CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Well Christmas certainly was full of surprises! I am glad none of them are spending it alone. I wonder what that phone call was about? I am very interested to find out. Great writing and I look forward to more next week!
The Original Gay Porn Community - Free Gay Movies and Photos, Gay Porn Site Reviews and Adult Gay Forums
-
Welcome To Just Us Boys - The World's Largest Gay Message Board Community
In order to comply with recent US Supreme Court rulings regarding adult content, we will be making changes in the future to require that you log into your account to view adult content on the site.
If you do not have an account, please register.
REGISTER HERE - 100% FREE / We Will Never Sell Your InfoTo register, turn off your VPN; you can re-enable the VPN after registration. You must maintain an active email address on your account: disposable email addresses cannot be used to register.
Nights in White Satin
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Well, since there is a power out at the Lewises, and Chayne just got a call from Russell, maybe you can figure out what the phone call is about.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHRISTMAS CONTINUES
“Chayne,” Thom said, effusively, “thank you. Thank you thank you so, so much.”
“Of course, Thom,” Chayne said. “You’re welcome, Thom.”
Patti, carrying a three quarters done turkey as she walked into the kitchen, kissed Chayne on the cheek and said, “We’re in your debt. Again.”
The Lewises came in thankful and effusive, each one, even the little children, and Chayne wanted nothing more than to go back to the quiet morning he’d been having, and reminded himself that sometimes what you wanted just was not that important.
Last at the door were three non Lewises.
“Bill Dwyer.”
Beside Bill was Cameron Dwyer and behind them, now in a coat and scarf, was Chris Knapp.
“I was just wondering, Chayne,” Bill began, “if it would be too much if Cameron stayed. We were going to have dinner with the Lewises—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Chayne said as kindly as he felt, “You’ll all stay here.”
“Thank you kindly, Mr. Kandzierski,” Chris said, coming in, “We’re not going to be here all day. We’re going to go to my parents after a while. Our dinner’s at four.”
Chayne nodded to this and went off to his other affairs, but Bill said, “That’ll be good for Cameron.”
“You’re coming too, sir,” Chris said. “It’s Christmas, no one’s gonna be alone today.”
Bill opened his mouth to protest, but changed his mind and said, “Thank you, Chris. You’re a good man.”
Jason Lorry had called Russell as the family was on their way out of the freezing house on 1735 Breckinridge.
“Our lights are out too. Ralph is on his way to get me.”
“You’re spending Christmas with the Balusiks?”
“I am. My folks are getting a hotel. You wanna come? To Ralphs? Not to the hotel?”
The idea of spending Christmas with two boys who had been his enemies and now were his alternate sex partners made Russell’s head spin. He needed Gilead for that, and doubtless Gilead would come sooner or later, so he just semi panicked and said, “I’m going to Chayne’s. My whole family is. You could meet us here and we could go to Ralph’s later?”
Aside from that, Flipper and Cody were both here, and getting on. The idea of four people he’d been with in the last few months all in one space made his head spin. He thought Jason would say no to coming over here. He had not expected Jason, five o’ clock shadow, green eyed, smelling like cedar to come. Or Ralph with his hair combed so bright it was like bronze.
“So who’s the hot guy your friend is with?” Macy asked Russell.
“The hot—oh, that’s Chris Knapp. He’s captain of the football team.”
“Well laddie dah damn,” Macy sang. “And tell me she’s not head cheerleader.”
“She is.”
“Fuck! Nailed it. Still, they don’t look like they should be together. They do, but they don’t.”
“Try not to talk too loud, cause they’re on their way,” Jimmy said, with that mysterious ability to talk and not move his lips. He had been debating if he should light a cigarette in someone else’s house, but Anigel had, so he did too, and Jimmy continued, “He looks like a bad boy.”
“He kind of is,” Russell said. “But he isn’t. He’s got a history.”
“That’s hardly fair,” Flipper, red scarf around his neck said in his quiet voice.
“I’ve got a history,” Jimmy said.
“True,” said Macy and Ross Allen at the same time.
“What is,” Anigel began, “that history? You sort of hear about it, but not really.”
“He sleeps around,” Jimmy said, flatly. “What else can it be?”
“That’s not exactly it,” Jason Lorry said.
“Yeah,” Ralph said.
“Well,” Anigel was sharp. “Exactly what is it?”
“Back in eighth grade,” Ralph noted with a leer on his face that Russell did not approve of, “he fucked his teacher.”
At about one in the afternoon, Pethane Dinkle arrived with her cousin, Sharon Wynn, at Chayne’s door.
“What’s this about you not having Christmas with us?” Pethane asked Chayne before his mother could.
Chayne gestured to the crowd and said, “House full of white folks, and I’m not leaving my house open to people I don’t know—which is half of them—while I’m gone.”
“Well,” Pethane said, setting down casserole dishes, “I don’t know that you’ll feel like coming, later—”
“Or be able to,” Sharon added.
“But here’s macaroni and sweet potatoes. Some ham and potato salad.”
“And desert?”
“Of course,” his cousin Pethane said.
“And what’s more,” Pethane added. “we’re going to take some of these people off your hands. Ross and Ani can come with us.”
With Ross and Anigel went Macy and Jimmy, and so Russell, Ralph, Jason and Cody and Flipper.
“I know,” Chayne whispered to Rob, “that you want to go with them.”
“I want to stay with you,” Rob said. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I won’t. Faye’ll be over. Now you go, OK? And look, there’s more space in the house already.”
They had already arranged sleeping issues. Denise had simply told Fathers Robert and Geoff that if they were Christians and priests and freeloading dinner guests, then they needed to open the parish house to Thom and Patti, and Sara and Frank. Flipper, Jimmy and Macy, the younger ones who knew Chayne, would stay here, but Kristin and Reese and Meg and Finn could stay with John and Jackie or Kathleen and Mason. By two, as dinner was placed on the stove and Chayne, stopped being saintly and laid down rules, things seemed better again. He was no martyr, missed his family, and was tired of these people.
“When this dinner is over,” he said, “we can worry about cleaning tomorrow. That shit’s never any fun. Just put some water on the dishes, let’s rinse shit out. But those of you staying with Geoff over here,” he patted the priest’s hand, “have to clear the fuck out because the rest of us are on our way to Westhaven for Christmas with my cousin LaVelle.”
Gilead felt half guilty for teaching him how to smoke, and sincerely hoped it was an affectation. But Mark looked good at it, and not like it was an affectation at all. He leaned back in the passenger seat of his car and by the nightlight Gilead saw his Adam’s apple, saw the smoke lift from his nostrils, saw the dim lights of the Brigham Street Bridge stretching ahead of them and over the water, shining on Mark’s wavy dark hair.
He said it out loud.
“I should never have taught you to smoke.”
Mark made a noise with his lips and shrugged, a jet of smoke leaving his nostrils.
“You gave me a cigarette and I lit it.”
He gave the rest of it to Gilead and sat up straighter saying, “Besides, if I’m going to teach your ass to drive, I’d better have a cigarette.”
“Are you calling me a bad driver?”
“I’m calling you a new driver.”
“Well, should we even be doing this in the winter?”
“Gil,” Mark said, sensibly, “winter is always going to come. Why learn in spring or summer and then get fucked up by winter? This is the best time, and we’re in a fucking empty dock yard so…. Get to driving.”
There was no driver’s ed at Our Lady of Mercy and Sharonda Story had never had time to teach him. Mark was relaxed and patient about everything. Once, when Gilead had hit the gas meaning to hit the brake, and they skidded clear across the parking lot and nearly crashed into a school bus, the only thing Mark had said was, “Not bad, but you could do better.”
“You wanna drive us home?” Mark said after they’d done some turns and stops in the parking lot.
“Whose home?”
“I’ve got three siblings and two parents,” Mark said, “and live all the way in the north of town so I was thinking yours.”
“I was thinking you could drive.”
“Nonsense,” Mark said.
His long leg reached over and his foot lightly lay on Gilead’s. His arm touched the wheel and then touched Gilead’s hand.
“Whatever happens, whatever mistakes you make, and I don’t think you will, I can correct them.”
Gilead relaxed, but he didn’t stop being vigilant. He turned out of the parking lot looking both ways before turning onto Brigham Street, and heading up the bridge. They were really less than ten minutes from his house, and Mark would stay here tonight. He had a second pair of pjs that he was keeping there. They would kiss and link arms on his bed and Gilead would taste the ash on Mark’s mouth and like it. He would smell the cigarette smoke mixed with pomade and the cologne Mark had worn, and not be able to get enough of it. As they reached the top of the bridge and headed down toward Riverview and the stretch toward downtown, Gilead allowed himself to rejoice in being in love with Mark Young.
He had always loved him, and it’s not even that he hid this from himself, just that it had to be buried somewhere deep, kept in a holy of holies so far back he could not even speak about such things to himself. He had loved him when he saw him in the hall, all quiet, talking to his friends, his khakis rolled, wearing a red cardigan over a white shirt, his dark wavy hair looking especially dark and wavy, a private joke always dancing in his green eyes. In those days after Joe Smith had died, Gilead caught himself looking for that light, looking for that something, worried about a boy he was barely friends with. There was something embarrassing about not only being infatuated with a white boy, but one who was so very, very white. The day Mark had swiped his journal, and he had headlocked him, felt the warmth of Mark against him, the heat of his head coming through his wavy hair, Gilead had to do everything to keep a frown on his face, and this year, when he’d come into class and Mark had casually leaned over his desk and said, “Hey, study buddy,” Gilead had felt a sort of doom because he knew he was in love with this boy, and what in God’s ass did you do with such a feeling your senior year at Our Lady of Mercy High School in Geschichte Falls, Michigan?
So that night in Mark den, that night, when Mark had almost awkwardly stated how he felt and his fingers had drifted toward Gilead’s and they had finally caught hands, that was the night when, not long afterward, and with an equal awkwardness, Gilead had leaned forward and kissed Mark.
Kissing Mark had been strange because he had expected it to be a quick peck and was surprised when Mark returned it with fierceness, and they lain on the couch making out, Mark’s body pressed to his. Gilead had never understood kissing, but right then it felt good and crucial, Mark’s lips, Mark’s tongue, Mark sucking on him, the two of them kissing eyes and ears, running hands through hair, the pressure of Mark’s body, his strong arms under the tee shirt. They’d made out hard until Mark, with the ears of a kid in his own house, had shot up just in time before his little sister came in the den.
“Mom said not to bother you—” she started.
“Then why are you?” Mark sounded surly, and Mark was never surly.
His sister said something about how the other TV had bad reception and did they mind if—
“We don’t mind at all,” Gilead said, graciously.
“Thank you, Gil.”
Charity smiled at him and Gilead had taken up their popcorn and whatever else and put it on the counter in Mark’s large kitchen and then taken Mark by the hand and led him to the basement. They were young and in love and it was right before Christmas. This was right after the revelation of Jason cheating on Russell, and Gil and Mark sat on a sofa kissing and then stopping to look at each other and kissing and petting, touching and stroking and laughing all that night.
“Chayne,” Thom said, effusively, “thank you. Thank you thank you so, so much.”
“Of course, Thom,” Chayne said. “You’re welcome, Thom.”
Patti, carrying a three quarters done turkey as she walked into the kitchen, kissed Chayne on the cheek and said, “We’re in your debt. Again.”
The Lewises came in thankful and effusive, each one, even the little children, and Chayne wanted nothing more than to go back to the quiet morning he’d been having, and reminded himself that sometimes what you wanted just was not that important.
Last at the door were three non Lewises.
“Bill Dwyer.”
Beside Bill was Cameron Dwyer and behind them, now in a coat and scarf, was Chris Knapp.
“I was just wondering, Chayne,” Bill began, “if it would be too much if Cameron stayed. We were going to have dinner with the Lewises—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Chayne said as kindly as he felt, “You’ll all stay here.”
“Thank you kindly, Mr. Kandzierski,” Chris said, coming in, “We’re not going to be here all day. We’re going to go to my parents after a while. Our dinner’s at four.”
Chayne nodded to this and went off to his other affairs, but Bill said, “That’ll be good for Cameron.”
“You’re coming too, sir,” Chris said. “It’s Christmas, no one’s gonna be alone today.”
Bill opened his mouth to protest, but changed his mind and said, “Thank you, Chris. You’re a good man.”
Jason Lorry had called Russell as the family was on their way out of the freezing house on 1735 Breckinridge.
“Our lights are out too. Ralph is on his way to get me.”
“You’re spending Christmas with the Balusiks?”
“I am. My folks are getting a hotel. You wanna come? To Ralphs? Not to the hotel?”
The idea of spending Christmas with two boys who had been his enemies and now were his alternate sex partners made Russell’s head spin. He needed Gilead for that, and doubtless Gilead would come sooner or later, so he just semi panicked and said, “I’m going to Chayne’s. My whole family is. You could meet us here and we could go to Ralph’s later?”
Aside from that, Flipper and Cody were both here, and getting on. The idea of four people he’d been with in the last few months all in one space made his head spin. He thought Jason would say no to coming over here. He had not expected Jason, five o’ clock shadow, green eyed, smelling like cedar to come. Or Ralph with his hair combed so bright it was like bronze.
“So who’s the hot guy your friend is with?” Macy asked Russell.
“The hot—oh, that’s Chris Knapp. He’s captain of the football team.”
“Well laddie dah damn,” Macy sang. “And tell me she’s not head cheerleader.”
“She is.”
“Fuck! Nailed it. Still, they don’t look like they should be together. They do, but they don’t.”
“Try not to talk too loud, cause they’re on their way,” Jimmy said, with that mysterious ability to talk and not move his lips. He had been debating if he should light a cigarette in someone else’s house, but Anigel had, so he did too, and Jimmy continued, “He looks like a bad boy.”
“He kind of is,” Russell said. “But he isn’t. He’s got a history.”
“That’s hardly fair,” Flipper, red scarf around his neck said in his quiet voice.
“I’ve got a history,” Jimmy said.
“True,” said Macy and Ross Allen at the same time.
“What is,” Anigel began, “that history? You sort of hear about it, but not really.”
“He sleeps around,” Jimmy said, flatly. “What else can it be?”
“That’s not exactly it,” Jason Lorry said.
“Yeah,” Ralph said.
“Well,” Anigel was sharp. “Exactly what is it?”
“Back in eighth grade,” Ralph noted with a leer on his face that Russell did not approve of, “he fucked his teacher.”
At about one in the afternoon, Pethane Dinkle arrived with her cousin, Sharon Wynn, at Chayne’s door.
“What’s this about you not having Christmas with us?” Pethane asked Chayne before his mother could.
Chayne gestured to the crowd and said, “House full of white folks, and I’m not leaving my house open to people I don’t know—which is half of them—while I’m gone.”
“Well,” Pethane said, setting down casserole dishes, “I don’t know that you’ll feel like coming, later—”
“Or be able to,” Sharon added.
“But here’s macaroni and sweet potatoes. Some ham and potato salad.”
“And desert?”
“Of course,” his cousin Pethane said.
“And what’s more,” Pethane added. “we’re going to take some of these people off your hands. Ross and Ani can come with us.”
With Ross and Anigel went Macy and Jimmy, and so Russell, Ralph, Jason and Cody and Flipper.
“I know,” Chayne whispered to Rob, “that you want to go with them.”
“I want to stay with you,” Rob said. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I won’t. Faye’ll be over. Now you go, OK? And look, there’s more space in the house already.”
They had already arranged sleeping issues. Denise had simply told Fathers Robert and Geoff that if they were Christians and priests and freeloading dinner guests, then they needed to open the parish house to Thom and Patti, and Sara and Frank. Flipper, Jimmy and Macy, the younger ones who knew Chayne, would stay here, but Kristin and Reese and Meg and Finn could stay with John and Jackie or Kathleen and Mason. By two, as dinner was placed on the stove and Chayne, stopped being saintly and laid down rules, things seemed better again. He was no martyr, missed his family, and was tired of these people.
“When this dinner is over,” he said, “we can worry about cleaning tomorrow. That shit’s never any fun. Just put some water on the dishes, let’s rinse shit out. But those of you staying with Geoff over here,” he patted the priest’s hand, “have to clear the fuck out because the rest of us are on our way to Westhaven for Christmas with my cousin LaVelle.”
Gilead felt half guilty for teaching him how to smoke, and sincerely hoped it was an affectation. But Mark looked good at it, and not like it was an affectation at all. He leaned back in the passenger seat of his car and by the nightlight Gilead saw his Adam’s apple, saw the smoke lift from his nostrils, saw the dim lights of the Brigham Street Bridge stretching ahead of them and over the water, shining on Mark’s wavy dark hair.
He said it out loud.
“I should never have taught you to smoke.”
Mark made a noise with his lips and shrugged, a jet of smoke leaving his nostrils.
“You gave me a cigarette and I lit it.”
He gave the rest of it to Gilead and sat up straighter saying, “Besides, if I’m going to teach your ass to drive, I’d better have a cigarette.”
“Are you calling me a bad driver?”
“I’m calling you a new driver.”
“Well, should we even be doing this in the winter?”
“Gil,” Mark said, sensibly, “winter is always going to come. Why learn in spring or summer and then get fucked up by winter? This is the best time, and we’re in a fucking empty dock yard so…. Get to driving.”
There was no driver’s ed at Our Lady of Mercy and Sharonda Story had never had time to teach him. Mark was relaxed and patient about everything. Once, when Gilead had hit the gas meaning to hit the brake, and they skidded clear across the parking lot and nearly crashed into a school bus, the only thing Mark had said was, “Not bad, but you could do better.”
“You wanna drive us home?” Mark said after they’d done some turns and stops in the parking lot.
“Whose home?”
“I’ve got three siblings and two parents,” Mark said, “and live all the way in the north of town so I was thinking yours.”
“I was thinking you could drive.”
“Nonsense,” Mark said.
His long leg reached over and his foot lightly lay on Gilead’s. His arm touched the wheel and then touched Gilead’s hand.
“Whatever happens, whatever mistakes you make, and I don’t think you will, I can correct them.”
Gilead relaxed, but he didn’t stop being vigilant. He turned out of the parking lot looking both ways before turning onto Brigham Street, and heading up the bridge. They were really less than ten minutes from his house, and Mark would stay here tonight. He had a second pair of pjs that he was keeping there. They would kiss and link arms on his bed and Gilead would taste the ash on Mark’s mouth and like it. He would smell the cigarette smoke mixed with pomade and the cologne Mark had worn, and not be able to get enough of it. As they reached the top of the bridge and headed down toward Riverview and the stretch toward downtown, Gilead allowed himself to rejoice in being in love with Mark Young.
He had always loved him, and it’s not even that he hid this from himself, just that it had to be buried somewhere deep, kept in a holy of holies so far back he could not even speak about such things to himself. He had loved him when he saw him in the hall, all quiet, talking to his friends, his khakis rolled, wearing a red cardigan over a white shirt, his dark wavy hair looking especially dark and wavy, a private joke always dancing in his green eyes. In those days after Joe Smith had died, Gilead caught himself looking for that light, looking for that something, worried about a boy he was barely friends with. There was something embarrassing about not only being infatuated with a white boy, but one who was so very, very white. The day Mark had swiped his journal, and he had headlocked him, felt the warmth of Mark against him, the heat of his head coming through his wavy hair, Gilead had to do everything to keep a frown on his face, and this year, when he’d come into class and Mark had casually leaned over his desk and said, “Hey, study buddy,” Gilead had felt a sort of doom because he knew he was in love with this boy, and what in God’s ass did you do with such a feeling your senior year at Our Lady of Mercy High School in Geschichte Falls, Michigan?
So that night in Mark den, that night, when Mark had almost awkwardly stated how he felt and his fingers had drifted toward Gilead’s and they had finally caught hands, that was the night when, not long afterward, and with an equal awkwardness, Gilead had leaned forward and kissed Mark.
Kissing Mark had been strange because he had expected it to be a quick peck and was surprised when Mark returned it with fierceness, and they lain on the couch making out, Mark’s body pressed to his. Gilead had never understood kissing, but right then it felt good and crucial, Mark’s lips, Mark’s tongue, Mark sucking on him, the two of them kissing eyes and ears, running hands through hair, the pressure of Mark’s body, his strong arms under the tee shirt. They’d made out hard until Mark, with the ears of a kid in his own house, had shot up just in time before his little sister came in the den.
“Mom said not to bother you—” she started.
“Then why are you?” Mark sounded surly, and Mark was never surly.
His sister said something about how the other TV had bad reception and did they mind if—
“We don’t mind at all,” Gilead said, graciously.
“Thank you, Gil.”
Charity smiled at him and Gilead had taken up their popcorn and whatever else and put it on the counter in Mark’s large kitchen and then taken Mark by the hand and led him to the basement. They were young and in love and it was right before Christmas. This was right after the revelation of Jason cheating on Russell, and Gil and Mark sat on a sofa kissing and then stopping to look at each other and kissing and petting, touching and stroking and laughing all that night.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Wow this Christmas is certainly eventful. Lots of people moving about and I am glad that lots of them are having Christmas together. Chayne is certainly proving to be charitable and a great host. I am glad he is not spending Christmas alone. Gilead and Mark are cute as always. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Nehru Alexander had felt a little guilty for taking so long to get through college. He knew he was smart and smart people ought to have more ambition. In fact, he’d been afraid of turning into Brad, and Brad had been, for a time, the most confused person he knew. There had been a part of him that wondered what his parents thought of him, still in a junior college, still with two years left of school and he should have been well graduated.
He hadn’t known how strongly these feelings played in him until they no longer did and he didn’t know they no longer did until that morning, a very few weeks ago when he had thought he would spent the night with Cody—which he did—and woke up in Brad’s arms in the apartment over the Noble Red. The logic, he assumed was this: He had been afraid of becoming Brad because Brad was unfinished and unhappy, and even when they were conducting their affair, Nehru had known this. But this new Brad, this confident Brad, this brad Nehru knew was in love with him, the Brad who was starting a life out with him was not a Brad he was afraid of becoming. This Brad was finding his way. They were finding their way together. So he didn’t mind the chance of being brad at all.
Also, if he thought about it, Brad had been that person who had finsiehd college at twenty-two/ Brad had a PhD, so Brad gave the lie to how doing things on time made your life a conventional success.
Nehru did not explain his relationship with Brad to anyone. Those who knew would have always known. Those who didn not understand they were anything more than roommates—and this included their parents—did not need to. Marissa did not need to, and when she finally did know, whenever that would be, she was already in a relationship with Hale Weathertop.
Midnight Mass had been the most beautiful thing he’d ever attended. Nehru believed in everything, but he didn’t really feel the need to be anywhere. He’d attended his mother’s synagogue, but privately thought it was too bad they didn’t believe in Jesus. It almost seemed like they weren’t sure what they believed in. The Catholic decision to camp down on all sorts of beliefs, not just an incarnate God, was an understandable one to Nehru, and when he was inside of a church, he believed everything too. But as much as he was fine with going to his father’s church and muddling through Catholic school, there had always been a sharp feeling of” not be. This is not me. It wasn’t even that the belief wasn’t his. The place wasn’t his. He did not belong. Tonight though, in the low glow of midnight lamps, crushed next to Brad in his good suit, smelling Brad’s good cologne, so near Anigel and Rob and Cody who looked slightly savage and slightly sexy in a dark brown suit, he felt like this place was his.
Cody had gone to Russell’s house that night, and neither he nor Brad spoke about that. There were a couple and a recent couple, a couple where there had almost always been a third. They had come together and solidified there relationship in the midst of a threesome and no sooner had they chosen to be together, than Cody had found his way back to them. None of them had discussed what this meant for their future. Was Cody and interruption? Was he a distraction? They’d decided to spent Christmas morning at Brad’s parents house, and in two o clock in the morning, in the old basement apartment where they’d first known each other, as he and Brad made love, Nehru still didn’t have an answer.
They showered together more because they wanted to than needed to and Nehru delighted in dressing Brad, in hos he looked in a red Christmas sweater and black trousers. He told hi mto put his glasses on and they kissed and held onto each other. It made dressing impractical. That morning at breakfast it was hard to stop touching each other and every question rar’ds parents had, everything they said made the two of them laugh with delight. The hard snow had ceased and the sun came up high and yellow. It was that way when they went to visit Marissa and when Marissa asked Nehru if he would be the godfather.
“I would love it if you did,” she told him, and Brad said nothing, but his green eyes, warm and brimming with love said everything.
It was in the early afternoon when they went just down the street from Marissa to the Alexander household that Nehru learned how half of Breckinridge had a power out and all of Russell’s family was at Chayne’s house.
“He’s throwing them out by four,” Nehru’s father said about his cousin. “Going over to LaVelle’s or Pethane’s.”
These were cousins Nehru did not really know. The Wynn family was large and Nehru’s father only had one mother. What’s more, he was related to the Princes as well, and so a cousin on that side to Chayne, and they had always thought the Wynns to be… well, not as respectable as they should be.
Like Brad’s parent’s, the Alexander family gathering was friendly but small. Bill and Melanie didn’t really feel the desire for a large crowd, and of course Melanie’s mother’s family was almost entirely Jewish. Brad and Nehru played with the idea of going out later and seeing what was going on where? Who was at Chayne’s house still. Nehru called Gilead and learned they would all be at LaVelle’s till about six, and then back on Curtain Street. He helped his mother wash dishes and Brad and Bill put food away.
“Well, now that you’re staying in the apartment, I’ll have to wrap food up for you,” Nehru’s mother said.
It’s a Wonderful Life was on, and they all sat down and dozed to it, watching the snow fall, Brad and Nehru thinking they might as well stay here till six and then go to Chayne’s or not go anywhere at all. And then Brad had cone upstairs for a bit into the bathroom, and he had been at the top of the steps and whispered to Nehru who was in a recliner. His parents were asleep on the couch and Nehru looked up and pushed away his blanket. He came up the stairs to Brad who took him by the hand and kissed him. They went into his room, locking the door and Brad took of his sweater so his old white shirt hung loosely, and then he took down his pants and Nehru did the same. In the drunken focused way they tended each others bodies, Brad waxed Nehru until he was hard, and then turned to the window, holding to the sill and pulled Nehru inside of him. In the dim afternoon light of Christmas afternoon, while soap flakes of snow passed by the window and fell in the backyard, Brad pushed his ass out, needing to be filled, and with a gentle, joyful rhythm, Nehru held onto the tall man’s hips, loved the gentle roundness, the dark downiness, the sacred split, the topening of his ass, and fucked him., Joy arose in him beyond sound, and they move with a quiet satiffied rhythm. They were musicians and song came to Nehru’s mind ad he pressed deeper and deeper into Brad. He wondered if it was a blasphemy, but as orgasm and seed rose in him, and he shuddered, shooting his seed her heard:
How silently, how silently,
the wondrous gift is given;
so God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of his heaven.
Brad only let out a little gasp, Nehru still pumped him. They froze and the world seemed to freeze, Brad looked back at him drunk with love.
No ear may hear his coming,
but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive him, still
the dear Christ enters in
Russell had resigned himself to having no private time with Flipper. who was headed out tomorrow, as made sense, to finally go home to see his family. Macy and Jimmy would leave too, and Jimmy would fly out from O’Hare back to Maryland. When things began to wind up at Chayne’s cousin’s, and the group split up, Russell realized that, at last, he and Flipper could have some time ,and Flipper must have realized it too. Cody was going home to spend the rest of Christmas with Jill and his mom, and Macy and Jimmy were going back to Chayne’s house. For a while, Russell and Flipper remained with Mark, Gilead, Jason and Ralph, but Russell knew that Gilead was taking Mark home, and Gilead took him aside and said, “Whatever Flipper is to you, he’s a better idea than Jason or Ralph.”
And so Russell was in Flipper’s Volkswagon, and the night was clear after the storm, .Russell had not known what they would talk about when they finally had a chance to talk, but now Flipper said, “I hope you like that Ginsberg book. When you get through it, I’d like to borrow it sometime.”
“I’d like to borrow your Blake.”
“How much you know about Blake?”
Russell quoted:
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
“I love Blake. He’s one of my favorite poets. I don’t understand half of what he’s talking about and I think he’s kind of mad. Nuts mad. Funny thing is, his madness makes me feel sane. When it’s strange to me… it’s like I’m strange to me. I don’t ever want to be the person who’s not a little bit crazy.”
“That’s how I feel about Ginsberg.”
“Maybe we should borrow each other’s presents sometime,” Russell joked.
“Or…” Flipper suggested, “we could just keep them.”
“What?” Russell blinked. “are you serious?”
“It is the thought that counts,” Flipper said. “That’s what they say.”
Russell shook his head and laughed. “I missed you.”
“I thought about you every day,” Flipper said, truthfully.
“I’m too young,” Russell began.
“A little.”
“And I’m a mess.”
“I’m a mess too.”
They drove past Jason Lorry’s house, remembering it had never been off then kept droving.
0“Look,” Russell said, “This part of Breckinridge is back on.”
Coming to Cameron and Russell’s block, they saw the lights on in his house.
“Do you think they know?” Flipper said.
“No,” Russell said. “I think they’re all either at Chayne’s or at the rectory.”
“Should we go in?”
“Mom may have left the stove on or something.”
When they entered the living room where the TV was on, and some of the lights too, Russell whispered, “Maybe there’s someone here. The heat is on.”
“There must have been power a while, then.”
Russell moved around the house.
“A hot plate was plugged in,” he reported, turning it off and pulling out the plug. “So that’s taken care of.”
He went upstairs and downstairs and coming back to the kitchen, he called Flipper.
“Down here!” Flipper said from the basement.
Russell had turned off unnecessary lights but left on the few his parents said should always be on to ward against the house looking empty. He left the TV on too, and went down into the finished basement. Flipper was in his room, going through his bag, and he handed Russell back his Blake book.
“Merry Christmas, Russell.”
Russell laughed and handed him back the Ginsberg.
“And Merry Christmas to you.”
“Andy doesn’t mean anything to me,” Flipper said, quickly.
“What?” “
“He’s a friend, but I don’t think it’s more than that. Maybe you are too young for me, but I think about you. I’m no saint. I haven’t been a saint.”
Russell grimaced and put his fingers to Flipper’s mouth.
“I haven’t been a saint either, and… I’m sane with you. I can’t believe you’re leaving in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Flipper said. “In the morning.”
Russell felt stupid and confused for a moment, and then he moved to the door, looked down the basement into darkness. No one was coming back here tonight, and if anyone did they would never come to this basement. Flipper’s car didn’t even mean Flipper was here. Jackie and John’s car was here too.. Russell closed the door, firmly, locking it.
When he turned to Flip Sanders, the other boy was already undressing.
MORE..... TOMORROW OR FRIDAY. WE'LL SEE
He hadn’t known how strongly these feelings played in him until they no longer did and he didn’t know they no longer did until that morning, a very few weeks ago when he had thought he would spent the night with Cody—which he did—and woke up in Brad’s arms in the apartment over the Noble Red. The logic, he assumed was this: He had been afraid of becoming Brad because Brad was unfinished and unhappy, and even when they were conducting their affair, Nehru had known this. But this new Brad, this confident Brad, this brad Nehru knew was in love with him, the Brad who was starting a life out with him was not a Brad he was afraid of becoming. This Brad was finding his way. They were finding their way together. So he didn’t mind the chance of being brad at all.
Also, if he thought about it, Brad had been that person who had finsiehd college at twenty-two/ Brad had a PhD, so Brad gave the lie to how doing things on time made your life a conventional success.
Nehru did not explain his relationship with Brad to anyone. Those who knew would have always known. Those who didn not understand they were anything more than roommates—and this included their parents—did not need to. Marissa did not need to, and when she finally did know, whenever that would be, she was already in a relationship with Hale Weathertop.
Midnight Mass had been the most beautiful thing he’d ever attended. Nehru believed in everything, but he didn’t really feel the need to be anywhere. He’d attended his mother’s synagogue, but privately thought it was too bad they didn’t believe in Jesus. It almost seemed like they weren’t sure what they believed in. The Catholic decision to camp down on all sorts of beliefs, not just an incarnate God, was an understandable one to Nehru, and when he was inside of a church, he believed everything too. But as much as he was fine with going to his father’s church and muddling through Catholic school, there had always been a sharp feeling of” not be. This is not me. It wasn’t even that the belief wasn’t his. The place wasn’t his. He did not belong. Tonight though, in the low glow of midnight lamps, crushed next to Brad in his good suit, smelling Brad’s good cologne, so near Anigel and Rob and Cody who looked slightly savage and slightly sexy in a dark brown suit, he felt like this place was his.
Cody had gone to Russell’s house that night, and neither he nor Brad spoke about that. There were a couple and a recent couple, a couple where there had almost always been a third. They had come together and solidified there relationship in the midst of a threesome and no sooner had they chosen to be together, than Cody had found his way back to them. None of them had discussed what this meant for their future. Was Cody and interruption? Was he a distraction? They’d decided to spent Christmas morning at Brad’s parents house, and in two o clock in the morning, in the old basement apartment where they’d first known each other, as he and Brad made love, Nehru still didn’t have an answer.
They showered together more because they wanted to than needed to and Nehru delighted in dressing Brad, in hos he looked in a red Christmas sweater and black trousers. He told hi mto put his glasses on and they kissed and held onto each other. It made dressing impractical. That morning at breakfast it was hard to stop touching each other and every question rar’ds parents had, everything they said made the two of them laugh with delight. The hard snow had ceased and the sun came up high and yellow. It was that way when they went to visit Marissa and when Marissa asked Nehru if he would be the godfather.
“I would love it if you did,” she told him, and Brad said nothing, but his green eyes, warm and brimming with love said everything.
It was in the early afternoon when they went just down the street from Marissa to the Alexander household that Nehru learned how half of Breckinridge had a power out and all of Russell’s family was at Chayne’s house.
“He’s throwing them out by four,” Nehru’s father said about his cousin. “Going over to LaVelle’s or Pethane’s.”
These were cousins Nehru did not really know. The Wynn family was large and Nehru’s father only had one mother. What’s more, he was related to the Princes as well, and so a cousin on that side to Chayne, and they had always thought the Wynns to be… well, not as respectable as they should be.
Like Brad’s parent’s, the Alexander family gathering was friendly but small. Bill and Melanie didn’t really feel the desire for a large crowd, and of course Melanie’s mother’s family was almost entirely Jewish. Brad and Nehru played with the idea of going out later and seeing what was going on where? Who was at Chayne’s house still. Nehru called Gilead and learned they would all be at LaVelle’s till about six, and then back on Curtain Street. He helped his mother wash dishes and Brad and Bill put food away.
“Well, now that you’re staying in the apartment, I’ll have to wrap food up for you,” Nehru’s mother said.
It’s a Wonderful Life was on, and they all sat down and dozed to it, watching the snow fall, Brad and Nehru thinking they might as well stay here till six and then go to Chayne’s or not go anywhere at all. And then Brad had cone upstairs for a bit into the bathroom, and he had been at the top of the steps and whispered to Nehru who was in a recliner. His parents were asleep on the couch and Nehru looked up and pushed away his blanket. He came up the stairs to Brad who took him by the hand and kissed him. They went into his room, locking the door and Brad took of his sweater so his old white shirt hung loosely, and then he took down his pants and Nehru did the same. In the drunken focused way they tended each others bodies, Brad waxed Nehru until he was hard, and then turned to the window, holding to the sill and pulled Nehru inside of him. In the dim afternoon light of Christmas afternoon, while soap flakes of snow passed by the window and fell in the backyard, Brad pushed his ass out, needing to be filled, and with a gentle, joyful rhythm, Nehru held onto the tall man’s hips, loved the gentle roundness, the dark downiness, the sacred split, the topening of his ass, and fucked him., Joy arose in him beyond sound, and they move with a quiet satiffied rhythm. They were musicians and song came to Nehru’s mind ad he pressed deeper and deeper into Brad. He wondered if it was a blasphemy, but as orgasm and seed rose in him, and he shuddered, shooting his seed her heard:
How silently, how silently,
the wondrous gift is given;
so God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of his heaven.
Brad only let out a little gasp, Nehru still pumped him. They froze and the world seemed to freeze, Brad looked back at him drunk with love.
No ear may hear his coming,
but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive him, still
the dear Christ enters in
Russell had resigned himself to having no private time with Flipper. who was headed out tomorrow, as made sense, to finally go home to see his family. Macy and Jimmy would leave too, and Jimmy would fly out from O’Hare back to Maryland. When things began to wind up at Chayne’s cousin’s, and the group split up, Russell realized that, at last, he and Flipper could have some time ,and Flipper must have realized it too. Cody was going home to spend the rest of Christmas with Jill and his mom, and Macy and Jimmy were going back to Chayne’s house. For a while, Russell and Flipper remained with Mark, Gilead, Jason and Ralph, but Russell knew that Gilead was taking Mark home, and Gilead took him aside and said, “Whatever Flipper is to you, he’s a better idea than Jason or Ralph.”
And so Russell was in Flipper’s Volkswagon, and the night was clear after the storm, .Russell had not known what they would talk about when they finally had a chance to talk, but now Flipper said, “I hope you like that Ginsberg book. When you get through it, I’d like to borrow it sometime.”
“I’d like to borrow your Blake.”
“How much you know about Blake?”
Russell quoted:
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
“I love Blake. He’s one of my favorite poets. I don’t understand half of what he’s talking about and I think he’s kind of mad. Nuts mad. Funny thing is, his madness makes me feel sane. When it’s strange to me… it’s like I’m strange to me. I don’t ever want to be the person who’s not a little bit crazy.”
“That’s how I feel about Ginsberg.”
“Maybe we should borrow each other’s presents sometime,” Russell joked.
“Or…” Flipper suggested, “we could just keep them.”
“What?” Russell blinked. “are you serious?”
“It is the thought that counts,” Flipper said. “That’s what they say.”
Russell shook his head and laughed. “I missed you.”
“I thought about you every day,” Flipper said, truthfully.
“I’m too young,” Russell began.
“A little.”
“And I’m a mess.”
“I’m a mess too.”
They drove past Jason Lorry’s house, remembering it had never been off then kept droving.
0“Look,” Russell said, “This part of Breckinridge is back on.”
Coming to Cameron and Russell’s block, they saw the lights on in his house.
“Do you think they know?” Flipper said.
“No,” Russell said. “I think they’re all either at Chayne’s or at the rectory.”
“Should we go in?”
“Mom may have left the stove on or something.”
When they entered the living room where the TV was on, and some of the lights too, Russell whispered, “Maybe there’s someone here. The heat is on.”
“There must have been power a while, then.”
Russell moved around the house.
“A hot plate was plugged in,” he reported, turning it off and pulling out the plug. “So that’s taken care of.”
He went upstairs and downstairs and coming back to the kitchen, he called Flipper.
“Down here!” Flipper said from the basement.
Russell had turned off unnecessary lights but left on the few his parents said should always be on to ward against the house looking empty. He left the TV on too, and went down into the finished basement. Flipper was in his room, going through his bag, and he handed Russell back his Blake book.
“Merry Christmas, Russell.”
Russell laughed and handed him back the Ginsberg.
“And Merry Christmas to you.”
“Andy doesn’t mean anything to me,” Flipper said, quickly.
“What?” “
“He’s a friend, but I don’t think it’s more than that. Maybe you are too young for me, but I think about you. I’m no saint. I haven’t been a saint.”
Russell grimaced and put his fingers to Flipper’s mouth.
“I haven’t been a saint either, and… I’m sane with you. I can’t believe you’re leaving in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Flipper said. “In the morning.”
Russell felt stupid and confused for a moment, and then he moved to the door, looked down the basement into darkness. No one was coming back here tonight, and if anyone did they would never come to this basement. Flipper’s car didn’t even mean Flipper was here. Jackie and John’s car was here too.. Russell closed the door, firmly, locking it.
When he turned to Flip Sanders, the other boy was already undressing.
MORE..... TOMORROW OR FRIDAY. WE'LL SEE
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Good to hear so much from Nehru directly. I may not be the biggest fan of him and Brad but they seem to be doing well together. Russell and Flipper seem to be also good together. Flipper seems like a good person for Russell. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow or the next day!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I am excited that you have such strong feelings about Nehru and Brad. I love that. I wonder what you think would have been better for Nehru. I loved seeing a large amount of them in this section, and I loved Russell and Flipper getting together, though I doubted it for a while.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE CONCLUSION OF "CHRISTMAS"
Gilead felt half guilty for teaching him how to smoke, and sincerely hoped it was an affectation. But Mark looked good at it, and not like it was an affectation at all. He leaned back in the passenger seat of his car and by the nightlight Gilead saw his Adam’s apple, saw the smoke lift from his nostrils, saw the dim lights of the Brigham Street Bridge stretching ahead of them and over the water, shining on Mark’s wavy dark hair.
He said it out loud.
“I should never have taught you to smoke.”
Mark made a noise with his lips and shrugged, a jet of smoke leaving his nostrils.
“You gave me a cigarette and I lit it.”
He gave the rest of it to Gilead and sat up straighter saying, “Besides, if I’m going to teach your ass to drive, I’d better have a cigarette.”
“Are you calling me a bad driver?”
“I’m calling you a new driver.”
“Well, should we even be doing this in the winter?”
“Gil,” Mark said, sensibly, “winter is always going to come. Why learn in spring or summer and then get fucked up by winter? This is the best time, and we’re in a fucking empty dock yard so…. Get to driving.”
There was no driver’s ed at Our Lady of Mercy and Sharonda Story had never had time to teach him. Mark was relaxed and patient about everything. Once, when Gilead had hit the gas meaning to hit the brake, and they skidded clear across the parking lot and nearly crashed into a school bus, the only thing Mark had said was, “Not bad, but you could do better.”
“You wanna drive us home?” Mark said after they’d done some turns and stops in the parking lot.
“Whose home?”
“I’ve got three siblings and two parents,” Mark said, “and live all the way in the north of town so I was thinking yours.”
“I was thinking you could drive.”
“Nonsense,” Mark said.
His long leg reached over and his foot lightly lay on Gilead’s. His arm touched the wheel and then touched Gilead’s hand.
“Whatever happens, whatever mistakes you make, and I don’t think you will, I can correct them.”
Gilead relaxed, but he didn’t stop being vigilant. He turned out of the parking lot looking both ways before turning onto Brigham Street, and heading up the bridge. They were really less than ten minutes from his house, and Mark would stay here tonight. He had a second pair of pjs that he was keeping there. They would kiss and link arms on his bed and Gilead would taste the ash on Mark’s mouth and like it. He would smell the cigarette smoke mixed with pomade and the cologne Mark had worn, and not be able to get enough of it. As they reached the top of the bridge and headed down toward Riverview and the stretch toward downtown, Gilead allowed himself to rejoice in being in love with Mark Young.
He had always loved him, and it’s not even that he hid this from himself, just that it had to be buried somewhere deep, kept in a holy of holies so far back he could not even speak about such things to himself. He had loved him when he saw him in the hall, all quiet, talking to his friends, his khakis rolled, wearing a red cardigan over a white shirt, his dark wavy hair looking especially dark and wavy, a private joke always dancing in his green eyes. In those days after Joe Smith had died, Gilead caught himself looking for that light, looking for that something, worried about a boy he was barely friends with. There was something embarrassing about not only being infatuated with a white boy, but one who was so very, very white. The day Mark had swiped his journal, and he had headlocked him, felt the warmth of Mark against him, the heat of his head coming through his wavy hair, Gilead had to do everything to keep a frown on his face, and this year, when he’d come into class and Mark had casually leaned over his desk and said, “Hey, study buddy,” Gilead had felt a sort of doom because he knew he was in love with this boy, and what in God’s ass did you do with such a feeling your senior year at Our Lady of Mercy High School in Geschichte Falls, Michigan?
So that night in Mark den, that night, when Mark had almost awkwardly stated how he felt and his fingers had drifted toward Gilead’s and they had finally caught hands, that was the night when, not long afterward, and with an equal awkwardness, Gilead had leaned forward and kissed Mark.
Kissing Mark had been strange because he had expected it to be a quick peck and was surprised when Mark returned it with fierceness, and they lain on the couch making out, Mark’s body pressed to his. Gilead had never understood kissing, but right then it felt good and crucial, Mark’s lips, Mark’s tongue, Mark sucking on him, the two of them kissing eyes and ears, running hands through hair, the pressure of Mark’s body, his strong arms under the tee shirt. They’d made out hard until Mark, with the ears of a kid in his own house, had shot up just in time before his little sister came in the den.
“Mom said not to bother you—” she started.
“Then why are you?” Mark sounded surly, and Mark was never surly.
His sister said something about how the other TV had bad reception and did they mind if—
“We don’t mind at all,” Gilead said, graciously.
“Thank you, Gil.”
Charity smiled at him and Gilead had taken up their popcorn and whatever else and put it on the counter in Mark’s large kitchen and then taken Mark by the hand and led him to the basement. They were young and in love and it was right before Christmas. This was right after the revelation of Jason cheating on Russell, and Gil and Mark sat on a sofa kissing and then stopping to look at each other and kissing and petting, touching and stroking and laughing all that night.
The Christmas party had been a surprise. Gilead had spent the first part of the day with his mother and his family at LaVelle and Terrence’s house in Westhaven. But after seven, Mark had shown up, and though Gilead had made no announcement about Mark to most of his family, and the majority of them didn’t even see him when he came, there was a thrill that ran through Gilead when the tall slim boy stood at the door in his black overcoat.
“The two of them almost look like twins,” Chayne noted to Rob who was one of the only other white people at the gathering.
“Reverse twins?”
“Um,” Chayne said.
“You know Mark is just a white version of Gilead.”
As Mark watched Gilead slipping on his own overcoat, Chayne said, “I wouldn’t say that’s all he is.”
In the car, Gilead said, “Seeing Mark Young on Westhaven Avenue is an interesting experience.”
There were old storefront churches and a tall, grey stone Methodist one, old clapboard two storey houses with gravel alleys behind them. There was an air of abandonment and the highway in the distance, and then the strands of shops, half painted Mexican restaurants, boarded up bars, money exchanges with locked gates pulled across them.
“Well, I just drove from my place,” Mark said.
”Westhaven goes all the way up to Stonybrook. In fact, I think it goes up into Saint Gregory.”
“Huh.” Gilead had said. He didn’t say anything else. They never talked to fill the space. Mark made a left and turned east on Salem Street until they reached Brigham and headed south and crossed the river into Little Poland.
But that was all done now, and Gilead parked the car silently in front of his and his mother’s house and Mark smiled at him as if he had just landed them safely on the moon.
They went up the walkway and the steps Gilead had shoveled just that morning after the big snow, and then Gilead slipped his key into the front door. They kicked their expensive shoes off on the mat and arranged them under the coat tree, then slipped off coats and gloves and scarves and then silently went up the stairs into Gilead’s room. There, in the dark, they kissed and undressed and make love on the surface of the bed without turning back the covers. It took less than ten minutes, and they both lay on their backs breathing heavily, clenching and unclenching hands.
Since the moment Mark had shown up at the door, it had been building up. Sometimes his desire for Mark built up so it was terrifying. He was surprised either of them could tamp it down, but it seemed to always be in control, to never go to strange places, almost, Gilead though embarrassedly, like when you didn’t feel you had to go to the bathroom until thankfully, you arrived home. Arriving home there had been swiftness, but not hurriedness, and in the room, neither one of them had asked what the other wanted. They just kissed hard before undressing in the dark and joining their bodies together.
Sex was new to them, but it was not awkward. Gilead wondered, if they’d had girlfriends would it have been different, or say if it had been simple lust and not this deep love, this need to be with someone who was like the other side of you. The first time it had happened was only last week, when Mark had shown up late with snow in his hair and a dozen roses.
Right now, Gilead Story is tremendously sleepy. For years he has pretended to be more sophisticated than he is. No, it isn’t that. He is sophisticated. The Wynn family always was, only he knew nothing about sex, and why should he? He remembers that when he was fourteen, just a Freshmen, he was at his locker and he heard Chuck Gibson, the good looking boy who always wore tight, checkered pants and had a man’s body but a boy’s voice, say something about having sex with his girlfriend and passing out on top of her, not waking up for two hours after. Gilead had felt himself red with shame on hearing what he knew he wasn’t supposed to hear. It was junior year when he learned that his other friends didn’t say certain things around him, that there was some sort of understanding that, in some ways, Gilead was and should be kept innocent.
But he had discovered with Mark that there was a sudden rush of weariness after things happened—which his what he called it—things happening. Only this was more. Orgasm was always startling, and orgasm with Mark especially startling. They were both winded when it happened and delighted to be in each other’s arms, but now it was as if the whole of the last day, Midnight Mass, slipping Mark’s hand in his in the dark of the church, waking up early to spend the morning with his mother, the afternoon over at Mickey and LaVelle’s, and the evening party at the Balusiks had all combined to make this moment of utter exhaustion when it all caught up with him. With them. For Mark, on his back, had already started a funny snoring.
The furnace clicked and there was the soft whir of the heat. Gilead’s body was cool and he could feel the semen on his belly, on his sex. There had been none of the preparations, and he separated himself from Mark now, and went to his closet, pulling on his housecoat and going out into the hall, closing the door behind him. When he returned he thought of checking on his mother, but he’d no intention of doing that half hard and covered in the mutual come of himself and his boyfriend. Now, in the bedroom, while the heat whirred through the vents of the house on Riverview, Gilead tenderly wiped Mark’s body while the boy slept with his mouth half open and his neck tilted at what looked like an uncomfortable angle. Gilead had always been afraid of the locker room, afraid of being seen naked and seeing others naked. Mark, he loved to see naked. He had known Mark was corny, silly, quiet, subdued, tall but not very tall, but it was only the first time he’d seen Mark naked he remembered Mark was an athlete. Gilead saw himself shirtless all the time, had seen Russell shirtless, changing at his house, had even, in gym class seen Jason Lorry and Ralph. But of them all only Ralph played a sport and it was football.
Mark was a runner. Mark had defined biceps and a small six pack like a Greek God, the V that went down to his sex , strong legs, strong limbs. Naked before Gilead his sex lay in the black cloud of his pubic hair and when Gilead saw all of this, what it filled him with was a protective love, as if Mark had been nothing more than a baby. He wiped the semen away from him, wiped the sweat from his body, whispered for him to get up and get under the covers, argue whispered like a mother with a child. Mark blinked, realized he was being a child, grinned out of his sparkling eyes and let Gilead put him under the covers. It was while Gilead was folding the cloth and going toward the door that Mark made a plaintive noise.
“What?”
“You’re leaving?”
“It’s my house. Of course I’m not leaving. I’m just going to the bathroom.”
“Hurry up, okay?”
Gilead was about to say yes, but Mark had already turned his back on him and gone to sleep.
This same protective love he felt for Mark, he felt for his mother. He pushed open Sharonda’s cracked door and looked on her, sleeping. This was a sort of private agreement they’d made long ago. His door was often shut to indicate privacy but hers never was. She snored peacefully, and Gilead walked in and kissed his mother lightly on the cheek. He was afraid he might wake her. He didn’t. He watched over her a little longer, and went back to his room and Mark. He went under the heavy, deep covers just as the whir of the heat whined off, and he was only a little surprised when Mark shifted in the covers, and his strong sinewy arms pulled Gilead in as he pressed his chest and stomach and groin into Gilead and linked their arms and legs together.
WHEN WE COME BACK NEXT WEEK, MASTER OF ALL SORROWS
Gilead felt half guilty for teaching him how to smoke, and sincerely hoped it was an affectation. But Mark looked good at it, and not like it was an affectation at all. He leaned back in the passenger seat of his car and by the nightlight Gilead saw his Adam’s apple, saw the smoke lift from his nostrils, saw the dim lights of the Brigham Street Bridge stretching ahead of them and over the water, shining on Mark’s wavy dark hair.
He said it out loud.
“I should never have taught you to smoke.”
Mark made a noise with his lips and shrugged, a jet of smoke leaving his nostrils.
“You gave me a cigarette and I lit it.”
He gave the rest of it to Gilead and sat up straighter saying, “Besides, if I’m going to teach your ass to drive, I’d better have a cigarette.”
“Are you calling me a bad driver?”
“I’m calling you a new driver.”
“Well, should we even be doing this in the winter?”
“Gil,” Mark said, sensibly, “winter is always going to come. Why learn in spring or summer and then get fucked up by winter? This is the best time, and we’re in a fucking empty dock yard so…. Get to driving.”
There was no driver’s ed at Our Lady of Mercy and Sharonda Story had never had time to teach him. Mark was relaxed and patient about everything. Once, when Gilead had hit the gas meaning to hit the brake, and they skidded clear across the parking lot and nearly crashed into a school bus, the only thing Mark had said was, “Not bad, but you could do better.”
“You wanna drive us home?” Mark said after they’d done some turns and stops in the parking lot.
“Whose home?”
“I’ve got three siblings and two parents,” Mark said, “and live all the way in the north of town so I was thinking yours.”
“I was thinking you could drive.”
“Nonsense,” Mark said.
His long leg reached over and his foot lightly lay on Gilead’s. His arm touched the wheel and then touched Gilead’s hand.
“Whatever happens, whatever mistakes you make, and I don’t think you will, I can correct them.”
Gilead relaxed, but he didn’t stop being vigilant. He turned out of the parking lot looking both ways before turning onto Brigham Street, and heading up the bridge. They were really less than ten minutes from his house, and Mark would stay here tonight. He had a second pair of pjs that he was keeping there. They would kiss and link arms on his bed and Gilead would taste the ash on Mark’s mouth and like it. He would smell the cigarette smoke mixed with pomade and the cologne Mark had worn, and not be able to get enough of it. As they reached the top of the bridge and headed down toward Riverview and the stretch toward downtown, Gilead allowed himself to rejoice in being in love with Mark Young.
He had always loved him, and it’s not even that he hid this from himself, just that it had to be buried somewhere deep, kept in a holy of holies so far back he could not even speak about such things to himself. He had loved him when he saw him in the hall, all quiet, talking to his friends, his khakis rolled, wearing a red cardigan over a white shirt, his dark wavy hair looking especially dark and wavy, a private joke always dancing in his green eyes. In those days after Joe Smith had died, Gilead caught himself looking for that light, looking for that something, worried about a boy he was barely friends with. There was something embarrassing about not only being infatuated with a white boy, but one who was so very, very white. The day Mark had swiped his journal, and he had headlocked him, felt the warmth of Mark against him, the heat of his head coming through his wavy hair, Gilead had to do everything to keep a frown on his face, and this year, when he’d come into class and Mark had casually leaned over his desk and said, “Hey, study buddy,” Gilead had felt a sort of doom because he knew he was in love with this boy, and what in God’s ass did you do with such a feeling your senior year at Our Lady of Mercy High School in Geschichte Falls, Michigan?
So that night in Mark den, that night, when Mark had almost awkwardly stated how he felt and his fingers had drifted toward Gilead’s and they had finally caught hands, that was the night when, not long afterward, and with an equal awkwardness, Gilead had leaned forward and kissed Mark.
Kissing Mark had been strange because he had expected it to be a quick peck and was surprised when Mark returned it with fierceness, and they lain on the couch making out, Mark’s body pressed to his. Gilead had never understood kissing, but right then it felt good and crucial, Mark’s lips, Mark’s tongue, Mark sucking on him, the two of them kissing eyes and ears, running hands through hair, the pressure of Mark’s body, his strong arms under the tee shirt. They’d made out hard until Mark, with the ears of a kid in his own house, had shot up just in time before his little sister came in the den.
“Mom said not to bother you—” she started.
“Then why are you?” Mark sounded surly, and Mark was never surly.
His sister said something about how the other TV had bad reception and did they mind if—
“We don’t mind at all,” Gilead said, graciously.
“Thank you, Gil.”
Charity smiled at him and Gilead had taken up their popcorn and whatever else and put it on the counter in Mark’s large kitchen and then taken Mark by the hand and led him to the basement. They were young and in love and it was right before Christmas. This was right after the revelation of Jason cheating on Russell, and Gil and Mark sat on a sofa kissing and then stopping to look at each other and kissing and petting, touching and stroking and laughing all that night.
The Christmas party had been a surprise. Gilead had spent the first part of the day with his mother and his family at LaVelle and Terrence’s house in Westhaven. But after seven, Mark had shown up, and though Gilead had made no announcement about Mark to most of his family, and the majority of them didn’t even see him when he came, there was a thrill that ran through Gilead when the tall slim boy stood at the door in his black overcoat.
“The two of them almost look like twins,” Chayne noted to Rob who was one of the only other white people at the gathering.
“Reverse twins?”
“Um,” Chayne said.
“You know Mark is just a white version of Gilead.”
As Mark watched Gilead slipping on his own overcoat, Chayne said, “I wouldn’t say that’s all he is.”
In the car, Gilead said, “Seeing Mark Young on Westhaven Avenue is an interesting experience.”
There were old storefront churches and a tall, grey stone Methodist one, old clapboard two storey houses with gravel alleys behind them. There was an air of abandonment and the highway in the distance, and then the strands of shops, half painted Mexican restaurants, boarded up bars, money exchanges with locked gates pulled across them.
“Well, I just drove from my place,” Mark said.
”Westhaven goes all the way up to Stonybrook. In fact, I think it goes up into Saint Gregory.”
“Huh.” Gilead had said. He didn’t say anything else. They never talked to fill the space. Mark made a left and turned east on Salem Street until they reached Brigham and headed south and crossed the river into Little Poland.
But that was all done now, and Gilead parked the car silently in front of his and his mother’s house and Mark smiled at him as if he had just landed them safely on the moon.
They went up the walkway and the steps Gilead had shoveled just that morning after the big snow, and then Gilead slipped his key into the front door. They kicked their expensive shoes off on the mat and arranged them under the coat tree, then slipped off coats and gloves and scarves and then silently went up the stairs into Gilead’s room. There, in the dark, they kissed and undressed and make love on the surface of the bed without turning back the covers. It took less than ten minutes, and they both lay on their backs breathing heavily, clenching and unclenching hands.
Since the moment Mark had shown up at the door, it had been building up. Sometimes his desire for Mark built up so it was terrifying. He was surprised either of them could tamp it down, but it seemed to always be in control, to never go to strange places, almost, Gilead though embarrassedly, like when you didn’t feel you had to go to the bathroom until thankfully, you arrived home. Arriving home there had been swiftness, but not hurriedness, and in the room, neither one of them had asked what the other wanted. They just kissed hard before undressing in the dark and joining their bodies together.
Sex was new to them, but it was not awkward. Gilead wondered, if they’d had girlfriends would it have been different, or say if it had been simple lust and not this deep love, this need to be with someone who was like the other side of you. The first time it had happened was only last week, when Mark had shown up late with snow in his hair and a dozen roses.
Right now, Gilead Story is tremendously sleepy. For years he has pretended to be more sophisticated than he is. No, it isn’t that. He is sophisticated. The Wynn family always was, only he knew nothing about sex, and why should he? He remembers that when he was fourteen, just a Freshmen, he was at his locker and he heard Chuck Gibson, the good looking boy who always wore tight, checkered pants and had a man’s body but a boy’s voice, say something about having sex with his girlfriend and passing out on top of her, not waking up for two hours after. Gilead had felt himself red with shame on hearing what he knew he wasn’t supposed to hear. It was junior year when he learned that his other friends didn’t say certain things around him, that there was some sort of understanding that, in some ways, Gilead was and should be kept innocent.
But he had discovered with Mark that there was a sudden rush of weariness after things happened—which his what he called it—things happening. Only this was more. Orgasm was always startling, and orgasm with Mark especially startling. They were both winded when it happened and delighted to be in each other’s arms, but now it was as if the whole of the last day, Midnight Mass, slipping Mark’s hand in his in the dark of the church, waking up early to spend the morning with his mother, the afternoon over at Mickey and LaVelle’s, and the evening party at the Balusiks had all combined to make this moment of utter exhaustion when it all caught up with him. With them. For Mark, on his back, had already started a funny snoring.
The furnace clicked and there was the soft whir of the heat. Gilead’s body was cool and he could feel the semen on his belly, on his sex. There had been none of the preparations, and he separated himself from Mark now, and went to his closet, pulling on his housecoat and going out into the hall, closing the door behind him. When he returned he thought of checking on his mother, but he’d no intention of doing that half hard and covered in the mutual come of himself and his boyfriend. Now, in the bedroom, while the heat whirred through the vents of the house on Riverview, Gilead tenderly wiped Mark’s body while the boy slept with his mouth half open and his neck tilted at what looked like an uncomfortable angle. Gilead had always been afraid of the locker room, afraid of being seen naked and seeing others naked. Mark, he loved to see naked. He had known Mark was corny, silly, quiet, subdued, tall but not very tall, but it was only the first time he’d seen Mark naked he remembered Mark was an athlete. Gilead saw himself shirtless all the time, had seen Russell shirtless, changing at his house, had even, in gym class seen Jason Lorry and Ralph. But of them all only Ralph played a sport and it was football.
Mark was a runner. Mark had defined biceps and a small six pack like a Greek God, the V that went down to his sex , strong legs, strong limbs. Naked before Gilead his sex lay in the black cloud of his pubic hair and when Gilead saw all of this, what it filled him with was a protective love, as if Mark had been nothing more than a baby. He wiped the semen away from him, wiped the sweat from his body, whispered for him to get up and get under the covers, argue whispered like a mother with a child. Mark blinked, realized he was being a child, grinned out of his sparkling eyes and let Gilead put him under the covers. It was while Gilead was folding the cloth and going toward the door that Mark made a plaintive noise.
“What?”
“You’re leaving?”
“It’s my house. Of course I’m not leaving. I’m just going to the bathroom.”
“Hurry up, okay?”
Gilead was about to say yes, but Mark had already turned his back on him and gone to sleep.
This same protective love he felt for Mark, he felt for his mother. He pushed open Sharonda’s cracked door and looked on her, sleeping. This was a sort of private agreement they’d made long ago. His door was often shut to indicate privacy but hers never was. She snored peacefully, and Gilead walked in and kissed his mother lightly on the cheek. He was afraid he might wake her. He didn’t. He watched over her a little longer, and went back to his room and Mark. He went under the heavy, deep covers just as the whir of the heat whined off, and he was only a little surprised when Mark shifted in the covers, and his strong sinewy arms pulled Gilead in as he pressed his chest and stomach and groin into Gilead and linked their arms and legs together.
WHEN WE COME BACK NEXT WEEK, MASTER OF ALL SORROWS
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great conclusion to Christmas and a wonderful Mark and Gilead section! I am glad for their relationship amongst all the drama with others. They have a strong relationship and I am grateful for that while reading this story. Excellent writing and I look forward to Master Of All Sorrows next week!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I am grateful and glad that you read. Yours truly got a little cold or something, and has been laid low for the last few days, or else I would have definitely been more present.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
NINE
THAW
There was something ugly and inartistic, overly modern about the look of the year 2000. The bleak air of that new year seemed to hold in it, as far as Bill Dwyer was concerned, the broken promises of the future. As he sat across from his wife in their strangely empty house, what he saw the absence of things that should have been, a world without the cure to cancer, or without the apocalypse of the computer bug everyone was hoping for, a world without flying saucers the Jetsons took to work from their homes perched in the sky. And why were those homes perched in the sky? What disaster had taken place below that kept the Jetsons airborne? There was something to that. The future had to do with the air, with going up and up till you met space. No one assumed the human race would still be crawling on the earth come 2000. Maybe this was why they were all so busy ruining it. Barely two years into the future, William Dwyer would look back to an explosion, planes in the air, going through buildings and blowing them up. and wonder, after everything, could this have simply been the wish of someone like him to see this new millennium start off with the bang that, on this drab January morning, it so clearly did not receive?
But never mind. All of this was a tangent from the wife who sat across from him, who was still pretty in her own way, but not pretty enough to excite him. He could feel how she felt the same way about him, probably had felt this way for a long time. After this was over, after whatever happened between them, Bill was going to drive an hour to visit Lynn and spend the afternoon fucking her. He loved Lynn, but he didn’t think of himself as making love to her. Making love had been Dena and their old tepid marriage. Bill, with this twenty three year old, her knees bent behind her head and him frantically slamming himself balls deep into her, was fucking. The exhausted boyish look on his face that he saw in the mirror when they were finished, when his copper hair was plastered to his red face, was fucking.
“Do you think you’ll be coming back to the house?” he asked Dena.
“No.”
“You and Niall and Cameron could have this house instead of crowding up Lee ad Dave’s.”
“Cameron stays here anyway. She doesn’t want to stay with me, and I don’t really want her to,” Dena said in a tone of discovery. “Lee and Dave have two extra rooms and me and Niall don’t take up any space.”
“I should talk to Niall.”
“He doesn’t really want to talk to you.”
“But still.”
“Don’t press him, Bill. When he lived in this house you didn’t have much use for him. Why try to talk to him now. You can have your favorite child, and I’ll have mine.”
“That… isn’t right.”
“Right?” Dena raised an eyebrow. “When we tried to be right, what did it do for us? Let’s not be right. Let’s be sensible.”
Bill said nothing.
Dena said, “Look, we haven’t loved each other for a long time. Still, I know you’ll be fair. Do you think it’s fair that I get what I got when we were married, and I get child support for Niall? You’re going to have Cam, and by the time things are settled, she’ll be eighteen anyway. Is that fair?”
“Yeah,” Bill blinked. “Yeah, that’s fair.”
She was being so fair, or at least, she was so single minded in her resolve to be divorced from him she had no time for revenge. She sounded reasonable, and he knew she would continue to be reasonable. What was more, everything he offered, Bill realized he didn’t mean. He didn’t want to give up this house and run off to Gale or Grand Rapids or even get an apartment here for that matter. He certainly didn’t want to give up Cameron. What he was afraid to look at too closely was that he probably did not care that much about Niall. And he certainly didn’t want to be here much longer. The moment he’d thought of Lynn was the moment he’d gotten a boner as thick as a Christmas sausage, and all he could do was think of shoving it in Lynn Messing. There was, he was sure, something not right, not entirely grown up or properly penitent in him. He was too like his father. He wanted to understand what that was about, but more than that, his cock ached. It throbbed and anticipated an hour in the future, speeding up the highway. He wanted to fuck.
“Jeff Cordino’s brother is a lawyer. He can draw things up.”
“You’ve thought about this,” Bill discovered.
“Yes, Yes,” Dena said, sitting back and tapping the table top of the kitchen with a far off look on her face.
“I’ve thought about it for a long time.”
Andy Gilson returned from the bathroom. A few moments later, without even looking at him, Chris Knapp leaned to his right and passed an ink pen to Gilead Story. He went back to taking notes, as if he’d done nothing at all, as Mr Stagmar continued his lecture. He was good at this, Gilead thought. He had always liked Chris, but now he wished he’d known the wild haired guy better.
Gilead pulled away the tip of the pen and around the ink stem was a strip of paper.
“The Achaemenid Empire was created by nomadic Persians. The Persians were an Iranian people who arrived in what is today Iran around1000 BC and settled a region including north-western Iran, the Zagros Mountains and Persis alongside the native Elamites.”
Beside Gilead, Chris Knapp mouthed, exagerrtedly, “E-lam-ites.”
“For a number of centuries they fell under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. That would be about 911 down till 609 BC, based in northern Mesopotamia…”
“Gil, don’t you take notes?” Adam Hauer whispered.
Gilead shook his head.
“Gil likes history. He just soaks it up. It’s gross,” Brad Andee whispered.
“Too bad he couldn’t soak up a little sports too. Gil, you’re a horrible athlete.”
“The Persians were originally nomadic pastoralists in the western Iranian Plateau. The Achaemenid Empire was not the first Iranian empire, as the Medes, another group of Iranian peoples, established a short-lived empire and played a major role in the overthrow of the Assyrians….
Gilead did not respond. He was paying attention to Mr. Collier’s lecture, yes, but he was thinking about the pen in his hand. Gilead opened the strip and read, in Mark’s fine handwriting.
Meet me at the chapel at 11:15?
Check here for yes ___
Here for you can’t ___
That Gilead would tell him no for any other reason than not being able to had never entered Mark’s head, and it hadn’t entered Gilead’s either.
“Cyrus revolted against the Median Empire in 553 BC, and in 550 BC succeeded in defeating the Medes, capturing Astyages and taking the Median capital city of Ecbatana. Once in control of Ecbatana, Cyrus styled himself as the successor to Astyages and assumed control of the entire empire. By inheriting Astyages' empire, he also inherited the territorial conflicts the Medes had had with both Lydia and the Neo-Babylonian Empire…”
This was his second history course of the day. Mornings started out with 19th century sitting between Mark and Russell. Gilead loved history, and would have loved a more interesting teacher for it, but the attention which Mr. Collier paid to his lectures was the attention he did not pay to his students and so Gilead marked a yes, then folded the note back into the ink pen, and handed it to Chris who raised his hand and then left to go to the restroom or, presumably, to Mark.
11:15 was study hall, and if you knew what you were doing an excellent time to have the run of the building. Much of OLM had been as renovated as one could make it without building a whole new school, but the wide steps under the great, diamond patterned window that let in the sun looked as old as they were, and as they left the third and on their landing, turned to the fourth, Gilead saw Mark waiting for him, hand in the pockets of his chinos, his blue blazer dropping over them. Mark gave him that damn nod, the cool nod that Gilead was almost embarrassed had such an effect on him, and when he met him at the top of the stairs, Mark caught his hand.
Gilead had always known this as the floor with the chapel. Now he saw this old floor was composed of a corridor with long windows at both ends. and only a very few doors. One of them Gilead was sure, led to the news paper room, but Mark was not concerned about that room, and opened another, quickly dragging Gilead in and shutting it as he pressed him against the door and kissed him.
The last few days before the end of vacation and the beginning of spring term were maddeningly busy and this morning, when Mark’s car had arrived at Gilead’s house, was the first time he’d seen him in days. Sharonda had already gone off to work, and Gilead locked the door behind him and then headed down the steps to hop into the passenger seat where he squeezed Mark’s hand. They didn’t kiss because, for some reason, having Mark’s hand in his felt even more intimate. They drove up Archer until Breckinridge and picked up Russell. On their way there Gilead said, “You know, it would actually make more sense to pick up Russell first.”
“Not necessarily,” Mark had differed. “I’m on North Westhaven. It’s all about what in what. Besides, it’s not Russell I missed.”
Mark had grinned and turned away from him, looking out the window, but rubbing his thumb along the inside of Gilead’s hand. Gilead thought Mark should drive with two hands, but kept this to himself.
“We’re almost kinda sort of late,” Gilead had noted as they parked beside the old grey stone school building on Lincoln Street, but they weren’t the last people here. Chris Knapp’s car was pulling into the parking lot and Russell noted, “He probably took Cameron to school.”
“Well, if they want us to be on time they should start school later,” Mark said, and as they entered the main lobby of Our Lady of Mercy, they heard the morning bell ringing.
“We haven’t even had time to see each other,” Gilead said as Chris Knapp burst through the door in his Starter jacket. He contemplated running to class on time, but on seeing his friends, he simply did a handspring against Mark’s back
“We all have our first two classes together,” Mark said. “So that’s plenty of time together.”
“Not me,” Chris said.
“You have fourth period with me if it makes you feel better.”
“It does, Gil,” Chris said stoutly, as they came to the third floor, “it does.”
So now they were in the closet and Gilead had removed Mark’s jacket and was running his hands up and down his sides, and then reaching under his shirt to feel his skin. He brought Mark down in a corner of the room and Mark Young knelt between his legs, kissing Gilead deeply.
“I almost thought that us together was a dream,” Gilead said. “I almost though I was making it up. I haven’t seen you in three days.”
“And debate team starts tonight,” Mark said, between kissing him, “and practice for cross country, and… I really, really, think you should join the paper.”
“Fuck the paper.” Gilead said.
They sat side by side, disheveled and kissing.
“I wish we could go home right now,” Mark said.
“How did you find this place?”
“I’ve known about this place. Because Billy Rathko was on paper and yearbook and they get that little room down the hall. He said he used to make out with his girlfriend. Before he graduated I got the key. I just haven’t had a reason to use it.”
They stopped talking and Marked lean in to kiss him again.
“We’ve got like… a half hour before lunch…” Gil began, but Mark was lifting his shirt and Gilead said, “Are we… here?”
“If you want,” Mark said, but his voice was husky, and he apparently assumed they were, had shrugged off his shirt and was unbuckling his belt.
Mark smelled like heat and desire and teenage boy cologne right next to him, and in the last minutes of their kiss Gilead remembered how firm and athletic his body was. And then there was the welling of tenderness Gilead felt for Mark just because he was Mark. And he remembered the way he felt about this school and his life here, and how having sex in a large utility closet was just what he needed.
MORE TOMORROW
Last edited:
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Well Dena and Bill getting divorced seems like they right thing. Their marriage is dead and I am glad Dena is taking the high road. Not that there is anything wrong with revenge but it feels like the right decision for her. Gilead and Mark are very cute and I am glad to have their happy relationship to read about too. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
IN TONIGHT'S PORTION, AS WE COME TO THE HEIGHT OF A BLINK WINTER, THINGS TAKE A TURN“
Winter is boring,” Cameron said. “I need basketball to start back up.”
“Huh?”
“Then cheerleading starts again,” she said.
“Oh,” Chris, who was on her floor on his stomach with his legs in the air as he did his calculus said, “Oh, I forgot. I mean, I always think of you all cheering for us.”
“We cheer for basketball too,” Cameron said, “And then there is the championship against Lourdes. And you know what, it’s not that I like cheering so much… no, that’s a lie. I like the acrobatics of it. I don’t really care who wins. Though.”
“Heresy!” Chris shouted, pointed a pencil at her.
“I don’t,” Cameron insisted. “I don’t even know how to play football.”
“Say it ain’t so.”
“But I love the dancing. I love the acrobatics. And I love having something to do. And right now there isn’t a thing to do.”
“Except spend time with me.”
“Well,” Cameron rolled off the bed onto the floor, and lay on her back. She stuck out a finger and touched Chris’s nose.
“Boop.”
He shook himself like a dog.
“Mr. Knapp, spending time with you is the highlight of my day.”
“Your dad seems pleased.”
“My dad is pleased. He loves you.”
“When am I going to meet the rest of your family, though?”
“Uh….” Cameron let things hang uncomfortably in the air a moment. “I don’t know that you will.”
“But… your mom? Your brother.”
“Niall you can meet. Hell, Niall goes to OLM. But my mother… I used to say we had a difficult relationship, but now I can safely say I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me.”
“Oh, I’m sure she—”
“No,” Cameron said. “Do not do that. It’s gaslighting, and it’s not for me. It’s because you don’t want to believe that a mother like her could exist.
“I’m sorry, Cam. It’s just…”
“I think she resents the fact that getting pregnant with me made her skip out of college, even though I’m not the one that chose to sleep with my father or drop out of school. I think when she sees me she sees my father. I don’t know. But as long as I’ve known her, she’s always sort of hated me.”
“Well, then I hate her.”
“That’s good of you,” Cameron said after stopping herself from laughing at the force of Chris’s words.
“I mean it, I hate her. If I ever meet her, I’m going to tell her that.”
Cameron was moved, but she also didn’t know how to be moved. A joke was easier, so she said, “Well, in that case, you’re definitely not going over there for dinner. It’ll just be you me and Dad. Maybe Niall.”
She said, after reflection, “Actually, most of my family is pretty great. Especially Uncle Dave. Dave and my dad are like actual brothers, and what happened at Christmas kind of drove them apart, so that’s what I worry about. And, of course, Lee really is Dad’s sister.
“I thought that your mother was David’s sister.”
“She is.”
“Wait… then like… your father’s sister married your mother’s brother?”
“Yeah, I know right?”
“Is that even legal.”
“Russell’s father’s sister, one of them, is married to his mother’s brother. I mean, it just happened, but there it is.”
“Well,” Chris shook his head. “What a world.”
“I just hope Dad and Dave make up,” Cameron said.
Chris look out of the window where day was turning to dusk.
“Is he still at work?”
Cameron shrugged, returning to the bed and her French homework.
“I don’t really know where he is.”
The kitchen was immaculate and empty as was al of the first floor. The furnace clicked on at 1737 Breckinridge and it roared from the furnace in the basement where, n semi darkness, Bill Dwyer sat, his face turned to the pipes and wooden slats above him, eyes shut tight, almost weeping. His lips moved in something like prayer, his face changed in something like sorrow and regret. The washing machine roared loud so that when he gave a sharp, painful cry, it could not be heard.
But though he wept, it was not in sorrow, and though he cried out, it was not in pain. The chair squeaked against his naked buttocks and, his trousers and underwear down, he cried out again as, straddling his waist, Lynn Messing rode him.
In the days of winter break, Gilead had wondered if he and Mark would tire of each other. After all, they were always together. But then the rhythm of school and normal life took over and Mark was at OLM till nearly five everyday with a job on the weekend. Gilead, tired of looking shiftless and unaccomplished, but having no desire to be at OLM any longer than he had to be for things he perceived to be frivolous, took up after school tutoring. Except for Friday nights and some Sundays the time to lie in Mark’s arms and be with Mark Young alone was short, and now, as January progressed into February, the closet on the fourth floor became their place of meeting.
The first time it happened, Gilead had been afraid out of his mind once it was done. Mark had taken him to the little bathroom on the fourth floor and together they had cleaned up, straightened each other’s ties, made out and felt each other some more, and then headed to lunch. But the lunch room was the same place it always was, full of boys who lived in a small world, and Gilead kept wondering if anyone could tell. Surely someone must have known he was having sex with Mark on the fourth floor three days a week. OLM and sex did not go together. OLM and gay sex, the freedom he felt, naked in Mark’s arms, did not go together. If it had not been the only time in the day where they could be together, he would not have done it.
He remembered his cousin Pethane saying, “Once you have sex, you’ll be over it. You won’t understand what’s so great about it and you’ll calm down. And once you see somebody naked, all those feelings will wear themselves out.”
But that had not been the case. The truth was the exact excitement that had been in him the first time he’d seen Mark, and the time when Mark had swiped his journal and he had given him a headlock, or the swell of tenderness when he’d seen him alone and sad at Joe Smith’s funeral, was in him now. The excitement was still in him when Mark looked at him across a room and gave him the nod. The crush, the nerves, the anticipation, the infatuation did not disappear, and the moment when they undressed and their bodies joined, Gilead did not get used to. As February approached he still felt as much like a giddy virgin around Mark as he had the day they first touched hands.
One very grey morning, Gilead climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and found Mark not waiting at the banister overlooking the winding steps, but reclined against the wall across from the chapel, hands jammed in his pockets.
Gilead kissed him lightly, but Mark seemed distracted.
“Do you mind if we just sit here today?” he asked.
They went into their closet and sat down side by side.
This didn’t bother Gilead. They’d begun their lives together like this and spent a great deal of time in silence anyway. Even when they made love, the rest of the time was spent being quiet with each other, but there was a different quality to this silence. Gilead wanted to ask, “Are you alright?” but he remembered what Mark had said, about sometimes needing to be quiet and alone. At least now, at this moment, he wanted to be quiet, but with him. So they sat that way, and when it was 12:15, they rose and went to lunch.
Chris Knapp looked different that day and Gilead couldn’t pen point it until he was standing beside his locker.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, Gil,” Chris said.
When Chris didn’t move, Gilead said, “Your hair.”
“Yeah,” Chris touched it. “I combed it down. I’m going to dinner with Cameron and her family tonight. At her uncle’s house.”
Gilead was going to point out that this wasn’t until tonight, but Chris looked nervous. He didn’t imagine it was about Cameron. After all, why would he be here, at his locker, worried about Cameron Dwyer.
“It’s Mark,” Chris said. “How is he?”
Gilead looked at Chris, and Chris said, “We’re friends, but you all are… closer.”
Gilead wondered if Chris knew how close and simply wasn’t saying it, or maybe he didn’t know how to say it. Hell, Gilead scarcely knew.
“We’ve always been friends,” Chris said. “But… we always let each other do our own thing. You know. Never press.”
“Right.”
“A few years ago I got into some trouble, and Mark was right there for me. I wanna be there, but I don’t know how. He’s not talking.”
Gilead had known Chris since seventh grade when he started coming to the basement parties his classmates would throw, but he and Mark had gone to Evervirgin, and Gilead had gone to Saint Celestine’s a year ahead of Ralph and Jason. There had been whisperings about Chris and some school teacher and her being fired, and there had been more than whispers, but Gilead had always ignored them. Chris was a kind boy who, as he did now, approached him with friendship when many wouldn’t, and Gilead had always returned that. Apparently Mark knew more, and Gilead had decided to not ask Mark what the more was.
“I’m not sure, Chris,” Gilead said.
“But—”
“He’s shutting me out. I’ll talk to him, but he’s been shutting me out.”
Chris bit his lip and looked troubled.
“Look, Chris said, “Can I talk to you?”
“Uh…” Gilead knew Chris meant someplace private, but he wasn’t sure where that place was.
“Sure.”
“Look, Mark is one of my best friends.”
“I know that.”
“I respect him,” Chris said. “I respect his life. And, I know losing Joe was hard. It was fucked up. It was fucked up for all of us, but they were friends.
“And then he found you, and… You are different. You’re more than a friend, You’re… I don’t get in his business, and I don’t care, but I know how important you are to Mark, how important he is to you. And that’s all that matters. And if you can help me know what’s happening with him, that would be great. He tells you everything. I mean, he does.”
“But he hasn’t told me about this,” Gilead said. “He isn’t really telling me anything.
“You remember before Christmas, we went up to the lake? He told me, he said that sometimes he needed space. It didn’t meant he didn’t care. He just needed space. And I am trying to give him that space—”
“But sometimes there’s too much space, and then—”
“I know.”
They were both quiet and then Gilead said, “He’s shutting me out. I feel it. At first I started to think it was about me, but it’s not, and…”
“No, it’s not,” Chris said. “He’s in a place. He gets in that place sometimes, but he usually comes out of it.”
Gilead nodded.
“I’m more worried than I let on. I kind of feel like I’m losing him.”
“You’re not,” Chris said. “You’re the one that still has the biggest hold on him.
“If he’s shutting you out there isn’t much hope for the rest of us.”
THANKS FOR READING, LOVES. MORE NEXT WEEK. ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND!
Winter is boring,” Cameron said. “I need basketball to start back up.”
“Huh?”
“Then cheerleading starts again,” she said.
“Oh,” Chris, who was on her floor on his stomach with his legs in the air as he did his calculus said, “Oh, I forgot. I mean, I always think of you all cheering for us.”
“We cheer for basketball too,” Cameron said, “And then there is the championship against Lourdes. And you know what, it’s not that I like cheering so much… no, that’s a lie. I like the acrobatics of it. I don’t really care who wins. Though.”
“Heresy!” Chris shouted, pointed a pencil at her.
“I don’t,” Cameron insisted. “I don’t even know how to play football.”
“Say it ain’t so.”
“But I love the dancing. I love the acrobatics. And I love having something to do. And right now there isn’t a thing to do.”
“Except spend time with me.”
“Well,” Cameron rolled off the bed onto the floor, and lay on her back. She stuck out a finger and touched Chris’s nose.
“Boop.”
He shook himself like a dog.
“Mr. Knapp, spending time with you is the highlight of my day.”
“Your dad seems pleased.”
“My dad is pleased. He loves you.”
“When am I going to meet the rest of your family, though?”
“Uh….” Cameron let things hang uncomfortably in the air a moment. “I don’t know that you will.”
“But… your mom? Your brother.”
“Niall you can meet. Hell, Niall goes to OLM. But my mother… I used to say we had a difficult relationship, but now I can safely say I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me.”
“Oh, I’m sure she—”
“No,” Cameron said. “Do not do that. It’s gaslighting, and it’s not for me. It’s because you don’t want to believe that a mother like her could exist.
“I’m sorry, Cam. It’s just…”
“I think she resents the fact that getting pregnant with me made her skip out of college, even though I’m not the one that chose to sleep with my father or drop out of school. I think when she sees me she sees my father. I don’t know. But as long as I’ve known her, she’s always sort of hated me.”
“Well, then I hate her.”
“That’s good of you,” Cameron said after stopping herself from laughing at the force of Chris’s words.
“I mean it, I hate her. If I ever meet her, I’m going to tell her that.”
Cameron was moved, but she also didn’t know how to be moved. A joke was easier, so she said, “Well, in that case, you’re definitely not going over there for dinner. It’ll just be you me and Dad. Maybe Niall.”
She said, after reflection, “Actually, most of my family is pretty great. Especially Uncle Dave. Dave and my dad are like actual brothers, and what happened at Christmas kind of drove them apart, so that’s what I worry about. And, of course, Lee really is Dad’s sister.
“I thought that your mother was David’s sister.”
“She is.”
“Wait… then like… your father’s sister married your mother’s brother?”
“Yeah, I know right?”
“Is that even legal.”
“Russell’s father’s sister, one of them, is married to his mother’s brother. I mean, it just happened, but there it is.”
“Well,” Chris shook his head. “What a world.”
“I just hope Dad and Dave make up,” Cameron said.
Chris look out of the window where day was turning to dusk.
“Is he still at work?”
Cameron shrugged, returning to the bed and her French homework.
“I don’t really know where he is.”
The kitchen was immaculate and empty as was al of the first floor. The furnace clicked on at 1737 Breckinridge and it roared from the furnace in the basement where, n semi darkness, Bill Dwyer sat, his face turned to the pipes and wooden slats above him, eyes shut tight, almost weeping. His lips moved in something like prayer, his face changed in something like sorrow and regret. The washing machine roared loud so that when he gave a sharp, painful cry, it could not be heard.
But though he wept, it was not in sorrow, and though he cried out, it was not in pain. The chair squeaked against his naked buttocks and, his trousers and underwear down, he cried out again as, straddling his waist, Lynn Messing rode him.
In the days of winter break, Gilead had wondered if he and Mark would tire of each other. After all, they were always together. But then the rhythm of school and normal life took over and Mark was at OLM till nearly five everyday with a job on the weekend. Gilead, tired of looking shiftless and unaccomplished, but having no desire to be at OLM any longer than he had to be for things he perceived to be frivolous, took up after school tutoring. Except for Friday nights and some Sundays the time to lie in Mark’s arms and be with Mark Young alone was short, and now, as January progressed into February, the closet on the fourth floor became their place of meeting.
The first time it happened, Gilead had been afraid out of his mind once it was done. Mark had taken him to the little bathroom on the fourth floor and together they had cleaned up, straightened each other’s ties, made out and felt each other some more, and then headed to lunch. But the lunch room was the same place it always was, full of boys who lived in a small world, and Gilead kept wondering if anyone could tell. Surely someone must have known he was having sex with Mark on the fourth floor three days a week. OLM and sex did not go together. OLM and gay sex, the freedom he felt, naked in Mark’s arms, did not go together. If it had not been the only time in the day where they could be together, he would not have done it.
He remembered his cousin Pethane saying, “Once you have sex, you’ll be over it. You won’t understand what’s so great about it and you’ll calm down. And once you see somebody naked, all those feelings will wear themselves out.”
But that had not been the case. The truth was the exact excitement that had been in him the first time he’d seen Mark, and the time when Mark had swiped his journal and he had given him a headlock, or the swell of tenderness when he’d seen him alone and sad at Joe Smith’s funeral, was in him now. The excitement was still in him when Mark looked at him across a room and gave him the nod. The crush, the nerves, the anticipation, the infatuation did not disappear, and the moment when they undressed and their bodies joined, Gilead did not get used to. As February approached he still felt as much like a giddy virgin around Mark as he had the day they first touched hands.
One very grey morning, Gilead climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and found Mark not waiting at the banister overlooking the winding steps, but reclined against the wall across from the chapel, hands jammed in his pockets.
Gilead kissed him lightly, but Mark seemed distracted.
“Do you mind if we just sit here today?” he asked.
They went into their closet and sat down side by side.
This didn’t bother Gilead. They’d begun their lives together like this and spent a great deal of time in silence anyway. Even when they made love, the rest of the time was spent being quiet with each other, but there was a different quality to this silence. Gilead wanted to ask, “Are you alright?” but he remembered what Mark had said, about sometimes needing to be quiet and alone. At least now, at this moment, he wanted to be quiet, but with him. So they sat that way, and when it was 12:15, they rose and went to lunch.
Chris Knapp looked different that day and Gilead couldn’t pen point it until he was standing beside his locker.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, Gil,” Chris said.
When Chris didn’t move, Gilead said, “Your hair.”
“Yeah,” Chris touched it. “I combed it down. I’m going to dinner with Cameron and her family tonight. At her uncle’s house.”
Gilead was going to point out that this wasn’t until tonight, but Chris looked nervous. He didn’t imagine it was about Cameron. After all, why would he be here, at his locker, worried about Cameron Dwyer.
“It’s Mark,” Chris said. “How is he?”
Gilead looked at Chris, and Chris said, “We’re friends, but you all are… closer.”
Gilead wondered if Chris knew how close and simply wasn’t saying it, or maybe he didn’t know how to say it. Hell, Gilead scarcely knew.
“We’ve always been friends,” Chris said. “But… we always let each other do our own thing. You know. Never press.”
“Right.”
“A few years ago I got into some trouble, and Mark was right there for me. I wanna be there, but I don’t know how. He’s not talking.”
Gilead had known Chris since seventh grade when he started coming to the basement parties his classmates would throw, but he and Mark had gone to Evervirgin, and Gilead had gone to Saint Celestine’s a year ahead of Ralph and Jason. There had been whisperings about Chris and some school teacher and her being fired, and there had been more than whispers, but Gilead had always ignored them. Chris was a kind boy who, as he did now, approached him with friendship when many wouldn’t, and Gilead had always returned that. Apparently Mark knew more, and Gilead had decided to not ask Mark what the more was.
“I’m not sure, Chris,” Gilead said.
“But—”
“He’s shutting me out. I’ll talk to him, but he’s been shutting me out.”
Chris bit his lip and looked troubled.
“Look, Chris said, “Can I talk to you?”
“Uh…” Gilead knew Chris meant someplace private, but he wasn’t sure where that place was.
“Sure.”
“Look, Mark is one of my best friends.”
“I know that.”
“I respect him,” Chris said. “I respect his life. And, I know losing Joe was hard. It was fucked up. It was fucked up for all of us, but they were friends.
“And then he found you, and… You are different. You’re more than a friend, You’re… I don’t get in his business, and I don’t care, but I know how important you are to Mark, how important he is to you. And that’s all that matters. And if you can help me know what’s happening with him, that would be great. He tells you everything. I mean, he does.”
“But he hasn’t told me about this,” Gilead said. “He isn’t really telling me anything.
“You remember before Christmas, we went up to the lake? He told me, he said that sometimes he needed space. It didn’t meant he didn’t care. He just needed space. And I am trying to give him that space—”
“But sometimes there’s too much space, and then—”
“I know.”
They were both quiet and then Gilead said, “He’s shutting me out. I feel it. At first I started to think it was about me, but it’s not, and…”
“No, it’s not,” Chris said. “He’s in a place. He gets in that place sometimes, but he usually comes out of it.”
Gilead nodded.
“I’m more worried than I let on. I kind of feel like I’m losing him.”
“You’re not,” Chris said. “You’re the one that still has the biggest hold on him.
“If he’s shutting you out there isn’t much hope for the rest of us.”
THANKS FOR READING, LOVES. MORE NEXT WEEK. ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND!
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Well it sounds like Cameron and Dena’s relationship is definitely on shaky ground and I don’t know if it will recover. Mark is definitely going through it and I hope he reaches out to Gilead and his friends when he is ready. Great writing and I look forward to more next week. You enjoy your weekend too Chris!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Yes, Dena and Cameron seem very much at an impasse. Bill wasn't a good dad to Niall, but Dena was never a good mother to Cameron. Meanwhile, Mark is struggling, and everyone is worried about him. It's the first major challenge he and Gilead have had.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WELCOME BACK TO G FALLS!
“I gotta call Cam when I get home,” Russell said.
“Damn,” Ralph shook his head as he looked up from his homework, “I can’t believe she’s still walking straight.”
“Because of Chris?”
“Yeah because of Chris,” Ralph said.
“I dunno,” Russell shrugged, getting up and beginning to stuff his homework in folders. “He just doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.”
Of course nothing really seemed like anything that it really was. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would have sex with his brother, or with Ralph for that matter. All through December he and Ralph had…. Well, they had been lovers. And suddenly, with Ralph not even asking what had happened, they were back to being friends and Ralph was merrily fucking Vanessa. Russell could not keep his thoughts from Cody and when his thoughts sank south between his legs, then he went to Jason. No, nothing really was as it seemed, and yet Chris Knapp still could not be what they said.
“Her name was Mrs. Pruitt,” Ralph said. “That bitch was hot. And you know, Chris fucking looked the same way he does now. Lucky bastard, his balls dropped when he was like nine. I still remember, Jeremy Reinhart saying he got the biggest boner coming in from class and seeing Chris just fuck her on the desk! Like, he scored with our teacher and he was like fifteen!”
“Fourteen,” Russell said weakly.
“Huh?” Ralph said, stirred from his reverie.
“He would have been fourteen.”
“Yeah,” Ralph said. “That’s even cooler.”
Russell looked at Ralph’s stupid face, and had a hard time believing he’d ever had sex with this boy.
“Well, he’s just been flat out distracted and irritated and not very Mark at all,” Gilead said.
“Yeah he’s being pretty weird,” Russell agreed and Gilead said, “I’m glad you said that, because, as reasonable as I’m pretending to be, I was beginning to worry if it was about me.”
“I don’t think it’s you, in fact he’s nicer to you that any of us, but he’s kind of being… not a dick, but…’
“Yes.” Gilead said. “And I don’t want to coddle him or bug him. We usually meet for lunch—” Gilead was not one of those people who felt the need to describe his sex life, “and we haven’t this week. I wanna give him his space, but I’m going to ask what’s going on soon.”
“Yeah, well,” Russell said, “don’t let it wait too long.”
The very fact that Mark had walked away from them and made it to class early was a sign that all was not well. Gilead simply took out a note and wrote: Are you all right?
Mark ignored him for about five minutes before returning: I’m fine.
Gilead breathed through his nose and then wrote: Meet me at our place at 11:45.
Mark looked angry for the first time Gilead had known him and then scribbled hard.
FINE
“You know,” Gilead began, “there was the really selfish part of me that was thinking, what if Mark is tired of me. What if he just wants to get rid of me? But this isn’t even about me, is it? I can guess what it’s about, or you could tell me.”
“Why don’t you tell me then?” Mark said, turning to look at Gilead.
“I mean, you are so clever, aren’t you Gil? Why don’t you psychoanalyze me and tell me what my problem is?”
Gilead did not dignify this with an answer.
“There is one thing you do have right, Gil. It’s not about you. You are not the reason I feel like shit.”
Gilead’s face changed.
“But you are making it very hard for me to feel how I’m feeling so I would really appreciate it if you left me alone.”
Gilead was not entirely sure what his face looked like right now.
Mark jammed his hands in his pockets.
“I can’t stand to think of how your brain is moving around worrying about me all the time. I can’t take it, all of you fucking whispering about me. You know what?” Mark said. “Try to get a ride with Ralph or someone cause I’m going home early. I’m going home now ,and please, please don’t fucking call me.”
Gilead was too… Gilead to let his feelings overwhelm him.
He just said, keeping his voice low in his throat:
“You’re sick of me?”
“I’m sick of all of you,” Mark said, looking away from Gilead, and he hitched his bag over his shoulder and walked away, trotting down the stairs.
They were making out in her bedroom, but Cameron realized that she never really had to worry about her virtue or any of those things girls in Catholic school were supposed to be concerned about. She could time it almost to the second when Chris, pulling away and patting his hair down would say, “There we go. That’s good. We better stop.”
She supposed he was right. She hadn’t planned to start having sex just yet, but it had been in the back of her mind. The moment the well built blue eyed quarterback had first asked her out, she’d wondered how far they would go, how soon he would press her, if she would know him long enough to be pressed. Now this hardly seemed like an issue at all.
“You don’t mind?” Chris said. “I mean, you’re ok with us stopping here?”
“Yeah,” Cameron said. Then, “Yes. Actually. I just…. People talk.”
“Yeah, they do,” Chris grinned looking very innocent.
“You know. Head cheerleader, football captain.”
“And it’s me,” Chris said plainly. “You’re dating me, so I’m sure that must lead to some talking.”
Cameron grimaced and tried to be diplomatic.
“Whenever a popular guy is involved there is always talking.”
“Cameron Dwyer,” Chris stood up and held out his hand. She took it and he pulled her up.
“I am not stupid. I know the stuff that’s been said about me for years.”
“People are jealous.”
“No,” Chris said. “They aren’t. They hear things. They heard things and they were misconstrued. Like, whaddid you hear?”
“Chris,” Cameron said, “is there something you want to tell me?”
“Yes,” Chris said, licking his lips. Then, “No, but yes. I mean, I just want to know—we should have talked about this a long time ago, what you think you know.”
“People just said you were a bad boy,” Cameron answered. Then she amended, “Now, maybe they said more, but I wasn’t around to hear it. And… you do look like a bad boy.”
“I’m not,” Chris said, sounding hurt.
“I was just,” Cameron stopped. She realized that Chris Knapp had come to her rescue. The day she had returned from Idlewild and couldn’t stand to be with her mother and couldn’t be with her father, he had come to her, and now he needed her.
She stood on her toes and took his face in her hands.
“Chris, I know you for who you are. Not who or what you may or may not have done. If I never listened to any rumors, it’s because they don’t matter. You matter to me.”
“You came,” Bill said, opening the door.
“Yeah,” Dave Armstrong, lanky and awkward as usual said, entering the house.
“It seemed like if I waited for you to come I’d be waiting forever. We have to sort things out. The way they ended.”
“Yeah,” Bill said, scratching behind his ear nervously, and pulling a chair from under a table for David.
David shook his head.
“Look, Bill, I love you like a brother. You know that.”
“Of course.”
“But what I said stands. You can’t be putting your hands on Niall.”
“I know that, Dave. I know=”
“And whatever….. bullshit the two of you have, where you’ve decided to love Cameron and Dena’s decided to love Niall, that shit has to stop.”
“Then you should talk to your sister.”
“I’m talking to you, Bill. You’ve fucked up. I mean, you really fucked up with Niall. You’re a bully.”
“I know.”
“You’re a fucking bully,” Dave said. “And I hate bullies. Why did you do this? To your family? You let me down.”
“I know.”
“And you weren’t there for your son.”
“I…”
“You what?”
“I was going to say I tried to be there.”
“And then you realized you didn’t,” Dave said, angrily.
“Yes,” Bill answered. “Something like that.
“You know he was dating Sonia Cormorant?”
“Jack’s daughter?”
“Yeah,” Dave said.
“You know why you were busy bullying your son and smoking his marijuana—and how did he even get to start selling marijuana—you know he was sleeping with that girl? You know he got her pregnant?”
“Pregnant?”
“Yeah, Bill,” Dave said, his face pale, his eyes angry. “And you don’t even have to worry about grandkids before you’re forty, because they got an abortion.”
“What?”
“The day before the shit show you gave us in Idlewild, Cam had just gone down to East Sequoya to pick Niall and Sonia up from the abortion clinic.”
MORE TOMORROW, FRIENDS
“I gotta call Cam when I get home,” Russell said.
“Damn,” Ralph shook his head as he looked up from his homework, “I can’t believe she’s still walking straight.”
“Because of Chris?”
“Yeah because of Chris,” Ralph said.
“I dunno,” Russell shrugged, getting up and beginning to stuff his homework in folders. “He just doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.”
Of course nothing really seemed like anything that it really was. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would have sex with his brother, or with Ralph for that matter. All through December he and Ralph had…. Well, they had been lovers. And suddenly, with Ralph not even asking what had happened, they were back to being friends and Ralph was merrily fucking Vanessa. Russell could not keep his thoughts from Cody and when his thoughts sank south between his legs, then he went to Jason. No, nothing really was as it seemed, and yet Chris Knapp still could not be what they said.
“Her name was Mrs. Pruitt,” Ralph said. “That bitch was hot. And you know, Chris fucking looked the same way he does now. Lucky bastard, his balls dropped when he was like nine. I still remember, Jeremy Reinhart saying he got the biggest boner coming in from class and seeing Chris just fuck her on the desk! Like, he scored with our teacher and he was like fifteen!”
“Fourteen,” Russell said weakly.
“Huh?” Ralph said, stirred from his reverie.
“He would have been fourteen.”
“Yeah,” Ralph said. “That’s even cooler.”
Russell looked at Ralph’s stupid face, and had a hard time believing he’d ever had sex with this boy.
“Well, he’s just been flat out distracted and irritated and not very Mark at all,” Gilead said.
“Yeah he’s being pretty weird,” Russell agreed and Gilead said, “I’m glad you said that, because, as reasonable as I’m pretending to be, I was beginning to worry if it was about me.”
“I don’t think it’s you, in fact he’s nicer to you that any of us, but he’s kind of being… not a dick, but…’
“Yes.” Gilead said. “And I don’t want to coddle him or bug him. We usually meet for lunch—” Gilead was not one of those people who felt the need to describe his sex life, “and we haven’t this week. I wanna give him his space, but I’m going to ask what’s going on soon.”
“Yeah, well,” Russell said, “don’t let it wait too long.”
The very fact that Mark had walked away from them and made it to class early was a sign that all was not well. Gilead simply took out a note and wrote: Are you all right?
Mark ignored him for about five minutes before returning: I’m fine.
Gilead breathed through his nose and then wrote: Meet me at our place at 11:45.
Mark looked angry for the first time Gilead had known him and then scribbled hard.
FINE
“You know,” Gilead began, “there was the really selfish part of me that was thinking, what if Mark is tired of me. What if he just wants to get rid of me? But this isn’t even about me, is it? I can guess what it’s about, or you could tell me.”
“Why don’t you tell me then?” Mark said, turning to look at Gilead.
“I mean, you are so clever, aren’t you Gil? Why don’t you psychoanalyze me and tell me what my problem is?”
Gilead did not dignify this with an answer.
“There is one thing you do have right, Gil. It’s not about you. You are not the reason I feel like shit.”
Gilead’s face changed.
“But you are making it very hard for me to feel how I’m feeling so I would really appreciate it if you left me alone.”
Gilead was not entirely sure what his face looked like right now.
Mark jammed his hands in his pockets.
“I can’t stand to think of how your brain is moving around worrying about me all the time. I can’t take it, all of you fucking whispering about me. You know what?” Mark said. “Try to get a ride with Ralph or someone cause I’m going home early. I’m going home now ,and please, please don’t fucking call me.”
Gilead was too… Gilead to let his feelings overwhelm him.
He just said, keeping his voice low in his throat:
“You’re sick of me?”
“I’m sick of all of you,” Mark said, looking away from Gilead, and he hitched his bag over his shoulder and walked away, trotting down the stairs.
They were making out in her bedroom, but Cameron realized that she never really had to worry about her virtue or any of those things girls in Catholic school were supposed to be concerned about. She could time it almost to the second when Chris, pulling away and patting his hair down would say, “There we go. That’s good. We better stop.”
She supposed he was right. She hadn’t planned to start having sex just yet, but it had been in the back of her mind. The moment the well built blue eyed quarterback had first asked her out, she’d wondered how far they would go, how soon he would press her, if she would know him long enough to be pressed. Now this hardly seemed like an issue at all.
“You don’t mind?” Chris said. “I mean, you’re ok with us stopping here?”
“Yeah,” Cameron said. Then, “Yes. Actually. I just…. People talk.”
“Yeah, they do,” Chris grinned looking very innocent.
“You know. Head cheerleader, football captain.”
“And it’s me,” Chris said plainly. “You’re dating me, so I’m sure that must lead to some talking.”
Cameron grimaced and tried to be diplomatic.
“Whenever a popular guy is involved there is always talking.”
“Cameron Dwyer,” Chris stood up and held out his hand. She took it and he pulled her up.
“I am not stupid. I know the stuff that’s been said about me for years.”
“People are jealous.”
“No,” Chris said. “They aren’t. They hear things. They heard things and they were misconstrued. Like, whaddid you hear?”
“Chris,” Cameron said, “is there something you want to tell me?”
“Yes,” Chris said, licking his lips. Then, “No, but yes. I mean, I just want to know—we should have talked about this a long time ago, what you think you know.”
“People just said you were a bad boy,” Cameron answered. Then she amended, “Now, maybe they said more, but I wasn’t around to hear it. And… you do look like a bad boy.”
“I’m not,” Chris said, sounding hurt.
“I was just,” Cameron stopped. She realized that Chris Knapp had come to her rescue. The day she had returned from Idlewild and couldn’t stand to be with her mother and couldn’t be with her father, he had come to her, and now he needed her.
She stood on her toes and took his face in her hands.
“Chris, I know you for who you are. Not who or what you may or may not have done. If I never listened to any rumors, it’s because they don’t matter. You matter to me.”
“You came,” Bill said, opening the door.
“Yeah,” Dave Armstrong, lanky and awkward as usual said, entering the house.
“It seemed like if I waited for you to come I’d be waiting forever. We have to sort things out. The way they ended.”
“Yeah,” Bill said, scratching behind his ear nervously, and pulling a chair from under a table for David.
David shook his head.
“Look, Bill, I love you like a brother. You know that.”
“Of course.”
“But what I said stands. You can’t be putting your hands on Niall.”
“I know that, Dave. I know=”
“And whatever….. bullshit the two of you have, where you’ve decided to love Cameron and Dena’s decided to love Niall, that shit has to stop.”
“Then you should talk to your sister.”
“I’m talking to you, Bill. You’ve fucked up. I mean, you really fucked up with Niall. You’re a bully.”
“I know.”
“You’re a fucking bully,” Dave said. “And I hate bullies. Why did you do this? To your family? You let me down.”
“I know.”
“And you weren’t there for your son.”
“I…”
“You what?”
“I was going to say I tried to be there.”
“And then you realized you didn’t,” Dave said, angrily.
“Yes,” Bill answered. “Something like that.
“You know he was dating Sonia Cormorant?”
“Jack’s daughter?”
“Yeah,” Dave said.
“You know why you were busy bullying your son and smoking his marijuana—and how did he even get to start selling marijuana—you know he was sleeping with that girl? You know he got her pregnant?”
“Pregnant?”
“Yeah, Bill,” Dave said, his face pale, his eyes angry. “And you don’t even have to worry about grandkids before you’re forty, because they got an abortion.”
“What?”
“The day before the shit show you gave us in Idlewild, Cam had just gone down to East Sequoya to pick Niall and Sonia up from the abortion clinic.”
MORE TOMORROW, FRIENDS
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Wow Mark is really angry and depressed. He has his reasons of course but I hope he comes back to Gilead and is a bit less rude to him. I understand he wants to be left alone but Gilead and their friends are only trying to help. Chris and Cameron are cute and having real adult conversations which I think is good. I am glad Dave called Bill out on his bullshit behaviour. After learning what Niall has been through hopefully he feels some remorse for being such a bully to him. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Yes, it was so rewarding to read these comments. So much going on. Bill has been such a rat, and been completely unaware of what is happening to his son. I liked that it was Dave who stood up to him, and not Dena. Meanwhile there's a lot going down with Chris, which he and Cameron are just starting to face, and whatever is happening with Mark, it's not being faced at all, and he is in danger of isolating himself from his friends.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
TONIGHT, WE TAKE A BREAK FROM MARK AND GILEAD, WHILE RUSSELL AND SOME OTHERS FOCUS ON THEIR OWN RELATIONSHIPS....
After Christmas, Russell Lewis had the powerful desire to lead a grown up life. This is the way he had phrased it to Gilead, and he was sure Gilead, who was his best friend, and who had found him as he once was, would understand. Russell had been leading something that was almost a grown up life before, but somehow the introduction of not only teenage social life, but a sex life as well had made him less grown up, less focused. All of these fallings in and out of bed with Ralph or with Jason or with Cody, all of this falling in and out of love and the almost treachery surrounding it felt very un grown up. He felt sillier and more in turmoil than he had in the past. He did not want to share his life with his friends anymore. He didn’t want to talk about it with Gilead or even with Chayne. Suddenly what Gilead had with Mark seemed very mature, very real, quite solid, and Russell felt like there was nothing solid about him.
The last of that feeling had been on Christmas when he was finally alone with Flipper, and they were driving over the snow crusted streets of Geshichte Falls, slowly pulling up to his house. The whole family was gone because there had been a power out, and no one was coming back till the morning. He and Flipper had gone through the house seeing what electric had been left on, and deciding which things should remain on. He’d thought—very briefly—of calling his parents, telling them to wake up and come home from the rectory. He told himself that he didn’t want to wake them up, but privately thought that was a selfish lie. He’d gone into the basement to find Flipper. Jason was sure sex, and a strange set of lustful feelings. Ralph was something else altogether. Cody was burning and crazy passion, but Flipper was stability. Flipper was the first right feeling. When he closed the door and set the lock, and Flipper was undressing, when he went to Flipper and took his face in his hands, there was a sense of relief, of rightness.
Sex felt good It felt great, but so far Russell had never felt “like a grown up” the way it was supposed to make you feel. Flipper was younger than Cody, yes, but for some reason, in that room, on his back, Flipper moving between his thighs, looking down on him with those black eyes, lightly licking his lower lip, the black curtain of hair touching Russell’s cheek, it felt like making love to a grown up, and as Russell felt his own body move, he felt like a grown up too. Being with him at Saint Alban’s was like that too. He didn’t feel like a dumb kid in over his head. But then, he never had been. He’d always been wiser than his years, or wise as them, and with Flipper this was just how he felt.
The sex was long lasting, which surprised Russell. He had wanted to be with Flipper so badly he though that things would culminate in five minutes. But neither of them seemed to be in a hurry, and they moved through all the measures of love slowly. Flipper did what Jason or Ralph would not have known to do, which was lie on his side in a sort of lazy peace, working Russell’s body like an oil man at a derrick until, finally, Russell shuddered and bubbled into quaking orgasm while, under his dark lash’s Flipper watched contentedly. When, a little later, with a staggering force that would have been was almost embarrassing, it revealed too much, Flipper came in his arms, the two of them lay in that bed, warm and naked and under the yellow light they had never turned off, limbs tangling and untangling, stroking one another’s arms, shoulders, hair.
“I want to stop being stupid,” Russell said, at last, turning over and lying on his stomach, folding his arms under his chin.
“You aren’t stupid at all,” Flipper said.
“Only I’ve bee very stupid, and you don’t know it. I’d like to start acting like a grown up.”
“But you’re not a grown up.”
“If I’m sleeping with you, I’m a grown up,” Russell said. “And maybe I don’t mean be a grown up. Maybe I mean be someone who acts like they have sense. Because I used to have sense. Too much sense. So much sense I was depressed and too afraid to do anything. But…. I’d like to be reasonable again. It’s no fun being a basket case.”
Flipper had laid on his side, looking over Russell, taking the back of his hand over the young hills of his buttocks, the valley of his back, taking his hand through his hair so that his ring was a little snagged in Russell’s red hair. He turned it round on his finger and in a movement untangled the ring.
“Russ, would you mind if I wrote you?”
“No,” Russell said.
“I wanted to call you. Ross said I should. It felt awkward. Calling your house.”
“You could if you wanted.”
Russell was not completely thoughtless. It would be off for a twenty year old to be calling asking for a sixteen year old.
“I could call you,” Russell said.
He felt that this was a loss of power, almost an act of desperation ,and wondered where such ideas about love had come from. It really just made more sense..
“If you called me I’d just hang up and tell you I’d call back. That way you don’t pay long distance.
“D.L. has one of those flip phones.,” Russell sighed. “I wonder if…. That would be great.”
“But we’ll do something,” Flipper said.
“Yes.”
Suddenly, Russell wanted to say, “Be my boyfriend!” And he was aware that this was the first person he’d wanted to say it to. In a way, he’d never wanted to say it to Cody, maybe because it didn’t need to be said. But he felt the strange pang of knowing this boy was leaving, and somehow he needed someone to make him his. And he also knew this was foolish, and selfish, so he said nothing.
“Don’t you have to be in class early or something?” Russell asked while he picked a pencil up with his toes
“Don’t you?” Flipper returned on the other end of the phone.
“I was just looking out for your interests is all,” Russell said. “I’ll yawn through first period.”
Now and again he realized how large his bedroom was, and he thought more should go in it. He’d keep that journal again. He’d get some more books. He used to love reading. He wanted to do that again.
The curtains were pulled over the windows and the door to the balcony.
“You know,” Russell began, “I’m maybe a little more upset than I should be?”
“About?”
“About Gil and Mark. They’re like the only sensible guys I know. And I know they care about each other. It seems like it took a thousand years for them to get together.”
“Well, they’re young.”
“I’m young,” Russell said. “We’re all young. And in a way they’re not young at all. Well, Mark’s last name is Young. But… I look up to Gil and Gil deserves to be happy, and Mark is being—”
“A dick?”
“Yes, but…. There’s something wrong with him.”
“Did you say he was in a car wreck.”
“I didn’t. Maybe Gil did. He lost his best friend in a car accident this summer. I mean last summer.”
“Well, that’s a big something, Russell.”
“I know!”
“I mean, it’s a really big something. I would feel fucked up too.”
“I get that. But how come his feeling fucked up has to fuck up my friend’s life?”
“Because, Russell, when you love someone their pain is your pain.”
Russell felt like he’d been smacked on the head.
He wanted to say, I know that! But it would have sounded childish.
Flipper just repeated, “When you love someone, their pain is yours.”
“I’d like to see you this weekend.”
“Well, I’d like to see you this weekend, too,” Russell said. “Only I’m not sure how we would manage that.”
“Ross is coming to see Anigel, and I’ll come with him.”
“Oh?” Russell sat up.
“I mean, I offered to drive him down, so I’ll have my car.”
“That’s actually awesome,” Russell said, pushing his hair behind his ear. “Uh… what are we going to do?”
“That’s just it, Russ. We can find out what we’re going to do. We can find out what we do in Geshichte Falls. I mean, we did all sorts of stuff at Saint Albans.”
“Yes, but at Saint Albans there was all sorts of stuff to do.” Russell said. “And…. What’s more…. Where are you going to stay?”
“I had thought…. Chayne’s house?”
“That’s… possible,” Russell said.
“Yes,” Flipper said in the tone of someone who was learning there was a problem, but hadn’t discovered just what the problem was.
“Look,” Russell said. “I don’t mean to sound like a slut or anything, but I assumed… I mean, if you’re coming to see me, then I would assume you would…. I don’t know… stay with me. And, I don’t know how that can happen.”
“Oh, yes,” Flipper said, sounding a little stiff. “I had…. I actually thought of that, but I didn’t want to press. I mean, I didn’t want to sound… I guess I didn’t want to sound like a slut either. I mean, I do want us to stay together, but…. Your parents probably wouldn’t be chill with me staying in your room.”
“Probably not.”
“I could… I could get a motel room.”
“No, that costs too much.” Russell said.
He could hear the exhale in Flipper’s voice. He knew college kids from Saint Alban’s weren’t swimming in money.
“How about you just get down here, and we’ll work everything out when you come?””
“I can live with that.”
“Why don’t you all just stay in the house behind the gas station?” Cody said.
“What?”
“You know the old gas station where I work is a house.”
“Right?”
Russell did know this, though he’d never been in it.
“It’s nice, and I stay there some time. You just take the key and go in the back way and no one knows you’re there. The body shop is closed on the weekend, so I’m the only one with a key. It’s totally private.”
“Thanks,” Russell said, sounding slightly at a loss. “I mean…. It’s good of you.”
“You like this Flipper, right?”
“I do.”
“He’s a good guy from what I see.”
“He is.”
“Then whatever we are, you’re my family, and you’re my friend, so….. you all take my place for the weekend.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?” Cody said.
Russell’s look did not relax. Russell could be relentless. Cody said, “I’m doing just fine. Believe me. I’m just fine.”
“Are you serious?” Rob almost stage whispered from where he and Nehru sat at the kitchen table of 1421 Curtain Street.
Nehru nodded soberly.
“Brad AND Cody?”
Nehru nodded.
Then he said, “Brad mostly. Brad mainly. Brad primarily. But Cody often.”
“That is so….” Rob shook his head. “That’s more like something I would do.”
Nehru shrugged.
“Is it permanent? Is it like… What is it like?”
“I don’t know what it’s like.” Nehru said. “Until not long ago there was nothing in my life. All I know is Cody was in love with someone—”
“Russell.”
“Oh, I see that got around.”
“It did. And I know that Brad and I are…. We are what we are. And Cody is our friend, and inviting him into our life doesn’t take anything from us. I’m not in love with Cody. But I do LOVE Cody, and that’s certainly more than I can say for a lot of people. And the truth is I love sleeping with him. And I love being with him and Brad at the same time, and I even love him sleeping with Brad. And I don’t know what that says about us, or how long it will last, but I like it right now. I like it a lot.”
TOMORROW WE WRAP UP OUR CHAPTER!
After Christmas, Russell Lewis had the powerful desire to lead a grown up life. This is the way he had phrased it to Gilead, and he was sure Gilead, who was his best friend, and who had found him as he once was, would understand. Russell had been leading something that was almost a grown up life before, but somehow the introduction of not only teenage social life, but a sex life as well had made him less grown up, less focused. All of these fallings in and out of bed with Ralph or with Jason or with Cody, all of this falling in and out of love and the almost treachery surrounding it felt very un grown up. He felt sillier and more in turmoil than he had in the past. He did not want to share his life with his friends anymore. He didn’t want to talk about it with Gilead or even with Chayne. Suddenly what Gilead had with Mark seemed very mature, very real, quite solid, and Russell felt like there was nothing solid about him.
The last of that feeling had been on Christmas when he was finally alone with Flipper, and they were driving over the snow crusted streets of Geshichte Falls, slowly pulling up to his house. The whole family was gone because there had been a power out, and no one was coming back till the morning. He and Flipper had gone through the house seeing what electric had been left on, and deciding which things should remain on. He’d thought—very briefly—of calling his parents, telling them to wake up and come home from the rectory. He told himself that he didn’t want to wake them up, but privately thought that was a selfish lie. He’d gone into the basement to find Flipper. Jason was sure sex, and a strange set of lustful feelings. Ralph was something else altogether. Cody was burning and crazy passion, but Flipper was stability. Flipper was the first right feeling. When he closed the door and set the lock, and Flipper was undressing, when he went to Flipper and took his face in his hands, there was a sense of relief, of rightness.
Sex felt good It felt great, but so far Russell had never felt “like a grown up” the way it was supposed to make you feel. Flipper was younger than Cody, yes, but for some reason, in that room, on his back, Flipper moving between his thighs, looking down on him with those black eyes, lightly licking his lower lip, the black curtain of hair touching Russell’s cheek, it felt like making love to a grown up, and as Russell felt his own body move, he felt like a grown up too. Being with him at Saint Alban’s was like that too. He didn’t feel like a dumb kid in over his head. But then, he never had been. He’d always been wiser than his years, or wise as them, and with Flipper this was just how he felt.
The sex was long lasting, which surprised Russell. He had wanted to be with Flipper so badly he though that things would culminate in five minutes. But neither of them seemed to be in a hurry, and they moved through all the measures of love slowly. Flipper did what Jason or Ralph would not have known to do, which was lie on his side in a sort of lazy peace, working Russell’s body like an oil man at a derrick until, finally, Russell shuddered and bubbled into quaking orgasm while, under his dark lash’s Flipper watched contentedly. When, a little later, with a staggering force that would have been was almost embarrassing, it revealed too much, Flipper came in his arms, the two of them lay in that bed, warm and naked and under the yellow light they had never turned off, limbs tangling and untangling, stroking one another’s arms, shoulders, hair.
“I want to stop being stupid,” Russell said, at last, turning over and lying on his stomach, folding his arms under his chin.
“You aren’t stupid at all,” Flipper said.
“Only I’ve bee very stupid, and you don’t know it. I’d like to start acting like a grown up.”
“But you’re not a grown up.”
“If I’m sleeping with you, I’m a grown up,” Russell said. “And maybe I don’t mean be a grown up. Maybe I mean be someone who acts like they have sense. Because I used to have sense. Too much sense. So much sense I was depressed and too afraid to do anything. But…. I’d like to be reasonable again. It’s no fun being a basket case.”
Flipper had laid on his side, looking over Russell, taking the back of his hand over the young hills of his buttocks, the valley of his back, taking his hand through his hair so that his ring was a little snagged in Russell’s red hair. He turned it round on his finger and in a movement untangled the ring.
“Russ, would you mind if I wrote you?”
“No,” Russell said.
“I wanted to call you. Ross said I should. It felt awkward. Calling your house.”
“You could if you wanted.”
Russell was not completely thoughtless. It would be off for a twenty year old to be calling asking for a sixteen year old.
“I could call you,” Russell said.
He felt that this was a loss of power, almost an act of desperation ,and wondered where such ideas about love had come from. It really just made more sense..
“If you called me I’d just hang up and tell you I’d call back. That way you don’t pay long distance.
“D.L. has one of those flip phones.,” Russell sighed. “I wonder if…. That would be great.”
“But we’ll do something,” Flipper said.
“Yes.”
Suddenly, Russell wanted to say, “Be my boyfriend!” And he was aware that this was the first person he’d wanted to say it to. In a way, he’d never wanted to say it to Cody, maybe because it didn’t need to be said. But he felt the strange pang of knowing this boy was leaving, and somehow he needed someone to make him his. And he also knew this was foolish, and selfish, so he said nothing.
“Don’t you have to be in class early or something?” Russell asked while he picked a pencil up with his toes
“Don’t you?” Flipper returned on the other end of the phone.
“I was just looking out for your interests is all,” Russell said. “I’ll yawn through first period.”
Now and again he realized how large his bedroom was, and he thought more should go in it. He’d keep that journal again. He’d get some more books. He used to love reading. He wanted to do that again.
The curtains were pulled over the windows and the door to the balcony.
“You know,” Russell began, “I’m maybe a little more upset than I should be?”
“About?”
“About Gil and Mark. They’re like the only sensible guys I know. And I know they care about each other. It seems like it took a thousand years for them to get together.”
“Well, they’re young.”
“I’m young,” Russell said. “We’re all young. And in a way they’re not young at all. Well, Mark’s last name is Young. But… I look up to Gil and Gil deserves to be happy, and Mark is being—”
“A dick?”
“Yes, but…. There’s something wrong with him.”
“Did you say he was in a car wreck.”
“I didn’t. Maybe Gil did. He lost his best friend in a car accident this summer. I mean last summer.”
“Well, that’s a big something, Russell.”
“I know!”
“I mean, it’s a really big something. I would feel fucked up too.”
“I get that. But how come his feeling fucked up has to fuck up my friend’s life?”
“Because, Russell, when you love someone their pain is your pain.”
Russell felt like he’d been smacked on the head.
He wanted to say, I know that! But it would have sounded childish.
Flipper just repeated, “When you love someone, their pain is yours.”
“I’d like to see you this weekend.”
“Well, I’d like to see you this weekend, too,” Russell said. “Only I’m not sure how we would manage that.”
“Ross is coming to see Anigel, and I’ll come with him.”
“Oh?” Russell sat up.
“I mean, I offered to drive him down, so I’ll have my car.”
“That’s actually awesome,” Russell said, pushing his hair behind his ear. “Uh… what are we going to do?”
“That’s just it, Russ. We can find out what we’re going to do. We can find out what we do in Geshichte Falls. I mean, we did all sorts of stuff at Saint Albans.”
“Yes, but at Saint Albans there was all sorts of stuff to do.” Russell said. “And…. What’s more…. Where are you going to stay?”
“I had thought…. Chayne’s house?”
“That’s… possible,” Russell said.
“Yes,” Flipper said in the tone of someone who was learning there was a problem, but hadn’t discovered just what the problem was.
“Look,” Russell said. “I don’t mean to sound like a slut or anything, but I assumed… I mean, if you’re coming to see me, then I would assume you would…. I don’t know… stay with me. And, I don’t know how that can happen.”
“Oh, yes,” Flipper said, sounding a little stiff. “I had…. I actually thought of that, but I didn’t want to press. I mean, I didn’t want to sound… I guess I didn’t want to sound like a slut either. I mean, I do want us to stay together, but…. Your parents probably wouldn’t be chill with me staying in your room.”
“Probably not.”
“I could… I could get a motel room.”
“No, that costs too much.” Russell said.
He could hear the exhale in Flipper’s voice. He knew college kids from Saint Alban’s weren’t swimming in money.
“How about you just get down here, and we’ll work everything out when you come?””
“I can live with that.”
“Why don’t you all just stay in the house behind the gas station?” Cody said.
“What?”
“You know the old gas station where I work is a house.”
“Right?”
Russell did know this, though he’d never been in it.
“It’s nice, and I stay there some time. You just take the key and go in the back way and no one knows you’re there. The body shop is closed on the weekend, so I’m the only one with a key. It’s totally private.”
“Thanks,” Russell said, sounding slightly at a loss. “I mean…. It’s good of you.”
“You like this Flipper, right?”
“I do.”
“He’s a good guy from what I see.”
“He is.”
“Then whatever we are, you’re my family, and you’re my friend, so….. you all take my place for the weekend.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?” Cody said.
Russell’s look did not relax. Russell could be relentless. Cody said, “I’m doing just fine. Believe me. I’m just fine.”
“Are you serious?” Rob almost stage whispered from where he and Nehru sat at the kitchen table of 1421 Curtain Street.
Nehru nodded soberly.
“Brad AND Cody?”
Nehru nodded.
Then he said, “Brad mostly. Brad mainly. Brad primarily. But Cody often.”
“That is so….” Rob shook his head. “That’s more like something I would do.”
Nehru shrugged.
“Is it permanent? Is it like… What is it like?”
“I don’t know what it’s like.” Nehru said. “Until not long ago there was nothing in my life. All I know is Cody was in love with someone—”
“Russell.”
“Oh, I see that got around.”
“It did. And I know that Brad and I are…. We are what we are. And Cody is our friend, and inviting him into our life doesn’t take anything from us. I’m not in love with Cody. But I do LOVE Cody, and that’s certainly more than I can say for a lot of people. And the truth is I love sleeping with him. And I love being with him and Brad at the same time, and I even love him sleeping with Brad. And I don’t know what that says about us, or how long it will last, but I like it right now. I like it a lot.”
TOMORROW WE WRAP UP OUR CHAPTER!
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am glad Russell and Flipper are continuing things. They seem right together and I hope it works out. I also hope it works out for Mark and Gil. I know Mark is in a lot of pain. Hopefully he can find a way to open up to Gil and his friends. Cody may have said he is doing fine but I don’t know if I believe that. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!