Moonlight • Water • Silence
A Nocturne from Another Place and Time
William Stewart
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THE RECEPTION NOW has ended, and, sated with poems and fine company, you take your leave and step into the night. The heat of the day has abated a little at last, and a tiny breeze just faintly stirs the cassia trees as you stroll past stately mansions hidden deep within their high-walled grounds. A bit past full, the bletted moon has already cleared the treetops as she begins her nightly journey across the sky, blanching out the flickering lamp your footman carries hanging from his pole. Soon, your route converges with a shallow canal, whose quiet music echoes the breath of coolness in the air. How fortunate your way should lie beside it! You walk along in silence, savoring the sounds, the sights, the smells, so variously focused and obscured by the magic of the plenilune night.
Soon, through the stillness, you become aware of the murmur of noise from the pleasure quarters, and, turning from your homeward route, you cross a footbridge and gravitate toward the river. Before long you are traversing the vast Sernashi temple complex, its shrines alight with candles and dotted with devotees offering up their prayers for a hundred poignant or petty things—a lameness healed, a daughter married, lust, wealth, revenge. An ancient fortune teller catches your eye as she sits on her tiny stool, her look unfathomably sad from out her ravaged face; you walk on, but something of her languor lingers, brushing your consciousness as you go through the gatehouse and enter the Quarter.
And here you are at the Street of Dreams. The crowd is thick with wealthy merchants, well-born ladies in token disguise, grandees in their litters, loiterers and shady characters, professional beauties, sad-faced Uzu slaves…they are young and old, Altani, Shari, Transmontane, people from all corners of the empire in fact, exotic clothes and wondering faces floating in a sea of fresh and jaded habitués. Heat, again; and no respite from the river, either, on account of the storied pleasure-houses on your left, which, by virtue of their waterside location, command the highest prices from the finest clientele. Only at the ferrymen’s stairs do you see the water; and even there, the milling throng makes a barrier scarcely less solid than the inns before and after, and the vendors’ lamps and cookfires cancel any cooling that the river might otherwise convey. You move through the crowd and, leaving your servant with a few coppers for a tub of beer at a tavern of his choosing, turn in at an elegant doorway whose understated sign, in a mannered running script, whispers to the knowing: House of the Dusky Iris.
Old Mursa bows you in with a respectful greeting. Next a pretty Shedri youth offers you water and a cloth at the dripping fountain, welcome indeed on such a night as this. The room is nearly empty: a pair of friends are deep in conversation by the door, an enormous bureaucrat fans himself morosely in a corner; but it is from the floor above that the gaiety filters down, and it is to the narrow stairs you go, and mount.
Music and voices, shadows and light, punk and musky oils: the feel of the room is vivid with tension and desire. Here an aged nobleman flirts with one of Hazaldur-zei’s handsome high-class charmers, who measures out a condescending smile; there a group of actors laughs, clustered around their big man, whom you recognize as the famous Dosht-i-Ghuri; deep in alcoves, figures recline, animated or lost in reverie, the boys alert to their clients’ every mood; while on the little platform musicians weave a web with reedy shawm, ethereal glass bowls, and plangent seventeen-stringed ghar. Hazaldur-zei’s lieutenant comes up beside you and, after an exchange of niceties, inquires as to your wants; you answer noncommittally, and, after he is gone, stand a moment surveying the busy room. A couple of tall, broad-shouldered ladies of fashion trip across the floor, their dress a lavish travesty of taste; servers move deftly, thimblefuls of khola and iced syrups on their trays; an unlikely threesome climbs the flight to the next story, presumably to retire to a private room; and in the corner an apprentice lad works the hanging fan, flickering the lamp-flames in their filigrees, making a restless dance upon the walls.
The open archways draw you, and you step out onto the wide balcony, where others have come as well to take the fresher air. For a time you stare down at the great river, where boats go to and fro or rock at wharfside moorings, the reflections of their dim lights breaking up again and again in the rippled darkness. Your eye picks up a fisherman in his coracle; he drifts in the stream and after a minute disappears from view, vanishing as if he had never been. You turn away and, seating yourself on the polished bench, request a khola from a server passing by. When he returns with the tiny cup, you sip, savoring the sharp distinctive smell, the bitterness, the intimation of euphoria…what will the night reveal, you wonder.
Presently a new sound attracts your ear: the voice of song. Curious, you wander back inside, and see that the musicians have been joined by a trio of pretty lads with the broad cheekbones of mountain folk, singing a lilting village air. You try to catch the words, but they are in an unfamiliar tongue, Gurdzhehi or one of the Kûi languages by the sound of it; their garb, too, suggests a northern style, though the rough hill-country idiom has been artfully translated into the silks and linens of the Quarter, and their sharduhas fall open to reveal tight gauzy breeches designed to offer up the gifts of delight they so coyly pretend to conceal. Such an act as theirs, performed by city boys, would be jejune and weary; but from these fresh-faced northerners, it seems charmingly authentic, and you observe them happily as they sing, threading their voices together in close harmony. At the end you hiss appreciatively, along with those other patrons who have been attending to their song. Unexpectedly, you catch the glance of the slenderest of the three; he tosses you the sketch of a smile in response, an aside, as it were, for you alone, fluttering your heart.
Now, though, they are moving on: three notes only, and you know it is ‘Oh, Yon Waning Moon’ its sad, familiar melody provoking an atavistic welling-up of tears. They handle it well, their accents giving it an unusual piquancy; they, and you, get through that last, heart-wrenching verse, and then they are back with another northern tune, a courting song most likely, and you watch the willowy fellow’s expressive face, musing.
And then you glimpse Keram i-Ridzhavi-mura, a friend that you encounter only rarely, but are always glad to see. You beckon him to join you on a divan, and you each take a bowl of chilled Oirani wine and a khola. You spend a pleasant interval, exchanging gossip and playful repartee, before your acquaintance begs to take his leave. He rises and moves away, and only then do you notice that the musicians have disappeared, save for a grizzled Shedri fellow, playing a hypnotic rhythm on the water-drums. Suddenly you are aware of the heat, and of your need to urinate. You rise and acknowledge the steward with a nod, then go downstairs and make your way to the chambers; and there, in the inner room, is the slim northerner, preparing to relieve himself.
Giving nothing away, you take your time undoing your chembran, while the singer stands motionless at the piscina. Moving to his side, you steal a glance and sense a heightened intensity; in the vivid absence of speech, the stream that courses through the trough seems preternaturally loud. You reach into your breeches and withdraw your member, heavy in your hand. You feel the pressure rising as it swells, drawn between the two conflicting impulses. Without raising your eyes or turning your head, you watch your fellow’s locus; he, too, appears to be having difficulty, he holds himself gingerly, and is thickening as well. Two or three times he pulls his flesh, then stops for a portentous moment, as if waiting for the flow. His penis arches out, not stiff exactly but visibly engorged. You pick up on his cues, your unspent water now more whet than counter-urge; insistent though the pressure is, it is subsumed in the other, more exciting lure. You stand there, feigning unawareness, with nothing but your semi-erection revealing your arousal. Suddenly, your neighbor’s jutting piece propels a juddering jonquil jet against the backboard, flooding for a moment before stopping as abruptly as it began. This is too much; you rub covertly, so does he, then you stop, as you must, so as not to get too much caught up in the momentum of the wave. Again the fellow releases his flow, much longer, now, until at last he cuts it; then a handful of flounces, a flick of the skin, a flutter of eyelids, and he reassembles himself and saunters into the anteroom, throwing a glance over his shoulder as he leaves.
You pull yourself together and, as the excitement subsides, finally find your own thwarted fluid pouring into the gurgling runnel, the first exquisite sting dissolved after an instant in luxurious relief. After a long, very long, slow-ending minute, you shake and replace your parts in their pouch. You fasten your chembran and adjust the reghba, then return to the entrance area, where a compère has materialized with a questioning look in his eye—but you pass him with a smile, and stride out, tipping old Mursa a couple of huluda as you pass.
Still a little dizzy, you find your servant waiting across the way, and together you set off for home. Leaving the Quarter by a side street, you pass through the alleys of the Mercers’ District, silent and shut tight now, empty of the jostle and fawn that will return in just a few short hours. Your shortcut leads you quickly to the Avenue of the Imperial Succession, its broad stone carriageway and flanking acacia allées stretching toward the Gryphon Gate, hulking vastly in the distance, the Imperial Precinct beyond. A troop of nocturnal langurs runs chitter-shrieking through the trees, their eldritch cries fading as they race away. You pass a few late-farers like yourself, including some very august personage in a sumptuous longa, who stops you with an imperious rap of the fan on the side of his equipage and makes an impertinent remark, which you deflect as best you can. Despite the passing shadows, though, the thoroughfare seems strangely empty in the zenithal moonlight, and it is with some relief that you turn into the Street of Five Waters. A watchman sounds his clapper, making his rounds, lanterns shining brightly from his horns, and soon you are in your ward.
A dozen or twenty paces, and you are at your threshold. Recognizing your knock, the porter opens the little side-door, and you enter, the footman at your heels. After a few words, you bid them both goodnight; you hear the heavy lock fall into place, and then the crunch of gravel as they head off to their quarters, and to their well-earned rest.
Now the night is yours alone. Skirting the main reception hall, you enter the western garden. You stand a moment, drinking the beauty in. The full, over-full peonies lean moonfaced on their stakes, night-blooming jasmine perfumes the sultry air. The silence is enriched, not hindered, by the drip, drip, drip of water in the old stone pool. Oh, the blessèd stillness! You make your way by the flagstone path to your private pavilion, where your sleeping room is marked by the gentle glow of lamplight filtered through a fine-wove veil. You mount the three wide steps, cross the broad veranda, lift the netting, and go in.
At the side of the raised chulum, your thoughtful Raukhma has put out a dressing gown, also a jug of lightly fermented melon water. You gratefully remove your necklace and step out of your sweat-damp clothes, then let down your hair and pull on the robe in happy anticipation of the zerda. Next you pour yourself a beaker of the fluid and drink deeply, conscious of the pleasure it will bring. After a minute, having drunk your fill, you dive beneath the hangings. Along the gallery your step is lit by a miniature oil lamp burning in its niche, but as you cross the courtyard to the bathhouse, it is once again the moon that shows the way, scattering her largesse indifferently on everything she sees.
Taking off your garment, you soap yourself at the dragonmouth tap and sluice off the heat of the day, then gladly sink into the waiting pool. The element embraces you, and at first you simply savor its coolness, your mind empty of all thought. Then reverie begins, under the spell of trickling water and flickering light-and-shade. After a time, you stretch yourself out as though to swim, as much as the confines of the pool allow, clasping the lip of azure faience tiles. Finally you float a bit, and consider the possibilities of adventure still to come. Hoisting yourself out of the pool at last, you take a towel from the bench and slowly begin to dry yourself against its clean caress. Enjoying your nakedness, you step out onto the little portico of the zerda, where the midnight air feels almost cool against your still-damp skin. You stand awhile, toweling, and then go back inside, deliciously aware of the heaviness at your loins. You roughly dry and comb your hair, then pull on the robe, blow out the light, and head back to your apartments.
A plan has formulated itself in your mind. On the lampshelf sits a vase of tapers. You light one and set it in a holder, then carry it into the anteroom that adjoins your sleeping chamber. The fragrance of cedar bewitches you as you open a drawer and find a pair of nankeen breeches, whose feel you know and love: they will cup you snugly, yet allow the ready movement you desire. You step into them with anticipation, then pause to tie a thong around your genitals before fastening the waistband and the cuffs below the knee. Pleased as always with the fit, you spare a tender thought for sad old Biddeh Loka, wasting away inexorably in pettishness and drink, yet making magic with thread and needle until the bitter end…a blessing on your path, you think to yourself, wherever you may be! Next you choose a kortchi of light buff muslin, cut loose about the shoulders, and tie it at the waist. You slip your feet into a pair of soft babouches, then quickly put your hair up and secure it with a couple of hairpins, and your toilette is done: reckless though it seems to go forth without chembran or reghba, yet for the foray you have conceived, any over-garment would be too much, given the heat of the night.
Back in your room, you extinguish the taper and make your final preparations. At the edge of the chulum there is a small brass-and-wooden casket, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. You open the top, then lift the inner lid, lined with lead to insulate the cache. There, nestled in precious ice, is the little flagon. You replace the covers and slide the vial snug into your waistband, where the momentary cold shocks your skin with a shiver of delight. Crossing to the veranda, you run your thumb across the khlismava for good luck, and head out into the night.
Passing quickly through the formal courtyards, you come to the rear of the compound, where shrubbery hides the looming boundary wall. Unerringly you find the place where the bushes can be made to part; you hold a heavy branch aside, and half-slide, half-force your way into a narrow space, where moonlight scarcely penetrates. So deep the darkness, the untrained eye might never see the door—but your knowing fingers find the latch, and you step over the threshold and into another world.
You have entered what was once a garden, now overgrown with weeds and grasses, a decaying mansion looming large beyond. You have been here before. You have come looking for the boy that some say lives here, kept by mad old Lord Druhpanar, who admits no one, possessed, they say, by some evil demon—they shudder and will say no more. Perhaps his nephew, perhaps his catamite, they will not say; some, indeed, deny that he exists, but rumors still persist, and though you have never seen him, you are drawn to look again.
There is a light. Never before have you seen a light. Faint though it is, it pulls you, it insists on your attendance. You will go there. You must see what can be seen.
First, though, you take in your surroundings. Like the postponement of that first inhale of bakhchi, the delay both focuses anticipation and brings a shimmering hyperreality to all that you perceive. The rank vegetation, crowding the long-untended quince and almond trees; the pungent smell of knuckleweed and wild onion, bruised beneath your tread; the flossy cloud illumined by the slowly sinking moon; the great baronial pile, patches of roof tiles missing, vines claiming verandas, silhouette sagging low—everything titillates your senses, begs for your acknowledgement in turn. Cautiously you advance, each step an unsteady venture on the heaved-up paving stones. A sudden subtle noise brings your heart into your throat—but it is only some night creature, scuttling in the underbrush, and deliberately you steady your breathing, regaining your equipoise before continuing on your quest.
Moving towards the villa, you see that the light is coming from a semi-detached wing, no doubt built for some long-ago concubine or other favorite. The ornate ridgepole, more or less intact, is an inky outline that makes the sky look pale; its serpentine form, that once announced the importance of the original inhabitant, now looms like a mammoth headdress over the pavilion, and the overhanging eaves hood the dot of lamplight like a giant beetling brow. A fearsome face, but its single eye is glowing, draws you in.
As you come nearer, your ears pick up the plang of plectrum against strings, the unmistakable music of the ghar. Faint it is, and somewhat melancholy—but thrilling too, for who else could it be, if not the youth you dream of seeing? For this is no fierce old tyrant or timid serving-maid; whoever it is that plays is confident, yet the touch is delicate, and the piece in ancient mode is sweetly modulated, a rare and tricky fingering, a minor threnody. Each step is a trancelike journey now, and desire flushes through you, filling out the loose-taut muslin. Will it be him? What will he be like? The stirring grows unbidden, the sacred gift, the impish godling, the ever-precious friend.
Through the gossamer hangings you descry a cross-legged figure, head bowed over the instrument, back-lit by an oil lamp set upon the floor. Behind the player, bathed in the golden lamplight, glints a waist-high chest, topped by a fine brass bowl. Softly through the gauze the glow diffuses, setting off the silhouetted form. So exquisite the picture, it could almost be a papercut, opaque against the scrim, save for the almost imperceptible gestures that render magic out of wood and strings. You cannot even tell the musician’s gender, though every hope and intuition tells you male…You listen, beguiled by the ornamented phrases as they circle round the underlying scale. They come to rest and then take flight again, like birds no sooner perched than scattering, only to alight anew, back where they began. But now the piece is winding down; it wheels around in a last long-lingering gyre, then settles in the secret glade of silence.
After a pregnant moment, the figure sets the ghar aside, and pauses…then rises with a dancer’s grace, and all at once uncertainty is ended, as the young man steps into the light, which gilds the highbred profile, the telltale boss of throat, the slim adolescent form. He is clothed in a dark chembran, which he now begins to unfasten slowly, as though his thoughts are elsewhere. Time seems to stop…but soon the hooks-and-eyes are all undone, and he reaches down, picks up the ghar, then turns and walks away, through an invisible doorway, his garment billowing out behind as he disappears beyond the pool of light.
Swooning in the still night air, you look around for something you can lean on. That such a vision should be vouchsafed you, then withdrawn so soon…well, perhaps it is enough, you say to yourself, though underneath you know you yearn for more. By lucky chance, you see a sculpted pard, worn down with time and weather, a darker form against the shadowy dark ground. Walking toward it, your package shifting with every uneven step, you almost stumble into it, mound against the smooth stone flank, pressing in. So good to rest and press, your hands on the broad back of the sculpted creature, waiting.
As you watch and listen, a new sound enters your awareness: somewhere there is water running. The faintest trickle, some tiny channel flowing through the grounds. Familiar but exciting, its music, barely audible, takes you right to your center of gravity; and though the need is still remote, a hint of pressure arises, in resonance with the tinkling of the rill.
Your eyes, fixed on the luminescent screen, await. You hardly dare to hope, but the lamp left burning promises return. Time passes. Then suddenly you are all attention: the boy has re-entered the room, he bears a long-necked ewer, he is naked above his breeches, save for an open flimsy. His lustrous hair is falling on his shoulders, his lips are full and slightly open beneath his long straight nose. His eyes seem deep, unreadable, lit strangely from below: try though you will to read expression there, yet all is mystery. He puts the ewer down beside the basin, then turns and pulls a hidden tabouret from out of a dark corner and sets it near the lamp. He lifts the bowl, its uneven beaten surface showing fickle in the flame, and puts it on the stool. Taking up the ewer next, he turns once more, tilts the slender curving spout, and pours. The delicious sound incites you, drowning the gentler murmur then ceasing with the end of the brief cascade. He returns the ewer to the chest, then sheds his lightweight garment with an impatient twist of the shoulders, letting it fall like froth upon the floor.
And now—oh can it be so good?—he lifts his arms above his head and, intertwining fingers, stretches upward, closing his eyes with the pleasure of the reach. Turning somewhat sideways to your view, he shows his silky flank, the lamplight pooling in the secret underarm where a dusting of darkness reveals the first brush of manhood, the calligrapher’s initial mark on the perfect virgin page. Taut over his ribcage, his nipples are stretched slightly out of round, their tiny tips just visible, erect. Below his slender waist, a swelling distends his pantlets, suggestive of the plenitude within. Dare you dream—could he be thinking about masturbating? Perhaps you should not hope, but oh, the thought is sweet! Of necessity you push, and raise your hand, smoothing back your hair. Half-consciously you breathe in—ah!—then out, and ready yourself, knowing what must come next.
Reaching into your waistband, you retrieve the secret potion and uncork it. No need to wait for something better: this is perfect, just like this, engrave the scene in memory, you know that you will finish it a hundred times and more. The beauty pulls his stretch to rearward, then audibly exhales as he lets go.
The moment has arrived. You raise the vial to one nostril, blocking the other with index finger pressed against your nose. You pull the bakhchi deep into your lungs; slowly it floods your body, reaching to your fingertips and toes, yet concentrating all on that one crux of being, fluxing, filling, floating, going, gone. With automatic motion you plug the bottle and nestle it back home, then pull back from the carven beast, just to let it be—the rich tumescence, the waiting water, the enchantment of the drug.
And now there comes the gesture you have conjured, have willed in your imaginings but did not think to see. He touches on the sly, as if absent-mindedly, but the sign is unmistakable and thrilling. His hand is gone as quickly as it came, but there you see the evidence: the prominent contour, the lazy downward curve. You make a slight adjustment, and notice a certain moistness in your breeches. You feel yourself engorge still more, the bakhchi works its sorcery, and you drift into a daze.
Let it be indifferent. Let it not matter one way or the other, what happens or does not happen. A trick of the mind, a sleight of awareness—pa didin, it is done. Just passing the time, you are, just loitering in a deserted garden, just happening to see this youth half-naked and about to bathe, just happening to be half-erect and heavy, just casually needing to urinate—it means nothing, you can take it or leave it, no matter either way. So languid thus, so nonchalant, so unconcerned, you can stay all night if need be, not go, not come, just be, and watch, and wait …
But now the boy is kneeling at the basin. You watch as he reaches round behind him, sliding a panel open in the chest, torso twisting sideways, head turned to the rear. He removes a couple of cloths, then faces you once more. Head down, he dips a towel in the vessel, wrings it out, and then begins to wash. First his face, then—lifting the weight of hair, and there again the brush of blackness—the nape of the neck, then breast and hollow stomach, then under the arms, then face again, water dripping down.
How quickly it is over! For now he is picking up the other towel, now he is drying his face and chest; and now, his bath complete, he gathers up the linens, then stands with an easy suppleness, and lays them on the chest. He seems to look right at you for a moment, and you freeze—but surely he cannot see you, you think to yourself confusedly, since the light is within the netting, and you are in the dark.
He stoops and picks up the basin, and suddenly you see what he intends. Beware the risky moment—surely he will glimpse you now! He lifts the gauzy curtain and ducks under so it drapes him, then tosses the water onto the weed-choked ground, where it sloshes once, abruptly, and is gone. He glances up—you catch your breath—and looks around, then all at once he turns back in, and finally you are able to exhale. He sets the bowl upon the chest, then stows the tabouret, leaving only the oil lamp, glimmering on the floor.
Now he leans against the cabinet, narrow buttocks half-resting on its surface, one foot thrust out forward, the other kicked behind. Casually he tucks his thumb deep into his waistband, letting the fingers fall in loose repose, then studies the nails of his other hand, picking at the smallest with his teeth. After a minute, he sends his idle fingers downward, where they grope the heavy bundle at his thigh, adjust it and release. Does he have a secret mirror, placed where you cannot see? There is something in his pose, a certain coy deliberateness…Watch that little fingernail, just beneath his pouch: is it inching upward, twitching the coarse-grained fabric into the tender slit? You wonder if the motion that you think you see is real, or only the vibration of your nerve-ends, all aquiver. You look away an instant, to clear your head and vision—but still you cannot tell; so slight it is, if movement there is at all, that you must feed on the unknowing, all suspense.
Out of the corner of your eye, half unaware, you have noticed a curious thing. A rattan blind, fixed lower than the others, hangs somewhat to the right of your line of vision. Stand so that it hangs between yourself and him, and no eye contact will be possible. A safety screen, cover, deniability. A secret phantom epiphany, unnamable, unprovable, whatever happens with that jalousie between.
Can you move to where you want to be? Leave the security of the pard’s support, and put the slatted blind in your sightlines’ way? Yes, if you dare. There, barely a pace away from the narrow loggia, is a gnarly fruit tree, its trunk nearly horizontal for a bit at waist level. If you can reach it—how silent you will have to be, though!—you will have a prop to lean against, and a perfect view beneath the lowered shade. But what if the lamplight finds you, reveals you to the one you want to watch unseen? It is a risk you have to take. You prepare for the perilous journey, knowing that the dozen steps from out behind the sculpture and to the tree imperil all, yet needing to take the chance.
Step, then: the friction of the homespun almost unbearably featherlight intense, fretting against your genitals in response to your weighted gait. Just idly strolling in a ruined garden, let it be loose, no need to be stiff, just walk a certain way, yes, you must pass close, right beneath the overhang, that close, that close, to reach the damson tree, the light will graze your garments, it cannot be helped, you are almost there, one more step, take it now, seems you’re safe, backside touching, resting/perching, rest, breathe, be.
Just as you had hoped: you see the taut stomach and cryptic navel, the smooth chest with its twin rondels, almost near enough to touch…and through the hairline openings between the rattan slats, the vaguest hint of head and shoulders, nothing more. Never will you know if he can see you, nor would he know for sure that you see him. Unable to restrain yourself, you reach for your flask of bakhchi and inhale…waves of it sweep over you, a tide of sweet delight.
It has begun. Affecting an offhand negligence, he cups his package through the linen, hefting, adjusting, fidgeting, unmistakably starting to masturbate. You drink the vision in, and try though you will to maintain your neutral stance, you cannot keep your hand away for long. Urgency is building in your bladder, and you must outmaneuver it, to keep the need at bay.
After a bit the boy begins to milk his fleshy member, pulling through his breeches. You can almost feel the tantalizing pinch as he tugs his skin’s loose bud, the silky sheathing smoothly sliding over the hidden head. He tweaks it down and then lets go, and you imagine the hood retracting just a fraction, exposing the secret tip, its little fish mouth pouting, oozing fluid just like yours.
Enthralled by the tableau vivant unfolding beyond the scrim, you follow every gesture as the numinous being enacts his ritual, all the time provocatively slow. Now he palms his box and presses, flattening and smoothing himself down; now he gently rocks his loose leg back and forth, the unit riding heavy on his thigh. You catch his sidelong glances as he checks the hidden mirror that is surely positioned somewhere out of view. A growing wet spot shows, seeping through his breeches; you feel a sympathetic discharge in response.
Now the youngling shifts his weight, and adds a new dimension to his monodic self-caress. Reaching up, he finds a nipple, first brushing gently, then flicking the puckered nub. Beneath the loose-wove muslin that just skims them, you feel your own pips stiffen in response; you follow his suggestion, echoing his gestures, whether seen or unseen, impossible to say. The little mascots come to life, standing to attention; you give them what they ask for, and they thank you in return. You could almost believe that a tiny drip was forming at each nipple-tip, if you did not know better …
And so the dance continues, suspended out of time, hypnotic and compelling. Only the position of the moon, low above the western hills, tells you that the night is waning and will not last forever. You note the passing hour in some corner of your mind, then once again surrender to the spell. The energy is tuned to a high-pitched tension, like a bowstring straining at the limit of its reach. The invisible filament stretches taut between you, edgy with vibration, and you know that something soon will have to give.
In mystic synchronicity, the youth starts worrying the knot beneath his navel, stomach held tight in. After a minute the tie comes free, and his breeches fall, catching for just an instant on the pendulous protuberance on their precipitate way down. The shocking black of the little patch, the fat and drowsy member, the tight round sac with its sacred eggs almost hidden underneath—the revelation takes your breath away, and you nearly have an accident, hard inside your pantlet leg. You stand a moment completely still, holding back from touching, waiting for the closeness to subside.
Reaching round behind him, he finds the bowl and pulls it forward, then picks it up and pushes it into his eager groin. You almost feel the shock of coldness, metal against skin. He lets his piece half-float, half-sink, into the empty basin, then forces it against the side and shapes it, molding it to fit within the vessel’s hollow curve. He holds it there, mashed sideways, turning downwards, where it stiffens in resistance to the torque, and you cannot help but wonder: does he need to urinate? The question triggers a violent surge of pressure: you feel it moving down the dark canal, so near is the weight of water. So easy it would almost be, to open up the floodgates; yes, but well-nigh impossible too, so near the waiting semen.
The faunlet’s tip is glistening; a rope of slime is drooling down into the waiting bowl. The head is showing red and shiny, expelled from its protective sheath, which gathers at the flaring ridge. The penis hole is rounded for a squirt. The moment cannot be far off now; you read it in the slit lips’ pout.
Like a distended wineskin, your bladder yearns to flood—but the fluid you will soon discharge will be a milky one, heavy with your seed. You grope yourself against your leg, and find the secret opening in the cloth. Reaching in, you find and tug the spongy bloated glans: you bless the hidden orifice, the placket oh-so-sweetly placed, that Biddeh Loka made there. It barely offers passage—indeed, as you pull down, the edging binds you, jamming up against your bulky flange. You throb at the insistent chafe, and feel the precipice near.
Now the creature takes his thing and flogs it, thwacking it on the inside of the bowl. It thumps against the burnished metal, spitting ooze with every heavy thud. You shift your stance so your penis head is pointing firmly down, peeking out the little flap like a lurid purple fruit. No matter if he sees you now—the lascivious scene will climax soon in a transcendent denouement. You set your freighted leg little wider, so the semen will splat unhindered on the ground.
Yet still you cannot know if it will be semen, so needful is your water to flush out. Maybe they will mix, and pour together…You hold them in equilibrium, holding to your casual stance, as if just dallying, as if any squirt would be just accidental. Just adjusting once too often, feeling the gates about to open, filling out, spilling over…
Swiftly bending, the wanton stripling tosses the brazen vessel on the floor, then aims his penis at it, forcing the erection partway down. He holds it backhand from above, his slender forearm angled in alignment, making it look unnaturally large. A pearl of sullen semi-liquid quivers at the tip, then turns into a gleaming thread as it stretches toward the floor. Milking deeply, he rolls his foreskin over the swollen head, showing the gaping oval to the basin. You see his narrow haunches flex…Suddenly an arc of fluid spurts from his rigid member; it lands with a heavy blat like a far-flung viscous ribbon, falling in the hollow of the bowl. Another splatter follows fast, hard upon the first—but you are nursing your own convulsion, and cannot control the pressure any more. You squirt a long fierce blurt of semen, hard onto the ground; it seems to last forever, as though you are ejaculating urine, but harder, thicker, searing as it jets. And then your penis squirts again, and you swoon in the sweet release…
At last the spasms gradually diminish, though even now there comes another, and just when all seems over, still one more. Trembling, vision spinning, you lean against the crooked tree, and try to catch your breath. Dazedly you touch your glans, now shockingly hyper-sensitive; you smear the residue around, then slip it back inside the little flap. The urine pressure is cruelly sharp; in a minute you will release it.
Slowly you begin again to take in your surroundings. You hear the trickling watercourse, steady in its libation, and smell the damp night air. The weary moon is sinking down, a few bright stars reclaim the vault of heaven. And in the east, the faintest opalescence, first harbinger of the coming of the dawn.
The youth is standing abstractedly, drawing out the last of his euphoria. You reach inside your breeches—the ordinary way—and extract your sticky, still-tumescent organ. It takes a moment to find the flow, but when it comes, it gushes forth, burning first then almost aching with the long-postponed release. It seems to arc out endlessly, falling far and loud on the hard-packed earth. You think the boy must surely hear, but if he does, he gives no indication. Instead he pulls his breeches up, and tucks his lovely genitals in their nest. Eventually your torrent slows, then changes to erratic bursts, then sputters, then finally ceases. You take your time and flick yourself, then slowly reconfigure, the last few droplets moistening your linen.
You leave your perch reluctantly, and as though in an unsteady boat, begin your journey home. After half a dozen steps, you turn for one last look; and from where you pause, no rattan blind obscures your final view. You see the apparition, still naked above the waist: he bends to get the oil lamp, then straightens up and lifts it close beneath his solemn face. His head is tilted slightly down; he looks out with a foxy gaze from under his raven brows. He drops his eyes, purses his lips, looks up once more with the ghost of a smile, and blows the quick flame out.
You blindly stare at the dark pavilion, disoriented and uncertain. The sudden change shifts everything: the villa flattens into black, the magic falls away, the sky that was a velvet cloak is now a pellucid paleness. The collapsing ruin seems eerily deserted, and you shiver at the unexpected chill. You fetch a mighty breath, then turn, and swish your way through the dew-soaked weeds and grasses. Coming to the boundary wall, you push aside the underbrush, then grope and find the hidden door, and silently go through.
Emerging on the other side, you see the lines of roofs and walls against the transparent dawn. A twitter of birdsong flickers, and is still. Drained in a sweet exhaustion, you pass through the various courtyards, heading for the welcome of your bed. You mount the steps of your apartments, lift the gauzy veil, and enter. Still in your lightweight underclothes, you sit on the edge of the raised chulum, replace the vial of bakhchi in its chest, then crawl into your curtained sleeping space. The first cock crows. You shift and stir uneasily, then return to your dream’s embrace.
