Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 14:25:11 -0700 From: Tim Stillman Subject: "Naked Tom Sawyer and His Halloween Guests" "Naked Tom Sawyer And His Halloween Guests" by Timothy Stillman Paul grimaced. On this cool gray skies day in Disneyland, with his two younger brothers, Mark and Jack. "Show them a good time. They're driving us nuts, with Halloween coming up soon. Get them out of our hair." How big a deal that made Paul feel. 14 and being taken into confidence by his mom. Great. Even putting up with these two rug rats would be worth it. For he had for the first time been introduced to the door of the adult world through which he was eager to go. The younger boys wanted scares though. There was their old friend "Haunted Mansion," good for more than a graveyard walking corpse ectoplasmic ghosts right in front of your eyes two inches away with all that dry ice cold fog smog boo or two, but it had been totally dipped up and destroyed by the new theme there based on "The Nightmare Before Christmas"-all cartoony and non scary and nonsensical too. Even Jack and Mark were bored with it, even the fast ride through it had left much undone. So now he, and his brothers, who were groaning all the way, but Paul had to sit down somewhere for he had been chaperoning these two around the park all day and he was beat as adults sometimes are, were on the Mark Twain paddle boat as it sailed down a river that had no dinosaurs in it, to stick heads, rubbery or otherwise upward through it, that had no Mickey Mouse heads floating by, (Paul hated Disneyland, he was a woos boy for being here at all) though there were some fearless ducks that paddled close to the double decker boat, and then away, content and safe in this somewhat dreary world of fantasies forever bested by the Universal Studios tour, which had dinosaurs that ate you, The Terminator 2 up close, guns blazing, all that glittery silver high tech detonating, with eye popping three D effects, a journey careening through outer space, and King Kong rocking your soul--the many reasons Paul had wanted to go there. The many reasons his parents would not let him today. Not with his brothers. Too scary. Too much fun. "They're too young. They got shot into space and beyond in "Back to the Future" and they cried for days in fear. They had dreams of being roasted alive thanks to that "Waterworld" show. And, when you're at Disneyland, don't you dare take them on the Indiana Jones ride or to the "Honey I Shrunk the Audience" show, the giant snake and mouse and especially that gigantic futz from Monty Python have terrified them as much as they ever will get a chance to again." Great. So here we are on a paddleboat. From the 1800's. Fake. Kids bored. Parents getting that parent face--see honey this is great, no we will not ski down the Matterhorn, it would scare you. Scare the parents, they mean, but don't say. So Paul sitting on the green bench, first floor, legs crossed, one elbow on one knee, the hand supporting his chin. Mark and Jack sitting listlessly beside him. The music and someone doing Twain's voice, the tiredness of the exhibit, the things parents take because they have to get unrattled from the tea cup rides that have put them in permanent broken inner ear servitude that will surely make them dizzy their whole lives through. And me, Paul thought. Me, watching Tom Sawyer Island. Those fake caves. And fake dangers. Those painted dun colored rocks and little minarets of hills. A child goes by. Running by, just as Twain's voice pulled from the grave says well friends here's my island, my Tom Sawyer Huck Finn island, where a boy can be a boy all his life and never answer to no one. At that moment. A child rushing by. Alone. Singular. Wearing bright red shorts and bright blue shirt. Feet in tennis shoes. Transformed suddenly on the hills there into a different boy, a boy, frozen for a moment as in an old tintype, then real and full of life, and running hard, wearing only overalls, both straps dangling, pants that rode low on his bony hips, the boy become stringy and twangy. Wearing the requisite straw hat. Barefooted of course. A little ways beyond him, there were more boys, a few girls, some parents, too. But right at the moment it seemed a gust of time had reached into a book and had touched magic, bringing Tom to life. An errant hope. An errant knight who needed to knife through the dismal day just a short week before All Hallows. Seeing that first boy thrilled Paul. For it was Tom Sawyer his own self Paul saw. Paul. Who liked boys. Who was entranced by the sunbeams in the corners of their eyes that the boys themselves could not possibly know were there. The effect of more children on the island, the other side of the bank actually, in unreality, the plastic white bones of pirates sticking up from the caves of Paul's mind and deposited across the way, across that ribbon of blue that must be quite cold with this low temperature of a day. He held that boy in his eyes. Tall the boy was. All gangling limbs and loose gaited. Running sure up a rocky path. More than a match for Injun Joe. All in a Mississippi that had been a sun glint off a rocky hill top that found, in Paul's mind, himself and his two brothers stashed away from the reality encroaching on all sides of the theme park, but in here, ,on that grand island--hide me away forever more. And no other children over there. Only Tom. Past the whitewash scam, past the church Sunday schools, on the other side of the cave with no need of Becky Thatcher. and night winds that blow steam in them. Blow steam and hear the cicadas ratchet away on their fiddle legs with their bows. When the night is a heavy physical encumbrance. And Paul and his mind where it always was. Magic needed to happen. Goldfish needed to shed gold dust. Tom in the cave now with the flag that had a naked boy's silhouette on it, turned sideways, that boy, sprouting an erection that was for a quiet Saturday night, in the tin bathtub giving himself the ritual Saturday night scrubbin', when you could count on more than technological tricks and 3-D glasses, that had more excitement in it and more fun than all the banged about screams you could muster in that mad crashing ride through Indiana Jones territory. And Mark and Jack turned to Paul. There in the cave. There in the cold and the darkness. They accepted they were somehow suddenly here. Tom with the flag he had been holding when he stood on the top manor of the hills of his domain. Tom with the flag that said quietly, that said, fun can be had without clothes in this summer time suddenly. Clothes that were trees of bark that had no bite to them. Clothes that said all over the place "ashamed" even when third and fourth and 20th reasons were given for wearing them, all starting with the phrase, "It's not my idea..." And Paul gathering his voice together, slowly, standing in the presence of this boy who seemed gold even in the darkness. There in the cold barrel refineries underneath the earth when dinosaurs raise their heads in boys' minds and never let them rest free again. Tom. God of summer. God of Main Street, which Paul and his brothers had broken kneed bent heart walked down and everyone but them pretending it was the eighteen hundreds, and a band concert soon, with more than enough people around who not only knew who Abe Lincoln was, but who were there when he made his Gettysburg address, and did not need the animatronic Abe Lincoln, inspiring as it was, to make them imagine. They didn't need to imagine. There was the emporium, and clerks who wore puffy shirts with red armbands, and straw hats. There was all of it. Hollow and the jawbreakers. Hollow and the cotton candy. Hollow and adults wearing Mickey Mouse ears and looking stupid as hell. Even had their names stitched on the back of their mouska hats. But Paul going to Tom now. Across the rocky floor. Almost faltering. Then catching himself. Feeling with the tendrils of his body hairs the boy who lived again, lived for the first time, lived forever. The boy wearing only bib overalls. His chest bare. His nipples hard in the cold. A crinkly brown smile on his dark sun tanned face. Paul felt all of this without touching. Saw all of this without seeing. Aunt Polly would tan Tom good if he got home late. And thinking that, all four boys did, Tom merrily shrugged. He had gotten switchin' all his life. He could put up with it a lot longer. And then the boys, Paul and his brothers, like midnight leaves blown against a lamp post on Halloween night, found themselves clinging to Tom, strong boy and vibrant boy. Stringy boy with a hay straw in his mouth. His old felt torn spat on ripped on hat pushed back high on his head. Tom holding the boys. Tom feeling them against him. The comfort of the thing. The rightness of the thing. And the three boys were shivering there in the cold cave that was not the cause of their shivering. Tom knew and held his warm brown sun arms round them as best he could. They were telling him, without saying a word, these three brothers, don't let us grow up, we've seen enough of it, heard enough of it, just--don't. And Tom whispering into their ears, all the ears at once, a boy voice, but like Mr. Lincoln said in the exhibit, in the ear phones, a voice that was wise and all encompassing and like liquid love poured into all of them, "don't die." And the boys found themselves pulling off their clothes in a mad abandon. Mark and Jack became boys again. Knock about. Fearless. Knife hunters. Cannibal head shrinkers. Show me King Kong and let me at him cause I'm loaded for monster. They were all boys one more time. Even Paul whipping off his clothes, so serious these days, so staid, so adult. The park could not work the magic on them. Tom Sawyer did though. What a great name for a kid. What a great name for a kid you could lie with under the panoply of Halloween night stars and count the distance from an on your back pissing contest and who got the most urine in their chests and in their mouths won and won big. What a magical sprite introduced into the boys all naked. All beamed with identity that was any they wanted. Any identity that was forever locked up with buckles and belts and buttons and zippers was no identity at all. The need to be seen. The need to exhibit the rocky slopes of their hips. The boxy chests. The penis dangling down and one second whish up breathing for air like that giant up in your face three d python never imagined such strength such a motor hum that was in the groins of all boys know it or not that said feed me into hands and play with me and warm my balls here in the cave that was made of real rock, the floor that was made of real stone. Come and hear the confessions of the boys as they lay in a huddle beside each other, legs entangled. Secrets spoken in echoes. Come and see the hearts of books and forget those three corn scarecrow husks still back there on the paddlewheel. They can go back and be us. They can fool parents. Make parents think these are their sons, and how grand it is they've calmed down, have some sense now, don't drive us mad in our very own houses with boy screams in the night time hours and slidings down banisters and shooting each other and getting up more alive than before, to try to drive themselves down to death one more time. Thank God for the difference. As in the mind of Tom Sawyer, the three brothers walked proudly naked outside the cave, to face the gray late afternoon already so old it had a gray beard on it. And the paddle boat went its banjo strumming way all sunny sun in sunless cold wind climes, as children and adults, stunned, gaping, limbs akimbo, saw the naked boys and turned the phrase, naked boys, over and again in their minds, and found it not such a bad choice of words, opening up the clothes to show the pinkness inside or the darkness inside. There brothers and Tom the fourth brother. There what libraries will do to you, where they will get you. There were only the four of them on the island. There was mud to run to and fall into and make mud cakes of themselves. There were brooks that true to form lept and washed the brown earth off. For earth was here. Earth to run on and heavy air to breathe and young nostrils and lungs to take in that air and combust their now active now skittering now skipping now somersault turning bodies in the whirlwind of boyhood and never get beyond it. Never find a tree not worth the sitting in of all those green leaves that comprise endless summer days. The senselessness of the Haunted House makeover, the creaky pointless attempt at the merging of Halloween and Christmas, with Christmas trees holding giant pumpkins and the odd ghosts floating by, the delivery of graveyard mandibles by a harbinger of Halloween round the Christmas tree Christmas Eve--all of that gone--but the merging of summer and Halloween, especially here in California, they lived side by side, those two seasons, they were one and the same. The weather said. The hearts of boys said. And these particular boys of July held Tom Sawyer upside down, as Mark, always the most daring of the brothers, stroked Tom's erect and goodly erect too penis, as Tom was held by his ankles high up in the air, as though he was made of straw, so easily they held him, they far slighter than he was. As he was made of dreams and madness beneath cat claw and cat screech moon as Paul reached his hand to Tom's brown buttocks--for the boy of Twain land sunned himself naked in this place every chance he got. Paul studying his hand on the upside down buttocks. The rocks of them. The hills of them. The perfect moon halves of them. Like a moon cow had crushed down on planet earth a long time ago, decided it was lonely for home and thus created an up close replica and given it to Tom's backside. Tom laughing. Tom with the straw still between his front teeth. His sweaty tobacco stained torn hat falling back ward off his head. And the air was October cool and the air was summer hot and Fall leaf cold and pumpkins were on front porches, pumpkins already lit and waiting for the Greatest Night of the Year, as the boys, Mark and Jack, held Tom and stroked his hard long foreskin pulled back penis and touched his balls, and put their hands wonderingly and unafraid to Tom's groin hair that was wild and like a little jungle all his own. Tom of dirt and clay and sand and silt and the smell of cavernous secrets all over him, hay lofts jumped from, into the hay stack below, naked of course he had been, and the sheer wonderment of the feel of his naked body itching with all that straw. Like the noon day Saturday sun come for him in each of the tickling straw knives, and enveloping him and making him laugh, at this mirage of body revitalizing. Not revitalizing like Aunt Polly's anti aging liquids bought from some fly by night snake oil peddler, that did no good at all, so she just bought and took more of the stuff, no none of that. But only revitalizing the way a boy could understand. That makes the blood pump harder. That makes the skin itch like it's got something so grand, such a marvelous joke, to tell under all that red thrashing it gets from hay and rolling about in it. Even the chiggers marked Tom's body with interesting road ways. Interesting intersections. And flies buzzing about his ears. Not the fake fly sounds in the ear phones at the Lincoln exhibit from another time another land where everything was fake real, where this was real as real could ever be. How Tom's tummy, tight and laced with strong muscles, pushed in and out, as he reached one hand for Mark's balls, and the other hand for Jack's hard on. Tom squeezed and rubbed and was squeezed and rubbed in return. Golden red headed genies. Dark and peeping genies. Boys glorying in the feel of the hot wind, the cold graveyard wind, swirling and darkling round their bodies, the eddies of winds that drank of the boys as the boys drank of the winds. Bejeweled and rubies and Paul rubbing his hands around the hips and the opening of Tom's ass. The need of boys barefoot. The need of boys of another century whose souls were not creped with the devices of the 21st, who had no need of blastings off into space or video games that turned the soul churlish and the fights of boys not leading to flights of boys tumble down in to each other, rolling on each other, pushing and pulling each other, and the delights of boy flesh in your hands. The delights of boy bones like juggernauts of steel from long ago and like peppermint sticks you used to be able to buy for a penny apiece. No boys with computer games, solitary regardless of how many he played the game with, the pixels reached into a boy, the computer hum reached into boys, the night time screens with their frantic lies took their lizard tongues and pushed against boy eyes--from the inside out, making sure that all their wonders would be covered with flint and suspicion and ghouls would come down chimneys real or imagined Christmas Eve, for boys these days always ready to fight the monster which was clever and sophisticated and filled with tricks and taunts and losses that came from nerd glasses that once put on can never really be taken off again, these little boy men, pity them please. But not these boys, not here, not now. As Mark in a tiny come true wish of self reached down a bit and put his lips to the abdomen of Tom and found it smelled of oat fields and hot suns and layers of cakes that would serve birthday rooms and rude noises and paper hats and a present that was usually a shirt or, god, even worse, Sunday leather shoes, but there was always cake sugar sick stomach fire of leaves that turned to boys, the way a day like Saturday lay ahead of them. The way Mark kissed unashamedly Tom's stomach and tickled his innie navel. All of this as Jack rubbed his hand over Tom's hand that was rubbing Jack's cock. All of it as though the earth had had enough of reality and digitized hang gliding in the eyes and no where else not ever, and had made boys remember their own body wells and the water pumps that are so grand to touch and erect and see and feel and unpeel and delight in arrows that no Indian or settler could ever devise out of phony and pretension. Just as the pump of Tom was coming to a conclusion with the chicken gumbo held inside, just as Tom writhed, and that straw finally fell from his mouth, and he breathed hard, bellows like, and Paul knelt down beneath Tom's well muscled bronzed legs to see it all from this angle. How grand to see a boy's equipment from here, from the back, as they are visible between the naked make a wish drumsticks. And Tom calling out and his face red as a beet and his clawing at the stomachs of the young boys bringing him thus to fruition, to the greatest canned summer candy in the world to put in a jar and keep in the cold cellars, to come out to in winter and to hold the massive amounts of Tom, boy, age 13 or so, in your hands in that Mason jar that was most blessed with the joy of this boy made visible and touchable and caked. And Tom spewing from his dick, the foreskin pulled back to the root, the balls heavy and tight against him and heaving themselves, and the silver arc laced out of him. The silver arc shot and meteor raced out of him, and as it did, Mark shot too and for the first time--came!, and as he did he fell to the ground in paroxysm of frenzy, his legs quivering, he had never done it standing up before, he had never done it unhanded even at the last minute before either. Tom was in no danger of falling on his wheat straw head either, for when Mark was letting go Tom's ankle, Paul graceful as a balletist, stood, took his place, and held that not free for a moment ankle, and they watched, did Paul and Jack, at Tom and at Mark, and their own balls were so heavy and their penises were so needing their milking. It was all boy. It was all kids who knew how to fight. Suddenly. And could if they had to. Who would defend each other. Four kids let in by Tom into the elite club. Who would protect each other from enemies. Who would let only friends in. And as Tom said later on when everyone had recovered from all of this sex stuff, lying on their backs, free and happy and spent, ever met a friend of mine named Huckleberry? Hound? Mark asked as they lay on the real rocks as the real wind blew against their skin and rushed them to a night of graveyard stories and death's heads that were always made the way they made them down Mexico way--of sweet white candy. Paul laughed and Jack did too. Though Jack didn't know exactly what he was laughing at. It was just he had to mimic his older brother. And get something on his younger one. And the skies were gray. As Paul sat clothed beside his clothed brothers on the paddle boat facsimile. As Tom Sawyer island sailed past them. As mothers and fathers took photos of their children there to show the relatives and folks back home. On Main Street, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon that took hold, "Steamboat Willie" was playing. And in the "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience" show, tiny Rick Moranis swung right out into the eyes of the audience in his little flying device, and bones half broke and bodies half flew out of the cars of the Indy ride, as night was coming on and lights were turned on. Street lamps glittering on Main Street. Electric lights subbing for gas. Cobblestones for horses to clatter down. Pristine uncluttered store fronts. Goofy and Mickey and Snow White costumed peopled by who knew what drifted along and parents took their children's pictures with them. As the steam boat pulled to the dock and a man dressed in sailor garb of another time helped everybody out. Desultory. The land of imagination. But only certain imaginations. Only the safe kinds. Only the general audience kind. But sometimes over the top of and through the bars of the steel fences of propriety, boys do come along, and they take the Mark Twain cruise, and they see a shadow boy in bright clothes rushing into becoming another boy entirely, from sheer nothingness other than a slight shimmering directly over one of the Tom Sawyer hills. This boy is lonely, for so few boys take him up on his true blue offer, his true blue sense of containing another century totally unlike the current one, in his heart and in his head. A boy who wants to piss with other boys. A boy who wants to run naked with other boys in July noons and thrust their shadows before them huge and inky and virile, and shiver naked sitting on graveyard doors of earth and ghoulishly imagining what is down there in transit or there for good or gone for good. And sometimes boys like Paul, somber and quiet and sad for no reason other than that was how he was, sometimes boys like that fool you, for there are books in their heads, and they grab the hands of their brothers and they rush to meet Tom in the coolness of the scariest cave alive. And they never grow up or go home or fall out of adventures to have, the ones to plan, the ones to remember, the ones to dream only a wistful dream about. And thinking of that wistful dream, Paul stumbling out of the boat. Paul looking at his brothers who are smiling. But not the wise ass smiles they made when their big brother screwed up, for he always screwed up, but this time, those smiles were sharp as pirate cutlasses, as bright and shimmering as gold doubloons pulled from the bottom of a pirate lake, as bright and shiny as the mass of Tom's face freckles, as Paul's lips smiled just as did theirs. Secretive. Devilish. Giddy. Full boy. All boy. And they walked out of the fantasy and into the world, just in time for the tram to the parking lot where their parents would be waiting to pick them up. Did you have a fine time kids? Oh mom, you don't know the half of it. Laughter exploding like confetti all colors from all the boys' mouths. Halloween inside them. Never to let go. Never to be explained to adults ever. Why, they wondered, the brothers, had they thought the Twain paddle boat ride would be boring? So boring they had never taken it with their parents. It looked so bland. So dull. And that was a good laugh in itself. As they recognized their parents' car, and walked to it, they thought they heard Tom's laughter too. Private. Right in their ears. Right in their own personal private head phones. The laughter said, earnest and true and deep honey liquid life pouring through their blood stream--firing them, enlivening them, galvanizing them, opening, wide, doors in them, tree tall green leafed Tom saying begging imploring them, entreating them--"DON'T DIE!" the end