Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part IV)

They got out of the car. The man eyed the boy suspiciously, as if checking for loot, or possibly weapons.

“Who gave you that shiner?”

Again the boy checked for useful lies. Would ‘a father’ work in his favour? A boy’s father, or better a girl’s? He wasn’t sure, decided to play for time.

“Someone,” he said, layering on a little sulk. His instinct told him to look down, as if ashamed or lying.

“Someone you stole from?”

 “No!” he spat, and glared at the man, suddeny certain how to play it. He forced himself to think of the man who had hit him, to pump for anger and disgust. “He stole from me. We had agreed…” He bit off the rest of the sentence, looked away again.

“He had agreed, to…” he muttered.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man adjust his belt, then wipe his brow, and he was certain he had him. But to make sure he let the silence become uncomfortable.

“Well,” the man said. “You can carry my bag.”

A short while later, they arrived at the man’s cabin: a small windowless room, the confined space thick with the hum and thrum of the ferry’s engines. The tiny, attached moulded plastic bathroom smelled of disinfectant. The boy put the bag down. The man sat down on the bed, looked up at the boy, then took off his glasses and began to polish them on his sweater. When he had put them back on, he said:

“My name is Richard. How should I call you?” and he put his hand out, as if he had forgotten how to introduce himself without doing so.

The boy waited just long enough to make Richard remember, then shook it – his palms were unpleasantly greasy – and said: “Ariel. Ariel Storm.”

He let go, stuffed his hands into his back pockets and looked down at the toes of his scuffed boots. “Um. Friends.” He looked over to the little neon light glowing over the headboard of the bed. “Friends call me Arik.”

For a while, neither said anything. Then Richard cleared his throat.

“Are you hungry, Arik?”

The boy nodded and they went to the restaurant. Richard asked him if he wanted a burger and fries, and then ordered the Viking Burger with cheese and bacon for the boy, while he had the haddock with chips and peas himself. He insisted on apple tart for both of them for desert.

“Can I smoke on deck, please,” the boy asked afterwards. Richard lectured him about health risks, but the boy could see how it made Richard both uncomfortable and happy to have him behave like a prisoner. He got his cigarette, and they talked about the stars. The boy pointed out Cassiopeia, and Richard showed him how to find Pegasus from there.

“It looks more like a kite with a tail, than a horse,” the boy said.

“True.” Richard looked at it for a while and cocked his head. “But it can still fly, can’t it?”

Richard watched the boy finish his smoke. Then he put a hand on the boy’s back: “Back inside, now.”

The boy knew he should shake it off angrily, it would fit the character better, but he felt too tired. They went back to the cabin. Richard guided the boy inside, and then locked the door from the inside, pocketing the key after a moment’s hesitation.

His voice shook slightly when he said: “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be with you right away.” Then he went to the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

The boy stood uncertainly in the room. There was no sound from the bathroom. He sat down on the bed, opened his boots and kicked them off. Suddenly he felt embarrassment for the sour smell of sweat coming off him. Hastily he peeled off his socks, then his jeans, then his jacket and sweater. He bundled all of his clothes together and put them underneath his backpack in the corner by the door, farthest from the bed. Then he sat down on the bed, with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, blanket over the knees. And he closed his eyes and waited.

After a while he heard Richard flush and run the tap and then open the door.

Richard had undressed, too. He was wearing his unbuttoned shirt over a ribbed undershirt and grey retro boxers, and dark socks. He looked most naked without his glasses.

Richard came over to the bed in little steps, and sat down next to the boy. He put one hand onto the boy’s covered knee, looked at him. With his other hand he brushed the boy’s bruised cheek. Twice he wanted to say something, but failed. As if to release him, the boy let the blanket slide down, went to his knees and pulled his dirty white T-shirt over his head. Then he took Richard’s hand and placed it on his shoulder, as if to dance. He took the other one, but instead of placing it on his hip he tried to guide it between his legs.

Richard stood up.

“I am sorry…”

He disappeared again in the bathroom.

The boy waited for a while. Eventually he went over to his backpack, and got dressed. He took the dog eared copy of William Butler’s “The Butterfly Revolution” he had nicked from the Kirkwall hostel out of his pack, sat down with the back to the cabin door and started to read.

Eventually the bathroom door opened again.

Richard was dressed, too. The boy put his finger between the pages and dangled the book between his knees. Richard came over and sat down next to him.

“I am sorry.”

“It’s okay,” the boy said. “Do you want to try again?”

Richard shook his head, took off his glasses again and wiped them.

“I should never have even thought it. It was…”

“It’s really okay, Richard.”

“No,” Richard suddenly said fiercely. “It’s not.” And when the boy flinched, he added more quietly: “Not because…” He hesitated but then forced himself to say it. “Not because of the gay sex. But because you are a kid in trouble, and it was vile of me to even consider taking advantage of that.”

To his own astonishment the boy found himself smiling wanly, instead of bristling at the diminution. He patted Richard’s knee. I would deserve it, he thought. I would deserve so much worse. Why couldn’t you be a little bit less decent?

“So, what now? Want me to get out? I can make my way from here.”

Richard stared at the opposite wall for a while. Then he asked: “Do you play chess?”

Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part III)

He tried the same trick again that had gotten him to the Orkneys: To wait amongst the cars before they boarded, find one to hide in when the occupants are taking a leak or stretching their legs, and sneak out on the ferry past the ticket check. He picked a station wagon with the rear seats flipped over and an antique rolltop desk wedged in. The desk was covered by several woollen blankest to protect it and he figured he could hide under the bunching blankets without being seen.

Again, he opened a door - this time on the passenger side – and kept it open just a crack when the driver got out and locked the car. He slipped inside and pulled the door shut from inside, locking himself in, and crawled under a blanket. The cord around his neck caught on something and he took off the pick and stuffed it into his pocket. The same excitement filled him as he had to lie under the blanket, blind, sounds muffled, and he had to wait whether it would work out or not.

He heard the driver return, the engine start again, the expected rumble up the ramp into the thrumming hold of the ship. He waited for the driver to get out, but he couldn’t hear or feel anything under the blanket and the incessant vibrations of the huge ship’s engines and the general din of all the other cars and passengers. He realised his mistake with the station waggon, the insides were too small and too well lit for him to have a chance of observing the driver without risk of discovery to himself.

He considered sleeping in the car, under the blankets, and to simply wait until the car had left the ferry again, but he was afraid he would struggle free of his cover in his dreams and be found still on board, with no place to flee to. So when he thought the driver must surely have left, he peaked out. The lights in the car were off and he tried to get to his knees quietly, but he bumped into something under the blanket and it made a hollow thump.

“What the…?”

The man’s voice was deep and throaty, and somehow sounded as if he’d been weeping.

The boy didn’t waste time looking, he scrambled to the passenger side rear door and tried to open it, but it was locked.

“Who are you?”

Shit, he thought. Fucking shit. And he turned around.

The only illumination in the car came from the fluorescent lights high up at the ceiling of the hold, and most where blocked by trucks and travel busses parked around them. The man was wearing large glasses that blinked in the little light and hid his eyes. He was gaunt and balding and wore a neat charcoal sweater under a light grey suit jacket and over a white shirt and a mauve tie. His face was twisted in what the boy assumed was intense anger.

“A blind passenger, I don’t believe it. A dirty little stowaway. Thought you get across without paying, did you, you rat?”

“Please don’t report me.” It was out before the boy could take it back.

“What?”

The boy took a deep breath. The second time was harder, he could feel his face begin to burn. “Please. Don’t report me. I… I can pay you.” And he took out the stolen money, offered a fistful of bills to the man.

I shouldn’t get caught, he thought, desperately. I shouldn’t have to see their faces. And he knew what he meant was, they shouldn’t get to see his. He hated the pleading in his voice. “Please… Sir.”

The man seemed taken aback for a moment, then considering.

“Come up here. Show yourself.” And he patted the passenger seat next to him.

The boy hesitated briefly, but he knew that the man only had to step out of the car and call for help, and he would be arrested and sent back. It was the thought of himself in handcuffs when his mother came to collect him – or his sister Nessa if his mother would refuse to – that made him comply. He shoved the money back into his jeans’ pocket. Then he climbed through the gap between the seats and sat down, hands in his lap, unconsciously already accommodating the cuffs.

The man had leaned back a little to give him more room, but watched him with an odd expression. When the boy was sitting, the man reached up and turned on the light. Everything about him was grey, and a little bit crumpled, in that tasteful British way that made him entirely inoffensive and almost impossible to remember if passed on the street. The boy was very conscious of his own dirtiness and smell.

“If you have so much money, why didn’t you pay for a ticket?”

The boy hesitated. He couldn’t come up with any useful lie.

“I’m not old enough,” he admitted, hesitatingly. “And no papers.”

Something in the man’s eyes changed, in his posture. He tensed slightly, Seemed to move at the same time closer and away. Something about him reminded the boy of the men he used to cheat in Edinburgh. Maybe he can do it here, seduce him and then get away. He remembered the moves.

“Also, I thought I might need the money. If… it doesn’t work out.”

“If what doesn’t work out?”

“The… the man… I’m meeting… my friend…”

“You…?” The man stopped. There was disgust on his face, the boy thought, but also need. Was he imagining it? But what did he have to lose? He gave himself a push, searched for tears inside. He thought of Bev, of how she would feel when she woke up. It didn’t work. He groped for something else, Nette’s death. No, that was buried too deep, frozen in a hundred centuries of polar night. He knew where he had to go, the one place he could tap for tears.

He thought of the night in the deer stalking cottage, the tentative touch, the kisses, the awakening hunger. The whispered words. And he felt the burning in his eyes, and the loathing for himself, for abusing the memory.

Quietly: “He said he would take care of me, but I don’t know if I can trust him. We only spoke on the web. I might need it to get away again. But…” He forced himself to look at the man next to him, to smile. It was easy to make the smile look faked and forced and shaky. “But I’ll pay you anything if you don’t send me back. You don’t know… I… I can’t go back… If my father…” – he managed to get a slight hitch into the word ‘father’ that added a perfect touch, he thought – “if he sees me again in handcuffs, he’ll…” He let the sentence trail away, let his still burning eyes dipping down in genuine shame for the charade.

“I’ll pay you... in money… or…” The hesitation was genuine as well. “Please, won’t you help me? I… I need some help.”

The man was silent. The boy didn’t dare to look at him. The man turned off the light in the car and said in his deep voice: “Well, I can’t leave you in the car.”

The boy looked up. The man was pale except for two bright red spots on his hollow cheeks. The glasses were opaque with reflection again.

Chapter Five: Duct Tape Is Silver (Part VII)

Ponyboy was crawling around in the rain and the muck in the alley behind the pub. I helped him to his feet, put his left arm around my shoulders, and with some effort got him to tell me where he lived. Fortunately it wasn’t very far.

All the way I revelled in the warmth of his body as he leaned, shivering, on me, and the feeling of his rain-slick, greasy, clammy skin against my palms, in brushing against the barbells piercing his nipples and only too visible under his wet My Little Pony tank top, andi n the smell of puke, and sweat, and cigarettes, and pot, and some medicinal stink that I assumed was from his smack addiction.

I realized suddenly that it had been over a year that I ad quit my own H addiction, and that I’d gone completely without since. Being a thief had completely replaced my libido. Sure, I had wanked, quite obsessively at times, but the last time I’d gotten any of the real stuff had been that time Hendrik had made wear his girlfriend’s clothes and the screwed me, calling me by her name all through, and demanding of me to answer in a ridiculous falsetto and pretending to be this horrible caricature of her.

Amına kodum, was I ever in need of a good fuck.

But nothing of the sort happened that night: I finally got Ponyboy into his flat, a dank, one-room affair that smelled as if it hadn’t been aired out, like, ever, while for the last two years every weekend two unwashed teams of rugby players had had wild orgies in there, and on weekdays the place had been used alternately as a meth kitchen and a field hospital. The grey sheets of his bed felt greasy to the touch. I dumped the near comatose boy onto it an lay down next to him.

Ponyboy said something that sounded like “A’ll be back in a moment” and started snoring. I lay next to him for a while. We were both still fully clothed (well, I was, he was wearing his stage outfit), and soaking wet from the heavy rain. When I started to shiver, I took his bed covers that were lying – I swear, I am not exaggerating here one bit – in a heap on the floor, on top of loads of unwashed clothes, an overflowing ashtray, and several half eaten, already partially mouldering and mostly tipped over cups of instant noodles. Hence it too was wet in places and extremely nasty all around. The only way to ever get it clean again would have been to burn it. I think I have slept cleaner under bridges and supermarket loading docks.

That night, though, it was the perfect cover for me. I put it over myself and Ponyboy, higged him tight, and just lay there in all that grime, and wetness, and soaked in his presence. After a while I got too horny to bear it, unbuttoned my jeans, and wanked until I blew a load into my boxers. For a brief while I fell asleep.

Very early that morning I stole out of Ponyboy’s cellar flat, and rang a very annoyed Charley out of his bed. I pestered him until he connected me with an ethically challenged locksmith who made me a copy of Ponyboy’s front door key without asking any questions. (He did take a heft fee, but what was I really going to do with all the money Charley and I were making?)

That done, I sneaked back into Ponyboy’s place, crept under the cover with him, and woke him with a blow job.

What can I tell you about Ponyboy? We didn’t rally talk about much. He was somewhere in his early 20s and enrolled in something artsy and futureless at Edinburgh University. He was from Gretna, in the very South-East of Scotland, near the English border, and claimed he had been conceived in the shadow of the Lochmaben Stone. My favourite tattoo on his boy was the phoenix rising from his crotch, and the three symbols on his back, one on each shoulder blade and one on the nape of his neck. I suppose they were the letters “G” (or perhaps “C”), “Z”, and “J”  (or maybe “I”). Each was about the size of my palm and heavily ornamented in skills, bones, blades, screaming faces, hangman’s nooses, hourglasses, and other symbols of death. At the time I sort of assumed they were his initials, though I never asked him for his name.

He asked me, once. I was lying on his bed, on my side, hogtied, and trousers around my ankles. He had lit a fag and put it between my lips. I watched crumbs of still glowing ash fall and burn tiny holes into his rumpled, grey sheets. He was sitting next to me, naked, glowing in fresh, post-orgasm sweat, and folding little fighter jets from his huge stacks of sheet music – his rents had once made him learn the piano, but he had since sold his instrument for H. He tried to knock the fag from my mouth with his paper planes, but all he could hit was my belly and shoulders and the top of my head.

“What’s yer name, ma wee sluagh?”

“What does it matter to you?” I tried to growl around the cigarette, but if fell from my mouth. Fascinated we both watched it burn a big, smouldering hole into the sheets and mattress, but eventually it winked out and nothing really caught fire.

“No’in,” he admitted, and rolled me onto my belly.

For the most part my routine that second week in Edinburgh was to be woken by nightmares and sneak out hours before Morpheus relinquished his hold on Ponyboy. If it was early enough that the city was still mostly asleep I’d walk to Holyrood Park, go for a run, and practice Aikido in the valley between Arthur’s Seat and the Salisbury Crags. Then I’d return to Curtis’s, Matt’s, and Marci’s flat for a shower and maybe a change of clothes, and go to a Laundromat neaby to wash what I’d worn the day before. In the Laundromat I’d read books I picked up either at the flat or at Ponyboy’s: a Hinton, a Welsh, and my first Dennis Cooper. Around noon I’d meet with Charley, who’ usually make me eat something, and we’d decide what games to play that day.

Eventually we’d end up in some pub, get pissed, and I’d bid him good night. Then I’d walk over to Ponyboy’s and peek through the window. When he wasn’t home, I’d just let myself in and nap on his bed or read till he arrived. When he was there, I’d watch him through his window until there was a good moment to sneak in and sort of just materialise out of thin air next to him. He must have figured out that I a copy of his key, but I think I managed to startle him at least a bit every day.

I really liked my time there, and in a way Charley and Ponyboy become very close friends, probably the closest I ever had aside from Leo. But after two week – two weeks of increasingly unbearable nightmares at that, I started to suffocate.

So I invested some money in new equipment like waterproof clothes and lovely 10 eye oxblood Doc Marten’s boots to replace the Chucks I had worn to tatters. And sometime in the afternoon of Thursday, 21 August 2008, without ever saying good-bye to either Charley or Ponyboy I walked to where Telford Road becomes the A90 and truck out my thumb.

And that was my Edinburgh episode. I’ve never been back, and I left nothing but a long line of hurt marks and two blokes who didn’t know anything about me. I thought that with leaving Charley I had finally turned my back on Leeds for good, too. Never in a million years had I thought that Edinburgh could ever come to haunt me. It would be half a year before I would figure out how wrong I was.

Chapter Five: Duct Tape Is Silver (Part VI)

Charley’s heart was in the art of the confidence game, but he got his regular income from peddling drugs, anything from dope and shrooms to speed and smack. Don’t ask me how that is connected to Bryan or Leeds. I’m guessing there as much as you, but it’s hard to avoid that conclusion, innit? On the other hand, jumping to conclusions can be a dangerous thing. As I later figured out, Charley probably was involved in other rackets, blackmail, and corruption, and who knows what. Mostly he networked, I think, brought peeps together to wreck more havoc than they could on their own.

Back then I thought none of that mattered to me. I had nothing to do with his other jobs, all we had in common were the games we played and the marks we shook down.

Sometimes when we were together he’d meet some peeps on some corner, in some park, or some pub. Sometimes little folded pieces of paper changed hands, sometimes little plastic bags, sometimes thumb-drives or just a few words. That was what lead us into that bar in Leith, near the harbour, that one night at the end of my first week in Edinburgh.

Outside it was pouring cats and dogs, and so I went inside as well. The bar – I have forgotten the name – was narrow, dark, and crowded, and smelled of wet wool and spilt beer. Charley was making his round, having a gab here and there, shaking hands, handing out merchandise and palming folded bills in return.

I trailed behind him and passed the time studying his techniques. He had some sweet moves, and I thought I ought to trade a couple of handshakes with him, and practice that passing off routine, but on the whole I decided I was the better sleight-of-hand artist. Of course, I would never be able to charm peeps as easily nd effectively as he could. Deceive them, yes. Manipulate them, sometimes. Charm – not a chance.

Usually Charley got out of these places as soon as he was done. That night, though, he bought a pint of stout for each of us instead.

“Here you go, Bobby,” he shouted over the general din.

“Ta!” I shouted back. “We’re not leaving?”

“Nah. You don’t want to miss this.”

“What?”

“Give’em a minute. They’ll be on soon.”

He pointed at a set of drums a heavily tattooed bloke was setting up in one corner. Another in torn jeans, faded t-shirts, and wearing a studded black leather belt, bracelets, and a dog collars was messing around with dodgy looking cables and an old set of amps and loudspeakers.

“Who are they?”

“Ah, the finest crappy band you’ll ever hear.”

“What do the play?”

At that Charley had to laugh. “Ponyboy is one of my regulars. Junkie. Fag like you.”

Just as an aside: As far as I could tell, Charley was pretty straight. Blokes just didn’t rattle his cattle was how he once put it. But he was about the least homophobic straight bloke I ever met. He had no problem embracing me, or walking around with an arm over my shoulder. He didn’t mind playing queer for our games, either, and when he did never camped it up. No floppy wrists or falsetto voice. When he played queer he was simply himself, only that he allowed the same possessive greed to creep into his eyes when checking out blokes that he usually reserved for ladies – especially those with a tramp stamp peeking above low slung jeans, boobs straining against the top, and about a pound of war paint concealing their faces.

He played it well, too. The way his eyes undressed and nearly devoured me each time we played the Teen Ticket – the way disdain mixed with raw, physical desire in his gaze – even after all that has happened since, even after Charley’s eventual betrayal and all that it cost me, I still shiver to think of it.

So when he called me a fag, in a fucked up way that was meant as a compliment. You know: “I’m so cool with you, I can use the bad word, cuz we’re brothers.”

The pub had no stage or anything. When the bloke was done with the amps, he simply climbed on the bar and took up a battered Ibanez electric guitar. He was joined by another bloke with a handheld mike. Their man at the drums started in with, well, I suppose it was a solo, or maybe just a noisy wake up call. The Ibanez followed, screeching scratchily, and finally the singer jumped in.

He was too drunk to be able to stand properly on the narrow bar, so for the most part he knelt on it, using his free hand to steady himself, while he screamed into the mike. It was absolutely atrocious. The crows loved it and cheered them on in their drunken and stoned inaptness. And whenever the singer’s knees or palm slipped on the beer-slick bar and he crashed with his crotch or chin onto the hard, wooden top, everybody hooted and jeered.

“Aren’t they great?” Charley shouted when the singer accidentally tore the cable from the guitar and the guitarist kicked him hard into the shoulder with heavy combat boots, almost knocking the singer from the bar, and finally stomped hard on his hand.

“Which one is Ponyboy?”

I was hoping for the drummer – he was stocky, with a square forehead, a square jaw, and a fleshy face, but with intense, stormy eyes that blazed as he pounded way at this drums – as if he was chopping enemies with a hatchet.

“Him.” Charley pointed at the singer. Just then the guitarist had plugged his instrument back in, and the continued, Ponyboy cradling his stomped on hand, and screaming through split and bleeding lips.

He was a tall, lanky bloke. He wore hi-top basketball boots, black patent leather with neon green Nike arrow and neon pink laces, skin tight, black patent leather trousers, and a black tank top with a glittering picture of Teddy the Little Pony “riding” Kitty White. His arms, shoulders, and neck were heavily tattooed, and a half dozen piercings gleamed in his face. His hair was short, wet, and died a very artificial black. But the best were his eyes: laughing crazily white at the same time crying in quiet despair.

Just then he threw up. Without warning he puked al over himself, the bar, the draft levers, and the patrons in the front row. And he didn’t stop singing, ust continued with oatmeal cloured puke hanging in glistening strings from his chin.

But the pub owner started shouting at him. Ponyboy ignored it. Still screaming profanities into the mike he just kicked backwards – like a pony – at the annoying voice behind him. The pub owner fended off his foot, grabbed him by the ankle, and dragged him from the bar. Ponyboy’s head thumped against the bar and the steel counter behind the bar. I had to think of Winni-the-Pooh, and Christopher Robin dragging him down the stairs.

“No way, you sick pup!” Charley shouted at me, grinning wildly.

Ponyboy’s band-mates just went on playing as if nothing had happened.

“What?” I shouted back.

Instead of answering, Charley grabbed me between my legs, making me only too aware of my hard on.

“You really dug this sick shite, eh?”

I half started to bristle, but then instead simply grinned at Charley, half embarrassed, half defiant. It felt great not to deny it.

“Go ahead,” Charley nodded towards the back door, through which the owner had dragged Ponyboy. “Go to him, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I hesitated for a moment. I hadn’t actually considered doing anything that daring, but now that Charley had said it, I understood that I wanted to, very much. Well, it’s the confidence artist’s job to know his mark’s hidden desires better than the mark does himself, innit? As I said, Charley was a confidence artist at hear.

Chapter Five: Duct Tape Is Silver (Part IV)

In the two weeks that followed we played a lot of games – though for some reason we never got around to that Badger game he’d originally proposed. Once he learned of my chromosomal preference thought, we developed a vicious house remix of the Spanish Prisoner. The Spanish Prisoner and its most famous modern variant, the Nigerian Mail Scam, is the proverbial free lunch that turns out to be anything but. In its classic form the mark is approached with a tale of woe and injustice. Somewhere some authorities are keeping the roper from access to his rightful wealth. Penniless as he is right now, he desperately needs some funds to pay the bribes and fees necessary to get his treasure to safety – an investment he would pay the mark back a hundredfold, once successful, of course.

Everyone who hears of this game thinks he could never be lured. But the beauty of it is that in truth everyone can be lured – given the right lure. For some that lure may not be money.

The version we developed and the we called The Teen Ticket went roughly like this: The mark encounters me and Charley in some suggestively seedy spot around Union Place, with me practically begging Charley to help me in return for (only shyly and obviously reluctantly hinted at) sexual favours. Charley, although obviously lusting, remains cold-hearted and distant, pointing out the legal risks to him. Eventually he shakes me off and leaves me in some dark corner quietly struggling with tears and read to be approached by the mark.

My legend would always be some variation on this tune: Coming from some backwater continental village with ultra-conservative sexual mores I had followed internet invitation and promises of true love by some lecherous old poofter. Upon arrival here I found that he had been in contact with several youngsters and that a rival had arrived at the same time. The best story to hook the mark turned out to be some lurid tale of how the old man had made my rival and me enter a sort of bidding war of what we would be willing to do in return for bed, board, and affection. As long as I blushed a lot, stumbled over my words, played up my accent – giving it an eastern twist – and obviously almost choking on trying to repeat the offers I had been forced to make and those that had trumped mine, it almost invariably assured the success of the game. I’m not quite certain why, but I think it was the combination of fanning the mark’s hidden desires and at the same time providing him with a way to avoid the guilt by assigning him the role of the good Samaritan.

Anyway, the conclusion of the tale would always be how the old man had kicked me out but not without buying me a ticket back to the motherland. After all, one he had found his perfect loverboy, he wanted to get rid of the worthless runner up. But I had burned my bridges, no place to go, and no money to stay. Being not even 16 I couldn’t easily return the ticket for cash – and that was what I needed help with.

I wouldn’t directly offer sex, and I wouldn’t ask for anything, not money nor a place to stay. All I would ask for is the help of a grown up to get a refund for the ticket – a ticket rightfully mine. But implied was of course that once I had that, I would still be in need of a bed to sleep in and perhaps a companion to warm it. And nearly no matter what they would dream off, they knew they would remain decent folks if compared to the arsehole for who I had left my home and come here.

The cruel genius of the game was that none of this mattered. The entire routine, the sob story, the process of going to the train station and a ticket refunded (a very time consuming process in Edinburgh at the height of the Festival), it all had only one point: To keep the mark occupied. Because as he kept me company in all this, I would relieve him of his flat- or hotel-keys and pass them off on Charley. Charley would then in all leisure loot the place, return the keys to me, and eventually I would ditch the mark under some pretence.

I wish I could tell you that the marks we suckered deserved it, that they were evil paedophiles who only helped me to get into my breeches – though I do think most them were paedophiles (or hebephiles, if you want to get technical) and did want to get into my breeches. But I am not certain many of the would have done so had I given them a chance. Desire is not deed. And with some of them I suppose I wouldn’t even have minded.

But the reality was that none of them deserved it. It was a rotten game, through and through, a cruel, calculating mindfuck, designed to play at one on the best and the worst that exists in everyone of us, and to exploit it shamelessly.

And I loved it, every single time. I loved the guarded, tentative way they approached me. I loved elaborating my story, fine tuning the details to the body language of the marks so to evoke the maximum mix of lust, horror, and compassion. I loved their attention. I loved that through all this I remained untouchable: I was a “child” and they were queer men. And they knew it. As far as I know none of them went to the rozzers.

I loved how I could make them dance on my strings, how I could make them hungry to give, only to then take behind their backs, how – using the subtle alc hemy of the con – I could turn their yearning and generosity into my profit, and their shame and fear into my armour.

And a few precious times I got to see that crazy, anguished flickering of hope for something long given up on in their eyes. And I knew that was the real reward I was playing for.