Cock Sucker Travellers Journal

A journey into a disturbing strangeness that would change this traveller's life...

This city, they say, is variously five-hundred to five-thousand years old. It was built on the tumulus of earlier cities that had decayed in upon themselves, just as this one is gradually dissolving into the mounds and swells of their remains. Ribs of palaces grow organically from cliff faces that – on closer inspection, can be seen to have been carved from the same living rock as the grottoes that stretch into immeasurable labyrinths behind them. Caves receding in distance and time, one fancies, to the very heart of this ancient land. Here, Keeps with collapsed domes and amputated minarets take on the appearance of reefed vessels settling through the earth to imaginary sea-bottoms, their geometries listing at remarkable angles – as if arrested in the act of falling over, and consumed by a wild slow tide of creeping grasses and vines splashed with violent sun-bursts of yellow trumpet-flowers.

And everywhere there are wells of moist shadow and dark recesses hidden from the sun where people have constructed newer, less grandiose accommodations for their teeming families. Lean-to's, shanties and ramshackle huts that spread in the manner of some virulent and unsanitary disease. Some had merely colonised convenient arches or pantiles in the corner of abandoned courtyards or cloisters, elsewhere they cannibalised masonry in an architectural devolution to simpler and cruder forms. I was forcibly minded of Armaka, the god Indra in its role as Purandara – breaker of cities. This must truly be his domain.

We'd come upon this place after travelling inland for several days across the north-west sector of this vast and infertile continent. Until suddenly, out of the encircling jungle, we could discern these mountains of masonry rising in successive ranges, entering a domain of great tumbling screes of plinths, pillars and lotus jambs. A place where trees spiral up out of the barrel-vaults of shingled temple-roofs like the flying buttresses of some phantom Gothic cathedral, and branches knot their way over Sanskrit inscriptions, before curving around the bas-reliefs of multi-limbed lion-headed and elephant-headed figures, gods and godlings, sprites and tree-spirits.

A lost city, but one which lies on the spice-caravan trade-routes so some provision has been made for the board and entertainment of travellers. My companion, Captain Ralph Forsythe, makes a striking figure in his scarlets and white solar-topee helmet. Me, I fear, creating a more bumbling impression in my dull fawns, struggling with my baggage and the typewriter on which I strive dutifully to fulfil my commission to the 'London Geographical Journal'. Sending sporadic reports back as frequently as local conditions permit. We establish ourselves, for a few coins, at the hostelry of an unpleasantly fawning but English-speaking Hindu. A deformity of the spine giving him the semblance of a grotesque scuttling insect.

We rest and bathe as best we can, then – refreshed, set out upon a meandering exploration of the bizarre locale in which we found ourselves. It was late evening by now, and a huge red sun was setting, casting long webs of shadow that lent the swarming squalor an exotic magical quality. One that extends even to the constant pestering of skeletal-thin cripples, beggars and whores, while above us the high citadels and solid buildings evaporate to mist and are enfolded by cloud. Yet eventually, such attractions pall and we feel the need to escape from the rippling tide-shifts of people and their incessant babble.

I confess, my companion was also intrigued by promises of a more prurient nature, and against my more cautious instincts, we succumb to the sales-pitch of a betel-brown native's salacious catalogue of insistent and knowing innuendo. We pay him well – rather too well in my estimation, then allow ourselves to be conducted through paths where snake-like tendrils of pepper-vines finger their way through window-portals and up door-jambs. Where cracked lintels covered in mosses and bright lichens were supported by the roots of thousand-year-old banyan trees, which wrap their way over broken arches, coiling in spirals like the tail of some slumbering guardian dragon. As the shadows deepen, he leads us through terraces of overgrown galleries, narrow corridors and down dark staircases, all the while turning to beckon and urge us on, across courtyard after courtyard, the sculptures gradually losing their definition, crumbling into shadows of dusk.

Finally, a precariously erected souk, beneath a decorated false-fronted awning opens into a turgid gloom neither day nor night, and down a long series of wide stone stairs into what I took to be the remains of a temple or palace. Across high inner-walls roots like fused spiders' webs grip fallen finials and crumbling friezes portray spear-brandishing warriors in war chariots, and long-haired, cross-legged and meditating sages. Then bare-breasted dancers in girdles and anklets. Which in turn give way to images of a more sensual nature. Whatever this place had been, it had long since been given over to more lascivious practices.

As dark and cluttered as the souk beyond, the haze of kif – opium smoke, was everywhere pervasive, and through the twilight of our descent, illuminated only by the flickering ochre glow of torches, rows of ornate cages could be glimpsed, which were foul with the stench of bodies and stale sexual odours. Two or three youths were drugged to docility and permanent sensual arousal in each cage, most of them nude with gaudy ribbons laced into their pubic hair – or shaved of all body hair to appear even more voluptuously naked. They were selected for the size of their pendulous penes and for their rampancy. Others, the hijras in invitingly vulgar kohl and lip-shade, wore short sheer dresses outlining their genital attributes provocatively. It was a lair of sexual inversion, and although a little disturbed by its blatant display, no-one who has endured the English public school system could remain totally unfamiliar with such predilections.

In an open area beyond the cages, clientele lounge or sprawl around long trestle tables. We were served drinks, said to be laced with sperm. Young men with bodies glistening like polished fruit snigger and scuttle beneath the drapes covering the laden tables, bare brown buttocks fish-wriggling, hunting between guest's anonymous knees for the singular object of their desire for furtive fellatio. It was gloatingly explained to us that the intention of the 'game' was not to betray by facial expression or outward agitation, whatever pleasures were being inflicted upon us by that means out of sight below the tabletop. Once enticed in this way, Captain Ralph was soon lured away to sample the denizens of the cages while I – more reluctant to become so directly involved, engaged our guide in conversation, quizzing him about the morés and history of this strange place – even as I became aware of gently disturbing fingers probing invisibly between my knees.

My guts knotting like a nest of cold snakes. How could I halt such an intimate invasion without causing a scene? without calling attention to myself? I couldn't, I could only sit tight, allow it to happen on the dubious pretence that it was not happening, and hope no-one could detect its symptoms in my outer appearance. Our guide picked his nose with exaggerated care, as my penis was sensitively extracted. His teeth were chipped tombstones. I felt warm moist lips closing in around my most private organ, and sought to control myself, even as my body was rising to meet its oral benefactor. For so long neglected, in slumbering abstinence, my manhood was reacting enthusiastically, and without my approval, to the intimate attentions being lavished upon it.

I licked my lips nervously. Seeking a focus for my attentions, through the low torchlight and the drifts of smoke I was able to discern that the walls were elaborately frescoed with erotica of great antiquity. I flinch, inhale sharply. The guide leers, his eyes glittering like some beast. Possibly such explicit art originated from the Harappan culture of the Indus Moheno-Daro? It seems certain to my eye that they represent a polytheism anticipating the later pantheon of Hindu deities. I select one particular frieze of worn pre-Sanskrit glyphs and pictograms and demand his detailed translation. My voice had become unexpectedly high-pitched. I hoped he'd failed to notice its unaccustomed register.

The legend, he told me predates the 'Rig-Veda' or the 'Epic of Gilgamesh', and is set in a mythic time soon after the creation of the universe when all was still without permanently fixed form, worlds were fluid and given to startling metamorphoses at the whim of capricious deities, a time before the appearance of the races of modern man. The tale has haunted me through the intervening years to this very day. The wall-paintings preserved across the centuries tell of a most beautiful youth whose skin is satin-smooth, his hair night-black and tightly curled – worn as though only wind had ever combed it, his eyes appealingly brown and soulful, his penis exquisitely long and well-formed, his buttocks firm and delicately rounded.

One day, while bathing in the stream, he was accosted by a god who immediately desired him. Unwisely, the youth successfully resisted the god's advances, and the god's resulting rage was so great that he cursed a terrible curse, that the beautiful youth should be immediately afflicted with two vaginas, one replacing his mouth, the other the anus – and that all who saw him would lust for him and be consumed with an overwhelming need to penetrate one or both orifices. Confused and fearful the transfigured youth returns to his village, but before he'd arrived he was seen and set upon by the villagers who rape him repeatedly in both vulvas. The youth fled, took to veiling himself in the guise of a woman and tried to lose himself in the golden cities of the fertile Indus crescent and the wide river valleys, but wherever he went he was subjected to sexual abuse and forced copulation as the vengeful god had decreed.

Eventually, driven to desperation, the once-beautiful youth abandoned all human society and retreated to the inhospitable wastes of the desert to live out his remaining days as a hermit, but even here he could find no peace. A pack of wolves came upon him and desired him, raping him repeatedly in both orifices, and after them the other creatures of the wild and arid places came upon him and used him – scorpions, toads, spiders, lizards, buzzards, until the once-beautiful youth was left broken and dying on the sand. Only then did the god see him, and was moved to pity. He allowed the copious semen filling the vaginas to germinate so that a double pregnancy occurred in head and thighs, expanding through the full gestation-period in the youth's final moments of life, so that on the point of death his head erupted, splitting open, giving birth to a new perfect man, while the thighs gave birth to woman. The head for intellect and control. The thighs for fecundity and intuition. The two beginning the races we now know as truly human...

As the tale was chillingly completed I found myself ejaculating uncontrollably into the unseen receptive mouth. My white-knuckle grip on the table-top increasing to such an intensity I felt certain I must leave my imprint there, it seemed I simultaneously inhaled and exhaled, while fervently praying with each pulse my discolouring complexion and the hard suck of my altered breathing-rate would remain undetected. A moment later Captain Ralph returned from his dalliance, his white pith helmet stowed precisely beneath the curve of his arm, crest to the fore. I was confused. My penis already dried and returned to its place of rest, safely buttoned away. My head swam. I felt myself strangely affected by the ancient legend, plunged into a mood of morbid and intense melancholia. Something perhaps to do with the subtle drugs, the uninvited arousal to which I had so easily acquiesced.

I wanted nothing so much as to quit this den of vice, and find cool untainted air. My amiable companion, his venal appetites assuaged, consented to leave. As I stood, my groin was prickly and perspiration-moist, the sweat already turning uncomfortably chill. We paid what we owed – which was a substantial sum, and made to go, stepping over glistening naked bodies as we did so. Which of those sniggering voluptuaries, I wondered, carried my seed deep within his belly? Then we were passing the cages on our way out. Through the plague of kif-smoke and flickering half-darkness I couldn't help but glance at the wretched occupants of the cells, and passing the final one – for the briefest of moments, the naked youth manacled and help captive within, turned to meet my eyes. I swear he was more breath-catchingly beautiful than any youth I've ever seen before or since, and for mouth he had the vertical wound of a vagina...

BY TRISTAN TROTSKY