A gay story: Bellapais Villa Munro Possession In 1985 a friend in England had suggested I rent Lawrence Durrell’s villa in Bellapais in Northern Cyprus.
My friend was a writer, and he had said, “There are places that can inspire a man, and having read Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, I am sure that his villa on Cyprus will be full of inspiration. And I have heard it’s available to rent. Go there, Simon. For me.”
I could hardly refuse him, as I knew he himself was longing to take Durrell’s villa. But he was tied to cold damp London by a sick wife, three small children, and a demanding job with The Times Literary Supplement.
I had followed through on the villa, because I had always had a soft spot for my literary friend. And I’d had the villa for only a month when I wrote to him, saying that, yes, it was full of inspiration, though perhaps not the inspiration he imagined. There was no literary inspiration there for me, but there was an immense amount of sexual discovery. And I said sincerely that I wished he were there to share it with me. And for six months I was ecstatically inspired by it but was forced to leave. And my time in Turkey was also up soon after and I returned to England.
Then, five years ago I had finally come back to Northern Cyprus. I was semiretired, and was now idling my days away in my apartment in the old part of Kyrenia, when I wasn’t working hard, lecturing on the Middle East at Oxford. I had always longed to return to Durrell’s villa, but it had never been vacant when I enquired, until recently, when I had asked about it on a whim.
With his sick wife long gone, and his children at university, my literary friend would shortly be coming to visit for a fortnight with his lover, and the villa was my gift to them.
The plane had got me to the Ercan airport on time and I collected my car and drove straight to Kyrenia, glad that I was home and immediately I took the old familiar walk along the jetty wall, around the harbourside and nearly to the walls of Kyrenia castle. The cafés across the road were already starting to fill up as I wandered lazily by, savouring my return, and occasionally I saw a familiar face among the patrons and nodded slightly to them.
The old town was the same, but slightly different, because even in the two months I had been lecturing at Oxford, it had subtly changed. It lay nestled by the harbour as it had for centuries, but it now sat against a constantly expanding backdrop of modern holiday flats climbing the mountainside behind. And there were more pale European faces in the early summer crowd.
From the balcony of the British Club cafe, a familiar voice called out to me, and I crossed the busy road and climbed the stairs to join Mustafa and be embraced by him. He had aged into a solid bull of a man, all heavy shoulders and thick neck and belly, the beautiful solid man of twenty-two I had once known lost beneath the intervening years of contentment and good living. But as the body had grown, so had the humour and friendship, and we embraced with affection.
And as we embraced, I smelt the familiar warm scent of him and closed my eyes and was taken back to when we had first known each other twenty years before. When I had come to the island and my rented villa alone, escaping from the crowded city whenever I could. But not spending my time there alone.
Ahh, the days of drifting down to the square after lunch and sitting around ogling the local Turkish Cypriot men and letting them ogle me. Until I got that certain look from one I fancied and took him up to my small rented Bellapais villa, once the writing retreat of the British writer Lawrence Durrell, and let him vigorously and noisily fuck my brains out on a lounger under the sun on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean.
Or down to the square in the twilight after dinner, with those fairy lights in the olive trees around the fringe of the café’s stone terrace. And, in that soft light hearing the twittering laughter of the Mediterranean men and watching the wisps of strong Turkish tobacco smoke drifting up, as I was eyeing and being eyed. Until I got that certain look and took him back up to the villa and let him fuck me in long, slow, sweeping strokes on the terrace under the stars.
And maybe, if he was really, really beautiful and masterful, taking him back to my bed for a night of sleep broken up with brief periods of wanton lust, waking to the feel of a hot poker at my hole and a wheedling whisper for permission at my ear. Sighing “Yes,” and arching back to accept the homage of his throbbing need to be deep inside me. Breakfasting on the terrace by the small pool. Then pulling him into the pool and wrapping my legs around his waist and letting the swirling water soften the rhythmic in and outing as I threw my head back and watched the morning Mediterranean light filter through the sighing branches of the olive trees. Thinking then about my after-lunch visit to the café on the square, already assessing which eyes I would respond to that day.
Ahhh, idyllic days. Days of youth. No, I hadn’t been that young. I had been a thirty-five-year-old man working in Turkey and needing to escape.
“You look good,” Mustafa said, holding me at arm’s length, smiling and nodding. “And the villa. It is yours for two weeks?” he asked.
“Yes, for my friends,” I replied, smiling foolishly.
“Ahh. I don’t understand why you want to rent that old place, when you could have had a big new flat, or a house like mine. My brother has built many good villas, he has many for sale,” he added enthusiastically.
“All you think of is new,” I replied sharply, wishing that more of the old island remained, the ancient ochre stone walls, the old houses with their hidden lush courtyard gardens and cool dim whitewashed interiors, the inconvenient but shaded winding lanes.
“OK. OK. You foreigners,” he said with a smile, not understanding what outsiders might see in his island’s past, “I’ll see you later. Tomorrow,” he added, leaving me.
But then he turned back and his face was sad. “You probably don’t even remember him now. Kamil. Do you remember Kamil? The musician? He died in a car accident last week,” Mustafa said. “So much trouble for you both. So long ago,” he added, shaking his head sadly, before moving off to answer a call from an English customer inside.
They were everywhere now the English retirees, and I watched him hurry back into the dull cool interior of the old-style café.
I had no idea who he was talking about for a moment, as he disappeared inside and left me there. But my mind spun and the name Kamil clicked into place, and I stood, stunned, as the past washed over me.
Oh God, Kamil, how could I have forgotten him. I had come down to the square in Bellapais after lunch, or in the evenings, and wandered into Sami’s familiar old-fashioned café, always full of a variety of Turkish Cypriot men. And I would sit up on one of the stools by the counter, waiting to be ogled, to be eyed off, and then later to be possessed by the man of my choosing.
I had seen it as no more than part of escaping from my demanding work and obligations in the city, an escape into an indulgent place of timeless pleasure. But then one day I had been possessed in a way I had never imagined.
Yes. One day I had walked down the winding cobbled lane to the square without realising that I was taking the walk that marked the end of my island days as clearly as anything ever could. The café was busy, and Sami’s son, Mustafa, the handsome, smiling twenty-two-year-old honey skinned, god like youth, who had eyed me off himself more than once, had to clear someone from a stool so I had somewhere to sit that day. And I looked about in mild surprise at the crowd, but with no real curiosity. There were even more good-looking young men there that day than usual, and it was that I had come there for. I had felt the heat in me rise and I was happy.
At first I hardly even noticed that quite a few of the younger men were clustered in a laughing, murmuring group to one side, arms linked about each others’ shoulders and their bodies moving with the talk.
But then several turned to look at me and I smiled back, realising I must have become the topic of conversation. Then most in the group were turning to look at me with looks of lust, curiosity, a few even of dislike, before the bodies moved aside so that those sitting at the table in the shadows behind them could see me too. There was much quiet laughter and whispering, and I felt the thrill of knowing that they were admiring me, and sure that two of them, who I remembered taking home at different times, were showing by their smiling looks and whispers how good it had been.
A couple gave me that certain look and I returned it, but there was some more talk and one of the men seated at the table in the shadows stood up, and the group was making a humming noise and the looks had turned to different ones. Not unpleasant, not lustful, different. They were the looks of men on the eve of the big game who know their football team is certain to win.
The man at the table stepped through them, and I saw him clearly for the first time. He was giving me a look, but it was not the usual one. He was young and slim and proud, but his look was almost a shy one, his huge dark eyes giving an impression of something serious yet timeless. At odds with the murmurings of the group around him and with his own posture.
I heard someone suck in a breath behind me, and knew it was Mustafa. I had no idea who the young man coming towards me was, but he obviously mattered on the island, so I made an effort to look friendly and harmless.
He stepped up to me and said, “We go,” his huge dark eyes holding mine briefly, and the look was one of me being politely ordered, and I sensed I had no choice whatever I wanted.
Fortunately, he was good looking in his own brooding way, and I mentally shrugged and stood up and smiled to his friends as I left the café, with my companion leading the way. I heard laughter and shouts behind us; very different to the normal casual way I left.
He knew my villa in the upper reaches of Bellapais and led us there and at the heavy door into the courtyard just walked in, knowing it wouldn’t be locked. Inside, he looked around briefly before he continued into the house, glancing into the two central rooms and stopping at the door of one of the sleeping rooms off to the side and turning to me suddenly.
“You are English?” he asked in a deep, honey smooth, almost accentless voice.
He was no ordinary island youth, speaking broken English badly. Cyprus having long been a British colony, those native to the island spoke English well. This youth obviously had originated elsewhere. In the shadow inside the villa, his eyes were gleaming, and all I could think was what big dark bedroom eyes he had and what beautiful long lashes. The sort of young man I might choose to fuck myself the odd time I wanted that. When I needed to be the possessor. To own beauty and youth.
“Yes,” I replied.
“And your name,” he asked, his eyes not leaving my face.
“Simon Munro.”
“Kamil,” he said, a small smile passing over his mouth as he reached out a hand and shook mine. “How do you do?”
“Very well,” I said smiling back, the tension suddenly gone.
We were standing in the doorway into my bedroom. with its French windows opening on to the terrace overlooking the sea, and he walked calmly past me and towards the bed that I had made up with fresh sheets that morning. And it flitted through my mind that if we were going to have each other, I wanted it to be like that, on fresh linen, in the shady room, on a perfect day overlooking the Mediterranean.
“So I fuck you now,” he said, which almost made me laugh, as he didn’t look as if he was particularly interested in doing it.
But then I realised why he was there. He was required to do this because of who he was, whether he particularly wanted to or not. And I suddenly resented it that he wasn’t particularly interested, when I could have been looking at another man who was.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked, thinking we could just fill some time and he could return to the café and give his opinion of “the Australian, the foreigner,” without us actually having to do anything.
I was no good when sex was a chore. I saw myself getting naked and lying on the bed with my legs wide waiting for him to fuck me like some bored whore, and smiled to myself as I vaguely wondered if I should “think of England” as he plowed me, or in my case, perhaps Australia.
“No,” he replied, pulling his shirt free of his pants and starting to unbutton it.
He was not beautiful in the usual Turkish Cypriot way, there was something much too lean and elegant about him. But the body he revealed as he undid his shirt was unexpectedly muscular, full of flowing lean shape and hardness and strength. One I could definitely work up some interest in, I thought, as I also began to strip off, not sure how to go with him and just following his lead.
We were both quickly naked and he had given me his second big surprise. His cock was already half hard and was obviously going to get to a good size. The head was big and flared and the shaft was already long and bulgingly full. His balls were high and almost small.
I sat on the bed while he stood there stroking himself, getting harder and larger as I moved into the middle and lay back. He made no move to come to me. Just stood there playing with himself and watching me intently. I looked back at him as I stroked myself and lifted my legs and fingered some lube into my own hole. But, however odd the situation was, he was turning me on in some strange way. There was nothing soft that day about those big dark eyes of his. They were more like the eyes of a huge cat fixed on its prey, in total control. And that look was turning me on hugely.
“You are ready now,” he observed quietly, smiling in a satisfied way, seeing my eyes move down and fix on his now fully engorged, long, thick tool.
I nodded, and I was ready.
He moved onto the bed and between my thighs and I wanted to scream for him to fuck me-for the slow quiet control he held me in to break into the instinctive, wild thrusting of fucking and coming. I wanted to be released from his control to fist myself to ejaculation.
But instead, he stayed calm and unhurried, his eyes fixing me and freezing me still, as he guided the big flared head of his cock to my hole and pushed. It was painful immediately, I wasn’t as ready as I needed to be to take him easily, and I grunted as he entered me, feeling like an observer until he pushed in deeper. He was splitting me, but I felt unable to do any more than look into his eyes and accept him into me, grunting and whimpering quietly as he opened me. Until his flared head rubbed across my prostrate, when I suddenly felt freed and arched back and wrapped my legs about his hips and yelled, “Fuck me, fuck me,” knowing that as completely unexpected as it was, he was going to give me exactly what I wanted-an overpowering ride that filled me completely.
My cry was the signal he needed, and he bottomed inside me forcefully, a burst of pain shooting through me making me scream again, “No, no,” and leaving me whimpering and crying out as he began to plow me with huge deep strokes that had me writhing and telling him to stop, that he was hurting me so.
But he didn’t stop. And I didn’t really want him too. He kept on and on. Slow and fast, slow and shallow. Several times I looked into his face and his eyes were still those of some great cat with its prey being batted playfully between its paws, and I moaned as the pain turned to pleasure, and I was gripping the bedhead and bucking my hips to match his thrusting and pulling him in deeper.
I came early on, cream streaking up my belly to my chest and staying there to dry as he continued to plow me, my legs pulling him in as I moaned for more of what he was doing to me. When he finally came, it was deep inside me and my thighs held him tight as I felt the heat of him flooding me.
I came again, then slowly released my legs from about his hips and lay there looking up at him, completely possessed by him and expecting him to pull out, calmly dress, and leave. But he didn’t, not at first, he stayed there buried inside me, and I looked up at him and locked eyes with him, pleased that his big dark eyes were telling me he was satisfied. He stayed buried until his soft cock slipped out and I felt his cream dribble out behind it and run down my crack.
He pushed my right thigh back to my side and, with a finger of his right hand, rubbed the leaking cum around my asshole, making me moan. Then he wiped the cream over my nipples, the first time he had touched me there. Then he pressed the finger between my lips and I sucked off the taste of him. I shivered, realising that he had taken possession of me. And I lay there still, watching him as he got off the bed and calmly dressed, but then he threw me my clothes too and I dressed for him as he watched. I felt like a visitor in his house the way he looked at me.
But it was erotic too, and I wanted it. The way he looked at me.
Then he was gone. Thinking about him afterwards, I thought he must be in his early twenties. The lean body and big eyes had made me think he was younger, but he had acted far older, yet I was sure he was aged far younger than the assurance he seemed born with had implied. I took a glass of wine out on to the veranda and found I was shaking as I settled down to drink it.
In the evening I went down to the café eagerly, feeling myself trembling and my cock filling as I entered the square and then made my way through the tables to the bar, feeling the men’s eyes on me and hearing the mutterings and laughter in the clear warm night.
I took my seat on a stool, and Mustafa brought me a beer. Icy and refreshing. I had drunk half of it, when a beautiful man gave me that look, and I wanted to run up to the villa immediately with him. Or better, do it right there in front of the other customers. Then someone sat next to him and they were both eyeing me. Then they turned away. And I was abandoned for the night. Finally, I walked home alone and rationalised that I was leaving the next morning and had a lot of work to do when I got back.
But that night I dreamed, and the dream was of Kamil and in the dream I ached for him and he appeared and roughly pushed me into positions in which I could watch him taking me vigorously, and I was begging him to carry on and I woke with my cream on the sheets.
The next weekend I was increasingly jittery and dry mouthed as the ferry approached the island. I disembarked in a rush and drove up to the villa to drop my bag before heading to the square and the café. And it was too early when I rushed in. There was hardly anyone there, and Mustafa was still slowly opening up. I wanted to know, but couldn’t ask directly.
I talked small talk, then said casually “Those young men who were here the other afternoon, do they come here often?” Mustafa shrugged and moved away, ignoring me.
I wandered around the main part of the old town. Even then it stretched for quite a distance beyond the harbour and up a shallow valley between the hills behind, but there were only a couple of small blocks of new apartments on the hill directly behind the square. The rest was straggly goat pasture, a few small sheds and a lot of rocks. I had never seen Kamil before the previous Saturday, and I didn’t see him anywhere that day either. I finally gave up looking for him and made my way back up to my villa in the dusk to get ready to go to the café for the evening.
When I arrived at the villa and entered the courtyard, I saw I had left a light on inside and the sound of a guitar being played floated out on the night air.
I wandered cautiously into the hallway and stepped nervously up to my bedroom door and looked in. Wary of what I might find in there. But it was him, Kamil, sitting naked on my bed, gazing at me broodingly as his fingers worked the strings of the guitar resting across his thighs. Then his eyes dropped to the instrument and his fingers moved over the strings as he continued to play. I soon realised that he played well. And as he finished one tune and started another, I knew he played much more than well.
He had me riveted and his playing became more and more sensual and complex, his hands, with their long beautiful fingers seeming to be part of the guitar. He looked up at me again, “Undress,” he whispered. And as I undressed he watched me with his brooding look of concentration as he played and I removed my clothes to the music.
As I undressed, I moved to his music, touching myself in response to it, running my hands over my skin. Pinching my nipples and stroking my manhood as I removed my clothes and lay them neatly aside, wanting him to see me and want me. Wanting those long supple fingers exploring me and playing a tune on me. My body was shivering and my cock standing ready as I finished and stood there naked, his big dark eyes and his music caressing me better than my hands could. I wanted him to take me and moved closer, stroking myself, seeing his eyes move to my tool and rest there as he played more slowly and sensually, and I stroked myself. I wanted him to fuck me while he played and couldn’t understand it was impossible.
I came with a huge shudder, cum riding up my belly and chest in bursts and he stopped playing suddenly and set the guitar aside. I fell to my knees between his spread thighs. He was already hard and dripping precum as I took his cock up and fed it to my lips. If I hadn’t already cum I would have then, discovering that he had been hard and dripping behind his guitar, as I had stroked myself off to his eyes and music.
I had barely got the taste of him and cupped and weighed his balls in my hand before he was lifting me and pushing me onto the bed on my knees and I knelt and widened my thighs for him dropping my head to the pillow.
“Fuck me,” I begged him, reaching back to spread lube around my hole, his fingers taking over and working it inside me.
I was still young and was hard again as I moaned and moved my hips to fuck myself on his fingers, my free hand stroking my own cock as he was palming my belly, holding me steady, ready for him.
He entered me more easily this time, and I was moving with him and moaning from the beginning, not controlled by his eyes and the look in them, as I had been on the first night. But he came quickly and I needed more of him. I rolled over and knelt before him and began to lick at his body, but he pulled back frowning.
I looked up at him, at his serious look, “Don’t think so much,” I said panting.
He looked back at me uncertainly, and I realised that in what we were doing, he was incredibly naïve. That I was the first man he had fucked. Stupidly I thought how could I not have known that immediately. Because, the first time he had controlled me so easily and I had not been thinking of anything else.
I leant in again more gently and played each of his erect nipples with my lips, then moved my mouth up and to his neck, his ears, his lips, wanting to hear him moan. He was reluctant to kiss, but I teased his mouth and finally he relaxed and I darted my tongue in between the pink fleshy pads of his lips. But just enough to run along them before I moved my head down again and ran my lips over his chest, and down, playing at his belly, nuzzling his pubes and his treasure chest, nuzzling his half hard cock into my mouth. His hands gripped my head as I knelt, bent over before him, and I heard a faint noise escape him. I released his cock and took his balls into my mouth, sucking on them one at a time and he definitely moaned.
When he was long and hard again he pushed me back and I rested my feet on his shoulders, opening myself up for him. This time it was him who lubed up my hole, though it barely needed it, still being open and slick with his cum from earlier.
His long flexible fingers exploring inside me hit the right spot. “There, yes,” I gasped, wanting him to know he had rubbed over something I wanted rubbed over. “Again.”
He was a fast learner, and I saw a small smile cross his face as he fingered my ass and my cock hardened and dribbled for him.
Then I was looking down and watching him feed his manhood slowly into me, knowing I could never get enough of it.
Kamil gripped my thighs as he plowed me, and I ran my hands over his belly and chest. We came together him pulling out this time and his cock jerking and spouting cream over my belly and chest as mine did. He locked his eyes on mine as we both recovered, my feet still on his shoulders. Then he lent in and kissed me briefly.
“I will be back tomorrow,” he said, kissing me when he left.
But I didn’t see him again that weekend. And on Monday morning I took the last ferry I could back to the city of Mersin on the Turkish mainland.
When I went to buy a ticket on the ferry the next Friday afternoon, I was told it was full. I argued, and eventually the manager made them sell me a ticket, but I knew something was up.
When I arrived at the island, I was sworn at and my car spat on by the deckhand as I drove off the ferry, and I hurried up to my villa, worried about what may have happened. When I got there, I was relieved to find that things seemed normal and I unlocked the doors and hurried through the courtyard and into the house to find that it was just as I had left it.
But I had barely finished inspecting the villa when I heard a car pull up outside and the sound of footsteps.
I walked back out to the courtyard and saw three men coming towards me, and the youngest one was holding an old shotgun slanted across his body. They stopped, and the oldest one stepped forward.
“You will be on the next ferry,” he said in broken English, “And you will not be back. Ever. ”
“What’s happened?” I asked.
But they just stared at me venomously, and the shotgun was lifted. I would have run if I’d had anywhere to run, but the only way out of the villa was through the courtyard door they were blocking. Another car had pulled up outside then and there were fast hurried footsteps and Layla, my landlady, was suddenly framed in the entrance from the lane.
“He is leaving,” she said loudly. “I will help him get his bags. Wait outside.”
Layla was far from her usual calm self. But the men went grudgingly out to stand just outside in the lane.
“You must go,” she said, running into the house and pulling my bags out of the cupboards.
I threw what I could into the bags I had there and we carried them out to my car and put them in the boot, under the malevolent gaze of the three strangers.
I knew enough about the way the island really worked to be afraid, and I left what didn’t fit into my bags and let myself be helped to leave.
When I tried to ask Layla what had happened, she only said “Not now, not now. There is nothing I can do.”
I drove myself to the ferry, only stopping in Bellapais to slip into Sami’s café in the square below the villa and grab Mustafa frantically by the arm.
“What has happened?” I asked him, fearfully. “Is Kamil all right?”
Mustafa looked at me, half sorry and half frightened. “Let go,” he said angrily, shaking my hand off his arm. “You took the wrong one home,” he said. “You have caused big trouble for him, and for you. You are lucky it is not twenty years ago.”
“Who is Kamil?” I asked .
“Go. Go,” was all he said, pushing me roughly out onto the street.
I came back from my memories, staring blankly into the gloom of Mustafa’s current British Club café in Kyrena Harbour, remembering how I had caught the next ferry back to Mersin, shattered that I might never see the villa, or the island again. Or Kamil. And not only might I never see them again, I had felt I was cut off forever from any escape from the impersonal bustle of the Turkish mainland. I had lost my private paradise, as well as the dominating lover who played so passionately on the guitar.
After years of thinking about, and pining for the carefree Turkish Cypriot way of life I had discovered in Lawrence Durrell’s villa, I had finally returned to Northern Cyprus and renewed that love affair. But I had never seen Kamil again.