Cute, cute, and thrice cute

The son of one of my colleagues, who I've seen a couple of times before, meeting his dad at my workplace this evening. A stunning boy at 'worktown' station when I arrived there on my way to work at lunchtime. And now cute barman Ben in 'domicile-ville' Wetherspoons. I could really do without these unattainables ghosting through my life at the moment, given that I still don't know what, if anything, is going to come of the nightmare I was going through almost exactly a week ago. But, sadly, I can't turn 'me' off, just because it's currently unhelpful. All this stuff is, as I've said before, a life sentence. With no hope of parole.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Throwaway

Ever had the experience of someone saying something which, to them, is a complete throwaway, but which, to you, has far, far more significance? I had just such an experience in 'worktown' Wetherspoons when I called in for a couple of drinks after work this evening. I was wearing a shirt declaring my allegiance (strictly in an 'armchair fan' sense these days) to a certain Cornish rugby club. A woman commented, without the slightest encouragement from me, that I was 'a long way from home'. In more ways than you can possibly imagine, lovey.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More questions, but some answers, at least

I asked a series of more or less rhetorical questions in one of my posts in the aftermath of last weekend's events, and more have come to mind. Why was I so smitten by him? He's not beautiful, apart, maybe, from his gorgeous (one of his favourite words, to judge by the number of times he used it) pale blue eyes, not even 'pretty' in the way young boys sometimes can be. I suppose what he is, really, is 'cute', in the way a doting grandmother, rather than a boylover like me, might use the word. Thinking about it over the past few days, I think the answer to this question revolves around two things - the fact that he took to me, even though this was, effectively, the first time I'd ever 'met' him in any meaningful way, and his very, very obvious intelligence. His father said, just before it all exploded, 'J really likes you', something I knew already. Which was why I said what I said, the statement that was the immediate catalyst for the disasters that ensued. That I never, never wanted to see J again, because that was the only way I could ever guarantee, with 100% certainty, that he would be safe from me. At which point his father went berserk.
All of which has given rise to another answer. That my long term strategy for dealing with the person I know myself to be is the right one. I simply must stay away from boys, never, ever get involved with a boy in any way at all. I'm still convinced that I had to say what I said, though, because the absolute, overriding priority is that such a perfect little boy, or, indeed, any boy at all, should never be exposed to even the slightest risk of being hurt by me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Coming down from the plateau of nightmare

Not prematurely, I hope, because I haven't been back to 'domicile-ville' since I left for work at 5:45 this morning, but my title was a phrase I used when I spoke to K a little while ago. I guess it's human nature, though, to assume that if the sky doesn't fall on you more or less immediately, it isn't going to happen at all. I'm certainly not in any such position of comfort in reality, though, there are still all sorts of dire things that could come about, but the longer it goes without such consequences, the more I might allow myself to believe what my brother and sister-in-law said at the weekend about dealing with issues as they arise, as opposed to allowing the worst-case scenario to become all-consuming.
As I suggested yesterday, I've dabbled in online literature this afternoon, as a displacement activity, finding, and reading from cover to cover, as it were, a version of John Wyndham's Chocky, a book I've been fond of for a long time. I was rather surprised to find how much of a parallel there was between Matthew, the 'juvenile lead' in the story, and my Xander, given that there was no conscious association of the two while I was writing my story, but the fact that Wyndham is one of my very favourite writers probably makes the influence easy to explain. I just hope I can avoid charges of outright plagiarism!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Comfort food, of sorts

In difficult times, it is, maybe, fairly common to head for things that are comfortable, familiar. In my case, one of those 'comfort foods' is found in literature, in its broadest sense. I've managed, in a short space of time this evening, to find some of my favourite books in online versions, and I'll probably set about reading at least one of them over the next day or two. But, in the short term, I've read Alexandrine yet again (although, to be honest, I'd already begun reading it before the weekend). I know it's only fiction, and, probably, the story of a relationship that could never happen in reality, but I still find myself going back to bask in the warmth of my lovely Xander when I feel the coldness of the world. Would that there could be a real-life analogue, but I know, almost with certainty, that it will never be. My invention, my fictional 'ideal boy' is as close as I will ever get to what I want the most, and, probably, that's as it should be, because the potential for hurt in such a relationship, even if consensual, in real life is too great. When you have almost nothing, in whatever area of life, the significance of the small things you can call your own is magnified, greatly. And I suppose Xander, and my story, are amongst those small, comforting things in my life. Sad, maybe, but true.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Damoclean

So, I'm back at base in 'domicile-ville', 48 hours later than originally planned, after the nightmare masquerading as a weekend away, and the sky hasn't fallen in. Yet. My stress levels, and thus my arrhythmia, are still through the roof, though. And I'm going to work in the morning, expected to operate professionally and efficiently in a safety-critical environment. Best of luck with that, if I say so myself.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Perfect

Why couldn't he have been a whiny, irritating little shit? Why did he have to be so cute, so bright, so special, so like his father? Why did he have to be so bloody perfect?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not knowing

Not knowing what's going to happen next is, I'm finding, a thoroughly unpleasant position to be in. The aftermath of the weekend's horror show has left me in limbo, having no idea about my cousin's next move - there are things he could say and do that could have major repercussions on what few positives are left amongst the ruins of my life. If that happens, I might really, this time, be left with nowhere to go.
I apologise for not having replied to recent comments, but I've been rather preoccupied with the situation I've found myself in. I do very much appreciate your feedback and support, though, as always.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The disasters of love

With apologies to Goya.
If it could've gone worse, I struggle to see how. Everyone I've ever loved ends up hating me. I know I'm the common factor, the obvious conclusions can be drawn, it can't be otherwise. So I head back south in the morning, having lost my best friend, to add to the rest of the carnage of the past year and a half. Mea culpa, there's no-one else to blame for my mistakes. Like coming up here, trying to do the right thing, but precipitating a complete meltdown. FML.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Shop till you drop

Well, not quite, but the most time I've spent shopping, or travelling to shop, in many a long day. I've actually spent the princely sum of £75 on a new jumper and shirt, and a much-postponed new backpack - the zip on my current one is worn out, and keeps coming undone at random moments, not recommended when my Kindle and camera are usually amongst its contents. And speaking of much-postponed, I finally got around to having a grievously needed haircut - as usual, given my 40+ year aversion to haircuts, it was the mess atop my head which finally annoyed me enough to persuade me into the barber's chair!
And, for another link, more annoyance - I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but sometimes you come across someone who's so irritating that all you want to do is to put your fist down their throat, and such was my reaction to a guy on the bus when I was en route to where I am now (yes, it is a pub!). He was talking, very loudly, on a mobile phone, to, presumably, a friend of his, who he was trying to persuade (seemingly unsuccessfully, and who could blame the unseen party!) to come out with him this evening. I don't think I've ever heard the words 'bruv' and 'innit' so many times in such a short space of time in my life, and when he started to go on about 'my pills' that 'will get you completely off your tits', I was ready to open the emergency exit and throw him out onto the road. Fortunately, my stop intervened, and I got off of the bus before the temptation to violence became overwhelming!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Horror

Whether it's something to do with being half asleep, I don't know, but it seems that my train journeys to work when I'm on earlies are one of the times when I'm most prone to random and unexpected thoughts and musings. One such happened this morning, and left me, however illogically, shuddering with horror. For no reason I can even begin to explain, a passage from a book I've read more than once, but not for several years, came to mind. The book was The Persian Boy by Mary Renault, the middle book in her Alexander trilogy, a fictionalised treatment of the life and legacy of Alexander the Great, and the passage was the one in which the eponymous boy, Bagoas, is castrated by slave traders prior to being sold as a harem eunuch. The passage isn't in any way explicit, although it does contain a sentence along the lines of 'I remember nothing except the pain and my screams'. While Bagoas, at least the Bagoas of the book - there are some very brief references to a real eunuch of that name in Alexander's household, including the suggestion that he might have been a lover of Alexander, in some of the histories written in the classical period - is a fictional character, and although I'd read the relevant section of the book on a number of occasions without any strong reactions, the idea that such a fate befell countless real boys in the ancient, and not so ancient, past really got under my skin this time. I know I'm judging previous cultures anachronistically, and that's probably a mistake, but I simply can't imagine how anyone could mutilate a boy in that way, then or now. And while, of course, boys are always uppermost in my mind, I feel almost equally horrified by things I've read about female genital mutilation, which certainly is still practised in a number of contemporary cultures, possibly even amongst some groups in this country (and doubtless other 'Western' countries as well). No child, of either gender - in fact, no-one at all - should ever be subjected to that kind of torture, for any reason. There's simply no belief, religious or cultural, that can begin to excuse it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What do they hope to achieve?

K' s been away over the past weekend, visiting a friend in Surrey (but about as far away from 'domicile-ville' as you can be and still be in Surrey, and I was working lates, so I wouldn't have had the chance to meet up with her anyway). Her friend is transgender, biological male but identifying as female, a situation I've got no experience of at all. K and I spoke briefly yesterday, as she was travelling back to Cornwall, and one of the few things that was said was that she'd met her friend's family, who seemed nice. When we spoke at greater length this evening, though, it transpires that her friend's family are totally unsupportive, and insist on always using her (his) given name and exclusively male pronouns. As per the title of this post, what do they think they're going to achieve? Do they think that she's doing this as some kind of act of 'rebellion', and that if they carry on long enough, she'll see 'the error of her ways' and suddenly go back to being 'normal'? This isn't, as far as I'm concerned, any kind of choice, any more than my being a boylover is a choice. It's an expression of the person we know ourselves to be, and no amount of wishing, hoping or inappropriate pressure is ever going to change that knowledge.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A reunion, but maybe a risky one

After a few days when he's been very much on my mind, I rang my cousin yesterday, and after a bit of uncertainty about his availability, I'm going to Manchester on Saturday to see him. I'll be staying over (at a Travelodge) on Saturday night, and travelling back on Sunday. The anticipation at our reunion - I haven't seen him face to face for more than three years - has been tempered somewhat, though, after our second conversation, when I rang to confirm whether I would actually be able to see him, this morning. We were chatting about family stuff - he's been doing some genealogical research of late - when, in response to something I said about one of my other cousins (female), a link which is too convoluted to readily explain here, he used that vile 'p-word'. About me. And he didn't seem to be anything other than 100% serious - even as a joke, it would've been distinctly off-colour in the context of the conversation, but there wasn't a hint of that in what he said. I took it calmly, corrected him, told him I'd certainly admit to being a hebephile, a word he wasn't familiar with and which I had to explain to him, but, particularly after the call ended, I was pretty upset, in the sense of being downhearted and disappointed, about his remark. I think he's got the idea in his head that I've got some kind of designs on his youngest son, who's now 8, although I haven't seen the boy since he was 4, but why, I really don't know - he's got two older sons, now 20 and 18, who I had far more contact with when they were younger, and with whom there was never the remotest hint of any kind of impropriety. All I can do, I guess, is to try to reassure him, but the prospect of my relationship with the person I've loved, and considered to be my best friend, for more than 30 years being fractured by this issue is one that I find it hard to even contemplate. It could be a good weekend, if we can resolve things, but there's the possibility of it being a very traumatic one, as well.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday night on the town

And it is, to paraphrase Wilde, the unspeakable in full pursuit of the equally unspeakable, and at deafening volume, to boot! Still, Ben, the cute barman, is working, so it could be worse - apart from him, the only person I've seen who I've found even vaguely desirable since I left work three hours ago was a cutie I fleetingly saw in 'worktown', walking with his dad. C'est la guerre!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Pawn

I'm not entirely sure of my ground, but, after a couple of phone calls yesterday, it seems to me that my ex doesn't want K to move up to London next year, and is trying to apply some pressure on the girl as a result. I only ended speaking to my ex because I couldn't get hold of K on her mobile while I was on my break at work yesterday evening - it transpired that she'd gone out to a barbecue - and the conversation centred around K. It soon took a disquieting turn - my ex said that K was stressed 'by everything that's going on', and that her schoolwork was suffering as a result. She also said 'whatever K decides to do, someone is going to be disappointed'. The later call, when I eventually spoke to K after I'd finished work, made it obvious that K had heard something very similar from my ex recently - in other words, my ex has made it known to K, more or less subtly, that she would be upset if the girl did move up here. I did my best to make it clear to both of them that I certainly wouldn't be 'disappointed', in the sense the word is being used here, if K ultimately chooses to stay at home. When K first mentioned the possibility of doing her A-Levels somewhere other than the school she currently attends, over a year ago, I immediately advised her to stay where she was - her school is the fifth best performing state school in the whole country, by the latest 'league tables', so she could hardly find anywhere else that she'd get a better education - and, a couple of months ago, when she seemed to be settling into a long-term relationship with her boyfriend, I'd more or less completely discounted the possibility of her wanting to move. It was K herself that revived the subject, when she was staying with me for 'Summer in the City' last month. It certainly wasn't through me putting any kind of pressure on her. I have to admit that I would enjoy having K around, and having something more akin to a proper home again, but what's important here is my daughter's overall welfare, in terms of her home life, personal life and her education. Wherever that objective is best met is where she should be. I've said to K that the subject of her moving won't be raised, by me, at least, until I see her at half term, at the end of next month (I probably won't see her in the interim, unless something unexpected crops up), and that she should try her best to keep her school standards up, because this, her GCSE year, is one of the most important waypoints in her education as a whole. Without wishing to seem as though I'm being bitter, my ex can be an emotionally needy person, but for her to, as it appears to me, manipulate our daughter's emotions because she doesn't want to be on her own is both troubling and, potentially, anger-inducing. Our dealings since the split, certainly those involving K, have been almost completely amicable, but if my ex decides that she can use our daughter like a pawn in some game, I'm afraid that is likely to change very rapidly.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Soundtrack

A song for the last post, and, even more, for Zenith in Nephelokokkygia. Love you forever, darling boy.




Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Loss

Having just read an evocation of lost love, I couldn't help but think of how my life could have been so different. My loss wasn't literal, unlike the writer of the post I was reading, my love is still around, living his life, his way, and that's just as it should be. The outcome is the same, though, I'm just as alone. Gay boy falls in love with straight boy, has his heart broken, what else could have been expected? My darling boy, lost forever. But there in my heart, always.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Education vs indoctrination

One of the issues that fires me up, as regular readers will know, is the role of religion, particularly organised religion, in society's problems. I'm an atheist, and that's a completely personal decision, based on what I consider to be the balance of the available evidence - science can't answer every last question about the world and the wider universe, not yet, at least, but my opinion is that there are internally consistent theories and natural laws, in cosmology, physics, biology, anthropology, psychology, to address all the questions religions concern themselves with. There is, for example, a logical, if still incomplete explanation, in the Big Bang Theory as to how the universe, and, by extension, the Earth came to exist, and there are rationally derived answers from evolutionary biology and psychology as to why most humans feel the need to construct and abide by a moral framework - including religious belief. To me, though, that belief, the experience of 'God' or gods, depending on the particular brand of religion an individual subscribes to, comes from within rather than without - deities are mental constructs, cultural memes, or figments of the imagination, as far as I'm concerned, rather than having any 'real', external existence.
It's the second of those elements, the development and transmission of the memes of religion, that I've been thinking about since I read the post that I linked to yesterday. Any organisation, religious or otherwise, given the unavoidable mortality of its membership, can only persist for more than one generation by recruiting new members. And, in the case of most religions, that recruitment is achieved by 'catching them young'. If a child's parents are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever, there's every chance that any such child will automatically be assumed to be a member of their familial religion, with no element of choice whatsoever. There's much play on the emotional and intellectual immaturity of children when it comes to discussion of issues such as voting rights and the age of consent, so why should it be acceptable to foist a whole belief system onto individuals before they even have the understanding of what religion is, still less whether any given religion is appropriate for them personally?
So, how to avoid such indoctrination? By way, in my opinion, of following the educative approach set out by Arian Foster in the post I found yesterday. Don't assume that your children will want to subscribe to the same beliefs as yourself, to follow your religion, or lack of religion, but help them to find the information that will allow them to make an informed decision of their own, when they're intellectually capable of doing so. Answer their questions, but don't pretend that your answers are set in stone. It's really not that difficult, it only involves saying something like 'some people believe that God did....' this, that or the other, rather than saying 'God did....' whatever. That's the approach I've always taken with my daughter - she knows I'm an atheist, and has done since she was very young, but I've never tried to cajole her into my way of thinking. I honestly have no idea whether my daughter believes in God, or not, and, frankly, it's none of my business either way. I'd be disappointed, given her intelligence, if she subscribed to some unthinkingly fundamentalist creed, but, if that was her choice, sobeit. It wouldn't change the fact that I would love and support her in any way I could.
My hope is, in the longer term, that education and information will eventually eclipse the superstition, as I see it, of religious belief, and that Homo sapiens will be able to progress as one united species to address and resolve the problems of living together on a small and relatively crowded planet. Because, as I've said before, if we can't learn to live together, there's a pretty good chance that we'll all die together.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Teaching children about religion

This is exactly how it should be done, in my opinion, and how I've always tried to be with my daughter. I'd never even heard of Arian Foster five minutes ago, but my immediate reaction is that he's well worthy of respect, for this alone.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I've just seen Xander!

Well, sort of. It was only the most fleeting of fleeting glimpses, from the top deck of a bus, more or less opposite the Royal Brompton Hospital about half an hour ago. He was 12, give or take, blond, athletic-looking - he was carrying a tennis racquet - happy-smiley, in short, simply beautiful. And easily the closest real life analogue I've seen to the picture of my favourite character that lives in my head. Oddly enough, around three hours earlier, my meanderings had taken me through 'Xander-ville', the part of 'Kentish' Greater London where I'd imagined him living in my story. I went past the two pubs that were conflated into the one that cropped up a few times in the plot, and took a few pictures, but a combination of my being on a moving bus, my still not being very familiar with my new camera, and, frankly, my woeful lack of skill as a photographer, mean that they're not good enough to post.
I've also managed to make my daughter rather jealous - I found myself in Borough Market at lunchtime, and indulged myself with a hot duck sandwich. K was due to be on her school lunch break, so I texted her the details, eliciting the almost immediate reply 'I want one'! I can feel a return visit to the market coming on, the next time K comes to see me!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

New kit

The first post written on my new laptop, which I went out to buy this morning after the old one died, seemingly irrevocably, of a hard drive attack last night. Albeit that the old laptop is an inanimate object, I did feel a little bit of sadness at its passing - I've had it for seven or eight years, used it on probably 95% of the days I've owned it, written a substantial majority, maybe 75%, of my blog posts on it, wasted many an hour playing games on it, and even used it for a few serious and worthwhile things. Not exactly an old friend, but a thoroughly useful and valued piece of technology. Still, in with the new, and here's hoping that this new bit of kit will perform as reliably, and for as long, as its predecessor.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another word I loathe

It's well documented here how much I dislike the word 'paedophile', and the way it's misused in contemporary society, but there's another word which I find almost as unpalatable - 'grooming'. A news item I've heard on the radio this morning makes me wonder if there's any limit to the paranoia on this subject - a UK charity is planning to send out 'training packs' to businesses in the 'retail, transportation and hospitality' sectors to help staff 'spot the signs of grooming'. Are we getting to the stage that any man - and it's always men who fall under suspicion, as far as I can see - seen anywhere in public with a 'child' is going to be assumed to have ulterior motives? If I go to lunch with my daughter, am I going to have to carry documentary evidence that she's a blood relation? The outcome is going to be a generation of young people scared of their own shadows and totally incapable of dealing with anyone outside their immediate families, if this sort of thing is carried to its (il)logical conclusion.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Aargh, aargh, AARGH!

I have strong suspicions that my elderly and tired laptop might have died (I'm Kindle-ing at the moment). How can I carry on without Windows XP?! The world's about to end!!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Home - or not, as the case may be

'Don't worry, it'll soon be hometime', one of my colleagues said in response to my sighing audibly towards the end of my shift at work this evening. But, as I said in my reply, that's all very well, except that I haven't got a home, not, at least, one worthy of the name. Just to rub it in all the more, 'domicile-ville' Wetherspoons are currently selling a brand of cider made about three miles from where we lived when we first moved to Cornwall. I don't live there now, and I might never live there again, but Cornwall is, as far as I'm concerned, 'home', in those inverted commas, and probably always will be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Irresistible

That's me, unlikely as it may seem, at least to one 3 or 4 year old girl on the train back last night. I got on at 'worktown', the train being 'standing room only', and not much of that, so I ended up standing by the door. The girl, with her sister and dad, was sitting on the floor opposite me, and as soon as I got on, she couldn't take her eyes off of me, talking to her dad in awed tones about how tall I was. Once the train got under way, she repeatedly tried to attract my attention, hiding her eyes if I did look her way. It was funny, and cute, but, needless to say, all I was wishing was that I could find a boy, preferably one about ten years older, who I had the same entrancing effect on. The boy I saw on a bus much earlier in the day, 12 or 13, blond and very good looking would do nicely, thanks! No such luck, of course.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Repressive, authoritarian, vile

But, I'm afraid, not at all surprising. Toe our bigoted line, or we'll take your livelihood away. The idea of a person being sacked just for attending the wedding of a friend, or even a sibling, to pander to the supposed whims of an imaginary deity disgusts me. Religious freedom. The very phrase is an oxymoron, as far as I'm concerned. Freedom is only to be found by living in the real world, following the principles of rationality, not in being enslaved by baseless, worthless superstition, in my opinion.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sadness

There are various things I don't understand about my psyche, most of them, as regular readers of my blog will realise, centred around my sexuality. There is another considerable issue, though, one which came to the forefront of my mind overnight. It comes over me like mist on a sunny day, sometimes, usually apropos of nothing, or nothing specific. A sort of unfocused, almost vague melancholy, but it can be powerful enough, on occasions, to reduce me to tears, and almost did so twice between my leaving for work yesterday evening and returning this morning, once on the train going to work, and once while I was actually at work, around 1:30 this morning. I've no idea where the sadness came from or why, nothing was different from the day before, nothing had changed, but my life seemed darker, somehow - I really can't explain it any more lucidly than that.
But then I got back this morning, and read a post worthy of genuine sorrow, which made my feelings seem stupid and childish. R.I.P., Daniel.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The (blind) rat race

A microcosm of modern life as I got off the train at 'domicile-ville' station on my way back from work this morning. Before I even made it onto the platform, another alighting passenger, nose to his mobile phone, texting furiously, almost walked straight into me, while once I was actually on the platform, I seemed to be walking against a tide of people single-mindedly heading for their trains, and woe betide anyone who stood in their way, or even caused them to deviate a millimetre from their chosen path. The 'me generation', and no mistake. One of those experiences that makes the idea of being a hermit on an otherwise uninhabited island (preferably a sunny one!) very alluring!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The muse stirs - maybe

The (visual) encounters with boys over the past couple of days have set thought processes in motion, and I've begun writing a new story this afternoon. I'm afraid that, if it does come to fruition, it's going to be in a genre I've visited many times before, but I'll try not to make it too much of the 'same old, same old'. The problem I have, though, is the one encapsulated in the 'all fiction is autobiography' adage - much as I try to dabble in other types of story, I find I can only write convincingly, at least to my own eyes, about subjects I have some understanding of. And those subjects are, sadly, a bit thin on the ground.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Guilt?

More introspection in the last hour or so, partly about yesterday morning's encounter, but more directly catalysed by a different boy this afternoon, a much younger boy. He was with a friend in the garden area outside my window while his little brother had a swimming lesson in the pool across the way. Just for a moment, a 'What if....?' question crossed my mind, about what might happen if I found myself alone with him. I say, often, that I would never become involved with such a young boy - he was 9 or 10, at a guess - but is that claim more to do with helping me to live with myself than reality? Am I guilty just for allowing such thoughts to surface, even if I don't act on them? What would I do in the face of opportunity, of temptation? I wish I knew the answers. I like to believe I possess a sense of morality, a sufficient degree of self-control, but, to paraphrase Orwell, the horror is that I might be wrong.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A technology win!

I've just edited my post of Friday, to include a couple of pictures from the first batch taken on the new camera. In typical 'clueless Dad' fashion, I had to ring K for a bid of 'technical helpline' advice, but now I'm at least vaguely au fait with the process, I hope some more 'illustrated' posts will ensue. No images to enhance this morning's post, though - I did have the camera with me, but had I taken a picture of the boy, it would have been, at the very least, intrusive, and possibly of dubious legality. My mental photograph album has been duly updated, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sex on legs!

For all of my posts referring to the boys I encounter as I make my way through life, on trains, buses, in shops, in the street, it's rare, believe it or not, for me to be actively turned on by what I see. I tend far more towards the wistful sigh at their beauty than anything overtly lascivious, getting my erotic 'kicks' instead from the imaginary characters in stories that I read (and occasionally write). There are situations when the two strands converge, though, and this morning has been one of them. I had to go to the hospital on my way back from work for another of my seemingly endless series of blood tests, and when I made my way back to the bus stop to head back to 'domicile-ville', two boys were already waiting there. One was unremarkable, just average looking, but the other - well, not to put too fine a point on it, he was, from my point of view, absolutely dripping with sex appeal. About 14, fairly tall and well-built, without being in any way overweight, dark haired, clear skin, but for a few freckles, and with very interestingly well-filled shorts, to euphemise a little. It didn't take very long for my imagination to come up with things I'd like to have done with him, given his consent, of course, leading to my hands literally shaking at the thought. I have absolutely no doubt that some would immediately accuse me of lusting after a 'child', although I would call him a youth, but, in this instance, I'll admit to being guilty as charged. Not that I would have even considered doing anything against his will, but as I now head into what I hope will be a good afternoon's sleep before going back to work tonight, if I was to dream about him, I'd be a very happy boy.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B