Eden

In the middle of the night, Pat shakes Josh by the shoulder.

“What?” Josh says, half asleep.

“Are you asleep?” Pat says unnecessarily. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“You went to sleep before I did.”

“And then I lay awake for the last half hour. Let’s go to the beach. The moon is out a little. “Let’s go to the beach.”

They lay side by side in the dark and Rob said, “Whither thou goest, I will goest.”

“What’s that, Ruth?”

“Whither thou goest I will goest.” Rob said. “My grandma, the one who had the farm, she was a Baptist and she knew the Bible forward and backward. She used to quote all sorts of shit from it, and she said when she married my grandfather that’s what she told him.”

Rob turned over on his side and told Frey, “So, whither thou goest, I will goest.”

Frey turned to him and Rob said, “I had a really educated boyfriend, well, not a boyfriend. He didn’t last. He was always trying to change me. He said, “You’d do real good in college. You should go to college.”

Frey blinked but said nothing.

“Well, you’re real educated, sir, what are you going to tell me?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Frey said.

“You don’t think I could do college?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Rob turned on his back and said, sighing, “I’ve been twice. I try to get into it, and that sounds dumb. I’m twenty-seven talking about, getting into it, like it’s a book or a tv show. But it’s not not me. And I like to read. Or at least I like to read some things, but college just passed me by.”

“I always loved it,” Frey said. “College. Education. I remember, I had this shitty job in a department store, the very last time I wore a suit, and I remember this Vietnamese woman saying, ‘You’re going to college, right?’ and I said yeah. And she made me promise ot get my education. And I loved it. It opened a door to me.”

“But you did it right.”

“Maybe,” Frey said. “I know a lot of people did it wrong. I just loved it so much. But now so many people I know who are really smart and capable didn’t do it, can’t really do it, and so many people who are sort of stupid seem to breeze right rhough it, so, something’s wrong. A lot is wrong, really. Everybody wants really easy answers to so much, and so much is wrong. It’s like… we ought to be thinking more than ever, and we don’t know how to do it.”

“Where are we going to go?” Rob said. “What are we going to do? I know you’re right. I don’t want the same thing. I want us to do something that hasn’t been done before. I want us to be people who haven’t walked this earth already. I…Do you live in a gay neighborhood?”

“No,” Frey looked disgusted.

“Good, cause that’s just another ghetto. That’s just a big closet. I… hate gay men. I really do. I wish I didn’t but they are so awful. They like being ashamed Maybe I like it too. You can do so much when you think you’re doing it in the dark and it’ll never come out in the light of day. We always blame everyone else for being homophobic. But that isn’t right. We’re homophobic.”

“People aren’t free. Not really. People don’t even want to be free. They bust out. They wild out. They do little bitty things, sometimes huge crazy things. Then they go back into their shells, because the change is too much. So we pretend to be wild, pretend to be free, hurt each other and ourselves, and no one gets any wiser.”

He gave in because he always gave in, no matter what DJ said. It was far too late to go back and wake up Isaiah and there was nothing happening in this town. Maybe one part of it was a regular old hole, and the other part was luxury, but it all went to sleep at around eleven. It was too much quiet. Heavy and oppressive like no quiet he had known. They parked on the street nearest the beach and kept walking.

It was almost a relief to come to the breakers and the breeze of the shore, noise and life after the lack of both and the lonely drive. They walked on the high grassy hills that rose like cliffs over the beach and now and again, Javon caught DJ’s hand as one or the other began to slip. We should go to Chicago, Javon thought. It wasn’t that far away. Honestly, it wasn’t that close either, but there was always something to do there Hell, even in South Bend there was always something to do. The nothingness of this place was entirely too much, and Javon couldn’t understand what pleasure his uncle had in it.

But even as he was thinking this, he heard a cry, and DJ had heard it first and was rushing, heedless as ever to the side of the sand cliff. As he neared it. DJ suddenly hit the ground, lying flat on his stomach and looked over the grass, kicking off his sandals. Javon joined him.

He didn’t ask what DJ was looking at. Beneath them, under the cliff, they could see two boys, two guys their age, and one was blowing the other. Javon watched, dry mouthed, and the boy with the black hair, or brown hair, leaning against the cliff, pulled up his tee shirt and put his hands in the curly hair of the other boy who was blowing him. Javon was getting hard, and as he looked at DJ, suddenly DJ got up and walked away. Javon looked from DJ to the boys down below, but DJ made a gesture. They were going down the hill? What? To get a closer look? What the fuck?

“Fuck,” Javon heard the boy getting sucked moan, and he got up and followed DJ.

The breeze had picked up, and Josh was thinking how there was nothing better than this moment with Pat’s strong hands in his hair and Pat, full and filling up his mouth. Pat thrusting into his mouth, deeper and deeper, gagging him as the waves washed over his legs as the sand made a mud pool for his knees.

Suddenly there was a change in Pat. A stillness, but he hadn’t come. Josh pulled away from Pat. He turned around. Coming down the shore, not quite menacing, but not unmenacing, were two boys? One was Black. How old were they. The white one looked maybe eighteen, and as he was preceding the other. His hands were in his pants and he was massaging his dick.

“Whats up?” DJ said.

Josh was aware that Pat’s dick was still out of his pants. It wasn’t limp now. It was harder than it had ever been, thicker, straight out in the night, and Pat had a sort of… fuck you look on his face.

Pat started to stroke his dick.

“Whaddo you plan on doing with that?” he asked DJ.

Josh looked from one to the other, and then because he didn’t know where else to look, he looked to Javon. Javon looked to him.

Javon came right up to him. He pulled down his shorts. He pushed his cock in Josh’s mouth, and Josh closed his eyes and took it all in.

The white one was what they called sturdy. Dark haired, cute more than hot. He might be muscular but he would never be thin. He would play football, not basketball. That’s what went on in the dim corners of his mind while Josh, face in the water, watched the boy fucking Pat, watched his hands bunch up on Pat’s shoulders, watched thighs bunch like powerful cords as he thrust, thrust, thrust, and his buttocks bunched as he pushed pushed, pushed into Pat and Pat screwing up his face bellowed, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” each time that boy fucked him.

Josh didn’t say anything, he just gripped the sand impotently as it turned to nothing his hands and let out great desperate gasps while the other one fucked him as hard as the white boy fucked Pat Thomas.

Javon Washington had not envisioned any of this when he woke up this morning, but here at whatever the fuck o’clock, Javon was fucking this random white boy and now and again he and DJ watched each other fuck, and the watching made each of them harder, made them thrust more and more and spend themselves on these random boys’ bodies. It was DJ who came first, crying out, almost screaming, shocking himself with the orgasm.

Javon didn’t have any idea about masculinity and topping. He just liked and needed sex. Sometimes. When it was happening it was happening. DJ was the same. Turnabout was fair play. When they were done, they went up to the grassy dune and Javon lay down in it and let himself be fucked. He closed his eyes cause it felt so good, to be out here, in nothingness, with no one, with only the sounds of the waves, distant cars and trucks, a night bird, gulls, and the desperate grunts of sex. He opened his eyes on occasion to see the moonlight on DJ’s white body. He was on his hands and knees, groaning while the skinny boy with the curly red hair drilled him.

When they were done, wordlessly, they parted, Javon, and DJ heading in the other direction from the other two boys. His ass hurt. He could feel that guy in him. He got hard remembering how the boy had grunted and come all over his back, got hard again remembering the tightness of that guy when he had fucked him on the water. Back in the car, he and DJ sat silently, worn out, crushed by sex the way it felt good to be crushed, and then Javon, because he was still hard, because the night was lawless, pulled his dick out of his shorts, and DJ bent down to suck it. As he closed his eyes and rested his hands in DJ’s hair, DJ nursed him like a sucking babe.