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 Info

    PLEASE READ: To register, turn off your VPN (iPhone users- disable iCloud); 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

TONIGHT IS THE END OF PART ONE OF NIGHTS AND WHITE SATIN, AFTER THAT, FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS WE WILL RETURN TO KING OF ALL THESE RUINS


Bill tripped into his son on his way to the bathroom.
“Sorry Dad,” Niall mumbled.
“I thought your mom told you to go up to your room.”
“Actually she suggested—”
“Don’t sass me, Niall.”
“No one’s sassing you.”
‘There you go again. When are you gonna learn a little respect?”
“I am—”
“No you’re not. You’re always trying to be the man, Niall. How ‘bout respect me. Learn to respect you old man.”
Suddenly Niall inhaled, then exhaled and said, “What—do you want—from—me?”
“I want you to get your act together, son. I want you to quit slouching around the house in black and dancing around like a goddamn fag—”
“FUCK OFF!” Niall screamed. “FUCK OFF. Leave me alone!”
And then the next thing either one of them knew they were twisting around on the floor and Bill had wrestled Niall into the kitchen, and then Niall was trying to pull away, but he suddenly knew that there was nothing to do but fight, and he wanted to hurt the son of a bitch. He’d been wanting to for a long time, and then the whole family was out, one by one and Bill pushed Niall away and then lifted up his right hand to bring it down on his son.
Niall laughed..
Bill stared at him.
“Great. Hit me old man. You could kill me, too. But where would you get your weed from then?”
Dena had been about to step between the both of them, but now she looked from one to the other, and then Niall marched off upstairs, and Bill stood still as a statue, hand still raised for someone who wasn’t there. David Armstrong pulled Bill by the sleeve out of the kitchen.



As the younger ones talked amongst themselves, Thom and Justine talked amongst themselves.
“You know how we moved to Georgia that year,” Justine said. “A complete surprise.”
“And you said you’d write me?” they both took out their cigarettes. “With your address and everything.”
“Well I was going to,” Justine said. “In fact I had the letter all written and then I missed my period and it didn’t come and I went to the doctor and learned that I was definitely pregnant.”
“You could have told me.”
“You were fifteen.”
“So were you.”
Justine nodded.
“It wasn’t the same,” she said. “Somehow it wasn’t the same. You were going to be a junior and do all this amazing stuff when you grew up. But right then what good would it have done me to tell you? Or done you. What could you have done at fifteen?
“Then there was Max Barnard, a son of a bitch inbred many times who actually could do something. Not now, he couldn’t hold a candle to you, but his family owned a good business and he was seventeen and he’d been trying to get into my pants since we had moved. So I thought and thought and then I got rid of the letter, put you out of my head. Went on a few dates with Max and—on the fourth—the way I planned it—slept with him. Cody was born, When I was legal I married Max. He thought he was the father.”
“But then he found out he wasn’t?”
“We had moved back here when I told him. Cody was eight by then. Jill was five. Naturally Max was mad. He felt like he’d been trapped, and he had. But then he walked out on Jill too, his real daughter. He hated being a husband.”
Justine shrugged and inhaled. She blew out a cloud of smoke. “I hated being a wife.”
“Did you ever look for me?” Thom asked her.
“I did,” she said. “But by then you had a wife and a son and a happy home and why the hell should I mess that up with… what happened?”
“Because that’s my son in the room. Justine,” Thom said, suddenly welling up with so much emotion he bit his lip.
“I tried to do what was right,” she said. “By both of you.”
Thom blinked rapidly and nodded. He couldn’t be angry. He wanted to be. It would have been easier, felt better instead of this swell of impossible sorrow.
“Well now we’ve got to tell him,” Thom said when he could speak again.
Justine nodded.
Thom said, “I want to tell him.”
Again, Justine nodded.



David Armstrong took his brother-in-law into the library and closed the door.
Bill was waiting for the willowy man in his black rimmed spectacles to start talking about inner children and getting in touch with his manhood. He expected to be petted and made much of.
Instead, David Armstrong slugged his brother-in-law in the mouth.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” David demanded.
Bill blinked at David, attempting to finally believe what he was seeing... or feeling.. or hearing.
“I always thought Niall was exaggerating. I always thought he was just making it up. But you really don’t like him, do you? You don’t like your own son. Whaddid he ever do to you?” David demanded. “I thought you’d know better after the way that son of a bitch was with you.”
“Shut up, Dave,” Bill began.
“No, I remember him giving you a black eye. You came back home junior year of college. You were my hero. You were my idol and we were roommates for the first time and I remember you coming in with that bruise and I asked you what had happened and you start crying—”
“Dave, please shut up.”
“No, I won’t shut up. How long till you do the same thing with Niall? Did you ever?”
“I never hit Niall.”
“You were about to. You almost did.”
“David—”
Bill,” David started. Then stopped. “I don’t know what else to say. I should stop talking now. But... Niall’s coming home with us.”
“Dave—”
“Why do you care? You don’t even like him. We live next door anyway and the house is too big. We’ve already got a room for him.”
“Dave, just—”
David Armstrong turned on his brother with rage that was truer for being harder to summon.
“Don’t say another word, Bill. It wasn’t a question. Niall stays with me. Done.”


The truth was that Bill was really too ashamed to come out of the library for a long while. He imagined that when he finally did come everyone would be waiting on the other side of the door to chide him. But no one was.
The house was practically empty.
He went out to the backyard, stood under a black pine, rolled a joint and smoked it, watching the stars. Even after the joint was gone he didn’t feel sufficiently high. He didn’t feel good. He felt like he could lay down in this cold snow, freeze, and not come up again, and it wouldn’t matter. Nothing would matter.
Bill Dwyer contemplated this for a while before pulling himself back into reality, and heading back for the house. He saw a shadow approaching and realized it was Dena.
“Deen,” he said.
She hadn’t even put on a coat. She was in a sweater and her breasts were high. In the night, eyes sparkling she looked beautiful in that high severe way that had first attracted him, when she was Dena Armstrong, Dave’s older sister, too high and mighty to even pay attention to him. And yet she had.
“William,” she said, her arms crossed over her chest. “Open your right hand.”
Obediently, as if he’d been that shy, corn fed baseball player from Littleton, he obeyed her. He opened his palm and felt a small cold weight drop into it.
Dena spoke.
“When you leave this house,” she said, “you’ll be leaving alone.”
He followed her as she walked across the yard, mesmerized by her behind in white trousers in the white snow. Still high, he watched her close the door.
Bill Dwyer, stoned half out of his mind, looked into the palm of his right hand and admired the sparkle of gold and diamond, thought what a beautiful and sad picture it would make, before realizing he was holding his wedding ring, and that the life he had known was over.


INTERLUDE



The TV was on in the living room, but Sharonda Story was in the kitchen ironing clothes for Monday. She didn’t like to do any work on Sunday and she had two days of work before Christmas settled in. Gilead was used to this, that he had started in on a bit of homework and the doorbell rang.
“There he is,” Sharonda called merrily. “A little later than usual, but there he is.”
Gilead got up from the dining room table and put his pen down as he went to the little foyer dividing the dining room from the living room. When the doorbell rang a second time, Gilead began, as he answered, “Well, now you’re just being ru—”
He stopped. He was too surprised to chide Mark Young of the dark wavy hair, smirking lips that were not smirking tonight, and green eyes who stood there in a good black overcoat, made blacker by the deep red of the dozen roses he offered.



It was well past midnight and the sky was purple with cloud and very few stars twinkling out of it. Below the snowy ground stretched on and on. What was Main Street in Geshichte Falls, once it passed the bus terminal and the shops of downtown and went through the sleepy, rough and roughly done homes and barred and boarded up shops of Westhaven stretched on through lonely homes amidst trees and scattered among fields, passed the Blue Jewell, still open at this time on a Saturday and at last stretched out to become State Route 34. On the road a van was rumbling and in the silence was broken by Joni Mitchell singing:

The wind is in from Africa
Last night I couldn't sleep
Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here, Carey
But it's really not my home
My fingernails are filthy
I've got beach tar on my feet
And I miss my clean white linen and my fancy French cologne
Oh Carey, get out your cane
(Carey, get out your cane)
And I'll put on some silver
(I'll put on some silver)
Oh, you're a mean old Daddy, but I like you fine!

While Ross, now tired of driving, hummed, Anigel sang, her voice a pleasant alto that few ever heard:

“Come on down to the Mermaid Cafe
And I will buy you a bottle of wine
And we'll laugh and toast to nothing and
Smash our empty glasses down…”

She hummed now to until they came to the refrain:

“Oh Carey, get out your cane
(Carey, get out your cane)
And I'll put on some silver
(I'll put on some silver)
Oh, you're a mean old Daddy, but I like you….”


And so, singing, into the night they drove…


MORE IN A FEW DAYS
 
Well Bill is facing real consequences for being an asshole. I can’t believe he almost hit Niall. Maybe this will all be a wake up call for him but I think Dena was right to do what she did. I am glad Thom is going to tell the truth to Russell and Cody. They need to know although it will be very painful for them. That was a great end to part one and I look forward to more of other writing tomorrow and more of this in a few days.
 
I added nothing here in comments although we had an extensive conversation about this, and about the shit that's about to hit the fan.
 
PART TWO


Verbum
caro
factum
est



FOUR


SUNDAY

PART ONE


The night Mark young brought roses, he had watched Gilead fiddle around in the kitchen for a vase and then fill them with water and take them upstairs. Hands stuffed in his coat pockets, Mark had grinned goofily at Gilead and, at last they sat on the bed together.
With the same determination he had exercised in the first kiss, Gilead got up and went to the door, and then locked it.
“Stand up,” he’d told Mark and Mark blinked, but obeyed. Gilead looked at his Adam’s apple and his long neck and then brought Mark’s face down and kissed him, Mark would always ask permission and rarely make the first sexual move, but if Gilead started something, Mark would be sure to help finish it. Gilead had been surprised at the level of lust in Mark Young that Mark controlled so well until Gilead touched him in the right away. It was only when Gil’s hands were at his zipper that Mark stopped. He didn’t freeze exactly. He didn’t say, “Are you sure?” or “Are we doing this?” He just began to undress and help Gilead undress. Neither one of them knew much about sex. They were just clinging together rubbing against each other’s bodies, which would always be their favorite thing. They were just touching places they’d never touched, opening for each other. It was over in less than five minutes with Mark making a long, unerotic shout as he ejaculated and Gilead trying to put his hand over Mark’s mouth. Mark had been winded, and they had both laughed together. Lain together. It was only a little while later that deeper instincts and a few pornos caught up, and in a darker room, while Mark made love to him slowly, Gilead felt all of himself melting, shuddering into his very first orgasm, weak and trembling in arms that would not let him go.
Mark had thought of saying something silly like, “If I’d known I’d get this for flowers, I would have brought them a long time ago,” but he said nothing. He just lay on his side looking at Gilead lying on his side and he felt beautiful. He felt desired for the first time in his life. Mark didn’t pay attention to girls, and he looked the way he did because of nature and because of running track. Gilead’s fingers stroked his temples and Mark was instantly aware of having a good body and instantly aware that Gilead would love him if he didn’t.
“Why? Mark had whispered to him.
“Because…” Gilead said, “I had the strangest silliest feeling. I thought, if anything should happen to you, I would never forgive myself if this didn’t happen with us. I thought about how anytime someone walks out the door, you might never see them again. Like… like Joe Smith. And I didn’t want to know anything ever happened to you and I was still a virgin.”
“So, I guess I can go get killed in a car wreck now.”
“Don’t you dare say that,” Gilead had hit Mark and Mark was surprised by the fury of his anger. “Don’t you ever say something like that.”
“Joe was my friend.”
“I know,” Gilead said. “That’s why I didn’t want to say what I said.”
“I never talk about it. About him. I don’t know how to.”
Gilead nodded.
Mark had run the back of his hand along Gilead’s cheek.
“Thank you, Gil,” he said.

Whatever his mother knew and whatever she didn’t, there were just things that weren’t to be done, or not to be done at all times. He longed to lie in bed and listen to Mark showering down the hall, but the morning after Christmas he went down to make coffee and set out the leftover Danish. The day after Christmas was like this, an off day for his mother, a time where the first person up would set breakfast things out on the kitchen table. In the refrigerator were the leftovers from Christmas at Mickey’s, Sharon’s ham and deviled eggs and cheesecake, LaVelle’s sweet potato pie and pecan pie, all unidentifiably wrapped in tin foil like visitors from outer space. The other food he could not remember or identify, but he saw a spot of the macaroni his mother had done. As he bent in the cool fridge looking over the food and searching out milk and coffee creamer, he could feel Mark behind him and hear the other boy yawning. He reached out to poke him in the stomach and heard him yelp.

The first time Mark had stayed over, Gilead had woken up in the middle of The Very Best of Judy Collins playing on repeat, and he’d been dreaming about tea and oranges and bellbottoms. He’d sat up and seen Mark, messy haired for once, bare-chested, swaying and murmuring:

“And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.”

Mark sensed Gilead sitting up, and turned around, looking a little embarrassed.
Gilead licked the back of his hand and began to smooth Mark’s hair while Mark said, “I like this song.”
“Well, I do too. Since you’re going through my CD collection.”
“I didn’t think you would. I didn’t picture you with Judy Collins.”
Gilead yawned hard and said, “What time is it?”
“Nine o clock.”
“I’m smelling coffee. Should we go down and have breakfast?”
“Do you all go to church?”
“When we do it’s Saturday afternoon mass. Mom believes Sunday is the day of rest and getting dressed to go to a building by nine o clock to be with people you don’t really like isn’t rest.”
Mark chuckled, and they got dressed while Mark kept giving Gilead what Gilead described as, “This look.”
“What do you mean? This look?” Mark said as he pulled a snug tee shirt over his long, admirable, slightly furry and definitely chiseled, chest.
“A look like… you wanna do something.”
Mark gave Gilead the half smile and shrug he was used to by now ,and then suddenly put his hands on Gilead’s shoulders and kissed him. As he pulled his lips from Gilead he said, “That’s the something I wanted to do. Alright?”
Mark was wondering if Mrs. Story thought he was as nice as she seemed to or if she was as nice as she seemed. He was keenly aware for the first time that, unlike on TV shows, Black people and Black women were not what they appeared to be. It was a thought that had flown into his head unbidden, and he almost wondered if Gilead had sent it to him telepathically. But even as he wondered the phone rang.
“Well, that’s early for a Sunday,” Gilead said, standing up and wiping his hands on the napkin.
Any phone call before noon was early on a Sunday.
“Hello,” Gilead began. Then, “Russell?”
Mark looked up from the table and both he and Mrs. Story looked interested while Gilead leaned against the wall, crossing one foot over the other and nodded.
“Yeah…. Okay. Sure.”
He hung the phone back up on the wall and turned to his boyfriend and his mother.
“After breakfast I need to go see Russell.”
He had no idea how long he would be there or how he would get back. He assumed Mark was driving him there. He didn’t need Mark to bring him back. Chayne lived right down the street.

Still full of breakfast and frankly ready to go back to sleep, they took the inside streets north through Riverview into Breckinridge, and Gilead was surprised by how close he lived to Russell. The only time they saw a main street was when they in fact, crossed Main. The Breckinridge wasn’t as cozy as Riverview, and it wasn’t as old. The houses were too far apart for affection.
Mark asked, “Do you want me to hang out with you all or come back?”
“You don’t have to do either. You’re not my chauffer.”
“I’d like to do either one,” Mark said.
“I mean, I don’t need you to… What I mean is you don’t have to hang out with my friends.”
“I like hanging with your friends.”
“Then I have to hang with yours,” Gilead said.
“Whaddo you mean?”
“I mean, its not fair to suck you up into my life. You have a life. So now you also need to suck me up into yours. Okay?”
“Okay?” Mark looked a little perplexed. “I can do that. But what do you want me to do now?”
“Come back for me?”
“Okay,” Mark said.
“I’m not exactly sure when. Let me—”
Mark placed a hand over Gilead’s.
“Whenever you’re done is when you’re done. Just call me.”
Gilead leaned in and kissed Mark quickly before heading up the walk to the house.
When Mrs. Lewis opened the door she looked strangely distracted. She looked like a grown up, like a white woman. She looked like someone who was covering up something and attempting to be pleasant when all was not well.
“Russell’s upstairs,” she told him. “And you know where the kitchen is,” which was to say, “help yourself to it.”
Upstairs, Russell sprang to answer the door as soon as Gilead knocked on it, and he pulled his friend in.
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Okay?” Gilead surveyed him.
“Cody is my brother.”
“What?”
“Cody Barnard is my brother.”
“Explain.”
“Apparently my dad had sex with his mom when he was fifteen and then she moved away and passed Cody off as someone else’s.”
“Mr. Barnard’s.”
“Exactly.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” Russell said. “So Dad says that to us last night, and then all of a sudden I blurt out I slept with Jason Lorry and I’m having sex with Ralph.”
“You’re having sex with Ralph?”
“You knew that.”
“I sort of knew that. But no. You’re sleeping with Ralph!”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“It’s amazing. I love him.”
“Ralph Balusik?”
“Yes.”
“Is your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know what he is. He’s my friend. He loves me. We make love. It’s… It’s what it is,”
“I feel like that’s a phrase for old people.”
“It’s what it is.” Russell insisted.
“Not making it better,” Gilead said, then:
“Have you told… Anigel?”
“I haven’t told anyone, and Dad told Mom and she’s…. odd about it, but not angry cause its not like he cheated on her. And Anigel…. She ran off in the middle of the night with her friend Ross.”
“Ross Allen.”
“Yeah?” Russell raised an eyebrow.
“We’re cousins,” Gilead said. “I can’t quite remember how.”
He sat on the bed.
“Oh, and Jason Lorry came by last night and apologized—”
“Hasn’t it been like… two weeks since you found him fucking some slut?”
“Yeah.”
“And since he had nothing to say and didn’t make any contact with you?”
“Exactly.”
“And then he just shows up.”
“Yes.”
“Damn.”
“Right?”
Russell said, “Enough about me. What about you?”
“Uh…. Mark brought me a dozen roses.”
“What? Are you serious?”
Russell crashed on the bed beside his friend.
“Yes. Just like a real gentleman. But that was actually a few days ago, I just didn’t get the change to tell you.”
“See, you have a proper boyfriend. A real handholder. That’s romantic.”
“And then we slept together.”
“Whaaaa?”
“Yes, Gilead said.
“I can’t… I can’t picture that.”
“You’re not meant to. And he dropped me off here and I just assumed it didn’t matter that your dad or Chayne or whatever would drop me home or even I might walk but he looked like he really wanted to be the one to come and get me. And he wanted to know if he should hang out with us and I was like, well don’t you want to hang out with your friends? Don’t you want me to hang out with your friends. And he looked at me like that was the craziest thing.”
“Is the whole school gay?”
“No,” Gilead said with certainty. “The whole school is most certainly not gay, and Ralph and Jason are still banging chicks. But it would seem that at least three of us are, and that’s three more than I knew.”
“Have you thought that…. Maybe Mark likes you and me and all of our gang better than he likes his friends?”
Gilead bursts out laughing.
“Like,” Russell said, “you’re telling Mark to get back to his life, and he’s probably just hanging around at his house waiting for you to call him back.”
“Don’t you think…. Like… He’s doing important stuff?”
“He’s popular at school and everything, but I don’t know that he has friends the way we’re friends. He’s probably staring at a wall.”
“So…. I should call him?”
“Call him.”
Gilead rolled over on the bed and picked up the phone on Russell’s nightstand, plopping it on his lap.
“What are you going to do about Jason?” he asked.
Russell shook his head head.
“I have no idea.”

- - - Updated - - -

PART TWO


Verbum
caro
factum
est



FOUR


SUNDAY

PART ONE


The night Mark young brought roses, he had watched Gilead fiddle around in the kitchen for a vase and then fill them with water and take them upstairs. Hands stuffed in his coat pockets, Mark had grinned goofily at Gilead and, at last they sat on the bed together.
With the same determination he had exercised in the first kiss, Gilead got up and went to the door, and then locked it.
“Stand up,” he’d told Mark and Mark blinked, but obeyed. Gilead looked at his Adam’s apple and his long neck and then brought Mark’s face down and kissed him, Mark would always ask permission and rarely make the first sexual move, but if Gilead started something, Mark would be sure to help finish it. Gilead had been surprised at the level of lust in Mark Young that Mark controlled so well until Gilead touched him in the right away. It was only when Gil’s hands were at his zipper that Mark stopped. He didn’t freeze exactly. He didn’t say, “Are you sure?” or “Are we doing this?” He just began to undress and help Gilead undress. Neither one of them knew much about sex. They were just clinging together rubbing against each other’s bodies, which would always be their favorite thing. They were just touching places they’d never touched, opening for each other. It was over in less than five minutes with Mark making a long, unerotic shout as he ejaculated and Gilead trying to put his hand over Mark’s mouth. Mark had been winded, and they had both laughed together. Lain together. It was only a little while later that deeper instincts and a few pornos caught up, and in a darker room, while Mark made love to him slowly, Gilead felt all of himself melting, shuddering into his very first orgasm, weak and trembling in arms that would not let him go.
Mark had thought of saying something silly like, “If I’d known I’d get this for flowers, I would have brought them a long time ago,” but he said nothing. He just lay on his side looking at Gilead lying on his side and he felt beautiful. He felt desired for the first time in his life. Mark didn’t pay attention to girls, and he looked the way he did because of nature and because of running track. Gilead’s fingers stroked his temples and Mark was instantly aware of having a good body and instantly aware that Gilead would love him if he didn’t.
“Why? Mark had whispered to him.
“Because…” Gilead said, “I had the strangest silliest feeling. I thought, if anything should happen to you, I would never forgive myself if this didn’t happen with us. I thought about how anytime someone walks out the door, you might never see them again. Like… like Joe Smith. And I didn’t want to know anything ever happened to you and I was still a virgin.”
“So, I guess I can go get killed in a car wreck now.”
“Don’t you dare say that,” Gilead had hit Mark and Mark was surprised by the fury of his anger. “Don’t you ever say something like that.”
“Joe was my friend.”
“I know,” Gilead said. “That’s why I didn’t want to say what I said.”
“I never talk about it. About him. I don’t know how to.”
Gilead nodded.
Mark had run the back of his hand along Gilead’s cheek.
“Thank you, Gil,” he said.

Whatever his mother knew and whatever she didn’t, there were just things that weren’t to be done, or not to be done at all times. He longed to lie in bed and listen to Mark showering down the hall, but the morning after Christmas he went down to make coffee and set out the leftover Danish. The day after Christmas was like this, an off day for his mother, a time where the first person up would set breakfast things out on the kitchen table. In the refrigerator were the leftovers from Christmas at Mickey’s, Sharon’s ham and deviled eggs and cheesecake, LaVelle’s sweet potato pie and pecan pie, all unidentifiably wrapped in tin foil like visitors from outer space. The other food he could not remember or identify, but he saw a spot of the macaroni his mother had done. As he bent in the cool fridge looking over the food and searching out milk and coffee creamer, he could feel Mark behind him and hear the other boy yawning. He reached out to poke him in the stomach and heard him yelp.

The first time Mark had stayed over, Gilead had woken up in the middle of The Very Best of Judy Collins playing on repeat, and he’d been dreaming about tea and oranges and bellbottoms. He’d sat up and seen Mark, messy haired for once, bare-chested, swaying and murmuring:

“And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.”

Mark sensed Gilead sitting up, and turned around, looking a little embarrassed.
Gilead licked the back of his hand and began to smooth Mark’s hair while Mark said, “I like this song.”
“Well, I do too. Since you’re going through my CD collection.”
“I didn’t think you would. I didn’t picture you with Judy Collins.”
Gilead yawned hard and said, “What time is it?”
“Nine o clock.”
“I’m smelling coffee. Should we go down and have breakfast?”
“Do you all go to church?”
“When we do it’s Saturday afternoon mass. Mom believes Sunday is the day of rest and getting dressed to go to a building by nine o clock to be with people you don’t really like isn’t rest.”
Mark chuckled, and they got dressed while Mark kept giving Gilead what Gilead described as, “This look.”
“What do you mean? This look?” Mark said as he pulled a snug tee shirt over his long, admirable, slightly furry and definitely chiseled, chest.
“A look like… you wanna do something.”
Mark gave Gilead the half smile and shrug he was used to by now ,and then suddenly put his hands on Gilead’s shoulders and kissed him. As he pulled his lips from Gilead he said, “That’s the something I wanted to do. Alright?”
Mark was wondering if Mrs. Story thought he was as nice as she seemed to or if she was as nice as she seemed. He was keenly aware for the first time that, unlike on TV shows, Black people and Black women were not what they appeared to be. It was a thought that had flown into his head unbidden, and he almost wondered if Gilead had sent it to him telepathically. But even as he wondered the phone rang.
“Well, that’s early for a Sunday,” Gilead said, standing up and wiping his hands on the napkin.
Any phone call before noon was early on a Sunday.
“Hello,” Gilead began. Then, “Russell?”
Mark looked up from the table and both he and Mrs. Story looked interested while Gilead leaned against the wall, crossing one foot over the other and nodded.
“Yeah…. Okay. Sure.”
He hung the phone back up on the wall and turned to his boyfriend and his mother.
“After breakfast I need to go see Russell.”
He had no idea how long he would be there or how he would get back. He assumed Mark was driving him there. He didn’t need Mark to bring him back. Chayne lived right down the street.

Still full of breakfast and frankly ready to go back to sleep, they took the inside streets north through Riverview into Breckinridge, and Gilead was surprised by how close he lived to Russell. The only time they saw a main street was when they in fact, crossed Main. The Breckinridge wasn’t as cozy as Riverview, and it wasn’t as old. The houses were too far apart for affection.
Mark asked, “Do you want me to hang out with you all or come back?”
“You don’t have to do either. You’re not my chauffer.”
“I’d like to do either one,” Mark said.
“I mean, I don’t need you to… What I mean is you don’t have to hang out with my friends.”
“I like hanging with your friends.”
“Then I have to hang with yours,” Gilead said.
“Whaddo you mean?”
“I mean, its not fair to suck you up into my life. You have a life. So now you also need to suck me up into yours. Okay?”
“Okay?” Mark looked a little perplexed. “I can do that. But what do you want me to do now?”
“Come back for me?”
“Okay,” Mark said.
“I’m not exactly sure when. Let me—”
Mark placed a hand over Gilead’s.
“Whenever you’re done is when you’re done. Just call me.”
Gilead leaned in and kissed Mark quickly before heading up the walk to the house.
When Mrs. Lewis opened the door she looked strangely distracted. She looked like a grown up, like a white woman. She looked like someone who was covering up something and attempting to be pleasant when all was not well.
“Russell’s upstairs,” she told him. “And you know where the kitchen is,” which was to say, “help yourself to it.”
Upstairs, Russell sprang to answer the door as soon as Gilead knocked on it, and he pulled his friend in.
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Okay?” Gilead surveyed him.
“Cody is my brother.”
“What?”
“Cody Barnard is my brother.”
“Explain.”
“Apparently my dad had sex with his mom when he was fifteen and then she moved away and passed Cody off as someone else’s.”
“Mr. Barnard’s.”
“Exactly.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” Russell said. “So Dad says that to us last night, and then all of a sudden I blurt out I slept with Jason Lorry and I’m having sex with Ralph.”
“You’re having sex with Ralph?”
“You knew that.”
“I sort of knew that. But no. You’re sleeping with Ralph!”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“It’s amazing. I love him.”
“Ralph Balusik?”
“Yes.”
“Is your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know what he is. He’s my friend. He loves me. We make love. It’s… It’s what it is,”
“I feel like that’s a phrase for old people.”
“It’s what it is.” Russell insisted.
“Not making it better,” Gilead said, then:
“Have you told… Anigel?”
“I haven’t told anyone, and Dad told Mom and she’s…. odd about it, but not angry cause its not like he cheated on her. And Anigel…. She ran off in the middle of the night with her friend Ross.”
“Ross Allen.”
“Yeah?” Russell raised an eyebrow.
“We’re cousins,” Gilead said. “I can’t quite remember how.”
He sat on the bed.
“Oh, and Jason Lorry came by last night and apologized—”
“Hasn’t it been like… two weeks since you found him fucking some slut?”
“Yeah.”
“And since he had nothing to say and didn’t make any contact with you?”
“Exactly.”
“And then he just shows up.”
“Yes.”
“Damn.”
“Right?”
Russell said, “Enough about me. What about you?”
“Uh…. Mark brought me a dozen roses.”
“What? Are you serious?”
Russell crashed on the bed beside his friend.
“Yes. Just like a real gentleman. But that was actually a few days ago, I just didn’t get the change to tell you.”
“See, you have a proper boyfriend. A real handholder. That’s romantic.”
“And then we slept together.”
“Whaaaa?”
“Yes, Gilead said.
“I can’t… I can’t picture that.”
“You’re not meant to. And he dropped me off here and I just assumed it didn’t matter that your dad or Chayne or whatever would drop me home or even I might walk but he looked like he really wanted to be the one to come and get me. And he wanted to know if he should hang out with us and I was like, well don’t you want to hang out with your friends? Don’t you want me to hang out with your friends. And he looked at me like that was the craziest thing.”
“Is the whole school gay?”
“No,” Gilead said with certainty. “The whole school is most certainly not gay, and Ralph and Jason are still banging chicks. But it would seem that at least three of us are, and that’s three more than I knew.”
“Have you thought that…. Maybe Mark likes you and me and all of our gang better than he likes his friends?”
Gilead bursts out laughing.
“Like,” Russell said, “you’re telling Mark to get back to his life, and he’s probably just hanging around at his house waiting for you to call him back.”
“Don’t you think…. Like… He’s doing important stuff?”
“He’s popular at school and everything, but I don’t know that he has friends the way we’re friends. He’s probably staring at a wall.”
“So…. I should call him?”
“Call him.”
Gilead rolled over on the bed and picked up the phone on Russell’s nightstand, plopping it on his lap.
“What are you going to do about Jason?” he asked.
Russell shook his head head.
“I have no idea.”
 
That was an excellent portion! I am glad Gilead and Mark had sex, it seemed like something they really wanted and it made them happy. Poor Russell and Cody. I am glad Gilead was there for Russell and hopefully they can be there for Cody. I think Russell should tell Jason to just get lost but we will see. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!
 
Oh my gosh, you're right! He probably should tell Jason to get lost. Will he, probably not. Poor Russell's life is in suc a conundrum MEANWHILE, Mark and Gilead have hit a new phase, and if you enjoyed it tonight, well, you're going to enjoy this book from now on. Russell and Cody are in an awful place now, and Gilead and the other friends will help as much as they can. No Bill and no Dwyers tonight. How's Cameron? We'll see soon enough.
 
Whatever Patti Lewis was feeling, and however discreet she’d tried to be when she let Gilead into the house, there was no keeping anything secret for long. For one, there was no shame in the matter, and then the three people, four if you counted Patti, who were closest involved were involved and involved again with interlinked people so that Felice and Chayne were already discussing the new situation in a three way call with Jackie who was nursing her daughter while telling John who was on his way to visit Patti, but stopped by the church to tell Denise who saw no reason not to tell Fathers Geoff and Robert. Geoff, missing his sister, and always glad to have something new to say, went over to the Shusters and told Ann who told Hannah and Will who couldn’t wait to tell Jewell, but by then Jewell knew because Chayne had called her and they had called Shannon.
This all meant that around the same time Russell was telling Gilead, LaVelle was on the phone with Gil’s mother telling Sharonda.

Geschichte Falls was not very big, though the people who lived in it acted as if it were. They were always surprised when they found that neighborhoods that were supposed to be very different from each other were only a spit’s distance away. Colum Street, the hard done, worn out pockmarked road where Cody and Jill lived, if one drove three blocks east and crossed Edison, became genteel Jefferson Park. Jefferson Park was the large public park with gardens and fountains that separated the rougher neighborhood on the east with the blocks on the west and those blocks were together called Jefferson Park too. There lived Nehru Alexander on a much more lavish part of Colum Street, and he had marched three blocks up to Indragal Road where Marissa kissed him on the cheek when he entered and said, “Brad’s practicing. He was about to call you.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I came.”
“You too share the same brain.”
“I bet we don’t because I bet you all have no idea what I’m about to say.”
“It’s for both of us,” Marissa put a hand to her stomach.
“For all three of you if you like,” Nehru pointed to her tummy.
“I’ll get him. You rest.”
“I’m three months pregnant, Jawarhahal, Relax.”
And the house was little enough, so in no time Brad was in the kitchen and Nehru said, “Cody and Russell…”
“Are lovers!”
“Are…. Yuck. No.” Nehru said while Marissa frowned at Brad.
“Are brothers.”
“The fuck!” Marissa and Brad said at the same time.
Around then the phone rang and Brad picked it up.
“Hello. Shane?”
“You’ll never guess—”
“Cody and Russell are brothers.”
“Damn!”
“Since all everyone wants to do is gossip,” Marissa began, “why don’t we just go to the Noble Red and do that.”
Indragal was a winding little road that went back out to Colum, but if from Colum you went only another two blocks east, you ended up on Kirkland, right across Keyworthy and just north of Curtain was Noble Red.

It was from Noble Red that the call arrived at 1735 Breckinridge Drive and Patricia Mc.Llarclahn, her brother and sister, loud as fuck in her living room, answered.
“Uh…. Patti.”
“Brad,” Patti said tartly.
“Well…. How are you?”
She could tell by his voice that somehow he must have known too.
“I’m fine, Bradley. I’m sure that’s not the reason you called. To ask me how I was.”
“Uh.. Yes. No. I mean, I’m glad to hear you’re fine. I….”
“I’ll get Russell.”
“Thanks.”

Russell’s bedroom was surprisingly full. All sitting cross legged on the bed in a circle talking were Mark Young, Gilead Story, Ralph Balusik and her son. She could have just bellowed up the stairs, but she preferred to walk today.
“It’s Brad and Nehru,” Patti said.
Russell rolled over and answered the phone.
After a moment of talking, he put the phone to his chest and looked at his friends.
“Noble Red?” he said.
“I’ve never been.”
“You’ll love it,” Ralph said with so much seriousness that Russell almost laughed.
“Yeah,” Russell said to the receiver, “we’ll be there. Sooner than later.”
Sooner than later because they would pass Chayne’s house to get there, which meant stopping in Chayne’s house which meant who knew? But even while thinking this, they heard a car screech, and Mark leaned over the west window of Russell’s room looking at the Armstrong’s driveway.
“Is that Dave Armstrong?” he started. Then, “That’s Cameron.”
“She’s so hot,” Ralph said, jumping up and Gilead decided to not look at Russell. Russell had already said they weren’t boyfriend and boyfried and Ralph’s sexuality was… flexible.
“She’s very pretty,” Mark said noncommittally, leaning on an elbow and looking back at Gilead with a shared understanding.
“And she’s not going in the house. She must be going to her house.
But just then there was a ringing of the doorbell and then not long after, Russell’s door opened without a knock and Cameron, cheeks red from cold, blond hair all down her back said, “What the fuck are we all sitting around her for? I need to get out.”


MORE TOMORROW
 
Sounds like everyone is finding out about Russell and Cody being brothers. I hope everyone there can have a good time at Noble Red. I look forward to seeing what happens and great writing as always!
 
For a long time she didn’t say anything and because they knew what this felt like, this not wanting to speak, they let it rest. Suddenly Gilead walking beside Mark understood why Mark wanted to be, not only with him, but with them. They were not the cool group, but they were the sad group. They were the group who knew things, and after a while that was what you wanted to be around.
The world is a rough place, Gilead thought to himself. It was not that he was personally sad. As they reached Wexford Avenue and crossed it, into the little neighborhood of the Curtain, Gilead realized that the world was sad and everyone here had been touched by sadness and that in the end pretending it was not sad, or making oneself so jaded because of the sadness was not the answer. See, here these last few blocks ought to have been Breckinridge too. Breckinridge should have stretched all the way to Kirkland, but here the streets were brick and they curved a little like that road where Brad Long lived with his girlfriend. The houses were smaller. They were lovely, but smaller and closer together. Brightly painted and porched with tiled gables, and the Curtain was older than Little Poland or Westhaven. The Curtain was older than downtown. It was from another time when his ancestors who lived lives he could not imagine had fled being called slaves and treated like animals and found refuge here, when after a war that was so civil between white people in blue and white people in grey that it barely changed the lives of people with black skin, even more had come just to find some space to breathe. As they stopped at Chayne’s house, Gilead thought, this very house, the bricks on this road were built in sorrow, and built from the determination to find joy.
“I like how people don’t knock,” Chayne said when they entered. Rob had put on coffee and was coming back to the kitchen table with a cup he put in front of Chayne, lightly resting his hand on the other man’s head.
“People just assume I want company.”
“I can’t always tell if you’re serious,” Russell said, kissing Chayne almost dutifully, the way one kissed a parent, “or if you’re not.”
“Neither can I,” Chayne said.
“Besides, we’re just stopping by for a second. When you don’t want to be bothered, you lock the door.”
“Like last Wednesday,” Gilead remembered. “In the afternoon.”
“I locked the door,” the handsome Rob said, looking wolfish as he took a sip of his own coffee and reached for Chayne’s cigarettes.
“Because we were having sex.” Rob continued.
“Wow,” Ralph Balusik said.
“Yeah, we got that,” Gilead said.
“If you children can do what you want,” Chayne put a heavy emphasis on the word children, “Why can’t we?”
Next he asked, “Have you talked to Cody?”
“Not since last night,” Russell said. “It didn’t seem like there was much to say. We’re already friends. Now he’s my brother. He’s already part of the family. Dad already feels close to him. I feel like he and Dad need to talk, or maybe him and Mom.”
“How’s Patti taking it?”
As Chayne exhaled smoke, Russell said, “The same way you would if you found out your husband had a twenty three year old son and that son had been hanging out at your house for months.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Cameron spoke for the first time.
“So…. Cody is… what?”
“My Dad was Cody’s mom’s boyfriend when he was younger than us. She moved away from town but not before they had sex. I think they were like having lots of sex. She was knocked up with Cody but passed him off as someone else’s.”
“So your dad was like fifteen or fourteen?” Ralph said.
“Probably fifteen.”
“That’s really young,” Ralph said as if he had not been sexually active since his sixteenth birthday, which is what Gilead’s look to Mark said, and Mark turned away before he burst out laughing.
“It’s alarmingly young,” Chayne agreed, “and not just a little bit gross. But there it is.”
“You know what I think,” Rob said, moving the soft pack of cigarettes around the table almost as if it was a toy car, “I think Cody might be more embarrassed than you think, and it’s your job to go over and visit him.”
“Huh?” Rusell said.
“You fuckin’ heard me, Lewis. You’re not deaf. Cody might need you to go over there and tell him it’s alright.”

“So, basically, Dad lost his shit and tried to kill Niall, but that’s been going on for a while and we all should have stopped it,” Cameron said as she listlessly pulled a slice from the pizza in the center of them,
“I mean, I love Dad but he was being a fucking monster, and not just that, but he was smoking Niall’s weed.”
Gilead and Russell looked at each other quickly.
“So Uncle Dave said Niall was staying with him from now on, which I guess means I am too. And so is Mom, because last night Mom gave Dad her wedding ring and said it was all over.”
“Do you think it really is?” Mark asked.
“Yeah,” Cameron said. “I really do. I mean, I think it should be.”
Then she said, “Dad left in the middlfe of the night, so I assumed he would be back here. But I didn’t see his car in the driveway.”
“We haven’t seen him,” Russell said. “No one’s come back to your house.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Cameron said, “because I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. Well, that’s the only thing I’m worried about. Where the fuck he is.”









“Oh, oh God. Oh, shi—”
He is taking her from behind. The way he wants her is like this, on hands and knees. Who is the dog? He thinks it’s him. He wants to fuck her like a dog, with this fierceness, plowing her from behind tugging her hair. Lynn Draper shoutts out as he pushes his cock into her.
“Whaddo you want?” he breaths.
“Fuck me.” she says.
“Tell me what you want?”
“I want you to fuck me.”
It’s never been this hard, not the way she makes him, longer, thicker, veins bulging out of his cock like in the pornos, so sensitive to the touch, almost so hard it hurts. Her hands, her mouth, her pussy always do this.
He wants to fuck her. He wants it to be like rape. Part of him pictures Dena refusing him again, pictures himself slapping her and bending her over the sofa, burying her face in a pillow, the rage in his chest and behind his eyes traveling down to his shaft and driving it into her until he explodes like fire in her cunt. He pictures that proud bitch humiliated as she once was, moaning and weeping at once, her voice thick and humbled from the fucking.
Still clinging to him, sore, half out of her body and half out of her mind she says, “Come to bed.
Bill’s face is pressed into her shoulder. He is still hard inside of her. He knows they aren’t done.


Lynn tightens her thighs around him and receives his thrust, and the bed moves and then his body freezes, He is perfectly still as, buried inside of her, his lips parted, his eyes almost far away, almost frightened, he comes, surrendering to this intensity. It like that the very first time, when he, who had been a virgin with Dena and known no one else for the eighteen years they were together, knew he was going to have sex with Lynn. He had told himself, like a stupid teenager that he could go this far and this far and this far and it wasn’t real unless he came. And when he felt himself coming that first time he had wanted to cry. He was terrified. When he ejaculated he knew it was a sin and his body shook with humiliation as much as if did with pleasure.
Today he closed his mouth, gritting his teeth, his body twisting for the last of his climax. When it had passed over him, as it had passed over her, Bill lay across Lynn and in her, wrung out. She stroked his damp hair while his cheek rested on her shoulder.
Last night he felt like an absolute ass as Dena gave him his wedding ring and walked away, as his whole fucking family shut him out. And where was he supposed to go? Back to the house? Back to that superior cunt of a mother-in-law and the wife he hated? Back to his sister, to Lee looking on him with all that pity? So he drove, and he didn’t drive back to his house. He drove recklessly in the snow. Maybe, he thought to himself, if he drove badly enough he would die.
But he had gotten to Gale before he’d died. He’d gotten there to knock on Lynn’s door.
He was knocking on Lynn’s door. She was on the second floor and had come down the stairwell to let him in. As he came through the door he kissed her and only as he parted from her, did she say, “Bill, you look awful. What’s happened?”
“Do you want me?” he’d demanded, kissing her as he shut the door with his back and locked it. “Tell me you want me.”
“I do,” she was a little disconcerted by the hunger in his eyes, the irrational set of his face, “William, I do.”
He pushed her against the door, searching under her robe for panties and finding none, he undid his belt and pulled down his trousers and his briefs. Lynn started as, moaning deeply, he pressed himself inside, fucking her against the door. As he fucked her like a piston, grunting, not speaking, his head buried in her shoulder, her back pressed against the door.

He feels tender toward her now. He feels tender and wounded. He is not a rapist. Or is he? Do rapists feel tender like this after a victim…. But what is he talking about. Lynn is no victim. He feels nail marks down his back. He feels like half of himself.
“You don’t have to go back to that house,” Lynn tells him that afternoon as they lay together. “At least not right now. You don’t have to go back and deal with all of that. You can stay here if you’d like. For a while.”
In Lynn’s arms Bill Dwyer feels like a man. When she looks at him he feels sexy and desirable, and now he feels vulnerable. He feels defeated and he feels like it’s alright to be defeated, like she sees him with all of his many, many flaws, and before this afternoon is over he’ll cry in front of her. He’ll cry while they make love like in that book he borrowed from Dave that he’d never tell Dave about, that he mocked the whole time wishing as he read it that maybe he could make love to a woman who wouldn’t be afraid of his tears, wouldn’t humiliate him as Dena certainly would have done.
 
I hope Russell does talk to Cody who must be feeling very alone right now. Poor Cameron, her family life is falling apart. I don’t feel sorry for Bill though, I just feel sad for Dena, Cameron and Niall. They haven’t done anything wrong and Bill has been treating them like shit. He had it coming when Dena dumped him. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
FIVE


SUNDAY

PART TWO





“We could have taken my car,” Mark said.
“We could have taken mine,” Ralph said.
“We could have taken the hearse,” Rob said, “but we didn’t do any of that. Keep walking.”
“You’re getting more and more like Chayne.
“Thanks,” Rob said.
Russell cleared his throat.
“I know you didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I’m gonna take it as one.”
Rob turned around and winked, his bright blond hair and almond shaped blue eyes making him look like a Christmas elf.
“Is it always like this?” Mark wondered, beside Gilead.
“Like what/”
Mark’s hands were jammed in his pockets as he trudged down Colum Street. They all moved aside as a car slowly rolled down the street.
“You all just marching around town in a clump on a mission?”
Gilead thought.
“Sort of. Sometimes. I shouldn’t have dragged you along.”
“No,” Mark said. “I wanted to be dragged along. This is great.”
“Being dragged along is just what I needed,” Cameron agreed.
“What are you going to do tonight?” Russell asked her.
When she looked at him he said, “Where are you staying?”
“I don’t want to be with Mom in my aunt and uncle’s house. But I don’t want to be a lone in my house, either.”
“Why don’t you get some of your stuff and stay with us,” Russell said. “If Mom explains it to them, your family’ll totally be okay with it.”
“Yeah,” Cameron said. “Thanks, Russell. I think I’d like that.”




“Where are you staying, Mr. Story,” Mark murmured, kicking up snow as they entered what was definitely the shabbier part of Colum Street.
“Whaddo you mean?”
Mark bumped his shoulder into Gilead.
“What?”
Mark whispered, looking at Gilead, “I want you to stay with me.”
Gilead tried to keep himself from smiling, and studied the snowy ground before him.
“You always go away or I go away. We had that once or twice. I’d like you to stay with me tonight. Get your stuff. Have breakfast together and all.”
“A sleepover. A slumber party.”
“There’ll be a little slumber. Lot more party if I have anything to say about it.”
Mark hooked his arm through Gilead’s
“I love when you look embarrassed,” he said.
He breathed into his ear: “Stay with me,”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Gilead said, and then realized, “But I don’t like leaving my mother alone. That’s silly of me, though…”
“I’ll stay with you, then,” Mark said.
“No, no,” Gilead said. “I need to grow up a little. I’m always so… I’m a mama’s boy.”
“You look out for your mom cause your dad didn’t and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Mark said. “Look, it doesn’t matter where we stay as long as we stay in the same bed tonight. Cool?”
“Yeah,” Gilead said. “Cool.”


When they arrived at the house on Colum Street, Jill was putting on her coat and pulling her red hair out from under it.
“It’s a good thing you’re here, Russell,” she said. “Cody could use conversation. The rest of you…” she looked over them. “This is one hell of an entourage.”
Now that Jill said it, Russell realized it was so.
“We could go,” Cameron suggested.
But Gilead said, “We’ve walked about a mile, maybe more. I’m not going anywhere.”
He sat on the couch, and Mark waited a second before joining him.
“Well,” Jill said. “Make yourselves at home, but don’t touch Mom’s Hennessee.”
“I’m not going to make myself at home,” Russell said. “I’m going to go talk to Cody.”
He’d expected Cody to be angry or sullen or something he never was, but when Russell tapped on the door and entered, Cody, in jeans and tee shirt, threw himself on Russell and embraced him.
“I was so worried about you,’ he told him. “I should have called. Are you alright?” He looked a lot like Thom right now, stroking Russell’s hair, holding him.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“If we… If you hadn’t of come over early. I’m not blaming you. But… nothing would have happened.”
“Something already happened,” Russell said, stopping himself from saying, “We made out and blew each other last summer.”
“Yes,” Cody remembered. “Yes. That’s right. I’m sorry, Russell.”
“I’m not,” Russell said.
“What?”
“I’m not sorry. I’m glad. I’m glad I came over because if he had known, nothing would have happened, and I wanted to be with you. I love you. I’d be so mad if we found out the truth early and we could never say we’d been together.”
“But now we know what the love was. We’re brothers.”
“That’s part of it,” Russell said, “but I don’t really love you like a brother.”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Cody said. “Because all of that, all we did, is over.”
“But why does it have to be?” Russell wondered.
“Because, and I feel like you may have missed this, you are my brother.”
“Half brother,” Russell dismissed this, “and it’s not like we could reproduce and make retarded kids.”
“I am your half brother,” Cody said. “Who is five years older than you.
“Seven actually.”
“Fuck. See what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” Russell said. “And I know what I’m saying is crazy. I’m just…. I’m just tired about lying about my feelings. And I know how I feel about you. How I felt when we finally got to be together. I’m not telling you what to do, I’m just telling you that for me nothing had changed.”

They came downstairs because they heard horns honking. Outside was Chayne’s hearse and Brad’s van.
“What the?” Cody started.
“I wasn’t walking back,” Gilead said, “so I called them.”
Cody and Russell did not sit together. Chayne had driven. Rob was beside him, and Russell suspected Cody needed to talk, though what he was going to say he couldn’t tell. Russell wasn’t sure how he felt. He did think that if he was older, maybe even three years older he would have been hopeless. He had a feeling that being sixteen made him hopeful, that the younger you were the more you could do and the better you could survive.
“I have to talk to you,” Russell said, not even paying heed to Ralph or Mark.
“Sure,” Gilead said, sounding more casual than he felt. Russell did not have to talk to you about casual things. “Wherever we end up, let’s talk.”
They ended up at Noble Red and Ralph steered Mark away saying, “Gil and Russell are going to pow wow. We’ll just be in the way.”
Noble Red was nearly empty. Mark was looking at Gilead. On the stage, Cody was playing guitar with Brad. Gilead said, “We will only be a minute.”
“We may be several minutes,” Gilead said to Russell.
“Now what’s going on?”
“It’s Cody.”
Gilead looked at the handsome guy on the stage who was built like Thom only taller, but had Russell’s manners.
“Isn’t it a good thing that you all are brothers? No matter what it might mean for your dad. Or your mom.
“It’s more than that—thank you,” Russell said as the waitress brought them their coffees.
Neither one of them looked at sugar and cream as they stirred them in.
“I’m in love with Cody.”
Gilead raised an eyebrow.
“He’s in love with me.”
There was no point in pointing out all the usual things, so Gilead didn’t.
Instead, Gilead said, “How long?”
“Always. Since the night I met him.”
“Wasn’t that the night you and Jason…?”
“Yes. I like Jason. I was mad about what he did, but… I love Cody.”
Gilead nodded and drank his coffee.
“Here’s the thing you need to know…”
“I thought you had told me the thing I needed to know.’
“No,” Russell shook his head.
“About two hours before Dad realized he was Cody’s father-”
“Yeah?”
“Me and Cody had sex.”
Gilead’s heart went heavy like a hot stone. His whole body tingled with dread. He had stopped his mouth from falling open, but not his eyes from bulging.
“And here’s the thing,” Russell continued, “I’m glad it happened before we knew, because if we had known it wouldn’t have happened, and I would be sad my whole life that it couldn’t happen.”
“But now you’re sad you’re whole life that it can’t happen again.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What?”
“Who gives a shit?” Russell hissed.
“Russ, just alone the fact that you’re still sixteen and Cody’s an adult—”
“I don’t care about any of that! If you only knew what it felt like to love someone like this. But, you do,” Russell said, pointing to Mark. “Everyone in the fucking world can see how together the two of you are. What if someone told you Mark was your half brother?”
Gilead snorted, then remembered they were in a serious time, remembered also that this would not have been impossible.
“His kiss, the way he looks at you, the way he touches you,” Russell said. “The way you want to be next to him…. Would you give it up just because of some dumb shit your dad had done?”

TOMORROW WE RETURN TO KING OF ALL THESE RUINS
 
Well they all got to Cody. I am glad he has them. I don’t really agree with Russell that they should continue their sexual relationship now that they know that they are half brothers. Kind of seems like a recipe for disaster but we will see. Great writing and I look forward to King Of All These Ruins tomorrow!
 
No, I think you're right. Russell is very much in the place of an impassioned sixteen year old. This is worst he's felt yet. His mind isn't really in the right place. I'm pretty sure Gilead doesn't agree with that either.
 
IT IS SUNDAY EVENING BEFORE CHRISTMAS WHEN WE RETURN TO GESHICHTE FALLS...



Gilead could not remember what he had told Russell. It wasn’t like him to tell much, to talk about being in his bedroom alone with Mark, the two of them naked together, running their hands over each other, shuddering at the touch of fingertips on nipples, on stomach, up and down sex, taking each other in their mouths, caressing asses and the private place between the thighs, the hard strong kisses, the shock of mutual hardness, cock to cock, the leap of ejaculation, and the quietness of sleep in each others arms, holding one another closer than a child held a teddy, waking up in the heat of comforters and eighteen year old boy skin. But no, God no, he could not imagine giving Mark up. When Mark said, stay with me tonight, not just his penis, but everything in him went erect with joy, stood completely at attention for this dark haired green eyed boy whose kisses were sweet, sweet, sweet, whose hands held enchantment. Russell Lewis, the sanest person he’d known, had been making his way through two boys and one man for the last few months, and the one he loved was his own brother. He was desperate for Cody, and Gilead, in his own desperation for Mark, understood that.




“She can stay with me!” Chris Knapp declared.
“Of course she can’t stay with you,” Patti blew smoke out of her nose like a dragon. “Look at you.”
“I’m her boyfriend,” Chris said.
“Exactly, and you’re a football player with sideburns and facial hair, no mother would let her daughter stay with you. Not even Dena.”
“Actually, Mrs. Lewis,” Cameron said, “she probably would, and if we want to find out, all we have to do is go next door.
“But I’m not staying with you and your parents,” Cameron said. “I will stay with the Lewises tonight. If they’ll have me.”
“Of course we will.”
“Well,” Chris insisted, “you may not be staying with me, but I am taking you out to dinner.”
We’ll have to go to my house first,” Gilead was saying as he and Mark prepared to leave.
“And then my place?”
“We can go to your place to pick up things,” Gilead said. “I don’t want to go to either one of our places.”
“Huh?”
“I want to go to the beach.”
“It’s winter.”
“Lake Michigan didn’t go anywhere. And I’ve never seen it in winter. I want to go there, get a room at a hotel, wake up near the frozen water. Both of us be some place we haven’t been before. Let’s go.”
He only had to say let’s go for Mark to be ready to go. He went and told Russell, “It’ll be alright. Everything will work itself out. I’m not sure how it will, but it will.”



He had to get away. There was too much happening in Geschichte Falls, Michigan, and really there was too much happening in him. As his mind whorled with what Russell told him, he thought, water, water, I want to see water, water so very cold and broad it would force everything to make sense. In his house, Gilead Story gathered a few things, and Sharonda came into his room. Mark was downstairs in the kitchen eating. That boy could eat, she marveled, and he kept staying skinny.
“I had to make myself go,” Gilead said. “Because there’s this part of me that feels like I shouldn’t leave you alone in this house. Like I shouldn’t leave you. Or like if anything happened and I was here, then I could stop it. Just by being here. Mama, I realized I don’t know how not to live without you.”
Sharonda smiled and touched her son’s chin.
“You are not my husband. Your job was never to keep me company or watch out for me.”
“I know… in my head.”
“Then what’s in your heart is your father’s fault and fuck him, I’ll be fine. It’s not your job to look after me. In fact, you don’t have a job. You’re just supposed to be young, and speaking of young, Mark is waiting for you.”
Gilead nodded and continued to pack his bag.


Tom opened the door to Russell’s room and announced, “Two more for Cameron.”
As Linh Pham entered with Freestar Rockwell, Thom murmured while turning to leave, “My house is turning into a teen drama.”
“We promise it won’t be a teen drama much longer,” Linh said to Russell, and then threw herself on Cameron, hugged her tight and made way for Freestar to do the same. “We just wanted to come and tell you we’d heard about everything. You can stay with us if you want.”
“I was staying here,” Cameron said, looking at Russell.
“It’s really not required,” Russell said. “You can if you want, but even I might not be staying here tonight.”
“Well, then,” Linh said, “you might as well stay with me.”
Cameron felt foolish for asking Russell if he minded, but she did and Russell, gesturing to Chris, said, “I know I’m not exactly your boyfriend or a sexual threat, but staying with Linh actually makes more sense than staying here. Just check with your family. And probably check with my mom.”
“Yeah, that’s a point,” Chris said. “Mrs. Lewis is not to be fucked with. I’m still taking you out to dinner, though.”
“I actually thought we were taking you out,” Freestar said. Then she said, “But it’s cool, the two of you having your romantic night out.”
“We’re not….” Chris started, then said, “It’s not even like that.”
“Yeah,” Cameron said. “I’m not feeling very romantic. I’m feeling like I don’t want to be alone.”
“Uh….” Chris began uncertainly, “what if we all, the five of us, went out?”
“Me?” Russell said.
They looked at him.
“Why not you?” Freestar asked in a way that made Russell wonder if she might be one of Chayne’s cousins.
“I’m not really popular or—”
“Shut the fuck up and get your coat,” Cameron said, getting off the bed. “We’re going to dinner.”
She pulled out her wallet and showed off a credit card.
“My mother’s treat.”



When he was a very little boy, Gilead had been told the story of King Midas. He had been cursed by the gods and given the ears of a donkey, and he had to wear a strange hat so no one saw his ears but his barber, who was forbidden to speak of them. It had been too much for the poor barber and so the barber had, at last, run into the fields and whispered into the riverbank, “The King has ass’s ears.” Unburdened of the secret, and having told the dirt, the barber went home.
But in Greece even, no especially, the earth was alive, and reeds grew up from it, and when the wind moved through them, the reeds would sing in their reedy voice, “The King has ass’s ears.”
Gilead Story, born with an inherent sense of right and loyalty, had always thought this was a horrible story about a week and gossipy man until he had turned around fifteen and actually had some stories worth telling, secrets he could barely keep. It wasn’t until then that he realized carrying some things was almost as bad as not being able to stop on the road for the restroom.
“No,” Mark said, astounded.
“Yes,” Gilead said.
“You’re fuckin’ lying, Gil!”
Mark looked at his boyfriend.
“You’re not lying are you?”
Gilead shook his head.
Mark shook his head and, looking inward, grinned sideways, a little like a fool, and shook his head, which always attracted Gilead to him.
“And of course I can’t tell anyone.”
“It would be best if you didn’t.”
Gilead felt that curious sense of relief that the barber must have in telling the earth, but then the earth had eventually grown reeds and whispered it about. That was the point of that story. But the earth was without malice. It just did what it did. Same with the reeds. There was something of the trap about Mark. You could give him a secret and it would never cross his mind to tell it. He was strangely gossip proof, and Gilead, alas, was not. He had to tell someone.
“Wow,” Mark shook his head as they continued down the country road in the approaching dusk.
“Wow.”
They had been on the road for about forty five minutes when Gilead finally told Mark. To either side of them, farm fields in white stretched out to the black trees and the grey blue sky grew greyer and went to dark blue. The road was not straight and many times Mark made right turns, left turns, turned into a corner that rose to the top of a high hill where they looked over a darkening valley before sinking into it. Gilead was impressed that Mark knew where he was going.
“That’s just cause I drive all the time. To keep my mind off stuff. Don’t worry, Once I keep putting you behind the wheel, you’ll be able to get around like this too.”
Gilead was not sure what made him more uneasy, Mark making him learn to drive, or Mark driving around with demons on his mind.




“Does Gilead know?” Chayne demanded.
“Oh, he must,” Rob said. Then, “Mustn’t he?”
Chayne shook his head, but said, “If Cody told you, Russell must have told Gilead. But...” he stood up. “We need coffee.”
“I’ll make it,” Rob said.
“No,” Chayne shook his head. “I need to get up. I need to do something. I can’t believe this.”
As Chayne went through the cupboards, he said. “But I thought he was with that Jason boy, and then Jason did what he did and…”
“And it’s more complicated that that,” Rob said, quietly, watching Chayne empty the coffee basket and begin rinsing it and the coffee pot.
“Not that this is the most important part of everything,” Chayne said, “but I feel like I knew Russell so well, and now he’s a proper teenager with improper secrets. But this secret…”
“I know.”
“Cody is a grown man.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, even if he wasn’t… who he is.”
“They are brothers.”
“Yes,” Chayne said. “Yes. It’s all…I actually don’t know how to feel. Whenever I think I do, I don’t.”
“Chayne,” Rob said, and got up now. He pulled out the creamer while Chayne turned on the coffeemaker, “if it makes you feel better, then you know far more than Mr. and Mrs. Lewis do.”
“No,” Chayne said. “I don’t think that makes me feel better at all.”


“So,” Nehru said, leaning in to take the joint from Cody, while Brad sat back blinking, “What are we…?” Nehru stopped to inhale and hold the smoke in his mouth, take it down into his lungs. “What are we supposed to do with this?”
They were in the empty apartment over the Noble Red, and it looked half like home and half like the amber lit otherworld where they had all three just made love.
“I dunno,” Cody said, shaking his head.
“I was going to say,” Brad began, “this is heavy. But… you already knew this was heavy.”
“It was going to be heavy no matter what.”
Nehru was what Brad called, weed resistant. He could smoke all the pot in Mexico and still be clear eyed and sober. “What you were doing was doomed from the start. We can’t even say what you were doing. I can’t. My mouth won’t shape it.”
“I know,” Cody admitted. “Well, now it’s totally doomed, and now it’s totally over.”
“If you think about it that way,” Brad said, as smoke leaked from his nose, and he held the joint Nehru had recently passed him, “then it makes everything pretty easy. No matter your feelings, no matter how crazy it was, it’s all kind of done.”

MORE TOMORROW
 
Well the group is leaving town and dealing with Russell and Cody’s revelations. Everything apart from say Mark and Gilead or Chayne and Rob. I am very interested and excited to read what happens next. Great writing!
 
“I feel like I didn’t think this out completely,” Gilead said when they arrived in Sawyer.
“What’s wrong,” Mark demanded, climbing out of the car and catching his hand.
“Well, for one it’s pretty much night.”
“Yeah, and it’s also winter. You had an impulse. You went with it. I’m cool with it. You think this motel’ll let us stay?”
“I think,” Gilead said, lifting his bag and walking toward the pool of light before the door with the sign that said OPEN, “this is the kind of motel that won’t ask any questions.”
“Great. We can lock the hell out of everything and then go look for some dinner. Then we’re going to the beach,” Mark said. “That’s definitely gonna happen. I’ve never been to a snowy beach. It’s about time.”
The room felt so good to be in. It’s never until you get the hotel room you realize how much you need to stretch out, or go to the bathroom, or take off your shoes.
“This is a beachy beach town,” Mark said. “I hope they actually have a McDonalds or something regular like that.”
“We will find something to eat,” Gilead declared, “even if we have to skin a rabbi
“No rabbit skinning,” Mark refused, “but we will find food.”
If they had not been so hungry, they would have stayed in that room longer, but they left in search of food and found a family restaurant whose name didn’t matter that served good burgers and all the stuff family restaurants should. There were two annoying children with their parents, and Mark sloshed a fry through his ketchup and muttered, “Fuckin’ white folks.”
When Gilead looked at him, he said, “What?” and shrugged.
The moon rose high and white over the beach they found to which they found their way. They drove over a long path, past a booth that was closed at this time of year and between high dunes. Now, Gilead stood, feet planted on the hard sand, watching the cold grey water crash to the slush on the shore. Mark, a dark shadow against the darkening night, ran the length of the beach. He ran and ran until Gilead thought he might not come back. He was a small dot who had left his coat on the sand and stripped to a sweat shirt and a skull cap. When he came back he was breathing heavily, and the thin boy clutched his knees, grinning at Gilead.
“I needed that,” he declared.
It was then, as they walked back, that Gilead realized Mark was graceful like a colt, long legs, surefooted even on rocks and sand. Gil tried to keep up. He couldn’t stand for Mark to know it was an effort.
“That,” Mark said, breathing, “And a bath.”
The water was good. The room was clean. This was not some weird motel. Gilead remembered it now. He had been with one of his weird aunts once, passing through here, and she had said this would be a wonderful place to lock yourself away and work on a novel.
Now they lay together, and Gilead sat in bed with his left knee lifted and Mark’s head on his chest, Mark’s leg hooked in his.
“I told you because I knew you were the person who would never tell a secret,” Gilead said, his hand stroking mark’s wavy hair.
“I don’t really have anyone to tell anymore,” Mark said.
Gilead blinked.
“Except for you. And you already told me.”
“You never talk about Joe.”
Mark had looked comfortable, his arms around Gilead, lying on his belly, naked after sex. Now he grew smaller, sat up.
“I don’t really know how to.”
“And you don’t have to,” Gilead told him. “But if you want you can. All those things you get in your car and drive around to clear your head from you could tell me,”
“I know I could,” Mark said after a time. “It’s just I don’t know how. And… I don’t even know that I want to. I… Sometimes a guy needs to be alone. Needs to be lonely. You know?”
“Yes, I know. I know all about that,” Gilead said.
“That’s what I like about you.”
“I’m just saying,” Gilead said, “I can look like I don’t care—”
“No, I never thought that.”
“But I don’t press. I’m never going to make you tell me things, but when you need to…”
Gilead looked at Mark, and then he sank back into the sheets. Mark was still sitting up.
“Yes, Gil,” Mark said. “When I need to I will. I promise.”




“Why won’t you let us drop you off at home, boy?” Freestar demanded.
They were on the corner of Breckinridge and Market, near the gas station, and Russell said, “I just need to get some things off my mind.”
“It’s too cold for that,” Freestar murmured from where she sat in the back, but they let Russell out.
“Some times guys just need to think,” said Chris, who was driving. “You have a good night, Russell.”
Cameron got out of the car with him and threw her arms around him.
“Thanks for being a friend. And everything’ll be alright. I promise.”
“Yeah, Cam,” Russell squeezed her shoulders. “Same for you.”
As Chris Knapp’s car turned north up Market Street, Russell started walking east in the cold. Cam didn’t know everything. How could she? She didn’t know he’d been with Ralph or Cody for that matter. And Chris was Mark’s friend, but had Mark ever talked to him about Gilead? And what were the two of them doing anyway?
He was tired of his mind. He turned it off as much as possible and concentrated on the cold of the air and the look of a cold night, blue and black and white, stars like hard jewels in a blue night. He walked until he was there, looking at the large house for only a moment before going up the familiar path that was only lightly covered by snow. He unhooked the latch and went around the side and the back of the house, both covered in dried and frozen vines. He passed the shuttered windows of the solarium. He stood on his tiptoes and tapped on a window several times before going around to a little door in this add on that stuck out from the house.
Jason Lorry, in his black pajama pants, no shirt, beautiful brown chest with its light dusting of hair, opened the door, and the two of them stood looking at each other before Jason opened the door, and Russell Lewis walked in, shutting it behind him.


TOMORROW NIGHT: KING OF ALL THESE RUINS
 
That was an excellent portion! I am glad Mark and Gilead are deepening their relationship and that Gilead is letting Mark talk about Joe when he feels like he is ready. I don’t know what is going to happen with Russell and Jason but I am interested to see where it goes. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
SIX


LIGHT
AS
A CHILD



Anigel had left in a hurry with Ross, and for the very first time, in a while, Chayne Kandzierski and Robert Keyes had 1421 Curtain Street to themselves.
Chayne remembered the very first night Rob had come to him, after those months when Ted had left his life. That night the house was empty too. It would have been a week or so after Russell had begun his relationship with Jason Lorry, and Jill and Cody Barnard had come into their lives. Chayne left one lamp on in the living room and then left the kitchen light on as well. Chayne said goodnight to Rob, and it felt awkward but he couldn’t quite figure why. He felt satisfied though, not itchy as he had, but glad like the night was well spent, and the whole world was embracing him, like he had when he had come back here after being gone out East for so long.
He had drifted to the very coast of sleep, when he lay pleasantly between waking and slumber and a thin light made a thread across the room.
“Russ….” he began, but Russell was no child who would disturb him in the night anymore.
He sat up, reaching for his glasses almost as much to come to mental clarity as to actual vision.
Rob had closed the door, and he stood there only visible by what there was of moonlight, and from what Chayne saw, only in his Jockey’s. He hugged himself, looking afraid, his eyes dark pools.
Chayne tried to speak, but could not. Rob stepped forward and stopped, and Chayne’s mouth was dry, but he understood now, and felt foolish, felt like no matter how lively he’d been, he’d been half dead before, for even as his mouth dried, the heat in him was rising, and he pulled back the comforter and moved aside, and Rob climbed into the bed and then, pulling the sheets over both of them, they embraced.


The first time Chayne and Rob had sex, they were sitting on Chayne’s couch and Rob said, “So whaddo you wanna do?” and Chayne put his hand on Rob’s thigh, and then Rob put his hand on Chayne’s and Chayne moved closer. He began to massage Rob’s thigh, and then he opened up the boy’s shorts, and started to stroke his cock through his underwear. Rob made a moan like a cat purr and leaned his beautiful head against Chayne’s shoulder, opening his mouth a little, his green eyes closing into slits. His mouth reached up for Chayne’s the same time Chayne squeezed him dick, and when Rob turned and thrust his tongue in Chayne’s mouth, the flat of Chayne’s hand held Rob’s balls, and they felt hot and heavy in his grasp.
Chayne went to his knees because he knew Rob couldn’t ask, and he pulled down his shorts and his briefs, and pulled Rob into his mouth. He was firm and heavy, large and growing larger.
“Chayne,” he moaned, stroking Chayne’s hair. “Chayne.”
They were both naked, under the sheets, twisting together on the bed. Rob pulled Chayne’s face to his. It wasn’t just head he wanted. He wanted eyes and arms and lips and tongues and kindness. He wanted to touch Chayne in love, and pull his face down and kiss him, press his body up into this otherman
In the end he asked Chayne to fuck him, but this was easier said than done. They’d never done it before and so it was just fumbling around, but happy fumbling. Chayne was so hard and Rob had already come all over his stomach. They had stopped to relax and hold each other after this. Now Rob, in a pinch, took Vaseline and oil and rubbed it over Chayne’s swollen cock. Rob knew just what to do. He fitted himself tightly inside of Chayne who closed his eyes and moaned with Rob’s entry. They moved together, Rob moaning in the shock of his pleasure at every thrust. The bed shook and they laughed in their pleasure as they fucked, and then lay side by side, breathing.
“Caress my ass?” Rob begged.
He didn’t have to beg. Thin as Rob looked, he was well built with healthy thighs and buttocks that longed to be stroked. Chayne had already eaten him out. He thrust his finger in the boy’s ass and massaged his asshole.
“Ohhh, fuck!” Rob cried, his dick jumping when Chayne did that.
So Chayne kept doing it, rubbing his hands up and down Rob’s back, caressing his shoulders, running his hands through his hair, pulling his face down to kiss him, running his hands back down. Rob drew close to him, fitting his cock between Chayne’s thighs.
“It’s gonna happen again. I’m about to…” he began, his voice shallow.
“It’s okay,” Chayne said, putting his hand on Rob’s cheek.
“But I’m about to…”
“Do it.”
With a relieved groan, Rob came, and Chayne felt the load, hot and thick between his thighs. He kept pressing his dick between Chayne’s thighs until everything was spilled out, and Rob pulled out, the length of his cock red and wet.
They lay side by side, chests heaving, bodies slick, and Rob grinned and looked up at Chayne. The two of them laughed, and suddenly Rob lay on his side and pressed his mouth to Chayne’s.





It was grey, not quite sunrise when Chayne woke, and he could smell the burning of Rob’s cigarette, He blinked and Rob sat in the chair across the room, naked, the light on his milky body, his rose nipples, his penis, long and pink and unprotected, and he ashed. He was looking over the papers Chayne had written on. He looked to him and said, “I’m sorry. I was just waiting for you to wake up. I didn’t want to wake you. You looked peaceful.”
Rob returned to bed. Chayne reached up and touched his cheek, and then he brought Rob’s mouth down and kissed him. Rob’s lips were tender and his tongue was light, pushing inside of Chayne’s mouth. He put the cigarette gently on the table, and lay down on the bed with him. They were already kissing, already twisting their limbs together, already exploring bodies they had come to know over the last two nights, doing the things they had understood thrilled each other. There was yellow on the edge of the sky when they lay together, holding hands, bodies damp with sweat and their bellies glistening with semen.
This was the way it had been when they first came together, and the way it was now, days before Christmas when the house was theirs alone.
“You better wash off,” Chayne said.
“What will you do today?”
“What I said I was going to do yesterday. Lock myself away and write.”
“I think I will too,” Rob said.
“Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had two houses connected by a bridge and they would do their work in their homes, and then come together on the bridge.”
“Did it work for them?” Chayne asked.
“There was a lot of adultery, and they got divorced. But then they came back together so, it depends on what your definition of working is.”
“At any rate, we’re going to have a metaphorical two houses and one bridge.
“I’ve never really had the chance to try it,” Chayne admitted. “I’m usually never alone.”
“We haven’t done that before. I think, sometimes,” Rob admitted, “I’m more serious about wanting to be a writer than actually writing, and that needs to change.”
Chayne stood up, wiping his stomach with the damp cloth, cleaning out his navel and running the cloth over his dark pubic hair.
“Should the bridge be lunch?”
“It’s barely sunrise,” Chayne said as Rob reached for the cloth and took it to rub down his own stomach. “The bridge could be breakfast.”


He pressed himself deeper into the covers, and in the pillows and the sheets he smelled Jason’s body. The first time he’d slept here, he’ d almost been startled by the smell of another boy. Now Russell was not sure if he treasured it or was used to it, but he treasured this room, its darkness barely illumined by strands of fairy lights, and he savored the heat of the room when the warm air pumped in from the furnace was mixed with the heat of their sex.
Russell was not sure how long ago it had been that he woke up, prepared to leave, and Jason had stirred and said in that reedy voice of his, “You’re not leaving, are you? Aren’t you staying?”
It was the Monday before Christmas. There was no school to go to. There was no place to be. He had wanted to prove to Jason and to himself that none of this meant anything, to be independent, get dressed, get up and walk out. Jason was pulling him back into his warm arms, into his furry chest, into his grown man’s body. He was kissing him with that mouth that always chewed on that mixture of seeds they had in the Indian restaurants for fresh breath.
He had gone to Jason in anger, upset and desperate. He wanted to fuck Cody again. He wanted Cody so bad, and no matter what he’d said, he couldn’t have him. So he came here. He couldn’t have gone to Ralph. That would be using a friend. He’d come to Jason, who deserved to be used, who had been banging some girl in this bed, and it was fine to him no, even excited Russell a little to wonder if the bed sheets had been washed since the last time she was here. One thing he did know, he was the only other boy who had been in this bed. He needed to use Jason. He needed Jason’s body, his affection, his kiss, all the warmth he remembered from him.


Jimmy said, “So how does it work? Are you guys like… going to movies? He… takes you to restaurants.”
“No, he came to our house the night Jackie had the baby. He was with us the whole time, but that was one of the first times we went out. I mean, he goes to school with me. I see him all day, and he hangs in our crowd.”
And then Russell said, “Primarily we have lots of sex.”
“Well,” Jimmy said, “there it is.”
“Yes, Russell said. “Exactly.”
Russell was watching Jimmy’s spidery fingers, watching the smoke leave his nostrils. His cousin knew about sex. This was why he was talking to him. Jimmy finally said, “You don’t love him.”
“What?”
“There’s someone else isn’t there? Someone you really love.”


And if he’d needed it last night, then why not this morning, when Jason pulled him back under thick hot covers and made love to him under the sheets?


As his arms hung around Jason Lorry’s neck and he clung to him, he didn’t need to tell himself that this was not love. It simply wasn’t. As Jimmy had said, his feelings had never grown that way.
And there was someone else, but as they moved on the bed that was so solid it never shook or quaked, and Russell pulled Jason closer to him, surrendering to the heat of his kiss, he knew that that someone else and his feelings no longer mattered.
 
Last edited:
I am glad Rob and Chayne got some time alone together. I think they needed it. Russell is one very confused guy at the moment. What’s going on with Jason doesn’t seem like love. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top