by Guy Willard
My mouth went dry.
Though I’d known such magazines existed, I’d never thought they would be this explicit. Idly I wondered what it would have been like if I could have seen this magazine as a boy. Back then, even my innocent muscle magazines had been enough to excite me to full erection, instantly. If I’d been able to see pictures like these, I might have gone crazy.
Putting the magazine aside, I lifted my hips off the seat and unzipped my fly, then pulled my pants down to my knees. My erection now freed, I picked up the magazine and balanced it on the steering wheel. With one hand on my dick, I eagerly turned the pages with the other.
About a third of the way through Hot Shots, there was a picture of a boy with dark, curly hair. He was lying on a bed, his head turned slightly aside, his eyes closed. One hand was pillowed behind his head so that his underarm hair was exposed. The other hand was down at his dick, idly stroking it. His pose showed off his muscular chest and shoulders to advantage, and with one knee bent and slightly raised, he looked as if he were idling away a dreamy summer afternoon just lying naked on his bed and playing with himself, thinking of nothing in particular, delighting in the feel of his body, of the hardness of the dick in his hand. How often had I done the same thing...back when I was free, a civilian.
I looked around. There were still no other cars nearby. Before me rolled the sea, glints of sunlight flashing off the crests of waves. I reached down and undid the catch below the seat so that I could slide it all the way back, then lowered the seat back so that I could lie down. Holding the magazine up before my face, I began pumping myself idly, just as the boy in the photo was doing. After a moment, I stopped stroking to pull my T-shirt up and bare my chest, and then went right back to it.
This was the most pleasurable thing I’d done since joining the Navy, and it was a little depressing to acknowledge that fact. Still, its rareness made it that much more of a luxury to be enjoyed gratefully. As long as I was able to do this at least, I would survive somehow.
When I thought about it, it seemed like a minor miracle that good-looking boys all over the country were happy to take their clothes off and pose for photographers who then sold those photos to publishers who put those photos into magazines which were then sold in stores to anyone who had the money to buy them…so that lonely guys like me could gaze to our hearts’ content at the naked bodies of sexy young men and dream of the bliss that was denied us.
Glancing out at the sea again, I thought of the ship I’d seen earlier, and imagined myself already aboard it, pulling out to sea and looking back at the receding shore. I actually felt as if I were beginning to drift free. And then I turned my attention back to the naked boy, mentally putting myself in bed with him, turning his butt around so I could fuck him in the ass. I thought of John in the ninth grade, who’d let me fuck him one afternoon in his bedroom, and of Dave, my girlfriend’s older brother, who’d fucked me in his car one night in my junior year. Would I ever have sex with another guy again? The boy in the photograph seemed to be saying yes, yes, of course! And it made me happy to have his support. But as I felt my pleasure trembling on the brink, the trigger ready to shoot, it was Brett’s name I moaned out.
Subic Bay
If you stand on the fantail of a ship and look toward the horizon, you can see what looks like blue cut glass endlessly churning over the edge of the world. And the white frothing wake stretching out behind the ship is inlaid with curved facets of the most exquisite turquoise blue.
I sat upon a bitt and gazed out over the Philippine Sea. A fine salt spray rose like a mist from the sloshing sides of the ship, permeating the deck and coating my face. From above, the tropical sun beat fiercely down, baking my skin. I peeled off my T-shirt. On the flight deck just over my head I could make out the forms of several guys sunbathing in cut-offs. Our captain, who was lenient to the point of indulgence in many other respects, had drawn the line at nude sunbathing.
My first class never got tired of telling me how lucky I was to be stationed aboard such a slack ship for my first duty station just out of A-school. Indeed, when I compared our ship with the others of our homeport, I could see we had an easy life. It all depended on the captain, of course, but small ships were generally more easy-going than big ones. The inevitable comparison was that between a small town and a big city.
A fast frigate such as ours (with a crew of 260) was like a friendly small town where everyone knew each other by first name. But on a carrier, you were lucky if you got to know your berthing mates by face, or even the people in your own workspace. But by the same token, life on a carrier allowed you a certain amount of anonymity, whereas it was difficult to keep a secret aboard a small “tin can” such as ours. All in all, though, I was happy to be stationed aboard a frigate.
I glanced around me. The only other people on deck were two black sailors chatting in the shade of the rocket launcher, whose shadow weaved and swayed with the rolling of the ship. My wristwatch told me I still had 30 minutes left of my lunch break. Taking a last look at the wake, I got up and went back inside the ship.
The sudden change from outside humidity to air-conditioning made my skin feel clammy. I slipped into my shirt again, for shipboard regs required that we be fully dressed within the skin of the ship. And my division officer was particularly strict in this regard, being one of the few hard-noses onboard.
I weaved my way familiarly through the maze of passageways, down ladders, through hatches. At first the inside of the ship had been bewildering, but I soon got so used to it that by now I probably knew my way around it blindfolded. There were still many nooks and crannies I’d never been to, and probably never would. Certain areas of the ship were restricted to those whose jobs dealt with highly classified weapons, detection devices, etc., and as a hospital corpsman, I had no business in them.
Not many guys were about at this time. I met only two others before I reached operations berthing where my rack was. I made my way down the ladder and into a perpetual twilight broken only by the red night-lights. Out at sea, there were always a number of guys (those who’d had watch the previous night) sleeping in their bunks during the day. I myself worked a regular 8-to-4 job, but like everyone else, I spent a lot of my free time in the compartment. For one thing, there was practically nowhere else to spend it. Also, the constant rolling of the ship was like a cradle endlessly rocking; it put you right to sleep. Unless you kept yourself busy, it was very difficult to stay awake out at sea. In addition, I had my own reasons for wanting to spend my free time in this stuffy compartment.
I kicked off my boondockers and climbed up to my rack, the top one of a triple-tiered bunk crammed into a corner. An almost palpable tang of salty sweat permeated the air as I gazed at the sleeping forms interspersed throughout the cramped rows of bunks. Down here, the air-conditioning unit did very little to alleviate the tropical heat, so most of the guys slept in the nude, or at most, clad only in briefs. And since no one used blankets, I could gaze to my heart’s content upon their nudity. With the sound of sloshing water against the hull just above my head, I feigned a light nap.
There was no privacy in a berthing compartment. If a guy was having a dream of falling, I could see him twitch in response to his fall. If he was having an erotic dream, his hard-on was a visible manifestation of what he was imagining in his sleep. And if he was turned onto his side, the lines scooping out the round form of his butt gave me a foretaste of heaven.
The boy who slept on the top rack opposite mine was Jim Wells. He was sleeping there now, probably just off a watch. Clad only in his briefs, he had one hand thrust down inside them, placed over his genitals as if taking a reassuring hold onto reality in the rocking and churning world he now lived in.
He was my running mate. For some reason he had attached himself to me like a fawning dog. Though I was only a year older than him, and this was my first cruise, he looked up to me, admiring and respecting me as if I were a salty veteran.
For my part, I regarded him as an
immature kid who exasperated and delighted me by turns. He’d just turned 18 and had probably lied about his age to get into the Navy. When I asked him about high school, he told me he’d dropped out. This was puzzling, for he was by no means unintelligent.
Jim’s only drawback was his racism, which sometimes drove me to the point of fury. He was from Texas and he never let you forget it. For him, anyone who wasn’t lily-white was a “nigger.” And yet I couldn’t help being drawn to him for he was as fresh-faced and eager as a puppy dog.
Jim sometimes talked about his best friend with whom he’d joined the Navy. To their chagrin, they’d ended up being assigned to opposite coasts despite joining up together under the Navy’s so-called “buddy system.” At first I’d suspected something more than just a hetero friendship, but as I got to know him better, I decided he was basically straight. Perhaps he was in love with his friend and didn’t even know it, for he was a heady mixture of innocence and depravity.
He was always harping upon his fantasies involving orgies (he pronounced it with a hard “g”) and three-way sex. Indeed his very openness about these fantasies (in the fag-hating environment of the Navy) indicated that he probably wasn’t aware of the strong homosexual elements in them. For him it was just an extension of the wild life sailors led on liberty. The free and easy sex offered at ports had confirmed every story he’d heard about a sailor’s life. It allowed him to break loose from all the small town inhibitions he’d been shackled with growing up in Texas.
And now he was eagerly looking forward to our upcoming port visit to Subic Bay, for it was rumored to be the wildest and freest liberty port of all. The whole area outside the naval facilities at Subic (located south of Manila, on Luzon Island) was described by veteran sailors as an adult version of Disneyland, where you could get anything you wanted, in sex, drugs, or whatever.
It was the whatever that interested me.
When we finally got there, everything that I’d heard about Subic turned out to be true. As soon as I stepped out the main gate, my first impression was that I’d landed in the Wild West of my dreams. Saloons and dance halls were packed with colorfully dressed Filipinas who were so numerous that they spilled out onto the streets. Some lined the sidewalks, boldly eyeing the sailors walking by, calling out teasing taunts, grabbing them by the arm and dragging them into a bar. Every sailor in sight had a girl on his arm, or was on his way to see his steady girlfriend.
I found a hotel and rented a room for the night, then went to the restaurant next door and had an early supper. I knew Jim would probably eat on-base before coming out here. He had a distrust of “native” food. Glancing at my watch and seeing I still had an hour to kill before I had to meet him at the main gate, I decided to find a girl.
I entered a disco at random. It was jammed with people dancing, their heads bobbing in time to the pulsating music, the flashing colored lights giving a jerky, stop-motion effect to their movements. As I squeezed my way past the moving bodies to get to the bar, I felt myself being groped several times. Each time I looked around to see who it was, a girl winked at me—even if she was dancing with another sailor.
At the bar I barely had time to order a drink before a girl attached herself to me. She asked all the usual questions: what was my name, what ship was I from, how long would we be in port? Then she begged me to order her a drink. I did so. And then I paid the extra amount of money which would enable her to leave the disco for an hour or two.
We went back to my room.
I had heard that the girls here were wild, but I soon discovered that they had their limits, some of them being surprisingly prudish. Most of them disdained both oral and anal sex, claiming to reserve such acts for their special boyfriends. Apparently most of the sailors were satisfied with run-of-the-mill sex, for the bars in which the girls specialized in oral sex were few and far between, located a little ways off in Subic City, as if they catered to a minority taste.
Afterwards, as we lay in bed talking, I tried to discover if there was a gay area in town. But though she told me there were some transvestite bars, she seemed cagey about giving me any more definite information. Apparently she feared that my questions hinted at a taste she couldn’t satisfy, for she began rubbing her hand over my chest and kissing me, asking me to buy her for the night.
Gently I pushed her away, explaining that I had to meet a friend from the ship. It was Jim I longed to see. Even while I was having sex with her, it was his blond hair and smooth cheeks I was thinking of. The girl made a reply in Tagalog which I made no effort to have her translate. I hurriedly dressed and rushed her downstairs. After an ungraceful parting with her, I headed for the main gate, glancing nervously at my watch. I was afraid of missing Jim. He might get distracted and go off with the first girl who clung to him.
There was a short bridge crossing a stream just in front of the gate. In the water below, little girls were sitting in long native boats calling up to the passing sailors for money. There was always a huge crowd milling about in front of the gate—pimps, drug pushers, sailors. As I shoved my way through, I heard someone swear at me and grab my arm. At first I thought it might be someone trying to steal my watch, but it turned out to be Jim.
He gave me a mock salute. “Seaman Wells, ready to assume watch, sir!”
“Bastard.”
Actually, it was his duty day. Normally, he would have had to stay aboard until the next morning. But he’d managed to find someone who would stand his watch for the night—for a fee, of course. There was a certain group of sailors who eagerly looked forward to the hot liberty ports—not for the fun they envisioned, but for the money they would earn standing someone else’s watches.
“Come on, let’s go!”
We pushed our way down the street, and Jim became the little boy again, letting out a loud rebel yell each time he saw a pretty girl. It was embarrassing—like being with a little kid seeing an R-rated movie for the first time. Apparently his racism didn’t extend to pretty Filipinas, for quite a few of them struck his fancy.
“Will you cut it out, Jim?”
“I can’t help it, man. I’m like to explode. I can’t take it no more.”
“Then here.” I grabbed him by the elbow and propelled him toward a shop window which had caught my eye: “Jennie’s Massage Parlor.” We went inside, and immediately two girls jumped up from a sofa and offered to accommodate us. I shook my head no and pushed Jim toward them, then waited in the lobby while he went upstairs with one of them.
In a little while he came downstairs again with a big grin on his face. As we went outside and made our way toward a bar, he excitedly told me what had happened. He’d been led to a curtained cubicle just barely large enough to hold a bed and a wash stand. They both undressed, and after the briefest of preliminaries, the girl began masturbating him with her hands. But what seemed to excite Jim even more was that the cubicle next door was occupied by another sailor and his girl, and only the width of a flimsy curtain separated them. Jim could hear their murmurs and soft laughter. When he was finished, Jim took his time dressing, just so he could eavesdrop on the other couple. He laughed now as he imitated the sailor’s climactic whimper, but I kept a straight face.
It was becoming obvious to me that Jim had more than a passing interest in the male sex. But I still didn’t know to what extent he acknowledged it to himself, or if he was aware that his seemingly innocent delight in depravity might be an unsuspected inclination toward homosexuality. How far would he be willing to go in his search for ever more daring thrills? He might just go all the way, taking it in stride as a naughty game, just as certain friends of mine had done when we were adolescents. Maybe it was just a matter of loosening his inhibitions.
Gnawed by frustrated longings, I charted a reckless course for the night. We rushed from bar to bar becoming ever more frantic and drunk. As the night advanced and we got rowdier, it wasn’t long before I heard the expected words from him: “Hey, let’s go have us an orgy.”
It wa
s exactly what I wanted, but I was beginning to doubt if there would be any girls willing to lend themselves to such debauchery. Anticipating Jim’s suggestion, I’d already started asking cautiously around, but kept meeting with rebuffs. As I’d discovered earlier, the girls were a lot more conservative than legend had painted them out to be. Still, given the sheer number of girls (no carriers were in port so the advantage was ours: girls outnumbered sailors by far), we were bound to meet with one or two who would acquiesce. And I knew we’d have much better luck as the 12 o’clock curfew came around.
At that time—when all the sailors had to be off the streets—the girls who hadn’t yet latched onto a partner for the night would be getting desperate. The money they could earn from an overnight customer was equivalent, I knew, to half a month’s wages for a normal worker here. So the fear of wasting a night’s wages might lend incentive to some girls to overcome their aversion to our request. Time was on our side.
By 11:30 the streets were rapidly becoming deserted. Shore patrol jeeps were more and more in evidence as we weaved up the emptying sidewalk. I asked every likely girl whether she would be interested in an orgy. By this time, I too was pronouncing it with a hard “g.” Finally, to my relief, we found one who was willing. But our search for a second girl seemed fruitless. There was no choice but to ask the girl if she would be willing to go with both of us. After a hesitation, she nodded, but added that we both had to pay for her. We readily agreed to this. At that, she saucily hooked her arms through each of ours and we boldly sauntered up the street like that to my hotel. It was a tribute to the general lenience of the town that the sight of the three of us walking abreast didn’t provoke any comment. Maybe everyone else was too drunk to notice what we were up to.