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DEATH IN VENTNOR
By Joynson Ramsay
(HIM Magazine.Issue52)
I have always been body conscious. I have always admired the male
physique in all its labored, pumped up, perfected hugeness.
Looking back over the years — and now the years are many — I realize
that the recent interest in The Body Beautiful is something that for me,
rather than being just a popular trend, is something that has been part
of my sexual development, part of the way I have always looked at men
since . . . since the year dot, I suppose.
I remember well, for instance, a summer long ago, confined now to
Technicolor snapshots in a family album, A holiday on The Isle Of Wight;
a week of adolescent tensions and frustrations.
I could only have been twelve or so at the time (exact dates escape me).
Pale and self-conscious — even then aware of too thin arms, a flatness
of chest and a horror of nobbly knees. My pride and joy was a pair of
swimming trunks newly bought for the weeks holiday — thin blue, black
and white vertical stripes cut in the then 'new style: tight,
square-fitting, falling in between the loose, baggy boxer shorts popular
at the time, and the conventional V-shaped bathers, not yet as skimpy
and tantalizingly brief as they would inevitably become. I remember,
too, that the itchiness of rather raw wool had given way to the first
unnatural fibers. So that shapelessness, at last, had also given way to
the more provocative and sensual clinging materials which would become
more and more common as the years passed.
The boarding house into which we had been booked for the week was joined
at the front to the road, the promenade, and at the rear to the beach
itself. It appeared to sit on the edge of the beach, its heavily
plastered walls glaring white in the sun. These walls, irregular and
rounded, seemed to have lost their original shape, presumably angular,
under successive coatings of plaster and whitewash. The effect being
similar to disguising the uneven dark and moist fruit-brown of a cake
with a cosmetic leveling of icing. The visual impact was of a small
sandcastle that a child might create out of wetted sand, scooped and
layered and constructed as a barrage to without successive tides. Cake
or sandcastle, it was home for a week.
The yard at the back of the boarding house, also walled in white, was on
the same level as, part of in fact, the beach. Rather than mingle with
the many on the shore itself, I would prefer to keep a solitary vigil
from within the confines of my white-walled castle. It was a wonderful
sensation to lean up against the sloped walls — which warmed up, of
course, during the day as the sun climbed. And there was excitement too,
at high tide as to whether the sea would — as I hoped it would — climb
the beach and batter in a frenzy of even whiter foam at the white
plaster buttresses of my boarding house castle keep.
It was from these walls in my solitary play time that I could sit and
watch the goings on in the day-to-day world of the beach. Being white
and practically on the edge of the sea, the tanning possibilities the
walls provided, both reflected and wind-blown, were excellent. I was,
then (how times change!) far less interested in a suntan than I was in
the row of changing huts which backed onto the promenade, facing
directly towards the sea and bumped up almost to lean against the white
walls of the boarding house. Furthermore, it did not take much time to
learn, surveying the landscape from my battlements, that the nearest of
the changing huts, the one which sheltered most snugly under the castle
walls, was that of the Lifeguard. For so I had, in my childish way,
turned a boarding house in Ventnor into an impregnable sea fortress,
guarding the English Channel. I was trapped within, and my avenger, my
Lancelot, was planning to storm the walls of this white-washed prison to
gain the hand of the fair . . . the fair . . .
The Lifeguard was, I suppose now, looking back, typical of all
lifeguards everywhere. Save to say, he was the first of many lifeguards
I would later come across and that is sufficient merit for his image to
be stamped indelibly in my mind. His tan was not the kind that emerges
weakly during a short holiday. It was solid and deep. The light hairs
that curled out on his legs and arms and chest were a sandy gold,
glistening with sweat or tanning oil or, on a return trip from the sea,
smoothed down and darker, clinging to the shapes of the various muscles
they covered, outlining them, emphasizing them with deliciously
intricate patterns.
He seemed to me, a small boy, to be a huge man capable of great physical
activity; yet capable, too, of a greater gentleness. His profession
suggested a caring for those less fortunate than himself and, at the
same time, an egocentric awareness that he was, indeed, more fortunate
than most. Certainly in the way of looks, build and coloring he took
pride of place on this particular stretch of coastline.
I remember breathless moments when, rather than just pass me by as
usual, he would choose a spot near to mine along the wall. Either to
lean up against or, sometimes, to jump up and sit upon to carry out his
ceaseless, squinted surveillance. I was ignored because I was male, I
quickly realized that. Young girls of approximately my age were often
engaged in brief conversation, usually resulting on their part in
embarrassingly red faces. From this I was quick to learn that I was not
the only person on the beach with a schoolgirl crush on the Lifeguard.
Seated on the wall he would be near enough for me to study more closely
his body. A body which would then present itself to me at mealtimes and
make me lose my appetite (a fact which my mother would hastily put down
to too much sun). Or appear to me later, naked and hard and hopeful, in
my bedroom at night as I tossed and turned sleeplessly in the heat, my
window wide open, looking out towards the sea and the row of changing
huts. I would fall into a dream-filled sleep just as his head appeared
smiling at the window, as he climbed into my room removing his swimming
trunks, revealing the full blooded splendor of his manliness . . .
During the day his blue eyes never noticed me. They seemed to rest on
anything but me, preferring to scan empty horizons or gaze, apparently
directionless, left and right, right and left, raking the popular and
crowded beach like a searchlight. Meanwhile, my brown eyes, battling
against the glare of sand and sea, were continuously distracted, seeming
to lack a proper focus whenever he was out of sight.
Obsession is, I suppose, rather too strong a word to use in connection
with a twelve year old. Crush, however, was just not perceptive nor deep
enough to explain what followed.
It was obvious there was only one way I could, if only for a few
moments, gain the complete attention of the Lifeguard for myself. The
urge to be able to stare man to man, brown into blue, unhindered, was
overpowering, with an intensity only the very young are capable of. To
hold on to those powerful arms, to smell the salt-sea and sweat of him
and, who knows, perhaps gently press a knee against that silky-smooth
mound I knew to be hidden under those unfashionably brief and
restrictive swimming trunks . . . this had become the most breathless,
most secret thought of the day, recurring as though to torture me at
intervals, accompanied by a racing heartbeat and myriad variations on
the same theme, each more tantalizingly erotic than the last.
I have never learned to swim to this very day. Water has always
presented a threat to me rather than a challenge. Once I had passed into
my early teens it became acutely embarrassing not to be able to take to
the water like the proverbial ducks which even now surround me. The fear
of water or, rather, the fear of being under water unsupported, is the
kind of tense fear usually only experienced in dreams of heightened
realism, when the awakening is desperate, hot, sweaty, breathless and
leaves one shaking, one's heart racing wildly, gasping for air.
With me, ostensibly to help me conquer my fear of water, I had a blue
airbed which I religiously inflated, with suitably red face, and
deflated each day. With this dragging at my side I wended my way down
the beach in a straight line, as near as possible, from the Lifeguard's
hut. Lowering the airbed to the shallow edge of the water where the
waves are weakest, I lay face down upon it and pushed myself seaward,
paddling slowly.
I never once looked back.
I could gauge distance simply by the thinning out of bathers. Soon I
knew I was away from the shore a decent distance and all that faced me
was open sea.
Desperation, I suppose, overcame fear at that point. Looking down, the
water was clear enough for me to guess that I was well out of my depth
both physically and, at that moment in time for my age, emotionally.
Mysterious dark green and brown shadows obscured the reassuring light
brown of sand beneath, waving like arms held out to save me, or pull me
under. It seemed that I had to prove something to myself, and that
dicing with death in Ventnor was a dangerously delicious way of doing
it.
Arms waving frantically at a great distance soon attracted my lazy gaze.
Could that be my mother drawing attention to my perilous plight? If so,
she could easily crush my plans by causing a mad rush of swimmers to
surge to my aid. On the other hand, she could perform for her son an
almost sacred service and provide a pointer for my beloved, who would,
with impressive haste, soon be breathless at my side. I thought it wise
to feign sleep, a state in which the stillness thus encouraged added
greatly to my precarious sense of stability. I would lie in wait.
There was an ominous silence about me which even the gentle lapping of
the waves seemed in conspiracy with. It occurred to me, should my plan
backfire miserably, that I would indeed be drifting into a very real
danger. I had no conception at that age of the vagaries and complex
mysteries of ocean currents. They were as unknown to me then as the
darker comers of my own slowly awakening mind.
It seemed in this still, silent state that I was drifting aimlessly in
that limbo to which they say all souls descend prior to a heavenly
ascension and their rightful place on high. The surface of the sea
reflected the watery sun with a silver and gold burnish, as though the
water itself here were thicker, denser, and less liquid than by the
shore where it natural tranquility is broken by waves. I trailed my
fingers gently across the surface, surprised to find that this ethereal,
undulating shroud of quicksilver was indeed merely salt water. My head
felt heavy against my arm; the silence engulfed me. I felt strangely at
peace.
A gentle pressure shifted the airbed. Awakened, I saw only his face —
those blue eyes — bathed in a golden glow, looking questioningly
directly into my sleepy eyes. Concern was written so plainly across that
divine countenance I felt I could reach out and smooth it away with a
single stroke of my hand. His hair, clinging wetly to his scalp and
face, smooth like the helmet of some victorious warrior, reflected the
mysterious quality of liquid golden light. He was Gabriel, the
archangel, come to claim me. I had drowned, and this . . . this was
heaven.
The Lifeguard gently pulled my limp, hot body from the floating airbed,
forcing my arms around his thick neck so that I could hang on his back,
all the time gently but firmly treading water. I could feel the power of
his legs below the surface, just as I could feel the heat of his back,
warmed by his swim out, in contrast to the cool water about us. As we
moved off, I could feel, too, the movement of muscles against my chest,
against my stomach, against my groin. My legs trailed, gently touching
those powerful thighs as they pushed us through the water, propelling us
towards the shore and down towards earth.
There was one magnificent moment, more magnificent than all those
previous moments of togetherness when, within my grasp, he turned to
face me. I could feel his breath warm and sweet on my face. I could see
deep into those bluest of blue eyes and, as he continued to push against
the water, his body arched up against mine as, under water, the length
of my body touched his in an electrifying sensation of tensed flesh,
both hot and cold, meeting, kissing, and meeting again, rhythmically,
caressed by the movement of water.
It was, if you like, my baptism. I knew at that moment in time that I
had been accepted into the ranks of the lost angels. I had proved myself
worthy. I had consciously taken the first decision that would affect the
rest of my life. I glowed with pride as for the first time I
acknowledged and welcomed the future. I looked forward to becoming a
man.
There had, indeed, been death that day in Ventnor.
But, more importantly, there was resurrection.
And now . . . Now there was Life.
-------------------------
Thanks to original poster in Yahoo! gaymagazinefiction group!
Enjoy!
By Joynson Ramsay
(HIM Magazine.Issue52)
I have always been body conscious. I have always admired the male
physique in all its labored, pumped up, perfected hugeness.
Looking back over the years — and now the years are many — I realize
that the recent interest in The Body Beautiful is something that for me,
rather than being just a popular trend, is something that has been part
of my sexual development, part of the way I have always looked at men
since . . . since the year dot, I suppose.
I remember well, for instance, a summer long ago, confined now to
Technicolor snapshots in a family album, A holiday on The Isle Of Wight;
a week of adolescent tensions and frustrations.
I could only have been twelve or so at the time (exact dates escape me).
Pale and self-conscious — even then aware of too thin arms, a flatness
of chest and a horror of nobbly knees. My pride and joy was a pair of
swimming trunks newly bought for the weeks holiday — thin blue, black
and white vertical stripes cut in the then 'new style: tight,
square-fitting, falling in between the loose, baggy boxer shorts popular
at the time, and the conventional V-shaped bathers, not yet as skimpy
and tantalizingly brief as they would inevitably become. I remember,
too, that the itchiness of rather raw wool had given way to the first
unnatural fibers. So that shapelessness, at last, had also given way to
the more provocative and sensual clinging materials which would become
more and more common as the years passed.
The boarding house into which we had been booked for the week was joined
at the front to the road, the promenade, and at the rear to the beach
itself. It appeared to sit on the edge of the beach, its heavily
plastered walls glaring white in the sun. These walls, irregular and
rounded, seemed to have lost their original shape, presumably angular,
under successive coatings of plaster and whitewash. The effect being
similar to disguising the uneven dark and moist fruit-brown of a cake
with a cosmetic leveling of icing. The visual impact was of a small
sandcastle that a child might create out of wetted sand, scooped and
layered and constructed as a barrage to without successive tides. Cake
or sandcastle, it was home for a week.
The yard at the back of the boarding house, also walled in white, was on
the same level as, part of in fact, the beach. Rather than mingle with
the many on the shore itself, I would prefer to keep a solitary vigil
from within the confines of my white-walled castle. It was a wonderful
sensation to lean up against the sloped walls — which warmed up, of
course, during the day as the sun climbed. And there was excitement too,
at high tide as to whether the sea would — as I hoped it would — climb
the beach and batter in a frenzy of even whiter foam at the white
plaster buttresses of my boarding house castle keep.
It was from these walls in my solitary play time that I could sit and
watch the goings on in the day-to-day world of the beach. Being white
and practically on the edge of the sea, the tanning possibilities the
walls provided, both reflected and wind-blown, were excellent. I was,
then (how times change!) far less interested in a suntan than I was in
the row of changing huts which backed onto the promenade, facing
directly towards the sea and bumped up almost to lean against the white
walls of the boarding house. Furthermore, it did not take much time to
learn, surveying the landscape from my battlements, that the nearest of
the changing huts, the one which sheltered most snugly under the castle
walls, was that of the Lifeguard. For so I had, in my childish way,
turned a boarding house in Ventnor into an impregnable sea fortress,
guarding the English Channel. I was trapped within, and my avenger, my
Lancelot, was planning to storm the walls of this white-washed prison to
gain the hand of the fair . . . the fair . . .
The Lifeguard was, I suppose now, looking back, typical of all
lifeguards everywhere. Save to say, he was the first of many lifeguards
I would later come across and that is sufficient merit for his image to
be stamped indelibly in my mind. His tan was not the kind that emerges
weakly during a short holiday. It was solid and deep. The light hairs
that curled out on his legs and arms and chest were a sandy gold,
glistening with sweat or tanning oil or, on a return trip from the sea,
smoothed down and darker, clinging to the shapes of the various muscles
they covered, outlining them, emphasizing them with deliciously
intricate patterns.
He seemed to me, a small boy, to be a huge man capable of great physical
activity; yet capable, too, of a greater gentleness. His profession
suggested a caring for those less fortunate than himself and, at the
same time, an egocentric awareness that he was, indeed, more fortunate
than most. Certainly in the way of looks, build and coloring he took
pride of place on this particular stretch of coastline.
I remember breathless moments when, rather than just pass me by as
usual, he would choose a spot near to mine along the wall. Either to
lean up against or, sometimes, to jump up and sit upon to carry out his
ceaseless, squinted surveillance. I was ignored because I was male, I
quickly realized that. Young girls of approximately my age were often
engaged in brief conversation, usually resulting on their part in
embarrassingly red faces. From this I was quick to learn that I was not
the only person on the beach with a schoolgirl crush on the Lifeguard.
Seated on the wall he would be near enough for me to study more closely
his body. A body which would then present itself to me at mealtimes and
make me lose my appetite (a fact which my mother would hastily put down
to too much sun). Or appear to me later, naked and hard and hopeful, in
my bedroom at night as I tossed and turned sleeplessly in the heat, my
window wide open, looking out towards the sea and the row of changing
huts. I would fall into a dream-filled sleep just as his head appeared
smiling at the window, as he climbed into my room removing his swimming
trunks, revealing the full blooded splendor of his manliness . . .
During the day his blue eyes never noticed me. They seemed to rest on
anything but me, preferring to scan empty horizons or gaze, apparently
directionless, left and right, right and left, raking the popular and
crowded beach like a searchlight. Meanwhile, my brown eyes, battling
against the glare of sand and sea, were continuously distracted, seeming
to lack a proper focus whenever he was out of sight.
Obsession is, I suppose, rather too strong a word to use in connection
with a twelve year old. Crush, however, was just not perceptive nor deep
enough to explain what followed.
It was obvious there was only one way I could, if only for a few
moments, gain the complete attention of the Lifeguard for myself. The
urge to be able to stare man to man, brown into blue, unhindered, was
overpowering, with an intensity only the very young are capable of. To
hold on to those powerful arms, to smell the salt-sea and sweat of him
and, who knows, perhaps gently press a knee against that silky-smooth
mound I knew to be hidden under those unfashionably brief and
restrictive swimming trunks . . . this had become the most breathless,
most secret thought of the day, recurring as though to torture me at
intervals, accompanied by a racing heartbeat and myriad variations on
the same theme, each more tantalizingly erotic than the last.
I have never learned to swim to this very day. Water has always
presented a threat to me rather than a challenge. Once I had passed into
my early teens it became acutely embarrassing not to be able to take to
the water like the proverbial ducks which even now surround me. The fear
of water or, rather, the fear of being under water unsupported, is the
kind of tense fear usually only experienced in dreams of heightened
realism, when the awakening is desperate, hot, sweaty, breathless and
leaves one shaking, one's heart racing wildly, gasping for air.
With me, ostensibly to help me conquer my fear of water, I had a blue
airbed which I religiously inflated, with suitably red face, and
deflated each day. With this dragging at my side I wended my way down
the beach in a straight line, as near as possible, from the Lifeguard's
hut. Lowering the airbed to the shallow edge of the water where the
waves are weakest, I lay face down upon it and pushed myself seaward,
paddling slowly.
I never once looked back.
I could gauge distance simply by the thinning out of bathers. Soon I
knew I was away from the shore a decent distance and all that faced me
was open sea.
Desperation, I suppose, overcame fear at that point. Looking down, the
water was clear enough for me to guess that I was well out of my depth
both physically and, at that moment in time for my age, emotionally.
Mysterious dark green and brown shadows obscured the reassuring light
brown of sand beneath, waving like arms held out to save me, or pull me
under. It seemed that I had to prove something to myself, and that
dicing with death in Ventnor was a dangerously delicious way of doing
it.
Arms waving frantically at a great distance soon attracted my lazy gaze.
Could that be my mother drawing attention to my perilous plight? If so,
she could easily crush my plans by causing a mad rush of swimmers to
surge to my aid. On the other hand, she could perform for her son an
almost sacred service and provide a pointer for my beloved, who would,
with impressive haste, soon be breathless at my side. I thought it wise
to feign sleep, a state in which the stillness thus encouraged added
greatly to my precarious sense of stability. I would lie in wait.
There was an ominous silence about me which even the gentle lapping of
the waves seemed in conspiracy with. It occurred to me, should my plan
backfire miserably, that I would indeed be drifting into a very real
danger. I had no conception at that age of the vagaries and complex
mysteries of ocean currents. They were as unknown to me then as the
darker comers of my own slowly awakening mind.
It seemed in this still, silent state that I was drifting aimlessly in
that limbo to which they say all souls descend prior to a heavenly
ascension and their rightful place on high. The surface of the sea
reflected the watery sun with a silver and gold burnish, as though the
water itself here were thicker, denser, and less liquid than by the
shore where it natural tranquility is broken by waves. I trailed my
fingers gently across the surface, surprised to find that this ethereal,
undulating shroud of quicksilver was indeed merely salt water. My head
felt heavy against my arm; the silence engulfed me. I felt strangely at
peace.
A gentle pressure shifted the airbed. Awakened, I saw only his face —
those blue eyes — bathed in a golden glow, looking questioningly
directly into my sleepy eyes. Concern was written so plainly across that
divine countenance I felt I could reach out and smooth it away with a
single stroke of my hand. His hair, clinging wetly to his scalp and
face, smooth like the helmet of some victorious warrior, reflected the
mysterious quality of liquid golden light. He was Gabriel, the
archangel, come to claim me. I had drowned, and this . . . this was
heaven.
The Lifeguard gently pulled my limp, hot body from the floating airbed,
forcing my arms around his thick neck so that I could hang on his back,
all the time gently but firmly treading water. I could feel the power of
his legs below the surface, just as I could feel the heat of his back,
warmed by his swim out, in contrast to the cool water about us. As we
moved off, I could feel, too, the movement of muscles against my chest,
against my stomach, against my groin. My legs trailed, gently touching
those powerful thighs as they pushed us through the water, propelling us
towards the shore and down towards earth.
There was one magnificent moment, more magnificent than all those
previous moments of togetherness when, within my grasp, he turned to
face me. I could feel his breath warm and sweet on my face. I could see
deep into those bluest of blue eyes and, as he continued to push against
the water, his body arched up against mine as, under water, the length
of my body touched his in an electrifying sensation of tensed flesh,
both hot and cold, meeting, kissing, and meeting again, rhythmically,
caressed by the movement of water.
It was, if you like, my baptism. I knew at that moment in time that I
had been accepted into the ranks of the lost angels. I had proved myself
worthy. I had consciously taken the first decision that would affect the
rest of my life. I glowed with pride as for the first time I
acknowledged and welcomed the future. I looked forward to becoming a
man.
There had, indeed, been death that day in Ventnor.
But, more importantly, there was resurrection.
And now . . . Now there was Life.
-------------------------
Thanks to original poster in Yahoo! gaymagazinefiction group!
Enjoy!
