The Mix of Us

by R. W. Clinger

* * * *

  The Meadow

  “Where are we?” Steve asked.

  To his far right was the end of the maze. Gio stood at his side, both still inside the sweeping and elegant meadow. Steve stared straight ahead and then up at an iridescent and semi-illuminated rainbow-colored waterfall. Bright, wet, and silky sheets of water dramatically fell over a rocky ridge draped in green foliage. Rushing water filled the night with a soothing, nostalgic, and surreal roar; nothing negative or frightening. Bands of shadowy golden yellow, persimmon, turquoise, violet, pink, and blazing red water glided down to the rocky earth where the two men stood, holding hands.

  To Steve, it was the most beautiful creation he had ever seen. A picturesque fairy tale he had only dreamed of or watched in a Pixar movie. Enchanted came to mind, lyrical beauty. The place offered a visual crescendo, nothing perilous or dark. Along with the crashing sounds of the water, he listened to a whippoorwill and other feisty birds among the mysterious night. A lute played in the distance, somewhere. He turned his view away from the waterfall and looked for the muses, but didn’t see them anywhere inside the meadow, misplaced for now, having disappeared at free will, gone but not forgotten.

  “We’re at the waterfall,” Gio answered, squeezing one of Steve’s hands. “I know it sounds simple, but it is. It’s not Puck’s Falls or the Waterfall of Tomorrow. It’s just the waterfall. Nothing more. Nothing less. Sometimes, simple is better.”

  To Steve’s far left, among a cluster of ferns and a hilly patch of cloverleaf, a blinding-white unicorn stood. Its single horn twisted upwards into a refined point. Its bulk was muscularly toned; one of the most picturesque and stunning creatures Steve had ever seen, dreaming or not. The animal neighed, nodding its elegant muzzle, perhaps offering Steve more wishes.

  Fireflies danced among the meadow, and plump squirrels played with scampering rabbits; an evening of fun and games among the wildlife. Palm, sycamore, birch, sky-reaching redwoods, and bamboo trees bent into the soft and plentiful breeze. Their wood rubbed together, creating a passive and harmonious song of a different era, filling the meadow with its appeasing tune.

  “What are we doing here, Gio?”

  “Watch and learn. This is the way it is supposed to be. Look into the waterfall. Concentrate. A film is about to start.”

  Steve listened, studying the stream of liquid. The falling water changed from a rainbow of brilliant hues into a sheet of silver, creating what looked like a screen that he might find in a movie theatre. The lute somewhere in the distance started playing “Cannon D” by Pachelbel. On the silver-watery screen appeared the three choir men, humming to the instrument’s calming sound. The film started to unfold on the sheets of falling water. The cameraperson steadily scanned the evening meadow with its frisky animals, stunning unicorn, and narrow brook. Birds chirped, and the familiar owl that Steve had grown accustomed to hearing, started hooting along with the lute’s melodic performance.

  The camera moved over a knoll of orchids, fluttering butterflies, and brightly lit green fireflies, busy at play, swooping up and down. Doves fluttered here and there, busy in flight. The camera veered slowly to the left, then right, and panned to rows of white, wooden chairs, most of which were occupied by friends and family belonging to both Gio and him. Between the chairs lay a bed/walkway of red rose petals. At the far end of the narrow path stood Pastor Downing, one of their close friends and a diehard Steelers fan during the football season.

  The camera did a close up of Downing: chubby face, rosy cheeks, thick head of brown hair, pop-bottle thick glasses. Downing was dressed in a white robe with a purple stole. He held a King James Bible in his palms, open to what Steve believed to be Ephesians, chapter four, versus two through three, prepared to read.

  “‘With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.’”

  Colorful light filled the meadow, flashing, stopped, flashed again. And then Pastor Downing said to his congregation, “May we be joined by our grooms, Mr. Giovanni Tartini and Stephen Jason Quaver.”

  Gio, wearing a navy blue suit, white bowtie, and leather Italian shoes, entered the screen from the left. Steve, dressed as Gio’s twin, entered the screen from the right. The two men stood in front of Pastor Downing. Nods were shared with thick smiles.

  The muses stopped humming, and the lute ceased playing.

  Downing said, “May we bow our heads in prayer?”

  The cameraperson scanned the pastor, grooms, and guests, all of whom bowed their heads, listening to Pastor Downing’s request. Downing recited a prayer about community, friendship, gatherings of family, and witnessing the most precious gift that a Higher Power could disseminate, the everlasting love between two men.

  Following the brief prayer, Downing hugged each of the grooms and provided kisses to their cheeks. He instructed the two men to face each other and to hold hands. Downing opened his Bible and read from Ecclesiastes, chapter four, verse nine.

  “‘Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lay down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?’”

  He paused, grinning. Then he read from Solomon, chapter eight, versus six and seven. “‘Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.’”

  The muses sang, “Thereforrrrre…what God has joined togetherrrrrrrr, let nooooo one separate,” a passage from Mark, chapter ten, verse nine.

  Downing shared more versus from the Bible. The wedding guests bowed their heads in another prayer and…

  * * * *

  Low Hollow

  “I was just about to put my dick in your mouth, and you passed out again,” said Gio, his boxer briefs and jeans pulled back up, snug on his hips. His dick and balls hidden in the fabric, contained and where they belonged. “Did you go to the meadow again?”

  Steve sat on the chair where he practiced his violin. “We were getting married. Doves. A unicorn. Rose petals. A sleepy brook. Everything out of a fairytale. It was the most beautiful and amazing thing to see. I can’t tell you how much it looked like a romantic movie.”

  “I’m more concerned about your health as opposed to the meadow you’ve dreamed about.” Gio checked his temperature, placing the back of his right hand over Steve’s forehead. “We’re taking you to the doctor as soon as the roads are clear. I’m making you go. No objections. These blackouts are unhealthy. Something’s going on in your head. They’re not normal.”

  “I need to eat better. I shove too many carbohydrates and sugars into my machine. Plus, I drink too much. Alcohol may have something to do with my passing out.”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Gio. “I’m not a doctor. But we’ll get you back to health as soon as we can. In the meantime, how about a cup of hot tea with some honey?”

  “We’re out of honey.”

  Gio chuckled. “And I think we’re out of tea.” He sat down beside Steve. Fingers brushed through Steve’s hair. “I’m worried about you, man. Something is seriously going wrong in your head.”

  “Vitamins. It has to be the vitamins I’m not taking.”

  Gio caressed his face: smooth hands, a white-collar worker’s touch, plump and long fingers. “I love you and can’t lose you.”

  “You could. In a flash. In a second. God only knows when He wants me.”

  “You’re not leaving me. We don’t have bad luck like some other couples. Everything about our relationship is a bonus round. Extra points. The big prize. Losing you isn’t an option.”

  Tell Fate that, Steve thought, but didn’t say out loud. You never know what they have
in store for you…us.

  They kissed, which was first prompted by Gio. Their lips touched, and tongues gently slipped into each other’s mouths. They huffed together, hungry for the other, passion-driven…something magical that happens between men who live together, in love. Their kissing became steady and potent, nothing shy of ravenous behavior. Shirts were removed. Jeans were removed. Underwear were removed.

  “Let’s take this into our bedroom, Steve. What do you say?”

  “I’m yours for the taking,” Steve replied, following his man out of his studio, to the right, down a narrow hallway decorated in family photographs, and finally into their bedroom. They fell on the bed’s fluffed surface, entwined, hairy chest to hairy chest.

  They kissed again, madly, locking lips to necks, pecs, pert nipples, and the erotic whatnots on each man that caused ripples of elation to meander through their bodies. They connected as husbands often do, although they weren’t married, and rose, fell, rose, fell, creating a sexual energy on the bed between them, solid and complex flesh melding.

  Huffing ensued, quiet followed, and puffing filled the bedroom. They licked hairy navels, kissed tight abdominals, and perspiration-covered inner thighs. The heat between them intensified, boiling.

  Gio lay underneath Steve, squeezed one of his pecs, and demanded in a whisper, “I want you to ride me. Tell me you’re game.”

  Steve nodded, happy to oblige. He straddled, arched over, and kissed Gio again, again, and again. He felt blood rush to his head, and his groin pulsed with the needed fixation to come. All he could think about was having Gio’s cock inside him: lodged there, throbbing, pumping him, Gio’s mighty palms on his hips, their bodies connected with symmetry.

  It happened with such ease; all of what Steve desired. Condom. Lube. Heavy breathing. Palms squeezing pecs. Gio’s engorged mass inside him. Moans. Unlimited groans. The unending, aggressive, and uncensored romance between them as they became tangled together within the bed’s cotton sheets. There was heaving, growling, and a string of long, indiscernible murmuring. Arched backs. Bodies slapping together. Heat rising from the bed. Acts of lust mixed with love and tenderness. Sweat. Vibrations. Rocking. It happened with such ease, didn’t it? Didn’t it? Didn’t…

  Clean up occurred together. Both of them slipped into the shower together and manhandled each other’s backs, chests, and the muscular curves of arms and inner thighs. They kissed numerous times under the shower’s hot spray.

  Steve thought, believed, told himself that he was in the dreamy and not-so-far-away meadow again, mixed in with the tranquil waterfall, lost there, bemused, and caught under a certain man-spell he just couldn’t understand or mentally grasp in full. He hadn’t traveled there, though. At least not this time. For him, the shower was real, as well as the time and place. Although the moment felt dreamy and surreal, a fairytale to Steve, it wasn’t. Not this time. Of course not.

  Gio pulled out of the kissing. “I love you, Stephen Quaver. With all my heart. With all my life. Whatever I have to offer you, the uncertainties, the promises, even the tiny arguments, they’re all yours if you want them. Everything. I couldn’t have a better man to spend my life with. I’d be lying to myself, and you, if I didn’t admit that. So, what do you say? Marry me. Spend the rest of your life me. Make me the happiest man on the planet and take my hand in marriage. Spend the next, ten, twenty, thirty, forty years with me. You and me, babe. What do you think? I’m here for you and your heart, and whatever else comes to the table. Us. Just us. I want the mix of us to happen. Marry me, guy.”

  Steve’s mind raced from one starry galaxy to the next. A ceaseless buzzing twisted in his ears, and his heart thumped wildly within his chest. He blinked several times and saw colorful pictures of the meadow behind his lids: the deepness of the wishing well and its tranquil and changing hues; fern beds; minimal blue-black-silver night and the many trees overhead, surrounding him like Gio’s comforting arms; the tiny loincloth covering Gio’s private parts, snug against his middle, showing definition, sexy as hell; the unnamed maze, and the waterfall, both which foreshadowed his future, possible occurrences extreme loneliness without Gio, and stinging emotions in his life.

  The meadow was such a fairytale place, nostalgic and surreal at the same time, a place of the good and bad, perhaps like marriage. Steve recalled the visions he had seen there: Gio’s growing love for Jeffrey Clef, Steve being unseen, nowhere in Gio’s life; Steve growing old and alone, without Gio at his side; their wedding in the meadow and how Gio had told him, “This is the way it’s supposed to be.” There was also the wish at the wishing well, Steve remembered it now. He wished…he wished…he wished to fall more in love with Gio, agreeing to marry the man. His grandest wish. The most important wish.

  “Vitamins,” Steve said, holding Gio against him, pressed against the man, wet.

  Gio chuckled, confused. “Vitamins? What are you talking about?”

  “The blackouts I’m having. I need some vitamins in my diet. It has to be that. I can tell.”

  “Doctor Marie Reinold will help. She’ll know what to do for your condition. You’ve been seeing her for the last fifteen-plus years. She’ll figure you out.”

  The good and the bad. The ugly and beautiful. The pain and love. These issues, feelings, and actions spun within Steve’s mind. Issues he could delve through and solve with Gio at his side in their future together. Feelings that could change the two men, making them better in their couplehood as faithful and caring husbands. And actions he wouldn’t want to process with anyone else. Only Gio. His.

  As tingles swarmed throughout his limbs, passing through his heart and brain, clear down to the tips of his toes, he couldn’t help himself. “I’ll see her…and I’ll marry you, Giovanni Tartini. You’re the only man for me. I love you. I will always love you. Yes.” Steve nodded, grinning. “I’ll marry you. It’s time. Honestly, it is. Just for us.”

  * * * *

  Steve didn’t pass out while next to Gio in the hot shower. Not quite exactly. His mind did drift to the meadow, as well as his heart, though. In spirit, he floated from the Tudor at 17 Tone Street to soothing and sparkling darkness of the woodsy area that he had traveled to numerous times before. Gio was at his side, of course. Floating. Swooping. Flying. Something. The two men had somehow, someway returned to the meadow, both wearing loincloths, wet from their travels, but were quickly drying.

  Near the shallow and meandering brook, Gio leaned into his right ear and whispered, “It’s the Nightingale Hour. Just for us. Here and now. You and me.”

  “A reception,” Steve said, taking in the scene.

  White doves floated here and there among the silver-sparkling stars that hung on matching string that resembled fishing line. Not one blinding-white unicorn, but three, enjoyed heaps of clover, sometimes neighing. The muses and lute player played something that sounded like a creation from Bach. Tables were decorated in fabulous linens and silver, with buffets of fat foods here and there. The golden moon, full and grinning like a chubby baby, hung in the semi-illuminated and starry sky. Shooting stars streamed from left to right, arching with severe beauty. Seemingly happy guests, both men and women dressed in fig leaves, colored turbans, skimpy clothing of many materials, mingled. Tamed animals were among the partying attendees: baby sheep looking like cotton balls, purple ponies, golden ducks, stray puppies, and kittens scampering here and there.

  The brook shone with rainbow trout, colorful coy, and aquamarine-colored water. Weeping willows flowed to and fro, perhaps shifting to the warm and soothing music. A distant planet to the far right of the moon with many rings, pink and persimmon, glowed in the night’s brilliance.

  Such a dreamy scene in the meadow. Such a show of shows that Steve thought mesmerizing, heaven-like, an illustrated page straight of out of a Lewis Carroll book, sprinkled with magical dust of many hues to make it come alive and breathe. A place where numbness and perfection mixed, and men could fall in love and marry without being judged. A sliver of bliss beyond a
nything unremorseful and spoiled. A plain of simplicity in a faraway world or galaxy beyond Low Hollow and Tone Street, of course.

  “Our reception,” Gio corrected. “The post-party after our shared vows. Here and now.”

  “It’s everything I dreamed of,” Steve replied, squeezing his lover’s hand within his own, continuing to take the meadow and its detailed glamour in. He kissed Gio again, again, again, growing excited. Eventually, he had to stop before he became too excited, creating quite the sexual scene between them that he honestly didn’t want to.

  Thereafter, he stood near the willow tree where his dreaming…falling away…romantic hallucinations started and stared at the guests again, scanning the hundred or more friends and members of their two families. And in the distance, near the trio of unicorns, although standing alone with a flute of what looked like golden champagne, Jeffrey Clef appeared. The two men made eye contact. Jeffrey smiled, but Steve didn’t…he just couldn’t.

  Steve studied the semi-naked man from toes to head: thirty-two years old and awkwardly pretty with brown curls and wishing well blue eyes, muscular build, and a six-three frame. He sported a clean-shaven and bronze chest with no hair, pink nipples, and an amber-hued loincloth at his center. A massive bulge was hidden under the fabric; not that Steve wanted to see it in full detail.

  Clef sported a short and thin trail of brown hair beneath his navel, which traveled southward bound, into the skimpy material at his middle. His thighs were thick and hairless, meaty, and quite attractive. Nothing of Jeffrey Clef screamed ugly; a man who had bedded many men; a lover of lovers in the meadow, and in reality; a sexual beast, Steve perceived, with an unstoppable hunger for men.

  Eventually, Clef made his way up to Steve and Gio and bowed his head. He toasted the two men by raising his flute of golden and sparkling drink, provided a polite, second nod. “To the grooms, who will love each other forever, until the end of time. I congratulate you.”

  “Thank you,” Gio said.

  Steve nodded, but said nothing. A small smile appeared on his face.