"Sharpen' Your Pencil, Mister?"
by
Timothy Stillman
So maybe this logy hot classroom here in the country of spring is making me horny as hell. So maybe I would not like to be the class nerd, and maybe I would like to take these horn rimmed, horny rimmed am I, glasses off and say to the pencil sharpener there in the corner, Woody by name, the boy, not the pencil sharpener, hey Wood sharpen this, baby!
So maybe I'm tired of stroking by myself, and maybe I'm tired of not daring to look at the boys in the boisterous locker changing room, don't even think of the rest rooms, and maybe I would like to strip to the buff and walk down the hall naked, past all the oogle eyed girls, past the laughing boys, and the giggle mouths with their hands pressed to them, and go up to Jimmirinksi, my secret secret boyfriend, and paste a real good wet one on his lips, and he can't resist me, see, and he has to see what the body, mine, is all about and everyone's looking at him like they been sucking on too many Mary Janes recently, and I don't mean those damn shoes either, and he backs up and I press my nakedness up against him.
And I'm hard enough for the both of us. And he's got a scream of fear somewhere lodged inside him, and all the kids in their stupid ass looking clothes standing around, petrified, their whole world turned upside down, and I'm the most fuckin' brave man in the whole world, in school, naked, like in all my nicest nightmares come true, like it's gonna be a group grope party if they will suddenly come un-statued and get down with it baby, and Jimmy the Timmy runs away down the hall screeching like Nellie Queen of the Jungle, and the jungle waits here and turns round and round pedestal like to all the boys and girls, with his Tarzan sling aquiver, his little pink Mt. Rushmore, rush me more baby, standing up and straight out, not supposed to be this pink in high school, but hey, the hairs are coming in nicely, and I do say so myself, so I'll be a man someday, don't rush me bees wax, I'm cool enough right now, and I would like to say there in that smelly black hall with all the unlocked lockers in it, with all those diaries in them from the girls to the boys, or mine, with diary from the boy to the boy, hey take the prince of come cause you ain't gettin' no second chance, and they'd see my flanks, nice flair, and my crotch, nice little v valley, and my penis with the little brown bands round the center of it, and my piss hole there looking up at my navel as if it wanted to be friends....
...but bubble burst as I wonder whose flank I will allow myself the generosity to come on, when bap back in the class room in the spring country, and the eyes of green and yellow and brown and gray and whatever ancillary color there is, to wrap my day in with my blue eyes bluer and prettier than all the blue eyes in the whole wide wiggle wag world, and I'm sitting there watching my friend who might as well never have heard of me Woody sharpen his pencil, and Woody the Penis is Watching Woody, the person's Crotch, and thinking how pressed tight can those jeans be?, his dick is hanging on the left side, his right ball more toward the center, his left more to the left side of that wondrous basket he has coming clickin' like a home run in the baseball park of my dreams, and he does not dream of me as he sits his rounded buttockal region on the wooden chair in front of mine.
As I try to think of excuses of how to explain to Jim Blaine (damn wouldn't you know his name would be some "As The World Turns" crappola name like that? Married to Laura Dain probably, but truly in love with Doris Strain or somethin') that for a time, just for a mere pinnacle time of a moment or two I wanted to fuck the whole student body, especially old Woody up there now right here in front of me, the back of his neck still has little hairs on it from the hair cut he must have gotten yesterday after school, for they weren't there yesterday, and he just managed not to get them all off in the bath last night, and think of that, me and Jimmy and Woody in the bathtub together just splashing and feeling up and who can come and who can't and it's my party so I get to inspect their parts in the bubble bath water boys of my dreams, take me away Camay. Splish splash was the song all right, I was takin' on a Saturday night--yes sir! I wouldn't have to open the bathroom door to see my friends, to really see them, cause they were in the bath with me and soap and wash clothes and sweet dreamy flesh of my flesh and there's together forever..never gonna be a man I won't. Man am I a plagiarist today, somebody stop me please from these song lyrics.
And we would just be like puppy dogs all over each other, and we would be licking necks and ears and chests and nipples and going for the score and the kids in their school clothes all round us in the hall where the bathtub was right outside this classroom are still standing there like statues, not knowing what to do, cause see, its usually, no, its always, the other way around, me standing like a statue not knowing what to do or how to do it or if I would like it or if I would not like it and how to tell if I'm through, and whether I should try it again and then complicated process go through once more when it has not happened the first time even, because if Jim or Woody came onto me in that tub of boys and sudsy Mr. Bubble water with all us squeaking our little and hello there not so little prongs and someone said my name I would pop like one of those bubbles and vanish in mid soapy hot leathery cologne smelling bathroom air, and hold onto my English Leather for all it was worth, press it against my suddenly too naked crotch and run down the hall of clothed children, when from the bathtub back there, and the hall of children I was rushing past, boos and hisses, and me so small, so insignificant, so stumbling over words, would I be, like always, I can't say "cat" without messing it up and getting into some kind of trouble to boot. Puss `n Boots, slide on by me, sometimes I am too cool for cool.
And the teachers and the kids standing in doorways, by the drinking fountain, by the atrium, by the teacher's lounge, by the cafeteria, the library, are laughing so hard now their guts half hang out of them, and they are laughing so hard it puts arcs of pain into my head and there is the voice in me, the voice of my Penis, saying you can't do it, you'll never do it, there were your boyfriends back there in the tub of suds and sex and you could not do it, you could only do it if you are by yourself and let's be ridiculous, if you were with someone and actually and we are really gettin' into far outs ville, doing it, you would have to pretend you were by yourself in order to do it, and when you are by yourself you have to pretend you are with someone else with whom you are doing in, but even in the fantasy where you are with Jimmy or Woody, you have to pretend you are by yourself dreaming of them....and I put my hands to my ears and the voice gets louder and louder and it finally penetrates through the cotton growing round my brain....
"Timmy? Timmy?" The teacher in the black blouse, the pleated skirt, the thick eye glasses, the hair back in a bun, is calling my name and holding a piece of chalk in her damp hot fat hand out to me and for a moment I thought she had cut off Jimmy's or Woody's dick and handing it to me with their blessing because they knew that would be the only way I would ever get to suck on one, but that fell apart in the fearful nanosecond, classified as wishful dreaming, stupid wishful dreaming but wishful dreaming none the less, and I addled to the board, where there were things in my fuzzy wake up from dreaming in class vision, that looked vaguely like numbers as the fat big breasted clown painted faced teacher slammed the chalk in my hand like a football, hard and fast, like the touchdown of all time depended on me, and the fate of the world hung in the balance, and I could not do the problems, so the teacher who had a really big mouth and a really grotesque hillbilly accent would call, screamed, she always screamed, I always came home from school with a headache, for lots of reasons, but mostly her, MONA COME UP TO THE BLACKBOARD MONA AND DO THE PROBLEM FOR TIMMY--
--and little shit Mona with sausage curls and a pert nose, and little round Margaret glasses, and white blouse for purity and dark skirt for ladylikeness, and those white ankle socks and penny loafers would sashay to the blackboard, haughtily take the chalk penis out of my hand and do the problem in three seconds flat, while I'm standing aside, the sweat of humiliation and fear on me because everybody's laughing at me including the teacher, everyone except Mona the dick cutter offer, the emasculator, and then she would put the chalk in the tray with much satisfaction and flounce her way back to her chair, flipping her hair at me, the only notice she ever gave me that I was alive. Great. Strike out even with that little cold as ice bloodless vampire bitch.
As the teacher told me to be seated, as the class was not laughing at me, had not been laughing at me at all, had not for a long time, they were used to this comedy routine, it bored them silly. So I sat like a swamp in my chair and I looked at my Blue Horse notebook with all the math problems in them with answers crossed out, done again, crossed out, sometimes the pages had tears where my Number 2 pencil eraser had crossed them out in such goddam fury. I figure these school smells, especially those of pencils, erasers, chalk, blackboard, sweat and terror will haunt me till the day I die.
Class went on. And my dick was limp. I had a brain storm, and wrote on a fresh page between the lines writing backwards as Ray Bradbury instructed me in "Fahrenheit 451" these words in my incredibly bad left handed penmanship (which made me write backward even worse or better depending on your point of view, thus giving the instructions an extra added touch of my own):
"Hey, Jimbo Shrimp, let's meat after school and just get together for at the ah the root beer ah stand (cross out cross out cross out) and a (tiny wavery little valentine heart, can't even really tell what it is, might be a tonsil) and ah you could ah (the ah's are dash marks, erasures, cross throughs, sometimes tearing the paper) and I really ahahahahah cross out cross out cross out luv cross out cross out. Smooch. Smooch. (Cross out one smooth. I'm dead enough with this as it is.) From, The boy over two rows down three chairs."
And I put his name at the top. I tore out the paper, careful, not to make a sound, though who could hear me under the screeching mimi up there?, put my hand on the shoulder, smelling of powder and sweat, all those sweaty clothing smells will haunt me forever too, that was round and weighted with the world it seemed, in front of me, and the girl flinched, because she didn't know I was back there where I had been all this school year, people forget me easily, and I nodded, and she passed the note on to someone who passed it on to someone.
This was the first time in my life I had done something like this in class. In addition to what I did not do in class: I did not chew gum. I did not laugh. I did not cross talk. I did not fly paper airplanes or toss rubber bands or write dirty words on the blackboard. Therefore I never got caught. Therefore the first time I do something I am nailed.
`TIMOTHY WHAT ARE YOU DOING WHAT IS IN THAT NOTE? YOU GIVE ME THAT NOTE IMMEDIATELY"
I had not seen the trajectory of her big fat stupid eyes, or where she was standing. She had been following the flow of the note from hand to hand, some of the owners of the hands reading it or some of it and giggling, (to my utter dismay! God, where had privacy gone in this country?, it was like opening a stranger's mailbox and reading their letters, there must be a law telling people what to do, or we shall dissolve into a police state) and she had now called me out into the middle of High Noon for a gunfight which was inevitable as it was in that movie, to die for love of yes I've decided Jimmy of the oblong head and the cowboy shirt and the clingy jeans, whose body I wanted to ravage and touch just everywhere right before I kicked off for Boot Hill and he to mourn me the rest of his life and to forlornly visit my grave evermore..
The teacher not knowing this, thinking it was other stuff, NOT gay stuff, here?, in my classroom?, are you seriously disturbed, standing right over Jimmy who was looking at me mad as hell, shaming me, because he had read the note and had gotten a look of utter terror (not too different from the utter on mine, as I thought of udders, cow udders, teacher udders, whether Mona would ever develop udders, I could not hide in words this time though) on his face as he looked from it to me and then back to me again, I guess he had drawn hearts like tonsils to girls he liked so he knew what I had drawn the note to him, but it was probably the smooch thing that tipped him off, before the teacher took it from him, read it herself, and almost had a spasm, toppling a bit on the floor, from desk to desk till she got her balance. The kids laughed. I was the center of the universe right then. It felt scary, but good too. I didn't think she knew the drawing was a heart, but I guess she know what smooch meant, even if I only used it once. Moral lesson: in love notes, draw a heart like a tonsil, don't write the word smooch.
Jimmy's hand was trembling, the one that had held the note, had I aged him fifty six years into palsy?, and then they both looked at me like I had crawled out of the sewer, the other kids breathless and open mouthed, couldn't wait to see what would happen next, and I fell into hot shameful poisonous ice cream melting in the sun. So long boy cocks playing etudes in my mouth, so long swimming naked with them and pulling off their underwear for a good looksee at the old swimming hole, so long love bites and testicle touches and measurings and so long sitting on Jimmy's face or Woody's or hell at this moment even Mona's anyone's please, and I would not have to lie next to imagination, and I would not have to let imagination make even success a failure, but success had to be a better failure than this, and I put my hands to my buttocks, strapped them right back there, cause the teacher was coming toward me with her largest paddle, the one with the most holes in it, and my randy thought in desperation, what would it be like for Jimmy or Woody or the man in the moon at this point to paddle me while I was tonguing and then sucking their lollies? Did the man in the moon have a lolly?
He had a face and it was coming closer and closer to me and it looked like that girl's face topped with the tiny fright wig that Senor Wincis or however you spell it did on the Ed Sullivan Show, the mouth birthing from the little finger and the thumb, the tiny eyes painted on the edge of the little finger, lipstick painted on the bottom of the little finger and the top of the thumb, and that damn red fright wig and that damned terrifying face staring right up close to me, the rest of her bending her fat fat body down at me, and then of course, all the kids were smiling, and my eyes went to Jimmy's biggest smile I had ever seen to date..
--so I got the living crap beaten out of me. Which gave me a hard on, as I bent over, gripped my thighs as instructed, thighs seemed an especially sexual word right about now, I had never been whipped before in any way, I was no longer a good boy, fine, save it and pass it to the next poor bastard, the torch is passed, I felt so warm, not just at my butt and legs, but all over, and looked at Jimmy right out loud as she hit me and hit me and hit me on the back of the legs cause it hurt the most. But I got a hard on thinking of Jimmy doing that to me, and also because I had never seen him so closely. And also cause the paddling felt actually kind of good, under the pain somewhere.
He knew I had a hard on. I knew from the sickness on his face though he could not turn it away from me, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it either is there? Ha Ha Hurt Hurt. I had never seen anyone look so angry. I didn't care. This was my moment in the sun. I got to stare at him a good long time. The slams on my buttocks and legs are for you my dear. When it was over, I cried, inside, being manly now, the tears of love. Then I asked permission to stand by my chair for the remaining few minutes of class. I did not cry. I don't think. The teacher said I could stand up. I said thank you. I was beet and beat red all the way through. My face felt so hot I feared it would fall off. It was only a few minutes to the bell. Everybody save me faked looking at our homework assignment.
Jimmy never stopped staring at me, this last class of the day. When the bell rang, he left first, still looking back me, running into Mona who huffed and said apologize, he told her to eat it, and he still looked at me, as he misjudged the doorway and ran into the wall, saying ouch, holding his face, still looking at me, and he was mad as hell. He waited outside the front of the school, till all the laughing joking kids were gone, and being the center of the universe was no fun, because I knew it would be something mean like this that would happen to destroy it if it ever happened at all which was ridiculous to think of, this might be my biggest moment in my life, make use of it. but how?
..So Jimmy, my love tapping his left foot, sucked my eyeballs as I stood opposite him, knowing today it would happen, what I had dreamed about all my life, we were magnets to each other, we could not have walked away from each other if we had tried, took me, as he walked a league to the side of me, to the football field where the darkness of the stands were. Could it be? Oh god? His hand on my shoulder? There it was now. It was Jimmy's HAND. It couldn't be. It was so warm. So nice. So comforting. He was giving me a reward for doing this for my King? My thinking was a little goofy at this point. Yes, I know. It always is. He would have his way with me when we got to the hot shadows under the stands where the secret darkness flows. He lay me down in front of him. He looked so intensely--Jimmy. You go you tiger you, I thought.
He knelt in front of me. We began. He began first. We'd go get a root beer later. Oh yes. To slake our parched thirst. But that was for much later on. Thank you God. And then--then--we did it--it was just as expected. At least I think so. As though I had ordered it straight from heaven above. It was beautiful. Wasn't it? I don't know. Did I fake it? I don't know. Did I like it? I don't know. Did he fake it? No he most assuredly did not. You can't fake something like that. I doubt if I will ever see anyone that worked up again. He knew his business, I'll tell you what.Was I there? Was the fantasy me there? I don't know. In my fantasy, will only he be there, with me gone while I was there at the same time? I don't know. The questions came later. Now was Jimmy and Jimmy was forever. I guess that's a good thing. I don't know. What's forever? I don't know.
Oh the hell with it. You should have been there, Timmy, you should have been there. There was a whole lotta sweatin' goin' on, I mean to tell you. I do know that my butt hurt like hell for three weeks and that's a fact you can take to the bank, Frank.
Timothy Stillman comewinter@earthlink.net