Page 166 - Some Dance to Remember

136 Jack Fritscher

the pain that was not pain. He wanted their Energy. He wanted to give
them his.
The four men contemplated each other. There was no pretense among
them. There were no barriers. The stripping had been more than clothes.
Ryan was naked in the want they observed and coached out of him. They
were not executioners. He was not one of the penitentes. This was not
Misericordia. There was no real guilt to be expiated, no real humiliation,
no real pain in all this ritual.
Ryan, this night, was the chosen. The baths were the opposite of high
school where teams picked the gay boys last.
He was honored down to the root of his hard dick.
Torture, like sacrifice, is a relative pleasure. Whatever in the corridors
of the Barracks this scene might seem, it was for Ryan a warp more than
Saturday night at the baths. The drugs gave Ryan that familiar old feeling.
His head clicked.
He was high, and certain these strangers knew they were, all four of
them, concelebrating priests of a man-to-man ritual in the old discipline.
They were shamans, more ancient than Druids, invoking priapic gods,
congregating among profane men, who themselves, remembering or for-
getting, it mattered not, tripped the corridors of the Barracks with motives
as ancient as lust. The four were a quartet in perfect alignment. Under a hit
of popper, Ryan fell down the violet-colored amyl tunnel with the black
spot at the end. He was sure the spot was the moon in full eclipse viewed
through a sacred passage of rune-covered stones.
The three men led him to the padded black-leather exercise bench
they had moved in for the night. Together they quickly fastened his ankles
and wrists to rings welded to the legs. His bare butt rose like a target. The
man with the gloves stroked his ass. A heavy powerlifter’s belt was laid
across the small of his back and cinched under the bench. He was tied in
place. They knew their moves. He knew the choreography. He thought to
resist, to call a halt, but thought again about this chance to receive.
What they gave Ryan, as much bonding as bondage, as much touch-
ing as torture, sent him reeling. They gifted his head, all twisted up in
his shorts since Charley-Pop died, with the tender S&M mercies that
launch men into sensual out-of-body experiences much like athletes say,
when pushing their bodies to the limits, their endorphins kick in, and
physical limitations disappear. In the Olympics, records are this way bro-
ken and new ones made. In the baths, particularly that night for Ryan,
transcendence occurred. The men worked him thoroughly, prepped him,
launched him. He entered that pure floating feeling people have when

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