The Colossus of Rhodes

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great conclusion to Flesh! I am glad Jayson was honest with Anne about what happened with Beth. I hope you have a great night and day too and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It was a deeply weird night, but good in its own way. Let's all try to get some rest for the next couple of days. Have a good one. I'll see you again soon.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WHAT COMES AFTER

RYAN AND JAYSON LAUJINESSE ​

Less than three months out of school I knew it was time to take some sort of control of my life. I’d had all of this time to think and I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do beyond this writing class Cecile had set up for me.
I was so tired, am so tired, really still have no idea where I am going. I don’t want to pretend to know either. I am not in a hurry to run and grab another degree, jump through hoops for another two years and then find myself standing right here again at twenty-six, going, “What now?”
Right now is my what now phase, and I don’t want to repeat it.

I found myself doing something I never thought I’d do.
I deliberately lied to my parents.
I’d never just out and out planned to lie to them. Yes, I’d done it. Doesn’t everybody? But this was usually when they asked me a question I didn’t want to answer. Usually I did what’s called a lie of omission. I just didn’t say things. I let them figure out what was going on. I went on about my business.
This day I lied.
I came down into the kitchen the Sunday before enrollment, and said, “Mom and Dad, City University wrote me. They really want me. They’re giving me a scholarship for eighteen thousand dollars.”
“What?” Mom put a hand to her mouth. I think for a while she’d been wondering if she’d done the right thing, the way she’d raised me. Now she was sure.
“Yeah,” I said. I could hear myself. I could see the proud look on Gus’s face. I was lying so effortlessly. But I’d done this before, right? Only not to my mother and father.

“You really think I’m beautiful?” she said while the music was thumping through the wall into the little closet we were in.
My hand was under her skirt. It was flimsy and shimmering. My fingers went to the thin cord of her thong.
“Yeah,” I told her.

“That’s a big offer,” Gus said in a way that meant you could tell he was wondering if it was or wasn’t. It was more a question because Gus went through a few years of school and then quit. He lucked out and got a great job working for Balliol Steel, the Saint Anne’s County Division.
“Yeah,” I told him.
“That’s great.” He was relieved. I could see how relieved he was. “That’s just great, son.”
It was like he had been a balloon, but instead of helium he’d been sucking up anxiety and now it was all leaking out of him. I hadn’t seen it until now. It had made him snappish.
Jayson was sitting at the table, and he didn’t say anything. Later on he came into my room without knocking. The door was open and I was slipping on my sandals.
Jayson shut the door, and cocked his head, looking up at me with interest.
“What?” I said.
“You are such a fucking liar.”
The look on my face must have said, “How do you know?” because he said, “You’re my brother. That’s how I know.”
“Look,” I said, reaching behind me for the old dress shirt that I wore open on over my tee. “I’m not ready to jump into all those hoops again. I just want to jump through this one and not worry about a job or money. So...”
Jayson put up his hand.
“Do you see me telling Mom and Dad? Do you hear me accusing you? You do what you have to do. That’s why I’m not living it up at Princeton or Yale right now.”
I sat on the bed so that now I was looking up at my brother and said, “That’s right How come you didn’t do that?”
“It was Scooter’s life. That was Kris’s life. Not mine. I’ve been borrowing from their lives a long while now. I need to find my life. You know?”
“I know exactly.” I said.
“So you’re paying for this one class?”
“Cecile is,” I said.
“Did you know?” Jayson said, “That if you enrolled for more than one class, you know, became a real student, then they really would give you some money? You’d probably never have to be all poor and shit again.”
I just stared at him in amazement.
“I know these things,” he said.

Saint Clare’s is a beautiful college. It’s hidden behind green trees and fountains with old brick buildings and a little church, so I have nothing against small schools.
City College, which is really City University of Rhodes, is not like that. It is smack in the middle of the city in a district called Little Soho. You come down Raflin Street and there are all these old stores, a potpourri shop, a Catholic bookstore, a palm reader and a Taekwando school. You see these weird fabulous looking hippies walking up and down alongside these really thug ass Black kids with jeans down to their asses and dreadlocks. I don’t know if I should be afraid or not.
Across the street is Washington High School and their new track, and then in the middle of this is the concrete administrative building and for two blocks jutting behind it is the campus. I’ve never set foot on the campus before and I’ve got a kinda sorta weird feeling about it. The steps to the administrative building are cracked. They really need to be redone and I think, we would never let the steps crack in Colorado.
As I’m going into the Admin Building, who should be coming out but, Sara Gallagher?
“Ryan!” Christopher is beside her. She looks genuinely happy to see me. I have a touch of vertigo looking at the kid, thinking: it’s Black, so it can’t be mine. But... we could have had a kid. If we weren’t safe, if things had failed.
“Hey, Sara!”
“Aren’t you excited?” she said.
I could tell she meant it too.
But to be honest, I wasn’t totally excited. Not in the happy go lucky sense that she was. I looked around Raflin Street witth the people coming up and down, and to the unattractive pillars of the Admin Building. I was afraid.

NO POSTING TOMORROW, MORE AFTER THE WEEKEND. ENJOY HALLOWEEN!!!

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to get back to this story! I love all your stories but its always nice to have a change sometimes. Have a great weekend and a happy Halloween!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm just kind of sorry to post the first few pages then be like, bye, have a nice weekend. but thanks for reading and it is nice to come back to Rhodes.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WHAT COMES AFTER: CONCLUSION


Cecile did not make it a secret that she was glad to have her four hundred dollars back. She loves the look and the feel and the touch of money, and so I gave it back to her in twenties and she actually rubbed it over her face.
That night, after my first class, I came over to the Walkers. I climbed up the side of the house into Cecile’s room and she helped me through the window. She said, “How was it?”
I didn’t answer for a while, and then I said, “Well, it’s got potential.”
“Hum?” she said. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Cile,” I stretched out across the bed yawning, “I just kept thinking: why am I here? I shouldn’t be here. These are the biggest bunch of losers I’ve ever met. I mean, remember the burnouts at Whitman?”
“Well yeah.”
“All the body piercings, the black, the bad skin, the bad smells, the sallow expressions?”
“Makes me misty just thinking about it.”
“Well, think of those burnouts as.... ten times better than what I met tonight. And these folks want to be writers. It’s so fucking sad, Cile. And then I think, ‘And I want to be a writer.’ That’s just as funny. I’m really nervous right now,” I confessed. “By the way, I saw Sara at City earlier.”
“She told me.”
“Do you tell each other everything?”
“Close to it. So you wanna hear about my day waiting tables?”
“Waiting tables? I thought… the play?”
“I thought I’d try out waitressing too,” Cecile shrugged. “Wonder if I’ll keep at it.”
“And?”
“Well, not that much to tell,” she shrugged, stretching her arms back and yawning. “Got some nice tips. Some trucker came in and grabbed my ass.”
“What!”
“Siddown, Ryan. I took care of it.”
“You told your boss?”
“I burnt him with my cigarette.”
For a long time we lay there in that tiredness that won’t let you sleep. You know it. Tiredness fills up your body like a toxin, and you’ve got all the stress and the worry and the heartache of the day inside of you. But it’s not rushing through you. It’s sort of constipated, and you want to rest, but you can’t.
Cecile is beside me. Now and again her hands make to touch mine and then pull away. Finally she leans toward my ear and whispers, “Make me over, Ryan.”
But I’m so tired right now.
“Make me over,” she whispers again and touches my shoulder.
“I want to,” I tell her. “But I don’t know if I can.”
After a while I say it again.
“I want to Cile; help me out.”
With a struggle she turns on her side a little, stroking my hair. Her hands are on my shoulder, and then one hand is gone and my cargo shorts are being unzipped. The zipper is loud to me and I feel myself growing even before her hand is there kneading me. Making me bigger, making all the pain and the stress melt down to that one place.
Now I move. I turn over, my dick hard. She helps me struggle out of my shorts and helps me with the tee shirt. A few moments later, with the window open and the smell of late summer coming through the screen we are there again.
Making each other over.

JAYSON


That night when I come back from my date with Siona, I’m surprised that Kevin Nelson is here. Now that my brother’s all back home in school and unfit for the real world, or at least for his real world, Kevin Nelson is here almost every night, and he says, “So little Jay Jay’s the stud, now.”
I don’t think Kevin means to be annoying, he just is. I’ve known him my whole life. As long as there’s been a life I’ve had a big brother and his best friend, in various phases of annoyance, has been Kevin Nelson.
“Pretty soon you’ll be breaking off a piece of that, Smooth Man,” he says and offers his hand up for a high five.
I “leave him hanging” which is what he accuses me of, and Ryan, sounding as if he’s the one annoyed says, “Shut up, Kev,” while I head up to my room.
After Kevin’s gone, there’s a tap on my door and Ryan sticks his head around. He looks like this big bear or something and he says, “Whazzup, Sport?”
“Nothing,” I say. It’s a warm night. It’s a great night. School’s just started and it’s so much better than I thought it would be. No having to be up at this or that time, all these new people. I’ m a grown up but I didn’t have to leave home. Life is really good right now, but what the hell does my brother want?
“You should ignore Kevin. He’s stupid,” Ryan says.
“Yeah, I know that. I was wondering when you’d figure it out.”
He chuckles and sits on the edge of the bed while I undress. He’s my brother so I don’t care. I pull off my briefs and switch into the mesh shorts I wear around the house all the time when it’s still warm, and pull on this old ratty tee shirt with bleach stains. It used to say, “Saint Antonin’s Parish, a Family,” but most of the the lettering is gone now.
“You know, Jayson,” Ryan says, “Kevin’s wrong about all that... Breaking off a piece. You shouldn’t listen to him. You just be like you are. Okay?”
I look at him strange. Does he think I’m gay or something? No, he can’t. He just saw me come back with Siona. Besides, gay guys have sex. Efrem’s never without a man.
“I mean,” Ryan says, “when you have your first time, you should think sensibly and.… Be careful. And all that.”
I look at him, and before I can put any kind of mask on, Ryan sees something and his mouth hangs a little open.
“Oh, my God,” he says.
“What?”
And then he says, “Jay, you’re not a virgin, are you?”
This is so uncomfortable.
“No…. Not really,” I say.
“When?”
Aren’t big brothers supposed to clap you on the back and take you out for a drink or something? Isn’t this supposed to be the moment of passage? Instead Ryan looks like my mom or something. He looks like Anne did. He’s totally horrified and shit and I’m wondering where he gets off cause I think he was about fourteen when he started having sex. But I say:
“About two years back. A little after my sixteenth birthday.”
“Oh,” he says. I guess he doesn’t know what else to say. Then he does.
“Who with? No, nevermind. That’s not my business. It’s just... I didn’t know you had a girlfriend back then. I must have been really out of the loop. What was up two years ago?”
He’s muttering to himself and then he says, “Oh... that’s what was up two years ago.”
And then I say, real fast, “It was Scooter’s sister.”
“What?” Ryan looks confused. “Scott doesn’t have any kid sisters.”
And then there is a new look on his face. He looks like I just fed him dogshit mixed with chocolate pudding.
“Not Beth…” he whispers, shaking his head.
And when I don’t say anything he says: “Christ, Jay. What the fuck? What happened? What...”
He’s sick now, and angry, and I’m scared. But he’s not angry with me.
“What happened?” He’s breathless. “What the... She was too old. You were a kid. Christ, you’re still a kid. What was going on? Why? What? You didn’t go after her did you?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. You mean, she went after you? Was it? Was it after I broke up with her?”
“Yeah,” and then I say. “It started the day after you broke up with her.”
He looks really sick right now. I feel really sick right now. I remember that however I felt after that the first time when Beth did that, I felt like something was being done to me. I felt... not right about the whole thing. And now that Ryan knows I’m totally ashamed about it all.
“Christ!” he says. “Shit! Christ…
“Jay,” his voice sounds like he’s a little kid asking to go to the bathroom. He sounds really ill.
“Jay,” he says.
“What?”
He looks up at me.
“You’re my little brother,” he says. It doesn’t make any sense.
“I don’t think I would have taken it well no matter how it happened,” he tells me, “But I would have taken it better if it had been now, with Siona and.… Not like this. I wish I’d known. I wish I’d been around for it. I wish...”
“Were there roses and candy and all that your first time?” I asked him.
He laughed that off. “Hell, no.”
“Did you have a big brother to talk about it with?”
“No, but...”
“And was it a shining moment you’ll treasure for the rest of your life?”
“Jay,” he said frankly, “it was in a bathroom against a sink with Jenny Mack. We started at the Animaniacs closing theme song and were finished by the time Power Rangers came on.”
I made an involuntary noise of disgust and then said, “Well, then see. We’re even. We each had to go through stuff alone.”
“Yeah,” he allowed. “But I don’t want that for you, Jayson.”
“What?”
“I’m supposed to be your brother. I’m supposed to be your big brother. I’m supposed to watch out for you. You’re supposed to have someone to do all that.”
“You didn’t.”
“No, I had a little borther, and.… I don’t really know you like I should. I don’t know…” he shrugged. “Hell, I haven’t really known myself. I sort of want that to change. No, I DO want that to change,” he said forcefully. “I... I don’t know if you want to start hanging out or anything. That would probably crowd in on your space and all. But... I want to know when stuff happens. I don’t want you to go through it alone. Does that make any sense?”
After a long while I say: “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How did it feel? I mean with Beth. I don’t know how it was supposed to feel. I—I don’t... know.”
“It was weird,” Ryan said. “I felt... I when I came back home from school I felt like I didn’t know who I was, like this wasn’t home. Like I was trying to get back something. I think I felt lost. And Beth was lost with me. That’s what it felt like. I felt... No, I FEEL—I think, most of my life I’ve felt lost.”
“Does it ever go away?”
“You feel like that too?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Not all the time, but a lot of the time. Like... like someone knows the way, but I’m not that someone. And then I wonder if it was always this way. If I never knew. And I wonder if I’ll ever know again.”
I looked at Ryan for a while. I realized I didn’t expect him to have an answer. For some reason I never really thought he could answer a question like this.
He said: “I think people are funny. I think we look for the wrong things, like answers. Maybe we’re not supposed to be found. Maybe we’re not really lost. Maybe we don’t have to know everything. There are... other things.”
That makes me think. I want to say something, but maybe it will sound stupid when it comes out. But Ryan is here, beside me, quiet like he never is, and he’s already said more and handled more than I ever thought he could. So I try him. Maybe I try myself.
“Ryan?”
“Huh?”
“What if they’re all wrong?”
He looks to me.
“What if we’re not supposed to find Jesus?” I say. “Or Buddha or Enlightenment, you know? Or success. Or even happiness.
“What if we’re supposed to find each other?”

THE END.... TOMORROW NIGHT MORE ROSSFORD AND... THE END OF COLOSSUS OF RHODES

 

[CharmedFan28]

Lots of revelations in today's portion! Sounds like both Jayson and Ryan got a raw deal from Beth. At least Ryan knows now. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, since you read it you know exactly what happened with them and Beth, so that isn't really a surprise, but their mutual knowledge is

 

[CharmedFan28]

Very true, I am glad they had that talk.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I felt like the story couldn't end without it.

 

[ChrisGibson]

HOME


A SORT OF POSTLUDE
​

Ryan has decided to to shovel the driveway for Mama. I told him he doesn’t have to win her over or anything. He shrugs and says, “I know.”
Outside I stand in the garage after helping him unloop the tangled black cord that goes around and around the jiggity snowblower. I plug it in for him but it does not go very far. He goes down half the driveway.
“You can go inside, Cile,” he tells me.
“I know.”
In this weather white people are so white. Ryan’s skin looks so chapped and faded. What would Florida Turner say if she found out I ended up with this? What would she say if I told her I was sure it was going to last. And why does what she would say matter?
I have to replug the snowblower, this time in the socket beside the front door. A red truck comes down Melbourne Street. Ryan is going up and down up and down the driveway. The snowblower is small next to him, tall and wide shouldered, only a few hairs coming out of his winter cap. The sky is blue and I leave myself for a moment.
Usually I think about how powerless I am. Sometimes I get frustrated with worry and inability. I am not like Efrem who never worries. I know he worries, but not like me. I am always shaky with inability. Right now that is gone. What I see is how blue the sky is and how the snow turns to ice when it flies out of the snowblower and hits the light. Ryan is caught up in the work of snowblowing my mother’s driveway. I am caught up in the work of watching, the stuttering whir of the snowblower, the white volcano of snow, the mist at its tip. It comes nearer and nearer and something tells me to get out of the way. But I ignore the something. I stand there as the snowstorm approaches. It gets nearer and nearer. My eyes are on the blue sky, the white snow. I close my eyes and smile a little.


RYAN

Apartment hunting, just up the street from Melbourne. Just a little ways, in fact, from Campus View. Campus View is one of the apartment complexes which promise you can see the steeple of Mc.Cleiss’s Saint Joseph Basilica from its rooms, and the students who love to party love to go there.
I remember college. I remember loving to party which meant loving to turn the volume and the heat up so high, the music so far up that you were blasted out of yourself. It was a good feeling because so many of us didn’t like ourselves. And then you could do anything and we did do anything. Cile and I threaded through Campus View a little bit because the rent was cheap and we knew we could find some apartments that were far from where most students lived.
“I don’t want to live in a complex,” she said. “Besides, everything’s so close up its like living in a rabbit warren.”
“I thought you wanted an apartment? We gotta get an apartment.”
As much as I liked Mrs. Walker I really didn’t see moving into the house with her and now I wondered if Cecile did.
“But a real one,” Cecile said. “One in an old brick building with hardwood floors and--”
“That’ll be expensive.”
“I bet it won’t. Ryan, let’s look.”
So we set to looking. I didn’t know that they had many apartments like that in Rhodes, except maybe near downtown. Over dinner Mrs. Walker said, “On the next block... down the street:” She pointed with her drumstick. “Apartments are right down there.”
“Mama, that’s nothing but old houses.”
“No,” Mrs. Walker told her, “Not that one brick on the corner--”
“That nice house--”
“That nice--apartment building,” Mrs. Walker said.
“Oh, Mama!”
“We’ll go see it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Ryan.”
“Well then Monday. Or I’ll call the realtor or something. After school we’ll go over and get a look.”
“Um,” Cecile murmured, “that means I better take that next part I got offered if we want to pay the rent.”
“A part?” I say the same time Mrs. Walker does.
Cecile gives a pleased smile and says, “Yes. And a commercial. About WIC vouchers. I’ll be an unwed, teenage mother and have to wear no makeup, but... it’s a start.”
.
Everyone rushed through dinner that night. Aaron and Sandy were going to the gambling boat and Jinny and Isaac were going to meet Cecile and Ryan, and then they were all heading off to pick up Efrem and go see a movie. Is
“Well, are you guys getting an apartment,” Aaron pointed his fork first to Jinny and then to Isaac.
“Huh?” Isaac stopped in midbite.
“I mean-” Aaron said, “I just thought....”
They continued to eat, this time a sort of discomfort settling in over them and then finally Isaac said, “Dad, do you want me and Jinny to go or something?”
Aaron’s eyes widened with genuine surprise, “Oh, no! No!” he said.
He looked at Jinny first and then Isaac.
“You all are my lights. I--I can’t imagine not having you here and if--” he looked at Sandy “anything should happen...” Isaac and Jinny assumed Aaron meant marriage or shacking up, and not death-- “I’d think you and Jinny should have all this.”
Isaac sighed with relief.
“Isaac, I just didn’t want to hold you to me or anything. I wanted you to be free. I didn’t want to hold Jinny either,” he looked at his daughter-in-law.
“I thought you’d think if Cecile and Ryan were getting a place before they married then you’d... “
“Want to catch up with the Joneses?” said Jinny, her eyebrow raised.
“Or the Laujinesses,” Aaron shrugged.
“No, Father-in-Law,” Jinny shook her head, “I think we like it fine here, for now. If it’s all right with you.”
“It’s very all right with me,” Aaron said.
And Jinny stretched across the round table, willing her bosom not to fall out, and kissed her father-in-law on the cheek.



Monday afternoon Cecile dragged Ryan from the large living room, through the dining room, down the corridor all the way to the kitchen. They went back up the hallway, this time peeking into the bedrooms, the little bathroom with--
“The lion footed tub,” Cecile gasped, and hit Ryan in the arm.
Above it was a frosted glass window.
“And the heating is excellent,” the landlord said. He was an old man in a beige cardigan that had seen better days.
“And look,” he gestured for them to come into the kitchen, and past it there was a little back porch.
“I didn’t even see it,” Cecile said.
“And you should see what that backyard looks like in the summer,” the landlord continued, “when the ivy and wisteria grow up over the black iron fence. You can look through them at the people walking down the corner. But they can’t see you.”
Cecile, sensing that it was not too good to look too eager, smiled a little Buddha smile to herself and clutched Ryan’s hand tighter. He hadn’t said a great deal.
“I’ll give you all some time to look around,” the landlord said.
They could hear Mr. Hanley’s shoes clacking on the hardwood floors through the emptiness of the sunglazed apartment.
“We’ll think about it,” Cecile shouted after him. “It’s the first thing we’ve seen.”
Ryan looks down at her and said, “You really like this place, don’t you?”
And she did. But the place she lived in didn’t really matter so much as who she lived in it with. And he needed to know that.
“A place is a place and home is home,” Cecile said, squeezing his hand.
“For me--wherever you are… That’s home.”

THE END​

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a very well done ending! I liked how all the characters ended up in this part of the bigger story. Great writing!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, thank you and now you've got the whole story. There is a change I made in one of the stories outside of Colossus about Jinny, and it kind of makes everything make sense, but, for the most part, here is the saga of Rhodes, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.