Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 04:58:34 -0700
From: B Keeper <silvershimmer@earthlink.net>
Subject: "Night on the Town"

			    "Night on the Town"
				    by
			     Timothy Stillman


It was a sour smelling hot night squeaking south of the
border.

End of term. End of school. And the boys brought their
girls over the border to party. It was evening, late. The
trees bled. The sky was black cotton. The stars were
immaculate and white boned. The boys were in their car
parked out side of the thriving boy bar. The girls did not
want to go in. They had all been drinking. Far too much.
Tequila down Mexico way. Tijuana. The bone they threw
the dog that got away.

Everyone felt bubbly happy. The car seats were torn. The
fuzzy dice on the rear view mirror evoked another age. The
car was a bubble of smell around them. The whole place
was. It liquored up the all of them and would have done so
without their bottles to help.

They were making out and they touched each other hard
and fast. There was no Rome of ancient in them. There was
no whale of white bleak in them. There was no chemistry
or math or biology. Save what they had in their intestines
and what they had in the nipples of the boys and the girls
who were together once more. Who passed the tongues
around and tried to with closed eyes guess whose tongue
belong to who. The tongues were courted. There was no
spray breath here. There was only rutting and seizures and
shirts unbuttoned and blouses up turned. And there was
flesh.

A mighty army of flesh. There were soldier ants here and
there in the car hot with the windows rolled down as the
night creaked beside them and into them.

They did not speak, save for moans, they did not laugh
save for wayward giggles. They were frightened. College
was over. Tomorrow was not yet here. Burt there was the
inexorable pity of it coming. Sometimes they felt like
weeping. Patches of flesh grazing here and there as though
they were all cows grazing on a field of flesh before the sun
came up and found them ashamed.

They had all met in college. They had all be disparate then,
as well as now. The boys with their penises hard and the
girls with their vaginas wet. And still and all this tumble
down Mexican night. The drunk passers by. The wavery
car lights moving on. This night that had little glass sharp
tatters of daggers in it. The peace was blasted by cantina
music. The heart was lacerated with the fact that no one
knew he was back there. In the back seat. Naked and
happy. Naked and free. Freer than they could ever be. They
did not know to check the back seat. They did not know
who had crawled in back there at some moment's notice.
At some point of the reverie. As the boys and the girls
cuddled in the front. As they sat on laps in this big old boat
of a white once now scuffed green and black with age and
ancient wear and tear  Old Cal Used Car Steals car.

They did not notice the young boy. They did not notice
when he discomfited himself. They did not hear. For
hearing would have brought a range they did not want to
know about. Something called the human factor.
Something someone read once and dreamed bigger dreams
than the little boy in back. With only the sombrero on his
head.

Destiny. And those who walk in it. Destiny and the humble
buildings on all sides of them. On this dirt road. Out in the
middle of crickets land. Out where there was a shot
glasnost on a table in their minds, a table cloth of red and
white. checkered. There inside where the real men were.
And the real women. And the real sex show. And the real
sweat would be pouring now. As a lubricant to shadowed
hall ways and shattered windows. Where rooms could be
had for a few dollars. Where beds creaked and the air itself
dark and mottled seemed to come complete with a screen
door attached.

Everything seemed far away to the young boy. Everything
seemed close up to the boys and girls. Who were no longer
boys and girls. The age of childhood was gone. Had they
been literate someone might have remembered the novel
"Childhood's End" and made at least a vague allusion to it
now and then. But they were not literate. And the college
they attended was a cow college.

Where they drank and had fun and had sex and believed in
nothing but the hot Santa Ana winds that made them even
hornier than ever and college kids become horny at the
drop of a Hustler magazine. They were into sex.

The little boy in the back seat with his poor clothes piled in
an embarrassed rush beside him wondered what love was.
Wondered what the mirrors here came equipped for.
Wondered what side of the world was in California with its
date trees and its palm trees and its Movie Studios with
Lions Heads and lights that seemed so wise and sparkly
and bright. And decided to find out. Decided that to the
gringos he was invisible. That he might as well take a deep
tank breath of air and just get to it. Just get to the world as
it was and young but none older than him.

The college kids not kids passed their courses as they are
wont to do at certain places, and they came here to party
and they were liberated and the driver, a bold looking boy
with a hawk like nose and stalky shoulders made up for by
pecs and tight strung muscles was sucking the breast of the
wan painful girl next to him and on her right leg sat another
boy who was window to everything, who was bright and
sharp and funny as hell and could tell jokes like nobody's
business and make everyone laugh their asses off, and then
his girl, and then the couple next to them, doorways of hair
and breasts and penises and vaginas and all the flesh there
and in between. Soft boy, red hair, scrunchy face, girlfriend
of diamond shaped face who had pendulous breasts and a
cross of silver between them that he was twisting with his
chubby fingers as he sucked her tits hard and fast, as she
moaned streamlined and secure in the act she was
performing, and it was most certainly an act.

All mingling, sharing each other's physical
characteristics--blonde dishwater and black eyebrows and
suntanned streaked red hair and bright wide bold seemingly
intelligent eyes.

As it seemed to flesh melted together in the night. As it
seemed there was nothing more than sick reality in the fear
that encapsulated them here in this car. They had not gone
to see the sex shows. Not even the much fabled and long
remembered lady and her donkey on stage and on and on.
They were fearful in their little boat of seize. The girls felt
penises hard and intruding and somehow wrong, they felt
and smelled each other. They were hot and hot was sex and
hot was lost oasis and hot was more bottles and more lips
to them and more upending of the booze. And there was
the scream and there were the shots heart round the would.

And the little boy bemused. And the little boy
understanding what he did not. For there were pesos to be
made. And he wasn't this night making them. He was
observing. He was still life, he was not part of the mass up
there, the gold hair and the hawk nose and the taut bodies,
and the girl with the too intelligent eyes that could not be
that intelligent and the red haired boy with the squishy
hands and the face with little old age wrinkles in it, and he
was not the suburbs they came from, he was not the trees
on the quad they had sex under. He was small and dirty and
would never amount to anything.

He was the last tattered piece of cloth of his family and he
was where it was to end. Because he was nothing.
Subscribe to the notion that as he put his hands to his small
penis he was nothing this night, or any other night. He
would rather be nothing than be the meanness he saw in the
front seat. He would not want to be drunk and just feeling
everybody up like they were dog meat. He wanted them to
be nicer to each other. He wanted them to be something
special. He had picked their car with its old run down look,
its ancient bumper stickers, its broken spokes, its bent
hood, and he wanted them to be something before he went
away, got up and walked down the dog barked street away
and back to home if home was what that was.

And in the distance a train chuffed. And cars desultory led
back and then back again, and women got in the cars, the
stiletto heels, the tight wrap around dresses, the need for
release, but releaser from what?  And the cars screeched
off to sex or close kin. Tomorrow the cannery would still
be there. Tomorrow the waves would still suck at the sand
and try to stay around a bit more but were inexorably
pulled out into the mid day blasted heat and sun. And
tomorrow was a million years wide without a drop to
drink.

And here were the boys and the girls with their clothing
almost all off. Here was the stick shift sticking in the driver
boy's side. Here was his girl sucking at his navel. Here
were the legs straddles and sprawled and everybody
going on about how man we are our own flesh bed and
those people in there in the sex shows or in the cantinas
don't know what they are missing, and man if they could
only see us they wouldn't ever want some wrinkled old
whore all painted smeared face and diseased body, with her
tits gross and flat, and down to her navel, and they giggled
and the stench of them and the alcohol reminded the boy of
home. So this did not repel him.

Where will you go? he thought as they bobbed and wove
and bumped and said get outa my face dude, and he
thought California must be cool, California must be cooler
than any place in the world. He did not mean cool as in
hot. He meant cool as in cool. And he straddled the wide
expanse of the back seat as they straddled the wide
expanse of the front, and there was bird shot shit on their
windows and there was only that tongue dripping moisture
up ahead where the boy would never be because he could
not get an erection. He was not fearful they would look
around and see him and invite the little pup drop over
though their side of the world where there were air
conditioners and there were milk shakes and there were
TVs as big as the walls of his home, and there was nothing
more than the fly night, there was nothing more than as if
he was not even there.

And that was the way it was with the tourists, especially
the kids who were not kids and would never be again
though they would hold onto the illusion till they were
about forty or so. And then they would ask where did their
young years go and he would say if anyone asked him now
right this second, they are captured in my lightning bug
bottle, they are captured in my Mason jar, and they will be
kept for you until you return and you really will be young
again. If you can find me that is. Invisibility has its perils
for those who search as well.

The golden gizmo you chased after will be right here in the
morning of my eyes for nothing grows never, nothing does
not age or change. And he wanted a hard on and he wanted
to look over the divider and he wanted to see them having
hard core for real sex for they were doing that now, the ahs
and the ohs and names like curses of hate screamed meant
that and the bustling around and the making the car bump
up and down, huge sex mumps up and down.

And it made the boy feel lonely as hell., and thinking as his
own sweaty body belayed him and made him a comma in
this hot painful night. His mother and father would not care
if he ever came home. The seas of the world would not
care either. The heart would not care, and he did not
understand as his ass cheeks stuck to the vinyl of the seat
and the night was ;painfully hot, he did not understand,
please explain, why they had to drink to get away from
what they had, from the joy of flesh being touched and
touching? The boy did not know what touching flesh felt
like. He did not know what his own flesh felt like because
you never do until someone else reaches out a hand to it.
And he hated them. And he wanted to scream out my god
are you people mad? Are you going to denigrate love
forever? Are you going to hide in bottles like everyone else
and pretend the genie is in there when it is not there at all
you should search for it.

He was too young to cum, or he would have, on the vinyl
sticky hot seat, in the sickness of the car, in the coming
baby here it comes oh gododddddddddddddddd, and he felt
nothing, because he was no moral, and he was no moral
because he was no poem, he was just a kid who wanted to
believe that something could be right without having to
look so hard at it your eyes went blank trying to find
meaning in things and people that had no meaning. Who
were not really here anymore than he was.

Who were not anything at all. Who would not remember
this night unless they got into a car wreck with  other
drunk drivers, and he would not welcome them into his
country. This is mine, as poor and disheveled and black
skinned as I am, as unfortunate and pink palmed as I am, as
needy and as futile as the world around me , as pained and
drugged as I can get sniffing glue and paint, as it all comes
down to just me, my visible rib cage bulges
bones, my tummy bulge from hunger, little legs that no one
has ever seen though I go naked often as not, still young
enough to do that in a land where there was only the tall
tales of old, in a land where there were only burnishes that
came with fake worthless who cares? freedom that came
with a mounting lava of greed that had to be paid back
even from the poorest soul.

What is your Dick doing now Mr. Driver? What is it doing
in the legs of the girl beside you? What is your red haired
squashy faced friend doing with the boy across from the
girl who is sexing the both of them. Is this an aquarium of
crazed fish? Is this what I lived for once when I led
Americanos around the hacienda and said here is for the
walls and here is for the pictures and the paintings and the
history of my land you would not believe how many times
you thought you got it right, with your dishwater minds
and your raindrop deep sweetness, and there was no pearl
to save the day for the old man and the boy and the seas
quite and still and unrifled as mirrors, and all the days stuck
inside here like cards in a magician's sleeve which he asks
you kindly to keep your eyes on while he pulls the half
dead drugged bunny out of his tattered top hat.

Its what they all come here fore, the boy knew without
knowing, and its what sucking sounds up there mean, and
its what spatters gauging on the night sliding out silver in
the bright light of the sex show club to their left. It was just
a moment in a precious little Jewell of a boy with bright
brown eyes big as Mexico itself, it was his hands that were
dainty and already callused on the other side, it was the flip
side of everything, he was of the dirt and grub which they
had come down here to see there fore he must be dirt and
grub himself. He was a lawn gnome back in their parents'
yards.

They came down the college kids they come down and
they vomited sickness in someone else's home sometimes
and they fell over and lay in a coma on the dry board walks
and the boys would pick their pockets and their credit
cards and have a field day imagining the hacienda is theirs
and they do not direct with little discretion certain wealthy
business men and women to these places where the heat of
bodies naked makes the life here of night a bad joke And
the dogs have three legs often as not. And the old men with
eyes half closed from the relentlessness of the sun, and
their stubble leather faces that are lined with poetry that
comes from nothing but an aggrieved meanness and a knife
in your guts if you don't let them have another drink of
anything.

For theirs was the hunger. Theirs was the need to get
drunk. There  was the need to escape. And the boy in back
spread his legs and he fingered his hole and it was moist
and tight and it made his dick finally rise. And it was filthy
in this car. It was filthy in the land stolen by those who did
not belong, who would go to parties, go right in and solidly
be there, and not have to hide under tables and be afraid of
being seen and cadge drinks from men who would let them
go for a song and a half or their abouts, and there was no
future here and he was not even a comma in this dying,
dead land.

 He was a distant relative of himself. And he wanted the
girls up there to suck his cock, he wanted to get laid, get
fucked, he wanted to stop being the prize of this parents.
The boy who would make them proud. The boy who was
addicted to inhalants already. The boy who hid out and
who watched the tourists tear through their tiaras of lies
and decants and deceits and more lies and distances in their
eyes as though they were balloons on the sins  inside and
needed so desperately to get away from the angle of the
street, the shadows and the darkness, the need of the boy
to run out of the car, not sneaky as when he entered, not
brave and bold and then disappointed as he took of his
clothes and waited to be of service to their NO.

He wanted to run to the front of the car with his little hard
on brandishing and to scream out look at me before you go
you will jot remember but it is the remember that counts
and that would be me, and if the Aztecs had warred, and
there was no proud people left, and if the lizards of the
desert were pounced on and the broken clay houses had
snaked crawling in and out, if this was the poverty these
college graduates had come to here like ugly penance and
thus trick themselves into believing that they had now hit
tank town bottom, so anything else would be UP, and soon
they would be home in their actual beds not straw mats,
and they would sleep well in actual rooms and they would
never be anything more than the ordinary and that would
so suit them fine as their head bangers over the next
morning would be calling cards inside memory of half, that
said I must have had a good time, I must have.

But they would never understand. They would never
understand about his country or his lamps or his breezes or
his dreams for even the nothings have dreams, that at least
is allowed them, so while they were still having sex, and
finally finally he thought no one ever would, somebody
said, ;lets get in the back babe, I want you all to myself,
and the boy sat there naked and unashamed.

Would they notice him now? And what would they do?
Would they laugh? Or would it be another drink turn on
what the hell no body will ever know and then in the next
day, if remembered at all, self righteously deny deny it ever
had happened? There were doors opening and doors
closing and there was a stumble and fall and somebody
picked somebody up and there was the back door opening
and the sanctuary of the boy's destroyed, and the shadows
rearranged themselves and the ones in front were still
partying the night away, and the boy and girl dove mostly
naked into the back seat and half crushed him and came up
in their bundle of bones. Baffled. Drunk giggles. And
noticed him.

 Sat on him, lay on him, fell on him, struggled to get their
boozy bodies off of him, trying to figure out what the hell
this thing was in the back seat. And somebody said hey
Muffer turn on the overhead. And Muffer did.

And the boy was naked, touched, finally, it didn't matter
how unwilling their touching him was, he had finally found
what skin felt like, it felt like hot baked marble, it felt
awful, and doughy and pathetic, and he drew himself
smaller and smaller to get away from them, he, between the
man and woman, newly minted, and the boy saw them
staring in shock at him, and the boy was older than they
ever would be, and their boozy brains tried to figure out
what a skeletal batch of kid was sitting his foreign naked
butt back here with a silly little funny hard on no less and
somebody finally noticed him. For once. NEVER NOTICE
ME AGAIN he wanted to scream.

He saw the faces of the two with him in the back, in the
dim ceiling light. Bright enough the light was however for
him to see the expressions on their faces, the ones beneath
the shock and surprise and already curly little jokes to play
on him raffling through their blood soaked brains.  But
over and above all, the looks, the ones that said "Hey dude
this ain't my fault." He had seen this in gringos faces often.
They seemed to do that better than anyone else ever. One
but hopes. And hopes are lonely little boys where they are
not supposed to be, who are not supposed to be, playing
lonely little boy games all on their own forevermore.

So he broke into his patter--nothing else but to smile politely and wing
it--And now senor and senorita, what is your pleasure? And he discovered
hands, people had hands, and this was a moment and nothing more. But for a
nothing, a nothing a more moment can last a lifetime. The booze sang. The
music was drunk. And then what was supposed to happen next?



B Keeper
silvershimmer@earthlink.net