Out of Bounds

by Mike Seabrook

  “They — some of them — think you’re gay”, said Stephen, in almost a matter of fact tone.

  Graham went cold. His mind had been running on overtime in the last few moments, and he had been virtually certain that this was what Stephen was going to say. But hearing it stated outright like that, cold and unequivocally, he felt a momentary tremor of fright, almost panic, shoot through him. Again he took refuge in silence and waiting.

  “They don’t actually know anything”, went on Stephen, in the same calm, quiet tone. “But some of them think so.”

  “I…” began Graham. But he felt a hand placed firmly on the curve of his hip beneath the quilt, and rest there, firmly, and moving slowly in small circles. He interpreted this, correctly, as a soothing message to be silent, and obeyed.

  “You know I’ve told you a lot about my home and my parents, and so on”, Stephen went on after a further pause. This time Graham permitted himself a murmur of acknowledgement. “And I think you’ve known there was something else, too”, he continued. “Something else I wanted to ask you about, but didn’t…wasn’t ready to yet. I’ve had the impression you were aware of that…?” He made it a question.

  “Yes, I thought there was something else”, he assented.

  “Did you ever have any idea what it might be?”

  This time Stephen left it hanging in mid-air, content to wait for a reply.

  Graham lay propped on one elbow in bed and gave the question some concentrated thought, then said carefully “I… think I could have had a guess at what it might have been. I think… I think I knew it was probably something big, something important. I think I was pretty sure it was something you couldn’t, or at least didn’t want to talk about to your parents. And — well, if you want me to be absolutely honest, which I take it you do, well, yes, frankly, Stephen, yes, I think I had a pretty good idea what the problem might be. I’m sorry to sound so hesitant”, he said, his voice more confident as his bodily reactions began to slow back to normal. “But I’d hate to draw conclusions about you and find they were the wrong ones. I don’t think it’s my place to judge other people, or to speculate about them, except in private. Everyone forms impressions, opinions, about other people. But unless they concern oneself, well, I think they’re to be kept strictly inside the mind of the person making them. But, since you ask me point blank like this, well, you’ve had my answer. May I ask if it’s what you expected to hear?”

  “Yes, of course”, came Stephen’s voice. “But can I ask you some more things first, please?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, you haven’t said anything about what I’ve just told you about what the club think about you. I’d have thought you’d be pretty shocked. But you didn’t react at all.”

  “I did, Stephen. Just not audibly. But I wasn’t very surprised to hear they thought that about me. I’ve had my suspicions from time to time. You know — or, well, perhaps you don’t — but you get the odd impression here and there, overhear the odd word when somebody didn’t know you were in earshot — that sort of thing. No, I wasn’t surprised. And apart from being surprised, what other reaction is there open to me? I can’t do anything about it, can I? I can’t stop them thinking I may be gay. I can’t stop their tongues wagging about it, if that’s the way they want it. I’ve got my own ideas which particular members of the club may have been doing the talking. But what would you suggest I do about it?”

  “They haven’t actually said anything”, said Stephen. “Not in so many words. Not to me, anyway. And I wouldn’t suggest you do anything about it. I wouldn’t have a clue how to react if people were saying that sort of thing about me.” He paused, then there came a faint titter. “I expect they are, actually, don’t you?” he said. “With me being such a close friend of yours, and sharing this room like this, and you bringing me from the school and introducing me, and so on…Now can I ask you the main thing? Please?”

  There was a tone of soft pleading in the soft voice which stirred Graham’s pulse in a turmoil of mingled love, fondness, protectiveness and yearning; but it was a pleading of a kind unattended by any sense of indignity: rather it was the tone of one who politely but without abasement asks something from one equal to another; the tone of one who asks only for that which he is owed by right. Graham wriggled one of his hands from under the bedclothes and laid it gently on Stephen’s own hand, where it still rested on his hip. “Ask me anything you like”, he said calmly, authoritatively. The twelve years between their ages vanished, and it was one mature man addressing another.

  There was another pause, the longest yet. Then Stephen spoke again, still in the same level voice. “It’s quite simple. How do you know if you’re gay, Graham?”

  “I can answer that quite easily”, he said. “You have to ask yourself one question. And give yourself an honest answer, that goes without saying.”

  “Yes?”

  “Which sex do you fancy?”

  Graham could hear him breathing as he thought about it, almost hear him thinking. “Suppose I say ‘men’?”

  “Then you’re gay.”

  “It’s as simple as that?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid it’s as simple as that. I say ‘I’m afraid’, because it’s not something everybody is very happy to accept. Some people are so unhappy they quite simply refuse to accept it. Others ask the question, answer it, and off they go, quite satisfied. They’re the fortunate ones. All they’ve been needing is to have the question answered. They’re not too bothered what the answer is, so long as they have it answered. But others… well…”

  “Suppose I said ‘I don’t know’? What then?”

  “I could go on, ask you a few further questions. I’d be able to get to the answer quickly enough, without much trouble, if you really wanted to know it. That would be the real difficulty — finding out whether you really wanted to know or not. Can I ask you something now?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Do you want to know this? I mean, I’m taking it that this isn’t just an abstraction, for the pleasure of abstract thought. Do you, really, want to know this about yourself?”

  “Yes, please. Yes, I do.”

  “All right, then, Stephen. You tell me: which sex do you fancy?”

  “I don’t know. I think I do, but I don’t know for sure.”

  “Which do you think?”

  “Men.”

  “Then I think you’re gay. Do you want me to go on — ask you the other questions?”

  “Will you answer another one from me first?”

  “Yes.” ‘

  “Which sex do you fancy?”

  “Men.”

  “Then will you show me which I am?”

  Graham caught his breath. He had, he supposed, known all along that this was where it was leading, where it was all intended to end up. Yet when the boy came out with it, for the second time that night it had the effect of making the foreknowledge of it singularly unhelpful against the shock wave it set up. He lay back against his pillow to gather his thoughts. When he spoke at last his voice was sober, carefully schooled to neutrality, the better to conceal the sudden racing of his blood and the feeling of lightheadedness that was making him feel sick and faint and threatened to lay him gasping and speechless on the hotel bed, like a freshly beached fish. “You want me to…”

  “Yes, I do”, cried Stephen, driven beyond his power to control his sudden, urgent need. Desire, lust, yearning flared within the boy as the careful facade of rationality cracked and burst, and he became what he was: a young, healthy animal suffering from years of sexual repression, ignorance and distortion when he was at the peak of his potency. The whole of it boiled up and broke the surface in three monosyllables, bursting from his lips like machine-gun bullets. As suddenly as they burst from him he subsided, and his next words were spoken quietly once more. “Yes, dear Graham, I do want you to. I want you to show me. Show me what I am. Now.”

  “It’s breaking the law”, said Graham, pushing b
ack the quilt and the sheet as he spoke, and making room in the bed beside him. “We’d both be in the most frightful trouble with the police if it ever came out. Especially me. I dare say you know that, and I don’t suppose you care.”

  “No”, whispered Stephen, sliding into bed beside him. “Nor do I”, said Graham, and it sounded like a sigh.

  * * *

  “Mmmmmmm.” Graham awoke with an erection, which was common enough, and with fingers running up and down it, which wasn’t. He circled quickly back to consciousness to find himself entwined in Stephen’s hard, vibrant embrace, and Stephen’s lips and tongue busy about his own. “Mmmm”, he repeated, easing himself slightly to one side in order to speak. “What are you up to?” he muttered as Stephen followed his movement and sealed his lips once more.

  It was several minutes before he got free again. When he did it was to nibble Stephen’s ear as his own passion rose rapidly. The boy’s hands were everywhere, and he could feel a very erect penis pressing urgently into his lower abdomen. “You sexy little bugger”, he muttered into Stephen’s hair. “We shouldn’t be…”

  “Shhh!” murmured Stephen, exploring with tongue and fingertips. Graham stopped resisting, and gave himself up to being caressed, wondering how the boy could have discovered such expertise in the space of a few hours.

  “Have you noticed”, said Stephen conversationally, flicking the tip of his tongue round the convolutions of Graham’s ear, “you get a sort of electric shock when your cock touches mine? I can feel it every time they touch.”

  Graham had noticed. “What are you trying to do to me?” he muttered as passion ached and throbbed through him.

  “It’s quarter to seven”, said Stephen softly. “They won’t be going in to breakfast till about eight. We’ll have time for a shower before we go down.” He closed Graham’s mouth with his own, and resumed exploring.

  “What do you want to do?” whispered Graham as his arms went tight round Stephen’s waist and neck.

  “You know bloody well what I want”, hissed Stephen, taking Graham’s penis and guiding it as he turned lazily onto his stomach. “I want to be screwed again, just like last night. Then I want to do it to you. Then we’ll have a shower, and go down to breakfast looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths, and then you’re going to get a hundred against Driffield, and I’m going to get fifty, and take five for thirty. Then we’re going to come back here and have a drink, and then I shall want to be screwed again, and so on, ad infinitum…” And since Graham was by now already halfway inside him, there was little point in resistance, even if he had been capable of it.

  They showered together, giggling and splashing each other as they fondled and caressed under the heavy jets. Stephen, with the inexhaustible potency of his years, became seriously aroused in the little perspex cubicle, and Graham mischievously turned the jet to the coldest point on the dial as he pulled away, effectually quelling the boy’s ardour for the moment. But even after they had dried each other, romping together on Graham’s bed, Stephen was suddenly twined round him with renewed vigour, erect and urgent and locking his arms powerfully round the older man. Graham leaned back in his arms and gazed contemplatively at him. “You’re going to wear me out before this week’s out”, he said, amicably. “I’m an old man, you know.” Stephen tweaked him playfully, then began stroking him with a slow, confident rhythm.

  “All right”, sighed Graham in mock resignation as his desire rose to meet Stephen’s. “I suppose I’ll have to quieten you down. As I haven’t got a bucket of water I’ll show you something else. But then it’s breakfast, okay?”

  Stephen smiled lazily into his face, then impulsively leant forward and licked the tip of his nose. “Okay”, he said softly, his eyes bright with arousal. Graham breathed another mock sigh, slid down through the boy’s pinioning arms onto his knees, and ran the tip of his tongue up the exposed underside of Stephen’s erect and quivering penis. Stephen moaned softly. “Oh, God”, he breathed as Graham got to work, “you don’t know how much I love you, do you?” Graham trembled, and got on with what he was doing.

  * * *

  “You don’t need me to tell you we’ve got to keep this a total, deadly secret”, said Graham very quietly as they went down to breakfast just after eight o’clock. Even though they were walking along a corridor less than four feet wide, with no-one in sight, he could not help casting a furtive glance round and behind.

  “Of course I don’t”, said Stephen cheerfully. “I know we’re breaking the law, and I don’t give a shit about the law. Nor do you, do you? You and I are the only people who know what happened, and we’re not going to talk, are we? The others may suspect something—you said yourself last night that they might. Well, let ’em suspect, I say. They can’t possibly know anything, and they wouldn’t have a chance of proving anything even if they suspected. Please, Graham, stop worrying”, he pleaded, looking much younger and more vulnerable than he had at any time in the past twenty-four hours. Graham summoned up such strength as remained to him, and gave him an uncertain smile as they turned into the breakfast room.

  They were among the last downstairs, and had to sit at separate tables. Stephen sat with some of the younger members of the party who had formed their own noisy clique in a corner of the room, and Graham dropped into a chair between Don Parker and Bill Stanley, a middle-aged beanpole of a man with a deeply-lined face and a Hitler moustache.

  Graham sat silently toying with his breakfast, to the chagrin of the fat, motherly waitress, who clucked over him until he was driven to pleading a poor night’s sleep. Stephen, by contrast, was in high spirits.

  “They’re hyperactive in children’s corner this morning”, observed Stanley as Stephen’s voice floated across. “This roll would turn a yard”, he was saying. “Give it a try”, someone urged him. He jumped up, took a short run and bowled his perfectly spherical bread roll towards Graham’s table. It leapt high to one side and struck Don Parker smartly on the back of the head. Don, who was not at his best at breakfast, clutched at his head so quickly that he crushed the roll into his hair. He directed an outraged glare in the direction from which the roll had come. “Ere y’are son, on me ead”, cried one of the youngsters as Don hurled the remains of the roll back at them. “I said it would turn”, cried Stephen triumphantly.

  “Hey, hey”, called Bill. “Let’s have a bit of decorum, you kids.”

  “You get like that when you get old and miserable”, said a youthful voice, and there was a chorus of geriatric sound effects.

  The horseplay went on, only slightly subdued, and this set the tone for the day, with Graham moody and uncommunicative while Stephen was high-spirited and playful. At Driffield Graham amassed a grinding thirty-three runs in a manner reminiscent of Geoffrey Boycott in an especially entrenched frame of mind, while Stephen flashed and glanced blithely to forty-nine, only to get out square-cutting airily at a ball pitched well up on middle stump. So far from being depressed or annoyed at himself he almost danced off the field, swinging his bat cheerfully.

  “That grin’d go right round your head if it wasn’t for your ears”, remarked Bill Stanley. Stephen put his tongue out at him as he skipped up the steps to the dressing room.

  “He’s chipper this morning”, observed Bill. He jabbed Graham in the ribs with his elbow. “You bin putting certain substances in his tea, or somethin, Graham?” Graham gave him a brief, unconvincing grin and said nothing. Bill stared hard at him. “You all right?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  Graham realized with a mental start that his depressed manner was attracting attention. He affected a wan smile. “Yes, I’m okay”, he said, making a concerted effort to pull himself together. “I had a lousy night, and I’ve got a blinder of a headache, that’s all.”

  “I’ve got some paracetamol”, volunteered somebody. “Want a couple, Graham?” He nodded gratefully, noticing for the first time that he really had developed a headache over the morning. The tablets were produced and he went
into the pavilion for a drink. The others exchanged glances briefly and then forgot him as they turned back to the game.

  When Graham came out after taking his tablets he bumped into Stephen, emerging from the dressing room after taking off his pads. “Walk round?” asked that youth, brightly. Graham stood for a long moment, contemplating his friendly young face, and his mood lightened as abruptly as the depression had descended when they woke. “Yes. All right, come on”, he said, in a brighter tone than he had used all day. They strolled off.

  “You’ve been pretty grim all day”, said Stephen as soon as they were out of earshot of the others. “Shot!” he added, as Alan Hood, the vice-captain, whipped the ball off his legs. He ran to field the ball as it came skimming fast across the billiard-table outfield and over the boundary. Then he returned to Graham’s side, and the concerned expression returned to his face. “Is something the matter? I mean, you’re not sorry about last night, are you? Please don’t say you’re sorry it happened, Graham…”

  Graham looked at him with the faintest glint of a smile playing round the corners of his mouth and eyes. “No, I’m not sorry”, he eventually said, a shade reluctantly. “Not really. It’s just…” He fell silent.

  “Yes,”, prompted Stephen, anxiously. “Just what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know”, said Graham vaguely. “I just felt it was… I suppose I felt it wasn’t right”, he faltered.

  “Oh, come on, Graham”, protested Stephen. “How can you say it wasn’t right? I wanted you to do everything you did, didn’t I? I asked you to, didn’t I, for Christ’s sake? So what can possibly be not right about the whole thing? You tell me that.” His voice had risen slightly in exasperation, but his expression was affectionate and concerned, and he put an arm gently about Graham’s shoulders as they walked slowly on.