Big Bangs, Prohibition, and a Sugar Daddy

God or god

I wanted to change the subject. Now that we were alone in the office, with no one to see or hear us, I needed to talk about what Luke wanted from me. I need to determine what I should do about it.

"Have you ever taken any interest in boys before? I mean, I look like a girl, but I'm still a boy." Clara had told me that Luke had boys before me. I needed to talk about the subject without revealing the who told me about it. So, I acted like I wasn't sure.

"My first boy was very pretty. Much like you. Without the extra feminine features of course." Luke was honest, he seemed unperturbed about talking about it openly. "I was about fifteen. I had been with a girl before this, but there was something attractive about the boy. He played the role of a girl, which made me more aroused. I have had both boys and girls since, but I find feminine boys, dressed in women's clothes, and willing to play the role of a woman to be most arousing."

"Why? If you can sleep with women, why do you need to sleep with boys. Even if they are dressed like girls." I didn't understand what the attraction would be in a boy who dressed like a girl.

"There is a certain power in it. Anyone can sleep with a girl. It helps to be handsome, with money, but even the poorest man can buy girl off the streets. The ugliest man with money can obtain a willing female companion." Luke explained this in the same manner he had discussed Communism yesterday. With that same lecturing tone. "A man who is willing to dress as a girl, and play that role. That is different. In some ways it makes me feel more of a man to have a boy beneath me, willingly allowing me to use them as a girl, then simply sleeping with a woman."

"It's unnatural." I had been taught that such acts were against God's will all of my life. "It's homosexuality. How does that make you feel more like a man?"

"If it was unnatural, people wouldn't do it." Luke explained. "Alcohol, drugs, even prostitution could be considered unnatural. No animal takes drugs, drinks alcohol, or prostitutes itself. Homosexuality is simply a label that someone made up to explain what they didn't understand."

"It is still homosexuality. If I allowed you to sleep with me, I would be homosexual since I started out as a boy and my changes didn't change that." I replied. "Homosexuality is a sin against God."

"I feared god, until I learned that there were more powerful things in the world than god. Death, hate, misery, fear, and greed." Luke seemed to have gone hollow. There was neither humor, anger, or passion in his voice. "If you watch a man's life seep from his eyes while you hold his hand. You know that there is no god."

"He can't talk, but his eyes talk for him. Begging you not to let him die. Then the eyes grow dark. The ancient writers speak of it. The eyes going dark. It's true. While this is happening you lose your fear of god. Your belief in god. Because what god lets this happen."

"There are other horrors, but that is the worse, to watch someone who fought beside you die. Trenches lined with bodies. So many bodies that the bottom of the trench is a floor of rotting corpses." Luke continued. "Charging into a Kraut machine gun nest. Even behind a tank, those nests were a threat. Ahead of you the tank smashes down the barb wire. To either side you see the lines of barb wire. There are bodies in the no man's land between the trenches. On the barb wire."

"The stench in the trenches was like rotten meat. A sweet sickening smell that suffocates you, until you get used to it." I pulled my chair over and took Luke's hand. "Then there is the gas. Choking, blinding gas that burns the skin, and corrodes your eyes. It turns your lungs to jelly. In some cases it's better to die, then to survive afterwards. Horribly burned, blind, and every breath is torture."

Luke shook his head. He seemed to come back to himself. He lifted my hand and kissed it. "Forgive me. This is not the time for war stories. The war changed me. I no longer fear god, nor am I concerned about silly morals in our society which have no meaning."

"God did not kill that young man." I wondered if the man who died in Luke's arms had been a lover. "Man killed him. Men who disobeyed God's laws out of greed and malice."

"God did not save him either." Luke said. "If there is a god, he has turned his back on us, or never cared. He set up the universe like a mantel clock, winding it up, and leaving it afterwards. No longer concerned about it until he needs to tell time or rewind the clock."

"God brought you to me." I had blurted it out without thinking. "I mean, as a friend."

"Just a friend?" Now some humor returned to Luke's voice. "Then god is cruel. I think I need you as more than a friend."

Luke placed my hand in his lap. "That is not the reaction of a friend."

I could feel his arousal. "That is a large reaction." It was getting larger.

"You caused it. What will you do about it? I think you should take responsibility for it." Luke smiled at me. He had a different look in his eyes now, they weren't empty or far away. They were intensely focused on me.

"Don't blame me for your problem." I withdrew my hand. I had no idea why I didn't do so immediately. Possibly because I was surprised by it. How big it was. "Take care of it yourself."

"I thought that was why god brought you to me. To be a friend and take care of problems like this." I stood up and started to leave.

"I'm sure there are women and boys who look like women who are more than willing to take care of that particular problem." I said over my shoulder as I left.

My feelings toward Luke were mixed. There was the part of him that inspired my sympathy when he talked of the Great War. He made me dizzy when he kissed and held me. He was very male. Which made me in some ways jealous. Luke was also arrogant, irrelevant, immoral and certainly an atheist. And Luke wanted me. Wanted me because of what I was, not despite what I am. And I simply don't know how to respond to that.

Oh, men have wanted me before. I'm told I'm very attractive. When my body changed, I quickly found I could not hide what was happening to me. My hips widened, my breasts grew larger than my sister's. It was both humiliating and annoying. It also seemed to attract men.

I found the best way to fend off unwanted advances was to say that I wasn't healthy. I told men my heart was bad, and I could not return their affections after a certain point. Which seemed to dissuade most me. Now, Luke was attracted to me. I felt something for Luke as well. I simply don't know what to do about it.

I spent a restless night thinking about Luke. About submitting to his wants. I thought about what might happen if I did. Would he discard me after he got what he wanted? From the way Clara described it, Luke had his share of women and boys here. Would I just become one of those who had been here.