The Lights in Room 42

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent start to the chapter. I am glad Swann’s friends look out for him and that they are letting him know how Sal feels. The ending has me excited to see what happens next! Great writing!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was an excellent start to the chapter. I am glad Swann’s friends look out for him and that they are letting him know how Sal feels. The ending has me excited to see what happens next! Great writing!

I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you had a great weekend.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Swann Portis left his door open that evening because he didn’t want anymore knocks on the door, and he was seriously thinking of getting a do not disturb sign. He told himself this was foolish and catty. So much of his life he had felt a little bit lonely, and now here he was trying to be even more alone.
But he didn’t get to drift into this self recrimination because there was a scrabbling of fingertips across the door and then Sal Goode, in a red hoodie and fitted jeans, entered.
“Nina Simone,” he said.
“Huh?”
“I looked that song up. Nina Simone.”
“Oh,” Swann, who was sitting on the floor, sketching said.
“I won’t be psychic,” Sal said. “I wouldn’t want to blow it.”
He made a silly face then, blowing out his cheeks before he slouched down beside Swann and exhaled. He pressed his shoulder into Swann’s and bumped him. Swann politely bumped him back.
Sal hefted his bookbag and said, “I’m going to do my homework here, alright?”
Swann nodded and Sal took out one very large textbook and a notepad and began writing and humming.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sal murmured.
Swann looked at him and then completed: “That pleases me.”



“I love projects and final papers because you get to show off,” Jill Montgomery said. “But I also hate them, because you have to write them.”
They were sitting in Jill’s room that night, and she had a notebook on her lap, but Swann wasn’t even pretending to work.
“Whaddo you think Joe and Sal are doing their papers on?” Jill asked.
Swann had been trying not to talk about them. Aware that he had spent the last month since Garrett’s funeral with Saint Anthony boys and with these Saint Anthony boys in particular. When Jill brought them up he was surprised. But once she had, he only said, “I really don’t know,” which pretended less curiosity than he felt.
Arriving back at Dwenger after traveling across the cold campus, he threw off his coat and bag and scarf and gloves and made a pot of coffee flavored with cocoa, then went across the hall and tapped on Joe and Sal’s door.
“Is it?” Joe’s voice queried.
“Swann.”
“Open,” Joe called.
Swann was surprised to see Joe Stanley in the middle of his room, naked, applying deodorant and then, tossing it on his bed, taking a little aerosol can and shooting body spray all over himself. The room smelled of Axe and and twenty year old boys while, absent mindedly, Joe went to his bureau and started combing his hair.
“I could come back.”
“Why?” Joe shrugged.
And Swann felt like he’d be a real priss, a real moron if he said, “Because you’re naked.”
“Okay,” Swann said, instead.
“Grab a Mountain Dew and have a seat,” Joe said, whistling, while Swann found his seat, watching Joe who said, “Sal’s in the science building, but he’ll be back soon.”
Pleased by his appearance, apparently, Joe turned around and crossed the room, his penis swinging, and Swann realized that even though Joe’s face was silly to some people, or just ordinary, the little guy who was only little next to Sal had a beautiful body, dark complexioned even now in early winter, and if Swann had looked like that he would answer the door naked too. Joe took a jockstrap out from his underwear drawer, pulled it on, and then went to his closet and when he came back he was in sweats and a tee shirt, grinning. He had a bottle of cologne in one hand but was holding out the other.
Swann looked at him.
“Look, I’m a copycat.”
In Joe’s hand, Swann saw a thick, beaten metal ring with a black stone. “I kept seeing your rings so I thought having one would be cool.”
He sprayed cologne on his wrist and behind both ears and Swann said, “I didn’t know how good looking you were.”
“Wha?” Joe Stanley, head cocked, looked merry and sweet and confused.
“I always hated locker rooms ,” Swann said. “I hated taking my clothes off in school. I think I hated my body. Until I wasn’t a virgin, and then even after that it was only for who I was with. I could never just open my door to anyone and walk around naked. I wasn’t going to say anything, but you should always tell somebody the truth. When it’s a good truth. You’re kind of extraordinary looking.”
“Well, now I am embarrassed,” Joe said, slipping on his baseball cap and turned it backward while he sat on the bed with a cola.
“Are you mocking me?”
“You’re hard to mock, Mr. Portis. I mean, you heard me ask who is it, so you know I don’t just let anyone walk in. We’re friends so…” Joe shrugged.,
“I’d draw you,” Swann said. “In the interest of full disclosure I said the same thing to Sal.”
“Why do you draw?”
“Huh?”
“It’s cool,” Joe said. “I mean everything about you is cool. But why do you do it?”
“Let me see your hand.”
Joe held out his hand and Swann said, “Right now, you probably think it’s just a hand, but when you begin to draw it, you see the veins. You see the muscles in the cheeks of the palm, the different lengths of fingers, the turn of the thumb, this scar over here. In drawing you observe, meditate… See. Eventually re create.”
He released Joe’s hand.
“That’s why.”
Joe cradled his hand and chuckled.
“All that in a hand.”
“I mean, if I drew you I’d want to draw you naked. You’re beautiful.”
Swann did not say, “You have a huge dick.” That felt like crossing a line, and he still couldn’t quite believe it.
“If you say it I believe it,” Joe said. “You’re not the lying kind.”
“Art’s a matter of noticing,” Swann said. “I mean, I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. It’s discovering, and then you celebrate the discovery.”
“Cheers to being the discovery, cause God knows I’ve never been one.”
As Joe raised his soda can, Swann said, “I think it’s cause you don’t want to be.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t want to be noticed. Not really. I think a large part of you wants to hide. You’re not good at it, but I think you want to.”
Suddenly Joe Stanley laughed and put his fingers together like an imaginary gun. He aimed it slowly as Swann and pulled the trigger.
“Mr. Portis, you may have stumbled onto something.”
Swann took Joe’s hand and looked at the big black stone in the silver ring.
“I would like that,” he said, “only with a big red stone. And gold.”
“Well then that would actually be something entirely different,” Joe pointed out.
The door opened and Sal cried, “Swann!”
“Good to see you too,” Joe said while Swann absently twisted the ring on Joe’s finger and said, “There you are.”
“Have you seen the snow?” Sal demanded. “We’re gonna get out first storm. We might even have a snow day cause the professors can’t get into teach.”
“I hope the winter’s not crazy,” Joe said as Swann released his hand.
“I love winters with lots of snow and ice and wind,” Swann differed.
“You don’t drive,” Sal and Joe said together, and Sal sat down on the floor on the other side of Swann.
“What are we doing?”
“Comparing jewelry,” Swann said.
“Swann saw me naked,’ said Joe. “I am artwork.”
“I thought I was artwork,” Sal stuck out his lip.
“And I meant every word of it,” Swann said, offering mock comfort.
“But he’s only seen you shirtless,” Joe said.
“Well, fine, if I have to get naked to be artwork—” Sal started to stand up.
“Please, God, sit down,” Swann said.
Sal was in jeans and a short sleeve green polo despite the winter, and when he did sit back down, pressing his hip against Swann, his thigh against Swann, Swann knew he would have been just fine is Sal had taken his clothes off.
“Whaddo we do now?” Sal said.
“Well, there’s that threesome we’ve been putting off,” Joe said.
“Or we could go to dinner,” said Swann.
Sal rubbed his chin.
“Both are equally appealing, but only one will fill my empty stomach.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” Joe wagged a finger at him.
“You’re a nasty fuck,” Sal said, cheerfully.
A gust of wind hit the window so hard it felt like a thump, and they all looked to see what seemed like someone hurling fistfuls of snow.
“I will call Jill and Chuck to tell them to get ready,” Swann said, “because wouldn’t we feel silly having a thteeway and then being trapped by a blizzard and not being able to eat.”
“That,” Joe slapped his knees, “is the most sensible thing I’ve heard all day.”
He jumped to the door, and yelled out.
“Threeway cancelled. We’re all going to dinner.”
Trish called down the hall, “Thank God, I wasn’t going to be up for a threeway until nine o clock.”
Katy opened her door and said, in her smoked out voice, “Guys, don’t leave without me.”
“In this fucking weather we should all leave together,” Swann said. “I’m going downstairs to tell the girls.”
When he had done so, he returned, and in his room Swann got on the phone and called Chuck.

continued in next post

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Have you seen the snow?” Chuck demanded.
Swann’s door closed behind him, and he supposed it was either Joe or Sal.
“Yeah, that’s what I called about. We’re all going to dinner now. Wanna meet us?”
“Yeah, I’ll call Jill and Payt.”
“Ok—oh!”
“What? Chuck said.
“Okay,” Swann said, and hung up the phone.
He had jumped because Sal’s arms had wrapped around his waist and Sal bit him on the back of his neck, sucking on him.
“What the—?”
“Do you mind?” Sal said, though his mouth was still on him.
“I… was surprised.”
“And I was horny,” Sal said, kissing the back of his neck.
“Fuck, Swann, you have to know how I feel.”
“I know how you feel.”
“What about you?”
“I feel a bunch of things and was not expecting this.”
“You want me to stop?”
But Sal was still holding him, and his mouth was on the back of Swann’s neck.
“Not… really.”
“I know things are complicated,” Sal said, his arms still hugging Swann’s waist, “but you know what we talked about? What if it wasn’t just a joke?”
“Come again.”
“We’re all friends. We all feel at least a little something for each other. It’s snowing and shit, and no one’s going out after dinner. What if you, me and Joe…”
Swann turned around.
“Then it’s like….it would just be friends, and…. It was just an idea. I just…”
“I don’t think I’m ready for that.”
Sal turned red and turned around.
“Sal.”
Not looking at Swann he said, “You’re cool and sophisicatd and I just thought you’d do something like that. I didn’t mean to be a creeper or make it weird, I shouldn’t have. Just forget it.”
“Sal.”
Sal turned around, but he wouldn’t look at Swann. Swann took Sal’s face and pulled it down and kissed him on the lips.
“If you knew everything happening right now inside of me, and if you knew the way I feel about you, you’d understand why that’s not a good idea.”
“I know about Max Mueller,” Sal said. “And I know about Chris. And I know that sometimes Pete comes around and…. You know me and Joe still….”
“If you know all that, I don’t know why you’d make things more complicated.”
“Cause I wanna fuck you,” Sal grabbed his shoulders. “I’m in love with you. I wanna pound the shit out of you and tell you that all night long. I want to wake up with you.”
Joe thumped on the door and called, “Are you assholes ready?”
“Yeah,” Sal shouted back roughly.
“Tell me you feel a little bit the same way. At least fucking tell me that.”
“Goddamnit, Sal.”
Sal looked angry and irritated.
“Of course I feel that way.”
“Great,” Sal said, looking no less angry. “That’s all I needed to know.”
He took a deep breath and said “Well, come on. Let’s go to dinner.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well Sal has finally laid his cards on the table with Swann. This was a very interesting portion. I hope it leads to something between them and I think it will. Things are complicated though as always. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well Sal has finally laid his cards on the table with Swann. This was a very interesting portion. I hope it leads to something between them and I think it will. Things are complicated though as always. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

Yes, that was definitely a big moment, and of course, as opped to happy ever afters, this will lead to more complications.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Swann Portis was sitting in his room with the lamps off so the lights in room Forty Two seemed to twinkle more than before, and they were not only amber, but purple too, and rose. And he got up from his seat, feeling lighter than usual, and crossed the hall where he tapped on the door.
“Is it?” Joe’s voice queried.
“Swann.”
“Open,” Joe called.
Swann was surprised to see Joe Stanley in the middle of the room, naked, applying deodorant and then, tossing it on his bed, taking a little aerosol can and shooting body spray all over himself. The room smelled of Axe and and twenty year old boys while, absent mindedly, Joe went to his bureau and started combing his hair.
‘What’s up?” Joe asked him, and Swann said, “Can I just look at you?”
“You can look at me all you want,” Joe grinned at him, and Swann followed the lines of his brown body, of his broad breast, the V going to the patch of brown hair over his thick penis. He looked at the strong thighs, well made calves, the gentle roundness of his little firm ass, thw valley of the small of his back, the tapering waist leading to strong shoulders. He took Joe’s small waist in his hands and Swann opened his mouth and Joe put his cock in it, and Swann begin to suck on his large penis as it swelled and Joe fired off his imaginary gun and said, closing his eyes and looking up at the ceiling, “Mr Portis, you may be onto something.”
That night, while the snow fell thick on the ground, Swann Portis awoke the moment he knew this was not happening. He wasn’t entirely embarrassed by the dream about Joe, but it was entirely inconvenient. He was a rational person. He knew that he wasn’t his desires and good thing because these days he desired everyone. Swann imagined for the first time that one of the reasons he had avoided Joe and Sal was not because he liked one of them, but because he liked them both, and these days he adored them. Sal had leaned against his door on their first night back from break and, in a very practical voice, but one touched with a little pleading, said, “I’m right across the hall,” and though Joe had said it differently, he had still also said it. He could, if he wanted to, knock on their door right now, and the two of them would put him in that bed between them. It was all he could do to not go over there right now, to feel their gentle hands, see in the dark their playful smiles, feel Sal’s lips against him again, tangle his feet with theirs, be naked with Joe as Joe had been naked before him. Have Joe fire one imaginary gun off, and then after that, a metaphorical one. How long since the last time when he had been surprised by seed blossoming in his mouth, the acrid salt taste? His whole body tingled.
And yet, it was not everything in him that wished to go across the hall because something very real stopped him, and he wasn’t sure that the something was. So he sat in bed looking out of the window and watched the white snow continue to fall on the silent earth.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Chapter Sixteen










When Douglass Merrin was seventeen he sat in his school uniform, blue blazer, white shirt, blue tie and khakis in a chair before Father Andrew Reed, the Dean of Saint Anthony School.

“We’ve got a problem, Mr. Merrin,” he said.

Douglass Merrin said nothing.

“It appears you got your entire Latin class very sick.”

“I’m not the first person to make a bad meal.”

“So it is true that you made the pizza?”

“I did. I offered to make it for Cicero Day, which was yesterday.”

“Which was how the class got sick?”

“Which is how everyone says they got sick.”

Father Reed was playing with something on his desk. It appeared to be some type of capsule, left over from a bottle of pills.

“Douglass, people think you put poisonous mushrooms on the pizza, and that you, a very intelligent young man, should have known better than to think you could just go out and pick them, that you need experience.”

“But I have experience,” Doug said. “My Uncle Donald is a mushroom hunter, and my great grandfather before him. I know how to harvest a good mushroom. I know what they look like, and I can assure you, about eighty percent of the mushrooms on that pizza were good.”

“Eighty percent—!”

“However the last twenty percent, they were definitely mildly poisonous. Or hallucinogenic.”

He said it with an absolutely unapologetic face, and the priest stared at him.

“You… intentionally poisoned your class?”

“I intentionally mildly poisoned my class and gave them mild hallucinations.”

“Until Nicholas Quatrain was in the nurse’s office screaming that he was an onion and trying to peel himself.”

“Clearly, he had some things to work out in his psyche—”

“Steven Tomanciek and Dave Barker have had diarrhea and been vomiting for two days now.”

Douglass nodded sagely, as if considering all of this and Father Reed said, “Why would you do something like this?”

“Because I hate them,” Doug said. “Bccause for three years they made my life a misery. And if I was going to leave, this is the way I wanted to say goodbye.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

Of course, up until the moment he’d done this, he wasn’t going to leave. But now, as Father Reed said, it was in the Abbot’s hands. Doug had made sure that Doc Russo and Gerald Parks, his teacher and the only guy he liked in that class had none of that poisoned pizza, and he had tripped on mushrooms several times by then, so wasn’t even bothered by what he ate. Ungrateful to the end, some of his classmates frowned about how he had to put mushrooms on a pizza, how they hated mushrooms. But even if they peeled them off, the effects were already there, certainly mixed into the sauce. The only thing that Doug regretted was having to go to his godfather, Abbot Eutropius Prynne.

The middle aged Black man, all in his august white and black habit, stood at his desk and said, “I can only imagine you must wanted to leave very badly to have done this.”

Prynne was one of those few people you could say, “Knew everything.” Under his eyes, Doug could not even pretend to not care, to not know, to be anything but what he was.

“It is just like Andy Reed,” Prynne continued, “to lay this at my door, when all three of us know where this leads, and when you knew where it led the moment you did it.”

“Yes, Father.”

“None of that,” Prynne said in his even voice. “No sounding apologetic for something you knew you were doing. Is this place really so bad when your friends are gone? Yes, I imagine it is. Was this year hard for you? Yes, it seems so. Was this the only way for you to get out of here? Maybe not.”

Prynne ran a finger under his lower lip and began to chuckle.

Shaking his head, he said, “But it sure had style.”

While Prynne laughed, he sat down in the chair behind his huge old desk, and swiveled about in it.

“You should have seen that little asshole, Nick Quatrain shouting, ‘I’m an onion! I’m an onion!’ Oh, it was worth a whole…. A whole everything!”

Prynne wiped the back of his hand across his eyes.

“He’s as vile as his father. I wish I’d given some of my classmates poison pizzas. It was hard, Douglass, it was hard back. Then I imagine it was hard for you and Swann too.”

The Black priest looking at the Black boy did not have to say why it was hard. He said, “I will miss you, Douglass, You’re the last of the boys. You made this place something.”

He shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Father.”

Abbot Prynne looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Leaving you like this is the only thing I could ever be sorry about,” Doug said, “And I am.”



Doug had chosen to live on the Freshmen floor his last year. It was easy to be in control there. He knew that once he’d done what he’d done, he’d have to move quickly. But the plan had come a month ago when Joe came to visit on his birthday. After his friend had left, Doug Perrin knew he couldn’t spend another year at Saint Anthony, and he had made all the plans he needed to leave. He scheduled the GED in town and passed, and then he went out among the trees, gathering the mushrooms for his poisonous pizza. Even as his classmates were eating, he’d already packed his car. Saying goodbye to Abbot Prynne was one of the last things he did. Going back past his room, he gave his keys to Benny, told him he could have the chair he always wanted, and that he should share the room with Tate.

“Be good to each other, guys.”

“You’re leaving?” Benny said.

Doug nodded, winked and went down the hall. He’d miss those guys too. But that wasn’t enough. The only bump in the road was at the end of the road, what awaited him in Evanston. But he was expelled with a GED, so there couldn’t possibly be any going back to Saint Anthony or any other high school for that matter. He’d seen to it.

Saint Anthony had never been unreservedly great. For starters, he knew he was there because his parents didn’t want him at home. He could have gone to any number of Catholic schools in Chicago or public ones in Evanston, all of them good, but Mr. Perrin just didn’t want his son around. He wanted Deborah all to himself, and Deborah, needy for love, wanted to be wanted. Still, he would pop in, see if he was welcome. He had to at least do that.

When Doug thinks about the past, it’s like a funhouse mirror. Which past, the past of a month ago or three years ago? And which Doug is thinking it? Sometimes it feels like Doug is looking at a long gone Doug thinking of things more long gone still. The memory of coming home from high school blends with the memory of the most recent Thanksgiving. The memory of leaving that emptied dorm room blends with those days when Swann and Chris and Pete and all of their friends were upstairs and Joe was across the hall, and he and Sal would whisk Doug away on little adventures.

The Latin gang, that was the kids in his year and his Latin class who made his life less than happy, didn’t matter so much when he was surrounded by these older boys. Life was more than bearable, When he had become a sophomore things were even better and there were kids who were going through what he had been through and looked up to him a little. He’d left his door open and was reviewing his geometry when he heard a fight and went out only to realize it was happening in Joe’s room. He didn’t press his ear to the door, just leaned out of his own, waiting for the fight to end, and suddenly the door flew open and even before Doug could hide, Sal stormed out arms waving about wildly, not even seeing him, and he was gone, presumably back home. Doug waited a moment, and then went down the hall to Joe’s room, but he was surprised to hear Joe crying, those really ugly cries like hiccups, the ones you were embarrassed to be around. But the idea of leaving Joe Stanley alone like that was …. Well, Doug wasn’t that kind of person. He was the kind of person who walked into a room and threw his arms around you, which is what he did, and Joe, face wet and red, buried his head in Doug’s chest and sobbed.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a very well done weekend portion. Poor Doug they must have really made his life hell for him to do that. I hope Joe is ok. I am glad Doug went in and comforted him. As for Swann I hope he makes a move soon. I am really loving this story and look forward to more next week! Have a great weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a very well done weekend portion. Poor Doug they must have really made his life hell for him to do that. I hope Joe is ok. I am glad Doug went in and comforted him. As for Swann I hope he makes a move soon. I am really loving this story and look forward to more next week! Have a great weekend!

“So… So,” Doug said while they were both sitting on the floor and he was mixing Ramen, “Sal’s like… Your boyfriend?”

Joe knuckled his eyes and said, “Something like that. It’s complicated.”

“I thought you were dating Suzie and he was dating Marjorie.”

“Like I said,” Joe said, “it’s complicated.”

“Swann says that’s what you call a beard,” Doug said reflectively.

Joe stopped rubbing his eyes and looked at Doug.

“Whaddo you know about it?” he said, irritated.

“I know people should be happy,” was what Doug said.

“Well, neither one of us is,” Joe said.

Doug stayed with Joe all that night. He couldn’t really bare to see anyone sad, not at that point in his life, at least. When he woke up the next morning on Joe’s bed, holding this upperclassman who was asleep in his arms, the two of them in their rumpled clothes, Doug had changed. He had grown older. He realized suddenly that this was the way Swann and Chris must feel about each other. He realized he loved Joe, and not in some possessive and jealous way. Sex was still a mystery, but the desire to shelter a friend and know he would be your shelter too, was not. They had been friends before, but something had changed, and in the morning Joe was smiling again.

“You wanna get breakfast?”

“You seem in a sort of good mood.”

“I am in a sorta good mood. I discovered something.”

“Whaddid you discover?” Doug asked him.

“I can’t tell you,” Joe said. “Not just yet.”

Doug was not the kind of person who demanded knowledge.

He said, “Okay,” and they went to have pancakes in the dining hall.

Doug didn’t see Sal for another two days. When he did, Sal said, “Heya, Doug!”

Doug, five inches shorter, thrust back his arm, and slapped him.



Later that afternoon Joe came into Doug’s room laughing his head off, and he couldn’t get a word out without cackling.

When he finally could speak, he was breathing in shallow gasps and he said, “You punched Sal!”

“I did it for you.”

Joe nodded, still laughing. “I know. You’re the best friend a guy could have.”

Still laughing, he threw his arms around Doug. “I love you. I can’t wait to punch the shit out of someone for you.”

Whatever Joe and Sal were going through was soon resolved, and not much later Sal and Doug made amends though, for the rest of the year Sal feigned dread and shielded his face every time he saw Doug. Whenever he did, Doug was surprised he’d ever hit the other boy. Aside from being goodlooking and popular, Salvador Goode was tall, and very strong. He must have been a good guy, Doug decided. Someone less would have floored him.

There was trouble upstairs as well. Doug always called it upstairs even through what he meant was the large double suite where Pete. Chris and Swann stayed with their group of friends. Whispers were going around about Chris, though exactly what was happening no on knew. There had been trouble with Brad Crist the year before, and the trouble was always about sex, though no one knew the details. Even Joe and Sal wondered what was going on and finally Doug said he would see.

His cousin’s room, which was usually filled with friends and cooking, was quiet and no one was speaking to anyone. Doug just sat around waiting for someone to say something and finally he asked what was wrong. When no one spoke, Doug said, “You all think I’m such a kid, but I’m not.”

“It’s not about you being a kid,” Chris said, miserably. Even his hair seemed to be depressed.

“Chris is going to be a proud papa,” Swann said.

Chris looked at him in a way Doug couldn’t discern and Swann said, “And now you know,” and went back to his homework.

Doug nodded. He felt suddenly weak in his knees. He said, “Are you guys going to dinner?”

He didn’t know what else to say.

“I’m not really hungry,” Chris said.

“Well, I am,” Swann said, almost savagely, and closed his book, rising to leave.





It was the first time Swann ever sat with him and Joe and the Freshmen, and for some reason Sal stayed at school that night too. Pete was there and Harry and James Lung and Vinny and Varon, two of the other Black borders who were sophomores. Swann said very little, and Doug understood without totally knowing that aside from the inconvenience and shock of Chris getting a girl pregnant, this was somehow a breaking of faith with the relationship Chris had with Swann. He went with his cousin to the lounge after dinner, and Swann didn’t seem much in the mood for talking, but he admitted he didn’t want to be alone, either.

“Are you alright?” Doug asked Swann.

“Of course, I am,” he said. “I’m not the one that’s stuck with some bitch’s baby.”

The increasing joy that had reigned upstairs and trickled downstairs since Doug had come and since that first night when Chris and Swann were united was dampened for some time. It was obvious to everyone that Chris Navarro and Swann Portis were not friends and then, as the year closed, things changed and they were friends again, but the wound was still there, a scar, and that was how Doug learned that though some things might be saved, they might not remain the same.



Doug would take his books out to the soccer field and with Swann he would go between homework and watching practice. There was Chris chomping his gum with the sun in his cloud of hair, and Chris was still like a big brother. He hurt for his friend who was going through the stuff he was going through, even though he knew he’d hurt Swann. And there was Sal, face reddened by the late spring sun, dark hair plastered to his head, one Superman curl dripping sweat to the bridge of his nose and Joe, compact, brunette, laughing. There they were in their Saint Anthony red and white. When practice was over everyone piled up to go inside and Doug heard someone call his name.

He turned around and Joe was running to him.

“What’s up?”

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Doug looked at Swann and Sean Fuentes.

Swann said, “I’m going to finish my history. Dinner at six.”

Doug nodded and he followed his sweaty friend back into the school where his teammates were going to the locker room. But he pulled Doug into the restroom in the back lobby then said, “No. Fuck that,” and pulled him out again, down the hall.

“Joe, what are we doing?”

Joe looked around wildly, and then pulled him through another door to the back entrance into the gymnasium. Beyond was the weight room, and past that he could hear basketball practice, but right here there was darkness and the smell of wood, and Doug said, “Joe, are you gonna—”

And Joe took his face in his hands and kissed him. He pressed his body into Doug’s and Doug felt himself not resisting at all, loosening, felt his hands slack and then felt them rising to Joe’s hps, felt his tongue locking with Joe’s, their teeth pressing together. It felt so good, and Joe stopped, and blinked at him.

“It’s all I could think about.”

“I hope you could think about blocking goals.”

Joe shrugged and winked.

“I don’t have to think about it. I’m bad ass like that.”

Joe made to open the door and go back into the hall, but Doug pulled him back and kissed him again. He gripped him by the collar of his soccer shirt and kissed him so deep Joe went weak in his knees.

“You should go shower,” he told Joe.

Joe kissed him one last time and then left him in that dark space hot and weak, red faced and finally understanding. Chris and Swann had been in love with each other. That was what Chris had violated, and though they were friends—they weren’t lovers—Joe was in love with him. Joe was friends with Sal, and they were more than friends, but they were not exactly… in love. He understood it all because when he pushed himself out of the back door of the gymnasium and thought of going back to his dorm, he stopped a while, outside of the locker room, hearing the soccer team’s loud banter, hearing the rush of shower water, and he imagined Chris and Sal, put mostly Joe, naked together, the water washing over their bodies. He stood there thinking about it until a part of him saw himself standing there and thought what a freak he would seem if anyone came out. And so he turned around for the long labyrinthine walk through the school, back to the dorms and his cousin.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion with some great writing. I am happy for Joe and Doug. Poor Swann though, Chris is going to be a Dad. I have no idea where this is going, but I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was an excellent portion with some great writing. I am happy for Joe and Doug. Poor Swann though, Chris is going to be a Dad. I have no idea where this is going, but I look forward to more soon!

Yes, Swann has definitely been fucked over, but of course, its all in the past. Even though its in the present.

 

[ChrisGibson]

end oc chapter sixteen

Two years later, when he drove down the road away from Saint Anthony, he would remember that whole summer when he longed for Joe, when he wanted to be a sophomore and all he could think about was his friend’s green eyes, his sly smile, his red lips, his chocolate brown hair, and how the two of them were the same height, eye to eye, and it didn’t matter than Joe was going to be a senior. He couldn’t stop thinking about the smell of Joe’s cologne and this was before email, this was when all there was long distance phone calls or writing letters, neither of which boys did, and so there were just the next twelve weeks of summer, just the waiting.



The day he left Saint Anthony for good he thought, I will not travel all the way to Evanston. I can’t deal with that tonight. South Shore is far enough trip. Or he could go to Swann. But then he turned south for Lafayette, for some reason, in the end he chose Chris.



At the end of Freshmen year, Chris leaves early, but Swann and Pete remain to help with graduation. Uncle Donald and Aunt Pam are coming down to get them with a little U Haul, and because Joe and Sal live in town, they invite him to stay with them that last night. They go out to Frisch’s and get ice cream and chicken strips, and Doug says, “Let’s pull into the school.” He’s going to drop some off for Swann.

Sal and Joe sit out in the driveway and Doug goes into school through the vestibule of the church and walks through the empty halls of a dormitory which seems to long and too large so with no one in it. How odd to see all the rooms dark, open and bare. Doug goes up the stair to the darkened second floor, a collection of shadows and moonlight. He goes to leave the food on Swann’s bed, because the lights are off so he must be out right now, of course he is, and as Doug pushes open the door, he hears sighs and sounds and sees, by moonlight, the Pete Agalathagos’ shoulders, broad back, as, rowing up and down and Swann’s legs encompassing him, sees Pete leaning down to kiss him as Swann’s arms wrap around his neck, sees Pete, bracing himself over Swann, quickly pumping him and they both shout with each pump, and then they take up a slower rhythm, not speaking but murmuring, sighing, before once again Pete pounds him and they both cry out.

This is sex. This is what Swann did with Chris that they do not longer. This is what Sal and Joe do with each other though now, his body hot, the tray of food on his fingers, Doug almost aches because he knows he wants Joe to do this to him, and he knows Joe won’t. Joe wouldn’t.

Doug closes the door slowly and heads away while he hears Pete and Swann both cry out.

Joe would just kiss him lightly and say, “You’re a kid. You’re not ready.”





Seventeen year old Doug who sits in his grandmother’s apartment in South Shore listens to her and Uncle Donald laugh as he tells them how he was expelled. Uncle Donald is smoking Camels and ashing into a pewter tray with a squat man beside a tall woman who is exclaiming “Oh.” When you flip over the ashtray you see the backsides of the squat man and the tall woman, and he is grabbing her ass.

“Well, you might as well leave your things right here,” Donald said. “No point in you traveling to Evanston.”

“You don’t think?”

“As a sign of respect,” Pam differs. “And your parents are your parents. You should try to work it out.”

“You never say that about Swann.”

“That’s cause Sefra is dead, his father is dead and Rose is…”

“Rose.”



When they returned to Saint Anthony for sophomore year—Swann’s senior year—Swann wore a big, chunky gold ring on his middle finger and he pulled out the largest bags for himself and Doug from the back of the station wagan and rolled his up the walk toward the open doors of the vestibule of Holy Angel’s Chapel. Doug followed and Joe Stanley, in ripped jeans and an old tee shirt, was upon him before he’d even gotten his bag halfway down the Freshmen and sophomore hall way.

“And wait till you see where they put us,” Joe grinned.

On the large landing between the second and third floor Old terrazzo stairs went up the back way to the second floor were four rooms, and Doug’s was diagonal from Joe’s.

“God, it’s so damn hot!”

“Everything on that side is hot,” Joe said. “But when it gets to be hall, you’ll just be like, what a big room.”

“Across from that was Joe’s room facing the old cloister.

“It’s much cooler in here,” Doug said, enviously.

“It’s not much cooler.”

“It is much cooler,” Doug reiterated.

“Why’s it matter? You’ll be here most of the time, anyway.”

“So we’re between the lower class men and the upperclassmen floors.”

“Neither fish nor fowl,” Joe said.

“What?”

“I don’t really know,” Joe confessed, “I heard it somewhere.”

At the top of the stairs, after a turn were Chris and Pete, and Swann, Brad and James who had agreed it was agreed it was better to stay together despite the pain of last year.

Joe explained that he couldn’t stay home, as he so eloquently put it, one more goddamn minute, and that Prynne had allowed him back into the school a day early. Upstairs, things were much the way they had been the year before only, instead of gumbo, Swann had learned to make British crumpets, and instead of him coming fresh from the death of a parent, it was Chris Navarro, dealing with his own loss that they all gathered around. Last year they had all made an appearance at the first Mass of the year. This year none of them did. They all schlepped—a new word for Doug—into the cold hallways of the recess of the old stone and brick building and, in shorts and for some of them not even tee shirts, sat down on the floors and ate the hot crumpets Swann had made.

For a whole month there, the hallways and dark passes were full of boys, who came out of their baked rooms to camp in the cool hall. The east side boys didn’t need this so much, but it was fun for them to camp out as well, and so they did, and you could hear the whir of the huge fans the brothers and priests had set up, or you could hear the roar of fans the boys had brought with them. At least once a day the electricity shut off.

It was so hot that Joe took to staying in his room naked, and he might, if you came to visit, pull on a pair of boxer shorts. Doug, who had wanted to see Joe this way, felt less seduced and more included in the fact that Joe did not put on anything for him. If one thought this would hasten their sex life, it didn’t. There was something strangely un erotic about Joe Stanley’s frank decision to be nude because of the heat. Practices for most sports were halted, except for football and track and field which were moved to the morning. Joe would come back sweaty and exhausted, strip, head to the shower room, come back and throw himself on the bed, dozing through his back to back study halls before going to class.

Donald had gone to Japan and brought Doug and Swann back black silk kimonos, which is what they wore during this time with nothing under, and it was in this that Doug would come to Joe’s room.

“What up, sensei?” the naked boy would wave, not looking at his friend, and Doug would examine and love Joe’s naked body, then take a thin cool sheet stored for an hour in his mini fridge, and drape it over him.

“Damn, that feels good,” Joe would say, and under the sheet he’d curl up like a baby.

One morning, toward the end of that heat, right before the promise of fall brought relief, Joe said, “Get in here with me.”

The doors naturally locked when you shut them unless you pressed the little button in the inside panel and Doug lifted the cover and climbed into the bed and under that sheet, Joe removed the kimono and kissed him.

“That’s better,” Joe said,” kissing him again. “Isn’t it?”

He had to go to class. He didn’t have two study halls. He should be in algebra. But h didn’t want to go, and Joe’s skin just felt so good. His body felt so right, even the smell of his breath which was sweet. He just felt so happy and safe like he rarely felt, and the room was getting warmer and warmer.

“Go to class,” Joe whispered.

“I can stay here.”

“Go.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’d be a real shitty friend if I said okay instead of telling you to go.”

“Is that what we are?”

“That’s the first, second, third and always thing we are.”

Doug stretched out across from Joe. For a moment he indulged the idea that like Chris, Joe was a big brother. Joe was a senior. He was a sophomore. But no, that wasn’t quite it, he got up from the bed, standing naked over Joe, letting the sharp heat of morning, warm even through the closed white curtain, fall on his body, and as he stood over Joe he lightly unpeeled the blanket from Joe’s body. His eyes frankly ran over Joe’s eyes, his face, his breastbone, the not tall but chiseled body, the muscled stomach the V that went to his groin and the growth of brown hair, his thick sex which was rising, his thighs, his calves, his beautiful feet. He knelt down while Joe’s penis was still rising and he pressed his lips to Joe’s, kissing him. Their lips parted, teeth and tongues touching. Doug pulled away from him, and began to dress slowly. Only when he’d had enough of looking at Joe did he turn and leave for class.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great end to the chapter! I like hearing more about Doug. I am glad he has Joe and I can see them maybe being a couple eventually. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days. Have an excellent Friday and weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

As chapter seventeen begins, we are still in the past with Doug....


Chapter Seventeen













After two weeks with Chris, Doug Merrin returns to the big house on Judson Street. His father says, “We already heard from Abbot Prynne. So what are you going to do now ?”

“I already got my GED.”

“So what are you going to DO?”

“Changing the inflection,” Doug says, “does not change the question.”

“Respect your father,” his mother says. It’s the first thing she has said.

“I just told you,” Doug says in the toneless way he always addresses his parents, the tone that won’t stir them up, stir the old man up and make the mother who should be loyal, but goes with whatever the old man does, stir up as well.

His father opens his mouth.

“And don’t,” Doug continues, “say you knew I had taken the GED, because you didn’t.”

“Are you going to get a job?”

“I don’t know, I just got expelled ten minutes ago.”

“Are you going to college?” his mother chimes in.

“That falls under the heading of I just got expelled ten minutes ago.”

“Boy, you better respect your mother…”

“You know what?” Doug stands up.

“You don’t really want me here.”

“That’s not what this is about, baby,” Deborah says.

“Baby? I’m baby now?”

“You’re not my baby,” Mr. Perrin says, “and if you’re going to be in this house then—”

“But I’m not,” says Doug. “That’s just it. I’m not going to be in this house at all.”

He’s sorry he came there for even a minute, flustered and angry and, though he does not want to admit it, a little ready to cry. When he’s ready to cry he imagines his Latin class. He imagines the assholes he was with, standing there looking at him, and his tears try up.



He goes down the road to the black gated, tree hidden Frank Lloyd Wrightish looking house. It’s closer to the South Street El station, and inside it are two old women, one black and one white, but most importantly, on the second floor, in a window that overlooks the cars running up and down South Street, is Swann.

“Well, you did what you had to do,” Swann said. “Our parents are shit, but our lives aren’t.”

This is the house that Swann grew up in, that his mother has fled to live, currently, in some Gold Coast apartment. She would have sold it, but the house belongs to the Porter family, and is held in trust for Swann till he’s twenty five. For now, his great Aunt Belle lives here with her friend and former Irish housemaid, Edith.

“That is,” Swann explains unnecessarily, “she is formerly a housemaid, She’s still Irish.”

No one bothers anyone in that house, and Doug doesn’t see his parents for the rest of the summer. It hurts. He hasn’t learned how to not make it hurt. They don’t like to drive. In fact, Swann refuses to learn, so most Saturdays they get up late, walk the three blocks up to the raggedy old El station on South and Main, climb up the wet steps and wait on the platform for the Purple Line to take them to Howard Street where they board the Red Line which rolls and rocks and speeds and then chugs slowly, the length of Chicago. They watch the city pass under them, Rogers Park, Uptown, Lakeview, Lincoln Park and so forth, the backs of brick two and three flats with their wooden porches, the streets below with their shops, neighborhood after neighborhood, high rises and eventually the tall buildings in the distance heralding downtown until, after Fullerton and DePaul campus, darkness rises and they pass under the city by the winding stops that take them under downtown: North and Clyborn, Grand, Chicago, and so on. At last they emerge into the light again on their beloved South Side. Here they get off and take the Orange Metra, the Red Line doesn’t come near South Shore, and the Metras don’t link properly. Sunday someone will drive them to 69th Street to take the Red Line all the way back up, but for now, they just take this second train and slowly mosey on into Birches.

“Why don’t you stay with me this summer,” Swann says. “There’s more than enough room for no one to get in anybody’s way.”

“And when the summer’s over?”

“That’s up to you.”

Swann is a huge believer in things being, “up to you.”





Aunt Leona was still alive then. She went to Mass every Saturday morning, and the rest of the family went at ten on Sunday, except for Donald who eventually ceased to go at all, and did his praying in his kitchen or in the living room. Swann and Doug went both times. Doug felt like every trip to South Shore was stepping back deeper and deeper into time or into something, and when they entered old Saint Elizabeth’s with its low light, the huge loud fans that blew in the summer, the rows of candles at saints’ feet, and the smell of extinguished candles, wax and old incense, he was in the midst of something older than old. For a moment he was reminded of Saint Anthony, and then he was sad, thinking of how he had exiled himself. But the Saint Anthony he wanted had been gone a year ago when Swann and Joe and Sal and Pete and Chris had left.

The community of Saint Elizabeth’s was Black, Italian and Irish now. The Black families and some of the white ones had very old ties that went further south to the time when they had come up from the Great Kankakee, and maybe even to times beyond. They were, in that wise, more than family, and this made Doug think of Saint Anthony, for Abbot Prynne’s people were part of that crowd, and that was how the two of them had ended up at the old school.



Pete, in his clean white shirts and white slacks, good shorts and Rolexes, was often at Swann’s house. There, either because Swann didn’t care or because the women didn’t see, he hid nothing of their relationship. The three of them had a good time, but Pete and Swann had their own good time. One night Doug looked out of the window to see Pete, lean an athletic, swimming naked in the blue lit pool. Swann was on the edge of it, elbows on the deck. Pete swam to him and began kissing him up and down, they made love starting on the water and then climbing out onto a blanket by the pool side. His own desire rising, Doug watched their bodies glide together in the night.

Chris never came. Chris was gone. After senior year it seemed he drifted away from Swann, though when Doug had gone to stay with him those weeks, Chris asked about him all the time. As Swann placed Pete on his back, straddled him and began to ride him slowly, Doug thought of Chris, long gone from here and the fellowship broken. Below him, Pete and Swann were in no hurry and for a long time Swann, like a swan on water, rode Pete leisurely. Toward the end, Swann leaned down so that his hands gripped Pete’s shoulders and Pete arched up. Swann rode Pete harder and harder and when a loud noise escaped the both of them, instead of lust, Doug was filled with sadness.

That summer he made no plans, though he had expected to. He was surprised to find that when August arrived, he still had no plan for the future, and relieved to find a home at the Birches. He could have stayed in the Porter House with the old women, but kind as they were, they weren’t family, and it didn’t seem right without Swann. At the Birches, no one pushed him to do anything and they were pleased as long as he cooked and cleaned. He never felt the pressure to say what he couldn’t say or do what he couldn’t do, and the only times he saw his parents was when they came down for Thanksgiving. And at those times, it was as if they were the outcasts.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Poor Doug, he has a very sad past. I am glad he has Swann. Chris seems to have almost disappeared at the moment which is sad too. I am glad that Doug had a place to go to with his parents being like they are. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Poor Doug, he has a very sad past. I am glad he has Swann. Chris seems to have almost disappeared at the moment which is sad too. I am glad that Doug had a place to go to with his parents being like they are. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

Yes. Well, more is on the way. And we're almost done!

 

[ChrisGibson]

The year before, Doug had stayed for graduation, after all everyone he knew his cousins was a senior. The bright red graduation robes and caps of Saint Anthony boys would always make him sad and graduations would make him emotional, but in the late afternoon when there was a party going on upstairs, and Doug was down in his room, Joe came in and he looked tall and a little bit elegant, a little bit beautiful. The light on his green eyes, his red cap on, his tassel turned.

“Hey,” he said

“Hey.”

Joe’s head was cocked and he closed the door behind him, then locked it. He wrapped his arms around Doug and then he stood before him and kissed him over and over deliberately, reaching up to take off his cap. He lifted his gown, and he was in white shirt, grey pants, grey tie, shiny black shoes. He kept kissing Doug and said, “I think I’ve been good. This whole year I’ve been good, cause you’re a kid.”

“I’m not,” Doug started, but that didn’t quite seem true to him.

“You are,” Joe shook his head. “Fuck. We both are. But I got real sad thinking about….”

They were both still formally dressed and they stood looking at each other and then Joe, tapping his foot on the floor, said, “I’m fucking nervous,”

Doug touched his shoulder.

“I’ve never been with anyone but Sal. And I’m eighteen and you’re not even a junior.”

“I’m a junior now.”

“I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be asking this. I’m going away. It’s…”

“Joe.”

“If you’ll have me,” Joe said, “if you’ll have me, then… I want us to be together. Right now. I always wanted it. You know that, but I thought it wasn’t right. Not yet. You should be a kid a little longer. I mean, sex is a big deal, and…”

“Joe.”

“And I’m not going to be around. I mean, I’m going to college and—”

“Joe.”

Doug turned Joe’s face to him. He kissed him. He held onto his face and while he kissed him he lowered his hands. They stood togther like that, and then Doug was undoing his tie, unbuttoning his shirt, and suddenly, no matter what Joe’s hesitation had been, he was coming out of his clothes. He didn’t have any experience past Sal, but he had a lot of experience with him, and while the long day stretched on, in Doug’s bed they satisfied themselves completely, making love for a long, slow time. Doug’s desire went ahead of Joe’s knowledge and Joe sat on the edge of the bed, eyes closed, head arched back while he rubbed Doug’s scalp and Doug, head between his legs, sucked on him.

While the day shadows went from yellow to brown, and the hall outside remained silent, Joe knelt on the bed, his penis large and aching, and he said in a thick voice thick, almost unaudible, “Can I fuck you, Doug?”

Doug nodded.

Doug kept lube on hand to please himself and now, lovingly, almost meditatively, Doug glossed Joe’s large penis in the lube, and he was aware that it was big, that other boys weren’t like this, and he kind of wished that Joe wasn’t either. And Joe’s face was businesslike, concerned as he reached into his bag and gave Doug a little bottle.

“When I start, I want you to take a big inhale from that. Shake it up,” he demonstrated, “and take a huge sniff. It’ll make things easier. We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“Joe, I want to.”

“It’s going to hurt. Not forever, but…”

“Joe. Please.”

He knew what he was doing, and he loved Doug. He loved him more than he’d loved anyone, and so the desire to be in him was matched by the desire to never cause him pain. Doug had wanted this more than he knew, wanted it since the time he’d seen Pete doing it to his cousin. So, though it hurt, though his eyes glazed a little from the beginning of entry, he closed them and took a deep inhale, and his body relaxed, all of him relaxed, even the pain didn’t matter. He was his senses. He was this one point of sense being opened. He was full of Joe filling him. He was full of Joe’s sighing with relief. He was full of Joseph Stanley. They moved in and out, back and forth, slowly, until they were the same thing.



“How do you feel?” Joe whispered.

“I feel great.”

“I mean, how do you feel?”

It took Doug a little while to understand.

“Oh, it doesn’t hurt. No… It… That’s not true. It does hurt, in a way. It aches. But it’s a good ache. I don’t know how to say it.”

“I get it.”

“It’s like… This sounds stupid. It’s like you’re still in me. And… I want that.”

“I love you, Doug. I always have.”

Doug didn’t say anything. It seemed cheap and stupid to say it back. He lay on his back, feeling the strange opening ache in a place he’d never known existed, where Joe had been. He wanted it again and feared it a little, was surprised and delighted that it could happen that Joe Stanley could be with him that way. In the gathering darkness, Joe held him.

“Stay with me, tonight?”

“Sooner or later people are going to coming looking for me,” Doug said. “And find you here.”

“Go and tell them you’re staying with me. We’ll go somewhere.”

“Okay. I will get up… when I have the will for it.”

Then Doug grunted and pushed himself out of bed.

“I’m never going to have the will for it. I’m going up and telling Swann and Pete now.”

“I’ll be right here,” Joe said, still leaning on his side, looking like his lover. His boyfriend.

Doug dressed quickly.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Does it matter?”

Doug shook his head.



All of that seemed quite distant the morning of Doug’s seventeenth birthday when there was a tap on his window, and he’d opened it to see Joe, and pulled the boy he loved into his room.

“Happy birthday, friend,” Joe said. “Now help me with this.”

They’d been inside of each other, loved each other from almost the moment they’d met. Just to touch Joe was to feel a shiver move through him, and yet when Joe called him, “Friend,” it was the word that moved him most.

Joe reached down and pulled up a cake and Doug said, “You made this?”

“Heck, no, I didn’t make it. My mom made it, though. She says happy birthday. Let’s get some forks and some coffee and dig in.”

While they stuffed cake down their mouths, Joe said, “I should have got milk.”

“We can go to the cafeteria.”

Neither one of them thought anything of sneaking through the school in the middle of the night. On the way to the cafeteria they passed the vestibule and could see the distant light from the stalls where the brothers were now chanting.



“My heart, O God, is steadfast;
I will sing and make music with all my soul.
Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.

I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.

For great is your love, higher than the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.



“What a life, hunh?” Joe whispered.

Doug nodded as they watched.

“I think I’d like it. Except for the whole celibate thing.”

“We could start a new order and just not be celibate.”

Instead of answering, Joe took Doug by the hand and let him to the kitchen. No need to tempt fate. They hadn’t been caught yet.

Back in Doug’s room, drinking out of little cold school milk cartons, Joe said, “So did the year get any better?”

Junior year had been the loneliest. He’d made friends with some of the younger kids, and though he’d mostly survived junior year, he’d really just wanted to be gone. He didn’t know if he’d make it through senior year and Joe said, digging his fork into chocolate cake, “Well, then why don’t you just fuck senior year?”

“I can’t.”

“You could.”

When they had eaten a third of the cake,” Joe said, “I got a surprise for you, Doug.”

“You already surprised me.”

“I’m taking you to the beach. To see the sunrise.”

They left at barely five in the morning, stopping at the Burger King drive thru for croissan'wiches and orange juice. Doug always envied people who knew roads. Cars and driving were still a mystery to him. Windows rolled down, Smashing Pumpkins playing, Joe drove into the darkness, and from country roads to highways, and at last the night sky turned deep blue with the hints of a new day. It was perfectly grey and cool and silent when they came into New Buffalo, passing the closed shops and riding over one bridge and then another, past marina hotels and to the very parking lot that brought thm to the beach. At barely six it was only them and a few gulls. Lake Michigan was perfectly flat under the not yet risen sun and it stretched on and on like silver grey satin, like an immense thing that had not yet been turned on, but still slept,

“How strange,” Doug said, taking off his shoes and stepping into the cool water, feeling the grains of sand dissolve beneath his feet.

“It’s like I’m on a tremendous sound stage, or like it’s the beginning of the world and I’m waiting for everything to happen. But nothing has happened, not yet. Everything is still perfect, and part of me hopes nothing will ever happen again.”

Joe held his hand and Doug said, “Whenever you call me your friend or touch my hand, why is it I feel like I just got shocked?”

“Probably because I’m in love with you,” Joe said.

 

[ChrisGibson]

They went to the car and Joe took out a blanket and a few other things and then they took the rickety walk up the dunes all the way to the top of one where among the grasses they could look down on the lake, the sunrise rippling over its waves like fish scales. Theu undressed and stood before each other the way God made them, and Joe reached out pulling Doug into a kiss as he wrapped his arms tight about him. They made love while the sun rose. After Joe fucked him, Joe brought Doug inside of him. Even when he was fucking him, Joe longed to know what it felt like for Doug to be doing it to him. It was just like graduation night nearly a year ago, when he had lain in the dark with Doug and said, “Stay with me?” and Doug had asked, “Where are we going?” and Joe said, “Does it matter?” It had been this same hill, but darker, and they had opened up the same secrets to each other.

“I hope no one comes walking up here anytime soon,” Doug said when eight am was approaching and the wind was in Joe’s hair and they both sat naked, knees to chest, arms wrapped around knees.

“I hope they do,” Joe said. “Why do I care if someone sees me and the guy I love watching the sunrise naked?”

Joe leaned forward and kissed him again, and it was while they were kissing and the sun was coming up, after Joe had said, “Let’s stay together today. Let’s get a hotel room on my credit card,” that Doug thought of another year at Saint Anthony, thought of his Latin class and resolved to make the poisonous pizza pie. In their little Motel Six room, while he watched Joe walk around naked, as he put a towel to the door and licked closed the joint he had just rolled, that Douglass Perrin knew he was going to take the GED and poison his class.

So here is the story, here is the whole of it which would have made no sense till now. After he was expelled, before he drove to South Shore, before he went to his cousin’s he thought of going to Joe. Joe was back in Calverton, after all, and he wasn’t sure what he thought they would do, but Joe loved him. It seemed weird to show up unannounced, beneath a boy who had become a man by poisoning thirty people. He called from South Shore and Mrs. Stanley told him Joe was with Sal. With Sal… With Sal. Yes, well, that was still a thing. And they were in school together, so it probably always was a thing.

“Thank you, could you just tell him I called.”

Mrs. Stanley liked Doug a lot. She thought he had real sense. She said, of course. It was in South Shore Doug got the call back and Joe was all, “Oh, my God, are you serious? Did you really? What the fuck? Are you okay? Are you in trouble…?”

It felt good to hear him like that, felt looked after to hear him like that. Toward the end of the summer, Joe said, “You could come to school with me? I think your cousin’s here too?”

“And Sal?”

“Yeah. You and Sal are friends, right?”

“Of course we are. I love Sal. But….”

Doug had been through a lot. He felt much older now, maybe even older than Joe.

“I shouldn’t have to explain this.”

“No…” Joe said. “You don’t. I know its weird. We’d work it out. We’d work it out somehow.”

“Joe, I’ve worked out too much already. My parents don’t want me. I don’t want them, and I’ve gotten myself expelled from school. I can’t share you with someone else or wait for you to figure things out.”

“I understand.”

“I love you, Joe.”



Doug hadn’t understood himself nearly as well as Joe did. Joseph Stanley had stayed away from Doug so long, yes, because he was afraid of hurting Doug, but also because the day he met that fourteen year old he knew Doug could hurt him. He knew there was something a thousand years old in that kid, and while Doug probably thought he would call Joe back in a week, Joe knew that he had lost his chance with the boy he loved. He deserved to lose it. He wasn’t ready. He was a dumb ass who could never quite figure out what his relationship with his best friend was, and Sal had girlfriends all the time.

Once Joe had lost Doug, he changed. He and Sal got on the chat lines and met other guys, did things with them, tested their boundaries. Sometimes, at road stops, Joe climbed into trucks with guys and made himself forget for fifteen minutes or a half hour or an afternoon up in Chicago at a bath house that he had ever loved someone and loved them truly.



And then Joe met Swann, and for the first time started talking to Doug’s cousin. Doug popped up in his mind almost immediately. Garrett Kerner died, and the night that Sal went off with Courtney, Joe’s emotions were so raw he finally lost his temper. He had lost Doug for Sal, he had become a lot less for Sal. And then, at the funeral, there was Doug, and he couldn’t believe it, and he was a little ashamed of standing in a bath house at a glory hole wall getting his dick sucked by a random person while Sal was getting his dick sucked by another rando. He was ashamed of not being smart enough to say, Yeah, Doug, let’s get together, embarrassed about blowing truckers near Grandma’s Diner. But more than that he was in love, more than that he was grateful to see Doug again. He wanted to light candles in the chapel and thank Mary or Jesus or whoever the fuck you thanked for things like this..

That night after the funeral they all ate chicken and Pete stayed with Swann, and Joe led Doug to the spare room on the second floor. He told him everything. He told him:

“I never stopped loving you. I always wanted to kick myself for not telling you to come. I—”

“You weren’t ready,” was all Doug said. “You weren’t ready, and I was seventeen so most likely, neither was I.”

Joe looked relieved and happy and sad and curious all at the same time.

“Can you take my driving?” Doug said even though Joe knew he had driven here..

“I’ll get my keys.”