CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great end to the chapter! I am glad Ben is making amends. I am also glad Swann stood up for himself. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon! I would have read sooner but I didn’t realise that you posted.
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Bedrooms and Bath Houses
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Chapter Sixteen
Junior year at Saint Francis, Douglass Merrin thought he would find solace in the choir.
If you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything!
Up until eighth grade he had been part of a wonderful choir. He had even soloed in church. Douglass Merrin was thrilled by the sound of his own voice, surprised by the notes it could hit, still thin and high when he wished it. Amazed by the waves he rode on when his voice joined the voices of others.
Now, as an adult, he realized that the cigarettes, along with the smoking of pot and other drugs had put a limit on the winged voice he’d once had and, as he filled another bowl and looked at Michael Buren, curled sleeping naked and brown, compact and beautiful beside him, he could not reminisce without missing those days when he was one of the only boys in the choir at Christ the King.
Once a year the choir of Christ the King joined all the other parochial schools choirs in town and became the Honors Choir who gave, as he remembered, an amazing one night performance. He always wished they’d done it more. That last year he pretended to be a bass so he could sing with Owen and the other boys, and he always regretted being separated from his own choir, all alto girls, his natural voice range, and among them the soft eyed, long eyed lashed boy, Andy. He didn’t understand much about his feelings then, just that he would have preferred the company of his girls and the gentle Andy to Owen and the other boys he practiced with all day. The lesson he learned: always be yourself.
Saint Francis’s choir was nothing like the glorious honors choir he had known. It was full of croaking not quite basses and unsatisfying tenors and the music the director chose was bad. When he’d thought of joining, Swann had said, “You’;ll be disappointed.” And he was. At the end of his sophomore year he had talked to Mr. Miller, the smallish, dark haired music teacher who looked a lot like a student.
“You know, Doug, I’m actually trying to do some things with the choir, make it better, press it a little further,” he said. “You might be surprised by what you see if you stick with us.”
The Doug of sophomore year, high on a relationship with Joe, and protected by his cousin, surrounded with the family of cousin’s friends, might have turned a deaf ear to that, but the Doug of junior year, who had none of that, who found life suddenly lonely and lacking in point, was willing to enter into Max Miller’s quest for a better choir.
Now classical music came bursting out of Max Miller’s classroom, and when he wasn’t going on, at great depth, about the wonder of Brahms or Beethoven, or giving lectures on Gregorian and Byzantine chant, there was singing, and more and more this is what the choir lessons were as well.
“And now let’s try a little of that.”
“A little of what?” Shomari Jackson said.
“A little Gregorian chant.”
“I don’t think we can do that,” Vinnie shook his head.
“If those tenth century monks could do it. You can do it.”
And the odd thing was, when the music became more challenging, more boys came into the choir. Max went to Abbot Prynne with a request, and before the end of the month, there were boys from the K through 8 school and girls from Saint Anne’s and the choir began to sound something like a choir should.
One night, after dinner, when Max should have been well home, and all members of the choir as well, they came quiet as mice into the darkened chapel and stood at the altar before the retrochoir, and as the monks were finishing Compline, the boys burst out, singing
All praise to You, my God, this night,
For all the blessings of the light.
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath the shelter of Your wings!
It was Thomas Tallis, and they’d practiced for three weeks along with much of his canon, The joy, the soaring power he hadn’t experienced for years, was back. He thrilled at their voices reaching the ceiling and coming back to them. The cynical Doug was shaken at the joy in the faces of the monks as they finished, the desire to clap that those often austere men refrained from.
From then on, it didn’t seem pathetic that he was always in Max Miller’s classroom. There was music to be performed, and Max always had something to teach.
“Thomas Tallis was a devout Catholic, and he wrote music for the Church,” Max said, “but then when Henry the Eight made the Church of England separate from the Catholic Church, he had to start writing his music in a slightly different way, and then when Henry died and his son Edward, a real Puritan, came to the throne, he had to change it again, make it completely in English make it straightforward as possible. Make good music, but keep his head. Literally. When Edward died, Mary became Queen and it was Latin again, and then the happy medium with Queen Elizabeth. Through all these reigns he…glorified God and was true to himself, but kept his head by adapting.”
Kept his head by adapting, were the words Doug heard, and ket those I nthe back of his mind.
Sometimes it was Doug, Shomari and Vince who were in the room singing and listening to music with Mr. Miller, and sometimes it was just Doug. If they worked till late, late for students, seven or eight at night, Max would bring food from the Strip or from the town he lived in, forty five minutes away.
“What is this?” Doug said.
“You don’t like it?”
“I like a lot, but I’ve never had it.”
“It’s bulgogi.”
“Bulgogi?”
“Korean beef over rice, with a little bit of vegetables.”
“It’s sweet. A little bit tangy. A little bit soy…soyeee. Not like sweet and sour, but…ummm.” Doug frowned.
“Umami,” Max said. “That earthy taste, kind of smoky, savory, that you get in Asian food. It’s called umami.”
“Umami,” Doug repeated, nodding his head.
“The soy sauce is different.”
“That’s because it’s not soy sauce. Not quite,” Max said.
“It’s Ponzu sauce.”
“Ponzu.”
Doug said, “I like it. “It’s soy sauce, but more sour, more… funky.”
Max laughed and nodded, “It’s definitely funky.”
Once Max took some of them to an Indian restaurant on the Calverton Strip and coached the boys through what they might like.
“Swann always liked Indian,” Doug remembered, “but he never told me what it was he liked.”
“You can’t go wrong on the butter chicken,” Max said. “And the naan. You’ll want plenty of naan, and to try the tandoor chicken.”
Doug went with that and fell in love with a new food, and while he was scooping butter chicken onto naan and rubbing the bread in the sauce, Max said, “Since you’re from Chicago, you could get your family to take you up and down Devon Avenue.”
“Devon?”
“Yes, that’s Little India and you can eat Indian food to your heart’s content. All sorts of food, really.”
Doug did not imagine his parents taking him anywhere, but Swann and Chris, Swann and his other friends, maybe. Definitely.
But the nights Doug loved most were when he had Mr. Miller to himself, when the two of them stayed in the little office off of his classroom. He would get his miserable dinner in the main hall, and sometimes he would stay and eat it. But eventually he was able to leave the hall with it. If Mr. Miller was in his classroom, then he would go to his office and they would listen to music, and Mr. Miller would make strong coffee and they would talk about the future, because the present was, even with music class, not very bearable.
“You thought about schools?”
“Now you sound like my father.”
“Ouch! I don’t mean to. And I wasn’t even doing it in a way to pressure you. I was just curious.”
Doug shook his head.
“I can’t imagine more… of this.”
Now Max shook his head.
“It won’t be more of this. It will be grown ups. And you will be in a grown up world with other curious people. You can stretch yourself.”
“I don’t really kow what I’d do.”
“Douglass, you’re brilliant.”
Doug’s grades weren’t great, but Doug wasn’t someone who needed to be told he was smart, and he also wasn’t someone who believed in false modesty. He merely nodded.
“Doug?” Max asked him.
“Yes.”
“I may be out of line for asking this, but are you gay?”
It was out of line, and jarring, and Doug wasn’t sure how to answer, but Max pressed on.
“Because I am. I had wondered? It must be hard here. I was asking because you’re different and different boys can be,” Max frowned, “different.”
Douglass laughed now and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
Max said, “You’re not the only one. Not at Saint Francis. There are others.”
“I know,” Doug said.
“Oh!”
“I had a boyfriend,” he said. “And my cousin had a boyfriend. A few.”
“Your cousin was Swann Portis?”
“Yes.”
“Bright guy. Yes, well, you’re a bright guy too.”
“They’re all gone,” Doug said. “Gone and left me here.”
“Even the boyfriend?” Max said, pushing away the beginning of Doug’s self pity.
Doug nodded.
“Do you miss sex with him?”
Again, Doug was surprised by the question, but he answered, “Yes.”
Max nodded and sank low in his chair. His foot almost touched Doug’s.
“I understand,” he said.
So Doug said, “Is it hard? For you to be at this school? Or are we just all a bunch of little kids to you?”
“I’m only twenty-four,” Max Miller said, sitting up again and pushing up his glasses.
“You all don’t seem like kids to me at all.”
Junior year at Saint Francis, Douglass Merrin thought he would find solace in the choir.
If you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything!
Up until eighth grade he had been part of a wonderful choir. He had even soloed in church. Douglass Merrin was thrilled by the sound of his own voice, surprised by the notes it could hit, still thin and high when he wished it. Amazed by the waves he rode on when his voice joined the voices of others.
Now, as an adult, he realized that the cigarettes, along with the smoking of pot and other drugs had put a limit on the winged voice he’d once had and, as he filled another bowl and looked at Michael Buren, curled sleeping naked and brown, compact and beautiful beside him, he could not reminisce without missing those days when he was one of the only boys in the choir at Christ the King.
Once a year the choir of Christ the King joined all the other parochial schools choirs in town and became the Honors Choir who gave, as he remembered, an amazing one night performance. He always wished they’d done it more. That last year he pretended to be a bass so he could sing with Owen and the other boys, and he always regretted being separated from his own choir, all alto girls, his natural voice range, and among them the soft eyed, long eyed lashed boy, Andy. He didn’t understand much about his feelings then, just that he would have preferred the company of his girls and the gentle Andy to Owen and the other boys he practiced with all day. The lesson he learned: always be yourself.
Saint Francis’s choir was nothing like the glorious honors choir he had known. It was full of croaking not quite basses and unsatisfying tenors and the music the director chose was bad. When he’d thought of joining, Swann had said, “You’;ll be disappointed.” And he was. At the end of his sophomore year he had talked to Mr. Miller, the smallish, dark haired music teacher who looked a lot like a student.
“You know, Doug, I’m actually trying to do some things with the choir, make it better, press it a little further,” he said. “You might be surprised by what you see if you stick with us.”
The Doug of sophomore year, high on a relationship with Joe, and protected by his cousin, surrounded with the family of cousin’s friends, might have turned a deaf ear to that, but the Doug of junior year, who had none of that, who found life suddenly lonely and lacking in point, was willing to enter into Max Miller’s quest for a better choir.
Now classical music came bursting out of Max Miller’s classroom, and when he wasn’t going on, at great depth, about the wonder of Brahms or Beethoven, or giving lectures on Gregorian and Byzantine chant, there was singing, and more and more this is what the choir lessons were as well.
“And now let’s try a little of that.”
“A little of what?” Shomari Jackson said.
“A little Gregorian chant.”
“I don’t think we can do that,” Vinnie shook his head.
“If those tenth century monks could do it. You can do it.”
And the odd thing was, when the music became more challenging, more boys came into the choir. Max went to Abbot Prynne with a request, and before the end of the month, there were boys from the K through 8 school and girls from Saint Anne’s and the choir began to sound something like a choir should.
One night, after dinner, when Max should have been well home, and all members of the choir as well, they came quiet as mice into the darkened chapel and stood at the altar before the retrochoir, and as the monks were finishing Compline, the boys burst out, singing
All praise to You, my God, this night,
For all the blessings of the light.
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath the shelter of Your wings!
It was Thomas Tallis, and they’d practiced for three weeks along with much of his canon, The joy, the soaring power he hadn’t experienced for years, was back. He thrilled at their voices reaching the ceiling and coming back to them. The cynical Doug was shaken at the joy in the faces of the monks as they finished, the desire to clap that those often austere men refrained from.
From then on, it didn’t seem pathetic that he was always in Max Miller’s classroom. There was music to be performed, and Max always had something to teach.
“Thomas Tallis was a devout Catholic, and he wrote music for the Church,” Max said, “but then when Henry the Eight made the Church of England separate from the Catholic Church, he had to start writing his music in a slightly different way, and then when Henry died and his son Edward, a real Puritan, came to the throne, he had to change it again, make it completely in English make it straightforward as possible. Make good music, but keep his head. Literally. When Edward died, Mary became Queen and it was Latin again, and then the happy medium with Queen Elizabeth. Through all these reigns he…glorified God and was true to himself, but kept his head by adapting.”
Kept his head by adapting, were the words Doug heard, and ket those I nthe back of his mind.
Sometimes it was Doug, Shomari and Vince who were in the room singing and listening to music with Mr. Miller, and sometimes it was just Doug. If they worked till late, late for students, seven or eight at night, Max would bring food from the Strip or from the town he lived in, forty five minutes away.
“What is this?” Doug said.
“You don’t like it?”
“I like a lot, but I’ve never had it.”
“It’s bulgogi.”
“Bulgogi?”
“Korean beef over rice, with a little bit of vegetables.”
“It’s sweet. A little bit tangy. A little bit soy…soyeee. Not like sweet and sour, but…ummm.” Doug frowned.
“Umami,” Max said. “That earthy taste, kind of smoky, savory, that you get in Asian food. It’s called umami.”
“Umami,” Doug repeated, nodding his head.
“The soy sauce is different.”
“That’s because it’s not soy sauce. Not quite,” Max said.
“It’s Ponzu sauce.”
“Ponzu.”
Doug said, “I like it. “It’s soy sauce, but more sour, more… funky.”
Max laughed and nodded, “It’s definitely funky.”
Once Max took some of them to an Indian restaurant on the Calverton Strip and coached the boys through what they might like.
“Swann always liked Indian,” Doug remembered, “but he never told me what it was he liked.”
“You can’t go wrong on the butter chicken,” Max said. “And the naan. You’ll want plenty of naan, and to try the tandoor chicken.”
Doug went with that and fell in love with a new food, and while he was scooping butter chicken onto naan and rubbing the bread in the sauce, Max said, “Since you’re from Chicago, you could get your family to take you up and down Devon Avenue.”
“Devon?”
“Yes, that’s Little India and you can eat Indian food to your heart’s content. All sorts of food, really.”
Doug did not imagine his parents taking him anywhere, but Swann and Chris, Swann and his other friends, maybe. Definitely.
But the nights Doug loved most were when he had Mr. Miller to himself, when the two of them stayed in the little office off of his classroom. He would get his miserable dinner in the main hall, and sometimes he would stay and eat it. But eventually he was able to leave the hall with it. If Mr. Miller was in his classroom, then he would go to his office and they would listen to music, and Mr. Miller would make strong coffee and they would talk about the future, because the present was, even with music class, not very bearable.
“You thought about schools?”
“Now you sound like my father.”
“Ouch! I don’t mean to. And I wasn’t even doing it in a way to pressure you. I was just curious.”
Doug shook his head.
“I can’t imagine more… of this.”
Now Max shook his head.
“It won’t be more of this. It will be grown ups. And you will be in a grown up world with other curious people. You can stretch yourself.”
“I don’t really kow what I’d do.”
“Douglass, you’re brilliant.”
Doug’s grades weren’t great, but Doug wasn’t someone who needed to be told he was smart, and he also wasn’t someone who believed in false modesty. He merely nodded.
“Doug?” Max asked him.
“Yes.”
“I may be out of line for asking this, but are you gay?”
It was out of line, and jarring, and Doug wasn’t sure how to answer, but Max pressed on.
“Because I am. I had wondered? It must be hard here. I was asking because you’re different and different boys can be,” Max frowned, “different.”
Douglass laughed now and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
Max said, “You’re not the only one. Not at Saint Francis. There are others.”
“I know,” Doug said.
“Oh!”
“I had a boyfriend,” he said. “And my cousin had a boyfriend. A few.”
“Your cousin was Swann Portis?”
“Yes.”
“Bright guy. Yes, well, you’re a bright guy too.”
“They’re all gone,” Doug said. “Gone and left me here.”
“Even the boyfriend?” Max said, pushing away the beginning of Doug’s self pity.
Doug nodded.
“Do you miss sex with him?”
Again, Doug was surprised by the question, but he answered, “Yes.”
Max nodded and sank low in his chair. His foot almost touched Doug’s.
“I understand,” he said.
So Doug said, “Is it hard? For you to be at this school? Or are we just all a bunch of little kids to you?”
“I’m only twenty-four,” Max Miller said, sitting up again and pushing up his glasses.
“You all don’t seem like kids to me at all.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great start to the chapter! I was happy to read so much more of Doug in this portion. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
This chapter and more of Doug's story have been long coming.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
One Thursday, it was definitely a Thursday, Mr. Miller said after practice, “Get cleaned up, we’re going to dinner.”
“Indian? Thai?”
“Wherever you want.”
“Actually, pizza, then.”
“Actually pizza sounds great,” Max said.
Upstairs in the dorms, Doug showered and changed and got his bookbag. It was always with him, and then he met Max, and as the evening was drawing on, they got in his car and drove north, out of Calverton, not onto the Strip, and for a moment Doug was dismayed and then Max said, “we’re going to Monon. You should see my place. Is that alright?”
“Yeah,” Doug relaxed. “Yeah, that’s great.”
Part of him thought how he should have actually told people where he was going, just in case Max Miller killed him. Of course, Max didn’t seem like the type, but then the type never did, and Douglass Merrin assessed the matter. Wasn’t he that vulnerable, all alone teen type that could get abducted?
But even as he thought it, Max’s hand was on his knee, and even as he thought it Doug realized ever since their conversation in the classroom, he’d wanted it there. He opened his legs a little more, and Max’s right hand lazily fell between his legs. His loins twitched, and Doug was getting hard. He took his right hand and slipped it between Max’s legs, and neither of them looked at the other as Max drove.
He drove right into town, into what, by the early night, seemed like a less than amazing neighborhood of sidewalkness streets and one storey white houses. They went right into the house, and in the darkened living room, with the curtains still opened, Max Miller got on his knees and opened Doug’s jeans, pulled down his briefs, and cupping his ass, began to suck him.
Doug swayed in the silent beginning of sex, only the noises of Max’s sucking and groaning interrupting it. He found himself getting harder and harder, large in his teacher’s mouth. There was rustling of clothes and then Max stood up and in the blue light of early evening he was naked, and he undressed Doug who stood before him, and he began to milk his cock as the boy moaned. He reached for something, and now his hand was slick and slippery, and then he pulled Douglass down on top of him, between his legs, and they shuffled together and Doug groaned and he propped himself on his hands and thrust against him. Max turned around, on hands and knees, and guided Doug inside of him, and Doug’s mouth and eyes widened and then, as Max lowered and lowered, together, on the carpeted floor, in the early darkness, they fucked with barely any sound until a startled boy cry came from Doug when he finally came, his penis trapped in Max while he spurted.
He’d almost passed out after the first time. Doug would always wonder how much of him knew what was going to happen and how much of his was a victim, or if victim was even the right word. Certainly the experience wasn’t right. Twenty-four was young, but it was still eight years and a whole college education’s difference. It certainly wasn’t alright for a teacher to ask a student about his sex life, and it certainly wasn’t right for a teacher to take his sixteen year old lonely student home for sex. None of that was right. He couldn’t think of who he’d share this with, but then, there was the thing. Only someone who could not share this would be here. None of that was right.
But fucking Max felt right. The easy access to his hot beautiful body, better formed than Joe, who was just coming out of adolescence, was right. Or at least it felt good. Getting out of that school felt good. How, after they’d done it, Max had taken him into town and they had pizza, and then they’d fucked two more times felt right. The way the seed rocketed up out of his balls and left him sore, the way his cock grew firmer and larger till it ached, and he drove it deep inside of Max as Max groaned under him, felt right. Max’s mouth on him felt right, and so, as Max drove him back home, smelling like sex, still getting hard, still letting Max stroke his cock in the dark, Doug decided that right or wrong, this would go on.
After that it was an established thing. While the rest of life fell apart, Douglass Merrin flung himself into choir, and stayed late in the evenings with Shomari and Vince and sometimes even Mike Buren, who had joined the choir. They toured around the city and around northern Indiana, once even went to Indianapolis. Now and again, when they sang, he could feel his voice match Mike’s, and they looked at each other, the love that had once been between them almost restored.
All things shall perish from under the sky.
Music alone shall live,
Music alone shall live,
Music alone shall live,
Never to die.
They would begin every choir rehearsal like that, and the song was so sad and lonely, and their voices rose and fell with the plaintiveness of it. Doug had a picture of a vast forest, black in the grey light, and the moon was falling from the sky, like a sickle, slowly crashing down, and the sun following, whooshed out as it descended. Then there were stars, then the stars falling one after the other. And after all of this, music still there.
Later, when he was humming the song, Max said, “It’s German.”
“That checks,” Doug said, and Max laughed.
“It’s a folk song,” he said.
“Even the peasants are depressed philosophers in Germany,” Doug said.
Every Thursday, around five o’ clock, Doug would come down to the music room with a bookbag filled with books and clothes and then, just like any student going on a run with the teacher he was apprenticed to, he would follow Mr. Miller to his car, they would climb in, and as the evening set, they would drive to Monon. Somewhere in the middle of the drive, one would unzip the pants of the other and they would stroke each other and then button up in time to get to the house where they would immediately strip and have sex on the living room floor, eventually the bedroom. While Doug lay heaving, on his back Max would get up naked, and go to his record collection, then put on Beethoven or Mozart, Haydn, or an opera. Once he surprised Doug with the Mamas and the Papas. They would sit on the floor or in bed naked for a while, and Max would give him wine, and then they’d dress and go to get dinner. After dinner their was a little sleep, and then fucking for the rest of the night. They woke up early the next morning, naked and splayed across the bed, showered, dressed, and Max brought Doug to school around 7:15. Doug would sneak up through the dormitories and into his room as if he’d been there all night.
As an adult, watching Mike sleep, the early springtime sun shine on his naked body, on his brownish hair, Doug thought, “There’s no way that should have worked.” No one was checking for him. He should never have been able to disappear with a teacher over night. He never wrote any excuses, never really engaged in any subterfuge.
Suddenly he wondered about his uncle, his godfather. Where was Prynne? Strangely absent this whole miserable year. Prynne was never overbearing, but that year he seemed nonexistent. Had he never, not once, on those Thursdays, seen his godchild traipse off at six o’clock in the even with a school teacher, or never knocked on his door and seen he was not there?
“Indian? Thai?”
“Wherever you want.”
“Actually, pizza, then.”
“Actually pizza sounds great,” Max said.
Upstairs in the dorms, Doug showered and changed and got his bookbag. It was always with him, and then he met Max, and as the evening was drawing on, they got in his car and drove north, out of Calverton, not onto the Strip, and for a moment Doug was dismayed and then Max said, “we’re going to Monon. You should see my place. Is that alright?”
“Yeah,” Doug relaxed. “Yeah, that’s great.”
Part of him thought how he should have actually told people where he was going, just in case Max Miller killed him. Of course, Max didn’t seem like the type, but then the type never did, and Douglass Merrin assessed the matter. Wasn’t he that vulnerable, all alone teen type that could get abducted?
But even as he thought it, Max’s hand was on his knee, and even as he thought it Doug realized ever since their conversation in the classroom, he’d wanted it there. He opened his legs a little more, and Max’s right hand lazily fell between his legs. His loins twitched, and Doug was getting hard. He took his right hand and slipped it between Max’s legs, and neither of them looked at the other as Max drove.
He drove right into town, into what, by the early night, seemed like a less than amazing neighborhood of sidewalkness streets and one storey white houses. They went right into the house, and in the darkened living room, with the curtains still opened, Max Miller got on his knees and opened Doug’s jeans, pulled down his briefs, and cupping his ass, began to suck him.
Doug swayed in the silent beginning of sex, only the noises of Max’s sucking and groaning interrupting it. He found himself getting harder and harder, large in his teacher’s mouth. There was rustling of clothes and then Max stood up and in the blue light of early evening he was naked, and he undressed Doug who stood before him, and he began to milk his cock as the boy moaned. He reached for something, and now his hand was slick and slippery, and then he pulled Douglass down on top of him, between his legs, and they shuffled together and Doug groaned and he propped himself on his hands and thrust against him. Max turned around, on hands and knees, and guided Doug inside of him, and Doug’s mouth and eyes widened and then, as Max lowered and lowered, together, on the carpeted floor, in the early darkness, they fucked with barely any sound until a startled boy cry came from Doug when he finally came, his penis trapped in Max while he spurted.
He’d almost passed out after the first time. Doug would always wonder how much of him knew what was going to happen and how much of his was a victim, or if victim was even the right word. Certainly the experience wasn’t right. Twenty-four was young, but it was still eight years and a whole college education’s difference. It certainly wasn’t alright for a teacher to ask a student about his sex life, and it certainly wasn’t right for a teacher to take his sixteen year old lonely student home for sex. None of that was right. He couldn’t think of who he’d share this with, but then, there was the thing. Only someone who could not share this would be here. None of that was right.
But fucking Max felt right. The easy access to his hot beautiful body, better formed than Joe, who was just coming out of adolescence, was right. Or at least it felt good. Getting out of that school felt good. How, after they’d done it, Max had taken him into town and they had pizza, and then they’d fucked two more times felt right. The way the seed rocketed up out of his balls and left him sore, the way his cock grew firmer and larger till it ached, and he drove it deep inside of Max as Max groaned under him, felt right. Max’s mouth on him felt right, and so, as Max drove him back home, smelling like sex, still getting hard, still letting Max stroke his cock in the dark, Doug decided that right or wrong, this would go on.
After that it was an established thing. While the rest of life fell apart, Douglass Merrin flung himself into choir, and stayed late in the evenings with Shomari and Vince and sometimes even Mike Buren, who had joined the choir. They toured around the city and around northern Indiana, once even went to Indianapolis. Now and again, when they sang, he could feel his voice match Mike’s, and they looked at each other, the love that had once been between them almost restored.
All things shall perish from under the sky.
Music alone shall live,
Music alone shall live,
Music alone shall live,
Never to die.
They would begin every choir rehearsal like that, and the song was so sad and lonely, and their voices rose and fell with the plaintiveness of it. Doug had a picture of a vast forest, black in the grey light, and the moon was falling from the sky, like a sickle, slowly crashing down, and the sun following, whooshed out as it descended. Then there were stars, then the stars falling one after the other. And after all of this, music still there.
Later, when he was humming the song, Max said, “It’s German.”
“That checks,” Doug said, and Max laughed.
“It’s a folk song,” he said.
“Even the peasants are depressed philosophers in Germany,” Doug said.
Every Thursday, around five o’ clock, Doug would come down to the music room with a bookbag filled with books and clothes and then, just like any student going on a run with the teacher he was apprenticed to, he would follow Mr. Miller to his car, they would climb in, and as the evening set, they would drive to Monon. Somewhere in the middle of the drive, one would unzip the pants of the other and they would stroke each other and then button up in time to get to the house where they would immediately strip and have sex on the living room floor, eventually the bedroom. While Doug lay heaving, on his back Max would get up naked, and go to his record collection, then put on Beethoven or Mozart, Haydn, or an opera. Once he surprised Doug with the Mamas and the Papas. They would sit on the floor or in bed naked for a while, and Max would give him wine, and then they’d dress and go to get dinner. After dinner their was a little sleep, and then fucking for the rest of the night. They woke up early the next morning, naked and splayed across the bed, showered, dressed, and Max brought Doug to school around 7:15. Doug would sneak up through the dormitories and into his room as if he’d been there all night.
As an adult, watching Mike sleep, the early springtime sun shine on his naked body, on his brownish hair, Doug thought, “There’s no way that should have worked.” No one was checking for him. He should never have been able to disappear with a teacher over night. He never wrote any excuses, never really engaged in any subterfuge.
Suddenly he wondered about his uncle, his godfather. Where was Prynne? Strangely absent this whole miserable year. Prynne was never overbearing, but that year he seemed nonexistent. Had he never, not once, on those Thursdays, seen his godchild traipse off at six o’clock in the even with a school teacher, or never knocked on his door and seen he was not there?
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Yet more I didn’t know about Doug. I don’t think what Max did was right, I’m glad he can see that now looking back on it. Excellent writing and I look forward to more.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
When Max says: I don't think of you as kids..... We already know something fucked up is about to happen.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Mike, half asleep, turned around and said, “What are you thinking about, babe?”
He loved him, Doug held out his hand, and the little man came to him Well, Mike wasn’t exactly little. He was compact, thin, strong, like something sculpted. Wolf faced except now he was so gentle, he put his soft cheek in Doug’s hand.
“I love it when you get like this,” Mike said.
“Like what?”
Mike didn’t answer.
Mike…
Mike…
Junior year was in its closing stretch when he came down to the music room one Tuesday afternoon, but stopped because he saw Mike going in to see Mr. Miller. Well, that was fine, everyone had something to talk about with their teacher.
But then he waited some time, a long time, and Mike still didn’t come out, and in equal parts exasperation and genuine worry, he went to the door. Doug Merrin pressed his ear to the glass pane with the blind pulled down, and he couldn’t quite make out anything, so he twisted the door, slowly, and there was Mike, his Mike Buren, the Mikey he thought he might love again one day, little virgin Mikey, sitting in Mr. Miller’s chair with his kegs wide apart while their teachers head snaked around moving up and down between his legs. As he watched Mike, head back and mouth opened, little noises escaping his mouth, the anger of the whole year twisted together in his gut and solidified into the witchly plan of the poison party. Even then he planned his exit from Saint Francis.
Is that why?
Yes.
You never told me.
We weren’t talking.
Even now, Since we’ve been together… You never told me.
It hurt. I didn’t know what hurt more, that he was with someone else, or that you were with him. But it was you. It hurt that what I thought was only with him, he did with you. And you were mine. And that’s a foolish thing to say, but despite everything, you were mine. Even if you weren’t mine yet, You were mine.
I understand.
I was so stupid.
It wasn’t stupid.
But you were mine…
They don’t speak for a long time.
I was, you know. I always was. I am. Yours. Even then. Even when I was… the way I was. I was…
Silence.
It’s why I came to you.
He loved him, Doug held out his hand, and the little man came to him Well, Mike wasn’t exactly little. He was compact, thin, strong, like something sculpted. Wolf faced except now he was so gentle, he put his soft cheek in Doug’s hand.
“I love it when you get like this,” Mike said.
“Like what?”
Mike didn’t answer.
Mike…
Mike…
Junior year was in its closing stretch when he came down to the music room one Tuesday afternoon, but stopped because he saw Mike going in to see Mr. Miller. Well, that was fine, everyone had something to talk about with their teacher.
But then he waited some time, a long time, and Mike still didn’t come out, and in equal parts exasperation and genuine worry, he went to the door. Doug Merrin pressed his ear to the glass pane with the blind pulled down, and he couldn’t quite make out anything, so he twisted the door, slowly, and there was Mike, his Mike Buren, the Mikey he thought he might love again one day, little virgin Mikey, sitting in Mr. Miller’s chair with his kegs wide apart while their teachers head snaked around moving up and down between his legs. As he watched Mike, head back and mouth opened, little noises escaping his mouth, the anger of the whole year twisted together in his gut and solidified into the witchly plan of the poison party. Even then he planned his exit from Saint Francis.
Is that why?
Yes.
You never told me.
We weren’t talking.
Even now, Since we’ve been together… You never told me.
It hurt. I didn’t know what hurt more, that he was with someone else, or that you were with him. But it was you. It hurt that what I thought was only with him, he did with you. And you were mine. And that’s a foolish thing to say, but despite everything, you were mine. Even if you weren’t mine yet, You were mine.
I understand.
I was so stupid.
It wasn’t stupid.
But you were mine…
They don’t speak for a long time.
I was, you know. I always was. I am. Yours. Even then. Even when I was… the way I was. I was…
Silence.
It’s why I came to you.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
The night Mike Buren came to his room, the night of accusing, the night of, I saw you with him, the night of, how long, the night of I was with him first, the shove match, the shoving that turned to kissing, to something aggressive like a battle, tugging at shirts and pants until they stopped, exhausted from hatred, and stood together in the room, holding each other, and then Mike lowered him to the bed, or Doug lowered Mikey, and wordlessly they began to undress and kiss, and tears were running down Mike’s face and he felt so stupd, or maybe Doug was the one crying, and they stopped to hold each other, they stopped to smell each other’s hair, they stopped to laugh and cry at the same time. They had the whole night. Somewhere, when dawn had gone to dark, the bed barely made noise as, in the dark they cling to each other, eyes closed to make a great darkness, Sweat sprung from Michael’s brow to his nose which touched Doug’s. One of them came first, but the other came almost immediately after, their bodies shaking violently.
“I should have said nothing. I should have done nothing. You should have stayed,” Doug says, now that they have repeated that first act and they lie deflated and exhausted in each others arms, young men and not the children they were.
“It’s in the past,” Michael Buren says in his apartment, reaching for his half smoked joint.
“It’s in my present.”
“Aw, Doug.”
“I told you to go away. I told you to get up and go away. I saw the look on your face, how I’d hurt you. I told you to—”
“It,” Michael insists, “everything we did to hurt each other that hurt ourselves. All of it, all the sick twisted shit is in the past.”
“I love you,” Doug says
“Duck, I love you more.”
After all the drama of the poisoned pizza, the last days of the year seemed leeched of any real pleasure. Sex with Doug had changed him far more profoundly than anything he’d done with Mr. Miller. Sleeping with Doug was the culmination of their voices almost touching in choir, of the love that had been tarnished being rediscovered, of that time in the woods when they discovered Mc.Donalds and civilization, of his deep, deep longing, a longing that hurt for the friend he’d forgotten how to love.
Ave verum Corpus
Natum de Maria Virgine
Vere passum immolatum
In Cruce pro homine
Cujus latus perforatum
Unda fluxit sanguine
Esto nobis praegustatum
In mortis examine
O dulcis
O Pie
O Jesu Fili Mariae
They sang at the school graduation Mass, but it seemed like they didn’t really sing it. The day after Doug had left, Max Miller came to school looking less, looking traumatized. After all, Michael knew what Mr. Miller was, and he knew he wasn’t any better. Mr. Miller was a teacher who liked to fool around with his students, and Mike was a student who didn’t mind it, who got a dull thrill out of the things he did with the music teacher. Doug’s missing voice affected the whole choir. It had always risen and called to Mike’s, and now Mike’s fell a little flatter. Everyone else said the music was beautiful, but Mike heard the difference. He felt it. He felt like lead. He had gone to Doug and told him how stupid he was the day Doug was packing up. Doug had ignored him, and Mike had watched him drive off. Every day he waited for him to come back. He hated being this soft thing, still stupid like Mikey Buren who needed Doug, and watched for Doug every day.
Miserere mei
Miserere mei, mei
O dulcis
O Pie
And so, after graduation Mass, that’s why Mike found himself in Doug’s old room, almost in defiance, his blazer folded over the chair, his hands gripping the window frame, legs planted on ground, and he gritted his teeth while, trousers to his knees, let Max Miller fuck him.
O Jesu Fili Mariae.
It was the first time Max fucked him. It certainly wouldn’t be the last. Even While Max clung to him and Mike closed his eyes, when he opened them he looked out onto the road, telling himself to stop looking, Doug wasn’t coming back, Doug wasn’t… Fuck… Fuck.
Miserere mei
Doug…
Max Miller, held Mike’s hips so hard it almost hurt, almost hurt like Max’s cock stuffed inside of him, and then Max groaned, and as he slammed deeper, Mike felt the wash of his seed, his seed…. Seed.
This was how it would be now.
Miserere mei, mei
Amen
“I should have said nothing. I should have done nothing. You should have stayed,” Doug says, now that they have repeated that first act and they lie deflated and exhausted in each others arms, young men and not the children they were.
“It’s in the past,” Michael Buren says in his apartment, reaching for his half smoked joint.
“It’s in my present.”
“Aw, Doug.”
“I told you to go away. I told you to get up and go away. I saw the look on your face, how I’d hurt you. I told you to—”
“It,” Michael insists, “everything we did to hurt each other that hurt ourselves. All of it, all the sick twisted shit is in the past.”
“I love you,” Doug says
“Duck, I love you more.”
After all the drama of the poisoned pizza, the last days of the year seemed leeched of any real pleasure. Sex with Doug had changed him far more profoundly than anything he’d done with Mr. Miller. Sleeping with Doug was the culmination of their voices almost touching in choir, of the love that had been tarnished being rediscovered, of that time in the woods when they discovered Mc.Donalds and civilization, of his deep, deep longing, a longing that hurt for the friend he’d forgotten how to love.
Ave verum Corpus
Natum de Maria Virgine
Vere passum immolatum
In Cruce pro homine
Cujus latus perforatum
Unda fluxit sanguine
Esto nobis praegustatum
In mortis examine
O dulcis
O Pie
O Jesu Fili Mariae
They sang at the school graduation Mass, but it seemed like they didn’t really sing it. The day after Doug had left, Max Miller came to school looking less, looking traumatized. After all, Michael knew what Mr. Miller was, and he knew he wasn’t any better. Mr. Miller was a teacher who liked to fool around with his students, and Mike was a student who didn’t mind it, who got a dull thrill out of the things he did with the music teacher. Doug’s missing voice affected the whole choir. It had always risen and called to Mike’s, and now Mike’s fell a little flatter. Everyone else said the music was beautiful, but Mike heard the difference. He felt it. He felt like lead. He had gone to Doug and told him how stupid he was the day Doug was packing up. Doug had ignored him, and Mike had watched him drive off. Every day he waited for him to come back. He hated being this soft thing, still stupid like Mikey Buren who needed Doug, and watched for Doug every day.
Miserere mei
Miserere mei, mei
O dulcis
O Pie
And so, after graduation Mass, that’s why Mike found himself in Doug’s old room, almost in defiance, his blazer folded over the chair, his hands gripping the window frame, legs planted on ground, and he gritted his teeth while, trousers to his knees, let Max Miller fuck him.
O Jesu Fili Mariae.
It was the first time Max fucked him. It certainly wouldn’t be the last. Even While Max clung to him and Mike closed his eyes, when he opened them he looked out onto the road, telling himself to stop looking, Doug wasn’t coming back, Doug wasn’t… Fuck… Fuck.
Miserere mei
Doug…
Max Miller, held Mike’s hips so hard it almost hurt, almost hurt like Max’s cock stuffed inside of him, and then Max groaned, and as he slammed deeper, Mike felt the wash of his seed, his seed…. Seed.
This was how it would be now.
Miserere mei, mei
Amen
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
But before that Mass had even happened, Doug was on the road. He drove as fast he could, possibly hoping to break his neck, and he didn’t head for Saint Damian’s, where his cousin and Joe and Sal were. Not yet. Rather, he traveled south on I 65, straight into West Lafayette, and after a little trouble, found, in the night, Shreve Hall, which seemed like nothing so much as a large brick apartment building. Girls and boys, men and women, really, were in jeans and tee shirts, smoking cigarettes and making out, and Doug took a deep breath, got all of the seventeen year old boarding school boy out of him, and then made his way into the dorm, up the elevator and to the room he wanted. He knocked on the door quickly, three times, thinking, but he might be out, he might be gone, what it he isn’t here.
But the door opened, and surprised, worried, overjoyed at the same time, tall as ever, his hair a messy blond cloud, was the most welcome sight in the world, Chris Navarro.
“This is nice!” Doug said, looking around the room and taking the jersey sheet between his fingertips.
“Yeah,” Chris agreed. He was sitting on the bunk bed across from Doug, and the curtain was open on the night. “They keep it straight, here.”
“And air conditioning. This is a whole other world. I’d never go to class.”
Chris shook his head and laughed.
“I never miss class. Class is about the only thing I do.”
“What about parties?”
“Nope. Not really?”
“What about… Girls. Or boys or… I never quite understood that with you?”
Chris shrugged.
“I never understood it either. I think I just cared about girls less and less. In the sex way. I… nope, I don’t really do anything.”
Doug looked at Chris and they didn’t speak for a long time, and Chris said, “What? Is that hard to believe?”
“Frankly, yes.”
Chris laughed.
“Fair.”
“I always looked up to you,” Doug said.
“And now you don’t because I don’t have a sex life.”
“No, no,” Doug shook his head and laughed.
“I… I was never jealous of Swann. I always looked up to him. But I know I had a crush on you. You were like this big brother to me, but, I had a crush on you, and you always had someone, so I can’t imagine you just sitting in your dorm room alone, being a virgin.”
“Well,” Chris shrugged as he smacked his gum and grinned sideways.
“I dunno what to tell you.”
“You could tell me where to get some food.”
“Of, fuck!” Chris shot up, amazingly not hitting his head on the bunk above and clapping his hands. “Yeah, that’s right. How about a gyro?”
“I’d love a gyro.”
“We could have gone back to my room. We didn’t have to stay here?” Chris said, looking around the fluorescent lit late night shop.
Doug wiped tzatsiki from his mouth and said, “You needed to leave your room. You’re turning into a vampire.”
“So you’re here to look after me?”
“Yeah, Christopher Navarro, I am.”
Chris nodded and wiped his own mouth this time.
“That’s nice. I could probably use some looking after.”
Then he said, “You could have too. From what you said.”
“Maybe I could have. But it’s all done, now.”
“Is it, really? You’re really expelled. You’re really not going back for senior year?”
“Fuck it all,” Doug said.
“You can’t go back?”
“Wouldn’t if I could.”
“It was really that bad this year?”
“Without you guys, yeah.”
“We weren’t so great,” Chris said.
“You were. You were my family.”
Suddenly Chris rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands and groaned, “Fuck!”
“What?”
“I’m so sorry we left you there,” Chris said. “We were family. I’m so fucking sorry things ended the way they did.”
And then, elbows on the table, Chris suddenly laughed.
“You really poisoned your class?”
Doug nodded humbly.
Chris burst out, cackling.
“You poisoned your class!”
Doug had said nothing of his affair with Max Miller. He wasn’t sure if he was shamed of it, but he wasn’t exactly not ashamed, and he didn’t talk about Mike Buren and how they’d had sex two nights ago, and then he’d been the one to run away from it. He certainly did not tell, would never tell anyone, probably, about what had happened the night he’d driven away from school, after he’s spoken to a godfather he was not completely resolved with who had been distant the whole year, after his expulsion was final and he was speeding down the road in the darkening night.
He made his way for Monon, taking the usual route, and parked in front of Max Miller’s house. He waited for Max to open the door and when he did, Max blinked in surprise.
“Well, Doug… I… I didn’t expect you.”
What he meant, and Doug understood what he meant, was that Doug had a place and a time and that place was when Max Miller put him in his car and drove him here with no one knowing.
“Look at you,” Max had once said while stroking him, “look at that fat cock, you have.”
It felt so good Doug’s eyes almost rolled back in his head while Max’s slick hand pulled up and down his shaft, ran over the head of his penis.
“You’re not a boy at all, you’re not a boy. You’re a man. This is a man’s cock. Fuck me like a man tonight.”
And Doug had, ecstasy in the tip of his cock, ecstasy rolling to the balls of his feet and the arching of his heels.
But here he stood, and Max was quite surprised because Max did not deal with men. Max dealt with boys. He had never dealt with a man.
Doug, who had left his things in his car, unbuckled his pants, let them drop, took down his briefs, shrugged off his blazer and took a bottle of poppers out from his breast pocket.
“What are you doing, Douglass?” Max asked in his most teacherly voice.
Doug took a deep inhale of the poppers and then reached into a another small pocket, squirted some liquid and started stroking his dick. He stood in the living room of Max Miller’s house, stroking himself into erection, and when a hollow sound came out of Max’s throat, Doug said, “Take off your clothes, Max.”
“Douglass, it’s not appropriate that you’re here, and you really should—”
“Max,” Doug said, bored, “I’m not going to say this again. Take off your clothes.”
He fucked Max Miller on the living room floor. He did it until Max groaned, cried out in pain or something like pleasure, until they both did. The sensation of coming was like flying, and maybe it was like flying to hell. They buckled against each other and lay there in the dark.
“I’m staying here tonight,” Doug said. “You alright with that?”
Max nodded weakly, perhaps sensing there wasn’t much of a choice.
“We weren’t ever really equals, were we?” Doug said. “But we were just now… The way I fucked you. You’ve never been fucked like that before. I’m going to get your keys right over there, okay? And then I’m going to come back with some of my stuff. I’ll stay the night. Head out in the morning. Not to school. I’m gone from there. I think you know that. I’m on my way to Lafayette.”
Doug suspected that Max might try to lock him out because, after all, he suspected he had just raped Max, at least a little. But when he returned, Max Miller still laid out on his living room floor, spread eagle, ass in the air, his face pressed to the carpet, and as Doug saw him like that, he was so overcome with… what? His own power? With actually feeling like man? His dick got harder than it ever had. His scrotum tightened. In the darkness he quickly undressed and they fucked again. This time it was more intense, on both sides. They had sex all night, and never left that floor. Early in the morning Doug got up to shower, smoked a cigarette and drank a beer. He dressed in the jeans and tee shirt he was in when he arrived in Lafayette, and after he left Max, he never saw him again, not until the funeral of Garrett Small.
He didn’t say any of this to Chris when they sat together in the gyro restaurant.
Chris said, “I wish we had some weed.”
Doug said, “I just poisoned over thirty people with herbs I found in the garden outside of school. Why the fuck do you think I wouldn’t have weed?”
But the door opened, and surprised, worried, overjoyed at the same time, tall as ever, his hair a messy blond cloud, was the most welcome sight in the world, Chris Navarro.
“This is nice!” Doug said, looking around the room and taking the jersey sheet between his fingertips.
“Yeah,” Chris agreed. He was sitting on the bunk bed across from Doug, and the curtain was open on the night. “They keep it straight, here.”
“And air conditioning. This is a whole other world. I’d never go to class.”
Chris shook his head and laughed.
“I never miss class. Class is about the only thing I do.”
“What about parties?”
“Nope. Not really?”
“What about… Girls. Or boys or… I never quite understood that with you?”
Chris shrugged.
“I never understood it either. I think I just cared about girls less and less. In the sex way. I… nope, I don’t really do anything.”
Doug looked at Chris and they didn’t speak for a long time, and Chris said, “What? Is that hard to believe?”
“Frankly, yes.”
Chris laughed.
“Fair.”
“I always looked up to you,” Doug said.
“And now you don’t because I don’t have a sex life.”
“No, no,” Doug shook his head and laughed.
“I… I was never jealous of Swann. I always looked up to him. But I know I had a crush on you. You were like this big brother to me, but, I had a crush on you, and you always had someone, so I can’t imagine you just sitting in your dorm room alone, being a virgin.”
“Well,” Chris shrugged as he smacked his gum and grinned sideways.
“I dunno what to tell you.”
“You could tell me where to get some food.”
“Of, fuck!” Chris shot up, amazingly not hitting his head on the bunk above and clapping his hands. “Yeah, that’s right. How about a gyro?”
“I’d love a gyro.”
“We could have gone back to my room. We didn’t have to stay here?” Chris said, looking around the fluorescent lit late night shop.
Doug wiped tzatsiki from his mouth and said, “You needed to leave your room. You’re turning into a vampire.”
“So you’re here to look after me?”
“Yeah, Christopher Navarro, I am.”
Chris nodded and wiped his own mouth this time.
“That’s nice. I could probably use some looking after.”
Then he said, “You could have too. From what you said.”
“Maybe I could have. But it’s all done, now.”
“Is it, really? You’re really expelled. You’re really not going back for senior year?”
“Fuck it all,” Doug said.
“You can’t go back?”
“Wouldn’t if I could.”
“It was really that bad this year?”
“Without you guys, yeah.”
“We weren’t so great,” Chris said.
“You were. You were my family.”
Suddenly Chris rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands and groaned, “Fuck!”
“What?”
“I’m so sorry we left you there,” Chris said. “We were family. I’m so fucking sorry things ended the way they did.”
And then, elbows on the table, Chris suddenly laughed.
“You really poisoned your class?”
Doug nodded humbly.
Chris burst out, cackling.
“You poisoned your class!”
Doug had said nothing of his affair with Max Miller. He wasn’t sure if he was shamed of it, but he wasn’t exactly not ashamed, and he didn’t talk about Mike Buren and how they’d had sex two nights ago, and then he’d been the one to run away from it. He certainly did not tell, would never tell anyone, probably, about what had happened the night he’d driven away from school, after he’s spoken to a godfather he was not completely resolved with who had been distant the whole year, after his expulsion was final and he was speeding down the road in the darkening night.
He made his way for Monon, taking the usual route, and parked in front of Max Miller’s house. He waited for Max to open the door and when he did, Max blinked in surprise.
“Well, Doug… I… I didn’t expect you.”
What he meant, and Doug understood what he meant, was that Doug had a place and a time and that place was when Max Miller put him in his car and drove him here with no one knowing.
“Look at you,” Max had once said while stroking him, “look at that fat cock, you have.”
It felt so good Doug’s eyes almost rolled back in his head while Max’s slick hand pulled up and down his shaft, ran over the head of his penis.
“You’re not a boy at all, you’re not a boy. You’re a man. This is a man’s cock. Fuck me like a man tonight.”
And Doug had, ecstasy in the tip of his cock, ecstasy rolling to the balls of his feet and the arching of his heels.
But here he stood, and Max was quite surprised because Max did not deal with men. Max dealt with boys. He had never dealt with a man.
Doug, who had left his things in his car, unbuckled his pants, let them drop, took down his briefs, shrugged off his blazer and took a bottle of poppers out from his breast pocket.
“What are you doing, Douglass?” Max asked in his most teacherly voice.
Doug took a deep inhale of the poppers and then reached into a another small pocket, squirted some liquid and started stroking his dick. He stood in the living room of Max Miller’s house, stroking himself into erection, and when a hollow sound came out of Max’s throat, Doug said, “Take off your clothes, Max.”
“Douglass, it’s not appropriate that you’re here, and you really should—”
“Max,” Doug said, bored, “I’m not going to say this again. Take off your clothes.”
He fucked Max Miller on the living room floor. He did it until Max groaned, cried out in pain or something like pleasure, until they both did. The sensation of coming was like flying, and maybe it was like flying to hell. They buckled against each other and lay there in the dark.
“I’m staying here tonight,” Doug said. “You alright with that?”
Max nodded weakly, perhaps sensing there wasn’t much of a choice.
“We weren’t ever really equals, were we?” Doug said. “But we were just now… The way I fucked you. You’ve never been fucked like that before. I’m going to get your keys right over there, okay? And then I’m going to come back with some of my stuff. I’ll stay the night. Head out in the morning. Not to school. I’m gone from there. I think you know that. I’m on my way to Lafayette.”
Doug suspected that Max might try to lock him out because, after all, he suspected he had just raped Max, at least a little. But when he returned, Max Miller still laid out on his living room floor, spread eagle, ass in the air, his face pressed to the carpet, and as Doug saw him like that, he was so overcome with… what? His own power? With actually feeling like man? His dick got harder than it ever had. His scrotum tightened. In the darkness he quickly undressed and they fucked again. This time it was more intense, on both sides. They had sex all night, and never left that floor. Early in the morning Doug got up to shower, smoked a cigarette and drank a beer. He dressed in the jeans and tee shirt he was in when he arrived in Lafayette, and after he left Max, he never saw him again, not until the funeral of Garrett Small.
He didn’t say any of this to Chris when they sat together in the gyro restaurant.
Chris said, “I wish we had some weed.”
Doug said, “I just poisoned over thirty people with herbs I found in the garden outside of school. Why the fuck do you think I wouldn’t have weed?”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Thanks for posting these portions. What Max has been doing is wrong and I don’t know if what Doug did was right. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see. Great writing and I look forward to more!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
They sat coughing and giggling, really, Chris doing more of either than Doug who, even then, smoked like a pro. Chris had shown Doug to the shower where he could get clean after his troubles, and there Doug felt like he was washing off more than the dirt of the road. He waited for Chris, who came out in his towel and stripped for a minute, to put on shorts and a tee shirt and then came to the bed, semi kneeling on the mattress while he smoked, the flesh of his strong thighs exposed, smoke traveling from his nostrils into the blond aureole of his hair while, beside him, Doug leaned against the wall, legs stretched out vertical of Chris so that their knees touched. Now and again he took a sip of coffee from the coffee maker he’d brought with him, and Chris reached behind him and held out his cup.
“I should have brought a coffee maker to college,” he said.
“I could leave mine.”
“You staying for a while?” Chris asked.
“I don’t want to impose.”
Chris shrugged goofily and took a sip of coffee.
“Look around. I don’t have a roommate. There’s no one to impose on.”
This time Doug did cough on smoke, because he was seated too low. He passed the joint to Chris and Chris said, letting it smolder, then remembering to take a puff.
“I’ve been lonely. I just haven’t had the heart to… I don’t even know how to be social or…any of that… anymore.”
Doug’s knee had been bumping up against Chris’s now and again, and now he sat up and he looked at his old friend. He looked like Chris always had, the older brother figure, sure, but now he looked only two years older. he’d always been just two years older, but it meant less now. He looked so sad and so beautiful, his lips red and full, his eyes wide and blue, his nose sort of like this Italian bust Doug had once seen and his hair like a hallo. And he was so tall, and so… sweet. That was the word Doug settled on, so sweet it hurt, so sweet it hurt because he didn’t know it. Doug thought Chris’s problem is he only remembered the bad things, or the things he thought he should feel bad about. How…sweet he had been when he came from the bathroom looking like Michelangelo’s David, and dropped his towel to change, and suddenly Doug’s lips pressed Chris’s, and Chris blinked at him.
“Douglass!” he said.
“I just… wanted to,” Doug said.
And then he leaned up and did it again, and this time Chris’s lips pressed back, and they both knelt on the bed, delicately leaning into each other, and Doug’s hand touched Chris’s thigh, and Chris kept on kissing him, eyes closed, and said, “Doug, we need to stop right now. We need to stop right now or it’s not going to end.”
“I know,” Doug said, eyes closed, still kissing him.
“I know. And it’s alright.”
Chris’s hands held Doug’s face and he murmured, “You came here for this, didn’t you?”
He nodded, not feeling his usual calculating self, feeling quite high and very fragile, and only feeling grounded when he put his hands on Chris’s thighs, or when he touched his shoulders.
“Yeah, Chris,” he said. “I think I did.”
They held onto each other, kissing, and then when they fell on the bed, Doug said, “Chris, grab the weed.”
“Oh, right, right.”
They laughed as they retrieved the ashtray and lighters, the joints, the bag of green, and fell back onto the bed embracing, kissing, eventually lifting up shirts, pulling down pants and shorts, pressing together, sighing in the semi darkness behind the locked, heavy door of that secret room on the fifth floor of an almost nameless dormitory.
The little amber desk lamp was the only light on some time later when the two of them lay pressed together in each others arms, naked on the bed, and Doug’s head was in the crook of Chris’s arm.
“I’ve been so sad,” Chris said.
“Um.”
“Since Kyle died, since things with Swann ended, since graduation, I’ve just been sadder and sadder. I’ve just been more and more on my own.”
Chris leaned down and kissed Doug on the mouth.
“You saved me, Duck.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
They lay face to face, Chris pulling Doug to him.
“I’ve been dead inside. I haven’t even… The last time I…”
“Had sex?”
“Had sex.” Chris agreed. “Was… a year ago.”
Chris did not say it had been with Swann, and it had been at graduation when they’d been high on emotions, or that after it was over he had hoped that he and Swann were together, but Swann said they were not, that he was still with Pete and never should have cheated on him and blah blah blah. And, because he hadn’t talked to Swann, he didn’t know that he was no longer with Peter, that he had gone back to Jack Rapp and that hadn’t worked out. Doug knew that, but didn’t say it to Chris. There was, at this moment, as Chris held him, so many things not worth saying.
Chris turned over on his stomach, yawning and crossing his arms over his pillow, he laid his head on them. Gently, he caressed Doug’s head, and as Doug turned around,, pressing his body against Chris’s like a comma, Chris said:
“You in a big hurry? To get to Chicago.”
“I’m not in any hurry.”
Doug yawned, and Chris turned around so—how startling and strange to hold his long, large body—he could be the little spoon in Doug’s arms.
“Howabout you stick around a while, okay?”
“Yeah,” Doug agreed, drifting into sleep.
“I could do that.”
END OF CHAPTER SIXTEEN....
OH MY GOD.... NEXT IS CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, THE FINAL CHAPTER OF THE BOOK, THE END OF THIS WHOLE STORY.....
“I should have brought a coffee maker to college,” he said.
“I could leave mine.”
“You staying for a while?” Chris asked.
“I don’t want to impose.”
Chris shrugged goofily and took a sip of coffee.
“Look around. I don’t have a roommate. There’s no one to impose on.”
This time Doug did cough on smoke, because he was seated too low. He passed the joint to Chris and Chris said, letting it smolder, then remembering to take a puff.
“I’ve been lonely. I just haven’t had the heart to… I don’t even know how to be social or…any of that… anymore.”
Doug’s knee had been bumping up against Chris’s now and again, and now he sat up and he looked at his old friend. He looked like Chris always had, the older brother figure, sure, but now he looked only two years older. he’d always been just two years older, but it meant less now. He looked so sad and so beautiful, his lips red and full, his eyes wide and blue, his nose sort of like this Italian bust Doug had once seen and his hair like a hallo. And he was so tall, and so… sweet. That was the word Doug settled on, so sweet it hurt, so sweet it hurt because he didn’t know it. Doug thought Chris’s problem is he only remembered the bad things, or the things he thought he should feel bad about. How…sweet he had been when he came from the bathroom looking like Michelangelo’s David, and dropped his towel to change, and suddenly Doug’s lips pressed Chris’s, and Chris blinked at him.
“Douglass!” he said.
“I just… wanted to,” Doug said.
And then he leaned up and did it again, and this time Chris’s lips pressed back, and they both knelt on the bed, delicately leaning into each other, and Doug’s hand touched Chris’s thigh, and Chris kept on kissing him, eyes closed, and said, “Doug, we need to stop right now. We need to stop right now or it’s not going to end.”
“I know,” Doug said, eyes closed, still kissing him.
“I know. And it’s alright.”
Chris’s hands held Doug’s face and he murmured, “You came here for this, didn’t you?”
He nodded, not feeling his usual calculating self, feeling quite high and very fragile, and only feeling grounded when he put his hands on Chris’s thighs, or when he touched his shoulders.
“Yeah, Chris,” he said. “I think I did.”
They held onto each other, kissing, and then when they fell on the bed, Doug said, “Chris, grab the weed.”
“Oh, right, right.”
They laughed as they retrieved the ashtray and lighters, the joints, the bag of green, and fell back onto the bed embracing, kissing, eventually lifting up shirts, pulling down pants and shorts, pressing together, sighing in the semi darkness behind the locked, heavy door of that secret room on the fifth floor of an almost nameless dormitory.
The little amber desk lamp was the only light on some time later when the two of them lay pressed together in each others arms, naked on the bed, and Doug’s head was in the crook of Chris’s arm.
“I’ve been so sad,” Chris said.
“Um.”
“Since Kyle died, since things with Swann ended, since graduation, I’ve just been sadder and sadder. I’ve just been more and more on my own.”
Chris leaned down and kissed Doug on the mouth.
“You saved me, Duck.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
They lay face to face, Chris pulling Doug to him.
“I’ve been dead inside. I haven’t even… The last time I…”
“Had sex?”
“Had sex.” Chris agreed. “Was… a year ago.”
Chris did not say it had been with Swann, and it had been at graduation when they’d been high on emotions, or that after it was over he had hoped that he and Swann were together, but Swann said they were not, that he was still with Pete and never should have cheated on him and blah blah blah. And, because he hadn’t talked to Swann, he didn’t know that he was no longer with Peter, that he had gone back to Jack Rapp and that hadn’t worked out. Doug knew that, but didn’t say it to Chris. There was, at this moment, as Chris held him, so many things not worth saying.
Chris turned over on his stomach, yawning and crossing his arms over his pillow, he laid his head on them. Gently, he caressed Doug’s head, and as Doug turned around,, pressing his body against Chris’s like a comma, Chris said:
“You in a big hurry? To get to Chicago.”
“I’m not in any hurry.”
Doug yawned, and Chris turned around so—how startling and strange to hold his long, large body—he could be the little spoon in Doug’s arms.
“Howabout you stick around a while, okay?”
“Yeah,” Doug agreed, drifting into sleep.
“I could do that.”
END OF CHAPTER SIXTEEN....
OH MY GOD.... NEXT IS CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, THE FINAL CHAPTER OF THE BOOK, THE END OF THIS WHOLE STORY.....
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was an excellent end to the chapter. I can’t believe we are up to the last chapter of this story! I have enjoyed it a lot!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
And I've enjoyed having you by my side the whole time. You are a wonderful friend and a great... FAN is a very tacky word, so I must come up with a better one.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Chapter Seventeen
This was not the first time Eutropius Prynne thought, my God, out in the world is where I belong, and how much longer can I endure that silly house, the walls of that monastery? And he thought he would travel, he must. It was time to leave Andy and Herulian in charge, Roberts as well. The place could live without him for longer than three days.
The train out of Chicago passed over the tired old neighborhoods of the far south side and gave way to scrub, reservoirs, stretches of highway between hills, the Calumet River, Hegewisch, Chicago’s backdoor. It passed through Hammond and East Chicago and Gary and then ran across fields before it stopped in Beverly Shores and he got off the train with the four others who got off in Beverly Shores, and he was in an Hawaiian shirt and a fedora, shades and khakis, his cigarettes in his breast pocket, wheeling his bag behind him, and the doors of Andy’s car opened and out came a tall, skinny man in track shorts and a tee shirt with glasses and buzzed blondish hair, perpetual whistle hanging from his neck, and there came another man, orange haired in jeans and a sweat jacket, smiling to the platform, Abbot Prynne suddenly threw his arms around his friends and drew them to him.
“What’s up with you?” Herulian wondered, chuckling.
But Prynne would not let them go, he clapped their backs, and he ran his hand over the back of Andy’s shaven head.
He said, “I just remembered that it’s good to be home, and that I love you both very, very much.”
“We love you too, Tommy,” Andy said.
Herulian didn’t say anything. He just cuffed Prynne in the jaw with a fake punch and picked up his bag, throwing it in the trunk.
The sun was up longer now. The sun was still up in the champagne colored sky when they gathered for Compline, and Prynne prayed:
“The Lord almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
And they all said, “Amen.”
“Our help is in the name of the Lord.”
“Who made heaven and earth.”
In the perfect silence they kept silence perfectly before Abbot Eutropius led them in prayer
“Most merciful God, we confess to you, before the whole company of heaven and one another, that we have sinned in thought, word and deed and in what we have failed to do. Forgive us our sins, heal us by your Spirit and raise us to new life in Christ. Amen.
“O God, make speed to save us.”
“ O Lord, make haste to help us.
All Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning is now and shall be for ever. Amen.”
Father Brectold started on the organ, one of those ancient, not very good songs that probably sounded better in Latin, that had always been a comfort to sing while he and Herulian bumped shoulders and shoved each other like children, or now, when he was the abbot over all of these brothers who trusted him so.
“Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That you, with steadfast love,
would keep
Your watch around us while we sleep…”
Tonight, in a world that seemed alright, for once, for this moment, Prynne who knew his psalter was still surprised when they sang
“O Lord, you have searched me out and known me;
♦ you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You mark out my journeys and my resting place
and are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
♦ but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
You encompass me behind and before
♦ and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
♦ so high that I cannot attain it.”
And then the part that he knew by heart, that he had murmured when he was washing the body of Jeff Ligibel, waiting for the coroner, that he had whispered as he washed Sharon Reed’s limbs and arranged them, even as he had arranged her uncle’s on that terrible night when Lewis Merrill, full of years had finally died.
“Oh, Where can I go then from your spirit?
♦ Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there;
♦ if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
If I take the wings of the morning
♦ and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand shall lead me,
♦ your right hand hold me fast.”
Prynne whispered, not singing, though all chanted about him:
“Surely the darkness will cover me
♦ and the light around me turn to night,’
Even darkness is no darkness with you;
the night is as clear as the day;
♦ darkness and light to you are both alike.”
“This is where the boys usually hang out during the year,” Prynne said.
“How did you know that?” Jack Knapp asked.
“Because it’s where we used to hang out,” Herulian said.
They sat on the roof of the dormitory, watching the sun make its dignified way into the earth, red and yellow light stretching under it while the pewter sky darkened. Between them they passed a bottle of rye whiskey and Prynne, sitting like a guru, his legs folded beneath him, exhaled the smoke of a Marlboro.
“You know, I didn’t smoke for three days, and I felt wonderful,” he said.
“Well then maybe you can stop all the time and feel even better,” Andy said.
Prynne eyed at him.
“What? Is it evil of me to want you to live for as long as possible?”
You may have a point,” Prynne said.
“I know I do. I could even take you running.”
Prynne barked out a laugh.
“You’d love it.”
“He’d hate it,” Herulian laughed.
They were quiet for a while and Andy said, as the wind picked up, “There is one regret I have.”
“Just one?” Jack looked up at him with a grin, and Andy playfully smacked him on the head.
“I know Jeff was buried here, in out cemetery, but I have wished, now and again, that I scattered him. I think he would have preferred that, to be on the wind one last time, to be free again. I know it’s silly, but… I think about that.”
“Oh, Andrew,” Prynne said.
He stood up, not as quickly at forty-seven as he had when he was sixteen. “Follow me. All of you can. If you wish.”
They all descended into the school and made their way into the Northwest Tower. They passed through the large abbot’s office and into the chapel, almost negligently genuflecting and crossing themselves, and Prynne bent near the altar and pulled out a plastic box.
It took some time for Andy to understand what he was holding and Prynne said, “You wanted me to bury him, but I didn’t think that was for me to do. I thought it was for you. When you were ready.”
Andy shook his head in disbelief.
“All these years? Jeff has been here, under the altar.”
“Jeff has been in heaven,” Prynne corrected, “but his ashes have been right here. I almost forgot. Sometimes I did forget. But I thought they were for you when you were ready.”
“Fuck, Tommy,” Andy said. His face screwing up a little.
The three old friends and Jack Knapp returned to the roof and with his keys, Andy cut into the box, and then he cut into the bag.
“Do it low,” Herulian said, “so they don’t get in your face.”
“Or ours either for that matter,” Prynne said.
As the sun descended, and a semi which Prynne was privately convinced was the exact same goddamn semi that was always going down the road passed by, Andy Reed poured out the bag and the finest dust lifted and spread out onto the air and for a moment it could be seen like a mist, and then it was gone.
“I’m cold now,” Prynne said, collecting the box and taking the plastic bag from Andy’s hand while Jack Knapp wrapped an arm around his old teacher’s shoulders.
“Whaddo you say we go down and have some coffee?”
Andy blew out his cheeks and nodded.
“I think I’d like that a lot.”
This was not the first time Eutropius Prynne thought, my God, out in the world is where I belong, and how much longer can I endure that silly house, the walls of that monastery? And he thought he would travel, he must. It was time to leave Andy and Herulian in charge, Roberts as well. The place could live without him for longer than three days.
The train out of Chicago passed over the tired old neighborhoods of the far south side and gave way to scrub, reservoirs, stretches of highway between hills, the Calumet River, Hegewisch, Chicago’s backdoor. It passed through Hammond and East Chicago and Gary and then ran across fields before it stopped in Beverly Shores and he got off the train with the four others who got off in Beverly Shores, and he was in an Hawaiian shirt and a fedora, shades and khakis, his cigarettes in his breast pocket, wheeling his bag behind him, and the doors of Andy’s car opened and out came a tall, skinny man in track shorts and a tee shirt with glasses and buzzed blondish hair, perpetual whistle hanging from his neck, and there came another man, orange haired in jeans and a sweat jacket, smiling to the platform, Abbot Prynne suddenly threw his arms around his friends and drew them to him.
“What’s up with you?” Herulian wondered, chuckling.
But Prynne would not let them go, he clapped their backs, and he ran his hand over the back of Andy’s shaven head.
He said, “I just remembered that it’s good to be home, and that I love you both very, very much.”
“We love you too, Tommy,” Andy said.
Herulian didn’t say anything. He just cuffed Prynne in the jaw with a fake punch and picked up his bag, throwing it in the trunk.
The sun was up longer now. The sun was still up in the champagne colored sky when they gathered for Compline, and Prynne prayed:
“The Lord almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
And they all said, “Amen.”
“Our help is in the name of the Lord.”
“Who made heaven and earth.”
In the perfect silence they kept silence perfectly before Abbot Eutropius led them in prayer
“Most merciful God, we confess to you, before the whole company of heaven and one another, that we have sinned in thought, word and deed and in what we have failed to do. Forgive us our sins, heal us by your Spirit and raise us to new life in Christ. Amen.
“O God, make speed to save us.”
“ O Lord, make haste to help us.
All Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning is now and shall be for ever. Amen.”
Father Brectold started on the organ, one of those ancient, not very good songs that probably sounded better in Latin, that had always been a comfort to sing while he and Herulian bumped shoulders and shoved each other like children, or now, when he was the abbot over all of these brothers who trusted him so.
“Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That you, with steadfast love,
would keep
Your watch around us while we sleep…”
Tonight, in a world that seemed alright, for once, for this moment, Prynne who knew his psalter was still surprised when they sang
“O Lord, you have searched me out and known me;
♦ you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You mark out my journeys and my resting place
and are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
♦ but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
You encompass me behind and before
♦ and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
♦ so high that I cannot attain it.”
And then the part that he knew by heart, that he had murmured when he was washing the body of Jeff Ligibel, waiting for the coroner, that he had whispered as he washed Sharon Reed’s limbs and arranged them, even as he had arranged her uncle’s on that terrible night when Lewis Merrill, full of years had finally died.
“Oh, Where can I go then from your spirit?
♦ Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there;
♦ if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
If I take the wings of the morning
♦ and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand shall lead me,
♦ your right hand hold me fast.”
Prynne whispered, not singing, though all chanted about him:
“Surely the darkness will cover me
♦ and the light around me turn to night,’
Even darkness is no darkness with you;
the night is as clear as the day;
♦ darkness and light to you are both alike.”
“This is where the boys usually hang out during the year,” Prynne said.
“How did you know that?” Jack Knapp asked.
“Because it’s where we used to hang out,” Herulian said.
They sat on the roof of the dormitory, watching the sun make its dignified way into the earth, red and yellow light stretching under it while the pewter sky darkened. Between them they passed a bottle of rye whiskey and Prynne, sitting like a guru, his legs folded beneath him, exhaled the smoke of a Marlboro.
“You know, I didn’t smoke for three days, and I felt wonderful,” he said.
“Well then maybe you can stop all the time and feel even better,” Andy said.
Prynne eyed at him.
“What? Is it evil of me to want you to live for as long as possible?”
You may have a point,” Prynne said.
“I know I do. I could even take you running.”
Prynne barked out a laugh.
“You’d love it.”
“He’d hate it,” Herulian laughed.
They were quiet for a while and Andy said, as the wind picked up, “There is one regret I have.”
“Just one?” Jack looked up at him with a grin, and Andy playfully smacked him on the head.
“I know Jeff was buried here, in out cemetery, but I have wished, now and again, that I scattered him. I think he would have preferred that, to be on the wind one last time, to be free again. I know it’s silly, but… I think about that.”
“Oh, Andrew,” Prynne said.
He stood up, not as quickly at forty-seven as he had when he was sixteen. “Follow me. All of you can. If you wish.”
They all descended into the school and made their way into the Northwest Tower. They passed through the large abbot’s office and into the chapel, almost negligently genuflecting and crossing themselves, and Prynne bent near the altar and pulled out a plastic box.
It took some time for Andy to understand what he was holding and Prynne said, “You wanted me to bury him, but I didn’t think that was for me to do. I thought it was for you. When you were ready.”
Andy shook his head in disbelief.
“All these years? Jeff has been here, under the altar.”
“Jeff has been in heaven,” Prynne corrected, “but his ashes have been right here. I almost forgot. Sometimes I did forget. But I thought they were for you when you were ready.”
“Fuck, Tommy,” Andy said. His face screwing up a little.
The three old friends and Jack Knapp returned to the roof and with his keys, Andy cut into the box, and then he cut into the bag.
“Do it low,” Herulian said, “so they don’t get in your face.”
“Or ours either for that matter,” Prynne said.
As the sun descended, and a semi which Prynne was privately convinced was the exact same goddamn semi that was always going down the road passed by, Andy Reed poured out the bag and the finest dust lifted and spread out onto the air and for a moment it could be seen like a mist, and then it was gone.
“I’m cold now,” Prynne said, collecting the box and taking the plastic bag from Andy’s hand while Jack Knapp wrapped an arm around his old teacher’s shoulders.
“Whaddo you say we go down and have some coffee?”
Andy blew out his cheeks and nodded.
“I think I’d like that a lot.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Thankyou for your nice comments and that was a great portion! This story may be coming to an end but I am still enjoying it a lot. I am glad they were able to scatter their friends ashes after all that time. Great writing and I look forward to more!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Ben’s fingertips were pressed to Doug’s and in the darkness Doug said, “How is it that they get brighter and brighter?”
Ben Forrestor’s fingertips, his lips, his long limbs, Ben who watched the two of them giving themselves to each other from the other room, a timid voyeur, now entered and stood there in reverence, his hand gently brushing one or both of them, finally sighed so deeply and slid out of his clothes onto the bed to join them. Ben with the firm pressure of his mouth, Ben with the mouth that sucked on both of them and roved over their bodies, taking them to ecstasy. Ben, so long and tall, unfolding like a scarecrow Adonis. Ben, his cock long and arcing, adored, loved, sucked, penetrating. Ben of the comic books and Star Wars who, in time knew how to make you cry out and give up all your dignity. Ben and his cock that sprayed seed across the room as they both gasped in marvel. Ben, several years older, a man, who held him like a man when he trembled in ways he never had as Mike made him come, as his own seed boiled out of him in the grip of these two white boys and he shuddered in orgasm.
“Ben,” Doug murmured.
“Come with us?” Mike said from the doorway.
“Not just now,” Ben said.
“I will, but not just now.”
Doug kissed him gently.
“I will come,” Ben said, touching Doug’s shoulder. “I promise.”
Doug rolled himself from the bed and sat up, and he and Mike went to the shower where they turned the water on and wordlessly, except for Michael’s quiet humming, showered. Mike turned around and Doug washed his back and kissed him all down it. Kissed him at the base of his spine, kissed further, inserted his tongue, kissed thighs, kissed beside them as Mike pressed his hands to the tiles and lifted his face to the hot water.
They dressed in last night’s clothes and Mike was fascinated as Doug made a makeshift cream from Vaseline and lotion and combed his short, wooly black hair. He turned to see Ben long and tall and nude and a little bit bruised. Things were not over. He had insurance, but they’d probably have to go to court somewhere in the future. Things were never over. They didn’t end or get less complicated. Look at the three of them now. Ben yawned and stretching, said, “What if I change my mind? What if I come with you?”
“You should,” Doug said, finishing combing his hair.
“I will,” Ben said, heading to the bathroom. “I said I’d come, but in time, but what if the time is now?”
Doug chuckled and watched as the door closed on Ben’s nude form.
“The time is always now,” he said.
A few days ago… had it only been a few days ago, Chris blinked and almost yawned. He stretched his hands and feet, flexed his toes. A few days ago, when they had been in Benton, when it was Holy Thursday and Swann had headed for Chicago, the three of them, Sal and him and Joe had been together. More as an experiment than out of need they had begun fooling around. This was after church and there was something about the contrast between the holiest night of the year, and them at their old school in the Chapel of the Holy Angels, and them right in bed. The questions they were asking were obvious. What was between them, Sal and Chris, if Swann was not here? What was between Sal and Joe still? What were the rules? They were young. They were boys. They’d spent their little lifetimes trying to do the right thing. What about the wrong thing? Or what about how no one cared? What if God was not watching? He hadn’t been watching when Mathew Shepard was killed. Those who thought he was were odd, and Chris could not speak to their theology. He remembered a priest in religion class saying, “God watches and weeps,” But what kind of God only weeps?
Chris Navarro was a paradox. He knew that about himself even as, in the dark he and Joe and Sal had started making out. He believed in law and doing what was right. He was a Boy Scout, a camp councilor and altar boy. He sort of dimly frowned upon his parents being Democrats and liberals, he realized that now, even though their being both was the reason he could do what he wanted, sleep with boys, find himself while sleeping with a bunch of girls. It was only later he realized the reason he had been free to be pro life and have a baby was because of his very unconventional parents. When Brad and Annette had done what they did, it was from fear, because, he was beginning to understand, it had been the only thing they could do at the time.
The fumbling had been tired and in the end the three of them had lain unsatisfied and feeling a little silly. It was Joe who got up first and said, as he pulled his shorts back on, “Let’s chalk this up to a learning experience.”
They had felt no need to tell Swann or Doug about this. There wasn’t even much of a need to reflect on it. What had they learned? That is only worked with Swann? No, that probably wasn’t it. What had they learned? Well, maybe they had learned that it was okay if it only worked with Swann. Or maybe they had learned that there was more to them that this, than rolling around and hoping for orgasm.
Joe had gone home Holy Thursday. He’d been thinking of Doug anyway, and as much as Chris was thinking of Swann, actually what he wanted was Sal, but Sal at his side to talk with and to unfold and take out memories that only made sense with him. He wanted Sal’s stories, the stories he was only beginning to tell now even though they’d been in each other’s lives for years.
Ben Forrestor’s fingertips, his lips, his long limbs, Ben who watched the two of them giving themselves to each other from the other room, a timid voyeur, now entered and stood there in reverence, his hand gently brushing one or both of them, finally sighed so deeply and slid out of his clothes onto the bed to join them. Ben with the firm pressure of his mouth, Ben with the mouth that sucked on both of them and roved over their bodies, taking them to ecstasy. Ben, so long and tall, unfolding like a scarecrow Adonis. Ben, his cock long and arcing, adored, loved, sucked, penetrating. Ben of the comic books and Star Wars who, in time knew how to make you cry out and give up all your dignity. Ben and his cock that sprayed seed across the room as they both gasped in marvel. Ben, several years older, a man, who held him like a man when he trembled in ways he never had as Mike made him come, as his own seed boiled out of him in the grip of these two white boys and he shuddered in orgasm.
“Ben,” Doug murmured.
“Come with us?” Mike said from the doorway.
“Not just now,” Ben said.
“I will, but not just now.”
Doug kissed him gently.
“I will come,” Ben said, touching Doug’s shoulder. “I promise.”
Doug rolled himself from the bed and sat up, and he and Mike went to the shower where they turned the water on and wordlessly, except for Michael’s quiet humming, showered. Mike turned around and Doug washed his back and kissed him all down it. Kissed him at the base of his spine, kissed further, inserted his tongue, kissed thighs, kissed beside them as Mike pressed his hands to the tiles and lifted his face to the hot water.
They dressed in last night’s clothes and Mike was fascinated as Doug made a makeshift cream from Vaseline and lotion and combed his short, wooly black hair. He turned to see Ben long and tall and nude and a little bit bruised. Things were not over. He had insurance, but they’d probably have to go to court somewhere in the future. Things were never over. They didn’t end or get less complicated. Look at the three of them now. Ben yawned and stretching, said, “What if I change my mind? What if I come with you?”
“You should,” Doug said, finishing combing his hair.
“I will,” Ben said, heading to the bathroom. “I said I’d come, but in time, but what if the time is now?”
Doug chuckled and watched as the door closed on Ben’s nude form.
“The time is always now,” he said.
A few days ago… had it only been a few days ago, Chris blinked and almost yawned. He stretched his hands and feet, flexed his toes. A few days ago, when they had been in Benton, when it was Holy Thursday and Swann had headed for Chicago, the three of them, Sal and him and Joe had been together. More as an experiment than out of need they had begun fooling around. This was after church and there was something about the contrast between the holiest night of the year, and them at their old school in the Chapel of the Holy Angels, and them right in bed. The questions they were asking were obvious. What was between them, Sal and Chris, if Swann was not here? What was between Sal and Joe still? What were the rules? They were young. They were boys. They’d spent their little lifetimes trying to do the right thing. What about the wrong thing? Or what about how no one cared? What if God was not watching? He hadn’t been watching when Mathew Shepard was killed. Those who thought he was were odd, and Chris could not speak to their theology. He remembered a priest in religion class saying, “God watches and weeps,” But what kind of God only weeps?
Chris Navarro was a paradox. He knew that about himself even as, in the dark he and Joe and Sal had started making out. He believed in law and doing what was right. He was a Boy Scout, a camp councilor and altar boy. He sort of dimly frowned upon his parents being Democrats and liberals, he realized that now, even though their being both was the reason he could do what he wanted, sleep with boys, find himself while sleeping with a bunch of girls. It was only later he realized the reason he had been free to be pro life and have a baby was because of his very unconventional parents. When Brad and Annette had done what they did, it was from fear, because, he was beginning to understand, it had been the only thing they could do at the time.
The fumbling had been tired and in the end the three of them had lain unsatisfied and feeling a little silly. It was Joe who got up first and said, as he pulled his shorts back on, “Let’s chalk this up to a learning experience.”
They had felt no need to tell Swann or Doug about this. There wasn’t even much of a need to reflect on it. What had they learned? That is only worked with Swann? No, that probably wasn’t it. What had they learned? Well, maybe they had learned that it was okay if it only worked with Swann. Or maybe they had learned that there was more to them that this, than rolling around and hoping for orgasm.
Joe had gone home Holy Thursday. He’d been thinking of Doug anyway, and as much as Chris was thinking of Swann, actually what he wanted was Sal, but Sal at his side to talk with and to unfold and take out memories that only made sense with him. He wanted Sal’s stories, the stories he was only beginning to tell now even though they’d been in each other’s lives for years.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
The two of them went out the next day to a little lake and sat under a tree and Sal said, “I brought Swann here earlier. It was the same day he took my to a sex shop.”
“He took you to a sex shop!”
“The guy there said I was hot. I didn’t know what to do with that.”
“Well… you are.” Chris said. “You are hot.”
He realized he had never told another guy he was hot.
Sal said, “I almost killed myself here.”
“Wha?”
“Junior year. The year everything happened.”
“That was the year you were winning everything. That’s when folks were calling you Bullet.”
Chris smiled. “All the girls wanted you. Probably half the guys.”
“I was trying to be straight, trying to be with girls, trying to make my fucktard of a dad happy, trying to… And I got my Dad’s gun and I sat here and I put it in my mouth and I sat there for a long time getting ready to pull the trigger.”
“That was the year I had Zach,” Chris said.
“I remember.”
“It was a hard year.”
Sal nodded.
“So, what happened?” Chris asked. “How come you’re still here?”
“Because I pulled the trigger and there were no bullets.”
Sal started laughing while Chris’s mouth opened in horror.
“It was almost like I died. I sat around blinking. Everything was so… pretty. The grass, the water, and the trees. The bug that had just bitten me, and I thought, I almost lost it. I dropped the gun. I was terrified. It was almost like getting hit by a bus. And I just decided I’d better go on. You know? I knew I wasn’t happy, but I just thought I could still go on.”
“I know,” Chris said.
And then he said, “I loved that kid. I loved him so much.”
When Chris was in eighth grade, two brothers had come to his house, Herulian and Prynne. Prynne ate and drank with a gusto and outsmoked his father. Herulian was nice, always that kind gentle soul, but Prynne won his parents over and did it simply by being himself. In the course of the night he had turned to Chris and said, “But we came here for you. What would you like to know?”
“If I’ll have friends,” Chris said.
“I’d think someone like you makes friends very easily,” the monk had said.
“I don’t,” Chris said. “Not really.”
Then he said, “I mean, it’s easy to be on teams and everything, and have buddies who like you, but I always wanted a friend, like a best friend.”
He ventured, “A brother. I never had brothers.”
“I have over seventy,” Prynne laughed. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Chris smiled at this and said, “Still, I’d like to meet someone I was close to.”
“My nephew is coming,” Prynne said. “He’s like you. He doesn’t look like you. I mean he looks like me, but I think maybe the two of you would get on.”
Swann, who was Doug’s cousin, the cousin of the kid who was like a little brother to him had be been two degrees from him all his life. He remembered the day he had told him about the baby, about Samantha, He could still feel the cut on his face, the blow of back of Swann’s hand, the disconnect he had made and the loss and the misery that perhaps united him to Sal, that let him understand what it was to entertain ending things.
Oh, how long it had taken to repair what was fucked up between he and Swann. If they had forever it still wasn’t enough time to make up for those missing years.
“He took you to a sex shop!”
“The guy there said I was hot. I didn’t know what to do with that.”
“Well… you are.” Chris said. “You are hot.”
He realized he had never told another guy he was hot.
Sal said, “I almost killed myself here.”
“Wha?”
“Junior year. The year everything happened.”
“That was the year you were winning everything. That’s when folks were calling you Bullet.”
Chris smiled. “All the girls wanted you. Probably half the guys.”
“I was trying to be straight, trying to be with girls, trying to make my fucktard of a dad happy, trying to… And I got my Dad’s gun and I sat here and I put it in my mouth and I sat there for a long time getting ready to pull the trigger.”
“That was the year I had Zach,” Chris said.
“I remember.”
“It was a hard year.”
Sal nodded.
“So, what happened?” Chris asked. “How come you’re still here?”
“Because I pulled the trigger and there were no bullets.”
Sal started laughing while Chris’s mouth opened in horror.
“It was almost like I died. I sat around blinking. Everything was so… pretty. The grass, the water, and the trees. The bug that had just bitten me, and I thought, I almost lost it. I dropped the gun. I was terrified. It was almost like getting hit by a bus. And I just decided I’d better go on. You know? I knew I wasn’t happy, but I just thought I could still go on.”
“I know,” Chris said.
And then he said, “I loved that kid. I loved him so much.”
When Chris was in eighth grade, two brothers had come to his house, Herulian and Prynne. Prynne ate and drank with a gusto and outsmoked his father. Herulian was nice, always that kind gentle soul, but Prynne won his parents over and did it simply by being himself. In the course of the night he had turned to Chris and said, “But we came here for you. What would you like to know?”
“If I’ll have friends,” Chris said.
“I’d think someone like you makes friends very easily,” the monk had said.
“I don’t,” Chris said. “Not really.”
Then he said, “I mean, it’s easy to be on teams and everything, and have buddies who like you, but I always wanted a friend, like a best friend.”
He ventured, “A brother. I never had brothers.”
“I have over seventy,” Prynne laughed. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Chris smiled at this and said, “Still, I’d like to meet someone I was close to.”
“My nephew is coming,” Prynne said. “He’s like you. He doesn’t look like you. I mean he looks like me, but I think maybe the two of you would get on.”
Swann, who was Doug’s cousin, the cousin of the kid who was like a little brother to him had be been two degrees from him all his life. He remembered the day he had told him about the baby, about Samantha, He could still feel the cut on his face, the blow of back of Swann’s hand, the disconnect he had made and the loss and the misery that perhaps united him to Sal, that let him understand what it was to entertain ending things.
Oh, how long it had taken to repair what was fucked up between he and Swann. If they had forever it still wasn’t enough time to make up for those missing years.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
West Lafayette, sophomore year at Purdue. He had been at an apartment party and they all called Chris the Professor because he wore his glasses all the time, but this was because his eyes were weaker and he studied all the time too. The Chris who went through girls and was full of sex and desire had been put away for a Chris who was just, frankly, beat up and tired. He was at the party with a beer in one hand.
He’d nearly dropped the beer because, suddenly, there was Swann. He didn’t even think about not running straight to him, and there was the moment between them when Swann saw him, and when he grabbed Swann’s hand and pulled him through the crowds and into the bathroom because it was the only quiet space he could find.
On the other side of the door the music was playing, but his heart was full and he just started to cry. Tears were rolling down his face even though he was smiling, and Swann was smiling and then they were hugging and Swann took Chris’s beer and drank from it, and the two of them sat on the edge of the bathtub hugging. They didn’t even need to speak. They just held onto each other.
Finally, Chris had started laughing, and he stood up, rinsing his face, and then he cocked his halo of hair in the direction of the door and took Swann’s hand. He opened the door and they threaded through the crowd until Swann found Jill and Katy.
“Chris!” Jill started.
“Hey, Jill. We gotta go, Jill.”
Jill frowned, and looked at Swann.
“I’ll bring him home,” Chris said. “Don’t even worry about it.”
“I have to go,” Swann said to his best friend in a tone that meant there was no other choice, and Jill understood.
Chris took Swann out of the apartment building and to his car, and they drove in silence to his dorm. Outside of it, Chris bent down and kissed him fiercely, and then took him by the hand and led him to his room, and they undressed wordlessly and made love hard until they lay, sweating and exhausted, limbs entangled, saying nothing, and Chris found himself crying again and Swann, touching his cheek, realized he was too.
“I missed you,” Chris said in a little voice, touching Swann’s fingertips.
“We lost so much time,” Swann said, his lips pressed to Chris’s forehead.
“Let’s stop that,” Chris said.
And Swann agreed.
It was how they’d come back together after the long division. That Saturday night and Sunday was theirs. Swann called Jill Sunday morning to let her know he was fine, but he returned Monday afternoon in Chris’s car, Chris his tall shadow once again. They hadn’t said they were a couple. They had never been exactly that, just that they were together, for they had never exactly been apart.
Which was what Swann was saying while they lay together and Swann’s arms were wrapped around him.
“I like this,” Chris said to the pillow, and then he turned to face Swann.
“Huh?”
“When you’re the little spoon being the big spoon. It’s nice to feel protected.”
“Well, I don’t know what a great big six foot something like you needs protection from?”
“All sorts of things,” Chris said. “Half of them coming from myself.”
“Well,” Swann said, touching the place between his breasts where the pale hair on most of his body was dark, “I like to be protected too.”
“I’ll always protect you. We’ll always protect you. Sal will apparently tear someone’s head off for you.”
Sal laughed low in his throat.
In the afternoon dark of the bedroom he lay on his stomach and they both looked over his long back, the tender rise of his ass, the long runner’s legs stretched out and above all his face, long nose, red mouth, gentle eyes, smiling in contentment.
“I could stay here forever,” Sal said. “I could make my whole life here.”
“We can make a life here,” Swann said. “We’ll make a life at Saint Damian’s, and Chris’ll go back to Lafayette. And… why should he always come to us? Why can’t we come to him? But we can make a life here. We can make a life like no one has seen, or like none of us has seen. We could make the new world.”
“Where am I in your new world?” Joe asked.
He lay on his side, on the other side of Sal. The love they had tried to make on Holy Thursday but had failed, rose naturally when they retired to bed late in the night, came out in laughs and fumbling and now in the warmth of that great bedroom, they all huddled together and Swann touched the side of Joe’s face, his hand traveling down his compact little body.
Joe closed his eyes and in the way of a child more than a lover, he placed himself between Sal and Swann.
“In the new world,” Swann assured him, brushing the back of his hand over Joe Stanley’s forehead, “You can be anywhere you want.”
THE END
He’d nearly dropped the beer because, suddenly, there was Swann. He didn’t even think about not running straight to him, and there was the moment between them when Swann saw him, and when he grabbed Swann’s hand and pulled him through the crowds and into the bathroom because it was the only quiet space he could find.
On the other side of the door the music was playing, but his heart was full and he just started to cry. Tears were rolling down his face even though he was smiling, and Swann was smiling and then they were hugging and Swann took Chris’s beer and drank from it, and the two of them sat on the edge of the bathtub hugging. They didn’t even need to speak. They just held onto each other.
Finally, Chris had started laughing, and he stood up, rinsing his face, and then he cocked his halo of hair in the direction of the door and took Swann’s hand. He opened the door and they threaded through the crowd until Swann found Jill and Katy.
“Chris!” Jill started.
“Hey, Jill. We gotta go, Jill.”
Jill frowned, and looked at Swann.
“I’ll bring him home,” Chris said. “Don’t even worry about it.”
“I have to go,” Swann said to his best friend in a tone that meant there was no other choice, and Jill understood.
Chris took Swann out of the apartment building and to his car, and they drove in silence to his dorm. Outside of it, Chris bent down and kissed him fiercely, and then took him by the hand and led him to his room, and they undressed wordlessly and made love hard until they lay, sweating and exhausted, limbs entangled, saying nothing, and Chris found himself crying again and Swann, touching his cheek, realized he was too.
“I missed you,” Chris said in a little voice, touching Swann’s fingertips.
“We lost so much time,” Swann said, his lips pressed to Chris’s forehead.
“Let’s stop that,” Chris said.
And Swann agreed.
It was how they’d come back together after the long division. That Saturday night and Sunday was theirs. Swann called Jill Sunday morning to let her know he was fine, but he returned Monday afternoon in Chris’s car, Chris his tall shadow once again. They hadn’t said they were a couple. They had never been exactly that, just that they were together, for they had never exactly been apart.
Which was what Swann was saying while they lay together and Swann’s arms were wrapped around him.
“I like this,” Chris said to the pillow, and then he turned to face Swann.
“Huh?”
“When you’re the little spoon being the big spoon. It’s nice to feel protected.”
“Well, I don’t know what a great big six foot something like you needs protection from?”
“All sorts of things,” Chris said. “Half of them coming from myself.”
“Well,” Swann said, touching the place between his breasts where the pale hair on most of his body was dark, “I like to be protected too.”
“I’ll always protect you. We’ll always protect you. Sal will apparently tear someone’s head off for you.”
Sal laughed low in his throat.
In the afternoon dark of the bedroom he lay on his stomach and they both looked over his long back, the tender rise of his ass, the long runner’s legs stretched out and above all his face, long nose, red mouth, gentle eyes, smiling in contentment.
“I could stay here forever,” Sal said. “I could make my whole life here.”
“We can make a life here,” Swann said. “We’ll make a life at Saint Damian’s, and Chris’ll go back to Lafayette. And… why should he always come to us? Why can’t we come to him? But we can make a life here. We can make a life like no one has seen, or like none of us has seen. We could make the new world.”
“Where am I in your new world?” Joe asked.
He lay on his side, on the other side of Sal. The love they had tried to make on Holy Thursday but had failed, rose naturally when they retired to bed late in the night, came out in laughs and fumbling and now in the warmth of that great bedroom, they all huddled together and Swann touched the side of Joe’s face, his hand traveling down his compact little body.
Joe closed his eyes and in the way of a child more than a lover, he placed himself between Sal and Swann.
“In the new world,” Swann assured him, brushing the back of his hand over Joe Stanley’s forehead, “You can be anywhere you want.”
THE END
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That is a wonderful ending! I have enjoyed this story so much. I hope you post more stories and have a great day my friend.