Jacques waited at the window for the light in his aquarium to come on and the boy of his dreams to appear.
Alain entered his room, switched on the light and threw his sport bag near his desk. He searched through a drawer, took some drawing pins and went in front of the toilet door. He unrolled the poster he had in his hand and fixed it on the door. It was an advertising poster of the sea fashion line of Yves-Saint Laurent with a picture of Dominique in very small swimming trunks, immersed to the calves in water, his body wet as if he was just coming out from sea.
It was a really well done picture that made the model look even more handsome than he really was. Dominique gave him that picture, very proudly. Then Alain went back to the desk, sat down, looked for something in his bag. He pulled out a "Gay Pied" magazine and started to browse through it.
Jacques followed each move from the darkness of his room. He looked at the poster and felt a pang: if that was that boy's ideal, if he was even gay, it was exactly his antithesis. But, anyway, he thought, he would never meet that boy so there would never be a comparison.
Then he saw his "Paul" leaf through a magazine lying on the desk, but couldn't see what magazine could it be. He seemed engrossed in reading. And he seemed to him more beautiful than ever.
Jacques didn't know that he was reading his last story, the one about Yves and Karim, and that he was enjoying it very much, as usual. He didn't know that Alain was one of the most passionate readers of the "Marc Jaures" stories.
Neither did Alain suspect that in that moment his favourite writer was watching him through the telescope. Alain took a pencil, underlined some lines that had impressed him as he hastened to finish the story, then took a sheet of paper and started to write a letter:
"Dear Gay Pied Editorial Staff, For a couple of years I've been a fond reader of your magazine. I am 20 and my name is Charles (a pseudonym of course). I like your magazine very much, and in particular Marc Jaures's tales that I always read with growing pleasure. I just finished the last one you published, and it is full of poetry even in the most graphic and realistic passages (I mean, those where he describes in detail the sexual act).
"It's obvious that Marc is a person with a serene and free sexuality and that he considers the physical union of two people loving each other is a sacred thing, so that I have no hesitation to affirm that in those passages there is nothing pornographic, but on the contrary, everything is erotically fine and clean. For that I feel I have to thank him. Since I guess you can't give me his address, I ask you to send him the following letter.
"My dearest Marc, I thank you very much for what you write. You have to be a splendid person, full of experience (you must be at least 30) and humanity. I hope I can meet you one day; if not you (since you surely have a lover), someone exactly like you are.
In your last story I loved the description of when the two protagonist-lovers decide to abandon everything and to start a new life somewhere else. Yves' words, in particular, when you make him say: "It will be absolutely useless to flee if we were fleeing from ourselves, or to search for ourselves. But we love each other, that is I love you and you love me. Self love is a reflex, and I know that love for you is the same..." Those words are some of the most beautiful messages of the many you give to your readers in your stories. We have to learn to love ourselves in the other, or to better say, in the Other. Unhappily I didn't yet find that "other", but thanks to your stories I can hope to find him one day and to be able to devote myself to him, soul and body..."
Alain wrote rapidly. Then he closed the magazine in his drawer, folded the letter and slipped it in his sack, because he'd buy an envelope and a stamp and send it tomorrow. Then he undressed, showered as usual and went to bed. He threw a glance to the poster of Dominique, who was smiling to him from the toilet door, and thought that that relationship would have not have very long to last. That boy was too superficial, tasteless and he seemed not to have other interests besides his own body, fucking, and the admiration of others. He shut off the light and started to sleep.
Jacques sighed leaving the window, turned on the light on his desk and started to write new pages of his new true story. He outlined Paul's personality adding new details and putting down some of his thoughts. Then he went to sleep, thinking that this novel was coming out very well, because it was not the fruit of his fantasy, but of his falling in love with that boy. On that his fantasy was just embroidering.
A few days later Jacques saw his Paul entering in his room, searching for something then going with a felt pen to the poster and write on it something, askew, with big letters. When the boy moved away, Jacques read one only word, written in English: "Boring!" and he smiled, pleased. He had felt that boy on the picture was a rival. That word eliminated him!
In reality this didn't change a thing, nevertheless Jacques felt happy. "Paul, you are a smart boy!" he said to himself. Looking at him he recalled when he had seen him in a sunny afternoon on the roof garden, in Speedos, plunging (just then he understood that there was also a pool there). Of course he preferred to see him completely naked in his room but his body, lit by the fall sun, was beautiful. The dive was perfect, Jacques guessed he was a swimmer. Ah, to have a camera to capture those images! Perhaps, if his new novel was successful, with its earnings he could buy one. After all, life didn't give him so much and he had to gather what little he could and enjoy it.
With the mail Jacques received the usual bundle from "Gay Pied". Those were the letters that the magazine received, addressed to him. He browsed through them rapidly. One or two from critics, all the others of praise. A certain Tony declared his love with a letter that seemed to be copied from a handbook for lovers without fantasy.
An Ali thanked him for having described, in Karim, an Arab in a positive way, able to love and not just to fuck, and asked him if by chance he had an Arabian lover or if he knew the Arab lands and cultures. "It seems that French people, when they think about us Arabs, just think about the dimensions of our dick or our endurance when fucking. To them it is as if we had no soul, no feelings. You are different and reconciled me a little with your people." Jacques smiled.
Then a certain Charles underlined some sentences of his novel thanking him because, he wrote, he was teaching him a lot and he hoped to find one day a lover like him. If he knew, Jacques thought with some bitterness, he would change his idea at once.
A certain F.P.R.S (who knows what those initials stood for?) asked him to write a love-story about two inmates and affirmed: "Also in prisons at times are born real and sound idylls, notwithstanding the rough skin. Why, writing stories about prisons do they write always and just about rape and sexual violence? I don't deny those happen, but there isn't just that..." Could that F.P.R.S. be an ex-convict?
Then others.
He was impressed by a letter from a certain Fabien, an eighteen year old boy that sent him his story: he was the son of an influential man of his town. Due to the fact that he was a real little rascal, his father had him sent to Reform school when he was fourteen. There he discovered his homosexuality thanks to an older companion that made him his "boy". When he got out at sixteen, instead of going back home he fled to Paris and became a pimp. He did the life then. Sometimes he was hired with some of his friends, for orgies organized by one of his johns for artists, or political men, or industrialists... people with lot of money, anyway. He participated willingly because in one evening he could earn even three times a full week's pimping. The orgies took place in the villa of that client. The outline was always the same: all the boys had to undress completely and to enter in a completely dark room where they had to wait, standing all around against the walls. Then also the guests entered and, in the dark, passed to finger them and could use them as they pleased. If a guest wanted to bring one of them in one of the many bedrooms to enjoy the boy alone and in peace, he only had to take the boy from there and go to a bedroom. Some guests, in fact, preferred to touch, to check if the boy was skilled in what they preferred to do, and then bring the one they chose to the bedroom for full sex. Others preferred to do everything there in the dark, possibly with more than one boy or, at times, two or three guests with the same boy. The boys preferred to be brought in the bedrooms, because often, if the client was happy with them, he asked them to meet again...
The last time Fabien went to that villa, he was touched in quite a rude way by a man. Who, having explored his body for a long while had the boy kneel in front of him and he fucked Fabien in the mouth. Then he had the boy stand up, turn around, bend over, and fucked him in the ass for a while. Then the man withdrew, took his arm and led him outside. Fabien understood that the man was pleased and wanted to pass the night with him. But as soon as they arrived in the corridor, Fabien felt like fainting! In the light Fabien recognized the man: he was his father! The man, of course, recognized his son at once. Fabien ran away, dressed in a hurry, left the villa and walked all the night long, thrown into confusion. Fabien stopped hustling and now he was looking for work, any work. He asked Marc to write him a letter to help him understand, and he enclosed his address.
Jacques was shaken. For a moment he thought that it was just a fantasy tale of a sick mind, but reading the letter again he was convinced that it was sincere. So he took paper and pen and answered that boy with a letter, several pages long, trying to tell him what he felt while reading his letter. He tried to pour into the letter all his humanity, because he understood that the boy still must have been shocked by the discovery he had been sexually used by his own father. According to Jacques it was more than having had sexual intercourse with his father, it was the fact he had been used that way, like an object, that had shaken the boy. He then concluded inviting the boy to write to him again, care of the magazine, if he wanted. He excused himself not to send him his own address, but he explained that there was a clause in the contract with the magazine forbidding him to give away his own address.
That story put him in a bad mood. For sure he after all was lucky, compared to Fabien, he sadly thought. If nothing else he had his love, even if necessarily idealistic, with his "Paul".
He went to see if by chance he was in his aquarium. Usually he wasn't there in the afternoons, but... He looked in his telescope and saw him. He was naked, sitting on his bed his back to the window, doing nothing. It seemed he was looking at the shower door. Jacques, with a pang in his heart, understood: soon the shower door opened and a naked youth, more or less the same age as his "Paul", came out smiling and went towards the bed where Paul was waiting. He saw the unknown boy climbing the bed to embrace Paul. Jacques felt a confusion of contrasting emotions stirring up in him. So, his Paul was gay, and that couldn't but please him. And now he was making love with that boy, and that aroused in him an absurd jealousy. He thought to stop looking, but something kept him glued to the telescope.
The two boys were caressing each other, little by little heightening their reciprocal pleasure. The caresses were steadily becoming more intimate, but they weren't ready to unite. They enjoyed long preliminaries, they looked at each other, they touched each other, they fingered, and continued to mutually arouse in a long erotic play. At last the unknown boy leaned between the spread thighs of his Paul and started to give him long licks on his turgid genitals. Paul widened his legs while leaning on his back, evidently enjoying the other's attentions. The boy now took Paul's genitals between his cupped hands, swallowing the powerful rod and starting to move his head up and down in a slow regular movement. Jacques was fascinated but at the same time his jealousy increased at the same pace as Paul's excitation. He wanted to be him, there. To lavish those attentions on his boy! He wanted to be him, leaning in eager adoration over that throbbing phallic meat totem to give pleasure to his Paul.
Then he saw his boy's guest standing up on the bed, going astride Paul's pelvis, then lowering, crouching with the clear intention to impale himself with that stake. He eased himself down, guided by Paul's hands, until the contact was established. For a moment the two boys remained quite still, to prolong the wait for the crucial moment. Jacques quivered, lowering the elastic belt of his sweatpants, and grasped at his hard-on. He waited too.
The boy started to push down and took into himself Paul's rigid peg. Jacques could see the expression on his beloved's face and a silent tear shone in the corner of his eye. Other tears followed when he saw that boy starting to spring up and down his own body, while Paul was caressing his sides and stomach. He wanted to be him over there. He wanted to be with him! Then he thought that his poor legs wouldn't have allowed him to be taken that way, that his body wasn't beautiful like that of the unknown boy that was making love with Paul. And the tears were so many that his sight became blurred. He could no longer see what the two boys were doing. He just masturbated, almost with anger, crying about his own powerlessness, his solitude, his jealousy.
He came, and very nearly missed the handkerchief he had ready so not to get all dirty. He put his clothes in order, dried his tears with the back of his hand and resumed to look through the telescope.
Now they had changed position. The other was on all fours and Paul, kneeling behind him, took him with strong pushes full of vigour. Jacques couldn't help but to admire the beauty of his Paul's body in action. He quite didn't see the other boy, and he was not interested in him. But Paul, hurling himself in a strong and regular rhythm, seemed to him the quintessence of virile beauty. He admired him bowing his trunk back, pushing his pelvis back and forth, guessing the orgasm was about to shake him. He saw him bend forward, superposed to the other boy's body that went limp on the bed. He saw him let himself go on the other, still deeply sunk within him, saw him holding the boy tightly while lightly biting his back and his neck. Then he saw them move away, lie down with their bodies parallel, caressing each other. Paul's body was near the glass window and almost hid the other's body. Jacques saw the other stand up, leave the bed, lean to kiss his Paul on the mouth, and dress again while Paul remained on his bed to relax.
Now dressed, the other boy approached the bed and sat on the edge, near Paul, caressed his chest, his genitals that were going back to rest and said something...
"Did you enjoy it, Alain?"
"Yes, I like you."
"So, you want to be with me again?"
"But I can't bring you home. The governess asked for today off and usually there is always somebody at home."
"Can't we meet somewhere else?"
"Of course. I know a small hotel."
"Good. When?"
"I don't know. Soon, I hope. We will meet at the gym, OK?"
"Sure. I'm glad I came to try it. I've heard very good opinions about your gym, but I didn't know if it was true...but it's perfect! I mean, I didn't think I could find somebody like you right the first time. I like how you fuck."
"But Patrick, you always hook a person you like this way ?"
The boy laughed, ruffled Alain's hair and answered: "Yes. And as you see, at times it's fun."
"It's the first time that a boy I thought about seducing comes up to me and asks me if I feel like having sex with him, just five minutes after we met and even before introducing ourselves. How could you know I wouldn't have punched you in the face?"
"I don't know, I just took a chance. To tell the truth sometimes I did have to fight, but rarely. At most they send you to hell. But I liked you too much, you really are my type, and I thought that from you everything would have been welcomed. Even if what I had a little before was a lot better. You know that you have a really nice tool, and that you really know to use it."
"Patrick, you like just to be a bottom?"
"And to give head. Especially to somebody like you."
"And why?" Alain amused asked.
"Bah! The first time I got fucked in my mouth and in my ass was at fourteen... I enjoyed it so much... and after that, that was all I desired..."
Jacques saw Paul dress and go out of the room with his friend. He watched them talk: how much would he have loved to be able to hear what they were saying. Words of Love? Were they lovers? Who knew...
He went back to his computer and added several pages about his discovery that even his Paul was gay, but that he had another boy, and then he wrote about his jealousy. He worked on the text, completely engrossed, until evening, without realizing of the passage of the time. To write his sentiments had helped him to rationalize them, to settle the storm that arose inside him. When Jacques started to watch the boy again, he was back in his room. Jacques realized the coincidence that his secret love was gay made see him with different eyes: now he seemed more beautiful and more desirable. He also thought smiling, that he had forgiven his Paul for having a boyfriend.
Anyway in the following days he didn't see his "rival" come back in the room, and he was glad about that. He never tired of watching his Paul, and in a few days he reached the definitive draft of his new novel: he liked it very much, it was the best thing he wrote until now. He stopped to correct it and spell-check it, he duplicated the floppy, wrote a short accompanying letter and sent all to his publisher.
The answer came immediately. His publisher loved the novel and wanted to publish it for Christmas. But he asked him also for a continuation of that story, sure that the novel would be a success. Jacques smiled: yes, he knew, inside his heart, that there would be a continuation, while "his boy" lived there and he could continue to look at him...
Alain was rather happy with his new relationship. Patrick was the son of a very rich family, but was simple, likable and merry. He knew that Patrick had also other relations and this also suited him well: he felt more free that way.
Patrick told him about his first time at the boarding school. He had become the boy of an older student, Jean Luc, who had taught him to have sex and who took him daily in the school's attic. One day Jean Luc approached him with a companion. He introduced them and then just simply told Patrick to "Go upstairs with him". Then another one, and more... Once they went in the attic a threesome and Patrick felt the need to be penetrated in his mouth and in his ass at the same time and he loved it very much. When he was seventeen, he was told that now he could have a copy of the attic key and that he could look for his own boy. It was the only one time he tried to be a top (a "man" as the boys said) but he understood that he liked lots more to be a bottom (a "lad" that is). The other "men" were not at all reluctant to continue to fuck him.
When eighteen he left the school and his tenth lover. For a while he felt lost. He wanted a male. He liked the boy at the coffee shop where often he stopped, so one day he decided to ask him: "You are Antoine, right?"
"Yes, Monsieur Patrick."
"Look, Tony, for a while I've watched you. You know you're a really handsome boy? What do you think about making love with me?"
"You are joking, monsieur Patrick, ain't you?" the other answered visibly blushing.
"Not at all. I would like you to fuck me."
"You mean you want me to..."
"Yes, I'd like to give you head, and then to be fucked in my ass from you. Only, I don't have a place... I've got a hard-on, you know..."
"I have a place..." the young man said without looking at him and blushing again.
"Very good. So, when?"
"Can you come after I'm off work? At four o'clock?"
"Sure. See you later, Tony."
The boy brought him to his boarding room. He was well endowed and rode Patrick for a long while. The boy was a bisexual and had a girlfriend, but during his service in the army he was paid by some john for sex and he discovered that side of sexuality finding he enjoyed it, so now he never refused if an opportunity came.
Seeing the success of that first approach, Patrick tried again. His second man had been a taxi driver that, being gay and liking Patrick, had accepted immediately. The third one had insulted him, the fourth tried to beat him up. But now Patrick had no more problems. If he really liked somebody, if he had the chance to speak to him in private, he told him straight that he wanted to have sex with him. Several refused, somebody even in a bad way, but others, who for the sake of curiosity, who for pleasure, accepted. So Patrick wasn't lacking partners.
Jacques received the proofs to correct and the proposal for the cover: a jacket with wisteria light purple with a pearl gray circle with a drawing of a naked boy in the style of Jean Cocteau at the centre, outlined in gold. Jacques loved it because, even though his novel didn't tell about his telescope nor how he could "see" his Paul, that drawing reminded him of the telescope with which he framed the beautiful figure of his boy.
He sent back everything to his publisher. At the beginning of November his novel was published, publicized and reviewed in "Gay Pied" and other gay magazines and for sale in all the bookstores having a gay section.
For Christmas many copies were sold and he received his first cheque. It seemed that the book was really a success and even some non-gay bookstores started to sell it. The publisher wrote to him asking if he started writing the continuation of that successful story. Jacques had opened a new folder in his computer, calling it, that time "Paul-01" and had written several pages.
He also received, through the magazine's editorial office, several letters, along with some about his new novel. But despite all the letters, one made him really happy: Fabien wrote him again. The boy thanked him for his answer. In fact, he wrote, he didn't have a crisis because of his homosexuality; that he accepted serenely; but just because, as he had guessed, his father had used him like a plain pleasure object... or slave. This made him understood that it was not right for him to sell his body: in fact, if he was selling himself to unknown people, he was the first to consider himself an object. No, he wasn't upset with his father, but with himself. So he had decided to change his life. But now he asked him, could a pimp, or an ex-pimp, think he could make a normal life, and find a lover accepting him with trust and esteem? Didn't he get marked, stained, dirty forever? Who could possibly accept loving an ex-pimp? Who could possibly believe in his love? If by chance he could find a lover, did he have to confess his past or to hide it? But in hiding it, if the other found out about it, what could be worse? And if instead he confessed it, wouldn't the other refuse him? But, above all, could he really be able to give real love, after being a prostitute?
Jacques started to write him again, and again it was a very long letter where he spoke to him with open heart and encouraged him to face life with a serene confidence...