Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:30:15 -0800 (PST)
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: g/m celebrities  "Awash With November"

			   "Awash With November"
				    by
			       Tim Stillman

 (With much thanks to Keith, who makes London Town seem a friendly place again)


Awash with November winds deep and strong, Autumn had long since taken its
count of the summer and the Kent countryside was fair no more, as Mark
walked out of his acupuncture clinic, as the sky chilled down on him this
early evening. Caught between the dreams he once knew, lost in the luminous
eyes no longer his, the golden hair, cherubic face, the purity of an inch
away from almost weeping, no more, caught now in a body and face he no
longer recognized, a stumble in a country side that was keen on nothing but
the next blowy snow, for it looked like it might this time.

He had a home to go to, and wife and children to greet him, always happy to
see Dad, when he was not at work or doing a promo for the Christmas showing
of "Lionel Bart's OLIVER!" which made him, in that title role, the music
humming down the days, caught in his friend's death, always the Artful
Dodger, and runner of dreams, they were, dancing somewhere still and
ill-remembered. He pulled his heavy top coat tighter and headed to his
Fiat, the only car left in the parking lot of his clinic, under the brash
light from the poles. He was soon to be nobody and no one would miss him,
not really. There were pains in his body that had never been before, this
former boy caught in celluloid history and what pictures of him there were
on the net, caused him to hate that child back there, to doubt his whole
reason d'etre, something of curdled milk seemed to taste in his small
nostrils and his hair was dark.

He stopped by his car, unlocking the driver's door. He wondered if there
was ever him or only the mysteries of dreams never to be unlocked. And
there alone thinking of Seven Oaks and his friends there once and the times
they had had. Keith and Barry. The three of them had been fifteen almost
exactly the same month and they had had such fun together. Mark just coming
back from making an awful movie, in which he had his first naked scene,
knowing that fey look he had given in the mirror, was a genuine one, the
hesitation, the intake of breath, his own, the hands of his taking off his
clothes, down to his underwear and the sigh and the incipient fear and then
off, as he took something less than courage and something more than a
moment that was him on one side and someone else on the other side of that
mirror he looked into when stripping.

Keith had been there at Manor to help him later on and Keith was a glorious
person, fine and optimistic and happy and so very filled with life and
bubbling over with eroticism, while Barry kept to the side, didn't join in,
was afraid and somewhat in awe of them both, as Mark got in his car,
started it and the warmer and then lay his forehead on the steering wheel
and thought he was afraid to look them up--Keith's smile and his giggling
hands and dancy eyes and his not letting hurt get to him, while Mark had
been so entangled with himself and now and again drugs, that he came to the
almost willful-child knowledge he had been had and life was a joke and
there was nothing now but clicking through google for the seller of "those"
films of his that embarrassed him so now, even though being English, even
though not ashamed of naked bodies, and he wanted to ring Keith up and say
what've you been up to, mate? And why don't you come over to an inn
 with me and raise a pint, what do you think?

He thought he needed some acupuncture himself, the bizarre headings of his
life, the bizarre career moves from "hot property" to "You mean the
director Mark Lester? Oh yes, no need for the middle initial L any longer,
that kid, long gone, no confusion." And when he slept with his wife, did
Mark Lester, former actor, ever remember Barry? The quiet one, the sad one
who loved him so but could never tell him and Mark wished Jack were still
alive, had kicked the alcohol before it killed him and Mark drove out of
the parking lot and remembered the first time Keith gave him head--on his
knees was Keith--slim, dark, curly hair, taller than the other two boys,
holding Mark's member like a joyous magical impossibility, there caught in
the darkness of the manse in the country side that unbearably hot summer
night, as Mark tossed back his head and pushed his groin into Keith who did
these wondrous tongue summersaults on it and Mark laughed in spite of
 his troubles, Keith's parents gone for the weekend, and Mark, and Barry
too, come here for sustenance, come here for reprieve from life extant.

As Mark orgasmed, body trembling, sounds of cumming and peace, as Barry
watched on for a moment and then turned his head away, Mark with a shaking
hand, motioned to him, mere ft. away but Barry didn't see, the success of
the endeavour, the sprite unleashed in Mark who for mere moments was not
making a movie scene, did not have the studio lights that burned his eyes
so badly, and no one round to watch him but his two friends, and it began a
big thunder boomer in time that night, as Keith put loving hands on Mark
and Mark put loving hands on Keith and they were naked and they were
together and somehow they made each other feel fulfilled, feel as there was
something more than sex and bodies and magic, and Barry thinking as he
moved to a heavily upholstered chair by rainbow window in the late night
hour, how many people how many kids would pay money a great deal of it to
see what I am turning away from, and why am I turning from it, and my two
friends whom I love, one of whom is in distress from a career gone wrong
and a once child who will make his living for a while, Barry suspected, as
an invasion of that child, a turning of him into a freak on screen, just
to---

--And Mark groaned and whispered and Keith and Mark were on the wine-red
carpeting in the darkened sitting room and the very shadows were banished
by the naked boys having sex, and the rain hailed against the window huge
and strong, both and same, and they wrestled round and they were having
more than a little fun, as it should have been, for Mark was now just a boy
who measured against Keith and in many ways in wanting found himself
wanting in comparison, as Barry imagined Mark and himself and how some time
tonight they would run away from this place and they would be naked in the
rain pummeling them and they would be hard, these shadows in a shadow land,
and tomorrow would bring it all right, and the sun would be up high and
golden and trees in the vast middle of it, as two boys were to take upon
themselves believing what could never be and thus make it be forever more.


And Barry selfish with his thoughts and guilt and not understanding. As
Keith naked put his hands on Barry's tight hunched over shoulders, of a
sudden, giving his friend a start, till Barry relaxed into those hands that
comforted him now and Mark naked as well knelt down to Barry's lap and put
his head on it and they held there each other, friends in the going away of
childhood, in the cold house in the beastly hot summer night, as Barry
whispered to the both of them, I love you so very much, and Keith put a
hand down Barry's shirt and Mark placed his hand on Barry's erection as
Keith moved to the side and knelt to their friend's face....


...And they were all naked in time and they stayed that way for the rest of
the night, as Keith showed them both how to live and his full to bursting
happiness and his wisdom and the songs he had inside, and cared nothing for
Mark the actor, but everything for Mark the friend, as Barry cared only for
Mark the actor, the dream, which pushed the other two from Barry as Keith
allowed Barry to sup and Mark allowed the dream, as they drank wine and
more wine and they became so close in their huddle in their sexuality in
their touching each the other everywhere and remarkable thing friends,
remarkable moments of insatiable.

And Mark, the man, drove for a long distance in the night cold and the
coming fog, for he stopped by the manse in Seven Oaks and sat there letting
the car idle, ready to get out and pull up the bonnet in case someone came
along and thought he was casing the place, as he looked at the silent dark
shell and heard Keith's hearty laugh and his singing and his hands and the
comfort of his bum and the sheer jolting sexuality that said let's try
this, no, over here, and there was just this wonderful playfulness of it
all, as their friend lay naked beside them and touched them gently as they
made love, touched them as though whispering fingers along clouds way up
high in the summer sky, as the lights surrounded them in their own tries,
the firsts for all, the pulling and the entering, like to like, and they
kissed deeply each the other and for a time Mark forgot who he was, forgot
what was done and what was up ahead.

And Mark started the engine again and continued on and hoped Keith was well
and happy and felt such love for him and his entanglement of arms and legs,
hoped there would be no more calls for another refrain of an acting career
gone so badly wrong, self-destructed before the eyes of the world, only the
eyes of the world no longer cared, so when he saw a phone booth by the road
side, he got out of the warm womb of the car into the ever-colder dark, and
got change out of his pocket, to ring university where he and Keith had
gone, forgetting the lateness of the hour, and they wouldn't tell him
Keith's number if even they had it, which they would not, so Mark leaned
against the booth's exterior and did all on his own what he had been paid
to do in so many films, he wept.

Keith, handsome and tall, and with a long strong cock, and dark and
chiseled facial features, a body fit and able and easily walked around in,
never ashamed of nudity, never ashamed of loving or sexing and always
saying what else are we here for, if not to bring comfort to our friends
and to ourselves as well for surely there was nothing wrong with that, and
Mark in the cold, Mark not looking even close to what he had looked as a
boy and as a young man, shivered in his heavy top coat and hoped his
daughters would not make him take them to see OLIVER! again, hoped they
never saw the DVD-R's on the net of a later film in which he and a girl had
two naked scenes of sex, or the one where he played boy as monster, for he
had had his brash devilish becoming warmth back with him back then, that
trademark that made him scatter himself to the winds in movies of him
breaking type, then him as human dandelion so horribly uncomfortable, so
wanting to go home, and he was going home now, and it was the weekend,
Friday night, and he would be a husband and a father and he would make love
to his wife and he would ---

--He got in the car and felt himself as Keith had, the warm mouth, the warm
tongue, the quiet tender excitement and then there beside them touching
sexing finally in such an apologetic way, Barry, and late in the night,
Mark and Keith, still naked, ran out into the rain that did indeed pummel,
their bodies rejoicing in it, their penises flapping up and down, Mark's
small one, Keith's much larger one, as one boy looked out the heavy rain
windows from the darkened sitting room and watched them as he stroked
himself in silence, in sadness, as they ran for a time and disappeared for
a time and came back inside to warm towels and taking a shower together and
laughing and mocking and preening and being adolescents in this moment of
rapture, this moment of reaching out one's hands and in them holding love
with face and name and voice and body.

After Mark had driven home, to the suburbs of London, he pulled into the
parking lot of his flat, turned off his heater and then the engine and he
did something that he had not done in a long time, he smiled and it was a
sweet smile, a smile of a boy long time passing, caught forever on a
celluloid image larger always than life, he smiled and he remembered then
and the times after and thought it's all not been a wash, there was someone
who cared and maybe he tonight is thinking of me and maybe he is taking his
kids to see my movies somewhere or when they are on the telly and maybe
just for conjecture's sake, he is remembering how I felt like, on him and
in him and maybe somewhere there is that tall sad man of broken heart who
turned away from us that night, and who we turned back to us and then we
made out with and maybe we all three are remembering each other, and that
way we're not alone, so Mark, happier, wiped his eyes, and walked through
the parking garage to his flat where his family was sleeping and where he
would sleep too, for things had maybe turned out right after all.