As he munched sandwiches and sipped tea, Keith was like Jason also thinking about Cody and Luigi. He knew better than to believe in 'in love'. Jason was far more romantic than he was. Keith had been a whore. He thought sex was pleasurable, sometimes intensely so. He loved making love to his friends, to Tom, to Esmé. He loved Tom very deeply. But it wasn't 'in love', that treacherous but seductive state which has more to do with chemicals and electricity than profound affection from deep in your heart. He admitted to himself that he was half 'in love' with Jason. But Jason was also his friend, as well as being sexy and desirable. He felt much the same now about Luigi. At first, he'd been hostile and afterwards still reserved. But now he loved Luigi as much as he loved Jason. He adored them both.
Like Jason, he too was willing to welcome Cody into their charmed circle.
But … he himself was bisexual. Maybe, if he hadn't had to earn his living by selling sex, maybe if he'd been an ordinary bloke who'd ended up with a nice normal nine-to-five job and a wife and kids he wouldn't have known that he was capable of loving and lusting after men. He supposed that if he'd lived at a time when being a homo was criminal he would have set aside his desires for men, his love and affection for men, and been happy to be an apparently straight married guy. But over the years he'd conceived a loathing for the religious bigotry that denied him and people like him the right to be what they were, to be loved, even the right to life itself. When he thought of Tom and Jason and Luigi, and how fine they were, he would feel a slow-burning anger build in him, a determination not to have a key part of his life dictated by the thin-lipped. He had no intention of pretending to be straight just to keep those drongos quiet.
Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)
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