Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 12:38:11 -0800 From: Tim Stillman Subject: Oh The Places We'll See (b/b, incest) (A cautionary tale written in Dr. Seussian. I know this particular ploy goes on every day at schools across this country, in this current atmosphere. But I've not read of it in fact or fiction a single time. It seems so obvious a thing for kids to do, things they make up for revenge, grades, etc; that everyone who works with them should definitely keep in mind.) "Oh, The Sights We'll See" by Timothy Stillman The Blood Brothers, ten and ten respectively, giggled the night away in their large soft bedroom home in Manitou, Connecticut. And the giggles as the blue moonlight fell on their cowboy bunk beds, Mark on top, Steve on bottom, and the night was falling cool in their room's bay window with its Snoopy pillows laying on the seat of it in disarray. The subject of the Brothers Blood was sex, of course. And the sex of course was their discoveries together, their discoveries of doing it all the way. There in their fair friends and their vast reaches that secreted themselves down in the gullet of them. And was more fun than video games, even more than the most violent cut their heads off and eat em for breakfast kind and save the left overs for the cats. The Blood Brothers found friends where they had least expected them. Not that they had expected them at all, for they were somewhat outcasts before, but not now. Now there was the Blieford School all quivering in childhood secrets, sweet and red tipped and pointed out and researched in the minds of elementary school children who reached something like hiatus at that year, or perhaps the year before, and did not want to return from it. The Blood Brothers, in their blue moon, in their little squeaky voices that transmitted up from one and down to the other, seemed in all respects more than average. They were remarkable handsome boys from a remarkably handsome family. They were attempts at never making a mistake, and that was the seditious deal. Founded in the concrete driveway with its huge garage at the further end of it, stuffed with expensive sleek shiny heavy and even finned cars, and the basketball hoop on the top of the garage. Here was the season, and the season was not of Sabrina or Tabitha of rerun Nick fame. The season was of sex. And all its entrails spilled out before them, before their happy unsleep clouded eyes of this night. And the deals of it. The promises of showing others what they knew, for though others had the same equipment that the Brothers Blood did, the others did not have the Brothers Blood equipment that was a belonging only to these boys of the fair skin and the yellow hair and the square lean faces and the bodies that grew taller it seemed every moment anyone looked at them. And their parents were proud as parents in this sleepy bedroom community of Connecticut had to be proud. The green grass had turned brown but it had turned brown respectfully for fall and the leaves had been raked by the family gardener every afternoon for the last two months. There was in this house of superb huge screen TV and rec room and shiny silver appliances in the huge house all to itself if it wanted kitchen, the Brothers of toys and books and music videos on their 24 inch bedroom TV, who were the stars. Who were the shining examples of bedlam come undone, of the great kid syndrome that the networks didn't want to bother with, all they wanted to hit on was Columbine, and Hinkley, one of the (new term) "shooters" at one of the other school massacres, Arkansas or such?, and didn't the buzzards return to Hinkley, Ark. every year or was that one of Johnny Carson's jokes? So Mark and Steve talked of sex this late night, in this soft house, softly. Only they themselves were not soft and when they felt the need of looking into a mirror they only had to look into each other. They were alive double. They were themselves multiplied without loneliness. They were their own crowd. Their own tennis team, and their own ping pong players. And when they were by themselves, they were with each other even when they were not with each other. And the examinations would take place in their room with their wood door safely locked and their wood paneled walls festooned with football hero posters and movie posters, especially "Gone in 60 Seconds", looking down beautifully and beatifically. This generation of boys in their cotton pajamas and their flies open and the stroking and stropping of generations and the thing the parents feared from them in three or four or more years was happening now, and it was just what it was not supposed to be. And it delved and it divulged and it had the late night giggles about it and it had the little stories of fallen leaves outside and how they would lie in state until tomorrow windy and red and brown afternoon when the yard man, black man name of Frederic, bald on top, tan work clothes, came and raked them up with metal and prongs and put them in the green garbage can of aluminum. And the house wavering never in its creamy beige color and its green thickly gabled roof and its quaintness, its luster of a big front deep porch for two boys to run up the concrete steps to at three o five each weekday afternoon, as they hit home, tagged safety and each other and away from school another wonderful night-- When they could explore sex. And when they could imagine the other kids who knew that they were exploring it and the other kids feeling bereft for the Blood Brothers were hung, each and both, with four and a half inches already, the lucky boys in gym got shown, to their own grief, of that white columnar steel that seemed to stretch for the stars and a little bit beyond them. As though the wangers, as the boys called them, were reinforced concrete looking for a victim, looking for a recipient. And when last summer, they had decided for sure on their victim, their recipient, it seemed as though the bowling of autumn had been tossed at them from very far away. From a foreign land where there were little jokes to play and splay and show your fingertips to me and your ears and drop and give me fifty and now what is going on here young men? Other takers and other players of catch ball in the yard this afternoon, in their blue zip up expensive oh yes my word jackets, boys, friends of the Brothers Blood, now that the Brothers had friends, who played catch as the brothers themselves, the stars of the house and the neighborhood and the town of Manitou, played basketball at the garage hoop. And the boys in the front yard looked over at them, often, would they do it? Would they really? Be in awe of the brothers, taller than yesterday even, almost four five if anything at all, and full of the way to do things, the way to concert themselves at this concert of life. Other expectations falling in the green shadows from the eaves of the long and gilded house with the sun shining in sparkles of sharp sheen on the boys in the front yard and on the smooth brown driveway, there glint in the sun, and the golden kids in the drive, in drive all the way-- let me see now, Brothers Blood, and not yet, Stan and Ollie (not the real names of these two ardent admirers, the brothers Blood had a keen cutting sense of humor), or Tightbutt and Tweedledee (cutting even deeper), you want to too much. And if you want to too much there must be something not normal about you. Saith the Brothers, who on plea and give you a dollar, make it five, no more, no we think about other things, we have our lives to lead, get your head out of your crotch and cut a bush or landscape a hill or read a book, just get your face out of my space. And then the brothers, who thought about nothing but cocks and balls day and night, though they would have never admitted it to anyone, especially themselves, burled their way through the cold and cold air and they in their fine clothes, their expensive Land's End for the Young Lad division, and they were memory dust in the distance. And Stan and Ollie who were representative of all the other kids in their class knew the boot would fall, the fly would be unzipped in public. And this was better than even those cool brutal school massacres, because this was one that would keep on giving and giving. And this mid November night, Steve and Mark were polishing their swords getting ready to go to battle, and the stuffed teddy on Mark's bunk was matched in kind and placement by the Pooh on Steve's bunk, and beside them on their whatnot table were all of the Buzz Lightyear miniatures and video games and the "Star Wars" memorabilia ("god, 'Star Wars', my grandmother was 10 when that thing came out, for cry eye', one or the other of the brothers would say, the other would concur, for they always concurred with one another) and the other things that designated masculine strength and chutzpah in boys who were right around the corner from kids whom you used to know a long time ago. In a house, the brothers were, that was dark at night and warm and had a great many corners to it, so sharp you could cut yourself on their card edge blades. But the brothers, like all ten year olds, knew their way round and round some more and could do it standing on their heads and had done it standing on their heads, and had done it standing on their heads while Marcie Carway, their singular double heart throb of the bumpless chest had watched on and had applauded wildly. This in the gym locker room, daringly after school let out, and they decided to risk it if Marcie would lower her drawers after first hiking up her dress there in the concrete locker room with the smell of sweat and the showers and the toilets and the fear of being caught--half the fun--which she did and the boys got to see her little hairless slit and they did boners both of them and stood on their heads as she unzipped their Levis and they had at themselves and each others. Giving the tops of their heads most terrible headaches, giggling themselves silly, they did that all the time anyway, life was a trip through Candyland for the Brothers name of Blood, and when they each popped, Steve before Mark, or Mark before Steve, it was so easy to get them confused and to confuse themselves, sometimes they forgot whose dingle was whose and which was left and which was right handed, for they did differ from each other in that regard, and it was enormously irritating to them, but it of course made them giggle too. And the little boys came without coming and Marcie bent her curious face real close to the bean sprouts and she seemed to be in some sort of praying mode with her eyes real wide as though she expected to see Moses or Jesus shoot out from the penie tubes, but only a sigh from each boy, as though they had caught a secret rainbow dream that no one else in the history of childhood had found and weren't going to share it with a soul, other than themselves, cause they couldn't help that, they were psychic to be sure. And they smiled when done, and they tipped themselves backward on the floor on their backs and their penie jerked a bit. And that was that. And Marcie said that wasn't exactly what she would call a big deal. Though it seemed like it at the time, the boys vowed later on, as they had looked at her face and her slit, she had held her dress up and panties, blue and laced, down for them to jack off to, she was somewhat keen on it because her face had gone pasty white and they could have sworn her eyes had bugged out like there was a big red rubber band on the back of them and they were about to dice tumble fall and spill on to the floor. This was the Brothers Blood who were fairly content with where they were, with the age they were, and the forms they were in, and they did not eat Wonder Bread because they did not want to grow their bodies twelve ways. They wanted to be boys forever and to play in the forest trees that boys do. They wanted to be free to wake up of a winter snow break Christmas week and say no more school forever and slide down that great old winding oak banister polished more regularly and made more slick than the brothers private little flag poles, to slide down the banisters and to fall at the bottom onto the thick as forest grass blue carpeting, the other brother falling into the first's arms and stuffings rushed out his middle, in the house that smelled always of new and Pine Sol and a great heart that they could hear almost beating in it, as though it were alive, as though it were the greatest secret pet dog or cat that any boy could conjure with. And into this land of sweet soft tree lined protection and projectile parents who launched themselves as the slightest hint of a gauntlet thrown down by anyone, any TV show, any movie, any book (this being an up scale neighborhood, persons here actually read books--real ones) any video game that harmed their children, came THE VILLAIN. The CHILD MOLESTER. Not named Chester, but Extra Sextra. The young man, the diseased young man, the Icabod Crane lookalike, always there with his thin wafer body and his pale pasty pimply face, too young to be an adult, too old to be a child, teacher of the grade in which were the Brothers Blood. Who was a man who was not a man. Who was a man who was GAY. And everybody knew, except the parents and the teachers and the preachers who were always going on about THOSE PEOPLE, but couldn't imagine one of THEM was actually in their midst. Pretty stupid, the brothers Blood and all the other kids thought, as they held their meetings, as they talked about GARY (how could anyone named GARY not be a CHILD MOLESTER? How had his parents known so immediately? One of those sharp jittery pretty boys with the body that looked like as thin as a worm and who floundered in trying to disguise his LISPING. Gary who looked at the little boy crotches all the live long day and who did not think they knew, crotches or little boys, but they knew all right because the eyes of GARY were like laser rays as he had the children take written test after written test in class for GUESS WHAT REASON? So the only thing was the buzz and the only thing was you've got to. "But why does it have to be me? Why can't it be you?" "Because they always believe you more than me." "No, they don't. They believe you as much." "They believe us equally." It was the brothers looking into a mirror of solid blue eyes like a wall of goodness in their perfectly pink faces and their mouths that did not utter swear words and which sang the sweetest in the church on each and every Sunday morning. He hurt me, mommy. He touched me down there, daddy. He told me to stay in the class room while everyone else went to lunch, mamma. And then he made me do something. It made me sick. It made me so sick. And during this Fall, during the beginning of the year in GARY'S class, the dreaded class, all their school lives, the things other older kids told them, the things kids were told by kids who had been there, who had been ABUSED, and all the kids thus waiting to get into Gary's class (he had taught at the school for five years) to show Gary the right way to live, to show Gary that the kids were smarter than he ever would be, to let him know they knew his racket, that they knew far more about REAL GUY STUFF than that little panty waist, who gave damned hard tests, ever would. Bully! That the other kids might not all this time have told their parents but they told each other. And Gary would have to stop hurting them and the mirror would have to stop looking into itself with all those knife edges, sharper than midnight turning cards of walls in the Blood household when the brothers had to shadow walk down the stairs to the thick night kitchen and get Coke from the beige massive fridge before they could sleep, and tilting up the big gulp bottle and downing, each, half, and then belching their way back up stairs to their midnight room that would always be sunny and funny tomorrow as all the tomorrows were yet to come would be. And the brothers held each other some nights, and they told each other what GARY did, and Mark, or was it Steve?, said with tears held back in those big soulful eyes, what would any man want with a boy's dick, with his ass, with his--crack? What would the words come out like when they told?, would they have the painful leprous heat of summer on them and flies buzzing about?, to talk like this in front of mommy and daddy!, imagine!, and they'll want us to, and others as well, a jury trial for sure, and we are the stars, on the witness stand! "Don't laugh. We can't laugh in front of them. Any of them." Mark. Or Steve. And there a hanging to follow, Gary's hands in front of his face as the cops lead him to the execution chamber, the photogs and news cams taking his picture, and since no one else had ever told, then they had to, they had to blow the whistle, and make boys, who did not look as good as they, and that was no other boy as far as they were concerned, not second fiddle O rings for GARY and how he liked to--DO THINGS. Since the Brothers Blood were way too smart for Gary to get away with anything with them. Though he had, he had. And the brothers giggled some more this night and they rubbed their prongs and they scratched their tiny seed bed balls, and they put a finger up behind their left ball and they coughed as though they were being given a hernia test by their doctor. They did these things simultaneously. Exactly on cue. And they had been had on cue. They had been told it doesn't hurt. They had been told it was kind of fun. They had been positioned with their naked butts--"naked butts, daddy, naked butts, mommy-- in the air in the paint and turpentine smelling art class after the end of school and everyone was supposed to be out of the building and they had laughed at first, and they had each held the other's hand and they thought there was enough recklessness to give Marcie the desire to see this for sure and they were going to ask Gary if she could watch sometime cause it made their two penie even bigger, and then Gary showed them what big really meant and what that string bean body had at the juncture between those two really ugly hairy legs, odd for Gary to have hair at all, he looked not the type. And the brothers looked at each other and screamed. And they felt on fire. And they felt as though not one or two or three Kotex plungers had been inserted up them as they did by themselves or with each other at home from time to time while Mom went to the market and Dad watched THE GAME on the sixty inch color TV in the rec room and then went to shuffle Saturday afternoon papers at his big maple desk in his den. This was pain! This was serious! This hurt like hell! This was embarrassing! They were not getting laid together! They were pumped into and getting killed together! They practiced on each other. This was how Gary would have done it. No, how he did do it. Did he? No. But he could have. Yes, the Brothers Blood to each other, yes he could have and therefore he did. Did he? Yesss. This is our story and we're sticking to it. Us in the mirror, turning us on. No, sad. No, tears forever more. And tomorrow they would do it. The brother on top, which name?, reached his hand down to the brother on bottom, the other brother with the other name, left or right handed?, who reached his hand up to his brother and they held soft Ivory soap smelling hands and they told each other, "Won't Marcie be thrilled when we do it?" "Won't everybody? We will RULE!" And the mirror answered, not a poisoned apple in sight for anyone, well not for anyone to speak of, who was worth anything that is, "It'll be the greatest thing ever! We will nail the bastard." The bastard (naughty word, but this was a most naughty man, a man who did not give candy, but a man who gave magazines and videos, all the talk, all the rumor, all the things in those magazines and videos of pink hairless no nos, bought by a man in a raincoat, dirty of course, who looked like someone named Crane who bent himself half in half to get into the secret video section of one of the video rental stores (and everybody knew what was in that secret little Eat Me, Alice room, save for the adults in the town, especially the most vigilant who were in fact as dumb bunnies as the Mad march hare could have himself found had he bothered to look up from his late time watch and find them). This man, Gary. This man Sextra Extra. Who sweated around the boys. Who sweated around the girls. Who had "lay me" written in cobwebs on his really creepy eyes that crossed sometimes when a boy caught those eyes where they should not be, and the homo's eyes turned scared and jumpy and crossed and began in their own fashion whistling the state song, as the man jerked the paper in his arms, to remind himself he was supposed to be reading it, while sitting on his desk top, so casually as the kids took their tests. And he practiced his visual acuity on their crotches at a later time. A long distant runner of eye gymnastics was Gary the HOMO, Gary the FAG, Gary the hardest--cough--teacher in the damn school. The teacher that absolutely everyone dreaded, even the smartest students, even the students of the last name of Blood and the mirror image of each other, dressed neatly and smartly in their own colors of identical clothes, boys who looked like little men all proper and refined, who took one half hour each morning getting their corn flower color hair just and exactly so, with a bit of a shaggy look on the sharp creased collar because that trend was coming back again. Heat click on in the house for a while. Wind in the willow trees out back, from which their bedroom window descended in this little community where it was sweater (cardigan, was there any other kind?) weather and Dad with his creased forehead as Mark (they had finally fought it out that Mark would go first--"you look like a girl," "Yeah, well what does that make you look like?", "oh, yeah, I forgot"- would go to Dad's study tomorrow after school--"we have to know", "I already know", "one more, Mark, you've got to get this straight, hold on, I'm putting it in now" "Oh Jesus Christmas!"--and Mark would have tears. And Mark would get this done before the next report card. Before the next B- average report card, for both of the brothers Blood, when they had never gotten anything less than an A-before Gary the FAG came along and plotted to steal their virtue from them as he had all the other boys before-- --everybody knew boys who had had their dicks SUCKED BY GARY THE HOMO--there was this kid last month, lives on Klondike Street, and there was that boy I heard about last year or the year before, everybody knows about, he and his parents and sister named Sadie had to move to another state they were so embarrassed. It was in the newspaper, on the TV news. I got that straight from a kid who used to know Sadie's cousin. And Mark's father would lean over in his crinkly brown leather chair and hold out his hands for his son and hold him and bravely with a quiver in his voice, would say, oh god, not my boy, "what did he do to you, son? What did that mother do to you?" And then Steve would come walking by. Dad in his cardigan sweater (was there any other kind?) his Land's Inn slacks-- would call the shuffling sad boy to him, and hold both of them. Dad worked at home with his computer and was there all the time in case his sons NEEDED HIM, and boy this time did they NEED HIM, maybe for the first time ever, and he could not louse this up. For he had told them in no uncertain terms when they got their first report grades back, if he didn't see those grades shoot up immediately to an A- at the very least--boy would they be sorry. A man of colorful language was Dad, who smoked an unlit pipe and looked as though he were constantly in search of a fireplace in front of whose mantle he would stand with a hunting dog alert at his slippers, not that Dad would hunt, it was just his woodsy thing that ran in the family. But now, god no, forget grades. Forget them! And Dad would tell Mamma. And Mamma would fall into a dead faint. And Dad would call the cops. And Gary's ass would be grass. Why didn't anyone ever think of this before? Maybe they did, though. Maybe they went to Gary and said "hey Gar old man, we are tired of these hard tests, and we're tired of your looking at our jujumbs when you think we don't know, and we are kind of tired of old prissy you, so what's say we just go a bit easier and give us better grades, like the other teachers before you did--or we might just say you REAMED OUR BUTTS. And we might just say YOU SUCKED OUR LITTLE CANDY CANE DICKS. After all, Gar old man, this is the age of THE CHILD MOLESTER. Everybody always believes the kids. Why, you laid us with our naked butts in the air, in the art room after school. Dontcha remember? It could have happened. No, it did happen. It did. Prove it didn't. We're too stupid to make this stuff up. We're too honest. And far too full of guile. "Why should we get lost in the cold and not have our own little horror stories about one of YOUR KIND? It's like a merit badge these days." Maybe they did say that to him. And maybe, just maybe, as might have, just might have happened with the Blood brothers, who were not in capital letters at that point of conference with Gary, in that school room, during lunch, that was too hot by far just a week or so ago with the wind howling outside and the campus trees rushing their blood red crackle veined leaves to the ground, Gary might have found some backbone, or might have had some all along and they hadn't known it, or was just a damned good bluffer and poker player, because of course kids ARE always believed, and maybe Gary just could have said, this being conjecture, you understand, maybe he said to the Bloods, as he might have said to others who might have tried this--well--true ploy--"Go screw yourselves, weird Blood brothers. I've not done a damn thing to any of you. You've dreamed it up in your twisty little brains. I give you permission to say anything you want. Expulsion vs. the vice squad. If you want to take the risk, you lying s.o.b.s., it's your call. I can make sure you and your parents will have the living hell embarrassed out of them. Shame like you wouldn't believe. Lies easily proven. Lives ruined. It works both ways. This is the lowest form of prejudice." Shaken, were the brothers Blood. But they practiced each night in their bathroom. Before their mirror. Getting the configurations of bodies right. Leaving no aperture unstuffed. Make sure. Making sure. Forget his threats. We're kids. We win. So, this night, sleepy eyes beckoning the sand man, Steve and Mark whiled away and came together, just did, not on purpose, just did, and sighed and their sighs reached up most manfully and reached down equally manfully to each other, and then they drifted off to sleep, each dreaming in lurid stark colors about the circus that would come to town tomorrow. They were not worried. They were the Brothers Blood. They were invincible! And forget the A-. They would have an A virtually immediately from their new really scared for sure teacher who better not give them any guff either. They would have a life of nothing but A's. And Gary would go TO JAIL. And Mark and Steve--or Steve and Mark--would be the true king of the world, eat that, James Cameron. The heat clicked off. Then after a while it shushed back on again. The warm sustained them under their sheets and cowboy blankets, holding the bundle of boys. And the huge white bone moon shone down over Manitou, Connecticut, and it seemed, did the moon, as though it smiled at the town and the children in it who were soon to strike such a blow for victory of their kind. "Oh, The Places We'll Go" was the top book on the top book shelf to the left of the bay window and it waited patiently for morning too. The End