Ritual of Honor

Before starting my tour of duty in Okinawa, I thought my primary talent was playing the piano. I was soon to learn otherwise, though, and my late coming to "the" life gripped me like a disease or an unshakable habit.

I had known since not long after puberty that I had an unusual attraction. I had formed friendships quickly from my days in high school—and not just with my school chums but with their parents as well. Everyone wanted to get to know me—to get close to me. It was a great boon for the development of my keyboarding talent as well as my tennis skills. I fed off their expressions of approval and interest, and this spurred me on to excel at both.

It never took long for these friends to push our relationship, though, to seek and sometimes to insist on more intimacy. I pretty much assumed that everyone was this open and pressing with each other, but, for my part, it embarrassed me slightly and worried me greatly. I could never bring myself to go where they wanted to go. I was attracted to it, but it seemed so complicated, so much in opposition to my goals to reach the concert stage. That's probably why my piano development outstripped everything else. When I thought of myself at the keyboard, on stage, or at least separated from everyone else, I was in my comfort zone. When someone pulled in close to me and whispered in my ear and touched me, I froze. It sent chills up my spine, but I froze.

Basic training for the Air Force in the rounding out that my grandfather insisted I get before he agreed to fund my further study at Julliard changed all of that. For eight weeks I was thrown into intimate relationship with a barracks full of other young men toning their bodies up before separating off into the specialties the government had chosen for them—in my case air traffic control. In the sixth week, I lost my virginity—not to any of the other guys in the barracks, but to the older, highly authoritative drill instructor. My life changed in the showers during the special workout session he had assigned me, under the running shower, belly up against the soapy, wet wall tiles, holding back sobs as the drill instructor forced his knees between my thighs and pushed my torso up the tiles with the strength of upward thrusts of his thick cock, surprised and apologetic in the end to find that he was plowing a virgin channel.

"Anyone your age who looks so good and overflows with such sexiness has just got to have been plowed long before now," he had said afterward. "I thought when you said you hadn't done it, it was just part of the come-on."

I thought at the time that it had been my fault. That I had found him attractive and had signaled my interest to him in some way I was too naïve to understand. Three nights later he fucked me again in the back seat of his car on a fire trail leading up a mountain to nowhere.

We were supposed to be going to a meeting he'd said I was called to and had offered to drive me to. But he drove in the opposite direction, away from the lights of the base. And he'd pulled me into the back seat and held me down with the weight of him and with an strong arm around my neck. I had struggled a bit and whimpered more than a bit while he was fiddling with my belt and zipper and pulling my pants off me, and then, knees encasing my legs, he was hunched over me and pistoning my ass with his cock from the rear and sobbing that he just couldn't help himself, that he had to have me again. After he'd done so, he covered me with kisses and declared that he was in love with me and planned to leave his wife and military service and follow me to wherever I was going.

In the eighth week, after using every excuse I could think of to keep him off of me until the end of the training, I told him I had orders for satellite photography training at Offutt Airbase in Omaha, but I shipped out for air traffic control school pretraining at Andrews Airbase outside Washington, D.C., instead.

While at Andrews I was invited to play tennis at the Army and Navy Club in the nearby Virginia suburbs by my commanding general's wife, who claimed she needed a doubles partner for a Saturday afternoon. The afternoon moved into cocktails at Happy Hour following our match, which we won handily—no thanks to her—and the discovery that she had a pied-á-terre at the Clarion House with a piano, a maudlin streak for Hoagy Carmichael, and an insatiable thirst for a strong, young cock being driven by a young blond hunk between her spread legs. I had drunk more than I thought at Happy Hour, but I also was disturbed by the encounters with the drill instructor and trying to prove something to myself.

Unfortunately, although I didn't want to admit it, even to myself, I got harder for the instructor's drill than for the generals wife's lips opening up over my shaft while I was playing "Ebb Tide" on her baby grand. I told myself it was the liquor, but I also swore off all future sex as too intimate and complicated.

And I held to that determination until I got through traffic control school and shipped out for Kadena Airbase on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Once there, if it hadn't been for my skill at the piano and on the tennis court, life would have been a dull disaster. There was little to do on the island for a young Air Force lieutenant. The work was hard and demanding; the bars of Koza City's Gate Two Street were tacky, and the bar girls there were too forward and not sexy enough, at least in my eyes. I dared not look at the Okinawan men for fear of my own thoughts.

The one person who was sexy beyond denial, though, was Steve Benton, a jet pilot, who I met in a pickup foursome on the golf course adjoining the flight line near Kadena's Gate One. We both proved to be dunces at golf, and our respective partners dumped us as soon as they were able. But we both—simultaneously—excused our lack of golf prowess by saying we actually were tennis players. I think Benton thought I was joking and, in a friendly way, he challenged me to a singles match.

I took him up on the challenge. We probably chose the hottest day of the summer to get out on the simmering asphalt of the course—the only brave ones at the KOOM officer's club courts that day. By the second set we were both shirtless and our tennis shorts were plastered to our bodies with sweat. But we soldiered on, in a tight match that I eventually won, but not easily. I think I would have done better if I wasn't distracted by his dark hunkiness and the graceful way he moved on the court—and because I could see every curve of his body through the plastering shorts.

I had never felt that way before. I had flashbacks to the taking by the drill instructor, and I was realizing that I had—guiltily, to be sure—enjoyed that taking. Both times I had hardened up and come before the drill instructor had, but I had marked that up to shock and nerves.

I was embarrassed now during the third set because my own interest was becoming clear and was impossible to hide. Later Steve was to claim that this distraction was why I had been able to beat him that day.

That day became the second time I was fucked in the shower. But this time I fully melted to my partner and gave him full measure of satisfaction in deciding to seduce me—a seduction that was effected by no more than a look. No matter how mad I subsequently was at Steve, all he had to do was look at me in that way, and I was opening my legs to him.

I gave myself fully to Steve Benton then, going with him straightaway whenever he held his hand out to me and letting him fuck me in positions I never would have known were possible—or even half-way decent—if I hadn't had such an experienced and masterful teacher.

He knew of my abilities on the piano, of course; I had quickly become the "go to guy" for that at parties. And thus I wasn't surprised when he asked me if I'd be willing to play up at the club at the Camp Butler Marine base, where the commanding general's wife was paying a ceremonial visit—no Marine being permitted to have his family at post permanently while serving on Okinawa. Steve said there would be $100 in it for me, so I readily agreed.

Steve was unusually fussy with what I was wearing that night, down to the underwear, and I sensed, with a bit of a thrill, that he had something special planned for me that night after the party—perhaps in his car on a beach turnoff.

After the party, though, the general, a classic Marine product with ramrod straight back, thin waist, and barrel chest, and with just a bit of graying at the temples, said he wanted to continue the party at his quarters, a suggestion that brought a sparkle to the eyes of his much younger trophy blonde wife, and Steve, who was my ride, quickly concurred.

I started out on the piano, but, as the guests started fading away, a record player was ginned up in another room and I left off playing and went to look for Steve, figuring it was time for us to leave as well. I was beginning to feel heated at the anticipation of what we might do after we left the party. I found Steve, and he said he'd need to find a can before going off, because it was a bit of a drive and he'd had more than a bit to drink. I said that was probably a good idea for both of us. I started off toward the kitchen, figuring that was a powder room back there, but he took my arm and guided me up the stairs.

Steve headed straight for an open door at the rear of the upstairs landing. When we got there, he propelled me into the room and then shut the door behind me. I was too much in shock to notice what he'd done, because there, on the king-sized bed, on her back in just her pearls and high heels, peering at me between her spread legs, was the general's wife.

Before I could react, she was off the bed and kneeling before me, unzipping my pants, unleashing a quickly hardening cock, squealing in delight, and taking full possession with her mouth.

Fifteen minutes later I was crouched between her legs as she lay back on the bed, pumping her deeply with my cock and sucking on her nipple when the door opened again and the general walked into the room. Stark naked.

Commanding me to continue doing what I was doing, he started pushing greased fingers into my asshole and in short order was fucking me while I was fucking his wife. The blonde wrapped her legs tightly across the small of my back and grabbed my hair, burying my face between her pendulous breasts and giving little yipping sounds, while the general, extra thick, if not very long, machine-gunned me from the rear. Near the end he had to hold me up by the hips when my knees went to rubber. At this point he was still increasing the pistoning of his cock, his bulging glans rubbing furiously across my prostate so that I creamed the blonde's insides to her cries of ecstasy before he shot his heavy load and ballooned out an overworked condom.

Later when we'd all come, the general informed me that I was spending the night, and he'd sent Steve away, telling him to pick me up in the morning.

Throughout the night, the couple proved that they had done this frequently before. I was exhausted and not interested in talking about it when Steve picked me up the next morning.

The general's wife, having made full use of her month-long conjugal visit, left the island the next day, but the general insisted that I return at least twice a week to be fucked hard and roughly in his king-sized bed. In the absence of his wife, the general showed that he wasn't adverse to a little bondage and dildo play. At first I tried to diplomatically get out of the trysting—the general was possibly in too good shape and I often left his bed in need of a chiropractor—but he made clear that, with his rank, he could make my life on Okinawa either very comfortable or a living hell.

I never quite figured out how Steve fit into all of this until the day I came downstairs to be driven back to Kadena earlier than he and the general had thought I would, and I saw the general doling out cash to Steve. That's when I learned that Steve was nothing more than a pimp, and I cut him out of my life cold turkey, which was painful for us both—but I think Steve felt his pain mostly in his lighter wallet.

* * * *

In trying to forget—and avoid—Steve Benton, I threw myself wholly during my off hours into discovering this island of Okinawa. And what I found, to my fascination, was that the island, like me, was neither here nor there—both refined and wild at the same time. I was equally in my element in tie and tails behind a concert grand on stage and entangled in sheets and Steve's arms, exhausted but exuberant after a fierce struggle and whimpering as his throbbing cock rose inside my channel.

I had not realized it until now, but Okinawa had been trapped between strong forces—China and Japan—back into ancient times, neither one nor the other, while being both. Its landscape was characterized by rough rocks rising out of unruly sugar cane fields, which, in turn, rose from the white-capped turquoise sea and patches of white-sand beaches scattered among jagged rock formations. But at the same time, it was the land of hidden, demur smiles fluttering behind silken fans, kimono-clad women mincing along on wooden platform sandals, and the interminably long and ceremonial tea services as well as a myriad of other rituals.

As a child, my parents had taken me on a riverboat cruise on the Rhine, and I had come home dreaming of massive, stone-walled mountain castles, somehow identifying with both their "apartness" and their fairy tale beauty. And I was flabbergasted to find after having been on the island for months that Okinawa also had medieval castles. This small Pacific island had long been real estate that both China and Japan had contended for and, in turn, had forcibly occupied. Most fascinating to me, the castles of Okinawa, built as defense over volatile centuries of conquest, were eerily similar to those of medieval Western Europe even though those two cultures apparently never made contact. Before I left the island on my short tour there, I wanted to explore those castles, and I began a regime on my days off from juggling jets flying into and out of Kadena AFB to roam the coastline of the island in search of these medieval ruins.

It was while I was traipsing the rocky southeastern coast in the Yonobura area, stripped down to a T and shorts and hiking boots under the strong tropical island sun that I came across Clare.

At first Clare was just a building, a white concrete building with a flat roof, long and squat, running in parallel with the sea half way up the rocky slope and set on a wide, long rock terrace right where I had expected to find the ruins of a medieval castle. In fact it was quite evident that the much more recent building had been set on all that was left of the castle, its stone-floored foundation. Set on top of the roof at one end was a sign that simply said "Clare," whether you approached up from the sea or down from the dirt road above.

I had heard of Clare—that it was an art gallery where the U.S. military wives with money to burn were snarfing up Japanese wood block prints at half the price of Tokyo galleries and a tenth of what they could sell them for when they got them back to the States.

I had been traversing the coast on a narrow path that ran parallel to the sea, but when that intersected a path cutting through the cane fields that led up from a small, white-sand beach cove to the building on the stone platform, I instinctively turned uphill, telling myself that I wanted to touch the stone foundation of the medieval castle at least since I had come this far in search of it.

A tall thin woman with flowing raven hair, possibly in her mid forties, and draped in a shiny black caftan, was standing on the terrace near the edge, holding a framed print in her hands and dipping it so that the sun reflected off its surface, as a couple—a man and a woman, both in their thirties and quite apparently American—ooed and ahhed over the colors in the print being highlighted in the sun's rays.

All three sensed my approach and turned to look down at me, the raven-haired woman in slight annoyance, but the American couple with great interest. The man was tall and straight and well muscled, evidently military; the blonde woman looked tanned and sleek and obviously well pampered. With effort, the woman in black diverted the couple's attention back to the print, and when I reached the terrace, I continued on into the open double French window, suddenly conscious that I was out of place in my abbreviated hiking gear and wanting to leave the impression that I was here on purpose—to see the gallery.

As I moved through the gallery, I was drawn into the wood block prints, finding the brush strokes bold and honest. There were only a few other patrons in the gallery, and all broke off their conversations and examination of the artwork as I passed and gazed at me instead with stunned looks, attention riveted to this tanned, blonde, half-dressed young man who had suddenly appeared among them. I was long accustomed to the effect I had on other people, so I hardly noticed that I had stopped all traffic in the room.

That was until I felt a light touch of fingers on my arm and turned to come face to face with the raven-haired woman in the black caftan.

"If you are going to be so riveting, darling," she said, with only a half smile, "perhaps you could talk up the art. If I don't pass off a couple of more of these prints this afternoon, there will be no dinner. Oh, my name is Clare, by the way. And you must be who—Apollo?"

I did then talk up the prints—indeed, I found them fascinating, and Clare lost that edge to her voice and became downright possessive as she took me by the arm and led me from patron to patron and we fell into a smooth, unrehearsed but highly effective sales double teaming.

I stayed for dinner that night in her small two-bedroom apartment at one end of the gallery building, during which she subtly introduced me to the fundamentals of the wood block print world—both the art and the sales end, in which she was heavily invested, having her main gallery in Tokyo's Akasaka district and the smaller gallery here feeding off the largesse of the U.S. military personnel. Also in the soft glow of the candlelight, which was more than fair to her face and figure, and the tinkle of the wine glasses, Clare propositioned me—both suggesting that I might be interested in joining her on the sales floor, where it was obvious that I was an attention magnet, and join her as well right there on the carpeted floor of her living room, where she hinted that she could show me pleasures never before experienced.

I demurred on both, saying I already had a job—with the U.S. Air Force—and that I was in a determined phase of chosen celibacy, although yes, indeed, she did have a pair of very nice, firm tits. She made quite clear with her searching hand that she wanted my cock, but the most I would give her was my phone number and a brushed kiss at the door as I turned toward the path leading up to the road and the still-long hike back to my car from here.

A few days later she caught me in my BOQ room on the phone and insisted that I come out to the gallery that Sunday to be the first to view a new shipment of block prints she'd brought down from Tokyo. I was drawn to the prints, having thought about this new—to me—compelling art from. The day after I'd returned from the gallery I'd gone to the base library and started reading up on the history of Japanese block print making. I had found an art book on the postwar school of the art form, led by Kiyoshi Saito, and remembered that I had seen some of his work at Clare. I wanted to see more. And, at the back of my mind, I half way acknowledged that I wanted to see more of Clare.

And see more of Clare I did. The gallery was closed on Sunday, and after letting me see all of the Saitos she had in the gallery, Clare decided we were going for a swim in the cove below. I tried to beg off, saying I had no suit, but she said she had one I could wear. It was a Speedo and a size too small and was barely better than nothing, but it was the thought that counted. Clare wore a string bikini, and she was still firm but supple and rounded in all of the right places.