Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 19:43:35 -0500
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: "A Wintry November Kind of Love"

	     "A Wintry November Kind of Love"
			    by
		     Timothy Stillman


A waltz time would be nice on this blustery noon of
Thanksgiving November. How beautiful those words, a
dance in them , forget politics, forget age, forget the
newspaper that has let me out early to catch the bus to
home and Joel. Touch me as I half run to my apartment to
get my suitcase, to hold still quiet for a moment. He meant
it. His letter meant it. In his scribble and his cat drawings,
he said come home, yes my darling, finally come home.
Home I never knew was knocking at my heart all this time.
Pistons inside me. An erection. No time for you today for
now but for tonight in the comfort of our pine cottage,
everything snow white outside, and we curled in each
other's arms before the fire place on the soft white
carpeting, and us my love, and us to be together for
forever.

As I tear my heart apart and toss it like red paper
Valentines all round me, as I close and lock and take the
key of the  apartment door, give it to the landlord. And I'm
giddy, and laughing and my heels are clicking up and down
and he thinks I am mad, and I rush through the vacuum of
Paducah, through the vacuum of the heads here and the
stupid little newspaper man who employed me and never
figured out my columns were secret cryptics about Joel and
how I loved him and how he didn't love me. But now the
wind is strong and blowing back my jacket, ruffling my
blue jeans and heavy winter sweater, and blowing back my
long thick shoulder length brown hair, as I hastened with
my suitcase down the broken sidewalks, remembering the
letter from Joel last week, and holding it and rushing fear
snatches in my heart to the nearest pay phone, and he said
yes, he will and yes we will be together forever and all the
sex fantasies I've had about him he has begun of late to
have about me.

With love, the real kind, the kind that makes sex a delicate
watercolor, a moist morning spiders web glinting in
sunrise, a pure and singing golden rod against the sky of
roiled gray. Something so delicate and creative, Van Gogh
could not touch our creation, Monet would kill himself
among his inadequate water lilies if he saw the competition
we were to give him. With balletic grace and style and
passion and not ashamed anymore, our bodies would be
music, symphonies and our hearts would laugh and be our
audience and worlds would thus be created that had never
been before. I had worshipped him in shadows and secret
for so long. Now I would worship him totally. In full
dignity of his sea brown eyes. With him and his Joel voice
moving to me and saying, Yes, please."

And we will do everything, first thing we will do when I
come to the door of our new house, he will be naked as he
opens it and he will kneel down and unzip my jeans and he
will hold my shaking hips and my groin and he will put his
face against me and I will put my hands to his golden head
and we would stay like that forever in a minute and then in
time, he would take me in his mouth and I will grow strong
and be the satyr of 23 and he will be the faun of 13. Never
had an unlucky number been luckier.

And the day is dark sky. The day has the holiday smell to
it. New and cold and freshly ribboned. Safe and hard and
blended ghost boys running in front of me, the ones I used
to run behind and fall, always I fell, and the boy I loved the
most had never turned back and asked if I was hurt--all my
school years--but Joel asked how my life had been, on that
ultimate phone call last week, and I tell him I never knew
life could be so horribly sad and I never knew people could
be so horrible, such users, just toss people aside like
popsicle sticks when they're through, and not a moment's
conscience.

But the sad bones of life, cast free and the red valentine
hearts  tossed to the crackling leaves of red and bronze and
gold and people coming for turkey and cars parked all up
and down Washington, and people greeting people like its
the most natural thing in the world, and it is--now--it is Fan
come to school to tell her brother that father isn't mean
anymore--it is the best turkey ever caught and served and it
waits and arms to go round me, little of that in my life, and
the sky patches the winding road the bus will take, and me
in the window with my finger at the mist, B.E. hearts J.H.
and the heart of Valentine around it, and breath to lose as I
hit the bus station doors and rush across the poverty smell
I feel here most of all, poverty of too much distance, too
much loneliness, too much searching, from the people all
round me, not many today, busses almost all empty,
destination come and gone or not wanting to see the
people with places to go on Thanksgiving day, and the
thought suddenly corkscrews I'm me--

--I'm not one of the lonelies, not today, not ever, I've got
Joel waiting at home and our three cats and my Boston
bulldog,; and its going to be love and snow fall forever
more and I get the ticket from the tired little bald man at
the counter and I should shout at the world, HAPPY
THANKSGIVING EVERYONE GOD YES EVERY
SINGLE ONE--and I would have hugged them all had they
not looked so scared and had I not an appointment with the
loveliest boy in the world, all thin and crescent and hair
down to there daddy daddy and his mother loved him and
so do I, and I rush to the cold, out of the steam of the
station, and find the bus immediately pulling in, there are
no chances, there are no bumps in the road, there is only a
straight line arrow here from me to him, and I wheel inside
to the steps, present my ticket and up the stairs and
laughing, and laughing some more for good measure.

And it starts, the driver making time, while I seek to make
hay, and I've got books of poetry in my suitcase to read to
Joel after we make love tonight, and we will never get tired
of each other, never hurt each other, never grow a day, eat
that Peter Pan, and we will find the snow taste the best
taste of all, and me running down that country gravel road
where the bus will let me out, and all the curly roads to this
day, all the saints in the pews pulling for us, making it right
for us, and we don't have to hold a quorum for our loves
approval, and we don't have to do anything but rush to our
November, the sweetest month, and our house will be
warm and fresh and filled with orange glow light and we
will sit under the stars and pull the sky back and watch
amazed as they do the same with us, and we will be so
happily naked in our warm house with our warm feather
bed and our quilts to pull round us when we dampen the
heat and open the window a little for its such fun to be
naked with Joel in the cold and keeping us warm by bodies
alone.

So hush my darling, the diesel is bringing me, the wheels
heavy and huge are bringing me, and the road is dappled
with autumn leaves and the sky blows dark forbidding
clouds around and the hum of the bus and the wishes I
make in the steam of the window beside me about to come
true. It is all I can do to live with the hard on that my hand
is over now, thinking of Joel's hymn to it, his blessed
anointing that comes long after my listening to him play
piano in the private music room of the Fine Arts Building
at college. I would lean over him in that dream, match and
set, and tell him, soon in two hours, match and set, that
they never let you breathe out there, you're always scared,
and you always knew you are going to screw up, and he
says in his whispering  somehow always astonished voice
that is the way life is for everyone, sweetheart, and then he
will take me and his mouth will be warm and his hands
warm and he will touch me where I have never been
touched before.

And our warm house our spacious house will be in the
world no one ever sees beyond the sounds of a piano and
the sounds of a boy of golden hair playing it, and the secret
music in him, the sheets that roll out to me, and this time
they are bed sheets and he upon them, faun and fairy and
pixie and elixir and magic incantations from the poetry of
his he reads, so lyrical, so stem by the beauty banks of
whatever marvel he manages to create with his long
dexterous fingers, and my stomach full and empty supreme
for the taste of Joel day.

For when my eyes work again and I see the magic of
yesterday cocooning for right now, for right this minute. I
rub my penis through my jeans. No one really much on the
bus to see. No a man who has waited all his life, can wait a
little bit more.

And it is happy and I am happy and there's nothing hurting
behind the next tree to hurt me uncaringly but that does not
make it less, and Joel and I will take our time, we will
count every freckle on his face, we will count the moles
and the indentations, we will measure and circumscribe and
circumspect every event of our body topography, and I
can't wait to run, run and be 22 again and Joel will be filled
with all the Joels that never were and I've got his letters to
me in my suitcase and he will read them every one and we
will giggle over Vonnegut and poke punch over his mouse
drawings in letters now new and crisp as the day each
Wednesday they arrived at my apartment post box, and be
so immensely fascinated with each other and interested in
forever stretching there silver and nightshade and blue and
all my our cats and my our dog playing with us and
scampering and purrs, and a bark of course, and soon and
soon then the bus stops not at the bus station but at the
country road five miles past the station that is also a Fannie
Farmers candy store, once more, and the door opens, and I
run, my god you should see me run, not tripping not falling
filled with the riot of me, and dropping the suitcase in the
orange Sunday kind of country road glow, I have no need
of it, no need of artifact, no need of time, feeling it slipping
off me, like shrink wrap that kept me so bottled tight in me
for so many years--


--and there Joel up ahead in the dark light in the beam light
in the opaque light of the darkening day and he runs to me
and he runs fast and he waves and I think my god my god
that's Joel's voice, that's how it sounded, oh please don't
let me cry now and screw it up, don't let me please--

--and don't let me wake from this dream too, and he's real
and I'm real and we breathe real stinging on the cusp
Christmas air, and the land around us is solid, no sands of
dreams, hills and meadows, but no other houses anywhere
in sight, and I'm handsome now when I never was before
and Joel is beautiful and he is oh Jesus thank you naked
and as he runs to me as fast as he can I see him naked the
first time his long thick blonde hair, his tight thin body, his
penis bobbing up and down in lover's dawn, the all of him,
the sum total of him, and I run as fast oh so delicate he so
German doll he and I will protect him with all of our days,
I will not let him be hurt or deserted or weep or not trust
or have that trust betrayed and murdered and then
forgotten by the murderer in an instant--

--and I scream his name and I say the hell with the
deserters the liars and candy sellers the pitch pennies the
haters and the name callers and the label makers and their
sweaty little ugly stupid loveless world, more power to
them in their breathless closets---

We have the world to ourselves, and we have each other,
and I stumble, no god this is the part where I wake up and
I'm crying and the cyclone is gone and I have to start the
journey all over again and I just can't, I just can't start all
over from scratch  one   more   time....and he catches me,
his warm hands reach down to  me, and he holds me to his
chest and he says, my Joel says the magic words: "Are you
okay?"  God, Joel actually said them. My heart started
really ticking for the first time ever.

And that alone made the whole thing worth it, made the
life of me worth it and I reached to his shoulders so bony
and so tender and so beautiful and I feel his face coming
closer and he pushes my closed eyelids open and says in
Joel speak "You never have to be ashamed again. You
never have to wait for friends to be executioners. Never."

 And I believed it, I could finally actually believe someone,
and miracle, that someone was Joel, I never gave up, never
forgot, not for one minute and he kissed me and his lips
thin and warm and his tongue at my lips as I opened them
and let him in, and the glory round about that, and I felt his
chest and his nipples hard and taut, touch delicately, do not
let the Joel sequins ever lose touch with this marvel, don't
let the fairy dust ever leave him, protect and defend, me to
you Joel, forever and a day--

--and I felt his stomach and he felt mine and we were now
officially of one material we would never stop exploring,
and it was Thanksgiving, and in the house our animals, and
out here ourselves and Joel after he had done what he said
he would do to me, took off my clothes, I not ashamed, my
body almost as beautiful as his though different, difference
counts a plus for in this world, and we ran side by side, our
penises bobbing up and down at the same cadence, him
excellent track runner, the stones not hurting my feet at all,
and we closed in on the sandy lane and there was the house
and all its devices waiting for me and waiting for us, and he
said to me as he held my hand tightly on all the run home:
Please don't leave me again." He not out of breath. Me
moreso. His voice did not break. He did not have to take a
large intake of oxygen to speak. I did a bit more than he,
and said, "Never, Joel. Thank you and never some more."

The wind rushed with us, feathered us with wings. But we
beat it to the door. And we had our own wings. We would
never take them off.

And he put his head on my shoulder.

As I said, "Joel, I love you."

And he held me and that said he loved me too.

We stood for a time longer on our blue Monday porch and
he opened the white door with the strawberry window
panes in it and inside, our early 19th century furniture, and
coming for both of us, our cats and dog all but knocked us
over, they were so happy to see us. And they licked us and
jumped on us and climbed on us and rolled over us and I
kissed and held each of them in turn. My marvelous Joel
had not forgotten.

And afterwards by the fireplace with its perfect flame, we
made love and time didn't matter and vocation didn't
matter and withdrawal from what they called reality didn't
matter. And there was snow music. There was the
loneliness of the dark bite of the night outside. The gusty
winds. Maybe snow fall by morning. But with the crackling
of the fire in the fire place.... But with the purring of the
cats, the snoozing sound of the dog, and Joel and I on our
feather bed, curled legs together, who could ask for a more
comfortable more crowded world so filled with a season
after our own name. And heavy coats ready and heavy
snow shoes for when winter descends any moment now.
Ice was love. Ice always was and always would be. In our
world, I mean.

We were safe. And late into the night after we had made
love again and I had held his body to me, I said, "Joel, my
darling. Say my name."

And he did and he slept with his head on my chest.

"Forever more." And he took my still hardened penis in his
hand. The painting for the Louvre would take a little while
longer, an eternity or two, we had to get it right after all.
What else could one mean by the phrase "making love"?

And we began again.

Thanksgiving was delicious. And it would always be so.
Thank you Sweet November for remembering. You need
not have. I would have remembered for all of us. But now,
magic, and rising on and into my love, there are no need
for memories, not anymore, not ever. There is the need for
the present. And I say, about time.

Timothy Stillman
comewinter@earthlink.net