by Westwind
May 2003
Summer 2060 ~ getting settled
July 1, 2060
like a hammer blow
sun bears down on the foolish
melting them away
We've found a place after a month of looking. A small house, it can be locked securely; something that is not always true. (I like to sleep at night!) We've been busy getting it fixed up, refurbishing it. We definitely needed a new septic tank (The brawn of the partnership got to dig the hole.) and the plumbing needed to be replaced (I did my poor best.). I even rigged a solar water heater (The better for showers--especially if one takes it with a partner.). Thankfully, the local vigilante group (the South-East Dallas Protection Association) keeps the water running for a few hours a day (for a fee, of course).
Duncan has been promised legitimate employment as a teacher in an academy. I've decided to give academe a pass and do a little furniture making. It has been several hundred years, but my hands never forget (and I find that I'm hungry for the feel of satin skin and well-turned legs. Oh my!) A widow wants to sell her husband's tools and wood and go back home to Waco, and I think I'll buy in. Duncan can't decide whether to snicker or make room for the pieces of furniture.
This is the first time we've been to a major city since the plague struck. Dallas is a shadow of itself. The high rises are visibly abandoned, the glass falling out of the upper stories and broken out of the lower ones. There is something so sad about the emptiness. The great pandemics of the past left just these kinds of holes in society.
I remember flying into Dallas for a bookseller's convention--when we still flew. The plane banked to land at DFW International, and I noticed the number of man-made lakes in the area, to supply drinking water, I suppose. When we landed and I looked at a map, I noticed parks surrounding the lakes, a very civilized way of organizing a twentieth century city. Although I remember that, once on the ground, it seemed that every road was torn up somewhere.
Dallas/Fort Worth is coming back, though, even the transportation. With an amazing noise, an old Toyota (They're all old, now) rattled down the street, trailing water out of the tailpipe. This is dry country; there are hundreds of old cars parked out in pastures and in sheds. A loud voice said, "Dern kids! They'll scare all the horses." It's been one hundred and fifty years and the complaints are still the same. The motive power is something based on the old hydrogen fuel cell cars that were just coming onto the highways when the plague struck. Duncan wants one, of course; you could see him straining toward the first one we saw.
July 4, 2060
summer breezes blow at least we hope they blow on the fourth of july
Yee Hah! The Fourth is still an important holiday; everyone either has a party or goes to one (Sometimes they do both.) So we went to Rosalena's fiesta.
The food was a complete mixture of cultures: hamburgers, hot dogs, and mole, fish tacos and coleslaw, pecan pie and chimichangas, macaroni salad and tamales, and a whole barbecued goat. The party was bilingual; we surprised everyone by speaking Spanish. (As well as the myriad iterations of English and Spanish that came before. You know language creeps and natters along, changing a little at a time, unless one is conquered, and then the two languages have to come to an agreement.)
A band played Mariachi (Soy un hombre muy honrado, que me gusta lo mejor/A mujeres no me faltan, ni al dinero, ni al amor./En mi caballo, por la sierra yo me voy./Las estrellas y la luna, ellas me dicen donde voy. * ), some folk music (It was down among my daddy's peas,/And underneath the cherry trees,/Oh there he kissed me as he pleased/For he was my own dear Davie.) to a mariachi beat. There was dancing--Duncan partnered anyone who would stand up with him. I would have given a lot to have been able to get my hands on him. (later!)
I drank beer with nearly everyone, and one healthy shot of the potent moonshine with Mama's husband, Jaime, who's going to work with me at the shop starting Monday. He's an experienced carpenter; we'll see how he gets on as a furniture maker.
And we ate, and ate, and ate. Mama (Call me Mama! Everyone does!) had to have been cooking for days. I enjoyed it all.
*translated loosely from the Spanish I am a man of honor, only the best will do. I have women, money, and love. I ride my horse through the mountains, Stars and the moon tell me the way.
Later that night, slightly drunk still, Methos began to undress as he and Duncan walked home. Starting to sing in his clear baritone "It was in and through the window broads/And a' twirlie wirlies o't/the sweetest kiss that e'or I got/Was from my dainty Davie." Methos presented quite a picture--a nearly naked, perfectly beautiful man, singing.
"His name was Rev. David Williamson. He was hidden from the dragoons by putting him in bed with the daughter of the house. He got the daughter pregnant and had to marry her. It's by Robert Burns, you know." Methos was smug. Duncan kept his hands firmly behind his back, but his eyes kept straying to the picture swaying down the street beside him. Meanwhile Methos had begun to dance. Turning and putting both hands on Duncan's waist, he began to twirl them both. Duncan put his hands around Methos's neck, and they twirled home.
Pausing at the door to listen to the bob whites' playing call and response, Methos had just a slight buzz on, just enough to feel adventurous. He went through the door and turned to watch Duncan lock, then bar the door, and come down into the room, carefully not looking at Methos.
Methos sashayed toward Duncan who laughed, his face lit with mischief and a dawning arousal. Duncan started to hum no tune that was recognizable. Methos smiled. "Shhhh."
"Hmpf."
"Don't hum. Remember, you're tone-deaf."
"When he was chased by a dragoon." Duncan sang the first line of the song that had caught Methos's ear as well.
Methos kissed him, on the mouth, around the face, down the side of his neck.
"What will we dance to?" Duncan was enjoying every minute of it.
"I wanted to dance with you, you know." All that time, and they couldn't touch.
"I know; I know. You sing; you have a good voice." And Duncan took over the kissing.
"Into my bed he was laid doon." Methos sang to the ceiling while Duncan made a feast of his neck. The laughter bubbled just ready to break out. "I thought him worthy o' his room./For he's my Dainty Davie."
Duncan's grin lit his face. "I'm not so dainty!"
Methos growled and kissed his grinning lips, at the same time shoving one leg firmly against Duncan's crotch. The reciprocal was quickly true. They stood firmly together and kissed everything that came to mouth, all the while increasing the friction. Duncan had passed on down, leaving a row of tiny bite marks, all the way to Methos's left nipple, and began to feast on that.
Left with nothing to kiss, Methos put both legs up around Duncan's waist and rode him to the floor. As Duncan was recovering his breath, Methos began to undress him. Meeting his first resistance where aroused cock met immovable zipper, he soon had Duncan naked and spread out like a smorgasbord. They both used their eyes to caress as Methos struggled out of his boxers.
As he turned to discard them, Duncan pounced. He threw Methos off and over, exposing his dimpled ass. Duncan pulled him up, kissed that ass, then introduced a very aroused cock. Methos drew a deep breath and held it, but Duncan remained still, waiting for Methos to begin moving.
July 14, 2060
the morning glories wrap around the stillness now in celebration
Two weeks as a carpenter, and I've got more work than I can do. I have to look for an assistant--someone who can do the easier, more repetitive tasks. And someone I can show how to make a piece from beginning to end. I don't think we will be here long; if I train an assistant, I can just go.
Duncan and I went down to the Trinity River, to the green belt that runs for miles along the riverbank. In the shade of the live oaks with the water flowing on by, we found a grassy spot to put the blanket. Duncan went down to the river to put the beer bottles into the water to cool; to tether them against the flow of the river, he had tied twine around their necks before we left home.
Crusty bread, tomatoes, cheese, some ham, pickles, a jar of olives, and some wedding cookies: we had a little of everything. The wedding cookies came from Rosalena Rosario (I love that name!); I started eating them first. Duncan didn't say anything, but I could see the worry line between his eyebrows. I'm sure the sugar will spoil my appetite, stunt my growth, ruin my teeth. Heh!
take Duncan, then add a tree, a rope, and water, and mayhem ensues
I took a little nap after we ate and woke up to see that Duncan had collected a half a dozen adolescent males and a rope--an old rope. They were looking up in the trees and gesturing at the limbs. Before too long, Duncan and one of the boys started up a big oak that was leaning out over the river (Two boys up the tree, and Duncan on the ground sounded better to me. But no!). Duncan unwrapped the rope from around his shoulder and tied it onto the limb that was about twenty feet from the bank, and about twenty feet above the river; the boy climbed down about halfway and jiggled on the rope to make the knot firm.
Wearing only cut-off jeans with water coming off him from earlier swings, the rope twitched, then broke, and suddenly Duncan was flying, still going up. Methos watched in awe as, at the height of his swing, he flipped over, grabbed his knees, and cannonballed into the bend in the river. The bow wave was tremendous, breaking over all the nearby swimmers and cresting up and over the bank.
He had hit the bottom with such force, Duncan came to the surface in a gout of mud. Looking up at Methos rather ruefully, he walked to the edge of the water. Duncan kept slipping down the bank in his haste to get to Methos. "Gimme a hand." Looking up he said, "I meant to do that." He was still coughing a little, but excitement and satisfaction were bubbling just below the surface.
"You're a bloody nuisance, you know." Methos helped him up the bank. He was covered with mud as high as the knees with splashes all over the rest of his body. It was going to be nice to clean him up. "You look like a drowned rat"
Duncan smiled brilliantly. "You'd think in a city decimated by the plague, there'd be somewhere I could kiss you." Duncan had picked up the blanket and was flipping it to rid it of debris. Methos took it from him to keep the mud from transferring to the blanket.
"Not so loud," hissed Methos.
"That's what I mean!"
"And decimated would mean that only one tenth died in the plague. You know where that word came from."
"Yes sir, Mr. Dictionary"
"Let's just go home, and we can fight more effectively in private." Methos picked up the basket with the empty beer bottles in it, the blanket slung over his shoulder, and walked clanking away. After a second, Duncan followed.
July 15,2003
summer time: heat, flies, mosquitoes, picnic, swimming, you, me, thunderstorms!
Duncan's always doing daredevily things. I've never been able to break him of the need to do them. Then to have him come back to life in front of God and everybody else. I half admire what I half fear. It's the boy in him, the need for pure exhilaration. How can a nearly five hundred year old be a boy? Everyone from the mewling newborn to the incontinent elder is a boy to me, and sometimes I feel it. Oh yes, Duncan. Will we twirl some more? I hope so.
He is sleeping on our bed; he looks like a dream, an erotic dream.
Finis.