Elegy

[ChrisGibson]

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a groovy weekend. Iam enjoying myself in Ohio.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WE CONCLUDE OUR CHAPTER ON THE EVENING WHEN CADE AND SIMON HAVE GOTTEN TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TN SEVERAL YEARS

Sex has passed through them like the Holy Ghost passes through a revival meeting, and having left, the two of them had remained against the door, pants down, clothes scattered, Simon’s face in Cade’s back. They were in that time when the body still thrummed with the shocks of lovemaking, the ache of fucking, the first feelings of nailmarks, oncoming exhaustion after the come. Simon’s hand weakly patted Cade’s back, faintly stroked him. Finally Cade had laughed.
“Can we get off this door?”
“That… “ Simon murmured, “is a great idea.”
He looked around the floor to see if coats and scarves and gloves were there, told Cade to check for his. That was very Simon. Cade would have said, let’s wait till tomorrow, and then gone searching the next day never to find his missing glove again.
And there was a missing glove. Cade went out and returned with it, but by now Simon had hung up his coat and his pants and shirt were under and over his arm. His shoes neatly near the coat rack and he stood naked except for his black socks.
“Everything?” Simon asked.
“Everything,” Cade said.
Simon kissed him and Cade followed him to the room where Simon neatly put his clothes in a chair and pulled off even his socks. He lay on the bed and Cade looked at him before undressing and laying on the bed too. Well, of course, this was Simon’s house, and he was his lover. And the heat was always on, why would he wear clothes? Whatever hang ups Simon had ever had, he had none about his body.
“What should we do?” Cade wondered.
“Nothing right now. I’m exhausted, but you can help yourself to whatever’s in the house.”
Simon had rolled over and pulled out a pillow and Cade looked over the body that, he realized, it was now his right to see again. Simon was not forgetting him, Simon was taking him for granted, assuming that now that they were together again there was no need to endlessly entertain or think too much over.
“But,” Simon said into his pillow, “since that snow is falling, I suggest you called Donovan and let him know we’re safe. You know how he worries.”



They lay in the golden room under the golden light, naked and Cade thought the way he had when he’d seen Simon with Don, naked like children. Now he realized he’d been a bit of a fool, he wished he’d allowed Simon and Don the rest of their day. But that was over now. Things were changing now. From now on Simon and Don could have every day. They all could.
The two of them were so different, not Simon and Don but Cade and Simon, Jesus haired and Jesus eyed, dark complexioned, long and hairy, Simon, smooth and compact at a college Freshmen, blond and blue eyed like all American things so that he fairly glowed when the lamp shone on the hills and valleys of his flesh. But they lay, each one leg pulled up, one down, arms spread out, head to head, and the room was filled with the smell of cigarettes though none were burning now.
“Do you know why I always loved it when you fucked me?” Cade said.
Simon turned to him, and his mouth was open, but he said nothing.
“Because… when you were doing it, it was almost like I could feel like I was inside of you. More than when I really was. I felt like I was you, and I could feel your….. everything. Your need, your happiness, the pleasure I was giving you. I always felt like I was turning into you, like when you were coming I was coming. When you were fucking me I was turning into you fucking me. I felt… so much like we were the same thing.”
“We are the same thing,” Simon said.
“I went to a Freemason meeting once and they had a presenter talking about… alchemy I think. And about the above being the below. That’s what we are, the same thing that looks different, the dark, the light, the left the right, the whatever. But we’re the same, and we find ourselves in each other. Only, only we forgot it.”
It seemed Simon was done talking, and then he continued, “And I’m actually no longer interested in going back down the road of what went wrong the first time. We did the work. You know. Now we can have this time.”



“Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me! Oh, God!” he cried out, Oh yes! Oh…. Oh… don’t stop.”



The bed shook under them while Simon kneaded Cade’s shoulders and looking down at him, then throwing his head back, he straddled him. That one light was on, the pile of clothes was still there. All night they would discover each other again. Minutes before, not quite asleep, Cade had put his head between Simon’s legs without demands, just desiring to have him in his mouth. They had turned into an ouroboros, sucking and being sucked at once, Cade had been on his hands and knees while Simon ate him out, not quickly, but lazily, his tongue in and out of him, with a slow pleasure.

When Cade called Don, he called him in the living room.
“We’re home.”
“You sound different.”
Donovan sounded…. Mischievous more than anything.
“I am different.”
“Are you happy? Now? Will we be happy?”

They made little noise while Cade sat on the edge of the bed, deep inside of Simon, Simon’s legs wrapped about him, Simon’s eyes shining while they looked into Cade until it was too much and Cade buried his head in Simon’s chest and Simon, mouth open, looked to the stucco patterned ceiling, closed his eyes, took him in.

“We’re going to be together now, right?” Cade asked Don. “We’re going to be a proper family? Right? Maybe not a…. normal family. But all for one, one for all. We’re going to do this, right? From now on. I’m bringing him back with me tomorrow. It’s going to be so wonderful…”

In the darkness of the room, Cade stopped himself from wailing while he stuffed the pillow in his mouth his nails dug into.
Simon, clutching his shoulders, pounded him.
While the bed thumped under them, they moved in a rhythm. All sensation went into the tip of Simon’s cock and he journeyed deeper into Cade, holding his own breath, gunting at the surprise of his pleasure. and both of them, clutching together in the night, murmured in the perfect rhythm of the fucking…

“Oh….
My…
God...”

“All for one, one for all. We’re going to do this, right? From now on. I’m bringing him back with me tomorrow. It’s going to be so wonderful…”
“Yes,” Don had said as Cade stood naked, holding the phone, “I think it will.”


They had knocked on the door the next day for Don to let them in, and when he saw them they looked not exactly shame faced, buy boyish, a little embarrassed, red cheeked, hair tossled, eyes down. He brought them in one by one, pulling their faces to him to kiss them.
Earlier that morning, as they had dressed, Simon said, “I owe Don a day, so we’re going to take it. I cut off of work, We’ll have dinner for you when you get back from the nursery.”
Cade had accepted this, and Simon had continued shaving in the mirror.

Later that day when they were sitting on opposite ends of the sofa, Simon doing work for the law office, Donovan working on a book, Simon picked up one of his shoes and jabbed Donovan with it.
“I’m sure there was a reason for that.”
“I like us. How we are now.”
“Yeah.”
“Yes. It seems like we weren’t what we were supposed to be.”
Donovan was not a man lacking in imagination, as evidenced by a writing career, nor was he free from jealousy. None of them was, and Simon knew this so he said, “Me and Cade are a terrible couple. The three of us are an excellent trio. I want you to know that.”
“I… why are you telling me this?”
“Cause I know you. You left the two of us in good faith. You love us. You wanted things to happen and they happened. But still, I mean, people have to think. Worry about things. Neither of us left you? Okay?”
“I know that,” Donovan said, defensively. “Of course I know that.”
Simon turned from him and chuckled, straightening his tie.
“Well,” he said, “so long as you do.”

TOMORROW THE BOOK OF BATTLES

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great conclusion to the chapter! It is nice seeing these three finally seeing how well they fit being a thruple. Excellent writing and I look forward to The Book of the Battles tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm sorry it took my so long to get to responses, but it's sort of what happens on the first night back after all the action that's been going on. I'm so glad I got to share this with you.

 

[ChrisGibson]

S E V E N

grace
and
frailty

“Are we weak?“

- Sheridan Klasko



When everything that should have happened finally happened, it was early spring, not long before Easter, and Cade had just returned from Ely where he had been going often to see his father who was recovering from stroke.




He’d had no relationship with his mother for years and was now developing one, and everyone in the family had wondered what had become of their sisters, Deanna when, at last, she had joined them again. Finally, it was time to return to Wallington, and Donovan had insisted Deanna sit in the front with her brother and they go over old times, reconnect while he slept in the back. Toward the end of the journey, as they returned to Wallington, Donovan had said he would stay would Simon and Deanna and Cade could have the night to catch up.



At the end of the first week of Advent, not quite two weeks after the death of the Aunt Adrienne who hadn’t liked him or really known him, but who was the mother of his cousin Donovan, DJ Henley Frey traveled to the beach with Joshua Dwyer.
“What are we doing?” DJ wondered.
“We’re not on a date if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I wasn’t asking,” DJ said, “and that’s kind of high handed of you. Besides, you’re too old for me anyway.”
“Ouch.”
“You just got out of college and I barely started.”
“I’m twenty three, not forty three, and speaking of forty three, if your dad isn’t too old for my brother, then I’m not too old for you.”
DJ dug his hands into his pockets as they climbed up the dune.
“My dad isn’t forty-three.”
“Oh, well—”
“He’s forty five,” DJ said, knowing how ridiculous he sounded, and Josh snorted and shook his head.
There was something bright about winter skies, bluer almost than the summer, and the winter sun was sharp and yellow and it shone on the copper curls of Josh Dwyer as the wind blew them. DJ could hear his father saying, “Don’t be stupid. Put a hat on,” But his vanity had gotten the best of him, which was the same reason for these fingerless gloves or these almost skinny jeans.
He took his hands out of his pockets to climb up the hill and he was faster up the sand and tough weeds than Josh, though he doubted his decision to not wear practical gloves.
“I know,” DJ continued, “that some people say skinny jeans aren’t practical, but these aren’t exactly skinny jeans and they have stretchy stuff in them so they actually are practical.”
“That was random. Do you just always talk about nothing?”
“Yes.”
Josh laughed again and stopped in mid climb, lying against the hill to cackle so he didn’t lose his grip.
“Well, from where I’m looking,” he said, “I don’t know if they’re practical, but they do make a damn fine view.”
DJ, who was aware of his build and knew the purpose of the worn and fitted jeans, who felt bad for those weirdly built verging on fat or all too skinny people who tried to wear clothes not meant for them, also knew that climbing ahead of Josh he was giving him a damn fine view.
He said, “I’ll pretend to be embarrassed and say, aw shucks.”
When they had gotten to the top of the hill, Josh wiped sand off on the knees of his very plain, slightly baggy jeans and commented, “You didn’t say it.”
“Say what?”
“Aw shucks.”
“Oh,” DJ blinked. “You’re right. Well, then, Aw shucks!”
“God, it’s gorgeous up here,” Josh said. “It’s cold, but it’s cold everywhere in Indiana.”
“Not in Evansville.”
“Fuck Evansville. Really, fuck all of southern Indiana. Oh, fuck!”
This was a different kind of fuck as a colony of gulls sailed to land as patches of white on the sand below, and beneath them they saw the immensity of blue water washing up against the sand.
“What does DJ stand for anyway?”
“It stands for Don’t Just Give Your Kids Stupid Names.”
“Ah,” the redhead in glasses said, and then he said, “But what’s DJ stand for?”
“Donatus Jeremiah.”
“You’re right. That really is stupid.”
“Thanks.”
“Strangely Catholic, but like many strangely Catholic things… awful.”
“My mom gave it to me.”
“I’d have a conversation with her about that.”
“She’s a little bit dead.”
“I thought as much.”
To Josh’s credit he didn’t say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Or, that’s so terrible, or what’s that like? He just said what he said. Of course, Josh had seen death. He’d watched four of his best friends killed in front of him and survived a shooter, so things were different for him.
“It is a terrible name, though,” DJ said. “I don’t know if she thought I’d shorten it or what. I mean, I guess she did shorten it.”
“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “But DJ is…”
“Nor grown up?”
“Now who’s being harsh?”
“But that’s what you meant.”
“It is what I meant,” Josh discovered, “only I didn’t know it.”
Josh said, “You could be Don.”
“I already have a cousin Don. It would be confusing.”
Josh was opening his mouth when DJ said, “I like Jeremiah.”
“I don’t know any Jeremiahs,” Josh said. “That could be….”
“Prophetic?”
“I was going to say cool, but prophetic too.”
They watched how the water brought in building wave after wave to wash white on the pale sand, and then pull back again, and DJ said, “Why are we here?”
“Because I like the beach. I thought you did too.”
“But I mean, why are we together? Like… out?”
“Your dad seems to think I’m a good catch. Which would be odd because then if I was with you I would be his son in law and Rob would be my father in law… Or you would be your dad’s brother in law. Not sure how that works.”
“Can it be any weirder than the fact that we had sex on this beach or a beach like it three years ago on a dark night in the middle of summer?”
“Wow!” Josh said.
“Or that we fucked in the same house where Dad and Rob are right now? Or that you and Pat used to come and we’d have orgies at my and Javon’s place?”
Josh said nothing.
DJ said, “Cause I’m tired of saying nothing. I’m tired of pretending like it doesn’t matter or it didn’t happen, and I…. please tell me how we’re supposed to be anything to each other in the present or the future if we keep on conveniently blotting out the past?”
Josh blinked at him and there was a long stretch of almost silence interrupted by the waves crashing and being sucked back into the water, and the cry of the gulls which didn’t care that winter was approaching.
Because DJ didn’t like the silence, he said, “Am I right?”
“You’re…. oh, you’re right.”
“We have never talked about…. Any of it,” DJ continued. “That whole thing. How we met. And it was weird. It was one of those things some people do in the middle of the night and walk away from. Never talk about again. Only we did it more than one midnight. But it was…”
“A midnight relationship.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what my ma used to call it when she saw like, someone dating a one night stand or a girl that was probably a stripper. A midnight relationship. Something that should be left in the night instead of taking it into the bright light of day.”
“Well… yeah,” DJ said.
“Well, what do you want?”
“Haven’t we… Didn’t you say that already?”
“I guess,” Josh shrugged. “But do you want us to leave the beach, or do you want us to stop talking and being civilized. Or do you want us to go back to being a midnight relationship?”
“We were never that,” DJ said. “It took Pat and Javon for that, and you kind of left that business.”
“It got weird for me,” Josh said.
DJ was about to press it, ask another question. But he realized he didn’t know what question to ask.
“The morning after,” Josh began, “you know, that first time, I got up, showered, took my dad to church like I always did. And I kept thinking, this is the world that makes sense. This is the right world. Even if it’s a world that says its wrong to be… you know,.. like us… it’s a daylight world with normal people and right and wrong and I said, I’m going to live in this world. In this normal world. And then we came to the house where Rob and your dad stay. Only you and Javon were there and like, after a while I knew you, and then stuff started and….” Josh sighed. “I think I wanted to be normal again. I didn’t want to be two people, and I didn’t want to be the Josh who was showing up at whatever it was that we were doing.”
DJ’s voice sounded small when he said, “I liked what we were doing.”
He said, “Once you were gone it was Pat and Javon and me on the side, and I could tell I didn’t matter. It’s hard to get just three people doing something. I felt… ”
“Left out.”
“A little. Yes. Left out and wanting something more.”
“Why don’t we talk about stuff like this?” Josh said, sitting down on a boulder. “We don’t we talk about this instead of always keeping it in?”
“Yeah,” DJ said, even though this was exactly what he was doing.
“Have you ever been in love?” Josh asked.
“No,” DJ said. “I’ve wanted it. I do want it. I want more than that. But… Well, I think I love Javon. But it’s not the same. And he’s caught up in Pat.”
“So they really are a thing?”
“They’re a sort of thing,” DJ said. “They have something, and I’m not part of it. So, I guess they’re a thing.”
Josh nodded.
“I haven’t had anyone. You know, I had a crush on… To be honest two of the guys who I was with when they were shot. I didn’t understand it then, but after they died I dreamed about them a lot. Sometimes I wanted to kiss Mike or touch his hand even, wanted it so bad that it hurt when I remembered he was dead. And I always thought, what if I’d done it when he was alive? It would have been impossible, but it was more than impossible now.
“I thought me and Pat were finding something. I don’t know if I’d call it love like falling in love, but we were finding something. And then… Well, and then you all came along and Pat just kind of found this thing with Javon and we’re not really much of anything anymore.”
“Maybe I’m wrong for this, but it doesn’t really seem like you all were that much to begin with. And the truth is, whatever I was with Javon wasn’t something that could have been more. And I need it to be more. I thought I didn’t, but…”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” DJ echoed.
It was as if they’d run out of words, and now DJ sat down and it was good to not talk and then Josh spoke.
“I wanted to be fucked.”
“Huh?”
“Everything I did I wanted,” Josh said. “I can talk all about love and not having it and wanting more, but I wanted to be touched. I wanted to do everything I did. I wanted to suck cock and get fucked. Be abased even. I was afraid of it, afraid of all the feelings, but I wanted it all.”
“I’ve been like that,” DJ said. “My whole life. Just something hungry and thirsty. Just needing it. Even when people I’m with don’t want me or don’t seem to like me. People talk about the search for love but they don’t ever talk about the search for the fucking, The search for—”
“Feeling.”
“Yes.”
DJ was thinking that in a porno, or in much of his real life, this would be the time when he unzipped Josh’s pants and started to give him head on the beach. No one was around but the birds and the waves were blowing, and the more he thought about it the more he wanted to. The truth was DJ usually did what he wanted, there wasn’t much difference between his ego and his id, but this time it seemed wrong. He wasn’t a person who became overly guilty or even sensible guilty about his sexuality, and even when it led him to things he regretted, he didn’t turn away from thinking about them, but to do this to Josh seemed a violation, and to keep still, sitting with him here, seemed like peace. This seemed like one of those few times when Catholic school proverbs were right and it was better to just sit with someone and know them.
“DJ?”
“Yeah,” he said to Josh.
“You wanna drive down to Lafayette and see what’s up?”
Lafayette, where Josh had gone to school, a sort of college sort of party town.
“Yeah,” DJ said. “We should do that.”

Night was approaching when Rob came to the little house and found Frey walking around in circles. He didn’t have a cigarette. He had made the rule long ago to never smoke when he was stressed, or at least to do something else when the stress came and wait for a cigarette until he had calmed down. He did the same thing with liquor. For the most part he didn’t touch any of that, or even bother with sex when he was angry.
“The things of joy,” he once said, “should never become the props of addiction.”
Rob always liked it when he talked that way.
He stood there in his brown police coat, his arms folded over his chest. He had been about to ask Isaiah if he was ready to head back home to Ashby. Now, Isaiah sighed and sat down on the sofa. He lifted his finger.
“Let me get the laptop and some stuff and I’ll be ready,” he said, before Rob had to ask.
“DJ,” he continued in that same voice, “went with Josh to Lafayette.”
“Lafayette?” Rob raised an eyebrow. Then he said, “Well good for them.”
Frey was doing that thing where his face was sullen, but he was trying to keep it from being sullen and no one but someone who had lived with him for three years would have known..
“Rough day?” Rob asked him.
Rob had rough days as an officer, but they involved driving in a hundred mile radius. When he had worked in the convenience store there had been dull days and the occasional irritating customer. It wasn’t until he met Frey that he understood if you did most of your work in front of a computer you could still have a very rough day in your house. Not that Frey stayed in front of that computer for long. For someone who got a lot of writing done, he had a tendency to be all over the place. A lot. He was also good at keeping his irritation to himself except for perhaps wearing it on his all tpo expressive face.
“It was…” he blew out his cheeks. “I don’t really want to go into it now because it’s kind of light. What’s happened with you?”
“We got a call that a man had threatened to kill himself, and we went into his house and he was bathing in a tubful of meat.”
“A bathtub full of meat?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…” Frey took a breath. “That takes a weight off my mind. That’s something I can take a breath for.”
“And then he screamed ‘Get away motherfuckers, I’m Jesus!’ jumped out naked and ran from the bathroom. He punched Klasko in the face and tried to punch me, but slid on the living room floor—”
“Cause he was covered in meat juice.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s really fucking funny and a little goddamn gross.”
Rob cringed, but he laughed.
“Isn’t it?”
Frey had been gathering up his things and turning off lights. They had come up here a couple of nights ago so Rob could get more sleep and see his family, and also because DJ was seeing more of Josh, but right now, especially at this time, Frey wanted to be back in Ashby. This, he reflected, made a better hang out house in summer. In winter he wanted his house, or he wanted that big weird house where Donovan stayed with is two boyfriends. When he looked at Rob he wondered how he could possibly have someone else. But Frey wasn’t his cousin, so there it was.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

A great start to the chapter and great to hear from these characters in particular who we haven’t really caught up with in a while. I think I see the beginnings of a relationship between Josh and DJ. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

There certainly is the beginning of something! And love has eluded DJ for so long. We'll see more of what happens tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“So,” Rob asked when they were on the highway, “What was pissing you off?”
“Government unemployment forms,” Frey said simply.
“I logged on. They changed everything and now there is this site where you have to verify shit before they send the shit to the state to verify it and I was doing it for myself and half of Bennett, and it was not working. Every goddamn time you came to the end of it there was some kink, some fucking number you had to call, something they couldn’t… verify, some form you couldn’t upload. I’ll tell you what. Everyone who’s afraid of the robot takeover must not know how stupid these computers are.
“And then there’s the other thing. As I try to upload something and they say they need a phone number, apparently my current one isn’t good enough, but one I don’t have anymore is, and then I’m asked to upload more shit and I think, It’s a good thing I’m middle class enough to have the stuff I need or to find people who can get me the stuff I need. Like the level of things they ask you do, how many people can really do them without assistance? And I think, this is that shit that’s beyond Republican or Democrat, that’s just part of this… fucked up way we’re doing thing—”
“The technocracy,” Rob said, in his mellow voice.
Frey always tried not to sound like a pinhead and Rob, with little formal education, had no fear of his own pinhead tendencies.
“Over all, across left right, red blue black and white, is a technocracy that doesn’t have reason and frankly is helped along by the fact that at the end of the day we don’t really want to help each other,” Rob said, placidly while he drove the country road.
Isaiah sighed, letting the angry air out of his lungs as he sat lower in the seat. He took out his cigarettes and gave one to Rob first.
“When an old government changes, especially a bad one that doesn’t seem very compassionate, you hope things will be better,” Rob said. “But the truth is if the Right is made of corporate businessmen, the Left is made out of lawyers, and the politicians representing both sides are too high up to understand the people low down. If you watch any inaugural speech, or any speech that comes out of Congress you realize that people can’t do much because they don’t want to break the system, They believe in the system. They’ve drunk the Kool Aid. They can’t even see past the system. That’s why, even though he didn’t give a damn about anyone, so many people voted for President Asshole, and that’s why no one in Congress or the Senate in either party could see him taking over. Anyone with sense could see it from a mile away, but they couldn’t cause they didn’t have the eyes to.”
When Rob talked like this, his coworkers called him, either with respect or half mockingly, Professor. When people who knew him less, like his mother, heard him talking they said, “You should go to college.” When Frey heard him, Frey who loved a man with a mind, he looked at his slightly short boyfriend, driving in his brown trousers and coat with the flat police hat, gun at his hip, chewing on a toothpick he thought what he said:
“I wish you’d break the speed limit now.”
“Can’t do it, and wondering why you’d ask.”
“So you can fuck me as soon as possible.”
Rob turned to him and grinned like a shy little boy.
“You’re bad.”
“You’re hard.”
Rob opened his legs a little and Frey slipped a hand between them. Rob’s eyes clouded and he bit his lower lip.
Suddenly the car revved up and Rob murmured:
“We can speed up a little, I guess.”

Earlier, Rob had sat in a county cop car with his partner, both of them stonily eating Hot Pockets in their exhaustion. Neither one of them felt inclined to do much but keep listening to the radio Sheridan Klasko had rigged to the car that BBC4 was playing on. Apparently this was something Frey listened to all the time, so Rob listened to it all the time, and when he had been partnered with Sheridan Klasko, they listened to it all the time.


“A miner has been rescued from a gold mine in northern China and rushed to hospital for treatment, state broadcaster CCTV said, after being trapped 14 days below ground by an explosion.
“The miner was ‘extremely weak’, according to a post on CCTV’s Weibo microblog site. TV footage showed the exhausted miner, a black blindfold across his eyes, being lifted out of the mine shaft and covered in a blanket before being carried away by rescue workers.
“At least fifteen more days to reach trapped miners, say Chinese officials. Twenty-two workers were trapped in the Hushan mine by the 10 January blast in Qixia, a major gold-producing region under the administration of Yantai in coastal Shandong province.
“Rescuers have been battling difficult conditions to help the workers amid rising waters following the explosion…”

“Um,” Rob murmured,
As he balled up the wrapper of the Hot Pocket, he saw his hands were spattered with meat juice. He tilted the rearview mirror to see that his face was spattered with the red of the bloody meat from the man they had captured earlier that morning. He should have been brought to the hospital, but now he was also guilty of assault of an officer and commitment to a hospital would take a while, so he was sitting in a cell outside of Bennett.

“And now, for the Radio 4 appeal...
“Practical Action is an innovative development group helping people find solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems, such as the devastating effects of climate change. They work with communities in South Asia, Africa and South America to develop lasting and locally owned solutions for agriculture, climate resilience, water and waste management and clean energy.
“Farming in the Himalayas is tough. Climate change makes it even harder. Two thirds of Nepal’s people rely on farming for food and income. But cycles of floods and droughts are destroying their crops. This dramatic change in the weather is destroying farmers’ livelihoods.
“Take Ganga. Her day starts with a two-hour walk to fetch water and firewood. After feeding her children, she works on her farm until nightfall. Climate change means however hard she works, Ganga’s crops often fail. Farmers like Ganga can still adapt and succeed.”

“Fuck,” Sheridan said.
Sheridan Klasko, taller, thinner, sandy haired, and a few years older, but equally pale and tired looking, was eating slower. He had a thin, high cheek boned, hungry face. His left cheek was bruised purple from the man who had punched him on his way out of the bathtub and his pale brown hair stuck up, crusted with blood.

“An ingenious combination of small things can make a big difference. From seeds better suited to changing weather and solar-powered irrigation, to new farming methods and business training. This is an approach that’s already helped farmers elsewhere in Nepal adapt to the changing climate and with your support we will reach even more vulnerable communities like Ganga’s. Donate before 9th March and the UK government will match your donation.”

“Are we weak?” Sheridan asked.
“Huh?” Rob took out a cigarette and handed one to Sheridan.
“Are we weak?”
“You’re not weak. You just took a fucking punch, and you’ve been shot.”
Sheridan flexed his left arm. He could still feel, after all the years, the ache of the wound that had almost killed him and he said, “You don’t have to be tough to be shot.”
“I didn’t mean tough. I meant strong. And you have to be strong to get up and go back to work after that.”
“Fuck you,” Sheridan waved it off and smiled. It wasn’t a smile of pride but a smile of embarrassment. “I should have never told you that shit.”
He lit his cigarette and sat low in the passenger seat, exhaling smoke against the window. When it rolled into his face, he rolled it down and smoke rolled out into the grey winter.
“You know,” Sheridan said, “when it happened I didn’t care, but when I was in the hospital thinking about going to work, then I was terrified. I was jumpy and scared. It took a long time for me to get back to myself, you know. But I went back in. I strapped that gun and vest on and went back to work as soon as I could. Cause I fucking wasn’t going to be afraid. It was better to go out there than to be terrified.”
The two of them had held a lot of silences, and now they held a new one.
“It was selfish to my kid. Selfish to my husband now that I think of it, but there it is.”
His husband. That had not bonded him to Sheridan. Their mutual personalities had bound them. There was a mutual silence Rob and Sheridan could share, a serious desire to be… well, heroes, minor heroes, better men. Rob had never hidden the existence of Frey or any of his personal life. That was tricky at first. He’d been with Frey since he’d come to the police, wondered if he’d have to prove himself. No one much seemed to care. He did good work and, frankly, he was kind of a good old boy. When Sheridan came to them, he’d been a cop in Rossford and Chicago for almost ten years. He was friendly, mild mannered, easy going, kept himself to himself. After Riley left, he’d been partnered with Rob and almost casually, almost, Sheridan had mentioned a son. And a husband. Rob had only said, matter of factly, “I’ve been with my guy almost three years.”
Sheridan had nodded. This was a thing they could just take as ordinary. Good to know. After that it was easy to talk about Frey’s cooking as well as his insistence that Rob stay out of the kitchen and his refusal to drink any whisky but Jameson and how when Rob had brought home something other, he’d sent him driving ten miles to take it back. And Sheridan could drift into waxing profoundly about his Brendan, and all of his skills and talents and how he’d lay down his life for that man, and then come in the next saying, “Well, you know, he’s a bit of nag.”
But here they were, obsessed with the question of weakness, and remembering the woman Ganga’s life.
“You are not weak,” Rob had said. “I don’t know about me. I think if I was really tough I might have gotten my ass up and gone to Chicago or something to be a cop.”
“So you could get shot too?”
“It’s just that sometimes life seems to be really, really… It can really fuck with you.”
“It can make you want to kill yourself.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“But you didn’t say it wasn’t true.”
“No,” Rob agreed. “It’s just…”
“Remember last year when Hanson ate his gun?” Sheridan said. “And no one saw it coming, because we never tell each other what’s going on. And he’s not the first. I think I came here because I got tired of losing brothers. It makes you feel like a fucking failure, like you wish you’d seen something. And yet, that’s what I’m getting at. You don’t see Ganga losing her shit. No. She just gets up and walks two miles to get her water every day. She just deals with her shit every day. And hopes shit will get a little better. Look at her,” Sheridan held up his phone. “She’s beautiful. Life isn’t getting her down.”
“Not in that picture,” Rob said, and waved it away with the tip of his cigarette that needed ashing.
“I dunno, Klasko. I dunno if it’s about being tough. Or strong. We’ve all got our limits.”
“But like sometimes I can barely handle it, and I feel like, why can’t I be a little stronger, a little more grateful. You know? Or sometimes a lot of shit will pile up, and then there will be that one last thing, and it just kind of puts you over the edge.”
“Like that poor guy in the bathtub?”
Sheridan snorted for a moment.
Rob flat out laughed, and then they both sat there and Rob said
“That poor fucker.”
“And that kid who hung himself out in the backyard. In LaPorte.”
“Wasn’t there a Nigerian doctor who did the same?”
“Yeah. Out near Gilson Park. Lived in this huge house. Attended church. Was real big in the community. They say the yard was so big it was a long time before they found him. Maybe he thought no one would find him. The one thing I know after seeing that so many times is its hard to say what goes through you when you do that. When you make that choice.”
“What about,” Rob began, wanting to leave aside the gloom for a moment, unable to stay away from a memory that couldn’t make him keep a straight face, “the man that barked like a dog outside of Wallington.
Now Sheridan snorted and buried his face in his hands, laughing.
“But, fucccccck, Dwyer,” he said, tiredly. “Some days I feel like all of those folks could be me. I feel like we’re all so close to the edge.
“Don’t you?”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion. It was nice to see Sheridan even if it was the best circumstances for him. Excellent writing and I look forward to more of it tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

A little meat juice! Just another day in the life of a country cop.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Was it worth it?” Rob said, grinning at Frey when they both lay on their backs, breathing heavily.
In the half darkness of their room, Frey put his fingers over Rob’s lips, and didn’t answer, turning over contentedly on his side while Rob turned on his and lay close to him.
“We didn’t even make it to the shower,” Frey murmured, laughing.
“You make me break the speed limit, and I’m an officer of the law.”
“No one made you do anything.”
Rob’s teeth grazed him.
“You make me do everything.”
“Are you passionately mad for me?” Frey smiled into the pillow while Rob’s hands ran over his body.
“Yes,” Rob said, kissing his shoulder. “And yes,” Rob said, kissing his arm, “And yes,” he said, kissing him lower. “And yes.”
Frey turned on his back, turned his face to Rob Dwyer.
“It’s a good world, isn’t it?”
Before Rob could say anything, Frey said, “I know it can seem hit or miss. Sometimes it seems like a really shitty world. It’s both at the same time.”
“That’s why I couldn’t have been a priest.”
Isaiah Frey had always loved Rob, from the first moment they were together he loved him, the first moment he saw him in the dim early morning light, he thrilled to run his hands down his milky body, trace his coral nipples, take his hand down his belly to the dark red hair and run a hand over his sex.
“I do not think that that is the reason you didn’t become a priest,”
Rob laughed low and said, “Well, there may have been other reasons, but it’s the way I feel about God. Sometimes I love this world, and sometimes I love him. And then other times I think, Goddamn, what a douche and what a douchy place you’ve made. And fuck all that theology that puts the blame on me and Eve and a fucking apple. But…”
Rob’s voice, which had risen for a moment was tender again.
“Right now,” he said, “Right now,” his hand had been raised, but it fell gently, his fingers moved over Frey’s brown skin, his full legs, his little belly, like someone plaything a sonata, “the world is beautiful and round and… full of God…” Rob’s fingers washed across Frey’s thigh. “Full of grace.”

They washed each other, face to face, scrubbing each other’s bodies, Frey kissing Rob’s eyes, his lips, his cheeks. Guiding him to turn around so he could wash his back.
“Sheridan was thinking of not going home early.”
“He should have left immediately and put something on that eye. Brendan will be furious.”
“Would you be furious at me if I got punched out by a crazy man in a tub of meat?”
“I would be furious if you let a black eye go unattended and spent the rest of your day covered in meat juice. Which you did. At least the latter.”
“Well, now being covered in meat juice was not an excuse to go home early.
“No, but it was an excuse to get to a washroom.”
“I washed it off before we had sex.”
“And I thank you for that,” Frey said, turning around so now he stood under the shower, his head bowed, and Rob washed his back.
“Are we weak?”
“You and me personally?”
“I meant… Us. Modern culture. Americans, I guess.”
“You know, when you got down there I thought you were going to eat me out and now you want to be philosophical.”
“I can be philosophical AND eat you out.
“Yes, but I can’t be philosophical while you eat me out.”
Rob was on his knees now, gently kissing Isaiah, gently squeezing one brown ass cheek, and then the other, playfully biting them, but feeling himself rouse again.
“Should we be deep when we’re out of the shower?” Rob murmured, already kissing, already gently lapping him.
“Fuck!” Frey said. Then, “Yes… Yes…” as the shower water fell on them and both of their eyes closed for pleasure. “Later.”

Robert Dwyer worshiped Isaiah Frey like a god, and though Frey couldn’t understand why, he in the end accepted it, For his love and attention to Rob was much the same. He lay on the bed while, tenderly and expertly Rob poured oil, then lotion into his hands and moved them in circles till it was warm and massaged his shoulder’s, moving down his back, kneading, came to his ass, smoothing it, massaged oil into his thighs do that he sighed. In between sighs, in between gratitudes Frey said:
“I think we are stronger…. Stronger than we know. When things happen we find strength we didn’t know. Some of us. Not all of us. I don’t know about other places, but it seems in this time, in this world, a lot of people have lost something…. Not strength, but goodness. And not… no… that’s not it. Humanity. There are a lot of people who can’t rise to the occasion when things become rough because they have never really risen to any occasion, you know? The thing about people now, the young ones, the old ones too, is there isn’t any experience in being good. Not just there’s no experience in being nice, or not being evil, but being good. You have to really sit down and decide to be good. And… you know what I’ve noticed?”
“What have you noticed?” Rob said, bending back one of Frey’s legs and massaging it, knowing before the night was over Frey would do the same for him.
“Without brains it’s hard to be good. Have you ever, ever met a stupid person who did good in the world?”
Rob thought about it.
“You’ve met people who were nice enough, for a time. But you never met a stupid person who did good on this earth,” Frey said, and Rob screwed his face up trying to contradict it.
“No,” he said. “I kept thinking about uneducated people, or even people with mental problems, or… you know… disabilities. But…”
“Those people of average intelligence or even more than average,” Frey said, “that you look at and think, what a fucking idiot…”
“No.”
“Some of us rise to the occasion and are as good as we can be, and some of us are as strong as we can be, but it’s not all about being strong, or winning. When they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, they sort of forget that a lot of people are going to be killed instead of being stronger. It’s… too much to look at.”
Frey sighed, paradoxically, grateful for the pleasure of this night, forgetting about the troubles of the day past.
“It’s certainly too much to look at right now.”

END OF CHAPTER. TOMORROW THE BOOK OF BATTLES

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great end to the chapter. I like Rob and Frey together, they are a good match. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

yes, who knew that Rob and Frey would work out. I certainly didn't. I was never sure what would happen to them and they do make good sense.

 

[ChrisGibson]

E I G H T

sheloshim





“Because I love you...”

- Simon Barrow



As the rose candle was lit alongside the two white, Donovan Shorter began to read, and then decided to chant, because Latin should always be chanted.

”Gaudete in Domino semper:
iterum dico, gaudete.
Dominus enim prope est”.

Simon had been surprised the first time he’d heard Don sing, which was generally only in prayer. He himself had been shy of singing, embarrassed by his thin voice. The first time he had sung anything with Don he had tried to be a bass, wasn’t good at it, heard Don’s tenor and suddenly felt free. As Donovan Shorter could not imagine Latin being anything but sung, he also couldn’t imagine that ancient Rome hadn’t been a bit like a musical. Was there really ever a time when people just said words like:


“Glória in excélsis Deo,
et in terra pax homínibus bonæ voluntátis.
Laudámus te.
Benedícimus te.
Adorámus te.
Glorificámus te.”

Yes, his mother had informed him drily. Every single Sunday she’d gone to church for half of the Sixties until they’d changed things. This was the kind of woman Adrienne Shorter had been. There wasn’t a bit of fancy in her, or at least, no indulgence for the fancy of others. He tried to remain on the service, but remembered the night she had died, when grief was wet and raw like fresh cement and he looked up at the sky and saw the new moon, and there was Venus in the west and pinkish copper Mars in the east, and the other planets he could not name, and he thought, “Mom hated stars.” And when he called their directions he thought, “And she had no sense of direction.”
If you were traveling down Charles Street and a detour was necessary and you said, turn in for a block, she couldn’t tell that you were just traveling in a parallel direction. She was instantly lost, instantly angry and instantly panicked. Looking back Donovan wonders if this was a sign that her mind was failing. There are so many things that are signs that her body was failing. She was failing, but only a detective could have known, and only God could have seen past the lies she told when you said, “Are you alright? Do you think you should go to a doctor? How is that problem you told me about? That pain, that swelling of legs, that tiredness, that inability to breathe…?”
They had listened to a Gloria every Sunday before looking at notes that said there was no Gloria in Advent. Well, this was Gaudate Sunday. The little altar was hung with a reddish gold banner. Christmas was two weeks away because Advent was long this year. This was three weeks after the ninth night of Adrienne Shorter’s death. That stone, that round and empty weight was beginning to shift. So the Gloria they should not have listened to, that Adrienne had said could be incredibly prosaic and was, like the stars and the planets, nothing very special, they heard again.
Gaudete: Rejoice
Donovan read the antiphon for the day in the English that was over the italicized Latin:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.
Indeed, the Lord is near.”

They read from the Book of Isaiah:

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to them,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendor of our God.
Strengthen the hands that are feeble,
make firm the knees that are weak,

Well now, what in the fuck did that mean?
Donovan Shorter’s entire Catholicism had been wrapped in the question of what the fuck did that mean? Not, did this or that that happen, was Mary a Virgin who gave birth to the Son of God but, so what? Not, did Jesus come out of a tomb in three days, but what of it? And what of this desert and parched land exulting? Had anyone ever known a desert or a parched land to exult? And what of Lebanon? He knew people who had fled from it. Cade’s family had come from there long ago, but he didn’t know that it had much glory to give to anyone or anything. And who was meant to strengthen feeble hands, to make firm the knees of the weak? Was it him? Was that his job? But his own knees were weak and feeble. He had little strength to offer.

“We do not celebrate because all is well, but we celebrate despite. Celebration is resitance, it is an act of prayer. The first commandment is joy. Even grief must make way for joy. “

He had written this after attending Sinai Synagogue with his friend Mitch Abrams for High Holidays, and he had said it when he attended the online service on the second Friday after the death of his mother, the day after Thanksgiving. He knew he believed it, but belief was like an egg or something else round like his grief was round, and he could not always poke its slippery surface, get through the membrane and enter it.
Sometimes he looked at his belief, knew it was there, but could not feel it.
Rejoice in the Lord, always, again….
It wasn’t surprising or remarkable that all his thoughts turned back to his mother who now he referred to as “You.” What slow days these were. Could all of the things that had happened have only happened in a month? Could this not even be the end of the month? No, that would occur later in this week. Love, color, joy, desire, all the things that he thought would not come back did come back and they came back quickly. The lack of control, the tears that sprang up, the overwhelming emotions, the nights where he slept with the light on ended.
Even when he had first had sex with Cade and then alter, Simon, when intimacy and desire were restored, there were still nights when he climbed out of the bed that the two or three of them shared and went downstairs to sleep in the bright and spacious light of the Christmas tree, the low lit lamp and PBS kids, twenty four hours of children’s entertainment filled with Big Bird, Arthur, Nature Cat and Martha the talking yellow dog to shepherd him through his nights.
Since Adrienne had died, her husband, mindshot, had taken to driving again. For several days he knew he couldn’t get behind the wheel of a car, but when Adrienne’s friend Becca couldn’t take him to the store, in a fit of pique he began to search for his independence anyway he could. First it began by demanding neighbors take him to the bank where he could get money, and because he could not find his checkbook and then did not know how to write a check once he’d found it, and then did not know how to follow his balance or read a bank statement, he just began withdrawing money with his ID and writing cashier’s checks. When he decided it was time to drive, though he no longer knew how, he ordered more keys because Donovan had stolen the ones that were there. He got into three accidents and two police departments sought him, When he gave up driving he went into taxi cabs.
On his reduced finances he ordered ten dollar there and ten dollar back cabs to keep him in cigarettes and Scotch, and then, remembering he needed food, the same cabs to go down the street to the grocery store. Looking over the bank statements, once, twice, several times, he cancelled everything in automatic bill pay, everything paperless, and taxi cabbed himself to the grocery store to sign only cashiers checks paying the same bill over and over again.
He called often. Donovan had learned to shut off the phone when necessary.
“I thought you might be asleep, so I called to tell you it was snowing.”
“You thought… I was resting. So you interrupted it to tell me it was snowing.”
“Yes, I didn’t want you to be surprised.”
Donovan looked out at a sky grey, but clear.
“Thank you for that.”
He had called adult services and real services and the kind women at both had been turned away as had been all of his attempts to look over bills or offer to be power of attorney, and as had all the searches for carers to come into the house.
Melanie, Frey’s best friend, said, “You have to throw up your hands and be a little cruel this time. The only way any intervention will happen is if he’s hospitalized. You just have to wait.”
Even in the first fresh days of his mother’s death, it had not simply been the sadness of her going, it had been this business of what to do with Eric. Day by day, hanging over Donovan’s head was the moment when he ran out of money, when the lights in the house went out, the water was gone, when he went wandering, or was hospitalized. Worry was at the seed of that smooth, hard grief, and now and then it rolled into an impossible sorrow. It could be, now and again, almost too much to be borne, too heavy, and yet, he was surprised. He could bear it.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion. Donovan is really going through it with Eric. This felt like a very in depth portion with some excellent writing. I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, but thanks for reading.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“When my mother died,” Donovan remembered his mother telling him, “I was coming to the hospital, and as I came onto the floor the doctor told me, and I just crumpled… to… my knees.”
Donovan had resisted the urge to say, “Melodramatic much?”
When his stepfather had had his stroke, Adrienne Shorter had screamed and wailed in the hospital, her face wet and eyes wide open with a private and, Donovan judged, selfish grief believing at once that he had to be mourning just as much and that no one could mourn as much as she did for one who was not even dead. When they came to the hospital a few days later, but he had brain bleeding and had to be rushed into surgery, she wept and raged and wailed and was a general irritation. Good wife like, all the time he sat unconscious she stayed in the hospital, watching him, and then, when he had awakened, and it was time for him to do the long weeks of therapy, she had promptly gotten up and gone back to work. As Advent wound to Christmas, when Donovan sat down to reflect on his mother, the one word that often came to mind, and surprised him a great deal was worrisome.
He and Cade went walking along the river while the sky was grey and the wind chilly. They crossed Michigan Street and traveled to where Marion dipped low toward the water and then became Riverside Drive. The geese did not mind the cold and sat in the grey green river that drought had not allowed to fill all the way. Ducks were on the tiny stone islands. Don remembers the day before he heard his mother was about to die, he went to the little oak tree island and saw a blurry picture posted of a missing man, and the day after she died he heard sirens wailing below this very spot where he and Cade walked, bobbing in the water, people had found that man, aged thirty two, tattooed and shock mouthed. If he had simply fallen into the water, or if he had invited himself to death, who could say?
“Are we going up to Ely this weekend to see your father?” Donovan asked.
“We could,” Cade looked down at him. He wasn’t wearing a hat, his dark Jesus hair was half over his face from the wind.
“You should and because you should I should too,” Donovan said.
He said, “I think you think you cannot talk about your father just because my mother is dead.”
“He isn’t well.”
“I know. Even though you don’t tell me.”
“I don’t want to trouble you with my shit.”
Cade’s foot gentle pushed a stick over the dry grey grass.
“Your shit is my shit,” Donovan said. “We don’t sleep in the same bed and live in the same house to have distinct shit from each other.”
“Can I admit that I’m scared?”
“Sure.”
“I mean, the moment your mom… passed.”
“Died. I’m resolved to say die and death until the first month is over. After that we can move into euphemism.”
“Died,” Cade said. “After that I started thinking. And being afraid.”
He shook his head.
“I was always afraid, though.”
“So was I. I realized part of me was worried she would die. And then she did, and for one brief moment it was as if all terror was lifted. This was the worst thing I could have imagined. And it had happened. So nothing else could happen, and I felt strong and courageous. It didn’t last. Almost instantly I began to realize how many other things could happen. How many people I loved. Goldfish, dogs, acquaintances and grandparents you knew were destined to go. This is the first real death. It will not be the last.”
“Where do they go?” Cade wondered, jamming his hands deep into his pockets, the breeze picking up the scarf wrapped around his neck. “Where the fuck does everybody go? We say to heaven or to hell, but that can’t by true. I mean, what’s that mean? If it’s a Christian heaven what about all the people who don’t give a shit about Jesus? If it’s a heaven heaven with God, what about people who don’t want anything to do with God? If it’s a place of goodness, how many really good people do you know? We don’t know anything. Not really.”

The river walks were theirs. They always had been. All three of them had things together and Cade and Simon had things together and Donovan and Simon had things together, but the walking by the river belonged to the two of them. The beach belonged to all of them, or maybe this was how Don thought of it because the beach belonged to him and it was special to his relationships with both Cade and Simon. It was after the trip to Sawyer that Donovan and Simon had gone back to the hotel room and renewed their relationship.
It was leaving New Union that Donovan and Cade had made love while the last of the summer rains poured, and in the aftermath of this concluded that it was time to stop fooling around and begin their lives together. The beach, Donovan remembered how that very trip was one that had been originally for Simon and Cade. But this river, the twisting green brown Shagwa that traveled to Lake Michigan, whose length tangled with other rivers and could flow all the way to the Maumee in Ohio where he had lived for a time, was theirs.
And Cade’s was the strange religion of the water. Don shared it, but Cade was the high priest. Cade brought his wildness into Don’s services, and brought it even this advent, putting jars of water and the last winter blossoms on the altar. But over the water Cade was high priest. He was the high priest of all the magic in this land. The old religion had no answers for him. It had failed him or he failed it. Don walked the river with him because Don knew that they could only talk of important things, if you will, holy things. The high trees were like church pillars and the strip of park attended by geese and ducks, groundhogs, squirrels, stray cats and contemplative dogs fleeing their families for moments of peace, was church. Lake Michigan was the place of pilgrimage, the Great Mother, the Lady of the Lake who was the Lake. But the river, all the rivers and streams that led to her were her water ways and her arms, her little chapels of minor visitation.
Cade saw the mermaids. He had seen them too. The moment had not been mystical and magical and at the time Cade had not seemed magical or otherworldly either.
“That is because,” Cade had informed him, “you yourself are magical.”
He did not doubt Cade’s seeing the mermaids, or his own seeing the one. He had only been shocked by her coloring, brown like a trout. It was, in some ways, like that week after Adrienne’s death where he kept testing if he believed she gone, and discovering he did believe it because he was living in it’s wake. He had seen several things, but he had not seen another mermaid. This is why he was not surprised when Cade said, “I’ve been looking for a ley line.”
“I read they have them in southern Indiana,” Don said, plainly, “though I can’t imagine they’re only there.”
“A ley line, a corpse road, a path of the dead or a fairy way,” Cade said. “I would like to find one. I used to think I wanted to find one so I could see the dead, stop and speak to one on some special night, Halloween or what have you. Stop them, say, excuse me, where the fuck are you going? Can I come with? I don’t know. Maybe I would, but that is not why I want to do it now.”
Donovan waited for Cade to speak rather than ask him.
“I want to stand in the power and feel it. Feel the magic of the earth. I want to feel everything I can. Participate in everything I can. Be a part of all that opens up to me. I don’t want to leave this life knowing I didn’t live it, didn’t experience everything that I could. You know?”


DUE TO TRAVEL WHAT WILL BE POSTED WHEN IS UNCERTAIN, BUT SOMETHING WILL PROBABLY SHOW UP TOMORROW NIGHT. CHEERS!

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Very personal and beautifully written. I look forward to more when you get the chance to post. No rush!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Thank you for that and as always thank you for reading it always means a lot

 

[ChrisGibson]

When Cade had suggested the big brick house on 812 Pine Street, Donovan had doubted it. Doubted it existence? Doubted the wide brick double sided porch with a staircase on both ends leading to the two doors of what had once been a duplex? Doubted the great bay window between the doors that now revealed an enormous living room and was joined by an equally large great room and bay window on the second floor? Well, yes, he doubted it. Doubted the size of it, the cheap price of it, the ability to actually renovate it, doubted that this could pay off, doubted even that they would be together long enough to finish making the house habitable.
But the house, much like their relationship, had good bones, and was touched by the energy of Cade Richards, a mixture of intense passion and patient love. Donovan loved the impossible length of it, the indication of something that had once been a mansion or almost like a mansion that had become a duplex and then four apartments and then gone back, inelegantly, through all of these incarnations. In his own incarnation Cade Richards had spent several summers on his knees and on his back as a plumber and was no stranger to electric, though he had brought his brother Fred in to help with that. Donovan was a cooker, of course, and scrubber, an excellent cleaner upper. Donovan could wax a floor and hang a blind. He made a fixed house look like a home. Their mutual hatred of mice came together to take care of that problem quickly.
The third floor was the attic, and it deserved to be called a floor. The mansard roof with its grey tiles was gabled and from over Pine Street, its large triple windows looked out of the wood clapboard gable with its flaking white paint, the one part of the house that revealed from the outside that there was still more to be done. Donovan wanted that third floor. Strung with lights and fixed with heaters, set with mousetraps and all mouse holes closed, he made it his own.
He rejoiced in the wideness of that window and the view, for there was no high house on the other side of Pine Street and he looked out into the blue blackness of the night and the low net of tree tops beyond. Snow, delicate as dandelion fluff was falling, and from the floor below, through the open doors and wide halls, he heard the sounds of catching breath and striving. This had been the time of death, but it was the time of joy and the gate of life as well. His journal was open and his legal pad lay yellow in the light but, being a practical person, it was the computer where he typed.


“Ah! Ahhhh! Oh, my God! Yes!”
It was Simon, Donovan knew the pitch of his voice.
“Oh my God! Oh my God, oh my God!” he almost growled though his voice was a ghostly cry, a haunting of sex.
“Oh my God, you feel so good…”


The beginning of things never holds an answer,
and then old men stood on temples and old women
sat in front of smoke,
shooting prophecies,
these are only upside down memories,
there is no answer in the beginning, in this
half startled waking,
and sunlight on the first real day.


“Fuck me Fuck fuck me fuck me fuck me. Fuck me. Cade! Fuck me!”
If this was another night, or if they did not live together, if he had not seen it before, if he had not touched poetry, if he was not sure that the three of them survived so well because some times were times for voyeurism, some times were times for sharing and some times were times for privacy and you had to know which ones, he would go down there. He would press his hands to the wall and feel the sensation of the bed hitting it, listen to the strain of the large old bed, when he would hear Simon crying out, demanding to be fucked, his oh gods would match the rhythm of Cade. They loved him, so he wasn’t jealous. He loved both of them, so he wasn’t troubled. And seeing them he could see what he never saw when he was with them.
“Fuucccck Yes! Yes! Oh, God!”
He didn’t write past his erection or ignoring it, but he wrote into the hardness. At another time he would go down and wind around the hall to the always open door and watch the length of Cade’s legs with the hair all down them, his hairy ass round and firm, flexing and unflexing as he pressed himself into Simon. He would watch Simon’s ivory thighs and arms wrapped about Cade’s long back, his white hands pressed like claws to his shoulders. Or he would watch Cade shuttling up and down as he held Simon under him, tight, and the bed creaked furiously. He would watch each of his loves as he could not watch them when they were loving him. But now he did not watch only, remembered, only traveled by the magic of his throbbing cock.


This morning is the time of cigarettes and coffee and sunlight
and the royalty of the bathroom,
This is the morning of the new language, and not the old
nostalgia,
and not writing of all the things we’ve written
a thousand times before.
There was a time when you had to say everything.
Now you only have to say enough.

And now all saints day is upon us, an unorgasmic o,
a virgin bubble between
all hallows eve and all souls, reserved for people pure
in their sterility,
saints in their hostility who could not love life,
give me the red of the leaf rather than the gold of heaven
make all these days the fine time of souls.

He couldn’t hear Cade. Once he’d lain against the wall and heard him whispering, “Do you like my cock? Do you like my cock inside of you? Do you like how I fuck you.”
Now he heard Simon, pleading, his voice high like it never was in the rest of his together life crying, “I love how you fuck me. Come inside of me. Come inside of me. Come in me.”
Donovan was done writing. He was in a cock trance now. He heard a stifled sound, a groan that he knew was Cade coming, and he sighed with it, feeling some release at his partners release,

HOPE YOU ENJOYED..... MORE SOON