Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:47:33 -0800 (PST) From: Tim Stillman Subject: Dark Walls Dark Walls By Timothy Stillman (For Van and for Jason) And for Mark Lester, who has nothing to do with this. It's been a while since I dedicated anything to him and I just wanted to.) Begin with those walls. Darker than dark. Shiny outer space Dark. Frightening and disorienting with night deep outside as well as I am 21 and I am staying here for the night, in this magic house of surprise turns and hidden alcoves that go to secretive book closets past the framed awards of Magicians societies, especially The Magic Castle, all hung on the blue deep sky walls of the living room vast they were and vast this bedroom with the shape changer walls that even with the desk light and ceiling light turned on, because the light was purple, made a strange ultra-planet glow on everything, a kind of mauve I remember some superheroes wore in comic books. That kind of sleepy sickly sweet feeling, to reach out and touch a separate universe, a distant land of mountains shaped of oceans and seas of deepest drowning basalt. All caught in my swimmy head. The dimensions of this person once known as me and sick in love made larger and leaner and filled with glasses of too much wine not drunk at dinner, as though the ceiling would come down in its own wall of black glow, and the floor too gaining concrete abstractness, as corners angled into circles and playing cards were laid out before me, with the Joker extant, pulling green gloves on, as he stood all festooned with bells and shackles and green and red pantaloons as his head hidden in a star with five points and his mouth grinned rictus red, as I fell to bed as though it was the only oxygen and gravity left in the entire world that was pouring out of my hands like time and then gone, there laying I on the bed of black pillows and black sheets and my eyes screaming for light that didn't make me feel like I was compressed in a Petri dish, for such was this gone to college boy's room in this house of psychic. Caught tendrils deep, sexuality, and masculinity and femininity and the ten year old boy, Van, on the opposite side of my wall that could be flexed with an index finger if I only known how, swimming through this fish kingdom of prestidigitation and tarot readings and lean sweet buttery milky Van in bikini blue swim trunks standing inches before me one summer afternoon a few months ago, bathic and fine, gold and pearl, leaning on his left leg, hand on hip, globes of his small behind perfect, tiny water dripping from already toweled hair and body, and molded through the lean wet cloth just out of his swimming pool as he talked to his father, otherworldly man, be ringed and cowled almost, dark with wide splendor suit, with a silver cane and wolf head always by his side, as I sat behind the boy of gold as he turned to the side sometimes, as he gesticulated often and laughed fairy like and was a whole world engine within himself, as my erection was so grand it should have been given an award of its own, and I could remember it all, how he had walked through the living room, coming toward me, dream clutch in one fatal almost heart attack OH GOD and then to stand in apparel of a boy dancing flesh and golden summer seek me never for I will always do you one better, and remembering now this October evening, here in the first cool of Autumn and purple lit thus engaging my bones to envelop round me again and toss this dream like silk multi-colored kerchiefs out of a master magician night's performance. And let the leitmotif be judged in my spinning around and seeing up there now in purple black light, the walls and ceiling and floor veritably glowing cold fires of shiny printable black, up there sprinkled in spangled gray were five pointed stars all hurrying away from my eyes please come back even as I watched and pressed my ear to the solar system wall division between Van's bedroom and mine, what did his look like? Was it also astrological impossible, was it astrology, not astronomy that guided our worlds as I leaned my hands above my head and pushed the fingers long on them the fingertips like pseudopods to the edge of eternity behind which I was told Van's bed would be resting and Van..what of him?..were there dogs of Baskerville on the moors? Was there the unsettling images of his floating off his own star dance winsome bed to open the secret panel between universes and thus, his and mine, pull both together in an astronomical miracle that would shout the heavens of dimensions into shadows shatters? What then, to think, to provide orientation in various means and meanings of the word, would Van of supple flowy flower child child flower body with the curving spine of his resting on one leg, with the tickle smile staring at me from the molded bikini briefs with a Superman logo on the right side, what was the heft of those tiny buttocks now before my eyes in recent memory that could occlude now reality and make fantasy real so I would never have to leave this October house again, and I pictured Van to bring my stomach back to its rightful place, on his bed the head of which faced mine and we separated only by disbelief and belief, as he would be naked tawny golden curled as he slid out of his briefs and lay on his still some baby fat left tummy and began rubbing himself on the sheet as I took my hand like spatial faith of huge leap considering what was this form I was no longer in, spit and curls, black haired and rail thin, a counting man on a cold snowy train in the middle of Switzerland heading down through the steam and wood coal eyes of a different century which I could play with as with a lily in a bowl of water, as Van named boy and boy named vessel and vessel named form and his shy and sweet as Autumn harvest smile, dry came in five make that four and three quarter seconds and then put his hand his finger tips on the membrane of the wall infinitely thin and our finger tips touched celery stick warmth as I turned from the dream of psychic over hear and cut the purple lights off and huddled in infinite blackness. It was a work vacation as I came here to the wood vale of Carpathian mountains not sure of the drear cloud of dust that angled in the entirety of the day time sky and I sat next to Jonathan Harker, in our funeral coach attached to skittery night horses, not knowing of his own fate though played who knows how many million times over? And I stripped my clothes off wondering now in this unoccupied point of un-creation or non-creation if my clothes had subsumed my skin and my skin would be my clothes as I wished for Van to slide through impossible in some trigonometry majesty and hold my trembly body in this too warm room as I tried imagining his sigh of little boy sexual gratification at the always wonderful warm wash rag soft of height and tower of strength crystal wise of dry orgasm and then his face laying down side soft on his pillow as if on clouds of marshmallows as I held my penis with trembling hands and worked on getting a too frightened to do it hard on and closed my eyes tightly as I dwelt on there being a psychic grid in this magic house of legerdemain slick and real and holy fire candles tricks that fell out of soft cotton bunny ears years before breakfast and supping with the next century at least, I tried to contact Van psychically, knowing this was all for beans, unless his dad Mr. Psychic himself was the most understanding dad of the universe forever after, but hoping for a little magical confluence here, just to unite me with a boy--- "Joel." "Barry." "Van." "Barry." "Joel?" "Van." "May I?" "What are you asking?" "May I be made love to by you? I never have been made love to before." "Are we on Edwardian time?" "No. Mine." Slender voice too. I look to my left at the young boy, kneeling on my bed, lighted of course by light of glowy as he brings my trembling hand to his nipples bare and brown and dim and hard as I reach for his penis not tired at all and his belly and his face and chin as I rush him to me with my hands knowing the rest of me has come here for not fun or gratification but a very real and urgently needed salvation and he is warm and wiggly and full of self and his fingers touch my hair and I hold his slim back and trace his soft legs and put his cocklet at my lips and suck and kiss it and we are afloat in trapeze acts without trapezes, we are gymnasts without strings and we do amazing and impossible things, song become real, music has colors all so varied and rare and many unnamed, and emotions emit like little baubles of winter and are cold and giggly and easy to break at our merest touch, at our merest whim, as we are water warm in summer and the origin of the snow angels in winter for no matter who makes them for the rest of all the winters up ahead, they used our images for themselves, we their templates, and we are birds on the wing and Peter and the Lost Boys and we are coming in each other's mouths somehow even though we are kissing each other's lips at that exact moment, as Van finds arcane lore in my nipples and in my penis as I begin to fuck him and see all the whole of everything and everyone how it all began and continues to this day to fuck is this to find the secret center of the worst imaginable things, the trophies left behind by lovers who thought they were the harbingers of the show and thus, we redress the mistakes in our undress, the flowers fall and scoop up the sun and put it in Van's ass as he screams strawberry ice cream out into the air of the room that now is contained on earth in this house as we eat strawberry ice cream lest it eat us as we fuck and the golden boy with the glowy light calls my name and holds me tightly on the forearms as we digest ingest procreate boy love to last all the live long eternities which seem warm and friendly and corridors it will be fun and communal to chase each other through and then the climax as I jerk his penis, pulling from its little guppy lips vastly colored scarves as I come jisms of sex feeding magic doves come to roost and stay, into every corridor of him, all the secret rounded corners of his angles, all the locked doors in him now open to October miracles in him of star bright and star light, and we collapse. In our rooms. In our silence. In our it never happened. But at saying goodbye next day to Van and his family, having conquered the dark shiny walls of outer space in a snap--"it was easy"-- was it just a quirk of sunlight reflected off of never forget that Autumn weekend, or did Van, as I turned away to walk to my car, wink at me? Do you think?