Creation: The Conclusion of the Lake Cycle

[ChrisGibson]

So, now that it's explained to you, you get that its only one death, since Don's mother died in Mangrove, and here we're just talking about the spreading of her ashes. The only person who died this time around was Cade's father.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER FOUR

THE WHOLE WORLD



“I don’t know anything about this place. I know about the things that happened to me in this place, but that’s not really the same.”

-Cade Richards




In the morning, May and Donovan went walking by the beach. They thought about walking through town, but both realized that was a waste of being so close to the lake, maybe even being pretentious and acting like the lake didn’t matter, when in a way it was all that mattered. The water was an endless expanse of churning grey green.

“Until I came here, until I met Cade,” Donovan said, “I only saw the lake when it was blue or blue green, and it was under the summer sky. It’s as amazing now. Almost more so.”

“Don, look,” May’s ungloved hand caught his gloved one. Look, there! By the pier.”

Donovan almost expected a mermaid but what he saw was far more improbable. There was a fat little man, red from the cold, and shirtless, and he was swimming.

“I’ll be damned,” Don murmured. “I mean. I really will be damned.”

“Is that even safe?”

“He’s opening himself to the elements,” Don said. “Even more than we are. Seems to know what he’s doing.”

Like a cross between a lifebuoy and a garden gnome, the little man was bouncing about, swimming out by the pier. They watched to see if he was indeed drowning. But he was swimming, and he was happy, and so they moved on.

Don felt a drop on his head.

“Rain.”

May felt it and pulled up her hood.

“Sleet,” she said.

They kept walking slowly in the same direction, watching the shore stretch beside them. There was no use turning around and running back. That wouldn’t get them home any quicker. Donovan lowered his scarf and pushed back his hood a little bit, lifting his face to the cold and the little stings of sleet, May did the same, holding out her arms like a crucifix.



The night Don married Simon, they all left Rossford and went back to the house on Pine Street. He and Cade and Simon and May, Frey and DJ, gathered huge blankets and climbed onto the giant L shaped sofa that was the biggest bed in the world, and went to sleep. Donovan cannot remember if the radio was on or the television or nothing at all. They slept almost right away.

In the morning, Frey made what he called the wedding breakfast, and his tall, brown haired son DJ helped. May had told Donovan that it was a shame that DJ was with Josh because he was good looking and kind, and she would have at least liked to go on one date with him. Donovan said, “He’s practically your cousin. That would almost be incest.”

He remembered that for years, DJ actually had slept with his cousin, but put that out of his mind. He thought of telling May, but didn’t see how that would come out without sounding like exactly what it was: gossip.



Before the afternoon had come, they drove up to Michigan City where they met Rob and Sheridan, who were just getting off duty, and then they all traveled to Ely to pick up Cindy and Deanna and to look in on Stan who, mostly, slept, but woke up for them.

“Well, everyone’s dressed. Where are we going?”

We’re going to a wedding, Daddy,” Deanna said, and Stan asked, “Who’s getting married? And Deanna said, “Well, Cade is.”

“Oh,” Stan said, smiling. “Is it Ashley? I like Ashley. Something happened with her.”

A shadow that only Donovan could see crossed Cade’s face. Ashley was the only girlfriend Cade ever had, and she’d had the misfortune of getting pregnant. Cade, not on speaking terms with his father at the time, had come asking him only for the money to get an abortion. Apparently Stan had forgotten about the abortion and his actions. Cade, almost fifteen years later, was not so lucky.

“Well,” Stan said. “let me get my good thing on. Let me get my good things on. I’m just going to watch a little news, and then I’ll be ready.”

Stan turned from them to the news and Cade whispered, “What are we supposed to do?”

“Relax,” Deanna said. She sat down on the edge of the bed and watched an article about coastal erosion and how three beaches north of them had been washed away by Lake Michigan. Stan turned to her and said, “Well…. You guys went to a wedding, right?”

“See?” Deanna said to her brother.

Cindy had a look of wonder on her face, and Deanna said, “Yeah, Daddy. Did it wear you out?”

“I was there?” Stan’s voice was weak and surprised.

“You were the belle of the ball.”

Stan grinned and laughed a bit.

“I was!” he declared.

They remained a bit longer before heading out, hugging and kissing Stan, Deanna bending to kiss him on his cheek tenderly.

Later, in the Land Rover, Deanna said, “Mom and Cade used to think I was being cruel or being funny, to lie to him so easily, to not fight to make him see what was and what wasn’t, to make him remember things he didn’t need to. Even …. To give him false memories.”

Cade said nothing, but kept driving. He was deep in his feelings and Donovan knew he was thinking about Ashley and the baby that never was.

“But, you see, his world is whatever we tell him it is,” Deanna said. “We literally have the power to make him have a beautiful world. Daddy thinks he went to a wedding, and he thinks it was yours. What a beautiful day for him.”

“But… one day… the truth. He’ll have to…”

“Daddy doesn’t have that many days,” Deanna said gently. “You know that.”



Yesterday, he had married Cade in the morning, and gone to Rossford to marry Simon in the evening. The wedding night itself had been largely sleep. Today they drove the winding road beside the lake and through the trees, and crossed the bridge until they arrived at the long screened in ranch hose, that looked like a summer camp cabin and belonged to the two old priests, Dan Malloy and Keith MacDonald. They looked as joyful as they were solemn when Don and Cade and Simon arrived with Linda, Deanna and May in tow, and the living room that was sometimes a chapel looked solemn too, with its altar table and its white candles, where soon little flames were burning. There were a few others from the home congregation, and in this quiet Simon again pulled out his silver top hat, but this time Don sat down, and he watched the solemn wedding between Cademon Richards and Simon Barrow. He had thought it was strange to be marrying each of them yesterday, but now he thought it was strange to be left out. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt. As he always had done in the last few years, he checked for jealously and found that this feeling was something related, but different. It was good, Donovan thought, that they should all feel it, a curb on insensitivity, a movement toward grace.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there last night,” Dan was saying after the wedding, “but we were just flying in from California and we had to set up all this. I haven’t done a wedding in ages.”

“How was it?” Don asked. “California, not the wedding.”

“It was too hot,” Dan groused, “and too…. Young.”

“So when are we going to do your weddings?” Keith asked Don.

“Uh. Let’s see… I did the legal marriage to Cade and the religious marriage to Simon. So eventually I will do the legal with Simon and the religious with Cade. That’s two more to go.”

“And then Simon and Cade just had the religious one with each other, so they need a civil one. So that’s three.”

“You should do it the way you did this one,” Dan said. “Over two days. Only I will be at all three.”

“Nope,” May said.

“Whaddo you mean.”

“You all are walking away from the D word.”

The priests looked at her.

“Don, you’re going to have to divorce Cade and have a religious ceremony with him. That’s four. He’s going to marry Simon in a registry. And…. I think that’s the last one.”

“This all seems kind of mad, doesn’t it?” Simon said. “Almost irreligious. Almost wrong.”

“Almost,” Dan said, but not quite.

“You had to have second thoughts when we told you we were going this,” cade said.

“I’ve had second thoughts and third thoughts and fourth thoughts for years,” Dan said.

“But it’s a new day,” Keith said and Dan nodded his head.

“When I was your age I would have never thought of a gay marriage,” Keith said, “but I would have done all sorts of thigns in the dark I am ashamed of now, and I did. Back then we did things in the dark and thought we were still holy because we asked God for forgiveness and denounced them.”

“For nothing is secret that will not be revealed,” Don said, “nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.”

“I used to think that when Jesus said that it was a threat,” Dan said. “Now I see it was a promise of how things may be if the world is ever to change. And if the world is going to survive…. Then it must change.”





Dan Malloy had told Cade the first time: There is the option of just the marriage rite without the Mass. At that time Cade and Simon blinked at each other and then Simon said, “I think we want the Mass.”

“We started out so wrong the first time,” Cade said, “I think I’d like to start out right this time.”

So today, in winter with snow piled high outside, Donovan Shorter stood beside Cade and Simon watched them with May. This wedding day nearly swam into the other, and Don was surprised that he was trembling. Cade, after all, had come first, and he had waited all this time for a ceremony with him. Legally they had done it, and legally they would undo it, but right now was the culmination of many years.

Donovan wondered about his relationship to Cade. Had they started out wrong? They had started out chatting in the school where they worked, Cade surrounded by little kids, Don thinking how sweet he looked. They had started out smoking cigarettes in the parking lot. Or had they started out that early summer night when the moon was so big and bright and the two of them had lain across Don’s bed, fingers reaching for each other and ended up making love?

“Dearly beloved, you have come together into the house of the Church so that in the presence of the Church’s minister and the community, your intention to enter into marriage may be strengthened by the Lord with a sacred seal. Christ abundantly blesses the love that binds you. Through a special sacrament, he enriches and strengthens those he has already consecrated by Holy Baptism, and your love be enriched with his blessing you, so that you may have strength to] be faithful to each other for ever and assume all the responsibilities of married life. And so, in the presence of the Church, I ask you to state your intentions…”



Cade had still been with Simon then. Don had been with many men, but that night was the first time in a while, and Cade was the first man he’d opened to. The night in his room under the moon and under Cade, as the tall shaggy boy with the tender voice that he had crushed on became the man who pressed into him, was the night when he watched him leave, get into his Jeep, waving, and drive away, leaving his ache inside Don, leaving a longing in him to follow…

“Donovan and Cademon, have you come here to enter into marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?”

“I have.”

“Are you prepared, as you follow the path of marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live?”



Leaving the ache of his cock in Don, leaving the desire to follow him, to be with him in that Jeep, never knowing what he was going home to was Simon Barrow, imagining white picket fences and His and His towels, and a house full of their own caramel colored children, himself with an apron, making coffee and eggs for Cade in grey pants and white shirt, blue tie. For three days this absurd bullshit had actually been a fantasy.



This day, Donovan was surprised by how shy he felt, by how he could barely look Cade in the eye when he answered: “I am.”

“Since it is your intention to enter the covenant of Holy Matrimony, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and his Church.”

Donovan slipped his hand into Cade’s .

“I, Cademon, take you, Donovan, to be my spouse. I promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.”

“I, Donovan,” Don cleared his throat, feeling his voice rise like a nervous high school boy, “Take you, Cademon, to be my husband. I promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.”



Dan said: “Now I see it was a promise of how things may be if the world is ever to change. And if the world is going to survive…. Then it must change.”

And Donovan had said: “You sound like a revolutionary.”

“I’m a priest. I’m too square to be a revolutionary. Fenn, who you know? Now he was a revolutionary.”

“Didn’t someone say,” Simon had said in his Simon way, “That revolutions just make the next group of tyrants?”

“A bunch of people said it,” Don said.

“Maybe not revolutionary war,” Dan had said, lifting a finger. “Revolutionary petunias.”

“Alice Walker.”

“I never heard that poem,” Cade said.

Dan said, “I don’t even know if it’s a poem. It’s a collection of them. I think it means that there is another type of revolution, to just keep growing, to come back year after year. The natural revolution of the sun and the moon and the planets, the whole world.”



Dan had said: “Donovan, do you take Cademon to be your spouse? Do you promise to be faithful to him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love him and to honor him all the days of your life?

And Donovan said, “I do.”

Keith said, “Cade, do you take Donovan to be your husband? Do you promise to be faithful to him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love him and to honor him all the days of your life?”

And Cade replied: “I do.”





SOME TIME ON FRIDAY WE WILL POST THE WEEKEND PORTION

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! All these marriages are exciting to read about and I hope they will all be happy together. I admire their dedication. Great writing and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Thanks.

 

[ChrisGibson]

HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND ALL.....




Dan Malloy, and Keith MacDonald, in their white robes and stoles, raised their hands, and prayed:
“May the Lord in his kindness strengthen the consent you have declared before the Church and graciously bring to fulfillment his blessings within you. What God has joined, let no one put asunder.
“May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God who joined together our first parents in paradise, strength and bless in Christ the consent you have declared before the Church, so that what God joins together, no one may put asunder.
“Let us bless the Lord!” Dan sang.
And they all returned: “Thanks be to God.”

“Bless and sanctify your servants
in their love, O Lord,
and let these rings, a sign of their faithfulness,
remind them of their love for one another.
Through Christ our Lord.”

“Amen.”

Natural as water. Revolution was as natural as water, as natural as turning and being one’s self, loving as strongly as you could though the world told you different. Mankind, all governments, all systems themselves were in revolt and rebellion to nature and the turning of things.
Dan dipped the silver aspergillum into the bowl of water, making ripples all around and it dripped crystal beads as he lifted it. Dan sprinkled the rings Keith had prayed over and handed one to Cade and one to Donovan
Cade tilted his head to look at the book of ceremonies and pronounced:
“Donovan, receive this ring
as a sign of my love and fidelity.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.”

Donovan placed his ring on Cade’s finger.

“Cade, receive this ring
as a sign of my love and fidelity.
In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.”





























After the wedding they settle down into the long afternoon visit, the visit that can last into the night because they will spend the night in the house in Ely, though Cade had spent more than one night sleeping on the davenport or in the spare room here. There was a time when he felt isolated from the world, very much gay on his own, or just everything on his own. Even being with Simon, their lives seemed incredibly solitary. It was only with Don, one of the most solitary people he’d ever known, that this began to change. Don had opened him up to the world of Frey and Rob and that whole extended family, and because the world was small, Indiana smaller and gay Indiana smaller still, Rob had known Sheridan, who was the spouse of the judge whom Simon had worked for and soon they were joined to this community, not only of Isaiah Frey’s family in Ashby, but of the Rossford crowd who simply lived on the other side of Tangerine Road.

“The world used to seem like a scary place,” May confessed. “In reality, it still does. I mean, it is. But here’s the thing: we can be scared together.”

“I like this girl,” Dan said.

“I’m rather fond of her myself,” Donovan said, spooning more stuffing onto his plate.

“May thinks we should turn the house into apartments.”

“She’s right,” Deanna said. “You always worry about not having money and not enough work, and you’ve got all that big house with just three—four I guess—of you.”

“But I was thinking about privacy,” Don said.

“You’ve got two big old floors, and attic and a basement,” Deanna told them. “I don’t know why May couldn’t live on the second floor and you all have the third floor and attic.”

“And then whoever have the first floor,” Cade suggested.

“Or even half of it,” Deanna said.

“I just like the idea of people,” May said. “It seems like we’re so lonely and life makes things so scary, and you have to remind yourself that people are there. What if you didn’t have to remind yourself, because they were already right there on the other side of the wall?”

“May is big on community,” Simon said.

“If you had swallowed a bottle of pills and tried to kill yourself because you felt lonely,” May said frankly, “you’d be big on community too.”

No one laughed at this, but no one seemed to be shocked. It was just the truth, and Don said, “We can start looking at how to split up the place tomorrow.”

“You should look at buying it too,” Linda said. “Just buying it outright.”

“I have a question,” May directed it toward Cade.

“We know so many people from Rossford, but why don’t we know anyone in Wallington? I mean, we hardly know our own neighbors? And why don’t we ever meet people in Ely?”

“Cause Ely’s a pretty dead town,” Cade said.

“Oh, but it isn’t,” Linda differed. “They’ve got the Boys and Girl’s Club. They’ve got the new pizzeria down from me along with all those restaurants going up on the Strand.”

“Maybe I’m confusing Ely now with Ely when I was a kid,” Cade said, only half seriously, but his mother said, “Maybe you are.”

“Maybe you are,” Deanna said. “You know how much I hated Ely, and now I have to say, it ain’t half bad.”





May rode back Deanna who said she would stay at Linda’s house tonight and they would all have “Girl Time”. Girl Time, Donovan thought, as an excellent idea, and they left earlier while Don, Cade and Simon were introduced to the neighbors who dropped by Dan and Keith’s and often hung out through the evening, making a mix between a coffee house and an old parish social hall.

When it was time to go home, partially because they were dropping off Linda, they took a different route, coming directly through the north head of Ely. This was not the lake path. There were farms spaced apart, and then under clumps of trees, well off ranch houses spaced apart as well and as they became closer two large apartment complexes Don had never seen which made Ely appear to be twice the size he imagined and converged at a corner with an all night gas station and a supermarket down the road. Donovan wasn’t sure if it was the one they’d gone to during a blizzard three years back or not. They passed a strip busy with a Wal Mart, a Rural King, two car dealerships, motels, one storied shops, one of which was a tattoo parlor.

 

[ChrisGibson]

At last, crossing over the wide river, they came to something of the downtown Cade remembered. But he did not remember this, because the downtown he had known had never been busy. Even a few years ago it had been populated by an old red brick Catholic church that had been his in childhood, the hospital, and the evangelical church of his betrayal. Now he wondered as he passed the Vietnamese Pho shop, the trendy bar that he knew had outdoor dining when it was spring, the Cambodian and Chinese restaurants in the old strip of downtown general stores, had these things or their predecessors not been here before, or was he so blinded by much of his pain he could never see them?

He wondered these things as he came to the more familiar part of Ely and kissed his mother on the cheek before dropping her off. They turned east for the lake and the wilderness they were used to calling Ely. In the quiet, where they again saw long low bungalows like summer camp cabins under tall bare trees, they arrived at their one particular house with Simon’s car sitting in the driveway.

“May’s right,” Cade said, climbing out of the Land Rover and hearing the electronic ping of opening and closing doors, “I don’t know anything about this place.”

“I know about the things that happened to me in this place,” Cade said. “But that’s not really the same.”



Don, who celebrates even his own wedding day by cooking, comes out with a plastic container of the fudge he made into the living room where they are sitting. They smoke. They drink. They eat fudge and Simon falls asleep between them. Without waking him, Donovan and Cade rise, put on coats, and walk toward the water which they can already hear.

“It’s so big,” Cade says. “It’s so big and they talk about being overwhelmed by stars and planets, but its this water, so huge. I turn into something else when I’m in front of it.”

They stand at the head of the pier, where the cement rises out of the beach on one side and the dune grasses stretch out on the other. The water is black against other black, endless cold rolling black capped with shadowed white waves under the moon.

“I never see Ely,” Cade said. “All I ever see when I come here are my sins.”

“Your sins?”

“Or the sins that happened to me. The evil, the bullshit. We cross that bridge last night, and it’s got new lights on it and everything, looking beautiful, but I think, that’s where they found Nash’s body. And we go downtown and not far from Saint Mary’s I see that Cornerstone Church has a steeple now. Never had that before, and it looks better than ever, and I think of me and Nash wrecking Pastor Pitt’s office.”

“Having sex for the first time?”

“That happened there too,” Cade said. “But it really wasn’t on my mind. Other things were.”

“Does it ever leave your mind?”

“Yes. No.”

“Is it still unbearable?”

“Not like it was. When I was kid I wanted to kill myself. Later I wanted to kill him. Now, sometimes, when it comes, it is a numbness, an amazement that people could be that way.”

They stood together letting the cold air beat against them, pitting their faces, their blowing scarves, their hoods against the sharp slap of the wind from Lake Michigan. It felt good and Cade said, “You know, before you, there were times when I wouldn’t let a man touch me? So, don’t underestimate what us being together has done.”

“Simon?”

“Only sometimes. I think the crazy things were a distraction. I’m just putting it together now. Pitts was gentle when he did the things he did . I mean, he wasn’t really, but he was. So when I was having wild, drug fueled sex, that was totally different, The more immoral the better. But you were the first man to make love to me. You were the first man that made me feel safe enough to sleep in his arms. In his bed.

“But even the house. Even the pier…”

Donovan pushed back his hood and let the cold wind sting his cheeks.

“You know, he’d be about fifteen.”

“The baby?”

“Yeah. He’d practically be grown by now. Almost May’s age. Maybe they’d date.”

“You can’t think about.”

“I actually can’t not think about it. I thought that as I got older it would be less on my mind, but the more time passes the more I think a real person would be here. Which is crazy because the whole purpose was to not have a real person here.”

“You weren’t ready.”

“I’m not ready now. What parent is ready? I was cold and mean and selfish.”

Cade’s voice could barely be heard above the waves.

“Later, especially being all liberal, I told myself that I was sad about the way I did it, how mean I was to Ashley, that I was sad about not being kinder, that it was going to happen no matter what. But the older I get the more I know if I had been right—”

“If you had not been really wounded and confused and in pain yourself—”

“If I had been right, and stepped up, then it wouldn’t have happened. It didn’t have to happen.”

“You weren’t in any position to raise a child. Your life was a wreck, You said it.”

“Why are you saying these things when I know how you feel?”

“Feel?”

“You told me a long time ago you wouldn’t have done it. I did it. I own it. Sure, I was a mess, but a different Cade who stepped up for his kid, who raised his son… It could have made me. It could have grown me the fuck up. Look, there’s no getting around it.

“I’m not blaming anyone else for what they do. And I’ll be damned if I vote for governments to shut down Planned Parenthoods or whatever. But we all have to stand before God and account. I fucking believe that Don. So do you. It’s one of the reasons we’re in love.

“What I did was my sin. Before God. I accept it. After years of trying to deny it, I accept it. But I don’t know how to atone.”



“I think I’m kind of in love with this town,” May proclaimed.

They were in Tiddle’s Pancake House, and May was madly devouring her breakfast.

“New York strawberry cheesecake pancakes will definitely to that for you,” Deanna began, then her eyes flew open and she cried, “Damn, Girl, save some syrup for the rest of us.”

“It’s just,” May looked out of the window, “this is the most beautiful town I’ve ever seen.”

“Wallington?”

“Wallington is a very okay town. I could stay here forever. I would enjoy this.”

“You know what I think?”

“Not yet.”

“I think you’re just glad to be somewhere.”

May stopped eating for a moment and folded her hands in front of her.

“In the last few days we’ve been driving halfway across the country. We were in Georgia. We saw Kentucky. It was so beautiful with all those hills. We saw the ocean. And now we’re here. And since my birthday, I’ve been able to be with Don, who I love. But before that, I hadn’t gone anywhere. My life was so small. I was so afraid. I am afraid.”

“Of?”

“Everything. I think it’s because my mom is too. And her house is all I knew. And now, when I’m here, I’m not afraid of any place.”

“Well, don’t be deceived by how safe and small this town it looks.”

“It’s not that,” May said. “I mean, I know anything can happen anywhere, but it’s not the town. It’s me. I feel ready for whatever now. I feel like anything could happen and I’d be ready for it. Back home I’m a little girl. Here I’m different. Does that make any sense?”

“Yeah,” Deanna said. “Yes it does. Only it was the opposite for me. Here was small, but I realized it was because I felt small. I had to go other places. I had to go somewhere else and get big. I know exactly what you mean.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am glad they are going to rent out part of the house, it’s big for just 4 people. Sounds like Cade regrets how he handled possibly having a child, he was very young at the time though. All these ceremonies are nice to read about. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon. I hope you have a good weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, Cade has always regretted the way he handled the abortion. But he has never dealt with it.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Ely was shaped like a wounded four pointed Christmas star. The main part of it went north to south, expanding to downtown in the center, and the western part from which most people entered, was where the highway became East Street. East Street branched back into the highway or West Street, and the length of West Street stretched out toward Lake Michigan and ended in the faded, square blue bungalow where Cade had grown up. Past this the tired road traveled as gravel, now buried under snow, and at last arrived at the pier and the great expanse of Lake Michigan.
Donovan Shorter had always walked north up this beach for a little while before stopping and turning around, but today he had broken a stick from a tree and walked and walked, this good coat heating his body while the air of the cold inland sea struck his face. The snow was melted in places and the beach was hard packed sand, grey and tan as an old lion’s side.
As he walked, he he thought he heard someone else behind him, but this new coat made sounds, the echo of his stick against the sand and the occasional clump of sandy snow made noises. A voice blended with a shrieking gull.
“Don! Donovan!”
He turned, and May was in Cade’s pea coat. It was huge on her and he imagined the scent of Cade’s large hot body, the cologne he wore was in it. A scarf was wrapped twice about her neck, and a hat pulled down on her ears. Cade had dressed her himself. She would never have had the sense to be so covered.
He waited and when she had caught up to him they began walking again.
They climbed over a hill of snow, white in the slightly grey sky, and even now sun filtered through the clouds, turning the hill a bright blue white. Before it could blind them, the sun was covered again, and now they moved through stiff tough weeds under a higher wind.
“I’ve been feeling small,” Donovan said. “Down in Wallington. I haven’t lived away from there in twenty years. I’ve been feeling so small and like nothing will happen there. Like I need to see something, and I can’t see it from there. Something had to happen. Something must come next, and I don’t know what the hell it is.”
They stopped walking. To their right, to the north of them stretched out another great pier. It went far into the water, and Donovan thought how even in summer he wouldn’t have liked to travel it.
“How do you feel here?” May asked.
“Not small.”
“That’s how I feel. That’s what I said to Deanna.”
He turned to his goddaughter.
“What if I were to stay here for a while? In the quiet? In the house? Would you stay with me?”
“Yes!” May said. “It’s the thing I was wishing for.”
“Yes,” Donovan said as the wind picked up, so loud now he could hardly hear himself.
“Let’s do that.”





“I am done with shrooms,” May reported.

“For now,” Donovan guessed.

“For good, though Riley doesn’t think so. He says I’ll be back.”

“Maybe he says it because he doesn’t want to trip alone.”

“The truth, and I haven’t told anyone yet, is that I always feel sick after them. And this time I felt really sick. So I’m done.”

Donovan was not strict regarding his own life, but he always felt that if he’d had children he would have been very strict with them. He had not had the raising of May or any of his godchildren. He could only stand on the sidelines. And so many of his godchildren were the progeny of useless friends, people who had floated away for a time and come back pregnant, and then with five years olds, now ten year olds, that whole sections of their lives had not been open to him.

For instance, he would not have had a sexually active child in his house. When he was seventeen, he was already sleeping with Ezekiel, and when he was eighteen he was carrying on with Ezekiel sometimes and sometimes Brian, depending upon who was around, and both of them were significantly older. His sex life had begun with Charles, big and tall and funny looking, safe, who worked in the gaming store, and when he was fifteen and sixteen, he’d been in the back of the store being fucked by him.

This was not shameful. It was not even regrettable. It was, however, inappropriate. He and Cade, and even Simon had had long talks about what was appropriate and what was not for children. They had agreed that, had their childhoods lasted a little longer, the adulthoods that came after might have been a little more sane.

But because Donovan was nothing like a virgin, and being a godfather was nothing like being a father, he spared May the sounds of shocks and looks of disapproval when she talked about her sex life with and before Riley, as well as when she told him about their ventures into drugs. She had almost killed herself, so pills were nothing new to her. Taking them in moderation with someone else was though, and shrooms and acid were a new horizon.

“I took them from Riley. I took them at my house by myself,” May said. “That may have been a mistake. But tripping in my room is nice because of all of the art in there. And that one painting you got me. And there’s the black light. I mean, I like seeing vines grow up my wall and all that shit.

“But I’m on my period and that probably didn’t help. And like I said, I get sick anyway so…. Okay, there is a trigger warning. You may not want to hear this.”

“Then I definitely want to hear it.”

“Be prepared. It’s disgusting. It’s funny, but it’s disgusting. But….. I think it’s funny.”

“I’m regretting this, but tell me.”

“So I get super sick and start throwing up. I’m on my hands and knees vomiting, and at the same time I’m bleeding out of my vagina.”

And Donovan found himself dropping his cigarette and laughing so hard he coughed.

“That is… disgusting.”

“I know.”

“It’s awful—and its gross—”

“Right?”

“And kind of a hilarious.”

“I know, so the whole time it’s happening, I’m sick and it’s awful, but at the same time I’m thinking about telling the story and how crazy it is, so I start laughing, and the more I laugh, the sicker I am and the more I throw up, and the more I throw up the more I bleed, and the more it happens the more I laugh. And…. I feel like shit today, and this is the end of my drug experience. So when I tell Riley he’s like, are you serious? And I’m like: I’m a girl. And he says, No, bitch, you’re a man.

“And then I laugh so hard I bleed through my tampon.”



When May was a little girl she drew wolves and wolves and wolves, and then she also made deer, and her mother and grandmother would show them and run their hands over her hair and talk about how sweet and adorable she was. But now her room was full of fearsome paintings, an old woman in an old blue dress with the severed penis of her husband. Saint Sebastian as a corpse on a tree with vines growing out of him. A naked black woman with thick thighs, pendulous breasts, and a blow out afro, smoking an enormous joint that became a cloud of smoke in which black men hung a white man from a tree. There was the detailed picture of her grandmother, but only as a severed head, and the odder her work was, the better it got.

“I had the visions before,” she said. “And then with the acid and the shrooms other visions came, and now I can’t get them at all. I’m just lazy and aimless all the fucking day and don’t see anything.”

And so she had come with Donovan to the house by the water, the aqua colored home that had once belonged to Cade’s father, where Cade had spent his boyhood, so she could see again too.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

I feel like we are getting a deeper look at the characters then we have had before and I am enjoying it! Sounds like they have had some interesting drug trips to say the least. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

BOOK
TWO

DEVOTION
OF
A
SACRED HEART



F I V E



JAVON HARRISON:

I
LOVE
YOU




“Of course I love you. I wouldn’t have you standing here in my room looking crazy if I didn’t love you.”

-Javon Harrison







“What’s for dinner?”

“We just had breakfast.”

“It’s not that I’m hungry,” Pat Thomas, explained. “It’s just that it makes it easier if we know what we’re going to do throughout the day.”

Javon Harris only frowned a little bit as he wiped down the kitchen while Pat was putting the last of the dishes away.

“Chicken molé,” he said.

“But we just had tacos.”

“Which is not chicken molé.”

“But it’s Mexican.”

“Do you have something against Mexicans?”

“My grandfather was Mexican.”

“We can’t have two different things that come from the same country? If you were Mexican everything you ate would be Mexican, then you’d really be up shit’s creek.”

“Are you done?”

“I guess we could have burgers and French fries. But then we better not have soufflé the next night.”

“I get it,” Pat said tiredly, “cause fries are French and—”

“Then you also get that you asked a silly question and we’re having chicken mole? Unless you want to be the cook.”

Pat held up his hands.

“I don’t wanna be the cook.”

“Well, then.”

“You know what? You’re as bad as your uncle.”

“Thank you.”

Pat came round Javon and clasped him on the shoulders, kissing him on the back of his neck.

“I like you when you’re—”

“Don’t say feisty cause old women and tiny white gay men are feisty.”

Pat squeezed Javon’s waist and nuzzled him. “Putting me in my place.

“I gotta go now. I don’t want to be late.”

“You might save someone’s life today.”

“Or I might just hang around by a phone while nothing happens, or I might just hear some really trifling problems.”

“Or,” Javon said, putting his cloth down and running to cup Pat’s ass through his khakis and squeeze it, “you could just save a life.”

“Alright, I’ll be Super Pat today.”

“You’re always Super Pat,” Javon said, swatting his ass and sending him out the door.

They lived on the second floor of an old building downtown in a row of old buildings. Beneath them was a tattoo parlor and above them lived the McNamaras who had showed them the place. In an hour Javon would drive to class and be happy, and right now, though he complained about it, Pat was putting in his time at the crisis center and he was happy too.

The way they had started out had been messy, and there was no reason to trust what he’d thought he’d seen in Pat, one of a few people he’d been messing with, but after a year of that tangle they couldn’t hide from one another. They were… in love was not quite the word. That was too trivial, too transitory. They were whatever his uncle Frey had for Rob, and whatever Rob’s brother Josh apparently had for DJ. They were for each other.







That night he heard a cry that interrupted his thoughts, and DJ had heard it first and was rushing, heedless as ever to the side of the sand cliff. As he neared it, DJ suddenly hit the ground, lying flat on his stomach, and looked over the grass, kicking off his sandals. Javon joined him.

He didn’t ask what DJ was looking at. They stood on the edge of a semi circle of dune with beach below. Beneath them, under the other side of the cliff, they could see two boys, two guys their age, and one was blowing the other. Javon watched, dry mouthed, and the boy with the black hair, or brown hair, leaning against the cliff, pulled up his tee shirt and put his hands in the curly hair of the other boy who was blowing him. Javon was getting hard, and as he looked at DJ, suddenly DJ got up and walked away. Javon looked from DJ to the boys down below, but DJ made a gesture. They were going down the hill? What? To get a closer look? What the fuck?

“Fuck,” Javon heard the boy getting sucked moan, and he got up and followed DJ.



The breeze had picked up, and Josh was thinking how there was nothing better than this moment with Pat’s strong hands in his hair and Pat, full and filling up his mouth. Pat thrusting into his mouth, deeper and deeper, gagging him as the waves washed over his legs as the sand made a mud pool for his knees.

Pat saw them coming out of the night. Josh must have felt the change in him, because he left off sucking him, and turned around. Coming down the shore, not quite menacing, but carrying the promise of some danger were two boys. one black, the other white and his hands were in his pants and he was massaging his dick.

“Whats up?” DJ said.

Pat’s dick was still out of his pants. It wasn’t limp now. It was harder than it had ever been, thicker, straight out in the night, and Pat had a sort of… fuck you look on his face.

Pat started to stroke his dick.

“Whaddo you plan on doing with that?” he asked DJ.

Josh looked from one to the other and then, because he didn’t know where else to look, he looked to Javon. Javon looked to him.

Javon came right up to him. He pulled down his shorts. He pushed his cock in Josh’s mouth, and Josh closed his eyes and took it all in...



The white one was what they called sturdy. Dark haired, cute more than hot. He might be muscular but he would never be thin. He would play football, not basketball. That’s what went on in the dim corners of his mind while Josh, face in the water, watched the boy fucking Pat, watched his hands bunch up on Pat’s shoulders, watched thighs bunch like powerful cords as he thrust, thrust, thrust, and his buttocks bunch as he pushed, pushed, pushed into Pat and Pat, screwing up his face bellowed, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” each time that boy fucked him.

Josh didn’t say anything, he just gripped the sand impotently as it flaked to nothing in his hands and he let out great desperate gasps while the other one fucked him as hard as the white boy fucked Pat Thomas.



Javon was fucking this random white boy and now and again he and DJ watched each other fuck, and the watching made each of them harder, made them thrust more and more and spend themselves on these anonymous boys’ bodies. It was DJ who came first, crying out, almost screaming, shocking himself with the orgasm.

When they were done, they went up to the grassy dune, and Javon lay down in it and let himself be fucked. He closed his eyes cause it felt so good, to be out here, in nothingness, with no one, with only the sounds of the waves, distant cars and trucks, a night bird, gulls, and the desperate grunts of sex. He opened his eyes on occasion to see the moonlight on DJ’s white body. He was on his hands and knees groaning while the skinny boy with the curly red hair drilled him.



Javon finished cleaning the kitchen. It doesn’t take nearly this long. Pat is on his way to be Pat, to listen to people’s troubles and try to help them. This is unlike the night they met, when neither one of them was themselves. Or perhaps they were more themselves than they had ever been.



When they were done, wordlessly, they parted, Javon, and DJ heading in the opposite direction from the other two boys. Javon’s ass hurt. He could feel that guy in him. He got hard remembering how the boy had grunted and come all over his back, got hard again remembering the tightness of that guy when he had fucked him on the water. Back in the car, he and DJ sat silently, worn out, crushed by sex the way it felt good to be crushed, and then Javon, because he was still hard, because the night was lawless, pulled his dick out of his shorts, and DJ bent down to suck it. As he closed his eyes and rested his hands in DJ’s hair, DJ sucked him like a nursing babe.



DJ. DJ…. His cousin, his best friend, the first male body he knew, the body he knew better than his own, the skin that pressed to skin. There had been a girl before him, and there had been, once, another boy, but DJ was his first true lover. Their bodies fit together like heaven and earth.



Joshua blinks for a while when DJ answers the door to the house where Frey was staying.

“I’m looking for my brother,” Josh says. “For Rob.”

“Oh,” DJ opens the door, “Come in. He’s not here. He’s with my dad, Frey. They left.”

He is trying to place this face.

“Left?” Josh says, coming in, followed by Pat who shakes DJ’s hand and then Javon’s.

“Yeah,” DJ said.

“We got pizza,” Javon offers. Something inside of shudders and snaps. It is like shame, and like the thrill of fear. His penis stiffens. He knows them right away.

“Stay a while?”

“Yeah,” Josh says. Josh’s yeah means Pat is staying too.

MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

An excellent start to book two! Nice to hear of other characters. Sounds like they all enjoyed their time at the beach. I like exploring all parts of this story and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, yes, I just checked over here and saw you had commented. It is good to check in with some other characters and see the story expand..

 

[ChrisGibson]

WELCOME BACK, FRIENDS....



“How long will they be gone,” Josh asked, tearing away a slice of pizza. “I mean… I didn’t even… Rob didn’t tell us he was leaving.”
“Then it can’t be that long,” DJ said. “Dad just said he needed to go away for a few days and find himself again.”
While DJ talked, Javon nodded often but said little, and Pat said nothing at all until he finally said, “Can I use you guys restroom?”
“But it’s not our restroom,” Javon said, smiling. “So yeah, you can.”
Pat got up, and went down the hall, and a moment later he called, “Josh, is this Rob’s?”
“Is what Rob’s?” Josh called.
“Come and see.”
Josh looked at the other two, shrugged, and then got up and went down the hall.
Javon thought, they know now. This what they are talking about. A moment later, Josh came out, but Pat remained and a moment later the toilet flushed.
When Pat joined them again, DJ said, “Was it what you thought?”
“Nothing ever is,” Josh said.
It was Pat who clapped his hands together and said, “How long are you guys here? Are you waiting till Rob and your dad gets back?”
“We hadn’t thought about it,” Javon said.
“Well,” Pat said, “we may come back. If it’s alright.”
He made to stretch and DJ said, “Are you guys leaving?”
“We don’t wanna crowd in on your space.”
“There is no space to crowd in on,” DJ said, “and it’s early, and we don’t really know anybody. So it’s not like we’re throwing you out.”
“Well, then,” Josh said, “we don’t have anywhere to go, so we might as well just sit down.”
“That’s the spirit,” Javon said, and pushed a beer across the table.
The more they drank and ate, the less Pat did either. He looked markedly irritated, and finally he said, “This is ridiculous,” and went to the kitchen.
He had thought it would be Josh who followed him. After all, Josh had come with him and was dependent upon his car to get home, but it was Javon who followed.
“What’s wrong?” Javon demanded. “You alright?”
“Do you honestly, honestly, honestly not remember us from the other night?”
“I thought that’s who you might be,” Javon said, unfazed. “At first I wasn’t sure, but I thought you might be. But things were going on so well, it didn’t make any sense to point that out, you know, to ruin things.”
“I’m tired of not pointing things out, and not ruining things,” Pat said. “I’m tired of that strategy.”
Javon shrugged.
“Well, yes, okay,” he said.
Pat looked at him.
“What are you going to do about it?” Javon asked him.
“Whaddo you mean what am I…?”
“If you’re tired of pretending this didn’t happen and that didn’t happen, what do you want to do about it?”
“Are you some type of therapist?”
“My uncle says the reason so many men are so angry is because they don’t deal with things. They’re frustrated. They are afraid of their bodies and afraid of the people around them and afraid to deal with stuff.”
Pat opened his mouth and Javon said, “And no, I’m not a therapist. I’m just… we’re just not like other people you know. We don’t believe in hiding too much for too long.”
At this, Pat heard DJ or Josh shout like he had stubbed his toe, and Pat moved around Javon, sticking his head out of the kitchen to stare into the living room. There, his ball cap turned back, his shirt off, on his knees, DJ was sucking Josh’s dick and Josh lay back, his eyes closing and opening to the ceiling.
But by then, Javon’s hands were already in Pat’s shorts, and he was pulling on his penis.
“Only,” Javon said, “if you want. Only if you want.”
“Oh, my God!” Josh moaned in the living room, “Oh, Jesus,” he moaned, almost crying, “Oh, Jesussss.”
“Only if you want.”
It hardly seemed fair, Pat’s shorts were already down around his knees and his dick was hard in Javon’s hand. Javon led him into the living room, pulling him by his dick like a leash. Not in the bedroom, not in private. But he didn’t want that anyway. It would be like it was the other night. They lay on the floor, and his dick pulsed like his heart was in it while sweat beaded on his forehead and sprang up all over his chest. His dick rose up in rage, and his eyes went blurry with tears. Javon’s mouth was warm and insistent on his cock, and Pat gave himself up. He gave himself to it all.





























The first time DJ came to Javon was when his father Jason visited, handed him a hundred dollars, and then left. He had been used to Jason being like that all of his life, but suddenly his heart cracked. His mother was dead. He had never known her, and his father had no time for him, not really. And he had cried till his eyes were red and his face was hot. He didn’t want Frey to see him like this. He didn’t want to feel ungrateful for Frey’s love. He had washed his face in cold water and gone upstairs to Javon’s room.

“What is it, DJ?” Javon had said, sitting up.

At the time DJ was fifteen and Javon was sixteen. DJ had wanted to spill everything on his mind to him. Instead he had come into the room and shut the door behind him

“DJ?” Javon had said, his voice uncertain, “are you alright? Are you okay?”

DJ had stood there for a long time, still staring, before he said, “He doesn’t love me.”

Javon was about to say, “Who?” but he knew it was Jason and Javon said, “You should leave that motherfucker alone. You know he’s ridiculous, and you know that Uncle Zay loves you. You know that.”

“You love me.”

“Of course I love you. I wouldn’t have you standing here in my room looking crazy if I didn’t love you.”

Like someone itching, overheated, DJ struggled out of his clothes and stood before Javon, naked.

“What the hell, DJ?” Javon started. “What are you…?”

DJ climbed onto the bed with him. Javon didn’t tell him not to. When DJ kissed him, Javon didn’t fight it. He opened his mouth to DJ’s. Their tongues linked, their fingers closed together.

Javon asked: “Is the door locked?”

“Yes, Nobody’s home.”

There was a dizzy buzzing, a strange worrisome hum in Javon. He felt, almost, like he might faint. But now DJ was kneeling over him. Now DJ was pulling down their shorts stroking Javon’s penis, it was thick and brown and purple headed in DJ’s hand. Some spit, some phlegm, some desperate shifting, the surprise of tightness, the strange heat, the look of pain on DJ’s face as he fitted Javon inside of him, as he began to ride him.How hot in was in this room, How much that didn’t matter, how good this felt, giving himself to DJ, letting DJ work out something on top of him, grinding down and grinding down, pleased to be pressed, taken and shaken. He breathed like a bull while DJ rode him, but suddenly he turned him over and with a grunt, he turned DJ over, pressing him against the bed, pressing him so that DJ’s knees were past his head. Sweat dripped down the both of them, and Javon was, for once, filled with his own desperate lust, his own grinding and pumping and pumping, his stifled groans and curses, oh fuck oh fuck, oh shit, panicked oh jesus, the fiery heat mounting like the rising mercury in a thermometer, the prick of light at the end of his dick, the explosion, the expression of relief like a screaming kettle and the shout from his own mouth while he erupted inside of DJ, while he felt himself tilt and turn dizzily, pumping out nut and nut and nut, collapsing into DJ’s arms, passing in and out of a consciousness neither of them fully returned to until the sun was lower, and burning gold in the sky, and the room was filled with funk and shadow, and they quietly unfold limbs, separate damp flesh, lay side by side, and contemplate showering and changing into fresh clothes.

 

[ChrisGibson]

In a way it never stopped being like that, something between shock and surprise, being taken out of himself into something he wasn’t entirely sure about. But then, Javon supposed, that was sex. There was a thrill in never quite knowing if it was right or wrong. Sex belonged to another world. Even at three in the afternoon it belonged to the two o’clock in the morning world, and there was small wonder why so many people were afraid of it. In fucking, you weren’t the you other people knew.

More than that, there was the moment when he found himself doing things he wouldn’t normally do, when the next day he would wonder what kind of person he was. And on those next days he was disconcerted. He was something that wasn’t quite ashamed, but certainly not proud. And then Javon thought, well who needs to be proud? Who needs to be certain if they’re good or bad? Often he didn’t know what he was. This is how it was the second time he had met Pat, at that house in Bennett. His knees nearly around his head, he pulled Pat into him, and pushed his hands into Pat’s thick, soft hair. He held him more than a mother ever held a child, held all of him, let him work out all of his need and come to him again and again until, shuddering, Pat came, came all over his stomach, came so hard slickness was on Javon’s chin, on his neck, on the place between his breastbone, trickling down the valley between his pecs.



Making love is a tame word. It covers up fucking. There’s nothing wrong with fucking. But there are two types of it. Three really. There is the one that is simple masturbation, where a man will lift your legs and turn you over and do whatever, just as if you are a blow up doll and he is trying to find the best way to unload in you. There is no you. No blow up doll was ever a you. This is masturbation.

Then the other two, both made of the same phrase, “Take me.” One is the angry demand, the battering into with the silent, “You will.” The forced, “Take me. Take me.”

The last is the request, the need, the please. The please take me, take me, take me. Take this longing. Take this nakedness. Take this naked body. Take my dick. Take my nut. Take the me that no one else can see. Take me at my weakest. Take me…

Whenever Javon fucks he feels this way, thinks he owes this to whoever he’s fucking. At the age of nineteen he knows some people like all three types of fucking, some people only know the first two.

The third is the only one he ever has time for.

The third is Pat lying half conscious in his arms.

I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A BALLCLAPPING WEEKEND!

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! Some conflict but that happens in all family and friend groups. It sounds like they are enjoying exploring each other and having sex. This story takes twists and turns that I don’t expect but that is a good thing as otherwise I might be bored. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days! I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, the last thing I would want to do is bore, and I'm glad this still surprises. You can only do so much with sex, or so far only so much has been done with sex. I want to always have the sex in these stories be more than parts moving and things going in and out of things.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION


While Pat is fucking him, Javon sees beyond Pat’s head to DJ and Pat’s friend, Rob’s brother. That night in the hotel he and DJ made love in the half light, and very often they make love, but how could he possibly see it? Now he can see it, sex from the outside. See the lamplight and the sweat glistening on the roundness of young biceps, the quad muscles, DJ’s buttocks, that sexy muscle at his hip. His eyes are closed, his mouth half open. DJ’s head is turned to the ceiling, his brown hair sticks up. Beads of sweat are on his forehead and drip down his face. His hands are on that guy’s chest, Rob’s brother with the curly red hair, whose eyes are looking up enraptured while DJ rides him. Javon understands. He knows what it’s like to be ridden by DJ. To be his horse, his lover, the pillar of fire and hard dick inside him.
But for the most part he only has room for Pat, his black eyes blinking, licking his red lips, his curly black hair damp, the look like he is falling asleep, or swimming across a channel, or climbing a mountain, breathing with purpose… fighting some battle,

Yearning

Straining….

Eyes opening, throat groaning…

Coming.

“I feel safe here, and I’m not saying I usually feel unsafe, except maybe that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Pat says.
He turns over in the large bed he shares with Javon. “I haven’t felt safe with another person in a long time.”
“What about him?”
“Josh?”
“Yes, him.”
The him is directed to the dark living room where there is just snoring happening, where there was sex on the sofa and beer drinking and now only snoring, and shitty music is quietly playing.
“But it’s different,” Pat said.
“I used to love his brother,” Pat said.
“This Rob…? That my uncle’s with?”
“Yes.”
“Well…” Javon said, and that was all he said.
“I wronged him, Rob. Josh knows that, He hated me for a while, And then, well, we started doing what we do.”
“And what is that?”
“I don’t exactly know.”
And then Pat said, “And what is it you do with that DJ?”
Javon shook his head and said, “I don’t exactly know either.”
They both laughed quietly, and after a while it was Pat who said, “But it’s love, right? I mean, some type of love. It’s love, right?”
Instead of answering, Javon turned over and said, “Look, in the morning I’m leaving to find my uncle, and I’m taking that passed out fool in the living room with me. If you want to come and make your peace with Rob, that would be great.”
“I don’t know,” Pat said.
“Didn’t you say you just quit your job?” said Javon. “It’s not like you have anything else to do.”

Javon Harrison was rarely reflective. He did not understand people who were always looking inside and peering within, or at least he hadn’t understood till he had said that to his uncle over a year ago.
Isaiah Frey had given him a look like he was stupid, and said,. “Then may I suggest that instead of fucking around and bumbling from thing to thing you might take a second to look inside and ask yourself what the fuck you’re doing?”
He wasn’t good at it because he didn’t like it. He hadn’t been good at it because he was afraid of what he would fine. Plain and simple. Looking in meant remembering, remembering meant asking questions. Looking in meant looking at yourself. Looking at yourself meant asking if you liked what you saw. Much safer to do and do and never look.

If he had bothered to ask himself too many questions, then Javon, who had basically been a virgin the first time he’d had sex with DJ, would never have been able to conduct the affair they’d had for three years or more. He could have never had sex with his cousin on an almost daily basis. He could not have asked himself if he felt a little resentful, a little raped for the way the whole thing had begun. Javon was sure that even if his uncle never said it, by now Isaiah understood not only that he and DJ had sex with each other, but that the two of them had started having sex with Josh and Pat Thomas.
And it wasn’t that Javon didn’t like Josh. Josh was what you had to do to be with Pat, and because Javon wasn’t used to thinking, it wasn’t until he’d sat down and said it like that he understood how he felt for Pat Thomas.
Josh Dwyer was also strange because he was the most distant sex Javon had ever had. Javon was intensely close to DJ, felt intensely close every time he plunged his dick inside him and felt DJ squeezing tight all around him, jerking the feeling out of him. He’d always been close to his cousin, and from that first day in the kitchen when he’d talked to Pat. and the morning they waken up together, Javon felt bonded to him. Josh was the first person he’d had consistent sex with that he’d felt almost nothing for. And now he understood not only this, but that he had gone to DJ less, and was coming closer and closer to Pat. DJ felt it, surely he did. Javon, who was so smart in so many things, but so lacking in self reflection, realized that he was falling in love with Pat, that he wanted to be with him always.

He’d needed someone to talk to, and was surprised how hard it was for him to talk to his uncle. He came to Frey for anything. Frey was his gay uncle who had a younger lover and possibly was starting a relationship with his first one. There was nothing about which you could not talk to Isaiah Frey, yet Javon had a very hard time sitting down across from him and saying:
“I love Pat.”
Isaiah was smoking in his elegant way. He nodded sagely, expelling smoke from his nostrils.
“I hope you tell him. He needs love. He needs it. Some people are needy, but some people have just lacked love. Whatever half assed thing you and him have, make a whole assed one. Tell him.”
At last, Javon said, “I think I’ve wronged DJ.”
“You think?”
There it was. That was his fear. He had never once said anything to Frey about sleeping with his son. They had never gone there. They had certainly never discussed Javon’s distancing himself from DJ as he became closer to Pat. There in his uncle’s face was the revelation that he knew. He knew it all.
“I should make it right.”
“You both should,” Frey said. “It takes two to fuck a thing up. Usually.”
“I think…. I…” Javon never stumbled over his words, “I think he’s with Josh now.”
“He is,” Frey said. “But he’s still your cousin and supposedly your best friend, so it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make it right.”

That was the hardest memory because those were the hardest words. Javon was out of practice with apologies because, truthfully, he rarely needed to make them. He did the right thing. He didn’t hurt people. He was usually thoughtful. Going to his cousin and saying things they’d never said out loud, like that they were each other’s first real lovers, that they had been so close, and he knew he had drifted away from him was hard. To say, he hoped very much that they would still be something to each other, that the love had not been damaged, was as difficult as seeing DJ’s tears, which he’d thought Josh would have dried up long ago. He was surprised by how terrible he felt, by the tears coming up in him too, surprised by the realization that he’d felt terrible for a long time, ashamed of hurting his friend. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had made the decision that, unlike all of these other queens, he would be a strong black man, a sensible one, not someone who cried and hurt people and got hurt, but fuck, this was who he was, and he and DJ cried like little boys who had been in a fight after the fight was over.
His drove north that night, into Michigan, but not by the lake. He drove a little east and arrived at the college town of Barrelon. It was nearly midnight when he knocked on Pat’s door, and he was surprised by how good it was to see that perplexed but smiling face, his curly dark hair, his olive skin, the salmon tee shirt that fit him so well, the faded jeans that were unlike Pat, that would probably come off of him soon enough when Javon came through the door.
“Javon, what’s up? Get in here.”
Pat closed the door, visibly excited.
“You didn’t say you were coming. You didn’t—”
“I came to tell you something.”
Pat’s face changed. What could he say? What news would force someone to drive for over two hours to knock on his door in the middle of the night.
Pat nodded, ever the hospice worker, ready to face the worst.
“I love you,” Javon told him. “I love you.”



MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am glad Javon is thinking about his life and his actions. Frey gave some good advice. I wonder how Pat will react to Javon‘s declaration of love. I look forward to finding out. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!