If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

LIFE AT SAINT ALBAN'S

CONTINUED

Before lunch, because Ross went to Mass, Anigel respectfully accompanied him, and because they were going and Russell missed church, he would go too, and because he was going, Flipper, who was a reluctant Catholic was there as well. Sister Pat said she’d never seen so many people under fifty at daily Mass before, and laughed. On the way to lunch, Russell remembered the first reading:

 

By faith they passed through the Red Sea as though they were passing through dry land; and the Egyptians, when they attempted it, were drowned.

By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after she had welcomed the spies in peace.

And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground

 

And Russell had thought, those saints and the people in “Howl” are the same. For the world as it is is not good enough. Those saints couldn’t help but to desire more, the same faith which raised the dead was the same faith that could lead men to sleep in holes. There was no difference between the man who stood in camel hair in the desert and cried “The kingdom of God is here!” and the wandering homeless man on the street, smoking cigarette after cigarette and sleeping under the Brigham Street Bridge at night. Jesus had died naked and forsaken on a cross. Both were the outcast and the beloved of God.

“But you’re right,” Flipper said as the two of them chain smoked in his room after lunch. “I had never seen it that way, but then I never go to church. When you put it that way, it makes God more real.”

“It makes God terrifying,” Russell said.

“Yes,” Flipper agreed, blowing smoke out of his nose, “But I can live with that.”

When Anigel shook Russell awake and told him it was time for dinner, he was surprised by how hungry he was. He looked out the window of the common room at the heavy grey sky and wondered, “What time it is?”

“It’s almost six, and do you know you smell like a pack of cigarettes? I’m not judging. I’m just informing.”

Jimmy was there in his coat, hood pulled up, grinning.

Russell already felt part of this family. Money was coming downstairs with Flipper and Jack Yeager who lived down the hall, and Russell went up to Ross’s room for his coat and found in Ross searching for his hat while pulling on gloves.

They all headed toward the cafeteria, threading past the football dorm where Andy Lagger came out and joined Flipper, and Russell knew it was Andy Lagger because, shyly, Flipper introduced him. Andy was well built but funny looking, but handsome at the same time. He was hard to describe. He looked like a young gym teacher. He and Flipper made sense together.

“We’ve been hanging out all day,” Flipper said.

“Yeah, whaddid you guys get up to?”

“Poetry. Philosophy. We talked about Ginsberg and Pound—   fuck him—and T.S. Eliot.”

“We went to church,” Russell threw in.

“Well!” Andy said.

“Andy’s a scientist,” Flipper explained.

“I thought you were a football player,” Russell said.

Andy burst out laughing. He had a wide mouth and looked a little bit like a sexy jack o’ lantern.

“Yes,” Russell said, feeling stupid. “People can be more than one thing.”

“And here you better be.” Andy said, jamming his hands in his pockets. “No one who plays for Saint Alban’s is making it into the NFL.”

As they were coming from the west, Macy and Bernadette were skipping, keys dangling from their hands, from the south where the night was already settling. Macy punched Russell affectionately though, as Russell rubbed his shoulder, he decided he could have dealt with a little less affection, and Bernadette complained, “They’re already starting that party over in Halleck Hall.”

“I know,” Macy said in a very different voice. “Are any of you assholes going?”

“We’re going,” Flipper turned around, pointing at Yeager and Russell, and Andy, “Aren’t we?”

“Uh….”

“What are you looking at me for?” Anigel said to Russell.

“Because you are a parental figure,” Ross said, sternly. “So act like one.”

And then taking his own advice, Ross said, “We will go. But we’re not coming till nine.”

“It’s not really starting till ten,” Macy said.

“I thought Bernie said it was happening now.”

Bernadette, who walked faster than them all and had already entered the dining hall, skipped down the flight of steps to the ground level, and stood in line, so she could not hear Macy say, “That bitch just means they’re coming back with the liquor. I love her but she’s like an old woman. She worries about EVERYTHING.”

Macy said they would make a feast.

“The proper feast,” she told Anigel, “is to come here as soon as the caf opens and not leave till it shuts. You want to know everyone’s business, see everyone, check in on all, and maybe have three courses of what’s up there.”

“The food here isn’t good enough to be a feast,” Coral declared and Bernadette looked at Macy and said, as if Coral was not there, “That’s the problem with her, ya know?” and Macy nodded in sage agreement.

There was a sort of country fried steak with white gravy for a first course, though Anigel had the chicken Caesar salad instead. They ate this and talked about the party and Russell remained mostly silent, listening to his cousins and eating. In fact, a lot of them took turns being quiet. There was much to hear and observe. Macy got up and had half coffee half cocoa and Anigel, in the spirit of the feast now, brought back an ice cream cone.

“I didn’t know school was so much fun,” she said.

“We even have classes,” said Ross, who had just returned with a coffee.

“Well, I’m doing that now at Soubirous. But the social life! Not that there isn’t social life there too. I just didn’t think there was any place to go after. But there’s here.”

“True. I mean, by the time you transferred we would be graduated, but Macy and Bernadette would still be here if you could deal with that. Ah, hell, who are we kidding? Flip and Jimmy change their majors so often, they’ll be here too.”

“I want to sit up all day and all night and talk about poems and go to church and see philosophy in Mass too! Hell, Russell’s having more college than I’ve had in one day with Flipper.”

They went out to smoke, but not all at the same time for fear of losing their table. There had been a smoking section in the cafeteria, but only two years ago it had been closed. Now, on the first floor there were couches and ash trays. When Russell came back from smoking clove cigarettes with Macy, the short, Bernadette was bringing them éclairs and saying, “Well, it’s almost seven, so I guess it’s time to wrap shit up.”

Nehru Alexander, who had always been a person of reason, having forsaken that reason, did not know how to return to it. He had always been so wise, and it was tiring now. Wisdom had kept him virginal. It had kept him ideal. Good, wise, sensible Nehru, and now he wondered, if he’d been less wise would he have been more fun, had more fun? Would he still be alone?

Reason reminded him that it was he who had told Brad to go to Marissa, and that it was he who, like a mad pervert, had stared in her window and watched them having sex. But reason, which sounded a lot like a tired, scolding woman, could kiss his ass, and all that same night he curled into a ball and cried into his pillow. He was numb and hurt by rage, and when Brad came by the house the next day—no one else was there—he stayed in his room and did not answer the door. He would not take his phone calls.

Brad had briefly thrown up the boy from the bar mitzvah they’d played at, and Nehru had simply slapped him. Sleeping with Joshua from the synagogue was a form of revenge, the desire to get back at Brad, to say, if you do this then I do that. But now his heart hurt too much for revenge. When he turned to the online personals, what he desired was desire.

• HARD , round & tight - m4mm 41 (U-HOST - G.F./PORT  GREG) pic
• 55/w/m looking for younger 55 (East Sequoya) 
• Are you Here? 28 (GF) 
• Black Man Wanted 51 (East Sequoya) pic
• Looking For Friends...Possibly Someone To Date 22 (Little Poland)
• Looking to suck a nice thick cock. - m4m 19 pic
• Horny oral bottom visiting looking for local dick 27 (St joe/colona koa)  
• 60/w/m looking for younger male 60 (Geshichtuh Falls) 
• Seeking LTR in Lothrop County area (Lothrop County/Fort Atkins) pic
• 60yrs male wanting to give head to younger 60 (atkins) 
• Black men you wanna put-now - m4m 49 (atkins) 
• Top Seeking Young Bottom St8 Acting 36 (Falls) 

 

 Are you Here? - 23 (GF)

age : 23 body : average height : 5'7" (170cm) status : single

 

Wanting to make some new friends. I really need to be with another man. I never understood that till recently, but having done it a few times, I want to do it again. There’s someone I have in mind, but I can’t be with him right now. I am told I am well muscled and have shoulder length brown hair.

do NOT contact me with unsolicited services or offers

There was a picture of the man, the other boy, from the neck down. He looked almost too good. He wasn’t tall, and so the ad had said, but he was thick necked and strong armed and his penis sent a thrill through Nehru’s stomach.

So Nehru began to type. For the very first time, as he thought of meeting a man, he was not thinking of Brad at all.

Life was a Sacred Net, Cody Barnard was sure of that. Everyone was caught up in it, and God was a fisherman. He would catch you up with the people who belonged to you, and everyone belonged to you in some way though it might take you a long time to understand how.

The waters we swam in were dangerous. Just look at the Choctaw River. At some points it was shallow and narrow, but when you got to other parts, like Royal Street, it was broad and dark, and only the Brigham Street Bridge could span it. Freighters trawled across it. Its cold depths were unknown.

But humans were different. They had hot depths. Cody didn’t apologize for his. He was sometimes amazed by them, but not ashamed. He was dismayed, but not terrified. When those parts of him arose, he simply decided something had to be done about them.

Something had to be done about Russell Lewis. Put him away? No. He couldn’t bear that. He loved Russell. Russell made more sense than people twice, three times his age. He was linked to him, certainly. But Russell was not even seventeen, and he had barely known Russell two weeks before feelings began to well in him that had never been there before. His desire to touch Russell’s red hair, to place a hand over his was so strong that the night Anigel Reyes’ sister had her baby, and Russell had been left with Jason, Cody had brought Ralph back to his house and had sex with him. The whole time they’d been traveling, Cody had been feeling Ralph up, wondering if he’d be up for it. Upstairs, in his small junky room, Cody told Ralph to wait. He’d cleaned himself come back, shone Ralph his beautiful body, played with the boy’s cock which was huge—Ralph didn’t seem like a kid—and then taken off his clothes and let Ralph fuck him.

It wasn’t that he pretended Ralph was Russell, not at all. He didn’t have nearly enough imagination for that, but Ralph was sex, the intense meltiness of sex, the need of it and the forgetting of ego. When Ralph begged him, though Ralph said he’d never experienced it before, Cody fucked him. The confusion he’d felt over Russell turned to bliss as he came inside of Ralph.

It had only been a few days later that he and Russell had been driving around and just like that, in his truck, Russell had given him head. Not much later Cody, feeling more fuck it than anything, in Russell’s own house had sixty nined with him. The broad side of his hand, rubbing up and down in the cleft of Russell’s ass, Russell’s strawberry hair in his face, his spearmint breath in his mouth first, their tongues linking and after that Russell, thick and long and hard in his mouth, Russell’s mouth doing duty on him. Ecstasy.

Brad Long had happened in order to forget Russell. He had happened because he was attractive. The first time Cody had seen him he sort of wanted to fuck him, but they were both trying to forget someone and they were talking about music, and surprised to have answered each other’s ad, surprised at whom the ad had revealed. They touched and kissed and stripped timidly, but again, the feeling of slaked need, the sacred feeling of giving someone what they needed and being humble enough to accept that you needed it too was here. He and Brad had gone at it all night. He didn’t call Brad after that. He didn’t want to intrude. And Brad did not call him.

It was ten minutes from the garage on Thompson Road to Colum Park. He parked and climbed out of the car, excited by the white quiet of the winter night. He was here to answer an ad again and wondered who—whom?—it would reveal. There was the Zen garden, and after it the little pagoda which Cody noted was Chinese and therefore inappropriate in this fake Japan, and he walked down the long hill to the stand of bushes, black in the night, and saw who was waiting for him, sitting on the bench, sensibly hooded and in a winter coat.. Now he stood up, and as Cody stood before him, the cold air stinging his ears through his thick hair, the other man, a little shorter, let down his hood.

Cody Barnard blinked in surprise.

“Nehru?”