Boy Caesar by Jeremy Reed Read Free Book Online Page B

moment to be part of the same footage. He needed to be alone in the night and decided to walk it back to his studio flat in Paddington Street and use the exercise as a means of offsetting the effects of shock.
    He knew without doubt that he had to break with Danny. Even the panic triggered by the prospect of being alone again seemed preferable to the option of continuing a relationship under these circumstances. He flexed his mind to take in the idea of loss and the inevitable carve-up to his nerves that would come from the split. Already he could sense the damage like broken piano-strings in the pit of his stomach. He wondered how many times he could stand up to being radically deconstructed by partners. He walked briskly, fooling himself as he went along that he was aimed for a new purposeful future. He had his doctoral work as pivotal support for the ruptured days ahead, and he might, he promised himself, take a short break in Rome and sniff out some vestiges of his enigmaticsubject’s posthumous legacy. For some reason he found himself linking Heliogabalus with Passolini as he walked into the night. He reminded himself that both had been murdered in public toilets and that both had survived as metaphors for a distinct archetype in the gay world.
    He kept up with his thoughts, and instinct guided him in the direction of home. It was starting to rain again, bittily, but without persistence. He hurried on, taking in nothing and seeing nobody, elated by the night air and in his mind determined to be free.

3
    Rome was everything Heliogabalus had anticipated it would be. After the long haul through violently changing seasons and countries he was welcomed at the capital by shocked crowds who threw flowers. He had arrived, flexing the muscle on the way of six white horses which conveying the image of his god and was given an ecstatic reception. He had dismounted to pick up a rose coloured a particularly deep burgundy and had held it out to a youth who had caught his eye by reason of his perfect looks. The boy’s archly camp expression and dyed hair had him assume he was rent or else the adopted heir to an older benefactor. He was determined to find out more and mentally put the youth’s image on file.
    With his minders looking on apprehensively, he had repeated the gesture, again stopping to present a flower to a boy made up like a butch cabaret artist. He could sense the suspicion on the part of the spectators who observed the incident. They were clearly passing judgement on his sexual preferences and categorizing him as a fag.
    The sun was starting to break through a low-cloud ceiling, spotlighting him in his moment of triumph. His only thought was for his mother and that she should be appointed his principal adviser. It was she who had guided him all along and prepared him stage by stage for the role of emperor. All the preliminaries of his education in rhetoric, the part he had played in the Emesan priesthood, the tangy introduction to hedonism that she had encouraged, her choice of tutor, all of it had formed the baseline to her plan to see him rule over the Roman Empire. The whole thing seemed unreal as the city crowded in on him with its mad celebrations. He could feel the sun on his face, and he thrilled at the prospect of coralling pretty boys from all over the city. It occurred to him that, of course, he would be forced to go through the pretence of marriage, but he knew as he stood there picking out faces in the crowd that a woman could never offer him the intense emotional high that came of asame-sex union. He knew this from his chemistry and from the encouragement given him by his mother, who had pointed him towards liaisons with his own sex.
    Already in his mind, as he confronted the excitement of the crowd, he had decided to build a high-rise temple to his god on the south-eastern edge of the city, in what were the lowlife suburbs. The building would face the rising sun and attract solar energies to its