Diary of an Innocent

by Tony Duvert

  I won’t invite him to come over any more; he’s one of those boys that is out of place in the loves I cultivate.

  Conversely, it happens that a shy person who doesn’t seem to be lewd turns out to be. A brat who has a prick like my index finger sucks my anus to the point of yanking my guts out, has a skinny little tool so strong that it gratifies me, eats my cock, my balls, comes in my mouth, gets on all fours and offers me a ravishing and ready behind. He’s not even surprised when, seeing him pissing outdoors, I want to drink his urine; he holds it in, brings his cock closer, lets all of it out as indifferently as if I were a toilet. Very salty piss. That little devil should be something when he grows up. He’s not in the city any more.

  A pair of swine. At night they take me to the back of an alley and suggest I fuck them. In the darkness, I suck their insignificant pricks. One takes his pants down and gets on all fours: anus squeezed together, a childish behind. I tell him that it won’t work. He insists. I push a little so he’ll understand. He keeps insisting. I shrug, would rip my way in. Disappointed, he straightens up. His friend claims he can. He’s seeing me at close range, he knows what to expect. On all fours, a little ass, the same kind of hole. I talk these braggarts out of it, suggest they fuck each other instead. They refuse, then agree. The one with his pants down lies on the ground, the other pulls on his prick, wets it and, aiming carefully for the hole, collapses onto his friend. While watching, I leave them a sticky souvenir in the alley.

  I often run into the child with the dog. He spots me from a great distance, gallops over, flies into my arms. Once he rummages endlessly in the pockets of the pants he happens to be wearing; he says he has a present for me, it’s a clean woolen ball shaped like the head of a dog, with the diameter and color of a tangerine. Two drooping, triangular ears and a square muzzle in soft, blue cloth glued to the ball. The ears are big, the muzzle small, there’s no mouth. The eyes are two white plastic beads. I put the dog’s head into my pocket. We run into a seller of gem-stones to whom I usually pay for a crystal without taking it; in order to retail them he breaks them up too much. It’s not a handout I’m giving him, he doesn’t panhandle; it’s a down payment on a larger crystal he’ll find for me someday. He’s pretty, but a snot. I don’t touch him, except for his hand. The bottom side of his shorts distracts me, he can be a slut. When it’s hot, he sits on the stairs doing nothing; his pants gape open, and today he isn’t wearing any underwear. It’s a smutty piece of clothing like women’s lingerie from Pigalle, or those outfits of openwork leather they sell to men who are into S&M. But it’s a young boy in a pair of worn-out shorts. High in the thighs, low at the hips, little moons running along the butt crack that are sweetly taking in some air. I regret it when I suggest he button up. There are little pipsqueaks that aren’t so little everywhere—what a cock!

  Diego’s little brother Pedro’s cock was as thick as my thumb, but was enormously longer, and his balls were plump. He often enjoyed using his prick to poke my foreskin, which he’d stretch into a tube. It was his only whim, and it wasn’t very imaginative. He’d caress a great deal, swallow quarts of soda, bananas, apples, cakes, chocolate, cookies—slowly, ponderously, implacably. He liked very long, very expensive cigarettes. He was much more badly dressed than Diego, which I reproached him for. The next time we met, Pedro appeared in his brother’s most beautiful pair of trousers, pulled almost up to his armpits. I didn’t push it.

  Pedro is dark, with short hair and the same blond skin as Diego. He’s not as handsome, but he’s a child. I have a photo of him at eleven in which he looks exactly like his brother: same features, lips, an expression that Diego didn’t have at that age. Then Diego took them, and the little one lost out on them.

  1 shoot my load onto him from behind, between his thighs. Contact with his body dazzles me. He jerks off. He’s at that prepubescent moment when you become a man; and when he comes, a murky spurt, as narrow and straight as wee-wee, comes out of the end. He stops moving his hand and looks at the little spurt with even more interest than I do; lying against his rump, I bend forward to see it better. We only come two times; I tickle him, I carry him, he’s nice and heavy, only these tickles drive him wild.

  He’s violently against my fucking him. Even so, I try. Naked with him in the bathtub, I soap him from top to bottom, slide my finger all the way up his ass without his noticing. In fact, he’s very relaxed, but aware that a boy doesn’t let anyone do that, he slowly realizes that I’ve just done it and only then does he protest. He fucks friends at school and recounts it in three words or less.

  In bed he’s kneeling over me, and I begin tapping his anus lightly with my cock. He doesn’t stop me. Stealthily I wet my cock with saliva and push; it gets swallowed up as if it were nothing. Pedro, who’s jerking off, doesn’t react. With his cherry hugging my cock, I feel everything. Then he finally decides to think … oh. And to say it. I pull out gently. He’s not angry. But he sees me as unfair; he’s a little boy, and he obviously has a hole that’s a match for men’s cocks, so it’s mean of me to take advantage of it and feminize him, it’s a denial of all trust. This is what Pedro has internalized concerning anal prohibitions. And (except if he sits by mistake on a cock that’s sticking up) it will be enough to protect his rear end.

  I can’t, don’t want to talk about recent lovers; there have been sweet ones, mischievous ones, violent ones—but so close that I don’t know where to begin with them. My mind is slow, it takes months before the simplest images become clear. Moreover, the truth of my stories comes from what I write, not what inspires them in me; I ransack so many wonders that if—while rereading what I’ve written—I weren’t able to recall a host of things I didn’t takes notes on, but which these sentences are helping to bring forth, I wouldn’t dare recount anything.

  Pablos had a dog. I was curious to see them together, since the child took every liberty with the animal. He treated this baby dog like he treated me. He didn’t hit it, and let it fight; would get very interested in it and would forget about it; rated his tokens of affection by the other’s, played without fear and let himself be nibbled on with fake grimaces of pain.

  Then he loved him more boldly. The puppy got bigger; Pablos’s hands were covered with scabs from bites. In the morning, since he got up alone, he’d make some coffee with milk and bread, place this human meal on the ground, and the little animal would swallow it. When he was surprised at it, he claimed that he wasn’t hungry. The dog was fed with leftovers. At dinner Pablos furtively put some pieces in his plate and slipped them to the animal; he didn’t dare do anything if the eldest was there (the mother didn’t eat with us), and did no more than what he could hide.

  Every week we go to the movies. Pablos had never been before, they don’t waste anything on the little brats. I inundate him with sweets. Francesco goes with us. If the boy doesn’t have a good view of the screen, he refuses to sit on my knees (in public it’s an ambiguity that embarrasses him) and uses his brothers. I don’t like the movies, but I like Pablos. He holds my hand, distractedly caresses the fingers, the hollow of my palm; he shares his candies, licorice, chewing gum and a thousand bland-colored sweets. Vampires, hemoglobin, brawls thrill him as he sits there calmly chewing away. During the karate films, the kids in the theater burst into laughter; a Dracula movie will give Francesco nightmares, but all the kids are splitting their sides. I myself am afraid. In my hand, Pablos’s hand doesn’t even clench. But it seems there were never so many vampires, shrieks, tombs, dogs, necks with holes in them, demented faces, bats, chests with stakes through them, corpses and claws. At night, I play vampire on Francesco; terrified, he screams, jumps out of bed, turns the light on, grabs two knives and forms a cross with them to protect himself. It takes a long time for him to calm down and agree to go back to bed next to me.

  One time, Pablos doesn’t show up to meet me at the movies. Time passes. Worried, I go to their place. Women are there, moaning; the mother’s weeping; the brothers look haggard. The eldest is manhandli
ng Pablos, violently threatening him with the police, yelling, pulling him toward his moped like a sack of flour. Pablos is red from crying. I separate them. They explain to me that the little one didn’t come back at noon; he went to a nearby park to study with another child, because it isn’t quiet at home. But the mother, who strengthens the family order with her frenzied tantrums, and who’s responsible for an alcoholic brute, two halfwits and a gigolo before wishing for model sons, had forbidden Pablos to go out. Indignant about the arbitrariness of it all, Pablos spit at the feet of his mother and left. By noon, the old lady had gotten her older son worked up. When Pablos comes back, maternal vengeance is ready.

  I pull the little boy’s pants back up; from his knees to his ankles, both shinbones are lacerated with bloody cuts. He has been whipped with the thick electric cable, a favorite instrument of the eldest. He’s good at his job; to make all that, it takes time, and strength in your biceps. I have some of that, too; I grab the eldest, fling him against the wall and shake him up my way. I find out he’s afraid; for a while, he’d kiss my feet to calm me down.

  I don’t leave until night. I’ve warned the eldest that if he touches the little one again I’ll break his bones. The kid also has bruises all over his head, because his brother, to give his hand some rest, banged it against the tiles.

  What is strange is that after that, they didn’t really beat Pablos any more. The eldest sucks up to me and chokes back his moaning about money. Week by week, the little one starts to get unaccustomedly cheerful. I’m surprised by this, and I don’t understand why. Francesco is just as perplexed. Did we underestimate the reign of terror in sway at home, where I only come as a visitor and Francesco as the guest at a hotel? Pablos is full of laughter all the time. It’s an attractive laugh that lights up his features without distending them.

  My intervention, that day, hadn’t been an example of prying; they’d involved me a little earlier in another family affair. One night when Francesco got drunk with some friends and a whore, he was arrested by the police. Because of the racket they were making, the neighbors had called the cops, and the boys had stood up to them.

  Now they’re in prison, and they’re going to charge them as adults. They inform me of it. Red tape, days of waiting, court, a dreadful parade of kids in which Francesco, looking arrogant with a clenched jaw, is taller than the others by a head. We bring in clothing, things to eat. I hired a lawyer for the gang; in such affairs, it helps to show that the accused is rich or protected by a rich person. The speech for the defense crudely portrays him in a good light. So Francesco is acquitted, his friends condemned with suspended sentences. The same evening, the eldest goes to pick him up on his moped. We’re all waiting for him at the house; Francesco comes back in a very good mood, his hair cropped short, covered with lice and rubble. After that, I’m a member of the family.

  That was when I began to fondle Pablos.

  In one of the games Pablos plays with me in front of everybody, he gives me his nipple to suck and calls me his little one. He lies down and I lie down next to him, and he says were going to sleep. Pressed very close together. This is during television. I feel good. We kiss each others teeth, tongues, play with each others fingers, palms, hair, ears. One evening, he gets up and goes to another room without a word. Since I miss him, I follow. He’s lying under a blanket and lets me get under it with him. We begin to caress each other. Suddenly the old lady is snarling at the door. We get up.

  At my place, I put my head on Pablos’s thighs. I nibble at his fly. He’s amused by it, gets angry, pushes me away so energetically that I behave better. In bed, I put him on top of me. That position bothers him, because of Francesco—or the second older brother, when he was the chaperone. I hold onto him, he wriggles out of it; but his face and stomach don’t really avoid mine.

  My panhandlers’ latest prank. A fat granny, the American world-tour type, with crumpled skin, blue hair, harlequin glasses, a tan with old-age spots, refused them a handout. The two of them walk behind her and spit on her back. They double up with laughter, the lady turns around laboriously, like a cow that has been disturbed. Then she starts walking again. The kids spit again, split their sides laughing, wink at me. We watch the gobs of spit dribbling down, feebly dislodged by a flowered ass, with enough meat, fat to represent at least a year of food. No passerby reprimands them; the two good-for-nothings are doing what everybody dreams of doing, and I’d be the first.

  A little hoodlum with cropped hair, while he is alone in my room lying on the bed, puts his legs in the air in front of a mirror, studies his hole and balls with keen interest as he yanks at his member. I watch him from a neighboring room, in another mirror.

  While I jerk off on his face, a well-behaved schoolboy sticks a finger up my ass. Since his fingers are still quite small, I take his hand to have him put in two; he thinks that I want his whole fist and, biceps tensed, but a bit surprised even so, tries to push it in, knitting his brows and glancing anxiously up at my face. The fist won’t go in. I spatter his face. He’s a small boy, very sensual and very accommodating, who fucks, licks, laughs, is well brought up, jerks off while lending me his thighs and asks for more in the morning. He bothers me about it as soon as he opens my eyes. His way of waking me up is charming, he spends a long time caressing my cheek and shoulder, kisses me, presses against me, tickles my cock, blows little puffs like smiles into my ear. He sleeps with me if his parents are out. I run into him in the street when he is returning from school. He ignores me. He’s chattering with some little girls, and he’s almost prettily dressed, holding his schoolbag with two hands against his rump.

  In the shower, which has a telephone, he leaves the cord made of metallic rings twisted into a double helix. I like the traces of children after they’ve left. On the table, the empty bowl of cafe au lait, the bread crumbs, the fruit peelings (but Pablos doesn’t eat anything without running to throw the scraps in the garbage), a knife dribbling butter. Sometimes, my toothbrush is all crumpled because they scrape their little teethies the way you shine shoes. And the shower: always immaculate, well ordered, until the age of twelve or thirteen. Afterward, you become a man, and you leave behind your grime.

  A pretty child whom I’ll see only one time. Another who took advantage of his parents’ absence to try his luck. He has such a good nature that he won’t fail at it. Before we go to sleep, I give him some money as a gift; the little ones are never too sure about the honesty of the promises made to them. I didn’t promise anything, and he didn’t ask for anything: more of a reason. It’s a tidy sum. He’s very happy, but the money leaves him perplexed; completely nude, he grabs his pants and shows me that there’s only one pocket, a small one for tickets. He’s afraid that he’ll lose the money or that somebody will take it. We think about it. I look for a safety pin, he hands me the money and the trousers, and I transform the little pocket into a gusset that’s nicely sealed from the inside. I give him back his pants, he tries the pin, pats it all over, is delighted, and tossing his pants there, climbs into bed. When the lights are out, he looks for the indentation in my side where he can doze off, kisses me, puts an arm around my chest and falls asleep immediately.

  The sleep of naked children has a profound effect on me. They go to bed long before the time that suits me. But although I stay up and sometimes go read in another room when I’m with the older ones, I can’t separate from the little ones. Their calm, their languidness captures me. They use me to fall asleep the way an adult arranges pillows, looks for a familiar hollow in the mattress, or piles the edge of the blankets against a shoulder or neck; they put their slight legs, supple thighs, soft arms, elastic stomachs together with mine, and they lull themselves to sleep by having their bottoms and hair caressed. That weightless interlacing modifies the boundaries of my body; and their trustful, silent, peaceful, solemn sleep works like hypnosis. Gripped by these waves of serenity, of infinite sweetness, I fall asleep.

  It is so powerful that the next day, long after the child has l
eft, I can’t get used to myself; I have no more hold over my body. The image, the presence, the eyes, the gestures, the loves of the child have passed through me, loosened some structures, some anxieties, have established the smooth, uncomplicated unity of a lake. There I experience a kind of happiness no one has ever described to me.

  When the sun sets, very far from my place, I meet a fifteen-year-old teenager. He has an amusing face that I find attractive. The truth is that he’s pretty, but dreadul. He senses my interest, his naive eyes brighten and he greets me cheerfully. He’s thin and rather small. I naughtily touch his fly. He laughs very excitedly.

  He picks up a cardboard box and gleefully pulls me behind a low wall, under trees. He spreads out his cardboard, lowers his trousers, reveals a little round, hairless, warm butt and lies flat on his stomach. No explanation. I interpret this strange ritual in my own way. His whole face bursts into giggles. Afterward he groans; his hole is small, small, he repeats. I feel bad about causing pain to such a nice partner. He turns around and offers his mouth. So we take a taxi.

  I haven’t shaved for several days. I ask him if I should. Cutting my beard seems like a big sacrifice to him. He hesitates, laughs, follows me to the washbasin and watches in the mirror. Such large, twinkling, luminous, intelligent eyes. He laughs, caresses my neck, it’s worth the trouble to see that.

  It’s only after his shower that I notice that he’s knock-kneed. Not a lot, a little, but clearly. Aside from this detail, his legs are gracefully curved, as is his body, muscular and smooth, erect, sensitive, the skin tanned and hairless, with a sheen. The short pubic hair of post-puberty, on the softness of a thin, childish stomach. His voice, which is changing, is melodious, inane. My house interests him a lot. Sex, even more. Delicious kisses, warm caresses. For the last few minutes, his hole hasn’t gotten any larger; kneeling over him, I fuck his mouth. He likes it, sucks, eats, draws it in, jerks off, gets come on his teeth, lips, tongue. He jerks off while he kisses me. He has a lot of sperm.