(No warnings -- you know why you're here.

If you didn't read the first three parts, you'll have no idea what is going on, but you'll still get your sex scene. This one gets a little rough.

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The River

Part Four

Quentin, it turned out, was Boy One. He was not exactly sure what number I was. He remembered red-headed Terrance, and tow-headed Colin, and a very effeminate boy with a perky bottom, and, most recently, Charles. Then there were two or three less memorable boys named John. When I told him Charles was my best friend, he smiled, and said, "In his heart, he really is a good boy. I'm glad he's your friend."

The nature of my relationship with Mr. Wilder, though, was becoming increasingly clear to me. It was going to last a year or two or three, perhaps, but it would not be true love. He might not be as brutal as his friend Captain James, but in his heart he was no better. Quentin wiped away a tear from my eye, and gave me a little squeeze, careful not to crease my silk shift. "I think we'll put a dab of rouge on your cheeks," he said. "You've gone quite pale."

..........

Dressed in my skimpy silkies, rouge on my cheeks and curls in my hair, I ascended the steps to Mr. Wilder's lavish bedroom. Two days earlier, I might have been flush with excitement, delighted to have the attention of a man who might have been like a father to me, and whose strong arms made me feel safe. All that, though, suddenly had changed.

He had given my dear Charles over to painful abuse by Captain James. Quentin, who said he was the young Mr. Wilder's first boy lover, now was nothing but his manservant, and still quite justifiably resentful. Nobody knew what had become of Terrance, or Colin, or the sissy boy, or the boys named John.

I was determined to leave with Charles when he ran away. We would be cowboys, or riverboat hands on the Mississippi, or drummer boys for General Sherman. It didn't matter. I would be with Charles, and he would love me forever, and I would have the joy of his dear Birdie pumping in and out of my bum, and somehow we would find a way to be happy.

I knocked at the bedroom door. Mr. Wilder told me to come in. He lay on his enormous bed, wrapped in a red satin dressing gown. When I saw the smile on his face as I entered, I nearly forgot all my dark thoughts and leapt into his arms, but that was not what he wanted.

"Wait," he said, "just let me look at you." He sighed. "So beautiful. So very, very beautiful."

Then I thought of him saying those same words to Charles, two or three years before, or to Quentin, back when neither Charles nor I had yet been born. I felt numb. I told myself I could take whatever came. After all, he'd done it to Charles, over and over, and he wasn't that much bigger than Charles. I just hoped he had some lard or butter. What he had was a jar of some sort of creamy thing that smelled like flowers, but that was later.

He flicked open his dressing gown. His belly looked larger, his skin whiter, and the hair around his privates (although he was not keeping them private) rougher and bushier than two days earlier, back when I loved him. Still, he wasn't dreadful. When I imagined how Captain James would have looked, Mr. Wilder seemed almost attractive by comparison. So, I approached him, swinging my hips a little the way Quentin did, and climbed into his arms.

He reached up under my silken shift, and stroked my back. He pulled up my tiny knickers so that very nearly all my bottom was exposed, and he stroked me, not gently, but not especially hard either. He reached his head up enough to touch his lips to mine, and thrust his tongue into my mouth. I decided that, just this once, I would give him whatever he wanted. He was not a cruel man, I told myself, just insensitive, and perhaps too rich for his own good. He wanted boys, boys of a certain age, and he was rich enough to have them.

And rich enough to discard them, which seemed to be what he did. He might have made arrangements for them afterwards. He might have seen to their educations, and given them a decent start in life. He might have spared them the attentions of Captain James, but he didn't. Except for Quentin, whom he kept as his dogsbody, all were turned out into the world on their own -- after just a few valuable lessons in life's realities from Captain James.

You may wonder how I passed through that long night. Well, first, it was not all that long, because Mr. Wilder was no better endowed with stamina than he was with manhood. Second, I kept my head filled with dreams of Charles, only older and stronger and able to protect me. When I took Mr. Wilder's peter into my mouth, I tasted Charles. When I did my little dance with no pants, holding up my silken shift and swinging my little bum and boybits around, I closed my eyes and imagined how much Charles would enjoy the show.

When Mr. Wilder pushed his tongue against my faultlessly clean hole, and ran it all around the edges, and licked me right up the center of my crack before going back to probe me more, I envisioned Charles's tongue probing and licking me. And when he coated his fingers with that scented creme, and pushed first one and then two of them up inside me, they were not his fingers. They were the fingers of the boy I loved.

I wasn't sure which way he would want to fuck me, but I hoped it would be from behind. My face to face experience with Charles, the night before, was still too special to me to share with another, no matter how hard I imagined. Well, I suppose I was fortunate in that sense.

He wanted me on my hands and knees, with my shift tossed up over my head and hanging down below my face, so I couldn't see him. Then he was strangely silent for a minute or so. Curiosity and apprehension prompted me to gently push the front of my shift up under my chin so I could see past my little willy, which was just dangling there, not stiff at all, and through my legs.

He had a long white thing in his hand, a long white peter that looked like it was carved from ivory or whalebone, and I believe that is exactly what it was. It was notably larger than his own, and he was rubbing it with that scented creme. I felt my eyes begin to tear up again, and just prayed that it would not hurt awfully much. Then I felt it, hard and cold, against my hole. I did as Charles had instructed, and pushed, hard.

My bowel had been thoroughly emptied, so I did not push anything onto Mr. Wilder's clean bedclothes, which was a bit of a shame because that might have put a stop to his appetites then and there -- or, perhaps, not. Who knows? I might have been caned. In any event, there was no way I could keep Charles in my imagination when that hard, cold thing pushed up inside me. Yes, it was thick enough to hurt, quite a lot, and I let my shift drop back down before my eyes so I wouldn't have to watch.

He worked that ivory rod up inside me, pumped it in and out, pushed it around in circles, and at one point sent it deep enough so that I could not help but cry out. I don't know if that frightened him or disturbed him or satisfied him, but that was the last of the ivory peter. He pulled it out, and replaced it with his own, which was small and warm and supple enough to feel almost like a comfort to me.

Once again, I imagined Charles. I imagined how good it would feel to have him inside me, loving me, perhaps coated with some of that ointment we'd had from Cooky to ease the pain I still felt from that Big White Thing. Then again, I wondered if I could manage a year or two if it just were Mr. Wilder, and neither Captain James nor the Big White Thing. The food was very good, and the rest of the work not too difficult.

Charles, I knew, had not acquired his fat envelope of greenbacks without doing some "work" on the side. As Mr. Wilder fucked me, I thought about some of the passengers I had seen on the Kingston Queen, some of whom, I knew, Charles had entertained. Could I bring myself to do that?

Mr. Wilder shot his mancream up my arse, bucked once or twice, and dropped out of me. I could feel a little bit of his stuff dripping down the inside of my thigh. Then, all I could feel was that big ivory peter plunging back inside me. It didn't hurt as much the second time, but it hurt, and I thought again of Charles. Then, oddly, I thought of my mother.

How long does it take before a person becomes accustomed to degradation? How long does it take before a person decides that just being used as a path to mere survival is acceptable? Charles, whom I still loved very dearly, had taken that route. My mother had as well. Would I?

..........

I expected that Mr. Wilder would keep me in his bed that night, but he did not. He just said, "Flit away, little fairy," and gestured towards the bedroom door. Walking somewhat painfully, I left his bed. Quentin was waiting for me in the hallway.

He was just a little sissyman, but when he lifted me up and kissed at my tears and carried me away to a little bed where I could sleep all on my own, up there on the third floor, I was immensely grateful. He really was a nice little man, making the best of a not very nice situation. I hugged him, and kissed his cheek before he lay me down.

"I'll work something out," he told me. "It's gone on far too long. Anyway, well long enough."

..........

The next morning, I felt much better, especially after breakfast. Quentin prepared very thin pancakes rolled around plum jam, and with powdered sugar sprinkled across the top. The French call them crepes. Quentin told me I had eaten enough for four boys, notwithstanding the two big mugs of chocolate. It all was so sweet, I almost fell asleep in the hansom cab that took me back to the Kingston Queen. I didn't see Mr. Wilder that morning. Indeed, I didn't see Mr. Wilder ever again.

Charles whistled when I disembarked the hansom, and I made my way to where he was hiding behind some trash bins. "Thomas," he said, "I'm taking off. Come with me? I got eighty-seven dollars and forty-five cents, and that will get us a long ways!"

"Did the Captain hurt you again last night?" I asked.

"Nah, though he probably meant to. I spent the night ashore. But he come up the gangway so drunk last night he took a spill and bashed his head and fell right in the water. The hands tucked him up in bed, and nobody seen him since."

..........

So, now it's time for the happy ending so characteristic of 19th century narratives.

When some crew went to rouse Captain James that morning, to supervise the lading of a bit more freight, they found him dead. It seems he'd hit his head a bit harder than anyone thought, or cared.

Policemen were sent to inform Mr. Wilder. Quentin told them the master was still sleeping, and could not be disturbed. The policemen insisted, so Quentin led them up to the second floor. None of this was in the newspaper, of course, but somehow Cooky found out what they discovered. It seemed to them that Mr. Wilder had perforated his own bowel with a long, ivory penis, and was dying of sepsis. Fortunately for Quentin, Mr. Wilder never regained consciousness.

The only living heir was Mr. Devlin, Mr. Wilder's maternal uncle, who came down from Boston. I do not think the cargo on board the Kingston Queen was perishable, because it was five days before Mr. Devlin arrived from Boston and recruited a substitute captain, and all the cargo remained on board for that time. Mr. Devlin, it seemed, took quite a liking to Quentin, and Quentin persuaded him to take an interest in Charles and myself.

I was sent away to school, because Mr. Devlin was impressed by my grammar and pronunciation. I was sorry to be separated from Charles, but school is a good place to make friends. Charles remained aboard the Kingston Queen, but he was salaried, so he only had to suck the dicks that especially attracted him.

Today, Charles is the riverboat's captain, and I represent Mr. Devlin's interests in the Massachusetts State Senate. We remain friends.

(That was an uncharacteristically upbeat ending from heedon@tormail.org )