Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 14:40:39 -0500
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: The Leaving of University

		       " The Leaving of University"

				    By

			     Timothy Stillman


(for Michael, far better writer than I shall ever be, and fine kind friend
as well)


He consoled himself, because he had to. He had to because no one else would.
He was 21 and this was his last day at university and he was so terribly
afraid. He was in his dorm room, alone. His roommate already left for home.
He locked the door and walked with purpose to the mirror on his side of the
room. On the concrete wall behind him were taped posters for "Lionel Bart's
OLIVER!" and print ads, along with fan magazine photos and stills from Mark
Lester and Jack Wild movies. How humiliating it had been to buy Tiger Beat
and the other fan mags, but he was in love, and that was the only thing he
really had ever believed in. Photos and stills and articles of boys he would
never meet, of lives he would never know.

He would luxuriate in sexuality in this room today. In the past here, he had
always to fear his roommate coming back at a wrong time or his roommate's
friends or his own. Not now. This was for him and he would not be hurried.

He  began to take off his shirt. It was a blue soft short sleeved shirt. He
took it off slowly, looking at himself in the mirror, with the pin ups on
the wall behind him looking over his shoulder. He pulled the shirt out of
his jeans. He looked at his now naked chest. It was slightly concave. His
nipples were pale orange and small. He had no chest hair. He turned his head
so he could look a bit at his face from the side. He had long hair that was
brown. He had a lean jaw and an aqualine nose. His eyes were ice chip blue.
His face was clear finally at long last of pimples. He turned his eyes back
full on the mirror. His eyes looked sad. He had not known they looked sad
until his girlfriend, well sort of girl friend, told him they did. He had
never noticed it before.

He took off his shirt and looked at his shoulders. He leaned down and kissed
his arm high up as he could. He told himself in his Mark Lester imitation
voice that he would be all right, that love would come calling soon. The
oblong window next to him blew in the spring air. This was the top floor.
Over the parking lot. No one could see him if they tried even. No one had
ever tried to see him. He sang bits and pieces of "Where is Love?" He sang
in whispers as he did everything in his life in whispers and silently and
quietly and secretly. He could not believe he was leaving university. He
never called it the university or a university, because that's how they said
it in England, as the same with hospital. His roommate kidded him about his
trying to have a British accent. Such as saying "gulls"  when he meant
"girls" but he did not let that deter him.

He stood in this room in the last hours of here. He remembered when his
mother drove him here to this dorm his freshman year and helped him up the
stairs with his suitcase. He put his hands on the wall and bent over. He
felt as though the universe was collapsing. He put his hands, quickly,
little thought, to his jeans, his belt was brown and thick. He unbuckled it.
He opened it and then unsnapped the top button of his jeans and lowered them
just a bit to his bony hip tops. He did not wear underwear this day. This
was to be his sexual day. He had never had sex before, so he had to do it
this way. Cusp of childhood long gone. Cusp of teenage years long gone. And
now cusp of adult hood. He lowered his jeans slowly.

His penis was erect. It stood upward. He kissed his left shoulder and then
his right. Pretending that he was kissing Mark's shoulders, one at a time.
He took off his glasses, so that he might look like David Cassidy in the
mirror. He ruffled his hair at his shoulders and threw  his head back a bit,
as though motoring in the Kent country side in Steed's Bentley, with Mark
golden sunshine child next to him, and all the hills were hills of soft
serene summery air and sky and green green grass. And they were laughing and
Mark had his hand in the young man's lap and it was wonderful and all the
songs played were being played for them and the young man fit, finally, and
smiles were soft sunshine pleasure and night was for love and moon and stars
and Mark from the movie screen, from the posters and posed photos for him.

He took his left hand, for he was left handed, and put it to the tip of his
upraised penis that had a sort of golden glow to it in the afternoon hot
buttery sunshine, and he touched the underside of it that was little bumped
here and there, and he touched his pubic hair, black and not thick, and he
put his left forefinger there and felt the pulse of his groin. He remembered
when he was a young boy, when he was in hospital, there was a waiting room
where he had sat for a few minutes while his mother admitted him. There was
a large painting on the wall in front, of a doctor or nurse, in lab coat and
safe doctor office, examining a boy his age then, who was naked and front
forward, but the painting cut off at the very top of the V of the groin of
the boy, and he had been so warmed by that, like caramel candy in his mouth
and everything safe and nice and hopeful, for he was there to have his
tonsils taken out and he had been very frightened, but this took his mind
off that. It was not sexual and it was sexual and it had him holding out his
hand for just a second to that painting and wanting to go inside there and
be friends with the boy, and then his mother came to get him.

He posed like he remembered the boy had been, though the painting boy had
been far more beautiful. He lowered his jeans to the concrete floor that was
cold with the cold air conditioning that caused his tits to be hard, and he
remembered pieces of his time here, people he had known, teachers he had
liked, articles he had written, laughs with his roommate before bed time,
how they had laughed hysterically when reading that awful dialogue in
"Desire Under the Elms" aloud-mebbee and ayhea---and could barely control
themselves in class the next day when the teacher asked what every student
thought of the teacher's favorite play in the whole world.

He stood there with his feet bare now in front of the mirror. He took off
his jeans, almost falling, catching himself by hands on the wall. He tossed
the jeans and shirt to the bed. He remembered students he had masturbated to
here. He remembered their beauty and his own plainness and being quiet and
inside. He stood now with his legs spread apart a bit. He stood back from
the mirror so he could see almost to his knees. His penis was springy and he
could make it move without touching it. It was six inches and hard to
bursting, for he had been saving two weeks worth of wanks for this moment,
and his balls were tight. The left ball had finally descended when he was
eleven. It had provoked such fear from his mother that he would be deformed
and it would never come down. So he was marched off to the doctor's office
every little while, so she could be reassured. And finally the miracle
happened. He touched his balls now. They were round and warm and felt
beautiful. He touched his penis with both hands. He had Jergen's Lotion on
the ledge in front of him for this reason. He oiled his penis and it just
tickled not only it but also his groin and his abdomen and his legs and his
chest. Even his tight nipples were tickled.

He did not want to go from this room. This university. He had finally found
friends here. He had finally found people who liked having him around. Who
enjoyed going to movies with him. His roommate was nice even about this
obsession with Mark Lester, and that "Run Wild, Run Free" poster with Mark's
face on it, that had been at the downtown theatre for at least half a year,
but the movie was never to be played, much to his frustration, but there
were jokes about it between his roommate and him and that made it okay too.
He put his head down. He looked straight down at his abdomen and his navel
and his pubic hair and his hard on. He stood against the bed frame and
pushed in and out as though he were having mouth sex. He rubbed his penis
with his lotioned hands and it just seemed to behave like a fish having
triumphant pleasure rippling. and jumping out of the water warm into even
warmer sunlight summer, and he made it all last. He made it slow, and he
made it official and important-that he had once had this room.

That no matter who would have it next, he had been here, and here he had
written screenplays for some of his favorite books, "Jordi," "Dandelion
Wine," and songs like "Puff the Magic Dragon" and a novel that he never
finished about a young boy in love with a beautiful young woman and how they
lived in New York, and one fine summer night, had decided that with him
covered by a painting, for she was wealthy and lived in a brownstone, they
would spend the night going round the city by taxi and walking and would see
movies and have dinner somewhere, with him totally naked; their aim being no
one would ever notice. It was a good idea, he thought, but he kept getting a
hard on writing it, but still hoped to complete it some day.

He lay back on the bed, with his legs on the floor and he rubbed his penis,
what he had called it as a little boy, rubbed his penis, and looked at the
photo of Mark from "Run  Wild, Run Free" as Mark posed, sitting on the
ground, holding the reins of the white pony he falls in love with and which
cures him of autism. He felt his hair draped around his shoulders. He played
with himself a long time. The air conditioner was almost freezing him out
but he would not let it best him. He called the almost Talmudic names of
boys he loved, ones who had been around him actually, and the ones in movies
and books and dreams, and he said penis I love you and he smiled as though
he were in a warm bath and wanking off with soap and warm water and
everything was like that painting of the naked boy in the safe doctor
office. It was as it should be. He thought he was sorry to his penis,
because it had never had anyone but him, and knew if anyone would look at
it, they would think it not bad looking and kind of intriguing in its way
actually, no foreskin, brown rings round the middle of the shaft, pink head,
endearing little slit, nice balls that held tightly together and thinking
these things, he moved his legs back and forth a little and pumped his penis
with his hand. Not really pumped. But using the thumb and the forefinger, so
it seemed safe that way and not as pleasurable as he imagined it would be
with full force, all that sin stuff from all that seemingly long ago

And he held in and came slowly and held back and came slowly and he began to
weep as his penis finally came and he shot over his chest and the floor and
the desk, for he had been saving up for a while, and his whole body was like
a bow string that was made to just keep the ejaculation flying, and he
luxuriated in the carnival body he had turned into, because for the first
time ever it had felt actually good, in spite of himself, it had felt as
though he had landed into a beautiful little silver sleep land where he was
so young he could not remember an ancient 21 year old man way up there
remembering what that 21 year old man could not possibly remember either the
other way. And he held his legs, nice legs, strong, sculpted with muscles,
straight out and he kept pouring himself into the room, so some of him might
remain, some memory might attain itself and stay here and he might come back
here when things in the unimaginable outer world could and no doubt would go
so horribly wrong. Like Oliver Twist imagined in "Who Will Buy?" And he lay
there and the afternoon ticked on in its hollow odd silence. No music from
the other dorms. No one running down the hall screaming CHICKENFUCKER, no
knocks and threats on their wall from the adjacent room when he and his
roommate talked in girly voices when they were feeling silly. And he lay
there and actually slept for a few minutes. Then woke. Startled. Someone had
rattled the knob on the door. He made a dive for his clothes. Dressed in all
the stumbling haywire gawky way of things that he was master of.

And then guessing it was someone checking the dorms to see if everyone had
left, he was dressed. He had most of his stuff packed in suitcases he had
put on his roommate's empty bed, the Playboy bunny head sewed onto a head
and back rest that his roommate's mother had made for her son, also gone,
and that alone, not seeing that there or ever again, the bad reproduction of
the bunny headm and no posters from Playboy on that wall above that- bed, as
if his friend had died, made him reel with hurt.

 So he took his photos and posters and cut outs from his own wall, not
looking at them, not daring to, putting them in one of his suitcases, and
getting ready to leave. Something happen, he pleaded silently with the dead
room in the dead building on the suddenly dead campus in the too alive too
real too monstrous to face real world, please let me stay here and read
books and make book reports and fail Math, and just anything. He stood there
with his head bowed. He could still see some of his cum at various places.
It made him smile evilly a little bit.

Then, he unlocked the door, and struggling with his suitcases, prepared the
ritual of leaving. He had never left before. He was always left by someone
else. He had wondered how it would feel to do this, to leave himself if no
one else. It felt quite sad. It felt quite awful.