Christmas Trees
By
Timothy Stillman
Lonely boys do lonely things. I was 14 when I discovered I existed. It was Christmas. My summer friend was not to return the next year. I was alone. The Christmas tree is in the living room; it is Art Deco pink. Pink branches slanted upwards. I so wanted an evergreen tree; my mother insisted they cost too much and shed too much. It was seven p.m. I was looking at the tree when I become a lifetime round and round. The full length mirror behind the tree, and I discovered something inside me. I was wearing a red short sleeved shirt and blue jeans. The room was cold, even though the wall heater was on high.
I put my left hand inside my shirt and touched my nipples, each one as in the mirror, I saw my face as if for the first time. It looked like the face of a baby bird, brown short cropped hair. My eyes were lonely blue. I discovered adolescence at that moment, and the adolescent was me. I put my hand on my shirt, then to the crotch of my jeans. I was tall and thin. I took my hands to my shoulders, then I touched my face and opened my eyes wide. And I saw myself bathed in the lights of the Christmas tree around and around. Blue. Green. Yellow. Read. I felt like an alien-- hey, I felt like I belonged. I smiled my crooked smile back. I closed my eyes. I took off my shirt.
My balls were hard. I fondled them. The tree in front of me with the branches. The Christmas balls, the slender trunk that was a tube hide and seeked me and let parts of me be seen. I put my left hand in my jeans. Even then, I did not wear underwear. Even in winter when it was cold. I put my hand to the zipper of my jeans. I pulled out my penis. I was hard. I was 6 inches then already; my pubic hair was sparse. I held my warm hard penis. It jumped and giggled. I touched my navel. I took off my jeans. Then I began slowly to dance. My mother would be home from work four hours from now.
I was already barefoot. I was naked now, and incredibly horny. I found then the same feeling I found much younger, the sheer sexuality of Saturday morning cartoons when they did not have anything involving boys or sex or beautiful kids in love. I think now, it was a curious blending in this boy's heart. Then sexuality, and in a sense childhood were all mixed up together for me. And one indefinable plot was always the structure of who I was and who I logged in as. I knew I hated me. I was not ugly. I was nondescript. But I was a boy. I had a boy's body and a penis that was hard as I've said before.
I began to masturbate. I was still on the trails of just feeling good. I did not have to think of a face or body or boy or girl or woman. I just felt good, the warm sweet washcloth inside me expanding again. I turned around in circles slowly, I knelt on the floor. I put my arms up in the sky to see my armpit hairs just a bit now. I threw my head back. I dreamed at my hands my face my mouth, and I kissed my hand and turned around to my butt, kneeling, looking down at my naked blue green yellow red chest and crotch, as I held my cock through my legs with my balls. I sighed, I imagined nothing. I felt the total freedom of sexuality. I felt so beautifully alone; it was Christmas in a week; every Christmas Eve, I would eat too many sweets, and be sick Christmas mornings.
The women in PLAYBOY excited me, but the magazine itself is much more than that. And yes, I bought it for the stories; it was beautiful really a great thing to have to touch to hold to read to feel. I would have to masturbate, including early dark Christmas mornings when I was always sick; and those pictures of naked women and Playboy were my only outlet. I would imagine as I went to the bathroom locking the door. Then the bathroom rug, which is soft, as I took off my pajamas. In the chill. And the magazine-- most recent vintage in front of me and imagine the woman naked in the centerfold teaching me how to have sex with her.
But now was only me in front of the tree in the mirror. The lights going round and round. I believe that the Christmas music was on the stereo soft glow. I kissed each of my shoulders. But I was all I had; was thought to be both. I became neither. I had a box of Kleenex next to me now. I was ready later on, next grade, to up the ante. I would come home from school to masturbate a certain other ritual that you don't want to hear about so will not tell you, however it kept me sane. I was a snow Angel in color lights, people watching, and I smiled at them and decided I would estimate who could touch me later. I was my own penis, which was the entire body and mind and soul and I held it. I caressed it and held it tight and spread the slit and I played with the pink mushroom head and pushed it to my balls. I rubbed them. I fell deliciously beautifully, up singing obscene.
I put my arms to my side. I stretched out my leg out than the other. I spread my legs. I bent over to the mirror. I felt my entirety; I stood side-by-side with an image that was me. I wrote my penis sex hard at my finger and thumb of my left hand, though I did not know this was not the way to produce the best feeling.
It was a way of punishing me already. I stood. I leaned down. I crossed my arms, legs.
Like sad Terrance Stamp, for much the same reasons in THE COLLECTOR. I pretended I was a morning. I was safe. I was in snow school forever, and somebody loved me. Someday I knew it, so I turned my back to the mirror at my hips; my spine. I felt my head caressing my heart. I felt myself masturbating, slowly, and it was pink and I was safe. And I was deeply happy.
I sighed; I held myself to throbbing. I pushed myself--penis-- balls to the mirror, to the tree. I had always wanted something--not knowing what--something not existing yet--for Christmas. There was no difference between reading a Christmas story from the Reader's Digest collection or a Christmas Carol or Christmas Eve services at church and sexuality. I pumped my groin hard. I was a hammock in a hard wind blowing first and back first and forward at myself ready to come now knot of orgasm ready to come now feel it filled the whole body tied tight center of me. My whole existence was concerned with one particular device one particular action direction masturbation coming. My eyes latent with lust, I walked further to the tree to the mirror. I said, I love you and my hand felt my come by come my come as spurts in my dick grew bigger it spurted hard and harder white white come as though the my knees. The Kleenex around my cock head. I bit my lips.
Though the room was cold. I perspired I caressed my cock, my tits, as I fell to the carpet of green. I was shuddering my short hairs were wet with cum. I looked cautiously around the floor to be sure I caught all of it. But no telltale stains left. I held the Kleenex in my left hand, made sure the cum was over, went to the bathroom and flushed it away.
I believed in Christmas, though Christmas morning was always quite horrible. And I'd never told anyone before this -- -- my Christmas ritual. I believed in God, then. And in Jesus and the Christmas story and in church on Sunday morning. There was a boy sitting in front of me always there. I loved him; he had blonde hair a very thin mortal neck, thin shoulders, and little moles on the back of his neck, as did Deirdre in "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," though his did not form a constellation as did hers, and he was beautiful. I listened to the sermon by preacher whom I liked enormously as I watched the boy.
I went through the rituals of teenagers. Not with another person, it never occurred to me that another person could ever be involved with me -- -- never. I stayed naked in front of the Christmas tree and mirror a long time. Then lay on the floor on my side. I wrote myself all over; I said, you're okay. I didn't dare go to sleep for fear of being caught. I dressed in my thick pajamas, got back to bed, covered up, then three times that night, like always, woke, went to my cherry wood desk, to be sure and have all of my homework done, even though it was Christmas break.
Somewhere around this time, my mother got a home movie camera. I was just getting out of the bathtub, and she opened the bathroom door quickly ran in and filmed me standing up in the tub; a towel quickly protected my genitals. I screamed, the lack of sound on the film didn't save me. I smiled goofily and hid my face and she laughed and went back out of the bathroom.
Even though she showed the film of me, almost naked, to friends or relatives and my friends in summer, I had grown somewhat proud of it. In bed now, I stretched my crotch, as far as it would go. I rubbed my nipples. I pinched them, I giggled. I was such a good boy. I never cursed or smoked or drank. I never ran through people's lawns in summer time or through people's flowerbeds. I closed my eyes and remembered the delicious deep pie fulfillment and warm satiation of how my penis coughed a little more, as I wiped it off; thinking as sleep took me--how amazing even I get to do this. Even I am allowed, though unhallowed. It's built in. Thank you God.
Lonely boys after all, get the requisite amount of doing lonely things. And sometimes lonely things can be quite beautiful.