The following story is for adults and contains graphic descriptions of sexual contact between adolescent and adult males and the power imbalance of these relationships. Like so many of my stories, this is a voyage and return.

If you are a minor, then it is illegal for you to read this story. If you find the subject objectionable, then read no further. All the characters, events and settings are the product of my overactive imagination. I hope you like it and feel free to respond.

Fourteen runs through five progressions, with frequent interludes. If you would like to comment, contact me at eliot.moore.writer@gmail.com.

Will you join your fellow authors and readers to support Nifty? To contribute discreetly  to the continuing operations of the Nifty Erotic Stories Archive website using a credit card or other methods of donation, go to http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html 

Thanks so much to Philip Marks for his contributions and the background conversations that bring the story onto the page. I also want to add a shout-out to Mischief Night who answered my call for a proofreader. Thanks to those who keep Philip and me updated on your interest.

Theo 2

Falmouth Harbour

October 17, 2018

The cold night in North Platte, Nebraska, when Levi Fisher gave Fourteen his Hikari folding knife and Beretta Nano, Hurricane Irma rubbed out Barbuda. Fourteen shivered shoeless-desperate on the street while George Thomas held his sister and watched Irma peel the corrugated roof off his parents’ house. Hurricane Irma unleashed 7 trillion watts of energy -- twice as much as all bombs used in the Second World War. Its force was so powerful that earthquake seismometers recorded it in Nebraska where Fourteen struggled with Levi. The turbulent night was a turning point. The traumatic Damascus steel-point moment in North Platte ended Fourteen’s journey west, Far East, and Irma ended George’s fishery.

Geo, he liked the nickname because cutie Mona liked to murmur it repeatedly as she rode his cock, Oh Geo Geo Geo Geo … like that.

“Geo, you’re not going to find a fishing boat,” Monique Liburd says practically. She wants Geo to take a job at King’s Casino, or anywhere in the Heritage Quay retail area where he will be close.

“Dad will fix the boat,” Geo replies unreasonably. The sixteen-foot boat was not lifted out to sea on Irma’s tidal surge. Ironically, it ended up on the road. If a larger craft had not smashed into it, it would be making money. His father’s boat sat untended now. It could be repaired, but there was no insurance and no government assistance. With the fleet of both islands decimated--it had largely sailed out of Barbuda--there was little choice but to stay on Antigua and look for other work. That was hard on a fisherman.

Geo pushed back at the old bones sitting beside him in the minibus. The trip from St. John’s took almost an hour with the taxi’s stops and starts. There was casual work to be had along the coast, but English Harbour was where opportunity waited for a patient young fisherman. “Small up yuhself! Stop pushing that my way!” he quarrels with the man beside him. The cardboard box keeps sliding his way as the van lurches to the right around a parked vehicle. “This is my stop,” Geo tells the driver.

He follows the line of palms running from the busy road down to the boatyard office. A large paint shed blocks the view of dry-docked craft to Geo’s left. The boats of Shekerley are mostly for the locals. Geo eyes the fishing boats with envy. They are not all local. A 60-foot Gulf Star sits out of place at this end of Falmouth Bay. It belongs over at the Antigua Yacht Club with the toffs.

Geo reaches the double doors open onto the dockyard road. Their white metal is covered in framed notices and schedules. He stops to look for something fresh. “Is Mr. Jean-Baptiste about? Where can I find the man?” He thinks it might be Kenroy Jean-Baptiste’s teenage daughter pushing her fine booty out behind the counter. The girl leans with her elbows on the top. Her eyes flick off the phone for a moment. She simply points up to the ceiling and her hips continue to sway back and forth invitingly.

Geo walks back the way he came past a massive cement diesel tank behind a spindly pump. One corner has been rubbed too much. The sun-bleached red reveals the white ghost of paint’s past. The top is scuffed from feet that filled the tank or trooped across its surface and continued up the stairs to a balcony overlooking the boatyard. One corner of the first floor is Kenroy Jean-Baptiste’s private domain.

He knocks on Kenroy’s door, then turns back to the railing to survey the boatyard. Four men are clearly visible in the paint shed and neighboring workshop. There is an old man and an off-island boy on a sports cruiser. Seeing the old man makes Geo frown.

“George, I know what you are here about.” Kenroy Jean-Baptiste’s voice does not sound encouraging.

“You said in the middle of October,” Geo uses his chin to point to the old man watching the white boy scrambling about the expensive boat.

“True, true, but then Vinny’s son-in-law crewed out on a freighter and his daughter moved into his place. He already has grandchildren underfoot. Vinny works half a day still.”

“So, half a day?” Geo asks hopefully. He can see why the powerboat is out of the water. There is a nasty tear in the port hull, just where the line cutter met something heavy. The man gave him hope for work. Geo wants to bitterly complain to someone.

Kenroy closes the door to his air conditioned office and joins George at the railing. Hurricane Irma left Barbuda with 50% of its buildings destroyed or damaged. Its entire population was evacuated. Antigua islanders like Kenroy only worried about the lost fisheries. They all thought the stiff-necked Barbudans would catch their breath and go back to patch up their little island. Eleven months later, most had not. Always more people from other islands looking for work, Kenroy sighs.

“Well, George,” Kenroy begins, “I have the boy there helping Vinny out. I promised you this month, but you’ll have to wait.” Shekerley Boatyard looks busy, but Kenroy Jean-Baptiste cannot employ everyone. Melvin Lyndsey might be 72, but he knows boats on and off the water. If it is mechanical, and you are now sure what you are looking at, you ask Vinny.

The 2014 Cranchi M44 HT Vinny is looking over, it belongs to a businessman in St. John’s. Four years old, and the man rode the Italian Sports cruiser right over some floating debris a week after purchasing it. Some people should not have boats, Kenroy decides.

Vinny would find some way to patch the bow, replace the bowthruster probably, but Kenroy needs him to pass his skills on to someone who would stick with the job. Fourteen, the boy helping him with nimble fingers, nimble mind, he is just a bonus apprentice, not likely to stay. Kenroy had an instinct that George Thomas is equally uncommitted.

“The schoolboy?” Geo gestures to the figure trying out a sun cushion on the cruiser’s cabin roof, “What are you playing at? Babysitting is it?”

“Do you see that Maramu out there?” Geo is not familiar with the makes of sailboats. Kenroy points out a two-masted ketch festooned with drying laundry. “Fourteen came in on that sailboat from America. So before you say it, the boy has got himself an Antiguan passport. It’s all on the up and up. The part-time work suits him.”

“So the tourists take the jobs we need.” Geo lets the bitterness slip out.

That stings a little, but not as much as Geo thinks. Antigua is banking on the influx of money that is disproportionate to the numbers. There is no enthusiasm for chopping uneconomical cane so Europeans can sip their double doubles.

“What kind of boat did your father have? Would you fix it?” Kenroy seems to switch the subject.

The Barbudan fishing fleet was composed of undecked vessels of less than 20 feet in length. Geo thinks his father is wasting his time patching the old wooden boat. “No man, it’s too old. We need a fiberglass pirogue. We can use the technology off the old hull.” The Thomas family just needed a new hull.

“The fish are out there,” Kenroy suggests helpfully.

“Just waiting,” Geo agrees. Plenty for the sports fishermen like the owners of the boats in Shekerley Boatyard and the marina. He realizes why Kenroy Jean-Baptiste has switched the subject. Jean-Baptiste wonders if Geo is serious about the work. This seems unfair. Geo doubts the old man talking to the American boy spent his whole life in boatyards. “I like the open water, but I don’t have a boat. I don’t have a job either.”

Kenroy will not explain the underage boy’s presence. A millionaire batty boy is paying for the apprenticeship through an inflated slip fee. He looks at the desperate young man beside him. Well, you did promise the man a job this month. “Do you see the sailboat at the dock?” The 60-foot Gulf Star takes the spot Anton Schroeder’s ketch would normally berth. “My brother-in-law, he charters out of Falmouth or Jolly Harbour. Fourteen is going out on Friday for a week. You can take his place.”

“On the crew?” Geo asks hopefully.

“No, here in the boatyard helping Vinny find a way to restore that Cranchi that got crunched.”

“So this American boy gets to crew a charter and earn a thousand American dollars, pocket a sweet tip, while I patch fiberglass with the old man?”

“Do you speak Spanish?” Kenroy replies.

“No.”

“My brother-in-law doesn’t either.”

There are plenty of bodies in Falmouth Harbour who could take the spot. All a charter skipper has to do is advertise. The American boy is underage. He will work for less and the American is paying his wages anyway. Experienced deckhand, chef, interpreter, Fourteen is a useful boy. The American boy keeps thinking people are doing him a favor. Perhaps we are, Kenroy decides.

“Come look at this,” Kenroy claps the young man on the shoulder. He has many people to take care of and he has not decided if he likes the nineteen-year-old. Kenroy points out a line of rusting shipping containers you might find scattered about the coast of Antigua. “Can you cut metal, weld?”

“I can, a little.”

“Well, you start tomorrow and show me, if you want some full-time work.” Kenroy explains his vision for the space beyond the office and store. It is an expansion of the building block three-container structure. “If I can add a space for food and drink out there, better than what I have now, then stack some rooms on top.”

“Who is going to want to stay in an oven like that? A body would come out like a suckling pig fresh from the smoker!”

“Look at the ketch that boy came in on. The solar panels on the stern. Look out in the harbour at all the other sailboats. Those that come and go are a strange sort. ‘What wild animals does your island have?’ they ask.” Kenroy shakes his head. “Nothing, I tell them. We have no room for them. All ecology these days, proud of their low carbon footprints as they sail about; bored with what they have.

“Come yachting week, I could fill those containers like chickens in the coop. They will sleep in one of those nasty container boxes and feel all righteous.” Kenroy nods knowingly at the young man. “They go home with their Antiguan story and maybe their friends sail my way next season and not over to the English Harbour side with its Nelson’s Dockyard and Antiguan Yacht Club and Resort!”

“Dinner by that rotting quay that’s falling back into Falmouth Harbour,” Geo is dubious, “Your own Nelson’s Dockyard, is it?”

“Maybe,” Kenroy will not be rushed. He gets the old containers when they can be had for the price of moving them.

“I’m not a welder, I’m a fisherman. I’m a sailor,” Geo points back at the thirty-five year old Gulf Star. “You want me to scrape paint off boats and this American boy gets to sail.”

“He isn’t eighteen. It is easier to pay him less,” Kenroy admits.

Maybe this is why he does not warm to George Thomas. Fourteen is eager to take anything he is offered. Working with Vinny made Fourteen more excited than the week on a charter cruise. The boy’s tangerine disarms everyone about the boatyard. Kenroy points out that Jeremy has logged thousands of nautical miles as crew for three skippers from California to Antigua. “Fourteen isn’t eighteen, so he isn’t old enough to certify.”

Kenroy is sure Geo will accept his offer. “Come down with me. I’ll show you around and you can get to know everyone. I’ll take you over to Man-o’-War Bird and you can meet my father-in-law Emil. It is up to him if he wants you to crew sometime,” Kenroy claps a hand back on Geo’s shoulder, “You could take that sour look off your face, boy. You soak up what Vinny has to teach, help him with the new technology he hates so. Fourteen and you will get along fine.”


Jeremy is stretching on the sun cushion with his eyes open to the memory. “He gave me a look.” Rich alto, seductive-superior, almost Anton-Schroeder self-assured, the whole unexpected conversation wriggles earworm through his day. “Now he can look — ask him does he like his hair, Col,” and Jeremy was tongue tied. He should have been more clever! Dil gave him a phone number. Then she went with the asshole who hit her; so, Jeremy did not message.

“Are you planning to sleep there, working on your suntan?”

Vinny never seems to push hard. Between them, they got a day’s work done. Melvin Lyndsey would say, “The boat there needs a good washing tomorrow,” and Jeremy knows that Shekerley has work for him in the morning. If Vinny mentions running into St. John’s with his granddaughter to the dentist, it means there is no work the next day. Jeremy might wander-watch someone else, even lend a free hand, but it seems he worked for Vinny.

Jeremy rolls off the pad. The powerboat is sweet. He checked it out when they climbed on board. Teak boards across the cockpit, white leather cushions wrapped around the table, cockpit fridge still stocked. Vinny calls him back to work.

“They want to sit and lounge while we work on the bow, pretending they are on the water. We will hook her up to power and water. Don’t be messing up their bed.” Jeremy had tried the mattress on for size. “Go clean out the chain locker. I want to see how badly they damaged the bow.”

“Sprung the grid?” Jeremy speculates. The boat’s skipper ran completely over the flotsam. Anton had talked about how disastrous that could be for a fiberglass hull.

“I’ll check the bilges while you start clearing that locker. Give me a shout if you see any cracking.”

The boat is close enough to the cricket pitch for Jeremy to watch. Jeremy takes a break and watches a batsman hit a ball. He imitates the batsman's motion with a speargun he pulled from the bow locker. A voice interrupts him.

“So Fourteen's a cricket fan, eh?” Kenroy Jean-Baptiste laughs. Jeremy turns. Kenroy is looking up at him.

“It's not Fourteen. It's Jeremy,” he replies. Kenroy got the nickname from Anton Schroeder and Jeremy is stamping it out like Smokey suppressing a brushfire.

“Where is Vinny?”

“Inside, checking the bilge.” Jeremy sets the speargun on the sun cushion. There is more to clear. He dismisses the boatyard manager and the young man standing beside him. Sirocco’s lockers ought to be cleaned out. Jeremy plots that out as he begins to examine the fiberglass hull inside the locker. It looks promising to him.

The American boy, Fourteen according to Jean-Baptiste, is sitting on the deck with his legs in the open locker. He has a diving mask on his face. He turns Geo’s way, looking stupid. Up close, the American looks younger than Geo expected. It is not a good impression. “Watch’ya playing at?”

Jeremy pulls the mask off, feeling foolish. “Hey, I’m Jeremy. Is this your boat? Very nice!”

“No, it’s not my boat, man. I’m here to work.” Like you’re obviously not doing, Geo adds to himself. “What have you found?”

“Hull looks sound,” Fourteen shrugs. “Of course, the lamination may have parted.” This is more perceptive than Geo expected from the lazy boy.

“Clear the way, I’ll have a look.”

The boy pulls his bare legs free of the hatch. He gestures an invitation that feels like a shrug. “Port side,” he offers.

“I know that.”

Jeremy thinks the young man is good looking in a sharp-faced way. His moustache is pencil-thin above the tense lips. The young man is whip-thin with narrow hips like Dil. Jeremy remembers José from Topolobampo. The Antiguan man has the same energetic-restless manner. The shoulder muscles flex across his back as he drops down into the open locker.

“I’m Jeremy, what’s your name?”

“Geo.”

Geo is sorry the moment the nickname slips out. Geo is for Mona and his friends. “You’re Fourteen, right?”

“Yeah, just Jeremy,” he suggests hopefully.

“Okay,” Geo agrees, but it is going to be Fourteen, because without thinking about it, Geo wants to rub the annoying boy the wrong way.


Chandler’s Caribbean Cafe

October 17, 2018

Chandler’s is crowded, Antiguans, sailors from the marinas, and vacationers coming down from homes overlooking the paired harbors. A heavyset woman is singing from the level below the bar where Jeremy met Dil. Jeremy walks in from the main gate, past the busy grill and up to the bar where Tyson Coyle presides over his domain. He has never been here for open mike.

Jeremy stressed dressing, then chose the only clothes he had, Anton Schroeder’s guayabera shirt above the rust muscle shirt, the tailored slacks, and rarely worn ocher loafers. You look snatched, Anton told him. He is hardly overdressed and not out of place with laborers pimping up and the mega-yacht millionaires slumming.

Jeremy looks through the crowd, but can't find Dil. Tyson Coyle smiles, “So can we consider you a regular?”

“Is that good or bad?” Jeremy grins.

Tyson Coyle shrugs, half an eye on the drink order he is marshaling on a tray. “Well, you get to say, The usual, Tyson. Things like that, only, Guinness can’t be the usual, you’ll understand.” Coyle pushes a club soda with a twist of lime toward Jeremy. “So let's call this the usual for a few more years.”

“Thanks,” Jeremy replies. The hoppy-malt bitter-sweetness of Guinness does not appeal to Jeremy’s adolescent palate. He will drink it when Dil orders one for him.

Jeremy reaches for his wallet to pay, but Tyson interrupts. “No, no. It's on me.”

Jeremy takes a small sip. He holds the glass in one hand as he scans the room for a splash of gold.

“You came to see her, didn't you?”

Jeremy shrugs and blushes. He takes another sip. An older man at the table where David and Cory sat yesterday smiles at him.

Tyson thinks about the boy and Dil. Chandler’s draws all sorts. “Something I should tell you. She's —”

“She's what?”

Tyson looks up toward the stage, “She's on.”

Jeremy swings around quickly toward the impromptu stage where Tyson Coyle has placed the microphone and sound system for the open mike. Dil is connecting her phone to the system so she can play her musical selection. From the way Dil flirts with the closest tables, Jeremy can see she is a regular.

Dil's hand wraps around the mike. The rich contralto voice speaks the first phrases as the techno introduction starts. Dil’s eyes stare past her audience. Her body absorbs the kinetic energy of Lady Gaga’s song.

Dil stands swaying slightly. She seems a little drunk. She mimes to the song’s lyrics, touching her hair and using the microphone like lipstick. Dil’s voice is feminine and strong. There is pride in the way she tosses her head at the lines. Dil seems to be singing to herself, until she slips the microphone off the stand and then she is singing to her audience.

The tables near the sound system seem to know this act. They cheer at Dil’s transition, whether out of approval or derision Jeremy can't be sure.

Dil is playing to his audience, using the song to make a statement about his life. “Right track baby I was born this way,” the line is almost spit out at an older Antiguan.

“Don’t be a drag, just be a queen,” the mantra comes out determined and she picks three different people to say it to.

Then, Dil moves down to the lower bar and draws the inattentive patrons into her message.

The voice has Gaga’s affirmation, but it is all Theo Clarke breaking chains. Theo is seventeen and not yet broken by school uniforms. He is Dil, dazzling the Miami Beach scene with a twist of his unique zest.

Dil is Helen-Reddy-strong about this message. Lady Gaga only echoes his mother’s message, “Jah mek nuh mistakes.”

Dil will sing it to the world and to himself until everyone believes it.

He turns to move back up the restaurant levels, chanting his message at the people who are smiling or watching him in equivocal fascination. The lyrics take him back into song.

The next lines are rapped out with the techno interlude. Dil finds a center stage and points at different people about the restaurant. He spotted them before it was his turn. The final lines are spoken to a tired woman with an unlovely face. Dil hugs her shoulders.

Jeremy sits beside his forgotten club soda, the citrus twist more than a memory on his tongue. Dil has her jet hair back in the club at her neck. First impressions with the hair and golden dress; Jeremy can superimpose the soft midnight halo about Dil’s face and the memory of Dave’s reveal on the yacht’s flybridge. Dil is beyond beautiful and the popular song has Jeremy’s heart on the right track.

He watches Dil as she continues to play for her audience at the tables below. She finally looks his way and the next lines are sung to him.

Dil knew Jimmy-Fergus was there at the bar. No message all day, the heartless boy. Dil composed a few himself, but the Fergus-futility of the American visitor overwhelmed him.

Dil has a room full of people to coax with his evening’s choice of song. If they like it, they will ask him for another. He speaks to the boy at the bar instead.

It is time to end the song at the microphone stand. He is really just an ingenu, but it is time to finish Dil-diva.

The last two lines are a wistful admission aimed at the beautiful boy at the bar.

It doesn't matter if you love him, or capital H-I-M

Just put your paws up 'cause you were born this way, baby

My mama told me when I was young

We are all born superstars

She rolled my hair and put my lipstick on

In the glass of her boudoir

"There's nothing wrong with loving who you are"

She said, "'Cause he made you perfect, babe"

"So hold your head up girl and you'll go far,

Listen to me when I say"

I'm beautiful in my way

'Cause God makes no mistakes

I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way

Don't hide yourself in regret

Just love yourself and you're set

I'm on the right track, baby

I was born this way (Born this way)

Oh there ain't no other way

Baby I was born this way

Baby I was born this way

Oh there ain't no other way

Baby I was born this way

Right track baby I was born this way

Don't be a drag, just be a queen

Don't be a drag, just be a queen

Don't be a drag, just be a queen

Don't be don't be don't be

Give yourself prudence

And love your friends

So we can rejoice your truth

In the religion of the insecure

I must be myself, respect my youth

A different lover is not a sin

Believe capital H-I-M (hey hey hey)

I love my life I love this record and

Mi amore vole fe, yah

I'm beautiful in my way

'Cause God makes no mistakes

I'm on the right track, baby

I was born this way

Don't hide yourself in regret

Just love yourself and you're set

I'm on the right track, baby

I was born this way

Oh there ain't no other way

Baby I was born this way

Baby I was born this way

Oh there ain't no other way

Baby I was born this way

Right track, baby I was born this way

Don't be a drag, just be a queen

Whether you're broke or evergreen

You're black, white, beige, chola descent

You're Lebanese, you're Orient

Whether life's disabilities

Left you outcast, bullied, or teased

Rejoice and love yourself today

'Cause baby you were born this way

No matter gay, straight, or bi

Lesbian, transgendered life

I'm on the right track baby

I was born to survive

No matter black, white or beige

Chola or orient made

I'm on the right track baby

I was born to be brave

I'm beautiful in my way

'Cause God makes no mistakes

I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way

Don't hide yourself in regret

Just love yourself and you're set

I'm on the right track, baby

I was born this way yeah

Oh there ain't no other way

Baby I was born this way

Baby I was born this way (Born this way)

Oh there ain't no other way

Baby I was born this way

Right track, baby I was born this way

I was born this way hey

I was born this way hey

I'm on the right track baby

I was born this way hey

I was born this way hey

I was born this way hey

I'm on the right track baby

I was born this way hey

Same D.N.A. but born this way

Same D.N.A. but born this way

The crowd actually cheers. Jeremy pulls his phone out and messages her, You’re great. He can see her as she disconnects her phone. Just a pause where she might have read his message. Jeremy watches Dil make her way through the crowded restaurant, toward him. The singer stops to talk with one or two people, shaking off suggestions that she sing another song.

Jeremy feels a spark in the tropical night when Dil comes very close to touching Jeremy’s back as she takes her familiar stool at the bar. “He's still looking, Col.”

“Persistent,” Tyson obliges.

“Good thing in a man,” Dil addresses Tyson, as if Jeremy was a person of interest at the other end of the restaurant.

“Solid gold primo.”

“Maybe he wants something,” Dil sets his bag on the bar counter. He could do something obvious, like take a compact out and check his face. Jaye-Davidson-Dil would think her face was perfect already. Jaye-Davidson-Dil would be chill on the outside, no matter how much she carried tragedy and hurt in her heart.

“Figure he does,” Tyson agrees with certainty. The teenagers are awkward-cute fumbling around together. Tyson wonders what they see in each other.

“Ask him.”

Tyson feels this has gone on far enough. There is an impending train wreck about this conversation. The hetero teen is blinded by the deceptive enchantments of the transvestite prostitute. “Ask him yourself,” Tyson concludes, not unkindly.

Dil looks at Jeremy directly, “So tell me.”

Jeremy says nothing. He shrugs and blushes instead. Promiscuous Fourteen would handle this more directly, heart-matters rarely conflicting with cock-matters. Jeremy Gates is less certain how to approach Dil. Worryingly, the beautiful singer reminds Jeremy of Sergio Ochoa, the Puerto Vallarta waiter who did tricks up and down the wharf and Craigslisted his income from sex-tourists stepping off the cruise ships. Prostitution is no way to live, but Jeremy does not care if that is the way Dil gets by, he just does not want Dil to think he is another predatory client.

“Everybody wants something,” Dil warns knowingly.

“Not me,” Jeremy protests. The line is a perfect setup. Dil melts a little further.

The answer comes so easily. Dil has played the movie countless times, echoing Jaye Davidson’s lines. The next has been cued, “Not you. How quaint. How old-fashioned and quaint. Isn't it, Col?”

Tyson Coyle shrugs, oblivious to the role he plays in Dil’s reenactment.

“You old-fashioned?” Dil asks the flustered boy beside him. His Jimmy-Fergus has dressed tonight. Dil hopes Jimmy-Fergus dresses for him. The Mexican linen hangs unbleached perfectly across the boy’s shoulders. Dil likes the life-blood color of the undershirt that complements the blush beneath his tan. Black onyx studs in silver settings. Nice ears, Dil thinks. “Hmm?” she prompts him.

“Must be,” Jeremy decides. American Doodle-dandy, Ohio buckeye, Chillicothe home boy, Jeremy thinks of the quiet town and his family’s Craftsman. Home for Thanksgiving, the thought of missing the annual gathering (twice) makes him ache. He can taste his mom’s cooking, hear his grandpa’s voice.

Then, Jeremy recalls Levi Fisher and the Luxor Winnebago, sex with (fucking) Cordell, and cruising with Anton and Daniel. It would be Fourteen who flies first class on Anton’s waiting ticket. Fourteen would settle at the welcoming dinner table like an unexpected guest. He would be a changeling supplanting the place of a lost boy. Fourteen considers Dil’s question once again. “Maybe not so much,” Jeremy’s grin is like a lighthouse. Suddenly he is casting his tangerine about in steady pulses that match Dil’s heartbeat.

Dov Norrell watched Dil’s performance from the restaurant garden. The beautiful Jamaican hooker will never be a star, just a favored novelty in some drag review. Still, Dil can sing, and whether it is the VIP stateroom, Oberyn’s salon, or a Miami club, Dil is mesmerizing. Again with the wet behind the ears teenager salivating at the bar! Dov Norrell comes up to Dil, still put out that she continues to refuse to agree with working the coming cruise, fucking ditzy bitch. 

Got the bracelet, Dil?” Dov is willing to concede he owed her the cash she took weeks ago, but the bracelet she walked away with that morning was not cheap paste and plating to be dismissed.

 “Fuck off, Dave,” Dil answers coolly.

“You fucking promised to give the bracelet back. I said you could only keep it if you sailed with me again.” Dil wore it while they made love in the stateroom. Dil was spectacular in nothing but her halo-hair, and the glitter in her eyes and on her wrist.

“Did I?”

“You fucking did.” Dov suddenly jerks Dil roughly off the stool, spilling her martini. “Didn't you? Well, come on!” Dov drags Dil through the restaurant. Jeremy watches them go.

Tyson eyes Jeremy, “She should know better.”

“So, who is he?” Jeremy wonders. Off that big yacht, are they partners? There is a fire in his chest that is all too like the feeling he had briefly for Paolo. Dil might sail away with this other man and he would never see her again.

Tyson takes Dil’s abandoned drink off the bar and empties it into the sink. “He's what she should run a mile from.”

“Then why doesn't she?”

Tyson Coyle shrugs off the moment’s drama, “It’s hard to figure people out, kid. What brings any of us to this island?” Jeremy is just like Dil, as far as Tyson is concerned. Two kids hanging out at his restaurant, maybe both selling themselves to get by. Then again, this clean-cut American might be here with his family for the month.

Jeremy suddenly stands. He grabs Dil’s forgotten bag and makes his way in the direction Dov dragged Dil.


Jeremy steps through the restaurant gate. The heavy bag swings from his hand. There is no sign of Dil. They went back to the yacht. The thought is a punch in Jeremy’s gut. He walks a few yards toward the entrance to the Antigua Yacht Club and Marina. She went with him again. He’s what she should run a mile from, Jeremy recognizes the undertone of cynicism in the bartender’s answer. There are voices down the street toward where he left his scooter.

Jeremy looks through the yacht club entrance. There are evening wanderers, but he cannot see Dave or Dil. He turns in the direction of his scooter and the stray voices he heard. A new voice has taken Dil’s place at Chandler’s open mike. The restaurant chatter and the fresh music seem to fade where the lights diffuse onto the road.  

Jeremy sees Dil pushing Dave away. The man grabs her, turns her roughly as he had the night before. “Your games just piss me off,” Jeremy hears Dave grate.

“You heard me!” She beats Dave’s arms away. A glittering bracelet falls on the ground. Dil staggers away from him past the parked cars.

Dave picks up the bracelet, then starts after her. “You think you can just walk away from me? Too innocent now?” Dov tries to pull her back down the road toward the yacht club entrance. “We’ll have some drinks before we go back. You’ll feel better.”

“I’m done with that.”

It is not for her to say. The three real women, Krystle, Annika, and Cherry, they are professionals. The Jamaican girl thinks she is above it all. Dil imagines she is Dov’s girlfriend. Cruising on High Grade, Dil could get fussy. Since Dil stepped off the boat to see his family, the trans boy has been extra difficult. The slut hardly knows what she wants. All she needs from time to time is a sharp reminder. That seems to be what Dil needs now. “Talk to me, you stupid bitch!”

Dov and Dil both bump into Jeremy, who has stopped walking towards them. Jeremy holds his ground. The anger is welling up and the man abusing Dil is Patrick Hunter, (fucking) Cordell, and Elvis Parker all in one cruel-selfish asshole with a yacht.

Dil smiles, “Hi Jimmy.”

“Hi. You forgot your bag,” he holds it up to show her.

“Thank you.” So clean, so timing it right, Dil might forget that Jeremy did not know his cues. It’s not a movie, Theo intrudes practically. He’s not muscular Stephen Rea, either, just, just, Dil lets the reply fade (for now).

“Who the fuck are you?” Which is Dov’s way to say, fuck off kid! The boy from the restaurant has followed them like a stray puppy that needs a good kick. Dov hates the sight of him.

“Jimmy,” Dil introduces the young stranger.

Fucking psych games, the nicknames and the trans boy’s flirtations were amusing on the passage from Miami. Dov took it as an act. Having Dil along as his uncle hopped from one island to the next was worth the drama. Dil outshone the other girls, risked more, gave more. The whole erotic-tragic-trans-thing was quite amusing, up until now. “You said I’m Jimmy. It's him now, is it?”

“Maybe,” Dil knows Theo is full of unrealistic dreams. Dil knows the real score. You get Daves who think you’re a whore punching bag, or Jimmy-Fergus types who can’t accept what God made a girl. Theo should have grown out of it in Jamaica, or maybe Miami. The dream of being accepted, everyone had it, even Bobbie Tosh. Jaye-Davidson-Dil did not let it break her, so Theo played Dil.

Dov Norrell eyes Jeremy. “Fuck off home, kid. You haven’t got a clue.”

“Hey, come with me.” Jeremy grabs Dil's wrist and Dov knuckles a rabbit-punch below the flat pans of Fourteen’s chest and just above the taut bands of his torso.

The unexpected-predictable punch leaves Jeremy searching for the right signal to draw the next breath. He swings away from Dov to protect himself from further damage. The knack of breathing still eludes him. Jeremy bends over the pain. It will come, trust me, Patrick Hunter offered with a clinical detachment in the Bronco.

Bobcat and the jackrabbit have a consensus that breathing comes second this time. A boy snorkeling the coast of Central America and the Caribbean coral can hold his breath a long time. Jeremy has a rage that needs no oxygen. Jeremy’s fingers find the stag horn handle in his right pocket. The knife is reassuring in his grip.

Before Dov can dismiss the adolescent pissant, he is staring at Jeremy’s Japanese Hikari, unfolded. The Damascus steel clip point blade points at Dov’s solar plexus with a determined, if inexperienced stance.

“No you asshole, you fuck off home. You’re the one who doesn’t have a clue,” Jeremy snarls in his turn. Fuck these bastards, he is going to be jackrabbit-dancing and bobcat-deadly. There is a fire in Jeremy that has been stoked by too many injustices. Am I holding the knife right? Just a thought.

“Big man!” Dov laughs his derision. Okay, the knife looks sharp, and the kid looks pretty fit. A little caution is called for. It should not take much to bat the knife out of the boy’s shaking hand.

Fergus, IRA volunteer, NOT, Dil pulls his expandable baton from the bag Jeremy brought him. As Dov and Jeremy face off, he snaps the baton, extending 26” of tempered steel and lead weight tip out away from him. There are memories of Theo and Bobbie Tosh helpless-cornered in Kingston. How useless Theo felt when they came for Bobbie, and how determined he was never to repeat that.

Dil thinks it is a little too macho West Side Story. Tony stabs Bernardo, Dil thinks, and then what is a girl to do? Dov is trying feints at Jeremy’s knifehand. Jeremy is dancing on his toes. Maria twirls the baton like a cheerleader, ♪♫♬ I feel pretty, oh so pretty! ♪♫♬

“See, they get the wrong idea, Jimmy. Have it your way, Dave.”

Dov turns toward Dil’s voice, and Dil whacks him upside the head. Dov drops. Dil looks down on Dov with satisfaction. “Some people are like slinkies, not really good for anything, but you can’t help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.”

Dov Norrell is going to have a nasty bruise above his eyebrow. “Cunt,” he groans. Dil plays the consummate lady, Dov tends to forget he is dealing with a wiry seventeen-year old boy from Trench Town.

Dil puts his foot on Dov Norrell's chest. “What was that?” he asks Dov. Dil’s eyes shift to Jeremy, who has stood down. The deadly knife is just held lightly in his right hand by his hip. “They all get the wrong idea,” he tells Jeremy.

“Cunt. Bitch. Fucking whore.”

“Charming,” Dil replies.

Dov Norrell tries a grab for Dil’s ankle. Dil raps the hand away with his baton. Dil presses his foot down on Dov’s chest and waves the baton negligently in the man’s face. He looks back to Jeremy. “What'll I do? Break his neck?” Dil makes as if he will.

“No, don't,” Jeremy replies. With Dave handled so neatly, the passionate rage has collapsed completely. Jeremy does not feel the after panic of the San Ysidro shooting. Instead, he feels the tremor-fright of Topolobampo harbor. I’m dangerous, and maybe I can’t handle that.

Dil bends low to Dov Norrell. “I’m going to take my foot off slowly, David. Then you're to go back to the yacht, like Oberyn’s good boy. You hear me? Tell your uncle, thanks but no thanks for the offer. I’d rather not meet his friends.”

“Cunt,” but Dov’s voice is softer.

Dil removes his foot and pirouettes away. He grabs the arm dangling the knife, presses his body into Jeremy’s bobcat tangerine strength. He draws Jeremy away. “Come on, honey,” he delivers his final line.


“People threatened me on buses in Jamaica. Said I should be shot, say my friends should be shot.” Schoolmates were just mean-talk. It was not till Dil tried to come out that it got dangerous. Much of the harassment came from anti-gay Rastafarians.

Bobbie Tosh and Dil doubted anyone would act on the threats, how wrong they were. After Kingston, Dil took security training with Greylake in Miami. He was going to be ready for that Irish bitch Jude whenever she entered his life. Dave's you tolerate for a while, putting up with Jude? Kill me dead. Dil collapses the baton and tucks it away in her shoulder bag.

They walk away from Chandler’s past the other busy restaurants. Neither caring for the moment where they might be going.

“You all right?” Jeremy asks his companion.

“Yes, thank you.”

“What was that all about?” Jeremy ventures.

“He wants me to perform for his uncle’s business clients.” Dil says this with a glance toward Jeremy, liking the feel of his warmth on her arm.

“Perform?”

“You know.”

“So,” Jeremy is thinking of (fucking) Cordell’s strange tattoo, or maybe Dil was more like Gareon Brantley and Malachi Hooker. The two young athletes hardly saw themselves as prostitutes. It was the quid pro quo of getting football scholarships. “So, you’re a hooker?”

“God no, I'm a hairdresser.” Dil assures the boy. He isn’t and he thought about it just in passing. Dil was a hairdresser, after all. Theo has no idea what he wants to do, finish school perhaps, go back to Miami to party, time will tell.

Jeremy looks back. Dov Norrell is sitting on the street holding his head. “He's getting up. I think he has a headache. That stick is something wicked.”

“Dov Norrell is a headache,” Dil observes without looking back. “You can't leave me then, can you?” Dil squeezes Jeremy’s arm. He notices the glittering blade in Jeremy’s right hand. “You would have knifed him?”

 Jeremy lifts the Japanese Hikari folding knife as if he was not sure where it came from. “No, I don’t know.” He stops while he carefully folds the blade and hides it in his pocket. “I get angry sometimes,” he confesses.

“Oh, like Dov.”

“Dov?”

“Dov-Dave.”

“Oh, what do you mean, like hitting you to end an argument?” Jeremy pauses before offering a passionate denial. He punched Daniel Ayers in anger. Don’t be so sure of yourself, he decides-warns. There is a lot of rage in Jeremy-Fourteen. “No. I’ve sometimes, never mind, I’d never slap you like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like last night,” Jeremy explains quietly. “I saw what — I just can’t put up with that shit, not anymore.”

“You’re a gentleman.”

“Why do I feel like you are always mocking me?”

“It’s the accent,” Dil replies.

They were almost up to the Dockyard Drive intersection. Restaurants and bars on top of each other, people moving in and out. “Are you hungry?” Jeremy asks beside Paparazzi’s.

Dil pauses, the idea attracts him. Dov Norrell simmering back on High Grade or Aunt Ronica and Thursday morning classes, or spend the rest of the evening with this boy his own age.

Jeremy is attractive. Theo wonders why he can’t drop Dil and give the stunning boy an indication that he likes male-on-male. He could take the dress off and really make love to this boy. The big (disapointing) reveal scene, cue the heterosexual vomit, the utter humiliation. Dil assumes Jeremy thinks he is female, or does he? Jeremy is hard to read. He simply seems to take Dil at ambiguous-face value. Does it matter to the boy beside him? In this way, Theo finds Jeremy as mysterious as he himself strives to be. Is Jeremy gay, or a straight boy who thinks Dil is a young woman?

Clubbing in Miami, it hardly mattered who he dallied with. Dil competed with the twinks, all of them in a dizzy, sex-charged now. Who they were was saved for the graceful exit in the morning after. Why does it even matter?  Odds on, Jeremy is vacationing from his American Midwest accent world. Jeremy is on the town from a resort hotel, or one of the view-commanding villas. He might be off a yacht, like Dil is.

“Another time,” Dil decides, “I’ll catch a taxi here and be a good girl.”

“You’re not staying on the — ?”

“No, honey.” Dil lets Jeremy have his arm back.

“Let me take you home,”

Dil flags a taxi. “Not necessary Jimmy,” Dil smiles at the serious furrows creasing the boy’s face.

“I have a bike,” Jeremy offers.

“Do I ride on your handle?” Dil teases. Jeremy’s frown melts into a pixie-boyish grin that would banish all transgressions. Her Jimmy-Fergus is quick.

“I’ve an old scooter,” Jeremy explains. The smile tips the scale.

“Where?” Back near Chandler’s, it transpires. They turn back, and Dil repossesses Jeremy’s arm. “Armed to the teeth and a ride, you are a knight in shining armor, aren’t you? Ready to whip it out at the least provocation, hmm?

They walk in step, their adolescent energy contained within their chests. “You sang very well. I like to hear you sing,” Jeremy begins.

“It is an older crowd at Chandler’s Caribbean Cafe, all the rich boat owners are old or might as well be,” Dil explains. Jeremy understands this. KOAs and Walmart parking lots full of comfortable Levi Fishers. Anton Schroeder old enough to roll his eyes at Daniel Ayers’ millennial music, who in turn patronized Jeremy’s Z-list.

“Lady Gaga.”

“Of course!” Dil agrees. “I’ll sing almost anything, except your country.”

“Not my country, well, Miley Cyrus,” Jeremy allows.

“Janelle Monáe, I love her look! Mykki Blanco, inspirational, but I don’t sing them much. Pabllo Vittar?” Dil looks at Jeremy. He just shakes his head. “Instagram-world-famous,” Dil protests. “Your turn,” Dil tries her head on Jeremy’s shoulder for a bit, liking the connection.

Jeremy hates these sorts of tests. “I usually think of song titles,” Jeremy confesses. “‘I’m the One,’ ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling,’ ‘Treat You Better.’”

“Shawn Mendes,” Dill confirms. When she looks, Jeremy is blushing. “You are old-fashioned.”

“I like Dil,” Jeremy replies awkwardly. He points to a black scooter, parked a comfortable distance from the Antigua Yacht Club’s grand entrance.

“Where are you from?” Dil asks.

“Scotland, I think you said, or was it Ireland?” This generates a silence between them. Jeremy retrieves his helmet and starts to offer it to Dil. Her perfect hair, she declines with an imperious stare. Jeremy has said the wrong thing. Dil slides on behind him, nestling into the shape of things. The scooter is less cool than Jeremy thought it was. It is small and weak, like Jeremy feels right now. “I’m from Ohio,” he tells Dil before he starts the engine.

“Holy Toledo,” Dil murmurs.


At the turn that takes Matthew’s Road up into the island and incidentally on to Swetes and Fig Tree Drive, Jeremy coasts to a stop. He points to the modest sign for Shekerley’s Boatyard. “I’m here, just saying. Boat-sitting for a friend.”

“Nice to know,” Dil’s voice is soft. Jimmy-Fergus is close to Jody’s cricket grounds. Life sends messages, if a girl pays attention. “You don’t play cricket, do you,” is a statement, not a question. Their worlds have been so different.

“Baseball,” the boy agrees equitably.

“Boys, bats and balls, anyway,” Dil consoles. Jeremy’s scooter kicks into gear and they start climbing the hill through Falmouth. “I am staying with my aunt and cousins,” Dil tells Jeremy over the petty whine.

“So you live in Antigua, cool! I’m staying too.” Very interesting, echoes back and forth.

Dil makes Jeremy stop a block short of his aunt Ronica’s house. It is late, and Dil is not ready for the predestined break with Jimmy-Fergus. He wants to delay the vomit-inducing rejection that leads to Jaye-Davidson-Dil’s humiliation. They always run when they realize, Dil thinks sadly.

“You never asked what I’m doing here on my own,” Jeremy interrupts Dil’s melancholy thoughts.

“It never crossed my mind. You’re on your own?”

“Yes,” Jeremy pulls his helmet off and sets it carefully on the scooter seat. “You grew up in Antigua?”

“No, not here. I’m here because,” well, because Dil isn’t certain the cruise with Dov and Oberyn Norrell was what he wanted. “I have my family here.”

“I suppose I might say the same,” Jeremy stops to consider it. “Sometimes it just seems I found my way here by accident, and I think it is better here connected to something, than to keep wandering.”

This makes so much sense to Dil. “What are you connected to?”

“A boat, a memory.”

“I completely understand.”

“You do? I don’t. I was running and I just needed to stop.”

“Perfect sense, Jimmy. You couldn’t stay at home after what happened, could you? The guilt and all?”

“What?” There is alarm in Jeremy’s voice.

“Your hand was forced, Fergus,” Dil assures the boy. “It wasn’t what you thought it was going to be like. There you were with your gun, not wanting to do what has to be done. You ran, of course, betrayal and revenge. Now you are here looking for me, with awful secrets you need to tell.” Fergus being complicit in Jody’s death confuses with Theo just standing there helpless while Bobbie Tosh was broken. Dil understands Jeremy completely.

“I —” Jeremy strangles out the single word.

“Don’t mind me, Jimmy. I’m just dreaming. But I do understand, sometimes we all have the urge to step on someone’s neck.”

Jeremy and Dil walk slowly on until they reach the shed Dil sleeps in. Dil realizes he has said something to upset the handsome boy. Things go the way they always go, Dil understands, which is to say to heartbreak.

“You want me to ask you in, right?” Dil puts his fingers on the shed door.

“No, I didn't —,” but he does. One is the loneliest number and the only thing Jeremy Gates can do is keep flinging himself at new people, gathering in the Keon Kings, the Sophie Wrights, and Mary Rules who will comfort him. People who will say the name Jeremy, and draw who he is closer to them.

Despite the words he just heard, Jeremy knows Dil cannot know what Fourteen did in San Diego. The beautiful girl has her secrets too. However Dil might see herself (himself, themself?), Dil is young like him. Dil lives with her own mistakes. What was it dad said? Don’t stress it Jem, somewhere between feeling ashamed of 85% to feeling proud of 40%, we all grow up. Like what dad? Jeremy asked his dad. Don’t ask, don’t tell! his father laughed.

But I'm not cheap, you know that? Loud, but never cheap,” Dil’s joke restores the humor between them, keeping the drama in play.

There is a movement at the back door. Theo’s aunt stands arms folded across her chest. “School night and you are out and about in those flashy clothes looking for fresh trouble,” Ronica shakes her head at the white boy.

Ronica understands Keyshia’s Theo is seventeen, almost a man. Her own son prowled at night and partied on the beach. Theo says he likes to sing at some English Harbour club, and who knows what the boy gets up to after? Now her sister’s son is bringing strangers back to her home. A tourist boy, lord alone knew if that made a difference with this strange child!

“He’s just brought me home, auntie, don’t get twisted!” Of course, she is going to stay there to be sure.

“I have a chance to crew for a week,” Jeremy is very apologetic. “Hablo un poco de español, resulta que todavía es útil.”

“Lo hablas muy bien,” Dil replies.

“You speak Spanish?” Jeremy is surprised.

“Yuh tink ah yardie lakka mi shud jus bi speaking creole?.” Dil’s unexpected switch is more surprising than his Spanish. He switches back to the posh accent he has polished. “My father is Cuban American. I thought he would appreciate my effort. Apparently not,” Dil concludes without disappointment.

Dil leans close to Jeremy. “If you kissed me, it would really get her goat.”  He tilts his face. Jeremy kisses Dil, tenderly. Despite the eighteen-month difference in their ages, Jeremy is finding his height and Dil’s lips are just a perfect tilt away from him. He starts to pull away, but Dil’s cool fingers touch his neck and keep him captured. Jeremy dares a hand on Dil’s hip.

“Now, if you asked me to meet you tomorrow after school, it would really drive my aunt insane.”

“Where?” Jeremy asks, “I can pick you up from school.”

Jimmy-Fergus seeing Theo in his school uniform with everyone at Irene B. Williams Secondary School speculating-condemning the connection was not appealing. Jimmy-Fergus with his sparkling grin and tender lips consume Dil.

“8:00 at Chandler’s, I’ll get there on my own.”

“I work tomorrow night,” Jeremy worries. He has a shift he can’t afford to miss. “If you met me at Lekker Braai, maybe 10:00, is that too late? We could eat there.” He tries the smile that never fails. It is worth a second quick kiss for encouragement.

“Lekker Braai, 10:00 pm,” Dil agrees.

Dil goes into the shed and closes the door. Jeremy turns and faces down at the disapproving aunt, who turns back into the house.


Heritage Quay, St. John’s, Antigua

October 27, 2018

The sky is blue and Heritage Quay loves to reflect sky and sea in shades of blue. Dil opted for slashed jeans and a smock that demurely distracts from his crotch. He envies the girls in hot pants and bright tops. Dil just can’t bear to test the Dil and Jimmy flirtation now with what comes after. 

Jeremy frustrates Dil with his unconcern. Definitely a gentleman, Dil decided when their first dinner date ended in another kiss. He cannot believe Jeremy is that virginal. This is anxty-dillerious high-school dating like neither boy has known.

Dil sits on the blue border of the boulevard near a cheerful coffee shop. The morning flood of cruise-ship passengers has ebbed back to their staterooms or they have been packed onto tour buses that will circle the island. A few are left, sipping coffee or wandering in and out of shops. Dil prefers it here, or in English Harbour where he fits in best. His aunt’s house is nestled comfortably in the shadow of Swetes Wesleyan Holiness Church. Dil walks Buckley’s Main Road past the church and to his high school. That pretty much says it all.

Jeremy has come back from somewhere looking very pleased with himself. “Give me that look again,” Dil commands.

“What look?”

“The one you gave me in Chandler’s and Lekker Braai,” Dil explains.

Jeremy takes a silk flower from behind his back. She holds it, with theatrical feeling. “Darling, you shouldn't have!” Dil laughs and leans toward Jeremy and kisses her in a classically old-fashioned way. She takes his arm and walks off with him.

Spices of India on Redcliff Street is on the second floor. They sit under a green umbrella where a sea breeze can cool them. “Are you okay?” Jeremy asks Dil.

Dil passed a restaurant that offered live music for the tourists. Jeremy waited patiently on the street while Dil made a pitch to sing there. The manager was tolerant, but trans-Dil was not welcome there. It burned to compromise. Theo was Jamaican, the manager could see that. The cruise-ship crowd were old and had fond memories of reggae and weed in their university dorms, posters of Bob Marley sucking on a spliff. Theo could do old time reggae, and ask Bobbie Tosh for forgiveness.

Dil watches the string of Antigua and Barbuda flags flap in the wind like Buddhist prayer flags. Jeremy is looking at Dil over his menu. A waiter places drinks on their table, then leaves. Dil wants to forget the restaurant moment. This should be the sweet-sorrow now of Dil and Jimmy.

“Now's the time you're meant to do something, isn't it?” The contrived line is more heartfelt than Dil anticipated.

“Like what?” Jeremy asks.

Adolescent hungry, culinary curious, the menu competes with the always alluring Dil seated across from him. Jeremy’s masking Oakleys are matched by her (his, their) Ray-ban Jackie Ohhs. Jeremy is determined not to embarrass Dil with semi-critical identity questions. People call Dil she, so Jeremy will too. He is not sure what she is supposed to say about Dil’s difference-asperations. 

“Make a pass or something. Isn't that the way it goes?”

“Must be,” Jeremy grins.

“You got a special friend, Jimmy?”

“How special?” Dil is not talking about Sophie Wright, waiting to deliver his goddaughter in San Francisco. His companion is not thinking of Mary Rule, who has decided the winds have turned Gravity away from Florida and toward Antigua for a happy reunion with Jeremy. There never has been someone special, Jeremy thinks sadly.

Dil sees the droop in Jeremy’s face. Damn dark glasses! The lenses keep their feelings opaque. Jeremy is interested, obviously, but Dil cannot decide what drives that interest.

“You want one?” This was supposed to come out as a sophisticated offer, a flirtatious dare Dil might throw at a dance partner in Miami. Do you want to take me home? Do you dare find out who I am? It was supposed to be cucumber-cool, peppery-hot, but instead it is something fragile.

A car abruptly stops on the street below them, “God damn!” someone yells.

“Jesus Christ!” Jeremy exclaims. It looks as if the car almost ran over a woman and her child.

“Jesus,” Dil agrees. The car continues down the road, stops, and then screeches off. “That Dave? The things a girl has to put up with.”

Dil looks down toward where the car has pulled away. His question has gone unanswered. There is the cheap silk flower Jimmy-Fergus gave her. Special friend, Dil wanted to say boyfriend, learn the answer to his question. Would Jeremy like Theo-within, or is it Dil-presented keeping them together? A boy needs to know.


They take a late taxi back to Swetes where Jeremy has left his Zuma 125. They have to walk a distance along the road, watched by the late night crowd. Dil knows his unique presence has blown through his aunt’s neighborhood like a tropical storm. He steps around the curious looks with practiced disregard as he might a tempest’s scattered damage. Jeremy misconstrues the neighbor’s looks. He imagines he is the odd one here, and Dil the blending native.

A car pulls up behind Dil and Jeremy. Dil turns around and shouts, “Piss off, Dave!”

“I worried about you being on your own,” Jeremy confesses. “While I was gone, I mean. He’s gone, Dave --”

“-- Dov”

“Dov,” Jeremy glances at Dil. “The yacht is gone. I checked. I know you can take care of yourself.” Dil waves his hand at Jeremy’s head with an imaginary baton and Jeremy snaps his head back as if he felt the blow, twists in the street and staggers for a moment. Finally, Jeremy falls at Dil’s feet on his back. Jeremy looks up at Dil, “I worry.”

Dil squats down beside him. “I'm not on my own, am I?” he counters with a smile. Dil touches Jeremy’s cheek. “Special friends? Come on back, would you?”

Dil and Jeremy walk in darkness to the shed. Jeremy stands like a shadow in the doorway. A dim light comes on. “Won't hurt you to come in,” Dil coaxes him. Jeremy enters slowly. He looks around the room; there is an exaggerated femininity about the bed throw and ordered cosmetics that contrasts with a cricket bat hung on the wall. Jeremy looks at a poster of an Antigua team on the wall. It fails to help him understand who this person is.

“My cousin’s gear,” Dil comments. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, please.”

“What'll it be?”

“Whatever you have.”

Dil leaves Jeremy to look around the simple room while she fetches something from his aunt’s fridge. Jeremy looks at the shelf and sees a picture of Bobbie Tosh, a boy as androgynous as Dil, but heavyset and soft. Jeremy’s reverie is broken by the sound of a voice outside -- Dil’s aunt.

Dil comes back with two sodas. Jeremy turns his way, “Am I a problem? Should I leave?”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dil answers.

Jeremy walks away from the photograph of Bobbie and sits down on Dil’s bed. He looks from Dil to the picture. “Is that your cousin?” He nods toward the picture. Dil looks down at his soda can.

“Not my cousin, that’s Bobbie. Bobbie was different.”

“How different?” Jeremy wonders. The answer does not match his question. Dil has this way of flipping the conversation on him without notice. It leaves him more uncertain. He feels like he is an audience. There is some truth behind all this and an authenticity to Dil. Jeremy is sensitive to this. Anton Schroeder played drama, but he was never a man to dismiss.

“As different as it's possible to be,” Dil continues cryptically.

         

“Do you want to tell me about him?”

 “No,” Dil is short. Bobbie Tosh is the pain of Kingston. A special person, but no more special than Dil was. Kindred spirits in a way, but nothing like Theo. Theo was just Theo. Bobbie wanted to transition. The memory brought tears to Dil’s eyes. He sits beside Jeremy; tall, straight, as if he is defiantly pushing his before away.

“Should I go?” Jeremy puts his drink can down.

“Yes.”

And they fall into each other's arms. Dil stretches up with his whole body over Jeremy. They grow suddenly and violently passionate. They fall back on the bright cushions on Dil’s bed. Jeremy tries to draw up Dil’s top, sliding his hand along Dil’s hard back. Dil’s lengthening cock is pressed into Jeremy’s thigh. A wondrous grind is just a breath away.

Dil suddenly pulls away, “No!”

Dil stands up and walks over to the shelf to look at the picture of his friend. It’s moving too fast, he was letting his desire push this to a climax. Not Jaye Davidson’s Dil-defeat, something worse, Theo’s reality. This was a boy named Jeremy, not obliging Jimmy-Fergus, ready to play along. Reality would hurt.

When Dil’s erection cooled enough, he came back toward the patient boy once more. She put her mouth close to his ear. “You want to know how I kissed Dov?”

“No,” Jeremy found he was not like Anton and Daniel. He could not be casual about this when his heart and stomach burned.

“Are you jealous of him?”

Dil disrobing on the yacht flybridge, damn right he was jealous. “Yes, yes I am,” Jeremy answers.

         

“That's good…”

Dil lifts Jeremy’s shirt and his mouth travels down the smooth chest. Jeremy tries to draw him up toward his mouth, but Dil’s hand reaches up to his mouth and presses his head back while his other hand undoes Jeremy’s pants. Dil kisses his stomach; his mouth moves down past the navel to the moist vanilla of Jeremy’s groin. Jeremy stares at the picture of Bobbie Tosh. Bespectacled eyes seem to burn through him.

Dil rubs the flats of his fingernails and then the edges against Jeremy’s sack. He takes a warm testicle into his mouth, holds it there, and swirls his tongue around gently. Next, he traces the seam with his tongue. Finally, he finishes Jeremy with a too soon, too unsatisfactory engulfment.

Dil raises his head and kisses the tiny mouth that just disgorged Jeremy’s cum. There are tears in Dil’s eyes. He turns away from Jeremy with a tragic grace. It is a moment lost to misunderstanding and wrong words. Dil sits in front of his cosmetics and a small mirror he cannot look in. The utter emptiness of Dil, he acknowledges, the fright. Dil tries to recall what Jeremy said about choosing to stay in Antigua. Something about being tired of running?

“I want to be with you. I worry, I don’t want you to go back to …” hustling? Being a casual liveaboard like he had been until he beached himself here in Antigua?

         

“You say that like a gentleman,” because of course, Dil knows which line comes next. “Like you're concerned.”

Jeremy gets up and stands behind her, gently pushes the hair from her face, bends down to kiss her. It starts at Dil’s ear and his lips snail-hump their way across a wet cheek to meet Dil’s lips.

“You’re a lovely boy, but you can't stay, you know that?”

“Didn't think I could,” Jeremy lies, thinking he certainly would.

After Jeremy has left, Dil sits in front of the mirror. “A real gentleman,” Dil reapplies his lipstick.

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