Richard Mason - History of a Pleasure Seeker

“You should have chosen New York!” he said with feeling, when their talk reached Piet’s plans for his new life.

“That was my first thought. I decided on Cape Town when I knew the boat was coming here. I wanted to sail on her.”

“If you’d seen New York once, you’d not have changed your mind. It’s worth a thousand times this tacky little ship.”

As he listened to Jay’s descriptions of a city he would never know, Piet Barol found himself thinking about Stacey Meadows and the challenges and advantages of being loved by her. “Where’s your wife?” he asked.

“Rose has been on St. Helena this past fortnight. She’s the chairwoman of the ball committee and doesn’t hold with delegation.”

“You must miss her.”

“Immensely. She’s coming on board tomorrow afternoon. I’ve had to bring her gown from New York.”

“What’s the theme?”

“ La gloire . Choice of a man named Verignan.”

“Who are you going as?”

“I’ll show you.” Jay stood up and opened the door to the bedroom. After half a bottle of Sancerre and a cognac he was no longer as content as he had been merely to look at his new friend. Neither was he so moved by the alcohol, the lateness of the hour, the fullness of the moon, as to abandon all caution. If the boy doesn’t come in, he thought, I’ll leave it at that.

But Piet did come in.

Jay took his costume from a mahogany cupboard. Rose had had it made for him and every detail showed the attention and care he so valued in her. She had chosen the uniform of a union colonel in the Civil War and personally supervised six fittings. Jay had a sudden urge to show Piet Barol how good he looked in it. Very matter-of-factly, he took off his tailcoat and his collar and began unbuttoning his shirt. “One always eats too much on a ship. I’d better make sure it still fits.”

Piet did not know whether he should return to the sitting room or honor the sudden intimacy of the evening by staying where he was, as he would have done with a friend. He compromised by sitting on a chair at the foot of the bed, from which they could continue their conversation without facing one another directly. The first-class suites on the Eugénie had windows, not portholes, and the glass reflected the room. Piet tried not to watch as his savior took off his shirt. He had often been naked with fellows his own age but had never seen a much older man with his clothes off except his father; and Jay Gruneberger looked nothing like Herman Barol.

Jay boxed and ran and played tennis and every morning lifted forty-pound dumbbells until his arms ached. He was broad shouldered with a densely hairy chest. Though thickening in his midsection he looked superb in a room lit by soft lamps and an orange moon.

Jay knew that there are moments in life when risks must be taken or failure accepted. He was not ready to accept failure. He looked at Piet, wondering how to touch the boy without alarming him. Then he went to his chair, gripped his shoulders, and pressed his thumbs gently but firmly into the knots beneath them.

The effect on Piet Barol was paralyzing. Not three hours before he had contemplated hanging by one hand above the engines, and the tension of this untaken decision remained deep in his muscles.

“I see a wonderful Russian three times a week in New York. I’d happily share his expertise with you, Barol. Or I’ll call a steward and have the sofa made up next door. Absolutely as you wish.”

Since earliest adolescence, Piet’s body had demanded pleasure of him and rewarded his efforts to seek it. Now it answered on its own behalf with a long relieving sigh.

“I thought as much. You’ve had a trying day.”

Watched by the knowing cardinal, who was not at all deceived, Jay went to the bed, drew back the coverlet, and with four plump cushions made a resting place for Piet’s head. “It’s better if you’re lying down with your clothes off.” He was careful to sound indifferent. “That’s how I always have it done.”

Piet hesitated. Then he stood up and took off his tailcoat, his waistcoat, his tie and his collar. His shirt as he unbuttoned it smelled of sweat and fear, an olfactory reminder of the evening’s adventures. The room was the ideal temperature for nakedness. As he pulled off his shoes, a deep weariness crept over him.

“If you put your head between the pillows, you should be able to lie almost flat. It doesn’t do to twist your neck.”

Piet did so. The linen smelled of roses and was deliciously soft. Jay stood over him, remembering his first sight of his back and giving thanks for his freedom to touch it now without fear. Piet had kept his drawers and his socks on. These last Jay removed. He had a secret passion for feet, and the smell of Piet Barol’s caught in his nostrils and heightened his alertness. He surveyed the young man just as Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts had done, wondering where to touch him first. Though this was not at all his Russian masseur’s practice, he swung himself over Piet and planted his knees on either side of his body. Then he applied the knuckles of his index fingers to his uppermost vertebrae.

It was the first time Piet had encountered physical pain that held the possibility of pleasure. He gasped at the intensity of it. “Breathe out very slowly,” said a deep voice above him. Jay’s hands were strong, and his back had so often been the focus of an expert’s attention that he knew his way unerringly over Piet Barol’s. Piet breathed out as instructed. Tendrils of fire singed his skin. He had never yet been in the care of a connoisseur.

As Jay moved up and down Piet’s back, his hands never leaving his body, a wholly wordless and yet precise and attentive communication began to open between the two men. The ship had met a swell and was rising with it and falling, as if timing itself by Piet’s breaths. This motion, and the darkness, and the scent of roses, and the rich combination of pain and its relief sent Piet Barol into a state whose existence he had not imagined.

When Jay lifted his legs and pulled his drawers down them and over his ankles, Piet barely registered this boldness. Certainly it did not offend him. He was in a place far beyond all questions of propriety. Now Jay put his elbows to work, setting them over the warmed knots of muscle and by infinite gradations placing greater and greater weight on them, so that Piet was almost crushed but at the same time lifted far above the aches in his body. These began to flow down his arms to his fingers and his legs to his toes and then to leave him entirely, as if they had never been.

When Jay’s elbows reached his buttocks, they located precisely the store of a lifetime’s spinal tension. As they pressed down, implacable and relentless, so Piet’s cock was pressed into the firm mattress and an element of erotic pleasure began to twist through the tranquil darkness that enveloped him. Jay’s elbows retreated, were replaced by fingers that gripped his thick legs, his calves, his ankles, and then — it sent goose pimples all the way to his neck — a warm, scratchy tongue ran over the soles of his feet.

This did intrude on Piet’s formless blackness. But Jay acted with such confidence he did not resist, and his instinct to do so was dampened by the knowledge that the situation that now presented itself — in the middle of the sea, in the middle of the world, in the middle of the night — would never arise again. He said nothing when Jay kissed the back of his legs, his bearded chin sending shivers across his skin. And when Jay’s tongue reached his balls he let out a low ecstatic murmur.

Other boys had played with his prick or sometimes sucked it but had never touched him there; and the women he had seduced had been far too well bred to think of doing so.