Creation: The Conclusion of the Lake Cycle

[ChrisGibson]

EV’RY (every)

ROUND GOES

HIGHER AND HIGHEEEEEER!



Soldiers… of the Cross!



So, the song that meant something over a hundred fifty years ago means something now. They waited in the past. We wait now. Once upon a time a black cook stood in a kitchen, but he or she did not serve men because she loved them. She did not delegate onion cutting to one because the onions hurt her eyes. The blond one did not go out and buy the wine, the shaggy one the beer. They did not eat together in the peace of their own home. Or did they? What chapters, long hidden and untold held such love? But of course, Donovan reflected as the reddening soup touched the lip of the pot once black beans were dumped in, those before him were asked, as the song ended:



Children, do you want your freedom?

Children do you want your freedom

Chilllldren, do you want your freedom?



He, and everyone in his house were left to ask just what that freedom entailed.





After dinner they make coffee. There is always coffee, and Donovan drinks this, though Simon stays on wine and later he and Cade both have Scotch. Motivated by something fey in the early autumn air, Donovan reads Tarot cards at the large table in the living room on the second floor. They have come to think of the second and third floors as home now. There is something secure about living above the ground. Simon says something about work tomorrow, but does not move from the sofa.

Later, under the starry heaven of the amber fairy lights, they lay together half sighing, half sleeping after making love, a treble of arms and legs as homely and comfortable as the grouping of stuffed animals on a child’s bed, Cade’s moist curls in Don’s fingers, Simon’s head resting on Don’s chest, Simon’s thigh and his whole body made amber by fairy lights. Stretched over Don’s brown waist.

“We should get married,” Simon says.

Don lets it alone, and so does Cade.

When Simon says it again, Donovan says, “You know that’s not possible, right?”

A few years ago, when it was just Don and Cade, they had been about to get married, and it had been Simon who had suggested it for them back then. He knew the judge to do it, and it turned out because the world was small, that this judge was actually the partner of Rob Dwyer’s work partner. Rob Dwyer was family, his cousin Frey’s husband, a police officer, and his partner Sheridan, was the husband of Brendan Miller, the very judge Simon had been talking about.

But it hardly mattered how talented or aware this Judge Miller was, he couldn’t very well marry three men to each other.

“You and Cade could get married. Like you planned,” Simon said.

Donovan said nothing, but continued stroking Simon’s hair, though Simon could now tell he had his attention.

“But you could marry me first.”

“Don?” Cade said.

“Or you,” Simon said. “You could both marry me with pre nups that stated that we would care for each other as if married, and then divorce me, and then marry each other.”

“Or we could just go around switching who was married to whom, and having a pre nup,” Cade said over him, excitedly.

Donovan looked at the both of them.

“Are you two mad?”

“We’re not mad. We’re practical. I want us to be married, and there’s no legal way to be married to you both at the same time. So… we should think about that.”

“That’s crazy,” Don said.

“When you first met us, you said that having an open relationship was crazy.”

“And we’ve never had an open relationship.”

“But you would have said this was crazy too,” Simon said, kissing his chest. “Look. We have a different life, so we have to make it work differently.”

“It’s not the marrying you both that’s odd,” Donovan said. “It’s the divorcing.”

“Think about it,” Cade said.

“Have you two discussed this with each other?”

“Not really,” Cade said, the amber light touching his hair and turning it reddish.

“But up here anything seems possible.”

And up here it was true, Donovan thought.

Anything did.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[ChrisGibson]

There are only two spots in the world where I have had coffee I enjoyed even somewhat: the Café du Monde in New Orleans, where the coffee is half chicory and then mixed 50-50 with milk, and -- oddly enough -- the central train station in Madras/Chennai, where the coffee is also heavily bemilked. I mean, I don't even like coffee ice cream or tiramisu.

I do like tea, but my main caffeine source is usually Diet Coke.

(However, in summer I do a great pitcher of green tea with a whole lot of ginger plus honey and lime juice.)

Oddly enough, I HATE Diet Coke. I was fucked up early by my family. They always let me drink coffee. When I was a little kid it was half milk half coffee, and this as time went on...... I became the tireless coffee drinker I am now.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

Oddly enough, I HATE Diet Coke. I was fucked up early by my family. They always let me drink coffee. When I was a little kid it was half milk half coffee, and this as time went on...... I became the tireless coffee drinker I am now.

It was my mother who messed me up, too. Coke (regular) in the morning. When it's 83 degrees and 83% humidity at 8 a.m., you don't want hot coffee. And she didn't like coffee, either.

Sometimes we'd take a special drive to the one place around that still had Coke in glass bottles.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am glad the guys are seeing more of May. All the marriage talk is very interesting. I don’t know if all three of them could be married legally but it’s good they are working it out. I hope they do rent out the extra room in the house. It would be a good source of income. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, yes, it is the point that they are working something out for themselves which the world has not worked out for them, or has even forbiggen. I'm glad you enjoyed tonight's portion.

 

[ChrisGibson]

It was my mother who messed me up, too. Coke (regular) in the morning. When it's 83 degrees and 83% humidity at 8 a.m., you don't want hot coffee. And she didn't like coffee, either.

Sometimes we'd take a special drive to the one place around that still had Coke in glass bottles.

Or maybe the rest of us are screwed up for drinking coffee in the heat?

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT WE END CHAPTER TWO AND RUN INTO SOME OLD FAMILIAR FRIENDS


On October 12th, two extraordinary things happened, or rather one extraordinary thing happened twice. It was May’s eighteenth birthday, and Cade and Donovan drove to her parents’ house, took her and much of her belongings, brought them to 812 Pine Street. and then, adding Simon, they drove to the courthouse where Donovan’s cousin Isaiah met them, joined by Jason Henley, the father of his son, DJ. In the registry they all watched while Donovan, who thought he would never marry anyone, was quietly and legally married to Cademon Richards, who beamed down at him, teeth flashing, as if he were the proudest man in the world. They were both in suits, and when Cade kissed him savagely and then stood back looking at him, he said, “I didn’t think it would feel different, but it does.”

And with his new husband, they had traveled, following Isaiah and Jason to Ashby, about an hour away, and the afternoon was spent in celebration.

Don had shed his tuxedo, but as the evening drew on, he changed back and asked: :Is the tallis there? Yes?” Cade changed into a brown suit. And Simon into a dark one with a red tie and…

“A top hat?”

“I always wanted a hat.”

“But a top hat?” Cade said.

“I think he looks good in a top hat,” Donovan said.

Simon grinned and kissed him.

“That’s all that matters.”

But the top hat had to come off when they got in the car. They drove back past Wallington into Rossford and over an hour later came to an ordinary enough house, except they’d been here before and been fast friends with the people who were friends, family really, to Brendan Miller and Sheridan. In fact, Frey knew some of them very well and Donovan realized how many people they had in common.

Todd Meradan was a graying and handsome gay rabbi. The gayness was old, the rabbinate was new. In the house on Versailles Street he shared with his husband Fenn, a chuppah was set up, and after Don had donned his kipa and tallis, and Simon his top hat, the religious wedding to Simon Barrow began. Rob was there. Brendan and Sheridan were there. Fenn’s niece Layla and her husband Will were there as well as Don’s old lover, Bryant Babcock and his old nemesis Chad North, This ceremony was long and formal and involved the signing of the ketubah, the wedding contract, and it seemed to make sense not only because Don was partially Jewish but because a formal religious marriage seemed the perfect counter to the legal one with Cade, and the contract he signed with Simon matched the legal paperwork with Cade and because, as Todd had noted, plural marriage had never been forbidden in Judaism.



“So you all did it.”

The very handsome young man who was about Simon’s height, but compact and more muscular, leaned in front of Don at the reception. He wore a was in a smokey blue fitted jacket, and Don had only met him a couple of times, Dylan, Fenn’s oldest son.

“It would appear I have.”

“Now you can do it too,” said May, who had been with Don the first time he met Dylan.

“Do you know, I’ve been with Lance and Elias since I was eighteen, and I never thought of marriage? I didn’t think it was possible.”

“It’s not legal,” Donovan said, “but it is possible.”

“Two weddings in one day,” Dylan marveled. “You all are staying here, right? It’s already late?”

“Are we?” May had asked Donovan.

“I was thinking about Frey and his folks more than us,” Don said. “But we’re only an hour or so from Ashby. We’ll see. Don’t you want to go back to the house?”

“I don’t know” May said. “This has been the best birthday ever.”

“So,” Elias, a young man who looked like Dylan, and yet unlike him, short and handsome and pale and dark haired, sidled up and said, “are you going to marry us, now?”

Dylan said nothing.

“Where is Cade, anyway?” Simon wondered, looking comic as he scowled from under his top hat.

Donovan shrugged. The way he had made things work with Cade all this time was by not keeping tabs on him.

“Over there,” Dylan said, “with Lance.”

Cade looked like a rangier, hipper version of the three men gathered in a corner. One was a tall, high foreheaded football player looking guy with curly hair and Donovan recognized him as Lance Biship, the third in the relationship of Dylan and Elias and the father of the little boy they all raised who was moving through the house with the other children. The third man, though, was very handsome, clear eyed, with short tawny hair. Athletic, Don thought, was the best way to describe him, Not quite Abercrombie, more Aeropostale.

“The white man you are ogling,” Fenn said, “belongs to my cousin Felix. They live in Ashby. You should meet them. That’s Scott Flowers.”

“Do they have kids?”

“Scott had kids. Felix has a decided disinterest in them.”

“Oh!”

“I’m surprised you haven’t met. He’s an artist too.”

“Who is that boy with the hair like mine?” May asked touching her bronze hair.

“That is Lance’s brother, Austin,” Dylan leaned in seriously, “And you might want to look at him a little less because, do you see the guy with the reddish hair?”

“He’s good looking.”

“That’s Rob, Todd’s nephew… Great nephew. And I’m pretty sure he and Austin fuck each other.”

“Really?” Fenn raised an eyebrow at his son.

“Make love,” Dylan corrected, and Fenn, splitting a roll, shook his head.

“Well, they’re both nice enough, but who is the boy with them?”

“That’s my nephew, Riley,” Fenn said.

“May likes mixed boys.”

May colored, but she said, “I like his red hair.”

“That’s an Anderson trait,” Fenn said.

“See,” Dylan said, clapping Elias on the back, “Dad’s best friend is Paul, and Paul is Elias’s dad, but he’s also Claire’s older brother, and Claire married Julian who is my cousin—”

“And my nephew,” Fenn said. “And their son is Riley.”

“And,” Elias added, “my twin brother married Todd’s daughter and they have two kids together.”

“Incestuous!” Donovan thrilled.

“My brother tried to rape me when I was seven,” May said, gaining silence at the table, before saying, “Now that was incestuous.

“I wonder,” May said, not caring about the silence she had created, “What if you got married in another country, and then came back to the United States?”

“A country that accepted plural marriage?” Elias said.

“Yeah.”

“This is weird,” Simon said, his silver grey top hat low over his eyes.

“No it isn’t,” Elias protested, “It’s your wedding night, and you all are taking a real stand about something that might be very important in the future, that is important for some of us already.”

“Great,” Dylan said to his partner, “then what’s the answer to May’s question?”

Elias drummed his fingers on the table and said, “I guess I’ll go ask Brendan.”

Cade had returned to the table and unnecessarily introduced Scott and Lance.

“All this talk about polygamy,” Fenn said, coming to sit down by Cade who was on the other side of Donovan, “and no one talking about my cooking.”

“This cake is delicious,” Cade said,

“That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“And the macaroni, and the chicken, and…. Really, it’s all too much.”

“It may be,” Fenn agreed. “But it’s not everyday I get to help plan a wedding.”

Fenn looked at Dylan. “Why is that?”

“Really, Dad?”

Fenn, Donovan reflected, had managed to outdo both him and Frey, managing not only to have one white child, but two, and Thackeray, a thinner version of Dylan, was coming forward with a brown toddler in his arms.

“Life surprises you,” Donovan said to Dylan, “I never expected o be married either, and now look at me.”

“I was your age,” Fenn said, “when a woman dropped her baby at my door. I never expected to have one child, let alone three, let alone four grandchildren. And given the lack of melonin in my partners as well as two of my children, I never expected this caramel wonder. Come here, Alice,” he held out his arms to his granddaughter and sighed, “So, yes, life is full of surprises.”

Brendan Miller, who looked like he’d gone to the same prep school as Simon, but a decade earlier, came up followed by a tall Mexican boy of about seven, who was always looking up at him with dark brown eyes, and he declared, looking at his phone, “This is what Nolo says about plural marriages concerning people coming from other countries.”

“And hello to you too,” Fenn said.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Brendan read, “You cannot be considered a practicing polygamist unless you belong to a culture or religion that recognizes the custom of polygamy; but in that case, if USCIS becomes suspicious, it can look at all your sexual and household relationships. As USCIS defines polygamy, it doesn't matter whether or not you are legally married to the people who share your polygamous relationships. Hi, Fenn.”

Fenn shrugged.

Brendan continued, reading from his phone, “Nor does it matter whether you are the spouse with multiple partners, or whether you are merely one of the partners. The non-legal ‘spouses of a polygamous man are practicing polygamy just as much as he is.

For example, a refugee who was practicing polygamy before he immigrated will be required by U.S. immigration law to designate one wife as his legal wife to accompany him to the United States. Years later, after becoming a U.S. citizen, he might divorce that wife, and marry the woman who was formerly his second wife, in order to petition for her (on Form I-130) to immigrate to the United States.”

“Well that hardly seems right,” Fenn commented.

“No,” Brendan scowled, sticking out his lower lip, “It does not.”

“Is there more?” Dylan asked.

“Are you getting married?” Fenn asked his son.

“Is there more?” Dylan said again, as if his father had not spoken.

Brendan’s eyes went from father to son, and then he read.

“If the petition is approved, the new/formerly second wife immigrates, and then USCIS learns that the husband is still continuing to live with the first wife (even if only some of the time), all three could be accused of practicing polygamy. This is the case because all three come from a country where polygamy is practiced. Therefore, if the man lives with both women at the same time, whether the women live separately or apart, their joint behavior meets the USCIS definition of polygamy.

“Similarly—oh, fuck—if an immigrant from a country where polygamy is practiced culturally but not legally goes through a ceremony of customary ‘marriage' with someone in her country of origin who has other customary wives, USCIS will see her as a practicing polygamist. This will be the case even though there is no legal marriage between the couple, and even though she is living in the U.S. and he and his wives are living outside the United States.”

“What about Muslims?” Donovan asked, as Fenn put Alice down and she decided to grab Don’s leg and cling to it.

“Islam,” Brendan cleared his throat, “is the most common religious tradition recognizing the custom of polygamy today. Nevertheless, as a result of the biblical practice of polygamy, there exist practicing polygamists in both the Hebrew and Christian traditions. In addition, many African and some South-East Asian nations have sociocultural traditions of polygamy.

“If you belong to any of these traditions (or certain sects within them), therefore, USCIS will pay close attention to indications that your household situation fits the definition of polygamy.”

“That sounds racist,” declared Maia, the caramel skinned daughter of Rabbi Todd and the stepdaughter of Fenn.

Brendan looked at her.

“Because you happen to come from a certain background, assholes from the government will be checking you out to make sure you aren’t practicing polygamy, and if you come to this country, you have to deny something that you thought was sacred or legal before?” Maia said. “The shit is racist.”

“I remember,” said Cade, “That people used to say if gay marriage was made legal that would open the door for polygamy and people to do anything they wanted.”

“Well, I say the sooner the better,” Fenn declared solemnly. “I never understood why it was a problem… letting people do what they want.”


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great end to the chapter. I am glad Cade, Brendan and Donovan found a way to get married. It may not be exactly what they wanted but until that can happen this is good. It was nice to see Fenn and old friends. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great end to the chapter. I am glad Cade, Brendan and Donovan found a way to get married. It may not be exactly what they wanted but until that can happen this is good. It was nice to see Fenn and old friends. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

I know that you meant Cade, Simon and Donovan who were married by Brendan AND Todd at Fenn's house. And yes, it was good to see them again.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I HOPE ALL OF YOU HAVE A BRILLIANT WEEKEND. HERE IS THE BEGINNING OF OUR THIRD CHAPTER



CHAPTER THREE

HELLSCAPES

“Sometimes a trip to hell is good.”

-Donovan Shorter



“We can go now,” Donovan said, knuckling his eyes. “I just don’t want you think I’m going to stay awake and keep you company in the car is all.”

If that was a threat it was a threat unheeded and Cade said, “So long as you’re there.”

“Why are we taking two different cars?” May wondered as they traveled down the stairs from the second floor apartment and out of the north door.

“Because,” Simon confided as if Cade wasn’t there, “Cademon always worries about one of the cars breaking down, and if we have two we can all pile into another.”

“It’s a fair worry. It’s happened before.”

“Of course,” Donovan noted, opening the door, “he’s never thought that twice the cars is twice the cars that can break down.”

He yawned again. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa and been surprised when the two had returned, Simon with a pom pom hat perched on his head, from digging the cars out of the snow.

“The weather says no more snow,” Cade announced, “so we could leave now.”

“We are not leaving now,” Donovan said. “I’ve gotten comfortable. We can leave in two hours or preferably three, but we are not leaving now.”

But Donovan was not, or at least he did not think he was unnecessarily difficult, and they left closer to two than three hours later when he felt ready. There wasn’t much to pack, for they had intended to head straight up to Ely last night. As they drove north, the blue sky was already being tempered by charcoal.

Mostly, when Donovan said he wasn’t ready to leave, what he meant was he had begun last night, and continued into the day to work on a small statuette of a strange goddess. Beside her was a goddess slim in spralking blue with deep earth brown skin and her jet face was covered by a green mask, Horns that were branches grew from her head.

This particular goddess was stark white, whiter than white, but Don had stayed on her face all day, frowning and scowling.

“No matter that I do, she looks like a giant man dressed as a woman. I can’t get to the face.”

May remembered a drowsy day last summer before her birthday, when she had checked her phone and seen the haunting image of a large boned women in sea green with jade bracelets all around her thick arms, her seaweed brown hair hung down, sparkiling, nearly living, touched by strands of green and blue. But her face, which ought of have been brown like her arms, like her ears, like most of Donovan’s sculptures, was painted pale blue and her eyes kohled in black. Strange and haunting she was, and May even dreamed of her later, many times later.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” Donovan said. “I was trying to make her, and every time I did she turned out wrong. And then I went to sleep and right before I woke up I saw this. So I knew this is who she was.”

“Maybe you’ll dream again and see the other one,” May said. “Maybe you haven’t seen her face right yet either.”

There was something to that. May was a good artist. When she was younger she’d drawn wolves and cute things her mother liked, but as she’d grown older and come into her own mind, her works had grown stranger and fine. A rotund woman in an afro smoking a joint that blossomed into the planet earth, a tortoise whose shell was a nuclear bomb, a fine drawn wizened face of a woman who looked like her mother and her grandmother, except that her neck had been severed and her neck was dripping blood that spilled into the word bullshit. Yes, she should stay with them. When he had been her age, the age when one became crazy rather than pleasing, all he’d had was his mother and father, and that was no having at all. Donovan was not the sort of person to say, “If only I’d had someone crazy and wild to look up to, a grown up to watch out for me,” for as much imagination as Donovan had, his imagination did not go into thinking of his life being a different way or pitying how it was.

“I think,” He had told May, as she began packing up her pencils, and looking over her paints and markers, and he began to carefully put clay away and wrap up the half done woman, “that you’re right about that. It’s no use forcing a vision. We might as well wait for her to come.”

They had decided that May would travel with Cade and Don would travel with Simon., both of them choosing the person they’d been with the least.

Donovan got into the silver car behind the Land Rover, and rested his cheek briefly on Simon’s shoulder, settling into the aura of gentleness and goodness that always came from his husband.



The phone rang, and Donovan shook his head. He reached into his pocket.

“It’s May.”

“Really?” Simon said.

Donovan answered.

“Donovan, damnit, this does it. I’m never going to sleep again.”

Don could hear Cade laughing in the background, and he put her on speakerphone.

“You love sleep,” Donovan said.

“You’re right. I’m totally going back to sleep after I get off this call, but this is the grossest dream I’ve ever had. I mean, I can’t even believe I dreamed this shit. Literally shit. By the way, did you dream about the Lady any?”

“No,” Donovan said. I’ve just been talking to Simon. Anyway, your dream?”

“Oh, yeah. God! So it’s a bathroom.”

A bathroom?”

“Yes, it’s this public bathroom. I can still see it. White tiles, really white tiles bright lights. And all these people are walking in and pulling their pants down so they can take a shit.”

“That’s gross.”

“I know. But here’s the thing. I walk out and go to Dairy Queen. There’s a Dairy Queen on the other side of the place, and I order an ice cream, and when they pull the pumps—”

“They’re connected to the toilets and the people’s shit comes out as ice cream?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“I could just kind of see where this was going.”

Simon was sitting there perplexed and bug eyed, and Cade was cackling in the Land Rover ahead.

“I always thought Dairy Queen was for shit,” Cade murmured.

“Are we sick?” May said.

“You’re sick,” Donovan said.

“I just wanted to check. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Dream about what happens between lemonade machines and urinals.”

“Please don’t,” Simon said.

After May hung up they were quiet in the car for a while and then Simon said,

“Don’t laugh…”

“You have to take a dump, don’t you?”

“I am feeling a little queasy.”

“I’m sure there’s a lovely gas station smelling of urine with a turd floating in an unwashed toilet that we can stop at.”

“I’m not stopping till we get to Ely.”

“Just let me know if I need to toll down a window.”

“Anything I do in this car,” Simon said, “I put the blame on you.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

When the cars stopped in front of the house in Ely, the night seemed still and dark and lonely, the long bluish house with its second attic second story was small under the high trees and the half moon that was coming out.

“Glorious,” Donovan whispered.

“You got the keys?”

Donovan handed them to Simon

“I have to shit.”

“You’re a poet tonight,” Donovan said.

“Get my bags,” Simon directed, climbing out of the car and briskly walking past the Land Rover, up the stairs.

“Just for that,” Donovan murmured as he saw a dim light go on in the upstairs window, “I hope there’s no toilet paper.”

Donovan climbed ouf of the car and May shimmied from the Land Rover, giving a shriek of pleasure.”

“Where’s your coat?”

“Mad things like me don’t need coats,” she declared.

Cade stepped out of the car and looked b,ack at Don who was coming toward them with his and Simon’s bags.

Cade had taken his bag. May, who said she would come back for hers was talked into the wisdom of just getting it now, and they walked up onto the great porch where she murmured, “Summer will be so nice here,” and walked into the living room.

It was clean, the way Don had made sure it was last time he’d been here with his cousin, Isaiah. When Cade flipped on the lights, though it was a little chilly and the heat needed to be turned up, the first floor was homey with its deep red curtains and the old furniture from the seventies and eighties, the great heavy old Davenports and easy chairs. Through the foyer and the living room, and to the right of the dining room, the kitchen was neat and waiting for them.

“Tea or coffee?” May said.

Donovan blinked at her.

“I know how to make things and I know how to serve friends.”

“Coffee, May,” Cade said pleasantly, and she nodded as the two of them stepped out and headed through the living room to the stairs.

“I wonder if she’ll know where to find the coffee,” Cade said.

“I wonder if she’ll know what to do with it once she does,” Don said, and Cade chuckled.

Cade stood on the first step to the second floor, and Don waited to follow.

“Found it!” May called from the kitchen.

“Do you remember?” Cade said, “the first time we were here? The first time you came to get me.”

“When you were cleaning it for Stan, and then I came—”

“And cleaned it for real. Made a brilliant meal. The first time we were with Rob and Frey.”

“Yes.”

“And I was so worried about Dad.”

“Yeah.”

Don did not say what was on both their minds.

The toilet flushed upstairs, and then they heard the water shoot on as Simon began washing his hands.

“It’s times like this I wish there was more than one bathroom,” Donovan commented and Cade smiled.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get unpacked. I don’t think there’ll be much sleeping tonight.”







After coffee, Donovan showered. He thought he’d shower first but he wanted that coffee, and a cigarette, and he was glad to have May with him.

“You look very sophisticated when you smoke,” she said.

“Yes,” Don agreed. “Yes I do.”

“Tomorrow’s going to be one hell of a day.”

“And that’s the truth.”

But today was just today and tonight was just tonight, and Donovan began to tear apart what he’s started the same time that May took out her pencils and began to draw something that Simon declared to be absolutely terrifying.

It ended up being a doorway to space with a spiral staircase going up it, but the doorway became a vagina with two thighs and high heeled legs bordering it, and out the doorway snaked a serpent with the head of her old pastor, and across it was written in blood red letters the name of the pastor’s wife: JULIANNE.

“Its going to be our new religion,” May announced. In the corner was a man with pentagram and the head of a goat, hugging a little child and as Donovan’s work progressed, May’s grew steadily more mad.

“The two of you feed off each other,” Cade who had gone into the shower first, declared.

“I should have waited to shower. You left a potent smell, Sy.”

“You’ve known me for years, and no one told you to take a shower directly after I’d gotten finished in the bathroom. I mean no one told you.”

“Did you ever see Call Me By Your Name?” Donovan asked, not turning away from his work.

“The boring movie about that little guy with the hair and that man that was too old for him?” Cade said.

“And they’re in Italy,” Simon added.

“Yes,” said Donovan.

“Well, in the book, there is a part where they’re both in the bathroom and one of them is taking a shit and the other pushes his stomach so that he can make the shit come out of him, and it’s supposed to be this really vulnerable, tender moment.”

“That’s fucking gross,” Cade said. “I’m not pushing the shit out of either one of you.”

“It’s also not how shitting works,” Simon nodded, pouring himself coffee.

“I mean,” May said, coloring in a thigh, “if any of you guys needed to have shit pushed out of you, I would do it. But that’s like a need thing.”

“As your spouse,” Simon said, hands jammed into his pockets, “I feel like I have to say that if it’s necessary, I will push the shit out of both of you. You too, May.”

“Thanks, Simon.”

“It’s what family’s for. But…. Pushing the shit out of someone is not erotic.”

“The more you say that the more I have to go to the bathroom,” Cade said, putting his coffee down.

“See!” Simon threw up his hands. “That’s exactly what I was saying.”

“Don, what is that?” Cade demanded. “It’s mad. I love it.

A wide eyed woman with black kohled eyes and ragged red hair, was throwing up large clawlike hands, and her brown nippled breasts were bare. She wore a skirt of blues and reds and Donovan said:

“It’s Jarnsaxe.”

“You know, Don,” Cade said. “You and May are the two people who the more questions I ask, the less I know.”





“In nómine Patris, et Fílii, et Spí-ritus Sancti.”

“Amen.”



“Introíbo ad altáre Dei.”



“Ad Deum qui lætíficat juventútem meam.”



“Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de

gente non sancta, ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me.”



Quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea, quare me repulisti?

et quare tristis incedo, dum affligit me inimicus?”





By now Donovan had showered, and was sitting in his room with the door open. Early on they had established that Don always had a room in this house, and then the room next door, which had been Cade’s was for Cade and Simon and maybe him as well. Cade and Simon were snuggled away, and May came into the room to listen with Donovan to what was playing off of his phone speaker.





“Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam;

ipsa me deduxerunt, et adduxerunt in montem sanctum

tuum, et in tabernacula tua.





“Et introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat

juventutem meam.

Confitebor tibi in cithara, Deus, Deus meus.



“Quare tristis es, anima mea? et quare conturbas me?

Spera in Deo, quoniam adhuc confitebor illi,

salutare vultus mei, et Deus meus.”



“I really have no religious education,” May said.

“I can’t tell if that’s a Protestant thing or a twenty-first century thing,” Donovan said.

“So this is a Catholic Mass.”

“It’s a Latin Mass,” Donovan said, “And the odd thing is I had very little use for it until I returned to Temple. Once you can do two and a half hours of Hebrew, an hour and ten minutes of Latin is nothing.

“Funny, you think of Latin Mass as something old fashioned and conservative, but for me it’s a lot nicer. It’s so open, so long, so not in English. It lets the mind wander. It’s the perfect ground for heresy. I found myself drifting once, thinking, what if the crucifix was an upside down woman with big breasts and her thighs open to the world? Well, now that would be a very different religion.”

May snorted and Donovan said, “Well, now I snorted too, and then the next week the same thing came through my mind.”

“Or it could be a man,” May said. “Jesus himself.”

“Yes,” Donovan said. “And I thought… how different things would be, and then I was just amazed. Not amused at all.”

They were quiet, and the priests and the servers began to sing:



“Glória in excélsis Deo
et in terra pax homínibus bonae voluntátis.
Laudámus te,
benedícimus te,
adorámus te,
glorificámus te,
grátias ágimus tibi propter magnam

glóriam tuam,
Dómine Deus, Rex caeléstis,
Deus Pater omnípotens….”



“I don’t know what I am,” May said. “I used to think I didn’t believe in God, but I just don’t believe in all the silly things people who say they believe in God think are important. Do you think of yourself more as Catholic. Or Jewish. Or what?”



“…qui tollis peccáta mundi, miserére nobis;
qui tollis peccáta mundi, súscipe deprecatiónem

nostram.
Qui sedes ad déxteram Patris, miserére nobis…..”

“What do you think, Little One?” Don asked her.

“I think of you as some type of witch. Something magical.”

“I think,” Donovan said, as the Gloria came to a close, “that in the end, when the heart is right, all prayers go to the same place.”





SEE YOU AFTER THE SABBATHS

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a well done start to the chapter! So much going on that I am glad you’re only posting this story and not two at once. The inclusion of May in this part of the story is really great! Excellent writing and I look forward to more after the weekend! I hope you have a nice one.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, the one story portion seems to be easier on us all, easier to post, easier to read reactions, easier for you to read. And there are more characters in this story than usual. I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm enjoying sharing it.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Welcome to a new week!


“That’s strange,” Cade murmured while they lay curled together in the dark, “Don hasn’t come to bed.”
“Maybe he was giving us time,” Simon murmured, tracing a finger over Cade’s bicep and down his arm.
Cade stretched out, uncurling from Simon’s body. Now he pressed himself against Simons back.
“I thought so too,” Cade said, “but he’s giving us a hell of a lot of time.”
“He’s so happy to have May,” Simon said. “And quite frankly, I’m happy to have you.”
Cade grinned at him,
“I’m happy to have you.”
“I feel like sometimes we’re almost afraid to love each other,” Simon said.
“I’m not.”
“I know I’m Don’s husband and you know you’re Don’s husband, but we forget we’re each other’s husbands too. That’s why Don goes away, you know? To remind us of that.”
Cade squeezed himself tight and pressed his knees to Simon’s ass.
“Are you excited?” Simon asked. “About tomorrow?”
“Is it silly of me to say yes?”
“No,” Simon turned around.
“Because I know that I am.”
They lay together with the half light of one lamp, Cade gently running a hand over Simon’s back, his arms, his thigh, and then he said, “I’m going to do something now. Because I don’t know that I have the strength to do it later.”
“Okay?”
Simon was turning around and Cade said.
“I set up a date, but…. I have to do it now, because now I can.”
Simon watched Cade rise naked from the bed and pull on a jockstrap, and then his jeans, and he began dressing himself. Cade went out the door and down the hall where May was half asleep in a chair in Don’s room, and Don was asleep in front of the end of the Mass.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“We’re going out,” Cade said. “Come on.”
May wasn’t sure if she was supposed to, but she shook Don, and by the time Cade was in his heavy winter jacket with the great fur hood, and Simon was in his pea coat with knit cap pulled over his ears, Donovan was coming down the stairs.
“I’ve gotta do this now,” Cade said. “While I’m ready.”
Don asked no questions, and Cade went into the closet and took out a plastic box, smaller than a shoe box with a label and a gold sticker for a seal.
When Don was properly bundled, they set out into the night in the shadow of the great trees and under the watchful white moon, trudging through snow until they arrived at the white beach and the slushy, sluggishly churning water.
They reached the pier, and Cade sat down on the cold stones that made a rough chair. He took out his keys, cut the sticker and read the label one last time.

The Cremated Remains of

STANLEY RICHARDS​

“Seven months,” Cade said, “and I keep thinking that when I see this label I’ll feel differently, or feel something. Or that I have to hold onto this. Or that one dau I’ll stop holding on. Or just….. not wanting to touch them.”
Cade reached in and pulled out a plastic bag in the shape of a box.
“God, its heavy,” he said as the waves slushed against the pier. “God, it’s a lot of him.
“I never knew what they looked like. So… white almost. It’s like chalk.”
“Or cocaine,” Simon said baldly.
Cade looked at him.
“We both know what cocaine looks like,” Simon told him.
Cade grinned ruefully and he jabbed his key into the plastic.
“The plastic’s strong,” Donovan said.
“What should we do with the box?” May asked.
“I thought it would be harder to open,” Cade said. “Pitch it.”
May looked at him as he cut into the bag.
“Pitch it,” Cade said again.
He stood up, and they walked down the pier, a solemn procession. It was covered in snow after the storm today, so no one slipped, and someone had put a railing on both sides. This was the pier where Cade had tried to kill himself when he was seventeen, Don remembered, and now, as they reached the edge, Cade held the bag of his father’s remains at waist level and began to pour. The heaviness of a life was a while powder that fell to the water and was almost immediately lost in churning waves. It was white dust, the ghost of dust, transparent and then gone, and an empty bag. A little remained and Cade thought of holding onto it. He shook the bag out and then, not caring about pollution tonight, he dropped the plastic bag into Lake Michigan, the inland sea, and May, as solemnly as she could, dropped the plastic box. It splashed and she was sure it would come back in land. It hit the pier and the waves carried it out and onto the line of white moonlight.

CADE​

When my brother came to town just a few years ago and told me Dad was dying, the truth is part of me didn’t give a shit. I rushed back here to Ely for him, and for my family or for the person I should have been. I had tried as hard as I could to get away from here. I didn’t have much use for my family, and I had zero use for Stan. I think when I came back here the first first time, to clean up this house, thinking I was getting it ready for him, it was because I knew I wasn’t right. My life wasn’t right. My past here wasn’t right. My family certainly wasn’t right. We were so wrong that I needed to just come here and do things, working with my hands though my mind was numb and my heart wasn’t turned on yet.

And then, in the last few years came this gift, of having a family again, though we had been broken, of looking at my life even though I had broken it. Of having my dad even though he was half of what he had been. The half of him was better than the whole him, and I loved him. If you had asked me before, did I love my dad, I would have said yes, because you have to. But I look at the last few years, at my fragile dad who knew less and less but seemed sweeter and sweeter and the truth is I really loved him.

We made a decision. In our house we would alternate on Valentine’s Day. We had never gone in for it much before, but eventually thought why not, wasn’t it time, and to have it in an old fashioned way, one for one. We drew lots. Don got the biggest straw. I got the second biggest. Simon got the last. This meant that on the 14th Don got to be the one that I treated like a Valentine, and then the weekend after Simon was one of our Valentine’s and the weekend before I was the Valentine. Who did what for whom was another lot drawing. After all the straws and chart making, Don said, “Can’t we just all get shit for each other on the 14th?”

“No,” it was Simon who said it, “and that’s because as long as you and Cade have been together, you haven’t really had a Valentine’s Day, and as long as I was with Cade—”

“We snorted blow and had threesomes on Valentine’s Day.”

“So,” Simon said, turning me a threatening gaze, “I’d like to experience what it is for one husband to make me his Valentine.”



But this isn’t really about Valentine’s Day. This is about the night I had with Don while Simon went back to his house. We were drinking champagne, or maybe it was sparkling wine, and Donovan said, “When I was seven I remember my mother started sobbing her eyes out. It was Valentine’s Day and my father had forgotten. He didn’t get her anything.”

“Your poor mom,” I started.

“No,” Don said.

“I went in and I made cupcakes for her. I don’t think they were good. I don’t know. I did the best I could. I feel like they had pink frosting, but I don’t know where I got frosting from. I gave them to my mother and asked her to be my Valentine.”

She just kept on crying. She said it wasn’t the same. That’s my memory of Valentine’s. That’s my memory of my mother. The longer she’s gone the less I like her.”

It was in early spring when Don’s stepfather finally went into care and the house needed to be cleared. In the midst of that Don brought into our home the plastic box they call an urn where Adrienne’s ash’s were.

“We could get a nice jar,” Simon suggested. “And put it on the mantelpiece.”

“No,” Donovan said.

“If you don’t want to see it, we could even put it in my house.”

Again he told Simon no.

“I don’t want to keep them forever,” Donovan said. “At least I don’t think I do. I don’t really know. It’s really sort of awkward. What do you do with your dead mother?”

We remembered watching the movie The Namesake, and seeing Kal Penn pour his father’s ashes into the Ganges. Don said he’s always thought of doing that, but just couldn’t get to it now.

“Besides, it’s still cold out. Maybe I’ll wait till its summer.

But Don decided, and we believed, that since Adrienne’s ashes had been brought to something like their final resting place it was time for a funeral. It would be a very small affair. Frey came from Ashby with his friend Felix. May was there as well. I took off work and Frey and Don made chicken parmesan and pasta for the meal. Don had thought of saying some prayers himself, but when I told Dan Malloy about all this, he drove down and did an actual funeral Mass.

At the end of the day, like a burial, Don placed his mother under his altar where he kept his sticks, his stones, his statues, Bibles and others scriptures, secret pictures and amulets, the place where he meditated and did whatever witchy people do, and where we had slept for seven days in front of burning candles when Adrienne died.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a good portion. I am glad Cade waited till he was ready to spread his Dad’s ashes. What Don did with his Mum’s ashes seemed fitting too. All a bit sad but necessary. I am glad all three guys find a way of including each other on Valentine’s Day. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, yes, they both do beautiful things, but as we'll see tomorrow, Don isn't quite finished yet, and Cade may not be either. There's so much more to come. Thank you for reading.

 

[ChrisGibson]

It was in the middle of the night, as we were about to start making love, Don was getting closer, giving me those little touches that let me knew what was up, that he suddenly sat up, got out of bed, and walked out of the room naked. He went down the hall, to his private room where the altar was, took up his mother’s ashes and then moved them to a closet, covering them in laundry and shutting firm the door.

“It’s like I could feel her radiating from the place that’s the most sacred to me, and I didn’t want her there,” he said.

The rest of the year progressed toward the middle of summer and Don started saying:

“She keeps showing up in dreams. And not in nice ways. Like, the dreams are not good and then I remember she’s not here anymore and shouldn’t be, and I wake up. I wake up feeling better. In the dreams she doesn’t really do much. Sometimes she’s just there, and often I’m back in the way things were, where she’s thwarting every fucking thing and my stepfather is being as asshole and she’s helping it happen and then I realize she’s dead and I’m….”

“Free.”

“Not the word I wanted to use, but yes.

“I have to get rid of her,” Don said. “But I’m not sure where.”

“Was there a place she liked?”

“Not really,” Don said. “Mom didn’t like things. She wasn’t a let’s go take a walk kind of person.”

“What about her old neighborhood.”

“We’re not driving to Chicago with a box of ashes to scatter her in some ghetto in Lawndale. But I’m not sure when, and I don’t really want to touch ashes.”

“The more we talked, the more Donovan realized how little he wanted to do. How he had done enough.”

“It may be the river,” he said.

There was a boat ramp on the river, barely used, but a sign that said, “Dumping is a fine of 2500 dollars.”

Donovan wasn’t sure if this included dumping mothers.





Simon, being Simon, came back from town hall and stood in the living room, looking perfect in his khakis and striped blue shirt, pushing his brass rimmed spectacles up his nose.

He cleared his throat and read:

“Where Can You Scatter Ashes in Indiana?

“There are many beautiful places in the state of Indiana where a loved one or pet’s ashes can be scattered. Through cremation, the resulting ashes are harmless and pose no health risks.

“Below we describe some of the most common places where people scatter in Indiana.

Scattering Gardens – With the increase in the amount of people in Indiana being cremated, many churches and cemeteries throughout the state are opening up scattering gardens. These are areas on their property identified as places where families can scatter ashes. With a quick internet search, you can most likely find one or more scattering gardens in your area.



Private Property – Indiana state law allows people to scatter ashes on the private property of a consenting owner. This can be private property you own (a yard, parcel of land, etc.) or property that’s owned by another person with their permission.



Public Land – Indiana state law permits you to scatter ashes on uninhabited public land. Therefore, if you’re interested in scattering on public land, it’s a good idea to check local zoning to make sure it’s considered ‘uninhabited’. It’s also recommended to check with your city or county offices to find out if any local regulations related to scattering ashes exist where you plan on scattering.



National Parks – Indiana is home to three amazing National Parks, which attract over 2 million visitors each year. National Parks provide some of the most stunning views in the country and are places where people commonly prefer to scatter ashes. Since every National Park has their own rules and regulations related to scattering, be sure to check with the park ranger’s office where you may be interested in scattering to find out if scattering is allowed there and what rules and regulations may be in place.



Water Burial – Water burials continue to be more and more popular throughout the country. If a water burial is of interest to you or your family, be sure to keep in mind that U.S. federal law requires that a water burial, or scattering at sea, is done at least 3 nautical miles from shore. Also, the Environmental Protection Agency needs to be notified within 30 days of a water burial being done.



From an Airplane – Similar to most other states, there are no state restrictions in Indiana related to scattering ashes of a loved one from the sky. Just remember that the person doing this needs to hold on to the urn used to scatter – U.S. federal aviation laws prohibit dropping any objects from the sky that could potentially harm property or people.”



When he put the paper down, looking as proud and excited as a third grader giving a report, he said, “So if you let me know, I’ll set about with that paperwork.”

Donovan said, “Um.”

And that’s all he said.



One day, not long after, Donovan said, “I wish I had known you two the way you were before me.”

“I don’t think you do,” Simon said. He was reading the morning paper and folding it over, looking very much like a dad from a 1950’s sitcom.

I disagree,” Donovan said. “It seems like in those days you were more uninhibited.”

“We’re not uninhibited enough now?” Cade said.

“You’re respectful,” Don said. “Respectable. I want you bad. I miss the badness.”

“Badness almost killed us,” Simon said.

“That’s because you didn’t have me.”

No one said anything for a while. Don had scrambled eggs. His are the best. And he was having a pancake and I was eating a donut and Simon, sensibly, was finishing off some of that expensive stuff that looks like rabbit food.

“Sometimes a trip to hell is good,” Donovan said.

Simon only chucked and shook his head.

We ate in more silence and then Simon said something about them doing road work in Gary, and I said something about how Todd Meradan was now a rabbi, and he wanted to perform a wedding, and Don looked as placid as ever while he finished off his last strip of bacon.

“It’s almost my birthday,” Don said now.

“Whaddo you want?” Simon asked before I could get it out of my mouth.

Donovan said, “A trip to hell.”



He had told us that he wanted us to follow his lead and it would be two days before his actual birthday when May and Frey, DJ and some others were coming. It was a Thursday night and we had agreed to do whatever the hell Don said—that’s exactly how we put it—and then Don just went up to the attic and worked. It was a little while later that Simon’s phone went off, and there was a message from Don.

“Check the cigar box. See what I left you.”

Simon looked bemused, and it was only after he handed me his phone that I understood why. When he returned it was with two large cigars, but when the next message said, “One is for you and one for Cademon,” I could smell that these were blunts, the fattest, craziest blunts I had seen in a long time.

My phone went off.

“Go check the bureau beside the mantelpiece.”

It was always empty, but tonight there was a bottle of Bushmills.

“Enjoy it. Both of you.”

I typed back, “This is your birthday wish?”

Don, being Don, typed back: “Enjoy them.”

Simon was already smoking, and he had brought back two flat bottomed glasses.

“Don did say he wanted to see us the way we were. He said a little bit of hell?”

“Is that what this is about?”

Simon held the smoke in his lungs and it leaked from his nostrils.

“And,” he said, his voice squeezing out of him with the smoke, “this is a problem for you…. Why?”

He grinned as he poured himself some whiskey, and the amber liquid filled the glass. When I drank it burned in my mouth and I realized how long it had been since I’d had a real drink. We got high and happy and after a while, Simon said, “I wish we had a little bit of coke.”

“Sy!” I said, sounding like a shocked school girl, and my voice was so funny to both of us we burst out laughing.

A little while later, when we were as cloudy as the smoke filled rooms and my eyes were burning like my mouth, but I didn’t care, a new message came.

“Check the cereal cabinet. Behind Simon’s granola.”

Simon got up, and I could tell he was fucked up. He laughed as he balanced himself, surprised by his new elevation, and carefully he traveled to the kitchen.

“Fuck!” I heard him shout back.

When he returned it was with a bag of chocolate meltaways, and if I hadn’t been sure, when I bit into one I knew it was loaded with marijuana.

“How many of these should we eat?” I wondered.

Simon stared at the meltaway that was already sticking to his index finger and thumb before saying, “I bet one will suffice.”

After two we were high and horny, making out on the couch, half naked, nearly more than half when the text came to both our phones.

“Come. Now.”

The next text said

“Come naked.”

We stumbled, kissing, supporting each other, the supporting turning into rubbing, Simon taking the bottle and the edibles, and cloudy as fuck, chuckling dumbly, we made our way to attic.

 

[ChrisGibson]

When we arrived there in Don’s place, it was like ascending to heaven, or maybe it was the hell that we wanted. Simon set the bottle and edibles down because our limbs were like gum or rubber bands, were were boneless, but for our cocks. Simon’s jutted out thick, the head of it like a soldier’s helmet in the purple light, for Don’s room was done up now in purple fairy lights that throbbed on and off, blackness and little moving stars of indigo, and pink coming in and out, washing the room in a deep, dark, plum color. Don came forward with a bottle he opened, and held to my nostril, and I inhaled the poppers deeply, and then took them in my next nostril, feeling my body melt into the purple blue, my skin heat up, my heart beat through my chest. I heard Simon snort them the same time I felt Don’s mouth on my cock, his mouth on the tip of my sensation, my whole body shivering as if I wasn’t anything more than a dick.

I was sensitive to everything, to Don snorting the poppers, to Simon’s turning to me and putting his tongue in my mouth while Don’s tongue moved on my cock, to all of Simon’s tongue in my mouth while all of Don’s mouth took me. The sensation increased and it was a while before I realized Don was working me expertly with his hand and sucking Simon now. We moved to the bed with the liquor, with everything. We weren’t in a rush, we were lose and high and happy that night under the gently budding and fading tyrian lights.

There is this moment, at least for me, when I am so high I come out the other side and see things with a clarity. Not a blinding clarity, that’s for sobriety, but the clarity of darkness, like a cat’s sight in the night. I hear the slapping of body against body, the desperate, satisfied, rattling groans coming out of Don as I see Simon, biting his lower lip, the light muscles of his body dyed in fading and blooming amethyst light, fucking the shit out of Don with equal desperation. The thickness in my hand is my own dick, harder than its ever been, coated in spit and precum and lube, and I realize this is what he wanted, this is what we have been afraid to do, to be. We’ve been terrorized to go to this place out of places. We went there with strangers, but as Simon screams and staggers and comes, and I start to rub his back and he clutches Don’s shoulders, I realize we haven’t been there with each other.

I haven’t been there. That first time when I was in Don’s room and we began to make out and then making out turned into touching and the touching turned into sex under the moonlight, there was no holding anything back. How much more the first time when Simon was with us and I had to push away any reserve. Now it’s all gone, now Don is shouting out again for what he wants, the two of us drunk and limitless in him, me pounding him. The lights are throbbing. He reaches for the poppers and inhales them. I don’t slow down enough to let him do it, then my rhythm is faster and faster. I can always see myself through Simon’s faded eyes hammering him. I almost… I almost… When I come I actually scream, and then I melt. I can’t feel anything but the coming, like everything is pouring out of me, like all of me is held tight inside of Don. I stagger weakly though the storm. We all lay there exhausted under the pulsing lights.

This should be the time when we drift into sleep, when we are at the end of it all, where someone weakly reaches up to turn out the lights. Even if more is to happen with a second wind, this is the place of the first wind. But after coming I am powerfully awake and powerfully aware. Not sober, not taken out of the magic of this other world, but something different, and Don gets up.

“We have to go,” he says. “I have to go. I can do it. Now.”

I’m surprised when Simon almost springs up too, when we go through the house quickly, and pull on shirts and pants if underwear can’t be found, grab sweaters because the night is cool.

Don goes to the closet and brings out the plastic box with Adrienne’s ashes, and when we go out, Simon guides us to his car. Maybe Don had thought of walking, but five minutes later when I am reminded that we are still high, and that we live further from the river than we used to, I am glad we drove. We go down Maron Street to where it meets the river and turns to Riverside Drive, and we get out and Don comes to the asphalt grass covered boating dock where no boat has pushed off for years. There, having cut the box open, cut into the plastic, he pours out the ashes and I see them like white stars swirling on the water before they disappear forever.

“It’s funny,” Don says. “I never saw her again. Not after combing her hair, after telling her to go to sleep. After saying goodbye and rubbing oil into her hands, rubbing her feet. I never saw her. My aunt was with her when she died. I never saw a body so I wondered what it would be like to see these ashes. To see all of her burnt to calcium whiteness. I was prepared. To see her like… silver dust, floating on the water and then disappearing. And she was afraid of water. She didn’t like nature, or walking or any of it, and now what’s left of her in this world is part of it, is gone.”

In our silence, the always rushing of the river takes over, and the little sounds of birds in the early morning, or bugs talking to each other. Up the road on Michigan Avenue, cars are passing. A bus sighs.

“It was the most magical thing she ever did,” Donovan says.

“Bye, Adrienne,” Simon says, waving, and I almost laugh, because he sounds like a little kid, and I think maybe he’s joking, only he would never make that kind of a joke, and he;s totally high.

Carrying the empty plastic box which had held Adrienne’s ashes and would, on the way home, be pitched in someone’s curbside trash can, Donovan says, “Let’s go home.”

Simon drives, by accident or on purpose I’m not sure, to his house which is down the street from Pine Street and the large one we share. In the old white bungalow he suddenly bursts into tears and none of us knows why. Donovan doesn’t even look at me with his “what the fuck?” the face, Simon just buries his head in Don’s chest and Don holds him. We undress and we get into Simon’s big bed and all night, Don holds him. Simon is a few years older than me, and I never knew certain things about him till all three of us were together. He’s been through a lot, true enough, and sometimes he puts it all down and he likes to be babied—that’s not quite the right word—by Don. There will be a whole day, like the next day, where he unconsciously follows Don around and Don doesn’t mind—because if he did you would know, and he snuggles up to him and lie’s on his lap just like a pet.

Sleep comes gently and swiftly. I had thought of showering. I had thought of many things on the edge of slumber, but there is just the velvety warm glove of night closing over us, and then the early morning or early summer, the gentler sound, the different sound from last night, of Don gently fucking Simon, whose his face is half buried in the pillow, turned to me, his lips parted, blond eyelashes fluttering over his blue eyes while he reaches back to pull Don in. When Don fucks him it sounds like waves in the morning rolling to the shore, unstoppable, insistent, natural, gentle as a bird song. It’s Simon who comes, all like hot syrup and honey in his pristine bed sheets, and the two of them are kissing gently, and then I am taking Don in my arms and wrapping my thighs around him, and when Simon’s hand is running up and down me, his lips are kissing me. I’m holding Don to me. I’m feeling the blossom of his ejaculation inside of me, feeling his seed in me as, still hard, still bruising, he gently pulls out of me and we all lie together in a half slumber as the grey morning becomes, behind the beige curtains, a golden one.

Later that same day, when I am still wrapped up in the lovemaking, Deanna calls and tells me that Dad has died.


MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

Another sombre portion but it was good. I am glad Don found a way to spread his Mum’s ashes that made sense for him. Another death at the end? Wow these three are going through a lot. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days.