Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 18:42:59 -0800 From: Timothy Stillman Subject: Trying to See Jeffy "Trying to See Jeffy" by Timothy Stillman Jeffrey pushed me back on the bed. We were naked. I had just sucked him off. Awful phrase for such a beautiful act. No act at all. None. Cum was still in my throat. He put his hands on my shoulders. He kissed my lips. He asked if I was happy. After I finished swallowing, I held to his back and put my lips to his throat. I could feel the pulse beat. "Of course I'm happy, you idiot." Jeffrey rubbed my left leg and my penis was ready for him. It was my turn. He pulled himself off me and lay beside me. He held his right arm over my chest. I touched it. Caressed it. And he caressed me in return. "You are not happy." I looked at him as he said that. The dark hair. The chiseled fourteen year old face. His slender muscular body. I traced his side with my finger tip. I held his now deflating a bit penis. He was the world. I was the most happy I had ever been in my life. My heart overflowed for him. I put his hand on my hard on, one inch shorter than his. He pulled his hand away. The warmth of it was gone from me. "I don't like people who are not happy." His voice was like wind song. He was going to be an actor. And singer. He sang so beautifully it broke you in half and healed you back up again. "But you like me, Jeffy, `cause," and I leaned over him with my not so attractive body but the body included an active and imaginative mind, my hard on looked good, and my balls, and I knew he wouldn't stay forever, I knew that, I kept telling myself. "You are a reader." He turned his head to me and smiled that dreamy smile. He put his lengthy fingers at the side of my face. He leaned over and kissed my closed eyes. He bent down and cantilevered himself and rested his head on my stomach. "We are in love." "Like in `Eyeless in Gaza.'" I was ashamed when I said it. He pulled from me. My penis was deflating and my balls were beginning to hurt. There was winter outside, but the room was warm. There was snow falling by the window. But Jeffy was here and everything was safe, WAS SAFE. "You could be mocking me," he said, as he took his finger tip and pressed it in my navel, lightly, as he leaned downward and stroked my slight brush of black pubic hair. "It's a habit. It's wrong. I'm sorry. I was lonely. Alone. Till you came along. I read books. I don't need books anymore." "You're a smart A." Jeffy said, as he took my penis in his mouth. As my boy bridge hardened again and the tip of my pee hole tickled the roof of his mouth. He sucked me for a time. As I put my hand on his so warm so sexxxxxyyyy butt and stroked his narrow lovely hips, of this pink and cream boy who I loved forever. He sucked me into him. I became part of Jeffy. I was Jeffy. I was not a book. I was not a character in a story. I failed him though. I talked like a book. I didn't mean to. I had to make up Jeffy when Jeffy was right here with me. Stupid, huh? Inexplicable, huh? Yes, very much so. He played with my balls with his light hand and he was going down on me and up on me and I was going up and up into him and down and down, almost slipping out of his mouth, but not quite. The snow fall made it lovelier. The snow furring the window. The Snow pelting down softly, easily.. Jeffy and I did not have conversations. Jeffy and I had sex. Jeffy had sex. I made love. And therein, the difference.... Jeffy stroked my legs with one hand, first one, then the other, he was intent and totally concentrated on how he made me cum. He gently tumbled my balls with his fingers. I boiled. I lunged. My penis exploded. He pulled out my penis and let the cum drip from his lips to the home from which it had just been delivered. I panted. I ached. I loved. I held him. I was messy. He pulled the towel over and wiped me clean. I wanted him to let me cum in his mouth. But seeing it dribble from his lips was exciting too. He was right. I was using "Eyeless in Gaza" by Aldous Huxley, published 1933, reprinted in paperback, the copy I had, in 1963 by Bantam Classics. The Bantam Classic rooster logo was the most impressive paperback logo of them all. It meant I was reading a REAL BOOK. I was not making fun of him because he had not read it. But what it said about philosophy and love and idealism and sex. And how when you had these things, you had a prison round you often as not. You knew the rules and the rules incapacitated you. And the millions of contradictory things inside you that made you never yourself and how you had to pretend, and how you had to be a part of society, with all those other people who didn't know what the hell they were either, and were pretending too. I understood it as well as I could. Which was not well at all. But I understood enough. Dammit to hell, I understood enough. He lay back on the bed beside me. The room was warm with the heater but we pulled the blankets over us and cuddled and were boy warm together. "You're thinking of that damn book, aren't you?" he said sleepily. I was suddenly angry. "What if I am?" Petulant. Watch it. Be careful. You will lose him. You are losing him. Everything is memory even now that it is reality. Fuck it. "I'm sorry Jeffy." I could suck him like nobody's business. I could breathe and suck and kiss his dick head, play with his foreskin till he went half mad, and go half inch by half inch and suck him in so slowly and profoundly he almost cried he wanted all of him in my mouth, I seduced him, made Jeffy JEFFY BOY SEX MACHINE, and always make him, the best part, THE STAR, and twirl my tongue and open his pee hole and tickle it just so, little feathers giggling from my sex toy tongue, I could make him shivery and sigh and clinch his finger tips deep into my shoulders in wonder and stark sexuality, I could brush my mouth by his balls and blow warm on them and with my teeth, tease the surface of the clingy skin of them, and gentle the pubic hairs and stick my fingers up him and play him like a violin, and I could pull his penis down so far it hurt him but the good feel of sucking made the hurt a good kind of hurt, I could stand up and he could kneel, or the other way round, and I could pinch his beautiful titties and I could inhale him like he was summer breath in my mouth and lungs, I could plunge him in me like a July lake and I made him all over entirely liquid, and all of this in time to the pulsing of his blood, and I could make him me, intuitively, and so many other things. I could make him come in five seconds. In half an hour. In one hour. I could make him lie back with this goofy smile on his face and his ankles crossed, and just go to town on him. And then we would lie back and there would be nothing to say. Other than the eternal wrangling over maybe one day fucking one another. Jeffy put his hand under my head and put the back of my head on his arm, as we lay together. Our penises were so hot next to each other. We rubbed them against each other. Cock fighting. "You're a clod," Jeffy said. His voice made it sound off handedly beautiful. His voice was still slightly girlish, but there were some masculine fissures in it. "I know." "Nobody our age reads books. `Cept when we have to." "I know." "You were making a crack with this Eyeless whatever right?" I pulled him to me. I held him. I had to hold tightly. The world was ending. And there was not one blessed thing I could do about it. I had to think. I had to be a real person. I had to be flesh and bones, not a walking breathing sucking public library. God, it was awful. All those words I had read all this time, and nothing fit. Well, it fit, much of it, but I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't pretend anymore. But sex was pretend. And not pretend too. "Jeffy...." "mmm.......?" he said drifting close to the radar of sleep. "If I stopped reading books, would you like me then?" "Like you?" he said with a little watermark of a smile. "We have sex every afternoon after school and twice on Saturday, for God's sake." "Nancy. And Bill Sykes." --"I lives with you, don't I?"--Oh god, call it back, erase it from the air that carried it over the two or three inches of bed to him. I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry... "OK. Buddy, that is it. That is where I draw the line." He lunged out of bed. I was in love with seeing him totally naked, the movement of him so Swiss Clock delicate and perfectly Jeffy, so in love I didn't hear what he said for a minute. He turned to me. I thought the glorious thought we had given each other our virginity one year ago, and from that spigot between his legs I had just drunk my full, and he had just a moment ago, just a moment ago, treasure it, remember every second of it, there naked beside the bed in which I lay. "You wanna fuck a book?" he said, and for the first time his voice was cruel. "No," I said, "they were substitutes until I found you. I've found you. I'll throw them away. Man, give me a break. I never had a conversation with a real person in my life till you came along. Give me a chance at least." "You've had a goddam year." He held out his dick to me. He was still partly hard. It was uncut. Mine was cut. I loved to rub the sheathe of it up and down and expose his dick like a gaudy Christmas present. I dared not say those words to him. Gaudy wasn't the right word. I tried to find the right word. My heart was pounding hard. If I could only find the right word, I could bring this back from the brink. I could not. "The thing is, Clancy," Jeffy said, as he bent over to pull on his white BVDs, "I'm smarter than you. Especially in math. I make better grades than you do in American Lit. for god's sake. Think of it. You're a loser. You are always waiting for somebody to write the next line of dialogue. And no one will. So you try. And you can't, cause you're stupid, so you steal from some real honest to god writer." He was not pulling his jeans up to his tightly cinched waist. Going away, I mused, I leaned on my side. I looked at him. I lay back down again. Curious lethargy. "You'll never find a better head giver." I said. "How do you know? I bet there are tons of better head givers out there. And what happened to your poetry fetish? Fetish, I learned something, fuck you. Head giver, from someone who thinks he's Emily Fuckin' Dickinson?" The snow outside was cold. I felt it in me. In my bones. It felt very badly indeed. "We laugh. We talk." I was being staccato. I could not help it. I was talking to a ghost. Or I was one myself. Now. I couldn't go back to Before Jeff. God, I just couldn't. I hate books. They lie and they screw up your life and they make you think thoughts that just cause you trouble and they make Jeffy go away. I want to burn them all. He put on his plaid overshirt. He buttoned it. I said a silent goodbye to his pecs. And his chest. And his flat abdomen. And his brown pubic hairs. And his lovely little penis. I would never take those balls in my mouth again. It would snow forever and I would lie here forever and he would be gone forever and my mom would come home from work and I would kill myself later tonight in this very room. I felt like Giovanni up in his room, hanging himself. Goddam it, stop it. You ARE LOSING HIM. He stood at an angle looking down at me with his high blue sky eyes. His shadow was over me. I would never have even his shadow over me again. God. "We talk about sex. We talk about how to do it this time. We talk about THE JOY OF GAY SEX. A book we look at. We talk about THE SEX BOOK. A book we look at. That's all we talk about. I don't need another person to make me feel lonelier than I feel right now, like always." "Lonely," I thought. Good things he just said. Well worded. A minus. Forget the meaning. Don't dare think of the meaning. God, I was a prick. "I have felt lonelier with you than when I was alone. Ever." I didn't really hear much of this, for it stunned me he had ever been lonely. "You were never lonely." "Yes and yes." His voice almost broke, like a toy box tipped over and precious little secret things cascading out. He began to cry. I had never seen Jeffy cry. I pulled myself out of the bed, tossed the blanket aside, and went to him and held him tightly. "Nobody wants someone sad around," he said. And he put his head on my shoulder. He had always been the leader. The strong one. I had always been the follower. The weak one. "Jeffy," I said. "Tanner," he said. He had to use my last name. To make sure we understood where we were with each other. We stood there a while. I, naked. I, always naked. I, always saying good bye. "You make me blue...." To which I answered...."you make me blue balled...just counting the seconds until there is you again." "This is not a goddam Victorian novel with a stupid painting on the cover of a woman running in fear from a freakin' Gothic castle in the background...." "This is us..." "And it's not Peyton Place and it's not Boys and Girls Together....." "Or Boys and Boys Together." And we both laughed a little. We had joked about that title before and how it seemed wrong. I felt such tenderness toward him. And he let me. He never had let me before. "Hey," I said, pulling his face a bit upward toward mine..."Have you been secretly reading on the sly?" He smiled. "I won't stay." And then a big breath, like it made him sad, "I want to have fun...I don't want to fuck a book worm with my worm....." "A literary allusion. A joke." I laughed. We could have been in "Gaywick." "I dried his tears. And I walked away with him into kinder worlds." "No." And Jeffy pulled away from me. "No, whether you made that up, or are quoting it, and I'm betting on the quoting, "I want to be happy. I want to laugh and be glad I'm alive. I don't want to have meaningful discussions. I want to giggle. Even in sex, even in talking about it, there is this seriousness in you. And I'm tired of pretending to be happy, tired of it for the both of it, and now I'm talking like you, and this is it, the end, the finale, curtain down." He went to the stuffed over chair by my desk and picked up his heavy jacket. I watched him. I took some pleasure in it. The end of the novel. The end of the world. The end of Jeffy and Tanner whose first name was Jonathon. Even my damn first name was a smart A literary name..what chance could I have with a name like that? Thanks Mom. He zipped up his jacket. He went to the door of my room and opened it. "I won't be a book character with the next one or the one after that or the one after that. I will be happy. I will not know their names, I will not care what they look like after they leave, I will forget them, I will be in IT for me, I will drink and drug and get sloppy drunk and hang around gay bars and pick up men and be picked up by them and I will live a life of debau--hedonism---and I will have a life. I will get a college scholarship. I will get a damned good job. Maybe with Bantam Books, maybe, just to piss you off. It's just another business like a bank and an insurance agency and crap. Diddly poo. They don't read the damn things either, I bet. I will have fun I will be HAPPY." Diddly poo? I held my head down. I felt like I was in a coffin. Ever been stuffed with maggots before? "And I hope you are happy sometime. I hope you meet a book person to stick your book worm inside and I hope it works out for you. And you can play dress up forever and a fartin' day. I've decided to be 14 again. If I can remember how. Maybe you should do the same." I let him go. I dressed. I was a metronome. I wish we could have fucked each other. I tried not to think of the last time I would hold him, the scratchiness of his clothes against me. Horrid. I lay on the bed and cried for a while. And the sky got even darker. The snow got more intense. I don't think I made him a book person. Though, in senseless revenge, I hoped he would have to wrestle with it for a little while, and see what it was like from this side. Oddly enough, I slept some. And was awakened by my mom opening the door. "Pizza tonight, Jeffrey," she called, waking me up, then she walked into the kitchen. I wish I could be happy. I truly do. But there is just so damned much to be sad about. I mean, look at this world, for god's sake. How can anyone not see it and not want to perpetually weep? Just how the hell selfish does it get and get some more? Would I ever get any more? I went over to my book case. I took out the 1948 Signet Paperback edition of "The Ox Bow Incident," one of the most beautiful books about justice and faith and humanity and the only way we can really touch what we call God that I had ever read. The writer had the greatest name a writer could ever have: Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Say it. Doesn't it sound beautiful on your tongue? How could he not have been a great writer with a name like that? Lucky for him it wasn't mine. I repeated it a few times before I went to the kitchen for pizza. I held it in my mouth like a trust, like a precious stone with the word in tiny insignificant letters on it, reading "hope" and promised myself not to be sad for a while. After I got over Jeffy. And how the hell do I do that? I sure wish I could tell my mom stuff. I could use a good talk right now. For I was very very scared. And small and frightened and I hated Aldous Huxley. I was the eyeless one all along. THE END Timothy Stillman comewinter@earthlink.net