Maddog & The Pope (Learning to fly on Broken Wings) - 1. Chapter 1 Niki

It was a wonderful autumn Sunday morning with the sun shining abundantly over the Westphalian city of Merligborn. Despite the relative early hour, at least for a Sunday, at 10AM, it was busy on the street that ran next to the railroad shunting yards, passing the station, leading towards the city center. It was full of traffic and a fair number of pedestrians walked on the sidewalks, all heading a bit hurried in the same direction.

It was as if they were drawn by a magnet towards the large cathedral, summoned and urged on by the loud ringing church bells signalling the High Mass. Because, no matter that it was the twenty-first century, the city of Merligborn was still a strictly religious city and a bulwark of the most conservative Catholicism imaginable.

 

There was one person, apparently not a part of the Lord’s flock, being the only one who walked in the opposite direction.

This was a young boy somewhere at the end of his teens of more than breathtaking, even Caravaggian beauty, who resembled the fairytale prince from Scheherazade’s tales of Thousand and One Nights, which had come to life. He stood about five feet eight inches and his not quite 130 pounds made it clear, he was a slim boy.

His muscles betrayed that he was no sportsman, but at least he seemed to know how a gym looked like on the inside. His almost carefully sculptured, delicate, but still manly face, showed a curious mix: his high cheekbones were Slavic, his lightly-tanned skin the paler shade of what might be Arabic, his nose a gracefully formed one that seemed kind of Asian and his mouth…Well, what can be said of a mouth, apart from the fact that his was very sensual? Its sensuality enlarged by the cute diastema between his pearl-white front teeth. The face was framed in somewhat chaotic, light bouncy and shiny black hair, contrary to present youth fashion without lower cut, but hanging over his ears and finishing just above his neck, with some strands at the front hanging carefully styled over his stern and angry eyes. His clothes were as can be expected of a youngster in this era: a hooded sweatshirt with a black t-shirt underneath and faded jeans with torn knees, white Nikes on his feet, that appeared to be a bit incongruous with the rest of his wardrobe, being slightly too expensive.

 

It was obvious he was not occupied with anything religious, but very interested in what was going on in the shunting yard. His eyes, a shade of dark brown, reminiscent of roasted coffee beans and framed by long eyelashes, peered intensely over the parked wagons, his face set in concentration.

Something seemed to anger him, because he hit his right fist forcefully in the palm of his left hand, growling:

“Goddamn, it’s gone!”

Yes, Niki felt incredibly frustrated. He had planned on walking along the shunting yard fence to observe the results of last night’s art job. He wanted to see on the railroad car by daylight, but the thing wasn’t there. With indignation in his eyes he shrugged because on the other hand he saw the positive side of it pretty fast:

“I would love to see it by daylight, but look at the bright side: the thing is rolling all over Germany, meaning that lots of people will see my art, when it passes them at railway crossings or when it stands at some station for a few minutes. That is better promotion than when it stands here in some yard!

It makes me alive in their eyes!”

The angry frown was replaced by a contented smile. He turned around and started walking back to his tiny, not very cozy, downtown apartment. Although it did have an underground garage to house his fancy racing monster. He wondered about what had made him end up, exiled, to this godforsaken town in the first place.

Nikita Mikhailovitsj, who was called Niki by everybody for the rest of his life, was born as a kind of accidentally, the offspring of a second generation Russian-German father and a French mother, with Algerian roots.

As his given name betrayed, his father was firmly rooted in the old Russian ways, despite the fact he was born and raised in Germany. And old cultural ways are one of those things that never seem to die! His sister Natasha was ten years older and his brother Dimitri, twelve.

Long before Niki was born, actually even before his older brother had been born, his father, a dominant and quirky man, had started a photo shop. He sold new and used cameras and the like, in a neighborhood of Hamburg. He had done quite well, expanding this one little store into a small empire of photo supply stores all over the northwest of Germany.

Consequently, Niki grew up in wealth, but this didn’t matter to him: as a toddler he only knew, his father was seldom home and when he was, he was tired or irritated, or both. And if the man was approachable, he seemed to be incapable of showing emotions towards his son, able only to translate his feelings in material gifts. Whatever little Niki wanted, he got, no matter the price tag! But a simple game of football with his father was out of the question.

His mother was a different story. From the first day Niki could remember, she had been cold, indifferent and stand-offish with him, as if she really didn’t care a damn about her youngest son.

As far as his brother and sister were concerned, they were both teenagers and more occupied with the opposite sex than with their little kid-brother.

 

Despite the fact he was too young to have the ability to define the word “loneliness” or comprehend its meaning, from an early age he was intimately acquainted with the feeling, more or less growing up in his own company, keeping himself amused. Instinctively he knew he was missing something important: he was lacking attention, security and warmth. He only felt fear sometimes, through being ignored, being shoved aside as if he wasn’t there, or when snapped at for no particular reason. One funny thing he noticed at the age of three or four, was when his older brother had a birthday, there was a party. It was the same with his sister. But…not for him, nobody mentioned his birthday and he never had a party. There was no cake with little candles on it, no decorations, no singing and no presents. Over the years this poignant feeling became a part of his life without him actually understanding what it was all about.

The overwhelming abundance of wealth compensated for it. Niki was spoiled to death with expensive toys, a top-notch stereo set at the age of ten and a large screen color tv in his room, which was decorated by an interior designer when he was eleven. His first high-capacity computer arrived when he was twelve.

He wasn’t disturbed by any of this. Abundancy was a part of his life. For him money was as common as water from the tap. He felt he was no different to other kids, whose world in their younger years is limited to the direct family and surroundings. He actually thought all these unlimited quantities of goodies were available to every other kid in the world as well. But as an individual he started to feel uncomfortable with it, asking himself what the purpose of all these gifts was.

 

His world started to change gradually when he entered secondary school. In itself that was a disappointment to his father, maybe even an affront, because unlike his brother, Niki seemed to be lacking the capabilities to enter a high level with direct access to university. Private schools were out of the question, because none of these wanted him, so Niki started at a lower level in a normal government-financed school.

 

Here he saw reality for the first time in his life: it became clear he was the only one with fancy brand clothing with price tags around two hundred euros for a sweatshirt or perfectly fitting jeans, while his classmates made do with sloppily-manufactured textile discounter clothes. His discovery made him feel awkward, he felt branded as a stranger in their midst and it ignited the seeds of adolescent rebellion in him. Rebellion against his own life as a spoiled kid, against his father’s dominant and crushing will and maybe the most adolescent of all, against society as a whole. A society that privileged a few kids and deprived so many of what was theirs by right!

 

At fourteen and fifteen Niki was no hermit. During the weekends he hung out with his pals, fooling around and chatting over innocent things, like smartphones, computer game favorites and -releases, how to cheat the system, preferred hang out places and the like. As soon as the subject turned to ‘girls’, Niki became sensibly quiet, because he had his friends and he wanted to keep them. He also had his secrets, especially since he fell in love with a classmate…and it was not a girl! Because the object of his adoration turned out to be perfectly straight and had whole hordes of girls lined up for him, nothing came of it. Niki simply regarded it as some foolish adolescent crush, forgetting all about it. When sports were discussed, he considered it a good idea to retreat and go to some other group or simply go home. Because Niki was no sportsman. He lacked the necessary all-consuming drive for winning, to always be the best. Oh yes, he wanted to be the best. Only problem was: he hadn’t discovered yet in which field or fields he wanted to be the top dog. He wanted to prove himself, but was at a loss with what. He was still looking for that one thing, that would determine his future. So, he limited his physical exercises to a twice-weekly visit to the gym, where he could do his work-outs without competition, only doing the things he liked at that moment without any rules, apart from his own rules.

Then one evening, when he was strolling back home from one of his hangout spots downtown, things started to fall in place. His future showed its first contours to him.

It was on a drizzly end-of-October evening, already late when darkness had descended over the city. A forceful and cold north-westerly wind blew from the sea, making him pull his hoodie tighter over his head. He walked from downtown to the plushy residential area, where his parents lived, an area he hated. He preferred downtown with its small streets and alleys, art, street music and liveliness. The whole area surrounding his parents’ home was dedicated to showing off status and wealth to such an extent it made it boring, even repulsive. Villa after villa with a swimming pool in the garden, drive after drive filled with Mercedeses, BMW 7s, here and there a lonely Ferrari and so every now and then a Porsche. He would have loved to move out of there, but knew his father never would let him, at least not when he could stop it, his youngest son still being a minor. He knew he had to put up with it until he was his own man at eighteen:

“If it happens then. Fat chance that dad still wants to keep his claws on me!”

In a way he should be content with things: it was fair to say he was spoiled. But it didn’t make him happy. By now he had reached an age, where he had the ability to understand all the animosity he found for what it really was: he was unwelcome and unwanted!

Should his mother have harbored any feelings for her youngest, then she must have been a real master in hiding them, because all Niki encountered was rejection. His father apparently considered him just as a future asset in the management team of his photo supply shop chain.

 

Niki had reached the age where he began to understand, what coldness and indifference were. And he had learned to define and truly understand the word ‘hate’ on an intellectual level! He no longer saw any reason to return love he didn’t receive in the first place. To the contrary: what he experienced as their hate ignited his own hate.

 

All this discontent with the situation at home made Niki develop into an ever increasingly wayward and rebellious boy. It made his father grab for every possible means to keep his son in check for his one ultimate goal which he had allocated his youngest son and which overruled everything else.

 

Niki felt himself trapped in a gilded cage, in a spider’s web of dense material abundance which at the same time showed enormous gaps in emotional security and warmth. He started to see what all the fancy goodies were: weak, insufficient compensation and bribery! This conclusion depressed and overwhelmed him.

 

His head filled with these dreary thoughts for the umpteenth time when he walked back to his golden prison after having a good time with his buddies. Then something unexpected happened.

From the corner of his eyes he noted movement in a narrow street on his left. Despite the darkness he perceived a man spraying paint on a wall with a spray can. That interested him! Because he thought he saw his first live street art painter…OK, other people would call it graffiti, but he saw it as art.

Living in a big city and regularly strolling around downtown he had seen hundreds, maybe even thousands of examples of graffiti and street artworks. He considered most of them as scribbling and amateurish. But here and there he had seen real pieces of art in the actual meaning of the word: well designed and balanced paintings of huge dimensions with bright and beautiful colors. It had to be a real thrill to see one of their makers at work, now he had that chance.

 

Stealthily he walked into the street and positioned himself behind the guy, who clearly had not noticed his being there, absorbed as he was in what he was doing. Niki hung with his back against the opposite wall and started to observe the painter’s actions with fascination. After a few minutes he felt a bit guilty because of his intrusion, so he asked kindly:

“Do you mind if I look on while you’re working?”

The guy turned around, looking shocked, as if he was afraid of being caught in the act. It was obvious he hadn’t noticed Niki’s approach. When he saw a kid of about fifteen, he visibly relaxed, and with a smile only visible by white teeth glittering in the darkness, he said:

“Not at all. If you’re interested”

“Yeah…I am”, Niki answered somewhat breathless and impressed, “Oh, by the way…I’m Niki.”

“Hi, Niki…I’m Raimund”, was the kind reaction.

Niki started to observe the painter as well. He liked what he saw. The guy was taller than he was, over six feet while Niki didn’t reach five foot eight. But he was also slim, like Niki himself was. He had long, somewhat curly hair that danced around with every fierce stroke he made with his spray cans. Niki admired the way Raimund seemed to have the ability to draw a firm curved line freehand without any aid. And he loved how the painting grew in a very short time with Raimund’s bold moves.

“How do you do that?” Niki wanted to know.

“Huh?” was the reaction, “Do what?”

“Drawing a curved line freehand?” Niki clarified his question.

“I don’t”, Raimund grinned, “I use templates. But they’re transparent so you don’t see them, not from where you’re standing. Come closer, I’ll show you”.

For Niki it was an invitation he couldn’t refuse: he was eager to learn more about this kind of painting and art. He got nearer and observed the way Raimund formed more and more of the large painting using plastic transparent templates until the guy said:

“Well, it’s done! I only have to sign it and I’m gone before the cops see me”.

“Cops?” Niki asked curious.

“Hey, kid…I’m not exactly doing this with the full approval of the Hamburg city council”, Raimund grinned.

“Oh! So…it’s kind of…illegal?” Niki asked thoughtfully.

“It’s no crime but at least it is an offense”, Raimund explained, “But…you really seem interested. You want to learn about this stuff?”

“Oh yes!” Niki cried out excited, “I would love that!”

“OK, I’ll be happy to teach you. But not here and now. It’s a bit too risky,” Raimund said still grinning, “Here’s my card. Give me a call and we’ll work something out to discuss it. I’m off, Niki, before someone sees me. See ya, kiddo!”

Raimund grabbed his gear, put it in some canvas bags, and with a cordial wave of his hand he walked out of the street. Niki followed him and took the direction home. After a while he stopped, took his smartphone out, switched on the light and looked at the card. It read:

“RAIMUND

Street Artist & City Beautifier”

Under it was a cell phone number.

“I must call him. I want to learn how to make street art. Hehe…especially if it is illegal. That would give my dad a fit, if he found out”.

This was his first independent step in the world and a discovery. He would learn street art and use it as a way of rebellion, a means of self-expression, a way out of the gilded cage and all that it represented!

 

Niki developed a very close friendship with Raimund, despite their almost ten years age difference. It turned out, Raimund had only graduated from the Art Academy recently although he was already twenty-five. It was this that made him an instant idol for Niki. But, as the older man explained, he had been searching for his goals in life for a long time since leaving high school. He had fooled around some time in music, then with photography, before he finally decided to study at the formal art educational institute.

Raimund began teaching his young admirer all he knew about abstract and street art. He taught him how he could express his ideas, feelings and thoughts in abstract forms by using the appropriate colors and shapes, he explained the letter types so typical of Street Art, the enormous and fat letters one could see on a multitude of walls; Raimund showed the kid how to make templates so he would be able to spray a wall fast in the middle of the night under the constant threat of being caught by the police charged with ‘damaging property’. That risk was not inconceivable, even in a city as large as Hamburg, because in the twenty-first century Germany thrived on the old adage “There must be order!”

 

Raimund talked about the background of his art form, how it could be used in protest and rebellion against the art establishment specifically and against the whole society in general. There were countries, where a sub-form of Street Art had developed, called “guerilla art”. That was an aspect that interested Niki enormously. He started to read all he could find on internet about the subject, once he was at home.

 

Niki went with Raimund during his nightly artistic forays through the streets of Hamburg. He helped him with spraying designs on fences, walls and railroad carriages. Over time he became confident enough to make his own designs, which seemed to please Raimund, who encouraged and supported him in crafting his own niche in the Hamburg Street art scene.

“But you will have to find a war name for yourself,” Raimund warned.

“Why’s that?” Niki asked, a surprised expression on his face.

“Nobody works under his own name, unless he or she wants a short notice visit by the cops,”,Raimund chuckled.

Niki had thought it over briefly, nodded slowly and asked:

“Which name do you use?”

“They know me as Fireball,” was the casual answer.

Niki stared pensively for a while before asking hesitantly:

“Is there a Maddog on the scene?”

Raimund shook his head:

“No, no one with that name. Not that I know of.”

“From now on there is one with that name,” Niki smiled, “It will be my war name!”

“Sounds real cool kid,” Raimund said with a broad grin, his clear blue eyes twinkling with pleasure. “Fuck, I taught you too much. Now I’ve got me a new stiff competitor.”

 

Niki started to spend whole evenings and nights making designs and templates, neglecting his homework for school. And he did pretty well: at the age of sixteen he was rapidly becoming some kind of shooting star on the Hamburg Street Art scene. He climbed with astonishing speed in the scene’s pecking order.

Nobody had a clue who the person behind the mysterious Maddog name was. He could hang at leisure on a street corner opposite his latest art work and study the reactions of those who stopped to look at it. Some were annoyed, but many, especially youngsters, seemed to admire it. Some took their phones to make pictures of it. It made him feel good. It made him feel like he was living in their eyes, only for a short glimpsed moment, but nevertheless a true and sincere one. And he wasn’t living there as a nuisance or a future company asset but as who he was, discovering himself. He lived in their eyes as an artist, the artist who made this work they admired. It made him feel good. It gave counterweight to all the suppression at home. But there was more young Niki learned from his older friend, things that eventually went beyond his expectations and imagination.

 

Apart from Niki’s talents as a gifted street artist Raimund also noticed his gorgeous young friend was a natural in another aspect as well. Over time he carefully coaxed Niki until he got him to act as model for something that progressively turned into male erotic photography. It wasn’t too hard to achieve. Niki started to consider his friend more and more as his guiding light. In his confused world he was on the verge of adoring the older artist, so much so he eagerly conceded to all his ideas and wishes. He was on the border of being in love with Raimund, or had he already crossed that border?

Raimund was not disappointed in his expectations: Niki performed brilliantly as an erotic twink model. He was far from camera-shy, moved gracefully and during the shoots his smoldering dark brown eyes gave proof that he enjoyed it enormously.

With more and more clothing vanishing from Niki’s eye-catching youthful body it was logical, even almost as per default, that it was Raimund who brought Niki into the spheres each young boy experiences as a pink haze, when he initiated the boy to the realm of physical love between two young men.

It was nothing fancy or caring: when Niki was already lying naked on the red satin sheet after a photo shoot, Raimund studied the boy on the bed intently with a kind of greed in his eyes and simply undressed. Niki saw his first dick, apart from his own, and when Raimund simply flipped him over on his belly and lay on top of him he felt his first dick as well…entering him! He tasted his first sperm for starters and felt his first wads of cum shooting in him during the replay. In the beginning it hurt like hell, but once the pain subsided it felt like heaven. For Niki it was compensation for much missed attention, but he failed to capture that for Raimund it was nothing more than getting rid of horniness and lust.

Once Raimund had cum the second time, he simply rose and with a funny kind of look in his eyes he grinned:

“You are so wonderfully tight. It looks like I found something else in which you seem to have a natural talent! It turns out you are a great cum dump as well!”

“A what?” Niki had asked, not understanding the word that Raimund had used.

The older man just shrugged, muttering something that sounded like:

“Not that important. Forget it!”

The experience was overwhelming for Niki, but it filled him with fear at the same time, because it confirmed more and more that he was developing into a….

“Don’t even think the word! Don’t think about it! Dad would have my hide for it!”

All this began to show Niki the way to the future. After their first lovemaking he understood why he never discussed the topic of girls with his friends. Now he knew where his true desires lay. And it was certain where his heart lay. On top of all this he saw where his future profession lay: it was in the world of art!

 

Over the following months Niki developed his artistic talents. The nickname ‘Maddog’ became a synonym for top quality street art. All his works were adorned by his unique, unmistakable signature: a small poster with the head of a snarling dog and the words ‘Living in your Eyes,’ signed with the alias ‘Maddog’ in the colors of the rainbow. Not only his peers liked what this great unknown was doing, more and more art lovers stood and studied his works, admiring them with growing respect. He laughed mentally when he saw people having a tantrum: that must have been the real estate owners on whose walls he had worked.

He always found it amusing that he was able to sit on a bench across the street from one of his works and observe the reactions of the people who had no idea the artist was a young boy sitting not twenty feet away from them.

On Raimund’s urging he studied the political background of street and guerilla art, becoming more and more intrigued by it. To find out more about he started reading Marx, Mao and Che Guevara. His father would have been abhorred if he knew his youngest son was in danger of rapidly growing into a left-wing radical.

As for his other talent, he stayed a very cooperative model for Raimund’s erotic photography and an extremely willing lover for all his mentor’s sexual appetites. So every now and then he was even subjected to a threesome with Raimund and a friend of his, enduring it all without objecting or complaining. He luxuriated in all the attention he got, something he had always missed at home. He was so absorbed in the love making, he completely missed the sound of the clicking camera shutter.

For his seventeenth birthday his father presented him with a camera. It was the kind of camera that would make even adult and experienced photographers envious, but they would need to think it over twice before acquiring the same model, unless they were willing to take a second mortgage on their home. The gift came with a complete set of lenses and accessories. Of course, Niki dutifully said “Thank you very much, dad,” but he knew it hadn’t cost his father a cent. The whole thing most likely came from the company stock where it had been written off as ‘lost’ or ‘stolen’ and was turned into a juicy tax deduction asset at the end of the year. In a way Niki admired his father’s shrewdness: not many people would have the idea to let the State pay for the bribes for their son. Real smart, indeed!

During that eighteenth year of life his private rebellion got a more personal touch when he launched a direct attack against his father, not with words in some argument, but with paint.

It all started when he was walking home after partying in the bars of the Hamburg-Altstadt, the old town and the gay scene party center in Hamburg. With his dazzling looks and youth he was very much admired with a lot of men, but he managed to dodge unwanted beds in a kind and polite way. He strolled at leisure through the silent streets, using the walk as a means of reconnoitering for a suitable surface for a new artwork. Any wall or fence would do.

He had never expected to find the surface he finally chose. Walking through a street with a lot of stores, he noticed one which had large illuminated windows. Funny not shuttered, despite the late hour. He looked in the windows, seeing lots of cameras and lenses. A smile came over his face. It was one of his father’s shops. And he knew why the windows weren’t secured with steel mesh shutters. His father had decided to use armored glass of a thickness that would necessitate the use of an anti-tank grenade to get through it. Every criminal with a shred of intelligence could understand that such a weapon would not only destroy the glass, but the valuable goodies behind it as well. So breaking in would be a wasted effort. But what his daddy had not imagined in his reasoning was an attack with paint.

He crossed the street and observed the store front, estimating dimensions and light effects, in this very special case both by day and night. The first images of a design started to pop up in his head.

“I know enough,” he muttered, deciding that exactly this surface would be the perfect canvas for his new piece of art. Smiling in anticipation and mentally juggling forms and themes for, he continued his way home, no longer looking for other surfaces.

The following days were filled with designing and making templates. He knew he had to work fast: in that street he didn’t have the luxury of unlimited undisturbed working time. He could get caught red handed pretty easy. Which limited the design because the templates and their use had to be effective. It made, that some designs ended in the waste paper basket, but finally he developed one he was satisfied with.

The next Friday he packed his templates and his paint in the bags with a scowl. Despite his grossly overdone monthly allowance he was broke for the rest of this month, because he had had to buy by expensive paints for this job. He had come up with a nice ‘special effect,’ but for that he needed translucent paints and these were a lot more expensive than the stuff he normally used. But the fact, he could finally sting directly at his father, made it all worthwhile.

He managed to put both designs on the windows in under thirty minutes without being seen. He had to work fast, damned fast. Every car that drove in the street could be a police car. And the last thing he needed was a police car, whose occupants would catch him in the act of painting the shop windows of his own father. That would end in disaster!

When he was ready, he crossed the street and studied the results. It was simply great! Both paintings were the same, providing a symmetry on each side of the store’s entrance. In the center of each was a somewhat abstract image showing his fancy camera and reflected in the lens a larger version of the snarling doghead he used as his signature. All the other colors around it were shaped in a way that they centered on the camera. The window’s inside illumination gave the art a luminous effect of its own, something no other street artist in the city had managed to do.

“Spasibo, papa- Thank you daddy,” he muttered with a wide grin of satisfaction, “For both canvases and the free illumination!”

He took his smartphone, shot some pictures of it and entered a message on his social media channels, giving the location of this new Maddog-project to his followers. Chuckling he added:

“But hurry, guys. The shop owner won’t like it!”

He grinned again, then hurriedly took his stuff and beat a hasty retreat. No use in staying any longer with the risk of being nailed.

 

No, his father didn’t like it. The next evening, he was still having a tantrum when he came home. Niki had to make every effort to suppress a smirk during dinner and excused himself from the table as soon as possible. Once in his room he broke in laughter.

“Well, daddy, now you can’t say I haven’t done anything for the company. Just brought you a lot of free advertising for selling your cameras. And the best part is: it was you, who paid for the paint.”

For the moment he put his old man’s violent reaction out of his mind and started dreaming about his next erotic date with Raimund, the next Saturday.

 

During this year of his life Niki developed rapidly into one of the top dogs in the Hamburg Street Art scene. The job on his father’s shop windows, in particular, with the luminated colors, brought him much recognition. But he was no longer happy with his local reputation.

He had investigated further and learned about the world’s leading street artists, people like Keith Haring, Banksy, Nick Walker and the Osgemeos brothers. Now life’s purpose became clear to him. He wanted to be the best street artist in the whole of Germany, or perhaps, Europe. Would he be happy with that? No, the ultimate step which struck his somewhat juvenile hot-brained head was the goal of becoming the best of the world. On top of that he wanted to use photography as a medium and with that he did not mean the selling of cameras and the like.

 

At the same time he broadened his sexual horizons with the help of Raimund.

One evening when he entered Raimund’s place he noticed a kind of tension. Once they were sat with their coffee and smoking a joint, Raimund opposite him at the other side of the coffee table, he noticed how the man was staring at him intently, scrutinizing him closely. A feeling of uneasiness crept into Niki’s mind.

“Why…why are you staring at me?” he asked a little worried.

The only answer was a hand stuck up, but Raimund’s eyes stayed fixated on him. After what appeared an eternity to Niki, Raimund spoke:

“I think it is time I discipline you! Undress!”

That was more to Niki’s liking. His smile immediately turned enticing, his brown eyes glowed like charcoal from sheer lust and he began to strip in the most seductive way he could think of, regularly licking his lips sensually while doing so. Once he was stark naked, doing his utmost best to show all the beauty his body had, he turned around and walked slowly to the bed. His hips swayed and his bottom presented an irresistible bait.

After a few steps in the direction of the bed he heard Raimund say sternly:

“Who told you to get on the bed?”

Shocked, Niki swivelled round. The glow in his eyes vanished and was replaced by utter amazement.

“I told you I wanted to discipline you. So come over here and stand next to my chair”.

Filled with incomprehension Niki did as he was told. Raimund rose, walked to the video camera that was on a tripod in the corner of the room and switched it on. Then he sat back in his chair and curtly ordered:

“Lay yourself over my lap, bottom up!”

“And then?” Niki asked flabbergasted.

“I told you…I’m going to discipline you!” came the harsh reply.

“What for?” Niki muttered uncertain.

A grin came over Raimund’s face when he answered:

“Because you are a little bitch! Now…over my lap!”

Niki knew he was about to experience something different, although he didn’t have a clue about how it might turn out. But it was enough to make him comply with what could be a new challenge and he lay down over Raimund’s lap.

Raimund didn’t lose any time in making it clear to Niki what this new erotic experience was about. The first slap with the flat of his hand landed on Niki’s bottom within seconds. It didn’t really hurt, but Niki winced nonetheless, more out of shock than from pain. The pain was a slightly hot burn of the skin at the place of impact. A second slap hurt a bit more, but it was nothing terrible, even pleasant.

With slap after slap following Niki became aware he was excited about the whole disciplining thing, which turned him on. By a funny twist in his imagination he saw that this could have been the punishment his father would dish out for his crime of ruining the shop windows. But his father would never do that. His father didn’t hit out at unimportant things, at thin air, which was what Niki was in the man’s eyes: nothing important, thin air!

Now Raimund did it for him, replacing his father in executing a rightful physical punishment. The added bonus was Raimund’s disciplining caused sexual arousal, something that would never happen if his father was doing this to him. Or was his arousal caused by the deep-felt emotion? Something Raimund noticed in him and wanted from him, something that would never happen with his father?

By now the arousal was becoming an issue, when he noticed how the tip of his dick scraped over the texture of Raimund’s jeans with each slap. It he had to make a lot of effort to avoid ejaculating. At the same time he started to fantasize about how it would feel if he was sliding inside Raimund instead of the other way around, like it always was.

“It must be beautiful to slide it inside a man,” he mused.

The thought prompted him to ask out loud, while he feigned a hurt he didn’t really feel:

“Why’s it me that gets spanked?”

“Because, baby, you’re such a perfect little bottom,” Raimund smirked.

Niki made no reply, because even though he felt a strong desire to experience what Raimund felt when he fucked him, he knew it wasn’t ever going to happen.

“I think that’ll do”, Raimund said with a satisfied grin, “So, baby, go get your ass on the bed, so I can reward you!”

Niki complied obediently, even eagerly. Lying down on his belly on the bed Raimund, by now naked as well, mounted him.

The moment the man penetrated him, the burning wish to feel for himself how it felt inside a man returned in his hazy thinking. But he lacked the courage to push it; it would be a bridge too far! Insisting on it could mean the end of what they had, so he just accepted it and resigned himself to being happy with being a bottom, for now. It was better than being on his own again, a prospect that really frightened him.

 

But he was no fool either. He knew damned well he had two big problems. Well, actually he had three, but the third one would rear its ugly head only later.

The minor one of these, although still huge in in itself, were his aspirations in the art world. His parents’ attitude towards artists was not exactly favorable, especially his father, who could be pretty ferocious in his judgements, proclaiming them very loud and clear. In their eyes artists were all idlers, who made irrelevant things; they were revelers who spent each night in some bar, only each only getting out of bed the following afternoon and most of all, they were squanderers of government subventions. His father might well be able to expand on this list of bad habits which all artists were guilty of, even beyond Niki’s wildest imagination, but the generalgist of it all was: artists were just an inferior kind ofpeople and art could most certainly not be considered a ‘decent job’. Since his father would block all his attempts to develop in that direction, he knew he had to do some real hard thinking about how he could achieve this goal on his own, without any help or supportfrom his father.

However, this problem was peanuts compared to the second: his ‘habit’ of falling in love with boys and men. No, it was not just a ‘bad habit’; it was the way his heart felt and to a lesser extent of how his dick reacted. But he had no illusions about his parents taking his feelings into consideration. His father, as a second generation Russian-German, was born in Germany, but was heavily influenced by his Russian parents and grandparents. They were deeply entrenched in Russian culture despite their emigration to Germany, especially where attitudes towards homosexuality were concerned. They would tell you that Russians had no problem with homosexuality in the first place, since the phenomenon didn’t exist in Russia. They simply ignored it! And if some gay guy in Russia became too demonstrative and open in his tendencies, then the poor sod might well end up in hospital in the ‘best’ case, or in the morgue if things really went sour. Funny enough, the police were never able to find those who had beaten up the unfortunate victim.

“Is that why they have been ignoring me for all these years? Because they sensed I was gay?”

He thought it over, but decided against it:

“No, they have always ignored me, from a young kid on. And I sure as hell wasn’t aware that I was gay at the age of eight!”

Niki did not fear a physical beating by his father. The attack would be more mental and emotional and it would be based on ignoring the problem, which in effect, meant ignoring him. It would be reinforced by strong lectures on the evils of homosexuality. And of course, he would lament the fact that his youngest son was so totally different from his first-born son; teetering on the verge of being unmanageable, of being a terrible son to his father, an ill-bred kid. In other words: he would turn his life into hell, even a larger hell than it had been since he was a child. He expected no help from his mother. Although she was only part Arabic, the opportunity to pummel her youngest son might bring her to revert to the old Arabic condemnations of homosexuality, even to the extent of quoting from the Koran, although she had never seen a mosque from the inside in the whole of her life. These thoughts made him gloomy and both problems pointed towards one solution: he had to break away from his parents, from his whole family, so that he could start his own life, doing what he wanted to do and loving who he wanted to love. That was the really sobering part of his reasoning, because he knew full well, that his parents wouldn’t allow him to do so. His father’s intentions were perfectly clear: he had to work for the company in a ‘decent job.’

All the gifts and the large monthly allowance which kept on coming, were meant to keep him in check and to assure his commitment, to maintain his ‘debt of loyalty'. He had been bought by bribes from his early childhood on. He was trapped by that ‘debt’, by the demands his parents made on him, and by his own personality.

It allowed them to trample on his dreams and aspirations until they would lay crushed in the dust of the earth. He knew he was trapped. Worst of all: he knew how it would end.

 

For his eighteenth birthday the most extravagant bribe was offered to him: a brand-new expensive cabriolet in a flashy custom-made color and white leather upholstery. Of course, he said another “thank you,” but he felt infallible in the knowledge as to what it was: the last installment in the series of bribes. He knew the time had come when he was expected to start delivering or he would have to decide on something else. But he couldn’t make up his mind. The courage to do something was failing him! He was afraid to cut all ties with his family.

While he stared at the shiny car the most fearful questions popped up in his mind:

“Did my father manage to keep me in check? Am I just a spoiled kid? Have I become dependent on his bribes? Am I addicted to wealth, gimmicks and expensive goodies? But I don’t want to be dependent on all that!”

Which was a natural reaction: what addict wants to be addicted to alcohol or drugs, sex or gambling, or as in Niki’s case, to wealth, certainly not once he has acknowledged the problem? The real task he faced, was not the fact, that he didn’t want it, but how to get free of his slavery.

The thought was devastating and it spoiled his whole birthday, the day when he became an adult. With tears in his eyes he stood motionless like a statue, eyes fixated on that damned racing monster in front of him.

And there was this other thing that puzzled him on his birthday: when he got his own passport a few days before, he simply couldn’t understand why he was born in Tblisi and not in Hamburg. But having learned not to ask, because nobody would answer him anyway, he just kept his question to himself and finally forgot all about it. But the question kept nagging him, adding to the overall feeling of being unhappy.

 

He kept his growing depression under control by stepping up his art activities. He needed the thrill of the nightly forays through the city and the kick of some new artwork that looked good. He accepted a reduction in quality to accomplish this and was away from home as much as possible. During the weekends he spent his nights with Raimund, either on a painting expedition or in bed together, shifting their erotic horizons even further. It took some inventive lying at home to account for his nights away, but the story that he had something going on with a cute girl went very well with his old man, who accepted his absences during the night with a grin. He only cautioned his son to keep his mother in the dark about it: she might get upset!

“Then that would be the first time she gets upset over something, that concerns me,” Niki thought grimly, but outwardly he reacted with a conspiratorial smile.

It escaped his attention that his increased activities made him more vulnerable. It was only a matter of time until luck turned against him and that happened one late evening as he was clambering over the fence of a railroad shunting yard in the pitch dark. He wanted to look around for a nice, clean railroad wagon to make some art on it. Over the months he had started to get tantalized by railroad wagons. It gave him a kick that these things were rolling all over Germany, maybe even all over Europe, so people all over the continent could admire his art while it passed by or when the vehicle stood parked on another shunting yard somewhere in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Görlitz, France, the Netherlands or Italy.

He found his target pretty fast. It was a huge thing but having done it before he had made his templates in such a way so as he would only cover the lower parts of the enormous surface. He unpacked his paints and started working. It was not easy in pitch darkness, but again his previous experiences helped him through.

He wasn’t even ready with spraying the first color on the steel when he thought he heard something. His uncomfortable feeling became frightfully true extremely fast, when he heard a voice call out:

“Stop! Police!”

Flashlights illuminated his body and face. Instinctively he dropped the spray can and started running. He knew he could run fast and it became obvious to him that his pursuers were either old or in a bad condition, because he could hear their snorting and panting. They sounded like two old draft horses at the end of a long working day. He ducked under bumpers, jumped over obstacles and sensed the distance increasing. Suddenly he heard someone swear. It was followed by the sound of a person falling and an cry of pain.

“That’ll shake them off,” he thought with a grin on his face.

The one thing that bothered him while running was he had abandoned his whole stock of brand-new paint cans. But he decided that was something to worry about later. He was almost at the fence; he knew he had made a clean getaway!

Until he got a nasty surprise: he was caught in the blinding light of a searchlight and heard a metallic voice call out over a bullhorn:

“Stop! Police. Stay there or I will unleash the dog!”

Standing still in the searchlight’s beam he covered his eyes with his hands against the intense light. He heard the barking of what sounded like a large dog.

Something confirmed when the flashlight illuminated a large, ferocious looking German shepherd, its sharp teeth bared in the light.

No, Niki was no fool: he knew he could run fast, but he also knew that the dog would run faster and, once it was in reach of him, would thrust its teeth in his arm or leg. That was a price he thought to be too high! Because, no matter that he could be foolhardy, no matter that his father considered him obnoxious, stubborn and unmanageable, he knew when to turn wise. And this was such a moment! It was time to cut his losses and give up. With a deep sigh of disappointment he capitulated.

 

In a very short span of time Niki found himself in some non-descript station of the Federal Police, the division that guarded railroad areas. He sat on a creaking chair between drab walls, surrounded by office furniture that was even more drab than the walls.

He just sat there, not saying a word. He amused himself with watching a policeman typing a report on his arrest using two fingers, making it a multi-hour job. When he was brought in, they took his personal details, studied his passport and told him to sit down and wait.

The grin on Niki’s face showed he found the whole situation hilarious. There he was, a kid of barely eighteen, and it took four police officers and a police dog to bring him in. And now there were two of them detailed to do the paperwork, in an exemplary thorough German way. He just found it a waste of time and money, all for that bit of paint on a railroad car. In his opinion it was totally ridiculous.

But his mood shifted from barely veiled amusement to panic when the door opened. The grin vanished from his face, his eyes grew large, his face turned a whiter shade of pale and his heart thumped in his chest, not from excitement but from raw fear. In walked his father, accompanied by Dmitri, his elder brother. His father’s facial expression left no room for doubt as far as his mood was concerned. He was most definitely not amused!

 

No, it became manifest his father was not amused during the following one sided and loud father-son ‘talk’ in the family living room.

Since Niki knew his father had found out who painted his shop windows, he felt really fearful for the most terrible chewing out he was about to receive. But he admitted his fear only to himself. He did his utmost best to control it, so he wouldn’t show it, which would undoubtedly been seen as a sign of weakness. With great difficulty he managed to behave totally indifferent.

For reasons Niki didn’t understand his older brother was there as well. He didn’t like the guy, who was always on hand of his father, but he had no quarrel with him. It eluded him as to what grievance his brother might have against him. His mother… she was not there. She was never involved as far as her youngest offspring was concerned, out of pure disinterest. She probably saw no need to be present.

 

“What the fuck do you actually think you are doing with your life?” his father started his tongue lashing in a roaring way.

Niki gave no reply; he just shrugged.

“Ah, yes…,” his father continued, “The big Mr. Indifference… the boy who doesn’t care shit that other people have to work hard, who has no idea of the problems others face, simply because he doesn’t want to see it! Goddamn, you’ve always been so indifferent!”

Niki let it roll over him, his head bowed. He knew it was no use saying anything. Every word would be turned against him.

“Do you like to make life harder for others?” his father continued, “I’m pretty damned sure you do, especially now I know who this idiot Maddog is, who ruined my shop windows. Do you know what this joke of yours has cost me to repair the damage?”

Niki shrugged, another time: how could he know?

“Forty thousand euros, mr. wise guy…I’m thinking very seriously about curtailing your allowance to pay for that. It would leave you broke for a long time, but might get the lesson into your stubborn head that way!”

Niki looked up and without thinking he said spontaneously in his headstrong way:

“Why not? You can always deduct it from your taxes!”

“Shut up, you damned brat!” his father screamed, almost losing control of his temper. There was a short pause in the noise production, his father visibly fighting to regain his composure or in any case regain control. But the lull was only temporary:

“I don’t know what I did to you that made you pull this dreadful joke. I really don’t get it. I’ve given you everything you wanted ever since you were a small boy. And what do I get as thanks: forty thousand in damages! What did I do to deserve this?”

“Apart from crushing my personality, ignoring my being alive other than as a company asset, determining my future against my own wishes with bribes, disapproving everything I dream of for the future… apart from that… no, not that much,” Niki thought. But he said nothing! Knowing his father wouldn’t understand a word of it, he understood it was useless to express his thoughts.

His father lowered his volume, but certainly not the dose of venom in his voice when he said:

“You were always a stubborn, difficult, unruly kid! You always wanted things to go your way with total disregard about how it might affect other people! It was always Little Prince Niki first! I had hopes it would change once you grew up…yes, it actually changed: it became even worse! I really don’t know what to do with you!”

Niki yawned involuntarily, being totally fed up with it all.

“Oh!” his father cried out, “The Little Prince is sleepy. I guess that can be expected if you spend every night painting other people’s houses and railroad cars”.

After a discreet cough Dmitri entered the ‘discussion’ unexpectedly, a sardonic smile aimed at his kid brother:

“I think, I might have a solution!”

The interruption seemed to annoy his father, because it was cutting through his line of thought.

“What is that?” he growled.

“Well,” Dmitri replied, still this awful smile on his face, “we happen to have a subsidiary in the town of Merligborn, about three hundred kilometers southwest of here, in Eastern Westphalia.”

“And?” his father asked, rather disagreeably.

“I hope you do remember I’m in charge of Personnel in the company,” Dmitri said, with a by now amiable smile, directed at his father, “coincidentally we are looking for a trainee in this subsidiary. And I know the branch manager, he knows how to handle… how can I say it? … to handle difficult kids. He has done it before with excellent results, producing people who are still working for us to great satisfaction.”

His father clearly didn’t get the meaning, so Dmitri explained:

“It would get Niki out of Hamburg, which seems to have a bad, almost pernicious influence on him. And it would give him the opportunity to learn a decent trade and at the same time start doing something useful for the company.”

The suggestion shocked Niki immediately out of his feigned indifference.

“Does this bastard really mean what he is saying?”

But again, for reasons he didn’t understand himself, his lips remained sealed.

His father seemed to consider the idea, because for a while he kept silent. Then he smiled unpleasantly and said:

“Yes… we’ll do it that way. Niki, you’re becoming the new trainee in Merligborn. You’ll have trainee wages and half your allowance. I will keep the other half as payment for the damage you caused.”

Niki blinked his eyes, his mind racing:

“Wages and half the allowance…? Oh well, in that way I won’t die of hunger. I’m better off than any other eighteen years old kid, I guess. So, I better take it before the old man changes his mind and I’ll just have to try to make the best out of it!”

“And now, get out of my sight!” his father growled, “I don’t want to see you for the rest of the evening, or tomorrow!”

“That’s the first smart thing he’s said,” Niki mused.

He rose and without saying a word exited the living room and went to his bedroom, heaving a deep sigh of relief. He let himself fall on the bed, tears welling under the surface:

“He has banished me to some goddamn provincal town, like in the old days when enemies of the Czar or the Party were banned to count trees in Siberia or search for gold along the Kolyma. Damned, he cuts me off from Hamburg, he cuts me off from the street art scene… and… he destroys what I have with Raimund. He amputates all I care for and love!”

Despite the fact that he vaguely realized this last amputation, the most traumatic one, was accidental, his father knowing nothing about it, it was enough to make the tears flow. In his understandable sorrow he overlooked one extremely important aspect of the whole banning order, Dmitri’s idea was plain bullshit, but it prompted his father to make a capital error unwillingly without all three of them initially realizing it. He had given his wayward and unruly youngest son the largest gift of his life, he gave him the beginning of his freedom!