Simcha

[ChrisGibson]

Efrem Walker’s greatest joy was squeezing himself more compact that the earth, knees lifted nearly to his chest in the heat of that room, thighs, large and strong and brown like a vice around the waist of Isaac Abraham Weaver, using those thighs to urge him deeper and deeper, running his hands over the ivory shoulders like bird’s wings, down the back to the hollow over his flexing ass where sweat gathered. Isaac pushing deeper into him, Isaac’s palms pressed to his shoulders, his neck straining above him, his face arched up, arching down, going pink as those green eyes bore down into him, Efrem was filled with him. In the same moment that Isaac bent to kiss him, Efrem pulled his face down for the kiss.
All worry fled or ceased to matter in these moments while the bed gently creaked back and forth in the apartment of off the Parkway that was Efrem’s, as they kissed things grew not gentler, but rougher, Isaac’s face redder, Efrem’s insistence and shouts, louder, the bed creaking more and more, the thunderous ache going deeper and deeper inside and, at last, Isaac’s fingers sinking like claws while the veins in his red neck struck out and he arched back his head to scream.
The scream was followed by a shuddering holy ghost incomprehension from Efrem, as the seed was rocked from his body. Isaac, out of his him, was still coming, and it was hard to tell whose semen and what wetness jetted over chests. It hardly matter, Isaac, kneeling between his legs, Efrem, thighs still bunched up, both shook in the aftermath of things and it was a long time before either of them moved from their positions, both of them shuddering as, outside of the third story apartment, the sun began to set.
Now they both panted, Isaac reaching down, Efrem up, to rub each other’s arms, to run hands over each other, Efrem bringing Isaac down to hold him. Making space for him, to cradle his damp head. The yellow sun went redder and seemed to melt slowly like a damaged egg yolk.
“You should shower before you go,” Efrem said.
“Are you throwing me out?”
“No, I’m reminding you that it’s late and you need to shower before you go home.”
“I wish I could stay here.”
“That’s a little impossible at the moment.”
“But still,” Isaac said, looking at Efrem’s arm and running a finger across it, “Don’t you ever wish… That I could stay.”
“You have stayed.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do know what you mean,” Efrem said, sitting up a little, because sitting up was the position of reality, and he thought it was best to be real right now, “And it doesn’t do to wish for things that aren’t going to happen. That you aren’t going to do.”
Isaac’s body changed. Isaac’s body had been part of Efrem’s life for…. Actually not as long as he thought. They had been friends firs,t and for a long tiem, tighter than twins. He understood Isaac;s moods totally, and even when they weren’t making lover, they were almost one, so this division, this little irritation, this anger, Efrem felt.
“I asked you,” Isaac said, sitting up, “I asked you the first time we made love if you wanted me to leave her, if you wanted me not to get married. You sat up on your goddamned logical high horse and told me I should.”
“You were a grown ass man and you’re blaming me for making your decisions? Do you even know what you sound like?”
“You said you weren’t ready for us,” Isaac reached for his glasses. Like Efrem he was nearly blind without them. Isaac’s head was always nearly clean shaven, dark as were his square rimmed spectacles. He reached for the pack of Marlboros they’d been smoking before sex. “You said you’d stay with Sean and I should stay with Jinny and—“”
“If you’re just going to sit up and blame me for your bad choices—” Efrem began.
“I am NOT blaming you.” Isaac failed at lighting his cigarette.
“You are,” Efrem, said. He took the cigarette from Isaac’s trembling fingers, calmly lit it, and then returned it to him.
Isaac sat on the edge of the bed, like the Thinking Man, but he was the smoking man and as darkness gathered he took two puffs and the burning cigarette hung, dangerously threatening to ash over Efrem’s new carpet, which he stopped himself from saying.
“I thought the baby was coming,” Efrem said. “I was… Not happy like I should have been, I guess I was resolved. I guess. I’m glad it didn’t come. I’m glad… And that makes me terrible. I’ve been with Jinny since I was thirteen, and I love her. I mean, I do, but I don’t want to be with her anymore. This isn’t right. Not us. I mean, mean and Jinny. It just isn’t right. It was once, but now.”
Isaac ashed his cigarette just in time and Efrem felt like an ass for watching the ash as much as he was watching his best friend…. Uh… his lover. Yes, his lover.
Suddenly, putting the class ashtray on the night stand, his shoulders shaking, Isaac buried his face in hia hands and began to weep. This apartment, Efrem’s first home, with the thick walls and the unobtrusive neighbors, was the first place where they’d allowed themselves to have screaming sex, to give way to all of their feelings. The house of shouts was now the house of weeping, and Efrem climed over the covers and gathered Isaac into his arms.
Sobbing and shaking his head as the night drew one, Isaac wept, “I cant go back, I can’t go back, oh God, I can’t go back.”
The telling his wife, the realizing his wife also had a lover, the fairly amicable divorce, the packing and moving out was all a formality. Moving in with Efrem meant little because, Efrem being his best friend, everyone expected Isaac to go to him anyway. Even the gradual revelation to everyone that Efrem was his lover was almost a formality. This evening, as day darkened tonight, and the room that had been filled with the smell of sweat and sex and cigarette smoke was now filled with weeping was how Isaac Weaver came to the home of Efrem Walker and, at last, the two of them became one couple.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to read some more of Efrem and Isaac! Nice to read how they finally became a couple. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I knew it would be a surprise for you, and I was pacing myself to post it at just the right time.

 

[ChrisGibson]

On a day that Efrem Walker had arbitrarily chosen to be their anniversary, he decided to make Yorkshire puddings. No actual date worked for an anniversary. The first time they’d had sex was after Isaac had found out his mother was a lesbian suicide. Her was very much engaed to Jinny and that didn’t seem like a good date. All of their first times had been under the shadow of an adultery Efrem should have felt worse about than he did, and they day that Isaac had lost his shit and ended up never leaving was also an unfit day, as was the day of Isaac’s divorce. They’d never had a marriage because Efrem was leery of the institution, and so he had chosen, because Isaac was Jewish, if only nominally, Rosh Hoshanah of the year they’d first began to live together and that was the evening of September 15th, so ever after, September 15th was their anniversary.
At first, Efrem had been disappointed in Yorkshire pudding. He reminded himself that British people had a very different concept of pudding—or for that matter good taste—than Americans, and learned how to mix the batter, pour it over hot grease and patiently await the miracle of spongy soufflé like bread. The first time he had made it for himself, nibbling experimentally. He told himself he should not have expected pudding. It was good enough. The good thing about life in the last few years was the explosion of the internet where you could find almost anything, it seemed. There you could click buttons on your computer to be directed to the article for the perfect soufflé. Of course the irritating thing was that people could not leave a damn recipe. No, they had to write an entire article about the making of the thing, the first attempt at the thing the way people loved the old thing and the other recipes that were like it. And then, no one had the same recipe either. But this was a small business and Efrem told himself things could have been worse. Things could have been far more than merely inconvenient, and in many places in his world, they were.
Unlike Christmas, Rosh Hoshanah moved all over the place or, as Isaac explained, it was on a lunar calendar. However it was never far from their anniversary, and Efrem always found a way to add apples or honey to the anniversary dinner.
“You don’t have to cook all the time,” Isaac said. “You know that. I can cook too and give you a rest.”
But the truth was Efrem was the better cook and didn’t want Isaac in his kitchen. He was content for Isaac to do the rest, and they were a couple where the rest was significant, but not overwhelming, for they were not in a hurry to live the life of grown ups. For a very few years they had owned a house, but were too bored and disinterested to care for it. They never knew how to fill more than a few rooms and mostly they filled them with books, cushions, religious statues and prayer beads. There had been an enormous kitchen and they’d put the bed in it so it could face the backyard which became overgrown and earned threats from code enforcement. Squirrels and raccoons lived in the rafters, neighbors annoyed. In the end they tried to rent and when that fell through, with no one buying, the two of them walked away from it until the bank foreclosed.
They did not love money. They needed it, but did not understand it. They had little of it, but assumed in the way of middle class people that, in some way, even if not abundantly, it would always be there. Isaac had the family bookstore and his father and Efrem had a mother and sister. Isaac was a philosophy professor when no one needed philosophy in the patches in jacket and pants which had started as an affectation were simple necessity. Efrem was a tutor and had gone to work with Isaac’s father in the bookstore. They had started out in Efrem;s apartment on Finnalay Parkway, and after the house, lived in a little apartment on Aramy over a junkshop. The radiators screamed in the winter and put out too much heat and during the summer they put old air conditioners in the windows. The bath tub was streaked with rust and good for only showers, and the gas stove and refrigerator were about a hundred years old. Along the walls of the old place were sagging bookshelves made of cinder blocks and old boards.
They were incredibly happy.
Often they ate with Isaac’s ex wife. This was not as strange as one would think. Isaac had known Virginia O’Muil longer than he had known Efrem and Efrem had known her most of his life. His sister was not only her closest friend, but married to her cousin Ryan. Efrem’s neice and nephew called Jinny auntie. What was more, they were all a little tinged by scandal, for the O’Muils were still Catholic enough to not be entirely easy with Jinny’s new husband, Kevin, being an ex priest. Also, Kevin and Virginia had similar ideas about adult life and money. Kevin worked in a soup kitchen and did counciling at Saint Antonin’s and Jinny worked at a day care, so they no richer than the other couple.
What was more, even if Jinny had not told her parents, they suspected, as Isaac knew, that at the same time he had begun sleeping with Efrem, she had begun sleeping with Kevin, that while he’d been saying Mass every day, for a full year and a half he had been sleeping with Jinny, that on the weekend that Isaac had gone off to be with Efrem, Jinny had driven down south to Lassador to be with Kevin. Hypocrisy makes forgiveness hard, but these four people at table were not hypocrites. They were so relieved to know about their mutual sin, to know that the other party had found love, to know they were released from the misery of reception, that they looked back on the past with true laughter, a laughter of thanksgiving, and greeted each other with real joy.
“I need something,” Isaac had said one evening. “I feel foolish because all those years ago I said I would be a good Catholic. I got baptized and everything and it seems not to…. I do hate to say it, but it seems not to be working. Isn’t that an awful thing to think?”
He had not looked at Kevin, but he was sort of addressing the man who, after all, had been a priest. The priests he’d known seemed to have no doubts about anything.
Kevin was similar to Isaac, something efrem had noted, though taller and a little more muscular and less shaven. Efrem grinned to look from one to the other and thing, “Jinny upgraded!”
“I made a choice like that once,” Kevin reminded him. “And I thought I couldn’t change it.”
“But you didn’t leave the Church.”
“No,” Kevin lifted a finger. “But I did break my vow of celibacy several times.”
“Several times?” Jinny raised an eyebrow.
“Several times with you my dead,” he said, blinking through his glasses.
Jinny was never fully convinced of this. But his own admission, Kevin had been no virgin when he’d taken her into his bed, but never mind.
“We have all,” Kevin said heavily, “broken sacred vows to keep other sacred vows and twisted ourselves up in deception in order to keep alive things that probably needed to die.”
“So,” Isaac said after a while. He was wearing a fawn colored jacket and looking very good to Efrem, “you’re saying I should just stop trying…. To be in the Church.”
“I’m saying you should find your way,” Kevin said, “and not somebody else’s.”

As they had prepared for bed, Efrem, coming out of the bathroom with his toothbrush had said, “I don’t even see what the deal is with you. It’s not like you’ve even been to church since the divorce.”
“The deal,” Isaac said the word deal a little harshly, “is that I’ve broken so many promises and reversed so many decisions. I thought I could at least keep this one.”
Efrem had no time for pity. He said, “The interesting thing about the Church of Rome is even when you leave it, it never accepts that. According to Church law, even if you join an ashram, you’re still a Catholic. And you that according to Judaism, you’re always a Jew, no matter what.”
“I’m going to a synagogue,” Isaac said quickly.
“You can,” Efrem said.
“Would you come with me?”
“I will,” Efrem said in a tone that meant, I don’t want to, but I will.


MORE TOMORROW AFTERNOON

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a well done portion! Its so great to get back into the lives of these two. I am glad Isaac is still at least civil with Jinny. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I wanted Isaac and Jinny to have a happy ending. I always imagined that all these friends would still be together no matter what. I love Isaac and Efrem and I always knew I'd return to them in the end.

 

[ChrisGibson]

They went on Saturday morning, Efrem was put off by the lack of cars in the parking lot, but Isaac explained. It was always a little like this.”
Isaac moved toward a little door, and Efrem thought there should be a bigger door.
“There is,” Isaac said, “and a main lobby. But unless things have changed, they really use this door next to the parking lot.
They had to ring the doorbell, and Isaac said, “I had forgotten about that.”
A middle aged man opened the door. Isaac thought to himself, “Nervous Jew,” and wondered if he looked like a nervous Jew.
“We’re here… for service,” Isaac said. Efrem only nodded.
The man let them in and said, “We’re all in the chapel and let them through a little lobby and past a cloak room.
“Get yourselves a book,” the man said, showing them to some very large blue books with English and Hebrew letters inscribed in gold. “We’re all right in here,” he said, pushing through stain glass doors.
Isaac handed Efrem a book and said, “Can I admit that I’m glad you’re here.”
“Are you going to grab a tallit?” Efrem said.
“Nope.”
“I’m glad you remembered the headcovering thing.”
“I have no idea how I found two kippahs so quickly. I haven’t worn these in years.”
Efrem looked about. “Does it look familiar?”
“Not really,” Isaac said.
Of course when Isaac had come he had been a holiday Jew. He’d gone to synagogue school to learn enough for his bar mitzvah and he had come on the big days, gathering in the large hall.
“I’ll show it to you later I can,” he said.
With an intimate gesture, his hand light on Efrem’s hip, he guided him into the chapel.
It reminded Isaac of a hospital chapel except that there was a gilded cupboard, an ark that houses the Torah. There was also a youngish large nosed bespectacled rabbi, a very Jewish looking rabbi, Isaac thought, who looked like he was trying to be warm and engaging. Some of these people didn’t look like Jews at all, which was a relief. Isaac had never asked himself why he’d stopped… well. No, why he had never been interested in Judaism, why he had never pressed his father very hard about how lapsed they were. Now he realized, at least to him, it was a religion of the look. How much did he look like what he was supposed to be. How much did he want to be. To be vaguely Jewish looking was one thing, to be all out Jewey… He was thinking too much, and aware that he was thinking nonsense.
His thoughts were interrupted by the gently swaying rabbi strumming his folk guitar and saying, “You can find the text on page sixty five of the Mishkin T’filah. Ma Tovu.”
Everyone else knew it. Efrem could pick up on a tune, and he stopped himself from swaying, as some were doing in their seats, and began to sing, “Ma Tovu, Ma Tovu, ohalekha Ya'akov, mishk'notekha Yisra'el.”
It was syrupy and sweet, but Efrem more or less liked it. He felt like he liked it better than Isaac. There was something off about the rabbi whom Efrem could only thing of as not as nice or liberal as he seemed to be, and there were snacks after the service and they all talked awhile. Isaac seemed more evasive than usual and Efrem said, “ My husband was bar mitzvahed here. Here wanted to show me the main sanctuary. That a problem?”
Rabbi Michael blinked a couple of times, put on a smile, breathed and said, “Not at all.”
“Well, then come on, lover,” Efrem directed the taciturn Isaac away.
“You called me your husband,” Isaac almost hissed as they went up the incline to the doors of the sanctuary.
“We’re getting a little long in the tooth for you to be a boyfriend, partners seems too business like, and we were never very good at business. I hope you weren’t trying to be in the closet for that man. He’s supposed to be liberal anyway. See he keeps leering at those lesbians?”
Suddenly Isaac almost roughly pushed Efrem against the sanctuary door and they fell into the large auditorium. Isaac kissed him hard and said, “I am honored to be your husband Efrem Walker, and I want to hear you say it again and again and again.”
“Very well, Efrem pulled Isaac’s head to his in the large sanctuary, to that their foreheads were touching.
“Husband. Husband. Husband.”

They kept going, not because they liked Or Chadash synagogue so very much. Rabbi Feldstein was smarmy and insincere and seemed to be hitting on the women and tolerating them. There were very few people who came to services and it seemed to only matter if they paid their yearly dues and sent their children to Sunday School. Everything felt a little… Episcopalian, Efrem said. Antiseptic. Isaac had the strong feeling that he would not have gone by himself. He despised the rabbi’s folk guitar.
But they went because, in what they heard from people who came occasionally, or from very old members, there was a glimpse of something more. What they met at Or Chadash Reform hinted at more and it was a more that Isaac wished for, but was no sure he was ready to undertake.
“Usually we go to the Conservative synagogue,” a woman said. “We thought we’d try a little something different.”
Efrem was always the more talkative person, the one who easily had conversations with other people.
“How do you like it?” he asked.
“It’s alright,” her husband said, tilting his hand.
A woman named Miriam said, “This is just fine, but if you go to the South Side in the Orthodox neighborhood, there’s something for real.”
“I’m actually,” Isaac began to admit, “a little afraid of them.”
“I am too,” Miriam said, “but it looks like so much fun, It looks like the real thing.”
Efrem, always one to see into the heart of things, returned from a day out and decided to not comment on how the lights were out in the apartment even though it was approaching evening. Isaac was hunched over his desk, ruining his eyesight as he read his student’s papers and Efrem came behind him and set a book on his head.
Isaac shook and the book fell into his hands.
“What the hell, Ef? Oh, what’s this?” He answered his own question, “It’s a Siddur.”
“Not a Mishkin Tafillah or that thing they use at the Conservative synagogue, but a straight up Ashkenazi siddur for the Ashkenazi in my life, and had you noticed the last two syllables in Ashkenazi are… Nazi?”
“I had not,” Isaac said, grinning more because he loved Efrem very much than because of that observation.
“Oh…. It’s got the pronunciations!” Isaac said.
“Yes… transliterations. I know you did your bar mitzvah and all, but I thought your Hebrew would be a little rusty.”
“Oh,” Isaac said, tenderly, standing up and wrapping his arm around Efrem as he kissed him, “Thank you, my lover.”
Then he said, “We’re not going back to Or Chadash, are we?”
“The only proper movement,” Efrem declared, “is the movement forward.”

They were, as so few are, in a state of joy. And maybe this is because they had suffered in another time, or maybe it was because as long as they had been friends they had been trying to be good and honest people and truth had been a friend. They were still, more or less boys, only recently in their thirties and they held onto life lightly. When Isaac’s aunt Hannah died, she willed him and Ef, was very sure to include Ef, her little almost cabin in the almost woods. It was toward Grasshouse, on the outskirts of town, a bungalow that resembled something kids slept in at summer camp. They sat on the front porch barefoot, smoking cigarettes, handrolled and otherwise, or sometimes something strong, getting high and looking at the tall trees while Isaac sang:

Mizmor shir leyom hashabbat.
Tov lehodot Ladonai, ulzamer leshimcha elyon.
Lehagid baboker chasdecha ve-emunatcha,
baleylot.
Alei asor va-alei-navel; alei heegayon bekinor.
Ki simachtani adonai befoalecha; bema'asei yadecha aranen.
Ma-gadlu ma'asecha Adonai, meod, amku machshevotecha.
Ish ba'ar lo yeda, uchsil lo yavin et zot.

Isaac had a fine tenor voice. They both did and they could harmonize together beautifully. At a Conservative synagogue they were bound to be accepted, and at High Street Orthodox, much like in a good old fashioned Catholic church, no questions were asked. Women sand from the balconies and there were only men in the main sanctuary so Isaac’s arm around Ef meant nothing.

MORE AFTER THE WEEKEND (ps Matt, give me some posting guidelines, will your reading be limited or not at all after tomorrow?)

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to read about some religion in this portion! From tomorrow my reading will be limited. I will try to read when I can but internet is limited where I am going. So if you don't hear from me don't worry I will try to read and comment when I can. As I said in my comment on Rossford I may not be reading much at all it just depends how busy I am. If I don't post much, I hope you have a good week and I will be home Wednesday night your time.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I hope you have an amazing time Matt, and I will post slower for the next few days

 

[CharmedFan28]

Thanks!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That very first time at High Street, when they had no intentions at all of having the absolute rest that the Talmud required, they went out hiking in thick socks, shorts and staves with their walking packs. They’d gone higher and higher in the hills, to the glorious trees until Efrem began kissing Isaac down the back of his neck. Isaac had laughed to himself wile Efrem had taken down his shorts and had him against the street. He rejoiced in the day, in the feel of the sycamore skin against his check, in Ef’s arms about him, Ef inside of him, his strong thighs clashing against him. He had reached back to caress Efrem’s ass, heavy and and firm, and they had moved together quickly. It was over as quickly as it had begun, the two of them laughing.
“Stay in me until you finish coming,” Isaac said. “I want to carry you in me awhile.”
The first part of their lives had been so lonely, so controlled, and Efrem was always in order. He loved when Efrem was out of order, when Efrem was fucking him, growling into his ear and when, in the moment of orgasm he lost control and his hands flew up, his voice made that cry.
Hand and hand making sure not to stumble over stones, they had walked on and come to a creek. Isaac looked around to see if anyone was there and told Efrem, “Shield me.”
He squatted in the river to clean himself, to release Efrem’s see, and decided he didn’t want to dress again.
“Come on in,” Isaac laughed, beckoning Efrem.
“It has got to be freezing.”
“No,” Isaac shook his head. “It still feels like summer.”
Efrem, unsure of this and unsure of being seen, undressed quickly and plunged into the white water only to scream.
“You lied.”
“I did,” I said calmly. “You get warmer if you swim.”
And so they swam in the current and climbed out of the water and onto moss under trees, laughing and tangling themselves in each other’s arms, they made love again and dressed and went home.
They had been in a state of joy that day, and they were in one now, some years later, an Orthodox Jew and an honorary one, in their mid thirties, with a pack of strong cigarettes and a bag of marijuana between them, barefoot on the porch of their almost cabin in the almost woods when to their mild surprise, a black truck roared off of the road, headed toward them, crashed mildly into the oak tree at the front of the property, and out of the passenger’s seat reeled the tall, curly haired, scarecrow figure of Michael Cleveland, and from the driver’s seat climbed a man who looked like and unlike Efrem, and who they both knew to be Jay Strickland.

“Ahavat Olam A-ha-vat O-lam beit Yis-ra-eil
a-m'cha a-hav-ta.
To-rah u-mits-vot, chu-kim u-mish-pa-tim, o-ta-nu li-ma-d'ta.
Al kein A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu b'shawch-vei-nu u-v'ku-mei-nu
na-si-ach b'chu-ke-cha v'nis-mach b'div-rei to-ra-te-cha
u-v'mitz-vo-te-cha
l'o-lam va-ed.
Ki heim cha-yei-nu, v'o-rech ya-mei-nu u'va-hem neh-geh
yo-mam va-lai-la o V'a-ha-va-t'cha al ta-sir mi-me-nu l'o-la-mim.
Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai, o-heiv a-mo Yis-ra-eil.”


The first time Jay Strickland had heard of Michael’s cousin, Isaac was the first time he and Michael had lain together, the day of Tony Fabian’s funeral. It was the day that Jay had felt like he and Michael were not just the only two best friends who had become lover, but the only two people in the world, period. Isaac and Efrem had come down to visit them, once, for Isaac was cousin ot Michael’s mother, and it had been Efrem, very direct, who had said, “You have a good spirit about you. If any of this gets heavy for you. You must come up.”

Isaac and Efrem sang:
“Sh'ma Yis-ra-eil, A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu, A-do-nai E-chad!”


The truth was James Strickland had grown up lonely and very middle class, moving from place to place in a small and private family, and he didn’t know what man black people he could talk too, certainly men who he could talk to about being queer, which is what he said.
“Oh, I did not mean about that, though that is a thing,” Efrem said. “It’s a clear as a daylight that Michael inherited depression from his father, and when you’re in love with him, its sort of like being in love with the night.”
“I have it too. A bit.”
“Yes,” Efrem had said. “But then I suppose we all have a bit. That’s what makes the whole thing so dangerous.”

But life caught up with one so, and Jay and Michael had never gotten that chance or, more realistically, taken that chance to make the short journey between Lassador and Rhodes. And then had come the time when things had collapsed between them. Michael went up now and again, and he could come back with the news that Efrem and Isaac were, “Wondering about him.”
“We should go,” Michael had said, “even if we aren’t together like we were. We should go. It would be like a pilgrimage, like going up to Jerusalem.”
“Like a festival?”
“It could be.”
Jay had felt, when they finally did go up, like it was a Day of Atonement. He had been invited and always found a reason not to come, maybe because he didn’t want to explain his life, explain loving Michael, but not being with him, explain his deliberate decision to have sex with as many different men as possible, explain Dalton. But Michael had gone out West to be alone and to get himself together and Jay had come to collect him in the spring of the year, and it had been that time, when they were on their way home they had stopped at Efrem and Isaac’s and Jay had realized he should have done it a long time ago.


THE CONCLUSION WILL COME SOON

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion and I have really enjoyed this story so far! I am sad to read that it’s ending but look forward to whatever you post next and Rossford of course. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Since I'm posting slower, Rossford will come AFTER this story is over. This stale is an end of an era. Do not worry. There will be more stories about more people. I was surprised but glad that you were able to read. Did anything surprise you?

 

[ChrisGibson]

for stale... read tale

 

[CharmedFan28]

Jay surprised me a bit.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I hoped so. I didn't want to say that the last Efrem and Isaac story is also the last Jay and Michael story

 

[ChrisGibson]

Tonight when Jay, ever the bad driver, was startled by Michael’s quick movements and hit the brakes fast just enough to only mildly damage the truck, Efrem and Isaac had barely been surprised and, mildly stoned, had risen slowly from their seats on the porch.
“You,” Isaac had said, giving Jay a warm hug and smelling of cedar wood, “are right on time for Shabbat.”
And now two fat candles were burning at the table, and Isaac was cutting into a roast and Efrem was passing a bowl of steaming mashed potatoes and giving Michael the butter and sour cream.
“Bacon bits are over there.”
“I see you’re not worried about being kosher,” Michael said.
“Oh, no,” Efrem shook his head with a large smile whose calm was more than marijuana could give, “I’m not worried about anything.”
Throughout the evening, guest dropped by, a tall, big boned red headed woman and her equally tall husband, Jinny, Isaac’s ex wife. Later on a girl, woman really, a bandanna tired around her off blondish red hair stopped by without asking and started eating. She lit a cigarette and sat in the big chair.
“Anne,” Michael asked, “Are you still Isaac’s sister in law if he divorced your sister.”
“Of course I am, she said, puffing away on her cigarette, “He didn’t divorce me.”
“And now,” Efrem said, clapping his thighs, “at last, why are you all here. I mean, it’s great you’re here, but you all were not great when you came.”
“They needed a full belly and a rest,” Anne said.
“They may have needed more than that,” Isaac said.
Anne shook her head.
“No one needs more than that.”
Out of Michael had tumbled the whole mad tale, about the whole of that year, the swastikas, the madness, the trash cans burning surrounded by the homeless and finally Lassador burning. How they had left in haste like those in flight, and taken Rulon Nelson with them, but Rulon had learned his ex wife had a child and he had gone back to get the kid. He was in Utah fighting with her every day.
“And who knows but that he won’t come to a bad end anyway,” Jay said.
“He might,” Efrem agreed. “But it isn’t your fault. None of it is. In this world you must do the best you can and move on. It’s good you’ve come to stay.”
“But we haven’t come to stay?” Michael said. “Have we?”
“Why not?” Isaac asked.
“We can’t just…. Run away.”
“But you said that you were running away. Leaving. Staying in Egypt doesn’t make it better, and staring at tragedy doesn’t make it go away.”
“You spent a long time climbing out of a pit,” Efrem added, looking from one to the other, “And now the whole world seems like a pit. But it isn’t, and you know it. The rivers and the trees tell it to you. There’s nothing wrong with settling down with the people who love you and paying more attention to the rivers and the trees than that burning old city.”
“And besides,” Isaac said, Lassador stopped burning, so why shouldn’t you? Sunset tomorrow is the end of the High Holidays, Simchat Torah, stay with us at least for that, and see if the world doesn’t change.”

Around midnight, Anne got up to go home. She was a sister of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the did not live in convents, but two by two. Sister Mags was eighty, which is how Anne preferred it, and waiting up for her safe return.
“Call us when you get home,” Isaac said, standing up to kiss his sister in law on the cheek.
They were right, Michael thought, not only he but Jay had gone through so much to climb out of their own pit. They must not fall into it again. Having risen out of their own misery it was easier to see the misery around them, and yet, if the world was burning, it was also cooling. If things were being wounded, they were also being healed. One had to sit still, live in the tension of it, and wait for a calming wind.
They thought they were going to bed, but bed was a long time coming, and then Michael and Jay went into the shower. They’d thought of going in separately, but that made no sense. The two bedrooms had been one, and either Isaac and Efrem, or Isaac’s aunt had put a thing wall up between them and added a new door. Isaac had changed the sheets in the spare room with the big soft bed, and he settled Jay and Michael in there. When sleep came it came fully.

When sleep fled, it fled fully as well. It fled with a thump on the wall.
Jay Strickland lay awake as the wall was hit once, and then after a while, again, and then more rapidly.
“Ef…” he heard Isaac moan.
The bed bumped the wall again and he heard Isaac murmur, “Oh, Ef. Oh my God, oh baby.”
Jay lay in the bed, listening, his body going hot and now he felt Michael’s hands moving on him and knew Michael was awake as well. He was about to say that they couldn’t, but on the other side of the wall, things grew more frantic. Jay could hear a breathless voice calling out. He removed his shorts and began to make love to Michael, The sex on the other side of the wall urged them on, and soon, in their bed, they were crying out, and when they cried out, the shouts on the other side of the wall grew louder, and when they hit the bed, on the other side, the bed hit more frequently, apparently whatever effort at quiet Efrem and Isaac had been keeping was lost.
Desire urged on desire and though they had begun last, it was Jay who startled himself, startled them all, but a loud cursing shout he could not keep in, by the rocketing shock that took his body after the tension of the last few days. Kneeling over Michael he almost spun out of control, and on the other side of the wall, he heard laughter.
Michael laughed quietly and Jay felt himself chuckling, but the lovemaking continued on both sides of the wall. As the black sky turned grey, eventually all of them succumbed to orgasm, and then to laughter, and then to laughter drifting into quiet and slumber. In time they could smell… eggs? Yes. And bacon. Coffee percolating. It was while the two of them dozed naked together, like spiders limbs coiled in limbs, the sun coming in, that Efrem and Isaac, not knocking, opened the door. Efrem was in his underwear and Isaac was naked as Adam so, though the sun was shining on his ass, Jay felt to innocent to care.
“Breakfast soon, and the Simchat Torah service starts at nine thirty, but we can be there whenever, unless you just want to stay here.”
“We do want to go?” Michael said, stretching and yawning as he and Jay separated.
“Simchat?” Michael said. “I know the Torah part, but I always forget the Simchat.”
“From Simcha,” Isaac pronounced it, “Seem- hah!” a happy sound.
Efrem had gone back to finish breakfast. Jay pulled the sheet over him, but slowly because he was not in a hurry to be covered and neither was Michael. It was as if they’d spent a lifetime being covered up in something and the sunlight and being seen by other people, even Isaac who wore nothing but his glasses, was vital.
“Oh, you mustn’t ever forget Simcha,” Isaac chided, folded his arms across his chest, and crossing one leg over the other, and you certainly can’t live without us. None of us can.”
Half asleep under the light of the sun and its Indian summer heat coming through the bedsheet, eyes closed, Jay Strickland informed his lover:
“Simcha…. Means joy.”

THE END

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a excellent ending! I was wondering what Simcha meant and now I know. Great writing and I look forward to more Rossford soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Ah, dear Matt. Rossford will be the next thing that gets posted. I'll probably post it tomorrow. I'm glad you could be there to see what is, as far as I know, the wrap up to both sets of stories. You are such a great supporter and a wonderful friend.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Thank you! You are a great writer and friend.