THREE
SUNDAY
PART ONE
Gilead Story’s Saturday had been far less eventful than that of his friends. This was fine He was still humming with Friday night and Mark Young. He loved Mark, there was no getting around that. He loved the wave in his brown hair, he loved the scent of his breath. He loved the taste of his skin, even though he couldn’t describe it. He loved the way they kissed, how their lips clung together, and he loved Mark’s little tongue in his mouth. He even loved that moment of something dawning in him, where Mark’s nose, his lips, his ears, his eyes, transformed into something he absolutely loved.
And he loved the freedom he’d never known, call it a lack of shame. Not that he’d ever thought of himself as ashamed, but he must have been, at least a little, so buttoned up, so afraid of undressing in the locker room, so on his dignity, but as he lay beside Mark in his bed, and Mark smiled down on him, that corner of the mouth smile, no dignity mattered, and Mark helped him undress and the two boys were naked before each other, kissing again and again, not turning the little light off because they wanted to see each other, not afraid of the things they tried until they both exploded in the night and slept in each other’s arms only to chuckle and start all over again.
When Mark Young brought him home that Saturday, Gilead was almost afraid of how tender he felt toward him, how much he loved Mark’s hand at the small of his back, how much he loved encircling Mark’s waist with his arm. All that morning he thought of lying on his back in Mark’s bed that smell of Mark’s unwashed sheets, his boy body, while Mark lay above him and he touched his face. When he closed his eyes he saw Mark, like some ancient piece of art, sprawled naked before him, a small line of hair down to the soft black hair over his penis.
So, when the phone rang, Gilead picked it up immediately and shouted, “I’ve got it,” and Sharonda, who was never in a hurry to answer a phone, let him get it. Perhaps she knew a little of her son’s mind as well, and he sat in his room and said, “Hello?”
“Gil?”
“Mark?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice.”
“What are you…. Are you up to anything?”
“Nope. I mean… No.”
This was not the conversation he wanted to have. He wanted to declare his deep love for Mark. He wanted Mark in a feathered cap and cape declaring his devotion. Surely this was the way they felt, not this blank and dull boy chatter their lips couldn’t move past.
“So….” Mark was saying, “I was thinking… I’m free for the rest of the day…”
This was Gilead’s turn. He got it, He almost missed it. The stage director in his brain prompted him.
“You should come over.”
“Really?”
“We could hang out.”
In a moment Gilead flushed with the heated memory of being on his hands and knees, his head between Mark’s legs as he swallowed his hardening cock and Marks hands massaged his scalp.
“I’d like that,” Mark said. “I mean…. I’d love it.”
“Me too.”
Again, the heat from memory, he and Mark in the dark with lotion, dicks pressed together, Mark shuttling back and forth on top of him, Mark;s hands kneading his shoulders ass his hands frantically rubbed Mark’s ass.
“My place or yours?” Mark asked.
“Well, it’s just my mom,” Gilead said. “but then it is my mom. So it would be the three of us in one place.”
“It’s a bunch of us here, and no one really knows what anyone else is doing.”
“So probably your place.”
“Give me fifteen minutes.”
Sharonda was glad to see her son going out, and even happier to see him with Mark. The only thing she insisted on is that he come over for breakfast in the morning.
“I can do that after church, Ma’am,” he said.
“I appreciate that,” Sharonda said, by which she meant, she appreciated that he went to church.
“Where at?” she asked him.
“Evervirgin,” Mark replied.
But Sharonda had none of the quarrel with Evervirgin that other members of her family did. She went to Saint Celestine’s when she went at all, and as long as a boy went to church, the where didn’t matter.
They took the very long way to Mark’s, and were on Finallay Parkway, a place they never needed to be, when Mark almost shouted and said, “Goddamn, Gil. Don’t.”
But the don’t was dull, and only half real, and he moaned and said, “You’re gonna make me loose concentration.”
Gilead had slipped his hands between Mark’s legs in a passion to touch him again, and was stroking him, and Mark moaned a little and said, “Fuck, Gil.”
They were driving through high trees and the road was lonely, and Gilead said, “You better pull over then.”
So they pulled over to the side of the road the Saturday before Christmas and fooled around a few moments before Mark fastened his jeans, got back into the drivers seat and said, “This just makes me want to get home quicker.”
At his house in the nice split level among other split levels, Mark’s parents were already gone along with his brother and sister, and Mark took Gilead by the hand up to his room, locked the door behind them, and feverishly kissed him, pressing Gilead against it. They struggled out of clothes, leaving coats and hats and jeans in a pile beside them, Gilead wrapping a leg about Mark while the other boy pressed against them. Together they went to bed to continue what the two of them had begun to discover the night before. Gilead had seen a few videos, felt a few impulses, known that bending over and being penetrated by Mark, or the other way around, as the summit of things, what two boys who weren’t supposed to do things to each other were supposed to do, but this right now, flesh pressing together, legs and arms wrapping about each other, was more than enough.
But Mark did not go to church with family on Sunday morning. He hadn’t lied to Sharonda, they just weren’t the sort of family who made their kids do that, often Mrs. Young stayed home herself. Mark had been through so much, and now he had this Gilead whom he was so obviously taken with. They left him alone. So in the mid morning before they dressed, Mark just lay on his side looking at Gilead lying on his side and he felt beautiful. He felt desired for the first time in his life. Mark didn’t pay attention to girls, and long limbed, strong thighed, flat stomached and chiseled, he looked the way he did due to track and nature. Gilead’s fingers stroked his temples, tracing the waves in his hair, and under Gilead’s long hands and loving eyes, Mark rejoiced in the beauty of his own body even while he knew Gilead would love him if he lost it.
“What took us so long?” Mark had whispered to him.
“I don’t think it took us that long at all,” said Gil.
“Then why, Friday?”
“Cause it had taken long enough. I had the strangest, silliest feeling that if anything should happen to you, I would never forgive myself if I didn’t see you naked and climb into bed with you. I thought about how anytime someone walks out the door, you might never see them again. And I didn’t want to know anything ever happened to you and I was still a virgin.”
Mark was so together, but Gilead had a way of undoing him, and they were naked with each other, feet entwined, face to fac, so Mark just said, “So, I guess I can go get killed in a car wreck now.”
“Don’t you dare say that,” Gilead hit Mark and Mark was surprised by the fury of his anger. “Don’t you ever say something like that.”
Gilead almost turned away from him and Mark touched his shoulder.
“Joe was my friend.”
“I know,” Gilead said.
“I never talk about it. About him. I don’t know how to.”
Turning around, Gilead nodded.
Mark had run the back of his hand along Gilead’s cheek.
“Thank you, Gil,” he said.
They showered together, dressed and went to Gilead’s house. He kissed him mother, made coffee and set out the leftover Danish. As he bent into the fridge, looking over the food and searching out milk and coffee creamer, he could feel Mark behind him and hear the other boy yawning. He reached out to poke him in the stomach and heard him yelp.
In the night, Gilead woke up to The Very Best of Judy Collins playing on repeat, and he’d been dreaming about tea and oranges and bellbottoms. He’d sat up and seen Mark, messy haired for once, bare-chested, swaying and murmuring:
“And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.”
Mark had sensed Gilead sitting up, and turned around, looking a little embarrassed.
Gilead licked the back of his hand and began to smooth Mark’s hair while Mark said, “I like this song.”
Earlier that morning, Mark kept giving Gilead what Gilead described as, “This look.”
“What do you mean? This look?” Mark said as he pulled a snug tee shirt over his long, admirable, slightly furry and definitely well formed, chest.
“A look like… you wanna do something?”
Mark gave Gilead the half smile and shrug he was used to by now, and then suddenly put his hands on Gilead’s shoulders and kissed him. He kissed him firmly, slipping his tongue into Gilead’s mouth, and said, “That’s the something I wanted to do. Alright?”
Now they sat in the large kitchen with Sharonda, and she was about to ask about their night when the phone rang, and Gilead said, “That’s early for a Sunday,” wiping his hands on a napkin.
Any phone call before noon was early on a Sunday.
“Hello,” Gilead began. Then, “Russell?”
Mark and Sharonda looked up from the table, watching Gilead nod, lean against the wall, then cross one foot over the other.
“Yeah…. Okay. Sure.”
He hung the phone back up on the wall and turned to his boyfriend and his mother.
“After breakfast I need to go see Russell.”
