Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 08:20:28 -0800
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: incest young friends "A Leaf in Summer"

			    "A Leaf in Summer"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


 When I was nine, I was in love. And love was of summer,
and year round as well. Summers were like living beings then. They
knew things. They held secrets in all that humidity, in all that
sweaty grass and sky that seemed to sweat too. My heart was held,
unaware, by Jimmy and Kathy. I didn't know it and, of course,
neither did they. A person can hold important someone without
knowing it for years. Perhaps this is self defense. But two people,
brother and sister, held summers then together for me. They were
not a linchpin, but the fabric of the days, and especially the
afternoons. Afternoons were long in summer. I seem to remember
them the most.  And at night--lightning bug catching. Placed in
Mason jars with air holes poked in the caps. Then releasing the little
lights again to climb up to the wool heat of the skies of our youth.

 I never thought of Jimmy, age 13, without thinking of
Kathy, age 12. I couldn't separate the two even if I had tried. They
were bread and butter and daytime and nighttime. They visited their
grandparents across the street from me each July. I was the clock of
the year that ticked so slowly and feverishly to get to each mid
summer when their bus would roll into town and I could be alive
again, and to die again, when they left. I was beginning to have
fantasies about them. This did not shame me. I did not admit what
ran the warrens of my mind. Besides, no one would ever know, so
what difference did it make? These were mine and mine alone. I had
to have some kind of territory for myself. I was not consciously
aware of the bright gleaming pennies of the sexuality of the thing,
of them, and of me, not really and truly, until that milestone July
afternoon. Till then, it had been a distant sigh that grew in
increments, a part of the sounds of TVs in the houses, mine and
theirs, a part of the radio sounds of ball games on weekends. It was
substance. And probably like all children, I thought it was my right.

 I can't say when I figured out that Jimmy, bronze colored,
like he had eaten the sun and it shown its radiance out of his firm,
compact, muscular body, that compounded with the easy smile, and
the careless ability he had to handle the world without even trying
hard, and Kathy, slim and blonde of hair as opposed to Jimmy's
dark hair that would for some reason turn blonde on its own when
he got older, Kathy, newly budding breasts or the hope of same
with the help of the magic training bra--were, that new and
daunting word for me, lovers, that caused giggles in my stomach.
Just that I never saw brother without sister. They would sit closely
together on the couch when we watched TV at their grandparents'
house or mine. There was something of a knowing look between
them from time to time that, truth to tell, got on my nerves now and
then. For it fenced me out. And reminded me that I was just a little
kid who didn't know anything.

 It's clever and hugely cliche these days to say we love
someone but don't like them. I don't know what that means. That's
the reason for cliches. They substitute for thought.  There was no
shorthand scrawl however in my feelings for Jimmy and Kathy.
Almost as though their names were run together. One thinks
something and the other says it verbatim. In those days, I was a
watcher. I watched life go by. I watched parents and grandparents
get through the day. I watched the sun blossom and develop and
then wither into nightfall. In fantasies in my dim cool sea green
living room when I was by myself, with only the sound of the air
conditioner hum, I watched memories of my friends, my friend as
two, as one, on the couch where they would come later this
afternoon to watch TV and to eat snacks my mom had prepared, as
brother and sister touched their knees together--Jimmy's Wrangler
jeans--Kathy's cool brief shorts--tipping against each other a little.
A sweet triangle of denim and flesh against each other. A certain
lethargy would creep into me as I imagined them, this particular
afternoon too, as I lay on the linoleum green floor, by the bathroom
door, naked save for my Jockey shorts. I would lie on my stomach
and rub myself on the floor. Sexuality was a good feeling then, new
and freshly minted, celery stalk little penis, balls like small fleshy
nuts. I didn't know what would happen later in my life, and was
more than content to keep things the happy way they were then.

 Jimmy and Kathy had faces that resembled each other, some
what cat like, eyes a bit guarded, faces that made you want to smile
when you saw them, but also faces that seemed to be hiding secrets,
caticornered in their slightly slanted eyes, and mouths that might
always be ready to say something you do not want to hear, as
though there were claws in them somewhere that might lash out at
you when they were at their seeming sunniest and most open.

 I had begun imagining them making love. All their clothes
on. But Jimmy on top and feeling Kathy's breasts, what there were
of them then. Their bodies merging somehow in a way I couldn't
quite understand. In the deep sea from which my sexuality was
emerging, I seemed to always feel that there should be another
penis against mine when I masturbated. It seemed words got in the
way. And when my dreams were cleared of the debris of what we
kids were told about sex in school--wrong, wrong, forever wrong,
don't ever, not ever--when we were told anything at all about sex
by the hygiene teacher--I always wanted a boy there with me.  And
yet...To see a girl there too, like Kathy, with Jimmy, this too
excited me enormously. I could dry come in those days in a
nanosecond. Three and sometimes four times in a row. Alone.
Furtive. I imagined no one other than myself did these things. Not
certainly my hybrid friend. And it turned out I was partially right.
They had each other, and did not do it alone. Or furtively. Or
ashamedly.

 It was a sunny bright hot afternoon--the two living room
windows had drawn and closed curtains and blinds, to keep the sun
out--my parents at work, my grandmother in the hospital--I had
gotten up, and was walking idly around the living room, still only in
my briefs. The front door was open, with only the screen door
fastened. I had always kept the front door closed as well. To keep
the house cool. This afternoon, I had not. I was in front of the door,
when the bell rang, and I turned to look-- it was Kathy I saw
through the patterns of the screen mesh--her hair of sun, smiling,
body in shadow dark midi blouse, stomach pale and showing, legs
long and beginning to be girl's legs, as I saw them in movies and
TV shows. I instantly got a stiffy. She looked at me directly, right
at my face. Her hands were cupped at the top of her eyes as she
peered in, close to the screen. The mesh and the sun and the
shadows made it not easy to see her in any detail, however. I
conjured that up later. Maybe right. Maybe wrong.

 My sexuality of course not counting for anything more with
her than with Jimmy or anybody else. I was poised in silhouette. I
drew in my stomach without thinking. I wished I had hair on my
thing. I wished I had hair under my arms. I wished I had clothes on.
Because standing like that with her seeing me was the most exciting
and the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to me.
Exciting because it was humiliating, probably. Jimmy was not with
her. Had he been, I would have died. Kids die a million deaths in a
second. It opens and throws you down and closes again and the
doors knock at you and push you into all those secret rooms it was
not your idea to go into in the first place. But there you are anyway.

 Mornings were spent, with Jimmy and Kathy, swimming at
the municipal pool, and then, eating moon pies, as we dripped wet,
in our soggy clothes, with our clammy wet swimming trunks and
bathing suit balled up in our hands, the all of us, wringing from
coming out of the showers, the day full and the grass hot and the
cement at the refreshment stand which was also where you bought
tickets to get into the pool, even hotter, burning to our bare feet.
We went barefoot all the time then. Our feet were tough and
callused because of it. Afterwards, after we walked to our houses,
they went to their grandparents' house for lunch, and I went home
for lunch. Later in the afternoon, our time together would start
again. But now, the pattern had been broken. Kathy stood in the
shadows of my porch with the sun back lighting her. Alone. Like
me. She shrugged a "well, can I come in or not?" shoulders hunch
at me. I had become seemingly a statue. Then, behind her, coming
from across the street, was Jimmy football playering it over to my
yard. I became stiffer. I died as I had not quite died for Kathy. Or
not in the same way. A door in me closed. I became frightened. I
imagined the street between our two houses as a sea, and from this
sea, each July, arose my king and my queen. My Trident however
this time seemed to be mine. It poked straight out in my briefs. I
had to move, but the cool shadows and green ambiance of my dark
living room seemed to give me all the hiding place I needed, which
was no hiding place at all. I felt like what I was--a stupid kid
caught, though it mattered to no one but me.

 And Jimmy then, bounding onto the porch, pushing past
Kathy, still at the screen door that he opened like he owned it, not
seeming to notice his sister, as though she was as ghostly as I felt,
then him rushing, as he rushed everywhere, down the hall way, to
the living room where I stood like concrete, and past me, without
even noticing me it seemed, to the kitchen, and the fridge, where he
got out a Coke, then brought it and the chips and dip my mom had
left on the kitchen table, to the living room, rushed down onto our
sofa which was blue and not comfortable to sit on, for it was not
soft,  and it had big buttons on its back in the center; indeed, it
looked as though at any moment it would stand up and salute some
flag. I just always had that impression. It looked somehow stern
and serious.

 Jimmy opened the bottle, took a deep slug, belched heartily,
then put it on the floor. He had the bag of chips in his lap, his
ankles crossed, and the dip beside him, as he dipped Lay after Lay
crinkle chips, crunching them with his firm white teeth, then he
looked up at me eventually, after seemingly hours, and said, "so
what's shakin' Barry?" I was pointed in his direction. Very much
pointed in his direction. And Kathy was  suddenly sitting down
beside him, cuddling up to him, curling her long delicate fingers
with their sparkly dime store rings of rhinestone don't you wish?
knock offs around his strong left hand with his long tough looking
fingers, leathery seeming, his flesh was. A boy of the sun. He was
sliding a chip into the onion dip and then sliding it into his sister's
mouth, as she took his hand that held the chip and seemed to kiss
the fingers of it before eating what he had given her. But could that
really be? It seemed once or twice she lightly bit one of his fingers
with her rabbity teeth.

 She had brown eyes. Which she directed up to me as she
kissed her brother's thumb and forefinger--yes, she was really doing
it--and a couple of times, licked out her tongue to his hand, as he
slid another chip into her mouth with its lips deeply red. In addition
to her lipstick, I also noticed for the first time she wore rouge on
her cheeks. I smelled face powder for the first time from her. How
long had she been wearing makeup? It made her so damned sexy. I
had finally begun to discern the difference between girl and boy.
She directed those large eyes up at me for just a moment, but a
moment was enough. I ached for the both of them. I felt right this
way. I was just watching, after all I had looked at them swimming
together in the blue. I had looked at them as they swung and used
the jungle gym in the deserted summer school yards and in the town
park. I had watched them beside me and always a little ahead of me,
as they walked through the curving lanes, and sneaked behind trees
that I was never allowed to go behind with them. They never said
so. I just knew.

 I managed to move a fraction to wiggle a left foot,
re-discovering my body that was somehow still there, get
something working contentiously in me a bit. I knew they were,
giggle word, lovers, again. My heart was with Jimmy, but my love
for Kathy increased exponentially then as well. Jimmy looked at me.
Looked at my briefs. "Got a boner" he said, like he would say the
moon is gonna be a full one tonight. And this excited me
immensely, because I thought he meant he had a boner, so I looked
at his jeans V, trying to see, but no go. And then I knew he meant
me. I should have said, "No shit, Sherlock," but it didn't occur to
me and I wouldn't have said it if it had. I remembered they could
see me after all. Sometimes I had doubts anyone could. And I knew
there was nothing sexual in the way he said it or what he had said. I
was a little squirt kid with jerky jug ears and a close hair cut just
this side of a crew. And I knew at that second, that instant, I would
never be equal with anybody. Certainly not them. As Jimmy said, in
that fine northern Ann Arbor accent that sounded to me like the
deep snows of Christmas that were such a novelty for us down
South, "come on over," his mouth full of potato chip chewing. I
imagined his mouth chewing other things and that made me stiffer. I
knew they would be coming over the same time that afternoon that
they did every afternoon.  This time, though, unbeknownst to me, I
had made sure to be almost naked for them. It had not been an
accident of timing. I was getting daring! And I kept my hard on
throughout. Which later also surprised me. But I was nine. So that
explains most of why I did not wilt.

 Brother and sister looked at each other and grinned that
kind of grin I saw boys and girls fester like splinters into the
woodwork of me at school. I think if Kathy had been older, if she
had looked like more of a woman, this would not have been as big a
turn on for me--she and her brother. He looked more man than boy.
She looked more girl than in the past to me, but like a rather
wonderful dream boy too. It was maddening and frustrating and so
intriguing I could hardly stand it. So, like a clanking mechanical
boy, I went over to Jimmy and stood in front of him. I could feel
the sheer jungle heat of them. I put my hands on my hips, trying to
pose all brave like Superman on TV.  Jimmy was busy eating,
throwing to his sister big moon drops of sex wisdom, and then
glanced back at me, in surly pride, as she nestled in him like she had
found home and never needed to look elsewhere, then she glanced
at me as well. "I guess it's about two inches, wouldn't you say,
Kath?" he asked her. She looked at my boner that was doing all it
could think of to get out of its corral, and nodded, and then she did
a curious thing. She smiled at me. It was a nice smile. But it was
condescending. And yet it was the kind of smile an adult gives you
that says we won't tell you anything you want to hear and we will
love you if you play along with us and don't let on to us that you
know. Before this, any grin, no matter how small and dim the hue
they cast in my direction, had been not with me in mind at all. So
this was progress of a sort. And they were foreverafter the adults. I
was the grimy kid they put up with.

 In other words, they wouldn't make fun of me, or they
would, but I was in on the joke, so it was okay. Jimmy pawed more
chips out of the emptying red and white crinkle crisp sack and
stuffed them into his mouth and Kath's, this time without the dip
which they had used in such huge globs, that the container was
almost empty by now. Jimmy and Kathy looked at me and then at
each other, then Kathy took her slightly pudgy hand and put it on
Jimmy's crotch. I almost died. I almost knelt in front of them in
supplication. Which perhaps Jimmy, who was not the most sensitive
soul in the whole of the universe I had to admit even then, read in
me, for he told me to kneel in front of him. I fell hard to my knees,
cracking them against the linoleum.  "Kath and I been fuckin' for a
year, three months, four days, and" he looked at his watch, having
to move Kathy off his arm, to see it " about, oh, nine or so hours."
That they did it in their grandparents' house just shortly ago surely
shattered the Earth. It made me want to shout hallelujah. This
meant they would let me watch. Somehow it just did. I would
watch the both of them. I would see what girls did with boys'
penises and what boys did with whatever it was girls had. I would
see where boys would put their dicks. Sounded nasty. Sounded
good. I would see sucking. And that word. F'ing. I had never heard
it said before. Even the meanest crudest boys in school had never
used the word that I knew of. That my friend had said it, so easily,
so casually, made me feel instantly a huge hard on that was the
whole inside and outside of me. It made me sad, like it was
somehow my fault (I was to get used to bearing the blame for
others) and somewhat disappointed in him too. How the mighty are
fallen. They were to be always right in what they did. I was to be
always wrong.

 "I think Fairy Barry digs me, Kathy," Jimmy said, and if any
of this seems cruel, if it seems at all unkind, what Jimmy was saying
to me, how he and his sister kept coming on to each other when I
was around because it was a joke on me, I honestly don't think they
meant it as such. They needed an audience. They needed someone
to know. Someone they had power over who had no power over
them. "I think Fairy Barry wants to prindle my prod."  I had no idea
what that meant, though I knew exactly. It was how other boys
talked. It made me mad. But I was learning how to suck things like
that into me and not complain.

 And Kathy, to her everlasting credit, did not laugh, but
looked at me steadily like she knew I was there--another huge step
forward--and pressed harder on Jimmy's crotch. "It's big, Berry,"
Kathy said, (she always called me Berry; I never knew if that was
just how she pronounced my name, or if somehow she thought that
truly was it; for whatever reason she did, I always especially loved
to hear "Berry" from her sweet Northern voice, for she made it
sound beautiful) her voice sounding  seductive, soft, white and pale,
like a summer fish on the bottom of a sparkly blue pond, a fish that
delights in little glowy underbelly shadow shows, and because she
was being generous, included me too. My name should have been
"me too" in those days. It fit. Suddenly, her body undulating against
him a bit, she seemed truly sexy.

 Jimmy then startled me by crumpling the now decimated
potato chip bag, the large deluxe kind of bag, and crushed it in his
hands. He rubbed the grease on his hands onto his shirt, then sighed
like he was tired from all the work of the day in being himself and
reached over and put his hand on my stomach which I sucked in
again. His hand felt warm, felt sunny. It felt good and I closed my
eyes for a moment. It was another boy's hand on me and that made,
as Robert Frost put it in an entirely different context, all the
difference. When I opened them again, I felt this that I never
thought for a moment I would ever feel--he had grabbed me.
Through my briefs. Down there. That. Not hurtfully or suspiciously
or meanly or kindly or unkindly, but as something he had to do,
because I, without asking, had asked.  I felt like I was growing
straight out of his hand. Like a bouquet and not me at all. My heart
rushed. My dick throbbed with pleasure. The air conditioner
clattered from time to time then went back to its smooth motor
hum. I thought I could hear a lawn mower whirring, lovely sound
of summer it was,  in the yard next door to us across the alley. I
thought I could smell the onion smell of the yards.

 I remember when Jimmy found some peppermint leaves
growing in a crack of the sidewalk one day as we were walking to
the corner grocery for some ice cream. How he bent on one knee,
to the sidewalk, observed the little green leaves, and then plucked
one, gingerly tasted it to his tongue, looked up at me,  though still
looking down at me, even then, which was a common thing for him,
and told me it was peppermint. I thought he was kidding. How
could peppermint candy be a leaf in a sidewalk crack? But he finally
convinced me to taste another of the leaves, and it really was
peppermint, and it was an extra ordinary, other worldly occurrence.
The little impossibilities of the planet that my friend somehow just
always knew about, that he accepted without a surprise in him, that
half turned my world upside down and shook it hard, just floored
me. Peppermint, up until then, for me, was a hard candy you got for
Christmas. A tin of Leo peppermint candy, when the weather was
winter outside and I always seeming to have a scratchy throat and
December cold. But peppermint was a leaf in summer too. What an
amazing odyssey this was beginning to be.

 And now Jimmy held me, as Kathy reached down her girl
hands, and held me too. Her hand felt cooler, softer, more assured,
more like she meant it, somehow, not as casual, as if she couldn't
help not being casual. Girl--safe, frightening. But that's how it's
supposed to be. Wanting a girl. Instead of a boy. Boy--forbidden,
scary, off limits, his being angry at the unspoken thought even of
mine.

 Explaining much on the surface. Explaining nothing
underneath. I think at that point, I whimpered. I pulled back. They
held on. I was rooted. I had never felt so sexy. I wanted to see them
make love. And the f word too. I wanted to observe and to put my
hand on Jimmy's thing, that I had never seen, even in the shower
room at the pool, because I always turned away and did not dare
look, for I had no right to. I wanted them to do anything they cared
to to me. I wanted to be their dog. I wanted to be their little boy. I
wanted, in short, to be more of a jerk than I was because it meant
something, maybe, to them. It was the only direction in which I
knew how to grow. I always said goofy things to make him laugh.
Kathy too. They seemed to like that.

 Life has always been scary for me. People have always
frightened me. I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall. The ax to
drop. In this, I'm usually not too disappointed.  "I'd say it's a good
four inches, Jimmy," Kathy said. And to have their hands feeling
me, and then feeling my far too little balls through my briefs was
where I wanted to dwell forever and a day. When she said it, she
kind of winked at me without winking at all. She knew very well it
was lucky to be a two inch boner, four was ridiculous in the
extreme. Then Jimmy, who I knew would tell her exactly those
words, surprised me, and nodded somewhat sagaciously as only
boys who know they are god to their sister and goofy kid friend,
said, "Maybe you're right at that." That they were playing me
along, of course, never occurred to me.

 Then he said, "Pull it out and let's take a look at it." Just
like that. So easily. So quickly and nonchalantly spoken. I felt like I
had been admitted into the grandest club imaginable. I've never
been good with following directions. I freeze up on the simplest of
them. If a packet of chicken noodle soup has a dotted line on the
top with the words "open here,"  I always open it from the bottom.
It is not a willful thing. I just get easily flustered. Same here. Now
did he mean for me to pull my thing out my briefs' opening?, or did
he mean for me to pull my briefs down or off? Well, I knew what he
said, but it muddled in my mind. So I pulled my briefs off. Which
caused him to laugh. Though a kind of sweet laugh. A kind of
startled laugh. The little kid of me, the shy, scared, nervous little
kid had gone whole hog at the moment, and brother and sister, I
like to think at least, were slightly stunned at my daring. For, of
course, I had been dying to do just that.

 They had removed their hands from my crotch so I could do
what Jimmy ordered. Order me to do anything, Jimmy, I will do it. I
knelt with my briefs around my bony knees. I looked down at my
hard on, well, such as it was. It looked like a frozen piece of
spaghetti. I was proud of it in silly kid ways. Also, I could not look
at them. I was embarrassed. I knew I would get hurt by this. I knew
there would be a laugh or another "Fairy Barry" joke or two. But
what else could I do? I've always been at the mercy of other
people. Sometimes there truly is mercy. Most times there is not.

 There were sounds then on the couch. I could not place the
sounds. I thought of a caterpillar crawling out of its cocoon,
looking at the day bright too stunning sun, and crawling back in,
knowing it would never be much of a butterfly anyway, so why
bother trying? And of course, caterpillars fashion their clothing that
turns into the clothing of a summer morning, bright and wet with
sparkly dew, and heartbreakingly brief and evanescent like the
sunlight you want to hold to you for all time because your
childhood, no matter what kind of childhood it was or is, is or was
the safest place you would ever know. You knew or know it would
be the best of all the times, so pay attention. Then the butterfly flies
straight to the direction of the sun, blots out in the light, and is not
even a church window pane of wing design memory anymore.

 The analogy was, at least, if clumsy, apt, because suddenly
there were Jimmy's legs and Kathy's legs before me, and Jimmy's
strong heavy legs were as unclothed as Kathy's slender dainty ones.
I followed, scared out of my mind, their legs up, their legs pressed
together, brother and sister, and found them completely, all over,
naked. Their clothing in little piles to the left and right of me,
though where the clothes were, I didn't notice till later. At the time,
I thought they had just made their clothes disappear.

 You should have seen Jimmy's thing. God, it was beautiful.
It was strong and also brown tanned and long and straight up and
he had this little crinkly mat of pubic hair right below the root of it,
and Kathy was rubbing his large, of course, fuzzy balls, and they
were tongue kissing each other, their chests meeting. Kathy's chest
looked still basically like mine, though much different, even more
vulnerable, and pinker, (I guess I hoped it would turn out she
would be a different kind of boy, something I could at least try to
understand) but as her legs moved, and Jimmy opened them with
his left hand, I saw her hairless tiny slit, honest to god, saw it, but it
seemed wrong somehow, that she was missing something, and yet it
intrigued me no end.  She was more naked that way than was
Jimmy.

 I felt like I had been admitted into the room where
everything is created, where all the beginnings are neatly stored.
Her slit was a bit puckered. It scared me some. Knocked the breath
out of me. More so than seeing Jimmy naked and hard. Jimmy put a
finger inside her slit. Then, with two fingers, he opened it and
looked in my direction, to be sure I saw in there. My body shivered.
I felt as though someone had reached deep into me and was tugging
my insides out. It was so pink in there, it looked like a sore throat
must feel, though a lot softer. It looked wet too. Like she had the
sea in her. Like she was made totally of it. All unknown, dark,
deep, mysterious, unending. She gasped when he put his finger into
her. That made him smile big time at her.  What the little lipped gap
(it looked like a snap purse in a way, close down, gotcha!, can you
get out?) was there for, I had no idea.

 She put her hand on his cock and rubbed it gently. Then not
so gently. She clutched at it deeply, looking darkly at it. Her tongue
tip extending to her lips, wetting them. It was--everything that
counted for anything. They were grappling on the sofa. Their hands
everywhere on each other. And I found myself watching an expanse
of flesh, watching a carnal carnival, happening right there, right in
front of me, right that second. A naked girl's passionate turned on
willowy wand body and a naked boy, equally as turned on, on the
very sofa where I sat and watched TV or read. Jimmy pressing into
her and feeling her everywhere. Whoa! But it was my sofa, I believe
I thought, it should have been me on it. With both of them. Let me,
please. But I was too polite, too terrified anyway, to say it.

 He was bending over Kathy, and his mouth was tight and
boy rough on hers. She ate into his. I thought of what was between
her legs in that regard. His butt, as was his crotch, was so firmly all
over tanned, caused me to wonder, later on, how did he maintain
his tan through all those bleak cold sunless ice wind searing
Michigan winters?, and there were no pimples on his butt like there
was on mine. It was smooth and his hips curved so pleasingly and
with fullness. Kathy's hand was on them  rushing up and down
them, and he was on top of her now. They were making out. Get it?
In front of me. I had heard boys at the lunch table talking about
what it felt like. But my god, this was stunning beyond measure. I
was shaken out of my tree by it all. And though it was boys I
wanted and desired and fantasized about, Kathy entered into the
equation as well, and I lusted, yes, in my heart, for her too. I
wanted to see him f her. I wanted to see him f her real and true.
Cause I had no earthly idea what that meant. I needed to know.
They would teach me. Then maybe I could put my little thing up
where Jimmy put his big one, and I could f her too. Then I could
rub my penis against Jimmy's chest and I could see it spasm on him
and he would be impressed. I just knew that he would be, if he only
would give me a chance.

 I wanted to touch his butt. I wanted to feel it as he f'ed her.
I wanted to see if stuff came out of his penis like I heard other boys
say that it did theirs, though that was probably a lie, still, it
fascinated me, those words at lunch and in study hall and home
room that wafted by me in attempted deep voices that had nothing
to do with me at all, just that I picked them up and plucked them
from the air and kept them with me for as long as I could, before
the words lost their dazzle, fell apart, turned to dust, and then were
gone in my memory, no matter how much I tried to keep them alive
and well. Jimmy of the square powerful brown body was lying full
length on Kathy now who was two inches shorter than him.  They
were squirming, really going at it, as my kid mind put it. And she
was moaning and so was he. Sorrowful little moans. Like they were
dying or something. Little heaps of moans that were accidentally
tossed my way, that I ate from the air, and smelled the sweat and
gaped at the look and imagined the feel of them, with me between,
and how they felt to each other, Jimmy and Kathy. I ate the moans
like they were forbidden fruit that tasted so exotically good in my
tummy.

 I crawled to the end of the couch, my briefs getting in my
way, and looked at Jimmy's ass as he was pumping up and down.
his fingers clutching his sister's arms hard as she clawed, with her
red long fingernails, his bending humping spine, equally as hard, or
so I thought, and I looked below Jimmy, and I saw, I think, at least,
his balls pushing onto her and his engorged penis plunged all the
way inside her, in that little dark tunnel view that I had from that
angle. Stupid as it now sounds, I still didn't quite know what the
hell they were doing, but it excited me no end. And, of course, all
this time I was jerking off. And it was like the greatest feeling in the
world, holding myself, cradling my balls in one hand, as I rubbed
my dick with the other, and they were there and I was a part of it.

 Though, of course, I was not a part of it at all. I was still a
watcher. They had touched me; they had held my penis. They had
both seen my hard on. They wanted me to see them. But it was still
me and them. I didn't matter. So when I came, silently, as always,
ashamed always, as I, some reason, wanted them to forgive me for
intruding, I did what I knew I would be killed for, for this was all,
in some way or another, my fault, that they were getting down to
my level, though it made no sense to think that. As my abdomen
turned in on itself and my penis shook and trembled, I put my hand
on Jimmy's molded hard as wood ass and pressed my hand hard
onto him and I imagined his doing to me what he was doing to her,
and I wanted to be her and I wanted to be him too. All at once. All
at the same time. He didn't rear back and kill me. He felt only her.
Sexuality is a maze, a nest of conflicting contradictory confusing
patterns, for it weaves together and makes sense and nonsense at
the same time. It is sun and shadow all at once. No one will ever
understand it. It is one sex and two and three and a dozen or more
all at the same time, and beyond all of that as well.

 And Jimmy came, his back and hips reared and bucked that
one final time, and I just bet he shot come, cause he would. He was
Jimmy, after all and he was much older than me, so he had to. I
wanted to see his come in her slit. I blushed all the way through
this. But this thought caused me, for some reason, to turn red in the
face the most. And Kathy's legs were so tightly wound round his
hips, her toenails painted bright pink, toes flexing hard, so I felt her
so soft, so impossibly soft, trembling legs with my eager hungry
hand too. How molten both boy and girl seemed to the touch. She
felt only him. And I saw how both of them fell into a deep
rapturous clandestine huddle, as they tumbled way below the earth
to the other side, where there was everything else they would
experience that I would never be allowed to know. They fell deep
and true and endlessly, for they had been doing this for some time
and knew how. I had never felt like a more ineffectual little kid,
observing, than then, and that is really saying something too. They
lay there naked and unashamed. When I masturbated alone, I
always dressed immediately and refused to admit I had done it at
all. And now I saw how all wrong that was. How cramped and
solitary and depressing. And before this, I had always thought, no
one could be randier and more obscene than I.

 They lay on each other for a time. Moving slowly, crab like.
Then not moving at all. I think they slept for a little while. I wanted
to put my hand to their things and feel both of them maybe still
locked together, but the nerve, what I had had to begin with, had
left me. So I curled up on the cool floor beside the couch, briefs
around my ankles by this point. And, the trembling in my body, that
was so massive, I had not noticed it, went gradually away. I slept
and pretended I was a part of something. When I woke, ashamed
and scared, coming to, with a start, they had already dressed and
were in the kitchen. Kathy shouted for me to wake up and come get
a sandwich. So I got off the floor, obediently, (I always do as told),
rapidly, clumsily, pulled up my briefs, dressed, and went through
the curtain, ready to be yelled at, laughed at, but not ready at all, to
the kitchen just off the living room, where they were sitting eating
ham sandwiches at the yellow painted wood kitchen table. Kathy
had fixed a sandwich for me and it was on the table, resting there.
So I sat with them. It was like nothing had happened. They just
talked about regular stuff. I was mute. Waiting for the punchline.
But it had to have happened. All that sex stuff. How can people just
walk away from something like that?, just take it as a given, and not
talk about it? They probably had talked about it over and over since
the time they had first started doing it. What happened this
afternoon was real, however. Yes, it was. I was there. I saw them. I
felt them. It had to have. I wanted to ask. But how do you ask such
a question? Even after I had seen it all?

 Jimmy ate ravenously. Kathy tried to eat daintily, womanly;
it was practice for her. I ate some of my sandwich, though I was
anything but hungry for food. But I ate it nonetheless.  They still
had the look between them. They could not share it with me. My
little exhibitionistic ploy had failed after all. I was still a virgin.
Yippee. They were unable to. It was not their fault. My purpose in
it was over. I should have exited the stage. But how? It was my
house.

 Then, later on, we listened to some records. Jimmy and
Kathy and me, sitting on the sofa where they had made such hot
love, looking through albums, flipping them idly, to see what they
wanted to hear next. They, not I. Though they were my records and
my stereo. I had no right to have any say in it anyway. And that was
good enough. An eventful afternoon, one to stay with me for a long
time to come, regardless of how I tried to forget. And I did my
dead level best not to think about the night when they would be
back, with their secretive clandestine coded eyes for only each
other,  and all the usual stuff, which would never be good enough
now, or about tomorrow. I knew how it would be. I knew some
people get a peep hole to look through every now and then, and
soon, it closes, and you hope for another one up there somewhere
ahead, but always preparing for there not being. John Lennon was
right-- "I believe in yesterday." And that alone. No matter how
much yesterday hurts. You know what's back there and are
prepared for the memory, though you aren't prepared at all for it.
Not ever. It still kills the heart every single time.

 You become grateful early on for favors. Which, of course,
was what all of this was. One whole huge bigger than I ever could
imagine favor. And you become adept at pretending favors are not
that at all.  So, I was in on the joke. They knew it. But I didn't tell
them I knew, so maybe that makes it better for everybody. I had
kept my part of the bargain. They had kept theirs. That was where
it began. And that was where it ended.

 We listened to the records for a while. Then they went
home for supper and came back later that evening, and we watched
"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" on TV and some other shows and
played some Monopoly and stuff. Then, they left till the next day.
And I lay on my bed.  Glad to be alone. Safe. Though I would
never get to be alone the same way again. Or ever feel safe the
same way again. I would always feel cheated. They had shown me
their world, what it could really be like. So I did what I do best-- I
cried for a while, remembering what they had done and the musky
smell of them when they were doing IT.  And I absolutely hated
them for that. And was so indebted to them, I could never repay
them their generosity, though I would spend the rest of our
growing up years trying. I never succeeded, however. Then, like
always, I began to cement down my own distance, making a new
room onto my already large solitary corner that was to only get
larger, in which to hide, as usual, only this time, deeper in the new
addition currently under construction. But, honest, I did not cry for
long and not real big tears. Not like in the past.

 So I was doing better. I hoped, silly as it was, that somehow
Jimmy and Kathy knew, and would approve of how well I was
getting on with accepting things as they were, and that I was
tempering the weeping. Especially, since this time, I really had
cause, so maybe it counted more. If they could have known, it
might have made a difference. Only it wouldn't have.

				  the end