The Music Room

"The Music Room"

by

Tim Stillman

I followed him into the music room. The wall baffles made it look like the inside of an egg crate, and it was summer hot and roasted, and we were young, and had come here to make love. There was nothing for us but the territories of ourselves, and he turned to me and he smiled that slightly lopsided smile and I put my arms around him, and the ands in this sentence are not meant for bad construction or run on sentences, but because there was always an and between us and around up, and protecting us.

We had met senior year in high school and now were almost through our university freshmen year. He locked the door and we both tested to be sure, and he lowered the shade on the window next to the piano, and we were together, because together was us, and we were oceans come together to small the world, as I put my hand in the small of his back and felt his wet shirt of yellow bay and his wet spine and I kissed him deeply, and he loved me, and there were only the hums of the a.c., deliciously cool, and the sounds distant and vague like steps up a mountain we never had to climb far away, and I loved him and was him and he loved me and was me, and I cupped the back of his golden head and I touched tongue to tongue with him and we pressed close together, and he was purest sexuality come with purest love, and we would never age or be sad, for all our lives were to be spent here in this piano room, and he would play for me, and I would kneel beside him and hold him round the middle, slight, he would be playing an etude on the keys and I would hold him softly as though he were the song, as though the music was coming through his bones and into mine.

There were we, two, and we leaned against the egg crate wall and he touched me and it was like love, man, and it was the last crossing and the last change for us, as he squeezed my shoulders and said, "I want to be in you so far, I can be you. I want to turn the sadness off from you, from inside

you." And I held him tenderly and kissed the peach fuzz on his pale cheeks. There were no imponderables in the equation that was we, equal as iron and as immutable, as only the young can be. And he put his hands to my jeans and put his hands backwards into my pockets and felt my groin and I groaned a bit, and demured a bit and was shy and ashamed, and he said, hey, don't worry, it's okay, and his body said it, and his eyes and I wanted to taste the freshness of him and the brightness of them. Once when I was young, there was someone, one of my mother's friends, who forced me on a hunting expedition, which I cried about, but was sent anyway. I remember the eyes of the animal he killed and now I ran into Joel's eyes and I wept for the cruelty of life and the cruelty of man and the longevity of our love. I knew he could do better. I knew he wanted more. I knew he did not want me at all. I knew there was going to be a lot of forgiving and it was going to be done on his part.

He took my hand and was a ladder that lengthened me to the floor, and there was hardness in his voice, and we were a parabola around each other, magic circles enforced us, encased us, and protected us, and he whispered my name and made it sound like summer wind of a long childhood that was to last somehow forever, and I dreamed him and he dreamed me and I held his hands and kissed his fingers that were meant to play pianos, and my penis and my balls, and he was ever, and if someone is ever, then you stop doubting them, but I was not that crazy, as we lay on the cool nubby green carpeting in the gray room and we lay side by side and looked up at the gray ceiling and the gray light bulb in the center, and he said, I will not go anywhere, I will not have a life, I will not get into drugs or booze or make a girl pregnant, I will not get a good job after a lot of shit jobs I will not have a wife or children I will never know what it is the grow older and old, and his voice got faster and faster, whirling, with out punctuation, and I took my left hand and put it to his jeans zipper and hardened him as he loved me to do, and I unzipped him and took out his erect penis that jumped at the touch of my fingers not nimble as his, but good enough for him, and I put my head on his crotch and I played with his penis inches from my eyes, felt the sponginess of it, the firmness, the way it seemed to giggle when he moved it, and I looked momentarily at his face and he smiled, and we forgot what he had been saying. Or tried to.

He was tall like God made him. And he believed in the future because the future was us and I would never grow away from him and miss him for the rest of my life and have failed friendship after failed friendship and would have failed job after failed job and never write stories of deepest rue or fall in love with movie boys who marred my heart when all the time there was the warm never to be concentric circle of Joel around it, and cry myself to sleep and wake with anger and suspicion and not be remembered for none of that was to happen and I put my mouth on Joel's cock and tipped it with my tongue, and I felt it shiver and it was like the whole thing was brand new every time. And he reached over and touched my crotch and I bent over and kissed him and I lay on top of him for a time, his naked penis against my closed in one, and there were country roads of red gravel in his eyes and something said tomorrow and there were the old fevers and the need to let the lighting bugs free after they had been kept in the Mason jar with holes in the lid enough on a summer's night, and I held him, and I did not want to be in a cell of such loneliness and pain that I was a scream in the silent air, and he held me and touched me and his left leg massaged my penis and it hardened and I knew he was not doing it specifically for me, to make me feel better, but it didn't matter. I didn't care why he was doing it. That it was happening was fast and far enough.

We never fully were naked here in the music room, but waited till the dorm room for that, but it was exciting here, people around, not knowing what we were doing, and cream and fun fairs and happy times and freedom like little kids with clouds passing over head, white clouds and whistle train sounds from far enough away not to make us afraid. He was white under his clothes, his fair skin could not take exposure to sun, and he was filled with the silence a farm boy has, that quiet unquestioned thing of him, to listen to animals and the land and the clock of the day and night and his own and to respect them and to know what they are saying in a soft silent way, and I loved him, and I rolled to the side and took his penis in my hand and it was a warm penis and it was my Joel's and he unzipped me and took out my penis that hardened more in his hand and we masturbated each other, and he put his soft fresh smelling breath in my face as he put his head in the crook of my neck. And he held me and as we were to come, we circled non wary and sucked each other off and I felt his thick sweet butter cum and he felt mine and we swallowed at the same time, and we were so gentle then and then after, and I loved him, if I haven't mentioned it before.

There would be no bus trips away. There would be no acid experiments for him. There would be no nights of pain for either of us, and we would not be confronted with reality and our hair would always be shoulder length and our faces forever unlined and our bodies graceful lilacs, and the Joel penis and my penis were so very happy and still firing and still a squirt or two here and there and the balance had been tipped, and the naid would win again, because she had to, and when we had swallowed all there was, including those last drops meant to get boys in trouble when they masturbated at home or in the music room, and I held Joel inside and he held me inside, and I pulled up his sweaty yellow shirt and I kissed his nipples and he said into my ear that he would be with me forever and always and I tried to say the same, I tried my best, I truly did.and he pulled away from me and he looked at me perplexed..and his eyes said he didn't understand, for I always echoed that or usually said it first and sometimes lately he did not echo it. He pulled from my arms and I thought how horribly fragile we both were and everyone and everything was and he pulled from my arms and he touched his chin with his forefinger, an affectation he had had, he said, since early childhood, that meant confusion, that meant, somebody please help, that meant he had lost his way.

And I pulled off him and zipped up and sadly turned from him and sat on the piano bench a few inches away, a few lifetimes, and Joel zipped up and he knelt at my legs and I looked at his eyes and he at mine and his I think were saying no, you need me, you can't run away, you can't treat me like this, you're not strong, you will not run away, and maybe not, maybe it was just don't go, but the eyes said something somewhere in all of that running through my rat wheel mind and my head was feverish and felt like it was coming off and I pushed away from him, gently, so he could lever his arm and hand to the floor and not fall over, and I looked at him, and there would be very few ands left for us, with us, maybe never for him, certainly never for me, and I'm thinking I'm mad, don't do this thing, but I kept picturing, dammit, those lightning bugs flying out of the Mason jar to the dark night sky pin holed with star lights, and I thought, it was not brave of me, or right of me, it was just me trying to get away from a conscience that was beginning to feel pretty dirty already when there was no need for it, and he could talk me out of it, it's what I wanted, just one word from him, but Joel my Joel turned from me and pulled his legs up and rested his chin on his hands, and he didn't say anything, and I thought turn to me, don't have to say a word, just turn to me and I will stay, and he turned to me right on cue as if he heard me-that meant we were-no that meant nothing at all-and his eyes looked like the eyes of that creature the man who took me hunting had killed, still alive but dying slowly and I turned from Joel.

I TURNED FROM JOEL.

And I fumbled with the flimsy lock of the door, I had never known it was so flimsy, anyone could have gotten in here with a little push, and I opened the door, hitting myself in the nose with it, me with the graceful exits, and Joel laughed and couldn't help it and I ran down the hall way of the Performing Arts Center and I ran all the way to our dorm and up those steps and I knew there were a million disappointments coming for Joel and I knew he would have it tough for a while, but he would weather it out. I on the other hand would remember and hope to come back to this place some day when the dance was finally for god's sake over and I packed up my stuff and when finished went to the main office to get a different dorm room, and I would see him on campus and in class and I would turn to him but it was too late, for he always turned from me and finally I got settled in making him a ghost even though we sat beside each other sometimes. I remembered Joel's penis luxuriating in my mouth, I remembered how his little buns flexed and reflexed as he went in and out of my mouth while sitting naked on my chest, smiling that little devilish smile of his, and how good it felt, my dick at his hips and feeling the warm and lying naked with him after and exploring and kissing everywhere and he taking my hand and placing it on his head and he began to suck me off...

And that's my story. I didn't do it for him. I did it for me. I did it because I could do nothing else. It tilted in that direction. I would be living on borrowed time with him. I knew it that day after sex in the music room. Sometimes I imagine I hear a piano being played and I remember the chamber music his parents always had on and how on Friday nights I was always the guest. His mom had this incredibly good home made soup and home made rolls so big and buttery I wanted to just live on forever. Sometimes Joel and I held hands under the table, while we listened to his father, a teacher at our university, talk about his big dreams. And I miss them. I've spent a life time missing them. It was, Joel, who and what we were and our two years together, it was Joel and he was life and we would sometimes spend the entire university weekends together, naked in our room, and just feeling each other and sleeping with each other, his farm clock in his chest ticking toward morning when we would find in each other home, and for a little while, believed we had.

So take care, Joel. I'll see you in the morning. Some morning. I'm not brave or noble certainly. Just a man in love. And sometimes for a man in love, stories are the best they can do.