Bedrooms and Bath Houses

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great ending to part one. I am glad so many characters came together for the meal. A big fight between Joe and Doug. I hope they can cope with each others actions and I am interested to read what happens. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great ending to part one. I am glad so many characters came together for the meal. A big fight between Joe and Doug. I hope they can cope with each others actions and I am interested to read what happens. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

Oh, i'm so glad you enjoyed it. A fight was long due. There's a lot Joe and Doug have to deal with. That whole big old devil called Karma. I plan on posting more tonight.

 

[ChrisGibson]

PART

TWO





Chapter Seven





























There was really only a mild pang when Sal called him this morning. After all, Sal had called him, not waited till twelve or one, not said nothing at all, not tried to persuade Swann from not calling. Chris had wondered who Swann would have called if Sal had not been at the station. He wondered how different things would have been if he had gotten the call. Would they have ended up at his house? It didn’t matter. Now that Chris thought of it, he could have called Swann from Chicago or traveled to him.

This was the situation they were in now, when Chris tried to take it apart, make it more normal, it meant that either he was gone or Sal was gone, and though this made more sense, was something the world could handle very well, lying in the dark, imagining it, this was a vision Chris Navarro didn’t prefer.

He’d watched a lot of TV, knew how things were supposed to be. He understood love and the heterosexual world, and he even understood how the gay world tried to ape it. After all, hadn’t he tried to ape it? Hadn’t he ended up impregnating someone because he wanted to be normal? He loved girls, He loved women. He loved having sex with them. It was only a little later he realized that hadn’t been entirely true. He did love sex, and he loved being liked. He liked how easy it was to get girls, and he even loved the idea of being bisexual, or being so flexible he could entertain loving Swann and also think of being married. None of the girls really seemed to matter how. They all sort of drifted into one slightly thrilling adventure that culminated in Zachary, whose head smelled so good, and whose cry went sharp into Chris and made him run straight to that little baby, who had the most perfect fingers and toes and lips, Zachary who still broke his heart.

No, it didn’t do to go there. Zach was gone, and he was here, and he was twenty one and probably his whole long life was ahead of him, He could go into that grief place later, the one that was so hard to get out of. What had he been saying? Oh, yes, Sal was part of the equation now, and the truth is Chris preferred it that way. Maybe he shouldn’t, but he did. There was no need, even in his mind to say he loved Swann Portis. That seemed too trite a thing to say. But he hadn’t loved him well, and for years now he loved him in Lafayette and that wasn’t going to change. He had remained with him more than usual this semester and especially this Palm Week when he’d said fuck all to his campus and stayed at Saint Damian, but he would go back after vacation and he would finish up there, you couldn’t transfer after your junior year. It may have been a perfectly acceptable thing to say to your boyfriend, whom you had kept perfect faith with, we’ll be long distance. But to someone whom you had not really claimed as a boyfriend, whom you loved and hoped to have a life with, who had, in fact, found someone who loved him intensely and lived next door, it seemed completely out of order to say, “Don’t choose him. Choose me, I won’t be here, and often in the past I wasn’t there either, but choose me.”

On the beach before Thanksgiving, when Sal was on the horizon, Chris had said go to him for that very reason, so the call from Sal this morning wasn’t a downgrade. It was an upgrade. It was the upgrade from being the occasional more than friend, less than complete lover to a welcome part of a triad that from which, quite rightly, Sal could have shut him.

Then there was the dishonesty with which Chris had conducted himself until, well, maybe until a few months ago. The first time he spent a day with Swann he knew Swann was his soulmate, a word which made him grimace, but there it was. He was also with Jack Knapp at the time, and Chris was experimenting with girl after girl. That’s as it was. Chris, playing two different sports, had adopted the monastic custom of custody of the eyes, looking up, looking down, looking straight past, never allowing himself to dwell on the shapes of boys, or on his curiosity about them. The only relief had been when Chuck had started giving it to Swann and he could, in the half dark, watch Chuck’s cinnamon colored body that always smelled of musk, smelled lightly of boy funk. In the semi darkness he watched the back muscles contract, the head arch, the thighs bunch and, at last, unable to resist, his hand had reached out and cupped those round ass cheeks. Now and again he would rub his cock between them.

Toward the end of sophomore year there had been a party, and Chris isn’t sure where Swann was. He ought to have been there. Chuck was and they’d gotten liquor and it was them and a bunch of girls and the drunker they got the more Chris wanted to make out with Chuck. He remembers staggering back to school and feeling up Chuck, and handsome, dragon faced Chuck is saying, “You crazy faggot,” but saying it lightly, laughing as Chris unbuttons his shorts. They’re orange denim shorts, very snug. All night he’s been seeing Chuck’s bulge through them, and Chuck says, “Fuck, I must be a faggot too,” as Chris goes down on him. He can’t stop sucking his dick. It’s like the best thing in the world. Chuck’s dick just keeps getting bigger, stretching his mouth, and Chris’s sucking get’s sloppier, crazier. When Chuck comes in his mouth, it’s only half a surprise. They’re in some abandoned part of the residence hall, and if they’d been sober, they’d know this is far too stupid of a place to be.

What is more of a surprise is when Chuck, drunk and horny, pants already down, bends town and shows Chris that marvelous ass and Chris, understanding what comes next, spits and spits and then presses his dick into Chuck and goddamn it feels so good and Chuck whimpers low as the moons rises through the window, and in the dark abandoned hall, eyes glazed over, head tilted back, mouth open in ecstasy, Chris fucks him. It’s not like it was, being with Swann that winter. This is mindless and mechanical, unrelenting like a piston machine, simple need and simple pleasure. It seems like it goes on and on forever before Chris finally busts. After he comes and he’s bent over Chuck who had bent over for him, they eventually straighten up and Chris starts laughing. Sometimes simple need and simple pleasure are more than enough.



At Christmastime he and Sal were discussing… everything… while Swann slept.

“Are you telling me?” Sal asked in disbelief, “that with all of those girls you were dating, Swann is the only guy you’ve ever been with?”

Chris felt stupid for saying it. There was never a time where he stood up and said he was gay. He just got tired of chasing after things he wasn’t interested in, and then had a more or less celibate life except when Swann was around.

“In a more than once way,” he said, “yeah.”

“Well!” Sal sat back and whistled.

“I mean, it was one other time at school. And once in college.”

“Okay.”

“How many of us to do you think there were?” Chris asked. “At school? Trying not to look at each other, or telling ourselves we weren’t interested?”

“I…” Sal started to talk about junior year when Joe had pushed him away. He didn’t want to blame Joe anymore. But if not for the coincidence of Joe and his father, things might have been different.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“I was trying to be what I was supposed to be. I clapped myself on the back for having sex with a girl, which is odd because that’s also a mortal sin, and I could have actually gotten her pregnant. So, I guess we were all super messed up. But me and Joe, we went back to it a little later, and I always looked for guys a couple of times a year…. In some stupid places too. Even when I had a girlfriend for a long time I just wanted to get out and at least see a guy. I used to go to the gym and strip and walk around naked cause I got off and being looked at even if I didn’t do that much looking.”

“I never did that much looking,” Chris said, sounding regretful, a little amazed at his lack of experience.

And now Sal had done something that took a lot of courage, and Chris had known that even then. He placed his hand on Chris’s knee and he asked him, “Would you like to look… now?”

Chris had felt stupid for a moment. It was taking a while to put things together. Men never hit on him, or if they did he never noticed, and Sal’s hand was still on his knee and Sal said, “I don’t know. Or maybe you just don’t think of me like that. Maybe you don’t—”

“No, I mean. What I mean is I have never let myself really think of most people—most guys like that. I spent a long time trying not to look.”

“Then look,” Sal said.

Chris did and Sal said, “Look, I know the two of you have something, but there’s no reason we can’t have something. I think it would make things easier.”

Chris didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what to say. He was so good at putting away all of his feelings, so good at not looking, so good at not wondering, but that wasn’t entirely true. He’d always wondered about Sal and Joe, and he’d even wondered about Pete, and Sal said, “Look, I know. Okay?”

When Chris was still not speaking, Sal said, “Once I met this guy, and he asked if he could kiss me, and I was nervous, more than nervous, and I don’t know why I was nervous cause I’d done more than that. I told him I didn’t want that, just the sex stuff. And then toward the end of the night I said that I did want it. That I wanted to try it, and it was the craziest thing because that was better than anything. I mean, the other stuff you can do it yourself or get toys but it’s something about kissing someone… I just… You know what, Chris? I’m going to kiss you, okay?”

And Chris hadn’t said yes or no, but Sal slowly pressed his lips to Chris’s. and Sal’s hand was on his knee and he could smell Sal’s cologne and all of him was opening. Things that he had pushed back were springing up, Sal after a track mete in the shower, the water running over his head, plastering his dark hair to his scalp, down his neck and his back to his ass and down his thighs, Sal drying his body slowly in the locker room, the line of hair that defined his breast, his stomach and hips, the dark patch of hair over his sex, the uncomfortable thoughts that began to bloom in Chris and he began to push back, now unfolding as Sal’s tongue pressed into his mouth. He felt his hand on the back of Sal’s head. His hand went to his throat and he thought if he took the other hand he could strangle him. He could bite down on his tongue. He could… what the hell was wrong with him?

In a brief moment he understood that poor Mathew Shepard boy who was the most recent, but certainly not the last and definitely not the first. This helplessness as Chris sank to bed with Sal, this vulnerability that men needed and men hated, to be this soft with another boy, this open. Swann had been his lover and his other self. Everything between them had always been free of fear, and there had never been a moment where Swann presented as anything but a boy who loved boys. With Sal it was different. Sal was like him. They’d fought the good fight, had the same shame. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was the voice that said this was some elaborate trick, that Sal would pull away and call him cocksucker, faggot, turn on a reel that showed him and Churck fucking in the darkened hallways of Saint Francis.

The two of them, Chris in jeans and tee shirt, Sal in sweats and a track jacket lay side by side, tangled in each other, and Chris gently told him all this. Sal shook his head.

“We’re the same,” he said. “I wish we weren’t. I wish I didn’t understand. It hurts, doesn’t it? It fucks you up.”

Chris nodded and Sal touched his cheek so gently, almost talking to himself as his hand went up and down Chris’s shoulder.

“All you want to do is just… be gentle with another guy and all the time your dad’s voice, or your granddad’s voice is in your head telling you not to be a…”

“I don’t know what happened. My parents always supported me. They know about Swann. I don’t know why I’m this way. I actually get mad at myself for being a coward.”

Sal nodded.

“You’re really pretty.”

“Huh?”

Chris said, “You’re really pretty. Handsome. Pretty handsome. I always thought it.”

“Well, you’re really pretty handsome too and the whole school thought it.”

“I… ah… I’d like us to… if you don’t mind… If you really think Swann wouldn’t mind—”

“He’d probably like it.”

“I’d like to be with you.”

Sal nodded.

“Not mess with you, or fuck or…. I mean, I want to make love. I want to be soft.”

“I’d like that too,” Sal said, his voice softer than he meant it to be, almost as if he’d run out of breath before he’d finished speaking.

“There are some things Swann doesn’t get,” Sal said. “I mean, he gets them cause he’s smart and he has an imagination, but he hasn’t been to certain places… done some things that you and I have.”

Chris nodded, serious.

“That scares me,” Chris said. “We’re so close, and you’re so close, I’m scared of us going to a place with each other neither of us can go with him. Cause, I love him. And I honestly, honestly think you’re the best thing that ever happened to him. I would die, you have to know I would die before I fucked that up.”

“I understand,” Sal said, sensibly, “but you have to understand if we’re going to be with each other, you and me, we have to have something between us where no one else can go. Not our friends, not Joe, not even Swann.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

“What’s going on in there?” Chris asked as he lazily tossed popcorn into his mouth.

Swann pretended not to hear and Sal sat down right beside him and said, “We know you know.”

In the large basement of Chris’s house, Joe and Doug were having a quiet but obvious argument behind a closed door.

Chris stopped eating and he looked at Swann. His dark haired, grey eyed angel and his blue eyed blond archangel. Night and day. Right now they looked like hawks and he felt like a mouse and that was as thrilling as it was disconcerting.

“So…?” Chris said, putting the popcorn bowl down and planting his elbows on his knees and his face in his fists as he looked at Swann.

“Maybe Doug should tell you himself.”

“Or maybe you should?”

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you?”

Both boys eyed each other then shook their heads.

Again, Swann was more thrilled than threatened by the bond between Chris and Sal and partially because he thought about what it would be like when they all went to bed tonight, a thrill ran through him and he said, “Doug slept with Mike Buren.”

“Doug fucked Minnow!” they both said, and looked at each other.

“But I thought…” Chris started. “I mean, I knew they were getting along and... But for a long time they weren’t”

“For a long time we weren’t,” Swann said.

“Ouch.”

“You know they’ve always had something for each other.”

“They were in love,” Chris said.

“I mean, that’s all you could call it. Mike’s been in love with Doug since they were twelve or thirteen. Shit went south, but….”

“They’re like you and me,” Swann said, frankly.

“Doug has known Joe since he was a Freshmen,” Sal said in defense of his best friend.”

“Yes, I know,” Swann said. “But…”

“You Portises,” Sal shook his head. “One white boy isn’t enough.”

“Well, you are addictive.”

“Wait,” Chris said, cutting into Swann’s sarcasm, “so what’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know,” Swann said. “You and Sal had something. Mike and Joe… it’s not the same. I really don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Alright, Swann,” Sal said, pulling his knees to his chest, “if it were up to you, which one do you think he should stay with.”

“Number one,” Swann said, “it’s not up to me. And number two, I honestly don’t think he should have to make a choice. I don’t know why they can’t all be happy.”

“Wait.” Chris said again, “I thought Mike was with Ben.”

“Ben?” Sal said.

“Ben Forrester.”

“That name sounds familiar.”

“He was Jack Knapp’s best friend. He was a senior when we were Freshmen.”

“Can Frannies stop fucking each other!” Sal exclaimed.

“Apparently not,” Swann touched his knee.

“This is—”

The door opened and Joe came out of the room.

“Not our problem,” Swann said.

“I don’t suppose we’re going to Chicago tonight?” Joe said as Doug came into the living room.

“What time is it?” Swann said.

“Eight.”

“That’s at least a two hour drive to do what? At ten on a Sunday?”

“I hear Mike Buren’s in Chicago—” Joe began.

“Don’t start,” Doug warned, and that was an end of it.

“Well, if we start now, we don’t have to drive tomorrow, and I bet we’re going to be bored in approximately forty-five minutes.

Sal was feeling sleepy and comfortable, tender. He was looking forward to going to bed early and getting under the covers with Swann and Chris, seeing what led to what. Lovemaking was just the right word for what they did, how the cuddling and clinging became kissing, became something more, settled into a puppy pile of sleepers, holding each other for warmth. Already his body was stirring with the thought of it. And in reality that meant by ten o clock they’d probably be up again and ready for a long drive, but Chris’s house was just the right place for it. The only better place was Swann’s house, and wasn’t his grandmother there?

Chris’s lack of enthusiasm about travel seemed to mirror Sal’s and since Swann wasn’t driving, he said, “let me confer with my companions.”

“The harem’s about to have a meeting.”

“Don’t be jealous. It looks bad on you,” Sal said in a tone that revealed he’d been with Swann a while now.

The three boys talked, and in the middle of it Chris said, “Me and Sal are thinking the same thing, and if they want to drive ahead, let them.”

That was decided and Joe said, “If we’re not going to head out until midnight, then…” he looked at Doug, “why don’t we just go see my family?”

“I thought you all were mad at each other,” Sal said.

“We’re not mad,” Joe said. “We’re just trying to work things out.”

“And we will work them out,” Doug said, and Chris couldn’t help hearing an undertone in his voice that implied: “Or else.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great long portion! It was interesting to hear so much of Chris and his life. I am glad Doug and Joe are trying to work things out. I am also glad Chris finally told Sal what he thought of him. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Can we ride together?”

“I drove my own car.”

“Yes,” Joe said, “That’s why I’m asking if we can ride together?”

Outside in the Navarro driveway while night set in, Joe said, “See, we are a little mad at each other.”

“I’m a little mad at you.”

“You have a right to be. You’re right. I didn’t stop myself that night.”

“Are you in love with Sal?”

“Not really,” Joe said simply. “I don’t know if I can convince you of that. We were something that isn’t quite what being in love is. If you can understand that.”

“I understand that just fine,” Doug said. “But I think you are a little bit in love with my cousin.”

“Swann?”

“Not Meech. Not Popeye. Not fuckin’ Rose.”

“Okay,” Joe waited for him to continue.

“I think you are enough in love with Swann to sleep with him. I think you wanted it. I think you enjoyed it. I think you never thought twice about it, and… Did you or did you not… No, never mind. I don’t care about that.”

‘Care about what?”

“Like I said,” Doug said. “I don’t care. But I come to you, honestly and truly, and tell you about Mike, and I also tell you I didn’t ask your permission, that I thought about it for a long time, and both of us put it off for a long time, but if finally happened, and you think you have the right to be upset. To be jealous.”

Joe crossed his arms over his chest.

“There’s a difference, Douglass, and you know it.”

“And the difference is?”

“He’s the love of your life. Whatever may have happened, however much I might care about any of those dumbbells we just left back there, it’s always been us. You’ve always been the love of my life, and I thought I was yours. Only now you tell me, well no, Mike Buren was too. All this time, and you never talked about it.”

“It’s not like it’s that fucking clear and it’s not like either one of you was around for a long time. When I was expelled I went to Chris. Not either of you. And then I went to Swann. And then I was alone.”

“I know, and I wish I was there—”

“But you weren’t.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not, because it’s on me,” Doug said. “But still.”

“Can we please get the fuck out of this driveway?”

“We’ll take your car,” Doug said by way of a peace offering.

Joe nodded.

“I don’t know if it’ll make it to Chicago.”

“We’ll take mine to Chicago” Doug said.

“I was serious, you know. I came to Saint Damian’s to be near you. I live downstairs from you. I love you, Joseph. We’re going to work out, no matter how.”

Joe was looking behind him as he pulled out of the driveway onto the winding street and he said, almost casually, “I know, Doug.”

They made their way through the winding streets until they came to Burlington Avenue. That would take them to the Strip or into Calverton, and Joe cleared his throat.

“You know why I wanted us to go to Chicago?”

“Why?”

“So I can talk to Mike.”

Doug looked at him.

“We need to talk, Doug. I’m serious, not fight or anything, but talk. You owe me that, or maybe the both of us owe you that.”





“Are you eating cheesecake?”

“Yup,” Swann said. “Want some?”

“I attacked the popcorn, so no.”

“You still got the coffee machine down here?” Sal asked.

“Same place it always is.”

Now that Joe and Doug were done, now that they had four hours to themselves, there was no hurry. Swann was seeking a radio station.

“There we go.”



We used to play out in the rain
Your mother scolded us
She said that we were bad
…She said that we were bad…
I thought I'd better go on home…

stepped it up and…
You watched till I was gone



“Is that some Motown shit?” Chris asked appreciatively as he rolled the second of two very long joints.

“The Sylvers.”

“It reminds me of South Shore for some reason.”

“That’s why I played it.”







I stopped in shock when I saw you
With another fellow, oh, wow
Can you remember the rain?
Can you remember the rain?



Chris passed one joint to Swann and one to Sal who was in his briefs and was on his way to make coffee.

“Thank you, Brother,” Sal toasted him with it.

“We should go to a French restaurant,” Swann suggested.

“We could,” Chris said as he rolled one for himself now, “but what brought that up?”

“Escargot.”

“Snails?”

“Yes.”

“And why?”

“Wouldn’t you like to try them?”

“Uh…. Fuck no.”

“I saw them once and thought if I didn’t know what they were, I would eat them. And here’s the thing, because they’re mollusks, they are actually seafood even though they live on land.”

“So,” Sal said, returning with a coffee scoop and leaning against the door lentil, “I just heard that shit, and as a scientist I would like to tell you that roly poly bugs are not insects. They are crustaceans.”

“Really,” Chris in his basketball shorts lay on his back with his knees steepled as he lit his joint.

“Really. Just like lobster and crabs. And you know what, Swann,” Sal said as he disappeared into the main room to make the coffee, “I’m not fucking eat those either.”

Swann, put aside his cheesecake to take up his joint and went to the bed for the lighter, lamenting in a luxurious French accent, “I am surrounded by rubes.”

“I’m French,” Sal said from the kitchen.

“I’m not,” Chris said.

“You’re not French,” Swann said. “You would have said something.”

“I just did say something.”

The rich smell of brewing coffee was entering their room as Sal came back in and did a half somersault in his Jockeys, then sat on the edge of the bed.

“I thought you were….” Chris started then said, “Actually, I just thought you were some white dude.”

“Goode is English,” Swann said.

“Goode is German,” Sal said. “My family’s German, as you should be able to tell by my depression and strange sexual kinks.”

“You just said you were French.”

“Let me finish.”

“I’m going to finish this joint is what I’m going to finish,” said Swann.

“The Goodes lived in the Alsace, so sometimes they were German and sometimes they were French. But my great grandmother’s family was French Canadian and they were the LaFluers, and my Dad’s grandmother was German and Jewish.”

“So you’re Jewish.”

“Not very.”

“Chris’s dad is Jewish.”

“My Dad is half Jewish.”

“That’s where you get that hair from,” Sal said.

“I have no idea where I get my hair from. My family’s northern Italian. They’re Lombards, and then some other shit showed up.”

“So everyone’s Jewish but me,” Swann said.

“Your Uncle Donald has a Jewish boyfriend.”

“And your house used to be Jewish.”

“I thought your family was Sicilian,” Swann said to Chris.

“Lombard and Sicilian. But Italian. But pale Italian. Like Norman Sicilian.”

“There were Norman Sicilians?” Sal said.

“Is the coffee ready yet?” Swann asked.

“I’ll go check.”

Sal got up.

“Maybe that white woman in the painting at Birches, your great great-grand something or other—“

“Evangeline Portis.”

“Yeah. Maybe she was Jewish. Then we’re all sort of Jewish.”

“She was French, and I doubt very much she was Jewish.”

“If she was French, then maybe she was Norman, so that means all three of us are sort of French.”

Sal brought in the whole coffee maker, planning to plug it in.

“So we don’t have to get out of bed.”

“Let me help,” Swann said, getting up and following him to the kitchenette where Sal was gathering cups. Swann got cream and sugar.

“So that oil painting from the old plantation, that’s pretty far back. I don’t have anything like that from my family except some German songbooks in an old chest.”

“It’s far back, but it’s only to the late 1800’s I think.”

“That’s pretty far back.”

“Yeah, but the Porter history… my father’s family, that’s further back, and all of their stuff is in that nice house with the swimming pool and the bath tub.”

“They weren’t….”

“White?”

“That was what I was about to say.”

“No, the Porters were very black. They were slaves. Until they weren’t. But they kept good records and that ring on your finger—”

Sal looked at the chunky silver ring, the one that had fallen off of Swann’s finger the first time they hung out.

“That’s a Porter family ring.”

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN​

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Eight





























They talked a lot, because they loved to be together, and though Swann thought he would fall asleep first it was Sal, in his Jockeys with one arm thrown up over his eyes.

“He’s different with you,” Chris noted.

“Howso?” Swann said.

“Jokey. Silly. Goofy.”

“He was always goofy. I remember that from school.”

“You didn’t really know him in school,” Chris said.

“We were in English junior year. It was the first time I saw him. He always had this silly little look on his face.”

“But Sal wasn’t funny or anything. He was popular, but he wasn’t funny. He wasn’t really happy.”

“Hum?” Swann reflected. “He was sort of quiet when we met. I mean, Joe was the one that talked all the time. I honestly thought that I might end up with Joe for a few seconds, but I dunno. Sal always seems happy around me.”

“That’s what I’m saying, moron,” Chris said. “You make him this way.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do,” Chris said.

Swann made a nondescript noise.

“What are you doing?” Chris asked.

On the other side of the bed, Swann appeared to be sewing a dirty pillow and Swann answered, “Sewing.”

He showed it to Chris.

“Is that a—?”

“It’s Tizzly. Sal’s stuffed pig.”

“Sal has a stuffed pig?”

“You didn’t have stuffed animals as a kid?”

“Sure. They were all gone by the time I met you.”

“That’s a shame. I had my Winnie the Pooh until my dad died and they cleaned the house out of all sorts of things without asking my permission. I loved that bear. I loved all of my animals but you’d never know. Poor Winnie had a hole between his legs because I learned about gender, though I’m not exactly sure what my original intentions were. Was it I thought Winnie was a girl so I gave her a vagina? Because I know later I realized he was a boy and made him a penis out of silly putty.”

Chris shook his head and his hair fell in his face.

“And then, after my very first Ash Wednesday, I took my parents cigarette ashes and crossed poor Winnie’s head. He never recovered. And I ripped Tigger’s mouth open.”

“What the hell for?”

“So I could feed him. This didn’t work out so well.”

As Chris laughed, Sal stirred a little and turned around, throwing an arm over Chris’s lap while Swann went on sewing a new eye on Tizzly.

“I had an Aunty Rabbit,” Chris said. “An Easter present. She was blow up, that rubber you can smell, and pink with a big carrot, and I took her everywhere.”

“What happened to her?”

“She exploded.”

“I should have seen that coming.”

“I’d like to think my parents rolled her up respectfully, but I think they just threw her away.”

“Do you think we’d make good parents?”

“You and me?”

“Or you and me and Sal?” Swann said. “I don’t know,” he shook his head. “Sitting here sewing up a toy pig is making me maternal.”

“I’ve heard of My Two Dads, and My Three Sons, but My Three Dads?”

“It’s just an idea, and if I’m honest not one I’m terribly attached to, but it makes me curious.”

“You were a good goddad,” Chris said, “to my boy.”

“Yes,” Swann’s voice changed, and Chris understood that it was the voice he used to shut down bursts of emotion.

“I’m not stupid,” Chris said. “You… The way it happened, you didn’t have to be there for me. Or for him. And I know you loved him. And I know you hurt when he died.”

Swann cleared his throat.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“We shouldn’t do this now,” he said. “I—damn, I pricked my finger. Would you please get some alcohol.”

Chris disentangled himself from Sal and got up. The long tall boy came back a moment later and dapped Swann’s bleeding finger.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Chris said, “always push back your feelings.”

“He was your son,” Swann said. “The last thing you need is me blabbing on about a baby that wasn’t mine. That’s not fair to you.”

Chris went on his hands and knees and wrapped his arms about Swann, pressing his head into him.

“I love you so much,” he said passionately. “And sometimes you’re so stupid. I mean, you’re never stupid. But… I always felt like he was ours.”

Chris stood up, and Swann tried not to notice he had an erection. He took the pig and needle and the thread away and put it on the little table. He bent to kiss Swann.

“Let’s do it. Let’s have another kid. I was so happy when you and I were with him. Let’s make a baby.”

“Now you’re the one that’s being stupid.”

Chris lifted him up and held him tight, “Let’s make a baby right now.”

To Swann there was nothing worse than a pedant who pointed out obvious impossibilities, and the tender affection Chris felt was turning into tender passion. He was kissing him roughly, and running his hands over him, and Swann felt himself melting, felt the pleasure and the grief rising together so that as he lifted his arms, Chris removed his shirt, and he threw his arms around Chris’s neck, allowing Chris to pull down his pajama pants and place him on the bed.



The day they all decided to stay together for junior year was the very same day Pete Agalathagos and Swann went to Housing and secured Northwest Suite. It was one of those afternoons where spring was feeling a lot like summer and you wanted to keep the windows open, except that Brad on his end was complaining about allergies, and sneezing through the night.

In their room, before it was time to go down to dinner, Chris said, “Why don’t we just go to my house?”

Swann couldn’t think of a reason they shouldn’t. Chris was his life and he was Chris’s. There was nothing better than the two of them packing up their things and leaving in the early evening for the forty five minute drive through Calverton and down to Benton. He had spent time with Chris’s family before, but there was something different about dinner tonight, and down in the newly done basement, the two of them sat watching television or reading, side by side or back to back like an old couple.

“I’ve always felt like we’re an old couple,” Chris confessed. “I feel like my grandparents, like we’ve been together a hundred years.”

“Maybe we have,” Swann said.

That night they slept in the same bed again. There was no fear. There wasn’t even lust. They undressed over the covers and joined together. Swann drew Chris to him, lying on the bed, arms stretched out, behind up like one praying, and Chris draped himself over Swann and entered him. They made very little noise and it was soon over and they lay side by side touching each other, still saying little. And then, fluidly, they did it again. In the dark night it happened four times, sleeping, and silence between them, and a fifth time in the morning. Chris marveled at how easy it was, how he didn’t wear out, how drawn he was to being in Swann and to what came over them, Swann on him, Swann in him.

This was always the way it would be. They came together like magnets. There was something so close about them that whether they were going shopping or making love there was no real preamble. In the morning they drove back to school like normal students for their final exams, and Swann thought how different this time of year with Chris was from this time last year with Jack. He wanted to cry a little bit, sentimental for what had been and amazed at what was.

They didn’t stay for graduation because they weren’t close to anyone in the senior class. Rose and Henry had said something regarding the inconvenience of coming to get him, so Swann simply said, “Don’t.” It was as if he’d had enough of their bullshit by now, and Chris had a big SUV and nothing to do, so he was going to stay down in Benton and play house with the boy he loved. Swann was ecstatic as the year ended, and he and Chris Navarro packed their things into one car. He didn’t even think about Jack Knapp. Well, he didn’t think about him much.





When Chris arrived at Sal’s house on Easter, and there Swann was, he thought of what a mistake it had been to part ways. Why were they always doing that? Was it grown up? Is that what he thought? That they shouldn’t want each other too much, that a week was more than enough? But a week was not enough. Even if they never shared a bed again a week was too much without his best friend. He wanted to say all of those things, but they seemed mad and there were other things to talk about. He was in his good clothes and his good cologne. He was helping out in the kitchen.

But when Swann went upstairs, Chris followed him before he knew he was following him. Swann, being a good guest, had gone off to make the bed, and maybe this is when he was stuffing away Tizzly the pig to sew him up later. Swann looked up at him, and Chris took him by the hand and led him into the bathroom. They shut the door and undid their trousers, Swann placed his hands on the sink and Chris draped himself over him. Without preamble they fucked until Chris groaned and came against him.

“I missed you,” he said as he lay clinging to Swann, and then he told him everything that had been going through his mind.

He was surprised that things were still going through his mind now, that there were still things to say, but mostly those could be said through touch, through sighs and even through silences as he and Swann made love on the bed while Sal slept. For both of them both sex was still, after all this time, the overcoming of self consciousness and the surrender to feeling, the revelation of vulnerability. Swann thought the reason he had so often had trouble coming first was because of how powerless he felt in orgasm, even when fucking. The fucking to him felt so much more vulnerable than being fucked. No matter how often you compared that part of you to a sword or any other type of weapon, a cock was not a sword. Even a big cock was a little thing, a vulnerable thing of flesh that somehow took on all the force of your desire, housed all of your lust and all of your feeling. When Swann was fucking he felt a little lost, a little dizzied, a little silly, a little bit weak, and it took time to push those feelings away, especially since now Sal was awake, Sal was watching, touching now. Swann gritted his teeth and came so hard and Sal and Chris in husky voices championed him on. It was almost as amazing to see a brother come as it was to come yourself.

And then the three of them gave way to tenderness, to kisses, to again, the loss of dignity, the surrender of the separations that made people dignified, gave way to true desire, to curiosity, the sucking of cock, licking of balls and taint, sucking of tongue and lip, deep kissing of armpits, fingers along flesh, nails gently raking the back, the ass, the biting of the ass, marvel at its roundness, at last, the entry of the tongue, piercing that deep secret place, the arc, the arc of semen across the belly, the love and tenderness that grew to fucking, the tender fierceness that ended in exhaustion, laughter, the gentle thumbing of nipple, kiss on hips, clinging together in sleep.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Doug shot up in bed.

“What?” Joe said, drowsily. “Is it time to go?”

“No, no….” Doug shook his head. “I just remembered. We can’t go. At least not until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Huh?”

Doug had been in Joe’s house only once. A yellow house with a enclosed front porch and dormer rooms on the second story. He’d never been with Joe in his bedroom, was a little surprised they were in it now. Joe reclined on his side, the bed sheet to his waist.

“I said… I told myself I would talk to Father Reed. He wanted me to talk to him about… something. And I promised I would.”

“Don’t the two of you hate each other?”

“It’s not really about my personal feelings, it’s about being a dece—no, that’s horse shit. It’s about being the person I’ve decided to be. We need to call the others. We’re not leaving tonight.”



“If you had told me the day after Easter, I would be sitting in a chapel at three in the morning, I would not have believed it,” Sal said, yawning so large his tongue came out of his mouth like a dog’s.

“I would,” Chris said. “Nothing surprises me these days.”

“Well, it just doesn’t make any sense to wait all day tomorrow when we know the man is up right now,” Swann said.

Beyond them, in the retrochoir, the brothers were chanting the end of Vigils for Easter Monday. It was now that Swann stood up and directed his cousin to follow him.

“Are you sure about this?” Doug whispered

“Absolutely,” Swann said.

“Let us bless the Lord,” Brother Josephus chanted.

“Thanks be to God,” the brothers chanted back, and Swann murmured as well, walking into the retrochoir and hoping to be seen before having to tap someone.

And he was seen, for he had no business there, Swann in his blue parka and Doug in a car coat, and Brother Herulian came toward them evidently happy, but apparently confused.

“We need Father Reed,” Swann said, simply. “Doug has something to say and we have to be on our way.”

Herulian looked momentarily puzzled, but also like he wasn’t about to stall things because of his puzzlement. He nodded and headed after the other monks into one of the doorways that led into the monastery proper, and a moment later, looking very serious, Andrew Reed came out, still in the white hooded robe the monks wore to office.

“Mr. Merrin, Mr. Portis.”

“You said you wanted to speak to me,” Doug said tiredly before Swann could say anything.

“Whatever it is, you had better ask me now. We’re on out way out of town and I don’t plan to come back anytime soon.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Those were some great portions! Sorry I took so long to start reading the 2nd last one, I’ve been busy as you know. This was very interesting talking about where the characters ancestors came from. I am glad Doug and Joe are talking through what happened. I am very eager to read what happens next after that ending. Excellent writing as always! Thanks for posting.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, you were busy! We both were my friend ,so it's no problem that it took some time to get to them. Besides, I had posted the hefty weekend portion as well, so it was meant to take a while to read.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Swann looked about the plain refectory. It had been years since he had been in it, the day in fact when Prynne had become abbot and they’d had a huge party and that was… how many years ago… seven? Eight?” Seven, but it seemed so much more. The priest had offered them something to drink. Swann had taken cocoa, surprised there was cocoa to take, but Doug was content with the pewter cup of water.

“This is not easy to say,” the priest began.

Swann did not look at him, and Doug only looked at the cup of water.

“It sounds strange in the light of day.”

“Good thing it’s three in the morning.”

“Yes,” Andrew Reed tried to laugh. “Yes.”

“It’s about the woman you said. By the old house behind the school.”

“Yes.”

“Where my godfather used to live.”

“Yes, Prynne lived there for many years. He was a hermit for a long time. He also said…” the priest pursed his lips together. “God forgive me, I feel so foolish, but he said you could…. See things.”

“And you want me to tell you about that woman,” Doug said.

“Yes.”

“Because she was your mother?”

Andrew Reed blinked at him.

“I put it together,” Doug said.

“I was born in that house,” the priest said. “You did not now Abbot Merrill, but he was the abbot before your godfather, and my mother was his niece. She got pregnant and came to him and gave birth to me there. I was raised here.”

“That explains a lot,” Doug said, more as if talking to himself.

“Yes,” Father Reed said, uncomfortably. “It just might.

“She left me here, and I didn’t see her for years, and when she came back we sort of made amends, but she died here, she died in that house. Maybe right before you or Swann were born, and I don’t think she knows I forgave her. Or… anything like that.”

Swann decided this had very little to do with him. He faded away as was his own ability and it was Doug who, though he said nothing right away, became the presence in the room.

“People hang around when we hang onto them,” he said. “At least from what I know. And they hang around to finish off what they did not finish in life. I mean, no one finishes everything. It’s like finishing the food on your plate, maybe it’s too much. But there are debts to be paid. Perhaps she is paying them, or finding out how.”

“But could you—”

“Look,” Doug said to the priest, “I saw her years ago. She was weeping and I don’t know what she wanted. I don’t even know if she still is there.”

This should have been the end of the conversation, but their talk still seemed to be open, hanging around in the room unfinished, so at last, Swann said, “There is a way to find out.”



Swann and Doug left the others in the chapel. It had seemed to him that for this strange work they should not be present. After all, they all knew Father Reed, and it might be strange for him to talk freely about dead mothers and floating spirits. The lack of relationship he had with Swann and Doug, the pure businesslike nature of asking for their aid was more untainted if the others stayed behind.

And now here Swann was beside his cousin and the priest he had never cared for, the man who had attempted to expel him twice in his Freshmen year, and here was Jack Knapp, his first love, and here was Doug in front of an old house that needed a paint job and had vines poking into the windows.

“I don’t see anything,” Doug said, simply. But he didn’t move.

And then he said, “I see a woman washing her hair. She’s blond and slim and pretty and singing. She’s calling someone chicken.”

Father Reed’s voice caught.

“That’s her.”

“A man in a car is coming. It is….”

Doug stopped speaking and he stopped speaking so long that Swann thought, “If something is happened to him I will kill this priest.”

And then Doug said, “A man in a truck comes, and she climbs into it with her suitcase and she leaves crying. And… she sits on the porch and still cries.”

“Can you say anything to her?” the priest asked.

“That’s enough,” Swann said

He turned to Andrew Reed.

“That is more than enough from someone you never did a good turn toward.”

“You’re right,” the priest said.

“You should,” Doug said, sounding dazed and shaking his head, “Come here, tell her everything is fine.”

“Tell her whatever you want to tell her,” Swann said, still thinking of Doug blanking out. “But you’ll have to tell it without my cousin. We have to go now.”

“Of course,” Andrew Reed said.

And then he said, “You’re right.”

Swann did not wait to hear what he was right about.

“I could have been better.”

“I am tired,” Swann said, “of forgiving and forgetting. I am tired of it because it only seems to benefit people in power and people who do wrong. Gandhi forgives and forgets, Martin Luther King forgives and forgets. What was that? Some asshole here who called Prynne a nigger and put a noose up in his room and of course, he had to forgive and forget and now Doug comes here at ass o’ clock in the morning to get involved in whatever personal shit you have, and after all of your frankly asshole behavior I suppose the very, very tepid phrase for what we deserve is an apology.”

“Swann,” Jack said. “It is an apology.”

“Don’t you start,” Swann looked at him. “Don’t you ever start, Jack Knapp. Gentlemen, we are done,”

And with that, Swann pulled Doug across the field and away from the priest and the postulant.



Neither Chris nor Sal asked what had happened. They took Chris’s SUV, and Joe drove Sal’s, and Doug drove his own car between them. Swann had wondered if Doug should e driving alone, but he only said it once because he knew his cousin didn’t want to be doted on. Riding with Chris and Sal, Swann climbed into the backseat, and Chris knew not to ask had happened.

 

[ChrisGibson]

But what had happened was Swann remembering a day seven or eight years ago, when he had been cleaning out his grandmother’s apartment and Doug had been with him. Suddenly Doug had gone silent and he stood there in the afternoon, about twelve years old, blank and stupid until someone less steady than Swann would have gone screaming for an adult.

In fact, just as Swann was on the very of doing that, Doug had snapped to and Swann sat him down on the bed and got him a glass of water.

“It was Aunt Sefra,” he said. “It was your grandma.”

Swann looked at him carefully.

“I saw everything. I saw so much. We need to purify the room. We need to send her own her way. She wants to be sent on her way.”













“She wants to be sent on her way,” Swann murmured as they drove west in the night.

“Huh?” Chris said.

“She wants to be sent on her way.”





It was not quite two in the morning, three more hours until Lauds and generally the time Andrew Reed went to sleep. Tonight, or this morning, he drank coffee in the refectory with Jack Knapp, and neither one of them talked much, but at last Reed said, “He’s right, you know?”

“Huh?” Jack said, noncommittally.

“Swann Portis.”

Jack only nodded.

“And Mr. Merrin would have been right too, to have not come back.”

“Why were you like that with Swann?” Jack asked.

He said, “I never knew Doug, but—”

“Douglass Merrin was expelled, and the reason was just. Not even Prynne could deny it, but…. There were things before it. I could have intervened. I didn’t. I could have been better. I wasn’t.”

Then Reed said, “But Swann was wrong, or at least not completely right. I don’t know about Gandhi or Martin Luther King, but Prynne never simply forgave things. He got his own in the end. He always did. When we were kids he did it quickly. When we were adults he bided his time.”

“Even about that.”

Andrew Reed cleared his throat.

“Yes.”

“What did he…? This is gossip,” Jack shook his head.

“It is gossip, and at any road, it’s probably best left alone. At the time I exclaimed that it was an abuse of power, but… I don’t think it was now. I think… in a lot of places an abbot serves for a few years and then they pick a new one. But in our house an abbot serves for years. My uncle was abbot for thirty years with a few interruptions. There’s no way to do it and be completely fair.”

“If you can’t be fair—”

“Then you try for balance. I don’t think I ever could.”



It had not been with a sense of sad duty, but of absolute delight that Andrew Reed had expelled Doug Perrin, and he had been over the moon that Prynne hadn’t intervened. Herulian had, but Abbot Prynne did not this time, not seeing any way that poisoning thirty boys could withstand an expulsion, and Father Reed had felt that smug satisfaction of having done the right thing, having protected his boys that he so often felt as principal of the school was his duty. He had felt so smug and Prynne had been so politic, so quiet, that when Prynne’s revenge had come, delivered in that same quiet, even way without so much as a smile or a frown, it had knocked the wind out of Andrew Reed. He had made no protest.

His relationship to all of his friends was not strained, but in his need to hold back the truth, it couldn’t help but make his life very separate from theirs. Prynne existed on another level, for he never intended to have a secret life. There was just something very secret about him, something apart, something that Andrew admitted his uncle had seen and discussed several times wondering if one day Prynne might be good for the order.

It had even been that way when they were sixteen, when every other weekend they were going back to Chicago without Andy who had cross country and track. They felt bad about leaving him behind, but it was Prynne who perceived: “He likes it.”

“What?” Benji, years off from being Brother Herulian, had asked.

“He likes it. There’s something in his weekends away from us that he looks forward to,” Prynne said.

“Like a secret girlfriend!” Jason==who was years from being any man’s lover suggested gleefully.

Andy turned red but Prynne said, “If it’s a secret, then it’s certainly none of my business.”

And then Prynne went on about his business.

This was a lifelong habit of Thomas Prynne, intuiting a great deal, but having no real desire to dig deep and know more than he was told. Prynne understood that Andy had found a great liberation. In track he was one of the guys. In track he was fun and fast and sexy and loose in a way that he never could be with his friends, and when they went away or when other teams came to town, there was always the chance of seeing Jeff.

That very first time he hadn’t gotten with Jeff till Saturday night, but all the other times he sought Jeff out as soon as the bus rolled into town and they would spend all night together, wind up in bed, or even start there. It became so that running and the thrill of sex were one in the same. It wasn’t long before Andy Reed began to see that, no matter what teams were competing against each other, over time friends had been made across school bounds, especially in the cases of schools that were far from each other, and folks always met up. Whatever the nature of the other friendships, Andy was not the only person who was seeking someone else as soon as the buses arrived that their destination.

One night, as he and Jeff were in bed together, Jeff said, “We should go exploring.”

They were in Indianapolis, and exploring seemed like a great idea.

“I left my sneakers in my room,” Andy said. “I’ll be right back.”

He always roomed with Rex and Jacob and Rob. They got on well, and Rob always found a girl to go out with. Jacob always went out with friends and Rex usually did nothing at all. Well into the night Andy returned for his shoes and the shower was running. He went into the large closet, hunting for them, and then the shower stopped and the door opened and out came Jacob and Rex and it wasn’t even so strange that they had apparently showered together. That could easily happen. But they were gigging and kissing and irrelevant to Andy on the other side of the door, and Rex said, “Alright, what are you waiting for? They’re all gone.”

Blond, round faced, brown eyed Jacob with the eyelashes that were so thick you could barely see his eyes said something, and then Rex got on all fours on the bed, and Jacob came behind him. Andy stood in the closet, holding his sneakers and watching through the slats as they fucked with increasing enthusiasm. Half of Andy hoped they’d never stop, and the other half needed them to so he could get the hell of out this closet and back to Jeff. In the end there was a frantic humping, a lifting up off the feet, Jacob doubling over and coming inside of Rex. Andy’s mouth dried as he watched. He had never seen sex before. The two of them slid apart and lay on the bed laughing, and only now did they both get up and head into the bathroom. Andy waited a moment before quietly opening the closet and darting out with his shoes and sprinting back to Jeff’s room.

“Yeah, that’s not a surprise,” Jeff told Andy. Andy thought about that first weekend when he’d assumed either Jacob or Rex had brought a girl back to the room. Clearly that hadn’t been the case at all.

“Everyone’s doing it,” Jeff told him casually.

And then, because Andy was so wound up, having seen what he saw, they did it again too.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to get such a long post for the weekend! The whole ghost thing was fascinating. People often have unfinished business when they die. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Hey, Matthew! I'm glad yu've enjoyed the story. More coming now.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“It’s too bad our schools aren’t together for all the metes,” Andy said the next morning while he lay on his stomach and Jeff was caressing his ass.

“It is too bad,” Jeff said, “but at least if gives us the chance to play with others.”

It wasn’t that Andy thought Jeff was his boyfriend, not exactly. But they had never spoken of having others. Andy had simply wandered around lonely on the few weeks that Jeff wasn’t there.

The next away trip was to Oreville, Illinois, not far from Annex, and Andy wondered why Jeff’s school wasn’t there. As the bus traveled through the night, he complained about this to Rob.

“Oh, yeah, the two of you always hang out,” Rob remembered.

“Yeah,” said Andy, “it’s gonna get kind of dull without him.”

“And Jake and Rex never want to do anything,” Rob lamented.

“Well, you always find someone,” said Andy.

“Yeah, most of the time. But can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

“Sometimes—not often—I just spend the nights looking to meet someone. Like, I know Rex likes a little alone time, so I just go.”

“Oh,” Andy said, wondering how much Robert knew about Rex and Jacob’s alone time.

“You know,” Rob said, casually, stretching as he yawned, “if you don’t have anyone to hang out with, and it seems like I don’t either… maybe we could hang out? You and me?”

Rob yawned again, casually. He sat on the inside near the window in the darkened bus, and he opened up his trousers so that his penis rose up out of them, a veiny stalk, bobbing down like a sunflower.

“Yeah,” Andy said, looking away, his face hot and his mouth dry. “I think I’d like that.”

Rob casually took Andy’s hand and put it in his pants so that Andy began to stroke him as he closed his thighs together and the bus drove on.

Rob said, dreamily, “I think I’d like that too.”



So the away weekends came to mean sex and liberation, the chance to be someone else even with the people from his school. Rob and Jacob lived at home and Rex was a year older and had his own roommate, but they were always together on the away metes and learned each other’s secrets though they never spoke of them. There was no good word for the secret at the time, and only the thrill of it and the desire to meet other boys like them. When he could not meet up with Jeff, then there was always Rob, and as time went by and he learned the look other boys sent his way, well then there were others. The only times when things became dull were in summer, and the summers were long then too. But those were broken up when he got letters from Rob or Jeff and headed toward them and whatever mischief they could get up to in Indianapolis or where Rob lived near Lafayette.

When college came, with the help of his mother, Andy found ways not to come home. Home would have been just fine for anyone else, but Sharon pointed out: “You have spent your whole life at this school, and the last thing you want to do is spend your summers behind it with me, Chicken.”

She was right enough. During college he ran track and cross country and entered into the strange and secret world of boy athletes who enjoyed other boys. In college he was on the same team as Jeff, not running against him.

Off the track, Jeff now sported a sexy moustache and a suede coat with a fleece collar. He drove a Volkswagen bug that Andy liked to make out with him in, and he talked about moving to New York and being free. Andy let it slide, never said much to it until finally Jeff asked him to move with him.

“I’m not an artist or anything like that. I… don’t want to do all that New York stuff.”

“The parties. The bars. The bath houses! Where you can be yourself. Where you can meet other gay people?”

“What does that even mean?”

“What does that mean?” Jeff cried. “It means this… And this…” he said, kissing Andy on his mouth, and then kissing him again. “And it means this,” he said softly, as he cupped his denim crotch and massaged him.

But even Jeff understood that Andy didn’t care for that life as he didn’t care for his hair grown out, which looked a little silly anyway.

“What do you want?” Jeff asked him.

Andy shook his head because he didn’t want to sound stupid.

“I want to go back home. I want to be a teacher. I want to be a track coach. I want to be a priest. I want to be a monk.”



He said it, but he didn’t do it, not right away, chiefly because his uncle wouldn’t have him. Merrill was not the presiding abbot at the time when Andy first came calling, but he was an abbot and everyone knew he’d probably serve as abbot again. The abbot at the time had a little pity on him and said, “Andrew, you should probably go to graduate school anyway,” and so he did. But despite everything, despite his lusts and doubts and desires, despite his split up with Jeff and Jeff having allegedly found someone named Cliff and made a home for himself in Manhattan, when Andrew Reed was accepted as a postulant, he knew, finally, peace.


END OF CHAPTER EIGHT

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent Andy and Jeff portion. I like seeing different sides of this bigger story. Great writing and I look forward to the next chapter soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was an excellent Andy and Jeff portion. I like seeing different sides of this bigger story. Great writing and I look forward to the next chapter soon!

Matthew, I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I love having the bigger picture stories too, and learning more about the characters. I've been offline for days, unable ot post or write much back. I will post more tonight.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Nine






He fell into the rhythm of prayer and the rhythm of the school. Andy got math classes as well as being assistant coach to the track team. Benji, now Brother Herulian, was the wrestling coach and later he did Quiz Bowl which seemed a strange addition. He had started out a biology teacher, but Father Anderson and Father Flaherty where getting tired of running the school and soon Andy was vice principal. Aware of how he was perceived in his black and white habit, he preferred the black shirt and trousers of a regular priest with a Roman collar and usually a sweatshirt or a cardigan. Eventually all of that was gone for shorts and tee shirt of track suit, and it was on that field he felt himself, and he felt leading the boys was his real call. When he was younger he’d known himself as the abandoned orphan kid, and he had barely perceived how every boy carried around his own suffering. Now he saw the suffering up close, and he couldn’t go to the Amazon or Africa and save souls there, but he could help these boys. He’d never had a father, now he heard of boys who couldn’t get on with their fathers, whose mothers put them down. He wondered if lacking parents had been such a bad thing.

This life of traveling and teaching and coaching found its root in the quiet chanting and joyful singing five times a day. The seven offices had been kept, but a long time ago the rule had been relaxed so not all of the brothers kept all the hours. Andy had a feeling that Prynne did. He was gone at the laundry through out the day, but at every office he came into the chapel in his white cloak and hood and his voice rose above the others. Prynne and Theodore Branch were the only two Black priests in the order, and by now they had gained Father Rahula who was from India, a Japanese postulant who would be Father Peter and two Mexicans who would be Father Kudco and Brother Martinez.

At the end of these offices, Prynne would disappear back to work, and it was only in the evening, as they all sat in the lounge in North Tower, that they were together, not reading, but watching TV in their black, white or black and white robes depending upon when they’d come to the house and where they were in their vows. Prynne always sat on the floor beside Father Merrill and some of the oldest priests, and already he was becoming one of the quiet centers of the house.

Herulian was another and the same year that Andrew Reed became assistant principal, he became assistant dean. Sitting together one night in the refectory, the two of them stopped talking and called to Merrill, who was presiding Abbot again. That night Prynne was sitting on the sofa with Abbot James, next to Merrill’s chair, and Herulian said, “Father, we need someone to take up the Freshmen and sophomore English classes.”

“Alright,” Merrill said in a tone that implied he didn’t want to be bothered with school business.

“We’re thinking it should be Prynne,” Herulian said, and then he said, at Andy’s nod, “It will be Prynne.”

Merrill looked like he’d just been awakened and Prynne put down his book.

“Of course it will,” the Abbot said while Prynne opened his mouth to protest.

“But the laundry—”

“Can take care of itself.” Merrill said, shaking Prynne’s hand.

“No need to put your light under a bushel. Time for you to teach again.”

That had been taken care of, and how could it be that it was nearly time for the final profession, that they had been here nearly six years?



Eutropius Prynne, with a frown he refused to remove, had arrived in the school to teach Comp One, Comp Two and English lit to the Freshmen class. He was a matter of curiosity at the time, for few had seen a man of the cloth who wasn’t white, and he had, up until then, been hidden away in his little house. He seemed, in some ways, more monklike, stranger, set apart from the priests and brothers they were so used to. And yet this changed fairly quickly, or at least moved in a different direction when he pulled his cigarettes out of his habit, and having asked students who were attempting to be impressive the meaning of a passage, responded quickly with, “Well that is complete horse shit.”

Once he began a lecture on early Medieval literature stretched out on the floor, pretending to be the dead body of Edmund the Confessor, and another time, doing the play Henry VI, he started a mild fire in the classroom while performing the death of Joan of Arc. If there were any complaints about his antics, Merrill, Herulian and Reed remembered they were the ones who had commanded Prynne to teach, and always the boys came out of his classroom energized, loud and arguing.

The three abbots who were more or less simultaneously acting as presidents decided that Prynne should take final vows with Herulian, Reed, and the two other from their year.

“It’ll just look silly to make Thomas wait another year,” Merrill said. It was the first time Andy had heard Prynne’s birth name used in a long time. A weird part of him felt jealous, felt like he had come here first, followed by Herulian and only later had Prynne come. It was scarcely fair they should all take final vows together, but he told that part of him to shut up.

The taking of temporary vows, the moment when a man officially left the rest of the world, was a public one, and it happened in the main church amidst family and friends and pomp and circumstance in the presence of the bishop. The taking of final vows was from men in the house who were to stay in the house forever, and it took place in the retrochoir, on the morning of Easter Saturday.





“Oh God, the preserver of the human race and giver of all spiritual grace,
send forth Thy blessings upon this ring,
that he who will wear it may be protected with heavenly strength
and keep a perfect faith and sincere will
to persevere in his promise of holy virginity, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.”



At Final Profession of Vows, they exchanged their side Rosary crucifix to an all pewter one.



“Holy Lord, Almighty Father, everlasting God,
be pleased to bless this crucifix,
that it may be a saving help to he who will wear it.
Let it be a support of his faith,
an encouragement to good works,
and the redemption of souls;
his consolation, protection, and a shield
against the cruel darts of the enemy;
through Christ Our Lord. Amen.”



From the retrochoir they could hear the monks singing:



“Veni, Sancte Spiritus,
et emitte caelitus
lucis tuae radium.”



Prior the Mass of Solemn Profession, Abbot Merrill took the young men to the high altar where they placed small lit oil lamps. Kneeling beneath the Blessed Sacrament, Abbot Merrill and Abbot James prayed.

“Lord, send the gift of your Holy Spirit upon your servant who has left all things for your sake.Father, may his life reveal the face of Christ your Son, so that all who see him may come to know that He is always present in your Church.”

Past the main altar, in the retrochoir, as the young men returned from the high altar, the brothers and assembled guests sang:



Veni, pater pauperum,
veni, dator munerum,
veni, lumen cordium.



Consolator optime,
dulcis hospes anima,
dulce refrigerium.

In labore requies,
in east temperies,
in fletu solatium.



.

Abbot Merrill asked: “My dear brothers, having completed the period of first profession required by our Rule, what is your desire?

Prynne, Herulian, Andrew and the others answered, with the help of sheets of cardstock they held: “With the help of God, I have come to know in your religious community the difficulty and the joy of a life completely dedicated to Him.

“I now ask to be allowed to make perpetual profession in this community for the glory of God and the service of the Church.”

“May God Who has begun the good work in you bring it to fulfillment before the day of Christ Jesus.

And then began the Litany of the Saints. Prynne looked like a saint himself, impossible to read, and Benji looked like he was trying to look like a saint, which is what Andy suspected he looked like too.