Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 08:09:44 -0800
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: And Then Suddenly the Sun Again

		      And Then Suddenly the Sun Again

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


Ricky smiled, and it was a December morning. He still was
of gold. Older now. Far more muscular. He rode a Harley
and his hands were callused,  but his smile was still a boy's
smile and his hair was still spun sun. And he hugged me and
told me how much he had liked me. He held me and I wept.
And it was a most odd thing, missing someone,
remembering someone who was standing, again, right in
front of me. We had good times together. Exploring our
sexuality. The first time we made love. The tangled sheets.
The giddy laughter. The little fears we took away from each
other in kind. We remembered. And in remembering, were
again.

How I loved to take his erection into my mouth as we lay in
bed, watching, or not watching, "The PTL Club." Every
time Tammy Faye cried, we had to jack off. God bless
Tammy Faye, and her eternal tears. It seemed a sign from
God. I loved being naked with him. He was never
completely naked with me. He always wore his football
jersey, but let me push it up from his chest, so I could lick
his nipples and he could  say, "Come on, I'm not a girl."
And I always responded, after a while, by rote, "Oh yeah,
Ricky, I know that for sure." How we loved to have cock
fights and wrestle each other out of our clothes. And touch.
We were all the time touching.

One winter it snowed deeply, and we made a snowman and
on the groin area, I put the biggest icicle I could find. And
Ricky said, "are you crazy?" And we laughed and he held
my gloved hand and helped me down the icy drive way and
we walked arm in arm down the snow banks. He was my
world. He was the boy I never thought I would ever know.
And he thanked me this month. He thanked me and said he
pretended he was my brother and that my mom was his
grandmom. He told me never be guilty about the sex we
had, we were exploring, and that it was just like two kids
jerking off except I was in my 20's and he was 15 and how
he had enjoyed that too. I had been told often and endlessly
how wrong it had been. How I had destroyed his life. He
told me I had saved him from himself many times over the
years and our two years back then were full of fond
memories and sunshine.

And his saying that killed there dead, as we stood by his
hawg before my house, the psychiatrists and psychologists,
like offal flies kalooming to the street below us, all their
cliches and their one liners and their judgmental superiority.
And Ricky and I talked of the summer we flew kites, and I
remembered the first time we slept together and how I woke
up the next morning with him only in his briefs and stroking
his cock, and how even then I didn't tumble to what he
wanted from me. It took about a month. And I never really
was, in the midst of it, sure it was actually happening.

He gave me my memories back, you see. He gave back two
of the sweetest years of my life. He took away the prison in
my mind, stolen away by morons who always got everything
wrong. And I remembered lying with him and holding him
and stroking him and watching Saturday morning cartoons
and the one time, though he didn't want to, and I only asked
him once, he said he had a surprise for me, and he bent
down and put my hard on in his mouth. And his peaches and
cream face going down on me as I raised up and down, and
my hand exploring his hips--there was magic in the world.


And there was magic in the world now too in these cold
winds... He loved KISS, he loved Black Sabbath, he loved
being happy and bright and giggling, and told me this day
that he was never popular in school, that he didn't have
many friends. Which astonished me. And shocked. How
could he not have? He was Ricky and anyone who did not
want to be around a boy like this, these people were fools of
the Nth degree. He told me I let him practice being an adult.
I told him he let me for the first time experience adolescence
and childhood that I had never had the chance to before,
for I had always felt like an adult even as a child.

We talked comic books, and his old friends, and his current
life, and I looked in his eyes hidden behind blue shades, and
they were Ricky eyes. And his smile was easy still and
warm, and there was December snow in our hearts that
wished again, that said walk a little more with me, share a
little more time with me.  He told me how safe he felt with
me then, and how he wished he could do it over one more
time. His youth. Me in it, too. How very odd to hear that.

How I felt complete with him like for the first time. And he
said how I was an oasis of sanity in a world pretty bad for
him. And he said he never forgot: and listed a litany of
things that astonished me; for I have never been one to be
fond of, but somehow the days brought us to this point, and
though that life is forever over, he extended his hand and
put it on my shoulder and December cold smiled with an air
of electricity and said journeys don't end the way you think
they will.

Sometimes if you hold on, and have no reason to hold on,
someone you once loved deeply, will return, will write
loving letters, eloquent letters, funny and sweet and full of
nostalgia and wisdom, putting my own writing to deep
shame.

And that is how December is for me now. And it is a sweet
December. And I don't feel so alone anymore. Because
Ricky smiled at me, and held me once more, and said it
would be OK. And today I find myself glad that I am alive.
And that somehow I did good things for him when I lived
with the guilt of doing such bad things for him. Fools who
said. Fools who pontificated. Fools who filled me full of
death drugs. But Ricky smiled at me and I smiled back and
thanked him, before he got on his big Harley and rode
away..

And I am glad I am alive today.


      the end

Timothy Stillman
comewinter@earthlink.net