This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 13 (Wed, Dec 21)

Since I was no longer just staying over with Lon but living there, Bat had given me my own bedroom up on the third floor with my own bathroom. At one time, the spacious room had been designated as his wife's hobby and sewing room, which she'd never used. So, Bat had slowly but surely moved her sewing and knitting machines into a finished room down in the basement, where they remained unused. Bat's mom was an expert in Mongolian handiwork, whereas Alice, Bat's wife, couldn't have been bothered.

I was thinking of how to get Marv up the secret back stairway up to my room, which had apparently been built as servant's quarters, at a time when exploitation of fellow humans had been acceptable, the door to which was located next to the pantry in the kitchen, and if I should ask Marv to take off his shoes, as not to disturb the rest of the house, when he told me he wouldn't come up. I wondered if I had misinterpreted the signals.

"But you can come over to my place." His look told me that he was uncertain of his courage.

"And where do you live?" My question seemed to brighten him up.

"Next door to where you do." He patted me on the shoulder as he turned around in the driver's seat to back into the drive. "But I think you should leave a note for Bat and Lon, so they don't worry."

Marv waited as I ran over to Bat's back door. The light on the stoop was on, as was the light in the kitchen. I used the notepad on the counter under the wall phone next to the dining-room door. I had just turned to go back to the door, when I froze. "You going back out?"

I turned to see Bat standing in the doorway, still in his plaid, woolen jacket with a glass in his hand. He had been, or was still, crying. His eyes were bloodshot and tears were still rolling down his face. I took the glass of vodka he was holding and set it on the counter and proceeded to suck his tears lightly off his cheeks. He must have been crying a lot; his tears were no longer salty.

I took Bat by the hand and led him to the door. "Marvin's waiting at the top of the drive."

He pulled his hand away. "I can't go over to Marv's looking like this."

"Yes, you can," I took his huge hand again into mine, gripped it tightly and jerked him along. "and you will. End of fucking story."

My forcefulness was unusually aggressive for me, and it made this huge man, my idol, Lon's dad, Marv's best buddy as docile as a lamb. I switched off the lights and locked the back door seized Bat's hand again and walked purposefully up the drive. "Have you got some booze at your place?"

Marv nodded and looked more worried than usual at Bat. Marv took us up to the front porch and opened the door. Both Marv and Bat removed their shoes, so, I followed their lead. The house had more of a Victorian feel to it than did Bat's, since we were in an entry hall, where oak stairs led to the floor above. A large coat rack dominated the space next to the door, where we'd left our shoes. The house smelled of old, beeswax-and-turpentine furniture polish mixed with baked apples and cloves.

He took us through the sitting room into the dining room with its large table still decorated with a menorah from which the wax hadn't been removed, although Chanukah ended a week ago. Bat stared at the candelabra and tears welled once again. "Didn't anyone visit you during the holidays?"

Marv shook his head and placed the full bottle of Scotch and three glasses on the table. "My sister couldn't get away from Toronto, and I wanted to stay close to home. Anyway, the rest of the mishpochah are still pissed off because of Diane, so I didn't hear shit from them."

"Diane?" I fished for an explanation.

Bat wiped his eyes and almost laughed. "Marv's ex."

"The money-hungry shiksa from Hell who used to live here." Marv sneered as he uncorked the Scotch.

I nodded my thanks for the smooth amber liquid, the aroma of which promised quality; however, the name was unknown to me. But thirty-year old, single malt was something I recognized, in theory at least. "Were you married?"

"Fuck, no." Marv chuckled as he poured himself three fingers into a whisky glass. "My mother would have demanded this house with her kosher kitchens back, if I'd married her."

"And why did you break up?" Although I was sure that I knew the answer, I wanted to hear it from him.

"She was too demanding." He held up his glass for a silent toast. "This house wasn't good enough, and she wanted to move to Scarsdale." He looked penetratingly at me. "This is where I grew up."

I took another sip of the smooth Scotch and looked at each of the men individually. "And it's next to Bat. When the Fuck are you two going to admit to yourselves what's going on?"

"Huh?" Marv looked even sadder than usual. And although Bat said nothing, he was staring at the menorah as if he wished it to undo what I'd said.

"Come on, Guys," I couldn't imagine someone so deep in denial, when it was so obvious to the rest of the world. "we have to do some straight talking, here." I took another sip and looked directly at Bat. "Shai broke up with you, didn't he?"

"Broke up?" Marv looked first at Bat then at me. "What do you mean with 'broke up'?"

"Good grief, Marv," I had to suppress a laugh at his refusal to admit to things that didn't fit into his preconceived concept of how life is. "Bat's boyfriend broke up with him."

"Boyfriend?" Marv could barely speak the word and began to shake.

I got out of my seat, rounded the table and took Bat into my arms. I turned him on his chair and pulled his head to my stomach and stroked his hair. "Everything's going to be alright, Lover. You'll see." Slowly, he placed his hands at the top of my hips and held on, while he emptied his pent-up grief onto my flannel shirt.

Marv, on the other hand, just stood at the head of the table with his mouth agape, shaking. This was when I decided that now was the time for action. I took a deep breath to project from my diaphragm, the only thing I could remember from my otherwise non-productive drama class in high school, and bellowed: "God-damn it, Marvin, get your sad ass over here!"

Marv jumped, as if I'd stuck his finger into an electrical socket. But his trembling did stop, and he calmly set his whisky glass onto the table and slowly, but deliberately, moved toward us.

I let my right hand move off Bat's hair and held it out for Marv, inviting him into our embrace. It looked as if he were in a trance, but I knew that in those few steps, Marvin Brandstifter, youngest child and only son of Ethyl and Julius Brandstifter, was shedding decades of strict, orthodox upbringing and indoctrination by the highly romanticized sexual orientation of mainstream humanity, which didn't fit him. He was deciding to follow his heart.

Marv approached us slowly with glazed eyes, steadying himself on my arm. And as Bat stood to take him into this long-overdue embrace of male affection, Marv almost blacked out, only to collapse onto the only lover he'd ever longed for.

"You okay, Marv?" Bat pulled him closer for support.

"Uh huh," He sobbed. "I will be."

"איך ליבע דיך זייט קינדשאַפט ,מאַרווין".

I had no idea what it was he'd said, but it was all that Bat needed to say for Marv to scream. I'd never seen anyone react so woefully.

"Whoa, careful, there, Bat." I held onto both of them, as Marv cried like a wounded animal. "What in the world did you tell him?"

Bat held his lifelong buddy to his chest, supporting the back of his head as he would a baby's. "I told him that I've loved him since childhood."

***

We sat in the sitting room, drinking whisky, until the early hours of Thursday morning. Bat and Marv related stories about growing up next-door to one another. How the elders of the Brandstifter family didn't approve of their Mongolian neighbors. And how the Khans thought the Brandstifters to be basically arrogant and racist.

Marv told about how he would sit on his bed, looking out the window onto the Khans' backyard and jack off, while Bat and his father, Borjigin, along with quite a few of their male relatives, would wrestle virtually naked, other than traditional, red or blue, skimpy, swimming briefs, shirtless sleeves, and black boots, during Naadam, the summer festival.

"When we were going to start school together," Marv chuckled while he cuddled with Bat on the couch. "my mother was carrying on about how I should go to a private Jewish school, and Dad was trying to get through to her that it was too expensive. Then she yelled: 'So what, if he becomes some Mongolian, raping and pillaging, what should you care, already?' Then she pointed her bony index finger. 'It's going to be your fault, Mister, because you were such a cheapskate not to let your own son get a good education.' Dad tried to shush her but she wouldn't listen."

"That was about when," Bat laughed like a teenager. "I started teaching you Mongolian and you taught me Yiddish."

Marv laughed hard. At first, I couldn't tell whether he was laughing or crying. Finally, he got his breath. "Bat came to my bar-mitzvah." The mere thought set Marv off again. "and his mother had made him a yarmulke…" He could tell by my puzzled look that I didn't know what a yarmulke was. "…it's the skull cap we wear as a flimsy compromise to keeping our heads covered. Anyway, Bat's mom thought it looked really dull, so she spiced it up with some Mongolian decorations."

This caused Bat to go almost limp from laughing. "When Mom got finished," Marv and Bat were rolling on each other. "it had a little spike on the top, making it look like something the German Kaiser would have worn."

"Nobody said anything," Marv wiped his tears. "until Bat introduced himself in Yiddish to my Aunt Ruth as a Mongolian Jew and his last name Khan was their spelling of Kohn."

"Yeah," Bat hugged his lover tighter. "they were about to lynch me, until Marv's uncle Mikhail, a Rabbi from Russia, came to my defense and explained that there are, indeed, Central Asian Jews, and that the bunch of them should be ashamed of themselves for being so intolerant."

When I yawned, Bat got off the couch, dragging Marv after him. "Ready for bed?"

Taken somewhat aback, I wondered if I wouldn't be intruding on them. Apparently not, since both Marv and Bat locked their arms into mine and lifted me off the chair and virtually carried me up the oak stairs.

The bedroom clearly had belonged to Marv's parents. It had a vanity with mirrors. Of course, the thought crossed my mind that we were about to use those mirrors for something of which Marv's mother would certainly not have approved. Without saying anything, I understood why Marv's girlfriend had wanted to move away. This place was a museum of Marv's childhood.

While unbuttoning my shirt and jeans, I noticed a tall, wooden clothes stand, the type upon which people hang their clothes to air. And at the top of the stand was a stylish blonde wig. "Did your ex forget her wig?"

"No," He turned around to look at the wig, displaying his rigid, circumcised cock. A chill ran down my spine at the thought of having part of my dick chopped off. "that's my mom's sheitel. She refuses to wear blonde anymore, since someone told her that it made her look like Streisand's spinster aunt."

Another chill ran down my spine at the thought of displaying any of Bernice's personal things like this. I forced my gaze off the wig and focused on the now naked and blushing Marv.

In the dim light, coming from one bedside lamp, he looked as if he'd taken off his clothes and slipped into a Teddy-Bear suit. There he stood in all his glory, and like the attraction any cute Teddy had always had on me, I couldn't keep my hands off. Again, an episode with the two Moroccans came to mind.

Bat laughed quietly, since I knew that he was experiencing the electrical charge of excitement, caused by all things furry. I've always attributed this to the fact that I had basically no body hair, except for the straight pubes above my cock and a tuft under each arm. So, when I encountered something furry, be it living or inanimate, I felt a need to, at least, touch it, if not hold it to me and cuddle it. And I knew for certain from past experience that Bat felt the same, and Marv was our target.

Bat and I pounced him at about the same time, which made us collapse onto the bed. We lodged Marv between us, me at the front and Bat at the back. Marv's moans of pleasure started immediately, as he humped my balls. I rolled him on top of me and got him positioned between my legs to rub cocks, when he whispered: "You want me inside, don't you?"

This is when, once again, the challenges of having sex with hitherto heterosexual men surfaced. For the most part, they were able to think only in terms of immediate penetration and not in terms of initial oral stimulation. I decided to let him in and we could discuss the finer points, later. "We'll need some lubrication."

"Such as?" He was casually rubbing my cock with his while we were discussing grease. Nature was taking its course, and I was tempted to just let him continue.

"Hand cream, Crisco, unsalted butter, petroleum jelly, anything like that." I was rotating my hips slowly, to keep him stimulated.

He got up and retrieved a pot of cold cream from the vanity, handed it to me and asked if it would be alright. I dipped an index finger in and rubbed it between it and my thumb. Luckily, I'd tried it, since there was something gritty in it, probably borax. "Why don't you go get the Crisco, this has something abrasive in it."

"Come on," He sounded put out. "my mother used it on her face."

At this point, I realized that I was probably too tired to enjoy this. The fact that Marv was being stubborn was getting on my nerves, and Bat was asleep. "Let's do this another time." And I got out of bed, dressed, and left.