Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 18:59:17 -0800 From: Tim Stillman Subject: The Little Drummer Boy "The Little Drummer Boy" by Timothy Stillman I cast T, like bread on the waters, to the watery winter sun of tomorrow, and tried to concentrate the night away on Jen. My girl. Not on my ten year old brother, T. Jenny was where my mind should be this deep chill winter night. Not on the still dreamy form of T only a few feet away from me in the moonglow bedroom, curled up under such thick blankets he didn't cast even a bump of a boy. His bed, sleeping. My bed, across the room, furtively active. Mom and Dad didn't care about us, as long as we left them alone. And that was a good deal. Because that meant they left us alone. T and I were content. Well, T was. I on the other hand.. A fifteen year old boy in the permafrost of his lust this December night should not be yearning for his bro. A fifteen year old boy who has his life mapped out like the plaid blanket, this square step to this square step, in succession, under which I gripped myself, and firmed myself, and whispered not louder than a moment ago, I love you, T. To a T I love you. And I can't tell you. Jen, I could talk to Jen. She would understand. Hell. She would kill me. She would understand if I told her I wanted to go to my brother's bed and I wanted to kneel down to him and to feel his sleepy boy breath on my cheek, and watch the boy of him, asleep. T. Uh-huh. That I wanted to hold him to me, like he was Pinocchio come to life. Only it was the other way round. I was Pinocchio, and I needed T to bring me to life. T square. T straight as an arrow. T who hated things rightly and wrongly, and with hop up and down fury and self-righteous passion. T an inverted dream come reality, set down to tempt me, in bold script on this quiet night with snow fall in gentle woods behind our house. T who I saw naked every furtive chance I got. Which was not often. I was always too old to bathe with him. Though god, just thinking about it... His body was small and baby bird bony and he had a lovely, I guess it was lovely, little whizzer that some Puritanical part of my mind air brushed away when I did get a glimpse of him in the bathroom--I could have bathed him when he was littler, I guess, but in those days, it was a whole different world for me, and for him too. "Hey, get the fuck out of here," T would yell out from the tub or toilet, and I would laugh and pass it off as a joke. "When they gonna start descending there, Bro? Pubic hair coming in yet? Ha ha." But it was Jen who would be my one and only and Jen was pretty in a severe manly way, more handsome than pretty, but T was hot. T was under all the glass steps I walked so carefully on when I was around him. T underneath them, like a boy trapped underneath ice floes and needing me to break through the cold blue white and pull him out by his delicious arm pits, and body freezing that I had to put to mine so he would not die of the cold. So I would not die of the cold.. He couldn't help it if his weenie stiffened. I would have to rub it with my hands to warm it up. It's in all the Boy Scout hand books. Honest. And his little stick legs round me and his flinty hips under my hands. How I longed to climb up the bone tree of T, and fit him to a T and nail him to me, and surprise him some wayward Saturday morning. When he was watching his gooney Saturday morning cartoon programs, and just slip in where my penis wanted to be, and hear a gasp between Boo and Berry and Count and Chocula. All laughs and sunny days were T. Who talked sex. Seemed to know all about it. Talked to me. Asked questions. I deflected them and hoped he did not see my face turn the color of a sunset at such times. God how I wanted to tell him--everything. But he just thought I was a dunce. T. A boy who gamboled on the edge of life so instinctively, so reflexively, so eloquently, that it could make my stomach break down into stained glass cheers. And he was over there, right now, cold night, cold room, conserve heat, Mom and Dad said, and I conserved heat from myself, that I tried to stuff into Jen's cold eyes in my dreams that were not dreams. Eyes that were flint and not pretty like T's flinty hip bones I could sometimes sneak a peak at, held in memory so vividly. Jen's eyes were cold and speculative, and questioning me in everything I did and do. She was leaching the child out of me. She wanted to. That was the only way she could feel safe. She, never a child herself. I should not be allowed either. Sex with us--she masturbated me, and did that grudgingly, never letting me forget that grudging part, sighing only in exasperation--was as exciting as opening a sticky bank vault at high noon. And I needed T to put me back inside. I needed his laughs inside me like raptors bouncing against my rib bones, bouncing and pouncing, like our little kittens bopping around the kitchen of a morning when I was putting out their food, and they hopping to the counter, where I used the can opener for their tuna, then to the table where I filled their plates, and then into my heart for they were T in animal form, animal lingo. They believed. And when I was around T, so did I. And if you're fifteen and your name is more incidental than anything else, and you're more of the idea of a boy, the schematic generality of a boy who was good at baseball and who had the graceful swimmer's body and who was not such a shabby swimmer to boot, then you turn to T and you say make me over, and let me hold you in a sexual way. And let the idea of being my bro be a turn on instead of a turn off. Come on, T. Screw me blue. Screw the moon up in its socket, the way it's shining down all hollow and white in little line glimpses between our window blinds and our curtain, and the woods are curly trees that echo with the secret world reverberations of the ears of a big eared boy like you. T, with ears like jug handles and a nose that is a little pink carrot, and let me hold you, let me undertake the biology of you. And tweak and twist and squeeze and joy in you. My cock was, now, rubbed by my hand, and to tell you the truth, my hand did it better than Jen's, my nuts not shrinking like they did with her. And her always using that to pressure me. Always asking, who are you with that you're too used up for me? I wanted to say something like, hell, Jen, you got the big balls in this outfit, why don't you strap on a dildo and go fuck yourself? But I couldn't say it. And I think, T. My refuge at times like that. At all times. But to her I mumble stumble, and stammer and turn away, and T is running across the fields with his little friends, and their laughter is a distant field of winter sky they run upward to. Happy little sounds, their giggles, like gingham all crazy colored and bright pop dyed and crinkled with stencils and big and bold letterings that are touched to the center of the blanket of their childhood, and then whip tossed to the day. And the letters lurch up to the low hanging winter clouds. And they and their creations just dance their socks off. And they make me happy in a sad way. And you are me, T. You came down the chute five years after me, and I paved the way for you. How more intimate can anyone be with anyone else? We shared the womb and the birth canal of the same mom. We were meant to be together. In every way possible. Talk about incest, for Christ's sake!! I made things easier for you because even before I was born I loved you and knew you in your mother's womb. And that is better than God almighty can say for himself, hating a baby in its womb and all. And T, look, please look at me: I have my penis and I pull down the heavy plaid blanket and I expose my dick in the cold glare of the room to you and the night looks in and it smiles in a not happy smile, and I hold me in the shivery dark, some of the cold blowing through chinks in the window frames, and I rub the little head and the slit and I rub the veins on the sides of the shaft, and I think, T, wake up, T, wake up and take me and have this tea with me, and never leave me because I look out for you, and I watch those stupid cartoons in the afternoon and in the A.M. Saturday with you, don't I? I laugh when you do. I choreograph it all. I try to be you. When it's supposed to be the other way round. I try to be clever, but you are always far more so, and try to guess upcoming dialogue or punch lines, but you get them right, I get them wrong. As we huddle in our little paneled mahogany smelling family room, as we curl up on the couch together and you eat your cereal, your eternal chomping cereal, and I eat you with the sides of my eyes glowing against the enamel glint of the TV screen. I try to see you in the cartoons. As a cartoon boy come to life. I see your bright glow to the distant too close to the side of me, and your razzle dazzle giddy always jumpy always heralding your existence body, and the strong straight off, and down to the crashing boulders, sheer cliff of you that I am always in dazed danger of falling over, headlong rushing downward, for you suffer fools most badly. And if you only knew what I think of you, T. God. You would pulverize me. And when I am around you especially I am a most bad fool. T in your Underroos, your obsession with them. You wear them always. Even to school. My favorites on you are the Superman and the Spiderman briefs and you seemingly unaware of your near nakedness to me on the couch bathed in sticky Christmasy flickers from the cathode ray and the lines that make up a picture and through whose cracks I almost fall, hanging by crinkly finger tips, for love of you. And you are a parabola, you are a picker up of sticks, your blonde hair and your pale yogurt colored body, your knees drawn up on that gray couch with all that paneling on all sides of us, fake wood. But not fake boy(s), as you laugh, giggle, fall out, gut roar at things on TV that are nothing at all to me, but I pretend and imitate you. You who are a twisty turny hotcake on the griddle, aglow with happiness, as you, for a moment, then off and running again, rest your chin on your hands on your drawn up knees, and your legs make that little graceful pyramid of boy bones and your briefs ride up a bit on the hip when you do, and I can see sometimes in the secret most desired trails of my nanosecond indiscretions, your even whiter hip bone a bit further up. And I want to smell you, T. I want to feel the boyness of you. I want to move the few inches on that damned couch of eternal endlessly maddening worlds and infinities and times past long to the remembrance of these days when all this has long gone and passed me by, I want to hold you and feel you warm. I want to put my fingers down the tops of your superhero briefs, and I want to feel that little belly button I crave when I feel an innie under my hands and need to unbutton my mind and let me see your penis hard as stone. Only this time, not air brushed by my terrified mind that is really Splat Pat Robertson's smirk in disguise, I sometimes so fear. And you would be the colors of drawings and the colors of deceitful TV, with their near hysterical voice overs of commercials about games and toys that never are that good in real life, as we have eaten our hearts out at breakfast, you still snacking on Sugar Pops, your favorite, and have come here in this long lonely house where mom and dad always vanish especially on weekends. And you will be a boy resting against my shoulder. The word "boy." How I love it. As we watch TV together, as you snuggle--what a capering little imp of a word--against me and tell me I am too big to wear pajamas, that it's really retro fit when you get down to it, and you scout out my crotch as I scout our yours-- --and you put your hand to the nape of my neck and turn your eyes to it and study it like you have always wanted to be a comma in my life, to be a slim warm little boy icicle right into me, feeling into me with the heat of your heart and your sheer usurpating liveliness. Though in reality, when we watch TV in the chilly house, of sleepy Fall and winter Saturday mornings, having no need to dress yet, with the cranky shudder cough basement heater clicking on and clicking off, we were always draped in our individual blankets. But for this fantasy, though intriguing use of blankets can be made, right now, it's best for flesh to see flesh, and rejoice. Boneless in such boniness. A little baby bird trying to find what love looks like on his own face and enjoying seeing how the dots of the future for him would be connected. Oh sport the boner with me, T, and be maple syrup and pancakes of a Saturday morning with the day sprawled and splayed out in front of us, as we are for each other, lackadaisical, silly, not for this or that, or the cherished bike rides up and down gleaming forest paths that always take you out of the house running as soon as your last Transformers had rid the world of badness for good or till this time next week, when they'll do it all over again. But now, no, let the sunshine pennies between the tree fingers on the forest shaded ground wait for a while, let's explore each other's forested areas, the secret beaches that we are and more secret together than apart. Singular together. Becomes two becomes one. Our legs tumbled together. We are nervous. We bite our lips. We pretend our way out of this. Wondering if we want a way out. The punch line is coming soon, I know it. Our hands, shy. Our eyes shyer, closed more than opened. Touching hands, fingers, delicately, like we are suddenly fine blown china, and the window is closed for cold weather to beat on, but the sun shines in on us and on the forest with a pale glow unimpeded, and coral is for your ears when I tickle them, and sea spume for your lips when you burst a bubble of happiness right there on those almost colorless little ledges. Come together. And your hands more resourceful. More daring. Your hands more free, looser hanging, you are not the up tight coat hanger I have become, destined to become even more so, and especially if I am to be locked in captivity with Jen the rest of my days and Jen not to know she is my own punishment for myself though I doubt she would object if she found out; indeed, it would probably make her quite happy. And Xmas soon, and my little drummer boy bro T. My little T boner steak who would put his hand to me first, who would dig down deep and come up with Mr. worm and Mr. worm would turn into Mr. stick and Mr. stick would greedily gulp his little boy hand so elegantly formed and so friendly and so cheerful. Mr. stick would greedily suck at his almost line-free palm, his way not yet known, even by the most reliable gypsy fortune tellers. Oh just to rest still and just to feel the sounds of the TV speakers grinding out blindly about this latest Ken and Barbie doll, when all the sparkle in their Barbie packaging would be nothing, oh live for it, like that in our eyes. Me and Bro. T, we got a thing goin' on. And it would be then I would put my most daring hand right there at his tummy and the entrance to the top of his underroos, and he would be a little ballerina for me and he would wiggle his little hips and would giggle and be coy and flirtatious, and he would lock his legs more firmly with mine, as he pulled my dick from my pajamas fly, no underwear folks, sexier that way!, and he would grin that mischievous grin of I got you where I want you now, you fool, this was my idea all along. God, bro, he would say, you are sure dim when you can't figure this out after all this time. Those chin dimples would kick in. He would rub my dick back and forth in his little hands. He would bounce it from palm to palm. He would test my nuts. Curious about the hair down there. And I would pluck him from his super panties. I would pluck him, and pull the fabric down and I would see his pent up little pleasure dome to my Kubla Khan decreed, and his balls would be so tiny I would have to ask a humming bird to lend me its magnifying glass to see them. I would see how his body parts all wove together into one seductive form, becoming more than the sum of them as well. And I would burst into smiles, and we would be stripping me down and he would pull off his underroos and we would toss our clothes to the floor, and Superman or Spiderman would be lying on the floor in broken blue and white and red comic wonder-- --lost forever to the animation of T's hips against me, my hand under them, so warrrrmmmm they were. And his delight--no joke, please no joke--his excitement at my hard dick that he would play with and be fascinated by. Take that, Mattel. Then we would watch TV without watching it at all for a while. Pretend we weren't naked. Pretend one or the other way. Pretend nothing was going on. Giggle for no reason. And for every reason. We would slowly become aware of each other, oh hello there, and we would rub our dicks and each other's, not looking, casual, men about town--we would tussle and pluck and pet--Saturday morning making it all better somehow. More daring. More innocence on TV. Good bye to innocence for the two boys in front of it-- -- and then his sitting on me, the wonderful weight of him, the surprisingly heavy weight that makes me go whoof-- That makes him smile big and feel good, as he stretches upward, and the long long length of short him somehow just going upward and upward away from me as though he had somehow grown taller naked, a paper ladder. And his dick would be about two or three inches, as big as my thumb or thereabouts, and the TV would play on unattended, unwanted, as he caught my cock in his quick silver water hands and he would bloom me and I would feel the ease inside me, the kind Jen never gave me, and I would feel the shudder doom-- --that T was playing a trick on me, for T could be mean sometimes, when he caught you in something that to his mind was not the truth ten year old boy style, he not learning yet about dissembling and shades of gray this very moment that caught four flies tonight on my tongue, offal penny tasting, this night, in my bed as I jack, and look at T, my dick standing up in the cold-- --as we upend the forgotten box of spun sugar onto the rug, spilling out the cereal, needing cleaning up soon, before Mom and Dad yell at us, but it can wait. I will not think of T as mean in this fantasy. I will not have it. He makes me feel like a fool. I can't tell him so. It would not be a victory for me. I was his servant, his slave, he knew it, I think, but the reason for it, I think, he did not know. --and my dick and me dreaming of Saturday morning the way God intended it to be. He would probably be bored with the whole thing, would get away soon as he could, couldn't wait to tell the guys and laugh at me with them. It's happened before. Not with anything to do with sex. But with other confidences. I endure it. I would die without him. To be able to explore his seamless body, my T. To be able to see him still a baby in many ways but rough and tumble boy in many others. The cuts and bruises inflicted on him in boyland. I would see how he flowed into himself. How his little tits were almost void of color, little wrinkle of sea that gave easily and effortlessly into the rest of his chest, how his face was so uniquely his and how it flowed into his neck and then to his shoulders, and how his stomach flowed easily from his waist, how his groin flowed and flowered his legs. His small narrow shoulders that flowed into his long bone elbowy arms and their candy fingered soft webbed boy hands. And his penis so serene and--ah--cock sure, like an old song that has no edges, as I turn him over on my lap, my boner bending when his crotch comes in contact with it-- --his little hard on and my larger one saying how de do to each other, and my lightly and painlessly spanking his hips (so sexy, doing that to him, feeling his cock move on my lap each time) that merged for the crack and then turned ease of cornfields under a gentle summer breeze to his hips and to his legs up and down and around, and his spine that curved so sprightly and from which flowed his back that I can kneed and need and want so terribly badly. And I turn away from him, now, on my bed, and I masturbate into the Kleenex kept waiting by my side, and I do the usual thing I always do when I masturbate. I want him to know this. To taunt me for it. To hurt me for it. That would be something at least. Better than this. I feel rotten and wrong and stupid and not the big brother T wants. Though I perform big brother duties and am the one to get him out of fights and out of school and out of trouble and out of detention with a few words spoken to the demigods who lord themselves over him, the demigods of child or so called adult who think my athletic abilities make me some kind of letter jacketed hero. How shallow and stupid people are. And if T gets in trouble and he gets in a whale of a lot of trouble, then big bro will always come to the rescue, with his letter jacketed arm round Jen often as not. And me wanting to put my other arm round T's shoulders. I don't dare. Me and Jen. Perfect couple, perfect cast, perfect timing, as T goes winsomely down the garden path from this deflected fist fight or that deflected two week study hall detention. As Jen and I walk behind him and I walk fast, but Jen walks slow and slows me down like I'm in the field of an iron magnet, and T gets so far up ahead that in a short time I can't see even his hips that I would like to bend over to me and rub his ass and feel his little exclamation mark of a penis on the opposite side of him, and sometimes I swear Jen knows it. But she couldn't. She thinks it's another girl. Or does she know and she is waiting for the most devastating time to tell me? Like maybe T is doing too. How can you love people who hurt you so much. Love isn't supposed to hurt like this, is it? I don't know. I'm just asking. You know, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind seeing T as a girl in frills and flounces and petticoats and summer dresses and little girl tresses, cause it would turn me on, and thinking of T I come into my bulls eye Kleenex. To find a little boy and his body and his penis in girl's clothes. Shakespeare knew what he was doing with all those girl roles played by boys. Why don't they ever mention that in school? What it was really all about. My come has gotten to be thick and milky and there seems to be a great deal of it, though I only have myself to judge by. And I come and feel lousy and want to get T to do my milking any old time he wants. How I would like to anoint his mouth with sperm. Mine. As the moon wavers in optical illusion and the forest limbs fold and extend and bend in the wind, and the moon stands still while all life goes dancing canting trotting past it, all giving the moon a vague illusory sense of movement to us, and everything is dream really, so why can't dream be reality and everything thus be dream and real at once? In the huddle of the shadows, in the quiet land of sleep, with T in my mind, naked, both he and my mind-- --except for T, now. I hear a noise. I turn my head and see T standing there. Real from shadow. Shadow from real. I am still in the after effects of cuming. Loggy. Tired. I am dreamy and lost among the stars. It is a moment before I feel the old fear cutting through the womb of self comfort. What the hell is happening? For he has a drum and sticks and he is beating on it. When did this come about? He has seen my dick in the air, the covers off me. Oh god, now even the dreaming ends. Comes: The joke. The laughs. The goldmine of hysteria he would suck from for months. I shrivel. I fear. His drum he holds right before his crotch, ugly word for such a magical place where deepest dreams can come true, and he is looking at me, in the middle of the now fairy bright moon white shadow forested room, as he hits the drum skin in metronome style. He's drumming me off the planet, I think. His blond hair has cascaded down his forehead to his sleepy sexy cat green eyes and he looks at me through waves of hair, and there is ever so seductive a smile on his lips. I tremble now for different reasons. That mischievous let's see what I can damn well get away with this time? grin, that just floors me. And his legs move and he starts to come toward me and the damn drum hides the best part of him, the glory glory part of him, but then all of his body and the boy it houses are the best parts. He is banging out something that might resemble some portion of "The Little Drummer Boy" and he stands by my bed, and looks at me in shadow show. Do with me what you will, I think to him. I will obey. He is the shadow box that catches me so easily in his eyes and reflects me on the wall behind me in his own dreamy half asleep way, his mouth open in a sweet little O of a yawn, as he welcomes me into Xmas land, only two weeks away, the Xmas tree already in the living room, the tree I pray to every night to bring me T and nothing else and we will be happy together, amen. P.S. I'll never ask you for another thing, oh except maybe that Jen gets hers sometime, like mono or something, so she can be a laughing stock, thank you. Course since she sees only me, I will be a laughing stock too. But, with T on my side, it would be worth it. And T, is setting aside the drum and sticks, putting his hands down on the bed, lowering himself to his knees, naked boy, and my hands rushhhhh to his tits and the ocean flow of the boy of unconscious style and scraped knee abandon in the ship that is him on my long ocean voyage, passing on a momentary path with me early in my life, said life to be an emptier ocean for the rest of it's time, now that such a thing has happened, and soon gone. Do I dream this now? Did T see me whacking off and thought this was a good time to make his move? Is the joke going to happen now? My stomach is knotted. Did T actually really get out of bed on his socked feet, for the cold weather eats into the boards of the floor, and nothing else on him, put on the drum from somewhere, and start beating his way over to me in his ship channel passage before the light of day happens again and this has never occurred tonight at all? And I push the covers the rest of the way back, and we are naked now together and he lies on my bed and we hold each other and he feels my chills and I feel his internal combustion engine made of Julys. We hold tightly. "It'd be even more fun if I was wearing my underroos and you took 'em off," he says in that little squeaky boy voice, and I delicately flower pinch his ears and his little carrot nose, and I say, "There's time for that later on." And T says, "Merry Christmas, bro." To which I almost feel my throat hurt, as I say back, "Merry Christmas, T' and for the first time we really meant it. What we were saying between the words and behind them and on top of them and in the framework and fabric of them was a swearing to fealty. I hoped. And we lie together. His body in my bed. My suddenly crowded warm comforting bed. As he puts his head on my shoulder and we lie like that for a long time, feeling us, feeling ourselves harden, and he says he wants to see my cum, so I turn on the bedside light, and he is a naked elf with me, he is a flower stem that took one look at that self obsessed Grecian lad, laughed at his stuck up ness, and pulled him into the pond, and then took the boy's place, and made himself into my bro T. And we---begin. T, who has it all over that Grecian lad by miles. Who will soon have me all over him too. And since it's coming up Xmas and silent nights make way for dreams you wouldn't feel right to dream any other time of the year, but ones that no child is immune to, whatever those dreams be, however old said child himself or herself may be, then let's not ask if this has been real or just more phony baloney. Let's just keep the question to a simpler purer level: Who came first? Me? Or T? That was no lady, no Jen, for sure, for who I waited at the door; no, it was T I waited for, and who came my way. T for tiger. And was he ever! So, Merry Xmas to everybody, from my wild ass bro T. And, if anyone should momentarily, vaguely and politely, pretend to care, Merry Xmas also from me.