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David the Graduate Student Ch. 01

By: WittePiet



 [If you have not already read the two-part story 'David Begins Graduate Study,' you should read that first, as it introduces all the characters] 

Chapter 21 Jon

The Camford Men's Fitness Trust

Shortly after his return from seeing his senile Nazi-loving grandfather, it was David's birthday. Although up till then he had not used cosmetics or male fragrances and was rather contemptuous of them as effeminate, I had bought him a large and expensive box of 'Storing pour homme' products made by a distinguished Belgian perfumer: shower gel, shampoo, deodorant, aftershave and a small bottle of the fragrance itself. "I know you think nothing of such products," I said, "but I want you to use these in place of the cheap stuff that you have been using until now, just to please me." 

He sniffed the perfume suspiciously. "Actually," he said "it is rather nice, subtle, and not a bit like the musky products that they push on the male toiletry market. But what will they think in the lab if I go round smelling like a tart? I'm only going to use the perfume at weekends, and as you know, I don't use aftershave. But I will use the other things if it will make you happy. 'Storing' means 'disturbance' or 'disruption' in Dutch. Is that the effect that it has on you? Does it excite you and drive you wild? You're randy enough as it is! And as we often shower together, you'll be using it as well, so it's a good job that I like it!" As a matter of fact it did actually excite me. I loved David's own scent, but 'Storing pour homme' seemed somehow to enhance it.

One morning early in the Martinmas term, David went off to work in the lab straight after breakfast. I was working at home that day, and having turned the computer on, while I was waiting for it to boot up and connect to the network, I went into the sitting room of the flat to tidy up. The morning post had arrived while we were eating breakfast, and David had opened his and left the open mail on the coffee table. While tidying up the table, I noticed David's bank statement, which had been pulled out of the envelope and carelessly left on the table. David and I had an agreement that we would not be nosy about each other's financial affairs, but I could not help noticing some of the details on his bank statement. To my amazement I noticed that this young man with subsistence level financial support from his studentship and a small allowance from his parents, was paying out significant sums each month in donations to no less than ten charities. 

David's living costs were not high: the monthly rent that he paid me covered 50% of my relatively modest mortgage costs and he paid me an additional monthly sum to cover the cost of his share of food, housekeeping and utility bills. The rest of his money was his to dispose of as he wished, and I assumed that he used it as pocket money to buy drinks, meals, clothes, books and trips to the cinema and all the other items of expenditure that young people of our age incur. It amazed and humbled me that somebody who, although he had no financial worries, nevertheless had by the standards of most young people of his age a relatively meagre income, should choose to give about a third of it away each month. Once again a deep feeling of love and respect welled up inside me, and once again I felt selfish and worldly and unworthy of the boy that I loved so much. The feeling was all the greater as I was due to spend the following day in London, discussing with Tim Ingledown a rent review of my family trust's property portfolio that was the major source of my income.

The Camford Bach choir was going to perform Bach's Christmas Oratorio at the end of term, and David was busy with rehearsals. He also spent quite a lot of time practising for his singing lessons. Marcello Fabioni was teaching him the techniques of singing Italian opera, and just occasionally he could be caught singing snatches from 'Aïda.' He didn't talk much about his progress in the lab, except to moan when things went wrong. This was because our research fields were diverging at a rapid rate.

I had become involved with a new source of expenditure. I had come to hear, via various gay fitness acquaintances, that there was a proposal to start a new men's fitness club in Camford. Several influential people in the city who were gay or who had gay sympathies felt that a fitness club along the lines of the Corinthian Club in London (made famous in a novel by Alan Hollinghurst) would be an appropriate institution for the city. The proposal would provide facilities for weight-training, general exercise training, a squash court and swimming facilities for men above the age of 18. Unlike the London Corry, it would not provide accommodation or meeting rooms. There would be a snack bar and a licensed bar and of course appropriate shower and changing facilities. 

The proposal was that it should be built on a derelict site quite close to the city centre. Because it had been the site of industrial activity, it had been acquired for a relatively small sum, but several million would be required to build the necessary facilities. I asked around at the lab and among acquaintances and it was clear that the demand for such facilities was high among both straight and gay men. The colleges of course made good provision for their undergraduate and graduate student bodies, but these did not usually extend to swimming pools and were more sport- than fitness-oriented. Moreover for the very large number of men working in industry in Camford, and in the service facilities of the University, many of whom lacked access to college facilities, there was very poor provision. Admittedly Camford had an excellent Olympic size swimming pool, but it was in the suburbs and relatively inaccessible for activities such as weekday lunch-hour exercise.

A trust, the Camford Men's Fitness Trust, had been set up to campaign and raise money for the new facilities. I thought that this was such an excellent proposal that I immediately offered half a million towards the construction costs, with the promise that as soon as a second half-million had been raised, I would double my original donation, subject to the proviso that ownership and management of the facility should never pass to the commercial sector. Although I had arranged for the donation to be made via Tim on behalf of an unnamed trust, I felt that it was necessary for me to be on the board of management for the fundraising campaign. While intended for all men, irrespective of sexual orientation, the prohibition of female membership made it clear that there was a substantial gay interest in the new facility. At that time, gay men were much more interested in bodily fitness than straight men. 

Getting involved on the management side of the campaign inevitably raised my profile in the gay community in Camford, which by now no longer worried me, what did worry me was the possibility of the media becoming aware of my existence as a person of wealth, so I never mentioned that I was behind the unnamed donor trust. The steering committee of the Trust after I had joined consisted of ten men, of whom three including myself were openly gay. Two other members, one of whom was the Provost of M College, were gay sympathisers, which meant in practice that they were bi or closet gay. The remaining five were hetero, but had been checked out to ensure that they were not homophobic. 

David was very enthusiastic about a facility that did not discriminate against gays. He reminded me that for many years there had been a nude bathing place for men on a tributary of the Camwell, but that it had been closed, allegedly on public health grounds, in the 1970s. Any man could go there, but for obvious reasons it had been particularly frequented by gays. 

Chapter 22 David

The Crabtree Family

Early in the Martinmas term, my supervisor, Charles Crabtree, invited me into his office, a tiny room opening off our lab in the Pharmacology Department. Charlie's door was kept permanently open except when he did not wish to be disturbed. As I sat down, he closed the door. I had often wondered why our acquaintance had not deepened over the past two years. In my undergraduate year, I could understand it, final year undergraduates are unpredictable and sometimes unreliable, and it was not the norm to have them in research labs in pharmacology. However I was a bit surprised that our relationship had not deepened during my first year as a research student. Charlie was an excellent supervisor, always at hand, always helpful, full of good advice and wise tips for a person starting off on research, indeed his professional aspects were outstanding. But in spite of him coming most weeks with the group that went to the pub from the lab on Friday evenings, I did not feel that I had got to know him better during that time.

"David," he said, "I know that you are very active in non-laboratory pursuits in the evenings and at the weekends. But I wondered if you would like to come round and have dinner with my wife and myself one evening, if you can fit it in. To be perfectly frank, I have an ulterior motive in making this invitation. One reason is that next month we are going to need a babysitter, and none of our regular babysitters or friends or relatives is available. My wife wants to meet you so that she can decide whether, if you are available, you would be a suitable person to babysit for us on 20 November. If you are free on 20 November could you pencil that in? 

"The second thing that I wanted to talk to you about is much more difficult for me. I have had other Ph.D. students in the past and in most cases I have shown them greater friendship that I have shown you. I want to apologize for this. It is totally irrational of me, but I do not number a large number of gay people among my acquaintance, certainly not at student level. I had a stereotyped image of the typical gay man, with a high voice, a camp attitude, an obsessive interest in clothes, and generally a man who is not afraid to show his feminine side."

"I don't think that I have a feminine side, even though I do have long hair!" I said. "I know lots of women and have friendly relationships with them, but I am not attracted to them sexually, in fact most of them frighten me. Men in contrast I can identify with and have no problems. They don't frighten me, because I know how they feel, being a man myself."

"This interesting you should say that," said Charlie, "because that's exactly the conclusion I have come to after knowing you for nearly two years. I don't know whether you have a feminine side! But I am sure that my wife can decide about that, because women are much better at recognizing female traits in men. Obviously to babysit you have to have an interest in and liking for young children, even if your charges don't waken up during your period of duty. So, could you come round and have dinner with us next Monday?" As it happened, Monday was one of the few nights of the week when I did not have a regular commitment so of course I said yes, and mentioned that I had a younger brother of 13. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my evening at the Crabtrees'. They were relaxed, comfortable well-educated people interested in classical music and culture in Camford. I tried to be more open and forthcoming than I was accustomed to be with Charlie, because I realized that that was the only way to overcome his reticence about gay acquaintances. It was difficult for people who were older than us and accustomed to dealing with homosexuality on a 'don't ask don't tell' basis to find themselves in a situation where they needed to be completely frank and open about sexual orientation. It is still possible nowadays to find people with that reticence, though it is becoming increasingly less common. Nowadays, even some schoolchildren seem to want to declare themselves gay, often without much grounds or justification for their assertions! One sometimes wonders whether some boys in particular do it in order to gain what they perceive as the advantage of being in a minority group in society, although in the real world gays can have a very rough time. 

There were two Crabtree children, Martin aged 9 and Emma aged 7, and I was introduced to them just before they went to bed. I told them that I had a little brother who was only 4 years older than Martin. I was indeed free on November 20 and having satisfied Mrs Crabtree that I would be a suitable person to be left in charge of her children, I duly turned up early on that date. The children were just finishing their tea. Mrs Crabtree was getting ready to go out. They were going to the theatre, preceded by dinner in a restaurant and Charlie was already ready to leave. So he asked me to give him a hand in getting the children to bed. They had had their baths before tea, so it was just a question of them cleaning their teeth, getting into their pyjamas and saying their prayers. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had been taught to pray. So many academics even in those days despised religion or thought it unimportant. By the time the children were ready for bed, Mrs Crabtree was ready, and just before the two of them left, Charlie asked me to read the children a story before putting their lights out.

The two children went into Martin's bedroom. Martin got into bed and Emma wrapped herself in a rug and sat at the bottom of the bed. I drew up a chair from the corner of the room and asked the children what they would like me to read. Martin gave me a book from the bedside table. "That's what Daddy's reading to us at the moment," he said, "we've got to chapter 5". To my amazement, it was Edith Nesbit's 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers', a book that I had always considered much too subtle and sophisticated for young children in spite of its being intended as a children's book. I could understand how Martin, who was a practical and articulate child, would enjoy it, but I was puzzled about whether Emma would like it. I would have thought that she would have been rather frightened by offhand comments in the story like statements that Smithfield was rather a dull place, because they didn't burn people there any more! But she seemed to enjoy it just as much as her brother. Martin giggled no end when Oswald in the story says that his brother is disgustingly like a girl in some ways. I asked whether I needed to explain about the strange money in the book, guineas and sovereigns, but they said no, their father had already done that. "So how much is a shilling?" I asked them. 

"Five pence," said Emma.

"And half-a-crown?" I asked, having taken a sneaky look at chapter 2. 

"Twelve-and-half pence!" said Martin, anxious to beat his sister to the answer. 

"Right!" I said "you both know a lot about the old money." They were as bright as buttons, these two kids. No wonder they appreciated Nesbit. The chapters in the book are basically a series of episodes, so when the children asked for another chapter, I was sufficiently caught up in the story to acquiesce. I have to admit that there were many times when I giggled at something and the children looked mystified, but that is the nature of Nesbit's sophisticated writing.

It was nearly 9 pm when I finally put the children's lights out. They each insisted on being tucked up in bed and kissed goodnight, which I found touchingly sweet. Then I was finally able to settle down to learning a new aria from Aïda. The house was in a western suburb of Camford, and was detached, so I was able to sing the aria quietly without fear of disturbing neighbours. Round about 10 pm, I heard a sound at the sitting room door. A dishevilled-looking Martin was standing there listening to me singing. When I had finished the aria, he said "I can't get to sleep! I didn't know that you could sing."

"I sing in two choirs," I said, "the Bach Choir and St Boniface's College choir."

"I sing in a choir too!" he said, "Winton College choir." Winton was a big, well endowed Camford college, with a big, male, semi-professional chapel choir, and a boys' school to provide soprano singers.

"You go to Winton College School then?" I asked. 

"Yes," he replied. 

"Can you sing this?" I asked and fished out of my music bag the words and music of Handel's 'Largo'. 

"The words are funny," he said, but nevertheless, stumbling a bit with the pronunciation, he started to sing

'Ombra mai fu, di vegetabile/

Cara ed amabile, soave piu' 

in a ravishingly sweet soprano voice. He obviously could read music without any difficulty. "That's VERY good!" I said and kissed him goodnight and sent him back to bed. The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. I learned two new arias and when the Crabtrees got back about midnight, I told them of our impromptu concert. We had coffee together and then I went home on my bike. After that I became a regular, though not frequent, visitor to the Crabtree household, acting as a reserve babysitter. The children were sweet, they seemed to like me, and I found their affection could partially console me for not seeing little Jeroen my brother more often. 

Chapter 23 David

My first professional Singing Engagement

Work in the lab progressed slowly but steadily. My confidence in working with enzymes increased as I found that many were nothing like as unstable and difficult to handle as I had been led to believe. Charlie was warmer and even more supportive in his role of supervisor. I think that he was impressed that both his children had taken a fancy to me. My singing also progressed, and Marcello talked of finding one or two singing engagements for me, to increase my repertoire and give me practice in performing in public. They were mostly recitals where a programme had been advertised, and the artist engaged had been taken ill. There was usually only a few days notice of such events, but Marcello not only got me the engagement via his network of contacts, but also gave me intensive coaching for a couple of days beforehand. I made it clear that under no circumstances would I undertake more than four such events per year, as that would interfere seriously with my day job. The fees though would be a useful addition to my income, and I intended to spend them on buying more music. 

My first engagement was a recital for a concert society in a town in the Home Counties south of London. The original artist had become ill at the last moment, and the society's committee was desperate to find a replacement. The recital was a very mixed assortment of numbers, which I think is why Marcello thought I should do it. There were songs by Vaughan Williams, Handel and Schubert, and I was allowed two numbers of my own choice, for which I selected two Mozart arias. The recital was on a Friday night, so I took a day off from the lab and arrived in the town in early afternoon in time for a full practice in the hall, which was part of the local government complex. Fortunately, I had not been expected to provide my own accompanist. The rehearsal went satisfactorily, and about 5-30 pm the local secretary and treasurer took me out to dinner at a local restaurant, prior to the performance at 7-30. 

The performance went well, and I sang as encore a couple of arias by Mozart and Handel. After the concert (there were no requests for autographs!), we went for a drink with the accompanist at a nearby pub before I was taken back to the secretary's house, where I was to stay the night. The secretary was a charming middle-aged lady with a handsome teenage son. The son Simon had been to the concert, so I asked him if he was musical. Like most gays, I tend to admire attractive males and chat them up, even though I have no sexual intentions. The boy said that he was, that he sang in the Cathedral choir as a baritone. I suppose that he was about 17. I asked him if he intended to become a professional singer, but he said no, he wanted to be a doctor. I asked if he planned to apply to Camford University to study medicine. I found myself wondering if he was gay. I guessed that he might well be uncertain about his sexuality, as I had been at his age. He said that Camford had not been on his list, as there was no tradition at his school of applying to Camford or Oxbridge. I told him that there were wonderful opportunities for doing things like singing in Camford, and that Camford had a big teaching hospital and excellent Medical School facilities. He was impressed when I told him that I was a research student in the Pharmacology department, studying to become a different kind of doctor. 


David the Graduate Student Ch. 01



About 11 pm, his mother went to bed and we continued to sit talking. He was an extremely intelligent boy as well as being prick-raisingly attractive, and would make excellent Camford material. By midnight when we went to bed, I think that I had convinced Simon that he should try to get into a Camford college. I gave him our phone number in Camford in case he should need advice or information the following year about an application to get in to the University. 

Chapter 24 Jon

A Weekend at Rockwell's Barn

The time moved into November. One Saturday morning, I realized that with David's singing activities, and my preoccupation with fundraising for the Fitness Centre, we never had much leisure time, and that we had not been to Rockwell's Barn for a month. He had no singing commitments now apart from his usual lessons, so I said to him, "Put your music in a case, and I'll go and get the car. We can be at the house by 11-30, go for an early lunch at the Jellycotes Arms, and then go for a walk before it gets dark. We need fresh air and a break from Camford. We can stay there overnight, and you can go to Ixton church tomorrow morning. We can get back here tomorrow night in time for chapel and hall." I put some bottles and some cold food in the boot of the car and we set off. David was driving. I had insured the car for him to drive, despite a premium that cost the proverbial arm-and-leg. He had protested, saying that he did not really need to drive and in any case the premium was exorbitant. However I insisted: I said that he needed the practice, because he had not driven since he had passed the driving test just before he came up to Camford. By driving the 4x4 now, by the time he was eligible for a reduced premium in two years time at the age of 25, which he could pay himself, he should have become a reasonably experienced driver. 

That afternoon we had a wonderful walk. The weather was dry and there was very little wind, just the occasional late leaf dropping from the trees. The ground was covered with a yellow-brown carpet of leaves, unstirred by the breeze. Sometimes we walked with arms across each others' shoulders, sometimes hand-in-hand, stopping occasionally to exchange a kiss. At the farthest point of our walk, we reached a small village, and because it was Saturday, the pub was open and we each had a beer. Then we walked back home with a spring in our steps, each knowing what we were going to do when we got back! David, perhaps stimulated by the fresh air, made an important suggestion. "I don't think that fundraising is something that you are good at, my sweet," he said. "You need a fixer, someone with a lot of contacts like Tim Ingledown. Why don't you ask Tim if he knows of a fixer like himself who is based in Camford? Someone with contacts in local government, the colleges, local businesses and parliament?" 

"David, that's a brilliant idea! I'll contact Tim first thing on Monday and see if he knows someone in Camford."

The Prosecco had been chilling in the fridge since we arrived, and I poured us two glasses before starting to undress David. In spite of the perspiration induced by our vigorous walk, I could still smell the scent of 'Storing pour homme' that he had put on that morning. He had been very good about wearing it since he found how much it turned me on! I pulled off his T-shirt and unbuttoned his trousers and pulled them down. He sat down, removed his sweaty trainers and socks and pulled off his trousers leaving himself with huge lump in the front of his underpants, with a rapidly spreading damp patch, which I made even damper by kissing. In return he removed my shirt and trousers and unlaced my trainers, which I then pulled off, followed by my socks and underpants. I continued to rub my mouth over the ever-expanding lump of underwear that covered his prick, while with my left hand I gently tweaked his right nipple. I used my right hand to pull down the waistband of his underpants and disengage them from his 25-cm dick. I pulled them down to his ankles and he kicked them off. 

I licked the copious pre-come from the the tip of his rock-hard dick and began to nibble his rolled-back foreskin. I played with his veiny shaft with my lips before moving down to his balls and spent some time licking them. Above the musky scent of his crotch I could still detect the fragrance of 'Storing pour homme'. I resumed my peregrination along his shaft back upwards to the rim of his 'copper's helmet', opened my mouth and took the glans just inside and played my lips and tongue upon it. "Jon, I'm going to come!" he muttered, and shot three times into my greedy mouth. I savoured his delicious life-juice before swallowing it, released his shrinking cock from my mouth and stood up so that he could kiss the excess of his jism from my sticky lips. 

"Now I have you in my power, my sweet victim!" I said, "I'm going to fuck the shit out of you! I'm going to ram my dick up your bum till you shriek for mercy! But you won't get any mercy, I'll fire with all barrels till your gut is full of blown-up rubber!" With these fearsome words, I grabbed a rubber, rolled it on to my dripping tool and pushed him on to his back on the bed. The application of lube to my dick and my multidigital exploration of his sweet sphincter with a generous dose of gel slowed me down a little, and I realized that I should be slower and more gentle if I wanted us both to enjoy it, so I entered his hole gently and smoothly before starting the fucking movements. "Oh, Jon, that's so good!" he said as I got into my stride, "fuck me, fuck me mercilessly!" I bent forward and kissed him passionately on the lips and continued my penetrative actions while he smiled blissfully and grunted with pleasure, his legs anchored round my waist as he pushed his hips upward against my male weapon.

My sense of spiritual exultation returned and perhaps for the first time I began to realize that in fucking my lover, I was not just pleasing my animal lusts, but was bringing joy and satisfaction to the person I loved more than anyone else on earth, and I began to wonder whether that joy was more than just physical pleasure. Maybe it really did symbolize something from outside ourselves that came from a God. Maybe in human love we did see evidence for a supreme being. I wondered fleetingly if this was something that I could discuss with a professional theologian without betraying anything personal... I slowed down my movements inside David and held my cock motionless before resuming gently and more slowly, but inevitably after two or three more minutes of delight, I shot my load violently into the condom and resumed kissing him, "My own sweet wonder-boy!" I murmured as I withdrew from his hole. He pulled me down on top of him and wrapped his arms round my back. "I just want to hold you here for a while," he said and kissed me. I could still smell 'Storing pour homme'. We lay there for some ten minutes.

"I love having you on top of me, because you're so light" he said "my featherweight lover!" 

"If you want something to eat, you're going to have to release me!" I said. "It won't take long, it's pork pie and salad, but I need enough time to make some potato salad," I said. "Could you open the bottle of Orvieto in the fridge?" 

"We haven't finished the Prosecco yet," David said, and released his grip. I climbed off him, tied off the condom and discarded it and poured us two more glasses of fizz. The meal that followed was one of the most enjoyable that I could remember since we had got back from Italy. Fresh air, beer, Prosecco and sated lust had combined to give us both ravenous appetites and the pie and salad were followed by large helpings of ice-cream from the house freezer. We finished the Prosecco and the Orvieto and David went to make coffee in the machine that I had bought for him when he lived in college. 

We then watched television for the rest of the evening, before snuggling down for the night in our silk sheets. I quoted to him a poem I had recently come across by the seventeenth-century restoration dramatist, Thomas Shadwell, set to music by Purcell, telling him that I wished I had known it when we first met and I was drooling with lust for him:

'Dear pretty youth, unveil your eyes,

How can you sleep when I am by?

Were I with you all night to be,

Methinks I could from sleep be free.

Alas, my dear, you're cold as stone:

You must no longer lie alone.

But be with me my dear, and I in each arm

Will hug you close and keep you warm.'

"That's beautiful!" said David and he kissed the back of my neck and nibbled my shoulder before we fell asleep.

Next morning, David got up early and went to church and I got up about 8-30 and cooked breakfast for us, including David's favourite black pudding. Over breakfast he said, "I'd like to learn that Purcell song, 'Dear pretty youth'!"

"It's usually sung by a soprano" I pointed out. 

"I don't give a shit about that. I just love the words!" 

We then went for another walk, longer than the day before and ended up having a light lunch at the Jellycoates Arms Before we left for Camford, David ran through three of his songs, accompanied by his practice CD. I said "I think really we ought to get a piano for you, but you can't sing opera and accompany yourself, and I'm not much of a pianist, so I guess that we're stuck with making CDs for you. Sing something for me before we leave, please, my pretty youth."

"This is NOT something that I'm doing for Marcello, this is an item of my own!" said David. And he sang 'Amazing Grace' in its entirety, unaccompanied, and by the time he had finished, tears were running down my cheeks at the breathtaking beauty of his performance. "Those words were a hymn entitled 'Faith's Review and Expectation' by John Henry Newton, a foulmouthed slave-ship captain in the eighteenth century who came to believe in Jesus and ended up a much-loved priest and campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade," he told me. 

"What's the beautiful tune?" I asked.

"It's called 'Little Britain,'" he replied. "In spite of its name, it's an American tune. 

"Jon, God loves you. Relax, surrender to Him and let His love work in you. You don't have to change your life. You already know your inadequacies. I love you in spite of them and so does God. Just accept that." I let David drive us back to Camford and I remained deep in thought.

That night after high table I went for coffee in Edward's rooms. There was no-one else there that evening, so I asked him about the relationship, if any, of human and divine love (if the latter existed). "You have first to answer three questions" he said. "Firstly, why do we exist? Secondly, if God created us, why should He be interested in us as individuals? And thirdly, what should our response be?" I had hoped to get him to come to the Lion to meet David and the rest of the choir, but instead our discussion continued till deep in the night, and David greeted me with relief when I finally slipped into bed beside him. 

Details of my discussion with Edward will only bore you, as this is a story about a gay relationship, not about theology, but I went away from St Boniface's that night having become convinced that a God existed, who loved us. This was a major change in my outlook, and I realized at once that although I was not going to make major changes in what I was doing, that my whole outlook on life would have to be coloured from now on by thought for other people, primarily David, but also for people whom I up until now had tended to ignore. I had learnt to recognize the power of God's love. At that stage, it would not be correct to say that I was becoming a Christian, but I had become a theist, a theist who believed in an interactive and loving God.

Chapter 25 Jon 

The New Fixer

Although the change that I had undergone was very profound, I decided not to say anything to David, but to wait to see if he saw any change in my behaviour, because I needed to be convinced that I could really change.

The next day I telephoned Tim, and asked him if he knew of a suitable fixer in Camford, explaining that we needed someone with contacts whom we could use both to lobby and to raise money for the proposed Men's Fitness Club.

"I'll see what I can do," said Tim. "The situation is actually fairly good at present. The current government decisively favours putting the political clock back to a less politically correct era, and that might help us deal with the equality lobby, which would be inclined otherwise to frown on a development that excluded women. Our Camford fixer, if we can find him, will have to be well primed with arguments about men's special needs, one of which is a place free of the tensions that a mixing of the sexes, or I suppose that I should say genders, creates." 

Tim rang me back after a couple of days to say that he had found someone who fitted our requirements, a middle-aged ex-local government CEO called James Everthorpe who now ran a similar sort of business to his. "He's not cheap," Tim warned me, "but he's effective. He secured planning permission for the Camford Olympic swimming pool, in spite of strong opposition from some local residents. He advises some of the colleges on the management of their endowments and property portfolios. I've made an appointment for you to meet him at his office at 4 pm tomorrow."

"Tim, is he honest? I don't want to work with someone who is into tax-dodging and shady property deals." Tim assured me that Mr Everthorpe was open and honest, at least with his clients, and had a good reputation. 

"What about discretion? You know my hatred of publicity." 

"I understand that he is very discrete," Tim said.

Mr Everthorpe's office was over a shop in Fleamarket Street. His personal assistant led me into his back office, where he was seated at a desk. I told him that I had been given his name by Tim Ingledown, who was my normal man of business, because the matter in question was based in Camford and it needed someone with local knowledge. I gave him a copy of the draft brochure that outlined the facilities proposed for the Men's Fitness Club and the membership structure we contemplated. I explained that there were two aspects to the problem that the Trust had to deal with: one was fundraising, the other was securing planning permission for a development that might have problems with planning permission because it might be viewed as discriminatory to women. Because of the latter problem, the Trust had decided not to seek grants from any national recreational or sporting bodies, but to raise the cash from private donors, who would be assured of total discretion if they wished to remain anonymous. The trust needed his help on both aspects, and I personally would meet his fees, without them being a charge on the Trust. I said that we were looking for around a million pounds in addition to what had already been promised. The sort of donations that would be most useful were those in the £50K-100K region. I made it clear that while his expenses in entertaining clients with drinks and meals would be reimbursed against itemized receipts, there was no question of any direct financial incentives being paid, as that would undermine the case we were making for a male health and community benefit. I also made it clear that we would not contemplate a commission-based remuneration, only a fee based on a scale related to the value of the funds raised. I hated getting involved in this type of discussion, and wished fervently that Tim could have done this job instead. 

To my relief, Mr Everthorpe, who asked me to call him Jim, seemed happy about the terms. He said that Tim had outlined the situation to him on the phone, and he felt that it was a cause that he could happily take on on our terms. He said that he had contacts with lots of persons in Camford, from heads of colleges and councillors to local government officials and Camford's (Conservative) MP. Also he knew people on the boards of local firms, many of whom had a lot of male employees. He said that the line to take was the provision of a reasonably priced, easily accessible facility to improve men's physical fitness, and that it would not be in competition with any local authority provision, except possibly swimming. The facilities on offer, except for swimming, would not be of interest to most women. I was impressed with his grasp of the situation and suggested that he should negotiate his detailed terms of service with Tim. I would then report my negotiations to the Trust.

A few days later, Tim rang to say that terms had been agreed with Jim Everthorpe and I was able to report to the committee of the trust that an anonymous donor had agreed to meet the cost of hiring Jim. Some of the other members of the committee knew Everthorpe by reputation and said that his appointment meant that we would certainly achieve our target within a year. I arranged for him to meet the rest of the committee, and he announced that as a result of my approach, he had at once contacted Paul Zebedee, a distinguished artist, whose art had made him immensely popular, and who could command astronomical prices for his works. Zebedee was an alumnus of Buckingham College, well know in Camford for its sympathy for gays, a tradition that went back to its founder, George Villiers, boy-friend of King James VI and I, and like many talented artists, Zebedee was as gay as a nine-pound note. He not only promised an immediate donation of £500K, but offered one of his major unsold paintings for auction in aid of the appeal. Ultimately, he offered a second work, to be hung in the building when it was finished, and which served as a lasting memorial to him, because he died of a lung infection consequent on AIDS within a few years of the time of this story. 

Chapter 26 David

Singing, Christmas and Jeroen's problem

My work in the lab, which up to that point had gone well, suddenly started to slow down. Intractable problems arose, experiments that had given good results could no longer be repeated, and every avenue we tried led to a dead end. Each night I would come home despondent and Jon would have his work cut out to cheer me up. Even being fucked lost some of its pleasure and excitement for me. Poor Jon: at same time as I was down in the dumps, his own work seemed to get more demanding, the fundraising campaign was preoccupying him, he had lost touch with the two out-of-town projects and we never semed to have time to go to Rockwell's Barn and unwind. Advent had begun, and Christmas was fast approaching. 

At the end of term was the Bach Choir's production of Bach's Christmas oratorio. This year the soloists were all guest singers, and Marcello advised me to listen carefully to their technique. At least the rehearsals gave me a chance to forget the problems in the lab, and the performance itself was a great success. The Choir had been invited on a short European tour during the Easter vacation, which would only take place if enough free or cheap accomodation could be found for us. On the tour, we hoped to premier a new work for the choir: Handel's 'Judas Maccabaeus'. 

Early in December, Marcello asked me if I were prepared to be tenor soloist in a performance of 'Messiah' in Reading just before we were due to leave Camford for Christmas with my family. The booked soloist had been taken ill and would not be available. I said that I only knew about 30% of the tenor numbers. Marcello said that if I had three days intensive practice, I would know the rest rest well enough to sing with music. I went to see Charlie, and he agreed that I should do it. He said that three days away from the lab would do me good, and wished me the best.

Marcello drove me hard in the practices and I asked Jon to come with me to Reading for the rehearsal and the performance itself, so that if I made a mess of it, he would be able to console me. The people in Reading were willing to pay for my accommodation in an hotel, so they were not a poverty-stricken organization. On 20 December, we drove to Reading and parked in the hotel's car park. We took possession of our double room about 2 pm and at 4 pm there was a rehearsal for as many choir members as could attend at such a time of day. We inevitably were unable to complete every number, we just concentrated on making sure that the starts and endings of each were OK, and I was able to make the acquaintance of the other soloists, all seasoned professionals whom of course I had never met before. The contralto was a particularly attractive lady of about 40. The bass was a bearded man of about the same age, so I was a callow youth in comparison. But as they knew that I had stepped in to fill a difficult vacancy, they were very supportive, particularly when they found that I had never sung some of the numbers in public before. We all went to dinner before the performance, and Jon joined us for the meal. 




David the Graduate Student Ch. 01



I would not describe my performance that night as sparkling, I was too nervous, but I only made a couple of small mistakes, which probably only the conductor and chorus noticed. The audience seemed to enjoy it, judging from the applause, but then such sublime music soars above any shortcomings of the artists unless they are totally incompetent! 

On the following Monday we left Camford by train to go to my home in the North for Christmas. Christmas followed its usual pattern, and we enjoyed it very much. Dorothea my sister was now well into her second year at Oxbridge, and from Easter would be spending the summer in Italy at the University of Verona, at that time a comparatively new institution. 

The most significant event, though, of that Christmas took place on the day after Boxing Day. I went for a short walk in the afternoon before it got dark, and Jeroen asked whether he could come with me. He was 14 by now and puberty was well into its stride. His voice would crack suddenly, and his boyish voice would suddenly deepen in the middle of a sentence. His legs were indescribably long and skinny and he had put on several centimetres in height. 

"I want to ask you something," he said. "I asked Mum some time ago about you and she said that I must talk to you about it. Are you gay?" I smiled and kissed him on the top of his head, which was approaching the same level as my own.

"Yes," I said "Jon is my partner. I love him very much, and we are going to be together for the rest of our lives." 

"I love him too," said Jeroen, "so I'm very glad that you are going to look after him."

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you this," I said, "but I know that he has a special present for you for doing well at school last year. He didn't want to send it, and this is the first chance that we've had for a long time to see you to give it to you in person. He didn't want to give it to you on Christmas Day, but tomorrow we are going to take you out somewhere interesting, where we will have lunch, and I think you might then get a surprise present." 

"What do you and Jon do together?" he asked. 

I blushed, "We make love," I said. "We kiss and cuddle and do all sorts of other nice things that I'm not going to tell you about." 

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because it's personal," I said, "It's not the sort of thing that you talk to other people about." 

"Even if I promise not to tell anyone?" 

"Look, Jeroen," I said "no doubt you have been taught about sex at school, possibly even about gay sex. But nice people do not go round talking to other people about their sex lives, because two people are involved, and it would be a betrayal of confidence. So just remember that it's very bad manners to ask people about their sex lives. 

"Besides, boys of your age are changing physically as you know, you are growing hair all over the place, all your limbs are growing, your cock is growing and your vocal cords are growing. It will take a while and requires a lot of self-analysis for you to decide about sexual matters. You wouldn't ask Mum and Dad about their lovemaking, and you shouldn't be asking anyone else either. There are plenty of books to tell you things without asking people deep personal questions. Oh, and please don't talk about Jon and me to your friends. You can tell them if you like that your brother is gay, but don't mention Jon. I know boys like to talk among themselves about sex, and that's fine, but you mustn't bring other people into your talk."

"OK" said Jeroen, "But I don't want to be gay!" 

"There's no reason why you should be. It's not inherited. Not many men are, and some men swing both ways. You're not fully a man yet, Jeroen, you have lots of other important things to do, so you mustn't get worried about things that may not happen." I put my arm round him, and felt him trembling. I squeezed his shoulder and then released him. I would have kissed him again, but feared that he might misinterpret it. 

Later I talked to my mother about Jeroen. "I'm terribly worried about him," I told her. "I think he's scared of turning out gay like me. But he loves both me and Jon, so what is there to be frightened of? I wonder what people have been telling him about homosexuals. He asked me questions about what Jon and I did together that I couldn't possibly answer. Although these are problems that will sort themselves out in time, I wonder if you could talk to him? He's such a loveable boy, it really upsets me to see him so mixed up. Sometimes he's the sweet boy that I've always known, but at other moments he turns into stroppy teenager with stupid ideas. I didn't dare kiss him, in case he thought it was a sexual assault! Mothers are there for just this sort of situation, so please, please keep a close eye on the little man. I'm worried that it might affect his performance at school. 

"He's a bright child, and Jon has brought him a present for his good performance at school last year. We're taking him out to York tomorrow and Jon will hand over his present after he has given Jeroen a little quiz. I never thought that when Jon and I found each other that it would lead to problems with Jeroen. I was worried about how you and Dad would react, and I thought that Dorothea might be upset, because I thought that she fancied Jon, but I never thought Jeroen would worry, because he's so fond of Jon, I just assumed that he would welcome him into the family, as indeed all of you have done. Does Jeroen talk to you about his problems? That's what mothers are for, but teenage boys often won't seek help from their families." 

"Yes, he does talk to me, and I will do my best to reassure him. I want both of you to be happy, and I think this is just Jeroen being confronted by his awakening manhood. It might be worth Jon having a word with him as well. Do you want to borrow my car for your trip tomorrow?" 

"I don't think that your insurance would cover me driving, as I'm under 25, so we'll take Jeroen on the train! He should enjoy his trip by rail, I don't suppose that he goes on a train very often." 

Chapter 27 David

A Trip to York with Jeroen 

Jon and I had decided to take little (now not so little!) Jeroen on a trip to York after Christmas and we went on the train from Lockton. Like most children of that era, Jeroen had done most of his travelling in our parents' car, and a train trip was a novelty for him. It was a cold but dry day. We spent a lot of time in the National Railway Museum, which he had not seen since he was about 6. He asked some intelligent questions about how shovelling coal into a firebox boiler can make the wheels of a steam locomotive go round, which fortunately Jon was able to answer. 

We then had lunch in a pub. In those days, only children above the age of 14 were allowed on licensed premises, and then only to eat a meal. The pub that we visited was somewhat family-friendly, as it had a children's menu, but Jeroen had reached the age of non-stop eating, so we each had a mixed grill. Jon and I had beer to drink, Jeroen had a cola. He was thrilled to be in a pub without his parents, and the worries he had revealed the day before seemed to have vanished. After lunch we went for a walk on the old city walls, and Jon asked Jeroen a few questions, like what was an adjective, what was the capital of Nigeria and what happened in the year 1666. When the kid answered Jon's questions correctly, Jon said to him: "I promised you a present each year if you did well at school. I think you know a thing or two from those questions I've just asked. I'm not good at knowing what boys like, so here is something for you to buy yourself something nice with!" And he gave him a £20 note. 

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Jon," he said. "I'll phone you and tell you what I've bought, after I've got it," and he pushed up his head and kissed Jon's chest, because he could not quite reach his face. We walked for about a couple of kilometres along the walls, looking down into people's back gardens, and as it was beginning to get dark, as well as colder, we came down and went into a café for tea. I had arranged with Jon to talk to Jeroen about his problems, and I made an excuse to go to the toilet and left them alone for ten minutes. When I got back, Jeroen was smiling happily, Jon was also smiling and neither asked why I had been so long. By now it was dark and we walked through the festively lighted streets back to the station, and soon were on a train going back home. Jeroen asked how we would know when we got to Lockton in the dark. I explained that the guard would announce it over the intercom system. 

Chapter 28 Jon 

Winter and Spring in Camford

We went back to Camford on January 2, having arranged that the following Christmas all the family would come to stay with us in Rockwell's Barn. By then Dorothea would be in her final year at Oxbridge, and we would have furnished two more bedrooms. 

On the train, David asked me what had passed between Jeroen and me in the café in York. "I asked him what he knew about gay men. He told me that they had high voices, walked funnily, were obsessively interested in clothes, held hands and kissed in public, and some of them did bad things to little boys. I asked him whether he had ever seen you or me do any of those things, and he said no. So I asked him whether what he had heard could be true, or was it just nonsense. He had to admit that it was nonsense. I told him that that sort of information was OK for kids up to the age of ten or so, but he was four years older than that and was now a functional man. 

"I said that I assumed that he knew what the equipment between his legs was for and roughly how it worked. I said I knew that you don't need to get involved with someone else to enjoy what you can do with your cock. I also told him that some of the things that men do with women they can also do with men, but of course that it is only women's unique equipment that can give rise to babies. Aside from this, I pointed out that sex was really only worthwhile within a relationship. I warned him that teenage boys can easily fall in love, sometimes with girls but sometimes with one another. If he felt attracted to another boy, it did not mean that he was gay. Most boys fall in love with at least one boy before they get involved with girls. I warned him that most teenage love affairs do not lead to long-term relationships, because they are not always with the right person. I also told him that if he had any worries, however difficult it might be, the first person to talk to should be his mother, but if he needed to talk to a man other than his father, he should ring me." 

"What was his reply?" David asked. 

"He thanked me for telling him things that he didn't feel able to talk about with his parents or with his friends at school and how relieved he was to learn that most boys fall in love with a boy before they get involved with girls. Maybe that's what has happened: that he fancies one of the boys at school. His fear of being gay may not be anything at all to do with you and me. I ended up by telling him to enjoy playing with his cock, that all men, gay or straight, married or single, old or young, in fact any age between 10 and 90, did it, and that it was a major source of contentment for males, but to be careful to clean up afterwards!" 

"And that made him happy?" 

"Very happy. He grinned with glee or relief or something, and seemed to be that sweet boy again that we both love so much. I promised your father that I would care for you, and now it seems I've got your brother as well!" 

"I shouldn't worry. In a few days he'll get caught up with something or someone he likes, and his worries will be forgotten. And he's always got his mother. She is amazingly understanding and full of insight. She had a good idea that I was gay before I knew it myself. But thank you Jon, for coming to my help. My little brother is no longer little, but he still needs all the love and help we can give him."

When we got back to Camford, at David's first lesson, Marcello raised the suggestion that he should enter a singing competition. "It's the best way to get yourself noticed, and if you come in the top three, you may get some bookings!" he said. "I'm going to enter you to audition for the Dunchester International Mozart Singing Competition to be held in early September. The entries have to be in before the end of January. The auditions will be just after Easter in London, Manchester or Cardiff. At these competitions, they always have agents and impresarios attending at least for the final. I don't want to enter you for a foreign competition yet, we'll see how you do at Dunchester. Each time you sing you have to sing two numbers, one of which has to be by Mozart. I suggest some Verdi as a contrasting number: how about 'Celeste Aïda'? 

The Candlemas term continued. The problems David had encountered before Christmas with the enzyme characterization work did not recur. He managed to purify enough of two of the biosynthetic enzymes to get a decent amino-terminal sequence for them, and hence a nucleotide primer sequence could be synthesized, which put them well on the way to mapping the genes for the two enzymes, which seemed to be linked in an operon. He was also learning the choral parts of 'Judas Maccabaeus'. 

My work in the lab was also making good progress and donor money for the Fitness Club was steadily coming in. Jim Everthorpe's first four months raised £750K, and money was coming in from Camford alumni, both gay and straight, all over the world. I was not going to count the Zebedee donation in the half-million that had to be raised before I would add more money: I regarded it as a bonus. We got $100K from a gay Hollywood director and £50K from the Oscar Wilde Trust. I deduced from the latter donation that whoever had approached the trust had played down the fitness aspects of the proposal, because Oscar Wilde was certainly not noted for his healthy lifestyle!

David and I were both so busy that we had little time left for lovemaking, except for the occasional quickie suck session. Even so, once a month we did our best to spend 36 hours at Rockwell's Barn, some of which enabled us to get some bodily relaxation of a different type from that which the Fitness Club would offer. At the end of the Candlemas term, the Bach Choir performed 'Judas Maccabaeus' in the University Aula, and then took it in tour to Germany, Switzerland and Italy, one performance in Munich, one in Lucerne and one in Malcesine on Lake Garda. They had had a grant towards their costs, but they were still expected to stay in Youth Hostels, which fortunately were not busy at that time of year. I had paid David's costs. Although he refused to be beholden to me for everyday living costs, as he hated being thought of as my kept boy, he appreciated my contribution to one-off activities such as this was very much. The tour was a great success, and admission takings covered all their remaining expenses. Justin Thyme was very happy with the outcome. At the end of the tour, David did not return with the rest of the choir, but took the train via Milan to Nice, where I flew directly from England, for our annual visit to my mother. 

Chapter 29 David

A Postcoital discussion in Nice

One of the effects of my singing lessons was that Marcello said that my Italian needed improvement. "It's not your pronunciation," he said, "that could be fixed by a language coach. It's simply that in order to express yourself really convincingly, you need to be able to speak the language, and not just repeat a few words like a parrot." I told him about the language course that my sister had recommended, and he said that he strongly advised me to go on it (he knew that Jon would foot the bill!). When I told Jon, he said that he needed to improve the bit of Italian that he spoke and that he would pay for both of us to go on the course, providing that we were both able to get time off from our lab work. 

Our stay in Nice was comparatively uneventful. Jon's mother was in one of her conciliatory phases. Jon asked her about Antoine, and she said that she had finished with him, as he was only a gold-digger. Jon was quite relieved that she had finally seen beneath the guy's charm. We did visit one of Nice's gay bars, not in search of sex and certainly not to drink the beer, but to survey the French talent and see whether French gays had more style and polish than British ones. They did. We noted some beautiful boys, elegantly kitted out, stylishly dancing, and decided that maybe we should leave before we were solicited! 

We went back to our hotel and after an hour in the pool, adjourned to the pool showers, which we had to ourselves. We were both feeling pretty randy after ogling the French boys, and as we were soaping and washing each other's intimate parts we both ended up with massive hard-ons. We speedily wrapped ourselves in the hotel's towelling bathrobes and hastened back to our room. As we hung up our clothes, Jon said "I may not be as smartly dressed as those French studs, but who cares about clothes when you're making love? Guys who like it rough go to bed with bricklayers and navvies! After all, it's the shagging that counts. I'm not keen on sex without undressing. Moreover, I bet that none of those guys was wearing 'Storing pour homme'." 

I opened Jon's robe, and knelt and began to lick his balls. His pubic hair was warm and fragrant from the shower. We had used 'Storing pour homme," not the gel provided by the hotel. I kissed away the precome from the tip of his dick and began to run my lips along its side. With a roar of lust, he pushed me onto my bed on my back, pulled aside the duvet, grabbed the lube from the bedside locker, pulled my legs apart violently and began poking lube into my back passage and stretching it with his fingers. I reached out and got hold of the open condom box and ripped off the foil from a prophylactic. I pushed him back and placed the rubber on the tip of his cock, and he unrolled it onto his rock-hard member, which he then without any further foreplay thrust into my hole, only pausing to put my legs on his shoulders. Then followed perhaps five minutes, perhaps less, of intensive fucking, broken at intervals by hot kisses between us. I ran my hands over his chest and nipples and caressed his shoulders and the back of his neck, until with a grunt of delight he came. His whole body tensed and convulsed as he shot his hot load inside me. He then grabbed my shoulders with both his arms and after he had pulled out of my hole, he lay on top of me and smothered me with kisses. I put my arms round him and held him tight, opening my mouth to receive his hungry tongue. After a few quiet minutes, I started to rub my hard-on against his belly and I moved my hands down to the small of his back and squeezed him harder against me. He reciprocated by rubbing himself against my dick. It was only a couple of minutes of wonderful warmth and contact before I squirted violently and coated both of us with my seed.

"Every time that I fuck you David, I become increasingly aware of the power of love, to the extent that I am beginning to wonder whether this sacramental feeling of reverence that I get when I'm fucking you is actually something coming from outside myself, possibly even from that God that you are always on about." As Jon said this, he was tying off the condom he had used and disposing of it. "Can it be that God is trying to reach me through you?" he asked.

"I hope so," I replied, "I've certainly tried to tell you about how much God loves you ever since we met, and certainly before we had sex together. God loves us more than any man can love another man and much more than a man can love a woman. You are more precious to me than anything else on earth, and I'm always full of gratitude to God, who brought us together." 




David the Graduate Student Ch. 02



[This is the continuation of 'David the Graduate Student Ch. 01,' which should be read first]

Chapter 31 Jon

A weekend in London 1

As the Pentecost term progressed, I suddenly realized that when I was not in the lab or doing calculations on the computer, I was continually engaged in manipulating people. And poor David, bless him, was being pushed around, either by me, or by Fabioni or by Charles Crabtree. When I was not running his life, I was involved in the Fitness Club, or the Afforestation Trust, or the drystone walling. At least I did not have the builders to deal with any more. So as May 12, our anniversary, drew near, I said to David, "We need a weekend off. What would you like to do and where would you like to go, bearing in mind that we only have about 60 hours? We could go to the house, we could go to London, we could go to Amsterdam or Antwerp, we could visit Arnold and Robin in Reading or we could do something entirely different. As long as we have time to eat and drink and privacy to fuck, I will go anywhere that you want." 

David said, "Let's go to London, take a suite in an expensive hotel, go to the Opera and visit this exhibition that I've been reading about 'The male nude since 1600' at the National Gallery. Let's eat in your pet Italian restaurant, have lunch in a pub, have room service breakfasts and shag ourselves silly. I'm only a poor student, but I'll pay for the lunches and dinners and my super stud can pay for the rest! I can't suggest a weekend of high living and leave you to foot the bill, I would feel like a rent boy. And I love you so much that anything that you want of mine, you can have for free, as often as you want!"

"Right," I said "I'll get on the phone to Covent Garden and try and get seats for the Friday night performance with us eating there beforehand, and we'll eat at my Italian restaurant on both Saturday and Sunday, and do a second opera on the Saturday night. You can go to All Saints on Sunday morning, and we'll do the exhibition on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. We'll eat early on Sunday night and spend the evening in bed. For the first time for years St Boniface's choir will have to do without you! We can get a train back about 9 am on the Monday and you'll be in the lab by noon. How's the work going, by the way?" 

"Not too bad," David replied. "We're writing a second paper at the moment. I'm enjoying this enzyme work. But I could do with a break, from both the lab and from singing. The idea of listening to someone else singing appeals to me enormously!" 

I also telephoned and booked a suite for us at the Caroline, a five-star hotel in Mayfair for three nights and booked the restaurant. 

We left Camford on the 2 pm train to Fennington on the Friday. The train was quiet, and for the first time for weeks I was able to sit back, relax and enjoy contemplating the sweet face and prick-raising figure of my boy. I reached out and got hold of his hand (we were in facing seats). David smiled at me so sweetly that I at once felt my cock stiffening in my pants. He was still feeling elated at having got into the Dunchester competition. Apparently Fabioni was not the slightest bit surprised: he told David that he didn't enter his pupils for a competition unless he knew that they were certain to pass the audition. He told David that the sudden switch of numbers at the audition from his stated item to the reserve item was a trick of some adjudicators, to try to undermine the confidence of the best candidates by springing a surprise on them. He also said that he knew that it would not work with David, because David knew 'Panis vivus' much better than he imagined. It seems that the wily old teacher knew David better than David knew himself!

The Caroline Hotel was only a short distance from the train terminus, and as our bags were not heavy, we walked there, which would have surprised the man in the reception if we had told him that when he enquired whether we had a car. A bell-boy took our bags up to our suite, and I unselfconsciously tipped him. By now it was 4 pm and we had booked our table at Covent Garden for 5-30, so we just had time for a quick shower and change of clothes before leaving. The meal was good and we had time for coffee before the performance began. The opera was 'Carmen,' something we might not have chosen to watch if we had had a choice, but it had an international star cast and was extremely enjoyable, even if we tended to sum it up as being about the problems of falling in love with the wrong person. "It's a good job that the audience is not expected to like the characters in opera," David said to me, "because the only likeable character in 'Carmen' is Micaëla, and even she seems a bit wet." My only reply (I regret to say) was that there were some nice boys in the chorus, one or two with nice arses.

We rode back to the hotel on the Central Line, decided not to drink in the bar but to go straight to our room and slip out of our suits (we had been sitting in the stalls at the opera and felt obliged to dress smartly). I poured us each a glass of beer from the mini bar (nothing special) and filled in the order card for room service breakfast at 9-30 am and hung it outside the door. Undressed, we sat on the sofa in the sitting room and gazed through the window at the lights of the city below. 

I put my arm round David and began to nibble his neck, inhaling the mixed scent of 'Storing pour homme' and that of tobacco smoke, which pervaded everything in those unenlightened days, even though our suite was non-smoking. I pushed to one side the chain of his crucifix with my lips, and he giggled as my nibbles turned into gentle bites. "That's nice!" he said, "don't stop!" I moved my right arm to encircle his waist and got hold of his cock with my left hand. It started to stiffen at once as I continued to chew his neck. My own dick was as stiff as a ramrod and oozing pre-come. David suddenly pulled his head away and bent forward and started to lick the clear liquid from the tip of my glans. I ran my hand down his back until I reached the cleft of his arse and gently pushed my finger into the crack and wiggled it in through his anal sphincter. Then I pulled him upright and started to nibble his left nipple. I made him lie down on the sofa, half sitting up, his back against a cushion. I then knelt on the sofa, straddling his chest so that my rampant tool was within a centimetre or two of his face. He grinned and took it into his mouth, rubbing his tongue against the rim of my 'copper's helmet'. He began the licking, sucking and chewing that made his blow-jobs so delightful. It was amazing how his technique of giving head had improved over the last five years. We had not made love for a couple of days, so it did not take long for David to bring me to the point of orgasm. "I am gonna come," I muttered to him, "Do you want me to squirt in your mouth or over your face?"

"Mouth, please," he said, "I love the taste of your come!" It did not take long for the miracle to happen. I shot a massive load of seed into David's eager and welcoming mouth. He smiled blissfully as he savoured the mouthful before swallowing it.

"My turn now!" he exclaimed, as I took his stiffening cock into my mouth. A deep sensation of love and desire seemed to spread from my mouth through the whole of my body to my fingers and toes, almost like an electric current. I sucked hard at his slimy, lumpy manhood and rubbed my tongue against the rim of his glans, and wiggled his foreskin with my tongue. David grunted with pleasure, "My darling Jon, I love you so much!" he muttered as he caressed the back of my neck and held my head against his crotch. I tried not to get too active with my mouth, because David obviously wanted to prolong the blow-job, but after a couple of minutes, he could hold back no longer and violently filled my greedy mouth with his fuck-juice. It was quite thick and it took some time for me to swallow most of it, just retaining a little on my lips to give back to him when we kissed. This we did for some minutes, enjoying the taste and feel of each other's lips, and eagerly exploring each other's mouth with our tongues. 

By now it was approaching 1 am, and we were both feeling sleepy, so I set the alarm for 7-30 and we settled down wrapped in each other's arms in one of the two king-sized beds. 

Next day we got up, washed, shaved and made love (in the unslept-in bed) before breakfast. David humped me rather energetically and I replied by letting him suck me off once more. When breakfast arrived, we polished it off and spent the rest of the day at the National Gallery. The admission charge to the exhibition 'The Male Nude since 1600' was expensive, but well worth the money. There was a long queue for admission, which gave us ample opportunity to survey the viewers. There were a lot of obvious gays among them, as well as several discrete male couples like ourselves, although there was no shortage of females either. It could scarcely be described as pornographic or even erotic, since there was not a single erection to be seen among the exhibits, although the same could not be said about the viewers!

The exhibition consisted of sculpture as well as paintings, and in many ways the sculpture was more arresting. David commented to me quietly about the size of the dicks on most of the sculptures. "Why have they all got dicks that look like those of little boys?" he asked. "Why don't they have something realistic?"

"I can't answer that," I said, "but you're quite right. But we're not supposed to be here to look at genitals so much as to look at shoulders, bellies and legs: that's where the artists have been most successful and impressive."

About 5 pm we left and went to 'my' Italian restaurant. We had a booking for a performance of 'The Mikado' at the Coliseum at 7-30, but at this early hour we had no difficulty in being served promptly. We were greeted with great cordiality by Paolo, the proprietor, and again we were invited to partake of a dish that was not on the menu and gratefully accepted the recommendation. I asked about Alberto (the beautiful son). What was he doing these days? Paolo replied that he in fact had got a job as an apprentice chef at a big-name Italian restaurant in the West End where he was making good progress (and, I guessed, fucking his way to success as a chef).

An opera in English was a total change from the Carmen that we had seen the night before, but in many ways just as enjoyable, if not more so. "I don't see Gilbert and Sullivan as a medium for your operatic talents!" I said to David with a grin. 

"Why not? Some of Sullivan's melodies are fantastic and Gilbert's words are enormous fun to sing" he replied.

"Yes, but Gilbert and Sullivan is the preserve of so many amateur singers. I know that you are currently a sort of amateur singer, but you do have professional aspirations and I think it is the kind of thing that you should leave behind."

"Wait till my singing career is established, and then I'll sing what I fuckin' well like!" he replied.

"If you want to sing popular items like 'Panis angelicus,' you'll need to have a record label. No-one's going to hire you to sing things like that in recital," I said. And I realized that if David did become a professional, he would have to have a recording career, which might cost money. 

By now we had walked almost all the way back to our hotel. We entered and went into the bar. To our amazement, they actually had cask beer on tap in the bar, and we ordered a couple of pints of Oulde's. "You would think that they would only sell expensive cocktails here," I said "Isn't cask beer a bit downmarket?"

"Hardly, at the prices they charge for it here!" replied David. As a poor student, he was much more price-conscious than I was.

We adjourned to our suite and undressed. David said to me "Jon, do you consider sex to be an absolutely private thing between the two of us or would you ever want to get involved in a foursome with a couple of our friends?"

"David, I wonder what makes you suggest that. We both know that there is a sacramental aspect to shagging, because we have both felt it, and you are conscious of it whether you are on top or underneath. It doesn't matter what your role is: there is an almost supernatural element in fucking. If you involve other parties, it could undermine the relationship, by getting both us and them interested in sex with other parties, which I think goes against our agreement to permit only individual acts of infidelity. So I do consider sex to be an absolutely private thing between the two of us. Moreover, I'm sorry to bring up the religious thing, but I think that what you are suggesting is not in keeping with Christian love and respect for our exclusive relationship."

"Jon, you're right. It was an impure and unworthy thought even to consider such a thing. It would devalue what we do together by turning it into what would be in effect a multi-party circle jerk. You are really a very moral person in spite of your scepticism about the Christian faith." I put my arms around David and kissed him firmly on the mouth. I could feel his heart beating against my chest and his lovely golden hair covered my face. Who would ever want a more delicious experience than to make love to this blonde-haired wonder, my dear pretty youth?

"Come on, let's go and have a shower," I said. The suite had a luxurious bathroom with a good double shower and we had a very pleasant twenty minutes cuddling, fondling, kissing, soaping and caressing one another. 

"Bend over," said David, "as we are under the shower, I don't think that I need a condom to shag you." He rubbed some soap on his dick, which had been half erect for some time, and with the handling rapidly stiffened. As instructed, I bent over and he gently inserted it into my arse-crack and proceeded to fuck me gently, kissing the bones of my vertebrae as he did so. He continued for several minutes before he reached his climax and with a gentle shout shot his hot man-juice deep into my gut. "Jerome is reputed to have thought that it was possible for married couples to have too much sex. He and Augustine were the most appalling despisers of one of God's greatest gifts, and how they both came to be canonized is a reflection of some of the worst aspects of Christian history." 

"Look," I said, "I want to make love, not to have a lecture on mediaeval theology! But thanks for the shag, I love your dick in my gut."

"Do you want a turn?" asked David.

"No thanks, I'm a bit tired, I just want to go to bed with your arms around me."

"Okay" said David "we'd better have breakfast a little earlier tomorrow because I want to go to High Mass at All Saints' Margaret Street at 11."

I opened the bottle of 'Storing pour homme' shampoo and began to wash David's hair. Having rinsed it thoroughly under the shower, we cleaned ourselves up and dried ourselves. I made sure before leaving the bathroom that I had farted out all traces of David's jism, as it would have been very embarrassing to have left telltale stains on the hotel sheets. Shades of Oscar Wilde at the Savoy once again! It took me quite a few minutes with the hairdryer before I got David's hair properly dry, and he then said his prayers and we got into bed and soon fell asleep.



Chapter 32 David

A Weekend in London 2

We decided to celebrate the fifth anniversary of our coming together with a weekend in London, just as we had done four years before, but this time staying in a fancy hotel. The first evening we ate and saw 'Carmen' at Covent Garden before returning to the hotel for a suck session before bed. We got up early the next morning and had a fuck session before breakfast. We spent the day at the National Gallery drooling at pictures and statues of naked men, before eating at Jon's Italian restaurant and watching 'The Mikado' at the Coliseum (English National Opera). After a drink in the hotel bar, we retired to our room, where I bummed Jon under the shower. I had made an unworthy suggestion to him about us getting involved in a sexual foursome, and he had rightly put me in my place for suggesting such a degrading activity. 

I felt extremely ashamed at having made such a suggestion and made full use of the confession at High Mass at All Saints', Margaret Street the next day to ask forgiveness for such unworthy thoughts. The service was wonderful: I had hoped for a Mozart mass setting, but instead it was one by Schubert, but the choir sang superbly, and I wished that I were one of them. 

I met Jon for lunch at a pub off Oxford Street, where we enjoyed a couple of pints and some excellent jacket potatoes. The weather was wonderfully warm for May: the trees in Hyde Park were just coming into leaf, and we wandered hand-in-hand through the park, getting a few askance looks from passers by, before sitting down in the sun under a tree. "No kissing!" warned Jon. "I think it's warm enough to take our shirts off," he said. "As long that is as we don't start to paw or fondle one another, much as we might want to!" We lay there in the sun for about an hour and then, putting our shirts back on, we slowly wandered in the direction of the underground. 

By 6 o'clock we had reached Paolo's restaurant. He had a nice table ready for us in a corner and a bottle of Prosecco was already chilling. After all the fresh air in the park we were both quite hungry and decided to have the full menu. We started some very nice antipasto followed by a small helping of ravioli. For the main course Jon had saltimbocca and I had a fish dish. We accompanied the meal with a full bottle of Piemonte, although Jon insisted on having a glass of Barolo with his veal. 

We had just started our desserts when a couple entered the restaurant. I looked up and recognized Barbara, the girl in St Boniface's choir who had recognized that I was gay before I knew it myself, and whom I had not seen since she graduated two and a half years before. She was with a tall well-built rugby-playing type who did not attract me in the slightest. When she recognized me, her eyes lit up and she came across to us. "Good heavens, it's David and Jon! she said. "How are you getting on?"

"We're doing fine thank you," I said. "How about you? What are you doing now?"

"I'm working in publishing now," she said. "Come across and meet my boyfriend Alistair." We walked across to their table and Barbara said, "Alistair, I want you to meet Jon and David, both contemporaries of mine at St Boniface's."

"I'm very pleased to meet you both," he said. "What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a research student in pharmacology in Camford," I said, "and Jon is a post-doc in chemistry there."

"Two scientists, eh?" he replied. "Come and join us for coffee after you've finished your meal. We are only going to have a single course before going on to a nightclub." We returned to our table and finished our desserts, accompanying it by a glass each of dessert wine. Paolo asked us if we wanted coffee and we said yes, and please would he serve it at Barbara and Alistair's table, which he did. We moved across and joined the other two.

"I'm still singing in St Boniface's choir," I said "after six years. Do you do any singing these days?"

"Yes," she said, "I'm in the London Philharmonic choir!" 

"That's great! I've started professional singing training with Marcello Fabioni," I said, "just as a sideline in case there are no permanent jobs in science when I finish. My university career has already been so long that I'm not sure that I would like to be a professional academic for the rest of my life."

"Why don't you come along with us to the nightclub?" asked Alistair.

"I don't think that either you or the clientele would appreciate a pair of gays dancing around!" said Jon, "Moreover, neither of us are at all keen on dancing and we've had plenty to drink already. We would be totally sloshed within half an hour if we started drinking. So thanks very much for the invitation, but I think we'll go our own way."




David the Graduate Student Ch. 02



Barbara and Alistair left the restaurant. We poured another cup of coffee. Paolo asked us if we would like a glass of grappa with the coffee, but we declined. Having finished, I paid the bill and we left to walk back to the hotel.

"Do you think that Barbara and Alistair will settle down together?" I asked.

"It's possible," said Jon, "Alistair is not as cloth-headed as rugby-playing types often are. We never asked him what he did for a living, I bet he works in a bank." We reached the hotel about 10 pm, and decided not to have anything further to drink but to adjourn to our suite and have some more coffee. The suite had attached to it a minute kitchen with facilities for making coffee and toast. This seemed somewhat at odds with the luxury standards of the hotel, but seemed to be designed to avoid the customers having to use room service to order cups of coffee! 

We undressed and went naked into the kitchen, where we were obliged by the narrow space to press up close against one another. "We'll be pissing all night after what we've had to drink!" said Jon, as he poured out two cups of black coffee, which we carried into our sitting room.

"Well, at least it will be using our dicks for something other than sucking or fucking!" I replied.

"Don't you want to fuck then?" asked Jon in husky tone of voice. I looked at him and his sweet brown eyes with their long lashes looked hungrier than I had seen them for some time. 

"Well, you obviously do!" I said and wrapped my arms tightly round him and began to kiss and nibble his neck under the left ear. Then I nibbled first the chain holding the locket with my picture in it, then his ear-lobe and he grunted with pleasure. I moved down his chest with my lips and started to nibble his nipple. He moaned with pleasure before sitting up and pushing me back on the sofa and pressing his face up against my belly and smothering my midriff with kisses. "The 'Storing pour homme' enhances your scent, fag-boy!" he said as he nuzzled around in my pubic bush. Then he rolled me over, made me get up on my knees and began to rim me. The sensation of his tongue in my arse-crack was delicious, and I nearly went crazy as he pushed it into my sphincter. 

I can never make up my mind which gives me the greatest pleasure: to make love to Jon or to be made love to by him. Making love gives me that sacramental sensation that in fucking my lover I am experiencing what God Himself undergoes when he pours out His love on His creation, but when Jon makes love to me, I experience a sense of total surrender to love that makes me think that I am feeling the love of God for me and for my partner as well. But the glorious thing about being gay is to be able to experience BOTH these wonderful sensations: that lovemaking can give me two different kinds of delight, whereas mere heteros are denied this double experience. I am glad that God made me gay!

By now, Jon had thoroughly coated my crack with his saliva, and soon he was spreading lube on the condom that I had just helped him roll on to his tool. He turned me over on to my back, and I spread my legs to open myself up. I clamped them round his waist as he entered me with his man-stick. "Jon, Jon my wonderful man, you give me all I need and dream of. I am yours, totally yours, to do whatever you want with me. Take me, take me, ravish me, eat me up!" I said to him quietly, and pushed my belly upwards against his as he worked his tool in my rectum. Every minute or so, Jon would pause, bend forward, and kiss my lips. I would reach up and stroke whatever part of his lithe, smooth body I could reach...

Next morning, we took the 9 am train to Camford, left our bags at home and by noon I was in the lab. The technicians grinned at one another as they saw my happy and contented smile as I put my lab coat on and started to take test-tubes out of the drawer. Angela, Charlie's middle-aged technician, smiled at me. "Did you have a good weekend in London, dear?" she asked.

"What do you think?" I grinned. "Lots of culture, lots of alcohol, nice food and lots of other things!"

Chapter 33 David

An Unexpected Legacy

One night early in July, just after the end of the Pentecost Term, I got a phone call from my Uncle Kees in Amersfoort. My grandfather had died, not unexpectedly. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer for nearly a year. I had visited him the previous August, an unpleasant experience that I preferred to forget. Reluctantly, out of a sense of duty I flew to the Netherlands to attend his funeral. No way was I going to let my mother attend after the way she had been treated, and my sister and Jeroen had never met him. 

The service at the crematorium was rather miserable. My uncle and aunt and myself were the only family present, and he had few surviving friends, and many people who had known him were not prepared to attend the funeral of someone who had been 'fout in de oorlog' (wrong in the war); for the Dutch have long memories about collaborators and Nazi-sympathizers. My uncle was not prepared to give a spoken tribute, so I stood at the podium and said a few words about how God's love and mercy could embrace even the worst sinner, without mentioning that the old guy had never shown any sign of repentance or regret for his Nazi views. The condolence session in the coffee room of the crematorium after the committal ceremony was over in 10 minutes. The deceased's lawyer and the three of us decided to adjourn to an adjacent café to discuss the will. 

It transpired that although my grandfather had declared that he was going to change his will after meeting me, the changes had never been implemented. One half of the estate went to my uncle, the other half was to go in equal shares to myself, Dorothea and Jeroen. Not a cent was to go to my mother. I was outraged. I did not want the old man's money, which came from dubious wartime transactions, but my mother could make good use of it. Rather than refuse the legacy, I resolve to take the money and give it to my mother. As Dorothea and Jeroen had never had any contact with the old man, it seemed right to me that they should have their money and make good use of it. The total amount the old man had left came after tax to three million guilders.

When I got back to Camford, I asked Jon to come home with me to Loxton for the following weekend to talk to my family about this sudden event. Jon agreed with me that I should give my share of the legacy to my mother. He pointed out that I could expect a good income in the future either as a scientist or a singer, and in any case, he would look after me financially if the need ever arose. To save time, we went by train, catching a train on the Friday evening which in those days still had a restaurant car, so we were able to have dinner on the way. We got to Loxton about 10 pm and took a cab to my home. 

Late though it was, we sat up with my parents until midnight discussing the situation. My father agreed with me that I should give my share to my mother, but she required a lot of persuasion to accept the offer. She said that she was sure that the money had not been honestly earned. I said that that was irrelevant, that she should regard it as compensation for the way that my grandfather had treated her and my father, or if she preferred it, to regard it as a gesture of love and appreciation from me for the love she had lavished on us and for the kind and loving response she had shown to my relationship with Jon. The only stipulation I made was that she should not give more than a small amount of it to my sister and brother. Jeroen's share of the legacy would in any case have to go into trust until he was 18. I suggested to my father that he got Tim Ingledown to invest it securely for the next four years. 

I asked my mother to break the news to my siblings that they were about to become moderately wealthy. I said that she should not at present say much about the old man's past, but explain the fact that they had never met him by saying that he had behaved badly when she wanted to marry my father, and that they had then lost contact. Both Jon and my father were adamant that she should not say that I had given her my share of the legacy. I said that if they asked me how I was going to spend my share, I would just say that I was not going to spend it. To that end, I asked my parents to continue to pay me my small allowance until I got fixed up with a job. My father was quite happy to do that, because he did not want me to receive any money from Jon, as it would look like payment for sexual favours! I blushed when he used that phrase, but it was true. I did not want ever to become financially dependent on Jon. 

Jeroen was delighted to see us both, and as usual made a great fuss of Jon, though I noticed that he shook hands with him rather than kissing him. He did let me give him a quick brotherly kiss however. He was very excited to hear that he would come into money when he was eighteen, though my mother refused to tell him the sum involved. She also telephoned Dorothea when Jeroen was not around, and told her that she was about to acquire a significant sum of money and to be careful what she did with it. The Dutch are very careful with money. 

Chapter 34 David

The Language Course

My progress in my second-year work in the lab had been such that Charlie had no objection to my three-week absence in Italy for the language course. Jon too did not feel guilty about taking time off. The time of year was not ideal: the end of July and beginning of August when the Italian summer was act its hottest. However we reckoned that the course was so intensive that there would be very little outdoor leisure time. The study programme timetable was 9 am to 1 pm, followed by a siesta break, and then resumed from 4 to 7 pm, when we had a two-hour break for dinner, followed by an evening session from 9 to 10 pm. The study hours at the weekends were shorter: Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings were free. Some nights the evening session was social, and some nights it was cancelled, so sessions for coffee, beer or wine were possible, but short. The instruction was entirely in Italian, and the students were graded into groups according to their previous knowledge: I was in the beginners group, Jon in the next higher group, so we only saw one another at night, where we shared a two-bedded room. 

The course was taught by the University of Trabizona, a relatively modern university in Emilia-Romagna. It was the era when language laboratories were being introduced, and we had a lot of audiotape exercises, to learn details of the grammar. Other instruction involved pronunciation classes, conversation groups, quizzes, conventional lectures, readings from literature, project work and visits to historic cities including Florence, Venice and Bologna. There was a limited amount of written work, but the major aim of the programme was to promote oral skills. There were students from every nation in Europe and a few from Australia and North America and use of languages other than Italian socially among the students was heavily discouraged. While most students were in the 18 to 25 age-group, there were some of all ages up to 65, and the mixing of ages and nationalities made it a really memorable experience. There were approximately equal numbers of males and females among the students, and a small number of homosexuals of both sexes. I recogized a couple of the men as middle-aged queens, who looked lecherously at me, as did some of the girls. 

It was a tremendous experience for both of us, and the fact that Jon and I spent less time than usual in each other's company was also good for us, it made our nights in bed all the more enjoyable. One Saturday afternoon we paid a quick visit to my sister in Verona, and met her Italian boyfriend, who seemed quite hot. Even in casual student garb, even I could see that he had an air of style that Anglo-Saxon men very rarely achieve, and Jon was obviously quite impressed, to judge from his bulging crotch. It was interesting to try out our Italian on a stranger. Jon managed very well, and even I seemed able to put together whole sentences that were understood. I said to Jon, "I bet Marcello will refuse to speak to me in English when we get back." 

"In that case you must make sure that you know enough curses and obscenities, as well as lots of musical terms! We're both also going to need to learn lists of words. But we can test one another using flash cards. It will be a change from watching porn videos!"

Chapter 35 David

A Summer of intensive practice

Our second paper on the biosynthetic pathway was submitted and accepted for publication. Charlie was delighted with the progress. In my singing however, things were less spectacular. Marcello did indeed insist on speaking to me in Italian, and both Jon and myself spent half an hour daily learning words with flash cards, and Marcello kept lending me short documents in Italian to improve my reading skills and enhance our vocabularies. The vocal exercises that Marcello made me do got progressively stiffer, and it was only just before we were due to leave for Italy that the items that I was to sing in the competition had been decided. 

Unlike some singing competitions, the Dunchester Mozart Competition did not have entry classes in topics like opera, lieder, oratorio etc.; instead it asked for entries for particular voices: tenor, soprano, baritone etc., leaving competitors free to choose items from different topics and styles. Marcello thought that this was very important for singers like myself, who had not decided to specialize. Each class of entry had a first round, with a maximum of ten entries, followed by a final with maximally five entries, and then a Champions' final in which the winners of the six or seven entry classes competed against one another for Champion singer. There were two Champions: one male, one female. In practice, the class finals were the most important, as they gave impresarios and agents the chance to survey and maybe to recruit from all the different voices. Prizes were given to the first three entrants in each of the class finals. The prizes were mostly monetary, except that the first prize in each class also included three master classes with a world-renowned singer. Each round required two different items, one by Mozart, one by another composer, so I had to learn a total of four numbers. Entrants were allowed to use their audition numbers in the first round if they wished, as the juries were different from the adjudicators in the auditions. It seemed sensible to stick with my two audition items and for the possible final (if I got that far) to learn one new Mozart item and we decided on 'Il mio Tesoro' from 'Don Giovanni,' as it was quite demanding, leaving only the non-Mozart item for the final to be decided. On Marcello's advice, we fixed on 'La donna è mobile' from 'Rigoletto' as a suitably demanding and impressive number and a contrast to the Mozart, and I got to work on all four pieces.

Pressure intensified when we got back from Italy, and Marcello now started to nag at me in Italian! One night we were practising at Marcello's house, when Caterina came into the room. "Marcello, it's time that you gave David a break. I've been listening to him, and it's clear to me that he knows all four pieces perfectly. Basta! Give him ten more minutes on scales and exercises, and then come and have a drink and unwind. There are still two weeks till the competition, and David has other things in his life besides singing. But, David, speaking as a retired professional, I think that you sing pretty well." 

Caterina was sweet. She had sensed that I was getting stressed from repeated singing and was offering us both an opportunity to unwind. She poured each of us a large glass of Marsala, and we sat down and she began to chat to me in Italian, to which I struggled to reply in whole grammatical sentences, but it was difficult, and eventually we ended up speaking English. She told Marcello that he was overdoing the pressure on me, and asked why he had to drive me so hard when he was much more easygoing with some of his other pupils. "None of them are entered for competitions," he replied, "Most of them are University students with exams in which I am not involved. I want David to win or at least to get a prize at Dunchester." 

"Let's talk about something different," I said. "How do you find my Italian now?"

"Like your singing, it needs more work!" said Marcello. He was never a person to throw away compliments. 

"David, bring Jon with you next Thursday and the two of you stay for dinner. There won't be anyone else there and we can have a nice tension-free evening and you can both practice your Italian!" said Caterina. 

"And in the meantime, refine your pronunciation in 'Il mio Tesoro'" added Marcello.

Chapter 36 Jon

The Dunchester International Singing Competition

Dunchester is a small historic town just off the Roman Fosse Way in the English midlands. There were more than fifty entrants for the Competition, and even though many competitors stayed with friends or local families, most of the hotels and bed-and-breakfast establishments in the small town were full for the five days of the festival, which attracted several hundred visitors. Anticipating this, I had booked some months before a twin room at the four-star Accrington Arms in Dinkerton, a town some 30 km from Dunchester. We decided to stay for the whole duration, because David could probably pick up some useful ideas. We had both had no problems in getting a week off for the event. Marcello was rather vague about when, if at all, he would be there. He did assure us though that he was not involved in the organization at all, though he did know several of the jury members. 

The competition was held in Dunchester Town Hall, an eighteenth-century building with a large hall with a balcony and seating for about 500 people. A series of small rooms at the top of the building had been set aside for last minute practising. These were bookable, but David had decided not to do any last minute practice for the first round. It turned out that of the two boys that David had met at the auditions, only Nat, the quiet baritone, had qualified, but his friend Mike the tenor had come along to support him. The first day of the competition was devoted to women's voices. We listened to some of the sopranos and were quite impressed, but then the four of us left after the coffee break and went to one of the pubs that are abundant in the town and are short of customers for most of the year. There we had a drink, followed by an early lunch. The boys from Stamford told us that the agents and impresarios would not turn up until the second rounds, which were on the last two days. We went back in the afternoon to hear the mezzos and contraltos and to hear the names of the second round qualifiers announced. It was an easy first day, and enabled us to understand the routine and know what to expect. 

Next day the tenor class was in the morning and the baritones and basses in the afternoon. There were actually only nine tenors in round one, so David had a greater that 50% chance of qualifying for the final. This time he had to perform the Verdi first and then the Mozart. It was interesting to hear the other entrants. None of them had chosen numbers from Mozart's sacred music, and for first item most of them had chosen nineteenth- or twentieth-century composers. Baroque music did not seem to be popular among the entrants. There were some very good entries, and David, who had had to listen from backstage told me afterwards that he was quite worried about the high quality of the competition. However, he performed flawlessly as far as I could tell, as usual he moved me to tears with his performance of 'Panis vivus,' and I noticed that several others in the audience were similarly affected. At the end of the day, when the qualifiers were announced by the jury leader, we heard that he had qualified for the final. Nat the baritone had also qualified. We had been interested to hear Nat sing, because David had not heard him in the auditions. He was very good, in particular his rendering of 'Vedrò mentr'io sospiro' from 'Le Nozze di Figaro'. The paths of these two boys would cross again several times in the future.




David the Graduate Student Ch. 02



We left the hall, and David said, "I need a walk." It was easy to get out of the small town, and we found a footpath leading through fields into some woods. As we walked, David said that needed a little beer, a quick shag and an early night's sleep. 

"What about eating?" I asked. 

"Yes, a light meal. Maybe some fish or something from the vegetarian menu."

"Don't go vegetarian, it may give you wind. You want to be on top form tomorrow."

"Oh Jon, I don't want to let you and Marcello down. You probably know that when I sing a love song, I'm always thinking of you and singing to and for you! You are my support and my inspiration. Obviously without you here I could still sing, but it's always you behind my best singing."

We drove to Dinkerton, had one quick pint, a light dinner and retired to our room at 8-30 pm. "Jon, I want you, I want to fuck the hell out of you!" David said. He started to undress me, and his eyes were burning with lust. Each time that he removed a garment he would kiss the area underneath it, even my sweaty feet. He pushed me face down on the bed and buried his face in the small of my back and kept it there, chewing and nuzzling me and slowly moving down on to my buttocks, kissing and nuzzling all the time. He then pushed his nose and mouth into my crack, chewing and nuzzling again. He did not try to force my crack open: he was just appreciating my body with his mouth. It was a tremendous boost for my self-confidence, because although I have always been uninhibited in my praise and admiration of his beautiful body, beside which I am a skinny weakling, he is not usually outspoken in his admiration of my body, in spite of my having benefitted enormously in toughness and general fitness from my nine months as building site labourer. 

Having kissed his way down my legs, he turned me over and lifted me up. "I want you to ride my dick," he said, and lay down on his back. He reached out and took a condom out of the box, extracted it from its foil wrapping and rolled it on to his rock-hard tool. He applied lube liberally to it and then asked me to squat above him while he poked first two and then three lube-coated fingers into my anus, spreading the gel and stretching my sphincter muscles. He then got me to turn round and face him as I carefully lowered myself on to his cock and began to work myself up and down on it. I gazed at his beautiful face with his dreamy smile and his still lustful eyes and my heart started to beat faster and I felt love spreading over my body as my cock bobbed up and down with every movement that I made. He began to thrust himself upward as I slid up and down his man-pole, and he began to pant as his orgasm started, and with smothered cry, he uttered my name as he shot his load into the rubber in my gut. 

I slowly and gently lifted my posterior and detached it from his slowly shrinking dick and I bent forward and lay on top of him, my face buried in his neck, my stiffening prick rubbing against his hairy belly. He reached up and enwrapped me in his arms and pulled me up so that our lips met. I rubbed my prick harder and harder against him and within a half minute I came and shot my small load of fuck-juice into the narrow space between our bellies and chests. "'Dissolve us in pleasure and soft repose, dear pretty youth!'" I whispered as we cleaned ourselves up prior to sleep. 



Chapter 37 David's Father

The Competition Final

There are times when I miss my eldest son enormously. We have a lot in common, and I see him so rarely. He has joined himself to a wonderful man, who can do more for him than I can, but we are alike in many ways, and I so enjoy his company that I wish that we did not live so far away from one another. When he told me about the Dunchester International Mozart Singing Competition, I was desperate to hear him sing, as only once in Camford when he took his degree had I ever heard him sing. It so happened that the same week I had to go to a meeting of local authority CEOs in London, which ended on the second day of the festival. I phoned up and managed to secure a hotel room in Dinkerton. It would have been a waste of time trying to find anywhere in Dunchester itself. 

I took the train to Dinkerton and booked myself in at the hotel, where they had a leaflet with details of the competition programme. To my delight, the class finals for the men's voices were to be the following day. I arranged for a cab to take me to Dunchester the next morning. I did not know whether David had reached the finals, but what the hell, he would be there and I could see the two of them for lunch and a drink. I phoned my wife and told her what I had done, and not to expect me home till I rang her again. 

The tenor class final was the first event at 9-30 am. My cab got me there just in time, and I paid my entry fee and crept into the balcony of the hall just as the event was starting. There were five tenor finalists from Europe and North America, and only two were British. They performed in alphabetical order, which meant that David was last and had to hear all his competitors from backstage, while Jon sat alone below me in the audience. I noticed several people below me who might have been agents or impresarios. The competition was severe, all the finalists sang superbly and the audience's applause was thunderous. We heard numbers from 'Don Giovanni', 'Così fan tutte', 'Die Zauberflöte' and 'Idomeneo'. David sang 'Il mio tesoro' superbly, but all the others sang well, so for a lay person, such as myself or Jon, it was impossible to make judgments. David's rendering of 'La donna è mobile' was pretty good, and although I thought it was an unsuitable choice for someone of David's temperament, the audience received it with rapturous applause. 

The jury retired, and it was announced that they hoped to deliver their verdict at 1 pm. In the finals, the classes were judged separately, even though it was the same judges for each class. People wandered out into the town in search of coffee, and I hastened downstairs and caught up with Jon just as he was about to step out into the street. He looked at me in surprise as we shook hands, and a delighted smile appeared on his face. "Well David has at least two devoted fans here!" he said with a grin. We had just half an hour before we had to be back in the hall, the cafés were crowded, so we entered a pub, where we found that we could get coffee. Jon told me that David's decision to give his grandfather's legacy to his mother had been entirely his own: he had had no part in influencing him, because he was anxious never to let him get financially dependent on him, at least until or if they started an adoptive family. "I wonder why they keep the contestants shut up together until the jury have finished. Why can't they come out and sit with their nearest and dearest until the results are announced?"

"Maybe they don't want the would-be agents or impresarios to come into contact with the contestants before the result is announced," I replied. 

We finished our coffee and returned to the hall, where there were sufficient empty seats for us to sit together, and the chairman of the jury came on. As usual, he announced the three prizewinners in reverse order. The third prize went to an American, the second to David and the first to an Italian. We all applauded like mad, and David and the American, having collected their certificates and cheques came down off the platform, leaving the first prize winner to thank the organizers in halting English on behalf of all the tenor competitors. David kissed Jon and me and whispered, "At least I don't have to prepare another item for the Champion's final."

We all adjourned to the pub to celebrate and for a bite of lunch, pursued by a couple of would-be agents/impresarios and accompanied by Marcello Fabioni, who had appeared at the back of the hall just before the winners were announced. Marcello said that he would deal with the men, and he took them apart in the bar, where I noticed that they bought him a drink. This left the three of us free to eat and drink. David felt like getting sozzled, but we pointed out to him that we ought to go in the afternoon to hear his friend Nat sing his final pieces. The afternoon session was due to begin at 2-30, but before then, Marcello beckoned us over and introduced us to one of the men he was with, who was an impresario. He said that at present David did not need an agent, because he, Marcello, as David's teacher would act in that capacity. However, the impresario, whose name was Wesley Johnson, was going to put David on his books as a recital artist. The fact that David's availability for the next year was limited did not, he said, make any difference, as many bookings were made two years ahead. The prospect of having at least some income, albeit limited, for the period after his Ph.D. stipend had finished, appealed to David, who said that it seemed like money in the bank. Mr Johnson went away happy and said that David would be sent a contract in the post.

As we went back into the hall, accompanied by Marcello, David whispered to me, "Dad, I bet that he's already planning to enter me in another competition!" The basses and baritones formed a double class, but there were still nine of them. This class had two first prizes, one for baritones, one for basses, and one second and one third prize, which were for either voice. To cut a long story short, Nat won the third prize with his performance of 'Madamina, in catalogo questo' from Don Giovanni, and 'Largo al factotum' from Rossini's 'Il Barbiere di Siviglia.' As he came back to sit beside his friend Mike, David went across and shook hands with him in congratulation, and invited the two of them to join us at the pub.

At the pub, after David's and Nat's health had been drunk, we discussed what to do next. Marcello had already left for Camford. Nat and Mike were going back to Stamford, where Nat's success would be properly celebrated, and as Mike was driving, one drink was all he dared have. We persuaded Nat that he was not so restricted and he had a second drink before leaving. I knew that I could not really go back to Loxton that night, so I decided to leave the next morning. Jon lent me his brick-like cellphone and I rang Helena to tell her, and passed the phone over to David for him to tell her the result of the competition. She was of course delighted. 

The three of us returned to Dinkerton and I invited the boys to dine with me at my hotel. They were going to stay in Dunchester for the Championship finals, so that David could pick up a few hints on technique and behaviour. It was a very alcoholic evening, but we all had a wonderful time, and when the boys left to return to their hotel, I reckoned that they were too sloshed to fuck! Next day I went home, and the boys heard the Champion finals before driving back to Camford. 

Chapter 38 David

Work begins on the Fitness Centre

My second year of research was nearly at an end. The lab work continued to make progress: we had one paper in the press and were writing a second. Marcello told me that he was entering me for two competitions the following calendar year. The contract with Johnson had been signed, and I had been sent a list of possible recital dates for the year, and I had accepted four of them, and I signed up for six for the year after. I was obviously going to be hectically busy with finishing my lab work, writing my thesis, the recitals, the competitions, the work with the Chapel choir and Bach Choir, not to mention keeping our Italian up to scratch. In addition the family were coming to Rockwell's Barn for Christmas, and I was planning a very special event for New Year's Eve. Jon was busy in the lab, and was going to have to take a few days off to go to inspect his forestry and drystone wall projects before the weather deteriorated. Money continued to roll in for the Men's Fitness Centre, and Jon's anonymous trust had released to the trustees the second £500K that had been promised, so that there was now more than two million pounds available and work could begin, subject to planning permission. Jim Everthorpe did his work well, and planning permission was granted without any hassle from the sexual equality lobby. So towards the end of September, Jon invited me to join him at the ceremony to lay the foundation stone of the new building. It was pretty low-key. The committee had decided not to go for a celebrity to perform the ceremony, so it was carried out by the Provost of M College, the committee Chairman. 

The next day Jon left with Robin Banks on a five-day tour of the five established woodland sites, and a search for sites for a further three. I hoped that Robin would not try anything other than 'kissy-cuddly' with Jon, but I knew that Jon would ring me if he did anything that he later regretted. They would be gone for a total of seven days, and hoped to take in the drystone wall sites at the same time, but meeting Michael T, the team leader on site, rather than touring with him. Early in October, they would be back, and a new academic year would begin. 

THE END