The Lovers of a Cottonwood Spring
By
Timothy Stillman
They came to the Cottonwood Forest every Thursday afternoon, after school, Timothy and Clemmie. They were in the eleventh grade. And here on gentle spring days or cool autumn days or winter wind or snow or green summers multiplied by every day of the week, they arrived. And they were beautiful, and they made love, and they let me watch; for I was in love with the both of them; they were in my dreams, and I had been so fascinated by them especially the last year of them letting me watch, I so wanted to be part of them.
To remove my clothing as they removed theirs. I did of course, but from a cottonwood tree a few feet away, for they liked to pretend I was not there/was there at the same time. A kind of smiling mirror kind of moon arrangement, Timothy said, for he liked to think he had a "way with words" and I would kid him back and say, "yeah, but I think your words keep losing their way" and he would frog me and we would laugh, and I would love him in my eyes for he was beautiful and almost identical boy wise with Clemmie girl wise, except for the parts of their body boy/girl, but their faces, their twilight eyes, their blush smiles, their slender bodies; they were separate from me, but forever together for themselves.
They took their time this Thursday, for it was spring and close to the end of school; things getting warm and drowsy; mosquitoes come to the woods then, though not bad right now. I never was told they would let me watch. No one ever said hey Tim wanna see something? Because that would destroy it, like destroying a spiders web, while running through it, one June morning, even if it had been Doug Spaulding, knowing for the first time he was alive; and not thinking once of all the time that spider spent making that extra ordinary creation that no human could do at all, just artificially like in horror movies, but still, it was wrong to say anything.
I followed one day last October when the pumpkin smell was in the air and Halloween tasted sweet apple cold; I don't know if you've ever had an unfulfilled love. Maybe no one gets by without one of those. But have you ever had two unfulfilled loves at the same time, and not being jealous of one or the other, but wanting them so much to be together, wanting so much to see Clemmie's breasts and small and red nippled and her stomach thin and inward and her thighs slender and shaped like dreams you have where you are so small and all the beauty of autumn dancers are surrounding you and you are safe forever and never have to grow up. What a joy it would have been to feel the heat of them. The texture of them. And I wanted to be Timothy's hands as he touched her, as he felt her face and leaned his face to hers, tracing both his own and hers at the same time, feeling the difference thus--this a boy, and this a girl--and wonder what it would be like.
I liked to be naked watching them. I was not anything at all, a boy, a little shadow you might see on a street corner, heading home after getting his head all filled with the Capitol Theatre's Wednesday night movie of mad scientists and unlucky men with hair thick on their faces and bodies, and I knew they both knew and approved, because as it is the werewolf's lot to fall in horror and away from love that could have been his had he not been what he was, so it was my lot to fall into love and away from horror, but love that was only observed, and thus I would one day envy werewolves because they at least had the horror to run to, until his former true love shot him with the fatal silver bullet; Timothy and Clemmie had saved me from not knowing, the horror, but would never kill me with a silver bullet--Timothy's penis--Clemmie's kisses--his entering her--her sighing gasp shock all at once and every time; this to me bequeathed third or fourth hand, and I knelt there in the cottonwoods by the tree.
I had taken off my clothes and was playing with myself. It felt right to do this. I was never embarrassed. Never feared they or I would be caught. There was an enchantment to this place. Because it was theirs. I never saw another human being here at all. Not even any animals.
It never occurred to me to come to them after they had made love and were resting beside each other, their feet and legs and hips sometimes pointed in my direction. Sometimes this way I could see Timothy's penis soft again next to the soft brown hair of Clemmie's vagina, soft lips? Magical opening?, show me, oh please, I covet closeness to both of you, to see in glorious piecemeal eyesight visions; it never occurred to me; my words get in the way and go the wrong way and get lost on the way too and sometimes never arrive.
It never occurred to me, I gaspingly finally get to it, to go to them then and kneel down by them and touch their bodies or say "Hey, Tim" or "Hey, Clemmie" "how beautiful and serene you look here in the woods, with all the cottony feel to the sky and the green ground or the autumn ground or the snow day when you both huddle naked with your coats over you and I am your guardian angel; I've been good," I would never say, "and I've not touched your breasts or your vagina, Clemmie, or your penis or your balls, Timothy; and I've never said a dirty word about any of it; I come and I watch and I don't curse and I don't think those other kinds of thoughts; so would you let me in for a minute? Could I lie between you and not be me for a while?"
No. They would say no; the same way they had said yes. And it would be over and I held my penis and I rubbed it hard again and I closed my eyes and I wished for them to make love on fields of cotton, just huge rolls of cotton, way up to the sky, and I wanted them to never have to touch the ground again. I wanted so much for them, for they were sweethearts, when they kind of meant something, and they were there when I looked up from my pale conch shell colored penis, and they were kneeling in their sun apple glade, sun patches on them, and they took off their clothes, unisex almost, and their bodies mirror image, girl as boy, boy as girl, and who in truth could say which was which? And they knelt there and they softly nuzzled each other; they were so innocent and so bold; each time seemed a new time; did they like me watching?
I never knew for sure, but I think, yes. I refused to think whether it was out of pity or not. I like to think they wanted a pair of eyes to record it, a penis to get an erection because of the both of them, to imagine both of them and me and to shape shift them sometimes and to imagine this of me, because though it soared greater than any human event, far as I was concerned, they wanted it to be even more, and I was their Boswell, I would like to think.
They touched each other's legs and felt the warm flesh and she kissed his knee and his left thigh and moved to his left hip and surrounded him there with her arms tender and graceful and long and perfect, as her long artistic fingers played taps on his hips and she put her mouth to him there and she circled him with her tongue and raised his penis into its tall height, and I was on my knees too, my butt in the air, and I was watching them so closely, and Timothy bent backward, rested his weight on the back of his hands and she took him into her carnation painted mouth of sun and shadow and make believe and spring artistic license, and he sighed so low that only I could hear it, as it reverberated through me, as he moved his penis with his hands, and she kneeling took it deeply into her mouth, while I wanted to be that mouth and I wanted to be that penis.
I wanted to be both and see what it was like from all the comforting sounds they made, to make me a house and to find it strong and eternal and to never have the seasons change and to have them here, Timothy and Clemmie, with me forevermore and they would love me and I would place my hand on his penis and slide it into Clemmie, as a royal king to his royal queen's chamber, and the wordlessness of them was the sweetest poetry, and the stomachs moving and the sides and the chests and the legs genuflecting as were their fingers as he stretched to become all of one in her and she lay with her creamy back to the air and to my eyes, in silhouette, and she was the ultimate in beautiful girl/boys as was he stretched back and resting and watching her and guiding her head softly back and forth, her black hair, his gold locks, and they were rhythm, and they were not going to have intercourse today, this was a day for this kind of love, and I came and my hands were full of my love for them and I bit back an emotion and held within to myself.
And I was perspiring, somehow it seemed they never did, as I watched them and I saw his whole body seize, his legs stiffen, and his body stopped bracing up and down, he was as still as the sky before a summer thunderstorm, his balls were tight, I could see them resting now at the bottom of her chin, as she moved her mouth, as I would move it on him, as I did in my dreams again and again, and I pretended he was thinking of me, and I pretended she was as well, and my upper thighs were wet with my cum, and I watched her/his head move only slowly now on his/her penis and then I watched Timothy roll back his head and close his eyes tightly, and she moved her head back and away, his signal, and he came and spurted and fountained and she gripped his penis and held it and pressed on it, and tickled it with her fingers; his penis jumped and spurted more, and she moved away a little, watching boy cum in her eye view of wonder, and she watched from up close again, and she pressed till there was no more to come out; she clapped her hands silently, and he opened his eyes and smiled, taking a bit of a bow.
Then she brushed his forehead and she kissed his eyes and she treated him as a boy coming out of a fever, coming out of a sickness, and into salvation again, and I watched them and I watched the pearly glow of the cottonwood sky and the forest around us as his left thigh was with pearly glow of its own kind, and they giggled and she helped him clean up after a time, and they lay still and cuddled and he pushed his hands to her thighs and then to her buttocks and he said without saying a word, in a moment, when I've rested, it's your turn
I lay down too. Resting. I did not say a word. I had learned that would always and forever be the only way I could ever say "I love you." Werewolves have their moments, too. Let's leave it at that. Here in the Cottonwood Forest of a Spring afternoon.