Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 10:10:15 -0800
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: "The Advent of Joseph"-masturbation

			  "The Advent of Joseph"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


 Lonely road down by the beach. Saturday afternoon, late,
in early fragrant smelling Spring. A boy in black swim trunks walks
down that deserted road. The sky looking for the moon to come.
His name is Joseph. He limps a bit. Until last year, his left leg had
been bracketed by a brace that had callused his young life, that had
put a carapace over him, that had made him different. Not that he
was a bad looking boy. Though you could never prove it by what
he thought of himself. He was small, heavier than he would have
liked, but losing weight by determination and long walks in the
nighttime hours. He had short hair, blond dirty, that he had had cut
this afternoon at the Jones Barber Shop. Not that he had wanted
that weekly haircut. But was forced to by those who knew best.

 The night was silent, as he brushed stray cut hairs, or
invisible ghosts of stray cut hairs, off his neck. He had looked
forward to Spring and the doorway to June and its saving environs
for all winter long, but now it had begun, he did not know what to
do with it. Dreams were like that, he had decided, the few that
came true. Like being able to walk without his brace. The limp was
small, he was getting better at conquering it, though he did not
believe this. The limp in his heart, the limp that was him was
always a good friend to him, unlike the external one. For he loved
to be by himself, that was when the night warm was the best.
When he believed Saturday could turn into one of those old lined
ancient Greek gods and scoop him safely inside arms infinitely kind
and strong, and he could be himself.

 He walked in the dark air and he glanced at the sky. It felt
good to be almost bare in the coming night, to hear the breakers so
close by, to have bare feet that longed for the warm grains of sand
to stick to them, as he would run, as best he could, along the
curving strand. Now he had metal braces on his teeth, as if to
replace the absence of the one on his leg. How odd the trade off,
how he didn't mind, when he supposed he should be embarrassed
by those crooked teeth and the device to straighten them. But that
was nothing. Not when you considered the ordeal, the pain, of the
brace was over. That leg had been healed not by god but by age
and by advancing science, and though it was still a bit atrophied, it
was getting stronger, the muscles getting more robust. He no
longer had to uncase his leg before he lay down at night in bed. He
no longer had to unwrap himself like a fragile glass hen in a house
that was his only by dent of pain and shame, no matter how he
tried to paint it up mentally, and deny it all physically.

 The brace off, at bedtime, before he turned out the lights,
or after the lights were off. He had done it so often, he knew how
to unleash his leg in seconds, he was good and deft at it, had
become like a sharp Mississippi gambler at the deal of it. And in
the morning to put the brace back on. To hide his leg, to heat it, to
bandage it, to shame it in the ordeal of getting better. The pads.
The buckles. The weight of it. The sheer inordinate clumsiness of
it. They called him Frankenstein, at school. And they were stupid
because that was the doctor not the monster. His leg always at an
angle, slight, but at an awkward, unnatural angle nonetheless,
when he walked, when he sat at his desk, when he sat at the lunch
table, as he cannonballed down the hall, sometimes falling into
other kids, or more embarrassedly, into a teacher or the principal.

 He loved the summer sun, he loved the heat, he loved the
ocean and how he could dive into the spray, at least in his dreams,
and be taken out to the world where someone would miss him
because he had come to the conclusion that being missed was
better than being loved, for it meant that he had been loved once,
and that was easier to deal with, than waiting for it sometime
tomorrow or the day after that. They called him a hobby horse, a
hobbled horse, they did the time honored things kids do to kids
who are so like them because they are so unlike them. The night
had shadows coming on, for it was night now. A day had been
survived. This summer, he was going to ride a bicycle for the first
time. Twelve he was, and he never had before. How sad. How
much lostness he felt in himself. The night seemed lost. Joseph was
unafraid of it. It seemed afraid of itself. Joseph understood how
that felt. And the night was clean and pure and right and was
nothing but itself.

 It had no hospital medicinal odor, it did not breathe ether
and fall asleep while strangers in white worked on his body
without his having any say so over what they did. Sometimes it
seemed his life was a hospital. As though he was a hospital. And it
was all white sheets and starched pillowcases, and nurses in soft
soled crepe shoes walking down the halls inside himself, and pills
in plastic cups, and eyes of nurses, warm or cold or indifferent, for
he rarely saw doctors, who seemed to make cameo appearances of
a moment or two, virtually unannounced, but always impressed
with themselves, making everything seem to have more gravity.
But night had no elevators in the sky. And the stars seemed to be
heavier than they used to be, but they were bright. And they had
shown down on so many lives, on humans and on dinosaurs and
they had crossed the span of such distance, like eyes that were so
longing to see.

 Joseph was at the turn of the road now, a dirt road, this
lame boy, who needed the multicolored coat of the world that he
held gently inside himself, as if a pearl of vast wealth on a satin
pillow in the case that was a boy flawed, the case of a boy who
dreamed little dreams and felt guilty even for those. Sometimes he
would in the middle of doing something else, even at school, even
when others were around, find himself touching his freed leg, the
freed captive part of him, and felt how amazing it was there and it
could move on its own, and how brave. Joseph wished he could be
that brave. Body parts could do amazing things. How shamed he
was they had to be his, he who did everything wrong. But his body
was patient, with the patience of the ocean that was a table on
which people swam and boated and skied, but underneath there
was a world too, of bright darting flash colors hauled between
sacks of silt and swirls of anemone. Joseph had never swum either.
He was going to do that this summer too.

 He had made the turn from the road, and now walked
through the yard or so of saw grass already high, already breeding
toward the sky, and he had to push through it a bit with his
fingertips, the grass already thickening steadily, who knows?, he
thought, who can take a night and interrupt the day and not feel
guilty for the dreams he puts on it? A boy, thin shoulders, body
bronzed brown, save for his hummingbird uncaged leg which was
still white as snow, as though it still had the brace on it, as though
it did not know it was given its pass out of prison. The grass and
the sand and the world felt good to his feet, the one foot still
turned in, the first two toes still overlapping a bit. Sometimes it felt
as though he had a sandbag instead of that withered, though
getting well, leg, and sometimes the sand would shift in it, and he
would fall. Sometimes he would catch himself. Other times he
would fall flat on the floor and have to get up by himself, or
perhaps someone might help him up, which was the worst of all.

 And now he was with his friend, the ocean, now he was on
the sand, warm sand, sensuous, not the bright red and green colors
of school, not the gun metal gray of the hallways, not the constant
katydid clatter of child voices in the building of ogres, but quiet
and pastoral, and serene. Joseph did what he had done for some
time now, at night, before the people came to this area of the
beach with their bonfires and their clambakes and their grilles and
their beer and their CD players and their girls and their boys and
sent fire smoke up to the rafters of forever. He slid off his trunks,
slowly, his hands at his sides, feeling his too padded hip bones, his
eyes closed, he had always loved being by himself on the cusp of
things, of things going to happen, someday, soon, like when the
doctor took off the brace for the first time for the last time, and
Joseph had held in the tears, because in being found, he had been
lost for all time, somehow.

 He stood now with his always dry, never ocean wet, save
sprinkled wet, from wading in the breakers, trunks lowered to just
above his penis, small, like a limp fleshed whistle that called no
one, that accepted only the silent soft silken hands of a boy who
had never had a limp or a brace or a dream or a love of shows that
gave ground life and made skies sing skies that did not exist here
but on planets kept carefully at the corners of his eyes where no
one else could see even if they had looked. The breeze was soft
hot on his body, as he pulled down his trunks, and stood on his
"good" leg, falling over, as he pulled his trunks off, falling with a
little huff of sound, breath rushed out of him. He lay on his side on
the sand, and he was nothing more than a boy who would not be in
a few months what he was now. He would ride his new bike, his
mom had already bought him one, but was keeping it hidden till his
birthday next month, though he had found where she had hidden it,
had peeked at it, and had fallen in love with it at first sight. He
shivered with the glory of how it would be when he was fitted to
it, when he became this summer machine of black and chrome and
handlebars that were rad to the extreme, and pedals for a boy, him,
and he alone, to ride the summer streets of the resort town, to the
taco stand, to the pier, to home, to the library, and then back
again. And no one, NO ONE, other than he, would ride his bike.
They would all love it and lust for it, but steeds obey no one but
their masters. Joseph would be such a very kind master indeed.

 He was a comma in the sand. He lay his head against his
left arm. He felt his heart beating with the heart of the world. He
thought he could hear all the way to China in the ground, all the
way on the other side of the universe, in the wheels of his bike
spinning in the wheels of his head. He spread his legs and felt the
air between them. He wondered if he would fall asleep. If he
would be found like this later tonight, and if others bringing their
picnic baskets and their laughter and their make out blankets,
would stumble on him thinking, he and they, he was a piece of drift
wood, and then he would be, they would see in the lights of their
cars and their flashlights and their normal supreme beams, a
mer-lad, washed up from the ocean, old as time and young as the
next minute just being born. He imagined, as he snuggled into
himself, closed his legs again as though he were a clam shell
covering up prize of great passion and sought after by all the lads
in all the kingdoms under the ocean there could ever be, this
escapee from Atlantis, miles under the sea. He warmed into
himself. He smiled, and though he would not know this, and would
sock anybody who had said it straight out to him, he was pretty
when he smiled. He had dimples on each side of his cheek. His
smile was a bow and when he grinned it made his eyes slant a little,
giving him a bit of an Oriental look, or at least an exotic look, the
kind that means birds of paradise and silk umbrellas, and buttery
warm cookies served by kind attentive hosts in a land of delicacy
and dignity and courage and gentleness that a boy didn't have to
kneel down to find in a land far more blustery and raw than there.

 And as always before the night was over, he would jack
off, he would lengthen himself, and he would wish as usual there
were some other way of saying it, some way that was as pretty as
the deed itself felt, and as it culminated, and as it brought the heart
and legs of him to draw up deeply inside himself, and felt pretty
afterwards too. As though he had just had a satisfying piece of sky,
or he had just been given a puppy to hold for all his life through, a
puppy that licked his face and waggled his pumpy little body, and
his paws just everywhere all at once, for he loved life so much,
yes, Joseph thought, making the shell of a curled up angel in the
Spring sand, yes, I will not forget you beach, I will not let my bike
take me away from you. Especially not on Saturday afternoons and
nights, for that's when the loneliness is like sweet home made
bread that rests softly inside me, that calls to light house clangings
and white sheets of bright loom turning round and round in the
dark way over there, clinging and then turning sideways and
disappearing, then illuminated squares once more, so ships would
not crash into reefs and die.

 Joseph's older brother would be home from college in
June, and would teach Joseph to ride a bike, god, think of it, the
immensity of it, the impossibility of it, to do what other boys had
been doing all along, riding their bikes, as Joseph had sat helplessly
in his yard and watched them go round the block and back again,
all hallooing, and showing off and pitching themselves into the
wind, and doing tricks like wheelies, and Joseph would do that
soon, his brother would teach him, but his bike would teach him all
the summer secrets its fine black bumble bee exterior held inside to
teach. And his brother would teach him to swim also, and he
would later on, by himself, of course, swim naked, and feel the
womb of water over him, and he would dive underneath the
surface and he would see what he had only seen on TV and in
pictures, but this time in person, the salt savoring his body, his
little penis floating like its own small island, suspended on waves
that he would make with his hand, like a doctor slapping a baby to
life after delivery.

 He would no longer stumble through life, he would pick up
pieces of the world, like other boys, he would not pretend to run
on the beach, while he was still hobbling, walking at a slightly
faster clip was all, he would run, and his little fanny would blossom
and his legs would grow straight and tall and he would become a
Gold Medal winner, and he would be a champion swimmer, as he
stroked through the world, so other boys could see him and could
know that miracles could occur. Joseph lay on the sand which
enveloped him as he turned on his back, as he touched himself, and
his stomach which was becoming, yes, he was sure of it, far more
concave that it was only last week, why, when he put his hand to
the bottom of his rib cage, he felt the descent of flesh, not the solid
singleness of it, the straight board of it, yes, he was getting a
declivity, and he smiled at the thought, and wiggled the fingers and
the toes of him in the air. Even the last two toes of his inturned
foot he could wiggle a little.

 He loved being a boy. He could not imagine not being one.
He didn't want to grow hair on his body, just on his head. He
wanted to be a jungle boy and a bicycle boy and an ocean boy. He
wanted to be that mer-boy others would stumble on when he had
forgotten, given in, slept on the beach unawares. Sometimes
Joseph thought he might be a bubble on the ocean foam.
Sometimes he thought that the beach, the island on which he lived,
and it was for all intents and purposes an island, shaped something
like a dolphin's back, had grown lonely and had created him to be
its special friend, had appointed Joseph boy god of the
summertime. And now he lay cradling himself, with one hand
beside his head, trying to make a come hither look at the sky,
fluttering his eyelashes, thinking the words, but not saying them,
"oh silly little me, come here brave strong boy and cuddle me"
while trying not to laugh, like he saw in beach party movies of the
sixties on TV. He imagined a boy looking down at him, with the
sun behind, the boy lying beside him, raised on one elbow, a hand
older than Joseph's touching Joseph's mouth, outlining the love in
Joseph's face that did not have a nose slightly too flat, that did not
have eyes that were slightly too muddy brown, that did not have a
chin that needed a little more forming of it, that did not have
braces on its teeth.

 Joseph would not tell that boy about the leg brace once
worn. That was past. Forgotten. Like this night had forgotten last
night, did not know or care, was not an extension of it in any way,
for Joseph believed that each night, like each day, was of its own
devising, a series of individual box cars on a train of time, that did
not hook up to any other of its fellows except the human mind said
it did, and the cars of night and day were understanding and
allowed the human fantasy that.

 And the boy would lean his lean hardened face down to
Joseph's and he would kiss Joseph's lips, and comment on how
warm they were, and how darned straight Joseph's teeth were, my
god, have you ever seen such straight white great teeth on anyone
in your life?, and the boys would laugh, the younger on bottom,
the older on top, and they would warm each other in the day that
was warm enough, or it had seemed so, before that first kiss,
before that first embrace. They would cleave, that was the word
Joseph had looked for in the school library dictionary; archaic, the
definition began, and when he looked up archaic, he closed the
book in anger. No, it was sweet, a lovely word, a word for dusty
poetry books on spring afternoons when he looked with such
hopeless and full to bursting heart at the boy seated in front of him,
who true to form did not know Joseph was alive.

 But tonight--the breeze more insistent. The saw grass
whispering. Late terns and gulls lonely and forlorn. Lighthouse
making a mournful sound just like Ray Bradbury wrote it did.
Night and a naked boy curled in the sand, pleasuring himself,
another archaic group of words, words that did not have in them
fight and tough and bleedy knees and lack of emotion and just
kidding round and I'll never be serious cause if you get serious
they go away from you in fear, not those words to describe jacking
off, just pleasuring himself, and tonight the world split open, and
the stars took their breaths in a little, because he saw he had made
a little pearl out of himself that stood right there liquid dreams
come solid substance, and this was a thing a boy should remember,
and should celebrate. And fear. Because in the dizziness of
grandeur that he had accomplished such a thing other boys talked
of as if it was no big deal, but you knew they thought it was a
damned big deal, in the hallways of their insecurity and fear, it
meant that he would start growing hair there soon, and on his legs
and arms, and, oh god no, maybe on his chest.

 He felt the drawstrings in himself loosen. He felt himself
undone. It had seemed when he ruffled the foam inside him and his
penis stood and quivered and contemplated and said yes now, go
for it, it had given him a gift, had said I know you are there, I've
known all the time, and here is a present specifically from me to
you, so you will know how much I think of you and love you as
you love me. He lay now, his face to the side, in the soft cupping
warm sand. The roads in him were already ridden by him on his
bicycle. The depths of him had already been swum in. Both he had
done gracefully and with style and beauty and candor and
ingrained skill, as he had pleasured himself the same way,
delicately, as though he were handling fine bone china of which he
knew the worth, how he coaxed it, and coaxed the steadiness into
him and then out of him on invisible winds and scrimshaws of
patterns of colors that danced behind and before his eyes at such a
time. And what he loved would take him away from what he was
now. He would ride his bike. He would not give that up for
anything. He would swim. He would not give that up for anything.
He would run bare in the night and he would pleasure himself and
one day he would get these braces off his teeth which would
indeed be straight and bright white and a boy would tell him so
before kissing him and hugging him better than any old Norse god
of the sea ever could imagine.

 But they would be the roads he would run while trying to
stay the same. While trying to stay in the same static locale. You
run, you move, you have to accept the change of scenery, inside
and outside. He felt the ocean air, the salt transparency, the cutting
cool breeze off the waters of dark nights like little razor blades
opening the air and bleeding more life out of it and onto and into
Joseph the more he fought against it. He curled up again now,
after he had put his finger to his sperm on a place on him that one
day would be covered with hair, he lay on his side and he felt the
little piece of ocean he had produced, and his leg would get better
and it would tan this year, would lose its childhood old man winter
this summer and never ever go back to that. Funny, he thought, as
he turned on his tummy, and felt the warm good on his penis, like
a warm wash rag applied to it after his joy, rushing life and blood
and health and contentment and comfort into it, caressing it,
kissing it, saying it's okay and I love you. Funny, he thought, that
hated leg brace, that thing that had caused him to be so different,
that had prevented his riding his bike and swimming and running
like everyone else, seemed now different to him.

He knew he would never figure himself out. For he had begun the
chrysalis of a nostalgia for that damned brace and wished he had
not let the doctor throw it away. Began wishing that very much,
and then, feeling tired, he fluttered his eyes closed, drew his legs
up more, and he put his heart into sleeping. The surf sounded like
silver quarters falling from a long distance away. The night pulled
up the warm covering over him and whispered its wind on his
buttocks sandy covered and the backs of his legs. He would sleep
doze a few moments before he was otherwise to be stumbled over,
drift wood, mer-boy. And he would put his trunks on and he
would walk, a little more sure footed than when he came here this
afternoon, toward home and watch TV or read in his room and he
would dream about tomorrow to be.

And wish it could be today.

				  the end