Forth into Light (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (12 page)

Peter didn’t quite know how it had happened; it was one of Charlie’s miracles. He had demonstrated to Peter, by insisting that he share Martha, that he was capable of giving pleasure to women and could derive pleasure from them. The discovery had broadened and opened out the world for him. His occasional heterosexual experiences offered the revivifying titillation of novelty and the comfort of knowing that they were incapable, through some private chemical eccentricity, of throwing him off course emotionally. As Charlie had doubtless hoped, they had somehow eliminated the temptation of boys.

Peter looked at the tormented boy in front of him and chose his words carefully so as not to let their conversation get out of control. He didn’t want to add to his torment or make him feel rebuffed. “I don’t have to see you with an erection to have a pretty good idea of how you’re built,” he said. “You’re all right.”

“You’ve noticed?”

“Sure. I’m no longer in the market but I still take a scholarly interest in guys’ crotches.”

Jeff looked up and his smile was suddenly boyish and vivid. “You’re extraordinary. You’re so natural. I don’t know any grownup like you. To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel any age difference between us at all. You might not think that’s a compliment but it’s meant to be. It’s amazing. You
will
let me see you naked, won’t you?”

“I’ve never been shy about stripping, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea under these particular circumstances.”

“You mean because of Charlie?”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re faithful to him, aren’t you?”

“Of course, but stripping for you wouldn’t be unfaithful to Charlie. Anyway, we found out long ago that we
can’t
be unfaithful to each other. I have a girl every now and then, but he likes that. We all have our queer patches. That’s Charlie’s. He gets a kick out of thinking of me with a girl.” He paused, thinking of the girl on the port at noon. He directed his attention back to Jeff. “The last time I was almost unfaithful was with Dimitri, God help us, and that was ten years ago when we first came to Greece on that cruise with Martha and her husband. When we bought the house.”

Jeff’s eyes had widened with interest. “What was he like?”

“About the same age as you are now. Very innocent and appealing. Not as beautiful as he is now. Quite small, by the way, if that’s as important to you as you make it sound.”

“It’s important to
him.
I don’t know what’s important to me,” Jeff burst out, flinging himself about in the chair. “I haven’t wanted sex until now. It seemed dirty to me. I realize that that’s because with kids there’s no love. I’m ready for love now. I’ve got to come to terms with sex. If I don’t, I’ll end up with fantasies about you and Charlie and Apollo, and masturbating for the rest of my life. Is it mad for me to be a homosexual and think I can have a good life? Is it very difficult?”

“I suppose so. Maybe more difficult than for other people, but making a good life isn’t easy for anybody. I have no complaints but——” He paused and his habitually sunny expression clouded briefly. “It can be weird sometimes. Being queer, I mean. You go along leading a good life—I mean, really good—loving and living for love the way everybody agrees is good—and then some trivial little event of the day reminds you that you’re supposed to think of yourself as a monster. Charlie fought it at the beginning. He threw me out to get married. I mean a regular marriage, not the nutty setup we have now. Well, you’ve probably heard about that. For a long time after we got together again, we tried to hide it. You know, pretended with everybody that we were just good friends. That does a lot of damage. Then Martha came along and by some fantastic freak of luck she turned out to be the one woman in ninety million we could work things out with, to have the children and everything. The thing I don’t tell most people is that if she hadn’t come along, we’d have been fine without her. It’s been marvelous but as much as I adore the family, Charlie is still the center of life and always has been. People may be fooled by us but we’ve never fooled ourselves about that. Yes, dammit, of course a homosexual can have a good life.”

Jeff was staring at him. Peter was astonished to see that his eyes were liquid with tears. “There’s so much love and understanding between you,” he said wonderingly. “Why isn’t everybody like that? When I think of what goes on at home, it makes me sick. My father turning into a drunken wreck. My mother running after young men who aren’t much older than I am. And they never
talk
to each other. They fight, but they never say the truth. You weren’t here so you didn’t meet Ronnie, but you must know all about it. He was after me. I wouldn’t have him so Mother grabbed him instead. That’s why tonight is so important to me. I’ve got to start some time. I’ve got to make a life for myself. I may really be in love with Dimitri but I’ll never find out if I go to him like this, all tied up in knots.” His voice strangled on his words. He lifted his fists and pressed them to the sides of his head. “I’m going out of my mind. He’ll see that I’m an inexperienced kid and throw me out. Oh God, Peter, you could help me so.” He closed his eyes and tears spilled down his cheeks.

Peter checked an impulse to go to him and put an arm around him. The boy was already emotionally overwrought; tenderness might further undermine his control. Showing him his body seemed a more straightforward alternative. He hesitated for a moment and then stood up. “All right, Jeff. Let’s get some of those knots untied.” He went to the door and locked it. He unhitched the cloth from around his waist and tossed it aside and turned back to Jeff. They had swum together so often with very little more on that he couldn’t imagine his nakedness being much of a thrill. “This is what I look like,” he said, approaching the boy.

Jeff’s eyes were fixed on the bit he had never seen. When Peter stopped in front of him, his chest heaved with a deep convulsive breath. “You’re so incredibly beautiful. You and Charlie are the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen. I knew it. You’re bigger right now than I am with an erection.”

“I doubt it, but if we’re going to pursue our comparative study, you’d better let me see.”

Jeff disentangled himself from the chair and stood. He kicked off his sandals and peeled off his shirt. In a moment, he had got his legs out of his shorts and underpants. He kept his eyes averted.

“Good lord. You actually
do
have an erection,” Peter exclaimed. The boy’s torso was still hairless but there was a shading of down on his chest and across his flat belly. Only the pubic hair had developed. From it, the pale sex rose at a steep angle, giving an impression of great vigor. Its adult virility was a shock in juxtaposition to the tanned, coltish, angular, boy’s body. “It’s just what I told you. You have a good average cock. If anything, a little bigger than average. I’m afraid my vocabulary isn’t as elegant as yours. I can’t refer to our phalli.”

“Is it bigger than Dimitri’s?” Jeff’s eyes were still averted.

“Considerably, unless he’s grown.”

Jeff looked up with an urgent plea in his limpid eyes. “I still don’t know what we’re supposed to do. If Dimitri and I were like this, what would happen?”

Peter smiled at him. “If you were like this, you’d be in bed together and nature would take its course.”

“But I don’t know anything about nature. How does one start?”

“Any way that strikes your fancy. Making love is an expression of desire. It’s supposed to be fun. If I were Dimitri, what would you want to do?”

“Can I tell you the truth? Kiss your—I don’t see how I can say it but it’s true—I want to kiss your cock. Is that ridiculous?”

Peter laughed. “You can’t expect me to think so. I’ve been rather partial to kissing cocks in my time. Lots of people are, women as well as men. You won’t go down in history as the inventor of cocksucking.”

Jeff looked at him gravely. “Would you let me?”

“Are you kidding? Of course not.” There was a sharpness in his refusal which he immediately regretted. He wasn’t angry. He felt a deep affection for the boy and now that his first surprise at developments had worn off, completely at ease. Being naked together made him feel, like a kid again, but that wasn’t unusual for him. He often wondered if he would ever feel fully grown up. Did he feel young because he looked young or was it the other way around? Maybe when he was forty at last, he’d crumple with the weight of years. Meanwhile, it was very pleasant to see an attractive youth with an erection. He couldn’t wait to tell Charlie about it. He approached Jeff, but stopped before he was within reach. “In the first place, you couldn’t give me a hard-on. That’s not because you’re not a damned attractive kid, but it’s just the way it is. A lot of people think queers will go for any guy they can get their hands on, but you must know better than that. So let’s stick to Dimitri.”

“How can I think about Dimitri with you here?” His eyes dropped once more to the object of his cult. “It’s absolutely ravishing. I could kill myself with envy. It’s obviously twice as big as mine.”

“Don’t be silly. Bigger maybe, but so what? All this fuss about size is silly. It may be important to Dimitri but it isn’t particularly to most people. I’ve always enjoyed having a little extra to wave around, but it hasn’t been a big thing in my life.”

“Is Charlie much bigger than you?”

“Oh, Lord. He really
is
twice as big as you are, but he’s a phenomenon. I admit I’m nuts about it.” Peter laughed. “I’ve always wished he could make a cast of it. It would be quite a hunk of hardware.” Jeff lifted his great adoring dark eyes and Peter felt the contact between them beginning to flow directly and easily. The boy’s expression had cleared. He was excited and curious but his adoration wasn’t primarily sexual, fervent but not passionate. He looked at the tenderly curving lips and experienced a stunned moment as he realized that this was the kid he had watched grow up, young enough to be his son, here, naked with him, the persistent erection still lifted before him. “I have a sneaking suspicion I rather hoped you’d turn out to be one of us,” he said with a smile. “You’re certainly the most attractive boy we know. I suppose you’ve never been kissed, have you? If you put your clothes on, we might do something about that.”

The ardent young face lighted up; the yearning eyes dropped for another lingering look at Peter’s midsection. Then he pulled himself up and with more grace and purpose in his movements than Peter had seen in him before, he returned to where he had dropped his clothes. The erection gave him the pagan look of a naughty Greek vase painting. Peter retrieved his sarong and hitched it around him. He was glad he hadn’t made a great mystery about his body. They could deal with each other as friends now on an equal footing with no meaningless strains or tensions between them. He wandered over to Jeff while he tucked himself back into his shorts. Jeff looked at him expectantly as he finished buttoning up. Peter took a step closer and tilted his head toward him with the back of his hand and their mouths met. Jeff’s was closed. Peter ran his tongue lightly along his lips and they opened with a gasp. Their tongues touched and then Peter pulled back with a laugh. “You mustn’t keep your mouth closed when you’re consumed with passion.” He was thinking of the thousands of distasteful open-mouthed male kisses he had received at “gay” cocktail parties in the old days.

Jeff’s eyes were aglow with wonder. “Oh, my God, Peter. That’s fantastic.” His voice had deepened with emotion. “That’s the most thrilling thing I’ve ever imagined. I’m in love with you, of course, but not like with Dimitri or some ordinary mortal. It’s good you don’t want me—not that I ever thought you did—but it would be too much. Show me more—tell me everything while I’m still innocent. I don’t want it to be an ugly shock. Just tell me everything people do. You can’t corrupt me because I intend to find out anyway. I guess I know already, but tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do with Dimitri.”

Peter ran his fingers along the sharp line of jaw and then dropped his hand and took Jeff’s and led him to a chair. He sat opposite him. “If you know, you know,” he said baldly. “He likes to be fucked. He’ll want your cock inside him.”

“Yes, but doesn’t it hurt? I should think it would be better for me to be small if that’s what he wants.”

“That isn’t the way it works. Guys who like to be fucked like to feel it. The bigger the better. I happen to know what I’m talking about.”

“And you say that I’m maybe a bit bigger than average? All right, what do I do? How do I go about it?”

“You’ll be in bed, of course. It doesn’t strike me as all that mysterious. Hell.” Peter sat back with a helpless little chuckle. “When you’re in bed with somebody you want, and kissing him and all that, you just let yourself go. You’ll probably find yourself kissing him in the most unlikely places. I’m sure you won’t think of anything that’ll surprise Dimitri.”

Gloom seemed to be descending on his audience. “You’re not telling me,” Jeff muttered heavily. “I mean, how do you get in the right position and that sort of thing?”

“Oh, dear. I guess I’m going to have to write the script. Look, you don’t have to leap at him and plunge yourself into him. Maybe you’ll find some entertainment along the way. If you want to suck his cock, I’m sure he’ll be delighted. When he comes, swallow it. You know that much, don’t you?”

“No. I’ve wondered. It doesn’t make you sick or anything?”

“Of course not. It’s good for you. Some guys spit it out. It creates an unfriendly atmosphere.” He rose and went across to a drawer in the bedside table. He pulled out a tube of lubricant he kept there. He and Charlie used the room sometimes because it was safely isolated from the children.

He returned to Jeff and perched on the arm of his chair. “You have to use something to make it easier. Even some girls do. Dimitri will undoubtedly have something, olive oil or vaseline or God knows what, but it’s much better with this. You can get it at the pharmacy. Take some with you tonight. It’ll show him you know what it’s all about. When an opportune moment occurs to make free with his bottom, spread it around and have at him.”

Jeff looked at the tube without moving. There was a moment of silence and then he burst out querulously, “I knew it. I knew it couldn’t possibly work.”