This story is an epilogue of sorts and one you can quote to the sadvocates who
frequently announce that boylovers are only interested in sex and then the
interest fades as the boy ages.

I fell in love once more than thirty years ago when I was 16. His name was
Simon and I wrote the sad story of my love for him in my
Love Story.

My love for Simon was not strongly sexual although at 11 he was in my AOA. He
was a beautiful child and I was infatuated with his loveliness but it was
something else that I still don't how to describe or identify. Maybe a sense
that he needed me once when I needed to be needed. I didn't fantasise about
him then nor do I now.

Simon is ever in my mind, more so now than for a long time. Never a day
passes when I don't think of him and many times I think of him constantly
during the day.


One of the great tragedies of this love affair is that I was left with nothing
much save for three mementoes, a plastic flower that Simon once gave me, a few
seconds of his voice on tape and a school magazine photograph of him at 11.

However I lost even these over time and I am not sure how or why.

Its a strange love that lasts this way over thirty years, seven thousand
miles and two continents. Its as strong as ever even though Simon is now 43 or
44. I realised some time ago that if he needed me for anything he could have
it, anything, from me whatever he needed (even as once I went away from him
because that is what he wanted and needed then). I can honestly say that I
would lay down my life for him still. I don't mean that sentimentally or
romantically I just mean it quietly and with total certainty. I haven't seen
Simon, not even once in thirty-two years.


Today I did something important. I went to Simon's old junior and high schools
and asked to see the headteachers and explained to them that I wanted to
browse Simon's old school magazines. I didn't tell them much more than that.
Just that he was a dear friend, and I used his name. It took quite a lot of
persistence on my part before they opened up the safes and rummaged through
the archives. I finally found some items about Simon and some precious photos
of him at 12, 14 and 16. I sat in a busy school office surrounded by teenage
children and broke my heart looking at a photograph of my lifelong love at the
same age then as I was when I first met him aged 16.

My god he was still beautiful at 16 although puberty had wrought its
usual ravages on his complexion and features. I want now even more to see him
at 44, possibly bald and with a middle-aged spread because I know how much I
still love him and that it might be possible for me to tell him how very very
glad I am that I have known true love in my life even if I never knew the
happiness of mutual love. I am so damned grateful for the privilege of loving
him then and loving him still. If my life never has any other meaning then in
this it is complete.

Thank you Simon. Thank you.

I love you.

Love has no end.

Kabouter