Beach Boys (18 page)

On the beach where they’d met, made love, created magic, Dave skipped stones into the water, and his heart rejoiced. Shane’s cycle would continue, he knew, whether or not he saw him again. He was glad to know that Shane used his one chance to appear, his chance to love, on him. To find Shane, and recreate the magic, he would lie on the beach, close his eyes, smell the cotton candy, and listen as the happy families strolled past.

by Rupert B Yorke

Benedict stared at his empty glass, twirling its slender stem between his thumb and fingers; round and round, back and forth. He wanted to fling it against the wall for the satisfaction of seeing it shatter, hearing the high-pitched tinkling of its fragments falling to the floor, only that wasn’t the sort of thing you did in Cesar’s if you ever wanted to be allowed inside again, any more than you expressed your frustration in the bitter, blasted obscenities that crowded behind his smile like a flock of vultures. Peter was a bitch. There was no other way of putting it. Tonight was their last night in Gabriel’s Haven before they had to return to the “real” world, and Peter had promised they would spend it together. Of course he was late. He always was late, only now he was so late that nobody could believe he was going to show; even poor, faithful Benedict.

He didn’t know which was the more culpable: Peter making a promise he knew he would forget in the giddy rush of whatever novelty had taken his fancy—and Gabriel’s Haven could provide novelty all day, every day, including Sundays (especially Sundays, if the truth were told, which it rarely was in the Haven) —or him, for convincing himself he would not forget this time.

Enough was enough. Peter had had his chance. If he did arrive, way beyond fashionably late, he would discover that his ever faithful, adoring lover had gone out into the lurid night of Gabriel’s Haven with the drunken intention of getting fucked. Benedict knew he was drunk, and not just because the bar seemed to sway when he stood up, but because there were six glasses on the table, the table he all but knocked over as he got to his feet but managed to steady before anything was broken, except his pride. Three drinks made him merry—the dancing fool, the life
and soul of any party. Six drinks made him drunk, monosyllabic with two left feet and fluent only in some language nobody else understood. He left a one-hundred-dollar note on the table and swept out into the cool darkness before any boy could swoop on the money and hide it away in the back pocket of his tight leather pants, trying to persuade him to stay. He didn’t want a perfectly formed boy in black leather pants that fitted across his thighs just so, not tonight. He wanted Peter, and it didn’t matter how strongly he wished it: that wasn’t going to happen.

There were signs on both sides of the doors, warning visitors not to venture outside the town boundaries tonight, of all nights. It might be Mardi Gras in Gabriel’s Haven, but beyond the lights tonight was the night the old ones of San Gabriel held their fiesta. Not that anyone really believed in the old ones these days, certainly none of the beautiful people who had come to visit the island. Benedict paid the notices no more attention tonight than he had the previous six nights of their holiday, less even, because he was in what his sainted old granny, rot her miserable soul, would have called a strop, and he didn’t care about anything or anyone any more.

Music and laughter and dancing lights billowed out of every bar and club on San Gabriel harbor, each doorway an invitation to pleasures most men wouldn’t dare dream and, once they left, wouldn’t believe they really remembered. Every pleasure known to man was to be had on that street. It was even whispered that there were women to be had by the most recklessly perverse. As he strolled past, looking in, Benedict found the evening breeze quickly dissipating his drunkenness, leaving him feeling just wretched and alone. His pace increased without his being aware of it and eventually he found himself at the entrance to the marina. Behind the red and white gate that rose into the sky to allow vehicles in and out were two immaculately uniformed guards, their midnight-blue trousers and shirts set off by the white neckerchiefs at
their throats and the augmented shades they wore even this close to midnight. Benedict could see the guns they carried on their belts and did not imagine they were pleased to see him.

He turned away and sat down on the promenade, dangling his feet over the edge. Here and there on the dark beach were fires, with people dancing around them, having the fun he was being denied. When tears welled up in his eyes, he scrambled to his feet and set off back in the direction he had come, striding purposefully even though he didn’t feel he had any other purpose than to get away. The resolution he had made in Cesar’s to pay Peter back by having the quickest, nastiest sex he could imagine was forgotten.

When he reached the other end of the harbor, he went on walking, along the narrow, ill-lit streets that were the homes of the people who worked in Gabriel’s Haven. All the windows were dark because everyone who lived there was working, and the discomfort made him keep his feet moving until the last of the town was behind him and he found himself in a heavily scented olive grove. Olive and rosemary filled his nostrils, made him dizzy, and sent him collapsing to the ground, where he lay on his back and stared up into the black sky filled with tiny lights, as though some Titan had taken a monstrous diamond, crushed it in its hands and flung the powder across the vault of heaven. After a while of lying like this, he did not know how long, he heard the sound of someone weeping bitterly nearby. A little later still he realized it was him. A little later still he decided it didn’t matter. Nobody could hear him, and if they could, they didn’t care.

He must have fallen asleep because he was woken by the nearby sound of pipes and drums and laughter. From the beach nearby came the light and crackle of flames. He rolled over and got to his feet, walking slowly to the crumbling edge of the small cliff that seemed to be held together only by the tabled roots of the ancient trees surrounding him. What he saw below made him forget to breathe. There was a fire there, a huge fire, taller than a man and broad enough for
that man to be able to jump over only after a good long run up. But it was not the fire that most impressed. Rather it was the tribe that danced and leaped and sang around it.

He had stumbled upon gods. All were young. All were so good looking that the only word for them was beautiful, jaw-droppingly, achingly, cock-hardening beautiful. There were about twenty, maybe thirty or more, circling the fire and each other, golden and night by turns, joyous and naked, each and every one.

Benedict had stared at this amazing sight for so long that all he could hear was the blood pounding in his ears when he first noticed the wings, although the last remnants of his rationality knew he must have seen them before consciously recognizing them. Wings. The realization caused such a reaction in him that he suddenly found his feet scrabbling to hold him upright as the soil beneath him crumbled. He slid down the ten feet of the cliff and stumbled forward, landing on his back, the impact driving all the breath out of him.

When he opened his eyes he found them all around him, some literally fluttering above their brothers. And brothers they obviously were, or close cousins. None was identical, but the same blood obviously flowed through them. Their eyes were widely spaced and blue, their noses straight, their cheekbones high and wide, and they all had lips most women Benedict knew would have sold their souls to have, if they had souls. Their hair was mostly dark, so far as he could tell in the firelight, and cut after the style of Julius Caesar, save for one of two rebels who had it flowing over their shoulders. Benedict preferred long hair on a man. Peter’s was a mane he had trouble controlling and so rarely bothered to try. He thought he might suit it dressed like this.

Innumerable hands lifted him to his feet and held him there while he recovered his equilibrium, and promptly lost it again when the same hands, or perhaps other hands—he was
still too dazed to be sure—began to unbutton his shirt, tug at his belt, pull down his underwear and reveal him to the night, which became at one and the same time bitterly cold and very uncomfortably hot. Looking from face to face, daring them to make a cruel comment, he kicked away his trousers and shoes and stood there, hands on hips, displaying himself. Inside his head, Benedict was as insecure as could be, but he knew he need have no shame in his body. He worked hard to keep it in the best shape he could for Peter, and nobody had ever remarked unfavorably about it. The smiles surrounding him broadened, but the circle was broken and another angel stepped forward, accepting the deference of the others as his due. He was taller than the others, more strongly built, older and hung like Bucephalous. Wordless, he looked Benedict up and down appraisingly, the way he would a horse in a ring. Benedict stared back, finding resolution from somewhere; he knew not where. The creature’s right hand went down between them and Benedict felt his balls taken in its soft yet firm grip. Without any impulse from him, his already erect cock stiffened further and enlarged, his glans just kissing the creature’s inner forearm.

The night was split open by laughter that was more spontaneous, joyous, and wholehearted than anything Benedict had ever heard before.

“He can play with us!” the chief angel crowed, releasing him and rising into the air with a single, awesomely powerful beat of his double wings, only to turn a somersault and hover upside down before Benedict, eye to eye. “I shall be back for you,” he whispered, kissed him on his lips as lightly as a butterfly and then rose into the air again, flying backwards.

“I’m dreaming,” Benedict muttered to himself. “I must be dreaming.”

Two creatures, angels, whatever they were, caught hold of his wrists. “No, you aren’t,” they said and laughed, “but you will dream of this night for the rest of your life.” Then they
carried him into the reformed circle of dancers, lifting him so his toes only just brushed the sand. The music had begun again, drums and guitars, flutes and voices, all of their voices, even Benedict’s. Although he had no idea of the tune it was but he sang as though he had known it from birth. As the circle rotated and accelerated, the tune followed suit, the rhythm that of the blood coursing through them, faster and with more syncopated each turn around, rising and rising until Benedict could look down, seeing the sand and fire so far beneath his feet that all he could do was laugh and cry at the same time. He felt as though it was light in his veins rather than blood, and that in a very short time he must burst through the veil of mundane life and experience insights that would change him forever. These angels with their wings and golden skins, their perfect bodies and perfect minds had chosen him to share their transcendence.

Fingers traced the length of his cock and made him fling his head back with his eyes closed and mouth open wide, wide enough to be filled to the back of his throat, filled as his mouth had never been filled before. Then the fingers were replaced by lips and a tongue and teeth, for the briefest moment, then they were gone, as was the cock in his mouth, no matter how he tried to hold it with his own lips and tongue. He was consumed by a sense of loss and desolation that might have torn him apart, but for the coming of more fingers and lips and cocks, stroking and clinging, just for the shortest time, as though every angel there wanted to share him and share themselves with him. This was impossible. This could not be happening.

Yet it was. He opened his eyes and found himself part of as circle turning in the air, a mandala of angels spinning and spinning, each one of them with a cock in their mouth and theirs in someone else’s, supported by their own languidly beating wings and the extended left hands of their brothers, who hovered outside the circle. Their right hands clasped around the cock of the
angel next to them, moving up and down to the slow, oceanic rhythm of the angels and the single men sucking on each other.

Benedict believed his heart was about to explode. Never had he imagined anything like this. How could he? Nobody he knew had ever believed in angels. He and Peter had dismissed the tales about San Gabriel as quaint myths, invented to encourage the tourists to part with even more of their dollars. To discover the tales were true was almost more than he could comprehend. Had he not been a part of it, had he just been an observer, he would not have believed it, assumed someone had spiked his drink and he was enmeshed in some absurd fever dream.

Then the circle was gone and he was tumbling down through the dark sky, watching the leaping flames rushing towards him, and the savage, tearing fear of death began to rip at his sanity.

“You didn’t believe I would let you fall.” The chief angel chuckled, taking Benedict into his arms with all the ease of a child plucking thistledown floating past them on a zephyr. He lowered him to the ground with infinite care, leaning forward and placing a kiss on his lips that was as tender as a mother’s, until his arms tightened around him and his lips parted as no mother’s ever did who was not named Jocasta. Emboldened, Benedict kissed back and ran his own hands up and down his new lover’s back, exploring the firmly muscled flesh that was so familiar and the stems of the wings flowing from his shoulders and upper back that were so fascinating, so wonderful and so alien at the same time. When a hand caught hold of his cock, again, he followed suit, marveling at the size and gravity of the angel, of the steady pulse of hot blood through the vein on the underside.

He sank to his knees, desperate and determined to worship that angelic member, only to find his arms taken and held out straight from his shoulders painfully, his face pressed into the sand so he could not breathe, the fine, hot powder filling his mouth and nostrils. Managing to turn his head sideways, he saw the chief angel stride past him, only now he was transformed into something out of an imagining of hell rather than heaven, cloven hooves making the beach resound like a drum with each hoof beat. The others were gathered around them, stamping the rhythm of his walk. Their hooves were cloven too, their wings transformed from feathered gold to leather, from azure and purple to rusty scarlet and dusty brown. He gasped, and found a strap of leather inserted into his open mouth.