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A STORY OF: ONE GAY LIFE
JOHNNY’S
JOURNAL
Chapter
19
Karl - From Small Acorns . . .
The fact that when I picked up the phone nobody spoke
straightaway was nothing unusual. There were often long
pauses before some of the abusive crank calls that came in
on the advertised contact line. I waited for the tirade to
start, just to be sure, before putting down the handset
and stopping the recording.
"Er . . . Hello? Is anybody there?" an unmistakeably
young voice finally arrived.
"Hello," I said, mystified. "I'm Johnny. Who did you want
to talk to?"
"Is that the GODS?"
"Yes, what was it you wanted?" I asked.
"I'm gay, and I want to meet some other gay people."
"How old are you?" The hairs on my neck were bristling. We
had joked many times about receiving such a call. It would
be our worst nightmare - and here it was!
  "Thirteen
- but I shall be fourteen in three months!"
Oh, no! Thirteen? No! "Why do you want to meet gay
people. Haven't you got any friends to knock around with;
people your own age?"
"All my mates have girlfriends. I don't have anybody."
There was a long and distinct stuttered sniff.
"Why do you think you're gay?" I was already feeling for
the poor little guy, but what could I do; what could I
say? What should I say? We were pretty damn
expert with the sixteen-year-olds and above, but a
thirteen-year-old . . . ? That was hairy!
"I just know I am . . . " And now the sobbing was
unmistakeable. He was breaking his heart. "I don't like
girls," he wailed.
"Now, now, don't get upset. There's nothing wrong with
you. Honest, there isn't. I don't like girls either. It's
just that you're a bit young to have made up your mind on
that score. Does your mother know how you feel? Have you
told her?"
"She . . . She took me to the doctor an' he said I'd grow
out of it. (Sniff) That was a long time ago, an' I
haven't."
"How long ago?"
"Before Christmas."
That was six months ago. "Well, these things take time.
You might have to give it a year or two before you really
know if you're gay. Why don't you wait a while longer to
be sure?" I suggested.
"Oh, please help me, mister. Pleeeeeeeease . . ." The
sobbing was intense.
"Alright, alright. I will. What's your name?"
"Karl." The sobbing continued.
"Look Karl, I promise you I'll help you. I promise. But
you do need to understand it is very awkward for someone
my age to get involved with someone your age. I shall
first have to talk things over with my colleagues here
before I can do anything, so can you ring me back at the
same time tomorrow? Can you do that for me?"
"Yes . . . But you promise you'll help?"
"I swear I will. Bye for now, Karl. I'll talk to you
tomorrow. Promise." With that I put the phone down, and
sat there stunned for several minutes.
At his age I'd known I was gay for years. I'd had sex with
Peter at ten, screwed him and been screwed by him at
eleven, and I'd never looked back. If I could do it all
those years ago, why was it so hard for this guy to find
at least one like-minded mate? He sounded so
desperate, but was it a wind up? How about an entrapment?
It could easily be an entrapment. My stomach churned at
the thought of it. I poured myself a stiff drink, rewound
the tape, and listened to it all over again.
 Steven
and Brian arrived home with the shopping, and I made them
listen to the tape before putting the stuff away. "What
are we going to do?" I asked them. "We have to do
something in case it is genuine but we can't adopt our
usual routine for youngsters, this one is only just a
teenager; hardly out of nappies. I've called the rest of
the committee. They are all coming over."
We had to help the kid if he was genuine, but we needed to
do it in such a way that could be proved was all above
board and doing the decent thing. The usual two or three
gay guys working together to cover themselves would not
hold up strong enough in court if this was an entrapment -
and in the eighties gay people were commonly the subject
of police entrapments. With a good prosecution it could
easily be seen as friends or colleagues conspiring to
corrupt a minor, or worse.
One by one the committee turned up, and we chewed over the
problem. Most of them were only one step from meltdown.
Thirteen-year-olds just didn't phone up gay groups, they
went out to play - football, tag, or something, it had to
be a trap, a way of the police getting their foot in the
door. Some wanted to simply ignore the lad, but I said I
couldn't do that. He sounded far too desperate, what if he
were suicidal? How could we live with ourselves if we read
in the paper a kid called Karl had topped himself? Others
there said that we should phone the council services and
pass it on to them, but we'd already heard enough bad news
about those services from a couple of members who had been
down that path not too long ago, so that was quickly
dismissed. In the end I made a phone call, it was very
helpful, and we managed to hatch a plan that would at
least give us some protection should this be a trap.
The next day, at six-thirty on the dot, the phone rang.
Pressing record, I lifted the handset.
"Hello, is that Johnny?"
"Hello, Karl. How are you feeling today?"
"A little better, I s'pose. Can I come and meet people
now? Did you ask?"
"Whereabouts are you? In town?"
 "I'm
in the phone box outside the Post Office in Streatham
Street. I only live up the road, but mum's in tonight and
I couldn't phone from home."
"The phone box outside the Post Office in Streatham
Street," I repeated. "I think I know it."
Steven already had Alf on the other phone and relayed the
address to him, whilst I got the youngster to give me the
number he was calling from so I could ring him back to
save him money, or cover the risk of the call running out.
By the time I rang him back the confirmation had arrived
from Alf via one of his taxis: the boy was alone, with
no-one else anywhere near the phone box. It was looking
genuine.
"Look Karl," I said, "I can have a taxi pick you up and we
could meet in the Blue Lagoon Coffee Bar to have a chat,
if you want. I would have my partners with me, they go
everywhere with me, but you don't have to worry about
them. Would you like to do that or not?"
"I can meet you? Tonight? Oh, yes please." The kid sounded
overjoyed.
"Good. Can you see an Alf's taxi somewhere outside?"
"Yes . . . On the corner. But how did you know . . . ?"
"Don't worry about that. Just hop in it and tell the
driver you want to meet Johnny, and then I'll see you at
the coffee bar. I should be there about the same time as
you get there. Is that alright? Oh, and you don't have to
pay for the taxi."
"Wow! See you in a minute, Johnny."
The kid that Don, one of Alf's drivers, escorted into the
coffee bar and introduced to us, before joining his
colleague on the next table purposely chosen to be within
earshot, nervously said hello and held out his hand. We
all shook it as I re-did the introductions more fully. He
thought I was very lucky to have two partners.
 We
spent an hour with him, before getting Don to drop him off
near to his home and watch him go inside, and it was a
surprisingly pleasant hour. Once the nervousness faded he
opened up and you could see how happy he was just talking
with people who wouldn't judge him. He had a Vic 20
computer that he spent most of his lonely time playing
with, so when we we told him we had a Commodore 64 he
wanted to have a go on it. I told him perhaps one day.
He must have told us his whole life history whilst he was
there, and it wasn't bad, apart from the last couple of
years when his feeling different to his mates kicked-in
and he became very lonely and unhappy. His class mates at
school had noticed a difference too, regularly teasing
him, calling him queer boy, and worse. Before he
left we gave him a couple of booklets for him to read, and
told him to tell his mother he had contacted us and seen
us here with all the straight people around us. She was
very welcome to call us herself, and meet us if she
wished. He was also welcome to come over and visit us any
time he wanted to, providing we weren't busy, but because
of his age he would always have to bring his mother or
father with him. We had done our bit, all that we could,
now it was up to him.
After he'd made us promise that we would see him again, a
very happy boy left us, and we left happy too feeling we
might have helped him a little. We headed for Alf's, where
I guessed there would be a pretty hefty bill waiting for
us for the time we had tied up his drivers. No calls had
come in, he told us. No charge to make. We all knew he was
lying, but we didn't argue. Alf was a great guy!
Next time I'll tell you how it went when Karl's mother
invited us over for coffee and a chat.
Johnny.
Copyright ©Michael
Knell 2008.
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JOHNNY’S JOURNAL
Chapter 20
Tarzan, Jane, Cheetah - and Boy!
It was no surprise when the phone rang at six-thirty
the next evening. I think we'd all been expecting it.
It was Karl again. He'd read the booklets, talked to
his mother, she'd read them too, and now we were
invited over for a coffee and chat. She was in most of
the time, and always at weekends, he told us - but
then pleaded could we come over now?
 As
we waited for the coffee we could see it was a very
nice home, and we had expected no less from what Karl
had divulged. From all the framed photographs we could
tell it was a large and close family, though the
immediate one only consisted of his parents and two
younger sisters. The coffee arrived, and sitting down
his mother told us to call her Sue. Karl perched
himself on the arm of her chair and put his arm around
her.
She had guessed for a long time that Karl was probably
growing up to be gay, she said, not least because he
had told her several times himself. But she didn't
know what to do about it. He seemed so unhappy for a
lot of the time, and the doctor had been no help at
all. Since meeting us yesterday there had been a
remarkable change in him, she revealed. Karl grinned,
blushing a little. Ideally he needed to have some gay
mates of his own age, er not for er - you know what,
she explained, but just for company. We all
nodded our agreement, but had to tell her we didn't
know of any gay kids his age. They would be about, of
course, in their hundreds for a town this size,
nevertheless only he would be able to find them. The
youngest ones we knew of were all around eighteen,
members of the group, but the kind of things they were
into at their age were not really suitable for a
thirteen-year-old. According to the law they were not
even suitable for an eighteen-year-old. She
sympathised on that point.
He had been so happy after seeing us, she explained,
and she knew it was a great imposition, but could she
bring him along to see us, perhaps once a week, just
for an hour or so? He hadn't stopped talking about our
Commodore 64, and he would love to see it working.
Karl now pleaded, just for an hour? How did his father
feel about that, I asked. It seemed father didn't feel
about anything. A strange man, he went to work,
supported the family, hardly ever spoke, and had no
opinions on anything. Sue doubted he would even know
the meaning of gay. We met him later, and guessed she
was right.
 And
so a ritual started. It was only once a week, on a
Sunday afternoon at first, and then an evening was
added, and then it progressed to them joining us and
the group on things like the country walks, games
nights, theatre trips and similar innocuous events.
After a year we had all become so much a "family" - we
knew many of the relations, and they knew us and a lot
of the group regulars who would visit - Karl was
allowed to come on his own, and he was with us for
just about every minute he had spare. By now, not only
we three but many in the group had taken on a role of
protecting the lad from any likely predators. New
members would be told in no uncertain terms the boy
was untouchable family - not meat! There was Tarzan,
Jane, Cheetah (Brian objected!), and now Boy - and
nobody ever touched Boy! It was something respected
until well after Karl was eighteen, when one day,
right out of the blue, he changed the rules for
himself and shocked everybody. But there was another
shock to come before that one.
Over the years we had all played for many hours with
Karl on the computer, which he seemed to convince us
to replace with a more modern one every year. Brian
became more and more disinterested in the disco with
time, it hardly went out at all now, but Karl
absolutely loved it, spent hours on it with the noise
blowing our brains out, and soon became the most
proficient of all of us at mixing. Whenever we had a
party or a barbecue he was the deejay for the night,
or at least until it was time for his taxi home. It
was the safest place for him too.
At school Karl wasn't the brightest spark, so he left
at sixteen wanting to work where there was music; pop
music. A recording studio the other side of town took
him on, once I had provided a suitable reference on
company paper. We gave them quite a bit of work, so
they weren't going to put that at risk. He did well
there, and they paid for a college course for him. He
was very happy. But then one day he came up with a
major surprise, something we'd never considered.
He was not quite seventeen when he asked, "Johnny, all
of you guys. Have you got a minute?"
"Yes, Karl," I said, "of course we have. What is it?"
We all stopped whatever we were doing to give him our
full attention. He'd been a little subdued since
arriving, and now the tone of his voice sounded
strange. Perhaps he'd had a bad day at work, I
thought.
"Can I move in with you?"
"Eh?" We all looked at each other, shocked.
"My parents are moving up north to be near Gran, she
needs looking after. I don't want to go with them - I
don't want to leave you guys. Besides I like my job
here. I'd be unemployed up north." The eyes were
fighting it; he was too old to show that kind of
emotion.
I looked at Steven and Brian, nothing had to be said
between us - we didn't want him to leave either. He
was a very large part of our lives now. There would be
a big hole there if he were not around anymore. "How
would your mother feel about you moving in?" I asked.
 "She
said she'd miss me, but she doesn't see a lot of me
now because I'm always here, so it is okay with her so
long as it's okay with you guys. I do have a good job,
and I'd have to leave home soon anyway. I couldn't
stay with my parents forever. She did say she would
visit me occasionally."
And so around a month later, when his parent's house
sale seemed to being going through, Karl moved in with
us. But as we helped him to carry all his stuff up the
stairs, his eyes caught mine and held them for a
moment. There was something in the look that perturbed
me; something deliberate - serious, tender and even
sexual. All of a sudden he seemed grown up. Karl had
never been sexual before, not to any of us. He was
just a kid. The word didn't go with his name. Then
some other words rattled through my head. They were
the words Steven had once said to me:
we'd need an awful big house one day if I was to keep
bringing my chickens home!
Karl was turning into a chicken before of our very
eyes. Something with an appetite. None of us had
thought about that before. Up to now he'd just been
like a younger family member, someone to look after
and protect. Was all that about to change? No, surely
that wasn't possible! Not with Karl.
Find out more next time.
Johnny.
Copyright ©Michael
Knell 2008.
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JOHNNY’S JOURNAL
Chapter 21
Birthdays and Other Things
 A
month after Karl moved in, we gave him a fantastic
seventeenth Birthday party. His family had finally
completed the house sale and left that week, so as he
was feeling a little down for a couple of days we went
overboard with it. We'd each given him a card in the
morning, and he'd had loads from the group, not
forgetting the ones his family left for him. We told
him we would give him his present later. As a sign of
the the times, he made out that was an innuendo, and
poked fun at us by saying he'd look forward to it,
with a menacing grin. Shades of my first day with
Brian flashed through my mind.
Everything was planned to the last second. Karl never
complained or objected if asked to do something, so
when I asked him to walk over and pick up four meals
from the Mayflower he didn't argue, and happily set
off to do it. With the time they were going to delay
him there we had just half-an-hour, so the minute he
was out the door we started bringing the disco up from
the basement. Meanwhile the food was arriving along
with the many guests who all had their jobs assigned
decorating the room. It was like a military operation,
where everything went according to plan. We were ready
in plenty of time.
"Sorry, guys. They kept me waiting bloody ages," Karl
shouted on coming in through the front door.
I took the meals off him, putting them on the hall
table in case he should drop them, and pushed him into
the darkened room which immediately exploded into
light as the disco started playing "Happy Birthday",
and the crowd packed in there sang along and cheered.
He stood there stunned until it had finished, more
than a little embarrassed, but happy we had thought of
him that much to go to all that trouble. He found the
transformation of the room quite unbelievable in the
short time he was away, and wondered how we'd managed
it. Then the crowd parted to allow Gloria to wheel in
the seventeen candle-lit cake on a trolley. After
blowing them out in one, for which he was told we all
knew he was the biggest poof there, the cloth was
lifted from the trolley to reveal his present from
Steven, Brian and myself - a brand new PC all to
himself.
He went totally ballistic. Steven got the first hugs
and kisses, then Brian, and then me. As he held me
tightly, kissing, hugging and thanking me, I could
feel him pressed into me, and I thought you sure are
going to make someone happy one day. How much the guy
had grown up since we'd first nervously met him as
that desperate snivelling thirteen-year-old kid, one
without a friend in the world, was quite unbelievable.
It only seemed like yesterday. And as we'd had some
small part to play in it, I couldn't help feeling sort
of proud. I was also frightened.
We had another funeral to attend that Tuesday. It was
the fifth since Bebe. Very soon Karl was going to find
someone, those hormones would be working overtime on
him already, I knew that - I'd seen them the day he
moved in, and I worried about the deadly world out
there waiting for him. The law might say twenty-one,
but everyone knows the law's an ass - they were all at
it long before that. Look at me: I had a full sexual
life at eleven-years-old. Did the law expect
fully-developed lads' hormones to hang on until they
were twenty-one just because it's written down
somewhere? Hormones never did learn to read, they were
far too busy.
I don't know why I suddenly became depressed at such a
happy time. Something to do with Adrian's funeral
obviously. Only nineteen-years-old, we didn't know him
that well - he was a member but he'd not been to many
events, and apparently he'd only ever been all the way
with someone once, in London. A guy he met in Heaven -
how cruel is that? - when blown out of his mind on
drink and drugs. And now he was dead. If that was to
happen to Karl, I just didn't know what I would do. My
brain was playing nasty tricks with me, they do that
sometimes, don't they? It was picturing the most
grandest of funerals imaginable, and I know whose it
was supposed to be. I poured myself a tall vodka -
neat.
Tuesday was a bad day. Some people love funerals; I
hate them. And why do they have to dramatise them so
much? Everyone was quite upset enough without having
to see the coffin glide off to the realms of: "If I
Could Turn Back Time" by Cher. What was all that
about? The do afterwards was at the Monty. Ham
sandwiches, of course. I always feel like I'm eating
the dead. Everybody got drunk, presumably as a mark of
respect. Still, as funerals go I suppose they
did him proud. They were getting a bit like the number
47 bus though: there'll be another one along shortly.
It was a toss up whether Jim or Wills would be the
first to go, but we knew they'd both be gone before
Christmas. AIDS was certainly aiding the bloody
funeral directors, and I hoped Karl was taking note.
We survived the other two funerals, and especially
thanked Wills for his choice of Freddie Mercury's:
"Who Wants To Live Forever?" to glide away to - there
wasn't a dry eye in the place. Only the silence of
Jim's glide made me appreciate there was a need for
something. That silence was terrible, between the
sounds of the rumbling stomachs you could hear the
woodworm fornicating.
We did a hell of a lot of good parties over the
Christmas period. New Year was at our place, and a
real blast. I can remember thinking more than a couple
of times whilst the three of us were in bed having
drink-fuelled sex after the parties, it must be tough
for Karl in the
 other
room
all alone - how does he manage without sex? Nobody
ever came on to him, I think they were all too
frightened of Steven's left hook. But I'd never seen
him eye anybody up either, or pass favourable comment.
It was strange, but in a way I was thankful.
That year we visited Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Playa
del Ingles for holidays, and had a very happy year. I
felt like an old man watching Brian and Karl having
fun in the pool - but then I was becoming one. It was
like Steven and I watching the kids at play.
Thankfully there was not a single funeral to attend.
Steven built an enormous conservatory in the Spring,
knocked out a wall and fitted French doors leading
into it, so it was a boon for the summer garden
parties when it rained. Karl's eighteenth surpassed
all that we did for his last birthday. He got a car
and driving lessons. Then before we knew it, Christmas
had arrived again. And what a surprise that had in
store for me!
You can find out what that surprise was next time.
Johnny.
Copyright ©Michael
Knell 2008.
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