Johnny Come Home
by Rafael Henry
Chapter 8
'Are they settled Alex?'
'Yes they're fine Adrean. In bed. They're both very tired.'
'Good. Thanks anyway. You're a godsend Alex.'
'When will Anna be back?'
'About nine thirty.'
Alex looked at his watch. Seven thirty. Two hours.
With the nights drawing in fast now, the boys' room was quite dark, but light enough to see two pairs of eyes wide open. Johnny wanted a goodnight kiss, and when Richard saw him give generously to the boy in the bed opposite, he asked if he might be granted a similar favour. Alex might have knelt by John's bed for long enough to help him on his way with matters in hand, having it grabbed urgently and unceremoniously. He turned to Richard, a far prettier boy than John, but too young to engage with in that way , but not too young to admire with eyes for his beauty only. It was a sweet kiss just with lips and hands behind heads. The kiss with John had induced the quick beginnings of a hard-on for both boys, but by the time he'd satisfied Richard's demand for attention, Alex thought he would lose his. He thought wrong. In the hallway back to Adrean's office, he realized he hadn't, and was feeling appropriately disgusted with himself. The touching of lips with Richard had done it. The two boys differed in build, John's being narrower, albeit with nicely stated buttocks, not quite sticky out, that showed his pants well through those fitted and 'not quite regulation grey' Levi school trousers many of the boys more body conscious favoured, and the waistband showed too when a boy bent over for any reason, enticingly, as their shirts were now being cut too short to stay tucked in for long. In British cultural history, this was the moment when clothes designers began to sexualize young boys with some success. Almost unisex underwear had just appeared, something that Alex had already embraced, and introduced to John, but the boys' mother, Anna, had not. Not yet. Boys, and their proud mothers now wanted to show them off, parading their sons in ultra short play shorts a size or two too small that showed the new style of underpants off wonderfully, and inevitably what was squashed inside, front and back, like it was some kind of competition. It came along with tolerated nudity on public beaches, and the occasional glimpse of a boy being changed not discretely behind a large beach towel but quite openly for all to see the nubile boy, or girl's body, and if you were the lucky observer, hard after a good rubbing in a certain place with the towel. Beach erections tended to be persistent beasts, and common to see, albeit straining inside swimming briefs.
'Can we concentrate on the online stuff this evening Alex? I'm still very hazy about things.' Asks Adrean, sitting at his desk, his face lit by the light from the monitor.
'Sure. I can go over all the internet basics. What do you want to look at?' Alex asks Adrean, quietly.
There's a pause before Adrean asks another question that takes Alex a bit by surprise.
'How did it go with John at the weekend? He was full of you when he got home.'
Alex felt his face warm alarmingly.
'Full of me?'
'Yes, he couldn't stop talking about you. He's certainly learning something from you.' Adrean said, looking rather hard at Alex. It was rather an odd look Alex thought. What does he know? Anything? Everything? Alex had told John to be careful what he reported back to Adrean and Anna, and Richard too for that matter.
'Yes I think he is. He's interested Adrean. He wants to learn.'
'That's great isn't it. Just like I'm learning from you Alex. Like John, I'm very grateful for your help with all this IT stuff. Has John been of use then? With your work? I think he's quite practical.'
'Yes he's great. He picks things up quickly.' Was Alex's non-committal, middle-of-the-road answer.
'So do you prefer to have someone to work from when you make those clay things? You know, a real person in front of you?'
'No, not necessarily.'
'So what then? What do you, or should I say have you used as a resource?'
'Books. I knew someone who had……….'
His voice tailed off.
'Had what Alex?'
'Suitable resources to hand. Things to work from. Images.'
Adrean eventually got it out of him, what he based his little sculpture maquettes on, his small rough drafts of sculptures he never actually made on the large scale he always wanted to. The best one he ever did was based on that little toerag, Simon Perret, imagined nude of course, standing up straight like the Giocametti that Quintus Beer had shown him. It was just a tiny thing, rather apt in Simon's case, but pretty, and full of feeling. Every time he touched the soft clay, he became aroused by the tactile qualities of the piece, and by the connection between his proxy handling of Simon's body and what he had experienced first-hand, his fingers deftly handling every part of the malleable object, just like he had done in life. Pressing and moulding the pliable material, like it was the real thing. In his mind it was the real thing.
The work wasn't only based on the images from Quintus's collection of books about the human form, and Adrean really wants to know what other sources of useful visual information Alex had discovered with Quintus's help.
'There are places to look.'
'Where? Exactly?'
'You have to know where to look Adrean.'
'Did Quintus show you?'
'Yes. Quintus was unmarried. He lived in a cottage on his own. Very privately.'
'And you were friends?'
'Yes. It sounds a bit odd but we were. It was from him that I learnt about making small sculptures. I modelled for him. It was very exciting for me to be involved with his creative processes. I felt important and needed. I'm afraid I got too involved with him, but it was a one-sided thing. I mistook his interest in me Adrean. I thought it was more than it was. I ended up rather upset about it when he was no longer in my life. My parents were very kind to me. I never actually discussed it with them but I'm sure they realised that something was going on in my head concerning Quintus. They understood my sorrow. I think I cried for days. Real tears Adrean. Real tears. I had cycled out one morning assuming he'd be at the cottage as usual but he'd already gone. When I got home I was in an emotional state, to put it mildly. The neighbour had told me that Quintus had left.'
'I'm sorry. Did you love him?'
'Oh yes, and thanks Adrean. He said I was perfect for him. I'm sure he left to protect me and himself. I was at an interesting stage of my development. He told me that as he drew me. I was at a particular turning point in my life that interested him, both visually and emotionally. I was at a volatile stage. I was desperate for a kind of love that you would not have from a parent or sibling. You have to get over disappointments in life don't you? Like a clay piece collapsing in your hands. Or something you've worked on for weeks exploding in the kiln. That's happened to me several times. Air trapped inside the clay. That's what does it. It literally blows up. Bang! Just like that. Do you want me to show you? Do you know what a search engine is?'
'I know about diesel engines Alex.' He says with a smile.
'Well these engines are a bit different to what they make at Perkins.'
'Ok, show me please.'
'I'll download; that's the word, a search engine for you. I'll need to go through your connectivity first. I'll explain all that as we go. There's the obvious ones most people use, but there are others.'
Adrean, a foreman at the factory, has done well for himself and his family. A perfectly pleasant standard kind of house, three bedrooms, if a little tediously suburban in Alex's rather critical eyes. He'd been used to a little money and been amongst privilege if not quite privileged himself. No, he wouldn't describe himself as that. Now Simon Perret was . That pretty little bottom hole with that deliciously tiny winkie that would one day no doubt supply some posh girl with everything she could wish for, and more. His neat pair of testicles that would, in time, produce perfectly pure sperm to make perfectly beautiful blond-haired children just like himself. That look on the little bastard's face that afternoon when he rejected Alex's hand with the retort; 'Get off, queer!'
So it took precisely four days for Adrean to pay for and thus acquire the necessary 'connectivity' to allow him to access the internet, more or less uninterrupted, alone in his 'office', the room at the back of the house, upstairs, that would have been the little third bedroom if he hadn't commandeered it for his personal use. The boys were happy to share. And when Alex had installed the right search engine, and appropriate protective software at some extra cost, he wasn't worried about any expense. Adrean was all set , as they say, to go a-huntin', and a hunting they did go.
It took fifteen minutes to install the search engine that Alex used at home, as the large box on the floor whirred it's way to a conclusion. Alex had already explained how the machine would remember all his searches, and asked him if he wanted that facility, or would he rather it not record his search history? [Recommended]. Yes please, that would be better.
Alex, by now an accomplished expert [for his age] in matters IT, had set himself up with his very own basic website, in fact he had two. One advertised his skills as an advisor to those friends of his dad and his partner Garth, who had the usual problems with their computers, like 'Why doesn't it work?' Or, even more frequently, 'Can you start me off?', and 'What's this bit for?' The other site promoted, or rather informed the rest of the world of his talent as a junior sculptor, complete with several photographed examples, specifically about the male human form, and even more specifically, attempted likenesses to Simon Perret, deliciously naked and with a downplayed penis that you would hardly notice, thus giving the impression that it was of no importance to the maker of the object cast in plaster of Paris. With an attached email address for both, info@, and ending in .uk, there had been a dearth of responses to both. In the case of the IT expert, none at all apart from friends and neighbours who knew about his skills from Sean. For the other, there had been several responses including one from someone in America.
Dear Clayboy. I particularly like the one of the boy, far right on the top row. Who is he? Does he have a name? You don't tell us. Exactly how old is he? Is it for sale? There's no price attached. Did you imagine the subject or was it a real person? I would love to know.' In anticipation, Robert in Phoenix AZ
And Alex's response.
Dear Robert. Shall we call him Simon? He was a friend who agreed to model for the piece I made in my bedroom-cum-studio at home. [A lie]. I don't see him now, but that is another story. [True].
Thanks Alex. Did Simon ever sleep over? If so what happened? He looks very young. How much are you older than him? Do you have any photos of yourself and Simon together? I would love to see them. Please reply as soon as you can. Love B.
Love B? This has left Alex with a bit of a conundrum. To go on with this game, or ignore Robert's plea? As a compromise, or a tease, he sent him a far larger file depicting the imagined three-dimensional image of Simon Perret, and from an angle that emphasized the full-frontal qualities of the piece in all the boy's mini-glory. And then another view from the rear that Alex had taken a particular pleasure from modelling.
When Robert's reply came back, as soon as the time difference allowed, Alex decided that he should not reply. Robert was asking questions and wanting information that made him feel uncomfortable. Why would this Robert person want to know things like that anyway? He wanted to know very personal things about him, a sixteen-year-old boy who lived thousands of miles away? Why indeed.
'Just type in what we call key words Adrean. Words that sum up what you're interested in. Just see what comes up.'
Things did come up that involved sexual activity between men and women. All sorts of things. There were different categories to suit different tastes and interests. Pornography in other words. Adrean looked at samples of each category in turn, and then went back to one that had he's looked at a few minutes before. All things gay.
'Do you mind Alex?' He says, turning to look at Alex.
'No of course not. It's ten past nine. We'll need a few minutes to close everything down.'
Then boys. They were over eighteen according to the blurb, the ones doing the play acting on the bed. They were pretending to do it this way, and then that way, obviously all for the camera. And then it all stopped. You had to pay if you wanted more.
'There's a lot of that kind of thing Adrean. I think it's all rubbish.'
'So that's not what you look at then?'
'No. It's pretty useless for what I want.'
'So what is it then? Where's it from?'
Alex didn't answer that question. He couldn't, as he showed Adrean how to exit the website, delete anything that was wise to delete, and close down the machine after deleting their searches. Finally the whirring from the box on the floor stopped and the red light went out. Adrean looked shell-shocked after the revelations.
'Anna will be back soon Alex.' He says, his mind still elsewhere.
'My bus in is in fifteen minutes.'
Then a revelation Alex would rather not have been told.
'Things aren't great with Anna at the moment.' He says in a hushed tone whilst putting his hand on Alex's.
'In what way Adrean?'
'The personal stuff. In the bedroom.'
'Oh, I'm sorry.'
'I was wondering.'
'Me?'
'Yes.'
'Now?'
'Yes. Just for a few moments. Nothing more. Just for a minute or two. I'd really like that if you didn't mind.'
Alex looks down at the hand that began to stroke his upper thigh. Up and down it went, higher and higher, until it came to rest right at the top where his penis was. He leant back in the chair so Adrean could feel him properly, and in so doing, consented to this invasion. And then he stopped.
'Sorry Alex. That was stupid of me. I'm not, if that's what you were thinking.'
Aren't you?
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