"Shades of Boy"
by
Timothy Stillman
R. always kept his football jersey on when I was sucking him off, or when we were masturbating ourselves and each other. It made him feel as though it wasn't really happening. After a year of intense regular love making, I was holding him in my arms, in bed. I told him, first time, I love you. He seized. He froze. He became a mannequin. He had not known. He was hiding his head in the sand all that time. It was over from that point.
X liked to lick my face and X liked to undress us both quickly and efficiently. He was like a metronome. He was not an individual. He represented all the people who had hurt him. He had tried to become them. He was a box in which Medusa's snakes lives. He upset my stomach. He made me ice cold inside. He was always horny. I told him I loved him. He said he wanted truth. I told him the truth. He said he wanted truth. I told him again. He went away. He was hiding his head in the sand. He called me sweetheart and begged. And I begged back. And we fought. And we begged. And he cried. As I used to cry, often and endlessly, but not this time. This time I was mean. And that scared me. A lot. And we almost went down to wonderland together. That would have been something at least. The "drink me" bottle though for both our sakes' never appeared.
I wanted J. I knew secretly that J. and I would die together and become one in rose covered biers on the opposite side of heaven some day, some day. We were locked in pale friend and frightened friend. We were locked in the winter of our souls. Every day was November. I longed to get my hands under his plaid overshirt. I longed to tell him I loved him. I never did. But he was a smart boy. He knew all along. And when he could no more take the thought of love secret in my broken vessel, he went away. I had been hiding my head in the sand. But it had never been his sand in which I hid.
I didn't believe S and S. They offered to have sex in front of me. They wanted to exhibit themselves. Not to turn me on. But to make fun. And fun was okay. Fun was fine when one was 18 or so. But fun turned sour. And I insulted them. They did not know why I insulted them. They did not know why I did not take S's cock and stick it into S's cunt, for they had allowed me to do that too. But there was propriety on my part. They were dark loomers on a foggy night. I declined. And they went away. They hid their heads in each other's sand. I never saw them again.
I tried to make myself love Jim. I did love Jim. But I could not masturbate even imagining him. We would go to the municipal pool. In the shower room, we stripped. And I stood in front of him naked as was he. I did not look at him. I closed my eyes. I wanted him to look at me. Instead he showered and left me standing there. Without an erection. Without any sexual feelings at all. I loved him. I told him about the J of later on, when we became phone friends as adults. He hung up on me. Never to speak to me again. Now I can masturbate all the time imagining Jim who I did love. Who I do not now love. But whose memory I can make into a flaming hour session with my hand.
The psychiatrist said to trust him. To tell him everything. Like when I took off my clothes in front of P. And P blushed and put his head in his hands. Hiding his eyes. Like when I went to P who was sitting in the living room and P trying not to laugh. Like I said, to him, you say I am shy; I disagree; I think it is you who are shy. He pushed upward, knocked me to the couch where I fell sprawled, and ran out the door and away. I never saw him again. He had not seen me. I had been doing the character Samuel S. from the J.P.Donleavy novel. That was how I hid my head in the sand.
I didn't tell him my age. He didn't tell me his. We pretended. We delved. We supported falling into gracelessness. He sniped at me. I sniped at him. We begged. We forgot. We forgave. We examined each other naked as boys are wont to do. He told me he felt nothing. I told him I felt nothing. There was a bleary neon sign in the distance. The night was dark as dark could be. The park was hot. The air was sweaty. He kept his sweater on. On this dank breathless July night. I smiled. Thinking of R. I did not smile prettily. He just sucked on me. And I lay back and remembered:
Sweaty countries. Traveled by the Internet. Nice people met. Nice people who did not like me. They read my words and turned them over and said they would get back to me but most did not. Some stayed for a while. We hid our heads in the sand and pretended until the world ticked down to something finally divisible.
The world has a jersey over it. Or a sweater. And the night is August. And the heat is stifling. And everybody has to hold their heads in the sand, or it's all over. I remember R's seven incher, when he was still just 15 years old. I remember how X used to love to lick my body all over because we had nothing in common and had to desperately cling to each other, because at least we had that in common.
I can see them all round me. Still and now. The high schoolers. The university students. The boys in the park in summer dark. J. in winter glow. Jim in the shower room. All children still and all. As am I because head in the sand is the only way to go about it in this world. And if I have another chance, and it looks like I won't, with a boy, or someone who pretends, and who does not pretend at other skins and ages?, I will learn even moreso to say I love you, only when I have my head in the sand, very deeply.
D. had a lover. He liked to hurt me. Over the phone. From Duke. His lover was named Sandy. But Sandy did not love D. D. pretended that Sandy did. He pretended that I was Sandy. I pretended that D. was J. We watched porno movies and jacked off on the phone. At least he did. I pretended. He had told me he was dropping me at the end of the summer. I didn't want the memories. So I faked it. Buried my head in the sand. He may have been faking it too.
Once he said to me, "you're talking to J., not to me. You're pretending all the time I'm him."
I had not realized it. It made me smile a mongoose smile. It made me happy. D. was not a nice person. And that felt good.
So all these boys and all this time, from cumming first time with a boy, R., for sitting on J's bed with him within inches of him and not being able to touch him as he sat beside me and read me his poetry, from finding momentary friends round the world, nice people who helped me as best they could, from now finding Jim sexy as hell while I hate him and masturbate myself over him hard till it hurts, from all of it, I have discovered one ineluctable thing:
They were all wearing clothes, even the ones who might have been naked with me. They were all with their heads in the sand. They had their own sand. I had mine. My sand was J. And dig my head in deep and long. And call it pride if nothing else. Even when a young boy, I was never able to make my cock stiff all by itself. I was never able to make it shoot without rubbing it hard. Others tell me they were able to do those things all the time.
I think that is unfair.
I choose J. as my sand. I like to think of him as the red dreamy soft sifty sand of Mars. And there would be no jerseys or sweaters allowed there. Not ever. No one ever took their jerseys or sweaters off. No matter how hot the day. No matter how we pretended we were someone else. Or I pretended J. was J. and J. alone. And all the others I pretended were him as well. To them I was just a nice boy or man who tried to be kind, but was something of a clown, and stumbled a great deal. Indeed, whose live has been one big stumble. Some wanted me to lead them. I did not know how. This scared me to death. Their wanting. Me not knowing how. Or far too late.
They just never knew it. And if they had known it, they would not have cared or giggled some. Even J giggled at me. I try not to think about that most of all....
Mechanical devises can be fun. And profitable. Just don't tell the machine next to yours that you love him or it. It can really wreck your lives.
the end
Timothy Stillman comewinter@earthlink.net