by Zack
Jim nodded. “Have it your way.” He gave Mike a nasty smile. “But I guarantee you’ll be back. The lure of the street’s too much. So, I’ll forgive you that little transgression. And don’t worry. I’ll take you back on the books the minute you realize the course of true love is a fake.” He tipped his temple in a sardonic two-fingered salute and strolled toward the street door with a carefree swagger.
Over the next few months, Mike juggled school work, home life, and as much time as he could with Kevin. Kevin’s own time was circumscribed by his studies at Imperial College (something to do with absolute-zero technology). They managed a night “down the Catacombs” now and then but preferred Kevin’s bedroom. Kevin was life, the future of Mike’s hopes. Kevin gave him a feeling of being home in an entirely different way from what he’d known all his life in Swiss Cottage. Fortunately, Kevin’s socialite parents were rarely in of an evening unless holding a grand dinner, in which case a polite greeting of the guests was all they expected of their youngest son—“My brother Jack? He’s eight years older, and clambering up the political ladder in Australia.” This left the boys free to disappear into what Kevin wryly described as his den- cum -bedroom, where they continued practicing sex, which they did with undimmed gusto; any consideration of their former social differences of school prefect and junior forgotten.
Mike’s flavored Durex remained in the packet when one evening Kevin enticed him to “do it properly.” Beyond the drawn curtains, midsummer evening light made the material glow and brought out the bucolic Roman scenes in sharp relief. Outside, the noises of Old Brompton Road seemed far off, a susurration mingled with the murmured voices of dinner guests two floors below.
“Are you ready?” Mike said with the concern of one who had endured Jez McGowran’s unexpected assault on his ass.
“I want you to do it, Michael, and I just know you want to.” Kevin lay back wantonly and spread his legs wide in invitation. He bent and raised his knees so that Mike’s weight brought the head of his cock up against the fork of Kevin’s thighs.
In his associations with other rent-boys, Mike had learned the function of KY, though he had never encountered its use as a lubricant and would never have dared mention it to Kevin in case his lover asked how he knew about such things. Instead he spat copiously on his fingers and then reached down into the cleft and felt his way to the center. An indrawn breath and quiet ooerrf! marked the spot as Mike’s slick fingertips probed around the raised ring of Kevin’s asshole. He worked the flesh around the sphincter muscles until Kevin began to rock on the bed. Another gob of spit on Mike’s cockhead and he pushed the tip to the spot and clumsily pressed in.
Kevin gave a sharp inward gasp.
“Did I hurt?” Mike asked anxiously, and pulled back.
“Yes, but no… I’m sure it will be all right. It just felt, well, odd.” Kevin’s expression, like a cloud-shadowed landscape in windy weather, switched between surprise and embarrassment. “I mean, it’s not the direction in which things usually go,” he said rather primly.
Mike was certain levity would ruin the moment. He chewed his upper lip uncertainly. Kevin mirrored by biting his lower lip. Then his look hardened into resolve. He slapped Mike’s rump in encouragement.
So quickly Mike wasn’t even sure how it had happened, he was inside, properly in his lover’s tight ass, all of his cockhead enclosed by the gripping ring of inner muscle. Kevin’s head snapped back with a solid thump on the pillow and he closed his eyes tightly. “Ughn…”
“I am hurting, I’m sorry—”
“No, just…just take it slowly, Michael.”
Mike drew a deep breath to calm himself and resumed with gentle pushes in and out. He had no wish to deliver pain, but oh, it felt so good, his cock squeezed all along its length with surprising strength, clamped by his lover’s insides. Yet even in that experience he feared to deliver pain by an inadvertent move and cursed his inexperience. Would Kevin have noticed if he’d been more practiced? If he was doing this right, probably not. Still, the reserve he felt made him hold back. Even as he hesitated, Kevin flung his head back again, moaned long and in undeniable pleasure, and then raised his shining face, opened his eyes to engage Mike above him with a feral grin. “Do me, Michael.” His internal muscles clenched hard on Mike’s invasion.
Energized by the reaction, Mike renewed his thrusting, not too hard at first, but with encouragement from his lover’s hands on his buttocks, wilder and more boisterous plunging followed. Then he lost all control and his balls boiled with the need for release and his cock took over. The strokes came longer and more forceful as he melted into total communion with Kevin, joined cock, ass, and locked eyes. He drove in again and again until his balls banged Kevin’s cleft, and they both gasped in unison. Gripping friction caressed every inch of his burning shaft and his balls ached for release. Almost without thinking he reached down to grasp Kevin’s wildly shaking cock firmly and stroked him at the same speed he fucked him. Each inward push further stoked the hot fire expressed in Kevin’s searing gaze of desire and love. And then his pale irises rolled up until Mike could see only the white orbs, matching the bared whiteness of his teeth, parted in a snarl. Two more ramming fuck-blows and Kevin lost it completely. Thick jets of cream sprayed out as he filled Mike’s fist with his hot ejaculation. Some squirted forcefully in an escape from between Mike’s fingers to coat Kevin’s heaving belly.
The vision of his lover flailing in the eruption of his climax pushed Mike far beyond his ability to deny his own release and, to the sound of his harsh breathing, he came into Kevin as hard as he could ever remember coming before. He shot into the intense heat of Kevin’s juiced insides jerk after jolt and for long seconds embraced the mindless extinction of being blissfully joined with another at a level beyond understanding.
“Oh, man, that was such a gas, so fabulous…” Kevin forced the barely heard words between sharp inhalations which matched the fluttering of his eyelids. He passed a languid hand across his sweaty brow and pushed back the damp fringe of hair plastered to his temple. He turned the corners of his mouth up in a slow smile which spread to his eyes.
The ache in Mike’s loins slowly abated to leave a warm glow of satisfaction and happily enervated movements replaced the urgent vigor of a moment ago, gentle and loving. He licked up the pearls of cum on Kevin’s stomach and lower ribs, and then stretched up to lip the shelves of his fine brows. He tongue-brushed the closed and more relaxed eyelids, the line of Kevin’s nose to its Roman tip, and then his lips, which parted in a sigh of perfect contentment and a lingering kiss. Mike slowly collapsed sideways. He rolled Kevin with him and they shared delighted grins as their fevered panting slowed.
That was weeks ago, could have been eons past, on another planet, in a parallel reality. Mike, so certain he had found his ideal friend, placed life on happy-hold. He dreamed through the school day, put in mechanical appearances at home for a meal, and drifted to The Boltons in a wistful daze. And Kevin Manners was his ideal. Pale blue eyes, beautiful classic straight brows with just the faintest arch into the dip at the top of his nose, the lovely square face, so earnest of expression, and a nature loving, caring, and considerate. Kevin was everything Mike could wish for, and Kevin seemed as enamored with him in return.
Until the Quintin Kynaston exhibition of his photos.
It was a thousand-times-damned Piccadilly Circus did it for him. How often since had he wished he’d never included an essay on the place at night, all in grainy black-and-white ultra high-speed Anscochrome. It had to be that. The use of flash would have alarmed the crowd and defeated the object of the exercise—to capture moments of unguarded reality. The essay had come about because he had slipped. Rung Jim and arranged a few nights. Jim even refrained from gloating at the prodigal’s return. Mike needed the extra cash desperately to buy Kevin a birthday present. The pictorial essay of tourist nightlife in London’s West End provided a legitimate reason to be absent some evenings and down there. But Mike wanted it n
ot to be a lie, so the photography became a real project in between putting out for clients under Jim’s watchful eye.
Yes. It was the Dilly and Ethan Hall did for him. Mike didn’t really know Ethan, a boy he passed in the school hallways, just another sixth former in the crowded comprehensive school. That all changed one night when he discovered Ethan hanging about by Shaftesbury Avenue. Mike had already exposed a couple of rolls of 35mm film in a camera borrowed from school and felt pleased with what he’d captured. As he tucked the camera into its case, he became aware of the stare. The shock was mutual. Both boys stood frozen in the midst of sidewalk bustle. And then Jim loomed from the press of tourists, theater- and cinema-goers, hustlers, hookers, and general flim-flam.
“You done, Mikey-me-lad?” Jim dipped his head at the camera case slung around Mike’s shoulder.
Mike almost turned and fled, but Jim took his elbow. “You seen a ghost?” He caught the direction of Mike’s gaze, turned toward Ethan standing at the railings, half-smoked cigarette dangling between listless fingers. “You boys know each other?”
Mike whirled on Jim. “What—?”
Jim waved Ethan forward. He took an uncertain couple of steps to come up beside Jim, still staring fixedly at Mike.
The penny dropped and Mike groaned. The Quintin Kynaston pupil was also one of the Atter-ridge Lads.
“I only took him on the other day,” Jim said in aggrieved tones when Mike lammed into him about it. “Bit like you, he was at Top Of The Pops, stuck on that West End Boys’ bassist.”
“You fixed it?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t I? Course, he’s still wet behind the ears, but a quick learner, and earner.” Jim emphasized the last two words to make Mike feel guilty about his recent distance from the scene. And still Ethan stared silently.
The inevitable mutual embarrassment ebbed over the next few days. Mike did his best to avoid Ethan during the day. Up until then he’d managed to put his hustling, school, home, and—as importantly as anything—Kevin into separate compartments. Now, whenever he passed Ethan in the hallways, a whiff of illicit sex assailed his nostrils and his soul with guilt. He didn’t need reminding that Ethan had created conflict between his occasional nocturnal prowling and the rest of his normal existence. Worse, Ethan made it abundantly clear that he wanted more. He caught Mike one afternoon out on Marlborough Hill as school turned out. The usually quiet backwater rang with the ruckus of pupils freed from the work day and the shouts of boys on the hardstand five-a-side soccer pitch beyond the street fencing.
“We’re both headed the same way,” Ethan began, somewhat redundantly as he walked alongside.
Mike nodded but said nothing. Under other circumstances he might have liked Ethan well enough, though not likely in a sexual context. There was something a little… shaky about the guy, something in the eyes or the way he held himself as if he were always ready to attack or flee. Highly strung came to mind. And the reedy quality of his voice scraped Mike’s nerves, like fingernails on polystyrene. And perhaps I’m simply over-reacting. But being found out on the Dilly game had come as an uncomfortable shock much more to him, he suspected, than to Ethan.
“Can I buy you a coke or something? You know, Macdonald’s on up on Finchley Road?”
“I have to get home,” Mike said flatly.
“What’s the rush?”
Mike wanted to snap that it was none of his business, but weirdly, he felt sorry for the guy, although he had no clear idea why. Perhaps for being swept up in Jim’s schemes. Mike had the distinct impression that Ethan couldn’t look out for himself. There, damn it all, my private school condescension to the forefront, hah! The broadened horizons of a liberal education, the lessons of becoming a “leader among men” rubbing off. In all honesty, Mike couldn’t help but feel better equipped at dealing with life than Ethan, even though the other appeared the less fazed by the Piccadilly Circus encounter. Mike squinched his cheeks in and then blew out a breath of controlled exasperation. “I’m going out. Have to get home to shower and change.” He instantly regretted raising the subject of his undressing. It seemed too intimate, and the words seemed to light something inside Ethan.
“Hmm, good opportunity for a bunk-up.” He smiled engagingly as if the words were a mere throwaway jest, but the intensity of his gaze spoke volumes in contradiction.
It only made Mike sigh the more obviously. He stopped, and three girls following flowed around them. “Look. Er, Ethan. I know… you know, up West. That’s what it is. It doesn’t make for anything between us. I—”
“Oh, I wasn’t… I mean, nothing all fixed up and that. I just thought… I kind of fancy you, you know? I think I have a for a while, but how could I know? It’s… you can’t, you know, go up to a guy and ask him out, or something. How do you know? But we know we’re both gay. Doesn’t that make some sense? And that Attridge guy, you’re a part of it. So I reckoned, on off time, you and me… couldn’t we?”
This simplistic view of life these statements underpinned took Mike aback. How to get rid of the twit? He started walking again, with a picked-up pace. Ethan speeded up too. Resentment swelled Mike’s breast over having to use the word Ethan was forcing out of him. Mike’s internal problem was with boyfriend. He’d never been able to bring himself to describe Kevin as his boyfriend because it sounded so girlie. Women, or Julian’s bints, had boyfriends. Q.E.D. men did not have boyfriends. “Look. I have a… a friend,” he managed lamely.
“So, can’t we be friends?” The puppy-dog appeal in the eyes emanated with the force of a storm.
Fuck, but he’s persistent. Or thick…
“Ethan, I don’t want to be with anyone else in that way. Understand?”
Mike turned left onto Boundary Road, which dropped downhill from Finchley Road to their right. Ethan remained silent, but kept pace. Mike crossed the street and turned right to go on down Loudon Road toward the bridge crossing the main London-Midland rail tracks out of Euston Station.
“You have a boyfriend,” Ethan finally said in a dull voice as they walked across the bridge.
“I do. We’re good together.”
“That’s a bummer.” He stopped walking. “Yet you do it with men for money.”
The bridge’s roadway vibrated as an Intercity train rumbled underneath. Mike paused and turned to look back. “That’s my business, so keep out of it. Just because we both know Jim doesn’t mean a thing.”
Ethan stood with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. His forlorn expression slowly hardened.
“I wasn’t asking much.”
The words came out as a loud spit above the roar of the second high-speed diesel locomotive as the train powered away for Birmingham and points north. Mike lifted both hands from his sides and shook his head. “For chrissakes, Ethan. What’s the big deal, huh? Just because you know something, doesn’t make you my…” He couldn’t find the word to describe what they were, or weren’t to each other.
Ethan’s features darkened and he looked mean. “I just hope your boyfriend is worth it. You’ll never know what I could have been—”
At which point Mike lost it. “Fucking hell! I don’t even know you, and you know nothing about me, so stop with that stupid shit. Go home, and if we bump into each other at school, smile politely and pass on by. And down the Dilly, well, just don’t. Do your stuff and leave me alone.”
Mike spun on his heel and marched away across the rest of the bridge toward the traffic circle at the entrance to Fairhazel Gardens. He considered calling in on Randall and Henderson to toke some maryjane and calm down. When this day began he hadn’t anticipated dealing with an obviously unbalanced twerp who had moved from puppy love to spurned woman in short order. Then he thought better of doping up. An evening in Kevin’s arms would fix things perfectly.
The Head of Physics insisted on including a batch of ten of the London Nightlife photographs in Mike’s exhibition. The low available light created a moodily psychedelic effect in the pictures. Streaks like passing com
ets of suspended silver particles filled the emulsion; humans in motion, smeared, indistinct, alien, and distinctly different from those lurking figures caught motionless in the long exposures. The stills oozed a menacing atmosphere in spite of the coruscating neon whirls of hoardings seen high up on the buildings around the Circus. The adverts were mostly rendered as unreadable flares of over-exposure against which stationary people became black silhouettes. In a few, the light caught the sharp planes of a face. Here, a man loomed, slightly distorted by the wide-angle lens, eyes shocked open like a frightened dog, but as he wasn’t looking into the lens it was hard to determine what alarmed him, or even if he was and only the lens distortion made it seem so. There, if the observer knew what the picture presented, were clearly seen negotiations, the promise of cash changing hands, against the light and dark blur of a passing double-decker bus. In one, the phosphorescent glare of a match lighting a cigarette brought out facial details sharply. Only after the event had Mike realized whose physiognomy he had revealed. His teacher thought it the finest of all the images and Mike found himself unable to resist his demands to feature the picture.
Ethan Hall, however, was thrilled to be included.
“It’s not like anyone at school’s going to recognize me, is it,” he told Mike.
“So what’s the point, then?”
“I’ll know it’s me. Anyway, if someone does spot it’s me, nothing naughty’s taking place, other than me lighting up, and they can’t throw me in jail for that.”
To Mike’s horror, Donny and Jim turned up on the exhibition’s opening afternoon. For long moments his brain refused to work as his worst nightmare began to unfold. He left Kevin’s side. As luck had it, the exhibition was packed with a mix of pupils, teachers, governors, parents, friends of the school, school friends, kith and kin. Mike managed to weave through the admiring throng, acknowledging a word of praise here and pats on the arm and back there.
“What the hell are you doing here?”