Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 08:30:41 -0500 From: Timothy Stillman Subject: The Stem of Tim The Stem of Tim By Tim Stillman The sleet had been coming down heavily all that January Friday. School had been called off for the last two days. The windows were frosted. The house was cold. The little wall heater did its best, but its best wasn't good enough. There were only fevers in my head as I lay in bed, under thick covers, shivering, Vicks salve on my chest and nose, and I thought there was no more day to come, that the ice and the sleet and the heavy snow fall that had been falling the first of the week was the entire world. That there were only the sweet taste of snow cream and a kind touch from a friend far away. Though I had no friend far away, there seemed an intense buttery-ness to be. As though I had slipped through a keyhole and into a land of my own devising, for though I was 12, no one had yet told me and made me believe such things were impossible. I had been sexually active with the kid down the street three times this past summer. I pretended disinterest, though I was intensely interested, and though I hoped he was pretending disinterest also, I knew he was not. It seemed to be there in front of me, him again, and what we did, as though a rosy fire glow had formed somewhere in the center of my forehead that I was somehow looking at and still being inside me at the same time. I've never trusted the brain, that strange thing, gray ridged chewing gum that contains me somehow, my thoughts, my identity, my past, my memory, my sexuality, my coming to terms with things I was not yet aware I was coming to terms with. There was a distinct collateral that was going round and round in my head, like a merry go round, all my very own, that said this is what I have to sell away, this is what I have to give away from me, if Jeff and I are ever able to do it again, because being able to do it with Jeff again or rather the negative of that was the cause of my illness, rather than the cold I knew it could be, but in science they say such things as depression and fear affect health, and of course one has only to be human to already be appraised of that. The thing in context was Jeff is contest with nothing and no one, blithely, and serenely, and whatever comes, comes. But for me, the text read differently, for somehow I knew I would not have much time, not as in having a shorter life, but in having the nerve to go through with it again, which had become paramount to me, while to Jeff, it was already forgotten. This forgetting thing seems to be the loophole through which everyone but me, so it seems, is able to plunge; I, however, am not. I am a dweller. I am a rememberer. Even now and surely more as I get older, and though Jeff and I never took off our clothes, we did unzip our jeans and look at some "girlie magazines" as I sneaked looks at Jeff rubbing his penis which was uncut, not like me, and therefore looked quite odd to me, somehow unwashed and raw like. I did not ask him what this thing, this skin over it, meant, for I had never seen one like it before. It was naked, yet not naked. It seemed to me a cheat. It was stiff, he was having fun masturbating it, it was his penis, but it was in hiding there in sight. It was like a deflated circus tent. Smooth and somehow smug. I felt sorry for him, and happy that my penis was better, was not deformed. I was used to the penis itself, which I took to be the head and the ridges and the shaft with the veins. Round brown rings round the center of the shaft. Nice pink head. Naked as naked could be. His looked like a small banana that he did not unpeel to masturbate, and thus I did not understand that he could have done so, though it happened before me, and thought him deformed there, and thus felt sorry for him. As though someone had knitted him a penis glove to forever cover-what?-itself? I had been to his house a few times before. To borrow books and magazines from him. It was hot summer. He had said I could borrow some books if I wanted, after the Cub Scout meeting let out. I said, sure, that's great. Hot as hell in those wool uniforms, but his parents' car was air conditioned as his mom, waiting, primping, reading Redbook, the dome light on, opened the door for us, and I proudly, in such a rich car with rich people, with my friend, Jeff, felt so happy. In his room, in his air conditioned house, he just, as I looked at his new books, plunked himself down to the carpeting, looked up at me. Smiled a Jeff smile that said he would not hurt me, and asked, wanna do something new? So, I, like broken London Bridge falling down, catching myself as I almost tilted over, with his hands, clumsily kneeled in front of him, and he said, pull it out; you done it before? I answered with a shrug, trying to be manly, thinking get me out of here, run for it. Blood rush. Embarrassed and red faced, me. He said, let's try. And knew I would. Because he said so. Not because he cared a thing about me, understand. Just that I was another boy and it was practice for girls, as were previous boys and boys to come later on. I pretended otherwise. I wanted him, so much, to look at my penis, as we sat cross legged in our cub scout uniforms, this first time we did it, in his room, on the floor next to his bed, and next to his stack of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and his book case with all sorts of horror novels and science fiction stacked haphazardly, which intrigued me mightily, because I loved reading, though, even though paperbacks were cheap, we could not afford too many, and I had to depend on the library, which I also found a second home, but I hated terribly not being able to read those wonderful paperbacks with the bright inviting covers and colors, and I hated having to give the library books back, but even books could not take my eyes away from Jeff's penis sticking outside his blue scout pants, and mine too, as he looked at the photos of airbrushed naked women, and I marveled at the fact another boy was doing this with me. Though he was not doing this with me at all, but doing it all by himself, with his fantasies of course, and though I did not usually have to have fantasies to masturbate, just the good feeling was enough, I knew that first time that Jeff had entered my brain as fantasy, that I would remember him for a good long time-his kind of clowny color red hair, his scarecrow kind of face and stick arms and legs, and his nose a little too flat, and his body thin and thin, and how he closed his eyes as he rubbed his penis and how he smiled to himself. As I pretended the smile was for me, and though I wanted to touch his penis at the same time I did not, because of the foreskin and I was afraid anyway. So these things I was thinking at this late afternoon hour, in bed, with my cold and my cough and my runny eyes and sneezy and fever, and grandmom taking my temp every few minutes, asking me a moment ago if I wanted some Campbell's Tomato Soup, but I said no, not right now. My throat was raw. I thought it might be how Jeff's penis felt, with that raw, wild, and beginning to be intriguing covering over it, though at the time I thought it the totality of the penis itself. It came to a point, like a little cloak, or a little gray horn, or a little pimple that was pulled into a piece of paper form rolled together like a magician would pour water into and then unfurl it and no water there, surprise, and it intrigued me now more than it frightened me, and the few other times we did it, it was the same procedure, and Jeff never looked at me, which seemed to be the signal to me though I refused to think of it then, though I already had reason to, that even when I was with people, even if I were lucky or unlucky enough to do such things with another person, I would might as well not be there, not at all, and this was baffling, because I had been there, I had been there to watch Jeff come, though he produced no spermy stuff, as I did not either. I did not finish masturbating for he was already packing it in, and zipping up and sitting on his bed, looking at a monster magazine, which really made me furious, because he could have been a little polite about it, at least. This happened each time when I was with him and we did that. The sky outside my sunroom/bedroom windows was nicely gray, and looked like Jeff's foreskin color, though I had no idea it was called a foreskin, I did however seem to be coming to the conclusion that his penis was blessed more than mine; because, he had this thing and it was thicker than my penis and looked bigger in ways other than physically bigger; it looked more important, and though I had not seen his balls, for he had pulled out only his stiff penis from his scout pants, I imagined his balls more impressive than mine. The thing of having done it while wearing scouting uniforms seemed especially daring, and even though it was only last summer, it seemed to me as though it had already entered into a sacred area where parts of it were flanges of something deeper, and other parts of it were little fillips of laughter at myself for thinking this counted for anything at all, that it was not just pretending, with another person there; he, pretending the women in the magazine. I pretending Jeff there as he was there and at the same time he afforded me no luxury of seeing him with that yellow kerchief, even his cub scout hat blue on his head askew and his thick blue pants and shirt, all photocopies of my own, as he had decided this would be "dirty," that this would show he was not squeaky clean because his parents made him be a scout and made him sit on the front row at church every Sunday, though they didn't attend, too early for them, and get perfect attendance pins for Sunday School each year that he had to have pinned on him by the pastor in front of the congregation, so after having a whole row of them going down the lapel of his coat and then even further down, he looked like, he said, General Friggin' MacArthur or something, and everybody but me laughed at him. I was the true goody goody in class. The scaredy cat kid. Who did not smoke or drink or do anything with anybody that was wrong, who did not go to parties or talk back to the teacher or be "rowdy" (Yates?) at the lunch table, and because the other kids called him by my first name, therefore to punish him and to make fun of him, I somehow became a companion of Jeff-well, we sure pulled a Timmy today, didn't we? hey, Timmy, where's your best boy friend,? hey, go Timmy yourself in Sunday school and see what the goodnicks have to say about that; and hey, Timmy, why don't you kiss your own Timmy; you're such a goody good. And in this way, comparing him to me, he learned to feel, not an empathy for me, but a need for comparison, for he smoked, and sometimes he drank beer and sometimes he did act up in class, and he tried to have me beside him often during school hours, to show that he was not me. Thus, in this very odd way, I had gained a friend, who of course was not a friend at all. I had to act more Timmy than I was, for I had to be a cartoon of myself to go against the manly boy that Jeff was but Jeff was not manly in size or weight; for that matter, I was bigger than he; taller; but he was heavier where it counted; for the kids still saw him as superior to them; they knew his parents made him do these things; therefore, they liked him even more because he had me by his side; they were never as stupid as me, but at the same time, they were me, compared to him, and they felt a little easier around him that he was nice to even something like me. So on this winter late afternoon, I felt my penis rise and my body was sicker than sick. I wanted to go see Jeff. To put on my scout uniform and walk the little distance in the creamy and thick white blue hefted snow and masturbate with him again. Only this time I would do him and he would do me. I had heard of coming from boys at the lunch table and in study hall, the ones who had started that, the ones who hadn't and were in such grave envy, and I thought it might be quite wonderful if Jeff and I could suddenly come for the very first time together. I would examine my body often in the bathroom mirror, naked, and imagine how it looked compared to Jeff's, for though we had P.E., I never showered; I just dressed and undressed and dressed again as rapidly as possible, for I had a horror of being naked in front of a group of boys, for the obvious reason that if my penis were made fun of, then it would be the finish of me, for I quite liked it, and it comforted me and sometimes at night I would wake up and just feel there with my hands and be content that somehow it, when no one else did, loved me; of course, I knew it was a part of my anatomy, just a thing, though it wasn't a thing at all; it had dreams in it and mysteries and blue smoke and distant clouds and running to somewhere I never knew and holding promises that were like Christmas candles in me waiting to be lit, that would surprise me someday, any day now. It was a charm for me, and if anyone had pointed and laughed, as they would have-well, it was always a worry that Jeff would have laughed at it, and told the others, though how he would have told the others he had been jacking off with me, I don't know, but he never laughed at it, for he never looked at it, maybe once or twice, idle curiosity, then he returned to his own which to him of course was equal in mighty importance that mine was to me. I put my hands to my penis which was as feverish as the rest of me, and it was smooth and felt pink to my pink fingers and I stroked it and if it had been a sheep it would have baaeed for me, but I could not get that sexy feeling being sick as I was; my penis was just greeting me and telling me I would be well soon and it would wait for me for as long as it took, and that was nice to know. Of course, I was never to masturbate with Jeff again, because Jeff found a girlfriend and I was never to be allowed around him again, because she was known as, whether she really was or not I've no idea, she seemed nice, however, the school "slut," so therefore he could prove how man of the world he was with her instead of with me, just taking it all from a different angle. Sometimes I would go for weeks without thinking about him, and sometimes I would really get sad about him, and me, and then I'd get angry and want to break something; preferably his head; so when later on I read about foreskins and how really all boys have them and doctors cut them off because of some sick tradition having to do with God, man, is God involved in anything at all that does not cause loss and pain and horror and mutilation? Seems not. And it turned out, Jeff was not the one mutilated, but it was me, and my penis was not erect for sometime after I found that out, and all the good will and sorrow and pity I had given Jeff because of his deformity, really he should have given that to me. It was nice, before knowing all the above, before knowing I would spend the rest of my school life alone, now that I would not be used for a comparative object lesson for Jeff, being ill, having someone wait on me, smooth more Vicks salve on my chest, watching TV that was in the corner of the living room. The sunroom had no door to it. Feeling kind of itchy wool inside myself. Having sadness and want make me feel like this, my penis telling me it was okay, till I had to explain to myself how it would never be what it could have been if some knife happy doctor had left it the hell alone, just being quiet and hot and cold at the same time, pulling the covers down often and then pulling them up when the freezing started immediately, well, it was kind of nice being sick, not really sick, just kind of light feverish sick, and soon the night would come and maybe there would be stars and maybe tomorrow my fever would break and I could eat real food and watch TV from a chair and read comic books and stop having my thoughts swirling around like galaxies in my head that I had little or no control over. And maybe, dream of dream, hope of hope, for I lived for it, I could dress warmly and play in the snow and cold and white outs and underneath a sky so gray I could almost reach up and touch it, and best of all, that would make me feel like a little kid out there playing in some snow magician's magic heaven and it always was just so good and it made me feel so alive. So that soon, please. That was the really bad thing about being sick in winter. So the Friday night shows will be starting soon. I hope I can keep awake to see them. I wish I could call Jeff and he could come over and say hi. Maybe he would drop by anyway. We hadn't spoken for a while. Well, sometimes friends don't speak. They have other things on their minds. Jeff's a busy person. Lots of friends. I comfort myself by holding my penis and feeling my soft hot balls, and I scrunch down in the bed and rest my feverish head most uncomfortably in every angle and spot I try for, as I try to watch TV, through watery eyes, lean over, get the Kleenex from the box on the table, rub the tissue on my eyes, and then I have to sneeze, and I wipe my nose and I feel very young, very loved, very protected, very safe, which for a different, difficult, confused, frightened kid like me, meant quite a lot. I rub my penis, which is now hard, against the material of my flannel pajamas, and it tingles and stretches into its familiar slight curve. I also liked rubbing it against the wool of the Cub Scout suit. When Jeff was through, those times, as I said, I was through too. We never talked about it. It was his show all the way. It was always to be like that, for me. But for now, I didn't know. Though I did, anyway.