Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 15:58:14 -0800 (PST)
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: Hi! I'm Joel

			       HI! I'm Joel
				    By
			       Tim Stillman

			(For Jay, with many thanks)

      He escaped me in his sleep. That deep, slim sleep of his.  Right
beside me. We had had sex two hours ago. I had entered him and knew the
locks were tightly shut. He slept with gentleness and a kind of dignity. A
blowing wind of snow hit the windows of our bedroom. I ached to him. I was
inches away and he was almost seven inches and you would never know it,
judging by his tiny boned small body. He slept. That simply. And that
starkly.

      We had touched often and had touched never. He pretended and I was
out of bed now, his pretended partner. I absolutely hated the word
partner. I think of Roy Rogers and Froggy Millhouse when I think of
partners, or Gene Autry and Gabby Hayes, when I think of partners. I slip
from bed, though he will never miss me. He is Joel and that is
wintertime. He is Joel and that is the quiet of the night.

      He knows and in knowing I am a fact, this fact that is me is going to
the kitchen for a snack, for facts eat, for facts get hungry, and facts get
thirsty, so this fact that is me gets a small bottle of Coke from the
fridge. And opens it, putting it beside the cheese sandwich I am to make in
a moment, facts sometimes getting the order of their facts out of order.

      I am 35. Joel is 15. We have been together ever since his parents
divorced themselves from him because of his sexual orientation, which he
munches into laughter when he says those words "sexual orientation." He
knows he is not a dream, but I can't love him unless he is a dream,
therefore he has become a factual dream for me. And that is me, the other
fact in the house, sitting in his black boxers, in the warm kitchen, at the
round table, eating my cardboardy sandwich and drinking my ice cold Coke.

      I will die without Joel. And then Joel will be a dream. And I can
love him because he is a dream. I am fucked up, you may have noticed. I
wish he would come in here, knock me off my yellow wooden chair, with his
fist, and as I fall akimbo to the flooring of linoleum and not very clean
linoleum too I might add, fact wise, he would stand over me, starkly naked
and thin and slim and say, Dammit, Barry, I am not a dream, I am a fact,
and if two facts cannot love each other, in spite of the factness of the
thing, then I wonder and worry what this world is coming to.

      But he won't. He is not a dream and therefore he is truly not my love
because in order for me to love anyone love must have dust on its glass
over the picture of failed conquests, but he was never a failed conquest,
for I had never tried to conquest before; in other words, he conquested me.
Which took a bit of doing, for I am one of those shadow people in the
corner and when he with his Jesus Christ gold long hair and his limpet body
and his pale alabaster face, pale and alabaster being the same, so let me
through in wan, as well, stood looking at me and he held a glass of wine to
me and said Hi I'm Joel.

      As I turned from him and thought they let kids into bars these
days. I stood out in the early spring night air, as he came to me and stood
behind my shoulder. I knew he was there. He didn't rustle or speak or
squeak or get close enough for me to feel his aura if you believe in auras
and I don't. Then there was that naked arm holding out that glass of wine.

      Joel said, "So. I take it you are lost in your dreams."

      God, his voice was beautiful. Like piano keys soft in velvet in an
early morning of darkness when you think you will smother from the heat and
suddenly from way off you hear a piano played and it's a nice tune from way
back when they used to say things like way back when, and you feel
comfortable again. You feel as though you might cry and that it would be
something you would like to do, rather than feel embarrassed at doing, even
when no one else is round you.

      "Don't toy with me." I actually said that.

      He smiled, I saw it in his voice, and I still had not turned round to
him.

      "I am a boy toy and you need to boy up because it is going to be a
boyable summer and I'm the boy for you, not one penile implant, my pubes
are real hair, not a merkin, and I'm a real `murkin hahah, so take this
glass of wine before I knock you to your knees and pour it down your oh sad
sad throat."

      I started to laugh. I tried not to. But I started to laugh.  And I
turned to him and he held out the drink, counting the time magnanimously on
his clock watch with the big black band, which he wears when we are naked
and which I have no idea why turns me on so damned much.

      I took the wine glass, upended it, and swallowed wrong, almost
choking on the wine. I bent over coughing, I guess it was past almost
choking, and he patted me on the back. His hand felt nice I could tell
after I stopped choking on the wine, yep, no two ways about it, way past
almost choking. And I stood up, eyes runny, as his hands brushed away my
tears. He said Hi I'm Joel.  For about the fifth time. So I kidded him, I
am not much of a kidder, but he was such a great kid, I thought as I
finished my sandwich, doing a vaudeville routine in my mind where the
applause was deafening, so I kidded him with that being his name, Hi I'm
Joel. So Mr. Joel, may I call you Hi?

      And he knew how to react to it. He was solidity in front of me. He
was fun. I finished my Coke, belched unashamedly, since no one was about,
and thought he wants me for a fact, and I am not fact material. Like a few
hours ago, he was kneeling on the bed and I was in mid-fuck of his lovely
ass when he asked, "who you—ouch—god—oh-thinking of?" I said,
"you, you lug," cause he loves those WW II movies talk. He pushed up and
back on me and squealed a little which sent me edge over ville and I came
and came in his butt, and he knew and I knew I was thinking of Joel indeed,
but not Hi I'm Joel but in the dream Joel in which he was the same but not
the same at all.

      I felt his pale hand palely on my shoulder as I sat at the table. I
looked up at him and his eyes were mood rings of brown as he leaned
downward and kissed me. He was wearing BVDs white and nothing else as he
knelt beside me and put his hand on my rising sun cock.

      He put his head golden and sweet smelling and filled with such Joel
on my lap, and he kissed my leg with his pale lips and put his ear to my
cock to listen to it say I love you Hi I'm Joel and Mr. Fancy Pants up
there can just moon and croon and swoon to dream Joel all he wants, it's
you I'm sticking with babe.

      I put my hand to his shoulder. And I knew. I shuddered. I put my hand
to my face. I all but became Charlie Chaplin in The Kid—in grainy black
and white on film that plays herky jerky on modern film projectors if not
calibrated right—and there he was, this little little boy and he looked
up at me and said, "Ain't it mournful, when you come right down to it,
Pop?"

      I suddenly said a silent goodbye to Joel the dream and held him
tightly in my arms, Hi I'm Joel and I pulled out his hard dick from the top
of his briefs and my god how could I not have seen? Not have felt? Not have
known? He sighed. He stood. I became aware of his existence. I became aware
of the beautiful and delicate way he was knitted together, the joy of
seeing his muscles moving, his soft hips in his briefs, his curvy back, his
long and hard and ticklish penis that emitted sperm, not stardust like I
pretended. Hi I'm Joel is real, and I put my head in my hands.

      We had had time. We had had each other. I had ruined it all, fuck it
fuck it fuck it idiot idiot.

      He got up and walked to the fridge, getting out a beer and popping it
open. He turned to me in the dim light of the brown kitchen and the bright
light of the opened refrigerator. He looked chilled though the house was
too hot. I got up and closed the fridge door. I knelt in front of him. I
put my face to his briefs and pulled them down. I kissed Joel's penis and
it had weight and heft and solidity to it.

      He bent toward me. He put his hands on my shoulders. He sighed. I
felt Hi I'm Joel for the very first time. I sucked his lovely alabaster
penis and the cum filled my mouth, the Hi I'm Joel cum and I swallowed not
stardust but my lover's love. And I wept against him and I said I loved
him. And he and I knew. For the first time. It was the Hi I'm Joel I
suddenly loved and would forever love even though he became the dream Joel
far too soon.

      That's me. This fact that I am. The fact that got the Coke out of the
fridge and put it beside the sandwich he hadn't made yet, getting the facts
out of order. The dream Joel was the Hi I'm Joel fact out of order. I got
what I thought I already had until I realized I had had...once upon a
time...golden wonder of the only true magic, real magic, real boy, real
Joel, who loved the real me, instead of starlight.


      Joel died last Wednesday. It was mid-Spring. The weather was hot. His
parents didn't attend the ceremony.

      I'm writing this now after the funeral. I have the dream Joel. He is
now the only fact I will ever know. Who I now get to love and pretend is
real, the rest of my days. And it is ripping my soul in pieces.

      "Ain't it mournful, when you come right down to it, Pop?"

      Well, ain't it?