Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 17:46:41 -0800 From: Tim Stillman Subject: In Praise of Holland "In Praise of Holland" by Timothy Stillman (for Ricky, my "Holland") "Ya gotta git reel. Ever'body gotta git reel." Doktor Phil Holland was a giddy joy. And a bit of an April fool. But he was so damned beautiful, in that way that only certain 13 year old boys can be, that everyone was willing to overlook a minor character flaw. Holland was not sure where Holland, the country, was, what its flowery rep was, what a windmill was, and if he had known what a windmill was, he would not have known you tend to find them in Holland, and they have a purpose other than wood blades going round and round. Holland was kind of a windmill himself. He went round and round. And wherever round and round he went, somebody was sure to be there to suck him, or fuck him, or kiss him, or let him do to them what they did to him. Holland was halcyon. He was the new year, Cupid, Eros, and all the downtown saints rolled into one. He was a miracle, and he was like a girl, he fluttered, flattered, flitted, except where it counted. And everybody counted on Holland. They counted on him to forget their names, not to know their names to begin with. They counted on him to forget what day of the week it was, what month of the year it was, or what year it was. Holland could be tricked. But he never was because he was Holland, of the thick flaxen hair that looked like the thatch on the roof of the house in Silas Marner. Holland was a sex pot, and if he had been a novel, he would have been a potboiler. He did not read much. No more than school made him. Some of the teachers, male and female made him, as well, but that's another story. Holland was a pencil. He had a lovely little pencil as well. Not the store bought kind. But something that was definitely and permanently his. The girls and boys loved Holland. And the fact, of course, that Holland was in love with no one, not even himself, made him all the more intriguing. Holland was the land and the sea and the sky and the forest. There was some trouble in discovering just what Holland was and where he would be if he were a tree if he were not a boy. But forget that. Holland was hallelujah a boy. And he was the carnival come to town, the carnival that never left town. He didn't have much in the way of impressive shooting gallery cum, little or none and all for a while longer. But he was no clown. And sweet enough to eat with a spoon. And he was one of those boys with those liquidly beautiful perfectly cheekboned and contoured Greek coin faces that always looks as though it has said good-bye to its best friend, and turned away from the train station platform, the lonely whistle going and smoking the train away, and Holland's body following his face, for a body kind of is stuck with doing that. Holland, be mine, the boys said. Holland, be mine, the girls cooed. Holland was a free moment. He was a dizzying high wire act. He was a lusty docile friendly bonny boy who had long arms that could hold and did not shame themselves into not holding. He knew he was sex incarnate. And he knew that clothing was not an option when he was in the tree house with his friends (who weren't his friends, because to him, he thought they believed him just a body; to them, they loved him dearly, because he was Holland, whatever Holland was)-- --or in the lavatory taking a leak, with all the boys gathered round, watching his yellow arc. Or in the park on a dark summer night with the shadows gathered round and the boys and girls round Holland their own private merry go round. Their own private hedge and they liked to think they were the only ones who had the clippers to him. Thus and forever locked in. Holland in being sad and happy, was neither sad nor happy nor neutral, all the latter in some odd undefined way. He seemed to be a chameleon of iridescent mind at the moment of whoever he was with. And yet at the same time, he was not. He was not a rounder. He just loved all kinds of sex. And gave himself with such gusto. He was not a Greensleeves. He had the Accent. And here in the mid west, that Accent was quite a wonderful thing. It was a dervish and the dust up and the free form and the poetry that British poets in their long nosed constipation would have died for. They were indeed dead. Holland was indeed alive. Praise Glory. Holland naked was a whole town of lust. They loved to lie with his naked body, feeling him up, listening to the soft sighs of him. Putting their ears to his lithe bundle form and hearing the boy clocks ticking merrily along inside him, the Holland before them who seemed made of fiberglass and warm and true. Of course Holland was never true. Of course Holland lied. Of course he was so crooked he would probably corkscrew himself to death some horrible day far away please far away. But he was crooked and he lied because he wanted to make his lovers happy. Because he had this incandescent something inside him that had the implacable inability to hurt another living soul. In his own way of course. Something about him was like a legend. Something of cross bows and boys in Sherwood Forest and hunter green. There should have been Lancelot about him. And Robin Hood. He should have been a parable. A story book come true. A pop up story book. Because when the jeans and briefs went down, his sweet licking penis popped up. And was a source of constant amazement and contact in something that was like salt taffy tasting water, dreaming close, and covering the heads and eyes and ears of those who got to lie with him and feel-him-up. Because Holland without sex was Holland un-happy. Holland needed to be touched and prodded and needed his equipment in boys' and girls' mouths. He needed to be enveloped in other children, younger or older. He needed to be ensconced in fevers that was his body sea inside that changed course and became rushing torrents and palm leaves rustling over Jesus' head as he rode into town on the donkey of an April day. All the children and some of the adults (but that is another story) loved to be Holland's donkey. But there was an otherness to Holland. And they were bewildered by it as well. When he lay unbound before them, and they could pull open his legs and see what was there. When his butt got tickled with tongue or finger while his chest got loved with all those hands large or small. But Holland never seemed to be exactly there. A peculiar balancing act. As though he was not when he most undisputedly was totally and for all time there. Not just the humpy lust of him, not just the giggles that tumbled out of his giggle box when he was, say, lying in the dark night summer park with all those worshippers gathered round the catafalque that was himself. Not that he was not attentive. Not that he did not talk dirty in his little gravely voice that turned just about everybody on like mad. Not that he was not the totality when ministered to or when ministering and held and caressed and combed and perked and sometimes, but this only on rare occasion, when he let some boy take him from the rear. And yet, and yet, Holland was a town without a location. Was a man without a country, or a boy without himself, more like it. And yet he was himself. Holland and no one but Holland. No other soul could worm into Holland and root him out and take his place without every fiber, every cell, every nipple and every ball of him coming unglued and being exposed as a leper and pretender to the throne, that no one would have a thing to do with. An impostor anyone could spot a mile off. And yet, something of him was missing. Something in his heart was turned off or never there to begin with. Something of that train station turned away from and best friend gone on the train to rocket off the earth in a minute and a half and to never be again. But Holland had lost no friends. Holland was never lonely. Holland was his own encampment. But the fire had room for only him and no one else in the dark, gibbon moon night of forest. And maybe the fire had room not even for him either.. Doves were Holland's eyes. And doves settled on his admirers, his progenitors, with great gentleness. With great softening balm in Giliad circumference, and made the eyes and the bodies and the faces they fell on sea becalmed on a starry night. Pip on his adventure was Holland circling round. With out a shred of desperateness in him. Not in his locks when hands were on them pulling and pushing him off erections of nobility and spirit and boldness. Penises that he sucked like they were the greatest sugar candy in the world. Holland circling round. Going no where. Holland of boys who loved to pin him to the wrestling mat in the school gym and pretend to give him the business, but Holland usually won them over and gave them the business himself. Not that he was a business or a shopping center or a slight warm sliver of a Mall. He was himself. And that oddity was that he was not himself. While at the same time he was Holland Westminster. And he had the Accent. And he could cuddle close and he could be a little toy lamb and he could be so seductive and so resplendent in the verses that no parent would ever admit their child could read or that could be read in them. Not there was need of that. Because Holland was the word soaked the boy soaked the girl legs scissored round him poem. And he was all of himself by being none of them. Not that either. If a person is none of anyone else, then how can he be any of himself? Holland never ventured the question, neither did the boys whose tits he sucked while he rubbed their hard ons, or the girls whose legs he licked upward and into the Venus delta, and the boys and girls who loved to surround him and make him their arboreal spring cleaning that they took such great care with-- --but if anybody had asked, and they did not, they would have seen absolutely nothing in him that was not there all the time. And it is a troublesome thing being one's self all the time. If there are no shadows. If there is nothing to hide. Well, then what is a person? A person is a love lamb. A person is Holland of the buttermilk skin and the buttermilk smelling soft clean breath. A person is Holland stretching on his toes as he is sucked to a farethewell, and Holland was a forehead which was lovingly kissed. And Holland was a set of ribs that were tickled. And Holland was a penis that was almost three and one quarter inches and was just cute as a button or bug or whatever little squeally words and images came to mind when they were with him. And with him, was to experience the songs inside. Inside yourself. And through Holland's slight of hand, inside himself as well. Though none of that was so. They actually weren't really inside him at all. It wasn't he was an echoing glass of anyone else. No one looked into his eyes and saw themselves. No one looked into his eyes and saw what they wanted to be or what they wanted him to be. They looked at him and saw this endearing little boy with the almost total lack of a butt, just two little flat buns, and that glorious penis that had this nice brown ring around the base like an engagement ring for far off yonder. They put themselves into him and they felt the inside of his throat, and the lucky ones, his ass, and they delivered unto him their untouched and unkempt hopes and salutations and sadnesses as only sex can be sad at the same time it is so much winsome fun. They felt the interior of him. The felt the magic kingdom of this almost acrostic boy who was Rorschach test for them, though not really. But as they panted and he panted and they tried to come at the same time he did, and bingo, did it more often than not, because he was a mercy scale on the piano and they knew his keyboard well-- --and through him, knew theirs even better. They knew how exciting it was to watch him suck on a girl's breast, feeding, like a little boy. They loved to treat him like their baby and pretend that he was boy or girl and both at the same time. A girl, naked, would hold him, also naked; his warm ass comfy on her bird nest soft equally warm pale freckled lap, while Holland called her mommy, as she cooed to him, and giggled, slapping his thighs, when he bit her tits too hard, and she would sing lullabies to him, as Holland would suckle at the girl's breast. As she played with his penis. Madonna and child. Living sculpture. Miracles happen. As sex became not raucous or fabricated, but something soft and kind and playful and easeful and far more bold in that form than in any other. And Holland's little windmill of a dick would pop up and tonight's winner boy or girl got to go down the street of Holland's main thoroughfare and seasons of passion and giggles and kidding around and some moments of heartbreaking seriousness that no adult believes a child could possible ever have. But Holland was not himself. He was himself at the same time. He was not them. They were not even the slightest dream of themselves in Holland's always sleepy consciousness. He was not a goal to be achieved some day. He was the goal achieved today. He was the hands that held to faces and the lips that kissed closed eyelids. He was the boy with the penis that was golden and wise and burped so cutely when he came you would have died to see it. And that was everything. The magic bag of tricks. Not deflating. Always exciting. Always new and something of chameleon. But chameleon of what? Chameleon of love that did not really exist? Chameleon of affection that was so pure and so crystalline, that Holland, when bent over and having his bony stairstep backbone tickled and kissed and stick penises laid on it in supplication, could never explain to himself, all of this was like being aliens with alien Holland. Who had more than the Accent. Who had more than the feather soft butterfly kisses from a girl on one side of his lips, to a boy's own kisses on the other side of his lips, as boy and girl turned unwillingly from him, but to put on a sex demo for him, to each other, as they lay down and Holland lay with them and put his hands on their sexes and put the boy's penis in the girl's vagina, and then kissed both, as the boy beginning. The girl ready. And the girl's legs round the boy, pushing him into her as deeply as she can. Her body pressed in tightly to his. His little white boy butt, slight arc, in the air, pumping up and down, up and down, while Holland and the others watched with gleesome awe. The breathlessness. The words. The silences. The sounds of making love. Indescribably beautiful. What else could we possibly be here for? Holland bathing them both in his lips and tongue all the way through. Who had the alien seed in him, did Holland. Something that was not his. Something that was almost his. And almost theirs when they were around him. But when they were not around him, something happened to them, though it never happened to Holland when he was at home asleep, the only time he was ever alone. It was not discontent they felt. They were too busy counting the minutes until there would be Holland again. The very thought made their hearts race. It was not some stupid little oh why do I do these sinful things? moral conundrums or anything like that. It was this, though they never thought of it as this or thought much of anything at all about Holland other than he was their soft charm bracelet stuffed animal button eyes baby love-- --what he had was not of him, though it was. It was on loan. And someday someone might take it back. Then where would he be? And where would they be? And there was something inside Holland that was more than a warm flat chest with its cute poke out stomach, more than sexy hot armpits, more than the crinkly smile he got on his lips when his eyes closed and his face got all serious looking and he started gasping for breath when he was about to dry cum in what, the sixth time?, in a row, sometimes his attendants applauded afterwards and meant it as well. But Holland as Holland was enough. More, god knows, than enough. But there was some more to him than this. Or might be. Or something. But Holland inside was not dying. For there was no Holland inside. Just as there was no them inside him or inside themselves either. Though they were all very much themselves. Very much individuals. Very much distinct living entities. Though there might be something more. Did they want to know? But what could they do about it? Why wreck a good thing? Why spoil Paradise, Adam? Still though, if someone could figure it out... They all thought and worked their lessons and read, some actually read because they wanted to, they felt sad, they felt happy, they were full human beings, they had their private moments, their private fears, their own ways of looking at the world, and yet, and yet-- --Holland blended with what was around him. And they were around him so he blended with them. And they did the same with him, whether they knew it or not. Though they might not be blending really at all. So much of Holland, so much of sex and of life was an illusion anyway, did it matter really? They had everything. And everything was Holland. Like the Charlie Brown song, he "was daytime and nighttime too." And who could live with things as the way they were? Everybody of course. And if everybody was an alien. If everybody was an alien who could at least strive to be like Holland, who was warm and kind and full of hugs and happiness and laughter, and who could mime strippers when taking off his clothes, cue the blue lights Mac, and make 'em horny and show 'em a good time and be a good time and be a city of sexual delights to come to-- --if in this garden, aliens considered themselves natives of the planet, and if Holland inside was not drowning or banging on the door to come out and be whatever deep intrinsic part of himself that was-- --if there was one at all-- --then it was okay to be a container-- --him and them-- --for all were far more than that as well-- --and all of this was part of the mystery-- --how Holland had different sex with each one of us; it was never the same for us or for him. We were all let in. We were all on the outside of him and each other and the combinations of him and each other even when we were having sex with him at the same time. We strove to get into each other totally and completely. To know exactly what it was like for everyone else. We could not of course. Holland also outside himself and outside us. At the same time, we were all together. Almost. And seeing Holland going down on me, for, yes, I was one of the lucky ones who got to have sex with him, feeling his warm little mouth envelope my sing along cock, as I put my hands into his thick thatch woven hair and on his warm head and pushed him up and down, feeling the rhythms of him and me, our own little oceans flowing together at the very same time--alone and a million miles apart, and there and intermingling our very atoms-- --and shooting the first time ever, into his mouth, and he gulped and swallowed hard and put his face against me as my penis bucked some more and a little bit more after that--as another boy sucked him at the same time-- ---who is not an alien when Jesus comes riding in on the donkey? And who would not like to be Holland's donkey? Who probably is an alien himself, the donkey, like in a great science fiction story, "Puppet Show," that I read once. It's like an erect penis, hard and somehow soft feeling at the same time. It's like the pleasure machine built into our bodies and souls and hearts. It feels different for everyone. It feels different at various times for ourselves. And how we can be alone with others, and with so many friends when by ourselves. It's Holland, carnival come to town, carnival never left town, though we left, and the boy Holland left too. Though I like to think some of all of us stayed behind. To tend the memories and keep each other company. Maybe just maybe we made aliens of ourselves together with the very essence of just what we always were, with the diffuse concreteness of ourselves and our vague definiteness, perhaps exaggerated in Holland by ourselves because he was the star of this piece after all and he must be, illusory, grander-- --maybe what we did with each other was, that much abused phrase, make love. Really and truly. Love becoming an entity, a visible, breathing thing brought into existence, becoming far more than "sex misspelled." Actually created something inside and outside of ourselves. Of us, different for each of us, and beyond us also. It is a mistake to believe creators have that much control over what they create. And afterwards, where does this visible, tangible thing, love, go? Does it, as a perhaps sentient being, live less time than a butterfly? Must it be made again and again? Does it breathe? Does it die? Is it reborn? Perhaps all of this taught some of us we were something different, something not always completely what we thought we were. That we were, everyone, quicksilver, even when we tried so hard not to be. Those Who Know Best are fond of categories. Those Who Know Best should be shot. Maybe we were all Holland. And Holland was all us. But different and the same and complete and missing and completely there at the same moment. Whorls within whorls. And that was the price to pay. The slight--concern. The slight--distress. The slight--uneasiness and longing for Holland, and perhaps someone else, also Holland, while Holland was with us and we longed for no one else. The slight--restlessness. Membership dues. But all this then, quite simply, memories and dreams and wonders, done then and now and always, in praise of Holland.