Chapter 3: Damian, On the Sea Off the West African Coast

Life was changing so quickly for me, I thought. I was standing by the rail of our great sailing vessel as we floated down the African coast to round the Horn and cross the Indian Ocean to our plantation home in Malaya—to the home where I had been told I had spent my earlier life but that I could barely remember. We had put in at the Azores for a rest and reprovisioning, where there had been almost a complete change of crew, and where my new friend, Antonio, a second mate and quite a strong and capable man of the world, had joined the voyage. And now we were scuttling down the African coast. I was exhilarated, moving toward the adventurous unknown in so many aspects of my life.

I was watching Antonio driving the men on the lanyards in setting the sails properly to coax maximum speed out of the vessel. He was not one to just stand and bellow directions and insults. He, like the younger sailors, was stripped to the waist and showing them what he wanted. He was such a romantic figure, strongly built, heavily muscled, not an ounce of fat on him. And not a wasted movement either. His muscles bulging and contracting as he effortlessly performed maneuvers that made the younger sailors look clownishly clumsy, and the tattoos that covered his chest and arms dancing as he worked.

And he had taken an interest in me. I’d even been overhead, with him showing me some of the fundamentals in setting sail, although Jane had declared that I was not to go farther up into the sparring than just the first level of spars.

My thoughts during this voyage, after Antonio came aboard and took an interest in me, were that I wanted to become a sailor and voyage freely around the world as well. Antonio was all smiles and compliments and special attention to me. And I wanted to sail with Antonio and be his friend—no, more than his friend. I wanted to trace that tattooing on his chest with my fingers and lips as he joined his body to mine in what the poetry had promised me was paradise.

I didn’t mind Summerville School at all. I was very happy there, and the other boys at school were very nice to me, especially after my parents had died in the car crash. The older boys, in particular, were very friendly. They were attentive to me and comforted me. They gave me pleasure and made me feel alive when the deaths of my parents had depressed me so, and the school itself was so dreary and old fashioned and strict.

And my tutor, Mr. Thorpe, took me to heaven when he comforted me.

But Antonio opened up a whole new, exotic world to me of possibilities and pleasures to pursue.

My parents’ deaths came at a time when I was just finding awakenings and new sensations with my body. Initially, I experimented with these awakenings myself and found what I suppose all boys of my age found in the pleasures I could give myself.

At first I thought it was just me, but then I began to notice that it was the other boys too. And the older of these, the top-form boys who were men already, of course, in comforting me, began to show me that even more pleasure could be had by not doing it alone. They showed me how sweet kissing and embracing could be and then the added pleasure when a youth other than me took me in his hand and fondled me until my pleasure overflowed.

And they wrote poetry to me on what more was out there, just waiting for me, if I wished it. It was all so romantic.

Then there was the day that Mr. Thorpe bound me and mounted and penetrated me, and fucked me to heaven. After that the older boys would come to me at night and, one after the other, would do what they would with me. They didn’t do anything I didn’t want them too, though.

Not more than two weeks later, I was called into Headmaster’s office, and my sister, Jane, and Uncle Jim, were there with the headmaster. And I found out that Jane and Uncle Jim—who I no longer could call that now, of course—were getting married and we were all sailing out to Malaya for a new life, and wasn’t that wonderful?

It wasn’t really wonderful at the time, I didn’t think. I was happy with James Feathergill being Uncle Jim—in fact I liked Uncle Jim a lot. He’d always been very kind and loving to me. I used to sit on his lap by the fire when he visited my family on weekends in the country, and he smelled of tobacco and he hugged me so close and I always felt safe and tingly when he did that. He was like my father in that regard—they both touched me in a special way that made me feel special. I would have to think of Jim in a whole new way now that he would be my brother-in-law. And once I’d started looking at him in a new way, he still made me feel warm and content. But in other ways than when I was a child. I tried not to think too hard on that, though.

So, I wasn’t all that happy leaving Summerville or while we were preparing for Jane’s wedding, or even on the sail out from Southampton down the coast of France.

But that all changed when we put into the Azores and Antonio joined the ship. After that I found life so romantic and filling, and I felt all warm and tingly inside again—somewhat like I had felt when my father or Uncle Jim had taken me to their laps in front of the fire, but much more intense—and more fire.

Our rounding of the Horn was a rough one, as I was told was typical. We were beset by a gale at night, and the ship tossed and groaned and I grew afraid that it would split apart. I was in a single cabin near the crew’s quarters, well away from the stateroom Jane and Jim occupied.

I was afraid during the night of the gale, and all I wanted was the comfort of my family. Or I thought that was all that I wanted. I left my cabin, barefoot and in only my sleeping skivvies because of the heat at this latitude, and I headed for my sister’s stateroom, on the deck above mine. I was at the ladder, though, when Antonio came out of his cabin close by. He was no more dressed than I was, and he looked magnificent—all power and graceful movement and undulating tattoos.