Jimmy, Cathy and by the way, Me
by
Tim Stillman
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now."
Simon and Garfunkle
And so do Jimmy, Cathy and me too.
Jimmy and his sister Cathy visited their grandparents every July. Across the street from me. This particular summer she was 14, Jimmy, my true love, was 16. And I was the most lucky age of 14. That second night of July, something happened with us that hadn't before. The light of night changed. It became a golden haze. There were tiny bones holding up everything. A MISTAKE had been made in the universe. You go along, as a kid, and then as an adult too, I guess, thinking things are one way and always will be. And when you're a kid, and you are lucky to be safe and protected, you expect it is your due.
Jimmy had introduced me to love when I was 12. Though he had not known it. I am one for keeping secrets. Especially from people I love. Especially when it's I love them.
He was over at my house all the time, because his sister was a major pain and his grandparents were, though extremely nice people, still and all grandparents. He had no time to make friends in other neighborhoods. So I was it. We watched TV, went to movies, swam at the city pool, played miniature golf, ate sandwiches, ran the day and half the night away. And I loved him. But I was no fool, and too scared anyway, to tell him so. I knew what love was.
Love was this: He caught me. Last July. See, at five p.m. every afternoon, he had to go to his grans' for dinner, and would be back at my house at five thirty sharp. So I really got to look forward to that half hour because in a very real way he was more there when he was gone that half hour than when he was with me. He was a tall boy. He had black thick hair. He was muscular without being buff about it. And he and his sister were from Michigan which I thought was a magical land of possible snow forever and being with my friend forever, Cathy too, for she was also nice, but we were major pains for her, she being a girl.
I never looked at Jimmy naked in the showers in the changing room at the pool. I never looked at his naked chest when swimming except a glance here and there. I never looked below that chest. But for half an hour, me alone in the living room over by the corner where the bathroom was and Jimmy just rushed home for dinner, I took my penis out of my jeans and rubbed it hard and lay down on the carpeting by the wall, that one over there. And I imagined. I imagined, not him, but us together, looking, feeling, touching, but not looking or feeling or touching each other. Except at the same time--confusion rains on many parades, but never as much as on a child's.
But it was me being in my own weird way sexual with Jimmy. It was me seeing him. It was being taught. It was being told things. It was his telling me words for what I was feeling. For parts of my body. For teaching me how to rub my penis better and get more excitement out of it. For his hand to touch my face and spring me to life as he wiped away the sheen of sexual happiness from my forehead. I could not picture him naked. It just seemed wrong somehow that he should ever be naked. He was more than that. He was a boy of great dignity. He was a boy who was going into the Air Force one fine day. He was always with the kidding. But in a serious way. He treated me seriously. And that impressed me immensely. No one else did. But he treated HUCKLEBERRY HOUND cartoons seriously too, though I tried not to think of that.
So, in those days, I never took off my clothes when I masturbated. I had just learned the word for what I was doing. I didn't like the word too much. I could come in maybe fifteen seconds sometimes. But in Julys I made it last longer. I made my hands his hands and his crotch would not have a penis because that would make him human; it would have something far more, if he had a crotch, which of course a dignified boy like that would not have. I shamed at the word crotch. And I dreamed my little dream of him. And rubbed my tight balls through my jeans and I bent my body backwards. I said his name in a whisper, I never failed to do that. And I came a little bit in my hand. And then the rest of it.
And when I sat on the couch, after have turned the air conditioner higher, and standing in front of it for a few minutes, to dry off, I turned on the TV and kind of giggled inside that he never knew what I did from five to five fifteen or so while he was having dinner. He hit the front blue porch running and slammed open the door, and then slowing to a dignified walk, came into the living room, sat on the opposite end of the green nubby sofa, and we watched whatever we watched on TV.
Then as then sun finally started descending, and we had had two glasses of Coke and vanilla ice cream, never did that taste as magnificent as in childhood summers; the only thing food wise that could best it was lime sherbet. Ambrosia. And Jimmy. Who I could not look at even when we watched TV. And whose hand I never dared even accidentally touch on the arm rest between us at the Capitol movie theatre.
There was love though. And that night around nine thirty after we had run around in the yards and played cowboys and Indians and cops and robbers and Superman and Brainiac (guess who got to be Superman? well, he could have done both roles, but it would have been difficult, I would think, so I got Brainiac by default) we collapsed in the white paint flecked yard swing and swung back and forth, talking about books we were currently reading; he-ON THE BEACH; me-THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER. And then Jimmy my friend with the Northern accent from where it was always cold and snowy all the time, who had never made me feel, not for one instant, uncomfortable one single time, who had never used me for laughter, or made me part of a practical joke, said:
Straight on. No huffing. No mumbling. No mangled words in his lexicon: And please keep this in mind, what he said scared me, made me wonder if he was to pull a shiv on me, but he was still Jimmy and, even in the wrench of these shocks, there was still that Jimmy warmth to his voice--a warmth I had never really noticed before, because I had taken it for granted--that I remembered now--and that I desperately needed now--I clung to it, because the words were brutal, Jimmy was not. Jimmy won over the words.
"I do what you do, when I'm thinking about fucking my sister."
That was not the moment the world turned golden. That was not the MISTAKE in the universe. Or the world tilting off its sweetly shrugged atlas. That did not delight me or confuse me or hurt me or make me laugh or make me sing or keep me awake for five nights running--it was but the lead in. It turned me instead into a tunnel of darkness.
And I closed off. I put my legs and knees knobby and thin hard together and I hunched over like a bird drinking thirstily out of a brook; I felt the usual sick in side; the kind of sick I always felt with other people, never before now, never with Jimmy, but others--I was always doing something wrong; always laughed at for things I said and did that I never understood were wrong; and now Jimmy had eased me in hurting me, in scaring me, in preparing to say so long, no need to hang around with a weirdo like you. And I was in fear, the familiar territory. The territory I ran all my life, save one month in summer.
The night was not golden or held up with little bones. The possibilities of a star field landing in my yard were not there yet. Now the night though with some light left in it was darker than the soul at the point of death when it knows, when it just knows without reason or rhyme, that it is on its way to hell. I was always on my way to hell. I did not cry. This is important for me to note to myself. I did not cry. I shivered instead. I felt ice in my belly. I knew I would never masturbate again. In penance. And it was all so horribly wrong. Because it had felt so good. Except for being with Jimmy, it was the only thing in my life that made me happy. The sad part was there also. But they made me happy too. It was hardly fair.
And he told me then. I wished to run away. I could not. He had assumed his professorial voice. Like he was lecturing about those trains, one leaves Grand Central at five forty five p.m. One leaves at eleven fifty one that night. They are both heading to----- They make----many stops. They are scheduled to arrive at------ He made it a math problem. He said it like teacher who knew you could do it, on Monday morning class work Jimmy: As though he didn't want to. But had to. And this was one of the ways he was using to distance himself. He wanted to make it all linear. Logic and numbers and algebra and trig. His best subjects. He was somewhere in the middle of here, asking me to share his solving of these problems. To help him. .
He told me he had come back, one afternoon, last July, when on his way to dinner, had forgotten to tell me something, had come back the house, had heard these bizarre vocal noises, and had looked around the corner of the French door and had seen me. And had known. And had said nothing about it to me till this July. He hadn't known if he should, or what he should say.
I didn't know what to make of it. Well, good bye to me of course. Yet, he had waited a year to tell me. He wanted to think about it. Most people, well, how the hell did I know, I had no friends, but some kids I was with in MYF and scouting, they would hang around me for a few minutes, somehow or other, know I was worthless, just being me, I guess, with me saying little or nothing, just walk away from me without a word which made me want to kill them real personal like. But Jimmy took some time to tell me. And then slowly seeping. The heat drowsy. The humidity unbearable. His jeans and T shirt. My shorts and shirt. Our slippery tennis shoes. All of this seeping in. And he had said fuck, hadn't he? And something about his sister? What? Recall. No. Won't. He's above that kind of thing. He's like me. Only I don't have a sister. Sometimes though I could get off thinking about girls too and all sorts of combinations.
I leaned further over. I wondered if my body had decided to be sick yet. Jimmy went on, still clatter slowly one at a time, like he was taking a stick and running it slowly down his grandparents' falling down white picket fence round their yard. He told me not to let it worry me. My ears were red. He told me every boy does it. Wants to have sex with his sister? I didn't have a sister. So that didn't fit. He must have meant--my brain had a million moths in it. He must have meant what I did was okay. But he didn't know what was in my mind then. Him not him touching not touching not wanting him to have a penis but something better something so jimmy like and hell---
I had peed my shorts. While he talked. I was warm and shamefully puddled down there and before I realized it and I could not stop it. He could smell the urine. On a night light this a boy smells everything. Cats on a corner three miles away having a to do, boys smell that. Well, okay, but at least two miles away. He told me and I wasn't listening. He talked about sex. I did not want to hear the greatest living human being in the whole damned world talk about sex. But I started listening. It hurt. The words hurt. They did not involve me. And that made them hurt more. I pretended I was on the side lines never with Jimmy, like with everybody else. I pretended I was the most important to him. But now he was telling me about girls he went on dates with. Oh god stop please.
And then he said, but it was always Cathy he thought about, and I thought well if he wants to do his sister then he's more fucked up than I am and that, to use his and Cathy's terminology, was one crumbum deal, that he would pick his sister over me and over the girls he dated, though he was never picking anyone over me of course, it was going to be hard to get that out of my head because I thought of him constantly and lived July first, and died July 31st, and was in a coffin till July 1 next year. And he mumbled something. And I asked what? Because that stood out like my dick never would again. I would sign a contract never to have pleasure, such as it was, again in my life. But Jimmy mumbled, and so I had to ask what?
He told me that Cathy wanted to do me. That she was waiting in her room across the street and she wanted me to do her. That she had been on him--matter of phrase, this sudden stranger said to me, haha--for some time to ask me if I wanted to fuck her. This word fuck had now been said for the first times in my life. It was a filthy word. It was a filthy world. I was hot. And sticky. And I wanted some cold sherbet to remind me who I was and who Jimmy and Kathy were and what world we were living in already. Next, he would tell me it wasn't cold and snow in Michigan all the time; I never asked; this was the deep South, where there was little of that; so my only hope was my snow friend Jimmy, with who I had looked at PLAYBOYS he brought with him from his father's, who was a real progressive parent, and though I coveted them, I only pretended to look at the pictures. I would have died otherwise. Wondering what it would be like to climb inside my friend's eyes and see them the way he did?
Jimmy put his arm on the swing back and I pulled further forward, to the irritating sounds of those goddam crickets I hated so much. He said he didn't think I was sexual at all. That I was asexual. What? Who is this person? GET UP RUN NOW NOW--but I can't. It's Jimmy. If I run away from Jimmy--he's my only friend---I can't--I'd be lost. I have to fake understanding this at least. I can surely fake it. I do that well, I have discovered. I figure it will be a necessary part of me. What is asexual? Silent. Face burning scarlet. The night dark and darker still as we moved into the eye jelly dark part of the night and would never get free of our viscous prison again, at least I wouldn't. Jimmy would just walk out when he was through, safe and secure.
Anyway, he told me, still straight and true and flying right, since he saw differently that afternoon last July, which made my balls retreat to their cavity and made my penis shrivel even tinier and made my stomach try to find a way out of my body in sheer embarrassment, I would do okay with Cathy. And, then, there was the hesitation---he lived in Detroit, he was from a poor city family, his hair was always ragged and he always had cavities in his teeth every summer when he arrived here, that his grandparents had to take care of and spend the money on. I had recently read THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE and suddenly it hit me, was Jimmy a J.D.? I mean I had never seen him in a black leather jacket, and he didn't have a Duck's Ass and he was real polite, but so was Eddie Haskell, who could have been a J.D. too.......
Jimmy took me by the arm. I thought he was going to punch me. He pulled my head up with his other hand. My sister, he said so as usual Jimmy like in this so Jimmy un-likeness, is lying in her little pink bed over there, the grans are asleep, the window is up in Cathy's room, I'm supposed to bring you to that window, she is lying on top of the covers, she has on only her bra (bra? Cathy has a bra? Had I not noticed? My how time flies.) and panties. They too are pink. She is going to be lying there with only the dim table lamp on. She is going to start rubbing her tits and moving her body, real hot, you know, night, and real hot, you know, her. And I'll have brought you to the window, so we can scare her and laugh at her, you know, boo, and all of that, and she'll jump a bit, and then raise up to see who's at the window, as she realizes it's her dork brother and his friend who doesn't know how he turns her on even though she does cheerleader back flips for him and stands on her head, showing him her panties, and likes to listen to records with him and sit kind of close to him because she is shy too....and she'll say hey you two come on in, and it'll be seductive...I've heard her do seductive with her boy friends...OK...yes I spy on them...but she doesn't let me watch....this time...if you will fuck her (man how does he say the worst word in the world so easily; creeping me out; interesting me; scaring me this is that practical joke he's set me up for your are just waiting for right this second) she will let me guide your penis, and it's a nice looking one, by the way (good god and gulparama; did he just say that?) into her cunt (oh please I'm a Christian; my mom examines every book I want to buy before I buy it and if it so much as has the word ""breast" in it, she won't let me have it; which will make me grow up very normal of course of course.
(Jesus will kill you and take me with him; run to the Lord, get the Bible and pray on your knees every night like you always do, but this one's a big serious one, God, don't let me stand in the line of fire by accident) and I can feel her up, her pussy, her pubic hairs, and she'll let me suck on one of her tits and you can suck on the other, and we'll both get to fuck her (PLEASE ALREADY WITH THAT WORD; he's as crude as kids at school; and this is my dearest perfect kindest in the world friend?, what will that say about the others?, if there ever are others?) and then of course after you break her cherry (do what?; I like cherries; especially at Christmas, Brachs are the best) I get to fuck her (god, its like Satan is sticking swords in me with every word of this, but you stick with a friend--or are supposed to--I really used to believe that once upon a time--pretty stupid, right?) and then you and I can do stuff together. You were whispering my name when I caught you (here comes the cruelest ending of all time from this boy I did not know one little bit; he had been playing me for a sap all these years) and I can teach you some stuff some of my girlfriends have taught me, and are your shorts dry yet?
And all of this, save for the mumble for a moment and the excitement for a moment were said in Jimmy words in Jimmy cadence and he asked if I was dry yet, good grief, and I just sat crumpled and then fell on the ground in slow motion as he stood up springily; he always did everything springily; nothing stopped that massive jump hopping life force that he had to tame down some inside him. And he helped me up. And he held my arm as he walked me out of my yard, cross the street, and down the side alley, turning us into the back yard of the grans' house and then, up to, me tripping once on a flower pot, and then a stick, to Cathy's window in the back. I closed my eyes and waited for the bullet to enter me, the knife to stab me, but Jimmy said, trust me, Timmy; just trust me this one time, and I unsquinched my eyes and gradually opened them a little at a time and it was true, and she had made a pretend scream and now she was up at the window. Pink Bra. Pink Panties. Pink Skin.
She had breasts. They looked quite big to me. The tits poked through. Her navel was pretty. She was curvy. Her hair was to her shoulders. Sun glow. Her panties were riding low on her. I could actually see some of her pubes. Then she pulled up her panties, and I thought the deal was off, or the joke was here and became hurt, till she put her fingers up to and into the slit the panties now molded around. And smiled she did at me so un Cathy like.
She was always wearing white shirts and stuff but still how had she kept them hidden...and Jimmy moved by me a bit...and climbed in her window....then they both helped me climb in....they were lithe...I wasn't...this is no surprise to anyone by now, I imagine......
And they touched me where I was dry of urine thank God but we were all drenched in sweat, even though there was a big fan in Cathy's room; the house had no air conditioner. And they held me. They had obviously choreographed what they would do with me before hand. They took off my clothes. They touched. They prodded. They examined. They complimented. They embraced. They discussed. They rubbed. They let me rub them. I felt Jimmy's tits and I felt Cathy's too. At the same time. This was GREAT. They smiled. They made it such a slow taking off of my clothes, I thought there were ants under my skin, get `em off already. I was pushing my crotch into theirs already and I still had my shorts and briefs on. They licked their lips. Their eyes looked hungry. They held me in those eyes.
Cathy put her tongue in my mouth. I for a second had no idea why and then holy mother I was hard as could be. And naked now. And ashamed. And body blushing. They told me I was good looking. For either boy or girl, if they had any sense of beauty. With voices and sighs and touches so delicate and gentle, they made me feel loved. I never had before.
Then we parody pounced on Jimmy, and took off his clothes as fast as we could.
And he was strong looking and tan and his penis was brown and uncut, with little veins in it throbbing, and little rings round it. It was rising and his pubic hair looked silky and black and soft. Cathy and I examined his strong circular buttocks. And felt them and kissed him everywhere on his body.
And then he told me to undress Cathy. While he finger fucked me and rubbed his hard on and large balls against my butt. And it continued...the rest of it...like Jimmy said. It was incredible, the moments of it, the making sure endless times her door was locked; the feel of girl skin; the feel of boy skin; their feeling mine; I think it true that a person does not feel like a person, does not know how his hand or his arms or his chest or his face or his penis or his eyes feel, until he touches those of others--it is the depth of cruelty that children do not know how their own bodies feel, because they cannot touch other bodies of children who do not know how their own bodies feel, because.....
And I fucked her. I looked at her. I rose up and looked at me fucking her. I looked down at my penis as best I could, sticking into her cunt. I was fucking a girl. Fuck was the greatest word ever invented. Why had I ever had a problem with that word? I was doing it and she was telling me I was doing it so great. God, I pushed in and she pushed into me and I never wanted to leave. Later, Jimmy and I would explore between those lips. But right now, if you don't mind, Cathy and I are FUCKING.
And Jimmy held part of my cock as I did so. At the beginning of my cock being stuck in her, Kathy almost screamed a moment. Jimmy held his hand over her mouth. He whispered to me to wait a while. I started to pull out where brother and sister hands had placed me. She shook her head desperately no. He whispered no, wait. It's called breaking her cherry; her hymen; it's a bit of skin that virgins have; you've broken through; the pleasure starts when she's ready.
And I fucked my best friend's sister and we were all three totally naked as Jimmy lay on Cathy's bed with us, beside us, and stroked her legs and her breasts and suckled on them and then had me raise up a little and suckled on my left tit which was like electricity going through me. Cathy's vagina, I had already known that word somehow, held me so tightly and hotly and wetly and she massaged me back and forth, and had her legs around my waist, and her body was a real wiggle worm, as Jimmy stroked my butt and kissed my butt cheeks and then moved closer rubbed his wonderful thick hard on against his sister's legs and then against mine. And I was shoving in and out fast. And Cathy held in her screams, but she was sighing a great deal.
And I threw my head back and I just exploded in her with the desperate thick hotness of me, the loneliness, the sadness, the awkwardness, the shame of just existing burst inside her, and became something else entirely, and the girl fluid in there, she later said she had cum a lot, said you're wrong, never think that about yourself again, and the golden lighted night had happened in the midst of all of this. The night was no longer viscous eye fluid black with me caught in deeply.
It was golden light for she was golden haired and voiced and beautiful as was Jimmy and it was tiny bird bones because she was so thin and delicate and like a golden rose vase, and she was so graceful and she was like dancing with me and I put my lips to her breast, can't read the word in a book, but here I am sucking on one, as Jimmy takes the other, with his hand still on my penis at the inside of her oh say, cunt--
--and is the most wonderful thing in the world, thank you Cathy and thank you Jimmy for making the world gold for me, for correcting the whole MISTAKE my childhood, my whole life would have been otherwise, for we each think we are the world then, later on too, but especially when we are children would have been without you, without this luminous initiation into sex real. How lonely and sad and cut up inside and shy and despondent and awkward and wanting to die I would have been had not for them, had not for this.
We rested and idly played with each other, and then, in this very pink very stuffed animals all over the place room designed for her one month life here and her's alone, Jimmy fucked her and he was experienced, and it hurt my heart a moment, that he already had, and was already growing away from me, while I was still a kid, thinking he counted on these Julys like diamonds of the years, blue and white and stunning in glow and glory, that got him through life like they did me. And then now Jimmy and Cathy on Cathy's bed, and Jimmy says to me, looking at me, his dark long hair fallen in his eyes, come on, Timmy.
So I kneeled down and held Jimmy's dick as he pushed it in and out and circled round sometimes and held long moments some times and then short moments and she worked him while he waited and then he did the same to her, experienced, he; also experienced, she; I could not have initiated her into such a highly skilled sexer, could I? I played with Cathy's cunt, felt the wetness, and I kissed Jimmy right on the mouth. Not daring to put my tongue into his. That was okay though. He put his tongue in mine and I was harder than hard. I don't know why that tongue thing works but man does it ever.
And I rubbed my hard on on his leg and his sister's and almost at once, (had they rehearsed it so much?, was what he told me on the swing just to break down my fears because he and/or she wanted me to sex with them that much? Made me feel pretty special.) They each took my hard on in their hands and rubbed me as Cathy reached up to kiss my penis and Jimmy looked at that and up at me and smiled. A person could have two friends. Even at the same time. I never had thought it possible before, for me. And Jimmy told me to hold his cock and feel it pulse as he came and his cum soaked my fingers, and Cathy moaned silently, and later on she would tell us how different and wonderful our dicks felt in her. And the rest of what Jimmy told me would happen, did.
They sucked me and played with my butt. And I did the same to them. I sat on their chests and their legs. And then they sat on mine. And we showed each other everything. I tasted Jimmy's come. And he tasted mine. And Cathy tasted both of ours and told us mine was saltier so I was the winner and we laughed quietly and we lay there now tired exhausted, even Jimbo, and he decided it was time to get to our regular places. And we kissed each other good night. Feeling each other all over. Cathy knelt and sucked my now limp penis off, making it hard but sadly it needed rest. Then I knelt and sucked Jimmy good night too.
And as dark as it was with no street lamps on our street, with the moon and stars hidden by clouds, everything was golden and soft. The heat was not heat. But comfort. the air smelled cool somehow. No humidity. Easy on the lungs. Life filling. Life feeling.
There were golden eyes of woods and the creatures that live in them looking at me. When I lay in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly, sank like a rock actually, dreamed lovely dreams that were mercifully finally true, and slept deeply, and woke up happy, happier than I had ever been in my life, and optimistic, what odd feelings, to the next morning to the sounds of Jimmy hitting the front porch, to watch TV with me, till we went to the public pool. If there was no one in the shower room at the city pool, I planned to look at Jimmy a while lot and I think he planned the same thing. Cathy came over a bit later. Then the fear. Was the joke to show me what it could be like, life? And then to cut me off at the knees? I felt sick.
Till all three of us at genuinely the same time, when no one else was in the living room save us, gathered our little group and kissed and felt each other up, and said love.
I wish I had been there.