Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 05:47:30 -0500
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: "The Cinder Track Runner"

			 "The Cinder Track Runner"
				    by
			     Timothy Stillman

"....when all the others turn their backs and walk away/
you can count on me to stay..."
Paul Williams
"You and Me Against the World"

He ran and he was beautiful. He was the high school track
star, and he was lovely. He was blonde, long haired, and
the thick hair was pushed backward by the wind, and he
was everything in the world. He took my breath, he took
my heart, and that exact heart breaking moment as I sat
on the bleachers this cold winter day, looking at him fly
down the track round the football field, round and round,
worlds inside him, thin, sweet face like made of pink
sunset, and love was him, and everything tipped to the
time of his rhythm. Everything was china blue skies, and
he had made them, and the clouds, there was never a
cloud like any other, for he was above all else, a creator,
and see the muscles in his legs, lit fire legs, lit heart in his
body as his heart beat to my tune and my tune would
always be him, and there was never anything in him for me
but love, for that was how it was supposed to be.

He was a crystalline product as he ran, and he rushed his
hands into the cold bitter wind, he in his T shirt and blue
gym shorts and black socks and gym shoes, and he was
machine and machine was beautiful for machine was
human and machine was him, and his arms cantilevered
every now and then, and there was something about his
stretching his fingers out to the wind and beating it back
with his vulnerability, and he was blue smoke on the ring
of fibers that make up the sky, for if you unravel the sky
you unravel him, this enigma, this boy of the finer songs,
and the quick rabbity smile and the shy down turned eyes,
the awkwardness was carried off with such skill and such
eventfulness, that you wanted to call home and say hey
gang I've found my true love, and Harlan Ellison who was
right about much, but not this, for I was not born the day
my true love died, and I did not die the day my true friend
was born, and Joel ran, and his running was a piece of
white flame in the wilderness, as I sat on the splintery
bench and aimed my traction at him, aimed my traction at
his shoes on the cinder track that was so noisy, and so
cumbersome, as was the tree over that way, and the high
school rust red sprawl of building behind it, and Joel was
never behind anything even though he stroked silently, and
I loved him, at the beginning of everything--stroke. At the
end of everything--stroke. What a lousy evil and double
faced word that was, and the thing was I was dressed in
my school clothes, and he knew me enough to say hi to
me, but mostly he was within himself, mostly he was the
town and the world and what was up there in space---

And he rocketed and he was so graceful at it, and there
was nothing in those eyes but wonderful peace, splendid
contentment that he was himself and nobody else, and it
made my eyes tense and tent as I watched him, as I
watched the willow tree body, as I watched him play with
the wind, and deny nothing, be what he was, and his arms
pistoning with his legs, and his body his and something he
was outside of and using at the same time. He was a
stamp on the world and he was ready to be someone else
for he was on that cusp too far down of boyhood to
manhood, and I felt him as he ran, and I felt him as his
breathing enlarged and became its own echoy brilliantly
dark room, at least in my own mind, and I wanted to love
him and did love him--stroke--bad/beautiful word, stroke
as his legs hit the track with such clockwork precision, as
his heart strained not even a little, he was a fireplace on a
winter day, he was the machine human who still had the
feelings deep in his smooth flat chest and stomach and in
his eyes that were brown of farm brown where he lived,
and he was the wall that everybody runs to and everybody
falls flat as they run into it, and he was with me, and it was
sky time, and sky time was nothing more than love that
happened when it is supposed to, when there is something
more than life and legs and arms slender and hands wise as
though running the lap after lap after lap, he was there on
the edge of becoming angel, he was on the edge of
becoming supernatural, he was only one moment of life,
the moment that said this is what all the galaxies were
built for, this is what the evolutionary process from
amoebae onward to this moment means, and you can stop
here, God, you've finally gotten it right, and it was
nothing else before or after this; I forgive you God for all
the mean kids, because now there's Joel; I forgive you
God because you couldn't help me understand Math just a
little bit better; I forgive you God because you couldn't
make me a little, just a little less lonely, accept things
better, though I prayed every night for you to just let me
be a little less sad, who would it have killed? I say thank
you God for all those childhood crucibles, because Mecca
is finally here.

You made Joel, God, and you got it right, every cell in his
body, every moment of his life, the fact that he exists in
their terrible hollow necked world, you made my love and
we are together, and he runs and he dines on the cold, and
he sups on the love I feel for him, and he never does
anything wrong, though he does a great many things
wrong, he trips in the class room sometimes or going to
lunch, and he trips and he dopes and he is clumsy and
awkward and he's never had a straight on day in his life,
but his smile gets him through, and he excels at running,
and we run together, and I am beside him, and he looks at
me and takes my hand and he holds my hand and we are
both in love with him, and he makes it not narcissistic, he
makes it not something off side and not right, as we face
the wind and the world together, and nobody gets to beat
me up anymore for any reason whatsoever, teachers don't
get to berate me cause I'm stupid, and love happens to me
this time with Joel and it just doesn't pass me boy on, and
I touch his hand and his hand is a glass of milk shake and
its cool and its delicious to the drinking hold of my palm
and he shelters me, and he wants me as I want him, and
we run together, into a kind of infection of perhaps, that
dreaded country I lived in for so long, and perhaps has
borders, or the potentiality of borders, and then they stay
away, they check out, they eye me strangely, and it
doesn't matter that I weep on Joel's shoulder, it doesn't
matter that sometimes I wake in the night, sobbing. For
we always go to bed together, and snuggle our way to
sexually satiated sleep.

He holds me and tells me its all right, and he is himself
still, and he is himself naked and beautiful the night he ran
the cinder track, wearing only his gym shoes, and the
night he ran with me, and he hardly touched the ground,
and he was all those little things you see out of the corner
of your eye, but don't dare turn to look at the glittering
gold dust there, because you know it will just go away
soon and sooner than that. From a distance he looked like
a scrawny bird, but up close he looked like the only god I
would ever  worship and he was naked now and he was
running and I looked at the interlocking of his muscles, I
looked at how free he was, how he did not claw the world
with tight mouth gripped muscles, how he did it with ease,
how he ran into it and was not tired, and in this cold night,
that cold afternoon, this night with us in silence of love in
our house, how his penis was hard and standing straight
up, bouncing against his stomach, tall penis and it was
bouncing up and down and he felt it hitting his tummy
over and again and he looked at me and he laughed and
his laugh was a feather bed of wonder, his laugh was a
feather bed of friend, and more than friend, as his buttocks
were so tight and so globular and so hard they did not
jounce one bit when he ran, and he was all the time
running, for he would never stop running, for there was
too much in the world to see and do and he had little time,
not like Tadzio had little time, but the way even gods have
it, and he was far better than Tadzio, and he held my hand
and we ran through the black skies, and I touched out to
him, to his naked shoulder, and I thought Olympus would
have been shamed in front of us, in our grace and daring
and skill, and we would never put on clothes again, and
we would never be winded or ashamed or needing this
drug or that, and I would be Joel's drug, I would be the
fine cold wan flesh of him, I would hold him within
himself, he would not be an extension of me, but I of him,
and he would not perform so I could see how not lonely I
was anymore, we would instead be in each other at the
same time, for even golden gods like Joel get lonely, and
he was a lonely figure this afternoon in his gym clothes, he
looked like the end of Saturday night on a January day,
the end of freedom, church the next day, school the next,
and he stroked and I stroked, and the worlds of that word
and the woods of that world betraying laughter one
moment and in too fine a dance to the next moment oh
god no...

And the blend of afternoon and the evening when we ran
naked. When he reached over and with giggly mischief in
his eyes and mouth, touched my penis head, tickled it and
made it erect, for this was not easy for me, to run this fast,
to keep up, and yet it was easy and I remembered the first
time I saw him, in the lunch room, sitting by the long
unwashed windows at the back, behind all those squabbly
ugly bully kids, and hidden by them, him playing desultory
games with the fork and the food on his plate on his tray,
his head down, he looked like he was crying, his long sun
hair hanging over his face, trying to hide him, like he was
saying to himself, get me out of here, away from this mob,
oh please, and my heart dived into him and I never wanted
to come out of the country of him, I never wanted to
know any topography other than that of Joel's.

He fascinated me, I feared him, I feared for him when it
was obviously he was on drugs, and I screamed his name
silently in the hall way when he passed by and when he did
not, and I worried over him when you did not show up for
school, whether or  not he was sick, and if sick, why,
drugs?, had he scored from the wrong dealer, man? like
the nitwits say, and was he in jail, or had he died, taking
too much, and I found my mind skittled on days like that,
and I found myself thanking a God I hated the next day or
the next day when Joel was there with his plaid work shirt,
and his heavy jeans and his farmer's boots, and I became
out of myself, and I did not say it and I did not know he
knew but the hammer shaped and confusion of the school
hallways brought me to him, and he ran that winter
afternoon and he ran for me, for I was the only one there,
and he ran to show off, he ran beside me in my dreams, as
I masturbated over and again in the night, as I was careful
to always come on the Kleenex, Laddy Buck of "The
Carpetbaggers"--which had such hot passages in it for me,
the kid, then--taught me that.

And Joel's back was an etching of spine and bumps like he
was a ladder giver who extended even that out of his
clumsiness with girls, of his nodding off in class, of his
mind that wandered more and more but never to me, so I
had to be his mind, I had to be what he was not becoming,
what he was slipping down into, and I hated the damned
drugs and I hated that he was so damned sad, and I hated
that he was caught in his blonde world where no one
could know what he thought, down in the seas of him,
down in the world of Joel where he lived more uniquely
than the rest of us did in our stupid little worlds, and we
stroke, and we stroke in the beginning and at the ending,
and Joel and I stop on the cinder field that late midnight
and we touch and hold each other, and our penises still
hard and spongy tangle with each other, and he wiggles
his hard on at mine and I wiggle mine back, and we press
into each other and I hold his hips and he holds mine, and
he is breathing just a bit hard from running, and pretends
that I am not breathing hard like a locomotive out of
steam, and in love and in Joel's arms and loneliness was
banished for both of us, maybe more for him than for me,
I can't say, but we stood there for a long time, being
happy naked out doors on this cold winter moonlit
midnight, and we kissed and his mouth was heavy with
sleep and his eyes closed and I held him and he held me
and we were the only things in the world that had the right
to be loved and to love...

...and we fell slowly, and extra slowly into our house, into
where we were now, into the flanges of the dream come
true, and it was still us and still what we were, and we
could not bear to be out of our house, could not bear to
be away at our jobs, and we would meet for lunch and we
would be so happy to see each other, the flooding of my
eyes with the sight of him, of course we had to keep it
quiet there in public, but at night--

--the field of Joel was brown leaves crackling underneath
me, and the field of Joel was the night sky being friendlier
and more understanding than the day sky which let's face
it just doesn't give a damn, but the night was Joel, and the
night was his penis waiting to be rubbed, and his balls firm
in their sacs, and the little wormy like scuttery vein on the
left side of his forehead, that pulsed so delicately, and he
was running in his mind and sex was running and stroking
was running, and there was never a normalcy more normal
than this, the taking off of each other's clothes, so fumble
fingered, so pretending we were not doing what we were
doing, so standing on a side walk just passing the time of
day with a friend,  talking about nothing in particular, like
we did this every day of the week, averting eyes, smiling
to ourselves, smiles filled with fear, avoiding each other's
eyes, but slowly, then slowly...

 the memory of the first time, and the great grand
penultimate awareness that he was right here with me, and
he was as hung up on me as I was on him, and there was
the sweetness of the farm we lived on, not the farm he
lived on with his parents, but our farm, and he was
faithful, and he had his peculiarities as I had mine, and we
always tried to come together, and though we never
probably did, we did have that goal in mind, and the first
time I bit his pale nipples and my tongue ran down his
naked chest, stopping to lick each encoded rib bone, and
his giggles now, I can hear them, like a girl, his laughter,
like cold water of a stream on a terribly hot summer day,
and sometimes we would go to a gay club, though
seldom, so he could prove his love to me, and how he
turned from the men there interested in him, and he
dismissed some who were brave enough to try to talk to
him in that blue strobe lighting and the dance music no
one could be heard over, and blue Joel blue boy in the
light of the bar always left with me and me alone, hey how
about that, me leaving with the most beautiful guy in the
room. Fancy that, willya? Their eyes licking him as he
walked away from them. And he always walked away
from them. With me..

For we were faithful in our fashion. Because, you see, we
were alike after all, incredibly alike, because he was more
me than me, except for the drugs and his running
marathon magic, he was like me, and he was a druggie
and a track runner, track star, because he was scared of
the world, like I was, all the times I thought his clumsiness
was just a tiny bit of an act, all the times he tripped over
his boots and almost fell, all the times he failed a test or a
class, see, I thought being the conceited s.o.b. that I am,
that he did it for attention, so someone would help him up
or help him out, and I pretended that person was me, I
wanted to, I froze, no one else even noticed him, and it
was, he told me later on, as we stroked, that he had fallen
in love with me sometime back there, and he did need me,
as much as I needed him, and it got even better, because
he needed me maybe a bit more than, and that was Joel,
and Joel came home to our house of pine, and Joel came
home to me, and Joel was scared of the world, really
really scared of it, even more than I was.

And he huddled like breakable glass next to me, and we
masturbated each other, and the truth then came to me as
his warm hand massaged my penis, he really was fragile
glass, he was not how a loved one is thought of when one
thinks of them that way, one wants the fragile glass person
to be the strong one, to be the one to help them along, to
know how to use that fragile glass, to make it work for
him and me, and gradually and gradually I felt he was
stealing my soul, and gradually and gradually he felt I was
stealing his, we never said, we just knew. And we loved
each other, and some years passed, and we were running
in our lovemaking in a world of beauty and cold and night
and youth and the tender songs that defined us, and our
deep intrinsic need for each other, and the world ganged
up on us during the day, but we had each other at night,
thank you Paul Williams for that lovely song.

It didn't happen all at once, we didn't kill each other by
the inch with ennui or disinterest or chagrin, no matter
how it falls, and we loved each other into existence with
each other, we needed and were given comfort, I gave
him oral sex and he came in my mouth and it was Joel in
my mouth and how truly magic it was, but time if it does
not change a person, deepens what that person already
was, and that meant solitude, for as boys we had jacked
off, hate that phrase, gotta go get the wrench, mom, so I
can jack off the car, back in an hour or so, but our
lovemaking had been ourselves in solitude, till there was
us, we were virgins with each other, and now it seems like
we are virgins yet again, not that re-virgining crap the
Christers spout that is such a goddam lie, but the fact that
to be with each other, to be as close to each other as we
could possibly be, in this and this alone, Joel and I
gradually took to jacking off, back in a minute, mom,
doesn't take as long now, to jack off the car, in different
rooms of our home at the same time, the kid excitement
that he was doing it too in the bedroom, just what I was
doing in the living room on the couch, and we sometimes
made our come noises louder so the other could hear, but
it sounded animalistic after a time, so we stopped that, it
had no grace to it, as when we made love as beautiful as a
bell on snowy cold Christmas morning when nothing will
ever be as magnificent, as heart wrenching as that, it was
also awkward love making and clumsy and we had to
dream our eyes closed to make it objectively what it was,
and if you notice for the last few pages, the attempt bad as
it was of poetry is gone, and now the writing is more
mechanical, more realistic, let's use that word instead of
the word harsh, because it is not, it just is, we find it more
romantic to dream each other apart from each other,
though we are together all the times we can be other than
that.

And I dream of the boy in the next room, who told me
back in high school when our wavery hi in the hallway
ducked into my being his friend and he being mine, mostly
because no one his age came to the meets or his running
training, but me, and it happened so gradually that way, so
painfully that way between us, such a silly thing, but
because he was Joel, and he said, because I was me, what
a wonderful silly thing to have happen, that he had begun
jacking off imagining me as I did imagining him, so we
have reverted to this, for a few years now, and we're
careful not to bump into each other going to the bathroom
to flush away the Kleenex, and that maybe is where I will
end it, for that's the pity of the thing, the after effects,
what we strive for the very most, what makes us happy or
sad or both, just gets flushed down the toilet....

... from the high wire tension tensile strength of Joel
running track and winning meet after meet, watched by
small audiences, mostly the parents of the runners, and the
majestic snow fall mountain we climbed as we climbed
each other's penises and achieved Valhalla, we came to be
two men who masturbate in different room, because that
makes us feel closer to each other than actually having sex
with each other, two men who are pretending to be boys,
who still love each other dearly, but love our childhood
loneliness more, and perhaps even our kid gawkiness for I
was more gawky than he, for, it seems to me, thinking it
through the best I can, a person can get hooked on
anything, a person can even get hooked on being alone
and sad and coming by himself and sobbing a bit
afterwards, because it has a certain nobility to it.

Yes, we love each other, and think of each other when we
"do it" but we never talk about it. Joel will just get up
from the dinner table or I will, or he'll look at me as we
watch TV or read, and I nod, and the lovers go to their
separate corners. You see, we were each other's dream
before we knew our secret, and the awesome awareness
of being another person's dream, it sounds fantastic,
doesn't it? But dreams can't be dreams after a time, and
this is our way of preserving it, as best as we can, for as
long as we can.

I apologize, Joel, for making you my dream.  That's a
tough thing to put on a person, for either of us to live up
to. But the thing of it is, you over there in the next room,
I love you, with all the honesty in me, and then sometimes
after I've come, I put my arms round my chest and hold
myself, pretending its Joel holding me, Joel in the very
next room, as I pray he is doing the very same thing,

And I whisper, "Joel." Hoping he will/won't hear me.
Which after all would be worse?

Timothy Stillman
comewinter@earthlink.net