"Boy in the Mirror"
by
Timothy Stillman
He stands before a dusty mirror. It is candlelight night. He is blonde. He is looking at himself. He is in a Roman villa that is old and ancient in disuse. He is bending over slightly. He is boy. He is thick blonde hair. His body is a stream of beauty made human. He is pale. He is slightly shy. He is wearing only white briefs. His back is a small comma. You can see his spine shadows in it. His chest is thin. His nipples are pale. He is pulling down his briefs, keeping his eyes on his reflection in the mirror. His face is kind. It is delicious. It has pale lips. And blue eyes. He is pure innocence. He pulls down his briefs after a single silent sigh. His hips are rose buds of winter when you remember them a long time later.
He steps out of his briefs. He is ecstasy. He has a certain air about him as though he could be anyone he wanted, but he chose to be himself. He stands now, after the briefs are off. He looks at his face in the mirror. His chest, the chest of a child. His abdomen, the abdomen of a child. Thin. And wanting so much. He looks down at his penis and balls, which the mirror does not show us. He stands straight. This is me, he thinks. He is a precision that has come to find out he has a body. That he approves of this body. That it makes him somebody. For the very first time perhaps.
He dreams of love. A different kind. He has seen so much pain. He wishes to be alone. He studies his face, pretends to shave, pretends to be a man and not fourteen. He stands unashamed not. The shyness is still with him. But he loves being naked. Being naked with the man who has just left the room. Who has been naked when the boy was clothed. The boy dared not look at the man, naked, shaving. He must not be bothered by the young man's casual nudity. He is after all still a boy. Of dignity. And propriety. He talks to the young Italian man as the man finishes shaving and dressing. The man goes to lie on the bed. The boy holds onto the bed post. Talking. Shyly. Talking like to a friend. "Would you be my friend?" the boy asks coquettishly. The man says something inconsequential. Wanting..waiting...thinking why do I have to wait?..thinking everything lost and won at this moment at the same time.
And when the man leaves the dusty tired bedroom of this rubble of a palace, the boy goes to the mirror and imitates the man, pretends that he too is shaving. Then the idea, then taking off his shirt, slowly, luxuriating in it, This is sex and not sex. This is who he is. This is a boy discovering the uncharted land of himself. He does not know he was trying to seduce the man. He does not know as he is bare chested, and as he begins the long slow dive to remove his pants, that he has always been a sexual child. That his face is like summer directly after an tremble ice floe winter. He looks almost in a splendid pain. As he has almost always looked like that. The shy awakening of awareness of awkwardness. The shy longing as he stands without briefs, and looks down at himself. Thinking: this is mine. This is me. And he turns from the mirror for a moment to the bed where the man has lain moments before lain. Then hurriedly back to the mirror. He is safe only in the scope of reflection. He is perfect. He is always surprised by the world. He is always surprised by people. He sees delicately and more deeply than he is aware of. His back is straight. His hips are small crescents. His crack is a merry doorway, waiting. His penis is hard. It is of coral, as is the rest of him. He takes it in his left hand and holds it, touching the hood of it, feeling the shaft of it, holding his balls in the palm of his other hand. Small balls. Little pubic hair. He has a thick heft of hair on his head, as though stolen from a golden coin that used to be the sun before it died in retrospect of failure in the match against this boy. He is quiet. He has been silent most of his life. There is fear in him. There is need of fear, considering what has happened to him. It is boy examining boy. It is nakedness as bold and loving and afraid as the whole of galaxies.
He begins to masturbate. His hips move as he slowly moves his crotch inward and outward. He is rose bud. He is the first thing he sees in the morning. He is not obsessed with himself. He thinks, I am beautiful, he thinks, I am average, he thinks will someone love me?, the man?, if he ever returns? He wants to seduce himself. He wants to lie on the bed of dust and age and masturbate, really for the first time, that has a meaning, that is more than just an incredible good feeling. He wants the man to walk in on him doing this. His face is perplexed. He is lost. He is lost. The wilderness of woods that surrounds this broken down palace. He is afraid of what has happened. And what will happen next.
He wishes to be naked all the time. He wishes to say, see me and desire me, and I will say--no. He wishes a girl with him. He wishes to be naked with her. He is so tentatively here. He is no longer bundled child, but he is not adult yet. There is such serene silence on this hot bug filled summer night in this sweaty cramped room. He wishes to die. He wishes to live forever in exultation. He wishes to smile one of those teary smiles he is so self famously for. He wishes to stay. He wishes to run away. He wishes to be made love to. He wishes to hit someone. Or have someone hit him. He puts both hands on his hard on. He strokes it masterfully. Warm. Hard. Blood like an ocean flowing madly in him. Fully. Completely. He looks in the mirror at his face and his mouth goes ooooooo. He is so excited. He closes his eyes in the candle lit darkness of the room. He cums. Spurting. Splattering. On the mirror. He does not smile. He is beyond that now. He has never smiled much. But now he is just a boy delivering a paper in the fourth form.
Come now. No. Stay away. I shall stay here naked, with my come running out of my penis, and on to my flat abdomen and down my left leg. I shall stand here and be a British boy with a high piping girl voice. I shall stand here like an orange waiting to be dressed then unpealed by hands other than my own, which he finds a disturbing thought. I shall stand here and be me. I shall be a painting. I shall be a statue. In front of a prominent building in Rome. People will love me with their eyes, for centuries. And with their hands and bodies too? That he is not so sure he wants.
Whoever and whatever sex and love might be. He holds his throbbing small still penis and he feels the cum in his hands. It is sticky and white and thick. He puts one finger to it, and then to his lips, and tongue. He feels deliciously decadent. He swallows. This, he thinks, will give me the world. Or not. He looks at the mirror. At his face. At the golden sunlight that is him. And he will wait. He will wait. Though not for long. For he needn't. And he knows that, akimbo arms, then hands on hips, secure, insecure, and sly smile and a hand tracing his nipples and down his chest and he looks at himself in the mirror and feels--
Pride. Just as long as its his own hand doing it. But not, he thinks, for long.
the end