J. H. P. Cash, 367

When I Were Nowt But a Lad 21

That summer holiday was a little strange for me.

My older brother wasn't at home: he was too busy dropping out of Polytechnic. Since he wasn't still in full-time education my father's employers wouldn't pay for his fare to fly home. My parents had considered paying themselves but there weren't any low-cost airlines in those days. Well, not in the sense that we know them today: there was some discussion of his flying out on Aeroflot, with a 7 hours transit-time at Moscow. This airline had a reputation for having female shot-putters as cabin staff and for relatively frequently not quite completing the Moscow-Tashkent sector in one piece. Eventually my father decided that if they brought him out then he might never go Home and get back into another Polytechnic.

There was one of my brother's friends I quite liked - Robin. He was a little younger than my brother and had just finished his 'A' Levels, like Robert back at school. His family and mine had been friends for as long as I could remember. At this time, with air travel becoming more and more available and developing countries less and less in need of expatriate skills, many European and American families were "short-termers", on contracts of just a couple of years. Robin's parents and mine were "Old Hands", having spent most of their adult lives abroad. His Mum and mine were involved in a women's club that arranged all sorts of social events for the expatriate community and those locals with enough money and ambition to send their children to the English-style primary schools. Helping new families "settle in" was a big part of the purpose of the club and Robin and I tended to get dragged along on visits to "make friends" with the new kids.

Both Robin and I were relatively friendly, helpful and polite, but we were also teenagers. We made very little effort with really young kids - usually just suggesting that they should meet such-and-such a family at the Golf Club swimming pool as the kids were of similar ages. If the children were of ages nearer our own then we would make a bit more effort, but in that wary, cautious way that teenagers inevitably treat others with whom they have been ordered to "make friends". Robin's younger sister was much more relaxed and easy-going. (Oh, didn't I mention that he had a sister? Yeah, well, he did. My age. She was pretty, I guess.)

For Robin this should have been a summer of pure hedonism. 'A' Levels finished with: no worries at all until the results arrived and university entrance was confirmed. He was fairly confident of getting the grades he needed. Robin had always been one of the quieter members of the set my brother used to run with - perhaps that's why I liked him. But now he wasn't joining the other older teenagers in their all-night parties. He had a fairly reasonable excuse - the use of recreational drugs was taken very seriously where we lived. It was considered unlikely that the local police would raid a party in the British High Commission residential compound, say, but not all expatriates had the diplomatic immunity from local laws that might have been more the case in the colonial era. Robin didn't smoke pot and he wasn't going to be swept up in some raid just because other people around him might have been.

I just didn't much like parties anyway. So we hung out together a bit, Robin and I. Robin's dad had his own legal practice - one of the biggest - of which he was senior partner. The family were real "Old Hands" - his Dad had been born and grew up in India, his Mum in Ceylon. Robin had been to a much posher public school at "Home" than I was at. They had a huge house with its own swimming pool. Robin would ask me up there and I'd get our driver to take me over.

Did I mention that Robin reminded me of Guy? Oh, well, I suppose that it might have been significant. Robin could have been simply an older Guy. Particularly the tight blond curls, but also a paleness to his skin (at least at the start of the holidays). It was a little weird, fancying an older boy partly because he looked similar to a younger boy you loved, but, thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense really. I was still into Big Boys and still basically a bottom. However, I'd previously very deliberately left my sexuality as a "school thing". Not in the way that the straight boys did, having girlfriends "at home". No, I just became, outwardly, asexual during the holidays. The sexual sub-culture was, as far as I could tell, completely straight. There were rumours of a bar in one of the better local hotels which was frequented by queers and, of course, there were managers of rubber and oil palm estates out in the country who were noted for their young, all-male domestic staff, but there wasn't really much room for a gay lifestyle, however wild the expatriate community could otherwise get.

Remember Demang? Yeah, me too. It shames me to say that he "didn't count". He was a local, living in the middle of the jungle, outside the society in which I lived. For those two weeks the previous summer I'd created my own little separate world with Demang. What would now be called the "institutional racism" of the expatriate community had allowed me to come on to Demang in a way I would never have dared to with another European or an American boy.

At Robin's place they had a large pool-side bar with an "atap" roof (thatch made of woven palm leaves) and the rear bit of this building was a changing cabin which you reached by walking round to the back. For one reason or another - usually because Robin would already be changed when I arrived - he and I had never used the changing cabin together. There would sometimes be other friends at the pool, but usually they would be friends of Robin's sister, boys and girls of between my age and Robin's. It was good fun hanging out at Robin's. The other kids were fine; cherryade, orangeade and Coke were all plentiful, with the light local lager at lunch if our parents allowed us to drink alcohol. Mine did. Lunch would be hamburgers, cooked at a poolside barbecue by one of the servants, and chips.

One afternoon after lunch, Sophie and her friends went out shopping at the new shopping centre above the new supermarket (the first supermarket ever in the country - very exciting; although, strangely, you had to pay in cash for anything that you bought at the time that you bought it, rather than the shopkeeper just writing the items up in your little tab book to be paid at the end of the month). Our driver was coming to pick me up at about three. Robin and I were lying on lounging chairs, slick with Bergasol sun tan oil (we didn't protect ourselves from the sun back then, we basted ourselves for it). I hated sunbathing and was actually mainly in the shade of a large sun umbrella. Robin was out in the direct sun, his lounger just in front and to the side of mine. His eyes were closed, resting after lunch. I allowed myself to look at him properly.

At Robin's school they played football rather than rugby. He was slim and slightly muscular- his body nothing like "rugby-player build". He was slightly less pale than he had been a couple of weeks ago when he'd arrived from England. He was wearing black Speedos with red side panels (all the boys wore Speedos then - it was so normal that it wasn't even a fetish). His cock looked big in those. I lay looking in a kind of reverie for about ten minutes. My prick stiffened and wilted several times in my worn Speedos. It was too hot for a wank out there, even if I'd dared. I then realised that Robin had actually fallen asleep.

"Hey Robin!" I called. "You'll get burnt if you stay out there."

Robin mumbled and sat up. "Oh, fuck, how long have I been asleep?"

"Just a few minutes," I said. "But you're still quite white, so I though that you might burn."

"Not as white as you, Whitey," Robin laughed. "But, yeah, thanks." He shaded his eyes from the sun and said, "Want to get changed and go inside? It's cooler indoors." He headed over to the poolside shower and I followed him. We stood together under the deluge of cool water, just slightly touching occasionally. The shower head was a wide tin thing with holes punched in it - it simulated a tropical downpour very well. Robin briefly rubbed a bar of soap over himself and handed it over to me. I wished that he hadn't, but we were out in the open, so I couldn't really expect him to soap me. I got a little stiff again anyway. Robin picked up his towel and headed round the back of the bar to the changing room. I followed him a few seconds later. Embarrassed by my stiffy I did that ridiculous thing that people do on public beaches, wrapping my towel around my waist and trying to slip my Speedos off underneath it.

"For fuck's sake," said Robin, "What are you hiding? We've both been boarders."

I turned slightly and looked at him. He was grinning.

"What? Are you really tiny or really big or something?" Robin taunted. He was really big. Not hard, but still big. He just stood there with his arms crossed, his dick hanging beneath a bush of blond pubes. When I looked at his face he just raised his eyebrows.

"Um... at school we sometimes..." I started. "At your place, did you ever....?"

"Of course!" Robin said. But now I didn't know what he was admitting to. More, surely, than just being naked in a changing room with other naked boys.

I unwrapped the towel from around my waist and pulled my Speedos down.

"See," said Robin looking at my stiff prick, "nothing that weird. Get dressed and we'll go in and rinse our swim suits." A little disappointed, I put on my shorts and t-shirt, slipped into my flip-flops and followed Robin into the house. We went upstairs to his bedroom and into his bathroom. He ran a sink full of cold water and dunked our Speedos in together. Even that seemed sexy to me, seeing our Speedos entwined. Mine were all red.

"Have you heard the new Bowie album?" Robin asked. Even if I had I would have said no. Robin had a Sanyo portable "music centre": record deck, cassette player and speakers all unfolding from a plastic case. It'd look dead naff now, but it was as sleek as an iPod to our eyes then. At my house we still had a gramophone in a large wood cabinet. Robin took Alladin Sane out of the slip cover and put it on the turntable. At this time, for commercial purposes, Bowie was still trying to pretend that he was "bisexual" and that was widely interpreted as merely an acceptable way of saying that he was homosexual. I couldn't help but hope that the choice of artist was significant.

"Side 2's much better. Shall we listen to that first?" Robin asked.

I shrugged. "Yeah, sure. Why not." Robin put the LP on and lay back on his bed. I sat on the floor by the side of it, leaning back against it, hugging my knees to hide my prick, which had got hard again.

The piano intro of Time distracted me briefly. Charlie had an LP of Lotte Lenya singing Brecht/Weill "theatre songs" which I loved, and the honky-tonk piano seemed familiar.

"Just listen to these words..." Robin said. (When did the words of songs become "lyrics"?)

Time - He's waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me... boy (Bowie's emphasis, I seem to remember).

I turned to look up at Robin on the bed. He held his hand up, signalling, "Wait!"

Time - He flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
His trick is you and me... boy

I'd never been seduced with music before. Such coyness wouldn't have been fine at all back at school.

"Did he say "wanking"?" I asked.

"Uh huh," replied Robin, making a wanking motion at his crutch, smiling. I wasn't listening to the words any more, but Robin didn't seem to mind. There was a brief pause - remember, the unvoiced communication of agreement we had at school was just absent here. Then I could see, as his hand fell away, that Robin too was hard. I reached for his groin and even as I did so he pulled down the front of his shorts so that my hand met his naked cock. Robin put a hand under my other arm and urged me up onto the bed next to him.

"This is OK, right?" he asked.

I'd got beyond a shrugged "S'pose" by this stage in my life. I just said, "Yeah, definitely!" I wondered briefly, as I usually did when starting out with a new partner, how naughty this would get - what would really turn him off? But then I thought, "Fuck it, he started it!" and bent to suck his cock. Well, that didn't turn him off. His hands went to my head and his pushed my mouth down on him. I dragged his shorts down to his knees and he kicked them off while pulling his t-shirt over his head. I was happy with him naked and me still dressed. For a little while.

Time had ended. Neither of us paid much attention to the next track, through which I continued to suck and lick at Robin's cock. Fuck, it was big! The ending of the next track was the cue for Robin to pull me up alongside him on the bed and pull my t-shirt off. I pushed my shorts off.

Bowie's version of The Rolling Stones' Let's Spend the Night Together was the next track. Robin and I laughed as the first lines were sung. We weren't going to get to spend the night together, but the song let us acknowledge that we weren't just going to have a quickie and then flee each other.

On the contrary, Robin put his arms round me and we kissed, only very slightly tentatively for only a very few moments. Then we were snogging wildly. "Shit," said Robin. "I've never down anything with a boy except at school!" I laughed happily: "Me neither!" (well, not a white boy, anyway).

"Fuck!" he sighed, not unhappily. "I was meant to have given this stuff up now I've left school."

"Sorry," I said. Then I said, "Maybe you'll have to go back for resits, then you won't have left school anyway!"

"I'm not stupid enough for that. And I'm not clever enough for Oxbridge. I've left school," he insisted. "But I haven't started university yet..."

We snogged again and Bowie spoke his extra lines to the Jagger/Richards song:

Let's spend the night together
They said we were too young
Our kind of love was no fun
But our love comes from above
Do it!
Let's make love
Hoo
"Hoo!" echoed Robin, bending to suck me. He'd barely started when he looked up at me and asked, "How old are you again?"

"14. Nearly 15," I replied. "Why?"

"I keep forgetting. You... I keep thinking you're 16 or something. 'Cos you're going to be in Sixth Form...""

"I don't look 16, do I?"

"No you don't!" Robin sniggered, lightly flicking my dick. "Hardly any pubes at all."

This was not quite true. "Is it OK then? Me being 14?" I asked.

"Better than you being 16," Robin smiled, taking my cock in his mouth again. The interruption, and my uncertainty about what my age might imply, had caused my dick to soften a bit, but it soon bounced back. I enjoyed Robin's sucking for a minute or two, then moved round so that we could 69.

The large electric ceiling fan was set at its highest rate but its cool breeze didn't stop us starting to sweat. Taking a rest, I licked gently at Robin's balls. Careful in the sun he might have been, but he still had fairly definite tan lines where his Speedos covered him. I licked along the line on his tummy. He had incredibly light, fine hairs running up to his belly-button. I was both excited by this and also glad that Guy wouldn't develop this feature for some years still.

I scrambled back round and we cuddled again.

"Can I...?" he started to ask. Then paused.

I grinned at him: "Of course you fucking can! But you better hurry up. My car'll be here in 15 minutes." We had both been brought up to know that it was impolite to keep servants waiting. Only short-termers who didn't know any better treated servants badly.

"I don't have anything..." Robin said.

"Yeah, you do," I said, padding into his bathroom and bringing back a bottle of sun tan oil. Not Bergasol, but still... I took off the cap and lay down beside Robin again. As I raised my legs and poured a little oil into my hand, he leapt up and got a towel to spread under us. He knelt between my legs, watching me oil my arsehole for him. I told him to hold out his hand and poured a little oil into his cupped palm. I lay with my knees raised, feet flat on the bed as he rubbed the oil onto his prick. He looked up and I raised my legs again.

"OK?" he asked. I just grinned.

Not for the first time I wished that I could actually see myself being entered. Sun tan oil was a brilliant lube. Robin slid home so easily that he was all the way in before the pain hit and I gasped loudly.

"Shhh!" Robin laughed. "The cook and amah are having their afternoon naps."

I howled quietly, half-joking, half-hurting. Robin was bigger than Robert. Or Mike.

It was very, very rarely hot enough in England for sweat to actually drip off you when having sex. Here, even with the fan on, drops were falling from Robin's chest onto mine. His pubes were darkened by sweat collecting there. My face was pouring. When we hugged the sweat made our bodies slippery and it felt lovely. It seemed so abandoned, feverish: sweating, soaking the towel beneath us. This seemed so very good - just like sex at school, but in the heat of the country that I still really regarded as my proper home. As the sweat poured off us Robin became more aggressive. Which was fine. In the heat I just felt relaxed, floppy almost, and wide open to his cock. It felt so good that I even gently tightened my arsehole on Robin's dick. A little pain returned, but it was not unbearable.

Robin knelt back, pulling me with him, holding me behind my knees and fucking hard. I reached to wank myself and found my hand slipping on my dick. Robin grunted quietly and held me still. I wanked myself quickly and shot onto my stomach.

The LP was going round and round on the turntable, the familiar hiss and repeated click of the needle coming from the speakers.

I almost did that Jane Fonda thing from Klute, looking over Robin's shoulder at my Timex . "Ahmed'll be here in a minute," I said.

"Our gardener's his uncle," Robin said, lying heavily on me. "They won't mind having a chat."

I was happy to rest under him for a few a few minutes. We didn't say anything. Just kissed a little, occasionally.

Then the fan finally got through to us and Robin shivered as the breeze cooled his skin. He sat up on the side of the bed. "We never really kissed at my school," he said.

"I should hope not!" I said. "That's really homo."

Robin smiled at me a little bleakly: "You don't seem to care much, do you?"

I thought of Guy, and of Dab, and even of Robert. "I do care," I said, a little petulantly.

"I don't mean care like that. I mean... worry about it."

Well, that wasn't quite true either, but just then I needed a quick shower. As I went into the bathroom Robin leaned out of his window and spotted the gardener's boy. "Mat!" he called. "If Ahmed arrives, please tell him we'll be down in a few minutes." He got an "OK!" back and came to join me under the shower. This had a slightly more modern head, but an equally full flow. The bathroom was so large that it was what would now be called a "wet room" - the whole of one end of it being the shower area, without any need for shower curtains. Any water splashed around or left lying on the floor evaporated quickly and, of course, there were servants to clean up anyway.

We didn't linger, but at least this time we could soap each other up, with inevitable results - we both got hard again. We rinsed and I wrung out my Speedos, laying them carefully in my towel and rolling it up. I put my shorts on but Robin stopped me as I was putting my t-shirt on.

"Hang on. You've got a bit of prickly heat coming," he said, touching my shoulder.

"Prickly heat!" I scoffed. "I haven't had that since I was a kid."

"Just in case," said Robin, coming back out of the bathroom with a bottle of Calamine lotion. I stood looking in the mirror as Robin smoothed the soothing lotion onto my shoulders and upper back. If the prickly heat diagnosis was just an excuse, then that was fine. Better, even, than if he was really caring about my having a rash, really. I smiled at him in the mirror. The chalky white streaks on my shoulders were comfortingly nostalgic. But I'd never got a stiffy when my Mum had put Calamine lotion on my back.

Robin and I became more enthusiastic meeters and greeters of new families, more cheerful assistants to our mums' good works in general - just so that we could establish a firm foundation for hanging out together. We even volunteered to help at the Red Cross immunisation clinic my mum ran once a week for "local" children: for example organising games of football for the older unaccompanied kids while they waited their turns (well, OK, Robin organised the football games, I just sort-of cheered them on). But we spoke the local languages better than my mum, both having grown up playing with local children, so we sometimes provided a translation service in the clinic itself. Sometimes the immunisation clinic went mobile, "up country", and we got a few good trips to remoter villages out of our volunteering.

Strict divisions between age groups didn't really happen that much at home. Indeed, many of the parties in the expatriate community included all age groups. But somehow it seemed good to have a solid reason for Robin and I, neither of us much cop as party animals, to be constant companions. And we enjoyed being together anyway. Watching Robin effortlessly organising a bunch of kids into a scratch football game was a joy. He literally was a native, having been born in the country, and seemed even more at ease in it than I was. Out in the villages he would squat and chat easily with the headmen. If you wanted to be cynical you could read this as the patronising behaviour of those District Commissioners of a previous era who had "gone a bit native". But it seemed to me then, and now, as just Robin being comfortable in his own person, in his own environment.

Since this chapter is turning out to be, as my legal friend has just pointed out, "a bit more Somerset Maugham than Nifty" I may as well add in a little History, just to explain the nature of post-colonial society where Robin and I lived. The country had never been a formal British Colony, but rather a "Protectorate". Purist national-liberationists would scoff at this distinction, but it had some significance. During the Japanese Occupation in WWII the main Resistance was formed by bands of (mainly ethnically Chinese) communists, assisted later in the war by British, Dutch and American commandos (often former rubber planters or colonial civil servants). The Communist Resistance, as with those led by Tito and supported by Allied agents in what was to become Yugoslavia, hoped that the inevitable post-war Independence would put them in power. This was not to be, not least because of the ethnic tensions between those of Chinese origins and the other races.

The Communists went back into the jungle and began an insurgency that became known as "The Emergency" (for insurance purposes it was not called a "Civil War"). But this didn't become Britain's Algeria or Vietnam - for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because a genuine majority of the population wanted a British-style democracy, not a communist state. (And, anyway, we had our mini-Algerias in Kenya and Aden.) The leading local politicians had been educated at Oxford and Cambridge (or at least St. Andrew's or Edinburgh) - not at the Sorbonne, anyway - and the commanders of the army trained at Sandhurst. There was no white "settler" community (despite there being some European families that had been living there for a few generations) that would, as in Rhodesia later, declare UDI and fight to maintain white supremacy. A real majority agreed that Independence should come, and that the Emergency was delaying, not hastening it. Even before Independence, in the year of my birth, 1958, there was fairly autonomous local government. Let's not pretend that there was no repression of civil rights under British rule, nor that the British were, as is sometimes suggested, "nicer" imperialists than the French or Dutch (better than the Belgians, though, I'll give you that). And let's not pretend that the rubber estates and tin mines weren't a large part of the motivation for Britain's devotion to its protectorate. But the Emergency is now largely regarded in the independent state today as a struggle for national liberation in which the people were assisted by British and other Commonwealth troops. Think Sierra Leone rather than Vietnam or Iraq.

The point being that it is perhaps not too sentimental or romantic (even 'though it is probably both) to suggest that the village headmen with whom Robin chatted might have seen in him, is his khaki trousers and jungle boots, some reflection of the young soldiers who had parachuted into the jungle to fight against the Japanese Occupation (as his father had) or led Fijian, Gurkha or local troops in protecting the villages from the demands for supplies from the guerillas.

Fuck, never mind Somerset Maugham, this is coming over all Sanders of the River now. If I don't stop, I'll have the village headman saying, "Ah, yes, Golden One, I remember when your revered father descended from the skies to save my people from the Evil Yellow Empire!"

Anyway, our good works done, of course Robin and I would head back to his pool, or to the cinema, or the Golf Club for ice cream sodas. My Dad was teaching me to drive, and often we'd head out to nearby estates that were owned by the company for which my father worked. My father drove the Mini Moke on public roads, but on the unpaved roads of the private estates, Robin and I could drive without licences. Robin was having formal lessons as well, but the practice he got just tearing around the rubber estates made sure that he passed his test first time. We'd make sure to go during quiet times on the estates, when there were unlikely to be workers or lorries on the roads.

After Robin passed his driving test my Dad put him on the insurance for the Mini Moke and we were, suddenly, free agents. Not only free agents, but free agents in the coolest vehicle around. Robin and I wanted to give it a psychedelic paint job, but my Dad wouldn't allow that - the Mini Moke remained jungle green. It didn't really matter. I wasn't that used to being cool, so the thing itself was what mattered.

Two hours’ drive out of town and a 15 minute walk through the jungle was a waterfall that was a miniature version of the one that Demang and I had enjoyed in the National Park. We drove out there for picnics. My father's company had a seaside bungalow about an hour or so down the coast - we kept a sailing dinghy there. It was usually booked up for weekends, but Robin and I went down there in the middle of the week and stayed for a couple of nights at a time. We sailed out to little uninhabited islands just off the coast; we went snorkelling over the coral reefs in the next bay along. The company also had bungalows at a local hill station, but those were always booked up, so Robin and I drove up and stayed at the mock-Tudor half-timbered "pub" above the golf course. The hill station wasn't really that high up, but high enough that they had a wood fire burning in an Inglenook fireplace in the evenings and we wore cardigans while playing the fruit machines.

Oh, fuck, in my mind's eye now I have one of those “summer of love” sequences in a sub-Hollywood rom-com in which there is a string of shots of the newly-consummate couple doing romantic things in gorgeous settings through a Vaseline-smeared lens. Sorry, but that’s just how it was. Except that we didn't bother with the Vaseline once we'd discovered how good a lube sun tan oil was.

But I won't bother you with the sex stuff, it'll just make you really sick.

Oh, alright then...

At the waterfall we laid four towels on top of each other (whose idea was it to bring four towels?) on the one really large, nearly flat rock by the side of the pool at the bottom of the rapids. I think that we felt like we owned the place - we had no thought that anyone else might arrive and find us sweating and panting in the middle of the rainforest. Despite the towels, I ended up with a slightly raw back when Robin bum-fucked me as I lay with my knees up round my ears and with slightly grazed knees when he did me on all fours. I didn't mind at all, of course, and regarded the slight discomfort of the grazes over the next day or so as a kind of trophy. After the drive and walk, we tended to strip off as soon as we arrived and fall into the first bout of sex without even putting sun tan oil anywhere except where it was absolutely necessary.

At first, I seem to remember, Robin was a little surprised by how uninhibited I was - not uninhibited in the sense of what sex acts I would perform, but rather in how sensuous, passionate and urgent I would allow myself to be. But there was something about the whole faintly unbelievable thing anyway that meant that we soon just let it happen without many restrictions. How could we possibly be able, at 18 and 14, to have this kind of holiday, fucking in paradise? Of course, the paradise was just home to us, and we were used to a great deal of freedom and independence there - paranoid parenting had yet to be invented - but we were both a little aware of the privileges we were enjoying. And so we let ourselves enjoy them.

We'd strip, whoop, wade into the pool and duck our heads, then we'd lay out the towels and stand on them to snog. I'd feel Robin's cock stiffen against my tummy while mine, already hard, would rub against the top of his thigh. I'd kneel to suck Robin's cock and then fish the suntan oil out of the haversack. We always oiled our own bits - I don't know why, but what we'd done the first time became a kind of ritual: I'd pour oil into my own hand and finger it into my arsehole, then pour a little into Robin's hand and re-cap the bottle while he got his cock slicked up. The first fuck would be quick and I'd be on my back so that we could continue kissing and licking at each other. And we'd need to be quick or our skin would start burning in the sun.

At the seaside bungalow we'd make a small concession to convention and put our bags in separate bedrooms, albeit with a connection through a shared bathroom. I'd mess up my bed a little before going through to Robin's room once the servants had retired in the evening. In fact, however, during the perhaps four nights in all that we stayed there (over several weeks) we only had sex together in that bedroom once. Otherwise we just slept together, exhausted after a day of sailing, snorkelling, water skiing (at the nearby Yacht Club) and fucking (usually out on one of the small islands dotted a little way off the coast). However careful we were, sand would inevitably get into the creases of our skin, into my arse and occasionally even under our foreskins. There were some types of discomfort I wasn't willing to bear, so one afternoon I suggested that we sail over to an area of mangrove swamp lying along one arm of the bay. Here the twisted, gnarled roots and branches of the mangroves rose from mud rather than sand. There was a slight smell of rotting vegetation, but I'd often been in here before, observing the creatures of the tide-line. We tied the dinghy to a tree trunk, took off our t-shirts and swimming trunks and slipped over the side into the mud. As we waded out of the shallows into the swamp proper, we were up to our calves straight away. Robin looked a little worried, sniffing the air. I grabbed a fistful of the rich, dark, nearly black mud and smeared it over his chest. He reciprocated. We tussled and fell together full-length into the mud, rolling and struggling to coat each other as completely as possible.

"It's like Lord of the Flies," Robin laughed. "Well, the film version anyway."

"Yeah, 'cept they didn't do this in Lord of the Flies," I said, gripping his dick.

"They probably did, but they left it out, didn't they?" Robin grinned.

"This isn't going to work, is it?" I asked. "I mean, all this mud, it's worse than the sand really."

Robin sat up and said, "We could try." He waded back to the boat and stood splashing handfuls of water, rinsing the mud off the relevant bits. I joined him and he splashed water over my lower back and my bum. He tried to wash between my bum cheeks so I held them apart for him as he splashed and rubbed. I leant into the boat for the sun tan oil and anointed myself. Robin held out his hand.

"Try leaning on that branch," said Robin, pointing at a long, horizontal stretch of wood just a little way into the swamp. I put the bottle away carefully and waded over to the branch as Robin readied his cock. I tried leaning right over the branch on my tummy, but that wouldn't work - it wasn't that thick or stable enough. I just put my hands on it and leant forward, bending my knees a little. With one hand Robin smeared more mud on to my shoulders and down my arms. I turned my head to smile my appreciation and he wiped stripes of mud onto my face. The hand then held my shoulder as he pushed his cock into my arsehole. Once he was comfortably in he lay onto my back a little more. The branch - the whole tree - swayed. We laughed and Robin moved his weight off a little. I could feel some of the mud dripping off me even as some of it dried on my skin. This really did feel naughty. We weren't a honeymooning couple now, we were rutting savages. I briefly imagined that I had been chased through the forest to the edge of the sea and I had tripped over tree roots in the swamp. Looking up I saw, not the crisp white tropical uniform of a Royal Navy officer, but the wild, mud-smeared figure of my pursuer.

"OK?" the savage asked politely, fucking me harder. The mangrove was bending and swaying in rhythm. I just nodded.

Later that same day, the mud washed of us, we sailed out into the middle of the bay and I told Robin about the Field Day in the CCF whaler. A little ridiculously, perhaps, we hadn't actually been skinny-dipping here in the sea and were about to take turns doing so when Robin spotted a "Portuguese Man O' War" - a large jellyfish-like thing with long tentacles drifting out around it. They were not common, but were sometimes seen in these seas. The stings from these could be very painful and we discussed briefly which of two pieces of common knowledge was true: that they were always loners, and if you saw one there would not usually be others around, or else that they frequently "hunted in packs", travelling in swarms of hundreds. We couldn't agree, but played safe, agreeing at least that they didn't usually come into shallow water unless driven in by a storm or strong tide, because of the length of their tentacles. So we sailed a little closer to the shore, but still far enough out not to provide a display for anyone other than each other. I stripped and jumped overboard into a shoal of small, almost transparent jellyfish. Their stings were relatively insignificant, but, dropping through the shoal, I was stung all down one side of my body and face.

I was a brave boy. When I was a kid I'd cry when stung - and there were plenty of things that stung in paradise. Your natural reaction to jellyfish stings is to want to run cold fresh water over them, but, and I don't know why, sea water is actually much better as an initial treatment. Robin sailed us in to the beach and I sat in the waves, letting them wash over my body.

"I'll go and see if Cook has any vinegar," said Robin.

"Or you could pee on me," I grinned. "That's supposed to work." Robin looked at me sharply. I looked down: "Yeah, see if there's any vinegar."

Oh, Shit! Why had I said that? Well, it was supposed to be true - that's what Australians did with jellyfish stings - got a mate to piss on them. But I had meant a little more than just that and Robin seemed to have understood that. Had I fucked everything up?

But Robin came back grinning, waving a nearly empty bottle. "Only a little bit of vinegar left, but Cook said what you said - piss'll work."

I looked up at him.

"You don't really want me to piss on you though, do you?"

"No," I said. "Course not."

We went up to the bungalow and in the bathroom Robin gently dribbled the small amount of vinegar in the bottle over the red, slightly raised stings. I looked at myself in the mirror. It didn't look too bad and wasn't really hurting very much. The welts on my face and neck looked a little strange though - almost like a birthmark. "Maybe spunk would work?" I suggested. "I mean... instead of piss."

"I think they're rather different substances," said Robin.

"There was a boy at school, when we were little, who told the dorm that you got a girl pregnant by pissing in her, ah, vagina, and we had a big row about it. I knew it wasn't right because Mum and Dad had given me a little book."

For the second time that day Robin said, "We could give it a try..."

So we did, but only on the most severe stings, on my neck and face. After all, Robin had already come just a couple of hours before.

Treating acne and jellyfish stings, not to mention the protein boost - it's great stuff, spunk.

At the hill station things changed a little. The last 15 miles or so of the road up to the hill station was so narrow that it there was a controlled one-way system, vehicles being allowed to drive up for and hour, a pause to allow all those that had set off to complete the trip, then vehicles were allowed down for an hour, and so on. You signed out as you left the control post and signed in at the top and the lists were phoned between the control posts. If you didn't arrive after a certain time, a search party would be sent out. It was on this stretch of road that the British High Commissioner of the time had been assassinated in a guerilla ambush near the start of the Emergency. Even in the early 1970s the hard core of the communist guerrillas were still making occasional attacks in what by now was called "the Insurgency". So, the road up to the hill station was always alive, to us, as kids, with frightening and exciting possibilities.

If you missed an "up time" there was a Rest House where you could have a drink and a snack. The road was closed completely overnight, except for emergencies, and there had been one occasion, driving up for a family holiday, that we had missed the last "up time" and had to stay overnight at the Rest House for the first night of the holiday. I remember this as amongst the first times that I endured a really full-scale row between my parents at close quarters. Usually I'd block my ears in bed at night, or disappear to a far corner of the garden in the day, but I was trapped in the car as they shouted at each other in anticipation of missing the passage up. And then in the Rest House, once the dire predictions of my mother had come true, I enjoyed the fun of my parents rowing in public, or at least within the hearing of the other guests. My brother and I ate our supper alone in the half-empty (but quite full enough) Rest House restaurant, trying not to hear the shouting match in which the other diners seemed so interested.

Robin and I mis-timed our drive and had to wait at the Rest House. The trip and the place was, because of the context described above, meaningful to us. The Emergency and the hill station had been backgrounds to our childhoods - a couple of symbols amongst many that gave us common ground as the offspring of "Old Hands". For us the country wasn't just another stop on Daddy's constant two-year postings to new spots around the world, it was home. And then we both had "Home", as we'd called the UK even before we'd ever consciously visited it.

We had only talked a little about Home. For me, this was because it would have meant discussing "what went on at school" and I instinctively felt that it was best not to bring that too much into whatever it was that Robin and I were doing. It was wonderful, as far as I was concerned, to find outside of school something like what I had had at school. I felt, or hoped, that we were somehow re-inventing queering for ourselves, out in this slightly unreal real world. What we were doing sexually was clandestine, of course, but perhaps our relationship was somehow not. Despite these hopes I also felt, or feared, that for Robin it was probably best not really to think about it. I suspected that, like Robert, he'd ended his last Summer Term intending to come home and fuck a girl (or three) from the tennis club. Instead he was fucking the younger brother of a friend he'd known all his life - a boy who, for most of that time, he probably regarded as a tiresome younger brother of a friend who occasionally had to be amused if left in their care.

Despite the afternoon sun, the Rest House was usually officially deemed high enough, whenever we'd stopped there as kids, to merit a light sweater or cardigan. As we parked Robin said, in a remarkably good imitation of his mother, "Now, darling, shall I get a cardy out for you?" I laughed and replied, in a sort-of combination of my mother's voice and my own as a little boy, "I think perhaps you should - I don't want to catch a chill or anything." We didn't bother, of course, but it was a little cooler than down in the capital.

"Just think," I said when we'd got our cherryades, "we think it's cool here but at Home it's probably colder than this and it's the height of summer."

"Poor buggers," Robin agreed.

"When you first went Home to school, did you sort of tell the other boys about how great it was here compared with the UK? You know, say about how cold and wet and dull it was there and how we all did water skiing and swimming and..."

"Yeah," Robin laughed. "Soon got that thrashed out of me, though!"

"Not literally? Thrashed?"

"No. Not for that, no. Although I did get caned once for "bad attitude" and I think that that may have been part of it - liking here more than the UK is pretty bad attitude, isn't it?"

"I've never been caned at school."

"What, never? Yours isn't one of those schools where the kids make the rules is it?"

"No, no. They just don't cane very much." And I thought about how the boys did make some of the rules. "And I'm a good boy, of course."

"Of course. God, at my prep school you got caned for breathing," said Robin. "When I got to my public school they'd only just stopped prefects caning kids."

"No!" I said, outraged.

"Well, a few years before, maybe. All the masters could, still. But it was mainly the Housemasters. Or the Head."

"My Housemaster hardly ever does. He did my brother a few times."

"Well, he probably deserved it!" said Robin. We smiled in a little conspiracy of disapproval of my brother.

"At school..." I started, but noticed that Robin had frowned a little.

"Go on," he said, ""At school..."?"

"Nothing. Some other time. We better get into the queue, they'll be opening the gate soon."

Vehicles were sent off at staggered intervals, like rally cars, so that slower-moving vehicles didn't hold up faster ones. You had to queue up for the off and go into the control post to sign your vehicle in - registration number, number of occupants. In the "good old days" - within my memory - a policeman would bring the log book to the cars of Europeans and execute a smart salute in recognition of their kindness in acceding to the rules. Now, you went to them, just like the local lorry drivers and everyone else. My father or Robin's would probably still have got a salute at the end of the transaction, but no policeman was going to salute a couple of long-haired white teenagers who obviously had no respect for themselves, let alone the independent nation in which they were guests.

The accommodation at the hill station pub was in a separate annex. We had a room with two single beds. It looked and even smelt a little like a room in an English boarding house. Neither of us had even been in the building before - we'd always stayed at proper bungalows, which were luxurious by comparison. The beds looked suspiciously like the beds we had at school - right down to the thin mattresses and grey blankets. We dumped our things and set off on a familiar walk through the pine forest on the hills around the golf course. Yes, pine forest - the British had brought rubber plants from the Amazon for commercial reasons, but the Scots had brought pine trees to the two hill stations for purely sentimental reasons. At Christmas we burnt pine cones in the fires in the bungalows.

High above the 9th hole there was a large, two-storey abandoned house. This was meant to have been the local Japanese HQ during the Occupation, and at night one was supposed to be able to hear the screams of those tortured to death there. As kids, it had seemed genuinely scary, but now we'd seen many episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where are You? and scoffed at supposedly haunted houses. "You pesky kids!" Robin croaked as we crunched through broken glass and over the jungle creepers which had invaded the ground floor, heading to the wide central staircase. It was in bad repair, but you could climb it if you kept close to the banisters. Upstairs the jungle had encroached a little less. There were vines everywhere, but only thin, light suckers. The rooms were empty apart from a couple of chairs and a rusting metal desk in one. I'd been here several times before, but it was always a little disappointing to find no Rising Sun flag above the desk, no portrait of Hirohito , no evidence of bloodstains.

Robin grabbed me from behind, hugging me tightly. "You will tell us everything, swine!"

"Um, wrong war, I think!" I said. "Or at least, wrong um..."

"Theatre," offered Robin. "I can't do a Japanese accent, though, it’d just sound ridiculous."

My cock had hardened as soon as he had grabbed me. Now I could feel his stiffening against my lower back.

"We don't have to do accents," I said quietly. "Just..."

Robin swung me round to face him and I shrugged, looking at my feet. I couldn't say what I wanted to - it was too risky. "Just... whatever you like."

Robin grinned. "Strip to your underpants and sit on that chair!" he said.

"Why only to my underpants?" I thought.

As I struggled with the laces of my jungle boots, Robin changed his mind and said, "No, strip completely. Underpants off too."

The fucking boots - the laces criss-crossed all the way up your calves. As I fumbled, Robin leaned out of the window and broke off the top of a high bamboo. It was green, and so the fibres tore and wouldn't break cleanly. He got out his Swiss Army Knife to cut the switch off. I was nearly naked by the time he'd done this, but my dick was shrivelled. I didn't really want the bamboo switch to be part of the game.

Robin must have understood my apprehension and said, "Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you really." A pause. "Sit on the chair and put your arms behind you. Grab the bars at the back of the chair." I did as he said. "Now, you're tied there, right, you can't move your arms. OK?"

I nodded. My dick was stiffening again.

"Put your ankles against the back legs." I moved my legs apart and my feet back. "Right, now your feet are tied there, OK? You can't move them." I nodded again. "Tell me," said Robin.

"I can't move them... I'm tied up."

"See if you can get out of it," he suggested. I struggled and writhed against my bonds, but couldn't free myself.

"Look at me," Robin demanded. I looked up at his face. He was smiling. "OK?" he asked gently.

"Yeah, fine," I said, trying to smile too, but too seriously aroused to manage as gentle a smile as his. I looked at his groin. His cock was hard in his trousers. I was relieved that he was as excited as I was.

He stood back and touched the tip of my stiff cock with the tip of the bamboo switch. My cock twitched and my hips jerked at the touch. My foreskin was retracted a little and the bamboo ran briefly over the head of my dick. He very lightly tapped my thighs with the end of the bamboo. It was so light and thin at the top - still green and so still very bendy - that it was not painful at all. Just a symbolic chastisement. Two slightly harder taps with a lower portion of the switch brought my head up. Robin put the switch across my thighs and went around the back of the chair. "Keep still - don't let the bamboo fall off your lap," he said, running his hands from my shoulders to my chest and then my tummy and then to my cock. It was difficult not to move as he started wanking my cock, but the bamboo switch was barely balanced on my lap. I tried to let my torso move without moving my hips. When his other hand firmly cupped my balls, I couldn't help but twist slightly. The bamboo switch rolled off my thighs and onto the floor. Holding my cock and balls, Robin said quietly into my ear, "You'll have to be punished for that." I looked at the bamboo where it had rolled a few feet away on the floor. No, I decided: if he wanted to cane me, that would be the end of the game. In a whispered tone that has forever set a sort-of Gold Standard for me, Robin said, "You're going to have to suck my cock."

I think that I may have tried to look outraged, or at least trepidatious, but as Robin moved in front of the chair I reached out for the zip of his khaki trousers.

"You're still tied up," he reminded me.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry," I said, putting my hands behind my back again.

Robin took his time undoing the laces of his jungle boots. He wasn't fumbling as I had, he was just enjoying me watching him. Unless you have a jungle-boot fetish, how can it be sexy watching someone unlace their jungle boots? That I couldn't wank myself made it somehow even more arousing.

"Close your mouth," said Robin, laughing, "you look like a mong."

I wasn't even aware that my mouth had been slightly open. Fuck, I'd be licking my lips next.

Robin stood in his socked feet and undid his old, worn snake-clip belt. He was so enjoying my absorption. He unzipped and flexed like a whore, his trousers falling to the floor. He stepped out of them and stood astride my thighs. I had to bring my knees together to allow this, and it was slightly awkward. Before Robin could tell me I was already mouthing his cock through his jockeys, straining against my bonds to get at him. When he'd let me lick along the whole length of it and back again to its base, he stepped back and pulled his underpants down under his balls. I think that my mouth may have been slightly open again. "Not much of a punishment, is it, really?" Robin noted. He stood there, letting me look. Only being allowed to look was a fucking punishment.

I wanted to say, "Please? Please let me..." but that would have been too much too.

He took off the underpants and straddled my thighs again. This time he held my head so I couldn't get at him until he said, "Suck my cock," and stuck it in my mouth.

Robin continued to hold my head - in both hands now. Not to fuck my face, but to restrain me, to slow me down. He set an easy, slow rhythm when what I wanted was to go wild. "I don't want to spunk yet; I want to last a bit. Just go slowly," Robin made clear. I stopped trying to fight his hands and let him guide my mouth on his dick. But he was soon moaning in his throat and moving faster.

"Right," he said, "I want to fuck you. Get on all fours..." I looked up, shrugging my shoulders questioningly.

"You're untied," Robin said. "Just get on the floor."

But I didn't want that. I reached for a handful of the vines lying along the floor, tearing lengths off. I knelt with my chest sideways on the seat of the chair and wrapped the vines round my left wrist, "securing" it to the bottom of one chair leg. I looked round at Robin and he pulled up some more vines to twist round my other wrist.

"We don't have any sun tan oil," I said.

"That's your problem," said Robin. "We'll just have to use spit."

It had been a while since I'd been bum-fucked just using spit. But it kind-of seemed right for the game. I felt Robin's finger wipe his spit around my arsehole. A pause, then the finger, re-wetted, pushed into me. I couldn't stop myself groaning. Robin seemed to be readying himself to push his cock into me. "Do two fingers first..." I asked, "...it'll be too tight." Robin spat onto his fingers and massaged the spit into me again.

"Right?" he half-asked, half-stated. I nodded and I felt his left hand prising my bum cheeks apart, and his cock press into my hole. I was so aroused - Robin was being just rough enough to keep me incredibly horny without taking it too far - that I expected to be able to allow his cock into my bumhole easily. But it hurt. It hurt all the way in. It was like when I was first starting out with Big Boys - centimetre by centimetre. I gripped the chair legs hard, grunting in pain. But I didn't ask him to stop and he never let up the pressure. The invasion was slow, but unstoppable.

When he was all the way in he spoke a variation on the old line that masters were supposed to use when they caned you: "I think that hurt me more than it hurt you."

"Wanna bet?" I gasped.

"My foreskin..." said Robin. He moved back to relieve that pressure on his foreskin. Even his moving out hurt. I moaned again.

"Hey, we can leave it..." Robin suggested.

"No we can't," I protested. "Not now you're in anyway. Just give me a minute." I breathed deeply and slowly. It began to work; my arsehole relaxed, welcoming being filled.

Robin didn't need telling that he could start to fuck me. As he quickened his pace the chair seat started to hurt my chest. I lifted up a little and toppled the chair over, still holding the legs, so that I was still "tied" to it, but I could lean forward on my forearms, forehead to the floor. Robin swore and growled as he spunked in me. He pulled out and flopped onto his side, pulling me with him. I slipped off the vine "ropes" as he cuddled up behind me and reached for my dick.

"I don't want to spunk," I said.

"What?" Robin said.

"I don't want to spunk," I repeated, getting to my feet.

"Are you mad?" Robin asked, reasonably.

"No, it's just right, isn't it? I'm a prisoner, aren't I?"

"Ummmm, well, a prisoner who's putting on his clothes without being told to..." Robin pointed out.

I couldn't explain it, so I just said, "Name, rank and serial number: that's all you'll get out of me, you bastard!"

I slightly regretted my decision as we walked back to the pub, me with my dick still hard in my trousers.

Later that evening we were playing shove-ha'penny at the pub bar. (They had bar skittles too, and at the other, bigger hill station the Inn actually had a skittle alley.) We were both drinking beer, Robin Guinness and I alternating between the two locally-brewed lagers. We both wore cardigans. I was a little drunk.

"At school..." I started again.

Robin frowned a little again.

"At school," I insisted, "there's this chap, Charlie. He's really, really bright and he's one of my best friends and we've been study-mates for a couple of years now - with Dab, of course..."

"Just study-mates?" Robin asked.

"Yes. Listen... that's the point, really. He doesn't do stuff at all..." I saw Robin glance up to check where the barman was. "He doesn't mind, y'know, what Dab and I do, and with other boys, but he says it's not real, boarding school, and the sex stuff is part of what's not real. And sometimes I think he's right, because at home it's never really happened - well, that once - but not, y'know, with another, um, English boy. Until now. This seems kind-of real."

Robin's figures flicked at the coins on the board - genuine big old British pennies.

"Does it? It doesn't to me." He lit a cigarette while I just looked at him. He blew out smoke.

"I don't mean... I mean, it's great. Really great. But it's not real. It's not. In a few weeks you're going to go back to school and a few weeks after that I'm going to go to university and then what?"

"We'll see each other at Christmas," I said simply. Now my flights were paid for every holiday except for those when my parents returned Home on Leave.

"No, we won't. I'm not coming out at Christmas. Not 'til next summer, probably..."

"But your dad can afford..."

"Going to university is meant to be about leaving home. I'll be staying at Dad's flat in London."

"I'll see you at Easter, then. My parents are Home for Easter next year."

"And what, we'll go out to dinner in Soho and on to a disco?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?" I said, even as I understood that I was too young to be allowed into a disco.

"And then announce our engagement in The Times?" Robin almost sneered this last line.

"No, of course not! But..."

"Look, don't fuck this up," Robin said angrily, through his teeth. I was about to cry and I wasn't sure if he meant fucking up the evening, or our whole stay, by bursting into tears in the bar, or if he meant fucking up everything we'd been enjoying.

"It's just... It's what your Charlie said. It's not real." He meant everything. "It's great, I love it, let's just enjoy it, OK?" he said firmly, finishing his Guinness. He saw that I was still on the edge of tears. "Come on, let's get out of here before you start blubbing."

"Blubbing?" I thought. I hadn't heard that word in years. It was like I was a little boy or something. He thought I was just "blubbing". I followed him out of the bar and along the passageway that led to the annex.

When I closed the door behind me I did start blubbing.

"Oh, fuck!" said Robin, irritated.

I tried to grab onto him but he stepped away. I lay on my bed, facing away from him, looking at the wall. Wallpaper. No one had fucking wallpaper in South East Asia! Fucking stripes and flowers, for fuck's sake!

I heard Robin's bed creak as he lay on it. He got up and rummaged in his haversack. I supposed that he was putting on his pyjamas. It had been a kind-of joke that we would bring pyjamas here.

I realised that I was being a pratt. Or I thought that I realised it. I stood up, avoiding Robin's eyes, and got changed into my pyjamas. Ha-fucking-ha.

I got into bed and lay facing the wall, no longer crying. Robin put on the bedside light between our two beds and switched off the main light. He came to sit on the edge of my bed.

"What did you expect?" he asked gently. "You couldn't really expect anything, could you? Did you?"

I rolled onto my back and sniffed, trying to smile manfully. "No, course not. Sorry, I was just being silly... I'm a bit drunk, actually."

"Yeah, me too," Robin smiled. "Shove over, I want to get in." I hesitated, but moved over. As Robin slipped under the covers, however, I turned away from him again. He cuddled in from behind.

"I thought you said there was a boy at school anyway," Robin said.

"Yeah, there sort-of is, I suppose. But that's not real either, probably."

"Just enjoy stuff while it happens, eh? Don't get het up about it."

"If I told you what really is real, you'd hate me," I stated, already determined that I was going to tell him. Because it didn't matter any more; because I wanted to hurt him; because I wanted him to care for me; because I wanted to tell someone? Fuck knows.

"I'd never hate you."

"There's a master at school who fucks me," I said to the wall.

Robin laughed, hugging me tighter: "At your school, I'm not surprised!"

"He's a master!" I said. He wasn't supposed to laugh.

"Yeah, we had queer masters. Don't think they ever actually did anything."

"This one does," I insisted.

"And?"

"And..." my worst confession: "...I like it."

"We know that," Robin said, moving his hips against my arse. His dick was hard.

"He takes photos of me," I said.

"What, dirty ones?" Robin asked, interested. This was all wrong. By now I was supposed to be sobbing out a confession while Robin comforted me.

"Yes, dirty ones! He pisses on me and he takes photographs of it."

That did give Robin pause. "Fucking hell. That is a bit much," he accepted. Then: "Is that why you wanted me to piss on you that time..."

"I didn't want you to! I just said it as a... it was a joke."

"Oh yeah?"

"It's disgusting," I said.

"So why'd you let him do it? Why don't you get him sacked?"

I said nothing. Robin's hard cock was lying along the pyjama'd crack of my arse. His hand reached into the front and took hold of my dick, also hard.

"Oh, fuck," I said, twisting away and leaning over him to drag my rucksack over. I got the sun tan oil out and struggled to get naked. Robin got up and stood to take his pyjamas off. I handed him the sun tan oil. "You do it, like this afternoon," I said, lying back and lifting my legs. Robin's fingers pushed into my bumhole again, this time slick with oil. I grabbed hold of the metal bar of the headboard. In case Robin didn't get it, I said, "I'm tied again."

"OK," he said, oiling his dick.

"Have you ever really been tied up?" he asked.

Little Spurt 09

Not Angles, but Angels

"Non Angli, sed Angeli," Pope Gregory I is supposed to have punned upon seeing some blue-eyed, blond-haired Anglo-Saxon boys on sale in a slave market in Rome. The boys supposedly came from a Northern English kingdom, so at my school the admiring comment was viewed with a special pride. I imagine that the Latin masters who re-told the legend either did or didn't intend any sexual sub-text. But for some of the boys the phrase was immediately and inevitably sexual. Oh, alright then, it was for me, anyway.

I was alone with one other boy in the Senior Dorm of my Junior House one afternoon after Games. I don't remember why - we would normally shower and change downstairs in the Changing Room after Games. And I don't remember his name. Let's call him Martin. Martin asked if I'd heard of Pope Gregory's famous pun and I said yes, of course, and that Pope Gregory was obviously a perv. Martin agreed, but nonetheless suggested that we play the well-known game of "Anglo-Saxon Slaveboy and Roman Centurion". I, of course, was to be the slaveboy, despite not having blond hair or blue eyes. When I asked why Martin wasn't going to be Pope Gregory he said, "I'm not a Catholic, am I?" That made sense. "And, anyway, Roman centurions were even pervier than the Popes," he added. I wasn't going to call him on the evidence for this judgement - my dick was already hard.

"First, you have to be naked, so I can see if you're worth buying," said Martin.

I was already nearly naked anyway, as far as I remember. I got nakeder, but covered my erect dick with my hands. As if Martin hadn't noticed it.

"Hmm," said Martin, circling me. "Not too bad for a puny Angle."

I looked down at my feet, a mere barbarian child to this sophisticated Roman.

"Put your hands by your sides; I need to see all of you."

I did as I was told.

"Randy little bugger aren't you?" the centurion asked. I shrugged and mumbled.

"Speak up, boy!" the centurion barked.

"Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir," I said.

"Can't understand a word you're saying," the centurion said, shaking his head sadly. "Don't you speak Latin, boy?"

"Um..." I couldn't work that out, quite. I was too excited. "No, Sir, I suppose not. I'm an Angle, Sir."

"Durrr! I know that, stupid," said the centurion. "Open your mouth." I did, and he examined my teeth. "Crappy barbarian fillings," he commented. "You Angles eat far too many sweets." The anachronisms were starting to wilt my prick.

"Show me your muscles." He made a body-builder's arm to illustrate his meaning.

I did a Charles Atlas pose, feeling extremely silly now.

"Bend over and show me your bumhole," the centurion demanded. My cock was instantly stiff again. I bent forward and pulled my buttocks apart.

"Hmmm. You'll do," the centurion declared, then turned to an imaginary slave trader and said, "Two sestertii, and not a penny more." I didn't know whether this made me valuable or not: what's a Roman earn? I just hoped that there wasn't going to be any prolonged haggling.

But it seemed that the deal was made. I was pulled by my cock a few feet to the centurion's bunk-bed. "Kneel down, slave," he ordered, sitting on the edge of the lower bunk. I did as I was told and the centurion said, "Kiss my feet." I'd never actually kissed anyone's feet before and this felt genuinely humiliating.

"Um..." I hesitated.

"Do I have to beat you, English swine?" asked the centurion, turning a little storm-trooper for a moment.

Propping myself on my hands, I bent forward and briefly kissed each bare foot. As I made to rise, one foot was placed on my head and I was forced down to kiss the other, "Properly!" Boys' feet don't get really smelly until full puberty kicks in but it was fucking horny anyway. The first foot was lifted off my head and I was moving to kiss that properly too when the centurion stood up and pulled down his shorts. His dick was bigger than mine and had a little hair above it.

"Kiss my willy," he ordered.

When I did so a hand held my head down.

Continuing the kiss seemed wrong, somehow, so I just took the whole thing in my mouth, thinking, "A Roman centurion wouldn't say"willy".

"God, you're really

queer," Martin said, without moving away.

As he dropped out of character, I moved into mine. I started wanking myself as I sucked. Then I took my mouth off Martin's dick and started wanking him. He stopped me before he came. I was disappointed.

"Go and draw my bath," he said.

"Um..." We didn't have any baths, only showers.

"I mean, get your towel and let's go and have a shower." This could have been good - surely a slaveboy would be required to wash his master's body and bits?

But there were other boys already in the showers. I was dismissed with a curt nod and Martin starting chatting to his mates under the showers. I stood under the furthest shower-head, sneaking looks at my erstwhile master's cock.

Email: spelchek@hushmail.com