One
I wanted Jesus. That’s how it started. Yes, the Jesus they built a religion on, the one they say rose from the dead. (I should be the last creature in the world to doubt that.)
There we were, on a quiet, stony hilltop overlooking the city, the stars above us like light through pinpricks in black velvet. Just he and I, years before the 12 dolts who formed his entourage. We huddled next to each other as we often did, and I finally asked him.
“Joshu,” I whispered—that was my name for him. “Why resist this? You’re always talking about the vanity of human law, about wanting to strike out against the old order.”
He looked troubled, a young man of 23 still as idealistic as his disgustingly naive, dull Nazarene parents, who actually believed me when I told them I was a Jew—I, a Roman officer serving under Pilate!
“I’m troubled,” he said. He leaned back on his hands. The moonlight washed over his lean form, his fine brow betraying his sensuality as much as it did his intelligence.
“What’s to be troubled about? Love? That’s what you rant about all the time, isn’t it? Love must replace the legalism of the priests.” I stroked his cheek, the smooth cheek of an unmarried Jew boy.
He took my hand and kissed it. “You know what place you have in my heart. You are the earth itself to me. But the earth is passing—”
“This is pious trash.” I jerked my hand away. “The truth is you lack the boldness to act by your beliefs. You’re not a man of action. You’re a poet brainwashed by the Essene fanatics walled up in their caves. All this business about the end of this age, the plight of the complacent priests. Then when it comes to a radical move—”
“You’re talking about forbidden relations.”
“Forbidden to whom?” I asked. I could hear him weakening, see him eyeing my strong calves, my bulky thighs. It was hot and I had thrown off my tunic to tempt him. Nature had given me a square jaw, a cleft chin, a dark mane, eyes that could bring a vestal virgin to her knees—and a cock that could keep her there. My meaty physique came from years spent in the Emperor’s training rooms.
“The point is,” I said, “we’ve sworn allegiance to each other. We meet on this craggy hillside night after night. I listen to all these dreams of yours about a kingdom of god. Your god. The stuff of sedition, I might add. We race along the river, buck-naked. We even bathe each other! Ours is only the ultimate bond.”
Right there, the Jew temple of Jerusalem beneath us, I swore to myself that I would finally enter him—the boy prophet, the ultimate challenge, my obsession. I would enter him the way I entered the Emperor’s gates after a campaign: invincible, majestic. But hailed by his groans rather than by the cries of banner-waving masses.
I reached beneath his robe.
He pulled away. “No, Victor.” His voice was not without regret. “I’m not ready to throw out the law of my fathers. This cannot happen.”
This was the last time we met there.
Soon afterward I received a message from him: I must give myself to no earthly man, only to my Father in heaven, for whose coming kingdom I must prepare. For the sake of this, we must meet no more.
I persisted. I who had taken whomever I chose until that moment. I followed Joshu, hounded him until he fled to the desert to live as a hermit.
I had never hesitated to use force with other subjects of the Empire, to beat, to wrench them into submission. With this one, though, force could not be mustered.