Beautiful Boy - An Essay

Beautiful Boy
July 22, 2011

It was about 3 in the afternoon when I got home from the movie. It was hot, I was sweaty from my 5-mile bike ride and was rolling my bike along the balcony to my apartment.

I saw him from the distance, a beautiful young man sitting outside the next apartment beyond mine, smoking a cigarette, with his bare feet up on the rail. I had met Camille the young French woman in that apartment months ago when she first moved in and our mail was mixed up, but didn't know someone else was living with her.

He saw me approaching and started to get up but I told him I wasn't coming that far and opened my door to put the bike inside. I was intrigued by the young man and wanted to see him some more. Got a glass of cold water and went back out on the balcony. I mentioned I had met the young woman and asked if he was living there now. He said he was Nicolas, her boyfriend.

He was quite gregarious and we started small talk, which grew and went into tangents that were jumping all over the world, from his travels and mine. He is from France, his parents came here for business when he was a child and he was educated here. There was a problem with his French visa and he could not return for a few more months until he turns 21. We joked that he was being held prisoner in the U.S.

All the while I am talking with him I am drinking in his young man charm and beauty. He has blue eyes and streaked blond, curly, shoulder length hair. His face is beautiful with that European symmetry and charming smile. There are a few red blemishes on his cheek, which on a young man just adds to the beauty. He is thin, like most men of his age and has a smooth, hairless chest and flat abdomen. He was wearing what looked like boxer underwear, his only attire, which showed off his well-defined hairy legs. Without staring conspicuously at any one part of this totally beautiful boy, I took it all in - including his well proportioned feet.

Admittedly, I was turned on by this young man. How I imagined intimacy with him, touching him, sniffing and licking him. He excited my desire. But ... aside from any great perception on his part, I restrained showing my true feelings of lust.

We talked a lot about the economy, world travel, conspiracy theories, the wars and France. I was fascinated hearing the views of a young man on these subjects and he seemed equally fascinated by my great history and experience.

I had the phone number of the new manager which he did not, so we stepped into my apartment for a while. He was impressed by my selection of DVDs, of which he had seen most. I offered him a beer but he preferred white wine, which he got from his apartment while I poured a glass of red.

His internet was down so we checked the dollar to euro rate on my computer. We sat at the computer for a while; I showed him some pics of my grandson who is his age. And we talked some more. He mentioned that he was glad to see I am not a racist.

Of course guys will talk about sex and I told him about how it was being young in the sexual revolution, making love to girls whose names you didn't know and the casualness with which we approached sex in those days. I even mentioned how, when I was about his age I made love to an older woman and he told me he was faithful to his girlfriend or he would have enjoyed an older woman himself. We even talked about this faithfulness and I mentioned never having sex with another woman while I was married to Brenda but that I had been infatuated with a couple of them. He also said he would like to have been around in the late '60s. I told him it was a perfect time for a man his age, which I was.

Camille came home from work and the three of us sat a while talking on the balcony with more wine. When we finally went inside, it was 7 pm. I had spent four hours happily passing the time with this beautiful boy. Why?

I have been here before, with Tony the teen son of a friend whom I saw several times at the beach with his mother. We talked a lot in those times, we had much in common and I could so easily connect with his adolescent experience. I analyzed my feelings about that as well; the fact that I was physically attracted to this beautiful boy, young enuf to be my son, yet would not - could not - act on that attraction. (See: A Beautiful Young Man - July 2003)

I have also been here before in 1967 when I was the beautiful boy, a security guard at the hospital who attracted the attention of Wally an older male nurse whom I initially thot was gay but in my inexperience dropped that thot when I found out he was married and had kids. For some reason Wally and I ended up at my shabby, furnished apartment in New Orleans, just talking for hours. He seemed interested or amused by my 22-year-old, inexperienced take on things and he never once made any kind of move on me. Months later I would end up drunk and in bed with Wally at his house - wife in another room. He was the first man I ever attempted to be sexual with.

So, again I ponder my attraction to youth and only assume it is a natural disposition in some of us. Raul is 30 years younger than me and still comes around for intimacy. Yet, even Raul at 35 would be the older man to Nicolas. There are so many age disparate relationships, so many older men hitting on young men and women that it appears clichéd. And yes, if I thot I had a chance I woulda hit on this beautiful boy.

 

nice story. i'm 26 but like guys my age or younger..i've always wondered if i will continue liking younger men or if my tastes will change as i grow older...probably the former

 

Me too. I like guys who are a few years younger. Though "a few years younger" changes with age. Like, I wasn't really into guys who were 18/19 when I was 15/16, for instance. But now at 21, I do. I'm going into my senior year and hope the incoming freshman class has a lot of hotties.


Also, nice story!

 

Hi Shale, I really liked this story, I think I would have not been able to resist you if I had been Nicolas! You are a very beautiful man!