The Persistence of Memory
by Rafael Henry
Chapter 5
I've known about Ralph Mole, Robbie's father, ever since we moved here to the village of Poverty S. Erth. I remember he did some work for Garth. He built a garden wall for one thing, and thence some spring digging in the vegetable patch that like me, Garth was too lazy to tackle. In the summer he would strip off down to his shorts which made Garth sit up and take more interest than he normally did in the garden. I had a good look too, not being averse to the sight of a handsome and fit young man with some major attributes inside those filthy shorts of his. It was funny watching Garth flitting around him getting all hot and bothered. The trouble was that Ralph Mole isn't gay. Dad and he are not married, obviously, as two men can't be married. Maybe one day they will be able to, and as I recall Dad saying that their relationship was an open one, which I took to mean they were not joined at the hip. Quite a handy arrangement. I'm sure that Ralph Mole had got the idea by then that Garth would much rather eyeball a handsome man than a woman. He dyes his hair blond, and wears clothes that might be seen to support that idea, his favourites being very tight white shirts, and white jeans or ripped shorts that leave one in no doubt as to kind of underpants he prefers. I love Garth. He's funny and extraordinarily kind to everyone, including me of course. He once showed me his wardrobe with particular reference to his under things. Quite a collection, changed every day, sometimes twice, and it was a matter of great pride that they went into the washing machine in exactly the same state, visually, as they were when he put them on. Boys seldom achieve that, lazy bottom wipers as they are. He taught me how to maintain a perfectly clean kinderkunt, as he called my tender back passage. He was born in Germany and trots out mangled and very rude sexual German bastardizations.
'You're not cleaning yourself properly Alex. I shall show you precisely how. Come to the bathroom now my sweet kinderbarn.' He often added snippets of Swedish too, the word barn meaning child.
Then I had the lesson which has prevented any soreness or discomfort of any kind associated with my pert kinderkunt; his word for it. After all, Garth does all the washing so he has a vested interest.
Very importantly, he told me that I should never ever use ordinary soap around or inside the anus to clean up properly after a bowel movement. But clean I have to be. Anyway, I like that idea, being pristine around there, and inside too. One's underpants are more for unfortunate rare emergencies rather than every day protection. And they should be what the wearer wants, and feel good in.
'It's far too delicate in there my kinder sweetie. Use a body lotion and your finger. It's not an unpleasant sensation! Never soap.'
Advice I listened to and acted upon. I have never had a sore bottom since, and found the after-process a pleasure.
I don't think the relationship he has had, or rather is having with my father, has been particularly sexual, not to say they don't. They do most weekends. I think Dad has been more of a father figure for Garth, being quite a few years younger and who was essentially rescued from a delicate situation, being hapless, hopeless, homeless and therefore very vulnerable. Dad must have found him attractive in some way or ways, and took him in after my mother took flight. I'm sure things began to go wrong for Garth when he got mixed up with the 'big church' back in Hamburg. He never had any interest in it, he told me one afternoon in the garden as we lay sunbathing, he in a pair of tiny pants that looked like something, in my naivete, a girl would wear, and curiously cut to emphasize his willy. He ended up as the crucifer, the choir member who carries the processional cross as they march up the aisle at the beginning of the service, and process out at the end. He said he couldn't sing for toffees but just looked the part. I can believe that. My father evidently got him back into adult education and eventually trying for a qualification in accountancy, which he hated. The stories Garth told me about his time at the big church were hilarious, and often rather dark, with openly gay clergy giving the new pretty boy with his light voice and euro accent a hard time. Then inevitably, there was 'the trouble'. One day I'll get the full story of what happened, but the adult in question landed himself in pretty serious trouble. I mean, why take that kind of risk with three young teen boys who wouldn't at their tender age fully understand what they were doing? Eventually one of the boys would talk. And one did. Those people must live in some kind of false security bubble or something, inside which the rest of the world can't touch them.
My father ran the account for the church in Peterborough, had a small office there, hence father's continuous presence. Everybody suspected something was going on between Dad and Garth who had got himself involved with the place as a cleaner. So the two of them inevitably met. End of, as they say. Garth lapped up all the attention dad was giving him, and probably had been for some time, desperate to find a path in his life. My father picked him out, and after many conversations, took him on, with a significant ulterior motive. Apparently dad gave him lunch the very first time they spoke properly rather than just 'the looks'. I was a small baby and got my nappy changed by Garth within the hour!
In the very early part of my life, Garth did most of the day to day looking after me, including all the nappy changing and cleaning me up. Although I was barely a teenager, he would recall those days with pride. Did you know that a baby can get erections? Apparently I did quite often as the nappy containing an amount of urine was removed to reveal an excited mini-peen. By the time I was approaching my teen years he told me that he never touched me inappropriately other than rather nice pats on my kinderbottom which I loved, and I used to stick my bottom out, laughing, asking for more of the same. He'd giggle that silly giggle of his as my small penis reacted positively to his fingers fiddling inside the seams at the back of my pants as he dressed me each morning. At school now, he went into retail, eventually landing an assistant management post for the new Next shop in town. He loved clothes so it was much more his thing, hence his providing me with all my sartorial needs, particularly the unseen items. Every week he would show me yet another design of boys' underwear to see if I liked them. If I thought them interesting, I would model them for him, and they would join my ample collection on the shelf. I had my favourites which I would wear in bed, to start with, imagining a boy I had seen somewhere recently, playing hard to get. But of course, in my daily fantasies, the boy gave in and I had my wicked way with him. One afternoon I had a snoop in their bedroom and found several sex toys. I put them back after close examination, concluding that were designed to stimulate the anus and beyond. One was a perfect replica of a circumcised and fully erect penis about three inches long, which looked much the same as mine, and others I had seen at school. In a moment of bravery I asked Garth what one might do with such a thing and he told me very willingly.
'If you haven't got a real one to hand, you can use this one darling. Let me show you.'
He put the thing to his mouth and went through a thrilling routine with his tongue and lips, and his whole mouth.
'That's what you do with it, and it works even better when it's the real thing. But be very careful who the owner is.'
Our question and answer session went on for some time, and by the end of it I felt fully informed. I asked if I could try it out for size.
'This one or the real thing?' He asked, opening up his dressing gown revealing the large bump in his underpants, and then quickly closing the gap. It was just his odd way of trying to be funny……..I think. He would never have abused me, not in a million years. I often wondered what it would be like to have sex with him. Anyway he would never have allowed it. I could never have kissed him in a sexual way. Some things you know you don't want to do. It would be like kissing your mother. Yuk! He is my mother really. A odd concept I know.
Garth found Ralph Mole intensely attractive, muscled and tanned as he usually was, long blond hair swept back and free. So he would employ him as often as my father would allow him to, sometimes in the house polishing brass items or whatever. He said that if he got him in the house there was a better chance of seducing him. He didn't seem to understand that, being very heterosexual, Ralph would never want to play the games Garth wanted to play, so nothing ever transpired, as far as I know.
'I did try darling.' Says Garth, giving me a cuddle in the hallway.
I think I had better luck than Garth. I once saw Ralph Mole have a pee in the garden, thinking that no one would be looking. I was. I couldn't believe the thing he got out of his pale blue pants. It must have been seven or eight inches long, hanging there in a huge curve as the pee poured out for a good two minutes. By the time he had finished flooding the rough grass, the thing had grown fatter, but curiously, no longer. I was at that time used to tiddlers, so Ralph's cock was something of a revelation. I saw Garth's penis quite regularly as he often strode to the bathroom nude, sometimes with an erection hoping I wasn't around to see it, but he was as not much compared to the manly Ralph. As my father worked in his makeshift office elsewhere in the house, Garth and I would sit together, often with his arm around me, pretending to watch the TV. I always wanted to hear something more about his early life so I would try to steer the conversation towards sex, a subject that was getting ever more interesting to me, aged eleven. I had landed my first 'proper' boyfriend, a neat dark-haired boy called Charles, who as it turned out and very conveniently, had similar ambitions as I had. In the privacy of the bedroom, standing naked together with our arms around each other's shoulders, we would jig about touching our middles together, our kinderkocks jumping up and down, and soon stiffening nicely with skin-on-skin contact. And then the inevitable question boys ask their potential partners; 'Can you come?', which really meant 'Shall we do it?'. Lying back on my bed with his hands behind his head, I did it for Charles with two fingers and my thumb, where he liked it, close to the end of his penis So we both lied! He said he could and I said I could. When it came to the crunch, neither of us could. I was very fond of Charle, while it lasted. One day I got very close to asking him if I might lick his penis as he lay there smiling and all expectant. I wish I had.
Charlie was a lovely boy, nine I think when he came round to play. We'd dance around the room naked, and erect, waving our willies around and bending over to show one another our bottoms, pulling each other's cheeks apart for a better look. His was different to mine with a larger pigmented area around the actual opening. I mentioned it to Garth.
'No one is exactly the same darling. That's the beauty of boys. We're all different.' How true. And how did I know mine was different to Charlie's? That's another story.
Our conversation with Ralph Mole was a short one, as he rested, perspiring, on the garden fork. Robbie was holding his bike up, one hand on the handle bars, the other on the worn looking saddle, the bruise on the left upper thigh just visible. He agreed that Robbie could come to our house for as long as was convenient, but to be home by tea time. I sent the two boys ahead but stayed for a further chat with Ralph. This I realized might be tricky because my father always said that financially challenged adults can get very defensive and proud when any offer of charity was offered.
'Something I thought of Ralph. It seems silly for me and Duncan to be driving every morning to Truro and leave Robert waiting at the bus stop? Can we not take him with us…..and bring him back at the end of school?'
Ralph stares back at me, open mouthed; and then nods.
'I'll be straight with you Ralph, if that's ok?' Another nod.
'Robbie mentioned earlier that he was under the impression that he would be leaving the school at half term. Is there any chance you might be able to tell me why?' I asked, taking a big risk.
Ralph's head drops as he breathes deeply. Several long breaths and then an extended exhalation.
'It's like this Master Alex. I can't afford it. None of it. Not really. Food has got so dear now. Then there's Rosie's clothes. She needs other things now that girls have to have. There's not a lot of work around here. I try my best for God' sake. I do. I really do, but it can't work. Not any more. I don't want charity. Not from anyone.'
'But that's not your fault is it? The lack of work. And who would know? No one would know.'
So I'm going to go for it now.
'If we take Roert to school each day, you'd save that money. Duncan is older than Robert and a lot of his clothes don't fit him now. They're perfectly good. He has shirts, trousers, jumpers; even a blazer he can hand on to Robert. Please will you promise me that you will at the very least think about it? For Robert's sake. And yours? Robert won a full-fees bursary. I know that. You can't waste that gift surely?'
I didn't hear anything from Ralph for two days, with the half term holiday a fortnight away. I decide to call on him one afternoon. Ralph hadn't had any work that day when he answered my knock on the front door. He'd be in his work clothes if he had.
'It's you then.' Was the sharp reply.
'Yes, sorry to disturb you. Have you had any further thoughts about Robert's future?'
'No.'
'None at all?'
'Yes. We don't need your charity. Fuck off.'
There was something about his face.
'You do Ralph as you well know. Why not for your son's sake? Can't you do that simple thing for him? You love him. That I so obvious, just as he loves you and wants to see you happy. Rosie too. Please?'
I could see the tears forming. I'm about to win this battle. I went home in a state of complete euphoria. I waited for the next minute. I've won.
The first person to consult is Garth when it comes to clothing.
'Get Robert round here and we'll sort him out. Offer him anything of Duncan's. He has loads more than he needs. And the girl too. Find out what size she is.'
Garth never threw out kinderclothing. There were several piles of it in the airing cupboard, most of it some stuff that Duncan had grown out of, and even some of mine from five years ago. What we didn't have, Garth would get. But we needed Robbie. I could see Garth's eyes shining with pride; that at last he could do something for others. People had shown him kindness when he really needed it. Now he had his chance again.
The following Monday morning Robert Mole rang the doorbell at seven thirty, the exact time we had agreed he should arrive at our house all booted and spurred for the new week. His school blazer looked very second hand, his mid-grey regulation short trousers were too short, and at the other end of his legs were a pair of odd socks, one black, the other not quite the same black. His white shirt was not very white, his tie crumpled and although we couldn't see it, his jumper was more than likely badly worn at the elbows. As for the boy's shoes, expensive items these days, they looked like they'd seen a few playground football games, but not seen any black polish for long time. I put him in the front seat of the car so I could talk to him on the twenty-minute ride into Truro, and Duncan sat in the back.
'Your dad has told you hasn't he Robbie?'
'Yes.' He says, looking at me bright eyed and half a smile.
'Good. You're staying at ours for tea tonight. We can make a start on you.'
We all met in the carpark at four twenty, five minutes after the end-of-school bell. Duncan was quiet in the car but Robbie had some good news.
'I'm in the chess team Alex. Mr Beer told me at lunch time.'
He's a bright spark this one.
'Oh well done!'
I looked back at Duncan who was looking out of the car window. So up pops Quintus Beer's ugly head again. He's very effectively managing his open-ended role in the school. Clubs and societies now is it?
Duncan always showers when we get home after school. Robbie can join him, and then as he will be a blank canvas, so to speak, we can start building the perfect image of an English schoolboy, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. Enter Garth.
One of the first things to get clear with Robert Mole is our reverence for the human body, whatever the shape and size. A boy's body is a wonder to behold and we'd rather see all of it that just some of it, so don't be afraid to show us Robbie.
He undressed for his shower with Duncan slowly, no doubt a little reticent about his impending nudity. Duncan helped him, naked now, as Duncan would. After three weeks at the Hut down at Endellion Cove, he has no qualms about revealing his body to all. And why not? The last item removed from Robbie were a pair of the most dreadful underpants. Loose legged and baggy and a horrible greyish pale blue edged with white, or off-white. At the critical moment both Garth and I have joined the showering pair in the bathroom.
'Oh my, those will have to go!' Insists Garth when he sees the collection of items Duncan has in his hands. I quite agree. All that stuff is for the bin. The boys left the shower door open which gave us outside some pleasing glimpses of the boys, Duncan soaping up Robbie's back. As his hands moved over the delicious shining flesh of the smaller frame, he was careful to avoid going lower than was advisable. Robbie is standing before us, in full frontal view, his hands to his sides and his head down, the water cascading off his spun gold long hair. He must be a good foot and a bit shorter than Duncan, but looking every inch the well-formed lad that he is. Although narrow shouldered, his calves are meaty below slender upper legs, and where they meet, his sexual parts look surprisingly immature. Duncan hands Robbie the bar of soap so he can complete the job at the front. He doesn't look used to doing that as he dabs at himself ineffectively, missing the important bits completely. Duncan, ever watchful, points out what he's missed, so Robbie has to do it right now. Lovely.
I got to dry Robbie with the towel, the first time I can feel the light, agile and in my opinion, slightly underweight and frankly a little undersized for his age, body in my hands. Maybe he would have preferred to have dried himself, but this is a gesture from me to him all about caring.
I loved being patted dried by Garth after my bath. Needless to say he was thorough, and I was left without a drop of water on my body, anywhere. He would hold me tight against him for a couple of minutes as my head nestled against his tummy and his hands hard against the back of my head. I remember those moments very well as he told me how much he loved me. I was ten before he stopped giving me that kind of attention although I would have been very happy for him to continue that and other kinds of his caring for as long as he wanted to. I know he enjoyed it as much as I did as I looked down when he got to my exciting and very responsive parts. I was at that early stage of making the connection between penis stimulation resulting in an erection, and another human contact. My penis was starting to grow larger although it would be three years before traces of pubic hair appeared. He'd sit with me telling me stories as I lay on my side in bed, my eyes shut and not too far from sleep. This was the point at which he knew it would be wrong to go on with our post-bathing routine, sadly. He would often catch me playing in my bed whilst I waited for my story. He'd smile and leave the room and return ten minutes later by which time I had finished the job in hand. My orgasms at that time, still years away from puberty proper, were incredibly intense, sometimes leaving me literally shaking with the shock of it, and touching the tip of my burgeoning kinderstick with the tip of a finger for any evidence of growing up. No such luck, yet.
As I mentioned, Garth never threw away any of the clothes I grew out of, and I never had them long anyway as he would always dress me in kit that fitted at the time; not like some parents [or guardians] who bought too large for the boy or girl to grow into. When I went off to S. Endellions, the other side of the country to where we lived in Eastern Anglia, my clothes fitted me perfectly, all from one of those exclusive boys' outfitters that had mannequins in the window clothed in some posh uniform from mid-August onwards ready for the new school year. I remember seeing one before it was 'dressed' by one of the camp male shop assistants, and wondering why they hadn't modelled the boy's bits more realistically. An opportunity wasted, I thought, to celebrate the wonders of the male form. I already had ideas as to how I would put that right with my clay models.
When we moved to Poverty, Garth, then being part-time at my father's accountancy firm, did various DIY tasks around the house on his days off, one of which was to put up a range of shelving in my bedroom for the ample selection of clothing I had acquired and not been disposed of to a charity shop. There were tee shirts from when I was five, and kid's pants with all sorts of things printed on them that boys' might be into at that age; dinosaurs for example, or soccer balls. Shorts too, of course. I loved those dinky Mothercare ones which when I saw other boys in those things with the little bulge at the front, it made by tummy tumble. I don't know who designed those things. Someone like me I suspect. They were hugely popular with mums as they were cheap but looked great on boys forced into them. We were being inadvertently sexualized by their doting mothers. I was still wearing those ultimately sexy things by my twelfth birthday, my external organs being slightly restricted, it felt like, internally. I had noticed that boys would look at me in the street as they passed by; lingering looks, no doubt jealous that I was allowed to wear such things at my age. A few men too. If they did, I would look around whilst holding Garth's hand and sometimes they had stopped and were looking back at this boy in the tight shorts holding hands with the young man with dyed blond hair. Goodness knows what they thought of that. Lucky Garth. I had certainly become sexually aware by my tenth birthday, definitely, and would ask to be dressed as I wanted to be, age inappropriately . I had known for some time that I was an emerging homosexual butterfly, and I was enjoying it. I would look at men too, teasing them.
Garth always made me wear something underneath those shorts, but if he wasn't around, I could go without which I had discovered delivered a certain pleasurable friction on my genitals causing the occasional swelling, and more obvious evidence that there was a real boy inside. I think the idea was to create a more unisex look for all the under eleven's, in other words, a style created for boys up to the end of primary school. I wasn't big for my age, height wise at least, and in other ways quite average, so I got way with wearing those things until I was thirteen. That was definitely the limit as far as Garth was concerned.
'You are not walking around in those any more Alex. They are becoming positively obscene!'
'Why not? I like them.'
'Well you're not . They're going. Just accept that please.'
I suppose he was right, but for me it was a bit of a tragedy to see my lovely Mothercare shorts consigned to the archive shelf.
I was ready for Endellion when I got there, having heard all the stories about boarding schools. The beds would be very close together with lots of boys sharing a room. You would all take showers together, naked of course. Boys were allowed to touch each other. Really? To me this sounded like fun.
By the end of my first term, I knew they were true stories of pack drill, sporting heroes, general heartiness, and underground romance. I did look a little young compared to most in my year, exacerbated by Garth's attention to my sartorial appearance, which made me more attractive to the older brethren than I otherwise would have been I'm sure.
We all wore grey short trousers in the first two years. In the eighties they were short trousers, and bless him, Garth being from a family of German tailors, had the necessary skills to subtly alter things like the length of my short trousers. Just one inch made a difference that I was completely unaware of. Then I got the comments.
'Hello sexy legs. Not too cold up there is it?'
Stuff like that, but good humoured. Some of the older boys were very complimentary which induced a warm face and nice little glow inside. One or two boys my age would ask where I got the shorts from. I knew but I didn't tell them. France. My father often went off to France, with me in tow. They always went to Galeries Lafayette, a large shop in Paris. They had fantastic shops for kid's clothes. Garth had a good look there for anything I might like or need now, or for school. The boy's shorts were perfect, cut finely around where it mattered as far as Garth was concerned, between the legs and around the bottom. Underthings too. Beautiful stuff in pastel colours and of course Garth's go to colour, plain white as white could be. One other thing he always looked for. At S. Endellion, about a third of the new boys arrived with a stock of traditional white briefs with what Garth called a 'door' at the front, and crucially, more robust lengths of rubber sewn into the seams of the leg openings. This feature made an imprint clearly visible when observing a boy from the rear. Two thirds of the boys wore, like me, very plain things cut a little briefer with no aperture to extract our Kinderkocks when we needed to pee. But mine, fresh from Paris at some expense, had much thicker seams, and consequently were far more noticeable. To pee, the waistband could be pulled lower and hooked under one's kinderballe which left both hands free while you stood at the porcelain urinals, glancing sideways at the boy next door. This was a revelation for me as an uncircumcised boy would often pull back his foreskin to reveal what I could always see. Those were always different to mine, often shiny with a finer texture and darker in colour, and as far as I could make out, a more pronounced hole in the middle. By Christmas in my first year, I had had an uncircumcised boy in my hand and rapidly learnt quite a bit more about what worked best for those boys.
One more thing on this subject. Due to cut of my pants and the thickness of the elastic inside the seams of the legs, I regularly had to use a finger and thumb to tweak them free from travelling too far between my buttocks and causing a nuisance.
'Something wrong Alex?' The boy behind me in the corridor asks.
'No.' I answer.
'Oh? Your pants are too tight. Is that it?'
'No.' I insist.
It was a way of that individual to let me know that he's interested. But if he were to go further than that obscure reference to a question he's really want to ask, he might easily be in trouble. 'If you want to do it, so do I.'
Robbie followed Garth and I to my bedroom, his towel around his shoulders still. In the bedroom now, Garth took the towel away from him, leaving him stranded and naked in the middle of the room, with both hands in front of him. There's still a little some residual modesty there. We'll soon get rid of that.
'Stand up straight dear boy……..and put those hands behind your back.' Says Garth in a tone that Robbie recognized from his father. Just do as you're told. I stared at this example of the immature male penis, wondering as I often did when I saw them at S. Endellion, how big it might get by adulthood. My guess was that Robbie's cute and flaccid uncut kinderkock would be at the very least, satisfactory for his partner, whichever the sex.
And then we had the fitting.
Garth went through my underwear archive right back to the ones he wore when he was nine.
'Too tight darling?'
'A bit. I like them though.' The boy says tugging at the elastic that curved around his right buttock, pulling it out and then letting it go again. Garth pulls up the waistband, the boy's kinderkock forced up into an enticing vertical position, turned the boy around to check the fit around the seat. With another adjustment of the thicker seams, Garth is satisfied with this result. The boy stands upright, smiling.
'What do you think Duncan? Comfy at the front darling? Do you like being a model Robert? You look perfect in those darling.'
'Umm.' He says, looking down, touching himself gently.
I had an arm around Duncan's bare shoulder as I looked at his face for any reaction to the beginning of his new friend's transformation, in more than one way, for that is what it is. A new beginning.
I could see the mixture of emotions on Duncan's face which included, I'm sure, a sense of satisfaction, and a dash of excitement as he admired the beautiful apparition he saw before him, smiling back at him. Robbie with the golden hair, fresh face and blue eyes and smiling face.
I think that's what we were all feeling at that moment, elated, and with the sense of a fresh start, a new beginning for him. Out with the old and in with the new!
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