Liberty
John Tunui
 
 
 
 
My adopted parents treated me to a vacation in New York. We had been friends for three years, and one day at my Fourth of July party, I introduced them, in front of all my gay friends, as “my new adopted parents, whether they like it or not.”
“Honey, you look just like your mother,” one of my ‘sisters’ said. Both my adopted parents are white.
 
It was my first time in New York, a most magical city, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I’d bought myself a poster of the Statue of Liberty and was taking a break from sightseeing in Washington Square when I spied a guy looking me up and down. I had seen him on the subway, and also on Christopher Street, and now he was sitting on the bench across from me…wow, I thought, I could get to appreciate this fair city even more.
The guy was bold, and his confidence caught me off balance. As for myself, I couldn’t believe I was suddenly overcome with shyness and starting to blush. He noticed, came up to me and asked if I needed directions or something. Damn, I thought: he stole my line. The park was crowded and I wanted to try to make it look as if the guy was really giving me directions, so I unfolded a map. He pointed to it and said, “My place is not far from here.”
He spoke with an accent. At first I couldn’t place it. His eyes, deep blue, bored through me: I could not believe his speed. I thought I was quick, being a former Polk Street hustler, but this guy had me beat, and he wasn’t charging. He introduced himself as Gaël, from Paris, and said he’d been living in New York for a year.
We wandered to a nearby café to get better acquainted, and he said he thought I’d been following him, and I said I thought he’d been following me, and one thing led to another, and finally he led me to his apartment—this absolutely gorgeous twenty-two-year-old French boy, with shoulder-length blond hair, electric eyes, and a killer smile, and it seemed he was not a whore like me. (There’s only one thing worse than sleeping with a cheap john, and that’s sleeping with a fellow whore.) Anyway, Gaël’s interest surprised me. I had been so busy cruising everyone in New York that I hadn’t noticed someone had noticed me.
He was a student in English, living the poor-student life, and his small studio didn’t have much furniture. His bed was just a mattress tossed on the hardwood floor.
We hit that bed, kissing quickly and passionately, undressing each other with practiced speed. He had a lean, smooth body and an uncircumcised penis. I assumed the bottom position while Gaël donned a condom and stroked on some lube.
“Take it easy, honey, I haven’t had it in a while,” I whispered through the curtain of his blond hair dangling in my face. My legs were already wrapped around his neck.
“How long has it been?” he asked in his sexy and somewhat formal French accent.
“Oh, not since San Francisco,” I replied.
“San Francisco is not as far as Paris.”
“Oh, yeah? New Zealand is as far as one can get,” I said. “Aaahhh, take it slow, once you get it in, keep it there for a while, okay? Please?”
Gaël silenced me by kissing me hard on the mouth while he penetrated me.
“You have many sheep in New Zealand, no?”
“Oh, too many, too many sheep,” I moaned.
“New Zealand sheep like to get it up the ass, no?”
“I don’t know, aaahhh, slowly, honey, slowly.”
“This sheep is tight, no?”
“Just shut up and do me, honey.”
“You sing me a New Zealand song while I make love to you, please.”
“What? I don’t know any New Zealand song. Just shove that thing into me.”
“Please?”
“Okay, but I have to warn you I’m not a good singer. Bah bah black sheep… owww, no no, take it easy, have you any wool ahhh, no, no, please, no, ohhh yes yes yes sir, yes sir, three bags full give me three bags full sir, please sir, give it to me, one for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little girl who lives down the lane, honey.”
“You are a very bad sheep, no?”
“Bah, bah, yes sir.”
“The master will have to punish the black sheep, no?”
“Bah, bah, yes sir, I’ve been a bad black sheep.”
“Master must fuck black sheep up the ass, no?”
“Bah, bah, yes sir.”
Our sweaty bodies climaxed simultaneously; I returned from cleaning up in the bathroom to find Gaël’s beautiful lanky body at rest, a Gauloise jutting from his mouth at a jaunty angle. It was like a French film. I knelt to kiss him, and I was in awe that this sweet and beautiful angelic being had just fucked me like a beast.
I unrolled my poster of the Statue of Liberty and held it in front of me. I turned to face Gaël: “Liberty,” I proclaimed.
“Liberté,” he answered, with another cute smile.
“Liberty is a white French bitch standing in the water.”
“Oh, you are from San Francisco and you are crazy,” he said, and pushed his lovely white body off the bed and walked into the bathroom for a shower. I stuck the poster to the wall with a thumbtack from his cluttered study desk, then dropped back onto the bed with the TV remote, channel-surfing to the news. The headline was “Trouble in Paradise,” about the Tahitian people protesting the French government’s decision to test another series of nuclear bombs in the South Pacific. The footage showed native people attacking French functionaries in Tahiti.
I heard Gaël whistling in the shower, while on TV I watched police arrest a number of the protesters, one of them my Uncle Oscar, who was handcuffed and hurled into a police car. I was horrified. My uncle’s face was pained, his kind and gentle eyes were now dark and sad and angry, a window into his anguish and suffering. Back in the bathroom Gaël was still showering.
As the images flickered, I wondered what would happen to Uncle Oscar and the rest of my people being arrested. I recalled how the French government had annihilated the native Kanaks of New Caledonia, its other South Pacific colony, some decades ago, and I remembered the dark cloud which showered dust on Aitutaki when I was just a kid, and I recalled the native Tahitians who came to New Zealand frantic for cancer treatment, cancer the French denied had anything to do with their bomb tests. And I remembered more recent history, the attack on the Rainbow Warrior Greenpeace vessel in Auckland, New Zealand by the French secret services, killing or injuring the defenseless crew. The newscast showed file footage of a bomb exploding. A tall, white figure rose from the water. I gazed at the tall white figure of Liberty on the wall, looked back at the figure on the TV screen. “that white French bitch in the water,” I whispered to myself.
Gaël turned off the shower, and I turned off the TV as he stepped into the studio, drying himself with a towel.
“Baby, please get me some wine from the refrigerator,” he asked as he dried his body, his hair falling over his face as he bent to dry his toes, before raising one leg and towelling his testicles.
“Are you okay, my baby?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” I opened the fridge, brought out a bottle of wine, poured him a glass.
“Pour yourself one.”
“No, thanks. I don’t drink this,” I said. He sipped at the glass, smiled that sassy French smile, reached out with his hands and pulled our bodies back together. We kissed, quickly.
“Baby.” He grinned. “You’re not smiling.” He grinned again, a sweet and innocent and beautiful smile, the sort that is so rare.
“Oh,” I said, “I’m just letting you soak in, that’s all. You were wonderful, and you’re still wonderful.”
I welcomed his comforting kiss, took his wine glass away, laid him down on the bed. We made love again but this time I wore the condom and he wheeled and squealed while I penetrated him. He moaned and wept and tried to push me away. He swore in French and struggled to escape me, but I was too big and too strong and too upset with what was happening in Tahiti, and soon I ejaculated inside his white butt and he ejaculated into my hands. I rolled off his beautiful body and he went back to the bathroom.
“Baby, that hurt me real bad,” he said when he came back, and then he beamed another of his sexy smiles. “But I liked it.”
He walked over to the kitchenette, poured more wine and stood in front of the TV, next to the poster of the Statue of Liberty, the wet cotton towel draped over his shoulder, a cigarette suddenly lit in his raised right hand, the glass of wine at his side.
Liberty had never looked sexier.
And then he said to me: “That’s why I prefer making love to a black man. You are best when you are angry.”