He sits in the sand, his eyes closing like he is listening for something. The reds and blues of the ocean sky are fading into purples and darker reds. His is tall and skinny with a red afro. The rest of them are already running into the water, black wet suits tight against their bodies, slamming against waves and swimming out, paddling till what they were hoping for came to them.

He is sitting off by himself. His lips moving slightly, soundless aestheticisms. His red afro matches the fading sun. He seems impossibly tall, close enough to reach and pull each abundantly luscious cloud from the sky like decadent strawberries in the waning sun. His skin isn’t dark. It isn’t light either. Latte. Mixed up.

I close my eyes.

Boruch ato adonay, elohaynu melech ho-olom, asher ki-d’shonu b’mitzosov, v’tzivonu l’hadlike nayr shel shabos kodesh.

I wave my hands towards me three times, welcoming the beginning of a new day, of shabos. Observancy isn’t dead. It’s just re-configured, re-anointed, re-confirmed.

He is watching me. Green eyes reflecting waning reds and yellows, strawberry clouds and Volkswagen blues. He smiles, nods, and picks up his board, running to the water to join his friends.

I climb down from the rocks I have been sitting on and move towards the water. I kick my sandals from my feet and wait. I want to say more, but having already welcomed the shabos what more can I say? What are the rules? The shema was done, tefilin couldn’t be worn till Sunday and I didn’t know anymore how to just talk. How to say what I wanted to say.

I feel lost. Shut off. I don’t feel you. Anywhere.

My hand reaches up to touch the black kippa. My fingers shift it, looking for the right place, the exact spot on my head that would show my adoration, but nothing feels right anymore. Nothing makes sense.

I notice him noticing me. Quick glances. He nodded twice. Once his hand sort of raised in an almost gesture, but it died before fully potentializing it’s potential. That’s okay. I knew what he meant.

Watching him was like watching someone involved in some deifyingly diaphanous dance. Slow, precise, each movement in response to his own needs, negating the seemingly chaotic jerks and thrusts, pushes and pulls of the ocean. Like a man taming a horse. The others were like virgins fucking whores. Sloppy and clumsy. Graceless. Without grace. And yet pretty. All of them out there. Against the sun which was fading into a hazy chill.

Do you believe in G-d?
I believe in G-d. Of course I believe in G-d.
Do you believe that Hashem redeems us?
I don’t know.
You don’t know?
I don’t know that I believe G-d cares about redemption.
Than what do you think G-d cares about?
I don’t know. I don’t know what G-d wants from me.

How am I supposed to know what God cares about? How am I supposed to know what some lunatic entity wants from me? The whole thing is beginning to seem more like a fuck up than a great plan. Who were those three men Abraham saw in the labyrinths of memory? Angels in Sodom? I should write my own midrash. Fucking those angels. Thousands of us, licking and tasting the Sons of God. Of gods. My tongue up the ass of that apocalyptic whore. Who was the nameless man Jacob wrestled with? The ladders of prayers leading to heaven, those same angels, shaved holes and huge dicks, climbing their way up and down, rotation, returning and returning, teshuva where I am now forbidden? For what? Miasmically tasting my own impurity? Fuck it. I’ll drink cum whenever it’s offered. And I would have raped those two angels. Lot could have offered me three thousand virgin daughters, each one with potential incestuous fantasies and it wouldn’t have mattered.

He’s the last one. All alone out there now. I couldn’t have done that. Been out there in that ever expanding expansion of blackness. I would have worried. About depth and perception. About being lost.

Sonorous waves were replaced by Dr. Dre and then his friends were gone, rhythmic poundings and Hondas leaving us behind. Just the two of us.

He is sitting, his board at his side. He is toweling off his hair, already frizzy and out of control. He is standing up and pulling the black wet suit off his shoulders, letting it hang at his waist. In the dying, already almost dead light, I can see brown nipples, a trail of ferruginous hair leading from his belly button below the back of the suit. His stomach is cut in ridges, cliffs and angles, lines leading to lines leading to cuts leading to lips that were full and smiling.

He is looking right at me. Watching me. And I wonder, can he tell how crazy I am? How far gone I have come? Can he locate me or am I just a shadow out here, no location, no longer even there. Just something reminiscent of some memory someone’s having?

All G-d wants from you is that you make teshuva. To choose to be with him.
Even with these sins?
What sins? Sins are just the devices he uses to facilitate the return.
That’s bullshit. Sins are all I have. The only choices I get to make.
G-d’s will will be realized, Joshua. You have no choice in that. You will be redeemed. Nothing you can do will stop that. All you can do is slow it down. This life time or the next. God’s will will be realized.

He stands up, picking up the board, and he is walking towards me. Ambulatory stillness. He has a way of moving that reminds me of floating. Like in dreams. Constantly moving and searching, never touching the ground, never stopping.

Sh’ma Yisrael Adonay Eloheinu Adonay Echad

I want to kneel. I want to be there waiting, my mouth open, my eyes empty. I want to escape. That’s what I came here to do. I was going to wait till the final hours of night and then, just when I had said my piece, just when I had presented my case to whatever vacuous judge was interested, I would walk out into that black expanding depth and be gone for good.

“What’s up?” He asks, his voice deeper than I had thought. Guttural. Gutterish.

“Hey.” I say, startled by the sound of my own voice.

“I’m Jesse.”

“Josh.”

He smiles, lips giving way to it, fully, like that is all he is right then and there. Just like that. Smiling.

“I live just down the street. You wanta come over?”

I have no idea how old he is. Old enough to live alone. Eighteen. Nineteen. Probably not twenty. Definitely not twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two. Jesse lives in one room with three chairs, a mattress on the floor with an immaculate white comforter, yellow walls and a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The place is clean, night jasmine blowing in from outside. Curtains moving in the wind. I imagine waking up here and eating grapefruit and watching sunlight glimmer on ocean waves.

He sits down on the bed, looking up at me, green eyes and long lashes, red afro and latte skin.

“So what were you doing out there?” He asks.

“I don’t know. Just sitting. Waiting.”

He laughs. “Yeah. That’s what it looked like.”

He reaches out for me, his hand hanging there expectantly, leaving me no option but to take it. He pulls me back down to him and for a moment he just holds me, to him, his breath soft against my neck. He tastes like lime and tapatio. Like salt and sweat, sweet and sour. My hand runs along the edges of his wet suit, my tongue traveling those ridges and cliffs, my teeth pulling gently, softly, tongue flicking over those nipples, losing myself in his smell, the taste of ocean sweat collected in the soft hairs of his arm pits. He pushes me back onto the bed, kneeling over me. He grins, lips and teeth, eyes and lashes. So human. God, all that humanness. Just there. Breathing before me. He pushes the wet suit further down, slowly revealing himself to me.

“Tell me what you want.” He says, breathless, breathlessly, without breath.

“You.”

“What about me?”

“I want your dick.”

“Yeah?” He pushes further down, revealing the beginnings of dark red pubic hair.

“Yeah.”

Hear, O Israel, The Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
With all your soul, with all your might. And these words
Words which I command you today, shall be upon your heart.
You shall teach them thoroughly to your children, and you shall
Speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk
On the road, when you lie down and when you rise. You shall
Bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be a reminder
Between your eyes. And you shall write them upon the doorposts
Of your house and upon your gates.

I can see it now. He is hard. I knew that is what I had been wanting all along. Starved for it. I pull him to me, taking the tip of it between my lips, using my tongue to push the skin back, tasting the muskiness of uncut dick. Sweat and piss and cum.

“You were praying, weren’t you?” He asks, his dick now halfway down my throat.

“What?” I mangled, my mouth too full to truly articulate.

“Out there. Tonight. At the beach. I saw you.”

I didn’t know what to say so I began moving up and down on it, slow movements, my tongue on the underside, creating friction. His eyes close and then open, lost for a moment.

He pulls out of me and bends towards me, his mouth on mine, tasting him on me.

“I want to fuck you.” He says.

“Yeah. I want that. I want you to fuck me.”

It hurt at first. Too much to take all at once. But he was slow. Before putting his dick in he had knelt between my legs, his tongue playing around the hole, soft flickering movements, pushing in and out, slowly fucking me with it, opening me up. Being fucked like that, slow and than fast, soft and than hard, his mouth on my mouth, his tongue exploring, his eyes open, watching me, my hands running along his back, pulling him into me, further, always more, wanting more. When I looked up at him looking down at me I saw tears in his eyes. I ran my tongue up his face, collecting tears as if somehow that would allow me to understand what was happening. To him. With me. As if somehow this might redeem the un-redeemable.

During the night he held me. Against him and I felt like I was burning up. On fire. With my eyes open I could see the flames, licking at me, tasting me.

She crawls fast, doesn’t she? She slithers against the walls, against the ground, over us. She is there now, dancing, shimmering. His hands are open, licking at us, tasting us…redeeming us? She is with him, hands held. She is there against him. He is slithering now, crawling over her, her arms pinning backwards, his eyes freezing and burning, his lips touching skin now water now air now fire until that expanding blackness expands it’s way over me.

God? There’s so much I meant to say to you. So much I had. They followed you, a cloud of white, to the top of that mountain. They beseeched you, fought with you, cried before you and changed you. They changed you. I’m not asking for that. All I’m asking for is a little forgiveness. To be more than an abomination. To be the one you created.

He didn’t have any grapefruit. Just orange juice and Lucky Charms. He fucked me again in the morning. With the sun refracting green eyes, with hands and feet, with arms and legs, toes and words and smiling, with each second passing by until it began to feel like there was no more time left.

“Will I see you again?” he asks as I stand in the doorway, preparing to leave. He reaches his hand out, fingers brushing the kippa I had put back on.

“I don’t know.” I say.

“I’d like to.”

I smile. He smiles.

“Probably.” I say though I don’t know if I mean it.

All these rules. What I’ve done is no different than raping or killing. Than eating bacon. I shouldn’t have driven last night. I shouldn’t be preparing to drive now, on shabos.

My hand reaches for the light switch on the wall. Flicking on and than off. Breaking each rule as they come, one by one, and maybe by saying fuck it to them all, slowly, maybe then I will remember what I’ve forgotten, or at least find my way back to what I’ve lost.

“I think you should have breakfast with me.” He says.

“Breakfast?”

“Yeah. You know. Eat something besides Lucky Charms. I’m fucking starved for real food.”

“Can we walk there?” I ask.

“Walk?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure. Yeah of course.”

Jesse lives above a garage behind a large Spanish beach house. Walking down the wooden steps to the driveway I can see the sun oblique against the ocean. The reds and yellows and oranges of flowers against the brown hills. His hand reaches for mine and for a moment I almost pull back, jerking away from him, but I don't. Instead I let him hold it. Even though it terrifies me.

 

© 2005 Jeff Leavell - Contributor's Bio