Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 21:40:41 -0600
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: AUTUMN IS FOR SAYING GOOD BYE

		       AUTUMN IS FOR SAYING GOODBYE

				    by

			       Tim Stillman


They say it's choices now. It used to be decisions. It used to
be up to you. Now there are responsibilities that you must
take for your actions. I pretend I believe these things.. I
don't. It's my job though. Until Alton. Whom I loved with a
passion I have never loved anyone with before. The first
time he came into my office, I looked up from my chair, my
eyes grown hard, my face harder still. I see them as
weapons, or I did. Save for Alton. He ran into my arms and
I held him and felt him and stroked him and believed in him.
It is an unique thing to believe in someone. To really know
they are there and you suddenly as well.

It happened. I don't care to fill in the blanks. Whether it
happened two weeks after his first visit or two months, I
don't care. Time meant nothing. It did happen. I don't
know, maybe some high school students were like me after
all. Different. Sad. Shy. Always knowing that solitary
masturbation at the end of day, so looked forward to, so
missed, so lonely. And it was autumn Alton came into my
life. He had been having problems in class. Picked on. Too
pretty. Too kind. Too forgiving. When he came to my office
that first time, he had a bandage on his face next to his nose,
and a black eye. And I held him and life is not for trees and
summer and ponds and woods by themselves. An  odd
thing, to remember your own pulse, and that it can so
strangely give life to another human being. Or a chance of
hope.

School in session two months now. I am the guidance
counselor/psychologist. It's a small school in a small New
England town. Autumn had that spurned gold red beauty in
full bloom, the season I lived for, the season now of Alton. I
believe in magic now. Alton was small for his age and his
hair was black as midnight and his eyes were searching as
well as frightened, a combination that when noticed by the
wrong person can get one into a great deal of trouble.

And Alton was in a great deal of trouble. There was a city
nearby, well, for us, it was considered a city, and it had
some gay bars and Alton had been to one two weeks before
he saw me, and it had been found out recently, therefore
Alton the punching bag. How found out, words, rumors,
and Alton of the gray eyes and the smile that could not help
itself, as he told me he was in love and he and the man he
met at the bar were to be together for the rest of their lives.
He was to run away from home, was Alton, soon, to be
with him. The man was to visit him some weekend at a hotel
in our town.

Alton and I didn't talk much. We thought a great deal and
we kissed and I loved him and I didn't want him to go
away, but there was always go away on the ghosts of
friends in the past and the ghosts of friends in the future, I
seem  to see no difference in what and who has been and
what and who would be to come. Alton and I lay on the
couch in my office. The shades of green down blocking out
the always brown glowy cloud days with the trees sighing
wind high and comforting. I held him because he had not
been held a lot in his life. I touched him because the man at
the bar had touched him and Alton said then it would be
okay for me to also, but remember he was spoken for.

For a man of 27, it seems I always come third or fourth or
lower, it seems I am used to mark time, not in a cruel
unkind way, just that is how it has always been with me.
Alton touched me too and he felt my firmness and he felt my
fear. He stroked my forehead and kissed it with his full lips,
and brushed my hair back, told me not to worry, I would be
safe, I was of worth and value. All those years my junior
and he comforted me and it seemed right that he do so. I
had asked him about school and he said he would go there
and it was okay with his old man because the old man had
other things to do and was happy to be getting "the kid" out
of his hair.

Alton lay on me. I remember that first time. The sounds of
school all round, the bells ringing, the kids thundering in the
halls, and Alton in here for counseling, for hiding out, and I
was afraid the door was not locked or someone would look
through the window shade and see our shadows. But he
shhed me and he held me and he lay his cheek against my
chest and he felt me up and down and I felt his penis grow
as we lay on each other. And he kissed me. What a thing. 27
and not kissed till now. And feeling his febrile body on me,
a body that would trace away in the wind, that was already
a torn shadow.

I put my hand delicately and with fear and not a bit of
shame down the back of his jeans, just a little bit, and he
wriggled his butt gladly and said, "more, please" and smiled
and said the first name of the man he was going away with,
sweetly said, I think he meant to say my name, however, I
would like to believe so, and I put my hand down on his
butt and it was firm and muscled and creamy feeling at the
same time, and he sighed and arched his body like a bow in
an arrow, and he sighed again and looked down at me and
for a time, a very little, very unforgettable time, he was a
pretend lover of mine.  I saw his pain, but he saw mine
more. I was like a young teacher, come back to school, not
to teach, but to be a student again, for even if school had
been awful for them, it was better than the outside world.
But teachers and guidance counselors are on the other side
of the desk, and there is a whole different world in that and
in being a student on the other side of that desk.

And he put his vanilla tasting (he loved vanilla gum, and so
thus did I) in my mouth and it made me so hard and he
squirmed his crotch on mine and though neither of us ever
took a chance of being without our clothing and I was too
antsy to have him come to my apartment, we saw each
other piece meal, he would unzip and I would touch and
tingle and stroke and play with his little almost hairless balls
and marvel at his perfectly pink leaning tower of Penis, as
we called it, and he would do the same to me. He was to be
the one to suck me off  before I did him, apologizing all the
way. "Please quit apologizing," he would say, somewhat
irritated at times, but I always felt the need for it.

I pretended the man he saw on the weekends he no longer
saw on the weekends. I preferred to think I was "saving"
Alton from him instead of just savoring whatever little time
Alton had to take with me. We did not talk of the man.
Alton learned early on to keep that quiet. I would say
nothing when he did. It was easy to figure out. Alton was
no longer a sad boy. He no longer got pushed around. He
pushed back every now and then  And sometimes when a
fight could not be avoided, he did not avoid it and at least
gave as good as he got. He told me "thanks" one time for
helping. I hope he meant it.

But it was love on my part and selfishness and the art of
Alton's going away. I've never liked trains. That is why I
chose an apartment in a building two blocks from a train
yard. Some times at night I would lie in my bed and listen
the engines and the whistles and the sheer massive bulk that
somehow moved so fast and so far away at such a quick
clip. I've always wanted things, me, people, seasons, to
stay. Alton talked about that once. I had sucked him off and
had swallowed his sweet cum and was lying with my face
still on his still hard penis. We had been talking desultorily
about leaving.

"I don't mind traveling, Mr. Burke. I think new places are
all in my future. I want to be a travel writer. I want to go
back to Chicago and I want to see the old places and my old
school, and I want to see plays in New York and be there
for the new book season in Autumn and live in the Strand
book store and smell the covers and paper and ink and paste
of all the new books. I'm not scared, Mr. Burke." And he
put his hands with the artistic fingers to my face and made
me look up at him, his sweater and shirt pulled upward and
my fingers now touching his still hard boy tits of brown,
"you've both helped me. Both of you. I will never travel
alone." And like the experienced lover he always seemed to
be to me, he wrapped his arms round me and his legs and he
tipped his tongue out of his mouth to his upper lip and he
closed his eyes and I loved him more than anyone could
love anyone and I thought please don't go; say you don't go
to the bar anymore, say you have forgotten about him and
anyone but me, and you did not say "both," you only said
me.

And Alton said whispered sighed advanced promised smiled
looked worried looked pale looked excited looked scared
look like he was even younger, look like a man in his prime
controlling the boy him of now/then/past and said brook
silent rush free, "I've never been--fucked--you
know--fucked---and ah I would like--you know--we'd have
to be quiet and we couldn't be naked totally, and--ah--I
don't want it to hurt--and if it--you promise to---stop...."
And it was awkward and clumsy and difficult still with jeans
round out ankles, and me stopping immediately he said to,
and Alton and I fucked and then we wept some and then he
said tomorrow, Saturday, he was going away with his friend
from the city. And the life I had extended into him had been
taken from me in all the dreams and pretend and refusal to
think about reality, me, psychologist, Mr. Reality Sucker,
and I didn't say anything. Just got up and dressed. As did
Alton.

He held me around the neck and he put his face into my
chest, and he said, "You fucked me first, Mr. Burke. And
you saved my soul. You were here for a reason. I will
always carry you with me. Believe that, please." And he
looked up at me and he smiled and for the first time these
entire two months, I did not return that smile. I was stern. I
went to my desk. I could turn the man in he was seeing if I
felt like it. I don't think Alton would do the same to me.
But it would be forever over between us. But it was
anyway. I could shame him at least. Take the confidence
away. He would be beaten up again. He would need more
therapy from me.

I sat heavily in my chair behind the desk.

"Please wish me happiness, " the boy named Alton, already
gone, said, his hand on the door knob, his head turned to
me, his eyes beseeching. I looked at him. I remembered.
Him. And friends who had left me over the years who pretty
much said the same thing when it was over. Only I hadn't
had sex with them and had not just fucked them, still feeling
the memory of his ass muscles clinching my dick and
milking me of the last of my love. How does a person do
that and then walk away for good with someone else? How?
Did none of this count for nothing? I was again a stand in.

I looked at him and told him he used me to fill time, for
practice with his lover until they could  be together full time.
I told him he did not love me and that he had better get used
to being used. As far as using, I said, and he was crying
now, he knew how to do that well enough already and
would get better at it.

He opened the door quickly and was out of it slamming it
closed quickly. I sat back in my chair. I called his home that
night. He answered the phone. I told him good luck and I
was sorry and I wished him well and if he ever needed
someone to talk to, there was always me. He told me with
much difficulty I had been right. He had felt sorry for me
and he had used me but it was meant as love too--it was
garbled but that was the best I could make out of it. And we
said good bye. Not wanting to. Saying oh wait a minute or
oh just a sec I forgot and then we were finished and hung
up.

I walked down to the train yards and listened to and
watched the trains carrying night with them speed by in their
bright sparks and the sound of their rattling cars and their
heavy wheels on the endless rails up ahead and never to
return to back there. I pretended Alton was on the train
gusting past me. I pretended I was saying good bye. I
pretended he would remember me. I knew he would not.
But when it comes to pretending,  with time, I can pretend
it so. And even pretend I believe it.

I'm a psychologist after all. I've got the knack.