A FRENCHMAN IN MOROCCO BY PARKER ROSSMAN

The following account of the sexual dalliance of a Frenchman with boys in Morocco in the third quarter of the twentieth century is from Chapter 9, “The Impact of Other Cultures” of Parker Rossman’s Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys (originally published in 1976). This chapter of Dr. Rossman’s book, introduced here, and intended to show how pederasts from repressive countries were changed by their experiences in accepting ones is a primary source for the history of Greek love, drawing on the accounts of the pederasts involved.

This is the first of two accounts devoted to North Africa, and is here titled “A Frenchman in Morocco” to distinguish it better from the second, which Rossman called “An American in North Africa”.

North Africa

Another area of the world where many foreigners have had pederastic experiences which resulted in radical changes in their sexual behavior and life-style is the Barbary Coast, from Tunisia to Morocco, as reported in many novels,[1] travel books and historical studies. For example, Gavin Maxwell,[2] in a footnote about the pederasty of a royal family, points out that sex play between men and boys “was never in any way considered abnormal or shameful,” and the omnipresent existence of “Greek love” has been commented upon “either directly or obliquely by nearly every French writer on Morocco,” who said that sexual relationships with boys were considered normal and a harmless convenience. Until quite recently, for example, the Moroccan army always traveled with young boys for sexual entertainment in the evenings. During the years of French occupation of North Africa, Frenchmen with pederastic inclinations found North African youngsters most irresistible — they had no hangups about sexual deviancy, were clean, and were “passionately loving as long as they were not being exploited.” For example a teacher assigned to a Moroccan village (not one of the cases interviewed in our study) said: “I had never thought about sex play with a boy as being fun and possible until my pupils invited me, the first week I arrived, to join them at the public bathhouse. It was operated by the father of one of my pupils, and was in fact the only place in town where one could take a bath. We were no sooner in the building before the sex play began, right in front of me and the proprietor, who said he would leave so I could join in the fun without embarrassment. My pupils chased the younger boys, undressed them, pinched them, sexually teased them — amidst hilarious laughter — and then they came for me. At the first few times I refused to join in the play, but gradually across the months I began to let them undress me and soap me — and I do mean all over — and of course I was affected by the giggling of the younger boys when they were held down for anal intercourse, hardly against their will.

“Soon,” the Frenchman continued, “my pupils were presenting themselves at my little house, one at a time, to sleep with me. They were sweet, sexy, naively innocent, and delightful. I’ll remember those nights as among the happiest in my life. I would like to marry, but I’m sure my wife would not approve of such play, and I have no intention of giving up boys. Since returning to France I nearly always have a teenager living with me. Currently I have two boys whose mother is quite aware of our sexual relationship. She is only too glad to have them off her hands so she can entertain her lovers. I have had only two troublesome problems with the police. The first was when the postal authorities intercepted some photographs I had ordered from abroad. Ironically, it was at a time when, not wanting to embarrass my family, I had decided to lead a more prudent and moral life. The pictures had been intended as a substitute for sex play. My second problem was more amusing. In my third year in North Africa the chief of the village summoned me to his house. I went trembling, sure that I was to be punished for my sex play with the boys. He received me kindly, and over a cup of mint tea asked me why I had never taken his son to bed? It was true that I had rebuffed all overtures from the son of the headman of the village, fearing trouble. “Of all the boys in your school,” the chief scolded me, “My son loves you the most. It is important for you to encourage that love or he will lost interest in his schoolwork, and I am ambitious for him to be the first boy from this village to go to the university. I promise you that if you love him as he wishes, he will be your loyal friend for life.” It was true. The boy writes me every year and invites me to return for a visit. He says all my former pupils will welcome me warmly, and also their wives and sons. The chief’s son did an unusual thing when he came to France on a visit. He not only brought his young wife along, but he brought her to my apartment for dinner. I appreciated it as an expression of friendship more significant than his warm kisses when he arrived and as he left. I have a few friends in France who know my secret: that in my personal and emotional life I am secretly a citizen, not of France, but of that village. ”

[1] See Maugham, The Wrong People (New York, 1971), Ronald Tavel, Street of Stairs (New York, 1968), Stewart (1973). [Author’s footnote 11]. “Stewart (1973)” would appear to Angus Stewart’s Snow in Harvest, listed in Rossman’s bibliography and Stewart’s only published novel set in North Africa, but it was published in 1969 and barely mentioned pederasty.

[2] Gavin Maxwell, Lords of the Atlas (New York, 1966), pp. 175 and 287, etc. [Author’s footnote 12]

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