Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 18:50:02 -0700
From: B Keeper <silvershimmer@earthlink.net>
Subject: "Maybe They Love You, Baby..."

		     "Maybe they love you, baby....."
				    by
			     Timothy Stillman

"No they don't. No one loves me. You love me. That's enough."

We were lying in bed. We were naked. We were cuddling.
I was his eleventh grade teacher and he was my English
Lit. student. He got beaten up  sometimes at school.  He
was a fighter, sometimes gave as good as he got, but not
often.

Once he got picked up and pushed into a trash can.
Because he was small for his age. Because he wore glasses.
Because he was gay or was not. Because he was a bad
student. Because he was wrong. Not good looking. Wrong
all the way around. And that's why they didn't see the
beauty of him.

"You could talk to them....."

He was fondling my penis which was warm to his touch, on
this tough cold winter night. I stroked his shoulder and the
side of his face. We held each other. Because we were each
other. I was like him as a kid. He was like me now.

"I did try...but there's only so much..."

"Don't worry about it, man...."

Now he was angry. He pulled away from me. It felt like the
earth spinning out of control, that pulling away..

"I stroked his thin shoulder blades. Touched each of his
dragon teeth sharp skin backbone. He was crying. He sat
on the edge of the bed and cried. The city was quiet this
late night. I wished my apartment looked better. I wished I
could beat up the kids who beat him up. I think the words
they beat him up with hurt him the most.

I got out of bed and came over to him, kneeling in front of
him.

"You're beautiful..."

"Stop it, man, it embarrasses me." It didn't. But he had to
say it. Inner city. Grimy. Scary. Knife fights in school halls
not unusual.. but he had to say it.

I took his hands that he had cupped over his penis.

I held his hands. I said, my heart thumping for him,
knowing for the first time in my life I was affecting a
person. I had been taken out of my corner, pulled from the
wall paper, and now someone depended on me. Totally. It
terrified me.

I said:

"They love you." He turned his face. He snarled. His tight
black curly hair seemed to tense.

I turned his face back to him. "They love you. But they're
too stupid to know it."

"Come on. Don't jive me, man." He reached for a cigarette
and lit it.

"They love you cause you're not them."

"I'm them," he said, now idly playing with his hooded
penis and his small balls. "I got me a gang, man. And I'm
tough. Want to see my switchblade?"

I didn't laugh. I didn't try to talk to him. I felt the
image--an angel with a switchblade, dying in the wind, in a
huddled little body, real tough man, real loser, real soon to
be school drop out, real pan handler, real nobody, real
needing somebody, real scared, who cried when he thought
I wasn't watching, who came onto me and who said I was
the only one who ever noticed him. The horrible thing, I
was. And the more horrible thing was he had cuddled up to
an equal loser, just like him.

He flicked the ashes in the Coke can on the rickety red
scarred bedside table. Beside table! Yeah, right sure.

"You have a beautiful penis."

"He looked at me. And he said you have a beautiful penis."
The boy mocked back and blew smoke in my face. "Hey,
mister, I could ruin you." He smiled. It was not a kind
smile.

I felt my stomach pit.

"I know."

He tossed the cigarette butt, still lit, in the dented Coke
can. The smoke still trailed out.

"And you that desperate?"

"I guess. Yes."

He lay back on the bed and he spread his legs and he said
to me, "Suck me off, then, dude."

I looked at him for a time. Rubbing himself all over. And I
stood up. And I said,

"Don't."

"Why not? You got the goods so you use `em."

"It's what I've been doing." I walked to the frozen little
window and looked at the city below.

"What the hell that mean?" His voice was gravely. I
pretended he was someone else. I always had since this had
started. I'm just a victim and I victimized a victim. But it
wasn't that way. It wasn't the way people think. Was it?

"I used you. I loved you. And I used you. And nobody else
would have anything to do with you, so that makes me
pretty rotten." It hurt to say it. It hurt to admit it.

"Oh, hell, man, you ain't used me. I knew you from jump
street. I saw you before you was even coming into the class
room. Hell, I used you, man. Ain't you figured it out yet?
I'm getting one good grade at least."

I turned and closed my eyes. I knew he would say it
eventually. I hoped he never would. The room was cold.
My nipples and dick were hard from it, and I had
goosebumps, and I wanted to get back in bed with him and
cuddle again. But he told me. He had to tell me.

"I know you ain't got nothing. I know all I can get out of
you is some fast food stuff. But its more than I get at
home. And you hold me. I held you first, remember? I
wanted to come home with you. I finally got through those
passels of no's and some other time, and don't think so,
and we couldn't, and no, really, I can't do this to a kid, and
maybe just, maybe we should, this isn't right, and I held
you and I kissed your shirt and I started unbuttoning it the
first time you finally gave in and brought me home.

"Hell, man, I'm not good at school or books or like that,
but for god's sake, ain't you figured out I'm a hustler.
Pretty damned ugly looking one, snaggle toothed one, but
one all the same. Make no money really. Go to bed so
someone will hold me. Get to sleep away from mom and
the boozers. That's all. You ain't nothing to me, man.
Nothing at all."

I sat on the edge of the bed. I pulled the thin sheet around
me as much as I could.

We didn't talk for a time. He put his hand out for me. I
took his hand away.

I held my head down. I refused to cry. And he said, all
slow and gravely and sad, "OH come on, you think anyone
would buy this pathetic little body." It was a body of neat
trained packed tight muscles. He loved basketball and was
good at it. He played it by himself at the YMCA down the
street. When he smiled, it was a gremlin smile. It scared
you for a time. Till you know it was just the configuration
of his face and muscles and was not meant to be scary..

I knew he wasn't in a gang. I knew he wasn't a hustler. I
knew he had had no one all his life since the nurse handed
him as a baby over to his mother. I knew he had done
things like most ghetto kids did to scrape by. But he lied to
me, was the thing. All this year, he still had to lie and I still
had to take it.

"Go home, Grant." I didn't look at him.

Long silence.

"Hey, man, what for? Cause you ain't the only one? Cause
I ain't been a virgin since nine? Hurt you feelings, man?
Stick you in a fuckin' trash can with all the bozos standing
around looking at you and see how your feelings get hurt
then."

"I'm a teacher. I wanted to teach you."

"I been doin' blow jobs forever, dude."

I turned to him. He made me so angry. "I wanted to tell
you that you are loved. That people don't know how to
love. But deep down some do. And you just can't keep
lying to yourself that you're nothing. That's a lie to you
from you. Delivered gift wrapped. And if that makes you
feel great, being a nothing, then you are a nothing. And
you will grow up to be a nothing. And you will get a
stiletto in the back some dark night when you really are on
a corner hustling cause there's no me anymore. Not even
me. The loser of losers. You lose even him."

He wept. Jesus wept. He was beautiful to me. Cause he
was me. But he could be more than me. He had a chance.
A slight scintilla of one, but a chance nonetheless. I wanted
to help. I did.

"Get out."

His face collected a fury like a rain storm. For the first time
I feared him.

"What did you just say?"

"Get out. I'm a loser. It's catching. You reached the
bottom of the barrel when you came on to me. I saw you
coming, the day you walked down the hall to my
classroom. All studdy seeming and torn cowboy boots, and
the tight torn jeans, and the lumberjack shirt, and the
stomping and the swaggering like you were somebody. I
saw you coming. And I want you now going. It was a joke,
you little jerk. It was a joke. You're a joke. And if you
don't get away from me you will be an even bigger jerk. I
was in a gang. All pale and sickly looking now, but I was in
a gang when I was younger than you. I had a zip gun. And
I had a metal pipe. And I shot kids younger than you and I
was shot by kids younger than you. I got bashed and I
bashed back. Nobody bopped like I did. I was the leader of
my bop club, so why don't you haul ass out of her. Before
I show you some moves like you never seen before. Dude.
Man. Punk. Beat it."

Grant stroked himself. Slid the foreskin up and down. Hard
steel boy. Hard shell body. Hard shell body inside too. He
laughed. He rubbed his abs and he laughed.

"Shit," he said with that grin coming on that would scare a
ghost.

"You jive turkey. You ain't in no gang. And you weren't
playing games with me. I seen love before. I seen it in your
eyes. Never love to me. But I seen love. And I seen it in
your eyes. And you just about made me break my heart.
Wa wa wa wa."

"You've got to make the jokes, Grant. "I lay on the bed
beside him.

"You ain't no loser man." He turned onto his side to me
and the side of his face on my stomach, looking up at me.
"You been nice to me. You been as nice as you could be.
You didn't have to have sex with me. You would have
been happy just being with me. I know, man. I ain't a
fool."

We held each other for a time.

"But I know loneliness," Grant said, "and you was real
lonely. And I figured I was your only chance. And I could
do something. I could be something. Somebody would
notice me."

"I never had sex with anyone in my life, Grant."

I expected a stiletto insult. They usually came when I
mentioned something like that.

Not this time though.

"It's okay. We're just two lonely dudes. And it's gettin' to
be kinda OK. Lots of things. You know. It's gettin' to be
kinda okay."

I held the naked boy and the naked boy held the naked me.
And it was good to feel his penis and balls against mine.
And I said, "Grant?"

"Mmm?" the boy said sleepy.

"One thing."

"Wha--"

"I just wish your toes weren't so goddam gnarly. Look like
tree roots."

And Grant giggled. And so did I.

"Well, mister web toes, you can just go sit on a Lilly pad
and go ribbit, you know."

We smiled in the night.

And the night got real calm, in spite of the city noise.

It was a cold winter night. Three weeks before Christmas.
One boy would not be on the street selling his body. Or at
home being raped by his mothers' boyfriends. Or drunk or
stoned his own damned self. Two people in a lonely city in
a lonely world held to each other. And began to drift off to
sleep.

And we would wake up a few hours later to get ready for
school, and start out on our walk to school in the long
winter wind, with the sweet secret between us all day long,
the secret looks, the coded words, and after school, we
would, on the way home, get two large salty hot pretzels at
the pretzel stand, then up the steps to my apartment, and
lie on the bed and eat and talk and laugh and then I would
help him with his homework, and hopefully  we would
repeat these days and nights in long succession, and things
would still be kind of OK.

And I would pretend it would never happen that someone
else would see in him what I did. I was good at pretending.
But not that good. And I lived in fear of it. Selfless and
selfish. I've tried both at times in my life. I would try to be
selfless this time. I would try. Even though that made me
feel as lousy as being selfish. Though of course that's what
selflessness is all about, I guess

But for now, for people like them, kind of OK was a stop
over in friendly territory, on their way to Mecca. Let them
have their day. Their night. They've more than bought the
right to them.

                                                the end


Timothy Stillman
B Keeper
silvershimmer@earthlink.net