"Memories of Matthew"
by
Timothy Stillman
(to my friend Omar, great writer, kind friend, who gave me the essential ideas for this story. The flaws in it are all mine.)
Gradually, because they were elderly and deep within their cups, these members of the stalwart Old Sock Club, and because they were immensely wealthy and they had been mere slips of lads a long long time ago and all young boys fiddle with themselves and each other, they began, the heavy curtains muffling some of their words, to talk about their boarding school friend more earnestly. There in the game room, with the animal heads on the walls, and in the fine leather crinkly comfy wide chairs, with their gin and bitters in various stages of absence, dark into the night, the butler gone away, there was the prescient knowledge that something was wrong. That their friend Matthew from boarding school was not a different person in different years, in different forms, but the same person to each one of them.
After all they did go to the same Claspham School for Boys, and it seemed to have to be right that the boy they loved was more than likely the same boy, other than a number of boys with the same first name. They had been friends in this Old Sock Club for years, and because Brit boarding schools have a reputation for diddling other boys, this was no longer as secret as the old guard liked to pretend it was. And if Matthew was one boy, and not various boys of various years with the same first name, then why could the men not remember how he looked, that his looks did not jibe with the memories of others'?
Well, of course, Sir Welbern said, we are at the age of being dotty, as he placed his hand over his pot belly, and leaned nearer the fireplace that was nicely warm on this cold December night, rubbing his always cold hands together. But the others chuffed and huffed and said well sir we are not that old.
But there had to be a reason. To Sir Ineton, Matthew was blonde. To Mageies, Matthew was black haired. To Trenlaw, Matthew was tall. To Stenhope, Matthew was shorter. And round and round the old club room this went, till some of the men got a bit deucedly angry about the whole thing. In addition to no one being friends with Matthew (Matthew was the star, the Adonis, the beauty, the hand reared boy to end them all, and he got to choose his friends, anoint them, give them the honor of his company, never the other way round) ;it seemed as though each of the men wanted to throw down a glove or gauntlet or something, to taut out the others who did not remember a school masterpiece chiseled as by the greatest of artists, even if their minds were going, so inaccurately.
Matthew had chosen a boy every two months. He was, whoever he was, the attraction, the star over the distant mountain on a cold crystal winters night. He was the Christmas feeling children get, when the great one pointed his thin fingers, his heavier fingers, his pale fingers, his reddish fingers, whatever the hell his fingers looked like at the next addition to his bed sitting. And if the boy chosen didn't do as Matthew asked, Matthew was not a cruel taskmaster, but Matthew had certain standards. If one did not live up to those standards..well Matthew just cold heartedly picked another bed boy. And the loser died. As did the previous ones who were out of style for Matthew. They had done everything he told them to.
They had cleaned his fingernails. Bathed him. Come for him. Dressed him. Undressed him. Done sexual things with him. Let him fuck them with his long short thin fat hairy almost hairless veiny columnar, wide, tight, heavy, delicate cock, and he did not go easy into them, and they put up with it, because it was Matthew, and it was worth it. Because he was nice to them sometimes. He let them suck him off. And he sucked them off. And he told him of his heritage and he told them how deucedly lucky they were he had anything to do with them at all. As for the obvious, he was doing the dons, so the dons let him do the boys, and he never let his bed boys forget that either. Matthew's eternal charity.
Matthew was everything. He was obeyed. He smiled and you had to smile back at him. His pale lips, his thin lips, his full lips, and red lips, and he was lovely naked, he would model for the boys and the boys loved him so. Matthew had two large clefts above his buttocks which the men now also remembered as looking different than the others' memories of him did. Had they really gotten that old? Well, Manwaring said, Matthew didn't have clefts. But Tigret said oh yes he did, and pretty and wan they were, but they were small. And Matthew was good at rugby. In spite of his looking like a girl, said Manwaring, save where it counted he was a boy. There was argument here.
They each had memories of soaping him. Of kneeling in the late night showers and taking him in their mouths and how exciting it was for this Olympian godlet to put his hands on the back of their heads and push them up and down and to feel his cum--ambrosia, oil of love, night cream, magic dust, moon and the stars in liquid form. Smelled a bit, said Overmyer. I beg your pardon, said Trent, it's bad enough you can't remember him in the slightest, but to say his cum smelled is outrageous in the extreme.
And they drank for a while. Got some more from the large crystal pitcher on the cut glass table. Were muffed for a while. And were sad. Because all that was long ago, and Matthew was too now old, and they wondered if he had found true love along the way. He could be brusque, that they all agreed on, but he could also be kind, especially to the boys who were crying at night in bed, from homesickness, and he would go round the room and pet them and let them have a good cry on his shoulder.
I don't remember that, someone said. I do, another one. I would like to beat the crap of the lot of you, Loutendew said. What? said the others in unison, their mouths hanging open, their pallid flaccid fists in a mockery of anger.
Well, it's true, Loutendew said, don't any of you remember anything at all? I mean we've been talking about this boy for all these months and it took us all this bloody time to figure out it was the same boy, now doesn't that confuse you? I mean, he said, leaning over, straightening his waistcoat, and brushing his white thick mustache with an arthritic finger, we were all there about the same time, it was a large school, but we remember each other from there, but our minds were always on Matthew, such an aura he had about him, and no one else, we were his boy choir, we must have studied, I know I did, every inch of him, the contralto voice that made me break into tears at the pageant at Christmas time, how good it felt to have him in bed with me, how nice to be warmed by him naked on a January morning, and to lay my head on his chest and breathe in Matthew.
Then the old man paused for a long time and added, so why in the hell do we not remember him? I don't mean now, old age and fading memories can account for more of that than we care to acknowledge. But then, we were all so in love with him then, and I put forth the idea, difficult as it may seem, that if we were back there, and in this colloquy about this boy who was right there with us in the same room, hunched over studying, because he was quite bright (not that I remember...someone interrupted), no, let me have my say, he had a girly butt, he had a flat butt, he was thin, he had a bit of meat on him, don't you see, this god who let us be with him and about who we never talked because we did not want to share him in words with anyone and risk breaking the spell, because also other boys would say oh yes, he laid me last year, let me tell you about it....god forbid knowing the obvious, thrown right in our faces...
The thing is, another old man said, in his corner chair, the London Times folded over his lap and forgotten long ago in the blonde soothing light of the room, and now the newspaper fell off his lap onto the requisite polar bear rug, the bear's face looking outward with eternal contempt at the lot of them, if we had tried to describe him then, we would have described him, each of us, differently, not a shade differently, but totally differently. We would have flushed his toilet and we would have shampooed his hair and clipped his toenails, and we would have asked him Sir, may I suck your lolly tonight? and he said, Matthew did---
And all the men, in rapture though the voices were weak of age and pipe and cigarette and cigar smoking, "if you are lucky, plebe."
Well, the old man who was trying to come through with this diagnoses of forgetfulness, said, at least we agree on that. But his bung hole was different for all of us. His penis. His way of making love. Dreamy. Awkward. Exciting. With ennui. I can hear all of you say it. As all of you have over these last months. We keep having the same circular conversation, don't you know? He took care of things. He showed us how. He let us sometimes after paddling out naked butts with his warm hand, as we lay across his lap and felt his hardness under our chests, hardness undulating--
--he did not do that, Warburton said. He had too much class.
No, and yes, and wait, yes he did, Styleman admonished and then sat back in his chair, somewhat foggy and confused. Nothing new there, Warburton noted silently, remembering his own thinking was clear as a bell. Poor old Styleman, let his brain slip every month or two it seemed. I'll never be like that.
The old man who felt he was figuring it out, Julian was his name, said, yes, he wasn't anything. The others started to rise en masse, and there was some polite cursing, as some of the old men managed to warble to their feet, while others only managed to fall back down in their chairs again. Words were exchanged. There was talk that Julian would be blackballed if he did not take that back.
If you will let me have my say, Julian tried to talk over the hubbub which didn't take too long to die out, for though the outrage was ravaging, the age took it out of them like starch from a collar, fairly quickly. So the old man said, at the point of any of you pulling any of those cutlasses off the wall over there and sticking me through the giblet or whatever you call it, he was a chameleon, was Matthew, he was--and here it comes again--nothing, nothing at all. And when Manleman staggered from his chair to get one of those deuced cutlasses, and fell back in his chair, gasping for air, as the two men sitting next to him, managed to get to him, open his shirt collar, fan him with a paper, and give him some brandy, till he was all right again.
Go on, someone said to Julian. The voice was so hollow. It seemed as though they were talking down a rain barrel now and everyone had to repeat things as others cupped their ears at the speaker.
Are you sure? Julian asked.
Please. Yes. I think we want to hear the rest of it, though I think we can guess, because you may be right. Dammit, at least listen to the man, break the chains, decades have passed, he was a friggin' vampire. He sucked the life out of us. The life we never lived.
No anger. No fighting words. No clenched jaws, as best as they could clench them. There was in the room now only--defeat.
Julian continued:
He was a real boy. He was no one. He was a scarecrow we pinned our boy dreams on. He used us. We had to do as he said. He brooked no insolence. He brooked no disagreement. He used us to do his work. He used us to not be alone. He was scared of being alone. He had this, not talent, but something, I don't know what, that let us make him our dreams, and he used it on us, and maybe he used it on himself as well.
He got to be so many different boys with so many different lovers, and you can't blame lonely people for that. Most lonely people, the old man said, taking his reading glasses off and stuffing them in the pocket of his herringbone coat, most lonely people, like I venture to say most people are really, they can't be a scarecrow brought to life, a tin woodsman given a heart, a scarecrow given a brain, a lion given courage, for no one sees them like we saw Matthew, maybe a person gets so lonely he can be seen as far more than he is, maybe it's genetic, I have no idea. Just that. Some though, some very very few, let us see them as we want to, and maybe he was the longing one, far more than we.
He was a smashed mirror, and all the images of him in all the shards of glass were of him as a different person, someone who didn't exist, not possible, but it was him, but not him at the same time. I loved sucking his cock. I loved the feel of him. I loved soaping him in the shower. I loved curling up and telling him bedtime stories after lights out, I remember him crying sometimes when he didn't think I knew, maybe he never cried for you, maybe he never really cried at all for anyone, but I remember he did for me, because I wept a lot in those days, therefore so did he. I'm surprised he didn't go mad. What in the world kind of life has he led? Being a living breathing fun house mirror. And not knowing, all this time, not knowing he was never loved for himself, for he had no self to be loved.
The old man finished. He breathed hard. Loosened his collar. Felt faint. Felt afraid.
There was a definite pall after that. There was no muffing, no anger, no resentment, just a terrible sadness that clattered against the chimes of Big Ben denoting the hour of midnight. The men were tired. They were disillusioned.
And when Julian said in some slight amazement, after draining his glass, I'm Matthew, in a soft childish voice, very much unlike his now, very much unlike Matthew's voice of then, they didn't hear, or pretended they didn't. There was sadness in the room. It seemed there would never be anything else but that in the world, that there never had been. Their heads downcast, their eyes closed, thinking about the lonely lives they had had, dreaming back to a reality that never was, dreaming back to a boy who was an image in a mirror, a very real image of a very real boy...but so unreal, their great dream, their great memory, what they thought about when they thought about love, I once had Matthew and nothing can take that away..but it was taken away, and it was so monumentally unfair.
And he did that to help us. Gave himself like that, Maltby said, Matthew was so selfless.
No, he was a user, like Julian said.
He was as decent a chap as I've ever known. I still think of him. All the time. I still think of him.
And Julian said, as the men were preparing to depart, getting their coats and hats from the racks, yet again Julian said, I was Matthew. And he sagged back in his chair. He knew in their elderly bustle around the room, the saying of good nights, the minor talk about rugby and the war and Lap Dog Tony, and the considerable outrage of the Jerry Springer Show being such a hit on stage and what was the world coming to, have you seen that filth? God awful, I should say--
--They left the room, each in turn, singly or in pairs.
Till only Julian was there. Alone. Forgotten, again. Waiting for somebody, some plebe to be chosen by him for his bed boy for a memory time the boy would remember all his life and against which he would judge the rest of his life. Julian said it again, I am--I was--Matthew. But no one had heard him, even when the men had been in the room. And they never would. No one certainly heard him now.
There were so many shadows in the room, especially now he was alone. He wished he could be a shadow too. Shadows don't get hurt. Shadows are stoic. They don't have a heart or a mind or a soul. Yes, things would have gone better for him, had he been a shadow.
So he put his face in his old veiny ropy hands, and pretended that he was not almost bald and what hair left to him was ugly gray, and he wept, and he wanted to be Matthew again. But he couldn't. He never had been, you see. He wept for the boys who were old and for himself and for dreams and for trickery, and for imagination of all of them of which he had none at all, and he stayed there for a long while. His bony shoulders shaking. He dried his eyes with his polka dotted handkerchief and then put the handkerchief in his pocket. He thought it would be nice if a boy would tell him a bedtime story, and then laughed in spite of himself at the thought. He after all was the bedtime story.
And then, in time, he got up, helped by his cane, put his coat on, went out into the hallway, opened the great front door, walked outside to the chill winds that knifed through his very old body, locked the door, and went on his way.
Walking on his cane. All the way home. And the next session of the Old Sock Club, they would have the many prisms of Matthew to lay before them again in the smoky room, the smell of liquor, and leather, and age, and memories, all wrong memories of course, especially Julian's--if his were right, how twisty the brain gets with age and trying to protect itself when it's too late, but the wrong memories had kept them going all these years. Had kept them young. Or perhaps not. Just the opposite, forever old, even when they were boys. Had he done that? My god. Imprisoned them, perhaps. Made them withered dwarfs, living in so long ago, even when the long ago was then. Did he enjoy their tears when he told them their time with him was up? Their begging? Their hatred of him then? How the former bed boys of the great Matthew shrank when they saw him later, in class, in the lunch room, all that pain.....did they masturbate forever, thinking of their god?
What kind of monster was he? No delusion of any of these men was half of what his own was, had been at least.
How odd, Julian/Matthew thought, turning a sharp corner, putting his head down against the gale, he had not known he had been Matthew till he put forth his theory, starting out of whole cloth, and then more and more and then it made sense. It did, it had to, or he was lost, like they were lost. He had tried to save them, he told himself, he truly had. But he had made a mess of it. Seeing them like this. And himself like this. He was right. Or had he and these other old men had these same discussions, like telly reruns. every Wednesday night? And none ever remembering? Was this his eternal servitude? Seeing some of his victims each week? To remember and forget. To remember and forget. He, the Flying Dutchman, though all of this was far too real.
Matthew was, had been, just a diving board the boys used to dive into their private dreams in which he could not share. The boys Matthew used were far superior to him. And to Julian. How strange, if he was right at all, and had not been another of Matthew's boys himself, that he was a murderer of dreams, of hopes, of love, of potential, of the essence of each boy he took up with. When, now, he tried to make it have been the other way round.
He wanted to scream now. He should have been the one who had gotten in his knees before them and said :Please, sir, would you let me sleep with you tonight, there is such loneliness about. Yes he should have. Too late now. If he was right at all, of course, and maybe he could convince himself that he was not right. Maybe in the morning, he would forget, just like they did, and go back to playing the Matthew game, for it would be impossible for him to live with himself otherwise. Thank god there was not much more time to go. The wind froze his face and hands and he hurried.
But tonight, passing a bobby, and nodding to him, Julian/Matthew would not think of that. He would force himself not to. He was sleepy and wanted to go home. But that was impossible, since he had never had one, so he went back to his flat instead. To pretend a little while longer.
Thus ending tonight's meeting of the Old Sock Club.
Timothy Stillman comewinter@earthlink.net