The City of Rossford

As Keith McDonald said: “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit…”

Chad thought about what Sean had said, bitterly:

“They could be talking about Zeus!”

Here, they might as well be.

What did he believe? He loved music. He loved working around town playing organ. He loved liturgy. He loved playing for the Vespers and Morning Prayer services here. He liked that much better than Mass. But did he believe in anything, really? Chad didn’t ask himself questions, not really, and when he did they weren’t very demanding ones.

He began to play the Gloria. He knew it so well he could drift off into thought even while adding the occasional flourish.

He liked the grottos at the Catholic churches. He hadn’t grown up with that, little manmade caves filled with candles where a saint lived inside of a statue and you could sit in front of her or his presence and bare your sorrows. No matter what ideas people had about saints, the saints he had seen never judged. Nothing was ever too much for them. You could tell them anything and always their plaster fingers were open in love. They were open with a human love, and with God’s love. Their faces were so calm and solemn. Nothing shocked, no request was too much. He wished he believed in them. He wished he could get to that place. Bryant lived in that place. That’s why he loved him so much. He wished he could tell someone, anyone, about everything happening inside of him.

Chad sat back sighing while the congregation chanted the psalm. They didn’t use an organ today. They sang from one side of the church to the other, something he liked much better than Catholic Mass.

Rescue me from my enemies, O God;

Protect me from those who rise up against me.

Rescue me from evildoers

And save me from those who thirst for my blood

See how they lie in wait for my life

How the mighty gather together against me…

And as he sat, relaxing, his socked feet playing with each other, he remembered the other night, Sean’s body pressed behind him, Sean’s arms over his arms, his smell, the scrag of his unshaven cheek as he whispered, and suddenly Chad blinked, embarrassed because he had an erection in church while he was listening to people pray.

Glory be to the Father

And to the Son

And to the Holy Spirit

As it was in the beginning, is now

And ever shall be

World without end

Amen!

He was embarrassed and he was afraid, because he knew Sean still wanted him, and Chad wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to stay away.

To Kirk Stanley, he just looked so damned good. It was like a scene in one of those romantic movies, and there was Paul with one bag over his shoulder and another two in his hands. Kirk was going to fetch those. He had on those gray slacks and that clean white shirt. His marmalde hair was freshly cut and his shades perched on his head. Those eyes that were flashing at him! And when Paul was coming to him, and he was coming to Paul, he anticipated his smell. That spicy sweet cologne from the blue bottle, and the deeper smell, the touch of sweat, the iron of his breath, the indescribable smell of freshly washed marmalade colored hair.

They kissed in the concourse and this was the first man who ever kissed him publicly. But this was O’Hare, in Chicago, where the concourses were larger than the streets of Rossford and women in saris, men in turbans and dishikis, brown, black, ivory people walked to and fro proclaiming every nation. Above them a flight for Tokyo was being called and Kirk took a bag and then clasping Paul’s hand, the two men walked together.

“How was New York?”

“It was good. What was more, it paid. And, let’s see… My character is now truly, and officially dead. But there’s this one part they want me to try out for, and would you mind that?”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

Paul gave him that great smile that spread across his face.

“That’s great,” he said. “Stop. I wanna kiss you again.”

Kirk let him. When they had first gotten together, Kirk was surprised by the fact that, no matter how out he said he was, he was a little unnerved about being kissed in public. Eight years into this and three children later, he didn’t care. Their love was their’s, and as if picking up on the string of his thought, now Paul said, “And by the way… Where are my kids?”

“With Fenn. He still remembers how I crashed the car when Elias and Bennett were fighting and he said, very convincingly by the way, that there was no way in hell I was going to drive from Rossford to Chicago with three toddlers.”

“Well…” Paul admitted, “he was probably right. And I’m definitely thankful. But I do want to see my babies.

“Oh, Claire told me about Robin? And about Radha’s brother-in-law. Her almost brother-in-law.”

“Yeah,” Kirk murmured. “That’s really shaken the whole town.”

At the sound of his voice, Paul said, as they neared the glass doors, “Did it shake you?”

“A little. Yes.

“But,” Kirk remembered, lightening, “Claire says she has something else to tell you.”

“Yes. And she said she wants to tell me in person.”

“She wouldn’t tell me either, so we’ve got to get home.”

Paul hooked an arm around him.

“Just in time for Christmas.”

“Yes, yes,” Fenn reflected while the children were screaming and playing around them, “it is sad. But it’s something I don’t much care to keep talking about.”

“Maia, put that down!” Tara shouted, turning from the conversation while Paul and Kirk’s eyes followed her, looking after their children.

“Fenn, it’s a lot of breakable shit in here.”

“It’s only breakable when Maia’s over,” he noted.

“She was the best idea you and Todd ever had,” Kirk reflected.

“She’s the only idea Todd and I ever had,” said Tara. “My eggs were hitting the expiration date. I had to use it or lose it and Todd wanted kids, so…

“But back to what I was saying. I can’t imagine wanting to end your life so bad you’d walk out on train tracks.”

Fenn looked at her, with a long steady gaze.

“Okay,” she admitted. “That’s a damn lie.”

“I think that if we reflect for just a second,” Fenn said, “all of us can think of a time when taking a ride on the train didn’t seem like such a bad idea.”

“But speaking of the good idea,” Paul said after a solemn moment.

“Yes?” Fenn said.

“Everything’s ready.”

Kirk nodded, happily.

“Layla’ll be so surprised.”

“He’s really torn up,” Casey said. His legs were planted wide apart and he sat across from Keith McDonald, who was watching him.

“So…” Keith began, his finger making a slow circle on the glass tabletop beside him, “This… lover of yours.”

“He’s a lover,” Casey acknowledged, hearing the question in Keith’s voice. “That’s an accurate description.”

“Yes,” Keith said, somewhat shortly. “He knows you do movies.”

Casey looked at the priest. “Yes. Of course he does. He works for me. You know that. I told you.”

“Yes,” Keith remembered.

Casey continued, “But he’s alright with it. He lets me be me.”

“Part of love is not always insisting on you being you.”

Neither one of them said anything.

“This isn’t about us,” Keith said, at last.

“No,” Casey said.

Then Casey said, “The two of us were happy. We were happy for a long time.”

“We were happy for a little time,” Keith amended, stretching, and affecting to look at the medieval painting of the Madonna that hung over the fireplace.

“Well, now I’m happy again.”

“With this… person you won’t tell me about.”

“Can’t tell you about. It’s risky. It’s dangerous.”

“Says the pornstar who used to be lover to a priest.”

“It’s way more dangerous than that.”

“Do you love him?”

Casey blinked. Keith himself was surprised by his own question.

The clock chimed and Keith said, “Look, I gotta get ready for the midday service.”

“Yes,” Casey said as Keith stood up.

Keith looked down at him.

“Yeah, I love him.”

“More than you loved me?”

“Different than I loved you,” Casey said, quickly. His brow furrowed. “And that’s not fair of you.”

“Maybe not.”

Keith went for the door into the foyer, and then he turned around and said, “You know something, Case? When I came back here I thought…

“Well, you know what?” he shook his head. “Never mind.”

“What?” Casey said, jamming his hands into his jeans pockets. But the handsome priest shook his head and said, “It’s almost time for Mass. I gotta go. You can show yourself out.”

“I guess,” Casey muttered, but by then Keith was already gone. His cell phone buzzed and Casey answered it.

“Yeah?”

Then: “Chay,” he said in a quieter voice. “You’re supposed to be in school…

“No, I won’t come get you now. You can stay there. You’re not gonna be a drop out because of me. Look,” he said in a sterner voice, turning his face to the window and putting his hand over the phone. “I know you’re sad, but she’s dead and you’re still alive and you have to go on. I’ll be there for you. I’m always there for you. You fucking know that. But for now you have to be there for yourself. And what that means is going on, and going on back to class.”

He took a deep breath.

“Yes. It’s the last night of school. Christmas is on Friday. Yes.” He was quiet, feeling his next answer thrum through his body. “We can be together tonight. I want you to stay with me too.”

The first day Sheridan woke up to go work at Casey’s, it was a Saturday and he wondered if the conversation between him and Casey had really taken place. He wondered if Casey Williams really had given him a job. He replayed it in his head and, deeming the memory to be reliable, showered, got dressed and drove over.

When he’d been dressing he wondered what he should put on. He thought of a shirt and tie, black pants or chinos, but it only took a moment for this to seem senseless. He wore what he usually wore, in the end, and showed up in a Starter jacket and ball cap.

. “Sheridan,” Casey said cheerily. And this was a good sign, for Sheridan had wondered if Casey would resent him for how he had gotten the job. But Casey seemed to be in a very good mood, and there was Chay, at the computer, working with some graphics for a film. Sheridan remembered that before, Chay hadn’t been allowed to see the actual movies. Now, perhaps because Casey was having sex with him, it didn’t matter anymore. Carefully Chay was touching up a scene where Casey’s hair was being pulled back, his face flushed in terrified ecstasy, while a very big, very black man with a tight sable behind was fucking him in the ass.

“We have to…” Chay murmured, licking his lips, “bring out the muscletone a little better in Casey’s thighs.”

Chay turned from the computer to Sheridan and continued, “You see, the whole thing is, all of these additions aren’t showing you what isn’t there. They are, believe it or not, telling you what really is there. With a regular camera and no make up, you could never see what the cameraman or anyone else filming is seeing.

Sheridan thought for a minute about how Chay genuinely did not seem to care that the man he was sleeping with, his lover, had sex with other people for a living.

“Is this what I’m going to be doing?” he half shouted to Casey, who was on the other side of the room, and seemed to have forgotten him.

“Wha?” Casey had on his black rimmed spectacles, and pushed them up a little.

“Oh, that? Oh… no. Follow me.”

Sheridan followed him up the stairs. He’d only been on the first floor, which looked like a ramshackle old farmhouse with bedrooms, a kitchen, front and back porches and this large area, formerly a den and solarium, where Casey and now Chay, worked on the computer. Now he ascended, with shock, into a thoroughly modern area of white walls, modern plants and carpet. They were in what looked like a very large bedroom. What, Sheridan realized, was a bedroom large enough for the cameramen and for the naked guys who were being oiled and rubbed and brushed, and there was one who, even though he was in jeans and a tee shirt as simply as Sheridan’s, was also being groomed immaculately.

Sheridan craned his head. Beyond was another similar set up. A living room, and its white carpet was coated in plastic. Cameras were set up and five or so naked men were milling about in there. Upstairs, in what would have been the attic, he heard the shower running and down the hall there were other showers. There was a good looking boy in jeans and a polo shirt, a little bit like Paul Anderson, with a ring in his left ear, smoking what smelled like a joint, bored.

“Alright, folks,” Casey said in a mellow voice. “Let’s do this shit.”

With little adjustment, they set to work, and the two men who had been dressed up came to sit down on the sofa. Sheridan had never been so surrounded by good looking and obviously sexual males. They were all only a little older or no older than himself.

“So,” Casey began. “What are we gonna see today?”

The one with bright brown eyes and shiny lips who had a diamond stud in his ear chewed his gum and said, “I’m thinking I might go down on this one.”

He pointed to the blond boy beside him, and gave a mellow laugh. “Make him moan a little bit, and then see what happens. But… I definitely plan on getting fucked in the ass before the day’s over. You know?”

Beside him, the blond one cackled and said, “I will be all too happy to destroy Tyler’s ass on film.”

“Don’t destroy it,” the one called Tyler said, “But definitely fucking rock it.”

The two of them sat there quietly and then, suddenly, they just started making out. Sheridan didn’t really know why he was here. Chay was the only boy he knew personally that was gay. Of course he knew Chay’s parents, and he knew Brendan and Kenny and Fenn and Todd and well, there were just really tons of gay people he knew. But they weren’t boys his age. They weren’t like him. He knew that Noah Riley really was young, and had done this, but there was a great difference, in Sheridan’s mind, between thirty and his seventeen. He knew about the kids at Rossford who probably were gay. They weren’t cute. They were Beta males or whatever came after Beta. They were sullen, overweight, flamy, achnied or, as Mathan called them, achnified. These guys who began tearing each other’s shirts off, these guys with their earrings and their well combed hair and their shiny lips and their goatees and their chests and their strong hands pulling now at each other’s belt buckles were not straight, were not anything he’d ever seen. But they were masculine, like Casey, like the first time seeing Casey had stirred up lust in him, and now, watching them, Sheridan was completely uncomfortable, completely excited and erect in his pants.

The blond one with green tattoos running up and and down his corded arms went down on Tyler, and then he began to rim him, his face between his ass cheeks, and Sheridan gave a shudder. The blond one’s large penis lay between Tyler’s cheeks and then, gently, he began to push in and Sheridan gave a little start, ready to touch himself, stopping, looking around. No one seemed amazed. No one seemed fazed. Cameramen were moving in. Casey was nodding in approval of a job well done.

And then Tyler, his knuckles white and his hands gripping the sofa’s edge, was being fucked steadily, and his face looked like he was being drained. He was moaning and Sheridan closed his mouth, wondering if he had been moaning too.

And then, just like that it happened.

“OH FUCK!”

“Crap!”

There was an explosion.

Tyler looked back, embarrassed. The other one came out in shock while Casey handed Sheridan a towel and said, “Wipe him down.”

Sheridan did, quickly, before slipping and regaining his ground.

He toweled the blond one off quickly, who shrugged with a grin and then Casey said, simply, “Resume.”

When Sheridan came back with the brown towel, Casey pointed to the mess on the floor the camera was not filming. Now the two were moving to fuck on the bed and Sheridan opened his mouth to say: “What was…?”

“It was ass water,” Casey explained.

Sheridan blinked.

“When you fuck a guy in the ass in a porn… or real life, really, he douches or enemas or whatever to get cleaned out. If all the water doesn’t get out by the time we’re ready to shoot,” Casey shrugged and pointed to the mess on the plastic covered floor, “that’s what you get.”

“Oh, God,” Tyler was screaming in the background. “Fuck me. Oh, oh, God! Logan. You’re just too good. You’re too fucking good...”

“Now,” Casey continued, “Go over to that corner. Get a mop and bucket and clean that up. That’s your job.”