Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:47:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: Dark Walls

Dark Walls
     By
Timothy Stillman


(For Van and for Jason) And for Mark Lester, who has nothing to do with
this. It's been a while since I dedicated anything to him and I just wanted
to.)


Begin with those walls. Darker than dark. Shiny outer space
Dark. Frightening and disorienting with night deep outside as well as I am
21 and I am staying here for the night, in this magic house of surprise
turns and hidden alcoves that go to secretive book closets past the framed
awards of Magicians societies, especially The Magic Castle, all hung on the
blue deep sky walls of the living room vast they were and vast this bedroom
with the shape changer walls that even with the desk light and ceiling
light turned on, because the light was purple, made a strange ultra-planet
glow on everything, a kind of mauve I remember some superheroes wore in
comic books. That kind of sleepy sickly sweet feeling, to reach out and
touch a separate universe, a distant land of mountains shaped of oceans and
seas of deepest drowning basalt. All caught in my swimmy head.

The dimensions of this person once known as me and sick in love made larger
and leaner and filled with glasses of too much wine not drunk at dinner, as
though the ceiling would come down in its own wall of black glow, and the
floor too gaining concrete abstractness, as corners angled into circles and
playing cards were laid out before me, with the Joker extant, pulling green
gloves on, as he stood all festooned with bells and shackles and green and
red pantaloons as his head hidden in a star with five points and his mouth
grinned rictus red, as I fell to bed as though it was the only oxygen and
gravity left in the entire world that was pouring out of my hands like time
and then gone, there laying I on the bed of black pillows and black sheets
and my eyes screaming for light that didn't make me feel like I was
compressed in a Petri dish, for such was this gone to college boy's room in
this house of psychic.

Caught tendrils deep, sexuality, and masculinity and femininity and the ten
year old boy, Van, on the opposite side of my wall that could be flexed
with an index finger if I only known how, swimming through this fish
kingdom of prestidigitation and tarot readings and lean sweet buttery milky
Van in bikini blue swim trunks standing inches before me one summer
afternoon a few months ago, bathic and fine, gold and pearl, leaning on his
left leg, hand on hip, globes of his small behind perfect, tiny water
dripping from already toweled hair and body, and molded through the lean
wet cloth just out of his swimming pool as he talked to his father,
otherworldly man, be ringed and cowled almost, dark with wide splendor
suit, with a silver cane and wolf head always by his side, as I sat behind
the boy of gold as he turned to the side sometimes, as he gesticulated
often and laughed fairy like and was a whole world engine within himself,
as my erection was so grand it should have been given an award of its own,
and I could remember it all, how he had walked through the living room,
coming toward me, dream clutch in one fatal almost heart attack OH GOD and
then to stand in apparel of a boy dancing flesh and golden summer seek me
never for I will always do you one better, and remembering now this October
evening, here in the first cool of Autumn and purple lit thus engaging my
bones to envelop round me again and toss this dream like silk multi-colored
kerchiefs out of a master magician night's performance.

And let the leitmotif be judged in my spinning around and seeing up there
now in purple black light, the walls and ceiling and floor veritably
glowing cold fires of shiny printable black, up there sprinkled in spangled
gray were five pointed stars all hurrying away from my eyes please come
back even as I watched and pressed my ear to the solar system wall division
between Van's bedroom and mine, what did his look like? Was it also
astrological impossible, was it astrology, not astronomy that guided our
worlds as I leaned my hands above my head and pushed the fingers long on
them the fingertips like pseudopods to the edge of eternity behind which I
was told Van's bed would be resting and Van..what of him?..were there dogs
of Baskerville on the moors? Was there the unsettling images of his
floating off his own star dance winsome bed to open the secret panel
between universes and thus, his and mine, pull both together in an
astronomical miracle that would shout the heavens of dimensions into
shadows shatters?

What then, to think, to provide orientation in various means and meanings
of the word, would Van of supple flowy flower child child flower body with
the curving spine of his resting on one leg, with the tickle smile staring
at me from the molded bikini briefs with a Superman logo on the right side,
what was the heft of those tiny buttocks now before my eyes in recent
memory that could occlude now reality and make fantasy real so I would
never have to leave this October house again, and I pictured Van to bring
my stomach back to its rightful place, on his bed the head of which faced
mine and we separated only by disbelief and belief, as he would be naked
tawny golden curled as he slid out of his briefs and lay on his still some
baby fat left tummy and began rubbing himself on the sheet as I took my
hand like spatial faith of huge leap considering what was this form I was
no longer in, spit and curls, black haired and rail thin, a counting man on
a cold snowy train in the middle of Switzerland heading down through the
steam and wood coal eyes of a different century which I could play with as
with a lily in a bowl of water, as Van named boy and boy named vessel and
vessel named form and his shy and sweet as Autumn harvest smile, dry came
in five make that four and three quarter seconds and then put his hand his
finger tips on the membrane of the wall infinitely thin and our finger tips
touched celery stick warmth as I turned from the dream of psychic over hear
and cut the purple lights off and huddled in infinite blackness.

It was a work vacation as I came here to the wood vale of Carpathian
mountains not sure of the drear cloud of dust that angled in the entirety
of the day time sky and I sat next to Jonathan Harker, in our funeral coach
attached to skittery night horses, not knowing of his own fate though
played who knows how many million times over? And I stripped my clothes off
wondering now in this unoccupied point of un-creation or non-creation if my
clothes had subsumed my skin and my skin would be my clothes as I wished
for Van to slide through impossible in some trigonometry majesty and hold
my trembly body in this too warm room as I tried imagining his sigh of
little boy sexual gratification at the always wonderful warm wash rag soft
of height and tower of strength crystal wise of dry orgasm and then his
face laying down side soft on his pillow as if on clouds of marshmallows as
I held my penis with trembling hands and worked on getting a too frightened
to do it hard on and closed my eyes tightly as I dwelt on there being a
psychic grid in this magic house of legerdemain slick and real and holy
fire candles tricks that fell out of soft cotton bunny ears years before
breakfast and supping with the next century at least, I tried to contact
Van psychically, knowing this was all for beans, unless his dad Mr. Psychic
himself was the most understanding dad of the universe forever after, but
hoping for a little magical confluence here, just to unite me with a boy---

"Joel."

"Barry."

"Van."

"Barry."

"Joel?"

"Van."

"May I?"

"What are you asking?"

"May I be made love to by you? I never have been made love to before."

"Are we on Edwardian time?"

"No. Mine." Slender voice too.

I look to my left at the young boy, kneeling on my bed, lighted of course
by light of glowy as he brings my trembling hand to his nipples bare and
brown and dim and hard as I reach for his penis not tired at all and his
belly and his face and chin as I rush him to me with my hands knowing the
rest of me has come here for not fun or gratification but a very real and
urgently needed salvation and he is warm and wiggly and full of self and
his fingers touch my hair and I hold his slim back and trace his soft legs
and put his cocklet at my lips and suck and kiss it and we are afloat in
trapeze acts without trapezes, we are gymnasts without strings and we do
amazing and impossible things, song become real, music has colors all so
varied and rare and many unnamed, and emotions emit like little baubles of
winter and are cold and giggly and easy to break at our merest touch, at
our merest whim, as we are water warm in summer and the origin of the snow
angels in winter for no matter who makes them for the rest of all the
winters up ahead, they used our images for themselves, we their templates,
and we are birds on the wing and Peter and the Lost Boys and we are coming
in each other's mouths somehow even though we are kissing each other's lips
at that exact moment, as Van finds arcane lore in my nipples and in my
penis as I begin to fuck him and see all the whole of everything and
everyone how it all began and continues to this day to fuck is this to find
the secret center of the worst imaginable things, the trophies left behind
by lovers who thought they were the harbingers of the show and thus, we
redress the mistakes in our undress, the flowers fall and scoop up the sun
and put it in Van's ass as he screams strawberry ice cream out into the air
of the room that now is contained on earth in this house as we eat
strawberry ice cream lest it eat us as we fuck and the golden boy with the
glowy light calls my name and holds me tightly on the forearms as we digest
ingest procreate boy love to last all the live long eternities which seem
warm and friendly and corridors it will be fun and communal to chase each
other through and then the climax as I jerk his penis, pulling from its
little guppy lips vastly colored scarves as I come jisms of sex feeding
magic doves come to roost and stay, into every corridor of him, all the
secret rounded corners of his angles, all the locked doors in him now open
to October miracles in him of star bright and star light, and we collapse.

In our rooms. In our silence. In our it never happened. But at saying
goodbye next day to Van and his family, having conquered the dark shiny
walls of outer space in a snap--"it was easy"-- was it just a quirk of
sunlight reflected off of never forget that Autumn weekend, or did Van, as
I turned away to walk to my car, wink at me? Do you think?