At dinner I got the inkling that the tent setup at the Elephant Camp West hadn't given Harvey and me quite the privacy during the midday siesta that we thought it had. Those with us on the safari down from Lake Nyasa to Victoria Falls had known we were a couple, certainly. We slept together at each stop. But since the afternoon there appeared to be a heightened awareness in the group that the tall, thin man over thirty years my senior and eight inches taller than I was, and I, had an active, athletic sex life—with each other.
This revelation seemed to have energized a few other members of our ten-person safari group, if you included two of the three male Zimbabwean natives who traveled with us, Madzinga and Taguma, more than I would have realized. Once it was established that Harvey and I had sweaty sex, Madzinga and Taguma weren't shy about ogling me and making suggestive gestures. I had visions of one of them dragging me into the bush and having his way with me—which weren't, by any means, unpleasant thoughts. I fantasized about big, black cocks and muscular black men as much as the next bottom did.
Akashinga gave me good service but little interest; his eyes kept going to a young French woman newlywed traveling in our group. The robust, muscular South African tour guide, Dirk Vandergrif; the mid forties Indian industrialist I'd thought was married, Prabha Rao; and two of the three native servants suddenly were paying me court. The two Zimbabweans were being particularly solicitous and brushing against me and touching me with their fingers in passing, the Indian was giving me hooded looks, and the tour guide, sitting by me at the dinner table out on the deck of the Elephant Camp West tent complex on the southern, Zimbabwe, bank of the Zambezi River, within hearing of the distant roar of Victoria Falls, was playing with my calf with his bare toes.
Vandergrif had already directly propositioned me, and I had teased him rather than saying no. He obviously took that as merely a logistical opportunity issue.
It was at that point that I had decided I'd had enough dinner and enough of that attention that I excused myself and went over and sat in the circle of garden chairs with the Indian couple, Prabha and Padma Rao. They had come to dinner in traditional Indian wear, Padma in a cobalt blue silken sari and Prabha, bare-chested, in a silken wrap from the waist down that showed off a solid, if a bit pudgy muscular torso. He was in good shape for his forty-plus years, and he was smooth bodied, the bit of roundness of him still locked tight inside tanned skin. I had come to sit with them because I assumed them a married couple and safe, but Padma excused herself and floated toward their shared tent not long after I sat and Taguma handed me a snifter of brandy. Prabha had one as well and also was smoking a brown-papered cigarette.
Prabha's bare chest was nothing unusual. It was hot and muggy, the moisture almost visible in the air this close to the falls, and all of the other men were bare-chested and in shorts. None, including the Zimbabwean servants, had physiques they could not be proud to bare. Prabha managed to look cool despite the temperature and humidity from the mist coming off the nearby Victoria Falls.
The third couple of our safari group, the French newlyweds, Andre and Josette Colbert, both model-like thin and attractive, passed us by to go fuck in their tent. They spent every moment when not on a safari expedition or eating a meal in their tent fucking.
That said, so did Harvey Wingate and I, I suppose. Harvey and I had been together for a year—a year that had grown a little strained from lack of variety. This safari, which was something Harvey wanted to do way more than I did, was supposedly a one-year-anniversary celebration. As Harvey was the one with the money and the one who made the decisions, we were doing what Harvey wanted to do. I was along as something to sheath his cock in, and he pretty much treated me as such. He hadn't been all that well recently, and an African safari was on his bucket list.
Harvey was a producer and financial backer of Broadway plays. I had been a dancer in one of the plays he was backing and had been virtually given to him to bed and to make happy by the musical's director. I hadn't minded. Harvey's New York apartment and all of the parties he went to and gave were far above my capabilities at the time and I had expensive tastes. I also didn't mind having a power-driven dick inside me. It wasn't always Harvey's. He gave me to whoever he pleased to and wanted to impress just as I had been given to him. When he gave a party, I was one of the party favors.
It wasn't a relationship of affection, really. It was more one of mutual need and convenience. He needed someone young and good-looking for his bed and someone to fetch and carry for him, and I needed to be taken care of—to be provided for in terms of comforts and to have a man's dick inside me, calming me and transporting me to another world. He took care of me in bed, but we weren't demonstrably a couple in public. And when he was angry with me, he was quick to call me a whore or a prostitute, which, of course, in many ways I was. I hadn't gone looking for a john, though. The director of the musical I was in had explained it as a sacrifice to be made for the good of the whole troupe.
"Ah, Mr. Bradley," the Indian industrialist said when I sat down, "we've come half away across Africa already and haven't had much of a chance to talk."
He'd had his face behind a camera most of the time and only today seemed to notice I existed were the reasons, but he had been making up for lost time in interest since we'd met for drinks after the afternoon nap. We had followed safari customs of sightseeing in the morning hours, napping after lunch, and going out again at twilight to catch glimpses of the wildlife. Harvey and I—and the French couple—usually spent the nap time fucking, though.
"Brent. Please call me Brent, Mr. Rao."
"And you should call me Prabha," he countered with a smile. "I would hope we can be informal with each other—more than informal even."
I wasn't sure if he was signaling or not. I was watching Padma Rao disappearing into their tent with a graceful glide.
"You and your wife seemed so intent on capturing everything on film as we traveled, that I assumed you were putting together a photo journal and I didn't want to interrupt that," I said.
"My wife? Oh, you mean Padma. She's my sister, not my wife. I have no wife. I'm not interested in having a wife, actually." He was giving me a meaningful stare. This I was pretty sure was signaling. I had failed to think of him as anything but married to this point, so I couldn't be sure he hadn't been showing interest in me in earlier days and I just hadn't noticed. But then he referenced this afternoon.
"You are a very attractive young man, and so athletic and graceful," Rao said, leaning into toward me. "Your Mr. Wingate tells me you are a dancer on stage—in New York."
"Yes, I am," I said. "But I didn't realize—"
"The walls of the tents here are transparent in certain angles of the sun," he said. "And there are openings in unexpected places. You put on quite a show with Mr. Wingate this afternoon."
