We were back in the neighborhood by eleven thirty. I went to school to finish out the day there and tell Cholito and Mr. Martinson what had happened in court, that I was free.
Cholito was in class so I stopped first by his door and waved through its glass pane. He smiled like a circus monkey and raised his arms in the air but pulled them down fast when the teacher asked him what he wanted. Delia couldn't see me from the rear door of her classroom so I went to the front. The whole class looked at me alerting the teacher. I waved happily at the smiling Delia and ran to my classroom as the teacher peered down the hall.
Mr. Martinson pushed me back out the door and gave me a hug.
'Don't you dare let me down.'
After a quick check of the corridor, I returned the hug and assured him I'd get even better.
Cholito was at my classroom door when we got out for lunch. He gave me six rapid but soft punches to the midsection.
'I tol' you they wasn't gonna do nothing. What happened?'
I gave it to him detail by detail, dramatizing and exaggerating the part about Miss Peters walking out all pissed.
'I'll bet she'd've bit me if the judge wasn't there.'
In the lunchroom, we told a table full of Forty-Ninth street kids about it. Cholito did Miss Peters leaving the courtroom.
After school in the basement, naked but not doing anything yet, Cholito admonished me, 'you gotta be a angel for a while. That Miss Peters' gonna be watchin' you real close.'
We made love, slowly, savoring each other's closeness. Cholito held me tighter than he ever had before. We only came once but must have laid there wrapped in each others arms for ten minutes afterward.
I had no thoughts about informing my biological father how it had gone. He hadn't done a thing to help though he was probably right to think there was no real threat. The judge had called the fight a school matter and not a juvy court case, which meant that someone had pushed it into his hands in hopes if hurting me. That pissed me off. Still, there really never was any danger of me being put away.
Saturday at nine in the morning, wearing my overalls, I met Bill at Tad's.
'The day is free and all yours,' he told me. 'We can go for a drive wherever you want, go to a movie, swimming, a park. I've got baseball gloves, bat and balls. You name it.'
On television, I'd seen fathers play baseball with their sons. It had become my image of what fathers are supposed to do with their sons. I immediately opted for the park.
On the way, I told him all about the court hearing though less dramatized and more accurately than the version given my schoolmates and explained what had led up to it. He embraced me and kissed my head.
'So, no more fighting?'
'No more fighting, promise.'
'I wouldn't want to lose you, you know.'
This time I hugged him.
We parked near Central Park on Eighty-Fourth Street. We found a place with enough space to throw and bat. I'd never played baseball in my life other than holding bat and glove in my hand on the street. I'd thrown balls but never a baseball. It felt good in my hand. I threw hard as I could way over his head and off to one side. He chased it, laughing.
'Slow down, partner. Easy at first.'
It took a few more throws before I could get it into his glove, less for me to catch. He showed me how to bat, hitting a few my way. It took at least a dozen pitches before I could do more than hit it straight up or into the ground. After an hour, we were both exhausted but I had the gist of throwing, catching and batting. We fell alongside each other in the grass.
'Next year, the Yankees,' predicted Bill.
I leaned into him, very pleased with our father and son play.
We walked around the park lake then spent an hour on a rented rowboat where we talked about why boats don't sink and airplanes stay up in the air. Then he asked me, 'So what do you want to be when you finish school?'
Finishing school had never been in my plans. I had no answer to his question.
'I mean you could be a carpenter, a lawyer, a cook, an artist, a photographer.'
A photographer, like the guy who took the movies of Georgie and me and the others. I looked at him trying to guess what he thought I should say but happy that he had mentioned photographer.
'Maybe a photographer.'
'Have you ever taken a picture?'
Boy had I, I thought, but best not tell him about that. 'No.'
'Would you like to? I've got some cameras.'
'Sure. When?'
'Well, tomorrow morning early. We can meet closer to your apartment.'
'Tenth Avenue and Forty-Ninth,' I interjected.
'Make that Eleventh Avenue and Forty-Ninth Street, nine o'clock sharp. But, right now, we need to get something to eat. I've got some fixings back at the apartment.'
It was nearing one and I was more than ready to eat. We went back to his car and drove to an East Side apartment building with a doorman.
The doorman smiled and opened the door. We took an elevator to an upper floor. For some reason, I expected there would be someone else living with Bill, a wife, a son or daughter, another person who kept him company and made him comfortable. He didn't seem a live alone type like most of the johns I had met. I suppose it was that well kept look about him.
The living room was larger than my family's entire apartment. It had two large plate glass windows that looked out over the Eastside Highway to the East River and Brooklyn or Queens, I didn't know which. A dining area with a large shiny wood table and eight chairs was off to the left. Behind it could be seen a huge kitchen with stainless steel furnishings. Hallways went left and right from the living room.
There were plates and settings for two at the dining room table.
The place smelled great. Bill explained why.
'I fixed some of my very special chocolate chip cookies before leaving to pick you up. But, my young friend, they are for after lunch. First, I've prepared a fantastic sauce for the best spaghetti you have ever eaten. That was easy. The best spaghetti I'd ever eaten was from uneaten customer meals at the diner where my grandmother worked. The stuff my mother and Brenda made at our apartment was terrible. I never ate more than a few forks full.
In the kitchen, which had better looking equipment than grandmother's diner and was a hell of a lot cleaner, Bill went about boiling the pasta and warming up the sauce and some bread shaped like a huge flat dick. The meal was really good. He let me drink a glass of wine with it.
While eating his delicious chocolate chip cookies, we talked about photography and looked at pictures Bill had taken and put on the many walls of the apartment. They were an incredible mix of people from all over the world, plants and trees, some buildings and boys, lots of boys. One appeared at least a dozen times as he grew from perhaps eight or nine to a young man.
'Who's he?' I asked.
'That's Michael, you know him.'
It was the man from the YMCA pool. 'Wow, you've known him for a long time.'
I immediately wondered if he had sex with him back when he was small but didn't feel comfortable asking.
Bill changed the subject by getting out the cameras we would use the next morning and showing how they worked. He explained aperture, film speed and other characteristics of camera and film none of which made any sense to me. What was more interesting were the photos in some of the books he had. Naked Amazonian and African boys caught my attention though I tried not to show too much interest. One Amazonian boy, with what looked like a toothpick stuck through his lower lip, seemed to have a partial hardon. He was walking with a man in the jungle. It must have been afternoon because the sun lit him from the front, making his skin glow like polished brass.
Then, it was into the shower. Time for sex I supposed. Bill washed me thoroughly, cleaning every crevice of my body then announced that we had to hurry because the stores were closing. Well, I thought, so much for a protein shake, as a New Jersey john liked to call sperm. And I was horny from looking at the Amazonian boy.
Bill took me to a department store where he bought me a whole set of nice clothes with a dress shirt and jacket, slacks, sweater, winter jacket and leather shoes. I tried to see what it cost but only caught glimpses of the price tag on the jacket, forty-nine dollars, and the shoes, thirty-six dollars. I wasn't going to be able to ask for any money for a month.
The clothes were to be used to go to nice restaurants, like where we later ate dinner, and to be left at Bill's apartment to avoid any questions at home. Dressed and hair brushed, I admired the new boy in the tall mirror of the store dressing room. I looked better than the whole Ostrowski family put together. Man, I thought, the kids at school would never recognize me.
Back at the apartment, I went for the book with the Amazonian boy. Bill pulled me onto his lap. 'Wanna play mommy and daddy?'
'Huh?' I was slow on the draw but the finger in his mouth clued me in.
I admired myself once more in his bedroom mirror before stripping down to bare flesh, which didn't look bad either. Bill was very affectionate, just holding and caressing until I switched around for a slow, easy sixty-nine.
Expended and feeling lazy, we lay in each other's arms afterward. I had a question that had been in my head for some time. I sat on his belly and played with his chest hairs.
'You take Georgie Shannon places too?'
Bill grinned at me. 'Do I detect a note of jealousy?'
That embarrassed me. 'Nah. But he give me that note last week and, well.'
'I've known Georgie for a couple of years now. We are friends. I know a boy, a teenager, down on Forty Fourth Street who knows Georgie. I know Georgie goes to your school. The teenager took the note to Georgie who gave it to you.
'I know Georgie from taking him out a number of times just like other boys on the Square. And, a couple of months ago, Georgie told me about you. And now, you, Ray Molina, are the only one I am interested in.'
He took my hands and looked me square in the eye. 'The only one.'
I stared back, looking for any wavering. Did he mean that? And, if he did, what did it mean. `And Roy and Adrian? You was friends with them for two years, more.'
`That's right, friends. Just like Georgie.'
'So how come only me?'
'It's just the way I am. Most men like me prefer to have different boys at the same time, some, lots. I watch for a special boy, like you, and that's it for me. You saw the pictures of Michael all over. Well, I met him when he was still eight years old. Now, he's in his last year of college. He's not a boy any more and doesn't need me as much. So, I've had my eyes open for a new boy. If you like, you can be him. Whatta you think?'
I didn't have to think. I fell forward on his chest and hugged with all my might.
We had dinner in a fancy restaurant with white jacketed waiters and carpets. It was some kind of chicken and rice with veggies and bread, okay, but I'd have been just as happy with a juicy cheeseburger. I drank milk which I didn't like a whole lot not being used to it.
It was dark, so we rushed back to the apartment where I changed my clothes. Bill dropped me where I was supposed to meet him in the morning.
I had to fight the desire to tell Cholito about my day in the park. Lying in bed that night, I considered my life to be about as good as it could get. I had a best friend who had great sex with me. The sex with Bill was enjoyable too. I didn't normally like all that body hair and such a fat penis, much less the cum I swallowed. But it wasn't just the sex with Bill. I felt so good, so comfortable, so secure being with him. I no longer thought of him as a john. He was about as close to a father as I ever expected to have.
Even school was going great thanks to my wonderful teacher, Mr. Martinson.
There couldn't be any more fights, no matter what.
Early Sunday, I went to Cholito's where I lied that my grandmother was taking us to my aunt's house in Queens and that I couldn't get out of it. The look on his face filled me with guilt and regret at not telling Bill about him. It would have to be done.
Bill brought along two cameras and a bunch of lenses in two bags. We went back to the park. I tried to focus on people, cars and buildings as we drove but wasn't nearly quick enough. In the park, with 50mm lenses on each camera, we took pictures of trees, flowers, people passing by including a young couple that stopped and posed for us. All the while, Bill explained about focusing, the effect of different lens apertures and shutter speeds and how and when to use them. It started making sense to me. Then he switched to a moderate telephoto and I went a little crazy. Everything looked not just closer but somehow better, especially people. I took six shots in a row of a little kid about three playing with his dog. After two hours of picture taking, we were at the lake. I had really enjoyed that quiet time we had had the day before out in the boat and begged to go again. We took some more pictures but I wanted to hear him tell me about things like boats and airplanes. I inquired about clouds. He gave me a lecture on how they formed and why it rained. I asked about the sun and how something so far away could keep us warm. He surprised me with news that the sun was all gases with those on the surface burning hotter than anything a human could imagine. When I asked about how cameras were able to take pictures, he said to wait, that he'd explain it back at the apartment. `So,' I said, 'let's go.'
In his apartment, he had a photographic darkroom. It was really a bathroom, one of three. With the door closed and the light off, you couldn't see a thing, not even after your eyes got used to the dark. I made sure I knew where he was when the light was out.
He explained, with the light on, how to take the film out of its container, put it on the metal reel then put the reels in a stainless steel can that, when closed, was completely dark inside. We'd shot seven rolls of film, one more than his largest can would hold. I'd shot six. We did mine first. With all six rolls on reels in the can, Bill turned the light back on and explained the three different chemicals we'd use to develop, stop the development and then fix the images on the film. He explained the importance of the amount of time each chemical was in the can ant set a large timer with long clock hands at six minutes, the time for the development step. The chemical was in a heavy plastic gallon jug. I spilled some before I even got it over the can. He laughed and helped me. He was like Mr. Martinson that way, never getting mad with me. We did all three steps and hung the film up to dry.
'Drying takes about an hour. What would you like to do?'
I thought I knew what he really wanted so grabbed my crotch and pulled on it. 'Wanna do this?'
'If that's what you'd like.'
His smile removed any doubt in my mind what he wanted to do. And I owed him one of my best blow jobs.
He suggested we shower first. I was still clean from the thorough scrubbing he'd given me the afternoon before but stripped down and hopped under the heavy flow of hot water.
'Want me to wash you this time?' I suggested.
Silly question. I did him head to between his toes making his peter hard on the way down. He was very thorough cleaning out my asshole. I hoped that didn't mean he wanted to fuck me. His dick was not huge but a lot fatter than that of the teenager who screwed me in the movie.
We dried and he carried me to his enormous bed. He laid beside me and kissed me on the cheek. I returned the favor and felt up his already hardening cock. He kissed me again, closer to my mouth. I never liked kissing men. Boys were okay because they didn't have whiskers and foul smelling breath. I turned my head away and hugged him.
"Let's sixty-nine,' I proposed pushing my crotch against his stomach.
I switched ends and sucked in the head of his cock. He did the tongue thing all around my middle without touching my stiff dick. Pulling me on top of him, he spread my legs and licked up and down between them, nicking my ass hole with each passage of his tongue. It felt great. I just wished he'd spend a bit more time at my hole. Then he did. After sliding his wet, hot tongue across it, Bill pushed the tip inside. Involuntarily, I squeezed it closed but quickly released the muscle and pulled my knees along side his ribs to spread my cheeks. His tongue went in nearly as far as Georgie's dick but didn't reach my special good feeling spot. Still, it was great.
I realized I had stopped sucking on Bill and got back to work. He was too big for me to get it all the way in so I did the top half, occasionally running my mouth and tongue down to his pubic hairs, a concession to my affection for Bill. I didn't do that with other men. His tongue slipped in and out of my clean hole, penetrating a tad more with each push. I wished Adrian had been there to fuck me and slide against my special spot.
Bill's cock began to grow. He released my legs and pulled his mouth back to my roaring hard peter. His timing was amazing. Moments later, we came almost simultaneously. I took his cock well into the back of my mouth so I wouldn't get so much of the taste of his cum. He made a momentary effort to push me off but then let go, firing off gobs of the hot stuff toward my belly, protein to build muscles I'd been told. I swallowed hard several times concentrating on the throbbing bliss of my own penis.
Bill's cock still in my mouth, Cholito's words came to me about only fags doing this. I had to know.
Bill pulled me around to lie beside him, his arm under my head holding me close.
'Bill, what's a homosexual?'
'You mean like me?'
'No, anybody, any homosexual.'
'Well, it's a person who prefers sex with others of his own gender, men with men, women with women.'
'And girls with girls and boys with boys?'
`Not so much boys your age and younger. Lots of boys do all kinds of sexual things with one another, with men, then become adolescents and find girls.'
`My friend Cholito's only ten an' he already likes girls. He does sex with me because we're friends. But I think I like it more than him.'
`Everybody's different. Everybody's special. The most important thing to remember is that sex is okay with anyone we want as long as they want it too. Being gay or straight has nothing to do with being good or bad. If I force a woman to have sex with me, I'm doing something very bad. When you and I have sex, we do it because we both want to, so it's okay, it's good. Most people don't see it that way. They say gays are evil, children shouldn't have sex until they get older, sex before marriage is wrong. Some even say sex in marriage for fun is wrong.
`If you have sex of any kind, fucking, sucking, whatever, with another boy and you both do it voluntarily, want to do it, it is just as good and correct as sex between a man and his wife to make a baby.' He kissed my head again.
`I like Cholito and I don't look at girls, just boys. I like Roy and Georgie, for sex, at least. I'm homosexual, aren't I?'
`Maybe, but maybe not. It's really too early to tell. Just remember, your true friends won't care one way or the other. I know I never would.'
What he said had not really helped me, had not really answered my question. I had hoped for something more definitive. I didn't want to be a fag. But what if I was? People did care if you were one. Where I lived, most everybody hated fags, or, at least, made fun of them. Some of the older teenagers and young men would take them into basements for blowjobs or to fuck them. Maybe it was different with rich people like Bill, but not in Hell's Kitchen. Why did I love Cholito and not Mary Santos? That was what I wanted to know.
The hour to dry the negatives had passed ending my time to ask questions. Worse, I wasn't sure he had any of the answers I needed. And I wanted to discuss Cholito to see if he could come with me some of the times I was with Bill, not for the sex, just to do things like play baseball.
In the darkroom, Bill set up three trays of chemicals in the wide sink and cut the rolls of black and white negatives into groups of six photos. He explained that these chemicals were similar to the set for the film and had the same uses. This time, we could work with a red light, which allowed us to see but wouldn't damage the prints we were about to make. He exposed a set in the enlarger across a single piece of paper to check his guessed exposure settings. The development process was magical to me. There before my eyes appeared strip sections of pictures I had shot earlier that day in the park. After running the test print through the stop solution, he made notes and exposed entire prints of six photos. Again, I was amazed watching the pictures come to life. There was the kid and his dog rolling in the grass. I was impatient to get the pictures into daylight. We spent an hour and a half completing all the usable shots on the six developed rolls. About a third were blurred or improperly exposed but Bill said, 'Not bad for a first time, not bad at all. And you have some nice composition on many of these. You might be a natural photographer.'
I felt great even though I had no idea what composition meant in a photographic context. Composition to me was a written assignment I had to turn in at school.
I wanted to take some of the pictures home but Bill said, 'Let's find a way for me to meet your mother and then you can take pictures home. Otherwise she might wonder what's going on.'
He gave me his phone number so I could call him Thursday night at seven to set our weekend meeting.
By the time I got home I had a story planned and rehearsed. I told mother I met a man while playing with friends in Central Park. He was taking pictures and let me take some too, even taught me about how the camera worked. He said he'd be in that area the following Saturday if I wanted to see the pictures I'd taken.
Mother thought I ought to take Brenda along but neither my oldest sister nor I liked that idea.
'Cholito'll be with me, and some other kids.'
She said she'd see as though I ever sought her permission to go anywhere on weekends.
Cholito was excited Monday when I told that we would be taking pictures in the park Saturday. I hoped Bill would be as enthusiastic about me bringing my friend along.