Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 14:55:32 -0700
From: Tim Stillman <novemberhourglass@yahoo.com>
Subject: Do You Wanna Know a Secret?

		       "Do You Wanna Know a Secret?"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


"Do you wanna know a secret?"

To which I thought, "No, Jimbo, do YOU want to know a
secret?"

It was Halloween night, around six thirty, and we sat on the
creaky paint peeled porch swing, in the shadows that seemed
juicy and ripe with berries of summer memories, the very
best way there is to live summer--to remember it, for it to be
GONE.

"You're running away from home? Joining the Marines?
Going to break up with Minelle? Going to jump off the roof?
Going to tell me you don't love me anymore?" Well, the last
question was again a thought, not said.

Jimmy put his hand on the top of my head. There were cold
chills running through me. As though he had staked me out.
Not as his claim. O hope hope. But as a vampire. O let me
see you naked, Jimmy. Full on. Not a sideways glance in the
pool shower every now and then when I get the courage.

"I'm going to the stars, Dougie." He laughed and removed
his cold hand and somehow colder fingers from the crown of
my head. I felt as though I had been mashed flat as a
worrisome pesky spider.

There were ghosts coming up the dark street, and under the
street lights of orange, each ghost seemed to be between
three feet and a little over five feet in height. Why do
children love death? Why was Jimmy's statement...?, hell, he
said that kind of thing all the time, Dougie. The name of me I
hated. Which everyone called me. But when Jimmy Jimbo
Jimarama called me that, it felt good, like a cool taste of ice
cream on a cold night, but in a warm house.

The ghosts  that cast shadows held  getting full paper sacks
and plastic sacks. I detected a diminutive Frankenstein
monster mask on one ghost's face. The costumes were cheap
and gaudy and silly looking and seemed to decry Halloween
as the dumbest holiday of the year, though it was no holiday,
except to kids.

"I'm going to go to the stars and I'm not going to use a
spaceship and it's not going to be imagined, or something in
a book or a movie. I'm going."

How I loved him, this boy who lived with his grandparents
across the street from my house. I was 13 and he was 15 and
I longed to rub up against him and giggle on his tummy and
sleep with him and wake up in the morning with him and the
sun nice and warm on a cold November day when we would
both have secrets kept from everyone else. Secrets in
tandem.

Jimmy was thin. I was not. Jimmy was handsome. I was not.
Jimmy was smart--but you get the picture.

"It's sex, I've decided, that will get me to the stars."

I laughed. I was not a laughing type person. But this made
me so. He hit me in the left shoulder. Hard. I would treasure
the pain for as long as I could, and when it left, I would
pretend it was still there, as I rubbed my shoulder happily.
He was ambidextrous, so I did not know if that was the same
hand he used to jack off. I lived in the hope of it.

"It's Minelle. It's me. It's going away."

We had finished eating candied apples awhile ago. I wished
the carnival of September would roll back into town like in
"Something Wicked This Way Comes." I thought about
going home and to my room, locking the door, and making
love to a ghost who was real but might as well have been a
ghost for all the difference it made.

Jimmy spoke with a Northern accent. He had lived here in
this southern town for four years now, but he was still of the
North. I thought at the time Michigan was heaven. But now
Jimbo was here, so here was Heaven, and I couldn't do one
rusty goddam thing about it.

I refused to hear him talk about Minelle. I just blocked it out
of my head. There was a joke on "The Andy Griffith Show"
the other week about blocking a hat. I had no idea what it
meant, but I did think that Opie and his friend Arnold had the
two greatest looking butts in the world. Sometimes I
dreamed about pulling their jeans down and....

"Minelle let me go around the world last Saturday."

I did not know what that meant. I did know I hated Minelle
who would go with anyone who had an Adams apple, except
me, and I didn't want her to, because she was my rival,
though she was not a rival of me in any way. She looked
Mexican and always wore white dresses with festive ruffles
of red and other bright colors on them, like she just stepped
out of Rosie's Cantina into the streets of Larado circa 1856.

"I'll use her to get to the stars." Jimmy's voice sounded cold.
There was the usual good natured kidding in it, the usual
way it made my heart feel merry, but it sounded colder than
the night, because Jimmy was Michigan and Jimmy and
Michigan combined on a getting cold Halloween night was a
bit too much, when you added in the new spooky quality of
him.

"It's the paranormal," Jimmy said. "It's FATE."

Not fate like fate but fate like FATE, which was a magazine
his grandmother read religiously and read to him and his
sister Kathy, and to me too for that matter. I thought it was
silly as hell. Jimmy did too. He had said so. Tonight the
scarecrows landed on his porch, the Frankenstein monster,
Count Dracula, the Mummy, Rin Tin Tin--Rin Tin
Tin?--don't blame me, I didn't make the masks or force these
kids to wear them. Jimmy stood up as they, not seeing us on
the side of the large round porch, proceeded to ring the door
bell of the house. But Jimmy, as was his custom, on
Halloween night, roared at them, bellowed like the moon
was coming crashing down to earth, the kids screaming,
tripping, falling down the cement stairs. No surprise though.
They were the same kids who came trick or treating every
Halloween, and Jimmy did that every Halloween.
Grandmother didn't have to buy candy for them. He took
care of that all by himself. It was a tradition. Lately, there
was more laughter from them, fearful laughter yes, but
laughter all the same, and maybe getting a little tired of it.

Jimbo returned to the swing. His slim body made weight as
he plonked down and the chain on my side creaked.

"Ever made it with a girl, Dougie?"

I wish there was a new "Twilight Zone" every week through
summer like the rest of the year too. It's my favorite TV
show, knows more about me than I do. How? The stars are
shining tonight and Jimmy will use Minelle to get to
them--but I do have that English comp I should get going on,
and adult hood is a long time away, and Jimmy never made it
with any girl--and--damn...I found myself perspiring. I found
myself scared. On Halloween night at least, it was allowed. I
guess.

I wished I had a mask. Jimbo was too big for Halloween
folderol, and therefore so was I. I never liked being treated
like an idiot when I rang a doorbell, me in my Popeye the
Sailor costume, mother made me, and the kids liked laughing
at me, but the adult things who answered the door laughed at
me more and wanted to pinch my cheeks. But look at the
real Popeye--someone got to those cheeks long before they
had a chance.

"You should have been there, Dougie."

Sigh. Yes. I wanted to be there. I wanted to tell Minelle
there on the banks of the Obion River how to get it right,
what boys wanted done to them, what I wanted done to me,
which surely Jimbo wanted done to himself. I mean how can
a girl jack off a guy if she doesn't have a penis? How does
she know how to stroke it? She might as well be having it
with a Martian or something. A boy knows the process, the
procedure. A boy knows how to make it hard and how to
coax it into happiness and how to stroke, then hold off,
press, then release, then rub the tip of the head and stretch
out his legs as far as they can go, and then to feel his balls
tighten and then to tickle the underside of the shaft, and then
to coax it to that final joyous moment, and then release and
release and cuddle it and make it happy and feel it all going,
pulled from the very roots of you, and the boy being in outer
space. That's how to get to the stars, Jimbo,  not through
some girl.

"I'm going to blackmail her, Dougie. She's not one of us."

My hard on was in the boy room shouting, look at me, and I
didn't hear him for a time, thinking if I could just move his
hand over to it, and then the words filtered through a little.

She's not one of us?

"You mean she's a Commie?"

"Go pull your dick, Dougie," Jimbarana said haughtily.
Hey!!! He had actually said it. He had given me permission. I
would be great sitting here on the October porch with my
best friend in the world, and pulling down my zipper and
pulling out my dick, and then pulling out his--and the
thought of it made me shrink. The thought of it made me
little. The thought of it made me me. And he would laugh
and laugh. And it's all that would be accomplished. O slap
my penis Jimber, slap my penis and tell it who's boss by god.

"No, you dummy. She's not a commie. She is NOT OF
THIS EARTH."

"You mean she's a Roger Corman movie? Who is she,
really? Paul Birch?" Oh hahahahaahah.

"Why the hell do I hang around you?" Jimmy turned to me.
He rarely looked at me. I did not like him to look at me. I
had lust plastered all over my silly face when he looked at me
and he knew it and I knew it but I didn't know it for sure
that he knew it and it was driving me out of my mind.

I shrugged. I said I was sorry. I always say I'm sorry. No
one ever says they forgive me. If someone said that, maybe
I'd stop saying I was sorry all the time or deck them--that's
one thing about being sorry, they never know at that point
you want to deck them but good.

Jimmy huffed and turned back to the front, and we watched
the night get colder and darker and feel good to us, tickle
our necks that still had a few hairs on them from the barber
shop when we got out of school, and our Keds toes touched
the wood floor and we rocked in unison for a time.

"She's an alien. She's a Martian. She has--something--
I--look, Dougie, can you keep a secret?" Can a caged bird fly
ever especially when his wings are cut and he only has eyes
for Jimbatookski? Hardly, is the answer. I nodded. We
needed jackets over our long sleeved shirts, but it was good
to be over summer and acknowledge its feverish finally at
long last death by shivering in our new friend autumn, for a
while at least.

"?"

That was from me.

"I know. You think I've been mentally creamed by FATE,
but I haven't. She is weird. You are weird but you are weird
in just a kind of kid way. But she is weird in a woman way.
But not a woman of Earth. A woman of the stars. And when
she goes back, she claims she and her parents are moving to
Kansas next month--"

KANSAS? Where dotty little red slippered Dorothy once
lived with Toto and Ray Bolger and tornadoes and all that?
Minelle was going away to--KANSAS? Which is not the
gateway to the stars in the sky or anything. Kansas was a
place on earth. Far far away. A state. Somewhere near
Oklahoma and Nebraska I think. My rival who is not a rival
is going to KANSAS? Oh god my dick jumped up and hit my
left ball which has somehow gotten twisted in my BVDS and
it hurts and hurt is a good thing, and if boys were men, and
Jimbeetle was a man so was I so I reached down to my
crotch like any normal red blooded American man would
with a few beers in his belly--candied apples would have to
do for me this night--and I pulled at my balls and my dick
and arranged them properly and didn't feel one centimeter of
embarrassment for the doing of it.

I was faking doing it as I did it.

Jimmy was not. He adjusted his own crotch tree and balls.
He did it without a second thought. He might not know he
was doing it at all. I was the height and depth of clumsiness
in my doing of it. He was just so fuckin' perfect I could kiss
his cheeks and make them big like Popeye's.

Jimmy proceeded to talk about sex. He never had talked
about it before. The sky was still and the night had halted
and the cold wind had stopped in its tracks, for he was
talking about sex.

"I never told her she was--well--she was odd-- for having
that thing. I mean, I just saw her naked last Saturday on the
banks of the Obion River, I mean I never saw her totally bare
before, and she never saw me totally bare before. But
it's--well, I won't go further--"

O god go further for a multitude of reasons, as many reasons
as there are stars in the sky. Jimmy talking to me about sex.
And about ready to blow Minelle's deep dark secret--did she
start it like that, like he had done it with me?--"Wanna know
a secret?" And then they took off their clothes and she

SHOWED

HIM?

WHAT?


Did she have three tits? Did her head come off in his hands?
Did she pull off her human skin and reveal her lizard hide?
What o please what?

"She---"

o god don't taunt me any longer. And more kids were
suddenly dropped on the porch and Jimmy went through his
routine and they went through their routine and it tired me
out and made me horny and made me want to touch him and
made me want to say she can have the stars, Jimber, we have
each other, and other old movie junk like that.

"She--"

Jimtimberino shy? Jimtimberino lost his cool? His marbles?
No not his marbles. Not till I get to play with them.

"She has a---"

o lord Jesus Christ come on already I'm a squirm monkey at
this point.

"A handle." Pause. He is sweating and wipes the sweat from
his face. What the hell is cool boy doing wiping sudden
sweat off his face in 40 degree weather? I kind of get scared.
I shrivel in the penis department again.

"You mean she's a--" Damn, can't think of the word. Come
on, there was one in the side show of the carnie last
September, almost made me lose my lunch of cotton candy
and five hot dogs "--a hermorph----something..."

"No, idiot, she's not a morphodite, good god almighty, give
me a little credit who I have sex with, sleaze bag. I mean a
man knows that up front. Idiot."

Up front. I forgot to laugh.

I felt some spooks looking over my shoulder. I hunched them
a little so the spooks could not get to them as readily. I
wanted to put my arm around Jimmy's shoulder, and say
come on old man, if Anthony Gethryn, who is me, can't
solve this little puzzle for you, no one can, I assure you, har
har har. Instead I pushed deep into my corner of the swing. It
was a box now and I was being nailed into it along with
Jimmy, the idea of closeness losing its appeal in such a
setting as that. I smelled very close by very cold and
unvanquished  and eternal dirt.

"She's got a--handle. Jeez." And he leaned forward and put
his Jimmy head in his Jimmy hands and sighed a Jimmy sigh
and I think maybe there might have been a tear or two
escape his Jimmy eye, though I would never ever let on. I
cried for him all the time. But this time I felt my own
coldness. This time I didn't think of anything but a girl
having a handle. A dick? But not a morphodite?

"She's got a handle"--and he whispered, like I whispered his
name when I dreamed as I masturbated that we were lying
with our legs entangled and kissing each other's tits and
rubbing each other into sheer ecstasy and dripping  warm
drowsy cum on each other's legs and bellies and how good it
felt to roll over and over with him on the banks of the
Wabash far away, where there were no girls, especially girls
who had handles. Jeez, I concurred.

"She--"Jimmy leaned back in the swing. He closed his eyes.
He manfully had both feet squarely on the floor at the same
time. Always a man, he.


"She had a handle right in the middle of her chest. Between
her two titties. I mean it's small and you can't see it unless
she's got her blouse off and even then you have to look for it
when it's dark but she showed it to me and she said---she
said isn't it shaped just like the Big Dipper?"

And my thought--she has a dick between her tits? Well, that
sounds sick enough. But it is economical and advantageous
when you think about it. I mean she can rub her own dick on
her own tits and not need a boy to do it. Like a boy's dick
being right on his chin and he can suck himself off and needs
no one else to do it for him. And then the power of what he
said hit me hard and--

Oh good golly night world I have come to join the circus
because my best friend has just barfed his brain out between
his fingers, gone round the bend, up and told it, jumped into
a jolly wheeze and left the surrounding country known as
sane land. I have never cared that much for sanity. It shows
little imagination and is pretty vapid and dull, but dammit, I
am now holding onto sanity like it's going out of style or like
the sand through the hour glass these are the days of our
lives---

"And it did. It looked like the Big Dipper. It did."

"She has a dick sticking out of her chest between her two
boobies?"


"It's not a dick. I examined it closely with my
flashlight--brought one cause she was going to strip totally
and I didn't want to miss anything--it WAS NOT A DICK. I
want that clearly understood. It was a handle. And it looked
like the big dipper and it had stars in it. It had stars from
outer space in it. And she rubbed my penis on it and it was
cold,  you can't imagine how cold, that handle, I never knew
a penis has to breathe like our bodies do, or it will suffocate
and die. I never knew such a thing was possible. I pulled it
away and it scared the hell out of me,  and it was grasping
for breath, but she showed me how to do it, how to breathe
at intervals, how my penis was to breathe at intervals, and
she rubbed it with the Big Dipper, really looked like the
drawings of the Big Dipper--I mean you look at those stars
in the sky that are supposed to be the Big Dipper, and you
think, where the hell did anyone get an outline of a dipper
out of that?, but in the drawings--"

An errant thought came to me--did you pump the dipper and
did you get space milk out of it? Did you taste it? What is
space milk like? And then this--STOP. Then this--GO
HOME DOUGIE. You want to be anywhere but here.

And Jimmy was babbling. He seemed to be what would now
be called manic. He was gone out of his gourd. Had he done
something to Minelle? Was he now going to do something to
me?  I recoiled. Why do I think he did something to her?
Something bad? Was this his insanity defense gambit? There
had been such violence in the way these words came out of
him.  Such a finality in them about her. And of course I so
wanted her gone. Kansas wasn't far enough. Neither was
Mars. Or the Big Dipper. And right at the moment I wanted
him gone too.

And then he started laughing. And I started laughing. And
we scared the crap out of ourselves and each other laughing.
And he said, "course you numb nuts, it was a dick and she is
a morph and her dick looks like a little boy's dick and it
made me excited and it was really neat the whole thing of it
and it's been all I could think of all the minutes since then
and I'm a fag and I'm sick and it did not look in any way like
the Big Dipper or the Little Dipper either and there really
wasn't anything between her tits but skin, and I didn't go
round the world with her, and I really did suck her goddam
little boy dick and then I got my clothes and got the hell out
of there, and I'm scared shitless something has happened to
her. Him. I sucked her dick. And I did it thinking of your
dick and I'm sick to death of hiding this crap, Doug."

Doug? Not Dougie? MY DICK? MINE? Holy chicago!

"I know you won't have anything to do with me now. I
know you always liked Rock Hudson and couldn't stand
Tony Randall, cause Hudson is straight, and Randall is a
homo, and it's just driving me nuts cause I want to suck you
and I'll even pay you if you want me to cause then you don't
have to have liked it or anything, and I don't even know if
Minelle has that morphodite dick or I dreamed the thing up
and going to space would kill me and purify me and I'd float
around up there forever and...."

So Tony's hand was laid on Rock's leg. There was my fear.
And did I really honestly want another boy...I mean when it
comes down to it.... Was I wrong about all that...? But
Jimmy trumped fear. And we sat that way for a time. It was
late enough, the trick or treaters didn't come by anymore.
The TV from the living room was turned off, the background
of the chittering sound of it ended, and lights were dimming
their orange in the house, signaling his grandparents were
going to bed and it was time for Jimbusco to come inside
too.

We sat there five more minutes. We did not talk during that
time. I could feel Jimmy trembling.  I did not touch him.
Though how I wanted to He had just gushed this stuff out.
My head was dizzy and hurt. And I thought then, really
thought then, about being with him, and taking off his
clothes, and he taking off mine, and it could be really real,
and us kneeling before each other and the tips of our  hard
dicks touching and my hands on the globes of his butt and his
on mine, and it excited the living hell out of me. It also made
me mad as hell. It also made me somehow think about
Minelle differently, though in what way I did not know. It
made me fear for her. And it made me fear for me. And it
made me fear for Jimmy.

Consider this--

A hero makes a series of admissions you never thought you
would hear in a million years. A hero shows he is leaving
sanity far behind. A hero may have done something quite
horrible--why did I keep thinking that? Well, I thought back
to the past week. Jimmy was always with Minelle at lunch
and in the hall, walking to class. I always blotted her out of
my vision, especially when she was with him. Made a kind of
outer space darkness out of her. I never saw her. But it was
more than that this time. I hadn't had to make a darkness out
of her. She had not been at school this week. Jimmy had
other friends he was with. But she had not been there. Maybe
I had succumbed to FATE too.

 A hero is weak. A hero has needs. A hero may be a nut. A
hero has put himself on the line for a boy who would have
loved him with everything he had if the hero had not been
such a damn hero all the time. If he hadn't till the last part of
tonight treated me like a skin rash. If he knew I wanted him,
knew all those sideways looks I made at him, all my dreams
of taking down his jeans and briefs and putting his dick in my
mouth and fucking him that way, for both of us, if so, we
were idiots, and had no idea one what was going on in the
other person's mind and everything was a lie and just where
the hell had Minelle Darnell gone and what had Jimberiski
done to her?  Was the Kansas thing a lie too?

He had hurt me all the time I had known him. Kept me
distant.  Was I lucky to this point? Had Minelle made a
mistake in also not being distant? I'm feeling sorry for a
girl????? And if he had kept me distant because he wanted
just the opposite?--it wasn't much better.

I did this.

I unzipped my jeans. I parted my BVD slit. I took out my
dick. I rubbed it. The night was so cold on it. Though not as
cold as the outer space I saw in Jimbo's eyes. His eyes that
were directly on it. I got it surprisingly hard in spite of or
because of the turmoil inside me. It was fun being outside, in
spite of the other stuff, with my dick sticking straight up and
hard before my friend. I said, "Eat me." So did it.

He fell to his knees, hard, must have hurt, and took my dick
in his  tough calloused boy hands and was readying to put it
in his Jimbereseque mouth, when I stopped him, put my
hands on his, and pulled it and myself away.

"What did you do to Minelle?" He sat back on his heels.
We'll just have to wait on this Maltese Falcon, buddy.

"I don't really....I don't. I've tried to remember. Really have.
Something though. Something." He was speaking to my dick
and not to me. Easier that way, I guess. How accepting  and
matter of fact I was of his wanting my dick. Who exactly was
crazy now?

"We'll have to find out, Jimmy. And about you too. You've
weirded me out tonight, big time. First we have to find out
about her. My dick's yours if you want it. But later on. I
discover I have power over you, maybe even more than you
have over me.  I have to think about things." Man, what the
hell was wrong with me? Ready to be enveloped by the
warm wet Jimmy mouth and I've GOT TO THINK ABOUT
THINGS????????  Minelle who? What had she ever done for
me? Why did I care? Great. Perfect time to find out I've got
a conscience. Thanks, God.

 I put myself back in my jeans and zipped up.

He looked sad at it and up at me. Odd. Confused.
Remembering and not remembering. He put his hand to my
crotch. It felt so warm. But at a long distance from someone
in me who was thinking about other things.

"We have to call her parents, and if they don't know where
she is, we have to call the police and tell them what you
know." I was doing dialogue based on that of detective TV
shows. But I was being real as hell about the whole thing.
Jimbo the Great needed my help. Jimbo the Great just
needed help. Period. He was always the sentence. I was
always the comma. Maybe things were beginning to reverse
in that. He sat there looking at my crotch. His left hand
delicately on my knee cap, his right arm dangling beside him.
I had the candy. He might get it if he wanted. If things
worked out.

"First, let's tell your grandparents."

"Please, no."

I stood up. He tried to push me back down.

"I have always loved you, Jimmy. I want to have sex with
you more than I want to see the dawn of a new day. But
there's all sorts of ways of loving someone. This way too."
God, I was being so Harold Robbins.

I did the impossible--I held out my hand and he took it and I
helped him up. He seemed so broken, like there were all
these shards of glass in him and he was in great pain. There
weren't wings on him anymore. He suddenly was very
human. Perhaps even more than I.

I helped him in the door. We were never to be children again.
Most people I guess don't remember when they stopped
being children.  Don't have this thud fall down of a
demarcation.  Like night, a thick black heavy stage curtain,
hurtling down all at once--slam, over, half taking off your
head. It's a gradual process. But not for us. I looked out at
the stars over my house as Jimmy went inside the foyer
where the lights were dim and his grandparents readying for
bed. He went so slowly so unsteadily to their bedroom door
and knocked like a blind man guessing at what it is to be
sighted.

I looked out at the stars and said under my breath, "look for
another dreamer, boys, cause hopefully this one's going to
stay with me. With the Milky Way kid." I tried to laugh.
There was no laughter left in me.

I went inside and closed the screen door and the wooden
door. I took a deep breath of the too hot house. Halloween
was over. Or just beginning. The dark secrets were just
starting to unravel.