...But once in while the boss gets an e-mail from a boy who's in some small town in the middle of nowhere.

He's got access to the internet in some backstreet café but he hasn't got a camera - certainly not anything as new-fangled as a digital model.

And he'd die before he'd ask any of his friends to take nude pictures of him.

Usually, you see, his friends don't even know that he's gay.

And that's where I come in.

I'm retired these days - and I've a pretty generous pension that allows me to indulge my hobby of travelling around the world taking photographs of the most beautiful boys on the planet.

And I know from experience that, if the HMboys.com boss thinks it's worth his while to give me a call and ask me to check out some kid in the wilds of Uzbekhistan or Udon Thani - or even downtown Union City, Tennessee, then I'm probably going to enjoy the experience.

But it's not all fun.

I'm not going to embarrass him by giving his name, but one of the most popular of the HMBoys once managed to set my portable studio alight by leaving the smoke machine that I'd hired for some particularly erotic shots switched on overnight.

(He and I were, of course, far too busy at the time with personal business to notice what was happening.)

And there was the time that the naked boy I was shooting in the branches of a tree fell out of the branches and into the arms of the local policeman. Believe me, I don't recommend an overnight stay in a provincial Lithuanian police station under any circumstances.

But the problem I had with Nicholas wasn't like either of those.

He was as good as gold.But he just looked too young.Now generally speaking, that's no problem. At HMBoys.com we don't even go to see a boy - and certainly don't put his photos on the site - unless we've got cast iron proof that he's 18 or older.So there shouldn't have been a problem - because Nicholas was 18 (well, just!)

He'd scanned and e-mailed us copies of his ID card, his passport - and even his driving licence - so we knew he was telling the truth.But, even when you can prove that some kid is really 18 and legal, you still don't want all the hassle involved in having to do so if you can possibly avoid it.

So the instructions I had from the boss were clear.Don't, under any circumstances, make Nicholas look like a kid.Try to make him look like a young man on the verge of adulthood. Continua

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