betrothal my Father will permit me to enter schooling at Athens. This will be prior to taking up your gesture of a scholarship to the Palatine College at Rome.
At Athens I aspire to learn something more of life, of philosophy or rhetoric, to read the classics, to study the new sciences, to hear the debates of today's thinkers, to take initiation into the Mysteries, to attend the gymnasia and palaestrae to refine my body or improve my technique with weapons and sports. Perhaps, too, to experience love or lust with a worthy companion, whoever he or she may be.
But I do not feel I am equipped to provide you with the satisfactions of a proper eromenos, especially an eromenos worthy of Great Caesar.'
He fell silent with his eyes downcast in shame.
'Antinous, lad, all this and more may happen. Do not be at a loss,' Hadrian interceded. 'You are young, so another year's education in a major centre of culture like Athens will do you no harm. Your body has entered manhood so extra training in armor, or casting javelin and discus, or refining riding on proper-sized chargers, will help you achieve it swiftly. You are well on your way. But I must add, the guidance of an experienced cavalry officer and exponent of hunting who is also familiar with the ways of love can complete it. That, Antinous, would be my contribution.
I am sure your father will be pleased with your decision if you decide to become my companion. You only have to ask him.'
Both Antinous and I immediately intuited Hadrian might already know of Telemachus's response. Hadrian may have made separate contact.
'I am grateful for your patience, sir,' Antinous responded hesitantly, beginning to find his tongue at last. 'Yet I must confess I possess only limited experience of sex. My body makes demands of me I myself cannot fulfill, let alone provide readily to another.
Surely there are many other freeborn youths in Bithynia who already know the arts of love, who are experienced as an eromenos, and who are familiar with a courtesan's skills or a slave's duties? I'm sure they may satisfy your desires with greater accomplishment than I ever could? I fear I'm not equipped with the aptitudes you require, my lord.'
Antinous assumed that shy downcast-looking gesture which was quite familiar to me when he was insecure in a situation. Caesar now grew more assertive.
'Let us test that aptitude, young man. Step closer, Antinous,' Hadrian instructed.
Antinous hesitantly moved a half-step nearer the couch.
'This will be the extent of my demand upon you at first,' he added, 'the rest may prove equally as engaging some later day.'
Hadrian leaned forward and tenderly brushed my friend's lips with a kiss. Antinous was startled but did not withdraw. Caesar's fingertip gently raised his chin to search into his eyes while the other hand reached down towards his groin. Patiently, calmly, deliberately, Hadrian, the ruler of the known world with thirty Legions at his beck-and-call plus twenty-thousand slaves, reached to the lower hem of my friend's tunic lying tucked behind his furled cloak. Ant reacted with a reflex shift of body weight but didn't overtly respond to the provocation. In fact his body was surprisingly impassive, I thought.
Hadrian lifted the tunic's hem away from his groin with one hand, and then gently, purposefully, teasingly, searched with the other into the binding folds of the loin-clothed mound lying close against Ant's crotch.
My recollections of my friend's threshold of sexual arousal indicated an immediate response by his generative organ; after all each of us was at the age where self-relief was a thrice-daily necessity to satisfy the demands of hyperactive genitalia and their wantonly lurid fantasies. We used to joke about it. Our organs certainly had a mind of their own which simply ignored our better judgment.
Hadrian obviously understood these things. Silently fussing about for a moment he playfully withdrew Antinous's already firmed member from behind the folds of the flannel. Antinous flexed bolt upright in astonishment while remaining available to Caesar's touch. Even at my distance from the scene I recognized how Antinous was fully aroused in a manner familiar to me. He had firmed despite the chill air.
He breathing was accelerating. I sensed he was powerfully turned on by his extraordinary predicament. Antinous has a comfortably sized organ, though nothing to gloat over as some owners do when on display in the public baths. Yet his erection is nothing to be ashamed of either. Perhaps he was no roadside priapic Herm with its extravagant phallus to defend a house from intruders by its sheer enormity, yet he was adequately built for pleasing action.
He stood motionless before Caesar, immovable, stricken, mesmerized, thrilled, but goose-fleshed. His erection and his scrotum were exposed from beneath his tunic in heightened arousal. His mouth gaped open, galvanized in amazement.
Hadrian calmly spat into one hand a few times and then applied his saliva to Antinous's package projecting from its foreskin. He worked the spittle into every nerve-end and sensory nodule of his member while his other hand methodically fondled the testicles. Both received intense, languid, voluptuous attention. Due to my friend's pelvic thrust projecting from beneath his tunic, I guessed Hadrian might have been fingering his anus with his other hand.
Shifting closer to look intently into Antinous's eyes, Caesar savored his intoxicated responses as he kneaded and stroked his parts. I thought I detected half a smile wash across Hadrian's face; a smile which combined teasing whimsy with some form of victory. It was entirely without sleazy prurience; it was quite generous in its intent. It was affectionate, even loving. Yet it was knowing.
Antinous simply stared wide-eyed back at Hadrian. He was uprightly entranced with astonishment verging on sensory swoon.
A few protracted moments elapsed until, with a faint gasp, half-closed fluttering eyelids, and a writhed undulation at the hips, he quivered ecstatically as he flung back his head in cathartic release. His bright shaggy hair bounced in the moonlight as he emitted a strangulated cry, an animal yowl of agonized rapture. I guessed he had ejaculated charges of semen directly into his paramour's fondling palm, just as I had seen him forcefully expel on those occasions of our jerk-off competitions under the stars by a wilderness fireside. Young men are fascinated by the extraordinary demands of their sex drive and its uncontrollable bodily manifestations.
Hadrian, bemused but determined, teasingly rolled the ejaculate around Antinous's penis to intensify his sensitivities, causing him to squirm in feigned hurt in a burst of nervous laughter. He then calmly wiped his palm on the flannel of Ant's loincloth while grinning into his companion's shining eyes.
The episode complete, he took Antinous's cranium in both hands to fondly buss him on the forehead, each eyelid, the tip of the nose, his lips, and bat a final brotherly tap to the butt.
'Young men are so hasty,' I heard Hadrian mutter in amusement, 'they don't wait around, do they?'
'Can I do something pleasing for you too, my lord?' I heard Antinous ask limply.
I suddenly realized how such reciprocation could lead in embarrassing directions; directions I might not wish to witness or even know about. The prospect of being obliged to avert my eyes from watching my best friend being butt-fucked by Rome's great emperor in an artificial garden by pale moonlight rose to mind. But I was immediately rescued from this prospect. Hadrian responded.
'You have already done enough,' he replied. 'But there'll be time for those things some other day, Antinous. We are going to part now, so you can return to your friends. I have other matters to address. But I hope my message came through to you? If you speak to your father for his permission, and if it is given, I would welcome you with your friend Lysias and your servants too, at Athens in the spring. You could join me for the Festival of Dionysus celebrations. That is, if it is your father's will. Farewell until then. I hope we meet again, Antinous. I look forward to it.'
Hadrian began to wind his cloak around himself in readiness to depart.
'Hadrian,' I heard Antinous murmur, halting the emperor in his move away from the couch with a presumptuous tug at his sleeve.
Caesar froze at this lapse of protocol as Antinous searched into his eyes. He had used the emperor's name in a familiar manner, while the tug at the sleeve was not a subject's approved kiss of a cloak hem. As we all know, a Caesar may engage in familiarity without permission, but a citizen should not do the same at risk of a lethal response from the Guard.
Hadrian scanned the garden to flick his head in a subtle negative shake. It immediately made me wonder if he expected hidden guards to be monitoring the occasion from somewhere nearby. If so, they were not evident to
