HI! I'm Joel

He escaped me in his sleep. That deep, slim sleep of his. Right beside me. We had had sex two hours ago. I had entered him and knew the locks were tightly shut. He slept with gentleness and a kind of dignity. A blowing wind of snow hit the windows of our bedroom. I ached to him. I was inches away and he was almost seven inches and you would never know it, judging by his tiny boned small body. He slept. That simply. And that starkly.

We had touched often and had touched never. He pretended and I was out of bed now, his pretended partner. I absolutely hated the word partner. I think of Roy Rogers and Froggy Millhouse when I think of partners, or Gene Autry and Gabby Hayes, when I think of partners. I slip from bed, though he will never miss me. He is Joel and that is wintertime. He is Joel and that is the quiet of the night.

He knows and in knowing I am a fact, this fact that is me is going to the kitchen for a snack, for facts eat, for facts get hungry, and facts get thirsty, so this fact that is me gets a small bottle of Coke from the fridge. And opens it, putting it beside the cheese sandwich I am to make in a moment, facts sometimes getting the order of their facts out of order.

I am 24. Joel is on the cusp of 17. We have been together ever since his parents divorced themselves from him because of his sexual orientation, which he munches into laughter when he says those words "sexual orientation." He knows he is not a dream, but I can't love him unless he is a dream, therefore he has become a factual dream for me. And that is me, the other fact in the house, sitting in his black boxers, in the warm kitchen, at the round table, eating my cardboardy sandwich and drinking my ice cold Coke.

I will die without Joel. And then Joel will be a dream. And I can love him because he is a dream. I am fucked up, you may have noticed. I wish he would come in here, knock me off my yellow wooden chair, with his fist, and as I fall akimbo to the flooring of linoleum and not very clean linoleum too I might add, fact wise, he would stand over me, starkly naked and thin and slim and say, Dammit, Barry, I am not a dream, I am a fact, and if two facts cannot love each other, in spite of the factness of the thing, then I wonder and worry what this world is coming to.

But he won't. He is not a dream and therefore he is truly not my love because in order for me to love anyone love must have dust on its glass over the picture of failed conquests, but he was never a failed conquest, for I had never tried to conquest before; in other words, he conquested me. Which took a bit of doing, for I am one of those shadow people in the corner and when he with his Jesus Christ gold long hair and his limpet body and his pale alabaster face, pale and alabaster being the same, so let me through in wan, as well, stood looking at me and he held a glass of wine to me and said Hi I'm Joel.

As I turned from him and thought they let kids into bars these days. I stood out in the early spring night air, as he came to me and stood behind my shoulder. I knew he was there. He didn't rustle or speak or squeak or get close enough for me to feel his aura if you believe in auras and I don't. Then there was that naked arm holding out that glass of wine.

Joel said, "So. I take it you are lost in your dreams."

God, his voice was beautiful. Like piano keys soft in velvet in an early morning of darkness when you think you will smother from the heat and suddenly from way off you hear a piano played and it's a nice tune from way back when they used to say things like way back when, and you feel comfortable again. You feel as though you might cry and that it would be something you would like to do, rather than feel embarrassed at doing, even when no one else is round you.

"Don't toy with me." I actually said that.

He smiled, I saw it in his voice, and I still had not turned round to him.

"I am a boy toy and you need to boy up because it is going to be a boyable summer and I'm the boy for you, not one penile implant, my pubes are real hair, not a merkin, and I'm a real 'murkin hahah, so take this glass of wine before I knock you to your knees and pour it down your oh sad sad throat."

I started to laugh. I tried not to. But I started to laugh. And I turned to him and he held out the drink, counting the time magnanimously on his clock watch with the big black band, which he wears when we are naked and which I have no idea why turns me on so damned much.

I took the wine glass, upended it, and swallowed wrong, almost choking on the wine. I bent over coughing, I guess it was past almost choking, and he patted me on the back. His hand felt nice I could tell after I stopped choking on the wine, yep, no two ways about it, way past almost choking. And I stood up, eyes runny, as his hands brushed away my tears. He said Hi I'm Joel. For about the fifth time. So I kidded him, I am not much of a kidder, but he was such a great kid, I thought as I finished my sandwich, doing a vaudeville routine in my mind where the applause was deafening, so I kidded him with that being his name, Hi I'm Joel. So Mr. Joel, may I call you Hi?

And he knew how to react to it. He was solidity in front of me. He was fun. I finished my Coke, belched unashamedly, since no one was about, and thought he wants me for a fact, and I am not fact material. Like a few hours ago, he was kneeling on the bed and I was in mid-fuck of his lovely ass when he asked, "who you—ouch—god—oh-thinking of?" I said, "you, you lug," cause he loves those WW II movies talk. He pushed up and back on me and squealed a little which sent me edge over ville and I came and came in his butt, and he knew and I knew I was thinking of Joel indeed, but not Hi I'm Joel but in the dream Joel in which he was the same but not the same at all.

I felt his pale hand palely on my shoulder as I sat at the table. I looked up at him and his eyes were mood rings of brown as he leaned downward and kissed me. He was wearing BVDs white and nothing else as he knelt beside me and put his hand on my rising sun cock.

He put his head golden and sweet smelling and filled with such Joel on my lap, and he kissed my leg with his pale lips and put his ear to my cock to listen to it say I love you Hi I'm Joel and Mr. Fancy Pants up there can just moon and croon and swoon to dream Joel all he wants, it's you I'm sticking with babe.

I put my hand to his shoulder. And I knew. I shuddered. I put my hand to my face. I all but became Charlie Chaplin in The Kid—in grainy black and white on film that plays herky jerky on modern film projectors if not calibrated right—and there he was, this little little boy and he looked up at me and said, "Ain't it mournful, when you come right down to it, Pop?"

I suddenly said a silent goodbye to Joel the dream and held him tightly in my arms, Hi I'm Joel and I pulled out his hard dick from the top of his briefs and my god how could I not have seen? Not have felt? Not have known? He sighed. He stood. I became aware of his existence. I became aware of the beautiful and delicate way he was knitted together, the joy of seeing his muscles moving, his soft hips in his briefs, his curvy back, his long and hard and ticklish penis that emitted sperm, not stardust like I pretended. Hi I'm Joel is real, and I put my head in my hands.

We had had time. We had had each other. I had ruined it all, fuck it fuck it fuck it idiot idiot.

He got up and walked to the fridge, getting out a beer and popping it open. He turned to me in the dim light of the brown kitchen and the bright light of the opened refrigerator. He looked chilled though the house was too hot. I got up and closed the fridge door. I knelt in front of him. I put my face to his briefs and pulled them down. I kissed Joel's penis and it had weight and heft and solidity to it.

He bent toward me. He put his hands on my shoulders. He sighed. I felt Hi I'm Joel for the very first time. I sucked his lovely alabaster penis and the cum filled my mouth, the Hi I'm Joel cum and I swallowed not stardust but my lover's love. And I wept against him and I said I loved him. And he and I knew. For the first time. It was the Hi I'm Joel I suddenly loved and would forever love even though he became the dream Joel far too soon.

That's me. This fact that I am. The fact that got the Coke out of the fridge and put it beside the sandwich he hadn't made yet, getting the facts out of order. The dream Joel was the Hi I'm Joel fact out of order. I got what I thought I already had until I realized I had had....once upon a time...golden wonder of the only true magic, real magic, real boy, real Joel, who loved the real me, instead of starlight.

Joel died last Wednesday. It was mid-Spring. The weather was hot. His parents didn't attend the ceremony.

I'm writing this now after the funeral. I have the dream Joel. He is now the only fact I will ever know. Who I now get to love and pretend is real, the rest of my days. And it is ripping my soul in pieces.

"Ain't it mournful, when you come right down to it, Pop?"

Well, ain't it?