A famous photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, taken in July 1910, showing young male telegraph messengers using shower baths at the Postal Telegraph Company on Broadway, New York. Hine, working for the National Child Labor Committee, documented the harsh conditions of child labour, but this image highlighted a positive aspect: the company provided showers, recognising good grooming was good for business and tips, a rare perk for these boys.
“No, sir — it ain’t no cinch, lemme tell ya. This life’s all leg-work. We don’t get no steady pay, not by the day nor the week — it’s by the message, an’ that means you’re on the jump all the time. Soon as I dump one off, I’m tearin’ back to the office for another.
“Two bits an’ a half is what I get for each one I sling, an’ if I tote back an answer for the wire, that’s three more cents in my pocket. That’s why I’ll hang around for a reply — I ain’t no chump.
“A boy that drags his feet or lays down on the job won’t make nothin’, but a hustler like me? I clean up. I knock out thirty messages a day if my legs hold. That’s near twenty miles on the hoof, an’ don’t forget the stairs — an’ New York’s lousy with ’em. Offices from the street clear up to the sixth, seventh floor, an’ you gotta hoof it every step.”
Four guys are waiting for a haircut. One hides inside a black hoodie so that all I can see is the tip of his nose. I call him a ‘scally boy’ – someone with edge, rawness, no inhibition; danger; lower social class. People only see what they must see: confidence, arrogance, hardness. They fail to see his vulnerability, his ignorance of those who might exploit him, and his lack of ambition.
When it is his turn, he stands and takes his hoodie off—but he gets it wrong. As he pulls it over his head, his T-shirt comes with it and he is left half-naked. He corrects things quickly, but it is too late. I have already processed every inch of him: the pale skin, the smoothness, the flat stomach, the black hairs showing above his waistband, the tattoo on his arm that says Adam.
Such a shame, I think, because he is primed for one thing only—a girl. His masculinity, the expectation, the understanding that anything else will not do. The girl will fall in love with Adam, but what he feels about her will not matter. He will have done what is expected and will display her like a trophy before discarding her for another.
Adam catches my eye and snarls, “Do you like what you see, faggot?”
Charlie didn’t go to Paris for Christmas. A family dispute—best addressed through absence—kept him away. Instead, he stayed with a cousin in Woodstock, near Blenheim Palace: an improbable place for pleasure. I was content with the opposite arrangement. Christmas alone. Eating, drinking, letting Netflix decide what mattered.
On Christmas Eve, I dreamed he climbed into bed and lay on top of me. His naked body was warm, yielding, unmistakably real. He kissed me. A faint musk rose from his skin—intimate, animal—stirring every sense at once. At last, I thought, this is the closeness.
I woke up with the sensation intact. The dream clung to me through Christmas morning, vivid enough to unsettle. I searched for an explanation and learned that smell can infiltrate dreams, especially when memory and desire are involved. Olfactory dreaming, they called it. Cologne was the usual example.
In the nineteenth century, a French physician, Alfred Maury, described inducing such dreams by getting his assistant to place eau de Cologne beneath his nose while he slept. On waking, Maury claimed to have dreamt of Cairo, of the perfumer Farina’s workshop, of adventures set loose by scent alone.
I hadn’t smelt Cologne. What lingered with me was the smell of a boy. And with it, a quieter truth: Charlie and I had never moved beyond kissing.
Someone, inevitably, had to puncture the theory. A psychiatrist dismissed the idea entirely. You don’t smell the coffee and wake up, she insisted. You wake up, then you smell the coffee.
I abandoned science and let Spotify take over. It suggested an album by Wolfgang Tillmans, which surprised me. I’d known him only as a photographer. The music turned out to be a sound work made for an exhibition—joy and heartbreak threading through collapse and repair.
I first encountered Tillmans years earlier through a Pet Shop Boys video composed almost entirely of mice living on the London Underground. Ever since, I’d found myself scanning platforms, tunnels, tracks—without success. A memory surfaced: my friend Stephen once worked on a four-hour Tillmans sound installation of It’s a Sin. He now despises the song completely.
Christmas dinner was an indulgence of sorts: cold baked beans eaten straight from the tin. I spent an hour scrolling through films before accepting, once again, that choosing outlasts watching. I downloaded the Christopher Isherwood biography David had recommended—the one that never seems to end—and fell asleep within pages.
When I woke, the room had darkened. Charlie had messaged: Will be home tonight at about eight x.
Transport on Christmas Day was nonexistent, yet somehow he’d convinced his cousin to drive him 130 miles. When Charlie arrived, I asked where his cousin was.
“Gone back,” he said.
“You didn’t invite him in?”
“It’s Christmas. He’ll want to be home.”
“And petrol money?”
He hesitated. “I didn’t think of that.”
Our former lodger once called Charlie a “me, me, me person.” Another friend was less generous and called him an asshole. Perhaps it was cultural. Perhaps it was simply him. Charlie struggled to imagine himself from the outside. I told myself it wasn’t malice. Just a narrow field of vision.
Despite the journey, he looked fresh, handsome. He smiled; I mirrored it. I considered mentioning the dream, then decided against it.
“Why come back early?”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone,” he said, without pause. “It’s Christmas.”
While he dropped his bag in the bedroom, I switched on the tree lights. We exchanged gifts a day early.
His were faultlessly chosen: Salò on Blu-ray, Sargent, Ramón Novarro, Edmund White, a glossy Igor Mattio photography book. Then he disappeared into the studio and returned with a canvas. He turned it around.
It was me.
He’d painted me sitting, relaxed, looking beyond the frame—as if caught somewhere warmer, lighter. My eyes were generous. My mouth was kind. Around my neck he’d included a thin silver chain, a birthday gift I wore only on rare occasions. The detail felt deliberate, almost intimate.
“I painted while you were writing,” he said. “I hope you like it.”
I had never been seen like that before. Not by anyone. I felt exposed, and cherished.
“I don’t know what to say,” I told him.
“One day,” he said lightly, “when you’re old—célèbre—people will say, painted by his French lover.’”
Charlie went to shower. Alone, I recognised a flicker of shame. I’d suspected his absence was a ruse. I’d rehearsed disappointment, punished him silently for not being who I wanted. The dream—so tender, so convincing—had fed that instinct. Sex can exist without love; love can exist without sex. The phrase circled uselessly.
Still, it would be nice.
There it was again. That reflex. The mind’s preference for negativity over positivity.
Charlie returned wearing only grey jogging bottoms and a Santa hat. He stretched out beside me on the sofa, smelling faintly of crushed mandarins, and rested his head in my lap.
“A Christmas film,” he murmured. “Something cosy.”
I stroked his stomach as we watched The Holdovers: a misaligned teacher, a sharp-tongued cook, a boy full of grievance. By the end credits, Charlie was asleep.
I didn’t move. I was afraid that motion would undo everything. His weight, his warmth, the faint citrus on his skin—it felt provisional, like something borrowed. The room held its breath.
I loved him then with a sudden, almost painful tenderness. Not the urge to claim, but to preserve. To keep the moment intact, untouched by language or expectation.
Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood. Early 1950s. Photograph by Zeitgeist Films / Everett Collection.
My friend David is reading a biography of the writer Christopher Isherwood on his Kindle. It has taken him a long time to get through—not because the book is difficult, but because it is extremely long. He joked that his Kindle had travelled with him from London to Munich and Paris, and back again, and he had only reached the fifty-percent mark.
“That’s the problem with an e-book,” he said. “We don’t talk about pages anymore. We obsess over percentages.”
I suggested that perhaps he was in too much of a hurry to finish it.
“That’s true,” he reflected, “but don’t you always have one eye on what you’re going to read next?”
David is a lot older than me, and I’m not entirely sure where we first met. He is educated, though—one of those men whose words are almost always guaranteed to entertain. We were walking beside the canal from Paddington Station towards Little Venice. It was dark, lonely, and faintly threatening. I half-expected a knife-wielding mugger to emerge from the shadows at any moment.
For someone like me, who comes from the provinces, London can feel dangerous. David had no such concerns. He regarded nighttime as the best time to wander its quieter streets, harvesting inspiration for his novels, though on this occasion he had also had to tolerate my repeated complaints.
He tried to change the subject.
“The other day I went into Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street,” he said, “and overheard two older women talking. One of them said, There are so many books to read, and so little time left to do it. That made me think about my own mortality. It’s probably why I’m in such a hurry to finish the Isherwood biography.”
It was the first time I’d heard him refer to his age in that way. I’d never really considered that it might trouble him.
It was my turn to change the subject.
“To be honest, I’ve never read Isherwood,” I said. “I find him a bit of a privileged bore.”
He seemed not to hear me.
“There are several comparisons between Isherwood and myself,” he continued. “I’ve been struggling to come up with new ideas recently, and while reading the biography I came across a quote from his diaries: A lack of creative inclination to cope with a constructed, invented plot—the feeling, why not write what one experiences from day to day? Why invent, when life is so prodigious?”
He paused, as if letting the words settle.
“That resonated with me. I’ve decided that my future writing will only be based on real life experiences. That will be far more satisfying.”
David’s work had always relied on a radiant imagination—several bestsellers proved that—but this declaration unsettled me. As if anticipating my concern, he smiled.
“I have a lifetime of fascinating stories involving my closest friends,” he said. “Some of them might raise a few eyebrows.”
“Did Isherwood do as he suggested?” I asked.
“Absolutely. He created characters based on people he knew. Sometimes he even wrote about himself in the third person, omniscient. I plan to do the same. I’ll call my character David—and absolve myself of any blame.”
Little Venice. Where the canals whisper secrets under the London stars
We passed moored canal barges. Most were dark, but a few glowed from within: a man cooking over a tiny stove, a woman bent over her laptop, someone stretched out watching television. Their lives were visible through brightly lit portholes, as if privacy were optional.
“There are other similarities between Isherwood and me,” David went on. “When he was forty-eight he met his long-term partner, who was only eighteen. Does that sound familiar? Joshua was twenty-one when I met him. I was forty-four. Seventeen years later, we’re still together.”
“To be honest,” I said, “I’m surprised your relationship has lasted this long.”
I thought of the times he had propositioned me, and of the occasions I had refused him. I would have been eight when he met Joshua, who was now approaching forty. I had been in my early twenties when I first met David.
“The secret,” he said, “is not to make a relationship exclusive. Not my words—Isherwood’s. He and Don Bachardy both had sex with other people.”
It sounded close to a confession.
“Young men enjoy the benefits of being with an older man,” he continued. “Even if they get their sex elsewhere. Boys can take on the identity of their mentor. Bachardy picked up Isherwood’s accent within a year. Joshua is still his own person, but he always comes home. He values stability.”
Above us, traffic thundered along the Westway flyover. Sirens cut through the night. London had become a city of constant alarm. We were nearing Little Venice—named, supposedly, by Lord Byron, who compared its rubbish-filled waters to the Italian city he had once lived in. In the darkness we could just make out Browning’s Island.
“This is where Paddington Bear was once carried by a swan,” David joked. “Though I suppose that means nothing to you.”
My mind was elsewhere.
“I know times were different,” I said, “but Isherwood might today be accused of grooming a young boy.”
“I knew you’d say that,” David replied. “And yes—you’re right. An established literary figure and a college freshman. There were even unkind rumours in New York that he was with a twelve-year-old. His friends disliked Bachardy. But they turned a moral weakness into a long-term relationship. Rather like Joshua and me.”
He paused.
“Back then, people were blissfully unaware. Today everything is played out before a global audience. If the same thing happened now, Isherwood would be cancelled—even if nothing illegal had occurred. We used to call it boy-love. An appreciation of male beauty going back to the Greeks and Romans. Now it’s considered dirty. That’s something I struggle with.”
A person with limited education is at a disadvantage when arguing with David. He always has the clever words ready. My clumsiness betrayed me.
“Can’t you see that there’s something disgusting about the age difference?”
He frowned—not so much at my disapproval, but at my inelegance.
“When I was young,” he said, “homosexuality wasn’t acceptable. Many of us missed out on young love. Then the AIDS crisis came. Now we grow old resentful, because there’s a void. Is it so terrible that we try to recover something we lost? You’re the generation without constraint. You don’t understand our predicament.”
He stopped walking.
“No matter how old you are,” he said, “there will always be something exquisite about youth.”
“Why?” I asked. “Isherwood came from an even older generation. And what you’re saying sounds pederastic to people my age.”
“When Isherwood was young in the 1920s, he was driven out of Germany by the Nazis. Berlin became dangerous. By the time Bachardy appeared, Isherwood was already considered ancient. Some say the boy did the chasing. The relationship later became non-sexual. Bachardy had other lovers.”
A group of students approached—three boys, two girls—laughing loudly before falling into an awkward silence as they passed us. I recognised the look. Suspicion. Not for the first time, I’d been mistaken for a male hooker. I resisted the urge to run after them and explain myself.
David smirked.
“I think I know why you struggle with age disparity,” he said. “That look on your face—it wasn’t moral outrage. It was embarrassment. Shame. You’re ashamed to be seen with someone older.”
He shook his head.
“That’s not a virtue I admire. One day you’ll find yourself old without warning. And the object of your desire will be much younger. I hope that boy doesn’t think the way you do now.”
Christopher and His Kind is a 1976 memoir by Christopher Isherwood first printed in a 130-copy edition
New Romantic. Colin Cox. Photographed by David Suárez (December 2025)
The thrill of the forbidden, the surge of emotion and thought. That quiet, hollow space inviting reflection on the fleeting nature of our own lives and whatever traces we leave behind. A wavering line between appreciating beauty and surrendering to objectifying desire—an involuntary pull shaped by masculine sensitivity, itself carved by the bittersweet passage of time and the ephemerality of experience. The soft focus, the restrained emotion: a vivid instant once sharp and certain now blurring into a subtle, almost spectral echo of what once felt wholly present. The intensity drains away, leaving only a neutral, distant recollection, until all that survives are scattered fragments of sensation.
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad
The days are getting shorter and, honestly, more depressing. The final stretch of this yearly slog is only weeks away, yet I’m already wondering whether I’ll make it to the finish line in one piece. Autumn seemed to appear out of nowhere this year. Now the winter solstice looms on 21 December — an already dismal day made even bleaker by falling on a Sunday.
“Solstice” means “sun stands still”: the Sun’s path appears to pause for a few days before inching north again, marking the peak of winter. It sounds poetic, almost serene, but for someone like me it can feel anything but. This year has been one of the bad wobbles.
I belong to that unlucky club of people living with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a form of depression that follows a seasonal rhythm — often called “winter blues” because the symptoms intensify as the light dwindles. At least I’m in decent company: Adele, Ryan Reynolds, Jim Carrey, and Emma Thompson have all spoken openly about dealing with it.
The symptoms? A greatest-hits list of misery: persistent low mood, loss of interest, low energy, oversleeping, carb cravings, weight gain, fuzzy concentration, irritability, social withdrawal, and those heavy feelings of guilt or worthlessness. Over the past few weeks, I’ve ticked every single box.
Worst of all are the irrational thoughts that hitch a ride. These fixations burrow in and make themselves at home. In previous years, I’ve spiralled over a long-ago one-night stand, convinced I needed to confess it to my partner to find peace — thankfully a friend talked me down. Another winter I became obsessed with the idea that I had too much money and would have to explain myself to the taxman, despite everything being perfectly legitimate. This year, despite feeling physically fine, I can’t shake the fear that I’m harbouring a terminal illness. Seeing it written out looks absurd, but that’s the reality of it.
SAD likely stems from disruptions to the body’s internal clock and imbalances in serotonin and melatonin triggered by the lack of sunlight. It was formally named in 1984 by Dr. Norman Rosenthal and his team at the National Institute of Mental Health.
There’s no magic cure. You grit your teeth and get through it. It’s less “mind over matter” and more “matter over mind” — odd phrasing, but surprisingly accurate. What helps me most is staying occupied: researching, writing, watching TV, cleaning… anything that absorbs me. Eventually, after a few hours, I’ll notice I feel almost normal again. I recently read that building Lego can help too — its structure and focus promote mindfulness, which can ease anxiety and depressive symptoms.
The fear that you’re “cracking up” can be overwhelming the first time, especially if you don’t yet know what’s happening. But when it returns, you at least recognise the shape of it. You learn its rhythm. You remember it passes. And that alone is sometimes enough to help you hold on until the light returns.
I noticed him but he chose not to notice me. After he had dropped his mobile phone on the floor for the third time, he realised that he had to say something.
Pablo thrusts his hands beneath the hot tap. He rubs them together in a frantic, almost self-destructive rhythm as the water climbs from warm to blistering. Anyone else would flinch, recoil — but he holds himself there, jaw locked, letting the scalding cascade engulf him in a cloud of bitter, furious steam.
The faces and bodies of the men he aches for seem to drift through that fog, circling him, pressing close. You can tell when the moment is nearing: the tightening of his calves, the subtle clench of his arse, the way he grinds himself against the cold lip of the sink. It is sharp, electric — his own strange ritual, the pink-hands-and-hot-water orgasm — that edge where pain dissolves into an ecstatic, trembling pleasure.
But the release he chases always slips from him. It teases, then vanishes.
When the heat becomes unbearable, he finally twists the tap off. His head drops. He turns, shoulders hunched, his shorts soaked and clinging to him. He won’t meet my eye; shame clouds the air between us. This little masochistic kitchen-sink drama — he believes it reveals too much.
– Being the transcript of a letter unearthed in the long-sealed vaults of the Royal Bank of Scotland, November 2025
George Walker Wood 66 Cavendish Street, Marylebone London
29 November, 1881
My dear Reader,
If by curious chance you hold this manuscript in your hands, I entreat you to read its contents with the utmost seriousness. Only by such attentive perusal shall you perceive that the pages which follow are both an explanation and a justification for their long concealment.
Should it prove that I still draw breath when these lines meet your eye, then I beg of you—burn them without delay, and disclaim all knowledge of ever having encountered them. The shame that would ensue from their divulgence is of so dreadful a nature that I scarcely dare commit the thought to paper.
I shall therefore begin at the point where first I made the acquaintance of one Johane—an Irish youth of some four-and-twenty years, of humble condition, and with every outward appearance of one who might easily draw misfortune to my door. He was, however, most commonly called Jack, and by that familiar name I shall refer to him henceforth. Dear Jack belonged to a loose fraternity of young loafers and street-bred rascals—variously known as the “London Boys”—a wild and merry set whose manners were as questionable as their morals, yet whose very recklessness possessed, for me, an unaccountable fascination.
In time I grew most attached to Jack, and he attended me frequently at my lodgings in Marylebone. There, behind doors safely bolted, we indulged in certain intimacies which, though common enough within that unseen sphere of which London pretends ignorance, would cause polite society to feign horror. Jack’s person was slight, his garments threadbare and ill-assorted, and he bore all the marks of those who are forced to wrest their sustenance from the streets; yet beneath that rough exterior there was a warmth and vigour not easily described. When fortune smiled and I had a few coins to spare, he would remain with me until morning, and those nights—cold, anxious, sweet as they were—remain fixed in my memory.
I suspect that my landlady, Mrs. Chivers, a stout matron of no small curiosity, had taken something of a liking to Jack as well; for once I discovered him seated at her kitchen table devouring a modest breakfast of bread and scrape. The glint of mischief in his eye, as he looked up at me over the crust, told me all I needed to know. She had chosen to see nothing of the nature of my rooms above.
My days were spent at the old desk overlooking Cavendish Street, where I composed articles for The London Figaro and The Dark Blue. Yet I had long nourished the ambition to attempt a novel—something that might echo, however faintly, the triumph of A Tale of Two Cities. My parents, never slow to remind me of my deficiencies, assured me that I lacked both imagination and creative faculty, that I was fit only to set down facts and order them neatly upon a page.
Still, I could not forget the tales Jack whispered to me during those winter nights—tales of gentlemen of rank who sought his company at a high price; of drawing-room adventures veiled beneath the richest draperies; of temptations and behaviours of which the world speaks only in scandalised murmurs. Spurred by these accounts, I sought the acquaintance of a certain printer known to an associate of Henry Ashbee—a man whose livelihood depended upon the discreet production of pamphlets of a decidedly provocative character.
Mr. William Lazenby, a sharp-eyed fellow, showed interest in my idea and agreed to an initial impression of two hundred and fifty copies. He offered me a share of the profits, subtracting his considerable costs, should I but write with candour. The sums he mentioned far exceeded any I had yet earned, and the promise of so easy a reward was exceedingly tempting. He informed me that the book should be sold exclusively by mail-order through an address in Paris, and insisted that I adopt a nom de plume, lest I bring inevitable ruin upon myself.
When I conveyed the scheme to Jack, he immediately demanded—nor without justice—a share of the proceeds, and further insisted that his own name be affixed to the work. I warned him that the police might take a dim view of such recklessness, but he merely laughed and declared that the “mutton-shunters”, knowing full well he could neither read nor write, would never suppose him connected to any printed matter. With that he tumbled himself upon the bed in his usual impudent fashion and suggested that we commence our “research” without delay.
By June the manuscript was completed, and I had settled upon what I deemed a most fitting title—The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. Though Mr. Lazenby scoffed at it, he conceded that the biblical suggestion would doubtless catch the eye of those gentlemen who take an interest in such hidden matters. I confess I feared that certain passages, dealing as they did with the concealed customs of our clandestine fraternity, might prove too recognisable to those acquainted with that shadowed realm.
Lazenby nevertheless published the work in two parts, and it found immediate favour among readers eager to feast upon the covert indulgences of the great and respectable.
Though I tremble at the thought of its reception, I take comfort that my own name has thus far escaped suspicion. I offer here my apologies to Mr. Simeon Solomon and Mr. James Campbell Reddie—both of whom have been unjustly whispered about in connection with this deception. Jack, meanwhile, basks in the admiration of his companions and seems persuaded that a century hence his name will still be spoken among certain circles of “inverts”, as he jests.
This very day I have deposited my first earnings at the Lombard Street branch of Messrs. Glyn, Mills, Currie & Co., alongside this confession, sealed and hidden, to remain in the vault until such time as Providence ordains its discovery. Should that day come, I trust that The Sins of the Cities of the Plain shall be regarded as a truthful and unvarnished portrait of those whose society I have come to cherish.
Ever, dear Reader, your faithful servant,
𝒢. 𝒲𝒶𝓁𝓀𝑒𝓇 𝒲𝑜𝑜𝒹 ⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣ George Walker Wood
*****
Now read on to separate fact from fiction.
This edition contains the unabridged text of the first edition housed at the British Library, together with a new introduction by Wolfram Setz and a facsimile reproduction of the original volumes’ title pages.
The Sins of the Cities of the Plain is an influential Victorian erotic novel, originally published anonymously in 1881 and widely considered one of the first works of exclusively gay pornography in English. It is a fictionalized memoir attributed to real-life Irish prostitute Jack Saul.
The book is a narrative, presented as the “recollections” or “memoirs” of Jack Saul, detailing his experiences as a young male prostitute (a “Mary-Ann” or “rentboy”) in the clandestine gay underworld of Victorian London. It traces his escapades from boarding school into young adulthood, describing his sexual encounters with various men, from schoolboys and guardsmen to wealthy aristocrats and members of high society.
While attributed to Jack Saul, the actual author is debated by scholars, with some suggesting a ghostwriter or figures like the painter Simeon Solomon or James Campbell Reddie were involved. The book was privately printed in two volumes in 1881 by William Lazenby to avoid obscenity laws and sold for a high price.
The original printings are unobtainable today, but modern editions are widely available from various publishers, such as Valancourt Books and Mint Editions.
I confess—I didn’t notice the rabbits at first. But there was something in the photograph that drew me in. It was taken by Izis Bidermanas, the Jewish-Lithuanian photographer, in Whitechapel, London, in 1951.
It’s quite possible that the boy in the image is still alive, but the rabbits, of course, are not.
Bidermanas worked primarily in France and is best remembered for his photographs of French circuses, Parisian streets, and commissions for the iconic Paris Match magazine. He befriended Jacques Prévert, the French poet and screenwriter; both were described as “urban wanderers.” A year after this photograph was taken, they published Charmes de Londres, a book of black-and-white photographs of post-war London by Bidermanas, accompanied by Prévert’s poetic texts—a vivid portrait of the “shabby old capital in its threadbare post-war years.”
There is something both tender and prematurely adult about this image. A loosely tied scarf, a jacket slightly too big. His style seems effortless—almost cool—as if he had stepped out of his own decade and into ours.
He is someone out of sync with his time. The kind of boy you might spot today on the Underground platform, earbuds in, oversized coat slung over his shoulders. Certain types of youth are universal—postures, anxieties, and dreams that repeat across generations. It makes you want to know his story.
There is an angularity to his posture, an aloof tilt of the head. He strokes the rabbit but does not quite look at it. Tenderness in his hands, hardness in his shoulders. Quiet care, resilience, an emotional inheritance that compels him to protect something gentle, even if he has rarely known gentleness himself.
He seems too sharp, too perceptive for the smallness around him—working here because life left him no choice, waiting for the real story to begin. The rabbits were merely a way to earn a few coins.
What if he was drawn to things outside society’s expectations? Art, books, music—worlds not meant for boys like him. Perhaps he dreamed of Soho jazz clubs, photography, fashion—things his home would never have approved of.
He was a boy caught between worlds: childhood and adulthood, duty and desire, the past and the future. A timeless boy, carrying secret longings.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 