A Most Personal Property (Ganymede Quartet Book 1) (6 page)

It had become more and more painfully clear to Henry as time passed that the sort of swooning, dramatic feelings he harbored for James and other handsome young men—the boy who delivered the milk, for instance, or the Briggs family’s young footman Patrick—were best kept secret, best repressed. He knew intrinsically that he would never develop a romantic interest in girls, but he kept that information to himself. Not even Louis was privy to his secret.

Henry sucked up the last of his soda through his straw and waved a casual goodbye at the boy behind the counter as he left the shop. Out on the sidewalk, he was assailed by a hot breeze and considered removing his jacket, propriety be damned. He was just two blocks away from the Blackwell Building and its newsstand, and it was a good bet that the building’s grand, high-ceilinged lobby would be cooler than the street. He made his way quickly to Wall Street, turned the corner, and pushed open the heavy brass doors of his father’s building.

The lobby was indeed cooler than the sidewalk, but the air was still hotter and closer than was comfortable. Henry had always been discouraged from bothering Father at his office, so he was not well-known to the people who worked in the building and no one recognized him. In addition to the newsstand, there was a tobacconist and a line of shoeshine stands. Henry dawdled at the newsstand, perusing the titles. There was a new
American Adventure
, but all the other titles—
Pals
,
Wayfarer
,
American Boys’ Life
—were issues he’d already seen. Henry flipped through
American Adventure
without really seeing the pages.

Men passed through the lobby at his back singly or in chatty groups and Henry watched them from the corners of his eyes, noting their attractiveness, the cut of their suits, whether they were attended by companions. He noted a handsome young man with James’ leonine coloring checking his own pocket watch against the clock on the wall above the elevators and make an adjustment. The man seemed to feel Henry’s gaze and glanced up at him, quite uninterested, and Henry looked quickly away.

Henry had tried not to look at men. He had tried so hard to be normal. For a few years, Henry had hoped that he was merely a late bloomer, that he’d wake up one day and want to see breasts. This had certainly happened to Louis, and to all of his other friends, but still Henry waited. He got taller, his voice deepened, and he grew a wispy mustache, but his appreciation of the female form never moved beyond the blandly aesthetic. Boys passed around illicit photographs of nude women and Henry looked at them and made appreciative remarks because that was what the other boys did. However, the only one Henry had ever really liked showed a woman with a man, taken from behind as they fucked, the man lying down and the woman riding atop. At the center of the image was the man’s erect cock, the tip just inside the lips of the woman’s cunt and the shaft and balls exposed. It was the hard cock that interested him, and it was the picture of that hard cock that came to mind when he was alone in bed at night.

Quailing under the news dealer’s suspicious gaze, Henry abandoned
American Adventure
and crossed the great echoing room to have his boots shined. Sitting on the high chair, he looked down on the head of the shoeshine boy, a young man perhaps his own age or even younger, who, however lowly his station, was functionally an adult and making all his own decisions. Henry was not quite prepared to give up his myriad advantages for the freedom allowed a shoeshine boy, but it had a certain appeal.

A young gentleman in an expensive suit trailed by a very handsome companion climbed onto the chair next to Henry’s and a second shoeshine boy sprang into action.

“I
really
don’t want to go to dinner with them,” the young gentleman said. “They’re so boring.”

“I can get you out of it if you want, Sir, you know that,” his companion assured him. “I’m good at lying.”

The young man laughed. “Don’t I know it!” They both laughed, seeming very fond of one another. “No, don’t bother. We’ll go, and we’ll be bored, and then we’ll do something fun afterward as a reward.”

“Very good, Sir.” The companion smiled at his master, and there was such intimacy in their mutual regard that Henry was abruptly cognizant of the sexual closeness these strangers had surely shared. This awareness was profoundly embarrassing, and he felt a hot flush rise up from the collar of his shirt, burning the tips of his ears, as he almost unwillingly pictured these men locked in an ardent embrace.

Henry made a conscious effort to block out the words of the young man and his companion and their continued conversation about their evening plans. Eavesdropping was rude and, besides, listening to them was just making him jealous: their obvious closeness made him worry about how he would manage to control himself with a companion. But if Father didn’t win Martin, he’d never even get to test his control.

“You’re all set, sir.” The shoeshine boy gave Henry a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He looked tired and very young.

“Thank you,” Henry said, giving him a dime, though the service cost only a nickel. “I don’t need any change.”

“Thank
you
, sir!” The boy smiled again, this time genuinely.

Henry did not like tobacco, so he felt he had quite exhausted all the possibilities of the Blackwell Building lobby. He checked his pocket watch against the wall clock; he had been gone little over an hour, and there was yet another to go before the auction. With a sigh, Henry turned his back on the clock and passed back through the big brass doors and out onto the street. A gust of hot wind dislodged his hat and pulled at the hem of his jacket; he clamped his hat more firmly on his head and inhaled a deep breath of hot, gritty air. Jaw set with determination, he set off down the street with no particular destination in mind, and bargained with the Fates: if only Father would bid high for Martin, Henry would prove worthy of the privilege of ownership. He would act appropriately and do nothing that might reveal the more shameful aspects of his nature. He would be especially vigilant about curbing his affectionate impulses and keep touching to a minimum. He would be careful with his own companion like he’d never had to be with any other family slave.

Henry’s father’s very large house required a very large staff, and he had been raised in good part by his nurse and his parents’ respective companions, but he had not really understood that companions had anything other than a quasi-parental role until he was 11, nearly 12, and James Briggs turned 16, old enough for a companion of his own and impatient for the privilege.

At that time, Henry and Louis had understood that their parents’ companion slaves helped their masters dress, turned down their beds, read to them, and performed innumerable other tasks—but they also performed these services for the children in their masters’ families, as well, so the boys did not understand James’ impatience. What did it matter if your father’s companion or a footman helped you dress, rather than a companion of your own?

“What a couple of
children
,” James had scoffed. “It’s not about getting dressed or shaving or running a bath, you dummies. It’s about
sex
.”

The topic of sex, the mere mention of the word, had been enough to make Henry turn red and clam up, but Louis was not so inhibited.

“What about it?” Louis had asked, eager and curious.

“You
do
understand what sex is, right?” James had cocked an eyebrow, looking back and forth between their faces. He had seemed particularly dubious of Henry’s grasp of the concept. Both boys nodded. “A man and a woman,” James had said. “A cock in a hole.” He paused to see the effect his raw words had upon his audience.

Louis was delighted, Henry a bit scared. Henry, who had learned of the mechanics of this act not long before this—thanks to Louis—and who had never seen a woman any more uncovered than bare arms, imagined the hole as being like a nostril, only bigger.

“Well, in our circles, people wait until they’re married to have sex, of course. And men might be 25 or even 30 years old before they’re married, and that’s too long to wait. It’s not healthy,” James had said, with the ring of authority. “It hurts your body. Fluids get backed up.”

Henry, who had gone to Timothy terrified at the event of his first nocturnal emission, was well aware of the fluids.

“So that’s what your companion is for,” James had explained. “So you have an outlet for all your sexual vigor in the years before you’re married. And also someone to help you get dressed.”

“But you said ‘cock in a hole,’” Louis pointed out. “Where’s the hole?”

James had laughed, not too unkindly. “You fuck him in his butthole, dummy. He cleans it out for you so there’s no shit or anything.”

“That sounds disgusting,” Louis had said, making a face. “Who would want to do
that
?”

Henry had felt guilty heat rising in his cheeks and hoped neither brother would look his way.

“Wait until you’re a little older, then,” James had said, laughing. “You’ll be willing to stick it in any hole that’ll hold still long enough.”

“But it’s queer, though, isn’t it?” Louis had wrinkled his nose fastidiously. “Isn’t that what fairies do?”

James had shrugged, unconcerned. “Not really. You don’t
kiss
them. You don’t do anything that’s just for
them
. It’s not
romantic
. It’s just for release, so you don’t get backed up. And besides, you stop doing it when you get married.”

Henry had wondered at the time whether Father and Timothy had had this sort of relationship, if all the fathers and all the companions had done this. If so, presumably all the mothers and their companions had done this, too, though with no cock involved, Henry had no idea what women would do with the holes.

That August, James had at last received Joseph, a cheerful, handsome boy with blond hair and a sturdy frame. James had scarcely come out of his room for a week, and whenever he had, he’d worn a cocky grin that he’d seemed unable to suppress, even in the presence of ladies. For his part, Joseph had been a good sport, which was all that was required of him.

In the four years since James had brought Joseph home, the full scope of the companion’s role had been made clear to Henry; James’ version of ownership was the first young person’s experience that Henry had had a chance to observe. Joseph was James’ valet, his confidant, and his sexual release valve. Joseph’s presence in James’ bedroom relieved James of the need to masturbate—a fact which he gloated about to the younger boys—thus preserving his health, both mental and physical. It was hoped, and intended, that Joseph would keep James from consorting with prostitutes and conniving lower-class women, preventing him from contracting social diseases, fathering inconvenient children, and developing unsavory attachments to unsuitable people. However, in James’ case, these were probably not realistic expectations; James seemed inclined to incorporate Joseph into his bad behavior rather than using him as a replacement for it.

In practice, with James and his friends as examples, it seemed most boys would use their companions with brutal frequency for a few months before tapering off and turning their attentions to girls in any case. Most boys, after all, preferred a female partner. If James or any of his friends had a more complicated relationship with his slave, he certainly wasn’t sharing that information around. No one with any sense of self-preservation would.

Henry made his way down Wall Street to the river and watched as men goaded a balky mule and its cart onto a ferry. Dockworkers eyed him with disinterest, occasionally even disdain; no doubt men like these would consider him a pampered child, a useless boy, and he couldn’t say they were wrong. However, he hoped that things would start to change today: the acquisition of a companion would signal his trajectory, his journey toward adulthood and responsibility, and a well-trained slave would help him to refine his character and become a man worthy of admiration.

It was unsettling to have a face to put to his previous vague ideas about a slave of his own. He felt the longing for Martin specifically so much more intensely than any desire he’d ever felt for a faceless, servile, imagined boy. Martin was everything he’d known he liked in a boy’s looks, and so much more that he’d never even considered. His smile! The color of his eyes! Henry’s breath caught in his throat at the thought and he was overcome with a wave of inconvenient desire.

The dockworkers either didn’t notice or simply didn’t care about Henry’s red face, but Henry hurried back up Wall anyway, ashamed of his embarrassment. His cheeks cooled a little as he shouldered his way through the throngs of people on the sidewalks. He was adept at negotiating crowds, always careful about touching other people because of his worries about his body’s unpredictable responses. While he’d never gotten an erection from incidental contact with a handsome stranger, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t ever happen.

In recent years, Henry had had very little physical contact with anyone. He did not have a loving mother, his father was gruff and frightening, and he was too old to be affectionate with household slaves. He hungered to be touched, however, and to touch in return. But Henry feared that once he touched another boy, even if he tried to restrict himself to those acts considered proper with a slave, he’d be unable to stop himself from going further; that once the floodgates were opened, he’d never get them closed again. He was convinced that he was one touch away from debauchery, that the breathless stroke of a single fingertip against another boy’s skin would push him over the brink into the sort of concentrated depravity from which there would be no escape. A good slave would, of course, go along with whatever his master wanted, and a slave was meant to keep his master’s secrets, but slaves did talk, and not just within a house, but throughout society. If it was said that Henry had shown untoward interest in a slave beyond using him to satisfy a physical need, he would be humiliated and his father would surely be furious.