EDEN: A Sex Story

[ChrisGibson]

I had a most excellent weekend, thank you very much. I'm glad you enjoyed, and I'm glad you got to see more of Pat and how he's trying to do the right thing. DJ and Javon are finally coming into their own, and we'll learn even more about them as the story comes to a close. As for what Frey is about to do.... well, we'll just have to see more tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER NINE CONTINUED


Brothers and sisters:
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.
Not that of ourselves we are qualified to take credit
for anything as coming from us;
rather, our qualification comes from God,
who has indeed qualified us as ministers of a new covenant,
not of letter but of spirit;
for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life

Being here at seven am was the comfort. Sitting here right beside his father, listening to the readings he only half understood, looking at the simple stain glass windows, the terrazzo floors, the modern brass lamps, the statue of the Blessed Virgin, was a relief. It was a small world, a world where he was a sinner, but it was a predicatble world, the world, Josh thought, of Mrs. Staff clutching and unclutching her black rosary beads. The world where some things did not exist, and some words did not exist.
When the woman he could not name said, “…The word fo the Lord,” everyone said, “Thanks be to God.”
A moment later, Jeff Carter stepped up and declared at the lectern: “Holy is the Lord.”
Josh responded with everyone else, “Holy is the Lord.”

”Extol the LORD, our God,
and worship at his footstool;
holy is he!”

Jeff Carter raised his hand, and they all declared, “Holy is the Lord.”

“Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
and Samuel, among those who called upon his name;
they called upon the LORD, and he answered them.”

“Holy is the Lord,” Josh said, and told himself to not check his phone for a message. This was, after all, church, and at the moment, after the strangeness of what had passed, to Joshua Dwyer, the quality of holiness was sanity, was self control, was not being taken out of oneself into lust and strangeness and lakewater and wet sand and come.


On their way down the road, Javon said, “You need to let him be free. You can’t always be afraid that Isaiah’s going to leave you.”
“I’m not afraid.’
“You are,” Javon said. “You’re afraid he’s going to be just like Jason’s sorry ass.”
“Hey!”
“Jason Hanley is sorry,” Javon insisted, “and Isaiah has loved you since you were basically a baby. Isaiah took you on because he loves you and you need to not always be clinging to him. He doesn’t always cling to you. Or me. He lets you be yourself. You have to let him be himself. He always comes back.”
DJ said nothing.
“Are you even listening?”
“Yes,” DJ said. “Yes. I heard you. Everything you said makes sense and I heard you.”
“He needs to be free.’
“Of us?”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what?”
“Free to do whatever he needs to do? The same way you need to be free.”
DJ sat back in the driver’s eat and pushed his hand through his hair, looking irritated.
Javon said, “You tell him about last night? Are you going to talk about that with him?”
“What?” DJ looked disgusted. “Are you crazy?”
“No,” Javon said, coolly, “I’m not. As people get older, they need space between them to do what they’re going to do,.”
“You think Isaiah’s going off with Rob to fuck random dudes on a beach?”
“I think whatever he does is his business.”



“I didn’t think you’d ask me to come over,” Pat said.
“Can I get a cigarette?” Josh asked.
“You don’t usually smoke,” said Pat.
“It’s a lot of things I don’t usually do that I end up doing when I’m with you.”
Pat handed him a cigarette, and then the lighter.
In a moment Josh tossed it back. He inhaled.
“Why didn’t you think I would ask you to come over?”
“It took you a while to message back,” Pat said.
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Well…”
“Well,” Pat said
Then Josh said, “Is that the only reason?”
“No,” Pat said, then, “Of course not. I see what you’re getting at.”
Neither one of them spoke for a while and then Josh said, “What theh ell was that?’
“I don’t know,” Pat said. Then he said, “I know what it was. We both know what it was. We were there.”
“Well, then why the hell was it?” Josh said.
“They were there. They came. We did it. Did what we did.”
“And didn’t discuss it.”
“What’s to discuss?” Pat said.
Again, they didn’t talk, as if there was nothing to discuss, and then Pat said, “Discussion only gets you so far.”
To prove this they went on smoking, tight eyed, exhaling, saying nothing and finally Josh said, “I used to think life made since, and I made sense and now I don’t really recognize myself anymore.”
Pat only nodded. He exhaled. He said, “I don’t know if I can do it anymore.”
“Do?’
“Watch people die.”
This was turning into an awfully silent night, Josh thought, and Pat said, “That night I wasn’t thinking about anything, but today I thought about tonight. I thought about it and it’s like today I understood how I felt before. I felt like I could forget everything, forget feeling, forget being there, forget ice chips on old dying peoples lips and silly people and death and sadness and tiredness and decisions. It was forgetting. Sometimes you just need to be freed from all that. And the truth is, no matter how I should feel, I know how I did feel, and I don’t regret it. I don’t understand it, but I don’t regret it. If I think, how could I do something like that, then maybe… But then I don’t really think there is an I any more. And I think we’re just trying to get by. Day by day, just breathe. And then it doesn’t matter. Whatever gives us relief is what matters. I remember when those two guys showed up, for just a moment I thought, maybe they’re angels.”
“Angels coming from heaven to fuck us?”
“And be fucked. By us.”
Josh stared at him.
“If an angel is what you need, if an angel is someone who comes to give you what you need.”
“And you needed that?”
“You didn’t?” Pat said, not looking at him. “Because you seemed to. You were right there with me. We were all right there together, doing what we did. Maybe we were their angels too.”
“I don’t know that God works like that.”
“I don’t know what God works like.”
Josh crushed his cigarette out.
“What do we work like?”
“What?”]
“What are we?” Josh said. “Are we together, or are we not? Or are we just making each other feel good. Or, the way you said, just getting through each day by using each other.”
Pat didn’t answer right away. He took out another cigarette. He felt like chain smoking tonight. He pushed the pack and the lighter across the table to Josh and Josh, after a moment decided to light one as well. Pat could smell Josh’s cigarette burning.
Pat said, “I don’t feel like I’m using you. I don’t feel like I’m being used.”




The Monastery of Saint Clew

Schedule

Weekday Sunday

3:15 am Vigils 3:15 am Vigils
5:45 am Lauds 6:45 am Lauds
6:15 am Eucharist 10:20 am Terce
7:30 am Terce 10:30 am Eucharist
12:15 pm Sext 12:15 pm Sext
2:15 pm None 2:15 pm None
5:30 pm Vespers 5:30 pm Vespers
7:30 pm Compline 7:30 pm Compline
8:00 pm Silence 8:00 pm Silence



As the bells rang for Vigils, Rob thought that this was the most foolish thing he had ever done. For the last few days, everyday, he woke up this early in the morning. Isaiah was already dressed or as dressed as he would be, in baggy shorts, tee shirt and thick Jesus sandals. Isaiah had already lit the candle and then lit another one, and wordlessly handed it to Rob. After all, they were still in the Great Silence.
The lights were not on yet in the abbey, and the two of them trudged down the hall. Down the hall other doors opened, and out of them came people bearing candles. There was something conspiratorial in this, something that made Rob not ever want to miss it, and so far, he had not. The bells tolled on, and as they made their way down the steps he could hear the river rushing by on both sides of the old abbey. Downstairs he saw others with their candles, walking silently, faces floating in the dark over golden lights. There, the beautiful face of Sister Anigel, there the sphinx like face of the bespectacled Nadia Laws, and behind her, the light on his red curls, Ken Martin the artist. They all swayed out of the side door and into the abbey church, long and high and deep. They moved over the cool pavement stones, and into the stalls. They sat there. Anigel lit candles with Nadia and with Anne, and then, all of them, in a darkness lit by candles sat in silence. Yes. The silence seemed to be broken by the movement of flames. That made no sense, Rob thought, but even so, there it was.
It was a deep silence, and Rob had no idea how it would be broken, though, in some way, it always was. It went on and it was like a rolling river, and he passed in and out of sleep and then, suddenly, out of the darkness, he heard:

Nos autem gloriari oportet in cruce
Domini nostri Jesu Christi:
in quo est salus,
vita et resurrectio nostra:
per quem salvati et liberati sumus.
Deus misereatur nostri, et benedicat nobis:
illuminet vultum suum super nos,
et misereatur nostri.


They kept singing, and mostly in Latin, and when they sang, Rob always thought of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, and remembered what Isaiah had said, how those times of hte year church had felt like church and Christians like Christians. Here, in the Abbey, Rob felt a mystery he had never felt before. He felt like he was inside of something. Back in Catholic school there had been these stuck up boys who were in Bible study and headed for the priesthood, and they had felt like they were in something too, something to the exclusion of common people such as read headed, sexually confused hick Robert Dwyer. That’s how religion felt. But right now Rob felt as if he and everyone around him really were inside of something, and that something was inside of everything, not out of it, inside of himself, only he had never been there before. It was an open secret. It was the secret of the world.
His eyes adjusted to the dark, and through the shadows he saw on the wall things that belonged in no church. He saw the shadow of Venus rising naked from the waters on a shell. He saw the long streaming hair of a Gorgon serpent. He saw a barely etched labyrinth on the wall. He saw schools of fish, weird squid reigning from ceiling to floor on the black night sea, and as his eyes grew used to these he heard Sister Anigel reading.

“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”

When Vigils was over, Andy got up and flicked on a few of the lights so the chapel was suffused with a low golden light. They all blew out their candles, and with order filed out of the chapel, moving in all direction. There was a long corridor along the east side of the chapel leading back to the dormitories and there, before the seated woman, more full breasted than any Virgin Rob had ever seen, and with hair streaming down her shoulders, someone went to their knees and knelt, stretching out their hands. Back in the courtyard, no one wanted to speak. No one wanted to interrupt the quiet. The moon was still up in the blue sky, and Rob said, “Are you going to bed?”
“I was thinking of writing. I was thinking of writing a long, long poem and doing it until Lauds.”
Rob yawned, and Frey said, “I will do it outside, or in the library. I’ll let you sleep. There’s no need to keep you up.”
“I feel like if I sleep I will miss everything, and I feel like I’ve missed so much already.”
“We’ve only been here a day,” Frey said. “And we’ve been to every office.”
“That’s not what I meant.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! I like how things are progressing and I like that Rob and Frey are staying together even if its just for now. I also like the deepening relationship between Pat and Josh. They seem to regret their night with the others but I think they are great together. Great writing and I look forward to more! Enjoy your week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Thank you so much. I actually thought it might be the least interesting, so it's good to hear that. I had something profound to say, but I almost blanked out sitting right here because this was a lovely, but long day. I'm glad you enjoyed, but no Rossford previews for tonight. After all, the whistle must be whetted.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER NINE
CONCLUSION

When they had arrived here it was night, and the summer had come into its glory, mellow seventy five degrees, and lightning bugs seemed to dance their way to Saint Clew. Frey only spoke of his son and his nephew obliquely.
“I asked my sister if she ever felt guilty,” Isaiah said, “for living her life, for not always being there, for making time for herself. She said yes, and I asked her what she did. She just said, she put it out of her mind. Guilt is not a reliable barometer.”
For the last hour Rob had been humming a song to himself, the radio off, and he kept touching Isaiah Frey’s hand.
“I love you,” he had said.
And then he had said, “Is it alright to say that?”
But it was not Isaiah who gave him permission. It seemed as if the world did, for suddenly the night was drawing on, and out of the river rose an island, and out of the island rose something like a small and homely castle. It was surrounded by trees, and little lights were on and Rob said, “I’ve never been to a monastery before. I’m a little bit afraid.”
“This isn’t the sort of place you have to be afraid of,” Isaiah had said, “and I do love you.”
They drove over the bridge and over the blue river and parked in the driveway. They were scarcely parked before an assorted, excited crowd came out to help them. An admittedly goodlooking, sturdy redheaded man, and an attractive Black woman in glasses who might have been Frey’s cousins were among them. They were followed by others, but Rob didn’t note a single monk or a nun among them.
Later on, while they were eating on the open balcony off of the dining room, looking over the river and the hills, the redheaded man, called Ken, explained, “No, no, it’s not that kind of abbey. At least not anymore.”
“The only sister here,” his friend Nadia said, “is Anigel, and she stopped being a sister some time ago, Technically.”
Anigel was the dark eyed, light skinned woman with long black hiar. She wore a light white dress, and there was something of the nun to her, Frey said. She was beautiful and barefoot and Ken said, “You might say she’s the reason we’re here, but that would sound…”
“Cultish?” Nadia said.
Rob looked to Frey and then he said, boldly, “Are you guys a cult? I mean, a religious group?”
“No,” Nadia said, “because that would be easy. We’re not any group,. We’re just people. We’re just friends. Me and Kenny have been friends for years, but all sorts of people come here. This monastery doesn’t belong to the a religious order, or to the Church. The Catholic Church I mean. It doesn’t belong to any church.”
“Then…” Rob began, “Who does it belong to?”
“It belongs to us,” Ken said, gesturing to all the people around him, to the trees even. “It belongs to God.”




“It’s home,” Anigel said the next morning when they were eating breakfast on the lawn. “That’s all it is. People have come who want it to be other things, and they’re always disappointed.”
Frey thought Anigel must be the same age as him. Rob thought that she and Frey had the look of people very young people from another world who went from disdain of the world to living outside of it, and were not subjected to age like others.
“I remember one Palm Sunday, I called it Passion Sunday, but it wasn’t it was Palm Sunday. There’s a difference, you know? One Palm Sunday I got up,” Anigel said, “and we were on our way to church. I was living with my sister and her husband. They had an apartment over his shop, and we were on our way to church, and before we had gone I just told my sister, I didn’t believe in God. It just hit me that I didn’t believe. She looked at me like I’d said I’d killed someone, and then she just said, ‘Well, let’s get dressed for church. Let’s not tell anyone right now.’
“And we went to Mass, and I heard all the songs and watched the Passion play, and heard all the beautiful music. It was always my favorite time of the year.”
Rob was about to interrupt and say it was his favorite time of the year too, but thought better.
“And I just knew I didn’t believe in it. Believe in the church. I was an atheist now. Being in church just made me sad.
“I had wanted to be alone. I had wanted to just be by myself in the warm spring day, and see the flowers, and see the white blooms fall from the trees. See the red tulips in yard and the bright blue sky, feel the sun on my face, and that was the first time I was happy. The first time I felt… sacred. Full of joy.
“It was a long time, but not quite as long a time as you would think before I found out that I didn’t believe in someone else’s God. I had been brought up in all the superstition, all the… half heartedness of church, of people who sort of believed. I needed a deeper thing. I did believe, just not like the people around me, and I had to go to church a few times a year not to irritate my family. That’s what I told myself. But the truth is, I never cared much about irritating my family. I liked going so I could look at the statues of the women, of Mary, the nuns and saints in the stain glass. And… I wanted to be them. I began reading books about nuns, and I understood that this was what I wanted. I didn’t want to believe in God in a casual way. I… wanted to love God. And so I came here, to the convent.”
Rob looked around, and Anigel touched his hand.
“In those days it was still a working Benedictine convent. Always in needed of money, never getting it, for the Catholic Church doesn’t treat monks and brother very well, and treats sisters and nuns far worse. The Church doesn’t care about women. That’s just the truth. I loved God, and I loved my sisters. I was here for five years. But… to make a long story very short, in the end, I left. I needed to not be a nun, I needed to not belong to the Church and the priests. I needed to get away from the rules. Perhaps,” Anigel smiled, “I even needed to lose my virginity. So I left.”
“But you came back,” Frey said.
“I came back,” Anigel said, “But not to be a member. I came back because I had never stopped talking to the sisters, and Sister Evangeline told me that Mother Mary Joseph was dying. I came back because I didn’t want to do anything more than I wanted to take care of her.
“I thought I was going on my own. But it was different now, now that I was a sister and a daughter in a different way. A sister because I suppose I was behaving like one. And, in time, friends came. Friends came and nuns died, and that’s what happened. That’s how all this came about. And now you have come too.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great conclusion to the chapter! I am glad Frey and Rob stayed together! Also good to see Anigel again! I didn't realise her story was linked. I am happy she found where she belonged. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Okay, so for some reason I lost my response and need to retype it.
It does seem Rob and Frey have made the choice for each other and now will have to see where that leads them. There are still some other characters who will need to work some stuff out in the last few chapters. All the stories are eventually linked, Isaac as Michael's cousin from the Jay and Michael stories, Anigel in on of the Jinny stories and here she is again. In the version of Eden that is not going up here there are some Rossford characters, but I took them out because it would give away what happens in the upcoming stories. I'm glad you enjoyed and how you keep on enjoying.

 

[ChrisGibson]

T E N





“Everyone needs to know you actually have a form.”

- Anigel Raez


Rob was sitting in the room he shared with Isaiah . He was remembering yesterday, sitting on a hill where Ken told him, “I painted those walls, the Gorgons and everything in the chapel. At first I thought, I mustn’t. Anigel told me I could, that I should. But I still thought, it’s a chapel, and she said, “It’s a chapel to what is sacred to us, not someone else’s story. Paint your own story.” And so I started painting.
He said, “Once I had a cousin. She died. She committed suicide actually. After she died I just painted crucifixes, over and over again. Maybe I’ve painted them all out. There are no crucifixes now. Only Gorgons.”
They were looking at a man at the bottom of the hill by the river bank, by a part that Ken said was underwater most of the year. He was chanting and Ken said, “In the movie Excalibur the wizard Merlin says a spell, and no one knows the actual words.a That man listened to it over and over again until he did know the words, and now he chants them over and over again. He is looking for the spell to change the world.”
“That’s…” Rob began.
“Crazy?”
“Why didn’t I just say that?” said Rob. “and then he said, “Only, it’s not. It is, but, I don’t know . Everyone ere is looking for something. Trying to do something, and it seems like in most of the world, in the place where I usually am, no one’s trying to do anything. And so it’s almost like, no matter how crazy the thing is you’re trying to do, It’s not that crazy.””
Ken smiled and said, “and what’s the crazy thing you want to do?”
“I always liked to paint,” Rob said.
“That’s not so crazy.”
“But all of a sudden I want to write. The way Frey does. I want to write.”
“Well, that’s not crazy.’
“When you say it like that, no. But I’ve felt like it is, like I was copying off of him, like I have a lot of nerve doing it.”
“:I think all artists have a lot of nerve. Why don’t you lock yourself away and come up with something?”
“Like I’m some grand artist? Like Van Gogh?’
“Or like yourself.”

Frey was already half locked away himself, and when Rob said what Ken had told him, Frey said, “I think he’s right. I think you should chase the dragon and see where it leads.”
“Doesn’t chase the dragon mean use opium?”
“Not when I say it,” said Frey.

Rob thought about Jason. Jason was a gloriously brown Indian who was a little too forward and, in the past, had him up for sex for a long time. He’d said he wa six foot two, and then on the way to meet him for the first time had said, “By the way, I’m not quite that tall.” Later on, Rob would learn there was no such thing as a six foot two Indian. He came over that night, and they sat on a couch awkwardly talking, and then Rob didn’t see him again for a long time. Rob was still half a virgin then.
Rob had started seeing Kent. Kent was older and gifted with an enormous sausage like penis. He’d come over at about three in the morning, and Rob had ended up fucking the life out of him. He loved Kent’s cock in his mouth, but was afraid of being fucked by him, after all, he’d never been fucked by anyone. And so he began to learn all about anal sex, working his way up to it with little devices, a finger here, two fingers there, buying enema bottles and emptying them out, filling them with water to learn how to clean himself. He began to fantasize abut his first time being fucked.
One night Mike, the little Indian, had appeared online and Rob asked Mike if he finally wanted to have sex. Ten minutes later, Mike had sped to the house so quickly he’d driven over the curb. Ten minutes later Mike was, not expertly, and not well, fucking him. But what there was of it, Rob treasured. He wasn’t one of those bitter people who thought sex should be like ordering up a meal. He was grateful, generally, for whatever happened, and thinking about Mike, he began to write.


blessing of brownness
and smoothness
quiet roundness of arms and ass
when you came to me
i'm still trembling
remembering you
inside me
and the shake and the shudder
of the bed,
you overhead, hair black, head in my hands-
you came, a little gift, full of love and lust,
carrying that magic bag, the sacred thing
in those faded jeans
stripping to reveal its humble power
and it's thick attention commanding,
demanding that i give
and so i gave, and gave
and wouldn't have it any other way
and would gladly have you in the circumference
of these thighs,
back in that brief, brown paradise
some day


“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Rob told Frey when they were in the breezeway before Compline. “But it’s not him I think about. He wasn’t that great. It’s something else. It’s on the tip of my tongue, or the tip of my brain. Is that what it’s like for you? Writing?”
“Yeah,” said Frey. Then, “Yes. “and what the something else is reveals itself. In time.”

At Compline, Anigel and Anne and Nadia sang:

“Answer me when I call, O God, defender of my cause;
you set me free when I am hard-pressed;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer.”

And they sang back:

"You mortals, how long will you dishonor my glory;
how long will you worship dumb idols
and run after false gods?”

The women at the altar sang:

“Know that the Lord does wonders for the faithful;
when I call upon the Lord, he will hear me.”

And with a full heart, as Rob had never sang, not caring about his voice:

“Tremble, then, and do not sin;
speak to your heart in silence upon your bed.
Offer the appointed sacrifices
and put your trust in the Lord.”

And in their room, Rob took his notebook and said, “I am going out. I’m going out to the hills with the fireflies and I’m going to write and now I know it wans’t really about Mike.”
“No?” Frey said.
“It was about Jesus.”


Rob wrote:

jesus loves me
but not like you believe
last night he came through my window like a teenaged boy
and he toyed with the lock, it didn't matter
while the preacher was murmuring something from the clock radio
he undressed and shimmied out of his black underwear
and hopped from here
to there
into the bed
and we started laughing
and then we started fucking
and the things we did under those sheets
i think you've never sermonized
i think you don't know how God harmonizes
and every aspect of our dancing
becomes loving
and giving and
taking
and spilling of seed
and the loosing of fear
with him
through him
in him
all through the night
until there is day
and the orgasm shout while he holds out hips
out
hallelujah!


Rob wrote:


what if in this last incarnation
you came to me a sweet young man
with the sun in his hand
and in his flesh, brown flesh,
gold flesh
flesh i'd want to hold flesh
and you laid down beside me and
said take of me and then you took
of me sliding the white cloth
from the length of your body
and i loved your body cause
you gave me your body
and you took me
and i knew you
and i knew no fear
and when we were finished
when all passion spent
you got up and went to the shower
and i knew what you were waiting for
for me to say
take me
as you took me then
take me again and i will follow
and you came out
all brown and gold, laughing
and me dickheavy with longing
water and myrrh dripped from your locks
and for my sake you redressed slowly
slowly cloth over round buttocks
and sausage cock
over the chest
the brown breast
and then i dressed to follow
you showered me
cleansed me in the myrrh of your hair
and there, Dark Lover
i knew Christ the Lord
the Lover
the Fool, the Fucker





At four in the morning, when the dark sky turned deep blue and Vigils was ending, Rob wrote:


baby joy,
fragile as a sunbeam
i almost missed you
why do you whisper when you command
why do you startle with your sun kiss when you remind
with the scent of a rose
with the lifting of shit from shoulders
you laugh like a little river, like the little hills
and ask to dance in grey times
like their cornfields
to dance out grey times
to waltz with light
laughing singing
crazy joy
pulsing blood through every cold thing
changing form
saying, crying
i am all the leaping
i am the drinking, praising, fucking
i am the flesh, the blood
the blessed come
and all the life

“He’s writing,” Frey said. “I told him write like a religious, like it’s your vocation. I am not a monk or anything like it,” he said to Anigel, “but for a year I lived in a monastery, when things went bad. When I needed to get my mind right.”
“I think things are always going bad,” Anigel said, shaking her head, and when she shook her head, all of that thick black hair moved like a curtain. “And I think we always have to get our minds right. As for being a religious, I’m not sure. I think it was always hard to tell who had a monastic soul and who was just a religious asshole.”
When Frey laughed, he added, “I don’t think it was ever hard to tell who was the asshole.”
“True,” Anigel raised her finger and nodded as they drank tall glasses of lukewarm water and looked at the river, brown and twisting, flowing thick through the green earth.

Every morning when she rises, Anigel tells Frey, she prays.

O my God, I wake on this break of Day to think of Thee, to love Thee and to serve Thee. Behold me, O my God, Thy holy will shall be mine, I will observe it with all my heart the whole of this day.

This God is not the same one she knew then, and the calling not the same either. Nor are the clothes. Once she saw a stain glass of Saint Solange. It was in the church her Irish grandmother attended in Chicago. A father who was Mexican, a mother who had a Black father and an Irish mother…. The story of America, huh? Anigel eventually wore that garment, but now she exchanges it for white cotton dresses. While she puts on the cotton dress she prays:
“Lord, prepare my soul interiorly while I prepare my body to go to Choir. Clothe me, O my God, with the fervor of Thy Divine Spirit and with the precious gifts of Thy grace. Clothe me, O my God, with Thy holy religious practices so that I may appear before Thee such as our habit and profession require.”

“Life without belts should not be lived,” Anigel said. “Everyone needs to know you actually have a form. Everyday I put on this hemp belt, which is the only one I have, and it’s getting kind of old, I remember what I would say when I put on the be girdle of the of the old habit :
“Unite me to Thee, O my God in an intimate union and attach me to Thee in the bonds of charity the links of which may never break.”

“Do you miss veils?” Frey asked her.
“Yes,” Anigel said, simply. “I’m not going to lie. If I didn’t feel like it was kind of silly, I would wear one all the time. These days, like when I was a kid, I settle for a bandanna.”
“And still use the prayer?”
“Oh, yes.”
She recited: “This veil should teach me, Lord, that I should die to the world and to myself so as to live no longer but for Thee. Grant me, therefore, the grace that nothing of this miserable life may remain in me, which prevents my union with Thee.
In winter when there are more clothes, Anigel said, “There are more prayers.”
“Will you tell me?”
“Yes,” Anigel said, because I think you will use them, being an artist, having the soul you have. They are for the scapular, and for the mantle…. The sweatshirt and the cardigan!
“Lord, grant me the grace to carry with joy and love Thy yoke and burden all the days of my life. And: O spotless Lamb of God, adorn Me with the purity with which all those are adorned who follow Thee.”


And there are other prayers:


Do me the favor, my Lord and my God, that my heart remain in solitude, never losing Thy divine presence, but that I may ever remain united to Thee, my Way, my Truth and my Life. All for Jesus and Mary! Judge me not, O my God according to the purity of Thy Eternal Son, but consult rather Thy mercy in my judgment and place the blood and death of Jesus Christ between Thee and Thy poor creature. Amen, sweet Jesus, Amen.


And in the evening they prayer:


He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
abides under the shadow of the Almighty.
He shall say to the LORD,
"You are my refuge and my stronghold,
my God in whom I put my trust."

He shall deliver you from the snare of the hunter
and from the deadly pestilence.

Anigel thinks, the beauty of poems and songs is the beauty ot the Psalms. It is the beauty the certainty, that though you have lost all words for a thing, no thing you pass through is so rare and strange that it cannot be laid here, in the words of others spoken so long ago.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion and some nice poetry and prayers too! Rob and Frey seem to be settling in nicely too their new place. It was also good to hear about some of Rob's past experiences with other men. Great writing and I look forward to more!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I was nervous because I wasn't sure if there was enough action, but this did seem appropriate. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WEEKEND PORTION: END OF TEN AND BEGINNING OF CHAPTER ELEVEN


“Let’s go away from here,” Josh says. “Let’s go see my brother. We need to. Please?”
“At that house you say he’s at?”
“Yes.”
“When?” says Pat.
“Tomorrow.” In the night, Pat whispers, “ I don’t have any good sense. I’m not a movie, you know. I’m not that guy that has the right things to say or much to offer.”
“You’re on your way to medical school.”
“And then I will have medicine to offer. At the end of eight years.
“But my heart is fucked up,” he tells Josh as they lay curled together. “Even now I feel a million miles away. You ask me what it means. Us. You to me. All I can say, and I’m sorry to say it, is that I just want not to hurt. I want to not feel dry and semi dead.”
Sometimes the radio or the television is on, but right now there is silence. The whole house is silent. They are not at Pat’s. Tonight Josh wanted to have sex in his own bed. Tonight, he and Pat fucked as quietly as possible, Josh, putting a hand over Pat’s mouth, or biting on Pat’s palm to stifle his own cries. They tried to make the bed shake as little as possible. When they are done, the bedsheets are wet with sweat and so are they, and they strip off the sheets and Pat walks across the room to open a window. Now they lay naked in the dark and there is no sound. At last, Pat speaks.
“I think you feel that way too. I think we feel it less when we’re together.”


“I’m not paying for a hotel room another night,” DJ decided shoving his baseball cap onto his head.
“I don’t feel like anyone’s asking you to,” said Javon.
“I’m not ready to go back ot South Bend.”
“You wanna go to Chicago?”
“No,” DJ said.
Then he said, “Dad’s house is still there, and no one’s in it.”
“You wanna go?”
“It looked peaceful. He felt peaceful.”
“Before we came,” DJ shrugged. “You wanna just hang out there?”
Javon said nothing. He just packed the bags and they checked out of the hotel. Check out time was at eleven o’clock, and it was ten thirty when they handed over the keys. They got breakfast at Bob Evans, and while Javon turned a sausage link over and over with his fork, he said, “At Bob Evans it seems like the whole world is a happy place.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe once a in a while, for a few moments, the whole world really is a happy place,” DJ said.
They drove down the road and out of town to where there were only power lines over high green trees. The trees were greener when the sky was greyer, and they stopped in front of the hedge that was in front of the yard that dipped in front of the plain white house. Even though they had been there when Frey had left with Rob, they still looked around the house for signs of him, and then Javon went into the bedroom and fell on the bed that smelled like his uncle and his uncle’s cigarettes, and like other subtle scents that might have been Rob, this new lover they barely knew.
DJ did not go to sleep beside his cousin. He went to the yard, He went out of it and along the long walking path. Occasioanlly a bicycle came, and to his right the land dipped lower for the trains. He crossed a reservoir. He walked until he was tired. Until he thought, damn, now I have to turn back, He began the walk back, his thighs burning.

Back in the house he showered and stood under hot water letting it soak his limbs till he turned it to cold. He came out dripping, shaking himself like a dog. In the hallway before the bedroom where Javon sleeps, DJ dries his body, willing Javon to wake.
He turns over and blinks, and DJ stands there, padding his skin, feeling himself rise.
The first time he came to Javon was when his father Jason came to visit, and gave him a hundred dollars and left. He had been so used to Jason 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 Isaiah 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. They should have both been grateful, not grateful like orphans, not grateful like the way people always wanted you to feel humiliated, but grateful because of this love Isaiah showed them, never questioning if they should be in his house.
“What is it, DJ?” Javon had said, sitting up.”
At the time DJ was fifteen, and Javon was sixteen. DJ had wanted to say all of these things to him, Instead he had come into the room and shut the door behind him.

Sometimes DJ forgot himself, who he was, where he was. He was like that now, half holding the towel, his penis standing up as his head hung down half looking at the floor.
“Are you just going to stand there?” Javon asked, slowly pulling off his shorts, struggling out his tee shirt.
“Come,” he said.


E L E V E N



“Everyone needs to know you actually have a form.”

- Anigel Raez

He quit the hospice that day.
“You are young,” his boss said. “You are young and it’s still summer. The world is full of life.”
“I wanted to look death in the face,” Pat said.
“And you have,” Maria said. “You looked it in the face when your mother died. You didn’t have a choice. Now you do have a choice, and pardon me for telling you what to do, but it is time to look at life.”
“I wanted to help people,” Pat said. “I wanted to be there for them.”
“You were. You were there for so many people. You were even there for Mrs. Ruebeeckers’ funeral. But you can’t follow them all to the grave. You can’t exhaust yourself doing this.”
And then Maria said, “Maybe one day you will come back to it. Maybe this is your call. You were good at it. You have a gift. But for now it’s time to live. Even Persephone had to leave the land of the dead.”
This struck Pat as whimsical, because he never imagined that Maria would ever bring up Greek mythology in conversation.
“How do I look at life? How do you do that?”
It was Pat’s question, but it was Josh who asked it as they drove to the house.
“I know, I see the world is full of color, and the sun is hot and its summer, but it’s just a knowing, not a feeling, and I think a long time ago I had the feeling and I would love to have the feeling again.”
They pass the convenience store where Rob works that Rob has left, and they go down the road to the house where Rob is staying, the house of his friend, Frey. And there is a car parked outside, but it isn’t Rob’s. Rob has a truck. This must be Frey’s SUV. They go over the hedge and into the yard. Evening approaches. Josh raps on the door.
He blinks for a while when DJ answers it, as if trying to get the features right and realizing this is an entirely different white man, not Rob at all, and Javon is coming from the kitchen.
“I’m looking for my brother,” Josh says. “For Rob.”
“Oh,” DJ blinks and opens the door, “Come in. He’s not here. He’s with my dad. My stepdad. They left.”
“Left?” Josh says, coming in followed by Pat who shake’s DJ’s hand and then Javon’s.
“Yeah,” DJ said. “They went to this monastery. Saint Clew.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Josh says doubtfully.
“We got pizza,” Javon offers. “Stay a while?”
“Yeah,” Josh says. Josh’s yeah means Pat is staying too.

“How long will they be gone,” Josh asks, 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. He says it’s good to find yourself as much as possible cause it’s so easy to get lost. Dad said it’s not like an ordinary monastery,” DJ continued, “whatever that means. Cause I have no idea what an ordinary monastery is like. Still…”
“To sort yourself out seems nice,” Josh said.
“Exactly. I thought it was like church, but Dad says its not like church at all. He calls every day. He didn’t do that when he was here.”
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.
“Is what—?”
He began, and then Pat closed the door behind them.
“Can you honestly not tell?” Pat demanded.
“Tell what?”
“I know it was dark and… everything… but can you not tell those are the guys from the other night?”
“What…?” Josh began. Then…” I.. wondered. I thought I was being nuts. They didn’t say anything.”
“Just like we didn’t say anything,” Pat said.
“Well,” Josh looked genuinely perturbed, “Do you think they know?’
“I don’t know, They’ll suspect something in a minute if we stay whispering in this bathroom.”
“What do we do? Do we keep pretending?”
Pat shook his head, looking irritated. “I guess so.”
Now Josh was irritated. “Just like how we pretend in front of Rob we hate each other. Well, if we are just going to pretend, then I don’t udnersand why you even called me in here.”
“I…” Pat began, then said, “I don’t really understand why, either.”
Josh went back out. Pat realized he really did have to pee, and when he joined the magain, 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 get 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 want to 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, to Pat’s great irritation, “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 gay 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 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 hands. Javon led him into the living room, 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 heart was beating. His dick pulsed like his heart was there and 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 he came to Javon was when his father Jason came to visit and gave him a hundred dollars, 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 fifteem and Javon was sixteen. DJ had wanted to say all of these things 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.”
As if he is too hot, as if his clothing is too much, DJ struggles out of his clothes and stands there naked.
“What the hell, DJ?” Javon says. “What are you…?”
DJ climbs onto the bed with him. Javon doesn’t tell him not too. Suddenly, DJ kisses him, and Javon doesn’t fight it. He opens his mouth to DJ’s, to his tongue, to the urgent press of his lips. To his hands. He lets DJ pull up his tee shirt, and Javon moans a little, struggling out of his hsorts. They’ve never discussed this and probably won’t discuss it again.
“Is the door locked?”
“Yes,” DJ says almost as if Javon is stupid. He says it desperately. He says, kissing him hard, “Nobody’s home.”
Javon feels like bees are buzzing in him. He feels light, like he’s about to float away. He deosn’t feel like this is strange, but he also doesn’t feel like he’d expected this either. He didn’t imagine this when he woke up this morning. He didn’t imagine lying hurriedly on his back, or DJ kneeling over him. Even five minutes ago he didn’t think of spit and thick phlegm and his cock head in DJ’s hand and DJ kneeling down over him. He didn’t think of the shock and the tightness and the change on both of their faces, the strange tightness and heat the look of pain on DJ’s face as he fitted Javon inside of him, as he began to ride him in the close heat of the little upstairs bedroom of Isaiah Frey’s house. He is pleased to be mounted, to give himself ot DJ, to let DJ work out something on top of him, grinding down and grinding down, pleased to be taken and shaken. But in the end he must have his moment too, for if it’s only DJ’s moment, if it’s only one sided, it’s a kind of rape. If all of this is predictable, and its only DJ riding him, then it isn’t quite sex. With a grunt he turns him over, pressing him against the bed, pressing him so that DJ’s knees are past his head, so that sweat is dripping down both of them, and Javon’s nostrils are filled with the smell of ass and armpit and teenage boy cologne and funk, and he is filled with his own desperate lust, his own grinding and pumping and pumping, 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 explosion, the expression of relief like a screaming kettle and the shout from his own mouth while he erupts inside of DJ, while he feels 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 returns to until the sun is lower and more golden in the sky, and room is filled with funk and shadow, and they wuietly unfold limbs, separate damp flesh, lay side by side, and contemplate showering and changing into fresh clothes.

In a way it never stopped being like that between, shock and surprise, being taken out of yourself into something you weren’t quite sure about. But then, Javon supposed, sex was There was a thrill in a 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. 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 not certainly 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. When he and DJ had woken up the other morning, and it was barely morning, just a lighter dark blue in the night sky, and they were naked in the back of the SUV, and the sounds of the breakers on the beach could be be heard, he asked himself, had they really done what they had done out on that beach? But surely they had. Here they were, even if they hand’t discussed it. And then, after what they had done, those two guys had walked away, just as surely as he and DJ had walked up to them.
And now here they were again, and here Javon was, his face to the carpet, while this nervous and at first angry man fucked him into the floor, while he felt him moving in him like a piston, felt him at first enraged and realized the rage wasn’t against him, but against so many things, and Javon had turned around, and the same way he had done DJ years back, now he left it be done to him. Now he realized he wasn’t being done to at all, his knees nearly around his head, he pulled Pat into him, and pushed his hands into Pats thick, smooth 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.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Lots going on in a great portion! So the two sets of guys finally realised how they knew each other. I wonder what Frey and Rob will think of all of this? I guess I will have to wait and see. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It sure was a lot to post in one night, but there won't be any tomorrow, so I thought it best. I don't know that Frey and Rob need to know everything about this other foursome. It's a lot to know. I mean, even without the foursome, DJ and Javon have been having a semi incestuous relationship for years, so their business may have to stay their business. I think Frey really wants them to grow up so that their business can be theirs and he can have his own again.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Eleven Continued



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 left 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 whomever 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.



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 they made love in the half light, and very often they make love, but he never sees it. But 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, his buttocks, that sexy muscle at his hip. His eyes are closed, his mouth is 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 read hair, who’s eys are looking up enraptured while DJ rides him. Javon understands. He knows what its 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 moaning…

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 lving room with me. If you want to come and make your peace with Rob, that would be great.”
“I don’t know,” Pat says.
“Didn’t you say you just quit your job?” Javon says. “It’s not like you have anything else to do.”



Ken and Nadia’s friend Logan came to visit. Later, at dinner, Ken said, “I had someone. I had a relationship with my high school boyfriend for seventeen years. It got to that point where I guess other gay couples start all sorts of gymnastics to stay together, but we broke up. I mean, I broke us up. I told myself I wasn’t afraid to be alone, but I think I was or else we would have broken up earlier. But you shouldn’t be afraid. He found someone else. I thought I would too, and find him soon. I didn’t. Not immediately. Not right away Then there were other relationships,” Ken said. “But not that boyfriend. Not that soulmate.”
Ken paused while Logan and Nadia were looking at him, then he said, “I think that’s important to say, because people need to stop thinking the happy ending is when you find one person who loves you. Value your friends. Lots of people love you, and you can love so many people. You just have to open your eyes.”
Rob nodded, but Frey, looking from Ken to the very handsome Logan, broad shouldered, blond, still well muscled though clearly in his forties with touches of
silver in his hair, thought, “With friends like that, it should be easy to value them.”
Logan was fun and affable, and sexy, very sexy. He owned his body in a way few did and was clearly not at Saint Clew’s for the religious life. He was here to visit his friends.
“That’s the most beautiful thing in the world,” Anigel said.
“I feel like I know him,” Rob noted. “Like I’ve seen him.”
“Well,” Anigel shrugged, “you are gay, and he is a gay porn star. Is, was,” she looked uncertain. “I’m not sure these days.”
Because Anigel made nothing of it, neither did they.
Whatever Logan was, he came to Vigils like a pro. They sang hymns and read from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Logan yawned, who could blame him, and Ken, defty led him out of the chapel. At Vigils, Frey joined Anne and Anigel. The sang:

O God, my God, unto Thee I rise early at dawn.
My soul hath thirsted for Thee;
how often hath my flesh longed after
Thee in a land barren and untrodden
and unwatered. So in the sanctuary
have I appeared before Thee to see
Thy power and Thy glory.
For Thy mercy is better than lives;
my lips shall praise Thee.
So shall I bless Thee in my life,
and in Thy name will I lift up my hands.
As with marrow and fatness let my soul be filled,
and with lips of rejoicing shall my mouth praise
Thee.

After Vigils, Rob says, follow me. And Frey says, “Just like Jesus said?” and Rob shrugs and says, “Perhaps.”
He goes back to their rooms and comes back with a heavy blanket, one he gives to Frey, the other he keeps. They go walking out through the foyer into the garden and then to the front gate. They go walking to the little bridge on the path that is like a shoulder or a long wall looking down on the low green land that stretches to the river. It is a little, almost secret armpit of land between this high ground and the bridge. Rob stops to look, and Frey follows his gaze. Down below, two naked bodies one whiter than the other, are twining about like snakes. Men, making love on the grass. Ken and Logan.
Without a word, Rob moves on, toward the stone bridge, perhaps with greater urgency now. As they cross the bridge and are on the other side, with one more gaze, they both behold Ken, leg’s wide open, receiving Logan, and though they are aroused they do not feel dirty or offended.
They walk on and on up to the green hills, until they can look down on the monastery, and the moon is low, and the trees are around them, and everything is safe and safe and perfectly safe, and there Rob lays down his blanket and then Frey’s, and Rob undresses. So Frey undresses. And they stand clasping each other and Frey whispers into the warmth of Rob’s shoulder, “I love you too, you know.”
And Rob says. “Let’s stay together.”
Frey nods.
They lay together like an asterisk, arms and legs Xed out, and Frey’s head’s is between Rob’s legs and Rob’s are between his, they clasp each other’s bodies and they feed on each other. Just before the morning light, they both come, shaking as they shoot salt and heat and life and a jet of liquid into each other’s mouth. Sleepy they come together holding each other under the blanket. Over the top of Saint Clew, the sky is pink, and in his mildly country voice, Rob quotes,

“If I remembered Thee on my bed,
at the dawn I meditated on Thee.
For Thou art become my helper;
in the shelter of Thy wings will I rejoice.
My soul hath cleaved after Thee,
Thy right hand hath been quick to help me.

Frey says, “We may be late for breakfast.”


Tomorrow night: The conclusion of Eden

 

[CharmedFan28]

A great lead up to the conclusion! DJ, Javon, Pat and Josh have some deciding to do about their relationships. Seems like Frey and Rob are liking where they are living now but who knows if they will stay in the conclusion. I guess I will have to wait and see. Excellent writing and I look forward to the conclusion!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I feel like there is so much to say, and I only have more questions about the story I am writing the more I write it, If you had any questions, I would love for you to leave them here, or post them tomorrow night, either or, as this story comes to the end. I am surprised. I didn't know until I posed how quickly I was coming to the ending.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER ELEVEN
AND CONCLUSION OF THIS STORY



“I could rent the house,” Frey said. “I could just keep renting it.”
“We could rent it,” Rob said. “Like I could actually pay money. Share your life. Or we could go back to South Bend.”
“I don’t know if you’d like South Bend.’
“I’d like it if you were there, and it’s only forty-five minutes away.”
“True enough.’
“And it’s got job opportunities,” Rob said. “But we have to stay together or else it’s no use. If we try to be something to each other and try to live an hour a part, I don’t think that’ll work.’
“No,” Frey shook his head, “It won’t.”
“Or we could stay here,” Rob said. ‘We could stay right here. I mean, why not?”
“We could,” Frey agreed, touching Rob’s hand. “But I want to go back to that little house. That’s our house. That’s where everything started.”
Rob nodded, folding up his shirt to take to the wash.
“Agreed.”
Ken, looking half asleep with his red hair tousled, peeped into the room, smiling.
“Guys,” he said, and Frey noted that Logan was with him, looking quiet, subdued, hands in pockets, smiley, “There’s someone here to see you.”
“Someone?” Frey said.
“Someones,” Ken corrected, moving aside.
“What the fuck?” Rob said.
DJ, Javon, a redhead whom Frey briefly remembered as Rob’s brother and a tall, shy, gorgeous almond eyed boy who might have been Arab or Sicilian entered the room.
“I’m Pat,” he tried, offering his hand.
Frey took it and then looked to Rob.
“Pat,” he said.
“Yes..”
Frey looked to Rob.
“Well, then, you all need to talk.”
Rob opened his mouth and Frey said to his nephew, his fosterson, to Josh in his glasses whom he didn’t know at all. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”

Frey did not ask them many questions. The abbey was beautiful enough that there was no need for him to talk and, besides, they had their own questions. And then Anigel arrived with Nadia and she could tell them so much more. Josh said, “She’s a poet, you know that? I read your first volume of poetry.”
“But did you read my second?” Nadia said with a smirk.
Josh mumbled and went red.
Frey’s experience from being a gay young man was that the questions you were asked had answers that were either trite and unnecessary or potentially embarrassing. That DJ and Javon were staying in the house and Pat and Josh came to look for them, that they all became friends was just fine. It was fine the same way it was fine that Pat had obviously been touching Javon’s hand, and Javon kept looking back distracted the whole time they were talking. This was fine the same way it was fine the first time Frey had passed DJ’s room after Javon had gone to sleep in it, and heard the bed creaking, the stifled sounds of sex between teenaged boys who were supposed to be cousins. Maybe he should have asked so many questions, but it was too late now, and anyway, he didn’t know what the point of those questions was. To stop hurt, to avoid pain, to stop tears. But life was made of hurt and pain and tears. There was no adventure, no juice, no zest without them. Certainly there was no love.
“I do have a question,” DJ said brightly, and Josh was grinning at him and Frey thought, They’ve had sex.
“Why is it called Saint Clew? I mean, I keep seeing statues of Saint Scholastica, but I’ve never even heard of Saint Clew.”
DJ looked around at the others and they shook their heads.
Anigel looked to Nadia and when she spoke her voice was happy, but it was serious.
“When I first came here, one of the nuns told me about a sister who had left before I came. She was a brilliant artist. Sister Solesme. While she was here she did much of the convent artwork. There was another sister, Sister Saint Agatha, who was an artist as well, but she was a carpenter, a joiner. Together, these two made the place look beautiful. Then, one day, Sister Saint Agatha fell off the roof while she was doing repairs, and she died.”
DJ gasped, and even Rob noticed when Josh caught his hand.
“Sister Solesme left the order that day. She moved to Chicago and came out as a lesbian. She told us later that she and Sister Agatha had been lovers for years. Later, Sister Solesme ended up being Gertrude Joyce, and she was one of Ken’s art teachers at college. She came here a lot, especially in the days when the last of the nuns were dying. Still does, She stopped calling this place Saint Scholastica and called it what she always called it in her mind, Saint Clew. Because Sister Saint Agatha’s name in life was Jean Clew. And so we call it that now as well.”


“What do you want from me? Pat says. “I know what I want from you, but what do you want from me?”
“You turned your back and walked away like nothing ever happened,” Rob said.
“I know.”
“I don’t want you. Not anymore. That’s in the past,” Rob said. “But I want… an apology. I want you to own what you did. Maybe I want to own what I did.”
“What you did?”
“Which was not be there and not not be there. Not commit to it and not walk away from it. Just let myself be passive. Frey says a lot about that, about not being passive. I’ve been passive for too long. I should have called you out a long time ago.”
“Are you coming back to town?” Pat said.
“Yes. Probably.”
“To stay?”
“Probably.”
“We could get together.”
“For what?” Rob said. “That’s what people say when they don’t mean it, but want to make folks happy, and I don’t need you to make me happy.”
“But we could sit in the same room,” Pat explained, “and mend what’s fucked up between us.”
“That’s what we’re doing now.”
“True,” Pat said.
“Are you fucking Josh?”
“Yes. I don’t know. I mean, I have. I mean… you need to ask him.”
“Are you with him, because it looked like you were checking out Frey’s nephew.”
“Shit’s complicated.”
“It usually isn’t.”
“I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. We need to mend something. We need to make the way we’ve been… better than it has been.”
“Yes,” Rob said. “Yes, you’re right of course.”
“I feel so thin and stretched out,” Pat said. “I feel like I never stopped feeling the way I did that night after the car crash. Like I just kept getting stretched out and more and more damaged and now, just now, I’m starting to be alright.”
“I think that’s way Josh felt,” Rob said. “Maybe that’s why you found each other.”
And then he said, “But why have I felt that way too?”
Pat said, “I don’t know, Rob. We were best friends once.”
“I know.”
“And now we’ve all been broken and fucked up and then broken and fucked up each other. Maybe we can help put each other back together again?”
Rob said, “Maybe that’s the only way we can get put back together again.”


EPILOGUE


FREY SPEAKS

I thrill, I rejoice. I rejoiced all this morning before the boys arrived. I was loading up the laundry bag with Rob, but for a moment I thought we were packing up to go home ,and I wasn’t entirely sure where the home was, and it didn’t matter, because we would be together.
And I have known many men, I have loved and been loved and made love to by many men, but I have not made a life with one yet, and at the age of forty-fill-in-the blank, to be making a life with a man, to be making a life with this one man, who I do love is a thing I can hardly believe. I thought I was long past this. I feel like Saint Elizabeth, long past bearing. I feel like the morning prayer. I feel like when the angel Gabriel came to Mary and told her that Elizabeth, long past childbearing, had at last conceived, and can it be that, with this young boy, this young red haired man sleeping next to me, I have finally conceived… love?
There is a feeling I can only call close that happens when I wake in the middle of the night.
When the boys have gone to sleep, and Rob sleeps and Vigils is not for some time, I put on my shoes to go outside. The whole world is naked tonight. I have always called South Bend the country, then coming to Rob’s town I thought, now this is the country. But here, we are finally in the country. Here, the air is different. Tonight there are no stars, but tonight the sky is more real.
I am going to do something foolish. Vigils is an hour off. Here is the bank where Logan and Ken made love. My bare feet press into the grass, trying to absorb some of the essence of their love. And then I am taking off my clothes. I am in love with and weary of the man breasts that are just shy of being boobs, the fat on the sides where no six pack ever was, amazed that this body has known so many lovers and is loved so much right now. I am completely naked.
I don't know if it's my certainly that no one will come, or if I just really don't care. But I am here naked and walking in the water, and it’s colder than ever, and my whole body is alive and my nipples are hard and pointed up, and I want to go down and down and down and it's so good and so terribly chilly and I can hear my mother singing a song from her childhood, from the days before she was Catholic.

Wade I nthe water… wade in the water children…wade in the water… God's gonna trouble the waters…

And my God, I know beyond a doubt that there is a redemption and I am saved, though not in any way that any priest ever meant. I am not alone. We are not alone. Anigel is here, and Sister Saint Solesme and her mourning for Agatha who became Saint Clew, and secret loves, loves that grow from nowhere and may go nowhere, and leave a black path like fire that heals and destroys. Rob is here. DJ is here. These sorrowful hopeful boys who came with my nephew are here. Ken and Logan twisting together are here. Salvation is me here in these waters. There are no divisions here, and here is the certainty for the very first time that none of the doubts, the fears, the horrors that once assaulted us and may even one day return… none of them… matter.

THE END​

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great ending! I don't really have any questions because they were all answered here. Sorry. I am glad everyone found their place in life and everything was wrapped up nicely. Great writing and I look forward to more of it soon! Hope you have had a great weekend and have a great week!

 

[CharmedFan28]

One question I did have is will there be a sequel? It finished well I was just wondering if there is more.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, there’s two things about stories: I generally have a shape planned for them, and then they generally have something planned for themselves. Like, I always planned for Rossford to be a long story, but I didn’t know how long it would be until it told me. I always planned for Eden to be short and self contained. I planned for there to be a lot of lose ends but for the main plot that counted, Rob and Frey, to be resolved and for them to be together. There is a lot that could happen, especially with Javon and DJ and Josh and Pat, but at this moment it seems their journey is over and they’re where they need to be. I did another stand alone novel on here, The Skin of Things, and people wondered if there would be a sequel, and that was feeling on that story too.

What you read is not the final version. I am editing the final version and just today I saw some stuff that I changed, so when I get to the end, the story may be different enough that it warrants a sequel, but so far I don’t think that will happen. What is possibly is that, as usually, some of these characters might pop up in other stories, but the short answer to your question is, I don’t know.