BRADLEY AARON LONG
I can’t remember how I met you, but I remember how we became this. I remember the afternoon by the black piano in summer in the quiet of The Noble Red when I bent toward you or you bent toward me, and the whole world bent between us and I kissed you. I discovered what had terrified me. In the tenderness of your lips the whole world ended.
I did not plan to be anything or anybody, I did not plan to be unusual or take a stand. I do not want parades. Maybe there should be parades. I don’t want to go on marches. I do not want to be without you. This is the only thing I want, the press of my forehead to yours, our lips to each others in bed, or on the street.
In bed we press feet to feet, knees to knees, knead the palms of our hands into each other’s. Lock legs, Lock arms, lock tongues. We are like living sticks rubbing together for that greater heat.
I am not political. I mean, I was a very little political. I had sentimental leanings toward the hippies. I had a semi longing for the Sixties. But if telling the world I love you is political, then I am political. It is winter, but I picture spring in Jefferson Park where the cherry blossoms are all on the tree, and there is that bridge, and we are standing on it and the little stream shoots under us, the one that leads to the river, and I lean down and press my head to yours, press my hands into yours. I look into your eyes so you know me, know how I feel.
I am silent long enough for you to talk. You say nothing. Good, say nothing, you’ve earned that right so that I can say there is a real moment, one I can’t remember, and then a realer than real moment when I think of how I met you. You are in those white linen pants and that white dress shirt, and Lake Michigan looks almost Caribbean so that, even though you are the color of caramel or of a good cup of coffee you seem gloriously black against the electric blue of water, the glowing blue of sky. You are coming to me from the sea, or am I coming to you?
“Coming, coming, coming, like that first time. Fuck, we were kids together, weren’t we? I was thirty, you were twenty three, and like teenagers we lay on the bed in jeans and tee shirts, making out and holding back, not going here, not going there, and you know what? I felt just like a virgin, and I think I wanted to be a virgin for you. I wanted to be your baby. I didn’t want to fuck and fuck it up. Make it like all of those other times with all of those others, where I wanted to be touched and never quite was.
So I say, “Let’s live here, together. Let me find out, in time, how much it would cost, look into a lease?” And you say, “We can do that today.”
I say I wanna make a home with you, and you say you wanna make a home with me too, and after all the waiting, why wait any longer?
Sentimentally, I want to make love to you again in my old bed, or in your old bed in your parents’ house, like that very first time when I was as eager to undress as someone in a heated room on a summer day when they see a pool. I wanted to be real for the first time with you, not to hold anything back, to give you everything.
That first time I was in you, there was the miracle of stupid old me, six foot three, rejoicing in ejaculation, love surrendering to orgasm, spurting joy made liquid,
God forgive me. I want to be a virgin for you. God forgive me. You are everything, and some of the things I took you through were unworthy of you. We came together in a strange kind of heaven. I longed for…. I was full of longing. I would have killed myself if you hadn’t taken me in that night. I know it now. If we had gone our separate ways I would have driven off a bridge. Now I understand the fragile line between choosing life and choosing death.
Every moment, but especially that moment I loved to drive into you. That night, pot and poppers, liquor and infinite arms, infinite embraces, endless love and absolute mercy came to me under twinkling amber lights in the form of sex. You and Cody were my fucking guardian angels, fucking angels. Fucking… And in the end, like a good angel, there is Cody, hair like chocolate, leaning there, pointing to you, telling me, so stupid, and you so stubborn, “This is home. This is your home.” Like a golden angel he did it, and like a golden ange, in the grey and white morning he leaves us alone, and he is gone.
In the morning we repeat what we began. Every time we come together, face to face, lips to lips, hands closing in hands, belly pressed to belly, is like what they used to say in church. How do you call it? A sacrament. And this last moment is the first moment, is the first moment as we come together on the second floor in that old apartment, making love, as the winter sun shines across us hot as summer, and we simmer together, my love, my one, my Jawarhalal Nehru Alexander.
Brad had a slightly assholey cousin named Stan, and Stan didn’t seem in a mood to ask them to stay, which would have made Nehru turn right around and walk out, but his wife, a long suffering blond woman named Linda was warm and welcoming and the three kids, Deanna, Fred and Caedmon, each picked one of the visitors as their favorite. Deanna set to tell Nehru everything about her life.
“That was just what I needed,” Cody said as they were heading back. The sky was full of snow, but Brad, laughing and smoking, seemed unaffected.
“You’re staying with us tonight, right?” Nehru said.
“I…” Cody blinked. He laughed. The world seemed like a less lonely place. The lack of Russell seemed less painful, in some ways even more appropriate.
“I guess I am.”
In the apartment over the Noble Red, they sat up till late, talking under the low gold pinpricks of the amber fairy lights.
“I wasn’t right,” Cody said. “I wasn’t right and then the two of you came and saved me, and I thank you for that. Once I was a together person. I want to be a right person. I want to be right.”
Cody slept on the couch in the dining room, and when Brad led Nehru away, like the lover that he was, they kissed in his room—their room now—with the door open, and then stripped in amber lights and held each other. Black and white, long and shorter, they tangled their limbs together, and like baby animals, lay down to sleep.
Rob turned over in bed that morning and looked out of the window.
“Pull these covers back down,” Chayne demanded, half asleep. “And my God, where is the heat?”
“I’ll check,” Rob said.
Chayne Kandzierski’s great dread was that the furnace would die in winter, and Rob jumped out of bed naked, ran into the hall and sprinted back into bed, reporting. “We never took it off of the timer. I just turned it up to seventy.”
Chayne leaned out of bed long enough to grab the comforter and pull it over them.
“This is going to be a three blanket morning.”
Rob chuckled and shivered under the covers, turning on his stomach to look out the window: “Chayne, it’s Christmas Eve.”
“I know. I have to be at the church at five for choir practice.”
“And it looks like it’s going to be a white Christmas.”
“And that excites you?”
Rob smirked at Chayne and said, “Stop being such a grumpy old man.”
“I am a grumpy old man.”
“I don’t know if thirty-six makes you old.”
“Older than you.”
“Well,” Rob slipped back into the covers, “it’s a good think you have me to keep you young.”
“And warm.”
“But how do you feel?” Kristin asked Patti.
They sat in the kitchen drinking coffee.
Jackie said nothing, but she nodded and Felice took out her cigarettes, handing one to each of the women.
“Well, I like Cody. He’s a good kid. And a good friend to Russell. And a good friend to Thom. I guess I feel fine,” Patti said. “It’s not like he cheated on me. Cody’s been out in the world the whole time I’ve known Thom.
“But, I don’t know, it still changes things. I have to keep reminding myself he didn’t cheat on me.
“And then I think about Liz.”
“Liz Parr?” Jackie said, exhaling smoke.
“Yeah,” Patti said. “He did have an affair with her while we were split up. And there was some other woman. And somehow this random bitch, Cody’s mother, I’m getting her confused with them.”
“Maybe you should go to therapy,” Kristin suggested.
Patti snorted, and all the women looked at Kristin.
“Look, I understand you are a therapist, but you can’t really therapize yourself.”
“Is therapize even a word?” Felice said.
“Felice, I don’t know what the fuck it is,” Kristin said, “but I think Patricia should do it.”
The kitchen door swung open, and the women were quiet, thinking it might be Thom. But Denise Mc.Llarchlahn entered the room in a bright blue snow suit and a pom pom hat and took off her goggles, singing, “Good morning, ladies.”
“Denise,” her sister said.
“I just wanted you all to know, I didn’t feel like cooking at the parish house for Christmas.—”
“Great,” Patti said, “so just come here.”
“Oh, I am, and I’m bringing guests.”
“Guests?”
“I can’t just leave Father Geoff and Father Keith hungry—”
“You actually could—”
“So,” said Denise, taking out a cigar and lighting it, “I’m bringing them here—”
“Two additional seats—”
“Along with Ann, Hannah Decker and her husband.”
“Denise!”
“Four additional guests,” Felice laughed, “is that all?”
“No,” Denise replied. “Father Keith’s brother is coming too. Or is that a problem?”
There was something in her cigar chomping sister that seemed to be challenging her, and so Patti said, “No, Denise. I welcome the chaos.”
“Ohhh, God,” she groaned. “Ohhhhhgod, fuck me. Fuck me. Stay in me. Stay!
“Fuck me! Fuck me!” she insisted.
In the dark little apartment, in the rickety shaking bed, his head buried in her shoulder, ass arched up as he crammed himself in her, William B. Dwyer fucked Lynn Messing.
“Stay in me, stay in me, stay in me,” she pleaded, her voice shallow, her hands planted on his back, now running down it, caressing his sides, the sides of his thighs, his ass.
“I’m about to—” he almost croaked.
“Come in me,” she whispered. “Come inside me.”
She placed her hands on either side of his red face and almost growled, “Don’t hide from me when you come. Let me see you.”
His eyes bulged, his face is red, veins rise from his neck, and he trembled as he stared into her. Seizing, he let out a strangled groan, and she exhaled a sigh of relief at his own relief, feeling his ejaculation, and the relaxing of his flesh.
“Where are you?” Lynn asked.
They lay side by side in the bed and Bill, his mouth half open, stared at the ceiling.
“It’s Christmas.”
“Almost.”
Lynn turned to him.
“You know you can come with me, meet my family if you want.”
Bill Dwyer did not answer immediately, and before he could gather his thoughts, Lynn Messing, who was no fool, took a strand of her brown hair, gently brushing it over his shoulder.
“You want to go home, don’t you? You want to go back to your family.”
Bill frowned, steepling his fingertips.
“I want to go back to Cameron.”
Nehru woke on his back, mouth dry and back sore, grey light coming into the room. He pushed himself out of bed, and went to the closet to pull a sheet over Brad before pulling on a housecoat.
Nehru went to the restroom, then came back to bed. Brad was already half awake and Nehru said, “The library?”
“Is closed,” Brad said.
And then, narrowing his eyes, Brad said, “Sacred Net.”
“What?” Nehru said.
“Nehru,” Brad said, “Cody’s Sacred Net.”
“Ah!”
Brad only kissed him quickly, and then he sprang up, pulled on his shorts and went to the restroom. He came back, pulling off his shorts and climbed back under the sheet. Only now, as they pulled themselves together, they heard Cody shuffling around, going into the bathroom, and Nehru said, “I will clean that place today. It’s getting a lot of use.”
As they chuckled, the toilet flushed, water ran, and then there was a heavy silence, and the two of them turned as Cody came into their room. He stood looking at them, shirtless, wearing his jeans from yesterday, the expression in his dark eyes unreadable. Then he pulled off his baggy jeans and his thick sex sprang out. He climbed into the bed on the other side of Nehru, pulling the covers over himself as well.
The snow was just starting to look bad when Anigel Raez walked through the door of 1421 Curtain at the head of a small party.
“Ani!” Rob cried, nearly tackling her while Chayne said, “Try not to kill her,” and, “I’m glad you got in before things got really crazy.”
“Before?” Ross Allen turned and looked at the white snow blowing onto the street.
“It’s supposed to get worse,” Chayne said. “Sit down and get some coffee. I’m thinking of canceling choir practice.”
“No, don’t do that,” Rob said as he welcomed the last two visitors, Macy Mc.Llarchlahn and Jimmy Nespres and their fellow student, Richard B. Sanders, better known as Flipper.
“We stopped in Walter early this morning,” Ross explained.
“This is awfully late to still be on campus,” said Chayne.
“Jimmy’s flight to Baltimore got canceled,” Macy said.
“Flipper And Macy didn’t want to drive to Chicago in this weather,” Jimmy added.
“So here we all are,” Flipper explained.
“Russell’ll be glad to see you,” Chayne told them.
“If we ever get out of this house.”
“Aw, things ain’t so bad,” Anigel said, wrapping an arm about Chayne’s waist. “Howabout, you get me the address book with the choir members and I start calling to tell them practice is off if snow doesn’t stop by…?”
“Three,” Chayne decided. “And you’re a brilliant friend.”
“I’m a friend who needs coffee,” Anigel said, kissing his cheek. “Rob, please get to it.”
Early on Christmas Eve Morning, with the curtains barely hiding the fall of white snow, under the amber fairy lights there was a joy that made those naked more naked still, Cody and Nehru and Brad began moving together, hugging tighter, caressing, and at last Brad murmured offhandedly, “If we fuck we fuck.”
Affection kisses got hotter, limbs tangled, hearts opened, blood rose. In the golden dimness of the apartment over the Noble Red, one of them is witness to two of them striving together, gently at first then in great need.
Love far more than lust makes this moment of limbs embracing, mouths hard kissing, tongues entangling, knees kneading, as the creaking bed gives witness to the three of them joining an old dance, and the silent room suddenly is a place of moans, curses, shouts, gentle sighs, tiny laughs. Peace and love reveal most urgent need, tasting, touching, entering and being entered, hands planted upon hands, hips slamming, hands reaching into hair, holding onto shoulders, eyes and mouths wide and shining in the dark, open in something between terror and great need, the calm after the earthquake and the volcano, the falling back into arms, even the laughter, especially the laughter, everything that leads to this sunlit midday.
“I didn’t know if you were back or what,” Russell said when he got the call from Gilead.
“We’re at home. At my home,” Gilead said. “Mark thought it was best if we came here first. What’ve you got going on for today?”
“I’m just watching my family arrive,” Russell said. “And trying to stay awake from lack of sleep.
“Well, why fight it? Just go to bed.”
“I don’t really want to be here.”
“Well then come here,” Gilead said. “I mean not now, but in a few hours. I’ll just send Mark up the road to get you.”
“You sure?”
“It’s really not a big commitment.”
“Okay, but I’m not even sure if we’re having choir practice or not. If we do, I’ll just be at Chayne’s.”
“Maybe we’ll all be at Chayne’s.”
On the other side of the phone, Russell heard Mark shouting, “Come to bed.”
“With this snow, we may not be going anywhere.”
“Fuck snow,” Gilead decided.
Then Russell heard Gilead say to Mark, “How can you sleep? We just got home.”
“Did you have a good time?” Russell asked.
Before Gilead could answer, Mark was saying, “You weren’t the one driving from here to Sawyer, were you?”
“We had a great time,” Gilead said in a low voice so Mark could not hear him.
“You guys,” Russell began, “you guys really love each other, don’t you?”
“Well, damnit, Russell, when you put it that way—”
Mark was wailing:“I’m tired! I want someone to snuggle with or I can’t sleep. Waaaaah!”
“Will you stop! My mother can hear your foolishness.”
“You better come to bed, then.”
“Yes,” Gilead said, sounding exasperated, “I guess I do love him after all.”
