EVE 9 — Family is anyone you can cuddle with
The three walked back toward town. Mark said goodbye when they reached his place. Eve and Adam were no longer holding hands.
This was a time before cell phones. Adam was acutely aware that his parents would surely have missed him by now. He could not explain his departure to himself much less than to them. As he and Eve came into town, he mentioned he probably needed to make the five-mile trek to the family’s country home.
“I’ll drive you,” Eve said.
“Drive?”
“I have a car. Come on.” She took his hand and said, ”You know I have a feeling that you would like nothing better than to cuddle up and at the same time feel free as a bird.”
“We’re you listening out there,” Adam said with a trace of surprise.
“No. Not at all. It’s not that hard to figure out. There’s a way to have that closeness without hitting the usual speed bumps. Think about when that closeness does exist.”
Adam thought and drew a conclusion and said. “I suppose you mean family. Not mine though. There’s no cuddling there. Mine’s what you might call fucked up.”
Eve smiled.
“Here we are,” she said. They had turned up Railroad Street and now stood before a green VW bug that had seen lots of wear.
“This is Margaret.”
They went around the block, turned right on Main Street, then right again at the second light. They climbed a bit.
“Families as we know them are definitely problematic,” Eve said. “The best solution is to sit light to them and look around you and create your own. That is going to take work. It will happen more and more.”
“Create your own,” Adam said. “Say more.”
“No, you say what you’re thinking.”
“The cuddling part?” Adam asked.
Eve brought Margaret down the hill to flat land that bordered a brook. “Where are you?” she asked.
“Two miles to go,” Adam answered. “On the right. I’ll tell you.”
“The good thing about most families is they understand there’s a huge gap between cuddling and what is falsely called serious sex, sex that leads to fucking if I can put it that way. Fucking is an invidious term for the desecration of sex by puritan thinking and other false premises.”
They drove on. The car seemed magic to Adam. He did not want this to end.
“I want to talk more,” he said. “This is good. Are families meant to disappear?”
“We are meant to express affection to all,” Eve said. “That is physical just as the body is mind. Just as ultimately we are neither body nor mind. We are unified. We are one.”
“What’s all that?” Adam said.
“A lot,” Eve answered.
“Turn right up there,” Adam said.
They turned and drove across a small field to a bridge that spanned the brook.
“Just go straight,” Adam said, wondering what was going to happen. He thought hard.
“My,” Eve said, “This is quite something.”
“I guess,” Adam answered.
“What do you want to do?” Eve said.
“I want us to be like family,” Adam answered.
