J. H. P. Cash, 367

When I Were Nowt But a Lad 16

One evening near to the end of the Lent term I popped through the Junior Dorm to check with Robert whether he would be waking me later to come to his bedsit. Mock exams were over. Robert had done better than he had expected and was on course to get the grades to match his conditional offer for the university he hoped to go to. Dab, Charlie and I had done much as expected, Kemal slightly better than expected and Roger as disastrously as expected. I hoped that Robert would be in the mood to celebrate.

He was, and we celebrated a little right away, but then he shoved me out, saying that he'd come to get me later. As I walked down between the beds, I saw a figure sitting on the edge of Andy's bed. It was Dab, in his pyjamas, as I was. It was nearly time for Lights Out in our own dorm and you had to be in your own bed for that or else someone would come looking for you. I didn't dare sit on Guy's bed, next door to Andy's - I didn't trust myself - so I just leant over and kissed his forehead. Then I hissed to Dab that he'd better hurry.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Dab impatiently. One of his hands was on Andy's nearest shoulder, but I couldn't make out where the other one was.

"I thought you only did liey-downy sex these days," I said to him quietly when he slipped into his bed just as the Duty Monitor was about to go looking for him.

"We weren't doing nuffink, guv, honest!" Dab protested, chuckling.

"Where were your hands?" I asked. "Where were his hands, come to that?"

"Shut up you two," said the Duty Monitor. The supposed rule banning talking after Lights Out was never really enforced unless things got very noisy, but we had to show willing by maintaining silence at least while the lights were actually put out and the monitor left the dorm.

Barely had the door shut before I leant over to Dab and said, "Cough it!"

"His hands, since you ask, were down by his sides, under the covers. And mine were over the covers."

"Yeah, one on his shoulder... and the other?"

"Where do you think, for Christ's sake?"

"And...?"

Dad sighed. And then sighed again, this time an exaggerated love-lorn sigh.

"Are you going back?" I asked.

"If I can stay awake long enough," Dab said. "Since that crack on the head I seem to nod off straight away."

Dab seemed fine, generally. But I was still worried that he'd never had an X-ray done. I was at an age, and in an age, when "the white heat of technology" just somehow ought to have been applied to any problem. "If they can land a man on the Moon..." was a popular prefix to many comments about modern life, and I kind-of felt that if they could land a man on the moon, they should be routinely X-raying all and sundry.

"I could help you stay awake if you like," I offered, heroically.

"How?" sniggered Dab.

"Test on French irregular verbs?" I suggested.

"Fuck off!" said Dab. "Or, rather, don't. Come here."

"It's a bit soon: everyone's still awake."

"Just sit on the bed then. We'll just be chatting."

I sat on the edge on Dab's bed. This seemed strange, but exciting. With an age-mate (or, rather, in our case, class-mate) the "sitting on-the-bed-having-a-chat" thing hadn't been necessary when we were younger. Now, as I've said, the forces of the "dominant culture" more readily made themselves felt, but we had previously evaded them simply by waiting until most of the force's foot-soldiers were asleep. Surely, though, no one could object to me sitting on Dab's bed chatting to him?

"You two queering again?" asked a voice from the darkness.

"Fuck off, wanker!" said Dab, his hand already on my dick. "We're talking, OK?"

"It's rude to talk with your mouth full," said another voice.

"Oh, they call it 'talking' now do they?" sneered the first voice.

"What business is it of yours anyway, Jackson?" I demanded. We only ever called each other by our surnames when pissed off with each other.

"It's my business if I have to share a dorm with a couple of queers."

"A couple?" I thought. "God, how little you know."

"It's not doing you any harm," Kemal spoke up in our defence.

"Oh, God, I might have known you'd take their side!" said Jackson.

"Not so fucking innocent yourself, Jackson," said Kemal.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"You know! You can't deny what went on in Junior Dorm," Dab said.

"We were kids," protested Jackson. "It's time you lot just grew up! It's kids' stuff, playing with each other like that."

"'Greasy kids' stuff'," Dab giggled quietly to me. The phrase was the disparaging description of Brylcreem offered in ads for a rival product, Vitalis, in the country where I lived. Dab and I had joked a lot about my experimentation with "hair control" products (at home, never at school, of course), and I'd told him about the ads. (Oh, yes, I didn't always use Elnett hairspray.) "Greasy kids' stuff" had become our code/joke name for Vaseline.

"We're talking, OK?" I said. "I know that you've barely mastered the art yet, Jackson, but the grunting's coming along quite nicely."

"Shut it, bumboy!" said Jackson, with some real threat in his voice.

I decided to follow his advice. It wasn't really worth provoking people like Jackson. The subtle, unspoken, tacit accommodations between the "queer sub-culture" and the general culture of the House were more easily strained than perhaps I've suggested. Not, I think, that Jackson would ever have "sneaked" on us, but he and some of his friends could make life unpleasant if they wanted to. I assumed.

"Leave them be," said Charlie, putting on his broadest Yorkshire accent. "It's not worth getting fussed about, is it, for fuck's sake?"

"Oh, have your fucking Goodnight kiss, queerboys!" relented Jackson.

"Just don't shove it down our throats!" whispered Dab.

"I've seen him chatting up that Giles," I whispered back.

"Takes one to know one," Dab agreed.

Then he said, "Giles? Really?"

"Hah! Thought that would get you going..."

"No, really... Is Jackson sweet on Giles?" asked Dab, perturbed.

"What's it to you?" I asked, knowing exactly what it was to Dab, as he pointed out: "You fucking know what it is to me!"

"You can't baggsie anyone, you know," I pointed out primly, echoing Dab's own previously stated rule.

"Yeah, I know, but..."

"They were only talking," I said, laughing. I reached under the sheet for Dab's cock: "Just like we are." Dab wasn't hard.

"'S'not funny," he grumped.

"I'm sorry," I said, pulling gently on his cock, trying to get him going and thinking of other things.

Dab sighed and adopted his "love-lorn" voice again: "Giles, Giles, Giles. Oh, Giles!"

"Um... Andy?" I reminded him.

"Yes, yes," said Dab, "but he's... easy. Giles is..."

"An angel?" I offered.

"Kind-of unavailable, you know?"

"Not from what I've heard."

"It's all crap," insisted Dab. "No, it really is! He's a complete innocent. Andy said he asked why you visit Guy's bed so often."

"That not innocent - that's just stupid!" I said. "How could he possibly not know? What does he think I'm doing in bed with Guy?"

"Not that you are in bed with Guy these days, you little saint, you." observed Dab.

Right, enough fucking dialogue, already! I merely wanted to give you a flavour of the atmosphere in our dorm and of the very different way in which those of us who didn't mind acknowledging what we were up to could converse. Does it sound a little camp? Possibly. This isn't verbatim transcription of course - I'm embellishing a real instance I remember. So there may be some of my adult sensibility in there. But although we wouldn't even probably have known the word "camp" in that sense then, and although neither Dab nor I were actually "sissy boys", I'm sure that we did "do camp" by this stage. We weren't your junior Julian and Sandy, mind, but we were certainly now more capable of understanding that humour than we had been when Round the Horne was first broadcast. Both Dab and I had memories of our parents laughing uproariously at dialogue we simply didn't understand. Reception of the World Service was bad enough anyway at my home, so I was used to my father, ear to the short-wave set, chuckling away at stuff I could barely hear, let alone comprehend.

Dab's cock was now stiff, as mine had been all along. The dormitory had quietened, but few people were probably asleep. I just stroked Dab while he played with me. He was experimenting with a light touch. We'd read something about "foreplay" in Forum magazine, and were intrigued by the idea of "sex skills". The tip of Dab's finger rubbed over the head of my cock gently. Then he ran his fingers up and down, barely touching me. I tried to follow suit with his dick, but it was not so easy under the bedclothes. I held his cock and rubbed my thumb over the head, pulling back his foreskin to be able to touch the whole of it. Dab pulled down on mine, my foreskin going back much less easily. I noticed the slight aroma of my own cock and that made me want to pull back the covers and bend my mouth to Dab's.

"Fuck!" I sighed. "It'll be okay if I get in now, won't it?"

"I don't want to come now. I'm going back to Andy, remember," said Dab.

"You don't have to spunk," I objected. "Just let me..."

"Oh, yeah, like you'd stop when I asked you!"

"I would! Honest, I would. Please?"

"Get your own Arts programme, you fairy!" said Dab, letting go of me and making to get out of bed.

"Dab..." I whined.

"Duty calls." said Dab, putting on his slippers and heading for the door.

I got back into my own bed and thought of Guy. Somehow it didn't feel right even thinking of Guy during our season of abstinence. Well, his season of abstinence. I thought of Giles instead. Then I thought of Giles and Guy together. With Andy. And, unaccountably, Jackson. Jackson? They were in the Drying Room, naked, and Guy and Giles were gently wanking themselves as they watched Andy kneeling in front of Jackson, sucking his dick. Jackson? Guy and Giles moved in closer and Jackson reached out to them. He cupped a pair of buttocks in each hand and pressed the two boys together, belly to belly.

Andy stopped sucking and moved slightly so that Jackson could guide the boys into more passionate thrusting against one another. Jackson, for fuck's sake? He had a hand on the lower back of each boy now, and they were kissing and holding each other as they were pressed together. Giles was slightly taller than Guy, and more willowy. His blond hair hung in a floppy fringe. He was less pale than Guy, and their contrasting skin-tones looked lovely against each other. Andy moved behind Giles and put a hand on his bum. Giles reacted by arching his back a little, raising his rump to Andy's hand. Andy wet a finger in his mouth and I shot my spunk as he parted Giles' bum and his finger slid in.

I licked the spunk off my hand. I wished that it was Dab's spunk. My own was alright, but just a little unsatisfactory. Dab's was a more substantial mouthful. Somehow, although I had just come, in my mind's eye Andy was bending Giles forward while Jackson moved in behind Guy. "Fuck!" I thought, "Jackson?"

The next morning, as we were putting our books for the first few lessons into our briefcases in our study, Dab said, "You'll never guess what..."

"You're not pregnant again?" Charlie suggested.

Dab ignored him and spoke to me. "When I was in Andy's bed last night, Giles crept over and asked us what we were doing."

"Bollocks!" said Charlie.

"What? I said. "That's ridiculous. Nobody could be that stupid!"

"Oh, he wasn't being stupid: it was just his way of asking if he could join in."

"In your dreams!" mocked Charlie.

Again Dab addressed me, pointedly not including Charlie.

"Stood there with his little willy sticking out of his jim-jams."

"Bollocks!" said Charlie again.

"Andy told him to fuck off and I said that that wasn't very nice."

Our briefcases were packed and Dab went for the door.

"Hang on... what happened?" I objected.

"I'll tell you later, when he's not around." said Dab.

"Fucking poofs," said Charlie, politely holding the door open for me.

Later Dab told me that Giles had not fucked off when Andy told him to do so. He just stood there. "What the fuck do you think we're doing?" Andy had asked.

"Queering," Giles had said, simply.

"Yeah, well, why d'you ask then, spazmo?" Andy said.

"Can I feel?" asked Giles.

"He didn't! That's not possible. You big fucking liar!" I said to Dab.

Dab smiled smugly.

"God Almighty!" I said. "Why's he left it so long? It's nearly the end of term. If he's known what's been going on..."

"Don't ask me, ask him. He fancies you." said Dab, matter-of-factly.

Andy had relented a little, apparently, and they'd had a quiet chat. "You came up because Giles said that you weren't visiting Guy's bed any more."

"And what did he say?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Only that, you know, if you were free anytime..."

"Oh, fuck off, Dab. It's not funny!"

"No, it's not, you bastard. He really fancies you."

"Did you let him cop a feel, then?" I asked.

"Well, I was all for it, but Andy..."

"Told him to fuck off," I said.

"How did you guess?"

It was three or four days before the end of Term. The next term I'd be allowed to do stuff with Guy again. Guy didn't seem to mind that I was still having sex with Robert and Dab, but might he be upset if I started something new with another boy in his own dorm? Fuck, though: Giles was so lovely! As lovely as Guy? Yes, probably. Different, but just as lovely. Longer, floppier. Longer, floppier hair too. Perhaps I should just ask Guy straight out if he'd mind me doing Giles?

But this was all assuming that Dab wasn't having me on. We constantly joked with each other, but we weren't really much for "practical jokes" of the April Fool's sort.

In House Prayers that evening Giles grinned broadly at me. I stopped myself from grinning back.

I remember clearly that I was slightly amazed at myself for hesitating at all, let alone worrying. Perhaps Guy's gesture for Lent had actually made me even more fond of him. His seriousness, and the lightness with which he carried it, made me anxious for him not to be disappointed in me. I realised later that he wouldn't have been anyway. But that was after I'd disappointed Giles instead.

And you, dear reader, no doubt. Well, for the time being, anyway.

Let's make up for it, as I did, by dragging Andy back into Robert's bedsit on the last night of term. Robert wasn't there. He was at the Senior Club, celebrating the end of term. I hadn't asked his permission. The last night of term was always a little crazy anyway. All the monitors except the poor guy on duty were out at the Club.

"You're not going to try and bum me, are you?" Andy asked as soon as the door closed behind him.

"I was hoping to, actually. It being the end of term an' all," I admitted.

"Forget it," said Andy firmly. "I'll do you, though."

"Fairy Nuff," I said, using a joke for which our Housemaster was infamous. How could I resist Andy's kind offer? Now that I was allowing myself to fancy sprogs, I realised just how very beautiful he was. Not pretty. Almost handsome - but still too young to quite be that. He had something like what we'd later call "a swimmer's body", though his shoulders were not that broad. The definition of his muscles made him very different from most boys of his age. There was no artifice, no effort to this. He was just naturally wiry, naturally energetic, naturally, casually at ease in his body. If you kissed Guy's chest, you were kissing almost a flat plain. Andy's body had contours. His nipples stood up. They were tiny, but not mere nubs. Your tongue detected them easily as you licked across him.

And his cock was the most exciting I knew, mainly because it seemed the most excited. He'd be hard in an instant, and very, very hard, his dick curving back into his tummy. It was, if anything, a little small, perhaps. His balls were always tight against his body, even after a warm bath. His was a delightful package.

And now, in private, he could be "soppy", as he would put it. He didn't just let me hold him and stroke him, he relaxed into it. He sighed and the air of bravado eased out of him. When I made to kiss him, he didn't dodge and roll his eyes. He didn't really kiss back. Not at first, but he wasn't making a face either.

But if I was going to let him fuck me again, I wasn't going to hang around. I found Robert's jar of Vaseline, and Andy watched as I greased his dick, then my bumhole. He was stroking his dick as I lay on Robert's bed on my back. He moved over to the bed and looked down at me. The hand that wasn't slippery he put flat on my chest. He looked as if he might be going to say something. but then just ran his hand down to my tummy, pressed lightly again and then took my cock lightly between finger and thumb.

"Do you want me to suck you?" he asked. But I knew that he wasn't certain. I didn't want to mess up the last night of term by asking him to do something he didn't really want to.

"Nah. Just bum me," I said.

"Queer!" said Andy and knelt between my legs. I lifted them and he shuffled forward. He guided his dick into me, looking down at himself. But when he was in he didn't, as he had the time before, stay fascinated by the sight of his dick sliding in and out of my hole. He raised his eyes to mine, then looked at the rest of me. I was flattered by what I took to be his approving gaze. I certainly approved of his body, taut above me. He pushed my legs further back and started fucking faster. He leant in to kiss me, and did so properly. My tongue went into his mouth. His didn't respond, but his teeth were not closed against me. His mouth opened wider and was over mine, slightly aggressively. It was the Big Boy who did this, usually, the Big Boy would cover your mouth with his, almost as if to eat you.

"Oh fuck!" Andy mumbled into my mouth. Then, "Jesus!" - a gasp almost as if he'd touched a hot griddle, a sharp intake of breath and several huffs out. A longer sigh as he fell onto my chest. I could feel his spunk around my bumhole. I shifted slightly so that I could get at my cock, and wanked myself. He rolled off to the side as I did so, watching me. I looked at him and he did that strange thing of putting his hand flat on my chest as he smiled. I shot my spunk onto his tummy. He didn't flinch. He pulled us together and kissed me again.

"Thanks," he said in my ear. After a tiny beat he added, affectionately, "You fucking poof."

Little Spurt 04

Pet Shop Boys

In the Science Block there was a room in which animals were kept. Well, hamsters, mice and gerbils anyway. Perhaps a guinea pig or two? Strangely, I can't really remember why they were kept. I'm pretty sure they weren't literally "guinea pigs". When we did dissections it was frogs or rats we used to cut up. Mind you, I gave up Biology after 'O' Level, so have no idea what the Sixth Form curriculum might have required of the little furry creates.

In my first few years at the school I volunteered to be in the rota of boys who fed and watered these animals and kept their cages clean. I suppose that there was both educational and emotional advantage to be gained in caring for animals, even if they were hardly personal pets. The food and bedding materials were kept in huge bins in a sort of box room just off the Animal Room. In here, screwed to the wall, was a wooden ladder that led up into the attic of the building. At first it never even occurred to me or any of the boys I shared my rota slots with to climb up this ladder. 11 and 12 year-old boys are supposed to be adventurous and curious, aren't they? One would imagine that a ladder going up into a strange place would be irresistible. However, where curiosity never led me, sex did.

It happened that Simon (see Chapters 1 and 2) and I shared a rota slot one evening. I'm fairly sure that his was after he's moved up to Big School and I was still in my Junior House. When we'd done our chores, Simon asked bluntly if I wanted to suck his cock. Despite the hour there were still quite a few people in the building: Choice activities included an Electronics Club and a Ham Radio station and 'A' Level candidates often worked on experiments in the evenings. I was reluctant to do anything there in the Animal Room.

So, we climbed the ladder. We didn't venture far through the attic (it was just the roof space, not the kind of spare-room-for-storage type of attic). There boards down in a few spots, but mostly you had to step carefully across the exposed ceiling beams. Just at the top of the ladder, however, there was a small, partially enclosed area with a firm, safe floor.

As usual, Simon wanted me to be naked while he remained mostly clothed. It was difficult to find anywhere that wasn't incredibly dusty to put my uniform down as I stripped off. Simon undid his trousers and got his cock out, saying simply, "Suck it!". Fuck, I was an easy lay. I knelt down and sucked him off, playing with my own dick. He came, zipped up and went down the ladder. I continued wanking myself but, probably for the only time in my school years, didn't bother actually finishing the wank. I felt suddenly cold, and put my clothes back on, trying to slap the dust off with my hand.

When I got back to my House the Matron expressed disgust at the state of my blazer and trousers. Fortunately, she was young and kind, not at all the traditional ogre-type of Matron, and we were friends (I, goody-goody little swotty suck-up, voluntarily helped her unpack laundry baskets in the House Airing Room/Clothes Store and sort and distribute the little stack of clean clothes that were put on each boy's bed twice a week (Once? Twice? Thrice?). So she did not inquire too deeply into how I had managed to get dust all over me. I mumbled something acceptable and she brushed me down with the clothes brush she wielded every Sunday as we lined up to go to Evensong in our little Sunday suits.

In later years I went back to the Science Block attic with a variety of boys. It was a good spot for assignations with boys from other Houses. I gradually explored more and more of the attic, eventually finding a hole in a wall leading into one of the older wings of the building. Here there was no chance of being caught - there would be plenty of warning if anyone was approaching. Obviously other boys had found the space, judging by the ciggie tabs and one or two empty bottles of beer, but none of those visitors seemed to have been very recent. One day I and a partner climbed up there with flattened cardboard boxes in which the animal bedding had been delivered. We created a platform with them so that we could lie down for sex.

Many, many years later it occurred to me that this would have been the perfect setting for a porn movie shoot. Not one of those porn movies with production values, but a proper porn movie with not-very-good lighting and slightly shaky camera-work. The grubby, dusty attic, the flattened cardboard boxes as a mattress. The slightly edgy idea of two "posh" public school boys fucking in such a setting. How would we know they were public school boys, rather than just any old school boys from a real school? Perhaps a few establishing shots of of the Victorian campus, the playing fields, the Chapel... The camera follows two boys in blazers and grey flannel trousers as they go through the arched doorway of a big, three-storey building and ascend the stairs, then a ladder into the attic. They discard their blazers and crawl through to the private space...

spelchek@hushmail.com