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Whenever I smell that certain smell, my mind goes back to the summer of my tenth year. The salty tang, assaulting both taste and smell at the same time, something I had never experienced before, and something I would come to love in the following few months. The smell of the sea.

I’d never been to the seaside before, not once in my ten years. My parents were both dead, gone before I’d even got to know them as a child. I didn’t miss what I’d never known, although there is a pang of longing inside me now that I am grown. A desire to know my mother and father, to understand what they were like as people. They had me young, and were killed not long after, leaving me with my maternal grandparents, who were not particularly old themselves. They were traditional hippies, so I had a rather enchanted upbringing. But holidays were never part of the deal. We had almost nothing. I didn’t go to school, but there were plenty of other kids in the commune, and we all learnt together. I certainly wasn’t a recluse, and none of the kids around me had any more than I did, so I considered myself fairly normal. What little we saw of the outside world intrigued me, certainly, but there was no real longing to find out what was out there.

All that changed the summer of my tenth year, though. A relative had been found. Or rediscovered, maybe. My aunt. My father’s sister, who lived alone in the town of Brighton, on the south coast of England. For years, she and my father’s parents had been estranged, and so I never knew her. A chance encounter brought her into contact with my mother’s parents, who she had met only once, at my parents’ wedding. Auntie Paula wasn’t a hippie, wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever met. She owned a bookshop, shopped in a supermarket and lived in the flat above her workplace. She didn’t even have a garden to grow vegetables in. She bought them all. She didn’t own any sheep. She didn’t spend her days farming. This was an intriguing person, the likes of whom I had never met. She, in turn, was fascinated by me, this nephew of hers she had never known. I think she was aware that I existed, but knew nothing of me. All alone in the world, save for her strange cast of friends, Paula wanted to get to know me, and persuaded my grandparents to release me to her for a summer.

I didn’t initially understand the concept of a holiday at all. I never had time off in the commune, probably because I’d never had time on. Life wasn’t particularly difficult, and so there were no holidays. We never felt the need for them. Summer was a time for growing crops, for preparing for the harvest that autumn would bring. Doing no physical work for several months was a concept with which I would find it hard to familiarise myself.

The time came quickly, more so than I had imagined it could. Not a fortnight after the last crops were sown, my aunt was arriving in the commune to take me away. It had been decided that she would pick me up, rather than leaving me to negotiate a public transport system I had never before experienced. I wandered wide-eyed out into the real world. Of course, I had escaped the bounds of the commune before – it wasn’t even forbidden, we were allowed to go to the town should we wish, and I had done so several times. But this time was different. This time, I would be travelling further afield than ever before, experiencing things for the first time that most people had spent their lives getting used to.

The train station was a revelation, and the place where I got my first taste for exactly how hectic life in the outside world could be. There were people everywhere, and noise, and my aunt just strode ahead expecting me to keep up. When she realised quite how intimidated I was, she rushed back and grabbed my hand, steering me through the crowds. She was different, exotic, but behind it all still the thoughtful person I would later come to realise she was. After that point, she never let go of my hand in any situation which was new to me, or whenever there was a chance I might get overwhelmed by crowds all around me. I saw all sorts of new people at the station. It was amazing to see so many people I didn’t know, that I would never know. Everyone in the commune was known to me, everyone was a friend or a relative. But all of these people, save my aunt, were neither.

I was petrified when I discovered that I needed to wee. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, I was so used to the shed at the commune. I tried as subtly as I could to alert my aunt to my need, though when she realised what I was asking, she only told me to head off to the loo then. I hesitated, and thankfully aunt Paula realised that I had no idea where to go. Saint that she was, she took me by the hand away from the other people on the platform and whispered in my ear where to go, and what to expect when I got there.

Walking through the door, I was immediately hit by the expanse of white porcelain. Our little toilet shed had a wooden plank over a hole, certainly not the gleaming material I saw in front of me. My aunt had told me there were toilets of a style I would have seen before in stalls, and I quickly found my way there, avoiding the big trough which ran along one wall. There were three stalls, two of which were occupied. The empty stall was the middle one, and I walked in, still a little unsure of myself.

The toilet was indeed of a type I’d seen before, at the house of a friend of my grandparents, and so I knew what to do. Naively I left the door open as I pulled the front of my shorts down and fished my dick out. I wasn’t particularly self-conscious, as often during the summer on the commune everyone would swim naked, and during the hottest weeks of the year, I could go without any clothing at all for several weeks. It wasn’t unusual. As I peed, I looked around the stall, and noticed, around the height of my dick, a hole through to the stall next door. Glancing behind me to make sure no-one could see, I bent down and had a look through the hole. What I saw surprised me, but didn’t actually shock me. There was a man there masturbating. I knew what masturbation was, from a chat I’d had with my granddad one day. He was very free with his advice, and even demonstrated to me, but never made any kind of sexual advances to me. I wondered to myself why there was a man in the stall next door masturbating. Surely he knew you weren’t meant to do that in public places. Feeling a little guilty for looking through the hole, and a little confused as to what the man might have been doing, I tucked myself back in and went to find my aunt.

The trip to Brighton didn’t take very long, but it could have lasted for days as far as I was concerned. Never having travelled faster than the maximum speed we could attain on our bikes, the pace the train set was amazing to me. The countryside flashed past so fast that I couldn’t even make out some of the things I was seeing. They were just a green blur to me. Arriving at Brighton station was another shock – it was far busier even than the station we had left from, and my aunt had to hold my hand tightly to make sure I didn’t get lost. Making our way out to the front of the station, I got my first smell of that air I would come to love so. Seeing me sniffing the wind with a confused look on my face, my aunt realised that I had never smelled the sea before, and explained that all the salt in it made it smell, and made it undrinkable. I was really confused now – why was there so much salt in the sea? Surely that was a stupid idea, because it made the water useless. My aunt just laughed, and reassured me that it wasn’t something we could control.

My aunt’s shop and flat above were to become my home for the next 6 weeks at least, maybe longer if I decided to stay longer, and so I was given the grand tour straight away. The shop itself was a strange place, misshapen with uneven wooden floors that were covered in dust, with well worn paths through it. The books smelled old and musty, and exactly what second-hand books should smell like. I fell in love with the place immediately. My grandparents had had the foresight to teach me how to read, and it was one of the things I was told I had a talent for. Certainly, by the end of that summer, I was to end up reading quite a stack of my aunt’s stock.

The living quarters above the shop were small, but held a certain charm. A room had been set aside for me right at the top of the house, in the loft, only accessible by ladder. My aunt told me she was mostly unable to go up there, and had had it cleaned and furnished by a young man who did odd jobs about the place for her. When I got up there, I was instantly enchanted. What ten year old boy wouldn’t be blown away by the prospect of a room only he could access, and then only by ladder. There was a small mattress along one wall which would serve as a bed – it was, in fact, better than any other bed I had ever slept on, so I wasn’t complaining about its simplicity. There was a little desk in there, with a small pile of books my aunt had already selected for me – clearly she was as keen as I was to further my reading over the summer. The view from the room was amazing, too. I had to tiptoe a little to see out of the window properly, but the strain was worth it. Ahead was spread the extent of the seafront right down to the pier. I could see the rocky shore, empty this early in the season, though I had been assured by my aunt on the journey down on the train that it would become extremely busy later on in the summer, and there would be no shortage of playmates before long. My exploration of the view was cut short by my aunt shouting up to me that she had something more for the room that needed taking up, and it wasn’t something she could do. Making my way down the ladder, I was greeted by the sight of my aunt pulling an old brass telescope out of a cardboard box, staring into the large end.

‘Do you know what this is?’ she asked, as I approached. I nodded.

‘It’s a telescope. You look at the stars with them.’

‘Yes, absolutely right. I think with enough of a box to stand on, you might be able to have a look along the coastline as well. You can have it up in your room to look around a bit. It came with a library I cleared out for someone, and I’ve certainly no use for it. There’s some instructions in this box, somewhere,’ she said, handing over the telescope and kneeling down to rummage through the box. A moment later, she was back up again, grasping a sheet of closely-packed text and grinning.

‘Take this upstairs and play around at getting it set up, and we’ll go for dinner in a while,’ she said.

I was used to working things out, especially mechanical objects – at the commune, despite the fact that we were hippies, we were quite technically versed, and I knew about all sorts of machines from reading whatever I could get my hands on, which often included service manuals. So it was an enjoyable time, sitting up in that room in the late afternoon sun, piecing together the old telescope, aligning the lenses and running all the little calibration tests the sheet recommended. Finally, with the sun edging towards the horizon, the scope was up on it mount, and using an old orange box my aunt had found during the afternoon, I took my first look down at the beach.

Wow. Wow! I could see anything with this thing! The telescope was really powerful. I watched a couple of people walking along the seafront, and there was good enough resolution to make out what colour their eyes were! It must have been a really expensive purchase when it was new, and I was thankful for the luck that had brought it to me. Suddenly, realising that I could see everything, I became excited. My heartbeat sped up, and I could feel a little pressure building in my groin. That wasn’t the sort of reaction I expected to have. On the commune, I saw plenty of people with no clothes on at all, and here I was excited by the prospect of seeing people in their swimming costumes, which wasn’t even the same. I took a moment to think about it, and realised that what was different this time was that these people didn’t know they were being watched. I was looking at them without their permission. This was elicit, this was forbidden. This was exciting.

Then it occurred to me that the seafront wasn’t all there was to see. With the sunlight fading, lights began to come on in some of the rooms of the guesthouses along the shore. Where curtains were left open, I could see people moving around the rooms, and swung the telescope up to zoom in on what I was seeing. This was great, I was totally engrossed, and more than a little annoyed when my aunt interrupted. When I heard what she had to say, though, I calmed down a bit – it was dinner time.

For the first time in my life, I was going out for dinner, though not exactly to a restaurant. Fish and chips are a great British tradition, and somehow in my ten years I’d managed to miss out, so my aunt promised me a treat. She took me along the promenade to what she considered the best fish and chip shop in town, and picked us up cod and chips each, with plenty of salt and vinegar. The smell and taste were overwhelming. I was used to bland food, filling though the fare at the commune was, but this was nothing like anything I had ever tasted before. The salt and vinegar assaulted my nostrils, then my taste buds, and instantly I was hooked. I wolfed the meal, and though I was ravenous to start with, I’d never eaten that fast before in my life.

I was absolutely stuffed, and so we decided that before we walked down onto the beach for an evening stroll, we would sit on a bench and watch the world go by. My aunt asked me about the telescope, how its construction had gone, and seemed impressed by quite how much of the instruction manual I’d absorbed. She reminded me that we lived above a book shop, and there were plenty of books on astronomy in her science section should I want to study it. I didn’t reveal my fascination with people-watching, I kept that one to myself, knowing somehow that it would have been frowned upon. Walking back to the shop, we passed several amusement arcades, something else my aunt had told me about before, and I watched fascinated by the machines with their flashing lights and ringing bells, surrounded by kids from six up to sixteen, all having the time of their lives, pushing little copper coins into the machines. I had no money, and though my aunt offered to pay for me to play on the machines, I was a little too nervous of the new experience, And a little bit too proud to accept that level of charity. I told my aunt that if it was allowed, I would work in the shop a few hours a day to earn enough money to return. She almost objected, but when she saw the defiance in my eyes, the fierce independence borne of my upbringing, she relented and agreed to let me help out to earn a little pocket money.

That evening, we watched a little television, a rare treat for me at the time, before I retired to my room. I had intended to spend some time reading up on what sort of stars I could see from my window, but before long tiredness overtook me and I fell asleep.
The next day, my first full day in Brighton, I woke early, as I always did at the commune. My aunt was just rising when I did, and showed me where the shower was. I wasn’t used to bathing daily, but it was something my aunt insisted on, now that the facilities were available to me, and so I spent a few minutes luxuriating in the warm water, washing away the night’s sweat. When I stepped out of the shower, I noticed there was a full length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and when the mist had cleared off it a little bit, I took a good look at my body. I would probably have been called thin, but that wouldn’t have been quite right. I think ‘toned’ would have done me justice, because although there wasn’t much fat on me at all, that was because there were young muscles in its place. Working the land all day long had turned my body into quite a sight – I already had powerful shoulders and upper arms, and there was the beginning of a six-pack on my stomach. Of course, not everything else was as developed as my muscles. Down below, I was still very much the little boy, although I’d always been proud enough to think my dick was nicer than the other boys’. The proportions looked just right, I thought, with just the right amount of foreskin hanging over the end, and just the right length and thickness to fit with the rest of my body.

As I watched myself, I slowly started to harden. As I mentioned before, I wasn’t a stranger to masturbation. I just didn’t happen to do it all that often. I knew the pleasure it could give me, but never really had the desire. I suppose that up to that point, the hormones in my body had been suppressed. Now, though, they broke through in a torrent, and for the first time I felt a real desire, rather than simply a passing interest, in playing with my dick. The technique my father had shown me was recalled, the classic two fingers and a thumb style, and I sat down on a mat on the bathroom floor and went to it, watching myself in the mirror. I’d reached orgasm once or twice before, and knew when the good feeling was coming that it was going to be a big one. I realised that I was turned on by the naughtiness of the situation, turned on by watching myself in the mirror. I loved watching the blur of my hand up and down, the jiggling of my balls in their tight little sack. The orgasm certainly was a strong one, certainly the most powerful to that point in my life. Dressing myself, I smiled to my reflection and walked out for my first day in the shop.

My duties were simple, since my aunt thought that learning to take cash and use the register was perhaps a little too much responsibility for me at my age. I was to clear up, and reorder books on their shelves, and add new stock to the existing. The work was easy, and repetitive, but I found it strangely fulfilling, somewhat like the work I typically found myself involved with at the commune. I took to it immediately, and was surprised how quickly lunchtime came around. The afternoon became far busier than the morning had been, and I actually helped a few people find books, for which they were grateful. I found myself feeling at home in the shop, happy at my work, and I loved being able to help people, seeing the grateful smiles they gave me. My aunt, too, was pleased with my work, which made it that little bit more worthwhile. I didn’t know why, but I was desperate to please my aunt. I think it was because she was giving me so much more than anyone had ever given me before. She paid attention to me, and though I didn’t want for loving on the commune, it was nice to have it on a one-to-one basis. I was her little boy for the summer, and in a way, I think, she was my new mum. What I didn’t realise at the time, and what has since become clear to me whilst chatting to my aunt, is that I was giving her so much joy just being there, so she didn’t have to feel so alone. Of course, her loneliness would come to an end before long, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself there, so I’ll leave it at that.

Days passed in a blissful haze of helping out in the shop in the evening, followed by dinner (which wasn’t, to my disappointment, fish and chips every evening), and a walk along the promenade. I loved those walks. The air was still warm from the afternoon sun, and tinged with the salty tang of the sea, which rolled into the beach not metres from us. I had spent some time during the daytime down at the water’s edge, and loved roving over the pebbles of the beach, looking all over for fossils and interesting rocks. Yet another book from my aunt’s shop showed me exactly what to look for, and so with my trained eye, I set to work building myself a decent collections of bits of rock. Only young boys seem to have the level of fascination for otherwise ordinary rock that I seemed to have that summer. It’s a peculiar trait, and one I have yet to explain. In fact, I still have several of those rocks now, in a box in my attic. I must get those down and have a look through them one of these days.

My use of the telescope became a regular evening pastime, too, after a little television. My aunt always watched for an hour or so, making sure that I saw something educational, before deciding that we’d had enough and retiring with a book. Not being used to television, I had no complaints about the situation, and happily disappeared upstairs for a couple of hours of looking up and down the coast. The guesthouses were my richest source of entertainment, curtains often left wide open whilst the occupants went about the business of preparing for bed. I saw plenty of naked flesh, and not a little of it my own age. As I said before, it was nothing new to me, the human form in all its glory, but the elicit nature of my observation added enough of an edge that I always became sexually excited while I watched. Knowing that my aunt could not climb the ladder to my room, and that I was therefore effectively alone in my viewing, I allowed a hand to slip into my pants and squeeze and twist the extra skin on the end of my dick.

There was never any real effort to bring myself to orgasm whilst watching – more than anything else, a constant motion in my pants would have rocked the telescope all over the place and I would have lost my view – but I managed to stay fairly much on edge the whole time. The real business would wait until I went to bed at night. After that first morning in the bathroom, I found the desire to masturbate taking over more and more, and I needed to do it at least once a day to keep my hormones in check. I would invariably lie on my back on my little bed, naked, and play the scenes I had witnessed through the telescope back through my mind as I did it. There was one scene which caught my imagination more than any other, and was inevitably the scene which sent me over the edge every time, though at the time I didn’t realise how significant its nightly reappearance was. I had seen a boy of about my enter a room in one of the guesthouses after having taken a shower. His body wasn’t quite as toned as mine was, but it was still quite nice, and there was hardly any fat on him. I expected him to close the curtains, but he never did so, and before long I saw him drop his towel to the floor. He was facing away from me, but walked over to the wardrobe and opened it wide to look at himself in the mirror there. In the reflection, I could see all I wanted to see. I don’t know where the sudden fascination with other boys’ equipment came, but I found myself mentally sizing up all the boys I saw at the beach, and wasn’t about to waste the opportunity to check this boy out. Like me, and most boys in England, he was uncut, and his foreskin hung a good couple of centimetres down from the end of his dick. The dick itself was a little longer and fatter than mine, and seemed to hang out at a 45 degree angle. It was then that I twigged – he was getting hard. I watched him for a moment, as a hand drifted south and started to tweak the end of his foreskin. He just played around with it a little at first, until his dick was at full mast. The scope was so powerful I could see his dick jerking in time with his heartbeat. Then he turned sideways to look at it in profile, and I got a really good look. Slowly, ever so slowly, he started rolling the foreskin up and down, and then started speeding his rhythm up until he was really going at it. For the first time whilst using the telescope, I had to masturbate before stopping my observations. Keeping one hand on the telescope barrel, I used the other to push down my shorts and pants and grab my already rock hard dick. It was hard to stay in focus and not wobble the scope around too much while I wanked, but I managed to watch him to completion. I was surprised to find that when he had his orgasm, I could see a couple of drops of fluid drip off the end of his dick. I knew what semen was – as I said before, I was well educated – but didn’t expect to see someone I thought to be my age ejaculating. I had my orgasm at exactly the same time. That image, of the boy standing there with his dick dripping immature semen on the carpet in front of him, became the staple image for my wanking fantasies for some time, until it was replaced by something even better. But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself there.

My first trip to an amusement arcade was a moderately frightening experience, as I had gleaned as much information from my aunt as I could – which wasn’t much – before heading out on my own. I entered rather nervously, totally unsure of myself. I had decided to only take a small proportion of my wages, believing my aunt when she said that if I took it all, I would spend it all. I think I understood the concept of computer games, and since this was the mid 1980s, the games provided were simple enough to pick up without ever having seen them. I stood out a little bit from the crowd, hanging back a bit and watching rather than crowding around the machines. This drew the attention of a boy a little older than myself. I was worried as he approached me smiling that he might not have the best intentions, but when I spoke to him, I realised that, like me, he was alone in the arcade, whilst most people there were part of a group of friends. Mark was a local boy, but didn’t really get on with any of the other kids for some reason. I couldn’t fathom what that could be – he was a fairly good-looking boy, fashionably dressed, and looked like the sort of person who would always have a group of friends around him. Certainly there were boys like him at the commune, and they were always the most popular kids. Mark was also a little older than I was, at twelve, so it seemed odd to me that he would take the time to talk to me. Nevertheless, we spent a few minutes walking around, Mark showing me the rudiments of the playing of arcade games. He didn’t seem particularly bothered that I hadn’t apparently played before, which made me feel a little more comfortable about the strange situation.

It wasn’t long before the amount of money I had decided to spend in the arcade was used up, and though I had more money with me, I knew that I shouldn’t spend a whole week’s wages in one evening, and told mark I was leaving. He seemed rather disappointed, and asked what I was going to do. I told him that I would probably end up going back to my aunt’s place, and having a look at the stars through my telescope. Mark was a little surprised that I had a telescope, but thought it was cool, and before I had a chance to change my mind I decided to ask him if he wanted to come and have a look. Mark accepted eagerly, almost before the offer was fully made, and I could sense that he was actually keen to be away from the arcade, despite having been hanging around there when I arrived. The impression was only reinforced by the way he spoke of the arcade once we had left, and his feelings towards the kids who hung out there. He seemed to have been outcast from their social circles for some misdemeanour or other, though he would skirt the issue of what that might be whenever it came up. As we walked, I talked a little about my background, which fascinated Mark. He lived all year round in Brighton, and made and lost friends every year as the holiday season came and went. He already seemed a little depressed that he would lose me at the end of the summer as well, but I reassured him, in the way that only ten year olds can mere minutes after meeting someone, that we would be friends for ever. That made him smile with obvious relief. I was itching to know what it was he had done that separated him from the other kids, what he had done that made him such a bad person to have as a friend. I thought he was great, easy to talk to, very funny, and nice when some other kids can be nasty, especially about my upbringing in the commune. It made me feel a lot better about myself to talk to Mark.

When we got back to the shop, I was surprised to discover that my aunt knew Mark, and that he knew the shop very well. He was a regular customer, it seemed, visiting once a week at times, though he had not been in since I had arrived. My aunt seemed happy for him to accompany me up to my room, and mark was really excited to see what the shop was like behind the scenes. Up in my room, the telescope was still pointed towards the guesthouse I had been watching the night before, and I quickly made a move to move it before Mark could see what I had been watching. It was just getting dark, and Jupiter was coming up in the east, so I decided to show Mark something he could get impressed by – the big four moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Mark was suitably impressed, even more so when I showed him the chart I had made of their movements every night, showing the periods of their orbits. I had seen Galileo’s original version in one of the books my aunt had provided, and decided to see if I was as accurate as he was. Of course, in the end I got nowhere near, but it was fun anyway.

The only problem was that once we’d looked at Jupiter and a couple of the brighter stars, there was nothing left to look at. Mark, however, surprised me by suggesting, with a glint in his eye, that the sky wasn’t the only thing the telescope could be used for. The whirl of emotions which ran through my mind at that point sent me reeling. The first feeling was one of immediate fear, that Mark had realised what I was using the scope for. Then came a little tinge of relief that I wasn’t the only one who thought that way, and then a little shock as Mark perfectly lined up the scope with the room I had been looking at the night before, and that the scope had been set up to watch when we walked into my room. I saw the hint of a smile curl the corners of his mouth, and it quickly spread into a full-on grin. I had expected him to have a go at me, but instead he just quietly said ‘cool’.

My mind was running ahead of me. There was the smallest chance that I could save face here, that I could get away with it, because the room that he was looking at had both a girl and a boy in it, both a little younger than myself, and who both ran around their room naked at night before going to bed. If he only saw the girl there, I would be safe – sure, I had been spying, but it was on a girl, so that would be ok. Mark watched for a moment, and taking the opportunity to satisfy my curiosity, I glanced down to see if it had the same effect on him as it did on me. Sure enough, there was a bulge there, and I smiled inwardly at the thought that I really wasn’t the only one. Mark decided that he had seen enough, and pulled away from the scope, still grinning, indicating that it was my turn to have a look. I stepped up and put my eye to the eyepiece, and got the shock of my young life. Through the scope, the only person I could see in the room was the young boy, lying on his side, reading a book, naked as the day he was born. It was obvious that Mark had been seeing that, and probably realised that that was what I was using the scope for, not checking out girls. I pulled back and looked across at Mark, whose grin regained its full power, and saw him blush ever so slightly.

‘You like looking at him then?’ he asked.

This was it, I thought, this was the moment of truth. There were two ways the conversation could go from here. Either I could admit it, admit that I was looking at other boys with the telescope, or instead I could try to deny it. The moment felt like it would last forever, but slowly, without realising for a second or two that I was really doing so, I started to nod my head. Mark’s grin, which had once again faded slightly, returned stronger than ever.

‘Are there any more then?’ he asked.

My head was spinning. I’d lost my tongue, and nodded once more, redirecting the telescope to another room that was almost always a sure fire hit. Every evening, a young boy had a shower and came into the room with only a towel on. He would get into his pyjamas quite quickly, so there wasn’t much of a show, but there were always a couple of seconds where he was totally naked, and sometimes he would be facing the window. The boy was probably my age or a year older, and had quite a nice body, though his dick was a little on the skinny side. Sure enough, the boy was just entering his room and stripping down for the shower, which was in a connecting room with the suite next door, which I assumed belonged to his parents. He always went into the bathroom with his undies on, and then it would only be about ten minutes before he was back, this time wearing nothing more than a towel. Mark waited patiently, and I could see him fidgeting somewhat, his right hand in the pocket of his shorts, clearly very close to touching himself. A few minutes passed, and then there was a gasp from Mark, and his hand moved those last couple of centimetres to its target. I could see him squeezing the end of his nail hard dick through the pocket of his shorts. I knew the boy had come back, and the anticipation would be building with Mark. A little later, and there was another gasp, and a harder, more frantic rubbing, and Mark came. I could see the bulge in his shorts pulsing a few times, and I knew for certain that was what had happened. Mark pulled back from the scope suddenly, face flushed bright red, and mumbled that he had to go. I smiled at him in what I hoped was a friendly way, and Mark responded with a shy smile of his own. I showed him out of the shop, and rushed back to my room, the telescope now forgotten. I had a new vision to work with.

Mark came back the next day. I was working in the shop, moving some books around to fit a new section in, and he came in. He chatted for a moment with my aunt, and then came over to speak to me. We exchanged greetings, and I explained that I was actually working. Rather than saying that he would come back later and heading off, Mark stayed and helped me, and we chatted while we worked. I couldn’t believe that I was getting on so well with someone who didn’t share facets of my personality. I loved science, loved mechanical things, whereas Mark was something else entirely. Mark was an artist, whose media covered all forms of imagery, from drawings and paintings to literature and poems. More than anything, he loved to sketch what he saw, and was without a doubt talented. With nothing more than the back of a delivery note from a box of books and a Bic biro, he drew such a lifelike picture of me at work that it could have been traced directly from a photograph. I was astounded by the image, and touched when Mark signed it and gave it to me. It was only after he had returned home for his dinner that I read the inscription, and my heart jumped into my mouth. It read: Tom, with love, Mark.

Love. A big word. Can mean everything in the world, can mean nothing. In this case, I couldn’t know. Sometimes people signed letters to friends that way, so maybe Mark was just one of those people. But I couldn’t get away from the possibility that it was something more than that. The thought haunted me as I lay on my bed waiting for my aunt to finish making the dinner, staring at the paper but not really looking at what it said. Love. Such a small word. Four letters, so easy to say, so difficult to take back, so powerful in strength, and at the same time so frail. Love. The feeling you get when you spend the whole afternoon with someone and can’t wait until they get back from dinner, lying on your bed, staring at the picture they have drawn. Love. The very thing I was feeling.

Of course, it couldn’t be, because Mark was a boy and so was I, and for me to love him would mean that I was gay. I knew what gay men were. We were hippies, after all. It wasn’t unusual for there to be same sex couples within the commune. And yet… and yet there was some sort of stigma attached to the idea, and it wasn’t something that I really wanted to be. Perhaps it was one of those phases my grandfather had told me about. He said that when hormones started running around my system, I would go through phases, like getting crushes on other boys or on people totally unsuitable for me. It would go away after a while, and wasn’t something to worry about. I was never told, though, how strongly these feelings would affect me, how fast my heart would race when the realisation hit me. If this was a crush, then real love would put me in hospital. I hardly heard my aunt calling me down for dinner.

Mark came back that evening, calling at the back door as I had told him to. I could see from the glee in his eyes that he loved the exclusivity of not having to go through the shop any more. My aunt opened late on Thursday evenings for a book club, and we passed through the shop as the members were gathering. Out on the street, it was actually quite quiet, probably because of the impending storm we could see building up out to see in the fading light. Mark wanted to take me somewhere, to show me a place that was just his, that only a few people knew of. We worked our way through the streets, away from the sea, in a direction I had never before explored. Here were the new builds, the houses not twenty years old, extending towards the countryside beyond the extent of the older parts of town. Beyond them, fifteen minutes’ walk from the seafront, the housing gave way to countryside, and Mark turned away from the path we had been following. There were signs of inhabitation here, but they were old and faded. An old VW camper van sat forlornly by the side of the path, rusting slowly on its axles, the fabric roof hanging down adding to the air of decay. Beyond the camper, the path opened out, and we entered a wide clearing, a small stream running down one side, the sound of trickling water drifting across towards us. It had been a campsite, once, and there remained one building at the far end. Mark started towards it, hesitating momentarily when I didn’t follow immediately, and then speeding up a little when he saw me move.
The building was obviously a combination site office and shower block, and we entered through a high window, which hadn’t appeared open when we had first approached. Dropping in through the window and onto a table, it became clear that we would need light, and that was the first time that I came to realise that this was somewhere Mark spent a lot of time. Without hesitation, he moved to the far side of the room, took a lighter out of his pocket and lit a small kerosene lamp sitting on a table there. Another lamp, this one on a shelf, was also lit, and the room leapt into life. This had clearly been the main offices, and there was still plenty of the paraphernalia of business about, from full filing cabinets to typewriters on the desks.

‘This place shut down last summer,’ Mark explained. ‘Not many people know how to get in, and all the other people will be busy in town tonight, I can guarantee it.’

The look on his face spoke more than his words ever could. He wanted us here because he knew it would be a private place, knew that no-one could walk in on us, no-one could see us together, no-one could see what we were getting up to. I thought I would have been appalled by the idea that Mark wanted us to be alone together, but instead my heart started pounding and the blood it pumped rushing to my dick. This was naughty, this was taboo. This was fun!

I followed Mark through the building as he showed me the few rooms that it housed, eventually ending up in the shower area, which still had running, if very cold, water, which was great to mess around throwing at each other. When we got back to the office, Mark showed me the one last surprise the office had to offer – on one side, a small door opened into a room with its own bed, which had either been left with its linen, or had had new sheets provided. Either way, it was a cosy arrangement, and one that made my heart race again.

Of course, with the electricity cut off, we had to make our own entertainment, which Mark provided in the form of a deck of cards. We both shared a love of card games, and started teaching each other those that we knew. We passed an hour that way before Mark decided that the games needed spicing up a little. As soon as I saw the look on his face, the grin that could be seen only in his eyes, I knew that the mood of our play was about to change, and in an exciting way.

‘How about poker?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘Let me guess,’ I said, ‘strip poker, right?’

Mark just started giggling and nodded his head. He wasn’t about to deal, and I was getting impatient, so I grabbed the deck and started dealing. I was sure I was on to a winner – poker was the game my grandfather and I played on the long evenings when there was little else to do, and I knew I was pretty good. What I didn’t expect, however, was the fact that Mark was at another level altogether. It was as if he could see through the cards in my hand. He never lost once, and before I realised what was happening, I was sat there in only my undies, a little tent obvious in the front, matching the one that resided in Mark’s shorts. And then he was laying down the last hand, and it was a winner again. Another winner. I’d not lost more than two hands in a row since I was eight, and now I had shed a t-shirt, two shoes and two socks, and a pair of shorts in quick succession. Mark had lost nothing, and I think he could see the sense of unfairness that I felt in the situation, because rather than waiting for me to take down my pants, he himself stood and started stripping, extravagantly throwing the clothes all around the room. Soon, he too was down to his briefs, the tent so much more obvious now, and, I realised with a start, quite significant too. Hooking his thumbs into the waistband of the shorts, he said,

‘On three?’

I nodded as I stood, confident now, ready, excited. Mark counted slowly, his voice beginning to show signs of the excitement he was feeling, and we dropped them.
There he was. Naked, in front of me. The boy who had confessed his love to me. I knew it then, knew that the note he gave me on the picture he had gifted was the simple, honest truth, though how he knew so quickly, and how I came to accept it myself is beyond me to this day. Love at first sight, you might call it, though I think perhaps it was second or third sight. First real conversation, definitely. It was our words that drew us together our quiet, self-assured love of learning new things. We were the same, are the same, remain the same. The love that those few hours built lasted, lasts still. But emotions were the last thing on our minds in those few moments. We were boys, horny and naked, and without understanding what we were meant to be doing with our excitement, directed our energy instead to running around outside the office, naked as the day we were born. I loved the naturist life, remembered it well from the commune, but this was something else entirely. There was an excitement in our activity that I had never felt when naked in the commune. There it was normal, was accepted. Here, though, it was taboo, out of the ordinary. Trouble would come our way were we to get caught without our clothes on here, and the excitement that brought built in us to bursting point. Mark was absentmindedly playing with himself every so often, and I was doing so with more than a little determination. I was uncontrollable, my hormones taking over now, and needed to get off really badly. I could see it in Mark’s eyes, too, the need, the desire to do something about it.

‘I was going to save it for later, but I’ll show you now,’ he said, and headed back to the office without further explanation. I followed him, shamelessly ogling his body as he walked in front of me.

Inside, he walked over to a filing cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer, reaching inside to grab a large envelope. When he opened it, my eyes nearly popped straight out of my head. Inside was porn. Real life porn, and nothing like anything I had ever seen. Whereas I had expected to see men and women, instead here there were kids having all kinds of sex. My hand went straight to my dick, and I didn’t bother hiding my actions as we leafed through the old, worn pages.

‘These were here when I found the place,’ Mark explained, as he too went to work on his dick. I loved the sight of him wanking, and in truth it was him I was looking at as I worked my own hardon. His dick was probably a little over four inches long, and had a very long foreskin overhanging the end, which was worked up and down as he wanked. As well as being longer than mine, it was also fatter, and had a slightly softer look to it than my rock solid nail. Suddenly I found myself wanting to do some if the things I saw in the magazine between us, but I didn’t dare lean over and take his dick into my mouth like the young girl was doing in the centrefold. Before long, the magazine was forgotten entirely, Mark and I watching each other for inspiration, and neither of us could last long with that kind of stimulation. Mark came first, and it was watching the couple of little squirts of semen he produced jetting onto his stomach that sent me over the edge. Mine was dry, of course, but felt just as good. After a moment, Mark had recovered enough to confess that he had never shot so much or so far before.

That night I lay in bed thinking about the evening’s events. Mark and I had left the campsite not long after we’d finished wanking, and returned to the shop in time to have a quick look through the telescope. We were a little late to be seeing anything really good though, as most of the people had gone to bed already. I got butterflies in my stomach thinking about the moment that Mark had to leave and he gave me a brief but wonderful kiss in the shadows of the alley that ran behind the shop. Then he was off into the night, leaving me wanting more, wanting to hold him, wanting him to never leave. But he had his curfew, and his parents would be worried if he did not return. They were never angry if he was late, he had told me, only concerned, and that was somehow worse than just anger. Mark was sensitive to his parents’ feelings, and I realised how alike we were in that regard. My grandparents had never had to punish me, since their disappointment was all too plain to me, and that was worse than any tongue-lashing I could receive.

I did it again, lying there thinking about Mark, but this time slower, at a more relaxed pace, taking my time as I watched Mark again and again in my head, first running around naked with his dick leading the way, and then lying on that bed with the magazine between us, wanking himself until he shot. I had wanted so badly to feel that semen, to taste it even, and yet I had held back for fear that Mark would think me weird. Then again, perhaps he wouldn’t be too freaked out if I just touched it, and after all the girls (and some of the boys) in the magazine had been drinking it themselves quite happily. I resolved as I stroked myself to taste it before I left Brighton.

Days took on a whole new element with the burgeoning relationship between Mark and myself. I wanted to spend all my time with him, being shown everything about the town, all the secret places he went to. None were as private as the offices at the campsite, however, and that was where we would spend time together when we wanted to be away from prying eyes. I still worked in the shop, though far fewer hours, but there was plenty of time for Mark and me to mess around at the site. We found the remains of a bridge over the stream, and set about rebuilding it from bits and pieces of rubble lying around. There had been a stone pillar in the middle, and we went to work on that first, wading into the water, naked so that our clothes wouldn’t get wet. Stones were wedged into gaps, and though we couldn’t mortar them, a quick hammering with a stout branch secured them in place. The footway was a little tougher to build, but we managed it, tying old planks together and wedging them into the bank on either side. The end result wasn’t bad, even if I do say so myself. We worked for several days on the bridge, drying out each afternoon by lounging around naked on the top of the office block, sunning ourselves. Our dicks, shrivelled from the cold of the water, slowly returned to their normal size, and would then more often than not continue growing, and we would have a quick session there on the rooftop, watching each other bringing ourselves to climax.
The tension between us became palpable at those times. I wanted Mark, and I knew deep down that he wanted me, even though neither of us could make the move. I lusted after his body, and more than anything else the hard nail at its centre. I dreamed of how it would feel in my hand and brought myself to crashing orgasms thinking about how it would taste. Looking back, I really was quite depraved in my lust for Mark. I wanted to own his body in the worst possible way. I wanted to do to him all those things in the magazine, and wanted him to do them to me. I wanted the feeling, the licking, the sucking, and even the fucking that I saw. I suppose it was the influx of hormones into my body, but I’ve never been more horny than those summer days.

Of course, so much of our time together wasn’t spent in sexual play, it’s just that I remember those times more vividly. We were, after all, just boys of a certain age, so alongside our construction efforts with the bridge, we went out hunting for nature to be impressed by, and hiked miles into the countryside around, roaming as far as the chalk hills several miles north of the town. Out here there was nothing but countryside, filled mostly with rolling green hills and the odd flock of sheep. Stands of trees afforded shelter from the midday sun, and the occasional village provided refreshment. It was when stopping in these places that I realised what it was about Mark that had unsettled me a little from the off. He was always dressed in expensive clothes, though he rarely needed to worry about his appearance – he could pull of the dishevelled look perfectly – and always seemed to have money to spend. Whereas I would scrimp and save, Mark would turn up each day with a full wallet, and never seemed bothered about paying for things. I tried on several occasions to buy us drinks in the little corner shops of the villages we visited, and each time Mark would refuse to allow me, saying that I had worked hard to earn my money, and should keep it. He had always been a little vague about his upbringing, and not once had I visited his house. My curiosity peaked one day when we were about as far from Brighton as we’d ever made it, and I asked Mark why he always had money. He wanted to skirt the issue, I could sense, but sometimes you have to grab the bull by the horns, and I did so, pestering Mark until he agreed to show me something that would explain everything. I was thoroughly intrigued.

We made our way back to Brighton at quite a pace, as Mark seemed keen to get it over and done with. When we got back, Mark took me to the far side of town, well away from my aunt’s bookstore, to a park. There, we entered the gents toilet block and went into a stall together. I was still unaware of what all this meant, and was about to ask Mark when we heard the outside door of the toilet bang open and someone come into the stall next to ours. Mark immediately bent down to look through a sizeable hole between the stalls, then unzipped and, standing on tiptoes, poked his boner through into the stall, his balls following as well. I saw the look of pleasure coming over his face as whatever was happening to his dick continued, and then I recognised the buttock-clenching which signified his impending orgasm. He gasped when he came, lifting a little higher and pushing his groin hard against the wall of the stall. When he pulled his dick back, it was wet and glistening. I thought that had been weird enough, but I was in for more surprises, as a big, hard adult dick followed Marks through the hole, and Mark immediately bent down to suck it into his mouth. Now I understood what had happened to Mark’s dick, why he had such a happy expression on his face. Now that expression was replaced by one of concentration as he worked over the first few inches of the man’s dick. Soon enough, Mark’s mouth was flooded with come, some of it dripping out to fall to the floor with a splat, and then the dick was gone. There was one last surprise in store, as a rolled up ten pound note was pushed through the hole, and then we heard the man get up and leave. Mark pocketed the money and smiled to me.

I should have been disgusted, should have been horrified. I was neither. A little jealous of the man, perhaps, and of Mark, but I didn’t react in the way I would have expected myself to. The situation excited me. As I had watched it unfold, I had grown hard and started playing with myself, and now I saw no reason not to go all the way, stripping out of my shorts and grabbing my dick. There was that glint in Mark’s eyes again, and I realised that I knew exactly what was about to happen. My belief was justified when Mark sank to his knees and engulfed my dick with his warm, sucking mouth. This, I decided, was what heaven must be like. No earthly pleasure could match the feel of Mark’s hot mouth around my hardon, and his tongue playing along the underside, exciting me further. I had no choice but to sink down onto the toilet seat, and Mark followed, not missing a single suck, ending up with his head in my lap, tongue still working me. I knew I couldn’t last long, and within a couple of minutes I was ready to explode, the tingling in my dick stronger than it had ever been. When I came, my orgasm left me breathless, panting, satisfied in a way I had never felt before. Mark sat back with a self-satisfied smirk on his face, and I smiled at him through hooded eyelids, and thanked him for the experience. That was definitely something I had to try, I thought. And since Mark had made the breakthrough, it was no holds barred time.

‘I thought you were going to run away when that started,’ Mark said as he lay back in the sunshine, stroking himself. He was naked, of course, and it was the day after the incident in the toilets. ‘I was worried it would be too much.’

I smiled.

‘I nearly panicked, yeah, but then I got kind of excited by it, and saw how much you were loving having it done to you. I’m not so sure about sucking a man’s dick, but it’s your call, and the money’s good.’

Mark laughed at that comment.

‘Yeah, the money does come in handy, and it’s not so bad sucking dicks. Mostly they’re ok.’

‘Do you like all that kind of stuff then?’ I asked. Mark just shrugged and closed his eyes, lying back in the sun, still fiddling with himself. I don’t know where I got the guts to do it, but as he lay there I moved down and pushed his hand off his dick, taking it into my mouth.

I suppose I didn’t know what to expect the first time I sucked a dick. I knew it would be hard – after all, it was erect – but I didn’t expect the soft sponginess that overlay the rock hardness beneath. It tasted of nothing more than a finger, though with a different texture to it, so very soft. Even though Mark’s dick was bigger than mine, it fitted into my mouth easily. I loved the feeling of it in there, with the puckered, overhanging foreskin brushing the back of my mouth and my cheeks as I moved around on it. Mark’s demonstration on me the day before had taught me all I needed to know to make it pleasurable for him, so I tongued the foreskin just as he had mine, finding that sensitive area just inside the skin that drove him crazy as I flicked it with the tip of my tongue. Mark had already been quite worked up when I went down on him, so it didn’t take long for him to reach orgasm, spitting a mini load into my mouth. I swallowed his spunk, after tasting it and finding it pretty tasteless. I didn’t dislike it, but nor was I desperate to taste more.

I looked up at Mark and grinned to see him lying there with his arms open, obviously wanting a post orgasmic hug. Who was I to disappoint him? So I moved up and our naked bodies came into touch for the first time. I thrilled at the contact, the warmth that radiated from Mark’s body, and I could feel him holding me tightly as he too felt the closeness.

Inseparable is a strong word, and often overused, but I think it would be fair to say that Mark and I were close to inseparable over the summer. From time to time he would return home to reassure his parents that he was alive, but now we spent every day together, and several nights a week, Mark sleeping on a camp bed in my room (when he wasn’t in my bed with me…). My aunt offered the same wages to Mark to work in the book shop, and that allowed him to give up sucking dicks for money. Though he said at the time that he didn’t mind doping it, it made me feel a little uneasy in the cold light of day, and Mark has since told me that he fooled himself that he got any pleasure out of it just because he needed the money so badly. So, he and I worked at moving books, restacking old piles and even renovating an older section of the shop that had fallen into disuse. My aunt was so pleased with progress that she joked that she would have to keep me and not let me go back to the commune. That struck a chord with me. Despite writing weekly letters, mostly composed of stories about how great Mark was, and how wonderful a time I was having, I really didn’t miss my grandparents all that much. The connection I had formed with my aunt from the moment we stepped through the door of her shop had grown, and she was now the closest thing I had to a real mother. It had always seemed a bit of an issue that I was being brought up by my grandparents, especially as they got older and couldn’t do all the things that a normal parent would do.
The issue came to a head on one of the rare occasions that Mark wasn’t around, and it was just me and my aunt. We’d taken a walk down to the beach, and were seated on the friendly side of a windbreak.

‘Did you mean what you said before about keeping me here?’ I asked my aunt. She turned to me, the expression on her face unreadable.

‘That rather depends, Tom. I love having you here, and you would be more than welcome to stay. I always wanted someone to share my life with, some real family of my own, and having you here has given me that for the first time. But what would your grandparents say? And are you ready to leave the commune behind? Can you become like all the other kids around here, going to school?’

I thought about it for a moment, watching the waves coming in. And then it hit me.
‘I think I’ve already left it behind,’ I said, my eyes focussed hard on the horizon to stop myself bursting into tears. But behind the fear of leaving the commune forever, there was the elation of the realisation that I would never have to leave this place. I loved Brighton, I realised, and would do anything to stay here.

‘Well, in that case, I think you need to go and see your grandparents, and pick up your things. Come on, let’s go and call the commune.’

With that we left and headed back for the shop. The commune had one phone, and anyone could be called there, though outgoing calls were severely restricted. The phone call was one of the most painful things I have ever had to do, and my stomach still lurches at the thought of it, but all of us knew that it was for the best, that really I was more cut out for the seaside life than that of a hippie.

When the phone call was finished with, I was in tears, and my aunt enfolded me in her arms, soothing me until I was all cried out. The excitement only hit me once the tears were gone, and I really began to understand what the move would mean. The room I occupied, the room I loved, would be mine always, and the shop would be my home, and the world that I was coming to know, so much larger than the commune had ever been, so much fuller, would be mine also. My aunt would be my mother, and Mark… my lover.

Getting on the train back north, heading for the commune, was no longer a frightening experience. I had grown so much in the three weeks or more that I had been at my aunt’s shop. People I didn’t know no longer scared me, open spaces didn’t bother me, and I dealt with the bustle of the platform and the scramble for seats with the proper enthusiasm a ten year old boy should show. The increase in my confidence was in a large part due to Mark’s presence on this journey. He had heard all the tales I had to tell of the place, and now wanted to see it for himself. I realised that I needed to see it for myself, too, because really I couldn’t remember what it looked like. Already, the place that had raised me was almost forgotten.

The news that I would not leave him at the end of the summer had been met with the kind of excitement in Mark that I had only seen emerging from within him in the last few days. The boy who had been somewhat reserved all the time I had known him, somewhat bottled up, was coming out of his shell. I loved to see him grow that way, to see the boy I loved become the person he was meant to be. The change in personality was reflected in the way that he drew. What had been tight, precise, was now free flowing and full of passion.We were good for each other, positive reinforcement, you might say.

Returning to the commune brought up all sorts of emotions in me. So many of my memories were here, among the trees and in the fields, and yet now it seemed such a small place. Only a couple of hundred people lived there, and I knew them all. Brighton, on the other hand, was into the region of a couple of hundred thousand people when summer got going, and I knew about ten of them, all told. I knew when I walked through the gate into the centre of the commune that I was never meant to live there. I was my father’s son, and he had been the non-hippie in the family, bowing to my mother’s wishes for the most part. My grandparents were my mother’s parents, and had raised her in the commune, so it was the life that was expected I would lead. I think I had other ideas from birth, though, and although I fitted in in the commune, I was so much closer to my aunt than I had ever been to anyone there.

My grandparents seemed so much older when I saw them. They’d always been so full of life, and yet now they appeared frail, my grandfather especially, as he leaned on the staff I had always considered nothing more than an ornament. Mark was slightly taken aback by the commune, not sure what to think about the chickens running around and the time-warp kind of feeling the place gave you. I’ve seen films set in post-apocalyptic times, where remnants of technology are left over, mixed in with a much simpler way of life, and they’re generally a pretty good copy of the average day on the commune.
A few of my friends came up to say hello, but none of them got excited in the way that Mark did whenever he hadn’t seen me for a while, and I realised I wasn’t going to miss them much. There weren’t really that many kids there, and that meant only a couple of boys my age lived on the commune, and I didn’t get on too well with them anyway. In Brighton, I had Mark, and a few of his friends I had come to know over time. He, too, was a fairly solitary person (with the exception of spending a lot of time with me!), but it turned out that he did have a few friends, all boys a little younger than himself, and all quiet. In fact, all but one of Mark’s friends had attended and art class he had helped give, and they hung around together drawing things. I know it’s hard to imagine, but they really did form a drawing gang, capturing the life of Brighton. A couple of those lads are professional artists now, as it happens.

We spent the afternoon with my grandparents, chatting about how things were to be arranged, and sorting out the more important details, like handing over my birth certificate and medical card. I only had a few possessions when I lived on the commune, but what little I had was closely guarded, and so I carefully packed up everything I owned. I also took the chance to visit the old library, and found the librarian, Matthew, waiting for me, apparently aware that I had returned for the last time. There was a sad look in his eyes, a downwards droop of the shoulders.

‘I shall miss you, Tom,’ he said as I took a last look around the little room that had held so much of my view of the world. I was beginning to get a bit emotional myself, so I tried changing the subject, forcing back the choking sensation in my throat.

‘What books don’t you have that you really want, Matthew?’

The old man shrugged.

‘There’s always a couple of things we can’t afford that I would love to have. You know where the wish list is, for when you go into town to the Oxfam shop. I suppose the oldest items on there, the ones right at the start, would be the ones I would like to acquire before I pass the work here on.’

‘Have you found someone to take over yet?’

At last I saw the smile that Matthew used to have every time I turned up.

‘Not one, but two! A couple, Jill and Darren.’

I nodded, I knew both of them, though not too well. I wasn’t aware that they were a couple, but I supposed that I had been away for over a month, which was plenty of time for things to change. I took a quick look at the wish list and saw the familiar old names there, the ones that Matthew had never found. There were a couple of hippie classics from the sixties, but mostly it was old classics, proper literature. In truth, I knew the first couple of pages of the list off by heart, and resolved to send through as many of them as I could over the coming years. The library had given me so much that it was time to give something back.

Just as I was leaving, Matthew stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
 
‘Before you go, young one, I want you to have this, to remember me by.’

He pressed a small, cold, smooth object into my hand. When I looked down, I could see the gleaming white of a carved figure, expertly chiselled from ivory. I knew that Matthew had the remains of a very old piano keyboard, and would often make figurines as gifts, but none was so excellently, so beautifully representative as this. It was the image of a young boy, naked, and quite detailed. As I studied it, I became aware that the face seemed oddly familiar. It definitely wasn’t mine, but when Mark popped his head around the corner to see how I was going, I gasped in shock. The figurine was a perfect copy of Mark. There was no way that Matthew had ever seen Mark, and so there was no way he should have been able to capture the image of him, right down to the most personal of details, so clearly. Matthew was a little taken aback himself.

‘I saw the image in a dream, and felt compelled to make it real,’ he said after a moment. ‘But it appears that Mother Earth has beaten me to the task.’

Mark had no idea what was going on, so he just shrugged and left again, off in search of my aunt for a bit of normality. I stayed for a while longer, relating Mark’s story to Matthew, who seemed genuinely pleased that I had such a good friend. He knew, I realised fairly quickly, that Mark was my boyfriend, and yet seemed happy for me rather than being disgusted as I imagined most people would be. When finally I left him, the sun was making a dash for the horizon, and it was time for us to be heading home. We had offers of staying in the commune, but I agreed with my aunt that making the process long and drawn out would only have increased the pain for me in the long run.

Stepping out onto the platform at the other end of the line, I finally felt like I was coming home. I’d been gone no more than half a day, and yet the place had changed already. It always changed, was always so fluid that if you weren’t there all the time, the town threatened to be a different place entirely by the time you returned. Mark and I had been quiet on the train, he drawing and I contemplating the gift that Matthew had given me, taking care not to show it off too much – it was, after all, a perfect statue of a naked boy who was sitting opposite me, albeit only just a little longer than three inches tall. That sent me into a fit of giggles, since that was exactly how I would have described Mark’s dick – very hard and just over three inches long. He bugged me until I was capable of whispering in his ear what I had been thinking, and that only served to send him over the edge too, until my aunt had to tell us to be quiet before we disturbed the whole carriage. Once we were off the train, the mood changed. I was no longer reflective, but instead was looking forward to my new life, and all that it would entail. I would be going to the same primary school as Mark had before he’d moved on to the local secondary school, and while my aunt was legally only a temporary custodian at the time, we had plans for adoption in the coming weeks. Whereas once I would have been apprehensive of all the changes happening, now I was only excited. But before all that was to happen, there was still the bulk of a long, hot summer ahead of us. It was only half way through June, and we wouldn’t have to be in school until September. So started my seaside summer with Mark.

There’s plenty more to say about Mark and myself, there’s a long story to be told, but you don’t need all the details, day by day, because that would destroy the joy of wondering. The summer was an amazing time, Mark becoming such a permanent figure at my aunt’s shop that he eventually had his own bed in what became our shared room. I met his parents one day, at last, and was shocked by them. They didn’t love Mark, didn’t really care for him, and it became clear that he was going to be spending more and more time at the shop. Eventually, in mid-August, his parents gave him an ultimatum – either come home permanently, or not at all. Mark was destroyed as a person, and it took weeks to rebuild him to a level where he could operate normally, but in time he came back to me, not fully at first, but at least part of the way. He did end up living with us, in the end, and every night I was able to hold him as we fell asleep.

The night of my eleventh birthday was one of the highlights of the year. Over the remainder of the summer, Mark’s friends became mine also, and I revelled in their acceptance. Each boy looked up to Mark somewhat, respected him it seemed, and loved him in their own way. He had shown them it was ok to be different, ok to be sensitive, to be quiet, to be, above all, artistic. They knew the feelings that Mark and I had for each other – they could hardly miss the way we held hands when we thought it was safe to do so – and because they had been accepted for who they were, accepted us also. You might expect to hear that they all turned out quite gay, but in fact most of those boys are either married or looking for a girlfriend now. They just happened to be the nicest people I will ever know. Anyway, back to the eleventh birthday tale. We all went out bowling in the afternoon for my party, which my aunt paid for as part of my present. The rest of it she told me was waiting at home, and refused to give me any more details. She only insisted that we were out of the house all day long, and so we had an enjoyable morning causing quiet havoc all over town, before heading out to bowl (where we discovered that Andrew could out-bowl most of the people in the alley…), and finally out for a meal in the evening. It was about the most enjoyable day I’d had in a long time, with one possible exception – Mark and I hadn’t yet had time to fool around, and I liked to suck him off at least once a day just to see the look on his face. When finally we dropped the rest of our friends off at their respective homes, Mark and I were totally wiped. But there was one more surprise, my aunt had reminded us, the second part of my birthday present. Suddenly we were wide awake again, practically dragging my aunt back to the shop to see what it could be.

She let us go when we were about a hundred yards from the shop, and told us to go and look in my room. The first thing I noticed when we walked through the door was a strange smell in the shop. It only got stronger as we went up, and I realised that it was the smell of fresh paint. I pulled down the ladder to my room, and was rewarded with a gust of even stronger paint fumes. I almost ran up the steps and into my room, Mark hot on my heels. What was there astounded me. The room had changed beyond all recognition. Gone was my rickety old bed, and Mark’s makeshift one, replaced by a single double bed built along one wall. The walls had gone from old, peeling wallpaper to a nice light blue colour that would make the room shine brightly when the sun hit the window. That, too had changed, the ragged sheet that acted as a curtain replaced by a rolling blind, which was really cool. And the wooden floorboards had been covered with a lovely, soft carpet. The room looked amazing.

We both jumped down the bottom half of the ladder on the way back, and ran straight into my aunt, who was grinning broadly. I wrapped my arms around her, and hugged tightly, and Mark, losing all inhibitions at last, leaned in and made it a three way hug.

‘I hope you boys don’t mind sleeping in one bed,’ my aunt said after a moment, her voice deliberately casual. The embarrassed blushes on our faces answered that one for her. Although she never ascended the ladder to my (our…) room, I think she knew that Mark’s bed was rarely slept in, and then only if we wanted a change. ‘I got a friend of mine in today, who specialises in quick decorating jobs. As long as you leave the window open tonight, you should be ok to sleep up there. Now go on, it’s past your bedtime.’

We needed no further encouragement, racing up the ladder and pulling it up behind us, shut away no in our little palace.

We were naked in seconds, jumping into bed together, and quickly locked in an embrace, arms wrapped around each other, lips locked in a strong kiss and hips grinding together, mashing our hard penises against each other. Mark rolled me onto my back and told me that he was going to really do something special for me tonight, for my birthday. I could go into gory details, but I think that might spoil the end of the story. I’m sure you can imagine what we got up to. For the first time that night I really felt as though we were making love, not just making out. I woke up in Mark’s arms, the sound of the sea and the town drifting through the open window, the sun streaming in with it, and realised that this, at last, was home.