Nowing the Right People

These events actually happened, to me, in England, quite some time ago. This is an abridged version of a much longer account I wrote some time ago. It is fully copyrighted.

* * *

I'm not going to begin this story where it should begin, with me being sent off to Ranleigh at the age of eleven. Going on twelve.

Ranleigh School is quite obscure, but it's similar to Rugby, which is very well known. Rugby is the school in "Tom Brown's School Days", published in England in 1857. At some point in the book the author mentions -

" ... miserable little pretty white-handed curly-headed boys, petted and pampered by some of the big fellows who ... did all they could to [corrupt] them."

And in case the reader missed the point, an accompanying footnote adds

"There were many noble friendships between big boys and little boys, but I can't strike out the passage: many boys will know why it has been left in." All this could have been written of Ranleigh too.

I first went to Ranleigh in the 1960s, more than a hundred years after this book was written. By that time much had changed - and I'm sure much had changed at Rugby too - but the friendship situation was recognisably the same, running the gamut from noble to, well, less than noble. As for myself, I wouldn't say I was miserable or white-handed, though most of the rest applied.

There was a sequel, "Tom Brown Goes To Oxford", and there Tom and I diverged once more -- I went to a different University, considered equally good by some, but not Oxford. And this is where I'm going to begin - when I went up to University at the age of 18.

* * *

The University was an absolutely marvelous place; I'm sure it still is. It hummed and fizzed with precocious young students, most of whom thought, the first year students anyway, that university was the pinnacle of life, an end in itself rather than a means to an end. I certainly thought that myself. And looking back from 40 years further on I can't say we weren't right.

Within the first week I was aware that I had an admirer. This wasn't a rare event for me. I was slim and somewhat petite, and good-looking in an effeminate sort of way, and as anyone who looks like this will tell you, it attracts a certain type of man.

And some proportion of these would become what I thought of as 'admirers' - you see them more than once, they put themselves in your proximity, and after a few times walking innocently by, they nod to you, smile at you. They are trying to insert themselves into your circle, to make the jump from stranger to acquaintance.

Delaroy told me "Keep an eye on that one, he likes your type."

"What do you mean 'my type'? I'm not a type."

"Of course you are, everybody's a type. You're 'angelic, freshly-minted little Ranleigh-sweetie' type."

I rolled my eyes. "Who is he?"

"He's Professor Hewitt. Classics. Spent too much time studying the Spartans, I hear."

"He can go and wank himself so far as I'm concerned."

"He might consider that a promising first offer ..."

"Now, myself, I'm more interested in that - that's my type." "That" was a very attractive first-year who'd just bounced into The Café. I'd seen her several times and what I'd said was true, she had the sort of looks that appealed to me.

"Oh, Stephanie, yes, she's delightful. Quite impure, too, I hear. Would you like to meet her?" So like Delaroy, so superior. Not just acting in a supercilious, superior way, but actually being superior. Insufferable.

"You know her?"

"She's my sister."

"Pull the other one."

But even as I said it I remembered there had indeed been a gawky gamin around at events at Delaroy's house in years gone by. She had been introduced as his cousin but I'd heard the very edges of rumours that she might actually be a little more closely related than that. This must be her.

"No, it's true, she is, she's my step-sister. You've met her actually, you just don't recognise her."

I looked at her more closely, and then jerked my eyes away as she became conscious of me. (Being stared at yourself, if nothing else, causes you to be sensitive to staring at others.)

Delaroy went on "You know my family situation is fairly unconventional. Complicated, even. My father has two wives, and two sets of children. I'm in the London family. Stephanie is in the Paris family."

This was essentially the rumour I had heard, in mangled form, but now I was old enough to appreciate it.

"Would you still like to meet her?"

"Um, perhaps not."

"A wise choice, Monsieur." Done in a French accent.

Delaroy was a year older than me and a year ahead of me academically. We had grown up almost next door to one another in London and he'd gone to Ranleigh too, so we knew one another very well indeed, and although we were as different as chalk and cheese, for some reason we had always been the closest of friends.

* * *

My room mate's name was Moody, and he was from Ranleigh too, same year as me. He was even prettier and more effeminate than I was myself. And better at maths too. He had a huge mop of bright yellow hair and could easily have passed for a girl.

Having sexual relations with members of one's own sex was by no means rare among the boys at that university, or for that matter, in that entire social class. But virtually all of us were on the whole more interested in girls. We were 'bi-sexual' - though I don't remember that word being in use then.

Moody wasn't bisexual. Moody was homosexual. He didn't wear it on his sleeve, but he didn't pretend he wasn't either.

We made good room mates, Moody and I. We both liked mathematics. He knew that I had no interest in him sexually. (Though he made a good character in one of my fantasies: We are both captured by the Russians, mistaken for spies, taken to a discreet and lonely house, tied up in the nude, forced to -- well, you get the idea. But just in fantasy.)

He wasn't interested in me either. Not his type. In fact, definitely not: Moody liked men who were much older than himself.

At the university, needless to say, the best supply of older men were the Professors. And as luck would have it, the famously-queer student body of the 1930s, 40s and 50s had by now moved on to populate the faculty. Many of them were no longer communists, but all of them seemed to have managed to preserve their sexual preferences intact. They were just older. Which for Moody wasn't a minus.

* * *

Professor Hewitt made his move a few days later. I was in the enormous bookshop near my college, and when I glanced up, there he was. He nodded and smiled. "He likes your type!" rang my internal alarm bell.

"You're Wilson, aren't you?"

"Yes, Sir. Andrew Wilson. Do we ...?"

" ... know one another? - No. But your friend Harris recommended you." Harris: Two or three years ahead of me at Ranleigh. (Known at Ranleigh as 'Bummer Harris', derived, in part, from the fact that he was vaguely related to the World War II Air Force commander, Bomber Harris.)

"Ah, yes, that's Harry Harris, Sir?"

"The same. Look, I'm sure you're wondering why I've sought you out, but I sub for 'Pantheon', the literary periodical, and I keep an eye out for a few new bloods each year, you know we do a whole section on new writers at the beginning of each academic year, just for works by you first-years. And Harris told me you're a very promising writer ..."

This was quite flattering. I'd been expecting some sort of sexual proposition, and it caught me unawares that I was instead being offered the chance to write a piece for a journal. And not just any journal - "Pantheon" was a prestigious publication. Even though I was following the Mathematics course for Year One, that was at least partly because I knew I could ace it. My real interest was writing.

* * *

"Are you sure about Professor Hewitt?"

"That he's queer?"

"Yes."

"Um, yes, I'm fairly sure of that."

"He subs for 'Pantheon', he does the fiction bit. He's asked me submit a piece for it."

"I'm sure he'd like you to submit more than that."

* * *

In spite of my scoffing at Delaroy, the idea that Professor Hewitt might have lecherous thoughts about me was, secretly, stimulating, and the Professor had already begun to play a prominent role in my nightly masturbation sessions.

I was an indefatigable masturbator, an activity that I fueled with elaborate fantasies, almost parallel universes, peopled by rich castes of dominant homosexuals and sluttish women. There were intricate plots, usually quite implausible.

When stimulated by a circumstance from the real world - someone propositioning me, for example - I would spend the next two or three nights imagining a detailed scenario based on what might have happened had I gone along with whatever it was, the proposition, the nodded head, the bathroom leer.

(Once, when the photographer Sir Cedric Clouter had asked me to pose in the nude for him, I spent several weeks masturbating urgently to that theme. Even though it was surely all above board - he was a celebrated photographer, after all; and even though I had turned him down. It didn't take much.)

So Professor Hewitt was often in my thoughts at night as I lay in bed masturbating. The Professor invites me to his place, he tells me what Harry Harris has told him about me. Next scene, I'm out of my clothes, kneeling on the floor in front of him in the nude, taking his big stiff penis into my mouth ...

Or ... he's taken me to his lonely little place in the Lake District. He ties me up in the nude. He and another Professor take turns ... Or ...

* * *

Moody knew that I'd 'been there' as they say, and he took that as license to recount his escapades to me. He was regularly propositioned and he knew I was too, so he didn't have to explain about that. And we were both observant enough to understand that not only were we both being propositioned, it was by and large by the same people.

Over a pint one evening he said "Remember that Professor I said was after me?"

"There was only one?"

Moody laughed. "Well he keeps turning up, you know how I mean. I was in the library after tutorials and he was staring at me so I went all the way over to that area that has books about homosexual art ..."

"... the Lord Keynes Memorial Shelves?"

"Is that what they call it? That's funny, very good. Anyway, I went there and took down the most egregious book, absolutely disgusting, full-page illustrations of ancient Greek erotic pottery art, really very turgid stuff, and I sat at one of the little nook tables and started examining it page by page.

"So the Professor turns up when I'm at about page two. I give him a big smile, just in case he has any lingering doubts, and he smiles back and looks at my book. Then he reaches all the way up to the top shelf, has to climb the ladder to do it, and he gives me another book, and he whispers to me 'if you like that one, have a look at this'. Well, of course, it makes my book look like Christopher Robin, it would turn the Archbishop of Canterbury queer ..."

" ... I think I heard he's already ..."

"... perhaps he saw the Professor's book. Anyway, I looked at his book for a minute and then he asked if I wanted to come back to his place."

"Nice line. A bit prosaic, but ..."

"I know! I'm going to write a book, "Etiquette For Literate Queers". But anyway I went back to his stunningly over-furnished flat with him and I noshed him. He has a big penis and he came buckets, but he only lasted about a minute."

"You always say that. It must be your technique."

"I think it is - I always try to feel their balls and put a finger on their anus when I nosh someone. And I sort of masturbate them with my fist at the same time I'm noshing."

"Sounds like you'd need an extra hand." I didn't say so, but I was fascinated. Good masturbation fodder.

"It does, doesn't it? But if you put the palm of one hand under his balls and sort of cup them like that, and then use the middle finger of that same hand to touch in his anus, then you have your other hand free to fist him while you suck him. Actually, it's even better if they wank themselves, into your mouth I mean, while you're noshing them, instead of you fisting them. But it has to be one or the other - see the thing is, if you just nosh them, only your mouth I mean, they often don't come at all. It's just not enough um stimulation."

"I'll defer to your vast experience."

"I'll show you if you like." And we both laughed.

"I have to go" Moody told me, and as we got up to leave, Professor Hewitt appeared.

He looked at me and smiled.

"Oh, Wilson, what a coincidence. Just the man I want to see. Do you have a few minutes?"

Later, when I thought about it, I decided he and Moody had set this up. Moody swore it wasn't so, but it seemed too perfect, the pints - I have never had a head for alcohol - the discussions of sex, Moody having to leave, Professor Hewitt arriving at that precise moment, all too much to believe it was coincidence.

But whatever the case, I wound up sitting over yet another beer, now with Professor Hewitt. He was smiling at me, self-deprecatingly, dying to please, and I realized for the first time that he was really quite young. It's hard to judge age when you're young yourself, but I now know that he was 28 at that point.

He fumbled around with conversation, and in spite of my being a bit plastered I was easily able to see that he had nothing in particular he needed to discuss with me. He just wanted to be with me.

And, oddly, this began to excite me. The idea that simply relaxing and letting it happen would lead to me being in the nude with him was, once I thought about it, extremely exciting. I realized I was stiff. I looked around in alarm, hoping no-one else I knew was there. Realising I should leave, either alone, or ...

Professor Hewitt had a very nice little townhouse just half a mile away. We walked there together making small conversation about literature. I was ready to call it off by the time we arrived, but once we were inside he lit a joint and poured some Rum and Coke I think it was, something unnecessary, and we relaxed in a low-lit living area. Listened to Slade.

I actually don't remember very well how things proceeded, but I know at one point I was dressed in a tight little bra and pants. Not really my cup of tea, the bra and pants I mean, but I've done worse.

* * *

I had a low, dull hangover the next day and lay in bed literally all day, with dream-like snatches of my debauchery of the night before drifting in and out of focus. With limited clarity, guttering like a candle. I vaguely remembered licking Professor Hewitt's anus like an ice cream. My own anus was twitching, not painful, but touching on my consciousness, and it led me to recognise that I had been very thoroughly sodomised. Possibly by more than one person - that was what my mind said. I had no concrete memory to substantiate it. And my knees were rubbed almost raw - whatever I'd been doing, it had involved kneeling, or perhaps being on all fours.

Moody brought in a huge pile of fish and chips at dusk and we ate them all. He opened a big can of MacEwan's, our favourite, and although the first mouthful, in fact even the smell, nauseated me, we knocked it off in no time and opened another.

"What did Professor Hewitt want to talk to you about?"

"Oh, well, not much just this thing writing for 'Pantheon', just about that. I think he really would have sooner been talking to you."

"Did you have sex with him?"

"Yes." I groped in these new and utterly unexpected weeds. "Yes. But ... he'd honestly sooner have been talking to you."

Moody smiled at me, his angelic face suddenly so full of warmth and, I don't know, camaraderie? I remember it so well, even if I can't put a name to it.

But I vowed quietly to myself as regards Professor Hewitt: Never again.

* * *

I went to a party at Delaroy's sister's place. I still carried a candle for her but I knew she was completely out of my league. It was better that way actually, because it meant that when I talked to her I wasn't self-conscious, knowing there was nothing at risk.

This was at that point in the progression of marijuana into English society that it, marijuana, was fairly common, but it was still treated with a certain reverence. A few years earlier it was almost unknown, and a few years later it was like having a pint. But at this point it was still the case that a party at which there was pot was exactly that -- a pot party. Everyone got stoned and sat around and ... enjoyed being stoned.

This was a pot party. I wound up sitting next to a girl called Valerie, someone I got on well with. I had already learned to be careful with pot; the line between being stimulated and being a drooling idiot wasn't well defined in my case. I'd also learned that the height of cool was to be funny but not to lose oneself in laughter, while trying to make others lose that cool, to make them laugh uncontrollably. I was quite good at it.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Valerie asked me.

"A fireman." I could see a twitch of suppressed laughter.

"You're attracted to fire?"

"No, quite the contrary. Perhaps I've misunderstood the role of the fireman. But anyway, my plan is to put the fires out. Rather than, you know, set them, or ..."

"... gloat over them."

Valerie had quite large breasts. Which wasn't all that common then. Or perhaps it's because I've since spent some time in the United States. (Whether New York City is the Capital Of The World, as it proclaims on every lamp post, is debatable, but that it is the Large Breasts Capital Of The World is a more-defensible position. Along with LA. And Houston. And Miami. And - well, it's basically the USA.)

Anyway, by my standards - un-enhanced by exposure to the American model at that point - Valerie's breasts were quite large. And she knew about cleavage. She had silky tanned skin and she owned a line of button shirts and V-neck pullovers and scoopy tops that brightened the day of every male at the University. Well, except Moody, of course. And -- well, she brightened many a male day, including my own.

She was also by repute someone who could be talked into a bit of slap and tickle fairly easily. 'Impure', in Delaroy's vocabulary.

So I was delighted to find myself sharing a couch with her at this party, to be seated so close to her cleavage that I had to concentrate on looking her in the eyes as we spoke.

"So, that's what I want to be -- a fireman. Or perhaps a policeman. But what do you want to be? When you grow up I mean."

"I'm still thinking about it. I was going to be a nun, but I'm beginning to think I might not be suited to it." I fought down a wave of laughter.

"Temperamentally?"

"Well, there's that, yes. But the threads, too, not my look. And you know they get up at some absolutely appalling hour in the morning."

"To do god's work, yes, the day is short. So, what was it you actually liked about the idea of being a nun?"

"Yes, that's the thing, when I look at it a bit more closely there's really nothing."

"A sort of ontological liking for nunnery."

"Exactly, once you've pierced the veil of words, there's really nothing I like about it at all."

"So true of life -- once having pierced the veil ..."

"How many girls have you fucked?"

"Oh, dozens. Hundreds. Lost count."

"Seriously."

"I was being serious."

"Seriously ..."

"Um, well ... "

"More than one?"

"No."

"Less than one?"

"Less than one. I've been, um, devoting myself to mathematics."

And masturbation, though I didn't mention that.

* * *

We fumbled around in my room in the dark, kissing inexpertly and feeling one another up. Her breasts were jelly, but firm jelly. I didn't know how to undo her bra and she did it for me, silhouetted against the faint glow from my window as she sat up. (I wondered if anyone was watching from the quad below. And whether Moody could hear us - his room was just across the little common room we shared between us. Still, Moody wouldn't care.)