(I was talking to a friend about how it might have been to live in some past era. He, of course, was fantasizing about being a rich man in a sea of poor boys. I was thinking of how the odds of being a poor boy far outweighed the odds of being a rich man. This story arose from that conversation.

Needless to say, anything in this section of Nifty is illegal to do, and depending on where you live, may even be illegal to read. Anybody here, though, assumes complete responsibility for his own actions.)

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Timmy says as every boy is got a mother. Look, he says, even Our Lord and Savior got one, even if His dad was a ghost shows up one night and is gone the next morning. His ma carried Him inside her nine months, give Him her teats for to suck at when He were little, and at least showed up to mourn Him when they nailed Him to his cross.

And I says to Timmy, "Oh yeah? How about Barabas? Did he have a ma? And where were she when he was hanging up there next to Jesus?"

I guess it's true that each of us popped out of some cunt or another and sucked off of some teat for a time, but that don't make those whores our mothers. No real mother would let her boy get where some of us has been.

Mr. Beckman roused us up each morning. We never knowed what time, but in the cold months it still was dark. Boys as clung to their coverings, thin and spare as they were, got a taste of his switch. There was mornings when I believed I didn't care, and if I died with no mother to grieve me, it were no great matter. That switch, though, always got me up and moving.

Timmy and me is kind of like brothers, but we most likely ain't. He is ginger haired, and my hair is near black, though both of us is very fair skinned and both our eyes is blue. I can't remember a time without Timmy, nor he a time without me, and nobody ever told us nothing so there is no way to know. Just the same, we figures as I is the elder as I is bigger than he, and it was me run in with a stick or a stool or something when the bigger boys got on him.

The big boys stopped messing with me after the time I near bit off half Frank Cunningham's cock. I mean, I'll suck it if I likes you, and even let you fuck my bum, although I don't get much pleasure out of that. Some boys does, it seems, but not me. Me, I likes to be on top. Anyway, I don't much go along with nothing ain't my own choosing, least along such lines.

You know, the time before I bit him, Frank and his boys fucked the shit out of me, three at a time holding me down and the fourth up my ass. I fought it the whole way, and probably if I had give in some I wouldn't have bled so bad, but I was damned mad. Frank come back a few days later, probably thinking I was broke. I wasn't. Nobody ever broke me, and nobody ever seen him since. Maybe he bled out and died.

***

We sold stuff on the streets, which was anything Mr. Beckman got his paws on. Sometimes it was matches, sometimes sugar plums, sometimes plugs of chaw. Depended on what Mr. Beckman's big boys stole the day before.

Me and Timmy liked to work down Bank Street, except when it was chaw. Rich men don't chaw tobacco, but they needs matches for their cigars and lots of them is fat and likes their sugar plums. Sometimes a rich man give us a nickel when all we asked was a penny and said to keep the change. Well, we kept the change, and Mr. Beckman never got his paws on it. And we got meat pies, maybe, or them big old sausages from the Eye-tye grocery.

Then one day it all changed. I was down the block a bit, and I saw one of those rich guys put his paw on Timmy and kind of stroke his face. I had a feeling what he was up to, so I nipped right over to put a stop to it. I give the rich guy one of my looks. He looks back at me and smiles, and reaches out to tussle my hair, but I ducks out of his way. "We ain't like that," I tells him.

He smiles again. "I won't hurt you," he says to me. "I don't hurt boys. But it's possible," he says, "that I can improve your situations."

I didn't know what all of that meant, and I was still pretty sure he were just a rich version of Frank Cunningham, but Timmy said I should stop and listen. Well, Timmy asked me, so I did. And what he said was as how we could have new jobs at his mansion uptown, and sleep in a warm bed, and have meat at every meal. And how we would have work to do, but honest work, like polishing his boots and currying his horses.

"What else?" I asks him.

"Well," he says, "that really would be up to you."

And Timmy says to me, "Joseph, I don't want to go back to Mr. Beckman's no more. I don't want no more switch, and I don't want no more of them big boys, and I wants to live someplace warm and have me more than corn mush for my supper. Please, let's go with this gent."

So we went.

***

Timmy and me had to ride outside the phaeton as neither of us been properly bathed since summertime, and the first thing we had to do when we got to our new place was ditch our clothes out back and get washed down with lye soap to kill the fleas. Fortunate our hair was free of lice, so we didn't have to get our heads shaved. There wasn't no clothes our sizes, but they give us some old gent's shirts to wear 'til our livery was sewn.

The gent's name was Mr. George, and his house was way up in the fifties, a proper mansion on three levels not counting the cellars or the attic. Our room was in the servants' quarters up on the third level, a good part more pleasant than the loft at Mr. Beckman's, and there was back stairs we servants used to go up and down. Mr. George didn't like having maids about, so the charwomen come in mornings while he was down at Mr. Morgan's bank, and a cook come in afternoons to prepare our dinner, but the only live-in besides Timmy and me was Oscar the butler, who also cooked our breakfasts and served as coachman for the phaeton.

Oscar was a funny little man with a very dainty way about him, but not bad when you got to know him. He was happy to see us because the old footman had lit out for the West and left him kind of in the lurch. Oscar was none too fond of polishing boots, or silver, or rubbing down the horses, or mucking out the stable. He figured we would do quite nicely, and be "decorative" into the bargain provided we kept our mouths shut when there was guests about.

It was that very first night, when Timmy and me was clearing the dishes from the servants' table in the kitchen, that Oscar first put his hand up my shirt and rubbed my bottom. Well, he seemed decent enough to me, and it felt kind of good, so I just let him. It weren't like Frank Cunningham at all.

That night Timmy and me was up in our own room in a real bed instead of on a sack of straw in Mr. Beckman's loft. We had sheets and blankets and even feather pillows, and it felt like heaven.

"Joseph," Timmy says, "don't it feel good to be so clean?"

"Yes," I tells him, although I were still a little chafed from the lye soap.

"You smell so good," he tells me. "Want me to suck your willy?"

To answer him, I rolled on my back and spread my legs apart. We was both naked, having took off the shirts they gave us, and Timmy just ducked his head under the covers and took me in his mouth. Timmy has the softest, gentlest mouth that ever sucked a willy, and it felt amazing. I was not very big then, and didn't have no hair down there, so it was easy for him to get it all in at once, even licking my sack while he was at it.

I never knew my birthday or exactly how old I was, but I figure I was around twelve that night. Most boys, they say, get hair and start squirting when they is fourteen or fifteen, so twelve probably was about right. True, I wasn't a big boy yet, but it still felt real good having Timmy suck my willy.

I liked the way he grabbed my bottom with both hands and squeezed me, and how he run his lips up and down and tickled the end with his tongue. He was the best little brother ever.

It weren't long before I felt like fireworks inside, like one of them Roman candles popping balls of fire one after the other. One good thing about being a little boy instead of a big boy, though, is how you can stay stiff even after the fireworks go off.

"Stick it in me," says Timmy. "Stick it in me now."

Well, I was not about to fuck him dry, even if my willy was wet with his spit, so when he got on his knees and put his arse in the air I bent over to give him some tongue so it would be nice and slippery. It really was nice, him being so clean from his bath, just a little taste of soap but no shit. Timmy was giggling so hard I was afraid Oscar would hear us from the next room and come in to see what was going on, but if he heard something he never said.

Finally I got up and bent over him and pushed myself into his tight little hole. Like I said, I was not too big back then, so it fell out a couple times, but he just reached back and grabbed me and put me right back where he wanted me. Timmy loves it up there, and I loves putting it in him, so we are a real good pair.

Just like brothers, even if we ain't.

***

There was a tailor come next day to measure us for our livery, and I must say he touched me under my shirt a bit more than I thought was needed. That was in the morning, and after that Oscar found us some chores to do, none of them being too tough, but he never missed a chance to put his hand up

Timmy's shirt or mine. I figured it was a fair trade for a real bed and a feather pillow, so I wasn't about to complain, and anyway, there was something real nice about Oscar. He was always gentle with us, even if he was a servant and not a gentleman.

Me, I liked the horses, even though it was kind of cold and wet out there in the stables. They was just so big and so strong, but they got like babies when they was rubbed and curried. The one called Champion always got a giant hard one when I curried him, and I wanted to touch it but I was scared.

That first week, Mr. George would call us into his study when he got back from downtown every night and ask us how we was getting along. We always said we was fine, because we was, and we told him how Oscar was real nice to us. We was still wearing his old shirts because our livery wasn't done yet, but he never stuck his hand up. Well, not until Timmy went over to him and shinnied up in his lap to give him a thank you hug. Well, you couldn't blame him for sticking his hand up then.

Timmy just cuddled right in, and I was thinking maybe I should climb on too except Timmy kind of had the whole lap, so I just stood there watching while Mr. George put his hand all over Timmy's bottom and then tugged on his stiff little willy. Timmy got all worked up, like he always will, but then Mr. George took his hand away, looking kind of pale.

"You don't have to do that," he says.

"Do what?" says Timmy.

"Let me touch you like that," says Mr. George.

"But I like it," says Timmy.

Mr. George looks a little surprised, but then I tells him he can touch me too if he wants. He's a kind man, and both of us will want to make him happy.

***

Our livery come that Saturday, two suits each so one could always be clean if there was company to serve. Mostly, though, we served Mr. George. Oscar taught us how to do it the proper way, and I guess we learnt pretty good because Mr. George was always happy and giving us kisses. One night there was two old ladies come to visit, Mr. George's aunts, I think. I guessed we served nicely because they was both pinching our cheeks 'til they was near red as strawberries. We didn't get no kisses, though, 'til after they was gone -- but they was special kisses, on the mouth, with tongues touching. I think Timmy liked them better than me.

The next week we got more livery, but different. They was the same purple coats with long tails and white shirts with big purple bow ties and pants kind of the color of lilac flowers, but the pants was a little different because they didn't have no seats, and Oscar said we had to wear them with no drawers. Well, the jacket tails covered our arses, but if Oscar or Mr. George cared to stick a hand up, there would be our bare bottoms.

First I thought it was kind of odd, but then it was kind of fun. Those old ladies came back again -- the ones who pinched our cheeks -- and they never figured out they could pinch our other cheeks, bare naked, if they just reached under the tails of our coats. Mr. George reached under, though, right in front of those old ladies, and they never knew. It was hard not to start laughing, and I thought Timmy was about to one time, but he held it in. Later he told me that Mr. George had buttered a finger and poked it right up his hole. Right in front of those old ladies. We got a good laugh about that later, up in bed.

Then I poked something else up Timmy's behind and, like always, he loved it.

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Next: Timmy and Joseph give Mr. George a special treat

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