Tim Comes Home

 CHAPTER 10

As autumn moved into winter, I began to suspect that Tim was no longer going to school. It worried me enormously, because despite his late start in education, he eventually did justice to his considerable intelligence and had been doing well. I phoned the headmaster, who told me that Tim had hardly been in at all for about a month and a half. They had assumed that he had been unwell, since he had always been so punctual and regular in everything. I was angry, and thought that they had been negligent with regard to my son by not keeping me informed, and nearly told them so, but a parish priest has to stay on good terms with his school.

I tried talking to Tim about it, but uncharacteristically, he would not discuss it. He said ‘Look! I’m seventeen, so it’s my business if I go or not. Just mind your own business!’ I was shocked; other than the incident over his new haircut and clothes, he had never talked to me disrespectfully before. I hoped that it was just overdue teenage angst (which I had expected at some time, after all), and decided to talk it through with Paul. What with one thing and another, the opportunity never came, and Tim always warned me off with a black look whenever I tried to broach the subject of school with him. As with the matter of underwear, there was not the slightest room for dialogue, and so I left it until we could find a good moment. By the time Christmas had come, he had missed too much school to be able now to take his A level exams; he would simply have to repeat the whole year or go to a college to start again. I was secretly happier than I let on, as it would be another year before I lost Tim to University or to whatever else he wanted to do. So I did nothing, and Tim continued to not bother with school. How foolish and self-deceiving we can be when we love!

I shall reproach myself to my dying day that I made no serious attempt to find out where Tim did spend his time.

One day Tim came in, looking very sheepish, with a scarf around his neck. Even when it was cold, he never wore scarves. And it wasn’t cold. He was also walking awkwardly, rather carefully, and pushed past me without giving me my usual hug. I was immediately suspicious.

‘What’s up, Tim? Have you been in a fight? Has someone kicked you in the unmentionables?’

‘No. It’s nothing. Get off my case, will you?’

‘Tim!’

I was hurt, and not a little worried. But he went upstairs and didn’t reappear for supper. Paul raised eyebrows enquiringly to me. I shrugged, so Paul went upstairs to Tim, and was there a long time. The two of them came down together and sat on the sofa to watch the TV. I sent a questioning glance to Paul, but he simply shook his head and shrugged. He’d obviously had no luck either, except to convince Tim to join the rest of us.

Tim was wearing a button-up shirt, and the collar was, unusually for Tim, a casual dresser, completely closed. This intrigued Marc and Conor, who began to tease and tickle him, which he was definitely not in the mood for. He tried to push Conor off his neck. He underestimated once again his own strength. Conor flew off, still with a grip on Tim’s shirt collar. The shirt buttons popped off, and the shirt tore right off Tim’s shoulder. Marc, who was pulling the other side of the shirt, sat back heavily as the buttons gave way. We all looked in amazement. Tim, his strong shoulders now bare, had around his neck a heavy steel chain closed with a huge padlock. There was an awkward silence. Tim seethed with fury. Paul looked at me, puzzled.

‘Tim, what’s that?’ I asked.

‘What does it fucking look like?’

Paul reacted furiously: ‘Tim! How dare you speak to your father like that’.

‘He’s not my father, he’s only my fucking landlord! The state pays him to look after me!’

Pandemonium. Conor screamed something incoherent at Tim, and Marc battered him hard with his fists. Paul went white, then red and was building up to a whole explosion.

I yelled to everyone to get out except Tim, and we would sort this out between us. When they had left, I looked at my son closely. Tim’s beautiful eyes were brimming with tears. Careful, Johnny, I thought, this wasn’t what it appeared to be.

I went over to my son, who seemed to want to be that no longer, and put one hand on the back of his head. He didn’t pull away, but seemed in some way to want me to be there. With my other hand I picked up the padlock that lay against his breast. It and the chain were horribly heavy. I was beginning to suspect what this might mean.

‘Tim?’

‘Yeah, what?’ he said sullenly.

‘Do you really want this around your neck?’

‘What do you think?’ he retorted rudely.

‘Where’s the key?’.

‘I’m not taking it off, and that’s that!’

‘I didn’t ask you to. I just asked where the key is’.

‘Never you mind. It’s none of your bloody business!’

‘Well, all right. Just get the key of that padlock, and show me that you can open it, and I’ll leave you alone. You can wear what you like, as far as I’m concerned’.

‘No.’ He looked trapped.

‘Do you mean that someone else has the key?’.

‘I didn’t say that’.

Tim still wouldn’t lie to me. He looked at me desperately, willing me not to push him any further. The tears in his eyes began to spill onto his cheeks. I wiped them away with my thumb. I wanted to cry myself.

‘Tim, something has to be going on for you to speak to me like that. I cannot believe that you are fighting me of your own will. We have always loved and honoured each other, and been more friends than foster father and son. What have I done to you that you would push me away from you like this? Do you know how you are breaking my heart? Paul and I are so very worried for you, my darling.

Tim steeled himself and pulled away from me.

‘Don’t be. I’m not your ‘darling’. Paul’s your ‘darling’, your bum-chum. I’ll look after myself. I’ve always had to, after all. I’m an adult now and can do as I want’ Tim sniffled through his tears, his eyes pleading with me.

His words spat hate, but his eyes begged for understanding and love and forgiveness. He never could lie to me. What the fuck was going on?

‘No, Tim, you’re not an adult, and all this proves it. Yes, you’ll be eighteen in a few weeks and in law our fostering relationship ends. You will no longer be a ward of court. You can go where you want, do what you want, if that’s what you want. Up to you. But now? Tim, for the first time that I have known you, you are not behaving responsibly. Perhaps, my son, I know you better than anyone else on earth does, and I know that this is untypical behaviour. I had wondered whether you might be on drugs, but I don’t think so now.’

Tim’s head shook strongly. I continued.

‘I think you are steeling yourself for some life decision. You think you know what you want, and I fear that you are about to make the biggest mistake of your life. Won’t you please tell me what is going on?’

I had struck a nerve.

‘It’s none of your fucking business! I’ve got to live my life my own way, not your fucking way. Get out of my fucking hair’.

Tim was sobbing now, his voice cracking, and pulling the shreds of his shirt to try cover the obscene chain and lock. Unsuccessfully.

I had to persist. There was something wrong here. I knew Tim far too well to even think for a moment that he really no longer loved me. He was putting on an act for some reason that I could not fathom, and though that act hurt me, I could see that it was hurting Tim much, much, more.

‘Tim, I will always love you, and wherever I am will be a home for you. You may not want to think of me as your father any more, but I shall always think of you as my son. You can say what you want, do what you want, call me what you want, but you won’t change that. Now please won’t you tell me what’s going on?’

Tim shook his head again.

‘Okay. Then perhaps I’ll tell you what I think is going on’.

And I told him what I thought, and I read in his frightened eyes that I had got it at least partially right. As time was to prove, I was not right enough. Tim hobbled out of the room, as quickly as he could. I wondered again how he had injured himself.

Later as we lay in our twin beds, side by side, with a heavy heart I told Paul what I had guessed.

‘Paul, I think that Tim has a Master’.

‘A what?’

‘It means that he has got into BDSM or something.”

‘What on earth’s that?’

‘Bondage and Domination, Sadism and Masochism.’

‘Sadism? Oh God! He’s only seventeen!’

‘Quite. I don’t know how far it has gone, but I think that he may have committed himself in some way to some man or woman. I suspect a man, from what we know of him. I can’t think why otherwise he would be behaving quite so badly towards us unless someone were forcing him somehow to choose between us, or to otherwise alienate us from him. His ‘Master’ I think is making him say all these things as a sort of test of his obedience. The chain and lock are another test; they must be really uncomfortable.’

‘But why, Johnny, why? Tim has always been the gentlest, loveliest, sunniest lad. We’ve all always got on so well. Why would he do something like that?’

‘Who can tell what lies below the surface? He was terribly abused as a boy, and perhaps this is somehow a bubbling up of the problems. Perhaps it is how he learnt from his father to express sexual passion. Perhaps as a result he feels more fulfilled as a gay submissive. I never got any further with him on the subject of his father than we did that first day when he arrived. He would freak out every time I approached the subject, so I took the cowardly route and decided to let it come out in its own time. I never guessed he would turn against me.’

‘I couldn’t bear the way he was talking to you. Calling you his ‘landlord’, after all you have done for him.’

‘That wasn’t him, Paul. I cannot believe he would ever willingly say that. His ‘Master’ has probably told him to call him ‘Daddy’ or something—it’s quite common—and told him that here is merely the place he lives now. I could see in his eyes that it was breaking him up to say it’.

Finally I wept, and Paul came across from his own bed, got in with me and simply held me, our bare chests pressed together. We were both so full of grief that the erotic significance of what we were doing quite passed us by.

Christmas and another month passed without incident. Tim continued to be sullen and uncommunicative. Marc and Conor, after refusing to speak to Tim for some days, had with the resilience of youth bounced back and they treated him as always before, mutatis mutandis.

Tim still wore his chain and padlock, but now he made no attempt to hide them, which drew some startled glances from the parishioners, as did the tight trousers he had resumed, in which his bulging genitals seemed to have doubled in size. But most of the parishioners had children too, and simply passed me sympathetic glances. One evening, Tim returned, and came into the house so quietly that we could hardly hear him. But Conor, who had just been brushing his teeth ready for bed saw him and called out

‘Tim why are you walking so funny?’

Paul came out of our room at that moment, and saw him hobbling along, wincing. As soon as he realised he was being watched, Tim straightened up and ran briskly up the stairs to his room. We heard a thud as he threw himself onto his bed followed by a groan of pain. Paul knew from recent experience that questioning Tim would be fruitless, so when the lad left for his mysterious destination in the morning, Paul went up to his attic room and found the khaki chinos Tim had been wearing the previous day. Inside the seat of the trousers there were bloodstains which Tim had inexpertly tried to remove. Even Paul knew what that meant, but he did not tell me what he had found for a very long time, knowing how it would distress me. Tim stopped serving at daily Mass, or receiving communion and just sat in the back pew with his head in his hands.

It was shortly after Easter that Tim returned with his padlock and chain gone, and in their place was a thin shiny steel collar. It actually looked rather good on him but for the fact that there was no opening or even lock on it. It had been welded in some way. Then over the succeeding weeks, and as the days became warmer, Tim’s habits of dress began to change again. He had always loved the feel of shiny 80’s-style brief nylon football shorts, (he had told us once that that was another happy memory, as it was for us, remembering Tim Senior’s cottage holiday) and now he would wear nothing else. We never saw him in trousers any more—we had another row when I tried to make him wear some to Sunday Mass. Even the obscene tight white trousers had vanished. He wore shirts less and less (though his torso seemed to grow ever more defined), and never shoes or socks. I was losing my son before my eyes, and there was not a thing I could do about it.

We were all watching the television together a few days after this—it was two days before Tim’s eighteenth birthday—and Tim, who was looking very tired, fell asleep, sprawled in the big armchair, shirtless as usual, his strong legs apart, wearing only his shorts. The rest of us, since the business of the day was over, were dressed casually, ready for bed, though it was still early. A little later, Conor giggled and pointed,

‘Look everyone, Tim’s got another collar on his balls!’ From where he was seated on the floor, he could see up the leg of Tim’s shorts, and he scooted across to Tim and gently lifted back the nylon for us to see for ourselves. Yup, he was right. There was another solid steel collar welded around the neck of Tim’s scrotum, which strained his angry red testicles down painfully. No wonder he had been hobbling. And that wasn’t all. His whole groin was entirely smooth. I looked up at the young man’s outstretched arm and saw that his armpits, too, were like Conor’s, totally hairless.

I had to talk to Tim. It was going to be fruitless, but I had to do it. So I woke him up, and asked him to come into my den for a while. He looked grumpy, but complied, growling at Marc and Conor, asking what they were giggling about.

Tim and I sat side by side on the sofa—it was the one that Paul had bled on so copiously that night when St Tar’s had burned, and I could still see the stains. It was why we had moved it out of the sitting room.

Tim sat slumped, his shoulders the picture of dejection, and his eyes closed. My heart went out to him again. I had to get his attention, seriously. So I got up, and hunkered down before him, our knees touching.

Tim looked startled, as if this brought some memory for him. Not as startled as he was going to be in a second!

I moved my arm across quickly and lifted back the nylon of his shorts before he could react. I grabbed hold of his testicles and held them firmly.

He gaped at me, baffled and shocked. I tugged his balls to bring him to himself.

‘Tim, what’s this?’

‘Aaaaargh,……what does it fucking look like?’

‘Isn’t it terribly uncomfortable?’

‘Yeah, when you do that! Let go, for God’s sake! You’re hurting me!’

‘And when I’m not? Does it hurt the rest of the time, Tim?’ I squeezed gently again.

He shouted. ‘Yes! yes! yes, Fuck! Ow! Yes it hurts all the time. It hurts when I take cold showers, when my balls pull up, it hurts like hell when I run and they slap against my legs, it’s agony when I sit down too quickly. It aches all the time, all the fucking time, all the fucking, fucking time. It doesn’t stop, it just gets worse sometimes. There, are you happy now? Are you happy now?’ Tim was crying with his pain and frustration.

And, to add to his embarrassment and humiliation, while I had been holding his balls he had grown a fierce erection which tugged on his scrotum, pulling his testicles hard against the steel of the collar.

‘Ow! ow! ow!’ And Tim sobbed with the pain and the humiliation.

I let go and tried to cover his privates with the nylon shorts, but the tented royal blue shiny cloth looked even more obscene. The shorts were really too brief to cover him properly.

‘You asked if I am happy now, Tim. Look at me. Look at me, Tim! Do I look happy to you?’

Unwillingly, he dragged his head around and saw my anguish and my tears. The answer was whispered.

‘No.’

‘Why am I unhappy, Tim?’

There was a long silence. I repeated the question. Another long silence.

‘Shall I grab your balls again, Tim? Why am I unhappy?’.

Tim gasped, but said nothing. So I grabbed him again. His erection hardened, and I could see the front of his shorts growing wet. He cried even harder from the pain in his balls and from embarrassment, and blubbered out

‘Aarrrgh! Ow! Please let go! I’ll talk. All right! ALL RIGHT! I know why you’re unhappy! You’re unhappy because of me. You hate what I’m doing, you hate what I’m becoming’.

I relased his balls again leant forward, and placed my hands high up on Tim’s slim but powerful thighs.

‘Correct, my son! Do you really want me to be this unhappy, Tim? Do you really think I deserve this?’.

‘No!’ Quietly, though.

That was something, at any rate. Progress.

‘Tim, have you been happy living with me?’

‘Yes. This has been the best time of my life’.

‘And are you happy now?’

Tim spat out ‘Do I fucking look it, Johnny?’

I edged forward until I held Tim’s knees between my own. His erection was still straining at the cloth of his shorts, the blood flow no doubt constricted by the collar. I laid one hand on his shoulder and the other on his waist, and looked directly into his beautiful blue eyes.

‘Son, I want you to ask yourself something. You have said some atrocious things to me over the last few months. Things I never in my wildest nightmares thought to have my beloved, my gentle, my loving son say to me. I have cried, agonized, asked myself where I have gone wrong, but never for a single moment has my love failed for you. Tim, you come first in everything I do, before myself, before Paul who is my life, before those terrors Marc and Conor whom I adore, before my parents, before everyone except God. Even, God forgive me, before my priesthood and people; so now, perhaps, I understand why the Church is so wise in insisting on celibacy for its priests, because, Tim, this is tearing me apart to see you like this. Tim, I would die for you. What is more, I would kill for you. I would go through hell and high water just to see you smile your wonderful smile for me once more. If this goes on for much longer, frankly, I think that I will want to die!

This ‘Master’ you have, whatever his name is. Could he say any of that? Or is he just using you for sex, to gratify his own sexual needs without a thought for yours, let alone your wider needs? Would he kill for you, die for you, love and hold you tenderly?

Tim was yelling his sobs now in his grief and confusion of mind and he threw himself into my arms with all his force. I rolled back onto the floor, and Tim fell on top of me, hugging me fiercely. His sore balls connected with my thigh and he screamed blue murder as he dragged me against his chest with his considerable strength; he was as tall as me, and much stronger now. I feared for a moment that he was trying to fight me, but he just hugged me as hard as he could. When his bawling subsided into wracking sobs, and he let me finally breathe, he just lay in my arms on top of me, quietly crying, beating his forehead against the floor over my shoulder. His tears fell as he calmed, and I could feel his heart within his chest banging hard against my ribs.

‘Tim, my beloved son, what does he give you that I can’t?’

Tim thought, still gripping me tightly. He said haltingly

‘He gives me what I need. And I give him what he needs’.

‘What do you need, Tim?’

‘Resolution. Closure. Peace with myself. You’ve always said that Jesus said that the greatest thing someone could do was to give his life for another. That’s what I need. And I need to put right what I did wrong all those years ago. This is the only way.’

‘What did you do wrong?’

‘I walked out. I hated where I was. I hated my parents, even my mother, who died when I was little, who gave me these scars on my chest, but now I know that hate is wrong. Hate is wrong. Hate destroys. I doubled what was already bad. That was where God put me and I should have stayed. I was so wicked, so wicked. I ran away. I should have stayed. Perhaps my father needed me more than you need me, and certainly my brother did’.

‘Tim, your parents abused you horribly. And now you feel that you have to be abused again by somebody else to get yourself back?’

‘Something like that. I must go through it again, if necessary. After all, if that was what my parents were like, that must be what I’m like. Its genetics.’

I spun Tim over so that now I was on top of him. I sat astride his thighs, leaning forward and pinning his shoulders to the ground with my hands. He didn’t resist me: I wouldn’t have stood a chance if he had made even a small effort.

‘Bollocks. Do you really think that God wants this?

I reached down and grabbed his balls again. Tim groaned and his erection hardened again. I continued relentlessly

Do you really think your coming to live with me was something wrong, not something right?’

Tim wailed: ‘I don’t know any more. I really don’t know. But it’s too late now. I’ve made up my mind.’

‘And does this decision bring you peace?’

‘Sort of’.

‘Does it make you feel good?’

Tim whispered ‘No, but at least it’s the first truly unselfish thing I have ever done. It’s time to repay.’

‘Bollocks. Double bollocks!’ I said again. But I could see that he truly believed it.

There was silence, while we both thought. Tears continued to trickle from Tim’s eyes, and an occasional sob heaved his chest. After a while, I broke the silence:

‘Tim; this man. Does he like to hurt you?’

‘Duuhh. Look at me! That’s the idea, Johnny. He loves to hurt me, and he likes to fuck my arse hard.’

‘Why do you let him? Does he love you?’

‘He says he does, though I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. But he finds me pleasurable’

‘I’ll bet he does. But why do you allow it, Tim?’

Softly Tim answered: ‘Because he has the right’.

‘Did you give him that right? Did you sign something?’

‘I didn’t need to. He has the right anyway. But yes. I have signed a slave contract, Johnny’.

The world turned black, and I saw stars. I struggled for breath.

‘Oh God! Oh Tim! Oh my son!’

There was a deep silence as I lay down on Tim and held my son to my breaking heart. Eventually, I had to ask

‘Why will you no longer call me Dad?’

Silence. Tim started shaking.

‘Does he make you call him Dad?’

Silence.

I said bitterly ‘So in your view, the man who abuses you, chains you, collars you, tortures you, and fucks you till you bleed is entitled to be called Dad, while I who love you so deeply, who have fed you, protected you, adored you, given my life to you and have never consciously or deliberately hurt you in any way am allowed no relationship to you at all except that of landlord, simply because the bastard whom you let torment you says it must be so. Oh this is too, too much! I’m not sure I can handle this any more! Well, all I can say is that the sex must be really fantastic for you to come to think this way! You sad, sad, sad, twisted fuck-up!

I got off my son—or was he my son any more?—and went back and sat down on the sofa. I looked down at my boy lying on his back on the floor, sobbing into his hands, his erection still tenting his shorts—due, no doubt more to the collar than to any erotic sense, and waited.

Silence. For a long time.

Tim whispered. ‘It isn’t’.

‘What?’ I had forgotten my question in my misery.

‘The sex. It isn’t fantastic. In fact he never lets me cum at all. Even when he fucks me he ties up my tackle with wire.’

‘What?? And this is the man you prefer to me?’.

Tim began to sob again. ‘No, n…no, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. DON’T think that, ever, ever. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else. This is not something I want to do; I’ve told you, it’s something I’ve got to do. He has the right!

Well, that was some small consolation, I suppose. But I had to ask.

‘Tim, does this have anything directly to do with the abuse you suffered as a child?’

Silence. Tim shut his brimming eyes.

Well, I suppose that gave me my answer. I had guessed it was something of the sort, when Tim had said that this man had a natural right to abuse him.

‘Tim, I’m nearly finished for now. I think we are both far too traumatized and exhausted to go any further. But I want to ask you a very important question. I’ve never been in an BDSM relationship, it doesn’t really do much for me, but I have read a bit about it. And so I want to ask you; what is your safeword?’

‘My what?’

‘Your safeword. Your ‘Master’ will have given you a word to say when you and he are…… well, you know. When you say that word, it is a sign that you have taken as much as you can and you want him to stop. What is the word he has given you?

‘He hasn’t given me any such word. He just stops when he wants to.’

I was now very frightened.

‘Tim, this man is a dangerous lunatic. You have made me so very afraid for you. He cannot, must not, be your lover. We must talk this over further. In the meantime, call me Johnny if you can’t call me Dad. It’s better than silence.’

We went slowly to bed. I was shocked to my core and utterly horrified at the prospect of what the future might hold.

Earlier in the evening, when the shouting and screaming had started in my den, Marc and Conor had got very distressed, and Paul had taken the two of them to Macdonalds. When I came into the bedroom, after brushing my teeth, I found Paul undressed and in his bed with his eyes closed. I was already in my shorts and so just slipped into bed. As I reached to turn out the light Paul asked

‘Well? I heard the commotion. I take it you have some news.’

I told him everything briefly, and by the end he was white with shock. He loved Tim nearly as much as I did. I asked him

‘Do we tell the police? Tim is still a minor, just.’

Paul thought about it. ‘You might alienate Tim forever if you do. And he’ll only be a minor for two more days. He will almost certainly grow out of it when he realises that this guy is out of his tree. Apart from those collars, which I suppose are largely symbolic, if uncomfortable, and the sex, which seems to be consensual, if rather violent, he doesn’t seem to have hurt Tim in any serious way. The contract thing couldn’t possibly hold Tim against his will; it’d never stand up in court; slavery is still illegal. Even if this monster were to claim that it was a binding exchange of goods and services, the very fact that the man made Tim sign it while still a minor goes against him.’

‘I still have a very bad feeling about this’.

‘Well, leave any action until after Tim’s birthday. Let’s take that opportunity to show him how much we love him, and he can work out any comparisons for himself.’

‘Okay, lover boy. But I’m still uneasy. He’s very, very determined, as only Tim can be. And we know only too well how he sticks his heels in if he really wants something.’

‘True enough! Do you think he’s going to do a runner?’

‘It’s not impossible. But it shouldn’t be too difficult to trace him if he does.’

‘How? We’ve not the slightest idea who this bastard who shafts him is.’

‘On the contrary. Because Tim is so insistent that this man has the right to abuse him, and because of other things, such as his refusal to call me his father any more, and his insistence that he is somehow righting something in the past, I’m 99% certain that Tim’s abuser is none other than his dear old dad. No, not me, you silly bugger! His natural father. It shouldn’t be impossible to trace him. How many Sullivans can there be within an area small enough for Tim to get there and back on foot—barefoot, in fact—in an afternoon?’.

Paul looked troubled, but said nothing. Both of us slept uneasily.

The following day, Tim and I were alone in the kitchen together eating breakfast. Though Tim was still wearing only the same pair of shorts and his collars, things were much easier between us. I was glad that we seemed to have cleared the air. I leant across the table and took Tim’s hand.

‘Tim, I explained what a safeword is last night. Do you remember?’

‘Yes: it’s a word you use when you want the hurting to stop, when it’s too much.’

‘That’s right. I want to give you a safeword, Tim. It’s “Roses”. Say it, Tim.’

‘Roses’.

‘Tim, if you’re ever in trouble, you’ve only got to say that word to me, find a phone, or whatever, and I will be there for you. I will cross the world, I will tunnel through mountains, I will do whatever necessary. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah, Johnny, thanks.’

He looked as if he meant it, but he changed the subject quickly.

‘Is Uncle Paul in?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Good. I want to go to confession’.

Another hopeful sign. He was with Paul for over an hour. I would have given anything to know what he said, but Paul, of course, kept his mouth shut, simply shooting me a look of anguish when it was all over. Tim, on the other hand, seemed transformed, radiant. He went to Mass and served again with the boys for the first time in months, with the most tender devotion. I had never seen him so transported, and I felt a whole lot better. Hopefully he had turned a corner.

That evening, Tim had a few close friends around for a barbeque to celebrate the eve of his eighteenth birthday. We, the family, were going to celebrate on the day itself with a special outing, a trip on the Eurostar to Paris, kept very secret. Tim was the life and soul of the party; his friends thought his neck collar was dead kewl (they didn’t see the other one). Tim wore the same pair of shorts that he had worn for the last few days, but this time added a new shiny t-shirt. He looked so beautiful, tanned and fit from all his workouts and shirtless weeks that no one could keep their eyes off him. He shouted and laughed and played practical jokes in his old happy way that I had not seen for some time and even I began to relax.

As his friends departed, Tim would press something into their hands, a little gift. I was touched. His best friend, Jack, was the last to leave, and I watched from a window as Tim gave Jack his own rosary, and then pulled his new t-shirt off and gave him that too. Odd gift, I thought.

For the last hour or so of the day, Tim was very affectionate to all of us, and we all went off to bed in a decidedly better frame of mind than the night before.

As midnight struck and Tim turned eighteen, he got off his bed where he had been lying awake, and took off his shorts. They were his last remaining possession. Over the last weeks he had given absolutely everything else away, the more noticeable things like his bike and his computer going to his brothers. Now, literally, all he had in the world were these shorts, and he carefully folded them and laid them on his bed with a note for me.

He knelt naked on the ground until he was sure everyone else was asleep. Then he rose and let himself quietly out of the house.