Elegy

[CharmedFan28]

I did enjoy this portion! Some hot writing and I am still enjoying this story. I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It was plenty steamy, wasn't it?

 

[ChrisGibson]

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,

He wanted this solitude of writing late at night in this high and private place. In the afterglow of sex not his own he sat at the great desk and half drowsed half meditated over the night below. He barely heard the tapping of feet, the arms around him, the smell that was mint and wheat bread and honey, shampoo that was even a bit of Cade, that was Simon behind his chair, arms pressing his cheek to the back of Donovan’s head, wrapping his arms around him.
“Come to bed,” he said, insistently. “Come to bed.”
He almost sang it. He could feel Simon’s bare arms, knew he was shirtless, but in the thin mesh pajama pants that fit snugly to him and were only a little opaque.
“Hit the save button,” he whisper sang, “turn out the light and come… to bed…”
Sometimes it was good to be commanded, essential to be wanted. How had he lived alone for so long? And he would have been contented to remain alone tonight, but this contented him too. He followed Simon’s orders. He saved. He put the computer to sleep. He turned out the lights. They moved to the sofa, let out the already made bed. Simon shut off the last of the lights except for the silver bucket incised with stars which shone stars all over the angles of the attic. Simon drew him under the blanket and they slept. In the middle of the night the howling wind beat more of a welcome than a threat and Donovan woke up to look at Simon’s snoring back, but turned to feel Cade, half dozing, eyes half closed, his fingers pressing Don’s hips.
It would have made more sense, been more space, to go back downstairs to the great bed and the large bedroom, but sometimes sense had nothing to do with anything. Pressing himself to Simon, he drew Cade to press his long body into him, and spooning, they slept against the cool of the night.

He and Freddy had been in a long discussion in the middle of summer when things had seemed very different, a whole other world. It was, Cade remarked, after the Solstice when there was the promise of days becoming shorter and the world eventually going into a cold emptiness. This year, with the Plague, with Don’s mother always ending up in the emergency room, with the schools closing and fewer kids and moving the daycare into the half empty building across Navarre, the decreasing day, the coming of the cold didn’t seem so hard to believe. There were times when the world seemed to be holding its breath, but this late summer the world seemed to have no breath.
And Ely, Michigan seemed deader than ever. Cade Richards sat across from his brother and watched Freddy tracing circles with his index finger on the glass table of Ely’s one outdoor café. Why was Ely like this? They could have put up a hotel, some restaurants, a few nice shops. They could have been a beach town instead of a town by a beach.
“I just don’t want to die here. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Ely, in that house, watching Dad. I…” Freddy threw up his hands, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Ely!”
“No, no. You need to do what you need to do.”
“I don’t even know if this is going to work out,” Freddy had said.
“All you can do is see what happens,” Cade said.
Suddenly Freddy said, “What if it all falls apart? What if I fall on my face?”
“Then you can come back here. Or you can be with Mom. Or, if you can stand it, you can even be with me.”
Fred Richards had been steady seeing Brooke Miller for the last three years and she had gone to a new job in Florida with his blessing. Freddy and been flying out of South Bend on cheap tickets to visit her every month and then every other weekend and now the itch was too strong and he was preparing to move away.
“I’ve saved up a lot of money,” he said. “I mean, I don’t pay rent and I don’t really do anything, so money’s there, and I can kind of be unemployed for a while.”
And so Freddy had left along with the summer, and though no one had said anything, from across town, Cade’s mother worried about her ex husband, and Cade worried from Wallington. Deanna came home for a few weeks and she and her mother got into a fight.
“You think,” Linda Richard’s daughter said, “because you’ve seen so many fucking Victorian movies, that for some reason your two sons and you included are going to do what the fuck you want to do, but that I’m going to stay here like some spinster and be a caretaker?”
“It’s just, you drift, you know? Your brothers have… fixed lives.”
Deanna wasn’t going to malign Cade, but Fred was fair game.
“He ran off to Florida to live off his girlfriend.”
“But, he’s trying to make a life and you…”
“Keep talking,” Deanna said, “and we really will have a fight.”
Deanna visited her ailing father, but she made it a point to not stay the night, and later she had told Cade it was a shame because she would have liked to stay the night. She didn’t want people getting the wrong idea, thinking that one night would make two because one single woman over thirty made a spinster, and Cade did not blame her.
“What the fuck does the word spinster even mean?” Deanna had demanded. “I mean, where does it come from?”
“From when single women, not having husbands, employed themselves by spinning wool,” Simon said without missing a beat.
“Well, fuck,” Deanna said.
“Is that true?” Donovan later asked.
“I don’t know,” Simon had told him, “but whenever Deanna is around I feel compelled to have something to say.”

“What I don’t understand,” Deanna had said, “is why Mom thinks it makes perfect sense for me to be Dad’s caretaker, but no one thinks it makes sense for him to move into a home.”
“I think it’s cause Mom loves that house,” Cade tried to justify the mother he was coming to have a relationship with. “That’s why she thinks it might be good for you to live in it. It’s sort of your inheritance.”
“It’s your inheritance,” Deanna said, losing patience with her younger brother. “You love that house. You can move into it and care of Dad.”
Cade was done with that discussion.
This is why Thanksgiving had mattered so much. He wanted to spend a few days at the house, seee how his father was getting on. His memory had become worse, not better. He still had problems remembering things from day to day and an inability to make decisions.
“Fred went to the store, and he’ll be back in a bit,” Cade remembered his dad saying all Thanksgiving. He had wanted to leap up, correct him, remind him that Fred was in Florida and not coming home for Thanksgiving. The brother Cade didn’t know as well as he wished—and that was his fault—whom he had been coming to know a little bit better, he now resented. He resented him running off, not just to Chicago or Lansing or Detroit, but to fucking Florida, and not coming home for the holiday, just saying it would be too much. And of course, Cade knew, after twenty seven or so years living with Dad and the last year or so nursing him, it was. He knew that Fred deserved his new life, that it took a lot of courage and a lot of strength of will for Fred to decide, this year, to live his life. But goddamn.
This was also why Cade had left Don and brought Simon with him, to get a good look at his dad, otherwise they would have stayed in Wallington. Don had sent them away.
“I cannot sit with other peoples families, other peoples’ mothers right now,” he had said, truthfully. “But you need to go up there.”
They stayed in the old house with his Dad, and Cade was glad to get things for him, glad to make sure he ate and glad to clean up messes.
“Where’s Don?” his father asked.
“He stayed back. He’s not feeling himself. His mom just passed.”
“Oh,” Stan Richards looked truly shaken, stared into nothing for a bit, “Oh, that is so terrible. I remember when your grandmother died. She died sitting right next to me. I was holding her hand. I was holding her hand. It felt alive, alive but cold. And then it felt like nothing. I was holding her hand. I was holding her hand.”
“This is Simon,” Cade said, as much to introduce his lover as to get his father’s mind off of a minor loop.
“Hello,” Stan said, still looking tragic. “Do you know Don?”
“Yes,” Simon said, realizing that even if Stan were at the absolute top of his form it might take some doing to explain to a sixty year old man the nature of their relationship.
“I know Don very well.”
“Poor Don,” Stan said. “Did you know his mother just passed?”
“I did, sir,” Simon said, his hand still being shaken by Stan Richard’s.
“Yes,” Stan said. “I was with my mother when she died. She died sitting right next to me. I was holding her hand. I was holding her hand.”
Simon did not have the necessary roughness of one of Stan’s family or even Donovan, and he was not able to quickly loosen himself from Stan’s grip. It took Cade cutting in and urging Stan to let them into the house for them to get off the November cold porch.
That Thursday night when Linda and Deanna had come over, and they’d had the turkey in a very low key dinner and watched television hearing about how there were so many dead of the Plague that the morgues in hospitals and mortuaries were filled past capacity, they put Stan to bed and did the last of the little clean ups in the house before walking upstairs.
“Is it alright for us to share a bedroom?” Simon asked Cade.
Cade looked at him like he was stupid.
“Because… You know…”
Cade didn’t want to say anything disrespectful about his father, and he didn’t want to say anything rude to Simon, so he just said, “Come to bed, alright?”
And there had been plenty of cleaning to do. Linda and Stan had not had a good marriage, and she had no plans of pretending to be a wife no matter what. The truth is, even before Stan’s stroke, the house was sort of a cinder, and it was moreso now. That first time when Fred had rushed to Wallington to tell Cade that their father was ill, Cade had stayed in the house, stranded with no vehicle and no proper cleaning materials, scrubbing and picking up and putting down, eventually throwing away. When he returned to a house with no Freddy he came to a place where all the work was undone by someone who, even prior to a stroke, took out things without ever putting away. The old bungalow looked like a warehouse, and the only cleaning victory Cade seemed to have won was that his bedroom, which he had spent days making habitable again, was untouched. The piles of clothes and virtual trash were gone, never to return. Instead what was present in the roll top desk and the old artist lamp stretched on its hinges, was his pristine childhood.
“It’s great that we’re here now,” Cade said as he and Simon lay in the dark, “but what about when we leave?”

MORE AFTER THE WEEKEND

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! Life is complicated and sometimes sad. Great writing and I look forward to more after the weekend! I hope you have a good one!

 

[ChrisGibson]

You're right. Life is complicated and sometimes sad. And sometimes overwhelmingly sad, and sometimes just flat out irritating.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Mom’s sheloshim ends on Wednesday,” Donovan said, “and when it’s over we will all go up to Ely.”
Sheloshim was the first month of mourning before the rest of the year, Aveilut, happened. Aveilut consisted of twelve Jewish months, not twelve ordinary months, but as Donovan said, “I’m not really Jewish and I think that’s really stupid. She died on the 18th of November and that’s when I’m going to always think of it, so that’s when I will celebrate her yartzeit.”
“But if you wanted to do it on the Jewish date.” Simon said, running his fingers over his phone, “It would be the Second of Kislev.”
Donovan opened his mouth to murmur something, but said, out loud, “How the fuck do you even know that?”
Simon shook the phone and Donovan said, “But why do you know that?”
“Because I love you and I assumed you might want to actually know that sooner or later.”
“Thank you, Simon,” Donovan said, touching his hand.
Cade looked between the two of them, and Donovan seemed to be thinking of something else. Cade looked to Simon and Simon looked at Don, and suddenly Simon’s fingers moved across his phone.
Don opened his mouth but before he could speak, Simon said, “November 5th.”
Don nodded and Cade blinked.
“Which would be a Saturday and a Sabbath, so there’s no reason for you to not just wait to the actually November 18th.”
“But sheloshim is tomorrow,” Donovan said. “And the day after we will go to Ely. Life is for the living.”


Here is the sound of water splashing in the metal sink. Here is an almost ordinary day where there is no snow outside, and the sun shines on the grey green grass. In the kitchen on the first level of the great long house of faded bricks on Pine Street, Melanie has arrived, and Isaiah Frey has come. Simon has taken off work and Cademon Richards never went. Donovan washes his hands and then fills the old rose colored jar with water, and pouring water over his hands he recites, with not a little bit of self consciousness.

“Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Haolam, asher kidshna bamitz votav vitzivanu el nitilate yadayim.”

Blessed are you, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us through your commandments and has commanded us concerning the washing of hands.”

He dries his hands in the large kitchen, and lights the tall white seven day candle, devoid of saints, pure white wax in glass. In the kitchen lit with pale light and characterized by anemic shadow, the flame from the Bic lighter is strong and yellow and quavering, clinging to the wick. Like life? Donovan wonders. Is this life, strong, bright, burning clinging, but so fragile it can be blown out just like… just like this. He thinks of puffing on it, but no, The ritual had already begun. The end has begun.
“We light this candle in memory of Adrienne Shorter, for whom we have been in sheloshim. May we be inspired to deeds of lovingkindness in her memory.
Not: In honor of my mother. Because the death was not personal. I thought it was my death, perhaps even a slight to me, the death of my mother. But it was her death. She was is outside of me. She always was. This does not begin and end with me. I feel it greatly, but she is not me.
He had cribbed the ritual from online and is not sure of its ancientness. There are some parts which seem pretty new agey. Judaism was difficult, not like Catholicism which was demanding, but could be learned, wanted to be learned, had translated itself and explained itself, had planned on being a worldwide church. In Judaism you were always trying to find the words and the meaning, then a translation of the meaning and a transliteration of the meaning. Donovan has placed rosemary in the water he washes his hands in because so said the ritual he had found.
“We wash our hands before embarking on a sacred act so that we may recognize the separation of the ordinary from the holy. Rosemary is the herb of remembrance, and we have put it into our water. So we begin our transition from sheloshim by recognizing the holiness in which we have been engaged—we have followed the commandment to observe the laws of mourning. This ritual is another kind of sacred time in which we begin this transition from intense mourning to beginning our lives anew.”
He had thought maybe Isaiah would read the ritual with, but it was his cousin who said the ritual was chiefly for him and ought to be conducted by him.
“You are ten times better than most of the people I’ve seen lose someone,” Isaiah said, “and that’s because you handled the funeral, you spoke Adrienne’s name and said she was dead. You prayed Kaddish everyday, and now you will lead this service.”
Don took the ewer of water and poured it over his hands, washing them again and then held it to Isaiah who did the same and took the ewer from him. The others followed in silence.
“We who are worn out and crushed by this mourning, let our hearts consider this: this is the path that has existed from the time of creation and will exist forever. Many before us have drunk from the cup of sorrow and many will yet drink. May the One who comforts bring comfort to us. Blessed is the One who comforts mourners.”
Cade took out the little wooden box and to illustrate what came next, he was the first one to put money in it, a five dollar bill. Melanie was next, then Simon. The bills crumpled in the box. DJ and Javon took what they had. They wanted to support their cousin and their, father, their uncle. This was the Tzedakah box, the charity box for money offered in the name of one who had passed. Rob was at work. That couldn’t be helped, and Isaiah had no plans of asking him to take off for this simple ceremony. It was Isaiah who prayed:

“Yehi ratzon milfanekha Adonai Eloheynu v’Elohey Avoteynu v’Imoteynu, sheh-yitzror b’tzror zikaron olami b’shem tzedakah zo et shem v’zikaron shelAdrienne.

“May this tzedakah, this act of justice done in memory of Adrienne Shorter, save her from the death of forgetfulness, and keep her safe in the eternity of memory.”
Donovan had said he would have a memorial service for everyone in the spring. He realized now that this wasn’t true. This was it. He was done. He didn’t want to do this again. That was an idea for her friends, the other people who had known her, sort of, that he did not. He didn’t care about his mother’s friends. He didn’t like them, didn’t want to stand in the same space as them and throw a party for their benefit. This was the closest thing to a funeral Adrienne Shorter was going to have. Done quickly, and dignified, and if she’d wanted something more she should have had insurance, real friends, other children and some planning. No, this was it. And while he was thinking this was it, suddenly Simon Barrow lifted his voice and began to pronounce, his voice throbbing.

“I lift my eyes to the hills—from where
will my help come?
My help will come from the Holy One
Maker of heaven and earth.
The Compassionate One will not let your foot falter;
your guardian does not slumber.
Indeed, the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.
The Holy One is your guardian,
your protective shade at your right hand.
The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Holy One will guard you from all evil
and will guard your soul.
The Compassionate One will guard your going
and your coming from now for all time.”


Donovan was out of tears, but Simon’s face was streaming with them. He was always a surprise like that, was his Simon. But no one looked embarrassed, not even Simon, and Cade wiped the back of his hand across his face.
There were other parts to the service, But Donovan thought them too much, too long. Ritual made things not only bearable but better. He had no tears, but he was full of some strange emotion that could only be gotten at by ending things properly and so he chanted:



“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di v’ra chir’utei;
v’yamlich malchutei b’hayeichon u-v’yomeichon,
uv’hayei d’chol beit yisrael, ba-agala u-vi-z’man kariv,
v’imru amen.
Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam u-l’almei almaya.
Yitbarach v’yishtabah, v’yitpa’ar v’yitromam,
v’yitnasei v’yit-hadar, v’yit’aleh v’yit’halal sh’mei d’kudsha,
b’rich hu,
l’ela min kol birchata v’shirata, tushb’hata v’nehemata,
da-amiran b’alma, v’I mru amen.
Y’hei sh’lama raba min sh’maya, v’hayim,
aleinu v’al koi yisrael, v’imru amen.
Oseh shalom bi-m’romav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu
v’al kol yisrael, v’imru amen.”

The Mourners’ Kaddish was not about mourning, it was an extension of the constant blessing prayed throughout the Jewish day, a prayer for the fulfilling of all things and the coming of the Kingdom of God, the blessing and sanctification of God’s name. It, Donovan imagined, twined sorrow with blessing, twined a voice silenced forever with a voice praising, one who could no longer work on the earth with the desire to still do good on it. While he still pondered, Isaiah, who agreed to take up the close of the ceremony, concluded:

“May the Holy One bless you and keep you
May the face of the Holy One shine upon you
and be gracious unto you
May the Holy One give you peace “


And all said,
“Amen.”


END OF CHAPTER EIGHT: TOMORROW, BITS AND PIECES

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great and very touching portion. I think it’s good that Donovan is doing so much to remember his Mum but I am also glad that he is in a way starting to move on. An excellent end to the chapter and I look forward to Bits and Pieces tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you have enjoyed reading this. With Don (and with me as well) the whole thing was he did what was prescribed, so he did the lot required in the first month and then began to move on when it was time. There is something liberating about moving by tradition and not being dependent on feelings, which are very undependable at a time like this.

 

[ChrisGibson]

ON A TRIP TO LAFAYETTE, JOSH AND DJ FACE SOME HARD TRUTHS AND COME TO A RESOLUTION




N I N E

After the
moment














“I’m saying you’re fucked up and I’m fucked up, and I like you.”

- Joshua Dwyer
































“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Then go.”
“I don’t want to be seen.”
Laughter.
“It’s five in the morning. You’re not going to be seen, and if you are, so what? You’re a friend staying over.”
DJ Frey let out a deep breath. In boxer shorts—he wished he’d brought pajama bottoms and a tee shirt—he went through the blackened room into the grey of the hall way and stumbled directly into a man around sixty with a vague look on his face that could betoken either senility or early morning.
“Hello!” said Jack Dwyer, “you must be Josh’s friend.”
“Yes,” DJ said without missing a beat, and smiling as politely as he could while, from behind the door he heard Josh Dwyer laughing.
“I’m… Jeremiah.”
“Jeremiah,” Mr. Dwyer took his hand and shook it. “Good to meet you.”
Mr. Dwyer shook DJ’s hand for some time until DJ remembered that Josh said he did this unless you took your hand away, and so DJ did, and said, feeling the increased sting in his bladder, “Sir, could you point me to your restroom.”
Mr. Dwyer seemed slightly confused by this, and DJ was sorry he asked, for now his eyes had adjusted and he saw the bathroom but he was too polite to say anything until Josh’s father found it, and then he padded quickly toward it and shut himself in, locking the door. He always hated using the bathroom in other peoples’ homes because he was never sure if the door was locked or not. But at least the bathroom was small where his knee bumped the door as he sat down and he thought, if someone were to come in, he’d have time to say something, shut the door again with his knee. This wasn’t one of those theatre sized bathrooms where you’d have to run five feet with your underwear around your ankles if someone was trying to get in.
When DJ returned to the safety of the bedroom, stripped off his clothes and climbed under the covers with Josh, he said, “You are a piece of shit.”
Josh just chucked and turned his back.
“Like, you could have stuck your head out the door first and told me the hall was clear.”
“You could have asked me to.”
DJ could not argue with this logic no matter how smug it had sounded coming out of Josh’s mouth, and Josh added, “Besides, the only thing that happened was a five a.m. convo with Dad, who I think legitimately believes I am twelve and this is a sleepover, And, you would have had to talk to him sooner or later.”
Was it only a week and a half ago? When DJ had come with his father to the little house in Bennett and he had given a casual call to Josh.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself.”
Josh always sounded so cool, so together, like no matter what had happened between them before he was still untouchable.
“I’m in town,” DJ said.
“Are you now?” Josh said.
“Yup.”
Then Josh had taken pity on DJ and said, “Well, should we do something? Say, you wanna go to the beach?”
And DJ said yes.
It was at the beach that they had decided to go down to Lafayette, that DJ had worn the almost skinny jeans that showed off his thighs and climbed ahead of Josh, thinking of seducing him, then pulling his mind from that weird gutter it was always in so they could have a real conversation. The whole way down to Lafayette, DJ had wondered about those months, or had it been a year, or had it been a little more than a year when he and Javon and Pat and Josh moved in that little sensuous knot, and he wondered how often he had cut off real conversation and real knowing for the satisfaction of his lust.
In Lafayette they went to the huge mall where some people wore face masks and some people didn’t, and DJ realized this was the first time in a long time he had been in a crowd. He used to love the seeing and the being seen, and this time he realized he linked being seen with Josh. Josh Dwyer was more like his older brother than he knew, or DJ had realized. Unlike Rob, his red hair curled, but he wore brass rimmed spectacles. His face was finer, more feline, and he was built more angularly, taller than Rob Dwyer. How, DJ wondered, could he have not truly seen a person he’d been naked with, and thought of seducing. But then you didn’t have to see in the dark, and DJ thought how his darkness may have been, might still be… more than metaphorical.
“Metaphorical,” Josh had said.
“What?”
“Metaphorical. It’s not going to be more than metaphorical. It’s either going to be metaphorical or actual.”
Well, that was Josh for you.

“There you go, DJ,” Riley, the rawboned boy with the shaven head who was wearing black shades in the middle of the night said, giving him a lazy high five and bringing him in for a hug. They were under the light on a cement stoop in a dangerous looking part of town, and now he and Josh came into the large old house.
They’d met up with some of Josh’s friends who turned out not to be college friends, but folks who had moved away from Bennett years ago. A long tall girl named Julia who had you pull her finger and then farted, and three white guys in wifebeaters who freestyle rapped and chain smoked. They lived in an old, high ceilinged house in an old neighborhood that had once been beautiful but now gone to seed, and DJ remembered just enjoying them, thinking they were good people as they poured liquor and kept rapping, playing dice and cards all night.
“Whaddo you like to drink, DJ?” Riley asked.
“Any old thing.”
“Any old thing? We got Crown, we got some Grey Goose and Cola, Grey Goose and orange juice cause it’s never too late for that shit. Beer. Miller.”
DJ thought of saying, “I’ll take water,” then said, “Miller sounds great.”
Riley thumbs upped DJ. “That’s right, my man, one Miller.”
As Riley got up in his baggy jeans and wifebeater, he moved swiftly like a dancer, and DJ remembered flipping through his father’s books reading James Baldwin.
From 1962: “Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”How white Americans were more like Black people than Europeans and Black Americans more like white people than Africans.
As if to prove this, the smooth faced, dark eyed Riley grinned at DJ and sang:

I push my seed in her push for life
Its gonna work because I'm pushin' it right
If Mary drops my baby girl tonight
I would name her Rock-N-Roll!

For some reason, as DJ took the cold beer, he was thrilled. Well, not for just some reason he realized, no, but because this boy who was friendly or flirting, was singing to him about pushing his seed into someone, albeit a woman’s, bush.
Whatever was going on with DJ, Josh did not notice it, and none of his other friends did either.
Scott asked: “Is Rob still a cop?”
“Of course he’s still a cop. Why’d you ask it like that?”
“It’s just well, he was at that store, and now he’s not, so I thought, well he was a cop and maybe now he’s not.”
“That doesn’t even make any since, Jed,” Riley said. “One’s working at a goddamn convenience store and one is working for the police. They ain’t the same.”
Jed shrugged.
“It’s the same to me. Gin.”
“Fuck you, and you’re a dumb ass outside of this table,” Adam said.
“Outside of this table, but we’re at this table so pay up, motherfucker.”
Josh had told him about his friends from college who had died, all shot around a table, and DJ realized that up until now that had represented Josh’s life. Preppy people at a preppy school and it didn’t seem to match Rob or the entire town of Bennett. But these people seemed like Bennett and Josh, without changing, seemed to totally belong to them. DJ thought, if I stay here I’ll learn something more about Josh. I’ll learn who he is. He had tried to learn who some people were, had crushes and tried desperately to get to the real them, but this wasn’t like that. Josh wasn’t a secret. Josh was just right here and just hanging out with him and his friends. DJ was knowing him,
When DJ said, “Gin,” everyone handed over their money, grumbling and Josh eyed him ruefully as he held out his hand.
DJ couldn’t stop laughing.

They were dizzy the way you can only be at three or four in the morning with friends when you’re in your twenties or approaching it, and you’ve been drinking and laughing, playing cards all night. DJ’s eyes were red and it was time for sleeping even though he wanted to stay up till the sun rose. They were almost all willing to do it, and if this had been summer and not two weeks before Christmas they certainly would have seen the sun coming up, but now Jed led them up a creaky old stair and DJ thought how he loved this house and how it reminded him of the old houses around downtown Ashby that had once been nice before something had happened and now where boarded up and raggedy on the outside in neighborhoods full of tireless cars propped on cement blocks. He hoped Josh’s car would be alright, and wondered if he’d left anything valuable in it. It was as if the world outside of this place was unsafe, but the inside of this house was absolutely where he wanted to be. They passed a big old bathroom that looked like it needed to be renovated, but didn’t look dirty and had drying clothes hanging from hangers and over the shower rail.
“There are lots of spare rooms,” Jed said. “This used to be a boarding house.”
“It used to be a mansion,” Ross corrected, or at least further explained. “It still kind of us. Our shabby mansion. I hope you don’t mind sleeping on a sofa. That’s usually Riley’s hang out room.”
DJ didn’t mind and knew that Josh had fallen asleep downstairs. Up here a rough curtain blocked out the big white moon and when DJ looked down on the street it looked strangely peaceful with all the cars, including Josh’s, sitting like fat shiny beetles, and the mounds of old snow made white again on the curbs and in the streets where proper cleaning hadn’t taken place.

He was half asleep when the door, half opened, opened further. DJ thought it might be Josh or really it might be anyone who had forgotten he was in here. The door closed all the way, clicked, and DJ turned on his side to face who had entered. In the dark he could make out the long, rawboned, shaven headed form of Riley, and he heard Riley’s voice, but he said nothing, and wasn’t sure if Riley saw him.
Riley went to the sofa, visible in the greater moonlight coming through the curtain. He knelt and he said, “You awake, DJ?”
“Yeah,” DJ said.
He felt Riley’s hand slide between his legs, felt Riley stroking him, felt Riley pulling open his zipper. He had wanted to fuck Josh this afternoon, been tamping down his needs and his lust, hadn’t been with anyone in some time and here Riley was and here was his dick, hard and thick rising out of his jeans.
“I like to do this some time,” Riley said, his voice sounding far off. He was looking away from DJ as he stroked him. DJ wished he’d do more. Suddenly, in one of his graceful movement, Riley’s turned around and his head snaked down, taking DJ into his mouth, going up and down his shaft. His warm, wet mouth, so insistent, felt so good going and down, up and down, on him, taking him all the way. DJ struggled out of his jeans and tugged off his underwear. Despite the coolness of this room, he took off his tee shirt and felt Riley’s long hands going up and down his chest, playing with his nipples while his mouth went up and down DJ’s shaft. DJ made space for him on the great sofa and closed his eyes, picking his tee shirt up and biting it so he didn’t shout. Riley did make noise, but these noises were muffled by DJ’s cock.
Riley did not ask anything. He simply did, and DJ’s body and actions did not object. Riley took of his clothes and his whole body, like his face, was narrow and hard. He took a long honk and spat phlegm onto DJ’s dick which was long and hard, arching up and aching in the night, and he sat down on it, swallowing DJ inside of his tight heat, wiping the spit hand on the sofa before he planted both on DJ’s chest and began to ride him into four a.m. and out of three. DJ sat up, bouncing him up and down, urging him, not caring if he shouted out. Who gave a fuck? He didn’t know these people. He lifted Riley up and put him under him, fucking the shit out of him, doing it rough and hard and getting all of the lust out, hearing the other boy, his hands flying up, give staggered cries, feeling his hands move up and down his back, feeling those hands massage his ass and take him in. DJ was in that sex moment that stretched out forever and ever, that centered in the thick hardness of his cock and burnt at the tip of his dick, but welled through his whole body.
As he fucked Riley and Riley’s thighs clamped tighter around him, Riley whisper growled: “Come inside me. Come inside me. Come inside me…”
DJ kept fucking him, wanted to release, wanted to never stop feeling Riley scratching his ass, whispered quickly, “Are you sure?”
“You’re clean right?”
“Yeah.”
“Spurt in me. Make a fucking sticky mess in me.”
DJ did, gasping, as if those words loosened everything in him, and the force of the coming pulled DJ deeper into him, so that in his last thrust, they both groaned and felt pierced.
They lay in silence, desire still humming through DJ, his body chilly with sweat now that the sex was done, Riley gasping beneath him, DJ dizzy and unable to catch his own breath. Slowly they separated and to his surprise, Riley stood up and began to get dressed deliberately.
“I wanted that the moment I saw you,” He told DJ who still lay naked.
“Can I… use your bathroom?” DJ could not possibly sleep covered in fuckery.
“Sure thing,” Riley told him as he pulled back on his tank top.
“Peace, DJ.”

Josh came in the same time DJ was waking up, when the sun was coming through the curtains and he said, “Are you ready? Who knows when they fuck they’ll wake up? I’m hungry? Are you hungry?”
DJ discovered he was and he followed Josh down to the living room across the hall where he’d stayed, watching Josh put on his car coat and his backward baseball cap. Josh was a good guy. Strange that this was his exact thought as he looked at him, Josh was a good guy and he liked the look of him in the day. DJ was so lost in this thought he had forgotten to get his own coat. In daylight this place was definitely shabbier and, yes, smellier, and smokier. As they headed out, making sure the door was locked behind them, and walked off of the stoop, DJ said, “We could stop at McDonalds.”
“Or we could stop somewhere real.”
“Bob Evans?”
“We could,” Josh said doubtfully.
They ended up a restaurant called the Family Pancake House, and when the waitress asked if it was one or two checks, Josh said, “One.”
DJ looked at him and Josh said, “I got this.”
The restaurant wasn’t crowded and breakfast was easy, by which DJ meant they didn’t really talk and Josh looked thoughtful and quiet a lot and that was fine. They could be quiet together. Josh washed down an entire pot of coffee and said, “I guess we’ll bet back by noon. I know we slept, but I’d like to sleep in a real bed. I love those guys, and I miss them, but I don’t entirely want that life.”
DJ was about to ask, “What kind of life do you want?” But he was bored by the question before it was out of his mouth.

They drove on in that same silence, broken only by switching music stations. They settled on an oldies station and as Stevie Nicks sang and Josh sang to her, DJ remembered this is what Javon called white folks’ music and always shut off when they were in the car together.
Josh said, “So, you fucked Riley?”
DJ blinked and turned to him.
It was said offhandedly and Josh shrugged.
“I knew he liked you.”
“I didn’t expect it. I mean, I… you didn’t tell me about him.”
“I didn’t know about him. Well, I sort of knew. He’s got a kid and a sometimes girlfriend. I feel like this whole fucking state is bi with one foot in the closet. He’s talked about it.”
“Yeah,” DJ said. He didn’t know how to feel. He didn’t want to talk about it with Josh, and if Josh hadn’t brought it up he would have felt glad for the private memory. Now he felt naked. He felt like the same old DJ out of control from on the beach two years ago.
“How did you know?”
“Cause I think your room was over where I slept. I heard it,” Josh said.
Josh seemed to be thinking and then he said, “Also Riley told me.”
“He what?”
“He told me he’d just fucked you. Or let you fuck him. And it was good and he wanted us to fuck too. So he could know what it was like to be with us both.”
Josh reported this precisely as they whizzed past farms and land where grey vegetation was covered by sparse stretches of white, and black trees stretched their limbs out in the distance.
“I feel sick and I wish you hadn’t told me that,” DJ said.
“Well, get ready to feel sicker,” Josh said, betraying emotion for the first time, “Because I said yes.”
They didn’t speak for a while and then DJ said, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because we set out to get to know each other and not fool around with each other then I take you to one of my friends and this shit happens and I’m just sick of this. I’m sick of stuff like this. I’m sick of doing weird shit like this. I know that some people think it’s cool, but I don’t and I wasn’t always like this, and I don’t want to be like this. I—”
Josh punched the steering wheel and shut up.
“Are you saying you don’t want us to see each other?”
“No,” Josh almost moaned. “I’m saying you’re fucked up and I’m fucked up, and I like you, and I think you like me and if we’re going to be running around sticking our dicks in people when we’re in the same room, why the fuck don’t we just…”
“Put our dicks in each other?”
“That doesn’t sound right, but I guess that’s what I was saying. I guess I’m saying should we just start sleeping together, being a couple, see what happens? We can’t wind back the clock and pretend nothing else happened in the past, and I don’t want to do dumb shit like listen to you fuck Riley and then fuck him ten minutes later, so can we just not lie and be together?”

MORE TOMORROW AND MORE BITS AND PIECES

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! So Riley fucked both DJ and Josh? That situation has definitely made both DJ and Josh think about what they want. I am glad they are going to be honest with each other. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes. Glad you enjoyed and thanks for reading.

 

[ChrisGibson]

They drove on in that same silence, broken only by switching music stations. They settled on an oldies station and as Stevie Nicks sang and Josh sang to her, DJ remembered this is what Javon called white folks’ music and always shut off when they were in the car together.
Josh said, “So, you fucked Riley?”
DJ blinked and turned to him.
It was said offhandedly and Josh shrugged.
“I knew he liked you.”
“I didn’t expect it. I mean, I… you didn’t tell me about him.”
“I didn’t know about him. Well, I sort of knew. He’s got a kid and a sometimes girlfriend. I feel like this whole fucking state is bi with one foot in the closet. He’s talked about it.”
“Yeah,” DJ said. He didn’t know how to feel. He didn’t want to talk about it with Josh, and if Josh hadn’t brought it up he would have felt glad for the private memory. Now he felt naked. He felt like the same old DJ out of control from on the beach two years ago.
“How did you know?”
“Cause I think your room was over where I slept. I heard it,” Josh said.
Josh seemed to be thinking and then he said, “Also Riley told me.”
“He what?”
“He told me he’d just fucked you. Or let you fuck him. And it was good and he wanted us to fuck too. So he could know what it was like to be with us both.”
Josh reported this precisely as they whizzed past farms and land where grey vegetation was covered by sparse stretches of white, and black trees stretched their limbs out in the distance.
“I feel sick and I wish you hadn’t told me that,” DJ said.
“Well, get ready to feel sicker,” Josh said, betraying emotion for the first time, “Because I said yes.”
They didn’t speak for a while and then DJ said, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because we set out to get to know each other and not fool around with each other then I take you to one of my friends and this shit happens and I’m just sick of this. I’m sick of stuff like this. I’m sick of doing weird shit like this. I know that some people think it’s cool, but I don’t and I wasn’t always like this, and I don’t want to be like this. I—”
Josh punched the steering wheel and shut up.
“Are you saying you don’t want us to see each other?”
“No,” Josh almost moaned. “I’m saying you’re fucked up and I’m fucked up, and I like you, and I think you like me and if we’re going to be running around sticking our dicks in people when we’re in the same room, why the fuck don’t we just…”
“Put our dicks in each other?”
“That doesn’t sound right, but I guess that’s what I was saying. I guess I’m saying should we just start sleeping together, being a couple, see what happens? We can’t wind back the clock and pretend nothing else happened in the past, and I don’t want to do dumb shit like listen to you fuck Riley and then fuck him ten minutes later, so can we just not lie and be together?”

So they lay together in the early morning, and Josh still laughed while he made room for DJ and they linked their bodies together.
“Are you taking your dad to church?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“Yes,” Josh said. “Why’d you have to ask?”





DJ thought that in bed with Josh nothing would happen after the run in with his father, after they had to be up so soon. But that was not the case, and Josh rose from the bed and said, “You know what? Rob is never coming back. I should take his room as long as I’m here.”
“And why is that?” DJ asked sitting up in bed.
Josh turned on a very little light, and in its harmless dimness, DJ hunted for clothes while Josh opened his untidy closet and pulled out what he would wear.
“You know his room is attached to a bathroom. None of this peeking down the hall business.”
“Oh, you should have done that a while ago,” DJ said. “You should have done that before inviting me here.”
“I will do it.”
“Can you do it before I come over again?”
“I’m kind of slow about things. How about we just stay in Rob’s room next time?”


Mr. Dwyer insisted on taking the back seat and DJ snuck a few looks at him, trying to see Rob or Josh’s face in his. He didn’t really look like either one of them, and so DJ gave it up. Maybe in the summer or the spring this seven a.m. mass made sense, but right now it was barbaric. This was the second time he’d been to the ordinary limestone church, smaller than Saint John’s back in Ashby, and the first time he’d sat next to Josh.
As they rose for the priest to come from the sacristy beyond the altar, they sang not a hymn, but the antiphon, chanted ordinary and quick.

“Behold, the Lord will come,
descending with splendor to visit his
people with peace,
and he will bestow on them eternal life.”

DJ savored the words of the prayer and read them again because the actual readings were boring. The prophet Isaiah was going on about foreigners making sacrifices and cows doing whatever cows did. It didn’t seem very Christmassy though neither did the church, hung in purple. Even the green wreathes on the wall seemed somber.
They prayed:


“May your grace, almighty God,
always go before us and follow after,
so that we, who await with heartfelt desire
the coming of your Only Begotten Son,
may receive your help both now
and in the life to come…”


Grace, life to come. Josh said, “Amen” Josh said that after the very first time they were on the beach, losing their minds in orgy, the first thing he’d done is go to church, try to make order out of himself. Josh believed in order, and he believed in this. How strange, because DJ had been born in the church and—Frey style—raised in it, and felt ambivalent, like someone told they were born in one land who had spent their whole life in another. The crucifix, the Virgin Mary, the stations on the wall and the people, he always viewed as somewhat foreign.
Josh he did not view as foreign. He had been a stranger to him a little over a week ago, strange to him or… dangerous. Frey had once said in medieval times dangerous meant something that held itself off from being touched, from being looked at. Twice already, Josh had caught DJ frankly looking at him and gone red. He did not turn away from him, put ran his fingertips along the inside of DJ’s open palm. He had invited the look. He loved this sitting hip to hip, legs under jeans and khakis touching, this smell of the mint toothpaste on Josh’s breath, the embrace of him during the peace offering. He loved the look of his face when he received Communion and the sheen of the lantern light on his dark red curls. They’d gone to McDonald’s and there was the pleasure of watching him stop to think and stare off, lost between bites on the hash brown.
This was the same as early this morning, when he’d come back to bed and undressed and his skin had lain against the warm dry skin of Josh Dwyer, when his hands had run over Josh’s body again, and he had lain separate from Josh in the barely existent light, long enough to see the small belly and the patch of hair and where his penis rose between his legs, thick but ordinary and human, a part of him like his smile and like his eyes. He loved the right Josh had given him to press his body to his, to link limbs with his. Rubbing together like two sticks they gathered fuel from each other and created a type of fire in the dark. There was a pleasure they took from each other and no one else. Now DJ had been given this right to come to one person, explore one body, to learn the dimensions of it over and over again as he had never known, not even with Javon. He was afraid to call it love, because love was something that had escaped him.
He had brought a change of underwear if not clothes, and after church he had used the shower downstairs and now he sat in Rob’s old room watching Josh dress, watching him pull on the fleece jacket with the upturned collar and put the skull cap on his head. He wanted to touch his hand, but he thought it would be too sentimental He wanted to take off his blue jeans and the olive green jacket and see him naked again, touch his warm skin, have nothing between them. He knew they would be together again like that, and soon. And he couldn’t get enough of it. Always DJ had thought, and it had been said of him, that he could not get enough of sex, but it was the sex that lead to the intimacy or promised it, and it was this being with Josh of which he now knew he couldn’t get enough.
“Why are you looking dopey?” Josh demanded, laughing at him. But Josh looked away, his skin turning red so DJ knew that he knew why.
He stumbled into the kitchen, and when a woman looked up at him, he almost ducked away. He said, “Excuse me.”
“No,” she said, touching a chair. “Sit down.”
She was listening to the radio and DJ felt very stupid. This redheaded blue eyed woman with Rob Dwyer’s quiet look and Josh’s thin features was, of course, their mother. And he had never thought of her. How strange? Weren’t gay men supposed to have a feminine side or be close to women? Care more about them? But that didn’t really make any sense. DJ knew full well some of the greatest misogynists were homosexuals, and as for him, he’d never really known his mother, or many women closely. Melanie and Sharon floated in a far orbit. Isaiah’s mother and Adrienne Shorter in an even further one.
Josh’s mother had a slightly aging hand with its painted red nails on the open surface of a Bible and she was listening to the radio.

“Myanmar has said its leader Aung San Suu Kyi will head the legal team contesting a genocide case filed against it in the International Court of Justice over the crackdown on Rohingya Muslims two years ago that set off their exodus to Bangladesh.
The country's military has been accused of carrying out mass rapes, killings and arsons against Rohingya during a counterinsurgency campaign initiated in western Myanmar in August 2017 after rebel attacks.
“Myanmar's population is overwhelmingly Buddhist, and the country has long denied citizenship and other rights to the Rohingya…”

“My husband likes Mass,” she said, “which is fine and good. I had just finished planning out what will happen to him if something should happen to me. My mother could never bare to look at her own death and so she pretended it would never happen, and when she did I had to arrange her funeral and eventually find a place for my father. There were days when I was nothing but sad, too sad to stay awake in the day, too sad to be asleep at night. That was when I met sorrow. So I sit here. I sit here with the sadness in the world, with people who are in the midst of sorrow so deep going through something so powerful they are not sure they can survive, and I just pray with them, with them more than for them, More than that, I just hold them. Just be. And then I think I am held up too.”
As if she had not made this speech, Mrs. Dwyer said, “Did you boys eat breakfast?”
“We stopped at McDonalds.”
“McDonalds is awful.”
“It can be,” DJ said.
Mrs. Dwyer laughed at this.
DJ said, “My mother never loved me, but she died when I was three, and then I was with my father, who loved me not as much as he could. And then I was adopted by the man who became my real father. And now he and our whole family… we’re going through something, through a death, and you’re right. The whole world really is…. There is a lot of sadness. Sometimes it really does feel like too much.”
“Then it’s good you met Josh. He’s always been a lonely boy and what happened to him didn’t help. He’s sort of too strong for suicide, but too hurt to be happy for long. Until now. I think you all might be matched.”
“What’s that?” Josh said, coming up the steps into the kitchen.
“He always knows when you’re talking about him,” Mrs. Dwyer confirmed.
“Your mom says that the both of us are so wounded, we’re probably a good match.”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

I liked this portion a lot! I am glad Mrs Dwyer thinks DJ and Josh are a good match. I think so too. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Her logic is tragic comic, but I agree with it being good that Mrs. Dwyer sees them as a good match, and I like Mrs. Dwyer.

 

[ChrisGibson]

chapter conclusion


The old Barnes and Noble had been far out, and Josh had been glad when he heard they were moving it to North Town Mall, but when it got to the mall, it became… more mall like. Or maybe it was that the world was become mall like. He remembered when there had been a Barnes and Noble on one side of the street and a Border’s on the other. Where was Borders now? Gone? And why did he sound like a crotchety old man when he was twenty four? This place, this current incarnation of the respectable bookseller, looked halfway like an Apple Store with all its electronic devices, and half like a B. Dalton, that fake bookstore that occupied every mall in his very young childhood.
He had walked here because he liked walking and often forgot how far he’d gone until an hour or so had passed and, in this case, his thighs were freezing. He had been in the pitiful literature section for an hour when he’d gotten a call from Rob. He still treated this place as if it was a library. Hell, someone should, and in their whispered conversations, he and Rob had agreed to meet for lunch.
When the brown county cop car rolled up to the mall entrance of the bookstore amidst the remains of last night’s dirty white snow, Josh winced, and coming toward it, he looked into the window where Sheridan was smiling and said, “What the fuck?”
“I’m dropping Sheridan off so he can drive home to Rossford and meet his guy.”
“So I have to get in the back of a cop car like I’m a fucking criminal? I hate you, Rob.”
“So,” Sheridan leaned back, “I hear you’ve got a love life.”
Josh winced again but was aware it wasn’t quite real. Sheridan reminded him, accurately, of an older brother’s friend, maybe from back in high school, the one who was always sitting in the kitchen eating your mom’s food when you came in from school, and who was going to razz you, ask shit that wasn’t his business and comment on your friends who had come in with you. He suspected in a former life Sheridan Klasko had been all of these things.
“You know what?” Sheridan’s voice was half between lazy and discovery, “I wish I had a gay brother. I mean, my brother’s great and all, but I wonder if I would have been so fucked up and in the closet so long if I’d had a brother who understood me, and here you have one and look at that frowny face of yours.”
Josh said and did nothing. Rob just kept driving.
Sheridan was chomping on gum, and now he reached into his coat and pulled out a stick, looked back at Josh. Sheridan just kind of looked at you like he had a right to, like somehow he was Josh’s older brother.
As if Josh were a little brother he just took it without saying thank you.
“You’re welcome,” Sheridan said.
Josh shrugged.
He wondered if Sheridan and Rob had ever fucked each other. It didn’t seem likely, but it didn’t seem unlikely either. Sheridan was a few years older and longer and taller, but the two of them were so goddamned alike, both chomping on their gum, both solicitous about weird shit like, “Hear you got a new boyfriend?” or, “You need a quarter?” and they could both be very silent for a long time, except for when they weren’t. Then they would bust out with something long and philosophical, yeah, they were both like that.
Except Sheridan was more annoying that Rob.
No, Josh realized, and now they were all in that long gum chewing silence as the cop car trundled over country road, and the police station, beige brick and peach colored paneling, square windows from the nineteen eighties appeared. Sheridan was not annoying. Sheridan was…. Josh had always had a slight crush on him, and that was annoying, to be annoyed with a thirty something year old man who was good looking in an almost gawky way, and married, and his older brother’s best friend was… odd. But now that he knew why, it wasn’t weird. It was just a thing, an answered puzzle. He sat back in his seat and grinned.
“Huh?” Rob turned back, chomping his gum.
Yeah, that was it, the discomfort of sort of liking someone who was too much like his attractive—and no he did not want to fuck Rob—brother.
Josh chuckled and shook his head.
His drawl and his not give a fuck more pronounced, Rob shrugged and smiled:
“Forget it.”
“His name is DJ,” Josh said to Sheridan.


























“Can I get in the front seat now?”
“No. It’s a cop car.”
“Well, then I’m getting in your real car.”
“I didn’t drive my real car.”
“Did you ever fuck him?”
“Huh?”
Josh pointed to the lanky frame of Sheridan Klasko, whose great coat went back as he pulled his keys from the pockets of his dark pants.
“Sheridan!”
“Don’t act so surprised.”
Rob sucked from his Big Gulp noisily.
“He’s my partner, you horny moron.”
“I know that.”
“And I’m married.”
“You’re not married, and while I know once upon a time gay couples said they were married to prove they were together together, in a day and age when gay couples really can marry, to say you’re married when you’re not is kind of a lie.”
“I think we’ve had this conversation before.”
“And it was true back then.”
“But the point remains.”
“What point?”
“You’re just being annoying,” Rob said, frowning, “because I won’t let you sit in the front seat.”
“I’m sitting in the front seat.”
“You’re not,” Rob said.
Josh jumped out of the back seat but Rob, not even looking up from his Big Gulp or changing his facial expression, hit the locks.
“Really?” Josh said.
Rob only nodded, not even cracking a smile. That fucker.
“Fine!” Josh moved to the back, waiting for the lock to unclick, which is when he opened the front door and hopped in.
“You’re such an asshole,” they both said. And this time Rob couldn’t hold a straight face.
“I went to college, brother. If you had too, you might have been able to outsmart me.”
“You’re a lowdown fucker.”
“Yup.”
Rob put the key in the ignition, and they pulled out of the parking lot as Sheridan honked at them and drove away in the opposite direction.
“So,” Josh said.
“Huh?”
“Did you fuck him?”
“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”
“That means you did.”
“No,” Rob said, “That means you’re a moron.”


later we will post some of Bits and Pieces. In honor of the Shmita Year, nothing will be posted on Friday.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Always nice to see some of Sheridan. Excellent writing and I look forward to more later!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yeah, I'm a fan of when Sheridan gets to show up too. I thought you'd enjoy that. I just woke up!

 

[ChrisGibson]

BOOK
THREE

dawn





T E N

jason



“You learn by doing, and you learn by being around good people, and we’re good so you learn by being with us.”

- Jason Henley














Isaiah Frey had been excited and exhausted and a little overworked thinking of the approaching Solstice. He had gotten a phone call from a friend who said, “This Solstice Jupiter and Saturn will come together. The Christmas Star!”
He had pretended not to care. This whole idea had seemed so fashionable for a few days that Isaiah turned his nose up to it. But the thing about Isaiah Frey is he was someone who cared about things. The combination of Solstice and planetary conjunction was something he could not ignore. He could not ignore the troubles of the world around him, the passing of Adrienne, the increasing grey world that called out for renewal.
In the last few days Isaiah had been out a lot with the Godchildren. And after a long Friday he had come home to rest a little bit and not do a thing on Saturday, But late Saturday afternoon saw him cooking, proofing yeast, making bread and garlic bread and cinnamon bread, cleaning a kitchen that refused to stay clean and turning back to clean a chicken, salt a chicken and stick it in a bucket of brine. Exhaustion from the busy day caught up with him.
“Why don’t you go to bed?” Rob said, almost irritated, and went to chop onions and clean rice, to slice potatoes, do all the things Frey would want for tomorrow.
“I want to write,” Frey said, his feet stretched out on the couch. “I’m going to do that or nothing’s worth doing. I even know what I want to do, but I’ve got to close my eyes a bit first. I think I’ll listen to the radio.”
He fell asleep to the radio in the living room having placed a deep red scarf he’d given to Adrienne years ago over the lamp for a dimmer. He woke up now and again to do a little bit, to remember how glad he was, and then when Rob had said, “You’re not getting anything done, you might as well come to bed,” he’d nodded and obeyed.
Rob was not surprised when Frey got up while it was still dark. When he’d first met him and known Frey was “a writer” this had been a big blank which, as much as he respected it, meant, “Frey is a warnk warnk warnk like the voices of adults in Charlie Brown cartoons. Now he knew what it meant was that dishes could sit in the sink, houses could be unclean, bills unpaid and groceries not procured, but the writing must get done. If he was bound and determined to do one page or two or three they had to be done before the sun came up, and now, when the clock said 5:45, Isaiah Frey had had enough of sleep—which was not the same as being refreshed—and gotten up to go to his writing spot in the kitchen.
It was not long before Rob got up, went into the kitchen, poured Frey the last of the warmed over coffee and brought him his cigarettes. He kissed Frey on the cheek and patted him on shoulder then, after putting fresh coffee in the pot and filling it with water for the true morning, he went back to bed.
In the first instance, Frey just sat in housecoat and pajama bottoms writing whatever came up, choosing to be insensible to the cold of the kitchen and his lack of brain power, just letting the words come to the page. This is what he called “hammering out” a page.
When Rob had first started painting, he had been embarrassed by his work and more embarrassed to do it when one of Isaiah’s best friends and DJ’s father had come to visit. Jason Henley seemed to not be a very serious person, seemed to be a not very good parent, and he was tall and dark with a mutton chop moustache around his thick mouth. He was strong, He smelled like a man. He was a lot to follow after and he insisted in taking Rob on. While he painted with Rob, Frey sat in the kitchen, and when Rob had finally said, “It’s strange doing this with the two of you,” it was Jason who frowned at him so Frey-like that he understood why the two of them had been together, were, in a way, always together.
“You learn by doing,” he said, “And you learn by being around good people,” Jason continued. “And we’re good so you learn by being with us.”
“Well, Isaiah’s a writer and not a painter,” Rob said while Isaiah kept typing and only raised one eyebrow.
“Isaiah,” Jason Henley jabbed his paint brush at his first lover, “is single minded and totally dedicated, and keeps on writing and doesn’t care if it turns out crap or not because he knows it all leads to something that’s gonna be gold. That’s the secret, Rob. Now get your ass back to that easel and do something.”

There are some men who take all the air out of a room, who demand attention. Frey’s father was like that, while he lived, Six foot four, loud and entitled, whether he meant it or not, and he usually did, Sam Frey took the air out of a room. He took everything, even the sunlight into his dark skin and, in the end, left everyone exhausted. The power of his energy sucking was strong. It killed his frist two wives before he came to Rhonda Strickland who would one day be the mother of Isaiah and his sister Sharon. The heat of his power had not abated until he was dead.
But Isaiah Frey did not marry a guy like dear old Dad. Not the first time or the times in between or the last time. He liked men firm in themselves, full of their own confidence, men who were gentle, gently spoken, gentle doers, gentle lovers.
When Jason Henley came to visit, even though he was a big man, he was not overwhelming. Though the house came to life and DJ and Javon were around more, you could not say the house was busier or more of anything, except that it was more Frey. It had more of the intensity that might have been had Jason and Frey been able to stay together. Even Rob saw this and, in time, ceased to be intimidated by it and came to love the tall, square shouldered, black haired man with white in his temples who had been the first love of Frey’s life and the father of the tall and handsome DJ who might one day be, if not quite Rob’s stepson, his brother-in-law.
Christmas time Pat Thomas was here, back from medical school and exhausted but exhilarated. Frey’s house was crowded because in addition to Jason, Melanie and Shannon were over every night with their boys who were in college now, but home for the holidays. Melanie’s oldest son, Ralph, whom she’d had from a brief and strange marriage to a dull man named Chet, and who was tall and eighteen and golden haired declared, as he put the last ornament on the great tree in Frey and Rob’s living room,
“Now this looks like a right proper Christmas.”
“Right proper?” Frey mouthed to Melanie.
She shrugged.
“This year he’s decided to be British.”
Jason would be staying until Christmas. The first two days he would actually be staying down the street with his son and Javon, and he made it clear that he and DJ needed to have a good talk.

“I hate how dark it gets and how soon,” Jason said as they were all climbing up onto the roof of the house.
Below, Melanie stumbled, and Jason reached out even though he was too far off to get her. Javon did that, and DJ watched his father’s breath on the cold air.
“Is that boy Josh coming?” Jason asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You look vague,” Jason said.
“Vague?” DJ said. Then, “I honestly don’t know if he’s coming.”
Pat and Javon were talking to each other in low voices, very much looking together, and Jason shook his head.
“Not that kind of vague, the vague like, ‘Josh, Who’s Josh?’”
DJ shook his head.
“I didn’t even know you knew who Josh was.”
“Well,” Jason shrugged, “why would you?”
DJ looked at him.
“I was a shit father,” Jason said.
He reformed.
“I am a shit father.”
When DJ said nothing, Jason said, “It’s kind of you to not agree out loud. I’d like to say I wasn’t cur out to be a good father, or to remember how many fathers aren’t very good at being fathers, but the truth is I was a shit one. I’d like to blame the fact that I wasn’t feeling totally sane when your mother died, or even while she was alive, that I was broken as fuck, and all of those things are true. But at the end of the day I wasn’t a good dad, and you deserved a good dad.”
DJ could not speak, and so Jason would not stop speaking.
“I had to put my old man in a nursing home. I mean, your grandfather. I’m not a good son either. None of us was, but he wasn’t a very good dad either. I’ve been thinking all this time: if he had had friends, or if he had given my mom a rest so she wouldn’t have gotten sick and died, or if, if he had been a pleasure to any of his children so we would have lived near him, cared for him maybe, how different things would have been. But… that’s not how shit happened, and there was a time when there was no one but me for a time, trying to keep him in that house, calling every day, traveling over as much as I could before… before it was too late. Before we had to put him there. And it’s rough because he wasn’t good to me most of my life, but I wanna be good to him, and then I think about you and how bad I was—”
“You weren’t bad.”
“Boy, don’t you fucking lie to me,” Jason said, looking more like an older brother who was about to punch him.
But that was the thing:
“You were eighteen or nineteen when I was born and you were twenty-two when you found out I existed. The whole thing was crazy. And no, you were not suited to be a good parent and yes, your parenting skills are for shit—”
“But I love you, Donatus—”
“Jeremiah,” DJ waved that off. “If you’re going to be formal drop the Donatus.”
“Fair enough. I always wanted to name you Luke after my grandfather.”
“You should have. You should have changed it. I would have liked it.”
“I love you so much. I’m just not a good parent,” Jason said. “I think about you all the time.”
DJ turned away from him and Jason said, “Did I say something wrong.”
DJ took a long time to answer and Isaiah, from where he sat by Rob, was looking at both of them, mouthed to Jason, “What the fuck did you do?”
“I just didn’t think you thought about me at all,” DJ said quickly. “I didn’t think you have a shit about me.”
“Oh, my God,” Jason said, looking hurt, looking ashamed.
“No, DJ. That’s not it. That’s never been it.”
DJ felt embarrassed, a little stupid for being a grown ass, six foot one hundred eighty pound man who hadn’t been a virgin in God knows when, and slumping over into his father’s arms, his father whom he had convinced himself he didn’t need or no longer cared about. He was embarrassed and comforted at once by Jason Henley’s touch and Jason said:
“A lot of dads are really good to their kids when they’re babies, and then shit at it when they’re older. Maybe… maybe it can be different for us. I wasn’t what I should have been then, but maybe I can be something useful. Now? Maybe?”
DJ sat up and felt the little bit of snot trickling from his nose freeze, and the tears chill his face. He wiped his eyes and squinted at the sky as Rob said, “Look. Look. There it is. There is the conjunction. Eh… on the longest night of the year.”
“Well, I don’t see it,” Melanie said flat out.
“I do,” Isaiah said, and DJ could just make it out.
He said, “The new world.”


The day was bright. It was, depending upon how you looked at it, the day of the Winter Solstice or the day after. It was the day after the longest night of the year, and Donovan Maurice Shorter, walking stick in hand, went up Moore Street and then crossed Michigan Avenue and continued down the hill where it curved toward the river. It wasn’t a sunny day, but it was a bright one, and the sun winked like a diamond behind white clouds. Before the week was out, Christmas would be here, and a great many things seemed to have happened.
So much has happened, he thought. And so much more is about to happen.
And he did not feel like, “So much horrible has happened,” no, he felt like things had happened and they were all of a piece.
“I wonder if I will be this philosophical, this enlightened, come night fall,”
When something philosophical, some revelation of God’s love or the goodness of the world came, he used to warn himself that it might not last. Now, it did not matter. A feeling was a feeling and a sense of truth was a sense of truth, and it didn’t matter that he wouldn’t hold on to these discoveries, there they were. The good, the bad and the especially horrible came together in a strand to create something Donovan could only call The End.
He stopped at the little white house to his left. To his right was the hill that was always green even in early winter that sloped to the river. The house was at the curve where Moore Street became Riverside Drive and during the spring into summer and even into fall it boasted flowers, but now they were gone, curled in on themselves, returned to the death of perennials from which they would return in their own time. But in this cold there was, and Donovan could not stop looking at it, one perfect pink rose blossom waiting to open.
What kind of a life will a winter rose have?
What kind of a life does any of us have? Who can say what this rose is about?
“I am that prince…” Donovan said to himself.
It was from a story his mother had told him.
No, but Adrienne had not been a storyteller. At least not that kind of storyteller. This story was before a fire, with falling snow.
“I am that prince…”
Nevermind, it would come to him.
This had been the year of the Plague, and now it was the year of the Plague shots. This was the year when life had stopped in an alarming way and people had been locked inside their homes and been separated from each other. And still, the kissing, the hugging the loving and fucking had not stopped. This was the year when Donovan Shorter, aged forty or so, had dreaded bringing an invisible plague into the home of his mother and killing her.
It had been the year of Ely, Cade’s home, of the long large house with the great porch and Donovan’s own reunion with Isaiah and coming down the stairs to watch the young bodies of Javon and DJ compacted, striving while they spasmed and orgasmed together. It had been the year of ice balls and ice volcanoes erupting from the steaming Lake Michigan. The year of Simon, in his shyness, coming into their house and making it his home.
He looked both ways, like a good child or like a good dog. His hound Storm had always looked both ways before she crossed the street. Until the greater mourning and greater need to move through mourning that came with the death of his mother, Donovan became sad and lonesome thinking of Storm, but such maudlin behavior could no longer be borne. The river had been black, but now he faced it and saw the water was brown and green, wide and uncaring. Uncaring? But a better word was constant. It would only be uncaring, Donovan thought, it if was full of uncaring things. The ducks were not uncaring, the Canada geese, who bobbed their black footed, ecru colored selves in one after the other were not uncaring, nor was the heron, who allowed Donovan one glance and then, pterodactyl like, soared up, its u shaped neck extending, its great bill clacking. Anyone who could not see in this creature the last of the dinosaurs was blind.
In the Church year, time was divided unevenly. The four weeks of Advent were… what? The whole of history waiting for the birth of Jesus? The six weeks of Epiphany were the measuring out of Jesus’s life, but the six weeks of Lent measured the small part of his life leading up to his death. Real time was like that as well. This season was the season of Adrienne, the season of a mother one day and cremated ashes the next, the season of not being able to envision something so horrible for someone you loved, and then the seven day journey through hell of shiva, and then the world where someone you loved being gone was just a reality. There was the world of learning to say the word dead, and then the world where saying it seemed gauche and unnecessarily, shocking, and you finally earned the right to euphemisms like gone, like passed on. Because dead did seemed shocking and ridiculous and gone was just true.
Something associated with color, with the will to live, with joy in this world had been ripped out of him as if hands had worked it out, pulled it away and left a thick round blackness. The color and half of his energy had gone. He had thought, some nights, how he would never be a proper husband, never be a proper lover again, never desire the touch of Cade or Simon. And then over those days something stronger and more real, another kind of will, a higher fire had arrived and desire had too. These were the days of great sadness and loneliness, and these were the days when the house was filled with Cade and Simon, Isaiah and Rob, DJ, Javon, the whole clan, those loved and suspected and those unknown. These were the days when Chad North had called and they remained on the phone for an hour and a half.
This was the time when all was not well with Stan Richards, when they would return to Ely and he would embrace Cade’s pain as Cade embraced his, for they were one. They were one in those nights in November when they’d all lain on the floor, sleeping and weeping and keeping shiva, and they were one when they’d all lain under one cover in the bed upstairs in the attic, hot from lovemaking. The nexus of all these things, the tying together of all of these moments was.
“Magic.”
It was the very nature of magic.
In a false memory his mother was reading him a story. It was winter and snow was falling and she had made him cocoa. Donovan remember the story could not have been true. It was not fair to say he had a bad mother. He’d had a mother like any other person, a person on this earth who was easily exhausted and often ungracious, who was trapped in her own drama and addicted to feeling like a martyr. She had not been without love. In a way he supposed he was the problem. When he was little she had read him Miss Polly’s Animal School every night. He couldn’t get enough of that book. And then she had stopped reading at all. It wasn’t that, well past forty he wanted that old woman to read stories to him, simply that he wished she’d wanted to do it a little bit longer, been kinder a little bit longer, open a little bit longer, and not only to him, but to herself.
Grief was a warm wave that passed through and left an inexplicable feeling, left a word whose closest approximation was regret, though what was regretted changed.
He remembered the story now, of a Rose Prince, a Prince born from a Rose bush. It was, he though, Romanian. He would sit down until he could remember it in full, let the story itself blossom again.


‘I am that prince!’ He said tearfully. ‘Through my veins runs the blood of the roses … I want to return to that life, to a life of beauty, serenity and fragrance. I do not want to continue being human.’
And the nightingale said to him:
‘Dear prince, I will stay with you and I will sing you a special song, a song that will return you to your original form.’

The return was the thing. Not that they were about something that had never happened, never been, not that they hoped for something far off, a dream with no connection to reality, not that they even looked to yesterday. Or the day before yesterday. Last night they had sat or stood on the lip of the foundation that had led to the house torn down the day his mother died, and they had looked at the hazy sky, peering and peering to see the conjunction of stars, peering to see the herald of Christmas and the beginning of the Solstice.
“I am that prince.”
Reinvention. Finding what was lost.
The invention of the new world.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great start to book three! I am glad DJ had that chat with his Dad and realised how much he cares about him. So much going on but I am still enjoying this story. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, I didn't knw that would happen. Jason did owe DJ that conversation. In a way this story is all about how you don't have forever to make amends, and Jason made the most of his now.