At last, I was looking down on acres and acres of flat, smooth sand - and beyond, almost out of sight, the North Sea.  Today the wind felt gentle, cooling.  The sun still warm.  No clouds.  Few people.  Slowly, my heart beat dropped.  During all the weeks of searching, I had never thought of coming here - the most beautiful beach I had ever seen. The sea pale with heat, almost the colour of my soon-to-be lover’s eyes.

For, there Tom was - sitting alone on a piece of driftwood, in his red swimming trunks, gazing our at the distant waves.  I called out his name before I could change my mind.  He turned round, saw me, and waved.  Soon I was sitting by his side.

“I didn’t think you were coming.”

“And I was afraid you wouldn’t come at all!”   We smiled at each other, wary.  No doubts, no point in doubts.  I dared to touch his hot, bare shoulder.  It felt too good to be all right.  No doubts, instead a bout of paranoia.

The whole world could be watching!  That family playing in the waves.  Could they see us as well as I could see them?  Perhaps I about to be the victim of a sting!  Could I really trust Tom?  His friend might well be lurking in a sand dune, waiting to leap up at the most embarrassing moment.  Or his clergyman father - watching from behind one of the pine trees, with a camera, a policeman.  
“
I thought you might have forgotten” Tom said, shy.  He picked up a shell, and tossed it from hand to hand.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”  I gave his waist a brief squeeze.  For prying eyes, no more than a gesture of friendly greeting. “But I had a few problems hiring a car.”

“A car?”  Tom looked puzzled.  In his eyes, a hint of cheekiness, lust even, but none of double dealing.  “Race you to those dunes over there!”  Just where, a moment ago, I’d thought young Randy might be hiding.  “Come on, slow coach!”

Tom’s bare feet and athletic legs ran way ahead. My shoes felt heavy, my trousers dragged against my knees.  He glanced back, grinning with triumph - or maybe contempt.  No matter.  He won by twenty yards - and sat down on the sand, mocking me with a shake of his head when I collapsed beside him.  I pretended to be out of breath, scared to make the next move.

Tom looked me up and down, as if before he hadn’t realised I possessed a body. 

“You’re one of those aren’t you?” he asked.  “Aren’t you?”  A question that in Latin, require the answer “yes”.  His saucer eyes laughed - at me, or with me, I couldn’t be sure.

Our common heritage - Latin syntax, Greek love.  “One of those.”  He’d saved me a long winded apologia.  But how could I convince him my feelings were beautiful?  

“Tom, I can’t get you out of my mind.”  Panicking, I’d reached for Hollywood!  “I’ve never felt quite like this before.”

“I thought that sort of thing was meant to stop when you left school.”  As he moved his lips, freckles twitched on his nose.

“So did I, Tom.”  He said nothing.  “So did I.”

“Have you got any girl friends?”  A knowing smirk, lascivious.  For a second, I hated him.  But, after all - despite my high blown feelings - I hadn’t come all this way just to recite a sonnet.  He was staring at my crotch.  “Gosh, that’s a big one!”  Oh God!  My erection had forced open a button of my corduroy trousers.  “Would you like to feel mine?” he asked, practical.

A big one!  I had imagined Tom would play the innocent for hours.  Seduction had been part of my fantasy.  Seduction, love, holding him close in my arms.  

But he was young, still a schoolboy.  Tutored behind bike sheds, not on a balcony in Verona.  It was up to me to show Tom the nobility of passion.  I lay a hand on his flat, brown stomach.  Astonishingly warm.  It trembled in time with his breathing.  I traced a circle around his navel.

“Well...”  I began, remembering his question about girl friends.  Perhaps it would help to invent one - Phil’s daughter, Rachel, for example.

“I’ve got a girl friend at school” Tom volunteered  “She’s very pretty.  Go on, Simon, touch my tool.  It’s gone really hard.”  Christ!  I tried to ignore his bluntness. It’s about to happen!   All I had to do was forget my brain, and the sentimental parts of my fantasies.

So I took a deep breath, moved my right hand down well below his navel, down past where his bathing trunks began, just above the point...  

“We better go over there” Tom said, practical again.  He pointed to a deep hollow in the dunes.  For the moment, I’d forgotten my own fear.  Perhaps, beneath his earthy lust, he felt a scintilla of shame.

Tom flung himself down on the sand, impatient as I pulled off my trousers, my underpants.  I lay down beside him, he pulled his trunks away.  His sex - his “tool” - sprang upwards to its full height.  Thin, but...  It didn’t feel right, to take a close look. 

Wasting no time, he touched it himself, a drop of liquid already on the tip.  A coincidence that lust rhymes with disgust?  Tom’s mouth open, eyes closed, restless.
Why couldn’t I hear music, or imagine myself as Byron or Humphrey Bogart? 

Everything had happened too fast.  I stroked his thighs, the way I had in my dreams. Tentatively, I moved my mouth towards his lips - or did I just think about it?
Tom shoved his penis into the palm of my hand.  I could feel its urgent pulse.  Oh, what the fuck!  In books, it’s afterwards when you’re closest to your lover. 

Abandoning symphonies, poetry, subtlety, preliminaries, I began to caress his sex.  “Can’t you do it harder?” he demanded.  “Harder!”

Doing it harder made my arm ache.  And, all of a sudden, it became impossible to fool myself.  Love!  I felt angry, disappointed, betrayed - above all bored.

After all my endless, operatic, anticipation of this moment, a ridiculous, bitter, anticlimax.  Banal, tedious, absurd.  “Squeeze it, harder!”  A bizarre demonstration from a TV cookery show.  

“My girl friend is the daughter of my housemaster, though of course he doesn’t know.”  Tom had made no attempt to touch any part of me - even with a flash of his eyes.  “Penelope, but everyone calls her Penny.”  Well, they wouldn’t call her Tricia, would they?  A stone stuck into my left elbow.  If only, even now, I could have found the courage to kiss.  But when I stroked his face, he pushed me away.  Damn it, I was older than him, I should be dictating the terms!  At least guiding his hand towards my crotch, to make the sordid feelings mutual.  “We go for walks together.”  At school, even Parker Robertson used to touch me.  “She’s really sexy...”

I could feel the blood rising in his tool – I tried to wallow in his filthy language.  No, no.  I sat up, desperate to gaze into Tom’s eyes.  Some chance!  Closed, as pink as his penis, bulging with images of an undressed Penelope.  “Next term, next term we’re going to...  Oh!  What a mess!”  He giggled.  “Have you got a tissue?  That’s the third time I’ve done it today!”