The Good Boy (20 page)

I did feel sure that we are entitled to use whatever part of the body we choose to earn a living, whether it was our brains or brawn or even our balls. The men and women who model for Armani, Dior, St Laurent and even Calvin Klein and so on know quite well that it is their projection of sexuality that sells the items they advertise. They are not criticised for looking alluring. Yet there often is something that could be criticised in these advertisements, an element of dishonesty, in the implication that the dress or watch or underclothes or aftershave advertised will be just as alluring on the purchaser as on the model, and indeed that the purchaser will, by wearing the product, look just as alluring as the model. But instead of being accused of working in a basically dishonest industry, a ‘top model' is likely to be a national hero/heroine … and a millionaire. Similarly, but to a lesser extent I suspect, the figure models who pose for painters, sculptors and photographers are accepted as working in the ‘art' industry rather than in the sex industry … but does anybody seriously contend that Michelangelo's ‘David' and Manet's ‘Olympe' are copied and admired around the world as art? They and similar works are famous for their beauty, and surely their beauty is their nakedness and potential sexiness. What part of ‘David' would be most looked at? His hands? His face? His head? Go on now, it is his penis, and the comments one overhears in galleries around the world would suggest that we are most of us size queens: ‘Oh, isn't it small!'

So I was quite relaxed about the idea of being photographed in sexual situations and in the resulting photographs being sold to buyers who would enjoy looking at them. And for the work to pay me cash and at the same time to give me some sex made it quite an attractive proposition. The disappointment was that there was no offer of follow-up engagements (or of more sex with Eric) … and so working in England until the French teaching positions came up in September seemed to have become inevitable.

A few days later I took the train from the Gare du Nord to Calais and then the ferry to Dover. It was a rough winter crossing with most passengers, including me, being seasick and quite terrified by the violent pitching and rolling of the ship. It was with an immense sigh of relief that I finally set foot on English soil and caught the boat train up to London.

Once there I soon found digs in one of those innumerable small hotels near Victoria Station and next day went around to the London Education Authority. There I put my name down as an applicant for a temporary teacher position, went back to my hotel room and waited. After a couple of days with no job offers and many empty hours of sitting reading in my room I went to the bookstall at Victoria Station and bought a copy of the nearest thing to a gay magazine then allowed in England … I think it was called
Health and Beauty
or something similar. There was a small ad which caught my eye, an advertisement by a photographer in London seeking male models! I had no illusions about being good-looking but my experience in Paris had taught me that some photographers were not principally interested in the model's face. So I hand-delivered an application and within a day or so was called up for interview. The photographer turned out to be the best-known ‘soft porn' man in the game in the UK, and I had already seen some of his work in magazines both in Australia and in London. He was a pleasant fellow in his early sixties, lived in a rather smart, white-painted, four-storey Edwardian townhouse near Victoria, and had transformed one floor of the house into a large, bright, well equipped studio.

‘Well, let's have a look at you,' he said, and so I took my clothes off and stepped into the floodlit studio centre. Happily, the whole house was pleasantly warm from the central heating … this was London, in January. ‘Well, let's be frank,' he said. ‘You haven't got the looks of a movie star and there are plenty of young chaps around who have. But you've got a good body and you've got that wonderful tan! That tan has got you the job, if you want it.'

I had left Australia in early summer, in December, and had spent four weeks on the ship mostly sunbaking around the pool, and had forgotten that I had indeed worked up quite a bit of colour: the white vee where my Speedos had prevented any tanning heightened the contrast and seemed to deepen the tan. Anyway, the man who mattered liked it, and that was what was important. I was invited to come back the next day for a three-hour session at so many pounds sterling an hour, and I agreed.

Next day saw me on the job for a 9 a.m. start. This time, as well as the photographer, there were two young chaps. To my slight disappointment I was the only one told to undress. The two young guys were both ‘technical assistants' although I got the impression that they both lived in the house and with the photographer as his live-in protégés and models. Perhaps sensing my interest he added something like: ‘Oh, I don't have sex with the young fellows now. Past all that. Give myself the occasional Wellington now and then, and that's enough!'

The shots were all to be solo ones, with an endless series of lighting and pose changes and with various props and even items of clothing being used. I had to be carefully and very lightly oiled all over and my longish wavy hair had to be groomed and sprayset into position. I wore Roman greaves and sandals and carried a sword and shield; I had the net, trident and helmet of a gladiator; I wore an Egyptian kilt and pharaoh's head-dress; I had Speedos and a beach towel; I was Mercury with golden winged sandals … and I was just a 28-year-old guy with a tan and an erection. Some of the shots were ‘art' ones and some were erotic ones. I found that being the centre of attention like that, with all lights, eyes and cameras focused on me, was exciting and arousing, and the team made clever use of ‘down' time to do the more artistic shots and then they were ready for something raunchy when I was up again! I was surprised when ‘Finish up now' was called, the time had flown so fast.

I was shown into the quite luxurious living quarters of the house and showered and then found that a place had been set at table for me and a very fine lunch which included a dessert of fresh strawberries and cream (in mid-winter) was to be part of the deal. All three Londoners were very pleasant fellows, a little bit condescending to a mere colonial, but that was understandable and even tolerable, as I was paid handsomely for a very pleasant morning's work. There was no sex and, more disappointingly still, it was made plain that they had ‘got the tan' and that there would be no more work for me in the foreseeable future!

Back at my hotel I counted my money and thought over the morning's adventure. Was this the sort of life I wanted to lead? Would I like to be, in my sixties, a wrinkly old bachelor with lots of money and a fine house and no wife, no children and no sex other than ‘the occasional Wellington'? All things considered, no. Choosing the gay life, let alone the life of a porn model, seemed likely to bring more long-term loneliness than happiness and so once again I decided to try to follow the good old doctor's advice and ‘choose to be normal'.

But, a little like St Augustine of Hippo and his famous struggle to renounce the sins of the flesh, I wanted to be normal … ‘but not just yet'! I had answered a second ad in the magazine bought at the kiosk in Victoria Station, another ad for a male model, contacted the advertiser and arranged for him to meet me in the reception area of the hotel the following afternoon. I decided not to cancel the arrangement and so next day when the Reception Desk rang my room to announce a visitor I went downstairs to meet him.

To my surprise he was a very personable chap not much older than me; he said his name was Thomas and to call him Tom. It took him very little time to decide to offer me a few hours work if I could be available that very evening. I agreed, and a few hours later took the tube to Sloane Square and walked to Tom's mews flat, a small but comfortable place off Eaton Terrace. This time my employer made it plain that the photo studies were for his own collection rather than for any sort of circulation, though how a model could hold an employer to such an agreement I neither saw nor cared. I quite liked the chap and would probably have been happy to call around and ‘work' unpaid.

The large ground-floor living room of the flat was almost blindingly white: white ceiling, white walls, white doors and architraves, heavy white linen curtains and thick white carpet. There were no paintings or photographs or decorations of any sort on the walls. There was a shiny black grand piano at the baywindow end of the room and in one corner behind it, an incongruously large aspidistra on a shiny black plant-stand. A jumble of photographic gear lay on the floor and a tripod was positioned next to the piano. At the other end of the room there was a quite tall set of chrome steps and behind it a black and silver folding lacquered screen. It looked much more like an artist's or pianist's studio than a living room and I wondered whether there were more comfortable living quarters upstairs.

When he opened the door to me Tom was wearing black silk trousers and a white silk shirt. Without further ado he motioned for me to go into the small bathroom under the stairs and ‘leave your things'. I did as I was being paid to do and then joined him in the living room where he was fiddling with his camera and lights. He took me through a series of poses, explaining in detail how I was to stand or kneel or lie in front of the lacquered screen, and then another series where I was to lean against or climb up the set of steps. It was more complicated and more difficult than I had expected, and all very business-like – not at all erotic. I felt I was being deployed like a piece of furniture or an aspidistra rather than as a hunky male model and I remained flaccid or barely half-hard all the time. Finally he seemed satisfied that I had understood what was expected of me and, leaving me posed on the steps, Tom picked up his camera, adjusted the lighting and started clicking. We must have done twenty or so shots with the steps before I was directed to move across to the screen and to assume my first pose there, one where I was to half-sit, half-lie on the floor in front of the screen, my right foot under my left buttock, my right arm bent at the elbow with the weight of my torso supported by my right forearm, and my left arm lying on my left leg. As I moved across the room Tom tossed a black silk kimono towards me with the instruction ‘Put this on but don't tie the sash'. I did as I was told and made myself comfortable on the floor. Tom adjusted the lighting, came over and rearranged the folds of the kimono so that the black silk on the white carpet highlighted the tan of my body, made sure that I was comfortable enough to hold the pose … and clicked away, taking shots from different angles including from halfway up the set of steps.

Unlike the other two photographers, Tom worked quietly, almost silently, with just a ‘Next pose' every few minutes. Once posed on the floor, however, I did not have to change pose or move at all: it was the camera, the angle of shot and the lighting that changed. Suddenly there was a new and by then unexpected instruction: ‘Now play with yourself with your left hand and show me that erection'. I obliged of course and with a ‘Now stay like that,' Tom put down the camera, sat at the piano and started to play. He played very well. He had dimmed the lights and played without sheet music, swaying gently to and fro, looking towards me all the time but seeming at times to drift off to some less substantial world. I realised that he was playing Debussy's ‘L'Après-midi d'un Faune' and wondered whether I really did look something like a faun there on the carpet. The thought was quite erotic, as had become the whole scene, and I was not surprised when at the end of the Prelude Tom stopped, stood up and moved over towards me. He dropped his silk trousers as he walked, revealing his own arousal.

My mercenary mind started asking: ‘Was this part of the deal?' and ‘Are you a model or a hustler or both?' Tom was on his knees beside me, shaking off his silk shirt and brushing his hands across my chest and belly as they came free of the fabric. Cocks cannot lie and both were now rock-hard. An instant decision was needed! As Tom moved his hand down to my groin I brought my left hand into play, protecting the crown jewels and said softly, ‘No, I'm sorry. Photos, yes, but sex, no.'

The effect was as if I had touched him with an electric cattleprod; he jerked back, rolled away from me and started to get up, as did I. ‘But why did you answer my advertisement, why did you come here and flaunt your sex in my face if you are not willing to play? I'm paying you the rate we agreed. Do you charge more for sex than for photographs?'

It was all so confusing. The dim lights, the beautiful music, the simple, masculine setting and Tom's trim body were indeed quite erotic and I wanted to have sex with him. But something seemed to warn me against accepting money for sex. Off the top of my head I answered: ‘If we have finished the photography, pay me for those two hours and that's the end of the work. If you'd like me to stay on for sex between friends, I'd love to.'

‘Friends!' he almost shouted. ‘You're not a friend, you're a prostitute. You answered my advertisement and I'm paying you by the hour. What on earth is the matter with you to think that we could be friends! Take your money and get out!'

Bewildered by the change of mood I retrieved my clothes, dressed quickly and headed for the door. Tom held out a handful of banknotes which I quickly saw did cover the agreed rate for the two hours. I accepted them and he immediately withdrew his hand as if fearing I might attempt to touch (or subserviently kiss?) it, opened the door and almost ejected me from the flat.

I decided to walk back to my little hotel near Victoria and set off down Buckingham Palace Road. It was cold but fortunately not raining and I thought carefully as I walked along. What had happened there? If I had not interrupted him, Tom would probably have kept me on for another hour or two, or maybe even longer, and then have paid me cash in hand for the number of hours worked … whatever kind of work had been involved. I was quite happy to be paid for the modelling but had rather impulsively resisted the idea of being paid for sex. I had wanted the sex but had wanted it to be sex between friends rather than between employer and employee, between client and (I shuddered at the word) prostitute. How could he call me a prostitute? Well, he could not have known that he was the very first person who had offered me payment for sex (give or take the Viennese photographer in Melbourne and the Moroccan photographer in Paris) and so I forgave him his mistake.