Riding Trains Together

[ChrisGibson]

“Mama puts me in the tub now,” Andy said as they entered through the back porch which faced the school.

“I’ll get on that right now,” Father Merrill said.

It was while he was running the bath, and looking through the curtains at the lights in the Mc.Candless house’s windows, that he opened the linen closet and thought how there were less towels than there should be. And then he frowned and went into his niece’s bedroom. He stopped for a moment, and took a breath before opening her closet and seeing it was empty. He stood there for a while until he forgot the water was running and went down the hall to turn it off.

“Andy,” he said, testing the water, “your bath!”

While the little boy splashed in the tub, Father Lewis went to his niece’s bedroom, opening her chest of drawers, and found it empty, found the bureau bare of perfumes and make up and those things he thought of as “what women used.”

The only time he had known this feeling of heavy, stone cold loss was when his mother had died, and this grief had been personal. Now, listening to the boy splash in the water who had no idea Sharon had left him, the feeling rolled over him with more weight than it ever had before.



“Tell him she’s dead,” one of the brothers said.

“You can’t do that,” said another.

“For one, she isn’t and for another, he’ll find out one day.”

“She could come back. We could be all wrong.”

“People who are coming back do not sneak away in the middle of the day with all of their clothes.”

“What if she…. Changes her mind? What mother would leave her child?”

“According to the orphanage we run… many.”

“I will not lie to him,” Father Merrill said. “But I can’t tell him the entire truth. I don’t even know the entire truth.”

“She left with that man who was coming around.”

“Vic Trainor,” another said

“How on EARTH do you know that?” Merrill demanded.

“It’s a small town with a big mouth,” Brother Guillaume said.

“Well then, très certainement, we cannot lie to him,” old Dom Alexander said.

“Your sister is his grandmother?”

Lewis Merrill nodded.

“Ask if she would receive him.”

His sister lived in Detroit and hadn’t seen Sharon in around six or seven years, and they had not departed on good terms. Still, Lewis put in the phone call. She sounded… unenthusiastic was the word he settled on, about taking on Sharon’s child.

“Would you like to meet your grandmother?” Father Lewis asked Andy.

For the last few days the priest had stayed in the house trying to make the boy’s life as normal as possible.

“Is she coming here?” he looked confused.

“No. you would go to her.”

“But I don’t know her.”

“That is true.”

“Mama didn’t like her. She said she left when she was having me because her Mama didn’t want me. Would she want me now?”

“You’re her grandson, Andrew.”

“But does she like kids? And how long am I staying?”

“You would stay for good. For keeps.”

At this the big headed little boy in the Coke bottle glasses burst out crying with all the grief he’d kept in him, and the priest drew Andy to his chest.

“This is my home. I live here. This is my home. You’re my family. If I go somewhere else, when Mama gets back, how… will she find me?”

So, despite reservations that never completely went away, not even some thirty five years later when he was on his death bed, he kept Andy. He was tempted to ask to have the house so he could raise the boy there, but knew that would be unfitting. Andy went to school as he always had, visiting Father Merrill in the afternoon, and he slept in the orphanage. There were only twenty orphans at the time, and when Andy was thirteen he was one of five left. The year the orphanage and the orphan school closed for good was the same year he started the high school, now called Saint Francis, and simply moved into the old dormitory on the same floor as the other Freshmen. Andy had spent the first two years after Sharon left looking across the field to their house, but by the time he was fifteen, he didn’t look much anymore.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Poor Andy! I can’t believe Sharon just abandoned him like that but it happens. I am glad they kept him after she disappeared. I am also glad I could finally get to this after our cyclone where I live. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Poor Andy! I can’t believe Sharon just abandoned him like that but it happens. I am glad they kept him after she disappeared. I am also glad I could finally get to this after our cyclone where I live. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

I'm glad you came through the cyclone safely and thrilled you're still enoying the story.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Four





























“It’s open.”

Andy Reed, in basketball shorts and a tee shirt, entered Jack Knapp’s room.

“Every year it’s less and less of us,” he said. “When I was a novice the novitiate was still a whole building. Now it’s a hallway.”

Jack nodded.

“Well, when I was a student you had a third less boys here.”

“Yeah,” Reed nodded. “Yes, that is something. This place has changed.”

Then he said, “You know that’s not why I’m here.”

“You’re checking in on me.”

“I am checking in on you,” Andy Reed said, his long bare feet moving against each other as he leaned against the door frame.

“I went to see Ben. Forrester.”

“Right, Right.”

“And then I went down to apologize to… Swann. Swann Portis.”

“Is there another Swann?”

Jack shook his head.

“I don’t know.

“And I know you never liked him, but—”

“No,” Andy said, standing straighter. “That’s not it at all.”

Jack laughed and said, “Well, tell it to Swann if you ever see him again because the Portis family is pretty sure of your hatred.”

“Well, Douglass poisoned his class, but… No, I never hated either of them. That’s not true. I just… Well, this isn’t really about them.”

“No,” Jack agreed. “I ruined my friendship with Swann because I was afraid I was harming him, and pushing him away did more harm.”

Jack loved Father Reed deeply, but he spoke in euphemisms with him. He was ninety-nine percent sure that Reed understood everything, but he couldn’t tell a priest, no matter how close he was to him, that he and Swann had slept together.

“And… Everything is better now?” Reed said.

“Not exactly.”

What Andy Reed, called in religious life Father Basil Chrysostom, a name he had almost immediately dispensed with, wanted to say was that he just never knew how to talk to Swann or his cousin for that matter, that they were too much like Prynne, whom he loved, but whom he also feared, and had feared a lot when they were teenagers. Those boys had made him feel awkward, reminded him of what he had been. Whenever he had dealt with either one of them he felt angry and caught up short, and then mad at himself for not being able to measure up to children who spoke to him like they were old men.

“Swann made me promise to tell you something,” Jack said.

“Oh?”

“Do you remember all those years ago… When Father Mc.Kindley was sent away. And Prynne came to all of us and asked us to say if something had happened to us.”

“Yes,” Andy said, frowning and crossing his arms over his chest so that his biceps rose.

“I didn’t come and tell. I was… I didn’t speak up.”

Because there were rules about such things, Andy Reed said, “Do I have your permission to enter?”

Jack nodded, and of course Andy left the door open. The priest, who looked surprisingly young, more thirty than his forty-seven years, sat on the side of the bed beside his old student.

“I kept it inside and told no one, and it has screwed with me ever since.”

Andy nodded.

“You know,” he said, “when it happened to me… Not from Mc.Kindley, from someone else, I kept it inside. I was twice the age you are now, almost, before I told anyone.”

Jack looked at Father Reed in surprise, and his old track coach nodded.

“You’re not alone, Jack. You’re not the only one.”

Jack shook his head, feeling sick.

“I actually wish I was.”





The perfunctory knock followed by Sal’s head around the door greeted Swann not five minutes after he’d gotten back into Dwenger.

“Were you waiting for me?”

“Yeah,” Sal said. “A little.”

Sal came in the room and stood there looking like Ed Sullivan, hands in his pockets, brown knit.

“You wanna get in the shower?”

“I was actually thinking about just going to sleep.”

“Get in the shower with me.”

“Alright.”

Sal said almost everything in a casual way, but by now, and Swann had to remember they hadn’t really known each other that long, they knew what the other meant, and how to respond. Swann prepared to undress while Sal went across the hall, and returned a moment later, a long towel hanging from the hips of his long slender body and he said,

“It’s been a long day,” he said.

They shared the heat of the stall, and every time Swann thought of speaking he realized he hardly had the energy for it. He had the energy to stand under hot water and scrub himself, and he had the energy to run a soapy cloth over Mark’s shoulders, his back, his stomach and chest, down below to his private places. To kiss him and hold him and be held and be scrubbed and stand under the water together, embracing until they went back to his room and lay naked together on the bed and Sal said, “I’m gonna show you something.”

“Okay?” Swann, lying face down, eyes closed in the pillow said.

“It’s called making a pizza.”

“Is that a sex term?”

Sal grunted a laugh and Swann could almost see him shaking his head.

“It’s a … It’s a romantic thing. It’s when you can’t fall asleep, someone makes a pizza on your back.”

“That sounds messy.”

“Shut up. So first, you knead the dough.”

And Swann had never felt Sal’s fingers on his back, rubbing out the stress and the ache of the day. The last person to rub his back had been Pete, and half of him pictured Pete Agalathagos, his honey colored hair in his face, over his glasses, saying in his staccato voice, “You gotta a lot of tension in you.”

But Sal only said, “You knead and knead the dough till its nice and tender…”

And Swann pushed the memories out of his mind so he could be right here, and feel the fullness of Sal’s hands, his strong fingertips, the weight of their heels, the weight of his love and affection.

“And then after this, you have to spread the sauce, spread the sauce.”

“It’s not the first time you’ve spread your sauce on me.”

Sal choked on a laugh, doubling over, and they both chuckled for more time than they expected. The joke wasn’t even that funny, but when one heard the other they would start up all over again, and then Sal straddled him again and the weight of his body and Sal’s sex resting on the cleft of his ass, Sal’s hands and the scent of soap on his freshly washed skin made Swann sigh as Sal’s hands moved over his skin and he whispered, laughing only once, “Spread the sauce. Spread the sauce.”

Surely he had not learned this from Joe, no matter how close the two of them had been. Had his mother done this? But then she would have done a much shorter, much less intimate pizza making. No. Courtney. For a moment the part of Swann’s mind that could never relax imagined all the girls Sal had slept with, all the sighing cheerleaders who had taken him to bed, and Sal felt Swann tensing up.

“And then you put the cheese and the pepperoni on. You like sausage?”

When Swann laughed darkly, Sal shrugged and said, “I didn’t even mean it like that. You make everything dirty.”

“Thank you.”

Sal stopped and said, “A penny for your thoughts?”

“Huh?”

“My granddad used to say it. It means—”

“I know what it means.”

“You got really tense for a minute. You wanna talk to me?”

“While you’re naked and straddling me?”

“Is there a better time?”

“It really isn’t worth talking about.”

“I wish you’d let me be the judge of that.”

“I was thinking about Courtney.”

“Who?”

“Your ex.”

“Oh? What the fuck for?”

“Cause she probably did this for you. Her or one of the hers before you.”

“Okay?” Sal said, sounding confused.

“I was just… I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” Sal said, continuing to rub Swann’s back, “cause when we’re together I don’t think about Chris or Jack. Or Pete.”

“Cause you know them.”

“Or Joe.”

“Its different. I’m not a woman, and it always feels like… If you were with those girls… and I don’t even know them… how can you be with me? And like being with me? And if I think about it—”

“I’d rather you not think about it.”

“But that’s a whole part of you I don’t know anything about.”

Sal’s hands stopped rubbing Swann’s back.

“My mind is weird,” Swann said, “and I shouldn’t have…”

“No,” Sal said, lying across Swann now so that his cheek touched the back of his head.

“I get it.”

“I’m glad you do, cause I don’t.”

Sal sighed a half chuckle and pressed himself against Swann.

“Can we make love?” Sal asked. “We’re both so tired, and so frazzled and this whole day…. Can we just…?”

Swann, already under Sal, reached into his dresser and pulled out a bottle of lube. He handed it to Sal and said, “So is this like spreading extra sauce?”

Kneeling, Sal poured the lube onto his penis and was surprised by how erect he was, how much harder he became.

“I love you, you know that?”

“You never let me say it first,” Swann said as they both adjusted.

“I promise,” Sal said, his voice changing as he pressed inside of Swann and Swann let out a gasp, tensed, relaxed at the press of his entry, “next time…. Fuck!…. I will.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great start to the chapter. Poor Jack, at least he isn’t alone even if he wishes he was. Good to get some more of Swann and Sal together. I like their dynamic and hope they stay together. At least for a while. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon.

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great start to the chapter. Poor Jack, at least he isn’t alone even if he wishes he was. Good to get some more of Swann and Sal together. I like their dynamic and hope they stay together. At least for a while. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon.

I'm not going to bullshit you and make you worry about shit you don't have to: Sal and Swann are not splitting up. They maybe have a complicated relationship, but they aren't splitting.

 

[ChrisGibson]

The sex was fast, Sal almost alarmed by his hardness, the sensation in his cock and the need to fuck. When he came, it was in jolts that seized his body again and again, and Swann whimpered, each jolt striking him while Sal crammed Swann with his seed. They lay together exhausted under the amber lights, like rag dolls, and Sal fell asleep almost immediately, his penis still hard, still inside Swann. Swann squeezed, feeling Sal in him, and thought he’d be awake forever until he realized he was waking up, and the two of them were in each other’s arms, had been gently moving about in the night, finding new ways to hold onto each other, and now who knew what time it was? And Sal’s head was between his legs, sucking him, and he lay half awake, blinking at the ceiling the color of a stormy day. And then Sal straddled his chest and Swann sighed as Sal sat on him, eyes widening.

They belonged together. They understood each other in the flesh and into the black pools of their eyes piercing on another while Swann felt himself coming, grunted and moaned through clenched teeth, shooting into Sal. But Sal shook and made a low noise and Swann closed his eyes as his stomach, his chest, his chin, his lips, were showered in the heat of his boyfriend’s second coming.

After this they shut off the amber lights and lay in absolute darkness, holding each other.

“I love you,” Swann said. “I wanted to beat you do it this time.”

Sal’s lips pressed against his.

“I’m really happy right now,” said Sal.

“I can still feel you in me.”

“I can feel you in me,” Swann said. “We might both be walking weird tomorrow on our way to class.”

Sal laughed very low and said, his mouth pressed to Swann’s chest, “Now, you can’t tell me that anything we just did made you think of my ex girlfriends.”

“No,” Swann shook his head, “No, definitely not.”

“Courtney slapped the shit out of me the other day.”

“What? You didn’t tell me.”

“It kind of slipped my mind.”

“Slipped your—”

“Listen,” Sal pressed a finger to Swann’s lips. “Me and Joe were crossing the quad and she sees us and slaps me and calls me a lying deceptive faggot, and then says, ‘You used me’, and she spits in my face and walks away.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. She was right.”

Swann half way wanted to laugh, but only half way. The two of them stretched, yawning, bunching their bodies, and held onto each other the way lovers do. Sal said, “I could do this for a hundred years.”

Then he said, “Let’s not go to class tomorrow. Let’s just have an us today.”

“You had me at let’s not go to class,” Swann said.

“An us day. What do you want to do?”

“Primarily?” Sal said, pulling the covers up over the both of them, “You.”



“I can’t believe they’re fucking everything up in the chapel. I almost feel like we should report it to someone, except it’s the monks who are doing it,” Ben said in amazement as they sat on the steps of the abbey.

The ancient oak doors had been taken down and replaced with lighter wood ones with great glass panes by which they could see into the vestibule, and where there had been three old doors in plaster that concealed the chapel of Our Lady of the Angels from view, now a low wall with a glass window was being put in.. The old blue carpet and the statue of the Infant of Prague had been removed to reveal flagstones, and the other day the solemn statue of the Blessed Virgin that guarded the way into the school and the New Dormitory had been removed, followed by the one of Saint Joseph that led to the new dormitory.

“I don’t know,” Tommy Prynne shrugged, “it looks airier, nicer. Not all fusty and stuffed up.”

“Well, I hope they don’t change everything,” Andy said. “I heard of this one convent where the nuns kept changing their habits until they were in mini skirts and then they just didn’t have habits anymore.”

“Are you sure about that?” Prynne raised an eyebrow.

“Tommy, I’m serious. They’re going to change everything.”

“Well,” Ben said, “my dad says here they’re not that serious about changing everything cause some churches started doing all that at least a year ago, and we’re just getting around to it. Why, at my Dad’s church, they took down the whole altar and just put up a table.”

“Ugh!” Prynne shuddered.

“I dunno,” Ben shrugged. “Maybe it’s a good thing Knock out all the mystery.”

“I don’t want all the mystery knocked out of it,” Andy said. “I want the mystery. I don’t know if I even like going to Mass now.”

“Now that you can understand what they’re saying?” Luis joked.

Andy scowled at him.

“I could always understand what they were saying.”

“Of course you could, you’re the abbot’s nephew. You’re practically a monk yourself.”

“That’s not quite the way it works,” Andy said, turning around and looking into the chapel.

“I honestly don’t think they’re going to do too much,” Prynne said, “Not here. The monks wouldn’t stand for it.”

“They still pray in Latin,” Jason Keller said, finally glad to have something to add to the conversation.

“I was talking to Brother Benedict and he told me they wouldn’t give up Latin for their prayers or for Mass. They just do the English service for us.”

“And to make the bishop happy.”

“But the altar…” Andy almost moaned.

Sophomore year had been a year of shocks. Teenagers were not naturally less conservative. Sometimes they wanted what they were used to. Coming back to school from their various homes where the churches had been making the slow changes allowed—or ordered—by the Vatican, they returned to the hot chapel with its giant whirring fans to discover two of the saints’ grottos closed—owing to the fact that Saint Philomena and Saint Christopher no longer existed—new overly bright lanterns and entirely too much sunlight owing to the glass front in the chapel and the two geometric stain glass windows on either side of the old rose window.

“They’d always been there,” Andy informed them of those new windows. But before they’d held two other now non existent saints, and those had been removed—taken to the basement—and replaced with clear pastel shapes.

The opening school Mass had all sorts of hymns, and the gradual and the antiphon were gone, so the boys stumbled through the English service as if it were a second language. The high altar was considerably less high, less crowded by angels and saints and rows of monstrances and relics, pressed further back now, and for the first time they saw the full size of the sanctuary, and Father Merrill, now facing the congregation, presided over a bare wooden table, painfully chanting in English.

“It’s weird,” Prynne said. “Even the Episcopalians don’t do that, but what if it’s all just a big show?”

“Show?” Andy said.

“Revolution from the top down? How’s that work? What if while we’re squabbling about saying Agnus Dei or Lamb of God, and all the old folks are losing their shit—and some of the young ones too—the real issues aren’t even looked at?”

“Like what?” Andy looked curious.

“Like sex,” Ben said.

“Birth control,” Prynne said. “The role of women. An apology for the Church’s complicity in the slave trade.”

“And in Fascism,” Jason said again,

Prynne nodded. “Franco in Spain, Mussolini. And even Hitler. The Vatican was in bed with them the whole time.”

“And Jews—” Ben said
“Exactly,” said Prynne. “Especially Jews. I mean, the things that were in the Good Friday service!”

“What was in the Good Friday service?” Ben said.

“Uh… stuff that if you didn’t know Latin you might miss.”

Ben sensed that this was the only answer he was going to get out of his best friend, and Andy said, “Well, then, I hope that as long as they’re pulling down statues and putting up coffee tables for altars they take care of the real stuff too.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! Some hot sex scenes between Sal and Swann and in contrast some interesting talk of the church and mass at the end. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

AND NOW THE CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER FIVE....



Ben looked nervous that morning, and Tommy knew the time to ask was when they were alone. They parted from the others and headed to chemistry where Ben pulled him into the lavatory. The large room was airy with open windows and a good place to hide despite the smell of ammonia and diluted urine.

“You wanna come to the drug store with me after classes?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Great,” Ben said in a tone like it wasn’t great. He pushed his marmalade hair out of his face, looking nervous and guilty.

“I just… I just hate going alone. I feel like they’re looking at me.”

“They are looking at you,” Tommy said.

“We can’t wear our uniforms.”

“We could.”

“Prynne!”

“But we won’t.”

“I’m serious. It’s not funny.”

“Benji, if you want, give me the money and I’ll buy them.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”

Ben actually looked like he might say yes, then he shook his head and said, “No, if I can’t get my own…”

“Condoms.”

“Don’t say that!”

“They’re condoms, Ben.”

“You know what?” Ben said, a little irritated. “You act so cavalier about things, but that’s only cause it’s my life and you’re still a virgin.”

“Well, you’re probably right, but if you’re this nervous, then someone has to be a little carefree no matter what the reason.”

“My cousin gave me a pack, and I’ve got like one left.”

“How much are you doing it? Don’t look at me like that.”

“You just…. You say stuff that…”

“How is it that you’re more uptight than I am, and you’re the one who’s…?”

“Shut up, will you,” Ben punched him, kind of hard actually.

The door opened and two of Dennis Lorry’s henchmen, Donald Copernic and Casper Jacks came in.

“Hey, Tommy, I left a little something for you at your door.”

Tommy raised an eyebrow and said, ‘Alright’, while Donald and Casper laughed and then turned to the urinal trough and started pissing.

“Do you want to go to the dorm?”

“We don’t have time,” Tommy shook his head.

Tommy looked at this piss trough and doorless bathroom stalls and said, “While they’re getting rid of grottos and putting up coffee tables, they could change some of this too.”

“For sure, and I didn’t mean to punch you,” Ben said.

He motioned for them to go out into the hallway. Domenic and Casper walked past them, laughing like villains, and while they trumped to class he said, “It was just I get tired of pulling out or being afraid I didn’t pull out soon enough. A baby…. Disgracing a girl…. That’s a big deal.”

“Yes, it is. And it’s a big deal that a pregnant girl with no husband has to be a disgrace,” Tommy said as they headed into the class room, “especially since a pregnant girl with no husband is the very basis of Catholicism.”



“Tommy be careful,” Ben said when they were on their way back to their dorm room.

The usual suspects were cackling, and Tommy had been wondering what would greet him when he finally came home. Dennis Lorry, Dominic and Casper along with other old enemies were standing around in mock innocence when Tommy found the noose on his door handle.

“Hey, Tommy,” Dennis said, “how’s it… hanging.”

“You son of a bitch,” Ben leapt at them, but Tommy caught his friend’s shoulder, and shook his head.

“That’s not the way,” he said, calmly opening the door and walking inside.

“That’s right, it’s not the way,” Dominic sang. “We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall over come—”

Ben shut the door in his face.

“Okay so, apparently they had to hang around here to make sure no one took it off. They probably had to take it off themselves every few minutes,” Tommy said. “That’s at least one sign that we’re not in the Stone Age.”

“How can you be so calm!” Ben demanded. “You can’t just sit there and take that.”

“You’re right,” Tommy said, holding the noose in his hand.

“You still got Bernadette’s phone number?”

“Yeah… And… what the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“Just give it to me and let’s go get your stuff.”

Still frowning, Ben opened up his leather satchel and pulled out a notebook and a Biro.



The story of the noose had made it around the school with less laughter than Dennis Lorry and his friends had hoped for, and Ben, Jason and Andy were in a corner of the lounge watching the Asshole Gang as they called them, and wondering where Tommy was.

“He said he was at play practice,” Jason said.

“Is he really going to do the school play at Saint Anne’s?” Andy wondered.

“Yeah, Sister Eugenia got him to.”

“Sister who?”

“She’s our French teacher,” Ben said. “And she’s actually French.”

“Didn’t everyone here used to be French?” Jason asked.

“I didn’t,” Ben said.

A boy stuck his head in the lounge and shouted: “Call for you, Lorry!”

As Dennis got up, he bowed, and his friends clapped for him and then he came back a moment later and said, “Better get my keys. The lady wants a little rendezvous.”

There was much high fiving, then Dennis strutted out of the lounge. Ben thought he was the kind of bastard who would never bother with a condom.

Dennis had no idea what Ben was thinking, but went whistling to his room to get his jacket and his car keys, and then went strolling out of the school on this clear night, and strutting to his Cadillac. He was singing tunelessly, unable to remember one song so that he immediately switched straight into another, and he opened the car door, sat in the driver’s seat and smiled toothily when the noose slipped over his neck, and his head was pulled violently back while the point of a Bowie knife touched his neck. He felt the bee sting of it, and blood ran down his throat, but when he tried to scream he had no voice and the noose tightened. As he looked into the rearview mirror, the little light there was reflected a pair of spectacles, and slowly he heard the familiar, calm voice of Thomas Prynne.

“This is what a noose does. This is the meaning of it. This is how it feels. Do you like it?”

The voice waited a long time, and then as it tightened and Dennis coughed, Prynne said, “I can’t hear you. Do you like it?”

Dennis grunted something and Tommy said, “I’m thinking about killing you. The way I thought about it when I set you on fire. I thought you would have learned by now, but… no. See, I think you’re the kind of bully that doesn’t really understand how to take it all the way. You don’t have it in you, do you? To take it all the way? But… as you can see…” the knife made a cut down Dennis’s neck, “I do.”

Prynne slackened the noose, and Dennis babbled, “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”

“That’s the thing,” Prynne continued pulling back sharply on the noose. “When these niggers get ideas in their head, they do all sorts of crazy things. Like, you didn’t see this coming did you? Well, I’m going to let you in on the next thing coming, because the next thing will be me slicing you open and then stuffing you in a drunk and driving your white cracker jack ass to the back swamps of Chicago where they’ll never find you. I’ll even do it in this car and leave the car there, But right now. Tonight…. I’m done. Almost.”

The noose slackened and the car door opened, Dennis was still unable to breathe and circles and dots blurred his vision, He was attempting to get up, but the Bowie knife was at his throat again and Prynne, who had reached into the open window with the knife said, “You can keep the noose.”

His footsteps were fading, and by the time Dennis, sitting in his own piss and shit, was able to shakily open the car door and stagger back toward the school, Prynne was well gone.



When Prynne returned, Jason asked, “How was play practice?”

“I wasn’t at play practice.”

“Ben said you were.”

“Ben looked at Prynne, curious.”

“I was taking care of business,” Tommy said. “It’s almost done now.”



Later that night, when they were smoking cigarettes and doing late night homework, bloodcurdling screams echoed down the hall from East Bathroom. Tommy smiled and said, “Now, it’s done.”

The next morning, Domenic, Dennis. Pat, Barry and all of their friends arrived in glasses and went through the school day with red burn marks all over their bodies, the signs that the soap they’d used the night before in the shower was filled with lye, almost as if someone had taken the time to boil and craft it in the even that he would ever need to take a painful revenge for a most unsuitable joke.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great end to the chapter. It was action packed at the end too which is always good. I am enjoying this part of the story a lot and look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great end to the chapter. It was action packed at the end too which is always good. I am enjoying this part of the story a lot and look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Five












For some reason, Joe Stanley felt the need more than usual to knock on the door. In the last month since Doug had come here, it was a cursory thing done before he simply turned the handle or shoved it open and walked right in, but now he waited for an answer, and when he came into Doug’s room, he sat on the side of the bed like someone waiting for an appointment to begin. Doug, at his desk, back turned, scribbling away at homework, looked like someone who was waiting to conduct an appointment, but he didn’t stop working, and finally he said, “Joseph, are you going to just sit there, or are you going to say something?”

When he spoke he reminded Joe of Swann which in turned reminded him of Father Prynne, of some old person putting up with something, but vaguely amused. Doug never seemed younger than him, and sometimes Doug seemed incredibly old.

“I was just…. Wondering if you were ready for bed.”

“No,” Doug said, turning around at last, “I’m in the middle of this paper and I’d like to get it done.”

“Put it off till the deadline.”

Doug looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“No… that was never you. It’s just… you haven’t been in school for like over two years, and, I don’t know…”

“It didn’t magically make me stupid,” Doug said. “Or lazy.”

“I don’t know. I just… I think I got you confused with me.”

“That is a very strange confusion,” Doug said.

“Are we…?” Joe began. Then, “Are you mad at me?”

“For?”

“I dunno. You seem different.”

“I’m not different, Joseph. I’m the same way I always am.”

Doug turned around and jotted something else and then he said, “You know what I think? I think you’re the one who’s different, and you’re putting that off on me.”

When Joe said nothing, Doug said, “You’ve been different all day. Very weird. You want me to be mad because you think there’s something I should be mad about.”

Joe felt caught out and stupid, and he said. “You… You may have a point.”

“Do you want me to be mad because while I was out shrooming at the stars last night, when we were all high, you went back to your dorm room and had sex with Sal and my cousin?”

Joe’s eyes bulged, but he didn’t say anything because he was often uncertain of what Doug expected him to say, and there wasn’t a right answer. Well, no, there was a right answer, and the right answer was the truth.

“Yes,” Joe said. “It kind of just happened.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Doug chuckled darkly. “I doubt that very much. Joseph, that’s the very thing you’ve wanted since the day you started talking to Swann.”

“Do we need to talk about this?”

“Yes,” Doug said, “we clearly do.”

“Are you…?”

Joe stood up, looking impatient and short and said, “I don’t know where I am with you. Are you…. Mad? Or amused? Or…. What?”

“Do you want me to be mad?”

Doug got up. He walked across the room and held Joe by the shoulders.

“Do you want me to cry and be angry and talk about how you’re my man, and I feel betrayed?”

“Sort of,” Joe said. “Because then I’d understand what we are.”

“What if I told you,” Doug began, rubbing Joe’s shoulders and making him feel that weird way Doug always made him feel, safe, like his dad never had, but turned on, like Sal never had, “what if I told you the whole time I was grinding down shrooms and putting them in juice I thought, let’s see what happens? The wilder the better. Let’s see some magic tonight. Let’s see desire do what it wants? What if I told you I was half passed out swinging over Alpha Centauri and I knew you all were with each other. And… and I was happy about it?”

Doug’s hand caressed Joe’s face and while he spoke.

“What if I said I imagined Swann and Sal and they were kissing those lips, and those eyes and touching that soft hair, running their hands over your chest, and touching you here, and…. I was excited. I liked it. I came in my own hands thinking about it.”

Doug kissed Joe and his lips burned into him and when they pulled away, Joe felt weak with their presence, drunk with Doug like he often did.

Doug looked down where Joe was pitching a tent in his jogging pants.

“Turn out the light, Joseph.”

“You wanna….?” Joe said, feeling half dazed.

“Reach behind you, baby, and turn out the light.”

“Doug…” Joe shook his head, trying to come back to a normal place so they could have a normal discussion about fidelity. He felt high all over again.

“We need to talk. We need to think about what last night means.”

Doug nodded, smiling pleasantly, almost predatorily. Finally, with a slight maneuver, he turned out the light.

In the dark, while Doug lifted his shirt, and pulled down his joggers, before Joe’s penis was taken into the heat of Doug’s mouth, he heard him say, “Think about it while you fuck me.”





They were at the retreat Doug didn’t want to go to, the one that Mike had talked him into, his junior year, Mike’s senior year, and all the old crowd was gone. The weirdness his classmates felt about Doug Perrin, the suspicion they held him in was untempered now with the absence of Swann and Chris and the older boys. It was, at least from where Mike stood, a rough year for his friend, and Mike wasn’t the kind of senior he wanted to be. He wasn’t the senior people looked up to. He was, unfortunately, the kind of person who read the room and then succumbed to its temperature.

They had been hiking through the woods, something Doug knew well. Where others stumbled, he never did. Where others got poison ivy, his hands were unaffected. He picked berries off the trees and ate them without regard. He gathered roots and leaves into bags knowing just what they were.

He still had the swollen lip from the fight last week.

Brian Gorman cried out as if he wasn’t six foot four, nearly screaming at what they found in the woods.

“What the fuck is that? Pat Iorio demanded.

Junior Lorry said, “I’m getting the fuck out of here, and there was general shouting, but no one really knew how to get back except Doug and so, eventually, they began saying, “Come on, Perrin, what do we do? Where do we go? Fucking wake up, Perrin! Goddamn, Perrin, don’t be such a fag.”

Mike was listening to them, because the part of him that wanted to say shut up to them all suddenly turned on Doug. That part said, “Damnit, Doug, stop fucking around.”

But Doug Perrin didn’t pay attention to any of them. He walked across what was barely a clearing, pulling his feet from the vines and branches they were submerged in and he came to the skeleton with its decaying clothes, its face hidden by underbrush. As if entranced, he lifted the green branches and the old ones to reveal a scene that made half the boys vomit.

A great deer, with an enormous rack had, instead of running from a man, run at him, and they both died here, the rusty gun the instrument of deer’s execution. His rack and skull where locked with the chest of the man, and now Doug worked with the body while one of the boys said, “The police’ll want that, you idiot.”

There was a snapping, and a cracking, and Doug pulled off the antlers, and then he reached into the dead man and pulled out something else. It dimly glittered in the dying day and Mike was enraged, enraged that Doug was putting them through this, enraged at being friends and having to distance himself from someone so weird.. He was enraged at vomiting while Doug held in one hand, the antler rack and in another a bloody necklace of teeth.

Holding the necklace to the sun, he slipped it over his neck, and then ignoring the others, he began marching on the way home. The angry boys followed and he tramped singular, ahead of them. Then he turned around

“Jeff?” he said to Jeff Mahon, who had shouted to him, ‘Come on faggot.’

“What?” Jeff said belligerently.

“This place, where we stand? Remember it.”

Jeff blinked at him, frowning.

Doug said, “You’ll die here.”

And then he turned around and kept walking.

No one said anything to him for the rest of the trip, and this was only a month before he poisoned the majority of them and then left Saint Francis, never to return until Garrett’s funeral a few months back.



In what would have been Doug’s senior year they went back for a retreat and Mike, having graduated, was a councilor. Ben Forrester was there too, and Jeff Mahon and some other boys had gone into the woods strictly because they’d been told not to. They’d been told not to because it was hunting season and none of them had on bright colors, so when the boys came running back with a band of anxious, repentant hunters, Mike already knew that Jeff Mahon had been shot.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“But how did you feel?” Joe asked when they both lay naked in the dark, on their stomachs, heads pillowed on their arms.

“Strange,” Doug said, “like a plucked string. But also vindicated. And then… I never liked Jeff. He was such a shit.”

“And Mike.”

“He’s in love with me. He always was.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“It’s hard to say what it is with him. But when I spent time with him you have to give me the same freedom I gave you with Swann. With Sal.”

“Are you going to—”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Doug yawned sleepily and turned to Joe placing his arms around him, drawing Joe to him before he said:

“And that’s really my point.”





That night, the dream Swann had of Chris was so real it was painful. They were on a train together, but it wasn’t the South Shore. The desert was passing by them and the sky went from day to night, stars cartwheeling, and clouds shuttling past. He didn’t know what Chris was saying, and it didn’t matter because the two of them never had to talk. Even when he woke, he remembered the touch of his hand. It felt so very real, and he turned on his side and looked at Sal sleeping. Why did no one ever say this? The more he loved Sal, the more he thought of Chris, because if there was such a thing as a soulmate then Chris Navarro was it. There couldn’t be another one. And then here was Sal, and they seemed to not have very much in common, or at least this is what they told each other, and suddenly with Sal, all the short forms which existed between him and Chris were there too. The nod of his head, the half spoken sentence, the touch of the hand that went from lips to chest, to heart, and descended to the rest of the body. Listening to someone talk, saying ridiculous bullshit, your eyes found each other and then turned away to stop laughing. He lay under the thick covers examining Sal, and hearing his breathing, smelling his breath, and he thought of Chris.

Sometimes thoughts of love filled him with fear. There had been those moments, especially after the death of his father when he thought, “I love the person so much who is so real and breathing next to me. So delicate. Irrational fears of death plagued him. But right now, in the semi grey light, he looked at the waves in Sal’s hair, his strong forehead, his bow shaped mouth, his straight nose, square shoulders, the curve of his biceps, and he lay on his side and thought, “It doesn’t matter. Even if he’s dead right now we’re alive forever.”

In the back of his mind the old scripture he had never quite believed materialized.



Perfect love casts out all fear.



Sophomore year, Chris was driving him to Benton, and after what had happened in the SUV on the side of the road, they reached his house. It was snowing. It was the first big snow. He had the photos Chris’s dad had taken, and Chris had been mad because he unzipped his pants and let Swann fellate him. He’d been mad at himself because he’d been planning out their first time and it was supposed to happen when they had all of their shit together and none of their baggage, when Chris wasn’t still banging girls and Swann wasn’t banging whoever.

But that first night together, they didn’t really talk about it. They just had dinner and fell asleep on the sofa in the living room. The basement was still being finished, so that first time they stayed in Chris’s old room which was on the first floor, down the hall from the living room.

“I feel so gross and sticky,” Swann said when he woke up close to midnight.

“You can shower first and I’ll go next,” Chris said.

“If we were at school there would be plenty of shower stalls and we could both go.”

“I’m a dummy. We can both go now. I’ll just use the one upstairs.”

Swann had been drying himself and quickly wrapped his towel about him when Chris came in from his shower, the towel hanging low around his waist.

He laughed.

“We’ve seen each other before, haven’t we?”

Swann did not say that the only time he sort of remembering seeing Chris or probably being seen was when both of them were having sex with other people.

Chris slowly unwrapped the towel from around him and shrugged as he dropped it. But even when his eyes laughed, his groin didn’t lie, and Swann didn’t take his eyes from it. He put down the towel and came to Chris and Chris bent down and kissed him. They wrapped their arms tight around each other, squeezing and kissing as much as they could and Swann said, “That door?”

“Locked,” Chris’s voice came between kisses.

“Light on or light off?”

“I want to see you,” Swann said.

As they went to the bed, tangling together, Chris breathed, “Me too.”

Sal reminded him of even that first time, after all the hedging and wondering if you should or shouldn’t, when you gave yourself to someone else while the snow fell, the shadows taking the shapes of your bodies’ lovemaking and painting them on the walls.

Early in the morning, like this morning, he and Chris lay together, and before Chris could say it, Swann said, “All this means is I love you. It doesn’t mean we’re together, or that we have to be this way when we go back to school.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to be a couple,” Chris said.

“We don’t have to be. Yet. We can be ourselves. Just keep being us.”

Us meant that Jack came home two nights later, and for several days Swann stayed in his bed. Us meant that he knew Chris had a hard on for the girl across the street and one night returned from Jack’s to find Chris quick fucking her. The one thing about having sex with Chris is when it was happening, he couldn’t see Chris having sex, and he loved to watch his body, lean and strong, white like marble, flexing, buttocks clenching as he fucked. It turned him on to watch Chris and the girl. A year later, when they were truly together, there was no time for any of this. Swann wondered if they should have always remained simply friends. After all, had they done so there would never have come that day when he’d taken the back of his hand across Chris Navarro’s face and drawn blood, or the long spaces of time when they were nothing to each other.

On one of the last nights when they were fucking, Chris said, “I think I know two guys at school who do this too?”

“I think you know more than two,” Swann laughed.

“Sal Goode and Joe Stanley. I’m pretty sure they’re like us. Best friends who…”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Chris grunted as he fucked him and with each pump said,. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”



So there was Sal Goode in jeans and a flannel, still looking a little bit like an insolent GQ model. He wondered, what would it look like to watch him fuck a woman? He’s fucked a lot. What would it be like to watch his body flexing and plowing into Courtney?

“You’ve got that look,” Sal said, grinning. “What are you thinking?”

In his mind he saw Sal’s buttocks flexing, the dimple in them pronounced, saw him licking his lips the way he did, while he slammed against some screaming girl, fucking her harder and harder and….

Swann shrugged and shook his head innocently.

Sometimes it was better to keep your thoughts to yourself.



By ten o’ clock Michael Buren was out of his first class, and he had been up since five. Every morning he jogged around Lincoln Park, and then had breakfast, dressed in ratty clothing, and jogged to campus. It was harder in the winter, but eventually he didn’t care. The chill did him good and he had been cold all his life. After all, he was from northern Indiana. In the rec center he dipped in the shower and swam a few lengths before a proper shower and dress up, heading to his econ class.

Mike was well liked, but he didn’t have friends. He didn’t mind it either. It was just that so much of his life he had spent trying to have friends, and trying to be liked, and actual friends were a lot of work. Most people were up for a facsimile of friendship and he didn’t really want to indulge that. He was pleasant, kind, helpful, volunteered as a tutor, offered to be there if he should be needed, and then got the hell out. Lately, and he had to laugh at this, he finally warranted the attention of girls. But most of the girls who liked him were Freshmen (freshwomen?) and shy. Michael had begun to realize it was some guys who liked him as well, and this was harder because he was trying to be a different person now, someone whose head couldn’t be turned, someone who wouldn’t hurt people. The attention of an attractive guy or even a not so attractive guy might end with them in bed and by necessity in deception, and he was through with deceiving people.

He was finished with his morning load of classes by 12:30, and went to the cafeteria where he ate something more or less suitable. The food was so good. He wasn’t sure if it was good for you, but it did taste great, and hell, he could jog home anyway, or put it to use in the weight room. He’d go home after this. He was a little yawny. Today he had one last business class that was at six in the evening. But then he only had one class tomorrow so… well, you had to see the good in things.

He could not see the good in this cup of coffee he was sipping. He frowned and pushed it away.

 

[ChrisGibson]

At home he lit a stick of incense, and placed it before the granite Buddha he’d bought last year. He slipped off his gym shoes and hoodie, and folding his legs under him even as he yawned, he decided to meditate for a few minutes.

He took the stone beads from the table or from the altar—he guessed it was like an altar—and slipped them through his fingers. Doug had always had altars. For a moment he nodded off. His mind stopped working, stopped that furious running and he settled into himself. It didn’t matter if he fell asleep here or not. The incense was sweet, the day was sweet, having a quiet mind was sweet.

At this point, a part of him always imagined an invisible audience and he wanted to turn to them and say, “No disrespect to Jesus at all.”

And it wasn’t that he hated Catholicism or Jesus, only that one day after many years of trying to follow both he had found this. It wasn’t even that it was hard to be a good Catholic. It was actually sort of easy, but these things in him, these things he didn’t like, didn’t go away, there was no way to take care of the parts of him that were poisonous. By the time Mike was eighteen he realized he didn’t like himself at all, and by the time he was nineteen he understood he never really had. There was something very, very wrong in him, and calling it sin and confessing it didn’t quite help. Church didn’t do anything about it. Neither did belief or unbelief. But he’d started to read some books, and do a little chanting and not tell anyone about it. Well, there wasn’t really anyone to tell, and he decided to change. It seemed easy. It wasn’t easy. He didn’t really know how to talk about the last two years of his life. He slowly began to realize he liked himself. It was a strange feeling, and one he didn’t think of as important, because he respected himself, and that was new. What was more, looking back on the boy he had been, he stopped being ashamed of him and felt sad, like he wished he’d been able to help him, or shake him, or talk to him or maybe even hug him.

He remembered Swann Portis, when he was a senior. Michael was a junior, tramping through the halls in a snug turtleneck, having just developed shoulders and a chest, laughing too loud with his swim team friends.

“Some people are bad,” Swann had said in his usual level tone.

“You’re not, though. You’re a jerk these days, Mike, but it’s just because there’s no one around to tell you to stop being a jerk. So… stop being a jerk.”

He had said it so calmly, and it cut deep, and Mike had been back to being his decent self, the one people had been used to. But after Swann was gone there was no one to tell him to stop being a jerk. Jerkiness ran deep in him. There was no one to tell him to not be so hung up on other peoples’ opinions and not be so needy of friends, to remember his loyalties. The closest reminder he had was the day Doug Perrin had turned around, bloody teeth hanging from his neck and a rack of antlers in his hand, and told Jeff Mahon, “You’ll die in this place.”

Mike snapped awake. The room smelled like bergamot and the incense stick was burned out. He climbed onto his bed and shrugged off his clothes, setting his alarm clock for 4:30. In his Jockeys, he lay like a fetus, and though it was winter and the curtains were open to let in light, the strength of the radiators was such that he didn’t need a blanket. When he had just awakened, the past was so vividly with him that his heart hurt. Shame, regret, none of those went away in an instant, and there was no reason they should. He had dreamed of Doug, and the truth was he felt so strongly about Doug that his heart always hurt him. But he had dreamed about that last time he’d seen Doug, before Doug was expelled. It had been the opposite of his finest hour, and it still hurt Mike to think about it.

Ben. Ben is who you’re with. Ben is who’s coming over tomorrow. It’s Ben you’re going to be making love to. He’s who you should think about it.

Just the other day, he and Ben had known intense sex right here, in this bed, and as the two of them quaked in the aftermath and Mike kissed him, knowing they’d go for another round and one after that, Doug Perrin was on his mind.

He was startled to find the stone prayer beads were still in his hand. They were cool and heavy and rough and he thought of putting them on the bedside table, then blinked at the ceiling and tried to think of nothing at all.

 

[CharmedFan28]

I had forgotten you posted earlier this week before the latest posts, sorry about that. These were excellent portions and they really made me think. This is such a complex story and I love it! Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I had forgotten you posted earlier this week before the latest posts, sorry about that. These were excellent portions and they really made me think. This is such a complex story and I love it! Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

Oh, I just saw this. That makes me so happy!

 

[ChrisGibson]

When the phone rang, Doug was surprised because he rarely got phone calls, but since he rarely made them, he thought it could only be about five people.

“Hello?”

“Douglass Perrin.”

“Michael.”

“Yep.”

“Aren’t you on your way to class or something?”

“Or something,” he said, “I’m slipping my shoes on.”

“Be careful out there. It’s probably icy.”

“A little. Thank you, though. Didn’t we just talk yesterday?”

“Damn, boy, are you that sick of me.”

“Did you just say, damn boy?”

“I was trying out something new. Did it work?”

“Almost.”

“Damn, boy,” Mike tried it again.

“You’ll get there.”

“You’ll let me know?”

“Yes,”

“Right now I just sound really white when I say it.”

“I’m not going to tell you that you don’t.”

“So, hey,” Mike said, “I was just thinking about… the past.
”Don’t do that, Michael.”

Mike chuckled.

“I was thinking I used to not be so great.”

“True.”

“That’s when you’re supposed to say, ‘No Mike, you were better than you think, and you had a few rough moments, but deep inside you’ve always been a lovely guy.’”

Silence.

“Not gonna give it to me?”

“I’d like to believe our relationship is based on truth,” Doug said.

“You’re cruel.”

“Yes.”

“Not wrong, but cruel. I just wanted to say…”

“You’re doing a lot of shuffling around.”

“I’m going to my last class.”

“I really don’t like the idea of you running around in the middle of the night—”

“God, Doug, it’s like five.”

“In wintertime Chicago. Where its dark at four.”

Doug stopped himself from saying, “And you’re little, and no matter how strong and fit you are, things can still happen.”

Mike really wasn’t that little. He had been. He seemed it. They were the same height now.

“I promise, promise, promise to be safe,” Mike said. “But listen, before I go… goddamn.”

“What?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“Just say it quickly.”

“I love you.”

“Oh!”

“I love you, and you pop up in my thoughts, and I… I’ve tried to be a better person, a good person, a peaceful person, a person who isn’t disturbed and doesn’t have crazy thoughts, but you’re the crazy thought that keeps popping up. You’re the irrational thing in my head, and I’m fine with that. I’m happy about that. I am in love with you, just like I was when we were kids and I didn’t know how to… how to tell you, and it’s been bugging me all day that I didn’t tell you last night. So… yeah.”

“Michael?”

“Yeah?”

“I know you don’t like to, I know you’re super vain about your hair, and you should be, I love your hair, but would you please put your knit cap on. And a scarf, and some damn gloves.”

Mike laughed so low it was inaudible.

“I will. I promise.”

“I love every part of you,” Doug said, “every little bit of you, okay?”

Doug was always able to, without effort, unplug wells of emotion from Michael that he couldn’t understand. He only had to say one thing and Mike felt undone.

“You’re making me cry.”

“Well,” Doug said, placidly, “if you don’t want to catch cold, then you should probably stop crying before you go to class, alright?”

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Six





























“That’s fucked up,” Sal said.

The good thing about Sal was when he drove he never took his eyes from the road. He wasn’t one of those people who looked away and made broad gestures and took his hands off the wheel. He looked considerably angry right now, though, and said, “Can I get a cigarette?”

“Were you smoking before we were together?”

“Not really.”

“I feel like I’m dragging you down into my world of unhealth.”

“If it helps, before we got together I was having indiscriminate sex with people I didn’t like and getting fall down drunk three times a week, so I’m probably healthier now.”

“Good point.”

Swann handed him a cigarette and lit it for him, and Sal said, “I promise I’ll get you a new pack since I’ve been mooching off of yours. It just feels like if I’m bumming off of you I’m not a smoker yet.”

“You don’t need to pay me back.”

Sal exhaled and leaned on the steering wheel, gesturing with the cigarette.

“So this priest was like… he was here right before us?”

“Yeah. Prynne got rid of him two years before we came.”

“So we would have been in sixth grade. You know, my mom brought me and Joe to see Saint Francis for the first time when we were in seventh grade. Everyone seemed so happy. Prynne was the one who showed us the place. We knew we wanted to go there. And to think…”

“Yeah.”

“Should we go see Jack?”

“And say what? Sorry you got molested by an old man?”

“God, Swann! I mean, Jack was our friend. He was my friend. He was your…”

“First boyfriend.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know that bit.”

Swann shrugged.

“I thought Chris was your first. Well, guess we’re just going to have to sleep with Jack too.”

Swann looked at Sal.

He laughed,

“I’m just joking. God!”

And then as they drove Sal, a small smile on his face, said, “Well, sort of joking. I mean, in the back of my mind I always wondered about Jack.”

Sal started laughing.

He said, “You know what, ever since I stopped pretending to be someone I wasn’t, stopped all this trying to sleep with girls and being this complicated bisexual, a lot of feelings are coming up in me.”

“You mean you want to bang a lot of dudes.”

“Kind of!” Sal said. “Or do we not want to talk about this?”

“No, please do talk about it.”

“Good because…. You’re my best friend. I mean, I mean, I can say boyfriend, but like, I’ve been a boyfriend and you don’t have to love someone or trust them to be their boyfriend and I feel like I can tell you anything. I feel like I don’t have to lie to you.”

Swann nodded.

“Swann!”

“What?”

“Do you get what that means?”

“Yeah. Yes, Sal, I do.”

“I lie all the time. I lied all the time, and I never told the truth and the truth is if you say you wanna go to the moon without a helmet or oxygen, then I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself from following you. If you say let’s jump off a cliff, then I’m right there.”

“That’s just dumb.”

“But I’m dumb about you, Swann,” Sal said, hitting the horn.

“I’m fucking dumb about you. But at the same time…”

“Ahhh!”

“Ahhh, what?”

“You want to fuck other people.”

“I wanna fuck other guys.”

Then Sal said, “Not like, in an active way. Not like I’m sitting around scheming to sleep with other people because you’re not enough. It’s just that my eyes are open all of a sudden, and I’m looking and seeing and having feelings—feelings that I’m npt denying or not ashamed of—for the first time.”

“Sal?”

“Yeah?”

“If you ever see a guy you like who likes you, you can tell me.”

“So far I just kind of like the guys you’re with,” Sal said.

“But if it changes.”

“And you liked being with me and Joe. That was… I think all three of us wanted that bad. And I kind of want it to happen again.”

Swann nodded.

“And when you brought up Jack…”

“Yeah?”

“I thought I’d feel jealous, but I didn’t feel jealous. I felt like… I hope you all sleep together cause I kind of want to hear about it… Or even… Join in. Does that make me awful?”

Swann frowned and said, “I think it makes us have the same brain.”



Sal was not Chris, not at all, and yet, here he was beside him, feeling those same ways he had with Chris. Maybe real love was bound in secrets. Maybe a real love was about being with someone who not only refused to judge you for your dark desires, but shared and abetted them. Back in high school, when he came back from winter break, Jill was officially with Jim Hanna and she told some of the things they had done, but Swann did not say he’d slept with Chris for the last three weeks, and he didn’t say he’d slept with Jack during Christmas and then lain hidden in Chris’s bedroom watching him with girls. Later, he would tell bits and pieces of this truth, but not then.

Returning to school he remembered Pete, Pete who was hard bodied and a man when he was just a sophomore, and who had touched his thigh so gently and slept nude in the next room, Pete who the covers slipped from in the night to reveal his smooth shoulders, the path of his spine down his back, his beautiful buttocks like hills and his long thighs.

And there was Chuck. Swann was afraid of his own desire and he had been away from Chuck for so long. His green dragonish eyes, and his flaring nostrils made Swann feel like the virgin ready to be consumed. But he was no virgin, and he couldn’t resist him, and when Chuck knew, in so many words, that Chris was in on it, that he wanted to watch, when Chuck remembered that last time, feeling Chris’s hands on his body, he crept into their room late at night, and while Swann lay in bed, biting down on a shirt or a pillow while he took in all of Chuck, when he opened his eyes he could see the dim form of Chris pushing the partition away, or standing behind Chuck, rubbing Chuck’s sides, placing his cock gently on the cleft of Chuck’s ass so that while Chuck pushed inside of him, Chris pushed against Chuck, and though he and Chris were not making love, and Chuck claimed to be straight, his mouth reached up hungrily for Chris’s kisses.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a well done long portion. A lot of characters are doing soul searching about the past and their current lives. I am glad Sal is so honest with Swann. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a well done long portion. A lot of characters are doing soul searching about the past and their current lives. I am glad Sal is so honest with Swann. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

I didn't even see your reply to the story. Yes, a lot is going on, and most of it is internal, and a lot of people, Sal especially, are having to be honest about their lives for the first time.