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Twenty Thousand Gold Stars

A Novel About an Internet Community

By Dusk Peterson

Chapter Four

Password Protected

A few points
Posted at the Christian Boylove Forum by Gold Star on Saturday, April 7, at 1:31 AM
In reply to Trying to understand you folks better by Paul

<<What I find hardest to understand is why, if you care about boys, you allow other boylovers who are hurting boys to continue in their actions. Right now at Crossroads, one of the moderators is boasting about his sexual conquests, while over at BoyChat there is a young boylover who is obviously seriously ill, yet no one is doing anything to help him before he explodes and murders a child. Now, I understand that you're not in the best position to go to the police – and truth to tell, I prefer community-based solutions to preventing crime rather than dragging these matters through the courts. But surely it wouldn't be too much trouble for a few of you to visit these men and stop them from hurting the boys you care about.>>

I don't usually post here, but I promised to do so on behalf of Conscientious Objector. I've just spent a half hour calming him down after he read your post. He was all set to come over here and post his views on judgmentalism, on negative attitudes toward sex, and his very long treatise on the evils that Christianity has perpetrated upon the world, none of which would be in keeping with the peaceful atmosphere that I gather CBF tries to cultivate. Myself, I prefer the rough-and-tumble free expression that Crossroads embodies, but I respect the work that At Peace is doing here, and I'd like to do what I can to help.

Conscientious Objector is particularly offended by the manner in which you chose to phrase your complaint against him. Paul, I'd like you to imagine for a moment that you married the girlfriend you've talked about, that you posted a message after your honeymoon, describing how happy you and your wife were together. Imagine that one of us stated that your post consisted of you "boasting about your sexual conquests." If you can imagine this scene, then I think you'll be able to understand Conscientious Objector's perspective on what you said.

That is the essence of Conscientious Objector's grievance. There are a few other points I'd like to make.

First point:

It's not clear to me what duties you think that we are neglecting. It is true that some of us here disagree with Conscientious Objector's views, and we have done our best over time to persuade him to change his views, just as he has tried to persuade us to leave our misguided ways. Short of turning him over to the police, what do you expect us to do? Yes, I get very concerned sometimes about what's happening with the boys Conscientious Objector meets, but I don't think I can do any more than I already have. I'll say more about that below.

As for True Boylover (I assume that's the BoyChat participant you're referring to), he's a different story altogether. It's clear that he needs special help beyond that which BoyChat is able to provide for most of its participants. Several boylovers have been going to a lot of trouble to try to locate such help for him. Again, I'm not sure where the origin is of your complaint.

Second point:

You suggest (if I may strip your words to their heart) that, if we believe our friends have committed a crime, we should out them to the authorities. I think that perhaps, with your background, you will be better able to understand my next question than most people: Do you really think that those of us who are celibate are in the proper moral position to cast judgment on those of us who are sexually active?

You've said that, at one time in your life, you considered engaging in gay sex. Do you really feel that you have a moral duty to call the police and tell them that a friend of yours, who made a different decision than you did about whether to make love to a man, is breaking a sodomy law?

And where do you draw the line? If it's all right to out someone who has broken civil law, should you also out someone who has broken church law? Or should you only out people who, in your personal judgment, are hurting their sexual partners? We had a boylover at BoyChat a few years back who developed moral qualms and began forwarding to the FBI every e-mail he received from boylovers who were attracted to boys eight years old or younger. Why eight? Because his own AOA was nine years and up, and in his personal judgment, having sex with kids in that age range was not harmful.

(This is something I have a hard time explaining to non-peds who depend on their gut reaction to determine which sexual acts are morally reprehensible. If I were to compose sexual laws based on what is personally distasteful to me, heterosexuality would be outlawed tomorrow.)

Third point:

You talk blithely about helping boys by calling in the police, and you imply that the only reason we haven't done so is to save our own skin. Forgive me, but it's clear to me that you've never actually witnessed what takes place when the police get involved.

Suppose that you had a friend who was taking illegal drugs and was also persuading his more innocent girlfriend to take drugs. Having failed to persuade him to stop, you concluded that the only way to protect your friend and the girl was to call the cops. Here's what would follow.

Your friend would be arrested and charged, not only with simple drug possession, but also with drug dealing, because his girlfriend had paid him for the drugs that he bought on her behalf. (You'd be amazed at how many charges can be placed against an arrested boylover; I can name a dozen offenses off the top of my head.) Then the police would have to decide whether to arrest the girl as well. (Keep in mind that an age of consent law means that it's illegal for a boy to have sex before a certain age. He has broken the law too.) Even if the girl isn't arrested, she will be grilled at length by police officers who are eager to gather as much evidence as possible against your friend. If the girl loves your friend, this means that they will try to break her of her loyalty by every means possible. Unless you've seen what happens when the police get their hands on a reluctant witness, you won't believe it.

So your friend is sent off to jail, to spend several years among hardened criminals. (At least he won't confront the cheery prospect faced by many boylovers these days, of being castrated.) He is then placed – if he goes to a good prison – in a drug rehabilitation program designed to convince him that he's the scum of the earth for ever contemplating taking drugs. If he continues to believe that drug use is not immoral . . . Well, I'll skip the painful details.

The end result of it all is that your friend emerges from the prison with his life in ruins. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a convicted criminal to get a job? Meanwhile, the girl you sought to protect will be utterly miserable at what her evidence did to the man she loved. It's not unknown, in such cases, for the convicted man and the victim to get back together again, simply because they've become convinced that the rest of the world is their persecutor. (I'm sure you've heard of cases of child abuse victims seeking out their abusers.)

So tell me: What part of this is supposed to help your friend and his girlfriend?

Fourth point:

You talk equally blithely of "community-based solutions." I'd very much like to know about those community-based solutions; I sure as hell haven't heard of them.

Since this is a Christian board, let me give you an example of why the community is hardly ever involved in these matters. I don't know which part of the world you went to college in, but let's pretend that it was in California, where the age of consent is eighteen. Suppose that, in a moment of weakness, you had taken to bed one night that seventeen-year-old classmate with whom you fell in love. Suppose that you had gone the next day to the college chaplain and told him what you had done. Suppose that you had asked his help in seeking therapy and in making as much reparation as you could to the young man and his family for what you had done.

Do you know where you would have been the next day? Behind bars, because California has a mandatory reporting law that does not exempt clergy.

So much for community-based solutions.

Fifth point:

You suggest that we should go visit Conscientious Objector and True Boylover in real life. Paul, even assuming that I have the airfare with which to do so, has it occurred to you that I might not know who these two gentlemen really are and where they live? Boylovers are not noted for their eagerness to reveal private information about themselves, and it ought not to take you much imagination to figure out why.

Sixth point:

Well, then, you will say, why don't I just tell everyone who I am and where I live, and then wait for other boylovers to come visit me? You speak in another post about the liberation you experienced by telling others of your sexual feelings, and how you would encourage everyone to here to undergo "spiritual growth" by revealing the secret of their ordeals to the world.

Paul, I don't know how to put this politely, so I'll be blunt: Being gay (or ex-gay if you prefer) is not the same thing as being a boylover. Yes, we are both members of sexual minorities that have been demonized. Every day, tragically, gays are attacked or murdered; every day gay youth kill themselves. Thankfully, a goodly number of people – including some conservatives such as yourself – are beginning to speak out against hatred and violence directed toward gays.

Who is speaking out against hatred and violence directed toward boylovers? I don't see any universities forming commissions to explore ways to prevent depression and suicide among teenage boylovers. I don't see any national leaders demanding that society find a way to combat the rising wave of hate crimes against boylovers. I don't see any churches passing resolutions saying that, although they believe adult-child sex to be a sin, it is just as grave a sin to hate someone merely because he is attracted to children.

Actually, I think that comparisons are odious; I hate the More Miserable Victim Than Thou game. It doesn't matter whether you gay people or we boylovers suffer more. Rather than make such calculations, I'd rather that we work together to free the world from all sorts of bigotry, large and small.

What worries me is that you will convince some inexperienced boylover on this board that, if he comes out, the worst he has to face is what you faced: having some of the people at his church refuse to sit next to him. I only wish that were the case.

I know a guy who got beaten bloody after he told his cousin that he was a boylover. When he had returned from the emergency room, the boylover naively called the police to report the crime. The police responded by ransacking his house and questioning the neighbors for clues that he had abused children. Once the police had departed (they found no evidence that he had committed a crime, for the simple reason that he hadn't), the boylover called his state's human rights department for information on what his rights were if he were beaten again (which seemed a likely scenario, as everyone in his neighborhood now knew that he was a boylover). The moment he said the word "pedophile," the human rights department informed him that his conversation was being recorded and that his words would be reported to the police. So he hung up, packed up his belongings, and moved from his neighborhood. He lives in another part of the country now, under a different name.

Or take Brick, who adhered to your advice to "share your secret with others."

Brick is one of the few boylovers on these boards whose real name is publicly known. He came out two years ago for selfless reasons, because Free Spirits needed a committee member who was out in order to sign some legal documents. Brick volunteered for this perilous task.

Last year, when Brick and his fiancée were on a trip to visit her parents, they crossed the U.S.-Canadian border. Brick was stopped at the border, handcuffed, told that he had no rights under international law, and taken to a dark, windowless room where he was interrogated for twelve hours straight. He'd probably still be there if his fiancée's lawyer hadn't demanded his release.

Brick's offense? He is Webmaster of BoyChat, so obviously he must also be a child pornographer, a child molester, and a child murderer.

Paul, I appreciate your willingness to take the time to talk with boylovers, but before you write any more posts here about the "joys of letting others know of your struggles," I think you need to do your homework and listen to a few of the stories here. You could start with the story of the boylover who was firebombed.

Gold Star
Webmaster
Crossroads

* * *

"Did you think I was Interpol?" asked the man he had known as Gold Star as they clattered their way down the iron steps from Johnnie's apartment building and turned left onto the sidewalk.

Reaction had arrived; Johnnie felt more than a little chagrin as he said, "It was because you called me Johnnie. Nobody calls me that in real life except my parents and my young friends."

"Would you prefer that I call you John?"

"No, Johnnie is fine. You can even call me White Rose if you like."

Delius threw back his head and laughed. Johnnie was dimly aware that, by speaking his nickname in a public place, he was breaking all the security rules he had set for himself long ago. But as they walked under the afternoon sun on this spring day, it hardly seemed to matter.

The sidewalks were crowded with the usual daytime traffic: families carrying shopping home, old men and women hunting through the trash cans for food, vendors and drug dealers selling their wares, and young men eyeing young women while lounging in front of liquor stores with no windows. Johnnie's street was at the far end of the theater district, and was populated by a mixture of black and Hispanic families and struggling white artists. The neighborhood had terrified Johnnie from the moment he moved in. Only the necessity of finding a cheap apartment – he passed on whatever earnings he could to his low-income parents – had made him brave the move from a small town where crime was rare at night to a city block where lack of crime was rare during the day. He had always planned to move to a better neighborhood once he received his next raise.

Yet now, as he watched Delius stride down the street with head held high – pausing only to exchange smiles with a fat woman selling scarves in booming Spanish, to restore a dropped ball to a young girl with mahogany skin, and to drop a dollar coin in a beggar's hat with a barely perceptible flick of the hand – Johnnie was suddenly seized with the irresistible conviction that this was the place where he was meant to live. Where else, after all, should a boylover live except among the other outcasts of society?

"I never knew where you got your nick," said Delius, stooping to pull back a terrier, leashed to a parking sign, that was venturing too close to the cars speeding along the road.

"My nickname has gotten me into trouble in the past," said Johnnie. "Conscientious Objector was suspicious of me for the first month after I arrived on the boards. He was convinced that my nickname was a Freudian slip, and that I was really a female CA."

Delius turned his smile toward Johnnie. When lit up, his face was as formidably bright as the sun, and now that they were out of the shadows of the apartment building, Johnnie could see that Delius's hair had glints of gold in it. He found himself wondering what Gold Star had looked like as a child.

"That sounds like typical C.O.," Delius replied. "What's the real reason for the nick?"

"It comes from a movie that impressed me when I was a child. There was a knight in it whose task was to give a white rose to the woman who was most important in his life, as a sign of his undying love. Since he was in love with several beautiful women, he had a hard time choosing between them. At the end of the movie, he gave the white rose to his grandmother, because he'd realized that she was the most important woman in his life. The movie captured my heart the first time I saw it. For weeks afterwards, I daydreamed of giving a white rose to the girl who meant the most to me."

"I wish I'd seen the film; I like the bit about the grandmother. —There it is."

Delius dodged a hopscotch game that was engrossing the attention of several girls on the sidewalk, and pointed toward a building at the corner that Johnnie had not noticed before. Like many of the buildings on this block, it was half in ruins; indeed, the front door seemed to be boarded up. The building's only elegant touch were the bay windows jutting out from the second and third stories, dating from a time before this part of the city had been abandoned to poverty.

"I still can't believe that you live only a block from me," said Johnnie. "It's just too incredible a coincidence."

Delius's mouth twitched as he looked over at Johnnie. "Coincidence?"

Johnnie was silent a moment as they passed a group of teenagers making a valiant attempt to hold a soccer game between the parked cars. Then he said, "You knew where I lived."

"There's only one Art Deco theater in this city," Delius pointed out, "so when you said that you lived in my city and that you could see an Art Deco marquee from your window, I came here to look. I figured that you lived in the building where you turned out to be, or else in the building next to it. But of course I couldn't go around knocking on doors and asking people whether they were White Rose, much less thrust myself on you uninvited."

"So you moved here for my sake?" Johnnie said incredulously as they squeezed their way through a gap in the passing cars.

"Well, I was looking for a new place to stay in any case, and when I saw the 'For Rent' sign I figured it was worth giving the place a look. Mind you, it did occur to me that if I ever came out to a BL in this city, it would be handy to have him living five minutes from me."

He flashed a quick grin at Johnnie, then directed his attention toward the man-high iron gate they were approaching, which blocked the entrance to an alley. Johnnie, turning around in time to see a woman and boy disappearing down the subway escalator across the street, felt his skin suddenly rough with goosebumps as he realized why Delius looked vaguely familiar.

"Do you arrive home at about nine p.m.?" he asked as they neared the padlocked gate.

"More or less. I attend a Web design class Monday through Thursday evenings at the public library. When I get home, I usually take a shower and eat lunch before going on the boards."

"Lunch?"

Delius grinned again. "I'm a night owl. That's what lets me give the world the impression that I live on the West Coast."

He opened the gate – its lock was shattered – and led Johnnie down the narrow gap between the buildings. The alley was filled with trash and urine and broken glass. Johnnie stepped carefully to avoid the decaying remains of a homeless cat.

"The alley is an added bonus to the accommodations," Delius explained. "It fulfills my lifelong ambition to lurk in dark alleyways."

"Do you invite many other BLs to come lurk with you?" Johnnie asked. The alley had widened; they were now at a point where Johnnie could see the gate at the end of the alley, and behind it the narrow service road and backyards of the houses on the next block, their lawns cluttered with hanging laundry and half-stripped machinery.

"Brick has a standing invitation to visit here, but his last attempt to enter the U.S. went awry." Delius steered Johnnie around the fallen drainpipe he had been about to trip over and gestured him toward a rusty fire escape running the length of his building.

"But what other BLs have you met in real life?" Johnnie persisted.

Delius gave his bright smile then. "Only you. Be gentle with me; I'm a virgin." He proceeded to race his way up the stairs, taking two steps at a time.

By the time that Johnnie reached him, he was struggling with three door locks. The door looked much like a window that had been cut open to the ground – which, in fact, it undoubtedly was. Unbolting the final lock, Delius said, "My landlord must be bribing the fire code inspectors to get away with a place like this, but he doesn't pry into his tenants' life, which is what is most important to me. Come enter my abode, said the spider to the fly."

So saying, he swung the door open and ushered Johnnie inside.

As he stepped inside, Johnnie had the momentary impression that he had just returned to the alley. He found himself standing in a kitchen that was draped with every object imaginable: a sweatsuit lounged upon the iron radiator; a pair of athletic shoes on the floor cozied up to a pile of dirty socks; a line of poster holders stood stiffly against an unplugged sound system, which looked a little bewildered, as though not sure what was expected of it; a backpack drooped atop a cracked wooden table strewn with computer magazines; a sink, proudly disdaining common tasks such as washing, cradled an armful of books; and a stack of used soda cans seemed determined to climb up the side of a computer. The computer was the only object that appeared certain of what work it was expected to undertake. Its screen was displaying a digital wallpaper showing a dark moonscape with a blue triangle logo upon the moon rocks, under a starless sky.

The whole room gave the impression of consisting of one raucous party of material objects, only recently disturbed. Even the cockroaches paused no more than a moment to inspect the new arrivals before they continued their climb up the soda can peak.

Delius chased them away with a shirt that looked as though it had been waiting to be cleaned for two or three months. "Sorry about the mess," he said. "I don't get many visitors, so I never try to disguise my abysmal housekeeping habits."

Taking a closer look at the room, Johnnie said nothing, for he was beginning to see signs that the neglect in this room was selective. The walls appeared to be freshly painted – not by the inspector-bribing landlord, presumably – and new light fixtures had been installed to supplement the weak light emerging from the alleyside window. If there was any uncertainty as to the source of the recent home repairs, none could be found as to the source of the neatness around the computer area. With the sole exception of the cans – which held almost a jaunty appearance, as though they were examples of modern art – the computer desk was immaculately kept. It was the only piece of new furniture in the place, and was topped not only with a hard drive, keyboard, and monitor, but also with a printer, scanner, combined answering machine and fax, speakers, and CD burner. Johnnie felt as though he had just interrupted Mission Control during a rocket launch.

Delius had opened the refrigerator, whose door was festooned with postcards of Renaissance Cupids and prints of old-fashioned boys playing with hoops. "Not much here," he announced. "I just finished breakfast. Shall I groom you with offerings of leftover junk food?"

"Not yet, thanks," Johnnie said. "Am I really the first boylover you've had visit you?"

"At the end of the day I give you a plaque of honor," replied Delius, shutting the refrigerator door decisively. "What about you? Have you met many boylovers in real life before?"

"Never," said Johnnie. "I only came onto BoyChat three months ago, remember." He hesitated, then added, "I did meet somebody in this city through the Internet—"

"Paul?" Seeing Johnnie's startled expression, Delius smiled. "Paul sent me an e-mail soon after he arrived on the boards, introducing himself, and giving me his address and phone number in case I should ever need 'support.' I didn't bite at the lure. I take it that you did?"

"Sort of," said Johnnie uneasily. "He doesn't know anything about me except my first name."

"If I were you, I'd be keeping my eye out for a plainclothesman trailing me home from these meetings. I trust you realize that Paul may be taping your conversations?"

"Look, he's not like that," said Johnnie weakly, like a lawyer called upon to defend an innocent man to a hostile jury.

"You know him best," said Delius, dismissing the matter with a wave of the hand, as he cleared a chair of its stack of computer paper. "Does anyone else know you're a boylover?"

"No, no one. I've been thinking of telling my parents."

"Well," said Delius, turning his back to place the paper next to dishes in a cupboard, "personally, I can't recommend the practice of coming out to one's family."

Johnnie waited for a moment for Delius to continue, then realized why he would not be doing so. Feeling his face grow warm with embarrassment, Johnnie turned his gaze away and walked over to stand at a doorway opposite the one he had entered through. It led to what must be the living room, though Delius seemed to be using it as a storage space for empty crates and spare computer equipment. The room was windowless except for a curtained alcove to the left. At the far end of the room was a door which must lead to the inner hallway of the building, but which was blocked by a sagging couch that looked as though it had been found on the curbside, awaiting trash removal.

"Do you want a tour?" asked Delius in his ear. "It won't take long."

Johnnie obediently followed him through the doorway at the far end of the kitchen, which turned out to lead to a hallway running parallel to the kitchen's far wall. The light was on in the hallway, and looking at the place where the light switch had once been, Johnnie realized that the hallway light was always on. The only other light came from a doorway further down the corridor.

Just opposite the kitchen entranceway was another doorway, with its door shut. Delius pushed this open, and for a moment Johnnie could see nothing. Then his eyes began to adjust to the darkness.

The room was black. This was not just because the floor-length curtains at the far end of the room appeared to beat back all light attempting to make its way through the windows, but also because the walls were painted black. Only with great difficulty could Johnnie see a battered dresser piled with disordered clothes, beside which lay a cot. No other furniture dwelled in the room except for a chair and typing desk. Atop the desk was a laptop, and it was turned so that Johnnie could see the e-mail he had sent Delius.

He was still trying to analyze the disorientation he felt when Delius said, "It's odd, isn't it? Like looking at a picture you've stared at for weeks, then seeing the picture suddenly come alive."

Johnnie nodded, tearing his gaze away from the e-mail to stare again at the walls. "I guess you like dark colors," he said.

Delius shrugged. "That was the sort of mood I was in when I moved here. Come see the other room; it's brighter."

The next room down the hallway was a bathroom; Johnnie caught only a brief glimpse of the rust-blackened sink and the window with glass so heavily frosted that little light penetrated into the room. Then he and Delius had reached the end of the hallway and were stepping through a door into lightness and warmth.

This room was larger than Delius's bedroom. Light flooded in through a series of streetside windows. Set into the midst of the windows was a bay window with a cushioned ledge broad enough to sit on. Going up to the window, Johnnie could glimpse through it the movie theater at the end of the street. Aside from the cushions, no decorations adorned the windows; they were uncurtained and were glittering with the early afternoon light.

The light fell upon a room lined with bookcases. From floor to ceiling they rose, bricks and worn planks. Some of the bricks looked as though they had only recently been transferred from a building site. They stood like sentinels in the room, but only two of the bookcases were filled. The books there looked shiny and new except for a few second-hand volumes, and even these, Johnnie discovered as he opened one of them and found a sales receipt stuck between pages, seemed to have been recently purchased.

He took a closer look at the text.

". . . and, look here! I really think you had better come and stop with me for a little time. It's very plain and rough, you know – not like Toad's house at all – but you haven't seen that yet; still, I can make you comfortable. And I'll teach you to row, and to swim, and you'll soon be as handy on the water as any of us."

The Mole was so touched by his kind manner of speaking that he could find no voice to answer him; and he had to brush away a tear or two with the back of his paw. But the Rat kindly looked in another direction, and presently the Mole's spirits revived again, and he was even able to give some straight back-talk to a couple of moorhens who were sniggering to each other about his bedraggled appearance. . . .

This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated Mole . . .

Startled, Johnnie looked over his shoulder. Delius was on his knees, unpacking a pile of used books from the two paper bags in which they were stored. Another sales receipt fluttered out of one of the bags and fell onto the floor.

"What do you mean?" asked Johnnie.

"You didn't go straight for the boylove books."

"Oh." Johnnie put the book back onto the shelf and looked vaguely around. "I hadn't thought of that. Do you have books on boylove, then?"

Delius pointed without looking up from the book he was carefully dusting. "Bottom shelf. Most of them have discreet titles."

Johnnie crouched down to the bottom of the second bookcase and ran his eye over the volumes there: Pederasty and Pedagogy in Ancient Greece. Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature. Ganymede in the Renaissance. Love in Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English "Uranian" Poets from 1889 to 1930 . . . There were a dozen more titles, but Johnnie reached for the scuffed book on Uranian poets.

This one, Johnnie learned by checking the back endpaper, was a library castoff; it had been discarded from the city university library the previous February. Johnnie skimmed the index for the words "Priest and the Acolyte." Then, as he began to trace the page in question, he said, "Most of your books seem to be on literature or art."

Delius didn't reply. When Johnnie looked up, he saw that Delius was sitting in the windowseat, book in hand, staring out the window. The silence lengthened; Johnnie stood up and joined him.

A family was emerging from the subway: a father, a mother, and a boy of about six or seven. The boy was holding his mother's hand while his other hand held a soft ice cream cone that was dripping chocolate onto his face. He was tugging at his mother, evidently desiring to run ahead, but she was absorbed in conversation with the man and took no notice. The three turned right, then disappeared around the corner.

Delius's gaze finally broke from the street scene. He looked over at Johnnie and smiled. "Sorry," he said. "I got distracted. That's the main problem with your street: too many pretty boys walking by."

"Problem?" Johnnie asked, letting his own gaze linger upon a sixteen-year-old passing by. It was the first time he had ever allowed himself to do this when another person was watching him, and he felt oddly exposed, like a virgin bride undressing in the presence of her new husband.

"It's like living next to a candy store when you're on a diet," Delius replied. "As for the books . . . Yeah, I double-majored in comparative literature and art history. I was planning to teach art in elementary school before I headed off on another path."

"You like the work you're doing better now, then?" Johnnie asked, sneaking a look at the books being unpacked. They were all on art history, he saw.

After a moment, Delius said, "Web design certainly pays better. Sorry, I haven't gotten any chairs in here yet. Would you like the windowseat?" He stood up, and as he did so, Johnnie caught a glimpse of the book he was holding: Plato's Symposium.

"I can imagine that it must be a formidable challenge finding furniture enough to fill this place," said Johnnie, declining the seat. "This room alone is bigger than my efficiency."

"It's too big a place for me, but I couldn't resist the lure of a two-bedroom." Delius moved over to one of the bookcases and slid the slim volume onto it. "Brick and I had discussed the possibility of him moving in here. His fiancée's in Africa till next summer, doing volunteer work for her denomination, and so he's sort of at loose ends till then. He thought it would be fun to spend half a year with another boylover. He changed his mind, though, after I told him I was on the registry. He didn't much relish the idea of opening his apartment door to find an angry parent perched on the doorstep, demanding to know whether he was the child molester."

A group of children ran by on the street below, calling to each other and laughing as they dodged their elders. There was a momentary lull in the sound of passing car wheels; Johnnie thought he could hear faintly the sound of the street vendor who always stood at his corner.

Johnnie said in a taut voice, "You molested someone?"

* * *

Delius gave a small shrug with one shoulder, as though he were casting off a burden too light to require two shoulders. His gaze was upon the books that he was straightening on the shelves. He pointed with one hand, saying, "File cabinet, top drawer. There's a folder near the front marked 'Prison Records.'"

Turning, Johnnie noticed for the first time a corner of the room that was bare of bookcases. Below a neatly hung art poster was a thigh-high file cabinet whose bottom door was rusted through. A stack of binders was perched upon the cabinet, perilously close to falling on the floor. Johnnie adjusted the stack before opening the top drawer of the cabinet.

The drawer contained two dozen file folders, most of them marked with names of art museums. The folder for which he was searching was easy to find; in contrast to the others, its edges were nibbled away, and it was grimy with dirt that came off onto Johnnie's hands as he pulled the folder out. He took a moment to wipe the folder clean with his handkerchief before he opened it.

After a minute spent scanning the first page, he looked up. Delius had disappeared from the room.

Johnnie found him sitting in the bedroom, his chair positioned so that almost nothing but his back could be seen from the door. The picture of the moonscape with a blue logo was on the screen of the laptop, but as Johnnie came to a standstill in the doorway, it disappeared in place of a white background with little boxes of colors to the side. Delius reached toward his mouse.

Johnnie said, "Five years for fondling a boy?"

"I got a light sentence," replied Delius without turning. "It was abuse of authority on top of statutory rape. I was his babysitter – at least, that's how his parents looked upon it. From my perspective, all those trips to the zoo were dates."

"But you did fondle him?" Johnnie was pressed with the feeling that it was of world-shaking importance to establish this fact.

"I kissed him." Delius's gaze remained upon the screen. "Repeatedly, over the space of two hours. Lips, cheeks, neck, hair. He kissed me back, of course. He was especially fond of my earlobes."

His voice was flat, like a soda that has lost its fizz. Johnnie could see his hand resting atop the mouse, the silver mark on his skin turned dark under the glow of the screen. His hand moved, using the mouse to guide the computer's arrow up to a small icon near the top of the page. A triangle suddenly appeared on the screen. Moving the arrow over to another part of the screen, Delius rotated the triangle until it was upside down.

"He was very happy and excited," he said as the arrow moved toward the top of the screen again. "He ran home and wrote in his diary – which his mother was secretly reading – about how this was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him." Delius paused. A star had appeared on the screen beside the triangle. As Johnnie watched, Delius clicked on a device that made the star grow larger.

Delius said, "That was the killer for me, as it turned out. If Teddy had written about how miserable he was, then I think his parents would have contented themselves with demanding that I enter into therapy. As it was, I'd not only molested their son, but I'd brainwashed him into thinking he wasn't molested. Next thing I knew, the police were at my doorway at four a.m., handcuffs in hand."

Johnnie glanced at the page in front of him and said hesitantly, "It says 'fondling' here. Is kissing someone fondling?"

"'Lewd or lascivious act' is the actual wording of the law. That means, if Teddy got a hard-on from kissing me, I was a felon. Anyway, I wasn't in the sort of position where I wanted to argue with the police over the distinction between necking and petting." Delius was using the color palettes now to turn the star gold. "All I could think was that if I simply pled guilty to whatever charges they placed against me, I'd save Teddy from further questioning. I was too late for that, unfortunately."

He nudged the star onto the triangle. The two fit together snugly. Apparently satisfied, Delius clicked the mouse, and the triangle disappeared. Another click of the mouse saved the file.

"I saw Teddy at the sentencing," Delius said. "He was as pale as a drowned corpse, and he wouldn't look in my direction. Every time he was asked a question, he'd turn his head toward his parents, as though hoping that they'd supply the answer. It made a formidable image for the prosecuting attorney to use: abused boy worn down by the savage force of the pedophile looming over him. The attorney even brought out a picture of a child cowering within the embraces of a man, supposedly as part of the scientific evidence."

Still groping his way toward some sort of illumination, Johnnie said, "So you don't think you deserved the sentence?"

Delius's hand stopped, on the point of clicking the mouse. For a moment he was still, gazing upon the starless landscape that he had switched to. Then he half turned in the chair so that Johnnie could see his face, barely outlined by the light from the hallway.

"I was only twenty, Johnnie," he said in a voice very different from the flat one he had used before. "That's what you have to understand. I had just turned twenty, and I was a sophomore in college, gobbling down the classics and dreaming of a world where men and boys could love each other freely. I did have sense enough to see that it might not be the wisest move for a man to have sex between the thighs of a modern American boy, but I'd worked up this idealistic image – more taken from the modern world than classical times, alas – of Teddy and me being romantic partners, holding hands, snuggling close to each other, perhaps exchanging one or two chaste kisses. I wanted to be Socrates the chaste philosopher, lying beside my beloved and giving him my love without ever approaching the carnal aspects of it. The trouble was, I didn't know nearly as much as Socrates did about how powerful the demands are of the god Eros. The chaste kissing got out of hand; the beloved got what he wanted."

Delius looked down at the floor. Dropping his voice further, he said, "I had the idea that, since we were partners, I should give Teddy whatever he wanted. I didn't know nearly as much about Greek boylove as I thought I did. I didn't understand then about mentoring, and how the man has to play the guiding role in deciding what is best for the boy, just as a parent or teacher would. And it didn't occur to me what matters would be like on Teddy's side. If the police hadn't come and we'd carried out our secret affair, he'd have been drawn more and more away from his family and friends, because he would have had to hide all this from them. Or if he decided that he couldn't take that sort of separation, he would have been left with the horrible task of telling me that he wanted our affair to stop. It's hard enough when adults carry out illicit affairs. Anyone who would do that to an eight-year-old boy—"

He stopped. Faintly through the curtained window came the continued sound of cars passing, their wheels whirring like wind. After a time, Delius lifted his gaze until it was level with Johnnie's. He said, "I was the adult; he was the child, following my lead. Yeah, I deserved every minute of those five years. I only wish that the next cell could have been occupied by the people who made Teddy miserable for enjoying our kissing."

Delius's face held an expression that made Johnnie shrink away from eye contact, as though he were gazing upon a wound too raw to be touched. Johnnie dipped his eyes quickly and spent another minute scrutinizing the contents of the file folder. When he had heard Delius shift in his seat, Johnnie looked up and said, "You didn't get parole."

"No, the head of the prison's sex offender program recommended against it. He took a dislike to me from the start, because I refused to say that it was one hundred percent my fault that Teddy had ended up as hurt as he was. That didn't make me popular with the other prisoners either."

Delius clicked a button, and the gold star appeared on the screen, standing beside the blue triangle logo that was lying oblong on the floor. Delius spent a moment measuring the two objects next to each other, then switched back to the image editor.

Johnnie asked hesitantly, "Was it bad in prison?"

The star appeared on the white background. Delius clicked an icon, and the star began to stretch out, as though it were lying on the ground. Delius said, returning to his flat voice, "'Baby rapers' are lowest of the low in the prison hierarchy; I was treated accordingly. What kept me going was my hope of improving my life after I left prison. I was determined that my time in prison should count for something, not be a wasted five years."

The screen switched back to the landscape. Delius brought up the gold star, now lying flat like the blue logo, examined the screen for a moment, then switched back the image editor and began making adjustments. "One good thing about prison, it gives you time to think. I decided that the most important thing to do when I got out would be to find people like myself. That was part of my problem during my time with Teddy, you see. I didn't have anyone to talk to, who might have told me what sort of trouble I was heading toward. One of the other prisoners told me about NAMBLA, so as soon as I got out I spent six months tracking down the mailing information for NAMBLA, then took out a post office box under a false name and signed up for NAMBLA's membership."

"Were their meetings helpful?" Johnnie asked.

Delius shook his head as he began to move the gold star into a different position before saving it. "I never had the courage to attend any of their meetings. The closest one is three hours' drive from here in any case. I only subscribed to their newsletter, and after a while I began to lose interest. So many of the articles were about how to lobby to change laws and what the world would be like when boylove was legal again. That really wasn't the center of my life. I was most interested in finding a way to live my life now, to keep from kissing any more boys and to put my orientation to good use." He clicked the mouse. The star appeared on the screen, partly off-center from the triangle. Delius gave a sound of disgust and switched back to the image editor.

He continued, "After a couple of years, I just didn't bother to renew my NAMBLA membership. I drifted around from job to job for the next three years or so, growing progressively more unhappy because I couldn't talk to anyone about being a boylover. I even reached the point where I was considering having a relationship with a boy again, just so that I could have someone to talk to. Then I earned enough money to buy a computer and was able to get Internet access. My first day online, I went straight to the pedophilia section of one of the big Web directories. That's how I found the Free Spirits home page." He clicked on the mouse. The gold star appeared on the moonscape again; this time it was perfectly nestled within the outline of the blue triangle.

Delius spent a moment assessing the results. Satisfied, he stood up and walked toward the door. Johnnie, closing the folder, stepped back to let him through, then followed Delius into the kitchen. Delius paused at the refrigerator, pulled out two cans of cola, looked enquiringly at Johnnie, and tossed him one of the cans, keeping the other for himself.

He said, "It was like coming home. All those guys, going through the same things I was, posting tales about their day-to-day lives as boylovers."

"It was the same for me," said Johnnie, pausing from sipping at the cola. "I'd known, of course, that there must be others like me out there, but I'd always thought the other men were violent rapists and kidnappers, because that's all that the papers talked about. It just blew me away to discover so many pedophiles out there like myself, who didn't want to harm boys."

Delius nodded. "I got fired from the job I had at that time because I spent the first forty-eight hours at BoyChat glued to the screen, reading all the posts in the main index and the archives. The loss of the job didn't matter, as it turned out. A few of my earliest posts were about how I was dissatisfied with the design of some of the message boards sponsored by Free Spirits. Pretty soon I was offering concrete suggestions on how they could be altered. I guess the Free Spirits Committee got fed up with having to respond to my posts, because they finally said, "Fine. Then you do it." And the next thing I knew I was on the Free Spirits Committee as their Web designer. Then I started doing a bit of Web work for a company I'd temped for in the past, and the next thing I knew I was a professional." Delius put his cola aside, unopened. "Brick thinks that Free Spirits should seek certification as a computer training college. So many of its committee members end up becoming experts in computer skills."

"You never got your teacher's certificate," Johnnie said suddenly.

"As a convicted sex offender? Not a likely scenario. I didn't even bother to go back to college, because I didn't want to have to go through the hassle of explaining to the dean why the college should take me back."

"I was just thinking . . . You'd be able to meet more boys if you were a teacher. Have you had many young friends?"

Delius went over to stand by the table where Johnnie had placed the folder. He looked down at it, touching the grime on the folder. After a minute he said, "One. Teddy."

Johnnie found he couldn't speak. He hastily lowered the cola onto the counter next to a pile of opened bills. Looking up, Delius said, "That was another decision I made in prison. I would have liked to have done some more child care after I got out, and to do it properly this time. But no parent is going to want a sex offender babysitting their child, and if a parent had found out about me accidentally – by reading my name in the sex offender registry, for example – there would have been a scene, and the boy would have been the one to suffer most. So my conscience told me, 'Well, Gold Star, you blew your chance. Unless the laws change, you'll have to find other ways to occupy your mind.' So I've stayed away from boys ever since."

"Gods!" The word came out of Johnnie as a whisper, more like a prayer than at any other time in his life.

Delius's lips curved upward then. He said lightly, "They can't stop me from smiling at boys I pass in the street. When one of them smiles back at me, it makes my whole day."

Johnnie couldn't think of anything to say. He turned his attention to the soda can, gulping down the tingly liquid and fingering the smooth metal. Delius picked up the file folder and said, "You finished with this? I don't like leaving this lying around. Sometimes I have to invite someone in as I sign for a package, and occasionally the guy below me will forget his key and ask to be let in through my place."

Johnnie thought about this as he followed Delius back into the bright room with the books. "Are those the 'few visitors' you receive?"

Delius knelt down to open the file cabinet, saying, "That's quick of you. Yeah, my social life with adults is nothing to write home about either. That's why I've been taking this Web design class. I know more than the instructor does, but it gets me together with other people in real life who share my interests. Trouble is, I don't feel I can invite anyone over to this place, lest they notice something that screams boylove to them." He flicked his hand toward the poster above the file cabinet.

Johnnie stepped forward to take a closer look. The poster depicted a two-handled silver goblet with a relief on both sides. Swallowing, he moved yet closer to read the label.

The British Museum, London
The Warren Cup
Asia Minor 30 B.C.-20 A.D.
Side A: Man and youth coupling while boy peeks
Side B: Youth and boy coupling

He turned and tried to catch the binders that were toppling from the vibration of the shutting cabinet door. A black binder fell out of his grasp and landed on the floor, flying open.

Johnnie knelt down and began to scoop it up, then found himself staring. Before him on the page that lay open were hundreds of gold stars.

They were pasted below the dates of a small calendar, with each date separated from the rest by a tiny box. The stars overlapped each other, each of them covering a date; the entire year had been marked in this way. At the bottom of the page, where there was extra room, a much larger star had been affixed, as though to climax the rest.

The top of the calendar was imprinted with the year in question, while written above the year, in careful lettering, were the words, "Age 23."

He became aware that Delius was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him, staring down at the stars without speaking. Johnnie said, "Is this where you got your nick?"

Delius nodded without looking up. "That's one of the more useful bits of advice I got from the offender recovery program I was forced to take in prison. The instructor suggested that we should reward ourselves for each day we didn't re-offend." He put a hand forward, touching the little foil stars. "When I was a kid, my mom used to put a gold star on the calendar every day that I behaved myself. I really loved those stars. So I decided to give myself a gold star every day that I didn't kiss a boy or anything else along those lines. I started the notebook right after prison, but I pre-dated it to when I was first arrested, because I wanted the prison time to be part of the change in my life."

He turned back to the first page. This was marked "Age 20," and every date on the page was marked with a star except for one day in late January. Delius pointed to it and said, "That's the day I kissed Teddy. I didn't get a big star at the end of the year; the big stars are rewards if I make it through an entire year without a break."

Johnnie turned the pages slowly. The stars were unbroken from that time on, with a large star affixed to the bottom of each page. When he reached "Age 25" he stopped and said, "Some of the stars here have black borders."

"Yes, I decided to give myself black-bordered stars on the days that I seriously withstood temptation in some way." Delius pointed to the first of the black-bordered stars, which occurred in the month of June. "I got that one just three weeks after I was released from prison. I was walking down the street late one night, and a boy appeared out of nowhere and asked whether I wanted my cock sucked. He was fifteen, well above my AOA, but Jesus, just for a moment . . . Fortunately, I came to my senses quickly. I took him to an all-night café nearby and bought him a milkshake and got him talking. Turns out he had run away from home and was earning food the only way he knew how. I managed to convince him to call the city's hotline for runaways, and I stayed with him till the hotline's car arrived."

Delius pointed further down the page, his silver-marked hand casting a shadow over the sunlit stars. "That star there— No, the one below it. That star represents a six-year-old boy who tagged me home like a puppy after I stopped and fixed his broken rollerblade. He would have come inside if I'd let him. So I hailed a passing police car and got him a ride home, then took a long detour from that point on to avoid his house."

He turned to the next page. "That star . . . Jesus. That star represents the incubus of my twenty-sixth year. I go to a gym sometimes that's usually safe for me, because it's in the business district, so only adults attend it. On this particular day, though, I walked into the changing room and found that the only occupant was an eleven-year-old boy, stark naked." Delius leaned back on his hands, staring at the ceiling. "Have you seen pictures of Donatello's statue of David? This boy was that way – like something you'd find in primordial Eden." He looked down at the page again, adding, "I must have broken the four-minute mile getting out of that gym. Then I had to force myself to go back, in order to warn the boy's father of the dangers of leaving his son alone like that. I give an awfully good lecture on the dangers of sexual predators, if I do say so myself." He grinned at Johnnie before turning back to the previous page and pointing to another black-bordered star. "I remember now what this one was. That was the day I ran across a little girl being bullied. She wasn't a snare to me, of course, but it turned out that she had a grateful brother . . ."

He continued on, recalling the story of each black-bordered star as Johnnie listened silently, watching Delius's scarred hand more than he watched the stars. He wondered to himself what struggle had taken place at the time Delius was arrested. Shying away from this thought, he concentrated his mind on the stories. After a certain point he realized that Delius, like a man on a desert isle who is deprived of all lasting contact with women, had stored these brief encounters with boys as the man on the desert isle might store images of women waving at him from passing ships. Each memory had been carefully hoarded, polished until it shined, and then set aside to take out again in moments of greatest need.

"Delius," Johnnie said suddenly, remembering a post, "do any of those black-bordered stars stand for Teddy?"

Delius broke off his story, pausing a moment to lick his finger and paste back a star that was beginning to peel off. Then he said, without looking at Johnnie, "No. I moved here from California so that Teddy wouldn't get himself in trouble by searching me out." He continued, as though there had been no pause, "So his parents said to me, 'Why don't you move in with us and teach our son better English?' They only spoke Spanish and were suspicious of the police; I knew they'd never even heard of the sex offender registry. And I heard my conscience say, 'Gold Star, this is the sweetest temptation that will ever come your way, but if you give way on this, the next thing you know you'll be giving in to their requests to tuck the boy into bed, and then it will be just one step to tucking both of you into bed . . .'"

The pages continued to turn. At first the calendars were printed on coarse paper that had been pasted onto bond paper – seemingly they were torn from phone books – but after age thirty a change occurred. Now the calendars were printed from a computer, and the simple beauty of each number, letter, and box put the phone-book calendars to shame.

Something about the painstaking care of the design triggered a memory in Johnnie. As Delius reached the end of another story, Johnnie said, "You know, you remind me a lot of Paul."

Delius shifted his gaze to look at Johnnie. He was not smiling. "I trust you meant that as a compliment," he said. Before Johnnie could think what to reply, Delius looked down at the binder again and said, "I used to carry this around with me. I'd take it out at odd moments to look at it, whenever I was feeling discouraged and felt as though I weren't accomplishing anything with my life."

Johnnie looked again at the page labelled "Age 34." The stars ended in the first week of December. Turning the page, Johnnie saw that "Age 35" was blank.

Delius gave a small shrug. "I stopped adding stars last December. At a certain point it began to seem like a meaningless achievement, just to not hurt a boy. Mind you, I know that the work I'm doing online is making a difference in boys' lives. I'm helping keep intact the sanity of other boylovers, so they can go out and help boys. But still . . ."

He closed the book, and as he did so, Johnnie saw that part of the binder's gold cover had been eaten away, presumably by whatever beast had eaten at the file folder. He took a closer look and saw that, yes, the outline of the nibbling here matched that of the prison record folder.

His thoughts were snatched away from this as Delius rose to his feet, turning the binder on its edge to prop himself up. Johnnie noticed for the first time how thick the binder was. "How many boxes do you have to fill?" he asked. "I mean, mentally, even if you're not pasting in the stars any more."

Delius smiled as he placed the binder back on the file cabinet. As he did so, one of the bent edges of the cabinet snagged the long sleeve of his turtleneck and pulled the sleeve back, revealing that the scar on his hand extended onto his arm. Delius pushed the sleeve back in an automatic manner and said, "Oh, I figured that out at the start. Assuming that the laws don't change, and assuming that I live my life to its normal span, I'll have to earn myself twenty thousand gold stars."

Johnnie opened his mouth; it remained open. After a moment he said, with repressed fury, "Gods! They give medals to people just because they write a good book. And all you will get at the end of your life is an obituary entitled, 'Child Molester Dies.'" He furiously drank down the last of his cola and rose to his feet, feeling the heat surge through him.

Delius had turned away from the cabinet. He looked at Johnnie for a moment, his mouth serious, then said softly, "White Rose, don't go down that path."

"What path?" Johnnie moved out of the shadow of the dark corner, back into the bright warmth. The afternoon sun had shifted; now it was falling onto a group of pictures Johnnie had not noticed before, because they were hanging on the wall next to the door. The pictures appeared to be photocopies of illustrations from different children's books: a pig and a spider, a pig and a bear, a cat and a mouse . . . Johnnie wondered what the unifying theme was.

"The path to self-pity." Delius's voice was quiet. "It'll cripple you. I can't tell you how many boylovers I've heard whine on and on about how they're underappreciated. Well, other people in this world do admirable things and never receive notice. Country doctors slave away to help low-income families, social workers risk their lives in inner-city slums . . . Compared to the work they do, staying celibate for a few decades is child's play."

"Yes, but everyone admires doctors and social workers. Us they despise." He was surprised, as he spoke, how bitterly his words emerged. He had not guessed that he was holding this in. Somehow, the very act of meeting another boylover face-to-face was bringing out emotions that, until now, he had kept carefully in check.

Delius said swiftly, "Johnnie, stop. I mean it. This isn't the path you want to take. I nearly went down this path when I was in prison, and again last December; I painted the room black not long after that. But it's the easiest road to self-destruction. There are hundreds of boylovers like that, feeding their hearts on their hatred of society. They've grown inward, like a toenail. At best, they'll show some concern for other boylovers and boys – at worst, they'll think of nothing but themselves. Jesus, Johnnie, if you could see what they're like. It scares me sometimes, the way Conscientious Objector keeps going on about how we're all victims of a holocaust. A holocaust? He has a good job, a good place to live, plenty of food – what does he know about being sent to starve in a prison camp filled with gas chambers? He says boylovers are the most oppressed minority in the world. Does he really think we're worse off than the victims of genocide? Than the innocents who die of hunger and disease because no one cares about them? Johnnie, if you want to let society destroy you, take that path. Let how society treats us turn you into a self-centered boylover who thinks only of his own pain."

Johnnie realized that he was crushing the soda can. He released his fingers quickly from the crumpled metal and said stubbornly, "But we are worse off than some other people."

"Sure, and there's no problem with admitting that, provided that we remember that other people are undergoing their own pain." Delius's voice had turned calm again. He took the can from Johnnie and said, "Do you know why I became Webmaster of Crossroads? To remind myself that I wasn't the only person in the world with problems. I own a book I wish could be read by every boylover at Crossroads who complains about how oversensitive people like Concerned & Angry are. It tells about the history of child abuse in the U.S., and it describes how, until recently, child abuse victims were ignored or despised or told that it was all their own fault. Of course people like Concerned & Angry are mad at us. All those people in the child abuse industry have been fighting their own mini-holocaust. When I read one of Concerned & Angry's posts, my conscience tells me, 'You could become like this if you get so focussed on your own suffering that you don't think about other people's suffering.' A fate worse than death, needless to say," he added with a twitch of the lips.

Johnnie spent some time tracing with his eye the pictures on the wall. After a while, he said, "Could I borrow that book you mentioned?"

Suddenly Delius's smile was back, as bright as the gold star for which he had named himself. "Sure. Actually, I lost my copy of that book a while back, but I can order another copy for both of us." He clapped Johnnie lightly on the shoulder. "Jesus, what sort of host am I? I invite you round, then give you the story of my life and lecture you as though you were a loved boy. Come out into the kitchen, and I'll order a pizza for us. Is it true what you said in your post at BoyChat last week, that you had a girlfriend in middle school? Did you love her?"

They returned to the kitchen, where Delius placed the crumpled can carefully atop the other cans. Johnnie found that his gaze was lingering upon books in the sink. As Delius picked up the phone to call for pizza delivery, Johnnie placed the books aside, turned on the hot water, and began clearing dirty dishes from the kitchen table.

* * *

No rape fantasies this week!
Posted at BoyChat by True Boylover on Saturday, April 14, at 7:48 PM

I didn't have any rape fantasies this week! I did have one murder fantasy, but I'm sure that next week I'll even be able to get rid of those!

It's been SO long since I've gone a week without these fantasies, and it's all due to you guys. White Rose, you were right when you said that meeting real boys would help me to stop fantasizing, because I'd be confronted by the reality of what boys are actually like. When I remember B's sweet face, I can't even THINK of raping him or any other boy!

My second piece of good news is that I now have a JOB flipping hamburgers at a local fast-food joint. (I won't say which fast-food restaurant. I'm sorry about my previous post, Brick, and I promise I'll try to remember the security rules from now on.)

So all and all, things are looking up!

Love,
TB

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This text, or a variation on it, was originally published at duskpeterson.com as part of the series Master/Other. Copyright © 2007 Dusk Peterson. Some rights reserved. The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0). You may freely print, post, e-mail, share, or otherwise distribute the text for noncommercial purposes, provided that you include this paragraph. The author's policies on derivative works and fan works are available online (duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm).