I decided to start this story mostly to see if I could write it. I wanted to write a story about a gay teenager at an important point in his life; learning about the world and finding out about love. I wanted it to be a romance and an adventure and a bildungsroman: a story of spiritual and psychological development. I've enjoyed so many stories about gay youth and romance on the web and although I've been lucky in life and not had any major problems growing up gay I know that for lots of gay teens those stories have provided them with comfort and entertainment and a sense of solidarity -- of not being alone. Many of the gay youth stories on the net -- perhaps surprisingly -- have a religious dimension and that dimension is almost always Christian. I think I've read one story that was set in a Jewish environment. I wanted to write a story that had as its religious background the teaching I grew up with: the dhamma-vinaya, what we usually call Buddhism. Of all the difficulties of writing a story probably the most difficult is voice: of writing in a natural and authentic voice, one that makes your characters plausible. As I started this story I found another difficulty: that of talking about a religion and philosophy that is unfamiliar and exotic to many people who I might hope would read it. I am not satisfied that I've done it well. I've found myself resorting to rather clumsy tactics to make the unfamiliar concepts comprehensible. I've also found that it takes careful work to write about a teenage Buddhist gay boy who is sincere and wants to do the right thing without making him into an insufferable prig or an implausible moral paragon. I hope that my failure doesn't make the story unreadable.
I've set the story in the United States for no very good reason except that it gives me some distance and some cultural space to play around with. If my dialect fails I hope any American readers will forgive me. I hope that my spelling, punctuation and grammar aren't too eccentric.
I intend to post one chapter a week until the story is over.
Please feel free to do anything you want with this story. I invoke no special rights over it and place it in the public domain.
If you want to contact me for any reason you can e-mail me at: zado_k@yahoo.co.uk
This chapter introduces our hero. There's no sex (there never will be any graphical sexual descriptions of any kind) so no warning is needed - this is suitable for younger readers.
Enjoy.
Dhamma-Vinaya Bums Chapter One
I've got used to the fact over the years that people find my family a bit strange you'll probably find them strange as you find out about them). Consequently I'm used to the looks and curiosity and to explaining things. I still sometimes wonder why people don't have a little more modesty about being so inquisitive but I'm mostly used to it. This time it's not my family it's my monastic charges. Right now I'm watching some kids stood stock still staring at Bhikkus Thanissario and Arjun. The two sat smiling, wrapped up in what must have looked like orange curtains to the collection of kids standing watching. I smiled myself at the two of them and turned back to the self-service food counter. I took a couple of plates of salad and some bread rolls and water for the two monks and a sandwich and a coke for myself.
I carried the food to the table and sat down.
"Thanks", Arjun said with his constant warm smile as I pushed the plates across the table. Both monks were fairly relaxed around me but as we started eating I knew there'd be no conversation till they finished eating. As I got into my sandwich I heard a woman's voice hiss from behind me
"David! Don't stare. It's rude!" I turned to have a look at the hisser and saw a pleasant housewifey looking woman pulling on the arm of a boy maybe half my age (I'm 16). I smiled at the boy and with a nod to my monk charges I got up and walked over to their table.
"Hi", I opened, "I'm Jakob. I just wanted to say it's ok for David to look -- my friends won't be embarrassed."
"Thank you but he knows better than to stare," the woman replied. David looked embarrassed and blushed.
"It's really OK. Maybe I could explain to David who my friends are?" I asked both of them.
"I'm sorry I'm so rude," the woman replied suddenly embarrassed herself. "I'm Avril. Listen if you wouldn't mind I guess David and I would both like to know about your friends. They are exotic looking for Georgia!"
I laughed at that: for Georgia? Bhikku Thanissario and Bhikku Arjun were pretty exotic anywhere but Asia. I looked over at them eating and Arjun smiled at me briefly as he looked up from his lunch.
"OK. Well they are Bhikku Arjun on the left there and Bhikku Thanissario on the right. They're Buddhist monks. They're wearing their monks robes; they've shaved heads; they're eating lunch and that will be their last meal today because that's the teaching of the Lord Buddha to his monks. Bhikku means monk in the language the Buddha spoke: Pali."
"Who's Buddha?" David asked.
"Buddha was a teacher who lived a long time ago who taught a way to get through life in peace and without hurting yourself or anyone else." This is my standard intro Buddhism for 8 year olds.
Avril was looking over at the two monks while David had his attention fixed on me.
"Do you go to their church?" he asked looking at me earnestly. "Well, we don't call it church but I go to listen to them teach just like other people go to church to hear about what Jesus taught." David looked at me hard for a minute then he asked,
"What did Buddy teach?" His calling the Lord Buddha "Buddy" made me smile: the Lord Buddha would surely have approved. I gave him more of the potted version of the dhamma for kids: "Buddha taught that you should love yourself and other people and try not to ever hurt any living thing deliberately or unnecessarily." "Sounds a lot like Jesus", David came right back at me. I smiled at his mum wanting to check that she was ok with me talking about religion like this. "Yup well if they both taught it then maybe it's right yeah?" I asked him. The boy scowled as he concentrated for a minute then asked him mother "Can I go and tell the guys about the monks?". Avril messed his hair and sent him off then she turned her attention back to me.
"You don't look like them", she said and immediately blushed. "Sorry I mean you", I coughed to interrupt her. "It's the clothes", I said smiling and got a laugh, "Well that and the fact that I'm not Asian", I added. Avril laughed too. "So you're a Buddhist. We're more used to Baptists." As I said I'm used to the curiosity and I didn't mind explaining. I told Avril about my parents becoming Buddhists after visiting south east Asia as volunteers and bringing up me and my brothers as Buddhists. I explained to her about traveling south to Florida to volunteer myself and about being steward for the Bhikkus. She was fascinated by this last detail but then people always are. Bhikkus (and Bhikkunis - nuns) can't carry money. In fact they can't own very much. If they have to travel people will make donations but someone has to travel with them to hold their money, buy things for them and so on. It seems strange but it makes sure that monks can't become con men because they can't accumulate stuff. I was on my way down to a Vihara - a Buddhist monastery and temple - in Florida to do volunteer work with the homeless for the summer and acting as steward to the two monks on the way.
After talking to Avril for a few minutes I looked over at the Bhikkus and saw they were finished with the lunch. I said good bye to Avril and took a moment to say good bye to David on my way to our table. We gathered up the trash and dumped it on our way out of the restaurant. As we made our way out people stared more or less discretely at the two monks and the teenager in shorts and b-cap following them. It amused me quietly thinking how they must wonder what the hell we were about.
Our connecting bus was due to leave in just a few minutes so I stowed our backpacks and we boarded. The two bhikkus took one pair of seats and I took a seat behind them. The three of us had books to read as the bus started off in the afternoon heat but it didn't take long for me to fall asleep my book in my lap.
We were leaving Macon and from now we'd travel down the I 75 S and into Florida. We would make it to Crystal River early evening and in the comforting air-conditioned atmosphere of the bus I slept on. I dreamed of the sunshine and orange groves and a strange character like me but with a tan. My dream was full of sunshine and friendship; a happy dream. In it although the sequence of events was confused I was happy and surrounded by loving kindness and sunshine. It was a kind of surfer Buddhist paradise.
I woke up when Thanissario shook me at a rest stop and got out to stretch my legs. We were in Gainesville. I looked around me taking in the difference. This wasn't like Waukegan. The light was different -- even in the late afternoon the sunlight here was more penetrating, more warming somehow. Of course the humidity was different and there wasn't the constant breeze of the lake we had at home. I made my way to the men's room and looked at the people on the way. I knew this was Florida but to me they looked like Californians: tanned and lean and easy in their bodies. Maybe it's just me but I think us northerners don't ever really feel that at ease in our bodies; not the way these people seemed to be.
On my way back to the bus I bought bottled water for the three of us. The vinaya -- the monks' code of discipline -- would allow them water but no food until they got up tomorrow. They only eat between dawn and noon. I still felt uneasy eating during the time that they wouldn't but I was hungry and there's not point in that. So I got myself sandwich and a chocolate bar. Even the few days I'd been traveling as steward to my Bhikkus (I couldn't help but think of them as mine) I knew I'd lost a few pounds. It wouldn't hurt me.
I got back on the bus and found Thanissario and Arjun in their seats reading. Arjun was reading a Pali book while Thanissario was sitting eyes closed the tell tale rise and fall of his breath indicating breath awareness meditation. How anyone could meditate sitting on a bus I don't know but I suspect that Thanissario could meditate anywhere. I put the bottles of water in the pockets on the back of Arjun's aisle seat and went to my own. I took out my book and resisted the urge to doze made more pressing by the heat. I read to keep myself awake sure that if I didn't I wouldn't sleep when we reached the Crystal River vihara.
Two hours later we arrived at our destination or at least at the city. I knew that the vihara was outside the city sitting between a state park and the sea. We were expecting an upasaka (a lay member of the local Buddhist community) to meet us at the bus station and drive us out to the vihara. He saw us as soon as we got off the bus -- we were more or less the only people disembarking and anyway, how could he miss the two orange clad bhikkus?
I was a little surprised that he seemed to be at most a year or so older than me. I tried to avoid paying his looks too much attention and concentrate on getting our luggage. I saw that he put his hands together in "anjali" -- raised to his chest palms together -- and greeted the bhikkus calling them bhante (venerable). Having showed his respect he turned to me and made to help me with the luggage. I turned to him smiling and offering one of our back packs when my control deserted me: I found myself suddenly trapped by his smile. He was quite straightforwardly beautiful with an arresting combination of pale blond hair and green eyes and the widest, most open and frankly sexy smile I think I've ever seen. I dropped the pack I was holding and the moment was broken. I was left fumbling and blushing trying to recover myself while he grabbed the backpack.
"Whoops! I'm David -- let me help you with those" he said still grinning at me. "Er, Hi, I'm Jakob", I stumbled gormlessly taking hold of the backpack he handed me without looking at it. Realizing that I was staring at someone standing less than a metre away from me I blushed and turned to find his car.
"It's this way," he offered and pointing the car out so that the bhikkus could walk ahead of us he strode off, me following in their wake with all the grace of a startled donkey. Here I am, supposedly a good Buddhist boy meeting this guy for the first time and I'm checking him out! The most embarrassing thing is that you can bet that bhikkus Arjun and Thanissario will have noticed. Monks don't gossip or engage in frivolous talk -- well they aren't supposed to and mine are pretty well disciplined (mine? I really am starting to think of them as my monks) but Arjun has a way of making jokes that doesn't break the rules but can certainly make me blush. I just hope that he doesn't get a chance tonight and -- oh I pray! -- that he doesn't do it in front of David.
We drive off, almost literally into the sunset and my summer in Florida has really begun.