I reckon that if I’d woken up in time I might have fucked Joe that Sunday morning Sunday morning, but I overslept and Dan shook me awake. He sounded really pissed off!
“Fucking hell, Steve – you were ranting on at me yesterday about fucking Julie, and here you are wit your cock stuffed up Joe!”
“I haven’t fucked him. We were just lying together, to keep warm…. We always did this in the army.”
“Pull the other one, Steve! They’d have thrown you out of the army if they found you with your cock up a mate’s bum! You were fucking…”
“No, sir, honest, we weren’t….”, Joe added. “I’d have liked Master Steve to fuck me, but he was asleep….”
“If I want your views, slave, I’ll ask for them!”, Dan rapped. And then he went on at me again. “And, in any case, even if you weren’t fucking Joe, it looks like it! What would have happened if Julie had come out here with mugs of tea for you both, and found you like this? Or if Shane had got up early and had come out here looking for ‘Uncle Steve’ to play with?”
“Oh grow up, Dan. Blokes sleep together all the time. It’s not necessarily sexual – I bet Julie’s magazines tell her that all the time. And Shane wouldn’t know what it was all about anyway….”
“Stop making excuses, Steve! You were quick enough to go at me for a bit of cuddling in bed. It seems that what’s sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander….”
“It’s different, Dan! Joe’s a slave. Free men can use slaves sexually and it’s just business as usual, you know that.”
“Oh, so it’s OK for you to fuck Joe, is it? So that’s what you’ll be doing every night?”
“Dan, no. And look, let’s talk about this calmly later, shall we? Now I need to get up and piss….”
I got out of the sleeping bag then, and waved my erection at Dan. “See, this hasn’t fucked recently! Unless you think I’m some sort of super stud who can fuck Joe one minute and still be ramrod solid….”
I don’t know what might have happened next, but I heard Julie calling “Steve, Joe… Breakfast! What are you doing out there, Dan?” It sounded as she was coming closer – and to my horror I saw her appear and peek over Dan’s shoulder.
“Steve!”, she almost screamed. “I told you about that last week! Now get that disgusting thing put away in your boxers, and come in and eat, before the breakfast gets cold.”
Well, Dan kept glaring at me over breakfast, but we had to set out for the regular Sunday football game and of course we took Joe along too, as we weren’t really sure if he could be “trusted” with Julie and the kids yet. I demanded to play now as I was a free man, and had a really good time, and we got Joe to act as a linesman – an unheard of luxury in our knock-about matches, where it was sometimes difficult to even get a referee!
As soon as we were in the showers after the match one of the blokes came up and rested his hand on my bum as he always did, but I was ready for him: quick as a flash I had him pinned against the tiled wall of the showers, and my hand grabbed one of his buttocks. “Haven’t you heard? I’m not a slave, who you can take liberties with? If you want to stroke my bum, it’s a game two can play…. Now, do you like me feeling your bum? Shall I go a bit deeper, and find out what your arsehole’s like?”
“I’m sorry, Steve…. I forgot…”, he muttered, and our team mates were all killing themselves with laughter as they reckoned it was better than watching the nude slave wrestling on TV.
Joe was a really nice bloke, actually – he fitted in to the tiny house as best he could, just as I had when I first came. He thanked Julie for the delicious roast she’d done at lunchtime, always said “please” and “thank you”, and never dived in and helped himself until after Julie, Dan and I had taken our pick of the vegetables and so on. And he did one thing that I’d never done, too: after lunch instead of slumping in front of the TV as Dan and I did, he went out into the kitchen and insisted on doing the washing up so that Julie could rest.
They seemed to be chatting away, and I heard Julie say “I hope boys aren’t going to bother you, Joe.”
“Oh no, ma’am. I like kids. If things had gone right with me and the wife, I’d have had some nippers of my own, I reckon.”
“Why were you Indentured, Joe? You seem like a nice gentle man. I can’t believe you did violent crime…”
“No, ma’am. It was my bitch of a wife – oh, sorry, ma’am…. My wife. She got fed up with me and ran off with another bloke, then said it was all my fault, and sued for divorce – and you know what the divorce courts are like these days: they always side with the woman. And she told them I was hiding assets, as there was so little money for her. I wasn’t, of course, as she was such a spendthrift she’d already almost bled me dry, but they believed her and said that as I had hidden assets, they’d indenture me to make up for it. So ten years later, here I still am….”
“Joe, that’s terrible! How long are you indentured for?”
“Life, ma’am. I’m a proper slave, I reckon, as I’ll never be free. When I still didn’t ‘reveal’ where my money was kept, my ex-wife went back to the Court and persuaded them that I was in contempt of the whole legal system…. And the Court got nasty, and here I am. Even if I’d got any money, which I don’t have, it wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Oh Joe, that’s awful…”
“Well it’s not so bad. The Captain is a good owner – well, at least as long as I keep winning. It’s a nice house he’s got – genuine Georgian with a couple of acres of gardens. And he’s got a slave to cook for us, and I’m kind of his hobby. I reckon things could be a lot worse, even if I was free. I mean, I’ve got no worries: as long as I do what the Captain says I don’t have to worry about paying bills, or any stuff like that.”
“But you’re not free, Joe.”
“Well how free was I when I was married? I used to go off every morning to work, worry my guts out about whether I was bringing in enough new business and stuff like that, then go home and have nag, nag, nag about the lack of money from the bitch – sorry again, ma’am. And if I was lucky I got two weeks off in Benedorm in a cheap hotel…. I mean, ma’am, it’s a bit like Master Dan and Master Steve, isn’t it – they have to work their guts out, and they have all the worry…. Not that I’m saying you nag, ma’am, please don’t think that. But they don’t have any choices in their lives, do they? I mean, they can’t decide not to go to work tomorrow, and to go off on holiday? Or chuck it all in and go backpacking around the world, or whatever? And I bet Master Dan is really worried about this house ,and the bills, and whether the roof is going to leak, or whatever, and whether he’s got enough saved to pay for it. It’s only the rich that have choices in this life, I reckon, ma’am, and for the rest of us, if you’ve got a good owner, then life a a slave is a whole lot less stressful than life as a free man.”
I went out into the kitchen then, as I thought Joe might be upsetting Julie as it would make her think about Dan and his debts. “Well one thing that’s different as a slave, Joe”, I smiled. “A free man doesn’t have to prance around in front of crowds, in the nude!”. Julie smiled a bit, and we left it at that.
Monday morning saw Dan off to London as usual, and I made Joe get up and we walked with him to the station, then went on a really long, gut-wrenching run to get us in shape. I told Julie to take the morning off when she’d dropped Shane to nursery school as Joe and I would clean the house – well, I had Joe do it, as he seemed to know about stuff like that and it amused me to sit there and read the paper as he dusted and washed up and ran the vac over the place. Then I “supervised” him to do press-ups and jumping jacks out in the garden, and Julie came home looking really refreshed after a morning off.
I wanted to go into London that afternoon, and I had to borrow the money for the fare from Julie (who was scraping her purse to find enough, and muttered about the quality of the food going down later in the week as she’s run out o house keeping!). Then she said “And what about Joe?”
“Well he could watch the TV….”
“No. He’s too big in the house all afternoon. I tell you what, though – poor Nicola James down the road can’t cope with the garden: her husband’s had a heart attack and they can’t find a casual gardener who just will do an odd day’s work: they all want yearly contracts! You could send Joe around there…. It would keep him occupied, and would be really neighbourly.”
So on my way to the station I dropped Joe off at a delighted Mrs James’ house, telling Joe that he was do exactly as she said, and caught the train into London. I made my way to Notting Hill, and went into the studio where I’d been made to make the porn.
The photographer was at first surprised to see me, and then I told him I needed some cash, and wanted to perform! He made all kinds of excuses about not having any other blokes – or women, for that matter – lined up, and only having one camera man. “Look, Mike, couldn’t I just do one of those solo wanking things: I’ve seen lots of them from here, where you get a bloke in, ask him some questions about how old he is, whether he’s got a girl friend, and stuff like that, and then he strips off and wanks. I can do all of that, and I really do need the cash…. I reckon you owe Dan a favour – think of all the stuff he made me do, and I reckon they sell well….”
He shrugged, and we were off! It’s pretty corny, really. I’m sure you’ve all watched something like it. “Hi, how are you doing? How old are you, Steve? And do you have a girlfriend?” (the answer’s always yes, even if the bloke only fucks other blokes!). “And does she know you’re here? And will you give her a copy of the DVD? OK, then, let’s have your shirt off…. Hold it a minute – show us those pecs…..” And so it goes on, until you lie back on a bed and start to wank, with the snout of the camera almost jammed into your crotch. Half way through you have to get up on your hands and knees and wank your cock as it sticks down underneath you, so they can get a good view of your balls swinging away, and a nice shot of your arsehole. And then it’s lying on your back again as you wank to climax, preferably leaving a huge streak of cum all the way up your belly and chest. It may look easy, but actually it’s quite difficult: wanking when there’s a camera watching you just isn’t as simple as it looks, as you tend to keep losing the erection and there’s nothing more ridiculous than lying there trying to beat life in to a cock that’s flopping around. And I have to confess that I accepted his offer of a Viagra pill, even though we then had to wait a bit for it to take effect. Still, as I hadn’t wanked the previous night, the slick of cum across my body was impressive, even though I say so myself.
He gave me five hundred, which I reckon was a rip-off, but beggars can’t be choosers, can they? And at Liverpool Street I bought Julie a big bunch of flowers – wasted, as it turned out, as when I collected Joe he’d picked a big bunch for her, too, as he’d worked away in that garden. Mrs James was full of praise for Joe, and told me he’d done a marvellous job, pruning and lopping the overgrown shrubs, mowing the lawn, and even digging over the vegetable plot. She couldn’t believe how much work one slave could do in an afternoon, and gave me two twenties in payment.
That night, over supper, I gave Dan the five hundred and forty and explained to Julie that Mrs James had been delighted to pay. Dan wanted to know where the five hundred had come from, of course, and I sort of stammered and blushed and said “oh that bloke we met in Notting Hill Gate”, so I wouldn’t have to tell Julie I’d spent the afternoon wanking.
I didn’t repeat the wanking that week, but news of Joe spread, and Julie took a number of bookings for him to go and work in various gardens, and I decided to join in too, ostensibly to “supervise” Joe properly, but mostly because I like to work: my muscles need exercise, otherwise I get cross, and start to feel all flabby. By Friday night we had more money from this gardening stuff than Dan would have got from hiring me out to the site – well, if you don’t count the tax, of course, as all our payments were in cash.
Joe didn’t want to have Julie groom him after supper, though. I remembered how embarrassed I’d been to have to kneel there on the kitchen table as Julie snipped at my pubes and shaved my balls, and I knew it must be worse for Joe – he’d taken a real liking to Julie and they were always chatting away, and it’s hard to have a woman then playing around down there when you’ve been so friendly, isn’t it? Still, it had to be done, and when Joe at first refused, I had to be quite sharp with him. And when he still refused, I ordered him outside and rammed him up against the wall – those few years he had on me really told, as although he was fit and strong, he was not really a match for me.
“Listen, you fucking slave – if you disobey me once more I’ll have you out here and paddle your bum!”
“Steve, please don’t make me….”
“Shut the fuck up, slave! And I’ve told you to call me ‘sir’! This isn’t optional – you’re showing tomorrow, and we’d lose points if you’re not properly groomed.”
“But please, sir, don’t make me have mistress Julie do it. Couldn’t you or Master Dan trim me and shave me?”
“No! It’s mistress Julie’s speciality. She’s a trained hairdresser. There’s no problem – you’re a slave, remember? And free men and women can do things like that to slaves.”
“Sir, please… I’m embarrassed….”
“Slaves don’t get embarrassed, Joe! Remember that! Slaves do as their masters say. And if when we go back in I order you to kneel there and wank, for example, that’s what you’ll do, with mistress Julie watching you as you stroke that cock with those long fingers of yours….”
“Sir, please, no….”
I relaxed my grip on him. “Well listen then, and listen well: You’ll go back in there, and you’ll apologise to mistress Julie. Then you’ll get up on the table and kneel neatly near the edge, then you’ll put your hands on the back of your neck, and you’ll hold them there as mistress Julie trims your pubes, and your pits, and that treasure trail across your belly. And then, when I order you to, you’ll put one hand down and hold your cock up flat against your belly so your balls can be shaved. And finally, when I order it, I want to see you turn around and really spread your buttocks wide apart, as wide as you can, so you can be shaved down your ass crack, too. And if you falter, if you protest, if you make any kind of scene to discomfort mistress Julie, you’ll be wanking instead, and stopping after every five strokes to ask mistress Julie if she’s happy with the way you’re doing it. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Joe said in a quiet voice.
“Right! In you go, then.”
Well, Joe did as I’d ordered, and even Dan seemed a bit surprised. But out in our tent that night, when we we’d zippered the two sleeping bags together, he rolled over and grabbed my balls. “Bastard….”
“Joe, you’re hurting…”
“Like I was hurting earlier on, Steve?”
“No, those are my balls….”
“I think I’m going to fuck you, Steve….”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am – I reckon my cock up your arse will make you feel just about as bad as you made me feel earlier on…. You and Dan could have shaved and trimmed me…”
“Let go of my balls, Joe, or else I’ll punish you….”
“But not tonight, eh, Steve? It’s the Norwich Show tomorrow. And you can’t exhibit me with my back or bum all flaming red from a punishment beating….. No, I reckon you’re in for it tonight, Steve: I’ve got you by the balls, and there’s not a thing you can do about it if I fuck you now…”
I went to struggle, but Joe’s fingers tightened around my balls and I winced and then gasped with the sharp pain. Then I felt his cock, his big, hard, hot cock nudging at my bum. “Here it comes, Steve….”, he began, and to tell you the truth, it was somehow exciting.
But then he stopped, before his head had actually forced itself into me, and let go of my balls. “See, Steve? See how terrible it is to have something done to you that you don’t like?”
“I ought to take you out and beat the shit out of you….”
“How about fucking me instead, Steve? I didn’t want to fuck you as I want to ‘show’ well tomorrow and I need all the cum on my sac…. But the judges like to feel a well-used hole…..”
I know it was being disloyal to Dan – I did love him, after all. But, I mean to say, a man is kind of naturally promiscuous, isn’t he? And with a fantastic muscled body like Joe rubbing against mine, and the prospect of a lovely arsehole buried deep down in a really superb bum, it was hard to resist. And I thought that, after all, Dan was fucking Julie and that didn’t make any difference to what we felt for each other, so it would be OK for me to just do what comes naturally and fuck Joe.
It was really good – snuggled close together in the sleeping bag we were warm and comfy, and the scent of our bodies was constantly pumped up to us as I fucked away. And it was exciting, somehow, to be doing it out there in the tent in the garden, knowing we had to be almost silent to stop the noise penetrating through the bedroom window of Dan and Julie, and the neighbours. So as I penetrated him and began to work away, I had to push Joe’s face down into the sleeping bag to stifle his little cries and moans of pain and pleasure, and I couldn’t do some of the things I like doing, either: for example, I thought that if I started to slap his bum, as I think that’s a real sexual charge for both blokes, someone might hear.
Well, you know how it is – when you’re kind of “constrained” like that, it makes it even more erotic somehow, and as I worked away I could feel the excitement building in both of us, to such an extent that it was all over relatively quickly as my cum pumped into Joe. Then I pulled out of him, and turned him around so we were facing, and kissed him.
We lay there, tasting each other’s spit and feeling the sweat running all over us. Then Joe whispered “That’s one good resolution gone, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said there’d be trouble if Julie found dried cum on the inside of this sleeping bag…. Well, there’s going to be a whole lot….”
“Jesus Christ! The shit….”
Dan chuckled. “Just as well I’m experienced, Steve! I spent a lot of time in the bathroom, you may have noticed…. So there’ll be no unpleasant brown lines…. But your cum is leaking out of me, I can feel it. Jesus, mate, when did you last cum? It feels like a half pint you pushed up me….”
“What the fuck are you going on about, Joe?”
“The Captain was very fastidious, Steve ,and he hated the thought of crap – and the smell. So every night I had to clean myself out before bed – you know, flush my arse out thoroughly, several times, until it was squeaky clean….”
“And you did this tonight? So you thought I would fuck you…?” “Steve, of course I did. I mean, two blokes who like sex… Naked together in this sleeping bag… What did you think was going to happen?”
“But you were going to fuck me! You had my balls….”
Joe gave a slow, broad smile. “Sometimes a bloke has to be ‘encouraged’ to get started, Steve! I though you’d stick to wanking, if I didn’t get you really going…. You army blokes are all the same, in my experience – wanking in the barracks is OK, but fucking your mates is not. Well, that’s what the Captain always said, anyway. So I reckoned you’d never get that lovely cock of yours up me if I didn’t get you started…. Not that wanking’s not OK, but it’s not as good as this, is it? I mean, we wouldn’t be lying here like this now if we’d just wanked, would we?”
“Suppose I hadn’t reacted, though….”
“…then I’d still have had sex, wouldn’t I? That arse of yours felt good to my cock, Steve. Why don’t you roll over, and let me show you….”
“Fuck off, Joe! I don’t take cock….”
“Not even mine?”
“Especially not yours, Joe! I reckon it might split me in half. And anyway, you’re a slave – slaves don’t fuck masters….”
Joe just laughed. “And what about you and Dan, Steve? You were a slave, and he was your owner…. So you must be used to taking cock….”
Without thinking, I blurted out “No way! I always fuck him….”
Joe laughed again. “I thought so! I’ve seen some of the looks between you two. And you say you ‘always fuck him’… So you’re still doing it, even though you’re no longer a slave? What does his wife say about that?”
“Joe….”, I was stammering now. “Look, it’s kind of awkward….”
“You mean Julie doesn’t know?”
I sort of squirmed a bit uneasily, and Joe dug me in the ribs as if sharing a joke. “You sly dog, Steve! Fucking Dan, right under the nose of Julie. Still, it must be a bit of a risk – I mean, if she finds out….”
“I don’t fuck him. Since I was free, that is. Before that it was OK, I was a slave. And everyone knows owners and slaves….”
“Everyone including Julie, Steve? You were fucking him, and then he would go and fuck her? What a nice cosy little arrangement you have….”
I lay there silently, horrified at the power I’d ceded to Joe. If he now threatened to tell Julie, it would destroy us all. He dug me in the ribs again. “Don’t worry, Steve! Your little secret is safe with me. Us blokes have to stick together, don’t we? I don’t want to cause trouble for you and Dan – and more importantly, I don’t want to upset Julie: I like her, as she’s really nice to me. She treats me like a man, and not like a slave…” He stopped for a moment, smiling, and went on “…except of course that she trims my pubes…” “Joe, if you ever breathe a word of this….”
“I won’t Steve. You can trust me. But the next time you’re playing with Dan, how about letting me join in?”
“No, Joe.”
“Why not? You’re not shy, are you? Worried about having another bloke watching you?”
“No, of course not. I’ve done porn stuff, with threesomes, and foursomes, even.”
“So what’s the problem? I reckon Dan might like a bit of variety….”
“Joe, it’s not like that….”
“Not like what, Steve? Like two blokes fucking?”
“No… Dan and me…. Well, it’s more than that…. It’s kind of special…..”
I went silent, and Joe did too, then his bantering tone became sort of serious. “I reckon you’re a lucky bloke, Steve. You and Dan…. It’s not just fucking, is it? I reckon you’re more than just mates… You love him, don’t you? I’ve noticed the way you look at him, and now I think about it, I can see that you’re always watching him…”
“Joe, I….”
“It’s OK, Steve. It’s OK to say you love another bloke, you know. It doesn’t have to be just about sex. And I suppose that’s why you don’t tell Julie. I mean, a lot of wives understand when their husbands go off and have a good time with another bloke – some of them even think it’s a good thing, as they’re ‘left alone’, not forced to have sex with their husband. But having sex is one thing, and actually loving another bloke is quite another, if you ask me. I reckon Julie could get over you fucking Dan if it was just that, but she’d never, never forgive Dan for loving someone else.”
Joe paused, then drew himself up on one elbow so he was looking down at me. He seemed to be so serious now. “I take it Dan does love you?”
“Yes, of course he does.” “How do you know, Steve? If you’ve never told him you love him, perhaps he thinks he’s just a bit of casual sex for you, and perhaps that’s all he wants, anyway. He has got Julie, after all…”
“No, Joe. I know he feels the same about me as I do about him. I just know it.”
Joe sort of shrugged. “Well that’s OK then! And what about me?”
“Oh Joe, get real! With you it is just sex. You’re a lot of fun, but I don’t love you.”
I caught a look of something in Joe’s eye, something infinitely sad. Then, as if he consciously made it happen, he smiled slightly. “Well that’s OK then. As long as it’s fun….”
He dropped down to lie beside me, then, as if he wanted to take care of me, he rolled me over slightly, spooned up to me and put his arm around me. “Take care, Steve”, he whispered in my ear. “Take care, mate. You’re playing a dangerous game. And you could get hurt, badly hurt. You and Dan both.”
After that little heartfelt talk I did try to consciously control my feelings for Dan. I began to notice what Joe had – that my eyes did follow him around the room. And I occasionally touched him – brushed past him close in the hall, let my fingers linger on his hand as I gave him the phone, that sort of stuff: my body wanted him so desperately, and I suppose all this was out of my control really. But it had to stop, as if Joe had noticed, others might have, too. But this lack of “casual” contact only made me more and more feverish for those rare times when we could really be close together – when Julie went to her mother’s, for example, leaving us alone. Or on those rare occasions when we managed to get a night away at a Show.
We weren’t doing badly at Shows, actually: I’d managed to work up a little circle of “regular” users of our gardening services, and even took on some minor building work like re-concreting drives and stuff. I worked alongside Joe, both to get more work done and hence make more money, but also because I didn’t want my own fitness to slide. And when we’d finished, I always made Joe run, too, as that’s good for the heart and lungs. I only wished I could have taken him swimming as that’s fantastic exercise for almost all the muscles, but of course he wasn’t allowed in the public swimming baths, being a slave. All in all, with the money we made from the contracting work and the occasional prizes that Joe won we weren’t doing too badly, although I did feel so sorry for Dan who still had the dreadfully long days because of the commuting.
I also continued to enjoy the Sunday morning football, and even though she didn’t see him all that much, Julie insisted Dan still came along, saying that a man needed something like that away from the house and kids. We usually took Joe, too, if he wasn’t working, and he sometimes got a game, just as I had. About a month later, though, I was standing there changing after the match and as I bent down to undo my boots I gave a little gasp of pain as my back ached so much. One of my team mates heard this, and at once asked “You OK, Steve?”
“It’s my fucking back – I was helping my slave pull a bit shrub out of one of the gardens we do and I reckon I strained it.” “You’re working? And alongside your slave?”
He sounded a bit surprised by this, and I thought at first it was because I was working with Joe. So as we walked towards the showers I told him “I like working alongside Joe, actually – you know, my slave who sometimes plays for us when one of the lads doesn’t turn up? It keeps me fit…. And we need the money, of course!”
“What? Are you a fucking gambler or something? Or have you got an expensive mistress stashed away somewhere? I didn’t see you arriving in your Ferrari, either – you came in that crappy old thing of Dan’s…. You surely haven’t spent all the compensation already.”
I wanted to ask him about it there and then, but you know how it is when there are a lot of you all in the showers together – we were all laughing and talking about the match, and one of the blokes had some big scratch marks down his back so we all wanted to know what he’d been doing with his girlfriend to make her so passionate… But afterwards, as I stood next to Bob, the bloke I’d been talking to, as we both towelled off and pulled on our clothes, I asked him “What compensation are you going on about?”
“You were unjustly Indentured. You were a slave, in fact. They must have paid out a lot….”
“No…. Nothing.”
Bob looked at me. “Steve, come and see me at the office tomorrow! I reckon you’ve been swindled, mate: if you had been falsely convicted of a crime and imprisoned, the Courts set compensation and the Government has to pay. So if you were falsely enslaved….”
Well, it turned out that unlike the rest of the team who were plumbers and electricians and carpet fitters and tradesmen like that, Bob was a solicitor: it was a bit unusual to have a professional in our team, but he said he liked to keep fit and always enjoyed football, so there he was – I hadn’t known before as he never made a big thing of it and always acted just like one of the other lads.
He gave me his card and I phoned him up on Monday, and the receptionist seemed surprised that I wanted to see him, but it appeared that he had a lot of time, so I fixed to go and see him that afternoon, leaving Joe to work away by himself. It was a large firm of solicitors down in Chelmsford, mainly specialising in corporate work, and when I got there I saw why my call had been unusual: Bob wasn’t one of the partners or anything, but a very junior employee, who normally did almost nothing but the work in buying and selling houses. He looked quite different in a suit, and as we sat in one of the interview rooms (I guessed he didn’t warrant an office of his own), I joked that he looked quite different with clothes on.
“I’m sorry, Steve”, he began. “I may have given you false hopes. There’s no precedent for the Government paying compensation for false enslavement, as once a man is enslaved, that’s usually it – he stays a slave! As far as I can tell, you and your fellow soldiers are the first men ever to have been freed like that.”
“Well I wasn’t expecting anything – but now you’ve mentioned it, it does seem unfair… Can’t we sue them or something?”
“As a general principle of English Law, no. You were convicted of a criminal act, in the name of the Crown, and you can’t sue the Crown as the Courts nominally operate in the name of the Crown!”
“But you said that wrongly convicted criminals did get compensation…”
“Yes, because Parliament passed a law saying that they should be able to claim for damages. But they never did that for Indentures, so you can’t bring a case against the Crown in the Crown’s own courts…”
“That seems fucking unfair!”
“Well, Steve, it’s the law. It can seem unfair sometimes. But you’d know that, from when they convicted you in the first place.”
Look, I won’t bore you with the full details of what then went on – Bob was a real junior but wanted to do something to “get known” in the firm. So Bob agreed to at least “make representations” to the Government, and said that he’d do it “as a favour” and sort of “pro bono” as of course I had no money to spare. And it dragged on and on – it was as if the government was determined not to admit it might have been wrong, even though cases like ours were very, very rare indeed and the amount of money involved would have been trifling.
In the end, though, we won! But not in the Courts: at the Harrogate show the next year Dan and I ran into Jason Carter again, the journalist whose paper had started the “Free Steve!” Campaign, and we all remembered the fun we’d had in that hotel room the year before, and how exciting it had been in the “Free Steve!” Campaign.
“So I’ll never get to fuck you, Steve…”, Jason said, still smiling after we’d all embraced.
“Well you turned me down when Dan offered me to you last year…”
“Which was before I found out what fun sex with men was – that little session was a real eye-opener, I can tell you.”
“So why don’t you join Dan and me tonight? We’ve got our display slave with us, but we can leave him in the cages here….”
“You and Dan still ‘play’? I thought that now you’re free…”
“As you said, Jason, sex with men is fun. Dan and I are kind of used to each other, and we decided not to stop….”
Some time that night, when we were all lying there sprawled over each other, Jason asked Dan and me how things were going. Dan started to tell him, but I cut in “Jason, this isn’t for publication, right? You know… Dan’s married…. You can say how we’re still showing slaves, but one of the rest.”
We went on to tell him about the compensation thing, of course, and in the morning he called his paper but they weren’t interested in doing another “Free Steve!” kind of campaign, as now they were banging on about the UK leaving the EC and becoming another state of the USA as “we had more in common with our former colonists than we did with those cheese-eating surrender monkeys in Europe….”
Jason was disappointed as he’d have liked to help us, but I reckoned he could still do something. So the next time Bob and Dan and I went to a meeting with the Government, Jason came along too and explained that he was the reporter who’d started the “Free Steve!” campaign, and that he was here to “update the British public.” Within a month I was in possession of a cheque for my “lost” three years of pay in the army, plus as much again for “loss of future earnings”, and another three years as “an ex gratia payment for the indignity I might have suffered”. Bob wanted to fight on for more, now they’d agreed to the principle that they should pay, but Jason was nervous that the Government might speak to his Editor and realise that the paper wasn’t at all interested. In the end, therefore, I settled for nine years pay, but Bob persuaded them it should be tax free, so it was worth a lot more.
To be continued …
