Sir Edmund de Courtney and I had known each other since boarding school. The family fortune was modest, but entirely adequate for his bachelor's lifestyle and tastes. He came up to London regularly in the winter. We- sir Edmund, Harry Crampion, lord Naughbury and myself spent many fine November evenings at the club, to be followed by dinner and a roistering at some select tavern down the east end. The Silver Duck was a favourite.
These charmed years preceded those of Wilde and his unfortunate, all too public affairs by two decades. Town and set' in the late 1860s was a much less extravagant, and hence, less risky prospect. You generally had one or two chums of your class you worked out the state of play as to the where to' premises in town, and you stuck together for weal or woe. Trust was an absolute prerequisite. For even in those simpler times there were the renter's and the blackmailers; youths you could fairly trust, and those you certainly could not. And some became favourites. This is how I met mine.
This night early in the November of 1868, we had been carousing at the Duck and were well on as we shambled down the dimlit alleys towards our accustomed lodging at Monsieur Granier's house of after-hours `entertainments'. A house, or rather a dark slum mansion of very ill repute. Monsieur Granier kept a veritable menagerie of male companions to suit a broad range of illicit tastes. Mostly though it was trustworthy (as far as that went) working class youths in need of, or at least inclined to making a few coins off enthusiastic upper class older fellows with nothing more than a nights work and rudimentary imagination.
I struck the door three times with my cane. The heavily muffled warden showed us in, took our coats and having furnished us with tumblers of brandy, led us on a tour of the rooms to select our nights company. That was where I met Robbie.
He was an exceptionally beautiful young man; a 21year old working class boy with a mop of dirty blonde hair, parted at the side. Lean, fit, but with delicately pale skin and divinely rose-petal lips. I closed the door behind me as my friends ventured further to find their own delights. Robbie was dressed in a clean, crisp white shirt and waistcoat. His grey britches were a little worse for wear, but clean. He welcomed me
`if sir is eager to get going'- he invited me to sit back in a huge comfortable armchair, decked all over in gaudy pieces of fabric and exotic looking scarves. I fell back, tumbler in hand as Robbie set about his trade.
He slowly peeled down his trews, revealing his simply sublime, pearly white ass cheeks and readied himself, slightly squatting, hands on his knees, for me to sample.
I threw back the remnants of my brandy and got to my knees. I proceeded to worship this boy's exquisite posterior, my face flushed with both the heady liquor and the taste of his budding young working class butt.
Although this nights jaunts had not been cheap, I felt almost honoured as an aging denizen of the stifling world of fashionable salons and interminable dinner parties to find myself here, prostrate and adoring at this altar of fresh manly beauty. His magnificent manhood hung swaying in front. I was astonished by it's robust proportion, by it's perfection! Sweet ecstasy overthrew me.
I cast off my stuffy garments, as Robbie did the same. There we were, stark naked together. This godlike lad, his impeccable snow white skin glinting in the dim lamplight, and me a sweltering pile of aging aristocratic flesh, on my knees, bathing in the aura of his beauty. We tumbled onto the bed I proceeded into a frothy, sweaty exertion of exploration of his body as the night rode by on the drizzle soaked back lanes outside. We woke in each others' arms.
Robbie remained my favourite for several years until he married as was expected of him. His youth and beauty passed away swiftly, as it is wont, sadly, among his class. I met him recently again. He's a fine fellow of 35, lined faced, mustached, jolly enough but not that angel I met that November night. We fumbled in the corner of the pub I met him in. It was pleasant enough, but it wasn't how it used to be. He simply wasn't that boy anymore.
Thankfully, Robbie doesn't need rich men's favours any more. He has a good career. And more often than not it's he these days who may be found catching the eyes of some lusty youth and jangling the coins in his pocket.