Where hemophiliacs are a never ending dessert tray.
Sometimes on late winter afternoons, there’s a certain slant of light that falls across the cinnamon trees and takes me to The Pride–his cabin–his bed. The years disappear and once more I am the recently rescued teen standing in his cabin waiting for him to decide my fate. Even now after all this time, I have to choke down the bile when I remember my fear, a fear I now know was unfounded. Captain Jack might have been the best known buccaneer on the Spanish Main, but I had never heard of this Englishman and his deeds. I was French born.
As usual, my friend, I tell my tale far too quickly and forget that you, dear reader, do not yet know it. To begin at the beginning rather than the end, I was born to one of the provincial families in France. We might have been of good name and nobles of the sword once, but now we had only a small parcel of land and great debt to call our own. Some years after I left the castle, I heard that some of Mamere’s jewels had joined with those of the good Florentine women to decorate His Holiness’ papier-maché tiara, but of course it was through the pawn broker not family generosity or their overwhelming sense of Catholic awe. With mouths to feed and our ancestral land at stake, I was sold to an Arab trader before I saw my first decade. He taught me the urbane and sophisticated ways I would need to become a master at my trade in the pleasure houses for which I was destined. I was sold from one brothel to the next–a noble by birth, poor by the throw of the dice, and accomplished in pleasure–a commodity traded like spice or silk–as precious and as expendible. I had taken the Arab’s tuition to heart. I plied my trade well with a smile on my face and developed a deep throated groan of pleasure that belied my years, and an eye for the franc, pound, drachma, or doubloon.
“You are a gift from Heaven,” the Cardinal declared. Then he vested for Maundy Thursday’s Mass. I made my way to out of the church and back to the house. I had learned my part and learned it well. He bought me the next day, and I spent a year living in his house. Sometimes, I spent the day in the confessional with him. I learned many of the sins of rich and powerful, and I could have made my fortunes peddling their secrets. But I reasoned if the penitents knew what was happening as they told him their sins, they would have stoned us both in the sanctuary–with a papal blessing I’m sure. It was rumored his holiness has his own pleasure boy, but I cannot say for certain. Rumors are as common as whores and I learned even before the Arab never to pay them mind. I still wear the ruby ring His Eminence gave me–first I wore it on a chain around my neck. Now that I have grown and it fits my finger, it never leaves. The other hand bears the diamond ring from Captain Jack put there lovingly one day in Vienna. Again dear reader, I entreat your indulgence with me. I am ahead of myself again. But that is how one’s memory runs ne c’est pas? It’s not one straight shot like a ball from the cannon; it flows haphazardly a river overflowing its banks. At last however, the Cardinal set his sights on his own tiarra, and I, now both a liability and an asset, was sold, with great sadness he assured me, to the captain of Le Souricier.
I’d been blessed with fair, pale skin, flame red hair, and eyes green as emeralds–yet another reason I could easily be sold and bought. We gingers are considered to be void of Soul. I’ll let God, or Allah, or Whoever worry after my soul. I played the lot I was cast. “Allea iacta est,”and I cross the Rubicon. Men loved me, and Mon Capitaine was no different. I was a prize to him a trophy for his bed. He intended to sell me I’m sure, but for now, I was a French noble groaning with delight at his touch and writhing in faux pleasure from his kiss. Never mind that I was no less his property than the Spanish victims of the Asiento taken from the ports of Sierra Leone to work the mines and sugar fields in the new world. His ship was no slaver, and he didn’t consider me his slave–his property yes, his slave no. I fail to see the difference. Chattel is chattel.
On the night a storm lit the sky with a blaze of light and a rattle of the heaven. I lay in his arms and he played with the gold rings that ran through my nipples in a prelude to giving himself pleasure with my body. The storm was of such strength when it fell full on us that we all felt destined to explore the bottom of the Sargasso Sea. We pitched back and forth wave unto wave until in the end we were broken up like some toy left in the gutter after a spring rain. I grabbed hold of the desk in his cabin and managed to stay afloat. For that night and the next day I clung to that damned desk not for my life, or the soul I am told I do not possess, but merely because I could not fathom giving up. I would not die here easily. I’d fought too hard to give in now. My life would have to be ripped from my body. I lost consciousness and dreamed that I was a dolphin able to negotiate the seas with ease. When I awoke, I was on a beach. I didn’t know how I got there. Perhaps Apollo saw me as work saving and sent one of his dolphins to rescue me. I didn’t know where this atoll was. I didn’t even know that it was an atoll until later when the men took me to their ship, but again I race too quickly. I was naked. I was beaten. I was bruised. I was dazed and confused. I wandered up the coast of what I now know was an island. There was a group of men taking fruits and water into a small boat. Off a ways was the ship. I hollered for them in my native French. They pulled their guns on me.
Having passed through some of the best whorehouses in Europe, I learned to speak a many languages: my native French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, English, and from His Eminence Latin. I get food from the Arabs, and I read Aristotle in his native tongue. I was a learned trollop after all. I went through every language at my command. Finally, they understood my English. I explained what happened. They knew of no storm. Well, perhaps providence placed me with them. As I said, I was naked except for the rings in my nipples, earlobes, and the Cardinal’s ring–no my ring–around my neck. They took pity on me, and put in the boat. I would go to the ship to meet their Captain. It was his ship, and they had signed on to work with him in an adventure. It was what I would now call democratic, this crew, but at that time I had neither the word nor the concept. They seemed happy with their captain. He might let me stay depending on what talents I could bring. They told me. Should I tell them that I could dance like a courtesan from the East, or that I could give the best fellatio west of Constantinople? Had they need for these things on their ship? I did not know. For now, they were my salvation, and their Captain Jack was my judge and my executioner.
I was sat in a room naked with only my jewels to my name. A brief knock came to the door as it opened and a boy about my age stepped in. “I was sent to help you get ready to meet Captain Jack when he returns. They call me Sir Luke, but I’m no knight,” he said. I looked at him. His dark hair, swarthy skin, and brown eyes were in such contrast to mine that I was taken aback. I had seen skin tanned by toil in the Sun before; those men could never afford the prices I commanded, but for some reason this dark and frail boy fascinated me.
“They said you were on the island.”
“I got there somehow after the ship sank,” I told him.
“Going to make your fortunes?”
“Owned by the captain,” I said blythely.
“Owned? People shouldn’t own people.” He looked at me with some mixture of pity and disgust.
“I was probably bound for another whorehouse. It is my life. I know of no other.”
“I ran away from a whorehouse too,” he said. “But enough of that, stand up. We’ll get you bathed.” I stood from my seat. He gasped aloud. “You’ve still got ‘em,” he exclaimed.
“Got what?”
“You’re balls. How’d you keep ‘em?” I understood him instantly. Most of the whore-boys were castrated to keep them boy-like for as long as possible. That was why he fascinated me. He was rather girlish looking. “I think some of the men wanted to raise me to service them,” I managed to say. In truth, I had always been the one taking it. I had only penetrated once. It was with one of the mates on the ship from which the sea had taken me. He offered me gold coins from the Papal States to do to him what had always been done to me. The pleasure I took outweighed those coins now lost at the bottom of the sea. Silently Sir Luke guided me into a wooden vat and called out to some unseen companions.
“I’m going to be raped before they kill me,” I thought. I was ready for way the die fell. My fears were soon abated, for it was merely some of the crew with buckets of hot water. They dumped it over me and into the vat. It penetrated my muscles like strong wine penetrates the senses. I hadn’t realized how much I hurt. My fair skin had burned under the tropical Sun, and my hair was a tangle. The men retreated and Sir Luke took off his shirt then his shoes. “Go on sit down,” he gently commanded. He washed my hair and began on my shoulders and down my back. He came around front and washed my chest and down my arms. I moaned with pleasure. He ignored me and continued his ministrations. He motioned for me to stand up. He tended to my legs next. I looked down and saw that the water was filthy and full of sand. Next he had me sit on the edge of the vat and he washed my feet. Over the years, I had been well treated–as well treated as he had been abused. He might be fine now, but I could see scars and a slight limp to his gait. No, I didn’t pity this boy. He had gotten away. I pitied those still left behind. The girls who would have their babies sold, the boys who would die at the hands of some master. The ones who survived would be turned out to beg when they were too old to earn their keep. I reached out and hugged Sir Luke not to comfort him, but to take comfort from him. He hugged me back.
“Come now, let’s finish”, he told me. I could feel the blood just starting to rush to my member as he continued bathing me. Next he sat me into the cooling water did my hands as he’d done my feet. The door opened and more hot water came in to be added to the vat. He reached under the water and found my cock. It was hard in his hands, and he washed it slowly, deliberately, professionally. I came close to orgasm but never threw it out. Sir Luke plied his trade well.
I was out of the water and standing on the floor with a puddle forming at my feet while he dried me. “You’re skin’s not used to the Sun,” he said. He bade me lay on the table after he covered it with a sheet. He pulled a bottle of oil from his pants. “It keeps it warm,” he said. He’d been well taught, I have to say that. With all my talents and teaching, I would have never thought of doing that. He poured the oil on my body and worked it into my skin. I’d had this before many times–usually before being taken market. They want to make you look your best. He took extra time with my feet. I think they fascinated him. “Come on, let’s get you turned over,” He rubbed the oil into my chest and worked it deep into my stomach. He seemed to be ignoring my member as it increased in size. He slid his hands onto one thigh then the other. I could feel the blood racing through my groin and the foreskin begin to pull back. “You seem to be enjoying this,” he said. I groaned wit real pleasure this time. Slyly his thumb slid up my ass. He worked it gently. It felt like nothing I’d felt before. Next his mouth was on my penis. He gave me his best. His dark hair against the copper of my pubes was almost more than I could stand. Again before I could die the little death, he pulled away and stood up. “Can’t let you go that quickly…What’s your name, Mate?”
That wasn’t an easy question. My name changed often over the years (sometimes over the course of a night) it was usually at the pleasure of the person paying to call me what he liked. Finally I chose what the Arab had called me “Amaras, you can call me Amaras,” I told him. He repeated it, got used to it on his tongue. The sound of my name in his mouth was more than I could stand. I pulled him to me and kissed him deeply not like some buyer who’d put a florin in my hand but like a lover. It was a deep kiss filled with a passion I’d never know before. Maybe it was the kindness he’d given me. I’m not sure. I kissed my way down his torso and began pulling at his pants.
“Amaras don’t,” he knew where I was going. I did not listen. I pulled his pants down. Sure enough, he had no balls, but his penis was still there. Sometime they take that away too in an effort to make you more like a woman. “I’m not like you’re used to,” he pleaded. I didn’t care. I took him in my mouth anyway. He was still a man. Plaisir is pleasure. He would still feel good even if it was different from the men with the gold. The difference excited me. He groaned. You can fool a customer but you can’t fool another whore. I stopped. “No damn you go on,” he groaned at me. My skills were now coming into play. I laid him down and spread his legs. I stuck my tongue in his ass and heard him groan again. “Fuck me,” he ordered.
I worked my mouth some more on his cock, and licked and nipped my way back up his torso then to his mouth. Now was the time. I thrust deep into him. He let out a little cry. That’s another thing I’ve been blessed with–a man’s dick of good length and girth. When I finished, we were sweaty our hearts pounding. We collapsed on the floor in a heap wrapped in each other’s arms.
“Come on Amaras we can go to my bed and sleep.” I needed to sleep. We literally stumbled to his cabin and fell into his bed. It was strange to lay in bed with someone who and expect neither payment or reward for it. I slept the sleep of the angels. Sometime in the night a bang came at the door. “Sir Luke, is the castaway with you?” Luke opened the door to his little room and answered that was. “Cap’n wants to see ‘im.” I heard the footsteps retreat. Luke’s room was very small. There was barely enough room for him to stand between the bed and the wall, and the door opened out onto the deck because there wasn’t enough room for it to open in. He fussed because I had no clothes to put on. Having spent so much of my life naked it didn’t bother me to parade anyplace wearing only my jewels and what God gave me. I said I would go meet his captain as I’d come to the ship. It was no use arguing with me, so he let me be. He did brush my hair into place, but that was all I’d allow before he took me to my fate.
Captain Jack wasn’t in his cabin when we arrived, but one of the shipmates said that he’d left instructions for us to wait for him. Then he left us. The cabin was fine, but it lacked the opulence I’d seen on my last ship. One thing did out shine the other and that was the captain’s desk made of a polished black wood and was polished enough to use as a mirror, and a large feather bed big enough for three (it was even better than the Cardinal’s). The walls were paneled in some dark wood–not as dark as the desk though. There were oil lamps on the walls, and where Sir Luke’s cabin was small this one was large; it even had a table and chairs so the captain could be served his meals here. Suddenly I was scared. The red wisps of hair stood up on my arms, and I felt the bile rise in my throat. What if I were marooned with nothing but a flask of water? They did that to people sometimes. Even I had heard those tales. If you were lucky they gave you a pistol and the means to put a ball in your head to get it over with. There were other horrible things they could do to me as well. What if I ended up a eunuch like Sir Luke? I’d grown accustomed to my set over the years after all. Sensing my worry, Sir Luke said to me “You’ve nothing to fear Amaras, Captain Jack’s a good man.”
“And a fair one,” boomed a baritone voice as the door opened. In stepped a man that I might have seen on the streets of any city in Europe. Even without the jewel heels on his shoes, he would be a tall man. His long blonde hair was arranged in the fashion of the cities and tied with a black velvet ribbon. His clothes were of the latest mode. Seeing the surprise that must be evident on my face he said, “don’t worry I’m only a dandy on dry land. I’ve not had a chance to change into my sea clothes,” he said. “It looks like you haven’t had a chance to change at all.”
“I come in all I have,” I answered as my emerald green eyes meet his sapphire blue ones. Usually I am hard and calculating when I meet someone. After all, it’s either a new master or a new customer. This was different. My heart melted, and I knew that all my life had led me to this one point. It was not lust. I knew too much of that and what it felt like and how to deal with it. I was in love. I saw the two of us naked on that bed–our motions transmitting through the ship and rocking in time with our motions. It became visible to Captain Jack as well.
“Sir Luke will help you find some suitable clothing,” he told me. And then I could tell by the expression on his face that he remembered something unpleasant he had to do. The kindness on his face vanished and he looked at Sir Luke with barely contained anger. “And as to you Sir Luke, if you sell yourself to another member of the crew, it will be Mofoe’s Law for you.” I later learned that Mofoe’s Law is forty lashes, lacking one, on the bareback. “Give yourself away to every man on the ship if you like, but you’re not here to sell your assets. You abandoned that life before it ruined you. Remember that if you forget everything else.” As far as I know, to this day Sir Luke has remained true to that order. Next Captain Jack questioned me about my past and my family. It seemed endless. He dismissed Sir Luke and bade him find me suitable pants. He motioned for me to sit down and poured a glass of rum. I was surprised when he handed it to me and poured another for himself. I was used to wines, brandies, and the liquors of nobility, but this drink was new to me. It was curiously strong and warming, but it brought me to my senses somehow. He explained to me about his own family. Like me, Captain Jack came from a noble family–as wealthy as mine was indigent. This was not the average buccaneer ship. We were the Robin Hood of the Sea. The Pride sailed the sea robbing from the rich, setting the enslaved free, and heading back to the ports of Europe where a share of the gold would be distributed to the poor. Let the girls in their veils take bread to the garrets in Paris. We took gold to the poor wherever they were. “You must learn to fight,” he told me. “Every person on this ship must be able to fire a gun and use a sword to defend himself if nothing more. There’s no room for one who cannot or will not..” He need not say more.
The rum went to my head, and my second night on the ship was spent passed out in the captain’s bed. When I woke the next day he laughed at my headache and had a pair of pants for me to put on. “These will do you for now,” he said watching me pull them on. They were too long, and he took his knife and cut them to a length that I wouldn’t trip over. The coiffure was gone, the leather patch on his cheek discarded, and he was more handsome as a would be cutthroat than the fine gentleman of court. “Go find some food then report back here. Your sword training begins today.”
He kept his word and personally taught me to use the sword and the pistol and the flintlocks. Thomas showed me how to ready the cannons, and others taught me about the sails, or how to figure provisions for a voyage. While my brain reeled and my body ached from the learning, something else happened. I began to see, and to feel the ache of, muscles forming. Here to fore I had been pampered–an exotic pet to be doted on. Never had I lifted more than my ankles in the air. Now I was running the deck with sacks of rice, and fighting with a sword, and raising sails. My skin took on freckles but never browned.
I continued to sleep in Sir Luke’s room, but never again did he play my whore. He watched me pleasure myself from time to time, but that was the extent of our intimacy together. We did become close friends. “Can you read,” he asked me one night as he lay beside me. I sat up and looked at his face in the moonlight that came through the opened door. I’d been taught and had been able to keep the skill. “Can you teach me?” Captain Jack allowed me a book from his shelf on the condition that I teach others as well.
There were raids on other ships, bounty earned, ports visited, and new adventures for me almost daily. No man on the ship advanced to me. They taught me to work and just as importantly to have fun. Except with the Cardinal, my owners had kept me from sight and the brothels are always in the part of town where decent men deny going. With the Cardinal, I was easily considered his protege one who would be taught from a master before going to my formal education. So while I’d learned much on land about how to be kept and those things that I could read in books, on the seas I learned to be myself, and if that meant that I was held in no man’s arms, I didn’t complain. For the first time in my life I was more than chattel with no purpose beyond the farthing and the next master of my bed. I had earned gold too–and this time without fake grunts, false smiles, and calloused shoulders.
One night while showing me to read the stars and chart a course Jack spoke to me in a tone I’d rarely heard. “I’ve never had a taste for women,” Captain Jack told me. His older brother had dutifully married and produced both an heir and a spare in rapid succession, so there had been no need for him to live a life he didn’t want. The sea gave him, and his shipmates, the freedom to be who they were. Some liked women, others preferred the embrace of a man, and others desired both. In fact some of the men actually shared a wife back on the Land. My eyebrows knitted together, and I looked at him with astonishment. He then explained matelotage to me. On the ship they lived as a married couple. One would inherit what the other had if he died.
I looked into his eyes, and wondered at the man behind them. He’d always treated me with a deference–a kindness more so–that one of my station in life might not expect. Now that I think on it, he treated me as a man to the manner born, not some tosspot from the dung heap. Even with the prices I commanded, that’s all I had ever been really–even to my own parents. I was something bought–something sold. A commodity for pleasure. I danced and smiled on command and when they were finished for the moment it was be good and put away out of sight. For a fuck for a frank call Amaras.
Jack leaned in and kissed me–tenderly, gingerly at first as though I might reject him. When instead of rejecting him my will soul transpired at every pour with instant fires, he became an amorous bird of prey. I was shocked–pleasantly shocked. I wanted this. No, I wanted more than this. I wanted it all. I wanted to give him a pleasure he’d never felt, and I wanted him to push me to something I had never known, a general affection for the one fucking me. With a skillful hand, jack pull my pants from me. And his hand caressed and toyed with me. He smelled of cinnamon. That is why I make my home here among the crop, that smell will always be Jack to me. He kissed his way down my throat and his tongue toyed with the rings in my nipples. I arched, ready to begin the ritual that would lead to the Pleasure of the Night. “Not here. Not like this,” he whispered in my ears. He picked me up in his arms and carried me to his cabin. The door was open. Maybe he’d planned this somehow. I did not know his intent, and I did not care. He put me on the bed and kissed me again. “You may have bedded half the lords of Europe, but tonight you are again a virgin,” he said. Before I could respond, his mouth was on mine. He fondled me until I was ready to explode. I might have been the whore, but he was the expert at pleasure. My tricks were child’s play to what he could do. He literally ripped my pants off and took me in his mouth. Almost instantly, I filled it with my juices. He swallowed and laughed at me. “I’ve been waiting to have you since I first saw you. Tonight you’re mine,” he told me.
“Tomorrow too if you want me,” I said.
“No, my little red wolf, only if you still want me.” He stood from the bed and turned. I made a sobbing sound, for I thought he was done, but the night was just beginning. He stripped for me–he had to have learned that in the brothels. I watched as he peeled of his layers of mask. He was everything a whore could want–tall, strong, hung like a horse, and able to fuck from dusk til dawn. He shoved his tongue in my mouth, once more and fondled me as he darted it in and out playing a child’s game of tag with mine. His tongue mimicked with my mouth what his cock would do with my ass later. With his mouth on my member, he played with my hole putting his thumb in it before reaching under the bed for a bottle of oil. He slid into me like he was afraid I might cry out. I did but from the pure pleasure he gave me. When we were exhausted, he pulled me into his embrace and we slept.
Since coming to the ship, I had worn nothing but those knife altered pants I had been given. They were now lost somewhere in the night, and once again I roamed the ship unncumbered. I was easy access for Jack. They were replaced with another pair as ill fitted and in as poor a shape as the first. This time, they were too short and needed no knife to alter the length. I prized these workman’s pants that were better than the silk, satin, velvet, and furs I’d been wrapped in most of my life. Now, I was not different than most men. I put in a day’s work and earned a share of the rewards. Maybe in a port sometime I could find more suitable clothes, but here on the waters, I was dressed as I pleased. Some days I chose not to dress at all.
The next morning in the full light of the Sun, I did still want him, and again that night as the Full Moon lit our lovemaking on the deck I wanted him.
He’s been dead ten years, and I want him still. He was my captain. No, he is and always will be my captain. I was with him as the fever broke and took him away. I was there in that cold, rainy church yard when they lowered him into the colder British ground. The Pride was mine now, and I sailed the seas playing the nautical Robin Hood. I might have stood at the helm, but Jack was still in charge.
It could not last though. For two years we sailed. Then I found this place with the warmth, and the river, and the cinnamon trees. I left the sea behind like I had the whorehouse. Sir Luke is with me still–a friend always. He never found a mate of his own (though he joined me and Jack in bed a time or two), and after Jack, no one could ever compare. The five years in his bed were the happiest I ever spent. With life both ahead of and behind me, who knows what more will come? Sir Luke plans to write the tale of The Pride and Captain Jack. He wants to add Le Petit Lupe Rouge. I told him to leave me out. I’ll tell my own one day.
Jack struck me once. Not long after he made me his own I called myself a whore as we ate our evening meal. The blow was hard, fast, and unexpected. Tears welled in my eyes more from the embarrassment than the physical pain. “You’re not a whore. You’re one of us un frere de la côte. Never forget it. Ever.” He followed it with a hug–not a sexual one a hug of kindness, compassion, fraternity, and love. “I took a virgin to my bed that night,” his hot breath blew into my ear and set me ablaze with desire. It was one he quenched.
And so, that is my tale. The World has much changed since I came. I suppose it will change even more before I leave. When I die the ring from the Cardinal will go to another hand, but the one from Jack will go with me to Heaven or to Hell. As long as I have it, I can face whatever eternity holds, for I know at the end of the trail Jack will be waiting for me.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
