A Twinkle in My Eye

by George Gauthier

Chapter 7

On the Quad

Last month, I joined Kyle at the university for a presentation on urban planning by a professor Jonathan Dryden, one of the leading lights on the subject. The man lived and breathed his subject and had a reputation as an engaging speaker.

As we neared the lecture hall a pair of students asked us to sign a petition against the practice in the medical school of vivisection. As its etymological roots indicate vivisection involves operations or experiments on live animals after which the animals will often be killed ("sacrificed" in scientific lingo) followed by a necropsy which is an autopsy performed on animals. Rating the betterment of human life of much higher value than the lives of guinea pigs, white rats, or lab mice, I refused to sign as did Kyle.

Up next was another earnest looking young man who shoved a clipboard at us and urged us to sign his petition disinviting a respected historian whose support for our lamentable ex-president I found inexplicable, but I certainly respected the man's scholarly work. So however much I disagreed with his politics I was against disinviting or cancelling him.

"Which side are you on?" I was asked. "How can anyone our age abide a supporter of that awful man who used to be in the White House? Do you really want to give one of his supporters a platform to spread his poison?"

"I agree with you about the politician, but no one should be disinvited or de-platformed, not even Donald J himself much less a supporter. Anyway, what makes you think that an undergraduate like you should decide that a winner of the Bancroft Prize for History should be barred from an academic campus."

"Why shouldn't he be? It's for a good cause?"

"Censorship itself is always a bad cause and taints any cause invoking it."

"You're just impossible!"

He then stalked off in a huff.

The next petitioner didn't have a clipboard. Instead this fellow sat behind a table offering pamphlets with a big sign behind him urging understanding for what it claimed was "Russia's Just War in Ukraine". Bizarrely the pamphlets were priced at two dollars each, as if people were expected to pay to be propagandized by an enemy nation.

I saw my chance and told him "Don't you realize that your sign and those pamphlets would get you arrested in Russia and sent to jail for fifteen years?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You are calling it a war and not a Special Military Operation. Referring to it as a war is a crime in Russia."

"So what? That's just semantics. The important fact is that Ukraine has always been part of Russia."

"Not true. The history of Russia's origins is exactly the other way around. Muscovy started as a mere outlier or appendage of Kievan Rus. The Principality of Kiev and the Republic of Novgorod flourished when Moscow was a backwater."

Kyle dismissed him saying: "A shame really. The guy was earnest and cute but an ideologue, which is always a turnoff. It offends me when folks don't put their brains to better use."

After the pro Putin stooge we were approached by a young guy with that Aztec look which I find so attractive in young Mexicans. He asked if would sign his petition. I told him no.

"No? But you don't even know what my petition is about. You didn't give me a chance to explain before refusing. That is hardly fair, now is it?"

"I don't need to know the specifics. It is enough that you are a complete stranger who is trying to get my name, address, email address, and signature. Whatever the cause or your intentions, you yourself don't know where the names and addresses on your petition will end up. That list of names could very well be sold on to some data broker with problematic clients who have malign intentions like identity theft. So no. You won't be getting my signature. Nothing personal, of course."

"Of course it's personal. You won't sign because I am hispanic. That's it, isn't it? You're a racist. If I were Anglo you would sign in an instant."

So I switched to Spanish and told him that I actually favored his Mestizo look, so what I really might do is ask him for a date.

That brought a scowl and a dismissive: "Maricón!"

Which is Spanish for faggot. I shrugged:

"Claro que si!"

It takes more than a simple slur to get a rise out of me.

The next guy was one of us, a sexy looking red head with a peaches and cream much like Kyle's. He smiled knowingly at both of us and asked us to sign a petition calling for the immediate establishment of a fully sovereign and internationally recognized Palestinian state with control of both Gaza and the West Bank, withdrawal of all Jewish settlements, and Israeli reparations to pay for the reconstruction of Gaza and infrastructure in the West Bank.

Not only was that a cause I could not get behind, but the sign he sat under was a deal killer.

"Queers for Palestine? Really? Don't you realize that any one of us who walked the streets of Gaza with a pink triangle on his T-shirt and waving a rainbow flag would be dragged to the top of a building and tossed off?"

He dismissed that as just right wing lies and propaganda.

"What is important is that everyone in the progressive camp supports this petition for the full implementation of a two state solution."

"And then what? For close to twenty years the terrorists controlled a small state of their own in Gaza and look what happened. A much larger and fully sovereign state which included the West Bank would be a far worse threat first to Israel and then to the West in general."

"A fully sovereign Palestine could ally itself with Iran and even station Iranian military forces in its territory, both missiles and troops right across the border from the Israeli heartland. It might also invite a million jihadis from around the world to join in the inevitable war of extermination against Israel to bring about their version of peace in the Middle East, one without Jews. Their slogan really means "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall be Free of Jews" who would all be dead. At least all of them in Israel.

"Freedom for Palestine is the cause of all right thinking people!"

"Don't you mean all left-thinking people?"

"Don't you realize that rewarding Hamas with a state of its own, especially after their recent atrocities in Israel can only encourage terrorists around the world. That is especially true about Moslem countries and communities, so many of which nurture a profound resentment that it was the civilization of the West which rose to lead the world to modernity and not Islam and its medieval mindset. Many Moslems are still trying to figure out what went wrong, but instead of taking a long hard look at themselves, they look outward for others to blame like the colonial powers, whose dominance of the regions lasted a few decades compared to centuries of misrule by the Ottoman Turks."

"Except for Egypt the Arab states are tribes with flags riven by rivalries between tribes, clans, and sub-clans. Hardly the best social timber. Just look at their economies which are mostly extractive and depend on foreign workforces, both expatriates from the West and unskilled contract labor imported from South Asia as what amounts to indentured servants. Endemic violence, sectarian differences, xenophobia, and misogyny do not make for healthy societies nor does religious bigotry."

"No. In this clash of civilizations people like them and you are on the wrong side of History."

"Fuck you!"

"Tell it to him" I replied nodding at my boyfriend. "Fucking me is his department."

Picking up on their cue, my lover gave the thumbs up gesture.

The gay activist could only scowl and sulk.

Kyle shook his head. "Morally bankrupt." was his only comment.

Full disclosure: I am a Zionist, though obviously one of the gentile persuasion.

My feelings about Israel crystalized in October 1973. I happened to be visiting that country as a tourist when the Yom Kippur War broke out. I suddenly found myself in a country fighting for its very existence. In very short order, the courage of their soldiers brought them victory.

On the quad that day the last petitioner we run into never got close enough to us to make his case. We just waved him off.

"Get away with your clipboard. Whatever your cause, we are not signing."

Our final encounter was with a lady of middle years who, by her frumpy mode of dress, hardly looked like she belonged on campus. Confirming my suspicions she came up to me and asked:

"Would you like a psychic reading?"

"Do you need to ask? I mean, if you're psychic, shouldn't you already know?"

She too went away, another disgruntled interlocutor. That was the last of the breed, at least on that particular day.

Fortunately, urban planning was not a controversial subject. So nobody was demonstrating, picketing, petitioning, or trying to cancel or shout down the speakers, not even NIMBYs. I got a lot out of the presentation. I only wish we had Paolo along with us for the question period which followed. It is cops after all, who deal directly with the social consequences of bad urban planning.

We had only an hour free for a quick tour of a museum dedicated to the decorative arts, so our visit was really a survey of what that institution had to offer. We saw enough to know that we would definitely be coming back for a full day's visit.

In the European tradition, fine art was made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from what was looked down on a mere decorative or applied art, which besides its beauty had to serve some practical function. So the fine arts would include painting and sculpture and more recently the kind of art photography of the late Ivan Pavlichenko. The decorative arts would include architecture, furniture, textiles, and glassware. Billionaire Franklyn Dysons's collections of cameos and Japanese seals would be right at home in such a place.

I was particularly drawn to collections of faience and Japanese lacquerware whereas Kyle zeroed in on a preview of a coming exhibit of architectural follies, ornamental buildings in the form of mock Roman temples or fake ruins of medieval castles, monasteries or abbeys. One good thing about a museum of decorative arts is that the public it attracted has far fewer snobs and poseurs than among visitor to fine arts museums.

After a light lunch at the museum cafe we headed over to the campus field house. The attraction at the field house was a truly huge swimming pool. At that time of day we even got a lane to ourselves. Of course, skimpy racing briefs or no, we were on our best behavior and just swam laps with no horsing around.

I should explain that we had brought our Speedos with us for just that purpose. At one time, only a few decades ago, when athletics were segregated by sex, we could have swum in the nude without any suit at all. That was also true at the local YMCAs around the country which one upon a time really were restricted to Young Men, though not necessarily Christian ones. Along came Title IX and that was the end of that.

For millennia no one spoke of skinny dipping. From antiquity to the early Victorian era everyone there was no other way to swim. Everyone swam in the nude. Swimsuits were only invented in the nineteenth century, inaugurating a blessedly short era of ridiculously voluminous and cumbersome "bathing costumes" which threatened to drag the bathers down to the depths just by the sheer weight of soaked fabric.

That began to change in the twentieth century. First men and then women were allowed to bare their limbs, but going topless was still frowned upon even for men sexes till after World War II. Fortunately, help was on the way. In the 1950s enlightened fashion trends brought in the bikini for females and speedos for guys. Even later came dental floss thongs for the ladies and G-strings for the laddies.

Some few beaches in America are now clothing optional but sadly only very few. There are still legal consequences for skinny dipping in most jurisdictions. My recent misadventure along Rocky Creek could easily have lead to an arrest.

In ancient times, there were no legal consequences for swimming naked, but there certainly could be practical ones. I recall, with a degree of perverse fondness, one such episode which occurred in the Arabian desert long long ago.

Skinny Dipping in Arabia

Early in the second century AD sensing a business opportunity at the new southern frontier of Rome, I spent a good part of my fortune building a fine new caravanserai in Hegra the next largest city and second capital of the Kingdom of the Nabateans. Their main capital was the fabled city of Petra, which lay some three hundred miles to the northwest in modern Jordan.

Hegra had recently come under Roman administration as part of the province of Arabia Patraea following the peaceable annexation of the Nabatean Kingdom. At the time Rome was preparing for yet another war against the Persian Empire, Rome's perennial eastern rival. The soldier emperor Trajan won is Persian war and conquered Mesopotamia and Armenia which with his earlier conquest of Dacia, modern Romania, brought the empire to it greatest territorial extent.

Both the city and its seaport across the mountains were garrisoned by detachments of Roman legionnaires, the port to protect it from pirates and the city against raiders preying on the caravan trade.

The caravanserai was a welcome change of pace from my usual occupation as an merchant. And I was gratified to be proved correct in my judgment of its business potential. In short order Hegra became a boom town, and I made solid profits serving traders transporting luxury goods to Rome along the Incense Route.

Running far south of what was later called the Silk Road, the Incense Route was the main channel for the trading of goods such as frankincense and myrrh which originated in southern Arabia, in the regions of Hadramaut and Oman on the Arabian Sea. The trade then proceeded north along roads inland from the coastal mountains to fabled Petra. In those early days, caravans could still take a short cut directly across the Empty Quarter, though that region later became too desiccated to traverse safely.

By contrast, spices from the East Indies took a different route, a maritime route across the Arabian Sea sailing with the monsoons. The trade was joined by shipments of and rare woods, feathers, animal skins and gold from East Africa which passed through the Gulf of Aden and up the Red Sea.

Now it was easy to ride the monsoon between India and Yemen and Axum at the southern end of the Red Sea, but the maritime route north from there was treacherous. The southern entrance of the sea was called the Gate of Tears for the many ships lost traversing the narrow sea channels, a hunting ground for pirates. Once past that gantlet, you had to navigate the narrow Red Sea for over a thousand miles all the while sailing just off a lee shore without a single natural harbor along its entire length. And coral reefs were everywhere. They could tear the bottom right out of your ship.

One drawback of the site of my caravanserai was that the fresh water supply was limited because the water table lay some twenty meters down. I solved that problem with a well dug slantwise into the slope of the plateau then rigged a pair of Archimedes screws to lift the water to the surface. Donkeys provided the motive power. Looking back now I wish I could have used a windmill, but they had not yet been invented.

One fine day some months after our grand opening, being somewhat at loose ends, I thought of the saddle horse I had neglected in recent weeks. I owned a number of horses, but my personal mount was a young gelding with a black coat. Now horses need to be exercised regularly. Running is in their blood. They can get surly if cooped up in the stable or the corral for too long. So, on that morning I took the gelding for a good run along an arc north of town.

I rode my mount bareback without benefit of saddle or bridle or hackamore and in the nude, as any stable boy would when exercising a mount. Horses love to run as nature intended them, unconstrained by the usual equestrian apparatus, so they carry you willingly, grateful for the freedom to canter and trot and gallop hither and yon bearing the light weight of someone they recognized as a regular care giver and supplier of treats like carrots and apples and sugar mash.

It is a great feeling. There is just you and the great beast, and the only thing that keeps you astride it is a good seat and your bare legs clamped around the barrel of his belly plus your hands on his neck or in his mane for balance. With my slight weight hitched forward onto his withers, my mount would carry me effortlessly for mile after mile, the wind whipping his mane and my hair. Joined as we were bare skin to dark hide, our bodies moving as one, our sweat mingling, I felt like a centaur of myth.

Near the end of the run, I walked the horse up a narrow box canyon at the base of the plateau, threading a defile opened long ago by an earthquake. It was deep enough to reach the water table and create a clear flowing spring. The discharge flowed to the northwest for nearly a mile before disappearing into a crevice in the rocks, becoming an underwater river. No one lived there. The narrow defile offered no site to build on. Still the defile held a deep pool where I could bathe the horse and go for a dip myself, sculling around though the pool was too short for swimming laps.

Finished with splashing in the pool, I clambered out and lay on the sloping rock to rest before heading back to the stable. Soon though the clatter of iron-shod hooves on rock announced the arrival of a patrol some dozen strong. They were commanded by a decurion, a man of only middle height but powerfully built. He had close cropped red hair and piercing blue eyes. I would have to say that his features were striking rather than actually handsome. He looked me up and down, a grin softening his strong features, then spoke to me in the Common Greek which was the language of the eastern half of the empire:

"Well, well, well. Is this a djinn I see before me, one in the guise of a beguiling and bewitchingly beautiful boy? Will you grant me the traditional three wishes then, young djinn?"

"Forgive me, sir, but it is not within my power to grant wishes. I am just, er, a stable boy who rode out this way to exercise a horse."

"Alas, Sixtus," the decurion said with mock regret to the man riding next to him. "This vision of youthful male pulchritude is merely a human boy after all, albeit an exceedingly comely one."

"Maybe so, Lucius, but I doubt that he really is just a stable boy. Did you catch that hesitation just now when he spoke. Would any boy this pretty be set to mucking out stables or exercising horses? I don't think so. Looking at him, I peg him for a rich man's catamite on the run from his master or maybe a slave escaped from a boy brothel."

I get that reaction a lot. One glance at my slight build and impossibly pretty features and macho males mark me down as the worst sort of a bum boy, a catamite or boy toy. These days I sometimes overhear men call me a kept boy or a male prostitute or a rent boy. I can hardly deny that I look like one. If that makes me seem less than manly, then so be it. I like my look just fine and am not the least bit interested in "manning up".

To his credit, the decurion gave me the benefit of the doubt.

"Oh, I must disagree Sixtus. In this harsh country, a fugitive would hardly run off stark naked and without supplies or weapons -- not even a water bag. Still that big gelding is a lot of horse for one small stable boy especially without a saddle, bit, bridle or even a halter."

"I suppose I should thank you for the benefit of the doubt Decurion." I remarked. "I am no fugitive. As you surmised, this gelding belongs to a caravanserai in Hegra. He was getting cranky, so I took him for a long run today. Oh, and my name is Alexandros though the locals usually call me Iskander."

The decurion introduced himself as Lucius Manilius of the Sixth Cohort of the Second Legio Traiana, the second of two new legions raised by the current emperor Trajan. The detachment had just recently rotated to the fort on the edge of town and were riding patrol to familiarize themselves with the surrounding country.

The decurion dismounted and walked up to me and put a hand companionably to my shoulder.

"You mustn't mind Sixtus there, young Alexandros. What he said just now was an expression of wishful thinking. Your pretty face and naked body have aroused his lust. Mine as well, for that matter. No offense, but with a face and body like that you are utterly wasted as a stable lad. Your master must be a fool not to rent you out as a pleasure boy."

"Sir, I will have you know that I have no master. I am not a slave but a free person. Though you are not far wrong about my line of work. At the caravanserai in Hegra I don't work in the stable but in the main building as a joy boy."

"A joy boy is he?"

Sixtus and most of the other men chortled, looking at me hungrily.

"Then he is fair game after all. Let's have at him!"

Lucius look at me apologetically.

"Sorry, youngling. You candor does you credit, but now Sixtus and my eager men will have their way with you, after all. You strike me as a decent enough lad, Alex, but I am afraid I must let my men take their pleasure of you. The fact is that we have no reason to exercise restraint in your case. You are not a slave, so we won't be violating another man's property rights. Even more important, as a public boy anyway, your virtue is not at stake. Indeed you could almost say that the privilege of fucking public boys who come our way is one of the unofficial perquisites of imperial soldiers."

"Besides, this situation is in no small part your own doing, wanton boy that you are. Just look at yourself, running around stark naked. What are aggressive males like us to think when we find a public boy like you at loose ends, your entire body on display for our delectation. Here you are so terribly cute and sexy with that impossibly pretty face and tight body and a pert rump that twitches fetchingly as you move about. And yet you pretend to shrink from the natural use which men make of boys of your sort. Well we know how to deal with cock teaser tactics like that."

"Men, this wayward boy badly needs instruction in good manners. And we are the men to give it to him. So take him as you will, but remember, go easy on the lad. No rough stuff. Alexandros here is a little guy after all, so we had better not all pile on at once. Instead we will take turns, just two of us at a time."

"Two?" I squeaked.

"One at each orifice of course to speed things up. We cannot linger but must resume our patrol soon enough."

My jaw dropped in dismay. It was not just that they intended to rape me. It was the outrageous assertion that this was my largely own fault, a fate that I had brought upon myself by my nudity and physical beauty. I wanted to protest the unfairness of the charge, which amounted to nothing more than a thin rationalization for what they really wanted with me.

Sure they had come upon me entirely naked, but what stable boy doesn't throw off his clothes before he takes a mount out for a wash? For that matter, what cavalryman? Admittedly I am an exhibitionist. I'll welcome any excuse to run around naked, displaying my sexy body, but in classical times nudity in public was hardly unusual.

I was certainly not deliberately teasing the soldiers. I mean, does a cock tease sequester himself in a deserted site where he has every expectation of solitude? As for being so cute and sexy, I was as nature had made me. Nothing was the result of artifice or primping or posturing -- no cosmetics, no jewelry, no suggestive clothing -- just good clean boy doing an honest job of work.

The decurion continued his discourse in a calm and even tone.

"I am sure that a brothel boy like you realizes the futility of resistance. What can one small naked youth do against a dozen professional soldiers? If we have to, we will hold you down and mount you, but things will be much more pleasant if you submit to your fate. Now since rank has its privileges, I will go first. Here let me examine you, little one."

I stood there passively, arms hung loosely at my sides. It never crossed my mind to resist. I simply had to submit to the lusts of these soldiers. In the ancient world, ordinary people like me, those without wealth or influence or connections, had few rights which men with power were bound to respect. To these soldiers, I was one of the lowly and powerless -- just a small nude boy who had fallen into their clutches, and not just any boy but a public boy, as he had called me, one who sold himself for coin. No reason then why they should not all mount me. It was that simple.

Even though most of the soldiers would have preferred a girl as a sexual partner, the fact is that many Roman men were functionally bisexual, fucking girl and boy alike, whichever came to hand. No one thought the less of a man who pronged a likely lad. The soldier emperor Trajan himself was known to bed a boy now and then as a change of pace. Regardless, for Romans males, only the active or dominant role was socially approved. Submissive males, those who allowed themselves to be penetrated, were considered unmanly.

Certainly no one would ever accuse me of being manly. Slight and delicate looking as I am and comelier than is seemly in a young male, I am no one's ideal of masculinity. Still I take offense at being called effeminate. I am very much a boy, thank you. Mine is the hard body of the male, not the soft round voluptuous body of the female.

Regardless of these considerations, on that day I was destined to serve these men in the passive or submissive sexual role. Now as a professional prostitute, I was not body shy. So I spread my feet apart to give the man better access and made no objection as the decurion ran his hands all over my body, stroking and poking and prodding at me, touching me intimately. He tested my muscle tone, bidding me to tense biceps and triceps and buttocks. Then he weighed my genitals in the cup of his hand and delve his fingers into my cleavage and squeeze my ass cheeks. Lucius murmured appreciatively.

"Hmmm, such a slender boy, yet your musculature is hard and well-defined. Yours is one of those wiry builds that is more about quality than quantity. Like an acrobat or a maybe a dancer."

I acknowledged that I was both. Then he turned his attention to my face, cupping my chin in his strong right hand, rubbing my jaw line with his thumb. He stuck his thumb into my mouth. That was my cue to suck on the digit much as I would suck on a cock.

His foreplay had it effect on me. My pulse raced as blood rushed to stiffen my cock. My ball sac pulled tight to the fork of my legs, my engorged cock jutting straight out, the purpled glans like an arrowhead at the end of the shaft. I heard approving murmurs from the soldiers. They knew a well trained fuck toy when they saw one.

"Here now, little Alex, I want you to turn around, spread your legs, bend over, and grab your ankles."

Now there was a set of orders with a familiar ring.

I sighed but did as I was commanded, presenting my ass for their use. Lucius started off with a chuckle and a friendly slap to my rump then reached between my legs and tugged on my ballsac, using his other hand to stroke my turgid cock like a farmer milks the teat of a cow. I will admit that my body responded to the treatment. After a bit, he stuck his thumbs into my anal ring and pulled it wide open, letting his men get a look at my secret delights. Sixtus summed up their thoughts:

"Ah, what an ass we have here. I can't wait to plumb its depths."

"All in good time, Sixtus. First me then you, then the rest by seniority."

I heard Lucius spit onto my anal whorl then again onto his hand to coat his cock. Not much lubrication, but it would have to do. He set the head to my hole and punched in all the way with one thrust of his hips. I gasped at the sudden total penetration and reached out for support, grabbing onto Sixtus who now stood in from of me. He ruffled my hair and smiled down at me.

"This is what you can look forward to, pretty one," he said, pulling the skirt of his tunic aside so I could see his turgid manhood.

Meanwhile the decurion plugged away at my bum. It wasn't long before he came, excited as he was. His gism acted as a lubricant for those who followed him in the saddle, the first of whom was Sixtus. From him I expected a brutal fuck, but I was mistaken. He was surprisingly careful for so vigorous a lover. Meanwhile a third soldier stepped in front of me and presented his cock for oral service, telling me:

"Lock them pouty lips around my man cock! That's it, boy, now rim me. Lick that talented tongue of yours all around the head of my cock. That's the taste of a real man. It won't be long now till my man juice fills that hot mouth of yours, you little cock sucker."

I soon sank to all fours, with cocks in both my orifices. Some legionaries came in my mouth, others held themselves back till they had a chance to switch to my rear and spurt their seed up my ass. I couldn't help but respond to the rough and ready sex. I grew heady with lust, my nostrils filled with a heady combination of sweat and leather and horse and male musk. With their cocks hitting my joy spot again and again, with the taste of the cum in my mouth, my body burned with desire. I eventually came myself, spurting my seed onto the ground.

The men fucked me without any finesse, pressed for time to finish up and resume their interrupted patrol. I have to admit that, as gang bangs go, this one was not at all bad. Afterwards I was sore back there, and my ass cheeks bore bruises and finger marks as evidence of the rough fuck, but that was it. These soldiers were just looking for a good time. The bad kind of rape happens when men are angry or when their blood lust is up such as during the sack of a town.

"There now that wasn't so bad, was it little Alex? the decurion asked, apologetically. "I trust we didn't get too rough with you. You must know we were not trying to hurt you, just have some fun."

I nodded my head. The man had a point. They had not hurt me.

"You got into it yourself, didn't you, Alex? I know you were hard for most of it, nipples erect, panting away with arousal, trembling with lust. You even spurted your seed on the ground toward the end. No hard feelings then?"

The man was right. No, I had not volunteered to be raped, but the truth is I do respond to dominant males who take charge of my small body willy nilly and use it to gratify their lusts. I am at heart a bottom boy, and scenes like that one turn me on unbearably.

"I hope that in the future we may call on you at the caravanserai, little Alex."

"Of course you may, Decurion, but only one of you at a time, and there will be no more complimentary mountings. The standard charge is two silvers for the other boys or five for me."

"Five!" sputtered Sixtus.

"I am well worth it, as you have just now learned for yourself." I retorted.

"He has you there, Sixtus. This boy is easily worth five silvers. For my part, I cannot wait to do this properly, at an easy pace, just the two of us -- man and boy -- in a soft bed, after a pleasant meal and a goblet or two of wine. It was so exciting grappling your sweaty little body, Alex, feeling that taut musculature of yours as you squirmed and twisted under me. And those well-trained ass muscles that clutched at my cock buried deep inside, squeezing and rubbing the shaft, milking it of every drop of my male juices. No shrinking virgin there."

As my new friends rode off, they called out:

"Till next time, Sweet Cheeks."

Roman soldiers loved to give nicknames, and now I had mine.

Only recently could I write about these things, choosing, from caution, to cast them as fiction, a series of fanciful tales of an immortal youth written under a pseudonym. My secret is safe for no one in these days of modern science will believe it. In this tale, all of the names are real. The events described really did happen just as I have written.