by Swan, Tarn
When I woke up next morning he was curled up with his back to me, the nightdress twisted up around his waist, the knickers lying on the bedroom floor. We were back to familiar territory and I was happy. I'd had my ten percent plus extra and I felt rejuvenated and strengthened. There was no hurry to get up and I nuzzled his shoulder, caressing his thigh and sliding a hand between his legs feeling his cock respond. He turned, touching his lips to mine. We kissed for a while and then he huskily asked permission to sexually top me this time. He occasionally likes to be the penetrative partner. I allowed it, sensing it was his way of re-establishing and confirming his ownership of me before we headed back to everyday life. He was marking his territory. I was his man just as much as he was mine.
8th March 2006: The Language Of Fashion
I babysat Dominic for a few hours last Saturday morning. Karen wanted to go shopping for a nice suit to wear when she started back at work on Monday. Since her maternity leave there's been quite a few changes in working practice and procedures, so she's been on a training course to bring her up to date with everything. She was nervous about starting work proper again and thought it would boost her confidence if she felt good about the way she looked. I told her there was absolutely nothing to be nervous about. After all she was working for me and she already knew what a marvellous, easygoing boss I was. She kissed my cheek and told me I was a dear friend and a lovely man, but the moment I hit the office I turned into a nitpicking, short-tempered perfectionist slave driver who was generally referred to as Il Duce, the gay dictator.
I was absolutely outraged. I told her that come Monday I'd show staff the real meaning of dictator. I'd downgrade the gratis tea break biscuit selection from chocolate top of the range from Tesco, to plain old custard creams from bottom of the range Netto. She said not if I valued the health and safety of my nut sac I wouldn't. Honestly, you just can't get the staff these days.
Dominic was apt to be crabby that day. He had a cold so nothing distracted him for long and he wasn't too happy about his mum leaving him. He cried hysterically for about ten minutes and kept taking my hand and dragging me to the front door and pointing. He obviously wanted me to take him to wherever his mother had gone. He calmed down eventually, though he was by no means his normal happy self. I sat on the floor and played with him, helping him put some simple chunky wooden jigsaw puzzles together. He loves them. They show pictures of animals and when the right shaped piece is fitted correctly to its partner it makes the sound of the animal, which Dom usually mimics while making an attempt at saying the name of the animal. He has quite a repertoire of words now. He calls Twinkles, Tink, and me, Ta. Tink and Ta that's us. It makes us sound like children's TV presenters.
On Saturday Dominic demonstrated that he had added a completely new word to his vocabulary. I have to say it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in dismayed horror. When he couldn't fit one of the puzzle pieces together he got very cross and banged it hard on the floor. He then threw it across the carpet saying very distinctly and vehemently, 'FIG!' It didn't need a language specialist to work out what it meant or where he'd heard it in its original form. I wagged a stern finger at him and said, no, naughty. He burst into frenzied sobs and I immediately felt like an utter child abusing bastard. I half expected social services to crash through the window SAS style, shoot me dead, hack off my head and stick it on a pole for the neighbours to spit on. You're not allowed to call children naughty anymore, or say no to them, as apparently it infringes their human rights in some way.
When I picked Dom up and cuddled him, he put his little arms round my neck and cuddled me back. I took it as a sign I was forgiven for my admonishment. He got his own back by wiping baby snot in my hair before falling asleep on my shoulder. To my knowledge there is no pc law that states that the words ‘no’ and ‘naughty’ can't be used between consenting adults. With that in mind I made plans to say them even more sternly to a certain someone when I picked him up from work that afternoon.
Twinkles tried to claim I had a bad mind and had completely misunderstood what our innocent little godson had actually said. He'd probably just been asking for an exotic fruit. Nice try, but I wasn’t buying it. I told him he was going to have to make more of an effort to stop using crude words when he was around Dominic. It just wasn't on. I didn't fancy having to face the humiliation of being informed that Dominic had told one of his grannies to frig off. I didn’t want Karen and Paul regretting their decision to ask us to be godparents. I asked if he really wanted them curbing our contact with their son because he couldn't control his use of low language? He went very quiet after that.
When he came downstairs that evening ready to go out to the PP, my jaw dropped at the sight of him. He was wearing an outfit I loathe. It’s a short red rubber dress, which has metal-rimmed peepholes at strategic places and it's utterly vile. It’s like something out of a particularly tacky fetish porno film. It was a birthday present from Lulu one year and Twinks didn't really like it either. He’d worn it once to please Lulu and then mercifully shoved it to the back of the wardrobe. Yet there he was parading in it and even worse he'd teamed it with black 'professionally laddered' stockings and red patent leather, killer heel stilettos.
I told him to change or I wasn't going out with him. He said fine, he'd go out on his own. He didn't need me holding his frigging hand. I told him he wasn't going anywhere looking like a cheap tart and if he didn't take it off I'd take it off for him. I know that sounds dictatorial to an excessive degree, but if you could see this thing you'd appreciate my embarrassment at being seen anywhere near it and also my trepidation at letting him go anywhere on his own while wearing it. It's sleazy and not in a sexy way. He’d be beating off perverts with a stick all evening, which would probably excite them even more and he'd have no chance of keeping himself safe. I'd get a call from the police to say he'd been found murdered in a back alley after refusing to sign a contract with some psychotic pimp.
Sticking his hands on his rubber clad hips he glared at me and demanded to know when the frigging hell I'd been appointed as a gay moral watchdog? Who the frig was I to tell him what was and wasn't acceptable club attire? He'd wear what the frig he frigging liked and if I didn't frigging like it I could piss off and find myself a less CRUDE partner who wouldn't offend my delicate, stuck up, self-righteous, snobbish sensibilities!
After delivering this profane full frontal verbal assault he turned on his heel to march out of the living room. Unfortunately the heel in question snapped and he plunged to the floor. I naturally hurried to help him and as a reward got the broken shoe flung at me along with another tirade of profanities. The words assaulted my ears, while the shoe very painfully assaulted my groin area. While I had suddenly twigged where he was coming from and felt awful about it I wasn't having that. Hauling him to his feet, I grabbed the hem of the dress and peeled it up to his waist. I then yanked down his tights and panties, bent him over the back of the couch and spanked his bare bottom until it matched the colour of his ghastly frock.
Afterwards I pulled him into my arms and asked him to forgive me (not for spanking him, he's not hurling shoes at my manhood and getting away with it) for the way I'd broached the subject of him swearing around Dominic. I could have discussed the situation in an altogether different way. I'd been judgemental and superior. My choice of words had been insensitive and I'd touched a nerve and hurt him at a vulnerable level, the level where the voices of his grandfather and mother still lurked telling him he was a lewd and worthless person. Hence the horrible dress and the barrage of swearing, it was not only giving exterior physical proof to the crudeness of personality they told him he possessed, it was a way of being defiant about it. It's horrible to possess demons that you resent and want to rail against, but also believe are right in some way. Twinkles can't always express what he feels in words. He converts a bad feeling into an act that serves to defy yet confirm the bad feeling. It's cyclical. I apologised for being a pompous prig and overstating the case.
I hadn't intended to make him feel bad about himself.
He forgave me, saying he supposed Tops were only human after all and had their imperfections, faults, blind spots, prejudices, bias, over inflated sense of self righteous self importance...I stopped him there and told him I got the picture and was he going to go upstairs and get changed or just stand there abusing me? He opted for taking me upstairs with him so he could abuse me while he got changed.
He’s got an appointment at the hospital tomorrow. He’s hoping the cast will be removed at long last. Fingers crossed.
11th March 2006: Saw
Saturday again, where does the time go? It's snowing here, just lightly, but judging from the sky we'll get a bit more yet. I doubt it will lay properly. It rarely does at this time of year.
I'm treading on eggshells as far as Twinks is concerned at the moment. The hospital visit last Thursday did not result in the liberation of his arm from the cast. There were no flags and bunting in the streets, no freedom songs sung. His consultant is going for the full twelve weeks just to be on the safe side. Twinks will remain plastered until later this month. He wasn't pleased. He argued with the man, questioned his qualifications and his attitude to gay people, and not very cordially either. I didn't know where to put myself. My right hand knew where it wanted to put itself, right across his churlish backside, but time and place frustrated it.
The consultant wasn't a bit fazed and my estimation of him grew. He folded his arms, glared at Twinkles and said his attitude to gay people was much the same as his attitude to other people, some he liked and some he didn't, but he treated all bones with fond respect and equality. Mr Lane could just resign himself to the fact that the cast needed to remain for a while longer in order to give his bone the best chance of mending without complications. Twinkles started muttering about contacting the court of human rights at which point I thanked the consultant and ushered Twinks to the reception desk to make his next appointment. He's been grumpy ever since.
I'm on the side of the doctor. In view of the bones slow start in healing I think a few more weeks inconvenience is preferable to months of problems if the cast comes off too early. I told him to cheer up, as it wasn't too much longer to wait. He snapped my head off and said that was easy for me to say. After the appointment I had to head off to work, but it was his day off. I was hoping that by the time I got home on Thursday evening he would be feeling less disgruntled, but he wasn't. He was determined to hang onto his bad mood.
I'd bought him a bar of chocolate, some flowers and a Hello Magazine in an effort to cheer him up. The chocolate was plain and he preferred milk. The flowers looked like they'd been sitting on the garage forecourt since Valentine’s Day and he didn't want Hello magazine he wanted Bride magazine.
I ate the chocolate myself, gave the flowers to Gabby to give to her mum and used the spurned magazine to whack Twinkles' ungrateful, ungracious little arse. He apologised, but it didn't stop him being tetchy or flinging a blue fit when the rough edge of the cast snagged one of his favourite gowns when he was getting ready to go out on Friday evening. He stormed out to the garden shed saying if the frigging doctor wouldn't take the cast off he would take it off himself with a hacksaw. He wasn't joking either. I had to bodily haul him back into the house before he started sawing at it. A warning was issued. He was to behave or he wouldn't be going out he'd be going to bed with a very sore bottom. I managed to smooth the jaggy edge of the cast with sandpaper and he calmed down a little. He's a cantankerous little toad sometimes and there are moments when I could cheerfully go away on holiday without telling him.
12th March 2006: The Mongolian Gerbil Quest
Twinkles and I are going shopping this morning, if he ever gets his backside out of bed and gets ready. That doesn’t mean I’ve relented with regard to giving him his financial freedom back, nor are we going food shopping. We’re going gerbil shopping. Yes that's right, gerbil shopping. How come? Well, last night at the PP Big Mary was in morose mood and had resumed a habit he'd successfully kicked quite some time ago, namely smoking. We all stared aghast as he lit up a coffin nail asking when he'd restarted, while coughing and waving our hands in typical non-smokers condemnation.
Apparently he'd restarted a couple of nights earlier…shortly after a thuggish gang of Barry's gerbils had staged a successful break out. BM, for anyone that hasn’t read my earlier diaries, is caring for Barry’s gerbils while he’s in hospital being treated for depression. He recaptured most of them fairly quickly, but one eluded him. The errant creature chewed its way through the cable of a homemade lava lamp, which was on at the time. Not only was the gerbil electrocuted, but also the lamp exploded spewing molten wax everywhere, consequently embalming the dead rodent. Big Mary said he was still wondering how he was going to tell Barry that Monty, his favourite Mongolian herbal gerbil, could now double as a nightlight.
I told BM that in the circumstances it might be kinder not to mention it to Barry. He suffered a severe downturn in mood just before Christmas and is still not too good. Learning about the terrible demise of Monty might set him further back. I suggested BM pop over to Pet World and try to find a look-alike. He said unfortunately he was due to go away on a job for a few days starting this morning and had promised Barry he would take Monty into the hospital to see him when he got back on Monday. The hospital ward allows pet visits because it cheers patients up.
I volunteered my services and asked for a description of the creature so I could go to Pet World and hunt down a doppelganger. BM did better than offer a mere description. We all stared in fascinated horror as he reached inside his capacious handbag and withdrew the deceased Monty and laid him on the table. Needless to say our table was an object of quite some interest after that. BM became something of a cause célèbre as he related the sad tale of Monty's death, scoring quite a few free drinks in the process. In the end I wrapped Monty in a tissue and insisted Twinks put him in his handbag for safe keeping, before someone tried to light his tail, which was sticking temptingly out of the wax like a wick.
Right, I'd better go rouse my Sleeping Beauty or we'll get nothing done today. I told him he didn't have to come with me, but he insisted. He has to be in on the action, even if the action only involves finding a gerbil look-alike. Of course if we do find one he'll take all the credit and bask in the glory of having fulfilled the Mongolian gerbil quest in aid of a stricken sister.
We're going to mum's for Sunday lunch after we've been to Pet World. She's feeling better thank goodness. The depression has lifted and she's back to her old self. Prissy is still staying with her. Twinkles keeps trying to get them to admit to being shacked up together, but they won't, coyly insisting Pris is just 'visiting' for a while.
15th March 2006: The Mousetrap
I had one of those sleepless nights last night. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t nod off. It didn't help that there was a high wind howling around the house. I lay there worrying about it taking the fences down, or bringing down the old cherry blossom tree in the back garden, which would then take out the shed. Twinkles lay beside me deep in blissful slumber and trumpeting like a bull elephant, or maybe my sleep deprived nerves just made it sound that way. I poked him in the ribs to make him change position, which he did and promptly carried on trumpeting. I'm sure he has an adenoids problem.
In the end I got up and went downstairs to make a cup of tea and do some work on my laptop.
I hadn't been down long when Twinks came padding into the living room yawning and scratching at his tackle in his habitual way. It’s as if he’s checking to make sure no one pinched it while he was sleeping. He slumped onto the couch next to me, kissed my cheek and asked if there was something on my mind. I told him I just couldn’t sleep. He closed my laptop, put it on the floor and proceeded to induce a state of relaxation and a desire to sleep in me by means of encouraging me to partake of that age-old male narcotic-sex. He's a bad influence. I love it.
We called in at the hospital to see Barry on our way h
ome from work this evening. For a while his doctor has been talking about ECT as a means of treating his deep depression, but Barry has refused to consent to the treatment. I’m glad. It sounds like a horrific treatment to me. He was animated tonight and it was nice to see him smile as he told us about Monty’s visit. It really had cheered him to see his small pet. I felt a bit guilty seeing as I knew Monty wasn't his pet, but as Twinks said, doppelganger Monty might not have been his pet when it went in to visit Barry, but it was by the time it came out. We were informed that Big Mary had promised to bring in Adelaide, another of his favourite gerbils, to visit him next time. I offered a silent prayer for nothing to befall Adelaide in the meantime. I couldn't face another Monty debacle, not without ending up being sectioned as a gibbering wreck and placed in the ward next to Barry.
Last Sunday Twinkles and I duly arrived at Pet World to pursue and hopefully fulfil the Mongolian gerbil quest. We no sooner stepped through the doors than he decided he was in urgent need of the loo and wandered off to find them while I wandered off in search of the gerbil department carrying a wax embalmed dead gerbil as a pattern.
It was a huge place and I ended up floundering around the aquarium section staring mesmerised at all the exotic species of tropical fish on show. I was gawping at a Bristlenose Catfish when the hairs on the back of my neck rose up, not because the fish was a particularly repulsive creature, but because the distinctive sound of another exotic breed of creature reached my ears, the infamous 'Stardust Twinkles' squawking my name in typical 'crisis' fashion.
Heart hammering I hurried towards the shrieks and found utter chaos with crying children, anxious parents, horrified staff…and Twinkles. He was flailing his broken arm around like a windmill sail in a hurricane. As soon as he saw me he charged towards me yelling that it was biting him and demanding I do something before it ate its way through an artery. He was clearly terrified and my anxiety mounted.