In which Danny unleashes the Grob Attack and Kevin learns that first impressions can be misleading.
Kevin
Football practice the next morning was rather more relaxed than it usually was, possibly because there wasn’t a match looming – the next game wouldn’t be until the following weekend – and possibly because it was taking place during the holidays, when everyone was in a good mood, even Mr Clifford. The usual training went on, but the session ended with a normal six-a-side game without the usual two- or three-touch only rule. And because Ryan was still away and there were an odd number of players, Mr Clifford suggested that I should play in goal for one team.
All I can say about it is that I probably made Jamie Leyton at the other end look like a superstar. But I did stop a few shots, and since nobody expected me to be any good anyway nobody gave me a hard time over my failings. The only disappointment was that everyone went straight home at the end of the practice, so I didn’t get a chance to watch them getting changed.
Chris was going out after lunch and so he had arranged for Danny Engel to come round and baby-sit. Obviously I wasn’t very happy, either about having some little kid two years younger than me telling me what to do, or about the prospect of an afternoon in the company of a boy who apparently had no sense of humour at all and whose only topic of conversation – if a collection of one word mumbles can be called a conversation – was chess. I thought an afternoon at the dentist’s would probably be more fun.
Chris spent a couple of minutes talking quietly to him and then turned to me.
“Make sure you do whatever he tells you,” he said. “You know what will happen if you don’t. I’ll be back around six, I think. Be good!”
And he gave me a big cheesy grin and left, closing the door behind him.
“Well, as we’re stuck with each other I suppose we might as well play some chess,” said Engel. “I assume you’ve got a set?”
“In the bedroom,” I said.
“Go and get it, then… no, hang on, I’d better come with you. I’m not supposed to let you out of my sight.”
“Bloody hell, I’m only going to be gone fifteen seconds!” I protested.
“I don’t care. Your brother said I have to stay with you. Besides, this place is a bit different from mine, and I’d like to see what your room looks like.”
So I took him up to my room.
“Crumbs,” he said, “this is about three times the size of my room…”
“’Crumbs’?”
“Yes, crumbs. We’re not all like you, Stratford: some of us can manage to get through life without swearing all the time.”
“Okay. Actually that’s sort of impressive. I know I swear a bit – not as much as Jason the Microbe, of course, but still… okay, Engel, I’ll try not to swear while you’re here.”
He looked surprised, as if he’d expected me to say something sarcastic instead, but he quickly resumed his usual expressionless look.
“Why is there a camera pointing at your bed?”’ he asked. “Are you so big-headed that you like seeing yourself on film all the time?”
“God, no… sorry, I mean ‘gosh, no’. That’s one of the ones Chris and Mark set up to stop me from… you know, what you’re here to stop me doing. There’s one in our bathroom, too.”
“What, so it watches you getting ready for bed and then keeps going all night long? That must be embarrassing…how do you know your brother won’t put it on the net, or something?”
“I don’t, and if I keep… you know, doing it, maybe he will. But I trust him not to as long as I keep to the rules. Now, are we going to play up here, or shall we go downstairs? There’s a better table in the study…”
So we took the chess set downstairs and set it up on the small table I normally used for doing my homework. Engel had brought his chess clock and some score sheets, so he was obviously going to do this properly.
“I’ve been learning a couple of new openings,” he told me, “and I want to try them out. I’d sooner not use them in matches until I’ve worked on them a bit…”
He pulled his fountain pen out of a pocket and wrote the date and our names at the top of the first score-sheet, and within ten seconds of the pen appearing there was an ink stain on his right hand. And ten seconds after that he’d scratched his head and transferred a smear of it onto his forehead.
I wondered if he had done it deliberately to distract me. Chess players aren’t above that sort of thing, of course: our teacher had told us that in the old days, before smoking was banned, players used to puff noxious tobacco smoke at each other, or - and this still happens - slurp cups of tea noisily, or play mind games like doing the Times crossword between moves, as much as to say ‘I can beat you without bothering to think about my moves in advance’. But I didn’t think Engel was really like that, and in fact I was pretty sure he had no idea he had ink on his face, and so I tried to ignore it and got on with the game.
In the course of that game I discovered one reason why he always looked so scruffy: he fidgeted all the time, tugging at his shirt, running his fingers through his hair, pulling his ear and biting his nails, and by the time we’d finished the first game – which I won – he looked as if he’d been pushed face first through a hedge – a hedge in which blueberries were growing, because the ink smears had multiplied.
We spent a while on the post-mortem, in the course of which he decided that his opening was basically sound but that he hadn’t developed his pieces as quickly as he should have done, and then swapped colours and set the board up once more.
“Let’s blitz this one,” he said, setting the clock to give us five minutes each.
I quite like this sort of chess: each player has only five minutes to make all his moves, and it means that if you make a mistake your opponent doesn’t always have time to analyze and identify the error. But of course that cuts both ways…
I thought I knew a bit about all the usual openings, but I’d never before been faced with a player whose first move was to shove his king’s knight’s pawn forward two spaces.
“What the hell is that?” I demanded, staring at it.
“Language,” he reprimanded me. “It’s called the Grob Attack. Just play.”
It ought to have been complete rubbish: it’s against all the basic principles to weaken the pawn formation without developing any pieces, but I didn’t have time to waste, so I just shoved the queen’s pawn forwards. His second move made no attempt to defend his pawn, so I took it. A couple of moves later I was in trouble, and ten moves after that I resigned, which is something that hardly ever happens in blitz chess. And for the first time ever I actually saw him smile.
“What was that cra… I mean, that rubbish?” I said. “You can’t play moves like that!”
“It worked, though, didn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but only because we were playing blitz. I’m sure that if I’d had time to think about it I’d have found a way to beat it.”
“But that’s the point – you didn’t have time. Yes, it’s unsound, and I wouldn’t use it in a school match, but it’s perfect for quick-time games. It’s best not to take the pawn, actually… do you want to try again?”
So I tried again and he still won, even though I didn’t take the pawn this time.
“Maybe I will use it in matches,” he said, grinning once more.
We played a couple more games, this time without the five minute limit, and then we played some basically silly variations on the normal game: barrel chess, where it’s possible to go off on one side of the board and reappear at the other, as though the board were cylindrical; hole chess, where each player secretly designated one square as a ‘hole’, with the result that any opposing piece landing on it falls down the hole and is lost; and kamikaze chess, where the idea is to lose all your pieces as quickly as possible. We tried playing with a camel and a zebra instead of knights, and then we got really adventurous and tried inventing our own game using two boards and a few extra pieces. It was actually a lot of fun.
By the end of all this Engel looked as messy as he usually did at the end of a school day, and I decided it was time to do something about it. So I led him up to my parents’ room and made him stand in front of my mother’s full-length mirror.
“Look at yourself,” I enjoined him. “What do you think you look like?”
He shrugged. “Okay, I look a bit messy – but who cares? There’s nobody here except us, and even if there was anyone else here, why should I care what they think?”
“Because… I don’t know, really. But I reckon you could look good if you cleaned yourself up and put some decent clothes on. Maybe then people would…”
“What?”
“Well, talk to you more, and stuff. I never see you with anyone at school – you’re always on your own. Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Not really. It was like that at my old school, too. I’m just different.”
“How?”
“How many ways do you want? I’m Jewish; I don’t like football, either playing or watching; I play chess; I like school; I can speak proper English, unlike most of the morons I went to primary school with. They just thought I was a nerd, and so they ignored me, when they weren’t hitting me. Here the other kids just ignore me, which is better. Why would I want to get noticed?”
“Oh… but not everyone is like that. I mean, I’m a bit of a dweeb, I suppose, but I get on all right with the other kids in my class most of the time. And like I said before, sooner or later you’re going to start looking at girls, and you’ll need to smarten yourself up then – so why not start now and see what happens?”
He shrugged again. “Well… all right, then. What do you suggest?”
“Maybe you should start by having a shower and changing your clothes – these have got ink all over them, just like your face has. I’ll find some of my brother’s stuff for you to wear while we wash these – he’s a bit taller than you, but I don’t think that’ll matter too much. Why don’t you go and get in the shower, and while you’re getting that ink out of your hair I’ll go and put your stuff in the wash and fish out something of Chris’s for you to wear until it’s ready.”
“Okay, then. Where’s the bathroom?”
So I took him to our bathroom.
“I suppose it would be okay for us to block the camera,” I said. “We can tell Chris it was because you were in the shower, so he knows it wasn’t me trying to... you know.”
“Or I could have a bath instead,” he said. “The camera is pointing at the shower, not the bath. Actually I’d prefer a bath – that’s what I usually do at home. I’ve never been in a bathroom that has both, though… you lot must be rolling in cash.”
I shrugged. “My dad’s doing okay, sure,” I said. “But he works all the time, so we hardly ever see him. Sometimes I wish he just did an ordinary nine to five job, even if it meant living somewhere smaller. Anyway, chuck your clothes outside the door when you’re ready to get in, and I’ll put them in the wash.”
I turned to go, but as I reached the door he stopped me.
“Hang on,” he said. “This is a trick to get some time away from me, isn’t it? I can guess what you’ll do as soon as I’m in the bath: you’ll be off somewhere perving again, won’t you?”
“No, I won’t! There’s a camera in my room, remember?”
“So you won’t do it in your room – you’ll do it on the sofa downstairs or somewhere. Sorry, Stratford, I can’t let you do that. You’ll have to stay here while I’m in the bath.”
“But you don’t want me seeing you in the bath, surely?”
“It wouldn’t bother me too much – it’s not as if there’s anything wrong with me. But you can sit on the toilet and look the other way – as long as I can see you I’ll know you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t.”
He started running the bath, adding some of the bubble-generating liquid we use sometimes, and I obediently went and sat on the toilet, though I didn’t look the other way. Once the bath was ready he got undressed, chucking his clothes towards the door, and got into the bath. Because the tap end was furthest away from me he had his back to me when he was getting in, which was a pity…
He started to wash and I sat quietly watching him. After a bit he called me over.
“Have I got rid of all the ink on my face?” he asked.
“Not quite. Give me the flannel.”
I took it and carefully cleaned the surviving ink smears from his right ear and the corner of his right eye. The bubbles hid him from the waist down, but I could see that he was incredibly skinny: every rib was clearly outlined.
“You should eat more,” I said. “I know I’m pretty skinny, but you’re almost a skeleton.”
“Better too thin than too fat,” he said.
“Better neither,” I argued. “Okay, I think that’s got rid of the ink on your face. Sit still and I’ll wash it out of your hair, too.”
I picked up the spray attachment, aimed it away from his body while I got the temperature right and then soaked his hair, and then I handed him the spray.
“Hold that and close your eyes,” I said, and I started to rub shampoo into his hair.
I’d never actually washed someone else’s hair before, and it was interesting. I did what it said on the bottle – wash, rinse and repeat – and by the time I’d rinsed for the second time I was confident that it was as clean as it was going to get.
“I can manage myself, you know,” he said as I replaced the spray on top of the taps.
“I know. But it’s more relaxing letting someone else do the work, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Good. Now, are you finished, or would you like to soak for a little longer?”
“I’ll give it five more minutes, I think.”
“Okay.” And I went and sat down again. Engel washed himself in a fairly desultory fashion and then lay back for a bit.
“What’s the time?” he asked, eventually.
“About half past three.”
“Then I suppose I should get out. It’s nice here, but…no. Can you find me a towel?”
I went to the cupboard and found him a medium sized towel, and he stood up without making any attempt to hide his body from me and started to dry his hair with it. When he’d done that he started to dry his shoulders, and since he was facing me that gave me a great view.
“Wow, Engel, you’re getting some hair!” I said.
“Huh?”
“You know, there,” I said, pointing to the little dark hairs at the base of his cock. There weren’t all that many, but they were plainly visible, and his cock wasn’t bad for an eleven-year-old, either: there were certainly boys in Chris’s football team with smaller ones. And Engel’s looked nice, too: somehow the way the uncovered tip was a different colour to the skin on the shaft fascinated me.
“Yes, I know. So what? It’s normal, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but I think most boys only start when they’re older than you are now.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “Could you dry my back for me?”
He climbed out of the bath and faced away from me, so I took the towel and carefully dried his back, and then his bum, and then his legs.
“Turn round,” I said, and to my surprise he did, which allowed me to look at him close up while I dried his feet and legs. Yes, it was definitely interesting… and then I felt a twitch between my legs and looked away quickly, because if I got an erection in this situation… well, let’s just say I don’t think he would have been impressed.
I handed him back the towel and went to collect his clothes, and when I turned round again he was doing up the towel around his waist.
“I suppose we’d better get my stuff in the machine first,” he said. “I don’t know how long your machine takes, but probably I ought to be wearing my own stuff again when your brother gets home.”
So we went down to the laundry room and I chucked all his clothes into the washer, added the liquid and softener and started the machine. Then I took him back up to Chris’s room and found him some clothes, including socks and underwear, and he removed the towel and handed it to me, once again making no attempt to cover himself…
Danny
Stratford was looking at my genitals again. It didn’t bother me, though it did strike me as a bit strange: I’ve never really understood why other people’s bodies, and that area of other people’s bodies in particular, seem to interest people so much. I’ve seen boys in my class trying to peep at each other when we’re getting changed for Games, but I don’t really understand why. Perhaps I could understand more if there were some girls to look at, though to be honest I’m not really interested in girls’ bodies, either. The special classes we had in my last year at primary school suggested that we would probably start to get interested in girls fairly soon, but it hasn’t happened to me yet. The class also said that some boys might get interested in other boys, or girls in other girls, but that hasn’t happened to me, either. Maybe there’s something wrong with me – after all, some of the other boys in my class are definitely interested in sex. Or maybe I’m still just too young.
Anyway, Stratford seemed to be interested in me, because he kept looking at me while I was choosing something to wear. If the classes are right I suppose that means he’s gay, which probably isn’t that easy for him: even if the classes said it was normal, quite a lot of boys in my class don’t seem to think it is, because they call some of the other boys ‘poof’ or ‘queer’ and things like that… anyway, like I said, it doesn’t really bother me, so I didn’t say anything. Instead I found some clothes that weren’t too big – Chris Stratford is taller and heavier than me, but perhaps his brother had found some clothes that he’d grown out of, because they didn’t fit too badly.
Once I was fully dressed Stratford gave me a comb and told me to comb my hair. I normally don’t bother with a comb except when I’m going to synagogue (and I wouldn’t bother then either if my mother didn’t moan at me about it), but I took the comb and pulled it through my hair.
“No, not like that,” said Stratford. “Give it here.”
So I handed him the comb and he combed my hair for me, combing it back rather than forward. Then he led me back into his parents’ room and stood me in front of the mirror.
“What do you think?” he asked.
I looked at myself. I certainly looked different: earlier I’d been a scruffy kid with dirty, uncombed hair, ink on my face and hand and my shirt half-untucked and with ink on the collar. Now the shirt was neat, clean and untucked all round, the face and hands were clean and my hair looked neat and tidy. I thought my mother would approve, but I wasn’t sure that it was really me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It looks as if I’m going to meet the queen or something.”
“Well, I think you look good. If I was out somewhere with you I’d be proud to be with you. Earlier I’d have pretended not to know you.”
“Really? ‘If you were out somewhere with me…’ are you talking about going on a date?”
“No! No, of course not! I just meant…you look nice like that, that’s all.”
“Oh, okay. Of course, I’m not sure I’d want to be seen with you: you need to get your hair sorted out, and maybe a new pair of glasses – those make you look really nerdy.”
“All right, then: if you keep looking like you do now, I’ll try to sort my hair out. I don’t know that I can do a lot about the glasses, though – I can’t afford a new pair at the moment. But I can take them off if you like.”
And he did, and actually it did make him look a bit less of a dork. A lot less, if I’m honest.
“Problem is I can’t see anything like this,” he said. “But I suppose if I’m not going anywhere it won’t matter too much. So – what do you want to do now?”
“Well…can you show me round the house?” I asked. “I want to know how big this place really is.”
So he put his glasses back on and gave me the guided tour, and that place really is massive: there are only four people living there, and according to Stratford his dad is away a lot, and yet there were six bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a whole heap of rooms downstairs that my house hasn’t got, like the study where they do their homework, a separate dining room, a laundry room, a ‘pantry’ (whatever that is), and two living rooms. And the garden was huge, too. The only reason we didn’t stay there very long was because it was still quite cold out.
We went back indoors and played another couple of games of our newly-invented two-board chess variation, and by the time we’d done that my clothes were clean and dry. Stratford insisted on ironing them for me, saying that I might as well look as smart as possible, and once he’d done that he led me back up to his parents’ room, presumably so that I could check myself out in the mirror after I’d got changed.
I removed Chris’s clothes one by one, folding each one up and handing it to his brother, who piled them on a chair near the door. Once I’d removed the boxers and passed them across I reached for my own briefs, but Stratford stopped me.
“Wait,” he said, and he guided me in front of the mirror. “Just look how thin you are! Don’t you think you’re too skinny?”
I looked at myself. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at myself completely naked in a full-length mirror like this before, and it felt strange… and kind of interesting, too.
Stratford came and stood behind me and put his hands lightly on my chest.
“See?” he said, quietly. “I can feel every rib like this…” and he started to run his hands gently across my chest.
It felt…strange, I suppose, but a nice sort of strange. I don’t know why, but it felt sort of warm, and I didn’t really want him to stop. His thumbs traced the ridges formed by my ribs and I watched him doing it to me in the mirror and wondered why it felt so interesting.
“And your tummy’s like a cave,” he went on, slipping one hand onto it and letting his thumb trace around my belly button. “I bet if you look down you can’t even see it, it’s so far behind your ribs.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was aware that my mouth was dry.
“You really need to eat a bit more,” he said, almost whispering. “Mind you, at least your skin looks healthy: you haven’t got any zits, even though your body’s starting to change.”
“Change?” I croaked.
“Yes – you know, the hair. Your skin’s really pale, so you can see them easily. Look.”
The tip of his middle finger brushed lightly against the little hairs at the base of my penis, and I gave a sort of shiver. This ought to have been extremely embarrassing, and yet it wasn’t, somehow: instead it felt… actually I can’t really describe it, but it felt really good. He moved his hand from side to side, barely touching the tiny hairs, and I felt something happening: my penis was starting to grow.
Obviously I know why that happens if you’re with a girl, and I know that sometimes it happens for no reason at all, and that it’s completely natural, but it isn’t something I’d want to let anyone else see. And yet I still didn’t move – it was almost as if I’d been hypnotised, but not against my will.
He went on just barely letting the tip of his finger tickle the little hairs, and my penis kept growing until it was sticking up properly. Normally when that happens I just try to ignore it and think about something else, and after a bit it always goes down again. But there was no chance of thinking about anything else this time.
“That looks really good,” he said. “And you’re definitely bigger than a lot of eleven-year-olds – it has to be at least nine or ten centimetres. Don’t you think it looks good?”
“Well… I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it. Do you think it looks good?”
“Definitely. And it looks really hard, too. I wonder how hard it is?” And, moving very slowly and giving me every opportunity to shout ‘stop!’ he slipped his hand around my erection, took hold of it and squeezed gently.
I didn’t shout ‘stop!’: instead I gave a gasp of shock. My whole body starting to tremble, and for a moment I thought my knees were going to give way. I’ve never felt anything like it. Obviously I’ve held it myself while I was washing it in the bath, but it had never felt remotely like this: my heart seemed to beating a lot faster than usual, and I felt hot, as though I had walked out into bright sunlight on the hottest day of summer. I could feel him standing close behind me, his other hand resting on my chest, and it was the most amazing moment of my life: for the first time I got a glimpse of why older people think that sex is such an important subject.
I looked at him in the mirror, and that seemed to break the spell: he flushed, let go of me and stepped back.
“Oh, God, Engel, I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I really shouldn’t have done that…” He looked really bad, as if he were going to burst into tears at any moment.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It was nice, actually. I don’t know why, but it felt sort of warm.”
“Really? You’re not mad at me?”
I shook my head. He looked unconvinced, but then seemed to pull himself together a bit.
“So… you’re not going to tell Chris?” he asked.
“Of course not! Why would I want to tell him that? It’s nothing to do with him – I wasn’t even wearing any of his clothes at the time. But… why did you do it?”
“I don’t really know. I was looking at you, and you looked really nice – even if you are too thin – and I just wanted to touch you and to feel your skin. And then when you started to go stiff I just couldn’t stop myself…. I know I shouldn’t have, but…” He shrugged.
“It’s all right. So – is it hard, being gay?”
“Oh! Well… I suppose it’s pretty obvious after that, isn’t it? Well, it’s not too bad so far because hardly anyone knows about it, just my brother and Mark. And now you, I suppose. But I wouldn’t want the other boys in my form to find out – I already get treated like a skinny short-sighted nerd, and it would probably get worse if they knew I was gay, too.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone. But do you really think I look nice? I mean, you’re right about me being a bit thin, and my face is all bony…”
“Well, okay, I suppose it is, but I still think you’re good-looking. And you’ve got nice eyes, too – I like the contrast between black hair and blue eyes.”
He seemed to have recovered a bit – at least, now he was looking at me properly again. My penis had softened, but I hadn’t started to get dressed yet, and for some reason I didn’t really want to – after all, this was the first time that anyone had ever said that I look good, and I thought that he really liked looking at me I could let him do so for a bit longer.
It was strange: until today I’d hardly known him – although we play on the same chess team we’ve never really spoken to each other before, and then when I had found out a bit about him – when his brother told me about his dirty habits – I’d only thought bad things about him. But this afternoon had been fun: I’d enjoyed springing the Grob Attack on him, and it had been brilliant actually inventing a new sort of chess game with him. He was obviously quite clever, and once I started talking to him properly I found that I liked him. Okay, playing with yourself still seems dirty, but if it’s really true that a lot of people do it – and that’s what those classes I went to last year said – then maybe it isn’t a good reason not to like him. I suppose he’s like me, in that he’s nerdy and skinny and hasn’t got a lot of friends, so perhaps it would be okay to be friends with him. And he likes chess, too, so we’ve got something in common.
“Don’t you think you ought to get dressed?” he asked.
“Do you want me to?”
“Well, not really.”
“Then I won’t – at least… how long have we got before your brother comes home?”
He looked at his watch. “About an hour, I should think.”
“Then there’s no hurry, is there? In fact… why don’t you get undressed, too? Then we can see which of us really is the skinniest.”
He hesitated, but only for a moment.
“Okay, then,” he said, and he began to get undressed. He hesitated again when he got down to his underwear, and it was obvious why: his penis was hard.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ve already seen me looking like that. Now come and stand in front of the mirror.”
We stood side by side and looked at ourselves, and we agreed that I was slightly thinner, but not by much. In fact we were quite like each other in other ways, too: we both had blue eyes and dark hair, though my hair is black and his is dark brown, and we both looked as if we couldn’t punch our way out of a paper bag. Of course, in other ways we were quite different: he was about eight inches taller than me, for a start. And his hair was wavy while mine is flat, and of course he wears glasses, and he isn’t circumcised. Obviously his is a bit bigger than mine, especially since his was hard at the moment, and he had more hair, too.
“You look okay,” I told him. “Especially if you lose the glasses. I wouldn’t be ashamed of you if we were seen together, anyway.”
“Thanks,” he said. “And you look good, especially when you smile. Why don’t you do it more often?”
I shrugged. “I suppose I don’t often have a lot to smile about... although I have had fun this afternoon. I won’t mind doing this again if your brother asks me to.”
“Make sure you tell him that, then! And… I suppose we ought to get dressed, just in case he comes back early.”
So we did that, and once we were dressed he stood me in front of the mirror again and showed me what I looked like when my clothes were clean and pressed. To be honest my own clothes didn’t look as good as Chris’s on me – okay, I suppose his are more expensive, while mine come from the supermarket – but I still looked a lot better than I had with ink everywhere. And when I admitted this Stratford took me through to his bedroom, went to his desk and gave me a really nice-looking ballpoint pen in a proper presentation box.
“I never use this,” he said. “Why don’t you try it for a week or so? It’s got to be better than having ink all over your face and clothes all the time.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “This looks expensive.”
“Not really. Go on, Engel, try it – please?”
“You can call me Daniel, or Danny, if you want,” I said. “Hardly anyone does, but I’d like it if you would.”
“I will if you promise to try the pen.”
“Okay, then, I will,” I said, putting it in my pocket.
“Good. Then I suppose you’d better call me Kevin – if you don’t mind, that is: you can still call me ‘Stratford’ if you prefer.”
“No, I think I’d like to use your proper name… except maybe I’d better not when your brother’s around, because if he thinks I’m being soft on you he might not want me to watch you any more.”
“Good thinking. And talking of that, I need a pee. Can I go on my own, or are you going to come and make sure I don’t misbehave?”
“You know I can’t let you out of my sight,” I said, grinning at him.
“Fair enough.” And he led me back to the bathroom.
Of course I didn’t actually watch him pee: I just waited by the door until he’d done it and rinsed his hands, and then we went back downstairs and played some more wide screen chess until his brother came home.
“Did he behave himself?” he asked me.
“Yes, pretty much. He swears sometimes, but I suppose I can put up with that,” I told him. “I wouldn’t mind if you asked me to do that again, anyway.”
“Great!” said Chris. “I’ll give you a call later, then – we might need you over the weekend.”
So I said goodbye to them and walked to the bus-stop to catch the bus home. It had been a really interesting afternoon: I’d expected it to be dreadfully boring, because I thought Stratford – Kevin – was a dull sort of boy who was only remotely interesting because he plays chess: apart from that all I knew about him was that he was supposed to be a pervert who plays with himself. I’d only agreed to do it because I had absolutely nothing else to do, and because I wanted someone to practise my new openings with. And instead it had turned out to be the best time I’d had for ages: Kevin turned out to be a nice boy after all, and as for what had happened in his parents’ room, that had opened my eyes to a whole new world. So I definitely wouldn’t mind if Chris wanted me to look after his brother again – and maybe next time he could teach me a bit more about why being touched like that felt so incredible…
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So now there's another relationship getting under way that we'll need to keep an eye on – and once again Kevin has emerged successfully from an apparently unpromising situation.
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Copyright 2013: all rights reserved. Please do not reprint, repost or otherwise reproduce this or any part of it anywhere without my written permission.
David Clarke