"Can I Do It Till..."
by
Timothy Stillman
(To the heroes of my childhood--they were just so amazing --they still are)
He was not going blind. He had been told by three doctors of varying eminence that he was not going blind. That this was a very simple run of the mill operation. Therefore, he did not doubt for a minute he was going blind. He had learned a long time ago to trust doctors is to let yourself into a big ass whippin' and since he was not Doctor Dobson, the monster of all the monster doctors, who fondly remembered sado-masochistic games with Dad, he did not like to be let in for an ass whippin'.
Greg kept trying to tell him and Greg was adamant on this point, that Bart was not going blind, which made Bart think that Greg and the doctors, save for Doctor Dobson, who was living in another state and did not know Greg or Bart, but who would if he could, knew damned well Bart was going blind. They just wanted to get his hopes up that he wasn't. Cause then it would hurt worse when he did, and they said, god, I can't understand it, you've gone blind, how did that happen? and you can't sue us for your faulty body parts, here's the bill to you and your insurance company.
Doctors are like that. Yes, they are.
But Bart hoped desperately Greg was not like that. Greg was this sweet kind somewhat heavy but firm wiggle worm from high school who was in Bart's English Lit. class, and who was also in Bart's bed with of course Bart because being there without Bart and alone would defeat the purpose of being in bed with Bart if Bart was not there, which was circular reasoning that Bart was baffling his class with this day. It was now the night of this day But day would come again tomorrow. Maybe Bart would see it. Maybe he wouldn't. It was his eyes, you see. He was going blind.
"It's laser surgery. I looked it up on the Net. Takes ten minutes. You see well. You're an out patient. Your hospital stay is about an hour after they get through with you. It's assembly line stuff. You will not go blind, Bart."
Well, Bart knew it was assembly line stuff. But it was his eyes. And his eyes deserved a better definition than being assembly line stuff. Shoes were assembly line stuff. Eyes deserved better. Which is what he told Greg that night of the day of circular logic, which was still making his head spin, trying to explain it to his classes, because it had something to do with one of the stories he was forced to teach and they were forced to read. Of course he had read the story. It would be difficult to teach it otherwise. Though he knew teachers who did just that.
They had moxie.
He wished he had moxie.
But he had Greg. Who leaned over and kissed him and lay his naked legs entwined with Bart's. Greg was a beautiful boy. He made his weight count for beauty and for sturdiness. He made his arms strong, Bart liked to think, just for him. This tough football star quarterback who was so gentle with Bart as though Bart were a fragile piece of toast Greg was gingerly, so to speak, putting the butter on, being sure and careful and delicate with all of it. Because he loved Bart, even more than Bart loved Greg. But Bart refused to believe that, because he knew Greg was conning him, because Bart knew the score. They get you to say you need them and then they get to say you're boxing me in, I don't need that, I need my space, man. And Bart felt like a spaceman right now.
Because his glasses were off and on the bedside table. And the small soft lamp was on and the walls were sea blue, and Greg was sharing his bed, and Bart was making love to him the way you make love to a dream that you know is going to have a very bad bumpy slide down the rocks of the cliff which seemed so solid just a moment ago, so it was best not to be fooled or admit you had been fooled that it was solid at all.
I knew that. You didn't trick me. But Bart was always tricked.
Greg loved Bart to suck him because Bart would get so excited and would just do all these mouth and tongue gyrations, a regular Circus he was with his mouth and tongue. Trapping Greg's lion penis in the lion cage of Bart's mouth and Bart's tongue the whip that was forcing the lion penis of Greg to beg for o please sir mercy. As Greg pushed up and down on Bart's head and Bart rode like a piston the train of Greg's lovely large thick penis, waiting for the cream rinse to set in and then swallowing it all post haste.
Bart had his eyes closed. He was trying to see, so to speak, what it was like to suck a penis he could not see. He was trying to remember if he could the exact look of the penis, so he could hide the image in his head like the Book People held books in their heads until they could set them down again on paper when books became legal once more. Fahrenheit 451.
And he could not remember what Greg's penis looked like. He was sucking it. Outlining it, silhouetting it with his tongue, every parsec of it, touched and tasted and he could not remember what it looked like and from that grew the roots of what Greg's body looked like and what Greg's face looked like too, and he could not remember that either. And he broke out in a cold sweat in the overly warm bedroom and he pulled away from the penis that he did not remember and he tried to remember what any penis looked like, his own, or in pictures or movies, nada again. He tried to remember what his face looked like but could not, not that he liked his face. which he did not, but if he could remember his face then he could remember the far more important face of Greg. And he could not.
He tried to remember the bedroom, eyes still closed, as Greg's penis popped out of Bart's mouth, and could not. His heart was trip hammering. He was scared out of his goddam mind. He found he could not breathe. He felt Greg's hands on his shoulders, wondering hands, hands that did not understand, hands that thought Bart was about to be ill, have a seizure or heart attack or something, and for the first time Greg was frightened too, and his hands were frightened, and they conveyed that fright to the thin arms of the man named Bart, would he have a name?, an identity?, after blindness?, would he exist at all? Would Greg be repulsed by him because Bart would carry a white cane and would sit on the sidewalk, holding a tin cup for quarters and collar buttons passers by tossed archly and with much superiority inside? And Bart stumbled to the bathroom and lay on the tile flooring, fell on the tile flooring. And all during this, all during this, Greg was following him, an asterisk suddenly in his teacher's life, not number uno, not the head cheese, not the light of Bart's life, and for a long terrified moment, Greg wondered if he, Greg, was dying. He had never in his life felt that before.
He knelt beside Bart like a supplicant. He knelt beside him and stroked the back of his teacher's graying hair that was still too long for the school board to approve of, but he had tenure and was a top teacher so eat that, school board. Greg looked at Bart, on his stomach on the cold tile. He looked at his teacher's a bit too flaccid hips. He looked at the crooked spine line, bumpy and not attractive. And he looked, he could not help it, it was in the triangle of his vision, his own cock that had light gold red hair at its base, the head was slightly purple, it was still partly erect, and he wondered for a breath freezing minute if he would ever have Bart or anyone else to suck it again.
Then he cut the thought in half, did Greg, thinking what kind of greedy self involved bastard am I? I'm not like that. And it was true, he wasn't.
But for the first time in this eight months of their affair, Bart looked old. Looked wasted. Looked tired unto dying. And Bart lay on the floor and began to silently weep. For a time, Greg was afraid Bart would go blind. And if Bart did not see Greg, then could Greg exist? And if Greg couldn't exist, would it be like Greg going blind too? And if he went blind, could he remember what Bart looked like? Could he remember Bart's sucking him and how much fun it was seeing an adult man of some years sucking Greg's rampant boy cock? And how it felt? The coming? The rumbling before it? The sweetheart kisses. The returning the favor. Bart's wide eyed boy eyes when he saw Greg naked before him each and every time, for Bart, like the first time. To not be was to not feel or remember or see or remember seeing.
And Greg collapsed on the floor and held Bart. He took his cock which was now going down and rubbed it against the slightly hairy leg of Bart, closest to the boy, like a mother wiping a cold dish rag against her son's forehead when he had come home from school with the flu. Greg felt a knot in his stomach and he did not know what the knot was. Bart also felt a knot in his stomach and he knew what it was. It was--ta da --nostalgia. The sweet sad old songs that he had lived in for so long until Greg had come bounding into his bed and stripped off his jersey and football pants, his shoes and socks already taken off, and had sat on the bed with his knees under him, and told Bart, "suck me till I can't stand your hot mouth one more minute" which he had learned from a fuck movie he had seen once when a friend's parents were away and the boys had gotten into their porno stash.
And Bart taking in the penis like it was an orphan in the storm and needed lodging, and lodging that Greg made sure Bart knew that only the lodging in Bart's mouth would ever do. And Greg throwing back his head and yowling at the world, and his excited hands on his teacher's bare shoulders, and the bouncing up and down and the sheer wonderfully wooded wildness of the whole forest primeval thing and then the explosion and then the little dying and the dying was not little and it was not dying at all but living together. And Bart's swallowing and his putting his head against the red rashed (poison ivy result from lying on the ground in the stuff being an idiot and goofing off and not knowing what he was lying in till the other boy scouts and the scout master told him, and then his p-dong rush out of the stuff) stomach of a Greek godlet name of Greg and putting his arms around the boy's waist and his strong back and just holding on to what the teacher had not known he had missed so desperately all his life.
And now ruined man with the sure conviction of blindness, and suddenly ruined boy lying on the bathroom cold floor beside him, wondering if the man was really going blind and this was a doctor conspiracy and wondering if Bart was in the conspiracy and the practical joke fell to the jokester of all trades good all around smiling happy boy football giant name of Greg. They both felt tears but did not weep, just lay there for a time.
Greg said, "Can I help you?" Greg always said "can I help you?" when he wanted to know if Bart would like to go inside him, for though Greg was feckless and fearless and strong and bold he was still a 15 year old boy and parts of him were still terribly shy and he could still blush, one time and one time only Bart told him he did when they were having sex, and Greg became furious, so Bart never told him again, though he loved to see his face go scarlet, and Bart knew he would never see that face or its blushing anymore. The surgery was tomorrow. Bart was trying to stuff his eyes with everything all this week, when the final word had come down from on doctor high, and he could stuff his eyes, his mind, his heart with nothing.
He turned to Greg and stuffed the boy's flaccid penis in his mouth. This was not sex. This was not waiting for Greg to get hard. This was a means to an end and the means was known as desperation and the end needed to be achieved was to be as young and Greg and in love forever where friends couldn't make you so gun shy you were scared as a rabbit all the time and, for example, suspicious and frightened of Greg every step of the way, waiting for the punch line that was sure to come, and doctors could not crush you with their edicts and declarations, case closed for good and all, in all their dry bloodless words and their scare mask faces that knew beyond words of knowing and then knowing some more.
Greg pulled himself gently out of Bart's mouth. Bart sat up with Greg's help. God, Bart thought, he's now my care giver. He's seeing me old and aging rapidly before his eyes. Who wants that? Who needs that? Let him go, Bart thought, for god's sake get to a home and let him go and thank him for his time and his trying to pretend you were young as he is, and his understanding so much, and being so forgiving, and doing his dead level best to prove to Bart to who it could not be proved that Greg was on the level, and all the games you played with Greg when he didn't know that was what you were doing and you were half unaware of it yourself, testing him and all things, because you wanted to make this one last. With a boy who would go away. Which would not last. Termites from the past you threw on this friendship to eat it alive too, termites others had set off in you and you just keep making sure they're not done with you yet.
Greg put his face close to Bart's. Greg's eyes looked crossed and hazy and fuzzy in Bart's fuzzy eyed world. Bart thought I will blink and be blind and he will be gone. And I'll die and I don't want to die, I make a big show of can't wait for it, but fuck I don't want to die and I want to die in Greg's arms and I want to live in Greg's arms and I don't fuckin want to go blind. Why is that in the cards? What the hell was that all about?
And Greg smiled and Bart smiled and their nose tips touched and Greg put his lips to the man's lips and kissed them gently and softly like the wing of a hummingbird as it flew his way one day and left its message in the man's mind, the message that read, "oh please stay with me a time."
Bart put his head on Greg's strong shoulder, and he said, "Greg, I remember so much, but I can't remember it, only hazily, I think I have memories of memories, you know?"
"I think so," Greg said as he kissed his teacher's cheek and found it pallid and a little shrunken and cold. Pay attention to me, Greg thought, do not go traipsing down memory lane right this moment. Unless I'm in that memory lane and scratch that thought because if I am then I am a memory and I am no longer with you and you are blind and if you are blind then so am I.
And the traipse down the lane of memories began: "I loved Scott Forbes. He was Jim Bowie in the TV series. I never saw him after that show was over, till years later, there was some TV movie made in England and he was in it and he had a British accent. I always wondered about that. He was my second hero. I could sing the theme song by heart. I loved that damn Bowie knife and I loved how Forbes moved and spoke and reacted, with grace and wit and speed and cunning. It was just wrong that he went away. I've never forgotten him or stopped hoping that he's had a good life. He was my second hero. I think I said that before."
And Greg pulled away slightly from his teacher, and lay his head in Bart's lap. Bart's penis was soft and his pubic hair was soft also, and Greg curled up there like a little boy listening to a bedtime story.
Bart said, as though he was speaking not to Greg, but to the boy Bart once was, lost and lonely inside the man's traitorous body with the aging and the soon to be blindness, "My first of course was George Reeves. Superman. I had a Superman suit once. Not one of those Halloween things. But one made out of real cloth. I got it for Christmas when I was six or seven. I would not take the thing off without a fight with Mom.
"I remember the morning when I read he had died. George Reeves. My mom had the Commercial Appeal lying by my breakfast plate in the kitchen. The head line read something like "Superman Kills Self." I was heart broken. Mom kind of snickered. She was always trying to get me to face the real world. I also loved him and I did not love her. She won. It was not the last of her wins. I was sad as hell. All the school was in a daze. We were so young. No one we had known, far as I knew the other kids as well, had ever died. We weren't stupid. We knew George Reeves was an actor. That day at school you could weep and no one would hurt you for it.
"I thought since The Adventures of Superman was supposed to be on that afternoon on Channel 12 at five o'clock, it would be proof that George Reeves had not died. The child mind at its most desperate. So I rushed home, sped through homework, turned on Channel 12 at five o'clock. And what was on? Woody Woodpecker. I've hated that damned bird ever since."
And Greg was too nice to tell him that he had heard these stories about five times by now. Instead Bart laughed a bit, kind of ruefully, and he held Greg and he said, "Greg, let me make love to you."
And Greg said, knowing that Bart meant it was to be the last time, "forever, Bart. I'm not going anywhere."
And so they helped each other up, Bart needing help; Greg not needing help. Greg got the KY from the bathroom and then they both went back to the bed in the air conditioned coldness.
Greg got his beautiful naked body up on the bed and was on his knees, his head hanging down, his golden hair in his eyes, his hands perched on the bed, his knees digging in for when it was time. Greg felt the man's finger rub the KY on, and Greg readied himself for the penetration. He also hoped Bart would not make the space ship docking at the space station analogy with him this time because it put Greg out of the mood. He wished Bart didn't have so many memories. Or he wished that Bart would at least jettison some of the damn pay load. But tonight if the man wanted memories, let him, it would keep him off the blindness thing, which, with the thoughts Greg had been having this evening, was beginning to creep the boy out. It hit way too close to home. What if Greg did go blind? Greg thought the world would go blind also. Which gave him no comfort.
Bart was a worry wart. He always knew the worst would happen. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't, sometimes even worse things happened, often enough anyway, though not always, so Bart kept a four leaf clover key chain (where the hell can you get four leaf clovers? They were as rare as four leaf clovers) in his pants pocket and a rabbits foot to keep it company so it didn't get lonely in there. Where did these stupid myths start anyway?
Bart was rubbing himself hard, his penis was solid rock now, and he aimed it for the target home, the place where Bart was allowed every so often though really Greg did not like this part of love making, the giving or the taking; Bart never pressured him on it, but sometimes like now Greg gave it to the man as a gift. Bart put his hands on the flanks of the boy. He saw the boy's hand go to his own cock and begin to massage it, and then Bart began entering into the tight black darkness. And he began entering deeper and Greg sighed and moaned, though Bart was always pretty sure that Greg just did that to make Bart feel better or maybe it was just a joke Greg played on Bart, and Greg was just waiting till the worse time to tell him, till the time it would hurt the man the most. Bart lived with memories, and those memories were most of his memories and that was circular logic there was no cutting the umbilical cord of. And then Bart was all the way in.
He loved and he panted and he pulled slowly in and out, and he lay his upper torso on the boy's sweating back, and he reached over and helped Greg masturbate himself. And for a time both forgot everything, thoughts left their heads, except for this last mutually shared thought, he is saying good-bye to me and I don't want him to go. Neat and clipped and sure as tomorrow's sunrise which Bart knew would be the last sunrise he would ever see because he knew the surgery entailed more than a laser beam on his eyes, he knew the doctors were wrong or lying, and that he would wake to a world of total darkness. Or would it be dark? If it were dark to him, he could still see. Because dark was a color. What did totally blind people see? He had heard someone on TV say once years ago, ask then what the back of your hand sees? And that analogy had always baffled him.
Please don't let me find out from the inside.
And the man and the boy fucked and the boy came first which caused the man to come inside the boy and they fell atangle on the towels that they had put on the bed, and they fell in a heap and they fell in love and they fell in silent sphere trajectories and they fell alone and together and they were everything and nothing and they were memories of each other that might be remembered for a time and more than likely would not be remembered after a time and the boy had his memories and the man had his and they each had their dreams, for the man the dreams forever deferred, for the boy tomorrow the dreams would start happening, the boy had formerly had no doubt, but now he had a great deal of doubts. Bart appeared to be catching.
They lay there for a time. Caught up in each other. Bart studying every inch of Greg's body, trying to hold it in his eyes like some old sweet song already gone away long into midnight. And Bart mentally ran through all the books and writers and TV programs and actors and writers and directors and movies and actors and writers and directors and comic books and publishers he loved best as a child and all the dreams and all the summers when it snowed green and heavy and ponderous and hot and all the Falls leading to all the leaf sharp fall blow of winter and the snowing of heavy white gentle flakes in the frost biting air that hurt his nose tip and made his eyes water but that was all right for it was winter he loved the very best and snowmen and snowcream and leaden skies and feeling at the North Pole, at the top of the world, before summer rolled around again with its waves and its langorousness and its sleepiness and its calm propriety.
And man and boy slept for a time. The man remembered seeing Scott Forbes walking down that red staircase in some house in the British TV suspense film, the last time he had seen him. And he remembered George Reeves and all he had read about him, how the series had been the nadir of Reeves' life and how sad and lost he was during all that time when so many kids loved him so much, and the terrible way he died, and the man wept in his sleep without knowing it, without feeling the tears, for sometimes the man wept without knowing it, sometimes in class, and a student would have to tell him, and he would be embarrassed, but they were used to it after a time and did not make fun of him.
As Greg turned over to Bart. And wiped the man's tears. And put his arms and held him to his large good happy friendly body. And Greg said softly, perhaps silently, to himself, "You will not go blind. I will be there with you. I'll be in the room when they bring you back. You'll see." And then again, as Greg closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep, "You'll see."