Sine Nomine

by N Fourbois

---oo0oo---

The alarm clock beeped and Dominic opened an eye, then two. Eight o'clock. 'What! Eight o'clock? Does that time even exist on a Saturday morning?' Then he remembered what he had to do. But first things first. He ignored the boner that was raging through the slit of his boxer shorts. No time to attend to that now. He had to shower, dress and have breakfast. He could hear his parents downstairs in the kitchen talking. He also heard the telltale creak of bedsprings from behind the closed door of his brother's bedroom as he passed on his way to the bathroom. 'Louise getting a good seeing-to — in his dreams! Shall I go in and say good morning?' he mused. 'Better not, no time.'

Downstairs he gave his parents a hug and got on with his breakfast. He had never had to go into school on a Saturday before and his body clock was rebelling against such an action on what it automatically concluded to be the seventh day of the week. His school didn't even hold cricket or rugby matches on a Saturday, especially since it had sold off the playing fields to a local developer for building concrete office blocks. The teachers were more interested in having two full days free at the weekend; some even played sport for their clubs; and many of the older pupils had regular Saturday jobs. So the tradition of inter-school matches had died with the exception of the odd match on a games afternoon. Dominic's mind, for no particular reason, suddenly switched to the previous day's PSE lesson which had been a discussion (Discussion? One way diatribe!) on the dangers of obesity and the couch potato society, or rather a propaganda session after the Headmistress's peremptory decision to have the food and drink machines removed. He had looked around the room and spotted the one obese boy out of the thirty pupils in his class. 'Half of young people obese?' he thought, 'where had the statistics gone wrong?', but he considered it pointless to question his teacher in the present governmental-interfering climate. Admittedly, that particular Billy Bunter did his best to live up to the stereotype of the obese child. 'Professional blob,' he thought, 'but why do the rest of us have to suffer for it?'

Dominic was one of those boys who coasted through school as exam syllabuses were consistently dumbed down so that the also-rans could win as well. He attended the local comp for there was no alternative. He would have benefited from a grammar school education, but no such beast existed near him, and his parents were not sufficiently wealthy to send one, let alone three children, to an independent school. Often he was too bright for his own good, but with encouragement from parents, not to mention healthy intellectual rivalry from two older brothers, he did read widely, newspapers and books in addition to comics and the usual teenage magazines. Under normal circumstances he might have got it in the neck from his peers for being a smartarse or swot, but one of Dominic's gifts was knowing how far he could push his luck and he often gained sympathy for saying what the others longed to say, but didn't have the bottle to do so. Also he had the ability to back up what he said with irrefutable logic. However, all this did leave him with a certain cynicism and even at his tender age he could readily see through the schemes and stratagems of those who exercised any control over his life.

"Have you got everything you need, Dominic?" enquired his mother.
"Yes, Mum."
"Money?"
"Yes, Mum."
"Passport and ID card?"
"Yes, Mum."
"Clean underwear?"
"No, Mum." His tone of voice betrayed a slight loss of patience.
"You know, you might have an accident or a medical?"
"I know, and you know, Mother dear, that I always put on clean underwear," he pleaded in mitigation. There was a rustle of the newspaper as his father tried to hide or pretend he wasn't there.

He took his dishes and cutlery to the sink, ran upstairs to clean his teeth, grabbed his coat on the way down, hugged his mother and father and ran out of the front door towards the bus stop. On his arrival there he looked at his watch. A minute to go. It turned out to be rather a long minute and when he at last looked at the timetable he discovered that the Monday to Friday ten minute service became a twenty minute service early on Saturday mornings. He metaphorically kicked himself and for another few minutes remained the only person at the bus stop.

The bus finally arrived. At least at weekends he could get a return ticket before nine. Dominic alighted outside the school and, looking around, found the one narrow gate that had been unlocked for the morning. He made his way to the school's administration suite. Searching he saw no one else outside. He reported, was asked for the parental consent form which he handed over and took a seat with the warning that he would have to wait until nine o'clock. At least he was first in the queue. In fact he was the only person in the queue as he sat there gripping a paper ticket with a figure one printed on it. It dawned on him that he ought to get his money out ready and he mooched off to the boys' toilets.

Ever since he had been mugged some six months previously he had devised the idea that whenever he was going to carry an important sum of money with him, he would wear his cricketer's jockstrap under boxers and keep the notes in the pouch. If he ever had to hand any cash over again, they could take the few coins in his pocket. They would never think of searching him there. After all, the police hadn't wanted to know at the time. When forty-eight hours after reporting the mugging nothing had happened, his father took him down to the police station and the civilian desk clerk gave them a crime number. That would have been the end of it, but his father pushed the point and was told that it was unavailability of staff. Their nextdoor neighbour was a policeman and from what he had told him and from what they had read in the newspapers they could easily interpret shortage of staff as too many officers persecuting motorists with speed cameras, other officers away on their 'Gender Awareness in the Community' course and the remainder seconded to police in Iraq or Bosnia-Herzegovina or Timbuktu, in fact anywhere but protecting the ordinary citizen from the barbarous hordes on our own streets.

As he sat down again, still the head and the tail of the queue, Dominic thought through why he was there. In 1997 when the thrusting prime minister of a newly elected government declaimed the imminent modernisation and social revolution in Britain (The 'Great' seemed to have disappeared somewhere.), he was seven and unaware of the social claptrap that was so popular in the media at the time. However, now at the age of fourteen he was about to benefit from one of these momentous social reforms, for when the government lowered the age of consent for homosexuals from eighteen to sixteen, it also made provision for, under certain strict conditions, legal sex for fourteen and fifteen year olds providing there was no more than a year's difference in the partners' age. Under those conditions these teenagers had to register with parental consent and have the permission encoded on their ID cards and in their passports. Dominic did not make a decision he was gay; he just knew from an early age that he was and that early age was not going to stop him finding out as much as possible about the subject. He found articles on the internet, and books which he ordered from the public library and read. He became so secure in his research that he had shared it with his parents and while they suffered the normal shock parents suffer when suddenly confronted with the fact their son may never provide them with grandchildren, the logic of his presentation and self-assessment won them over and they immediately accepted that he was different from their other two boys. Dominic was dearly loved by his parents and elder brothers. Being the third child of the same sex he successfully filled that typical rôle, namely of entertainer and clown and the pet of them all, but they also instinctively knew that he was the most intelligent of the three children. They also accepted that if they had girlfriends, he was going sooner or later to have a boyfriend.

All three boys were good-looking. They were the fortunate types who could develop sinewy and muscular bodies without having to work on them. Dominic had light curly brown hair which would blanch in the summer sun, sparkling blue eyes, a long handsome face with sharp features and which always appeared to be smiling and full of fun. He was wrenched out of his daydream when he felt a playful squeeze from an arm round his shoulders and found that Pip had heavily plonked himself down beside him. It was Pip he had been looking for when got off the bus, Pip he had been looking for while he was in the waiting area.

"Sorry I'm late, Dom. I went for the half past eight bus and found there wasn't one on a Saturday." Pip was the foil of Dominic. He had straight black hair which stayed in place, black - not even brown - eyes, a smooth face and although his body was slim, it was smooth, not sinewy like Dominic's. Pip's face lit up when he smiled, but his smiles had to be elicited, earnt, encouraged. Perhaps his most noticeable feature though was his inordinately long, but graceful and dextrous fingers. He was manually endowed and would excel at anything that demanded the skilled use of his hands - playing the piano, model making, sketching and dealing with anything mechanical. Together Dominic and Pip made an exciting and entertaining pair to look at, to be with and to work with.

They had met at the age of eleven on the first day of their transfer to senior school, one of those chance encounters where Pip had accidentally spilt the contents of his schoolbag and Dominic had helped him pick them up. That made them late for their first Year 7 assembly and getting admonished so early in their school career seemed to bind them together as friends. Coincidentally their surnames began with the same letter, they were placed in the same tutor group and for that year they had all their lessons together. And that was it for Year 7; they were two ordinary schoolboys who had palled up together. It was not until Year 8 that they realised they had something else in common. By that time the girls' equipment had well and truly arrived, if ever it was going to, and the boys' equipment was beginning to arrive and even if day to day mixing hadn't made the pupils aware that sex was rearing its ugly head, a combination of PSE lessons, school discos and parties at the weekend removed any last illusions. By this time Dominic was used to his brothers' girlfriends and Pip to his sisters' boyfriends, so that was no big deal, either at home, school or in their social perceptions, but despite unstinting efforts by the opposite sex, none was able to win either over and in their intense adolescent conversations the two boys came out to one another. As already said, Dominic was already out at home and it was he that used his experience to help Pip along and encouraged him to talk to his parents. At the same time their own relationship was deepening, at first just good friends soon to be best friends, then the experimental stage until finally at one teenage party they sneaked away to a closet where the guests' coats had been put, and with the experiments obviously a success, discovered an intense emotional passion for one another which quickly blossomed into first love and by the time they emerged from there they had agreed to become boyfriends. Meanwhile the only person to miss them f rom the party was one rather aggravating girl who had the hots for Dominic.

At first the word boyfriend was never used at home, at least not in front of the parents, even though they were obviously under no illusion about the closeness of the two boys, the way they did everything together, looked at each other, and the frequent sleepovers. Eventually, however, it could not be avoided once each boy finally persuaded his parents that he wanted to register under this new government initiative and none of the parents saw any wisdom in resisting their sons' requests.

Dominic was summoned into the office. He had half expected to see one of the senior members of the school staff, but instead found a rather severe looking woman dressed in a white blouse, grey costume and with her hair packed into a tight bun. She introduced herself as the registrar. She checked his papers, then his iris and fingerprints against his passport and ID card. He handed over £42 for which he duly received a receipt, was told that he would receive his passport and ID card back within seven to ten working days and that the receipt would act as proof they were being dealt with officially. He was invited to take a seat outside again, while Pip received similar treatment.

Meanwhile another youth had arrived whom Dominic instinctively took a dislike to. He was dressed in Lycra cycle shorts and a stretch tanktop, all black, bead necklace and bracelet, and shades. He was holding a cycle helmet which had obviously taken its toll on the boy's gelled spiked hair. He took his crumpled forms out of a bumbag strapped round his waist. Dominic could have sworn that there were slight traces of mascara round his eyes and rouge on his cheeks. He shuddered, but without any more ado he was directed into another office where a young man in a white coat and with a stethoscope about his neck introduce himself as a doctor and Dominic immediately underwent a medical examination. His mother had been right. He did need the clean underwear. It was a drop and cough, a lot of intimate questions and an even more intimate examination. With that over he was back in the waiting area, alone this time as the other two were still being processed. 'I know. I'll go and get a drink while I'm waiting.' 'Oh no you won't.' he contradicted himself in his head. 'The headmistress has had the drinks machines removed. Don't you remember, dummy?' He sat there looking at his fingernails. Pip came out from his medical.

"Do your trousers up, Pip," Dominic said in a shrill voice. Pip blushed. looked down and started fiddling with his zip.
"They are done up, Dom! You bastard!" hissed Pip and as Dominic started giggling out loud, Pip had the last laugh because Dominic got an immediate hard-on from seeing him fiddling with his trousers, just at the moment they were called into one of the classrooms. Holding on to Pip he staggered into the room unwilling, or perhaps unable, to walk upright.

They sat down facing a television monitor with a video recorder, waiting for Lycra Boy. Once all three were there the young man in charge introduced himself and started the video, a film called Boy Meets Boy. Although it was an ordinary film, a superimposed cartoon character dressed in a white coat and with a yellow face like the Simpson family's, took over the narration in Roger Rabbit like style.
"Another PC character that's supposed to avoid any racial stereotype," Dominic said in a stage whisper to Pip.
"Who do they think they're kidding?" came the reply. The man in charge visibly tried to ignore the remarks. As the film progressed Dominic became more and more convinced that he had seen it before, or rather that the script was familiar. Then the penny dropped. It was an adaptation of a personal relationships video they'd seen in PSE, except then the title had been Boy Meets Girl. Pip leant over to Dominic, completely ignoring the presence of Lycra Boy and not even attempting a stage whisper to say
"Hey Dom, it'll be the banana scene in a couple of minutes." The man in charge gave him a look and Dominic giggled. The film was dealing with personal hygiene and STDs before going on to the workings of the body. Then as predicted there came the scene where a condom was unrolled by a set of carefully manicured fingers, making sure the teat was squeezed, over a rampant banana. Our two boys howled with mirth. Lycra Boy looked rather nonplussed.
"I'll never know why they even tried to make us think that you can ever get pregnant from a banana," said Dominic.
"I've always eaten them," rejoined Pip. "I never even thought of slipping one up my butt before, with or without a johnny."
"Now there is an idea," said Dominic and amidst their raucous sniggers there was a loud clearing of the throat from the man in charge while Lycra Boy did not know whether he was allowed to join in the merriment or not. After this they tried to settle down and behave themselves.

The film was followed by a discussion and a question and answer session which fell rather flat when Dominic asked the one question which couldn't be answered. Because of his private reading he was pretty well genned up as it was and had shared his knowledge with Pip during their intense adolescent conversations. Lycra Boy was asking the most elementary of questions, annoying the other two, not so much with the questions, but with the particular manner in which he asked them with a mock coyness and that intonation in his voice, particularly beloved of girls, where a statement becomes a question. Finally Dominic could suppress his natural naughtiness no longer and asked the man in charge
"Tell me. Are you gay yourself?"
"As a trained counsellor I'm not allowed to answer that as we're not supposed to impose our own personality or give you any of our personal details." Then pushing his point home Dominic asked
"If you're not, are you really in a position to lecture to those of us that are on how to lead our lives?" There was silence while Pip polished his finger nails and Lycra Boy sat stock still with his mouth open. It was broken by another clearing of the throat from the man in charge who then said
"It's time to move on, I think."

After that the discussion and question and answer session did not survive for much longer. Each participant was handed a 'Welcome Pack', a paper carrier bag containing a book on personal relationships, a leaflet with addresses for counselling and the treatment of STDs, a separate one on HIV and AIDS, a tube of K-Y gel, a twelve-pack of super strong condoms and a packet of Kleenex tissues.
"Excuse me,"said Dominic. "There's no banana in mine." The man in charge gave him a withering smile. Pip was already out of the door. Dominic said thank you and goodbye and left with Lycra Boy. Still brimming with high spirits he put his arm round his shoulder and whispered confidentially in his ear
"Hey, Lycra Boy, if you're going to wear Lycra shorts you've got to wear either a thong or nothing at all underneath 'cos the outline of your knicker elastic is a right turn-off to all the boys. See ya," at which he patted him on the bottom, briskly left the building and rejoined Pip outside. Hand in hand and laughing they walked through the playground as Dominic related what he had said, until they reached the street and then they decided it was time to behave themselves.
"By the way, he was wearing rouge. I wiped some off on my finger," and showed Pip. They went off to Burger Star for coke and fries to plan the rest of the day. Dominic had to go home to pick up a few things before going off to Pip's for a sleepover, though sleep wasn't very high on their agenda for their first legal night together.