Original Innocence

I guided a visualization last week that involves a group of men lying on their backs in a circle, nude, with eyes closed. We make an imaginary journey to a Temple of Refuge consecrated to the erotic energy between men. We approach the shrine, enter it, and witness its rituals. We co-create the experience by speaking aloud one by one what rises from the depths of our imaginations. Throughout the exercise, we pass our energy around the circle through continuous heart-centered, non-genital touch.

The exercise turns out very differently every time I lead it. Some men remain reticent; others give free rein and ready voice to their fantasies of what such a Temple would look like, and what would happen there. I have only a vague idea in advance how our visit will end; I follow their lead in guiding our departure and return to the “real” world. The visualization can get pretty juicy, but we agree in advance to clear boundaries, and we end without directly acting on  the detailed sexual scenarios that we’ve sometimes voiced.

Except for last week. Throughout the exercise, the touch around the circle had been sensuous, exploratory, active. As I concluded the visualization and invited everyone to open his eyes, no one seemed ready to relinquish the pleasure of physical contact. Calling a halt to it felt like an intrusion, counter to the clear impulse of everyone present. So it continued, morphing gradually into fluid erotic freeplay, by pairs who’d connected within the larger group, then welcomed a third, then broke apart again into a new configuration. I got up to dim the lights, then returned to my place to cradle the head of a man whose face had relaxed into a moment of surprise and delight.

Looking  back on how the evening unfolded, I still dwell on how easily we all accepted one another’s witnessing presence amidst these intimacies. Derogatory labels of exhibitionism and voyeurism couldn’t begin to capture the unselfconsciousness with which men in the circle allowed themselves to be seen, in trust that we shared a safe, sacred space. We’d established that space together, visualizing the Temple; now it endured, as surely as if we’d built it stone by solid stone. Seeing and being seen was sexy, yes. But more important and enduring, seeing and being seen brought some small healing of the soul, and repair of the world.

When shame and prohibition drop away, it’s possible to glimpse the original innocence of Eden, mirrored in the presence of those who bear witness to it--never destroyed by the eating of an arbitrarily forbidden fruit; unpunished, unrebuked, unafraid, still whole, still available, despite sixty generations of grey old men preaching to the contrary.

A Queer Utopia, Concluded: House of Refuge, Chapter 11

11 Firesong

I’m glad to have let go before deep winter.

It’s hard work enough, for body and soul, to dig a brother’s last bed through the Staghorn Lord’s outer roots when the ground isn’t like stone. And I’d been ready for at least a year. At some point, the wisdom of our bodies itself tells us when it’s time--not much differently, it turns out, than our bodies’ wisdom guiding us well all through the journey. Not much differently than a leaf knowing when to drop from a branch of the Tree.

Summerstorm has come every day since he and our brothers laid me to rest here, knelt above me, wept. Much as our Lord knelt above Gil at the very start, before He took root here to embrace His beloved, before His beloved was taken up into the life of our Lord Himself. As I too am being gathered more completely into him, day by day. The seed my brothers offer Him flows down through the soil to bless me as I rest in in His embrace. They’re with me at Full Moon; I’m among them still at Full Moon.

Summerstorm knew all along, from the day he became my companion and helper, that I’d make the passage long before him. His heart will heal. Refuge is a place for the healing of the soul that’s found no true home down country, and for the repair of the world. We’re here to be made whole, to make one another whole, to care for this land. And to bless our brothers and sisters down country as well, offering them what they can’t offer themselves or one another.

I’m still aware of them one by one as they stand or lie above me. I know their voices and their tread. I know the sounds of their Full-Moon ecstasy. Especially of Yarrow and Brightsong; of Arrowshot and Willowwind; of Yarrow’s beloved Yellowwood to whom I watched Brightsong open his heart as well through the warm, green months of summer; and of Amberleaf, who still has so much to learn of himself. May their paths be long and joyful, every one of them. May their sadness, when it comes, unlock deeper treasures of their hearts. May their happiness, when it returns, blossom into gratitude and open them more fully to themselves and to one another. May they merge, long before their own letting go, more and more fully into the Soul of Cernunnos.

Brightsong took Refuge at noon after the Full Moon of Lughnasa. I couldn’t stand through the whole ceremony, but sat in the chair Summerstorm had brought out for me to the Tree as our new brother declared, “I take Refuge in Cernunnos. I take Refuge in the ways of this House. I take Refuge in my brothers.” With that, he tied his new banner into the branches above his head among those of us all. And then the whole brotherhood gathering in around him like bees swarming, toning together, voices becoming one, Summerstorm’s arm supporting me as I rose to join them. The ritual of which men’s Coming-of-Age down country is but a type and shadow. Three dozen men murmuring together, “Twice-begotten, twice-born,” declaring his second birth, as he’d already been twice-begotten the midnight before, anointed with the seed of us all. The light of the late summer sun filtering down through the leaves of the One who receives us here.

A Queer Utopia: House of Refuge, Chapter Ten

10 Yellowwood

The sun was already high when I woke.  I felt Brightsong moving, burrowing curled into the curve of Yarrow’s back. A sigh and words spoken softly beyond the curtain told me Willowwind and Arrowshot were stirring as well. Someone else was already up, his footfalls soft on the floor in the passageway. The slow, lazy morning after Full Moon is always sweet and delicious--even more so for the brothers whose beloveds come up country than for the rest of us. These hours before noon of the next day are the bridge back into the daily rhythm of our life, a time when the veil remains thin.

Yarrow reached behind him to bring Brightsong’s arm around his chest, then turned his head to meet the lad’s lips. I moved away as softly as I could to the far edge of the bed. I could have risen and slipped out, but I couldn’t bring myself to forgo the sight of them together--the man I’ve loved since my first days in Refuge, and the man he’s loved and waited for in patient hope, since long before the lad came of age.

I know I’ll never have his heart quite the way Brightsong does. I knew it even then. There’s a sadness in that, but a beauty as well. The freedom I give him is the freedom he gives me; the freedom we all aspire to give one another, though sometimes we fail. I know that Yarrow would lay down his life for me. As I for him. But his love for Brightsong is a mirror of the love of Cernunnos for Gil.  Not just at Full Moon but from day to day, they’re knit together into the Soul of the Staghorn Lord as I’ve rarely seen two men joined.

Yarrow turned to face Brightsong and our eyes met, much as mine had met Brightsong’s at that moment of terrible and beautiful understanding the afternoon before. The moment he knew, as a visitor is required to learn, that he and Yarrow would never be husbands to one another, like men down country to their wives. The moment I knew that the years of our sleeping together alone nearly every night were drawing to a close. The moment that Yarrow had to face the pain of witnessing his lad’s loss of innocence, a new man’s entry into the ways of the twice-begotten and twice-born.

I rose from the bed  as casually as I could manage, stretched, turned, and parted the curtain into the aisle. And then found myself weeping, much as Brightsong had wept the afternoon before, though, I’m thankful to say, more quietly. Some cushions lay piled together just outside the curtain, and I sank down onto them, my forehead pressed to my knees. I found respite in the posture, as though I could comfort myself as I longed for Yarrow to comfort me.

Willowwind found me there when he parted the curtain of the cubicle next to ours. I felt his hand on my shoulder, then clasping my own hand to raise me up into his arms. We said nothing, nor needed to. His embrace was enough, the solace I needed and all the solace I could receive. Finally, “Come to bed,” he whispered, and led me beyond the curtain where Arrowshot lay, who raised the sheet and then drew it over the three of us.

“I’m sorry for the pain of yesterday,” I whispered to them both. 

Arrowshot was quiet for a moment, then turned to me. “It had to happen. And was healed soon enough--“ he paused, smiling, and wiping away the tear running down my cheek, “from what we saw of the three of you together last night.” He paused at the sound of Yarrow moaning in pleasure beyond the curtain. “And from what we can hear right now,” he chuckled, and reached out to tousle Willowwind’s hair. “You wish you were with them, don’t you--just a little?” he asked him.

Willowwind laughed. “You know me very well for a man I only get to see one or two days a month.” He reached across my chest to take his beloved’s other hand. “How couldn’t I fall a little in love with a man who looks so much like you?”

Their clasped hands settled on my chest. Arrowshot nuzzled into my cheek. The brother-down-country of my beloved, the father-down-country of the man he in turn loved. The Soul of Cernunnos was still moving in me, as it still blessedly moves in many of us the morning after Full Moon. I wanted to make love to him and in him to Yarrow and to Brightsong as well. To Arrowshot and Willowwind together and in them both to the whole great chain of my brothers, stretching back to the First Days, and forward to generations of men not yet twice-begotten and twice-born.

The sounds of Yarrow and Brightsong making love just feet away could only be a source of heartache for me, or else of joy, and I chose joy.

I turned and opened my mouth to Arrowshot. Felt Willowwind kissing my chest, then his tongue flickering around my nipple. His fingers beneath my sac, lightly stroking me there at first, then pressing more firmly. His hand rising then to curl around my stand. My breath quickening. Arrowshot rolling onto his side. Straddling me. Pressing his stand against mine, offering us both to Willowwind’s grasp. The two of them kissing deeply.

The melting into One. The Staghorn Lord alive in us. The heart opening to gratitude at the wonder of it, and pouring out Love in morning light as bright as the dawn of the First Days. All of us gathered under the sheltering branches. None of us left alone. Our souls healed. The world repaired. The whole of this grace grounded in our bodies and flowing from them as a spring from its source. Time falling away.

And then awareness of the curtain parted between our bed and the next, clutched in Brightsong’s hand as he stood watching us. Yarrow embracing him from behind, his chin on Brightsong’s shoulder as he whispered encouragement in his new beloved’s ear .

Willowwind turned to meet their gaze and opened his arms. Brightsong hesitated for only a moment, looking to Arrowshot before falling into Willowwind’s embrace. Yarrow followed him into the cubicle, gently kissing the back of his neck,  then raising his eyes to me in invitation. I rose to meet him at the foot of the bed. His skin smelled of wet earth and seedflow and tasted of salt. I sank to my knees in front of him and gazed up into his face as I pressed my tongue into the sweet crease between his balls and his thigh that I know so well and love so dearly. His palm laid to the side of my head was bliss. He gasped, bent down to stroke my shoulders, and then turned to sit on the edge of the bed as I took his stand in my mouth, lapping at the dewdrop that had trickled from its tip.

Further up on the bed, Arrowshot was embracing Willowwind from behind, kissing his neck, the front of his body rolling into his beloved’s back, buttocks, and thighs. Brightsong’s arm had lain on Willowwind’s flank. Now he stretched it forward to stroke his father-down-country’s shoulder.

Yarrow followed my distraction at the sight and turned, pulling me up onto the corner of the bed with him. As I went down on him again, he reached out to trace the line of his brother-down-country’s spine with his fingers before turning back to me, raising my head from his stand and pressing my lips to his.

I lost myself in the kiss, as I’d lost myself in our lovemaking the afternoon before. And then, feeling  hands at my hips, looked down to see Brightsong gazing up at me, couched at the foot of the bed, Arrowshot  beside him kneeling before Yarrow, whose amazement mirrored my own. I couldn’t distinguish the pleasure of Brightsong’s stroke from the pleasure of witnessing Arrowshot’s on Yarrow. It seemed, instead, that the Pleasure was living Itself through us--through Arrowshot to Yarrow, through Yarrow to me in the kiss that we resumed; through me to Brightsong; through the arm slung across his shoulder back again to Arrowshot, for the cycle to begin again.

Sons of the Staghorn Lord, twice-begotten, twice-born. Twice-begetting one another: in the connection flowing among us, one to the next, creating anew the bond that knits men together in love, overcoming enmity and division.

The curtain into the corridor still hung open from when Willowwind had drawn me in after I’d sat weeping outside. Now, just beyond the opening stood Amberleaf, frozen. Watching all of us together, but fixed mostly on the sight of Brightsong kissing and caressing my stand. Willowwind saw him too, from where he crouched by Arrowshot, stroking his beloved’s hair and Yarrow’s chest at the same time. He rose and went through the curtain, where the two talked for a few moments before Willowwind laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder and encouraged him into the cubicle. Everything about his mien made clear both his fascination and his fear.

Yarrow’s breath came now in short gasps that I knew meant he’d reached a point beyond any turning back. All four of us sensed it: Yarrow burying his face in my neck; Arrowshot slowing his stroke and reaching up to rake his brother-down-country’s belly with the fingers of one hand; Brightsong reaching up to clutch Yarrow’s hand in his own just as his Yarrow’s seed arced up to fall pooling on his chest; Willowwind coming forward again from where Amberleaf stood to lay his hands on Brightsong’s and Arrowshot’ shoulders. All of us moaning encouragement and praise. Then Brightsong springing up to kiss the man he adored. Willowwind lapping up the seed from Yarrow’s chest. His eyes locking with Brightsong’s just before they came together in a kiss overflowing with the offering of Yarrow’s body to our Father and Lord.

And then Brightsong turning to me, to share with me in turn the gift of our beloved to us both.

Twice-begotten, twice-born. Twice-begetting one another.

"Pleasure Heals"

Well, yes it does. And no, it doesn’t.

I hear that slogan tossed around, along with the self-descriptor “pleasure activist.”

Both phrases almost invariably leave me skeptical. Not because healing doesn’t sometimes come through pleasure, but because what brings the healing is lot more complicated and subtle than an experience of feeling good, or great, or even mind-blowingly amazing.

It’s healing to be seen for who you are, honored for who you are, loved and encouraged to be who you are. It’s healing when someone witnesses your longings without judgment. It’s healing to be in the presence of someone who rejoices in the pleasure you’re feeling. It’s healing  when you feel the freedom to rejoice in your own pleasure without self-judgment or self-doubt.  

All this can come with great pleasure. But what heals us is the experience of being held in safety and love. What heals us is being reminded that we live in a web of relations. We need healing in the first place because we fall into believing that we’re alone, that we are only for ourselves, that our lives are not sustained by something bigger in which we live and move and have our being. We need healing because our love and compassion for ourselves has been blocked.

So pleasure, to borrow a Zen phrase, is a finger pointing at the moon. If we get hooked on looking at the finger instead of the moon, we’re missing the main event. If we imagine that pleasure can fix us while we go on feeling profoundly disconnected from others, while we still can’t love ourselves, while we go on believing we’re on our own, then we’re putting the cart before the horse. If pleasure becomes the thing we’re always chasing for its own sake, instead of welcoming it when it comes and accepting its passing as also part of the inevitable cycle of things, then it becomes part of our entrapment rather than a gift of our liberation.

House of Refuge, Chapter 9

9 Brightsong

We went forth into blackness until my eyes adjusted from the bright light of the hall. I walked by the sound of the footsteps of men around me, and the comfort of Yarrow’s hand in mine. Then pools of light emerged on the ground beneath the Tree, through level after level of branches in new leaf rising above us. The outline of the bowers set up in a circle, each with a lantern set next to its entrance. The banners of Refugetakers tied to the lowest limbs, still invisible but brushing my face as I passed them.

Men removing and folding garments to the side of the walkway. And in the strengthening pale light of the moon, faces nuzzling into necks or laid against chests, hands reaching for rising stands. Men pressing themselves in embrace against the trunk of the Tree. A man leading another by the hand--Willowwind leading Arrowshot, I was sure--toward one of the bowers.

Then Yarrow’s breath on my face. The brush of his stubble against my cheek. Our lips parting. The second time that day, I thought with a moment’s confusion, and the second time in my life, that I’d opened my mouth to the kiss of another man. My hand reaching down to the stand I could already feel pressing against my hip. His laughing encouragement to slow down as I kneaded him desperately.

The awkwardness of feeling the hands of another man caressing our shoulders. Then Yarrow leading me away to a bower, and the flickering play of lanternlight inside the door over the cushions inside as we fell into each other’s arms. Our faint shadows on the walls of the tent.

His weight on top of me, the roll of his belly against mine. My hands on his flanks, and then sliding down to clutch the hard muscles of his buttocks.

Home. Sanctuary. Refuge.

His teeth gently biting at the line of my jaw, the warmth of his tongue against my neck. The sound of my own moans as though they belonged to another man; my disbelief that all this could be happening. My prayer that it would never end.

The moment when we rolled over and I found myself on top of him, now with his face pressed into my chest, as it had been that afternoon into Yellowwood’s. The impossible ecstasy of it, believable because I’d already witnessed it between the two of them. My stand pressed against his belly, slick now with the flow of my arousal, and his against my thigh.

Sanctuary. Refuge. Home.

My gasps quickening.

“Remember what you learned in the Longhouse, Brightsong. Use your breath. You can hold it, you can hold more. Our seedflow belongs to the Staghorn Lord. But not yet, not yet. Stay with me. Hang onto me. Breathe.”

Sitting up together, stand to stand, heart to heart, Not-One-and-Not-Two. Slowing our breath down. Breathing as one. Stillness. Stands cradled in palms almost motionless. Then anointed with oil from a bowl in the corner and stroked so slowly that the rise and fall of our breath was faster than our hands. Time falling away, the very possibility of words falling away. The energy uncoiling up my spine as we’d learned to recognize in the Longhouse.

Refuge. Home. Sanctuary.

The point when I began doing in turn to Yarrow what he’d done to me. The hardness of his nipple against my tongue. The roll of my own body as he lay under me. The moment when his own gasps told me he in his turn was just at the edge of seedflow, and his deep, slow breaths bringing him back, making room within himself for more pleasure.
The memory of his bare skin against mine in the river, years before. The knowledge that I’d wanted this then without knowing what it was I’d wanted. That I’d wanted this as a child of five, sitting on his knee.

Home.

Rolling over again, and his arms sliding down my body in firm embrace. His hair trailing over my chest, the roughness of his chin nuzzling my belly as he kissed me just below the navel. And down again, his hair brushing my thighs. The unimaginable miracle of his mouth for the first time on my stand.

Sanctuary.

Outside our bower, a soft, slow, steady drumbeat. His head rising, his smile just visible in the dim light from the lantern behind him at the door. His hand extended to pull me up and guide me out of the tent back into the company of the others. My arousal evident to every man who looked toward me in the moonlight, as theirs was to me.

Refuge.

The steady drumbeat grew gradually louder. Men stood in pairs, or in knots of three or four or five. Two or three lay face down, spread-eagled and thrusting against the earth.

At the edgeof the circle, alone with his arms crossed, stood Amberheart. I saw nothing of Bowstring and their cousin-down-country among the men close enough to me to make out their faces. The four men who’d walked up country ahead of us stood together in a circle, each with one arm around his neighbour, their heads bowed and their free arms reaching down into their midst in the now-bright moonlight pouring straight down through the tree.

One of the men lying face-down on the ground groaned, cried out “Twice-begotten and twice-born!” and lay still. Another man knelt down to lay a hand between his shoulder blades, then gently stroked his hair, speaking softly to him, all the while continuing to caress his own stand.

Yarrow knelt before me, taking me once more into his mouth. My knees began to buckle. I caught myself on his shoulders, then found myself cradling his head and thrusting my hips forward. Behind him facing me stood Yellowwood, watching but hesitant until I smiled and extended my hand.

Now I can name what was happening to us as I couldn’t have then: the dropping away of the small self, as we merged into the Soul of the Staghorn Lord. Thought no longer preceded, the body no longer followed. Our mouths opened to one another--to Yarrow’s momentary surprise, as he looked up, then turned to take Yellowwood in his mouth as he’d taken me, before Yellowwood himself sank to his knees, the two of them licking at my stand, their hands clasped between them and around my thighs.

The drumbeat louder still, and and with it the moans of a dozen men around the Tree. I heard again, from across the circle, the cry “Twice-begotten and twice-born!”--which one man after another began to echo in quick succession.

“I can’t hold back any longer,” I whimpered.Both men rose.  Yellowwood stepped behind me, his one arm around my chest, pulling me back to lean against him, his other reaching down to cradle my sac. Yarrow’s cheek against mine was bliss. His firm, slow stroke was sweet agony. My seedflow erupted in a moonlit fountain and fell glistening onto the ground at my feet.

“Offer your seed. Declare yourself His son,” Yellowwood whispered into my ear. “Twice-begotten and twice-born.”

“Twice-begotten and twice-born,” I stammered, to hear it repeated around the circle by still more men, before I collapsed entirely into Yarrow’s arms.

I have no recollection of leaving the Tree--none even of Yarrow or Yellowwood offering his seedflow to the roots of the Staghorn Lord. I remember only the door of the dormitory, and moonlight streaming through its high windows onto the curtains around the beds. Falling into one of them, crawling somehow between the sheets, embraced on either side by Yarrow and Yellowwood. Vaguely aware of the voices of Arrowshot and Willowwind murmuring just beyond the curtain in the next cubicle. Sinking at once into the deepest, most fully dreamless sleep I’d known in weeks.

Sanctuary. Refuge.

Home.