When there is time, I have always taken ferries, going to engage artists or to participate in language-teaching events. Ferries are excellent for erotic encounters, as I can attest from personal experience and as others have reported to me. So, feeling once more the urge to write about such things, I am launching a craft of my own to carry some of these seaborne adventures, which seem always to have an element of service, sometimes initially altruistic but ultimately making the satisfaction mutual. As was the case with my initiation of a sweet young man I will call Mark, 25 years ago.
1
Hull to Rotterdam, autumn. Part of the pleasure was the sumptuous buffet included in the fare, and I was savouring the meal when the young man courteously asked, in an American accent, if he could join me. He was short in stature but neatly made, quite muscular inside the short-sleeved blue shirt and jeans. He was pale, with ash-blonde hair cut close, pale blue eyes and a complexion so smooth it suggested he hardly needed to shave.
We quickly began to converse, partly because he seemed to need some human contact, even reassurance. It soon emerged that he was travelling to his wedding in the Netherlands, and I guessed that much as he was overjoyed about the forthcoming union, he was also apprehensive about it for some reason.. He and Toos (pronounced Toe-sh, she was Dutch) were postdocs in some rarefied, pioneering field of physics, and had met when she was studying at his college in the USA. They were going to work together at CERN, the respected research centre in Geneva. They were in their mid-twenties, the period of maximum productivity in the manipulation of creative particle mathematics.
So, why the apprehension? The quantum world was all before them and they were going to take it by storm. It was clear that their relationship was not derived entirely from mutual intellectual admiration, but the first clue about the possible rift in the lute came when he said shyly, 'We know a heck of a lot of string theory but nothing about marriage.'
'Aha,' I said, 'Plenty about bosons but nothing about bosoms.'
'Yeah. We spent our teenage years in the lab and the library.'
'Making equations and not making out?'
'Yeah. We've read up the theory and we know the physiology, but - '
'You've not checked each other out at all?'
'Too busy and too shy, I guess. We're about as virgin as you can be.'
'Well,' I said, 'You're going to have a wonderful time getting to learn each other.'
'Not quite like that,' he said. 'We've split the field, as we do with the physics. She's researching and prepping the contraception and I'm supposed to major in the practical work.'
'On the wedding night she'll be preventing the pregnancy, and you'll be showing her all the holds and throws.'
'Yeah. That's about it.'
'I hope you don't mind my putting it bluntly,' I said.
'Go ahead.'
'Are you supposed to be still virgins, then, when the dinner and dance are done?'
'I think she's happy for me to get some help.'
By now we had finished eating and were drinking coffee. It was evident what an unattached woman should offer. I said, 'You must know, Mark, that it's commonplace for a lad to be initiated by an experienced older woman.'
'I know that's supposed to happen sometimes.' Then he blushed a hot pink in his smooth, hairless cheeks. 'Oh, I wasn't asking - wasn't trying to - wasn't hinting -'
'I know you weren't, and why shouldn't you, anyway? You're an attractive young man, and any older, or younger, woman might be ready to assist.'
He was still blushing and stammering. 'It didn't occur to me. You must think me very thoughtless and naΓ―ve.'