by Guy Willard
Contrary to my expectations, she was slow to respond. Was she unable to have an erection anymore? Or was she unwilling, now that she’d been “unmasked?”
Finally I felt her dick stiffen in my fingers. Only a couple of inches long, it was the cutest little dick I’d ever seen in my life. I wondered if it had been this small to begin with, or had it shrunk down as a result of the hormone shots?
I glanced at her face but she had it turned away. Shame had brought a flush to her chest and shoulders, and it excited me. I’d never encountered such shame before, not even with the shyest of girls.
I reached for the KY.
Maya’s ass was nice and tight, but I had to close my eyes to imagine my partner as a boy at all...to shut out the sight of the high heels on the floor, her stockings and dress folded neatly atop the cabinet. I tried to picture Maya minus the long hair and make-up, and wondered how she had looked before the hormone shots had changed her, softening his body’s curves, giving him breasts where none should be, shrunk his genitals down to a travesty of their original beauty.
I needn’t have worried, though: no butt-fuck with a girl had ever felt this good. Clearly she had learned her moves as a boy. I didn’t even try to make it last; I doubt if I could have. I came in about a minute.
Afterward, as we lay there, I turned to her and said: “You fuck pretty good, Maya…for a ‘girl.’”
She looked away.
I touched her gently on the shoulder. “Listen. What I’m trying to say is, I like you better as a boy.”
“I’m not a boy. I’m a lady.”
“Come on….”
She thrust her chin out defiantly and insisted: “I am a lady.”
“Since when? Since your hormone shots?”
She got up to go.
“Wait a minute, Maya. I’m only kidding.”
“I don’t like your jokes, Bill. I’m going now.”
“Where to?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“But why, Maya? What’s the matter? I thought you liked me.” I recalled the coy way she’d returned my bold stares, and the way she’d turned down all those other men right in front of me.
“I did. I thought you were a gentleman. You look like a gentleman.” She sat down on the bed and turned her gaze to the floor. “I liked you.”
“You’re a boy,” I said. “To me you’re a boy.”
“No! I’m not!”
“Yes, you are. You’re a boy and you know it! And what’s wrong with that? You don’t have to turn into a girl just to attract boys.” I knew I should have stopped, but couldn’t help myself, even when I realized, with a jolt, that my argument was so impassioned because it was really myself I was trying to convince. Hadn’t I been ashamed of my own love for boys all along...all through middle school and high school...perhaps even now? Feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach, I finished up weakly, my voice almost a whisper: “You’re living a lie, Maya. An illusion.”
“Leave me alone. I don’t like you anymore.” She tried to shake herself free. The glint of a teardrop flashed on her lashes.
“Maya, please. I’m sorry.”
She sat down again and I sank to the bed feeling drained and weak. She didn’t want to hear the truth. She knew the truth, but she wanted to keep her fragile world together, holding it tightly with all the strength of her delicate arms, and I, the uncouth one, had just shattered it. It had collapsed at a mere touch. And that was the tragedy of it.
I expelled my breath. “I’m not a gentleman,” I agreed.
“It’s okay,” she said, not whispering anymore. “You’re all right.” And then: “Bill...I’m tired.”
I looked deeply into her soft brown eyes and felt a tug at my heart which I hadn’t felt in a long, long time. “You know, Maya, you’re really very beautiful.”
Down below, the old man rang up a taxi to take me back to the ship, and another to take Maya wherever she was going. We heard laughter behind us and I turned around to see a young European boy break away from the embrace of a heavily made-up girl, a real girl, a prostitute. The girl shot me a seductive look, then noticed Maya. Her eyebrows went up and she covered her mouth to smother a knowing smirk. I ignored her.
My taxi came, and before I got in, I pulled Maya to me and kissed her. But even as I held her—him—I could feel him being pulled away as if drawn from my clasp by an irrepressible undertow.
Bangkok
The waters off Pattaya Beach in Thailand were so shallow that our liberty launch (the ship’s whaleboat) couldn’t take us all the way to shore. We had to roll up the bottoms of our trousers and wade about ten yards or so to the beach. Along with the others, I had my shoes and socks tucked under one arm, and was cautiously walking in the water, feeling the voluptuous squeeze of sand between my toes.
We’d been told to watch out for broken glass in the sand but to me it looked clean. As I approached the shore I saw crowds of vendors with wooden boxes slung around their necks. Even at this early hour they were hawking their slender bottles of Coca-Cola and orange pop. This resort town with its beautiful white sand beach had been a favorite liberty port for sailors ever since the days of the Vietnam War.
In the cool morning air the beach itself was still deserted and a sleepy languor seemed to hang in the breeze. Palm trees swayed gently against the backdrop of azure sea whose gentle surface was shot through with silver spangles of sunlight.
A few native Thai boys were scrambling around wearing nothing but ragged cut-off shorts. Jeep-taxis lined the beachfront street and as I approached them, one driver after another lazily offered to sell me some Thai stick, wearing crestfallen expressions as if expecting to be turned down. I’d heard that the sticks were cheap, and that a dime or quarter meant just that: 10 cents, 25 cents. But I had no desire to get high this early in the morning. I wanted to take a look around first.
Starting from the clusters of bars and strip joints at the southern end of town, I walked along the beachfront until I came to the hotels and bungalows at the northern limits. The whole trip didn’t take me very long at all. Pattaya was, after all, a small town.
I stepped into a restaurant and had a continental breakfast. By the time I stepped out again, the European tourists with expensive cameras slung around their necks were beginning to appear. They were noticeable for the rather formal clothes they wore, and they gazed upon the swarm of American sailors as if upon another, quite alien form of life.
I pulled out a copy of the ship’s liberty bulletin which had a lot of handy information about Pattaya and the nearby capital of Bangkok. I’d always wanted to go to Bangkok and was delighted to learn that there was a shuttle bus for the city which left from in front of the Majestic Hotel several times a day.
I had no trouble finding it, a mini-bus whose driver was squatting under a nearby tree reading a newspaper. Stepping aboard the bus, I noted that I was the only passenger so far. Obviously most of the guys planned to spend their time doing what they usually did in port: get drunk, and then get laid. But Pattaya offered much more than our usual liberty ports: a clean, attractive beach to sun-bathe on, parasailing and motor-boating in the bay...plus cheaper Thai stick than we were likely to find anywhere else in the world.
Fearing that I might have a long wait ahead of me, I opened a window and called out to the driver: “Hey, what time do you leave?”
He glanced up at me and held up all ten fingers. I looked at the clock set into a panel just above the driver’s seat. The man’s sign could either mean that the bus would leave in ten minutes, or at ten o’clock. Either way it wasn’t much longer. I chose a seat near the back of the bus and sat down to wait.
Just then somebody stepped on board: Ensign McDavid, the First Lieutenant (the division officer of 1st division, the boatswain’s mates), a young, still boyish-looking man not much older than myself. He took a look around and, seeing me, came back to sit on the seat across the aisle from mine, saying shyly with a nod, “Hi, Doc.”
Thoug
h not very attractive—a little gangly, with a prominent Adam’s apple—he was very popular with the crew. Perhaps it was because the officer he’d replaced, LtJg. Wordsworth, had been so unpopular. At any rate, McDavid had seemed eager from the start to make a good impression as “just one of the guys.” And he’d succeeded so well that there was a certain amount of resentment against him among the other officers.
They probably envied him his relaxed relationship with his men, a rapport which very few of them could ever hope to establish. No doubt they assured themselves smugly that they were acting in accordance with Navy tradition which frowned upon too much familiarity between officers and men, or “fraternization,” as it was called. Such a situation supposedly had the effect of decreasing the men’s respect for authority, and of encouraging a lack of discipline. Hence the traditional cool distance between the men and officers of the U.S. Navy.
There was even a clause written into the military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) which specifically forbade fraternization. A copy of the UCMJ was posted in a glass-encased bulletin board just outside the ship’s office so that we could read the list of other crimes which, along with fraternization, included sodomy, bestiality, and “lewd conduct,” whatever that was.
On board the ship, the area where officers had their staterooms, restrooms and wardroom was called “officers’ country.” Unlike us, each officer (with the exceptions of the CO and XO who had their own private staterooms) shared a room with a bunkmate. In addition to a double bunk, each room contained a pair of writing desks and closets.
At mealtimes, while we shuffled through the chow line down below with trays in our hands, the officers ate their meal at a long covered table in the wardroom with the captain sitting at their head, clean linen napkins over their laps. They ate from plates imprinted with the emblem of the ship, served to them by a sailor who acted as a steward for a designated period of time.
An enlisted man was not allowed to pass through officers’ country unless specific business took him there. And when he entered it, he was required to doff his hat, leaving his head uncovered the whole time he was in the cool silent passageways, their soundproofed walls (and distance from the ship’s propulsion system) making him feel as if he were deep in some enchanted forest.
Everything in the Navy was designed to bring out the differences between officers and crew.
So now, as I started chatting with McDavid, I felt a slight sense of transgression. Anyone coming upon us, seeing two young men in civilian clothes, our ages not too different, would have thought we were just a couple of buddies. But if they listened carefully, they would have detected a slight edge in my voice, caused by a certain nervousness which always arises whenever a sailor talks with an officer, no matter how casual the conversation may seem to be. And in addition, because I’d been taught to treat officers with courtesy in or out of uniform, I couldn’t break my habit of saying “sir” every now and then.
Apparently even McDavid began to feel self-conscious about the “sirs.” He smiled and said, “Come on, Doc. Seeing that we’re on liberty, and we’re the only ones here, I think we can drop the usual military courtesies, at least for the time being.”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you just call me Rick? It’ll feel much more natural that way, even for me.”
“Sure.”
I think a shiver went down my back as this privilege was granted to me, for it implicitly contained a certain degree of profanation.
The bus driver climbed aboard and, with the briefest glance back towards us, eased himself into his seat and started up the bus. Apparently he was used to the sight of such a small number of passengers.
We headed up the beachfront road until we came to a large street leading away from the bay. We turned right and followed it out of town until we were cruising alongside lush tropical forests, the branches of the trees leaning out above the road like awnings. The bus picked up speed as we left the resort town behind, and the countryside became poorer looking, and more Asian.
Bangkok was a city of canals and barges, of floating vegetable markets and motor launches, of noodle stands and strange cries resounding in the air; a spicy pungency wafted on warm breezes. The area called New Town was fairly modern, a typical metropolis, but the Old Town offered us sights and sounds not to be found anywhere else. Here, houses stood out over the water on piles or pontoons, and houseboats were moored to the banks of canals. The water looked murky, and banana peels floated tiredly in the wakes of tourist-filled speedboats.
Our bus pulled into a terminal and we had lunch in a cafeteria there. I tried their fried noodles but noticed that McDavid ordered a tuna fish sandwich. After lunch we set out for the temple compound downtown where three beautiful temples, each built in a different style (Thai, Vietnamese, and Burmese) stood side by side. Hiring a guide to show us around, we followed him on his informal tour, clicking away with our cameras like typical tourists. I noticed the man’s teeth were reddish-looking, and pulled McDavid aside when we were alone for a moment.
“Hey Rick,” I said, “did you notice the color of this guy’s teeth?”
“Sure. It’s from betel, a nut or a leaf (I can’t remember which) that they chew on down here. It seems to work as a stimulant, like the nicotine in tobacco, and for them it’s like smoking cigarettes—just as addictive, too, from what I hear.”
I began noticing more Thais with red teeth after that. At the tour’s end I bought some temple rubbings which depicted erotic scenes from the Indian epic, The Ramayana. McDavid wanted to go to a jewelry store to shop for some star sapphires, so we asked the guide to translate this to a taxi driver.
Star sapphires were very cheap here, and the street we were taken to was lined with jewelry stores. Within each store were banked, cloth-covered tables onto which the clerks emptied out tiny bags full of the clean polished stones which, when held up to the light, revealed a pure, cross-shaped star trapped within. We were allowed to sift through them to pick out the ones we liked, and McDavid began looking for a matching pair. He’d worked with jewelry before and planned to make a set of earrings for his fiancée.
“Oh? Who’s the lucky girl?” I asked.
He smiled but wouldn’t tell me her name.
It was late afternoon by the time we finally finished our shopping. For supper I voted we go to Old Town to try some authentic Thai cuisine, but Rick said he didn’t trust the sanitary conditions there.
“Let’s go to one of the luxury hotels downtown,” he suggested. “I’m sure they offer Thai food, and probably much more appetizing.”
“Sure.”
On the taxi ride there we passed a huge plaza where I noticed a large group of Buddhist monks, their heads shaven, wearing the saffron-colored robes of their office. We stopped at a red light and I was able to watch them for a while. They seemed to be peddling caged birds, and as I looked on, a woman came up to one of them and paid him money for one of the tiny wooden cages. But then, to my surprise, instead of walking away with her purchase, she merely opened the door of the cage and let the bird free, then handed the cage back to the monk.
“What’s going on here?” I asked McDavid.
“Oh, that. I read about it somewhere. Apparently you can pay for the privilege of setting one of those temple birds free. It’s considered an auspicious act, and helps you to accumulate good deeds so that when you’re reborn in your next life, you’ll advance to a higher incarnation. In her case, being a woman, she’ll probably want to be reincarnated as a man, because men are the only ones who can enter Nirvana.”
“Wow, that’s kind of hard on the women, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t make up the rules.”
Bangkok was turning out to be fun and it was largely because of Rick. I didn’t feel my usual sense of desperation when on liberty, knowing I had to have a “good time.” I could relate to Rick in ways which most of my shipmates wouldn’t understand.
Sometimes when he wasn’t
looking, I’d steal a glance at him, noting that, young as he was, the responsibilities of an officer had given his boyish face a certain quiet dignity, even a sternness which he was unable to throw off even when relaxing. I found this maturity very attractive. And his wire-rimmed glasses gave him an intelligent, almost scholarly air which belied his position as First Lieutenant.
Just as we reached the hotel section of New Town, evening suddenly fell, as if a translucent purple gauze had been dropped over everything. We agreed to have dinner at a posh-looking hotel whose restaurant offered authentic native cooking—or so the menu said. But I knew it had probably been toned down quite a bit to suit Western palates. Even the so-called “traditional style room” we were shown to had made concessions to Western-style seating; the straw-matted floor upon which a Thai normally sits had been cleverly adapted so that we could sit down as upon a chair, putting our feet down into the sunken area under the table. In the corner were musicians in native dress playing traditional music on exotic-looking instruments whose percussive tones evoked an antiquity which made the sleek hotel seem like a transitory mirage.
As we waited for our meal to arrive, I noticed that Rick kept glancing in the direction of a middle-aged couple and their daughter. Snatches of their conversation drifted over to us and Rick whispered to me that they were speaking in German. The daughter was quite attractive, and I became irritated at the way she kept casting glances at Rick. The subtle visual flirting that went on between them was unmistakable.
I tried to distract Rick with conversation but he seemed more interested in the girl, so I was glad when the Germans finally finished their meal and left, leaving Rick to myself.
“You were getting a little quiet there,” I said to him insinuatingly.