Richard and Franco 01
First six months in Haiti
Gay-MM
My name is Richard. I graduated college as an accounting major with a writing minor, probably eight months ago.
Since leaving home and college in the States, I've gotten an education.
Just under a year ago, sick of cold and rain in my hometown, I decided that I wanted to be a CPA for the European Space Agency.
My parents told me that the give-and-take I had growing up so close to my best friends, and ultimately lovers, Betty and Bill had taught me empathy and that even as an only child. They said that I was never spoiled.
I now know that I was spoiled, because I got to do whatever I wanted to, and when Betty, Bill and I set out to do something, we made it happen. That stopped after college.
The ESA, as I now understand it, does their accounting in Europe, with Europeans, in inhuman white buildings with people wearing long sleeved shirts, long pants, shoes and socks and maybe, God help us, ties. Parts of Europe where the weather is the same or worse as what I wanted to get away from.
I had taken French the last half of my senior year to prepare for that dream job, which in my mind gave me mobility.
When I told my parents that I wanted to go to Haiti, I got a frightening, over-the-top lecture about condoms and AIDS. They even suggested celibacy.
Mind you, I'd always used condoms, so "celibacy" seemed awfully reactionary to my ears.
When I looked up "AIDS in Haiti", I got quite a history lesson. The short version is that it came from there. I'm not going to put the long version in a story about sex.
I did find out that things are a lot better off now than they were in the eighties, and that the advocacy work I'd done with young people would be useful there, and I went ahead and got a work visa and flew to Haiti at the end of June after graduating college.
I had spotted a cheap hotel in a poor neighborhood on the Internet, and the first thing I did in Port-Au-Prince was get a hotel room to stay in while I looked for an apartment.
The second thing I did was go to the library, get a library card, and check out Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" in French. It would be my last attempt to improve my French for a long time.
The morning of the next day I looked at job listings. Not much for "American CPA's that don't know Haitian accounting rules", but I just needed enough to get an apartment and keep the lights on, so by 11am my self-respect was as forgotten as my virginity, and by 3pm I had a job at the best hotel in town, as a dishwasher. That's the day that I learned the word "scullery".
There were others and we worked shifts, since hotel room service demands it. In a mess of English, French, Hatian creole and a couple of words new to humanity, I learned that shorts and an old tee shirt or tank top would be plenty since I'd been provided with an apron, and was I was sent to a street vendor near the hotel I was staying at to buy ugly rubber clogs. I was given a space to hang up my coat (in the tropics), and shoes. I kept my clogs there and wore flip-flops to work from then on. I also got some pointless pre-owned tee shirts and tank tops from a street vendor. If you see me wearing a shirt for some forgotten local band or a festival from six years ago, assume that I don't know what I'm advertising. My fancy Italian and Indian sandals and long white pants have been put away for a long time now.
I told the dishwasher who was showing me around that I was looking for an apartment. He made a phone call and wrote down an address. This was also close to the street vendors and the cheap hotel. I went to the address. It was only about 20 feet wide, but seemed long. It was ugly but solid and had a steel door and bars on the window, like a space capsule protected against whatever may be going on outside, which seemed prudent in this neighborhood. I knocked on the door, and Franco answered.
Franco is Spanish and a year older than me. He has an engineering degree from a college in Barcelona, and worked in the tourism industry then. Sometimes he drove a tram full of tourists and luggage, sometimes he was concierge, sometimes he was a parking valet. He didn't keep a job, quit or get fired; management kept moving him to where he was most useful at the moment, and sometimes one resort would trade him to another. Franco just shrugged and started any new job like he invented it.
Franco was paying his rent, but just making ends meet and he had an empty twin bed in an alcove. The whole house was alcoves; doorways but no doors, and it was long and narrow. Franco had a queen-sized bed near the back, by the water heater. There was a tiny middle courtyard, about eight feet deep by the width of the house, with a rectangular hole where sun, rain and whatever came in. Coming from the U.S., I'd never seen anything like it. The twin bed was smaller than what I was used to, but the space was enough for my stuff. No TV or radio, but Franco had wireless and my MacBook and library card could keep me entertained.
I agreed to half the rent and half the utilities, and we schlepped my stuff from the cheap hotel to the apartment. We got a supper of street food; Franco had never really cooked and this was just as cheap. On his advice I had one glass of rum with my supper. I'd had two drinks in my life up to that point, but I had one glass of rum each day for all of my time in Haiti.
Franco explained that though the official language is French, everybody making less than 100,000 Euros a year spoke a local Creole dialect, and I'd have to pick it up to do my shopping and get laundry done. He also explained that we didn't have a washer and dryer but he hooked me up with a family in the neighborhood that took in laundry. He also had a mother-daughter team that came in and cleaned once a month.
The next day I woke with the sun and walked around the block to get some sense of the vibe. The street vendors were mostly set up, and some greeted me in French and others in a language I didn't recognize. I went back inside, shaved and showered and then went to work.
I washed dishes for eight hours and became good at it. This happened six days a week for the next six months.
After work, Franco and I got each other's life stories while he showed me the neighborhood beyond the block I'd walked around that morning.
He did his year abroad while he was at University in Barcelona by going to Tunisia, and wanted to explore more after he got his degree.
Odd jobs seemed more plentiful than engineering jobs, and if you lived cheaply, as we were, you could even save a little. Franco liked being able to meet so many people in his jobs since he'd come to the Caribbean. He liked the festivals, the music was better here than in Tunisia, and festivals were an okay place to pick somebody up.
Franco and I had a language between us made up of chunks from English, Spanish, French, Catalan and the local Creole dialect. There were new words from none of those languages that only he and I understood. I'm writing this all down as if we were speaking English.
"What about AIDS?", I asked. Picking up somebody from a festival sounded risky.
"I use condoms, and I go and get tested about every two months".
We were a mile from the house now, and Franco pointed out a lagoon. Some kids were skinny dipping in it. "Cheaper than the YMCA. I come here once in a while, but grownups are expected to wear shorts."
I told him that I wanted to pick up my workout routine from college, and he agreed that we should try to do sit-ups and push-ups, jog here from the house and swim a couple of laps before jogging back home each morning. We had a couple of false starts because we didn't have good shoes for it, flip-flops didn't work, so we had some painful barefoot days before our feet got calloused, and after that it wasn't difficult at all.
Back to Franco showing me around. I'd told Franco about Bill and Betty but I don't think he had absorbed it. As we walked back towards the house he got the full picture, that I'd been in a long-term active bisexual relationship with them, and that for two years in college I was steady with a guy named Nick.
There was another pause while he absorbed this. Finally, as we found a place for street food and ordered our rum and whatever the special was, he told me that he'd had a jerk-off buddy in high school and had gone as far as oral in college, but his Catholic upbringing made him feel guilty about falling in love, which had seemed like a danger a couple of times. I asked him what kind of people he brought home from festivals.
Franco grinned, like he'd been caught. He said that he'd brought three girls home, two locals and one American tourist. They'd used condoms and had vaginal sex. He did have the grace to get them off first. I nodded at this. Franco then admitted that he'd brought a guy home on two different occasions, both locals. He had enjoyed oral sex with them, and had gotten tested after those encounters.
"No anal?", I asked. Franco wanted to talk about that back at the house, so we went back to the house.
Franco was interested but didn't want to get hurt. I told him what he needed to know and gave him a shopping list for a drug store closer to the resorts.
After we finished talking, we realized that we were making plans for him to experience anal sex, which meant that we must have already established some level of intimacy.
We had dropped our flip-flops as soon as we'd come inside the door. I took off my shirt and then asked him to raise his arms, and pulled his off. I pulled him into a hug so that our bare chests were in full contact, and began an open-mouthed kiss. I felt his hands massaging my shoulders. We were both hot and sweaty. I grabbed his ass cheeks, he grabbed my crotch and soon our shorts were on the floor. Now our hands were on each other's dicks.
We moved to Franco's bed and I found myself confronted by an uncircumcised penis up close for the first time. I'd seen a couple on swim team, but didn't know if I liked them. It seemed strange, so I paused for about five seconds before deciding to go for it.
Soon we were turned around so that we could sixty-nine each other. It had been a long day full of new things, and maybe being worn out made me last longer but it had been a long time since I'd been so aroused. Franco sure had no problem; his dick was hard and a bit longer than any I'd seen in years. I was turned on by the prospect of having it in my ass during the coming days.
I don't know if it was ten or fifteen minutes before we came but it felt like release from a long period of waiting, though I'd had sex with friends only about four days before back in the States, the distance and wildly different setting made it seem like longer.
I slept in my own bed that night, though I don't know why. I wonder now if Franco was sharing the bed with his Catholic guilt.
At sunrise, we did our workout, jog and swim in the lagoon.
We took quick showers and left for our respective jobs.
The kitchen staff had a small dining room, and lunch was free and good. There was a TV where we watched a French murder mystery series, "Meurtres au paradis". Somebody says that the BBC helped and that there's an English version, but I liked having to decode the French and solve a murder all over lunch. I started learning the names of my co-workers.
After work that day, Franco came home with condoms, lube and an ear syringe. I had him clean himself with the syringe before supper. When he was ready, we went to a different food stall for rum and some different street food that I couldn't pronounce. Franco seemed nervous.
Back at the house we stripped, I gave him a good solid kiss, and I just held him for about twenty minutes.
When I got up, I went to my things and produced a dildo that my friend Bill had 3D printed when we were seventeen. It was the average measurements of Bill's dick and mine back then, which seemed like a reasonable size for Franco to start with. I'm not one for sharing dildos, but this one had never been used without a condom, Franco was going to use it with a condom tonight, and I don't know where to buy a new dildo in Haiti.
I talked Franco through it as I put a condom on the dildo and put some lube on the tip. I let Franco lube his own asshole, handed him the dildo and told him it should take him five minutes, but that he could take an hour if he wanted to.
The first inch and a half seemed easy for him, then his eyes popped open and he looked like he'd found a problem.
"Back off a little, come at it again gently, and keep doing that. It won't feel like you're doing anything, but after a minute it will be easy."
Franco's eyes were focused on a blank spot on the wall, but he nodded at my words, closed his eyes and started an in-and-out effort to try to take more of the dildo in.
Less than two minutes later, his eyes popped open again, surprised, but this time he smiled.
The dildo was all the way in.
I moved so that I was sitting cross-legged on the opposite corner of the bed from him.
Franco had been on his side with his butt facing the middle of the house while he had been working the dildo. I told him to let it be for a minute while he adjusted to it.
He nodded again, closed his eyes and stayed still. After a bit over a minute, I saw that his dick got half hard and he had the look of a man having a nice dream.
"Go ahead and fuck yourself with it, jerk off if you want to. It's time to have fun with it", I said.
Franco opened his eyes half way and nodded, and started enjoying the dildo and pumping his dick.
I unfolded my legs and started on my own dick. Franco came first, and I finished a half minute later.
When I got up, I pulled the dildo from his ass, put the condom in the trash and the dildo in the kitchen sink, then I came back with tissues to clean us up.
Eventually we showered together, then I helped him change his sheets.
The next night after work, I had him fuck me, being careful not to come myself. This was difficult because his uncircumcised, long dick had turned my prostate into it's playground.
After supper, I became the first man to take Franco's ass.
I don't know how much I'd grown since I was seventeen, but it took a few minutes for me to get inside of him.
Franco had a pillow under his ass and his toes up near the headboard. He has the most expressive face of anybody I've ever had sex with.
While I was entering him, he moved between sleepy and pinched.
When I was in all the way, he looked surprised, then slowly became contented.
After he was used to me being there, I started giving him a good proper fuck, and he looked like he was actively participating, and very enthusiastic.
He was saying, "Yeah!", in three languages.
I had been fighting to hold back before supper when he fucked me, and now about fifteen minutes after I'd first entered his pucker, his half-hard dick started dribbling while his ass clamped on my dick, and it was all over for me.
I filled my condom and shoved myself as deep into him as I could. Pain might have been involved.
A few minutes, maybe ten minutes later, we cleaned up with the tissues and then shared the shower.
I barely ever slept in the twin bed after that; we tried to keep a balanced where one of us "topped" and the other "bottomed", alternating nights.
Once in a while we'd sixty-nine for variety.
Five weeks after that night we both got tested for AIDS, then again at another five weeks, of course negative both times for both of us.
After that, we stopped using condoms. That was the first time I'd barebacked, and it was a little different.
We had an explicit understanding that if either of us brought somebody home from a festival, we would go back to the condoms.
I didn't foresee that happening, but then dishwashers don't bring movie stars home for sex very often.
About my second day off, I found a local LGBT advocacy group and started volunteering to help. They didn't have a pride event and had never heard of Harvey Milk, but I helped with AIDS prevention training, counseling of high school kids and younger. That got easier over time as I picked up the local Creole dialect. In a masterpiece of irony, I was teaching young people how important condoms were at the same time that I stopped using them myself.
At this point my routine for the next six months was established.
Sit-ups, push-ups, barefoot jog and a swim at sunrise, eight hours of dishwashing, gay sex and street food.
After working with the advocacy group on days off, I learned to shop at the street market, figured out produce I'd never seen in the states, and cooked some local dishes. On days when I worked, street food was all that we had time for.
After a few months I realized that I was living cheaply enough and making enough at the hotel that I was saving a little money. That was encouraging.
Six months have passed, and right this instant, it feels like the whole world has upended itself.
My job changed, but that was minor; a dishwasher doesn't get shaken when his job changes.
The big change came in the form of something called a "Rosalie".