When I Were Nowt But a Lad 9
J. H. P. Cash, 367
When I Were Nowt But a Lad 9
That summer term ended on something of a high. My older brother won or came second in most of the individual races in the Senior section of the Inter-House Swimming Gala and I won most of my races in the Under-16 section. With another two boys who lived abroad -one in Iran, I think, and one in Hong Kong - our House team won the Freestyle and Medley relays that formed the grand finale of the Gala. So our House won the overall competition and I briefly bathed in unaccustomed recognition for athletic achievement. Got a couple of fucks out of it too.
At home during the summer holidays, as I approached my 13th birthday, I started developing my sulky teenager side. I remember particularly attending a huge teenage party at one of the swimming clubs one evening and sitting on my own for most of the evening, hating just about everybody, but especially my brother and his friends. I already knew that I was queer, not just "finding relief" when there were no girls available. One night in bed at school over 18 months before I had thought to myself "Well, I must be properly queer" and I'd given a mental shrug.
At nearly 13, I don't think that I directly connected my awkwardness and sense of alienation at the barbecue party with my sexuality, but I do know that I did a very good job of despising everybody for everything - their clothes, their hair, their music, the films they liked, the books they didn't read... That my parents were having constant squabbles and occasional full-scale rows didn't help my mood either. How could I ever have been homesick, for fuck's sake? Now I just wanted to be back at school snogging Iain or holding Dab.
The Australian National Ballet was visiting and our family doctor, who was an Australian, arranged for us to be invited to a reception for them at the Australian High Commission. Somehow my mother ended up inviting a few of the dancers over for dinner later in the week. One of the young men who was to attend was extremely beautiful. I had already used this word to describe a man after watching a film earlier in the holiday. Stupidly, I'd told my brother and a couple of his friends that I thought that Jean-Paul Belmondo was "beautiful" and had received their obvious scorn.
Now at least I knew not to say anything of my excitement about the Aussie ballet dancer coming to dinner.
I only half-understood what I was doing that evening of the dinner as I dressed carefully, choosing my best batik evening shirt and trendiest flares. I snuck into my parents' room and spayed my carefully parted hair with my mother's Elnett hairspray. I nearly reached for the giant bottle of 4711 eau-de-cologne, but the Elnett had a fairly heady perfume itself.
I flirted, mostly silently but probably fairly outrageously, with the beautiful ballet boy. As far as I can remember, his reactions towards me were utterly devoid of any ulterior meaning. Had I been him, however, I'm pretty sure that I would have been nearly helpless with restrained laughter at the anxious antics of the little trainee queer. I wasn't camp, but I was a polite, well-behaved boy - i.e. definitely not "straight-acting". The most intimate contact with him involved re-filling his gin-and-tonic as soon as he came anywhere close to finishing it and plying him over-enthusiastically with crisps and local delicacies.
I was devastated to find that I had been put on the "young persons" table for dinner - I had dreamed of sitting next to Him and interrogating him about his training regime. And then what? He'd invite me to a private after-hours rehearsal? I'd arrange a tryst at our favourite jungle waterfall?
What's the point of including these slightly self-deprecating memories? Well, it's partly just that I remember these evenings so very well. But it's also an attempt to describe were I was with my sexuality at this point. At the risk of sounding like a boring old fart, there were no websites in the early 1970s to which I could have posted the question "Am I gay?" I'm not even sure that I knew that meaning of the word "gay" then. I wasn't a stereotypical "sissy boy" in my behaviour or mannerisms, but I knew that I preferred reading books to rugby or soccer and enjoyed being thought of as "mature for my age". Indeed, my Housemaster's end-of-year report rather upset me when I read "I have even seen him behaving like an ordinary twelve year-old on one or two occasions." OK, so I'd only just learnt to bowl a cricket ball over-arm and I couldn't whistle, but I wasn't a fucking poof, alright? Just not that butch.
But these are meant to be sexual memoirs, not psychological ones, so that's enough of that crap. On with the sex...
The first year in Big School at my school was, with almost deliberate eccentricity, called the "Fourth Form". The next year was called "Remove". At other public schools the term "Remove" was usually used to describe special classes, either for the particularly stupid or the particularly gifted. Small "Remove" classes would remove some boys from the mainstream so that they could be given extra support in getting through public exams, or so that very clever boys could get, for example, a little extra tuition in Latin and Greek if they were to go for their 'A' Levels and Oxbridge entrance early. At my school the whole academic year was called "Remove".
Don't get me started on "tradition", marketing and the close connection between the two. (We played Fives at my school, but with different-sized courts to those used for "Eton Fives", with the buttress in a different position and no step dividing the upper and lower courts.)
So, anyway, I was in "The Remove", as were Dab and Charlie and Roger and Kemal. My brother was in the "Middle Sixth" (the second and last year of the Sixth Form - only Oxbridge candidates got into the "Upper Sixth"), due to take his 'A' Levels at the end of the year. He had just about scraped in as a House Monitor and, fortunately, was not in a bedsit in my new dorm, South Dorm.
We were no longer "sprogs", but we were not yet anywhere near being Senior boys either. The tradition of British public school queering emphasises relationships between Senior and Junior boys. But we were far from celibate in our middle years, at least at my school. For a start, a 14 year-old could still be attractive to a 17 or 18 year-old boy and a 14 year old boy could still be attracted to a 15 year-old. And advanced boys like Kemal slipped early and easily into an Big Boy role, courting 13 year-old new sprogs from the lofty heights of his 15 years.
I began by being a little lost, however. I just couldn't bring myself to fancy anyone in my brother's year. I regarded him as a charmless, moronic bully and, by extension, damned all his friends. I wasn't ready to play the "Big Boy" to any boy only slightly younger than myself. But Dab and I started having sex together more regularly again, and I wondered why we'd fallen out of doing it very often towards the end of the previous school year.
We were very close, very affectionate, and sex together was great: relaxed, friendly, talkative, giggly and loving. But I see now, as I did not then, that we were both basically bottoms. Dab yearned for an older boyfriend - a Senior. I yearned for a sexually demanding older boy - a day or so older would have done. This did not affect in anyway the joy we experienced together at the time, but I understand now that it explains why were were close friends rather than real lovers.
Dab had the additional advantage, from my point of view, of being more adventurous sexually than most. I have been describing here the most exciting, memorable and, if you like, "advanced" (or "dirty", as we might have said at the time) sex I experienced at school. Most boys in my House would be happy to engage in a quick mutual wank and quite a few would not object to having their dicks sucked (and some of those would even suck you back). Only the elite queers "went all the way". I remember the confusion I felt when a Junior boy who was having a widely-recognised affair with a monitor told me that the most they'd ever done together was to jack each other off. And yet they were supposed to be "in love"!
After a year of the "Duke of Edinburgh's Award" in the Fourth Form we had to spend a year in the Combined Cadet Force. (Remember that Soviet tanks were due to roll across the plains of Northern Europe at any moment and public school boys would need to be able to form the officer corps of the Free World). I chose the Navy Section. Yes, yes, I know... but: apart from the best dress uniform we also did the least marching and very little crossing of ditches with two empty oil drums, three poles and a coil of rope. Although the RAF Section got to go flying, that happened for about ten minutes once a term. We sailors actually went sailing nearly every week. Not in battleships or destroyers, of course, but in a "whaler", many dingies and the master-in-charge's rather beautiful yatch.
And we had the best-looking non-comm officers. A boy in the Lower Sixth in my House, Robert, was in charge of my "mess" and taught us how to sail. I knew already, having been dingy sailing for a few years at home, but by now I'd learnt to avoid showing off too much about my privileged tropical home life. The best thing abut Corps afternoons (on Thursdays, when we'd have no afternoon classes but it wasn't a half-day as CCF activities went on all afternoon) was that I'd arrive back at the House Changing Rooms at the end of the afternoon at the same time as Robert. He was in the Senior and I still in the Junior Changing Room, but there was always the Drying Room. I would bathe quickly and get to the Drying Room as soon as possible. A few weeks into the term we'd had a fun, if very wet and cold, afternoon taking the whaler out into the bay - our first experience of heavy waters. The excited chatter in the mini-bus on the way back to school seemed to carry over seamlessly to the Drying Room. Someone made a rather lame "Hello Sailor!" remark and I said something about not all sailors being queer.
"'Cept you are, though, aren't you?" someone else retorted.
It seemed a good enough excuse for Robert, when the room cleared a few minutes later, to move over beside me. He didn't have to say anything for me to reach for his cock. I felt it through his towel and then took my towel from around my waist and hung it to dry. I bent over to lift Robert's towel and take his cock in my mouth.
"Not here!" he hissed.
"It'll be alright." I tried to reassure him, "Even if anyone comes in, they won't care."
"I will." Robert said.
Robert didn't have a bedsit, he was in the Senior Dorm. He shared a "two-study" with a friend. It was a little frustrating. But then Robert came up with a suggestion.
"Choice tonight: I've got the keys to the Navy Stores. Meet me there at half-seven."
The Navy Stores at the school weren't actually very big - most of the equipment was kept down at the large boathouse on the estuary. The Navy Stores just held vintage equipment - Royal Navy surplus from the Second World War. It had that musty smell of old canvas and peeling wood varnish. It was lit by a single bare bulb. Robert locked the door behind me. I reached out for the hard dick in his trousers. He watched me rub him. I pulled his hand to my own groin.
"Um, I've never done anything with a younger guy like you." Robert said. "I mean, do you want to be the girl or what?"
A year or so later I would have had a smart, mocking reply to that. Just then I just couldn't think of anything to say.
So I said nothing. I just unbuttoned his flies and dragged his cock out. I knelt to suck it while shrugging off my blazer. I briefly interrupted myself to pull my pullover over my head, and carried on sucking while I unbuttoned my own shirt.
"What are you doing?" asked Roger.
"Getting naked." I explained.
"Aren't you cold?"
"Yeah, but it's more fun in the nuddie."
Roger just stood there, his dick sticking out of his kecks, as I completed removing my clothes. I put my arms around him and rubbed myself against his hard dick. He embraced me a little awkwardly but when I made to kiss him he let me do so. I snuggled in against him. I quite liked being naked while Roger was still fully dressed. It reminded me of Simon. Roger's hands finally started moving on my body, running down to my arse.
"Do you want to bum me?" I asked.
"Um, well, no. Not now. Not right now. Not here. Um, just suck me, would you?"
I dragged out an un-inflated life-jacket and knelt on it. I wanted to lick Roger's balls, but he wouldn't let me undo his trousers properly so that I could get at them. I resigned myself to simply sucking him off and starting wanking at my own cock. Roger gradually relaxed and started moving his hips. Close to coming he even put a hand on my head. I felt his fingers in my hair. Just this slight relative improvement in his performance got me very excited and I shot my little spurts of spunk before Roger started making a few restrained grunts. He tried to pull out, but I held on to his thighs.
When I'd swallowed his spunk he held the side of my face and asked, "Don't you mind? Isn't it nasty? You don't have to, for me." I couldn't bring myself to say that I liked it. Somehow I didn't want him to be disappointed in me.
"'S'OK. I don't mind." I said.
You better get dressed." he said.
As I found and put on my clothes Roger picked up the life-jacket and looked a little disapprovingly at the few drops of my spunk on it. Well, he was the Navy Section Quartermaster. He pushed it into the bottom of a pile of the vintage jackets. I grinned a "Sorry" at him and, at last, he smiled. Then laughed, "Don't s'pose it'll rot or anything!"
I honestly don't think I'd even been very aware of Robert as a specific individual during the previous school year, even though he was in my House. Now, despite the uninspiring beginnings, I developed a little crush on him. He wasn't a monitor yet, so he didn't supervise Prep or take Roll Call or sit at the head of one of the tables in the Dining Hall. He sat on the House pews behind me in Chapel. There were few occasions for me to gaze at him in wonder and lust. Even on Thursday afternoons when he led our "mess" there were usually other things going on which precluded prolonged looks. In the minibus back from the boathouse to the school at the end of the afternoon was best. The ride home after an energetic afternoon was always great. Exhausted, cold, wet, you could just slump and look forward to a warm bath or hot shower. And you could smile shyly at your Chief Petty Officer sitting on the bench seat across the way.
Dab didn't get it.
"He's not that smooth, really, is he? And you have to do it in the Navy Stores? Why don't you get yourself someone with a bedsit? Then at least you could have liey-downy sex."
"You should see him when he's sailing. He's super-smooth then." I protested.
"All the nice girls love a sailor" chortled Charlie.
"And, anyway, we do it in the Drying Room too sometimes now - if we're late back and there's no one else around."
Dab just looked at me pityingly. He was having it off with one of my brother's friends who had a bedsit and, on a few occasions, much to my disgust, with my brother.
"He's quite good, actually." Dab teased me.
I was actually a little frustrated with Robert. It wasn't just the restrictions on venues for our encounters, but also his inexperience and, well, prudishness. Leading a flotilla of dingies or commanding the whaler he had a natural, easy authority. When we had sex together, it was as if I had to lead and teach him. There was fun to be had in persuading him that, yes, I did want to lick his arsehole and no, I wouldn't think any less of him if he sucked my cock, but it wasn't my natural role.
Fortunately when the Oxbridge candidates left at the end of the Michaelmas Term, Robert was one of the Lower Sixth Formers who got promoted to a bedsit, albeit one of those converted from studies on a lower floor of the House.
Creeping downstairs from my dorm to Robert's bedsit involved passing the door to my Housemaster's flat. And, of course, Robert had to make the same journey the other way to come and wake me. We came to know quite quickly which steps creaked and where.
In the privacy of his own room, Robert relaxed considerably. One night when we'd wanked each other off and I'd persuaded him not to wipe up our spunk but rather just lie together with it still on our bellies, I tried to explain to him that I really wanted us to do whatever he wanted us to.
"You just mean you want me to bum you." Robert smiled.
"Well, yes, OK. But it's not that so much. It's more that I want you to, well, sort-of tell me what you want. Not force me, really, but order me, as if it was a Corps afternoon, sort-of. More like you were in charge, really."
"But I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do." said Robert.
"You won't!" I replied. "I mean, I wouldn't let you anyway, but I don't think there's anything I don't want to do with you."
I didn't consciously realise it at the time, but I must have thought that if decent, kind, friendly Iain could become a dominant sex mong in the heat of the moment, then many older boys must have it in them when confronted with an eager, pliant younger boy.
I really don't remember all the details of how we gradually changed, but the more that Roger saw me (and heard me) enjoying harder, more demanding sex, the happier he became to "use" me. And our cuddles and kissing after we'd come became happier and more relaxed as well. Robert laughed a lot more when we were together, losing that demeanour of slightly serious concern.
I do remember one occasion which I found incredibly exciting and which, I think, marked the point at which I became really devoted to Robert. He'd told me to dress in my Games kit and tracksuit before I went down to his bedsit that night. When I arrived he was sitting cross-legged on his bed, still wearing his pyjamas. In the converted studies, the bed ran across the far wall, beneath a window. The door through which I came in was a couple of metres across the other side of the bedsit. The window was slightly open and Robert was smoking.
I moved towards him but he told me to stop.
"Stand At Ease." he said, but not in his parade ground voice. Much more quietly.
"Good. feet a little closer together, just shoulder-width apart. Head up, don't look at your feet!"
On the few occasions that we'd had to do Drill I'd never enjoyed it at all. Now my cock was hard just standing there.
Robert stubbed out his ciggie, but immediately lit another.
"Take your top off." he said.
"Put it on the armchair." I unzipped my tracksuit top and laid it on the chair.
"Fold it properly." Robert said quietly.
"Now your bottoms." he said, once the top had been folded neatly. I knew to fold these. I was hardly naked, but I felt excitingly exposed, with my arms behind my back and my legs slightly apart. Robert just smoked and looked at me.
"You on-jack?" he asked. I nodded.
"Speak up."
"I'm on-jack" I said.
"Good" he said.
"Take off your rugby shirt." I did. I was wearing a gym shirt underneath - a plain white tee-shirt.
"And that." Robert said. I had come down barefoot, so now I had only my Games shorts on.
"Turn around. About turn." he ordered.
"Nice bum. How many times have you been bum-fucked?"
I didn't know. I tried to work it out in my head, but I was nowhere near when Robert laughed and said, "Can't remember?"
I shook my head and just mumbled, "Lots."
"Oh well," said Robert, "another little fuck shouldn't make much difference then, eh?"
I shook my head again.
"Turn back around and take three short steps forward." I did and Robert told me to take my shorts off. Revealing myself to him completely, even though I'd done so many times before, now felt very special. He was really taking charge. When I'd folded the shorts he told me to turn away from him again.
"Bend over and spread your arse. Show me your bumhole." He put a finger against it.
"Does it hurt, getting bum-fucked?" he asked.
"Not much. Not now," I said. "Just at first, a bit."
"You like it though? You like being fucked by another boy?" My memories of Robert's past prudishness made me embarrassed to admit it, but I did.
"And you've had a Big Boy's cock up you?"
I nodded and said "Yes, um, more than one Big Boy." Roger sniggered at me.
"Alright, turn round and stand At Ease again". I wanted to hug him, but he just casually took a last drag on his ciggie and ordered me one step nearer. He un-crossed his legs and drew me between his thighs. His dick was very obvious, sticking out of the flies of his pyjama bottoms.
"I like it when you do what you're told." He ran a hand under my chin and pressed his thumb against my lips. I sucked on it.
"God, you're a dirty little boy, aren't you? But I like it. Naughty but nice..." he said, echoing a telly advert of the time.
I smiled round his thumb.
"Kneel down and suck my dick," Robert told me. He pulled off his own pyjama bottoms and sat right on the side of the bed. I'd enjoyed undressing to his orders, but it was great to get down and take his cock in my mouth. He took off his pyjama top.
"How do you like getting bummed?" he asked.
I drew back to say shyly, "Anyway you want."
"Oh, come on! I've never done this before. Tell me how's best," Robert laughed.
"Um, well, probably on our sides first off," I said. "It' kind-of well, you can balance better... and sort-of guide things easier."
I sniggered too. He reached down and pulled me to my feet and kissed me. Now I could hug him. When he breathed "Good boy" into my ear, I felt that I was his... well, his boy, I suppose.
He gave me a new, unopened jar of Vaseline.
"I want to watch you put this on yourself. Um, in yourself, I guess." I turned away and bent my knees, giving him a little show of me getting myself ready for his cock.
"Ummm!" he said, pulling my buttocks apart to get a better look.
I then coated his dick while he pulled down the bedclothes and laid a towel over the bottom sheet. I got onto the bed and lay on my side, facing towards the wall. Robert spooned in behind me. His greasy cock lay in the crack of my arse.
"OK, little bumboy. Put it in yourself." I loved that idea and reached back to pull his cockhead to my hole. The angle was all wrong; his cock bent slightly. I shifted and it went in. I gasped at the suddenness, but Robert just groaned, "Oh shit. Oh fucking hell! That feels... ugh!"
I recovered quickly and said, "You can go in more now. Not too fast."
I hadn't actually had an older boy's cock up my arse for a few months, so I felt some pain still as Robert moved into me. I brought one of his hands to my mouth and sucked on the side of it. When he was right in Robert put his other hand flat on my tummy and I sighed at the strength of his embrace and the fullness of his cock in my arsehole.
Robert didn't need my persuasion or guidance any more. I was his to do with whatever he wanted. I turned my head back to see his face. He was grinning. He began to fuck me.
No longer in the least polite or restrained, Robert moved quickly from slow fucking to hard, fast thrusts. My cock, which had softened when he's entered me, got stiff again quickly. He muttered obscenities at me as he came.
Before this occasion he'd fallen straight into that post-come guilt which many young guys get, but now he just rested against me, his head heavy on mine. His cock stayed in me and he even thrust it in a bit a couple of times.
I hadn't come, and I loved it that he was staying in me.
When he eventually pulled out I reached back and scooped up some of the spunk from my arse. I raised my sticky fingers to my nose. Robert laughed and said, "You dirty little fucker." I inhaled and then licked the spunk off my fingers. Robert's fingers felt between my buttocks and then he held his hand to my mouth. I ate more of his spunk. I started to jack myself off as I licked, but Robert stopped me. He told me to put my Games shorts and gym shirt back on.
"You can stay here until I'm ready to do you again" he said. I whined that I could come then and still be OK for him to fuck me again a bit later. But Robert seemed to enjoy holding me with my cock stiff in my shorts. I quickly understood this as an aspect of the new, more demanding, controlling sexuality I'd almost willed into being in Robert.
I hugged him closer and waited happily 'til he wanted me again.
I started writing my sexual memoirs at the request of an online undergraduate friend who had been to an all-boys private day school at which there was little sex between the boys. He was keen to hear about "what went on at boarding school".
Thanks to all those who have emailed to say that they are enjoying these memoirs.
Email: spelchek@hushmail.com