Kill the dove!

by Francis Kroncke

  Chapter 46: Coldwater flat

  For days Jared sits by an open window and reads and re-reads the copies Char made of the letters she had sent—those which “the Man ate!” Before he left the farm, she gave him several small boxes. “You certainly came prepared!” he laughed. Now as he reads, he muses, Clever as a fox, that girl! He admires her foresight and cleverness. “Damn, Char you actually beat the fucking-A system, babe, out-manuevered the censors, even Steve as his Black Ops best. Damn, girl!”

  Jared winces at the memory, his own stupidity. He had argued with Matt, “Come on, man, you’re getting paranoid. They can’t do that. We have rights even in here!”

  A sudden sliver of wind blows an updraft, rustling a loose stack of letters. A handful of pages flutter away. Jared hurriedly catches them all, before any fly out the window.

  Each letter refers to and expands upon the storyline that took form during their very first visit Inside. That her Revolution took a heartfelt lesbian turn. She wrote, time and again the key line, what to him is the line that marks the road taken, “I must find out, explore the meaning of I am a lesbian!”

  Jared holds up the letter with that line. Say out loud, sincerely, resigned, “Babe. Blossom, babe. Love and blossom!” He pauses, can’t seem to put the letter down, tears well up in his eyes, he bursts out sobbing. Looking at the letter, sobbing. Hand shaking he lays the letter down, back-hand wipes his eyes, looks outward and upward, “The Revolution, babe. It fucking-A hurts!” Gathering himself, he knows he has to get out of the house for a bit, go for a walk.

  Somewhat later that same day, the letters find him practicing how he’ll talk to his family, answering their question, objections. He’s anticipating that visit, Soon. Soon, Mom. Hears himself saying, “Our son. The kid . . . Well, I’m as proud as the proudest papa’s ever been.” He knows that he and Char are cutting a radical pathway, one that will strike many in his family as incredulous. “Char’s going to raise him on her own?” He accepts that no matter how he’ll try to explain it, they simply won’t, can’t get it. All that he knows to say is, “Physical proximity doesn’t ensure spiritual closeness.” He’ll tell them, “Me and Joey, we’re a fillip, a cosmic sound. I’ll father him as fervently and soulfully as life allows.”

  Jared had gone down to the farm to find closure for his relationship with Char. On the other end of things, he’s waiting here inside his apartment for Aaren. He doesn’t call her; simply waits. Karma, man, can’t rush karma! A week goes by, then several—slowly. A month. Two. Early October. An early, bitterly cold frost comes, then an ominous snowfall, foretelling a long hard winter ahead.

  Waiting. He takes no time for formal prayer. No recitation of the rosary. No jaunts on Eastern roads, no gurus . . . just a lot of music. No reading of any serious sort, just music: deep, velvet-blooded blues, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, BB King, old chain gang chants and the “smokin’ shooter” of Sonny Boy Williamson.

  Blues and hot baths in an ancient funky tub that is his apartment’s one delight, sporadic but intense workouts, living off the food pantries, the Free Store, this church and that church’s charity, just getting by, blowing smoke up his parole officer’s ass. “Three interview last week. Looks promising!” Lying to the Man: He doesn’t care. He just wating. All in all, a lot of just looking out the window onto Elliott Avenue. Waiting.

  Early one day, the doorbell buzzes, wakes him. Seven? Not an ungodly hour for the working class, but Jared’s gotten used to snoozing till ten. Who? With two blankets, fake furs snatched from a pile of six or more, he wraps himself, half-assedly, cursing the cold uncarpeted floor, a brevity of curses to awaken the day, and with the look of a hung-over man, which he is not, he looks through the peephole.

  Aaren stands there!

  “Jennings, report to the visiting room!”

  It what he’s been waiting for, but now that she’s here, he hesitates—more, he resists opening the door. Aw, shit! He knows that he can’t keep her out—Karma. So he unhooks the safety chain, twists open the door handle, makes a hurried turnabout and shuffles back to his room.

  Aaren quietly enters and while he’s in his bedroom immediately goes about being Miss Nice. She starts up a pot of coffee using a banged-up, cratered tin percolator left by a former resident or maybe his landlord friend.As the java bubbles and brews, she sets about tidying up this and that. Giving him a few minutes, she assumes that he’s dressed by now, possibly even shaved, so she brings the pot and cups to his room.

  Interesting! She senses that no women have been here. There’s no perfume, either cheap or expensive. No telltale long hairs in the comb or brush loitering on his bed stand.

  He’s sitting by a window, looking far away. She’s surprised that he’s no further dressed than when he came to answer the door.

  “It is a bit chilly here. Are your windows sealed?”

  “It’s okay.”

  She slips off her overcoat, keeps her sweater on, and again starts rearranging this and that, tidying up the room just a bit.

  “Only half-insulated. Your plastic sheets will need to be re-stapled soon. They say we’re in for a lot of snow this year,” she says as she hands him a cup. He takes it, she pours and fills it to the brim.

  “Whoa!” as hot drops splash the back of his hand.

  “Sorry!”

  She sets the pot aside and sits on the floor, her back against his bed. It’s barren, she observes silently. No. That’s not it. Not really barren, just sparse. It isn’t ascetic as the way her place is now, a place consciously devoid of things. This room’s more just a dab of poverty. His brother must be helping, she doesn’t say, but knowing the Jennings siblings, she senses it’s true, although it’s not.

  Jared settles on the floor too, back against the wall, directly across from her. The room’s narrow and he has to half-tent his legs not to kick her toes.

  “Feel at home here?”

  “It’s mine . . . sorta. Yeah.”

  The psychic weight of the moment is almost unbearable. Jared doesn’t know whether he should try to lift up and throw the weight away or wait for Aaren to do something. What?

  In unplanned unison, they blow, sip and then hold their cups in both hands. Out of nowhere, some magical bell must’ve rung because they both burst out laughing. Just laughing, trying not to spill their drinks. Slight teardrops hold at the corners of their eyes. He heaves a deep sigh; she too.

  Without words, they hold their cups up to toast this moment. Clink! A sip, blowing, steam fluttering, they drink.

  “Sure is hot.” She blows, popping a sound with her lips.

  “Yeah.”

  Nothing more said, all the way to the bottom of the cup.

  Oh, how I want to flee! In chorus, two voices within them chime, but both stay put.

  He knows that it’s his to open. A simple question, flat-toned, “Why are you here?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “Love?” Something within him fears the moment, wants to test it, throw some acid on it, make sure it’s real. Am I dreaming? Witson, are you fucking with me? With smart-ass tone, “What does that mean besides loss? Do you want to lose me?”

  “I did lose you . . . and you me.”

  “But I love Char, you know?”

  “Truly. So do I.”

  Jared wiggles about, but only to relax his long legs. He’s feeling the pin sticks and stabs of legs beginning to fall asleep.

  She reopens, “I love Joseph, too.”

  “You know his name?”

  “Of course.”

  “When?”

  “A bit after you, when they came back from the farm.”

  She’s sharply focused on his every movement, that of his left pinkie, the way his lips purse, the shrugs he gives to shift into a more comfortable spot. She reads his mind. Her meeting with Witson at the Black Forest. Of course, how can he trust me so soon?

  Aaren startles him by picking up on his thoughts about her and Steve. “I tried
to tell you in DC. That I had left everything here: Mao, the Sisters. I’m on my own. Believe it or not, I’m back in graduate school.” She stops, then, “Look, I’m not here to chit-chat. I’ve changed. Oh, Jared, how can I convince you?”

  Having practiced this a thousand times, she is now ready, jittery but ready. “Everything Witson told you is true. All my Weather involvement, my betrayal of you, all—”

  “Wargasm?”

  Fingers like wings flutter to her mouth, a slight cough. “True.”

  “Really?”

  “Wargasm.”

  “Humph.”

  “What else? It had to be my journey, I mean, look, you and I both had to become warriors. To battle in the streets, under the sheets and inside the sanctuary. Isn’t that true? Don’t you see, we’re like mirrors to one another. And I—I—oh, how painful!—only when I had battled with all my weapons, only after I fired every stock of ammunition: bullets, bombs, knives, only then, only after fucking and being fucked, inside and out, only when I thought I had won, captured the warrior male and his fire in my every opening,” and she points, mouth, cunt, ass, hand, teats, lips, tongue, “only then did I experience defeat. Defeat and victory, what is the difference? You know that.”

  Jared stands up and walks about, more like shuffling. “Ha! Maybe it is just like me, I don’t know.” Turns. “But I have to say, I’ve prayed—no, not with my monkish prayers but with the hope for a new fire—that you are who you said you were . . . back in DC, that is.”

  Aaren stands and moves towards him. He holds her off at arm’s length.

  “But let me tell you, I’ve seen myself from more sides now that I can count. I was turned inside-out and outside-in, almost crossed over—yeah, both crossed over to them and crossed the line, I mean,” and he’s no longer holding her off, she stands there, steady. “I mean, I betrayed myself. You didn’t betray me. I fucked myself. You didn’t fuck me. I—I imprisoned myself. You didn’t imprison me.”

  “Amen,” she whispers, floats into his open arms, they embrace.

  Hours, days, eons, timeless moments they are there, just there, waiting together.

  It’s like they’re inside the Bright Cloud. All they’ve meant to one another, for good or bad. All that they’ve felt, from dark hatred to molten desire. All that they’ve sought to know, now opens to them. At this moment each senses that they are together, teetering on the verge. It is as intense as the stiletto moment back before the raid. Their hearts are pounding heavily, they know—Yes!—that they are about to launch forth on their personal Revolution. With intimate eyes they painfully see two broken-down, impoverished, damaged and crushed youths who have lost first bloom. They sigh, do not have to speak, it is simply known, shared. With heartfelt kisses they melt together for the first time ever as a couple.

  “Beloved, Aaren. You are my beloved.”

  Their hands touch, slowly they move towards the bed and ease down onto it. Minds, hearts, muscles, desires all gradually relax as they lie in each other’s arms and breathe together. For the next few hours this seedy and rickety bed becomes the cradle of their newly coupled impassioned and fiery heart. From within their embraces arise a twin-flame glow that bathes the room and lights up the morning sky.

  Many a wind has raised embers to spectacular fire. Here rises a wind, a fiery daughter of Ruah, “The Rush,” that cloaking wind which moves lovers to huddle so close in intimate flesh and bone that the betrayals of the past are purged and the purity of that primal blaze which fashioned the heart of the First Lovers bounds free.

  She is to him a box of precious gems, and as he opens her she bequeaths him gold. He is like the goldsmith upon her, lightly pounding the malleable metal, forming a necklace for himself from her kisses, drawing from her breasts light pearls. Sweet and salty he licks her, sucking from her soulfully healing milk, tapping into her warm heartways through her dark nipples and delighting in the softness of her hillock as with spring’s first grass, tender of shoot and blade, he feels her, pets her, and breast to breast they couple and lock on. She kisses him, his eyes the entryway to his soul, and she watches his hunger for her in the movements of his play. As he turns to her, she slips her hands under him and strokes him, raising moistness in her delta and crack-hardness in his shaft, and they roll to the side, playfully, tenderly stroking, kissing up and down, feeling electric thrills bouncing off their skin, static electricity snap! Their lips entwine, dip and dart. He is the strong west wind blowing the ocean towards her desert and she is the hot flaming flashes darting from the wilderness, seeking his cool embrace. Deeply they enter each other’s intimacy, pressing cheekbone to cheekbone, legs latching, arms pulling ever closer until they almost pass body through body! They laugh, gasp for breath, he licks her ear lobes and she palm-surfs on his back, fingers dive and pinch his buttocks, loving the length of him, feeling buried by him but not submerged, actually emerging through him, and he is molding her, moving her soft-lands and entering into her, right hand calmly touching her panther hairs, parting her and feeling within her, finding that wet warmth which enters his hands and fills them with artist’s power, for he moves her and she is pleased. He presses her clitoris and she is aroused, heat sears from her loins and he finds her liquefying and he sways and swings around, lightly, finger-tips tenderly massaging her clitoris then thumb on top and fingers inside he ups the beat, plays her like a fortissimo piano, all the while kissing her on cheeks and neck and tongue caressing her now fully raised nipples and she finding that he’s falling into her, following her lures, coming to rest, that he is listening to her music and he’s down upon her sirenic mouth and she without pause and within the beat has him hard to suck, and they lie there joined as only humans join, in that embrace of divine coupling that celebrates the erotic power of cock and cunny, intensifying that coupled charge, transforming flesh into heart, heart into soul, soul into flesh of a newly birthed presence—the twin-flamed lover. It is a magical moment of flash! An unnerving moment of love! The delirious moment of two who are now coupled and manifest as one presence. Yes!

  “I love you.” You love me. Love!

  They are love, each to the other, they join fierce hearts to fiery souls, are the juice of life, flowing onto each other, bathing each other, raising each other, now rightly and newly named as we.

  They rest, a long time silent, he drooping, nodding off, she elbowing him, smiling. “You know,” and he hears in her tone that her mind’s been racing around, doing what Aaren does—working out the ideological framework, the theoretical basis. So just as she begins, a huge broad smile whacks his face. She stops, “What?” He laughs, leans over, kisses her on the forehead. “Oh, nothing. Just that it is you, Aaren. It is truly you.”

  “Hang in here with me, big boy, okay? See, I’ve been doing some of your stuff, believe it or not, theology and all that, myths, so look—okay, let me ask instead of tell—isn’t what we’ve been trying to do ever since we met—wow, seems long ago!—is deal with violence, really our sexual violence? We, you and me, we were mythic enemies, true Warriors of the Sexes.” He’s totally wrapped around every word she’s saying, with every syllable he’s falling more madly in love with her than ever before. “If, not as, I mean, right now, I know you’re here, just like me, to form a common life together, right?” He smiles. “So—” she pauses, waves her hand at imaginary demons: old Marxists, raving Maoists, all the Revolution’s crazies. “So,” she pauses again, places her hand in his. “Trust, my love—it is all about trust, isn’t it?” She sighs, he presses her hand affirmatively. “As we seek deep intimacy, we need to be aware of the mythic challenge. Eve was Adam’s enemy. I am not yours. You are not mine. So—” he’s waiting “—love as if you are no one’s enemy.”

  As in the Bright Cloud, Jared is being drawn forward. Aaren’s heart is drawing him forward. “Fuck, man, that’s really beautiful.” Kidding, “Wish I had come up with that!” Tickles her. This breaks her serious mood. They tumble back into intimate exploration. Their fire
burns, flares, roars, and by day’s end greets the night with glowing embers.

  Aaren and Jared slumber, arms crossing and intertwining, legs laced, dreamers within each other’s dream, alive within, Beloveds who are together a virgin fire, twin-flamed.

  Love as if you are no one’s enemy.