Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 14:57:46 -0700
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: M/M incest "COUNT THE COSTS!!!! WIN BIG PRIZES!!!!"

			  "COUNT THE COSTS!!!!!!
			    WIN BIG PRIZES!!!!"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


Jordi, child of autumn, was in the middle of a summer
night, adrift, an open sack of Skittles in his left hand,
pouring two or three of the candies into the palm of his
right hand, and then absent mindedly popping them into his
mouth for somnambulant chewing and absentee
swallowing. He had earlier masturbated, but the good
feeling had washed away. He wished his penis would grow
taller than it was, and he already 14 and three fourth years
old. He sat on the back steps of his home in the itchy sick
smelling blanket of dark, and looked over at the back
campus of the university which his big brother was
attending. Though Todd lived at home, not his idea by any
means, there was nothing between Jordi and him anymore.
Todd acted as though Jordi didn't exist.

And Todd had been Jordi's whole world from his young
childhood on. Todd biggest of friends, kindest of
confidants, lord of the manor in Jordi's unkempt heart.
Todd with the quick wit, the easy grin, the way he could
look at the toughest problems and find solutions clear and
sensible and with a balancing in the world that simply had
Jordi in awe. It was when Jordi walked in his big brother's
bedroom one autumnal afternoon with the sky gray and the
wood smoke touchable with breath even in the house, and
found Todd on his bed, jacking off, which had given Jordi
giggles, which gave surprised, but hiding surprise well,
Todd giggles as well, the mechanics, the desire in Jordi for
a shadow bigger than his own to be exploring such things,
they became, in effect, closer. Such a silly situation to be
in, and Todd more concerned with Jordi's ease than his
own.

Todd not shy, Todd not bold, but friendly like, with those
blue sky eyes, and the dimples in his cheeks that made his
face always look happy even when it was not, but on this
afternoon of affliction, there came something that made
Todd's mortality important and vital to Jordi, something of
Todd's hand inviting him over to the bed, Jordi hesitatingly
going over, Todd still in his school clothes, but his erection
growing out of his unzipped jeans, and Jordi did something
that was beyond him at that moment, he fell on Todd and
his stomach felt Todd's hardness, and Todd held his
brother round the waist, and they lay there in a soft field of
silence for a long time, and it was comforting to each, to
hear and feel the other's heart beating. Todd's erection had
gone down by the time they moved away from each other,
Jordi first, so he could look into Todd's eyes, and they lay
side by side, while things happened.

Neither of them knew how Jordi's jeans became unzipped
and how his penis was pulled out of the slit of the BVDs,
neither of them knew how love happened, but it was
unbreakable because such kinds of love are always
unbreakable, when the hearts of those involved refuse to
admit the day and the accouterments of that day, and the
smell of woodsmoke round them was beautiful and
profound. They were boys clothed and then unclothed.
They were boy tall and boy short. They were boy muscular
and boy lean. They were boy sunbrown and boy pale as a
guttering candle flame. They were arms and legs and faces
and lips, and hands fell and felt everywhere. Todd was a
boy of summer, and he met and meshed and entangled and
laughed with a boy of autumn, and the late afternoon
sundered around them, mom not home, but at work, and
brothers bound and having fun, a gambol at day's end, and
Todd gave Jordi the summer of himself, and Jordi gave
Todd his little syllables of autumn, and the sex machinery
played, and night came to them and fell on the hooked rug
beside them, and then on the bed itself, and from that day
forward, Jordi had a much taller shadow than anyone in the
whole world combined.

Jordi sat on the back porch wooden steps in the hot muggy
night air. He was no longer a keeper of a wood flame and
November heart, because somewhere along the way,
though Jordi pretended to keep the title, he had given his
world away to Todd, and Todd had accepted with gladness
and harvesting smiles and warm hands and legs, but Jordi
did not know how to keep the summer inside himself, was
not gifted in span of hands or mind or time wise or bright
enough to know what to do with Todd's inestimable gift of
compassion. Jordi wanted his world back. He no longer
wanted autumn. He did not want Todd to have it now,
because his brother had changed with his first year as
university freshman, had become apart, had become a man,
had become what Jordi had thought he had been all the
time, his Todd, but Todd had not been a man back with
Jordi. He had been a boy too, taller and smarter and
cleverer than most boys are, but still one and the same.

And the last night Jordi had lain with Todd, the last night,
when Jordi had put his hand on the crotch of his brother,
his life line, as he had so many times over the years after
the starting gun was accidentally and most providentially
fired, Todd pulled the hand away. Not jerked it away. But
eased it away. Quiet and still like a pall forever falling
slowly from the sky and breath stilled that summer night
right before university began for Todd. They had lain
together and Todd had said what he had to say, for there
was the need for the last talk. A bridge had been tumbled.
A safety ladder was broken down and the burning house it
had saved Jordi (and he thought, Todd, too), from, was
now burning wickedly, frying his lungs, sucking out breath,
fire mandibles wide, and Jordi (but not Todd) inside the
crackling flames, the crumpling leaves of October sound,
the crackling reds and yellows signaling what was once
Jordi's favorite season, and the mockery came, how do you
like your identity now that you don't have one, Jordi? It
seemed to say in the smoke and flames yelling up and down
and around and burning into him, you can swing over to
Todd's summer, you can live there, if you are smart
enough, if you really loved him like you said.

But summer could not save him. Being in it without Todd
was unthinkable. Chalk and cheese indeed can not blend,
and opposites do not sit easily in a season of grace with
each other, and what brought them together, pushed Todd
into his own world, leaving Jordi with no world at all. Jordi
did love Todd, he did, and always would, and the flames
bellowed and unrighted, had been wrong in what they had
said to him. They just simply had to be wrong. There was
no more to say about that.

Todd's over there, Jordi thought, with his own so inferior
hand on his crotch, outside his thin shorts, a slip of a boy,
who was seriously blonde, who had too pretty a face that
made girls feel jealous, and he missed Todd's mouth on
him, he missed the delay and delay as Todd expertly
brought him out of himself, and the nights of before were
carnival, but this night was Todd there alone or with a girl,
just such a short distance away, this night of summer, with
Todd, who still lived here and slept here and ate here, for
whom Jordi had seemingly vanished, and Jordi consumed
with the banana peel slide of discretion concerning how
one can slip from life into something so much less, and no
one is aware of the country inside themselves changing and
turning into a far away place where the mice come
scratching, and a hand pops unawares Skittles candies into
a boy mouth that would far rather be up to randier things.
Did the girls suck his brother as well as Jordi did? No need
to ask.

Her name was Margery. The first of Todd's girlfriends.
One month after that ultimate magnificent first of always
late autumn afternoon and early night had found the two
brothers in bed together. Todd had tried to explain to Jordi
that older brothers have a right to have girl friends, that
older brothers if they are worth their salt at all, need to find
a girl who will go to the movies with them and dance with
them and listen to CDs with them, and let themselves be
felt up, and Todd had tried to allay Jordi's fears, kept
quiescent inside save for the one tell tale item of a slightly
quivering bottom lip, which could be read by only someone
close to Jordi in spirit and soul, that Todd read of course
with ease. He told Jordi, when they were sitting on the
swing on the blue porch in the cold afternoon, his arm
around his kid brother, that he and Jordi could still do the
sex and things they had done and it would still be fun, and
Jordi pulled in his shoulders as though he was trying to
stuff himself into himself, and Todd held him tighter, which
comforted Jordi but still made him think he was soon to be
on a long train trip to the mountains of the moon, and
everyone was getting him ready to say good bye to him,
getting his clothes packed, the suitcase out of mothballs,
being sure his toiletries befitting the man he would
someday be, were included.

And autumn was summer sharp, and had razor edges that
afternoon, summer eating up fall and laughing cruelly all
the way, for Jordi had not learned the art of saying good
bye, for Jordi for all his go away purposes, or so he
thought, believed things would stay like they had been till
the sun fell from the sky, for what else could change things
other than the sun losing its center and going into free fall?
And Jordi did what Jordi was so good at doing. He denied.
He pretended "no." He would keep on having his tall
strong brother with him, his brother who had been with
him when Jordi came that first time, his brother with him
who just complimented him over and again on his first
squirt, "means you're not a little squirt anymore," and
frogging Jordi's arm, and both of them laughing, and then
going to the task manfully of cleaning the bed sheet
because neither of them expected the little guy and his
sudden geyser, Todd said, adding there should be a bell
going off when you are about to shoot the first time, so
you can get the Kleenex ready and won't have to explain it
to Mom when she washes the sheets.

So the next day which was Jordi's birthday, on the sly,
Todd gave Jordi a gift of  deluxe size scented pastel
colored Kleenex tissues, and on the side the box, was
written in marking pen scrawled in Todd's almost illegible
writing, "To Bro, Let Her Flo," They laughed a long time
about that, and Jordi thought Todd loved him, and Todd
did love him.

But Todd was busy in the art of growing up, of knowing
what he was doing, or did he?, no question, he did indeed
know. And he did love the sight of his little brother sucking
him off,  the feel, the tenderness, as he stroked Jordi's hard
on, and he did love the sight of Jordi's pencil thin and pale
flame cool body, lying in the crook of his brother's arm,
and they talked of sex stuff and how Todd was still a virgin
when it came to girls, and Jordi thought with the things
they had done, not that many, but fine and close making or
seeming so, free, Todd thought it counted with Jordi, and
Todd did nothing to dissuade Jordi from that thought, but
sometimes lying by omission is the worst lying of all. And
Margery came.

And she had dinner with the family, and Jordi "acted out"
(psychobabble from the art of TV quick labels and be done
with it) and Todd seemingly placid and oblivious to all of
this, while Jordi played with his peas and farted twice, and
Mom had ordered Jordi from the table, who was laughing
at his brother's girl friend, this geeky little girl, who looked
like Margaret in the Dennis the Menace comic strips, prissy
little face, hair in sausage curls, stuck uppity nose, idiot
round thick lenses of glasses that made her eyes look
mammoth, and snotty mouth, and the whole bit, and Jordi
told his mother everybody farts and took his spoon, and
put a pea on it, aiming it at Margaret's big girl ugly face,
and Mom said "don't you dare, young man" so of course
Jordi dared, the pea not making it to the target but falling
on the white damask table covering, the fancy cloth, so
Margaret would think they were made of money though
everything about this small middle class house shouted they
were not so, but Margaret ducked and squealed in a little
prissy voice, which made Jordi laugh harder, and now
Mom raised the roof and stood up and accidentally dumped
her plate of meat loaf on herself, ker thump, as she was in
the motion of standing, and ordered Jordi to his room for
the rest of his life. Todd had been eating like nothing was
happening all this time.

Jordi ran for his room's bed and fell on it and huddled and
shuddered and shivered. He had drifted off to a sort of
rainy sleep when Todd came in and sat on the side of his
brother's bed. Jordi woke up when his brother started
massaging Jordi's back with his hand. How warm and safe
and complete that hand was to Jordi.

The rain continued in the dream and spread also to the
waking up, the feel of dampness, the serious gray drops
from  the sky clouding out everything, a fog and mist in the
near distance, the sogginess of the ground below and the
moldy forest Jordi tried to hide himself in. And his brother
rubbed his hand on Jordi's back and then on the outside of
his jeans, on his brother's hips, and then inside his jeans,
put his hand delicately like examining a newly born to the
world lamb of spring, his brother's flesh there and traced a
finger down the cleft and leaned over and kissed Jordi on
the forehead and Jordi smiled despite trying his damndest
not to. It was a rainy rubbery late summer smile and wilted
some by the encroaching dampness and heat, but still and
all it was a smile Todd had raised from him, and soon Todd
was to once more raise another part of Jordi's anatomy.

And it was Margery for a while. And then it was Kate. And
then it was Sara. And each girl stayed for a season long or
short, and then Todd went to another, and being star
basketball player of his school, he had many anothers
waiting in the wings, and he always came home to Jordi
who loved him beyond words, beyond thought, beyond
dreams and philosophy and reckoning. And with a kiss
Todd would wake Jordi late night after Todd had come
home from a date, and Todd would say look what I saved
for you, and Jordi would see the unveiling, as though Todd
had brought home a piece of cake from somebody else's
wedding, only more than calories with rich thick sweet
green and red frosting on it, just the best kind of  boy
frosting there is.

And in such a way, with a kiss, as Judas betrayed Jesus, did
Todd say good bye to his kid brother. After he had, that
horrible miserable moment, taken gently gently Jordi's
hand from his  big brother's crotch, did Todd turn to him
and kiss his forehead, saying, tomorrow I go to university,
tomorrow I am a man, and I say good bye to you now and
it breaks my heart, only Jordi knew it did not break Todd's
heart, only Jordi knew the more he thought about it, this
was the cruelest way Todd could have done it, this was the
coldest most calculated ditching of all time there was, done
with sympathy and seeming regret, and passion in that final
kiss which was the last one forever more.

As Todd spoke to Jordi of growing up and being boys and
treasuring and remembering and looking ahead to girl
country and it was all said in the lowing tones the deep
bone reflecting and saving tones of his brother's first
unplanned admittedly seduction of Jordi, and it was a
disease that spread to all the memories Jordi had promised
to store in his mind, all those times he did not need to store
any, but something in him knew, something in him knew
quite well, and the termites came out from the baseboard
of the boy's hiding and began to devour away at the
memories and the theft that Todd had been making of his
brother's mind and penis and beliefs and soul, and Jordi
clung to him, as Todd let him, still in many ways a replay
of the greatest moment in Jordi's life, until Todd told Jordi
mom would be home soon, and he should get back to his
own room. Which Jordi did most unwillingly.

And so ended one life of Jordi Edgingly.

Todd was still around. Though more and more he would
stay on campus with friends or at their apartments off
campus. He brought girls by for mom to fix dinner for. He
introduced Jordi to them. And Jordi acted as though they
were tatters of wall paper that smelled of paste, and the
hell with them also. But Todd never spoke to Jordi. The
usual good mornings and good nights and how's school
treating you?, yes, those, and Jordi giving monosyllabic
answers back, neither boy looking at each
other--correction--neither boy nor  man looking at each
other.  Todd forever being the man. Jordi himself having
aged and changed, more pubic hair, more arm pit hair, his
voice not reedy like it used to be, his height lengthened, his
penis lengthened, but to never attain adult hood like Todd
had.


Jordi no longer a child. Jordi adrift as he crumpled up the
empty sack that had once been the home of Skittles now
devoured to a stomach that couldn't have cared less, as he
threw the empty pack into the yard, on one of the concrete
stepping stones, and he felt night hot sweat on him. If there
had been an argument. If Todd had insulted him. At least
given him an insolent look every now and then, then Jordi
could get about the business of hating his brother, but even
now when Jordi and Todd accidentally looked at one
another, Todd's face was bland and without any definable
expression other than slackness, non-awareness of Jordi,
certainly non interest. It was the same, as Jordi
remembered it, face of non-awareness that Todd exhibited
that first and last dinner Margaret had had with them, and
Jordi guessed Todd now classed him back there with
Margaret, the ugly smelly old girl with the snot superior
butter wouldn't melt grin, and that hurt Jordi to the quick
the most, to be linked at least in his own mind to someone
who he detested with an affirmative fury. He and Margaret,
Jordi thought, lodged together braces in teeth forevermore,
for Todd, both of them squealing for Todd's return.

It wasn't as though Todd had paid any more attention to
mom since going to university. He was ticked she wanted
him to wait till he was a sophomore to stay on campus, so
she could get used to the idea of him being grown and for
all intents and purposes going away from home for good,
but Todd was sullen to mom more, was there less and less,
and Jordi was a mouse underfoot, a fledgling that couldn't
fly away from home for home was Todd and Todd was still
at home, ostensibly, but Todd could never be a home or a
haven to Jordi again. How can one person do that to
another person? And live with it with no problem. How?

Todd felt like a prisoner in the confining. Jordi felt like a
prisoner in the awful rush and haste and tearing around of
freedom as he went now with this girl or that, as he
contemplated university for himself, as he started hanging
around with the guys from school, drawing from a
cigarette now and then, looking at sex books and on the
Internet, gaming with the gang at the arcade, devising
grown up masturbatory fantasies that proceeded from
childhood to tinges having nothing to do with childhood at
all. Jordi would share a beer now and then with a buddy.
He would kiss his current girl friend and maybe she would
slap his face, and if so, then he would just go to someone
else and if she did not slap his face he would go as far as
she let him go, and though some had let him go pretty far,
no one had let him go all the way. Some girls let him
nuzzle on their tits. Would they be surprised to know he
was all the while dreaming of memories of sucking his
brother's dick? What would they say if anyone found out?

And he was doing what his brother did, but meanly,
angrily, not giving a damn about hurting anyone, and
seeing sure they knew it, making Todd look bad by making
Jordi look bad, and Jordi in the breakable painful shell of
Todd thought it would be Todd affected by this, thought it
would be Todd who would get sick on too much beer, and
vomit it out, thought it would be, was, by psychic osmosis,
Todd getting slapped by a girl for getting out of line,
thought it was Todd who would get kicked out of
university because it was him instead of Jordi purposely
failing every test he could. Jordi pretended that it was
Todd who made their mom cry when Jordi brought home
his latest failing report card, pretended that it was Todd
who was being taken to counselor after counselor to figure
out what was wrong with him, and all of them coming up
short with answers, though these learned men were superb
in flashing their maddening flatulent smelling arrogance.

When mom tried to get Todd to "talk some sense into"
Jordi, Todd would weasel out of it, saying things like--
he's just a kid, he'll grow out of it, or, there's too much
age difference, it was so long ago I don't even remember
being Jordi's age. And Todd brought home the good
grades. And Todd was on lots of  university committees.
And even Jordi had to admit Todd's choice in girls had
definitely improved, when he brought them home. To make
Jordi hurt all the more, though never admitting it. Neither
brother. Jordi and Todd and mother lived as though they
were covered by individual cones of paper air, that gave
them both just barely enough rations of oxygen to breathe,
and though they could see each other through their prisons,
they did not do so clearly, it seemed as though an oxygen
tent, more like it, over each of them in this house,  making
them all look spotted and terribly aged and wrinkled and ill
and wan and sickness bound, which is why all of them
avoided this house as  much as possible. The past of it was
virtually unbearable.

On this night, by himself, Jordi, sitting on the back steps,
strained his eyes to the campus right next door, tried to
make an occasional laugh over there be coming from Todd
who was telling some girl of no distinguishable name that
she was very pretty, but he was going home to Jordi now
because Jordi needed him more and he needed Jordi more
too, for that matter. The lights of the library over there
winked off. Cars with their white lights, drove back and
fourth on the streets on campus. Fewer fire fly cigarette
ends, owned by students lazing on the quad, dreaming their
dreams both big and small, darted in the thick, clotted air,
night was closing up shop, as was the university, and
sometime later tonight, later and later it seemed, Todd
would come home. Jordi invariably stayed awake in his
own bed until he heard Todd in the house. And how Jordi
ached to go to him, but never did.

Thinking these things, Jordi tried to come up with a
dramatic ending, a coda, but real life is not like that, he was
beginning to learn. Life was drifting and aimlessly eating
candy you could not care less about, or candy you once
loved dearly, that you could no longer stand no matter how
much you pretended you had the taste for it.

Jordi had never been to a basketball game at the university
now that Todd was playing for them, had not been to the
play there Todd had been in, whereas he had never missed
one of Todd's basketball games in high school, and was in
the audience cheering and applauding and hopping up and
down like a fool in the high school auditorium when Todd
got his diploma and was two persons below in the top of
his class. Screw you, anyone who thinks athletic prowess
has to go always with a bird brain resting uneasily on the
crown on the dearest head in the world, to Jordi at least,
even so even now, as he forgot where he was, forgot how
old he was and how long ago all of this was to his still child
mind that was currently in the process of hiding out from
itself in fake, laughable adulthood.

The night dark, he pulled at his penis through his summer
shorts, and he remembered the first time Todd went down
on him, with that warm wet mouth, and the tongue that
molded his penis just right for Todd's mouth alone, but it
just made Jordi sad, and he pulled his hand away from his
limp penis, wishing Todd could see how much more pubic
hair had grown in, pulled his hand away from himself, as
Todd had done to that same hand the last night of the
world, Todd moving into the world, to other hands, other
lips that kissed sweeter all over than did Jordi's, while
Jordi moved into a life of being the bad penny in Todd's
pocket, without anyone, especially Todd, being the wiser,
and that last, Jordi thought, as he stood up from where he
had been sitting for hours, that was the most important
thing of all, losing Todd second by second, and pulling
away from him, as though Todd still deserved some kind of
loyalty from him, and feeling guilty as hell about it, because
Todd had been so gentle with him before the beginning,
and that first time Todd had rubbed his kid brother's penis,
and taught him the best way to do it, and all the times after,
and then the ending of the thing, impossible not to do
otherwise, caught in the sea flow of life, not his fault,
Todd's, or Jordi's either, for that matter, the way life is--
brothers and girls and growing up and forgetting and going
far away from each other even if still occasionally,
especially then, when they were in each other's presence.

Jordi stretched his long legs. He wished he could entwine
them again with Todd's.

"Fuck you," Jordi said to no one in general and the world
in specific, and then he walked to the top step, opened the
screen door and went inside. His current girl friend thought
it would be rad if Jordi could dye his hair pink and wear a
ring in his tongue tip. She was always at him to see if his
mom would let him or was he just a wuss all the way? She
of no ring in her tongue tip or anywhere else embedded in
her face, and her hair of original hazel coloring, but she
was calling Jordi a wuss?  Even her clothes were wuss
drag. Well he would show her. Mom would cry and stamp
her foot, but eventually she would give in because she
loved Jordi and thought anything to get him interested in
some kind of awareness of the world around him just might
be worth it. She pretending lack of knowledge of the
awareness of the kind of world he was indeed in. She let
him wear the latest in grunge after all. Though when he
was with her, as little as he could possibly devise, she
always made him wear pressed jeans and a clean shirt like
when he was small and stupid.

Jordi went into the kitchen, closed and locked the screen
door and the wooden door. He went to his computer,
turned it on, logged on, went to his favorite sex web site,
and pretended he was watching men and women fuck each
other silly, when he was not him watching at all, but Todd
watching, Todd, having all the sinful fun Jordi supposedly
was having but not at all.

Mess with an autumn boy, try to parlay him into a summer one,
 just brotherly love and some fondling and sucking, practice for Todd for
 when the girlies started, and Todd's having sex with his brother's girls
when they didn't know it, the interior rage, the exterior
slackness and coldness and studied disinterest in everything,
and see the nightmare Todd had caused. See what you would have
 been without me, Todd? I've always just been a
stand in for you, always will be. See how you needed me?

And still need me? Please see.