Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 23:46:52 +1000 From: KG Subject: Guinea Plantation When I was growing up in a place called Guinea (changed for the sake of this story) in the sixties, my parents separated and I went to live on a plantation with my mum who had found herself a new man. Now this guy was a real asshole and to this day I cannot speak to him or of him without feeling rage. Because he was so hard to get along with, and because I was a very needy five year old without his real Dad, I was desperate for some male love and affection. Our plantation was a large one and we had hundreds of men working there, but one in particular took my heart. His name was Ari (changed to protect him) and he lived at the edge of our compound. He worked as a servant, or 'wash-iron boy' for our family. I used to follow Ari everywhere, around the house, down to the laundry, when he went to visit other people walking through the coffee trees. I began to fall in love with this beautiful gentle man with his coal black eyes and silky brown skin and the more I made my feelings known to him, the more he tried to push me away; scared that I would be the undoing of him. I know he was attracted to me, I could see the bulge in his trousers and smell the desire on him, but I was five and a little white boy, the master's stepson and he was twenty and black and a servant. But the more he pushed me away the more determined I was to be near him and touch him and caress him. I was so in love with him, especially his smile which was constant, even when I could see him wrestling with his own desires. Eventually something had to give, and it was him, he gave into his lust. We had many warm mornings wrapped in each others' arms; many stolen afternoons where we stroked and licked and caressed each other, our love was finally consummated when I let him enter me. He was big, it did hurt, but I was so much in love with Ari that I would have let him do anything with me. One morning, months after we had started making love, I got up very early, before dawn, snuck quietly down to his hut at the edge of our compound, made my way into his arms and we fucked. Suddenly the door to his hut burst open and there stood my stepfather and a couple of the other men servants. My stepfather had a rifle in his hand and I was very scared that he would use it. He hauled me off Ari and then dragged my beloved out of his hut. He beat my beautiful Ari with the butt of his rifle in front of me, until he was covered in blood. I was crying and begging him not to, claiming that it was all my fault and that Ari wasn't to blame. But my stepfather was determined to punish Ari, though for whose sake I have often wondered. I don't want to make the beating Ari received seem any less brutal than it was, but it was for my benefit that the poor man was thrashed. It was me who felt most responsible for it, it was me who felt each thump and smash of the rifle butt and I will never forget the look on Ari's face. My heart was broken and my hatred of my stepfather forever cemented in those horrible moments. What happened to Ari? He was taken away and locked up in prison. I never saw him again. What happened to me? Well here I am, always wishing to wipe out the violence of that time when I lost my first love.