Clouds over Antibes

"You are studying creative writing, Mark tells me."

"Did he?" I asked, surprised. I knew that Mark would talk to Parker-Smyth about his own writing, but I was surprised that he mentioned mine as well. Parker-Smyth put a hand on the small of my back and smiled at me. I didn't move away from the hand. I didn't go to a party without the thought that someone there would fuck me. I didn't mind if it would be the host himself at this party. Mark and I arrived at parties together, but we had no expectation that we'd leave together. I allowed the back of my hand to brush down the front of Parker-Smyth's slacks, and we both knew the dance was under way.

"Yes," he continued. "Just as important, he says you are a crackerjack at typing up his manuscript drafts--at figuring out what he's meant by his chicken scratches on the margins of the previous drafts. That's in addition, of course, to the writing you're doing yourself. He's shown some of the novel you're working on now to me. Quite good writing, and you have the characters down. Very sympathetic."

I was presuming that he was making sure I was gay and submissive, although I became sure that Mark had covered all of that before we came to his party, and we seemed to be beyond that. He had pulled my shirt tail out of my trousers from behind and the hand he'd laid on the small of my back was now placed on flesh, with an index finger snaking down into my crack. I remained within his control, not shrinking from him in any way.

The novel I was writing was about the relationships in a group of gay men stranded in a paradise that was facing destruction. "Thank you. That's quite a compliment coming from an established novelist like you," I said, reaching up and stroking his cheek in a gesture that was sheer sex, acknowledging that we were doing so much more out here on his balcony than discussing writing. His index finger sank to my hole, and I rose up on the toes of my feet and widened my stance to signal permission. The finger entered me.

"How long have you been here in Tangier?" he asked.

"We came--Mark and I--at the end of August."

"So, nearly four months here, planning to go back to the States, but still here. It gets increasingly harder to make it across the Atlantic with the German U-boat threat, and yet you're still here. Mark told me you have a cabin cruiser you are determined to use for the voyage--that you refuse to abandon it here. It would seem you like it here and aren't all that keen to return to the States."

"I'm not an ambitious person, I guess," I answered. "And I'm learning valuable lessons on writing and publishing from Mark."

"I'm sure you are, but Mark tells me that he's taught you just about all he knows and that you need to soar higher. He's suggested that you come to me."

"Has he?" I asked. So, Mark and Ian have been working this out between them. That's when I was sure that Mark was trying to shuffle me on. Later, when I confronted him, he came clean.

"I'm trying to help you resettle, Brent," Mark said. "I have every reason to believe I'll be leaving here sooner than later--and that I'll be going someplace I can't take you with me. Even now, those who provide this flat to us are unhappy that you are here--that you see much of what goes on here. I don't want to draw you any further into this. It isn't safe for you to know more than you do--well, as much as you do, actually."

"Come to you for writing guidance or for more," I asked Ian out on his balcony, probing the extent of the offer being made.

"Or, certainly for more," he said, with a smile. "You know I want to lay you, I'm sure."

"Yes, of course."

"And you will lie under me?"

"Yes."

"You will come up to my bedroom now, and I will fuck you."

"Yes, if you want."

Ian wasn't finished with his pitch on the balcony. His proposal wasn't just for a casual fuck at his party, although I would have been satisfied with just that much. "I have need of a transcriptionist as much as Mark does. Mine has gotten all patriotic on me and gone off and joined the army. If you find you have a need to move from Mark, I can offer you much the same life here. You can do everything for me that you do for Mark."

"Everything?" I asked, turning my head and looking directly at him. We'd both been looking out at the sea, both aware that he was feeling me up. He put an arm around me, holding me close to him as the fingers of his other hand were moving in my passage.

"Yes. Mark and I have discussed all that you do for him. I would know, even if he hadn't, what you would do for a man from what you have written in your novel draft. I just didn't know whether you would do it for me. I'd pay, of course."

"If you're asking if you're a desirable man, yes you are," I said. "I wouldn't go with you only for the money." He was, in fact, a desirable man, if quite old for me. In his sixties, I was sure. But he had been a very handsome man, and was both commanding and elegant still, tall and in good shape for his age. Of course, I wasn't turning down is money either.

"I wouldn't be as demanding as Mark is," he added. "Shall we go upstairs now? I think the party down here can get along quite nicely without either of us."

"Mark--" I started to say.

"Mark knows all and is quite content with this."

"Well, then, yes," I answered, my thoughts being more "well, screw Mark."

I expected, of course, for Ian to screw me upstairs in his bedroom, and he did, after much effort, manage to get it in and have an ejaculation of sorts, but I could clearly see what he meant by how it would be different than it was with Mark. Ian was near the end of his sexuality. He was more talk now than ability to perform. We had met too late in life for him--and for my pleasure. Mark was still at his peak. I changed from Mark to Ian--I didn't make any fuss about that; I could see he was trying to help me adjust to a reality he couldn't fight any more than I could. But, whereas the literary partnership with Ian did, in fact, take me higher than I was reaching with Mark, our direct sex life was limited. He had trouble getting it up and keeping it up. He still enjoyed stroking me off and giving me head to a climax, but what he really enjoyed was watching me be fucked by another man. That this didn't bother me as long as the other man was good at it kept Ian and me together.

In the four years I was with Ian, he would bring guests he wanted to impress home--many of them Arabs who helped him keep his residency here--and would sit and watch them fuck me.

It was a little kinky, but it wasn't outside my realm of experience or willingness, and it became the norm until the end of the war in Europe when Ian learned he had been forgotten enough--outside of being a celebrated novelist--to be able to go home to London. I think he was somewhat surprised to realize that he wanted to go home. His health was fading; he wanted to die at home, in England, not as an outcast in northern Africa.

Fortuitously, however, I had met Ali Bakr, the owner of several newspapers, including an English-language one, and a book publisher. He was a beautiful man not more than thirty-five when we first met in 1944. Ian had brought him to the villa, seeking a publisher for one of his novels that the London publishers wouldn't touch because of content, and he'd given me to Bakr as a gift.

Ian had sat, watching, while Bakr fucked the shit out of me. Physically, Bakr was a beautiful man, and he was an expert cocksman. He really rang my chimes.

Bakr was a magnificent, all fire and power and cruel passion, big-cocked stud compared to Parker-Smyth and the other old men he brought home. He, dark, sensual, muscular, all white-toothed smile behind jet-black hirsute manliness, came in full Arab dress, slowly unbuttoning his pristine-white Arab robe to reveal his pelted naked muscularity and his proud erection. As Ian watched and brought himself to as near hardness as he could get, the stallion stripped and manipulated me, put me on my knees to take his cock in my throat, and then put me on all fours and strapped me on the buttocks as he rode me high on my hips like I was some sort of thoroughbred in a major race.

Afterward, Ian was able to mount me as well and to maintain an erection and produce an ejaculation that rivaled any he'd managed before.

* * * *

Like Mark before him, Ian had been, I found, preparing me to hand off to another man as he himself was planning to return to London to die. Bakr offered me a job writing for his English-language newspaper and offered to publish "Despite Everything" on that first night when he so fierily conquered me and left me panting and begging for more.

It became obvious that the two men had discussed this all beforehand. Both Mark and Ian left me, but they didn't abandon me. They ensured my safety in a transfer of master. I had allowed myself to become the slave of another men--of other men, in succession--but they had treated me well. In the process, though, I slowly lost my independence, increasingly submitting control to the succession of men who took me under their wings. Morocco was a traditional, patriarchal society. Bakr's offer to me was a master-slave arrangement, and I accepted it without realizing how far I'd come in being willing to be totally controlled by another man.

I had already begun working for Bakr at his English-language newspaper and my novel had reached the promotion stage in the summer of 1944, when the German retreat had been in train for two years, but I still was living with Ian while he arranged his affairs to return to London by that Christmas. I no longer was even thinking about returning to the States. Bakr was dominating me sexually, ravishing me each time we met once or twice a week, and fully satisfying my literary needs as well.

Ian had a heart attack and died in November, 1944, though, and never made it back to England. Bakr took me straight from Ian's funeral to his fortress-like compound on the desert outside Tangier and locked me in his harem. He encouraged me to write, which I did, and he published what I wrote, making me a well-selling, if mysterious author in the English-speaking world. He also, though, used me as his slave and whore, bringing men in, just as Ian had done, and letting them fuck me to provide favor chits for Bakr, me acting as a courtesan, as he watched. The difference between Bakr and Ian, though, was that Bakr himself fucked me roughly after his guests had risen from me, and I was lying there on a divan, on my back, panting, legs spread and bent, open and vulnerable to his taking. I was so steeped in writing in that period that I hardly noticed I was also imprisoned. Bakr was taking care of all of my physical needs with the added benefit of publishing what I wrote.

I was approaching thirty, though, and both Ian and Bakr had had a fetish for far younger men. In 1948, he freed me, taking on a new, young, French slave and lover, and made me publisher of his English-language newspaper, with a contract to continue publishing my novels and selling the international rights to them by bigger, European and American publishers. I was financially secure now and took over the very lush beach villa Ian had owned.

After the war, Morocco once more became a French protectorate. Seeing other colonies gaining their independence following that war, a segment of the Moroccan population also became hungry for self-rule and began to agitate for independence, forming an underground movement. Ali Bakr came out too openly in support for self-rule and paid the price from a bullet in late 1948, leaving the newspaper and a share of the publishing house to me.

And still I did not return to the States.

Chapter Six: Return to Antibes: Brent

For my thirtieth birthday, now completely my own man and independently wealthy, I decided to sail the cabin cruiser back to the French Riviera and see what effect the war had had on Antibes. I wondered, of course, if Maurice, Tristian, and Père Bernard had survived the war and if Gunter and Louis had returned to take up the gay life in Antibes again. Did Antibes even tolerate the gay life anymore, I wondered. It had been so free and easy--not as much as Tangier had once been and had remained--but quite forgiving before the war.

I was able to berth the cabin cruiser in nearly the same slip I had had it in ten years previously. I could see from the marina that the war years had been pretty good to the waterfront area. The Germans had only been in full occupation for the two years--1942 into 1944--and little visible damage had been done. Unfortunately, what had disappeared, from what I could see, was Maurice's inn. That was down and a higher building was being built in its stead.

As I climbed off the boat and onto the pier and walked in to the shore, I passed a fishing boat moored in the yacht basin, with a hunk of a dark-haired young man, just in athletic shorts and deck shoes, working on the boat. He was a beautiful, very muscular young man, obviously used to the demanding work of running a fishing boat, which is what the boat he was working on appeared to be. He gave me a smile as I passed by and I smiled back. It was a smile of mutual interest--sexual interests. Gay guys almost always could correctly gauge the smiles of other guys.

"English?" he called out?

"No, American," I answered.

"You need a guide to Antibes?" he said in careful, but passable English. His English certainly was better than my French was. The Allies had won the war. Everyone who hadn't spoken English before now wanted to be able to do so. English was the language of success and of the future.

"I've lived here before," I answered, and, giving him another smile, I moved on.

"I'm Jacques," he called out as I continued walking. "If there's anything I can help you with..."

And a very fit and good-looking Jacques, I thought. I turned and called out, "Hi, Jacques. I'm Brent. Maybe I'll see you around." There was every reason to voice my interest.

I thought then that perhaps I should ask him about Maurice and company and whether there was still a gay community here, but I didn't. His vibes were resonating as gay, but my mind was occupied by the absence of Maurice's inn. I went to where the inn had been and asked the construction workers there if they knew what had happened to Maurice Gagnon, who had owned the small hotel and bar that had been here before, or the waiter Tristian Alarie or the priest, Père Bernard. But I drew a blank on that. These workers, at least, hadn't caught the "learn English" bug. They were polite enough, just not informative--and whereas I got the vibe that the man at the marina hoped I was gay, that these construction workers would not be pleased to hear that I was.

I wondered if the war had killed the somewhat openness with which I'd heard the French Riviera greeted young gay men before the war, but as I came back out onto the street from the construction site, I saw two young men walking across the street with their arms around each other, each palming the buttocks of the other, and I decided that, despite everything that had happened to Antibes in the war--which was far less than most everywhere else in Europe--it had survived in this regard.

That's when I saw that the young fisherman, Jacques, I'd seen down at the marina had followed me and was standing outside the construction site.

"I heard you ask about the building that was here before," he said. "Is this where you came when you were in Antibes before?"

"Yes," I answered. "It isn't here, though, and the men I just talked to say they've never heard of the men I knew here."

"Many of the people in Antibes want just to look at the future," the young fisherman said. "They don't want to think of the past here. A lot of people here don't want to be reminded about what they had to do to survive the Vichy government and the German occupation."

"I can understand that. There used to be a small bar here--on a porch above--named Oscar's. It was run by Maurice Gagnon. Do you know him?"

"I have heard of him--and of Oscar's--yes," Jacques said, giving me an assessing look. "That man is no longer with us."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said, not sure whether I should dredge up the war and ask what had happened to Maurice or any of the others. I was sure it would be sad news, though. They had all been sailing close to the edge--doubly so, since they also were gay. Well, maybe Père Barnard wasn't gay. I'd never figured that one out--what his real relationship with Tristian was, whether uncle or lover--or, perhaps, both.

Thinking of Tristian, though, made it seem like Jacques had read my thoughts.

"There is a man named Tristian, though," he said. "I heard you mention him. He has a club--someplace some us go to."

That gave me pause. He'd said he went there. Was that a declaration of sexual preference? Not that I really needed one; I already was sure that Jacques was queer--and available, if we were a fit.

"It is called Oscar's too," Jacques continued, "like the place you mentioned was here. You went to the bar by that name here?"

"Yes," I said.

"And you were with the men who were here, who came regularly to this bar?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps you would like to go to Tristian's bar--to the one called Oscar's now? A bar that men who like to be with men go to?"

"Yes, I would," I said.

"I go to that bar," Jacques said.

He'd repeated that so I didn't miss it. "I'm very pleased to hear that," I answered, thus completing the signaling between us--yes, we both are, and yes, I would with him.

Jacques smiled broadly and put an arm around me, turning me east toward the center of Antibes. I felt comfortable in his embrace and relaxed there. He smiled broadly.

"Do you wish for me take my arm away?" he asked.

"No, it's fine there," I answered.

"It means I dominate. I find few ways of getting that across without saying it right out."

"That's all fine with me," I answered.

"Tristian's place has rooms above his bar where men can meet in private."

"Does he?" I asked. "I wouldn't mind seeing one of those."

"With me, yes?" Jacques asked as he guided me along the street.

"Yes, with you," I answered, feeling his strong hands glide down to palm one of my butt cheeks and feeling, at the same time, relieved that, despite everything, Antibes had returned to its casual, welcoming nature.

I was in for a surprise when we reached the new inn, in many respects reminiscent of Maurice's inn in that it was a four-story building, with a tavern downstairs; rooms above, including a second-story porch bar off the back reached by a staircase with a sign above the stairs saying "Oscar's Club"; and very likely a flat at the top for the inn's owner. The porch overlooked the Mediterranean, although not the busy Antibes yacht basin marina as Maurice's inn had done.

On the porch I found a group of men drinking and engaging with each other in boisterous conversation. Tristian was there, overlooking it all, and, to my surprise, the transvestite Louis also was there, serving the drinks. They both looked about the same as they had ten years previously. Louis was still proudly displaying ruby-red fingernails and matching lipstick. The war had not knocked the attitude out of him.

Both were happy to see me. Vowing to catch up with him later, I released Jacques to socialize with the other men in the bar, which he comfortably did, showing that he, indeed, did belong here.

"Tristian," I said, when the three of us were settled with drinks at a table on the porch railing, "I'm happy to see you alive and thriving. Tell me of the others--Maurice, and Père Bernard... and what happened with the artist Jean-Paul Jardienne and the Italian, Mateo Paoli?"

"Maurice and Père Bernard didn't survive the German occupation," Tristian said. "The snobbery of the Germans couldn't quite accept a simple bar waiter would be involved in the Resistance, so I did survive. You remember the half French, half Englishwoman, Laura, who ran the wine shop and moved into Mark Standish's villa when you left with him? Her English side and activities were uncovered by the Germans as well, and she did not survive their occupation either. Jean-Paul was an informer. His fate was sealed before you left. Paoli was an Italian spy. He eluded us and we never heard about him again. The Italians never reached this far, though."