Carnal Sacraments

“Layered with philosophical elements, fascinating descriptions, and a clear focus on character overall, Brass's . . . work is one of the most unusual novels I've read in years,” Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco.

“I would definitely recommend this book to readers who get tired of reading erotic homosexual stories and would like to try this sensual book,”

Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society.

"Perry Brass has created a page-turning thriller that takes the reader on one helluva roller coaster ride, and oh, the places you’ll go!”

White Crane Journal. 

“Unusual and unpredictable.”

Mandate Magazine. 

Carnal Sacraments, A Historical Novel of the Future

Here is the glimmer of the glimmer of an idea: a man who is kept young and alive by the job he has, and how he struggles to stay that way. It was going to be our over-worked, 24/7 lives now, telescoped into the future, into the year 2075. And so, like in any novel getting born, a series of images and feelings, just raw feelings, came to me. Then characters, situations, plot—and the the life itself of the book. That thing that makes a book come alive—action, all sorts of actions, connecting human feelings to that most important of all questions in fiction: What comes next?

No one would know his real age. Or how he felt inside. Or what he had to do to stay the way he was.
 

Second Printing:

Print Length: 316 pages
Publisher: Belhue Press (March 17, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Original Edition:
​ISBN 978-1-892149-05-3
Price: $16.95, 232 pages
​Pub date: June, 2007  

An Excerpt from Carnal Sacraments, A Historical Novel of the Future, A Novel by Perry Brass

   [From Chapter Five: Jeffrey Cooper, a executive design star living in Germany in the last quarter of the 21st Century, has been attacked in the woods by gang of neo-Nazi kids. John van der Meer, a stranger who drove him to the forest, re-appears after taking a naked nocturnal run, and finds Jeffrey badly beaten up and shaken.]

   Then everything stopped. Dead quiet. He looked up into the eerie moonlight and saw John
return, covered with sweat, still naked except for his running shoes.

   The ringleader and John exchanged wary glances, then the ringleader shook his head and he
and his boys vanished in a sooty blur of curses and screams down the road and into the trees.

   John, looking concerned, approached Jeffrey.
   “Scheisse. You got beat up. It’s really bad. That kid’s name is Pik, like Pete. He and his boys
and I have a truce, so they don’t screw with me—not much, anyway.” John shook his head.

“Your fucking luck, friend! They’re out tonight. I was afraid this would happen to you, if you

didn’t move fast enough.”

Jeffrey remained balled-up on the ground. His clothes were ripped and he was in unholy pain,

in an undiscovered world: the corrupt underside of the forest he loved. He reached out, clasping

John’s bare white legs, touching his muscles, the warm veins, his cool sweat.

John crouched, touching him softly on the forehead.

“Seems like you can use a friend. You’re my friend, right?”

Jeffrey nodded. If he’d ever needed help, it was now.

“Let me help you up.”

He felt very unsteady. Everything hurt. “Please,” he begged. “Give me a minute.”

“There may be more kids,” John warned. “They have lots of friends, and I mean real nuts.

Anything goes.”

“Bitte.”

“O.K.”

John crouched lower, hugging him. He seemed made out of moonlight itself. Nothing had

ever appeared so beautiful to Jeffrey, or possessed such tenderness and kindness. He put his

head on John’s wet chest, feeling John’s heartbeat and more peace than he’d had in his entire

life.

“We must get up.”

John helped Jeffrey rise and they went to John’s car. He unlocked it with a key from his shoe,

and the two of them got in.

“You want to come to my place?” he asked. “I don’t live far away. Not exactly fancy, but it’s

yours for the night.”

“That would be good,” Jeffrey said.

John’s small stone house was only a short drive from the forest, with a stream running behind

it so that it looked as if it were on a tiny island.

“In the old days it was a mill,” John explained as he parked his car. They walked in—John

still naked and Jeffrey in his torn clothes—and John lit kerosene lamps and candles.

“I have no electricity but plenty of water, and I can get wood from the forest, stuff that falls

from the trees. Want something to eat or drink? How ‘bout a beer?”

The beer was warm but good. There were pictures in bright colors with extremely bold

figures and designs in every room, even painted on the bare walls. They flickered in the lantern

and candlelight, like old silent movies or medieval illuminations, with a vitality of their own.

John took off his shoes and put on a pair of white briefs. Jeffrey felt ashamed of his shredded

clothes, and John could sense it. He handed him a loose white peasant’s shirt that fell to Jeffrey’s

knees, and Jeffrey stripped off everything but his underwear and put that on. John invited

Jeffrey to make himself comfortable; then he pointed out some of the pictures.

“That’s Adam, making Eve. I think Adam wanted to make Eve himself, so he would be

complete. God showed him how to do it. I think we all want to be complete. The problem is

how to do it.”

Jeffrey gazed at the pictures in the soft glowing light. What were they? He thought of Picasso,

Blake, Giotto; Gauguin, Matisse—all of them rolled into God’s own breath. The paintings

seemed not only self-taught but self-generated. As if in their brilliant, free, yet startlingly lucid

forms they had created themselves, like a breath-taking piece of music that had always been

there, only waiting for the composer to jot it down.

But from where did all of this come?

“And that over there,” John went on, smiling handsomely, “is Jacob. He’s dreaming of the

angel, and then wrestling with him. I like to wrestle, touching a man like that.”

Jeffrey looked at him.


“You do?”

“Yes. It’s a pure kind of touching. I like that. See, I’m seeking something different. I call it the

‘pure’ image. An image greater than itself—it’s ‘real’ self. If you look at things directly, what do

they mean? Nothing, really. But somewhere there is the pure image, the image that is greater than

the ‘real’ thing is. You know it when you see it.”

Jeffrey drank in his words.

“So, if it’s pure, we’ll all recognize it?” Jeffrey suggested.

“Yes!” John shouted. “You understand me. I’m so glad.”

Jeffrey went on, puzzled by this strange, gifted man.

“Are you saying that because we really recognize it inside, this image—this ‘pure’ image—that

it’s available to us, already a part of us—and simply only has various forms?”

John smiled greedily.

“Yes! I’m thrilled that you understand this.”

Jeffrey looked at him; John’s childlike glee at this morsel of understanding Jeffrey offered

was touching but close to embarrassing. Jeffrey in his world rarely touched such innocence of

feelings, with all of its generosity and pent-up force. He looked away from John, knowing he

had to lay some of his grounded sense and cynicism aside.

Taking a candle, he peered closer at the pictures. Cascading ribbons of rainbows fell from

flocks of vividly colored birds, naked children sat with wolves, and groups of naive but saintly-

looking people were humbly worshipping simple field animals.

“You are a real artist,” Jeffrey announced. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

John smiled incandescently.

“Thank you, sir.”

Jeffrey nodded.

“Why did you attack me?”


The question flew out of Jeffrey; there was nothing to hold it back anymore. He had wanted

some nicely stitched plan to confront the man, and now he was the one who felt confronted,

both by John’s amazing innocence of feelings and his own feeling that his normal carapace of

control was having a hard time staying up against any possibility of salvation. Because he felt

truly beautiful, and alive, simply being in John van der Meer’s presence. The golden lantern

light, flickering candles, and reflected colors from his paintings made John glow like a Byzantine

icon, passionate to his core and powerful. Jeffrey felt there must be nothing false between them,

and that he would forgive John anything.

John’s eyes flashed for an instant, then they appeared calm, even resigned.

“Attack?”

“At the pubtran platform. Hauptwache, a few days ago.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

John sank onto a mattress covered by a sheet on the floor. He looked up at Jeffrey.

“You’re sure it was you?”

Jeffrey nodded. “You hit me, then smiled at me. Then hit me again.”

John looked down at his hands. His voice became strained.

“I don’t know. I must have seen something in you that upset me.”

“What?”

“I don’t know!” he exclaimed. “Gott! Everything gets knotted up in me. I’m crazy, see?” He

tried to calm himself, but was shaking. “I’m sorry.”

Jeffrey nodded. “I see.”

He couldn’t actually, but he wanted to. He turned to the paintings again, so unflinching in their

intensity. He felt truly dismantled by their honesty and intense emotional nakedness.

“I was married,” John explained. “With the kind of ‘successful’ life somebody like you has.”


Jeffrey turned to him, their eyes meeting. It was easy for people to think Jeffrey had a

“successful” life; he was only too aware of that.

“I fell apart,” John explained. “Everything was taken away from me. Or maybe I just couldn’t

hold on to it anymore.”

Only listening, Jeffrey nodded.

“I had a good job,” John went on. “In the city, selling things to people I’d never see, in China.

I was in step with everything, but really never stepped on anybody. I just did like they wanted

me to, and hid any questions I had until they stopped being questions.”

Jeffrey smiled. He was beginning to understand.

“One day—on the pubtran—I’m not sure how it happened, but inside I became a stranger to

everything including myself. It was this horrible al—”

John hesitated.

“Alienation?” Jeffrey offered.

“Yes! I knew it that moment; I couldn’t hide it from myself. I was the Dutchman who never

comes home. He’s lost and knows it. Something parted inside me and I knew it. It was like I had

lost the thing that allows you to go on with the lies and the forms, all the appearances. The pain

felt unbearable. I was on the edge of being valuable, a huge ‘asset’ to the system; they were

beginning to offer me everything and I could not hold on to it anymore. My wife was English,

very pretty, nice. We were one of those bright couples you see in newspapers. We didn’t have a

‘relationship,’ we had a romantic advertisement for a relationship. One of those full-color

pictures that offer—”

“‘Escape’?” Jeffrey suggested.

“Yes, that’s it! ‘Escape.’ But how do I escape this? She couldn’t see me at all. I mean, I really

smiled, kept smiling like in those newspaper pictures; and we had two wonderful kids and I

thought that if I didn’t do something to get myself out of it, I’d kill all of them, and then myself.”


He paused, looking guiltily at Jeffrey.

“Do you think I’m nuts?”

Jeffrey shook his head, then sat down with John on the mattress. It was so warm that he took

off the loose peasant’s shirt. He felt somewhat cooler, yet could feel warmth streaming from

John’s pale flesh hardly more than a breath away from him. He’d never felt so close to someone.

He started shaking, with his sweat evaporating in the body-heated air between them.

John drank more of the beer.

“I put myself in a hospital; they told me I was schizophrenic, or some crap like that. They

couldn’t figure it out. Like one day I was a regular person and the next—they were going to

chemicalize my brain. Numb it, operate on it. A doctor came in and told me how nice I was, how

pleased he was to be ‘working’ with me. He gave me a distant, sugary smile, then left. So I had

to figure things out for myself. What to do. How to preserve myself. How to fool the people I

had to fool.”

Jeffrey’s eyes widened.

“The truth was,” John went on, “I’d come to this moment, this awakening, and for the first

time I found myself to be truly alive. It was wonderful, amazing. I saw that most other people

weren’t alive. They were trapped in their own deadness, no matter how ‘rewarding’ it was. They

were on this constant . . .”

His forefinger, pointing up, described a continuous circle, like a merry-go-round. Jeffrey

watched, mesmerized. Their eyes met again.

“It was like a religious awakening, but I couldn’t find anyplace in it for God. I didn’t need

God, not everybody else’s God, the one that the system works with, one way or another. I

needed religion, but I had to figure out where God stood in it. Later I painted these stories, made

them mine, because I needed stories of my own. We all do, I’m sure of that. But at that moment,

God, big, powerful, my own God, wasn’t in it. Just the truth that I was alive, and they were

going to kill that living part of me.


“So with some effort I tried to be normal again. I fooled them and got out of the hospital with

my brain intact, and went back to my wife, Cynthia. Isn’t that a proper-enough English name,

Cynthia? But there was no way I could reach her. She had a good job and nice friends in her

world. She tried to bury me in all her English busyness and drag me back with her into the

system, so everyone would forget that anything had happened. She’d say, ‘You’ll get better,

John. You will, darling!’ and smile just like that dreadful doctor in the hospital. So I had to fool

her too. I felt like shit. I couldn’t even talk to my kids, they were brainwashed in their private

school already.”

“What did you do?”

“I went back to work and Cynthia went back to England for a while, to her wealthy parents.

Then she came back to me. What else could she do? I was the father of her kids and she was

very traditional. She made me feel that I had no choice. I mean, I wanted to work it out; you

have no idea. But I realized I did have a choice. I could stay with her, inside a certain line tightly

drawn around myself, and not fall apart too much if I held on. But—”

He stopped himself.

“But what?” Jeffrey asked.

“I’d die. Simple as that: I’d never have a moment of being alive. I’d just have everything that

keeps you from being alive. Games. Entertainment. Too many things that do that.”

Jeffrey’s eyes narrowed.

“So you attacked me instead?”

“No. It wasn’t that, I swear!”

John ran his hand through Jeffrey’s hair again, then touched him on the shoulder and

suddenly kissed him on the neck.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” he said crying. “I knew who you were when I asked you into my

car. I recognized you. The truth is at the pubtran at Hauptwache, I wanted to warn you. I needed

to.”

     “Warn me about what?”

     “You’re in danger. Something is going to get you.”

     “You attacked me to tell me that?”

     “There was no other way to do it. I couldn’t approach you. Why would you listen to me? Do

you know what I’m saying?”

     “No, I don’t.”

     “There was no other way to reach you. You were so distant.”

     “I was trying to keep from going crazy in the crowd. You just couldn’t see that.”

     “I saw it. And I could see you were struggling to reach someplace I’d—” he paused, then said

—“already reached. But the only way I could get you there was to hit you. I’m sorry. It was

stupid.”

     Jeffrey smiled. The man was crazy, but at least somehow he’d seen something Jeffrey was

attempting to conceal even from himself. It was something that could be fatal; he tried to explain

it.

     “I was trying to be calm. I have a hard time with stress, John. Much harder that I let on. All

those signs are right. Stress is a killer.”

     “Sure, you can die of stress; I almost did. The stress of not being yourself, of hiding, of trying

to fool too many people. I could see all of that in you. Our meeting wasn’t accidental, I swear to

you. You were so handsome, beautifully dressed, trying to be safe in a guarded way, alone in

yourself. I hated watching it.”

     “I’m not that,” Jeffrey argued. “I wish I were.”

     John nodded knowingly.

     “No. You haven’t found what’s inside you yet. That’s why I hit you. I could have killed you,

really. I needed to reach you; I mean that. What the hell else could I do?”

“I don’t know,” Jeffrey answered softly. “But if you did reach me, what else would you want

to do?”

John licked his lips. His eyes seemed to Jeffrey as golden as the light.

“What else?”

“Yes, what?”

“God. I can’t believe you asked that.”

He put his hands firmly on Jeffrey’s bare shoulders, letting his lips graze Jeffrey’s neck as he

whispered:

“Wrestle with you.”

[From Chapter Five:Jeffrey Cooper, a executive design star living in Germany in the last quarter of the 21st Century, has been attacked in the woods by gang of neo-Nazi kids. John van der Meer, a stranger who drove him to the forest, re-appears after taking a naked nocturnal run, and finds Jeffrey badly beaten up and shaken.]

An Excerpt from Carnal Sacraments, A Historical Novel of the Future.

Carnal Sacraments

 A white-knuckle suspense story set in the year 2075, the distant yet close-enough future, when constant corporate + government surveillance is Standard Operating Procedure. Endless war and endless “security” punch their way through individual lives. And your job level will determine exactly if and how you live and die. In a glittering city in a very internationalized Germany, Jeffrey Cooper, Alabama-born design star, has made a pact with the Devil himself. No matter what age he is, the mega-Corporation running the world will keep him looking movie-star young and handsome. Cooper has left his past, his history, and heart behind. But they will catch up with him when he meets a handsome young Dutchman who offers him his real soul back—but with even a higher price than the Corporation is making him pay. 
A perfect tale for the age of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency, and a world business culture in which many gay men have taken key roles and given up so much of themselves in return. Carnal Sacraments is a book you won’t put down until the very end. 
This new edition has a Foreword by the author.