Eden

When they had arrived here it was night, and the summer had come into its glory, mellow seventy five degrees, and lightning bugs seemed to dance their way to Saint Clew. Frey only spoke of his son and his nephew obliquely.

“I asked my sister if she ever felt guilty,” Isaiah said, “for living her life, for not always being there, for making time for herself. She said yes, and I asked her what she did. She just said, she put it out of her mind. Guilt is not a reliable barometer.”

For the last hour Rob had been humming a song to himself, the radio off, and he kept touching Isaiah Frey’s hand.

“I love you,” he had said.

And then he had said, “Is it alright to say that?”

But it was not Isaiah who gave him permission. It seemed as if the world did, for suddenly the night was drawing on, and out of the river rose an island, and out of the island rose something like a small and homely castle. It was surrounded by trees, and little lights were on and Rob said, “I’ve never been to a monastery before. I’m a little bit afraid.”

“This isn’t the sort of place you have to be afraid of,” Isaiah had said, “and I do love you.”

They drove over the bridge and over the blue river and parked in the driveway. They were scarcely parked before an assorted, excited crowd came out to help them. An admittedly good looking, sturdy redheaded man, and an attractive Black woman in glasses who might have been Frey’s cousins were among them. They were followed by others, but Rob didn’t note a single monk or a nun among them.

Later on, while they were eating on the open balcony off of the dining room, looking over the river and the hills, the redheaded man, called Kenneth, explained, “No, no, it’s not that kind of abbey. At least not anymore.”

“The only sister here,” his friend Layla said, “is Anigel, and she stopped being a sister some time ago. Technically.”

Anigel was the dark eyed, light skinned woman with long black hair. She wore a light white dress, and there was something of the nun to her, Frey said. She was beautiful and barefoot and Kenneth said, “You might say she’s the reason we’re here, but that would sound…”

“Cultish?” Layla said.

Rob looked to Frey and then he said, boldly, “Are you guys a cult? I mean, a religious group?”

“No,” Layla said, “because that would be easy. We’re not any group,. We’re just people. We’re just friends. Me and Kenny have been friends for years, but all sorts of people come here. This monastery doesn’t belong to the a religious order, or to the Church. The Catholic Church I mean. It doesn’t belong to any church.”

“Then…” Rob began, “Who does it belong to?”

“It belongs to us,” Kenneth said, gesturing to all the people around him, to the trees even. “It belongs to God.”

“It’s home,” Anigel said the next morning when they were eating breakfast on the lawn. “That’s all it is. People have come who want it to be other things, and they’re always disappointed.”

Frey thought Anigel must be the same age as him. Rob thought that she and Frey had the look of people very young people from another world who went from disdain of the world to living outside of it, and were not subjected to age like others.

“I remember one Palm Sunday, I called it Passion Sunday, but it wasn’t, it was Palm Sunday. There’s a difference, you know? One Palm Sunday I got up,” Anigel said, “and we were on our way to church. I was living with my sister and her husband. They had an apartment over his shop, and we were on our way to church, and before we had gone I just told my sister, I didn’t believe in God. It just hit me that I didn’t believe. She looked at me like I’d said I’d killed someone, and then she just said, ‘Well, let’s get dressed for church. Let’s not tell anyone right now.’

“And we went to Mass, and I heard all the songs and watched the Passion play, and heard all the beautiful music. It was always my favorite time of the year.”

Rob was about to interrupt and say it was his favorite time of the year too, but thought better.

“And I just knew I didn’t believe in it. Believe in the Church. I was an atheist now. Being in church just made me sad.

“I had wanted to be alone. I had wanted to just be by myself in the warm spring day, and see the flowers, and see the white blooms fall from the trees. See the red tulips in yard and the bright blue sky, feel the sun on my face, and that was the first time I was happy. The first time I felt… sacred. Full of joy.

“It was a long time, but not quite as long a time as you would think before I found out that I didn’t believe in someone else’s God. I had been brought up in all the superstition, all the… half heartedness of church, of people who sort of believed. I needed a deeper thing. I did believe, just not like the people around me, and I had to go to church a few times a year not to irritate my family. That’s what I told myself. But the truth is, I never cared much about irritating my family. I liked going so I could look at the statues of the women, of Mary, the nuns and saints in the stain glass. And… I wanted to be them. I began reading books about nuns, and I understood that this was what I wanted. I didn’t want to believe in God in a casual way. I… wanted to love God. And so I came here, to the convent.”

Rob looked around, and Anigel touched his hand.

“In those days it was still a working Benedictine convent. Always in needed of money, never getting it, for the Catholic Church doesn’t treat monks and brother very well, and treats sisters and nuns far worse. The Church doesn’t care about women. That’s just the truth. I loved God, and I loved my sisters. I was here for five years. But… to make a long story very short, in the end, I left. I needed to not be a nun, I needed to not belong to the Church and the priests. I needed to get away from the rules. Perhaps,” Anigel smiled, “I even needed to lose my virginity. So I left.”

“But you came back,” Frey said.

“I came back,” Anigel said, “but not to be a member. I came back because I had never stopped talking to the sisters, and Sister Evangeline told me that Mother Mary Joseph was dying. I came back because I didn’t want to do anything more than I wanted to take care of her.

“I thought I was going on my own. But it was different now that I was a sister and a daughter in a different way. A sister because I suppose I was behaving like one. And, in time, friends came. Friends came and nuns died, and that’s what happened. That’s how all this came about. And now you have come too.”

Rob was sitting in the room he shared with Isaiah . He was remembering yesterday, sitting on a hill where Kenny had told him, “I painted those walls, the Gorgons and everything in the chapel. At first I thought, I mustn’t. Anigel told me I could, that I should. But I still thought, it’s a chapel, and she said, “It’s a chapel to what is sacred to us, not someone else’s story. Paint your own story.” And so I started painting.

He said, “Once I had a cousin. She died. She committed suicide actually. After she died I just painted crucifixes, over and over again. Maybe I’ve painted them all out. There are no crucifixes now. Only Gorgons.”

They were looking at a man at the bottom of the hill by the river bank, by a part that Kenny said was underwater most of the year. He was chanting and Kenny said, “In the movie Excalibur the wizard Merlin says a spell, and no one knows the actual words. That man listened to it over and over again until he did know the words, and now he chants them over and over again. He is looking for the spell to change the world.”

“That’s…” Rob began.

“Crazy?”

“Why didn’t I just say that?” said Rob. And then he said, “Only, it’s not. It is, but, I don’t know . Everyone here is looking for something. Trying to do something, and it seems like in most of the world, in the place where I usually am, no one’s trying to do anything. And so it’s almost like, no matter how crazy the thing is you’re trying to do, it’s not that crazy.”

Kenny smiled and said, “And what’s the crazy thing you want to do?”

“I always liked to paint,” Rob said.

“That’s not so crazy.”

“But all of a sudden I want to write. The way Frey does. I want to write.”

“Well, that’s not crazy.”

“When you say it like that, no. But I’ve felt like it is, like I was copying off of him, like I have a lot of nerve doing it.”

“:I think all artists have a lot of nerve. Why don’t you lock yourself away and come up with something?”

“Like I’m some grand artist? Like Van Gogh?’

“Or like yourself.”

Frey was already half locked himself away, and when Rob said what Kenny had told him, Frey said, “I think he’s right. I think you should chase the dragon and see where it leads.”

“Doesn’t chase the dragon mean use opium?”

“Not when I say it,” said Frey.

Rob thought about Mike Price. Mike Price was a gloriously brown Indian who was a little too forward. He’d said he was six foot two, and then on the way to meet Rob for the first time had confessed, “By the way, I’m not quite that tall.” Later on, Rob would declare there was no such thing as a six foot two Indian. He came over that night, and they sat on a couch awkwardly talking, and then Rob didn’t see him again for a long time. Rob was still half a virgin then.

Rob had started seeing Kent. Kent was older and gifted with an enormous sausage like penis. He’d come over at about three in the morning, and Rob had ended up fucking the life out of him. He loved Kent’s cock in his mouth, but was afraid of being fucked by him, after all, he’d never been fucked by anyone. And so he began to learn all about anal sex, working his way up to it with little devices, a finger here, two fingers there, buying enema bottles and emptying them out, filling them with water to learn how to clean himself. He began to fantasize abut his first time being fucked.

One night Mike, the little Indian, had appeared online and Rob asked Mike if he finally wanted to have sex. Ten minutes later, Mike had sped to the house so quickly he’d driven over the curb. Ten minutes later Mike was, not expertly, and not well, fucking him. But what there was of it, Rob treasured. He wasn’t one of those bitter people who thought sex should be like ordering up a meal. He was grateful, generally, for whatever happened, and thinking about Mike, he began to write.

blessing of brownness
and smoothness
quiet roundness of arms and ass
when you came to me
i'm still trembling
remembering you
inside me
and the shake and the shudder
of the bed,
you overhead, hair black, head in my hands-
you came, a little gift, full of love and lust,
carrying that magic bag, the sacred thing
in those faded jeans
stripping to reveal its humble power
and it's thick attention commanding,
demanding that i give
and so i gave, and gave
and wouldn't have it any other way
and would gladly have you in the circumference
of these thighs,
back in that brief, brown paradise
some day

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Rob told Frey when they were in the breezeway before Compline. “But it’s not him I think about. He wasn’t that great. It’s something else. It’s on the tip of my tongue, or the tip of my brain. Is that what it’s like for you? Writing?”

“Yeah,” said Frey. Then, “Yes. And what the something else is reveals itself. In time.”

At Compline, Anigel and Anne and Layla sang:

“Answer me when I call, O God, defender of my cause;
you set me free when I am hard-pressed;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer.”

And they sang back:

"You mortals, how long will you dishonor my glory;
how long will you worship dumb idols
and run after false gods?”

The women at the altar sang:

“Know that the Lord does wonders for the faithful;
when I call upon the Lord, he will hear me.”

And with a full heart, as Rob had never sang, not caring about his voice:

“Tremble, then, and do not sin;
speak to your heart in silence upon your bed.

Offer the appointed sacrifices
and put your trust in the Lord.”

In their room, Rob took his notebook and said, “I am going out. I’m going out to the hills with the fireflies, and I’m going to write and now I know it wasn’t really about Mike.”

“No?” Frey said.

“It was about Jesus.”

Rob wrote:

jesus loves me
but not like you believe
last night he came through my window like a teenaged boy
and he toyed with the lock, it didn't matter
while the preacher was murmuring something from the clock radio
he undressed and shimmied out of his black underwear
and hopped from here
to there
into the bed
and we started laughing
and then we started fucking
and the things we did under those sheets
i think you've never sermonized
i think you don't know how God harmonizes
and every aspect of our dancing
becomes loving
and giving and
taking
and spilling of seed
and the loosing of fear
with him
through him
in him
all through the night
until there is day
and the orgasm shout while he holds out hips
out
hallelujah!

And then Isaiah wrote:

what if in this last incarnation
you came to me a sweet young man
with the sun in his hand
and in his flesh, brown flesh,
gold flesh
flesh i'd want to hold flesh
and you laid down beside me and
said take of me and then you took
of me sliding the white cloth
from the length of your body
and i loved your body cause
you gave me your body
and you took me
and i knew you
and i knew no fear
and when we were finished
when all passion spent
you got up and went to the shower
and i knew what you were waiting for
for me to say
take me
as you took me then
take me again and i will follow
and you came out
all brown and gold, laughing
and me dickheavy with longing
water and myrrh dripped from your locks
and for my sake you redressed slowly
slowly cloth over round buttocks
and sausage cock
over the chest
the brown breast
and then i dressed to follow
you showered me
cleansed me in the myrhh of your hair
and there, Dark Lover
i knew Christ the Lord
the Lover
the Fool, the Fucker