Elegy

[ChrisGibson]

CONCLUSION OF OUR CHAPTER


Men are ridiculous. I’m not sure where I was going with this. I was writing a story about love. I was going to call it a grand story, but the story isn’t grand, the love is grand. And I’m not grand either. I wish I was. I am little. I am little and a little fat and past forty and blinking through these glasses and part of this cold earth with its black trees and the river that is green and black and anyway…
I wrote this story about this couple. The boy, the man, learned he was gay, ended up sleeping with his best friend, but went ahead and married his fiancé anyway. The story ended with the reveal that he had left the fiancé. I thought it only fair that the fiancé have her own story, her own reveal where the same thing happens, where she meets a man and sleeps with him and goes off and marries this boy anyway so that what we have is a couple where both went down the aisle and married while harboring love for another.
The reaction to the first story was positive, but these gay men reading the story didn’t want to hear about a woman, didn’t give a damn about her side. Had no mercy for her. Not to long ago I met a man who had left his wife to fuck all the men he wanted, who sat their blaming his wife and talking about how awful she was though he was the one who was left.
A third thing, this idea of the woman who shows up in all of the gay stories. She is making soup and caring for people and being an angel and someone says, “All gay men need a woman like that.”
Men are so selfish. We don’t need to be served by a woman or mothered by a mother. We need to learn to serve and be a mother. So entitled. I never had much use for most men, and very little for gay men. How, then, did I end up so very lucky, no, blessed in love?
Very few women show up in these pages, because all too often when gay men put women in pages it is to make them the servants and the companions they should never have to be, because a woman needs to be what she is on her own and for herself, and so do we. So in these days Adrienne becomes Adrienne. It is a sort of mistake. It can’t be helped, but it is still a mistake to take the death personality, as if it happened to you, someone took my sister, my aunt, my mother from me. No. We all have our lives, our times. Our deaths are our own. She was someone in herself in her own right long before she was my mother and now long after. Walking up Riverside, steering clear of the SUV coming down the road I murmur”

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra
chirutei, v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon
uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit yisrael, ba’agala
uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: “amen.”

When you pray for the elevation of a soul, you pray for your mother, your father, but you pray for someone in their own right…. As they were. And who were they? Who knows? We are the child in the rose.
Suddenly I want to write poems. I want to lock myself away and sit by the window with coffee and cigarettes and see whatever turns up. I want to put those geese squawking and flapping and that hump of ice, and the crows clacking in the tree into poetry. I want to celebrate whatever this is that is happening. Life comes after death, and then there is life and life and everything is living. My words tumble over themselves making little sense in English but true sense in a language that has scarcely been invented.

Frey looked to the sofa where Jason was huddled, incapable of taking care of anything. He wanted to press further, to ask if they’d handled what would happen in the event Jason wouldn’t or couldn’t care for DJ. But he left it alone.

He returned, and the shower was on. Melanie was highlit by the sun, her hair all in fire down her back, and she turned from the desk with a notepad saying, “Listen to what I’ve done. I’m so proud of it. Bad moments make good writing. I don’t know why.”
The shower shut off and Melanie read:

I went five hundred miles
to find out that I’m terrified
over the prospect that
I can’t raise you, baby,
that you, who are this
whole universe that came
spiraling out of me are a thing
I cannot deal with.
They say the universe is expanding,
and expanding and
if that’s true you’ve already grown
past me and my unskilled hands
they say there are no accidents but
the world is full of them
and grace is granted in the accepting
you came into this world the product
of two half wits clashing, and look at you,
all a wonder of ten fingers, ten toes,
eyes, just two, a nose, the thunder
of a ‘I can’t do this’
fuck
I want so much
I want to be a poet
consistently
I want you to see
something beautiful before you
something I forgot
I forgot...
I…
need to remember
baby
be tender
to your mother
before she fucks up
forgive her


“Mel!” Frey began.
But Jason came out, dripping, towel wrapped around his waist, the soaking black hair plastered to his head and to his chest as he held a Speed Stick. Lost looking, his gaze traveled from DJ to Frey, then to Melanie.
Again he looked at DJ.
“Papa?”
“That poem was for you,” he said, touching his chest. “Even though Melanie wrote it for her son.... It’s to you. From me.”
DJ screwed up his face in confusion, and then said, “Okay?”
DJ didn’t understand. Not then.

DJ did not entirely understand it when Frey had told this story to his son as well as he could remember it, or as well as he chose to remember it. He told the story when he could see DJ’s mind distracted. He told it when he could see that DJ was off in a place where he felt loveless. Frey was not surprised that his love was not enough. DJ had been deeply injured. But the story could only mean so much, and over the course of time he had stopped telling it. Jason had never told it, and now he did.
“I almost remember that,” DJ said over breakfast.
“I almost forgot,” said Jason.
Melanie did not say, “I remember. It was my poem.”
Over the years she had learned silence in appropriate spaces.
It was the morning after the Solstice, and at this time, in this bright and hazy light where a sun was hidden by clouds but bright as a diamond, it was easy to believe that the world was new. Frey sat at the table saying nothing, putting his pen down and pushing the computer away. He had been scribbling or typing dull lines of bad poetry, but now he thought, “Maybe this is just the time to be.” After all, you couldn’t always be writing about life, sometimes you just had to be in it, right?
“Do you mind?” Jason asked Frey.
Frey might have said, “Do I mind? Do I mind you being a parent to your child?” He might have said, “It’s the one thing you’ve done I don’t mind.”
What he did say was, “DJ is an adult, and it’s his business where he goes.”
“We’re going to Amsterdam,” DJ said.
“That sounds about right.”
Frey was glad he’d made sure DJ got his passport last year. That would make things easier. He was jealous too. Come January, Indiana was so boring, and one wanted to go someplace. Amsterdam seemed just like the place.
“You all—” Jason began, and Frey put his hand over Jason’s It was true. If you knew someone well, and not everyone did, if you were with someone long enough and loved them, you could know where their words were going.
“You all could come too.”
And DJ would have agreed, and that would not have been the thing. The two of them needed to know each other. The last time DJ had spent a long time with Jason was over a decade ago. Then Jason came and went, snapping up DJ for long stretches of time, missing the beginning of the school year, bringing him back whenever. Now they could do all that again, and then things of childhood which Jason had not been expert in, he could make up for now with the things a young man needed from an older one.
“Still,” Rob said, stopping the constant chewing on his bacon and sipping of coffee, “You might want to tell Josh.”









Last night this house was so full, and it was so full this morning, really only an hour ago. Now Rob has gone to work and he’ll be back tonight. And now DJ has gone off with Javon and then later he’ll be going with Josh to the lake. There are those people who don’t go to the beach except in summer and except on the sunniest days. They don’t understand the nature of the water.
“I love this house,” Jason says.
It has been a long time since Isaiah Frey has taken the time to observe his own house. When he goes to visit his cousin and look at the that large ramshackle brick on 812 Pine Street, he thinks about that house, its creaking wood floors, its overlarge rooms piled with exotica in the corners, the remains of the daycare on the first floor. But he never thinks about this place where he’s lived since his late twenties.
It’s the great picture window in the living room that took seven years to feel like a living room with the braided carpet and the old couch he and Melanie took from down the street. It’s misplaced tables and old bookshelves. It’s a bunch of disparate things, not very special or worth mentions by themselves that, all together, make a home.”
But when Jason says, “I love this house,” Frey only says, “I can’t really see why. Let’s wash the dishes.”
The dishwasher has been broken for three months and they just haven’t gotten around to fixing it. Jason squirts blue soap in the silver sink and swishes hot water into the basin as he adds this morning’s and last night’s dishes.
“What are you doing?” he asks Frey.
“Trying to find something to say,” Isaiah Frey says. “About this moment. Trying to make some poetry out of this. You know?”
Jason looks wistful, his dark hair has that Superman curl, and he is scrubbing and rinsing and handing dishes to Frey.
“They say there is no such thing as writer’s block but I don’t guess that’s true, cause I get painter’s block aplenty,” Jason said. “And then, sometimes there is that moment where it just takes so much to lift the brush, to start again.”
“It’s the blank page thing,” Frey says, drying one plate and then another, adding, “Leave the utensils there till I’m done with the plates.”
Jason nodded and he said, “Breakfast was great.”
“You’d have to thank Melanie for that.”
Jason laughed from the side of his mouth.
“I didn’t mean that,” Jason began, then said, “I mean, I did mean that. Breakfast was great. But being here is great. Last night, all of us together. Us right now is great. And I just wonder—”
Jason’s voice did not fade out It cut off. He thrust his hands into the water and was looking up not quite at the ceiling.
“I just wished I had been better. You know? What if I could have been what I was supposed to be? If we had been what we were supposed to be?
“Sometimes I come back here,” Jason continued when Frey said nothing, “And I think about if I had been a proper father, or a proper partner to you. We could have made a home here. You me and DJ could have had a real home and things could have been right.”
There were many things Isaiah Frey stopped himself from saying, but this time he wouldn’t. He loved Jason, especially when he was like this, but truth was truth.
“There is a proper home here. I made it. DJ and I had a proper home here. I’m sorry you weren’t a part of it, but there was a proper home.”
“I know,” Jason said. “I wish I had made it my home.”
There was nothing decent to be said to this. Isaiah didn’t even resent Jason. The only time he’d been angry was when Jason had failed DJ. Frey was not the type of person to wonder about what was past and wish to remake what could not be remade.
“The past is the past,” was all he said, and began stacking dishes.
“Do you resent me ever?” Jason asked.
“If I do I’ve had a strange way of showing it,” Frey told him.
He opened the bottom cabinet with his foot and stacked the casserole dishes.
“Sometimes I thought you couldn’t have helped yourself,” Isaiah said. “And sometimes I didn’t know what the hell was in your head.”
He slid the casserole dishes under the sink along with the Pyrex measuring cup and closed the doors.
“You made your choices,” Frey said, “which I never understood. But I also made mine.”
Jason began to wash the thick green glasses. They were old. Frey remembered they had belonged to his father. Jason began to rinse them, handing each tumbler to Frey.
“Should we make coffee after this? Spend the rest of the afternoon together?”
“Of course,” Frey said.
“I still love you,” Jason said. “I always love you.”
“I know,” Frey said. “I never doubt it.”
They go on like this until Frey as put away the last of the cups and put the knives and forks in the drawers. Diligently Jason rinses out the sink.
“Should I make the coffee before or after?” Jason asks in the quiet house.
“After,” Frey says.
“We have the house to ourselves.”
“Yes,” Frey nods.
Jason bends down and kisses him. Frey’s hands reach up, holding Jason’s head. Jason is not much taller than him. Just tall enough. They hold each other’s heads and kiss deeply, pressing their bodies together.
There had never been a moment in this morning or in this conversation when Isaiah Frey thought this would not happen, when he did not only desire this, but plan this. All this morning, touching fingers, sharing a gaze across the table, this was already something they saw. He did not resent Jason because this was the life he knew with him, the life where they came together after long separation, and even now his hands went under Jason’s shirt to touch the fur of his belly, the tangly soft fur of his chest that had increased over the years, but that was familiar to him. This stomach, this chest, was known to him, the heartbeat familiar under his palm. Frey’s mouth pressed to Jason’s wet mouth, his tongue snaked with his.
This body and this love was the same as it always had been. Was the same was the same was the same as his hand traveling to undo trousers, was the same as this worship, where he pulled Jason out of his jeans and sunk to his knees taking all of him in his mouth. Jason gripped the sides of the sink and didn’t care when the back of his shirt and jeans got wet. He lifted his face to the white light, and as he swelled in Frey’s mouth and his hands descended to massage his head, here they were in that timeless place where it was all the same, where this moment in the kitchen was the first moment like this in the kitchen and where it was he and Frey and DJ sharing a laugh together in the boy’s childhood, where it was that first time when he came out of the shower after Elle had died and Frey was there with Melanie and three year old DJ and Jason was broken and had spent the night in bed with Frey finding the love they thought they lost.
“This was… This.”
They were one thing. That was the crime of what had been done, or maybe why what had been done didn’t matter. They got up like one thing and went to the bedroom, undressing swiftly, and lay on the bed, limbs together, mouths together, tangled in one another, adoring each other, bent in all the angles of love and desire, to open legs, arch backs and touch and taste and delve into all places. Jason’s legs all long and silky with black hair, his buttocks, firm and round like they’d always been, were hooked around his first lover like a vice, and Frey’s mouth was open, crying out, crying out as the bed struck the wall more and more frantically. When Jason came it was in silence, his face buried in Frey’s shoulder. It was Isaiah Frey who screamed out loud enough for them both, whose voice was like a weeping, descending fractured wail as both of their bodies moved like a creature sobbing, like a creature in mourning even as they found their great joy.

MORE AFTER THE WEEKEND


OUR STORY IS APPROACHING ITS CLOSE, BUT NOT JUST YET

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great end to the chapter. I am a bit sad that this story is coming to a close soon as I am enjoying it a lot. Excellent writing and I look forward to more after the weekend.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Thank you, Matt, that's very moving, especially since the story was born out of grief and I didn't know how much joy it would bring to anyone. but it did bring me joy and I'm so glad it's done the same for you.

 

[ChrisGibson]

E L E V E N

the rose


“I am that prince! 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.”

- from “The Rose Prince”, A Romanian folktale



At a time when wonders were credible, and therefore possible, a rose bush grew on the edge of a forest. It produced large and fragrant roses, the like of which had never been seen before in that region. One day, from that rose bush grew a bud more beautiful and aromatic than any other. When that bud opened, it revealed a child within. The rosebush had mothered a son. That day, Queen Rhoda happened to be passing by and heard the cry of a child. Alarmed, she asked her ladies and her entourage to leave the road and accompany her to discover what was going on. Imagine her surprise when she saw the baby wrapped in the petals of the huge rose! Not hesitating for a moment, she took the baby in her arms, wrapped him in her own clothes and took him to the palace. A few days later, King Laurin returned from one of his innumerable battles in the far north, and found the queen rocking a baby in the palace gardens. As soon as he saw the child, his heart softened. Laurin and Rhoda had had seven sons, and Laurin had enjoyed the little ones very much.
But then they grew into men and demanded to accompany him to the battlefield. One after another they had been killed in the endless war that consumed the north. He had forgotten the reason for the war, but he continued with it to avenge the deaths of his seven sons. The arrival of that baby, now that Rhoda could no longer conceive, was a source of joy for both of them, so they decided to raise him as if he were their eighth child.
Years passed, and the Rose Prince grew in strength and intelligence. He also grew in sensitivity. While his father instructed him in the art of knighthood, his mother taught him to sing, to play the lute, to write poetry and to listen to and understand the songs of the birds. And so, finally, the prince came of age and was to be knighted. The night before, while he was in his vigil, his mother came and told him the truth about his origin: that he was not entirely human, that his mother had been a rose bush on the edge of the forest. When dawn came, the prince was knighted, and immediately he begged his father, the king, that he be allowed to put right the wrongs that had led to the deaths of his seven elder brothers. So, after saying goodbye to the queen, he left with his father to the far northern border, where that war whose origins they had all forgotten continued to rage.
The battle came, and shouts of anger mingled with the cries of agony from the soldiers. The smell of blood penetrated deep into the prince’s nostrils … that sweet, metallic smell. The prince felt cheated. This was not what he had thought it would be. The war was not noble or heroic. The war was savage, cruel, horrible, ruthless … Suddenly, he saw his father, the king, get hit by a lance and fall from his horse. Horrified, he raced to his father’s side in time to hear his last words, asking his son to avenge his death. His vision clouded with anger, the Rose Prince went after the man who had brought down his father. He chased him to the edge of a forest, where he finally caught up with him, split the man’s lance and knocked him from his horse. Dismounting, the prince put the point of his sword to the throat of the terrified knight. Just as he was about to sink the blade in the knight’s neck, the Rose Prince spotted a wild rose bush growing among the trees of the forest.
There were drops of blood on the rose petals!
He looked again at the man on the ground and felt the hatred clouding his mind drain away.
‘Go!’ he said to the defeated knight. He raised his sword. ‘Go while I’m still in my right mind!’
The astonished knight scrambled to his feet and ran into the trees. The prince lowered his head, the bloodied sword drooping in his hand. He swore to himself that he was going to end the absurd and stupid butchery that was the war.
He rode back to the battle and mysteriously managed to cross the field from one side to the other, without being attacked by anyone. He, picked up the fallen banners of each side and raised them above his head shouting:
‘Stop the fight! I order you to stop the fight!’
One after the other, soldiers and knights stopped fighting to stare at the noble, young prince who was carrying the banners of both sides.
The Rose Prince addressed everyone, from one side to the other, telling them about the absurdity of war, telling them about forgiveness and reconciliation. And the soldiers, tired of so much struggle, of so many years of hatred and fear, of so many horrendous memories, threw down their weapons, stripped off their armour and left the battlefield, never to return.
As the warriors were leaving, the prince returned to the forest, plunging into its depths shouting:
‘I am one of you. Please tell me, where is the rose bush that grew such huge flowers?”
A nightingale replied:
‘That rose bush died years ago. You know? She mothered a prince in one of her flowers!’
‘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.’
When night fell, the nightingale began to sing as no one had ever heard her sing before. Her melody dissolved all memories of what his life as a man had been like. The prince sank down into the moss of the forest, and his legs took root in the earth. When dawn came, there was a new rose bush in the forest, one without thorns, from which bloomed the most fragrant and aromatic roses that the world has ever known.
While that beautiful rose bush lived, peace reigned unblemished over those lands.

When Isaiah Frey was fourteen years old, Gesu Catholic School had made a new and excited rule. From now on, instead of just blue, they could wear whatever color cardigans they wanted with their uniforms. Isaiah felt fat because he kind of was, and also because white kids were kind of skinny and he hadn’t seen a body like his, so he wore cardigans to cover his butt and he wore them because they didn’t’ stretch across his chest. He didn’t know men would come to love that chest. But, then, at the time, he didn’t know men.
He had lovingly sorted out the blue, the yellow, the red and the green cardigans his parents had bought him, planning this one for that day and that one for this. The red one would be for Friday. He had shown his sweater chart to his mother who said, “Very organized,” rather than: “what the fuck? And he had tried to be organized, wearing the yellow for Tuesday, the Red on Friday and so on until he discovered that he loved the Red. The Red made him happy and then he just began to do what he felt.
Two or was it three years ago he had left Ashby and come to his friend Deborah’s little beige house, the house that belonged to her family. He had felt like sex. Whatever peccadillos he’d had about desire were gone by then, and if he felt like sex he would see if it was available. Often as not it wasn’t. That’s what people never understood. Sex was fortuitous. People who lied and said it was easy and you could have sex anytime you wanted were nuts. And so he had met Rob Dwyer, but that first night Rob had been nameless mouth and hands and flesh, yearning opening and body straining. It wasn’t true that you couldn’t know someone through sex. Sometimes, with all the external things stripped away you knew someone better, You knew them at the level of absolute yearning, total id.
But he had never planned to see Rob again. In the early morning, lying next to him he yearned to see him again. That was how it was with several of the men he’d met for sex. But in his life there had been Jason and Adam, and the others had faded in and faded out. He did not know Rob would last. So that first time when Jason had made his regular autumnal visit he was not sure what to do. Jason expected to sleep in his bed, the place where Rob was. And that was the beginning of things. That is, he had never really looked at the consequences of taking on Rob but never fully ending things with Jason. He had been sneaky. He’d been dishonest and this was at the time Rob was going off to fuck Pat Thomas. Isaiah told himself it was fine to take Jason into his bed. Even Jason wasn’t sure.
“I’m a lot of things,” Jason had said. “Or maybe there are a lot of things I’ve failed to be, but I’m not a cheater.”
Whatever Jason was, he wasn’t able to withstand Isaiah and while he had remained in Isaiah’s house he had slept with him and known full well it wasn’t to be talked about with Rob.
This life where Isaiah Frey did not pretend to be a married heterosexual was so strange, was to put things together as they must be put together. They had to sit down and talk about things.
“Do you love Pat? Will he be part of us?”
Rob had said Pat was gone. Once he and Frey had shared him and the part of Frey that thought this made for a bad future, he put away. Rob’s Catholic guilt Rob learned to put away as well. They had turned only to each other, but then Pat had come to them a few times after that, and in those few times Frey couldn’t feel like it was better or made their relationship stronger to turn Pat away. He couldn’t pretend that it was better if Rob didn’t have Pat when he wanted him.
“I do not want us to have an open relationship. Not like that, not something you see advertised on the net. Or what’s the point?” Frey said. “If we no longer satisfy each other that way, why hang onto things? But Jacob loved Rached and had three other wives, so why don’t we sit down and come to an understanding.”
“I think I’m done with Pat.”
“But you don’t know,” Isaiah had said.
Rob had tried to skirt around this and then echoed, “But I don’t know.”
“So,” Isaiah had said, accountant like, “Pat.”
He’d added, “What about Sheridan?”
“Sheridan Klasko?”
“He’s your partner.”
“He’s married.”
“The same way we are. You all are friends. Say something happens, a rough day. two cops can talk to each other and understand each other in a certain way. He’s gay and so are you. What about Sheridan?”
“You want me to fuck Sheridan?”
“I don’t want you to fuck anyone. Except me,” Frey said. “But I want us to settle things before they happen or becomes issues. So let’s put Sheridan on your list. Pat and Sheridan.”
“Damn,” Rob said, but did not disagree.
He said, “Well, what about your list?”
“I suppose Pat if your bring him,” Frey said. “I’m fond of him, He’s a good person. A loving soul. He seems to need the both of us.”
Rob resolved to not be surprised by Frey’s lack of surprise. He took a deep breath and said, “Jason?”
Isaiah raised an eyebrow.
“I know you still sleep with him. I know you aren’t over him.”
“He’s the father of my child. I’m not entirely sure he’s something to be gotten over.”
Frey tried to sound calm, but he was getting hard just at the mention of Jason’s name.
“I’m not stupid,” Rob said.
“No,” Frey agreed. “But are you angry?”
“At someone who came before me? Who’s only here every once in a while?”

Jason had said the same thing. It was the first time he and Rob had hung out and they were sitting in a resuarant at a little round glass table. Jason’s eyes had been dark and liquid, eager. Good. God, Jason was a good guy and he had said:
“I’m just a Catholic school boy.”
“Same here.”
“Frey is too. But… he’s different. He doesn’t care about things. He’s more… European than I am. Which is strange cause—”
“He’s Black.”
Jason snorted.
“I meant cause I go to Europe all the time. But… you don’t mind it? When I sleep with him. It’s just, you have him all the time. And I don’t fuck around. He is the love of my life. He really is. And he’s yours but…. I have a passion for him, a love for him. I just. When I’m here I love being with him. If you want me not to I won’t. I’ll stop. We’ll stop.”
And then Rob understood exactly what Frey was about because in that moment it seemed petty to tell Jason no. It seemed like it didn’t help a bit to not let he and Frey have these few nights of happiness. He took Jason’s hand and Jason stood up and held him tightly.
“Thank you,” he told Rob.

MORE ON TUESDAY AFTER THE BOOK OF THE BATTLES

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a different yet interesting portion! I am glad these characters are being so frank with each other. Excellent writing and I look forward to more Book Of The Battles tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It was a different kind of portion, but you're right about the frank part. For so long they hid things and now its time to be as honest as possible. After all, they don't have forever.

 

[ChrisGibson]

AND NOW WE RETURN TO ELEGY AS OUR FRIENDS PREPARE FOR CHRISTMAS


It was then, embraced by Jason, Rob had realized that you could only be so out, that there were things you could never share with that many people about your relationship if you were gay. Probably if you were straight. How could he explain that a few times Pat had slept in their bed, or that when Jason came to stay, Rob left in the evening and went back to Bennett. He’d done it not because he was angry at the idea but because Jason was so nervous about sleeping with Frey when Rob was there. He’d done it out of love to let the two of them have their nights. He’d thought he’d mind, but he didn’t.
He’d found himself leaving to let them have time and then returning early and quietly to be a voyeur, to be warmed by the warmth of their love. One night when Rob was in the living room, Jason had come down the hall. Jason his new art teacher, his friend, his sort of brother, damp with sweat and sweet with a smell he could not identify. Jason had not been going past him and then been surprised. No, Jason had been coming for him. Jason had looked down at him, smiling, his eyes glowing, and taken him by the hand and into the dark bedroom. From then on, when Jason came to stay, three slept in that bed, but Rob always made some time for Frey and DJ’s father to be alone.

MORE TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW WE RETURN TO BITS AND PIECES

“I don’t understand the people who think the beach only exists three months out of the year,” Josh says while they drive quickly over the road.
“The people who are like, what, you’re going to the Lake? But it’s September.”
And while DJ admired this, he also thought, “But it’s not September. It’s December, and a few days bfore Christmas.
He said nothing because he liked Josh’s company, because he liked to see Indiana passing like a strip of grey between the brown fields when they drove. He loved the length of fields leading back to red barns and old farms. He loved the stands of trees stretching out in the distance. He wondered, is this the way Dad sees the world, like a painting? And for the first time in a long time, when he thought the word “Dad” he meant Jason Henley.
He was reminded of what Frey had said: You might want to tell Josh that you’re leaving. He was reminded but he didn’t do it yet because he wanted the right time and this was the time to be in the car with Josh. This was the time to hear the music with him, to look out the window and see the piles of grayish white clouds in the pale blue winter sky.

I still want you by my side
Just to help me dry the tears that I cried
And I'm sure gonna give you a try
And if you want, I'll, I'll love you again, baby,
oh yeah
Honey, I'll try to love again but I know
The first cut is the deepest

The world was blankety blank beautiful. He meant it was beautiful with an adjective, but he couldn’t think of what the adjective was. Was the word wintertime? No, there was something else. Heartbreakingly beautiful? His heart wasn’t broken. Maybe, as Josh looked at him, looked away, as he looked at the pink shell of Josh’s ear, the word was heartmakingly beautiful. Not a great word, but there you were.
“I cannot bother to climb a dune today.” Josh said.
They parked in a different place than usual. They parked where they could not see water, only trees and there were dunes before them and dunes beyond them but this place was only a drive through trees that lead to a clearing.
And then the trees opened and they were on packed beach. They were walking on grey sand and there was the Lake as DJ had never seen it before. For while he agreed with Josh about how silly people who only believed the Lake existed three months out of the year were, he had been one of those silly people. He had never seen Lake Michigan so fierce, so grey, like a cocktail of the gods, chunks of white and grey ice washing up against each other, hitting the beach. He had never seen waves of snow and ice all along the shore, curving like the shell of Josh’s ear. He turned to Josh and tugged his skull cap down.
“What?” Josh blinked at him.
“You’re ears will get cold.
“My ears are fine,” Josh said. “Think about your ears!”
DJ was not thinking of his ears at all. He was thinking about Josh’s legs, in shorts at this time, thinking of Frey murmuring something about white people who had no sense.
He said, as he shouted over the crashing waves and he jammed his hands into his pockets, “I don’t want you having pneumonia for Christmas.”
“I will,” Josh promised, “keep my ears covered.
“I will,” he continued, turning up his collar and pulling his zipper, “keep my throat covered.”
“Thank you.”
“I love it how you fuss at me.”
“I’m not fussing,” DJ argued.
Josh suddenly turned to DJ and kissed him on his mouth.
“I love you,” he insisted.
“What?”
“Are you deaf?” Josh said over the waves.
“I love you!”
“You can’t just say that,” DJ declared. “You hardly know me.”
“I think I know you very well.
“We haven’t even been together very long. You can’t just say that. It’s a big thing.”
“Don’t be stupid. This isn’t some…. Movie. This isn’t some… oh my God he said the L word. I love you,” Josh laughed. He broke away from DJ running down the beach, shouting, “I LOVE YOU.”
His voice caught on the air and swooped away with gulls
“I love you!
“I,,, love…. You!”
Josh’s arms were out, his windbreaker flapping. He wasn’t even looking back at DJ, didn’t really even require that the broken boy give an answer.



Once, Donatus Jeremiah Henley-Frey had read on a blog someone describing the first time they’d been fucked in the ass. Chronology failed DJ in the event. He remembered that it had been happening a while before he knew it was happening, and then it had been hurting a while before he knew that it hurt. Kevin had gone further than he needed to, not knowing what he was doing, not using enough lube, not trying to hurt him, but not really knowing any better, enjoying the unexpected pleasure too much DJ imagined.
But then the truth was, even when it was uncomfortable, even when it was too much, in a way he not so much enjoyed it, as needed it. Needed the on-his-hands-and-knee-ness of being bent over and fucked in Kevin Pulaski’s room. He needed the right-now-ness of it. There was no past, no consequence, no reflection. Just the moment right there where Kevin was pressing into him, harder and harder, and then the grunting, and Kevin cursing, and DJ knew Kevin had ejaculated inside of him.
When Kevin pulled out of him, DJ went to his side on the floor, feeling a burning deep inside of him, squeezing himself together, feeling weirdly opened and strangely exultant about it.
“You all right, Deej?” Kevin said.
“I love you,” DJ said.
Kevin seemed not to hear so DJ tried it again
“I love you, Kevin.”
“No,” Kevin said.
“Huh?”
“Don’t say things like that. Don’t say that, again. It’s not right.”
DJ didn’t say anything. He just lay on his side, and Kevin said, “I’ll jack you off. Suck you off. Make it worth your while.”
Apparently Kevin felt guilty.
“I’m gonna suck you off, Deej, all right?”
And he did. DJ was already erect, and he was burning down there, a little raw. Kevin’s mouth was on him, sucking him. He could hear Kevin gulping and swallowing on his cock. But even louder he could hear himself saying:
“I love you.”
And Kevin: “Don’t say that.”


The first cut is the deepest
Baby, I know, the first cut is the deepest
'Cause when it comes to being lucky,
she's cursed
When it comes to loving me, she's worst.

Rod Stewart’s version does not sound the best, but it is the best, not because it’s the first—that’s Cat Stevens—but because it’s the rawest…


On the grey beach with the ice cube cocktail waves washing the shore, Josh turns around and pale sun touches his glasses on the morning of the Solstice. As DJ looks at him he lifts his hat so the curls of his dark red, almost brown hair are caught in the breeze and he unbuttons his jacket so that his scarf flies about in ribbons. DJ jogs across the sand and holds Josh by his face, kissing him.
“I love you,” he says, as if he has never said the words before.
Nothing is forbidden.
Before it was only that sex was not forbidden, lust was not forbidden. Deeds in the dark were not forbidden. Now, in this new age, even love is no longer forbidden. No longer forbidden is fearlessness. Now even joy is not forbidden.



“So I hear you’re having a huge Christmas,” Renee Dwyer said.
“When I was a boy,” her husband began, and Renee smiled fondly and stroked his hand as if to say, “Well, you know he does this.”
“We used to go to my grandmother’s house and she would have me go out into the yard and kill a chicken. Now a chicken is one of the hardest things to kill because they like to run around and you would just chase that chicken, and then when you finally got it, you’d put its head on the block. But you know, when you kill that chicken—”
“It will run around before it dies,” Josh interrupted, making it sound like a question.
“It runs around,” his father said, “before it dies. And then she would make that fresh chicken. And I always hate fresh chicken. I can’t stand that. And eggs.”
“Well, pops,” Josh said, “I will make sure there is no fresh chicken on the table at Christmas.”
“I hate that fresh chicken,” he continued. “And I would go outside,” he enacted the pushing forward of a screen door, DJ supposed, “and get that ax, and chop off that chicken’s head. And it had this taste…”
DJ didn’t feel comfortable about interrupting, but Mrs. Dwyer said, “So a lot of people will be there?”
DJ realized she was talking to him and said, “Well, yes, my cousins, and my Dad’s friends. And then my actual Dad. Cause I’m adopted. I think I said that. And we’re going to up to the Lake and visit some folks. But it’s not all on the same day. Because, is Rob coming here on Christmas.”
“Yes, that was my point. And you should come too. If you want.”
Privately DJ thought Christmases at his home were the best in the world and everyone should come there, but he said, “Yes, I’d like that a lot.”
Josh quickly squeezed his hand and stuck out his tongue.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered as they were heading out of the kitchen, “it won’t be that long.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Nice to return to this story. So Josh has confessed his feelings for DJ? Good for him! Hopefully one day DJ can say it back. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Josh doesn't even think anything of it, but he knows DJ is still in a broken place, and he doesn't mind that either.

 

[ChrisGibson]

The light in the basement room is amber colored, and the warmth is all Josh, Heat rises to his eyes stinging them, as he holds onto Josh Dwyer, feeling his whole body press against him. His hands roughly caress Josh’s thick red hair as he turns his throat to feel Josh’s kisses, the kisses that go hungrily from throat to chin, to mouth, to mouth, to mouth, so fiercely, and go back down again. DJ opens his legs wider to fit him and he opens his eyes and sees, hazily, through tears the plains of Josh Dwyer’s shoulders, the length of his back, the twin round hills of his ass, sees them flex tenderly, feels Josh pumping inside of him, deep in a way no one has before, the depth is not of size, but of love. There is no space between them, legs move with legs, stomachs against stomachs.
Once he took a Bible class because he had to, but in the end he liked it. He remembers over and over again a line from the Song of Songs that has played in his ear since they came back to the split level in the cul de sac in Bennett where the Dwyers live and Rob kissed him against the back door, since, holding his hand, he lead him into the kitchen.

I would lead you and bring you to my mother's house,
she who has taught me…

They are in Rob’s old room in the basement, and for some reason this proximity to the family, this not being hid from it, sings all through DJ’s body, makes him strive harder with Josh’s striving. Josh lifts up his head and his face is different, chiseled, lovely, his blue eyes piercing. He slows, stops, frowns in concern.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes,” DJ says, startled, but understands why Josh asks before he says it.
“You’re crying.”
“It’s…” DJ feels silly, “No. No, don’t stop.”
Josh nods earnestly, earnestly be thrust deep into him again. Earnestly they move together looking into each others eyes.
“I,” Josh says as he moves in DJ, “want…. to fuck you… so…. so... tenderly.”
He buries his head in DJ’s shoulders and they move together, deeper, the only sound in the room the cricket chirp of the moving bed. As their sex increases, they cling tighter, sweat more, Josh grits his teeth and surrenders a great agonized groan that carries DJ into his own coming. Orgasm leads to orgasm, the world silently rattles around both of them and, mouths open, bodies shaking and then clenches, they are rocked into rest.

They lay naked like babies in the in the graying light, knees to knees, looking at one another.
“So… Amsterdam?”
“I won’t stay there too long, I promise,” DJ said.
“When do you leave?”
“Whenever Dad does, I guess. I… should have told you, but I didn’t know until… I should have told you as soon as I saw you.”
“I don’t grudge it,” Josh said. “It’s Amsterdam. And you need to be with your Dad.”
“It’s only for a little while. And then… And then I’ll come back to you.”
Josh looks at DJ with his short, almost butchered, buzzed chocolate hair, his deep brown eyes in pools of shadow, thick lips.
“If you are not back soon,” Josh tells him, “I will get on a plane and come for you. So don’t you worry about that.”



This is a little house, two simple stories, a bedroom oddly set off the dining room and a bedroom in the back. Upstairs, in what was a dormer added later, two more bedrooms and a better bath.
From downstairs they can smell cooking.
“I think it’s fried chicken,” Rob says.
“You always want it to be chicken. I’m pretty sure it’s… something else.”
“That’s a terrible answer,” Rob says.
Jason giggles a little, shrugs, like a kid.
“I know this,” Jason murmurs, “fried chicken would be done quickly, and Isaiah has sent us away, told us he won’t be done anytime soon.”
It is dark because they have not turned on the light and day has retreated without their permission. The slats of the blinds are open, looking on the world outside. They are naked on the bed, kneeling in front of each other, and Jason knows that this is Javon’s old room, but does not know that this is the place where his own son first came to Javon long ago and gave himself to the other boy.
In this room Jason stops talking and bites his lower lip while Rob massages his penis. He feels how his cock crows in Rob’s hands while Rob rubs his fingers over the head and up and down his shaft. Jason feels, but does not see, the veins rising, the round helmet head of his penis growing, his balls dropping, becoming heavy at Rob Dwyer’s touch. He did not lie. He has been many places, met many men, many people. Very few have the power to awaken this thing in him. The place between his legs is often, not dead, but not full of life, not like it is now while he looks in the dim light on the milky body and the bent red head of Rob Dwyer, nothing like Isaiah, but entirely like him, and Rob run’s his hands from Jason’s penis, jutting out of its dark hair, to his stomach to his breast, to his shoulder, to his arms and draws him down, expertly.
There is something efficient about their sex, which sounds bad, not like the truth. It is not the shameful hurried sex with someone they do not know or do not like which they’ve both experienced. Nor is it the mindblowing two to three hour slow burning passion. It is… married people sex. The sex that happens when sex is essential and you want to be with someone but there is only so much time, like say, when dinner is being made downstairs. It is not less for the quickness of its intensity, and Rob’s mouth is an O as Jason’s hands press down on his shoulders, as he reaches up and down, caressing Jason’s sides. They are always gentle, always less so, always in the end quick, furious. With an outburst of breath Jason comes first while Rob, groaning, clings to his hips.

Jason didn’t start out a smoker, but it is he who takes Rob’s cigarettes and lights one, taking a deep inhale and letting out a long gush of smoke. He takes two long drags and as smoke leaves his nostrils and he passes the Marlboro to Rob, Rob says, “When are you leaving?”
“I haven’t even fucking left yet,” Jason’s back is to him, outlined by the last grey light of the day.
“Which is a great time to ask about your plans,” Rob says.
Jason reaches for the cigarette, but Rob pushes his hand away.
“Get your own. The pack’s right there.”
He waits while Jason takes one out and lights it, puffs without inhaling really.
“After Christmas.”
“Why do you have to go away at all?”
“Huh?”
“I didn’t think you were deaf.”
Rob sits up, ashing onto the little saucer they use for a tray.
“Why go away so often? Don’t you get tired of that shit?”
He touches Jason’s temples where small white strands touch his black hair.
“Wouldn’t you like someplace to crash? For more than Christmas or a few days in fall?”
“You’d want that?” Jason says. “You’d want me here all the time?”
“I don’t think even you would want to be here all the time, but I’d want you here. I think we’d be happy.”
Rob sits up now so that he, compact and milky, and Jason, tall and dark and bent in thought are side by side, naked, knees touching.
“I,” Jason begins, “liked to be gone. A lot. Had to be. And then I felt like I… I dunno, exiled myself.
“It would be good to have a home again,” he said after a while.
Rob says nothing to this. Instead, when he’s gotten to the end of his cigarette and stubbed it out, the grey smoke of two cigarettes in the room almost stinging his eyes, he says, “Should we dress for dinner? It’s almost time.”
Without waiting for an answer, Rob walks out naked into the hall, and Jason can hear water running while he runs the cloth up and down his body. Rob comes back in and dresses. He is reaching for his tee shirt when his phone buzzes.
“I’ll get it,” Jason says without even thinking about it.
Rob nods, pulling his shirt on while he smiles over Jason’s body, follows the trail of dark hair that blooms from his sex to make a line up his stomach and cover his chest.
“Ah, it’s Donovan,” says Jason.
“Huh?” Rob raises an eyebrow.
“He sent a picture,” Jason says, and turns it to Rob who is pulling his brown police shirt on over his tee.
Rob squints, murmurs, and smiles.
In the snow, amidst a patch of dead flowers on a nearly dried bush is one, small, pink blossoming rose.

END OF THIS CHAPTER
ONLY TWO MORE CHAPTERS TO GO.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great end to the chapter. I have been missing for a few days as you know but it is good to get back to reading and commenting. I don’t know what will happen in the last two chapters but I am looking forward to finding out.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, now, between Sukkpt and... well mostly Sukkot, I have been missing as well. But yes, it is good to get back into the swing of things and return to our stories.

 

[ChrisGibson]

T W E L V E

water
like
a
stone




“I blame you. You make me feel things.”

- Simon Barrow






“Well how have you been?”
“I’ve been good, Dad,” Cademon Richards said. He had not quite gotten to that place where he wasn’t bothered by his father asking the same thing every five minutes.
“I mean, it’s a blizzard and everything,” he told him on the other end of the phone, “so not much moving around.”
“A blizzard,” Stan Richards said, thoughtfully.
“It probably makes it hard to get from your place to mine then.”
Stan could not, or even would not understand that it was not the blizzard but the great distance that made it difficult for Cade to get to his house in Ely easily.
At first his father had begun by saying that he would go back home, telling the nurses at the hospital to just fetch his coat until they reminded him he had no car and had been brought here on a stretcher. And then he ordered them to summon him a cab, but they told him to rest just a little longer. He had been a flight risk with an alarm on him and when it was time to send him to the nursing home north of Ely he had refused to go until Good Samaritan had called and told Cade they were going to run a second psych eval on him, make sure he was truly incapable of making his own decisions before heeding Cade’s advice and bundling his father off to Whispering Pines.
For a day and a half Cade had walked about the house not resting, barely sleeping and Donovan had stayed up not sleeping either. Simon tried, but Donovan understood.
“They’re going to call me and tell me he’s incompetent and he’s going off to Whispering Pines no matter what. Or…”
“They’re going to tell you he’s fine and send him home.”
“Yeah,” Cade said. “And I know which one should happen.”
“And the one you want,” Donovan continued, “is the one that makes you feel guilty.”
“As hell,” Cade turned to him.
Donovan did not say that the one that made him feel guilty was also the best option. He did not need to, and on Wednesday morning the hospital had called Cade and told him his father was on his way there, but he had to sign him in.
So Cade had been on the phone doing what Donovan was going to be doing with his stepfather soon enough, and by the end of the evening his father was in Whispering Pines.
“Have you been to the house?” Cade’s father was asking him.
“Yeah, Dad,” he stopped himself from saying, “I just told you that.”
“And did you lock it up?”
“Yes. It’s all locked up.”
“Well, what did you do with the key?”
“I have the key.”
“What about the other key?”
“I didn’t see the other key.”
“Did you lock the backdoor?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Stan sounded deflated.
“Well, I’ll just have the locksmith open it up, and I’ll get a new lock. Did you leave the other key in the house?”
“I just told you, there is no other—”
In the midst of talking he saw Don sitting across from him in the old living room.
“Uh… yeah, Dad. The key’s in the house.”
“Oh, good. When I leave here I’ll just go get it.”

This was the first time Cade had spoken to his father since the night he had driven up to Ely after work. He’d been told Stan was going to be placed that day or the next and wanted to visit him before he went in. When he’d gotten there, Stan was cross and mean and talked shit to the social worker who explained he needed to go someplace else for more help. When Cade agreed, Stan roared and threw him out. Cade, looking into those eyes, remembered the son of a bitch he’d grown up with. It had been a week and a half before he felt the need to talk to his father again.
“Well, he told Stan over the phone, “I’m about to go.”
“Yes, yes. And I’ll be out in a few days. Love you, son.”
When Cade hung up he said, “When he says shit like that, part of me thinks he really is about to get out. Like they’re really going to let him go,”
“Sans coat, sans car, sans money?”
“Sans mind,” Cade said.
Donovan burst out laughing and Cade frowned.
“It’s not—”
“It is,” Donovan said, touching his hand. “It is funny. It’s all funny. Just be glad he thinks he’s only been gone for two days and is coming back home. He needs to think that. It keeps him happy.”
That had been some months ago, and now Cade said:
“I’m glad we can’t go visit. Glad for the Plague just for that reason. I would dread going up to Ely if we had to see him. I’m not ready for that.”
It was Christmas Eve, and though there had been no snow for a week, and when it came it came barely at all, little white flakes were falling with a rapidity that promised a storm. They would be going up to Ely tonight, and then heading back home in the morning to receive Frey and Rob and whoever those two were bringing. Frey had talked about them coming to Ashby instead, but Donovan had pointed out the simple fact that his house was bigger.
“It’s practically a hotel. You can even stay the night.
“Will you have blankets and sheets and towels for everyone?” Frey said.
His cousin frowned at him.
“It’s not that kind of a hotel.”
“It’s more the European kind,” Simon had said.
“It sounds like the broke bitch kind,” Frey had replied, but with no true heat.
Tonight Donovan and his men would be staying in the aqua blue bungalow where Cade’s father had lived with his brother Freddy who was still down in Florida and not coming back anytime soon.
Tonight they would eat at Linda’s house and Deanna would be there and then they would go up a little more north, winding through trees to the home by the Lake where Dan Malloy and Keith McDonald, the priests turned lovers would lead them in Midnight Mass, and the new world Donovan had said he half believed was coming, maybe Cade would be able to believe in too.


Donovan came behind Simon while he was dressing. There is something very single about both Donovan and Simon. Donovan comes back to that solitude by the largeness of the house and the strangeness of Cade. He came back to it by Simon being in their lives so that Cade was not wholly dependent upon him, And Simon came back to it by staying in his own house a few nights a week.
When Donovan came behind Simon and straightened his tie, Simon grinned.
“I like when you do that.”
“Straighten your tie?”
“Yeah. Kiss me behind the ears. Act like you’re a boyfriend.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, you are my boyfriend,” Simon said, tenderly, touching his hand, “but sometimes I wonder if you know that. Or how happy it makes me.”
“Sometimes,” Donovan admitted, combing the back of Simon’s hair and sniffing his neck, “I do forget. I forget it, and then also I can’t believe it.”
There wasn’t a way to not sound like a foot and tell Simon how beautiful he was, how much he loved the way he walked, the straight way he held up his head, the gentle hair down his arms, how good and slim he looked in these grey trousers and white shirt.
“How good you smell,” Donovan settled on. “Always like cedar.”
Simon turned around and beamed his bright smile. He kissed Donovan quickly on the mouth.
“And cigarettes too,” he said. “You got me started on that filthy habit.”
“I certainly did not,” Donovan said, walking out the room while Simon grabbed his ass.
“Really?”
“Oh, yes,” Simon said, coming up to him and wrapping his arms about him.
“You know the tragedy of being with someone? You know how much you’re into them, what’s beautiful to you about them, but they can’t see it. So you can’t see how I love you. And I can’t see what you see in a goofball like me.”
Simon was, to Donovan, the very opposite of a goofball, and then they stood in the doorway of the bathroom, looking out on the old expensive living room, Simon’s arms wrapped about Don.
“I’m about to get that black car coat you like so much.”
“I do like it You look like a businessman from the 1940s.”
“Because you meant that as a compliment, I’m going to take it as one.”
“Please do.”
“Should I top it off by—”
“Wearing the fedora and the red scarf? Yes.”
When Simon had done this, standing before Donovan with his fedora cocked, his gloves in hand, Donovan said, “I like how you like to look good.”
“I think,” Simon said, “I like looking good more when I know you’re looking at me thinking I look good.”
“A whole lot of thinking going on.”
“And now,” Simon said, theatrically, opening the old heavy door into the living room, “let us depart and find our third man, Cademon, so we can get to Ely before dark.”

TOMORROW: THE BOOK OF THE BATTLES

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to get back to these characters. It’s sad about Cade and his father but it happens. That’s life sometimes unfortunately. Excellent writing and I look forward to The Book Of The Battles tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It is sad, but it's exactly what happened to my father. In the end, all we can do is make the best of what's handed to us. I'm glad you enjoyed our friends muddling through life together. It's all they can do, and it's all we can do too.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“You don’t have to worry about going to see Dad,” Deanna says when they have gotten to the house and she and Linda have greeted them all. “I just drove up to see him today.”
“How is he?” Cade asks, trying to sound casual, and Deanna says, “He seems to think he’s only been gone two days. Three at tops.”
“Is he still mad?”
“As a goddamn hatter. Oh, you mean at you?” Deanna recovered herself, while her mother frowned, shaking her head.
“Oh, no,” Deana answered, “he said you were coming that afternoon.”
At the look on Cade’s face, Deanna added, “don’t worry, I told him you’d already been there.”
“You what?”
“I told him you’d been there.”
“What did he…? Did you tell him I’d been there while he was asleep.”
“I started to,” Deanna said. “But then he seemed to actually remember it, so I asked what you all had talked about, and he told me, and I elaborated from there.”
While Linda’s face was blank, Cade said, “You lied to Dad?”
“He lied to himself,” Deanna shrugged.
“Deanna.”
“Cade,” she returned, mocking him with her own chiding voice. But this time her chiding actually felt like chiding.
“He has dementia. Why the fuck take all this care to remind him of the facts, the facts, the facts and build a less happy reality for him when he can have the reality he wants? And quite frankly, he always did made his own reality. You were worried about not coming to visit, which you didn’t want to do anyway—”
“I did!”
“And now,” Deanna continued, “thanks to me, you have.”
As Deanna had been talking, the kitchen was filled with the smell of her cooking. When she was done, she threw everyone out except for Donovan who had not only the knack for cooking the food he knew, but for understanding the food of others. Linda had learned in the last year or so that the way to have her daughter around was to shut her mouth and not say little things like, “You shouldn’t say that,” or “Deanna I can’t believe you.” Linda limited herself to wry facial expressions, and the way to have a good table, she had learned, was to stay out of the kitchen when Deanna cooked. Cade could smell the roasted lamb and the baking pastry from the kebbeh pie. When he was allowed a look, the lamb and grain looked smooth and brown like chocolate velvet, and Deanna had cut a diamond pattern cut across it. Cade’s childhood senses were filled with the sight and tank kibbeh pie served with warm yogurt sauce. He envied Donovan in the kitchen beside his sister working on turkey and chicken with spiced, nutty rice. He had seen and or imagined the tabouleh, mezze plates of hummus and beet and tahini salad, and lamb rotis. He could already taste the flaky crumble crust of spanicopana, taste the sweet date flavor of the pastries being set to bake.
“How did you learn to cook this?” Cade wondered. “You didn’t learn it from Grandma.”
“No,” Deanna said when she was pulling the kibbeh out of the oven and had everyone setting up the table and taking out wine or beer.
“And I didn’t learn it from Aunt Shereen either, though I tried. But then I remembered they’d invented this shit called the Internet, and I was smart enough to learn recipes. So, tada, I’m a Lebanese cook!”

About nine o’ clock, Donovan Shorter felt himself thoroughly full, and curled up in a chair seriously thinking about unbuttoning his pants.
“Do we really have to go to this midnight mass thing?” Deanna asked. “I’m beat.”
“You don’t have to go anywhere,” her mother said, half asleep. “Honestly, after a meal like that I’m seriously thinking of staying in myself.”
“Not seriously, Mom,” Cade said from where he was lolled on the sofa, his legs meeting with Simon’s as the blong man half dozed on the other end.
“No,” Linda said. “Not seriously. Only semi seriously. “We need a nap and a second wind, and then we’ll head over at eleven I suppose.”
“Well, now,” Donovan observed unnecessarily, “eleven is two hours from now.”

Simon, who had enjoyed the eating of everything, was quiet through the meal, very pensive, and Don wondered if it wasn’t because they weren’t going to his home for Christmas. They knew Simon had a family, but they didn’t really seem to feature in Simon’s present, only in the back story. He wanted to ask, but right now the sofa was so comfortable and their silence was so comfortable and there was something about this house so warm and full of people and good food and tempting seconds and thirds on the kibbeh pie and the date pastries, while the outside was full of snow and cold, the asking of questions seemed forbidden.
As eleven o clock approached, the promised second wind came, or at least the ability to button one’s pants again and yawn less than once every five minutes.
“Woah!” Simon cried, pulling his collar up as they stepped outside into a driving breeze and white snow.
Donovan, who believed talking did little, locked his arm in Simon’s and announced, “We’re driving behind the rest of you.”
Cade was wearing no hat, the wind was tossing his dark curls around his face and his cheeks were red. Eyes sparkling, he stopped to kiss Donovan and kissed Simon lightly on the cheek before turning around and joining his familiy in Deanna’s little car while Don and Simon went to Cade’s Land Rover.
“How did you know?” Simon asked him, and Donovan wasn’t sure what it was he had known except that Simon needed him.
“I always know,” is what he said.
The road they took out of Ely wound about the blue green house of Cade’s childhood and later of his father. They stopped while Cade ran in, turned up the furnace and turned on some lights. The twisting road went by the Lake, the water hidden by the trees, and while Simon drove, he held out his hand and Donovan placed his own in it.
They said nothing, but Simon just squeezed, and they followed Deanna car over the bridge and toward the long old cabin like house, its chimneys giving great smoke and all of its lights on. Cars were lined before it on the snow, and blue and immense, Lake Michigan sparkled beyond.
“I bet they probably had Christmas dinner here tonight too,” Donovan murmured.
Simon’s heart lightened. He remembered the first Easter—last year—when he had come here and felt light and welcomed, and as the door opened a redhead with a fringer of a beard popped his head out and Simon frowned, thinking this was the last place he would see him.
Apparently Donovan felt the same way.
“Rob? Rob Dwyer?”
“It’s a small world,” Rob laughed, stepped out in the snow and throwing his arms around Donovan and then dancing back into the house.
“Ain’t it?”

Rob had explained things, but not very coherently, and out on the porch, where they could hear the ice cracking the frozen blocks of ice that were the surface of Lake Michigan crashing together, Isaiah Frey spoke to his cousin and friends.
“So, apparently, Rob’s partner—his cop partner—that tall gawky one with the pale brown hair over there, his husband is lawyer, well a judge now, Brendan. Who apparently is talking to Simon like they know each other.
“Simon once told me,” Donovan said, “that I should marry Cade and the guy who should do it was this judge, Brendan Miller.”
“Well, yes, that’s the very same one. See what a small world it is,” Frey continued.
Donovan looked between Simon and Brendan. Brendan was a little taller, a little older, his features sharper. There was something of Simon in him but he seemed, Donovan thought, cagey, rangy and not a strange match for Sheridan Klasko. Judge or no, that man knew some things and Isaiah, turning from watching them on the other side of the door, didn’t doubt it.
“Anyway,” Frey said, “turns out this Father Dan is friends with Brendan. Like from long ago, so they all just ended up coming up here and when I put things together and realized his Dan was your Dan, well,” Frey shrugged. “It really is a small world indeed.”
Suddenly someone was singing. They couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, and the voice was soaring, too big for the house. As they turned to the doors they could see the lights dimming, and Sheridan Klasko came cheerfully to the glass doors with a box of candles and waved them in.

“Of the Father's love begotten
ere the worlds began to be,
he is Alpha and Omega,
he the Source, the Ending he,
of the things that are, that have been,
and that future years shall see,
evermore and evermore!”

“That’s right,” Sheridan said. “Get your candles. Everyone is through the whole house. Good thing about an open floor plan. Time for good Christians to rejoice and all that business.”
As Cade reached into the box and took out a small fat candle, he said, “I’ve never been a very good Christian.”
“Neither have I,” Sheridan shrugged, taking the box and turning to offer candles to someone else.
“In fact, I’m such a not very good Christian, I’m actually a Jew.”
Cade frowned.
“What about it?” Sheridan said. “A holiday is a holiday and God is God.”

This wasn’t the first time Donovan had been to the home of Dan Malloy and Keith McDonald. He was like Saint Thomas who had seen things but still needed to see them again to believe. He was not church people, not anymore. He had made his own church and his own doctrines. Not only did he not feel right in church, he felt no desire for it. The idea of a church being conducted out of the home of two gay priests did not attract him from his own private church one bit. He was surprised at how he’d felt that Easter over a year ago, when he had been swept up into the hymns and the lighting of candles all through the house, into the group of misfits, these people who were on the edge of the world and they were all, he understood, misfits in their own way, even the whitest and most common looking of people. Well, wasn’t Linda part of their number, and wasn’t she absolutely the commonest white people you could find? But she was here and not at that church down the street, and not becoming an Episcopalian or trying out a new evangelical church for the same reason he was here. Because she was on the edge.
“Well, now,” Donovan thought, “love is why I am here. Because the man I love wanted me to be here.”
But love was the reason they were all here. There wasn’t any other reason but love.
On Easter the fire had been kindled outside and brought into the house, and all the little tapers were lit from it. Now, in the dim light of the house increased to a gentle glow as light was passed from fat little candle to fat little candle. And as the light increased from one to several, so did the singing.


O that birth forever blessed,
when the Virgin, full of grace,
by the Holy Ghost conceiving,
bore the Savior of our race;
and the babe, the world's Redeemer,
first revealed his sacred face,
evermore and evermore!

This is he whom heav'n-taught singers
sang of old with one accord,
whom the Scriptures of the prophets
promised in their faithful word;
now he shines, the long expected;
let creation praise its Lord,
evermore and evermore!

The priests were nowhere to be seen, and the table that Donovan remembered as an altar last year, had been draped in white and gold cloth, and at its corners, candles burned.
“It’s a real and proper church now,” Donovan said.
“That’s what I was going to say,” Simon whispered as they decided to settle in the kitchen rather than walk all across the crowded, singing house to find Cade.
“And then I thought no. I remember once I saw this picture of a cave church in France. It was supposed to be the cave where Mary Magdalene lived out her life and it had been turned into a church, and it was a place I really wanted to go. And then I remembered those old, old Roman churches like, from back when Christians were persecuted. They look all ragged from the outside and they were tucked away in weird places. You have to go up staircases or into basements to reach them, and they’re little and strange. The oldest of the old, more churches than churches. That’s what this place looks like. Those churches are on the edge… cause they’re on the edge of time, of belief. Before orthodoxy or maybe even before fact. And this church is the same.”
Donovan was amazed, shivered actually to hear Simon talking this way because part of him had believed something like this. Once he had known a Mormon who talked about going back to the beginning of the Church when it was just the Twelve Apostles after Jesus, but when Donovan had looked at those old churches and those old days nothing came to a small and concentrated point. It seemed, in fact, more diffuse the further you went back, more chaotic, more varied, more ancient but less orthodox and rather than getting closer to the fact of Jesus, the ancient belief went to a place beyond fact. Jesus was the son of the Virgin Mary, Jesus was the Son of Mary and a Roman soldier, Jesus was the Living God, Jesus was an angel, Jesus was Jehovah Himself, Jesus was a witch, Jesus was three of these things together, And yet, he was, and they were. The origins of things were beyond fact and simple reality, and so were they.

They were the bell ringing.

They were the hymn.

Silent night, holy night….
All is calm, all is bright…

They were the faces Donovan knew, of Cade beside his mother and Deanna, of Brendan Miller and Sheridan Klasko, of Rob and his cousin Frey, and they were the faces he did not know yet, but had always known. The fiction of time and the fiction of fact were suspended in the growing light. A hallway or a cleared space had become a nave, and twenty somethings had become people with the voice of children walking up, the last of them carrying a plaster baby made gold by candlelight and real by faith, placed in the manger. Father Dan and Father McDonald had on robes of white trimmed in gold, had frankincense, were censing the manger. Sweet sharp smoke was rising. They censed the altar and everyone sang:

“Sleep in heavenly peeeeeace
Sleeeeep in heavenly peace.”


In this moment no one needed to say that the new world had begun. Donovan Shorter was almost mad at himself for thinking it.


NOTHING TOMORROW. BLESSINGS TILL AFTER THE WEEKEND.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a welcome surprise to see Brendan and Sheridan in this story. The situation with Cade’s Father is still sad but at least they get to see him I guess. This story is wrapping up nicely and I look forward to more in a few days! Have a great Friday and weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you enjoyed it, and so glad to send you some surprises. In fact I'm glad you;ve been here on this journey and there will be lots on the other side of the weekend and everything that happens in it.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER TWELVE ALSO WRAPS UP IN ELEGY WHERE WE REJOIN OUR FRIENDS AT THE CHRISTMAS PARTY IN DAN MALLOY'S HOME



“So, Brendan, who is supposed to be this great man of the world—“Sheridan began, elbowing his partner in the ribs.
“I never claimed to be a great anything of anything!” the tne blond man threw up his hands
“Is all like, Well, we can’t stay too long cause we gotta drive all the way up to Ely.”
“Cause it’s in another state,” Brendan justified. “Like, if we were driving to say… South Bend or something I’d be like, we’ve got a drive ahead of us.”
“But we’re literally taking the curve around Lake Michigan.”
“I thought Ely was somewhere like Holland or Saugatuck.”
“Even that isn’t that far away, but the point I’m making is we’re pretty much an hour from home.”
Cade had been laughing and he swiped some of his sister chips and cheese dip.
“Hey!” Deanna cried.
“I sympathize with Brendan, “ Donovan told Cade, “I always think it’s a lot further than it is too.”
Cade squeezed Donovan’s hand and said, “Thank you for this.”
“For this?”
“I needed this,” Cade said.
He did need to be here in this loud and laughing room at one in the morning after Mass, and when Cade said, “And Simon needs to be with you,” Donovan nodded because he knew it.
He so associated being there for both Cade and Simon with being present and in their faces that he was surprised that to give Cade what he needed he had to throw him in a loud party, and now he was ready to go to Simon and give him his undivided attention.
“It’s going to be a blizzard,” Simon declared.
“Shall we walk in it?” Donovan asked.
They turned their backs on the light and the merriment of the house of Dan Malloy and Keith McDonald.
“Yes,” said Simon Barrow.


























They climbed into the SUV silently, and by now Donovan could tell when Simon didn’t want to talk and that this had little to do with him. And then, sometimes, there just wasn’t anything to be said. They drove along the winding road back to Ely and the house and the only thing Donovan did say was, “I wish I’d told Dan goodbye.”
Everyone else knew they were leaving and he would see Frey tomorrow. He yawned now. It was toward two in the morning, and it was Simon who said what he was thinking:
“I forgot how long the drive from here back to Ely was.”
They were on the road for at least twenty minutes, and then curving back to the welcome blue house that seems so solitary despite being on a block with ten other large bungalows. Maybe it was because they were so spaced a part, separate from each other as they were separate from the rest of the town. When Simon had parked, though Donovan yawned, the cold air woke him up and he thought, this is not a night for sleeping, not just yet.
Simon followed him wordlessly through the snow and past the trees to the beach where Lake Michigan washed up ice slush water onto the white shore and breathed white cold breathe on them. The sky was clear tonight and Simon looked up at it and said, “I’ve just felt so unbearably unhappy tonight.”
Despite the cold, Donovan took his hand from its glove and pressed it to Simon’s cheek.
Further south, if they had been say, in New Union or Union Pier at the curve of the lake they might have seen other cities, and further south they might have even been at a curve where they could make out Chicago. But this far up they were on true deep water, and there was no seeing across this.
“I keep looking for happy memories,” Simon said, “and I can’t find them. You’re going to see happy families and I don’t want to see mine because mine isn’t happy. I’ve never felt quite this way before. I am… unbearably sad.”
“Yes,” Donovan said, slipping his hand back into his glove and feeling the sting of air on his cheeks as he listened to the waves crash onto the frozen shore.
“I’ve never felt quite this way either.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to be sunk in my own sorrow with… what’s happened.”
“My mother died,” Donovan said, “is what happened. And that sorrow was never meant to be a contest against yours, like my sorrow outmatched yours, or like you couldn’t talk about what you were going through. Especially since I’m not really even entirely sure how I feel.”
“Well, that’s how I feel,” Simon said, “Not entirely sure. Just sad. And I needed to be away from the party. I couldn’t… I couldn’t live up to it.”
“I don’t know that I could have lived up to it forever either,” Don said. “Cade said you needed me, but maybe I needed us to be alone out here as much as you did.”
“I said unbearably sad,” Simon said. “I may have been laying it on. Because it isn’t… a crying sadness. I think of my dad, you know, and how things were, how they should be. How I can’t call home. How I can’t expect a call from home. How much is gone and that’s strange because its been so long, but sometimes my mind goes there.”
“Not a sadness like a crying sadness,” Donovan supplied. “A sadness like a weird ache, like something got torn out and no matter how the wound heals, you’ll see the tear.”
“You’ll see the scar.” Simon nodded.
“Only, maybe it doesn’t sound right like that,” Simon thought.
“Once I had this plant,” he continued, and I got a hole in one of its broad leaves. I thought I killed it, but no, it just healed with the hole in it. That’s what I feel like, and sometimes I’m on the edge of that wound.”
“And then sometimes you’re in the hole.”
“Yes,” Simon said. “And tonight is that sometime.”

They turned to walk back to the house and Donovan waited for one long wave to crash make against the shore before he spoke.
“The feeling comes, sometimes. By surprise . It’s new to me. It’s not like depression, or anger or the usual sadness. It isn’t like anything I’ve ever felt. But if you had not said what you said, I would not understand it.”
“I hoped it would go away,” Simon said.
“But it doesn’t?”
“It didn’t for me,” Simon said. “But that’s also because I never looked at it. I’ve tried to fill every bad feeling, every sadness, with something else. I’ve spent a long time trying to not feel very much for very long.”
He laughed suddenly, but the laughter was a little broken, He took off his fedora, a little insufficient for this weather, and hit Don in the shoulder.
“I blame you. You make me feel things.”
“I won’t lie,” Donovan said. “this whole feeling things business is kind of a bitch.”
As they came up onto the road from the beach and began walking toward the houses, Donovan recited:



“Then, Joseph wandered, but he did not wander.
And I looked up to the peak of the sky and saw
it standing still and I looked up into the air.
With utter astonishment I saw it, even the birds of the sky
were not moving.
And I looked at the ground and saw a bowl lying there
and workers reclining.
And their hands were in the bowl. And chewing,
they were not chewing. And picking food up, they were not
picking it up.
And putting food in their mouths, they were not putting it
in their mouths.
Rather, all their faces were looking up.”

They went inside and up the stairs and they didn’t remark about the sadness of the house where there had once been life, but the life had been brought to a sudden stop. They didn’t remark about such sadness because it led back to that hole of which they had already spoken. The two of them undressed quietly and turned up the heat, They climbed into bed and under deep covers ay naked, Simon’s light body stretched across Don’s, his arms holding him, cheek to chest.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion. You are right about the fact that grief isn’t a contest. Having gone through it myself it’s good to remember the people around you and that you can help each other with your grief. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!