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A STORY OF: ONE GAY LIFE
JOHNNY’S
JOURNAL
Chapter
22
Anyone you choose. Anyone at all.
  It
was mid-morning of Christmas Eve, Steven and Brian were in
town doing some last minute shopping, Karl was not yet up,
and it was my turn to vacuum upstairs - a job I hated
doing. Not prepared to wait around until Karl decided to
face the world, I boldly swept into his room with the
machine screaming away. He sat bolt upright with the
surprise, and then disappeared in a ball under his duvet.
Having whisked it around the room, it was clean anyway, I
switched off the noise and was about to heave it back on
to the landing when he popped his head out from under the
cover.
"Johnny, would you object if I was to have sex with
someone here, in my room?" he asked, all serious.
Oh, oh! He wasn't celibate, then. The rest of us were
beginning to wonder. But what could I say? He was way past
eighteen, who was I to preach what the law states? Steven,
Brian, and myself had all ignored it. It was better he did
it there where we knew he was safe, than perhaps in some
unknown's dirty bedsit. "Of course not," I said, "but
don't forget those safer sex rules - we've all been to
enough funerals." Then curiosity got the better of me, and
I just couldn't resist it: "Who have you got in mind,
anyway? Someone we know?"
"Someone very special to me," he said.
That only went to feed my curiosity. "Who's that? Someone
nice?" I asked, trying to sound disinterested.
"The best," he said, "but you wouldn't vet who I could
have, would you? I mean - I can have anyone I want, can't
I?"
I was not going to be a mother hen, so I said, "Of course
you can. Anyone you choose. Anyone at all."
He was an extremely strong young man, and before I knew it
I was pulled down onto his bed where in one quick move
he'd rolled me over and was on top of me, naked, looking
down into my eyes. As I always vacuumed in just my
underpants to keep cool, I felt quite vulnerable. The love
was pouring out of his dilated pupils.
"You don't mean me?" I asked, looking up at him in shock.
"You said anyone I chose. I chose you that night in the
Blue Lagoon all those years ago, and you've been my
fantasy ever since. You don't wanna know how many times
I've pulled my plonker whilst dreaming of you. I've waited
five years for this: to have sex with someone; proper sex.
I'm a big boy now, and I make my own decisions. You are
that someone; you always have been. Lying here every night
knowing you're having sex in the other room is agony. I
want you. I love you. I really, really love you!"
Oh, my God! So that was why he never eyed-up anybody - he
had a hang-up on me. "I love you too, Karl. Really, really
love you. But it's a different kind of love. It's the love
I would have for my son if I had one. And nobody ever has
sex with their son, do they? We can't do this, Karl. We
really mustn't." I pleaded.
"But I'm not your son! I'm me! Karl, a hot-blooded living
being that loves you!" He said it loudly, with his strong
hands pinning my arms to the bed as that love continued to
pour down, now from eyes that were doing their own
pleading.
 Hypnotised,
I lay there defenceless, unable to move, looking up into
those eyes as they came closer and closer until, when they
were almost touching, his lips enveloped mine. God, his
kisses were like velvet chocolate on a warm moonlit night.
They reminded me of Tony. He kissed like Tony. Helpless, I
closed my eyes and melted along with them, drifting away
into my heaven.
It was pointless trying to fight him off, I had lied, I
knew I had, only saying what I thought I should say, what
was expected of me - I hadn't loved him like a son for a
long, long time. Not since I'd seen those hormones playing
in his eyes the day he moved in. Ever since then I had
seen him for what he truly was: a gorgeous young guy, one
who fitted all my yearnings for youth, but never making a
move because I already had two lovers, and besides we had
that hard and fast jungle rule.
There was Tarzan, Jane, Cheetah, and Boy - and nobody ever
touched Boy. Not even us. But now Boy was no longer a boy,
and he was changing those rules for himself - forcibly.
Being banged by a virile young guy, one doing it with all
the vigour and excitement of the first time so that every
position and place in the room had to be explored: on the
bed, over the side of the bed, up the wall, on the carpet,
this way and that way - and then him doing it fives times
in total with hardly a pause between them - can really
take it out of the older man. Exhausted, I was only able
to oblige him twice, excusing myself by saying I'd done it
before earlier that morning with Steven and Brian. He was
like a machine: unstoppable. I was absolutely shattered
when finally he collapsed onto the bed satisfied, to lie
there cuddling me.
"I love you," Karl said.
"Still?"
He laughed.
"What are we going to say to Steven and Brian," I asked.
"Do they have to know?"
"I hid Brian from Steven once, but he knew about us within
an hour. He's like that: not much gets past him. I
promised him then I'd never hide anything again. We have
that pact between all three of us."
"Do you still love them? Both of them?"
"Yes, of course I do. And as much as I always have done.
Love is a strange currency. You can spend it all over the
place, yet you'll never run out of it. It's not a bank
account. Like eternity, there are no limits to it. Loving
you doesn't mean I love them any less, though I'm not sure
they would see it that way."
"The wise old man has spoken," Karl teased.
"Less of the 'old', thank you!" I thumped his arm
playfully.
"I know what's in one of your bedside drawers," Karl said.
"In the cellophane packet."
"Do you? Been spying on us have you?"
"No, Steven borrowed my nail clippers and didn't return
them, so when I needed them I had a search around. I
couldn't help but notice the packet. Do you guys take them
often?"
"They belong to Brian, he's gaga for them. Though we have
been known to join him occasionally.
 "You
can bet we'll all get well-plastered tonight, won't we?
It's Christmas, so we're bound to. If you can make sure
everyone has one tonight, then when you are all sky high I
could sneak into your room and jump in bed alongside you.
By morning they won't be able to object to what's between
us, will they? They may even think one of them invited me
into bed themselves to have their wicked way."
"And suppose they did have their wicked way?"
"Well, I'd lie back and think of you and England, wouldn't
I?" he joked.
And that's the way it went - almost. It was one hell of a
naughty night. Mind-blowing. However Karl failed to
mention that he would be popping one too when he crept in.
Far from surreptitiously slipping into the bed to be found
in the morning, he couldn't contain himself. Like some
wild thing possessed, moaning and groaning in ecstasy, he
went through the lot of us, and me several times that I
know of. Returning to the real world around breakfast time
on Christmas morning, everybody was giggling at what Santa
had brought us in the night. Neither Steven nor Brian
questioned how Karl had really got there, perhaps for fear
it was them who fetched him. But that at least proved
something to me: I wasn't the only one who had changed the
way in which I thought about the guy.
However it wasn't too long before we discovered that four
doesn't work as well as three. Three go out of their way
not to exclude, whereas four find it too easy to pair off.
Big changes were on the way, and there were some real bad
times to come. More on that soon.
Johnny.
Copyright ©Michael
Knell 2008.
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JOHNNY’S JOURNAL
Chapter 23
Yule Tired Celebrations!
 Ding-dong
. . . Ding-dong . . . Ding-dong, Ding-dong, Ding-dong!
The clock wouldn't focus, so I dragged it closer.
"Jees!" I screamed. "It's gone ten o'clock already!
That'll be Gloria and the gang we invited round for
Christmas sherries!"
Three sat up, looked at me, and then burst out
laughing. It was Brian in the end who slung on a
dressing gown and ran downstairs to let them in,
telling everyone to help themselves; we'd all woken up
late - we wouldn't be long. But no such simple
explanation would ever satisfy Gloria. Trying to get
her exploratory arm up underneath Brian's robe as
screaming he raced up the stairs away from her, she
followed him up into the bedroom to find the rest of
us nakedly surveying each other. There had been a
vampire in the night. The only one without a love-bite
was a very red-faced Karl.
"Well, I see you three have opened your present
early," Gloria squealed in delight. "Hmm, looks like
it's got quite a nice fitting too! How were the
nibbles? I see you've had some."
Anything within range that wouldn't break was thrown
at the queen, who quickly disappeared downstairs
laughing. Did she have a story to tell
the rest! We joined them downstairs about twenty
minutes later. However not even the daring shaves and
hot showers could hide the night we'd survived, and
they all curled up at the sight of us - wrecked!
Far from us being the hosts, it was Gloria who was
left to tend to everybody's drinks, including ours.
 "I
never thought I'd see the day anybody would have Boy
Karl," everyone's favourite queen crowed, "and then we
arrive to find you've all had him for Christmas! How
wonderful! Some of us thought he was going to enter
the priesthood, darlings. What in heaven's name
brought it on after all this time?"
"Goodness only knows! But it seems Johnny tried a bit
of the cake yesterday morning," Steven said. "So Brian
and I thought we might as well have a taste of it too
- and it was very nice." He flashed his eyes across to
where Karl and I were sitting opposite him.
He knew! Again!
Gloria and her entourage swept away little more than
an hour later. The pub was open for lunchtime, so no
doubt that was her next port of call. News needs to be
broadcast, especially when it's a scoop. Karl had a
heart to heart with Steven, telling him it was he who
had started it, and come up with the deception when I
wanted to come clean about it. Steven said he'd
guessed that was the way it was, and told Karl not to
worry, he'd known for a long time about his crush on
me. The soul windows reveal everything, he told Karl.
Once you learn how to look into them, there are no
secrets. He was puzzled though why it had never
happened before. It seems Karl, the romantic that he
was, wanted to do it on a day that could never be
forgotten. There wasn't the chance for his eighteenth,
when he had planned for it, so the Christmas after
that birthday was the next unforgettable instance, and
this time the opportunity arose.
 Christmas
dinner was very late - six o'clock when it hit the
table. We'd suffered "the munchies" all day and not
stopped pigging at mince pies and the like, but we
still managed most of it, and then passed the evening
together quietly drinking and watching television. I
sat there wondering what the bedding arrangements
would be when we turned in that night. Now it had
happened, I couldn't bear to think of Karl on his own
in his room wondering what we were doing. Yet four
people sharing every night, even in an emperor bed,
was not going to be comfortable.
At two o'clock in the morning the film finished and it
was off to bed. I was hesitating, when Steven
suggested I should sleep with Karl as I was the one
with the chicken fixation. I looked over at Brian
expecting him to be upset with that arrangement, after
all it was he and I that had last fallen in love.
Steven - for want of better words - was just a willing
but much wanted partner to it. However as I
looked at him, Brian put his arm around Steven. There
was no show of any emotion towards me. Had I lost him?
I wanted to say things, but I couldn't. Not there and
then.
 We'd
been in bed only a few minutes, just cuddling and
talking, when Brian bowled into the room naked.
"Steven reckons we should all be together when we go
to bed, like the family we are, and then because it
would be too crowded you two come back here every
night when it's time to fall asleep," he said, leaning
over to kiss us both before grabbing our hands to lead
us into the other room. "I brought a tray of drink up.
It's Christmas. Time for fun. We want a rematch." He
squeezed my hand a few times, it told me he was okay
with everything, and I felt better about him.
It was another brilliant night of sex. However
as great as it may have been, I think everybody became
aware of a difference that crept in that night. Whilst
we were waiting to get blown away we talked, and
confirmed how much we all loved each other, but it was
noticeably becoming natural for Brian's hand to find
Steven's hand, and for Karl's to find mine, no matter
who was doing what with whom at the time. It was what
Steven and I had done naturally all those years ago at
Gloria's entertaining nights before we moved here.
Although plainly we all still deeply loved one
another, now it was no longer an equal threesome with
a platonically loved one to care for, we had become
two close but separate couples and not the equal
foursome I had hoped for; even expected.
Next time we have our first row, and it's a
spectacular one. Four suddenly become three - or
rather: two plus one. Can we hold it together? And if
so, for how long?
Johnny.
Copyright ©Michael
Knell 2008.
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JOHNNY’S JOURNAL
Chapter 24
And Then There Were . . .
Why does anybody start a row? What do they ever
achieve? So often they are over the most ridiculous
trivialities, things that don't matter at all, and
then go on gathering pace until they blow-up into
life-changing events. Such was our first one. Our only
one.
 Cleaning
up one Saturday morning, it seems Karl may have
accidentally vacuumed-up a clasp that had come off
Steven's watchstrap. Perhaps it had already fallen
onto the floor, or maybe he or the vacuum cleaner hit
the bedside cabinet and it rolled off only to
disappear up the hose never to be seen again. There is
no way now to ever know how it might have happened,
but however it did, its value was negligible - nothing
more than mere pennies. Nevertheless before the
pointless row was over a lot of nasty things were
said, and more than a thousand pounds worth of crystal
glasses and decanters hit the deck, along with many
other valuable household items. It turned into a
blazing row; a right humdinger.
Of course, I sided with Karl, and straightaway got
blamed for that by Steven. According to him Karl now
came first for everything in the house, and that
really wasn't true. I just knew he would not have
deliberately vacuumed away the clasp, and felt it was
wrong to have a go at him over it. Karl said he was
sorry, and even offered to buy him a whole new
watchstrap, but that did nothing to placate him.
After an hour of shouting and throwing things about,
which culminated in the drinks cabinet being pushed
over destroying all that crystal gathered over many
years, Steven stormed off out. Brian, who for most of
the time had stood ashen-faced by the door to the
kitchen, rushed out after him.
Karl and I spent many hours cleaning up the debris,
and trying to make the room look presentable again,
before watching the television whilst we waited for
them to return, hopefully with Steven in a better
mood. It was late that night when Steven came home
very drunk, gone midnight, and he went straight up to
bed without saying a word. Brian didn't come home at
all, and I was worried what might have happened to
him. I couldn't ask Steven where he was for fear of
starting everything off again, and anyway with the
state he was in I doubted he would know.
Next morning, on the Sunday, Steven came into our
bedroom early and said he was sorry. He regretted
everything. And so did I. We had both screamed far too
much at each other, and said things we should never
have said; things that were totally undeserved.
Sitting down on the bottom corner of the bed, Steven
then put his head in hands and cried like a baby;
sobbing uncontrollably. It was only then we learned
the whole truth. When Brian had caught up with him
yesterday, after chasing after him, he'd told him to
"go away" but in more unkind words - and then belted
him around the head a couple of times! Poor Brian had
run off screaming, shouting out that he was going to
kill himself because nobody cared about him anymore.
 Within
minutes, even at that early hour, we were all
downstairs phoning our friends, everyone we could
think of, airing all our dirty washing for them to
enjoy, to find out if they had seen him or knew where
he might have gone. No one had seen him, or knew
anything at all. I wrote a quick note saying how we
were all sorry and we did still love and care about
him, and left it in the middle of the floor where it
could not be missed should he return home, and then
without even bothering to shower we each took a car
out and went in search of him. We searched for the
whole day, until it was becoming dark, but never found
him.
I was hoping I would find him the next day at work,
sitting at his desk, but he wasn't there and didn't
arrive later. An emptiness engulfed me, and it hurt
like hell. It wasn't the same there without him, his
absence was gnawing at me. Did he not know I loved
him, and just as much as I ever did? That only raised
another question in my mind: when had I last actually
told him I loved him that wasn't in bed whilst we were
all fooling around? It should have been said at other
times too. Feeling worse than ever I kept reassuring
myself that every minute the police didn't turn up to
tell us some awful news was a good sign. If he had
done anything horrible, we would have heard by now.
That evening, as I swung the car onto our drive, I
noticed that Brian's car was missing. Rushing inside I
discovered his house keys, and the note replacing the
one I had left for him in the centre of the floor.
To the 3 Most Wonderful Guys in the World,
I'm sorry. I got confused and I've been really stupid.
I should have known you guys would make up, and that
Steven didn't mean to hurt me. But it's too late now.
I spent a couple of nights in London, got drunk and
was really silly. There's no way I can come back now.
I wouldn't put you at risk. I love you all too much
for that. Another day. Another lifetime. Maybe we can
do it all again and get it right next time. Thank you
guys for so many happy years. I shall never forget
them and will really miss you all, especially you
Johnny, my first love. Thinking of you, as always.
With All My Love - Brian. XXX
The fool! The stupid little fool! Of course he could
have come back! The tears flooded out of me, I
couldn't move and was still sitting on the floor
re-reading the note, over and over again, looking for
some hope in it, some clue as to where he might now
have gone, when Karl came home. Then we bawled
together. We guessed he had gone back to London, and
that was far too large a place to search for him.
Steven was utterly destroyed after reading the note.
He started drinking heavily that night, and was never
the same again.
 We
struggled on for a year or so, a two-some and a
lonesome, but it was no longer a happy house. Steven
drank heavily, never joined in anything, and never
visited any of the gay venues again, or even any of
our friends - and they were already keeping their
distance, frightened in case they were thought to be
aligning with either side of an obvious split. We both
resigned from the group's committee, neither of us had
the heart to be involved anymore, though I remained a
group member. Unbelievably Steven took up
bird-watching, ornithology, bought binoculars, many
books on the subject, and would go off for whole
weekends, sometimes much longer, to sit hiding for
hours in some God-forsaken windswept place waiting for
the merest glimpse of a feathered rarity.
Then one day Steven came home and said he wanted out -
and after twenty-five years together that wasn't so
easily done. He was like my right arm, and I would
have given anything for him to have stayed even though
we weren't exactly hitting it off right then. From
those early days when we had tried the taxi business,
everything had been jointly owned. We even had a joint
bank account, and the house was in both our names. But
there was no way I could change his mind, he was
totally without any emotion as he had been ever since
reading Brian's letter that awful day. He didn't even
want to try to recapture what we once had, he only
wanted to go home and stay with his mother for a
while, and so with solicitors involved the bank
account was split down the middle, and in order to
remain there I had to buy his share of the house off
him. He only took a few things the day he left, and
didn't even look back over his shoulder as he drove
away. It broke my heart to know that now I meant
nothing to him at all. I still loved him like crazy,
and it took many months to get over him going, and
perhaps I never have completely. Yes, I loved youth
alright, and like me he was becoming an old man, but
he was my old man! And now he isn't.
Between the two of us, Steven and I had earned a hell
of a lot of money over the years, but by God had we
spent it too! That settlement cost me nearly every
penny I possessed, almost all my share of the bank
account, which left me struggling to pay the enormous
bills such a sizeable house amounted, and I sometimes
wonder today why I ever wanted to stay there, for once
he had gone it seemed so empty with just the two of us
rattling around in it.
Next time things go even further downhill. Will they
ever bottom-out and begin to improve?
Johnny.
Copyright ©Michael
Knell 2008.
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