The Trembling of Leaves
By
Timothy Stillman
novemberhourglass.tripod.com
(With deepest thanks to Bobby, who asked me to write this sequel)
Leave-taking has a trembling all its own. It is a beast of August heat trapped in the head like a mountain lion that roars with silent pain. It is a bus pulling up at night on the hot world that was to be lonely again for another year. To this day, I do not like busses, or the sound of their breaks, starting stopping, hissing, door shushing open, travelers getting off or getting on, and Jimmy and Kathy always coming by bus for one month, then at the end day of that month, the fabric that they had knitted for me, was unraveled again, and they boarded and did not look back; they did not look out the green tinted window; they were for the North, were for home in Michigan; and I was me again; this penny witch in a window, to wait, to be sealed over till the next July, full of denim jeans of Jimmy, full of party skirts for Kathy, and their cat like eyes, and their voices of splendor and cold and winter snow, and the time they made sex in front of me, this July, and what had come after; after Jimmy knew I wanted to be with him, and Kathy too; after they had had sex on my couch, and I had watched and Jimmy had humiliated me by calling me fairy Barry and letting me, and me letting them see-but they had only cared for each other.
I did not know if they even had cared for each other that summer afternoon; that time I got to see them naked; her hand on his hard penis; his fingers touching, stroking her vagina; and me there, watching; with the air conditioner cooling the summer bell jar of a dark house in which I lived; in which I wanted to be both of them at the same time, and never me again.
Finding spearmint growing from a crack in a sidewalk, what Jimmy had found, and gave to me to taste and smell; not magic, to him; but to me, this was a wonder; to me he had done this trick and only he could do it; were I to try, I would fail, and I loved Jimmy and Kathy, I eager to see them and afraid of them as well; and trying to be worthy of blue sky summer that I always then and always now associate with them and with me by proxy. Summers were owned by them; there was the falling down or close to it white picket fence around their gran's yard; there were the baseball games Jimmy and his granddad liked to listen to on the radio; there was the morning dew of slight cool, that could whisper into my sleeping ear, it's July and you're alive again, Barry; and the swings of my heart; the way they hurt me so tenderly this July, having sex in front of me; all that long cool bronze flesh; all those ways Kathy used her brother's hard cock, all the ways she sucked on it, and he sighed, always in control, always sure of it, and with the touch of a finger to her blonde head, a certain Morse code that was the same as this odd and usual silent communication between them, this telepathy, she would switch to rubbing him or tonguing him, or going down on him all the way.
Or sucking on his large brown balls; and he would lie with her on the couch, and that had been the couch Jimmy and I had sat on to watch TV; but now it was forlorn with them there; and it would always be of their own handiwork; and I resented this terribly, and tried to say it for a second, then dropping back, dropping my hand to my penis, and not crying after they had left, not much, only the laughter that had gotten into me; only the ways of childhood when one is not one thing or another, when I did indeed wish I could be both of them at once; wished I could become part of them and thus be a triad; to have mental contact with them, always; so once they were back in Michigan with the snow and winter I so coveted like a king's domain, I thought of Detroit, then we could just think thoughts and they wouldn't have to be sex thoughts; and I wondered after I came, after they had dressed, insulted me a few more times and left as though nothing had happened; I wondered what they looked like in Fall and winter; did they lose their bronze color?, how did they look with snow on their hair?, and coats?, what kind of coats did they wear?, what were they like outside summer's clime?
I had fallen asleep that special summer afternoon. Late it was getting. I was tired and still naked and on my bed, my large Laurel and Hardy poster over my bed smiling and protecting me with their sweet faces, and I wished I could cum like Jimmy did, I wished I could be Kathy as he came into her secret place, and I wished I could know how that felt; and I wished I could hold them without fear, touch them, their bodies, examine them, without the pain this had caused me, without having to be a servant to them, a kid, a pest; maybe I was dreaming about summer fevers where boys were kind and girls were kinder, and there was more than the leave-taking.
Maybe I was dreaming that leave-taking is what makes everything sweeter; what makes everything glow in a kid's heart, when he feels so terribly happy; when summer haunts him and makes him think summer and childhood are gone when instead they are right there with a person; they are right there in the center of you; and I was ashamed that I did not have pubic hair like Jimmy and Kathy did; and I dreamed maybe that Jimmy was showing my Kathy's secret tiny golden lips, and his hand would be with mine and she would smile down on the two of us; both of us, her brothers. I think I was dreaming about all three of us running naked through Fall crunch leaves, or through cold winter deep snow; and making love in it, and falling down as the taffeta leaves of winter dropped on us sweet and cold and comforting, and I was not me like a little monkey masturbating on the floor of my living room, as they sexed on the couch, looking at me at times, saying the things they did, and laughing at me; all of which or none of which had made me hard, as I woke up, and my penis was throbbing.
I thought, no, this is not for me; this has all be turned terribly badly; it was my secret world; it was my world where I was to never have guilt; it was my world where I was to never have to explain or be rejected; and now they had, my Jimmy and Kathy, conjoined twins of my soul; I had given them my life and it was theirs to do with as they would; I leaned over and rolled on my back; oh I was so small there and I was so rib cage thin, and I thought, as my left hand descended to my penis that was hard yes, there was this new Michael Shayne novel I hadn't read yet, and they were always fun, so I could just join in the new adventures with Michael and Tim and Lucy and solve the puzzle down in safe Miami far away from all three of us, the boy and girl who lived their lives and their secret sex lives, oh how many questions I had for them?, how long?, how did you start?, who started first, Was it in the bath?, who came to whose bedroom one night?, are you afraid you will get her pregnant?, did you have sex before you both got pubic hair?, before Jimmy started cumming,? Did he cum for the first time with you?, and my hand rubbing my little nub of a penis and my eyes closed, and I wanted to turn over and cry because late summer afternoons were counted as a clock, to them, from them, and they had an air conditioned bus ride here and one back as well, and I was the stop over, the stop gap, and I turned on my side, feeling the pinkness of Cathy's toenails as she had arched her toes as Jimmy had squirmed himself inside her.
I could feel and touch and almost talk to that pinkness; I wanted to see-everything; I wanted to know-everything; I wanted to stay a child forever and see and know everything, but when one does see and know all, he can't be a child anymore; and if they had not taken my virginity, they had indeed taken my childhood away; and I loved them for that, and for doing this thing for me; for letting me see; maybe they let everybody see if they wanted; maybe this was nothing new for them at all; and I imagined and in imagining I dry came again; I thought, honestly thought, I would squirt a bit of liquid this time; it seemed as though I had been through so much, I had that right.
They didn't know of course that my Wollensak tape recorder, the one my mother had gotten me two Christmases ago, that was on a chair beside my bed, had recorded all the sounds of their sexing each other and what they had said to and about me. It was a huge cumbersome tape recorder that could record up to two hours on a large tape. While they had been in the kitchen, I had checked the machine, found the reel was about to run out, and had put a new reel on just in time. They would never know my little secret; my little treasure; they would probably never let me see them have sex again; this was my salvation, this tape would go with the others Jimmy and I had made last summer and this, into which we read stories and told jokes and read comic books into, and this summer as well; and this sex thing too; that seemed to me all of a piece, that seemed all of a tapestry.
That was not incongruous with Saturday morning cartoons and comic books and cowboy movies and Alfred Hitchcock Presents..creeps-this was childhood and always would be associated with it in my mind; sacrosanct in the owning of; this bit of aural spearmint growing out of a crack in a sidewalk; that little spearmint leaf that trembled in my hand as Jimmy had on that hot hot summer afternoon when our shadows were virtually frying on the sidewalk, as Jimmy had handed me it and said it was spearmint, as I, not believing him, said no, spearmint was gum, this was not gum; he all knowing and sighing just a bit in impatience had said, they make the gum out of this, here, taste it; and I tremblingly took it, afraid my friend was for the first time wrong, and I had to say something about it to him, and how do you say something critical to a huge god like Jimmy?, and I tasted it and smelled it, and I thought it was gum and the world was full of trembling leaves of spearmint, all the trees grew them and the lawn grass was spearmint gum, and all fresh and new and tart and tangy to my tongue and making me feel cool no matter how hot and sweaty and gnaty the weather; and I held myself now on my small narrow bed for a small and narrow boy and I wanted to run the tapes back now; the main one of sex especially; and imagine, and remember; and thus take them into my secret world.
While they were gone and had forgotten me for another endless night crawl of time to next July barely making it there alive, and then the whoop of inner joy when their bus pulled in again, and they very adult like and very unexcited came down those steps to me almost jumping up and down with happiness; until then, I had them in my ears and I could make them have sex or listen to Jimmy read a Superman comic book; or play some songs of a Smothers Brothers album he brought with him one summer, "Both Sides of the Smothers Brothers"-one side of them being crazy; the flip side, which is the one I loved, where they sang folk songs straight through; my favorite being "The Four Winds and the Seven Seas" because it was about leave-taking; because it was about waiting for a return; because it was about longing, and seas that stretch galaxies wide, and winds that blow so differently when lovers are apart; and in the middle, I could hear the sounds of Kathy making love with her brother, and when she did, I could see her legs round him and her hands squeezing his buttocks, and pressing into him, and he leaning down and biting her breasts that were so tiny still, little puffies, I thought.
And giggled, liking the name being close to puppies, and I had always liked puppies; and they took the scare of a girl's breasts and body and a boy's naked body away too; and I could look at his penis inside her and I would want it inside me, as I heard boy and girl sounds and the tape recorder, being quite a good one, or my imagination better than it, I thought I could hear the fucking sounds, and definitely it picked up the cumming shouts and the sighs and the excitement of orgasm as I rubbed myself to climax again, listening to the sex tape, which I labeled as another edition of "A Summer's Day-With Jimmy and Kathy-friends of mine"-I would put the sexy ones with the other tapes of Jimmy and Kathy and me talking into the machine; it would make me sad and grim all August, the most hated month, when they were freshly gone, my friends, and it felt like my skin was being flayed off; and I would be angry and grumpy all that month; I was surely hell to live with then, but by September, the sadness would set in more, and school rituals started, buying new clothes, notebooks, pencils, pens, all of that.
And when I would come home on hot September afternoons, there were my "A Summer's Day" tapes to listen to all that happiness back then, and in retrospect, even in close up retrospect of then, it was happiness; the other stuff, the hurt stuff; well, I have had to put up with that to keep friendships, all my life, I'm used to paying far more than the other person, one way or another, and usually in many ways; and when Mid October came and it was starting to turn cool and the air conditioner could be turned off and windows opened and I could sleep under a sheet and then a sheet and blanket as days went ahead into winter when it was it seemed to me expected to be sad, wasn't it?, after all.and I could play my Jimmy/Kathy tapes and I could hear their laughter, and how they finished sentences for each other, or said half complete sentences that the other would pick up on with a half complete sentence of her/his own and thus continue the sequence, then break and look at me and laugh and I tried to laugh back and sometimes did-
Thus, my story, and thus the tapes of a Summer's Day. I always hid them when I left for school so my mother wouldn't find them. And I was right, Jimmy and Kathy never fucked for me again and I longed for it so; it was never mentioned by them or by me, and for the summers of our childhood till they turned eighteen and were not court ordered to visit their grandparents one month out of the year anymore, so I was never to see them again after that, I made summer year round; I got to cry when Jimmy laughed.
I got to hear Kathy dance when I played her the soundtrack of my next to favorite musical "West Side Story" and hear her sing to "Tonight" while somewhere in the back ground, soft and reedy, a voice hiding itself in embarrassment, my little voice trying to accompany her, and I got to be with imaginary friends in my bedroom as the cold stole on and I grew without wanting to; it was two seasons later that I finally started growing a bit of pubic hair and started to cum a bit; it was to their sex making that I did it; I always masturbated those years listening to them and pretending they had invited me friendly like to join them; at the end of my tapes after listening to them each night, before I started my homework, wondering if Jimmy and Kathy were doing homework at the exact same time, time change excepted, I would put on my record of "West Side Story" to the song "Somewhere" and I would sing along and I would pretend that Jimmy and Kathy were gathered round me and we were all three naked and they came to me and hugged me.
And there was indeed "a place for us" (their suitcases never packed for leaving me again; and I knew they were leaving me with regret, not because of a court order that had nothing do with me; I was just the kid next door is all; never again that endlessly long walk those three hard brick screamy nightmare sick stomach to the bus station destination on the last night of July; not ever again, would they leave me.
And they would kiss me and I would feel their cool refreshing bright tart tongue tips in my mouth like spearmint leaves, and my penis would rise hard and taller than it had been summer before last and then the next summer taller as well, as they would put their hands on a quivering me and Jimmy would go down on me, as Kathy let me suck her more than budding breasts as I held Jimmy's hard cock, and in my steady dreams, the light that keeps me going, that shows me still today the way of then and now and forevermore, this scene, in tableau, and candlelight, and my summer living room with the air conditioner keeping us cool, as Jimmy lay me gently down on top of Kathy as she offered my her breasts, and Jimmy beside me, as he helps insert me into her, all of us spearmint leaves in summer, trembling in the mere fact of existing together and forgetting who then is who, my summer friends and I, with one name alone..