Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 22:07:16 -0800 (PST) From: Wishus Teglin Subject: Always, preface (M/b) Always A Boylove Romance by Teglin Copyright 2002 by Teglin. You may freely copy this boylove romance and distribute it. Please have the courtesy not to alter it in any way. WARNING: This boylove romance contains descriptions of sexual acts between a man and a minor boy. Their sexual relationship is very important to the story, as part of their love-making, but it is their spiritual relationship that I wanted to explore even more, as the very essence of boylove. If this story is illegal where you are, or for your age, or the concept of a man/boy romantic relationship offends you, don't read further. Dedication: To every boy and boylover who has ever contemplated the inexorable march of time. Always The Preface "Mister! Ya gonna just stand there all daft like? Or could ya gi' me a `and?" Daft. That's how I felt, certainly. Sir Gilbert, standing slack-jawed midst the heather and gorse, in his afternoon tweeds, staring at Beauty in stupefied wonder. I had been watching him from afar - this boy who was Beauty - as he rabbit-hopped across the swell of land rising from the sea off to my right. Tall, lanky, and long-haired, dressed in a loose-fitting white tank-top, with arm-holes stretched down to his waist, and cut-off faded blue jeans - cut off tantalizingly short and frayed at the crotch, from what I could see a hundred paces away. His long, slender arms and legs gleamed in the bright sun - gleamed like polished porcelain. His burnished golden hair, flip-flopping with his every jump and dancing about his head wildly in the wind, gave only sparing glimpses of his face, but I saw full, pouting red lips and traces of his exuberant smile. Beauty betides, upon the moors. A moment stolen from Olympus. A moment of joy without care or responsibility. Beauty. A boy. No country-boy, I could tell even from that distance. His form was much too lithe, too supple and delicate for one born and bred in these harsh lands. His hands were animated, with long, thin fingers - they were no doubt soft and smooth, unused to any labor. He waved them about in awkward angles, almost like a girl - rather, a boy - a boy unused to balancing roughly upon the lichen-encrusted rocks and leaping long swales of sundew and heath grass. I doubted he could be from Highquay either. I knew all the local town boys, and all those in the surrounding villages, besides. The folk hereabouts were proud of the Conservatory in their midst. Every family with a boy took their chance, and brought him before me to try for the choir. So. Was this boy a visitor from the city? A newcomer perhaps, enjoying his first explore into the wilds. Certainly he was not one of my new boys, nor even a visiting auditioner - he was much too old. Probationers at Highshore enter at age 8. Anyway, all of my boys were back at the Conservatory, no doubt just now sitting for afternoon biscuits and tea. When he reached the copse of stones piled just below the ridge-top, he fell, and seemed to flail his arms about in panic. I jumped up in alarm, and loped up the long rise of barren moors from my rocky perch amidst the waves all the way to the edge of the rock cairn. He had caught his foot. I was not more than 10 steps away then, but - well, all conscious thought suddenly vanished from my mind and I .... Ashamed as I am to admit it, I fear I just stood stock still staring at him. For as I had drawn closer and closer, eyes fixed upon him ... well, at some point I seemed to have forgotten all motive in my approach, and became a mere observer. Have you ever turned the corner in a museum, only to be brought up still by a painting upon the opposite wall? Some element in it will render you momentarily transfixed. It may be the integrity of the colors, or ... or some emotive response, or .... ... the sheer Beauty of it. The mesmerizing element in this boy was just that kind of Beauty. Beauty Personified. For as long as I can remember, I have sought Beauty in boys. It lives in a boy's spirit, in his form - and of course, above all, there is Beauty like none other in a boy's voice. I've dedicated my life to that Beauty. I know it well, I know it intimately. Yet ... never before had I met beauty of such an animal force as in this boy before me now! It wasn't that he was practically naked, clad in scraps of cloth that revealed more than they covered. It was that those scraps seemed more suited to adorn his form, than to clothe it. Indeed, chosen consciously to adorn, for he also wore a gold-link anklet above his right foot, and I thought I glimpsed the flash of a ring where the silken strands of his hair swished briefly apart over his right ear. He rose up, standing upon his one free foot, balancing there, trying to twist his other foot out from the crack in the rocks. His arms waved about again this time, but I dare say I have never seen such fluid integration of form and grace even in a ballet. How could I have ever thought him awkward!? The lines of his body were all taut and angled. Then he bent to pull his foot from the rocks with his hands, and every angle became a boyishly delicate curve - broader, rounder at his hips and buttocks, narrower and sharper at his shoulders. Everywhere his fine bone structure was accented, not hidden, by his undeveloped musculature. Not for an instant had I thought him a girl. He was tall and slim, so perfectly formed for a boy, with none of that generative fullness relegated to the female of our species. A boy, yes. A one of a kind boy. Such a boy can make any man an artist - I've certainly felt the need, on countless occasions, to try to capture on canvas - or just in words - what I see in a boy. Unfortunately, my only real skills are with sound - with melody and harmony and tone and note. How then could I possibly describe him? How could I comprehend him? My God, I stood there on the verge of screaming, wanting to shout out for him to turn and brush that hair back so that I could see his face. But such beautiful hair! It was one of the first things I had noticed about him even at a distance. He had defied the unfortunate fashion of our time, and let it grow out. Now, standing so near to his presence, I watched as the veil of his hair hung smooth, glistening and straight, curving in below his ears and over his cheeks, half-obscuring his face with every flit of his head. It dangled down like a cascade when he bent lower. It was a style that was groomed, with intent. Just like the jewelry he had selected, or the revealing rags. He had brushed his hair carefully, trained it purposefully, to frame his features, and at the same time to almost hide them alluringly. Hide thee not from mine eyes. Turn and fill my soul .... Suddenly he did so. "Mister! Ya gonna just stand there all daft like? Or could ya gi' me a `and?" he said, twisting his body around even more to face me. I hadn't even known he was aware of my presence! I didn't answer. I couldn't. I was listening. Looking. I fear my mouth did drop open then. Perhaps I did try to answer, but the words would not form. First was his voice. For a boy so old, certainly nearing puberty if not already passing through it, his voice was high and sweet, naturally lifting from his throat, not his chest - airy, soft, pure and gentle, belying the harshness of his untutored diction. It was a voice that would not carry in the wind upon the moors, but would loft and swell and fill the vaulted confines of a cathedral. Oh, to hear him sing! And then, his visage. His body was turned only half towards me, but he craned his neck and looked me straight in my eyes. His face was framed within the curves of his hair - an oval of purest, most precious, flawless creamy white complexion. His forehead was half-obscured by the curve of his hair on either side - it touched the ends of his eyebrows, blending with them in the same soft-golden hue. A few strands floated out freely, but only highlighted the stunning blue of his eyes. Have you ever beheld the sky on a very hot and aridly dry late summer afternoon, when the azure seemed to glow? This boy's eyes were like that - twin circles of living color within the white, and the blackness of the pupil with the same depth as the blue - entrancing, hypnotizing. His lips were indeed full and red. He held them closed now, looking very sternly at me. His nostrils flared as he breathed deeply from all the running and jumping - and perhaps from his scare. "'ey!" He called to me again, this time sounding very perplexed and annoyed. "I know I'm AWFULLY pretty, but you think you might stick your eyes back in your `ead and gi' me a `and just now?" "Uh -aaa ...bu ...," I started to stammer. "Aw look! I seen it all before, mister. You ain't the first bloke to slobber all over me, but that ain't wat I need right now. So quit lollin' your tongue like a dog, and lend me a `and, would ya?" I stumbled awkwardly forward across the mounded cairn of slick rocks to where he was stuck, flabbergasted, stunned at his brazenness. And yet, as crude as he had spoken, he stated only the truth! I hurried to deny it. "S-s-sorry," I mumbled. "B-b-but of course, you m-m-misunder - ah- stood my ...." The stuttering came naturally to me, of course. I've auditioned more than 500 boys through the years, and you can imagine that I'm in somewhat of a position of authority in those situations, but it's not an authority thing at all - it's very much a boy thing. I stutter when I meet a new boy - the pretty ones bring it out worst of all, to be sure. Oh well, some think it an affectation - a very upper-class sort of thing. I know it as the true expression of what I'm feeling meeting a new boy. Only time - getting to know him, becoming more than Headmaster or Director - only that stills the anxiety that brings it on. So I stuttered as I approached this new boy - he who could apparently see deeper into my soul and into the pit of my desires than I ever allowed myself to see. I kept my eyes averted nervously, looking anywhere and everywhere but upon his countenance now. I'm sure I turned red as well. I held my hands out just as awkwardly, looking no doubt like one of those stiff-armed robots, too clumsy to be of any assistance at all, without very precise direction. "Mister," he suddenly paused in his efforts to extract his foot, and just looked up at me calmly, patiently. I froze. Just one word! But he had spoken it in a quite different tone, a different pitch and voice, this time! Softer, and with feeling now, soothing - somehow aware of the effect he had on me. "I think if you could just let me lean over on you, I could slip me foot out," he continued so gently. Before, his voice had sounded high enough. But here, now, so close that I might touch him - so close that he WAS going to touch me - my heart skipped another beat. He should be singing, was all I could think of. He looked to be all of 12 or 13. The top of his head rose easily to my shoulders - his voice would soon change - lost forever to a humanity that would only have reproach in its stead. But this boy should be singing! I don`t know how I did it. To have heard his voice, but to know that it would never be raised in song for the world to hear, was painful beyond belief, but I managed to answer, "Of-of course." Hesitantly I shifted to his side and put my left arm about his shoulder, and stooped to put my right beneath his buttocks. Feeling them, so pliant and soft through the tight-fitting shorts - touching a boy there - a strange boy - was like a shock. Who could count all the boys I had seen through the years, in shower and out, when Matron happened to be away - most I had known for months or years - but not a one had I touched in this way. I shifted my forearm lower, ashamedly, so that he could at least have some support under his thighs. Bare flesh! But he gave me no chance to contemplate it's contour - he leaned back into my arms immediately, making little muttering, angry utterances as he tried to leverage his stuck foot out from the small crevasse. He was light, weighing nothing at all, but his skin through the thin fabric of his cotton top, was hot in my hands. If he said anything coherent at that moment, I didn't hear it. I was too busy living another enchanted dream - as he pressed himself into me, forcing my face into his shoulder-length, golden-blonde tresses. Now I was so close - holding him so close within my very embrace - that I could breath directly from his skin, from the strands of his hair, from his clothes. He was unwashed. Oh heavenly scent - as any man can bear witness - the natural effusion from a pre-pubescent boy should be sought, not washed! Indeed, when Matron was away, I had on more than one occasion stolen away one of the boys' shirts or pants, or ... or undies ... only to bury my nose in them, breathing deeply, filling my lungs with boy. I taught the boys all day. How I wanted to hold them at night! I did the same with this boy, unconsciously perhaps, because I can still smell him, long after he pulled his foot free and no longer needed my support. I can still feel him too. The sharpness of his narrow shoulder where my left hand curled about it, the silken chill of his hair upon my brow and cheek, the pressure of his fingertips upon my forearm, where he briefly held onto me for dear life. Memories that I had already started to linger on, when he jolted me back to the present once again. "Thanks mister," he said matter-of-factly as he started to stand up straight upon his own two feet. "Damn!" he said sharply, looking down at his foot. The sock had been pulled half-way off, and dangled loosely at the end like an over-long prepuce . The shoe was nowhere to be seen. "Here, l-l-let me g-g-get down thEEERE," I expostulated as I knelt down too hard and too quickly upon the rock. "You alright, mister?" he asked, sounding sincerely concerned. He hobbled about on one foot, and I felt his hand against my back momentarily as he tried to keep balance and pull the sock up. "Oh. Oh yes," I answered, as I took my first look down into the crack in the rocks. His shoe had slipped farther down, I could see, but I was certain I could reach it. "It's there, j-j-just on a ledge ... I'll-I'll soon fetch it ... f-f-for you." I leaned way over, and slithered my hand down into the hole, going lower and lower till I felt my shoulder impede all further progress. "Nice view, mister," I heard the boy say behind me. He giggled, and I looked back, craning round my shoulder, and realized that I was bent completely over with my posterior pointed straight up and out at him. He seemed to think it funny. We're quite a formal, structured school, at Highshore, so I expect the best comportment from all the boys. However I am just as certain that boys will be boys (thank goodness), and high on their list of humorous topics of conversation are portions of the human anatomy, the posterior bearing only reluctant second-place to a girl's breasts, or a boy's penis as targets. Thus it did not add much to my fluster when this boy made his joking reference to my embarrassing position. It was quite another thing altogether, after I turned back to reach for the shoe, when I suddenly felt his hand between my legs! "You got a big one, I can tell," I heard him say, as I instinctively tried to jerk up out of the hole. My arm was wedged in, just as his foot had been, I suppose, and I could only look back again, and out of the corner of my eye see him standing behind me, leering, stooping over. I didn't need to see more - all I had to do was feel, as his fingers deftly caressed my dangling balls and suddenly contumacious member. It was hardening to his touch, and there was absolutely nothing I or anyone could have done about that at this moment. "I'm-I'm not at all sure that ... you should be doing that," I said lamely, as I froze in place. "I figger ya kind o' like it alright, though," he answered. "You were already half-hard before I touched ya. So I was right, `uh? You get off lookin` at boys, don`t ya?" I didn't know what to say, or do. Over the years more than one of my boys has offered himself to me sexually - boys can't board away from home for nine months of the year without sometimes getting lonely or wanting some closeness from an adult. I worked with them on a daily basis, I taught their minds and their voices. It was only natural that one or two would look to me - of course, I had always found a way to defuse the situation. Both for my own sake, as well as theirs. Not a one of them has ever known of my desires. Not a one has ever known that in my career I fulfilled a very real need, not just an avocation. I lived for them! I lived to be with them! I wanted them with every fiber of my being! But I could never, ever ... ... allow ... I could never ever give in to this kind of touch .... Perhaps the boy sensed my unease. I don't know. He silently smoothed his hand right down the length of my now hardened shaft and scraped his fingertips lightly over my bulbous, swollen glans, feeling of me through the thin fabric of my slacks. He lingered there, or at least I thought he did, and then just lifted his fingers. I heard the scrunch of his shoes upon the gravelly rocks as he stepped back. I breathed again, and slumped weakly down, with my shoulder and head against the crevasse, my other hand propping me up. In a daze, hardly thinking, trying to grasp what had just happened more than anything, I instead grasped the lost shoe. It came up easily, and with just the slightest of twists to free myself, I lifted both it and my arm and hand up. I stood up - reeling, barely able to focus, and turned round dumbly to the boy, holding out his shoe. He hobbled the few steps to me and took it, falling forward with his other hand out, propping himself against me in one motion, and then he just bent and slipped the shoe on. My heart was racing. From the surprise at his words and his touch, of course, but also from the most magnificent feeling of accomplishment. I swear at that moment, every triumph of my life was forgotten. I stood tall, just glorying in the feel of his body braced against mine. I had served him. He took it as his due. I looked down, and saw that my penis was tenting out my slacks quite visibly. He couldn't help but notice. "I can see you didn' really mind me touchin ya there," he smirked as he stood back up and took a step back, twisting his foot all the way down into the shoe. I almost swayed forward, following his retreating hand, wanting to feel it against me again. "I wouldn't mind takin that up me bum," he said non-challantly, as if he were commenting on the weather. He reached out again to run the tips of his fingers up along the side of my pole. I only gasped. My mind was formless by now, incapable of thought or any reasoned response, but I reflexively raised my arms and kind of flapped them. "Haha, you look like a rooster," he laughed. "And you're randy like one too." "Dang, but I didn't bring me lube!" he cocked his head and laughed again, obviously having great fun with me. "You don't have any do ya, mister?" At least I had the wit to lower my hands, but I'm afraid I was completely at a loss for words at this point. I've directed the Highshore Choir in the presence of the Queen, I've visited Highgrove more than once at the command of the Prince - I've refused placement to the sons of Dukes, by God, because they had no aptitude or voice - all with every grace that my breeding and position justified, and yet at this moment I danced a mindless jig before this ragamuffin, incapable of even the mildest retort. Trouble was, of course, that this ragamuffin, by his very being, meant more to me than any Queen, Prince, or nobility of any kind. It wouldn't have mattered what he said - it didn't matter that he seemed half-serious about offering his body to me. Nothing mattered but that I was in his presence. He ... Fate ... the gods ... graced me with his presence for this one moment, surcharged with every element of every kind that I had ever desired. He was Beauty personified, his voice transported me without accompaniment. He couldn't possibly know it, but I would have turned round and walked headlong into the sea at his command. Perhaps he did know it. Perhaps he read it in my eyes, because I could not help but stare at him with all the pent-up longing in my soul. I don't know how he understood. I don't know why he chose to express it this way. It hurt! And yet I hungered for it as if I had never taken nourishment in my whole life, when he suddenly reached down with both his hands and unsnapped his cutoff shorts and zipped them down, baring the pure white, still hairless flesh of his pubis to me. "You deserve a reward, you do," he smiled up at me again lewdly, and thrust his crotch forward invitingly. I could see the base of his penis, just as white and pale as his mount, as it bent down into the shorts. It looked as thick as my thumb, and already as hard as my own member, bending only reluctantly, confined within the rough fabric. He obviously was not wearing any underwear. My mouth dropped open again of course, and my eyes flitted back and forth from his crotch to his eyes, as I tried to fathom his purpose. "Go ahead. Gi' me a suck. I can tell you wouldn' mind it a bit. I for certain wouldn' mind it, I can tell ya. I been awful lonely out here, since they drug me away from London." He wiggled suggestively, and pushed the pants on down, and up popped his boyhood immediately. If I didn't gasp out loud, I certainly felt like it. He was asking - telling me to suck his beautiful little penis. And it was gorgeous! It looked a bit small for his age and height - probably no more than 5 centimeters, but his dangling testicles told a different story. They were much bigger and weightier-looking than those of any of the pre-pubescent boys I had seen at my school. His scrotum was full, and lowering with his maturity. His penis had the most striking curve to it, bending off to his left fully 10 or 15 degrees. That alone put him in a class all by himself, as far as my experience with boys went. I had seen a few of the choristers with after-shower erections, but not a one with this kind of distinctive bend. But even more striking than that, to me, was that he was cut! His reddish glans was bared to me, it's tiny pee slit staring right up. It made me even more mad with desire. It was like - with this boy I had gone so far beyond what I had ever experienced with any other, that he had already unhooded his glans and was ready for our sex. There was nothing tentative or testing about this boy. He did not come to me seeking solace or assurance or even just some answers to the pre-pubertal feelings he was having. He presented himself to me completely. For once he seemed to mistake the meaning of my gawking stare, for as he fondled and stroked it, every second or so letting the inflexible stalk plop free of his hands, he very self-consciously said, "Yeah, I know, it's a little weird, all curvy like that, but it won' bite ya, mister." I was almost in a trance, but managed to mutter, "N-no, it's-it's exquisite." "OK, so gaw on then, and suck it," he seemed to dare me, enticing me again with a suggestive thrust of his hips. Feeling as if I had suddenly entered some strange dimension, I sensed time and space and motion all out of sync. The crashing of the waves, the perpetual wind upon these empty slopes - all were suspended, silenced. Almost dizzily, I slumped to my knees - it seemed to take forever, and all the while I glared at his penis. I had time to trace every tiny blue vein that lay beneath it's pale, transparent skin. I noted the darkened, tortured ring of soft scar tissue, from when his foreskin had been taken. What remained of it was now stretched so tight below his pouting glans that I wondered if it might tear. And the glans itself! It's surface seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, it's glistening, roughened surface inflamed, looking too sensitive for anyone to touch, much less me. My knees hit the ground too hard again, but it wasn't with pain that I groaned. It was more a growl as in one continuous motion I leaned forward, raised my hands behind him to cup his incredibly soft buttocks in them, and pulled him forward to meet my open mouth. He was nothing loathe! He guided his appendage into me, holding it down perpendicular to his pubis with one hand. I didn't take him inside me softly or slowly, but devoured him, locking my tongue and lips around his stalk, tasting, sucking, licking like the madman that I was. Forty-two years old, I was. Fully thirty of that a conscious boylover, and now at this moment I finally had a boy's penis in my mouth! My god I gloried in his taste! It was - HE was mana, like some kind of fleshy embodiment of life itself! The taste was bland, a bit earthy and almost flavorless, not unlike when one might suck his own finger, and yet I sucked this taste into every pore of my mouth, knowing this was no finger, but this boy's very spirit, erect and powerful. I could feel that spirit too, because with each lave of my tongue, he thrust into me and groaned and moaned, louder and louder. He placed his hands on either side of my head and started guiding me in and out, in timing with his own thrusts. I didn't let that stop me from savoring him though, exploring his texture, and every smooth contour, the swell of his urethra, the ridge of his glans, the curve of the shaft just where it grew thicker below the head. Each thrust, each withdrawal, was a new experience, one that I had wanted for so long, but had always denied myself. When did I begin to think about him, rather than myself? I don't know. It just came to me, at some point, that I was sucking a boy, not just a penis. This was no experiment, nor test of my long denied dreams about what it might be like. I suddenly wanted this moment to be as important for him as it was for me. I suddenly wished, knowing it could not be true, that I could make love to this boy. I licked with a purpose now, I tightened my cheeks around his shaft, I moaned in timing with his moans, feeling him rushing and rising to the edge, wanting to help him reach that edge. In and out he thrust, again and again, and forward and back I pumped on him, over and over, till his moans became a continuous, guttural growl, and suddenly he slammed his whole body forward into me - breaking our building rhythm - thrusting his penis all the way back into my mouth. I felt him cum - actually ejaculating! He was indeed nearing his change, because he spurt his hot semen into the back of my mouth, and just as instantly screamed, and jerked his body back, pulling his boyhood from my lips. Another spurt - a clear, spermless liquid - shot out of the tip of his glans. I felt it spatter against my chin, and watched as he stilled himself, and one last little surge of the precious fluid seeped out of his slit to drip down onto the rocks. I was too slow to try to catch it, but instantly I released his buttocks and as he stumbled backwards from me, I greedily wiped the rest of his cum from my chin with one finger and brought it to my mouth. There was just the faintest of salty-sweetness to it, but I wondered if that were just my imagination, or merely what I wanted to taste from him. My chest was heaving, and I must have been staring at him agape, stunned at what had just transpired. I expected he must feel that way too, and I looked up at his beautiful face hoping to share the wonder of it with him. He shocked me with a knowing leer, reducing what I had thought almost a religious experience to a mere encounter in one swift blow. "Yeah," he lifted his eyebrows, "I can really cum now. Just started last week. You're the first man lucky enough to eat it yet, though." I felt weak, and I'm sure the blood drained from my face. It was like he had slapped me. I hadn't made love to him. I had meant nothing to him. He had no idea what he meant to me. I stood up drunkenly, swaying to catch my balance, feeling so utterly empty and ashamed. What had I done? Had I just used him, as quickly and easily as he seemed to suggest? The words blurted from my mouth, stupidly, cruelly, accusingly, "Do you do that with just anyone you meet?" He didn't sense my hurt. I was nothing to him. Indeed just an encounter. "Naw, only with good looking blokes like you." he shot back as he bent to pull his shorts back up and started zipping them up. I couldn't look anymore. I felt so utterly unworthy to look at him now. My embarrassment, my shame, was more than enough for the both of us, if he didn't feel any himself. "I-I'm s-s-sorry ...," I started to say, but just as quickly realized that I had it all wrong. I should be sorry. But I had to be sorry for the right reasons. I had just used this boy, for my own selfish purposes. It wasn't his beauty that had blinded me, it was my own selfishness. There was no reason that he should have felt anything good from this act. Nothing more than the physical pleasure. I had given him nothing of my soul, nothing to show him that he meant anything more to me than just his flesh. "What you got to be sorry about, mister?" he said, looking at me querulously, while he casually finished zipping up.. "I'm sorry that I did ... no, I'm sorry that I used you like that, I hope you will ...." "You didn't use me. Enough people `ave done that already in my life, I can tell you. I ought to know," he interrupted me, pursing his brows and looking like I was being just as daft as before. "You aren't the first man who's `ad my dick, and every other part of me body too. So I figger it's about time for me to get some fun out o' it. Nobody's going to use me again, ever, you can bet on that," he said angrily, now. "I do what I want now. They can drag me out here, make me live in this dump, but they ... aw," he stopped and glared at me from under lowered brow, and just shook his head, and ended with, "just forget it, mister." "But I do apologize, most sincerely," I almost cried out to him, still unable to look him in the eye. I stood awkwardly before him, my hands uselessly at my sides. I wanted to hold them out to him, drop down on my knees again if I had to. "Gaw! Mister! You ain't done anything. It was just a suck. It's no big deal. Isn't that what any man wants? Why can't a boy want it too? He turned to leave, waving a hand at me dismissively. "Wait!" I called out desperately. He turned back halfway, looking suddenly wary of me, nervous, almost afraid - all his bravado gone for some reason. The high pitch and softness of his voice now belied all his brashness. "What do you want from me, mister? I told you, it don' mean nuffin." "There should be more," I finally found my voice, and some small degree of courage. "I mean ... it should ... mean something ...." I groped for words. I, who had put words and song into the mouths of boys for close to twenty-five years, had no words now to express what I felt. "I ... don't even know your name. I`ve ... taken something very precious from you, and ...." "Precious," he retorted. "Ha! You took some cum, tha's all you took. what's the big deal? Ha'n't ya ever sucked a boy before?" "Never, and I sincerely want to apologize for ...." "Oh Jesus! A virgin! No wonder you're makin such a big deal about this. Just forget it, mister. I don't know you, you don't know me. You seem like an ok bloke - a bit stuffy and all - I guess you're somebody real important - but don't worry, I ain't telling on ya, if that's what's worryin' ya." He looked at me with something almost akin to disgust, as if he saw in me not the man that I was - or the man I wanted myself to be - but some other man - perhaps just like those that had apparently abused him in the past. His look was like a knife that stabbed up into my stomach. "Please no, it's not that at all. I feel that ...." I started, but then paused. I've written scores from my heart - whole compositions that came to life only through the voices of my boys, but now I wanted so much for my words to live on their own. If only he would understand. Suddenly I felt what I wanted to say to him just pour out of my heart. "I was sitting upon the rocks, before the waves that crashed in, just moments ago. Wondering about life and meaning. Then I saw you enter upon the moors. And I knew. You were - are - a vision of something that I have always held dear ...." "Aw go on, mister!" he interrupted me with another dismissing wave of his hand. Again he started to turn away. "No! Please listen to me!" I entreated. He stopped, but didn't turn all the way back. Just stood looking down at the ground. I prayed he would listen. "I don't know about your past. I don't know why, but you seem to have decided in your short life that ... encounters like what we just had are unimportant. I do think better of you than that, though. You're a boy, and you deserve better. A man like me should mentor a boy, not use hi ...." "Oh shuddup!" he yelled at me angrily. He turned his head and looked up at me. "I'm not going to listen to any more of you high and mighty do-gooders telling me all about what you can do . I been there, done that. Look where it got me, mister. A street whore. Nothun` but a fuckin` street whore, and now they`ve gone and taken me away from that too." "B-b-but I'm not like the others - whoever they were - I assure you," I rushed to say. No, you don't know who I am. I don't know you, either. But it doesn't have to be ... that way ...." I held my hands out, shaking my head, just hoping he would listen, but not even knowing myself what I was trying to say. What was I asking of him, after all? What could I do for him? He just shook his head, denying me, but there was something in his look - it wasn't at all anger, or just simple denial. It was more like disbelief, or amazement - like my words were suddenly foreign to him. Finally he turned back away from me again, but threw all his hurt back at me. "It doesn't matter, I'm tellin' ya, Just forget it. Forget me! Everyone else has ...." "Can't we ... talk? Here, let us ... get to know each other. I mean ... let's start over and .... I want to get to know you. I think I can ...." He swiveled about instantly and gave me the most wounded look, as if my words had hurt him far more than anything I could have done to him physically. "You're just like all the others," he spat out lowly. "You don't mean any of that. Yeah, you want to get to know me. You want more of what I got, don't ya, mister. Well, you blew it. With all that fancy talk, and your lies. You blew it. Let me tell you, if I ever see you again, it'll be the sorriest ... fuckin' .... day in my life." He ended, his lips trembling, his fists clenching, but staring me right in my face, defiantly. Then he looked about suddenly, wanting to get away from me, like a little scared rabbit - no longer bouncing and hopping across the fields as when I had first seen him, but like one who has become prey. His eyes were suddenly wide with his pain. I don't think it was fear. He couldn't possibly fear me! What had I done to make him fear me? But - what had others done? He found the way he had come, then, and with something like a sob just took off running, stumbling at first in the loose rock, but then darting off across the moor. I started to reach out to him, to grasp his willowy, lithe form. He could not have pulled away from me, if I had. I did call out, "No! Please wait!" Begging him to listen. But I drew my hands back. I couldn't force him to stay. Hesitantly, numbly, I took off running after him, but there was no way I could have kept up with him, even if I had tried. He disappeared over the top of the rise. The last I saw of him was his gloriously shining hair. When I got there, he was long gone over the next ridge, or round the next copse. He might have run on in the direction of Highquay, or to some local farmstead. I stood there in stunned dismay, my shoulders sagging in despair. It had all happened so fast. One moment he was seemingly happy, and then in an instant I had driven him away in tears. Absently, I brushed the dust from my trousers, and turned to walk back to Highshore. One last time I looked off in the direction that he must have gone in, and knowing it was just as useless a gesture as any of my words to him had been, I whispered my regret. "Would that you grant me another chance. Wherever you may go, wherever you may be, you deserve so much more. I pray that I might find you again." -------------------------- I might as well not have returned to the conservatory after that, for all the good I did there. Neither the Matron nor the faculty, and sadly not even the boys, were to benefit from my presence. Frankly, I didn't know if I could go on in their presence after what I had done with ... The Boy. After Lights Out, I slipped out across the grounds under the dim light of a quarter Moon, and strode listlessly back to the moors. They were empty of course. And I searched in vain upon the rise, where the cairn of rocks marked our meeting. The Boy would not return this night. He might not return ever again. So I sought my accustomed spot down upon the shore, where I so often went just to think. This time I may have just wanted the roar of the waves to drown out all thought. Sea-spray stung my face, cold and piercing. The salt of it seeped into my mouth, bitter and dirty. It hurt. It was foul. But it was also somehow cleansing. That's what I wanted - to hurt. To be punished, after what had happened just this afternoon, right up behind the shore, upon the empty, rock-strewn moors. I wanted to be punished, but could I bear to be cleansed? The tidal waves crashing into the crags all around me were less pitch black than my soul, and yet I turned away. Turned my back to the purifying waves. Wanting the memories more - oh so much more - than ever I could want to be free of them. I was cursed, being a boylover. And today that curse had led me to hurt a boy. Never before had a boy had ever suffered at my hands. How many boys had I raised to the very pinnacle of their potential? All because of this awful, wonderful curse. If it were taken away - washed away, swept away - would I be the same man to all my boys? Would I still give them every waking moment, every breath from my lungs, every spark of my imagination and my passion? It was my curse that lifted my boys to heights seen around the world - HEARD around the world. It was never just the music. Nor was it my gift with the crafting of it. `Twas nothing more and nothing less than my enduring, all-encompassing desire for the very boys that I led. A desire that I had harnessed and drew strength from, for their sakes. I had never given in to it for myself ... till today. Highshore Conservatory Boychoir and their famous pedophile Director, Sir Gilbert Bloody Worthington-Fuckington--------. That's they way the tabloids would print it. Knighted, kneeling before the Queen herself. Just like he had knelt before The Boy this fated afternoon, upon the moors. I trembled. Not from the cold of the night air, or from the ocean spray that chased my retreating footsteps, but from the memory of The Boy. I trembled, because I wanted him more than I wanted all the fame. More than I wanted my school, the choir, the .... more than all the good I had ever done for all the other boys. He hadn't even given me his name. But he had seen my curse - somehow he had seen it within me, and he had made me do what I had never done before ... NO! He was not to blame! Not this boy. He was the very embodiment of everything holy and good in this world! On the very cusp of manhood, but at the pinnacle of boyhood. Such beauty that the very rays of the sun were paled beside him. A voice so soft and sweet that the very ocean had to swell and rush in, the everlasting winds across the moors had to still, to hear him. Worldly and heavenly perfection that can only exist in a boy. Oh, he had commanded me, standing right up there upon those rocks this very afternoon - captain of every element, including me. But it was I who had always known how to shape every passion. I've been in that position so many times before! How many times had I given reign to the power of a Boy, through our music, to achieve his perfection? This time I gave in and sullied it. What now? Should I flee? Abandon everything I had created here in this windswept, benighted corner of Cornwall, because of my curse?! No one had to know. Only he. Only me. And perhaps the gods. And ... the music .... Will I ever again be able to make the music? Will I ever again be able to lead the boys in their glorious song, when I have finally, after all the years of struggle, given in to the desire? And wounded a boy. What is the song in my heart now? How can I remain the heartbeat of the very choir school that I created, when my heart has departed? What can I do for all the boys now, when all I really want to know is ... where is The Boy? Will he ever command me again? How can I correct the wrong I have done him? Who is he? Will I ever see him again?