Background to the Stories
Looking at many stories on the net, I got really fed up with stories about pure sex, and some about really nasty stuff. So I followed my friend Comicality's lead and started to write about love. I'm also not into dimensions of equipment and volumes of ejaculate, so you won't find that here
I thought you might like to know how much and how little the stories are based in reality, and how much on my world of fantasy. Most important, nothing in these stories has actually happened to me or the kids I grew up with [unless, of course, you are one of those kids, and you know different! And unless you're reading "The Walk" or "Wotcha Bennett!"]. Even so, they are all based upon people I know, or have seen, or have met, or have loved, or simply lusted after.
People have said "Your younger readers take these stories as behaviour models." That sounds like heavy responsibility. Only I don't accept it. These are stories, fantasies, romantic fiction, erotic fiction. A good few are too good to be true. But I like happy stories. Some have a sting in the tail, maybe! You have to get to the tail to find out. But no-one should model their behaviour on the stories, unless the lesson they take is that love, true love, is possible, and possible for the gay youth, sometimes with the blessing of his family.
I do have some pictures of some of my inspiration for some of the stories. Thses include the real life Nigel, the real star of Wotcha Bennett!, the boy who is the inspiration behind Twist of Fate, and more... And there is a poll on the page for you to say who is your favourite! Go to my Rogues Gallery and have a look.
Chris and Nigel
is based on my feelings for a very seductive lad I was at school with. He was hugely attractive without being beautiful, so I made Nigel beautiful as well. The lad at school used to walk past in the changing rooms, clad in a towel, and just drop it seductively in front of, well, not me, but a guy next to me. He knew what he was doing. He knew the effect he had. He was the owner of the most perfect suntan, and a pair of legs that were silky smooth and long and gorgeous. His name was Nigel, too.
I got into a little trouble over Nigel in real life. Those legs... Enticing. I first saw them when he came into the house dayroom wearing games shorts. Ours had pockets in, and Nigel had his hands in the pockets, and was pulling the shorts up as high as they'd go making them look like a high cut bikini. You could almost see all he owned that day. Later, maybe two years later I was caught looking at his legs. "Stop looking at Nigel's legs!" That's what I was told. Glorious legs.
I tried to write about him when I was eighteen, and failed all three times. Don't ask me where Carol comes from. She arrived in the plot and forced her way in!
Wishing for Love
Harry is based on a kid I saw each day as I drove to work. He had shoulder length bright blond hair, and a real cute face. Then one day I couldn't see him, and I saw he'd cut his hair off. That gave me the idea for Harry and the story.
Breaking into Love
is based on a kid I was at school with, too. He had hair that was bright blond and looked like cobwebs. When I first saw him, he was eating tea in the dining hall, blushed bright crimson red. He was a fantastic swimmer. Beautiful, and much admired by, well, by anyone with a feeling for boys
Sun and Sand
is different, an experiment in writing direct to you, using you as someone to confide in. The place is the hook, here, since the characters are entirely fictional, but I used to go on holiday there, staying in that hotel. Does it still exist? I have no idea, nor is it important.
The Love of Sailing
is all made up. If it's based on anyone, it's based on all the attractive kids I've changed into and out of wet suits with in sailing clubs. I guess Ben is a composite of them all!
Band Practice
is based on the most adorable and awesome trumpet player, all of 18 years old, looking as I have described him here. And the location, while nowhere near where I see him, is a real location
Acting As friends
is just based upon desperation, plus experience of watching a house play from backstage, and seeing the adorable heroine, a boy I wanted to kiss so badly [it was a single sex school], being "stage kissed" by the hero. I could have shown them how to do it so much better. How can I describe him? Picture him at 14/15, naked, standing in the showers, yes at "Elthorn College", and yes in "Gilbert's" boxroom [see "Nice Try!"], soaking wet. Slim, a sprinkling of hair above the sweetest, most kissable... Sorry, I was getting carried away. It wasn't his mouth. He was just as gorgeous at 18. The play? Romanoff and Juliet, by Peter Ustinov. In real life I mean.
Hit for Six
is built around the kid with the bluest eyes I have ever seen. He's is 14, like Ted, and is gorgeous, but doesn't know it yet. And he is a bowler, too. It's enough to make me wish I played cricket!
Flight of Fancy
was literally that. He exists. He was at Heathrow. He is gorgeous, as I have described him. And that is the only real part ot the story. The setting is fine, of course. But the storyline? I wish....
Holiday in the Sun
is set on my own holiday, In Lanzarote, in the Summer of 1999. Otto is a beautiful boy, Andrew, who was in my hotel. John is (paradoxically) a german boy. Both are cute. Andrew was beautiful. The German boy? I fell for the back of his hair and his tanned calves!
Wotcha Bennett!
Oh based on reality. All except the story! Was his name Paul? Maybe. Did he call me Bennett? Yes. But he didn't sail. Yet he was more beautiful than the story can describe, and the story does tell of a true interaction between us. Until the bus, and all is then fantasy.
To learn more of what Paul Metcalf meant to me, read "outed", part of my life story.
The Walk
An experiment. based on a real person, and based on real events, thinly disguised. Who am I trying to kid. Jamie is John. I am Paul. I tried so hard to write a story about me and John with the ending I wanted; it would not come. Instead I got the ending that happened, though it happened less well, and 33 years too late. You have to read my life story to find out the real life version. There was no beer in real life, nor was there the end of the plot. But there could have been. Each of those things. There could have been. It is autobiographical. Except the ending.
Velvet Touch?
I went on holiday in the Summer of 2000 to this hotel on the island of Fuerteventura. I first saw him in the poolside café-bar having lunch with his parents. Then later, in the dining room, and again in the bar I saw him. As I've described him. He was younger in real life, maybe 12 or 13, so I had to add age to him for the story. The other two boys? Well, I reckon one is me, and the other, in my dreams, is John. You'll have to read my life story to find out about John.
Nice Try! (Original, Prequel, and "Back")
I was at my son's school for a parents day. As we came out of the theatre where the headmaster had been talking to us we were met by the boys. And two boys struck me. One was maybe 13 and blond, and the other sixteen or so and dark mouse blond with long unkempt hair and smiling eyes. The younger was dancing attendance on the older. The older looked like someone to write about. So I have. He was absolutely and totally sexy without being beautiful. The younger? Well his spirit is in all the stories anyway.
I moved the school to my old school, on Elthorn Downs in the town of Elthorn (yeah, right!) and made almost all of the geographical references real. The names of the houses are changed, of course, and one which was a day house has mysteriously become a boarding house, but that's ok, coz it's a story. And it could have happened.
I wrote the prequel for fun. I've never written two stories separately about the same thing before. This was hard work!
The third episode is written from a different perspective. It's the first story I've written from the third person's viewpoint. I think it's worked, but I'm not totally sure. I found it really hard to cope with so many different perspectives. Also the ability to know what is going on in all the characters' minds seems to me to remove the magic of a love story. But it was fun to write.
Do the D-W With Me?
So hard to explain this one. The Journeyman, friend and author, and I were on a Thames pleasure boat, and we saw a beautiful boy who became Sam, on a trampoline, bouncing for the pleasure of bouncing. And he was as I describe Sam. The stretch of river is real, but the boy was on a different island.
I used to work on that stretch of the river. A beautiful boy used to hang out with me with a sprint kayak. He taught me to paddle it. Sam and he are an amalgam, and I am in there too, as Steve. Oh, "The D-W" is the Devizes to Westminster canoe race.
A couple of people have said to me "But the ending - it just wouldn't have happened that way, it was too... " Well I won't say too what, because you may not have read it yet. But my answer is that it would. I know it would. I know it because I wrote the character of Steve, and he's based on me, and that is how I would have behaved. One hundred percent how. But in doing that, I seem to have upset some "conventions". Ah well. I do that. I would say "sorry", but, well, I'm not. And that's because I write for me. And, of course, for you.
Face at the Window
Each year so far since I started writing I have written a story based aorund someone or something I saw on my holiday. 2001 is no exception. It was a simple glimpse in the hotel dining room. The glimpse is the saame that Simon had. The eye contact, the "hi", the conversation at the dessert servery. The character which starts out as "David from Coronation Street was real. He was a German lad, younger that I place him in the story. He was very self aware. The eyes he met were mine. Behind the eyes was something indefinable, yet he was not classicly good looking and it was a surprise that he was attractive. After the short exchange of words he acknowledged me whenever he saw me. And in my head I became Simon as he became Phil.
The Misfit
Two things prompted this story. the first is the death by suicide of a close friend of a man I know. The second is a kid at my son's school who tries so hard to fit in. A hard story to write, a hard story to read.
I wondered about a sequel, or a prequel, or more detail. Nifty rejected the story because there was nothing about "the aftermath and results of suicide", which I respect but found weird.
The thing about Graham is that we never ever know what he is like. We see what he lets us see. A kid, trying desperately to fit in and to be LIKED, let alone loved. Lonely, with al the advantages money can bring, and no love in his life. Good looking, yet failing to make the best of it. Loved and never knowing nor daring. yet daring at last to speak. Too late. Graham always did things too late.
Alan? What did it do to him?
Yes. What DID it do?
You see, if I write that, Alan will become unloved by any reader, for it will be too awful. Right now Alan is a character who gains our passing sympathy. He also tried to fit in. HE bullied Graham. But he did it so that Graham would notice him. But HE was a misfit as well. Was he gay? Who knows. Was Graham gay? Who knows. Alan will survive. It was true love he felt, not sexual attraction. the sex would have come, of course it would, but he LOVED Graham, adored him. And he doesn't even have a scrap, not even the teddy bear, to remember him by. It is why he carried the stuff to Grahams' parents' car. To touch it once, for he never had before, except to bully.
I can't write about Alan without killing the "passing love" I feel for him. Alan was a fool. He hurt the thing that loved him. Perhaps HE was the greater misfit? I'm not at all sure I like Alan. I know I like Graham.
Graham is based on a living character, one who has got through being bullied, and the "out of place" phrases are from his lips, verbatim. he is still bullied, but gives as good as he gets. The difference between him and Graham is that he is liked by his school peers. And given overt yet grudging respect.
Ganymede
As usual my vacation promoted a story. Ganymede is real, and was as I describe him. The location is real and as I describe it. The story, well that has a twist in the tail. Unconventional? Maybe.
Two Burgers
In May 2006 I went to Bradfield village, in Berkshire, and went to the May Fayre. I queued up for burgers and Jack was there. I've no idea if it was his name, but it suited him.
