I grew apprehensive, not being able to go to sleep on my pallet in our attic bedroom in the flat of the banker Castillo, when I heard the breathing of my mother, on the other side of the screen, become regular. Not that she didn’t deserve her sleep. She worked had as the Castillo’s cook on the Calle San José near the Malaga Cathedral. It was because she wasn’t alone on her pallet, and, if she was asleep now, Jorge, brother of Señora Castillo, if he was still awake would be thinking of me and not my mother any longer.

I think that Jorge came to my mother in the night because he wanted me.

And was true. I heard him stirring from her pallet. It wasn’t that I didn’t lie under men. At fourteen I had grown into a slender youth with the looks that attracted a certain type of man. Jorge was that type of man. I was becoming too old to live with my mother in this attic room, which was large enough and had its own bath, but our separate sleeping areas were only divided from each other by a screen. It was time that I start making my own way. As of now that most likely way was with men from down at Malagueta Beach, on the Mediterranean.

But tonight I was afraid it was with Jorge. And Jorge did not pay. Jorge only took—not just from my mother, but from me too.

And there he was, coming around the edge of the screen—naked and in erection. I could see in the dim light coming in from the calle through the window that he was raising his finger to his lips. He knew I was awake—waiting for him, if not with exactly the same sense of anticipation that he liked to believe. He came down beside me as I lay on my back on the pallet. He slipped my shorts off and now I was naked too.

I gave a low moan—I couldn’t help doing that—as his hands, smooth and silky because he fancied himself a violinist and did no manual work that I knew of, moved between my legs and glided up, coaxing my thighs to open to his touch. He put his hand under my knees, one at a time, and lifted them, leaving my legs bent, feet flat on the pallet, and my thighs spread. He looked down into my eyes and I looked up into his in the dim light coming from the window. Although panting lightly and moaning low, I tried not to make a sound. I didn’t want to wake my mother. I didn’t want her to know that Jorge came for more than her.

One of his fingers touched my entrance and then entered and moved there, enticing me to open to him, which I did. I was known by men, although not that often—not yet. As he lifted his leg over mine and put himself into position, he put a hand over my mouth to stifle any sound I might make on penetration.

He wasn’t a big-cocked man, but I panted harder and arched my back as he forced his way into me. I did make a sound, but he muffled it, first with his hand, and then his lips. He was hovering over me, his shaft inside me. I hooked my knees on his hips and pressed my fingers into his shoulder blades as he fucked me.

After had had come inside me, he slid out and moved around to the other side of the screen and lay with my mother again. Near dawn, he quietly left. I waited for a few minutes and then rose and went into our bathroom and cleaned myself up with a washcloth. It was time for a change from this. I pulled on a bathing suit—a small Speedo—a T-shirt, and sandals; rummaged around for a beach towel and the New York Yankees baseball hat Señor Castillo had brought back to me from a business trip to the United States the previous year, and slowly worked my way down through the flat and the central apartment house staircase and to the street. I stopped briefly at the cathedral before continuing on to Malagueta Beach.

It was a long walk from the Castillos’s flat to the peninsula on the other side of the Malaga inner harbor, but each step I took away from the situation with Jorge, the more I felt in control of my life and opportunities. I had come to the beach and wound up being entertained and bedded by a man before—and paid for it. At fourteen, maybe it was time for me to leave my mother’s side forever and make it on my own in that way.

I arrived at Malagueta Beach, looking out onto the Mediterranean, the inner harbor behind me and the city of Malaga rising to the cathedral beyond that, and picked out a spot, laid out the towel, stripped off my T-shirt, and sat, watching the world go by and wishing that I could get off of it. I’d find my own way in life, I knew, but it would take time.

As I sat there, people went by. Women and some men cast their eyes in my direction. I was aware I was eye candy on the beach. I didn’t care—I welcomed it. I looked back with interest if I was interested. Spanish men contributed more than their share of male beauty to the world’s supply of that. Several men passing me—and particularly ones in their late thirties and their forties looked like gods to me—Mediterranean olive coloring, dark hair and eyes, magnificent muscularity, exuding an air of confidence and command, and openly showing interest. Many were hirsute, which I found arousing.

The third time a man in his late forties, solidly built, a Zeus rather than an Adonis, passed by me, I looked directly in his eyes and flashed him a warm smile. He was dark-haired but starting to go gray, swirls of salt-and-pepper curls covered his chest in thick enough matting that I had to look at him closely to see his nipples, which were puffed up and had ring piercings. He was in a Speedo, as I was, and it left little imagination on whether or not he was hung. He was.

He paused, a hand, with a thick-stone ring on the middle finger paused at his crotch, and I could see him pop his tongue in his cheek, a signal I had learned as an expression of sexual interest. I smiled back, and he turned and walked on.

Tiring of sitting on the beach, I rose and walked off the beach and back into the city. It was the same direction that the sexy older man had gone in. I didn’t see him during my stroll, though. I walked up the hill toward the Gibralfaro Castle, commanding the heights in this section of the city. When I reached the castle, I went in. I saw him up on the battlements, looking out toward the sea. I looked around for a staircase to go up there, but by the time I reached the battlements, the man was gone. I told myself that I wasn’t following him anyway. I had no idea what I would say or do if I came close to him.

He aroused me, though. He was probably twenty-five years old than I was, but I had been initiated by older men. I found handsome older men in fit condition sexy. I was submissive. I wanted to be controlled. The truth be known, I wanted my sex partner to be a bit cruel too. Jorge disappointed me that way. He just lay on top of me and moved inside me until he came. There was no excitement in sex with him.

While I was on the battlements, the wind took my cap away. I didn’t care all that much. I didn’t have all that much interest in the New York Yankees, and I had other caps. I hadn’t brought any more with me today, though, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be going back to the Castillo flat. After seeing all there was to see in the castle, I walked back toward the beach, going to the other side of the peninsula, where the marinas were, facing the inner harbor and the cathedral section of the city. There was an area of asphalt at the seawall between the marinas and the line of restaurants, bars, and shops, where outside dining was set up. I sat on a curb, outside one of the restaurants, contemplating where to go next—where I might hook up with a man who would feed me my midday meal and pay me for sex in one of the hotels behind me.

“I believe you lost this in the castle,” a rich, baritone voice spoke near my right ear. I turned to find my sexy Spaniard I’d followed to the castle standing there, leaning down to where I sat at the curb, my New York Yankees cap in his hand. He was still in his Speedo and sandals, but he’d added a white cotton shirt, flared open. He had a gold medallion nestled in the curly hair in the curve of his pecs. I didn’t remember whether he had that on before. The rings were still there in his nipples.

“It says New York Yankees,” he said, “So, you must be a baseball fan. Or maybe you play ball?”

“I was a gift by someone who visited America,” I said.

“I have visited America. I’ve even been to a Yankees’ game. It’s a slow game, but it is interesting to watch the players. Many of them are beautiful men. You are a beautiful boy,” he said. “My name is Sergio. Are you hungry or thirsty? Would you like to sit at a table with me in this café and I will buy you something to eat and drink and we can talk about American baseball, or anything else you’d like to talk about.”

And thus was how it started for me with men.

“That would be very nice,” I answered, standing and going to one of the café tables with him. “I’m Paulo.” He hadn’t given me a last name, so I didn’t give him mine. If this was a sexual hookup, and I certainly hoped it was, we probably should keep it on a first-name basis—at least for now.

“Do you like to play games, Paulo?” he asked as we sat. “Perhaps we can think of a game to play—just the two of us.”

“Perhaps,” I answered. It, of course, was a sexual hookup. We both seemed to understand that from the beginning just as I understood from the beginning that he was taking command. I knew that men liked taking command with boys—that this was the biggest reason they wanted to fuck boys.

He flagged a waiter over and ordered drinks food for us both. He took the chair beside me, both of us looking out toward the inner harbor and beyond to the old city and the cathedral, rather than the chair across from me. When the waiter left, he said. “I think you were following me just now. Was there perhaps something you would like from me?”

“I didn’t think about that, I don’t think. But you seemed like a really nice man to me and you’d looked at me on the beach like you wanted me to follow you—that you wanted to know me better.” I’d leave the responsibility for this with him.”

“You must be what, twelve or thirteen,” he said.

“Is that what you want me to be?”

“I want you to be whatever age you are,” he said. “What you looked to be is all I need to know.”

“I’m fourteen,” I said. “I’m told I’m small for my age.”

“A very fine-looking young clerk, though. There is a lot of promise there ... in you.”

“I’m young and small,” I said. “But I’m not inexperienced.”

He didn’t say anything right away. If he was disappointed that I wasn’t claiming to be a virgin to men, he wasn’t showing that. I thought I should pin that down. “If that makes a difference to you—”

“No, no, not at all,” he quickly answered then. “In fact it might speed this up.”

I didn’t ask him what speed up. I didn’t have to. Our first drinks had arrived. When the waiter left, Sergio placed a hand, the one with that ring with the huge stone in it on his middle finger, on my knee. While we had been waiting for the drinks, he had lightly touched my forearm. I hadn’t shirked away from either.

“I rather had hoped you were following me—to the castle. I need to establish that if a boy goes with me, I would lead. He would have to follow.”

“I am a follower,” I answered. “I’m just a boy. I have experience, but I want to be shown what to do—what I man wants me to do for him.”

“You say you are fourteen. I am thirty-six. There us more than twenty years difference.”

“I have always followed older men,” I answered. “I’ve almost always found that they know how to lead.”

We chatted for a few minutes, each finding out a bit more about the other, but not much. I found that Sergio owned a film company, filming what I didn’t ascertain. It was called Apollo Studios and operated out of a villa he owned on the coast, west of Malaga, near the coastal town of La Carilhuela.

“I’ve kept the name in English. Having it Apollo Studios in English makes it sound international, don’t you think?”

I agreed that I did. “What sort of movies do you make?” I asked.

“The sort that you may wish to be in. You could make some good money in my movies.”

I liked that idea. If I wasn’t going to go back to the Castillos flat to live with my mother and be fucked by Jorge, I’d had to find a way to make some money. It was hard for a fourteen-year-old boy to go out on his own. I knew that.

“While you were working on my movies, I, of course, would give you someplace to sleep and would cover your meals. Plus you’d make some money to spend any way you want.”

“For clothes for the movies?” I asked.

“Oh, we’d take care of that too,” he said. Our meal arrived then, and we didn’t say anything of importance while we ate. As we were eating ice cream for dessert, though, he returned to what I knew he wanted to discuss with me. “I think I’d really like for you to be in movies I make. Have you really lain down from men twenty years older than you?”

I wasn’t so naïve that I didn’t understand why those two thoughts were being put together.

“In deciding who to have sex with, age doesn’t really occur to me,” I said. “Hardness, experience, and being able to keep it up until I am finished too are important.”

“Men, when they are on top of you, inside you, can make you come? If you were in a movie showing that, you think you could come—and show you were—for the camera. Not every fourteen-year-old boy, even when they want to—”

“Yes, sure,” I answered. “I was with a man once, just a couple of weeks ago, who wanted to take photos of me, you know, doing it—by myself. And I did it. It was kind of fun. No problem.”

He took my hand and placed it on his crotch under the table. He was both big and hard. I knew he would be.

“So, you will come with me, and you will lay with me and let me be inside you. And you’ll let make a movie of that? I, of course, will pay and provide you someplace to sleep and your meals.”

“Yes,” I answered. No more need for games or talking about it.

We had another drink. He became more free with his hand under the glass top of the table when others didn’t appear to be looking. I was looking though. The sun was descending, its reflection setting the water of the inner harbor spread out before us ablaze. We could be freer with our foreplay. I gasped and jerked as the fingers of his right hand pressed in under the leg hole of my Speedo, and he closed them around my balls and squeezed.

I looked into his eyes and endured.

“There is pain in pleasure,” he murmured. “Do you agree with me in that, Paulo? Will you remember that during the movies we make and not mess the filming up. Retaking scenes can be expensive.”

“Yes,” I answered.

The pressure eased and he withdrew his fingers. “Now, shall we have another drink or shall I show you my boat?”

“You have a boat here?”

“Yes, a sailboat. It’s right over there.”

“You are leading,” I said. “I follow. Don’t ask me what I want anymore. Do what you want. Take what you want.”