Chapter 7
A change came over my life. I met the travel writer R.X. For the purpose of these pages I'll call him Rex.
He was staying in that city for some curious reason -a relation of his was dying slowly in a neighbouring village and he wanted to be on hand-some said out of affection, some said in hope of screwing a legacy out of the poor old girl. He was also finishing a book, resting up between his pursuit of the Incas and his next head-hunt. He lived in middle-class lodgings, and raised the honest guinea by an occasional lantern lecture. I went to one of these generically-boring affairs to please a girl I hoped to sleep with, a girl with a naive enthusiasm for authors, celebrities of any kind, and foreign travel. She had read some of Rex's books, which I certainly had not. She talked non-stop about him as we waited for the lecture to begin. I was wondering whether she would talk as much in bed as she did out of it
Rex appeared. He was younger than I expected, somewhere in his early thirties, rather tall, military in bearing, with a small moustache, and sandy hair with small waves brushed straight back, short-back-and-sides style. He had a quiet but sonorous voice, easy to hear everywhere in the hall. It all sounds commonplace, he could be anyone, by the mere description. But it wasn't, and he was really someone!
The girl at once fell madly in love with him, and no blame to her for that. Later, I read some of his books and was disappointed. She had no disappointment, seeing the man after reading them. On the contrary. But I knew then that he was one of the people whose magic is in themselves, their personalities, and they can never put die best of themselves into their work.
I had expected to be bored, and I yielded slowly, reluctantly, to the spellbinder. But he got under my skin with his unexpected wit, first of all, then the charm of his unconventional slant on things. He never thought the "natives" quaint, or the mountains picturesque. He sank into the places he visited, and came up with the spoils; and obviously was loved by the peoples who heaped their gifts and their secrets on him. He also seemed, to my ignorance, to know everything about every subject: literature, languages, physics, geology and history. It was a journalistic smattering, really, but he had it at his fingertips as required.
To please the lovesick maiden, we went to the platform afterwards and scraped acquaintance. He played up to her with perfect courtesy. She asked him some damn silly thing about the Andes, and he said, "That's a complex question. I think I have some material that would answer it, though. Would you care to have tea with me tomorrow, in town somewhere, the Kardomah, shall we say? and I'll try and satisfy you." (Satisfy her! not in the Kardomah, at all events!) "Perhaps you could both come?" He included me in the invitation, either for courtesy or safety-a chaperone, to protect her name or his own virtue-I wondered which.
He never made love to that poor little fan. Neither did I, come to think about it. She switched her loyalty to an actor at the repertory theatre, so all was well.
I continued to meet Rex, and could talk of nobody else. He seemed to enjoy talking to me, and was very patient in argument. I got more education from this than from all the professors rolled into one. I introduced him to my friends-he apparently liked the company of students a lot better than I did-and I met some of his, who were very mixed, from mannish old ladies to smart doctors' wives, long-haired would-be painters to uncouth dock labourers, who seemed to worship the ground he walked on. Best of all I liked our long talks tete d tite in pubs and cafes, weighing up the universe and unfolding the mysteries of remote places and peoples.
He was a bachelor and never spoke of sex, except in joke, or scientifically, or when he asked me to tell him about myself. He was obviously unshockable, so I gave myself the exhibitionist pleasure of telling him the tale of my exploits among the students. It amused him highly. He capped it with stories of the initiation of boys and girls which he had seen in New Guinea.
He remarked one day, "My landlady's dear daughter, Rosy, has taken a fancy to me, and turns up naked in my bedroom, offering herself with my morning tea. I do my best to make her happy, but it's really a bit much. I hope I shan't have to change lodgings."
This story excited me. How wonderful to have a naked girl offered with your morning tea-to hell with the tea! But perhaps she was a hag. I asked him.
"She's very pretty, and sings like a canary," he said. "Her age? Twenty-nine. She ought to be married. But she's unlucky. Her last lover turned out to be a bigamist. Haven't you seen her? No doubt you will, next time you call at the house. Would you like her yourself? I'll be happy to arrange it. She'd do anything to please me."
This really was a friend! He laughed at my eager Ill ness to take up the offer, and I was not quite sure wasn't joking.
Twenty-nine was not quite middle age, but near enough, to someone ten years younger; and it was right out of the student class. I only hoped I would find her attractive. I was so sick of my own age-group and category.
I couldn't help telling the promise to my student friend of the moment, a cynical aesthete named Ewan, who had a grand contempt for the student community.
"It's very handsome of him," I said, "to be willing to share her, when he doesn't seem to have any other mistress kicking around."
"Don't be so damn silly," said Ewan, "Rex is a homo, everyone knows that." "What!"
"Queer as a coot. He likes boys. Didn't you know?"
I simply didn't believe it. They said this about everyone celebrated, anyway, and the more I thought of it less likely it seemed.
"He's presumably after you" Ewan added.
"Well, he's never given the slightest sign of it, if so, and I've known him three months," I said. I was sure it was nonsense. "I'll ask him," I added.
"Yes, do, ask him!" Ewan grinned. "Tell me the result. I shall be most interested."
I should be very disappointed if Rex's interest in me was only sexual, after all, and not personal. But I knew it was not so, from those long, animated arguments we had.
But of course it might be both kinds of interest. He did like to walk around with his hand on my shoulder in a paternal style sometimes. He once remarked that a certain person, male, was "a bit of a bitch." He had a grand, immoralist, or super-moralist, creed, which would surely permit him to do anything, and which certainly dazzled my mind.
"When one reaches a certain stage of development," he said, "one can say 'a thing is right because I do it.' I passed that point ten years ago."
On the other hand, he seemed to me to radiate masculinity. He was tall, soldierly, quiet in dress, bold in decision. His virile qualities did not melt away when he was drunk. I had discovered during the months I had been getting to know him that he drank a great deal, in a quiet way. Scotch whisky, mostly. I had smelt it in the air after his lecture. His breath was permanently laden with it, and he casually let fall the fact that he used to have his first drink immediately after breakfast. But he could be pretty drunk before anyone knew it.
I went back to Ewan and said, "There's another thing, Rex doesn't show the slightest interest in the Tonydarling crowd." (That was our nickname, from their manner of speech, for the usual clique of student pansies, who went about in a gang, "camping," and using a special vocabulary of mysterious phrases like "cottage love" and "trolling the dilly.")
Ewan said, "They're too conspicuous. But you'll find they all know about him. He has most of his fun abroad. He likes black ones and brown ones best, and red and yellow for afters."
"You don't count those, do you?" I said. "That proves nothing."
I added, "Besides, I'm passing for white."
"You'll be passing for brown, soon."
This silly talk of Ewan's, about coloured boys, only convinced me the whole thing was groundless gossip. Just because he was a famous writer, and a bachelor.
Why was I so worried? Ah, that's another question.
Psychologists tell us small boys are often obsessed with a secret dread that daddy, or a bird with a sharp beak, or a bogyman with a chopper, will cut off their precious little pricks, leaving them only a wound, like their sister's. I don't think I ever suffered that fear! If so, I have buried it very deep.
Then later, they tell us, boys and young men lose confidence in their manliness and behave in an excessively hearty way to reassure themselves.
I had given myself a number of assurances by now that I was of the masculine gender, and I had never thought of buying a chest-developer. But I certainly imagined that I had "grown out of" all sexual dealings with the male. It had not occurred to me that I might be an object of attraction to a man. I was a bit disconcerted at the idea, and tried to put it out of my head.
My affairs with women had languished since Lena had moved over to a first-eleven footballer; I never took up with Sandra or Beryl, as I found them equally unattractive by daylight and common-sense. "No more students!" I had made that a mental rule for myself.
Which brought me back to Rex's landlady's daughter. I found that after all I did not want to ask Rex any blunt questions about homosexuality. Instead, I pressed him eagerly for details about Rosy, and begged him to let me see her. He laughed at my eagerness.
At last he said, "All right, meet me tomorrow in Rowley's bar, at seven, and I'll take you home to supper. You'll have the privilege of being served by Rosy, how will that suit you?"
"And listen," I said, "you will tell her in advance that she's got to sleep with me, won't you?"
He laughed again. "How is it possible to be as young as you are?" he said.
I was piqued. I considered myself adult and sophisticated.
We met in the bar, and drank too long for my liking. For one thing, I felt a bit fuddled, and would rather have been clear-headed to see Rosy. For another, I was impatient; and I knew the difficulty of getting Rex out of a pub, once he had had a few. He liked to stay till closing time, spellbinding the barmen and finally the customers with his talk.
However, he let himself be led out by a quarter to nine, and we reached his lodgings by nine.
"What time is your supper?" I asked him.
"Whenever I wish it," he said, loftily.
We went in. His lodgings were anything but stylish: the usual dowdy provincial house, with conventional oleographs on the wall and a dreadful quantity of tassels and fringes on the furniture. Rex had done nothing to his own room to improve it, except to put an African idol on the mantelpiece. Much of his stuff, books, papers and clothes, seemed to be still in suitcases, as though he might dash off at a moment's notice. There were plenty of bottles. He spends all his loose cash on liquor, I thought. We drank another Scotch, then went downstairs.
"Did you tell Rosy she had to sleep with me?" I whispered. He only laughed.
His landlady came out and greeted us. Would we like something to eat now ?
Rex said we would. I sized up Rosy's mother. She looked nice, a stupid, kind sort of person, fat, colourless and slow-moving.
In the dining-room I asked him why he didn't put up his own kind of pictures and so on. He held my two shoulders and sang: "I'm only a stro-ho-lling va-ha gabond, so good night, pretty maiden, good night."
Very soon the landlady brought in the food. I was surprised that Rex had not been asked what he would like and had not indicated any preference. He just accepted what they chose to put before him. It was ham and eggs, with tomatoes, and the remains of a seed-cake. I ate willingly enough, but I thought, in a restaurant, he would have ordered like an epicure!
As soon as the landlady had gone out of the room, I said, "But you promised Rosy would serve me."
"Of course, so I did!"
"Ask where she is, please!"
When the landlady came back to ask if we would have coffee, I nudged Rex openly, and he said, "Where is Rosy tonight?"
"Gone off to her aunt's for a couple of days, you wouldn't rather have tea, I suppose?"
My hopes were dashed. I didn't care what we had, if I couldn't have Rosy.
After coffee, Rex, who apologised lightly to me for Rosy's absence, asked would I like a liqueur. We went to his room and had Grand Marnier.
"Are these your cameras? They look pretty marvellous," I said.
He showed them and explained the gadgets.
"Would you like to see the pictures I can't put on the screen for my dear respectable audiences?"
Wouldn't I just! He unlocked a case, and we sat down on his divan-bed to look at them.
"This is the circumcision of little Africans on the banks of the river, at dawn. They stick a thorn through their poor little foreskins. But the cold water has numbed them, like an anaesthetic. I had to hide my camera and use an automatic release and a telephoto lens, of course. It's all secret, but the tribe liked me, and didn't mind my watching. Only they wouldn't have let me take pictures, had they known."
He then came to pictures of a remarkably beautiful tribe, not African, something light-golden I imagineNagas, maybe, or Karens, or Annamites. Delicious young girls, stark naked, one with her legs apart and her finger stuck in her hairless quim. One, taken from the back, from some place of concealment, showed a row of young women side by side, all shitting into a trench among the bushes.
"What would they have done if they had caught you taking that one?" I asked.
"According to custom," he said, "they would have cut off my balls and nailed them to a palm-tree."
He opened a rubber wallet and took out some more pictures. He gave me a quick look, as if to see how I would take them. These were of boys, of the same tribe, of various ages, twelve to eighteen one would guess. Some singly, some in groups. Two grinning boys with their arms round each other's neck. Naked, of course. Then some taken indoors, with a background of straw walls. A youth with a tremendous erection. Two boys with erections, holding each other's.
"Do you like them?" Rex asked, nonchalantly.
"Yes." It was true, I did. The ones of the girls excited me more, but I could not deny that these were more than merely interesting and they threw a light on Rex. He showed me another. He himself figured in it: taken, doubtless with the automatic release. He was sitting on a chair, and had a nude boy of great beauty, perhaps about thirteen, on his knee. With one hand he was holding the boy's erect penis, decidedly a creditable one, and the boy's arms were round his neck.
"Was he nice?" I asked.
"Adorable." He added: "They're like the ancient
Greeks, all the men have their boys, there, it's quite normal. The boys offer themselves. So do girls, and there's no disapproval. But heaven help you if you were to approach a married woman."
"The opposite of England," I remarked.
"Which picture do you like best?"
I picked the one of the girl with her finger in her cunt, and a provocative smile on her lips.
"I'll give you that one," Rex said. "And now I'm afraid I have some work to do, so you'll have to leave me.
I went away more" puzzled than ever. It was a week before I saw my enigmatic idol again.
During that time I kept remembering the pictures, and kept saying to myself that after all, those brown boys didn't count. Just as I had said it to Ewan.
I played with myself, gazing at the picture of the girl, who seemed to be playing with herself while gazing provocatively back at me. The next night I rather wished I had chosen the picture of the row of gleaming bottoms, with little chippolatas of shit sticking out. However, it did not matter, I could remember it well enough...
Masturbation was my only sex joy, except for occasional dreams, at that time. And still a great joy, too; but I could do with something more. It seemed an age since the vacation, when I had been back to see my parents, and enjoyed a trip into the country, and my annual tumble in the hay with Ruby, the girl who had given me the first fuck of my life. That return had been nice but with a touch of melancholy, as I felt it would probably be the last time: she had hinted that she might get married soon.
I showed Ewan the picture Rex had given me.
"O God!" he said, his mouth watering. "Lend it to me for an hour."
"Don't you wish you'd been the person who took it?"
He gazed at it avidly. "O well," he said, "maybe he's ambidexterous."
"He's normal," I said. "I tell you, coloured boys don't count, all the Englishmen have them in India and Morocco. In this tribe, they expect it. An old Spanish custom."
I convinced myself, if not Ewan.
Well, nearly.
A week later I met Rosy, at last,-Again we went back to Rex's lodgings from Rowley's bar, where I had met him by accident.
(That's hardly accurate! I had gone to the bar, not for the first time, in hope of seeing Rex; and behind that was the hope of being taken home to meet his landlady's daughter. Did I really imagine that like a sultan he could or would command her into my bed? I am a born optimist.)
We went back too late, this time, for supper, and I had had too many drinks to care about food. There was Rosy in the hall: I knew it before we were introduced.
You might imagine I would be disappointed. Not a bit: she was a fine, attractive young woman. Mature, decidly; over-made-up; her reddish hair had been touched up, too, with some kind of tint or burnish, but it glinted in voluptuous coils. She had rings on her rather fat little hands. But a really winsome smile, warm and simple; and shapely legs, and a proud upstanding pair of tits. A glow went over me: the thought of this lovely young woman walking naked into Rex's bedroom, into my bedroom-I gulped, hard. How hot her palm was! My parents would have called her vulgar, and they would have been right. But I was no snob; and few men are snobbish where sex is concerned.
"Pleased to meet you," she said. I would have liked to reply, "Is your cunt as warm as your hand?" but said it with my eyes instead. She turned to Rex and said familiarly, "Your friend Tim's here, he said he'd wait in your room. I told him we'd got a few people coming in, and he said make it a party. Ring up Johnny, too, go on. Ma Sutherland is here already and Joan Bright, and there's plenty of beer."
"Ah!" said Rex. "Excuse me-" and hurried to his room.
With the boldness of my half-tipsy state, I pulled Rosy to me and kissed her.
"Well, I don't know!" she said, humorously indignant.
I kissed her again, Frenchly this time, and she pretended she wanted to escape, and then pretended to surrender to superior force. Her tongue licked round mine, and her hands slid and clutched on my shoulderblades. After I had stopped kissing her, she said, "Stop it!"
She led me into the living room where her mother and three men and a woman and a girl were drinking and chatting and roaring with laughter. I greeted her mother, and was ceremoniously introduced all round. I took a drink and joined in the talk, but at the back of my mind was a question-mark. Rex's friends seemed all ordinary people, though of mixed types; but two I had wondered about: one was Tim, a handsome young Irish lad, who was a carpenter, and the other was Johnny, a clerk to an accountant, about my own age, who had a very girlish laugh. I must admit that as soon as I heard the suggestion that Rex was homosexual, I thought of these two. And now they cropped up like this.
But I still suspended judgment. I felt myself getting decidedly drunk. The evening began to slide by at a great pace. One of the men, a bookmaker, played the piano and everyone did Knees up, Mother Brown. Another man sang Songs of Araby very soulfully. The third, a youngish fellow with a wooden leg, was avidly cuddling Joan Bright, a girl who looked plain, wholesome and eager. "Don't touch his stump!" Rosy called to her, and somebody else warned the man, "Mind she doesn't break it off!"
Rex had appeared, with Tim, and a bottle of gin. Everybody made a fuss of Rex, especially Rosy's mother. Time passed. I danced with Rosy and clutched her tight. Johnny turned up, and did a kind of female impersonation, in one of Rosy's hats. "Camping herself silly," said Tim, and all my suspicions were confirmed.
I was tight, and bright, and stupid. I went up to Rex, who was talking to Tim in a corner, and said: "Can I speak to you alone? I want to ask you something important."
Rex obligingly came out of the room with me, looking a bit worried. "What is it?"
"You know those coloured boys, in the photos you showed me?"
"Yes?"
"You know you said you had them?" (I was swaying.)
"Now, come along, Robert, back to the party."
"Don't try and evade me," I insisted. "You did say you had them. What I want to know is, did you stick it up their bottoms?"
"Now, Bob," he said soothingly.
"Did you? I've got to know. Terribly important," I mumbled. "Did you really sodomise them?"
"Be a good boy, Bob. If you want to know, no, I've never done that in my life to anyone, it repels me. Have you, by the way?"
"No. Yes, to a girl," I said.
"Even more repellent," he said. "Shall we go back?"
"No," I said. "What did you do, then?"
"Use your imagination. If you can't guess, ask me again next week and perhaps I'll tell you." He added in his lecture-hall manner, "Anal-eroticism has nothing to do with-"
"With what?"
"With me," he said, and walked back into the room.
I followed. I felt the gaze of Tim and Johnny on me. The little party seemed very gay. People began telling smutty stories, but I was too drunk to see the point of most of them.
Then the party thinned out, people were going home, and at last I was in a corner kissing Rosy and doing as much as I dare, with her mother in the room. I had a "whisky cock": she must have felt it sticking up under her bottom as she sat on my knee.
I was half-asleep, all the same. The lights were low and I was in a sensual daze. At last the man playing the piano got up and shut the lid. Rosy got off my knee.
"He'll never get home, I'll make him comfy down here," she said, and I slowly realised she was speaking of me.
The piano man put on his hat, and said, "Good night, all." I opened my eyes wide and gazed round the room. Rex and the young men, like the other guests, had disappeared. Rosy's mother had gone to bed. I was alone with Rosy.
"I'm going to be sick," I said suddenly.
"Come this way, lovey," said Rosy. She led me through the kitchen into the garden. She held my forehead while I threw up my liquor. Afterwards she gave me some soda water and sponged my face.
The fresh air had pulled me together amazingly. Rosy and I sat on two kitchen chairs and held hands, and I talked quite sensibly (I think) about the people at the party. She told me amusing tales about them and we both laughed. Then she said, "Come, it's bedtime. Can you walk home?"
"I don't want to," I said and began kissing her and mauling her about.
"Stop," she said, "you're breaking my straps."
I had a handful of her delicious breast, by this time. Young and resilient, it was, with a nipple like a turnedup nose, hardening under the pressure of my fingers.
She wriggled and struggled in my grip, saying all the time that it was too late, and I was drunk, and I ought to go home, and even saying that she hardly knew me! (true though that was). But presently she caved in, suddenly, and gave herself up to the kissing and caressing; her struggles turned to sensual squirming, as if her body was getting out of control.
"Be very quiet, then," she said, turning out the light and leading me up to her bedroom.
I thought she was afraid her mother would hear, but later I learned that her mother knew all about her love affairs and made no fuss about them. Perhaps it was for Rex's benefit that we were to be quiet!
We did not use the electric light, in Rosy's room, but undressed by the glow of her gas fire. She looked at me admiringly, in that flattering light, and ran her hands down my sides. My cock had shrunk, with nerves, or something, and I was rather ashamed of it, as I stood looking at and fondling her body. But she put her hand down and held it in her hot, fat hand, and I began to rise to the occasion. She was so experienced, so maternal, that she inspired absolute confidence, and yet was a simple, goodnatured girl. This, this was the naked girl who walked into Rex's room, according to his story, and offered herself. The picture returned to my mnid's eye, and excited me again. Now I had a stand like a ramrod.
"Are you in love with Rex?" I asked all of a sudden.
"I was," she said, "but what's the use?"
I did not say any more. I lifted her right off her feet and tossed her down on the bed. Then I climbed on, in reverse, my face between her legs, my fork over her face. My tongue touched her clitoris and slid up and down her slit, while she, with hands lightly holding my hips, drew my prick into her mouth. This sixty-nine affair, or Golden Boat, was something I had always wanted to do and never done. Our bodies slid sweatily on each other, and divinely keen sensations ran up and down my spine, along my limbs and out at the dps of my toes and fingers. Rosy took her mouth off my steaming knob for a moment and licked my balls, her tongue going like little darting flames. This was too much for me, I got alarmed for fear I should come too soon. I stopped sucking her, and pulled my head away, though she said in a breathless whisper, "No, no, don't stop!" She tried to heave her loins up to my mouth.
This was enough, however, and I turned round, whispering, "I want to fuck you now."
She rolled over, face downwards, and offered me the rear approach. I had no objection to this, and slid it into her cunt with the greatest of ease. Her buttocks were like round Dutch cheeses, and the air smelt of Dutch cheese, come to think about it. I slid one hand under and held her on to me, both to get a deeper thrust and to give her a clitoral rub at the same time.
What a clitoris she had! my hand confirmed what my mouth had discovered, that it was knobbed like an electric light switch. It was almost like the rudimentary prick of a hermaphrodite, and I wouldn't have been too surprised if it had suddenly come, with a little white spurt of its own. All it needed was a pair of marbles, to complete the illusion. But she had enough wetness to give me, without that contribution.
I drove away, with long steady strokes, quickening at times, slowing down again, and Rosy gave suffocated gasps of pleasure. I put my spare hand under one of her tits, and she bit the pillow with pleasure. I must have been a grand lover that night, for the drink was still swimming in my veins and I had one of those famous alcoholic cock-stands that will last forever but won't let you come. My head was clear enough for me to have control over what I was doing, and take conscious pleasure in it. I worked Rosy up with deliberation to a splashy orgasm, and then took it from there, on the down-beat, without letting her lose the excitement or go quiet again. She had no sooner exploded, with jerks in all directions, than I started up the rhythm again, slow but meaningful, and brought her up, up, up, to another climax. I enjoyed it all, for she cooperated with the muscles inside her vagina, while I nudged the mouth of her womb with the nozzle of my cock. And yet more, I enjoyed it like a musician, master of an instrument. She was rapturously surprised, as she told me afterwards, at this great-lover stuff. I could never have achieved it without the alcohol. It's only by chance that one can never reach that happy state: in ninetynine drinking-bouts out of a hundred, one is either short of the mark or incapable.
Drink is the Judas of sex, the most treacherous ally it can have. But that night, for once, it was a true friend. Though, of course, it was Rosy's friend, more than mine!
I felt more like the producer than the actor, as though I were directing somebody else's performance. I had never played the thing like this before. Funny, because in my heated imaginings in advance, after first hearing about Rosy from Rex, I had always thought of her as the mature, experienced woman (as no doubt she was) leading the young man in her own sophisticated pathways. But here she was helpless with passion, and I in control, running her up and down the scale!
It went on and on, until I thought, "No, it must end sometime." I could tell that Rosy was pretty nearly exhausted. So was I, but I had never got near an orgasm. I must, must come. It would be a failure of manhood on my part if I couldn't; I would have to act it, go through a pretence of coming, and perhaps she would detect it, for all women are detectives by nature. I began to panic, and could feel my flesh going numb, losing interest. I flogged it harder, but seemed to be slipping away from the crest, though I was gasping like a walrus by now. Yet when she was sucking me, a little while before, I had been afraid of coming too soon.
I seized her wrist and guided it, and she quickly got the idea and wriggled her fingers under my balls. This was a terrific help, and my sensations returned.
Confidence came back too: I was going to make it! I began the rhythmic romp uphill, and tried hard to shut my mind to any kind of thoughts. And at last I shot my bolt, with Rosy lashed to a fresh foam under me. When I did come, it was more like muscular relief than anything; like breasting the tape at the end of a quartermile. I don't believe I shed a thimbleful of juice.
All I wanted was a good rest. I fell asleep while waiting for Rosy to stop quivering. She had to wake me to shift my weight off her poor mauled body.
Eventually we sat up. She clung to me, and shed a few tears.
"I'm so thankful," she said, "that you're not one of those. I thought you might be one of Rex's fairies, like Johnny and Tim. They're very nice, but they're not interested in women."
"Aren't they?" I said. "But I am."
What would she have said if she had known that I had been asking myself all night what I would do if Rex made an advance to me? that I had never stopped thinking about it, at the back of my mind, even when I was having Rosy? and that I had not yet absolutely decided on the answer?
I found I was in no hurry to meet Rex again after that night. When I did, he was perfectly affable, his well-mannered self, and showed he knew all about things by asking me humorously whether Rosy came up to expectations. I assured him she did. I was taking her to a dance the next night, I told him. "Good," said he.
"And did you have a good time with Tim and Johnny?" I asked.
"They're nice fellows, you should get to know them better," he said. Johnny, in particular, admires you."
"Hm."
Smooth, I thought.
Later, we walked round the moonlit park, talking of various things. Rex took my arm.
"Johnny," he remarked, "is a little jealous of you. Understandably. He knows I'm out of my mind about you.
I stopped in my tracks.
"I know, I know," he went on before I could say anything. "It's all hopeless, you're horribly one-track, you're only interested in your precious Rosy, and you think homosexuality is shameful, and so on. Not even to save a wretched man's sanity would you allow so much as a kiss. Besides, it's against the law!"
"Listen, Rex!" I exclaimed indignantly, "I don't care a hoot for the law, you ought to know that, and as for shame I haven't got any. And I'm not so horribly onetrack, or at least I used not to be, because I had larks with my brothers, and other boys at school. It's just that I've grown out of it."
"Have you?"
"Rex," I said, falteringly, "is it true?" "Is what true?"
"What you said... that you're sort of... in love with me?"
"O my dear!" he exclaimed, breathing painfully. His grip on my arm was tighter.
I was moved, and a bit sad. He had tears in his eyes.
"I don't think I could love anyone, a man, like that," I said gently.
"No, I know," he said.
"But you can kiss me, if you very much want to," I said.
He looked so hopeless, and I admired him so much, it would be idiotic prudery to refuse him a kiss, I thought. Did I secretly, unconsciously, want more, and guess that I would be ready to yield more when it came to the point?
Someone was walking towards us. Rex steered me into a side lane, and round the bend where it turned, and into the dark moon-shadows.
Putting his arms round my shoulders, he pressed his lips to mine, thirstily. With strange sensations of crossing into unknown land, darkest Africa, I accepted the kiss.
He began to tell me I was beautiful, I was all youth and springtime, I was manliness and feminine grace all in one, I had virility and the skin of a girl, I resembled young Persians he had known... I knew this was all exeggeration and compliment, but it was not unpleasing; and because I believed he was in love, I believed he sincerely meant it all. He wove a spell of words over me. He told me of the anguish of self-restraint he had endured, and how he had determined never to let me see his feelings, but his resolution had broken down at last.
How true was it? I still don't know. Neither does he, I dare say. He could intoxicate himself, as well as me, withwords, and believe his own rhapsodies. He could make an erection sound like a grand passion; just as he was making me into a Greek god. He loved words, and his own emotions. Looking back, I wonder if in the end I wasn't more in love with him than he ever was with me. I certainly had a great attachment to him.
When his eloquence died down I submitted again to his kiss. I allowed his tongue to penetrate my mouth, and I responded as best I could.
His breath reminded me of the Major's, when I was kissed as a child.
I can't, surely, have been so naive as to imagine it would stop at a kiss! Rex was pressing me to him, running his hands over my shoulder blades, holding my loins, pulling me close to him by my buttocks. It was all very strange. I tried to project myself into him, and imagine his feelings. I tried thinking of myself as a girl with a lover. I was aware of his erection, hopping away there behind the double barrier of gents' suitings. In me there was some force resisting, and another opposite impulse wanting to explore, to experience, to advance further into the dark continent.
Rex repeated his phrase about saving a man's sanity, in a whisper in my ear. He seemed so madly eaten up with desire that I could think it might be true. He had put it in the form of a question, and I murmured, "All right."
His hand slid round between us and he unbuttoned my fly. I was not erect, but I was not entirely soft, either. The bizarre and exciting atmosphere had already had some effect, and I was half-hard when his swift, exploratory fingers reached my flesh.
He kissed me again, while his hand with obvious delight played about with me. He felt my boyish pelvis, the curly pubic hair, my balls and then my prick, drawing his fingers very slowly up it from base to 'tip, as if to learn it by heart. The foreskin was peeling back by now, and he knew by my frisson when he had reached the most sensitive part. Whatever resistance I had was melting fast. My prick adored his skilful touch and quickly became as firm as the Eiffel Tower.-(There's nothing like experience, I thought.)
I was full of very complicated feelings: the mixture of repulsion and attraction, to start with; then the affection I had for Rex and the magic flow of words stimulating me through my imagination; that adolescent uncertainty about what I was; a half-fear that I might turn into a painted pansy overnight; the memories of the Major, and my boyhood friends; all these made a cocktail of emotion such as I had never swallowed before. There was even a feeling of disloyalty to Rosy, who had said so tearfully that thank goodness I was not "one of those." And I wasn't-or was I?
One thing I certainly was, a sensualist: I don't think that even one of Rex's little black brothers, with all their generations of technique behind them, could have been more responsive to his caresses than I was. The only trouble was, I couldn't hold back long enough: one hand kneading my spine seemed to touch nerves I didn't know I had; the other played so brilliantly round my parts, from lightest touches to a firm ring of finger and thumb frigging up and down with steadily increasing speed: he must have felt the fast increasing throb in the threefold bloodvessels inside my prick, for he turned himself aside just as I breathed, "I'm coming!'*
The white liquor, like a little rain of moonlight, leapt out and landed beside our feet, just missing his clothes. He wiped me with his handkerchief, then gathered me again in his arms for a last kiss. I suppose he must have come in his pants, but I don't know at what point in the proceedings. I had not touched his cock at all with my hand. I was purely the passive partner, in so far as that can ever be said of the male with his active shotgun. Rex sighed with profound contentment. I was glad.
I went to my bed that night in a state of fierce turmoil and conflict. Life and sex were no longer so simple! I lay there wrestling with my confused ideas and emotions, and, inevitably, wrestling feverishly with my inflamed member, the cause of all the worry. In any crisis, such as exams, I always felt the itch to masturbate; more especially in a crisis of this nature. I went over the pros and cons of the matter, and then relived in my memory the happenings of the evenings, the things Rex had said, the first approach of his hand: and now, alone, I gave myself up to the pleasure of it without qualms. I frigged by an old, curious method I had found for myself years ago: holding my balls in one hand, grasping my wrist with the other, and squirming the inner side of a wrist, like a wheel, against the front of my prick. It needs a photograph to illustrate this tactic, but it would have won a Highly Commended at the International Masturbation Jamboree and Friggers' Fair. It lias a very egotistic, enclosed, self-sufficient feel about it, though I am sure it doesn't compete with the Japanese method which I have heard of but never achieved-a way of making a vacuum with the two hands, in which the swollen head of the organ is positively sucked! Perhaps it is a legend, like the horizontal cunts of the Chinese girls. (I have met a man from a far countree who maintains that Chinese tale is true! He says that though the slit is vertical, really, as in the West, they splay the pelvis and use themselves in such a way as to give the crosswise impression when you fuck them. I can't quite visualise it, but could so persistent and widespread a yarn have absolutely no foundation? Hundreds of generations have had a chance to verify it!)
During this little digression I had been jerking up to my climax, and here I was, coming in the bed, and biting the pillow.
I went smoothly to sleep; there's no sedative like it. Such is the sexual vitality of youth, that I had a wet dream that same night, and woke up just as I was coming once more, with a good, healthy shot of spunk. I am not sure of the details, but Rosy and Rex both played a part in my dream, and the same conflict was it work.