Love Charms (138 page)

Chapter Six

My first official lover was an exchange student from Italy. He
was taller than I was, and his shoulders seemed oddly wide in comparison to his
tiny waist. He smelled of oregano and something I later learned was basil. In
our language, one of the slang terms for a White Person literally means
"hairy-assed" and I didn't understand why until I saw him with his
pants down. A lifetime of nude bathing and sweatlodges among my own family did
not prepare me for how many hairs per square inch a White man's ass can
have--and they were curly.

Valentino had skin like a mocha latte, and his eyelashes were so
long they brushed against the lens of his glasses. His hands were large enough
to easily span the keys of the school's piano, the warm coffee fingers against
the cool white chocolate and licorice keys. He loved to play jazz and knew the
name of the musician whose home I had seen (and smelled) in New Orleans, and I
loved to watch his fingers alternately slam and caress the music out of the old
beat-up piano, which smelled of dust and glue. I knew he wanted me, and could
even follow the rhythm of his heart in the rhythm of his music, calling me in.

We consummated in the closet of the music room, with me banging
out a rhythm on his hairy ass that matched his earlier piano solo, while he
whimpered in Italian I didn't understand. It would be another year or so before
I learned about lubrication--perhaps Valentino wouldn't have whimpered so much that
first time if I had learned earlier. His fingers were long enough to grab and
pull and play with my body, his color pale against mine, lightened coffee
against darker cinnamon, and my wild hair got caught in his wide mouth and he
started laughing.

For the next eight months of his stay, we practiced our rhythm
and his English improved tremendously, while my tongue perfected French
movements rather than Italian ones. Even now, while I am fluent in my mother's
language as well as my father's, my English is strong, and I can hold my own in
French, German and Gayspeak, the Italian language has always eluded me. When
Valentino and I were alone, discourse wasn't the course I was interested in.

When the frost sparkled on the ground and the air smelled of alder
wood smoke, we invited Valentino to come with us for the Winter Dancing, to the
Longhouse, where his brown eyes grew wide behind his glasses as we began to
paint our faces and the drums pounded. When the fireman flung his fresh logs
onto the waist-high fire, sparks flew up like a mad swarm of glowing hornets,
which glittered against Val's lens, as his face paled as if cream were added to
the latte, his pupils dilated and glassy. Then my grandmother's Song began and
the dolls began to dance.

I think that's when I first realized I might have some problems
explaining to White lovers what my life is like, after he sat in the station
wagon more silent than the dolls, until we brought him food around 4am as the
healing ceremonies began inside. He only spoke a few words in Italian until we
arrived home, Taurus and Capricorn joking about him in our language until our
mother told them to leave Val alone. We had one more exchange student (from
Sweden) but after Valentino's reaction, our grandmother decided it was best she
wasn't offered a chance to come to the Longhouses with us.

We would pack her off to stay with our cousin Maggie and her
Mormon husband during the weekends we were away, and she seemed content. I
never really knew her that well--I was older and busy with Otter, a half-breed
in my art class who was from a different tribe. Gemini and Libra knew her much
better, since they were closer to her age, and the last I asked, Gemini still
e-mails her, and actually once flew out and visited her in some small cold town
that seemed to have a lot off "J's" in the spelling, where he said it
was dark most of the day.

It took Valentino a full week to thaw out, and he never asked
questions of what he saw, and never again looked my grandmother in the eye. He
would not go into the "Indian Room" where the dolls were kept. For 6
weeks he spent his spare time blankly watching television and eating everything
he could get his hands on, until his thin waist swelled and gaps in the shape
of footballs appeared between the buttons over his new little belly. By the
time we resumed having sex he was speaking English again and he felt
wonderfully spongy on his new love handles. When he unbuckled his jeans, his
new belly slowly pushed his zipper open and his freshly formed flab escaped in
a way I found strangely sexy. Fat had also fleshed out his tits, making small
cones on his chest, and his hairy ass was much larger and rounded.

By the time he returned to Italy, his thighs rubbed together and
I had learned to enjoy having sex between their soft thickness. When I kissed
him goodbye, he smelled of smoked salmon. Ever since I have especially enjoyed
fleshy, zaftig lovers, even though most of the ones I have chosen (or who have
chosen me) have been lean as chiseled marble, and about as hard.

Chapter Seven

Mormon missionaries always come in pairs, in matching black
polyester suits and they smell of whatever cologne had been introduced the year
before. As I understand it, their religion gives them extra points for
converting us--we're called Lamanites, and are considered to be the Lost Tribe
of Israel, descended from one of the sons of Noah--at least that's what I
recall. When I was demonstrating dances in Honolulu I was told the Polynesians
were also Lamanites.

One day, two missionaries came to our home, pimply-faced and
smelling of a knock-off version of Calvin Klein's Eternity, with plastic badges
identifying them as "Elders" (which always made all of us laugh at
the thought of White boys barely old enough to shave being called Elders--a
term of the greatest respect for us). My grandmother offered them tea while
they talked on and on about their beliefs (apparently if you convert, you get
to convert all of your dead ancestors as well, apparently without consulting
them). When they had finished, my grandmother put down her tea and quietly
said, "Let me get this straight--you say there was this White Man named
Joseph Smith, and he found these golden tablets under the ground in New York
State?"

The two young missionaries nodded their heads and smiled--their
body heat rising and carrying the scents of the faux Calvin Klein and Irish
Spring.

My grandmother frowned: "Then they were our tablets! They
were
Indian
tablets and he stole them!"

After that we never had a Mormon show up at our home until
cousin Maggie married a Navajo man who had converted to Mormonism and attended
Brigham Young University for a year. He refused to come to the Winter Dancing
but he was polite about it. We all appreciated that. Virgo stayed with Maggie
and her husband for a few months. Later we found that's where she learned to
drink. Maggie's husband was what some called a "Jack Mormon." I was
never quite clear where the term came from, but it meant that he drank and
smoked. He was the one driving years later with Virgo in the front seat when he
flipped his truck over. I don't think Virgo converted to Mormonism after she
died, no matter what Maggie said.

Chapter Eight

My grandmother--in our language, our
Kussa
-- was thrown
from a horse in her early 70's, and never walked well after that, relying on a
beaded cane of cherry wood thick enough to dent the top of a Ford (as she
proved more than once). It was a mean horse that was given to us by a neighbor
as an animal no one could ride. She tamed it--but again, found that some things
are too costly to win. Her hair only became streaked with gray when she also
reached her 70's. We are a long-lived folk, tending to live well into our 100's
provided someone doesn't murder us or we don't flip cars or fall off cliffs (or
have cliffs fall on us.)
Kussa
had a long history of racing horses--she
once told us that while girls were allowed to ride, they weren't permitted to
race them--this was not part of our tradition, but was introduced when the
Bushtins came (Bushtin is our understanding of what they called
themselves--these people from Boston). She knew she was better than any of the
boys, as did her father, until one day my great-grandfather's jockey was too
sick to compete, and she was told to put on his clothes and win the race--which
is what she did.

Several months later she was out and saw an older couple on a
cart pulled by matched brown horses, and the cart was heaped high with various
objects. She ran back to tell her grandmother who was horrified. "Go to
your room and shut the door," my
Kussa
was told, "and do not
come out until I bid you."

But she listened through the door. The couple had come to buy
her--well, this doesn't exactly translate--in those days, our marriages among
the Chiefly class were all arranged to keep the bloodlines straight and support
political alliances. What one did for love was another thing--apparently this
is what European royalty do as well. Anyway, they had come to arrange a
marriage and brought many things to add to her dowry price. When they had
announced their purpose, my great-grandmother told them, "Oh, you don't
want that girl--she's lazy and doesn't even know how to tan hides." Which,
of course, couldn't be further from the truth. They were from across the
Wanapum River and my great-grandmother didn't want her married there--but they
were too high-class to simply dismiss.

"Well," they said, "We really don't care. We came
for her because she rides so well. We want her to be able to race for us."

"Oh, that is the worst of it,” my great-grandmother lied,
"we have to beat her to even get her on a horse. You take your gifts and
return home. If we accepted them you'd only be pounding at our door a little
later wanting them all back."

Kussa
was told never to race again--that apparently some things are
too costly to win.

I have seen photographs of her when she was in her late teens.
Among Indians, our earliest photos came from the postcards that Bushtin
photographers took to sell to tourists, most of whom would never cross the Mississippi
River to see what the tiny pieces of cardboard showed. In the photos she is
smiling (which is rare among these old postcards--their expressions are almost
always distant and wary, perhaps wondering about all the Bushtins who were yet
to come).

In the photos she wears a basketry hat of our tradition, woven
with black fern forming a design in the shape of the topknot of quails. The
basketry hat has the same meaning as the crown of a princess, but is far more
practical, and as I found, more comfortable. Once I wore such a foreign
thing--pretty it was, and crusted with jewels and about as inflexible as the
royal who placed it on me. It smelled oily and felt cold. I will always prefer
the feel of eagle feathers fluttering in my hair instead.

A single eagle feather was tied with a white weasel skin to the
top of the hat
Kussa
wore in the photos. She was beautiful in a strong
way. No woman in our family has ever been weak, although not all were
beautiful. As for the men, many were weak, although all were beautiful. Her
braids were thick as broomsticks and tied with abalone shells.

In her later years she was no less beautiful and strong,
although her braids thinned a little and faded to an ashy gray rather than
silver. I always remember her smelling of the crispy vanilla of Sweetgrass, a
wonderful fragrance. She kept braids of it among her clothes and made some
concoction of Ivy root and Sweetgrass that she claimed helped her hair grow
long.

When she was 13 she carved her first doll of yellow cedar, with
large painted eyes and hair of shredded cedar bark darker than its face. She
was very good at carving, my
Kussa
was. Her first dolls were done with
Bushtin knives of gray metal but the ones she later made were done with
obsidian blades that seemed to carve sharpness and light into the softness of
the wood. Once she made a doll of ironwood, but it was evil and had to be
destroyed. That doll was the only one that made any type of sound. It screamed
as it burned.

Chapter Nine

A few weeks before my birthday, a new student was introduced to us
by the principal. “Nathan's father is the new Doctor at the Indian Clinic.
Please make him feel welcome. It isn't easy to transfer to a new school so late
in the year.” Nathan was so blond and pale he seemed to glow around the rest of
us, who tended to be some shade of Native dark, or Mexican brown. Over the
years, the number of migrant workers from south of the border had continued to
grow, and you could sometimes watch the White teachers and staff start to realize
they had become the minority.

He had filled out in a muscular way, beefy rather than stocky. His
eyes were narrow with a slight slant that I would come to associate with the
Ukrainians from Canada I would later work with while modeling. They were the color
of a blue sheet that had been washed too many times. I looked openly at him,
curious about someone new, and who looked so different than the rest of us.
Valentino, from Italy, was the same color of some of the Mexican students.
Nathan was not.

I knew where he lived. The new Doctor's family would be assigned
housing that was near the tribal store. I watched him and saw he appeared
withdrawn in his interactions with others. I suspected having to move to
satisfy your father and Indian Health Service decisions around relocation was
difficult. Our grandfather used to tell us as Indians we had roots, but White
people had wheels. I looked at his crotch and wondered what this White boy's
root was like.

Through the day he shied away from others, keeping to himself. I
had finished my assignments and I was bored. We're told our history involved
Medicine People—what we call the
Twatee
, who used to fight among
themselves. “They were like young rams,” one of my aunts explained. “They were
testing each other's strengths. They looked for each other's weaknesses, like
rams hitting each other head on.”

“But they were careless,” another aunt took up the story. “In
their bouts with each other, sometimes their
Tamanawis
(their Power)
would miss and injure innocent people. Many were hurt.”

“The bare area near the lava beds we see when we go to dig
roots—that's where they fought. It's why nothing grows there anymore.
Even now there's a residual energy in the ground. That kills off anything that
tries to grow. It can be dangerous to be there at night.”

I tapped my pencil against my teeth, still bored. I wrote Nathan's
name on a piece of paper and stared at it instead of him for a change. At home
I had a little privacy, and decided to do something with it. I wrote a note to
Nathan. I thought of a sad time, when my favorite horse caught a disease from
the White people's horses when we had ours at the Portland Rose Parade. Sable
had to be put down, along with the others who had been ridden in the Parade.

A single burning tear slid down my cheek. I began to softly sing
my Song, and I gathered my little drop of liquid sadness—a tiny bit of
me--on the tip of my index finger and touched it to the note's paper, watching
it soak in. I continued to sing, and licked the corner on the opposite side of
the paper. It tasted odd—some sort of metallic overlay.

I received my first Song when I had just turned eleven and it was
a gift from the Eagle. Jokiyah was impressed because I was so young—most
others received their Song when they went on their Vision Quest at the time of
Puberty. There had been some discussion as to whether or not I should go on a
formal Quest when my regular time came and my nipples turned outwards. My Aunt
Pork told me it had been decided the experience would be a good discipline for
me, so I found myself on a mountain top in the chilly evening air, sitting on a
blanket and bored. The Eagle Song had come in a dream. All I had to do was
receive it. The actual Vision Quest seemed like work.

It was one of the most boring times of my life. I could only take a drink of
water—as much as I could hold in my mouth. Uncle Sly would come once a
day with the water and check on me. He would renew the red paint that protected
me. We’d sing a prayer song and then he’d leave me alone. Again. A small double
headed twig of yew wood hung on a deerskin thong around my neck. You’re not
allowed to touch yourself during the Vision Quest. If you itch, you had to use
the yew twig to scratch yourself.. You’d be amazed how aware of your body you
become when you’re not allowed to touch it.

All around me the birds sang. A rabbit went by but noticed me
sitting there quietly. It came closer, its flat nose twitching. By the time it
was close enough to touch I guess it decided I didn’t smell very good and it
took off running. On the second night I dozed off but was awakened by a small
herd of rez horses rushing by. I had thought a Vision Quest would be a lot of
work. It was just tedious. Boring.

Right before the dawn of the fourth day, I heard a sound in the
distance and turned to see what was coming. It was an enormous stag made of
white light. It was larger than an elk, and had too many points on the antlers
for me to count. It ran past me and I felt myself pulled in its wake, dragged
from my blanket. The pounding of its hooves took on a different rhythm and
within the sound I began to hear a new Song. The Eagle Song had words that were
not of our language, but the Deer Song had no words at all. I closed my eyes
and Sang as I flew behind this great creature, and when I opened my eyes I was
back on my blanket and still singing.

“The Eagle is for strength and courage,” my Aunt Pork told me when
I returned home, “and The Deer is for love and nourishment. The Deer Song will
help you feed the people in those times when they need more than food to
survive.” I nodded respectfully, having no idea what she meant.

I imagined what Nathan would look like once I had taken off his
clothes. In my mind, he was covered in the finest hair spun of yellow gold that
was soft to my touch. I continued to sing, my pants off, giving me access to
pleasure myself. I played with him in my version of the moment, pleased I was
getting hard. When I was hard enough, I began joy-skinning myself, keeping up
my Deer Song. In a few more moments, I had produced a glistening hint of
pre-cum. I rubbed it into the third corner of the note. To the naked eye, the
note appeared exactly the way a note should. But it was starting to feel
differently. It felt larger than it looked.

I picked up an obsidian blade of my grandmother's and ran it
across a fingertip. Because obsidian can be flaked to an edge that is sharp on
a molecular level, in the old days, eye surgeons would use an obsidian scalpel,
rather than a standard one of stainless steel. It was so sharp I didn't feel it
cut me. When I was older, I discovered love could do the same thing. I balanced
a single bright red bit of me on my finger and held it close to the paper. As I
continued my Song, it looked as if it pushed off, drawn to the paper. I pulled
back and a tiny bit of it bloomed onto the surface of the note, the size of a
period at the end of a sentence. I stopped singing. I had marked the note in
all four directions with a part of me. I was busy making something more than myself.

The next day in class, I promptly dropped it on his desk when I
walked past him. When he picked it up, I felt an electric like charge, and I
knew I had done everything correctly. He turned to me, obviously not having
actually read the note. It was still folded in his hand. It was as if he really
saw me for the first time. His pupils dilated and took on a glassy sheen. He
reminded me of Val when he first saw the dolls dance. It was as if I was the
only thing he was capable of seeing.

Between classes, I saw him with my peripheral vision. In the
classes we did not share, I would look up after the bell had rung, and see him
peering at me through the door's small window insert. Great. I had managed to
create a stalker. At the end of the day I led him to the Music Room, knowing
from my long experience with Valentino it was a safe place. The janitor made it
her last stop, so we would have a couple of hours of privacy. Budget cuts had
wiped out practice most days of the week.

I stood by the piano, thinking of Val. Nathan came through the
door in silence, and I wondered if he had spent the day this way. With some
people you can tell the wheel keeps turning but the hamster is dead. He gave
off a vibe like a male elk when rutting, although he thankfully wasn't doing
that weird whistling sound they make. It was the first time I realized what I
could do might have what I learned in college to call “unintended
consequences.”

What can I say? I loved it. I unbuttoned my shirt and enjoyed watching him
focus on my every move. He reached out and his fingers brushed my left nipple.
“Take off your shirt,” I whispered. He did so without hesitation. I responded
by doing the same. I noticed his breathing had become shallow and rapid. “Take
off your jeans,” I said. I had never seen anyone strip so quickly. I admired
how his thick legs were covered with the golden hair I had imagined. I took my
jeans off as well. “You desire me, do you not?” He nodded with heavy slowness.
I hesitated. Valentino had never been struck dumb when he was with me. His
frozen tongue was due to watching the dolls dance. I had nothing to do with
that, other than my being among the many who drummed while my grandmother sang.

Nathan moved towards me as if the air itself was beginning to freeze, the way the
water used to harden on my braids. It was a graceful moment, although very
creepy. He swept me up as if we were ballroom dancing, crushing me next to his
bare chest and holding my arm extended in his grasp. If he were Native, I would
have known what to expect. But he was just different enough to be
unpredictable. At least I wouldn't be bored.

By now his attention had turned to tongue raping me and while I
tried to catch my breath, I realized this was not how I wanted to start off a
relationship. Then he flung his jeans across the room and he stood there only
in his socks, his Air Jordans having been thrown off when I wasn't looking. His
nicely shaped cock was standing at attention. He was a bit smaller than
Valentino, but I didn't mind. As a top, I don't really care about the size of
my partner's dick, other than from an aesthetic perspective—it didn't
exactly impact me.

I felt as if I had some version of a zombie, and I had no clue how
to reverse what I had done to him. Not that I cared. Let's face it—it's a
Native American wet dream to have all White Men become your willing sex slaves.

“Suck my dick, bitch,” I whispered. I had learned early on if you
really want to shout you have to whisper. I also had an internal thrill because
at that age, I had never said the word “bitch” out loud because I was a “nice
boy.” Looking back at my life, I find it interesting that's what I remember
about the moment instead of “Suck my dick.” I can see my priorities even then.

He approached me in slow motion, a hint of pre-cum glistening on
his tip. There was a lot of golden body hair. He touched my face gently, and
then kissed me at the base of my neck. He ran his fingers through my long hair.

At that point I got bored and spun him around, pushing the tip of
my own cock against his boy pussy, circling around until I heard him gasp. At
that point I shoved myself into him, delighting in the resistance I felt. After
a few jabs, that clearly gave away to acceptance and I buried the length of
myself inside him.

I enjoyed his screams, just as I had those of Valentino. What I
did not appreciate was how he continued to stalk me, both in school and then
showing up in our front yard. I led him into my shared bedroom, grateful
Capricorn was away at a basketball tournament in Portland, which meant I could
actually lock the door. As soon as I heard it click, Nathan was all over me,
like a starving man jumping onto a Thanksgivings Day table. I will admit it
stroked my ego. However, my reality check was not pointing due truth anymore—or
in any direction for that matter. “Nathan,” I started—pushing him away
from me and his puppy dog slobber kisses.

He looked up, still obviously seeing only me, but not really
seeing me at all. His version of me was playing on a loop inside his head, and
the actual me was only tangentially connected to it, like Peter Pan needing to
sew his shadow on his feet to keep it attached. Who knew the whole note thing
would result in this? It seemed as if his body was operating on automatic, and
that any significant part of Nathan was off-line. He was on top of me again and
I sighed and flipped him over once more for my convenience. I banged him again
and then wondered how long I could keep this up until Nathan got locked up in
some apocalyptic cell with a straight jacket on, or until my grandmother found
out I had sort of, kind of, violated the whole “consent” thing that was part of
keeping Harmony. I looked at the empty eyed sex stud in front of me and
realized my grandmother was a higher priority when it came to my survival.