Roundhouse, hearing her Coming-of-Age declaration from our mother Bracken the afternoon before. My father's left hand rested on my shoulder, his right hand on my heart. His voice began to break as he spoke. My older brother stood in the inner circle of the assembly, along with the fathers and brothers of the year's other boys.

I remember my surprise at how short and simple the ceremony seemed for all the preparations of the previous year that went into it. Our fathers leading us by the hand, clockwise seven times around the Lingam on the dais above the Longhouse floor. Then, after I'd undone my lunghi to join the adult men in their nakedness, the officiant bowing to me, smudging me with smoke from the bowl of camphor he carried in his left hand, then with the fourth finger of his right daubing the vermillion powder on my forehead, heart, and the head of my cock, then bowing to me again before my father came forward to make his declaration. Afterwards, the whole assembly crowding in around the fifteen of us who'd come of age, arms around one other's shoulders as we all began to tone--the one detail of the ritual that fathers and elder brothers hadn't explained to us in advance.  A column of purer and purer sound rose above us, as though its solid mass could pierce the roof. I saw mirrored in the faces of some of the men crowded around us the unfamiliar sense of peace that stole over me as our voices died away. Here and there, heads rested on shoulders. Across the circle,my grandfather stood with his cheek pressed against my uncle Yarrow's.

I hadn't seen Yarrow for nearly six weeks, when he'd last come down from the House of Refuge in the hills beyond the river, staying with us overnight after he'd completed the House's business in the high street. Now he and the others had all arrived together for the Coming-of-Age, the only time in the year when the men of every family assembled, townsmen and Refugetakers together, and the community was one. So too, in the Roundhouse, amidst a ritual whose secret the women kept as closely from us as we our secret from them.

Again tonight as last night, women and men, dwellers in the hills and dwellers by the river, would all feast together. Tomorrow or the day after, our kin who'd gone up country would return to the lives they'd chosen, sending down to us the fruit they grew, the wine they made, the timber they cut, taking up with them  grain and cheese and meat, wool and flax to spin and weave. My heart leapt to think that now I was of age, I could join my father on the visit he'd pay my uncle in a few weeks, as he did at nearly every Full Moon. I still felt the pang of regret for the boyhood summer when I'd spent long, bright days with Yarrow downriver, fishing, gathering wild berries to take back at dusk to the family, learning to swim. That summer Solstice, he'd already declared that he'd go up country at the following autumn Equinox. I'd wept myself to sleep night after night when he left, just before my twelfth birthday.

Seeing him across the circle gathered around us, I felt a sweet ache in my heart to remember him wading into the river, inviting me to lean back into the water, promising to hold me up, and I felt his flat, firm chest against my ribs and his arm beneath my shoulders, then later beneath my chest when he asked me to try floating face down. At the thought, my cock begin to swell again--like many of us, I'd been hard when the officiant blessed me but had gone limp as the whole community gathered into itself to tone. The sweetness of the moment vanished into embarassment at the thought someone would see, or feel it pressing against him. Then my father whispered into my ear with a squeeze of my shoulder, "It's alright, Brightsong. Just take a deep breath, and remember it's how men are."

The great knot of men gathered around us began slowly to undo itself. Neighbours came up to congratulate me and my father, and to greet Yarrow, whom my grandfather finally released from his embrace. We all spilled out into the light of a bright May afternoon. A shout went up from mothers and sisters and wives, three hundred girls and women clapping rhythmically, five against seven, seven against five, to welcome us, as we'd all done for them the day before when they'd emerged from the Roundhouse.

My sister Rush jumped up and down in excitement, but I knew it wasn't for me as much as it was for Bloodroot, who walked just ahead of me. He waved, then dashed forward to hug her. They'd been talking about sleeping together for weeks. Bloodroot asked his mother to settle it with our mother a week before the ceremonies. He would come to our house a few days just after her next time of the month and stay with us three nights, then go back home.  We all looked forward to his coming. Everyone loved Bloodroot. "He's a sweet young man," our mother told Rush. "I couldn't be happier he's going to be your first." If their affection continued, he'd visit again the next month, staying a day or two later. So it would go until they decided there were others they wanted to be with--or else until they eventually made a child.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Yarrow smiling down at me.

"Here you are," he said. "Strong and handsome and all grown up."

I could feel myself blush. I smiled stupidly and couldn't think of anything to say to him. He must have sensed my embarrassment, because he pushed on to ease the awkward silence. "Every time I've come down from the Refuge,  I keep asking myself, this can't be the boy I remember, can he? I'm really proud of you, Brightsong. We all are."

"I'm glad you're proud of me," I managed to stammer. "Are you going to stay past tomorrow?

"I have to get back," he said. "We've got seedlings to put in all this week." He smiled. "Did you want me to stay longer?"

"I always want you to stay longer," I blurted out. He was so handsome. His blue eyes shone below the long copper hair that fell across his forehead. He hadn't shaved for three or four days, and the rusty stubble showed thick on his chin.

"You can visit me now," he said. "Your father can bring you this month, if you want to come up." He turned toward me and stopped where we stood in the street, halfway between the Longhouse and the banquet hall on the square. "You know why we have a House of Refuge, don't you? Firesong explained it to you when you were preparing for today?"

My tongue went numb in my mouth again. I lowered my eyes and nodded. He went on looking into my face until I met his gaze. "Men come up to visit friends and kin," he said. "Or because they need the Refuge themselves, just for a little while, to put their life down here back in balance. We welcome them all and then bid them farewell. The men who take Refuge become our own kin as surely as the families we've left."