"Class A"
by
Timothy Stillman
Chaz was balancing the two steaming cardboards of coffee, plus a paper sack of hot buttered croissants, while opening the door with one hand, as he thought he heard Julian say, "I'm haunting."
Chaz called out, "Jules, get your haunting butt over here and lend me a hand will you?"
But Julian was stretched languidly on the bed, the chenille spread tossed and rumpled under his lean lanky unclothed body.
Chaz kicked the door closed, almost spilled one of the coffees, cursed, and hustled them across the parquet floor to the breakfast table next to the morning balcony. Paris was blue underneath them this early morning. Chaz not being able to distinguish the sky from the city below. They seemed of a piece. And here was Julian and here was Chaz who was now standing with hands on narrow hips, looking across to the other side of the flocked wall paper room, "get a move on Jules; it's time to breakfast."
Jules did not move. His penis was what first attracted Chaz to him. It was long and covered with a generous sack of a foreskin. He had tasted it first in a glory hole at Blarney's Bar in Dublin one year ago almost to this very day. It was quite tangy, a little salty, but well done and nice, and Julian came quite nicely too; friendly little spurts of white like Morse code taps on Chaz' tongue. Then he stuck his own penis in the glory hole recently vacated by Jules'. And through this method, they finally met, face to face. Eventually. It was glory hole courting for a time however.
Chaz stood over Julian who had his eyes closed, and thought again, if it wasn't for that too long jaw, his lover, his soul mate, would be quite attractive. As it was though, he was a man of angular face, who persisted in wearing horn rimmed glasses, and having his black hair too neatly cut and too short for Chaz' taste. Even naked, Julian looked like he was wearing a business suit, and preparing to go to another day at the office. Still, when one falls in love, one is content with that. This was the first time Chaz had fallen in love. He aimed to stay that way. Regardless.
Julian had a somewhat boxy chest, an innie navel, a small patch of dark pubic hair, that delicious penis, and balls a bit too small but fitted into Chaz' mouth quite nicely. Julian was pale and he seemed pasty a lot of the time, sometimes tanning, as they had on the beaches here in the south of France, but losing the vague tan over night.
Perhaps Julian was asleep. So Chaz tugged on Julian's right toes which were long, long like a werewolf's toes were supposed to be, or what that a werewolf's fingers supposed to be long. Well, it didn't matter, because Julian was quite nice and quite human, though that upper class Kentish accent got on Chaz' nerves sometimes, and he was a prig on rare occasion, but he was a nice lover, and knew how to give and receive head like Chaz had never known before in anyone else.
"O haunting lover," Chaz sang off key and chirrupy, "thy breakfast awaits." Julian stirred. Coffee aroma must be getting to him across this room. That always woke him up.
Julian opened sleepy eyes at his friend, taking a moment to remember who Chaz was, something Chaz had never felt before from him, something that made a clock hand in Chaz' heart tick tight for a minute, and then forgotten. Julian always looked like a little boy when asleep or just awakening. It dispersed that business suit image for a time. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes, and smiled with too thin lips. He brushed his hand over his close cropped hair, and then it seemed as though he brushed non existent hair out of his eyes. What the hell was that about? Julian had never had long hair. It had begun receding when he was 18 or so. Not much. But you could see where the hairline used to be.
"You were talking in your sleep, old man," Chaz said, as he sat on the bed and played with Jules' jewels, the star of those jewels rising to the occasion, as Chaz began stroking it. Julian sighed and lay there with a goofy smile on his face. "I've never heard you do that before."
"Do what? Stop. It tickles." Julian laughed. His laughter always broke. His voice never did. Except--when he had said he was haunting. It had hardly sounded like Jules' own at all. But that was ridiculous.
"Kind sir," Chaz leaned down and said to Julian's hard cock, as Chaz pulled down the foreskin--"another opening, another show--"would you tell your life support system to get out of bed and put on a robe or something, to cover his flat butt, so we can go drink coffee and eat croissants before they become as hard as you?" The he kissed Julian's penis, and put an ear to the head of the pale thick thing, and listened.
"What flat butt?" Julian asked, and stretched his long thin limbed arms.
"Humm?" Chaz looked at the penis as though it had spoken.
Julian bent over and cuffed Chaz on his ear. Chaz looked up at Jules' face and head with its jug ears and its crinkly nose and seemed startled, mockingly so, then said, "Oh, yes; well, it's about time you knew old man, your dickie and I have been having an affair, and we just didn't know how to tell you, but now that you've discovered us and all---"
Julian reached behind himself, picked up his feather pillow and beat Chaz' head with it, more frivolity ensued, then Julian dressed in his bright royal robe, fit for the penis' slave master, one J. G., and they had breakfast. Then they stood on the balcony and looked at the almost three quarters risen sun. Paris was like a magical miniature magician's dream made real and otherworldly and quaint and delicate and utterly lovable. People moved, street artists arranged their paintings for selling to goggle eyed tourists, book stalls were being opened, and walking, sitting in outdoor cafes, at the market, opening stalls, door ways still dark with emptiness as of yet, and Julian said, sipping his coffee--hot with only a bit of cream, no sugar, not ever--"I am tired of Switzerland. I am bored to death with it. I hate the damned mountains. I hate the damn snow. I hate skiing. I've never been able to ski worth a--" he paused in a reverie of negatives, which was most unlike Julian at all, and looked over the steam from the coffee cup, to Chaz who stared at him, mouth open.
"What the deuce you got your mouth open for?" Jules asked, for he was one of those people who thought himself so intellectual, that speaking like, in his words, "a common tradesman" made him seem even more so.
Chaz looked at him for a moment, as if trying to get some things in his head straight. He put his left hand on the shoulder of his one and only, and asked, "What's the gag?"
Julian responded, dead pan, not trying for a gag, just a comment about the world around him at the moment and how he wanted to vamoose from Switzerland. Which was all well and good, but, "Julian, we're in Paris." Now it was Julian's turn to stare at his friend, agape. Chaz took his hand off Julian's thin shoulder. "You were kidding, right?"
"Of course you were. I mean, it's your revenge on my love affair with your penis which I've named Derrick, O.K.? Because everyone is naming their penises these days. And it seems unfair that your little gusher"--Julian stiffed his shoulders in mock outrage--"well, it is a little gusher, and it's a very sweet one. I don't want to drown in the surf of the stuff, and yours is just right, baby bear."
They both as one looked out at Paris below them, a blue table cloth arranged on a giant picnic ground of summer and the Mad Hatter and Alice would arrive any moment, if the Rabbit's clock was working properly yet.
"Paris?" Julian said. Seeing, and seeing Switzerland. And then the next moment, as though someone had taken a slide out of a machine, a slide that had been of Switzerland, mountain goats and yodelers and stiff straight mountains of snow on them, and all that frigid air and promise of blanketing white coming any minute from dark skies; someone had removed it and had put in a slide of Paris, and from the truncation, from the instant overlap, from the shock of the thing, Julian dizzied and stumbled against the railing. Chaz dropped his coffee at the same time Jules did, and caught his friend before Julian fell over the thin railing.
A bit later, both shaking still, my god, Chaz thinking he almost went over, what the hell's wrong. And Julian thinking, once more, as he had said before, this morning, in sleep or half sleep, "I'm haunted." Then Julian said it aloud, and Chaz holding his naked friend, they had taken off Julian's robe so Chaz could warm him up with his body on this very hot July morning, while Jules still shivering from the cold Swiss air.
Chaz had been rubbing their flaccid penises together, and he had been stroking Julian's flat butt, but a nice one nevertheless, as his lover asked, his lips against Chaz' shoulder, "what flat butt?"
"What?" Chaz asked carelessly, still thinking of that fatal tumble that might have happened.
"What flat butt?" Jules said again, this time remembering why he said it, since it had only been a few minutes ago Chaz had said he had a flat butt, and even Jules, especially since things were highlighted, as if by a thick black magic marker, by the shock of where he was and the almost falling, remembered that.
Chaz pulled Jules' face by its fetching jug ears to in front of his own. Then he remembered and looked curiously into Jules' puzzled and beginning to be more than a little scared eyes. Chaz felt his penis harden at this point for some reason, and Julian's fingers absent mindedly massaged it, as Chaz wished Julian still looked like he had a suit on, though naked, and wanted him to put on those ridiculous squaresville horn rimmed glasses, he desperately wanted to see Jules as dull and normal and business like and forgettable to anyone but him.
He did not want to see his lover as a naked scared defensely child. Which is exactly what Julian now looked like. Because that made Chaz feel the same way, and that way Chaz did not want to feel. He pulled his cock free of Julian's hand, and went to the loo, got a small mirror off the vanity table, brought it back to the bed, positioned the mirror at Jules' flat butt and mirrored the reflection off the wall mirror at the side of the bed, till Jules could see for himself.
"Gawd." Jules said. "I'm in Paris. And I have a flat butt." The amazement in his voice scared the hell out of both of them.
"Well," Chaz said, trying to make a giggle out of the thing, "we all have our little crosses to bear. And seeing as how you killed Christ and everything, I think you should be grateful your crosses aren't gigantic--"
"Shut up." Not the trendy phrase of "shut up" that used to be "get out of here" or "get out of the city" or "cool it dude and/or dudette, as the case may be." But said scared. Said eerily. And then Jules leaned and turned over and made Chaz drop the mirror which miraculously did not break, and Jules went for Chaz' hardening cock and stuck it unceremoniously in his mouth, not having to pull back a foreskin for there was none; why did Jules' parents have to be so liberal and his not?, Chaz always thought, for he envied Jules' so, and Jules began sucking on it desperately as though it was a lifeline to reality or its nearest companion.
Chaz moved with Jules and called his name and put his hands on his friend's shaking shoulders, and moaned, and pushed in and out with his cock, and the rhythm was the rhythm of having come in this morning from a cafe down the street under the blue sky along the blue sidewalk of the blue world and coming to their room at this hostel and having coffee and hot buttered croissants with his friend who knew they were in Paris, that they had been at the Cannes film festival, and had walked naked along the nude beaches, and had made passionate love in a deserted place near Montmarte one midnight because it all seemed so dangerous and daring and romantic, and when he came, and he came from way deep inside, he exploded in Julian's greedy, never before so greedy, mouth, and then they collapsed stickily on the bed on top of each other.
Their chests heaving, stars spinning in Chaz' closed eyes, their arms round each other, clutching each other desperately, like they were tiny creatures on a huge leaf swept down a stream turned mountain torrent, and soon to be dashed on the rocks, and these their final moments of life and love and comfort.
And after a time, Jules said, "I've never been to Switzerland in my life." He said it as a half question. Let me be right. Let me be wrong. Which is worse?
To which Chaz said, "It would be nice. I mean making it in a chalet, after having hot buttered rum by the fireplace and watching the snow fall outside and all that cold air after we have sex, and open the window and see whose titties get harder the quickest and all that from those breathtaking gale force winds..."
"And I don't have a bubble butt."
Chaz ran his hand tenderly down Julian's flat buttocks. And said, "see?"
And then he had to go and tell Jules that he had said he was haunting, as Chaz was coming in the door earlier this morning.
"Haunting?"
"You sure haunt me, old man." Chaz kissed the tip of Jules' wrinkled nose.
"I'm not an old man." Jules, for a moment, thinking, "I'm not, am I? No, 24 last month. That's all," and he pushed away from his lover and sat on the opposite side of the bed. As Chaz knelt behind him and traced the bones of Jules' spine and stopped at the dimples above his back door. Jules shifted away from him. He stood and faced Chaz.
"I am not an old man. I do not have a bubble butt. I have never been to Switzerland in my life. And you are---" Jules snapped his fingers (Chaz had never seen one finger snap from his friend) and closed his eyes and concentrated. As Jules did that, he tossed his head and brushed thick long hippie hair that seemed to Jules to extend down to his shoulders; Chaz praying this was a joke. Knowing it wasn't.
And then:
Jules said, "I didn't say I am haunting. No." He paced the room, stood on the hooked rug in the center of the parquet flooring. He would have looked so sexy there in the buttery sun rays shining in and the sound of soft Paris even this late in the morning, soto voce, as if in tender consideration of the problem going on here, whatever that problem might be.
Jules said, his hand holding his dick, like a little boy when scared, when alone, when comfort is needed and he is too big to suck his thumb anymore, "I said I am haunted. That's it. I'm haunted." He sat down on the divan. He sat spraddle legged and took a red pillow from the divan and held it to his lap.
Chaz got up. "Come on, Julian. What the hell kind of thing is that?"
Julian said, as if forgetting Chaz or anyone else was there, "It's not even a good haunting. I was in Switzerland, but I can't feel it, can't see it personally, from my own memories and all. Just from movies and telly and stuff." His voice was halting. It had begun to crack as he talked. As an adolescent's would. Chaz shivered.
He went to the divan and sat beside Julian and naked he huddled against him, as though Chaz had turned into the child and Julian had turned into the protector, needy no more.
"I had a bubble butt. But I don't. But I did. And right before yesterday or the day before or sometime or other, I was humming a song to myself. I was humming this song and I didn't know what it was. It bugged me for a while, but then I forgot about it."
Chaz leaned over to Derek and said, "your master's just a bit confused. Don't worry about him. He's just had too long and deep a sleep. Honest. Your master is okay. That's the way it is, old chum, I love you like a brother, god bless incest, but Jules is your master and I love him more, though I want you to sticketh close to us like a brother too, okay?"
"Stop making fun." Jules pushed Chaz away and Chaz fell to the flooring. Jules was on top of him immediately, fists digging into Chaz' back, hard, pushing Chaz' flanks to the ground with his legs, stronger than Chaz had ever imagined Julian as being, what the fuck?, trying suddenly to fuck him, Julian's face enraged suddenly, this is my love, this is my love, though even getting angrier, but Julian's penis was too flaccid, and Chaz hated him at the moment, it was with force Jules had pulled him round and had mounted him and if his damn prick had been stiff the prick owner would have fucked Chaz without condom (though of course there was no need of that, was there?) or lube or anything and it would have hurt and Chaz somehow knew this gentle young man would have been pleased that it did hurt.
Therefore in anger, Chaz who was much the stronger, pushed Julian off him and straddled his chest.
"Don't you ever, ever do that again, you prick." As he shouted this, Chaz' spittle sprayed on Julian's face. God damn, Chaz hated at this moment, like he had never hated before. No one, NO ONE had ever dared to this to him.
He might have made a joke about this being the spurned recently named penis' revenge but he was too damned angry. The hair was falling in Chaz' eyes. He brushed it back. Julian seemed to recognize him, then not recognize him, then see him as someone else altogether and recognize almost.. Both young men were heaving their chests. Breathing hard. Then Chaz remembered, that brushing thing again had reminded him, and he told Julian about Julian's having made a motion at his eyes on awakening that seemed as though he was pushing tick hair back from in front of his eyes.
"I never had hair that long."
"Yes, I know, Jules."
Then:
"Who's haunting you, Jules? Someone you did something to I guess, like you just did to me? I would have bet my life you would have never done something like that to me or to anyone." Jules was trying to get up but Chaz easily had him pinned with his legs and with his arms on Jules' shoulders, hurting him, so Jules relented and just lay there.
"You want to fuck me, Julian, you want to fuck me, you ask me, you kiss me, you say tender things, you don't take me like a ruttin' animal."
Julian closed his eyes hard.
"You did something to somebody and they are possessing you. I think this little experience we've just had has cut through my denying that something unbelievable is impossible. Everything now is possible. Every single thing. Who'd you hurt, Julian? Who finally died that you had hurt and now wants to drop by and say howdy? It's not someone you were kind to. Whoever heard of some ghost dropping by to say thanks and it was fun and I'm awfully glad to have known you and I will miss you like crazy?
"Cause you are crazy, Jules," and then Chaz reached back and patted Jules' dick which maddeningly, hilariously, showing he had a mind of his own, rose to the occasion. "I guess you'll just have to wank yourself off till you can find another push over, Jules. I'm getting up, getting dressed, getting packed and getting out. So long, mate. Get back to jolly ole, on your damn own. Or rot here and see if I give a shit."
Julian lay where he was, heard none of it, didn't react when the door slammed, didn't know he was alone, hadn't done anything wrong, hadn't raped anyone, hadn't forced himself on anyone. Sure he had had his share of one night stands. Who hadn't? Sure a few men and boys had fallen for him. Just as he had fallen for some men and boys. But these things never lasted. They were all just a part of the mosaic. The stew of life and sex and getting by and moving on.
He remembered L.A.. He remembered Brazil. He remembered Carnaby Street as it was in the sixties, which was impossible, he was not alive in the sixties. He remembered going to Graceland with someone or other once. He remembered the first time he saw someone's mother grasping at his tiny child wrist and pulling him away from another naked boy, her son he guessed. He remembered the pubs. And the loos. And the glory holes. And the desperation. And the beers. And the poppers. And the stories. And the lies. And the desperation. And the sweat. And the fear of age from others. And the fear of age in himself. He remembered declarations of love. Give nothing away. Give nothing away. Make them pay like you had to pay. It was only fair. I didn't make the rules. No one did.
And the desperation. The sick climaxes. The run aways immediately after. The grabbing your clothes, throwing the cummed things in the hamper and rushing to the shower to scrub your body clean, especially your dick, of that vile mouth that had just blown you. And from your mind, as quickly as possible. He remembered vaguely, ghost like, people who were him once believing in love. And he went cold at that last thought.
People who were him once believing in love. And like him, then and now, he and they, they might as well have been ghosts for all they had been worth to each other.
Sadness can be a ghost. He thought. Not much for thinking, Julian had never been one for that, just flowing with the tide, whatever will be will be, and sadness with loneliness when you're with someone or many someones, he had not done anything anyone else would or would not do, he was sure of it, as the yellow sun limned his lean body with the boxy chest, sadness and loneliness when you're in the midst of fucking someone because he's beautiful and tender and like some film boy, or when you're getting sucked because its the drag end of a Saturday night and the one doing it is hardly thinking of you any more than you are thinking of him, and he's not much, but nothing was offered other than him during the lateness of the hour.
That was the worst. Coupling. With someone not really there. And being in Switzerland or humming a song you never heard of, knew you had never heard of once in your life, and then after the room or the park or the car or wherever, after you've been blown or have blown, then walking away back home, that wasn't home at all, and the stars of night even seem to be resting like a million miles of weights on your shoulders alone, maybe all of that has to go somewhere, maybe all the anonymity and all the failures and all the private tears and all the emotional impotency has to finally have the faces of the men and boys who have experienced it. Who experience it still. Maybe it devours them in a way. Has to make them what they've been all their lives, getting more and more that way. Ghosts. And no one can hurt ghosts. Not anymore.
It didn't matter that he had been in Switzerland in someone else's head or whatever. He could not escape into that, could not see that person's personal memories or feel the wind, or taste the snow. No one experienced anything. No one dared. There was always a muslin screen drawn. For protection. He could not escape into any of the ghosts minds'. Did ghosts have minds? Did ghosts think? Did Jules? Did--whoever that was who had been here, recently?, wherever the hell here is?
Jules thought he must not be the only one this is happening too, this silent wailing that was going on inside him that was not his wailing at all, but that of a hundred kindred souls packed now tightly in him, and still a million miles distant from each other and from him. One of them put Jules' hand to his penis and tried to stroke it. Another of them put both hands over Jules' penis and covered it. Ashamed. Senseless. Nerve endings finally dead. That's over at least.
And the morning became afternoon, and sun shine became shadows. And Julian slept his dark dreams that were not his and not theirs either. They were safe now. Except from the silent howling, to which, in his dream, Julian joined. That they would never be safe from. The pain of protection. Worth it though. Worth it, Julian mouthed, and then drifted off again.
When he awoke mid afternoon, still where he had been, he had an urge to touch his butt, to feel its shape, to go look at it in a mirror, and then he was seized with ice cold fear. He dare not. He moved his hands from his penis. He put his arms straight out to the sides. He moved his legs left and right, out as far as they could go. He closed his eyes. He tried to not feel his heart beating. He tried not to think. He tried not to feel the floor or the hot close air. He tried not to see the sun dim on his closed eyelids. He tried not to breathe. He tried not to have any substance at all. He wanted to become one of the ghosts haunting someone else. It would be better.
It would be better than this. Which was actually a funny joke when you stopped and thought about it. Like all the broken promises, broken loves, betrayals, being used, being walked away from by too many people who claimed they were so damned sensitive and caring and better than, dying inside, living with all that hurt, finally enough people had gotten sick enough of it, and this caused Julian to laugh, had filed a ghost class action lawsuit.
Had just had enough of it to file a lawsuit against the people just like them and people totally unlike them, their need for justice, for revenge at least finally bubbling up and out and some ghost judge in the sky had given them the ok, and the ghost papers had been prepared. Haunters, begin. This new suit, long time coming. Which was in a way like Julian's business suit that he looked like he had on even when he was naked, except when he was scared. Now he had a suit for when he was scared. So it cut down on money for new threads.
But eventually, would he care? Would he remember this even with time? Not too long from now, it would be, even though pregnant with hundreds of demons, like always; he would get used to it. One thing he had the ability to do and that was forget. He was kind of a magician that way. So, sadly, were many of the ghosts. They hung on to the memories and the vengeance as long as they could. But by force of habit, they forgot soon themselves. They stayed where they were. It didn't seem to matter, leaving or anything. A hole was a hole was a hole.
So, in this case, the class action lawsuit, a wizard idea at the time, failed miserably. But others would try elsewhere, already had probably, and that more than likely wouldn't go any where either. He felt a little stuffed for a time. But then again, what could he possibly be stuffed with? A million tons of emptiness weighs how much? And, it was like someone once said to Julian somewhere, we all have our little crosses to bear. Who was that again? Julian wondered. Then forgot about it.
the end
Timothy Stillman comewinter@earthlink.net