"House of Autumn"
by Timothy
First thing, it was late November. And it was cold. Brown and gray and crunchy autumn had finally made it round again. I was 14. Frankie Adams and me, neither of us members of the wedding. Or anything more than distance. But it was Friday afternoon. I looked out the school window. It was steamed, that window. And so was I. I was to miss "The Twilight Zone" tonight. And if that didn't make me angry enough, I was also to miss "Rawhide" and "Robert Taylor's Detectives." My best night of TV. My night I lived for all week. My reward for putting up with this noisy scary crowded bump in the night school.
I was being forced to go spend the night with Johnny and Tommy (sorry, Tom, he was 15 after all) Wilson, because their parents made them invite me over. I was burning up inside. I hated the whole damn thing. Johnny and Tommy (I'll call him Tommy if I feel like it) and I were in scouts together--another damn thing I was forced to be a part of--and we had never said two words to each other in all the time we had been in scouts, cub and boy, and in school. But somehow their parents--wonder how?--cause they knew my mom--who said I was a lonely child; lonely for a reason, dig it, okay, Moms?--thought it would be a peachy keen idea if I could trundle over to their woodsy house in the Smokeville area and spend a weekend with two normal kids.
So I cried and threw things, and that only made Mom determined all the more-- "you won't make friends with any of the boys because you know it hurts me"--yadayada. No, Mom, I won't make friends with any of the boys because boys made me hot and hard and I tend to cry when I'm hot and hard and I know that isn't the way it's supposed to go in "For Boys Only," but there it is anyway. I'm dead before I start. I can't speak to them. I can't look at them. Without falling into their eyes. Without stammering and tumbling. And now, great, I gotta go visit Geek Boys, because they were forced to invite me and they don't want me there anymore than I want me there. Yippee. So school bell rang and the break is made for, and I remember the rancor of the Geek Boys; how they kinda snarled the invite and dared me to say yes, and got my dander up and so I said then by damn yes.
Tommy (Tom) was tall and gangly. He wore big black rimmed glasses. He was thin to the point of emaciation. He had no belly. He had sticks for legs and arms. His head was a little too long front to back, and his eyes were dark. He had a pocket protector in which there were pens and pencils. He wore neatly pressed jeans, cuffs turned up. He wore billowy white shirts like he was some bank exec. got turned into a boy somewhere or other. His face, unlike mine, was unpimply. There was a sheen to his face and his toffee nose and his lips were a little too red if you get what I mean. He smelled of Brylcreem and his hair was always plastered back, (brown color) with the stuff.
Johnny was everything his brother was, except he was 13 and it all came in a smaller package. I figured they smoked and drank and would make me smoke and drink and I would die and go to hell. I figured they would give me the business, as the Beav is fond of saying. And then they would fiddle with me and take off my clothes and throw me out into the cold cold forest beside in front of and behind their so cute woodsy house, so maybe I should beat them to the punch, throw my foot in front of them and trip them and then fiddle with them and take off their clothes and......I really didn't know what came after that. Something nice and wonderful and I would spill the beans around them and they would kill me for it and their parents would approve when they discovered too what a perv I was.
I figured the boys would have "Playboys" and they would look at the pics in their room and make me sit on the side and not let me look at them, just every so often they would repress their panting as they sat side by side and look over at me and look at each other, and sputter with laughter and then go back to the naked girlies. I did not know anyone else could press erections out of their penises, surely being able to get a hard on--without touching it-- at the moment I wanted it was my gift alone. I didn't really think anyone else had penises. I don't know what I thought. I never looked at any of the boys in the locker room after gym. I never showered there. Dress. Undress. Dress again. Get the hell out. Sure, I heard boys make sex jokes there and at lunch--"what's the most gross thing in the world?" "I don't know. What?" "You kiss your grandmother and she gives you some tongue." "Oh sick yuck. Hey, what's that in your mouth? Oh it's a pubic hair. ahahah."
I didn't know what that really meant or why any grandmother wanted to, or why a pubic hair would be in one's mouth, but it set me to thinking about me giving some boys some tongue, choke on it, or them tonguing me, choke on it. The pubic hair in the mouth baffled me totally. Let's say that I was mostly as I walked home on a cold dark chilly late afternoon bummed about missing my TV shows. Like "The Twilight Zone." God, I loved that thing. I loved the writing and the acting and the directing. It spoke to me and only to me and made me sad and cry sometimes at the same time it gave me a very comfortable displaced feeling. I waited to see me on the screen in that magical country, and I was always there somewhere. Wanting to get off at Willoughby. Or stay with Martin Sloane in the summer night small town of long ago and never let either of us grow up and grow sad. I felt old already. I felt I had never been a child.
I wanted to kill the Wilson's. I wanted to hate them. I wanted to say, no, dammit, it's time for me to defy Mom who would do the usual deadly cruel stuff to me she always did when I defied her time and again, so why did I think I never defied her? Life makes no sense. I make less. So I'm storming home on a great day with terrific weather, neat night planned, and whap, there are the Wilson's, damn they are fast, in the car with mom and dad Wilson and waiting there beside the house by the time I get home. I smell winter coming. I smell the boys in the car. I smell with a feral movement inside me. I get a hard on. damndamndamndamn. And the boys do not look at me. They are in the back seat of the Chevrolet, new model, sparkling fresh and expensive, as opposed to my mom's ancient fly trap Plymouth, and the mother, whoever she is by name, rolls down the window, and says, "let's fly; got dinner"--they were from the far North, Iowa or somewhere, and said things like "dinner" instead of "supper" like here in the South--"waiting." Hell. Let's fly? Who is she? Supergirl. Now I'm tamping fury and at the same time this thought occurs acrostic in my mind--hey, I'll be bunking with the boys and therefore all night with the boys and boys have got to do stuff, the sex book "For Boys Only," said so, but I really still don't believe it. That's for movies and TV and they don't do that stuff in real life. Or in movies or on TV either.
Still. In real life. There is me. Old fucked up me. They don't write books about me. Or songs either. Those are for everyone else. The wind is blowing leaves around and it's so beautiful and brown and gray and black and white and whistling and lonely sounding up in the roof of the world, and I can't enjoy it and cry myself to sleep tonight because I've got to go be with these two boys, with this happy, rich, as opposed to my poor, family. And what will I talk about. What will they? Will they watch "The Twilight Zone" with me? Will they laugh when I am saddened by it. Will they see I'm not as tough as I pretend? Or do I pretend that only to me?
Egg white and other goo on you. And my mom is on the porch, smiling her ass off, not an easy thing to do, waving fast and hard toward the car, "thankyouthankyouthankyou" with my stupid little boy suitcase and I trudge up to her and she kisses me, shoves the case at me like a football that I've gotta run with and make that final decisive touchdown and win the game for the home team, and I don't have to see to know Geek Boys are looking and laughing their asses off at me. It makes my hard on go down at least.
Mama's boy Mama's boy I can hear the phrase multiplying like rabbits from them and everyone else in school once they tell and they will tell. So here I am with my Roy Rogers suitcase (I really would have liked to go to the bathroom first, and also to jack off in there, because I have to wait an entire weekend to do it again, and I'm cumming sperm more often now and that fascinates me, I don't care if I do get penis cancer, well I don't care all that much) and I get in the new car with the new smell and the boys have to be forced, squeezed, "get off me lame brain, give me cooties for sure," over by Dad who says "hi Tim" and shakes my goddam hand, making the boys sputter noisily in their hands, then driving us away, as I look out the window at my house, as for the last time, and he is so cool and modern and woodsy I almost puke and his wife leans over and puts a hand on my left knee and says we will have a spiffy time, and I think gag me with a spoon Leroy.
And we're off. The usual stuff happened. Well, usual for real people. Not for me. I had dinner with them. I kept looking for TV cameras, like on that "Twilight Zone" episode. It is very bizarre for me to eat at a table. With real people. Like a family who has adopted me. With the TV off. Mostly I eat on a TV tray with the TV on. The first thing I look for in their house is the TV. A bigger better model than ours of course.
The woods are all around and the night is here and I think of trolls carrying me away and the boys play with each other, I mean, they give each other noogies and push each other around a lot and their parents laugh a lot and tell them to stop it a lot, and the food is home made and not frozen dinners which is pretty much what home made at home for me is, and it's good and lots of hamburgers and butter beans and French fries and nice big glasses of sugary tea. And I can't look at any of these people. They are having fun at dinner. I never have fun at dinner. I eat. Swallow. Digest. And don't really taste the stuff anyway.
But here I taste the stuff at this big mahogany dinner table and the boys studiously avoid looking at me and never refer to me once, but their parents do, and they ask me things I don't know the answer to, like who's my Math teacher this year?, what, ah?, god, what?, and I mumble and the boys noogie each other some more on the arms and laugh and giggle and sputter and spit spittle and Mom lays down a ladling spoon hard on the damask table cloth and the boys wise up and sit straight and mind their P's and Q's for about a third of a second, and there is life in this house and it feels good.
The house is warm (there is an honest to god real fireplace in the living room, with a mantle and the whole works) and the house is filled with people who irritate each other, while I only live in a cold house where I irritate my mom and mostly myself. And I think then "The Twilight Zone." These are brainy kids. A brainy family. They will like it, cause it's so well written and so perfectly made for discussions after, and I think god that would be great to have someone to discuss it with, instead of just turning it over and over in my head all week, pretending someone else watches it too. I figured if I like it, it wasn't worth liking.
But Dore, that's the mother's name, it would be, kitchen domestic, with silver gas range and white egg shell huge food stuffed fridge and parquet flooring and sink and white counters all wide and cupboards filled with tons of precious dishes and cups and glasses, like the ones we are using, everything sparkly and clean and perfect like a TV commercial, so maybe this won't be a bad gig after all and I don't mind Dore really does wear a pearl earring and I don't mind her stupid looking white dress with ruffles round the neck, or Dad, what is his name again?, who looks like his sons, only taller and older, I never thought about men using Brylcreem too, and his face is shiny like his sons, like they are newly unwrapped and just out of the package, and I decide maybe and maybe, but Dore says, "We don't watch TV here, Tim." Oh dandy, she's a mind reader. Or I'm very easy to read. It may be because every so often I look back longingly at the RCA color TV in the living room.
"Not very often. Except for the news. And we are very opposed to violent shows and horror shows. It disrupts the mind. We really hate"--here it comes, oh god throw up little waves in my throat-- `The Twilight Zone'--cause it gives a person, especially a young person certain--ideas," here she smiled, on cue, at the boys, who, reaction shot, smiled angelically back at her, while kicking each other in the shins under the table--and I want to kill her, and them and every freakin' body in this freakin' don't breathe a thought on me it might be catchin' fuckin' house. She must have been a model for some years later for "The Stepford Wives." Was Ira Levin somewhere in the shadows of a time warp, watching all of this?
After that little glissando, everything is pretty much hazy. They talked. They laughed. They discussed Dad's work day. Mom's work day at the house. Who was going to pick up the leaves and pile them tomorrow. What school had been like. What classes were the boys doing the best in. And you, Tim, bladabladablada. So I bladabladablada'ed back and nobody gave a shit in hell. So Mom cleaned up and the boys helped and Dad went to his over stuffed easy chair in the adjoining living room, there should have been slaughtered animal heads on the wall to show what a big dick he was and all, but he and his little family were proving that in extremis already. So I'm sitting there on the nubby brown (color schemes all matching, not just what you can get and live with it, like at my house) couch with you got it the Saran Wrap on it, these people are on TV, why do they hate it so much?, and Dad (who is of course wearing a smoking jacket--they really make things like this that people actually pay money for and wear?) is smoking his, god damn cliches everywhere I turn, pipe, and Mom and the boys do the dishes and there is talk and I pretend I'm home watching "Rawhide" which is on this very minute and how can that be, without me there? Dad likes quiet non-conversations. It is a rest for me. I sit there still like I had a stick up my butt. I didn't know who D. James Kennedy was at the time. But I think he stole my act from me.
Eventually the whole family is in the living room. The boys on the floor, me sneakily looking at their lines of boy slim shanks, the boys just holding in their devil faces, as they sit politely and thumb through "Boy's Life" and "Mark Trail" and who knows what, all taken from the mag rack, with the stuffed book shelves above them. Then finally finally mom says well boys, been a rough school week, why don't you show Tim your room and get him situated and just talk for a while and then"--and I thought it as she said it--"hit the hay." Now this excited me. It suddenly became real for me. The whole thing, except for the slander against `The Twilight Zone' for which the should all have been executed, should have excited me. And was beginning to. The boys weren't much. But they were boys. They and I were going to go in their room. Close the door. Lock it? And not come out till morning. With their parents idiotic naive blessing??? Groovy. The boys looked better and better. They were thin and they were attractive in that kind of geese stalky way, and I was to spend the night with them, in the autumn woods with the cold winds outside.
So I followed their little bouncy bony behinds as they lead the way to their room, where there was the bunk bed and right beside it, a sleeping bag, and I almost died, (the bunk bed excited the hell out of me, I have no idea why, it was just so boyee, the sleeping bag had the same effect on me) holy god, these boys were going to take off their clothes in front of me, and put on their pajamas in front of me, and scratch their nuts and their butts--I suddenly was aware they had such things, and other children's clothes were not their actual skin itself--and I laughed inside myself, I went, heheeheh, and they became the devil in the room, wrestled each other to the ground, not knowing there was another devil in the room who was more of a devil than they were, and I had a hard on, and didn't try to hide it and they sat on each other and pretended they were going to strike each other, and I remembered a cat fight in a western I had seen at the Waldren one time, and I thought please be like the girls and rip your clothes off too.
I felt guilty and sat/fell on the bottom bunk. I was deserting TV for the night. My eyes were glued to every facet of these boys. It would be back next week, and I could catch the missed shows on summer re runs. But I wanted to all of a sudden be here.
Here sitting on the cowboy bedspread of brown and lariats, and in the room of boys with pin ups of Connie Francis and Sandra Dee and Annette on the walls, all the girls perfectly properly dressed with only the slightest most demure smiles on their faces that said let's get a sundae, you'll treat, even if that. And there at my leather shoed feet, were two boys, two BROTHERS, who looked enough alike, all things considered, to be mirror images of each other, except Tom was older and Johnny was younger and maybe Johnny wasn't too sure about this jack off business and Tom had to instruct him as well, and since I was in age sandwiched between them, could I in a more tangible way, be sandwiched between them before the night was through?, from the song of the same lyric?
I could be taught too. And if Johnny hadn't come before and if he was just getting in pubic hair--we could ready him and compare--thank you God and "For Boys Only" and whoever the perv was who made up the questions in this hot little sex book (they were handed out in school, though how the hell such a thing occurred in this little Southern town I've no idea, as though it was rancid meat, the boys' phys Ed teacher, red faced and embarrassed, threw copies at the boys all in one classroom, as the girls' red faced and embarrassed phys Ed teacher probably threw "For Girls Only" at the girls all gathered in one classroom), and the answers, pretending that boys (and girls, though I hear tell he was a woman in that book) were really asking him this hot stuff.....
I was told to stand up. By Tom. That this was not my bunk. That I would sleep on the floor in the sleeping bag. That I could use their bathroom. That I could leave my suitcase by the side of their door so I could get to it easily and depart the premises tomorrow morning "a little sooner than you anticipated." But that I was to touch nothing else of theirs. Later it made me laugh. Then it did not. Brain boy did not catch the double entendre.
I thought I had found two escapees from "The Village of the Damned" based on "The Midwich Cuckoos" by John Wyndham, you fuckin' charlatans in the brains department, bet you never read or heard of that either, you pretenders with your damn pocket protectors and your weird little icky brains that had learned the trick of doing math perfectly like trained seals and liars in every other damn way, but what I did, was stand up, robot like, and walk to the other side of the room, where their study desk was, and look down at the white rug where it occurred to me I could do `em when I wanted, whatever that might be, and then they stood up, after having flashed their death rays eyes at me which had seemed suddenly golden, and they started to undress, as though I wasn't there.
HOLY MOTHER. A STRIP SHOW. And I'm not even Catholic. I will be I will be if they continue. Please forget I am there. All the other times in my life I wanted to be noticed, but people didn't seem to know I existed. Please this one time, I thought, holding my breath, trying to make my blood stop pumping regardless of the consequences, make me the invisible man, and when Johnny or Tom or whoever went over to turn off the lights and make the room very very dark, he did it not out of modesty, or because I was there, it was just the ritual. Well they can't close out the sounds, I thought, fearful and angry and sexy and wanting to feel their bodies and wanting to be naked in front of them and that thought made me even stiffer, right out tenting my jeans, but there was only the sounds of nothing. Walking around. Bedsprings creaking. Shoes thrown on the floor. Bathroom door opened. No lights. Toilet flushing. Maybe peeing sounds? Can't really tell. Though my ears are on stalks.
Do they sleep naked? I saw no pajamas and they didn't go to the closet, and the woods were still and the wind blew cold and I stood there who knows how long? endlessly and I rubbed my penis through my jeans. Did they know how to masturbate? Maybe, really, no one really did know how but me, and if they didn't, would they kill me if I asked them, and how does a boy ask another boy that question Miss Post of the Emily guide please tell me tell me do?
I guess they talked for a while. The older boy on the top. The younger one on the bottom. Of the bunks I mean. And I walked, not easily to the sleeping bag, decided I had to take off my shoes, in order to fit in there, did so, setting them down gently, so they would keep thinking I was not there, and worrying they would step on me in the night when they went to the bathroom, which by the way I had done as soon as I got to the house, embarrassment of me not with standing, and dangled my dick in the bathroom door mirror to make a shadow of time and me the boys would always see in that mirror without knowing it. That was as gustily daring as I had ever been in my life. Lord, please don't let me fart. I tend to do that a lot. Not this time. No, please God who has done nothing for me anyway. Or Jesus. Get off God's right hand and help me. Pleasure can come to you later. What the hell is God doing to you with his right hand. No. Forget it. More important things await me. Oh and by the way, God. Fucketh You.
So I lie there in the too warm room, all covered in the sleeping bag. I see little movements in the tree branch swaying woody moonlight, not much, just a hand or something hanging down, just some pieces of the bunk bed itself and I lie there sweating, and scared and excited, as I've said a million times already, wanting to masturbate, playing with myself under neath the covering of the bag, pulling my zipper down oh so quietly, and pulling me out and my balls, cold against the zipper, and I rub gently and pray oh please let one of them wake up and come to me and before they kill me because they have discovered full and well and official like I'm a perv, touch my penis.
How I want a boy to touch my penis and let me touch his and see if its as hard spongy warm tingly thrilling as mine and his would have to be more so in my hand because it would be his and he would be looking at me and I would feel my tits harden and he would be powerless under my spells, and we would just...whatever the hell we would do...I guess jack off looking at each other. And we could I guess see who spurts first and farthest. I've heard boys and the perv sex book writer mention this and that would be fun, for the first time, boys were sexual beings to me for true and honest, and the dais turned and suddenly I was no sexual being at all as I had felt before for such a long time, it had been my secret, my sexy lessons to myself and now they had surpassed me even if they only did what I did, because it would not be done in secret any longer all the time, not for them, there was a point to it, there was a reason, and I knew for a fact they did not cry no matter how they tried to stop themselves afterwards cause it was so fuckin' ought be a law against such sad big lonely--
--and they were brothers, so they had bathed together when they were small and they must have made grabs at each other when they were growing up, and wiggling themselves at each other just to torment the one with the smallest dick, and they must have walked in on each other when they were jacking in the bathroom or wherever in this room, and they had one boy to one boy and they were not alone and that made me do something that I cringe even now that I did; that made me do what was for then, the ultimate ultimate--throwing caution and possibly my life to the wind--I threw off, with a magnificent flourish, the top covering of the sleeping bag, just like Loretta Young sweeping through the door at the opening of each episode of her TV show, and there I was, pulling my jeans down below my butt and my briefs too, and held my dick hard and high and I jacked off like billy be damned, though who billy is or why he should be damned I have no idea; does this refer to a specific billy, or to all billys?; why not ralph be damned?--
--or tim be damned, and who gives a shit, because though they were asleep, soundlessly so, save for the occasional little breathy sounds, and here and there a whistling sound, which GOT ME SO HOT, and I was dancing my penis to sleeping boys, they were boys then by damn and by all, and I was jacking off in their presence; it was kind of like doing it with them and because of my age, the fear left me, and the daring entered in, and I shot and shot up to the sky with white creamy sperm and it covered the whole damn room and landed on the boys just drenched them and they awoke with a start and said what the fuck? and Tom fell out of bed and rushed to the lights and turned the golden glow on in the burnished wood paneled room, and saw my huge boy dick staring right at him in the face, and he did sleep naked and his dick arose to mine as though he was an orchestra and I was the conductor raising the baton, he wanted it, man, he wanted nothing else in the world so badly, and Johnny awoke too and he was rigid and he saw what was happening, boinged his dick hard with his hand, right to his belly and then standing out straight, boned out of bed and they went into a sexual dervish on the floor and my come was still creaming the room, and they rolled over in it to me and they said as one, "We do your bidding. master" in a zombie tone of voice and.....
--ok ok you got me cornered Louis, here's the gat, the game's up--so it wasn't like that, so my dick, though it came and came for a while produced little sperm, I could have made more but I was too afraid I guess or my nuts were or something--anyway, I lay there in the dark room, and the boys still sleeping--I guessed; though I lived in mortal fear for the next month they had been watching me make an ass out of myself, and getting then excited that maybe if they told others, then sexy stuff would somehow start coming my way, I didn't mind being the joke, honest, I just wanted to be with other boys, laugh away buckaroos, I don't care, it's worth it--and then the deep gut sadness that they told no one, had not been awake, or the very worst, they had seen me momentarily, yawned, and then turned over and went back to sleep.
So I lay there and I did my after jacking crying, silent as usual, big blue tears streaming down my face, and I covered up embarrassed, pulled briefs and jeans up, thought about mooning the bastards, rejected it, and lay breathing hard for a long time till I fell into a, how appropriate, twilight sleep. Forgive me TZ, I had it coming to me.
And the next morning, still dark, so I could not see them sleeping, and how I wanted to see their sleepy faces, alas, I got up before they did, groggy with little sleep, so they wouldn't step on me, put on my shoes, and sat on the floor by their door with my suitcase at hand, me holding onto the handle. When they did wake, I had dozed off, so when one kicked me in the leg, they were dressed--I was not to see them wake up, to see if they slept naked, if they woke with hard ons like I always did--just another little joke on me--and Tom (Tommy Tommy let me see your goddam Swedish Salami and fuck you you goddam pseudo intellectual) motioned me wordlessly to get up and get out. So I had to sit at the table eating blueberry pancakes because the parents insisted and then I said I was kinda you know home sick, and Dad whatever his goddam name was, said but we thought you would help us rake the leaves this morning, and I wanted to.
I loved raking autumn leaves, from the song of the same title, in the morning cold, and to do leaf raking with these boys to whom I had jacked off last night, not to a dream, not to a guess, but right there, while they breathed, mere inches beside me, the small amount of sperm on the waist band of my briefs was now cold on me, my little secret, O god how I wanted to tell them, my death would have been worth it, it made me feel so kicky, to know what I had done, emptied my current crop of cum in the BOYS ROOM OF THE WILSON HOUSE, to be there working on those leaves with them, to see them in action, and maybe maybe jumping in leaf piles with them, leaves all crumbly and woody and smoky and cold and hands grabbing where hands should not grab,, cold hands becoming warm at the touch.. I should have loved this place, I should have been sad to go, a nice mom and dad, nicer than mine for sure, boys who did stuff together--
--I still tremble when I wonder what stuff they did, and I mean more than they played with that big deal elaborate Lionel train set in their room, and more than they played their regulation big deal guitar and sang cowboy songs, and I was here in autumn woods and it was just like a fairy tale, in this house with the fire place and the smell of wood smoke, and I didn't want to leave, not ever, but Tom kicked me in the shin and so did John, so I really did insist I had to go, and oh yes, I loved blueberry pancakes, these were the batter made kind, they tasted scrumptious. Though they sat like lead in my stomach. It was over. All of it. But I did have to leave. Their dad took me home. Dore blew kisses at me at the door as I walked away. I decided to let her live anyway. The boys were no where to be seen. This should have been my house. I should have been their brother. Then when they beat me up, it would be from the inside, and not the outside which is what makes the total difference.
So that was pretty much it. I was never invited back. Stupid, but it hurt. The boys were Geek Boys once more and I wished their pocket protectors and pens would spring a leak all over their bank exec white shirts. They never spoke to me. I never spoke to them. I was able to go three weeks one time without saying a word to anybody at school. I could have gone longer if a teacher hadn't called on me to answer a question once. One fuckin' time and then I had to start to play my own silent brand of solitaire all over again.
The Wilson's moved away a year or so later to California. I didn't miss them. They might as well have always been in California. I wasn't able to jack off for a week after my visit with them, it was all so gray skied inside me, the first time I started to almost hate cold weather and coming snow; it took some others years later to make me dread autumn and winter for a long time, so thank you fuckers, (memo: don't trust psychologists or psychiatrists ever in your life not for one single second, assholes one and all, and pricks too, physicians aren't a fuck of a lot better) though I've gotten back to living for those seasons again.
One winter night I was at my very hollow feeling home, watching TV. It had forgiven me long ago for my one night abdication and my finally not thinking about it at all when I got the THE BOYS ROOM, the doom butterflies gathering in droves pushed the other things away from memory; cause I was one of something, for a little time, a member of something for a very unperfect night, a very pretend as always night, (so Frankie Adams and I got a little of our own back; hell she got a hit novel, play and movie out of it, and awards and acclaim up the kazoo; ok Frankie you win hands down, I give).
The door bell rang. My mom was at work. She didn't get home till eleven at night. Who the hell? No one rings the door bell at night or any other time for me to come out and play. Scared little high school senior me. And I opened the door expecting the Werewolf and the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy and Gorgo to all be there waiting for to carry me home, but it was Mr. Wilson (no, not the old fart in the Dennis the Menace comic strips, comic books, TV series, movies) but Johnny and Tom's dad.
He was in town on a meeting for the weekend and thought he would drop by and take me out to dinner. I was incredibly flattered. And by this time had figured some things out sexually, so I thought. Again oh boy was I wrong. So though I had eaten yet another cardboard TV dinner an hour ago, I said, sure thing, Mr. Wilson, and hoped I didn't sound too much like Jay North, or maybe I hope I did. Whatever floats your boat, hey, man, I can dig it.
And I got my coat and we were off to a restaurant and I thought, well, he' s pretty nice looking anyway, and maybe, I mean well Johnny and Tom were long ago, to me anyway, and it would be kind of nice to ah tell him about that visit I mean if he wanted to hear and I'm so confused sir, cue tears, I just don't understand my feelings, ah god I'm a TV show too, a very bad Aaron Spelling TV show at that, but I just ate dinner with the man, spilling my food on the floor only twice, goofing with smiles, scared to death, sweating in my arm pits, and all of that, and we finished and as we walked back to his car he said,
"Now, Tim, you should know something...." And my heart timpanied, not for him really, but for his sons, that is always how it is with me, looking for substitutes for boys I fell in love with secretly, never told, knew it would be no use, so I latched on as soon as possible to someone to take their place, I take it as a matter of pride they never found out, I felt good hurting them (it hurt no one but me) as they hurt me (I just doubled my pain, clever, right?), but I never could tell them they were only a ghost of a ghost of a ghost and they meant nothing and when they turned their back and walked away they would never know I hardly knew they themselves were there....so the next person I latched onto was a substitute for them who was a sub for and a sup for and on and on.
Anyway, Dad what was his name again, like a Dobie Gillis story where Dobie keeps trying to find out this girl's first name he didn't catch the first time she said it, and it's driving him batty and he's ashamed not to admit it so he keeps doing these patented Max Shulman attempts to find out, and he screws up all the time...Dad whatever said, "Tim, you should know," as I walked beside him down the dark street and past the bus station--hint hint--"there are certain men, sailors usually, who hang out at night on street corners, and they ah well they look for young boys like you and ah...." So to calm me down and to take the shame off him, (also, he had begun to sound like an idiot, and I felt like laughing at him) we were GOING TO DO IT, I HAD NEVER DONE IT BEFORE, I WAS GOING TO DO IT WITH JOHNNY AND TOM'S DAD FUCK `EM EAT THAT BOYS, WHICH WAS THE SOLE REASON I WAS GOING TO DO IT WITH WHATEVER HIS NAME WAS THOUGH I KNEW I COULDN'T DO IT CAUSE HE WAS NOT A BOY BUT I WAS GOING TO GIVE IT ONE WHOLE EMBARRASSING HELL LOT OF A TRY, and then thinking, well, it's a novel come on, this warning business, I guessed then and was wrong again--
--there in the cold cold dark autumn night I walked a little closer to him, our arms shadowed against each other a few times and he hadn't moved away even....
...so to take the vise from around us before the vice cops--ha hah--arrested him, me?, I'm an innocent little minor angel straight from heaven above, he was gonna what?, he was gonna dowhatttttt?, well, my land O' Goshen and hush my little fucky, I do declare I never heard of such a thing in my whole entire life...so to take the conversation away from his casting further aspersions at men (and boys I will have you know) who go after young boys for sexual congress, and because it was beginning to make me mad cause he didn't know what he was talking about, I said, "You know, Mr. Wilson," as we approached his car; he did not say "call me Flick or Brick or whatever the hell" like I hoped, "I saw this movie, `Dinosaurus' last weekend, it was about dinosaurs coming back to life in modern times, there was this little boy" (boy was he a cute little Mexican kid, hatcha) " and he rode a dinosaur and it looked so incredibly real," oh why is the moon in the sky mister and the color of the day time sky, is that called blue? oh wink wink bat bat eyelashes you pompous egotistical boob job, "do you know how they did that?," so as we got in the car and he drove me home, as we walked to the porch and sat on the swing in the cold, huddled in our coats, he told me how they did special effects and it pained me silly because I read "Famous Monsters of Filmland" and I knew about all that stop motion stuff and blue screen and miniatures and all that and I'm thinking, you better make your play for me because it's getting late and my mother will be home soon and that will take off the thrill...though of course I hadn't exactly invited him in the house...the little horse must think me queer...
...of course that was what he was waiting for. My mom. My dumb ugly screamy crazy Mom. Because he stopped his endless monologue that took us through "The Lost World" and "King Kong" and "Mighty Joe Young" and the Harryhausen movies to date (someone in his family at least watched movies some time or other, giving him "ideas," ) and hopped off the swing so fast it twirled me as her car came into the garage and she walked up to the porch and up the steps, not seeing us there--a piece of beefcake if you ask me, is he kidding?-- as he approached her, said her name, she screaming, falling back a step or two, and he like Rhett Butler, catching her most handily, so when she calmed down, they chattered and he took Miss Moral out for coffee, they damn near skipped to his car. My mom? Oh yuck. Dore was better than that. God. Vomit. I sat there and fumed.
Later I heard good old Mom tell someone that he had made a pass at her, which shocked her out of her life...he was married after all would you believe?? Get a grip Mom.. That he and Dore were getting a divorce and the kids were bearing up well, had their own lives, college there or soon, and he was a man and he was in town anyway, and a man's gotta have yayayayay and she slapped his face, and we never saw any of the brood again. At least I didn't. It's a crummy thing being beaten out in the love game by your own damn mother.
Anyway... back there at the end of THE VISIT, when I was leaving the BOYS ROOM, the boys coming behind me so they could be sure I left, I stopped and said I had forgotten my toothbrush and toothpaste. I went back in THE BOYS ROOM, closed the door a second, and stole the first paperback I saw from a shelf, rammed it in my jacket pocket. They never ever knew. I sure the hell would have known. They would not be shy demanding it back. I knew where my books were at all time. No friends to steal them, of course. Or vague ghostly children who were never really there at all.
I treasure my books more than I do people. No book has ever let me down. Not one single time. No book has ever turned its back and gone away. So I treat them well. I never break the spine. I never crease the covers or the pages. The book I stole: "Utterly Mad," a Ballantine paperback collection taken from Mad magazines. I still have that book. That was in a very beat up condition when I stole it, though it had been brand new.
It is no more beat up now than it was then. The same cannot be said, unfortunately, for me. My hands are much kinder than life can ever be. THE BOYS had their chance to find out. Too bad, Gunther and Seymour, and all the ships at sea, and even a sailor or too standing on that street corner watching all the boys go by, way too bad, without being noticed by them one single solitary second.
Thank you for reading my story. Which just happens to be true, though the names were changed to protect the normal and their goddam pocket protectors. Which I still hope will some day leak like a sieve on all those bank exec shirts everywhere at the most embarrassing times possible. Hat check to the left on your way out.
the end
Timothy Stillman comewinter@earthlink.net