Clouds over Antibes

Paoli had said that the American was prostituting himself across Europe to men, seeking to race ahead of the onslaught of the war in Europe to make it back to the United States before the Americans dropped their neutrality and Danforth had become an enemy alien. Paoli had also said that the handsome young blond was a superb fuck for a man who had the money to afford him.

For what Gunter saw in the American, he either would find the money--he had been working at Abram Monteux's tailor shop and haberdashery, treating it as just another acting role and doing quite well at it, and he had a little money to use--or he'd try to seduce the handsome blond. He would, of course, try to charm the pants off the American just as another member of the Oscar's club, the British writer, Mark Standish, had been trying to do when Louis had coaxed him up to this room that Maurice, the innkeeper, and himself a member of the club, made available to his fellow international set "Greek" lifestyle comrades in Antibes.

Tristian was there, at Oscar's, this night, as he naturally would be, as he served as waiter for the group as well as a submissive for them, like Louis. The rest of the regulars were there too, in addition to Maurice Gagnon, Mark Standish, Mateo Paoli, and Gunter himself, who had been the newest addition until the American had shown up to add to the ranks of submissives. The local resident French artist, Jean-Paul Jardienne; an old Spanish general, Juan del Campo, who sat looking morose; and the priest, Père Bernard, speaking in low tones with the Spaniard, were also in attendance.

Gunter finished with Louis as quickly as he could, hoping this would stop the young transvestite from hanging on him so much that evening so that Gunter could return to Oscar's and make a play for the American, Brent, who had been sharing looks of interest with him. Louis took Gunter's vigor and forcefulness as the inability to resist the transvestite's charms. But when Gunter was done, leaving Louis panting and preening and admiring his debauched self in the mirror, he rolled over the side of the bed opposite of where Louis was admiring himself in the mirror and lit up a Gauloises. After a few puffs on the cigarette, he let out a stream of smoke, grunted, and stumbled out in the hall to go to the communal bathroom. When he went back to the porch at Oscar's, intending to pursue a hookup with the guy Paoli had brought in from the marina, the American was gone.

The Englishmen, who had been sitting on the side of the American away from the Italian, Paoli, while both worked on seducing Danforth was still there. Paoli was gone.

"So, you lost out to the Italian," Gunter said. "It wasn't enough for Paoli to cover him through the afternoon on his boat, I suppose. The Italian does have deeper pockets than I do, but I thought you stood a good chance. As I'm sure you know, I'm interested as well. But did I hear the American say he was interested in writing? I thought that would be enough for you to win--by telling him about the novel you're writing."

Standish laughed. "Talking writing was working well, yes, but the American's choice is more shocking than that."

"How so?"

"Maurice slipped in with his offers of free drinks and access to a room at the inn."

"So, the prostitute has gone off with Maurice. But, no, I see Maurice right over there."

"Maurice asked the American to go with Del Campo tonight, and he's done so."

"The old general?" Gunter asked, with a snort. "What a waste of prime man flesh."

"Juan is leaving tomorrow--finally. An oil freighter is taking him to Morocco. Maurice wanted to give him a good sendoff."

"Shit."

"It's not all a loss, though. I have invited the American to come out to my beach villa to swim in the sea someday soon. You live here in town, so I've suggested that you breakfast with him here at the inn and bring him out on bicycles."

"You are suggesting we share him?"

"We both enjoy doing that, sharing young men. We share Louis."

"And in return...?"

"You can pay my share of his fee."

And that's how the young, blond American, Brent Danforth, floating into Antibes en route, he hoped, to get home to America ahead of the storm clouds was introduced to two key members of the Oscar's gay men's club, Gunter and Mark, in the summer of 1940, two months after the Germans occupied northern France and the toothless Vichy government took over control of the southern French region. It was also what led both Gunter and Brent to consider prolonging their stay in Antibes longer than was safe for them.

Gunter guided Brent out to Mark's seaside villa a few mornings later on bicycles. Louis was still clutching Gunter so close that he came along as well.

The four of them went directly into the sea, Brent swimming out strongly into the sea, while the other three lingered, playing intimacy games just outside the surf zone. Brent came out of the sea to stretch out on a towel to watch the other three cavort. To show Brent what they wanted from him and to put him into a mood, Gunter and Mark shared Louis, putting him between them, as they stood in water above their waists, and shared a penetration and mutual taking of the young transvestite. Squealing with delight at the attention, Louis writhed between them, in glorious pain-passion.

When it came time for Gunter and Mark to come on the beach to where Brent sat, they indicated that they wanted to share him as well, and he let them.

Brent now solidly was in the Oscar's gay men's club, but, threateningly, the three men, momentarily displaced where the Nazi storm clouds of occupation were forming, had found a reason not to want to leave Antibes.

* * * *

Much as Gunter was reconsidering not wanting to leave Antibes now that a real honey of an American submissive had arrived, by that night he found himself on a race to the border.

While the four guys were at Mark's seaside villa enjoying each other on the beach, a roundup was going on in the town. It was being observed by Tristian Alarie from a distance, and he'd been drawn to it because one of the members of the Oscar's club, the French artist, Jean-Paul Jardienne, had been acting suspiciously, and, as a unit commander of the French Resistance in the area, Tristian was ever on the lookout for suspicious activity. In following Jardiennes, he found that the artist was informing on Jewish families that were secretly moving their wealth out of France to somewhere safer, with the intent to escape themselves.

When Gunter returned from his frolic in the sea at Mark Standish's villa and reported for work in Abram Monteux's tailor shop and haberdashery, where the Monteux family lived in expansive comfort in the two floors above the shop, he found the shop door open and the shop unattended. Looking for the family upstairs, he found they were gone and everything in disarray. If they had left willingly, they surely would have taken much of what was still here, he thought. He ran to the synagogue to find Rabbi Hershel missing as well and the synagogue deserted. Nazi swastikas were painted on the façade with red paint. Both there and at the shop neighbors tersely said, "They are gone. Armed men in troops came and took them away," and doors were shut on Gunter. Most of these neighbors appeared to be pleased.

He knew of nowhere else to go to report this than Oscar's at Maurice's inn. Maurice, Tristian, and Père Bernard were in conference there.

"It's good you weren't at the shop when the men came for the Monteuxes," Bernard said. "It's best if you leave now. You had mentioned going up into Switzerland. That's a good idea, I think."

"But I don't know how to get there. Is it safe to take the train? It's 300 kilometers to Geneva, isn't it?"

"We've already discussed it," Maurice said. "There is a car. Louis will drive you."

"Louis?"

"He insists on going with you. You can take the Abram Monteux's Citroen. He'll have no need for it now."

"But I have an appointment with Jean-Paul this evening. I'm modeling for him." Gunter was going to be doing much more than modeling for Jardiennes that evening--and he was supposed to collect a big fee from the artist, too big just to forego.

The other three men looked nervously at each other, and Tristian finally spoke up. "Jean-Paul has had an accident. He no longer is in the picture here. And if he were, he'd be the last one to tell that you are racing to the border tonight."

* * * *

They figured it would be a ten-hour drive through southeastern France to the Swiss border. Gunter's papers were in order to get into Switzerland as a political refugee. He was a well-known actor in that part of Europe, his mother was Swiss, and he'd lived off and on in Switzerland already. Louis was another matter. He had French papers, which wouldn't automatically deny him entrance into Switzerland, but you only had to look at him to know he was an element not high on the social acceptability list. At the same time, it helped qualify him as a political refugee. His kind would not fare well--at least officially--where there was German control. They decided they'd face that when they got to the border.

Louis wasn't particularly enthusiastic about leaving France at all--attitudes were quite lax, even now, on the French Riviera, and he refused to think about the cloud that was gathering from the north that brought with it quite different attitudes toward young men like Louis. What swayed him a bit to stay was that he knew transvestites like him who were in Paris--and even in Berlin--who were existing well under the protection of powerful men in the Third Reich. What the Nazis espoused in public wasn't necessarily what some of them practiced in private. He'd even heard rumors that the head of Germany's Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, was a transvestite himself. What swayed him more to go was the opportunity to be with Gunter.

Gunter drove the first leg northeast from Antibes, with Maurice driving in another car in front of them for the first eighty kilometers to get them on the correct road leading up to Geneva. But the German became weary from the tension he'd faced all the previous day, and Louis took over the driving north of Montmélian, sending Gunter to lie across the backseat of the Citroen and doze. Beyond there, the militarization of the area became pronounced and they noticed the mixing in of German markings on the military vehicles with those of the Vichy--and even some with Italian markings. They were going through a much more tension-packed and militarized area than down on the coast of the French Riviera. They were traveling in the middle of the night, with very little other activity out. As they drew ever closer to the Swiss border at Geneva, on the southwestern edge of Lake Geneva, Louis dowsed the headlights to help conceal their race for the border.

Luck ran out just north of Annecy, at the top of Lac d' Annecy, less than a distance of fifty kilometers to the Swiss border. Louis drove over the top of a hill and saw a military checkpoint on the road below them that was active. The markings on the trucks there were German. They had made it through a couple of checkpoints much earlier, but that was when Gunter had been driving and, as an actor, could manage to look calm and use his German to joke his way through. Louis turned off the motor momentarily and said, "I'm sure I can get through this pretending to be a local. I've lived in Annecy before and can drop important names here. I think you should slip out of the car, go around the roadblock on foot, and I'll meet with you on the other side. We don't have far to go now."

Gunter thought to object but then, seeing the resolve in Louis's eyes and not wanting to offend him, he opened the back door and slipped out.

Louis didn't have the ease he hoped for in getting through the checkpoint.

"Please step out of the automobile," a gruff, to-be-obeyed voice greeted him at the roadblock. Trembling, Louis complied, and when he moved into the glare of the lights, it became apparent what he was--someone to toy with if the guards were bored and randy. They were.

"Look, Rauf, this one has his nails painted. Red. You like to play dress-up do you, little one?"

"Yes, sometimes," Louis answered, not being able to deny he painted his nails.

"You dress up and give it to randy soldiers, do you?"

Louis didn't answer. There were six of them. Two of them weren't interested, so they were posted to continue manning the roadblock. Laughing and sharing obscene banter, the four other burly guards hauled the small transvestite over into the bushes at the side of the road and had their way with him.

"Does he paint his toenails too?" Rauf called out. Undressing him, they found out that he did. Taking turns, each of them fucked him while the other three held him down.

Beyond the checkpoint, Gunter waited for a couple of hours, until dawn, for Louis to meet him in the Citroen. But Louis never showed up. Eventually, Gunter gave up the vigil with a sigh, decided that Louis had been overcome by the reluctance Gunter knew he had about going to Switzerland, turned his face toward the Swiss border, and continued in the direction off to the side of the road, in the concealing foliage, on foot.

Chapter Four: The Italian Connection: Mateo Paoli

Mateo Paoli, in Antibes for his usual summer semi-vacation from his fabric manufacturing business in Milan, was sitting against the rail, facing the yacht basin marina, of the second-floor Oscar's Bar porch on a weekday afternoon, trying to figure out how he was going to discharge what was demanded of him, when the opportunity fairly fell into his lap. He'd almost missed it. As he was thinking about his dilemma, he was looking out into the marina. But he wasn't really focusing on what was happening there--that is not until he noticed the gorgeous blond hunk who popped up from one of the medium-sized cabin cruisers.

The young man was a god. He had a beautiful body, barely covered by a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. He looked around and then walked toward the quay, pausing right below the porch Paoli was sitting on. Tristian Alarie, the Oscar Bar waiter--and a submissive to Paoli and to the other dominant top men who frequented the bar at night--had been standing just below the porch, smoking a cigarette, so the Italian heard the blond god speak to him.

"Excuse me. Do you speak English?" the young man asked.

"Non, pouvez-vous parler en français?--No, you speak French maybe?"

"Je parle un peu, mais pas bien--I speak a little, but not well," the young man answered, and, indeed, his French was rudimentary. Luckily, Paoli spoke both French and English, so he had little trouble following the short conversation that followed, as it proceeded in fractured English on Tristian's side and rudimentary French on the young man's, with, happily for Paoli, a bit of Italian thrown in. He knew that Tristian spoke Italian pretty well and the American must have picked some up as he cruised around Italy in his boat.

"You are English?" Tristian asked.

"No, American. I've sailed here from Rome."

Paoli's attention perked up. He was Italian. He had been alerted of interest in the movements of foreigners here two months after the Germans invaded northern France, a puppet Vichy government was set up in the south, and his own leader, Mussolini, was making covetous sounds of Italy sweeping around to and over the French Riviera where he now was. He was here because he always liked to summer here. He hadn't come here this summer to gather information but he had suddenly become important to the Italians as an observer and informant in Antibes. He was asked, in particular, to report on the activities of Englishmen and Americans. Although he did enjoy the pleasures of covering young men, he'd only joined the group of men attending Oscar's Bar in the evening because an Englishman, a novelist by the name of Mark Standish, came there. Paoli was quite sure that Standish was some sort of British agent here.

Thus far in the few weeks Paoli had been forced into his new role as informant to Rome, Standish was the only topic he had gathered any information on. The man was suspicious. Paoli had determined he just might be an English spy. But Paoli didn't have any means yet to report back to Italy. He'd been given radio frequencies and a code book to use, but he hadn't been given a radio and he was warned not to put one in his villa. He was not to be detected as an Italian agent. He, in fact, had no interest in being an Italian spy, but the men who had visited him had made ominous references to the safety of his family back in Milan, so he had no real choice in the matter.

"Perhaps you can tell me if there is a tennis club nearby," the American was asking Tristian.

"A tennis club? Didn't I see you come off one of the boats in the marina?"

"Yes, but I need to stop here and try to earn some money for enough diesel to continue on."

"You are sailing in the Mediterranean--with what is happening in Europe--for pleasure?"

"I was," the American said. "I was taking a year off from college to travel. But now I have to try to get back to the States while that is possible. I am a tennis player. I play in tournaments and I teach it. Perhaps if there is a club nearby, I could give some lessons there."

"Yes, there is. Clay courts."

"That would be fine."

"Is that all you can do to make money?" Tristian was asking. "You are a handsome young man."

"Women here would pay for that?" the American asked.

"And men too," said Tristian, who had experience in what some men wanted from young, willowy men like Tristian.

"Am I that obvious?" the American asked. Selling his body to men had, over the last several weeks, been more of a money maker for him than the tennis lessons had been.

"To someone else who will do the same," the answer came back. They didn't say more on this, but Paoli picked up on the understanding that went between the two young men--evidently both registering as submissives to men--and this was something of great interest to Paoli as well.

And, while the two conversed below the porch about where the nearest tennis club was as well as other possibilities, Mateo Paoli was contemplating the possibilities for a solution here to his own problem. A cabin cruiser the size the American was sailing in the Mediterranean would have radio equipment. Paoli was an expert tennis player himself and now had an idea where the young man could be approached and that it could be managed through tennis. And just as important, Paoli, who was interested in covering beautiful young men, had the money to spend--money that the beautiful young American needed to continue his sail home.

Everything was coming together to make possible the task that had been set for Paoli by Mussolini's generals in Rome.

After he knew the American had gone to find the tennis club, Paoli went down to the marina and, making sure no one saw him, boarded the American's cabin cruiser. The young man hadn't locked anything up. There, on top of an inset desk between two lockers in the cabin was a radio set. And it was one Paoli knew how to operate. If he could get into a relationship with the American, he'd have access to communications back to Rome that couldn't be directly linked to him. The American needed money and Paoli had plenty of that. It sounded like the American would let himself be fucked for money. That suited the Italian as well.

* * * *

Paoli met the American, introduced to him as Brent Danforth, "by accident" on the tennis club courts.

"The club manager tells me you are giving tennis lessons. My name is Mateo Paoli, by the way. I live and work in Milan, except that, during the summers I operate from the French Riviera."

"Yes, I am here temporarily, giving lessons. Are you interested?"