"My Darling Joel"
by
Timothy Stillman
Boy wild, willowy, and wistful he was. And they broke him. So he came to this winter cabin. Snow sheets falling. Grip of coldness that was black angry night sky. And piles of drifts that rushed first one way, then another in the grip of a wind hungry and whistling. When weather has soul and form and breath. When weather makes itself known as a beast that is living and is toying with those of us considered so superior.
The cabin was warm, however. There was a warm puppy brisk fire in the fireplace. Orange and jumpy and filled with bright shadows. That was what the boy needed. Bright shadows. And himself by the fire, on the bearskin rug. Naked was Joel. Naked and small and boned deeply and lying on his stomach, still a bit of pout to it though he was now 19. His hair was the color of the fire that danced on his skin, reflecting himself in himself.
He was a mirror glass. He stretched his leg tendons. He propped one foot, the left, upward. He grimaced. His eyes became suspicious and sliding around from side to side. He smiled warmly. He smiled wanly. He held his upper body up on his arms before the heat that felt so good on his naked body. His thin comma shaped body. As though he was a sleet thought in desecration on the waves of the white foamy fabric beneath him. This synthetic bear skin rug. This boy on it making it more synthetic. Making himself more unreal.
The wooden carved bear head that he held to and put his face on and toyed with this momentary beast of a jungle who would like to see him and feel him. Feel the boy's hard cock rubbing against it. Feel him mimic fucking. The hairless chest. The thin chest. The sweet smell of him as though he were always just out of the bath and just dusted with talcum.
For he was a gentle caring boy. He was the boy everyone picked at school. His emotions rode too easily too obviously in his dark eyes. He loved and was loved in return. That was the problem. He had long thin arms and long thin legs. They knew him. And he didn't know himself. Just the trapezoid he felt he held secretly in his tummy. Just the way he wondered what he looked like, now as he masturbated, from above. His hips flexing. As he dug his dick into the rug. As he luxuriated in the heat that was enclosing him in gold.
A golden boy. Smart and well liked. And not them at all. Not what he was supposed to be. When that was intended to be the answer. And he was perspiring beside the fire. He was expiring by the fire. He lay his head like a slow motion autumn leaf falling off its branch, on the wooden head. His cheeks were soft, face, and buttocks. He closed his eyes. He breathed his last. His arms fell akimbo to his sides.
He pretended to be dead. He pretended there would be boys who would weep over his death. Call bird and come winter sky and Joel not here anymore. How sad. How bad. And they would cry in the night for him. For all the wrong reasons. He lay there still for a time. Wondering if death heard. Wondering if death would come.
His hair was long full and reached to his bird soft small shoulder blades. He was caught in the stillness of Canada. Caught in a cabin made of logs and made of mortar. There were heavy snowed fir trees all around the cabin in the forest which claimed it, framed it and him.
They loved him, this place, the trees, the fire. As he had been loved all his life. Apprehending death standing too close by, he flicked open his eyelids. He moved his legs apart, and put his left hand to his cleft, then feeling his balls pressed underneath. His body was molded with tight secrets. And his head with tighter ones. Pale skin snow he was with orange pumpkin light within.
He was himself. And the soft music on the CD player was himself. And that was wrong. He was at the top of the world. He could see the coldest deepest stars up ahead of him. He dreamt he was swimming in space. He had been in the snow earlier this evening. Naked, in the snow. Biting the cold and biting the nipples of it and him. Strumming his cock in the cold and his ankles deep in the white drifts, as he stood in it. Slightly bending over. Being taken from behind. He shouted his name over and again to the echoing dark.
He was Joel and that was good enough for most. And the thing was, that was true. In the snow a bit earlier this evening: He felt the little down of eider on his legs and arms, out there in the white cresting. and he felt the cold lift his dick and hold it straight out. Like the hand of a cold lover was holding it. He felt his butt cheeks pucker and shiver. He fell backward in the snow, wondering as his body hit the softness, hit the delicacy, as though he were falling into a water color whoosh of winter water color in which he might swim forever, he wondered if he would make a snow angel or a snow devil?
He had laid there for a long time. The snow and wind numbing his body. Making him feel divorced from it. Making him feel as though he were riding a horse of deep and pure and perfect winter. A horse like Pegasus perhaps. Or like a unicorn. Heading with the great beast's hot back between the boy's legs, flying, they were, out to space where there were candles of Winter on every planet they passed by. But the boy would be choosy. He would only stop at the right planet. The exact right one.
He had laid in the snow and the snow of the sky fell on him. Covering him. As though he were laying on a sandy beach and was a young child. Being dusted and melted within and covered by snow sand. And the waves he could almost hear. The ferocity. The demimonde of them. As though he were, in memory, and lying now by the fire a bright crystal cup, a delicately inlaid crystal wine glass. To be pinged by the wind and by the fire. To be pinged and to make this utterly pure sound. This perfection of music that would forever be round him and protect him from the world.
But he did not need to be protected. He was well loved. And they had broken him, so he had had to hie himself to this winter cabin. Because he was leaking out of himself. Because when he stood up from the snow he had laid in, he saw a beautiful snow angel that he had made.
And cried. Which? The maker of the angel imprint? Or the angel himself? It was couched in moon lamp holding bright in the sky. It was couched with that echo light forests sometimes give on bright blue cold winter nights of long graceful bright moon blue snow hills in the distance
Joel was an echo. He had made himself hold his hard shivering penis as he stood above the snow angel. It was all he could do to keep himself from peeing on it. It would have been like peeing on himself, and everyone would be quite angry at him if he did that. For no one could stand to see the desecration of Joel Haden. Say it loud. And there is freedom for them. Say it loud. There is no freedom for him.
He had come back to the cabin. Shivering. Iced up. Like he was turned almost into a snow boy. And the ice came off quickly as he lay by the fire. He shook the snow from him. It lay in his hair and on his chest and some flakes on his pubic hair. As he lay by the fire and considered himself a languid stretching meowing cat. He luxuriated in the world that was himself. Others saw the world as only himself. He had never been alone a moment a second in his life. And he touched his shoulders and kissed the fingers that had touched the shoulders. He shook his head back and forth to make his hair dust against his shoulders. It was such a sexy sensation.
He was proud of his skin, of his body, of the way it swayed and was like a willow tree when young and in a spring breeze. He loved being naked with himself. He hated being naked with others. They wanted to fingerprint him with their love. They were sad and lonely no matter how boisterous and drunk and high they were at the time. They wanted him to be their circus, their merry go round, their fun fair. For he was festival. For he was the boy the others clumsy and ashamed and loud and shy and delicate and fake and real and too lost danced around him. Circled him and starved him for himself, because, they gave him themselves and took as much as possible of Joel away from Joel.
Clear pool on distant day. Boy on fake bear skin rug, was the boy fake too? after all? Boy rubbing his chest and abdomen and crotch on the rug. Boy feeling the softness against him, the fine fuzziness almost like that of a soft bath rug beneath him. Rearing upward and sighing. Putting the tip of his tongue out of his mouth. Touching it to his lips that were open a bit. And sighing. As though he were being fucked by the greatest lover there ever was to be.
Feeling his strong veined candy cane warm penis sticking straight out, confined by his hot stomach pressing down lightly on it, feeling his balls start to crawl upward. Feeling the fire in himself and the fire without himself. As he wondered if he might vanish now. As he might vanish as though he had never been. A great icon to his friends. And his friends were legion. A boy who was all sexuality. Who used his right hand and caressed his soft sweet butt. Who took a finger and inserted it in himself. Finding the hot hole small and snug and dry.
He loved being fucked and sucked at the same time. He loved having one boy kiss and bite Joel's tits, while another boy was sucking Joel's cock, while another boy fucked Joel, and lost Joel in the stars of himself. Lost Joel in the sweet soft slumber that was him. The languid boy. The boy who was wise and kind and shy. Even in the paroxysm of sex, he was still somehow shy. As though he shouldn't be here with these boys--in dorm rooms, in the quad at midnight, in an empty midnight classroom gotten into through jimmied opened windows, in the town cemetery as the summer moon shone down on the boys, their bodies naked and glowing bone white.
All hail Joel. All hail the boy who scuttled out of his clothes so quickly, who teased so easily, who kissed so unashamedly, with the legs that opened easily and the legs that would perch so lovingly on your shoulders, as you sucked him or placed your penis inside him. Who sighed accordingly to each centimeter. The boy who was the sea of snow and heading to a distant shore. Joel, who talked little, who kept to himself, while he was giving himself away. Who needed the feel of lips against his. Paint me with your lips, sometimes, Joel thought, so that at least a part of me will last, will never go away.
They took pieces of himself away--with love, with gladness, with humility, with devotion. Until some day he thought, as he rubbed his warmth and felt the sexual glow and the coming storm clouds of sperm rain inside him, until some day I will be like this synthetic bear skin rug with the wooden bear head. Totem Joel.
Joel by himself. Moaning now. Sighing and feeling the trills running through him. Lost in magic that was him. Lost in the unbounded sexual lust he felt now. Now that he was not thinking about anybody but himself. Not performing. Not proving anything though he had nothing to prove. It didn't matter, he still thought he did. Joel's toes curled and his heart throbbed. The veins in his high forehead pulsed. His whole body was a drink of sex. The machine of his penis felt so good. He put himself in its saddle and rode it. This time truly unashamedly. This time truly giving into sexual passion. His whole body filtered out to his dick so tumescent thin and tall and on a strong straight stem, the pistil of it rushing almost beyond Joel's hand could rub it as it now did. He was left handed. On that wrist he had a thick clock watch. Time was Joel. Sex was a way of stopping time.
Adore me, Joel said.
Adore me, and he rubbed his penis hard. He rubbed the little head of it and felt the slit and he felt the volcano inside him. His body had not changed much since he was 14. He still had only a light dusting of blonde pubic hair. His balls were small, but the boys said they were glad because they could hold both of them in their mouths at the same time. He rubbed himself by the fire. The fire rubbed him too, as though it were making love to him, as the snow had earlier this evening.
He rushed his hands over his hard thin chest, over his inward turning abdomen. He stroked the staves of his ribs that were coverings for all the secrets within the hot house known as Joel. He was a comma in a song, he was the pause of breathe that such a wondrous boy could actually exist on this planet that did not deserve him. His cock was jerking by itself. He felt his balls and their heat, as well as the extreme heat between his legs. He closed his thighs over his hand and he worshipped the sexuality he had been blessed with.
He cried out and he cried tears and he rubbed his penis and he covered it with both hands. He held to the center of it and the center spread out to the entirety of his body. He was within and without- one gigantic penis. He loved the word "penis". It said childhood and it said daring and it said pure and it said fine and it said all the wild sex that he could find with it and he found so much with it. This amazing device that could grow from its flaccid state into this hard proud gifted love tool, this exhibition of sexual turn on that made the boys know Joel was so excited, so ready and sexually devised. That nothing would do but rutting wherever they pleased with him and wherever he pleased with them.
He thought of snow angels and he thought of snow devils and he heard the cold wind blowing, howling, outside the cabin. The fire groped and sparkled and sparked and crackled as though it were a soft silk whip against Joel's stomach and his back. As he got into the final stretch of jerking himself. The delight at the words, kid words and naughty words but presaging, hiding, the deep seated pleasure and giving away and taking to sand inside him that rushed in tidal waves. That wanted to settle him down on a distant shore of some other far away planet no one else had ever heard of.
His legs were scissors open now. When he masturbated, he always did it on his right side, always had his left leg in the air. He never knew why, just the way it worked best for him, so the boys he had been with, who loved to see him jerk off, would kiss the inside of that soft downy leg, that soft bunny feeling of it, and they would kiss him at the ridge between his legs. They loved to lie there with him and feel his hand on himself and feel him--explode. As he was lost then as now in his coming.
As he was lost now in crying out to no one at all. And he pulled his cock hard, twisted it just a bit. Pulled on and pushed on his balls. His tiny balls that a boy mouth could take inside all at once. He put his right hand to his mouth. He kissed it and felt his eyes close with it. His hips jerked and pushed in and out. His whole body was going wild. He was the snow and its trajectory. He was the snow and its willful destruction of the world of winter Canada. The world of maple leaf and sled dogs and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and Leatherstocking and snow masks and snow hiding and snow be me, Joel, snow be me and let me stay naked here forevermore. Let the patches of dark sky push the stuff down on me. Let me fill my mouth with it like I did as a child with snow cream. Let the blue night take the always sad blue of me and fill my cock with power and pleasure. Even more than it has known before.
Joel felt alight from the tip of him to the full body of him. He pulled himself and he jerked his hips in and out. He fucked his hand and he growled like a bear. His chest was heaving and his ribs were almost breaking he was so thrusting, so turned into that crystal glass about to be pinged, about to be shown the loveliest sound, the most haunting sound, the note the plaintive piano cord that would break the night and the sky and him apart. That would find him pushing into himself and his body that was geared almost to the point of giving his left leg a charley horse, though the pain made him go further. Reach into himself. Pull out all the magic that he had had hidden all these years even to himself.
His right hand felt the pimples on his face. Only a few of them. But enough to make him even sexier as he rode some other college boy's cock, as he rode him and the boy plowed up into the hidden secret part of Joel. Into the warm tight hole and Joel feeling the cock up into him and never getting it the right distance into him, always too short, always too unsatisfying, for he wanted to take in more and more. And the boy on the bottom feeling Joel's cock and holding it and reaching up sometimes and trying to kiss it. Trying the deepest kiss of all time.
As Joel sprang now, as his body jack knifed and he shot his silvery thick stream into the direction of the flames which blazed brighter and the wind howled more mightily and the snow came down deeper and harder and in a frenzy. The exact same frenzy Joel had just released from his body, as though it were a golden tiger leaving him now, spent and tired and flopped on the rug as though he were a straw doll who had just had all its stuffings pulled out of it. The golden cord that had held him bound so tightly, found and cut and done with. For a time at least.
He lay there. Perspiring. Gasping for breath. One hand rubbing all over his body that was still trembling. His left hand filled with his come. He in time put his hand to his lips and ate of himself. It felt salty and dewy and sweet clean all at the same time. It was hot and from the depths of himself as though a monster that had risen from some Japanese sea a long long time ago. He was not himself now. He was flying. He was in deep dark space. The piano note sounded from him again and again. It took it strove it turned into a parabola of perfect pitch it shattered and it glowed bright and red and gold as though it held an autumn heart within itself.
This crystal glass note rose from Joel and took itself away from the cabin. It dwelled in the dark night. It was an arrow of music. It was the saddest and the sweetest sound there had ever been. It came from Joel's mind and heart and penis and balls and it whispered so loudly, "love."
It spread its iridescent wings about itself and it took off to the forest and through the white dark growth of the trees, it bounded and bounced in firm form and firm decision and unashamed and it strove through the forest and through the bitter cold china sky it touched to a village far away from the cabin and to the people asleep in their beds. Who, though they did not wake, felt it, felt the conclusion, felt the inclusiveness of it all, felt how lonely they had been all their lives regardless of how un-lonely they had thought they had been. Regardless of their lovers or husbands and wives or their children or their good jobs or their firm grasp they thought they had on reality and how they had learned to contain themselves within themselves and considered it fully and completely their duty to wait for God and their reward coming in full bloom after they died.
And it broke them. It made them dream of shimmery beautiful hearts high profound dizzingly angled and constructed architecture of new castles new worlds on which were never before seen golden limbed and so excellently formed aliens with eyes the colors of color that had never been seen here before, aliens whose bodies human words could never describe--only this, this is what the body should be, this is how we should look, this is how we should feel. That we will never ever be. And the dreams caused by the crystal glass of Joel pinged just correctly, just rightly, made them ashamed of their lives that they had always been proud of before, that they had always been sure of before, those who had been proud and sure. And know then in this dream moment what a lie it had all been. What a sham.
As the children in their beds felt all of this as well and a sexuality beyond what they had felt before, as their bodies rubbed crotches on their beds, as they groaned as they felt their pubes with their hands and dreamed of mouths on them and needed so much, needed so much, hungrily, no matter their parents heard, no matter if they were found out, the itch of their bodies before this paled before the fullness of sexual lust that was agape in them now.
But the parents did not hear them, for they were rutting as well, and all over the village, and the next one, and the city many miles away, and through out the whole country, then throughout another country and the whole world in time, everyone felt all of these things. In daylight and dark time. In city streets. In restaurants. In beds. In fields. In the middle of the day. In schools and in boardrooms and in banks and on mountains and on ships and on planes--the plaintive note of Joel spread and had its effect and the sexuality of Joel was known. Not its depth though. Not the full wonderment of it. They mimicked him as best they could, without their knowing it. But they were only badly mangled copies, dim and uncounting, when compared to Joel.
For the vast complex poetry rooted in times not known on this planet, the longing, the crush and the demand of it, the way it signaled all the stars and turned their faces straight to him--these things only Joel knew.
And that made him alone. And here in this cabin he could have sex, could feel that warm rush, that undenied giving away, but only alone. Only with, he thought, no one else in the world ever knowing.
Joel then, this night that he started this chain reaction, falling to sleep. The naked faun boy, flamed by yellow and red as though autumn had caught fire and shed its glory on him, drifted off to dreams of castles and excellently formed aliens that only he was to know in full. The howling wind and the feel of snow fall lulled him. His last conscious thought was-- everybody loves me and that is the problem.
Oh my dear darling once and future king, Joel, you don't know the half of it.
end