"Awash With November"
by
Tim Stillman
(With much thanks to Keith, who makes London Town seem a friendly place again)
Awash with November winds deep and strong, Autumn had long since taken its count of the summer and the Kent countryside was fair no more, as Mark walked out of his acupuncture clinic, as the sky chilled down on him this early evening. Caught between the dreams he once knew, lost in the luminous eyes no longer his, the golden hair, cherubic face, the purity of an inch away from almost weeping, no more, caught now in a body and face he no longer recognized, a stumble in a country side that was keen on nothing but the next blowy snow, for it looked like it might this time.
He had a home to go to, and wife and children to greet him, always happy to see Dad, when he was not at work or doing a promo for the Christmas showing of "Lionel Bart's OLIVER!" which made him, in that title role, the music humming down the days, caught in his friend's death, always the Artful Dodger, and runner of dreams, they were, dancing somewhere still and ill-remembered. He pulled his heavy top coat tighter and headed to his Fiat, the only car left in the parking lot of his clinic, under the brash light from the poles. He was soon to be nobody and no one would miss him, not really. There were pains in his body that had never been before, this former boy caught in celluloid history and what pictures of him there were on the net, caused him to hate that child back there, to doubt his whole reason d'etre, something of curdled milk seemed to taste in his small nostrils and his hair was dark.
He stopped by his car, unlocking the driver's door. He wondered if there was ever him or only the mysteries of dreams never to be unlocked. And there alone thinking of Seven Oaks and his friends there once and the times they had had. Keith and Barry. The three of them had been fifteen almost exactly the same month and they had had such fun together. Mark just coming back from making an awful movie, in which he had his first naked scene, knowing that fey look he had given in the mirror, was a genuine one, the hesitation, the intake of breath, his own, the hands of his taking off his clothes, down to his underwear and the sigh and the incipient fear and then off, as he took something less than courage and something more than a moment that was him on one side and someone else on the other side of that mirror he looked into when stripping.
Keith had been there at Manor to help him later on and Keith was a glorious person, fine and optimistic and happy and so very filled with life and bubbling over with eroticism, while Barry kept to the side, didn't join in, was afraid and somewhat in awe of them both, as Mark got in his car, started it and the warmer and then lay his forehead on the steering wheel and thought he was afraid to look them up--Keith's smile and his giggling hands and dancy eyes and his not letting hurt get to him, while Mark had been so entangled with himself and now and again drugs, that he came to the almost willful-child knowledge he had been had and life was a joke and there was nothing now but clicking through google for the seller of "those" films of his that embarrassed him so now, even though being English, even though not ashamed of naked bodies, and he wanted to ring Keith up and say what've you been up to, mate? And why don't you come over to an inn
with me and raise a pint, what do you think?
He thought he needed some acupuncture himself, the bizarre headings of his life, the bizarre career moves from "hot property" to "You mean the director Mark Lester? Oh yes, no need for the middle initial L any longer, that kid, long gone, no confusion." And when he slept with his wife, did Mark Lester, former actor, ever remember Barry? The quiet one, the sad one who loved him so but could never tell him and Mark wished Jack were still alive, had kicked the alcohol before it killed him and Mark drove out of the parking lot and remembered the first time Keith gave him head--on his knees was Keith--slim, dark, curly hair, taller than the other two boys, holding Mark's member like a joyous magical impossibility, there caught in the darkness of the manse in the country side that unbearably hot summer night, as Mark tossed back his head and pushed his groin into Keith who did these wondrous tongue summersaults on it and Mark laughed in spite of
his troubles, Keith's parents gone for the weekend, and Mark, and Barry too, come here for sustenance, come here for reprieve from life extant.
As Mark orgasmed, body trembling, sounds of cumming and peace, as Barry watched on for a moment and then turned his head away, Mark with a shaking hand, motioned to him, mere ft. away but Barry didn't see, the success of the endeavour, the sprite unleashed in Mark who for mere moments was not making a movie scene, did not have the studio lights that burned his eyes so badly, and no one round to watch him but his two friends, and it began a big thunder boomer in time that night, as Keith put loving hands on Mark and Mark put loving hands on Keith and they were naked and they were together and somehow they made each other feel fulfilled, feel as there was something more than sex and bodies and magic, and Barry thinking as he moved to a heavily upholstered chair by rainbow window in the late night hour, how many people how many kids would pay money a great deal of it to see what I am turning away from, and why am I turning from it, and my two friends whom I love, one of whom is in distress from a career gone wrong and a once child who will make his living for a while, Barry suspected, as an invasion of that child, a turning of him into a freak on screen, just to---
--And Mark groaned and whispered and Keith and Mark were on the wine-red carpeting in the darkened sitting room and the very shadows were banished by the naked boys having sex, and the rain hailed against the window huge and strong, both and same, and they wrestled round and they were having more than a little fun, as it should have been, for Mark was now just a boy who measured against Keith and in many ways in wanting found himself wanting in comparison, as Barry imagined Mark and himself and how some time tonight they would run away from this place and they would be naked in the rain pummeling them and they would be hard, these shadows in a shadow land, and tomorrow would bring it all right, and the sun would be up high and golden and trees in the vast middle of it, as two boys were to take upon themselves believing what could never be and thus make it be forever more.
And Barry selfish with his thoughts and guilt and not understanding. As Keith naked put his hands on Barry's tight hunched over shoulders, of a sudden, giving his friend a start, till Barry relaxed into those hands that comforted him now and Mark naked as well knelt down to Barry's lap and put his head on it and they held there each other, friends in the going away of childhood, in the cold house in the beastly hot summer night, as Barry whispered to the both of them, I love you so very much, and Keith put a hand down Barry's shirt and Mark placed his hand on Barry's erection as Keith moved to the side and knelt to their friend's face....
...And they were all naked in time and they stayed that way for the rest of the night, as Keith showed them both how to live and his full to bursting happiness and his wisdom and the songs he had inside, and cared nothing for Mark the actor, but everything for Mark the friend, as Barry cared only for Mark the actor, the dream, which pushed the other two from Barry as Keith allowed Barry to sup and Mark allowed the dream, as they drank wine and more wine and they became so close in their huddle in their sexuality in their touching each the other everywhere and remarkable thing friends, remarkable moments of insatiable.
And Mark, the man, drove for a long distance in the night cold and the coming fog, for he stopped by the manse in Seven Oaks and sat there letting the car idle, ready to get out and pull up the bonnet in case someone came along and thought he was casing the place, as he looked at the silent dark shell and heard Keith's hearty laugh and his singing and his hands and the comfort of his bum and the sheer jolting sexuality that said let's try this, no, over here, and there was just this wonderful playfulness of it all, as their friend lay naked beside them and touched them gently as they made love, touched them as though whispering fingers along clouds way up high in the summer sky, as the lights surrounded them in their own tries, the firsts for all, the pulling and the entering, like to like, and they kissed deeply each the other and for a time Mark forgot who he was, forgot what was done and what was up ahead.
And Mark started the engine again and continued on and hoped Keith was well and happy and felt such love for him and his entanglement of arms and legs, hoped there would be no more calls for another refrain of an acting career gone so badly wrong, self-destructed before the eyes of the world, only the eyes of the world no longer cared, so when he saw a phone booth by the road side, he got out of the warm womb of the car into the ever-colder dark, and got change out of his pocket, to ring university where he and Keith had gone, forgetting the lateness of the hour, and they wouldn't tell him Keith's number if even they had it, which they would not, so Mark leaned against the booth's exterior and did all on his own what he had been paid to do in so many films, he wept.
Keith, handsome and tall, and with a long strong cock, and dark and chiseled facial features, a body fit and able and easily walked around in, never ashamed of nudity, never ashamed of loving or sexing and always saying what else are we here for, if not to bring comfort to our friends and to ourselves as well for surely there was nothing wrong with that, and Mark in the cold, Mark not looking even close to what he had looked as a boy and as a young man, shivered in his heavy top coat and hoped his daughters would not make him take them to see OLIVER! again, hoped they never saw the DVD-R's on the net of a later film in which he and a girl had two naked scenes of sex, or the one where he played boy as monster, for he had had his brash devilish becoming warmth back with him back then, that trademark that made him scatter himself to the winds in movies of him breaking type, then him as human dandelion so horribly uncomfortable, so wanting to go home, and he was going home now, and it was the weekend, Friday night, and he would be a husband and a father and he would make love to his wife and he would ---
--He got in the car and felt himself as Keith had, the warm mouth, the warm tongue, the quiet tender excitement and then there beside them touching sexing finally in such an apologetic way, Barry, and late in the night, Mark and Keith, still naked, ran out into the rain that did indeed pummel, their bodies rejoicing in it, their penises flapping up and down, Mark's small one, Keith's much larger one, as one boy looked out the heavy rain windows from the darkened sitting room and watched them as he stroked himself in silence, in sadness, as they ran for a time and disappeared for a time and came back inside to warm towels and taking a shower together and laughing and mocking and preening and being adolescents in this moment of rapture, this moment of reaching out one's hands and in them holding love with face and name and voice and body.
After Mark had driven home, to the suburbs of London, he pulled into the parking lot of his flat, turned off his heater and then the engine and he did something that he had not done in a long time, he smiled and it was a sweet smile, a smile of a boy long time passing, caught forever on a celluloid image larger always than life, he smiled and he remembered then and the times after and thought it's all not been a wash, there was someone who cared and maybe he tonight is thinking of me and maybe he is taking his kids to see my movies somewhere or when they are on the telly and maybe just for conjecture's sake, he is remembering how I felt like, on him and in him and maybe somewhere there is that tall sad man of broken heart who turned away from us that night, and who we turned back to us and then we made out with and maybe we all three are remembering each other, and that way we're not alone, so Mark, happier, wiped his eyes, and walked through the parking garage to his flat where his family was sleeping and where he would sleep too, for things had maybe turned out right after all.