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Becoming a Philosopher 27
Jan Marais and Joel Sher, the main characters from A Karoo Christmas Discovery are now at university in Cape Town and are part of this story. Franco Rossi has returned to Verona and is deciding about his future. Sven Karlsson is Karlstad teaching at the local university.
Tom speaks...
The seminar brought together the readings we were doing on happiness. The professor started with a contemporary discussion on the World Happiness Report. Finland was identified as the happiest country in the world followed by Denmark and Iceland. Just why Finns are happier than others come down to several factors including lower income inequality (most importantly, the difference between the highest paid and the lowest paid), high social support, freedom to make decisions, and low levels of corruption.
We discussed the classic definition of happiness from Aristotle, who suggested that happiness is the most important human desire, and all other human desires exist to obtain happiness. He believed that there were four levels of happiness: happiness from immediate gratification, from comparison and achievement, from making positive contributions, and from achieving fulfillment. Aristotle suggested that happiness could be achieved through the golden mean, which involved finding a balance between deficiency and excess.
When ordinary people talk about happiness, they are normally talking about how they feel in the present moment or how they feel generally about life overall.
Happiness is something that we all search for, but what defines happiness varies from one person to the next. Happiness is typically an emotional state characterised by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment - it is often described as involving positive emotions and life satisfaction.
That afternoon the group working on the new LGBTQI+ handbook met. Joel had read a great story on Nifty which he wanted to include in the handbook. He said that identified so much with it, and I was sure others would too. He suggested that we include as many stories as possible:
"Living with a Willy
I wish I had a copy of the book `Living with a Willy' when I was growing up in the 1970s. The book gives boys advice on adolescence, hormones, sex, and sexuality. The cover has a cartoon of a boy looking into his pants and his erection and has animated stars and rockets coming out of boxer shorts. We had no internet in the 1970s and very restrictive media laws in Calvinistic apartheid South Africa. Now and again porn magazines would surface for schoolboys to delight in.
I remember experiencing erections before I was ten and being aroused by boys' bodies. But I didn't understand what was going on, I had a lot of girlfriends but no one girlfriend. When I was ten my cousin who was three years older than me was sitting next to me on my bed. We both had our pants off and had erections. He had developed some pubic hair already, but I was hairless. Mickey was a head taller than me, he had a muscular body and was well-toned.
My arms and legs were thinner and as smooth as young girls, the opposite of Mickey who had clearly begun puberty maturation. Short brown stubbles of hair were now visible on his calves. His arm hairs were beginning to change colour and his armpits were already filled with hair. The difference in our bodies was noticeable, but this would change in time.
Mickey asked me if I knew how to jerk off, and I didn't know what he was talking about. So, he took hold of my dick and slowly started to jerk me off. I took hold of his uncut dick and did the same to him. I felt very good. As I continued to jerk him off his body started to shudder, and he said he was coming. A couple of blobs of what he called cum shot onto his stomach. He reached down scooped it up and ate it. Next thing my body was shuddering, and I had an incredibly intense feeling in my dick. I didn't produce any sperm but experienced my first orgasm.
Mickey explained that that was called `pulling wire' and that he did it all the time to get the feeling. It was the start of an incredible journey for me.
We changed into our swimming costumes and went swimming in the pool. I still could not get over the feeling I had earlier and wanted to do it again. After spending the afternoon in the swimming pool, we went back to my room to change. We dried off and left the towels on the floor, and Mickey was sitting naked on my bed. He asked me to stand in front of him, which I did. He grabbed hold of my arse and brought me close to him where he took my erect little dick into his mouth. He moved his mouth up and down and kept sucking while squeezing each arse cheek. He had taken my entire dick into his mouth, and I got that intense feeling again. My dick became sensitive, and I had to take it out of Mickey's mouth. I then sat on the bed and sucked Mickey who was now standing in from of me. I enjoyed getting my tongue under his chlorine-smelling foreskin and sucking him until he came into my mouth.
I had learned how to masturbate and how to give blow jobs in one day. Mickey aroused desires in me that I would need to satisfy. He went home that evening, and I couldn't wait to see him again.
That night I switched off my bedside lamp and pulled down my pyjama pants. I ran my hands over my skinny chest and was taken back to the wonderful experience I had in the afternoon. I gently wanked my dick and felt my balls tighten and then shudder. A journey of pleasure had started."
We never agreed to include this story, most of us felt that this was too erotic for the handbook and that we had to be more discreet. Joel was a good debater and stood his ground. He finally capitulated and we opted to use more humour instead in the handbook. I enjoyed having Joel and Jan in the working group as they were both fresh out of school and had grappled with the issues more recently.
Joel speaks...
I was glad that Tom had taken the lead on the handbook, as no one else seemed to want to take responsibility. I liked working with him, he understood people and knew how to relate. I knew I was pushy at times, but I respected his point of view. The handbook was coming together nicely and both Jan and I were glad to contribute. We laughed a lot about this handbook and wondered whether anyone would ever translate it into Afrikaans. Jan said: "Dit sal skandalig wees" (It would be scandalous).
Tom invited us for supper at Mario's later that evening, and he called Martin and asked him to join us there. We loved Mario's. We weren't used to Italian food, as both Jan and I grew up in rural areas. I travelled to Italy with my parents when I was in high school and told Jan a lot about Rome, my favourite city. My family had eaten in many places there, but I felt that Mario's was special. We talked about Tom's seminar on happiness and Martin said that it sounded much more interesting than his structures workshop. After a bottle of the house wine, we spoke about happiness in our own lives. Jan was very amorous and was all over me, and I had to keep him in check. Tom and Martin were more discreet and not as touchy. I'm not complaining. I always found it amusing that this huge Afrikaner boy, with his brown-blond hair and blue eyes, would have his hands all over this smaller Jewish guy from Wepener.
We didn't accept the invitation to spend the night at Tom and Martin's place with it being a school night. In the end, we had drunk three bottles of wine, and I knew that I would not be doing any studying. Jan had a test the following day and would have to get up early to go over the material. We hadn't been home since early morning, and we spent a couple of minutes tidying our room. We stripped down and threw our clothes into the laundry basket and took a shower together.
Both Jan and I were hard. Jan squeezed the shower gel over my back and his huge gentle hands caressed me all over. He washed my hair and kissed me at the same time. I washed his chest and made sure I cleaned between his balls and legs. I enjoyed cleaning his arse hole. I went down on my knees and sucked his upright dick until he pushed me off. I faced the wall and had my hands against the wall and he slid his dick between my legs and moved his hips. I tightened my thighs to grip his dick more tightly. Jan had his arms around my chest when he groaned, and I felt his dick throb as he shot. He slipped his hand beneath my arse and washed away the cum. It was a very intimate moment as I stood with Jan behind me under the warm jet of water with him kissing my neck. I told Jan that this was happiness for me.
Jan turned me around and kissed me deeply. He used his one hand to wank me, and I shot cum onto his groin area. I massaged his chest, and he used his hands to wash away my cum. We continued to wash each other and only left the shower when the water started to get cold.
Tom speaks...
Martin and I lay reflecting on the day. I told him about Joel and Jan in our working group, and how much I was enjoying it. We also spoke about happiness, and I asked Martin what made him happy.
"The answer is simple," he said. "I love spooning with you. Having your body close to me, your skin touching mine, and feeling the gentle movement as you breathe. And you?"
"I enjoy watching you. I love sitting next to you in the car watching you drive and listening to you talk. I have a deep feeling of contentment.
Martin rolled over and had his one leg and arm over me. He kissed me deeply while he played with my dick. He slowly wanked me and I asked him if could suck him off. I slipped down and got his dick into my mouth and gently wanked him at the same time. I loved playing with his foreskin and getting my tongue into his piss slit. He was oozing cum, and I felt his balls retract as he released his load in my mouth.
Martin was up early going through his notes. I got up a little later and made him a cup of coffee. I stood behind him leaned down and kissed him on his head. I massaged his shoulders, and my dick tenting in my track pants, but this was not the time for fun. I grabbed a clean towel and made my way to the shower where I stood under the hot jet. I washed my arse, getting my fingers in, and wanked. I moved my dick away from the jet of water and wanked more vigorously thinking of my dick in Martin's mouth. I thought about happiness and how happy I was to have a friend like Martin who loved me and gave me the space to be myself.
Sven called from Sweden later that day. He enjoyed being a tutor in the gender studies department. He was saving a lot of money, and he would bring Nicolas back to Cape Town to meet us. I told him about Eckhardt and the others in our working group, and Sven asked me to send a draft for him to look at. He was excited to tell me that he and Nicolas were now in a relationship and that he couldn't get enough of his redhead. Sven knew that Nicolas was younger than him, but Nic was mature and had endured tough times. I often recall the time when we pulled him out of Lake Vänern. He was naked and his pale body was ice cold, and we warmed him up and took him back shore.