Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:31:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: g/m masturbation  Mirror Joel

MIRROR JOEL

             Tim Stillman



Once in Joel's bathroom, I pulled down my jeans, faced the full length mirror on

the inside of the door, and kissed my reflected lips, dressed,  walked to  him,
mere ft. away, lying on his side, on his bed, glancing up and reading. And I,
pretending later, all those mirror fantasies in movies to come, from THE FOX to
GHOST onward to the scare mirror instant rush past, as the fraught woman sees in

the corner of her eye, turns round, but not quickly enough, to MIRRORBACKARDS.
At the time, though, it was as gaunt and perfunctory and sexless as that.

Later, there was again, from my childhood, Jimmy. When Christmas came, I put the

few Christmas cards I got, into a sack, not seeing who they were from, and did
not look at them till after New Years, and with much relief, looked and found
one reading "merry Christmas, Jimmy." I owned the moon that day.

When I was a very young child, I hid the phone under pillows, so if someone
called and there was no answer, there would be worry. There was no one to worry.

Was I practicing for later? When there were people who might have, but didn't.


Was I that mirrored image in Joel's bathroom? It was the mirror in  the bath of
his own room. Did I go through great long leaps of versions of  Hedda Gabler and

Chekov ghost plays as I imagined my reflection left behind would envelop him in
his sleep as I took my own stylish, sensuously choreographed masturbatory ballet

in front of my living room mirror, in movement and arch and sigh and holding him

in my arms, as he touched me, or my mirrored image, in his dreams?


And woke from it, with the same hollow image of himself, as I? A bleached vast
sand blasted distance covered in glowing red sky hue zillions of all the frozen
unyielding mirrors of all tickless time, with rhyme and rime and frigid
unclosing eyes on me and freezing unto spectral death my sexual warm brief
shameful dream?

Elaborate in my ego? No, drenched in my solitude. Reflections are so
fascinating, from Lewis Carroll on, to see and not feel, because how can a
reflection feel? It must be, for some reason, made of silver and have blood
composed of snowy north winds.


And moving with him and inside him, and the lonely growing pains of his, and the

lonely muscle cramps of mine, would cease. Were we Patrick Dempsey and Demi
Moore, the morning before school  times when he looked at himself in his full
length mirror after his shower, naked, toweling himself, blow drying his long
yellow hair, dressing? Did he approve of himself? Was he just Joel and that was
that?

            Did I think myself in Wonderland, and he doing all of this in front
of me? Mirrors run silver mercury somewhere in child memory, beads of mercury on

the yellow counter by the sink, as I tried to split them apart, and  did, but
they kept moving, dimpling, like they had tiny microbes of laughing jelly
inside.

I had felt awful invading his mirror that Friday night right before leaving,
doing it as I dared, and wanted to tell him, so he would absolve me, and to
imagine, dusky years hence, this thought muffled by pillows, so it would only be

heard ringing now to funhouse torment me without a chance of hope, that he would

say, why the mirror? When here I am.

Maybe I meant to be Dorian Gray in his mirror, thus to keep him young forever,
and me to take on his  age, so one day in the park of autumn, he would blindly
put a hand to me, and he the sightless Narcissus, arrowed to ground in mirror
beauty, image wrong in my incantation, would see as I would see. Of his maybe
masturbating in the mirror and I---no.


My generation got by on that to a certain age, and Joel's earlier than that. It
was to be my sole friend, and I needed one fine Spring day to push Joel out of
my mirrors. All of them. Including the one school picture of him and long years
later to dispose of his letters too.

Not to divest him of a mirror world he never knew existed between us, but to
divest myself of his, which did not exist. In mirrors in between, sleepy
exhausted morning or night, I see myself as only habitant, for mirrors are made
of grains of sand and are very imperfect reflectors of illusion,  poorly or
badly made, depending on light, and eyesight and hope and bad memory.

And of whoever or whatever it reflects, its methodology unintended with no
scorn, and that mirror remained, I suppose, after my 2 years of imprisoned
happiness were up.


And it, that I had shown my lean body, unintentionally to, meaning to show it to

Joel, my shirt pulled up, my own mirrors I saw from, off, my eyes half-closed,
all this for a grand terrified total of maybe 5 seconds, had seen him grow up,
hair shorter when the long hair hippie style left, and his clothing also
changing accordingly; and shaving. My God, I never thought of that; Joel with a
beard--nooooooooooooo.


The mirror showing him gradually taller and practicing his moves on girls in
front of it. The heat of the shower. The little window raised to rush in cold,
clear the steam, so pores could breathe again. To have gotten caught in his
mirror. To have once upon a time been, for isn't this an attempt to crawl into a

fairy tale,? for a few more years, myself standing still, as I had before it, to

have Joel out there as I implanted my still, silent as granite, reflection that
never touched, kept breathing and heart in check, and now I know.


It comes to me in a terrible way of personal certainty,  that I, only 8  years
older than he, was a not essential mirror for him to gaze into, as teen eyes
will look to other human mirrors, to adjust themselves to coming years,
possibly, a little of reasons here and there into the wizardly withering ways
of utter self awareness, and I, if lucky, was one of his first holy god this is

for real and I am actually here, using maybe me,  reality and dream checks, and
on everyone he sees....(and what of him did he see perhaps in me? I.
Joel's--however momentary-- mirror? What a laugh.)


"Candyman? Candyman? Candy---

"Joel?"