Bird Came Down

Theme Song: Mother Nature's Son (Sheryl Crow Version)

“I want to guess that the reason you look like a deer in the headlights is because you’ve never seen three men living together,” Dylan Mesda said, pushing a beer into Felix’s hand and grinning, “But I sense that isn’t it.”

Felix blinked at him.

“I sense you are a man of the world,” Dylan went on in an animated fashion. “This is what Elias has told me.”

Felix laughed and said, “I’m so sorry I’m shitty conversation.”

Dylan shook his head.

“Don’t you worry about it, brother. I’ve had a lot of stuff on my mind so I can tell you’ve got stuff on your mind too”

“I told you he had stuff on his mind,” Elias shouted from the kitchen.

“And then that too.”

Dylan was dark haired and blue eyed like Elias, and he was also compactly built and not very tall, about as tall as Felix. But he and Elias did not look alike. Later on the writing part of Felix would try to tell the differences, but right now he drank the beer and made a face

“That’s cider.”

“Angry Orchard,” Dylan said. “Do you not like?”

“I like it very much. I just wasn’t paying attention.”

“Do you know,” Dylan folded his hands together, and stuck his lips out so that Felix wasn’t entirely sure if he was serious or not, “I’m a great listener?”

“Do you know,” began a voice that came from a tall, almost lanky figure on the sofa, “that everyone doesn’t want to talk, and some people just like to be left alone.”

He was a brunette too, but his hair was more chocolate in color, and he was so much taller than the other two he could not possibly be mistaken for them. He had to be at least six four, and when Felix looked at him Dylan said, “Yes, one of Lance’s arms is almost as big as Eli’s thigh.”

Lance Bishop rose from the sofa in one grasshopper like movement, and Felix was surprised to note that after his height snuck up on one, it was followed by his build. He reached out a hand, and it swallowed Felix while he grinned affably and said, “You know you can get away from Dr. Dylan and sit by me, and I won’t bother you a bit.”

“I’m just trying to be helpful,” Dylan said, following them to the sofa.

“You could be helpful by actually helping me cook!” Elias cried from the kitchen. Then he said, walking into the living room, “You all could, in fact. Except for you, Felix. You’re a guest. Sit down.”

“Well, I don’t want to just sit down. Besides,” he turned to Dylan, “something is bothering me.”

“You don’t have to be a doctor to see that,” Dylan said.

“Good,” Lance reminded him, “because you are, in fact, not a doctor.”

“Not yet.”

“Dylan’s studying to be a shrink,” Lance informed Felix.

“I figure there’s enough crazy in me to help other people,” Dylan said.

“I’m just going to ask,” Lance said, “since we all know about it: how’s Scott’s trial?”

“I don’t know,” Felix said. “And I don’t know when he’ll be back.

“He thinks he’s losing the kids.”

***

“Well the whole poking holes in condoms thing is evil,” Dylan decided, “and I think she doesn’t really want the kids. I think she just wants to ruin Scott’s world.”

“That’s what I think too,” Lance snapped his fingers and then remembered, “even though we don’t actually know him. Or her.”

“Who knows why mothers do things?” Elias said, passing the garlic bread as if it really did not matter why mothers did things. “The only one of us at this table with a normal mother is Lance. Maybe Felix,” Elias nodded to him. “After all, I don’t know your mother.”

“She is most abnormal, I assure you,” Felix said.

“Abnormal is your mother buying frozen semen from a Black man she meets at the grocery store, getting herself pregnant with it and then deciding she doesn’t want to keep the baby and giving it away to said Black man.”

“Who the fuck would do that?” Felix demanded. But suddenly Lance raised his long arm and began pointing down at Dylan’s head.

“You’re joking, right?”

“No,” Dylan said. “See, Lance’s parents are ordinary straight people, but me and Elias are second generation gays. My dads were a couple and they split up, but then they got together for a little while and one of my dads—the one who is Black—stole my other dad’s semen and sold it to my natural mother. My only mother I guess.”

“I don’t quite believe this.”

“There’s more,” Elias said, and encouraged Dylan to continue.

“There is more,” Dylan said. “She had me, and kept me for a while, but then decided she couldn’t do it, so she gave me to my biological father who then took me to the man who had given my mom his jizz—”

“The Black one, his ex. Are you following?” Elias said.

Felix nodded.

“And asked him to adopt me. Which he did, and he’s the only mother I know.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, my dad—”

“He means Fenn. His adopted dad,” Lance interrupted.

“Yes,” Dylan said. “He didn’t tell me until I was fifteen and my life was a real freak show.”

“That is the most bizarre story I’ve ever heard.”

“But wait,” Elias said with a merry smile. “There’s more.”

“Yes,” Dylan lifted a finger. “My mother actually got pregnant with twins, but she froze one embryo. After she gave me away she thought she’d have that one, only she repeated the same cycle with him.”

“So you have a brother?”

“He is my baby… twin.”

“That’s so fucking freaky.”

Dylan smiled with the satisfaction of a well told story.

“He’s a genius musician. His name is Thackeray.”

“And your mom?” Felix asked. “What about her?”

“She died,” Dylan said. “It was on her deathbed I learned about Thack.”

Felix wanted to say, “I’m so sorry,” but he didn’t think that was appropriate. As funny as the story was, he was sorry about that whole mess his new friend had gone through.

“My story is pretty tame,” Elias said. “My dads had a surrogate. With one’s semen they made my twin brother Bennett and with the other’s they made me so that the two of us would be related and each of our dads have a biological kid. Interesting but tame. And we have a little brother named Matthew, and none of that happened with him. But he’s more like me than Bennett and more like Dylan’s brother Thackeray than all of us. Other than that, we’re pretty tame.”

“Except that Elias’s dad used to be a porn star,” Lance threw in.

“What?” Felix said, almost choking on his beer.

***

When Felix and Dylan were sitting on the porch, Dylan lifted a cider to his lips and drank and then looked over the city beneath them and said, “I don’t think I could ever leave the Midwest for long. I love this time of the year, where the summer is getting ready to turn into fall. But it’s still summer and it’s still warm, and everyone still thinks everything is going to happen for them.

“And for some of them it will.”

“I’m very sorry,” Felix said suddenly.

“About what?”

“When you said you had lost your mother I wanted to say I was sorry, but I didn’t feel right about saying it, and now I don’t feel right about not saying it.”

“Look, Felix. You never met my mother—”

“I know,” Felix said, lifting a hand, “and I suppose what you are about to say is that you don’t mourn her. But I’m sorry for the whole thing, really. Sorry you didn’t have a mother you could mourn. Sorry for that.”

“When I was ten she came back for me,” Dylan said. “She made me promise she would be my little secret. My parents didn’t know she was around. Eileen would buy me things, and I would come to her in the park. After a while my Dads found out. Fenn—you remind me a lot of him—threatened to kill her if she tried to steal me. But she didn’t. She just disappeared one day. And you have to understand, though I had never seen her until I was ten, I loved my mother. I really did. And I loved being with her. And when she disappeared that second time it really ruined me. I didn’t know how much it did at the time, but it did, and all the love from my parents, all the love from Fenn who was more of a mother to me than anything, couldn’t cure what she did.”

“Depression?”

“No,” Dylan said. “Not really. And not drugs and not bad grades. But at an earlier age than I wish wasn’t true, my crutch was sex. That was my thing. I really, really liked it. And then I really, really needed it. I put myself in a lot of dangerous places, and I was smart enough to know I was doing it because of my mother, but I just couldn’t tell exactly what the connection was. Now I think I just wanted to touch and be touched, and I think I wanted to be an adult. I think I wanted to be bulletproof.”

“And that’s why you’re going to be doctor?”

“Uh huh. I think it’s the same thing with Elias. He still can’t understand why his mother left him, and it’s just a shitty horrible feeling and I’m past it now. I mean you can’t camp down on that forever. But I remember how I felt and the things I did and more than that I remember how I made other people feel and, I would do anything to get other folks out of that situation, so that’s why I do what I do.

“And why do you do what you do?” Dylan suddenly asked Felix.

“Uh,” Felix shrugged. “Because I need a job, and when you go to graduate school forever, this is the only thing you’re equipped to do.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” Dylan said, smiling at him

“I’m not. I applied for a bunch of jobs cause I needed money, and these fuckers hired me.”

“But I hear you’re fucking on fire. I hear it’s your gift!”

“From Elias?”

“Yeah, and also from this lanky kid in one of your classes. I came to pick Eli up the other day and he told me.”

“Well, well.”

“Yeah,” Dylan patted him on the shoulder. “Well, well.”

When Felix made to leave, Elias demanded where he was going.

“Walking home. The same way I walked here.”

“But we didn’t know you walked here,” Lance said. “Come round back. I’m getting the truck.”

And so they piled into Lance’s Chevy and Felix wondered about where they came from.

“It’s not that far away,” Lance explained.

“As the crow flies it’s only about eighty miles away.”

“Who says as the crow flies?” Elias mocked Dylan.

“I said it,” Dylan said.

They dropped him off and Elias said, “Next time bring Joey.”

“Wesley drove up here, and then he’s going down next weekend to be with Wes.”

“Is he going to do that all the time?” Elias wondered. “Cause that’s a lot of gas.”

“The Flowers family doesn’t seem to mind burning gas.”

“Well, this family does,” Dylan said from between Lance and Elias, “So unless you want to waste this tank, say good night to Felix and let’s stop stalling here.”

“Goodnight, Felix,” Elias and Lance said together in mocking tones, and then they turned to Dylan. Felix entered the courtyard and went to the side door where he stuck in his key. He noted that the black truck did not depart until he was safely in.

***

In the middle of the night Felix woke with a raging erection and peed in the sink because his dick was too stiff for straight aim in the bowl, and then he came back and lay in bed looking at his penis. He got up, went to the kitchen, brought out the coconut oil, thrust his penis in it, and then suddenly began fucking his mattress until, with a groan, he ejaculated all over his pillow.

He lay there, thighs caught around the pillow, feeling his semen sticking between his stomach and pillow and then, at last, got up to clean himself. He sat on the bed smoking a cigarette and now the phone was ringing on his dresser.

“Really?”

Felix searched for an ashtray, but laid the cigarette on the jar top of the coconut oil and answered:

“Scott?”

“Felix, I need you to get up here right away!”

“Uh...”

“What’s going on?”

“There was a car crash. I’m at the hospital. I’m at Mount Sinai. Jen was driving with the kids, and the car crashed.”

Felix felt all the strength go out of him, and the floor move under his feet.

“You gotta get here. Jen’s dead.”