Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 22:26:11 +0000
From: Timothy Stillman <menovember@hotmail.com>
Subject: "Flicker"

Flicker. Glows of match. Then the thready light goes out again. It is dark
and cold. There is a match in an other section of the old house. Flicker.
Then gone again. He thinks, E.T. with his warm face and his finger that
glooowwwweeeeeddddd. Flicker, snap, twists against the side of the kitchen
matchbox. Hiss yellow. Like a snake out there. He hated snakes. He hated who
was doing this to him. Come on with the college gags. Come on with the
college sneak horrors. They were all fake. All fortitude in the right finger
of his left hand could be brave enough for this. This and then some.

It was the sound of the match that made the golden shimmer in his brain. The
sound of the match hissing, then being twirled and extinguished, for far too
short a time. You waste matches doing it this way. It's not economical. It's
costly. Do you know how much money it costs to run this house, young man?
But this is no house. This is a frat. And he doesn't want to be in a frat
house. It's his frickin' mommy's idea and even here, she rules the roost. He
is naked and he is 19 and he is not scared or ashamed. They gave him a scary
brain, but his body was not scary.

It was buffed and tanned even here in deep late Fall. He had to go through
these mazes of darkness, and not get scared, but it was they who would be
getting scared. He had a good-sized penis and he had good-sized balls, and
he was not ashamed. All they wanted him to do was to masturbate in the dark
with only the match light and fizzle. And he had to do it on the count of
whenever they had the lights on; he had to come at that exact same moment.
He had to guess. He had to pretend he was one of them.

But what if he took his coat of flesh off? What if he did that opening of
the Twilight Zone movie--"wanna see something really scary???" No. He was
kneeling. He did not care if he passed this portion of the test. He should
tell mommy what The Guys had him do to get accepted by Normal Society. Heddy
was out there somewhere, waiting. Heddy that none of the guys would get to
first base with. And then the accoutrement. Then the sighs the guys watching
somewhere in the dim light of forever. All mouse dropping smells. All
vaguely rotten odors, for who would be washing their clothes and their jock
straps, these half-wit jock jokes? Whisper. Touch himself. Like with Heddy.
Touch himself and feel himself go hard.

Feel his balls heavy. Feel his chest smooth and hairless. And they are not
getting off on this. Them wearing their infrared viewers. Them thinking he
didn't know that. The secret was a few branches short of what old G.W. could
figure out in his stoned, coked, drunken brain of sickness. Of course, they
were watching their pledge, their feeb, with the funny brain and the
dyn-o-mite body. Oh god, it felt good to have them watch--Herbert, and
Shelby, and Roach, and the others in this lowest of the fraternities. To
show to Mommy. To show to them. To do it for Heddy. To prove that these oh
so hetero guys were as gay as he was. To push the distance was to keep him
on the straight, so to speak, and narrow. To be nimble enough in craziness
to have fooled them. To be Clark Kentish enough to get them to let their
guards down, to show them what he and Heddy could do.

And they had started out the campaign against him this afternoon, dull and
drear in Uplift Hall by showing him the rankest of horror films. They
thought. They not knowing that he had seen far worse and he had gobbled them
like eye candy. He loved horror films. He loved the goriest. Because it made
him feel hot and hard and it made him feel loved somehow that made no sense.
No one but Heddy had he ever told this. No one but Heddy had ever known how
he would turn to demon flesh at the beginning of chainsaw massacre stuff,
not the classic original, but all the cheap shoddy rip offs and he would
dance in his crazy head as he watched and touched and was touched and
clothes came off and clothes came with pressings of hands and legs and
genitals and blood ran hot in their fevered bodies, the films providing the
back drops there on the TV screen and seas of torrents of something past
passion, of getting back to the primal, of that lunge for the last of the
final primal scream that no half-assed psychologist ever understood, and
thinking this:

He was hard. He had been hard for some time. He was kneeling and playing
with his rock on. He was thinking Skinny Lizard and Eddie Rafters and Blue
Moon on Blood Bay. He was rocking to the songs in his head. Way past Ozzie
and Alice and Last Man Standing. Hard in the fair haired boy, so angelic on
the outside, so stupid and, can I hold your ah books ah if you ah don't
mind--oh sorry, I didn't mean to offend, please forgive me, really really sor
And the real him was crouched on this sticky basement floor with the hollow
sound of the Guys trying to breathe as silently as possible. He was at the
cum level. Had been there for some time. Could wait to shoot at the moment
of the light being turned on, and bubble and spurt from him, and this was
the last test. He was in. Only Heddy waited outside the building. Waited
right out there by the basement window. And Heddy would see him at his
ultimate. For what does the Clarkiest of them all do when he was a boy? He
trained. He exercised. He watched horror movies. He dwelled in a world
totally and precariously all his own. For the real fest. For the real zest
was in hearing The Guys. Hearing them jacking off. Oh so quiet. Oh so
silent. Oh so clever. A meat cleaver being hurled in revenge thirty miles
away could be more silent to his ears than these dim wits. Or rather, no
wits at all. Keep in mind--Ivy League colleges turn out regurgitated jerks
too.

There had been no match scratches. No momentary flare-ups of tiny sun
lights. There were not the goals remembered. That this was meant to be
embarrassing to him. But he pictured them almost as though he had on
infra-red specs himself, and he could see these guys who put the arms round
their main squeezes, total bottom line cheerleader girlies wanna bes, and
they were getting off on this crazy brain with the hot body jacking off for
them, or at the surcease of the epic of the same act, while they were busily
hurtling their hands over, as they would call it, their "meat." He heard a
gasp. One had just come. Others turned their heads to look at the comer up
and. He knew it. He could feel their excitement. He could feel their own
overflows. He could be finally, the first time in his frickin' life, the
center of attention. And he knew now. Something from all those horror films
he watched all these years, that he and Heddy watched and so soon, made out
to, all of the corridors with monsters behind doors, all the saws and knives
and the classic monsters and things disgusting that made everybody else
almost vomit over, made him and Heddy laugh. Because it was all fake. Didn't
they get it? It was all fake and bullshit. Nobody really died in these
movies. Save for stupid horrible accidents like the John Landis thing, but
there was---imagination at work here--there was the side show mirrors shown
up against real life--

--that was the thing that excited him and Heddy. All the gore, sure, they
could rock with that, but more--like exhilarating. More than a Ferris Wheel.
More than a roller coaster. It was like being on the top of a mountain, at
the top of the world. No hiding. Naked him and naked Heddy. And naked world.
And nothing to scare them. Nothing to surprise them and send them up in
horror in their beds late night before they figured most of it out singly.
Then figured almost all of it out, together. And Heddy was at the window.
And he could hear the stealth of her. He could hear the non-sound of her. He
wanted to come now. He wanted to come so badly. But they had practiced this
for a long time, he and Heddy. It was remembering all the gross out scenes
in badly made movies. It was the absurd dialogue. And the pathetic acting.
And the gallons of stage blood. And the mannequins with severed arms, and
the goriest gore to make even Tom Savini blanch--and it was at its cheesiest
where it counted. Where it said, look at all the numb nuts that believe in
this utter garbage, and in this stupid stuff ten year olds could film in
their garages given one summer afternoon. And he heard Heddy. And heard what
she had stored in a closet being pulled out. He heard-nothing. Because it
was all nothing. And he was naked and he pinched his tits and he rubbed his
balls. He remembered E.T. phone hooooooommmmmmmeeeeeee^Åand the Guys had all
come by now. He had super acute ears and senses of smell and feel and the
basement room which he would be sent exploring, naked of course, once this
test was over--

--but this was the final test.  And he felt Heddy next to him. Also naked.
Also hard. Holding the head of his own penis, was Heddy. As he held his
penis. Both ready. And when the lights were on--and when the lights came on
with a click and a flood of bright white ceiling illumination came on--the
Guys who had pulled up their cum stained jeans and had buckled their belts
again--saw the secret--and the secret was Heddy, who they had never seen
before, and their pledge of the lovely body and the crazy brain, knelt there
before them. Heads bowed. Penises coming milk spurts. They held each other's
hands. They were still as their penises jumped and jumped. If possible,
Heddy was more beautiful than crazy brained Herbert, for that was the crazy
brained shy as hell boy's name. And they were there totally naked. Totally
exposed. They were not embarrassed. They were not grasping for their
clothes. In the huge white light in the cold basement room, they were as
penitents. They were ready at any given second to be hailed, to be harmed.
To be done gentleness and love, as they gave outward. Or to be treated in
the most horrible manner the Guys could think of, and they could think of
many horrible things.

But they were hypnotized, the Frat guys. They were doe eyed in the head
lights. They were before beauty. But more than beauty. Acquiescence.
Acceptance. Pure and utter peace. Herbert and Heddy waited. For the next
second. In supreme bliss.  That was what horror movies, especially the
cheapest, more ridiculous, sickest kind, had taught them--that what they saw
was a joke. As what they saw in these ridiculous young men was also a joke,
these monster want to bes. Only those in on the joke knew where the only
true reality could be--in themselves. Thus, peace of mind. What they were to
themselves and each other trumped what the stupid, sick, grossness of the
world said it was. For they knew it lied. And they turned to each other,
Herbert and Heddy. And they kissed. The frat jock jokes might as well not be
there. Were not there, not really. They were just a stupid horror film
background. And nothing that happened to Herbert and Heddy would really
happen, for they had their own bought and paid for private territory.

The less dense of the frat boys, the holy Guys, rushed out of the room, for
they saw the emptiness that was forever to be theirs. The others just stayed
there and quietly, perhaps the quietest thing they had ever done in their
lives, observed and paid homage. They really had no other choice.  As Heddy
and Herbert did not care about them.

Flicker.