Letters from Blackwell Island Pt. 02

The Blue-footed Booby is a rather endearing species of seabird - their vibrantly coloured blue webbed feet being their most striking feature of course. They have a greyish blue bill and pale grey, almost white eyes with dappled white and brown plumage on their neck which graduates to white on their breast, and their wings are a dark brown in colour. Interestingly, unlike many bird species where the male is vibrantly patterned and coloured whilst the female is a dowdy brown colour, in Blue-footed Boobies the two sexes are almost identical. As Angela explained to me once we were among the colony you can only tell the difference if you look closely - the males' eyes usually have smaller irises, their feet are a slightly lighter shade of turquoise blue and overall they are a little smaller than the females.

We divided ourselves into two teams - Toby and Patrick would catch the birds and weigh them whilst Angela and I logged the information and applied rings to their legs. Of course, many of them already had rings, and when the boys brought us one of the ringed birds all we had to do was log the number for Angela to look up on her database later on.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a male doing a strange dance, waggling his feet around in order to attract a female - it was quite a comical sight and at that moment the old Spanish description of the birds made sense. The more I worked with Angela the more she explained about this colourful species. Apparently they are mainly monogamous, and like the albatross they tend to mate for life. They breed roughly every eight to nine months and will usually raise a single chick at a time. If two eggs hatch the older stronger chick will usually kill the weaker one - I found that a little upsetting, but that's just the harsh nature of survival of the fittest.

"To find a colony of Blue-footed Boobies this far west in the Pacific is quite unusual," Angela went on as we worked. "They're normally to be found along the coast of central and South America and on the Galápagos Islands, so for there to be a colony here over a thousand miles further west is most unusual. Still, they seem to be thriving here, so there is clearly a wealth of fish in the surrounding waters for them to prey on, and there are few predators on the island so officially they are not an endangered species - at least not here on Aina Ahi anyway."

"Because were on a volcanic hot spot, the waters here are teeming with aquatic life," Toby took over. "The boobies are towards the top of the food chain, so it's no wonder that they do so well here."

The work was pretty tiring under the equatorial sun, not to mention pretty smelly as well (they may look rather sweet but my goodness, these birds produce huge amounts of guano!) but it was pretty rewarding, especially when ringing one of that year's chicks.

"A healthy looking brood this year," Angela observed. "And in a few years time this year's chicks will mate and we'll have yet another generation to ring. You could say that doing this job is like painting the Forth Bridge - it never ends!"

At around midday we left the colony for a while in order to have lunch - Angela and Toby took us towards a rocky outcrop that overlooked the lava flow from the volcano's most recent eruption twelve years earlier. It was a scene of utter desolation of jagged jet-black rocks that looked like they would cut you open if you had the misfortune to fall. Despite the harshness of the landscape however, green shoots of new plant life could be seen sprouting up between the rocks - no matter how harsh the environment, nature always seems to find a way.

After lunch we returned to the Booby colony (there's that 1970's soft porn film again!) where we continued our work of assisting Angela and Toby. Patrick spent some time taking some photos of the birds and of Angela and Toby at work for the next installment of Letters From Blackwell Island that I would be writing up of our trip to Aina Ahi. I wasn't sure if it would go viral quite as much as the previous month's installment, but who could possibly resist reading about these beautiful birds on this isolated volcanically active island?

* * * * * *

At the end of our day at the colony it soon became apparent that following our day among the Blue-footed Boobies the four or us absolutely reeked of a noxious cocktail of our own sweat and Booby guano, so the first thing we did as soon as we were back on the beach where we'd left the dinghy was to enjoy a much welcomed swim in the tranquil waters to wash off the worst of the smell. It was certainly invigorating and much needed, and of course the boys had to challenge each other to race back to the boat. This of course left Angela and I to take the equipment back on the dinghy ourselves but neither of us really minded - it gave us a chance to cheer our husbands on. What Toby and Angela didn't know was that Patrick is a good swimmer. In fact, he is a very good swimmer - he was County Cork schools champion in the 200m freestyle back in his youth in Ireland. Needless to say, Toby was no match for him!

We all showered once we were back on board and then, smelling much nicer and after another hearty meal, we spent another evening chatting and singing songs, and we also played a few rounds of Scrabble. Following Patrick's opportunity to display his athletic prowess in the water, it was my turn to display my lexical skills - I practically owned the Scrabble board that night! My three opponents never stood a chance against my journalistic vocabulary (of course, having the right letters on my rack at the right time helped too!) The "killer" moment came in the third game when I made the word "jukebox" which was worth 27 points alone. But by adding my word to "flu" that Patrick had just played to make "flux" and by taking into account a double letter score for my letter K, a triple word score for "jukebox" and "flux" and a bonus of 50 points for using all seven of my tiles I bagged a whopping 188 points giving me an insurmountable lead in the game. Needless to say nobody wanted to play a fourth game with me after that!

We retired to our bunks for a second night aboard the Aina Venturer IV and as the boat gently rocked us to sleep I reflected on our tiring but rewarding day.

* * * * * *

It was a shame to be leaving Aina Ahi and be returning to the comparative hustle and bustle of Blackwell Island, but as Patrick and I sat on the deck watching the uninhabited but stunningly beautiful volcanic island gradually get smaller on the horizon I knew two things for certain. Firstly, that in Angela and Toby we'd made two new friends, and secondly that we'd both definitely be revisiting Aina Ahi with them sometime. By finally experiencing making love in the open air both Patrick and I had passed a massive milestone, but I knew that doing it together on an uninhabited Island was one thing, doing it in one of Blackwell's red zones might be a different matter - for Patrick at least. Still, I was more confident than ever of visiting one of the red zones with Patrick in the hopefully not too distant future.

That night, back at our little apartment I opened my laptop, spread out all the notes I'd made during our expedition and set to work on my latest installment of Letters From Blackwell Island. If ever there was a time when I was "in the zone" with my writing, now was definitely one of those times. It was as if the words were literally pouring out of me like the waterfall where Patrick and I had shared our first experience of outdoor sex. In under an hour I was finished, and after giving it a quick proofread I emailed it straight away to Mags back in the UK. In a separate email I sent what I considered to be the best of the photos that Patrick had taken, including one of Toby kneeling beside a Blue-footed Booby nest complete with chick, his diminutive but clearly fully functional circumcised penis on full display (although it'd be censored with a black panel if published). All in all I was extremely satisfied by my work - and I had a feeling that back at the magazine's head office back in London, both Mags and Carole would be too!

A Kani For Patrick

Now that we were back on Blackwell after our brief sojourn to Aina Ahi, I decided it was about time I went and purchased the Kani that I'd pledged to myself to buy for Patrick. I'd already bought one for Marea and Jackson's son, Aiden for his coming of age, but that had been one from "off the shelf" - for Patrick's first Kani I wanted something a bit more bespoke, especially since it was partially for his upcoming birthday. I'd already bought him a brand new pair of binoculars (he'd mentioned during our visit to Aina Ahi that a pair would've been nice so that he could view the island's wildlife from afar) and a tablet (as he seemed to covet mine somewhat once he'd seen how handy it was to have). First of all however, I decided I needed to know a little more about the traditional adornment worn by the island's men. I wanted it to be a surprise for Patrick so I waited until he was out of the way - he'd got into the habit of spending Saturday evenings playing pool with Jackson in his "man cave" in the summerhouse - so I used that opportunity to speak with Marea.

"So, you want to know more about Kani's huh?" Marea answered me once I'd broached the subject over coffee in their large living room. "Then I shall endeavour to try and enlighten you!"

"Thanks - I really do appreciate it, Marea," I responded after a sip of coffee. "I know I bought Aiden one, but at the time I didn't really know what it was. All Jenni told me was that it was something that the men here on Blackwell wear - she didn't say exactly where on the body they actually wear them!"

"I expect she thought you already knew," Marea said with a lopsided grin.

"Maybe, but you can imagine how surprised I was when I found out that men wear them around their penises!" I chuckled.

"A man looks so smart when he's wearing a Kani though, don't you think?"

"I don't think smart is how I'd describe it, but it definitely looks sexy!"

Just then, Lisa entered the room with her own mug of coffee. Having seen the girl clothed when Patrick and I had first arrived at Marea and Jackson's place some five months earlier, seeing her as naked as her mother was still a sight that I was getting used to.

"What looks sexy?" she asked us as she took one of the available armchairs.

"Men wearing Kani's," Marea replied to her daughter's query.

"Well, now that I'm eighteen I can safely say they definitely look sexy!" Lisa giggled. "Smart and sexy!"

Now that she was an adult she was allowed to freely express her sexuality, and clearly she was making the most of her newfound freedom.

"Allie wants to know why men wear them here and what their meaning is," Marea explained.

"Cool, mind if I sit in on this?" Lisa asked.

"Not at all - I guess you need to learn about them too, so now's as good a time as any, I guess," her mother replied. "Now, as you can imagine the exact reason why men started wearing them is lost in the ether of time, but what we do know is that men here have been wearing them for many centuries.

"Before Henry Blackwell and his cohorts arrived on the island they were worn as a symbol of marriage - a man's wife would make her husband wear one as a sign of her "ownership" of him. Women didn't actually own their husbands in the literal sense, it was more a way to display to other women that he'd already been taken by her as a husband and that he's officially off limits to their advances."

"Yeah, but couldn't he just slip it off?" Lisa asked. "I mean, if he fancied a little extra-marital nookie all he'd have to do is take it off and the missus would be none the wiser to his adultery, surely?"

"Well, the Pā'ele women soon worked that trick out and they developed a special way to make sure their husbands couldn't take them off," Marea responded. "But to explain fully I'd need to give a hands-on demonstration."

Marea got up from her armchair and walked out of the room. A few moments later we heard her calling upstairs.

"Aiden! Could you come down here for a moment?"

"Yes, Mum," came his muffled reply.

A few moments later the handsome lad, looking absolutely stunning in his bare skin, entered the room.

"Go and fetch one of your Kani's, Aiden, there's a good boy," Marea instructed her son. "It's time I taught Allie here how to put one on a man."

"Yes, Mum" Aiden said with a groan. "But, what about Lisa?"

"It's time she learnt how to do it too," Marea responded. "Now go and do as I ask."

"Yes, Mum," Aiden sighed resignedly.

He clearly knew better than to argue with the family matriarch. A few moments later he returned, holding the Kani that I had unwittingly bought him.

"Good boy," Marea said kindly to her son. "Now, come and stand here in front of us."

"Yes, Mum," he sighed.

"Good boy," Marea repeated as she knelt before him. "Now, the first thing to learn is this - men don't put Kani's on themselves, women put them for them."

She held Aiden's Kani in her left hand - when not being worn, a Kani simply resembles a kind of intricately decorated strap, a little like one of those braided friendship bracelets that you wear on your wrist (which is what I thought I was buying him before I was educated at the twin's coming of age party) with several loose strands at either end.

"A Kani is tied on you see, with these loose strands," Marea went on as she demonstrated by folding the thing over so that it formed a ring and showed how the loose strands at the ends tied together. "Now, the knot that we use to tie it on with is handed down from mother to daughter - I guess you could say it's a little bit like Alexander the Great's Gordian Knot - and untying the thing was so complicated for the man wearing it, not to mention painful if he accidentally ended up tightening the thing, that it was easier for them to simply leave it in place until such time as his wife untied it.

"Since the HMS Perseus mutineers arrived here however, they gradually stopped being used as basically a means of wives controlling their husband's lustful shenanigans, and over time they became more a fashion item that men wear to look respectable. One tradition remains however, and that it's still a woman's job to tie it on.

"Now, the complicated knots the Pā'ele women used have long since been lost, but there is still a definite knack to putting one on so that it doesn't easily slip off, as I shall now demonstrate with dear Aiden here."

She looked up at her son.

"Are you ready, dear?" she asked him.

"Yes, Mum," Aiden replied, looking down and meeting her eyes.

"Good boy. Now, first of all you take the Kani at both ends and place it over the base of his penis like this," Marea said as she placed the decorated strap over the base of Aiden's manhood. "Then, with your fingers you push his testicles forward a little and then wrap the Kani around them so that it goes right the way around his genitals."

Marea deftly demonstrated with well-practiced fingers. I had to feel a bit sorry for Aiden, stood there as he was as his own mother touched him in such an intimate part of his body, but he seemed more or less unperturbed by it all - I guessed this wasn't the first time since his coming of age that Marea had put a Kani on him, but it was clearly the first time it'd been done to him with other women looking on.

"Then once it's in place comes the tricky part," Marea continued. "You need to pull it tight so that it can't slip off him, and then take the loose strands and sort of plait them together so that the individual strands form two bigger strands. It's a bit fiddly but it comes with a bit of practice, I can assure you!"

I sat and watched as Marea twisted the loose strands together, her fingers working deftly away behind Aiden's scrotum. From her point of view she couldn't actually see what she was doing, but with the skill handed down from mother to daughter over many generations she made it look almost effortless.

"Then all you need to do is tie the resulting two ends together," she went on after a few moments. "Now, it goes without saying that it's vital that you don't tie it too tightly - we don't want to hurt him or cut off his circulation after all - but it's equally important that it's not too loose either. After all, we wouldn't want it to accidentally slip off him. My mother always taught me to make sure I could still fit my little finger under it once it's in place."

Marea then demonstrated by hooking her little finger between Aiden's Kani and the back of his scrotum. Then, by giving the thing a couple of brief but gentle downward tugs she also showed that it couldn't easily slip off.

"And of course, removing it is just the reverse of putting it on," she continued as she then untied it and removed it from Aiden's now not very private parts.

She then opened the Kani out once more so that it simply resembled a decorative braided leather strap.

"Now then, time for you to have a try, Allie," she then said as she handed it to me. "Lisa, you watch and learn for now - I'll get you to have a try at putting one on your father later."

Marea handed me Aiden's Kani, and I suddenly found myself questioning whether I should go ahead and attempt to put it on him. It just felt... well, sort of inappropriate for me to be doing this. After all, this was her son and I was a woman whom Aiden hadn't met until only a few months ago. All of a sudden I was in the position of basically molesting him in order to put the thing on him.

"Are you quite sure you're okay with me doing this?" I felt I had to ask him to make doubly sure.

I hadn't, after all, so much as touched another man's genitals since I'd met and fell in love with Patrick, and it felt like a bit of a betrayal.

"It's fine - I don't mind," Aiden replied, though I guessed his answer would have been different had his mother not been present. "I guess it's something I ought to get used to anyway."

"You're really sure?" I asked one last time to make doubly, doubly certain.

"Yes," he responded simply.

"Right, well, okay then - um, here goes, I guess," I said, psyching myself up.

I knelt before the young lad just as his mother had a few moments earlier. With the Kani in both hands I reached out to his groin and placed it over the base of his penis just as Marea had shown us. As a symbol of his bachelor status he still had all his pubic hair, and the coarse hairs tickled my fingers as I pulled the two ends around his penis and behind his testicles - so far, so good, but that was the easiest part by far. Twisting the loose strands together turned out to be hellishly fiddly! I may be a pretty good typist (56wpm, to be exact) but apart from that skill my manual dexterity leaves a lot to be desired!

With a stab of alarm I noticed that Aiden was definitely firming up a little as I worked my fingers behind his balls. Marea, who was kneeling beside me, lifted her son's testicles out of the way to see how I was getting on, and offered a few little hints and tips. Despite this, it took me no less than four frustrating abortive attempts before I even managed to get the thing to stay in place without it immediately falling off him. By that time the poor lad was fully erect - his taut foreskin having retracted fully to expose his soft and highly sensitive glans and the tiny opening to his urethra. I became somewhat distracted by the throbbing motion of his tumescence as his heart rate caused the head of his penis to gently bob up and down before my eyes. Eventually a tiny glistening bead of precum formed at the tiny mouth-like opening there which gradually got bigger and bigger until it dripped free and started to dangle like a tiny crystal on a gossamer thin thread.