Who am I trying to convince?

Myself, probably. I've been thinking about the past week, and the time my daughter and I spent in and around London, and it occurred to me that many, if not most, of the cuties who caught my eye were decidedly at the younger end of my 'age of attraction' scale. There was one in particular, on Thursday morning in Regent Street, a boy of around 11, who, apart from his hair colour, which was a sort of autumnal reddish-brown, was so like DBJ at that age, utterly beautiful, but he was just the cream of a largish crop of boys of that age, and even a little younger, who I found my gaze drawn towards. When this sort of phase, and these things do seem, for whatever reason, to run in phases, has happened before, it has often led to my plumbing the depths of self-loathing, of buying into the propaganda and thinking of myself as nothing more than a totally worthless paedophile deserving of nothing other than revulsion and contempt. And there would be many people who, I have little doubt, would say that's exactly what I am, but, on this occasion, not myself. Because, ultimately, I'm only looking, with no conscious intention of enacting my desires. Maybe it's easy to say that in the absence of any more concrete temptation, of any access to a boy of that age, but I really believe that I wouldn't engage so young a boy sexually, both for his sake and mine, his because while I certainly would never, ever knowingly hurt a boy physically, I could and probably would hurt him emotionally, and I wouldn't ever want that, either, and mine, because I really have no ambition to spend my declining years in jail, as a member of the most hated, lowest of the low, class of criminal. I feel, despite what the haters might think, that I have a moral sense, and that includes not doing anything sexual without informed consent, consent derived from genuine knowledge of what was proposed and the motivations behind it. I still don't believe that a young person has to necessarily be 16 (based on the age of consent in this country) to be able to make that decision, but I can't imagine that more than a tiny handful of those as young as the beautiful boy I saw the other day would have the capacity to realistically weigh the issues and decide for themselves. So, as long as I just look, admire, but otherwise leave the objects of my attraction sacrosanct, while I'm not claiming to be a good person, I can't believe I'm irredeemably bad, either.

2300 edit: On my way back from work, I saw another mind-manglingly cute boy leaving 'worktown' station as I was arriving there. And, almost needless to say, he was another one around the 11-ish mark. This week certainly seems to have had a theme.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B