Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 14:12:53 -0700 From: B Keeper Subject: "In the Hands of Gein" "In the Hands of Gein" by Timothy Stillman Davie and Smith were looking at each other again. Thinking about getting Christmas started. But steam vent school was still rattling its swords in its sheaths. And night was in the boys' eyes, after they had discovered each other. And that looming cavern that was known as their single heart. There are those who say love cannot come at such an early age. That there is only a certain species of need that is basically the same as a cell has when it splits and comes to find infinity inside itself. And that gaping maw could be the blackness of the soul both boys felt when they were away from each other. And had no one to cling to. Christmas, and not even November yet. Counting costs and freckles and lies that turned out to be the truth. They had met in a chat room. They had danced around the heads of a thousand pins and had counted the terrible cost, because it is a terrible cost to children to admit anything at all. Even love of your cats was something seen as parabola of embarrassments. A link bridge winding over you, ready to descend fast on your head if anyone should know. The teacher squawked and the class dozed and Davie and Smith looked at each other. There were smiles in their eyes, and the bleakness of the Wisconsin winter already in force seemed a certain moldable pride in them they had never had before they had stopped in each other's lives. And had had the courage to open their eyes and look. And not to turn away. There were coughs in the little red and brown square room. Coughs of colds and the seasonal attitudes when the seeds were hidden underground and there was nothing left but a certain distillation that came from not being human enough. That came from a thunderous cry of mortality inside, even when it wasn't called that. Even when the safety valves were stuck and the necks were hot and sweaty and the faces felt they had been pushed into a griffin of fire from the heat radiators in this room that would make warm rain descend from the ceiling any moment now. Smith lived for Davie. And Davie for Smith. They had not been told there were myths of childhood. They had known only their destiny lay within each other's skin. And if this was fraught with mumps and whooping coughs and fevers and chilblain, then they would be ill together. For they had discussed it, and had decided that love was like a sickness. >From which you wished never to get well. Though Smith was finding a secret to tell. One that had bothered him much. One that he had tried to hide.. One he was, however, taking out and examining. Deciding on. Davie was all rough and tumble. Smith was pinstripes and glasses. They were defined by themselves this very second. The next second, they might be defined by nothing at all. Not their looks or their sexuality or their fears or their nightmares, all freely shared. All coming to a certain boil on the dry cold roil of the topography of this place, a few miles from where Ed Gein, famous mass murderer, had once lived. The teacher was reading from "The Outcasts of Poker Flats." Smith knew that Brett Harte had supposedly been homosexual. He had told Davie, who had replied, that Smith read too much, knew too much non-essential information. And Smith had smiled and gnashed his teeth and said faith and begorra, and that made Davie laugh, because they loved to laugh. They loved to share the wind blown snowy weekends and after schools together. They were inseparable. And in this boy's prep school there were no triangles. There were no words to declare, because looks could do it alone. A certain stance. A certain motion of friendship that had to do with perhaps nothing but sharing those cold cardboard French fries at lunch, if sharing those things could ever be seen as a mark of friendship. They had never taken off all their clothes when they had gone at each other. They were still in the ashamed stage. The little dirty stage that seemed like soiled linen in the middle of a great circus tent top with the sky going blue and summery and billowy above them, and that little soiled linen in the center of the tent top was getting smaller and smaller. Until one day it would be gone altogether. Once upon a time. There are cliques in schools. There are bastards but if they are the right bastards and are owned properly and do what they are told, they get along okay. Davie was one of those, who believed that athletics meant having a soft head, or rather a soft brain, and so he let his ability to perceive deteriorate. Because it was expected of him. Smith worried about him. Because Davie was something of the school goon as well as the star athlete. And Smith had gotten to the point that he didn't like to be seen with Davie as much as he used to love it. Because love is razor blades at this age. And betrayal can come from a turned corner, a shaved inch on the school monument of bronzed man and boy, side by side, weak with strong, holding hands, with the man's outstretched hand directing the boy to the world of tomorrow. And all that lay in store. But Davie would never get out of here. Davie was to turn inward, and would hang onto this place as long as he could. When it was over and he was through, then he would cling to the memories and make them his world. The star athlete from a long time ago who longed for the cheering of the crowds, just for a moment, just one more time. Smith was currently reading, for his own amusement, "Catcher in the Rye" and he thought it made him worry about Davie all the more. He tried to talk with his friend late night in the lavatory when all the others were in their beds asleep. But Davie would only be grabbing at Smith. Making Smith feel giddy, and bold, and used. There was no justification for Smith other than being what he was. And the same for Davie. If gawky is as gawky does, then there was no reason to continue, and Smith thought he would die if there was no more Davie. Smith knew Davie for the lug and for the nuts and bolts and for the desire to get to the center parts of Smith. But because the air was cold and would stay that way until perhaps after Easter, they needed just to hunker down and to forget who they were. As their smiles laddered toward each other this bleak afternoon in the classroom. Davie thinking of nothing but sex. And Smith thinking of nothing but Davie. And there was a difference in that. Though it could turn around in a moment's notice. Though both of them could be wrong. There was not the well oiled though somewhat broken machine of them. There was not a hall pass each could use to get into the other wing of the building and there make their horniness felt. If anything was felt at all, here in Plainfield. If there was something of a utilitarian flight of birds in the gray overcast sky, then there was only Davie not wishing to go with them, and Smith wishing to go, most desperately. So in some far off snow field, he could find Davie, the real Davie, waiting for him. Other stanza. Other lives. Other lies become true. But Davie was right here. In this wet damp smelling classroom. With geometry going headachy on. When there was nothing but sunrises in the boys' minds, and that suggested something for Smith to be more than a coat rack for Davie to push himself onto. And stay there, in satyr lair, most comfortably, till morning. If it ever arrived. And if they even wanted it to. The other boys knew. Razzed them. But Davie was the pet goon. The pet mongoose and when they said here eat this snake, he would do so. Because it was always tempered with kidding, with not really meant, with the dulcet half tones of allowing humiliation, then stopping it forthwith. Knowing that it would have been done, had they wished to go through with it. And that was then enough fun for the moment. Because Davie thought with his genitals. Because Smith thought with his genitals and with his head as well. Because he had to tell Davie that it might be time to move on, for both of them. Because Smith had met someone else in a chat room. Or a few more someone else's. And he did not know how to tell Davie that the coat rack was becoming a little scared of all of this. That the sessions together were something Smith used to imagine someone else, while Davie was there. It is a terrible thing to lose a friend. You might never have another one. The guys in the chat room were friendly enough, but of course you always had to be wary. And if the guy was named Davie and you had met him on line before it turned out, miracles do occur!, both of you are entering the same prep school at the same time, and you just did all sorts of things with him-- It was of a remarkable stupidity that you would give that up. And it made a hole in Smith's heart to think of such a thing. It is not true that bookworm boys do not know how to do things. Even sexual things. Books are repositories of knowledge and fantasy and experiences. Books, as one writer put it, "are written by persons alone, for persons alone." And all that aloneness can make a gap wider than Tuesday could ever fit in, in all its environs, in all the misty world regions of what it was and what it might have otherwise been. Once, there had been Smith. He had not been symbiotic. He had looked at the world as a single place. He had been moving down to the last of his early childhood when he decided to put the brakes on. When he had decided, wait a mo, this is stupid. Do you see other people proudly alone? Needing no one else? The hell you do. And he went on line. Tried some chat rooms. Tried and failed and was made fun of more than once. And always scared. Always waiting for the joke to end in the cruelest way possible, and in that, he was never disappointed. Until Davie. Who was a sweet kid. Who would let you say stuff to him, until you got it right, until you got what the words were out of you in the way you had intended. Davie of the strong build, and the friendly sky blue eyes. Davie who would hold Smith and not need anything else from him for a moment, maybe more than few. But Davie had needs. And it was Smith's duty to satisfy them. Not that Davie ever said that directly, but it was understood. And though sex between boys in a prep school is not actually accepted, it is not frowned upon too much by most especially if they can get into the action themselves. Otherwise that dread thread phrase, "I'm going to tell." One boy said that to them, and Davie ran after him down the hallway that late night, and tackled him, and sat on him. The other boy beating his hands and feet on the floor and crying. While Smith, what odd power Davie had conveyed on Smith, what a grand strange feeling, had walked nonchalantly over, had given thumbs up. So Davie let the boy go free. With a warning. Then Smith and Davie had put their arms around each other and walked back to their room. Avenged. Something solid and sure. And Smith was for giving it up? What?, he would ask himself, are you out of your frickin' mind? The Gein house was no longer standing. Had been burned down in a suspicious fire after the man had been taken away from it. Smith and Davie had read about the murderer, or rather Smith had, and told Davie about it. They were intrigued, as was pretty much everyone here in this area of Wisconsin. Because Gein had been something of a local celebrity. After all, "Psycho" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" had supposedly in one way or another boiled out of what he had done. But now was come for Christmas, and now was come to an end of depredation, and a vile kind of virile madness that would take a sickness like a Gein and transfer it to more and more persons, who, according to the news, were chunks of great madness, where trust was a byword spoken sharply and quickly as you ducked out of sight and hoped no one with a gun saw your shadow so much as, till you got to cover. Finally the class bell rang. And the day was over. The kids stretched and yawned and talked and sleepily gathered their books and stood and headed for the door. McGinty said, "you little love birds, tweet yourselves over here for a moment." He was looking right at Davie. And right at Smith. McGinty was the teacher. Davie and Smith were stunned. Did teachers know what bodies were? What sex was? And to know that he knew. What did he know? Everything, they decided at the same time. Christ! What was happening? The other boys, they were okay to know. But a teacher? An adult? And what he said here in front of God and everybody. They would never live this down. And all the boys laughing uproariously and punching each other on the arms and blowing kisses to the "lovebirds" as they straggled past Davie and Smith, to the door. A name of sorts had been given to Davie and Smith; what they were; what they did; what they felt. Smith knew it was up then. All of it. He decided for good. Though it appeared to have been decided for him. Davie was furious. Smith felt like he was, as he had read once, falling down inside. Davie wanted to kill. Smith wanted to kill himself, or to sink into the floorboards and just stay there, like a grease spot, for the rest of his days. The boys sat there as though they were pinned to their chairs by an extreme g-force. The teacher told the clumped boys to get out. They left, going limp wristed and giggly faced. There would be hell to pay tonight and all the nights to follow. McGinty was a short man. Middle aged. No sense of humor. His head was a mathematical figure outer. His body was only a life support system for that ability his brain had. He had never, to his class' knowledge, spoken to a single boy, personally, had always dressed in a suit and tie, to match the students' required uniforms, had always called each one by his last name, with Mr. tossed in front of it. And now, Mr. McGinty was sitting on the edge of his glass topped desk. Looking at the two boys. Hi canary, he seemed to be saying, I'm the cat. The boys who were lined inside now with a certain disturbing rhetoric, with a need to explain what should not have had to be explained. What they could not begin to explain. What they did not understand themselves. It just was, was all. And Mr. McGinty was smiling. This too was a new thing for the man. The boys had always thought him as grim as Gein when he had been caught. And perhaps slightly mad also. There had always been something about McGinty--something so--intense-- about him. Something so tamped down. The boys could not look at him. Or at each other. They looked at their desks instead. At their hands on their desks. They were diseases now. They were diseases of good-bye and where are you going? and what kind of friend are you? and we still go to this damned school and will see each other every day, and you want someone, who the hell knows who? on some computer line, in some chat room? What good is that? What kind of pie is this you're forcing me to eat and pretend I like? To Smith, even that little bit of future now seemed nostalgic. Mr. McGinty said, his voice harsh and full of ground glass, "Boys, in stories about things like this, there is always a teacher who sets things right for two lovebirds in peril. Who says, always remember, live each of your days to the fullest, cling to each other because it's a lonely world and look how good you've got it. And all of that. "Now, that is fine to a point. And it is all well and good. But, boys, the thing of it is, you have been a bit too--overt. You have been having sex on the quad late at night. One night you did it when the board of trustees was breaking up after a cantankerous long winded meeting. And--well--they saw you. "They saw you and gaped. Yes, boys, gaped. Because you were under the lamppost and the light gave you away in a most sterling manner. "Now," McGinty, looking down at his hands, paused a moment, as though he was having to find just the right words for this, "boys, the thing is, you are both going to be expelled." Those weren't the right words. Smith thought, for god's sake, just take a gun and shoot us and get it over with. Their lives were ruined. Their time with each other was over. They would be split asunder for good and all. Time did not wait for them. Smith would not get to hurt Davie and that bothered him a great deal. He had found he wanted to hurt Davie. For what reasons, he did not know, but he did. "Boys," McGinty looked at them again, his eyes tired behind his thick bifocals, "your parents will be up tomorrow to take you home. It's been reported to them, and the stark terror you might now be imagining is nothing to what it will be like when you see them. And hear them. And know that you are destroyed. "If you had just made it secret, or partially secret, you know, then you would have gotten away with it. But you were so daring. So forceful in the whole thing. I myself saw you once--feeling each other up--in the alcove of your dorm one day, when I went there to give some lesson notes to a boy who was sick with the flu." Oh? Smith thought. Tell us about it. Then he was back to the stark fear, like a rubber band in him was twisting tightly and squeezing everything inside him till he could not seem to breathe without making a huge effort at it. Then Smith thought, me?, daring? He wanted to laugh. But couldn't remember how. Davie was thinking his life, his football career, his days were over, were numbered; he would be disowned, as Smith would be. And there was nothing more than champipple and the gutter in the Bowery for the rest of their days. Well, he sighed, at least I can count on Smith, at least I will have him, and that is something right there. That is, as the song went, what friends are for. Davie looked over at the boy in the seat next to him. Smith felt the eyes. Felt the burden in those eyes. But he could not bring himself to look back at them. And then he did a most un-Smith like thing. And yet, if you look at his life, at these few minutes of it, at the times he and Davie had had together, at Davie's kissing him first, and their lips tingling with hysterical boy laughter, as they fell into a clinch with each other and nuzzled and grazed and just felt such an encumbrance of warmth and an end to being different, alone, it all fit. And of course, Smith had been going to ditch Davie. And Smith might have no prospects after that. And there were all sorts of bullshitters on the net. And all sorts of dangers. And Smith was not good looking or clever in the way relationships were meant to be worked. He never had known the quick word, the needed getting into the other's mind and saying what you know they want to hear. All of which had not mattered to Davie. All of which had not meant a dibble damn to Davie. Because it was Smith he was after. Smith himself. Who Davie felt could do no wrong. Davie loved the reality. Smith loved the dream. It was a curious turnabout, but that was how it was with them. Smith would be lost without Davie. But the idea that Davie had been hurt by a boy who had spent much of his young life being hurt by boys--so Smith said, "Mr. McGinty. Mr. McGinty, sir." Davie looked at Smith. Smith could figure a way out of this. Could save the day. Could get the banishment lifted. Could make their parents not hear what they must have heard from whatever prissy butt administrator had phoned them. There was nothing in Smith's deep complex mind but the knowing of how to do this. How to reverse all of this. "Yes?" Mr. McGinty said, joining Davie at looking at Smith. "I didn't do it willingly." He did not look at Davie. "He made me. He--did it. He--raped me. He hurt me. I--bled. It was--awful. It was...." I love you, Davie, Smith thought then. Looking anywhere but at Davie. He had looked forward to this. A part of him had. And now it was ruined. Davie, who looked as though someone had just struck him with a two by four. Davie gape mouthed. Davie seeing a photo of Ed Gein superimposed over his friend's face. Davie having no notion why he imagined that. But it seemed--though it was not the word he would have used--contemptible. It seemed--reprehensible. It seemed--as low as a person could go. It seemed--death rays. And the cold night was to be a long one. And it might never ever be over. "I see," McGinty said and smiled again. It looked like a snake would smile if it could. "Well, you're a little rat fink," McGinty said slowly. " I told you, you little bastard, that I saw you two once myself. Other boys have told the administration all about your little assignations at night. It will go worse for you, I fear. Then, to Davie, "What did you see in him, Mr. Miller?" Davie had his hands on his desk. He had his hands gripped together. A flame had started burning in him. Deep in his stomach. He didn't know what to do or say or feel or think. He wanted to use Smith's head for a football. He wanted it to snow up to the top of the school and suffocate everybody. He wanted to call Ed Gein back from the grave and say here's something you can dress up in and good luck to you; and here, let me help. Smith was red and flushed and embarrassed and humiliated. How can they do this to me? Can't they see how Davie hurt me and how I was used like a thing, an object? What is wrong with this man? Are he and Davie getting it on too? Did they cook this up to cover over Davie's fucking me? He fucked me, man. I'm the victim. I didn't do it to myself. God, what is going on here? Davie began hitting the desk with his hands. With his fists. Harder and harder. And Smith began doing likewise. Harder and harder. And they started hitting their leather shoes against the hardwood floor. And hard. And fast. And their bodies were revved up like whirligigs about to be shot off into a summer breeze from a long time ago. Because it had to be a past summer. Neither boys planned to see another. The boys looked at Mr. McGinty. At that exact moment, they knew it was his fault. Davie and Smith knew that he had plotted all of this. Davie knew that he had liked Smith, though there had been absolutely no proof of that, and that he had told Smith to say this, to keep saying it, so he, Smith, would get out of this whole mess, while Davie went down for the count. And the fact that Smith was equally enraged as was Davie, that must mean that Smith could not go through with it. That he would not tell these lies again. The boys were newly united. Cemented closer. Closer together forever friends who could stick by each other no matter what. Mr. McGinty looked a bit fearful. He had no idea what these reactions were all about. He knew math and he knew how things linked together. He knew logic and the need for order and the need to make everything add up, to make everything make sense. But this did surely not make sense. If Smith had split from Davie, Davie, who was now smiling a wolfish smile at the boy, who smiled it right back at him, if they were locked together again, if there was some game play that had been right under his nose and he didn't see it, couldn't figure it out, if both boys were united in the same kind of thumping striking hitting madness, then he had not divided and conquered at all. If he had wished to. If that had been on his mind any little bit. They had somehow put one over on him. And that was not allowed. "Leave now. Get out. Get to your rooms. Get packed." The boys were unearthly still now. They looked at him like Gein must have looked at his prey while they were begging for mercy--let me go, I won't tell a soul. Smith stood up, fast, quickly, like a shot, when he had never moved anywhere close to that fast before. He looked over at Davie, who also stood up like a shot, that athletic body having such power and prowess to it. Davie said, remembering the boy he had sat on, who had made the threat that one night, "We'll tell. We'll go and tell right now." Smith nodded. "You put us up to it. You sick Fagin bastard you." The boys were now symbiotic again. The boys walked to the classroom door. Side by side. Slowly. Methodically. Defiantly. In tandem. Smith turned to look at McGinty. Smith thought of that poor sick boy McGinty had been visiting in the dorm, out of the goodness of his heart. That should be easy enough to check on. Smith saw McGinty turn a curious shade of green, get off his desk, suddenly moving like a much older man, and fall, limp, into his chair. Smith knew he and Davie would not get out of this. But seeing the glee of McGinty fall apart and his life destroyed too, that might help a little in all of this horrorshow. Davie and Smith walked out of the room to the empty hall. They put their arms around each other's shoulders. They smiled at each other. Smith would have to tell Davie soon that it was off between them. Of course, parents would make sure of that. Which would hurt both of them. So, Smith would have to make it clear to Davie that, even if this had not happened, it was through anyway. That there was no saving grace in this. It was imperative that he could hurt Davie just a bit more that Smith was hurt himself. And before all sorts of other people would hurt them, in the name of helping them. Davie smiled at him, and Smith put his head on Davie's shoulder, as they turned a corner, and walked out the door of the building into the biting cold. They had forgotten their overcoats. The wind was like knives sticking into them. They shivered. And, instinctively, they moved closer together. Smith felt sick and felt tired and felt wasted. Davie, trying to be brave for his friend's sake, needed him now more than ever. Davie would never forget him. The ending before the ending would be sure to make that happen. It began to snow. It would soon snow harder. There would be four inches by morning. Maybe their parents couldn't get here tomorrow. Maybe Smith could play out the game a little longer. But after Davie had protected him from the boy piranhas they were going to have to face tonight. Smith, after all, was not an idiot. Timothy Stillman B Keeper silvershimmer@earthlink.net