Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 13:38:22 -0700
From: B Keeper <silvershimmer@earthlink.net>
Subject: "A Summer Idyll"

			     "A Summer Idyll"
				    by
			     Timothy Stillman

Jack clipped Chip on the chin and threw his arm around the
broad shoulders of his best friend. Chip responded
Chip-like and cuffed his buddy on the cheek. It was the end
of school term. Everybody was rushing out of the hallways
toward summer and freedom. Jack and Chip though, they
took it easier. Ambled out. Peacefully.

Jack was gay. Chip wasn't but they went to bed together
anyway because they were friends and that was all needed
for sex these days. Of course Jack, who was smaller than
Chip, and who wore thick lenses in his glasses, compared
to Chip's noble face with its smooth walk and its smooth
talk and his eyes that looked right at you and didn't make
you feel you were looking at the football star he was and
always would be, had not thought of that.

The school smelled dirty and dusky from all those days and
months of the use of it this year. It seemed to groan under
the weight of all those bodies no longer being in it. It
seemed that Jack and Chip were forever and forever was
not till Monday of next week. Their friendship could be
trusted as a courtly thing, something sweet and long and
silent a lot of the time, for they loved silence in each other.
They loved it in lying on the banks of their hill outside of
town, all grass growy green, and the skies of maple wood
it seemed, that came to both of them.

The lounged by the school door and watched the ants
rushing here and there, darting to bikes, their cars and their
parents', boarding the same dumb old school bus for the
same dump old scene never more, not until next
September, when the woods came off the bottles and the
sun came out of the sea and you had to drink in another
year of boredom and grade fear and rushing to senior year
and then the world if there was such a place to run to.

They walked in the already hot blast of summer afternoon,
though summer was officially three weeks away. They
talked the way friends talk. They believed in Chip. Jack
believed in nobody but Chip. They liked the way they
walked together. They liked being in each other's
company. But Jack knew forever would never last forever,
and he tried to protect his friend from that knowledge.

It was last summer, clocked around the first or second of
July, that they had made love. Chip never had before, and
surely Jack never did. Jack with his black hair and his soul
serious eyes. Chip with eyes that becalmed what he saw
and stopped the rages flourishing in Jack. Jack was a
homely guy. He never knew why Chip had selected him.
Had said "hi" to him at the lunch table and later on, "here
sit by me" when Jack had to sit by the football players and
was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but did so
anyway, shocked, waiting for the joke. People saw him as a
joke.

But Chip didn't. And Chip was of golden hair and knew all
the old Simon and Garfunkle songs and never laughed at
him, and took him seriously, and believed in the world and
helped Jack fake believing in the world too.

They had been in Jack's attic, which was Jack's bedroom,
and it had been hot, there were Aurora models on the
shelves around the stair well, mostly of movie monsters
that Jack has pieced and glued together by himself in long
summer afternoons when even the shadows weren't good
company anymore, and no longer summer by himself to
make him happy, as happy as Jack could ever be, but he
longed for a friend. And Chip had gloriously moment by
moment became one. His idol and his lover.

They had been looked through Jack's Playboy
magazines--his parents were progressive and let him buy
each issue--and even bought him buff brown Playboy
magazine binders with the silver rabbit head on the front.
Jack was envied by other kids who had to sneak them in.
But for Jack to, proudly so...sigh.

And Chip had asked Jack what did he really see in girls.
Like the ones they were looking at in the new issue. The
were seated side by side on the floor leaning back on the
dusty musty old love seat that looked more like a torture
chamber covered in cloth, how could anyone love in that
thing, with each person faced away from the other? And
Jack said he really just liked looking at them. And the
curious thing, the really wavy extraordinary thing was that
Chip, girl magnet, Chip who was not gay at any step of the
way, put his hand, his square heavy hand with the thick
veins, on Jack's leg, and Jack drew back.

"What's going on?" Jack asked, pulling the magazine from
between them, and closing the cover, ashamed, blushing.

"Nothing, at all, Jack," Chip said. And he smiled and
looked right into the rabbit, not bunny like at all, eyes of
Jack and Chip's eyes said it was okay, and that he
understood. And Jack thought fear and he thought this was
another joke and he thought there was no where to hide
anymore, and he thought I love you, and he turned away
like he was in the back seat of that love sofa behind them,
and he wanted to run away, felt his muscles itching and
straining and bunching to do just that.

And Chip put his arms around his friend. "You know me,
right, Jack?" Jack played like he was the woman pulling
away from the Phantom of the Opera, an Aurora model of
the phantom, not incidentally, sitting on his ledge of
models around the stair well, in this hot dusty attic, with a
little fan that did no good, with all the tall windows open
for the hot breeze to blast in, and the floor covered with
throw rugs, the closets to each side of the boys. And Jack
felt cheap.

God, can you believe it? He thought later? I felt cheap. I
felt like Gloria Graham in "In a Lonely Place" and I feel
cheap. He started to get up, but Chip pulled back at him,
gently, like he was saving his friend from diving into the
deep end of a swimming pool, and Jack not being able to
swim a stroke. But the danger was with Chip. Chip was the
deep end of the pool and Jack would drown in his friend if
he didn't get away.

And Chip kissed him with his golden kiss, right on the thin
pale lips. And Jack put his arms around Chip, his small thin
arms around that strong protective chest and they lay like
that for a time and the sunlight of afternoon was beginning
to turn on a circle and leave them some darkness of green
Pledge ink to hold onto for a little while. It was a
ridiculously romantic scene, and Chip raised his own knit
white short sleeve shirt and took it off and put Jack's head
on Chip's chest and Jack began to weep just a bit.

The sounds outside included: two lawn mowers, a lawn
sprinkler, the old lady down the street clipping her hedges,
some cars shushing by, in a longer distance the bells for the
good humor man. And Jack and Chip lay down, Chip's
back on the floor, and they touched, and it was good
together, and it was nice to feel Chip's hand in Jack's hair.
Nice for the both of them. They felt enfolded, elastic,
perfect for each other. Jack lost in the dream. Chip lost in
the reality and that was where the fatal flaw started,
splintering. The beginning of such dreamsicle delight. And
the saddest ending of heart banished from home forever
more.

And Chip put his hand down on the crotch of Jack's jeans.
And Jack looked at Chip up close and touched Chip's chest
and knew what all the prettiest girls saw in him and knew
how lonely feeling the not so pretty girls felt when he did
not give them a tumble. But this was not a tumble. This
was false and straight and true, the wrong mask was on the
wrong person and life was sweet that summer. Jack's mom
gone to work during the day. Jack and Chip in the attic
playing. Or outside as Chip taught Jack how to shoot
better than rim shots at the basketball goal at the top of the
garage, something that his mom had placed there years
ago, hoping it would teach mopey alone Jack how to be a
man.

And it worked now. Being a man. Who wanted to be a
child forever. Who wanted to be a child for always who
always wanted to be a man, in a wistful foreboding,
foretelling way that Jack would never understand. the
basketball goal. And the Goal of Chip. And Chip was easy
and Chip was kind and Chip waited and Chip hurried and
Chip never found anything about Jack's wasted little body
funny or foolish or average. He praised him like he meant
it.

But Chip wanted to be Jack's friend. And this is how he
could be Jack's friend. Never once did he doubt that he
was heterosexual. When he had sensed Jack wasn't and
that Jack was lonely--it wasn't a mercy thing. It wasn't an
endeavor to help Chip reach out to a little person of little
worth and help him out. It was what it was. And Jack
would never understand that barbed injurious phrase.
Which may have been a bad thing or may have been a good
thing.

And over that first summer in the dust and the smell of
mildew and the smell of wild onions and the perspiration
that poured over them, this was Jack's room, and this was
where they made love, on the floor, on Jack's bed that was
really too narrow for them. And they taught each other and
they held and they believed in today and the next day was
summer too and the next as well. And they were naked
with each other and examined and pretended and did and
asked carefully delicate as a stein of china, safe now and
legs entangled and happy to see what miracles the bodies
of the other could do, and always new things, always
imagination, always the first feel, the first moment, the first
time ever for Jack not alone.

And summer turned to September and they still made love
occasionally, not as much time, studying, football practice,
piano practice for Jack, mom home more because her work
shift had changed. So they made love on the hill last
summer, often, kicky doing it outside, and they made love
at night sometimes in the back yard of one or the other of
the boys, kicky that as well.

And now they were walking home, arms round each other
(nobody made fun of them, Chip the key to that) and the
streets seemed blue with the hot yellow sun casting
shadows and patinas under trees and round cars, that it
shouldn't have cast. Jack thinking, now, summer, and mom
back on her regular shift, and no football practice for a
while, and ease and Chip had not had a girlfriend this
whole year, that Jack knew of, or that he pretended he did
not know of.

It had become fairy tale like--the smell of greenness, the
taste of the air, the promise of the creek they could skinny
dip in by the hill that was always to be theirs, and Chip
always near by so Jack would not drown though it was
such a shallow creek. And Chip and Jack were silent, and
they thought of looking through Jack's legally bought
Playboy collection, and Jack was wanting to make love
now, as soon as he and Chip got to their home, for it was
their home after all, and Mom had thought it great that
Jack had been befriended by such a great boy who has his
picture in the paper often, touchdown after touchdown.

And they were now older. And they were now more than
what they had been a year ago, as well as less. Chip was a
bit broader in the waist because he had developed more a
love of eating than he had before, and Jack was a bit taller
and a bit less gawky and had filled out himself some. Oh
hold me. Oh hold me. And work was done that was not
work, but friendship, and friendship did not just stand up
one fine day and say see you around, nice working out with
you, but a girl's coming by my house later and I should be
there soon now so I can't come by your house today, but
I'll see you this weekend, maybe, Saturday morning good
for you?

And then thunderstruck. This was not completely a voice
in Jack's always worried always frightened insecure brain.
This was what Chip had actually said. And Jack stopped
full in his tracks. And cars buzzed past them to the root
beer stand a block or two away, the town's main hangout,
where even the mugs, real glass mugs, who would dream
otherwise?, were frosty themselves, and the root beer
stunningly cold and ice in it to make it colder. It was the
greatest. Chip would drive Jack there, and would meet
people, and tell them this is my true friend Jack, great guy,
maybe you would like to get to know him. And Jack
pushing away. Jack smiling unbearably and hurtfully, don't
pawn me off, Chip, don't you dare.

And now the words. Now Chip stopped and came a foot or
two back to his suddenly mannequin friend.  The words
you don't say to a friend. The worlds you don't say to
someone you have been having sex with FOR GODS
SAKE. You don't just sex around and then its off and
running to the next game. And who the hell are you Chip
Marren? What the hell do you think you'll be like later on
in life, make the team be the star on the college team too
no doubt, but what about later on when your belly starts its
beer gut, its a law with former high school athletes,
especially football players, and your hair won't be as thick
and golden, nature takes care of that, and you won't have a
pretty face and you won't be popular with the girls because
you are not Adonis anymore, and you'll get married to
some hausenfrau and have some brats and you'll work as a
pitchman/salesman at some used car lot--it's in "Rabbit
Run" by John Updike, he knows what's ahead for you even
if your are too much of a stupe.

Jack saying the words he just thought he was thinking
silently. Chip put his hand on Jack's arm. Jack shoved it
away. A red Volkswagen passed by with screaming kids in
it.

"Fuck you!!!" Jack shouted at the departing car. Chip's
hand tightened on Jack's trembling shoulder, of his
shuddering body. Jack turned his attention back to his ex
friend.

"Doing me a favor." Jack said, and took off his back pack,
empty now for the most part, sign of the season, and threw
it on the cement that was hot as hell, and he was hot as hell
and Chip was too and this was hell, so the hell with it.
"Doing the fag kid a favor."

Chip pushed backward and turned around. "No. You got it
wrong. You never asked me if I was gay." He was so hurt.
There was hurt in his voice. There never had been before.
There had always been calm and never anger or hurt. But
Jack felt anger and hurt all the time, all his life before Chip
and after and he sometimes unloaded on his only friend in
the world and Chip would hold him tightly and they would
feel each other against themselves and the delights that
brought each of them.

"We did--we did all--and you aren't---" And Jack was
turning around in circles almost he was so damned mad.
"You faked it. Or, yeah, you didn't fake it, you're a bigger
fag than I am, the girls are just a disguise. YOU FAG.
YOU FUCKIN FAG." And Jack's face was red and his
voice was boiling and when he started shouting and did not
stop, thinking he was going to pass out, Chip hit him in the
face, the first time he had ever inflicted pain on his friend,
and Jack fell to the ground, his upper lip bleeding, the
breath knocked out of him, and Chip standing over him
blotting out the hateful endless mocking sun, and Jack's
back hurt like hell. And Chip held a hand to him, and Jack
scurried away like a beetle that had landed on its back and
could not turn over, all those little legs trying to bicycle the
sun to get on its front again, and failing and failing.

"God, what's wrong with you, man?" Chip was
whispering. And Jack looked round at the houses on either
side. He shuddered. He was embarrassed. He did not want
to hurt his friend, or embarrass him or Chip's family which
was quite well to do in this town, so he let Chip help him
up.

"Football's no good for being a queer." Chip said and
walked onward alone. It was okay for Jack to say fag, not
okay for Chip to say queer. It just felt that way. He
watched his friend walking the golden path of the sun. Go
with him. Why? He's got a girl coming over. I can see him
a little time on Saturday morning. He probably has a date
that afternoon, to see the new horror films down town, and
he will make a little time for me here and there, and get out
of this, you idiot, he was playing you for a fool, he was
laughing at you, even when he stuck up for you in a fight at
school and fought the guy himself, even then he was.....

....no, he wasn't, you don't be that close to someone and
they just one day kill you inside and never think a thing
about it and have something missing in their consciences,
friends, Jack thought, with total eleventh grade innocence,
believed that with all his heart. It would take a while for
the world to explain it otherwise, and he still refused to
believe it, as long as he could, without being an idiot about
it.

Chip walked. Cliché name for a football star. Not his real
name. But cliché anyway. He watched those flanks that
hand had caressed so many times, he watched the back of
his friend and knew what his body was like under those
clothes, and Chip was straight and tall as ever, especially
the straight part. Let him go. Let him go. You don't need
some future used car salesman with a beer gut and ache in
the head for all the glories that will never happen to him
again, and the baby's mewling and her diaper's needing
arranging, and I leave that to you my fellow former lover, I
leave the whole superior ball  of wax to you. Chip turned
around. He looked at the pavement, could not look at his
friend.

"It wasn't that way, Jack." Simple. Honest. True. In other
words, Chip, like always.

People in their yards were pretending not to notice them,
because people in small towns do that, save it up for the
nightly gossip, but not at the time the whatever juicy stuff
was happening. They listened and observed, the women
under their bonnets, the children playing catch, the men
sitting on the porch reading the local rag, and missed out
on not a thing occurring in the street drama. Ears attentive.
Eyes narrowed and watching the boys, the FBI and the
CIA operatives could not have done a better job, reporting
their information back to their superiors.

Then Jack walked slowly to his friend. Chip, smarter than
Jack, wanted to tell him how it was, wanted to explain as
best as both of them could understand it. Jack would never
kneel naked down at Chip. And Chip would never hold his
friend's head again. And they would never be again. Not
ever in the whole long history of everything forever and
ever amen.

Jack wanted to cry. Chip did too. Chip walked all the way,
eternity, back to Jack, and they both knew they were about
to have their hearts broken, that the worm in the apple
when they first started, last summer, with the Playboy
magazines, Jack gradually replacing the pictures for Chip
who had no longer need of them, had come into view. The
beginning so sweet, the ending so painful. They would try
to work it out. They had to. They worked too well
together. It was just the sex stuff was over and that would
be tough for both of them. Even Chip, truly.

But Chip put his arm around Jack's shoulder, and they
began to walk, amble, and in time, Jack put his arm around
Chip's shoulder and everything was going to kinda be all
right.

Hopefully.

After they did some talking.

"The girl," Chip said--Jack's heart froze--"can wait."

And then, Jack thought, I'll be the one doing the waiting.

An idea, with this warm sweet boy beside him, arms
around each other, I'll have to get used to. As the town
and the day went on, and they cuffed at each other, goofily
walked into each other now and then, they being still
young enough to do that and get away with it, as Jack
smiled for Chip and Chip smiled for Jack as best they
could.


Timothy Stillman
B Keeper
silvershimmer@earthlink.net