Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:05:42 -0500
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: g/m college "Gamin"

				   Gamin

				    By

			     Timothy Stillman



He was gamin. He was an exchange student from Paris. His hair was night
dark. His face was shaped like a fox's. A box of summer in it. Bright
black eyes that looked perpetually startled, as though he were a boy who
knew Christmas lights were tomorrow, and they would always be for him,
without the resonant arrogance, without the resident precipitation that
he might have had; a turning, a sweet touch of shoulder bare; a
suggestion of shadow when his narrow chin lent downward; a surreptitious
smile that always seemed to extend a bit of uncertainty; somehow, he know
everything was his; at the same time, not being sure of it. Elegance.
Eloquence. A slow deer like walking, his slim body cross campus.

A serious boy. Not used to life, though he had lived 19 years of it.
Someone who carried his stars in his heart and would not let the secrets
out; for he seemed to have many secrets; he seemed an illusion that was
most real; especially on this cold winter's night, as we lay together in
our dorm room. As he had his arm, long and particular, draped over my
shoulders, and I, his. I, the same, and never the same. Trying to capture
him on the film of my mind. Trying to see the touch of my fingers down
his thin small boxy cheeks, touching the tip of his perfect nose; pale,
his flesh, and rose, his lips, and he giggled, and he said French love
words I on purpose did not understand, for I wanted him to be everything
and everyone in the world. I did not want to know too much. Then I would
lose everything.

I wanted him to have carried the City of Lights all this distance to Far
America with him. His hair was a dark birds nest now, for we had finished
for a time, making love, in my small bed, with the winter wind howling
outside, and the heat in our room far too hot and not under our control.
I touched his shoulder bones.

 I touched the nape of his neck, and felt the hollow where the Adams'
apple was not; and I amazed at him, and rejoiced at him; I thought he was
not totally human; that the way he hunched his shoulders a bit when he
walked or when he was reading or studying was his way of hiding out from
some federal agencies, the MIBs maybe, after him, searching for this
ethereal feather of love that held supine now and giggled as I blew
breathe hot on his neck, and he turned his head to me, without turning
neck or body; as I looked into his eyes; in which there seemed to be
whole worlds; whole galaxies; whole civilizations that were done in
miniature; that were done with the sharp precision of the soap texture
and the warm texture and the sharp edges of the framework under his neck;
of the edge of his shoulders; of his back bone; of his knee caps; of his
fox face.

And yet, soft, all soft, and he put a finger to his lips and smiled and
broke a million hearts at that very instant, that did not know why they
were broken, only that they were; and only he and I could ever tell them;
but they would not believe.

We entangled each other.

 We were each other's late winter's majesties, and when he talked, he
had Colette in his voice, and he had Rousseau in his eyes; this
roundabout boy who encircled my chest and back as we lay now facing each
other; I imagined seeing him on his bicycle riding down the streets of
early morning Blue Paris, going after some just baked bread loaves, to
put in his satchel, and the streets wet with the morning mist, or the
night's rain, all cottony and fresh and new and springy and vibrant, and
a long deep breath from his just long enough nose, and his hands on the
bike handles, sure and swift, and guiding, with his sandals on the
pedals.

He, seeing in his wonder of eyes all the details of swift panorama, the
hovels, the hotels, the cafes, the tables, the stalls, the streets, the
early passers by, for his eyes needed to take in the world, and thus saw
a vast vista of it when others' eyes did not, because he drank the world
in; he was a living proof that miracles can occur, and the sidewalk
peddlers shouted out his name, Emil, Emil, and there was his waving at
them with grace and ease and a total lack of hubris.

As he the boy become young man; he the man who was with me as he touched
little nights in me; as he touched little words and phrases that sounded
like earth being conquered by little angels on the wing straight from
Easter clouds lambent above; as he pushed into my chest his hands and
pulled himself away, as if on a trapeze; and he dangled and I loved him;
and the serious smile of his made me smile back, and made my smile feel
bumpkinesque, as his hands were pure and firm and pale and I put my too
large hands on the top of his head, to his warm nest of bunched hair, to
his warm nest of head and face; then I kissed his lips, and drank of him;
for the world was a celebration; for the world was an indentation before
him, before we were locked into having the same room; before the doubt
and the fear and the secret imaginings, thus caught, like love birds at
rest and play, and no longer alone.

As I held Paris inside him, as I walked to the book stalls on the
sidewalks, as I had a sidewalk painter draw my love's face, and carried
it in the pocket of my shirt forever and a day, changing it to each shirt
pocket, every single morning, making the shirts one, making him one, and
me one, and all the fevers and all the nights when I thought he was sick
and weeping in his bed, behind the desk divider, and he came to me this
night and he held me and we traced our history on each other's bodies,
for we had been lovers for four months.

 There was a treasure in his long bony pale nippled chest, that I played
my hands on, and touched so felicitously, that I touched his chest and
worshipped him as he lay now on his back, and ruffled his hands through
my too long brown hair, as I put my head to his naked chest, and he
whispered words of love in French; he once asked me, didn't I want to
know what he said at these times, when he spoke to me, and I said, no,
Emil, no, for that would spoil it, for you are a surprise, and I never
want to know the entirety of the surprise, for I could not bear it if I
did, and he raised my head, and I looked into his very serious, very
black eyed face, and his hair mussed to the edge of his eyes; his
eyebrows cocked as in a quiz, as if he were studying me, as hard as I was
studying him, and he lay on top of me, and we rolled about as best we
could in my narrow dorm bed, and I held him and I felt him and I marveled
at a sequence of events that could have come together to make him, and
could have then come to make him mine.

For even naked, he looked proper; for even the first time for both of us,
he looked as though he were the master, a kindly one, a patient one, and
he led me as I led him and he was not clumsy as I; as he improved on me
and taught me that Paris nights were soft even when cold and the snow
fell at winter times, and there was a quiet snow fall of lowing of songs
off in a distance; the Right Bank or the Left; this avenue or that; a
quoissant or just a cup of coffee in the morning, as the sun broke
through the lattice windows and the world was alive with beggars and
street merchants, and it was as though the whole world were perched on
forever, and he could fly, if he wanted to, there naked,  in his room in
Paris, unashamed, aware, turning, and profound.

And with features that said definite; with features that said alliance,
that said hands touching as they did that first night when I braved
myself to go to his bed in the dark, and found him indeed crying, and I
sat on his bed edge, and he turned to me; and he held me, and our hands
touched, as though from a million miles and a million lifetimes away; we
were safe; and this new world he had come to; that he had been so
terribly brave about; that had truthfully hobbled him in panic; relaxed,
and his fingers interlocked with mine, and he spoke the first French
words I had heard him say; all along it had been English words for him,
pronounced with that sweet peach piquant accent that made him sound as
though he were precisely advancing vowels and adjectives; said so
perfectly; so distinctly; so as if analyzing every syllable, every word,
every noun, like my name for instance.

Roaming it round in his mouth with his pink warm tipped tongue, and
deciding how he liked those foreign words in that tunnel of teeth; he
with the spider crawl to my bed in the nights after that, and jumping on
board, his weightless body, and knocking the wind out of me, and we were
together, as I touched his penis and he touched mine; and we became hard
together, and we learned what the other liked the best, and that
was^×everything^×and I felt the weight of him, the heat of him, as he did
of me as well. As we discovered that topography of flesh and bodies is
more real than topography of geography of the world.

And it was an akimbo that led us to the offering place of each other. And
this early morning as shadows fell in the Parisian world he had brought
with him, the paintings, the fresh early morning Cocteau blues and bright
greens and reds, the sweets he had eaten with the other children when he
was a child, that he always made sure to share with them; the way his
hand waved majesty and with precognition on bike rides when it seemed
everyone knew him, and he everyone.

How he loved to visit his uncle in the country in summer, where he loved
to ride on the back of the field hands' hay wagon, and at night, to lie
on the grass and look up at his own particular starry, starry night.

And see the skies that he stole from up there for his own, as I touched
him now, and here was his shoulder and warm, and Clichy, and here was his
left buttock so narrow and bony, and this was the Tropic of Capricorn,
and here was the center of him, and that was The Thief's Journal, and
here was the Seine as it ripped along under bridges upon which lovers
walked and soft music played Charades for them, and for us.

And here was the all of Emil, full and wise and noble and all of himself
forevermore, and here was Emil tracing me, and finding in me Western
movies, his favorite kind, and horror novels, he loved of all writers,
John Saul, the best; his first time with an American hamburger at
Wendy's, spare no expense on our first date, there as he touched to my
touchy ticklish stomach, and he was all giggle boxes turned over; and he
was room for love; and it was close to Christmas.

It was close to the present I was to give him, the complete annotated
two-volume set of Baring-Gould's massively beautiful volumes of all
Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. He loved Holmes movies and I had
gotten him addicted to the stories. He would read them to me at night in
French and I would try to guess which one it was. Of course he would have
to tell me and I would try, and fail, to follow along, though I loved
Holmes as well, all those foggy London nights, as inside 221B Baker
Street, Holmes played his violin and smoked his pipe, as Watson wrote the
latest story for the Strand, each knowing their housekeeper would be
showing a frazzled Lestrade into their rooms at any minute, and they
would be off on another harrowing adventure. Oh you should have seen Emil
acting out the characters as he read them. It was so incredibly funny. So
frenetic and studious at the same time, he was. And laughing all the way.

And in a few hours, the boy of boxed wonders, this boy of kites flown
into skies different than yours or mine, once upon a time, that is, and
I, would touch each other and magic scarves would erupt, and priapism
would be a world unto a Parisian carnival in the snow and we would ride
round each other, on our devices of horses and satyrs and fauns, and we
would be dressed for sex, and the music would be Debussy and it would
cause sadness in his eyes and we would make love then, getting off the
slow and slower merry go round, and I would let him lie atop me for he
was by far the lighter, and he would bring his box of face down and he
wound annotate me with him, and then we would drift to magic sleep, one
of us at least, to wake up on the floor, thanks to that narrow bed.

Then, amazed we were still here, and our ablutions, then we would shower
together and soap and I would think him indeed an alien, kneeling to him,
Emil, someone that had never ever been before, and as we began again, as
we lay in each other's arms and I said Cherbourg, as he looked at me and
smiled, for the first time, a really huge delighted somewhat sweetly
sappy smile, for I had said a word in his native language; I had honored
him; I had brought home to him, in my poor pronunciation, and he joyed
his arms around me and held me tighter than ever before^×

--and it was like I had already given him the annotated Holmes; and I saw
how I had hurt him all this time by not learning his words and what they
taught to me, knowing now that I would study them from now on, and be
precise in my hearing and with his much needed help,  in the saying of
his tongue, though I would be a million miles from the poetry he made of
words, in French, and in English; oh take me with you when you go back to
your home planet of France; don't leave me here, without you, for it
will be unbearable, and he said Cherbourg and Cherbourg again and laughed
and wiggled and pulled my face down to his as we kissed and drank each
other, and he held me and I held him and I bent downward to kiss his
chest, and then downward further, thinking of that old lovely French
film,  "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" with the radiant Catherine Deneuve,
and the sad, alas, ending, in the impossibly real colors of Paris that
only lovers can see, in the sheer joy of romance, in the city of Lights
and the city of Love, and as I took Emil in my mouth, I heard him singing
softly,  the first time I had ever heard him sing, as if Heaven could not
be more beautiful; he sang in French, but I knew the words for I knew the
melody, from that movie; and I translated the lyrics in my mind as he
sang them, between sigh and soft gasp, "If it takes forever, I will wait
for you, through a thousand summers I will wait for you.."

And neither of us had to wait any longer.  Not any longer.

We were home.

Homes.