Tobago
The Twelfth Tale of the Daphne Boy
by George Gauthier
Author's Note: This is a tale of an eternally youthful boy and those he encounters in Europe, Tobago and South America during the mid XVIIth century.
This is the twelfth in a series of tales about an undying youth named Alexander or Axel in this story. The other stories in this series so far are 'Antebellum', set in the American South just before the Civil War, 'Daphne Boy', set in Roman Syria, 'El Dorado', about the conquistadors, 'The Erythraean Sea', set in Arabia just before the rise of Islam, 'Stupor Mundi', about the Sixth Crusade, 'Ferghana', a tale of the Silk Road in Central Asia, 'Zulu' set mostly in Southern Africa during the Anglo-Zulu War, 'Sol Invictus' set in the Roman Empire during the reign of the dissolute androgynous and sexually insatiable gay emperor Elagabalus 'Reniassance' set in Italy around 1500, 'Gupta' set during the Golden Age in India in the century AD, and 'Palmyra' set during the crisis of the IIIrd century that nearly destroyed the Roman Empire.
It contains graphic descriptions of the male human body, of consensual and non-consenual sexual activity between adult males, and considerable non-sexual violence including combat. If any of this would offend a reader, read no further. This is not intended for persons younger than an age where they may freely and legally select their reading matter in whatever jurisdiction applies. It is offered for entertainment. If it manages to both intrigue and to provoke prurient interest, it will have succeeded in its aim.
It is as historically accurate in its setting as I could make it, with only minor poetic license for the sake of the story. This tale, after all, is fiction. It is not a historical monograph. Only the duke of Courland is an actual historical persons. The rest of the characters are not intended to resemble any person living or dead.
Readers who like these stories might want to try my 'Jungle Boy' series of tales in a modern setting, posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section of the archive. See also my series 'Naked Prey' in the historical section, my 'Mer Boy' series in Gay/Beginnings, and the 'Track and Field' series in Gay/College. For links to my stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors on the Archive.
Comments and feedback welcome.
Chapter 1. Courland 1654
Snow slid like a minor avalanche from the sharp pitched roof of a church just as I was walking past. With a whoosh, I suddenly found myself buried in soft snow up to the neck. I extricated myself easily enough, laughing like a kid and not particularly minding the snow that had infiltrated my fur collar. Sure I was cold, and soon I would be wet as the snow trapped within my garments melted from body heat, but I was German born, as my blond good looks could testify, and the mishap brought back happy memories of my boyhood including snow forts and snowball fights with the other lads.
Of course I knew I had better hurry to my quarters to take my wet things off before they could suck the heat out of me. The staff at the inn were used to my peculiar habits of personal hygiene, especially the way I insisted on a hot bath every morning. Now I was demanding a second one late in the evening.
The tavern boy who brought up the heated water for my bath was a very cute lad indeed. I judged Jan to be no more than seventeen: a slender redhead with an honest open face, eyes the blue of the sky, and with a hint of Tartar cheekbones that gave him an exotic beauty. How could I not desire him?
Bringing up my bath water was Jan's last task of the day. I knew the tavern owner would not be looking for him till the morning, so I counted on having him spend the whole night with me. Our glances had crossed once or twice before, and I had sensed his interest, but he was either shy or cautious. That night, I caught him staring at me openly as I stripped my wet garments off and got my bath things ready: soap, sponge, brush, towel. I made my movements deliberate to give him a good look at me in the light of the candles and the fire in the hearth --the yellow light of their flames creating a chiaroscuro effect of light and shadow as I turned to let him see my trim physique.
I knew my form was pleasing to him from his hungry look and from the way he had gulped when he saw me standing there in the nude, deeply and evenly tanned all over, without a bit of body hair anywhere, not even at the fork of my legs. I always liked the way that made my manhood more visible and prominent. Even with the smoke and the fire and the dampness of my wet clothing, my pheromones were at work rousing his interest, causing his nostrils to flare to help him to take in my scent.
"You're beautiful!" the boy blurted out, then put his hands to his mouth in a comical fashion, reddening at his own unthinking candor. I thought the gesture made him look very cute and boyish.
What he was staring at so intently was a comely youth several inches shorter than he was, a youth of apparently of no more than seventeen or eighteen summers (though as a near immortal I could boast as many centuries). Small and slender. I carry only 122 pounds (56 kg) on my small frame and stand a mere five foot five and a whisker (165 cm). He looked me up and down, drinking in my androgynous if wiry physique and fine-boned features: a straight nose, high cheekbones, green eyes topped by a blond thatch. I was clearly his type, boyishly slender -- almost skinny, with narrow shoulders atop a well toned but otherwise unimpressive musculature. I sported a well corrugated chest and stomach with defined abdominals, prominent ribs and sharp hip bones. The tracery of veins on my forearms, calves, and belly showed I carried very little body fat. I like to think my manhood is more than adequate but I wouldn't be scaring the horses. It takes both my small hands to cover an erection, but only one when it was soft. Trying to be ever so casual, I remarked to the boy:
"No sense getting your own clothes all wet Jan when you help me with my bath. Just take them off -- all of them, if you please."
He gulped, his adams apple visibly bobbing as he swallowed, then nodded his acquiescence to my wish, too excited to speak as he dropped his trews and pulled off his overshirt. Soon I had him totally naked. He had the slim coltish build of a lad who had but recently completed his growth spurt. They did not feed him enough for him to put on weight, though he was healthy enough for all that. His facial complexion was flawless, unless you count light freckles against a boy. I do not. He was smooth too, with almost no body hair, just wisps in the usual places.
"These clothes you are wearing are little more than rags, Jan. Here, let's get rid of them. You can wear something of mine afterwards."
Whereupon I threw his ragged garments into the crackling fire already going in the hearth. He watched in dismay as what I later learned were his only winter garments went up in flames. Now I had the boy for sure. He had nowhere to go, naked as he was. He looked so very cute, standing there next to the tub, nervous as a kitten, biting his lower lip in embarrassment, a hand covering his groin, hardly knowing what to expect next. I could see that he had a fine body, standing about a hand taller than me and probably carrying fifteen pounds more than I bore on my smaller frame.
"Would you mind scrubbing my back, Jan?" I asked every so casually. "I can never reach far enough back there. I am sure you know how that is."
I had him run his hands over me, soaping me up, rubbing the sponge, scrubbing with the brush, loosening my tight muscles, working down from my neck all the way to my rump. His hands felt good on me. I giggled when his roaming fingers found the ticklish spot under my ribs. This was turning into real fun.
It wasn't long before I found myself squeaky clean and warmed up from my bath. I vacated the tub and induced Jan to get in for a much needed cleansing of his own. Sadly in those days, personal hygiene was not sufficiently valued in Europe. Regular bathing was a thing of the past. Alas, civilization in the West lost much when the Roman institution of the public bath was abandoned. It was a loss that I felt keenly and one reason I had spent much of my middle centuries in Islamic lands where public baths were still part of the urban infrastructure. The Medieval West made much of the so-called odor of sanctity. If you want to know what it was like, just stand downwind from a bunch of homeless men. The odor of sanctity is the stench of the unwashed, raised to a virtue.
I liked helping Jan soap down, getting the grime out of his skin, shampooing his short red hair, leaving this lovely youth smelling as he ought to -- of healthy boy. I helped him dry himself with toweling, then sat him down next to me on a rug near the fire. We sat close together, our knees and hips touching. I rubbed the top of one of his feet with my own foot, establishing my right to touch his body. I leaned over and kissed his shoulder. I ran my hand along his nearer thigh and up his belly, fingering his abs and ribs. Then my hand drifted down to the fork of his legs, kneading and fondling. His ballsac was pulled tight to his groin, manhood at full staff, growing harder as I stroked it. Abruptly, he surrendered to me entirely. Going to his knees, he bent forward to take my cock in his mouth, surrounding my member with his wet warmth. I let him lave me for a bit, then I took his arm and led him over to the double bed. No point rolling around on a hard wood floor. Neither of us had much cushioning on his frame.
That night I found out to my delight that Jan was no virgin in male sex, being much more experienced than I had supposed. Unknown to the landlord, he occasionally supplemented his income by selling himself to guests who appreciated a fine looking lad like Jan. He was sensitive to my moods and my preferences, recognizing that for all my wealth and social position, I wanted him to take the dominant role, that I was basically a bottom boy with two hungry holes that needed filling. That was a job he did most admirably, filling me with his seed twice in either orifice. I was almost in a delirium as his thrusting cock rubbed my joy spot setting me to shuddering just before he brought us both off. Yet he liked sucking cock too and getting fucked. When we switched roles, the results were very satisfactory indeed. In short, he was an exciting and satisfying bed partner. Too bad I had only three days left at the inn.
In the morning, I gave the boy four sets of sturdy clothes suited for the clime plus a wool cloak and a pair of stout winter boots. I was leaving for the tropics soon anyway, and they would be of no further use to me. Jan was delighted. With four basic outfits, he could mix and match and change into fresh clothes while his other outfits went into the laundry. The poor lad really had had only the single winter ensemble I had tossed in the flames. Although he was taller, my clothes would fit him easily enough. Nothing was made in standard sizes in those days and my winter clothes fit loosely anyway for greater warmth. I also gave him two silver coins he could spend right away. Three days later, when I left the tavern for good, I tipped him five silvers, as many weeks' wages, and easier for a tavern lad to spend inconspicuously than the equivalent in gold. Then I bid him a fond farewell.
It was the shipping business that had brought me to the Duchy of Courland and its capital, Mitau, which lies inland and not too far from Riga in modern Latvia. In those days Courland was a semi-independent country, nominally a vassal of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poland-Lithuania was then one of the largest and most populous countries in 16th and 17th-century Europe, a vast state stretching from the Baltic almost to the Black Sea. Riga itself, an old Hanseatic city, was at that time a Free Imperial City.
I had heard that Courland was contemplating a colonization venture in the Caribbean. The plan was to take possession of the island of Tobago. It had fine anchorages in the western part of the island and its volcanic soil was deemed suitable for growing sugar cane. Still, overseas colonization was a bold venture for an small state like Courland with a population of only 200,000. The duchy did have one of the largest merchant fleets in Europe with good harbors that were ice free in winter. That is how I got involved. I was part owner of some of those ships trading out of Courland.
The Spanish, Dutch, and English had tried without much success to set up colonies on the island in recent decades. Colonial rivalries were the main reason for lack of success. In the brutal way of seventeenth century colonial powers, one jealous power would attack and kill off or deport the colonists sent by another power to occupy the island. Courlanders had tried three times already to establish their own colony. One attempt was driven off by the fierce Carib Indians.
Jakob von Kettler, duke of Courland, was a Baltic German. Germans had long constituted the upper class of the lands on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. At that time he was in his early forties. He was a great organizer and for a time a notably successful ruler. He had already established a small colony in Africa at the mouth of the Gambia River. Now this new venture beckoned. I respected the man as a fair ruler who tries to build something rather than just take from others like so many others who have sat thrones. I had tried to talk him out of the attempt, afraid his ambitions would prove too great for the resources of his small state to support. I pointed out that even a successful colony would only draw the jealousy of stronger powers like the Dutch and Spanish. He resolved to go ahead nonetheless.
So it happened that in May of 1654 his ship Das Wappen der Herzogin von Kurland set out for the Caribbean. (The ship's name translates as "The Coat of Arms of the Duchess of Courland"). She was a powerful double decker of 45 guns and carried 80 families of colonists, 124 Courlander soldiers to protect them, and 25 ducal officials to oversee the colony. Upon arrival, they founded a town on Great Courland Bay, renaming the island, Neu Kurland ("New Courland").
Tobago is only 26 miles long (42 km) and six miles wide (10 km) and located at 11 degrees North Longitude. It has a tropical climate and is fortunate in lying south of the Atlantic Hurricane Belt. The settlement and a fort went up in on the north coast of the flat western end of the island.
Unfortunately the Dutch from Zeeland had also set up their own colony on the south coast of the western end of the island. Though another 120 Courlanders later came out from Europe as reinforcements, the Dutch towns including the capital Nieuw Flushing grew much faster. The Dutch even settled 500 French in a town not far from the Courlanders' settlement, on the north coast of the island. In just a few years the population of the Dutch colony numbered some 1,500 white colonists (mostly Zeelanders and Frenchmen) plus 7,000 black slaves. The island produced sugar, rum and cacao on some 120 plantations. It boasted three churches, half a dozen sugar mills, and two rum distilleries.
Chapter 2. Tobago 1659
I left Courland and traveled in Europe for several years attending to my various business affairs. I am forever shifting my wealth around, buying ships or businesses or shares, establishing several entirely separate fortunes, arranging to inherit or transfer my wealth to new identities as needed. I could not stay in one place too long since I do not get any older. Five years later I finally sailed to the island of Tobago in 1659 just at things there were coming to a head.
I arrived under a Dutch flag, which most of my ships flew, so we put into the port of Nieuw Flushing. The Courlanders on the other side of the island were frightened that their homeland's entanglement in the Northern Wars would leave them vulnerable to massacre or at least a military and political takeover. Out of respect for the duke, now a captive of the Swedes, I hoped to extricate his settlers from an untenable situation, offering them free passage back to Courland on my ship and another that would soon join her at Tobago.
"Impressive isn't it Mijnheer Van Dorth," the captain, Johannes Schoon, asked. "So much done in only five years."
I only shook my head.
"Oh it is impressive all right. A right prosperous town. Too bad it all had to be done on the backs of thousands of black slaves kidnapped from Africa and forced to work without pay."
"Ah yes, the idealism of youth. Give yourself a few years to knock about the colonial empires and you will see things more clearly, see them as a man of the world does. No disrespect, young sir, but you are so very young, by your looks not yet eighteen. I understand that is your first voyage across the great Ocean, your first chance to get away from your books at the university. I applaud your courage in leaving the academic cloister and venturing out into the hurly burly world. But please be guided by a much older man. I know whereof I speak."
I smiled inwardly at being patronized by the grizzled captain. I suppose he meant well even if he did patronize me, speaking to me as the callow youth I seemed to be rather than the near immortal that I really was. Despite my seeming youth and pretty boy looks, at that time I had not eighteen years but as many centuries of life experience, having been born late in the second century BC in Germany. I cannot explain the reasons for my eternal youthfulness, why I looked then (and still look now) like a boy in his late teens. For reasons completely unknown to me, I had stopped growing and aging before reaching my eighteenth birthday.
No, I never sold my soul to the Devil. It just happened that way. Presumably it is something genetic. Recent science suggests it may have to do with self-repairing telomeres in the nuclei of the cells that maintain the body in a state of homeostasis.
"Well at least this once you are properly dressed for our landfall, young Axel. And very comely you look too with your straight nose, sea green eyes, and blond hair, though I dare say you are prettier than any boy rightly ought to be. Still, in coat and breeches and a cravatt at your throat, you are the picture of a proper gentleman." he said looking me over.
Actually I felt vastly overdressed in my required formal garb of shirt and cravat with vest and cutaway coat topped by a tricorn hat with a plume in it. The leather shoes on my feet pinched from disuse. The tropical heat called for lightweight garments or none at all. Indeed I had spent much of the later stages of our voyage, once we reached tropical latitudes, climbing the rigging or walking around deck in the rude nude. Even at mealtimes I wore no more than a pair of breeches slung low on my hips. While that was true of some of the other young hands as well, I was not some cabin boy or carpenter's helper but the owner of the ship and of others like her including her sister ship which had sailed in convoy with us.
I should explain that nudity at sea does not necessarily have a sexual significance. Men aboard ship often welcome the chance to dispense with clothing, to free the bodies from clothes that are too tight or chafe in the wrong places, or feel rough on the skin, or are infested with vermin. It is not easy to launder clothing adequately even with salt water soap. The best way to maintain one's hygiene is to keep cloth from contact with the skin. Besides, it just feels good to bare the body to sun and sea and fresh air, to cool off with the spray and spume of the sea. Shipboard is a social refuge, a place where men are free from the fussy standards of deportment imposed by land based society, especially by women, the clergy, and the respectable classes.
So my casualness toward clothing helped the sailors relax around me as we chatted and worked the ship. Oh I did not scrub the deck or do scut work, but I did help reef the sails when a storm came up and manned the crows nest as a lookout. I am an expert seamen at all levels of the trade from ship's boy to captain.
I never took any of the crew as lovers. As the owner of the ship, they all worked for me. I try to avoid even the appearance of coercion in choosing sexual partners. Besides not every ship's company is tolerant of same gender attachments, as I sensed this one was not. Homosexual conduct could lead to prosecution under the laws of the sea, especially in ships sailing from northern Europe.
So the captain was reasonably well enough disposed toward me when he escorted me to meet the Dutch colonial governor. That worthy, named Pieter Adrienszoon, accepted my letter of introduction from the Dutch West India Company approving my offer to transport the inhabitants of the rival colony back to Europe at my own expense with no costs charged to the company. Adrienszoon's military power would be the stick and my ships the carrot to peacefully resolve this colonial rivalry.
In the end the Courlanders had no choice but to give in to force majeure. They agreed to evacuate their untenable holding on Tobago. I sweetened the pot by giving each family a modest bit of silver to help them get resettled back in Europe. Meanwhile I would stay on in Tobago awaiting the return of my two ships for a planned venture to the northeast coast of South America, much of which was in the control of the Dutch though contested by the Portuguese.
Why was I so charitable toward the Courlanders, besides my respect for the duke? I suppose it was a form of expiation for my many sins. Understand, I do not consider myself a bad man, an evil doer by predilection, but I am not without blame no matter how much I might try to rationalize things. Although I have never owned slaves myself, I have carried on commerce and owned lands in slave societies, benefiting at least indirectly from that despicable institution. Yes, I paid fair wages to my own servants, but the level of wages for free labor must have been depressed by the ready availability of slaves in such circumstances.
Also I have killed many times over. I never kept count of those I slew, but over my long life it must total several hundred with quite a few more slain under my leadership. Mostly this was in self defense, while fighting raiders, bandits, pirates, and footpads and such. I have fought in wars too, when forced to choose sides. I like to think I usually was on the right side though that was often a matter of circumstance. A number of times I had to enroll in the militia in defense of a city I had settled in, trapped by a besieging army. Still who can say which side was in the right, who the usurper and who the rightful king? So many wars are stupid or needless or wicked, started by ambitious rulers who care little for the lives of the humble. Such men are the real villains of history, the great butchers who leave a famous name and a pile of corpses behind. True, sometimes conquerors build something of value. The Roman empire brought centuries of peace to lands on three continents with its Pax Romana. The same is true of some of the stronger Chinese dynasties. Most conquerors are like Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, butchers pure and simple.
My conscience is clear about the bandits and pirates and robbers, men who would have slit my throat for my purse or my goods. As for those I killed in the wars, I do regret the young men I have had to cut down in the flower of their youth, naive youths recruited or conscripted by promises of pay or excitment. Yet in the end I ended their brief lives with one stroke of my sword or a shot from my pistol ending a unique human life. I still see on their youthful faces that look of anguished disbelief as they realize they are really going to die, not in some hard to credit old age, but right there and then, at age eighteen or twenty. So many were good looking young men I would rather have made love to. Instead I had to thrust into them with my steel blade. So many young men, slain before their time. Such a shame. Such a waste.
At least by rescuing these four hundred colonists I was putting something on the plus side of the ledger to ease my conscience. Oh, I am not a believer in some cosmic system of punishment and reward after death. The ledger exists only in my own mind. Yet I would not be true to myself if I did not occasionally take concrete steps to redress the balance. My long life has been a long struggle to remain a moral and caring person, someone who can love and be worthy of the love of his fellow human. It would be so very easy for me to give in to arrogance, to look down on mayfly humanity, to feel myself superior because, with my special gift, I would go on and on, long after they were dead and buried. Yet surely my immortality was unearned, some accident of birth. Nothing I had earned, certainly.
Imagine my surprise when one of the colonists turned out to be Jan, the cute tavern boy I had romped with in Mitau in Courland five years earlier. He had sailed with the colonists, seeking a new life and had, in time, become a tavern keeper in the new settlement. He was a young man come into his own rather than the boy I had known, but still a stunning example of youthful male pulchritude. He sought me out when he learned who had financed the rescue.
"So it really is you Axel. I never expected to see you again. You look exactly the same as when we parted. Here I am, now twenty-two yet you look no older than when we had our tryst, though you must be in your mid twenties at least."
"The years have been kind to me, Jan."
Jan hated having to return to cold Europe, but the Dutch would not let him stay on Tobago. He asked me to take him on in some capacity. I wanted to help and not just because I wanted to take him to my bed again. He had made something of himself, taking over the local tavern on the death of the proprietor and making it a success, one of the few business in New Courland that had flourished. As a businessman myself, I admire those who have a head for affairs. The problem was that I generally avoid taking my employees as lovers. We resolved the issue by Jan becoming a very junior partner in my new venture, putting up his meager capital as an investment. Meanwhile he would move in with me and share my home.
Once the Courlanders vacated, I had the pick of their abandoned dwellings where I would wait out the return of my ships from far off Courland. After me, Dutch colonists moved in promptly, justly prizing the sturdy homes the colonists had built. I had chosen a fine house on the outskirts with few close neighbors. I did most of the cooking, for which I have a real talent, thank you, while Jan handled the cleanup and other chores. We sent our laundry out, such as it was. Most of the time we went about naked, isolated as we were. With my sea chests moved in along with Jan few effects, we were soon comfortably ensconced in my new demesne. In that months I got to know Jan well; we became firm friends as well as eager lovers. It was as if five years had not passed since we had met. He was a rare delight.
While my ships were convoying the other colonists to Courland, I intended to explore the shallow seas and coral reefs around the island both to experience the beauty of the underwater realm and also to search for pearls. Not that I needed greater wealth, but I knew that the island of Margarita off the north coast of South America had yielded a fortune in rare yellow pearls. I was an experienced pearl diver. I knew how to use a stone to sink to the bottom quickly and effortlessly to conserve air, how to construct goggles to see clearly underwater, what to do at the approach of a shark. Admittedly my apprenticeship at the trade centuries earlier had not been voluntary.
Taken from Byzantine Egypt a prisoner of war of the Persian Empire of the Sassanians, I was enslaved for three years working at the dangerous trade of pearl diver in the Persian Gulf. I was kept perpetually nude, set to dangerous work, taken sexually by guards and fellow divers regardless of my wishes. Our masters were strict about segregation from females. It was 'common knowledge' at the time that sexual activity increased buoyancy, so we divers were prohibited any contact with women. Slave owners kept slaves in male-only quarters, with the inevitable result that same sex relations were nearly universal among slave pearl divers. Our masters punished us for fighting and would have punished me even worse if all I was fighting about was protecting my non-existent virtue.
On Tobago, my first order of business was to get back into top shape. Shipboard life is bad for stamina and wind, and I try to keep myself fit and not just for my health. Stamina has survival value. More than once I have simply outrun pursuers who would have slain me. So I took Jan along on my early morning runs along the beach running eastwards away from the settlement. I love to run long distance and with my slow twitch musculature I am a natural at it. For Jan it was something to get used to. He had never gone in for exercise for its own sake. I coaxed him into running in the nude like me, the sun kissing our back and bare butts, the wind blowing our hair around, the sand flying back from our bare feet. The rhythmic movements and breathing help instill that state of euphoria that moderns call a runners' high.
We also swam in the sea at least twice a day, once right after our run then again after lunch. I love to swim almost as much as I like to run. I especially liked the way the water touches me all over at once, the way I wish a lover's hands could. I am quite tactile during lovemaking, as Jan grew to know well. In the afternoon, I helped Jan with his letters and arithmetic. His rough upbringing had left him with only the rudiments of literacy and numeracy. I wanted him to learn to read well enough to enjoy reading for its own sake. Literacy opens the mind to the best of human thought despite our distance in miles and centuries from the authors. Of course, there is also reading for pleasure. The mid seventeenth century was before the novel, but I did set Jan to reading modern translations of Chaucer's Cantebury Tales, and Boccaccio's Decameron.
What a happy time that was. I could enjoy both leisure and a lover on a tropical island where we did not even have to work for a living. Life was good.
However I knew that bad things can happen too, so I kept up my weapons practice. Jan had never really handled weapons. Oh he had wielded a bung to knock out unruly patrons at his tavern and had a been in a couple of fist fights, but that was all. He wondered at my daily practice with sword, knife, and pistol.
"Life is good here, Axel, and safe. Yet you practice with weapons incessantly, as if you expect the worse to happen."
"Anything can happen, Jan, whether it is war or pirates or hostile Carib Indians, a slave insurrection. Anything. Reversal of fortune can happen in a day."
Indeed, I spoke for bitter experience. There was something of a pattern in my centuries of living, where periods of wealth and freedom came interspersed with periods of captivity and slavery, even sexual slavery. The truth is that all my long life I have been both blessed and cursed by a lovely form and face that inspire admiration and lust in the heart of any male who appreciates a beautiful boy. I am small and pretty and uniformly bronzed from habitual nudity. So I looked entirely too much like I belonged to someone as his catamite or pleasure boy. And if not already so, then I was fair game to capture and taming. With my androgynous if wiry physique and fine-boned features I fell far short of normal male standards in height, muscular development, and secondary sexual characteristics like beard and body hair. I was smooth even at the fork of my legs. Since I had stopped aging before my beard grew in I have never had to shave. The upshot of it all was I often wasn't taken seriously as a male.
I have had much experience of rape and sexual servitude over the centuries. Enslaved at fourteen by a Roman tribune as a spoil of war, I became my captor's catamite and body slave until sold on to a merchant in Massalia, modern Marseille. My new master also kept me nude and used me as a messenger and pleasure boy but later put me to work as a scribe as well. Set free by his will when he died suddenly of a fall from a horse, I traveled to the East and made my first fortune in Alexandria, working in a boy brothel while investing in mercantile ventures on the side. That is where I took up the Roman habit of having all my body hair, little as it was, plucked with tweezers. After several decades of plucking it stopped sprouting. Now I was completely hairless and would stay that way forever.
In the early first century AD I spent a few years in ancient Antioch as a Daphne Boy, enslaved for an unjust debt as a temple prostitute. The cult of the nymph Daphne is allied to that of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Male acolytes, for that is what they called us, offered themselves to boy lovers. We were very popular because we were scrupulous about personal hygiene, trim and fit, and hand picked for our beauty of face and form. Although we could not chose our clients, the life was pleasant enough, with bright airy accommodations, good food, and decent treatment. The priests let us keep tips from our clients so we had a bit of coin to spend on our two days off per month.
I made friends among the other boys and even some of my clients, though I was glad enough when circumstances freed me before my unchanging youth could be noticed. In some ways I still have fond memories of my time as a Daphne Boy, slave though I then was. Other periods of slavery before and since were not so pleasant. I had spent a year in the Colosseum as a gladiator, forced to fight for my life before the crowd. I became quite the crowd favorite, fighting naked and armed with two knives. They called me the killer catamite because, after my bouts, I was regularly given to my fellow gladiators as well as to rich spectators who paid gold for the chance to fuck me fresh from my latest combat, still covered with sweat, the dust of the arena, and the blood of my foe.
Is it any wonder then that I kept myself ready to defend my wealth, my person, and my liberty?
Tobago was an unusual idyll in my normally busy life. After several weeks of exercise and fresh food, I was ready to explore the sea around the island. With Jan holding the fort, I sailed a small craft by myself up the coast toward the eastern mountains stopping at likely spots to dive. I wore only a sarong when I set out and stripped that off as soon as I was out of sight of the settlement. I felt liberated from my usual responsibilities managing my ships and wealth and the people who worked for me. There I was a nude young man alone upon the sea. Just me and and my small boat.
The seas around Tobago are well worth diving. Even today they attract tourists. I loved to watch the varied sea life around the coral reefs. In truth, the search for pearls was just an excuse for diving into the wondrous undersea realm. Today we have SCUBA and rebreathers, but in those days all that you had was yourself, your unaided physical abilities. I can say in all candor that these were considerable. After centuries of practice aided by my unusual vitality, I am the equal of an Olympic swimmer. I can hold my breath for three minutes at a time and do so repeatedly during an afternoon of diving. Even my skin doesn't get dried out much from the salt water. I sometime feel I am a mer-boy, a natural citizen of the sea.
Although I found only a few low quality pearls in the first two weeks, I was not discouraged. This was a pleasant and peaceful interlude in my existence. I was there just for the sheer enjoyment of it, taking pleasure in the natural beauty around me, the exercise of my physical powers, and the welcome solitude and cleanliness after life aboard a crowded, smelly, and vermin infested ship.
One day, as I returned to my lodging, I found Jan had received messages waiting for me. It seems my ships had returned from Europe early and were loading stores in preparation for my planned trading journey to South America.
Chapter 3. South America
Our course was southeast, into the open sea paralleling the north coast of South America. Our destination was the capital of New Holland, i.e. Dutch Brazil, the port city of Pernambuco, now called Recife for its fringing coral reef. The region grew prodigious amounts of sugar cane and still does. On the way we would stop at Paramaribo, Bahia at the mouth of the Amazon, controlled by Portugal, and the islands named for Fernando de Noronha, an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean nearly 200 nautical miles (350 km) off the coast of Brazil at the point it juts out farthest into the South Atlantic Ocean. The total distance was the equivalent of a transatlantic voyage, some 3,000 miles.
My plan was to chart a route along the northern coast of South America and the Dutch Republic's holdings in Surinam, Guyana, and northeastern Brazil. These areas had been contested during the recent wars and though the fighting was over their status was still not settled by treaty. I hoped to get in on the ground floor while the diplomats were negotiating, building warehouses and and docks and assigning factors (agents) to the main ports, creating a commercial link between the Dutch holdings in the Caribbean and these other regions. This was the way I usually earned a living, as a prosperous merchant or businessman.
"You look like a young pirate, Mijnheer Van Dorth," captain Schoon chuckled as he looked me over. Indeed I was dressed only in cut-off breeches slung low on my hips with a gold earning through my left earlobe. I also carried a long knife thrust through the leather belt around my hips. In keeping with his comment, I struck a pose, hands on hips, putting a scowl on my face, but my smile and a chuckle spoiled my attempt to look fierce.
"I hope you don't have any romantic notions about pirates rattling around in that pretty head of yours, my young friend. They are the worst sort of men: killers, robbers, rapists. What do you think they would do if you ever fell into their hands?"
"Hold me for ransom, of course. I am worthy plenty."
"Indeed, that is standard practice, but how do you think they would keep themselves entertained while waiting for the ransom to be paid?"
I flushed knowing full well what fate awaited a pretty youth such as myself or Jan at the hands of pirates. I needed no lessons from the captain about corsairs, a class of men I have always considered among the very worst sort.
"Good. You understand then. I also venture to point out that your androgyne looks and frequent state of undress have attracted the attention of some of the crew who are, shall we say, at a loss for companionship while at sea. They know you consort with your young partner, Jan. Though you keep to the privacy of your cabin, such things cannot be hidden long aboard a crowded ship. So these men look on you as one of those ineffectual and shameless lads who deserves to be treated as less than a fully functioning male, regardless of your own wishes in the matter. Take warning, young sir."
"I am not a complete innocent captain. I am well aware that, ashore or at sea, there are men who would use me as a man does a woman or else attack me for carrying on in ways they disapprove of. I should be safe enough as long as the men are sober and remember their place."
"And if they were not sober?"
"Then Jan would have my back. Even alone, I can take care of myself. Besides, captain Schoon it is your own sworn duty to maintain order aboard this ship".
As I spoke I dropped the mask I usually maintained, the air of callowness and innocence I projected consistent with with my youthful looks. That let the captain catch a hint of my over seventeen centuries of life experience. Also, he had seen me at daily practice with sword and knife and knew how well I could shoot with a pistol in either hand or with a musket. As for my skills in unarmed combat, he could guess from the fluid motions of my frequent training sessions on deck, spinning, kicking, rolling, punching, all part of the eclectic method of defense I had evolved to suit my physique and capabilities. It is fair to say that, after seventeen centuries of training, practice, and experience, I was likely the single deadliest human on the planet. A couple of the other dozen or so of my fellow immortals might be able to take me, but certainly no single human mortal. In short, I am a very bad man to cross, though my saving grace is that I am slow to anger.
My gaze made the man take a step back, intimidated though not quite sure why. Having made my point, I deliberately turned away to gaze at the horizon. I stood in front of a rack along the bulwark that held five swords, ready to be seized in defense of the ship. My two merchantmen carried enough cannon to discourage most pirates, though we would be no match for heavily armed men of war. Of course, I was thinking about external threats, not about the potential for a mutiny led by my own captain.
That evening I had a light supper, shucked my breeches and climbed into the bunk in the cabin I shared with Jan. During the night, I had occasion to use the head, climbing out along the bow to use the facility like any sailor would. The crew was used to seeing me going about at night in the nude. I dare say the moonlight cast an attractive pallor on my flawless skin. I know I always drew the rapt attention of the watch.
As I was returning, still muzzy from sleep, five of the crew jumped me, grabbing my arms and punching me. I tried to fight my way clear, stamping on one man's instep, kneeing another in the groin, breaking a wrist, but I took hard hits to face and belly. I still might have prevailed but for a sound rap to the head with a wooden belaying pin which took what fight I had left out of me. My assailants soon had me bound hand and foot, something they never could have achieved had I not been caught by surprise half asleep.
I found myself dragged to the quarterdeck on deck and strung up from a yard arm and the mizzenmast, my toes barely reaching the deck. I realized then that my attackers were not pirates or Portuguese sailors. It was my own crew that had mutinied, and Captain Schoon was their leader. I saw little fighting among the crew; few fought for me, though Jan put up a stout resistance till he too was subdued. Most of the crew threw in with their captain. He was after all a sailor like themselves, and a proven leader. Although the ship owner of record, I must have seemed to the mutineers like no more than a spoiled youth, my ownership of these two vessels a mere accident of birth and inheritance, one they were about to rectify.
Captain Schoon soon took control of both vessels and put them about on new course for Belem in Portuguese Brazil. Later that day he took the time to talk with me, to brag about his plans to turn pirate. I tried to argue with him.
"The Portuguese and Dutch navies have stopped fighting each other." I pointed out. "They will turn their attention to you and hunt you down for the pirates that you are."
"I would agree, dear boy, if we intended to operate as normal pirates, but we will not. Instead we will sail these waters as normal traders, carrying legitimate cargoes for the most part. On a given day, our ships will rendezvous, one playing the pirate ship for an afternoon, the other its hapless victim. After a less than heroic defense, carefully staged to prevent serious injury, the ship playing the victim will surrender, turning any wealthy passengers over to the pirates for ransom, and surrendering rich trade goods to them. We will collect ransoms from the families of the passengers, insurance for the loss of cargo, and a good price for the trade goods themselves. Those we ransom will be witnesses to our good faith. Anyway, who would look for pirates among their victims. It is foolproof."
I could tell he really believed it. Maybe they could operate that way for a while, but sailors have loose tongues, especially when drunk. In time, captain Schoon's scheme would be exposed and the hunt would be on. Maybe he had a plan to deal with that too, skipping out of his crews with most of the loot as a retirement fund.
"What are you going to do with me." I asked, as defiantly as I could be under the circumstances.
"You? Well obviously you know too much for me to trade you for ransom. And I could hardly trust your lover Jan, now could I. Instead I promised you to the men for a plaything. With Jan, I can provide a boy for both crews. You don't realize how much lust you aroused in these lonely men, traipsing about so often in the nude, showing off that sexy body you are so proud of. Well, now you will pay for your foolishness."
With that he bundled Jan off to the other ship, turning me over to the crew to be used as their plaything, a sex toy for the pent up lusts of a crew of sailors. I have to say it was rougher than any other experience I had had in sexual service. Customers of professional rent boys, or chained up gladiators, or temple prostitutes exercise some ultimate level of restraint. Even the pearling crews knew they had to keep me fit enough to dive. Many of these men were looking to settle scores, not so much with me personally but with the world, for the way things were. I was young and healthy and beautiful of face and form. I was rich and they were forced to work at dangerous jobs as sea for low pay.
The most macho among them resented me for falling short of proper standards for a human male, especially in sexual orientation, then in physical characteristics like height and muscular development, or secondary sexual characteristics like my lack of beard and body hair. I was smooth even at the fork of my legs, leaving my genitals bare. As for my face, that was far too pretty for any proper boy, prettier than most of the girls they had ever met. Some simply despised me for being a "faggot cock sucker". Others hated me for arousing lusts in them that they thought sinful, but felt helpless to resist given their isolation at sea. Others resented me for having teased them endlessly with my casual nudity yet never allowing anyone to touch me much less take me. What better punishment then than to use my own perverse sexuality against me, to fuck me senseless.
Strung up as I was by my wrists, my ankles tied together, there was little I could do. Oh I could have wrapped my legs around the neck of an individual assailant and snapped it, but then what? Such resistance would be worse than useless. The men fucked me in turn, at first singly, then in pairs, some even double penetrating me, one from in front, the second from behind. This was far from the first time I had had two cocks shoved into my hole at the same time, but it still hurt. Experience can help a boy cope with such stress, to relax the sphincters and let the intrusive cocks stretch the anal ring, but size does count. After all, I am small, many of them were large men and two at a time doubly so. They chortled to see their twinned cocks poking my belly wall from the inside. It wasn't too long till my "virgin's blood" was leaking out of my orifice along with the cum and piss of multiple rapists.
Meanwhile others tormented my nipples with their hands, pinching, pulling and twisting away from the tiny red aureole that surrounded them, even cutting at them with the edge of their fingernails till they bled. Sometimes they forced the spines of sea urchins through the nubs, betting on which trickle of blood, left or right, would reach my groin first. Other sailors liked to drip hot candle wax on my chest and belly and cock. Afterwards they beat the dried wax off with a tawse.
One man liked to use fish hooks on my nipples and genitals. He forced the barb-less hooks through the nubs of my nipples and tied together with fish line. Then he inserted another hook into my piss slit and out the top of my cock just behind the head, connecting it with line to the other two hooks. Now all they had to do was yank to cause excruciating pain. Believe me all ideas of disobedience pass from your mind when a man with a nasty disposition has his hand on a line connecting fish hooks to your nipples and cock head. If he tells you to suck cock, you do so, no argument.
It did not help my cause that occasionally, during the morning when I was still fresh, my body responded to their attentions. I am a bottom boy, after all, a sexual submissive. There I was strung up, spread-eagle, with fingers running lightly over the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, playing lightly with my balls, poking a finger into my hole and stimulating my joy spot. I could not stop my cock from rising involuntarily into an unwelcome erection. That happens rather often in cases of male rape. My turgid cock elicited guffaws from the crew. I tried to explain it away as due to the stimulus of my prostate, but they would have none of it.I was erect so obviously I must welcome their ministrations to my tight little body. I now had to deal with shame and unwanted lust in addition to continued pain and humiliation.
The first few days passed in a blur till, in the end, I was literally fucked senseless. I really came to my senses only three days later, shackled in the rope locker. That day, the men dragged me on deck again, mostly keeping me on all fours as they took me at both ends again and again. It wasn't just cocks that got shoved into my nether orifice. Belaying pins, rough skinned cucumbers, and eventually fists all passed my sphincters into my rectum. Much of what they did was too degrading and shameful for me to admit to easily even now, including the infamous practice of double fisting, the most painful form of rape.
I could not keep the tears back on those days. I let my tears flow heedless of their taunts. I was beyond shame. I did not beg for relief, not so much from any remaining courage but because my pleas only seemed to excite them. I was reduced to uttering inarticulate cries of pain, the tears running down my cheeks matching the blood leaking from my orifice. That of course only inspired my tormenters to new taunts for my weakness, for being a cry baby.
"Awwh, the little pussy boy is bawling his eyes out. What's the matter, a bit of stretching and pain too much for your tender tush, there blondie?"
"Nah, you got it all wrong, Will. The boy is simply delirious with happiness. He is in heaven with all this stud service day after day. He never had it so good."
Sometimes when our ships were anchored close by, I could hear Jan's cries of pain and dismay as they worked him over on the other ship. At least the crews brought us up on deck for their fun and games. That meant were not kept locked in the bowels of the ship, in darkness, with the smells and the rats, and the potential for sickness. The sun and fresh air revived me each day. I don't know how we would have survived otherwise. After three weeks passed, the crew's interest slacked off. They played with me for fewer hours each day.
Now I am no coward, as I think I have shown in these narratives. I can be brave enough in battle or in a fire, or storm at sea, or facing other dangers. I have stood up under adversity, tolerating years of sexual slavery on more occasions than I care to recall. In this situation my courage nearly deserted me. I saw no way out, just weeks and maybe months of sexual torture followed by a cut throat. In the end it was my anger that saw me through.
I had thought this could never again happen to me, that I would once more be reduced to the status of a sex slave. Nearly a thousand years later and here I was worse off than when I was a pearl diver cum sex slave in the Persian Gulf. This was worse. All my life I never owned a slave or accepted any of the rationales of the ruling classes to justify slavery. Coercing another human being is simply wrong. These men were taking from me everything that made life worth living. They had taken Jan from me and were doing their worst to him. I nursed my anger, vowing to make them all pay dearly.
At night I tried to come up with a plan of escape. I could unlatch my shackles easily enough. I am an excellent locksmith and I could open their crude locks with a old nail or any other bit of metal. I had already pulled a nail out of the wooden wall of my improvised brig just in case. But then what. We were well out to sea, our ships separated. Even if I could manage to get away in one of the shallops, I could not out sail my ships. I had to devise a solution that not only got me free and away, but made recapture unlikely.
Eventually we arrived at the mouths of the Amazon River. Captain Schoon has miscalculated his longitude (which was easy to do in those days) so we were far to the west of the port of Belem. We anchored for the night in a cove in one of the Amazon's many distributaries. Here was my chance for escape. I unlocked my shackles, slipped out of the rope locker and gained the deck. Anchored as we were, the captain had set only two men on night watch. With skills rivaling those of a professional assassin, I managed to kill both without raising the alarm. I went about the ship, moving stealthily, securing provisions and arming myself with a good knife and sword.
One man did come on deck, aiming for the head. I knifed him in the back. Then I used the ready powder stores and jug of turpentine to start several fires, slid down a rope to the shallop, and sailed off into the night. There was no way I could reasonably expect to sneak over to the other ship to free Jan. The crew was aroused by the smell and smoke and managed to put out the fires before they engulf the ship, but the distraction and the destruction of major sails was enough for me to get away. I did not sail straight out to sea but turned inland, counting on losing myself in the maze of waterways through which the mighty Amazon discharged its waters into the ocean. It was over a century since I had passed this way in the expedition of Francisco de Orellana, conquistador and first man to travel the length of the Amazon.
Schoon did try to seek me out, thinking I had headed out to sea. I bided my time upriver, spending a month in a native fishing village where I was welcomed for my skills as an arrow maker and boat builder. When I thought the coast was clear, I made my way to civilization, arriving eventually in Tobago.
I must have looked quite a sight, a slightly built blond youth barefoot and clad in no more than a loincloth marching up to the office of the Dutch colonial governor Pieter Adrienszoon. Even transformed as I was he recognized me as the young influential shipowner who had providently relieved him of the unwanted colonists from Courland months before. I had no trouble establishing my identity or convincing him of Schoon's turn to piracy. With the governor's assistance, we set a trap for Schoon in Suriname. He sailed in with his two ships, ostensibly to engage in honest commerce, and was taken ashore without a shot being fired. Some of his men turned state's evidence so the courts had plenty of proof of his piracy to hang him and the chief mutineers. The others were sentenced to hard labor. I got my ships back along with a badly shopworn and bedraggled Jan. They had not slain him after my escape as I had feared. Instead they passed him back and forth between ships, doing double duty, as it were.
We lingered in Tobago for a while, recouping our health and sanity. I persuaded Jan to come with my in my canoe to explore the corals reefs. He too responded to the wonders of that undersea realm. You might say that diving the coral reefs helped heal our souls. In time we put the nightmare behind us, except at night, when sometimes, in his dreams, Jan relived his ordeal, trembling, sweating profusely, even calling out in his sleep. I held him tenderly, helping him through the bad nights, assuring him by words and physical contact that he was safe and in the arms of a man who loved him. A lad with a sweet disposition anyway, he came around. Most days he gave no sign of being bothered by his ordeal, but it was always there. Strangely it was part of the bond that united us. I came to care for Jan very much over the next few years.
Unfortunately I had lost the commercial opportunity I had sought, so we soon returned to Europe, settling in Amsterdam. Jan became my apprentice and factotum, and OI was grooming him for a larger role in my business operations. One day he took a fever that could not be brought under control. I did everything I could giving him what herbal remedies I had found effective over the centuries as a febrifuge. And I kept the doctors away from him. In those days all doctors were essentially quacks. Their prescription for fever was to bleed the victim, to restore the balance of the four humors, a notion deeply ingrained in what passed for medicine before the germ theory of disease.
With medicine so primitive and standards of public sanitation so low, it is no wonder that many people died before their time in Early Modern Europe. Even my wealth could not make the cities of the day salubrious. I did have fresh uncontaminated water brought in by barrel from a rural spring, but other sources of infections were all around us: in the air, the food we ate, the poor hygiene of our neighbors and even our servants. Even as their employer, there was only so much I could demand from my staff.
Despite my every effort, Jan died within days. He was only twenty-six. I felt his loss acutely. He was one of the few young men I ever allowed myself to fall in love with. I can still see his cheerful smile in my mind's eye, his blue eyes sparkling over some private joke. The hardest thing about never growing older is that you must eventually lose everyone you ever loved or befriended. It is even harder when they are taken from you prematurely. No wonder so many people turn to empty promises about an afterlife, where they will rejoin loved ones. Maybe that assurance can comfort the more credulous sort of people, but I can draw no consolation from a notion so utterly without evidence and so obviously and entirely the result of wishful thinking.
Epilogue
Six years after the Courlanders surrendered the colony to the Dutch, it was conquered by the British and finally destroyed by the French. For the contending powers, colonization was a blood sport. Just as well then that the colonists from Courland returned to the duchy when they did. Afterwards, the island of Tobago was a perpetual bone of contention among the Atlantic powers. It changed hands, often bloodily, no less than 33 times among Spain, England, France, and the Dutch Republic, until 1814 when it fell to the British for good until decolonization in the late twentieth century. Since 1899 it has been politically united with the larger island of Trinidad.
I still like diving coral reefs like those around Tobago, the most southerly of the Caribbean islands with coral reefs. Today modern equipment makes it easy to explore that wondrous realm.
I am not much of a tourist these days. For centuries I have traveled all over the world, visiting many places now labelled world historical sites during the eras they flourished. I saw the Roman forum before it was in ruins, so too Palmyra, Antioch, Alexandria, Ctesiphon, Renaissance Italy, etc. There is little left for me to ooh and ahh at. The novelty is no longer there. So I am little drawn to conventional travel and tourism.
Also I seldom travel on business these days. I have no active operations these days, having sold my last two shipping lines some years ago, just before the upsurge in piracy. Just as well then, I might otherwise have been tempted to take direct action. I hate piracy. I wish the advanced nations would adopt a stern policy: at a minimum arm merchant ships. Ideally launch punitive raids on ports in failed states that harbor pirates.
I no longer manage businesses but live as a rentier, what some might call a trust fund idler or a coupon clipper, though no one really clips coupons anymore. This is not from any laziness on my part or a desire to retire from the hustle and bustle of commerce. I like the cut and parry of business and trade. However, a business career in the twenty-first century leaves so many traces, too many really, all those documents and legal entanglements, security and ID, photographs. My fortunes (I have several in different names and countries) are invested via dummy companies in financial instruments in the developed world plus landholdings in South America and Australia. I took less of a hit during the recent financial debacle than many, having early on listened to voices of caution about the credit bubble. I never invested with that Madoff character not through any particular astuteness of my own, but simply by heeding credible warnings that were out there years before that it was a Ponzi scheme. The guaranteed returns were just too good to be true. Hence I lost less than ten percent of my portfolio in the crash.
That does not mean that I am trying to claim the title of savviest investor on the planet from Warren Buffet. No, what I am above all is an extremely cautious investor, cautious as only a very old man with twenty-one centuries behind him can be, one who can plan for the very long haul. I do admire the talents of business wizards like Buffet or George Soros who have had only one lifetime to perfect their investment skills. I especially admire them for all the good they have done with their philanthropy.
These past few years I have spent half the summer on the beaches of Fire Island. Although I could easily afford the prices in Fire Island Pines, I stay at the hotel I own on the eastern edge of the hamlet of Cherry Grove. It overlooks the Great South Bay on the inland side of the island. I dock my sailboat there. The public beach there is clothing optional, always a plus for a shameless show off like me. I can be found there almost everyday, entirely nude, running in the early hours of the morning just after dawn, later in the day swimming, sunning myself, or riding a surfboard in the low waves that crash ashore. I also like to take friends sailing and fishing on my ketch 'Mer Boy' in the Great South Bay. If I am in the mood, I will even cook the catch of the day using centuries old recipes.
Just east of the boardwalk from my beach house is the notorious wooded cruising area called the Meat Rack. Fire Island Pines lies on the other side of it, so it serves both communities. Not that I ever haunt its pathways -- at least not these days. It just makes sense to be careful of infectious disease. No sense pushing my luck, counting of my strange vitality and boosted immune system to protect me from the virus.
My lover Jeffrey has no classes at Pratt on Fridays, so he can come out for three day weekends just about every week. He takes the Long Island Railroad to Sayville or drives out in one of my leased cars. One reason we prefer Cherry Grove is that the crowd in the Grove tends to be younger and livelier than in the more staid Pines. The kids know all the latest dances too. I love to dance, especially with a lover. It is so sensual and erotic. Dancing, as a wise man once said, is a vertical expression of a horizontal intention.
Although only the beach itself is clothing optional, I never wear anything on the walk down the boardwalk to the sands whether to go swimming, to play volleyball or to toss a frisbee or when I go for a run along the beach. These sports not only keep me fit and healthy, they appeal to the exhibitionist side of my nature. Few sports are better suited for displaying a youthful male's athleticism and raw animal appeal. So my trim bronzed physique is a familiar sight along the beach, and I play to an appreciative audience. Evenings I can be seen parading around in a sarong slung low around my hips as Jeffrey and I visit other beach houses for parties or dinner or go dancing at the clubs.
Of course, we are careful to spritz ourselves with insect repellent against the pestiferous mosquitos which come out at dusk. A sarong is open at the bottom, so I have to spray my entire nude body before wrapping the sarong about my hips. It is not the itching and scratching that bothers me about mosquitos. My system shrugs off their bites. It is mostly psychological. Biting and stinging bugs offend my sense of order for failing to concede that humanity is rightfully at the top of the food chain. I hate it when I smash one on my arm and it leaves behind a smear of my blood. How dare they, these creatures, these insufferable invertebrates bleed me, feed on me, a human being. (And don't get me started on leeches.)
As a blond, stinging and biting insects target me less than others like Jeffrey, poor kid. How can I explain to him that as part of my extraordinary vitality, my skin heals so quickly that it is just so less sensitive to bug bites. Many contact irritants like the chemical urishiol in poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac have no effect at all. (About fifteen percent of the population is completely immune to that kind of contact dermatitis, so I am not unique.) This is quite handy on a hike in the woods, especially when it is not just my arms and legs that are bare but my entire body.
Still immunity or no, mosquitos still hover about, droning and buzzing as they circle around. My beach house is well screened, believe me and the back deck is enclosed in a lanai. Recently I have installed electronic repellers. Did you know that you can get an application for the iPhone that emits an ultrasonic sound that drives skeeters away. Works pretty well too during strolls along the boardwalks, though Apple really has to extend the battery life, in my humble opinion. (Disclaimer: I own a considerable block of shares in Apple.)
Only recently could I write of these things, choosing, from caution, to cast them as fiction, a series of fanciful tales of an immortal youth written under a pseudonym. My secret is safe for no one in these days of modern science will believe it. In this tale, all of the names are real. The events described really did happen just as I have written.