SECRET SUMMER A Mystery set in Detroit and Derbyshire 1966 Secret Summer was published in 2010 by The Nazca Plains Corporation in Las Vagas. Why secret? Because when you are young, when you are in love and if you are gay in 1966 - it must be secret. You love in secret, lust in secret, hunt in secret, meet in secret and play in secret. The alternative would be unthinkable. In 1966 - if things go wrong, horribly wrong, dangerously wrong, criminally wrong - you can't tell your heterosexual friends, you can't tell your parents and you certainly can't tell the police! 1966 was the summer of my secret love. It was a rollercoaster, a frantic mixture of agony and ecstasy spanning the Atlantic Ocean, with no support save for that which was available from the secretive and frequently unreliable world of gay men who were riddled with all their own personal problems, repressions and hang-ups. I fell in love with a mysterious tough guy I call Ahmed. He called me Booby. He was beautiful; butch as a brick with a powerful controlling personality. On one occasion we climbed a tree. He boasted how desirable youths had been deflowered on that very same bough. He became hard, stern and rough. In that precarious situation 140 foot off the ground, I was in no position to argue or resist – not that I was minded to put up much resistance! Using convenient branches, his quarry was rudely positioned for an oral attack which afforded a few minutes of pure ecstasy. Never was a naughty tongue so titillating or fingers so clever, so fondling: until, eventually, one panting Booby hung limp, satiated, after the desired result had been achieved. And then there followed one of those quiet moments, golden moments which, in retrospect, would be cherished in later years. Only for a short time, yet it was so wonderful, so very precious. I often look back on this great love and savour fleeting minutes when the relationship did work and did prosper. Here was the creation of one such memory. Ahmed’s eyes mellowed to a half smile; divine, deep brown pools of pure love communicating an unspoken promise for a life-time of conscientious care and unstinting protection in a harsh Detroit environment. High up in that beech tree, a dominant primate was wearing an exultant expression, an equivalent of beating his chest. He had captured, conquered and drained a lesser primate of the English teenage variety. Minutes passed. Further into that quiet moment of quality silence, still up in that tree, Ahmed leaned over and whispered into the ear of his lover – ‘License my roving hands, and let them go, Behind, before, above, between, below. O my America, my new found land.’ I received these rather obtuse, erotic words in puzzled silence. I assumed it was a quotation and waited for Ahmed to elucidate. ‘Like that, Booby? Like poetry?’ ‘Is that what it was? Oh! Well … I’ve never really understood poems; they don’t seem to touch me. Did you write it?’ Ahmed threw back his head and let rip a loud guffaw. He seized his boy, still precariously balanced, and forcefully inflicted kisses, interspersed with insults. ‘Oh, my sweet, stupid, ignorant Booby! You need your college education real bad. Those words are 400 years old! It’s the timeless work of an eminent English poet – my poet. ‘Hey, listen up – poems are profound – they live forever. What can I tell you? Hear this – some king in India had a lover. She died. He was grief stricken. He built a mausoleum to honour her memory. You have heard of the Taj Mahal?’ ‘Of course I have! It’s beautiful.’ ‘Sure, but it won’t last,’ continued Ahmed. ‘The elements will get to it - eventually. It will crumble. That king would have been better to have commissioned a good poem which would last forever. ‘Hear this, Booby – my poet … correction, our poet - was writing about us. In just a few words he summed up our love, our pain, our pleasure and all our contradictions. Can’t you understand that?’ Ahmed clutched his lover closer, forcing my head into firm chest muscles – a place where that head was happy to be. Breathing in body scent, listening to a heartbeat and viewing a mass of young, green foliage which had just brightened due to a sudden sunburst; I soaked up more of the secret world of poetry. And those sexy deep throated words of the lusty Arab were now being spoken, more softly, delivered with gentleness and understanding. ‘Pretty boy, I know it’s tough. But we have to keep working at it. Don’t ever give up on us, Booby. I won’t. This Englishman now, this poet - hear him. He’s telling us that love is the Big Chaos! A mental hiccup. ‘Love is chaos – OK? It has the potential to disrupt all our lives. It’s the chaos unleashed upon the one we love. It has fall-out for all the people around us.’ Ahmed shuffled to change his position on that bough and guided his lover to face him. Balancing, with sincere earnest expression, he faced me. He cupped my face with warm hands and continued in tender mode – ‘Listen, Booby - that chaos, we call love, the big chaos – it’s magic! It’s worth the risk. It’s an enterprise worth embarking on. We can die by it, if not live by love. And if unfit for tombs and hearse, our legend be, it will be fit for verse.’ Again, I was puzzled. I followed Ahmed’s words, gleaning some small meaning, but doubted that the last were his own. Also, those last words were frightening. ‘We can die by it, if not live by love.’ What did Ahmed mean by that? I felt threatened. Years later in 2024, I recall that extraordinary conversation which took place somewhere inside the mass of foliage of that great beech tree somewhere in Belle Isle – an island in the Detroit River. Ahmed never revealed the identity of his beloved poet, but I remembered the lines - and one day I came across John Donne 1572 – 1633. I reflected on the effects of a mixture of the Big Chaos with the insidious homophobia which had blighted my life. Take Big Chaos, add gay hating parents, gay hating sisters and terrorism at a brutal junior school – result; the victim sustains permanent damage. Those miserable injuries cause their target to limp through life, hiding his true face, hoping to be invisible. The wounds fester into a terrible rage which eats away at the body. It’s one of many bodies trying to survive in a dysfunctional, closeted homosexual society which, under pressure, often turns on itself and attacks its own kind. Narvel Annable Copies of Secret Summer are available directly from Narvel at the special price of just £3.00 each, and that even includes post and packing!
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