"The Advent of Joseph"
by
Timothy Stillman
Lonely road down by the beach. Saturday afternoon, late, in early fragrant smelling Spring. A boy in black swim trunks walks down that deserted road. The sky looking for the moon to come. His name is Joseph. He limps a bit. Until last year, his left leg had been bracketed by a brace that had callused his young life, that had put a carapace over him, that had made him different. Not that he was a bad looking boy. Though you could never prove it by what he thought of himself. He was small, heavier than he would have liked, but losing weight by determination and long walks in the nighttime hours. He had short hair, blond dirty, that he had had cut this afternoon at the Jones Barber Shop. Not that he had wanted that weekly haircut. But was forced to by those who knew best.
The night was silent, as he brushed stray cut hairs, or invisible ghosts of stray cut hairs, off his neck. He had looked forward to Spring and the doorway to June and its saving environs for all winter long, but now it had begun, he did not know what to do with it. Dreams were like that, he had decided, the few that came true. Like being able to walk without his brace. The limp was small, he was getting better at conquering it, though he did not believe this. The limp in his heart, the limp that was him was always a good friend to him, unlike the external one. For he loved to be by himself, that was when the night warm was the best. When he believed Saturday could turn into one of those old lined ancient Greek gods and scoop him safely inside arms infinitely kind and strong, and he could be himself.
He walked in the dark air and he glanced at the sky. It felt good to be almost bare in the coming night, to hear the breakers so close by, to have bare feet that longed for the warm grains of sand to stick to them, as he would run, as best he could, along the curving strand. Now he had metal braces on his teeth, as if to replace the absence of the one on his leg. How odd the trade off, how he didn't mind, when he supposed he should be embarrassed by those crooked teeth and the device to straighten them. But that was nothing. Not when you considered the ordeal, the pain, of the brace was over. That leg had been healed not by god but by age and by advancing science, and though it was still a bit atrophied, it was getting stronger, the muscles getting more robust. He no longer had to uncase his leg before he lay down at night in bed. He no longer had to unwrap himself like a fragile glass hen in a house that was his only by dent of pain and shame, no matter how he tried to paint it up mentally, and deny it all physically.
The brace off, at bedtime, before he turned out the lights, or after the lights were off. He had done it so often, he knew how to unleash his leg in seconds, he was good and deft at it, had become like a sharp Mississippi gambler at the deal of it. And in the morning to put the brace back on. To hide his leg, to heat it, to bandage it, to shame it in the ordeal of getting better. The pads. The buckles. The weight of it. The sheer inordinate clumsiness of it. They called him Frankenstein, at school. And they were stupid because that was the doctor not the monster. His leg always at an angle, slight, but at an awkward, unnatural angle nonetheless, when he walked, when he sat at his desk, when he sat at the lunch table, as he cannonballed down the hall, sometimes falling into other kids, or more embarrassedly, into a teacher or the principal.
He loved the summer sun, he loved the heat, he loved the ocean and how he could dive into the spray, at least in his dreams, and be taken out to the world where someone would miss him because he had come to the conclusion that being missed was better than being loved, for it meant that he had been loved once, and that was easier to deal with, than waiting for it sometime tomorrow or the day after that. They called him a hobby horse, a hobbled horse, they did the time honored things kids do to kids who are so like them because they are so unlike them. The night had shadows coming on, for it was night now. A day had been survived. This summer, he was going to ride a bicycle for the first time. Twelve he was, and he never had before. How sad. How much lostness he felt in himself. The night seemed lost. Joseph was unafraid of it. It seemed afraid of itself. Joseph understood how that felt. And the night was clean and pure and right and was nothing but itself.
It had no hospital medicinal odor, it did not breathe ether and fall asleep while strangers in white worked on his body without his having any say so over what they did. Sometimes it seemed his life was a hospital. As though he was a hospital. And it was all white sheets and starched pillowcases, and nurses in soft soled crepe shoes walking down the halls inside himself, and pills in plastic cups, and eyes of nurses, warm or cold or indifferent, for he rarely saw doctors, who seemed to make cameo appearances of a moment or two, virtually unannounced, but always impressed with themselves, making everything seem to have more gravity. But night had no elevators in the sky. And the stars seemed to be heavier than they used to be, but they were bright. And they had shown down on so many lives, on humans and on dinosaurs and they had crossed the span of such distance, like eyes that were so longing to see.
Joseph was at the turn of the road now, a dirt road, this lame boy, who needed the multicolored coat of the world that he held gently inside himself, as if a pearl of vast wealth on a satin pillow in the case that was a boy flawed, the case of a boy who dreamed little dreams and felt guilty even for those. Sometimes he would in the middle of doing something else, even at school, even when others were around, find himself touching his freed leg, the freed captive part of him, and felt how amazing it was there and it could move on its own, and how brave. Joseph wished he could be that brave. Body parts could do amazing things. How shamed he was they had to be his, he who did everything wrong. But his body was patient, with the patience of the ocean that was a table on which people swam and boated and skied, but underneath there was a world too, of bright darting flash colors hauled between sacks of silt and swirls of anemone. Joseph had never swum either. He was going to do that this summer too.
He had made the turn from the road, and now walked through the yard or so of saw grass already high, already breeding toward the sky, and he had to push through it a bit with his fingertips, the grass already thickening steadily, who knows?, he thought, who can take a night and interrupt the day and not feel guilty for the dreams he puts on it? A boy, thin shoulders, body bronzed brown, save for his hummingbird uncaged leg which was still white as snow, as though it still had the brace on it, as though it did not know it was given its pass out of prison. The grass and the sand and the world felt good to his feet, the one foot still turned in, the first two toes still overlapping a bit. Sometimes it felt as though he had a sandbag instead of that withered, though getting well, leg, and sometimes the sand would shift in it, and he would fall. Sometimes he would catch himself. Other times he would fall flat on the floor and have to get up by himself, or perhaps someone might help him up, which was the worst of all.
And now he was with his friend, the ocean, now he was on the sand, warm sand, sensuous, not the bright red and green colors of school, not the gun metal gray of the hallways, not the constant katydid clatter of child voices in the building of ogres, but quiet and pastoral, and serene. Joseph did what he had done for some time now, at night, before the people came to this area of the beach with their bonfires and their clambakes and their grilles and their beer and their CD players and their girls and their boys and sent fire smoke up to the rafters of forever. He slid off his trunks, slowly, his hands at his sides, feeling his too padded hip bones, his eyes closed, he had always loved being by himself on the cusp of things, of things going to happen, someday, soon, like when the doctor took off the brace for the first time for the last time, and Joseph had held in the tears, because in being found, he had been lost for all time, somehow.
He stood now with his always dry, never ocean wet, save sprinkled wet, from wading in the breakers, trunks lowered to just above his penis, small, like a limp fleshed whistle that called no one, that accepted only the silent soft silken hands of a boy who had never had a limp or a brace or a dream or a love of shows that gave ground life and made skies sing skies that did not exist here but on planets kept carefully at the corners of his eyes where no one else could see even if they had looked. The breeze was soft hot on his body, as he pulled down his trunks, and stood on his "good" leg, falling over, as he pulled his trunks off, falling with a little huff of sound, breath rushed out of him. He lay on his side on the sand, and he was nothing more than a boy who would not be in a few months what he was now. He would ride his new bike, his mom had already bought him one, but was keeping it hidden till his birthday next month, though he had found where she had hidden it, had peeked at it, and had fallen in love with it at first sight. He shivered with the glory of how it would be when he was fitted to it, when he became this summer machine of black and chrome and handlebars that were rad to the extreme, and pedals for a boy, him, and he alone, to ride the summer streets of the resort town, to the taco stand, to the pier, to home, to the library, and then back again. And no one, NO ONE, other than he, would ride his bike. They would all love it and lust for it, but steeds obey no one but their masters. Joseph would be such a very kind master indeed.
He was a comma in the sand. He lay his head against his left arm. He felt his heart beating with the heart of the world. He thought he could hear all the way to China in the ground, all the way on the other side of the universe, in the wheels of his bike spinning in the wheels of his head. He spread his legs and felt the air between them. He wondered if he would fall asleep. If he would be found like this later tonight, and if others bringing their picnic baskets and their laughter and their make out blankets, would stumble on him thinking, he and they, he was a piece of drift wood, and then he would be, they would see in the lights of their cars and their flashlights and their normal supreme beams, a mer-lad, washed up from the ocean, old as time and young as the next minute just being born. He imagined, as he snuggled into himself, closed his legs again as though he were a clam shell covering up prize of great passion and sought after by all the lads in all the kingdoms under the ocean there could ever be, this escapee from Atlantis, miles under the sea. He warmed into himself. He smiled, and though he would not know this, and would sock anybody who had said it straight out to him, he was pretty when he smiled. He had dimples on each side of his cheek. His smile was a bow and when he grinned it made his eyes slant a little, giving him a bit of an Oriental look, or at least an exotic look, the kind that means birds of paradise and silk umbrellas, and buttery warm cookies served by kind attentive hosts in a land of delicacy and dignity and courage and gentleness that a boy didn't have to kneel down to find in a land far more blustery and raw than there.
And as always before the night was over, he would jack off, he would lengthen himself, and he would wish as usual there were some other way of saying it, some way that was as pretty as the deed itself felt, and as it culminated, and as it brought the heart and legs of him to draw up deeply inside himself, and felt pretty afterwards too. As though he had just had a satisfying piece of sky, or he had just been given a puppy to hold for all his life through, a puppy that licked his face and waggled his pumpy little body, and his paws just everywhere all at once, for he loved life so much, yes, Joseph thought, making the shell of a curled up angel in the Spring sand, yes, I will not forget you beach, I will not let my bike take me away from you. Especially not on Saturday afternoons and nights, for that's when the loneliness is like sweet home made bread that rests softly inside me, that calls to light house clangings and white sheets of bright loom turning round and round in the dark way over there, clinging and then turning sideways and disappearing, then illuminated squares once more, so ships would not crash into reefs and die.
Joseph's older brother would be home from college in June, and would teach Joseph to ride a bike, god, think of it, the immensity of it, the impossibility of it, to do what other boys had been doing all along, riding their bikes, as Joseph had sat helplessly in his yard and watched them go round the block and back again, all hallooing, and showing off and pitching themselves into the wind, and doing tricks like wheelies, and Joseph would do that soon, his brother would teach him, but his bike would teach him all the summer secrets its fine black bumble bee exterior held inside to teach. And his brother would teach him to swim also, and he would later on, by himself, of course, swim naked, and feel the womb of water over him, and he would dive underneath the surface and he would see what he had only seen on TV and in pictures, but this time in person, the salt savoring his body, his little penis floating like its own small island, suspended on waves that he would make with his hand, like a doctor slapping a baby to life after delivery.
He would no longer stumble through life, he would pick up pieces of the world, like other boys, he would not pretend to run on the beach, while he was still hobbling, walking at a slightly faster clip was all, he would run, and his little fanny would blossom and his legs would grow straight and tall and he would become a Gold Medal winner, and he would be a champion swimmer, as he stroked through the world, so other boys could see him and could know that miracles could occur. Joseph lay on the sand which enveloped him as he turned on his back, as he touched himself, and his stomach which was becoming, yes, he was sure of it, far more concave that it was only last week, why, when he put his hand to the bottom of his rib cage, he felt the descent of flesh, not the solid singleness of it, the straight board of it, yes, he was getting a declivity, and he smiled at the thought, and wiggled the fingers and the toes of him in the air. Even the last two toes of his inturned foot he could wiggle a little.
He loved being a boy. He could not imagine not being one. He didn't want to grow hair on his body, just on his head. He wanted to be a jungle boy and a bicycle boy and an ocean boy. He wanted to be that mer-boy others would stumble on when he had forgotten, given in, slept on the beach unawares. Sometimes Joseph thought he might be a bubble on the ocean foam. Sometimes he thought that the beach, the island on which he lived, and it was for all intents and purposes an island, shaped something like a dolphin's back, had grown lonely and had created him to be its special friend, had appointed Joseph boy god of the summertime. And now he lay cradling himself, with one hand beside his head, trying to make a come hither look at the sky, fluttering his eyelashes, thinking the words, but not saying them, "oh silly little me, come here brave strong boy and cuddle me" while trying not to laugh, like he saw in beach party movies of the sixties on TV. He imagined a boy looking down at him, with the sun behind, the boy lying beside him, raised on one elbow, a hand older than Joseph's touching Joseph's mouth, outlining the love in Joseph's face that did not have a nose slightly too flat, that did not have eyes that were slightly too muddy brown, that did not have a chin that needed a little more forming of it, that did not have braces on its teeth.
Joseph would not tell that boy about the leg brace once worn. That was past. Forgotten. Like this night had forgotten last night, did not know or care, was not an extension of it in any way, for Joseph believed that each night, like each day, was of its own devising, a series of individual box cars on a train of time, that did not hook up to any other of its fellows except the human mind said it did, and the cars of night and day were understanding and allowed the human fantasy that.
And the boy would lean his lean hardened face down to Joseph's and he would kiss Joseph's lips, and comment on how warm they were, and how darned straight Joseph's teeth were, my god, have you ever seen such straight white great teeth on anyone in your life?, and the boys would laugh, the younger on bottom, the older on top, and they would warm each other in the day that was warm enough, or it had seemed so, before that first kiss, before that first embrace. They would cleave, that was the word Joseph had looked for in the school library dictionary; archaic, the definition began, and when he looked up archaic, he closed the book in anger. No, it was sweet, a lovely word, a word for dusty poetry books on spring afternoons when he looked with such hopeless and full to bursting heart at the boy seated in front of him, who true to form did not know Joseph was alive.
But tonight--the breeze more insistent. The saw grass whispering. Late terns and gulls lonely and forlorn. Lighthouse making a mournful sound just like Ray Bradbury wrote it did. Night and a naked boy curled in the sand, pleasuring himself, another archaic group of words, words that did not have in them fight and tough and bleedy knees and lack of emotion and just kidding round and I'll never be serious cause if you get serious they go away from you in fear, not those words to describe jacking off, just pleasuring himself, and tonight the world split open, and the stars took their breaths in a little, because he saw he had made a little pearl out of himself that stood right there liquid dreams come solid substance, and this was a thing a boy should remember, and should celebrate. And fear. Because in the dizziness of grandeur that he had accomplished such a thing other boys talked of as if it was no big deal, but you knew they thought it was a damned big deal, in the hallways of their insecurity and fear, it meant that he would start growing hair there soon, and on his legs and arms, and, oh god no, maybe on his chest.
He felt the drawstrings in himself loosen. He felt himself undone. It had seemed when he ruffled the foam inside him and his penis stood and quivered and contemplated and said yes now, go for it, it had given him a gift, had said I know you are there, I've known all the time, and here is a present specifically from me to you, so you will know how much I think of you and love you as you love me. He lay now, his face to the side, in the soft cupping warm sand. The roads in him were already ridden by him on his bicycle. The depths of him had already been swum in. Both he had done gracefully and with style and beauty and candor and ingrained skill, as he had pleasured himself the same way, delicately, as though he were handling fine bone china of which he knew the worth, how he coaxed it, and coaxed the steadiness into him and then out of him on invisible winds and scrimshaws of patterns of colors that danced behind and before his eyes at such a time. And what he loved would take him away from what he was now. He would ride his bike. He would not give that up for anything. He would swim. He would not give that up for anything. He would run bare in the night and he would pleasure himself and one day he would get these braces off his teeth which would indeed be straight and bright white and a boy would tell him so before kissing him and hugging him better than any old Norse god of the sea ever could imagine.
But they would be the roads he would run while trying to stay the same. While trying to stay in the same static locale. You run, you move, you have to accept the change of scenery, inside and outside. He felt the ocean air, the salt transparency, the cutting cool breeze off the waters of dark nights like little razor blades opening the air and bleeding more life out of it and onto and into Joseph the more he fought against it. He curled up again now, after he had put his finger to his sperm on a place on him that one day would be covered with hair, he lay on his side and he felt the little piece of ocean he had produced, and his leg would get better and it would tan this year, would lose its childhood old man winter this summer and never ever go back to that. Funny, he thought, as he turned on his tummy, and felt the warm good on his penis, like a warm wash rag applied to it after his joy, rushing life and blood and health and contentment and comfort into it, caressing it, kissing it, saying it's okay and I love you. Funny, he thought, that hated leg brace, that thing that had caused him to be so different, that had prevented his riding his bike and swimming and running like everyone else, seemed now different to him.
He knew he would never figure himself out. For he had begun the chrysalis of a nostalgia for that damned brace and wished he had not let the doctor throw it away. Began wishing that very much, and then, feeling tired, he fluttered his eyes closed, drew his legs up more, and he put his heart into sleeping. The surf sounded like silver quarters falling from a long distance away. The night pulled up the warm covering over him and whispered its wind on his buttocks sandy covered and the backs of his legs. He would sleep doze a few moments before he was otherwise to be stumbled over, drift wood, mer-boy. And he would put his trunks on and he would walk, a little more sure footed than when he came here this afternoon, toward home and watch TV or read in his room and he would dream about tomorrow to be.
And wish it could be today.
the end