Now Am I In Arden
A story by Ivor Sukwell and Kyle McKenzie. A story about a boy and a man with all that such entails. The setting is modern and based around the theatre, Not your thing? Sorry about that, we're sure you'll find something that is. Whatever your choice, please remember Nifty needs your donations.
Now Am I In Arden
Chapter eighteen
Showered and refreshed and both naked on the sofa - Brat had to be a little careful arranging himself, and that's why we were on the sofa and not my armchair with him on my knee. Even with 'after spank' a bright red bum needs to be sat on carefully.
His legs had not been turned bright red and his thighs were within reach and so, inevitably, his thighs got stroked and fondled.
"Tell you what I've got in mind, Brat," I reached for a copy of the play so I could make it clear how I saw it being done.
"Well, first time I read it I thought Ariel was under Prospero's control, and couldn't be free until he was released." I took a sip of my coke and snuggled into him.
"But then I read it again and thought maybe it was different, Prospero was under Ariel's control and maybe Ariel wasn't as funny as he first seemed."
"Let's get rid of that for a start. Ariel is NOT funny. He is NOT another version of Puck. Ariel is a spirit of the earth and of the air, of water and of fire. He is a spirit of the four elements. There is, of course, the matter of whether he is a he or a she; been done both ways."
I smiled, as always his passion for Shakespeare was clear as we talked about the play.
"He's mostly described as comedic," I reminded him, knowing he wouldn't care what other people thought, but gently needing him to be reminded other people had a different opinion to him.
"What do you see the role as?" I was intrigued by what he thought, in my eyes no-one knew more about Shakespeare than him.
"Sweet Will, like a boy I know, left school with very few qualifications, whatever they were back then. He knew a little Latin, that would doubtless have been thrashed into him, and he did not, as others, like Marlowe did, go to University. How then, could he be able to write something like the Tempest? That's one of the points those morons who say Sweet Will did not write Shakespeare always make. But he DID write the Tempest. Simply, he was a genius. So let's forget what others have said and done, let's look at what Will did.
Remember I mentioned once the Celtic Druids Song of Being?"
My hand had strayed from leg to between legs, but Brat didn't seem to mind.
I giggled, "Maybe you should have thrashed GCSE maths into me." I hadn't got terrible grades considering I hadn't been at school much during the final term, but I would have been pretty fucked if I had left school with just those qualifications.
"I remember," I told him as he fondled my cock. Not wanking me, just enjoying it in his hand which was something I also enjoyed.
One delightful thing about Brat was that he still enjoyed his cock as he had done when he was fourteen and not a youth thinking about being seventeen. He never tired of having it admired and I never tired of admiring it.
"Putative Druid had to be able to sing that song, a different song for each individual, but certain things were essential, being a bird or suchlike, being in the earth, and being both man and woman.
Where the
bee sucks there suck I
In a cowslips bell I lie,
There I crouch when owls do fly,
On the bat's back I do fly.
See any parallels?" I asked, now twiddling his irresistible foreskin.
"You mean that Ariel isn't a man or a woman, funny or sad. He's kind of everything at the same time." I sort of got what he meant. Ariel wouldn't be a spirit like Puck with human style motivations, instead `it' would be more like a force of nature like the wind.
"Something like that," I nodded approvingly. He might have left school at sixteen but Brat was no fool. "But even more than that. Ariel is all those things, but can also be just one of those things if that's what's needed." I got up and went to the cabinet for the weed. Weed helps serious, artistic thinking, I always found.
"Let's try another parallel," I said after I'd given the necessaries to Brat. "Appearance and reality. The entire play is about appearance and reality, after all, but concentrate first on Prospero and Ariel. Who is the boss and who seems to be the boss? As an aid to thinking," he was looking a shade puzzled so I tried to give him something to help. "Who owns this house? And in this house live a man and a boy. Who, to the outside world, is the boss? And who, in reality, is the boss?"
"Well you own the house and you're in charge aren't you." Mum had made it very clear that one of the conditions for me being able to stay in the UK rather than being dragged to California with her was that, in her absence, Mr Williams became stand-in parent for deciding things like what time I could stay out until, where I could go and who I had to report into. He was pretty laid back about it, but definitely still in charge.
"Am I?" Not a fool, but he needed to learn to think sideways as well. "Who seduced whom in the first place? Who decided on the need for toys to play with? Who made it clear that all would not be well unless spanking happened from time to time? Who forced an idiot to realise that a boy needed desperately to be fucked? Who wants to keep a certain something from the world?"
I smirked, "So it was all my fault was it?"
Despite joking with him I could see what he meant. I had made him dance to my tune for a long time, and while our roles had become reversed for a while, I knew he would do anything for me. He had even done things that he found really upsetting, and I knew he would never have hurt me without me making him.
"Of course it's all your fault," I grinned back, "I'd still be a lonely, lost old git without your help, wouldn't I. It was you who helped me, even forced me, to understand what I am. 'I was lost and now I'm found.' Those words echo down the ages from when man first began to think."
"Who says you're not still an old git?" Mr Williams liked cheeky boys and I was always happy to oblige.
"Is that how you see Ariel? Something which controls Prospero and leads him to his true self?"
"Yes, but in Prospero's case, Ariel is a bit of a failure. Or Prospero is, because where he finishes up must be his true self.
It's all about redemption, isn't it? And just about everyone except Trinculo and Stephano, and, in my version, Prospero, undergo some sort of redemption, don't they. All Prospero manages is to get back where he started from, back to being Duke of Milan. All the rest move up a notch or two. Those three don't."
"Well he wasn't Duke of Milan anymore at the start of the play and he is the duke again by the end, so he kind of goes up." Being duke sounded quite good to me but I could see what he meant.
"No, Brat, no," I sighed, "All he does is to go back to where he was before the play started, the same, pompous idiot he was before. He even dresses himself as he was, 'As I was sometime Milan' he says. He manages a few forgiveness's on the way, but the important one? His brother? Oh, yes, he says 'I forgive you' but he also says in almost the same breath that to call you brother would infect my mouth. What sort of forgiveness is that?
We don't know much about the Elysian Mysteries, and sweet F.A. about the upper circles of them; that's a secret that has been kept for thousands of years, but it's pretty safe to say Prospero was pretty near the top when the play began, and he's still pretty near the top when it ends. But definitely no higher up. And, remember, the time scale of the play is the time scale of the performance. The only play in the whole canon where the two are the same."
I saw what he meant. The sort of `moving up' he was referring to was becoming wiser not richer.
"So has Ariel failed? Or does Ariel just use Prospero to influence everything else rather than to make him into something new?"
"I believe the failure is Prospero's, not Ariel's. If we look at the play as an allegory of those Mysteries, all on the magic island are there in order to be initiated into one or other of the various levels of those Mysteries, whatever they were. Prospero is already near the top, he is able to use magic. His final step is to understand himself and use that magic for its proper purposes, again, whatever they were. He doesn't do that. Instead he abjures 'this rough magic' breaks his staff and drowns his book. The final step is beyond him, and that he does come to understand."
"Do you think Ariel cares what happens to the other characters?" I was interested to hear what he thought.
"Like the sea doesn't care if people drown in it, it's just the sea."
"Oh no, Ariel cares and doesn't care at the same time. Ariel's job is to show people the path they need to take to move up to the next level, and in most cases they follow that path. Look at Gonzalo's early remark about his clothes. He's just been dunked in the rough rude sea, yet his clothes are fresher than they were before. He doesn't see the reason for that till later, but he does see it and so up he goes one step. Ferdinand was lost, but Ariel makes sure he finds Miranda and they both then find themselves." I grinned at him there, my grin asking, very clearly, see the parallel between them and Brat and one Mr Williams? "Each man finds himself when no man was his own. Except Prospero. He always thought, mistakenly, that he was the one in charge."
"So Ariel is keeping the whole thing moving, sort of like he is the centre of the wheel?" I quite liked the idea of the whole play revolving around me.
"Exactly!" I gave Brat's foreskin a congratulatory twiddle, and he gave a gentle, satisfied little moan to show he appreciated the form of congratulation I had chosen. "And we don't change a single line, a single word. It's all there, all in the words just as the Bard wrote them."
Even with his foreskin being twiddled, I suspected he may be a bit surprised at that. My reading was a long way from the traditional one, after all.
I moaned happily as he twiddled my foreskin. As always that felt amazing.
"What will all the other actors think?" I could imagine the guy playing Prospero might be more than a little put out when he found out he wasn't the star of the show.
"I said, we don't change a single line or a single word. The play is and will remain, the play it was. Ariel doesn't dominate, Ariel doesn't do any upstaging, Ariel, in my interpretation, is exactly what he, she or both, have always been in the play Sweet Will wrote. Ariel is the spirit of the island, nothing more and nothing less."
I guessed that Brat was having thoughts of stardom again, of being the big, central character. Now, if he did this, he'd be facing a different challenge - how to be an apparently supporting character, but a support without which the play would be a mere romance, have no deeper meaning, a meaning I was absolutely certain now that Will had meant it to have.
'Work that out, and then I'll suck you,' I thought to myself. Well, sucking Brat was something I liked almost as much as I liked Shakespeare.
"Ok, Ok," he clearly was going to treat me like any other actor and put me back in my place if I got ideas above my station.
"So if Ariel is the spirit of the island, it is kind of leading the other characters to the end. It's not always onstage, but it's kind of involved in everything anyway."
"Yes. And all we do is let the audience know what the actual relationship between Ariel and Prospero is by using tiny bits of business. An eyebrow here, a look there and touches of irony and sarcasm at the right moments. How many times does Prospero give Ariel orders and Ariel say something like 'Of course, master' or 'Ariel will do your bidding, master'?
Look at just one line. 'Do you love me, master? No.' Think how many ways you could say that. How, just by an appropriate little look you could make it sound like 'Do you love me, master? Of course you don't you pompous old fool.'
Nothing grand, no big gestures, just subtle business and tones of voice. Needs a little bit of skill to bring that off."
Tempt his ego, I smiled to myself. Brat has an oversized ego, he always did have. One of the things I loved about him. One of the reasons he so liked being adored.
"I can do subtle you know." I pouted a bit at the perceived slight, small as it was, that I would somehow insist on making myself the star of the show.
"Never seen you being subtle," I teased, and he knew, possibly from the way I was playing with his cock, that I was referring to his blatant and almost constant desire for sex of some sort or other. "Like the way you seduced me, I suppose. That was quality subtle, wasn't it."
I giggled at that.
"Actually I was quite subtle. I was fourteen and convinced my mum to leave me all weekend with some old bloke she'd never met. If you had been smart you would have buttered up my Mum then bent me over the kitchen table as soon as she was up your drive! Instead you wound her right up and were nasty to a boy who showed you his shaved pubes."
"Not nasty for all that long," I grinned as we enjoyed our very private reminiscences, "I think it was the subtlety of the shaved pubes that got through to me. As for bending you over the kitchen table back then, you have to remember that I was still under the illusion that kitchen tables were meant for breakfast. And," I needed to try very hard not to burst into a wild fit of sniggering giggles, "I also seem to recall that, later, when I had come to understand the true nature of kitchen tables, it was you and not your mother that required buttering up."
I giggled, "Yeah you buttered me up nicely." He lent in and gave me a long kiss and I moaned in his mouth.
"Love being your boy," I told him when our lips parted.
"Long may it last," I kissed the softness of his neck. We were both conscious of the passing of time, and well aware that nothing we could do would stop it. "Adore you being my boy. Adore your boy bits as well," I hinted.
"Well I'm your boy so my boy bits are your boy bits." He still had a few shreds of his old bashfulness and sometimes needed to be reminded he could touch or play with anything he wanted without specific approval.
"Do you think there's room on the sofa for a game of sixty-nine?"
"Definitely room on your rug," I knew that was even naughtier but thought he wouldn't object.
"Then rug it shall be," I conceded, and allowed my Brat to do the organising, remembering that his bum was still very red. My hands would have to be content with his thighs while we sucked, but I could manage that. I still worshiped Brat's thighs, and the backs were especially delightful, all smooth and soft.
"Your skin is like velvet," I whispered as I felt his thighs before getting his cock where I intended to get it. "How on earth do you keep them so silky?"
"That's just how they are," I giggled as he squeezed and stroked my thighs. I still didn't quite get why he found them so fascinating but as always the feel of his hands on my body had me moaning and purring.
"Lucky you," I smiled and stroked away to my heart's content, "And very definitely lucky me. Don't know what I'd do with you if you had hairy legs."
"Lucky me cos you like them," I giggled and gave his cock, which was now near my face, a lingering lick.
"Oh yes!" I sighed when he licked me, "I could even let you off a hair or two for that."
Since sucking cock was why we were in this position, I felt it would be mean of me not to give Brat's a lick or two in return, before I teased him a little more. "Any more than two, though, and I'd have to trade you in for a smoother model."
He knew I was joking, that this was simply a teasing prelude to the cock devouring gobble to come.
"It took you years to get one boy, and now you want to go out and get a new one?" I gave him a smirk to show I was joking but it was something I had thought about before.
What would he do when I got too old? I knew he liked boys younger than me, and while we had a more emotional bond, he would one day want another year eight or nine boy again. The age of boy I had been when I first met him.
Not wanting to think anything about that at the moment I gave his cock another lick to drive the thoughts from my head.
"Be far too much trouble," and then I stopped teasing and sucked him.
Sucking a boy, as I now knew, is a joy and a bliss; sucking him when he has your cock in his mouth at the same time is joy and bliss times I don't know how many.
Sixty nine was a game we played quite often and we'd become rather good at it. A position change or two - limited this time because of Brat's red bum - pauses from cock so things didn't end too soon, but those pauses could be, and were, used to taste balls while any spunk in a hurry gave up and retreated for a while, and then, when we got it absolutely perfect, we filled each other's mouths at the same moment.
We got it perfect!
Then we made a spunk cocktail by having a cummy mouthed snog.
"Tastes so good," he broke the kiss and I nuzzled into his neck. I might be sixteen now, but much as I was starting to not want to admit it, I still enjoyed him cuddling and holding me.
Brat phoned Gwyl Monk and he sounded over the moon that Brat was agreeing to do Ariel, and wanted the name of Brat's agent there and then so he could finalise matters.
Rehearsals wouldn't start till April with the show opening in June, and that left Brat several months with nothing to do unless his agent came up with a quickie. Me it did not leave free for several months, there was an awful lot to do. Meetings with set designer and costume designer; meetings with Gwyl Monk to make sure we were on the same bus as far as my ideas were concerned, and many hours of working out preliminary blockings.
I rather hoped Brat wouldn't be offered anything, having him around for relaxation would be a great help.
I was no longer fearful that he'd find someone else; he'd had that chance and turned it down. He was my boy, and he was my boy because he wanted to be my boy. That was a wonderful feeling.