"The Cinder Track Runner"
by
Timothy Stillman
"....when all the others turn their backs and walk away/ you can count on me to stay..." Paul Williams "You and Me Against the World"
He ran and he was beautiful. He was the high school track star, and he was lovely. He was blonde, long haired, and the thick hair was pushed backward by the wind, and he was everything in the world. He took my breath, he took my heart, and that exact heart breaking moment as I sat on the bleachers this cold winter day, looking at him fly down the track round the football field, round and round, worlds inside him, thin, sweet face like made of pink sunset, and love was him, and everything tipped to the time of his rhythm. Everything was china blue skies, and he had made them, and the clouds, there was never a cloud like any other, for he was above all else, a creator, and see the muscles in his legs, lit fire legs, lit heart in his body as his heart beat to my tune and my tune would always be him, and there was never anything in him for me but love, for that was how it was supposed to be.
He was a crystalline product as he ran, and he rushed his hands into the cold bitter wind, he in his T shirt and blue gym shorts and black socks and gym shoes, and he was machine and machine was beautiful for machine was human and machine was him, and his arms cantilevered every now and then, and there was something about his stretching his fingers out to the wind and beating it back with his vulnerability, and he was blue smoke on the ring of fibers that make up the sky, for if you unravel the sky you unravel him, this enigma, this boy of the finer songs, and the quick rabbity smile and the shy down turned eyes, the awkwardness was carried off with such skill and such eventfulness, that you wanted to call home and say hey gang I've found my true love, and Harlan Ellison who was right about much, but not this, for I was not born the day my true love died, and I did not die the day my true friend was born, and Joel ran, and his running was a piece of white flame in the wilderness, as I sat on the splintery bench and aimed my traction at him, aimed my traction at his shoes on the cinder track that was so noisy, and so cumbersome, as was the tree over that way, and the high school rust red sprawl of building behind it, and Joel was never behind anything even though he stroked silently, and I loved him, at the beginning of everything--stroke. At the end of everything--stroke. What a lousy evil and double faced word that was, and the thing was I was dressed in my school clothes, and he knew me enough to say hi to me, but mostly he was within himself, mostly he was the town and the world and what was up there in space---
And he rocketed and he was so graceful at it, and there was nothing in those eyes but wonderful peace, splendid contentment that he was himself and nobody else, and it made my eyes tense and tent as I watched him, as I watched the willow tree body, as I watched him play with the wind, and deny nothing, be what he was, and his arms pistoning with his legs, and his body his and something he was outside of and using at the same time. He was a stamp on the world and he was ready to be someone else for he was on that cusp too far down of boyhood to manhood, and I felt him as he ran, and I felt him as his breathing enlarged and became its own echoy brilliantly dark room, at least in my own mind, and I wanted to love him and did love him--stroke--bad/beautiful word, stroke as his legs hit the track with such clockwork precision, as his heart strained not even a little, he was a fireplace on a winter day, he was the machine human who still had the feelings deep in his smooth flat chest and stomach and in his eyes that were brown of farm brown where he lived, and he was the wall that everybody runs to and everybody falls flat as they run into it, and he was with me, and it was sky time, and sky time was nothing more than love that happened when it is supposed to, when there is something more than life and legs and arms slender and hands wise as though running the lap after lap after lap, he was there on the edge of becoming angel, he was on the edge of becoming supernatural, he was only one moment of life, the moment that said this is what all the galaxies were built for, this is what the evolutionary process from amoebae onward to this moment means, and you can stop here, God, you've finally gotten it right, and it was nothing else before or after this; I forgive you God for all the mean kids, because now there's Joel; I forgive you God because you couldn't help me understand Math just a little bit better; I forgive you God because you couldn't make me a little, just a little less lonely, accept things better, though I prayed every night for you to just let me be a little less sad, who would it have killed? I say thank you God for all those childhood crucibles, because Mecca is finally here.
You made Joel, God, and you got it right, every cell in his body, every moment of his life, the fact that he exists in their terrible hollow necked world, you made my love and we are together, and he runs and he dines on the cold, and he sups on the love I feel for him, and he never does anything wrong, though he does a great many things wrong, he trips in the class room sometimes or going to lunch, and he trips and he dopes and he is clumsy and awkward and he's never had a straight on day in his life, but his smile gets him through, and he excels at running, and we run together, and I am beside him, and he looks at me and takes my hand and he holds my hand and we are both in love with him, and he makes it not narcissistic, he makes it not something off side and not right, as we face the wind and the world together, and nobody gets to beat me up anymore for any reason whatsoever, teachers don't get to berate me cause I'm stupid, and love happens to me this time with Joel and it just doesn't pass me boy on, and I touch his hand and his hand is a glass of milk shake and its cool and its delicious to the drinking hold of my palm and he shelters me, and he wants me as I want him, and we run together, into a kind of infection of perhaps, that dreaded country I lived in for so long, and perhaps has borders, or the potentiality of borders, and then they stay away, they check out, they eye me strangely, and it doesn't matter that I weep on Joel's shoulder, it doesn't matter that sometimes I wake in the night, sobbing. For we always go to bed together, and snuggle our way to sexually satiated sleep.
He holds me and tells me its all right, and he is himself still, and he is himself naked and beautiful the night he ran the cinder track, wearing only his gym shoes, and the night he ran with me, and he hardly touched the ground, and he was all those little things you see out of the corner of your eye, but don't dare turn to look at the glittering gold dust there, because you know it will just go away soon and sooner than that. From a distance he looked like a scrawny bird, but up close he looked like the only god I would ever worship and he was naked now and he was running and I looked at the interlocking of his muscles, I looked at how free he was, how he did not claw the world with tight mouth gripped muscles, how he did it with ease, how he ran into it and was not tired, and in this cold night, that cold afternoon, this night with us in silence of love in our house, how his penis was hard and standing straight up, bouncing against his stomach, tall penis and it was bouncing up and down and he felt it hitting his tummy over and again and he looked at me and he laughed and his laugh was a feather bed of wonder, his laugh was a feather bed of friend, and more than friend, as his buttocks were so tight and so globular and so hard they did not jounce one bit when he ran, and he was all the time running, for he would never stop running, for there was too much in the world to see and do and he had little time, not like Tadzio had little time, but the way even gods have it, and he was far better than Tadzio, and he held my hand and we ran through the black skies, and I touched out to him, to his naked shoulder, and I thought Olympus would have been shamed in front of us, in our grace and daring and skill, and we would never put on clothes again, and we would never be winded or ashamed or needing this drug or that, and I would be Joel's drug, I would be the fine cold wan flesh of him, I would hold him within himself, he would not be an extension of me, but I of him, and he would not perform so I could see how not lonely I was anymore, we would instead be in each other at the same time, for even golden gods like Joel get lonely, and he was a lonely figure this afternoon in his gym clothes, he looked like the end of Saturday night on a January day, the end of freedom, church the next day, school the next, and he stroked and I stroked, and the worlds of that word and the woods of that world betraying laughter one moment and in too fine a dance to the next moment oh god no...
And the blend of afternoon and the evening when we ran naked. When he reached over and with giggly mischief in his eyes and mouth, touched my penis head, tickled it and made it erect, for this was not easy for me, to run this fast, to keep up, and yet it was easy and I remembered the first time I saw him, in the lunch room, sitting by the long unwashed windows at the back, behind all those squabbly ugly bully kids, and hidden by them, him playing desultory games with the fork and the food on his plate on his tray, his head down, he looked like he was crying, his long sun hair hanging over his face, trying to hide him, like he was saying to himself, get me out of here, away from this mob, oh please, and my heart dived into him and I never wanted to come out of the country of him, I never wanted to know any topography other than that of Joel's.
He fascinated me, I feared him, I feared for him when it was obviously he was on drugs, and I screamed his name silently in the hall way when he passed by and when he did not, and I worried over him when you did not show up for school, whether or not he was sick, and if sick, why, drugs?, had he scored from the wrong dealer, man? like the nitwits say, and was he in jail, or had he died, taking too much, and I found my mind skittled on days like that, and I found myself thanking a God I hated the next day or the next day when Joel was there with his plaid work shirt, and his heavy jeans and his farmer's boots, and I became out of myself, and I did not say it and I did not know he knew but the hammer shaped and confusion of the school hallways brought me to him, and he ran that winter afternoon and he ran for me, for I was the only one there, and he ran to show off, he ran beside me in my dreams, as I masturbated over and again in the night, as I was careful to always come on the Kleenex, Laddy Buck of "The Carpetbaggers"--which had such hot passages in it for me, the kid, then--taught me that.
And Joel's back was an etching of spine and bumps like he was a ladder giver who extended even that out of his clumsiness with girls, of his nodding off in class, of his mind that wandered more and more but never to me, so I had to be his mind, I had to be what he was not becoming, what he was slipping down into, and I hated the damned drugs and I hated that he was so damned sad, and I hated that he was caught in his blonde world where no one could know what he thought, down in the seas of him, down in the world of Joel where he lived more uniquely than the rest of us did in our stupid little worlds, and we stroke, and we stroke in the beginning and at the ending, and Joel and I stop on the cinder field that late midnight and we touch and hold each other, and our penises still hard and spongy tangle with each other, and he wiggles his hard on at mine and I wiggle mine back, and we press into each other and I hold his hips and he holds mine, and he is breathing just a bit hard from running, and pretends that I am not breathing hard like a locomotive out of steam, and in love and in Joel's arms and loneliness was banished for both of us, maybe more for him than for me, I can't say, but we stood there for a long time, being happy naked out doors on this cold winter moonlit midnight, and we kissed and his mouth was heavy with sleep and his eyes closed and I held him and he held me and we were the only things in the world that had the right to be loved and to love...
...and we fell slowly, and extra slowly into our house, into where we were now, into the flanges of the dream come true, and it was still us and still what we were, and we could not bear to be out of our house, could not bear to be away at our jobs, and we would meet for lunch and we would be so happy to see each other, the flooding of my eyes with the sight of him, of course we had to keep it quiet there in public, but at night--
--the field of Joel was brown leaves crackling underneath me, and the field of Joel was the night sky being friendlier and more understanding than the day sky which let's face it just doesn't give a damn, but the night was Joel, and the night was his penis waiting to be rubbed, and his balls firm in their sacs, and the little wormy like scuttery vein on the left side of his forehead, that pulsed so delicately, and he was running in his mind and sex was running and stroking was running, and there was never a normalcy more normal than this, the taking off of each other's clothes, so fumble fingered, so pretending we were not doing what we were doing, so standing on a side walk just passing the time of day with a friend, talking about nothing in particular, like we did this every day of the week, averting eyes, smiling to ourselves, smiles filled with fear, avoiding each other's eyes, but slowly, then slowly...
the memory of the first time, and the great grand penultimate awareness that he was right here with me, and he was as hung up on me as I was on him, and there was the sweetness of the farm we lived on, not the farm he lived on with his parents, but our farm, and he was faithful, and he had his peculiarities as I had mine, and we always tried to come together, and though we never probably did, we did have that goal in mind, and the first time I bit his pale nipples and my tongue ran down his naked chest, stopping to lick each encoded rib bone, and his giggles now, I can hear them, like a girl, his laughter, like cold water of a stream on a terribly hot summer day, and sometimes we would go to a gay club, though seldom, so he could prove his love to me, and how he turned from the men there interested in him, and he dismissed some who were brave enough to try to talk to him in that blue strobe lighting and the dance music no one could be heard over, and blue Joel blue boy in the light of the bar always left with me and me alone, hey how about that, me leaving with the most beautiful guy in the room. Fancy that, willya? Their eyes licking him as he walked away from them. And he always walked away from them. With me..
For we were faithful in our fashion. Because, you see, we were alike after all, incredibly alike, because he was more me than me, except for the drugs and his running marathon magic, he was like me, and he was a druggie and a track runner, track star, because he was scared of the world, like I was, all the times I thought his clumsiness was just a tiny bit of an act, all the times he tripped over his boots and almost fell, all the times he failed a test or a class, see, I thought being the conceited s.o.b. that I am, that he did it for attention, so someone would help him up or help him out, and I pretended that person was me, I wanted to, I froze, no one else even noticed him, and it was, he told me later on, as we stroked, that he had fallen in love with me sometime back there, and he did need me, as much as I needed him, and it got even better, because he needed me maybe a bit more than, and that was Joel, and Joel came home to our house of pine, and Joel came home to me, and Joel was scared of the world, really really scared of it, even more than I was.
And he huddled like breakable glass next to me, and we masturbated each other, and the truth then came to me as his warm hand massaged my penis, he really was fragile glass, he was not how a loved one is thought of when one thinks of them that way, one wants the fragile glass person to be the strong one, to be the one to help them along, to know how to use that fragile glass, to make it work for him and me, and gradually and gradually I felt he was stealing my soul, and gradually and gradually he felt I was stealing his, we never said, we just knew. And we loved each other, and some years passed, and we were running in our lovemaking in a world of beauty and cold and night and youth and the tender songs that defined us, and our deep intrinsic need for each other, and the world ganged up on us during the day, but we had each other at night, thank you Paul Williams for that lovely song.
It didn't happen all at once, we didn't kill each other by the inch with ennui or disinterest or chagrin, no matter how it falls, and we loved each other into existence with each other, we needed and were given comfort, I gave him oral sex and he came in my mouth and it was Joel in my mouth and how truly magic it was, but time if it does not change a person, deepens what that person already was, and that meant solitude, for as boys we had jacked off, hate that phrase, gotta go get the wrench, mom, so I can jack off the car, back in an hour or so, but our lovemaking had been ourselves in solitude, till there was us, we were virgins with each other, and now it seems like we are virgins yet again, not that re-virgining crap the Christers spout that is such a goddam lie, but the fact that to be with each other, to be as close to each other as we could possibly be, in this and this alone, Joel and I gradually took to jacking off, back in a minute, mom, doesn't take as long now, to jack off the car, in different rooms of our home at the same time, the kid excitement that he was doing it too in the bedroom, just what I was doing in the living room on the couch, and we sometimes made our come noises louder so the other could hear, but it sounded animalistic after a time, so we stopped that, it had no grace to it, as when we made love as beautiful as a bell on snowy cold Christmas morning when nothing will ever be as magnificent, as heart wrenching as that, it was also awkward love making and clumsy and we had to dream our eyes closed to make it objectively what it was, and if you notice for the last few pages, the attempt bad as it was of poetry is gone, and now the writing is more mechanical, more realistic, let's use that word instead of the word harsh, because it is not, it just is, we find it more romantic to dream each other apart from each other, though we are together all the times we can be other than that.
And I dream of the boy in the next room, who told me back in high school when our wavery hi in the hallway ducked into my being his friend and he being mine, mostly because no one his age came to the meets or his running training, but me, and it happened so gradually that way, so painfully that way between us, such a silly thing, but because he was Joel, and he said, because I was me, what a wonderful silly thing to have happen, that he had begun jacking off imagining me as I did imagining him, so we have reverted to this, for a few years now, and we're careful not to bump into each other going to the bathroom to flush away the Kleenex, and that maybe is where I will end it, for that's the pity of the thing, the after effects, what we strive for the very most, what makes us happy or sad or both, just gets flushed down the toilet....
... from the high wire tension tensile strength of Joel running track and winning meet after meet, watched by small audiences, mostly the parents of the runners, and the majestic snow fall mountain we climbed as we climbed each other's penises and achieved Valhalla, we came to be two men who masturbate in different room, because that makes us feel closer to each other than actually having sex with each other, two men who are pretending to be boys, who still love each other dearly, but love our childhood loneliness more, and perhaps even our kid gawkiness for I was more gawky than he, for, it seems to me, thinking it through the best I can, a person can get hooked on anything, a person can even get hooked on being alone and sad and coming by himself and sobbing a bit afterwards, because it has a certain nobility to it.
Yes, we love each other, and think of each other when we "do it" but we never talk about it. Joel will just get up from the dinner table or I will, or he'll look at me as we watch TV or read, and I nod, and the lovers go to their separate corners. You see, we were each other's dream before we knew our secret, and the awesome awareness of being another person's dream, it sounds fantastic, doesn't it? But dreams can't be dreams after a time, and this is our way of preserving it, as best as we can, for as long as we can.
I apologize, Joel, for making you my dream. That's a tough thing to put on a person, for either of us to live up to. But the thing of it is, you over there in the next room, I love you, with all the honesty in me, and then sometimes after I've come, I put my arms round my chest and hold myself, pretending its Joel holding me, Joel in the very next room, as I pray he is doing the very same thing,
And I whisper, "Joel." Hoping he will/won't hear me. Which after all would be worse?
Timothy Stillman comewinter@earthlink.net