Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 23:50:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Pete Brown <petebrownuk@yahoo.com>
Subject: This Time Around Everything Wa Reversed, Part One

THIS TIME AROUND EVERYTHING WAS REVERSED

By Pete Brown        petebrownuk @ yahoo.com


Read all of Pete's stories at
groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownseroticstories


Part 1


There were all those stories circulating about
"slavers" operating in the USA, but most people
thought it was like that stuff they do for the free
sheets in the supermarkets "Skeleton found on the
moon", and that sort of crap.  When I went off by
myself to Florida for a break before starting college,
mom and dad even joked about it, telling me not to go
out by myself at night.  Ha fucking ha - that was he
whole point of getting away, wasn't it?  - to be out
by myself, having fun, cruising the bars with the fake
ID I'd knocked up in Photoshop and picking up any
women I could find, for a good time.

I'd spent a couple of hours, and a stack of dollars on
drinks for her, talking to this woman before she just
said she was going home to her husband and patted me
on the head just as if I was a kid!  I was pretty
pissed off - and just a little bit drunk - and on my
way out to my truck they grabbed me.  I was putting
the key into the lock when a sack or something was
pulled over my head, I was punched hard in the gut
that caused me to keel over, and my hands were pulled
behind my back and cuffed.  Gasping for breath, hooded
and cuffed, I couldn't stop them - although I did try
to kick out at them - as I was dragged across the
parking lot and thrown into the back of something,
which drove off.

Judging from the sounds and that characteristic smell
of kerosene we must have been somewhere near the
airport in Miami when I was dragged out and stood on
my feet.  There was a ripping and cutting sound, and I
realised I was being stripped - my jeans and shirt,
and then my T, were cut away from me, and they pulled
my sneakers and socks off my feet.  I was standing
there still hooded and cuffed in just my boxers, and
when I tried to shout and protest at what they were
doing to me, a cane slashed across my butt. I screamed
out with the sheer surprise and indignity of it.
"That will give you something to shout about, buddy.
Now, shut the fuck up!" a gruff voice said.  I'd never
felt anything like it before - the hot, stinging
sensation, that was now being followed by a dull ache.
 I mean, my parents didn't believe in corporal
punishment, and even if dad had wanted to punish me
physically, he wouldn't have used a cane with such
sheer calculated viciousness as that.

"He's the last one this trip - get him loaded" the
voice said again, and I was half pushed, half carried
across a whole lot of tarmac - it was hot under my
bare feet - and then up what must be the steps of a
plane as there was that roaring noise from the engines
as I was herded past.  They pulled my hood off then
and I almost gasped with astonishment - inside the
plane there weren't any seats or anything, just a
series of barred cages running from floor to ceiling,
with a narrow isle down the centre.  The cages were
full of men like me - in just their underwear -
although I could just see one cage full of women who
were mostly naked too.  The two men holding me - big
blacks, and I mean big - way over my own six two -
unlocked the nearest cage which was already really
full as the guys in there were standing up as there
was no room to sit down, and pushed me in.  They then
cut the cable ties that had been cuffing me, and left
the aircraft.

There was none of that crap about seat belts and
safety and life jackets and all the other stuff they
do, as a few minutes later the aircraft started to
taxi, and then took off.  As it climbed we were all
thrown against each other in our cage, and I guess
that's why we were in so many separate cages as
otherwise it would have been even more dangerous.  I'd
never been in such intimate contact with other guys
before - well, I mean, when you're changing at school
and at the public pool, you keep well away from the
other guys and certainly don't touch skin to skin, do
you?  And now here I was in just my thin boxers with a
whole lot of other guys kind of on top of and around
me.

One of the guys was totally naked, too - he was in his
early thirties, I'd guess, but in superb physical
condition.  I could see he had one of those "Semper
Fi" tattoos on his arm, so I guessed he must be, or
had been, a marine.  He saw me looking, and made no
attempt to cover himself.   "Guess I made a bad choice
to go out in just my jeans last week", he said,
smiling.

"Last week?"

"Yes.  They grabbed me when I was off duty and going
out for the evening.  I've been kept like this in that
fucking holding centre for about a week.  You're
lucky, just having been grabbed..."

"What do you mean?"

"Look, isn't it obvious?  They're slavers.  We've all
been captured.  And we're being flown somewhere - the
fuck knows where - to be sold.  This is like the
modern equivalent of those slave ships you read about
bringing niggers from Africa to the American
plantations all those centuries ago - now we're the
slaves, I think."

A lot of the men around seemed to agree with him.  We
all seemed to be much the same type - I think I was
the youngest, at eighteen, and the marine was probably
the oldest, at thirty-something, and the rest were
somewhere in-between.  We'd all got reasonable bodies,
though, and there were none of those "tubs of lard"
you see everywhere these days:  I guessed they all
worked out, or were like the marine, or had manual
labouring jobs.  And then the other thing struck me -
we were all white guys, no blacks, Asiatics,
Hispanics:  just good old plain and simple
Anglo-Saxons.

The plane sped on and one guy near the window said
we'd been over the sea all the time since shortly
after we took off, so he guessed we must be crossing
the Atlantic.  Another similarity between the plane
and those slave ships then started to make itself felt
- we were all caged in, and there was no provision for
rest rooms!  I mean, you hear how the bilges in those
ships stank with the slaves' waste as they weren't let
out on deck or anything, and it was the same here:  it
must have been a couple of hours into the flight when
one guy said he was desperate to piss.  We all tried
hollering for someone to come, and a guard strode down
the narrow central gangway and told us to shut up as
it was annoying the Captain.  I guess he was a guard
as he was in some sort of uniform -  khaki shirt and
shorts, with a leather belt from which hung a cane, a
couple of sets of cuffs, and some other stuff I didn't
recognise.  He was carrying a gun.

"It's a fourteen hour flight", he told us.  "So if you
need to piss, do it.  You can't hold out that long.
But don't expect any food or water."  He strode back,
and we all looked at each other - well, my bladder was
starting to make those little painful sensations that
says it needed a bathroom "soon", and now I started to
almost panic.  The first guy really was desperate,
though, as he finally just had to stand there, close
to the back wall of our cage, and let fly!  Well it
really was gross - as well as the smell of his piss,
the stream of it ran across the floor of our cage and
there just wasn't room for everyone to get out of the
way - including me, and I got my feet wet.

 I was stamping around and almost crying, trying to
get clean, when the marine guy put his arm around my
bare shoulder.  "Easy, boy", he said.  "It's not worth
it.   Things are going to get a whole lot worse.  He
was only the first, and none of us is going to be able
to hold out for fourteen hours.  There must be seven
hundred men crammed in here, and the floor's going to
be petty wet by the time we arrive.  Still, it's only
piss - it's pretty sterile and you won't die of it.
Now, I may as well make myself comfortable...."

I watched as he just held his dick and pissed, as if
it was the most natural thing in the world.  He shook
himself dry, and saw the look on my face.  "In the
marines you get used to pissing in front of your
buddies,  I guess.  I'm Joe...."

"Steve", I replied.  And now I could see what he
meant, as spurred on by his example, several other
guys had started to piss as well, and the floor was
getting very wet.  "You'd think they'd let us out, to
go to the bathroom..."

He just laughed.  "Think about it,  Steve.  Seven
hundred of us on here - how many guards would they
need?  It looks as if they're only flying with one as
we're all securely caged.  If they had to unlock the
cage, get a guy out, escort him to the heads, then
bring him back... They'd need dozens.  And it would be
dangerous - someone, like me, would try to attack
them..."

I nodded.  "Where do you think we're going, Joe?"

"I reckon somewhere in Africa.  Somewhere deep in the
heart of it, where it's kind of 'private' and where
they say slavery still flourishes."

"But we're not slaves..."

"Steve, we are now!  Do you think they'd capture all
these guys - and some gals - have that holding
facility, this chartered plane... It's an old 747 I
think, but even so the charter rates are thousands of
dollars a day, and they've had it fitted out with
these cages.... They wouldn't, or couldn't, do all
that unless there was a big profit in it.  And this
must be a hugely profitable business - we cost
nothing, and will probably sell for very high prices.
And that's why we're all fit, young guys - they're
going to get a lifetime of hard work out of us."

"But my monm and dad will go looking for me..."

"And the mariens for me.  But what progress are they
going to make?  Hundreds of young men go missing every
week in the USA.  There's no chance they'll uncover
something like this.  I was just snatched off the
street, and there's no 'trail' to follow - they junked
my cell phone, and you can bet they haven't been using
my credit cards.  No, Steve, it's us they want, and us
they've got..."

By the time we landed, I was exhausted.  The whole
place stank, and I was bone tired and had mostly
dozed, as you do on planes, resting up against the
marine.  How quickly I was losing my inhibitions about
not touching other guys' bare skin.  Still, we had no
choice, as the cage was so cramped.

They took us off cage by cage.  Guards in the same
khaki uniforms,, carrying guns, lined the plane steps.
 At the bottom I stopped for a moment to take it all
in - the almost deserted runway, the furious scorching
heat of the sun, the strange smell of rotting
vegetation in the air, the shouting in some strange
language form the guards.  And then I screamed - one
of the guards had slashed at my bare back with a whip!
 It stung, and I leapt forward, and I guess the words
he was using meant "keep moving".  Look, I'd obviously
never been whipped before, and I didn't even really
believe all that stuff you read on the Internet about
men whipping each other.  But my back was stinging
with angry pain, and that kind of makes you think that
it's real enough!  I was to discover later that I was
fucking lucky - the guard only "encouraged" me to keep
moving, as when the guards use the whip in earnest it
usually breaks the skin and makes you bleed.  Still, I
expect they were under orders not to damage the new
arrivals, before we'd been sold.

The guards patrolled up and down as a long line of us
formed on the runway, so there was no possibility of
escape.   All of the guards were big blacks, and they
were generally herding us towards a tent that was set
up ahead.  It felt so odd to see us white guys in our
tattered and grimy underwear (or naked, like Joe),
when the blacks were so immaculately dressed.  The
line seemed to move, then stop, and move again, and
obviously something was going on, and then as I got
closer I saw that each of us in turn was being looked
at by eight big black guys who were sitting behind a
long table in the shade provided by the tent - it was
fucking hot for us men out there in the sun!  They
were not in the uniform the guards wore, but had a
variety of "western" style dress - a couple had suits
on, with ties, and others were more casually dressed
in open necked shirts and well-cut slacks.  When I at
last got to the head of the line and I stood there in
front of the men, I saw why it had kept jerking to a
halt:  they started to gabble and chatter at each
other in their language as they looked at me.  Then
they shouted something to the guard who was
immediately behind me, and he simply pulled down my
boxers before I could stop him.  I tried to cover
myself as I wasn't going to be looked at like that,
but one of the men said calmly, in English,  "Raise
your hands, boy, or else you'll be whipped."

Well, having felt the whip once already and knowing
there was a guard behind me, I did as he said and I
could see them all looking at my dick.  "Turn
around!", the command came, and so I did so, and then
"Turn back", followed by "How old are you, boy?"

"Eighteen" I said, and this seemed to spark off
another round of discussion amongst the men as they
sat there.  I just stood there, feeling very conscious
of my nudity, and not knowing what the fuck was going
on as their language was completely incomprehensible.
Remembering what had been said on the plane, I thought
that his is how those black slaves must have felt when
they were first landed in the USA, hearing all the
settlers and people speaking English.  But almost
before I could complete this thought, they seem to
have decided, and the guard stepped forward and marked
a big green cross on my chest, with a magic marker!
He pushed at me to move on then, and I went to pick up
my boxers, but he pushed at me again and I got the
idea that I was to leave them.  Little did I then
realise that that was the last time I was ever to be
clothed, even minimally.

On the other side of the tent there were ten trucks
drawn up, and the guards, seeing the green cross on my
chest, pushed me over toward the third in line.  It
was so fucking humiliating - I was being "sorted",
based on the green cross, just as if I was some sort
of package in a warehouse and not a man.   It was a
kind of open bed truck, but they'd built an enclosure
on it - a few poles sticking up, and wire mesh all
around.  I was pushed up into this enclosure, and saw
that all the other guys there were marked with a green
cross, as I was.  A few moments later, to my great
delight, Joe came too, and he just grinned at me.  "So
we're both naked now, eh, Steve?  Sill, never mind -
you're like me, you've got nothing to be ashamed of."

The enclosure gradually filled up until it was
"standing room only", and then they closed off the
entrance to our enclosure, and the truck started up
and moved off.  We drove a mile or so until we entered
a town, and it looked pretty prosperous - there were
expensive looking shops lining the main thoroughfare,
and at pavement cafes well groomed blacks in
beautifully cut clothes sat sipping drinks.  The sight
of our truck with its cargo of naked guys didn't seem
to be causing any special stir, and the only other
unusual thing that I noticed was that the only white
faces we saw were doing pretty menial sorts of work:
at a traffic signal, for example, there was a white
street sweeper brushing the sidewalks vigorously, and
he only seemed to be wearing some sort of skimpy loin
cloth.

"What's going on, Joe?" I asked, as Joe seemed to know
about this kind of stuff.

"I expect we've been split up amongst the men who
financed this slaving expedition, Steve.  It must have
cost a lot to hire that plane, and to arrange for us
to be captured and warehoused and so on, and I think
they were entrepreneurs who got together to finance
the whole thing.  Then, when we arrived, they needed
to divide the spoils equably between themselves -
that's why they were spending a lot of time discussing
you, as presumably, being a young guy, you're more
valuable as you've got a longer working life.  It's
just like when they got together to mount slaving
expeditions to Africa - the first thing they did when
a ship landed in Virginia was to apportion the slaves
to the 'promoters', as they were called."

"But what's going to happen to us, Joe?"

"I don't know - but I'd guess they're going to  make
us work.  I think we're slaves, and that's what slaves
do."

"But why would they want that, Joe?  Surely they can
hire people.... It's not as if there's full
employment, is it?"

"It's not about employing people to work for you,
Steve.  It's about power.  Some men have a desire to
totally control others, and what better way than this?
 Have a man captured, bring him here and strip him,
then turn him into a slave.  A slave has no choices,
remember.  He can't walk off the job, he can't take a
day off sick, he can't refuse to do a job..... I
should think the joy of having that total control must
be a real thrill to some men, and they're indulging
their fantasies by reintroducing slavery - although
now it's the blacks who are the masters, and us white
guys who are the slaves.  And instead of bringing
slaves form Africa to America, they're bringing us
from America to Africa."

The truck sped on along really bumpy roads, and any
inhibitions I may have had about touching other guys
not totally evaporated as we clung together.   You may
think it was stupid of us not to try to escape, but
firstly there was a guard with a rifle cradled in his
arms who sat in the front of the truck, but facing
backwards at us.  And secondly, as Joe said when I
whispered to him that we could probably overpower the
guard and the driver "And then what, Steve?  We're
naked, we have no idea even where we are, or in what
direction to escape to, even if we could.  They taught
us in the marines to bide our time if we were
captured, as you need to have some reasonable chance
of success before you sell your life in an escape
attempt:  and that chance is hugely improved if you
know where you are, and where to head to.  If we broke
out now, we'd just be a bunch of naked guys running
around here in the middle of this wilderness."

Well he was right,  I suppose, and so we just huddled
there as the truck sped on, trying to keep the burning
sun off our exposed bodies as best we could.    It
took about an hour to get to our destination - a
walled city, rather like you see in those old desert
stories, with towers at each corner and with walls the
colour of dark dry brick.  We went in through big
double gates, then along narrow alleys and passages
until finally we turned in through another set of
gates, and the truck stopped.  The now familiar guards
started to gesture to us to get down off the truck,
one at a time, and under their watchful eyes we were
led, one by one, into one of the buildings.

The first thing they did was hose us down - my skin
was really burning, and the cool water splashing all
over me was a huge relief.  Then we were given cool
water to drink - a lot of it - in sort of metal
flasks.  I didn't want to drink all of mine, but Joe
whispered that we must be sweating gallons, and we
needed to drink, so I did.  I hated the next bit:  in
two, we were made to crouch down on an open grill, and
the guards made gestures and noises indicating that we
were to crap!  I did need to, actually, as it was more
than a day since I was captured in Miami, but all the
same it's hard if you've never done it in public
before, isn't it?  It was only because Joe squatted
down alongside me and said "Hey, kid, it's no worse
than being on manoeuvres in the marines... We often
had to do stuff like this if we were on exercises in
the woods.." That I managed to at all, but I was
blushing a bright red by the time the guards told us
to move on, so the next two guys could come behind us.
 They fed us then, and I have to say it wasn't all
that bad - some sort of porridge, but full of nuts and
dried raisins and currants and stuff, although I
wasn't used to eating with my fingers;  but perhaps it
was just because I was really hungry.  But  I saw Joe
actually licking his bowl clean, and he whispered "You
need all the strength you can get, Steve - don't waste
a scrap.  We've no way of knowing when we'll next be
fed."

We were bedded down in a cell that just had straw on
the floor, and I think we  were all so tired and
overwhelmed by what had happened to us that we
actually did sleep.  Then the next morning we were
given more water and more of the porridge, and then,
one by one, hosed down.  Then finally, joy of joys, we
were each given a pair of shorts to wear - you just
can't imagine how great it is to be respectable again,
even if the shorts had an open fly without a zip or
buttons.

I was chained next to Joe when they put us "on
display" later than morning - if he hadn't been there,
trying to be encouraging, it would have been even
worse than it was.  We were led out in our shorts to
one of the long passage ways that snaked its way
through the town, and at about five foot intervals
were simply chained to the wall by a cuff around our
ankles.  As they did this, the guards also cuffed our
hands behind our backs, and then they simply left us.
All that morning the crowds swirled along the alley,
and many of the people stopped to stare at us - they
were all blacks, and many of them were very well
dressed in "Western" style clothing, although some
were in brightly coloured long robes, and stuff like
that.  It seemed we were in some kind of "shop
window", as passers by could, if they wished, feel our
muscles, stroke our bodies, command us to open or
mouths so they could inspect our teeth, and even
plunge their hands into the open fly of our shorts to
grope at our dicks and balls!  I'd never been so
totally humiliated, and the first time a man made to
grab at my dick, I shouted and screamed at him to
leave me alone, and tried to get away from him -
utterly futile, of course, as I was cuffed and
shackled to the spot.  A guard came along, attracted
by the commotion, and savagely slashed at my butt with
his cane, so had that I was almost knocked over.
After that I just stood there, head hung in shame, as
the crowds did whatever they wanted to me.

The auction, as I guesses that's what it was, was held
in the cool of the evening.  They unshackled us from
the inspection wall, gave us a bowl of the porridge to
eat, and then we were lined up ready to go up onto a
small podium in front of a crowd of a hundred or so
potentially interested purchasers.  Thank god I've not
got to be naked in front of that lot, I thought, as I
saw the fashionably dressed black men and women taking
their seats, but when it was my turn to be sold, the
auctioneer simply pulled my shorts down and then
rotated me so that everyone could get a good look t my
dick, and my butt (a butt with a couple of red stripes
on it, from the caning.  He must have made some sort
of joke about that, as there was an amused murmur from
the audience.).  I stood there, utterly helpless,
hands cuffed behind me as there was some sort of
shouted question form the audience and, in response,
the auctioneer grabbed hold of my dick and squeezed at
the tip so that my head emerged, and I began to get an
erection.  He asked the audience something and they
seemed to be satisfied, and mortified with shame and
blushing deeply, I was left to stand there as the
bidding proceeded - I don't think cut guys can ever
really appreciate how private a guy's dick head is
when is decently covered with his 'skin - at school,
I always turned to the wall in the showers, of course,
when I wanted to make myself really clean.

I've no idea how much I was sold for, as I couldn't
understand  a word of the language, but when the
auctioneer's gavel fell I knew I had been sold.  His
assistant wrote something above my left pec in magic
marker, and  I was ushered off the stage, with no time
to pick up the shorts.  Guards and assistants read the
stuff on my chest and sorted me into a cell with four
others, all of whom had the same kind of
Arabic-looking stuff scrawled on us, and I felt just
like some sort of animal at a livestock market who
gets marked with the buyer's name, so that they can
keep track of who's bought who.  We were all pretty
silent, stunned by what had happened to us, but to my
great joy we were joined eventually by Joe, who
grinned at me, put his arm around my shoulder to try
to cheer me up, and said "Seems like you and me have
got the same owner, Steve."

"Joe, they can't have just auctioned me, surely...."

"They surely did, Steve.  We were on display for
prospective buyers earlier on, and then we were
auctioned.  We're slaves, buddy, and we've just been
sold.  That's how they dealt with the niggers who were
brought to the good old US of A.  I wonder who's
bought us, though, and for what?"

"What do youthink, Joe?"

"Well, looking around here I'd say it was something
that needed hard, manual labour - look at all of us,
we're pretty fit and tough.  And that's typically what
slaves are used for, or were used for in the
nineteenth century, anyway - growing cotton, sugar
cane harvesting, that sort of stuff. I reckon our
owner has himself a plantation somewhere, and we're
all the latest additions to the workforce."

"How come you know all about this, Joe?"

"My folks wanted me to go to college and made me write
a paper on nineteenth century practices in the South.
But I went off and joined the marines instead, as I
wanted to see the world.  But not like this.....", he
said, grinning at me to try to cheer me up.

"So what happens now, do you reckon?"

"Steve, I don't think you want to  know..."

"Yes I do"

"OK, you asked for it!  Well, what does an owner want
to do next to something he owns?  He..."

Joe stopped speaking abruptly as outside our cell
there was a really big black guy - six-six, I'd say,
and solid muscle.  He was wearing a snowy white
short-sleeved cotton shirt with a bright green silk
cravat at the neck, and immaculately cut grey slacks
fell to the expensive leather loafers he wore.  He
spoke in English, perfect unaccented English, of the
kind you hear some Englishmen speak.

"You slaves are going to join my work force at my
plantation."  There was a shout of disbelief from one
of the guys, and he roared "Silence!  The next man to
speak will have his vocal chords cut.  Slaves do not
interrupt their owners"  We were stunned into silence
at the casual way he'd said that, and he went on "You
are now part of the work force at my plantation.  As
such, only two things are required of you:  hard work,
and total obedience.  Failure to work hard, or to
obey, means only one thing:  punishment.  All my
overseers have my full authority to cane and whip idle
and disobedient slaves, and in more severe cases I
myself use the bullwhip to very good effect - and you
will not wish to learn just how good I am at flaying
the skin off a slave's back."

He turned to go, and one of the guys called out
"Please..... Sir....."

The man whipped around.  "You cannot have a question.
Slaves do not question.  Slaves obey.  But as you have
dared to risk your vocal chords, you may continue."

"Please, sir, can you call my wife... I've been
missing now for several days, and she'll be worried
sick.  And she's pregnant, sir, and you know how
worrying that is... I'm concerned that the stress will
bring on premature labour.  I can give you the number,
and you can call collect...."

The big black just laughed.  "You're lucky I'm in a
good mood, or I would have had you muted permanently
for daring to speak.  Now, remember this:  you're a
slave.  Slaves do not have families.  Your wife and
child are now your ex-wife and former child.  You are
a slave, the lowest of the low, and you owe your duty
and obedience only to me."

He simply walked off then, totally uninterested in
whatever else we might have to say, and the rest of us
did our best to comfort the guy who'd spoke, who
looked pretty cut up at what had been said.  He kept
repeating over and over "But Mary-Lou's going to have
a little girl any day now....", and just didn't seem
to understand what our owner - as I guess that's what
I should call him - had said.

We were loaded into a cage on the back of a small
pick-up for our journey from the slave dealer to our
new home.  And when I say cage, I meand just that - a
barred thing, like you transport dogs in.  We couldn't
stand up, and just sat there bent over a bit as we
watched the countryside speed by.  Gradually the
sombre desert started to turn green, and soon there
were immaculate fields with all sorts of strange crops
that I couldn't identify in them.  I was soon to learn
why they were so immaculate - it was going to be my
labour, and that of hundreds like me, who kept them
so!   Joe was strangely silent - even for the short
time I'd know him he always seemed to have something
to say - but perhaps he was interested in the view,
too.

There was a long driveway from the highway up to the
"plantation", and it was impeccably neat with finely
trimmed grass, a white picket fence all the way, and
lamp standards at intervals.  The labour to keep such
a long driveway so immaculate must be immense - as
indeed I was to find it was!    The plantation itself
was another set of buildings in the dark red brick
stuff, surrounded by a high wall.  We were driven
around to the back of one of them, and at once guards
came out in their now familiar khaki uniforms with
their leather belts hung around with all sorts of
stuff.  "Hang in there, Steve", Joe whispered.  "It
will all be over soon...."

I didn't get the chance to ask him what, as a guard
gestured at me with his cane, and pushed me into the
building.  More incomprehensible grunts and I realised
I was supposed to kneel down in front of something big
and heavy, looking rather like and anvil, and then a
slave came over and collared me.  How easy it is to
say that now... "a slave came over..." - already my
thinking was telling me that any white guy who was
naked must be a slave, and  this guy had the big,
burly muscles that really hard manual labour gives
you.  "...and collared me."  Yes, he put my collar on.
 That collar that I wear still today.  The standard
slave collar, that all slaves on our owner's
plantation wear - nothing fancy, just a three inch
wide band of heavy, black iron, with "eyes" standing
out from it through which a coffle chain, or wrist
cuffs, can be threaded.   It was open at the time of
course and he pulled it around my neck, then used a
huge pair of pincer-like things to squeeze it back
into a circular shape, with the ends nearly touching.
They use a rivet, a red hot iron rivet, to join the
two ends together and I thought he was going to burn
my ear as he fitted the rivet, and then banged it flat
with his huge hammer.  I'd seen pictures of nigger
slaves in the South wearing collars just like this,
and now here I was, fitted out in the same way.

"Stand up", he said, and as I got to my feet I felt
the weight of the collar bearing down on my shoulders
- it's four pounds, actually, and Joe tells me that
they always use heavy collars in spite of them
affecting our efficiency as the sheer weight makes
them oppressive, and there's no way of fooling
yourself into thinking that you're not wearing this
badge of servitude.  I felt my head bowed down by the
weight (although you get big corded neck muscles
eventually by way of compensation).  The blacksmith
ran his fingers around inside he collar, and I
flinched as he managed to pinch the skin.  "You'll
do", he told me. "Too loose and it will chafe.  Too
tight, and it will choke you.  Now..... Over the
anvil...."

I didn't understand at first what he meant, but his
strong hands guided me to kneel down, and then to
stretch my body over the cold metal.  At once a
leather strap was tightened around me, holding my
waist down.  I wondered what was going on, then the
world stopped, as a totally consuming agony of pain
went through me.  I've never known anything like it
before or since, and even now I can't describe how it
felt as he pushed the red hot brand into my left butt
cheek.  I know I screamed, and carried on screaming
until my throat was hoarse, and I had nothing left to
give when he grabbed my right arm, stretched it out
across his massive thigh, and burned the second brand
into my upper arm.

The only pain relief they give you is to allow you to
throw yourself into the big trough of cold water they
keep in the blacksmith's for quenching iron as it's
being worked, and I sat there, desperately trying to
make some kind of sense at what had just happened.  I
could see the brand on my upper arm, some sort of
strange Arabic character, and the way the skin was all
blistering and puffy around it.  I stayed there as
long as I could, but when I heard the next guy scream,
I had to get out and stand there so that he could try
and ease his suffering.  Joe did his best not to
scream, I think, but even he did, and finally we all
stood there, heads bowed, with the big "S" they'd put
on our butts and the fancy mark on our arms.

Through chattering teeth Joe said "I thought that's
what would happen next.  That's what happened to a lot
of black slaves on the plantations.  They collar us to
remind us that we're slaves, as well as to make it
easy to chain us together and control us.  They brand
us because it's the ultimate sign that we are no
longer free men - the 'S'  was given to many slaves so
that, if there's ever any doubt, a man's pants could
be removed and his butt inspected.   But the owner's
mark is special - it's the ultimate symbol of one
man's control over another:  you are my property, and
I have marked you indelibly, in a way that can never
be removed, so that the whole world knows you belong
to me."


He paused for a moment to draw his breath, as it was
an effort to speak at all, the state we were in.  He
looked at his arm, and pointed at it.  Our owner's
mark was right over his "Semper Fi" tattoo.  "I guess
I'm no longer a marine", he said, trying to sound
cheerful.

They led us off to the slave barn then, as it was
evening, and that's where all the plantation's slaves
sleep overnight.  As the heavy door was swung open we
could see hundreds of naked bodies sprawled out on the
straw that lined the floor.  A voice called out "fresh
meat", and Joe put his arm protectively around m
shoulder again (being careful not to touch the boiling
skin where my brand was still hurting terribly).
You'd think, wouldn't you, that men who had been
enslaved would have some common purpose, would look
out for each other - but I guess it's like being in
prison:  the strong prey on the weak, as men locked up
together have a need for sexual release.  In spite of
the terrible hurt from his branding, Joe had to fight
two or three of them to prevent them trying to drag me
off to be fucked.  When they realised he was a skilled
fighter they ultimately stopped, but I was shivering
and shaking at what might have happened to me if Joe
had not been there.

He said that we'd better lie close together in case
they tried anything during the night, and I remember
my first night of slavery as being not only the
terrible pain I was in, but the feel of Joe's warm
skin against mine.

End Of Part One