Subject :Camming with Venus
"Camming with Venus"
by
Timothy Stillman
Nathan found himself plopped into the first day of summer. It was green and lush and he was feeling the warm zephyrs before the wind got hot and humid. It was early morning. The sun just beginning to come up. He thought, I will love Dean today. I will love Dean and nothing in the world will change that. Not even his eyes.
He was downtown at the moment, was Nathan. He was down town where the stores were still closed for several hours, except for the coffee shop which opened a half hour ago. He liked to go in there of a summer morning and see all the business men chatting up the waitress in her white uniform. The men in their black or blue or gray business suits. He liked to sit on the stool at the counter beside them and pretend he was one of them. And he would not think of Dean's eyes.
He spied Dean on hotmail a few times. He was in love, was Nathan. They communicated by symbols. They communicated in that traitorous mode where love is nothing more than the words and the images. And the images were great and sharp and colorful and crystal clear, since they were coming from Venus and all. You had to make allowances of course.
Dean was a biped. Dean was golden. Dean was a dream. Dean was a million miles away. Nathan's mom was always saying so and so is a million miles away. That was Dean. And he longed for Dean. He longed for Dean's six arms round him, and he longed for the gaseous belch that was the center of Dean's stomach or what passed for a stomach. They rubbed each other on the feelie drive. They felt each other. Dean was purple. Nathan was human and kind of orange.
They had gotten past that species barrier. It was a kind sky this morning. It was a kind and majestic thing to be up this early. And only a few businessmen and the waitress at the diner down the street. Dean was good with Venusian. Nathan was good with English. His teachers always said so. Dean was beautiful, Nathan thought that over and over, and he was heavy and his head was purple and his eyes--oh no, that would be telling.
They would never meet. Concourse between planets was outlawed, had been outlawed since Nathan had been 10 or so. He was now 13. His hopes were pinned on a screen of electricity and the feelie drive and the words that made no sense. Because they computed and computered mathematically. At least Dean did. Nathan was a numb nuts when it came to math.
They masturbated in their own fashion, watching each other. Avidly. Nathan was slim and bony and had a little penis all the boys in phys. Ed. laughed at. He was not of a time. He was a slippery cuss. He loved to rub his hands over his dick hard and look at Dean who was looking back at him--and he had trained himself not to look at Dean's eyes, which was the utmost thing in Nathan's mind and which he could not stop thinking about. And the sex was beautiful. It was a lyre at dawn. It was a coming together that made him feel butterflyery inside.
The fact that they were so far apart meant that they were telling distance and space to take a hike. Dean dreamed. He dreamed little miniatures of love, he dreamed little boy space suits and of course in them little boys and he put them in little bubbles and he blew the bubbles out at the screen and through the screen Nathan reached his hand and caught the bubbles like multicolored bright and dancy and airy soap bubbles and they popped into being, the children who looked like variations on Nathan for Nathan was quite fond of himself, before the images vanished and he was left with nothing in his hand but a promise.
Dean told stories in words. His words were pictographs. He sent Nathan a drive in which to insert his penis and through this device Dean could actually move each of his three mouths onto it which brought Nathan off every time. Dean's mouths were like moth mouths and musty and dusty and dry and sweet and summery when August rolls round and no one cares anymore if summer stays or not. Except Nathan. Nathan always wanted summer to stay.
For Dean was summer.
Dean did not breathe like Nathan. Nathan had never been seen by Dean as anything else than a curiosity. Than a human being who Dean did not visit often because Dean did not like Earth that much, though he had never been here, though he had been computer sexing for some time now, Earthlings too, but they seemed mostly like cows to Dean, and he was referring to Martian cows but it was still an insult.
Nathan waited for Dean. And Nathan knew as he walked himself into the blue walled diner with a few businessmen on stools, sipping coffee and eating hot cross buns or eggs and bacon and as Nathan took the stool at the end of the gray counter and watched the henna haired woman with the white waitress uniform on serve steaming hot coffee to one of the customers, as the desultory convo passed round him unheard save as little buzzings, he thought he would not think of Dean.
Because Dean was a Venusian. And it was not outlawed to speak or even to have sex with one on comp, still Dean was too much for Nathan. Dean was too much distance. Dean was a huge balloon who could sail around pirate ships on black skies on his planet with the steam hissing up under him. Dean was a magic wand. A wish that did not wish back. A wish that was star stuff and dream scans. Dean was nothing more than a hand full of stars you could look at that could make their little circle of dreams and then poof they were gone.
They were nothing to one another but sex. Dean was a curious beast. Nathan was a love sick one. Dean had two trunks. One in the back of his collapsible gaseous chest and on his back that was longer than his front. And Dean would open those trunks and out would pour Venusian death beams--that showed--
--Nathan himself naked with all the beautiful boys in all the schools around the earth as Dean sucked Nathan off with mouth moth, and Nathan would lie back in his chair at the comp and he would see himself as having sex with all of them all of the time all of them in love with him and Nathan was in love with them and knew them and they felt his body and he felt theirs and he knew their mouths and their nips and their thighs and he loved to kiss their rosy little penises as they felt him with their warm human hands and 69ed with him and leased him their time and their love and their aching eroticism, and Dean sucked him but it was all of them with their penises in his mouth--
--one at a time, while all at a time---
--and the comp was an embroidery of human flesh. The comp screen was delight of heart window and open it up and see the school boys standing there in the peace sign of planets finally not at war, as Venus and Earth and Earth and other planets had been for some time, recent time, wounds still wide open, and Nathan would not look at Dean's eyes because the wounds were there and made Nathan so sad about the whole business that had happened long before he was born.
But not long before Dean was born. Dean was sex pure and simple. Other ppl wouldn't understand why he loved a being that looked like a giraffe and an elephant and an aardvark and a sailing ship that was all paint colors spilled over on it and looked like it had crashed into a jetty millennia ago. So Nathan told no one about Dean. And Dean kept it to himself too. He did not see why the worm of Nathan and his littler worm were so endlessly fascinating to Nathan. He did not know why Nathan was so egocentric and never figured out the boy images he sent Nathan to make love to were all little deals of cards of himself.
They were all the emptiness Dean could think of. Dean sipped Nathan like a milk shake. Nathan could still only dry cum but to Dean it was like what would be Nathan's version of a warm milk shake and Dean loved the taste and Dean was on the comp all the time with twelve other planets with various from four to twelve individuals on each one at the time he was playing about with, like with a tennis ball. Dean did not love. Dean did not like. Venus is a very boring planet. Dean was one of the most bored of them all.
Nathan had ordered chocolate milk and sausage and eggs. He was repasting now. He would not think of Dean and how Dean got longer and longer between comp visits. Dean loved Nathan, because Nathan loved Dean and would have it no other way. If Dean would have had sex with other Venusians he would have gotten pregnant and died because that was how it worked on Venus with males because Earth had sent a virus there and it was wiping out the Venusians right and left. Earth had destroyed the civilizations of Venus, had savaged the land and its beings, and Venus was dying. And the virus had turned off four of the twelve brains each Venusian had had. So they could not figure out why when they had sex, would have been to an Earthling like watching Latin verbs tense with Latin objects in ancient Latin script, they died, they got pregnant and they died. There were no female Venusians. They had been deleted first of course. They always were.
Nathan didn't know either. He just knew he was hooked up to a comp and that was where the world were for him. He was quite a catch on his home planet. Nathan was going to be somebody. He was already writing a book on all of this. It was called "Put it in your Pocket, Mate"--he didn't know why that title, he just liked it.
The summer sun was coming up higher and blushing red beams into the long big windows of the diner. More men were coming in and sitting down and reading newspapers and ordering breakfasts and chatting up the henna haired waitress. And Nathan had finished his breakfast as the crease of day was officially announced and the men started getting ready to leave to open their shops or offices early, while others stayed for a few more cups of coffee and more comic pages reading.
Dean's eyes then. Dammit. Nathan had never looked at them. Nathan was too busy getting sexed by boys older and younger than him. He was too busy feeling their warm and holding them tight and singing little nonsense poems into their delicate frames and their cozy pink chests, and how he loved their little penises sticking straight up for him to put his mouth on as Dean's mouth was on Nathan and Nathan was loved and beloved and he humped his butt and they humped theirs and they played between each others legs and they vanished just when they came--they puppy licked him and lapped at him--and then they popped and they were gone--just not gone as soon as the soap bubble boys were gone--but gone anyway--
And Nathan was suckled by Dean's four tongues and the tongues looked at him and smiled at his penis and did the most wonderful moist things you would not think a moth mouth could possibly ever do. It was like hooking into summer deep and feeling it sucking back at you and singing to you and enveloping you and declaring you what you always knew you were inside yourself, and it was nothing lodestone, and it was nothing murdstone, and you never had to leave your room, and you never had to go to school, and you never had to grow up and grow old, and you were one of Dean's approximately forty lovers at a stretch and if you looked in Dean's eyes you would know--
--you would know--
--indifference.
Horrible world. Nathan didn't know the word for it. But he knew how it felt. He would be a big shot some day. A big shot important writer. And he would not need Dean then. He would not have to avoid looking into those two huge terrifying orbs, terrifying because they were the doors, he knew he knew, to nothing, to not even dark space, falling forever, not hell or heaven or caring or not caring. It was not beyond not caring because it would have to travel a million miles to get to not caring and then it would not even be one inch closer to it. Not caring would be a gift compared to this.
The waitress poured him some more chocolate milk without him asking. Nathan drank it in two large gulps, hoping to cure the panic that had just surged inside him. Dean was hippo flanks and little doors in those big fat legs that Nathan could go exploring in and find little boys having sex in caverns dark and blue and bright and shiny and gray and gold all at once and they would let him have some of them and they were pretty--they were gold and bright as pennies and they had little penises and bigger ones and they had long arms and shorter ones and they knew Nathan from the inside out and he watched them like a voyeur with each other and they smiled and invited him in and he kissed them down their bodies and they kissed him down his and they made butterfly kisses at his hard on and they held his balls in their hands or their mouths as though they were Renna eggs from the Megellan nebulae. And they loved him as he needed, as he deserved to be loved, and they came first time or dry came or came on his hair or came on his abdomen or they did not come but came with little pops of sighs and explosions and the comp screen was a field of boy flesh--
--and personalities and identifies and names, for that was how Nathan spent his time between Dean's shorter and shorter visits, he named the millions of himself, he gave personalities to others that were just like his own though he did not know it, he kept fiddling with Dean's dreams and never asked what Dean's dreams were for himself or how he got the name Dean--but it didn't matter--
--Dean was indifferent. Dean had no dreams. Dean was not even amused. Dean held out no hopes. Dean was dying on a planet that was dying from a war far distant for he was far old and space and leaping and flying and looking like a helium balloon sometimes red sometimes garish purple, or looking like a whale out of water, none of that was for his sake or for his interest or because anyone loved him at all, for there was no love, there was only desolation. So he found other planets and other beings on those planets.
And he whiled away his time. Till they figured it out. Till they figured that he was doing his own war on them, to all the beings he met on all the planets including Earth that had warred with Venus because one always wars with the Planet of Love, one always has, from time beginning, whatever name they called it, they always somehow, all the planet beings saw it for what it was and they hated it, because that was where the love resided for everything, and on every planet one always kills that thing first and then longs for it evermore.
Some never figured it out. Some did. Most did. To their chagrin and rue.
And now Nathan did. Finishing his milk, paying at the metal cash register and out the air conditioned chilly diner to the getting hotter day and sidewalk and store fronts and Nathan stumbled on a crack, break Dean's back, though it didn't matter, Dean had forty or so more in a trunk on his withered left arm as he hovered in space and sucked boys off and terremaen and selactanes and martians and drenemtsh and other beings here and yon and there was such a lot of here and yon where Dean put the virus of indifference.
Of which love is the opposite. Every month, then every two months, then every three--don't think about it any more than you think about his eyes--for the eyes told you crystal lids and millions of little eyes inside them--for Nathan had seen the eyes without seeing them--and the eyes said this--you will not hurt when I go away, you will not remember, you will not sigh longingly for me, you will however sigh longingly for yourself and what you saw in me--and you will know that that is the greatest curse I can give you, up here in my airless climes, up here in my dead and devastated planet, up here where love resided and you never had the guts to find out for yourselves you with your rockets and your bombs and your pains and your stupidities and your lies and your pomposity and your need to own the solar system and your idiot fools gold that you took back to collect on your planets in the spoils of victory that turned to dust and sand and blew away on the solar winds in your hearts that beat still, and wish against the beating itself.
Nathan felt collapsed. He felt as though he was in a glove and the glove had collapsed all round him. And there was no more Nathan. There was no Dean. He did not feel sorry for Dean. He felt sorry for himself. He stumbled on a sidewalk crack, fell against a jewelry store window, caught himself in time, and leaned there for a moment, delicately, against the glass, knowing for the first time how fragile glass is and how tenderly and cautiously and respectfully you have to treat it. He wished Dean would be on comp this Saturday afternoon for Saturday afternoons were for some reason the loneliest times of the week.
He didn't know what to do without Dean. How he lived for this:
! ? 678=12345 90909090 ((())))) 3erttfh 1222222erreeh (and then the comp screen would turn to boys and oh the fun we had)
Nathan stood up and stumbled once, and then he walked on home. He hoped that ah--what's the name?--Dick?--no, Dean, yeah, he hoped Dean would be on line today. Or something.
The plan was working. But of course Dean was fairly indifferent to the entire enterprise.
the end
B Keeper silvershimmer@earthlink.net