Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:13:59 -0800 (PST) From: Gale Adams Subject: Me at Nine chapter 4 Me at Nine By Gale Adams Chapter 4 Summer was sweet that year. The sun was golden and hot and magnanimous. I was 12 yesterday. Time had had its way with Marcus. He turned seventeen one month ago. We ran a lot that summer. We flew kites. We rode our bicycles. We made love. I got to tell him that was what it was. Marcus still had that awkward delicious off balance thing he had developed. It meant he was going away. And so was I. It had come to the point of skin for skin and skies were blue and we watched movies and ate lime sherbet. I had finally been able to cum. Marcus and I celebrated that moment that I came in his mouth. It was just a bit, but he loved me for it, never saying it, but holding me tightly. I had begun getting soft dark pubes. He loved to nuzzle his face in them and to hold me round my abdomen, looking up at me, adoringly. He had begun to need to shave and his penis was one whole inch longer. His balls, though not hairy, were larger. I held them in my hands and sucked on his cock, the greatest lollipop ever invented. He could cum a lot and I learned how to take it all in. My penis was almost two inches longer now. And he liked to suck on it by the hour. Childhood could have been pain for me. It had been, till he came along. I think I taught him more than he taught me. He said I did, anyway. I've come to the point of leave-taking. Marcus and his family are moving away to Iowa, where his dad will have a better job. I've never met his parents in all these years. Never even seen them. He saw my mom when he came over to baby-sit me. But they rarely spoke. She and I rarely spoke anymore. Nods. One word here and there. Her exasperated sighs at all the things I did wrong. Summer was reflective and bold and shiny with perspiration. It irradiated everything. It came in with pause and with a silent hillock of maybe some notice of noise up ahead; like a drum beat that will one day come. And you try not to think about it. You try to spend energy into a single minute, invigorating it with everything that is in you. To make it large enough for Marcus and me to walk in to it. Like a huge bubble or raindrop. And zip the door closed behind us. To remain. I kept thinking that phrase all the last days of us--to remain. We loved horror movies. We watched lots of DVDs. Marcus introduced me to his friends who did not see me as anything more than a kid. But Marcus saw more in me. He showered with me. He bought me little gifts, not to overwhelm me, but to say, this is how I care. He was taller now. I was too. Though not as tall as he. He broke my heart just lying with me on the hill of summer just outside of town. We had the world set and safe, but the sky of blue and fleece clouds would crack open soon enough, thus emerging the lightning. That would finish us off. There is a lethargy with which I write this, for that is what I felt then, and now as well. His hair was longer and his hands could hold me as he penetrated me and I felt the all of him, romantic and sexual and careful. I dreamed one night that summer, that he ejaculated clouds into me. Not cum. But summer clouds. That would be enveloped in my body forever. That no matter how sad things got, no matter how many rows I would have with my mother, no longer did I call her mommy--mommys care about their kids, they don't hate them--no matter how I would slip and fall, there would be those clouds inside me, buffering me, protecting me. I cried myself to sleep a lot that summer. He and his goddam parents were leaving mid-August. To be there, in time for his school enrollment. I would look deeply into his hazel eyes as we lay together, wearing our T-shirts and our summer shorts, our arms round each other. He would sometimes sing, badly but with verve, some song he heard on the radio or on a CD. He would touch my face with a fingertip and caress my butt with his hands and kiss my nipples, which were now larger and stood out firmer when excited. And he always excited me. I had no friends, but Marcus. I would never need a friend, as long as there was Marcus. He was so warm and the grass was so dense and green. There was no one around to see us in our seclusion. We skinny-dipped in a creek. Well, we skinny walked in it. Too shallow to skinny swim. He once asked me what that phrase--where it had come from--did the divesting of clothes in order to swim naked make one skinny? It made no sense. I said his leaving made no sense. I said he could stay. "They're getting a divorce," he said to me, on that hill, one week before leaving. "Then you don't need them. You can get--eman---eman--" "Emancipated," he said. "I guess I could. Yes." He was silent for a time. We lay cuddled and I kissed his lips that kissed mine back. "Have you ever been really hurt?" Marcus asked me. "I mean really---" he put his hands on my hair and stroked my head and my temples--"really--" pause beat one two--"betrayed. Do you even know what that means?" I put my head in the crook of his shoulder. I nodded. Too scared to speak. He took off my shirt and kissed my scrawny chest and thin belly. "I didn't mean it, Toby." We were silent and the breeze was hot to the touch. He undid my shorts and my penis was there for the touch and the holding and his making it hard. I turned away from him. I held my penis, wanting my touch of it to feel like his touch of it, but of course it did not. I zipped up. I stayed with my back to him. "Her name is Ruthie, Toby," and I said, "Hey, Marcus, could you just shut the hell up, please?" I sat up and away from him. "I didn't mean to^Å" Marcus said. "When was all of this? When did you have time? School and me and all." Marcus put a hand to my naked shoulder, which I thrust off. "You wanna be a baby about it, it's your choice." I turned to him, "Will you quit that `its my choice' crap--I hate that psychobabble bullshit--look--you used me--you just flat out used me--practice till some goddam girl comes along and it's so long Toby^Å" "And it's so long her too, Toby. I'm leaving her behind as well." We didn't talk for a while. I played with a blade of grass. "You fuck her?" I asked. Head down. Not wanting to know the answer. Feeling inadequate. Feeling stupid. Feeling lowest of the entire bug kingdom. He said, softly, so he and I could barely hear, "Yes." Then, "Toby, we go through changes. These are the ages of changes. We put on different identities and feelings, or they put us on themselves, and they use us to try them out and see what works the best." "And there you go with no blame for yourself, Marcus." I stood fast, brushed some grass off the bottom of my shorts, and got my bike. He got up to and stopped me from getting on it. "Let me go," I said. "Or I'll tell." And then, holy god, why did I say that? It had been so wonderful. I had so fallen in love with Marcus. He had been so kind to me. So very gentle and careful. And I could say that to him--I could be that--spiteful? "Christ, Marcus," I said as he turned his head down. "I never would do that. It's been fantastic." I put a hand on his that rested on the bike handlebar. His hand trembled under mine. He looked at me and I've never seen desolation so huge on anyone's face before or since. "I'm a Judas." He said it and it took me some minutes to figure it out. "Jesus forgave Judas," I said. I held him to me. I felt the front of his shorts. "Do you forgive me?" He asked. Life seemed to depend on it in that hot sticky air and I knew I had the chance to influence his life forever. To let him escape with no guilt. To let him remember this as pleasant memories that were to hide in when tomorrow got tough. To just remember me as this funny little kid he introduced to sex and had great times with. Or I could let it eat into his conscience for the rest of his life. One sentence. One word. I could break him. Or I could free him. I decided to do none of these things. Maybe in spite. Or maybe because it was, when you came right down to it, none of my business--those years of his up ahead. I held his hands in mine. My bike tilted over and fell. I took one hand and led him to the top of the hill. He seemed more a child at this point than I had been or was now. I lay him down and took off his shorts and his tennis shoes. Then I stripped. And I lay with him. We had sex. Different kinds. Until we were parched, exhausted and sweaty. Night was far away. But night also was here as well. Inside us. We clung to one another, and we slept for a time. Before we got dressed and the sun didn't seem as bright as before, he said, "Toby, next time your mother calls you Kid, would you do something for me?" I looked at him as we stroked each other's penises, his much larger than mine, thicker too. The things we notice at the times we do. I nodded. He said, "Tell her I have a name. Tell her `It's Toby or Tobias, if you would prefer, but it is a name that says me. I do not wish to be called Kid anymore. I thank you for your attention.' Will you do that for me, Toby/Tobias?" And he smiled at me and I hugged him and he hugged me back. Then we dressed and got on our bikes and rode down the hill, into the small town, into our last week of summer, into our last week of us. (Thank you deeply to those who have read my story, and to the very kind persons who took time to write me about it. I dedicate it to all of you; above all else, I wish you love)