later when there was room. The beach shorts had been a 21st birthday present from an American friend.

Back in the flat I said to him «I want you posed 100 stripped, you understand. Not a stitch of anything.»

«Yes, boss, he grinned back, half out of his shirt already. «It's not the first time, you know.»

«No, I suppose not.» Naked, he was divine there is no other word. Hard trained, slim and streamlined for action like a young panther, his body yet bore the last traces of the softness and bloom of boyhood, adding roundness and ripeness to his limbs; and the cheeky twinkle in his dark eyes was pure boy. As he stood casually in front of me as if in doubt about my approval, I had to keep my hands very firmly behind my back and turn away my eyes to avoid being dazzled by so triumphant a personification of all I admired in a young man. I knew it would be all right when he was posed and I'd entered into the formal, artist-model, working relationship with him; but for the moment I simply couldn't trust myself to go on looking at him. I ought to have learnt to control my desires by now, I'm sure; but it just wasn't so.

He took matters into his own hands. «Come on, I'll go and sit out here. O. K? The light'll be better. And so saying he strode out onto the balcony, snatched up a cushion and settled himself down on the right hand parapet. His instinct was right we had gone on eating too long, so the day light had begun to fade, and by a miracle there was no one using the balconies of either of the two flats next to mine. He sat with his right foot up on the parapet, his left down on the floor, his hands together on his right knee, and his face turned slightly to the right looking out over the darkening city. Professionally I have to work fast in all sorts of lights and was not as much worried by the unorthodox conditions as a better artist would probably have been; but I thanked my stars he wasn't a «talker», so that I could concentrate hard on getting that lovely peach-like young body down onto the paper to the best of my ability.

When I next looked through at the clock in the main room, more than an hour had passed. He had not moved once. I said, "Come on, you'd better have a rest now, or you'll fall off the balcony, and I wouldn't like that.»

«Well, thanks, perhaps I will.» And then I had my next and greatest surprise from this somewhat surprising young man. He continued after a moment, quite unaffectedly and openly, Shall we go to bed together? I'd like to.>>

There are moments in one's life when it is better neither to think nor speak, but just to take a big jump. Without a word I went in front of him to the 'door of the inner room and simply held it open for him to pass in. -

Later I lay relaxed and happy on my back, watching the rising moon creep across the ceiling. The young man still lay on his front at my side, moved his arm'across my waist and nuzzled his face round onto my chest so that I could feel the tickle of his eyelashes on my skin. Our intimacy seemed to have released something in him and he began to talk much more freely not straight off as I give it here, but easily and quietly, in fits and starts just as the ideas came to him:

—

*Of course I was hopping mad when I looked back out of the sea this morning and saw you messing about with my shorts. I covered the distance pretty quick, I can tell you, but then when I got to you, I didn't really know what to say, in a foreign country and all that. Actually I've had the same thing

mattachine REVIEW

happen to me before in swimming baths sometimes

is it a fetish, or a recognized way of picking a fellow up or something? but they've always been the most fearful dire types I wouldn't be seen dead with. On the other hand, in spite of everything, I rather liked the look of you still do, you know, even from this angle, those square shoulders are quite something, and you're certainly strong and when you looked me straight in the eye and just stood your ground, I didn't know if I was on my head or my heels, though I was certainly glad to find you were English. And then straight away all that flash talk about my body being as vain as hell, I suppose I fell for that at once. You know, you ought to go into politics or something, a chap like you who speaks up just how you think without apologizing or excuses we'd all follow you, or my lot would anyway. You can't think what a change it was from the usual shifty, cringing pass I usually get made at me.

<<But oh dear when the queers decide to lay seige to me more in earnest. Either it's a long talk about ancient Greece and naked youths wrestling all oiled and glistening in the sun wonderful, I'm sure, but I'm alive today not 2000 years ago, and I know quite a bit about wrestling, a dirty business not how they describe it at all; last year I took on a pro wrestler of my own weight just for fun as I thought, and I was fighting for my life at once, he all but broke my back for meno poetry there, I can assure you. Or else they do their best to make me tight, but I'm in good training and can drink most people of any age under the table. Or else they pull out «feelthy» postcards which I'm supposed to enjoy. Oh dear, those postcards, pity me please having to look at them so as I'm certainly no angel, as they say, but if I was they'd not to offend people. put me off sex for years and years and have just the opposite effect to what is meant you'd be surprised how often they are tried on me.

—

"Another great thing about you never once today have you referred to me as a boy I'm twenty two such bloody sentimental nonsense. I'm not a boy and a full grown man, and I hope I look it and behave like it. Do I? Thanks. Let me tell you, when I came up to this flat after our supper I was so pleased about this I made myself a vow that if you lasted out the first hour of our modelling without ever calling me «my dear boy» or anything silly like that, I would take my courage in both hands and make the first suggestion to you myself. Of course I didn't reckon with the fact that you were so intent on your so here we work you never spoke a word to me at all! But a vow's a vow

are. ,»

I don't doubt he said a great deal more as well, but by that time, exhausted and happy, I was asleep.

he was gone. I When I woke, in the cold of the dawn, a third surprise in which even at that unholy found a note on the table in full round writing hour I noticed with half my mind the long descending y's and g's which graphologists say are the sign of strong sexuality. It read:

2.0. a.m.

«Something tells me I'll get on that plane tonight, so I've decided to run out to the airport on the off chance. Thanks a lot for everything. When you get to London ring HOL 73430 before 9.30 and ask for Andrew. Good-bye.