They were woken very early—just what he was expecting and what he’d have done with new recruits.They were given a good breakfast, but a buffet where they had to mingle and talk as they ate—again, an obvious tactic.
And then they were brought out of darkness.
It was simple as that.
It was palpable, the shift in the mood of the group from anger and despair to something like hope.For the next two hours, they were shown the positive benefits of being different.They marvelled at the art of Michelangelo; listened to the poetry of Walt Whitman; discovered why Alexander is called the Great; found out about Leonard Matlovich.Nikolas half expected the good doctor to get them to stand up and sing a gay anthem (was there a gay anthem?).
Nikolas had once sung to an unbreakable union of freeborn republics.
The irony of it all almost made him laugh.
Instead of singing, they did colouring.The doctor handed them back their pictures they’d drawn on the first day.Nikolas assumed they were to fill in the route they’d found to take them from where they were now to their desired end state.He was going to draw a top-end model Range Rover sport.Rather like the one Benjamin Rider had left unlocked in a bus station in Taunton.It still niggled Nikolas that some oaf in Somerset was driving around in his hundred thousand pound car.
The doctor, however, didn’t want them to complete their drawings; he wanted them to reassess them in the light of what they’d learnt about themselves on the course.Did they really see a nest as where they wanted to be?A new boyfriend?Flying free?More sex—that had been one of the threesome.Nikolas had thought the man had drawn a visit to the doctor, but apparently it hadn’t been a doctor’s couch he’d drawn.Nor a proctologist, come to that.Weren’t all their desires narrow and selfish and only about themselves?
Apparently no one did want what they’d initially thought they’d wanted.Even Ben.He was scribbling furiously, and when Nikolas finally snuck a look, he saw a vast swarm of stick figures assaulting a wall.He frowned and whispered,
“You want a zombie apocalypse?”
Ben mirrored his frown.“No.It’s my army.We’re taking over.”
Nikolas raised his brows.“A gay coup?”
“Why not?Why shouldn’t we run things for once—say how things are going to be?”
“Would you make sodomy compulsory?”
Ben suddenly laughed out loud.He hung his head and was Ben once more.He pouted ruefully and added a few lumps to his drawing.
Nikolas tilted his head to one side, considering.“Breasts?”
Ben gave him a very familiar, derisory look.“They’re hillocks, where you can go for respite if you’renotgay.”
Nikolas nodded his head sagely.“Uh-huh.Oh, look.That’s me, scrambling desperately up the side.”
Ben grinned evilly.“That one actually is a breast.”
Nikolas shuddered and returned to his own drawing.He’d left it too late.They were out of time.He chuckled to himself and very quickly turned the nest with happy little stick people into the scene of a huge explosion.Happy gay families could be made to look like bomb victims very easily, he discovered.All it took was the application of red crayon.
* * *
They watched another movie after coffee.This one actually had a happy, life-affirming ending, which rather negated the doctor’s assertion the day before that there was a conspiracy against such outcomes.John, being a teacher, called the doctor on this, and Doctor Fergus proudly told them that this indie film had not been made in Hollywood—that it was a British production and that he’d been an executive producer.Nikolas reckoned they’d just watched some of their friends from the pub.The way he and Ben had left them looking, they could make a gay war movie next.
Despite John’s interruption, the film set the tone for the rest of the day in which they discovered, if they didn’t already know, some of the very positive benefits of liking men.They weren’t just leaving darkness behind, they werecelebratingthe light—it was pride, sweet and simple: pride in the male body, the male strength, the male way of seeing the world…the male way of fucking.
No excuses, no apologies, no regrets.
Who knew there were so many men in the world with names like Zac and Zeb, Tory and Troy?Three thousand pounds was a lot of money to pay for porn when you could download it for free, Nikolas reflected.He hadn’t watched porn in a room full of other men for years.It was…uncomfortable…especially as they were all dressed and sitting behind school desks.Mixed messages.
He was pretty sure Ben wasn’t enjoying this experience either.He appeared to be trying to keep his eyes averted from the screen, in protest, perhaps, that this could in any way be part of the purity of his new cause, tarnish the perfection of the shiny new medals he was planning to earn in his mind.Appeared to be…Nikolas noticed with a very amused smirk that Ben’s eyes stayed longer on the screen than his.
Nikolas suddenly had an evil thought and whispered to Ben, “Did you have a pet as a child?”Ben, concentrating on not staring at Zac—or was it Zeb and did it really matter from that angle?—frowned in reply, “No.”
“Later?In the army?”
“No!A snail.Does that count?”
A snail?Sheesh.“What did you call it?”
