A Table of Green Fields, Guy Davenport [ebook reader screen .TXT] 📗

of a Swedish forest and the nays of the world many miles away we would know it both by his famous cunning and his shameless boldness. Did he play with himself like a boy?

Lots. It is nature and good for the spirit. But only if Eros is running the show. Were we friends? I am if you are.

We put our foreheads and noses together and laughed. He took off my breeches. Tarpy's big business was a parsnip compared to Florent's.

I had squeezed and pulled and caressed and he had replied in kind. Eros was happily busy and inventive.

But as things got more wonderful Florent disentangled us and whistled cheerfully while he poked up the fire and put our coffee pot on to heat. I was dancing with impatience. This got me laughed at and a hug. He said we would learn to play with each other well. We would both teach the other. So we had our coffee as the dark came on. I would have liked it better if I hadn't been half out of my mind. Maybe wholly out of my mind. The second time was longer and sweeter. Florent said we were still initiates in the rites of Eros who needed to know if we were of his ilk before his magic eyes and fingers did what they do best.

The wilderness was grander day by day. The forest darker. The rocks greyer and sharper. The streams whiter and swifter. Florent taught me the Greek alphabet on our marches and I would recite it first thing every morning. He began to tell me the Iliad. It had all happened three thousand years ago. He told me about Schliemann and Hissarlik.

On a wide shale beach under a cliff shelved with ferns and topped with larches that went up to the sky we pitched our tent and jacked each other off for the first time in broad daylight. In spite of breaking them in my boots had made a blister on my left big toe and heel. Florent said we would give them a chance to get well. I held my foot in the cold dashing water of the stream. Florent fished above the shoals. We did our wash and laid our shirts and breeches on the clean shale to dry. Our underpants and stockings hung on the tent ropes.

Florent put a blanket in the sun and painted my blisters with iodine. I yowled. He slid his hands along my legs and rolled my balls against my crotch. He lay on his elbows and lazily worked a good feeling into my peter with his fingers. For mischief he tickled around the eyelet with his tongue. I straddled his tummy when it was time and jacked him from the front while he kept an idling hand on my peter. The second time we lay head to hip and did it together and decided that getting and giving at the same time was sort of crowded and too much of a good thing. His spunk on the tip of my finger tasted like soda and green grass. He licked some puddled in my belly button and agreed.

We explored the woods naked. We found long humps of moss that was like a deep carpet to walk over. Pitcher plants. A lady slipper all by itself. A mouse's round nest in saw grass. Snow hawks wheeling overhead. Knee-deep in a clearing of daisies and quitch grass we stood nose to nose and peter to peter. On my toes. It was a pledge.

We played leapfrog and Florent told more of the Iliad. We cooked our fish and oat cakes and stewed dried apples. Ruckled sooty clouds filled the sky by sunset. We got our clothes in and trenched around the tent and floored it with our rosined tarpaulin. The rain came with a whomp. I was never snugger. We sat and watched the windy warp of the downpour from the front of the tent. Our arms around each other's shoulders. While Florent sat with his knees up and smoked his pipe I lay in front of him and fiddled with his peter. I fingered and studied the conic obliquity of its nozzle. Its sumptuous vascularity. The gutty crimple of the balls. It crested as I meddled and spanged proud in my hand. I worked it into tone. You can tell by Florent's eyes and the polish of the stud. And by his saying so. I tried a boldness. I flicked my tongue against the little link of flesh that checks the underslide of the foreskin. The frenum. He liked it. He wiggled his toes and flossed my hair. He called me goose and rascal. I tongued the full contour of the glans and swivelled my lips on the flare. He throbbed and gushed. He flinched and shoved my head back. I panicked. I think he panicked. He swore. A flaw of wind worried the tent flaps. The rain slapped down in torrents.

I asked what the matter was. He didn't answer. There was just enough light to see him huddled. Biting his lip. He said Jens. Not goose. Or chief. But Jens. We sat in the dark for the longest.

Finally he scrounged in the rucksack and got something out. And something else. A candle. The tinder box. He lit the candle and set it in a tin cup between us. The rain was chilly and we put on our shirts.

He smiled at me. I think some tears had run down my cheek more from confusion than anything to cry about. Their salt mixed with the alkaline taste in my mouth. He stuffed his pipe with the cidery tobacco and lit it with the candle. I asked for a puff. I filled my mouth with the sweet smoke. My stomach listed crazily as I blew it out but I gave no sign. It was Florent too.

How the rain came down! He said he thought we had gone too far. Was it wrong? It was wrong in that a game which we played casually for the lust of the flesh might become a bond which we could only break along with our hearts. You have already had your heart broken.

With Tarpy.

He would have to go away in less than a month. I said I thought I understood. I wasn't sure. He mentioned the world. Its disapproval. And added that for the moment the world around us