Clouds Over Antibes

Chapter One: Despite Everything: Brent Danforth

I lay on the bunk in the cabin of my twenty-six-foot 1930 Elco Marinette cabin cruiser in the Antibes, France, yacht basin marina and tried not to scream as the Italian, Mateo Paoli, worked my channel with the oversized dildo. My wrists were tied and attached to the iron ring at the head of the bunk. I was on my back, legs splayed and bent, the soles of my bare feet flat on the surface of the bunk, a canvas ballast sack under the small of my back, lifting my pelvis, demonstrating my willingness to take the dildo.

The dildo was mine. I had agreed to this. He'd offered a lot of money to have his way with me like this and I needed money. The dildo was on the table when Mateo and I entered the cabin. He'd seen it as he was greasing up his gloved hand and decided to use that first. I couldn't say I couldn't manage it; it was my dildo. And I had agreed to be fisted too. I needed the money and he was a sexy man.

Mateo was tall, gaunt, hard-bodied, and distinguish looking, in his early fifties. His lion's mane of hair gray made him look both patrician and commanding. We'd met on the clay courts of a tennis club not far from the Antibes harbor, with its yacht basin and extensive marina. Antibes, on the Côte d'Azur, the French Riviera, on the southern, Mediterranean coast, had been the playground of Europe since the 1920s, right up to two months previously, upon the German invasion of France in June 1940. Now it was becoming a refugee center, a stopping off place, still for the wealthy, but for those trying to move on to the United States and South America to escape the gathering storm of war. That's what I was doing too, although I was trying to get back to the United States. I was an American, taking a year between my freshman and sophomore years at Dartmouth to do some sailing exploration in Europe. I augmented my travel funds by lying on my back for men for money.

My timing was just a bit off. I'd managed to get this far, but the money was running out. I'd need diesel to get any further away from the storm clouds floating over Europe, and the price of diesel was mounting with every passing day.

The Italian industrialist, himself taking the summer, as he'd always done, he said, to work from the French Riviera rather than Milan, had found himself looking for a tennis match at the club when I was finishing up giving a lesson there. I had no trouble discerning that he was shopping for more than a tennis partner.

I had money, but needed more to see myself home and my access to cabled funds had temporarily, I hoped, been cut off by the quick and unexpected fall of Paris to the Germans. I was giving tennis lessons here and there and lying on my back for men when I was particularly hard up for money. Mateo didn't need tennis lesson--it was a chore for me to defeat him on the court. He was, however, quite interested in my lying on my back for him. He started coming on to me even before we got onto the court, and I didn't discourage him. He acknowledged he'd be cruel and demanding, but I needed the money. He'd been up front about wanting to fist me. I knew that up front. He also looked like he was a stud for his age. He was certainly the best prospect at the tennis club that day.

He proved to be a stud for any age. He wasn't my first Italian man. I'd always found Italians to be exceptional, and he didn't change that observation.

I lay there on the bunk, staring at the wad of money on the table where the dildo had been, hoping that the money would last me until I could sail out of Antibes--for where, I wasn't sure. Europe was in turmoil. Where I was now was still France, in name, under the Vichy government. But how long could the Vichy, under Marshal Pétain, be able to juggle supposed independence and German occupation? And where could I go from here to prepare to get safely back to the States?

Despite everything I had to think about, for now, this moment, I had to think about giving the Italian his money's worth--about taking his fist. With luck, he'd want to pay me to take him again. He was sitting next to my prone body on the bunk, both of us naked, our tennis clothes mingling on the deck beside the bunk, the boat gently rocking against the marina pier, giving off a steady, dull thump, thump, thump cadence.

Staring at the wad of money, once more positioned beside the dildo the Italian had pulled out of my ass, I started panting and moaning as his fingers forced their way inside me, up to the knuckles, waiting for me to stretch to take him. His left hand was gliding over my body and he was leaning over me, looking intently into my eyes. He'd already explained that half of his pleasure in fisting a young man like me was to watch the youth's facial expressions as he possessed and worked him with his hand.

I arched my back and head and gave a little cry as the greased knuckles breached my sphincter muscle. Mateo ran the fingers of his left hand into my blond curls and held my head to the surface of the bunk, leaning close over me, his face near mine, as he possessed me up to his wrist. He took my lips with his and I writhed and panted under him as the fist moved, slowly, in and out.

"Good, good," he murmured. "Take it. Take it."

At length, he pulled the hand out, moved over on top of me, and turned my body to where I was face down on the bunk. He put a hand on my belly and coaxed me up onto my knees, my cheek and chest pressed to the bunk. I didn't fight him. I was cowed and exhausted from the fisting, even though it hadn't lasted long. He positioned himself, mounted, on my raised ass, his thighs on either side of my hips. Still, I certainly knew he was there, thick, long, throbbing, teasing my hole by rubbing his mushroom cap around the rim. He slid inside me easily, having already opened me up with the dildo and his fist. He possessed me wholly, thickly, sure of his mastery. He was Italian. He fucked me to his ejaculation, breeding me, filling me deep, with his warm cum. Even in his fifties, he was a virile and vigorous man. The fucking motion augmented the natural thumping of the boat's hull against the pier. His thrusts and my rocking against them had matched the rhythm of the thumping of the hull against the pier.

He was a stud. I had endured the fisting, but I can't say I didn't enjoy the cocking.

I held steady for him, giving him his money's worth, hoping that what he'd paid would last me for two weeks or, better, that he'd enjoyed me enough to pay me to do it again. By the end of that two weeks, I needed to have moved on--toward home. Despite everything--despite how enjoyable and educational this trip through Europe in my cabin cruiser was--I needed to move on. War had arrived in France. The occupation was reaching out its claws toward me. The French Riviera wouldn't be a playground for much longer.

Just as I'd learned that fascism and being gay didn't mix well in Naples, I had the definite impression that being gay wouldn't be safe here on the French Riviera if and when the Germans arrived.

* * * *

I went to bed on the boat early that night, feeling a bit alone and at odds because I had no clear plan on where to go from here. I was working my way from east to west in the Mediterranean with some loose plan to break out of the Med and sail to England or directly back to the States--or maybe the Caribbean, if I could be convinced that was safe in these uncertain times. I'd sailed over to England from Boston early the previous fall, with another guy, who was long gone now. I'm sure I could pick up someone else trying to get back to the States--but where? So far, I'd heard that Portugal would be my best bet--or maybe the Azores. Also, until I had a clear idea of what to do, I was husbanding my funds. I couldn't afford to go carousing in the bars in the town above the yacht basin, although, from the sounds coming from the town, there was a lot of carousing going on.

So, I tried to sleep. But it was no use. I got up, pulled on cotton trousers, a T-shirt, and my sandals and decided to walk the lower streets of the town until I was drowsy enough to come back to the boat and sleep. I had half a notion that maybe I could pick up another guy who would pay for it. Maybe he would take me to a bar before.

I only made it to the street above the yacht basin, though. Looking up at the second, covered-porch story of a bar with a "bar and inn" sign out that was the source of considerable convivial boisterous noise, I spied two figures, entwined, in silhouette, backdropped by the light of lanterns under the ceiling of the porch covering. When they came apart, I saw--or thought I saw--that one of them was a small, trim woman--and the other was the Italian who'd fucked me for a fee that afternoon, Mateo Paoli.

So, maybe bisexual. OK, I didn't mind. I hadn't even known what a bisexual was when I've shoved off from the pier in Boston. I knew now, though--all part of the education of taking a gap year. It had just been men who had financed my travel across Europe. There were some women--usually older but still sexy--who contributed in exchange for my favors.

Paoli, seeing me coming up onto the quay from the marina piers, called out the magic words. "There you are, Brent. Come up and join us. We are celebrating the uncertainty while we can. Come up, lad. I'll stand you your drinks. There are men here you'll want to meet--and who will want to meet you."

It was the "I'll stand you your drinks" that had me entering the building and mounting the stairs to the second-floor porch, which seemed to be a private party area. There was a sign above the foot of the stairs that said "Oscar's," so I presumed I was going up to what was sort of a separate, specialty bar of the inn. And from what I've seen up the upper porch from the ground, I gathered that the "Oscar" probably stood for Oscar Wilde and signaled a literary men-for-men bar. That, in fact, was what I found.

Of course, there was that figure who had looked to be a woman.

By the time I got to what was obviously a private party, the "small, trim woman" who had been kissing Paoli had moved to the lap of a handsome Nordic blond guy with blue eyes, who had his hands all over her--and she wasn't a "she." She was a cross-dresser or a transvestite.

"Her name's Louise--well, tonight it is. Tomorrow, with the town looking, she's likely to be Louis," a voice next to me said, in high-drawer British English. "Come, sit next to me," the man continued.

He was a few years older than I was--not quite handsome, but with an interesting, angular face, and a mop of ginger-colored hair. "Mateo has been telling me about you--at least I think it's you. An American, having floated in from Rome, with a cabin cruiser parked in the yacht basin. True? My name's Mark Standish, by the way. I would so love to float away from here with you."

"Yes, I'm an American. Brent Danforth," I said.

"Mateo says you take it rough--that he had a good time with you. Says you let him use his fist."

"A stupendous time," Mateo said, as he took two beers from a young, French waiter, almost more beautiful than handsome, and with a ring in his right ear. If that meant here what it meant in New York at the time, the waiter was my competition at the table. And there were six men at the table--a very diverse group--and another guy who must be the innkeeper, hovering over the table--in addition to the transvestite, Louis or Louise, sitting on the blond man's lap. All of them were being boisterous. Mateo sat at my right, next to the railing overlooking the yacht basin and pushed a beer in front of me.

"We aren't usually this raucous," Mark Standish, sitting to my left, leaned in toward me and practically yelled over the noise at the table.

"That's right," Mateo said, "we're celebrating desperate times coming. We all, those of us at this table--a club that you have proven you will shine in--are intent on blazing our torches despite everything coming toward us."

"A club? One I belong in?" I asked.

"Yes, you handsome young man," Standish said. "We're all of differing nationalities and talents, but we all share one thing--and with you, I presume. We're all queer, and we're all in the target sights of the gathering horde."

Oh, I thought. Well, I couldn't claim not to be gay--not after spending the afternoon with Mateo's fist up my ass. And he seems to have shared that information with the men at this table.

Mateo took up the conversation. "Let me reveal our friends to you, most of whom will pay you to let them lay you, as I have done--as I will be happy to do so again. Our friend Mark here, indeed is English. He's a novelist--not too bad, I've been told. No telling how much longer he can call Antibes home. He's quite notorious among the lads in the town, not all of them of legal age. The Nazis will love playing with him, I think. And across from us, the blond and very fit young man who is playing with Louis. He's German, an actor, quite possibly not of the religion the German's prefer, I don't think, or he might still be in Germany. Gunter Achten by name. Like Mark, I think he'll be looking for some way to move on from Antibes within days. The older priest eyeing the waiter, who is near to topping out in his sexual interest, is Père Bernard. You may be a bit old for him. He's French, as are the dark, brooding men sitting next to him, Jean-Paul Jardienne, an artist, and our innkeeper, Maurice Gagnon, definitely a member of the Oscar's club and bedpartner and pimp for the waiter, Tristian Alarie, both, of course, French. I'm afraid those three are stuck here for the duration and may not see their way clear for another gathering of the gays here for quite some time. The older, gray-haired man with the medals on his chest, sitting there and looking so solemn, is our Spanish general, Juan del Campo. He apparently is royal--a Bourbon. Having opposed Franco in the Spanish Civil War is what has brought him to us. But I'm afraid that, since Hitler backs Franco in that war and the fascists don't have much respect for royalty, Juan must be planning to move on from here as soon as possible. There, I think you've met them all. Let's see how long it will take them all to have bedded you. Ah, another beer?"

"Yes, please." It may chiefly have been the beer offer that kept me at the party. I could well understand with the political clouds moving in, that being a member of a gay man's club in Vichy France, with the Germans looking over their shoulders, might not be the safest use of my time. Beyond that, as long as Mateo kept the beer coming tonight, and even with him and the English writer touching me from both sides and making cow eyes at me, I would stay. They were right. This might be the last night for many nights that I or any of them would think of wanting to party--or that any of them would be interested in taking a young American to bed for money.

I would always stick around if there was that chance I could make money from it.

Over the next hour, I talked--or, rather, share yells over the din--with those at the table enough to remember what nationality and specialty they were, whether they were tops or bottoms, and, in most cases, at least their first names. As the night lengthened, the Oscar's club crowd thinned out a bit. The German actor, Gunter, took the transvestite, Louis, away. The Spanish general, mumbling something about packing, bowed out. And when I went to the pissery, I saw that the French cleric, Bernard, had the waiter, Tristian, up against a wall at the end of a passage. Tristian returned to the table on the porch afterward. The priest didn't.

On my way back to the table, the innkeeper, Maurice, stopped me and showed me a small wad of franc notes. My first thought was that he wanted to fuck me and was putting in his bid before any of the other men--only Mateo, Mark, and the French artist, Jean-Paul, still being at the table, with the possibility that all of them would pass out drunk there--could get to me that night. But I was wrong.

"Mateo tells me that you are in the need of money and are willing to work on your back for it," he said to me in low tones at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the inn rooms.

"Yes," I said. I wasn't in the position to be choosy and, although he was large and heavy and ugly, the innkeeper's money would be as good in the dark of one of his rooms upstairs as any other man's.

"Juan. The Spanish general," Maurice said, his eyes looking up the stairs. "He is quite despondent at what has come to pass here. I wish to cheer him up. Do you think it possible that you could--?"

"Which room is he in?" I asked, taking the banknotes he was holding in his hand.

* * * *

In addition to the nominal fee Maurice gave me, which I didn't question because I wanted to be in his good graces and I'd already earned enough for today, I was given a small bottle of cognac, with the explanation that it was the general's favorite, and two wine glasses.

If the general was surprised to see me show up with the cognac, he didn't reveal it. He seemed despondent and there were a couple of suitcases out on the bed half filled with clothes. He was a soldier; everything was folded with precise, straight seams.

"Maurice asked me to bring this to you," I said. "He also asked me to give you anything else you might want from me. He's paid me." I wasn't going to lie about where this gift was coming from.

"As you can see, I'm packing to go," he said. He was sitting on the foot of the bed.

"You're taking a vacation?" I asked. "Maurice says you live here."

"Yes, it's been a little over a year. I came here directly from the defeat in Spain. I knew that Franco wouldn't let me live. But now it's time to move on."

"Move on where? And why do you need to leave here?" I asked, as I poured him a glass of the cognac and handed it to him. He accepted it and took a couple of sips before answering.

"I'm an old man. You don't have to be here with me."

"I like older men. There's no place else I want to be."

"I'll try to go across the sea to Morocco, I guess," the general said, returning to the question I'd asked. "Franco is a fascist. If he has a friend in this world, it's Hitler. And I don't believe in the independence of the Vichy government that's here now. I don't know where I'll go from there. But there is a colony of my men and their families there, near Tangier, and Tangier has long been welcoming to my kind--to our kind." He looked at me and smiled when he said that. "You are a beautiful young man," he said, saluting me with his glass. "Mateo tells me that you went under him."

"Yes," I said. "And if you want, I could--"

He touched my cheek with the fingers of his free hand. His thumb stroked my lips and I opened them and took the thumb in, giving it suck.

"You are such a handsome young man--very fit. You could have been one of my soldiers. One of my special soldiers. Could you give me a memory?"

"Of course. What?"

"Could you become naked for me and let me see you--make love to you with my eyes?"

I poured him more cognac and put my own glass down on the top of the bureau next to where I'd put the bottle. Then, slowly, smiling at him, I disrobed until I was standing there, naked, posing for him, turning this way and that.

"Oh, my. Magnificent. Thank you. It will be something to remember."

I took the glass from his hand and knelt before him.

"What are you doing? You don't need to... I'm such an old man. I don't deserve..."

"Shush," I said. "I want to." I slowly unbuttoned his fly. He was so old school that he had buttons rather than a zipper. I found that he had hardened up, watching me. It was fortunate that he could do so. I took his cock in my mouth and gave him slow head, as he gripped my head between his hands, moaned and almost sobbed for me.