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Twenty Thousand Gold Stars

A Novel About an Internet Community

By Dusk Peterson

Chapter Ten

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Happy International BoyLove Day!
Posted at Crossroads by Pedo-Hag (by proxy) on Thursday, June 21, at 5:35 PM

I'm going to be away from town till the end of the week of the solstice. (I still haven't figured out whether I'm supposed to celebrate IBLD in the winter or the summer, but I've grasped that everyone here parties around the time of the solstice.) So I'm asking Gold Star to post this for me then. I want all of you to know that, wherever I am, I'll be lighting a blue candle for you, and I'll also be lighting a blue candle on behalf of those of you who are afraid to light candles for fear that the flames will identify you as boylovers.

Last winter's International BoyLove Day was the best ever for me, because two days before it, a twelve-year-old boy came onto Crossroads and started asking questions about whether men who have sex with boys love those boys. Gold Star became concerned, dug up the e-mail address he'd deleted from the boy's first post, and wrote to the boy, asking him why he was interested in this topic. After a great deal of hesitation, the boy finally confessed that his father had been making the boy have sex with him, and he didn't know what to do.

Well, Gold Star ICQed me right away, and together we were able to persuade the boy to tell his mother. The last we heard, the boy's father had entered into therapy. Afterwards, all I could think was, "If Gold Star and I hadn't been running this board, that man would still be abusing his son." It made all the hours I spend trying to douse flame wars seem worth it.

This summer, I decided to dig up the first message I ever posted at Crossroads, eighteen months ago, in which I described what happened the first night my father molested me. Then I rewrote it from the perspective of my father, as though he had posted the message at BoyChat. I know that such a message wouldn't be permitted on BoyChat, since it describes illegal activities, but I've read enough posts from pro-sex boylovers to guess how it would have read.

Here is what I wrote eighteen months ago:

You imprisoned me with your arms and growled, "Do you love me?" I was so scared I didn't know what to do. I thought perhaps if I kissed you on the cheek, you'd let me go, but you moved your face and trapped my lips in yours. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't get away from you because you were holding me so tight, and I was afraid that, if I told you how much I hated you, you'd abandon me. You're always talking about how you plan to leave my mother because she doesn't love you.

Then you pinioned my wrist and took me into the bedroom and tore all my clothes off of me. I was shaking with fear, but you didn't pay me any mind; you just put me on the bed and took your pleasure on me. Even when I cried, you just smiled, as though my pain was what you enjoyed most. Afterwards, I was like a corpse, but you forced me to stay with you all night.

I hate you. I hate all of you pedophiles for destroying my life and the lives of other kids.

"Do you love me?" I asked shyly in a low voice. I was stiff with fear that she'd say no, but instead she stood on her tiptoes and gave me a passionate kiss. I was frozen with wonder; all I could do was cling to her. I thought I would start crying for joy.

I took her by the hand then and we went into the bedroom, where I undressed her, slowly and gently. She was shivering with excitement. I tried to make the foreplay last as long as I could, for her sake, but I'm afraid that when I entered her I was so eager that I hurt her a bit, because she cried the way my wife did on our wedding night. Afterwards, though, she was very calm and contented and lay in my arms till dawn.

To think that someone as wonderful as her loves me is something that humbles me. I just don't deserve anyone as special as she is. The fact that I can give her a little pleasure in return for all the happiness she has given me is the best gift I ever received.

So my International BoyLove Day message is in favor of better communication between all of us and our loved ones, so that we can find ways to draw closer to each other in love, in the hope that none of us, boylovers or non-boylovers, will be hurt by other people.

With all my love,
Pedo-Hag

* * *

The street had turned into a river. Cars had parked themselves at the curb, while the few pedestrians on the sidewalk had given up hope of controlling their umbrellas in the wind that caused the telephone lines to swing violently to and fro. Most of the pedestrians had taken refuge under the theater marquee; one couple, pressed close together to avoid a waterfall from a gutter spout, took the opportunity to exchange a few kisses. Some of the other pedestrians glanced at the couple, but only briefly. This was a cosmopolitan part of the city, and gay couples were not likely to rouse much interest.

Another couple – a teenage boy and girl, in this case – came rushing into the shelter, laughing loudly as they beheld each other's drenched appearance. The boy ruffled the girl's hair; she gave him a mock blow to the chest. Several of the pedestrians smiled.

Johnnie, watching them from the dark room above, sipped on his cold cocoa. His gaze traveled to a family group: a mother, a father, and their half-grown son. He looked away abruptly and turned to place the cup on his desk.

His apartment door crashed open then with such force that, in any other mood, Johnnie's thoughts would have been upon FBI raids. As it was, he merely stared blankly at the figure in the doorway. He could vaguely see that it was dripping on his carpet.

"Sorry," said Delius. "I was trying to knock, but your door was ajar." He hesitated, then added, "Is it all right if I come in?"

"Sure." Johnnie realized with incredulity that his voice sounded no different than usual.

The reply must have reassured Delius. He pulled off his backpack and tossed it onto the bare table, then began shedding himself of his drenched coat. "Jesus, what a night!" he said. "First my umbrella blows out of my hand when I'm halfway home, and then Brick pages me a message asking me to respond to one of his e-mails immediately, and then I've no sooner reached my building than all the lights on our street go out. Mind if I borrow your laptop to check my mail?"

"It's on the coffee table," said Johnnie.

"I'd better dry myself off first, or I'll be electrocuted. If you don't mind me making free use of your bathroom . . ."

"There's a flashlight on the counter."

"Thanks, I can grope my way there. We perverts are accustomed to spending our nights lurking in the dark, didn't you know?" He disappeared through the bathroom doorway.

Johnnie slowly made his way over to the table, picked up the coat from where Delius had dropped it, placed it on the coat rack, and turned his attention to the bookbag. After several minutes and a quantity of paper towels, the table and the bag were drier than before. Johnnie opened the bag to see whether any of its contents had been damaged.

Only two objects lay within the bag: the thermos Johnnie had given Delius, and a black binder. Johnnie pulled the binder out and took it over to the window to inspect it by the flashing light of the theater opposite and the flicker of a small flame.

The blue candle had grown low as the evening lengthened; now its flame was little more than a spark, but it was still the brightest light in the room. Glancing out the window, Johnnie saw a police car cruise slowly down the street. A police officer looked up toward Johnnie's window, causing time to stand still momentarily for Johnnie. Then she switched her gaze away indifferently.

The binder opened easily, without damage from water, to a page labelled, "Age 35."

Delius, Johnnie noticed, had begun adding stars again, earlier during the year. Row by row they twinkled at him: gold star and gold star and gold star, the monotony broken only by a single black-bordered star six weeks before. Johnnie tried to remember back to the previous month's events to see whether Delius had mentioned the boy, but his mind refused to focus itself.

He turned a page. Three hundred sixty-five blank boxes confronted him; three hundred sixty-five days be filled. The page read, "Age 36."

He turned to the next page. Three hundred sixty-five blank boxes; three hundred sixty-five stars to be added. "Age 37."

He had reached the page labelled "Age 62" when Delius emerged from the bathroom, rubbing his hair dry with a towel. "I borrowed your bathrobe," said Delius. "I hope you don't mind." Without waiting for an answer, he picked up the telephone, listened for a moment, then slammed down the receiver. "The telephone lines are down as well – damn, no modem access! Oh, well, Brick can stew over the emergency on his own for a while. I have worse things to worry about: an entire evening without the Internet. It's the boylover's worst nightmare, you know. Conscientious Objector wrote a satire once about all of the computer knowledge of the world being lost in a disaster. It turns out that the only people who could reconstruct the Internet were boylovers—"

He stopped abruptly. Johnnie, staring down at the elderly couple standing arm in arm, thought to himself that the thunderstorm must be growing worse, for the rain was now blurring the images on the street. Then he realized that the water blurring his vision did not come from the rain.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Delius said quietly, "Come tell me what has happened."

They ended up sitting on the day bed together; Delius made Johnnie drink all of the warm cocoa in his thermos. By the time the cocoa was finished, so was the tale. Johnnie leaned back against Delius's arm, which was resting atop the back of the day bed, and thought to himself that it was a shame that Delius did not have a young friend, because Gold Star would have had a comforting effect on any boy who wished to talk with him.

The electrical power was still off. Turning his head, Johnnie could see the outline of Delius's profile, bright from the theater glow, while the nearer side of his face was blurred by darkness. Under the steady sound of water falling from the sky, Johnnie remembered an image that had been offered to him late one night when Delius seemed reluctant to return to his apartment: of a newly released prisoner turning up at the doorstep of his family's home, and of a doorside basin of holy water spilling its contents as the door was slammed in the prisoner's face.

Staring down at the abandoned thermos, Delius asked, "Do you think you did the right thing?"

"I know I did," said Johnnie. "Everything I said to Milano was true. Whether you're right or Paul is right, one way or another it's likely that Milano would have been hurt if I'd said yes. If it hadn't been for your story – and Pedo-Hag's and Concerned & Angry's and True Boylover's – I might have been tempted to tell Milano, 'We can't sleep together, but we can still be lovers in our hearts.' As it was, though . . ."

Delius's gaze remained fixed upon the thermos. "You don't think that Conscientious Objector is right?"

Johnnie shook his head. "I don't think I hurt Milano badly by turning him down – and after all, if he goes on to date other people, he's likely to be rejected on a few occasions. Maybe I've given him a gentle preparation for that."

"Still," said Delius softly, "it hurts like hell being the one to say no, doesn't it?"

Johnnie was silent for a while, looking at the sun-golden glow of the neon lights upon his dark walls. Finally he said, "It's not the sex. Despite everything that Conscientious Objector and Paul say about the indivisibility of body and heart and mind, it's not that. If need be, I could take daily cold showers. It's just . . ." He groped for the words, aware of little other than Gold Star's arm behind him. "Every night, I do the same routine before bed. I make myself a cup of cocoa and stand at the window for a while, watching the couples walk by hand in hand. Then I close down my computer, clear away the remains of my dinner-for-one carton, use the bathroom, and go to bed alone. And then I lie awake for an hour, thinking about what it's like to live my life alone, and thinking about how it will remain that way for the rest of my life. If Milano and I had entered into a relationship together – even for a short time, even if it didn't involve any sex – then we could have been special to each other, centered upon each other. And then we would have had that bond for the rest of our lives, like Conscientious Objector and his older friend do. I would have gone to bed each night knowing that my life was so bound with another person's that I had added something essential to his life.

"But as it was, I looked at your star binder tonight and . . . Oh, gods, Delius, twenty thousand blank boxes to be filled. Twenty thousand days of emptiness and loneliness, and nothing to fill them except the cold satisfaction of knowing I've done my duty. Twenty thousand days without someone in my life. . . . Delius, I just can't face it—"

Delius halted the flow of choked words abruptly by pulling Johnnie into a tight embrace. Johnnie burrowed his face against the hollow of Delius's shoulder, feeling the bathrobe grow wet from his tears. For a long time, the flow of salt water continued, as though matching in its intensity the rush of water outside. Finally Johnnie lifted his head. Delius was still holding him close, though his face was turned, not toward Johnnie, but toward the pattern of light against the wall. In a shaking voice, Johnnie said, "Tell me your secret. You must have found a way to fill all those blank boxes."

"Must I?" Delius's voice was quiet; he did not shift his gaze.

"Yes, otherwise you wouldn't have begun pasting stars in the notebook again, for all those boys you were tempted by."

"Well," said Delius, "it hasn't been boys recently."

Thunder purred distantly, withdrawing to the edge of the city. The pounding of rain began to slacken. Delius continued to look at the wall opposite with the same sort of intense focus he adopted when designing a Website. Johnnie, confronted with this unmoved gaze, shifted in Delius's embrace. Delius let him go immediately, and even stirred in the day bed as though preparing to rise.

Johnnie caught hold of his hand. Delius turned his face then; Johnnie could read little in his shadowed expression but for the tautness of his straight mouth.

Leaning forward, Johnnie kissed him on the lips.

Delius accepted the kiss without withdrawing, but did not move his lips in response. When Johnnie moved back, he could see that Gold Star's expression had tightened still further. For a moment, Johnnie had a vision of Delius in the city gym, confronting his incubus.

Johnnie wondered whether his own expression was just as tightly controlled. "Did I just lose you a star?" he asked.

"I'm afraid so," replied Delius. "No star for today, no star at the end of the year."

His voice was light, almost self-mocking; Johnnie recognized the tone. All it would take, he realized, was some subtle signal from himself, and Delius would turn this into a joke, as he had the previous month. The thought gave Johnnie a feeling of desperate haste, as though he had sighted a handsome boy just turning the corner. He caught hold of Delius's hand again and cried, "Why didn't you tell me last month that you're attracted to me?"

"Because I'm not." Delius's voice was painfully matter-of-fact. "Not that way, at any rate."

The rain had lessened to a light trickle. Voices came from the window as the pedestrians who had been sheltering at the theater began to emerge onto the streets again. Faintly, Johnnie heard the half-broken voice of the teenage boy, talking to his girlfriend, but he barely registered this fact. His mind was falling back to an old conversation. "You told me," he said slowly. "You told me last month that you'd been looking for someone. I didn't realize— Why didn't you tell me that I was the one you wanted?"

"What would you have had me say?" Delius's voice was still too light, still too detached from the words he spoke. He had returned to gazing at the wall. "Johnnie, I've been searching for ten years for another boylover who I could love and share my life with – how could I have told you that? You were ready to go to bed with me out of pity; it would have been like asking Pedo-Hag to marry me. Pity isn't what I'm looking for. I'm not searching for someone from whom I can take and take and take, and give no return." He turned his face toward Johnnie; the anger on it was plain to see. "If that's what's going through your mind – giving me a present that will never be returned – I'll leave right now." He shifted forward to the edge of the day bed.

"What?" said Johnnie. "And waste all that fine grooming you've been doing for the past six months?"

Delius's brow was creased with black anger. He opened his mouth. Then his mouth remained open as he looked at Johnnie, who was biting his lip in an effort to keep control. After a moment, Johnnie abandoned the effort; after a moment more, Delius abandoned the effort to be angry. With one accord, they fell into each other's arms and howled with laughter.

After a time, the laughter ended like the rain, but Johnnie made no effort to raise his head from the shoulder on which it was resting. He could feel, even through the thickness of the bathrobe, the pounding of Delius's heart. Johnnie said, "Your heart sounds as though it's holding a party. Are you sure that you don't desire me with your body?"

Delius chuckled softly; his cheek was pressed against the top of Johnnie's head. "Place your hand a little lower, and you'll encounter proof that I'm not. There are more kinds of excitement in life than sexual excitement, as Paul would say."

"Paul." Johnnie unconsciously moved his body closer to Delius's warmth. "Paul would say that I'm straying from the higher path."

"Yeah, well, Conscientious Objector would say the same to me, though for different reasons. I suppose that, if we do this, a number of our friends will be disappointed."

Johnnie raised his head from the shoulder and traced with his eye the curves of Delius's face, now relaxed in the darkness. "What is it that we're doing?" Johnnie asked. "I'm not entirely sure I know."

"Whatever it is that you want," Delius replied promptly. "If you want things to stay the way they are, that's fine. Just the fact that I can tell you how I feel means something to me. If you'd like to be lovers . . . Well, I know some other boylovers who have been in our situation, and they've given me a few hints on how to partially overcome the minor detail that we're not attracted to each other. On the other hand, if the idea of us bedding each other doesn't appeal to you, we could be 'domestic companions' of the sort that Paul always talks about. It's up to you; sex isn't the essence of what I'm searching for."

"What is the essence?" asked Johnnie, his gaze rising to the glint of gold shining in Delius's hair. "What is it that you've been searching for?"

Delius was silent for a moment, his arms resting lightly around Johnnie. His expression was filled with the same concentration he showed when composing a particularly important administrative post. At last he said, "I suppose that I disagree with Paul and Conscientious Objector about their theory of the need for body and heart and mind to work in harmony with each other. I agree that it's nice when body and heart and mind all cooperate with the conscience, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary that they do so. Provided that at least one part of us obeys the commands of the conscience, then I think we're on the right path. . . . Today, when Milano asked you to become his lover – what parts of you said yes?"

"My body," said Johnnie slowly. "And my heart. My mind is the part that vetoed the idea."

"So your mind followed your conscience, and all is well. White Rose, I've just asked you to be my life partner – whether sexual or nonsexual is up to you. What do the different parts of you say?"

Johnnie could read Delius's anticipation of his reply more in the sudden tension of his body than in the returned sobriety of his expression. The rain had ended now, though the room remained in darkness.

"My body isn't throwing a party."

"And your heart and mind?"

Delius had returned to his note of careful neutrality; Johnnie caught his gaze before he could turn it away. "My heart and mind are yours," he said quietly. "Is that what you've been seeking? My heart and mind?"

For a moment, Delius was frozen, as though unable to reply. Then he said with simplicity, "No. To give you mine."

Johnnie reached forward then and pulled Delius into his arms. The latter came without resistance, laying his head upon Johnnie's chest, with his face turned upwards. For several minutes, Johnnie was silent, tracing the silver scar on Delius's arm and looking down at Delius's eyelids, which were closed. Finally Johnnie said, "Paul was right about one thing."

"What is that?" Delius's voice was muffled against his chest.

"Eros and philia aren't the highest loves."

* * *

The apartment was white with afternoon sun by the time Johnnie returned home. The street noise, barely muffled, filled the apartment. Johnnie stood a moment at the doorway, surveying the empty room, then pushed aside the clutter of dishes on the table and carefully placed the bag of cookies in the middle, like a centerpiece. He propped next to it the accompanying card.

Dear Johnnie (Mr. Steadman),

I told Mama last night about me being bisexual, and she wasn't at all angry, not even about the fact that I'd told you first. Mama did say that I shouldn't have asked you to have a relationship with me. She says that only pedos have sex with boys my age. Will you accept my apology? I didn't mean to imply that you're a pedo.

Mama says she doesn't mind us still being friends, even though you're gay. She says she's just miffed that you haven't introduced her to your partner.

I'd like to meet him too. Have you told him yet about the circle?

Love,
Milano

P.S. Mama baked the cookies, but they're from both of us.

Benjamin Christopher Walters

Johnnie looked at the dates printed below the words. Ben's eleventh birthday, he noted, would have taken place in a week's time. He wondered whether True Boylover had bought the birthday present.

He dried his hands with a paper towel, placed that towel in the newly purchased trash can, and was about to turn away when he noticed a small icon at the bottom of the computer screen. It was bright yellow, and it contained the words: "I want to kill . . ."

Slowly he moved forward and clicked on the icon. The icon sprang open to become a CBF page.

I want to kill myself
Posted at the Christian Boylove Forum by At Peace on Friday, June 22, at 4:20 PM

Johnnie read the message rapidly, the phrases running through his mind like the familiar refrain of an ancient ballad: The pastor whom At Peace thought he could trust . . . Now everyone in his community knew . . . He was barred from attending church services . . . He had been fired from his job . . . The police had visited him and had found no evidence of crime but had warned him to stay away from the children in the community . . . His brother was convinced that he'd molested his niece . . . His parents were standing by him but insisted that he enter into therapy . . .

There were about two dozen replies to the post, several from BoyChat participants who never posted at CBF. "Don't do it, dear," said a subject heading by Conscientious Objector.

Johnnie scanned the list of names twice, but one name was missing. He clicked at a second icon at the bottom of the page, this one green, and a post popped up.

* * *

The latest
Posted at the Crossroads Committee Forum by Gold Star on Friday, June 22, at 5:45 PM
In reply to I'm concerned about what's happening at CBF! posted by Pedo-Hag

Here's the situation: At Peace has been exchanging e-mails with Brick for several months now. When the stress started to get to At Peace yesterday evening, he sent Brick an e-mail indicating that he needed to talk with him urgently. Unfortunately, Brick was heading out the door to pick up his fiancée at the airport, so he passed on the message to me, asking me to write to At Peace. I was offline until a short while ago, though, so I didn't see Brick's e-mail.

When Brick failed to respond, At Peace tried writing some other BL friends, but apparently they were all slow at checking their mail. Finally, late today, At Peace wrote a message about what was happening. He tried first to post it at Crossroads, since he knew a number of participants here, but you'd already disabled posting on the board. So instead he posted it at BoyChat.

Unfortunately, he did so just moments before BoyChat's main index was replaced with the memorial page, which will remain up while Ben's funeral is taking place. When he saw his message disappear from BoyChat, At Peace lost control of himself entirely and posted his suicide note at CBF.

Well, you know how few visitors CBF gets on the weekends; it might have been days before anyone noticed the post. Fortunately, Paul saw it almost immediately and began sending e-mails to every boylover in his address book.

Brick and I have been on the phone with At Peace, and he's a lot calmer now. At Peace thinks his parents just want advice from someone besides himself on what sort of help he should receive, so I'm planning to fly out to visit At Peace next weekend and explain to his parents how peer support groups can be an alternative to therapy.

What this episode brings home, of course, are the limitations on what sort of help the boylove community can provide to its members through cyberspace alone. Coincidentally, I was discussing this topic last night with a boylover who's planning to come out to his parents when he sees them next. We've decided to start a local support group for any boylovers who may live in our area, and we're hoping to connect with non-boylovers (ped or non-ped) who would be interested in talking with us. For example, there's an ex-gay group near us whose members might be approachable, and the boylover I was talking with has met a minister who could be worth getting to know.

Think of us as a real-life Crossroads.

That's all that I can say at the moment. Perhaps Johnnie, who posts more than I do at CBF, can add something when he comes online.

Gold Star

* * *

Sitting down on a crate next to the computer, Johnnie typed a short note in reply, saying only that he hoped to make real-life contact with At Peace as well. His gaze was already beginning to wander before he clicked the "Send Message" button; he was watching a red light blink nearby. After a moment's hesitation, he reached over and hit the play button.

The answering machine rewound with a satisfied purr, and a disembodied voice said, "This is Paul responding to Delius's message. Gold Star, it's a delight to hear from you. I'd sort of gathered that Johnnie had someone important in his life, but I didn't want to press him about this, since I know how much he values his privacy. Of course I'd love to join the two of you for dinner. I'll be by at six tomorrow, and I'll bring the wine . . ."

Johnnie gradually became aware of what he was sitting on. He stood up, looked down at the crate full of shirts, and picked it up, placing the briefcase atop it.

The hallway's light was off, a new light switch having been installed the previous week. Johnnie paused in front of Delius's door, which was ajar; a beam of sunlight poured through the opening. The crate was still in his arms, though, so he continued down the hallway. As he did so, he passed pictures, recently moved to the hallway: Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet, Harry Cat and Tucker Mouse, the Water Rat and the Mole . . . The pictures of friends living together ended at the entrance to the library.

Inside the room, a small tornado had hit. Half the bookshelves had been moved to make room for Johnnie's day bed and desk; Delius had even set up his laptop, whose screen was blank at the moment. Delius's books, though, had not yet been moved. Piles of them were scattered across the floor, nudging the crates containing Johnnie's belongings.

He had put down the crate and was rummaging through the briefcase when he sighted the stars.

Standing up slowly, with his hand still clutching the object he had touched last in the briefcase, he gazed a long moment before walking over to the wall nearest the door. Where the children's illustrations had once hung, the wall was now filled with dozens of sheets of paper, glittering golden in the sun. The first fifteen pages had the familiar pattern of gold stars neatly pasted in rigid rows. Row upon row the stars stood, monotonous, constrained by the boxes holding them.

The remaining forty pages were different. Gold glitter had been sprayed wildly upon the sheets in whirling patterns; the only neat element was a single, large star affixed to the middle of each page.

Stepping backwards to see better the golden pages near the top of the ceiling, Johnnie bumped into his desk. As he did so, his computer sprang to life, throwing forth onto the screen a shower of golden stars as chimes rang like festival bells.

As the screen cleared, the familiar moonscape landing appeared, with its blue triangle logo in the middle. Stars now danced in the dark sky, and the logo was shimmering with stardust. Words appeared on the screen:

Even if the laws should change, you'll be the one I want.

For a moment, Johnnie could not speak. He felt caught out of time, as though this had happened long ago. Delius said nothing; he simply smiled.

Then Johnnie stepped forward and said, "I bought this for you."

He handed Gold Star the white rose.

The author would like to thank the editors of this novel, who, for obvious reasons, are not named here.

Publication history.

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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).