Damiem

Last week's HMBoy, you'll recall came from Miami.

Sea, sun and sex.

Sorry to disappoint you guys, but this week's comes from Middlesbrough, England.

Murky, mucky and miserable.

And no sex.

Most subscribers to this site are, I'm told, Americans and probably the only bit of England they've seen is the touristy bits of London - Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the Tower of London, Downing Street…

But, believe me, outside London life's nothing like as colourful as that.

And neither are most of the guys.

English boys have got a reputation as "reserved". In fact, some (desperate? lying?) people have even been known to say that that's the very quality that makes them attractive.

But give me a break! Let's just face the fact that, just as whole regions of England are grey urban wastelands, most English guys look as if they're designed to match. (Of course, the two things - environment and people - don't necessarily go together. I often go to Russia to take pics for porno sites and, believe me, you haven't seen real crap until you've seen some of their horrible, run down industrial wastelands. But somehow - as you can see from Russian boys all over the internet - the people still have a bit of life about them, a joie de vivre that just isn't there in much of England.)

But, in spite of feeling that way about English boys, there was something about him that made we want to give Damien a chance to prove me wrong.

It wasn't that he was much more outgoing than other English guys, but at least he seemed to work up a small degree of enthusiasm when I proposed paying him to model for me (later, though, he did tell me that his grandparents were originally Irish, so maybe that explained it.)

I had some hopes of Damien, then.

Admittedly there wasn't much I could do to brighten up the outdoors shots I took. Put a boy in a glamorous setting and it'll start to rub off on him - but put him in front of a dismal piece of derelict grunge and there's not much that even Damien could do to rise above it.

Even though he tried as best he could…

I gave up on a bad job at that point. I know the boss here likes to have both indoor and outdoor shots for the sake of a bit of variety, but maybe this particular shoot just wasn't going to work outdoors in Middlesbrough.

So we moved inside.

Now that's when I'd have expected to see some action begin. But I guess all that kicked in was that famous British reserve.

I've just never known anyone as slow and reluctant to get his clothes off - especially since he'd already agreed to pose for me.

By shot #60 we'd still only got to the stage of lifting up his shirt just like he'd been doing outside more than an hour before.

It wasn't until we'd taken more than 70 shots - by which time it's usual, in an HMBoys.com shoot to be coming to the cumming, if you follow me - that I even caught a glimpse of anything even remotely interesting that you wouldn't expect to see on any summer beach (not that Middlesbrough, unlike Miami, is famous for its beaches)…

Even then, Damien was amazingly reluctant to remove a particularly shapeless pair of white boxer shorts that looked as though they'd been bought at a garage sale in one of the poorer areas of town.

And it wasn't, unbelievably, until shot #121 that I began getting stuff I knew would appeal to you - though getting this kid to look at the camera by that stage was virtually impossible.

And it was then that I finally ran out of my fifth roll of film - usually more than enough to cope with any shoot.

Middlesbrough isn't the sort of place you can just pop out to buy a roll of film. Anyone seeing you come out of a shop with one is more than likely to beat you up in the hope of getting their hands on the camera.

So that was the end of my day with Damien.

And what's the lesson, guys?

When you hear that British boys are reserved, think carefully.

Because the best advice I can give you is not to bother at all - they should just be reserved for other equally grey and unenthusiastic Brits.