(no subject)
My first commentary for dvd_commentary!
This a dvd-style commentary on callmerizzo's Oz fic Communion which you should read and love.
(My comments in bold).
I suppose I should start with an explanation as to why I chose this story: it was a confluence of events mostly. Dori (callmerizzo) mentioned in her LJ that she’d put her name down for this thing and I thought, ‘hey - I could talk about Dori’s fic until the cows come home,’ so I put my ever enthusiastic self forward and signed up. Then I was faced with the unenviable task of choosing one of Dori’s stories. I love them all, naturally, but Communion is an obvious choice for a commentary - it’s Oz (Dori has a couple of Stargate Atlantis stories too which you should also check out, but Oz is a love affair for both of us), it’s a recent story (I know authors will often say their latter work is their best) and it’s got layers - layers upon layers - like a wedding cake. There’s religious symbolism, good versus bad, innocence and corruption and hot steamy sex. It’s a story packed with meaning. Perfect for commentary.
This is a story that generates a lot of thought - and to emphasise the fact, I’ve quoted from replies to the original post which can be found here. It’s the kind of fic that sees more than one interpretation, and I thought it would be good to mention some of those interpretations here.
On with the show…
Communion
Pairing: Beecher/Keller
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine, yadda. No profit, yadda yadda.
Just an aside, Word Spell Check has yet to recognise “yadda” - I thought you all should know.
Author notes: Originally posted for the oz_magi challenge, December 2004. My heartfelt thanks to maverick4oz for kick-starting and cattle-prodding my ass into gear, and also for her seemingly-boundless supply of encouragement and inspiration. Also, my gratitude to cheights for an inspiring holiday wish that woke my muses from a long, *long* hiatus. Much thanks to both of you.
I recommend checking out the oz_magi lj community for more such wonders as the one below.
*
It’s getting to him, Chris can tell. Thirteen days deep and no sign of it ending anytime soon; days always suck in Oz, but especially during a lockdown.
It should be mentioned right here, that every Oz writer has written a lockdown story. It’s like an Oz fandom rite of passage. The ‘lockdown’ occurs at the end of season 3 when the inmates of Em City are locked in their cells until further notice. This means meals in their cells, no recreation, no laundry, no showers etc. The last scene of season three is Beecher and Keller ‘locked down’ in their cell and kissing! Then, at the beginning of season 4, we’re told lockdown went for 14 days! Come on! Clearly we were meant to fill in the blanks - and with as much detail as possible. Oz authors rose to the challenge!
The great thing about this story, and the many lockdown stories in this fandom, is that it shows there are still stories to be told about this period in the Beecher/ Keller relationship; there are still new things to be said, new ways to imagine what happened in those 14 days.
And if there are Oz fans out there who are sick of reading lockdown stories, I haven’t met them.
In the daytime, with the lights of Em City spotlighting every move they make,
That’s freaking awesome imagery right there. So succinctly put. Em City is brightly lit, no privacy to speak of - they may as well have spotlights on them. I get stupidly envious when I see lines like that.
there’s not much to occupy them except for the little things they find to do, and there’s not a whole lot they haven’t tried. Wrestling is out, and they’d pretty much given up on chess, having played so many times the paint was peeling from the tops of the pieces. The days in lockdown are endless, marked only by the way they spend the nights; last night it was Chris kneeling on the floor, his head bent low, his tongue buried deep in Toby’s ass, thrusting one finger into Toby’s mouth to keep him quiet, to stop him from shouting aloud.
I’m having a little trouble picturing the physical arrangement here. Maybe it’s because I’m all light headed from the line about Chris burying his tongue in Toby’s ass… (*Meep*). But I’m sympathetic to anyone trying to picture the positioning in m/m sex while they’re writing. I sometimes have to go look at my bed, figure out how far off the ground it is etc. Visuals are a challenge.
It worked, that time. But it’s getting harder and harder to keep things inside.
Right now, Toby’s bent over the trunk at the foot of the bed, rummaging through his stuff, most likely looking for something, anything, to keep his brain occupied. It’s a wasted effort. Chris has already been through that trunk, item by item, and knows there’s nothing of any interest in there.
“Jesus, Toby, would you cut it out already?”
“I don’t have any clean shorts.”
“So sleep naked. What’s the big fucking deal?”
“It’s fucking inhumane, that’s what the fucking deal fucking is. Christ. Is it so wrong to want clean clothes to sleep in, for God’s sake?”
He’d told Chris, during one of these long, indistinguishable days, that at home he’d always worn pajamas to bed. “Nice ones,” he’d said, as if the distinction would matter to Chris. “The kind your parents give you for Christmas, you know?” Then he’d snorted. “Seems like another world, now.”
For some reason I think of Lee Tergesen’s character in Homicide: Life on the Streets here. There’s an episode where he’s bedridden (he was shot) and he’s wearing blue pyjamas and he looks so cute.
Chris had just laughed. He couldn’t agree more.
*
He doesn’t remember any particular Christmas; the ones from his childhood were all mostly the same. Christmas Eve meant Midnight Mass. Though he could usually wheedle his way out of most things where his mother was concerned, this one annual ritual was set in stone.
There are a thousand lockdown stories in Oz fanfic, and there has to be an equal number of versions of Chris Keller’s childhood. Some of them I buy, some of them I don’t. I know it’s mostly in the telling (or the selling) but I have a tendency to be sceptical of stories that portray Chris Keller as a victim. Quite frankly, I don’t think he’d appreciate that description either.
This is not one of those stories, incidentally. This description of Chris’s childhood, I totally buy. Chris clearly had a religious upbringing. He wears a St Christopher’s cross, he’s got a crucifix tattooed on his arm (thanks to Chris Meloni, of course, but it’s incorporated into the character) and he knows of and seems familiar with the concept of confession.
There’s a lot of debate about it in the fandom, but I think many of us would agree that Chris Keller is a sociopath. And, I say this cautiously, sociopaths often have religious ‘connections’ (for wont of a better word). A sociopath is sometimes someone who lived by structures or well-defined boundaries. When these structures break down, the sociopath has no reason to not do whatever the hell s/ he wants. It’s not uncommon for a sociopath to have a messianic complex. I’m not saying religion is a causative factor, but the connection is there. So I see Chris’s mania easily drawn from a heavily religious background.
Hundreds of candles, nubby white ones glowing on every available surface, making everything in the room seem vague... Chris would sit stiffly on the hard wooden bench, uncomfortable in his church clothes, his mother’s fingers like chisels drilling into his knee if he squirmed too much or too often. At that hour, the tall, narrow stained-glass windows were dark, their colors muted, the stories they told somehow less significant than they seemed in the daytime.
I LOVE that. This imagery is so precise - I know EXACTLY what Dori is talking about here. I remember being a child at church, being profoundly bored, being distracted by the details such as the windows and the statues and the writing. Church went for one hour and as a child it was the longest hour of my life!
When I first responded to this story I wrote: I love that you make these moments definitive because they *are*. I remember these moments so vividly - and it was never the sermon or the prayers that remained with me, it was the stained glass and the wooden pews and the goddamn boredom. I’m an atheist now. Go figure.
I’ve never asked but I’m willing to bet much of this imagery is drawn from Dori’s own experiences. It’s just so evocative.
Father Scarpello, a short, round man with deep grooves in his face, would thunder and roar from his pulpit, raving about sin and Satan and all of the other things that good Christians should fear. He would preach about the battle between God and the devil, a battle that had been going on since the beginning of time and which, apparently, still hadn’t been won. Bored and unimpressed, Chris would close his eyes and imagine the two of them, God and Satan, crossing swords like knights on a bloody battlefield -- both equally powerful, with the bodies of hundreds of their slain followers littering the field on either side.
Like Jedi knights! Well - Chris’s memory probably pre-dates Star Wars, so maybe not…
When I was a child I imagined God as looking something like Sleeping Beauty’s father in the Disney movie. No, really. I think we forget what a child’s imagination will do with complex information. Children don’t think about underlying messages - they go off on tangents and think about things that are more relevant or more amusing.
A full scale medieval battle is perfect for Chris. And it obviously leaves a lasting impression. To Chris, religion is not about spirituality or healing, or compassion or mercy, it’s war - with casualties. It’s all about extremes - good and evil, sin and redemption, heaven and hell. The idea of an interpersonal religion - doing unto others, loving your neighbour, being a good Samaritan - is far too mundane for Chris. Good and evil is inextricably rooted in the soul, and only a baptism of epic proportions can save him.
A further interpretation of above scene comes from cheights:
The above really struck me. It's a powerful image, and a frightening one because, it gives you the feel that Chris pictures God and Satan only concerned with their fight and rather indifferent to the cost to their followers.
Which is something else that could make a deep impression on the young Chris Keller’s mind. The only thing he gets from church is the lack of connection the battle between good and evil has with real people - with himself. It’s like he’s waiting for them to fight it out and he’ll side with whoever is winning. So very Chris.
*
Chris doesn’t know what Christmas would have been like in Toby’s world, but he’s willing to bet that it wasn’t anything like Christmas in Oz. Especially this particular one, which Toby had spent languishing in the infirmary, bleeding from Schillinger’s blade. But he *is* willing to bet that whatever that difference is, it probably accounts for at least part of Toby’s current pissy mood.
“Beecher. Sit the fuck down and chill out. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Toby slams the trunk shut and turns, abruptly, to face Chris. “He’s going to come after you, now.”
The mood, the tension, it all suddenly makes sense. In the end, everything always comes back to Vern.
“It don’t matter.”
“It *does* matter. When is all of this going to end?”
“When it ends,” Chris says, matter-of-fact. “Or maybe it won’t. Maybe we’ll just have to kill the son of a bitch, once and for all.” He shrugs carelessly. “The world would be better off.”
Toby stops moving, and stares. “And it’s that easy for you? You feel no guilt at all?”
“I don’t believe in guilt, Beecher. I believe in me.” Chris takes hold of Toby’s arm roughly, and pulls him close. “You and me.”
*
Over the years, Chris had learned to distract himself by ignoring the sermons completely and watching everyone else in the church, instead. When the priest’s big voice threatened doom and apocalypse, the people around Chris would shudder, or cower, or cover their mouths. But when he spoke quietly, of love and forgiveness and redemption, everyone suddenly smiled, sat up straight, and heaved tiny sighs of relief. Chris found all of this fascinating. And most intriguing of all: when the long-handled collection basket came around, pew by pew, Father always spoke then of Jesus, of His pain and suffering and selflessness, of the way He gave up all material possessions in order to give Himself over to God. By the time the collectors reached Chris’s pew, the basket would be overflowing with cash.
Chris learned a lot from going to church.
That’s awesome. Where did Chris learn to be such a master manipulator? Why in church, of course.
*
”Toby, c’mon. Come here.”
He drags Toby around the corner of the bunk,
Thank god for that little space behind the bunk, huh? If you’re ever writing sex in Oz it’s really hard to get past the fish-bowl thing. You can handle it two ways: you can ignore it - which will work, if only because in fantasy reality can be shoved aside for no reason whatsoever and the reader will believe because she wants to believe. The suspension of disbelief is all about the tension between believability and a willingness to believe. Sometimes you can get away with ignoring the technicalities, sometimes you can’t.
The second way you get around it is to think laterally about where inmates can hide their activities. The show helps because drug dealing and rape occurs frequently despite the completely open spaces (and we all know this happens in real prisons. All that time to sit around and think and prisoners get creative. I have a friend who works in a juvenile detention centre and he is often amazed at how crafty the kids get when they wish to conduct themselves in secret. He says he wishes they’d apply that level of thought to more productive activities).
Anyway, the space ‘behind the bunk’ before is a useful spot. I’ve used it myself. Also, it’s cramped quarters, which makes more intimate. Very hot.
pushes him up against the wall, the most privacy they’ll ever get in this place. Down onto his knees before Toby can even begin to protest, ripping into his pants and taking Toby’s cock deep into his mouth. Toby struggles a bit but it doesn’t last, Chris is too practiced, too skilled, and it isn’t long before Toby’s hands fall, uselessly, from Chris’s shoulders, his head dropping back against the wall.
Without breaking pace, Chris glances up at him. Toby’s eyes are closed now, his face turned up to the ceiling as if in prayer.
Niiiiiice. There’s really not much more I can say about that.
It’s not much of a gift, but it’s one he can give, this moment of forgetfulness, this hiatus from his life -- to make him feel something other than grief, other than hate. Nobody knows how well this works better than Chris himself does, even if it’s only temporary. Sometimes temporary is all there is. And it’s always better than nothing at all.
On the above, ultraviolet730 writes:
That, and in the later scene, where he fucks Toby, it's both sexy and sad to see Keller using his amazing talents, but denigrating them just the same. It's fucked up and it's probably not, strictly speaking, healthy, but it's so much more than just "better than nothing."
Exactly. Chris has a propensity to think he has nothing to offer anyone. On one memorably occasion he refers to himself as a “piece of shit” and seems to think that Toby (and Chris’s former wives) have no reason to love him, so he makes them need him. The psychology of Chris Keller; there should be papers on this guy!
Later, when Chris grew too big for his mother to do anything about it, he’d simply get up and walk out of the church. He knew she wouldn’t get up to find him, knew she’d never walk out on Mass before receiving communion, certainly not on Christmas Eve, so he would head toward the bathroom and then duck out the side door. He’d meet up with his buddies behind the rear of the church and they would light up, inhale, exhale, feeling grown-up and rebellious and invincible. Chris took to cigarettes right away. He liked the way his breath and the smoke would become one in the cold night air. It made him feel like he could breathe fire.
This is a line only a smoker could write. And it’s one that makes a former smoker really want a cigarette… Especially on a cold day. *Sigh*
One time, when he was fourteen or so, it had begun to snow. He’d tossed the cigarette aside and turned his face up, sticking out his tongue. The cold snow tasted new, and clean, and unspoiled.
So around about here is where I wet myself. See - I used to work in ski fields (yes, we have snow in Australia - shut up) and I know that snow on the ground is dirty and sludgy - but snow before it hits the ground is clean (supposedly - of course, it isn’t but why fuck with the imagery?). So Chris has this one moment of touching something pure in the fleeting moment before its corrupted. You see where Dori’s going with this? *LOVE*
He’d never tried it again. Tasting the snow made him feel guilty, in a way the sneaking and lying never had.
And more wetting myself - because lying and sneaking and stealing is nothing in Chris’s extremist world of good versus evil but the corruption of something pure is unforgivable.
*
When the lights go out, Chris pushes Toby down onto the bed and fucks him hard, so hard the bedsprings threaten to break, so hard his own muscles scream in protest. He knows it’s exactly what Toby wants: to feel pain, to feel punished for whatever it is he thinks he’s done to Schillinger’s son, and it works exactly like it’s supposed to. Toby claws at him, begging for more, digging his heels into Chris’s back. There are tears in his eyes. Chris touches them, makes them his, because it’s all they have. All there is. And even Chris’s hand over Toby’s mouth isn’t enough to stop the words from coming this time: I love you, Toby says, over and over, as if to convince himself that it’s true. As if they both might forget in the morning.
I love a story where sex isn’t about getting off. Because sex is so often about other things. It’s about punishment, betrayal, retribution, forgiveness, penitence etc. There are so many complex emotions caught up in the sexual act that are SO not about sexual gratification. And Oz is a great canvas for painting them.
Also, note the staccato effect of the sentence structure - it gives the impression of building pace (as you would when having sex). It’s hardly a new idea but DAMN it’s hard to do. Believe me, I’ve tried.
*
His mother would always find out, of course, and then she’d make him go to confession. He liked the confessional, though; liked the unrelenting blackness of it, and the way it smelled, of sin and snuffed matches and sweat. In fact, the whole ritual pleased him; the reversing of roles, the self-important priest now a captive audience, forced to sit, poker straight and uncomfortable, on a wooden bench on the other side of that wall, hanging on Chris Keller’s every word.
And Chris Keller loves a captive audience.
He liked the way his own voice would penetrate that holy silence, rough and unyielding, the sound itself a kind of blasphemy. He’d spend the better part of an hour in there, telling the priest every last thing he could think of in pure and revolting detail -- listening, always listening for the way the Father would clear his throat nervously, for that strangled gasp of horrified surprise.
Echoes of Chris’s sessions with Sister Pete. (cheights points out that this scene is also reminiscent of Keller taunting Father Mukada in ‘confession’).
Whenever they met outside of the box, Chris would smile broadly at Father, and wink. The priest’s face would blanch and he would turn away quickly, as if Chris’s handsome, young face frightened him. As if he’d seen the devil himself.
Oh yeah.
*
They fall asleep together on Chris’s bunk. Chris dreams of Christmas, of church, of his mother coming around the corner and finding him with a cigarette in his hand. He wakes with Toby wrapped tightly around him, as if it’s the very last time they’ll ever be together like this -- as if, somehow, he knows. Chris lies there and breathes, in and out, in and out, absorbing the heat rising from Toby’s body. He runs his hand over that body, because he can, because he earned the right to. Because Toby is his.
There’s something utterly compelling about the way Chris sees Toby as his right - most of the credit is due to Chris Meloni who played the character with such intent - but a lot of it is due to the writing - both here and in the show - of someone who is the centre of his own universe and yet still capable of loving and being selfless. It’s tough for a writer to take on an intimate POV of someone so twisted, especially with the kind of depth this story is going for, but if you’re looking for an example of how to do it, Dori really *gets* it here.
Fuck guilt. There’s a door in his brain, and he shuts it, slams it hard, walls it up. Childhood memories don’t mean shit now, and Schillinger’s son gets no sympathy. Little Andrew is no more than a ghostly dream, vague like the church in Christmas candlelight, a pawn played, an obstacle removed. All that matters is this. Toby’s skin is warm beneath his hands, his heart is still beating. It’s all they have. All there is.
Toby is awake now, Chris can sense it. He turns his face into Toby’s neck. With his eyes closed, it’s still night; the day hasn’t come.
“I’m responsible for Andrew’s death, Chris,” Toby says quietly. “So are you.”
“Yeah?”
“I have to find a way to make up for that. So do you.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Toby extricates himself from Chris’s arms, sits up, throws his legs over the side of the bed. Chris lets his hand fall across Toby’s naked hip just as the lights come on.
“I’m serious, Chris.”
“So am I. Fuck that.”
Toby pushes his hand away, and rises. “No, fuck you.”
It’s an argument they’ve had a dozen times, will probably have a dozen more,
And probably had repeatedly during lockdown. As much as we’d like to believe they did nothing but boink each other stupid during this time, the reality is they probably argued plenty.
Hmmmm… there’s a story in that…
and Chris isn’t interested in it right now. Instead, he crosses his arms beneath his head and simply watches Toby, the way he frowns, the way his hands flex into fists, the way anger colors his skin. There’s a thrill in it, knowing they will fight again, in this war that is never won; Toby never stays down for long. It’s one of the things Chris loves about him. A battle between them will never have a predictable outcome.
“You love me, Toby.”
“That’s the point.” Toby sighs. “He’s not going to leave us alone.” He pulls on his shirt from the night before and moves to stand in front of the glass wall, looking out into the quad.
“It don’t matter,” Chris says again. He gets up too, and moves behind Toby, leaning one arm on his shoulder. Together they stand there, side by side, gazing out at Emerald City. Their battlefield, littered with bodies. “Those fucks out there? They don’t mean a goddamn thing, Toby. Nothin’ matters but you and me.”
LOVE that visual.
Toby turns to look at him, silent, his eyes filled with pain. Chris leans over, kisses him, and remembers the taste of snow.
And if that imagery doesn’t blow you away you are dead, dead I say! The idea that Toby is snow, something pure that disintegrates on Chris’s tongue is gorgeous enough, but that Chris kisses him anyway and lives with the regret - or the sin - is heartbreaking. And why does Chris do it? Because it’s what he does, because it’s something he can do for Toby, because he’s the freaking scorpion. There’s something so inevitable about the fall of Chris and the tragedy of this relationship that you just want to cry from the moment they hook up. Have I mentioned this is my favourite pairing EVER?
Lastly, a comment from ultraviolet730:
Of course, as we know, snow really isn't pure. And some people say you should never taste it.
Which is such a perfect note to end on. This is Chris’s point of view - and it’s easy to see that in Chris’s eyes, Toby is pure, the innocent that is corrupted by Chris’s touch. And yet, Toby’s clearly not so innocent. He adapts to life in Oz *very* quickly. He kills, he lies, he fucks, he manipulates, he betrays. And he wasn’t so innocent to begin with - he came from a different world but he was a drunk who ran over a child. He’s the master of his doom and when he’s honest with himself he knows it (and Sister Peter smartly makes him face up to it). Maybe this is the real danger? Equating ignorance with innocence. One would hardly argue that one of Chris’s flaws is underestimating Toby.
So much to think about from such a profound story. It’s been an absolute pleasure to go through it again and share some thoughts. Check out callmerizzo's fic at Strange Bedfellows.
This a dvd-style commentary on callmerizzo's Oz fic Communion which you should read and love.
(My comments in bold).
I suppose I should start with an explanation as to why I chose this story: it was a confluence of events mostly. Dori (callmerizzo) mentioned in her LJ that she’d put her name down for this thing and I thought, ‘hey - I could talk about Dori’s fic until the cows come home,’ so I put my ever enthusiastic self forward and signed up. Then I was faced with the unenviable task of choosing one of Dori’s stories. I love them all, naturally, but Communion is an obvious choice for a commentary - it’s Oz (Dori has a couple of Stargate Atlantis stories too which you should also check out, but Oz is a love affair for both of us), it’s a recent story (I know authors will often say their latter work is their best) and it’s got layers - layers upon layers - like a wedding cake. There’s religious symbolism, good versus bad, innocence and corruption and hot steamy sex. It’s a story packed with meaning. Perfect for commentary.
This is a story that generates a lot of thought - and to emphasise the fact, I’ve quoted from replies to the original post which can be found here. It’s the kind of fic that sees more than one interpretation, and I thought it would be good to mention some of those interpretations here.
On with the show…
Communion
Pairing: Beecher/Keller
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine, yadda. No profit, yadda yadda.
Just an aside, Word Spell Check has yet to recognise “yadda” - I thought you all should know.
Author notes: Originally posted for the oz_magi challenge, December 2004. My heartfelt thanks to maverick4oz for kick-starting and cattle-prodding my ass into gear, and also for her seemingly-boundless supply of encouragement and inspiration. Also, my gratitude to cheights for an inspiring holiday wish that woke my muses from a long, *long* hiatus. Much thanks to both of you.
I recommend checking out the oz_magi lj community for more such wonders as the one below.
*
It’s getting to him, Chris can tell. Thirteen days deep and no sign of it ending anytime soon; days always suck in Oz, but especially during a lockdown.
It should be mentioned right here, that every Oz writer has written a lockdown story. It’s like an Oz fandom rite of passage. The ‘lockdown’ occurs at the end of season 3 when the inmates of Em City are locked in their cells until further notice. This means meals in their cells, no recreation, no laundry, no showers etc. The last scene of season three is Beecher and Keller ‘locked down’ in their cell and kissing! Then, at the beginning of season 4, we’re told lockdown went for 14 days! Come on! Clearly we were meant to fill in the blanks - and with as much detail as possible. Oz authors rose to the challenge!
The great thing about this story, and the many lockdown stories in this fandom, is that it shows there are still stories to be told about this period in the Beecher/ Keller relationship; there are still new things to be said, new ways to imagine what happened in those 14 days.
And if there are Oz fans out there who are sick of reading lockdown stories, I haven’t met them.
In the daytime, with the lights of Em City spotlighting every move they make,
That’s freaking awesome imagery right there. So succinctly put. Em City is brightly lit, no privacy to speak of - they may as well have spotlights on them. I get stupidly envious when I see lines like that.
there’s not much to occupy them except for the little things they find to do, and there’s not a whole lot they haven’t tried. Wrestling is out, and they’d pretty much given up on chess, having played so many times the paint was peeling from the tops of the pieces. The days in lockdown are endless, marked only by the way they spend the nights; last night it was Chris kneeling on the floor, his head bent low, his tongue buried deep in Toby’s ass, thrusting one finger into Toby’s mouth to keep him quiet, to stop him from shouting aloud.
I’m having a little trouble picturing the physical arrangement here. Maybe it’s because I’m all light headed from the line about Chris burying his tongue in Toby’s ass… (*Meep*). But I’m sympathetic to anyone trying to picture the positioning in m/m sex while they’re writing. I sometimes have to go look at my bed, figure out how far off the ground it is etc. Visuals are a challenge.
It worked, that time. But it’s getting harder and harder to keep things inside.
Right now, Toby’s bent over the trunk at the foot of the bed, rummaging through his stuff, most likely looking for something, anything, to keep his brain occupied. It’s a wasted effort. Chris has already been through that trunk, item by item, and knows there’s nothing of any interest in there.
“Jesus, Toby, would you cut it out already?”
“I don’t have any clean shorts.”
“So sleep naked. What’s the big fucking deal?”
“It’s fucking inhumane, that’s what the fucking deal fucking is. Christ. Is it so wrong to want clean clothes to sleep in, for God’s sake?”
He’d told Chris, during one of these long, indistinguishable days, that at home he’d always worn pajamas to bed. “Nice ones,” he’d said, as if the distinction would matter to Chris. “The kind your parents give you for Christmas, you know?” Then he’d snorted. “Seems like another world, now.”
For some reason I think of Lee Tergesen’s character in Homicide: Life on the Streets here. There’s an episode where he’s bedridden (he was shot) and he’s wearing blue pyjamas and he looks so cute.
Chris had just laughed. He couldn’t agree more.
*
He doesn’t remember any particular Christmas; the ones from his childhood were all mostly the same. Christmas Eve meant Midnight Mass. Though he could usually wheedle his way out of most things where his mother was concerned, this one annual ritual was set in stone.
There are a thousand lockdown stories in Oz fanfic, and there has to be an equal number of versions of Chris Keller’s childhood. Some of them I buy, some of them I don’t. I know it’s mostly in the telling (or the selling) but I have a tendency to be sceptical of stories that portray Chris Keller as a victim. Quite frankly, I don’t think he’d appreciate that description either.
This is not one of those stories, incidentally. This description of Chris’s childhood, I totally buy. Chris clearly had a religious upbringing. He wears a St Christopher’s cross, he’s got a crucifix tattooed on his arm (thanks to Chris Meloni, of course, but it’s incorporated into the character) and he knows of and seems familiar with the concept of confession.
There’s a lot of debate about it in the fandom, but I think many of us would agree that Chris Keller is a sociopath. And, I say this cautiously, sociopaths often have religious ‘connections’ (for wont of a better word). A sociopath is sometimes someone who lived by structures or well-defined boundaries. When these structures break down, the sociopath has no reason to not do whatever the hell s/ he wants. It’s not uncommon for a sociopath to have a messianic complex. I’m not saying religion is a causative factor, but the connection is there. So I see Chris’s mania easily drawn from a heavily religious background.
Hundreds of candles, nubby white ones glowing on every available surface, making everything in the room seem vague... Chris would sit stiffly on the hard wooden bench, uncomfortable in his church clothes, his mother’s fingers like chisels drilling into his knee if he squirmed too much or too often. At that hour, the tall, narrow stained-glass windows were dark, their colors muted, the stories they told somehow less significant than they seemed in the daytime.
I LOVE that. This imagery is so precise - I know EXACTLY what Dori is talking about here. I remember being a child at church, being profoundly bored, being distracted by the details such as the windows and the statues and the writing. Church went for one hour and as a child it was the longest hour of my life!
When I first responded to this story I wrote: I love that you make these moments definitive because they *are*. I remember these moments so vividly - and it was never the sermon or the prayers that remained with me, it was the stained glass and the wooden pews and the goddamn boredom. I’m an atheist now. Go figure.
I’ve never asked but I’m willing to bet much of this imagery is drawn from Dori’s own experiences. It’s just so evocative.
Father Scarpello, a short, round man with deep grooves in his face, would thunder and roar from his pulpit, raving about sin and Satan and all of the other things that good Christians should fear. He would preach about the battle between God and the devil, a battle that had been going on since the beginning of time and which, apparently, still hadn’t been won. Bored and unimpressed, Chris would close his eyes and imagine the two of them, God and Satan, crossing swords like knights on a bloody battlefield -- both equally powerful, with the bodies of hundreds of their slain followers littering the field on either side.
Like Jedi knights! Well - Chris’s memory probably pre-dates Star Wars, so maybe not…
When I was a child I imagined God as looking something like Sleeping Beauty’s father in the Disney movie. No, really. I think we forget what a child’s imagination will do with complex information. Children don’t think about underlying messages - they go off on tangents and think about things that are more relevant or more amusing.
A full scale medieval battle is perfect for Chris. And it obviously leaves a lasting impression. To Chris, religion is not about spirituality or healing, or compassion or mercy, it’s war - with casualties. It’s all about extremes - good and evil, sin and redemption, heaven and hell. The idea of an interpersonal religion - doing unto others, loving your neighbour, being a good Samaritan - is far too mundane for Chris. Good and evil is inextricably rooted in the soul, and only a baptism of epic proportions can save him.
A further interpretation of above scene comes from cheights:
The above really struck me. It's a powerful image, and a frightening one because, it gives you the feel that Chris pictures God and Satan only concerned with their fight and rather indifferent to the cost to their followers.
Which is something else that could make a deep impression on the young Chris Keller’s mind. The only thing he gets from church is the lack of connection the battle between good and evil has with real people - with himself. It’s like he’s waiting for them to fight it out and he’ll side with whoever is winning. So very Chris.
*
Chris doesn’t know what Christmas would have been like in Toby’s world, but he’s willing to bet that it wasn’t anything like Christmas in Oz. Especially this particular one, which Toby had spent languishing in the infirmary, bleeding from Schillinger’s blade. But he *is* willing to bet that whatever that difference is, it probably accounts for at least part of Toby’s current pissy mood.
“Beecher. Sit the fuck down and chill out. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Toby slams the trunk shut and turns, abruptly, to face Chris. “He’s going to come after you, now.”
The mood, the tension, it all suddenly makes sense. In the end, everything always comes back to Vern.
“It don’t matter.”
“It *does* matter. When is all of this going to end?”
“When it ends,” Chris says, matter-of-fact. “Or maybe it won’t. Maybe we’ll just have to kill the son of a bitch, once and for all.” He shrugs carelessly. “The world would be better off.”
Toby stops moving, and stares. “And it’s that easy for you? You feel no guilt at all?”
“I don’t believe in guilt, Beecher. I believe in me.” Chris takes hold of Toby’s arm roughly, and pulls him close. “You and me.”
*
Over the years, Chris had learned to distract himself by ignoring the sermons completely and watching everyone else in the church, instead. When the priest’s big voice threatened doom and apocalypse, the people around Chris would shudder, or cower, or cover their mouths. But when he spoke quietly, of love and forgiveness and redemption, everyone suddenly smiled, sat up straight, and heaved tiny sighs of relief. Chris found all of this fascinating. And most intriguing of all: when the long-handled collection basket came around, pew by pew, Father always spoke then of Jesus, of His pain and suffering and selflessness, of the way He gave up all material possessions in order to give Himself over to God. By the time the collectors reached Chris’s pew, the basket would be overflowing with cash.
Chris learned a lot from going to church.
That’s awesome. Where did Chris learn to be such a master manipulator? Why in church, of course.
*
”Toby, c’mon. Come here.”
He drags Toby around the corner of the bunk,
Thank god for that little space behind the bunk, huh? If you’re ever writing sex in Oz it’s really hard to get past the fish-bowl thing. You can handle it two ways: you can ignore it - which will work, if only because in fantasy reality can be shoved aside for no reason whatsoever and the reader will believe because she wants to believe. The suspension of disbelief is all about the tension between believability and a willingness to believe. Sometimes you can get away with ignoring the technicalities, sometimes you can’t.
The second way you get around it is to think laterally about where inmates can hide their activities. The show helps because drug dealing and rape occurs frequently despite the completely open spaces (and we all know this happens in real prisons. All that time to sit around and think and prisoners get creative. I have a friend who works in a juvenile detention centre and he is often amazed at how crafty the kids get when they wish to conduct themselves in secret. He says he wishes they’d apply that level of thought to more productive activities).
Anyway, the space ‘behind the bunk’ before is a useful spot. I’ve used it myself. Also, it’s cramped quarters, which makes more intimate. Very hot.
pushes him up against the wall, the most privacy they’ll ever get in this place. Down onto his knees before Toby can even begin to protest, ripping into his pants and taking Toby’s cock deep into his mouth. Toby struggles a bit but it doesn’t last, Chris is too practiced, too skilled, and it isn’t long before Toby’s hands fall, uselessly, from Chris’s shoulders, his head dropping back against the wall.
Without breaking pace, Chris glances up at him. Toby’s eyes are closed now, his face turned up to the ceiling as if in prayer.
Niiiiiice. There’s really not much more I can say about that.
It’s not much of a gift, but it’s one he can give, this moment of forgetfulness, this hiatus from his life -- to make him feel something other than grief, other than hate. Nobody knows how well this works better than Chris himself does, even if it’s only temporary. Sometimes temporary is all there is. And it’s always better than nothing at all.
On the above, ultraviolet730 writes:
That, and in the later scene, where he fucks Toby, it's both sexy and sad to see Keller using his amazing talents, but denigrating them just the same. It's fucked up and it's probably not, strictly speaking, healthy, but it's so much more than just "better than nothing."
Exactly. Chris has a propensity to think he has nothing to offer anyone. On one memorably occasion he refers to himself as a “piece of shit” and seems to think that Toby (and Chris’s former wives) have no reason to love him, so he makes them need him. The psychology of Chris Keller; there should be papers on this guy!
Later, when Chris grew too big for his mother to do anything about it, he’d simply get up and walk out of the church. He knew she wouldn’t get up to find him, knew she’d never walk out on Mass before receiving communion, certainly not on Christmas Eve, so he would head toward the bathroom and then duck out the side door. He’d meet up with his buddies behind the rear of the church and they would light up, inhale, exhale, feeling grown-up and rebellious and invincible. Chris took to cigarettes right away. He liked the way his breath and the smoke would become one in the cold night air. It made him feel like he could breathe fire.
This is a line only a smoker could write. And it’s one that makes a former smoker really want a cigarette… Especially on a cold day. *Sigh*
One time, when he was fourteen or so, it had begun to snow. He’d tossed the cigarette aside and turned his face up, sticking out his tongue. The cold snow tasted new, and clean, and unspoiled.
So around about here is where I wet myself. See - I used to work in ski fields (yes, we have snow in Australia - shut up) and I know that snow on the ground is dirty and sludgy - but snow before it hits the ground is clean (supposedly - of course, it isn’t but why fuck with the imagery?). So Chris has this one moment of touching something pure in the fleeting moment before its corrupted. You see where Dori’s going with this? *LOVE*
He’d never tried it again. Tasting the snow made him feel guilty, in a way the sneaking and lying never had.
And more wetting myself - because lying and sneaking and stealing is nothing in Chris’s extremist world of good versus evil but the corruption of something pure is unforgivable.
*
When the lights go out, Chris pushes Toby down onto the bed and fucks him hard, so hard the bedsprings threaten to break, so hard his own muscles scream in protest. He knows it’s exactly what Toby wants: to feel pain, to feel punished for whatever it is he thinks he’s done to Schillinger’s son, and it works exactly like it’s supposed to. Toby claws at him, begging for more, digging his heels into Chris’s back. There are tears in his eyes. Chris touches them, makes them his, because it’s all they have. All there is. And even Chris’s hand over Toby’s mouth isn’t enough to stop the words from coming this time: I love you, Toby says, over and over, as if to convince himself that it’s true. As if they both might forget in the morning.
I love a story where sex isn’t about getting off. Because sex is so often about other things. It’s about punishment, betrayal, retribution, forgiveness, penitence etc. There are so many complex emotions caught up in the sexual act that are SO not about sexual gratification. And Oz is a great canvas for painting them.
Also, note the staccato effect of the sentence structure - it gives the impression of building pace (as you would when having sex). It’s hardly a new idea but DAMN it’s hard to do. Believe me, I’ve tried.
*
His mother would always find out, of course, and then she’d make him go to confession. He liked the confessional, though; liked the unrelenting blackness of it, and the way it smelled, of sin and snuffed matches and sweat. In fact, the whole ritual pleased him; the reversing of roles, the self-important priest now a captive audience, forced to sit, poker straight and uncomfortable, on a wooden bench on the other side of that wall, hanging on Chris Keller’s every word.
And Chris Keller loves a captive audience.
He liked the way his own voice would penetrate that holy silence, rough and unyielding, the sound itself a kind of blasphemy. He’d spend the better part of an hour in there, telling the priest every last thing he could think of in pure and revolting detail -- listening, always listening for the way the Father would clear his throat nervously, for that strangled gasp of horrified surprise.
Echoes of Chris’s sessions with Sister Pete. (cheights points out that this scene is also reminiscent of Keller taunting Father Mukada in ‘confession’).
Whenever they met outside of the box, Chris would smile broadly at Father, and wink. The priest’s face would blanch and he would turn away quickly, as if Chris’s handsome, young face frightened him. As if he’d seen the devil himself.
Oh yeah.
*
They fall asleep together on Chris’s bunk. Chris dreams of Christmas, of church, of his mother coming around the corner and finding him with a cigarette in his hand. He wakes with Toby wrapped tightly around him, as if it’s the very last time they’ll ever be together like this -- as if, somehow, he knows. Chris lies there and breathes, in and out, in and out, absorbing the heat rising from Toby’s body. He runs his hand over that body, because he can, because he earned the right to. Because Toby is his.
There’s something utterly compelling about the way Chris sees Toby as his right - most of the credit is due to Chris Meloni who played the character with such intent - but a lot of it is due to the writing - both here and in the show - of someone who is the centre of his own universe and yet still capable of loving and being selfless. It’s tough for a writer to take on an intimate POV of someone so twisted, especially with the kind of depth this story is going for, but if you’re looking for an example of how to do it, Dori really *gets* it here.
Fuck guilt. There’s a door in his brain, and he shuts it, slams it hard, walls it up. Childhood memories don’t mean shit now, and Schillinger’s son gets no sympathy. Little Andrew is no more than a ghostly dream, vague like the church in Christmas candlelight, a pawn played, an obstacle removed. All that matters is this. Toby’s skin is warm beneath his hands, his heart is still beating. It’s all they have. All there is.
Toby is awake now, Chris can sense it. He turns his face into Toby’s neck. With his eyes closed, it’s still night; the day hasn’t come.
“I’m responsible for Andrew’s death, Chris,” Toby says quietly. “So are you.”
“Yeah?”
“I have to find a way to make up for that. So do you.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Toby extricates himself from Chris’s arms, sits up, throws his legs over the side of the bed. Chris lets his hand fall across Toby’s naked hip just as the lights come on.
“I’m serious, Chris.”
“So am I. Fuck that.”
Toby pushes his hand away, and rises. “No, fuck you.”
It’s an argument they’ve had a dozen times, will probably have a dozen more,
And probably had repeatedly during lockdown. As much as we’d like to believe they did nothing but boink each other stupid during this time, the reality is they probably argued plenty.
Hmmmm… there’s a story in that…
and Chris isn’t interested in it right now. Instead, he crosses his arms beneath his head and simply watches Toby, the way he frowns, the way his hands flex into fists, the way anger colors his skin. There’s a thrill in it, knowing they will fight again, in this war that is never won; Toby never stays down for long. It’s one of the things Chris loves about him. A battle between them will never have a predictable outcome.
“You love me, Toby.”
“That’s the point.” Toby sighs. “He’s not going to leave us alone.” He pulls on his shirt from the night before and moves to stand in front of the glass wall, looking out into the quad.
“It don’t matter,” Chris says again. He gets up too, and moves behind Toby, leaning one arm on his shoulder. Together they stand there, side by side, gazing out at Emerald City. Their battlefield, littered with bodies. “Those fucks out there? They don’t mean a goddamn thing, Toby. Nothin’ matters but you and me.”
LOVE that visual.
Toby turns to look at him, silent, his eyes filled with pain. Chris leans over, kisses him, and remembers the taste of snow.
And if that imagery doesn’t blow you away you are dead, dead I say! The idea that Toby is snow, something pure that disintegrates on Chris’s tongue is gorgeous enough, but that Chris kisses him anyway and lives with the regret - or the sin - is heartbreaking. And why does Chris do it? Because it’s what he does, because it’s something he can do for Toby, because he’s the freaking scorpion. There’s something so inevitable about the fall of Chris and the tragedy of this relationship that you just want to cry from the moment they hook up. Have I mentioned this is my favourite pairing EVER?
Lastly, a comment from ultraviolet730:
Of course, as we know, snow really isn't pure. And some people say you should never taste it.
Which is such a perfect note to end on. This is Chris’s point of view - and it’s easy to see that in Chris’s eyes, Toby is pure, the innocent that is corrupted by Chris’s touch. And yet, Toby’s clearly not so innocent. He adapts to life in Oz *very* quickly. He kills, he lies, he fucks, he manipulates, he betrays. And he wasn’t so innocent to begin with - he came from a different world but he was a drunk who ran over a child. He’s the master of his doom and when he’s honest with himself he knows it (and Sister Peter smartly makes him face up to it). Maybe this is the real danger? Equating ignorance with innocence. One would hardly argue that one of Chris’s flaws is underestimating Toby.
So much to think about from such a profound story. It’s been an absolute pleasure to go through it again and share some thoughts. Check out callmerizzo's fic at Strange Bedfellows.