Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 17:01:59 -0700
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: young friends "Timothy the Mouse"

			    "Timothy The Mouse"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


(a fable for anyone who still has the courage to believe in "once
upon a time.")



 Timothy the Mouse, naked in the glow of the moon winter
night. Enveloped in the darkness that had a white patina to it.
Ghostly night in mid November. And Timothy, called a mouse,
because he was small and scared and shy and black of hair while
white pale of skin, was off on the hill side looking at his favorite
position--upward.

 Up where the cold gales blow. Up in the stirs of stars
swinging around. Night and light and Timothy who was a little
parallax of arms held up high to the moon. Catch me, moon, catch
me and never let me go, he cried silently. As he jumped up higher
and higher. Slim flanks bouncing their bones. Little cock jiggling.
Other nights and frights and sights had anyone in them but Timothy
the Mouse.

 Boy of face watercolored and gentle. Boy of eyes blue skies.
Boy of summer here in mid November with Thanksgiving close at
hand. And night the way it goes when you're young and bizarre and
filled with far off laughter that is nothing more than time. Time
laughing. The true timeless time. When no one else hears it. When
there are no gales of love in sight for Timothy the mouse.

 Who wanted to be on the moon. Who wanted to be a
participant in other lives that had never existed. A little mouse in
the room. Hollow chest and lungs too weak to support him in much
of anything like running, which was impossible for him to do. Or
walking, which he did slowly. But not so at night, late, when
jumping at the moon and his tiny chestnut balls bouncing against
his body. All animated like a cartoon mouse name of Mickey and
all linked with whatever was up there on the moon.

 That paralleled little Timothy. Whose name was Tim for
real. And who was poor for real. And who lived on the wrong side
of the tracks. Timothy, little scion to a fortune of hurt. And the
mouse who came to the night mountains of the sky along about
every midnight. Who was paler than pale in the moon. Who was on
the wrong planet. Who played too many tunes no one understood.
For truth to tell, everyone was a little afraid of Timothy the mouse.
He was far too--different.

 He had an endearing smile when he smiled. A shy smile
when he smiled. A sly smile when he smiled. He was encased in
moon beams. And kids don't like it when they find a kid encased in
moon beams. It makes them feel left out. Not that they would want
that anyway. But still and all, possession of anything by such a runt
of a kid they called "girly boy" because he had a girly way of
walking, a girly air to him that sighed softly like he had always just
finished being kissed, and they had not--possession, even of a
moment of moonlight was wrong, as far as they were concerned.

 Timothy gamboled in the moon glade. He danced and his
lungs did not ache nor feel tired. His heart did not hurt as it did
when he so much as crossed the floor at home or at school. Here the
moon grabbed his elbows and the cold wind blew and grabbed at
his hips and the night was a cathedral. He was a boy bow in the
midnight air. Where Timothy T. Mouse had come to pray. All the
time the cobble stone sky was run upward and downward by
meteors and asteroids and stars that moved in their trajectory for
Timothy T. Mouse, Esquire, and no one else at all.

 Timothy ran his hands with their long lingering fingers and
square finger tips over his bony body and he loved himself. He
loved how he felt. All tight and full of bone and full of muscles that
he squeezed in his legs and his arms and his ass and his groin. He
was all of a part was sensitive pensive Timothy. When the night
came to play on him. And the stars danced in their bright bones,
because he was there. Because there was the moon and its friends
saying look down at Timothy and look up, because he should be
where we are. And marvel at him.

 Thus, naked boy calling exhalation to the stars with himself.
Thus, his hands holding his dainty cock hard to the night sky.
Saying in itself here is all the romance any world would need. Here
is all the Little Prince any asteroid would love. Here stands willing
friend to be of Pooh and Tigger and Christopher Robin and the
Grinch too. Come hands soft in the glow air. Come hands entranced
in the webs of wind he held between his fingers.

 Timothy should wear a dress. Timothy should be Minnie
Mouse. He's a girl. Look at that long hair. Look at those long
eyelashes. Look at that face, looks like Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm. I'd be ashamed to be Timothy. I'd be ashamed to be a boy
like that. And a broken boy. A boy who can hardly breathe. A
cripple like Timothy. How do you live with yourself, Timothy T.
Mouse? Minnie Mouse? Don't you feel like you're a leaking house
boat sinking in the waves? Glub glub glub.

 And Timothy threw his arms to the sky. And the sky caught
the bushel of insults and the bushel of pain and the bushel of
laughter, from the boys, and from the girls who thought Timothy
looked even prettier than they, and they did not like that one little
bit. Timothy nightly threw the day's barbs up at the giants in the
sky. Who caught them and turned them into ice comets. And then
threw them out into space, deeply and outward like arms of nothing
at all. That did not count.

 And Timothy counted in the stars. He skated on their ice
flows. He ran up ice mountains and was the tallest boy in the
universe. He ran his hands over his convex abdomen and his  weak
defenseless hollow chest and he was worlds inside and outside. He
was everything the universe turned on and depended on. He was the
center of everything. The star of everything. He was not the sun.
However. He was the moon and the moon loved him so.

 Because no one else loved Timothy. His mother tired easily
and most easily especially because of Timothy, who could dissolve
into tears at the drop of a moment that she never noticed was there.
But a moment that took her son Tim's breath away. Took the heart
in him to thumping so hard he felt he had a base drum in there. And
he got so scared. He got scared deeply between his legs. He got
scared his peter, as his mother called it, was going to fall off.

 And then he could not use it as a barber pole to climb to the
Arctic in the sky way up there, a sky that had so many random
glows in it. So many possibilities on planets, and swinging through
the universe, this one and that one, on comets like his own private
midnight train through all the countries that no one, including he,
knew about. Life was up there in lack of breath. Life and brilliance
and candles and Halloween. And Christmas. He read a story once.
A father forget to get his daughter a Christmas present, so he gave
her the universe they were rocketing through instead.

 How that story chilled Timothy's spine. How that arched
him now, thinking of it, as he knelt on the ground, on the cold
brown sparse ground, that hurt his knees, for he was a delicate
child. And he felt the space of himself between his tickly hips
become the space of everything that was around him. He laughed
his arms out and he almost fell, then caught himself. He laughed his
legs and feet up off the ground and almost fell, then caught himself.

 How good to be me, Timothy thought. Something he never
thought anywhere but in his nightly revels. In the day time he was
silent and withdrawn and leaf curled into himself. He was ashamed
of his body and his mind and his heart and his lungs. He didn't
know the children. They frightened him. Most were bigger than he
was. Even the girls were bigger.

 But at night, away from the hateful sunlight of the day, he
was a friend of Icarus. The moon Icarus who knew that flying too
near it on his wax wings would not kill him, but would free him.
But on this earth, in the world of people: Timothy, where they came
with the games. Timothy, where they tossed dodge balls at him.
Timothy. where they ran the numbers on him and the little jokes
and the laughs and the mean cold hands of them turned him round
and round and found little use for him at all, at all.

 But Timothy by himself was magic. Timothy was the friend
of the stars. The giants of the sky. The giants who ran the hills of
space and never got winded or hurt or fell down or socked around.
Timothy loved no one, but the stars and the center of them, the
moon, because they loved him back and they expected nothing of
him but that he be Timothy. And mice ran the moon, as he called
out silently in the big gusts of his big lungs and his heart that was
safe and secure and beat as it was supposed to, "come for me, moon
mice, come for me and let me taste moon cheese too!!"

 His mother sighed over Timothy. Not as Timothy sighed,
which made persons think he had just been kissed. But his mother's
sighs meant Tim was not living up to expectations. Tim was not
going to be the right kind of man. The correct kind of man. And
Timothy was just a little moment in time on planet Earth. But
Timothy of the stars was all the universe and he would live there
and only there, forever and a day.

 She, Mother?, Mom?, who was this angry harried sad lonely
alone woman?, had read nursery rhymes and fairy tales to him when
he had been much younger. All the fairy tales and rhymes had to do
with the sky for some reason or other. There were cows jumping
over the moon, and there was wishing on moonlight, and there were
children who called water from the moon to cascade life into a
friend so young and so dead it seemed forever. But magic said not
so. Magic said cross the bow of the archer in the stars in the sky.
And shoot the arrow like Timothy shot his cock, though nothing
came out of it, how he loved to shoot it nonetheless. How good and
safe and summery it made him feel inside.

 Timothy. On the hillside of broken bow. On the hillside of
broken children. The children who were like Timothy that he
sometimes saw on TV telethons and did not connect them with him
for they were much sadder, and they were far less fortunate, and it
made him so angry that things were that way. Pray to God, his
mother would adjure him. What God? he would think? A God who
would cripple children and make them be in such torture and pain
and die so young? What kind of God would be that way? So
Timothy prayed to the moon and the stars and the dip of white
lights that surged through the sky in crescent rainbows.

 The sky was ancient and the sky was young in its being
ancient. Children Timothy saw seemed so old. Their skin seemed
grainy. Their faces seemed marked by such evil tempers and such
sicknesses that did not seem to have names for them. Their faces
were patchworks of skins that didn't seem to fit them. Eyes that did
not meet the expectations of the mouths. Noses that did not meet
the expectations of the ears. How sad they thought themselves so
superior, Timothy thought. Why in the world did they?

 And he lay his small delicate bony body down flat on the
ground. The wind was bitterly cold and played with his spine and
his hips that he jiggled back and forth as though there were seas
under him and he was sailing on them and off the world, off into
space. On his penis stiff rocket. Off into a moon glow that had
nothing in it but time. And time was love. And time was everything.
Because, you see, down here, Tim Redfield didn't have a lot of time
left. Tim Redfield was dying. And the doctor and Tim's mother did
not think that Tim Redfield knew it. Tim's teacher, giving him, his
pills at the correct times of day, right in front of the class, which
always took such cruel delight in his choking them down with
water, made him blush and feel so stupid and weak and unmeant for
life.

 But Timothy the Mouse knew about the green cheese moon.
And he knew about the apple pie sun. And he knew that if he lay on
the ground. If he lay in the cold, without a stitch on. If he lay in
enchantment with his penis hard as it could be till it almost went off
by itself without his touching it or moving his body in any way at
all, now, as he lay still, there was nothing he could not do. There
was the gift of space. Given to Timothy the Mouse. Who did not
need to hide behind Dumbo's big ears. Who did not have to close
his eyes at night, in bed, after he climbed back into home and
bedroom and pajamas and, had to pretend that fireworks were not
going off inside him. Desire and delight in going away, away, soon
and soon.

 Dr. Dolittle riding past the moon on his giant Lunar moth,
with Matthew Muggs sitting behind him, and their hats raised and
hands waving down at little Timothy who so wanted to be with
them. Who wanted to sing himself up to them and be forever
blessed with their wisdom and their worlds that were so bright and
brave and endlessly fun. Timothy lay on the ground and he popped.
His little peter popped. And he lay his face on the side of the
ground, and he sighed, just one time. Softly. Like he had just been
kissed.

 As the boy slept and slept deeper than he ever had before.
His body relaxed and his eyelids closed on his black iris eyes. The
long lashes protecting the eyes of Timothy the Mouse. The lashes
saying you've seen enough of this world. You've seen enough of
false time and the false, stupid persons in it. As trapezes of gold and
silver swung down gently and gracefully from the sky. And the boy
felt his penis saying farewell for the moment, Timothy Mouse, and
shrinking under him. As his balls went back into their little warm
body cavity. All saying, we will come back to play another day.

 As his heart beat fast and faster and then stopped beating
altogether. And the trapezes were of  moon glow feathers and spider
spun miracles lowered downward, and the night leaned over to
Timothy the Mouse and the winter wind got colder and colder. And
blew Timothy's long home cut hair in its path. As the night leaned
closer into Timothy. And the moon reached outward its long white
milk path to him and kissed him on the side of his cheek. For it had
so kissed him many times before right in that exact spot.

 The trapezes came closer and closer till they were hanging
right over him and all round him. The wind picked up Timothy
Mouse, still and tender and light as a leaf, and placed him, so
delicately, so carefully, on one of the trapezes padded with
goosedown dreams from a Hans Christian Anderson story about
ugly ducklings and surprises in wait for them.  Timothy's little
defenseless behind bent over, to the stars and safe and secure. A
little moon beam was Timothy. The stars threw off lights so bright
they would have hurt the eyes here if anyone had been looking. The
other trapezes gathered up the dreams of little Timothy, dreams he
knew about, as well as dreams he didn't know about, and all at a
single time, they and he were pulled up off the ground of winter.

 And on the moon waited the most enchanting things just for
him. Pooh and Tigger and Christopher Robin too. As Matthew
Muggs called out to him (which Timothy heard, Timothy alive way
up there, again, for the first time, breath of a different sort
whispered into his lungs, by the sky night. For Timothy had been a
friend to the night, which, unlike persons on Earth, never forgot a
friend) "Halloo, Timothy. We're waitin' right here for you to get off
the grandest elevator ever invented and meet up with your friends.
Timothy, good lad. Job well done. You loved us always. And we'd
be honored to shake your hand. Honored, indeed. You're a hero of
ours."

 Timothy in the sky. Smaller and smaller than even Tim
Redfield. The earth which never had time for Timothy, who was too
far up to even be seen by it now. Timothy in the sky, heading home.
As he sailed closer and closer to the moon, which was not made of
paper after all but of blue moondust just right for dancing a wild
west shoot 'em up dance in, as Timothy started to breathe the
Christmas feeling all around him and he opened his eyes just a bit.
Then as he was gently placed, as by so attentive a lover, on the blue
moon dust, he opened his eyes more and more. Round eyed, he was.
And fascinated and entranced. And he smiled. Like he never had
before. And sighed. As though he had been kissed by all the moon
craters and moon mountains and the blue dust of the ragged old
planet that needed him more than it needed anyone else who had
ever lived.

 And that much needed friend was one Timothy T. Mouse.
He had cheese for breakfast that morning. Moon cheese. And if
you've never had any, you should try it some time. It is delicious.
He got to a certain fabled candy factory late in the afternoon, moon
time, and the candy too was delicious. And he slept and danced and
laughed and would never be alone again. Christopher Robin,
personally, told him that.

 And that's my story of one Timothy T. Mouse, Esquire. The
mouse on the moon who got to wear Dr. Dolittle's tall hat
and ride the Lunar moth with the good doctor and Mugs, and do all
sorts of marvelous fanciful things.

 Now don't you wish you could be Timothy T. Mouse, Esquire, too?

				  the end