Daphne Boy

El Dorado: A Third Tale of the Daphne Boy

by GGDC

Author's Note: This is a tale of a unusual young man and those he encounters in the middle decades of the sixteenth Century AD in Spain and South America. It contains graphic descriptions of the male human body, of consensual and non-consensual sexual activity between adult males, and a moderate level violence.

If any of this would offend a reader, read no further. This is not intended for persons younger than an age where they may freely and legally select their reading matter in whatever jurisdiction that applies.

It is offered for entertainment. It is as historically accurate in its setting as I could make it, with only minor poetic license. If it manages to both intrigue and to provoke prurient interest, it will have succeeded in its aim. I hope you like my take on the legend of the Golden One, the El Dorado.

It is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead except the conquistador Francisco de Orellana, who completed the first known navigation of the entire Amazon River in 1542 and the conquistadors Cortez and Pizarro mentioned in passing.

This is another in an ongoing series of tales about the 'Daphne Boy', an undying youth named Alexander, variously called Alejandro or Sandro in this story. The other stories in this series so far are 'Antebellum' and 'Daphne Boy'.

Readers who like these stories might want to try my 'Jungle Boy' series of sexy tales in a modern setting that spoof Hollywood. These are posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section of the archive. I have another series called 'Track and Field' in the SF and Fantasy section. Even if you don't normally read science fiction, you might like these stories. The SF element is mostly a device to put the story into a future where taboos against casual public nudity are almost absent and my pretty boy protagonists can benefit from genetic enhancement that arrests aging in the late teens for 3 or 4 centuries. It also gives these lads a supercharged sex drive. I used the same fictional future for my 'Mer-Boy' series (forthcoming).

Comments and feedback welcome.

Chapter 1. The Road from Valladolid -- 1539

Don't you just hate barroom brawls? I know I do.

Sometimes you can see a brawl coming as an argument grows more heated. You try to edge your way out the door before things get out of hand. Sometimes a fight erupts spontaneously. Suddenly drunken patrons are assaulting one another right and left just for the hell of it. At times the brawl pits sailors against landsmen, or locals against travelers. At other times, drunks just starting pounding on the man next to them.

Some brawlers are clearly enjoying themselves. Usually these are large powerfully built men looking for excitement. They're drunk so they don't feel pain as easily and can be very hard to put down without inflicting real damage. Maybe it is just me, but I have never quite grasped the concept of recreational brawling. Perhaps my small physique has something to do with it.

This time, I blamed the loud mouthed ex-soldier for starting it. He boasted he had served with Cortez in Mexico nearly twenty years earlier. Maybe he had. I was not the one who questioned his veracity. Mine had not been the voice that mocked him as a braggart or laughed at him, but those who had were very young men, much like me, or rather, as I seemed to be. So I got pounded on too.

Too bad everyone was so packed together. I like a little room when I fight. I am smaller than most men and slightly built, but I can be quite an effective fighter when I can capitalize on my agility and speed. In a standup fight I am not so effective unless I am prepared to use deadly force. There are many ways to kill a man in close combat, often with a single blow, and I know all of them. I just didn't want to use them on some drunk who might otherwise be a decent enough fellow when not in his cups. It's not that I am squeamish. I can kill readily enough when I have to, but a barroom brawl isn't worth a man's life unless he pulls a knife on you. Well if that happened, I had a dagger too, though I had left my sword upstairs in my room.

I suppose my slight build and youthful appearance marked me as the enemy. The old soldier and his cronies suddenly grabbed at me. I got away for the moment but left behind the fine linen shirt they ripped from me. I drew the single sticks from their scabbards in my calf-high boots and laid about, rapping knuckles here, numbing a wrist or elbow there, jabbing a solar plexus, even cracking a few ribs, but avoiding killing strokes like to the throat or upward under the ribs to shock the heart. I managed to fight my way to a window and jumped through it. Since this was the ground floor, I took no hurt.

At least I'd had a good supper before the fight broke out. I had stopped off on this tavern on the road from Valladolid, at that time the capital of Spain, heading for Sevilla where I could catch a ship for the New World, bound for high adventure.

"Hola, amigo!" a young hidalgo said to me. He was tall and lean with dark good looks and had a military air about him. "You were quite handy with those sticks in there. I must apologize for getting you into trouble," he said grinning. "The fight was my fault entirely. I should have just let the old jackass bray." he added cheerily.

His laughter was infectious. "Apology accepted sir. May I ask your name."

"I am Teniente (Lieutenant) Diego Arias Navarro, late of His Most Catholic Majesty's Light Cavalry, at your service." he said with a courtly bow.

"I am Alejandro Vargas," I said in reply. "Merchant prince and adventurer!" I declared boldly.

"Well you fight as well as any soldier, so adventurer, I grant you. No offense, my friend, but you seem rather young for a merchant prince."

I told them that I had recently inherited a controlling interest in a shipping and mercantile firm in the Rhineland which I had left in the hands of trusted agents while I tried my luck in the New World. Unlike many, I did not seek wealth. I had that in abundance after more than fifteen centuries of accumulation. Even so I carried only a modest purse with me, relying on letters of credit drawn on the Fugger bank in Augsburg. No, I wanted to see this New World for its own sake.

He was quite right about my appearance of course. I looked more like a callow youth than a merchant prince, a pretty boy only five and one half feet tall (165 cm) with a wiry frame that carried only 122 pounds (56 kg). Shirtless as I was, they could see how slim and smooth my upper body was with no hair on my deeply tanned chest or anywhere else they could see. I was quite slender and boyish -- almost skinny, with narrow shoulders and a flat but corrugated chest and belly sporting well-defined abdominals. The tracery of veins on my forearms, calves, and belly showed how very little body fat I carried. My face was comely with almost elfin features topped by a blond thatch. I was bronzed from the sun and blessed with a straight nose, large green eyes, and high cheekbones.

He introduced me to his two friends Pedro and Miguel and we went up to the room they shared in the adjoining inn. We chatted and got acquainted. On their way out of the taproom, his friends had thoughtfully liberated two flagons of a good red wine. I ducked into my room and got a small wheel of cheese and some travel bread as my contribution to our impromptu get together. These were high spirited young men in their early twenties also on their way to the New World. We decided to join forces and travel together to Sevilla.

By the middle decades of the sixteenth century, explorers and conquistadors had sketched the eastern coasts of two new continents across the ocean, though much was unknown, especially how far the new lands extended to the north and west. Magellan had sailed around South America about the time Hernan Cortez conquered the Aztecs, barely twenty years ago. More recently Francisco Pizarro had conquered another fabulous empire, that of the Incas, rich in gold and silver. There were tales of further empires rich in gold, lost cities, even of a king whose nude body was coated with gold dust, called El Dorado, the gilded one in Spanish. By this time I had been to most places in the Old World and was looking for something new and exciting.

"Do you mind if I share your bed tonight, Alejandro? Pedro snores and Miguel kicks," he teased his compadres.

Sharing a bed was quite common in inns, so I readily agreed. There was no suggestion of anything untoward, though I would have welcomed advances from any of these fine looking young men. I lit a candle from the one in their room, deliberately taking my time getting ready, so that Diego could see me in the light of the candle as I stripped naked. Yes, the bronze tint of my torso did continue all the way to my ankles, and no, there wasn't any hair on my lower limbs either or even at the fork of my legs. After years of plucking during Roman times, my body hair had finally stopped sprouting.

I almost laughed as I saw his eyebrows lift at my utter hairlessness. Diego had a few sparse hairs on his chest around his nipples and sported a narrow mustache that only emphasized his youth rather than suggested maturity. I blew out the candle but went to open the shutters. I knew the moonlight would cast interesting highlights on my slender form. Let him carry that sight into his dreams this night. Many people slept naked in those days but modestly -- indeed furtively. Few paraded around nude as casually as I was doing. I lay next to him, a hand's breadth apart with only a light sheet covering me from the waist down.

"Pleasant dreams" I whispered to Diego.

He reached over and pushed a lock of my hair back from my face, looking into my eyes, then drew his fingers across my chest and tweaked my nipple.

"And to you also, chico." he replied, then we settled into slumber.

The next day we made good time though we were careful not to overtax the horses. I had a remount with me and could have made better time, but traveling with companions is both more pleasant and safer. Highwaymen prey on the unwary. My companions had been to the wars in the Germanies, and I had centuries of experience with sword, knife, and bow. Diego watched as I settled my weapons about me.

"Quite the little soldier, you are, chico," Diego observed, stroking his mustache in assessment. "That is a great deal of sword for one so slight of build." he added.

I carried a straight double edged cavalry sabre on a baldric across my shoulder. In good hands, the cavalry sabre can hold its own against thrusting weapons like the rapier if you target your opponent's sword arm, but a rapier isn't much good at parrying the heavier sabre. A sabre also lets you slash from horseback as well as on foot, and mine had a sharp point as well, in short, an all round weapon. In a scabbard on my belt I had a dagger, useful both for close work or, in the left hand, to parry and stab. My single sticks were in their boot scabbards. A throwing knife at the back of my belt and a brace of pistols in their holsters on the saddle completed my visible armament. I carried a small hatchet in my saddle bags and a lariat around the pommel, but those were tools rather than weapons.

The wood and wire decoration on my broad leather belt doubled as a garotte. I had to disguise it for it was the tool of an assassin. I had never worked as a professional assassin myself, though I would have been a good one, but had had occasion to kill surreptitiously: enemy sentries, guards, and sometimes evildoers who thought themselves beyond the reach of what passed for human justice. I admit that I have taken life pre-emptively when my path crossed that of insufferable villains who preyed on others but were no threat to me personally. I did this as much from distaste as from philanthropy. Also, maybe as payment to the universe or whatever gods may exist for my unexplained immortality.

For reasons entirely unknown to me, once I achieved my full growth I had stopped aging. I have never known why. Certainly there were no encounters with sorcerers or pacts with eldritch powers. I have since learned that there were a very few others like me scattered across the globe. No, we are not organized. We are not a cabal of immortals controlling the world. We don't have strange powers beyond our extraordinary vitality. We are otherwise normal men and women who don't die, except by violence or misadventure. Our strange vitality protects us against even the periodic plagues that afflict the world. I did get quite ill from the Black Death in Italy, but I recovered. It left me with a few scars which eventually disappeared. Time eventually clears all scars and tattoos from my skin.

On the road, I became better acquainted with my companions. Pedro and Miguel, both twenty, were good lads though not particularly bright. Diego, twenty-two, was of a different cut. Though he affected an hidalgo's traditional disdain for book learning he was actually quite well read and intellectually curious. The third night on the road, as we stretched out on the bed Diego put his face very close to mine. I thought, or at least hoped, he would kiss me. He took my chin in his right hand and ran his thumb across my lips. Disappointingly, he just sighed and shook his head slightly then turned to put his head on his pillow, murmuring "Good night, pretty one." in his lightly accented Castillian.

Besides Castillian, he spoke French, German, and his native Catalan all of which I spoke too, except for Catalan, plus many more. I kept up my Latin easily enough, though these days I had little chance to use Greek. I had even learned some English, the tongue of what was then quite a minor kingdom. My German was sprinkled with archaisms. German was actually my first language.

Chapter 2. In Antiquity

Just a year or so before Julius Caesar's birth around 100 BC Germanic tribes erupted into Roman Gaul. The talented general Marius defeated our allies the Teutons in Trans-Alpine Gaul, modern day Provence in France. My own people, the Cimbri, met defeat in what today is northern Italy but was then called Cis-Alpine Gaul, meaning Gaul on this side of the Alps, the Italian side. Cisalpine Gaul, between the Alps and the Apennines was where my people were cut to pieces. We lost two thirds of our entire force of some 100,000. The rest were enslaved. The Teutons were annihilated entirely.

I was captured with my uncle two days after the big battle and, at age fourteen, turned into a catamite and body slave for the Roman tribune Quintus Caecilius Metellus. In time I was sold on to an owner in Transalpine Gaul in what would later be the French Riviera. Kallikrates used me for his pleasure and shared me with his friends, but otherwise my existence was quite tolerable except for the infibulation of my foreskin that trapped the head of my cock in its fleshy sheath. Any pleasure I derived from sexual acts would have to be through my two boy holes.

In time Kallikrates used me as a messenger carrying letters or oral messages into the city to his factors near the docks or from his country house by road to several nearby seaports along the Riviera. Even sheltered as those regions were, the winters were uncomfortable for a nude messenger boy. At least the running kept me warm. In spring and summer, the sun turned my skin bronze, not just my arms and legs as back in Germany. Ever since then I have enjoyed the kiss of the sun on my bare flanks. After a few years he set me to work as a scribe to help with his correspondence and accounts. My master died in a fall from a horse, and I got lucky. Though he had expected to live many years yet, he had freed me in his will, even settling a small sum upon me, enough to travel or to start a small shop.

Still looking only seventeen summers, I left Massalia for Alexandria-by-Egypt, called such since it is situated next to the Nile Delta but is not considered part of Egypt proper. I started working in a boy brothel in fabled Alexandria. Although the most cosmopolitan city of the age, my northern good looks were unusual there. Few boys sported hair the color of the sun and eyes the green of growing things. So I was popular with the clientele. I liked the warm climate and soon took to wearing only the nearly sheer Egyptian kilt of white cotton, wrapped low around the hips when I wasn't entirely naked. Indeed I liked to swim in the sea or run nude along the strand letting the sun kiss my skin in all seasons.

Nude youths were hardly unusual in that culture. Many of the youths I saw fishing in small boats on the river were entirely naked as were serving boys and young slaves often shaved entirely even on their heads. I found I much preferred nudity and hairlessness myself, though I kept my blond locks. I had and still have a trim body which I delight in showing off. In the gymnasium where we trained in the nude, I made friends among the students and scholars at the Great Museum and Library and attended symposia (drinking parties) always on the condition that I arrive naked. I sometimes provided part of the entertainment with acrobatic displays, and I also had a fine singing voice in a light tenor.

I took up the Roman practice of epilation of body hair at armpits and groin by plucking with tweezers. I had never had more than a tiny bit of peach fuzz on my cheeks so I did not shave. My true beard just never came in. My forearms and lower legs had only the very lightest of dustings, very much like the modern Japanese. This too I had plucked. It wasn't just for hygiene, though that was supremely important in my line of work. It made my physique look better and made me feel even more naked.

With my earnings as a pleasure boy, I invested in shares in shipping ventures, always spreading the risk by taking only a small share in any one ship or voyage and reinvesting all proceeds. I could easily support myself by my work at the brothel and could allow my capital to accumulate despite occasional losses from shipwrecks or piracy.

After nearly two prosperous decades in Alexandria, first as a pleasure boy then as a merchant, I changed my identity, leaving town on business. I had beforehand transferred much of my first fortune to a young 'nephew' living in Antioch, myself of course by another name. This was the first of many identities I assumed over the centuries. Now I was 'merchant prince' Alejandro Vargas.

Chapter 3. Meseta Central

We four rode along in marvelous weather. I stripped my shirt off and cantered along naked to the waist. I like the feel of the sun on my skin, and the wind in my hair. I didn't mind the summer heat. I like to think a sheen of sweat makes a boy's skin glow with good health, and the more of it that is exposed the better. Like my companions, I wore a hat with a broad brim, the forerunner of the Mexican sombrero. Diego took off his doublet. It was really padding for his armor which was on a packhorse anyway. He looked good with just a shirt open to the waist, ballooning away from his lean torso, revealing his large light colored nipples. From then on he wore just a shirt sometimes with a leather vest.

Diego and I rode side by side talking and joking and yes boasting as young men do, all good naturedly. I noticed he kept glancing over at my bared torso. Was he one of those who preferred his own gender? His nighttime endearments to me suggested as much. That would be good news, though we would have to be careful around his friends. Pious (and priest ridden) Spanish society was much less understanding about attraction between males than say, Renaissance Italy.

The four of us rode through the Meseta Central, the central tableland, which was arid and hot, cut by numerous streams and rivers that flowed from the low mountains that dissected the plateau. Coming to a pleasant stream, I suggested we halt there for our picnic lunch, leading the way a little upstream and out of sight of the road. Trees provided welcome shade for us and our mounts, but the horses also had good grass and water. Hobbling them, we found a good spot on the river bank. The water was clear and cool. I could not resist the chance and stripped naked then plunged into the river, swimming back and forth, exulting in my mastery of the watery medium, letting the current caress my bare body.

Suddenly I realized I was alone. None of the others had come in after me, reluctant because they could not swim. The water was only chin deep on me in the middle, so I managed to coax them into the shallows where they splashed about inexpertly.

"Madre de Dios!," I exclaimed, "grown men who do not know how to swim? What if you have to cross a river too deep to ford, or your landing boat capsizes just offshore?"

"In that case," Diego observed with mock seriousness, "I would sink to the bottom, pulled to my doom by my armor."

I looked at him reproachfully, and he laughed. Yes, knowing how to swim might be useful, he allowed, so could I show him how? Miguel and Pedro were not interested. Fine by me. I now had a pupil and a reason to be alone with Diego, both of us naked, and with my hands on his bare body (and his sometimes on mine).

I was quite serious about teaching him to swim. The first step is to instill confidence, to show that the human body does not naturally sink to the bottom but can float. Now someone as lean and muscular as myself does not float very well. My body is just too dense with muscle and bone. Even with my head laid all the way back and my chest inflated, I barely kept my mouth and nose above the water. However, I showed Diego that simply sculling the hands and feet makes it easy to float and to propel oneself short distances. In many cases, people drown only a body length from safety: a mere two meters from a pier, a boat, a river bank, a rope thrown from the ship, whatever.

It was fun to teach Diego as we stopped nearly every day to swim and splash. We made a fine pair, me small, blond, and bronzed all over, Diego tall, dark haired and with a light olive complexion. He readily accepted my hands at his hips and shoulders, or holding his legs or his waist as he perfected his arm strokes. We became familiar with each other's bodies, each other's touch, especially since we always shared a bed now. At times he gave me saucy glances as our bodies touched. Was I imagining things? I wondered if I should make advances, but I did not want to lose this young man's friendship. Would he be shocked at my thoughts of him as we lay together naked in bed, my bare hip touching his? I hoped he put my frequent erections down to normal morning wood.

During our noontime stop overs, we practiced sword-fighting before our swimming lessons though I could not persuade him to perform the dance of the sword in the buff as I often did.

"I am sorry my friend, but I wouldn't want to get something lopped off, if your sword slipped," he said emphatically.

Sword practice can mean minor cuts or bruises from the flat of the sword, though we were always careful. Diego and his friends carried rapiers along with parrying daggers or 'main-gauche'. I always thought the rapier too light and the main-gauche too specialized. Though I had a smaller build, I had developed considerable upper body strength allowing me to wield the heavier weapon effectively. Diego was quite good with his blade though my centuries of practice made me better than all but a handful I have encountered and none for several hundred years. As always, from caution, I did not show just how good I was, but I never threw a match. I didn't have to, he was that good.

And it wasn't just showing off when I switched to my left hand and still gave as good as I got. In combat, your sword arm might be wounded, maybe right off from an arrow or a ball. I had been in enough battles to see desperate men awkwardly trying to defend themselves that way. Training my left arm was just keeping my options open. I secretly practiced looking awkward with it too, without actually giving an opening, a little play acting that might come in handy some day against an overconfident opponent. Experience and guile will often win out over size and brute strength. Too bad none of my companions was left-handed. Righties often have trouble fending off lefties, and I like to practice with either hand against them.

I do not have many advantages over other men. I have no strange powers. I cannot read the thoughts of other men or confuse their minds. I cannot pop from one place to another, teleporting at will. I cannot blast enemies by calling lightning from the sky. I cannot make myself invisible, nor can I fly through the air. What I can do is based on experience and practice. In a very long life you acquire useful skills which continual practice may perfect. You become an astute student of human nature and of reading the implications of situations. You can take the long view. My physical advantages, though few, are significant. I am resistant to disease. I recover quickly from privation. Scars heal quickly and completely though I doubt I could regrow a limb lopped off in battle. I have great stamina. I can keep going whether just running or simply staying awake. Like many men I can call upon what the modern world names hysterical strength as when mothers lift cars to rescue their children. Hysterical strength can result in torn muscles and damaged joints to mortals, but only soreness to me, and I am able to do it again after a much shorter recovery.

Then one evening as we stripped for bed Diego exclaimed impatiently "Basta ya!" and pushed me hard to the wall then pressed his body to mine. We soon joined lips, tongues dueling in the French manner. Hot hands stroked flanks and hips as I let out a sigh. At last. Our mutual excitement was obvious from the rigid members pressed between our bellies.

"We might never have gotten together, if I hadn't taken the initiative, little Sandro," Diego chided me. "We are now half way to Sevilla. Let us not waste the rest of our journey, mi chico."

With that he redoubled his kisses, taking command of my small body, tweaking my nipples and squeezing the em-purpled head of my cock while I mouthed and licked and nibbled on his large nipples. Then he guided me to the bed, our bed now. He had a long virile member, smooth not gnarly with veins, very like my own and truthfully somewhat longer. It took both my small hands to cover his erection and even then not all of him. No one had ever played with him quite as I did that evening. No one gives better pleasure with his mouth than another male and I had had a millennium and a half of practice. We lay in bed as I licked his smooth cock. It pointed toward the belly button, lifting completely off his belly, cantilevered out from the root, rigid but dipping rhythmically with the throb and beat of his heart, all the time leaking a clear fluid which spread in a limpid pool on his belly.

My hands and lips caressed this strong young man, stroking the length of his legs, sliding along his flanks, tracing the scar left on his hip by a sword blade, delving between his thighs into his crack making love with my hands but touching his proud cock only with my lips and tongue. I swallowed him to the root, snuffling in his wiry bush, sucking, bobbing my head up and down its length for a long while then pulled off just in time. The ball sac pulled tight against the fork of my young man's legs, its globularity in contrast to the cylindrical column of the engorged member. The head purpled, its tiny lips spreading open. Abruptly, with only a quick intake of breath and a tightening around Diego's half-closed eyes, his proud cock engorged beyond its previous impressive girth and began spurting and spitting his white seed onto his chest. Even after many strong spurts, the gism continued to drain from the still tumescent shaft but now in a slow flow, a lazy river, emptying into and collecting in a pool in the hollow of the belly.

I used the tip of my finger to gather some of his chrism and brought it to my lips and then to his. I lapped some of it up and took him back into my mouth, sucking and tugging on a cock that the moment before has spit his essence onto his belly. He whimpered begging me to stop. It felt so good, it hurt. He shuddered as I teased his softening member, abdominals flexing as he practically sobbed with pleasure. I was happy too. I had so wanted his first experience with me to be memorable. Later he pleasured me with his mouth and seemed to know what he was doing. No amateur then. Good.

"Wait till tomorrow night, little one." Diego warned me, pinching my rump. "Prepare yourself properly, mind you."

He fucked my ass the next night. I took the hint and made sure I was clean back there. He was young, strong and vigorous and knew how to please a male lover. I was clearly not his first. I responded as I always did to a big cock pressing at my rump. I suppose it's because I am a sexual submissive that a fire gets going in my belly whenever an large virile member slides along my cleavage, from tail bone to perineum, poking, prodding and playing with my anal ring, teasing me before the real fuck. Diego fingered my hole, pushing in, lubricating me with a bit of olive oil, thoughtfully preparing me for the penetration. I felt his masculinity stretch the anal ring as the head push through the first ring then the next. The shaft slid inside, first just an inch to give me time to adjust to his impressive girth, then more.

Next came the moment when his cock touched my joy spot, stimulating what I now know as my prostate. I felt light headed. My whole body shuddered helplessly as my guts clutched in an internal orgasm. Then his shaft took on the familiar rhythm of penetration and withdrawal, our balls slapping together as he reached maximum depth. The sensation became overwhelming. I lost the ability for rational thought, my slender body tempest tossed on a sea of sensation, with my pulse pounding at my temples, my own member poking stiffly from my groin.

This man knew better than to touch my cock and bring me off too soon. He wanted us to come together. My internal ass orgasms could go on forever, my lithe torso shuddering in a wave that started at my ass and traveled up the hips and back and neck to my head. The rapid shaking of my head was a reflex action, one indicative of overwhelming lust. My lovers always said that at these moments my green eyes lost focus and rolled sightlessly as I surrendered myself to the good feelings coursing through me.

I was one bottom boy who knew how to follow the lead of a lover, allowing him to take his pleasure, waiting for the wet warmth spurting inside me to trigger my own orgasm so I could spend my seed on the sheet beneath me. Afterwards, we lay together sweaty and exhausted, drained but satisfied. As we lay spooned together, he teased my cock with his fingers as I had done his with my mouth, tormenting me with sweet pleasure and pain.

"Now you have been with a real man!" he declared. "I imagine you have only played around with boys your own age up till now," he said, very proud of himself.

If only he knew how much experience I had of male to male sex over the centuries including years in as a rich man's catamite, as a spoil of war, in boy brothels or as a houri boy in Islamic lands. In ancient Antioch in the early part of the first century AD, I spent a few years as a Daphne Boy, enslaved as a temple prostitute. The cult of the nymph Daphne is allied to that of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Male acolytes, for that is what they called us, offered themselves as sacred prostitutes to boy lovers. We were very popular because we were scrupulous about personal hygiene, trim and fit, and picked for our beauty of face and form. In some ways I still have fond memories of my time as a Daphne Boy, slave though I then was.

So it was all I could do to suppress a giggle at Diego's youthful conceit. He would have taken that badly, and I certainly did not want to hurt his feelings. Young men can be forgiven a certain degree of self-centeredness, and Diego was really a fine fellow and a caring lover. He must have taken my prior caution for the shyness of a virgin!

Though an ardent and considerate lover Diego was not very versatile. He normally took the active role though he would take me in his mouth too or in his hand. We made love discreetly though I suspected Pedro and Miguel knew of us, but their respect for Diego, their leader in combat, was undiminished. He had long since proven himself not only as a doughty soldier, but as a friend you could count on.

And so we came to Sevilla, the jumping off point for the Indies and New Spain.

Chapter 4. The New World

I had been as surprised as anyone nearly fifty years earlier when Columbus returned from his first voyage and announced he had found a new route to the Indies. I knew for a fact that this planet of ours was far too large around for his voyage to have really carried him to the East Indies and the fabled spice islands. For centuries educated men have known the shape and approximate size of the Earth. Well before I was born, at around 240 BC Eratosthenes of Alexandria, the second Librarian of the Great Library of the Ptolomies, measured our globe fairly accurately.

Columbus himself never realized that these new lands were a continent or really two joined at the Panamanian Isthmus. The outflow of the mighty Orinoco River, discovered on his third voyage in 1498, must drain a vast land, not an island. He thought it part of Asia. Eventually Spain divided its holdings on the continents into four vast vice-royalties: New Granada in northern South America, Peru, the River Plate, and the largest, New Spain. Spanish expeditions reconnoitered the continents: Narvaez in Florida, Cabeza de Vaca along the Gulf Coast, De Soto to the American Southeast, Coronado to the American Southwest. Eventually New Spain included not only the Indies, Florida, and Mexico, but also Central America, and, much later, the Louisiana Territory in the central U.S, the American southwest from Texas to California, and even the Philippines.

In the summer of 1539, we left Sevilla for Havana in Cuba. Our voyage across the Atlantic was routine, south to the Canary Islands then west with the trade winds. In those days, before navigators could determine longitude accurately, ships often sailed first to the correct latitude then went east or west to their landfall.

We went over as passengers, not signing up with anybody, keeping our options open for when we got to the New World. Staying fit at sea was always problematic. The ship's captain indulged me and let me swarm up the rigging as long as I didn't get in the way and was willing to lend a hand with the sails if a storm came up. I made a point of climbing lines with just my arms again and again to maintain upper body strength. On land, I do chin-ups or pull ups on a handy branch or door lintel. To maintain my wind, I ran in place holding onto the rigging for balance. I also practiced unarmed combat on the quarterdeck as well as sword fighting. Sometimes I wore a simple loincloth though I was often naked.

Ships were crowded and unsanitary and smelly so I spent as little time below decks as I could. I had no real chance to swim since the ship was constantly in motion and would leave me behind. I did manage to keep clean, difficult as it is to bathe with sea water even with salt-water soap. My yoga exercises drew much attention. Few who sailed for Spain had ever been to India or had heard about yoga, and fewer could appreciate its spiritual and psychological dimensions. Surely, they thought, only lascivious intent could explained such a demonstration of the flexibility of the youthful nude male. Why else would I display myself in an arch with feet flat on the deck, body bent backwards in a half circle resting on arms extended past the head and then back to the deck fingers pointing back to the feet?

Now I admit to a certain vanity about my trim sexy body, and yes, yoga is good preparation for athletic sex, and yes, flexibility can pay off too in combat, whether hand to hand or with a blade. But the other reasons are real enough. I have no use for conventional creeds of any kind. They are all unreliable answers to existential questions. Yoga is a system rather than a set of beliefs. Its techniques let you find your center. Yoga is the way I connect with the spiritual dimension in all of us.

We had no duties on board and much time on our hands. I am a voracious reader, and I would often find some out-of-the-way spot on deck and bury my nose in a book. Diego chided me for teasing him, reading with my nude body stretched out prone, a posture that emphasized my curvaceous rump. He wasn't the only one surprised how much curvature a slender kid can display lying belly down, propped on elbows with legs spread apart. From the front, I know I look so, well flat, though well corrugated with rippled abs, pectorals, ribs, and nicely formed muscles, but my fawn-like physique was the very opposite of the bulging muscles of a pumped up muscle man. From the rear, a slender boy is all curves and no padding: the calves, the thighs, the firm globes of the buttocks, the swale of the lower back, the slope up to the shoulder blades which formed winglets on the upper back, the cylinder of the neck even the twin spheres and tubular cock lying enticingly between the fork of the legs.

Once I was startled from my reading when a rope end switched my rump. It was Diego.

"What was that for?" I asked indignant.

"For tempting me almost beyond bearing, chico" he whispered fiercely. "Not to mention all these horny sailors." he added. Indeed I often got looks from the crew and had turned down approaches from both the first mate and the navigator.

The crew and other passengers soon got used to the sight of me in the buff. Many of them wore just cut off pants or a loincloth once we got to southern latitudes. As explanation for my lack of body hair, I put out a story about a skin disease. Once or twice a sailor tried to bully me when Diego wasn't handy, thinking a small hairless lad like me needed his protection. They soon found that even naked and unarmed, I was a bad fellow to cross. Diego and I shared a crowded cabin with Pedro and Miguel, so we were forced to be more or less chaste, though we slept in the same bunk. I vowed to make it up to him, once we got some privacy.

Havana was crowded and noisy. Many adventurous young men and some not so young were looking for a quick fortune, but the merchant in me noted commercial opportunities. One thing New Spain needed was horses. An astute man might find good grazing land on the mainland and raise mounts for military and civilian alike. Let others grub in the earth to dig up silver or gold or steal it from the natives. People would pay handsomely for good horseflesh. I did not want to go into that business just then, but I promised myself to look into it in the future.

Iron mines should prove profitable too. The Indians had had no knowledge of metals before the white man arrived, so rich deposits might lie just below the surface, not played out like the older mines in Europe. There lay the real wealth in this New World, wealth created by farming, raising cattle and horses, both unknown in these regions, mining, and industry. Too bad the hidalgo mentality was so totally against anything so prosaic as trade, commerce, and industry.

Even Diego was uninterested in commercial opportunities. He wanted to find and lay claim to a city of gold, to win fame, to be granted a patent of nobility. I have never had much use for aristocracy as an institution and have found many nobles to be unaccountably and insufferably proud of nothing more than being the sons of their fathers. Their talk of good breeding left me completely unimpressed. Breeding is for horses and dogs.

We heard that the new lands in Peru were crying out for white men to help secure Spain's hold on that country, so we took ship to Panama, crossed the land bridge and embarked on a ship for Peru. Unfortunately Pedro took sick with malaria, so we were held up in Lima a while, until he recovered enough to continue. There was never any thought of abandoning him and pushing on. Pedro was a good lad. Also, this far from civilization, you want to keep your friends and allies close.

We took a small house, little more than a shack really, on the outskirts of the capital Lima where I could exercise nude without attracting undue attention. At least Diego and I had a small room of our own. Our friends by now knew of our relationship from the sounds we made together at night, but they had long suspected anyway. For their part, Pedro and Miguel had native girls to attend them.

I took the opportunity to get back into form, swimming and walking and especially running. I love running for its own sake because it is so intensely physical. It makes me feel strong and alive. I love to feel the sun warming my skin, to fall into a near trance from the rhythmic breathing, to exult in my strength and stamina as my feet fling back the sand. Even the sweat that pours from me as I run is an expression of life and vitality. The feeling that I later learned to call a runner's high keeps me calm and centered. A wise man once said that endorphins were the drug of choice of the physically fit. My physique responds well to exercise, giving me a toned and taut musculature, flexibility, and agility that have stood me in good stead over the years.

Diego and I got in much sword practice. I taught him some moves in unarmed combat as well. I also brought out my recurved bow, carefully wrapped against the elements heretofore. Firearms in those days were still cumbersome, slow, and single shot. I could get off many shots with a bow in the time it took a man to reload. A compound recurved bow made of horn and bone had greater range and accuracy, and you can often retrieve your arrows, so you would not run out of ammunition. You can even retrieve your enemy's arrows and shoot them back at them, which is a lot of fun, at least in the heat of battle. After a little practice I was shooting as well as I ever had.

Pedro and Miquel were skeptical that the bow was powerful enough to punch through armor till I demonstrated by walking closer to my target, about fifty paces off, then put an arrow through the six inch block of wood.

"Carramba!" Miquel exclaimed. "I hope the savages don't have bows like yours, Alejandro."

Unfortunately I couldn't get the arrow out and had to break it off. I made a point of recovering the irreplaceable arrowhead. I carried twenty five arrows in my quiver, mostly war arrows, with four arrows for hunting. I can make arrows if I have to, but it is tedious work, and I am not very good at it.

My letters of credit were no use in these remote regions, so I carried a considerable sum in gold coin with me now. The inside of my broad leather belt held a row of coins securely and discreetly, with no tell-tale clinking. In public I carried a purse of mostly silver with more coin in my saddlebags. I have always been liberal with friends and did not mind sharing with my three companions. It's only money, and I was always good at acquisition. I have a talent for business and have always liked the chance to match wits with rivals, to take calculated risks and turn an honest profit.

The coast of Peru is a desert broken by the valleys of seasonal rivers descending from the mountains to the sea. We followed the road up one of the valleys into the heights. The Andes run parallel to the Pacific Ocean, dividing the country into three geographic regions: coast, mountains, and jungle. A high plateau, the Altiplano lies between the main ranges. To the east stretches the selva, a wide expanse of flat terrain covered by the Amazon rainforest.

The country of Peru is magnificent in its grandeur and variety. Although it lies near the equator, its climate is not exclusively tropical, thanks to the Andes and the Humboldt Current offshore. The coast has moderate temperatures, low precipitation, and high humidity. In the mountains, rain is frequent during summer though the high peaks of the Andes are covered in snow. The selva has heavy rainfall and high temperatures, not to mention an overabundance of insects. We saw the great roads the Inca had built and some of their temples. The slopes were terraced in the most marvelous way allowing farmers to grow crops on land Europeans would never try to farm.

The Incas in their day had ruled territories stretching from modern Ecuador to northern Chile and taking in western Argentina plus most of Bolivia. Its heartland was Peru. Now it had collapsed or better yet been decapitated with the capture and execution of Atahualpa. Pizarro had done to them what Cortez did to the Aztecs and Montezuma: seize their god-king and throw the empire into disorder.

I saw a great and peaceful empire in dissolution, conquered by a stronger one, better organized and better equipped. I hoped the result would ultimately be for the good, as it had been for the Roman Empire. In its day, the Roman Republic and Empire had been just as cruel and rapacious as the Iberian powers were in the sixteenth century, but much good came out of it ultimately. They brought peace, the centuries of the Pax Romana. Instead of many warring states there was only one empire in the entire basin of the Mediterranean, facing only barbarians on its borders except to the east where lay civilized Persia. The Romans protected and spread civilization: Roman law, literature and philosophy, and great works of engineering. They built infrastructure: roads, bridges, aqueducts and public baths, harbors, markets, stadiums, sewers, fortifications.

What did the Egyptians build? Temples and tombs for their vainglorious and megalomaniacal pharaohs. What did the Mesopotamians build? Temples and ziggurats for the gods. (All right, irrigation works too.). The Azetcs practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. The Incas built impressively, true, but were illiterate and treated their subjects little better than domestic animals. Yes, they did give the world the life sustaining potato.

My three friends took work guarding convoys and supply routes in central Peru, while we weighed what to do next. I went to work for the audiencia, usually an appellate court in Spain and its empire. Unlike those on the Iberian Peninsula, audiencias overseas had legislative and executive functions as well as their judicial ones, often serving as a check on the authority of the viceroys and governors-captains general. I went to work straightening out the logistics for the military, sadly in need of the hand of a 'merchant prince' like me to bring order from chaos. Conquistadors were brave soldiers but poor managers.

Chapter 5. The Amazon Country

Over a year later the four of us found ourselves far to the north and on the other side of the mountains, in the service of Francisco de Orellana, one of Pizarro's lieutenants in the conquest of Peru. Our expedition was to push east from Quito exploring some of the local rivers including the Coca and Napo rivers.

We had sailed from Lima to the port of Guayaquil in what is now Ecuador. Founded by de Orellana himself just three years before with the name Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Guayaquil. Spaniards in those days loved long names for new towns. Los Angeles was originally dubbed El Pueblo de Nuestra Se–ora, la Reina de los çngeles de Porciœncula. So it really is not the City of Angels at all, rather the City of the Queen of the Angels, but I digress. Guayaquil lies on a small river at the head of a gulf providing access to the interior of the country.

At first Orellana had not want to take me on, contemptuous of my slight physique, boyish features, and lack of armor, not to mention my prior service in Peru as a 'clerk' where his impatience had once clashed with the system and procedures I'd introduced to the process of outfitting troops.

"We have no need of a camp boy. Native servants can see to our needs. Or are you offering yourself as a bum boy? You are pretty enough for one, Rubio (Blondie), though Holy Mother the Church frowns on such couplings. And just what do you think you are going to do with that bow of yours?"

"Outshoot any of your soldiers!" I declared stoutly.

In the next hour I proceeded to do just that. In range and accuracy I was far superior to their old fashioned matchlocks or even the newer wheellocks. (This was long before the flintlock musket). My rate of fire was six times theirs. The reason the bow was superseded is that you can train a man to a practical level of proficiency with firearms in days or weeks at most. It takes years of constant practice to master the bow.

I then challenged their best swordsman to a practice match and defeated him easily. Capitan Gomez insisted I had tricked him, distracting him by fighting bared to the waist, dressed only in tight hose and cod piece. He complained I had gulled him with my youth and apparent inexperience.

Stupid excuses for a professional solder. Actually I preferred not to wear armor since its weight would only slow me down. I relied on agility and speed, not raw strength. I had taken my shirt off simply because it was hot. As good as I was with a blade, I had no need of psychological trickery. I switched my sword to my left hand and defeated him again. This was not showing off, but a necessary object lesson to a fool. In combat there are no do-overs as in the games of children. Needless to say, I was hired on the spot.

We marched up country passing the volcano Chimborazo whose peak was later recognized as the point on the earth's surface farthest from the center, higher than Everest, due to our planet's equatorial bulge. In the distance we could see the cone of Cotopaxi, nearly as high. Eventually we came down to the plains near the Coca River which we followed to its junction with the Napo. At that point de Orellana had completed his mission. Pizzaro had wanted only a modest scout of what lay over the mountains from the lands the Spaniards already held.

Gomez and most of the men had other ideas. They did not want to simply march back to garrison empty handed. They were thirsting to find the legendary El Dorado and the Country of the Cinnamon. Cortez and Pizarro had found riches in the New World. Why not them? They actually mutinied and demanded de Orellana lead them deep into the interior.

"This is insane," I objected. "We don't have the supplies for such an expedition."

"We can take what we need from the natives." Gomez insisted.

I always despaired at the cavalier attitude of such men to logistics. They had no nails to build a boat to float down the river so they would have to lash one together. We had no sails nor metal for making fittings either, not to mention food and salt and many other needful things. How could they expect to catch fish to eat without nets?

"We are fewer than fifty." I pointed out.

"Yes, but look what Pizzaro did in Peru with only 150 men."

Despite my reservations we set off, first caching our heavy garments for the return trip. We would not need our woolen cloaks and jackets in the hot lowlands. No way only the four of us could try for the coast by ourselves given the dangers. Also, we would be considered deserters if we tried. Since we were traveling now by boat, we had to abandon our remaining horses and mules.

My friends took along their armor and padding. I don't know how they wore it as much as they did in the heat, but it did turn the arrows hostile Indians shot at us. As word proceeded us downstream, the Indians frequently attacked us on sight. I used a wooden shield I had rigged from the staves of an empty barrel of salt pork. Sometimes we could trade peaceably for provisions. At other times, we seized what we needed.

We floated down the Napo to where it joined the mighty Rio Negro, a blackwater river that is the main tributary from the left of the Amazon itself. In this way we bypassed the actual headwaters of the Amazon far to the south, the rivers Maranon and Ucayali, which flow northward in parallel valleys before joining as the Amazon. The Maranon makes a dramatic debouch from the mountains at a stupendous gorge called the Pongo de Monseriche. I have travelled there since and it was worth the trip. The river is 250 meters wide (800 ft) before it squeezes through rapids not much more than 25 meters across where it slams against an enormous crag 30 m high. At the end is a maelstrom considered more dangerous than that of Niagara Falls.

Our own journey was more placid, though our boat was clumsy, hand built and crewed by soldiers not sailors. I finally persuaded de Orellana that we should use several captured dugouts as scouts and to allow his soldiers to maneuver against enemy boats rather than sit as a single target. The four of us took one of the dugouts for ourselves. At least it gave Diego and me privacy when the others were asleep or at least pretending.

"Where the hell are we going on these endless rivers." Diego grumbled. "I am getting heartily sick of fish and salt pork. Too bad you cannot hunt for us, chico. I am sure you could easily bring down a fine deer with your bow."

"Hold still. I'm trying to shave you." I scolded.

I dry shaved him every few days with the extremely sharp blade of my dagger. It left him a bit scraggly or stubbly, but at least he did not have face fur. That silly mustache of his was plenty. If I teased him about it he would just tweak me for a beardless boy who couldn't grow a decent mustache if he tried. He was right about that. My beard had never came in.

"A beard or a mustache is only right. It makes a fellow look manly," he insisted.

"Tell that to the Romans, to Julius Caesar and to Alexander the Great before him," I retorted. It was Alexander who started the fashion for a clean shaven face that lasted for five hundred years, the entire Hellenistic period and the early Empire. Hadrian, in the early second century AD, was the first emperor to wear a beard. In the end, we agreed to disagree, though I know he liked me smooth just the way I was.

The Indians proved largely hostile. A few were willing to trade. Others wanted us to pay a toll, really blackmail, to let us pass. Others attacked first or fought us when we felt compelled to seize food. I had lost many of my arrows with their irreplaceable arrowheads. In a fight on a river, even the arrows that hit an enemy are lost to you as the enemy retreats back paddling. If you miss, it's an instant loss when the arrow zips into the water. I was down to very few shafts and my bow was starting to become unglued -- literally. One day it simply snapped as I aimed at a foe. Compound bows were not made for warm hot climates.

Neither were our clothes. As the weeks passed, they simply rotted off our bodies. Our leather boots and belts went first, then the cloth. For a while I was down to just ragged hose, my shirt having gone for bandages. Then I snagged my hose on a nail boarding our main vessel ripping them too bad to wear any longer. Now I went stark naked with just a cord around my waist serving as a weapons belt to hold my dagger and throwing knife. I still had the gold coins from the rotted belt, but they were of no use in this wilderness.

I was lucky that bugs have never bothered me much. Part of the reason is that dark hair attracts mosquitos and mine is very light. One more way we blonds have more fun. Maybe I simply smell bad to insects. Seriously. I suspect my skin gives off a natural pheromone that discourages bugs from landing on me. It might prove interesting one day to get my genome sequenced and find out why. Diego and I tried various plants as repellents, rubbing the leaves on the skin or pounding them in a mortar to release their juices. We found several that acted much like citronella. Too bad each had a limited geographical range. As we traveled, we passed into regions with new flora and had to experiment all over again.

I didn't really mind being naked, not in that climate, and if it rained, so what? Between rain showers and the rivers it was easy to keep clean. That always made me feel better. My friends were inspired to followed my example, though the rest of our expedition largely maintained the deplorable standards of personal hygiene that marred the age.

I could cool off from time to time with a swim when we stopped or exercise my lower limbs kicking and sculling in the water while holding on to a short rope from the stern of our canoe. Contrary to later urban legends and Hollywood movies the piranha in those waters are not especially dangerous to man. They do not hang about in vast schools that can strip a man to the bone in minutes. If they occasionally collect in great shoals, it is to confuse and escape predators like the river dolphin.

You do have to watch out for caiman, though I found them less of a threat than the Nile crocodile in Africa. At least there were no hippopotami in these rivers. People think hippos look too roly poly to be dangerous, but they kill more humans in Africa every year than crocs. Why do you think crocodiles coexist peacefully with them in the first place. The hippos would kill them otherwise, though as vegetarians hippos would not attack first. The ill-tempered beasts will attack humans who approach too closely.

Diego had been right in predicting difficulty taking game for the pot. The hostility of the Indians kept me from hunting for the larder. I had last tried it upstream two weeks earlier, before my bow snapped, and might have lost my life or at least my liberty. On that occasion I was walking cautiously along a game trail. I scanned the forest for enemies and an animal in that order when I stepped into a snare. A loop tightened around an ankle and yanked me into the air as a sapling straightened up. I yelled in surprise as I was dragged topsy turvy and slammed into a tree trunk. I found myself hanging upside down with only my bow in my hands, having lost the arrow I had had at the ready and the others in my quiver. The blow to my head befuddled my wits just enough that I could not immediately free myself. I am acrobatic and would soon would have managed to reach the rope, free my ankle and drop safely to the ground.

As I struggled to gather my wits, four Indians surrounded me, three youths and a mature male. A small hunting party then, obviously attracted by the commotion. The oldest male punched me twice in the belly driving the air from my lungs then slammed his fist into my groin. His young assistants bound my wrists behind my back then cut the rope holding me up. I hit the soft earth and lay stunned as they bound my ankles together.

The four started talking excitedly about what to do with me. One obvious use suggested itself. There I lay bound and helpless, a stranger and an enemy, small, pretty, and entirely naked. In the excitement of combat, the chase, or capture, even males who do not normally couple with others of their own gender may seek to relieve their tension and excitement in sexual aggression and rape. I supposed my exotic looks added to the attraction. They had no blonds among them. They put me on my knees, and one after another made me suck them off, though the very youngest looked embarrassed about it. After another brief discussion, punctuated with knives waved in the air, the older male put me on my back, threw my legs over his shoulders and raped me, dry. To facilitate access to my hole, he cut the rope between my ankles. I thrashed around in considerable pain, but he only slapped my face back and forth till I subsided.

Now I had been waiting for my a chance to escape. While they took their pleasure, I had been working my nimble fingers at the knots binding my wrists. The inexperienced boys who had bound me had used knots more appropriate for tying dead game to a carrying pole than a live prisoner. I caught my rapist just at the critical moment when he closed his eyes in pleasure as he pumped his seed into me. With a kick I knocked him back, sprang to my feet, and crushed his windpipe with my fist. The three youths rushed me, but the bone knives in their shaky hands were no match against my finely honed skills in the martial arts. It was three untried boys against a warrior with centuries of experience and practice, and only one of them was bigger than me anyway. The boys soon found themselves moaning on the ground with broken wrists, sore heads, and in one case a badly wrenched knee. I gathered up my bow, arrows, and knives and considered what to do with them.

None of them could have been over sixteen, with the youngest, maybe fourteen, sobbing softly as I tied their elbows behind them. They looked very young and forlorn. The youngest reminded me of myself when I was captured by the Romans and turned into a catamite for their pleasure. I had been fourteen myself then. I could have killed them, but to what end? Once I got back to our boats and paddled down the river, their tribe would pose no threat. So I broke their flimsy bows over my knee but left their bone knives conspicuously stuck in the earth in front of them so could help free each other with some effort. With that much of a head start I knew I could get away before they could raise the alarm. As I started off, the boys spoke to me. I did not know their tongue but their gratitude was clear enough from their tone and demeanor. I suspect they rather took their time getting word back to their village to raise the alarm, giving me plenty of time to get clean away.

In retrospect I am glad I spared their lives. I was the invader after all. They were mere boys with their whole lives ahead of them. Over the centuries I have sometimes regretted killing those I slew but only once regretted sparing a life. I can be ruthless when I have to be, but I try, I really try, not to be cruel. It helps that I am not quick to anger, though I have been known to hold grudges when I or those I loved have been wronged. It would be easy to become arrogant and hold the lives of mortals at little worth. Why should I care for the lives of mayflies, here one day, gone the next. I have no real answer to this existential question. In my early centuries I studied philosophies and creeds, but found them unsatisfactory. In the end I decided that holding other lives in contempt would only make me contemptible in my own eyes, though I could not give you a good reason why.

Sometimes our expedition tied up to the riverbank (or should I write the shore?) That gave Diego and me a chance to step away from the others into the forest for an assignation. We felt terribly naughty slipping away from authority like a couple of kids. I was already naked and he wore only a breechclout so our garments never got in the way of our lovemaking. We would kiss passionately and touch each other all over. I sometimes wore a tropical flower in my hair or a garland of flowers woven into a ring. Sometimes I rubbed a flower onto my skin before lovemaking to make me smell sweet for Diego.

He liked me to take him in my mouth first, so he put me on my knees while he stood over me, clubbing my face with his thick member, making me reach for it, to kiss and smooch his purple helmet and lick around the flange. His was one of the largest cocks I had ever seen, a massive weapon, a truncheon.

"You excite me more than ever chico. I look at you down there, so small and submissive with your pouty lips around my cock, sucking and slurping. I see the delicate features of a girl but with the strength of character of a beautiful youth. It makes my cock so hard it hurts."

I loved it when he talked that way, getting me excited. He knew to appeal to the submissive side of my nature as he lorded it over me, telling me I was his joy boy, a mere youth, beardless and hairless, small and cute, born to serve manly bravos like him. After I brought him to his first climax, he reciprocated the favor, though, now that the shoe was on the other foot, he changed his story, claiming that it was the lover on his knees who was the one in charge of his partner's sexuality. He would decide when or if I could come. To make his point, he liked to bend my cock painfully down, sometimes pointing it to my knees then let it snap back to thwack my hairless belly. I played along groveling and begging him to let me come. Afterwards, we sat and kissed for a while till it was time for me to turn and lean against a tree to present my rump to my young lover.

"Naughty boy" he chuckled slapping my ass cheeks to get them red before the usual lusty fuck. Sometimes he tickled me instead, bringing peals of laughter. I am rather ticklish.

"Surely they can hear us at the camp?" I suggested.

"So?"

I loved the man for his candor and simple earthiness. Sometimes when we returned to the camp from these trysts, it was with evidence of our coupling leaking out of my ass and down my legs or with Diego's cum drying on my torso. He put his arm protectively on my shoulder, glaring at anyone staring too obviously, challenging anyone to say anything against our relationship. No one did.

By now everyone knew of us and acquiesced to it. Yes the Church said it was sinful, and they were good Catholics, but also men of the world. These things happen when men are without women or simply prefer their own gender. By now we were all comrades in arms, not necessarily friends, but you make allowances for the man who might or maybe already has saved your life in combat, even if you don't really like him.

We passed through a countryside I could never have imagined. The Rio Negro is a mighty river in its own right. In the wet season, it floods the country for a stretch of 400 miles (640 km) sometimes 20 miles (32 km) across. In spring and summer it is a succession of lagoons, long islands and intricate channels. At least that made it easier to keep away from the Indians. Now I really missed my bow for hunting.

We saw strange forms of wildlife: the tapir, which looks like a pig with a prehensile snout, slow-moving tree dwelling sloths, and the fierce jaguar, considerably larger than the leopards I had seen in the Old World. The big cat seemed completely comfortable in the water as it wrestled with and killed a river dolphin. Cats are supposed to be afraid of water, but the jaguar and the tiger both enjoy hunting and playing in that element. Another remarkable denizen of the rain forest was the largest snake I had ever seen, the anaconda, a constrictor bigger than a python.

Then Pedro died, carried off by a recurrence of malaria. He was always a good soldier and friend, loyal and uncomplaining and completely non-judgmental about the physical relationship between me and Diego. I missed his smile and good nature. I gave Miguel what comfort I could. They had not been lovers but were very close, childhood friends in fact.

Soon after that I lost my fine sabre when it jammed in the ribs of an Indian who had closed with us. Too bad Pedro's rapier had lost all but the first two feet, snapped off against an enemy's skull. The blade had succumbed to rust. Like so many of his countrymen Pedro was not much into preventive maintenance. My pistols were commandeered for soldiers on the main boat. I was out of powder anyway.

We searched in vain for cities of gold or even of brick. No cinnamon either, which is an old world plant, growing nowhere in this hemisphere. The population density was amazing. Far more people lived there then than do now. They had a way of creating patches of fertile cropland by piling up certain soils and fertilizing them with anything to hand such as fish or human waste. In this way the natives overcame the poor quality of jungle soils.

Most people see a lush jungle and think the land must be incredibly fertile, but the soil itself is almost sterile. The hot climate and rainfall let the rain forest recyle its nutrients before they can flush or leach away. That is why, once the land was cleared in the twentieth century for farms, it soon turned into a packed lateritic soil nearly as hard as pavement and good for neither farming nor grazing.

By the time we reached the Amazon proper we were down to fewer than a dozen souls including me, Diego, and Miguel. I should explain that the main river is called the Rio Solim›es until the Rio Negro joins it to form the Amazon River at Manaus, in Brazil. If I was impressed by the Rio Negro I was absolutely flabbergasted by the Amazon itself. I have since learned that is the largest river in the world discharging more water into the ocean than the next ten rivers combined. The Amazon has the largest drainage basin in the world and accounts for about one-fifth of the world's total river flow.

At its widest the Amazon is 11 kilometres (7 mi) across even during the dry season. In the rainy season, when the Amazon floods the surrounding plains it reaches 45 kilometres (28 mi) in width. Its vast dimensions are why it is called O Rio Mar, The River Sea, in Portuguese.

Even today there are no roads along the Amazon because of the flooding and no bridges across it, not a one for its entire length of 4,000 miles. A river of superlatives indeed.

Chapter 6. El Dorado

It was at the junction of the rivers where we ran into those whom legend later named Amazons, warrior women from Greek mythology transported somehow to the New World. The name was silly. These were just male warriors who grew their hair past their shoulders unlike all the natives upstream who cut theirs fairly short in a kind of bowl cut. Longhairs is a better name for them. Our pitiful band faced two hundred of them in scores of canoes blocking the river both upstream and down. I wondered if my long life had finally reach its end here in the middle of a trackless wilderness.

Diplomacy seemed liked the only option. We met their delegation on a low island near the north bank. Some of us remained in the main boat with firearms and blades at the ready, though they would probably get off only one shot each it it came to violence. The rest joined de Orellana and Gomez with the party from the Indians. Our last native servant knew enough of the trade tongue, supplemented by sign language, to give us a rough translation.

Originally the Indians had thought to slay us outright, given our reputation for depredations upriver but were impressed and intimidated by our firearms and armor. We could go in peace if we would surrender our wonder weapons. De Orellana wouldn't hear of it, but he was clever. Instead of simply refusing, he handed over an empty pistol and let the puzzled Indians try to figure out how to make it work. When they gave up, he tossed the pistol to me in the boat and asked me to bring him another. Then he fired the pistol into a large fruit set out as a target like a man's head. It burst apart impressively. He gave out that this proved that only the white man could call forth the magic of the thunder sticks.

So much for their interest in our firearms. Meanwhile, some of the Longhairs had taken an interest in me now that I had left the boat and they could get a good look at me.

De Orellana did proffer the Indians steel knives with a fine sword of Toledo steel for the chief. We had more steel weapons than we could use by now. The Indians had no metals and were quite impressed by the blades. We even showed them how to use whetstones to keep them sharp. Even so they were still reluctant to let us go.

"What else do we have to trade then?" Gomez asked.

"Him maybe," Orellana said indicating me.

"Rubio!" he called, waving me forward.

He had seen the way some of the Indians were looking at me. I found myself surrounded by warriors touching me everywhere, marveling at my yellow hair, bleached halfway to white by the sun, and my smooth hairless skin, bronzed by the sun, glistening with a sheen of sweat. They had never seen anyone with eyes the same green as the forest either. They supposed me their long awaited messenger from the gods. They took away my modest weaponry, cutting the cord around my waist to render me more satisfactorily naked, admiring, fondling, and holding my hairless manhood. They took up a chant and lifted me onto their shoulders, displaying me to their fellow tribesmen, naming me the Golden One, convinced my presence was a good omen for the tribe and demanded that I be surrendered to them to live with them. Then they would let the others go.

Suddenly the absurdity of it all struck me, and I began to laugh uncontrollably. Diego looked at me like I was crazy.

"Sandro, what madness is this?"

"Don't you see Diego. We have come thousands of miles looking for El Dorado, the Golden One, and he was right here with us all along. Me! Ha ha ha ha ..."

I laughed so hard it hurt. Perhaps I was a little hysterical, given the situation. The others grasped my point, but did not appreciate the irony of our situation quite the way I did. I did ask what the 'Amazons' planned to do with me. Would I be sacrificed to their gods, slain, butchered, and eaten? The unfeigned looks of horror on their faces at the suggestion convinced me that I would indeed be an honored guest among the Indians.

Pointing with admiration to my manhood, they expressed the hope that I would soon take wives from among them and give them many golden haired children. The natives were much taken aback by the sudden look of alarm and consternation on my face. My hands moved protectively to cover my groin, the first hint of bodily modesty in many a year. After weeks of constant nudity, public performance of bodily functions, not to mention my experiences over the centuries as a catamite, joy boy, and temple prostitute, now suddenly I was shy about my nudity, frightened that I might be carried off and put out to stud, to use my generative organs for the use intended by nature. In truth, I had never been so afraid from my bodily integrity. Diego started laughing then, shaking his head.

"I can just see little Sandro years from now dandling toddlers on his grandfatherly knees."

Even Gomez smiled at the image, shaking his head slowly.

I didn't know any better way to get the message across, given our limitations in translation, so I walked over to Diego and kissed him provocatively to show them the way things stood between us. Diego wore only a loincloth himself, as I rubbed my slender nude body to his, then turned in his arms to face the Indians, a challenge on my face. Diego put his arms possessively around me, the way a man holds his lover.

The message was universal and unmistakeable. We were together, we would stay together, and we would fight to keep it that way, no matter what the odds. To their credit, the Indians knew a lost cause when they saw one. Shaking their heads but smiling they indicated that they would let all of us go, with a blessing from their chief.

On impulse, I drew my knife and hacked off a good sized hank of my blond hair. I tied the hank with a string and handed it to the chief as an offering. That made him very happy. The tribe now had a talisman, a sign that they had indeed been visited and blessed by their Golden One, the El Dorado.

So off we went, always downstream.

Eventually we made our way to the mouths of the Amazon and the sea, then sailed north along the coast to Venezuela. Ours was one of the most improbably successful voyages in known history. However, we could not claim these lands for Spain since we had traveled so far east we were in lands reserved by the Pope for Portugal.

Even Gomez was forbearing about the now open relationship between me and Diego, though we reverted to discretion once we reached civilization. It was Gomez in his cups who started the story about our encounter with the Longhairs, turning it into a desperate battle with Amazons during which he displayed epic courage. As often happens, the more sensational version of the tale gained currency, especially since, from discretion, Diego and I could not reveal the key part that our close relationship had played in our encounter with the 'Amazons'.

Epilogue

Diego and I spent many years together. We sailed to New Spain and settled in Mexico for a dozen years to raise horses. My wealth enabled me to import luxuries from Europe. My correspondents sent me printed books to keep me in touch with the intellectual ferment of the era. I had a first edition of Copernicus' work on the solar system, 'De revolutionibus orbium coelestium' (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), which he published on his deathbed in 1543. I also tinkered with the new mechanical clocks, those driven by springs as well as those deriving their power from falling weights. Eventually we sailed for the Spanish Netherlands, settling in Antwerp where I could oversee my investments better. Diego was one of the few mortals to whom I ever divulged my secret. It was either tell him or leave him, and I could not. I loved him that much. As a man of simple faith he accepted it as God's inscrutable will.

We had twenty-three wonderful years as best friends and lovers. He aged gracefully and kept his lean athletic physique even into his forties. He kidded me, wondering aloud if a bit of my gift had not rubbed off on him from our closeness over the years. He understood that I was not truly immortal. Someday I would die just like any other man: from foul play, in a war, in a fire or earthquake, in a fall from a horse or drowned at sea. After all I was not invulnerable. I had accepted that, which is why I still took risks. You cannot hide in a hole in the ground afraid of losing your life. Life has to be lived to be worthwhile.

He never did get rid of his mustache but for my sake did not grow a beard. He lost his own life in a shipwreck just off the Hook of Holland. Poor navigation had run the ship aground just offshore. It was a fine summer's day so he had saved himself, swimming safely to shore, for I had taught him well. They told me he later got swept away by an undertow, going back once too often to haul survivors from the wreck onto the beach, undone by his own courage and selflessness. I still have a portrait miniature of Diego done in Holland when he was in his early thirties, dashingly handsome, like Zorro without the mask.

I live in New York City these days, trying not to attract too much attention. Security being what it is since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, it makes it harder to switch identities. That is the way of things. Change is the only constant, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. For example, I really regretted it when the YMCA went co-ed. I used to be able to swim nude at the pool at the McBurney Y on 23rd Street. As a member of the Businessmen's Club I could step right out to the pool. It was the closest thing in centuries to the old palestrae and baths of the ancient world when I was young. Ah, well. At least there is Fire Island, Provincetown, and certain Caribbean resorts and vacation schooners that do not look askance at the undraped male figure. Not to mention nearby Gunnison Beach, only a ferry ride from Manhattan.

Only recently could I write of these things, choosing, from caution, to cast them as fiction, a series of fanciful tales of an immortal youth written under a pseudonym. My secret is safe for no one in these days of modern science will believe it. Except for the genuine historical figures all the names have been changed, though the events described really did happen just as I have written.