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BLACK PRINCE:
A Romance
from another time
by
Once upon a time (before waxed cotton was
invented) there was a certain kind of very smooth black and shiny, tough and
rugged waterproof two-piece motorcycle suit. From the first moment I saw one I
wanted to touch it, feel it, rub myself against it.
Most of all I wanted to zip and strap and snap myself into one and stomp around
in it. As at that time I was fourteen years old, this was pure fantasy. I soon
discovered it was called a ‘Black Prince’ suit, which seemed appropriate
because to me at that age anybody wearing one looked like a modern knight in
shining armour.
That was a lot of years ago and, even then,
my attraction towards tough waterproof fabric wasn’t a new thing. Since before
I could remember I’d been somehow excited by images of masculine men wearing
thick and restrictive ‘gear’. When I was only seven my uncle Ted who was ‘away
at the war’ had stored his massive heavy, shiny, long black motorcycling coat
in the big walk-in wardrobe on our landing. Don’t ask me why; I guess his
wife’s cupboards weren’t big enough. I only know I was drawn to it, and used to
sneak into the dark interior, shut the door and wrap myself in this slippery,
rubbery Greatcoat, as it was called. It was so heavy the loop to hang it up by
was made of chain; another thing that attracted me to it. There in the
breathless blackness I would feel it and smell it long before I knew what being
turned-on was.
By the age of ten, American Fliers stationed
near our provincial town who wore brown leather bomber jackets somehow
attracted me, but not as much as my mother’s youngest brother, a cherubic
looking young airman with a tangle of curly gold hair. When he came home on
leave he wore a sheepskin flying jacket with brown leather outside, heavy white
oiled wool high neck sweater, and wellies turned down at the tops with white
sea-boot socks showing. I think it was the gear - but it could have been the
man, although at that age I thought in terms of Heroes. I was also attracted to
pictures of knights totally encased in metal armour.
When the first ‘Black Prince’ two piece suits
came onto the market for motorcyclists in the late Forties they made even Uncle
Ted’s blanket-lined full skirted shiny black ‘Storm Coat’ look very old
fashioned. The Pride and Clarke mail order biker catalogue I’d so guiltily sent
away for and drooled over, informed me that the Black Prince was ‘ ... the
ultimate in weather protection, comfort and style’. Pictures in motorcycle
catalogues from that era still turn me on, though at that time they really made
my palms sweat.
By the age of seventeen I was working
temporarily in Barrow in Furness (the wilds of the Industrial North) for a
pittance. My landlady’s husband worked in the ship yards; ex-navy, he rode a
motorbike, went fishing on his own and spent a lot of time gardening on his
bleak allotment on the outskirts of Town. I fancied him rotten in an unfocussed
way. At that time, though, I just wanted to be like him;
masculine, confident and unselfconscious. He wore clapped out navy
oilskins to and from work more often than not, and a sensational Government
surplus heavy twill Tank Suit for when off on his bike in cold weather. I also
fantasised about wearing this suit and being wrestled into submission in it by
him while wearing his black ex-navy oilskins. My instinctive preferences were
at that time still trying to find a focus.
When a spanking new Black Prince suit arrived
for him by mail order (from Pride and Clarke) I was in serious mental turmoil,
and he got the rough edge of his wife’s tongue for this piece of financial
self-indulgence. But as he climbed into the glistening suit for the first time,
and zippered and strapped and belted it, and all its tough snap fasteners and
collar flaps and ankle flaps were snapped into place, I was filled with secret
lust for the suit and seeing him in it. Here was the ultimate ‘Black Prince’
for me. I wasn’t clear what I wanted him to do to me or with me, but I was in
danger of making a fool of myself because he was less than impressed by me. He
was also not too happy at having me lodging in his house, but his practical
wife insisted that they needed the extra cash (Three pounds a week for full
board!).
I was born in The Midlands and anybody from
south of The Pennines was already suspect in the eyes of this slightly dour
epitome of northern working class maleness. Drafted into Barrow for six months
on the local newspaper on an exchange scheme, I was judged to be a pen-pusher
rather than a real
Generally referred to as Banny because they
were Lil and Reg Bannerman, in their homely street
they were a popular couple and regulars in several of the local pubs and
Working Men’s clubs. I was welcomed into their circle for their sakes, Lil introducing me as something of a cultural feather in
her cap. She was no snob, and one of the most wonderfully genuine people it has
ever been my luck to know. However, she was secretly concerned that after ‘a
good war’ her husband was perhaps slipping backwards socially and becoming dangerously
like his father, one of the grimmest of grimly resentful unskilled labourers
who had struggled through The Depression. ‘Our Lil’,
on the other hand, not being from industrial Barrow was a feisty
When I first arrived, his brooding presence
in the small backstreet house carried a little menace, but Lil
would wink and tell me he’d ‘Get used to it!’. They
were both enthusiastic supporters of their local soccer team, so the fact I
knew enough about Midland teams to name names (I’d covered matches for the
Leicester Mercury), Banny and I found our first point of contact (or conflict).
His notorious dark moods and need for solitude intrigued me. He’d been at sea
from an early age, thrown together with dozens of men, escaping from a large
family living in a very small house on a very low income ruled by a tyrannical
father. Now he worked unsociable hours, drank rather too much and spent a lot
of time off on his own, either out on his bike or up on his allotment.
Lil’s determination for me to
‘pal up’ with her husband embarrassed me, particularly because I was quite
fearful of unintentionally revealing my guilty secret. Homosexuality was still
a criminal offence so, although I’d done nothing about my natural instincts so
far, I was less than comfortable around Banny. I found his northern blokeishness slightly menacing because I wasn’t yet able to
deal with my own potential gayness (a term not yet in general use). I envied Lil her husband and felt slightly sorry for her. She was a
lusty lass and although I knew she was sexually regularly ‘attended to’, I
guessed there was little imagination behind her morose husband’s efforts at
love making.
Because Lil really
loved her Banny and was afraid his ‘deepness’ (as she called it) meant she was
‘too ordinary’ for him, she actually told me she thought I could stimulate him
in a way she couldn’t ... poor innocent lass! She kept hinting that he should
take me on his bike, fishing or at least show me more of the local countryside
that she loved. She occasionally rode pillion with Banny (as even she called
him), mainly to visit her family’s remote farm on the Coast Road. Eventually he
sighed, as was his habit with Lil, and did as she
suggested.
He tentatively offered to show me a bit of
the
Around the house he gradually began to
tolerate me more like a younger brother rather than a ‘mucker’
as they say in Barrow, and at that time our relationship was a tightrope for
me. There was no way Banny could be even experimentally gay and continue with
the life he’d been brought up to. Although regarded locally as something of a
Dark Horse, he was essentially what they used to call a man’s man. At that time
in the north, Working Men’s clubs, Lodge Nights, lad’s nights out, exclusively
men only pub rooms were all part of the cultural heritage. But this story is
about a ‘Black Prince’ rather than the complications of growing up gay in the
Industrial North.
I did get to wear Banny’s fantastic new suit,
but only when he and his wife were out of the house together for the day or
even over night. One night I even slept in it and was then worried that it
wouldn’t have cooled down again before he came home or he might smell me on the
oddly flannelette-like lining. I hung it inside out in the bike-shed where he
kept it, until the time they were due home. Another of the problems was that in
those days nobody locked their front doors and any of Lil’s
family would regularly walk into the house without knocking, any time they were
in Barrow. To ferret around Banny’s motorcycle and fishing suits and boots was
a constant temptation when nobody was home; so there was a delicious danger
about masturbating over it all. I started to fantasize about two of Lil’s horny handed brothers dropping in unexpectedly and
finding me tying myself up in his gear ... and carrying me away to their barns
and windswept farm cottages (specially the two who weren’t yet married and
lived together in muddy isolation). But, like sex itself, it was all fiction in
my mind ... not that any male-male fiction of that type was being published
anywhere in the world at that period ... not as far as I knew, at least.
Eventually, I did get to wear a set of
Banny’s ex-Navy oilskins semi-legitimately. It turned out there was a second
set he kept in his shed up on the allotment that supplemented their limited post-war
household budget. This deliciously stiff and pungent foul weather suit he’d
somehow managed to ‘borrow’ from the Navy at the end of his service. The heavy
hooded anorak and pants were brand new and had lain folded away for several
years. The reason he’d never worn them was because he regularly wore his old
set of ‘skins’ to and from the allotment when he was ‘in his muck’ as he called
it.
My job with the Barrow Herald included a lot
of evening reporting assignments so there were afternoons when I was officially
off duty and at a loose end. Banny frequently worked nights by choice, so after
a sleep and mid-day drink he spent many solitary afternoons tending his plot.
My offer to help with some digging was met with a sardonic smile. But, perhaps
because he thought it might ‘toughen me up a bit’ (a phrase he often used), he
agreed.
On the Barrow peninsular where wind and rain
is part of the landscape, it was common practice just to ignore the drizzle and
work outdoors. So before long it was logical for me to climb into his spare
oilskin smock and trousers to work alongside him on my occasional visits. Most
of the individual plots out on that remote hillside had their own rudimentary
wooden shack where tools and seeds could be stored. Banny’s hut also had a
Primus stove for brewing tea, and a rough cot on which I suspect he’d slept off
many a boozy lunch time. It was something of a den for him; a hideaway for a
curiously solitary man. At first I thought he might resent my determination not
only to get to know him better, but ‘muck in’ alongside him. He never mentioned
the fact that I always seemed to have free time on days that threatened rain,
but he would occasionally stop and watch me happily digging or hoeing, sweating
away in his spare ‘foul weather’ suit and say with a smile ‘We’ll make you one
of us yet’. If only!
As Lil predicted,
he ‘got used to it’, and I became his ‘mucker’ ...
and nobody looked twice as we worked in the rain and sat around in the hut in
wellies and oilskins on long autumn afternoons and occasional Sundays. Banny
being ex-navy, it was inevitable that when we were alone I’d work the
conversation around to my favourite topics; knot-tying and the man-to-man
roughhouse games. My most potent fantasies had always been based on competitive
masculine horseplay especially when it involved ‘tying-up’. So, as a budding
reporter I played the ‘Learning about life I’d never experienced’ card and
asked about pranks that matelots played on one
another. With quiet humour Banny would recount stories about the physicality of
randy blokes at sea and ashore and apprentices in the shipyard when he was
younger, usually implying that he’d watched from the sidelines rather than
taking part in such mucking-around as he called it.
The gradual relaxing of his guarded nature
was encouraging to experience. It was not a seduction because (a) it would be
dangerous and (b) I liked him as he was. The first invitation to go fishing
with him was quite a concession according to Lil who
had long ago accepted that he was a man who needed solitary time, or at least
time apart from her.
On our first experimental fishing trip
together it was logical for me to take along the now familiar oilskins from the
allotment. Banny had still been taking his old ‘skins’ and waders along on his
regular solitary fishing jaunts even after the advent of the Black Prince suit
which he now wore regularly on his bike in rain or shine. I might have risked
asking to borrow the padded Tank Suit if we’d been going far but the spot
chosen for this tentative trip was very close to home. However, the weather was
dull enough to warrant me wearing my ‘skins’ (as they’d become) clinging close
to the Black Prince on the back of the bike for the first time.
He seemed to enjoy schooling me in the gentle
art of lake fishing and the trips became a regular feature in our lives. Quite
often he took along a small tent in case the weather got really shitty when a
long ride from home. He admitted that he used to enjoy an occasional overnight
stay so he could do very early morning fishing but Lil
had never enjoyed the tent. An offer seemed to be on the table. I suddenly
became especially interested in learning more about dawn or even night fishing.
The idea of a night in a small tent in the pissing rain with two sets of
oilskins and his Black Prince suit hot off the bike to give the small space a
special smell and ‘atmosphere’ ... at least I could fantasise and get off on
the possibilities.
It was a seriously dangerous progression and
the first time we ‘slept over’ I was naturally extra cautious. So, I sensed,
was he. His status in the local community as a touchy and unpredictable hard
man was quite scary. There were stories of sudden social violence in his past.
Any suggestion of anything questionable about our relationship could have ended
in disaster. However, as the degree of his comfortableness with me grew, my
occasional cautious returns to the topic of challenging roughhouse games
between men were carefully connected to my journalistic development. He still
thought of me as having had a pampered upbringing, so he was forthcoming about
the benefits of manly physical competitiveness and body contact sports. This
theme I developed in casual conversation, eventually reintroducing a topic I’d
studiously resisted returning to too often. I told him I intended to do an
article on Harry Houdini’s tours of northern
On several previous occasions I’d asked Banny
about rope and cable tying in the Navy. Hammock stowing and lashing and general
horseplay with guys getting lashed up in their hammocks or to deck-rails at
night were, I already knew, old Navy practices. So,
tying up techniques suddenly became a legitimate topic because of my
speculation on what sort of challenges might be brought to Houdini by the
public today.
We were sleeping overnight on a fishing trip
up the Cumbrian coast the first time I got him to tie
me up. The weather was foul so not only were we in the tent early, but he was
wearing his Black Prince suit and I the foul weather suit and boots because it
was intensely cold and damp. Inside the tent from early dusk we talked about
possible Houdini challenges. He had previously mentioned that on board one ship
there had been a ‘regular Houdini-freak’. Later that evening, after a wet ride
out for a couple of beers and fish and chips, back in the tent I steered the
conversation back to how Houdini might have been foiled. He wasn’t easy to
convince that he might know a useful trick or two, but he did say he’d watched
as others challenged the guy aboard ship. When I asked how and if the guy got
out - he laughed and said there were several simple ways to rope somebody
inescapably. That was all the encouragement I needed - in the cause of
‘research’ he had to show me.
He had fishing line, a few odd straps (for
strapping things to his bike) and some rope - and I’d thoughtfully packed some
extra rope just in case, as the saying goes. It seemed acceptable to him to
while away a couple of otherwise dreary hours - and I was secretly determined
to spend all night trussed up next to this dark and sexy man dressed in boots
and a Black Prince suit worn over corduroys and seaman’s sweater.
Still head-to-foot in oilskins, I suggested
wearing gloves so my hands wouldn’t get cold if the escape took ... “too long”.
He refused to allow gloves because he instinctively knew this would make escape
easier. Being a practical man he approached the challenge seriously. After
tying my hands efficiently but not dangerously tightly behind my back (in a
small tent, this meant me lying face down with him kneeling astride me) he then
used a small canvas pouch he kept fishing weights in to cover both my hands,
cinching the strap tight enough to stop me working it off. He said it was to
keep my hands warm but it also prevented me using my fingers through the thick
canvas. Needless to say the ropes were inescapable. He offered to let me free
almost immediately and it wasn’t easy to invent excuses to persuade him to
leave me trussed all night. Eventually I just said ‘Fuck it Banny, it feels
great! I think I must be kinky. I like the feeling of being bundled up and tied
up with no possibility of escape’.
Well, I guess that’s when I learned that
honesty pays. It made him smile his quizzical dark-eyed smile, but from then on
he would tie me up whenever a suitable opportunity arose. When Lil went to visit her mother or when we were off fishing
he’d good naturedly indulge my ‘kink’ for a good healthy struggle and sweat,
and challenge me to get out or deal with it. The allotment hut became a
treasure house of stuff he specially introduced to vary his strapping and
wrapping. He seemed to look on it as a toughening up process, leaving me
trussed for unspecified periods - sometimes over night - but only, according to
him, because he knew I liked it. Significantly our activities were never
mentioned when Lil was around, and I’m sure he never
told her in private. His willingness to invent quite elaborate ‘challenges’
coupled with his refusal to admit any erotic involvement drove me crazy with
frustration. But I convinced myself that one false move on my part could spook
him and, should our activities become openly sexual, our relationship would
either explode or freeze.
This may have been a cop-out on my part.
Perhaps I was over cautious. Perhaps he was not as naive as he appeared. After
all he had spent several years in the navy - but he continued to truss and rope
and wrap - doing me a favour, as he put it. Gradually, he developed the game,
bringing from the ship yard industrial tape and metal crate strapping bands.
The periods of restraint became longer and more physically uncomfortable with
me never knowing how long before he’d come back. He would return and taunt me
for enjoying being trussed - but telling me it was good for me - toughen me up.
Sometimes, coming back after leaving me in a seriously uncomfortable situation,
he’d then leave again before finally returning to release me. But, never once
did he make any overt sexual overture or remark or leave me any opening to suggest
eroticism or even genital teasing. In fact, he noticeably no longer ever
accused me of being poofy or poncy
but insisted such situations were to encourage endurance and strength to
struggle out of his ‘challenges’ or learn to survive them.
Such deliberate avoidance of possible
homo-eroticism may sound unbelievable today but in those sexually inhibited
times blokes just didn’t even talk about that sort of stuff in Barrow in
Furness, even as a joke. There were ‘poofs and
pansies’ in the town and Banny and all his drinking cronies knew who they were.
There was no harassment of them, in fact most people
deliberately steered very clear of any social contact. In my work I met them
when covering amateur drama, at the local theatre and Arts events. Today this
may sound disgracefully stereotypic. There were even rumours of Rough Trade in
the town; men who fucked men they despised for money. I made a couple of
cautious attempts to discuss such situations with Banny, but as far as both he
and Lil were concerned ‘That
sort of thing!’ was totally beneath contempt ... full stop, end of discussion.
So, I had to chose between outwardly agreeing with
them or sowing seeds of doubt about my stance on issues the social climate of
Barrow in Furness in the late Forties was not yet ready to admit.
Banny was certainly not sexless. He screwed Lil resolutely in the hope of cementing their marriage. In
a small terraced house it wasn’t easy to ignore their regular efforts to
procreate. Occasionally Banny even mentioned to me that he wished she could
‘catch’. I wondered if he was afraid he might be infertile. Uncertainty about
his manhood may have been another reason he so studiously kept our little games
on a non-sexual level.
Our life as ‘muckers’
developed to bizarre levels with visits to the Dog Track, the Speedway Track
and local football matches. Best of all were the hillside bike scrambles,
togged up in the muckiest of waterproofs and wellies,
standing around with dozens of other masochists shivering and squelching around
as the bikers sprayed all and sundry with muddy slime. Helpfully diving forward
to drag some beleaguered bike out of a ditch only to be sprayed with mud for
your trouble as it roared away or was overtaken by other riders,
was considered to be good manly fun. Lil even
sometimes came along, which involved a second bike. On such occasions I
automatically rode with Banny, with Lil behind one of
her farmer brothers because they remained suspicious of me ... quite rightly
because I fancied two of them rotten.
Those winter afternoons had all the potential
for a muddy orgy - especially when it was only Banny and his ‘young mucker’, as I was known. We sluiced one another down with
gallons of water from brook or seashore before riding home; sometimes we peeled
off and dried out in the meagre
Memories of Banny in his glistening Black
Prince suit leaning over me and wrapping and tying, breathing into my ear and
holding me down because I started resisting while he was tying (but never
enough to discourage him). Was I a fool not to push our activities into overt
sexuality? Did he regret that I didn’t push him or did
he want it and thought I didn’t? Even when I met him later in life when Lil was dying of cancer (the dormant cancer which had
prevented her bearing a child) it was too late to be honest with one another. Probably my fault because I didn’t fully come out even to myself
for another fifteen years. He could have helped me. He never even let me
tie him down. He never left himself open to a legitimate approach from me. I
still believe all the shutters would have rolled down and I would no longer
have been welcome in his house. He could not have faced his drinking mates with
me at his side. At least, that’s what I hope; because if I got it wrong and he
was waiting for me, this is a modern tragedy I’m writing. Or might it have been
a brief ‘encounter’ that wrecked an amiable marriage - or could passionate
sexuality between us have been just a happy chapter in both our lives with no
long term effects?
The image of this dark and sexually powerful
Black Prince, booted and goggled (no statutory helmets in those days) is still
vivid in my sensual memory. Banny was the first man I saw and felt while
wearing that tantalising fabric. Sometime before my stay ended he was talking
about buying a Waxed Cotton version, the latest thing. One of Lil’s brothers had bought one and Banny had tried the
jacket on as I stood and lusted. After one particularly rugged Trial Bike
meeting in the mud, big Dan (the brother) decided his suit needed re-waxing. Lil had offered that Banny would lend a hand, and of course
I was game to assist ... while her tough farmer brother was wearing it ... in
the little brick back yard in
It’s not a case of luck or fate - perhaps we
make our own luck and chose our own fate. Who knows? I just know that Black
Prince suits still hold the appeal for me they held when I was seventeen and
now I’m sixty-five. I can now play comfortably in them and with people who get-off
on wearing them, whenever I like now ... and have been doing so for forty
years. Because all those years ago (on the day I left Barrow in Furness) I
vowed I’d never again hang back when something tempting was within reach. Since
then I’ve taken chances, made opportunities and been honest with myself and
other people about what I like. I told Banny I like to get tied up - but never
told him I wanted him to fuck me or do whatever he wanted to do with me - I
never told him I sort-of loved him - but didn’t want him to change his life for
me - or become something other than what he already was. But then again,
perhaps he knew I wanted him to fuck me rigid and perhaps he knew that I ‘sort
of loved him’ - and that was his problem.
I hope he had a happy and fulfilled life. I
have.
Jim Stewart - revised July
2000
Words 5200
HOUDINI CONNECTIONS
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