Issue 15 - April 2008

Remembering Teft A love Story by Barry Eysman

(For Joel—once more, with feeling)

It was a cold crispy snow filled morning in December. I was awake, with Teft in my arms. How I loved him. Deeply and truly. We had met this day one year ago in our college Freshman English class. Our eyes touched once. Then twice. Then somehow class was over and we were at the coffee shop, sitting at the window table, watching white fleece fall in dove-white droves from the sky of dark and lowering. We looked at each other and his eyes were brown and big and his kindly smile almost made me cry. We touched hands as I reached for the sugar bowl. We took our hands away, in awkwardness. I think it was our last awkward moment together. Teft was perfect. He was a grand lover. He was an even better friend. I could say his name and he would respond with a kiss or a hug. I had not had many of those before he came along.

It was almost time to get ready for class. But our apartment just off campus was so toasty warm and the covers protected Teft and me. It was funny; Teft said often that I protected him. I think that amazing. I never knew my arms round someone could be seen as their protection. I stroked his gold sun hair lightly. I wanted to have sex with him. We had talked about making love and had decided it was a silly phrase. What then was made? Could you say yes here is some love I made this afternoon? Or if you keep making love, we are going to run out of house space, so could you just kind of knock it off? Is homemade love better than store bought love? Like homemade ice cream is always better than the store bought kind?

I thought of his sucking me off. Terrible phrase for a beautiful act that was no act, but a prayer really, a religious moment that came with fun and happiness and pulled the interior of me downward, and into his mouth and how fun it was to see my penis in his mouth and his caressing my balls, my legs spread apart, one of his fingers tracing the ridge between them and my ass. I loved being naked with him. I loved cumming and his taking it in his mouth, and me holding his head from the back with trembling hands. As though I were a winter sapling in a gale force of deepest human affection.

Don’t let him wake up just yet, please, I thought. I could not remember if I had set the alarm clock. Please let me not have set it. Christmas was close and Teft was closer. We had become so comfortable being naked with each other. We had flesh that seemed adhesive one to the other. I felt that my territory, my island, had been fogged and lonely for so long, that I was territory unto myself, and then Teft came along, ran into my heart and is there forever. I can’t remember when I realized I was a single person. It would seem obvious to someone like me. But I used to think, even alone, I was a part of others, of the world of life, but Teft showed me that I was an individual, that I was had been before he came along, alone. That shook me deeply.

And that sex and closeness and love and holding tight and sometimes crying—this was our home. We were our own homes. Never to become one or the other; the loneliness would never go completely away, but we could shut it out for a time, like the earth’s shadow on the cold and distant moon. And he had taught me that that was enough. That, better than this, humans could not get.

I was partly sitting up in bed, his head lying against my chest. He breathed slowly and surely, for Teft had always been sure, even though he had never been as sure as he had pretended. He was such a hard worker, such a good student, while, as for me,I passed the tests somehow, but in classes with those long cathedral windows with the winter sun light watery and dim coming through, I would, in my mind, be rushing home to him and we would take our clothes off and examine each other, and play with each other as though we were children again. I never got tired of seeing his penis rise right before my eyes, which were two inches away. I never got tired of pulling down his foreskin and holding his penis and kissing his balls or putting it in my mouth, which made him sigh and he would kiss my head and hold my shoulder tops and run his penis in and out of me until he came and then we would kiss and I would say, you’re my best friend, Teft, and he would always respond, forever and a day.

We had had enough of love. At least he had. I sometimes forget he is not me. He said it was true. He had heard someone in a movie once say that love is no good, it only causes heartache; it never lasts. But what we had was love, but by not calling it that, we might be able to sneak up on it and hold it for all our days, we would kill the jinx that love had always had for Teft. He thought until senior year in high school, the feelings would go away and he would be “normal.” Then he found we were normal. And very suspicious of those who go round making this big deal about being so very normal—read moral hypocrites and you have the juice of that story.

And Teft moved his hand to my stomach. He looked up at me and I bent down and we kissed. His lips were pale.  Mine were cherry red. His skin was golden hued. Mine was dark hued.

“Morning, Barry,” he said and I thrilled to hear my name in his mouth. It had always seemed a silly name, like a clown’s, but he gave it dignity and character and made it what it was not, ‘till I forgot.

“Morning, Teft,” and he came up beside me. His erection prodded me and I found myself hard as well.

“I think our friends have some business to take care of…”And he raised his left eyebrow like Snidley Whiplash in the Dudley Dooright movie, and I smiled at him and whimpered, “Oh no, not again, oh hellllppppp…” As Teft said, “As you wish,” then he dived under the covers and took me in his mouth warm and tight and wet and my penis strained to get even further in, as it felt his teeth and felt his tongue laving it, as I put my hands to his shoulders, on top of the covers, and he ate me alive and I held back as long as I could as I spread my legs and bucked into him, as he rubbed my cock root, as he massaged my balls and made them tight in their sac.

 I was hard as a rock—someday someone is going to come up with another phrase to replace that one someday, and then I was spume on the waves, and then I was the sea in turmoil, then I was harvest home and come November and he guided my silver spray right to the center of his mouth and I was the wave crashing on the most kindly boulder. And when it was through, and my body returned to breathing again, we held each other, then I “did him.”

We celebrated two Christmases. At his parents’ home. My parents didn’t believe in Christmas or love or me. So his parents tried to make up for it. They said I had a home here, if I wanted. I hugged them so tightly. They were so kind to us. They didn’t know. We held each other each Christmas Eve midnight when they had gone to bed. We sat in front of the Christmas tree. Holiday music playing softly. Boiled custard at our sides. Garlands cross the tree. Christmas cards on the mirror behind it. Us in warm clothes.  The snowfalls were heavy those two winters. Autumn had never been more golden and leaf crunchy and cold winded, and there was Teft. Of course, I never expected him to love me. He told me once he never expected me to love him. Making love, that phrase was out, jinx time, but saying love was okay. We held our arms round each other, ready to break from each other, should there be a sound of a door opening and a parent coming our direction. The tree lights were so bright and fairyland. The tree was big and lovely and green and pine smelling. We gave each other our Christmas presents. We gave each other ourselves too. He had been so critical of his body and his looks. I told him otherwise. And winters were like they have never been before or after.

We had read the college books like “Catcher in the Rye,” “A Separate Peace,” and “Death in Venice.” We had been caught up in all that so nostalgic, even then, ideals. We wore our hair long and our bodies supple and so incredibly young. We laughed a lot and walked nearby unused railroad tracks. And he said he was my best friend. I won’t say how it ended. I don’t know how. All I know is we were in one of those blessed moments and I knew him for two years.

I’ve never loved anyone else. Not for a moment. When the ending happened, he said, “Let’s make love.” My heart withered. My bones chilled. I said, “No, Teft, please no…” He put his hand to my shoulder and then to my groin, which did not stir. “Please, Barry…” I turned away from him. “Tired. Homework to do.” I never knew if his saying those words, “let’s make love” were an ending or a declaration of “let’s really try to break this jinx” or a plea for help or a repenting for this is the world ending and I want you to have this memory. I was too scared to ask. He told me I was stronger than I thought. He was wrong.

The film broke, and became a never-ending loop playing over and over in my mind, at the very second I saw him going out that door that one last time in late spring when it was muzzy and hot and awful. The smell of mown grass and green onions, I thought, go to him, say it, and see what he says. But we both knew. When he closed the door and walked away, I went to it and whispered, “I love you, Teft.” And it was done. And it was never done. Winter is Teft for me then, now and always. God bless winter. And especially bless Teft. And thank you for being my best friend.

In my heart, I am still there with him. We are still young. All of it, every second in ingrained in me. You are still my true love, Teft. I have made you a legend. Every moment, I think of you and me.

This is for you, Teft. Real personal-like. From Barry, with love.

                                                        The End

Some people have November born in their souls.  They do not run from it, but toward it.  Sometimes love happens to them and then it ends,  to be replaced by new love, but not for those November people.  My writing is a winding country road and it leads future to past, in one arching glissando. One of my favorite places was at Joel's house  on Friday nights where we read books and talked and dreamed our big tall dreams, and I fell in love forever.  Another of my favorite places as a child was the town library.  Especially in deep November.  For like calls to like.  The library was magic.  It was Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar.  It was Sherlock Holmes. It was Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, and Brett Halliday's Michael Shayne.  It was quite and softly lit and I could find the Lost World, years before I became adrift in a lost world wide as tomorrow would ever be, in these eyes at least.  Love and books and stories and poems and dreams mean to me Joel.
He is, of course, Teft, in my story.
 I sing him all my life. Writing is, for me, a pathway home, under a darkened sky, cold wind blowing, snow in the offing, as I head to the place I've never really left and thus belief will occur again.
This is my bio. Thank you for reading it. And thank you for reading my story. I hope very much you will like it.

Take care,
Barry Eysman

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