And Joel Was 12
By
Timothy Stillman
(To Sean, for I've been away far too long, and he is my friend)
He was a farm boy and his eyes were sad-looking even when he was happy. He lived in the country miles away from anywhere and the wheat fields were sun burnt umber. He had discovered himself one year almost to yesterday. He was small and thin and he had a kind face that made you happy just to look at it. He was poor almost. And he had few friends. Not because kids didn't like him, for they did, but because in some confusing, broken mirror way, he was not of them.
He rode his bicycle five miles to school and back again, and he was developing. He had discovered masturbation, had found it a wonderful little feathery waterfall inside himself. His penis was a bit over three and one half inches hard. He thought it a very nice one and tiny balls. It didn't wrinkle when it was not hard, like he saw some of the other boys' did in changing room after gym, when he sneaked furtive instant glances he did not know he was sneaking. It was smooth and did not have a foreskin and its head was like a tiny bullet shape. He liked to think it his seashore penis because of its pinkish color.
He liked to run in the fields late night, when his mother was asleep. He liked to run the fields, naked, and cry out silently to the moon big and full or small and a sliver of meek. He loved to fall to the earth, as if falling from the very sky itself, and to roll around on the dirt and feel it cover him with coolness even on the hottest summer night.
He loved to masturbate outdoors at night. He loved to run his hands over his tiny nipples and to kiss his shoulders as if someone else was kissing them. To take his hands and rub his thin stomach, to reach up his cool fingers and trace his ribs. To feel himself little boy hard, to wiggle his penis by just willing it so, to watch it do a private dance out where the shadows grow, just for him.
He wouldn't say he loved boys more than girls, for he loved really neither, for he was very afraid of them, which was his nature. He was a single boy and a singular boy. He had kids who talked with him some at lunchtime, but no more than they talked with anyone else. He had never really been hurt or called out by anyone, still there was that feeling in him that -- it would happen someday. He adored playing with himself and being naked.
He adored looking at his sexy body in the mirror of his room. He was not in love with himself and did not think himself better than anyone else or certain other people. He thought quite little of himself actually and though a good student did not believe himself so. But on moonlight nights when there was a howl in his soul, he like Ishmael had to take to the world outside, not of seas and whaling, though in his imagination, save for hurting whales, that seemed quite grand, but of the fields and the stream and the cool October air of this night when the pumpkins came out to play.
He was stroking his little finger length penis. It was hard and he loved to see himself making himself so very happy. He spread out his legs, tickled between them, and rubbed his penis with two fingers. Little smooth veins in it. Little smooth balls. And when he came, it was so wonderful, and made him so happy, though his eyes were still sad-looking, as he tossed back his head a little, felt the tiny pop pop pop inside him and uttered a soft "ohh" and then leaned on his elbows to see his erect penis spurt clear liquid onto his stomach and he was alive at those moments.
He felt so vulnerable then. Always his clothes he carried with him as he ran and placed down wherever he stopped. But vulnerable nevertheless and though his mind didn't process the thought really, he felt desirable, felt loveable. If he had known those concepts more, he would have denied them immediately. But this. His cum on his tummy. His hips grinding into the ground. His penis hopping a bit.
He lived for them. It got him through the grueling boring days of school. It got him through weekends and Sunday when he was forced to go to church. He knew he was to be no one. He knew that reading would be his life. For he was an omnivorous reader. Weekends filled with library books and as many comic books as his mom could afford for him. But she worried about him. And he felt guilty for, not for the masturbation itself, for that was fun and nothing wrong with a boy feeling good, if somewhat baffled by the whole thing. There seemed to be no point to it. And he grinned at the metaphor. Cracked a laugh, which he rarely did.
It was like his nipples. Just for fun. No other reason. Well, peeing of course, but he did worry that he thought about it so much. In a book he read last week, he discovered this thing he worried about had a name -- obsession. And it truly was. He thought of little else. Even in church when the preacher was raining hellfire and brimstone down on the world, the boy couldn't wait to get home to masturbate in his locked-door room. But..he decided, with his legs now crossed at his ankles, his left hand rubbing slowly on his soft penis, just feeling good and sleepy and happy with the world in the cool air of beginning October, it seemed as though he needed no one else. Just his penis. And his books. And himself. Which he kept to himself, for no one else would have him.
Then, as he was wont to do, afterwards, he turned over on his stomach, held up his legs and crossed at the ankles, put his hand to his chin, in a thinking position, and imagined being a boy in a boy version of Playboy. He had seen some of the pictures of the naked ladies and that was the pose he liked the best. Just, he imagined, he could have a little of his penis showing, and his butt which was creamy and soft, highlighted in the moon glow, and his face with a rare little smile that said I'm here, look at me. And he thought, some day, some day.
Then after luxuriating and masturbating again, this time on his knees and his cum spurting on the ground as he fell to the side and gave a small giggle which no one else in the whole world had ever heard him emitting. Sometimes at midnight's calling, he would crawl out his window, his clothes or p.j.'s with him just in case. And he would march like a soldier in the fields, with his erection proudly leading the way. Sometimes he would lightly thump it and it would go boing boing. Sometimes in the fields of night, he would twirl round and round in a whirling dervish. He ran to the places of night nakedness and he was never alone.
In summer there would be birds flying over head, and in Autumn when the weather was like bundled in a cold brown aromatic coat, the ducks would fly to safety and he would look up at them, praying that no hunter would kill any of them and if they did, the hunters would go to hell, for he was a boy who had a kindness toward birds and animals. The world stretched great big from his fingertips as he held his arms out beside his body and he was the crackle of everything meek and mild and gentle and soft. And he would swim in the stream unless it was too cold, feeling all that skin envelope of water on all that skin of boy.
He lay for a time and he remembered the chores tomorrow. Soon. He needed little sleep. Paper route a few hours from now, collecting on Saturday from people who said they would pay him next week, and how he hated that, their taking advantage of a kid. Then to school, and then home for chores round the farm, with the one farm hand his mom could afford to work the place with the three of them, and that only on a part-time basis. But now, tonight, this was his and it filled him with a melancholy happiness and he knew it was time to get back in his p.j.'s and run to home and think of masturbating, being careful when he did it in bed, and thinking with his hard-on all day in school, then riding his bike on the everlasting ride home, doing it in his locked room, then here tomorrow night.
For a boy who would never be loved, he had much love in him. He collected animals from hunters' traps or caught in barbed wire, and he and his mom nursed them back to health. It was always a task to let them go, but they were wild and free and as he watched them off onto the horizon and beyond, he felt like sunset on Saturday night, which for some reason, to him, seemed the loneliest fabric of day or night in God's tapestry, and he would want to call out to them, the fox, the squirrel, the blue jay, the jack rabbit -- oh please take me with you, I want to be wild and naked and free like you. As he waved them farewell, he thought some day, some day, they truly would.
And now he did not run, or walk, but trudged home to the little dingy wooden house in the middle of no where, where Mom lay asleep, as he sneaked into his window and left it open, then lay in bed and with tissue handy, masturbated again. And then he went to sleep. The alarm clock waked him in the still dark and for a boy who needed little sleep, he was hoping for five more minutes, just five. Then he remembered and he smiled to himself, careful careful remember who they think you are if they think you are anything at all. It had to be that way. Always. He struggled from under the covers, and began to assemble his day.
The last thing he put on was his newspaper carrier bag, then he went out to the kitchen where Mom said hello and eat quickly, you overslept, which he did and then she kissed him on the cheek, wished him a good day, as he said Bye Mom and half waved as he went out the screen door to his bicycle propped against the barn wall, got on it, and yawning one last time, rode away.
And his name was Joel. And he was 12.