Eden

That night they were completely in the moment. Later on he said that many other times he could never be in the moment but was always thinking of the future or remembering the past. With Adam he thought only of this moment, of Adam’s fingertips, of the light hair up and down his thighs, of the wetness of his mouth, the pressure of him, Adam entering him gently, a lover asking permission. Then later, his own cock being pulled into Adam’s heat, being fiercely welcomed and overwhelmed.

When it was over Adam said, “It’s funny but I didn’t know I wanted that. Not until we did it.”

Isaiah said nothing. Adam stopped talking after a while. Isaiah said everything with his hands, gently moving across Adam’s breast, his stomach, under his stomach where the hair went from red to deep black like the earth, then he came up again, kissing him.

“I can’t wait to see this book,” Adam told him as he was getting dressed in the morning.

Was it his imagination, or were Adam’s eyes penetrating him? Was it possible that once someone had penetrated you, everything in him did? No, Jason’s vision was opaque. This was all Adam. It must have been the other way around, not that Adam’s eyes bore into him because his penis had the night before, but rather both had happened because Adam was Adam and they’d always, really, seen into each other.

“I want to help any way I can,” Adam said “Then I can say I knew the two of you ‘back when’.”

“Take out your camera,” Isaiah said.

“What?” Adam blinked.

“Take out,” Isaiah said again, “your camera.”

Adam climbed out of bed, and Isaiah removed the covers, then lay naked on his side, one leg brought toward his chest.

“What are you….?” Adam began.

Isaiah recited:

“i need the companion,
i need the boyfriend,
i need the love
i want that body,
long and sweet,
smelling of sleep and milk and earth
and sweat so naked beside mine

“Now,” Isaiah said, “shoot me.”

“What?’

“Photograph me,” Isaiah said, almost kissing the pillow, his eyes closed. “Now.”

“i need the one who is there most of the time,
if not all,
who can give me some of his strength,
when i have none
i need him to make eggs for me
i need him to share coffee
i need his stiff dick inside me
i need to make him cum
i want to wash his floors
knit him hats and hold him when he is down
i want to go down, and lick
his balls with the base of my tongue
and then have about a child or two and
run the water outside in the backyard
while he plants bulbs in the backyard,
and we have barbecues in the backyard
and are so happy and then real hard
he fucks me deep in the backyard
and showers all his seed on me
and i need this
i need that boyfriend
i need him true
i need him certain like the lord our god
i need him till i'm black and blue…

“

And so, Adam photographed Isaiah Frey: the length of thighs, the curve of ass and small of back, the gentle roundness of stomach, the child innocence and sexiness of face, the inviting lips. moving around the bed, his camera gently clicking.

Most people existed in a world where they didn’t really live at all. That was the only way he could describe it. There was a world where you could go from thing to thing and never remember one hour to the next, where you could get in your car to drive someplace and not remember how you got there. There was a world where you could turn to someone and say, “Did you know such and such a thing, and they could say, “Yes, and so did you, because I told you a year ago.” And you won’t remember the year ago, because you weren’t paying attention. Dates become confused. Names and times and what you did and what you wished you’d done become confused. You want it this way, really. That was the world Josh belonged to, he supposed, before things had changed.

That last day he remembers because Darcy said, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

And even though he doesn’t really remember stopping to look at it, it is forever etched in his brain. The most perfect blue sky, the most perfect black branches of early spring with their little green buds. The light on Tom’s red jacket, and on the gold flecks in Tom’s red hair. How pretty and pale Kathleen looks because, even though she is his girlfriend, she understands, somewhere, somehow she must understand. They are all together and laughing and Mike is talking about spring break. Mike is best friends with another Mike, and they have gone down to Florida for Spring Break. That is where Mike One is from. His baseball cap is turned backward.

“We were on the beach and there are these guys, and they are a little away from us, and they took out this huge blunt and lit it. And started smoking it. It was so much smoke. It was so huge.”

There was a time when marijuana was exciting. That’s how innocent they were. This is at Saint Alban’s, before he would transfer. This is a place where they say things like:

“Did you hear that Sister Anne said something about gay marriage being good?”

“Well, it’s not a sin,” Kathleen said,

“Yes,” Joe reminded them. “You can be gay in your heart. It’s carrying it out that’s a sin. Like pre-marital sex. Like any kind of sex.”

Josh sinks into his seat. It’s Kathleen who says, “But that’s not really the same, because even if you wait till you get married, then you will have sex. But if the Church says gay people can’t bet married…” she shrugs.

Josh remembers that several people have walked into the restaurant. Through the plate glass windows he can see the shops of Main Street, the sun bright on the hoods and roves of cars, cobalt blue, cherry red, a passing one lime green.

“But,” Joe says, sticking his finger out pontifically, “that’s their cross to bear, because Jesus gives us all crosses.”

These are the discussions they have had in the past. This is not what they are discussing today. He can’t remember what was going on. There was laughter and Mike was telling some off color joke and Joe was pointing out one of his useless facts.

“Did you know that they put actual gold dust in the Notre Dame football helmets, and that’s what makes them so shiny?”

And then, just like that, the effects were there before the sound. Joe, twenty-one, handsome in his way, but always with rings about his eyes, stops talking. His head hits the table. All around the shots are fired. As Josh sits there. Mike is down, Kathleen is down. A man in line with his baby hits the floor. The baby cries, is silent, bullet holes ricochet through the glass. There is a another shot, the shooter is down. In the midst of those once alive, Josh sits trembling, blood on his face, all over his tech vest and baseball cap. Joe stares up at him and keeps staring as blood flows out of his mouth. Katy grasps for something and then is done grasping. He turns his head halfway to see Mike, sitting beside him, his hands at his side, his face looking up, his mouth open as if he has given up. But his throat is covered in blood, and Josh looks at his goodlooking friend, the one he remembers he had a crush on, and realizes he has given up, he’s given up his spirit. Mike’s slumped shoulders fall, and he keeps looking up, his dead face full of sorrow.

None of his friends live.

He is just trembling. All he does is shake, like those poor wet dogs in the cold rain, after they’ve been dried down but the cold still makes them tremble like their having a seizure. No one asks questions. It’s shaking this way that he’s found in the hospital by Rob and his mother and father. Mom stays in the car. This is before the stroke, when Dad was all of himself, and all of him was nearly too much. He has told Mom to stay in the car, that no one needs to see her fits. He and Rob come for Josh. Rob embraces his brother. Josh doesn’t respond. His eyes are still wide, and he is still shaking. He can’t talk. If he could talk he would say, “Never let me go. Just keep holding me.”

He can see, partially, the fluorescent lights of the hospital, the pale blue and dark aqua blue of hospital scrubs. He can see the white of his hands, scrubbed clean of blood. On the way home, the fields and the hills are golden green, rolling up and down like great lazy waves, the height of the sky is piled with clouds. He can see the back of his father’s head and feel Rob’s hand. Rob has moved to the backseat to be with him.

But all of this is transparent, and through the hills and the road and the sky and his family, it is the restaurant he still sees. The restaurant is full of the brightest colors, and his friends and Joe, knowing they’re laughing at him for telling one of his long factoids, Joe with his lazy half smile, self deprecating, and then Joe falling down across the table. And he can hear the breathing, labored. He turns to his side to see Mike’s chest, rising and falling. It isn’t like the movies. No, they don’t know what hit them, at first. But Mike knows in the end. Mike and Mike, There was a time when they both kept breathing, when a noise like air squeezed out of an accordion came from Mike on the other side of Mike, where Mike, next to him, let out his last breath and looked up at the ceiling before his spirit left, if spirits are a thing. The pain was a thing, grief was a thing, the not anger, and not fear, but the sadness on Mike’s face as he died, aged twenty, was a thing.

He goes back to finish the semester because he is sure that the only thing worse than not doing so is having to do it later. Better to get it done now, while the pain is fresh. Better that than having more credits than he wants when it is time to transfer, and he knows he will transfer. He sits exams early. He is home at the end of April.

All the other college kids are coming home. In town, there is a solid line between college kids and the kids who do not go away. Sometimes you can see it even in one family, those who went and those who stayed. Rob tried it out for a bit, but he didn’t last Now, Rob is always here. At the end of May, Pat Thomas comes home. Josh has always noticed Pat Thomas, but it isn’t until now that Josh notices his noticing Pat Thomas. That was Pat Thomas who did his brother so wrong, who his brother used to care about, who used to care about his brother. Pat with the dead mom and the dead sister. Now and again you can see him in church, which is the only place you would see both him and Rob. Pat looks over at Rob, and then he looks away just in time for Rob to do the same, one long, incomplete, unending but broken look.

One Sunday, Josh says, “I will walk home, and he is at that place where his family is afraid to leave him alone, but also they don’t dare refuse him a thing he asks. He has seen Pat sitting in the church by himself after Mass. Pat who, when once asked if he was part Arab or part Black said that his mom was Italian. But it turned out she was Sicilian and it turns out Sicily is, at least, part Black and part Arab. Pat Thomas is a mass of always dark nearly black curls over deep black eyes and lashes long enough for a girl’s, He is red lips and a shy expression, and it is hard to believe he could ever do Rob wrong. And yet he did. And Josh finds himself, well now, plants himself, beside Pat Thomas in front of the Virgin Mary.

Josh is there so long he can hear Pat’s breathing, and he thinks to stand and light a candle, but this seems like play acting, would be. He says, “Do you believe in her? In it?”

“Mary? The Church? Or God?” Pat says.

“All of it. I try, but it seems like lately… well, it seems like I believed more when I was more shallow.”

Pat smirks. “You think you’re deep?”

Then instantly he remembers and says, “Oh, God. Josh, I’m sorry. I forgot what happened to you. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine.”

“You can imagine a little,” Josh says. “After all… your mom.”

“Yeah,” Pat concedes. “But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t on purpose.”

They sit together a while and then Pat says, “You know, if you want to talk about it you can.”

“I don’t know that I do,” Josh says.

Pat nods his head.

“That makes sense.”

Josh notices that Pat always wears shorts sleeves, notices the hills of his humble biceps.

“Sometime you don’t want to talk,” Pat says. “Sometimes you just want to be with someone who has seen something awful too. If you’d like that—”

“I would.”

“Just… call. Whenever you’d like to do something. Or… whatever.”

“What about now?” Josh says.

Pat says: “Now is good.”

I don’t know,” Pat sighed as they sat in the thick grass on the top of the dune. Lake Michigan stretched endlessly pearl blue, beneath them and Pat said:

“The truth is, I hope more than I believe. I always admired people who really believed in things. In God. It’s harder and harder to do it.”

Josh didn’t say anything. He only tugged at a particularly long and tough long blade of grass.

“I thought you hated me,” Pat said. “For what happened with Rob.”

“I don’t even really know what happened with Rob,” Josh said. “I know Rob told us all he was gay and everyone just sort of accepted it. And I know we all thought Rob was in love with you, that you were in love with him. And then, after your mom died, he went to your house, and after he came back, you all were never together again. That’s what I know.”

Pat didn’t answer back, and the water pulled in a deep breath before sending itself to roll back over the sand again.

“I thought you all had sex, and then you turned away from him,” Josh said.

“Well, that is sort of what happened,” Pat said. “But I would have turned away from anyone. I wasn’t at the place to be there for anyone.”

“Did you ever tell Rob?”

“No.”

“Never? You never made it right with him?”

Pat shook his head.

“My girlfriend was killed,” Josh said. “That day in the restaurant she was killed along with all my friends.”

To his credit, Pat didn’t try to say anything. He let the silence fill the space between them, and seagulls entered it, and the soft crashing of waves entered. A car in the distance playing country music.

“The thing is, I can’t see her face. When I think about it, I think about Joe, cause he was right across from me. I think of his eyes. They were grey. Almost green, and how tall he was. And I think of my friends, of Mike and Mike and how Mike’s Adam’s apple kept rising and falling while he was dying. And I think how I wish I could have done something. But at the same time I think about… how beautiful he was. How… and this sounds awful—good he smelled that day. The cologne, you could still smell it after that son of a bitch killed him. And it’s him. I think about him. Him and the other Mike. And Joe. A little. I…” Josh shook his head. “I don’t think about Kathleen. I…”

“You think you’re gay.”

“I know I am,” Josh said.

“Have you told anyone?”

“You.”

“What about Rob?”

Josh shook his head.

“It’s… Rob’s thing.”

Pat burst out laughing.

“What?”

“It’s Rob’s thing?” Pat repeated.

“It... he came out to Mom and Dad. He... he’s the worst fag ever. He’s not fabulous. He’s a fucking hillbilly. He can’t even get a boyfriend. I used to think… I’d do this whole thing so much better than him. But he’s the gay one. Mom and dad can’t, they cannot have two gay sons.”

“But they do,” Pat said, simply.

That hung in the air for a while before Josh spoke again.

“I just never let myself think about it. I never let myself think about it at all. But now that Mike’s gone, I think, I wish I’d kissed him once, just to know what it was like. Even if he would have slugged me. Even if he would have told his girlfriend what a fag I was. But you know, I keep thinking about it, and I don’t think he would have slugged me. I don’t think he would have hated it at all. I’ll never know, though. Not now.”

“You want me to kiss you?” Pat said.

“What?”

“I said,” Pat said, “do you want me to kiss you?”

Josh stopped himself from looking around. He’d been to college and even though it wasn’t a particularly progressive college, he told himself that he was above caring about people seeing him.

“Yes.”

“I… ah… don’t have much experience,” Pat said.

Josh stopped himself from saying, “Just my brother.”

Pat leaned in.

His lips were so soft, and his mouth was strong, Pat’s hand in his hair was so gentle. It felt so good to be close to Pat, to touch Pat. He felt so hungry. His dick was hard and it hurt. It kept stiffening and stretching until it hurt like it wanted to cry, and Josh wanted to cry. He wanted to keep kissing Pat, and hold onto him, never let him go. And kissing Pat was like kissing Mike and Mike and Joe, and bringing them back to life and wiping the blood from their faces and kissing Pat was like kissing Pat and when they stopped, Pat’s mouth was close to his, and his dark eyes were blinking into Josh’s.

“No one’s home,” Pat said. “Dad won’t be back till tomorrow.”

Josh said, “You can’t do me like you did Rob. You can’t turn your back on me like that.”

“I won’t” Pat said.

“Let’s go, then,” Josh had said that day.