Joel/Barry
by
Timothy Stillman
"I am not rich or famous/but who can ever tell?/I do not know what waits for me/maybe heaven/maybe hell" "Baby, The Rain Must Fall"
This is a horror story. It is an interior one. The most frightening, most painful kind.
There are no ghosts, save the human ones. There is no violence, not so's you'd notice. There is no pain, save the ones we don't talk about. There are neither demons nor ghouls, not where you would expect them at least. There is no death, save the one that's ticking in all of us right this minute. This is how it's laid out. This is the autopsy.
They felt for each other only love. They lived for the oceans of themselves to be guided by the other's hand. They were two in one and believed that days of deliverance were created by the first morning hello, and the last evening good night. Though there were always mornings, and there were no final evenings. Things would go this way for always, as long as Autumn followed Summer, and Winter followed Autumn.
There was promise in their first sight of each other, an addition to each other, at the same time, a subtraction from each other, balanced and fair and right and just. They sacrificed these goings away, not sublime, not important, not the selling of even the slightest bit of a soul, not sold to each other, but to the something in them that had never been there before. Not since a bargain was sealed, and payment due, with no excess, without a kinder conceit than anyone with a bargain in the direction of the devil had ever given.
Love felt good, and it was that obvious, as they lay with each other that first time, in Joel's bedroom, in the night, with the Autumn approaching and brushing away Summertime, and they held each other delicately as though they were each china porcelain, the fingers touch, and the chests touch, and that web of sexuality that dueled with love and fought against it at first, for they were only human after all, but still the trigger pulled, and still they fell. The distance was far below and time unhinged and membranes took the place of the lonely nights, for there were no walls anymore, not here, this first time, not ever again.
They lay naked and close and whispery and tickly against each other, for love demands it, love demands risks and promises and withheld eyes behind the tremble of lids of flesh, because they knew in that second before they were enraptured with each other, that this was a trick, was a joke, but love gripped them as they gripped each other, more than a substantiation, more than a performance with someone else engraved on the heart as the bodies tackled each other in reckless fury, for this love allowed something they had not allowed before, a lack of fury of sexuality, a lack of conjugal badminton where deft serves could be negated by sweaty pores and the continual shame that had plagued them all their lives, when they had discovered who they were and who they were was not what they had set out to be at all.
They did the things two naked lovers do in bed, , for love demands exposure, and they were a gulf each of themselves, gradually discovering the land between was not to be, that something in their hair smelled this way, that something in the way their hands cupped parts of each other, this sifting night when the cool winds were starting to blow, and the shades rattled in the windows partially open to give the night air from the stifling fists in each of their stomachs, to allow a partial escape of repose and not meant and over then and away in the lonely night corners of the table pockets, there to hide and bleed no more, singly and alone. But the sugary parts did not happen this time, this beginning.
For Joel and Barry were not of the sentimental variety, as though there were isotopes in their minds that were always bleating out green lights for lack of courage or too much insight, or the thought processes tangled in a league of consideration that always webbed too much feeling into too much hypotheses, and thus the escape that way as it had always been, which was no escape, then, none at all.
They had known each other the beginning of this semester of university. They had known and danced delicately and pulled eye shades down on their immediate intense love for each other, that had bristled and developed and haunted and betrayed them in bringing them together in the library last night with the dark drawn and the lights shaded brown, and the books in their hands as they sat on either side of the long horseshoe style table on the second floor, to the right of the science book stacks.
And there was a longing past who could take which drug to achieve which mastery that was nothing more than a shade of tricks in the nights and the bars and the student lounge and on the quad with the amber moon shining beacon above, and there was more than drinks and the feeling empty in the stomach that had made them laugh too loudly, had made them too desperately in need of not needing each other.
Quiet Joel's room, as quiet the library, as quite Barry had put the book of graphics down on the wooden table top and had looked straight into Joel's hazel eyes and had seen Autumn in him, had seen a memory of a cat he had loved all russet and brown and filled with heavy fur and a sweet deep as fulfillment pair of green eyes that had looked at him so intently with love, the cat's paw on Barry's left hand, as they lay on the boy's bed, when he had been a child, home from school on a winter's day, sick with the flu, fully sneezing, stuffy, weepy, and this cat was the only being who knew him, as the TV screen had dissolved in front of Barry's eyes, the cats' eyes so full of the boy..
And the cat had come to fill the whole world of him and nothing could separate them again, and the boy thought this as he looked at the boy named Joel and thought the world is in a name like that and novenas on every planet and candles lit and prayers said, and night was now a distant memory, like a wish of bravery of the end of night, and then he saw it in Joel. The same thing he felt in himself, a bare damask out in a field somewhere of funereal blackness, blankness, and his sight rose fast and higher and higher, and the damask that had been the thing Barry had clung to with such supreme tenacity became an instant, a skate left in some million years ago childhood, seen from up high, like from the eyes of God, and Barry felt that sickness inside himself and looked into the attendant darkness that was cold and unclimbable and he would not give himself away, not one more time...
And in that darkness that was inside himself, that was subaltern, that was so elemental to people of the world who are ready to twist a good bye into any hello regardless of the chant of cost known so well and befriended like a hand in a warm night soothing the sickness away, that kind of wired sterile preamble, as always, started, and lived through and then fallen to the earth and that dim damask there below in the infinite tumble down, thus to rush to forest rest and hurtle to the brutal magnificent ground again in all its shadow removal crews that never seemed to get round to the task, he had seen, within his own self, within his own tortured cravings and immediate repentance for those cravings, Joel, in his own fears, his own no not this time turn away and walk through the door, and Joel had seen this other boy within his own fear, his own timetable that was forever getting scrambled, that was forever, filled with broken destinations and train stations.
When there were such things and they had not been Amtracked to death, and the unknowable fevers of those hard benches in the harder nights, sitting there with splinters fingering your nail tips, and the night a long unbroken brook of sealed domestication when it seemed this was the only thing that mattered, the waiting on, the waiting for, and thus eternity foolscap on your mind and seeming then to intellectually win because you could bemuse the process and no one else would mercifully, damnably, understand.
But in their secret night, Joel and Barry, peas in a pod, planets in a suddenly close universe, suddenly a pocket universe that did not have loneliness at its core, was not a game of billiards of the half rungs of life that must be lived on and cramped and twisted and deformed and consider this the full extent of life and what you might find some day in it, but never believed, and if a glissando was not raised on a violin string, and if a trumpet did not sound at that moment when Joel and Barry at that library table, the only two people there, shadows of dangerous edged books all round them, looked inside themselves and found the other there with him, if no one broke into song or recited poetry of beautiful rooms created at least in verse, then it was a silent thunder shock in each boy.
It was a release and a drawing through and a pulling back, but not the gravity pulling kind, only that deep thrushed body wavering as they looked at each other that first time they really looked at each other, and their eyes seemed to droop at the corners, like those of tired old men, gunfighters of an ancient age who know this time they will be killed, this time the kid will pick them off and well done with it in that dusty saddle tramp town with the ill wind always blowing through.
And that night, last night, how could it have simply been last night?, count the waves of the ocean, multiply by a million, and that was how the centuries, the millennia caressed them in their rooms afterwards, that giving out of time, that giving out of all that childhood loneliness and hand cradled sadness when their orgasms singularly and lacking was only what trees could grow in their summer minds and branch with anything that was past human, anything that was beyond the human experience, any frame of it, an impossibility for humans to imagine, but the goal was at least in the trying, and if that meant senseless objects could be abused, if penises could be strained and mastered, and if trees in the night wind were enough for clauses in which they could hide and be less than themselves.
Though deep interior they knew themselves to be fully immense though this egotism would not be felt by them for some time to come, then here was salvation and sensation in the form of knowing the terrible waste of other years, because when one is one and twenty, as Auden placed the world in that bracketed phrase of years so turned, then the past of two so young could be the past of two so immensely long and old, thus turn, and the turning in their single beds last night after they left the library, Joel first, not a word said between them, just encyclopedias at their beckonings and their minds in silver swirls.
And now they lay, piano key boys, different tunes in the each of them, radios, stereos playing down the distance of halls, scuff marks of sounds come to them as undercurrents to the electricity that had not been for them when they had drunk together at Chelsea's Bar, when they had done acid in Larry's room, ruthlessly lurid colored and aggressively postured, pot smoke thick filled with twangy Sitar music, overflowing with nodding off hippies and crowded with psychedelia, but here in the truly and richly drunk human facets of themselves, in the darkness that brook no more fancies, that said dreams stop here, and you will have each other at your beck and call forevermore, here then the main mast, here then the seas of themselves.
As they had peeled themselves free of their tie dyed shirts off and their jeans and they had cuddled under the light blanket covering and they had held each other close together as though the lights inside in that great huge high hall of a tunnel they had rushed upward last night was still with them, as an engraving of moment, of motion, of moth to flame and finding it a most friendly flame, most comforting; can a flame smile? Oh yes indeed. Watch them.
The two flames together, their hands rushing over the other, the silkiness of skin, the sucking of it by the fingers and the flesh thus brought finally to a peak of life and motion, as their blood zipped through their veins, as their nights seized into each other as though there was a seeking of pain as the tongue worries the cavity where a tooth has been, the commingling, the sheer joy of legs entangled and entangled in each other Barry in Joel and Joel in Barry, love unleashed, and though each boy had had sex with others there was in them this lingering lock case of love left unfounded, left unbounded because not known, long string or short, infancy or maturity or a lacking of even infancy, as they toothed the others' cheeks, as they put tongues in the other's mouths and felt that wise strength of clean boned electricity surging through them.
And ushered into arms that held strong and arms that gave back stronger, and the weakness in their stomachs, and the sureness with each other as though someone had taught them all the words all the battering and they were one up on the game.
They were endlessly inventive lovers, and though to other less indulged less inebriated eyes, they might not have seemed inventive at all, to them there were motions of Venice in them, and there were sea scapes where Martian eyes looked at all that red all that blood all that immensity of crystal civilization caught in these prize boxers of first rank who need not hurt each other or expect hurt themselves and toothing the tongue that could not find the cavity anymore and missed with much sincerity the terrible leagued loss of it.
Then the tongue finding on its cut edge by the newly formed enamel incisor grown not from dental mastery but from the formation of it from both boys at once thus enticing their bodies to give each other exactly what was required that lone lithesome moment, a molar of love and serenity and there-ness, a something that made the tongue lose the cut in it almost immediately if not sooner, and then the saltiness of the tongue, the fullness of it, the intact perfection of it, the lack of internal betrayal which is far worst than any physical one, as both boys knew and impeded the thought that gushed in gusts of night wind into each other's minds the moment they tried to hose the thought and its attendant ones back.
And they gushed into each other, they rubbed and stroked and sighed and held and fell back and fell on top of and rolled themselves tangled in the light, brown blanket, they needed nothing other than the seconds that came cascading after each other.
Too, the drowning sleepy need that was a hook inside them that the other went for and swung on and scampered up as their fingers tickled the other's chests, and their hands rushed to the hips slender and with no padding and they felt the intense oven heat and they swung back their heads and they silently howled at the moon, silently, because they had always been quiet reserved shy boys, and they would be this still this night and every night of their lives because it was a cause that the tremble inside be known only to them, and if boy went down on boy, then the night had a special glove in the secret compartment of a drawer that could not exist and could not exist, the glove or drawer, because there was no fitting them in, there was no need for them, and if boy fit boy, and they did, then the things that did not fit, a useless Mickey Mouse glove golden and small in a far distance.
From a secret compartment of a drawer that had no use for anyone in this world, then that was Joel's and Barry's logo, that was their secret separate strengths that would unite them when the unthinkable happened and day arrived again, and they had to go to separate classes, and eat alone, for their schedules did not permit them to eat together on Wednesdays and tomorrow was Wednesday...
..thus their symbols would carry them through their endless time alone tomorrow, already wept into this night, already cut and woven in the fragment of the night time darkness that made their closeness just that much more so, that made the redeemer of train stations signal to the trains to keep in their night corridors, that sometimes looking is the ultimate rejoinder, that sometimes, as they did right this second, laughter was a lute that whispered to a boy alone in his attic reading a book forbidden, his hand secretly, almost unaware of himself, stroking himself through his jeans in the summer hot dust moted attic of July afternoon, his mind on secret loons and songs that might be brave for future sexual athletes of which he would be one, but it would only be a series of one night stands, first names given only, a divot of a life that would play on the golf courses that had something of midnight oil about them and if that was the promise.
If that was the thing to be lived with almost in a lordly kind of way, then good luck to you and godspeed, but Joel and Barry gave in and needed, after so many long roads on their road to one and twenty and to themselves spliced together, mouths on each other, entering each other, dwelling on each perfect quotient of skin pore, feeling the heft and slender girth of one the other on top or under, working in beautiful spectral metronomic perches the way they would and could only function if the other person was named Joel this Joel, and the other person was named Barry, this Barry, accept no substitutes even if you see actors portraying them on television.
For though they were far from perfect, they seemed perfect in each other's eyes, and they wove themselves into this room in Ellington, and they lost their virginity this night, they lost forever more the ability to protect themselves from each other for there was simply no need, for they were most considerate and most delicate and even handed with each other and when Barry came in Joel's hand and Joel rubbed the cum on his own chest like a precious ointment from the East, when Barry felt Joel rushing into his mouth, when they opened themselves and were finally unashamed of anything, a little thing happened, a pinprick really, nothing important, but because they were boys who were not parts of themselves, not ever, because they were boys who could not piece meal themselves, trust this person, do not trust that one, open yourself to Joel's good morning and sleep tight.
But do not allow the rest of the world to rush into you, to come into a mist and descend onto you like winter in a foreign country the lay of the land you do not understand for a single moment, for before each other, before last night and especially this night, everything had been alien, everything and everyone, and if one sees nothing but alienness around one's self, then one has to do one of two things--become the only human thing there is in a world of gnome daddies and pyramid babies and three headed boys and eight legged arachnid teachers, or one has to become alien with the rest of everyone else, these boys who were not patchwork quilts, these boys who were allowed to see the planet of an insubstantial planet like a bad dream caught in the fender of a vehicle unrecognized that pulled up by the midnight train station and unloaded freaks.
With more freaks to sit beside you on that splintered bench and crowd you half off it and to stay on you had to reduce them to the size of a bug or yourself, but to do that to each other? This night, in bed, with sex and love beholden to each other and each endemic with the other, this night in bed as they tired and delighted in going to sleep with each other, singing Barry or Joel a bedtime song from a childhood long ago but somehow just as lambent and just as comfy cozy here and now as it must have been when they were so small and snuggled by their mothers in rooms of soft fuzzy animal designed wall paper--
---and the night wind sang, and they said they honestly loved each other, and there was the soft emission of a little more from their penises, and there was the little salted mouths that each owned containing the different the same salt as the other boy had before this only singly and achingly and with much heaviness of feeling and dwelling and spurious flesh that he did not want, possess, and everybody in the world must be smiling, and tomorrow they would greet the day first together and then alone and then they thought together tomorrow and they would run to each other and never leave the skin of this sad old world crying for long again, and the night ended them and began them, and the cost would start tomorrow and the cost would be them as dupes for everyone.
Believing anything anyone told them, believing the lies, believing the sales pitches, making them vulnerable patsies for anyone who came along, who liked to have fun with people, who liked to jiggle with their minds and would spread the word when such easy aces could be found, just for the hell of it, or because both boys were handsome enough and smart enough and had well off parents who had important business contacts, then the skyscrapers of the world could be put in the boys' hands and pockets.
Of course, there were, along with just the simple fun of it, some side benefits for the to be hangers on before the boys became men and took over their fathers' CEO positions and their stock portfolios, and before other con artists took advantage, before Barry and Joel ran their fathers' Fortune 500 corporations into the ground and all points below, there was some coinage to be made, some positions to be had thanks to these two ridiculous suckers who had never been suckers before.
The lovers slept. The night grew cooler. Autumn was on the way. Summer over. Their lives had been long. But they had long to go. To turn on each other would be unthinkable. To blame the other for the laundry list of things cooked up for them in their to be profligate lives, their goading lives, their turnstyle lives, their deep searching need to have sex with anyone who moved and who could be bought, and they could all be bought, which would be so easily found out, too soon, far too soon, to fight and wound in the simple lack of not withheld sex but the forgetting of a kiss or gentle stroke or word before hand, before the armies of themselves began the routine all too well known sexual war of the wordless, they dreamed of each other next to each other, and they would have time before it all began in earnest.
That would indeed be granted, the respite, at least, grace point given, need there, could there ever be more?
This has been a horror story. This has been a love story. Autopsies need not be brutal or graphic or heavy handed. Termites eating into the human mind and heart can take long to make themselves known, can be so subtle you could not hear an irony drop for a great many years. Wish this on them. A long time ago. When they were one and twenty, before it was too late to quite become themselves again, all the selves they were having been lost in the distance of tomorrow.
Just as long as they are cradled in each other's arms, here in bed, or conjoined twins much time later on the autopsy table, and maybe, just maybe that would make it, all of it, the beginning to drink too much, the bellies that start expanding too early in life, the long hair being lost and what there is of it turned prematurely gray, the embarrassment, the fears, the groping from one body to the next to the next, but in the end, Barry and Joel coming home to each other, sicker each of each other a little more each day in the places where they were to live always in the process of down scaling, of making do, masking themselves to each other, more so all the while, the impossibility of such a thing becoming a reality, it happens, it just happens, like with pretty much everyone else.
Their once sharp clever minds lost and strayed and compromised and baffled and gravity scarred and human burned and cocktail party subsumed, from penthouses to lofts to flats to places they would never admit to, and both searching for a train at a deserted station, trying to find their way home.
Not knowing how love turned to pin cushion and splinters whenever they held each other, which would be why they would not hold each other, which would be why they would instead use each other, trying to remember what could not be remembered, and they too became eight legged teachers and pyramid shaped babies and Mars would be neither alien nor familiar and there would be little more inside them but a scream unscreamed, when before, they knew each the other was forevermore their home, and the sum total, maybe worthwhile. Maybe.
Again, this has been a horror story. Like all love stories soon or eventually are.