Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:40:55 -0700
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: g/m high school "Memories of Matthew"

			   "Memories of Matthew"
				    by
			     Timothy Stillman

(to my friend Omar, great writer, kind friend, who gave me the essential
ideas for this story.  The flaws in it are all mine.)


Gradually, because they were elderly and deep within their
cups, these members of the stalwart Old Sock Club, and
because they were immensely wealthy and they had been
mere slips of lads a long long time ago and all young boys
fiddle with themselves and each other, they began, the heavy
curtains muffling some of their words,  to talk about their
boarding school friend more earnestly. There in the game
room, with the animal heads on the walls, and in the fine
leather crinkly comfy wide chairs, with their gin and bitters
in various stages of absence, dark into the night, the butler
gone away, there was the prescient knowledge that
something was wrong. That their friend Matthew from
boarding school was not a different person in different
years, in different forms, but the same person to each one of
them.

After all they did go to the same Claspham School for Boys,
and it seemed to have to be right that the boy they loved
was more than likely the same boy, other than a number of
boys with the same first name. They had been friends in this
Old Sock Club for years, and because Brit boarding schools
have a reputation for diddling other boys, this was no longer
as secret as the old guard liked to pretend it was. And if
Matthew was one boy, and not various boys of various
years with the same first name, then why could the men not
remember how he looked, that his looks did not jibe with
the memories of others'?

Well, of course, Sir Welbern said, we are at the age of being
dotty, as he placed his hand over his pot belly, and leaned
nearer the fireplace that was nicely warm on this cold
December night, rubbing his always cold hands together.
But the others chuffed and huffed and said well sir we are
not that old.

But there had to be a reason. To Sir Ineton, Matthew was
blonde. To Mageies, Matthew was black haired. To
Trenlaw, Matthew was tall. To Stenhope, Matthew was
shorter. And round and round the old club room this went,
till some of the men got a bit deucedly angry about the
whole thing. In addition to no one being friends with
Matthew (Matthew was the star, the Adonis, the beauty, the
hand reared boy to end them all, and he got to choose his
friends, anoint them, give them the honor of his company,
never the other way round) ;it seemed as though each of the
men wanted to throw down a glove or gauntlet or
something, to taut out the others who did not remember a
school masterpiece chiseled as by the greatest of artists,
even if their minds were going, so inaccurately.

Matthew had chosen a boy every two months. He was,
whoever he was, the attraction, the star over the distant
mountain on a cold crystal winters night. He was the
Christmas feeling children get, when the great one pointed
his thin fingers, his heavier fingers, his pale fingers, his
reddish fingers, whatever the hell his fingers looked  like at
the next addition to his bed sitting. And if the boy chosen
didn't do as Matthew asked, Matthew was not a cruel
taskmaster, but Matthew had certain standards. If one did
not live up to those standards..well Matthew just cold
heartedly picked another bed boy. And the loser died. As
did the previous ones who were out of style for Matthew.
They had done everything he told them to.

They had cleaned his fingernails. Bathed him. Come for him.
Dressed him. Undressed him. Done sexual things with him.
Let him fuck them with his long short thin fat hairy almost
hairless veiny columnar, wide, tight, heavy, delicate cock,
and he did not go easy into them, and they put up with it,
because it was Matthew, and it was worth it. Because he
was nice to them sometimes. He let them suck him off. And
he sucked them off. And he told him of his heritage and he
told them how deucedly lucky they were he had anything to
do with them at all. As for the obvious, he was doing the
dons, so the dons let him do the boys, and he never let his
bed boys forget that either. Matthew's eternal charity.

Matthew was everything. He was obeyed. He smiled and
you had to smile back at him. His pale lips, his thin lips, his
full lips, and red lips, and he was lovely naked, he would
model for the boys and the boys loved him so. Matthew had
two large clefts above his buttocks which the men now also
remembered as looking different than the others' memories
of him did. Had they really gotten that old? Well,
Manwaring said, Matthew didn't have clefts. But Tigret said
oh yes he did, and pretty and wan they were, but they were
small. And Matthew was good at rugby. In spite of his
looking like a girl, said Manwaring, save where it counted
he was a boy. There was argument here.

They each had memories of soaping him. Of kneeling in the
late night showers and taking him in their mouths and how
exciting it was for this Olympian godlet to put his hands on
the back of their heads and push them up and down and to
feel his cum--ambrosia, oil of love, night cream, magic dust,
moon and the stars in liquid form. Smelled a bit, said
Overmyer. I beg your pardon, said Trent, it's bad enough
you can't remember him in the slightest, but to say his cum
smelled is outrageous in the extreme.

And they drank for a while. Got some more from the large
crystal pitcher on the cut glass table. Were muffed for a
while. And were sad. Because all that was long ago, and
Matthew was too now old, and they wondered if he had
found true love along the way. He could be brusque, that
they all agreed on, but he could also be kind, especially to
the boys who were crying at night in bed, from
homesickness, and he would go round the room and pet
them and let them have a good cry on his shoulder.

I don't remember that, someone said. I do, another one. I
would like to beat the crap of the lot of you, Loutendew
said. What? said the others in unison, their mouths hanging
open, their pallid flaccid fists in a mockery of anger.

Well, it's true, Loutendew said, don't any of you remember
anything at all? I mean we've been talking about this boy for
all these months and it took us all this bloody time to figure
out it was the same boy, now doesn't that confuse you? I
mean, he said, leaning over, straightening his waistcoat, and
brushing his white thick mustache with an arthritic finger,
we were all there about the same time, it was a large school,
but we remember each other from there, but our minds were
always on Matthew, such an aura he had about him, and no
one else, we were his boy choir, we must have studied, I
know I did, every inch of him, the contralto voice that made
me break into tears at the pageant at Christmas time, how
good it felt to have him in bed with me, how nice to be
warmed by him naked on a January morning, and to lay my
head on his chest and breathe in Matthew.

Then the old man paused for a long time and added, so why
in the hell do we not remember him? I don't mean now, old
age and fading memories can account for more of that than
we care to acknowledge. But then, we were all so in love
with him then, and I put forth the idea, difficult as it may
seem, that if we were back there, and in this colloquy about
this boy who was right there with us in the same room,
hunched over studying, because he was quite bright (not
that I remember...someone interrupted), no, let me have my
say, he had a girly butt, he had a flat butt, he was thin, he
had a bit of meat on him, don't you see, this god who let us
be with him and about who we never talked because we did
not want to share him in words with anyone and risk
breaking the spell, because also other boys would say oh
yes, he laid me last year, let me tell you about it....god
forbid knowing the obvious, thrown right in our faces...

The thing is, another old man said, in his corner chair, the
London Times folded over his lap and forgotten long ago in
the blonde soothing light of the room, and now the
newspaper fell off his lap onto the requisite polar bear rug,
the bear's face looking outward with eternal contempt at the
lot of them, if we had tried to describe him then, we would
have described him, each of us, differently, not a shade
differently, but totally differently. We would have flushed
his toilet and we would have shampooed his hair and
clipped his toenails, and we would have asked him Sir, may
I suck your lolly tonight? and he said, Matthew did---

And all the men, in rapture though the voices were weak of
age and pipe and cigarette and cigar smoking, "if you are
lucky, plebe."

Well, the old man who was trying to come through with this
diagnoses of forgetfulness, said, at least we agree on that.
But his bung hole was different for all of us. His penis. His
way of making love. Dreamy. Awkward. Exciting. With
ennui. I can hear all of you say it. As all of you have over
these last months. We keep having the same circular
conversation, don't you know? He took care of things. He
showed us how. He let us sometimes after paddling out
naked butts with his warm hand, as we lay across his lap and
felt his hardness under our chests, hardness undulating--

--he did not do that, Warburton said. He had too much
class.

No, and yes, and wait, yes he did, Styleman admonished and
then sat back in his chair, somewhat foggy and confused.
Nothing new there, Warburton noted silently, remembering
his own thinking was clear as a bell. Poor old Styleman, let
his brain slip every month or two it seemed. I'll never be
like that.

The old man who felt he was figuring it out, Julian was his
name, said, yes, he wasn't anything. The others started to
rise en masse, and there was some polite cursing, as some of
the old men managed to warble to their feet, while others
only managed to fall back down in their chairs again. Words
were exchanged. There was talk that Julian would be
blackballed if he did not take that back.

If you will let me have my say, Julian tried to talk over the
hubbub which didn't take too long to die out, for though the
outrage was ravaging, the age took it out of them like starch
from a collar, fairly quickly. So the old man said, at the
point of any of you pulling any of those cutlasses off the
wall over there and sticking me through the giblet or
whatever you call it, he was a chameleon, was Matthew, he
was--and here it comes again--nothing, nothing at all. And
when Manleman staggered from his chair to get one of
those deuced cutlasses, and fell back in his chair, gasping
for air, as the two men sitting next to him, managed to get
to him, open his shirt collar, fan him with a paper, and give
him some brandy, till he was all right again.

Go on, someone said to Julian. The voice was so hollow. It
seemed as though they were talking down a rain barrel now
and everyone had to repeat things as others cupped their
ears at the speaker.

Are you sure? Julian asked.

Please. Yes. I think we want to hear the rest of it, though I
think we can guess, because you may be right. Dammit, at
least listen to the man, break the chains, decades have
passed, he was a friggin' vampire. He sucked the life out of
us. The life we never lived.

No anger. No fighting words. No clenched jaws, as best as
they could clench them. There was in the room now
only--defeat.

Julian continued:

He was a real boy. He was no one. He was a scarecrow we
pinned our boy dreams on. He used us. We had to do as he
said. He brooked no insolence. He brooked no
disagreement. He used us to do his work. He used us to not
be alone. He was scared of being alone. He had this, not
talent, but something, I don't know what, that let us make
him our dreams, and he used it on us, and maybe he used it
on himself as well.

He got to be so many different boys with so many different
lovers, and you can't blame lonely people for that. Most
lonely people, the old man said, taking his reading glasses
off and stuffing them in the pocket of his herringbone coat,
most lonely people, like I venture to say most people are
really, they can't be a scarecrow brought to life, a tin
woodsman given a heart, a scarecrow given a brain, a lion
given courage, for no one sees them like we saw Matthew,
maybe a person gets so lonely he can be seen as far more
than he is, maybe it's genetic, I have no idea. Just that.
Some though, some very very few, let us see them as we
want to, and maybe he was the longing one, far more than
we.

He was a smashed mirror, and all the images of him in all
the shards of glass were of him as a different person,
someone  who didn't exist, not possible, but it was him, but
not him at the same time. I loved sucking his cock. I loved
the feel of him. I loved soaping him in the shower. I loved
curling up and telling him bedtime stories after lights out, I
remember him crying sometimes when he didn't think I
knew, maybe he never cried for you, maybe he never really
cried at all for anyone, but I remember he did for me,
because I wept a lot in those days, therefore so did he. I'm
surprised he didn't go mad. What in the world kind of life
has he led? Being a living breathing fun house mirror. And
not knowing, all this time, not knowing he was never loved
for himself, for he had no self to be loved.

The old man finished. He breathed hard. Loosened his
collar. Felt faint. Felt afraid.

There was a definite pall after that. There was no muffing,
no anger, no resentment, just a terrible sadness that
clattered against the chimes of Big Ben denoting the hour of
midnight. The men were tired. They were disillusioned.

And when Julian said in some slight amazement, after
draining his glass, I'm Matthew, in a soft childish voice,
very much unlike his now, very much unlike Matthew's
voice of then, they didn't hear, or pretended they didn't.
There was sadness in the room. It seemed there would
never be anything else but that in the world, that there never
had been. Their heads downcast, their eyes closed, thinking
about the lonely lives they had had, dreaming back to a
reality that never was, dreaming back to a boy who was an
image in a mirror, a very real image of a very real boy...but
so unreal, their great dream, their great memory, what they
thought about when they thought about love, I once had
Matthew and nothing can take that away..but it was taken
away, and it was so monumentally unfair.

And he did that to help us. Gave himself like that, Maltby
said, Matthew was so selfless.

No, he was a user, like Julian said.

He was as decent a chap as I've ever known. I still think of
him. All the time. I still think of him.

And Julian said, as the men were preparing to depart,
getting their coats and hats from the racks, yet again Julian
said, I was Matthew. And he sagged back in his chair. He
knew in their elderly bustle around the room, the saying of
good nights, the minor talk about rugby and the war and
Lap Dog Tony, and the considerable outrage of the Jerry
Springer Show being such a hit on stage and what was the
world coming to, have you seen that filth? God awful, I
should say--

--They left the room, each in turn, singly or in pairs.

Till only Julian was there. Alone. Forgotten, again. Waiting
for somebody, some plebe to be chosen by him for his bed
boy for a memory time the boy would remember all his life
and against which he would judge the rest of his life. Julian
said it again, I am--I was--Matthew. But no one had heard
him, even when the men had been in the room. And they
never would. No one certainly heard him now.

There were so many shadows in the room, especially now
he was alone. He wished he could be a shadow too.
Shadows don't get hurt. Shadows are stoic. They don't
have a heart or a mind or a soul. Yes, things would have
gone better for him, had he been a shadow.

So he put his face in his old veiny ropy hands, and
pretended that he was not almost bald and what hair left to
him was ugly gray, and he wept, and he wanted to be
Matthew again. But he couldn't. He never had been, you
see. He wept for the boys who were old and for himself and
for dreams and for trickery, and for imagination of all of
them of which he had none at all, and he stayed there for a
long while. His bony shoulders shaking. He dried his eyes
with his polka dotted handkerchief and then put the
handkerchief in his pocket. He thought it would be nice if a
boy would tell him a bedtime story, and then laughed in
spite of himself at the thought. He after all was the bedtime
story.

 And then, in time, he got up, helped by his cane, put his
coat on, went out into the hallway, opened the great front
door, walked outside to the chill winds that knifed through
his very old body, locked the door, and went on his way.

Walking on his cane. All the way home. And the next
session of the Old Sock Club, they would have the many
prisms of Matthew to lay before them again in the smoky
room, the smell of liquor, and leather, and age, and
memories, all wrong memories of course, especially
Julian's--if his were right, how twisty the brain gets with
age and trying to protect itself when it's too late, but the
wrong memories had kept them going all these years. Had
kept them young. Or  perhaps not. Just the opposite,
forever old, even when they were boys. Had he done that?
My god. Imprisoned them, perhaps. Made them withered
dwarfs, living in so long ago, even when the long ago was
then. Did he enjoy their tears when he told them their time
with him was up?  Their begging? Their hatred of him then?
How the former bed boys of the great Matthew shrank
when they saw him later, in class, in the lunch room, all that
pain.....did they masturbate forever, thinking of their god?

What kind of monster was he? No delusion of any of these
men was half of what his own was, had been at least.

How odd, Julian/Matthew thought, turning a sharp corner,
putting his head down against the gale, he had not known he
had been Matthew till he put forth his theory, starting out of
whole cloth, and then more and more and then it made
sense. It did, it had to, or he was lost, like they were lost.
He had tried to save them, he told himself, he truly had. But
he had made a mess of it. Seeing them like this. And himself
like this. He was right. Or had he and these other old men
had these same discussions, like telly reruns. every
Wednesday night? And none ever remembering? Was this
his eternal servitude? Seeing some of his victims each week?
To remember and forget. To remember and forget. He, the
Flying Dutchman, though all of this was far too real.

Matthew was, had been, just a diving board the boys used
to dive into their private dreams in which he could not
share. The boys Matthew used were far superior to him.
And to Julian. How strange, if he was right at all, and had
not been another of Matthew's boys himself, that he was a
murderer of dreams, of hopes, of love, of potential, of the
essence of each boy he took up with. When, now, he tried
to make it have been the other way round.

 He wanted to scream now. He should have  been the one
who had gotten in his knees before them and said :Please,
sir, would you let me sleep with you tonight, there is such
loneliness about. Yes he should have. Too late now. If he
was right at all, of course, and maybe he could convince
himself that he was not right. Maybe in the morning, he
would forget, just like they did, and go back to playing the
Matthew game, for it would be impossible for him to live
with himself otherwise. Thank god there was not much
more time to go. The wind froze his face and hands and he
hurried.

But tonight, passing a bobby, and nodding to him,
Julian/Matthew would not think of that. He would force
himself not to. He was sleepy and wanted to go home. But
that was impossible, since he had never had one, so he went
back to his flat instead. To pretend a little while longer.

Thus ending tonight's meeting of the Old Sock Club.


Timothy Stillman
comewinter@earthlink.net