by Nicole Dere
He lifts a hand. The bristles of hair are thick on the knuckles, the short nails are black, the whole surface smeared with dirt. He holds it up to me, watching as I pick my way slowly, awkwardly, down the narrow metal steps of the ladder. I can feel the heat of the metal through the thin rubber soles of my flapping footwear and reach for his filthy hand as I near the bottom.
‘You come see me?’ His expression is one of incredulity. I can see individual pores, the beads of sweat on brow and broad nose, the tiny dots of black pores around the sides of his nostrils. I nod, and he nods back furiously, as though to convince himself this isn’t some fantastic wet dream, gripping me tight as though he fears I might flee or simply disappear. He pulls me away from the bottom of the ladder, into all that thumping, deafening machinery; the great pistons turning, rising and falling behind two sets of metal gratings, the cylinders, giant versions of the kind of thing we used to have in the airing cupboard of the first place I can remember living in.
The heat is more than intense. It’s like a different kind of atmosphere, rich with oil, with smell and noise. All at once every inch of my skin oozes perspiration, I can feel it wet on my cheeks and brow, between my shoulders and breasts, my armpits, every surface of me from head to toe. Hassan draws me along, into a kind of caboose, a little hideaway right in the midst of all that racket, where there is a large board with dials of differing sizes, a table with a huge kettle and several encrusted mugs, and a couple of low bench seats, of torn and deeply stained leather. They look as though they have been removed from the rear of cars.
He reaches down, seizes the hem of my kanzu , and whips it up, pulls it over my head and tosses it aside, and I stand there naked except for the flipflops. My skin is gleaming in the electric light, the sweat runs from my brow, stinging my eyes, a drop coursing down between my breasts to lodge in the shallow little dish of my navel. I can feel it running down between my shoulderblades, into my buttocks.
Those black button eyes are all over me, like a greedy boy in a sweet shop, and with the same unsophisticated honesty, and I realise he probably didn’t see very much of me last night in the boat, even though he enjoyed me so freely. Suddenly devilish, I reach out, tug at his filthy shorts, and he at once undoes them, so that they fall, exposing the great thrust of belly and the black tangle of his pubic bush over that thick hanging tube of a prick, already stirring, its head peeping from a thick roll of foreskin. He shakes and kicks his way out of the voluminous shorts, without dislodging his boots, so that we both retain our footgear, and I smile widely at his bizarre yet rousing appearance: that short wide body, so hairy and so coated in oil, the great drum of his belly, and his now lifting prick and solid, short legs, like trunks rising from the pièce de résistance , those wide, battered boots.
‘God! You’re gorgeous !’ I cry and fall to my knees, pitching forward and burrowing my head under that great hang of a belly, to rootle my face against his swinging, stiffening penis, and the wiry bush above it. My hands fondle, my lips and tongue service it eagerly, kissing, sucking, lapping, thrilled at its surging erection literally in my face.
Then the world tilts, as he makes a wild grab, our limbs and bodies collide and hold like wrestlers. He topples me on my back on one of the leather banquettes, which tips and rocks dangerously, then I see his shining bald head above me, between my lifted knees, his mouth seeking my tits like a hungry baby, then on down, over my tummy, into my light bush of pubes, and on, to the fissure of my sex, where he wallows, his face buried as avidly as mine was a few seconds ago in his genitals.
My fingers slide over the greasy smooth dome of his skull. I shudder in a suddenly imminent climax at his mouth so fiercely buried in my vulva, and my fingers slip, then dig into his furry, slippery shoulders as I try to haul his bulk up on to me, in order to feel the ultimate pleasure of his prick driving into me. An instant later it’s there, I groan with consummate desire and need, and slam my belly into his bulk, rejoicing in the long stabbing feel of his manhood taking possession. My vaginal muscles lock around him, my knees are up under his armpits, while my heels, now minus my flipflops, drum against his giant, glistening, humping back.
‘It’s going to huh – happen!’ I squeal, clinging like a monkey, buffeting against him. ‘It’s – I’m c-o-o-o-ming!’ I screech, and he accelerates his thrusts, bucking madly, and I feel it start to happen, the starburst of orgasm, and lose the power to find words and simply howl, clinging, bucking, shuddering, on that ultimate ride, and just as I can’t bear the sensation of it any longer, he comes, we come together, tip over the precipice, glide down the roaring cataract, lost until the roar and great waves become ripples, fanning out. And there I am: on my back, my dirty feet in the air, my body soaked, clamped to the blubber-hulk of slippery flesh, smothered under his bulk of breasts and belly, our flesh sealed together, well and truly. Feeling, pain, returns, and we dazedly uncoil our soaking bodies, become two again, sore, dripping with our shattering union, while all around us those other, mightier, gleaming pistons drive contemptuously on and on.
He holds me gently now. I sit on his hairy thighs, cradled in his arms, like a little girl resting on daddy’s knee. I’ve never known that situation, as far as I can recall, but I guess that’s how it would have felt. I feel so safe and protected, and free from all the complexes and fears of life in this safe, unthinking sanctuary. My pale skin is smeared with great swathes of grime, slippery patches where his hands have clutched and pawed, our skin has touched and slithered and pressed in our frantic juxtaposition. I don’t care – about anything: my filthy body, the dripping sweat, the fetid heat that wraps itself around us like a wet blanket, the thunder of those driving engines all about us whose power seems to flow like electricity through our sated flesh. I don’t even care about the great uncertainty of my future. Sufficient unto the day is the fucking thereof – and how!
Until there is a loud, cheerful shout, and Hassan’s mate, who had vanished at my appearance overhead, comes round the corner of the great block of machinery with an armful of beer cans, and I uncoil like a startled cat, grab my kanzu , and squat there on the leather seat, holding it over my genitals and my breasts in less than perfect cover. The new arrival’s name is Gori (or something close to that). He is tall and thin, with a complexion much darker than Hassan’s, and he is much more comprehensively covered, in overalls which gape open to the waist and are ... the colour of oil, as far as I can make out, the residue of gallons and years. He has a long face, with a long, prominent nose, and a dark grizzled beard close to stubble. In contrast to Hassan, he has a rich crop of curly, black hair, which shines with grease put there deliberately, in liberal, fragrant quantity.
He nods pleasantly, as he lowers himself onto the couch opposite us, and passes us a can each of ice-cold beer. I reach awkwardly, trying to keep my scrap of cloth over my breasts, then I think, what the hell! And let it fall as I take my can and eagerly hook back the ring-pull. Enjoy the view! I think philosophically as I tilt my head back and let the heavenly brew flow down my working throat, letting the kanzu hang there in a heap between my thighs. I’ll probably let him see the lot pretty soon, I reckon, as he’ll be my next customer/lover, whatever. Welcome aboard, shipmate!
But that’s not the way it is, as Hassan amply demonstrates by the way he sits at my side, his solid arm flung over my bare shoulders, a hand falling in friendly fashion on my thigh. We sit there, a couple, chatting (though I say very little and understand less) as though Gori is our guest who’s joined us in our sitting room. The second beer goes to my head almost as soon as it chills my gut, and the whole bizarre scene makes me want to giggle like a clubbing teenager, sitting there starkers and covered in engine oil (or whatever), with my fantastic partner, also nude, and looking like a steaming Turkish wrestler, cosily at my side.
Surely Gori will want and expect to shag me too, and I am disgustingly beginning to wonder whether it will matter if he does, when Hassan suddenly rises, pulls me to my feet and urges me to get dressed
. It doesn’t take long, and I get no more than a friendly wave from Gori, as my lover, now sporting his grotty shorts and boots again, escorts me to the ladder and the comparative cool of the darkened upper deck. ‘Night, Crissie!’ he grunts, and his thick lips pucker in a light kiss on my cheek. Again I am forcefully (and almost tearfully) reminded of a loving parent putting his offspring to bed.
The tender feeling lasts until I get to the cabin, where Amina, awakened at my entrance, snaps on the lamp near the head of her bunk, and stares in disbelief at the state of my grimy flesh. ‘What the fuck! What have you been doing? Working in the engine room?’
‘You could say that!’ I answer wearily. ‘Making sure those old pistons are still driving!’
‘It’s a fine old navy tradition!’ Captain Abdi smiles, but it’s a thin smile; his lips are a line of hardness, which makes me uneasy. Amina’s expressive face is alight too, with a triumphant anticipation far from the easy friendliness she had displayed during my earliest days on board Ocean Star . Too late, I regret the disregard of consequences and my fatalistic, live-for-the-moment escapism that led me to pursue the briefly hectic pleasures of the flesh with Hassan, and consequently with Gori, his fellow engineer, and several others of the crew. Word has clearly got around; impossible for it not to, when you think about it, which I clearly and stupidly did not, in such a small, isolated community as this one.
There have been some heated quarrels, apparently, and even a fight, when my noble champion, Hassan, defended my dubious honour against the accusations of my showing partiality towards only certain members of the crew, instead of satisfying all with disinterested equality. His argument was supported by a bottle broken over his opponent’s head, which won the battle, but not the war. And it has led to my being bundled unceremoniously up to the bridge, in the determined grip of Cara and Lochi, led by Amina, and flung into the skipper’s outer cabin with dire threats of untold consequences if I so much as stick my nose out again.
And here is the startling result: a good number of the ship’s company assembled up here on the wide, glassed-in bridge, who have endured the captain’s short but fierce harangue, in a mix of Swahili and Arabic, (just as well, I suspect, that I cannot understand a word) before he turns to me, with that smile that does nothing to ease my unease, and a nod towards the two Philippino girls, who grab me and bind me by wrists and arms to the projecting spokes of the large wooden steering wheel which stands centre stage at the back of this command post.
My resistance is token, but I am shocked, both by the act itself and by the vigour with which they carry it out. They are using long strips of white cord. It cuts painfully into my thin, bare limbs, and I’m forced to stand there bowed forward, my head between the two topmost spokes, my legs apart to ease my balance. Amina steps forward to my side and I feel her lifting the white T-shirt I’m wearing, which, several sizes too large, provides a perfectly respectable cover, from neck down to mid thigh. She rolls it up tightly to my stooped shoulders, so that it hangs at breast level at the front, ensuring that, for the spectators, positioned mostly behind me along the after bulkhead of the bridge, my modest dangling boobs are on view, as are the plain white cotton briefs covering my most private parts. Not for long though. With a deft flick, Amina tugs them down, so that they stretch in a tight narrow band just above my knees. There is a spontaneous burst of applause.
The tears course down my cheeks at the indignity of my position. Again, though, not for long. It might not be the customary flogging referred to by Abdi, and the instrument of chastisement is not the legendary cat o’ nine tails – it is in fact a broad wooden rule taken from those drawing instruments in the cabin behind us – but it’s no titillating series of taps on the bare bottom to stimulate the lickerish desires of the audience. As I discover from the first great crack of the rule brought with the utmost vigour across the centre of my clenched cheeks, followed by a burn so fierce that I writhe and twist and dance in howling agony, totally unaware of the abandoned spectacle of my capering, or the appreciation of my rapt audience.
I do become aware of the extra little nuances of discomfort caused by the friction of the bonds on my arms, as I struggle in vain to release them in order to claw and rub at the fire blazing across my bum. Doubtless the aesthetics of the crimson bar branded so centrally over my scorched buttocks are appreciated by the onlookers too, until the next swishing blow descends, the second crack across my crack, and my screeching, mad dance of swirling hips and capering legs is recommenced, the second fiery bar is stamped on my quivering, pale little nates.
The captain waits each time for the violence of my threshing to ease, before the next blow lands, and off I go again, throwing in the odd disjointed word now, to punctuate the squeals of pain. ‘No! Oh no! Oh please! Cuh – captain! Please! I am suh-so – suh-sorry! Ow! Please! Stop!’
I guess it’s probably no more than nine or ten of the best, but it seems an indeterminate time of burning torment, as well as shame and, over the fierce sting and throb of the beating, an almost worse vague awareness of the humiliation and shame, of the eager eyes devouring it, before at last that throbbing burn is steady, and I hang there, sobbing, before I am finally released and carried through into the day cabin, and laid face down across the table where the captain had so splendidly and comprehensively fucked me – an age ago! – and someone, Lochi or Cara, lays a cool wet cloth over my quivering, blazing behind, and begins very gently to soothe the ridged, swollen, vermilion, twitching cheeks of my poor arse.
Chapter Twenty-four
THUS BEGINS WHAT SEEMS an interminable period of virtually “solitary confinement”, a kind of prison sentence, what the old-time mariners used to call the “brig”, I believe. Amina tells me, with sadistic pleasure, that there is in fact a tiny cell for wrongdoers, right up in the fo’csle, or bows (the front end!), a metal box of noisy horror, with a bucket as a lavatory and, in this climate, like a microwave on full. I almost tell her that I have already suffered such harsh conditions, thinking back to those earliest days of captivity, when poor Wanda and I were chained up in the old slave shed, but decide not to. To my intense relief and her clear disappointment, my confinement is in the much more luxurious quarters of the skipper’s day cabin. True, he does have a mattress brought up, for me to sleep on the floor, thus denying me the comfort and attendant pleasures of sharing his bunk in the inner sleeping cabin. But what the fuck! Or rather, not the fuck, I guess.
Captain Abdi tells me he cannot in all conscience deny the crew the pleasure of social and sexual contact with me and yet continue to “screw the arse off” me himself. I say nothing, but think yet again, what the fuck! A noble sacrifice, but it seems pretty pointless to me. After all, who among his gallant crew is going to believe him? Otherwise, he treats me like a lady, and I can relax in comfort, to lounge about, make use of his limited little library, his toilet and his shower. My meals are brought up by Cara or Lochi, though without the beaming friendliness they have hitherto shown me. Undoubtedly, they are considerably pissed off with the way I have been putting myself about with Hassan the Stoker and his colleagues, giving for free what they have always considered to be “a nice little earner” to supplement their modest wages. Well, looks like it will be business as usual for them from now on – and though I lounge all day in decadent luxury, I have to admit I miss my former friendly encounters with my shipmates – especially when I lie there in the steamy night, tossing, turning and wretchedly touching now and then, with Captain Abdi either pacing his deck one side of me or, even more maddeningly, sleeping on the other.
He still talks to me, though, perfectly politely as he did before, until I sometimes wonder if the vivid scene of my chastisement tied to his wheel is simply one of my hot fantasies, along with the Mandy and Joe archives. Until I catch sight of my multi-hued bottom in the mirror of the tiny shower compartment, its rich variety of bruises fading to gentler, paler, autumnal tones after a few days.
A cruel refinement is that Amina resumes her in
timate relationship with him, and I lie sweating, tormenting myself further in the dark by straining to listen to the murmurs, sighs, grunts and cries, all the way to the sharp crescendo of the final summit, and the Geronimo leap beyond. Cruel enough, having to writhe and relive their tumultuous rides from imagination aided all too powerfully by memory – but she always makes sure of waking me by an indelicate prod with her toe on my still sore bum en passant , and her cheery, ‘Better get up, Crissie! He’ll be out in a minute.’
He’s truly a man of steel. Partly out of spite towards her (but largely, I confess, in forlorn hope) I lie there, with the sheet kicked carelessly down to my ankles, feigning the naked abandon of sleep, when he emerges, and get nothing but an equally infuriating cheerful greeting. ‘Morning, Crissie! Mind you don’t catch cold!’
My long and idle hours alone give me far too much time for gloomy introspection. Simon, M. Auguste, Wanda; all occupy my thoughts, as well as the doubts and fears for my own future. Until one evening I can bear it no longer, and pluck up the courage to confront him as he heads for his inner cabin. ‘Please, captain! Can I talk to you? What’s going to happen to me? What about M. Auguste? And Simon – Simon Kent? I must know what ... what’s going to be done with me.’
All at once, I realise how afraid I am. The beating with the ruler no longer seems merely a minor humiliation. I can’t get away from the knowledge that, for – what – over two, nearly three months now, I have been a prisoner, completely under the control of others. I got myself into this through my love for Simon – my utter devotion to him. I had sworn, many times, that I would do anything for him – anything in the world – well, surely I have proved it now? Why is he leaving me to endure this slavery? Especially when poor Wanda ... is no longer alive. She was the whole point of all this business. I’ve been Simon’s confidante in all of it. And M. Auguste knows it. Why hasn’t he come to rescue me? Why did he abandon me after Wanda’s crazy suicide?