The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (49 page)

August 1, 1829—

Exactly one year after beginning this diary, I think I can look back with great satisfaction. I have attained age 41 with no decline in either my mental or physical capacities. Indeed, far from declining, I have discovered that my physical capacities are far superior to other men. I had known that I had ability to heal faster and better from minor wounds and sickness. Now, thanks to Ophelia, I know also that I can withstand injuries that would kill any ordinary man.

Not only this, but my mental capacities are also superior to other men's. Without any study, I find I can read Latin, speak Spanish, and quote passages from Shakespeare that I have never read. I can even set traps for small game, tie knots and handle a broadsword like a master!

Who would have thought that all my fears of a mere twelve month ago could so easily vanish? Who would have thought that age, far from bringing decline, confers greater power?

It seems that my mixed blood may well account for this superiority. Surely my abilities bespeak perfect balance between my physical or animal self and my spiritual or mental self. Few, if any, white men have the sexual appetite, let alone the sexual skills, that I have recorded in this diary. Few, if any, black men have the intellectual ability which I have recorded. In other words, I stand as living proof against those who argue that miscegenation does neither race any good. Indeed, it seems that the society has begun to recognize my full humanity. The Colonial Secretary, I am reliably informed, has issued an order removing all disabilities from free coloureds in Trinidad. I am sure it is the example of individuals such as myself which has helped the passage of this order.

There is a caveat to all this, however. Looking over my entries for the past year, I realize that these pages must never be read by other eyes. I intend to leave an autobiography, of course, for God would never have granted me such magnificent gifts were it not to serve as a lesson to all mankind. But what I write here, privately, would muddy that message. The ordinary person can never understand the intense passions that drive men of extraordinary abilities. They would object even to the apparent crudity of my language, although it is modelled on Chaucer's. Great men always stand outside the pale of established society, for only thus can we do our deeds. Even Dr. Johnson was described as a great sloven, who never put on a clean shirt more than once or twice a month, and who was reserved until he drank a bottle of claret, after which he became good company. (I note, too, that the eminent compiler of our Dictionary used to regularly propose a toast to ‘the next insurrection of the Negroes in the West Indies.')

At any rate, I too have my little peculiarities, which do not detract from my superior abilities, but which I needs must keep secret. But I cannot stop fucking Ophelia. Nor can I destroy these pages, which I have so carefully laboured over. But I must change my will to ensure my lawyer buries my diaries unread with me. As Moliére wrote (and only the original French gives his aphorism its true flavour), ‘
Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l'offense, et ce n'est pas pêcher que pêcher 
en silencé
.'

[Only near the end of 1830 do the entries return to matters other than sexual. This is partly because sex with Ophelia has become customary, though more than once the observation ‘I doubt I shall ever find a woman both as beautiful and as willing as Ophelia', is made. But it was also because of a growing concern with the coming abolition of slavery. These entries (some edited) are highlighted, as well as those which show a change in his relations with Ophelia – A.A.]

November 29, 1830—

For some time now – several years, in fact – I have noted a growing unease in the colony. It is there among the slaves, because word reaches them of revolts in other islands. It is there among the planters because word reaches them of abolition in England. And the two things are not, I believe, unconnected.

The colonists here remain, for the most part, blasé. Most do not think that slavery will be abolished. There are several reasons for their complacency. The men in England who rule their lives are far away. They are convinced that the Negroes are natural slaves who would not know what to do with freedom were it granted them. They have the long arrogance of persons who live in a country where for so long, Sugar has been King.

But even kings pass away. George IV was no abolitionist, but William IV apparently is so. Yet, although the succession happened only in June of this year, I have not yet heard one planter remark on this important detail in a matter so crucial to us all. But how can they, when they fail to acknowledge that Sugar itself is no longer King? Thomas Clarkson's pamphlets show that more seamen than slaves died, proportionally, in the Middle Passage and that the Government earns more from imported cotton and manufactured goods than slavery. And these telling arguments were presented in the year of my birth!

Even before that, the political philosopher Adam Smith argued that free labour is cheaper than slavery, pointing out that ‘A person who can acquire no property can have no other interest than to eat as much and to labour as little as possible.'

Two years ago, Macaulay became the editor of the
Anti-Slavery Monthly
. Cowper's poem, ‘The Negro's Complaint', continues to be in vogue. But, since we have no intellectual life to speak of in the colony, the colonists view all men of letters as mere gadflies. Yet it was as a gadfly that Socrates described himself in his
Defence
. The Philistines here believe that it is gold, not ideas, that shape the world. If they are not careful, they too shall suffer the fate of Socrates's accusers, who are remembered only in order that they be vilified.

Tonight I bound Ophelia and tickled her with ostrich feathers...

March 7, 1831—

I have been keeping a close eye on the Whigs since they replaced the Tories last year. It is quite clear which way the wind is blowing, but the planters see it not. The abolitionists' lobby is now powerful – indeed, given that industrialists and manufacturers now dominate Parliament, I would say unstoppable.

This is not to say the pro-slavery lobby does not still have a strong voice. Only recently in the newspapers, I saw one writer quote Mr. Hume, the British philosopher, as having said: ‘There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, not even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.' I think it may prove useful for me to analyze Mr. Hume's opinions. I shall order that work by which he established his reputation,
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
. In these changing times, my responsibility as a respectable man of colour becomes even more acute.

I must confess, though, to a more personal motive in wanting to study Mr. Hume. I would like to refute him in the area of speculation, since as far as I am concerned my entire life has reproached him in the region of action. But to construct a telling argument against this eminent British logician would, I think, serve my purpose far more effectively. No man is more respected than the philosopher, and to establish myself, even through one great essay, as such would be to lay for rest for all time all prejudice against men of my complexion. (I must confess, though, to some relief that Mr. Hume is dead.)

A most fascinating episode with Ophelia today. Last night, we fucked for about an half-an-hour, but because I was tired I only let her massage me and then ride me while I only lay there and let her do all the work. Today, when I came in, she met me as usual in the hallway to remove my boots. But, when she had pulled them off, she pressed me back into the planter chair with a most curious smile on her face. She then unbuttoned my trousers and pulled them off. With my stockinged feet resting on the floor, she then proceeded to suck my prick. As I have indicated in my entry of November 3, it was only then that I finally took the chance of letting her perform fellatio on me, and that only in a soixante-neuf so that, had she chosen to bite me, I could have immediately inflicted similar damage upon her most intimate person. So this was the first occasion that Ophelia had serviced me in this manner without me returning the favour. Of all the many experiences I have described thus far, this seemingly simple act was amongst the most erotic, partly because of Ophelia's position kneeling while I rested comfortably, partly because of the chance that someone would walk through the hallway as she serviced me. I came, groaning, in less than a minute, and Ophelia swallowed every last drop of my gushing semen.

April 26, 1831—

I have finally finished my study of Hume's
Concerning Human Understanding
. A very deep and profound treatise, which required my fullest concentration. But I believe I have grasped him fully. I find that Hume himself refutes his own comment on the dark-complexioned races. Consider the following passage from his essay: ‘All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we can never observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined but never connected. Had no objects a regular conjunction with each other, we should never have entertained any notion of cause and effect... liberty, when opposed to necessity, not to constraint, is the same thing with chance; which is universally allowed to have no existence.'

Now, if this is indeed, Mr. Hume's considered view, how can he, even on the available evidence – which he must perforce admit to being inadequate since he has never been to Africa and my understanding is that vast portions of that dark continent remain quite unexplored – how can he make such a sweeping judgement on the darker races? He himself confesses that cause and effect have no necessary conjoining! ‘Cause and effects are discoverable, not by reason but by experience,' he holds.

Therefore, why contend that the admitted subjugation by the white races over the black lies in some fundamental superiority? Though it would be foolish to deny the fact, at least in particulars of science and literature, might one not equally say that these superiorities lie in accidents of climate and materials? It is also obvious that, in modern civilizations, printing is absolutely essential. Yet, if Mr. Hume were to argue that the Africans did not develop this invention because of intellectual inferiority, he would also have to admit that the European is inferior to the Chinese, since it is from them that Europe learned about printing, as well as the compass and gunpowder!

And even if Mr. Hume were to contend, as do so many others, that climate and geography have significant effect upon the character of a race, his own philosophy does not allow him to make that contention!

I have more to say, but I needs must write about my encounter today with Ophelia. She had used her skilled mouth on me about three or four times in the hallway since the first occasion recorded in my entry of March 7. I have never asked for her to do this, but always left the decision to her whimsy (though on every occasion I have always given her several extra shillings). On this occasion, she sucked me to an erection. But she was particularly lingering today, delicately licking the underside of my shaft and even inserting the tip of her tongue delicately into the slit at the top of my prick, while her hand gently massaged my balls.

Now on the previous occasions, Ophelia had left my trousers around my ankles. This time, she paused and pulled them off entire, then pushed my legs up on the extensible arms of the planter chair. I went along willingly, for it was clear from her expression that she had something most pleasurable in mind. Nor was I disappointed. Her hand gripped the shaft of my penis, stroking in a slow but regular motion, while her tongue licked my balls wetly. The sensation was heavenly, and I would have been well-satisfied had she done only that. But Ophelia had other, more perverse things in mind!

Her tongue moved lower, its tip curling over the so-sensitive area between scrotum and anus, and then moved right on to my anus! The jolt of pleasure that rushed to my head is indescribable. She tongued the rim of my anus, licking it with exquisite delicacy, so that my senses swam. Had I the gifts of a Shakespeare, I doubt I could do justice to the overwhelming pleasure of the sensations she created in me. It was as though every erotic nerve in my body was alive with ecstasy! I was aware of nothing save a pleasure so intense that, for perhaps the first time in my life, I was unable to think. When I came, I spurted so violently that I stained the breast of my own shirt.

May 5, 1831—

To conclude my refutation of Hume. He says: “The only proper object of hatred or vengeance is a person or creature, endowed with thought and consciousness... Actions are temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil.” So from whence arises his contempt of Negroes? His own contempt means that he acknowledges that they are ‘endowed with thought and consciousness', which makes his contempt paradoxical since, if one acknowledges another creature to be capable of thought and consciousness, then any inferiority must lie in secondary, not primary, causes. That is: it is enslaving a man makes him an inferior; it is not his inferiority that makes him a slave.

I can only conclude that Mr. Hume, for all his logical brilliance, lacked a most fundamental moral quality: the virtue of sincerity. For, had he believed his own arguments, he could never have written ‘there scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, not even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.' Thus ends my argument.

Thrice since my entry of April 26, Ophelia has given to me the divine experience of arse-licking. We did not repeat the act in the hallway, but in the bedroom. Once she performed the act on me while I sat totally naked on a cockfighting chair, to use the popular term for the reading chair. I sat astride the chair, facing its back as though I were reading, resting my arms on its padded yoke. My arse hung over the seat of the chair, and Ophelia knelt on all fours and tongued me delicately until I was nigh driven out of my mind. After she had done this, I turned around and had her suck me to an erection (for so intense is the feeling when she tongues me that I go quite flaccid). I then put her on the chair backwards and, bending my legs so that I was half-squatting, fucked her like a beast of the field. She came thrice before my own release, which left me limp as a rag.