FRIDAY
13 JUNE, 1997
DORIAN

               My eyelashes are sealed with sleep. I peel them apart to welcome the sunlight that sieves through the fleece of pollen outside the window. The bindweed in the wallpaper blooms to greet the morning. My soul is at peace between my bones.

Isaiah's breath fans my shoulder. With me lying on my back, he clings to my right arm and leg with his like a sloth climbing a branch. The sun scattered across his face, every muscle at rest, he looks healthy. And so beautiful.

The alarm on my watch beeps.

Isaiah groans. Even when his face screws up, it remains just as handsome. 'What have you put an alarm on for? We ain't got nuttin to do today.'

'On the contrary,' I say brightly. 'It's Shabbat.'

He opens one eye to inspect me before he shuts it again. 'I thought the whole point of Sabbath was rest.'

'Which is why we have to clean and cook everything before it starts. And we have to go to the shop, I'm assuming.' The kitchen, too, is empty.

Isaiah only presses his face to my bicep to avoid the light. (I want to protect you even from the sun. I will pray for it to stop burning if it bothers you.) As reluctant as I am, I peel my arm from his hold and tuck my pillow in its place. It's warm and must smell like me and Isaiah buries his face into it, rolling onto his stomach to hug it tighter.

When I return from the bathroom, he's asleep again.

The summer is warm enough that even Isaiah is dressed only in a ribbed vest and thin cotton trousers, orange and blue. The ball of his right shoulder rises like a hill from the cloud of the duvet. I press a kiss to it. He smells like himself again, of the castor oil he let me massage into his hair yesterday and his mother's moringa perfume.

I stroke his temple and soon he stirs.

'Sorry–'

'No,' I interrupt. 'I like it when you sleep. You don't sleep enough.'

He makes a noise that might be "yeah". Angular phonemes glue to the slumber on his tongue and his speech muddles. 'Been sleeping better lately. Ganja helps with the pain so I don't wake up so much.'

'That's good.' Smiling, I continue to caress his face. 'How are you feeling now?'

Isaiah turns onto his back and squints at me, the sun still too bright for him. Dream lingers around him like dew over Halsett's orchards at dawn. The pillow has debossed creases on his cheek.

A slow grin grows on his lips until his tooth gap is unobstructed. 'I'm really happy.' He shifts my pillow so it covers his mouth. The dew is gone. 'I'm scared though... I can't believe it's real, that you're really here. Maybe I'm hallucinating the whole thing.'

'It's real.' My hand sweeps his jaw, nudging the pillow out of the way in the process, and I angle his face toward mine. I kiss his forehead, meaning: I promise, I promise, I promise. 'This is real.'

Isaiah traces a vein up and down my forearm in search of reassurance but tears pearl between his lashes.

'What's wrong?

'I love you so much. And I trust you, I do. I just... someone like me isn't allowed to be with you.' His voice is sodden with shame and it's he who breaks eye contact. 'According to scripture, I ain't good enough for you. I don't know how I'm supposed to ignore that.'

Shards pierce my heart.

'Yakiri... I love you.' Despite the cinch in my throat, my voice flows like the river. 'Of course, you're good enough for me. I love you so much. HaShem loves you.'

He hums vaguely.

Caressing his cheek with my thumb, I coax his mind back to me. 'God loves you, Shay. I'll spend the rest of my life convincing you if you want me to. I'm not the poet, don't ask me to be good with words, but do you honestly think our love would feel like this if it wasn't blessed?'

This is chesed, loving-kindness, full surrender. G-d is on our side.

A smile finally graces his face, albeit small. His hand slides to the back of my neck to pull me down. I'm happy to comply. Isaiah is still too tired to do much more than press his lips against mine and yet I'm still delirious when we part.

'I'll teach you to love yourself as much as I do,' I whisper, as if the moment might fracture if I speak louder. 'It's like that quote from The Art of Loving: "If I can say to somebody else, 'I love you,' I must be able to say, 'I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.'" God willing, we have to learn to do that.'

He stares at me, and though the instinct to mockery twinkles behind his eyes, his voice is mesmerised. 'How do you remember that word for word?'

'I recorded you reading it.' The answer hasn't left my lips before the guilt that has made a home in my stomach stings. I shift back. 'I... I recorded most of your poems too. You said you burnt them but... well I still have the recordings.'

I think I'm apologising. If he wanted to burn them, I don't have them with his consent anymore. 

'I'm glad,' he whispers. 

Through the gap in his teeth, sunlight drips like honey into his mouth. He gazes up at me and my love mirrors in his eyes, black eyes that absorb the world's light only to offer it back twice as luscious. That's what we do when we look at each other: reflect light for the other to catch.

How blessed we are to have a love as sweet as honey and warm as the sun.

His focus falls to my lips and, unabashedly, he stares. I stare too — at the vitiligo that peeks out from behind his facial hair, the dusty pink of his lips, how they're supple and the skin sleek and intact. He hasn't been peeling it off with stress.

Isaiah grabs the pillow that he has still been hugging with one arm and tosses it aside. With it gone, the lust that radiates from his skin melds with mine.

He pulls me down again.

This time the kiss is awake. His mouth moves over mine like waves that caress the seashore on a tranquil day until his tongue slides against my lip and the rhythm grows ardent. Thumb under his jaw, I angle his head for better access. His lips over mine compose a symphony with the current of my blood. Music fills every cell in my body.

The kiss breaks only when my hand leaves his neck to slip under the waistband of his boxers and he gasps though I let my palm rest on his stomach. My mouth latches onto his throat instead where I devote myself to leaving a mark until Isaiah grows impatient with my lazy approach; his hand joins mine to guide it the rest of the way down.

He swells in my hold almost instantaneously.

I smile into his neck. 'It's working.'

'Please don't say it like that,' Isaiah whines, though it's playful more than genuine hurt. 'I'll develop performance anxiety and then it'll be even harder — or not hard.'

'Sorry,' I say, though a grin forces itself onto my face. 'I already washed.'

He stares at me, open-mouthed. 'Here I were thinking this was spontaneous.' He's mocking me and that alone makes my cock throb in my boxers.

It doesn't take us long to be naked and lubed, with the towel I brought with me from the bathroom laid under us. Both sitting in the middle of the bed, I straddle him and Isaiah slowly works his fingers inside me. His skin is too sweaty to offer anywhere for me to grip so, seconds from plummeting into a void where consciousness is a mere memory, I clutch his hair.

He curses, his voice desperate and high-pitched. It tugs a sigh of pleasure in tow as his hips writhe under mine.

He freezes and swears again, though not in pleasure this time. Pulling away mechanically, as if his spine has been replaced by a rod with a single hinge at the base, he finds my gaze. 'I ain't bought no condoms. I ain't got none — it's not like I've had any use for em. If you told me you was coming, I'd've got some, but...'

'I haven't been with anyone.'

'Me neither. I'm criss with not using one. Are you?'

'Yes.' Which means: with you. I wouldn't do this with anyone but you.

'Okay.'

Nonetheless, he flattens his lips in an obvious tell of discomfort. His attention bounces around before they finally land on mine. 'Would you... Would you be comfortable being on top?'

'I've just spent fifteen minutes–'

'No,' he interrupts. 'I mean literally. My body's tired.'

Understanding dawns on me and my cheeks flush. It would be impossible to count how many times we've had sex, but despite all the different positions we had time to try, we never did this. He, on the other hand, insisted on the position for the first four times we had penetrative sex. I thought it was confidence at the time though I've since understood it was a matter of control.

Even for control, I don't have the confidence. I can't move my hips the way he does. Rhythm is something I am capable of holding only with my hands.

Still, my anxiety is joined by a tingling of excitement. 'I've never done that before.'

'I know. You don't gotta. We can do sum else–'

'It's okay. I want to try it.'

I tuck a pillow under his head and check the towel is secure so we won't need to change the sheets. Then, despite the jittering in my chest, I straddle him, careful not to place too much weight on his body.

I become acutely aware of my round cheeks and soft jaw which can't be attractive when he's looking at me from below. My shoulders are too broad. Does my head look too small for my body?

Isaiah reads my mind (you can read my mind again). 'You're so fucking hot.' He strokes my thigh, his touch so light it almost tickles. 'And so beautiful.'

I take a deep breath, flap my hands at my sides a few times to shake anxiety out of me, and reach behind me while Isaiah continues to affirm me physically and verbally. I'm slow to sink onto him. We exhale in unison. Seven months have never felt longer than they do in this sigh of relief.

But anxiety seeps back in as pleasure fades.

'How do I...?'

'Whatever feels good for you.'

Unsure, I go slow, grinding on him for a while before I dare to lift at all. With a firm hold on my pelvis, Isaiah curls my hips a little and, as I continue to move. When I plant both palms on his chest for leverage, his mouth finally opens to spill ragged moans, and confidence bursts through me.

I kiss him and though he's entirely out of air, Isaiah latches onto me with the desperation of a drowning man. His teeth graze my lip, bite the flesh exactly the way he knows will start fires under my skin. The kiss breaks only when my smile grows too wide to continue it.

Beaming, I rest my forehead against his.

'I love you, Shay.'

'I love you, Doron.'

Gift, gift, gift...

As I start moving again, my Star of David hits his nose. It swings over his Cupid's bow and knocks into his chin. I go to apologise and twist it so it hangs on my back where it's out of the way but Isaiah catches it with his tongue.

His lips close around it, seemingly out of pure instinct, though when his eyes sharpen and affix into mine, he smirks. If I move more than three inches from him, I'll pull it out and I'm abruptly certain that I don't want to pull it out. Isaiah holds G-d tenderly in his mouth as his fingers dig into my flesh.

This is the Garden. We are the Garden.

Notes

Excerpt from The Art Of Loving by Enrich Fromm: