Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 17:18:09 -0500
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: "Sharpen Your Pencil, Mister?"

	      "Sharpen' Your Pencil, Mister?"
			    by
		     Timothy Stillman


 So maybe this logy hot classroom here in the country of
spring is making me horny as hell. So maybe I would not
like to be the class nerd, and maybe I would like to take
these horn rimmed, horny rimmed am I, glasses off and
say to the pencil sharpener there in the corner, Woody by
name, the boy, not the pencil sharpener,  hey Wood
sharpen this, baby!

So maybe I'm tired of stroking by myself, and maybe I'm
tired of not daring to look at the boys in the boisterous
locker changing room, don't even think of the rest rooms,
and maybe I would like to strip to the buff and walk down
the hall naked, past all the oogle eyed girls, past the
laughing boys, and the giggle mouths with their hands
pressed to them, and go up to Jimmirinksi, my secret
secret boyfriend, and paste a real good wet one on his
lips, and he can't resist me, see, and he has to see what the
body, mine, is all about and everyone's looking at him like
they been sucking on too many Mary Janes recently, and I
don't mean those damn shoes either, and he backs up and
I press my nakedness up against him.

And I'm hard enough for the both of us. And he's got a
scream of fear somewhere lodged inside him, and all the
kids in their stupid ass looking clothes standing around,
petrified, their whole world turned upside down, and I'm
the most fuckin' brave man in the whole world, in school,
naked, like in all my nicest nightmares come true, like it's
gonna be a group grope party if they will suddenly come
un-statued and get down with it baby, and Jimmy the
Timmy runs away down the hall screeching like Nellie
Queen of the Jungle, and the jungle waits here and turns
round and round pedestal like to all the boys and girls,
with his Tarzan sling aquiver, his little pink Mt.
Rushmore, rush me more baby, standing up and straight
out, not supposed to be this pink in high school, but hey,
the hairs are coming in nicely, and I do say so myself, so
I'll be a man someday, don't rush me bees wax, I'm cool
enough right now, and I would like to say there in that
smelly black hall with all the unlocked lockers in it, with
all those diaries in them from the girls to the boys, or
mine, with diary from the boy to the boy, hey take the
prince of come cause you ain't gettin' no second chance,
and they'd see my flanks, nice flair, and my crotch, nice
little v valley, and my penis with the little brown bands
round the center of it, and my piss hole there looking up
at my navel as if it wanted to be friends....

...but bubble burst as I wonder whose flank I will allow
myself the generosity to come on, when bap back in the
class room in the spring country, and the eyes of green
and yellow and brown and gray and whatever ancillary
color there is, to wrap my day in with my blue eyes bluer
and prettier than all the blue eyes in the whole wide
wiggle wag world, and I'm sitting there watching my
friend who might as well never have heard of me Woody
sharpen his pencil, and Woody the Penis is Watching
Woody, the person's Crotch, and thinking how pressed
tight can those jeans be?, his dick is hanging on the left
side, his right ball more toward the center, his left more to
the left side of that wondrous basket he has coming
clickin' like a home run in the baseball park of my dreams,
and he does not dream of me as he sits his rounded
buttockal region on the wooden chair in front of mine.

As I try to think of excuses of how to explain to Jim
Blaine (damn wouldn't you know his name would be
some "As The World Turns" crappola name like that?
Married to Laura Dain probably, but truly in love with
Doris Strain or somethin') that for a time, just for a mere
pinnacle time of a moment or two I wanted to fuck the
whole student body, especially old Woody up there now
right here in front of me, the back of his neck still has little
hairs on it from the hair cut he must have gotten yesterday
after school, for they weren't there yesterday, and he just
managed not to get them all off in the bath last night, and
think of that, me and Jimmy and Woody in the bathtub
together just splashing and feeling up and who can come
and who can't and it's my party so I get to inspect their
parts in the bubble bath water boys of my dreams, take me
away Camay. Splish splash was the song all right, I was
takin' on a Saturday night--yes sir! I wouldn't have to
open the bathroom door to see my friends, to really see
them, cause they were in the bath with me and soap and
wash clothes and sweet dreamy flesh of my flesh and
there's together forever..never gonna be a man I won't.
Man am I a plagiarist today, somebody stop me please
from these song lyrics.

And we would just be like puppy dogs all over each other,
and we would be licking necks and ears and chests and
nipples and going for the score and the kids in their school
clothes all round us in the hall where the bathtub was right
outside this classroom are still standing there like statues,
not knowing what to do, cause see, its usually, no, its
always, the other way around, me standing like a statue
not knowing what to do or how to do it or if I would like
it or if I would not like it and how to tell if I'm through,
and whether I should try it again and then complicated
process go through once more when it has not happened
the first time even, because if Jim or Woody came onto
me in that tub of boys and sudsy Mr. Bubble water with
all us squeaking our little and hello there not so little
prongs and someone said my name I would pop like one
of those bubbles and vanish in mid soapy hot leathery
cologne smelling bathroom air, and hold onto my English
Leather for all it was worth, press it against my suddenly
too naked crotch and run down the hall of clothed
children, when from the bathtub back there, and the hall of
children I was rushing past, boos and hisses, and me so
small, so insignificant, so stumbling over words, would I
be, like always, I can't say "cat" without messing it up and
getting into some kind of trouble to boot. Puss `n Boots,
slide on by me, sometimes I am too cool for cool.

And the teachers and the kids standing in doorways, by
the drinking fountain, by the atrium, by the teacher's
lounge, by the cafeteria, the library, are laughing so hard
now their guts half hang out of them, and they are
laughing so hard it puts arcs of pain into my head and
there is the voice in me, the voice of my Penis, saying you
can't do it, you'll never do it, there were your boyfriends
back there in the tub of suds and sex and you could not do
it, you could only do it if you are by yourself and let's be
ridiculous, if you were with someone and actually and we
are really gettin' into far outs ville, doing it, you would
have to pretend you were by yourself in order to do it, and
when you are by yourself you have to pretend you are
with someone else with whom you are doing in, but even
in the fantasy where you are with Jimmy or Woody, you
have to pretend you are by yourself dreaming of
them....and I put my hands to my ears and the voice gets
louder and louder and it finally penetrates through the
cotton growing round my brain....

"Timmy? Timmy?"  The teacher in the black blouse, the
pleated skirt, the thick eye glasses, the hair back in a bun,
is calling my name and holding a piece of chalk in her
damp hot fat hand out to me and for a moment I thought
she had cut off Jimmy's or Woody's dick and handing it
to me with their blessing because they knew that would be
the only way I would ever get to suck on one, but that fell
apart in the fearful nanosecond, classified as wishful
dreaming, stupid wishful dreaming but wishful dreaming
none the less, and I addled to the board, where there were
things in my fuzzy wake up from dreaming in class vision,
that looked vaguely like numbers  as the fat big breasted
clown painted faced teacher slammed the chalk in my
hand like a football, hard and fast, like the touchdown of
all time depended on me, and the fate of the world hung in
the balance, and I could not do the problems, so the
teacher who had a really big mouth and a really grotesque
hillbilly accent would call, screamed, she always
screamed, I always came home from school with a
headache, for lots of reasons, but mostly her,  MONA
COME UP TO THE BLACKBOARD MONA AND DO
THE PROBLEM FOR TIMMY--

--and little shit Mona with sausage curls and a pert nose,
and little round Margaret glasses, and white blouse for
purity and dark skirt for ladylikeness, and those white
ankle socks and penny loafers would sashay to the
blackboard, haughtily take the chalk penis out of my hand
and do the problem in three seconds flat, while I'm
standing aside, the sweat of humiliation and fear on me
because everybody's laughing at me including the teacher,
everyone except Mona the dick cutter offer, the
emasculator, and then she would put the chalk in the tray
with much satisfaction and flounce her way back to her
chair, flipping her hair at me, the only notice she ever gave
me that I was alive. Great. Strike out even with that little
cold as ice bloodless vampire bitch.

As the teacher told me to be seated, as the class was not
laughing at me, had not been laughing at me at all, had not
for a long time, they were used to this comedy routine, it
bored them silly. So I sat like a swamp in my chair and I
looked at my Blue Horse notebook with all the math
problems in them with answers crossed out, done again,
crossed out, sometimes the pages had tears where my
Number 2 pencil eraser had crossed them out in such
goddam fury. I figure these school smells, especially those
of pencils, erasers, chalk, blackboard, sweat and terror
will haunt me till the day I die.

Class went on. And my dick was limp. I had a brain storm,
and wrote on a fresh page between the lines writing
backwards as Ray Bradbury instructed me in "Fahrenheit
451" these words in my incredibly bad left handed
penmanship (which made me write backward even worse
or better depending on your point of view, thus giving the
instructions an extra added touch of my own):

"Hey, Jimbo Shrimp, let's meat after school and just get
together for at the ah the root beer ah stand (cross out
cross out cross out) and a (tiny wavery little valentine
heart, can't even really tell what it is, might be a tonsil)
and ah you could ah (the ah's are dash marks, erasures,
cross throughs, sometimes tearing the paper) and I really
ahahahahah cross out cross out cross out luv cross out
cross out. Smooch. Smooch. (Cross out one smooth. I'm
dead enough with this as it is.) From,
The boy over two rows down three chairs."

And I put his name at the top. I tore out the paper,
careful, not to make a sound, though who could hear me
under the screeching mimi up there?, put my hand on the
shoulder, smelling of powder and sweat, all those sweaty
clothing smells will haunt me forever too, that was round
and weighted with the world it seemed, in front of me,
and the girl flinched, because she didn't know I was back
there where I had been all this school year, people forget
me easily, and I nodded, and she passed the note on to
someone who passed it on to someone.

This was the first time in my life I had done something like
this in class. In addition to what I did not do in class: I did
not chew gum. I did not laugh. I did not cross talk. I did
not fly paper airplanes or toss rubber bands or write dirty
words on the blackboard. Therefore I never got caught.
Therefore the first time I do something I am nailed.


`TIMOTHY WHAT ARE YOU DOING WHAT IS IN
THAT NOTE? YOU GIVE ME THAT NOTE
IMMEDIATELY"

I had not seen the trajectory of her big fat stupid eyes, or
where she was standing. She had been following the flow
of the note from hand to hand, some of the owners of the
hands reading it or some of it and giggling, (to my utter
dismay! God, where had privacy gone in this country?, it
was like opening a stranger's mailbox and reading their
letters, there must be a law telling people what to do, or
we shall dissolve into a police state) and she had now
called me out into the middle of High Noon for a gunfight
which was inevitable as it was in that movie, to die for
love of yes I've decided Jimmy of the oblong head and the
cowboy shirt and the clingy jeans, whose body I wanted
to ravage and touch just everywhere right before I kicked
off for Boot Hill and he to mourn me the rest of his life
and to forlornly visit my grave evermore..

  The teacher not knowing this, thinking it was other stuff,
NOT gay stuff, here?, in my classroom?, are you seriously
disturbed, standing right over Jimmy who was looking at
me mad as hell, shaming me, because he had read the note
and had gotten a look of utter terror (not too different
from the utter on mine, as I thought of udders, cow
udders, teacher udders, whether Mona would ever
develop udders, I could not hide in words this time
though) on his face as he looked from it to me and then
back to me again, I guess he had drawn hearts like tonsils
to girls he liked so he knew what I had drawn the note to
him, but it was probably the smooch thing that tipped him
off, before the teacher took it from him, read it herself,
and almost had a spasm, toppling a bit on the floor, from
desk to desk till she got her balance. The kids laughed. I
was the center of the universe right then. It felt scary, but
good too. I didn't think she knew the drawing was a
heart, but I guess she know what smooch meant, even if I
only used it once. Moral lesson: in love notes, draw a
heart like a tonsil, don't write the word smooch.

Jimmy's hand was trembling, the one that had held the
note, had I aged him fifty six years into palsy?, and then
they both looked at me like I had crawled out of the
sewer, the other kids breathless and open mouthed,
couldn't wait to see what would happen next, and I fell
into hot shameful poisonous  ice cream melting in the sun.
So long boy cocks playing etudes in my mouth, so long
swimming naked with them and pulling off their
underwear for a good looksee at the old swimming hole,
so long love bites and testicle touches and measurings and
so long sitting on Jimmy's face or Woody's or hell at this
moment even Mona's anyone's please, and I would not
have to lie next to imagination, and I would not have to
let imagination make even success a failure, but success
had to be a better failure than this, and I put my hands to
my buttocks, strapped them right back there, cause the
teacher was coming toward me with her largest paddle,
the one with the most holes in it, and my randy thought in
desperation, what would it be like for Jimmy or Woody or
the man in the moon at this point to paddle me while I
was tonguing and then sucking their lollies? Did the man
in the moon have a lolly?

He had a face and it was coming closer and closer to me
and it looked like that girl's face topped with the tiny
fright wig that Senor Wincis or however you spell it did
on the Ed Sullivan Show, the mouth birthing from the
little finger and the thumb, the tiny eyes painted on the
edge of the little finger, lipstick painted on the bottom of
the little finger and the top of the thumb, and that damn
red fright wig and that damned terrifying face staring right
up close to me, the rest of her bending her fat fat body
down at me, and then of course, all the kids were smiling,
and my eyes went to Jimmy's biggest smile I had ever
seen to date..

--so I got the living crap beaten out of me. Which gave me
a hard on, as I bent over, gripped my thighs as instructed,
thighs seemed an especially sexual word right about now,
I had never been whipped before in any way, I was no
longer a good boy, fine, save it and pass it to the next
poor bastard, the torch is passed, I felt so warm, not just
at my butt and legs, but all over, and looked at Jimmy
right out loud as she hit me and hit me and hit me on the
back of the legs cause it hurt the most. But I got a hard on
thinking of Jimmy doing that to me, and also because I
had never seen him so closely. And also cause the
paddling felt actually kind of good, under the pain
somewhere.

He knew I had a hard on. I knew from the sickness on his
face though he could not turn it away from me, and
there's not a damned thing you can do about it either is
there? Ha Ha Hurt Hurt. I had never seen anyone look so
angry. I didn't care. This was my moment in the sun. I got
to stare at him a good long time. The slams on my
buttocks and legs are for you my dear. When it was over,
I cried, inside, being manly now, the tears of love. Then I
asked permission to stand by my chair for the remaining
few minutes of class. I did not cry. I don't think. The
teacher said I could stand up. I said thank you. I was beet
and beat red all the way through. My face felt so hot I
feared it would fall off. It was only a few minutes to the
bell. Everybody save me faked looking at our homework
assignment.

Jimmy never stopped staring at me, this last class of the
day. When the bell rang, he left first, still looking back me,
running into Mona who huffed and said apologize, he told
her to eat it, and he still looked at me, as he misjudged the
doorway and ran into the wall, saying ouch, holding his
face, still looking at me, and he was mad as hell. He
waited outside the front of the school, till all the laughing
joking kids were gone, and being the center of the
universe was no fun, because I knew it would be
something mean like this that would happen to destroy it
if it ever happened at all which was ridiculous to think of,
this might be my biggest moment in my life, make use of
it. but how?

..So Jimmy, my love tapping his left foot, sucked my
eyeballs as I stood opposite him, knowing today it would
happen, what I had dreamed about all my life, we were
magnets to each other, we could not have walked away
from each other if we had tried, took me, as he walked a
league to the side of me, to the football field where the
darkness of the stands were. Could it be? Oh god? His
hand on my shoulder? There it was now. It was Jimmy's
HAND. It couldn't be. It was so warm. So nice. So
comforting. He was giving me a reward for doing this for
my King? My thinking was a little goofy at this point. Yes,
I know. It always is. He would have his way with me
when we got to the hot shadows under the stands where
the secret darkness flows. He lay me down in front of him.
He looked so intensely--Jimmy. You go you tiger you, I
thought.

He knelt in front of me. We began. He began first.  We'd
go get a root beer later. Oh yes. To slake our parched
thirst. But that was for much later on. Thank you God.
And then--then--we did it--it was just as expected. At
least I think so. As though I had ordered it straight from
heaven above. It was beautiful. Wasn't it? I don't know.
Did I fake it? I don't know. Did I like it? I don't know.
Did he fake it? No he most assuredly did not. You can't
fake something like that. I doubt if I will ever see anyone
that worked up again. He knew his business, I'll tell you
what.Was I there? Was the fantasy me there? I don't
know. In my fantasy, will only he be there, with me gone
while I was there at the same time? I don't know. The
questions came later. Now was Jimmy and Jimmy was
forever. I guess that's a good thing. I don't know. What's
forever? I don't know.

Oh the hell with it. You should have been there, Timmy,
you should have been there. There was a whole lotta
sweatin' goin' on, I mean to tell you. I do know that my
butt hurt like hell for three weeks and that's a fact you can
take to the bank, Frank.


Timothy Stillman
comewinter@earthlink.net