Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 09:14:45 -0800
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: Breaking and Entering in the Nighttime Hours

	       Breaking and Entering in the Night Time Hours

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman



Night was a mandolin, strumming, and it made Tag's heart full to
overflowing.

It was green and unshakable summer. It was night and the dark
was magisterial. Tag was ten last month which was June. And
summer baked round him. And his room hummed with the air
conditioning that was centralized. So was Tag--centralized. A bud
at the chrysalis of expanding, of growing.

He lay amidst his cool white sheets in the darkness that hid his
posters and his pennants and his model monsters and model ships.
He was not addendum. He was not inclusion by dent of the world
not having any other choice but to do so because he too breathed
air and exhaled it.

Tag was everything right with the world. He heard, above the
mechanical intruder hum, the night outside. Lively sounds. Kady
dids and Kady didn'ts, he would joke. And the firm stern big trees
keeping everything in line, grounded and in order, that had a
sound too. And the grass growing in the night heat and
remembering the days of the sun, as well as the one to return
tomorrow and the tomorrow after that.

He was a small boy and he had a chipmunk face. His cheeks were
a bit too full and the other kids accused him of harboring nuts,
goober nuts specifically, in there. Tag was cute, had red hair and
freckles that dusted constellation like across his small nose bridge,
like Diedre's in "Silent Snow, Secret Snow." The night was fuzzy
for him here as he looked at the dark, for his eyes were slightly
farsighted, without his glasses. Which was okay with him. Fuzzy
like a bath towel and the world seemed kinder then.

It was a momentous night for him because Tally was coming
over. And they would both stay and watch for the monster in the
closet which Tag had named Irv, not the closet, but the monster
therein. He thought with Tally along, then things would be okay,
for he did not want to banish the monster, but wanted to befriend
it. Because monsters should be befriended on occasion simply
because they should be, no other reason need be added, for any
other reason would be a lie.

Tag lay in his briefs alone, and felt sexy, the hormones having
kicked in a year before, and he knew things now he didn't know
before the blossoming. He loved feeling his skin slightly sticking
to the sheets. He loved moving his arms and legs and butt and
groin slow and languorous like the summer night, in waves. He
knew that Tally loved him with a love that was different. The
currents of summer night said so, sailed it in quiet wind cliff
harbors from a long distance away, maybe from a distance as far
away as the stars above.

Most of the boys at school, and they seemed to exist solely at
school, to him at least, made fun of him because he was scrawny
and because when they showered after gym class, they could see,
and were not adverse to letting him know by word and grabs and
demonstration, that his dick was far less impressive than theirs
already were.

Tally had entered the school from Detroit, or as they pronounced
it down here, Deetroit, in February of this year. Dressed in
sweatshirt, jeans, a haircut that could have been a boy's or a
girl's,  with a voice that could have gone either way, no one was
sure which she was, and because she was lame in one leg, gym
class was out for her regardless, so no one could tell that way
either.

Tally was always on Tag's mind, and when Tag rubbed his
periwinkle penis, he always thought of Tally, and wished Tally
was here with him, though he did not want to know which sex
she or he was, because that would spoil everything between them.
He could not be friends with her if she was a girl. He could not be
in love with her if he was a boy.

This was to be the first time Tally would visit Tag in his home.
And without his parents knowing it, to boot. Tag was excited.
Tag was frightened. Tag squirmed in his bed and put his hands to
his warm stomach. He liked the feel of noclothes. He liked being
almost naked except for his briefs. He could not envision doing
this with someone else present. Even Tally. But she was to be
present tonight. After Tally's parents were asleep. She or he
would knock on his window and he would let his friend in and
they would face the monster in the closet--together.

He put his hands down his briefs and felt himself and was
ashamed his penis was small and his balls were like tiny veined
watery pebbles. He felt himself rising and it always tickled him
deeply inside, a kind of Saturday night bathtub soft friendly
feeling that made him seem as though his skin were being turned
into cotton or rayon maybe, because he needed a material more
than flesh. He didn't have enough flesh to cover him really, so he
thought someone should knit him new skin stuff over his spare
but demandingly sharp bones that any day now would cut through
him.

A boy alone is a curious kind of candle. He flames and he sputters
and he is grand and magnificent. He is not self conscious and does
not dread tomorrow. Because he is the world that will lie down
for him. That will make way for him. And tomorrow would be a
blue sky white cloud day. Like a perfect milk shake that would
open with splendid red glow colors about five a.m. and would
then proceed to blue and white and the sun a friendly yellow
gentle clothes on the line breeze blowing in the hot tired air.

And Tag would be alone no more. He and Tally would marry and
would always be together and if Tally was a boy, then they would
adopt the monster in the closet as their child.  A child monster for
a child human seemed right and parallel. Tag honestly couldn't
say when he had begun not believing in the monster in the closet
as much as he had or when he had believed in it at all, or if he had
feared it on his own, or if one of his parents had told him about
their childhood fears. And it was all just some matter of
generational tradition that obligated him.

He loved his body, when alone, and liked it, when alone, being
small because he thought if things get too much for him, then he
could hide under the cabbage leaves, wherever they might have
been, where his mom said she had found him. He did not know if
he had ever believed that, or if he had stopped believing it, or
when he had come to a conclusion on it, fuzzy thought it was still,
in one direction or another.

He had begun to wonder about his penis and his balls, and it was
true the other boys in the locker room and the showers at school
and at the muny pool were much larger than he, so he had begun
to believe even that was a failure, but it still felt so good to play
with it like a new friend that made him feel all these new/familiar
sensations that seemed not to be one thing or another but more
than and always different from the time before

Sometimes he apologized to it for being unappreciative of it. Not
that it was his to do anything with but pee, and to rub and feel a
happy clicking over in him, as he lay on his stomach on his bed
and only had to do it against the sheet a very few times, then sigh,
close his eyes, and feel like the fourth of July fireworks had just
dispersed inside him way deep down. So if it felt good and it
never shot whatever it was supposed to, well, then he didn't have
to worry about any evidence on the sheets, now, did he? And why
was that such a bad thing?

He played his left hand fingers around the tiny head like a little
space ship nose cone, and he thought of Tally, he had never
thought of anyone before her, the sensation was good enough all
by itself, and wondered if the monster, impressed?, was watching
him though the closet was closed tightly, Dad always saw to that
every time Tag was put to bed, demonstrated it with clear sure
purpose and reason and always standing away to the side of the
door so Tag could see him closing the monster in.

Which Tag thought silly, but then again, that showed disrespect
for the monster so he immediately thought what the monster
would want him to say because like mom and dad and Tally and
the preacher and the teacher, he knew they could read his mind,
for they certainly read him like an open book, which was a phrase
the teacher this year had used at him, always used at him, never to
him,, all the time, like everyone said at him when they passed on
their oh so superior wisdom, aimed vaguely in his direction. Who
could read a closed  book anyway? What was the big deal? It
made no sense. Any fool knows that. And was a stupid phrase. It
made them stupid, not him. He just endured them, like you endure
such mosquitoes.

He dreamed sometimes about being naked with Tally and playing
doctor and feeling around and goofing with her. He wanted to be
naked all the time. Even imagining himself in school naked turned
him on and showing everyone that his equipment was every bit as
good as theirs. It was the hormones kicking in and it was his great
and given desire to be something more than a good boy,
something more than a boy who did his homework, made good
on his tests, did not cheat, was not into drugs, did not play violent
video games, and all of that, which was the same thing about
Tally who was also good and was also tired of being good.

The monster in the closet was good. It was polite. It never
opened the closet door. It stayed docile in it when dad closed the
door and made a big show of locking it in. It could have, if it was
any decent monster at all, burst through the door like King Kong.
But it did not. It knew its place too. That's what Tally was always
saying to him, repeating what her mother said to her time and
again, "everything in its place and a place for everything," and
how she was so sick of hearing it. Tag didn't have the balls to tell
her his dad said the same phrase to him all the time too. Tag
commiserated with her on that, but pretended his parents weren't
quite that silly.

He supposed for him to be naked in front of Tally and twist his
little dinner roll butt cheeks at her and turn around and wave his
williwag at her and be in front of her with his thingy hard, well, he
did hope she was a she, and he did think of her like that, but he
did wish she could be a boy too. She talked like a boy, looked like
a boy really--they loved movies and TV shows that were westerns
and gangster and mob boss and action pics, and they loved
science fiction, especially Heinlein because he wrote about sexy
stuff sometimes too. Her parents thought those were okay books
because they had never read them and were just harmless silly
stuff kids could safely read. His parents had read Heinlein and lots
of other science fiction as well, knew what was in them, but tried
to be progressive.

Mostly though, Tag wished she was not blessed with either what
he had or with whatever girls had. It just seemed to cause trouble.
Boys and girls fought and girls were always catting around about
this boy or that and boys would give each other the dozens, stay
away from my girl or else, cause they had seen this stuff in movies
and everybody wanted to use everybody else to be the big cheese
on campus. Which was another thing everybody just took for
granted as right. But Tag had begun to wonder why such things
were just for granted. The monster in the closet for instance. His
sole idea? Or placed there for him?

Tag wanted her to be smooth all over, did not want her to be
anything but smooth and sexy and friendly with a boy's body but
not a boy's genitals, for then somehow she would never grow up
and he would find himself never growing up, right along with her.
Sometimes he would kneel by his toy box underneath his
bedroom window, playing with soldiers, or putting together some
monster models, and he would look out at the day. Which,
whatever season it was, whatever time of day or night, whatever
was good and whatever was bad at the time, the day or night was
a huge soft comforting bed that went on to tomorrow and it was
kind and soft to sharp bones and it liked Tag and was doing its
best to get everyone else to like him too.

Tag tried to remember being scared of the monster his closet.
Was there a monster in the living room closet?, with its shelves
that housed books, lots and lots of them, for his parents were
omnivorous readers, as was he; they never were, his parents or
himself, scared of this closet, for it seemed friendly, and he loved
to browse there in the book and wood smell. And the fascinating
mental taste of all those ideas between covers. Mars was there.
And the center of the Earth too, I know, for I have been there,
you can do it too.

If so, then why did the monster reside in his room's closet alone?,
and he thought the monster might be books which he loved.
Might be books that spanned time and thought and were eclectic,
that deliciously contradicted themselves and each other all over
the place. Perhaps they were just waiting for him to be older so he
could appreciate these gifts of books then given to him. Like in
school, there were parts of the library stacks that were off limits
till he was in the next grade. Or maybe he was meant all this time
to see what was in the closet itself, since he never had before.
Maybe his parents wanted him to. Though how could he be sure?
It had always been a secret, fascinating puzzle of a place.

He couldn't bring himself though to go into that dangerous dark
closet. It seemed to exist with the sole purpose of baffling him.
Though he couldn't wait till he could get to the formerly
forbidden books in the school library.

He thought, I'm doing wrong lying here, safe and sleepy and
waiting butterflies in my stomach for Tally, and I'm not even
thinking of the monster. Not even what it looks like or what it
might do to me or how it might kill me or mom or dad and I have
to watch out for them even more than for me. He tried to
remember if he had ever imagined the monster, what it looked
like. He could not remember. Mostly now it just seemed an
excuse to get Tally over here.

He did not want anything about her body but that it be sweet and
soft and smell nice and her arms around him, and his hardness
against her stomach. He wanted the night like this, star spangled,
and slightly onion and peppermint leaves smelling even though
the windows were closed and the a/c. was on. He wanted to be
imagined. He wanted to be the monster in the closet. Tally had
never said she had one, but he bet she did. He wondered if it was
the same one, or if he had or a relative or clone or something.
Did his look totally different than hers? Or other kids'? He had
not considered all the children might have their own individual
monsters. If the monsters were to all have a fight with each other,
who would win? What did these things eat? Well, best not to ask
that. How did they stay alive? Did they get claustrophobia being
in there all the time or did they sneak out late at night and jog and
stop by open all night Burger King or Wal-Mart for refreshments
and bathroom breaks? Monsters in jogging suits, sitting down at
Burger King for a hamburger, or checking the book aisle at
Wal-Mart made him laugh. They bought books to while away the
time. But what did they use for money?

Did they have a route between children's bedrooms like a paper
route sometimes and sometimes was his closet empty at night
when he thought it monster full? Did they fill in for each other
when one of them was sick? What kind of sick did they get? Tag
verging on the edge of reality that would go about madly killing
illusions. Verging on spoiling it all. But a long way from there
yet. He did not know the name of the mayor of the town and
could simply not care less.

Tag certainly had not told Tally he was scared of the monster, or
that he believed it even existed. Had just said his parents said
there was one in there but that was so he would behave and not
get out of bed because even if the monster came out of the closet,
which it would never do, being locked in, and polite and all, then
it could still not harm him if he was completely on the bed with no
toes or fingers or feet or hands hanging off. So he would sleep
straight as an arrow in his bed; his parents made the craziest stuff
up, instead of just telling him what to do which would be simpler
it seemed. And Tally agreed. And she did-not-laugh.

The a/c. clicked off for a time and the night sounds came into his
room. It was like an orchestra far away, measuring him and the
day and the night that fit him so easily inside. Watching him like
the monster behind the blue door with the wooden slats in the top
panel so, Tag guessed, he could see out, or Tag could do what he
would never do, look in. Tag rolling his BVDs down his legs.
Raising his legs and kicking them off with his small feet. He
tossed from side the side for a time, pretending he was Jim
Hawkins on the getaway raft of wave bobbing ocean, from Long
John Silver and his pirate cronies.

He pretended he was on the ocean in the morning green with
ocean sun, and somewhere deep below the ocean as well. That he
could see up to himself and the raft and down from himself into
the mirror water where he existed at the very same time himself in
his raft on the ocean mirror, and looking farther deeper, way
down there as well. He was naked and had suffered a virulent
snake bite on his groin, right above his penis. There was a red
nodule there. It did not hurt but a little. It itched a lot. His body
felt so free in the sun that seemed to oil him with his singular
sexual feelings, absolutely every cell of him was horny. And every
bone and ligament and muscle. He was the sexin' machine. Better
than anyone in the world no matter how big their goddam dicks.
Yes, he thought, and a double goddam too. Unafraid. So odd the
feeling of unafraid and not guilty.

The red snake nodule seemed to be putting fire into him that he
had not had before. He saw his penis grow bigger, taller, longer,
thicker, and his balls seemed to inflate as well, and he was a
mighty boy who was lusted after by all the girls on the far banks
of Tahiti who worshipped him in their own mysterious integral
curious girly ways, as he smelled bamboo for some reason now,
as he felt all the world tied to him, as a junk went by, and Tag
getting his corners of the world mixed up, but what better things
are dreams for?, as on this junk were commands and orders
shouted out in unknown word sounds. As he felt Tally naked and
sexless and sexy as hell beside him.

As he felt the hot hot shadow of her hand reach down to his
boyhood bigger than the other boys' now for sure. His penis
made an arch under her palm. Like a bamboo tree, under a
commanding sirocco wind that was her giggling knowledgeable
magnetic hand to which his penis strained. As she pushed it down
on its stalk and then let it spring back up. As she began to
curiously examine it, face close to it, breathing on him, thus
rocking him, where no one should. And the clouds the boy stared
up at had some sort of Oriental caste to them.

As did Tally's eyes, now, that were, now, the color of jade.  That
were now warm purry cats' eyes.  And she was just so sexy,
though Tag would not let her know how impressed by her he
was, and he was very impressed, and she leaned her unclothed
chest against his, her chest with its stairstep ribs and her stalk
waste curved and formed into a kind of a V made with her legs
scrunched together, and her nipples were boy nipples and she
played them against his as he held her in his strong oak arms and
pushed his passionate cock into the smooth sexless place between
her legs. Legs they now entangled, as he felt his body mount to
shelves of something that was more than momentary, more than
looking forward to three p.m. each school day so he could get to
his room and take off his clothes and rub his penis on the bed till
it jingled like a cash register made of magical happy fun flesh and
then expounded and floated him down into a sea of feathers, soft
and sleepy.

This though, this was different, and he felt a current coming from
somewhere other than from himself, and for the first time he
realized he had always thought jacking was akin to going to the
bathroom, you did it by yourself, you didn't think twice about
that, that to do it with another person was dead wrong, but as
Tally rubbed her body on his, like a bee rubbing on the nectar of a
flower of summer repose, as she rubbed him with one hand and
took him into her mouth so wetly and warmly and so incredibly
fast, he never even considered such a thing possible, in such grand
exciting guilty wrong and wonderful gusto, for the both of them,
and he put his hands to her  warm head of golden hair, both of
them covered with sweat, and his mouth whispered and groaned
and he lay back and he arched, his leg muscles and toes straining,
and his face crinkled at the lips and under his nose, as it seemed
he was pulling away from her to get free, though the case was
exactly the opposite, and she seemed to know all about him, she
read him like a book, and that made him feel good, the first time
that phrase had.

And he raised up and looked at her on him and he put his hand to
her and he came and came and the whole earth was waiting as it
had been from time immemorial for his little excitation that was to
him the meaning of breaking the world apart and everything in it.

And breaking him apart for Tally too. His heart and all of him. He
didn't dare hope she felt the same.

As the water lapped round them and the beasts in it were quiet
and respectful and awaited his and her next command.

Dreams are curious things. Tag's were to be sure. He rarely had
nightmares. He called them nightmares but they were not that.
Instead they were sad dreams, dreams that made him wake
weeping as often as not. He would like some nightmares
sometime. Just scary as hell all out horror show dreams.

 He would prefer them in place of the sad lonely ones that he
could not really remember other than a rain of pastel on a watery
canvass. They were of happinesses he had once had or
happinesses he had almost once had that were now for some
inexplicable reason cut off from him. He thought, this dream too
is a nightmare for this dream too leaves me alone and feeling like
the moron I am, with the loss over and again of a happiness I will
never know, for she won't even come to my house tonight, with
the moon shining full and the trees heavy with sweaty green
leaves, or any night at all.

Because she saw through my monster in the closet business.
Knew I was scared  of it. Knew I wanted her here so she could
exorcise it from me. Forget befriending. That was just me kidding
myself. Not thinking, till now, that in order for her to get rid of it,
she will have to exorcise me as well, because for whatever reason,
the monster is now in my mind and is somehow or other my own
fault and no one else can share in its birth. Who wants to share in
the birth of a monster, after all?

And that will have to be surgically operated on. Said surgical
operation being the saying of her to me, "good-bye forever, friend
Tag, you're far too childish for me."

He had had his eyes closed ever since he had cum, ever since the
snake of green emerald on a forgotten desert brown oasis had
chased after him, faster it than even John Silver and his band of
cut throats, with their raised sun glinting swords and cutlasses,
there in the dazzle me sun, and the raft on ocean foam the boy
almost got on to before the snake bit him on the groin, right
where he had had his hernia surgery last year. Forever after he
was to think of the word hernia in a sexual connotation, no choice
in the matter. It had gotten around school he had had hernia
surgery, so, when they found out where that was on the body,
everybody inculcated that into their trick boxes of hurt they used
on him. The laughs. The taunts. O Tally don't leave me too I'll
die if you do I will for sure. I'll endure all the monsters till the end
of time and keep you safe from them if you just won't go away.
I'll die every night for you, just please. Stay.

And Tag opened his wet eyes in the darkness and tried to
remember the blue sky and the cat like lithe grace of the girl,
delicious mysterious parts she had hidden just so, on the raft with
him, though he had been thinking for a time, if Tally was a boy,
that could be sexy too; indeed, it seemed that Tally looking like a
boy as much as a girl was one of the reasons he fell in love with
her in the first place, though it's tough for a boy to admit that. If
not impossible.

He opened his eyes and felt the warm sweat on him. The a/c.
clicked on. But instead of the cold gusting all over his body, he
only felt it on  his face, his upper left shoulder and his lower left
leg and foot. Something blocked the fake cold air. Something on
top of him and to the side of him. In his bed that had another form
in it in addition to his own. He felt hackles raise though he had no
idea what hackles were. He felt squeamy and his penis deflated
and his balls went to hiding in their cavities. He felt scared like he
had never been scared before. He wanted to leap out of himself.
But he was paralyzed.

 He wanted to get up, to run, to leave, not though being able to
move one single frozen muscle. He ordered his body to put
clothes on because it was just not right to be naked when you're
being picked bone clean by the monster in the closet, the monster
now embracing you on your bed that dad said would be safe as
long as nothing of you dangled off of, which meant that dad lied,
and how can you possibly ever forgive him that or live in such a
world where that could happen? Was Dad the closet monster as
at Christmas he dressed as Santa?

 Were his parents at his door now? Looking at him and laughing?
You even allow the slightest possibility for something like that
and nothing is the same in the world ever again.

He almost screamed. Falsetto. To hell with being brave and a boy.
Something lowered quickly to his mouth and hushed him. A quiet
hush, a musical hush that had its roots in him all along, as though
they had been together since antiquity, the monster in the closet
and he, and his eyes widened, and in the moon glow, he had to
look, he had to see what the damned thing looked like before it
sliced its claws or fangs through his arteries, and he looked at its
face, the very last sight he would ever see.

He looked in the shadow and the moonlight. Into the face of
Tally.

Tally smiled and pecked her lips perkily at his chipmunk cheek.
There was such mischief about her. In her eyes even if he could
not see them in the dark, he felt it.

She held his penis in her warm wise small hand. With the other, as
she leaned over, quietly giggling, like a purr inside her rumbling,
and stretched such a long (why did she look so much taller naked
and more to her than she did clothed?) fascinating heart stopping
body, she turned on his soft glow bedside lamp. Tally smiled and
was unclothed and he became scared in a different way, in a good
way, and the summer was full, the night was theirs, home had
come to stay with him, as he leaned up and embraced her as
though he knew exactly what he was doing, and soon actually
would, as he held the sweet warm fragrance of her to him, felt the
daintiness of her, his hands warming at her hips and chest, and he
felt her arms going round him, and he knew if she had a penis it
would give them so much more in common and if she did not and
was a girl, then he would love her every bit as much. It was Tally
that counted. Nothing more.

And later on, in the dim orange light, after they had begun to
tentatively touch and explore, Tag noticed the bedroom windows
were still down and that the closet door was wide open with only
darkness inside and nothing more. She would leave tomorrow
morning early. Parents would not find out anything. There was no
doubt in their minds. This was too important for the 'rents to
screw up. You stake your claim. You abide by it. It was as simple
as that. Besides, he always locked his room door, and his parents
had recently pledged to Tag his room was his own, and they
would respect his rights of privacy.

And in each other's arms in the beginning of July,  very late night,
Tag and Tally slept, her hand on his groin, a finger tracing his
hernia operation scar, his hand on her hip, as they dreamed of
each other and would wake to find their dreams beside them, real
as real can be, and the night was like a mandolin, strumming, and
it and Tally and all the time there was, time to be with each other,
time to delight in each other and time in which to consider who
was a monster and who was not,  and why was it ever anyone
else's  business anyway?, what right did others have to say?,
made Tag's heart full to overflowing.

And the two sleepy books closed. Only to be opened and read by
each other, for only they knew how. So good-night, Irv, and
thank you more than you can know..