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 sixteen
`The cynic in me has come to Shaftesbury to bury Sebastian Lansbury's revival of 1970's psychodrama Equus for, on the surface, there is much to dislike about his production.
The decision to cast the barely sixteen year old Jacob Wills as Alan Strang seemed designed purely to generate maximum column inches by exposing, (quite literally), a barely legal actor on stage, while the fact that this production was financed by Hollywood Hunk Kasper Gundarson, (not a man normally associated the arts), gave the whole affair the whiff of a credibility grasping vanity project.
But as much as I want to I cannot bury Equus because this is, quite simply, the show of the year.
For all his boyband good looks, Wills has form in drawing fine performances from dark material, his turn as a series of troubled teens in the underrated season of NetPixs shorts `Why does everyone hate me?' showed him as adept at displaying the traumas of youth while his portrayal of a young soldier sexually assaulted and then shot for desertion on Armistice Day `In Dawn's Cold Light' was heartbreaking, but here he is simply electrifying.
Brought before local magistrates for the horrifying crime of blinding six horses Strang's story is slowly revealed through a series of conversations and flashbacks during his sessions with repressed Psychiatrist, Martin Dysart.
Resisting the urge to drench the night in gothic horror, Lansbury builds the narrative slowly. The Wills we meet at his part-time job at a local appliance shop seems bland to the point of dullness, his hair neatly parted to one side and his answers delivered in a flat monotone suggesting he is a wholly unremarkable `boy next door'. But those bright green eyes, lingering and darting, ever watchful, leave the audience unsettled.
And that feeling only grows. A flashback to a family dinner with his devout mother and less than devout father is excruciating, with the parents passive-aggressive debating of the former's religious devotion soundtracked by the creaking of the latter's polished leather shoes. The quiet clicks of cutlery placed on china and clinks of glasses replaced on the wooden table ratchet up the tension until becomes almost unbearable, and it is initially a relief when Alan retreats silently to his bedroom.
The relief does not last long as we are first introduced to the object of Strang's fascination, a large picture of a horse's head with huge staring eyes. "Nothing mother," Alan calls through the door as the woman demands to know what he is doing and the fleeting look he gives the audience, (one of lust, disgust, fear and fury), as he speaks those words is enough to make the man next to me shudder.
And Wills is just getting started. His conversations with Dysart become ever more intense, the older man's fascination with his young patient growing as more of Strang's past and infatuation with horses is revealed. Lansbury skilfully delivers this via both conventional flashbacks and windows into Strang's internal world, and Wills begins to prowl the stage as we enter his mind. A pretty young girl takes a liking to him but she seemingly can't compete with his sexual attraction to horses, and the look on his face as he caresses the side of one of the wicker headed men who portray the beasts, and purrs out his love of their thick coats is terrifyingly intense. By this point the man next to me was wincing, and a darting lick of Wills small red tongue as he eulogises the smell of their sweat brings a ripple revulsion from the audience.
We go deeper into Strang's past and Wills take us darker still. His new job at a stable gives him access to the source of his lust and he fixates on one horse in particular, stripping naked and `riding' the beast who he imagined to be his equine god. The nudity of the main character is of course what this piece is famous for, but Wills shows no signs of being phased by the scenes and strips his clothes as if cleansing himself for a religious ritual. It seems almost illicit to talk of his physique but Wills is truly beautiful in those moments, until he turns those green eyes back on you and pins you to your seat with the intensity of his glare. It almost a relief when the girl tempts him to a porno theatre to take in a show as, for a moment, you can imagine him as any other adolescent boy, but the pair meet Alan's father and any hope of `normality' is lost.
From there on it is only darkness. The two try to copulate in the stable but under the gaze of his equine god, (his watcher), Strang cannot perform. Humiliated he rages at her to leave him before begging his deity for forgiveness. In the hands of lesser actors it would all come across as ridiculous, perhaps even laughable, but Wills is mesmerising as his rage, fear and disgust build to a crescendo and he takes up his steel spike.
The blinding scene, which reduced more than one person in the audience to tears, is almost too painful to watch as Wills twists and gouges the spike again and again. The final horse, the object of Strang's adoration waits patiently at the front of the stage, back to the audience, and more than one member of the public covered their eyes as Wills stalked balefully forward to complete his task. The way Wills twists that elfin face into something monstrous makes that understandable but it is a mistake none the less, as they will miss a young actor delivering the climax to something quite special.
Because, while Wills may have delivered you into the heart of darkness, the journey he takes you on is unforgettable.'
Review of Jacob Wills in Equus - London Post.
The Arden Hotel does a good after show supper. It's not really intended for the bums on seats at the theatre, most of those go up the road a bit to the Dirty Duck. Mostly it's theatre people in the Arden, and as both Brat and myself counted as theatre people, even if we'd only been bums on seats this evening, we were not politely asked to leave.
It was a couple of months since Equus, Brat needing a good long rest after that exhausting show, and a decent rest and healing for both of us after our traumatic curtain call to that.
We'd gone, not to Main House, but to the smaller place where they did rarely done Restoration drama, and we'd sat through a very well staged and directed 'Witch of Edmonton'. Not exactly a masterpiece but worth seeing as it was so rarely revived.
Jacob was killing a steak and I was demolishing plaice when we were approached by a figure I knew of, but had not met.
"Mr Williams, I believe, and Jacob Wells." the figure said, "What brings you to Stratford?"
"A Witch," I smiled politely, "And a very well done Witch it was. May I offer congratulations, Mr Monk?"
Brat looked confused, he was less well up on stage directors than I was.
"Mr Monk," I explained to him, "Is the last of the dinosaur breed. He's fairly recently hatched, twenty eight, is it?" Monk nodded that it was. "And has recently been appointed Artistic Director of the esteemed establishment over the road. A real pleasure to meet you, Mr Monk."
"Gwyl, please," Monk beamed, "And may I have the temerity to call you Richard?"
"Not if you wish to be considered a friend, and I do hope that as a man as besotted with the bard as you are, you would wish to be a friend. And if you do, then it is 'Rich', " I said.
"Read the reviews of your Equus," Monk said to Brat, instantly involving him in the conversation. "Saw it as well. Permit me to say it was first rate."
Brat beamed; he always did like a bit of praise.
"Shakespeare interest you, by any chance?" he asked. Brat sniggered and pointed his fork at me. "Don't think he'd want to take me to the theatre if I said it didn't," he cheekily waved the bit of steak on his fork in my direction.
"What, dare I ask, would you say was Rich's favourite play?"
"No problem," Brat shrugged, "Dick Two. That right Mr Williams?"
I nodded. Of course it was right.
"Lovely poetry," Monk agreed. "And what about The Tempest?"
"Got some good lines," I agreed.
"One you've never done, I believe. Why's that, dare I ask?"
"You may dare," I said, beginning to quite like Gwyl Monk, "And the reason is because no-one has ever asked me to."
"And were they to ask?"
"Then I'd say yes. If I could do it my way."
"And what way is that?"
"Simply, with Ariel and not Prospero as the puppet master."
"Intriguing," Monk mused. "Want to do it here like that?"
I almost swallowed a fish bone.
"And even if you don't, is there any chance I could talk Jacob into doing Ariel?"
It was Brat's turn to choke.
"I'd have to think about it," I told them both, and think about it I did. Think about it and talked to Mr Williams about it for most of the rest of our trip.
"I don't want to repeat Puck," I told Mr Williams, "anyway I couldn't be that Puck anymore." While I was still described as 'elfin' in articles and reviews I was no longer the fourteen year old who had flipped and tumbled his way around the set of 'Dream'.
"Nothing
like a repeat of Puck." We were staying overnight in the Arden, driving
back to Berkshire not an option after a good meal.
Brat was, to all intents and purposes, living with me full time there now. He
was sixteen, had no school commitments, nothing to keep him in London, and
whilst his mother wasn't exactly overjoyed that her son had chosen to live with
a man three and a half times his own age, she'd put up no objections.
"You've taken him this far, Mr Williams," she'd said, "I believe I can trust you to take him the rest of the way."
"Ariel isn't some frisky spirit," I explained "Ariel is the spirit of the island, the magic island that Prospero got washed up on. True, Ariel is an androgynous spirit, but that, I believe, is in the age old tradition of Celtic magic. To be a druid, a real one, Merlin type one if you like, you had to be able to make what was called 'a song of being'. 'I am a worm in the earth, a fish in the sea. I am a bird in the sky and a lizard on a rock', that sort of thing. And it always had to end with 'I am man and I am woman', followed by your name. And you didn't just have to say the words, the words had to be true. That's right," I said as Brat struggled to make sense of this, "You actually had to be a lizard, fish, mollusc, worm, bird or whatever. Seriously powerful magicians those ancient druids were supposed to be. And the man and woman bit? Well, perhaps that meant you had to know what it is like to be fucked as well as to fuck."
A touch of the really basic, I thought, may aid understanding.
You can't smoke, and certainly not smoke weed in a hotel room, so we had wandered out, across the road and into the park by the river. Brat, drew deeply on our spliff, looked me in the eye and blew out smoke in a very resigned sort of way.
"I know, I know," I knew exactly what his look meant, he still had the albatross of virginity hanging round his neck, "I just have to get my head round doing it, that's all. Look," I tried as he raised his eyebrows at me, "Somehow I got it into my head that if I did that deed, then it had to mean that I owned you. I never wanted to own you."
Feeble and must have sounded nothing like I meant it to sound.
"You own half of me, and the other half," I told him with a smile, thinking quoting Shakespeare in Stratford might be able to stir his passions.
"I need it soon," I told him urgently, taking another long drag on the spliff before handing it back, "and I've been wearing this like we agreed."
I tapped the back of my skinny black jeans and gave him a smirk. In truth wearing the small plug in my arse while we were out and about was no trouble, in fact it gave me a kinky little thrill to know my hole was filled with a rubber plug while I was out shopping or doing some other normal activity. I had been wearing it all evening, Mr Williams having put it in me before we headed out to the theatre earlier, and wearing it for a few hours meant my boxer briefs were damp with pre-cum from the stimulation the rubber gave my insides. The plug was small enough to be comfortable and after a while you would forget you were wearing it until a sudden movement, or sitting down, suddenly reminded you via a jolt of pleasurable discomfort through your insides. The woman to the side of me had given me a strange look as I had bounced up from my theatre seat with a high pitched yelp after first taking my seat, and Mr Williams had muffled a laugh at my discomfort.
"I know," I grinned, his little yelp when he sat down had almost had me giggling. "You are still tight though, though I admit it that now doesn't feel like I'm never going to see a particular finger again when I suck you."
Brat loved being fingered when he was sucked, and I liked fingering him as well - I got a much bigger mouthful of ambrosia when I did.
"You need to loosen me up then," I told him grumpily, taking another drag on the spliff. I was sixteen and a half now, but not getting my own way still put me in a mood.
"You make it sound so commonplace." Surely this ultimate act wasn't something that should be talked of in that way? "Isn't that what that thing in you is supposed to do?"
"This kind of just gets you started," I replied slightly testily, "it makes sure I don't end up in hospital when you do it. Trust me, when you start, my hole will get bigger for you."
I had no way of knowing that for sure, but wanted him to complete our love. In truth I understood what he meant by `owning me', by completing the act, he would become my first, and even if our relationship ended, there would be no replacing him. I would be his as much as he would mine.
"You'll need to help me," and that made me sound like what I was, an old man asking a boy for help in fucking that boy. How pathetic! "I'm terrified I'll make a complete mess of it."
I smiled, as ever my affection for him overcoming any annoyance.
"You will be fine," I stroked his cheek and, as we were alone and it was dark, moved my mouth into his and gave him a lingering kiss. We were virtually the same height now, him retaining an inch on me, and while his frame was unmistakably broader than mine, the sight of us kissing would not cause so many glances in liberal Stratford.
"Love you Brat," and I did and he knew I did, and simply because I loved him I knew I had to fuck him. "Hurt you enough by depriving you of all the fun you should have had in your prime teen years," I smiled, "Stupid, ignorant old fool that I am. Got to get rid of that albatross around your neck. My duty, isn't it."
I held him close, and after, urged him to roll one more spliff. I needed the courage for what was to come, and, as I sniggered to him while he rolled it, "It does make me desire your delights even more than usual."
"Need help getting it up Mr Williams? Or you just trying to get an innocent boy stoned so you can have your wicked way with him?" I sniggered as he laughed. Richard Williams still enjoyed me playing the cheeky, slutty schoolboy and he always appreciated the act.
Handing over the spliff after taking a drag I gave the seat of my jeans an experimental push. Instantly a jolt of pleasure went through my body, and I giggled in excitement. Wearing the plug was fun and I was tempted to ask him to buy me a bigger one.
"Certainly will need help getting it up," I sniggered with him, the second spliff having a distinct effect. I couldn't help wondering if the little imp had dosed it with weed rather more strongly than usual, but that was probably being uncharitable. "Not sure I know any innocent boys though. Do know one always horny, dirty minded, delicious one though. Will he do?"
"Yeah I can think of someone who fits that description," I gave him another lingering kiss as I handed over the spliff. I was tempted to kiss him more, maybe suggest we go into the bushes so I could suck him, but I wasn't quite stoned enough for that. I might have been sixteen and legal, but I was pretty sure sucking off a guy in a park was probably not something the police would look kindly on.
"Thought you might," I held him when he gave me my mouth back.
The weed was having a definite effect now, unlocking he 'dirty thoughts' compartment in my mind. "Looks so easy when you see it in porn," I said seriously and a little slowly, "Boy bends and man just pops it in. And talking of bending over," I even managed to look at him when I said this, "I have to confess to a recurrent, though only when I've been smoking this stuff, mental picture of you bent over the kitchen table, me holding you by the hips and fucking you silly."
"That's weird, I get exactly the same image except sometimes you spank my bum while you're fucking me." I giggled and rubbed his cock through his trousers with my hand; putting double the amount of weed as normal in the spliff had seemed like a good idea at the time but now I was feeling very stoned and quite unsteady.
"No," keeping my face straight with difficulty, "That's not an image I get. Your bum is usually bright red already before the fucking starts."
The weed had done its job. I was mentally loose and very horny. "Jacob Brat," I pompously announced, "We should from hence and to a bed make way fast."
We went from the park, across the road and into the hotel, hand in hand, and I didn't give a wasted toss who saw.
I giggled as we walked across the lobby. Compared with most people my age I was fairly smartly dressed in new jeans, a checked shirt and a zip up hoodie, but the few other guests who were around gave me disapproving looks. The fact that I was being led by the hand by a man three and a half times my age while giggling probably didn't help, but that just made me a snigger more and I had to stop myself bursting into laughter as the lift doors closed.
"That old biddy probably thought I was a rent boy," I giggled at the thought, more than a little turned on at the idea and gave Mr Williams a smirk.
"Think you can afford me?" I asked him teasingly.
"Despite Sis's best efforts," still straight face, though how I have no idea. "I have no idea what a rent boy costs, but you, my Brat, I would sell all my worldly goods to afford."
Our room door closed behind us with a soft 'click'.
"Why have you still got clothes on?" I asked, though he hadn't had the chance to do anything but think of kicking his trainers off yet.
I giggled. "Well, I was hoping you would undress me. I am a shy virgin after all."
I was indeed still a virgin but I hadn't been shy about my sexuality for a long time, though the idea of his hands taking off my clothes was exciting.
"Oh, blushing virgin are you," I moved in and helped him out of his hoody and top, "Just how virgin are you, I wonder?" And I asked that while tweaking his nipples, simply because they were exposed and in the mood I was, an exposed Brat nipple had to be tweaked.
I giggled and yelped as he tweaked and tickled my nipples, my cries becoming moans of pleasure as he rolled them between his fingers and playfully squeezed them until they became hard little nubs.
"I don't blush much," I moaned and put my head back as he licked and nibbled at my right nipple, "I'm a slutty boy really."
"A slutty boy who shamelessly seduced a poor old man and drove him into lusting for your so delicious body." It was weed talking, but weed was saying what I felt so I let weed speak and I let weed make me do what I wanted to do.
His new jeans unzipped and fell to the floor in a most delightful way, but that left him in boxer briefs. "Why must you always wear these horrid things?" I moaned and did my best to tear them from him. The elastic waist band refused to tear, but the cotton below it ripped with a very satisfactory noise of tearing cloth. Not perfect, but the resultant sight made my saliva run.
I laughed as he tried to rip away my underwear which left a torn piece of cloth held up by an elastic waist band around my middle. A pair of scissors was fetched and one snip later the material was gone for good.
"Have to," I told him with a giggle as he held up the ruined designer trunks in mock anger. "You put this thing up my arse and it keeps me hard. If I didn't wear those my jeans would be soaked in cum!" I knew I was overdoing the dirty talk a bit, but being filthy was fun and helped cover my own nerves.
I had never been fucked, and while I was desperate to change that, the knowledge that Mr Williams would soon have his cock inside me was quite daunting.
"Then let them be spunk soaked!" I cried in mock despair, pushed him on the bed and went straight in to devour his cock. Getting a finger inside him seemed the obvious thing to do, but I had to get that plug out first, something my lust had forgotten all about. Once removed it left Brat's hole open enough to take a finger easily, even a second went in for the very first time. He yelped quite loudly as number three tried to make an entrance, but yelps were not enough and although he moaned it was to no avail.
The plug came free with an audible pop and for a moment I felt empty and open. Then Mr Williams worked a finger inside me and followed it with a second making me give a loud cry.
I was beyond caring what the people in the next room would think and begged him for a third, but as much as he tried he couldn't get it in.
Try as I would, that third finger would not go in.
"Use more lube," Brat gasped, and it dawned on me that I hadn't used any lube at all! His hole had been open from that plug, and in my ignorance I'd thought that was all that was necessary. "Lube? What lube?" I asked stupidly and he croaked that I'd find it in his washbag, so I went on a search, found it, and took the opportunity to get my own clothes off as well.
With lube, lots of lube, the third finger made it in after a struggle.
"Oh fuck," I screwed my eyes closed and pushed my bum back as he wiggled and worked his third finger inside me. The pressure on my hole felt amazing, their movement and heat a different world to the hard rubber of the plug, and I gasped and moaned as I pushed my bum back trying to get more inside me.
"Fuck, yeah, finger me! Yeah more, more!" I was slurring a bit now, my eyes screwed closed and I pushed my chest and face down to lift my bum higher.
"Do I suck you all the way, or will that mean you don't want to do it anymore?" Thus betraying, yet again, my complete lack of knowledge in this matter. I wanted to suck him all the way; greedy, but I did so like eating his spunk.
"Eat me, eat me!" I was too far gone to make much sense but I knew I wanted him to drain my rock hard cock. A few hours wearing the plug had got me hot and I knew that I would cum shortly anyway if he kept fingering me.
"Then fuck me till I cum," I begged him, "suck the spunk outta me then fuck me till I spunk again!"
Very little sucking was needed, perhaps because he had three of my fingers inside him.
Then I tried to fuck him, he on his stomach and me on top.
Utter failure. No matter how I tried, I just couldn't line up cock and hole. Brat, in moaning frustration, reached behind himself and tried to guide me in, but that didn't work either.
"Oh fuck!" he somewhat inaccurately moaned, rolled onto his back and lifted his legs in the air. "Try it this way," he demanded, so I did, and this time I was able to line things up properly, but it didn't just slide inside like it did in porn videos.
"Fuck!" I knew Mr Williams didn't want to hurt me, would never want to do that, but the pressure of his cock on my hole got like someone was trying to force a table leg up it!
Naively I had thought wearing a slim plug, about the size of two of my fingers, would make things easy but my hole seemed to clamp closed. It was worse than when I had first tried to finger myself, even worse than the time I had forced the handle of the bog brush up while Mum was at the supermarket when I was twelve, and I screwed my eyes closed.
"Please don't stop!" Despite everything I still begged him, stopping now would be unbearable.
"More lube," I thought out loud. That had worked for the third finger, perhaps it would work for cock, and while I was seeing to that, Brat grabbed the remains of his boxers.
"Gonna need them," he said before stuffing them in his mouth, and I tried again, pushing my cock, not hard, but it seemed to me to be brutally hard, against his slicked hole.
This time something did happen! I felt the tip of my cock going somewhere very hot and very tight and Brat moaned loudly, even though his mouth was full of shredded boxers.
Maybe he took me by surprise or maybe the lube did the trick, but this time his cock pushed past my resisting hole and made itself at home inside me.
I squealed into the boxers which luckily muffled my cry and Mr Williams looked at me in alarm before realising I wanted more and put his weight forward. Slowly his cock slid inside me, making me squeal and moan around the ripped boxers as my hole was forced to expand to accommodate him.
Slowly the heat travelled down my cock, more must be going inside, I stupidly thought, as if the sensations alone were not sufficient to tell me that. There was a moment more of resistance, but that gave way as well and I was all the way inside him.
I could see his face, scrunched up with pain, his eyes tight shut and I wanted to get out, not hurt him as I must be hurting him, but something stopped me from doing that.
I had caused him so much pain for almost two years by not doing this, to stop now would humiliate him beyond measure.
So I stayed where I was until instinct took over and I began to move inside him, my brain now screaming to me, via my cock, that I couldn't stop, I had to fuck until I spurted.
And so I did, though Brat spurted before I did.
"I love you so much," his cock had slid free with a wet plop and he was holding me now, his cum leaking out of my now no longer virgin hole.
"I loved that so much, you were amazing." He cuddled me tighter, too nervous to speak and I nuzzled into his sweaty embrace wanting never to leave it.
No doubt the hotel maids tut tutted in thrilled disgust when they went to change the bed after we had gone - we made no attempt to clean up after, we just went to sleep and showered in the morning.
When we got back to Berkshire, Brat undressed, as he always did, and quicker this time because he didn't have any underwear to take off. And I undressed as well. Never again would I wear clothes when Brat and I were alone in Arden House; I no longer had need to cover up and try to hide the fact that I was not a lithe teenager. Brat loved me as I was.