Losing Tim
by Nigel Gordon
Chapter 9
Black Country 1963
I got home just before five. I felt cold, empty and something else, what that something else was I could not say but it hurt. It hurt inside me like a knife stabbing at my vitals but with a pain that was not physical. I wanted it to stop, I wanted to get away from it, I wanted to sleep. To go to sleep and not wake up till everything had gone.
I'm not sure that I every actually intended to kill myself, all I wanted to do was to get away from this pain that was nagging inside me, from the feeling of total emptiness and uselessness that filled me. I went to the medicine cupboard and got out a bottle of Dalmain and placed it on the table. I took one tablet and waited, time passed, and it seemed to have no effect, so I took another, then another …
There was a noise, something banging, it would not let me sleep, I just wanted to sleep, I reached out to the bottle on the table. I heard the back-door slam open and then somebody was shaking me. Then someone was shouting at me, Timmy was shouting at me, he was pulling over towards the sink and forcing me to drink something, it was not nice. My stomach did not want it, it started to heave, I started to retch, the vomited into the sink, I could hear Timmy on the phone. All I wanted to do was sleep, I went to sleep.
I was in hospital when I woke up, the nurse told me it was Tuesday. Shortly after a doctor came to see me who told me I had been bloody lucky. Later my mother came but we did not talk much, and she could not stay long. Over the next couple of weeks, I was moved around to different wards and different hospitals as one doctor after another came to see me and assess if it was safe to let me out. Somehow Terry found out and he came to see me one evening. He told me that I had been bloody stupid, and that Chris was not worth it, then said I was twice the person Chris could ever be, that is if Chris every managed to amount to anything.
I wanted to see Timmy but as I was in the psychiatric assessment unit this was not allowed. No visitors under sixteen were allowed, that was the rule and they stuck to it. I mentioned this to Terry who said they needed to get me out of there as soon as possible. He seemed somewhat relieved when I said I had not said anything about Chris or why I had done things.
The next day the doctor who was Chris's friend turned up to see me. I had met him a few times and even been with him and Chris together on a couple of occasions. We talked for a bit then he told me that there was no way they would let me out unless they were convinced, they knew why I had taken the tablets and that I would not be doing it again. He then told me what I should say to the psychiatrists, then he left me and went to talk with the staff nurse on duty. Before he left the ward, he came back and said he would be talking to my parents and the psychiatrist.
Basically, the gist of the story was that I was being bullied by some older boys and they were forcing me to steal and I had been caught shoplifting. It was a complete fabrication, but it appeared to make everybody happy. The owner of the local model shop, one of Jock's customers I had been with a couple of times, actually said he had caught me shoplifting but that he was not pressing charges. A couple of days later I was allowed to go home.
When I got home, Timmy turned up and informed me that he was staying for a few days so that I would not be on my own during the day. In fact, he stayed for the rest of the holidays.
I was still feeling pretty weak, the effects of the treatment I had received to get the Dalmane out of my system, so tired easily. As a result, by half past eight I felt ready for bed. Timmy insisted that he would come up and make sure I was OK, my parents said as I was going to bed, they would go around to the Club as Timmy was there to keep an eye on me. I learnt later that they had agreed on this as they thought Timmy and I needed to talk, and it would be easier for us if they were not around.
I went up to my room and got changed for bed, with Timmy sitting on the end of the bed watching me. Once I got into bed he came and sat next to me, putting his arm around me and looked me in the eye.
"Don't you fucking ever do that again."
"What?"
"Try to kill yourself."
"I wasn't I just wanted to sleep."
"Why? And don't give me this gumph about you getting caught stealing. First, you've never stolen anything in your life, second, you're a magician, if you decided to shoplift, they would not catch you." It was a point that I had not considered, my other hobby besides photography was magic and I was quite good at it. Although I had not worked professionally, I had put on a number of shows at local organisations and Timmy had helped me at a couple, he had helped more building props for the shows. I looked at him a bit bewildered. "Don't give me that little boy lost look, cum on and spill the beans, I want to know what really happened." He paused for a moment as if something had suddenly occurred to him. "It's that bloody Chris isn't it?"
I nodded, the step by step started to tell it as it was. I told Timmy about Chris my relationship with him, about working for Jock and getting paid for sex. Whenever I stopped Timmy just seemed to have the right question ready that led me on to the next part of the revelation. When I got to the end there was a moment silence.
"So, you're a bloody queer." It was a statement from Timmy, not a question.
"Yes."
"Good, because I think I am."
"What makes you think that?"
"Because I want to do this." He leaned forward and planted a kiss on my lips. For a moment it lingered there then he pulled back.
"Was that the right way to do it."
"Don't know if there is a right way, it was a good way, want to try again?" He nodded. This time I put my arms around him and pulled him into me. Our lips met and then opened slightly as our tongues started to explore each other's mouth. Then we parted.
"I'm glad Chris had dumped you."
"Why?"
"Because I love you!" he shouted at me, then pulled me into another kiss. It was then that I realised I also loved him.
After that things started to settle down. Timmy never spoke to me about working for Jock or suggested that I should give up but somehow things did not seem to be the same.
Anyway, I was getting a bit too old for a lot of the clients. I still did some modelling work and still had a couple of regulars that I saw but they were outside of Jock. As it was a few weeks later Jock suddenly closed shop and vanished. I learned later he did so just a day in front of a planned police raid, somebody tipped him off.
Timmy stayed with us till the end of the school holidays. During that time, we had a chance to discuss how we felt about each other and where we wanted to go from here. Timmy made it clear that although he was in love with me and was attracted to me, he wanted to hold back on the sex thing. He understood that I was sexually active and wanted sex and said he had not objections to me having it, he actually suggested that I should get together with Raj, who he had met a couple of times and seemed to like. However, he also made it clear that at the moment he did not feel he was ready for sex and so our contact remained limited to kissing and a lot of hugging.
I saw Terry a couple of times, again for some reason Timmy seemed to approve of Terry even though the only time he had met him before was in the company of Chris. It might have been that Terry, who was now eighteen, was clearly a lot older and he had matured very fast. It might have been that when we did meet up Terry never stopped talking about Arthur and it was clear he was deeply in love with the man. Terry also approved of Timmy who I always took along when I was meeting him. One Wednesday I had arranged to meet him after Scouts' swimming, Timmy was with me but could not stay long as he had a pile of homework to do for school the next day.
"You know," Terry said to me, just after Timmy left, "that boy is in love with you, really in love. You're bloody lucky and you deserve it, Chris used you badly." I just nodded, I now accepted that Chris had just been using me.
I had started and college and found I enjoyed the study there. It was a lot harder than what I had done at school but also a lot more interesting. The fact that I was there by my own choice also made a difference.
Timmy now came and stayed with us every weekend. That led to a complication when my Aunt Joan wanted to come over and stay. Mother suggested we moved the double bed from the spare room to my room and swap my bed, which was a three quarter over. Then Timmy and I could share the double and Aunt Joan could have the spare room. It was suggested only as a temporary measure for the two weekends that Aunt Joan was staying. Somehow or other Timmy never went back to sleeping in the spare room. With Timmy moving into my bed our relationship also got a bit more physical. Things were no longer confined to kissing and hugging, there was now a lot of touching, feeling and of course mutual masturbation.
In November Kennedy was shot, the world changed. We, by that I mean the youth, realised that he was not going to change the world for us, if we wanted it changed, we had to do it ourselves. It was then that I started to become political.
Just before Christmas I got a phone call from Terry asking if we could meet on the Saturday morning. Timmy and I went up town a bit early as we wanted to get some Christmas shopping done. Timmy would be spending Christmas with us; his father was back in hospital and his mother was spending most of her free time there. It was generally understood but not stated that Timmy's father did not have much longer to live.
The Christmas shopping did not take us as long as we expected so we got to the café where we were to meet earlier than planned. Terry was there already with an older man who I recognised as Arthur. Arthur, an American, was in his mid-thirties, I knew he was a PhD student doing research at Birmingham University. Terry told us that he was moving to Manchester with Arthur, it seemed that Arthur had finished his PhD and on the basis of it had been offered a Lectureship at Manchester Institute of Technology. Terry was going to transfer from his course at Wednesbury Technical College to one at a Technical College in Manchester. Arthur told us that they could not get Terry a visa for the States until he was qualified as a lab technician. In the meantime, they had got Terry a visitor's visa and were going over to the States for Christmas and the New Year. Arthur wanted to show him where they would be living when they went home.
I was could clearly see that they were very much in love with each other and happy for both of them. Arthur was clearly looking forward to moving out of student digs into his own place where he could have the man, he loved living with him. That was important, Terry was a man and Arthur treated him like such, this was not a boy that Arthur was taking a passing fancy to.
Christmas came and went, it was not a particularly happy time as Timmy's father died late on Christmas Eve. Although it had been arranged that he would spend Christmas with us he felt he had to go home and look after his mother. She, though, had expected to spend Christmas at the hospital and made no arrangements, there was no food at the house. In the end she came down and spent the Christmas and New Year with us but the whole time was very sombre.
After Christmas the situation at college over the morning assembly raised its head. Over the next couple of months, I discussed it with Timmy, who had now started to insist he was Tim. He supported me in challenging it and we spent a lot of time talking about the possible consequences and how we would cope with them. The one consequence we never considered was that I would have to move to London.
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