When he woke in the morning, Matthew stretched luxuriously, safe in the warmth of his bed. He turned on his side and put his fists between his knees, staring at the blow-torch edge morning sunlight traced down the centre of his curtains.

And then the events of the previous night crashed down upon him with all the terror of a plate glass ceiling.

He groaned.

How could he ever face Lukas again after what had happened? Lukas had been naked. Matthew had had his hands all over his gear. He had come in his pants. Lukas had come on him!

He covered his face with his arms and clutched the back of his head.

By ten-thirty he was at Ace Hardware looking at padlocks, where he decided to buy not one, but three padlocks, each a little larger than the one Lukas had used.

On the way home he stopped at the bakery to buy his mother a croissant, the payoff for her lending him the Passat. There was a near miss in the parking lot. A car behind him was backing at the same time as Matthew and Matthew didn’t see it. It was only because the driver blew his horn that Matthew managed to stop.

The driver came out and spoke to him, a man with a bald head, who was driving a Bentley. He told Matthew to look out where he was going and to slow down.

‘Particularly in reverse. What have you got there, a variomatic?’

Matthew supposed, from the way that he said it, that this was some sort of joke. He didn’t suppose the Passat was a variomatic, whatever that was. It sounded old.

Matthew didn’t argue. He wasn’t the sort of person who got into arguments with strangers, and he was swallowing anyway, his heart racing.

What would his mother have said if he had backed her car into a Bentley? Worse still, what would his father have said?

Matthew drove deliberately all the way home, obeying the stop signs so that he actually made the car stop before going on again, one of his father’s pet peeves. His hands kept trembling. A thing which he didn’t seem able to stop.

When he turned into the drive, he left the car out, afraid to put it into the garage where the opening to both bays was narrow and lined with bricks.

‘Are you back? That was quick,’ his mother said, emerging from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel.

Already, Matthew noticed, her makeup was smudged.

‘Are you going to have a cup of coffee with me?’

‘If you like,’ Matthew said.

‘I’ve cleaned the coffee maker.’

Matthew handed her the croissant and sat down at the table in the family room, putting the bag with the padlocks in it on the chair beside the phone.

‘What have you got there?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, it must be something,’ his mother said.

‘Just some hardware stuff, some padlocks and shit.’

‘Don’t swear, Matthew.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Do you want some of this?’ she said, coming to sit down opposite him at the table, and offering him some of the croissant, which she had buttered with bread and jam.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Why didn’t you get yourself something?’

‘I’m really not hungry.’

‘You shouldn’t start off on an empty stomach.’

‘I had some cereal before, when I got up.’

They picked up their mugs at the same time, both taking a sip of coffee.

‘I thought you were you going into town today.’

‘I slept through my alarm,’ Matthew said, remembering how he had agreed to meet Greg and Vince on the north bank at eight. They were supposed to be looking at the conservatorium together. He supposed he would have to ring them and apologise.

‘So what was the big drama with Lukas last night?’

‘I don’t know. He needed my help with something.’

‘Was he upset?’

Matthew shrugged.

‘He’s a very sensitive boy, you know?’

‘I know, Mum.’

She took a bite of her croissant and studied him as she chewed.

Matthew looked away, looking out through the sliding doors where the garden was flooded with sunlight. There was an orange tree laden with fruit, and a blue bird was bathing itself in the birdbath.

His mother sipped her coffee.

‘I didn’t think you were seeing him anymore,’ she said, putting her coffee cup down.

‘I wasn’t. He rang me the other day. We went to the movies.’

‘Are you going to be seeing him again?’

‘I don’t know, Mum. Maybe. Probably. What am I supposed to do if he asks me out?’

‘Tell him you don’t want to see him.’

‘I thought you liked him.’

‘Well of course I like him, Matthew. The question is, do you like him? If you don’t, well then I don’t see why there’s any need for you to be seeing him. I don’t really think he’s your type of boy.’

Matthew said nothing. He stared at his coffee cup in silence. In the garden a lone bird was whistling.

His mother started again.

‘After that business with the statue, Matthew, you can’t really expect your father and I to–’

He knew all at once what she was talking about.

‘He’s going to England next year,’ he said, getting up from the table. He didn’t want to hear about the statue, about how his parents had thought it was…known it was…

Matthew went upstairs and locked his bedroom door. He phoned Greg and Vince, and then he tried Christian again, but got no answer.

He lay on his bed for a while, and then got up again.

The bag with the padlocks in it was on the floor. He picked it up and put it on his desk. He took his T-shirt off, sat on the bed again and took his runners off, his socks off, stood up and pulled his jeans off, his shorts.

He tore open the packaging on the smallest of the padlocks but found it impossible to fit it around his scrotum. He opened the next largest, tried that, even forced it, sitting on his bed, but finally found that he could only just manage to click the largest of the padlocks into place around his scrotum. It locked and he stood up. It felt uncomfortable, the weight of it pulling his testicles down. He looked at it in the mirror, pulling it to one side and looking at what a large padlock it was. He had had to use one a lot larger than Lukas had. He hadn’t thought he was that much bigger than Lukas, though he now supposed he must be, his balls being like plums to Lukas’ grapes.

He had man’s gear, he said to himself, a man’s dick and a man’s balls, though he didn’t suppose he was a man yet.

He looked seventeen.

Though a few weeks back, at the mall, a woman had said to her little boy, ‘Look out for the man’ as Matthew had passed them. That she had been talking about him had been a jolt. He had supposed her to have meant someone else, but there was no one else there. He had wanted to tell her her mistake, but had then remembered that he was eighteen now, and had thought, well, I suppose I am a man, though he didn’t like the idea. He had always been a boy.

Putting a padlock around your scrotum was a very difficult thing to do, he discovered. And he wondered why Lukas had done it. Matthew had pinched his skin in the steel groove a number of times before he had managed to lock the padlock into place.

He let the padlock go and stood up straight, looking at himself in the mirror. He was aware of the contrast between himself and Lukas. Matthew wasn’t a hairy person. He didn’t have any hair on his chest or on his stomach or his arms, or only very fine hair. There were some darker hairs on his legs below his knees. But he did have pubes. And he had hairs under his arms.

What eighteen year old didn’t?

Lukas.

He lifted his arm up and looked at his underarm hair in the mirror.

He wondered what it would feel like to be like Lukas, with no hair under his arms, and no pubes – with no hair on his body at all, except for on his head.

He looked at his cock again, and saw how large it was in comparison to Lukas’. It was flopping onto his thighs. He decided to measure it, a thing he had never done, though he had heard guys talk about it, and had heard dick lengths mentioned on T.V. and so on, though he had never understood, until recently, when he had been watching something late at night, that they meant the length of guys’ dicks when they were hard.

Before then, he had never really understand how you measure a dick when its length was always changing, and he had thought that the measurements referred to the length of guy’s dicks when they were soft, which meant that he wasn’t very big, he had thought.

There was a ruler in his desk draw, one that had metric measurements on one side, and imperial on the other.

Matthew had no trouble getting an erection. He was always getting one. Even the idea of himself being caught naked somewhere could give him an erection, even someone looking at his groin, but now, as he tried to think of something that would make him hard, he found himself thinking of Lukas last night, and how it had felt when he had forced Lukas’ testicle through the padlock with his thumbs. What would it feel like if he had burst it?

His cock jumped up. Matthew wrapped his hand around it, and then he remembered that he was supposed to be measuring it. He picked the ruler up and laid it along the length of his cock, feeling the hard, cold steel against his skin. He pressed it down. It was seven and a half inches. How could that be right? He had heard guys talk about six inch cocks being big. Seven and a half had to be big, if that was right.

He looked at the metric measurements. Nineteen centimetres.

He checked the inches again and supposed it had to be right. I mean, it looks big, he said to himself, doesn’t it?

It did.

He inhaled, expanding his chest, and wiped his hand over his chest and stomach as though he was dusting it.

He wondered what it would be if he measured it around, though he knew that he couldn’t fit it into a toilet roll when it was hard, something which he’d heard a guy at school say was more important than length. He pressed the ruler around it, wishing he had a tape measure. It measured five inches. A circumference of five inches. How could that be right?

Matthew stood back and looked at himself again, suddenly seeing himself in a way he never had. He didn’t look like anything special, he supposed. Was he even attractive? he wondered. His hair was brown, or chestnut, as his mother said. And his eyes were brown - hazel. He didn’t suppose there was anything really remarkable about him. He just looked normal.

If he was like Lukas, people would have turned and looked at him, or like Christian. Matthew frowned at himself.

What would girls think of him?

He pulled his shorts and his jeans on, leaving the padlock where it was. The jeans were tight, and it was uncomfortable, but he supposed he could leave it on for a while, and then maybe, later, he could try to get it off without using the key, though he didn’t really think he’d be able to do that.

He hated the feeling already.

What if he, like Lukas, turned around and gave the keys to someone else? What would it be like to watch Lukas throw them over the side of boat? What would it be like to have someone keep the key, and have it in their pocket, while they forced his testicles out of the padlock?

He frowned.

He lifted his arm again and looked at his underarm hair. And then he went into the bathroom where there was a pair of clippers in the draw. He pulled his jeans and his boxers off again and got into the shower. He started on his underarm hair and then he moved to his pubes, shaving all of those hairs off as well. He stepped out of the shower and got his razor and his shaving foam from the vanity before stepping back in. He spread the shaving foam over his underarms and onto his groin, and then he used his razor to shave the skin smooth. He turned off the shower, and dried himself, and walked back into his bedroom to look at what he’d done in the mirror.

He looked naked now, like Lukas had, properly naked, like a boy. He swallowed and looked at his groin, wondering if he should have done that.

He turned around and looked at his arse. It looked like the statue’s arse, a bit, he supposed, but not really. It couldn't be...that guy was perfect. And it couldn’t really be… He didn't want to think about it, and anyway, the guy had no cock or balls. Matthew covered his genitals with his hands and pushed them to one side, wondering what it would be like. He couldn’t really see. He squatted down on the ground and pushed his cock between his legs, and then he stood up again, keeping his thighs locked together and trying to stand as straight as he could.

That was what it would be like, he decided, though at the same time he was reminded of Lukas on the garage floor, when he was sitting on his heels after Matthew had pulled him off the vice.

What would it be like if he had really cut Lukas’ sack off? or crushed his balls in the vice? What would it be like if he had cut his dick and his sack off with the saw? If he had made it seem like an accident?

Matthew felt himself starting to get hard again, and he released his thighs, letting his dick pop up.

You couldn’t really do that to a person.

He coughed, and walked back into the bathroom to get his shorts and his jeans, wondering if Christian wouldn’t want to try going to a nightclub sometime. Nathan and Tom had been going to clubs, they said, and had invited him, though he didn’t really like Nathan and Tom. Though some of the other guys, Brad and Joel and Drew, would probably go out to a club with him.

They could even go this weekend. He would maybe meet a girl. He could go back to her place, or, if she had nowhere to go, he could even bring her here. Sneak her into the house.

But he had just shaved his pubes off! What would a girl think of that?

He frowned, and pulled his jeans on, unhappy with himself.

Sitting down at the desk, he looked for a song he had heard on the radio, scratching his underarms. It was by a band called Portishead. He couldn’t find the song at first. Then he found the album. It was called Third.

He downloaded it, and then lay down on his bed, listening to it, and thinking, after the third song, that it was the best music he had ever heard. He was wondering why all music couldn’t be this good. And wondering why it wasn’t possible that half the artistry involved couldn’t be put into all the cars and the buildings and the television and movies and books and clothes in the world, so that everything wasn’t so ugly and pointless and stupid, when he fell asleep.

He woke because he was in pain.

He had dreamed that he was fucking Lukas, and had come in his sleep. Lukas had been lying beside him, and Matthew had been fucking him up the arse from behind. He had had his right hand thrust into Lukas’ groin, where Lukas had had nothing. No cock. No balls. Just a smooth, firm patch of hairless skin. Matthew had been digging his fingers into it, digging into it with his nails and trying to break it open, as though there was a hole there, though he now realised that he had been digging into his own groin with the fingers of his right hand. His jeans had ridden up while he was sleeping, and Matthew had been digging into the seam of them with his fingertips, forcing his fingers into the seam as though he was trying to find an opening, and all the time crushing his balls against the solid brass body of the padlock.

And there was come in his shorts.

He got up quickly, pulled his jeans and his boxers off, and started looking for the keys. There were two sets on his desk, and he tried each of these, but they were for the other padlocks he had bought. He searched around amongst his papers, amongst his books, looked all over the carpet, under his bed, in the closet, walked into the bathroom, started rifling through the drawers in the vanity, and then began to panic. He sat down on his bed, looking at what he had done to himself, and then he remembered that he had put the keys into his bedside cabinet, at the back of the top drawer, so that he would know exactly where to find them.

He jumped up and yanked the drawer out, yanking it so hard that he pulled it out of the cabinet. The drawer crashed against his shins, and all of his underwear fell out of it. He heard the scrape of what he supposed were the keys falling, and bent down to pick them up, annoyed now at the thought of what he had done to himself, aware not only of the padlock but of the fact that he had shaved himself.

He sat on the edge of the bed again, his hand shaking as he inserted the key in the lock. He turned it, the wrong way, and then managed to open it, hearing a stifled click as the arm of the padlock popped up. He exhaled. He twisted his sack out of the arm, gathered up all of the packaging and the padlocks and the keys and thrust them back into the bag. He folded the bag into a tight wad and stuffed it into the bottom of his closet.

He ran his fingers through his hair and felt that he never wanted to see a padlock again in his life, finding what he had done to himself disgusting, and having his shaved groin and armpits to remind himself.

He got changed, putting on a clean pair of shorts and an old pair of old pants that had some room in the groin. He pulled a T-shirt over his head and went downstairs, where his mother was cooking dinner.

That evening, when they were all in the sitting room, his father began to berate him.

‘You know, I was trying to call you last night. I tried three, no, four times I think, and then I discovered around one-thirty that I was ringing your bedroom. It’s not a landline, you know. You’re supposed to take it with you.’

‘It doesn’t fit in my jeans,’ Matthew said.

They had had this argument before. The truth of it being that Matthew found the phone annoying. There was nowhere to put it.

‘Ten years ago you could have fit a cat in each pocket.’

‘Yes. Well, I don’t make the fashions, do I?’

‘You should wear a jacket, Matthew,’ his mother began. ‘If you can’t carry a purse, wear a jacket, that’s what I always say.’

Mother wondered how a purse would possibly help. It would be an extra thing. How did women think that made sense?

‘He was wearing a jacket.’

‘I can lend you a purse, Matthew,’ his sister said.

‘Oh, for God’s sake! He’s not going to carry a purse!’