Chapter 1—Childhood

JACOB LEVIN was my best friend. Jacob Levin is my best friend. Jacob Levin will always be my best friend, which is a rather rash statement, but I fully believe it. That is until the eldest sister of the Greek Fates, Atropos, comes along with her shears, snickety-snack, and cuts the lifeline of one or the other of us. You see, I’ve known him for so long, from at least when we both were three years of age when, according to my mother, his surname was Levinsky. Why they changed it, no one seems to know, not even Jacob. It’s a perfectly good Polish name, which comes from the Polish word for “lion.” Not that Jacob is particularly “lionlike.” In fact, he’s quite a placid individual, and I’m sure at the age of three was even more so.

We met at kindergarten, the Alexandra Park School for kids from three to seven. Not of course that I remember any of this. My mother told me, and Jacob’s mother confirmed it, that I used to wander around after the headmistress, holding her hand, and Jacob followed, holding mine. The only thing I do remember from back at that time was that she taught me to spell the word “Egypt,” a piece of knowledge that hasn’t so far been of special use to me, as everyone knows how to spell Egypt, except the Egyptians themselves, who call their country Misr, and why not? Everyone has a right to call their own country what they wish. Why should they and the rest of us slavishly follow those damned ancient Greeks, who called their own country “Hellas”?

Around the age of seven or eight, and this I do remember with startling clarity, Jacob and I were wandering around the grounds of Alexandra Palace. Yes, a real palace but not a royal one. It was (and still is, as far as I know) called the People’s Palace, and housed things like exhibitions and a roller-skating rink, and was the place from which our BBC television programmes were originally broadcast.

Anyway, the grounds were open to all, and Jacob and I made full use of them, playing what was then the allowed term, Cowboys and Indians. I don’t think we ever played Doctors and Nurses. (Children didn’t develop at such an early age in those far-off times.) To our mothers, “outdoors” wasn’t the dangerous place it is today. Huh! If she only knew.

We were, I remember, playing tag or some such game, which involved running through and hiding amongst thick clumps of bushes, when we were approached by a man. He might well have been quite young, but to us he was incredibly ancient—you know, about our parents’ age. Yes, we had our full share of parents who stayed together in spite of, or probably because of, “the children.”

This man, as I was saying, approached and asked Jacob if he’d like to see “something really exciting.”

Jacob said he would, but I had my doubts. Perhaps I was just that much more street savvy. The man held out his hand to Jacob, who was about to take it when I stepped in. “I’ll tell my mummy,” I said. Middle-class children called their parents “mummy” and “daddy.” Perhaps they still do. I have little knowledge and thankfully no interest in children of seven or eight (breeding grounds of colds and coughs, I always think).

My outburst didn’t seem to deter the man, so I came out with the strongest mantra I knew. “Don’t touch him or I’ll tell the police.” You remember the police perhaps in those days. They walked the streets, stoically telling enquirers the time and, if we were offending in any way, giving us a clip round the ear, which made our heads ring for minutes afterwards. If we told our parents, they would say we deserved it and, more than likely, give us another.

The man’s expression changed. I think I can almost if not quite see it now. That amiable, I’m-your-friend look altered to one of, what was it, fear? No, not fear, belligerence. He reached out his hand to grab Jacob’s arm, and I remember shouting, “Run, Jacob, run,” and we both hightailed it out of the bushes and into an open space where there were people around and I felt safe.

“Why did we have to run?” asked Jacob, and I didn’t know, though I do of course now.

By then we were both going to what is called a prep school, Suffolk House, a bit like the middle schools of today, where we were prepared for secondary education from thirteen to eighteen. There we learned various mnemonics like remembering the Cinque Ports of Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney, Hastings, Winchelsea, and Rye by the sentence, “Ships at the Disposal of His Royal Highness (When Required).” Yes, I know there are seven ports, and cinq means five, but that’s British history for you.

I remember the headmaster had a system of white (good) and black (bad) marks and a board on which the results were displayed. The winner for the year became head of school. Points were given for both academic and sporting achievements. Jacob was good at cricket. I was good academically. As cricket was only played in the summer term and not in the other two, I always finished top at the end of the year, and Jacob second or sometimes third. I don’t think he ever minded, though. I was, after all, his friend.

This was also the place where I found a sort of fumbling sex, though not with Jacob, who would have been the obvious person. It was in a French lesson, and Mademoiselle, as we had to call her, was chattering away. It was a gloriously hot summer’s day and the windows were open so we could look longingly at the bright, sunlit streets outside. The desks we had at that school were double, so two boys or two girls sat together. (Never mix the two, things might happen!) The boy I was sitting next to—I can’t remember his name—started pressing his bare leg against mine (we hadn’t progressed to long trousers at the time). First I moved my leg away, but his followed, and so I pressed back, more, I think, to stop him shoving me off the bench and onto the floor (a black mark certainly). I suppose he must have taken this as a hint, for the next thing I knew was his hand, rather hot and sweaty on my leg, just above the knee and moving upward. A feeling I hadn’t experienced before took over, and I opened my legs, though there was still not enough room, so he transferred his attention to my flies, opening the buttons and delving inside. I decided I enjoyed it, until out of the blue, Mademoiselle called my name and demanded that I stand up and give an example of a French sentence starting with “I’m afraid….” I stood, revealing my open flies—luckily, willy had not been freed—and acknowledged, “J’ai peur d’avoir été découvert.”

I’m sure some understood what had been going on, probably were doing it themselves. I’m certain that Jacob knew, and I had the feeling that he was disappointed that he had not been the recipient of such attentions. He never said anything, though. Mademoiselle didn’t either and gave me a white mark—a reward for sexual fumbling! Wow, that was encouraging!

At eleven years old or just after, we took what was called the 11+ examination. It is probably the exam that had the most influence on one’s future. The results decided whether you would go on to a good school or a mediocre/ba

d one. It was an iniquitous exam passed in 1944 by a coalition government, so I guess we can’t blame any particular party, though the arch-conservative Winston Churchill was still prime minister. However, the all-wise proletariat threw him out the following year. “Thank you, Winnie, for the war effort, but this is peacetime and I guess we’ll try someone else.” He was replaced by Mr Clement Attlee, to be precise, under whose auspices the free National Health Service was instituted.

Chapter 2—Adolescence

JACOB FAILED his 11+ and went to a secondary modern school, which he hated. I got a scholarship to one of the minor public schools (which in England are actually private schools and enormously expensive, so the scholarship was a godsend). I loved my school. I loved the fact that, apart from the very lowest forms (which I escaped because of my years at Suffolk House), we were treated almost as adults. The range of sports and subjects was enormous, and theoretically we could choose our own curriculum, though advice from parents and relevant teachers was considered desirable.

It was here that I decided I was irretrievably gay, though I probably didn’t use the term. Elmbridge was an all-boys school, and I fell in love with quite a few guys and lusted after many more. There were opportunities for more sophisticated fumbling, which often reached “fruition.” These took place behind the fives court, in the bicycle sheds, even in the outfields of the cricket grounds, where long grass and occasional nettles (ouch) provided suitable cover for our nefarious sexual activities.

I’m sure that in most of these cases, my companions in sex weren’t queer at all but just wanted release from their raging testosterone. Someone else’s hand was marginally more exciting than your own. I expect, and in some cases know, that many of them went on to marry and lead extremely satisfying heterosexual sex lives to produce progeny that went on to Elmbridge and through the same experiences as I did. Others, though, I came across in gay bars or clubs, and we reminisced and occasionally “copped off” together, though it was never the same thing. I think there was always a slight sense of déjà vu.

Mostly these activities passed unnoticed or at least unpunished by the masters, but there was one case that was so obvious that ignorance could not excuse it. Two boys were discovered in flagrante delicto in bed together, not once, which resulted in a telling off and advisory caution, not twice, a swishing of the cane on the bare buttocks by the head, who was adept at the practice and theoretically the only master who could administer the cane, but three times, expulsion but done in the most covert manner. No one wanted the school to “get a reputation” for “that sort of thing.” Nor, in fact, did us boys want a crackdown on our activities or indeed any sort of internal investigation.

At that time I was so much in love with a boy called Thorne (we only used surnames in school) but he was, we assumed, in love with another boy called Thompson. They were always together, so we decided they were an item. Looking back at old group house photographs, they appear as very ordinary-looking boys, and I cannot understand why I wasted so much time in sick longing over them.

But such is the nature of love/lust in the adolescent and occasionally the adult also.

My holidays I spent with Jacob. His experiences at secondary modern were as opposite to mine as it’s possible to be. His school was coeducational, and the boys there bragged of their conquests of their girlfriends and how far they had got. Certainly some had got further than others, and it wasn’t all that unusual to see a thirteen-year-old girl sulkily (or sometimes happily) pushing a squalling filled pram around town or sometimes leaving school for a period and returning months later looking much thinner.

Jacob and I came out to each other—he rather hesitatingly, I much more openly. I was going to say proudly, but poor Jacob’s experiences had been so limited—the one that he did confess sounded so unlikely that I felt he’d invented it. Yes, he said, there was one man with whom he’d had relations but it was in a bus shelter. The episode, if it had ever happened, was obviously in the same class as my fumble in the French lesson at Suffolk House.

We never did anything together. I don’t know why. He was just my best friend and, in that capacity, exempt from any sexual feelings. I don’t mean to sound unfeeling. He was my best friend, and if asked I’d probably admit that I loved him—but like a brother—and I would have done anything for him, had he asked.

Jacob and I, and my parents and his mother. Did I tell you that his parents split up in a rather messy divorce that, I know, upset Jacob exceedingly, for he told me, tears running down his cheeks, how much he missed his dad? Anyway, the five of us crammed into a fairly old Ford Consul and toured Europe. In Belgium we saw and marveled at the Atomium, glinting like silver in the sunshine. In France, the Eiffel Tower of course, the Louvre (I have a picture of myself sitting alone and rather regally in the Champ de Mars, taken, I assume, by Jacob on my father’s old box Brownie). Phones that took pictures hadn’t been invented then, though they were on the way. The so-called mobile phones, however, were the size of house bricks and nearly as heavy, and way beyond our pecuniary reach.

One summer we went down the Rhine in Germany, passing the Lorelei rock, that huge lump of slate that sticks out into the river and on which the Lorelei sang so beautifully that she lured sailors to their death. Huh! Catch me being lured anywhere by a woman, I thought scornfully, and aptly quoted the first two lines of “Die Lorelei” by Heine in German. “Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, daß ich so traurig bin.” My mother said I was showing off, but I said it was just something we learned in class, and Jacob looked tolerably impressed.

We passed through Switzerland and then across the Alps (without elephants) via the St Gotthard Pass into Italy. We visited Venice, which was smelly at that time of year, and then across to Florence, which was beautiful, and finally up through France, and home. That was a trip and a half. Luckily all three adults could drive, so took turns. Then of course Jacob and I had to split up again. We got quite emotional and a few tears on both our parts were shed as the new terms started.

I’ve probably given the impression that my life at school was one of sin, debauchery, solitary wanking, and mutual masturbation. There was certainly some of that, but we had to work hard, especially if we aimed to get a place at a reasonable university. In fact, as we worked our way towards the sixth forms and concentrated on our A-level specialties, I confined my emotions to a single person, Hornby, first name, John. Yes, he thought he was gay. Yes, we had sex together from time to time, but mostly we were just friends, not firm, everlasting friends like me and Jacob, but good friends.

In fact, one half-term, he and I went to one of the West End revivals of Oklahoma, which we enjoyed immensely. Who says that only a true gay loves a musical? Dunno, but I certainly do, and he did also. Why didn’t I take Jacob? Do you know, I can’t exactly remember. Possibly it was something to do with dates, when we could get tickets and when he was unavailable. But why would Jacob be unavailable? He never was, but anyway, I went with John, and probably the next day, I introduced him to Jacob.

That was a mistake! A big, big mistake! John was fine. Jacob was an old friend I’d known for some fifteen years. On the other hand, Jacob obviously hated John. I saw it in his eyes as they met, in his body language, in his refusal to talk apart from animal-like grunts. In fact afterwards I told him off. Said he’d been behaving like a jilted drama queen, and that he’d better apologize to John.

But he just shook his head and flounced off.

It was the first time in all those years that we’d ever had a major quarrel. Minor disagreements, sure, but never anything like this. I knew pretty well that he wouldn’t make the first move, so later I went around to his house.

His mother was doing something domestic in the kitchen, but she motioned with her eyes upstairs and whispered, “Whatever’s happened? He’s been crying.”

Seventeen-year-old boys don’t cry, I told myself as I went up to his bedroom.

But the red-rimmed eyes told their own story.

&nb

sp; “Jacob, dear Jacob, you mustn’t take things like this. You know you are my only true friend.”

It sounds so banal written down, but it’s what I said.

Then he got up and ran toward me, hugged the breath out of me—and then started to kiss me on the cheeks, on the mouth, on my eyes. Funnily enough they weren’t sexual. I don’t think either of us were aroused, and I’d have surely felt it because we were clasped together face to face, chest to chest, groin to groin—and there was no hardness in between.

Tags: Michael Gouda M-M Romance
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