Clitoris of Chaos

Dinner had been an overly long affair, the mutton greasy and steeped in a too sweet sauce, which, naturally, had been overly peppered with the cayenne beloved of the Anglo-Indian fraternity. The weather had added nothing to the ordeal of dinner. It was the time of year, before the rains come, when Ceylon is hot and humid and in which all of nature, and all of humanity, wait languidly, expectantly for the pregnant clouds to break and to wash away the decaying matter of the dry season. It is the season when that peculiar tropical reek of fecundity and decay reaches to an almost unbearable pitch and man and beast alike must collude in the pretence that it is so unnoticeable as to be unremarkable.

Fortunately, it was late enough for the mosquitoes to have departed and we had been able to escape the oppressive heat of the director's dining room for the relative cool of his bungalow's veranda. We were in a variety of positions in deckchairs and on cushions, had loosened our belts and lit cigars or pipes, according to the preferences of the assembled men of the company. I, at least, was still suffering the after-effects of our uncomfortable dinner and fit for little more than to listen to the maddening shrieks of the monkeys marking out their territory and communicating the devil knows what to each other. I have no doubt that I was not alone in my distemper, for no one made the slightest murmur of objection when Marlow lent forward, took a puff on his cigar and asked if he'd ever told us about his encounter with a dark whore in Calcutta.

"I say 'whore'," he continued, "but, of course, though perhaps there is no of course about it, I never bought her services. It was much stranger than that sort of transaction. There is something straightforward about sex with a prostitute. It fits. It makes sense. A man has needs. He wants something to envelop his penis from time to time, something to open and engulf it, something soft and slick to slide and slip around it, and, when the need has become too much, there's the release in the spurting of hot semen. Now, a woman has the very thing to satiate a man's desire. It makes sense, you see, walking down through Saint Catherine's docks or round the back of the Observatory at Greenwich, finding some, soft, pliable woman with hips and breasts to suit your taste. You negotiate a price, head to her lodgings, you take your clothes off, maybe she plays with your balls a little, scratches her fingernails along the shaft and round the tip of your hardening penis, but really that's just for show -- a little preliminary -- before she bends forward over the creaking bed, exposing round, dimpled, white buttocks to you, so that the swell of genitals, perhaps shaved or perhaps covered in hair, is there inviting you to slip your erection in and out, the curve of your belly bumping against solid, ivory coloured buttocks. She moans a bit to let you know that she can feel you pushing your cock into her void, but that's another charade, something to speed things up whilst you enjoy the sensation in your cock, the squeaking bedsprings, and breasts bouncing like udders as you slap your hips against a broad backside. Quickly enough you finish, pull out, wipe yourself down, button up your trousers and your shirt. You pay and head back to your boat or lodgings, or, maybe, refreshed, you go about your business, perhaps you hunt out the chandler to see about some replacement tackle, and she, I don't know, I suppose she puts her uniform back on, settles her hair and returns to her station to wait for the next man who needs to pay her for her services."

"Ah youth! We are all well out of it now, but it's simple, don't you see? It's sordid, but it's necessary. Sex is ugly when you come to think of it. Why were Adam and Eve ashamed of their nakedness? It's not because once they had eaten the forbidden fruit, they realised that the bodies were beautiful. Just the opposite, I'm afraid, what they realised is that their bodies were ugly and uncontrollable. Adam, the poor man, takes a bite of the apple and looks at Eve. Now he sees eyes, and a nose, plump, red lips, belly, rounded thighs; the lines of her body all drawing attention to her pubic mound. Suddenly he is aware that he wants to put his mouth on Eve's nipple and fill his whole mouth with her soft, white, plump breast. Then he looks down as his penis, something he's never noticed before, is up, standing to attention, practically quivering, demanding it be touched. And what of Eve? She now knows what Adam wants to do with this thick, angry solid thing that, as she is now aware, she has only seen him use to micturate. It must have disgusted her. Maybe it doesn't happen quite like that, perhaps it takes a bit longer for Adam to realise what he wants to do to Eve's body, even so, he is now aware that his skin itches, that he has a bit of soreness around his anus where he hasn't wiped properly, so he scratches himself, but now his finger smells in a way which disgusts him and he must pollute the river of bliss in order to wash himself clean of the impurity."

"No, we clothe ourselves not because we are too attractive, but because we are too ugly. Somehow we have to find a way to keep some purity in a debased world. That is the role of women, you see. We men, we fetch and carry, make and destroy. We have to be of this admixed material out of which the world is constructed, so that we can eat and reproduce and keep the whole, great biological process rolling on. I've often thought that it is this requirement to be of the material world that gives us men, when we're young and labouring, this insatiable need for sexual release. Women are, by and large, kept out of it. We must strive to keep them that way. They need to be covered up, naive and foolish, full of the high ideals. No man who ever, alone in the dead of night, has succumbed to the overwhelming need to tug himself off and soiled his bedclothes with the wasted seed of his onanistic fury can ever sincerely embrace the noble visions of our day. All men have masturbated, and so no man can truly be a democrat or believe in bringing the light of progress to the dark places of the earth. Our unthinkable lust forever bars us from that Eden of hope for a rational world. It is women who must be the principal of rationality and it is they who must carry the seed of a world, free from biological imperatives, a place where we are able to live a well ordered, well-regulated life. Because that purity can only come from ignorance, us men must constantly labour to keep women safe from our lust. That damned lust governs us -- that's the problem -- so, some women must minister to our needs, but at least we can keep that clean enough by making it a business transaction. Of course, we must rail against prostitution, but it's hypocrisy of course. It is she, the prostitute, who, by at least elevating sex to the level of financial exchange, preserves our civilisation from descent into animalistic savagery."

"I say that gentlemen, but, I must, in truth admit that there is another way. We are all men who, one way or another, have followed the sea. We know what it's like to be cooped up, alone, staring at that incomprehensible, maddening, ever receding horizon, the inscrutable face of the waters reflecting those damned winds, constantly examined for the slightest sign of change and meaning as if as if man could somehow understand the irrational. Of course, on a boat, you have to keep an eye on the weather, but it's another fiction, isn't it? There's no hope of understanding it. Really, one minute you are lazily, nudging forward through the placid waters, waters that seem harmless and friendly as they reflect the blue sky and the burning orb of the sun and the next the seas have darkened and the storm is lashing upon you, the futile, incomprehensible fury of the wild tossing and pitching your too tiny hunk of tin whilst you do your best to hang on and not vomit. There's nothing for it in a real typhoon. Is not skill that keeps the craft afloat and preserves the souls of every man aboard. It's blind luck, I say, gentlemen."

"Like I say gentlemen, there's no point being coy about it, in that situation, gradually losing what precarious grasp of reason we ever possessed with only men to stare at, there's none of us who can say, in his heart of hearts, that we are free of the stain of homosexuality. I remember, it must have been my very first voyage for the company when I had one such encounter that has stayed with me to this day. We had steamed out of Southampton in a pleasant modern craft heading for Calcutta. Apart from a slight squall in the channel, the weather stayed fair, in a way that upset all reason, down through Biscay, across the med, through the Suez, out of the Gulf of Aden and into the middle of the Arabian Sea. The boiler, which was my province, had given no trouble and there was nothing to do but listen to the thump of the propellers, stare at the horizon and pretend to be tending to a well functioning machine which seemed, somehow, entirely self-contained and uninterested in my all too human ministrations."

"On board, we were carrying one of those damned young English gents, fresh out of public school and Cambridge, bound for the life of a colonial administrator. You know the sort of thing, endless, tedious disputes between Mr Singh and his Hindu neighbour over whether or not the former had encroached on the latter's rights by making disparaging remarks about his sacred cow or some such nonsense, cricket at the weekends, gin promptly at 5 o'clock, correspondence between the board of control and the East India company, all the maddening, frightening minutiae that, in fact, make up the bulk of the good work that has to be done in these dark places. There's a certain arrogance about these gentlemen. It's bred into them, but I suppose it has to be. They need to be as gods to the natives or there would be mutiny. At first sight this chap seemed typical of his type, fair hair, clean shaven, slightly receding jaw, broad chest and thin hips on powerful legs, legs that were constantly exposed, once we had passed Gibraltar, in neatly pressed khaki shorts, so that all one could see of him really, were smooth, creamy thighs, shaped by those strong muscles which seemed to give him the natural right to command and demand obedience. I don't imagine that he had ever had to do any real physical work, but years of rugby in crisp, autumn afternoons and sculling through the early morning mists on the Cam had given his youthful body a preternatural hardness and power different from that of the fireman, the dock worker or the ferryman on the Tyne. It was somehow an unnecessary strength and it brought with it the promise of unnecessary violence."

"He did nothing all day. There was nothing to do, but sit on the deck stare at me as I worked. I suppose it was that gaze and those thighs that led to my first fall. He would sit there, this damned chap, smoking in an affected slightly effete manner, absentmindedly scratching at his juvenile, almost hairless chest, crossing and uncrossing, the smooth well-oiled springs of his thighs. The weather being as it was, I had nothing to do but polish brass, check the simillarly well-oiled boiler and stare at him or the horizon. We must been halfway across the Arabian Sea, there hadn't been a breath of wind for days and this infernal devil of a chap, just stared and stared. My eyes were constantly drawn to the creamy curve of his thighs and the unmentionable bulge in the crotch of those short khaki shorts. It was hot and I had taken my shirt off in preparation for descending down to the boiler house, wanting an excuse to escape the glare of the sun and the gaze of this fair boy's relentless pale eyes. I had reached the bottom of the ladder, when I looked up and realised this chap was following me. I could see the opening and closing of his long, white legs as he descended the ladder behind me. I stood transfixed by his buttocks, wanting to hold them and feel their hidden power. Instead of moving aft towards the stoke hole, I moved forward towards the bulkhead where the bales of cotton we were transporting to Calcutta were safely stowed."

"He followed me and I was conscious of those pale eyes drilling into my own back and buttocks as I inched slowly forward towards the very front of the vessel. I turned and rested my back against a well lashed stack of bales. He stopped inches from my face, those sneering pale eyes never left mine and it was all I could do to restrain myself from reaching out and placing a kiss on those pink plump lips. To this day I'm glad I did not. It would have been, somehow, a total admission of madness on my part. I remain man enough not to make love to another man.

I let the madness out in another way of course, I reached out and unbuttoned this youth's shirt. He didn't flicker, though I sensed his breathing became, perhaps, faster and more shallow. I removed the shirt from those well sculpted, rowers shoulders and let it drop to the floor. Never have I seen a figure who more resembles a god from antiquity than there by the dimly lit bales in the bulkhead of a tin bucket somewhere in the middle of the Arabian Sea."

"I ran my fingertips across the musculature of his chest, somehow picturing him performing endless repetitions with the Indian clubs as I did so. I caught his nipples between my fingers and tweaked them slightly. I wanted some reaction from this inscrutable, siren of a boy. He caught my wrists and tugged them firmly towards the fly of impeccable khaki shorts. I unbuttoned the fly and tugged off the shorts and his expensive silk underwear without much fuss. The damn boy had such self-control that the fat slug of his penis was still almost flaccid, there it was, obscenely flopping across his loose scrotum, the scraggy ring of his foreskin still covering the glans. I knelt before him, of course, (why of course?) and placed my face up against his ivory, sculpted groin. My hands reached up automatically almost so that I could fill my palms with the firm, creamy musculature of his buttocks. My fingers reached for his peritoneal cleft and without thinking I found myself working a finger into the tight ring of his penis. I let my tongue trail across the base of his tightening testicles, my face pressed up against and took in the well defined muscles of his thighs and then I, naturally enough, but without reason, let myself nibble on the base of his crinkly scrotum and took his eggs in my mouth. The sweaty, fetid stench of his genitals filled my nostrils and I sucked blindly and madly on his balls. Once I had my fill, and removed my face I saw that his penis was now fully erect, as rigid and as upright as the justice he would administer for Britain in India. I could do nothing but suck it and I placed my mouth readily against the tip of his cock."

"You don't need the details of what happened next gentlemen, you have, I know, all been there. You suck, you lick and soon you are rewarded with thick, spurts of semen, the salty, nasty taste coating your mouth and almost making you gag as you swallow it, but, somehow, impossibly, being exactly what you want. I didn't want this boy to stop pumping his semen into my mouth and I, as you can imagine, sucked and licked him dry."

"Keep it clean, Marlow," growled a voice from the darkness and we became conscious of the rustle of the garden, each of us shifted surreptitiously, trying discreetly to relieve the pain of our various degrees of priapism. Nobody spoke for a while and the only sounds were the maddening calls of macaws, the screeching of the monkeys and the unidentifiable noises of unnameable, oriental animals. At length Marlow apologised, but went on with his story.

"After our encounter, the boy seemingly vanished. I suppose having pulled me to my knees and received the tribute all beautiful youths assume as their birthright almost, he rested languidly in his cabin, smoking and preparing himself for his new life bringing enlightenment to the savages or, at any rate, keeping them from killing each other. I don't have much time to think over the experience, though, as you can see, it stayed with me, as the weather broke and the boiler, drenched by the sloshing build water, through off its mask of obedience and revealed itself to be a wild and chaotic beast."

"We arrived into Calcutta in one piece, although a little shaken up and overstrained by the untameable weather and the nervous exhaustion that comes with keeping a tiny tin craft afloat through a tropical Inferno. I suppose it was the exhaustion in conjunction with the foul, Indian cuisine, the heat and the fetid drinking water that laid me low with my first bout of dysentery hours after my undramatic arrival into the Orient. I lay on my bed delirious, voiding my bowels and stomach any time I tried to ingest food or liquid. The room stank and I was a mess. I will never be able to say what was hallucination and what was reality, but I could swear that the young, fair, Greek God tended to me the whole time I sweated out that fever. Most likely it was a feverish delirium, but it seemed to me that this youth, contrary to all expectations of his class and social type, press cold flannels to my forehead, sponged the worst of the vomit and diarrhoea from my body, changed my bedding and insistently fed me cold water despite my propensity to vomit it back up. Who can say? Somebody must have helped me, most likely it was a paid coolie, some Indian boy used to dealing with the bodily excretions of white men newly arrived on that vast subcontinent, who I, in my fever racked state imagined to be the boy whose cock I'd sucked somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean."

"Whatever the truth -- and who can ever discern the truth in the chaos of the Orient? -- Once the fever had broken and I had rested, I awoke in a bed with clean sheets, in a small room in the port entirely alone. My body felt weak but my spirit was restless. That great, endless mass of humanity in that vast city located on the edge of a vaster and unfathomable country must have somehow stirred my soul and I, insanely, wandered hesitantly out of the port and headed into the unknowable chaos of Calcutta."

"I must have walked blindly up out of the port and through the labyrinthine streets, sucked inexorably in towards the market. I soon found myself crowded on all sides by stalls piled up with mounds of rich smelling, brightly coloured spices, unnameable vegetables and cloths of all hues imaginable. The stallholders, mostly men, screamed and jabbered in their incomprehensible Bengali. The market goers, mostly women, were dressed in brightly coloured saris and salwaar kameezes, the dazzling fabric setting off their dark skin and dark eyes. I was pressed by a mass of people, flesh against flesh. The noise and the heat were unbearable. I found myself crushed up against the edge of a vegetable seller's stall and I reached out my hand for a firm, plump, dark purply fruit, just to feel something solid between my fingers, to reassure myself that there was a basic commonality between the world of Spitalfields, which I knew, and this incomprehensible market here in the west of the Raj."

"As my fingers made contact with this strange, swollen fruit, I felt another, softer hand on my own. I looked up and there, staring straight at me were a pair of dark, almost black, eyes. They held my gaze with a brazen challenge and it took me a few moments to register the slim, brown, oval face, high cheekbones, arched eyebrows, elegant, long, slightly hooked nose, small dark, pink mouth and solid chin which constituted their frame. This strange woman, almost imperceptibly, raised her eyebrows and turned away. Perhaps, though I cannot say for sure, she gave a slight nod of the head as she turned and started to walk slowly down a narrow side street. Whether or not she beckoned me, I was drawn to her as iron is drawn to a magnet. I walked, having lost all agency, a couple of steps behind her. Her dark salwar were topped by a loosefitting, turquoise kameez, but even so the swell of her shapely buttocks were visible as she strode slowly, but purposely through a maze of streets. I followed, mesmerised by the flaring of her hips, her narrow waist and the smooth, dark skin of her neck, visible above the bright blue of her tunic, a neck which sloped down into rounded gentle shoulders that swung loosely as she walked, dragging me forward, goodness knows where, through the foreign, impenetrable, unknowable city."