Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 10:21:53 -0700 From: Tim Stillman Subject: "Saturday Morning on the Farm" (M/B) "Saturday Morning on the Farm" by Timothy Stillman Brett, and the way the sun world of harvest home worked. Brett, and the clockwork of boy, and the clock work of autumn land. Sun peeking out more and more in the cold morning air. Like happiness of the red and pastel sky come down to earth to kiss shoulders of the boy who was world within worlds. He ran naked, this boy of 15 years, through the fields of his parents' farm. The air lazed and relaxed on him. It initiated him in his flanks of his crafted small legs and his torso which was tight with love. In his face, which braved the day and the deed of naked in it with no fear. For he had never felt that truly free moment of being him before. When there is an ease. As well as an excitement. This farm outside the small winterized town. This piece of land where the nights came early and the dreams of day stayed long. He imagined he was running through a sea instead of running through the wheat stalks. He imagined winter coming down like a gentle giant that knew all the answers and would tell him anything he wanted to know. Because there was Mr. Satterley, Doug. Because there was Doug, his teacher, his love. And Brett of dark red longish hair and a body that was built strong because he was working out so much and lifting weights. Shoulders with freckles. A strawberry birth mark on his lower left hip. His stomach taut and his eyes of green shade. Mr. Satterley. Doug said those eyes were like green eye shades of newspaper men of old who worked by dim lighting in the dark copy rooms of a midnight office vigil where the world clicked in on teletype machines and scandals were to break any minute. Hot copy and typewriters clacking. And bravery issuing forth. Keeping the town safe and informed and with knowledge so they could make their own decisions. Doug talked like this. Brett just said, please love me. Brett could only live in the early morning. The sun bright already but away some. And the truth that Doug kept talking about did not interest Brett as much as the man did. Brett, who wondered how a man could be with a boy and still not see how much that boy treasured him. So early this Saturday Brett had done something he had not done in his entire life. He had gotten out of bed, taken off his briefs, climbed out his bedroom window and faced the world, in the raw. For he found he loved it so. The world and its land and its skies that always seemed, even in the midst of the most ferocious snow storms, and there had been several in his life, to look out for him. Brett, chronic masturbator. Brett, boy of thoughts he did not like to think about. Brett, of autumn and football games and his plays were classics under the arc lights on the cold field and his team cheered him on, as much as the crowd in the stands did, as he made more touchdowns than anyone else. The dark blue uniform, past the thick shoulder pads, fitting him perfectly as though he were poured into it. Hiding everything. Hiding nothing. And the ice air hitting him on football nights. And the cold air hitting him this morning. Feeling every part of his body. Running hard. Erection hard. Legs pumping. Going with his bare feet hitting the ground as though they meant business. As though he was a steam locomotive of boy and proud of his name and his designation. And prouder still when he put his hand to Doug's arm and touched a moment. Touched a spark. And Mr. Satterley, Doug, turned his eyes to the desk and silently drifted himself into his chair. As though a snowflake given up finally when finally on the brink. They had tested each other. They had danced their little dance. They had feinted and ducked and smiled a bit more at each other and turned away from the hot griddle that had suddenly so wonderfully come between them and had become them. Brett felt Doug first. Felt him with that aplomb that certain boys have when they are scared to death and can't let anyone know it, thus making themselves unfrightened at that exact moment of most fear. And Brett had run away. And Doug had called for him. Brett came back down the dark empty school hall. The straight and narrow hall with the metal lockers on each side, making the narrow hall even more so. School ended an hour ago. Brett staying. Doug also. The janitors did not come till early evening. They had time. The dream happened. For both of them. Without knowing the topography of the land, they traveled it as though they had been born to do so. But Doug still unsure. Doug still frightened and trembling some. Brett needed to tell him these things. But Doug needed only to kiss his boy, his love, his lad. And Brett let him. That sweet bliss of student and teacher in empty class room. The sun lingering like a blush in the sky, a blush that was not epoch and not melodramatic but there, as it had always been there, if either of the two of them had ever looked for it. Brett thought he had. But he knew now that he had been wrong. That was three weeks ago. The first time of the first kiss. Tentative lips against tentative lips. Sitting together on the desk top. Sitting with their hands holding each other. As though there was the need of the farmland in them. The need of a hay stack to jump in and to lie in and look up at the straw sun through the eyes of farm children who know the world tilts its own way, who can feel its rotation, who can feel the aliveness of it all. Soft brown eyes Mr. Satterley had. Soft lips that were against Brett's. Hands roaming. Brett's sweater being pulled up. The autumn of Brett lingering in the aroma of his hair and his clothes and his body. Hands of boy studying what was behind that white shirt of the man, and feeling the beating of that autumn heart. What held secret court in that heart? What was the ineffable longing of a man who had looked too far away for too long a time? When the world looked for was right here, right now. "I'm tired of being hurt," Doug had said, in words that stumbled, when their lips parted, and his hand felt Brett's face, marveling in the symmetry of it, the cream roses complexion of it, the world of farm that it contained and delineated and made wondrous bone and flesh and structure that was far more than the feel and complexity of itself even. "I'm tired of believing when there is nothing to believe in. Of trusting and then the betrayal. Always the betrayal." And then, ashamed of what he said to the boy. Ashamed he had given himself away. Put his troubles on Brett who didn't have a trouble in the world. Brett who was well liked and smart and athletic, who already had offers from some of the Top Ten universities lined up. But Brett, who seemed to have so much, had actually very little. Till now. He had always been too busy being Brett, too busy building this form that he was, working on the structure that proclaimed high school football hero, to have known before that he, too, had the right to stop and just breathe for a moment. Have fun. Be given to, for a change. Here, with Mr. Satterley, Doug. It was Doug's time too. His turn. They would learn, together. Brett knew what his teacher meant. And he put his face against the side of Mr. Satterley's, Doug's, face. And their hearts beat their own course. And boy was man, as man became boy or had never been anything else. Then in the dark room, lights off, door locked, both wary though of being caught, in the room of empty desk chairs and blackboard scrawled on with chalk. In the smell of chalk dust and the smell of old textbooks, and the furled American flag on the far side of the desk, the flag with the golden tarnished eagle on top. In the room that held children who wanted to be there, and children who did not want to be there. In the room that was too small to accommodate too many students each class period. In the room of erections at the wrong moments, always seemed to be, when the bearers of those erections were called to the blackboard to work out a text problem. In the room of laughter and questions and fears of failure and wonderment that someone's eyes you've been staring at for such a long time have begun to stare back at you, kindly--in this room Doug and Brett had their first day. And Brett, sun boy running down the dappled fields, kept every moment of it close in his heart. Preserved and loved and cared for as one cares for a puppy, himself, who has finally found his way back home. Life was the farm. And shamelessness of himself as he stood now, panting a bit, though not really out of breath, naked to the world. Turning in the diamond beaten red sun that shown its sparkling facets down on him. A free weekend. No usual Sunday football practice. The team was to rest this weekend for their big Friday night game with Union City. It was always the jewel in the crown to beat the Tornadoes, because so few teams ever did. Even with Brett, the Rockets had not pulled it off. Few past teams had done so either. Hard fought, battle scarred, but not enough. Brett had to use everything in him to best the Tornadoes. Put it aside for now, though. For it was autumn cold, the first really cold day of the season. Brett's tits were hard berries. His balls which were on the small side were tight against him. His penis he held in his hands. He stroked it and felt it rear up like a horse in a field of dream. Doug had held Brett's penis two days later, after their first intimacy, in the classroom again, at the same time. This time the intimacy went further. And Brett, again sitting on the desk next to his teacher, had, as the man touched Brett's chest, through the shirt, touched his fingers to the golden boy's bronze perfect flesh, as the man had put his mouth to the boy's chest, then put his head against Brett's heart, Brett had unzipped himself (he did not wear underwear) and pulled out his erection. The man had not wanted to look. Had been afraid to look. But Brett took his hand and put it under Doug's chin and gentled his face and said look at me, really look at me. And Doug did. And in a sense of vague collisions of planets that were cells that were locks in keys that were doors of bars, the whole world inside, opened, as the man held his disbelieving eyes to the boy and the boy used his own hand and the man's hand to masturbate himself. And thinking these things now, Brett kneeled to the ground. He was of medium build, not stocky, but not thin as he had used to be. It felt good, right, his bare knees on the ground that was cold and the sun which for all its brightness, seeming even colder. Brett kneeled there for a time. Reached out to infinity of air and put his arms around nothingness and remembered Doug and put his arms around the memory of the man and held him. Breaking him. Lifting him. Doing all the things Brett had not known he knew how to do, for it was all first time for him. But the land was beautiful and comforting and the land was a thin isthmus with the seas of madness all pushed back on each side, from the both of them. All turned round and country roads to run down and bike down and ride down with Mr. Satterley in his car. To park close to Brett's house, but around a curve where there were no houses. On the hard packed dirt road that rarely had cars traveling it. Three days ago, this. Three days ago, they had sat close together, in the parked to the road side, the car idling, with the heat on, for it was turning cooler and the land was darker and more sad this time of year heading forth. Doug had had the radio on. The song was an oldie from Brett's teacher's own youth. "Stand by Me." Brett, though, knew it from the movie. So they half sang along together in that clumsy way people do, remembering some of the words, but usually at the wrong places in the melody. The singer's voice was like from deep inside each of them. A shy voice, a little scared, but willing to be brave, just one more time, if a friend was there, so they could protect each other from everything that might come from the shadows. Brett had had his head on Doug's shoulder. They sang, in whispers, to the refrain and they felt sad and happy. It was growing dark. The moon was up, the stars to come. The wind of the night was an alley of bracing autumn. The car heat felt enveloping and friendly, the way machine made heat in cold weather felt. That was one of the best tangs of autumn and winter. You walked into the cold when you wanted to, and only then. And you knew it was out there, and looking out for you. Holding you in the palm of its gray snowy brave and generous hand. They each thought of the darkness, brightened only by the lonely moon, but they wouldn't be afraid, "just as long, just as long, as you stand, stand, by me." They wanted to talk, after the song. It seemed important that they should. They only cuddled, though. For that was enough. The sun in Brett met the night in Doug. They had found each other. They would watch over each other. Guarding the other. For a little time. Please, more than a little time. It had been such a long space of coming, for the both of them, really. But instead they just held to each other. The blowing heat from the vent made both feel strong and drifty and misty and not much one thing or another but a blend of movies and books and dreams and nightmares and circles that said teachers need their students' help more often than the other way around. When Brett kissed Mr. Satterley's, Doug's lips, and then took off the man's wire rimmed glasses, and kissed the man's closed eyes, Brett could feel the tiny pulse of those eyes thrumming. Brett now thinking of then as he moved to sit down on the golden rim of brown grass here at the edge of the world and the beginning and the end of everything all at once. He pressed his eyes closed. He stroked his shaft and he pulled his foreskin down even further. His penis was hard against his stomach. It came almost to his navel. He was dream now. More than himself. More than he had ever been in his life. Doug talked to him, to his classes, about truth and about knowledge, and though the lectures could get confused, the man losing himself in his own words, the words sounded important, sounded as though there were things behind doors that most people didn't know about, the doors most people didn't even know were there. And safe they were in the not knowing. And safe Brett was now in the knowing, as best he could figure it out, and he was a smart boy so he figured it out more than Doug thought he had, perhaps even more than Doug himself knew. But you have to help heroes along at times. Because if they let you lie in their arms, and they don't laugh at you when you tell them your dreams, if they only play with your hair, and brush your hair with their hands, and kiss you on the top of your head, then the world is okay, the world is beautiful. And there is no pain anywhere. Not for anyone ever again. Why? My friend and I say so. That's why. Begone sorrow from here on out. Begone pain and horror from the whole world. From now on there will be enough to eat, for everyone. There will only be a world filled with joyousness. No more fear. No more hate. No more loneliness. There will be no one dying. Children would be allowed to live out their lives, happily. Dads would live, too. And Moms would not spend most of the night crying into their pillows. No one will have to fear what is coming straight at them, for it will be a gentle tender happy surprise. The world this day smiles. And always will. There will be no more endings. Ever. Doug and I shall see to that. And betrayal? No more of that either. No more of turning and walking away, leaving the pain for someone waiting behind. Begone you galoots (Doug's word for idiots, the word that never failed to make Brett laugh) of the world. We neither need you nor want you here. We've not the time for you. Just Doug leaning down and kissing the forehead of the boy the man had never known before. The boy Doug still did not know. For the man was still unsure and guilty and wary and most sorely afraid. No matter how Brett tried to quieten him, to reassure him. For that was just Doug, and they would both have to live with it. Brett longed to see the man naked. Longed to take the clothes off the tall man with the thin arms and the squinty eyes and the long black hair turning gray at the edges like ice on the night right before it turns its deepest black into morning. He wanted to put his shorter body next to the man's longer one. To examine every inch of the man. He wanted to feel Doug's penis, touch the balls, kiss the pubic hair and feel the man aroused and aroused so much more. He wanted to couple with Doug, fit into him, dwell in that land of closeness, arms and legs around his lover's. Yes, lovers, Brett thought, that is what we are. We are in love. What a wonderful word. Thrown around far too much, the word, the designation, but when it's real, it's sweet beyond bearing. And the cause of that? Me. Brett Long. Me. Brett the farm boy who was going places in this world. Who was going to carve up the world and hand huge chunks of it back to Mr. Satterley, Doug, and thank him and paint skies for him. Like the boy painted the sides of barns when he was younger, barns of his family's and of those of neighboring farms. Just slashing the bright paint on. Never red. But gold and umber and orange and purple. Brighter than the sun. Bright like the doors to his grade school rooms always were. Like he had been told by Doug the doors of rooms in the CIA were, which Doug had read about. Then, Doug explained a bit about the CIA and how incongruous those bright painted doors were for those drab men and women who lived in such fear and spider webs of intrigue that brought the whole world to the cold dark basement floor in their minds. But with doors, painted bright primary sharp as fun colors. So they wouldn't die, those morticians of the most invasive, the cruelest information, of terminal paranoia. And they laughed at that. They laughed and they held to each other and they wanted to do everything they could for each other. And now Brett lay on his side, his left side, for masturbating, as he put one hand on his penis and the other on his left hip. As he remembered and looked out at the world that looked unashamedly back. Because before this it seemed the world had been ashamed of so much. Such as, just existing, for one thing. But now boy of autumn pulled his penis and stoked it and turned it and rubbed it hard, his fingers feeling the veins of it writ large. In time, Doug would do more than touch it so gingerly. In time, Doug would kiss it, and more. They had been discussing it like two little kids, trying to find new quests to get away with, where they could lie with each other, be naked, and make full and complete love. There was always the fear of getting caught. They tried not to think about it. But it was all around them, like a terrible disease. No one seemed to have twigged to it. No one seemed to have noticed. Yet. The two of them talked often about it. Brett asked why did people think this brilliant, exciting thing was wrong? Doug tried to explain, became caught in word tangle, and just held Brett to him, and said, "I don't really know, love. I honestly don't really know." And that was enough for both of them. The sense of the senseless was a futile thing to try to figure out. They had decided that next weekend, if Doug could get up the nerve, they would spend some of Saturday night by the pond some distance from Brett's house but still on the Long property. Brett would need Doug then. They couldn't see each other this coming week because of the extra practice for the Union City game and because Brett could only let his mind ride on that. But Saturday--yes--they would come to the pond, under the ceiling of close touch stars, getting out of Doug's car, which he let Brett drive, when they got to the country roads, and they would bring a thermos of hot chocolate and something to eat, and they would lie on the brown dead cold rings of grass. They would hear the lowing of the cows on the farm. the lowing of the same cows that Brett was hearing right now, knowing that he had delayed too long, the cows were impatient. He would have to leave this reverie soon to go back to his bedroom, to dress, to go about the daily farm chores, the feeding, the milking, the moment to moment things it seemed he had been doing so by rote all his life long. But now, he thought of the man who would be next to him, thought of the man's mouth on him, and Brett pulled himself harder, and he shot crescent liquid glue up to the sun, and his stomach was tight with strings, his legs pulled hard, and he fell on his back, and the arch his penis had birthed, and the pumps of liquid thereafter, that fell on his stomach and his red thick pubic hair. His penis struggling still. Wild colt in the morning cold air looking for the clearness so a lover could know he was that and Brett would find some way to tell him, some way to make him believe. The farm was a tough thing now. Tougher than ever before. Brett's dad had not been with them for the last five years. Brett's mom, so very lost and forlorn, depended on her son for everything. To keep the farm running. To keep her happy. To keep her content. To do the grocery shopping for her. To keep the books. To budget their income such as it was. To be the best son that he could be to her. To tell her he loved her. Even though he didn't. He tried to but he couldn't. He had, once. Long ago. She wanted herself to be happy. She did not think he should erode her happiness. Because she was sad all the time. Because she was all that he had, once, and he all that she had. And it was really getting to him. He felt there was too much grasping going on. Felt that she could be strong like she used to be. Like he remembered her being. Before it had all come down on her shoulders and she had felt them too weak, thus transferring it all to the shoulders of her son. She, refusing to admit it. Brett's shoulders that were strong. But not that much. But Brett had such strength when he was with Doug. Brett felt as though he could hold the whole world up and toss it off to space whenever he pleased. And because he was strong for Doug, Doug was finding something in himself for the boy. Because, Brett had decided, in that quick, keen mind of his, that was what love was. It came to weakness and said be weak with me, and that allowance, that permission let something happen, and from it came courage and daring, maybe just a little, but sometimes a little was a lot. That was what love was. What his mother could not understand. What Brett was beginning to. And he thought, what Doug was beginning to, as well. When two people cared about each other. And not the ghost of a father long gone, or the ghosts of boys long gone and once upon a time. Cracker barrel philosophy, but even so, Brett had thought that it made sense. He lay, now, in the afterglow, with the world twirling around him. He put his finger to his abdomen where some of the cum lay in little circles. Took a bit of the tag ends of the liquid and tasted it. The boy salt of it. And he relaxed, all over body easing, football gladiator bruises not hurting, feeling the world comfortably with him. And soon he would stand and run back home. No need fearing his mother seeing him. It was still early and she slept late. He would begin the farm day. Looking forward to the classes with Doug. Looking forward to the game Friday. Looking forward to Saturday night when they would make first time love. He put his arms round his chest. He hugged himself. He spread his legs. He let the all of him to the day. Then he stood up and he was off and running again. Brett Long. Long sprinter of love and passion and daring and prowess and most of all, glee, scissoring through the day of harvest home and the first truly cold winds of the season. How in love with everyone and everything he was right now. And it would never change. Never. Except to get better. end