Mr and Mrs Jones of Ruislip,
I find it rather interesting that you spent thousands of pounds to send your son to this university city. Did he have a choice in the matter? Perhaps not — but in any case, thank you for your thoughtful consideration. He is, as you surely already knew, something of a handful. But did you also know that he grinds his teeth in his sleep?
Johnny had Sabrina Carpenter in his ears again, looping ‘Feather’ from Russell Square all the way to Wood Green. She didn’t know she was basically the narrator of his life, but one day he’d tell her. That’s what twinks do: dream big, unrealistic, sparkly dreams and somehow convince themselves it’ll all work out. Johnny didn’t care. He usually jumped head-first into the unknown anyway.
The day had been a slog. Instead of listening to his tutor, he’d spent two hours doodling in his notebook — the one with the Eric Ravilious cover he pretended made him look cultured. The tutor finally snapped and kept him back. “How would you describe your life?” he’d asked, like Johnny had personally offended academia.
Johnny had smiled. “Fed, pampered, and impatient. Honestly? My life is one long, sexy, pouty battle.”
The tutor hadn’t expected honesty. Or attitude. “In my day,” he’d muttered, “you would have been called a prostitute.”
Harsh, sure. But Sabrina would’ve had his back. She’d remind him he was eighteen, hot, and fully allowed to be desired — and if someone wanted to bankroll his glitter-coated lifestyle, that was on them. She’d conveniently skip the part about him being high twink maintenance: fine dining, special diets, beach holidays, designer clothes, and accommodation that didn’t smell like student desperation.
Alexander funded the whole thing, because Johnny lived for an Instagram-ready existence and the universe had not, so far, given him the bank account to match.
Twinks are vulnerable, Johnny decided, and love could never be found in a discount store.
When he got home, Alexander was already there, drinking wine and listening to Vivaldi — the soundtrack of men who’d survived ‘twink death’ and were now coasting through their late thirties in cashmere.
“We need to talk,” Alexander said. Serious voice. Terrible sign. Johnny tossed his Reiss puffer on the floor anyway. He was a trophy boy, and trophies didn’t hang themselves up.
Alexander cleared his throat. “The thing is… sugar babies aren’t really financially viable anymore. I need to do a quarterly business evaluation.”
Johnny froze. Thank God he’d kept all the receipts — he’d at least prove he’d been properly maintained. And he was not going down quietly.
“Look,” Johnny said, already shifting into survival mode, “you’re old enough to be fluent in PowerPoint and so I’m going to prepare a presentation of all my key deliverables. I think you’ll find them very compelling. Being adorable. Emotional availability. Pretending to like oysters. And really? That’s just the intro slide.”
“I’m in love with a Lego brick,” Josef said, grinning like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Tomas raised an eyebrow. “What do you know, Joe? Are you an AI prostitute now?”
“No,” Josef said seriously, as if clarifying a crucial fact. “I’m Gigolo Joe.” He slammed the cases into the trunk with mock solemnity.
“Are we ready?” Tomas asked.
“Ready when you are, brother. But make it fashion,” Josef said, voice smooth as a sales pitch.
Tomas laughed, a little bitter towards his little brother.“I used to be somebody. I used to take people places.”
Their parents groaned, caught between shame and exasperation. “Put some clothes on, Tomas!”
Destruction has its own pleasure: a compulsion—call it weakness or strength—to obliterate the good and start anew. I’ve done this all my life and won’t stop now.
There’s something sneaky going on in the subconscious — innocence, purity, chaos, sweat. Dirty white socks hit all of it at once. They spark that weird little thrill: the musk, the heat, the trace of someone’s body still clinging to the cotton. It’s a micro-kink, sure, but the power comes from whatever story you attach to them — private, charged, and way more psychological than you’d ever admit out loud.
Dominic chose fourteen stone steps to sit on. They hadn’t been cleaned in a century; weathered and frost-damaged, they had taken on a patina — the greyness broken by lichens and mosses, ivy-leaved toadflax, and ryegrass. He rested his head against the iron railings and sighed.
Arthur sat thinking below him, his legs sprawled across the pavement.
“Once upon a time, a horse and carriage pulled up, and a well-dressed man — wearing a top hat and fine coat — disembarked and climbed these steps. He rang the bell and waited while an old butler answered the door, then handed over the hat and coat before being shown into a reception room.”
“How do you know that?” said Dominic, who lit a cigarette and looked towards the front door. There was no grandeur anymore. A glass door stood behind a padlocked gate; dirty net curtains protected the inside from prying eyes. The house was empty and unloved.
“You only say it because you are describing something that you have seen or read. You don’t know what happened, because you weren’t here.”
Arthur picked up a piece of stone that had crumbled from one of the two pillars at the foot of the steps. He examined it before putting it inside a trouser pocket. This was something else to add to his ‘shelf of memories’. One day, when they were old men, he would pick up the piece of stone and show it to Dominic and say, “Do you remember the day we sat on those stone steps?” But he doubted that Dominic would grow old.
“My dear boy, despite your charm and privilege, you sadly lack imagination and prefer to live that shallow existence on TikTok and Instagram. Such a waste of an upbringing.”
Dominic laughed.
“And besides,” Arthur continued, “you will never become famous if you don’t contribute anything worthwhile that you can be remembered for.”
“That, my love, sounds too much like hard work,” Dominic replied. “But I envy you, Arthur, because you believe that writing those shitty little posts will turn you into a brilliant writer.”
There was a note of sarcasm in his voice, and Arthur knew that Dominic didn’t mean to be unkind.
“It is true. There are millions of tadpoles swimming in this huge pond. Why should anybody take notice of this one ordinary tadpole? But, Dominic, it’s not about being a brilliant writer. It’s about learning from mistakes — because I look back at some of the things I’ve written and cringe. But I remind myself that writing is about me, and I write for my own enjoyment.”
Jeffrey and his mafia. And me—only me—still unaware that I was God. A mutual understanding never consummated in public. We conspired like poets at war: Jeffrey with his loyal men, and I, followed only by those who believed in my every word. Yet I remember one moon-warmed night, when the sea breathed softly beneath us, and at the stern of a drifting ship, we clasped hands and swore our respect. The water glowed like milk around us. It was the start of a beautiful romance that put fear into the hearts of everyone except ourselves.
Once, a handsome Sicilian boy, the son of Eros and a nymph, fell deeply in love with the sun, and couldn’t bear to stay another minute where he couldn’t see it. He worshipped it wherever he went, and when it wandered out of sight, especially at night, he couldn’t rest, because that object he loved wasn’t warm upon his tanned breast. For this reason, he never walked, stood, or lay in the shade, the love, in full sway, was boundless, and made his life its prey.
At one time, the sun remained under a cloud for eight days; during this period, the boy, Cylmenon, was very unhappy, and because he could not find his beloved, pined away and died. It was a tragic end for a fine young boy. When the sun shone again it found Cylmenon’s body near a fountain where he had tried to see the sun’s reflection, and so grieved was the sun, that it changed the lad’s body into a golden flower, of the first Marigold.
An explanation: Marigolds are known as “herbs of the sun” and represent the sun’s power, warmth, energy, and light. They are often associated with joy, optimism, passion, and creativity. This story is based on an obscure and forgotten poem from 1868 by Peter Spenser. Little is known about him other than that he was the eldest son of the Rev. Peter Spenser, Rector of Temple Ewell, near Dover. He wrote poetry for local newspapers across England and also published the magnificently titled ‘Parvula, or, a Few Little Rhymes: About a Few Little Flowers, a Few Little Birds, and a Few Little Girls, to Which Are Added, a Few Little Songs, and a Few Other Little Things.’ (1863)
Baron Corvo once told me in a dream that I should write something controversial. Terrible advice, obviously. But here we are.
I found a book in a charity shop that Charlie told me not to buy. He said it was distasteful. Which, of course, made me want it more.
The book was Germaine Greer’s The Boy — a 2003 art history study about how young males have been represented in Western art. Greer argued that, for centuries, it was the male body — not the female — that dominated the gaze. Art, she said, used to worship men. Then we decided that kind of looking was shameful.
When it came out, The Boy caused an uproar. Greer said she wanted to help women reclaim their “capacity for visual pleasure,” to look at men the way art has long looked at women. Then she dropped her most infamous line: “A woman of taste is a pederast — boys rather than men.” Predictably, everyone lost their minds.
The book is filled with over 200 images — statues, paintings, portraits — each exploring what Greer called the “evanescent loveliness of boys.” The soldier. The martyr. The angel. The narcissist. The seducer. It’s the sort of book that doesn’t end up on display in Oxfam, which is precisely why I found it there.
The cover shows Björn Andrésen, the Swedish actor who played Tadzio in Death in Venice (1971). The photograph was by David Bailey, but Andrésen said no one asked permission to use it. He was furious — disgusted, even. “I have a feeling of being utilised that is close to distasteful,” he said. And the irony? The week I bought the book, he died, aged seventy.
Every obituary revisited the same scene: the audition tape from Death in Venice that was included in The Most Beautiful Boy in the World — a documentary about his life. Visconti tells him to smile. Then to undress. He laughs nervously. Strips to his trunks. Shifts under the gaze of men deciding whether he’s beautiful enough.
It’s hard to watch now. Visconti — Count of Lonate Pozzolo, titan of Italian cinema, and apparently, chaos in a cravat — ends up looking less like a mentor and more like a predator. But dead men can’t explain themselves.
When I was fifteen, I’d probably have thought that kind of attention was glamorous. Maybe I’d have handled it. Maybe it would’ve destroyed me. Hard to know. My own encounters with predatory men later on made Visconti look almost saintly by comparison. At least he left art behind. Maybe Andrésen’s story isn’t just one of exploitation, but what happens when fame and beauty collide with someone who’s too young to bear it.
Charlie, meanwhile, can’t stand The Boy. But he loves Death in Venice. He called Tadzio a “beau.” When I asked what that meant, he said: “The boy is beautiful. It’s sensuous, not pederastic. I’m surprised no one’s remade it.”
Which — yes — feels like a double standard. Both the book and the film are about the same thing: beauty. The kind we no longer know how to look at without flinching.
Could Death in Venice ever be remade?
I doubt it. The original is a masterpiece, and also completely unmakeable now. Mann’s 1912 novella was already controversial — a composer obsessed with a boy — and Visconti turned that tension into pure cinema. But in 2025, the moral landscape is different. Post-Me Too, post-Epstein, even looking can feel like a crime. No studio would touch it.
Unless you flipped it.
Make Tadzio older. Make the story less about sex and more about time — the hunger for youth, stillness, lost purity. Desire becomes existential, not erotic. If Visconti made the tragedy of seeing, a modern director — Luca Guadagnino, Todd Haynes, François Ozon, Joanna Hogg, Andrew Haigh — could make the tragedy of knowing you’re looking.
Visconti’s gaze was romantic. Ours would have to be self-conscious.
In their own way, both The Boy and Death in Venice celebrate the same thing — male beauty, youth, the brief perfection of being looked at before it fades. Once upon a time, that was sacred. Now it’s scandalous. Somewhere along the line, admiration turned into suspicion.
So yes, Baron Corvo told me to write something controversial. Bad idea from a worse man. But maybe he was right about one thing: sometimes, it’s worth writing about what we’re not supposed to look at.
Love, I adore the contours of thy shape,
Thine exquisite breasts and arms adorable;
The wonders of thine heavenly throat compel
Such fire of love as even my dreams escape:
I love thee as the sea-foam loves the cape,
Or as the shore the sea’s enchanting spell:
In sweets the blossoms of thy mouth excel
The tenderest bloom of peach or purple grape.
I love thee, sweet! Kiss me again, again!
Thy kisses soothe me, as tired earth the rain;
Between thine arms I find mine only bliss;
Ah let me in thy bosom still enjoy
Oblivion of the past, divinest boy,
And the dull ennui of a woman’s kiss!
From ‘Caprices: Poems by Theodore Wratislaw’ (London: Gay and Bird, 1893)
No mystery about what’s going on here.
When someone at the Pall Mall Gazette got an early look at Caprices, they immediately picked up on the vibe — To a Sicilian Boy and L’Eternal Feminin were clearly written with a Uranian (homoerotic) theme. The staffer freaked out and threatened bad reviews unless those poems were cut. The publisher caved and swapped them for two safer options, Paradox and At Midnight.
But nobody seemed to notice the poems quietly dedicated to Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. That particular scandal was still waiting in the wings.
To a Sicilian Boy eventually found its way into Charles Kains Jackson’s The Artist and the Journal of Home Culture, a more open-minded publication of the time.
Theodore William Graf Wratislaw (1871–1933) — yes, he claimed to be a Count thanks to his grandfather, who basically declared himself one — was born in Rugby. These days, almost no one remembers him, but he wrote about 160 poems, most during the so-called “naughty nineties.” His work popped up in Love’s Memorial, Some Verses, The Yellow Book, and The Strand Magazine. He’s even rumoured to have inspired Max Beerbohm’s character Enoch Soames.
At some point, Wratislaw swapped the pen for a government desk job — which he famously called “penal servitude.” He married three times, but people still speculated about his sexuality, and To a Sicilian Boy didn’t exactly hide the clues. The timing’s telling: Wilde’s trial happened in 1895, and that same August, Wratislaw quietly joined the Civil Service. Draw your own conclusions.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 