LOVE WORKETH NO ILL:
MY RELATIONSHIP AT SEVENTEEN WITH A POET IN HIS SIXTIES
BY KIT

The following testimony was written in April 2024 for Greek Love Through the Ages by a sympathising reader.

As a boy of seventeen, growing up in a small town in the UK in the 1990s, I was in a bad way. That’s how I tend to put it; it hardly matters what the reasons were. Ask Holden Caulfield for his. I’ll just say an important part of my predicament was that I had for many years had a vast need for sexual love and fulfilment, which I lacked the gumption to do something about. Hope deferred had made the heart sick.

One of the persons I confided snippets of my inner life to was a teacher in secondary school, an intelligent and gentle man of about sixty. I gave him my poetry to read and critique. He put me in touch with the organiser of an upcoming poetry event and it was agreed I would read some of my work there. Another participant would be my teacher’s brother, a published poet in his mid-sixties called Jake. He lived in a city at some distance. I forget how much my teacher told me about him in advance, but I almost certainly knew he liked boys. (I myself have always been bisexual.)

Tigers and piglets

Jake had definitely also been told about me. We sat next to each other during the event. The electricity between us was palpable. His hand rested flat on top of his upper leg next to my leg, conspicuously so. I considered putting my hand on top of his, but didn’t. When I mentioned this to him later, he said he’d placed his hand there on purpose in case I wanted to do just that. That night he gifted me his most recent book of poetry and invited me to visit him for a few days. I soon took him up on the invitation; my parents will have allowed it because he was my teacher’s brother and had a good reputation. He lived in a pleasant, large flat full of art and books. He took me out to lunch and dinner, we visited art galleries and bookshops, he took me to see films. Coming from my small-town isolation, I was exhilarated. We talked intensely of art, literature and our lives. We listened to Under Milk Wood and The Young Messiah. He suggested we choose a poetry book or novel once a month for both of us to read so we could discuss it. I was keen to read my own work to him, on which he shared his views and tips. He in turn shared his work in progress with me. His best poetry book was no longer in print, so he copied it out for me in his own hand in a notebook.

We were on unabashedly intimate terms from the start. It was probably during my first stay – though it could have been the second – that he asked, as we were sitting on the couch in the living room, if I would take my trousers off. I did so. Then he asked if I would take my briefs off. I did so. I was suitably excited, which prompted Jake to sigh in amazement: “How potent you are!” This utterance of his still makes me smile. Being the consummate aesthete (a term by which he often characterised himself), he caressed me endlessly, as he would do many more times. It was the first time I experienced physical tenderness that was not of the parental variety. Sexual acts were limited to his masturbating me. On occasion we tried more – I daresay on my initiative – but we found nothing that suited us better. We slept in his bed, though there was also a room with a single bed he said I could consider mine.

Jake fell head over heels for me. One reason was our mutual poetic bent and love for literature and art, over which we bonded passionately. Another was my perfect age. He was attracted exclusively to boys of about fourteen to eighteen, and considered seventeen the age of the gods. He liked boys on the cusp of manhood and was fascinated by the metamorphosis of boy to man. He identified as an “ephebophile”; the first time I heard the word. Strikingly good-looking boys he called “tigers”. Chubby ones he called “piglets”, but jokingly and without malice. For my part, I was not in love with him physically, never having been attracted to the physique of males older than myself. This didn’t matter. My experience fully aligns with the well-attested fact that the young are sexually flexible and, with their hormones on fire, can be desirous of sex with persons they feel good enough about. This was how it was with Jake. When I went to visit him, I expected something physical would happen, and it did, and it was good. It released my impossibly pent-up energy and libido.

“Your cheeks are only sixteen”

We also launched immediately into an intensive correspondence.I shall cite from his letters more than mine because I’ve only retained drafts of a very few of my letters, but his will say much about what was on my mind. We sent each other not just fat letters but enclosed poems of our own, poems by others, postcards with photos of writers, newspaper and magazine cuttings, booklets, bookmarks and so on. We took to calling these parcels “goody bags”. Jake paid exquisite attention to detail and symbolism, for instance choosing stamps with literary themes. On one occasion, our goody bags crossed in the post and each us of had included a different book by filmmaker and writer Pasolini, not knowing this about the other. (Jake had introduced me to Pasolini by taking me to an arthouse cinema that was showing a cycle of his films, including The Decameron and Arabian Nights.)

At one point I wrote to Jake that it troubled me he was able to give me much more (books and such) than I was able to give him: “Our gifts are not in balance.” He wrote back: “May I politely point out that the terms ‘gifts’ and ‘in balance’ contradict each other? It’s a bit worrying that a poet should confuse the concepts of ‘gifting’ and ‘bartering’. Your friendship is your most precious gift to me. Keep it coming!” He further cited from a collection of very affectionate letters between a boy and his teacher, published in adulthood by the erstwhile boy. As it happens, this publication had been a happy find of mine which I’d gifted to Jake. The introduction to the letters said: My teacher’s need to give without any ulterior thought of receiving was overwhelming. Citing this, Jake added: “That sentence could be applied to the person writing you this letter. I have readied a cardboard box of books for you and ask you to please overcome your considerable modesty for once and accept my gift of these books, each of which may help you in your studies.” Over time he was to familiarise me with the work of countless writers, painters and sculptors. I also met several in person through him. He was brilliant at explaining what made great art and literature great. I definitely got a free education from Jake. For my part, I shared with him what literary and musical discoveries I had made by age seventeen.

Jake was a writer in love. He wrote: “On Wednesday morning when I got up, I felt a longing to be with you, suddenly, like a burst of flame. I was unable to write. I fled from my room into the garden and from the garden into the room. I could not concentrate. At five o’clock I was tired and I went to sleep for an hour. Then it was over. I felt calm again, thought with pleasure of our friendship again, was able to write again. Last night I had a pleasant dream. We were together and you again posed your anxious question: Am I not too old for you, would you not rather have a younger ephebe in your arms? I was awoken by my own answer. Leaning on my left arm, half raised, my face turned towards you, I said aloud: ‘Your cheeks are only sixteen.’ Then I could sleep no more. Never in my life have I told anyone so many intimate things about myself. Love casteth out fear. You are a stimulus to me, a pillar. I may perhaps be one to you. I hope for a lasting and inspiring friendship. And I hope we’ll see each other again soon. And now, please forgive this nocturnal letter. Dawn is breaking already.”

Oscar and Bosie

In another letter he wrote: “Thank you for your letter! From your dedication and openness speak great friendship and affection. Let not a shred of doubt exist about our friendship. You’re my best friend. I love you.” I was not to be outdone and wrote: “Our relationship is majestic.” On a separate sheet I wrote three lines: “Jonathan and David. Oscar and Bosie. Jake and …” On the dots, Jake filled in: “Kit!” He visited me at home a few times so my parents got to know him a bit better. He and I also visited his brother, the matchmaker. Afterwards, Jake wrote: “My brother rang me to say he was impressed by what he witnessed of our friendship. His wife had also noticed how intimate and at the same time relaxed you and I are around each other. I am glad they told me this. I realised how amazing it is that you and I have only known each other for such a short time and yet are so familiar with each other.”

Jake and I spent some days in the country, staying with an elderly lady friend of his, a very sweet widow. He wrote afterwards: “When I arrived to pick you up from the station, I scanned for somewhere to park my car. Quite unexpectedly I saw you, sitting on a bench. You were already there. A thrill of happiness surged through me. Kit! I shall never forget that place and that moment. Breaking through the weariness of all practical distractions, suddenly there was that illuminating moment. How wonderful it is to love someone. To love you. And what unforgettable days followed. What is most beautiful cannot be put into words. How close we were to each other in our raptures and our sorrows. The concern for each other. The telling, the listening. The way you read poems to me. Your insights. Your ambition and passion for writing your own poetry. Your candour. You who are so reserved, how you were able to give of yourself. The humour, the silliness, the comradeship. The enjoyable, peaceful silence in each other’s company. But also your sad, distraught silence on the way back. You sat in the car staring vacantly and saw nothing of the beautiful route I’d chosen. You mostly sat with your eyes closed. When you got out in silence, you avoided me. I was just as distraught as you were. When it was over, you came over to me and we came immortally near to each other. This is going to be a letter to throw away. An adolescent’s love letter. I write this as I have no choice. I love you more than I love myself.”

“We are just glass toys”

As said, I was in a bad way. This wasn’t simply remedied by a great new friendship, special though it was, or by the exhilarating world of art and literature that had opened up to me. I had crippling silent spells. Sometimes I was also unable to express myself on paper: “I keep this letter so short and formal because at this moment I can’t do it any other way. I often think of you and other reassuring things.” I wrote and said dark and stark things to Jake. God knows I tested his patience. I repeatedly expressed doubt that I was any good for him and suggested he might be better off leaving me to my own devices. He would have none of it, consistently seeking to put me at ease and to offer more positive perspectives. I had written: “The line that ties me to you is imperfect, because love is selfish and random. Anything can break, whereas only I, Kit, will stay with myself until the end unconditionally. This is ME; EGO; imperfect, suspicious and impossible.” Jake replied: “Would you please consider for a moment, Kit, that what you are capable of is making someone happy. You may call yourself imperfect, suspicious and impossible, but to me you’re a perfect, sincere and impossibly good friend. You are right, love is vulnerable. We are just glass toys. Our sincerity makes us very vulnerable to each other. At the same time, it’s what solidifies our friendship. […] How can I feel great and happy if you are not? What kind of friend am I if I cannot help you in your depressed and desperate moments, if I cannot inspire you to pull through? If I can help you in any way, tell me how. Tell me everything you want to say, even if it might be painful for me. One time at mine you told me: I am enraptured because you are enraptured. What a great expression of friendship.”

At another time he wrote: “There is so much you don’t say but still communicate to me. You have a silent nature. That’s not you being taciturn, as I’ve discovered. You say things differently from the customary (and often clichéd) way. The photos from your childhood, you could not have made me a nicer present. Especially afterwards, I understood their language well, dear Kit. I cherish the small pictures and look at them frequently. They fortify me. You fortify me. For a while I thought: you are a rationalist and I am a romantic. But of course that’s not the case. You are a man of symbols. Yes: a man. And a boy at the same time. Tough and vulnerable. An ephebe. As mysterious and boundlessly fascinating as an ephebe could be. In my mind’s eye, I see you wave a dismissive hand: enough, enough.”

And in yet another letter: “Dear Kit, you aren’t lazy. You slaved over your most recent letter. I thank you for it! Your letter not only proves your strong work ethic, but also your literary talent and your feelings of friendship for me. If you ask me (and you do ask me, but frankly, who am I), your issues come with your age. I think back to my own great difficulties when I was 17/18.” At this age, in the late 1940s, Jake had discovered from a Christian “sex education” book that he was homosexual and that this was a bad thing. He thought: I shall have to hide this for the rest of my life, and he sank into a deep depression which a year later he was miraculously (as he wrote to me) able to overcome. As it happens, when in his fifties he first went public about his homosexuality, the reactions were overwhelmingly supportive.

Curiously, Jake was never specifically attacked for liking boys, though I think most people who knew about his “homosexuality” were unaware of this specific preference. During his long decades of hiding his sexuality, he had a very few intimate, but not always sexual, friendships with boys. One of these great loves was a musically gifted boy of fourteen. Their friendship was intense but remained chaste. Jake told me he had confessed his feelings to the boy, who had said: “I wish I were homosexual myself, so I could answer your feelings sexually too.” The boy grew up, got married and started a family. He remained friends with Jake. Jake and I drove over once to visit him and his family. On another occasion Jake introduced me to a friend who, around the age of eighteen, had been his lover. This man now lived with his gay partner.

“I would a thousand times rather live with you”

As for me, it was becoming impossible to continue my studies and stay at home. I wrote: “Hello, my darling! Sweet, sweet Jake. My sweet Jake. Poor gentle boy. I’ll be okay again, but at this moment I see the truth. The news: bombings, murder, death, war. The evil of people, who are no less voracious than other animal species, drives one to despair. I can’t understand you want to be a Christian, for G-d does not deserve the praise of such people.” I had cast off Christianity years before, and in one letter attacked what the tribal laws in Leviticus had to say about male-male sexuality. In response, Jake expressed his view that “all commandments are subordinate to the central commandment of love”. He cited Romans 13:10: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

I described a verbal altercation with my parents, then wrote: “In all truth, I must mention the option of going to live with you. But I want to be clear that you can wash your hands of the matter completely. You are free to forget me: you are not to blame. I admit I am selfish. I would a thousand times rather live with you than stay at home.” Jake wrote: “If you should find it impossible to stay at home and in school, you can come to me. You have your own room here, and I will clear the table on the mezzanine for you. I mean: don’t drive yourself crazy out of despair. I don’t want to claim you, on the contrary: I want you to be able to spread your wings, to develop your talents. I believe in you as a writer and as a friend. […] At the end of your letter you’re mercilessly honest. [I don’t preserve this letter; I may have stated once more I was incapable of lasting friendship, or I may have written about my longing to experience sex with others – K.] It hurts. And at the same time I am happy about it! Giving each other space is not the same as dropping each other. You have never heard me talk of a ‘relationship’ we should need to enter into, of promises, of rings sealing partnership and so on. Let us enjoy our friendship and (how could it be otherwise in true friendship) also leave each other totally free. Strange though it may sound: I am capable of this.”

Apparently in my next letter I was remorseful, as Jake responded: “Thank you for your letter and the beautiful photograph. You’ve written me, but you haven’t written me off. Once more you’re as gentle and candid as anyone could be. I love you impetuously. But my letter is not a chain letter. My embrace is no manacle. The days we have shared were days of amazing grace. Reading, listening and loving. No one can take them away from me. I was allowed to know you as an ephebe! If you should ever tell me your desired one has arrived, my happiness will be greater than my pain.” He also gave me advice: “Isn’t your recalcitrance due mainly to your artistry? You were born to write. So write. When I see what you are capable of now, in your letters, in your poems, what will you be capable of when you’re twenty-five? I think (and again: it’s only me saying this) you should concentrate fully on writing. And for its sake you should ask yourself: how can I achieve independence as soon as possible so I can dedicate myself to writing?”

I had graduated from secondary school around the time I met Jake and, after the holidays, started a course of study that after some months I found myself unable to continue. One day, as broken as I could be, I walked out of class and travelled unannounced to Jake’s, my place of refuge. After some days we drove to my parents’ and discussed with them what to do, Jake offering to take me in. As I would soon turn eighteen, my parents agreed. They understood it was for the best, that he was “my best shot”. I was going through the rye headed for the cliff, and Jake caught me and prevented the plunge. I ended up living at his for a few years. Our sexual relationship lasted perhaps up to a year and graded into nonsexual, if always physically affectionate, friendship. These years were a convalescence of sorts for me, with tremendous ups and downs. Jake, the inveterate gentle optimist, was invariably magnanimous and almost never angry. I think no one with a less serene disposition could have tolerated me. Jake did, and gave me the time I needed to start picking up the pieces of my life. Eventually I got a job and was able, through a friend of Jake’s, to go live on my own. It’s not that during my years at Jake’s I was a basket case who sat around doing nothing. I kept busy writing and doing other things; I took on responsibilities. I met younger partners, which hurt Jake, but he even let me receive them at his place. When some years later I got a steady date, the three of us went on holiday – or should I say on an art pilgrimage – to Italy, courtesy of Jake. If I’m giving the impression Jake was a saint, it’s not because I’m writing nostalgically with rose-tinted glasses. He practically was one.

An ephebe, a minstrel, a great poet

Jake died years ago, in his eighties. We remained friends until his death, although in the latter years we lived further apart and I could only visit occasionally. I feel justified in sharing what I have shared here (in anonymised fashion) because he is no longer alive and because I want to provide a counterweight to our zeitgeist which is senselessly bigoted against intergenerational friendships and intimacy. I’ve been opposed to this bigotry since my teens, but strangely, until now I had not thought of harnessing my own testimony as the younger lover in a decidedly “Greek” relationship to show such relationships can be beneficial – indeed, important at a young person’s time of need. I suppose this is mainly because I was seventeen when mine started, which in most Western jurisdictions is a legal age for the sexual component. However, merely looking at ages in statute books ignores the fact that it is significant age gaps in and of themselves that are deprecated in our culture. Intimacy between even a “legally aged” teenager and an older man would be condemned out of hand by most commentators. Gay orthodoxy, going by the mantra of equality, would be in the vanguard of such condemnation. Hence my testimony. What details I’ve changed for the sake of privacy do not lessen the truthfulness of this account.

I conclude with some answers Jake gave to a questionnaire I’d sent him. “My own trait I like best: Optimism! For all the maturity I’ve acquired, I’ve remained a little boy. My child-like optimism has helped me overcome much sorrow and many unfulfilled desires. My idea of happiness: Friendship with Kit, close and candid, loving and literary, deep and lasting, even if Kit eventually becomes a stuffy teacher who likes smoked meat. [I forget what that in-joke was about – K.] My greatest misfortune: My depression as a seventeen-year-old. My loves I could share with no one. My long loneliness. The country I’d like to live in: Italy, the country of the Renaissance, preferably in Tuscany. What I’d like to be: An ephebe. A minstrel. A great poet. My favourite flower: In springtime: tulips; in summertime: roses; in autumn, which is my favourite season: my own late flowering. What I most wish for the world: Death to all chauvinism, to hell with all prejudice. Tolerance, understanding, sincerity, kindness, peace!”