Queering Benedict Arnold, 1 Saratoga, New York: July 4, 2012 By Jake Preston
"Queering Benedict Arnold" is historical gay fiction. The story alternates between twenty-first century scenes in which Jake Preston and Ben Arnold (a descendent) investigate Benedict's life, and eighteenth-century scenes imagined by Jake and Ben. Some characters and allusions hark back to "Wayward Island" (in nifty's file on Beginnings). Jake Preston is the narrator in both works.
Most episodes are faithful to history, except for sexual encounters, which are fictional. You should not read this story if you are a minor, or if you are offended by explicit gay sex.
Benedict Arnold was an American military genius who was treated unfairly by jealous rivals while he lived. After his death, he was denounced as the archetypal traitor in history and folklore, but he was a target of inexplicable hatred long before his treasonable conspiracy with John André to surrender the fort at West Point to the British. Taken as a whole, "Queering Benedict Arnold" is an attempt to discover the origins of that hatred.
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Dark before dawn: a lonely time for unrequited lovers, but welcome solitude if you're on a motorbike in a national park and want to sneak past an unguarded gate before hours. 'Saratoga National Historical Park', the sign said, and below it, 'Boot Monument'. It's one of the park's three discontiguous locations; the others are Victory monument, near a village called Victory, and General Philip Schuyler's mansion, eight miles north of Schuylerville.
I parked my motorcycle in an empty lot. A trail lined with oaks and sycamores led to the Monument. According to an informational sign, it was donated by John Watts De Peyster, a Union General who, after the Civil War, made a study of the Revolutionary battles at Saratoga and published books on the subject. A two-tiered pedestal supported stone slab shaped like a house ?)). A post with a platform, perhaps a mounting stool, stood in bas relief, and on it a military boot, folded over at the top. The boot-sculpture reached almost to the height of the pointed backdrop.
I copied the inscription in my notebook:
In memory of the most brilliant solder of the Continental Army, who was
desperately wounded on this spot, winning for his countrymen the
decisive battle of the American Revolution, and for himself the rank of
Major General.
Feeling Nature's call, I took a wooded path to the cement-block restroom. Finding it locked, I hiked in the woods for a spot of privacy, and happened upon a ramshackle 1920-something outhouse. The padlock on the door was broken. At the back wall, thin sheetrock walls separated four commodes into compartments. Glory-holes were crudely carved in the compartment that I had selected. As I fulfilled my obligation to Nature, whose details will be of no interest to the Reader, I found that I was not alone in the outhouse. A man's hand beckoned through one of the glory-holes. It was a hand wounded by fire, rough with scars that had healed over.
Sex in a men's room was never my scene. My first instinct was to beat a hasty retreat, but I was intrigued by the wounded hand and the pain that it signified. I opened the adjacent commode-door and encountered a tall brown- haired man in his twenties, robust but blushing with sheepish embarrassment. Scars on the left side of his face matched his wounded hand. In profile from the right, his handsome face bore witness to some catastrophe that had robbed him of his winsome appearance.
"U.S. Marine," I said. "Was it Iraq or Afghanistan?"
Embarrassment turned to surprise. He had expected a confrontation, or at least a rebuke. "Ganjigal, September 8, 2009," he said, "ambushed by Taliban. Outnumbered ten to one. How could you possibly know?"
I ignored the question. "I'm Jake Preston," I said. "Should I call you Ganjigal, or do you have a real name?"
"Ben," he said. He offered his unwounded hand.
"Tell you what, Ben, let's get out of this privy. We can shake hands outside." I asked how he got to the park. He had hitched a ride the previous day, and slept overnight in the woods where his rucksack lay stashed. It dawned on me that Ben had a personal reason for coming here. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go, Ben, if you can hang onto me without destabilizing the motorcycle. Or we can hang out if you'd like."
"Really?"
"Sure, why not? You won't have to talk about Ganjigal if you don't want to."
"I'd like to see the Boot Monument one more time before we leave," he said. I gazed at him while he gazed at the sculptured boot.
"How odd that the memorial doesn't mention the name of the general for whom it's intended," I said.
"The name was unmentionable," Ben replied. He knew more about it than I did; that was evident. I took pictures with my cellphone, and promised him digitalized pix from my computer back home. We retrieved his rucksack from its hiding-place, and motorbiked through the village of Victory, to Victory Monument. Ben wrapped his arms tightly around my waist. I enjoyed the close contact. Gate-crashing at the Boot Monument didn't save us the cost of admission. By the time we reached the Victory Monument, the park was open and the fee was applied to all three parts of Saratoga National Historical Park.
"Where is 'back home'?" Ben asked as we walked the trail from the parking lot to the Monument.
"Northern Minnesota. A place in the woods on Lake Ashawa. You've probably never heard of it. I'm a writer," I explained. "I've been commissioned by a magazine to write some articles about the role of American Indians in the Revolutionary War. I've been visiting historical sites for inspiration."
"Why American Indians?" Ben asked.
"It's a fresh angle on a topic that's much discussed," I said.
"I might be able to help you with that, Jake," Ben said. That was a mystery. I assumed he'd tell me later. He grew up even further north, he said, in Calgary. In the nineteenth century, his family moved from New Brunswick to Saskatchewan. Some moved further west, to Alberta.
"How does a Canadian end up in the U.S. Marines?" I asked.
"There are other Canadians in the Marines," he replied. "I wanted the adventure of Afghanistan. Anyway, there's a tradition of military service in my family, going back as far as the Revolutionary War."
At the Victory Monument, we read an inscription about how two battles near Saratoga, both fought in 1777, helped the Americans win their war for independence. In particular the second battle forced the surrender of a British army. When the French Government heard about it, they recognized U.S. independence and entered the war as an ally. The Victory Monument had four niches, one for each leader whose military leadership won battles. We gazed at each one. The first had a sculpture-portrait of Major General Horatio Gates. The second niche depicted Major General Philip Schuyler, whose ancestral home was a few miles away. The third niche depicted Captain Daniel Morgan. The fourth niche was empty and unmarked. "I've been to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but who is this Unknown General?" I asked Ben.
"Unmentionable, not unknown," Ben said mysteriously. He asked me to take pics on my cellphone. I took one with him posing in front of the empty niche.
To make our tour complete, we visited the Philip Schuyler mansion. Ben showed keen interest in this place, too. "Are you a Ben or a Benjy?" I asked him: "Benjamin? I have a friend named Benzion, in Brooklyn."
"Benedict," he said.
"Like 'eggs benedict'," I replied.
"Something like that," he said. "My name is Benedict Arnold. Benedict has been a name in my family since the seventeenth century."
"The unnamed hero of Saratoga: it's Benedict Arnold, isn't it?" I asked.
"It is," he replied. "My ancestor."
"I'm aware that most Marines come from military families, but a tradition dating back three centuries must be unique," I said.
"The Judas Iscariot of the American Revolution, the archetypal traitor, that's my ancestor," Ben said. "But there's more to the story."
We found a motel in Schuylerville. It had one queen-size bed. Ben had no objection, so we took the room. His clothes needed laundering, including the ones in his rucksack, so I took them, with mine, to the washing machine in the motel. Ben settled into the bath. "If we decide to make love, it won't be through a glory- hole," I said.
"When, not if," Ben said.
We got naked in bed. Ben related a war story, the first of many he had to tell-none of them about Ganjigal. For weeks, he served as a Marine adviser to a Askar platoon (Afghan soldiers). Their task was to stop Taliban infiltration from Pakistan near the mountain road between Monti and Dangam. One time, he and his Askars ambushed a Taliban contingent. Four Talibani were killed and three were captured, while the Askars took no casualties. Afterward, the local Mushani chief adopted Ben as his son. At a feast, the chief renamed him Eagle-at-Dusk and said he was zelawari zelmai, a courageous son.
"Eagle-at Dusk," I repeated. "Dark Eagle."
Ben's mind wandered: "Ganjigal: not exactly a town in Ireland, full of smiling faces and friendly pubs." His voice thinned. "Folks do not want to hear about the night at Ganjigal," he said. He said he admired my physique.
"I'm just an older version of you," I said. Same six-foot height, same athletic body type."
"Yeah, but half of me got pelted with shrapnel, skin curdled with diesel fuel," said Ben. Maybe he liked me, but he didn't seem eager to jump my bones.
"You're not really gay, are you, Ben?" I said. It wasn't a question.
"No... well, maybe, I don't know," Ben said. "Do I have to be gay or straight? Is that what happens before we're allowed to be born? Must we tick boxes for gender and orientation-
____Male ____ Female
____ Gay ____ Straight
-on an application form administered by the celestial bureaucracy of God's holy angels?"
"No, you're allowed to be flesh-and-blood human," I said. I was in the naked presence of an unusual personality. A soldier enters a combat zone at age 21 or 22. A year later, he's forty-something, or fifty if he's a Marine. "So what's up with the glory-hole?" I asked. "Have you done that before?"
"Just once," he said. I gave a guy a blow-job. He walked away. "The minute he saw my face, well...." His voice trailed. "I just wanted some human contact, skin to skin. Last night I slept in the woods behind the Boot Monument. Your motorcycle woke me up. I thought I'd take my chances with the glory-hole again, so I waited in the commode. Sooner or later, I figured you'd make your way there."
"You could have just introduced yourself, Ben. I wouldn't have walked away."
"I know that now."
"I'll be your friend, Ben, if you'll knock it off with anonymous sex," I said. "And when we're together, we won't have sex unless you want to, seeing as how you're not gay."
"When I came to the U.S. and joined the Marines, I had a girlfriend in Calgary. Megan and I were unofficially engaged. I guess you could say we were engaged to be engaged. Megan grew up in a strict Baptist family, so agreed we'd get married before we had sex. I wasn't exactly Don Juan myself." (He said Juan the British way, "Joo-wan.") "She never visited me during the year I spent in a burn-unit in San Diego. When I returned to Calgary, the look that she gave me was pity, not romance. Megan was relieved when I told her that I was going back to the States to check out the places where Benedict Arnold had been: my namesake. At home we have family papers about him, and books. I've made a study of him. I never had sex with Megan, or with any other woman. So far the only sex I've had was the blow-job I gave through a glory-hole to a guy who didn't want to know me. Not much of a track record."
I felt his hand on my chest. I laid my hand over his and glided it over my torso. It was like teaching a boy how to ride a bicycle. After he was confident that permission was granted, he explored my body on his own. "The human touch is free, Ben. It doesn't put you under any obligation," I said.
"At least I know what cum tastes like," Ben quipped.
"Maybe," I said. "It doesn't taste the same each time, not even with the same guy at different times."
Heavy drapes blocked the bright light outside the picture-window in our motel room, except for a narrow crack that allowed us to see each other as shadows. Ben edged closer to me. With his right arm he drew me toward him. He breathed apprehensively, but neither of us turned away when our lips met. One tentative kiss followed another. A minute later, I couldn't get his tongue out of my mouth. Not that I wanted to.
"About Benedict Arnold and Indians, some of them were lovers," Ben said. It eased his mind to talk about something else while making love. I had never encountered that before, but I got used to it.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Near as I can tell, his first boyfriend was a Mohegan. In the archives of the Mohegan Congregational Church in Uncasville, there's a notation that in the 1760s, Benedict Arnold leaned about herbal medicine from the son of a Mohegan Shaman. I don't remember his Mohegan name, but it translates as something like 'Red Feather', meaning 'Cardinal'."
"Who ARE you?" I asked, urgently.
My reaction surprised Ben. "I'm just a U.S. Marine who survived the massacre at Ganjigal, not without wounds and PTSD," he said.
"Yes, but who ARE you?"
"Who do YOU think I am, Jake?"
"Do you believe in Indian mysticism, reincarnation, that sort of thing?" I asked.
"Maybe."
"I've got an adopted son, named Red Feather Preston. He graduated Oberlin College, and now he's studying piano at Julliard. His partner is Henry Hasek, a doctoral student in literature at CUNY, in the Grad Center across the street from the New York Public Library."
"Red Feather is fairly common as an Indian name," Ben said. After long silence, he added, "You did what a father is supposed to do, Jake. You kept your son out of war."
I sidled Ben 69. The only way to shut him up was to stick cock in his mouth. When cocks took the measure of throats and tongues, he was Vorax personified. His hunger exceeded mine. Our fellatio was simultaneously anatomical exploration. He had seen me naked, but kept himself covered, always self-conscious of disfigurements over the left side of his body. In the absence of visual stimulation, sensations of touch, smell, taste, and sound were heightened. Throbbing cocks served up bulbouro cocktails, slick droplets of diamond-bright lubricant, rumored to be tasteless. Our senses proved otherwise, or maybe it was shared cognition, erotically enthralled in bulbourethral emission.
'Pre-cum', Dear Reader, is pre-seminal lubricant, produced by bulbourethral glands at the base of the prostate. I call it bulbouro, or in Ben's case a 'bull-slick' when it pooled at his prick-slit. With a light stroke of a finger, I guided his bulbouro-ooze in a descending flow to his frenulum, and kneaded it into the sensitive mass of skin at the base of his glans. When Ben felt the sensation, he gasped and arched. Bulbouro, I say, and bull-slick! Give your tongue freedom to play with words and you'll liberate Language from Noah Webster's prison-house.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a gay man in possession of a foreskin must be in want of a lover to share it, especially in America where boys are victimized by the barbaric practice of infantile circumcision. Ben was born in Canada. His penis escaped the medical chopping-block. A micro-whiff of smegma was my first hint of foreskin. As Ben's erection swelled, it retracted to the shaft. I teased the velvety double-skin-slide forward and fronted it over his glans. I nibbled the raggedy edge with my lips. Ben panted at the detailed attention. We devoured each other. My hand roved over asymmetrical ridges of his torso and thigh, tactile signifiers of a body broken at Ganjigal.
We dozed in each other's arms, but startled awake by the fireworks of Fourth of July. Ben lapsed into a post-traumatic trance. Overcome with terror, he took refuge from Taliban artillery by crouching behind a boulder in the cliffy valley of the Kunar River. Not knowing what else to do, I crouched with him like a buddy Marine. When the trance was over, Ben wondered why we were crouching naked at the side of a bed in a motel room in Schuylerville. We got dressed, and went outside to watch the climax of fireworks from the third-floor balcony.