Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:12:25 +0200
From: Julian Obedient <julian.obedient@gmail.com>
Subject: Against My Ruin

1.

I was leaning against the railing in front of some empty benches on
the boardwalk looking out at the ocean wearing nothing but my skimpy
little black speedo and a cool tan I had gotten from being at the
beach sunny-day in, sunny-day out for more than two months.

Evening was falling. It was nine-thirty, just beginning to get dark.
An evening wind breezed by suddenly and my sweet little nipples
cringed and crimped at the chill.

I had to feel them. They were hard and sharp and strong and it made me
feel so good touching them that my hot little cock started acting up
inside my speedo, making an exhibitionist of himself, just when this
blond guy three or four years older than me I've had my eye on, on the
beach, passes by down below; trudging along through the sand; him, too
in only his speedo.

Hey, I call to him.

Hey little nipper, he calls up to me. He refers to me as little nipper
he says because I remind him of the dog next to the old fashioned
Victrola listening to his master's voice.

He reminds me of the guy who plays Anakin Skywalker.

Grr, I growl playfully at him.

Woof, he answers back and comes up the steps and walks over to me. I'm
pressing my balls and boner against one of the vertical bars of the
railing.

He puts his hand on my butt, cups it and keeps it there.

I turn my head so I can look at him. I smile and cup his cock and
balls in return.

With his other hand he takes hold of me in front and has got my cock
and balls in the palm of his hand^Åand me, too.

I inhale; I exhale.

Relax, he says.

I kiss him like a child expressing adoration and the need for affection.

He rubs my cock, and without even thinking about it, I'm rubbing his
through his speedo, gently outlining its shape and feeling its warmth
and vibrancy.

He puts his lips to mine. Then he takes hold of my nipples and gently
pinches them. Then he gets rougher. He is holding me by the nipples,
pulling my face up to his. I'm going out of my mind. I just want to
worship every part of his body with my tongue.

You're the kind of kid who needs discipline if he's to grow up right, he says.

Who's gonna do it? I challenge him.

Just wait, he says.

Till when?

But he doesn't keep it up. Instead he messes up my hair and says, It's
getting dark, junior. Why aren't you in bed already?

I'm waiting for you to tuck me in, I answer, trying to get it going again.

You think I'm your mother? he says and leaves me standing there.

2.

I don't know what I'm doing with that kid or what I'm getting myself
into, or, maybe, what he's trying to get me into. But every time I see
him, he comes on to me in a way that makes him irresistible. But it
makes me angry. It does. And the strange thing is that that's what
makes me start to respond to him.

It's like, fuck you I'm saying. You want to do that. You daring me?
Well this is what it feels like, kid, so watch it. And every goddamn
time, it turns out that he beats me at the game. He doesn't back down
and we're into the real thing.

So I figure if this kid can mess up my mind so bad and make my
hormones race I better do something or I may be looking at serious
jail time and a tainted life for the rest of my life. It's a critical
time for me. It's my mind against my body for the control of my life.
And that little fucker is at the heart of it.

So there's one thing I gotta do, and that is^Åget it on with Laura,

But that's a lot easier to wish for than to accomplish.

Problem is, I don't really wish for it, I want it. I want to want it.
But I don't wish for it. I know I want to want it because I think
about it, but I wonder if I really want it because even though I think
about it when I'm not with her, it's more like scheming than desiring.
Suddenly, when I'm with her and I'm trying, something goes dead.

Now this is getting me crazy and I start wondering if I'm queer.

I know it's perfectly ok to be queer, and yet something about me does
not like the idea of me being queer. It's like I don't know if I'm
really queer and not letting myself admit it, holding down that part
of myself or if I'm really not queer and just doing a number on myself
to make myself crazy.

My friend Richard says I'm crazy either way, but suggests that I let
him hypnotize me to get to the root of it.

The thought of it gives me a hard-on. Does that mean I'm queer?

Not necessarily, Richard says. But it does mean I get off on being
passive, he says. I think submissive, but keep myself from saying it.

Ok, I say, hypnotize me.

Take off your shoes, he says. We're sitting across from each other by
the window in his room in his parents' beach house. It's nighttime.
There's a full moon hanging over the ocean and hardly any stars are
visible.

Let your head fall forward and slowly roll your eyes up and down, look
up at a spot in the center of your forehead and then down to a spot
beneath your chin and keep doing that. Notice how heavy your eyelids
are becoming. You can't keep them open anymore.

It worked. My eyelids closed and when he told me to try to open them,
I couldn't. The more I struggled, the heavier they became.

He told me I was in a trance, and I guess I was. I was sleeping and I
was not sleeping. I heard his voice and everything became as he said
it was. When he told me I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn't. When he
told me I could, I could. When he told me I couldn't stand up, I
couldn't. When he told me I could, I did.

3

The kid sat at his desk unable to get his mind on geometry as Miss
Foster was showing them how to find the area of a parallelogram. The
autumn was still rich with vibrant color. In his blood it felt like
springtime. The surge of his blood through his body felt like the
memory that the ocean had left in him each summer night when he lay in
bed dreaming of caresses after the long days spent at the beach in his
speedo darting over and around the bodies of all the other kids he
played with in the water.

The feel of the blonde kid who called him nipper was still in his body
too and it aroused him in a dull and dreamy sort of way. Glad he was
when the bell rang and the school day was through.

Jack, Miss Foster called him before he was out the door and free of
her. He turned around and walked back to her desk.

Yes, ma'm? he said, respectfully.

I don't know where you were, but you weren't here today. Not
yesterday, either. Your mind is up in the trees.

Yes, ma'm, he said. I'm sorry.

Well, sorry isn't good enough. Sorry isn't going to show you how to
figure out the area of a triangle.

No, ma'm, it won't. He had learned long ago neither to argue nor to
contradict when he was being reprimanded. But it drove the teachers
crazy. He was polite, but they couldn't get a grip on him. There was
no traction when they tried to talk with him.

I'm letting you know now before it's too late so that you can get a
hold of yourself.

Thank you, he said, but all he could really focus on was the other
meaning of her expression.

4.

When you overcome yourself you find that you can give yourself to
things from which you once held back and you can begin to enjoy them.
Later you may wonder if what you gave up might have offered you more
if you had only been patient and waited for it to emerge. But if you
had done that, you would have had to take a stance of dangerous
defiance. Dangerous because possibly self-obliterating. And then you
would not have been there to wait.

So he lay in the lonely bed with Laura in a pre-war building in
Washington Heights aware of the loneliness tearing at his heart as he
held her in his arms and kissed her without meaning it, and waiting
for the night to go away.

He was aware of a sadness he had never felt before. Yet it was
familiar. He recognized it as his own. He knew it was something that
had been waiting for him. It was waiting for him the way that our
adult features are waiting for us as we pass through childhood. They
are waiting to surprise us with what we really are in our own dreadful
individuality, when we are no longer being shaped and formed, after we
have been irrevocably cast. He had come face to face with his
inevitability. It was like a blow to the gut. Weak tears welled in his
eyes but did not spill out in sobs.

What's the matter? she said, trying to be tender.

I can't do this he said.

What can't you do?

This.

She knew what he meant without his having to break it down.

I'm not forcing you, she said. She had intended it to sound gentle but
it came out harsh.

I know, he said.

Tell me what it is, she tried again.

But unformed words stuck in his throat and nothing took shape and
nothing could get out.

Perhaps you better go home, she said at last, insulted that he would
not tell her what it was.

Yes, he said, getting out of bed in the dark and feeling around for
his clothing.

A surge of affection for her welled up as she stood opening the door
for him and he kissed her good-bye with his tongue. It was a feeling
of relief.

Call me, she said.

Anger flooded him like an arrested orgasm. He knew he would not.

5.

I can't force myself, Jack said through his tears as his father
slapped the failing test paper which he was required to sign down on
to the table.

No? he glowered.

No.

What makes you so special?

I'm not special.

Every day I force myself. I force myself to get out of bed. I force
myself to go to work. I force myself, Christ, to come back to this
lousy house every night. I force myself. And you can't force yourself.
That's what life is all about, forcing yourself. If you don't know
that, it's time you learned it.

I don't want to learn it. I don't want to live that way.

You don't want. You don't want. It's not a matter of whether you want
it or not, boy. It's the way it is.

6.

I told Richard about what had happened with Laura.

Good, he said, rubbing his hands together. We're making progress.

Progress? I echoed uncomprehending.

Leaving the past behind. Stepping into the void.

I don't know what that means, I said.

Of course you don't, he said. That's why it's the void. The dark place
where nothing's there but discovery. Sleep now, he said, without a
pause between one sentence and the next.

I knew what was happening, but I had to do as he said. My head fell
forward, my eyes rolled up, my lids fell shut.

You step into the void, he said. There is nothing to avoid, he said.
Everything is dark. You feel the humming of darkness flowing inside
you. Go deeper.

7.

I long for coincidence. I seek through the streets the unfinished, the
avoided, the phantom of what might have been but did not happen, the
shadow made flesh of the lingering but impalpable form left as a trace
of a movement aborted by a hesitation.

It's a long shot. More often than not this convoluted desire is
frustrated, as it must be. As it must be, for that is the reality of
things. They are as they are. We are bound to ourselves and nothing
changes.

But if I'm making up the story, it's another matter, shadow becomes
substance and fantasy becomes fact.

So I was not surprised when I saw the kid looking in the window of the
men's clothing store on Greenwich Avenue in an old pair of dungarees
and a motorcycle jacket hanging open. A cigarette was loose on his lip
and as he turned in my direction to light it and the match flame
flared I saw from the way he inhaled it was a joint.

You remember me, nipper? I said approaching him.

I'm not that stoned, he said, in wonder, looking at me and trying not
to let his breath out as he spoke, and, I felt it: him involuntarily
drawing towards me, like I was to him; magnetized.

And then he exhaled, and before all the smoke could leave his lungs
our mouths were upon each other and I had caught his sweet and nutty
breath in mine and felt his soft and velvet tongue caressing mine.

I backed away and put my thumb to his lips. He gently kissed it,
smiled, and said, I always believed I'd find you again. This time it's
for keeps.

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