Hot Nights in the South of France

by Henri Couesnon

  “Well, I’m available,” Laurent quipped. “My parents wouldn’t mind being rid of me. And I wouldn’t mind having two sexy brothers. Think of the good times the four of us could have.”

  “Ooh, stop!” Pedro pleaded. “Don’t get me horny, don’t get me started all over again! At my age, I might not be able to handle it. You’re amazing. I’m so glad Gaston recommended you to me. I’ve enjoyed myself. We’ll talk again, soon. And get together again. I come here to Monaco often. For now—can you see yourself out?”

  “Of course.” Laurent was accustomed to be dismissed rather summarily, much of the time. As abandoned as the sex had been, it was over. Now that Laurent had served his purpose, Pedro, he sensed, wanted to be left alone. Maybe so he could lie there on the bed and indulge in his fantasy of screwing his sons.

  Laurent got dressed and left, making sure that the door’s lock snapped shut behind him. An instant later, the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor went dark, after Pedro turned off the light inside his room. Laurent paused in the hallway long enough to open the envelope and count the money it contained. Then, smiling, he strolled toward the elevator.

  Chapter Five: Fishers of Men

  Laurent and Michel had been friends, since boyhood.

  They’d grown up together, in the same rough neighborhood in Marseille. When they reached adulthood, though, the two young men’s paths had diverged. Laurent had relocated to Nice and set himself up as a successful escort. Michel, on the other hand, had plied his family’s traditional trade. His people were fisherman, and they had been for several successive generations, more at home out on the waters of the Mediterranean than they were on land. Michel owned his own boat, which was his pride and joy, and which he took out virtually every day—including Sundays, after Mass. On the other six days of the week, he was out to sea well before dawn, returning at dusk. Unmarried, he was considered to be “a good catch.” Young local girls and their mothers vied for his favors, hoping to entice him into the bonds of matrimony. But Michel resisted them, remaining a confirmed bachelor. His close friends, and the men with whom he hooked up, knew he was gay. Recently, he’d come out to his family, which had been surprisingly accepting. Perhaps their hardscrabble existence had given them a realistic outlook on life.

  Laurent had always been well aware why his childhood buddy showed little or no interest in women. He and Michel had fooled around together, sexually, and quite without shame, as horny, curious adolescents, and Laurent knew that Michel, like him, had matured into a man who preferred same-sex intimate relationships.

  The friends had stayed in regular contact. One day, when he had no clients scheduled, Laurent drove the two hundred kilometers to Marseille, and he met his buddy, as they’d arranged, for a leisurely lunch at a waterfront café. They ate bouillabaisse, the city’s staple comfort food, accompanied by bread and wine.

  Michel had arranged for another man to captain his boat, during his absence.

  “If that fool wrecks it—!” he fretted.

  Laurent laughed. “Relax. Have more wine.”

  “I’d better. What have you been up to, lately?” Michel inquired.

  “Oh, same old, same old,” Laurent answered, evasively.

  Michel laughed. “Still whoring around, are you?”

  “Yeah,” Laurent admitted.

  “Doesn’t it ever get tired?”

  “Not while the men still want me and the money is still good. And you?”

  “Still fishing,” Michel said. “Keeping the markets on the dock supplied. It’s hard work, but I’m used to it. And now I have two new men assisting me. They’re young guys. Brothers—Algerians—whose family came here recently from Tunis. Hard workers. They don’t complain. We work well together.”

  “Yeah, good workers are hard to find,” Laurent remarked, thinking about the other male prostitutes who worked for him.

  “You should come out with us sometime,” Michel suggested. “Like we used to do in the old days. Sail with us. Throw out the nets. Then sit back and have some lunch and some wine, and soak up the sun, while we wait. Then haul in the catch. Take it back to port, and sell it.”

  “Which is a hell of a lot of hard work, as I recall. What’d be in it for me?”

  “Oh, I’d give you a cut of the day’s profits.”

  “No, you guys work too damn hard for your money. I couldn’t do that. I’d settle for one or two nice, plump fish. For me to take home, and cook for myself. I could no doubt make a couple of meals from the fuckers.”

  “That’d be acceptable.”

  “I’m now tempted to do it. A free boat ride, after all. Not on a yacht, maybe, but still out on the water.”

  “Don’t just be tempted. Go ahead and do it. A day off—a day on the water, in the sun—it’d do wonders for you.”

  “All right. Let me check my calendar. I’ll get back to you. We’ll do it. Soon!”

  And they did.

  Laurent spent his next free day with Michel and his two helpers. It required a real commitment. Driving to Marseille in the dark this time, Laurent met his friend on the dock in the harbor an hour before sunrise.

  “And they call me a whore,” Laurent grumbled, sleepily but good-naturedly, as he stumbled along the wooden planks in the dark. “No, this is obscene, to be awake at this ungodly hour!”

  Michel laughed. “I’ve got coffee ready. Come aboard.”

  “Coffee? Thank God.”

  “Meet the crew.”

  Even though there were no fish loaded on board at the moment, the wooden-hulled boat was absolutely permeated from stem to stern with the residual, lingering smell of fish. Laurent didn’t mind the odor. As a Marseillaise, he was used to it, and it had nostalgic memories for him.

  Michel introduced Laurent to his new two-man crew, whose names were Ammar and Azhar. There was such a marked facial resemblance between the two brothers that they could have passed for twins. Brown-skinned, handsome, they smiled at Laurent, dazzling him with the whiteness of their teeth.

  Laurent had come dressed for work, in shorts and a pullover, with sensible boat shoes, and a sweatshirt in case the air turned cool. The three fishermen were similarly attired.

  “I’ve brought wine,” Laurent said, indicating the bottles he’d brought along. “Assuming drinking is still allowed, on board your boat?”

  “Drinking,” Michel retorted, “isn’t just allowed, it’s required.”

  “It didn’t occur to me until now, but aren’t Azhar and Ammar, um, Muslims?”

  “They’re open-minded Muslims. Thoroughly French in some respects. Including taking a little wine with meals, or as a stimulant, now and then. Look at it this way. You and I were both brought up as good Catholic boys, weren’t we, Laurent? But that’s never stopped us from doing a lot of things which are technically sins.”

  The Algerian brothers kept grinning, and Laurent had the impression that they weren’t quite following the conversation.

  Michel confirmed this.

  “They barely speak any French, yet, though,” Michel warned Laurent. “Haven’t lived here long enough. Only a few phrases. I keep teaching them. And I’ve picked up some Arabic from them. Between that, and with gestures, we manage to communicate well enough.”

  “Good-looking guys who don’t bother you with a lot of talk,” Laurent said, humorously. “It sounds perfect! And they’re quite a pair of beauties. Trust you not to hire anyone homely.”

  “These Arab boys tend to marry late,” Michel remarked. “Not until they’ve had a chance to save some money, to set up housekeeping on their own.”

  “Yeah? And you’re telling me this, because—?”

  “Because, until they marry, they don’t hesitate to fool around with each other, to relieve the sexual tension, and prevent getting some girl pregnant,” Michel explained. “So—if they start acting all flirtatious with you, don’t think it’s necessarily going to lead anywhere. You’re not going to be the love of their lives. You’re just going to be ano
ther white man diversion for them.”

  “You’re a bit cynical.”

  “No, just honest. Aware.”

  “Have you been a ‘white man diversion’ for either or both of them?”

  Michel looked uneasy. Guilty as hell, in fact! “Ah—never you mind.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Fucked both of them, haven’t you, you horny bastard? Which of them do you prefer?”

  “None of your goddamn business!” Michel growled.

  “Interesting, that you don’t deny it. That’s honest of you, I suppose. Bet you liked the taste of that dark meat—just as much as they got off on that sun-bronzed, not so lily-white body of yours.”

  “Don’t be disgusting, Laurent. Don’t be racist.”

  “You know me better than that. Racism has nothing to do with it, except to the extent that I like all men, no matter what color their skin happens to come in. And so do you, I remember. Which doesn’t prevent a guy from appreciating a hint of the exotic, now and then. Am I right?”

  “Aw, shut up, you whore! Make yourself useful. Cast off the lines, while I get the engine started.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. If I disobey you, captain, will you tie me to the mast and flog me?”

  “Don’t tempt me. Not that flogging the likes of you would be a punishment. You’d enjoy it!”

  “Actually, you’d be surprised how many of my johns are into a little bondage and S and M. Or a lot of it. For example, just the other night—”

  “The lines,” Michel reminded his new crew member, firmly, although he laughed. “Save your lurid sex stories for later.”

  “Listening to dirty talk is a good way to learn a foreign language. Ammar and Azhar might expand their French vocabulary before the day’s over.”

  Slowly, cautiously, the boat chugged its way through the floating maze obstacle course of other vessels crowded together in the harbor. Once out to sea, it picked up speed. Soon, just as the sun began to rise, they reached the first fishing area which Michel wanted to try.

  The Algerians shed their shirts and shoes, and, nude except for shorts, they scampered about the deck, barefoot, performing various tasks with brisk efficiency. Laurent, who’d been enjoying the voyage, began to feel guilty for slacking off.

  “I’m not on this tub of yours as a passenger,” Laurent insisted. “Put me to work!”

  “Will do,” his buddy Michel retorted. “Be careful what you wish for! Help me cast these nets.”

  This was a fairly complicated process.

  “This fishing shit is damn hard work,” Laurent complained. “Quite apart from the fact that the hours suck.”

  “It’s no life for soft guys like you, that’s for sure,” Michel responded.

  “Why do you do it? Oh, I know all about tradition. Keeping up the family business, and so on. But times do change, my friend, and we have to change, with them. You should cut your losses. And wake up to reality. Start thinking about yourself, your future. When are you going to give up this fishing drudgery, and come work for me?”

  “What, as one of the studs in your stable?”

  “Sure, why not? You’d be good at it. You’re no pretty boy. No twink. You’ve got that roughhewn working-class thing going for you. A lot of my clients like that. And I can’t provide it. I’m too damn much of a high-class, sophisticated, urban pretty boy,” Laurent boasted, facetiously.

  “Yeah, you’re disgustingly perfect—in your own mind! Anyway, I could never be a whore,” Michel insisted.

  “Lots of guys think that way,” Laurent suggested. “But then, their circumstances change, and they end up changing their minds, accordingly.”

  Michel emitted an enigmatic-sounding grunt. Then he said, “Well, now we can take a break. This is the easy part of the job—waiting to see what, if anything, ends up in the nets.”

  “And what do you guys do while you wait?”

  Michel shrugged. “Sunbathe. Play cards.”

  “Fuck?”

  “It’s been known to happen,” Michel admitted. “While keeping one eye open, looking for passing boats. God forbid a bunch of swells, partying on board a yacht, should come close enough to be subjected to the sight of sodomy.”

  Laurent smirked. “Listen, buddy. I’ve been on board yachts, and I can assure you that all sorts of sex acts take place out on their decks, too.”

  Michel grunted. “Good to know the rich and I have at least one thing in common. A functioning penis, combined with an inability to resist temptation.”

  By now, the sun was climbing higher in the sky, which had cast off its black night veil and was once again its vibrant daytime blue. The air was getting hot. Michel and Laurent also stripped down to their shorts.

  “I’m not really doing anything, but I’m sweating,” Laurent said. “It feels good, though. There is something to be said for this. Out here on the water—out in the middle of nowhere—under the sun. Free.”

  “Free, except for my debts,” Michel replied. “But I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “Remember that time, when we were boys, when we wanted to earn a little pocket money? And we talked those fishermen into taking us on board, to help them out?”

  “Ah—yeah,” Michel said, uneasily.

  “They all ended up fucking us,” Laurent reminded his buddy, gleefully. “Remember, they gave us extra money, afterward, to shut us up? I guess that was the first time I prostituted myself. Which means you’ve sold yourself, too, after all, at least once.”

  “We were raped.”

  “You can’t rape the willing, Michel. And as I recall, you were very willing.”

  “If I toss your whore ass overboard, you’ll have a long swim back to Marseille.”

  “Ooh,” Laurent cooed. “You’re such a big, strong, frightening man! I just love it when you talk tough to me like that!”

  “Bitch,” Michel mumbled.

  Laurent snorted with laughter, which attracted the attention of the Algerian brothers, who, despite the fact that they weren’t in the joke, cheerfully joined in the laughter at Michel’s expense. Then the two siblings began a quite animated conversation, between themselves.

  “What’re they chattering about?” Laurent asked.

  “From what I can make out of it, they’re discussing you, as a matter of fact. Speculating about what you’re like in bed. Too bad my Arabic’s still so limited. Ah, the tales I could tell those boys about you—!”

  “Well, let’s not keep them in suspense,” Laurent said, flippantly. “Tell them I’m available—assuming their union contract entitles them to a break?”

  “Yeah, ‘union contract,’ my ass,” Michel scoffed. “Well—the fish aren’t exactly jumping into the nets yet, from what I can see. While we’re waiting—” Matter-of-factly, he dropped his shorts, and stood on the deck, nude. “Sign language is the best way to communicate with them.” Michel took his cock in his hand and began to stroke it, coaxing it into erection.

  Laurent watched as Ammar and Azhar promptly lost their shorts, as well.

  “You’re overdressed,” Michel advised Laurent. “Get naked.”

  “Right out here in the open?”

  “Why not? Since when are you shy? Afraid you’ll frighten off the seabirds?”

  “And to think we’re all still sober,” Laurent said, as he lowered his shorts to his ankles and stepped out of them. “Haven’t even cracked open one bottle of that wine.”

  “We’ll save it for lunch,” Michel told him. “But we may as well work up an appetite, in the meanwhile.” He gestured to the two brothers, urging them to approach him and Laurent. Michel made the first overt move, nonchalantly reaching out to grasp and stroke Azhar’s dusky uncut cock, which responded at once, and dramatically, to his manipulation of it.

  What followed was a floating orgy, a gay bacchanal—Sodom and Gomorrah on the sea.

  Within seconds, all inhibitions had been discarded, thrown to the four winds of heaven. The quartet of naked men groped one another, freely,
indiscriminately. The four of them stood there on the deck of the rocking boat in their circle jerk, backs arched, slim hips thrust forward in priapic glee, gasping for breath while their mutual obscene excitement continued to mount.

  Gradually, slowly at first, but then imperceptibly accelerating, each of the participants in the lewd open-air act of mutual masturbation felt himself being prodded closer to his ultimate pleasure. They moved their nude bodies shamelessly closer together, until their tautly muscled physiques were jammed against one another in a solid mass of hot, perspiring male flesh. By then, Laurent was brazenly grasping and massaging the dusky cock of Ammar, the brother who stood to his right. The Algerian youth, in turn, was jerking Michel’s cock, at a rapid, ball-draining pace. Michel masturbated the prick of the other brother, Azhar, who, in his turn, completed the circle by concentrating his manual attentions on Laurent’s raging erection.

  While each man jerked another guy’s cock on his righthand side, each of them also utilized his free hand to heft and fondle the scrotum of the man on his left, so that every set of fiercely aroused male genitalia received a double stimulation.

  Azhar spouted a rapid-fire stream of Arabic to his brother, who responded with equal volubility.

  “Let me guess,” Laurent said. “They’re talking about us? About what we’re doing? Are they approving? Disapproving? Or what?”

  “These horny black boys,” Michel gasped. “Dirty-minded buggers, both of them—!”

  “Yeah? Don’t be too hard on them. They rather remind me of you and me, when we were their age! What about them?” Laurent asked.

  “They say they want your white ass. They both want to fuck you.”

  “Oh? Have they said that?”

  “They didn’t have to, not in so many words, or in any language, French or Arabic. I can read their body language well enough.”

  “Sort of a universal language of lust, huh?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Wantonly, Laurent smiled at the two dark-skinned brothers, who responded by grinning at him, baring their white teeth in their dusky faces, in delight.