Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 20:29:18 -0700
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: Mann and Kidd--In the Muscle Car of Love

		"Mann and Kidd--In the Muscle Car of Love"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


Kidd was beside me. The night had glass ice lights in it.
Pure and white. Kidd half asleep next to me in the
companionable molded bucket seats of green, in this
par-excellence muscle car. The fuzzy dice hanging from
the rear view mirror. The red and green and yellow lights
on the dashboard, staccato, flickering, marching forth and
back, one two three. All whippy like plane control lights.
Chrome feasting lots of land on the car, killer machine,
but not as much chrome as in Kidd's brain or in Kidd's lap
as I stroked him through the opened fly of his gray jeans
heavy and padded to hide the bones of the boner that
sprouted full attention from this little bone yard known as
my boyfriend. Metal man with braces on his crooked
teeth. And rents and rips in his heart from believing in
nothing and everything at the same time. Turned and taut,
his lithe body, little glow worm of a boy in the klieg lights
of lit up billboards and late night bars and grocery stores,
broken trailers in the fields here and there, as they twirled
past--little burps that said life is important and worth it
even when you are hanging onto the playing field of the
plains of Kansas by the skin of your teeth.

It was late night and the car zooooomed. It was late night
and the car had mag wheels and a big duck ass in the
raised high up back, so far off the ground back there that
you expected the machine to give birth to little addendums
of its own kind, that or thereabouts, squatting itself out on
the roaring highway--splat splat and birth created and
nothing to it, whoosh it at seventy and now eighty and
now eighty five miles an hour. Windshield wide and high
handsome, bugs crushed on it ker-splat. Me with the fuzzy
warm womb over the driving wheel, Me with my boy and
my love and my all and his hard on in my hand, and
nothing but washboard fields struck in the stage lights like
man had conquered them, but the corn was here and the
child was in our heads and we had lots of warm hot
gasoline smelling infancy to go through before we would
manage to get anywhere else. Me, driving the pistons
gearing down the range, this monster with the red blood
jagged zipper Godzilla teeth in neon reflective glory on
both sides of the car, and hunkered down, and eyes made
zinc with all that nicotine and coffee thus ingested as we
cannonballed through three states and were on the lam, on
the run, because my lam got caught, and I had to do the
best thing I knew how to do.

Me and him back there how many lifelines ago? Me
outside his window, throwing pebbles at it in the nighttime
hours. Me howling with my silent heart and ready to get
stabbed again, calling out whispers, Kidd, Kidd, come
down from there and run away with me, and we won't
have to duck and suck and always be afraid in the car, in
my sturdy ready to lay rubber machine machine, bucking,
waiting for its lord's, up there high above, directives,
when the night is too late and your parents might find
your bed unslept in for the entire night, come with me and
muscle into gear and we shall fly across the open land and
make it our bread and butter table to sup ourselves silly
on, and over and again, pause for the picture I take of you
naked bending over the left tail lights of my erect
automotive device as you wiggle your pink butt so
profoundly and so wisely and then perch on the drivers
side, door open and you open yourself to me, and look
back at me with that sly oh grin, and my camera click and
click again just to make sure. The suddenly. The need of
horsepower. The need of nettles of yourself and your evil
grin and your larcenous eyes as you stage the Kidd the
Hoer pose with your naked butt on the hot summer
bucket seat, and your tongue creeping out like a little red
sun onto your cherry lips, and your balls up in your hand
and your hand stroking yourself and pinching the ring toss
of your tits as your head is thrown back in wild abandon,
in the car shuffles under the shade tree of the empty field,
and the sun glares down and Kidd all spread out and ready
to fuck me thirteen ways till Sunday, machine and boy,
bodies of both melting into body of one; you didn't mean
to steal the jewelry, for they fell in your hands, and that is
why I am here now, tonight, getting you away from the
bad influences, from the organized labor that says teen
years are a blight and should be snuffed out even if you
are snuffed out with them. So in hot night summer with
those cold careless unfeeling lights whizzing past us and
then out into moonless darkness, with that huge sky
above, I hold the hot ice of your genitals, and I strum you
as though there is no beast beastlier than you, as you sigh
in your sleep and I wonder at the nasty cobweb dreams
and surfs inside your seemingly so placid head.

I pull a Winston out of the left sleeve of my over shirt and
I light up and blow the lung soothed fog into the world of
our rad ride, and blow you in my mind like we are still at
the windows of the world back there that were the
windows of your bedroom eyes, when I tapped with
pebbles and you finally finally got out of that muzy fusty
sleep long lasting of yours and stuck your weary blank
eyed curly headed self out the window you finally with
much fumbling, raised, and I smiled up at you and wanted
my smile to be how you lowered yourself to the poor
ground with me, all perspective lost, and I told you with
my eyes and you gestured with your head and all of us
were the car, the machine of movement, the machine of
mirth and the radio and the CD blaster booming out
heaves of heated survival, and heated reconnoiter, and the
gut deep need to do something more dangerous than ever
before. And me with my Kidd's jewels in my right hand
and Kidd all sleep curled around any Roman candle he
wanted because he was that kind and didn't have to ask
twice, hell, didn't have to ask once, good old once upon a
time tomorrow again. And we were running from a little
jewel heist, a minor inconvenience, a minor smash and
grab that Kidd had staged because mirrors are terrible
things, and make you feel so impermanent, so
powerless--they say childhood is a smashup and there is
no more living here, for it is a closing door continent that
is going to squeeze you in or out, ready or not; but adult
hood, what the hell is that?, and is it nothing more than a
constant flood of contingents of coping out and then
selling out some more and where were the picket fences
of our youths and where were the briar bushes we could
hide in and eat our blueberries bloody and pick the needles
and stick them in ourselves of our own accord?

You could smell the muzzle of the heat nosing into us
even though the air was on, windows sealed, and blasting
all tit and ball tightener frigid and we were hot still, hot in
that way that comes with-- are you out of your mind? are
you crazy as a bug? shoplifting, christ, Kidd, that's a
woman's game, that's a girl's game, a little boy's, you
don't still think you're a little boy do you?, and at that
thought, Kidd sleep turns and in the shadows I can't tell if
he's got his eyes open or not, so I keep stroking him,
putting in a finger deeper to feel his wiry black pubic hair,
and I whisper to him, baby, go down on me, I love to get
blown while I'm going eighty, and he had to be awake or
he was slaking some dream boy's barber pole because his
head suddenly went for me, and his body turned half
comma as he bent down and licked his tongue against the
zipper of my jeans which boned me up like I tell you what,
as the car fishtailed over the highway, wide and high and
more than any living man can stand, and then he put his
hands creepy crawly like spiders up my opened shirt and
to my white tee shirt that he rode upward, and he put his
head there on my chest while he unzipped me, lovely to be
unzipped by a boy, and he pulled it out and stuck it in that
warm wet mouth, and he was delicate and child and sweet
and tender and his tongue was the best friend a guy could
have, and he coaxed me harder and harder like a diesel
bus pulling into a maintenance garage to get a fast lube
job and oil job, and being blown, above and somehow
inside those mag wheels and all that horsepower and that
smooth running crystal stream sounding engine, god
damn, it was marvelous!!!

Kidd couldn't go back. And it was a cinch I couldn't
either. We were prone to carry out our basic instincts. We
still had not learned to ask permission whether or not we
could eat what we liked, when the ice cream looked good
and cool and tasty on a tree leaf  hang dead as hell
summer afternoon when the breeze itself stops and asks
which direction it was supposed to go in because it can't
think of anything anymore than can anyone else on one of
those sultry heat baking torpid summer days, so we took
the ice cream we wanted and I always paid for it because I
was that way, but Kidd--ah yes, Kidd, with the huge
thumpy basket in his Jockey shorts, and the creamy chest
and thighs, still free of any hair except down, and his face
always set in that mock humor ready to split a gut
laughter of him that he laughed even when he emitted not
one peep, even when he tried to look as serious as a
banker after a bank robbery, when said banker has to
convince John. L. Law that he didn't rob his own damned
vaults.

Kidd the thief. Fell in with a bad crowd. So his parents
pretended. Much easier that way. Than to know the bad
crowd was always in him instead. Come down to me in
my Jokester machine, my Batmobile, my Popemobile,
come with me to chrome and glass and stud me mo and
mo, my studd, watch me tear down with those huge black
wheels half as round and big as a Black Hole and then
some, and the memory of Kidd climbing out his bedroom
window, the moon glow painted on the side of the house
and on him, little spider monkey, climbing down the drain
pipe and then hopping over to the old Elm tree and
juggling himself to the bottom branch and then swinging
out dizzily to my arms, jumping into them, and Kidd
dressed only in these gray jeans and knowing with firm
elasticity that I would always be there to catch him like a
windfall of autumn apples that knew they would be
forever appreciated and never be allowed to touch down
to solid ground, not never, not nohow. And off to my
wheels parked up the country road, down past his parents'
barn, the chickens in their coop cluckingling awake, and
we ran in the night time dampness, hands together,
swinging like idiots those hands that might be nooses for
our necks someday if Kidd didn't learn to control them,
because Kidd never paid, and I always paid, and that was
the way it was. All of this, all of this, was going to cost
me a pretty penny I had no doubt.

Pretty penny and me in Kidd's workmanlike mouth, let the
games begin; Pretty Kidd and his usurping of my boner,
and his spidery little hands pushing up my tee shirt even
further and playing the tittie serenade on me, and my right
hand off the wheel and pressing the back of his warm dark
hair as he went up and down and did that wonderful
milkshake slurping sound that made me awfully parched,
my eyes half masted with lids, my tongue working its way
around my own bloodless lips, my sighs coming up and
out like melody to Kidd's magic mouth and his magic
fingers as he put them round my base and stroked and
demanded and confirmed and congealed and used my dick
as a dousing rod to clever up the firm cum that was roiling
in my balls that very minute, as I looked over, cut eyes
over to the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view and I
thought you guys should be as lucky as my balls are right
now, with Kidd lathing them, that trained toned pumped
buffed tongue of his doing stunning nip ups, making the
muscles down there jump, making the muscles in my arms,
big strong muscles Kidd loves so much to rub against,
jump and pump and hurt almost, and my legs spread, and
the speed speeding up and the speed speeded down there
and elsewhere and lucky thing no other cars around, no
county mounties for sure cause we would never explain
this.

Like Kidd explaining the jewelry heist. The penny ante
shop lifting. I had no nerve no guts to tell him the jewels
he heisted were pure zirconium from the word go,
because he was so damned proud of all of that, carried
them in his pocket like now, carried them in his sleep, and
worked his hands over them at school at home at baseball
practice which he hated but his parents insisted on this at
least, little glass spiders in his hands, little nuggets of
coming winter when everything was white and cold and
feather bed soft and close up and far away at the same
time; and the air froze the runny snot to your nostrils and
the sky was all crystal pale blue like somebody was afraid
to paint it deep and strong and surround sound like it
should have been, and Kidd trying to get caught, Kidd
stroking the jewels when other people were around, and
his keeping them hidden in his hands, his don't give me no
shit! face on and nobody gave him no shit, but it was
dangerous cause it was still theft and stores will still press
charges.

So Kidd explained it and Kidd said in that green sap
willow voice of his that he knew where we could get a
good price for the ice, always say it the hip cool way
Kidd, that way you will stay young forever and never have
to shave a single day of your face or your life to be, out in
California where his uncle lives, his cool uncle, his bebop
uncle, his uncle who blows dope and doesn't think it
unmanly to blow boys and we got it made, Kidd would
say, and Kidd scuttered down the side of his house who
knew how many hours ago? and we were off to the
Olympics of power engine, of gunning and revving and
tearing the highway in half and showing the world the
stuff we could do, at least late at night, when the other
traffic didn't hem our speed and magnificence and sexual
dalliances together cramped and hot and sweaty like
closed in a tiny iron box. But at night, man, at night, tell
you what.

And I was thrusting into Kidd's mouth now, grinding my
whole Elvis pelvis into his mouth, bucking like the two
hundred broncos that were under the hood of this chassis
delight, and Kidd could feel me coming and Kidd braced
his hands, one on each side of me, and I span the stars and
erupted geyser foam and froth and Nome came up to look
at both of us and fell apart in fiery darts and excesses, and
Kidd swallowed from my  close to seven inches stud dick
and he was happy to know someone ten years older than
him and cool with the chicks but like they always say,
"Girls are for practice, boys are for fun," and man you
believe that I was having fun now. I was sweating in every
inch of me. Even through the wool socks I was wearing
and my dick was throbbing and pulsing I just knew with
every possible light that could be imagined, and Kidd
drank me in, and he moved his left hand to his left jeans
pocket where the Ice was covertly stored, and I shuddered
like a door closing, I bent over almost to the wheel and
the eyes of me went dim a bit and the colors inside them
closed ranks and the colors seemed to say stop right here,
you don't want to go any further, you don't want to delve
any deeper, you've picked up too many rocks to see what
crawls out and this time, after Kidd, there will be the
finding out, or before Kidd is over, that something is
crawling out that you would rather not know because it's
got your number on it and your paycheck will be taken
from you and used for company dues you haven't got
around to taking care of just yet.

Kidd moved his mouth off me, un-impaled me, and put his
warm sweaty face against my bare chest, and I was
breathing hard and so was he, and I had a stash of weed in
the glove compartment and so I told him to light us up,
and he did, and we toked for a while while I held my
baby's face against the tight muscles of me and I stroked
his hard on that he asked me not to bring off just yet, he
was mellowing down now and he just wanted to stay
cuddled here for a while,  like a baby with its source of
comfort, like he thought I would be here forever, like he
thought we would never ever get to California, just keep
cruising all over the country and then when that got old,
we'd cruise the Atlantic and Pacific and then we'd give
the seas a whirl and Europe and Greece and all of that;
Spain might be nice too but we decided they must eat only
olives in Spain because all the olive commercials on TV
seemed to have Spain as a backdrop for some reason, and
neither of us gave one whiff for olives. Kidd asked me,
Lenny-like, how it was gonna be when we got to L.A. and
we got his kool as kan be uncle to dump the ice for us and
give us big bang bucks on our return, and I told him about
that "chicken farm" in Kidd's own dimensional terms, and
I kept thinking about "Of Mice and Men" and thought the
illusion is shot to hell when Uncle whoever tells him the
ice is worth about as much as a pack of gum and it's a
laugh and he will laugh at Kidd cause everyone laughed at
Kidd about this "heist,"  that I tumbled to as soon as he
presented his stash to me; and George had to fire the
bullet of shame and screw up into the back of Kidd's head
before the other bastards got around to doing it instead in
a far worse way. Everybody gets killed eventually. It's the
way you get killed that's important. You don't want to die
with other people's derisive laughter in your ears. No, you
don't want that.

Behind his back, they laughed. He had been A-Number
One With a Bullet for a long time now in school, and they
knew he would always do something rad, cause he was
always on the verge of it, always perching, wire walking
on the knife edge of the world, he lipped the teachers, he
flipped the bird to the coach, he mouthed off to his
parents and their preacher, and God too, if He was
listening and not taking a shit or anything at the time; he
said hell and fuck and motherfuck in polite company, and
the other kids younger and older looked up to him even
when they had to look down at him, and the adults
tolerated him, some being secretly impressed with him,
because he was such an enfant terrible and effective
parenting was letting him do it his way so as not to injure
his psyche, for his mom and dad were heavy fans of Oprah
and Dr. Phil, and the maze of childhood is a thicket far
and fast and fat and deep and Kidd would make it through
his days without ever letting his stiletto sharp eyes be even
close to asleep, but now, now, Mann knew, the kids were
laughing at him because they knew the Ice he heisted was
worthless costume jewelry, everybody knew, even though
the store and the police had kept quiet about how much
had been stolen and what it was, the monetary
value--rumors need not see to be sure, they smell the
failure even when the creator of the failure is totally
unaware of it; and Mann had to half threaten to beat the
hell out of anybody who said anything to Kidd,  who even
thought about popping his bubble; Mann who was the
swim coach at the Y back there where all the kids and
Kidd went. Mann said he would know who talked even if
he didn't know because he would just pick one of their
tribe, and take him out into the pool's deep end, thrust
him under, and he would make this sacrificial lamb pay for
all the other little pansies who might have squealed and
hurt Kidd, broken Kidd, killed his spirit, killed his
soul--cause Mann told the others, you're a shadow of
Kidd, you're little butt wipes who could not hold the toilet
tissue for Kidd,  for he is and always was and will be
better than you, and if you've got a problem, settle it with
me, or settle it sinking in the deep end of the last lights of
watery indigo blue, after I clock you first.

Kidd and Mann toked for a while. They eased. Kidd
reached in the back seat and got the Big Gulp container of
Coke and they each took healthy slugs of it. Kidd put the
drink back in the back, and then he pulled his short body
taller and put his arm around his friend's shoulders which
were broad enough for Kidd to cry on anytime he wanted,
and he looked at the bug juice smeared windshield show
with his face beside Mann's arm and Mann put his arm
around the small bird like delicacy of Kidd's own little
shoulder machine, and Kidd thought, god, he's a beautiful
beast, but god I've got to get away from him, I've put up
with being a joke on his behalf long enough, because for
Kidd this Mann was from a bad wood cut out of James
Dean, this car needed to bop down to the main street and
have a drag race with other ghosts like it, with Natalie
Wood and Sal Mineo cheering them on; this Mann who
introduced him to sex, always did the same things, always
made Kidd do the same things, and it got to the point now
that Kidd was older that Mann was a definite liability to
him, and this was the purpose of the trip, getting to L.A.
so Mann could get his cut of the loot, then go to some gay
bars, without Kidd, and hang out with the other
youngmen who still lived like it was "City of Night" and
hustlers were the core of everything, and nameless sex
with as many Numbers as possible, and being with
someone at the bar when the lights were turned out and
then turned back on, for, above all else, you could not be
seen in shame by yourself by yourself alone.

God, Kidd paid for everything that he did, that happened
to him, how he shouldered the embarrassment the man
brought him, from those cruel bastard other kids Kidd had
had to promise to deck if they didn't leave Mann's bubble
alone, if they ever laughed at Mann one single time; for
Mann the albatross was the current payment that Kidd had
to stop owing on. Kidd never told Mann how everybody
was always jabbing and hooting about Mann's body
beefcake at the Y, at his constant preening preoccupation
with himself, at his love affair that would consist solely of
himself and whatever beaming alter boy types were
around him who made him feel tight and taut and with the
truth in every muscle that always pointed in the direction
of his golden field triangle. He didn't know it, and by
God, Mann never would. Kidd felt so damned sorry for
him. Much of the reason he stayed around him was pity.
Mann had been hot and brandishing as an ocean breaker in
Kidd's body and in the deflowering of Kidd's cherry that
had become charity--a novelty show no more, that and
revenge on the others and Kidd's knowing that Mann's
dick inside Kidd had been and sometimes with effort on
Kidd's part still was a raging firestorm, but there was the
dullness now, the happenstance, the time table, the old
grind and old maw to be fed and firestorms burn out in
time, and you have to look for other fields to ignite. How
was Kidd to tell him? Could he tell him straight out? It
would break Mann. It would break him in half. Christ, did
mr. studd muffin have the slightest clue at the derisive
laughter that was getting harder and harder for Kidd to
hold from expelling out his  own mouth?

How do I tell him? Mann thought, his hand fondling Kidd,
his hand fumbling at Kidd's belt buckle and open zipper,
as Kidd got out of his pants and his Jockeys, his prong
boinging upward, his stomach hungry but his cock
hungrier, and Mann's hand ate at Kidd's five incher and
Mann's hand stroked the warm sleep human skin ivory of
it, and Kidd was naked save for his shirt that he had pulled
up to his armpits; his jeans and briefs round his ankles,
and he whispered and shouted and Mann's hand was all
up and down him and a finger at Kidd's mouth that Kidd
kissed and then that finger touching at Kidd's crotch, and
below it and then in the boy's asshole and Kidd sat on it
and rocked on it and pumped up and down on it,
remembering happier days, and they knew they had to find
some motel soon.

Because they had to have each other, there was nothing in
the world for either of them, the both of them believed
fully well the other one was thinking, but mostly, at the
moment they were just wasted, and Kidd sprang a leak
and came on his navel and legs and balls, with Mann
working the cum in them with his hand, for mostly they
were in their own shipwrecked thoughts thinking, well,
what the hell am I going to do with this guy now? Too
young. Too old. How do I say it? And the road ran on and
they thrummed into the night trying to get a blueprint of
how the morning might one day be, apart, as Kidd leaned
over and kissed the prominent pulsing blue vein in Mann's
forehead on the left side next to his hairline, and boy and
man stayed together for a while longer and looked for a
place to stop off. The car was given more juice, the motor
hummed, the windshield splattered bugs to their deaths,
and Mann put on a CD of Arrowsmith, cranked it up
loudly, and Mann grooved and grocked, as Kidd
pretended to and wondered in that airy spacious way of
his, especially after smoking dope, as he reached into the
goody bag in the back seat and pulled out some sacks of
munchies for them, if that would always be the way it
would work out with him; pretending and then pretending
some more. Christ, what a nightmare thought.

So there they were. In a car whose green pain paint was
just a bit flecked, just slightly fading. And if the passenger
side front door was closed with bailing wire, it was just a
bit of bailing wire, very temporary. Those things Mann
could easily correct. It was still one classy piece of
merchandise. The dream would keep going a little while
longer. So far, only the exhaust stuttered. But it stuttered
loud and with gusto, and stuttering loud and with gusto
was a very good thing. Therefore, enclosed tonight in this
hurtling sleek wide finned hunk of metal, rode Mann and
Kidd. Close as two people can be. Just George and Lenny
blazing down the Yellow Brick Road with the fake eyes
known as cheap glass in the pockets of a boy who just had
just so absolutely much in store for him. Get Mann to a
gay bar, first thing, then, like the old joke about the
parents shagging ass when the kid's away at school--Kidd
would mooooovvvveeeee.

				  the end