PART THREE
MEDITATIONS
ON
THE FLESH
FOURTEEN
NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN
BRAD LONG
Everything makes more sense when I sit down and write. For so long I thought that was Nehru’s job, I really did. I used to play my guitar and think, when I get other people we’ll have a nice little garage band. And then we had a nice little garage band, and I thought, when we get a real singer, we can have a better band. And we got Nehru, and he could write. He had the greatest mind I’d ever seen. He was the wisest person I’d ever met, this little guy—well, not little. I’m six-two, he’s just shorter than me. And younger. But the point is I thought he had all the words, and lately I realize I have words too. Lately, I even realize that salvation comes through the word. I’m not very religious, but there are verses I’ve heard: the truth will set you free, the word became flesh… I think now I understand what they mean.
I’ll be thirty-two before long, thirty-two, and last year when I turned thirty-one, I was in a panic because I didn’t understand anything accept that something was wrong. Not quite a year later, everything has changed. There’s hardly a need to rehearse it, but everything has changed so much, and it is so very different from what I thought I needed, or what anyone else would think I needed. Need is a strange word, maybe I should say things are so different from what people—me included—thought they should be. But then, should is a strange word too. These days I just keep on trying to do what feels real, what feels like me. No, that sounds selfish. I just keep on trying to do the thing that gives people joy. Well now that sounds saintly. I just keep trying to do what makes Nehru Alexander happy. Well, now that seems co-dependent. Or so they say. Somewhere in the middle of saintliness, co- dependence and…. Authenticity…. Is love.
After the Purim party we all drive back to Geschichte Falls. Cody is with us, but Cody spent the night with Russell. It’s strange to me, but I don’t judge. Cody is a strange man, but he’s made me strange too. There’s something wonderful about him. And kind. And hot. If I didn’t love Nehru, I probably wouldn’t be able to see it. Nehru is the first guy I’ve been with, but Cody is the second, and it’s easy to be with him. It’s natural to be with him, more natural than most of the people I’ve been with in my life. And he loves Russell, and Russell is a conundrum. He and his friends—I mean Gilead mostly—are pretty complicated for high schoolers. I can’t see myself fooling with a kid in high school, but Russell’s not every kid. And apparently Russell is his brother? But they found that out late. It seems to be making a real mess between them, and by that I mean, being hung up on the fact that they’re related seems to be making a real mess.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” I heard Nehru say when we were at his cousin Chayne’s.
“Well, now,” Chayne began, “the big deal is Cody is a grown ass man and Russell is sixteen, but…”
“But that cat’s out of the bag and the road has been crossed,” Nehru said.
“Right,” Chayne allowed, “and having been crossed….. I do see what you’re saying.”
“You know Mom has this friend who’s a shrink?” Gilead turned to Chayne.
“Sherraleese?”
“Yeah. And she used to council this girl whose parents were brother and sister. They just couldn’t stay away from each other. They made three kids together.”
Rob was there and he said, “That’s sick,” and I wanted to say the same thing, but Chayne shrugged and said, “It’s kind of romantic.”
“You would say that,” Rob said.
And Chayne said, “Of course I would. I just did.”
“But the kids were all fucked up,” Gilead continued.
“That,” Nehru said, “is the unfortunate consequence of incest between heterosexuals. But Cody and Russell can’t make children.”
Rob doesn’t come back with us. He is going some place with some guy who was at the party last night. I’m sure Anigel knows what’s going on, and I can’t believe that somehow Chayne Kandzierski doesn’t know everything. But it’s none of my business.
All I know is that the other night it never occurred to us, or maybe it occurred to one of us for a moment, to turn this Joshua guy away. Maybe we thought he’d be like Cody. He wasn’t. He was fine. We had a good time. I don’t regret it. I’m surprised about that. I’ve slept with a lot of people. That’s true. I’ve done a lot of things, but I always tried to do what was right, and Nehru is the person I care about. Cody was always an exception. I don’t want other people. It’s not something I seek. I was surprised when we took Joshua to bed with us, but I kept thinking this was a guy who needed something, and we had it, so we gave it to him. Ha! We gave it to him all night. And it didn’t make us less.
But on the way back I can’t help thinking about Cody, wondering if, after last night, maybe he’ll be with Russell now. Maybe that will be his thing, and me and Nehru will be on our own. I love Nehru on his own, but we’ll miss Cody. When I say we, I know I mean we. We, Nehru and I, will miss our friend. When Cody shares our life it doesn’t make it less. It kind of makes it more.
We sit in our apartment over the Noble Red, where the amber lights are strung up along the walls and down below is Kirkland Street, cars passing by. Up to the window come the branches with their first green buds and Nehru says, “If you’re going to sing. You have to teach me to play the guitar.”
I have never named my guitar. I tried to call it Bessie, and then something else, but it didn’t make any sense. It’s a guitar, but it’s precious and I set it in Nehru’s precious arms and then put my arm around him, my hands over his, and begin to instruct him. I tried to teach Debbie, but she complained that her hands hurt, and I wasn’t patient, so I lost confidence in my ability to teach. Tutoring math and history is one thing, but I’ve never been able to teach music, so I am surprised when Nehru takes to it,
We are going to California this summer. Ir has been our dream to go and play there. It’s a hazy dream, but I’m a fan of it, and there’s really no limit to who goes with us. Regardless if Cody is in our bed or not he will go because he’s in the band, which means Jill will because she’s with Shane. Robin will go and so will Hale. So I imagine Marissa there as well, Marissa round with our kid. Surely she can take vacation time. In my mind everyone is there.
Nehru is competent enough to strum a support to the words I am humming into a song, and while I turn loose words into lyrics I think of the sun setting over blue water that has been taken up by sunlight and a long stretch of sand, and I don’t know if I’m picturing California or the lake where Nehru and I so often come together.
“So close your eyes and take my hand
Leave behind this ragged land
When will you ever
Understand
That I will always love you?
Follow me and leave behind
The broken place, space in your mind
Where everything is cold and black
So I can always love you.”
The bells of Saint Adjeanet are ringing when hands over hands become clinging, when my arms around Nehru tighten and we are done with our lesson, or maybe we’re in the midst of a new one. We gently put the guitar down, and Nehru gently puts me down, kisses my eyes, my lips, traces my face with the back of his hand. I rise to meet him, to kiss him, to pull his mouth to mine. We undress, and now he’s teaching me. We leave the sofa. He takes me by the hand and leads me to the bed, sits me down, presses his fingers to my lips, lays me down, takes his hand, takes the oil, strokes what’s already hard into something harder. He kneels down and takes me in, rides me as the afternoon shadows stretch to evening. In the end he takes mercy on me, turns around, so that I can kneel behind him. He tells me not to be gentle, urges me on to the finish line. It only takes a moment. Nehru cries out while I pound him. I apologize for not lasting longer. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry, babe.” Exploding is like shattering. It’s like being lifted off your feet, and then I wonder if an egg feels like this when it’s cracked, a thin piece of paper when it goes up in flames, or water when tension breaks the surface.
“Honey now whisper my name
As you and I go up in flames
And what is left? Only grace remains
And I will always love you…”
Nehru lies on his stomach, the last of the day limning his head, his shoulders, his back, his rising buttocks while, on my back, I pitch and tremble. Orgasms with Nehru seize my body so hard so often, he strokes me as I come off of this one, still shaking, my hands flexing and unflexing, hips still pitching, eyes still a little wide open, the last of the climax wrung from my body.
He says: “No need to apologize. We have all night….”
After a while he amends: “We have every night.”
“And I will always love you…”
When Cody came through the door he was received with gladness. Nehru had been at the stove, mixing spaghetti sauce, and came to him with a quick embrace. Brad had been scrubbing the toilet. It was his day to clean the bathroom.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” Nehru, who also said that as long as Brad didn’t know how to cook everyday would be his day to clean the bathroom, also said“Have a seat.”
Then Nehru said, “Actually, if you wash your hands and make drinks and put plates out, that would be even better.”
Cody did, and it was like saying he was home, and in the bathroom the water ran, Brad washing his hands, and then he was out and in the kitchen helping Cody put out the dishes and telling him about the new song they’d been working on. Nehru pulled the garlic bread out of the oven, and while preparing plates, he squeezed Cody’s hand, and his ass, smiling and saying, “It’s good to have you back.”
“I’ve only been gone two days!”
“It’s good all the same,” Brad agreed as he kissed Nehru.
They sat down to dinner, and no one said anything about Russell or about Purim. It was not their way to press, and things seemed to be sorted out. It seemed Cody was staying. It wasn’t necessary that he did, but he could if he wanted. While Nehru drank his wine and got another beer for Brad, one for Cody, he thought one day Cody would have to be accountable, say what he wanted, make an arrangement. One day he and Brad would have to do the same. But this was not that day, and at any road, they just all seemed to know what to do at this time, and to know what they wanted.
“Who wants some of the finest cush this side of Bob Marley?” Cody asked, taking a fragrant bag out of his rucksack.
Cody always smelled of patchouli and vanilla, milk and earth and a faint spray of cigarettes and marijuana. Brad kept weed handy, but smoked it infrequently. Nehru had never bought it and wouldn’t know where to get it, and if it never came across his path again he’d be fine. But now it did come across his path, and so they went to the living room, rolled a blunt and passed it around. Even thought it was simpler to roll joints it was holier to pass the smoke between them. As they smoked and laughed and drank they talked. They talked about California and Anigel and her tampons. They talked about Russell and how Cody was unsure.
“This is my home. You guys are my home. If you want me. If you’ll have me. I’m sure about this. This is what I’m sure of.”
“You know,” Nehru said, “if you guys love each other, then who cares?”
“Thom and Patti might care.”
“Doubtless,” Nehru agreed. “But Thom and Patti don’t have to know.”
“He’s my—”
Nehru put his fingers over Cody’s lips. He clipped them shut so they looked like a duck’s bill and he said, “Shhhhhhh.
“Abraham and Sarah were brother and sister. In the Bible.”
“The fuck?” Brad said.
“They were half brother and half sister. And they could reproduce!”
Nehru remembered he was holding Cody’s lips hostage. He let them go.
“Do what you love,” Nehru said, holding his arms out, and passing Cody the blunt.
“You’re too much,” Cody dissolved into a gurgle of laughs.
“You’re right,” he said. “But you’re too much too.”
Everything that needed to be said had been said. There was no drinking, no smoking, and only a minimum of light. They were only a half a band short of Chilli Comet Sunday, but it passed through Brad’s mind that they might practice when, lazily he paid attention to Cody, whose hand was unzipping his jeans. He helped him, working them down, pulling down his black Jockeys. On the other side of Cody, Nehru’s trousers were already all the way down, and Cody was working him too. Now, Nehru whispered in Cody’s ear, and then Cody bent down and took Brad in his mouth, and Brad closed his eyes and plunged his hands into the thickness of Cody’s hair. He opened his eyes to look at the amber lights, and then to look to Nehru, who leaned forward to kiss him. Nehru’s mouth on his, Cody’s mouth on him.
They were in no hurry Under artificial stars things happened slowly. They had not closed the blinds or the curtains. The windows were high and they were high up. As Cody undressed and Nehru helped to undress both him and Brad, Brad remembered the B&B by the lake and his penis rose in a thrill. In a thrill on the soft carpet before the sofa, he took Cody. They both moaned and even Nehru moaned as Brad buried the length of his cock inside Cody. Their sex was the beast with three backs, As he moved in Cody, Nehru’s hands gently shaped and traced his back, he wanted Nehru’s hands on his ass. He shocked to Nehru’s mouth there, his tongue inside of him. Nehru in him, Nehru in him. Nehru in him! His fingers hooking down to yank his balls, his finger pressing into Brad’s asshole so gently so that Brad was caught between two exquisite pleasures. Nehru in him, him in Cody, holy trinity, fuckecstasy. Cody groaned, “Harder…. Harder” while Nehru urged him on, planting his hands on his hips, clapping his ass, pushing him deeper into Cody, his breath shallow, his head bent low.
“Fuck him, Brad… Fuck him…”
Between the two of them, carrying out his wish, carrying out theirs, he was harder than he’d ever been. The sex thrill was at the base of his balls. It rose higher and higher, took all of him into the sky. The three of them were caught in a frenzy on that living room floor that night.
That night the three of them slept so deeply in each other’s arms and there wasn’t even a radio on, just the sound of crickets from the one open window and the occasional car driving by on Kirkland. In sleep they rolled together and embraced, woke up, rejoiced to be together and embraced again.
Brad Long needed no alarm clock. Even on days when he wasn’t going to work and was going to piss and go right back to sleep, for some reason he always woke at 6:26. This morning the toilet was lushing, water was running, and Cody, compact, brown bodied, chocolate haired, was coming out of the bathroom. He climbed on Brad, squeezed his shoulders and mussed his hair. They all lay together a few moments before Brad rose, padding on bear feet to make the coffee before heading into the bathroom. If Cody was here, he could drop Nehru off at Soubirous. He had a late schedule this semester anyway. Brad would head to the library at nine.
On his way to the bathroom he saw Cody naked, stretched out like a starfish, his buttocks and thighs rounded and strong, his head between Nehru’s legs as he sucked him into morning. He pissed with the door open, and from the bathroom Brad could hear Nehru’s moans, which were becoming cries. He wanted to see them. He wanted to hear them. The front of the apartment was one barely divided common space, living room and main bedroom, bathroom to one side, kitchen to the other.
Brad thrilled at the sounds of clapping and at the elegant way in which Nehru, on hands and knees moved his body, at the fierce rhythm in which Cody fucked him. He could barely stay away. His penis arched up like a sausage. His knees trembled. Full of lust and love, Brad moved toward the bed.
