Thirty-One

[ChrisGibson]

Part One

“Unh! Unh! Harder! Now! Now! Baby... Oh, my Gawwwwwwwwwd!”
On her back, Debbie Baynes started to shout. Brad Long prevented it with the gentle penetration of the base of his palm and the whispered, “Quiet Baby, Quiet!”
He said it in rhythm, gathering up strength as he fucked her.
They were in his basement. She’d snuck in this morning and said, “Happy Birthday, honey. Do you want your present?”
“What is it?”
“Me,” she said, and offered herself. Which, Brad thought, would have been gallant, would have been neat if she wasn’t always offering herself. He couldn’t complain. He was always taking.
He took this time.
Debbie told him, wrapping her little arms around his long neck, “I want you to be rough.”
He was rough enough. He took her on his hands and knees at seven in the morning and thrust himself into desire, and then into roughness. Roughness and tenderness were always a struggle, but right now there was no struggle because he didn’t want to be tender. Not really. He wanted this fucking, and then he wanted the coming and...
“Are you coming?”
Debbie stroked his head as the orgasm rumbled at the base of his cock.
“Are you coming?”
He hated—it humiliated him how at this moment she would pat him on the head and stroke him. Ask in her child voice: “Are you okay?” Take sympathy on him right here, right now when he could have been at his most glorious, but he was also at his most vulnerable.
Brad opened his mouth to speak, gaped like a fish while his body contracted, flailing out, and he let out a little strangled cry and collapsed on her.
“Oh, good boy,” Debbie said. “Oh, happy birthday!”
She was stroking his damp head. He was all damp. His heart was thumping. Debbie spoke on in her sweetly, vapid voice.
“How’s it feel to be thirty-one?”
Brad was drawing away from her, half swimming away to his side of the bed. His wet dick was shrinking into him.
He looked at Debbie, hair a mess, long face reddened and wettened.
He realized he hated her.

Brad could hear the water from the bathroom. Debbie was cleaning up. He wanted to clean up too, a little. He should go upstairs and take a shower—which Debbie—who had snuck into his parent’s house—could not do.
He did not say it, or even voice in a complete sentence that he was thirty-one as he looked around his domain. There were, painted in grey darkness, the rafters of the basement, They moved with the pressure of his mother’s feet. There was behind him as there was across from him the narrow windows, high and close to the ceiling by which he could see his father’s feet, or the dog’s paws as one of them walked the front yard.
“I’m underground,” said Brad. I’m buried alive.
He assessed the place, two large rooms, unfinished. This room he stayed in which was lower than the others with his large bed and a collection of many dog earred books, and on the opposite end of the great room that little bathroom where Debbie was washing off.
Brad was half tempted to look in the mirror, but he knew what he would see: the face at the end of the lanky, hirsute six feet that was pale nearly to the point of greenness. He’d see the eyes with the rings around them, the black hair and sideburns that made him look grungy, that needed to be cut, the goatee that his mother wished he’d shave.

He was surprised to see Debbie that morning and so early because she’d been over las night. She’d wanted to go on a walk. She liked this neighborhood. She loved the wide winding streets of what had been new thirty years ago, the low lying ranch houses, the trees just beginning to turn into something real. Brad had been here since Conestoga Drive was little more than a freshly baked prefab neighborhood. It meant nothing to him.
“Oh, honey!” she gushed, patting his face off as she reentered the room where Brad was still sitting naked, looking half dazed. “Let’s go on a walk. It’s a beautiful night. Come on. Get dressed!”
It was a wretched night and the air was filled with cricket song, which annoyed the hell out of Brad, and the air was so thick that Brad thought, if I lean forward, the air will catch me and I’ll just be able to swim through it. But the thought of swimming just made him hotter. The air smelled hot. The lights on Conestoga Drive were out now. There were no sidewalks in Stonybrook subdivision. They walked the gravel.
“This is a nice life,” Debbie said. “I think we should have a house like this.”
“Like that one?” Bard pointed up a driveway posted by the round globed lanterns.
Debbie smiled with a simplicity that bordered on senility.
“Yeah,” she said.
“But that’s like the house I live in now.”
“I know.”
“It’s like the house you live in.”
“My house doesn’t have those little gnomes.”
Brad knitted his brow. He caught her hand and they kept walking. It was his fault. Didn’t she realize he was thirty—past thirty! Didn’t she understand that he had different needs even if he himself didn’t know exactly what those needs were? She was twenty-two. Her whole life was ahead of her. If she took it.
“What do want, Debra?”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“What are you going to do with your life? I mean, what do you want to do?”
She smiled up at him, swung his long arm and said, “Be with you, silly.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Interesting new story! Brad seems like a cool character. I hope there is more of this story as I enjoyed the first part.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you like Brad cause I'm pretty fond of him myself. He and Todd are actually based on the same person, and there will be more of him tomorrow night.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Part Two

Well, we’re back here live in Washington D.C.--
**Applause. Applause

On Voice of the Nation from International Radio. And this hour our subject is Generation X-ers. With me are Bob Mc,Gee, Director of Intergeneration Studies at Brown University, and Alexandra Yarbro, an X-er herself--do you mind the term, Alex?

--No, Kevin.

**Laugh.

Well, Bob, exactly what is Generation X?

Kevin, it’s that group of people right after the baby boomers. Their reach is wide, anywhere from the late sixties... would you say 1965, Alex?

That’s the extreme end. Way before my time!

Up until about 1977, 78?

Yeah, it’s a lot of people shocked by that. My sister think’s she’s Generation X. Had to tell her, sorry, Sis.

What is she?

Kevin, the question for us is what are we?

Well that’s a good question. What typifies this generation?

Usually, a since of loss, of drifting, there’s no direction. Some people think there’s not ambition. That’s not ture. It’s not that there’s no hope. There’s a lot of disillusionment.

Well, ah. We’re going to take a few callers from the disgruntled generation. Hello? Hello?

Hey, Kevin!

Hello.

My Name’s Brad, and I come from Michigan. That’s me! I’m thirty one. I live at home with my parents in their basement. I can’t seem to find any meaning in my life...

~~~


“Did we miss the turn?” Shane Meriwether demanded.
“I think we were supposed to take Old Route 30,” Nehru said, turning the map over and pushing up his glasses.
In the seats behind them, Leon Dixon, said, “I just saw a sign that said Route 30... when he hit the bypass.
“Did it say Old 30?” Nehru turned around.
There’s a difference?” Leon asked the black man.
“That would be why,” Nehru explained, “one route is called 30 and the other one’s callled Old 30.”
“Fuck it,” said Shane, taking a hand through his blond hair, “I’m turning back.”
“No!” shouted Brad, leaning in front of Debbie. “Look, the sign said Saint Joseph—twelve miles!”
“And isn’t that the church we saw last year?” Debbie said. “I think we know where we are.”
Shane sighed and kept driving.
“I think you’re full of shit,” Robin Childress wrapped a long, black braid around her caramel colored finger.
Shane sighed deeper and raised an eyebrow to Nehru who said, “I’m sure we’re in the right direction.”
From the hatchback Hale Weathertop shouted, “Are we there yet?”
Except for Robin, who turned him a murderous look, they all rode through southern Michigan in silence.
“Oh, thank God,” Brad said when familiar buildings started popping up and the road grew a little narrower. “We are in Saint Joseph.”
Banners hung across the street with red letters exclaiming, “Welcome to the Venetian Festival.”
“I wonder if it’ll suck this year?” Nehru said.
“As much as it does every year,” Shane told him as they made a right turn, away from the street that led down to the beach, past the bank, into the parking lot. On the house tops people were sitting, laughing and drinking. The streets were filled with people walking to the beach or back to thier cars.
Shane got the minivan parked in the bank’s parking lot, and they tumbled, cramped out onto the blacktop. Brad reached into the pocket of his white shorts and pulled out his Marlboro’s.
“What kind?” Robin held out her hand.
“Menthols,” he said, lips clenched around the cigarette he lit. Robin made a face and drew back her hand. Brad inhaled, exhaled.
“Oh, honey, it’s such a bad habit,” said Debbie.
“It helps me deal with stress said Brad as he began walking at the head of the group, shaking out his long legs.
“What stress?” Debbie inquired.
Robin and Nehru rolled their eyes at each other and all Shane said was, “Ironic, isn’t it?”
Their group crossed with about twelve or so others and a bicycle. There was a two block walk down a cobble stone street full of shops with things no one could afford before they reached the beach.
Leon said, “Hey, did you know I got laid last night?”
“No,” said Robin. “but I know men lie a lot.”
“I got laid,” Leon insisted. “I took this girl home and fucked her in my Impala last night. She was hot as hell. But a little stupid.”
Against his desire to pretend he didn’t care, Hale said, “Did you meet her at the wedding you DJ-ed?”
“Un hunh. Red hair, nice tan, brown eyes. Nice ass. Kind of a bitch, though. She was a bridesmaid.”
“At Tara Daniel’s wedding?” Hale said.
“Um hum. Her name was.... I think her name was Jill. She lives on Colum.”
“You fucked Jill Barnard?” Shane turned on Leon.
“Yeah, that’s her name.”
Shane smiled fiercely. “You’re full of shit. I don’t believe you.”
“It’s a small world,” Nehru noted.
“It’s a small town,” Brad said darkly.
“Brad got laid last night too!” Debbie announced proudly.
Brad, who had been giving his attention to Nehru, suddenly blushed and his younger friend saw the taller man’s eyes widen a little.
“For his birthday,” Debbie announced.
Nehru was embarrassed for his friend who just kept walking with a fixed expression—or lack of expression—through the crowd.
Before the concession stand filled midway to the beach, Brad turned to Nehru and murmured, “Can I talk to you later?”
“About what?” said Nehru, smiling vapidly.

Shane rolled up his white trousers, and taking off his sandals, stepped into the water’s edge and began walking along the sand.
“You did not fuck Jill Barnard,:” he insisted to Leon.
“Yes. I did.” Leon said.
“I don’t believe you.”
They were both whispering, which was just as well, because they had to thread their way through children and sandcastles.
“No you didn’t,” Shane grew a little shrill and took his hands through his hair.
Leon opened his mouth and then started to crow.
“What?” Shane said fiercely.
“Oh, my God!” shouted Leon.
Shane’s blue eyes burned on his friend.
“Hey guys,” Leon shouted running ahead where Brad and Debbie were walking hand and hand. In a clump before everyone else, Robin, Hale and Nehru were strolling.
“Guys, Shane fucked Jill Barnard too!”
“Shut up!” Shane ran ahead to hit Leon, but Nehru reached back and knocked Leon on the side of his head first.
“Could you shout that out on a beach full of hillbillies and their children a little louder!” he hissed.
Leon blinked and tilted his head like a struck puppy. Then he said, “Nehru, you think all white people are hillbillies.”
Looking from Nehru Alexander, to the people on the beach, Brad reflected that his friend might not be wrong.
Leon looked like a dog who had been struck on the nose, then undeterred he went on to Shane.
They all walked along the beach, Shane, sullenly slouching behind them. No one asked if he was okay. It would just upset him more.
Leon did a cartwheel. Robin and then Hale began to explore other parts of the beach. Nehru strolled alone, watching a sea gull dive for the water, and then just miss it and veer back into the air.
Brad came up behind him with Debbie and Brad said, “Baby, can I talk to Nehru alone?”
Debbie looked offended.
“It’s guy talk, baby? Between men? Alright?”
Against his will, he was afraid he had hurt her.
“Go talk to Robin. She’ll be glad to hear from you,” Brad told her, and Nehru had to stifle a laugh. “We’ll be back in a moment.”
Debbie went off, and Nehru and Brad stood watching before Brad took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Well ,the stress just left, so why are you smoking?” said Nehru.
“Com’on, leave her alone.”
“She’s what you wanted to talk about, right? I mean, I know that when people say guy talks, women’s talk, Black talk, what they mean is ‘We’re talking about you. Please go away right now so we can do it properly.’”
Brad watched Debbie go smaller as she dwindled toward Robin’s end of the beach, then turned around, and kicking the waves, he and Nehru started to walk along the shore.
After a while Brad and Nehru stopped. Behind them Nehru could hear the young and the not so young screaming. He wriggled his toes and sank them in the soft silt of the sand. Sometimes the water was dirty. A dead fish might float to shores. And it wasn’t always fish. Bottles, articles of clothing, contraceptives, things best not guessed at. Right here, in this little patch before the sandbar, the water that washed in was clear, and Nehru could see his gold brown feet, through the water, sinking into the grains of red and black and brown that made the sand. Brad’s larger white feet sank in too, and the older man wriggled his toes and let the sand filter through them.
“Have you ever been to the ocean, Nehru?”
“Not yet. You?”
Brad shook his head.
“Sometimes I pretend this is the ocean,” Nehru looked out. The sky was clearly blue, the horizon filled with gold, the sun setting red into the water. “You can’t see the end of lake Michigan either.”
“I’m thirty-one,” said Brad.
“I know this,” Nehru replied.
“What do you think about it?”
“I don’t think anything about it.”
“What about Debbie. About me and her?”
“You know what I think about Debra,” Nehru said, folding his long brown arms behind his white tee-shirted back. “You’ve always known.”
“You think I’m too old for her.”
“Brad, why are you asking me?”
Neither one of them was looking at the other.
“You know you’re too old for her.”
“She’s the same age you are. She’s older than you.”
“You’re not fucking me. If you were happy with her, you wouldn’t ask me all these questions.”
“I just want to hear you say I should have quit her a long time ago.”
“I just said it.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Well, if you didn’t here it implied, I’m not saying it outright. That’s on you.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

A great continuation! Sounds like Brad is questioning a lot in his life. I can't wait to read whatever happens next.

 

[ChrisGibson]

You won't have to wait long, just till tomorrow night (afternoon). Brad is going through a whole lot of stuff.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CONCLUSION


It was Sunday afternoon, and they were in Nehru’s kitchen on Meredith Street.
“I called earlier,” said Brad, “but you weren’t at home.”
“I was at Saint Celestine’s. It’s Sunday. Some of us still believe in God.”
“Hey, I believe in God. I don’t know about Jesus and I definitely don’t give a shit about Rome. But I believe in God, so there.”
“So,” Nehru went on, nonplussed, “that’s where I was. What happened after we got back from the beach and went our separate ways?”
“Let’s see. Shane almost beat up Leon up. We stopped him, but now I don’t know if we should have.”
“Did Shane really have sex with that whoever girl?”
Brad shrugged. “Shane’s close mouthed about his sex life.”
“They say the ones that talk the least about it...” Nehru started, trialed off, drank from his water bottle.
“Then I got back to the house with Debbie.... We had sex.”
“Naturally.”
“Whaddo you mean naturally?”
Again, Nehru ignored the question. “And then what?”
“And then we broke up.”
Brad drummed on the table top. He raised one eyebrow, then lowered it, then raised the other like a bored dog.
“She cried, you know.”
“I thought she would. But, how do you feel?... Now that she’s gone.”
“A little bit bad.”
“But a great bit relieved,” Nehru guessed.
Nehru, what do you want out of life?”
“That’s a strange question.”
“It’s not that strange.”
“Well, it kind of put me on the spot.”
Brad said, “You put me on the spot on an hourly basis.”
“True,” Nehru allowed. It was a while before he spoke.
“I guess I always thought that it was a day by day thing. That... that you just don’t plan life and say I want one thing, But that you take it each day and you do... what you have to do.”
“Well, when you’re thirty, what do you picture for your life?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Why not?”
“Cause I’m so grateful I made it to twenty-two. I can’t see that far.”
“It’s not that far off.”
“Yes and no.”
“Do you want to be living in your mom’s basement when you’re my age?”
“Com’on Brad.”
“With a group of friends who are all a bunch of mornons?”
“Thanks.”
“You know I don’t mean you. And a girlfriend who’s a moron too. Who’s too young for you. When I was in college I thought I wanted to bet my Masters. And I did. And I thought I wanted to do all this great stuff and be respectable and maybe teach and it’s all stupid, Nehru. It’s all worthless. It’s like I was so ambitious at one point I wanted to have this and this and that. And now this and that just feels… not worth it. There’s no place for us.”
“Us?”
“Yes,” Brad said. “We’re the same thing, you know. You’ll turn out better. you won’t live in a basement, but you’re gonna look around and see that this is all just a bunch of bullshit. I wanna get somewhere. You know? And I’m not getting any younger. When I was twenty it was cool to bitch like this and dream like this. but I’m thirty-one and there’s not time any more. I hate my life.”
Nehru sat there silent. Anything he said would be the wrong thing.
“I’m sorry,” Brad said at last, staring at the wall behind his friend.
“For what?”
“For whining. For going ballistic.”
“I think you’re not saying anything that’s not on everyone’s mind,” Nehru said.
“Do you... ever feel that way sometimes?”
Nehru nodded.
“There’s got to be something better. Something’s got to mean something. Everyone’s walking around smiling, pretending they’re so happy,” said Brad.
“Some of them aren’t pretending.”
“I kind of hope that’s true,” Brad said. “And then I sort of hope it isn’t.
“I know that it isn’t. For a lot of people. Even at the beach you could tell. I can tell. But you can tell…that something’s wrong. If you talk to people, if you talk to friends long enough, you’ll all agree. You’ll all have seen it. If you look at people a little harder you’ll see it. And... And I’m not going to live with it—whatever it is. I’m gonna get happy,”
Then Brad laughed.
“I just don’t know how to get there. I wonder what a priest would say,” Brad laughed.
“I don’t,” Nehru said. “They don’t know what the hell is going on either.”

Brad was lying on his back listening to depressing music. It had been so warm this whole July. It was warm tonight, even in this basement where he lay on his back staring at the rafters and watching the tendrils and clouds of smoke from the menthol cigarette, watching the uneven cone at its tip burn rust orange. He took two last puffs before stubbing out the cigarette, and began to play air guitar as the music grew more angry and less sad. Then the phone rang. Brad reached over, turned down the stereo and answered.
“Hello?” it was too late for anyone to be calling.
“Bradley?” it was a small voice that sounded a little desperate.
“Debbie?”
There were a few snuffles to prove that she was in real pain, and then. “Yes,” in an even smaller voice.
“What’s up, Debra?”
“I need to come over. I need to see you.”
“Debbie, honey. It’s late.”
“Please, Brad. You used to love me.”
“I still do,” he lied. He wondered if he ever had loved her. On the other side of the phone, as if she’d heard his doubt, Debbie began sobbing loudly.
“Okay,” he said. “Come on over. The basement door’ll be open, alright?”
She sobbed again.
“Alright,” she cried.

Brad got dressed. It really was too hot. How could it be this awful, even in July? He sat in the second room of the basement, in the old beat up barber chair that had belonged to his uncle’s shop. Often, when Debra said she was coming over, he would sit here, looking at the red metal door, waiting for it to open, sometimes fantasizing that he was waiting for a drug lord, some arch nemesis to step through, making a gun sign, licking his lips. This was the chair where he waited for the enemy.
He made a gun out of his hand, closed one eye, aimed at the red door, and fired a few times.
Then Debra came in looking sadder than ever.
“Debbie.”
“Hi, Bradley.”
She sounded so sad it made him sick. No. No. That was the thing. He made himself sick because he was falling for it. She was so little. He wanted to make her feel better.
She came to him, and guiltily he enfolded her in his arms.
“I miss you she said. I love you.”
“Baby, you can’t be like this. It’s not right. You should find someone. You will. I’m not what you want. Not really.”
“Yes, Bradley. I do… Life is...” she sobbed and he stroked her hiar. “Life is bad and you’re so smart, you know how to help me get through it.”
“You’ll get through it,” he said holding her tighter.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. “I promise I’ll do better.”
“That’s not what it’s about.”
“I’ll do what you want me to. I promise. Just tell me.”
“Baby stop.”
She kissed Brad. She was like a puppy. She kissed his neck and his eyes and his ears and his head and wailed. “I promise.”
“Baby. Stop,” he said. “Baby, stop.” he pled. He knew what she was doing, past the promises and the tears that she herself really believed in. He knew how his body was responding. How his heart was unlocking.
“Bradley, I’m sorry,” she breathed into his chest, still weeping. “I’m sorry.”
Her little hand reached his shorts and her fingers wrapped around his already stiff cock.
She was seducing him.


Brad sat up in bed staring blankly at the wall. Beyond the blankness, dully insisting itself, was anger, though Brad could not say exactly with whom he was angry. His clothing was in a pile at the corner of the bed. At the side of the bed Debra was dressing, Her face was dry and pale and showed the first trace of real, grownup sorrow.
She pulled the pink shirt on over her brassiere.
“It really is over isn’t it, Brad?”
Brad looked sullen. He looked guilty, but determined.
And he nodded his head.
Debra nodded. She did not pat him or smile or say anything but, “I’ll let myself out.”
Brad nodded. and pulled his knees to his chest. He heard her footfalls die and then the red door open and close.
So this is what freedom feels like.
He felt like shit.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great new section. I think Brad needs to make a clean break from Debbie altogether. I hope he can figure out what he really wants in life. Excellent writing and I look forward to more!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I am not entirely sure what Brad needs. He certainly needs a change, and he definitely needs to break up with Debbie, but when I first wrote this story, I wasn't sure what the solution is and I'm still not sure all of this time later. This might be some of what life is about, that we don't know what we need, exactly, but we know we need to keep moving forward until we find it. There will be more of Brad later on, and more of his friends, but for now, this current story with him is done and we will leave him in his basement to sort himself out.