Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 06:10:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Robin Reed <any_mouse2003@yahoo.com>
Subject: Living Dangerously

There are times and there are people that are the tipping-points in
life. The Secretary of Defense talks about it regarding the war
overseas. You know from your own. There are the events you know from your
own life. You are reading this here because you either came out or you
didn't.

I am not unlike you. I'm a queer of a certain age, but I forget that when I
am not forced to look in a mirror. When I wake in the night I am the same
as I have always been, young and lean, and with that chestnut brown hair
with the bangs that flip up at the end.

Blue eyes like a mountain lake. Not rheumy and ringed with a pale yellow. A
nice, solid cock, thick around and cut so the tip is proud and prominent,
and it can spit fierce man-cum five times in an encounter.

I forget that when I rise and hobble the first few steps from the bed
toward the bathroom. I don't wear my glasses when I am in front of the
mirror. Sometimes it takes a while to remember to put them on. Only when I
have to read something do I remember that I have to wear glasses at all.

But I am lucky to be alive, and that is where Joe comes in.

He was the first boy I had a crush on. He was in my band class. He was
slight and a little dreamy. He wore straight-legged corduroy pants and
tie-shoes, which was an epithet in those days. It meant that your parents
would not trust you to dress yourself, or they were afraid you would grow
pigeon-toes. He had fine sandy hair and he wore glasses with thick frames,
but I could see the fine dark lashes that made his gaze sweeter than any of
the girls.

He was shy and diffident and he held himself with this thin shoulders
back. He usually wore a cardigan sweater, even when it was warm. I made me
think that he was sheltering himself from something.

I couldn't tell him I had a crush on him. The whole thing confused me. Our
middle school was just starting to pair off and date. We did that then,
rather than what the kids do now, which is to run in a pack and hook-up
when necessary.

We were much more linear in those days. I went on a couple dates because
that is what we were supposed to do. I remember the new couples sneaking
off to the furnace room to neck by the machinery at the first boy-girl
parties, and I remember my first kiss from a girl.

It was exotic, that first brush with passion, that fumbling around. But
what confused me was what I thought about when I masturbated in my bed at
night. I tried to think of the girls at school naked, or of the Playboy
women in the magazines we stole from the store because that is what was
expected of us.

But I found myself thinking of little Joe, and what his cock might look
like, and if it was as long and elegant as the fingers I saw him run up the
neck of his violin in band class.

They said that Joe's dad had played professional football, that he was as
rough and tough as they came. I heard that he came down to watch us
practice on the football field in the fall, and I heard once that he made a
comment about my aggressive press to cut to the head of the line in the
hitting drills.

But I never knew precisely what he looked like, and I never could put a
face to him.

I could not imagine that Joe's fair skin and delicate features came from a
man that had played in Soldier Field on a Sunday.

The kids were not kind to kids who were different. They called Joe a sissy,
and a homo, and other cruel things. Sometimes I thought I should defend
him, but I could never figure out how to say it in a way that wouldn't have
my big rough friends call me the same thing.

I could imagine it clearly: "Oh, so you like the little faggot? You a homo,
too, Rob?"

I thought about a lot of things when I jerked off. But I always thought
about Joe, one way or another in the days I waited to get my drivers
license and start the road to being a grown-up.

I used to have a fantasy that I would consider as I waited for the drum
part to begin in band class. I would be watching his fingers dance up the
neck of his violin, and I imagined my cock being massaged by my fingers. It
would get me hard in class, but I didn't care, since my snare drum blocked
my crotch from view.

I wondered if I could write him an anonymous note, say that someone who
cared about him was wearing some unique piece of clothing, maybe a tie or a
particular color sweater. Then I would see him the next day in school, in
the hall perhaps, and he would imagine me looking at him from the back of
the band, or in the math class we shared.

And it would not be until the end of the day that he would ask if it was me
who sent the note. Sometimes in my fantasy I told him, and sometimes I was
cruel.

The fantasy I liked was that I nodded and smiled and told him I thought he
was handsome and would he like to walk home from school with me. When I was
really hard, and ready to spew all over myself, I imagined what it would be
like if we went to his house and it was empty and we could kiss and take
our clothes off and rub our cocks together.

But I could never figure out how it got beyond that, or how I could live in
the world I had to live in and be a part of his at the same time.

Reality in 1966 was a lot different than it is now.

I played football, hung around with my idiot buddies who joked at what I
secretly desired. I would see Joe at the big high school where we went
after middle school, but I dropped out of band and only saw him
occasionally in my masturbatory imagination.

I got decent enough grades to get into IU and as it turned out, the summer
before college was the time I finally figured things out.

IU

Alexander brought me out and taught me how a man likes to have his cock
sucked. He taught me how to fuck with abandon, and how to take a strong
hard dick up my ass and writhe in passion, panting for more.

He was a man, though, and he waltzed off to his college without a backward
glance. I was hurt, and homesick when I went to college. Having found real
sex I did not want to live without it, but things were so new and so
overwhelming that I was quite stunned by it all.

I saw a note on one of the bulletin boards for a Gay group on campus with a
phone number. That was the first time I saw the word capitalized, and the
first time I saw the words that seemed like there might be a way to be
proud about being a homo.

I thought it was worth a try. I called from the phone in the hall of my
dorm, and I wondered what my floor-mates would think if they knew what I
was doing.

The phone rang three times and a soft voice came on. "Hello?"

"Hi. Are you, er, ah.." I stammered as one of my three assigned roommates
from downstate walked by toward the common men's shower area.

"Part of the Gay Liberation Group? Why yes, I am. Can I be of assistance?"

"Uh, I think I am a homo and wanted to know if there was someone I could
talk to about it."

"We don't say it like that. We are Gay. But yes, in answer to your
question. You can come over and I can tell you come of the resources
available to our community."

"Gee," I said. "That would be great." He gave me an address and a time the
next day and I wrote it down on a piece of paper. I could have written it
on the wall with all the other notes next to the phone, but I didn't think
that was cool.

Once the lights were out and my roommates settled down, I thought of the
voice. I became engorged and I thought of Alexander and his proud hard cock
planted deep in me and I thought about Joe for the first time in a long
time and I came in a sweet flood all over my hand and belly. In the
darkness I licked it off my hand, and drew my index finger across the rich
viscous pool on my belly.

The next day I showered early and went to my geology lab and the big Frosh
English class. My appointment was at lunch. The address was off University
Street in an apartment on the second floor of a battered Victorian house
that had been subdivided from a single-family residence. It was not
run-down, per se, but it clearly had been used by generations of IU
students.

My heart was pounding as I knocked on the door. A voice from inside said
"Hang on, I'm coming!" I waited there with my heart in my throat. I heard
footsteps coming, and then the door opened on a chain. I saw dark eyes and
dark hair.

"Are you Rob?" asked the voice from the phone. I nodded. "OK then, come on
in."

The door closed and I heard the chain slide off and the door opened wide.

In the frame was a tall slim man who I thought might be in his early
twenties. He looked like a grad student, or maybe a teaching assistant. He
had a wispy dark beard and fair skin and dark hair that reached down to his
shoulders. He wore a T-shirt that said, "Stop the War" and faded jeans. He
looked like a guy that my football coach would have called "Sleeping Jesus"
which was his term for the hippies in town.

"Hi" he said, sticking out his hand. "My name is Steve. I am a volunteer
for the Gay Pride."

I shook his hand, thinking that his fingers were long like Alexander's had
been. I made the connection between the length and dimension of the fingers
and the penis, and would have blushed if he had not ushered me through the
door.

"It is like a Pride of lions, get it? The Gay Pride."

"Yeah," I said. "I got it." Though frankly I did not have a clue.

Steve gave me all the clues. He sat me down at a tiny table in a sun-lit
kitchenette. He gave me an instant cup of coffee and he talked like he was
on speed.

"O.K., the first thing you need to do is raise your consciousness. This is
not about sex, although of course it is, but it is mostly about the
politics of Straight Calhoun County. The pigs are out there, enforcing
antiquated sodomy laws, busting us. We have got to stop the war and we have
got to stop the war against us."

I blinked. I had thought about the war hardly at all at home, except to
register for the draft and get my 2-S student deferment. I wasn't going
anywhere, as far as I knew, and certainly not to Vietnam. I had come over
here to investigate finding other young men who liked each other. Not to
join the war on war.

But he was a fascinating man, very intense. His fingers were elegant and I
found my self watching them intently as he drew them across his cheeks and
gestured with them as he described the injustice of things.

He explained that there was a social activity at the local Unitarian Church
that Saturday, one of the first mixers of the season, and that there would
be a lot of the right people, activists, Gay thinkers and maybe some music.

I realized this was not the place to find a joint and a joint to suck. This
was a hub of activist politics. I was interested by the energy, quite swept
away by it. He told me which bathrooms on campus were hot to cruise, a
notion I found curious. Going to a public toilet to find sex? It didn't
sound very romantic, I said, and he responded that in anonymity was power,
and a way to get to the straight guys and let them experience the power of
cock-suckers and their own latent Gay sides.

He was still in mid-sentence an hour later when someone knocked at the
door. He went over and removed the chain. I realized that there was a
little paranoia in the air. A tall woman entered. She was black as night
and she wore her hair in a vast corona of an Afro. She looked at me coolly.

"Who's the frat boy?" she asked.

"Oh, this is Rob. He called me on the hot line. I think he is Gay, he just
doesn't know how yet."

"I know how it works," I said quietly.

"Honey, you don't know the half of it," she said, and gave me a thin
smile. "C'mon, Steve. We need to get to the meeting." He shrugged and
looked at me.

"Listen, that is what is going on here. Remember the Social this week. If
you have any questions, give me a call. Maybe we can have coffee some
time."

"I'd like that," I said, realizing Steve was going to be too busy stopping
the war and injustice to slow down for me. "And thanks for your time."

I walked to the door and let myself out as they began to talk about
strategy, and how the Black Lesbians needed support and how The Man would
be watching everything they were doing. They didn't pay any attention at
all to my going.

I confess I looked over my shoulder as I walked away. The Pigs could be
watching everything, after all.

The Unitarians

I had been to a Unitarian service one time. I went to a nice Presbyterian
Church and one of the Sunday School activities was to go to other churches
and discuss them from a theological perspective.

I wasn't here this Saturday night to discuss secular humanism, though. I
was here to meet other homos- Gays, I corrected myself, and maybe find a
friend.

The Church was a long low building and didn't look much like a traditional
place of worship. It looked like it could be a union hall.

I had walked by the place a couple times, looking over my shoulder to be
sure I was not followed.

It was pretty crazy. I had been to fraternity Rush the night before,
visiting several of the more popular houses on campus. I liked the Lamdas
and the Dekes, and they seemed eager to hand out the beers and get me to
like them. Rush would go on for another week or so, and I thought I might
find a group of people to hang out with.

But there was this Gay thing to deal with. I was so horny, and all I wanted
was someone like Alexander to fill me up. Of course, he had been Black,
even if his skin was almost as light as mine, and the politics of that were
something I didn't fully understand in this very political campus.

The frat houses didn't even seem to be aware of the war, just the necessity
of staying in school and away from the draft.

I finally screwed up my nerve in the darkness and walked up to the double
door on the lobby. I went in and there was an easel set up that said "Gay
Pride Mixer in Activities Room" with an arrow pointing to the corridor on
the right. I walked down the hall toward the sound of voices.

There was an open door and a guy sitting at a card table. He had a coffee
can with a sign that said "Donations."

"Hi" I said. "Is this the Gay thing?"

"Yes it is," he said and smiled broadly. "I'm Greg and I suck cock. Two
bucks is the recommended donation."

I fished my wallet out of my slacks and found two wrinkled bills. "I'm Bob,
and I do, too." I said weakly. I didn't have much cash and wouldn't until I
got a bank account set up in town so I could get at my summer money. I
dropped the bills into the can and Greg smiled again. "Thanks" he
said. "Hope I see you inside." He looked me up and down and didn't seem to
mind what he saw. I swallowed and walked in.

There were about forty people standing around in little clusters. The
lights were half on, in an attempt to create an intimate atmosphere. There
was a table that had big jugs of soft drinks on it, and big bowls of potato
chips and napkins.

There didn't seem to be anything to do except stand there awkwardly, so I
went over to the table and poured a Coke and munched on a handful of
chips. I was thinking this might be one of the larger mistakes of my life
when a young man with dirty blonde hair left one of the knots of people and
walked over to me. He extended a hand and took mine and held it a second or
two longer than I was used to. His hand was soft and his skin was moist. He
cheeks were full and so were his lips.

"Glad to see you here tonight," he said. "My name is Rob. We are going to
have some music in a minute, as soon as the band gets set up, and I hope
you will save a dance for me. I'm with Student Coalition."

"Coalition for what?" I asked. "And my name is Robert, too, though they
call me Rob."

"Well, Robby," he said, suddenly conspiratorial, "It is a coalition to
oppose just about everything." Then he laughed. "And have a little fun in
the process of overthrowing the Old Order." He grinned an infectious grin.

I smiled back a little uncertainly. I hadn't come to overthrow the
Government. I had just come to meet some others homos. But at least some of
the people here sucked cock, so that was a start. And they say the longest
journeys start with a single step.

We chatted for a moment about the latest developments on campus, the riots
elsewhere and when we might expect something to get going at IU. I heard
the squeal of an amplifier and some first brisk chords being strummed on an
electric guitar. Rob excused himself, and walked over and tapped the top of
a microphone. It went pop-pop and was live. He took it off the stand and
asked everyone to come up close.

"We want everyone to dance tonight, and we want to make some good
noise. And we want some solidarity tonight, proud that we are Gay and
Lesbian!" There was a murmur as people walked up and formed a broad
semicircle around him and the band. "Tonight we are going to do some
political dancing with The Pride Band! Get down, brothers and sisters!"

He handed the mike to an emaciated woman in a tank top. She had small
breasts with large nipples and nothing between them and the thin cotton. He
hair was straggly and she had a ring in her nose and eyes as dark as the
bottom of a coal mine. Lead guitar was a white guy with an afro and a black
man with big hair and elephant bell pants slung low on his hips was holding
a Fender Jazz Bass. A kid with a hank of blonde hair and a blank gaze
looked like he was threatening to play rhythm.

There was a sharp rap on a snare drum and a thickset guy with sunglasses
and a ponytail started to rap out a drum riff.

The band stumbled into some muddy song, way too loud for the acoustics in
the room. The woman started into something that sounded a little like
"G-L-O-R-I-A" but the words were different. I decided I didn't care. It was
too loud to talk to anyone, and I sipped my Coke and tried to make sense
out of the crowd.

There were couples, male and female ones. Most were hippies, but there were
a couple older guys in rumpled sport coats and chinos. They were clearly
academics. I was scrutinizing the crowd and hoping to find someone who
looked like they needed a friend. The cutest was the black guy playing
bass, and I think he looked back at me with a cool gaze, but it could be
that is how he looked at everyone.

I like men of color. Alexander set me up that way, I guess. I wondered what
he would be doing later, and what it would be like if he made me his bitch
for the semester. That would cause a stir back at the dorm. Or maybe it
wouldn't. This was an altogether new world.

I felt a little flustered and then I felt someone tug on my sleeve. It was
Greg. He shouted at me over the music. I think he asked me to dance. I
nodded, since there was no point in trying to talk over the noise of the
band. I finished my Coke with a gulp, turned and began to shake with him,
not touching.

It was the first time I danced with another guy. It seemed perfectly
natural, just like the casual way he had announced that he sucked cock.

Dancing then was mostly just standing in one place and gyrating at one
another. We did that for a while, and the band lurched into something else,
and we kept dancing through the rest of the set. When the chords rose and
crashed and ended mostly at the same time the silence was deafening.

We got something to drink, more soft drinks, from the table. "Is there
anything more fun to drink?" I asked, my voice sounding peculiarly
loud. Greg smiled and I noticed he had a dimple on his chin a little like
Kirk Douglas.

I also noticed that his hair was full and the same color as mine. He eyes
were set a little close together and his teeth were radiantly white. Maybe
that is what set my heart beating a little quicker.

"Yes there is, but we can't have it here. The cops would bust the place if
we had a keg. I have some vodka back at the apartment. I am only committed
here until the next break. Maybe we could go over to my house and smoke a
joint and have a couple drinks?"

"That sounds great," I said. And then the band was sawing at some Bad Moon
Rising, and we were dancing again. They even tried a slow version of
something. I honestly couldn't tell what it was, but it gave me an
opportunity to move closer to Greg and he put his arms around me.

I felt a electricity as his arms closed around me, and I put my head on his
shoulder as we swayed on the floor of the Unitarian Assembly Room.

After the next set he took my hand and we slipped out the door, back down
the hall and out into the cool evening. We could hear those dissonant tones
for a block or more as we walked along under the green canopy of trees.

Greg lived in another one of the old houses converted to student
apartments. The stairwell smelled like cat urine and old carpet, but his
apartment on the third floor was brightly painted. There were posters on
the wall, an old tattered Oriental rug on the floor and a battered couch
that faced a small portable TV.

"It's not much" he said. "But it's home."

"I like it better than the dorm," I responded. "It is nice."

He smiled and I realized how nice that was when he showed those teeth. "The
couch doubles as a bed" he said and he smiled again and I felt a tightening
in my groin. He went into a kitchen that was about the size of a closet and
I heard the clink of glass and the opening of a refrigerator.

"Here," I said. "Let me help." There was barely room to turn around, and he
handed me an ice-cube tray. It had one of those handles that flipped up to
crack the ice loose and I pulled it. It was still frozen solid, so he took
it from me and ran some warm water over it in the little sink. The he
turned and faced me with it and I found myself kissing that handsome mouth
and touching those beautiful teeth with an eager tongue.

We made out for a while and I got as hard as a rock. He reached down and
cupped my balls through the tent in my slacks. I sighed against his mouth
and I heard the ice cube tray rattle into the sink. He put his arms around
me and drew me to him and I felt his cock hard against mine.

We never did get the drinks.

We stumbled back into the main room and we fumbled madly with our
clothes. Our eyes were locked as shirts and slacks and jeans tumbled into a
heap on the floor. He stood as watched as I skinned off my boxer shorts,
and he flipped the waistband of his Jockeys, drawing them down over a cock
of impressive size and girth. I licked my lips and drew a ragged
breath. When he kicked off the underpants he stood proudly with his cock
waving toward me. I stepped over to him and placed my eager cock next to
his, side to side. They were nearly comparable, pale flesh engorged,
erupting from a thick patch of dense pubic hair. A little trail lead up to
his navel, but otherwise he was smooth and hairless.

We caressed each other, gently stroking, the sides of our erections
touching. It was electric. I wanted that cock in my mouth so bad. He
stopped touching me and took me by the arm and we walked to the couch. He
grabbed the front and raised it to it slid down into a flat surface. He
rose and he kissed me again, and then said:

"We both claimed to suck cock. Let's see how well we do."

And that is how I found myself on my side, head between his legs, with the
rich smell of his sex in my nose and his warm cock buried in my mouth,
tonguing him and suckling on him as he did me. It was incredible, almost
like sucking myself.

He had a wonderful taste, musky and slippery. I tried to mimic the movement
of his lips and his soft palate, and when he took me deep into his throat,
I ignored the gap reflex and impaled myself on him.

God, he tasted good. Eventually, he moaned and I knew he was going to erupt
in my mouth. I wasn't going to miss a drop, and his ecstasy made my gorge
rise and thrust and when his hot jets of jism hit the back of my throat I
shuddered and shot right back into him.

We drained each other, mouths warm and sucking on softening cocks.

It was a while before we stirred. Greg got up and got a joint and we smoked
it on the couch, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to naked thigh. Then we were
at each other again, sucking like mad.

Greg was one hell of a cocksucker. I blushed when he said the same about
me.

It made me feel as warm as his semen in my belly. When we slept, we slept
with our heads buried in each other's crotches, breathing the smell of sex
and cum.

We got hard again in the night, and I remember shooting another load into
his warm soft mouth, just as he did for me. Then there was just sleep.

When I awoke, the first thing I did, the very first thing, was take his
soft penis in my lips and gently kiss it good morning. I had a feeling I
might get lucky.

A Guy Named Joe: Slouching Through the 70s

I have a little trouble sorting out college and the immediate time that
came after it.

We were awfully high, after all.

It is hard to believe it now. I honestly don't recall much about the latter
half of my Freshman year at IU, nor can I really unscramble Sophomore and
Junior Years. It was not until the awful specter of graduation loomed that
I started to clean up my act and focus on what I was going to do next.

Which is not to say that I don't have a fabulous warm texture for it
all. The dope was plentiful and inexpensive, the sex was likewise, and the
music was fantastic.

I was organized enough to go to class when necessary, and we always had the
ultimate card to play with our professors if things got a little out of
kilter. "What do you want to do to me? Hand me a rifle and send me to
murder little kids in an unjust war?"

Not that I cared that much, one way or the other. It seemed like the war
was going to peter out before my class graduated, and the Movement on
campus was a fun way to run amok without many consequences.

I began to live something of a double life in my Freshman year. I found a
string of lovers early on who met most of my needs.

Greg was the first. He was a very oral guy, and we had mutual suck-fests
from the first night we got together. He was a stud, with a firm cut cock
that was very much like my own. He was a sort of luke-warm political type,
sorta committed to the Liberation, but mostly committed to a systematic
undermining of the Illinois sodomy statutes.

We slept together, if that is what you call it, a couple times a week. With
my sexual drive covered, I continued to live a pretty normal life in the
Dorm and on campus. I pledged a fraternity because it felt like home and I
liked being around a bunch of macho studs, fitting in with them, and
keeping my life as a practicing homo- I mean a Gay- a separate issue.

Greg used to tease me, even as my Beatle-cut bangs grew out and my chestnut
hair began to cascade over my collar.

I might have got a haircut later in the year; I think I did around finals
times, and I got the bangs cut so that things evened out. I liked Greg's
pony-tail and he told me that there were really only two ways to wear your
hair: either short enough so that it didn't get in your eyes or long enough
to pull back and secure with a rubber band.

I found it pretty erotic. He liked me to fuck him, though that was not my
favorite thing. I preferred to be his bottom and all-round cocksucker, but
fair is fair, after all. I was ramming him from behind one afternoon in the
hour I had between Modern European History and Ecologic Studies when it
came into my mind how sexy his long hair looked all gathered together and
writhing over his back.

I gathered it in my hand and pulled back. Not hard, mind you, but enough to
bring his head up like a mare being fucked by a stallion, his eyes wide in
pleasure.

What struck me then was just how much I wanted him to do the same thing to
me. God, I shuddered when I pumped his bowels full of hot man-cream. After
I softened and slid out of him I turned him over and went down on his rigid
shaft, slobbering up and down with desire for my rich slimy reward.

After that, I wore a pony-tail from the moment I was able to get it all
pulled back in a rubber-band. And when he fucked me I insisted he slap my
ass-check hard, and pull my head back like he was reining in an
out-of-control mare.

We went to the big demonstration in Washington in his van, and the IU
students got their asses kicked by the National Guard. The Guard shot the
kids over at Kent State, and everyone had turned against the war. It was
just a question of time. Things weren't quite the same after that. The air
came out of a lot of people about the way the government responded to us,
and despite my best efforts, I preferred blowing Greg in the van to getting
my head split by a riot cops baton.

With the war winding down, Greg didn't see any impediment to graduating. He
had heard how cool it was out on the West Coast, and he decided that the
time was right.

The legislature changed the drinking age around that time from 21 to 18,
and I was retroactively legal.

Oh, we could vote, too, and I seem to recall that was the point. But campus
got so crazy that it was remarkable that any of us graduated. Bars
proliferated. I would party at the Frat and then go downtown for as many
pitchers of beer as the allowance could afford.

The frat had a bar where we were regulars, and suddenly the local gay bar
was joined by two others that split the crowd into lesbian and Gay male,
and mixed. The frat guys wouldn't go near any of them, or better said, the
straight ones wouldn't, and when I tagged along with Greg to the bars I
made some notes on who I might be able to look up later.

I got a job on the University landscaping crew for the summer so I could
stay on campus. It didn't pay much, and the town pretty much emptied
out. So I didn't have to worry about keeping my lives and friends separate.

It was a sorrowful parting with Greg and the emotion was all real. The last
night we were together was quite extraordinary. He lubed me up and fucked
me forward and back, but the last act of love we made was the same
sixty-nine we had done the night we first hooked up. It was tender and
sweep licking him and suckling on him as he did me. It was the best way to
feel life was a circle, sucking and being sucked, his tongue lapping my
balls, me capturing both his orbs in my mouth and gently sucking them both
like a large mouth bass.

He drove me wild with his tongue and I gave him as good a load as he gave
me. It was with a lot of sadness that I saw that luscious cock disappear
into his briefs and watching him fire up the air-cooled engine on his
Beetle bus and head west.

I assumed the lease on his little apartment and abandoned myself to
mindless work and more partying through the summer. I had to find a new
lover, and I gravitated to the usual suspects who were full time residents
of the town.

Rob the Campus Radical was there, of course. He was sort of the anti-BMOC,
or big man on campus. He tried to keep his Coordinating Committee on top of
everything, and keep everyone's consciousness elevated. But what with the
Paris Peace talks and the prospect that the war was going to die down, what
they mostly did was sit around and get high.

I was welcome enough, a familiar youthful face. Since they knew that Greg
had been fucking me almost exclusively for a year, they figured the Pigs
could not find a confirmed undercover cocksucker to infiltrate their group.

I think they were right on that. This was years before anyone was really
out and in the establishment. Gay cops at the time seemed like a complete
impossibility.

I hooked up with Rob because he was bored and horny, which I think is why
we all do.

I'll confess I had a hankering for him, and had been impressed the first
time he talked to me at the mixer the year before, and then watching him
from a distance at the speeches and demonstrations through the year. I knew
that the cops were watching him, and that gave things the sense of danger
that was a real turn-on. Rob was a real Revolutionary, though for exactly
what I wasn't sure.

He had a sense of humor, and after a political strategy session which
turned into a mini-hash bash, he waggled his finger at me, summoning me to
his inner sanctum.

He had a room in a commune decorated with a big white cat. The commune
styled itself the IU chapter of the White Panther Party run by John
Sinclair. John was a dude who was going to overthrow the government of the
United States and wound up getting put in prison for ten years for selling
two joints to an undercover cop. His conviction was overturned thanks
mainly in part to John Lennon and seven others who organized a movement to
set him free. Lennon even wrote a song about it "It ain't fair, John
Sinclair..."

I should have thought about what happens when you decide to overthrow the
government, but what the hell. I was rising twenty and bulletproof.

Besides, Rob was hypnotic handsome. He had dirty blonde hair that he had
trimmed up so he looked semi-respectable, like Tom Hayden of the Chicago
Seven. He had full, florid Dutch features and passionate full lips. He was
always well shaven and it must have been the speed that kept him trim,
since

But he got plenty of that. I found out quickly that he liked being in
control of things, right down to the smallest detail, and as far as the sex
went, that was fine with me.

Oh, I'll confess it was irritating at times, not the least of it being the
fact that we shared the same name. He was the famous one, though, so he got
to be the default value. When there was confusion I became Little Rob. I
suspect there were other nick-names, too, but if there were I didn't hear
them. On the whole, it was great to be along for the ride.

And ride me he did. The first time he took me was just exactly like
that. He waved me into his bedroom and closed the door and told me to
strip. I looked at him, a little stoned, and asked him what he wanted.

He sighed and sat down on the edge of his bed. "I don't have a lot of spare
time, Bob. I didn't want to screw around with you and Greg, but he is
gone. I need someone to keep me serviced so I can continue to give my time
to the Movement. I have decided you are going to be my lover, and if you
are satisfactory, I may keep you with me as we move onto bigger things in
the Fall."

I looked at him for a moment, thinking about the implications. Then, with
the same level of careful attention most of us applied to momentous
decisions at the time, I peeled off my shirt, unbuckled my jeans, kicked
off my moccasins and stripped off my bell bottoms. Wearing underwear was
considered bourgeoisie at the time, and so there I was, buck naked. I
walked over to where he was seated and got on my knees between his legs and
unzipped his jeans and began to get into my new role in the Movement.

When I fished his stiffening cock out of his jeans I examined it
closely. It was a nice piece of meat, not overlarge, but full and pleasing
in aspect. He was cut and about six inches long and pleasantly fat, with a
satisfying girth and a nice ballsack nestled in fair pubic hair.

He stroked my hair as I took him in my mouth. I really liked that part, and
the fact that he would lecture me while I blew him, outlining the key
political issues and the corresponding direct action that the Coordinating
Committee was going to take. When he came, he came rapidly and with vigor.

I managed to keep it all in my mouth and swallowed hungrily. I loved to
suck his cock when I was high, and the rich reward and the acrid taste
followed by a Marlboro and a cold beer were heaven.

It was definitely an unequal relationship, but I really didn't mind. I did
a lot of hanging around waiting for him, and the other political players
seemed to treat me as a sort of groupie, someone to be accommodated but not
deferred to.

He wanted me to sleep with him regularly, and I became a fixture in his bed
at the White Panther House.

There were all sorts of people there from the Movement. There were angry
black people who were in an uneasy alliance with the white students, but
were not at all comfortable with faggots, a word I normally heard only
behind my back. But not far behind my back.

There were a lot of women, also angry, a lot of them Lesbians, but straight
ones, too. Some of them cute and since they all had Movement relationships,
they viewed me as no threat and let me into the club as a sort of
sister. And there were the rampantly heterosexual revolutionaries, and they
were getting as much pussy as they could handle.

When I would be at a meeting with Rob, I could see some of them look me up
and down, faded bell-bottom low-ride jeans, package nestled in a worn place
that highlighted it, Mr. Natural tank-top and heavy-lidded blue-eyed gaze,
my pony-tail luxurious down my back.

I could tell that some of them would have fucked me just for the
experience, and others, whether faggotry offended them or not, couldn't say
so because it wasn't politically correct.

So I suppose I shared a lot with most political spouses. He would be tired
when we finally got to bed, he wasn't very interested in my problems, and I
had to be attentive to his.

Sometimes all he wanted was a blow-job before sleep, and other times he
wanted a straightforward fuck. I would be laying there, wondering what
would come my way. If me stopped at the rickety bureau in the corner and I
heard the muted farting of the push-dispenser of the moisturizer, I knew I
would be rolled one way or another.

I think he had a preference for the missionary position, or maybe it would
just be his level of fatigue. If he was particularly spunky, he would flip
me over and take me vigorously from behind, driving my face into the
pillow. I loved that position, since it got his cock deepest into me. He
was not a premature ejaculator, but he also did not last a long time, and
my pleasure clearly wasn't the point. But his cock was fat enough and long
enough to hit my magic spot. Sometimes I would cum spontaneously and get to
sleep in the residue as his semen leaked from my sore but contented
asshole.

If he had a hard day, or a bad one, he would run two fingers of
moisturizing cream up the crack of my ass, pull my legs up to his shoulders
and enter me roughly and expeditiously from on top, looking down on me as
he thrust into me roughly, my hair spread all around me on the pillow like
a twinky princess.

I liked either one just fine, and learned that I sometimes was going to
have to take care of my own hard-ons for satisfaction.

So like I said, it was very much like what other political wives have had
to do down through the ages of meetings and glad-handing by their
politician husbands. I honestly didn't mind. It was interesting.

We were nearing the end of the summer. I quit the job on the grounds crew,
since Rob said he needed me to be more flexible in my schedule. There was a
big meeting in Chicago in the middle of August to kick off a new round of
protests and public actions. My folks had been bugging me to come home and
visit. I told him I was going to go home for a few days and meet him at the
crash-pad the Coordinating Committee had rented in the big city.

He sniffed a little, but had enough kindness in him to say that he could
spare me for a couple days. I went down on him in thanks, and he came an
astonishing amount, and it tasted slimy and sweet and I stayed down on him
until I had lapped him all clean again.

The trip home was another one of those coincidences that life pivots on.

I was getting the fish-eye at the family reunion barbecue even though my
hair was neatly pulled back and I was wearing a collared shirt. I got the
lecture about responsibility and inquiries about what I was going to do
after Senior Year, which was going to start in just a few weeks.

I gruffly said I was going to use my degree in Journalism to start a career
with one of the local papers and work my way up and be an international
correspondent. It sounded like a plan that I had thought about, though the
dimensions had largely floated through my brain that moment. It sounded
vaguely glamorous, if unprofitable, and my folks let it drop. I hung out
with my girl cousins who were visiting for the reunion, and we got along
famously.

I was a little concerned that I was losing the ability to change from one
role to another. I honestly identified with some aspects of my cousin's
lives. I was a little unsettled about changing more than I had intended,
getting those mannerisms that were just fine in bed, or in a group of other
Gay people, so I watched myself and stayed out of the family limelight. The
visit appeared to be coming to an end without disaster.

At least for the family.

The morning before I was supposed to join Rob in Chicago, I was reading the
local fish-wrapper and nursing a headache from too much alcohol and too few
drugs the night before. I saw below the fold that the Chicago police had
busted a crew of Revolutionaries who were Going To Overthrow the Government
and presented a Clear and Present Danger to Public Order.

The article implied it was going to be as big a deal as the Chicago Seven,
but this time the Yippy Bastards had dope and weapons.

A shotgun, cocaine and marijuana were found, the article went on to say,
and there was evidence of homosexual activities. Rob's picture, him looking
defiant and cute like he did when he fucked me energetically, was alongside
the article. Additional suspects were being sought by the authorities, the
story concluded.

My heart raced. Aside from the drugs and sodomy part, I had no interest in
the Revolution. I rose from the table and went up to my room and flushed my
little stash of pot. Then I looked in the mirror and decided that I was not
going anywhere near Chicago.

That afternoon, I drove over to the mall where I had worked with
Alexander. I wondered how he was doing, and if his exploration of Black
Power had landed him in jail, too.

I went into one of the new uni-sex boutiques and got my hair cut off and
bought a set of chinos from a young sales guy in the store where I used to
work.

I thought he was sort of cute, and wondered what he thought when I asked
him to measure my inseam "just to make sure" of the proper length.

I went up to the cabin my family owned for the last week before school
started and laid low. When I went back to campus, everyone commented on how
young Republican I looked. I arranged to move back into the Frat House and
stayed the hell away from anything to do with the Coalition and the White
Panther House, which appeared to be vacant.

I was jumpy as a cat, though no one came after me, which I suppose meant
that the cops had their tip from an informant in another organization. And
I was just a political wife, anyway. Not worth the trouble.

But with my hair gone and the possibility that the cops could stage a
follow-up bust, I was on the straight-and-narrow, at least for the time
being. I even started going out with women once in a while, though it never
led to anything serious.

I watched the papers. Rob got ten years, just like John Sinclair. They
convicted him of trafficking in cocaine and possession of marijuana. I knew
the pot was possible, though he was normally more clever than carry his
own. He normally had me to do that. I suspect the cops planted it on him,
along with the shotgun they found.

They did not give him bail, either, since he was considered a risk of
flight.

All things considered, I considered myself the luckiest faggot on
campus. But I sure missed Rob's fat cock and the taste of him in the night.

I didn't know what to do about that.

I found out later that Alexander had some problems too, down in
Washington. But apparently he worked them out just fine. It was going to
take a while, though.

A Guy Named Joe

Bangkok

So there is graduation, eventually, and my old boyfriend doing hard time
and me looking over my shoulder to see if the pigs are looking for his old
fuck-toy. I wasn't political, there should have been no reason for them to
come after me, but they say you are only paranoid if they are not out to
get you.

I laid low senior year, and interviewed well with the wire service for a
the job that took me overseas.

There wasn't much money, but that was fine with me. Leave the Midwest
behind, and the wreckage of the anti-war to experience the wreckage of the
real thing. Seemed romantic.

So next is Asia, and a first assignment so far away from home that it did
not seem possible to be on the same planet.

It was at this time of the bi-centennial and the tall ships that the first
news of the plague began to spread. They called it Sarcosi's Carsoma- an
odd and fatal sickness among Gay men- and then there was the growing awful
dread of what was happening to our friends.

I got on an airplane and left it all behind. My first real job and I was
set down with a fresh haircut, a modest paycheck and the fleshpots of
Bangkok. One night in that city can make a hard man humble, it is
said. They had a thriving sex business there, and things that appealed to
every taste. They have men there who masquerade as women, smooth skin and
long lustrous hair. They are called katoys, and they are randy fellows who
make a man feel great to be alive.

I found out one night late at the Grace Hotel Coffee Shop. Everyone wound
up there in town after the other bars all closed down. It was where every
prostitute went for a last trick of the night, and sometimes I was up early
to cover a story, or be coming back from one.

The place looked like the bar scene from the original Star Wars
movie. There was every kind of woman in the world there, elegant Chinese
and wise Filipinas, sad Russians and every ethnic tribe of every country in
South East Asia. Even some tribeswomen from the Hmong region in the
highlands of Vietnam with frizzy wild hair, tiny things, and ferocious in a
nice way, with aggressive little tits that jutted out like spears.

I have always liked women, in their way. I just don't love them. I like the
way they look, and the things they can do. I have been accused of being a
bit of a drama queen myself, but after the flirtation with radical politics
in college I had assumed the disguise of a Young Republican. Consequently,
when I found out about the katoys of Bangkok I was smitten.

They were cute boys, as a rule, mostly local but some from out of the
country. It did not take long to pick them out and they were everywhere on
the streets. I was picky then, minding my business and filing my stories at
the bureau, but I can only go without cock for so long.

There are thousands of katoys in Bangkok, and the breast implant and sex
change thing was still new in town. The boy-girls had their own thing going
at the Grace Hotel, and loved to get the straight men to ask them out. The
first one I met was named Nok, who usually worked at a bar in Patpong Road
watching the Western men come and go.

Nok was the first boy I took home from the Grace. He was a Thai with long
dark hair and a sylph-like body. He had slim hips and pert little breasts
with remarkable aureola. The night I met her she had closed down the Flying
Machine and was sitting alone in the crowd at the Grace. She flicked back
her long black hair and smiled encouragingly at me. I made a cocktail
appear at her table. Nok looked up and blew me a crimson kiss. Later,
consumed by booze and bravado, I wandered over and told her she was the
most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

It was a lie, of course, but we both knew it and she took me by the hand
and we caught a pedal cab back to my apartment off Soi 4 on Sukhamvit Road.

I knew- or hoped I knew- what I was getting into, and once I started I
could not stop. As he undid the buttons on my shirt, he squirmed against
me. His secret was well concealed as I reached down to feel his package. It
felt like his cock was pulled back into the crack of his trim butt, and his
balls pushed right back up into his body cavity. She resisted, not knowing
that I wanted exactly what she had. She often fucked the straight men so
well that they never knew she was a girl. She said delicately "It is my
time of month," thinking it would put me off.

I said she didn't have them, and that I wanted what she did have.

He was not disconcerted, since obviously he had men who liked him just the
way he was, but also knew that some would kill him if they realized they
were fucking another man. When we drank a glass of wine she finally allowed
as how she had been taking drugs to get smooth skins and little titlettes,
and his little cock could only get so hard. He wanted me to fuck him on my
bed, bare-back, with his legs thrown up in the air and a come-hither look
that said fuck my brown rose-bud.

Unfortunately, that was what I had in mind. I wanted to feel a hard cock
inside me, and we could have arrived at an impasse, but Nok was a
trooper. We wound up sucking each other in compromise, his lips eager and
mine able to work his cock into semi-hardness that in time rewarded me with
a thin spurt of delicate jism.

We slept together late into the morning, nestled together with my hand
around his little dick. We knew that there was little potential for this to
be a long term relationship, but the street is a cold place and I liked
him, even if his goal was to have cut off what I so fondly craved.

Over coffee in the morning, Nok said I should meet her friend Oy, who lived
with Rick.

"You know," she said. "Man who own Rick's Number Best. Best steak house in
Bangkok."

I told him I would, and asked why I should meet her friend.

"She know all katoy in town, all who own them and rent them, and what they
all like. She match-maker lady. They find one just for you, nice girl who
fuck you silly with hard boy cock. You buy me dinner soon?"

I told Nok I would, if it worked out that way, and she told me to go to
Rick's at eight, when things started to cool off after the heat of the
day. I got her in a pedicab and watched her disappear in the
throng. Inscrutable Asia, I thought. All I want is a little scruting, but
on my terms.

I sleep-walked through the heat of the day. There was a press conference
about the Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia, and some idle copy to file
back home that might make the inside of the morning paper that was just
getting printed back home. I checked out early- I had a fabulous job for a
young man. If I filed my copy on Chicago time, I was free to do what I
liked. I went home and had a cold beer and a warm swim in the pool of the
nearby Nana Hotel, a place that was friendly for just about anything you
would like. I had a membership that entitled me to use the pool, and I used
the dark little bar as a sort of auxiliary office.

I dried off as best I could at the pool and looked at the western men who
were getting fired up for a night in Patpong. Bangkok wasn't as gay then as
it is now, and I minded my own business at the Nana. I was looking forward
to the evening. Something new, something a little exotic. Maybe something
hard and eager. Sounded good to me.

Rick's Number One

I had heard of Rick's. He had the best Kobe beef in town, or at least meat
that could pass for the Japanese version he claimed it was. He had been in
town forever, or so the story at the Foreign Correspondent's Club went. He
was ageless. He was a Hungarian, the legend went, and had come out to this
town before the war. His homeland had been allied with the Nazis then, and
of course the Nazis were good pals with Tojo and the militarists from
Tokyo, so when the Japanese overran Southeast Asia he was not locked up
with the other Westerners.

They said he was a hero, using his status as an allied national to get food
and information to the westerners who were interned, and trying to help the
prisoners in the death camps that were building the railway the Japanese
were going to use to supply their forces in Burma and then invade India.

The Japanese finally got wise to Rick's activities, but the war drew to an
end and he was still there, flush with cash and suddenly homeless as
Hungary fell to the Red Army.

Rick was nothing if not agile, and went overnight from being a national
socialist to a communist. He was a flexible sort of man. He stayed on in
town after the war and the development of the big mud-brick city began. War
surplus airplanes began to fly in, filled with all manner of goods, and
wars raged next door as the French and the Americans in their turn were
ejected from the region.

During those conflicts Bangkok was a tranquil refuge, filled with soldiers
on R&R. They say that Rick poured a hefty glass of alcohol for the
camouflage-clad men on break from the war, and if they were garrulous and
their words were heard and reported back through the embassy pouch to the
Russians, well, what was the harm?

A man has to take care of himself, doesn't he?

He still ran the restaurant in the old mansion that was gray with mold. The
cab dropped me off just outside the gate. There was brown wall surrounding
the compound and limited parking inside. The city was already crowded with
little Japanese cars that had conquered the place much more efficiently
than the Emperor's armies had.

The front door was open and I walked in past the reception desk and into
the bar area that opened in an L-shape to the right. Lazy ceiling fans
slowly stirred the humid air and candles flickered. Wide barstools fronted
an old Colonial-era serving area, all rich teak, well oiled. Behind the bar
was an attractive Thai woman in traditional dress.

"Sawadi, Poo-ying," I said politely, and she bowed, smiling, with her slim
fingers pushed together against her forhead.

"Sawa-di, Kop" she replied. "What would you like?" Her English was perfect.

"Well, I am here to see a woman named Oy," I said. "But while I am waiting,
I would love a gin and tonic. Bombay gin, Schweppes tonic. With lime,
please."

She smiled and set about building my drink. She made it American style,
with plenty of ice, but made a careful pour of the clear liquor and left
the small bottle of tonic on the side. "Oy will be down presently. She is
with Mr. Rick right now."

I nodded in thanks and poured a little tonic on the gin. It tasted
wonderful.

I was in no hurry, and neither was the restaurant. It was early, and there
were only a few diners at the tables in the back. The bar slowly filled
with businessmen, eager for strong drink and rich beef. I looked over the
hundreds of business cards that were tacked to the pillars on the
bar. Everyone seemed to want to be part of Rick's legend in Bangkok, and I
was no exception. I took a card from my wallet that identified my wire
service and tacked it along with all the others. The value of the
information slurred over drinks at the bar may not have been of interest to
spies, but commercial affairs were becoming every bit as interesting as the
information on troop movements had been.

There was talk that the Vietnamese and Khmers took their R&R here, at least
the leadership. The troops in the war next door had nothing, but the
generals always seemed to live pretty well.

Presently a gorgeous woman emerged from the back of the restaurant. She
wore a pale blue jakgree-style two piece dress in watered silk. It was off
the shoulder-style, with a beaded yokonnang, or folded front, and a
one-piece wrap over her shoulder that trailed nearly to the floor. Her ears
were adorned with long hanging gold and her neck was wreathed in gold and
rubies. Her dark eyes glittered and she extended her hand to me.

 "You must be Oy," I said, rising. I looked her up and down. She was an
elegant lady and I could not tell if she had been born a woman or just
grown into it. Before the plastic surgeons began to ply their trade here
you would have known. Until around one hundred years ago, most common Thai
women used to be naked from the waist up, especially when at home. They
wore a long tube-skirt - pha sin - tied high above the waists below their
breasts, and had a shawl which they could use for modesty.

In the late 19th century the influence of missionaries and modernization
under King Chulalongkorn encouraged local women to wear blouses to cover
their breasts. Only a missionary could come to this lovely land and want to
cover things up. The blouses evolved into the delicate lace blouses the
women wear today. Up north, they use silver belts are decoration, but that
is a recent development since they would have been hidden by folds of cloth
and used for support.

Men used to be naked except for a cloth wrapped around the loins that was
either short or long. Short cloths would reveal more of the tattoos. Men
used to like tattoos from the waist down to the knees. Men began to wear
round necked shirts at the same time as women began to wear
blouses. Fucking missionaries, I thought. They spoil all the fun.

Indigo cotton cloth known as moh hom came to be used for shirts and loose
fitting trousers for working in the fields. I was wearing a pair myself,
cut western style, that the tailor had run up for me. It was the only way
to stay comfortable in the heat.

"Nok told me about your evening. She is nice girl. She like you."  "That is
kind of you to say," I responded as she sidled onto the bar stool. I
thought that she liked the content of my wallet better than she like me,
but the fiction was pleasant.

The bartender was solicitous and brought a glass of white wine, delicately
chilled so that beads of moisture condensed on the sides. Oy took a sip
without acknowledging her. She did as much as own the place, I figured.
"But you have special interests."

"I don't think they are so special. They seem fairly natural to me."  Oy
smiled. "Of course. I share them. But it is an interesting inversion, don't
you agree? To want to be with a girl who is a boy who will treat you, a
man, as a girl?"

"If you put it like that, I suppose you are right. But it does not have to
be so complicated."

"No," she said. "That is remarkably zen-like. Sometimes what is, simply is,
and needs no explanation. The godhead is neither woman nor man, but both
simultaneously."

I thought that thought mixed the Buddhist ethos with Hinduism. But that is
Thailand for you, a unique blend of East and South Asia. "It is unusual to
have that freedom back home,: I said. "My lovers have always been strong
men. Assertive. This is a change of pace."

"And a change of pace is what you shall have. I have a friend who might be
what you are looking for, and we shall see how it works out. Perhaps you
could call on her later. For now, would you care to join me for dinner?"

I told her I had no other plans, my groin rising with the possibilities
that might wait later on. We finished our drinks and I followed her to the
back of the restaurant, where there was a small alcove that provided
privacy. We had a delicate shrimp appetizer following by the restaurant's
signature beef. She did not attempt to finish hers.

I was just spearing the last bite of mine when a man appeared at the table,
and swept in beside Oy.

"Hello," he said in a full rich voice. "I am Rick, and welcome to my
house." Oy smiled possessively and patted his hand.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Rob. I'm with Brand-X of the wire services here in
town."  "Yes," he said, and he smiled though his eyes remained focused on
me. It felt odd, as if I was being studied. "I have heard about it." The
Western community in Bangkok is not that large, though it is growing. He
was a friendly sort of man, and he had a dozen tales to tell about the big
brown city. I had heard some of them, but it was fascinating to hear it
from the horse's mouth. I had another glass of red wine and we talked for
an hour, until coffee appeared, laced with Hungarian brandy.

Oy bridged the stories with the tale of her own life, coming to the big
city as a young man and becoming the mistress of the man who sold beef and
collected secrets. Rick's shoulders were broad and strong, even if there
was a slight thickening to his waist. He was a dashing figure. Too bad he
was taken, I thought. This was a man who could take care of you. I figured
he might be in his early fifties, still vigorous, a little gray at the
temples, but oh those glittering bottomless eyes. He said he had to greet
his guests. He swept away from the table.

I pulled a hundred bhat bill from my wallet and laid it on the table. "Oh,
no," said Oy. "The dinner is complementary. If we manage to find something
that makes you happy we can discuss money then. This was just to get to
know you."

She looked at me with those deep dark eyes and pushed the bill back to me
with a small folded piece of paper on top. "There is an address inside. It
is near. You are expected at 11:00 pm."

I glanced at my Omega watch. It was time to go. I leaned across the table
and kissed her on the cheek.

"I'll let you know how it went," I said. "But I must be going. Thank-you
for the dinner. It was delectable."

"I'll be seeing you," she said. There was an air of complete serenity in
that, and I think I might have blushed as I left the restaurant. Rick was
occupied with a table of businessmen as I passed, but I swear I could feel
his look on the back of my neck as fierce as coals.

Amazon

I had the oddest feeling as I left the restaurant and crossed the crushed
gravel of the small parking lot and drank in the rich earth smell of the
city. It was diesel fumes and shit, I thought, and decay. Everything here
on this big town on the river with the canals- klongs, they call them-
would return to mold and earth if left alone.

And of course that included me. The feeling I had was one of tension in my
loins. Had I misread Rick? He was an intense guy, personable to a fault, a
hail fellow well-met. I had dinner with his mistress, the lovely Oy, whose
transition from country boy to lady of the mansion was seemingly complete.

He had been charming and gallant. But a little aloof. There was something
about those eyes, so worldly and dark. And I was headed to an assignment
with a katoy that could meet my desire.

How had Oy put it? It was delicious. A man being a women to make me, a man,
feel like a woman? Shit, all I wanted to do was get a good fucking. I think
that is just human, maybe the most human thing there is. I lit my Zippo
lighter and looked at the piece of paper that I had been handed.

The address was on Soi 6, perhaps a half mile from where I stood. I stood
under the faint light above the gate of Rick's Number One and waved for a
pedicab, careful to keep my hand down so as not to offend the Thai
driver. Traffic was brisk in the middle-evening as partygoers ventured out
into the cool of the night. Acab lurched over, the peddler wearing a skirt
and plaid shirt tied gathered at the waist. He smiled at me with
betel-juice stained teeth.

I told him the address and he stood on the pedals and we lurched into
traffic. I looked around at the throng, western tourists returning for
dinner, Thais going home or out to sample the nightlife, men attracted to
the heady aroma of sex that hung in the air of corruption. Maybe that was
what made this place so sensual, the heat and the sweat and smell of the
buses and crap.

I was tense as we pulled up in front of a low block of apartments. In the
night I could only see that they had once been whitewashed, but there was
the stain as they began the slow return to the earth.

I handed the driver five bhat for the trip and dismounted from the
cab. There was a central doorway leading to a passage inked in
darkness. The paper had said apartment 3 at this address. I checked my
watch. I was a couple minutes early. I lit a cigarette and choked down the
smoke, feeling the tension in my gut. I threw the butt down after a few
drags. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I took a deep breath of the rich
air and walked up three steps to the open portal and walked down the
hallway, peering at number on the doors.

Number 3 was second on the right. I could barely make it out in the
gloom. There was a faint orange flow around the bottom of the door. I
swallowed and rapped softly on the door.

I could hear motion inside, and the rattle of a chain on the other side of
the door. The knob turned and the door opened to a candlelit room. I
smelled the musky scent of incense, so rich as to be almost
overwhelming. Before me was a woman who towered over me.

Her face was framed in an afro that formed a perfect corona and her skin
was a rich ebony, like oiled teak. Her ears were pierced with large silver
hoops. Her brows were plucked to high accents and her eyelashes were
enormous, drawing me into intense dark eyes, her lids colored a deep
purple, and her lips were voluptuous and colored brilliant crimson.

"Hello, Rob," she said in a husky contralto. I could see her adam's apple
move behind a thick velvet choker as she spoke. "You are Rob, aren't you?
Or did you forget the pizza?"

I smiled, frozen in the gaze of those eyes. "Yes, I'm Rob. Oy referred
me..." I trailed off lamely. Was this a visit to the doctor's office? Panic
began to rise and I looked down the towering frame to the tits that thrust
at me aggressive as torpedoes.

They were gigantic, thrust up against the silk of a patterned blouse cut
high so her mid-section was exposed. The muscles of her belly were defined,
leading my eyes down to thin hips caught in a mini-skirt. Her legs went all
the way to the ground, ending in platform shoes with a pronounced heel.

She might have been a little taller than me in bare feet, but with those
shoes and that hair she towered above me.

She smiled, though not in a kind way. A neutral smile, perhaps, a
professional courtesy, one that indicated nothing. "Come in, Rob. Let's get
to know one another. Perhaps we have something in common. Mother Oy thought
we might."

By her smoky voice she was American, and African-American at that. I have
always had a weakness for men- people- of color, and I was stunned. She
took my hand and pulled me into the room, closing the door behind me.

"Thanks for the response. I get that sometimes. But can you talk?"

"Um, yes, yes of course I can. I just was not expecting..."

"A six-foot five inch nigger?"

"No! I didn't mean that. My first lover was a black man, please, don't take
it that way," I stammered. Shit, biggest event of my life and I am blurting
it out in the first seconds. "Please."

She looked at me stoically and then there was a smile that actually held
some warmth. "So you like black folks?"

I felt better, thinking of Alexander of the caf au lait skin and thin
imperious cock and passionate lips. "I love black folks," I breathed. "I
love them."

"Fair enough. Would you care for a glass of wine? I'm drinking white."

"That would be wonderful." I think I exhaled for the first time since I
knocked. She turned and walked toward a short hallway that held what looked
like a kitchenette. The bathroom and the bedroom were probably beyond that,
though the rest of the hall was cloaked in darkness. The whir of an old
window-mounted air conditioner stirred the air and blew the rich cocktail
of her scent and sandalwood in lazy coolness.

"Make yourself comfortable. Have a seat."

There were two couches pulled together in an L-shape around a low coffee
table. A stick of incense burned there in a long narrow tray. There some
silk prints on the wall depicting Thai dancers in the stylized costumes,
cobra figures sprouting from their shoulders and erupting from the peaks of
their hats. The Cobra was a powerful symbol here, one of strength and
virility and danger. I walked over to the couch and sat down on one, on the
edge, still ready to flee if I had to. I heard the opening of the
refrigerator and the clink of bottle on glass.

She stepped around the corner, a wineglass in each hand. She walked toward
me, extending one hand. Her nails were long and painted crimson to match
her lips. I took the glass from her and brought it to my laps. She slipped
by me, her navel at the level of my eyes, and delicately took a seat on the
adjacent couch, so that the arms were between us. She looked at me levelly.

"Relax, White Bread. What you see is what you get. Maybe."

"All right. I'll try. This is not what I expected. I thought you would be
Asian."

"Reasonable enough, I suppose. And in a way I am. I am going to be a woman
in Asia, or at least the kind I can be here and I can't be at home." She
arched her back, and her magnificent bosom strained at the material of her
blouse. "I got these here. They are brand new. Cost a fraction of what they
would have cost back in LA. What do you think?"

I took a sip of wine, hypnotized by the jutting mass of her chest. "Why,
they are very impressive. Lovely, I mean." I tried to be polite about them,
but they frankly freaked me out. When they pointed at me I felt like I was
being illuminated by twin searchlights.

"They are nice work, if I must say so. But listen, White Bread, why don't
you drink your wine and we can have a bowl or two and see if we can loosen
up. She rose and walked to a reel-to-reel tape recorder on a console
against the wall. She flicked a switch and the tape began to roll. Miles
Davis, cool and cerebral passion flooded the room. She took a small box
from a shelf and returned to her seat. She looked at me and I felt like a
rabbit caught in the gaze of a cobra.

She slid the top of the box off and set it down on the coffee table. She
fished around in the box and brought out a bamboo stick with brown
materials wrapped in a bundle at the top. "Thai stick," she said. "The very
best." She bent forward and removed the strand of wrapping from the bundle
and gently crumbled the dark marijuana from the stick onto the lid of the
box, careful to keep it all in a neat pile.

Then she removed a little brass pipe with a wide flat bowl.  She took a
pinch of marijuana and placed it in the bowl. She produced a wooden match
and struck it artfully one-handed and raised the pipe to those enormous
crimson lips. She carefully applied the flame and drew the smoke deep into
her lungs. She held it there, gazing at me, and then exhaled slowly, the
smoke hanging between us.

The smell of the dope and the incense and her were overwhelming. I breathed
in what had been in her as she took another pinch and placed it in the pipe
and extended it to me.

I put my glass on the table and took the pipe. I had not smoked dope since
I had been in Bangkok, part of a small effort to clean up my act. But I put
it to my lips and as she waved another match across it I sucked the smoke
to the bottom of my lungs. It was rich beyond belief. When I was full I
held my breath and I swear I could feel the rush as swiftly as my blood
rushed through my lungs. I could feel my heart beating, suddenly huge and
heavy in my chest. I gazed into those chocolate eyes, losing myself in
their depths.

"My name was Cleatus, but I am known as Cherie here. You can call me
Amazon."

We had another few bowls and finished the wine as she told me her tale.

She grew up in Watts, a tall skinny kid. Good at sports but not that
good. The riots had put everything on hold, Black revolution in the
streets, the 68 Olympic Games indelible in his mind. He had not been a star
at the playground. As the other boys cocks were stirring for the girls who
blossomed, he found that his cock was stirring for them. It was awkward,
being Black and gay. He had to maintain an air of machismo, and find the
others of our kind for the furtive grope in the alley, always afraid of
being caught. By the cops or by the neighborhood hard guys.

He had done a hitch in the army, enlisting with his mother's permission at
17 as a way to get out. Enlistments were only two years in those days, he
said. I watched his throat, fascinated, as the structure moved behind the
velvet choker. I let his words carry me along. He had been lucky. The need
for troops in Vietnam was fading in 1970, and he wound up in Germany in a
transport unit. His exposure to the barracks and to Europe showed him many
new things. He saw an ad for a drag review when his unit rotated through
the isolated garrison in Berlin, and he went, and he said that it
electrified him.

He went around to the stage door when it was over, desperate to meet these
men who appeared as women. When they emerged, suddenly normal men in fey
street clothes, they saw him. Exotic and filled with longing. Barely legal,
even there. And they took him under their wings.

He went back to Berlin on pass and they indoctrinated him to the drag
world, and he was free to be gay when he was with them on the Ku-damm. By
the time his tour was up, he had made some decisions. He would be released
from service right there, and then he was going to take his last paycheck
and head for Bangkok and get the tits he knew he needed and could not
afford in Europe. Then he would return to the cabarets of Germany and be
the Queen.

Queen of the Amazons.

I was mesmerized. She did not ask me my story. I imagine it was written on
my face. She got us more wine, and I watched her sashay by, swinging her
thin hips enticingly. Her shoulders were strong and the veins stood out on
her ebony arms. She brought the wine back and placed my glass in front of
me.

"So, watcha think, White Bread? How do you like me so far?"

"I think you are the most fascinating person I have ever met," I said
softly.

"Well, that is a start. I think I might keep you for a while. I like to
fuck white ass. Like those kinky Germans. That is the other part of the
story. I'll tell you about that later." She reached between those massive
breasts and unbuttoned her blouse, shrugging it off. Her brassiere was
black satin and strained to hold in the monters. She reached behind her and
unclasped the bra, leaning forward in a most feminine manner to shrug it
off. When she stood erect, her shoulders back the breasts stood out hard
and jutting. They seemed to have no relationship to the rest of her body,
which was slim and well muscled.

Amazon undid a button on the side of the mini and unzipped it, stepping
out. Her panties featured a reinforced panel on the front. It must be to
keep her cock pressed against her body. "I always like getting out of this
thing," she said. "Hard to go to the bathroom and stay lady-like. I gotta
take a leak. Have your clothes off when I get back." She walked away in her
platform shoes and I heard the door open back in the hall.

She was matter of fact and completely in charge. I stood and unbuttoned my
shirt. I placed it on the couch, someplace, I am not sure where, and
shucked off my shoes and slacks and underwear. She would be even taller
when I was in my bare feet, funny what you think of at times like this.

I stood there, naked, waiting. I heard the creak of the door and then her
footsteps returning. She rounded the corner and came into the light. Her
breasts pointed at me. Her lips were freshly crimson. The muscles on her
lean belly formed a six-pack that vee-ed down to those slim hips and high
bubble buttocks. And now, free from its prison, hung her cock. My eyes
bulged. Even limp it was at least eight inches long, and uncut. It was
darker even than his rich skin. He stopped and cocked his hips at me.

"Come here, White Bread. Worship the Queen."

I couldn't help myself. "Yes, Ma'am," I said. I walked to her. As I got
close she reached out and grasped my shoulders, pushing me down. Her feet
were akimbo, and on my knees I was between the platform shoes. I had to
look up at the magnificent cock, and I looked at her ballsack, long and
deeply textured, public hair trimmed and curly. Him, I thought. Oh, yes,
Him.

I reached up and gently took his ballsack in my palm and opened my mouth. I
extended my tongue and breathed in the musky smell that had been trapped in
his panties. The dope was in my head. I licked the tip of his cock, teasing
a drop of urine from it. I licked him softly but insistently, and I could
feel him respond, beginning to swell. I had to arch my back as it rose
before me like a thick snake. He was going to be ten inches of manhood if
he was an inch, and I took as much of him into my throat as I
could. Gentle, I thought, if he wants to use me differently he will tell
me. I gently caressed his balls, feeling them glide beneath the texture of
his sack. I could only get half of him down my throat and I licked the
underside of that magnificent tool.

It was richly veined, carved almost. It was the most powerful beautiful
cock I had ever seen, bigger, more insistent, the most male thing in the
world. I looked up from my man-meal and saw his lips and his wild halo of
black hair framed by those rigid breasts with the angry nipples.

With my other hand I grasped the rest of the mighty shaft, a full span of
my hand. I smoothly began to jerk him with my right hand as I sucked the
tip of his cock, tonguing his piss-slit of the slimy pre-cum and continuing
to caress his balls. "Oooh, that is not bad, White Bread. You got some
potential as a cock-sucker, you do."

I redoubled the motion of my tongue and increased the tempo of my caress
and rhythmic motion on the base of his shaft. He started to fuck my face,
thrusting more of himself into me. "You go, boy, you suck Amazon's fat
black clit! Oooh..."

I was so hard that my erect cock was slamming my belly. I wanted to cum so
badly but I could not release my hold of him. I could sense he was nearing
his climax and I held him on my lips so I could taste him when he came. His
hips bucked toward me and my hands felt his balls contract upward toward
his body and the first surge of his rich cum on its way to my mouth and
tongue and greedy gullet. He erupted into me, and I imprisoned the huge
mushroom tip of his cock at the front of my mouth so I could milk him of
every last drop.

When his major spurts were over, I took him again, sucking the aftershocks,
hungry for more of his hot manhood. My lips were slick with his seed and my
belly was filled with his hot jism.

It was hot and slimy and wonderful. He came in massive waves, five good
shots that almost pushed me back off him, I swallowed, submitting to his
manhood, triumphant in my service to him. I was almost choking, the taste
salty and acrid in the submission and victory.

I did not take his dick out of my mouth. I waited attentively and kept up a
gentle manipulation of him. I could wait until he told me he was done with
me.

"White Bread," he sighed. "I'm glad you took the first one in your
mouth. The next one is going to take longer, and I am going to fuck your
white ass within an inch of your life."

I nodded, the tip of his cock still within me. I could feel him stir
again. This was liable to be an all-nighter, I thought.

Fucked by the Queen

It was an all-nighter, and before it was done I realized I had a tiger by
the tail and there was no way to get off. I knelt before him with the tip
of his enormous black cock in my mouth. I gazed up at him, as his face
framed by those enormous prosthetic breasts, hard as missile cones.

He looked down on me without compassion, his eyes were cold and lidless now
that he had cum and yet I knew he was rousing to the idea of another
bout. His/her eyes, darkly purple shaded, bright crimson lips un-besmirched
by a kiss. But the taste of him was intoxicating, and my position left
really no alternative. I could get up and leave, but with his heels and
natural height and afro he towered so far above me that I thought it would
be wise to submit to his mood.

It was a good idea, the submission. He reached down with the blood-red
nails of his hands and gently raked my cheeks.

"That was gooood, White Bread. I like to see a boy who knows his work and
his place. You are like those Germans. So proud outside and inside they
just want hot black dick stuck in them and my cum dripping down their
chins. Fucking Krauts." His voice continued a rant, chanting almost. "Now
you take your hand and move those sweet lips of yours and you get me
hard. I got some fucking to do. I got my orders."

I nodded meekly as I began to suckle his cock. Orders? What the hell did
that mean, I wondered. This had suddenly become frightening. His cock was
so big I thought it might split me up, make me bleed. I did not see mercy
or love in his eyes or hear it in the chant of anger. This was part of
something he had not told in the story of the young black GI drag-diva of
the Ku-damm. This was a dance of anger. Was it drugs? I could only suspect,
and I realized for the first time I was way out of my league in a land far
from home.

I raised my hands again to serve him, gently stroking the long shaft of his
cock and my hands cupping his scrotum, and the hard tight curls of his
pubic mass. I was shivering a little as his cock began to rise, once more
triumphant. I kept my eyes on his face, hoping for some softening of his
features. But what I saw was cool excitement and the radiance of the power
he was demonstrating over me.

The contrast between Noy, the Thai boy who wanted to be a girl, and who
cuddled against me in the night after our abortive and confused love-making
could not have been more complete. As he stiffened I had to rise up as tall
as I could on my knees. This tall wiry man with the enormous thrusting
penis was not at all like the first black man I had serviced. There was
hardness and sad learning in my first one, and tenderness, too.

Not this simmering reservoir of anger for something that was not me, nor
anything I had done. I licked the piss slit of his cock and gently nuzzled
the gathering of foreskin behind the bulbous purple tip.

He was almost fully hard once more when he jerked himself from me and
grasped my shoulder, squeezing hard enough for me to murmur in
protest. "Shut the fuck up, Fuck boy. You dumb fuck. Now Amazon is going to
get down, and you are going to shout."

Then he pulled and I lurched to my feet. He looked down at me from the
height of his platform shoes and his rocket breasts with the dark areolas
nearly stared me in the face. He thrust one in my mouth. "Suckle on the
Queen," he said, "The source of all blessings."

I took the thing in my mouth. The nipple was supple, but the mass behind
was unnaturally firm, as if there had not been enough skin to cover the
bags of silicon. It was lifeless, not a human breast at all. Something
alien implanted in this wiry body. A breast of torment, not of solace and
comfort.

He held my head there, thrusting his chest into my mouth. If it had been
softer he might have succeeded in suffocating me, but it was too hard to
fully cover my nose. Instead he dominated my mouth and if he would not have
hurt me I might have used my teeth on the awful thing.

Then again he pulled himself from me and gripped my head with both
hands. "You don't like these lovelies, do you, Kraut Boy. Now I was a
German. What plagued this man? "Well, I'll give you something you do love."
With that, and the dark empty eyes he turned me and thrust me toward the
back of the couch. I stumbled forward and into it, falling forward so that
I had to grasp the back to keep from falling right over it. He pushed me
down so that my face and arms were on the seat cushions and my ass was up
in the air. I could touch the floor if I extended my toes, but he kicked my
legs apart so my asshole was exposed and open to him.

I might have been born at night, but not this one. I knew he was going to
take me here and this way and I just hoped it would be with some
consideration. Something must have happened to this guy in Germany. Why was
I paying for it? God, I wanted Alexander and a gentle loosening finger.

I thought perhaps I could plead my way out of it, and the image of my first
love, that slim young man with the violin and the soulful look crossed my
mind. The sight of him circled by bullies in the junior high school and me
saying nothing at all to stop his torment.

"Faggot," they had hissed at Joe. "Faggot! Fucking homo!"

I saw the fear in Joe's eyes and I did nothing then, and now I was about to
ripped apart and there was no one to see and no one to help. My hands
ripped the cushions.

"Please use something," I whispered. "Please don't tear me. Please." In
response he chuckled and hawked up some phlegm. I felt a warm viscous drop
hit the top of my ass crack and drizzle down to my rosebud. I jerked as his
long nails pulled my buttocks apart, and then I felt the tip of his monster
perfunctorily rub down through the mucous and then lodge against my
asshole.

"No, Please. I've done nothing to you...Please!"

"You got that one wrong, Duetsch-fag. You fucks are going to pay for what
you did to me." I felt him press hard against me. He was hard as a diamond,
fully, rampant, and my pain was part of his pleasure. I willed myself to
relax, to admit this intruder as best I could. I pressed back on the blunt
tip of his cock, wet with our spit and he pressed again, insistently,
brutally. I was not ready, and the more he pushed against me the more I
tightened. I could not relax. Push, I told myself, otherwise you are going
to wind up in the hospital. A Thai hospital with your asshole sutured shut.

The pressure grew and I moaned in pain, pinioned between his thrusting cock
and the rigid bulk of the couch. God it hurt, but my whimpering only made
him press harder. Press back, press back, God please press back....

Then the fierce tip of his cock sprung the lock-ring of my anus,
triumphantly entering me. I think I might have passed out in a white
blazing light of pain. He withdraw slightly and spat down on me again. I
thought I heard that but it could have been happening to someone else. This
was pain beyond imagination, a violation so profound I could not imagine
that his cock in my ass had been what I came for. I cried, shaking in pain.

And then he was inside me, inch by inch, to the tip of the monster. Ten
inches buried in me, and I could feel his balls slapping at the back of
mine. He slapped my ass with an open palm, hard, but I made no sound. There
was nothing that could hurt so much and so deep as his cock inside.

Then he began to move his hips, and then, slowly, the pain leveled. After a
few minutes of stroking he was able to withdraw almost to the tip and then
suddenly and violently lunge right to the full depth of his sword again. I
felt as though my insides were being churned, and I suddenly felt
nauseous. Bile filled my throat.

Ten of those sharp piercing thrusts and then came a pounding, steady
rhythm. The pain lessened, and even with the pain the repetition began to
bring the glow I had known from my gentler lovers. I grunted now, not in
pain, but in my own arousal as my prostate was stroked by the bulbous tip
and shaft. I might have moaned.

"See, now, you fucking Kraut. It always feels good after a while. I'll
breed you until you shit niggers for a week." He began to hit me in time
with his stroking, alternating cheeks and I was humiliated to see that I
was responding to him, thrusting back on him, moaning with each thrust of
that enormous device deep into my bowels.

He was right. He lasted a long time on his second session. I came on the
back of his couch, over-stimulated by the impact of his lithe hips, the
churning of my bowels and the wild rubbing of my cock against the coarse
cloth. He cursed me and called me a Kraut bastard, and when he came
himself, he grunted in triumph, and I felt the warmth of his seed deep in
me. And then he hit me some more.

The third time he came he threw me on his bed, atop the comforter, and
pulled my legs up on his shoulders and penetrated me that way, my hips
aching, thrusting against me so hard that my head was thrust against the
headboard, banging it with each stroke.

He wanted to come a fourth time, and he thrust his soft dick into my mouth,
filling it with the odor of shit and taste of decay and semen, and when I
succeeded in getting him hard, he just fucked my face and I thought I was
going to suffocate. He pushed me on my side and pinioned me with his arms
so I could not escape. His hard breasts felt like weapons against my back,
and my head swirled with pain and the end of the dope high, which had
enhanced every sensation. He dozed for a while, exhausted assault on me. I
might have too, even as freaked out as I was.

I should have run. But I didn't. He fucked me again in the morning and made
me blow him in the shower. I could taste the coppery taste of blood on his
bludgeon, and my shit, and his semen was thin.

Then he told me to put on my clothes and get the fuck out. I wondered at
what he hated so much. I didn't know him well enough to earn treatment like
that. But before he let me go he made me worship the hard Queen, the tit
that felt like plastic and tasted like hatred. He told me I would be back.

I didn't say a word. I have never been so happy to see the daylight. Not
before, and not now.

But I did find out that I could be sadder. But some mistakes you make with
your heart, and some with your groin. Live and you learn, I thought. Or
don't. As bad as I felt, I wondered at what had happened to Amazon to make
him hate his own sex, mutilate himself and become such a complete psychotic
prick.

I limped along Soi 6 and out to where the bustle of Sukumvit Road would
cloak me in the anonymity of daylight and the crowd. There was a dead dog
by the side of the road, hit a glancing but fatal blow by a truck or
taxi. The body was swollen in the heat.

Oddly corpulent, since the dogs were skinny here. It was almost
balloon-like, and the legs stood out from the internal pressure of gas in
the carcass. Great green flies darted to wing him to his rest. Presently
the asshole would burst, or the esophagus, in a cloud that would mingle
with the bus fumes and the shit in the Klongs. Then the insects would make
him flat.

There was no one to complain to, for the dog or for me. The Bangkok cops
would laugh at what one Westerner did another, particularly one raped by a
katoy so clearly male.

You get what you pay for, I guess. Though I could not precisely understand
the transaction.

My pants were trashed and I had to return to my apartment and soak the
blood and daub my damaged asshole. I would not be shitting happily for some
time, as I bent over and tried to inspect the damage in the full mirror in
the bathroom. I hoped that I would not die of some infection in this
tropical town. I missed filing my copy and Chicago was mad and I had to
make up a story about a country road, some Khmer refugees and a broken
motorbike. I wondered if I should talk to Oy, and decided this particular
humiliation was too intimate.

Maybe if I kept a low profile I would never see the Amazon again, and when
the time was right, I could slink out of town. I stayed away from the
clubs, even after my poor torn ass healed up.

There is a lot to be said for kindness, I thought, and the joy of pain is
much overrated.

I considered that right until the afternoon I found the envelope made of
fine fiber paper that had been slid under my door.

Year of Living Dangerously

You don't need a history lesson. You are not reading this for some dry
facts. If I was a betting man, and I am, I would say you are reading to see
how fast I show what a shallow little slut I am, and how fast I wound up on
my knees or on my back.

Be patient. There is plenty of time for that. I was still hanging around
town in 1975. It was early in that year that President Gerald Ford asked
Congress for nearly $500 million bucks to aid the government of
Cambodia. Congress wanted nothing to do with the old war in Southeast Asia,
either in Vietnam or any of the other ravaged nations.

In mid-April of that year, a guerilla group calling itself the Red
Cambodians- or Khmer Rouge, in the language of the old French colonialists-
occupied the sleepy capital of Phnom Penh. The US-backed Lon Nol government
surrendered the next day. The nominal leader of the Khmer Rouge was an old
ideologue named Khieu Samphan. The real power was held by a fellow named
Pol Pot, and he ended Cambodia's five-year war, and initiated the
astonishingly brutal regime that murdered two million of his own people.

He renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea, and decided to start history
all over. He expelled the people from the cities, forcing them onto
countryside farm collectives. He purged the leadership of the old regime,
and then his own.

The Khmer Rouge was utterly ruthless and employed a system of forced
marriages to help engineer a classless society. No one here cared. They
were tired of the war, and no one wanted to hear about it. Saigon fell on
the 29th of April, and the last action of the war occurred with Pol Pot's
thugs grabbed the American merchant ship Mayaguez on May 12th with 39 crew
aboard.  Pres. Ford sent a company of Marines to rescue the ship, but it
was a disaster fitting the end of the larger disaster. The ship was freed
but 41 Americans were killed, 50 were wounded, and the Marines left three
behind on an island called Koh Tang.

They were among the first to be murdered by the Khmer Rouge, but they
certainly were not the last, not by several hundred thousand.

1976 was the year I lived dangerously. I was with the wire service in
Bangkok, and though a little wiser, still young. There was just enough
interest in the region for the wire service to pay me a pittance to be
there and it was far enough from my other troubles to be exactly the place
I wanted to be.

Thailand was essentially untouched by the great war that had raged around
them. The commercial sex business was in transition. The thousands of G.I.s
who had once flocked there on R&R were long gone. Rama the Vth was
King. The head of state was a portly little fellow named Pol Pot. He was a
first class asshole, it was widely known, and had taken his model for the
new Kampuchea from the French Revolution, and proclaimed the year of his
conquest to be Year 0.

He introduced something they called agrarian communism. The capital was
resettled to the countryside or killed. Phnom Penh shrunk from over 300,000
inhabitants to around 20,000. Those who were suspected of having
collaborated with the Americans were executed; the regime went
xenophobe. It regarded anyone capable of speaking a foreign language a
collaborator or counterrevolutionary. We in Thailand watched thousands of
refugees cross the border escape starvation and death.

There were stories every day, even if the editors back home did not
care. The troops were not coming back to save anyone. There would be
interest when the magnitude of the horror became apparent, but it was not
when I was there, when it was happening. Vietnamese intervention in
Kampuchea resulted in a continued flow of refugees into Thailand, as well
as guerrilla fighters. Granted they were facing out, rather than in, but it
was put on the spike back home.

Southeast Asia was so fifteen-minutes ago.

But it suited me at the time.

I was blue for three days after the night with Amazon. My physical woes
were mostly mended and I was horny again. And I blush to say that the
memory of that incredible cock still floated through my mind at times.

But to love a cock that big would take some work, and some gentleness, to
make it right for both lovers, and all I saw in Amazon was unresolved
anger. Anger at himself, anger at everyone around him. I decided it might
be amphetamines. I actually forgave him for the way he treated me. He had
more demons than I did. And if he didn't turn the cheek the way I wanted,
well, I was OK and was the wiser for it.

Speed was everywhere it town. It had become popular during the war, and it
was cheap. Mellowed the buzz from the Thai Sticks and the alcohol and let a
man thrust hard all night. My butt still felt raw from it.

So in the process of forgiving my enormous tormentor, I also decided that
the contrast of artificial boobs and the rampant cock was something I
couldn't resolve. Noy on the other hand was soft, soft skin and soft
cock. But her eyes still glittered. Hang with the whores and you hang with
the whores, I decided. Then the note appeared below my door.

It was on a heavy linen note-card. The words were few, and simple. "I am
sorry." It was signed "Oy" in delicate calligraphy. I put it down. I was
confused and I did not want to think about it. The nice thing about being
young is that the libido always comes back.

I was jerking off the third night after the rape. I thought of that giant
cock, of course, but I thought about my oldest fantasy. Joe. Joe with the
soft sweet eyes, gentle, but I imagined him taut with desire, hard as a
rock, spurting over my belly, spurting everywhere. Then melting together.

Funny. I had not seen him since senior year. I wondered, as I drifted off,
what had happened to him.

It had been an interesting few months since arriving in Bangkok to report
the news. There was plenty of it, and not one seemed to care.

It was comfortable in Bangkok. Thailand had been a vital base for America
in the Vietnam War. Thais always supported the winner. That is why the
Japanese did not dethrone the King. So Thailand hosted dozens of US bases
in the war. But to the west it was different. In 1964 Cambodia received
military aid from China; the country severed ties with South Vietnam in
1963. The Viet Minh ran supply lines on the Cambodian side down the Ho Chi
Minh trail.

I learned my history because it was my job. In 1967, the communist Khmer
Rouge began guerilla warfare against the Cambodian government.

On Feb. 23rd of 190, Tricky Dick approved the 'secret bombing' of Cambodia;
on April 30th, he announced that US troops were sent into Cambodia. Just
before, on March 18th 1970, General Lon Nol staged a coup, sending Prince
Nordodom Sihanouk to a well-heeled exile in the Peopl's Republic of China.

>From 1970 to 1973, Cambodia was a sideshow of the real war. In 1975, the
Rouge was in, and it was the only war.

Three nights after I got raped I read the note from Oy and decided I needed
to get out again. I could not let this thing eat at me any more. I ventured
out for a drink after I filed copy for the stateside market. There were
disturbing reports coming out of Kampuchea. I had learned to say the name
and write it with a straight face. The Khmer Rouge were absolutely
unchallenged. There had been an awful sucking vacuum as the US pulled
out. Now there was nothing to stop anything. The cops were gone.

This particular story was about refugees who had fled across the Thai
Border. I thought I might have to go up there and get an exclusive
by-line. On the way home I decided to stop at the Trocadaro Hotel. It had
been popular with the R&R crowd, recharging from the war, and it had been
on hard times since the bulk of the troops pulled out in 1973 and now,
three years later, it was on hard times. It was trying to re-invent itself
as a tourist place. It was as resolutely a hetero place as any in town, and
I if I did any mental cruising, I wanted it to be with men who were
comfortable as men.

I was approaching the bar in the humid twilight of the hotel. Just as I was
about to ask for a cold Amarit beer I heard an all too familiar chanting
from the bar to my left. It couldn't be. Amazon was out in the afternoon,
and she had apparently been here for some time.

She was a mean drunk. She was yelling at a tourist with a plump face and
blonde hair. Amazon had apparently decided she had found a German. It
wasn't hard. The Germans were here in a mob, and the Thais loved them
because they were a replacement for the soldiers who were not coming
back. So what if they were pigs. It doesn't mean they aren't nice people,
right?

Amazon had a bar girl on either side of him and he looked like he might
have been awake since he raped me. It looked like he was getting ready to
hit the German, and he had no idea just how strong Amazon was.

The bartender was a middle-aged Thai who had stopped polishing glasses and
turned his attention to the commotion. I should have turned and left, but
I'm much smarter now than I was then. I didn't want those poor little girls
to get hurt in his rage. I figured I had hurt enough for everyone, the
German included. I walked down the bar to get the girls away from him.

Now, he was tall and he had a good reach, even if a lot of it was hair and
heels. Just as she was rearing back to let a fist fly at the German on his
right, I yelled out "Hi, Amazon! Let me buy you a beer. I forced myself in
between the German and the girls on bar stools.

It took him a couple of seconds to recognize me and then I got a big wicked
smile. He was really high. While this was going on, rather than gratitude
the bar girl behind me apparently had been counting on the German for some
serious Bhat if he went down, and wanted revenge for the almost punch and
tried to smack Amazon on the back of the head with her pocketbook. I
managed to lean out fast enough to prevent it.

But here was another lesson in life. The other girl joined in and succeeded
in whacking her on the Afro, spilling the beer in her hand.

Things went downhill real fast then when Amazon elbowed the bar girl on his
left in the face. The two of them and the German ran out of the bar crying
and screaming in Thai. Amazon was fixated on the door where the girls left
and I thought it was over.

I started to sidle out of the place and put it behind me when the Mamma San
came in started screaming at Amazon. It was delicious, watching the little
woman yelling upward at her. I should have left right then, but then I saw
that she was carrying a large big black fan-shaped pocketbook. She was
going to hit Amazon with it and that was not going to go down well.

In less than a second, Amazon turned and delivered a left hook straight to
her chops and she fell back on her rather hefty butt with a very surprised
look on her face which turned sudden to tears as she got up and fled out of
the bar entrance behind her.

Amazon's face screwed up in surprise. He must have been really
gone. Instead of freaking out, he slumped down onto one of the barstools.
Now it is time to go, I thought, and started to walk out and then there was
a screaming Thai guy from behind us. Turning around I saw a very Mak-mak
Mo-ho Thai in a white shirt, black pants and pointed plastic shoes about
eight feet away.

But what is really drawing my attention was the .38 jammed in his belt.

I think he got out about two sentences before jerking the gun from his
belt, but it may have been three. He stood with his legs apart, the gun
cocked, holding it two-handed and shaking like hell.

I stepped off the bar stool and stood in front of Amazon. High and drunk or
not he did not deserve to die for whacking a bar girl and this guy did not
want to shoot me. I was counting on it. While this is happening all at once
- suddenly there is a man standing next to me, shoulder to shoulder,
blocking the Thai from having a clean shot at Amazon. He had wiry dark hair
and a powerful physique.

I knew him. It was Rick. His katoy mistress Oy had got me into this. He was
wearing one of those long formal au dai shirts and was a bit taller than
me. I was pleased not to stand there alone. Neither one of us spoke a word
to the Thai who then screamed a couple of more sentences and ran out of the
bar.

That was it. We took Amazon under the arms and those tits stood up erect
even if he couldn't. We put him in a pedicab, and Rick gave some
instructions in Thai I could not hear and a fist-full of bhat.

The cab pulled away into traffic and I saw the corona of Amazon's afro
slump on the seat.

"Thank-you for your assistance," He said. "It is curious that you
intervened, after what happened."

"What is curious is that I am here, and you are here and she was here. What
does that mean? You knew? Are you following me?"

"Yes and no. Oy told me she was here and out of control. She asked me to
take care of it for her, but unfortunately I was detained at the restaurant
or this would not have happened. And as to his treatment of you, Oy was
informed when he cooled down the next day. He was quite contrite. He
realized he had an opportunity to strike up a relationship with a handsome
westerner that could have accommodated his time here and he threw it away."

He fished in his shirt pocket for a maroon package trimmed in
gold. Dunhills, of course. He lit one and exhaled a blue cloud that mingled
with the fumes of the buses. "For what it is worth, this is probably a
result of remorse as much as anything."

Handsome, I thought? "He is fucked up, big time. He needs help," I said. "I
hoped I would never see him again. Not ever." Handsome? Maybe that
accounted for the vibe I felt when I left the restaurant. It seemed like an
eternity ago. Three days and a night.

"I don't blame you. Perhaps I can buy you a drink as a small token of my
regret. The Oriental is probably a good antidote to this place."

I was impressed. The Oriental had been the best hotel in town for over a
century, treating guest and semi-conquerer with great luxury and dignity. I
had been to a reception there the month before. The place was British
Empire at its zenith. The accommodations and public rooms were supposed to
be sumptuous. The sps was reputed to be one of the most beautiful in the
world. Dignitaries and distinguished travelers have all followed the Chao
Phya river through the heart of the brown city to The Oriental.

Now I was going there in a cab, with a restaurateur who served a good
steak, and was maybe a spy. And not one of ours. His hair above his brow
was crisp, and the gaze of his dark eyes frank.

Like I said, it was a year of living dangerously.

On My Feet, or On My Knees

If there is a nicer place in the world for an afternoon cocktail, or
frankly, anything at all in the afternoon, it is the Oriental Hotel in
Bangkok.

I was riding in a pedicab with Rick, the proprietor of the famous Ricks'
Number One steak house. My adrenaline was still up. The little man with the
gun had seemed very serious at the time, and I was grateful that Rick had
appeared to help me extricate the drunken katoy Amazon from the bar before
something awful happened. And that should have taught me a lesson. Don't
get involved, particularly with large she-males who have recently raped
you.

I still had mixed feelings about what she had done to me, and did not think
that cruelty should be a component of love. And still, I wondered why that
magnificent cock of hers still floated in my memory, detached from the
pain.

They say that the body does not retain the memory of pain, and I had to
accept it. The horror of the violation was fading. I was learning a lot of
lessons in 1975, in a town that was supposed to be a backwater but was now
in the middle of yet another war, this one without the Americans.

I wondered why I had acted so foolishly. In the future I was going to make
a note about minding my own business. We rolled up Sukamvit Road. Rick was
silent, and I looked at his profile: proud nose, deep smoldering eyes. Dark
hair dusted with gray at the sides, swept back from his temple. Full
sensuous lips. He turned to me and smiled. His teeth were even, but stained
with the Dunhills he smoked.

"That was a narrow thing back there. If you had not acted, young Amazon
might well have got the surgery she wants by gunfire. Not a happy thing."
They was only a hint of his native Hungarian in his voice. He had been
speaking English for decades, but the trace remained in his cadence and
some of his consonants.

I told him I should not have gotten involved. Amazon didn't deserve it, I
said petulantly.

"Amazon has more problems than you can imagine. My mistress Oy has been
trying to help her through her transition, but it has been a harder task
than we originally thought. We hoped that you might be a part of that,
someone who could cool her down."

"So what are you running, Rick?" I asked. "Some sort of queer dating
service?" My tone might have been more querulous than I liked, not the man
of the world tone I had hoped for. But my encounter with Amazon had hurt,
and I still could feel an ache in ass where her tool had reamed me so
thoroughly.

Rick looked at me levelly. "There is apparently much about this big brown
city on the river that you do not understand, my young friend. And I hope
you will consider me your friend. You need friends in a foreign land. Trust
me, I know that well." He looked out at the gates of the Intercontinental
Hotel where they had an elephant that lived in front. He fished in his
pocket for the red and gold package of cigarettes. He offered me one,
courteously, and I took it from left side of the divided package. He smiled
and produced a heavy gold Dunhill lighter and lit mine, and then one for
himself. His leonine profile was wreathed in smoke.

"Let me start by saying that there is nothing that happens in town that the
Police do not know about. You may think this is a happy-go-lucky place of
happy prostitutes and drunken tourists, but it is much more. The Monarchy
is ancient, and the Thais were never colonized by any of the powers. They
did it by being smart and crafty in their relations with the West. It would
behoove you to remember that." We smoked in silence. It seemed like good
advice, whether I wanted to hear it or not, and he had survived and
flourished here for more almost thirty years.

You are going to think I am a slut, but my gaze wandered down from his
handsome face, past his powerful shoulders and along the buttons of his
loose shirt down to where it bloused over his belt. I imagine he had
thickened a bit over the years, but he was solidly built and exuded
power. I wondered if his body was carpeted with that wiry dark hair, and if
his cock was nestled in a thick bush, waiting to be teased out. He had an
air of authority and mystery about him, and I found myself wishing he did
not have a live-in mistress. Of course, I thought, he is a European, and
everyone knows they are more mature about affairs of lust.

OK, I am a slut. But all I expected was a drink. A guy can dream, can't he?

We pulled up in front of the Oriental, under the dignified faade that
protected the guests from the sun and the monsoon rain when it came. The
British had built the place more than a hundred years ago, and it reeked of
the old Empire smells of oiled teak and brass.

A doorman dressed in the regalia of old Siam opened the heavy doors and the
gasp of air conditioning swept past us as we walked into the lobby. The
public rooms were supposed to be sumptuous. You could see the sluggish
brown rope of the Chao Phya river through the large windows.

Rick gestured toward the salon, where some tourists were enjoying high tea
and businessmen where conferring with their Thai counterparts. Very
civilized, I thought, as we walked in. Rock selected a table with four
padded lounge chairs around it. They were covered in a fabric of rich
damasque. I sank into the cushions as Rick sat next to me. One of the
solicitous young men in a white jacket appeared as if by magic.

"How may I serve you, Mr. Rick?" he asked in rich rounded English. Rick had
the grace to smile with some irony.

"I'd enjoy a Sapphire and soda, and I believe my associate would enjoy the
same, only with tonic and lime." He turned to me, challenging me with the
fact that he knew what I had ordered at his bar, even though he had not
been there. Maybe everything was known in this town, and I suddenly had the
feeling that I did not want to trifle with him. I thought briefly about
ordering a beer and thought better about it. I just nodded. Associate, I
thought. It seemed like a useful term.

"Let me give you some simple rules for survival," he said. "You should be
judicious about the copy you file. You may report honestly, of course, but
careful on mention of corruption, and be careful that you do not criticize
the local authorities.

You know they have the death penalty here for drug trafficking, and it has
not been completely unknown for earnest reformers or journalists to be
found to be in possession of small amounts of narcotics when it is
convenient for the authorities." He lit a cigarette and narrowed his dark
brow. He leaned forward. "I can be useful in helping to identify the
sensitive areas, though of course I am always interested in knowing
anything that might be useful from a...commercial...standpoint."

He took his time over the word. "Do you really mean military or
diplomatic?" I asked.

"All things can be interesting. The human comedy is so amusing."

There was a chill in his voice that told me it wasn't that good a joke. The
drinks arrived, the clear gin in a short glass and the soda and tonic-
Schweppes, of course- in tiny bottles next to them. There was a little bowl
of delicate porcelain with sliced limes. I poured some tonic into the glass
and reached for a lime slice, offering it to him first. He shook his head
as he splashed soda on his gin. "I assume I can report on the Khmer Rouge
and the Vietnamese?" I asked.

"Certainly, within reason. It is news, after all. But any implication that
the Royal Government is cooperating with either could raise concerns for
you. And of course they are. The Thais are survivors in what has been a
very dangerous neighborhood. I'm telling you this as a friend."

I contemplated that information. I could swiftly get in more trouble than I
needed here. "Tell me about the war here- World War Two, I mean."

He smiled, and the stories began. He talked of the Tiger from Japan, and
how the troops had arrived here, not conquerors exactly, but very much in
charge. He talked about helping the poor British prisoners who were forced
to build the railway along the Kwai River to support operations in Burma,
and how that had very nearly cost him his diplomatic status as a Hungarian
ally of Tojo. He had several lovers in the British Officer Corps, and being
young and reckless, it had been the thing his heart told him to do.

It seemed a world away, before the French defeat in Indo-China, before the
American War and before the Khmer Rouge came out of the jungle and began
the killing of the gentle people of Cambodia.

He must have talked for a half hour. The solicitous young man returned and
Rick ordered another for us, noting that two was his limit in the
afternoon, and that the dinner rush would begin after his siesta with Oy.

"How long have you been together?" I asked.

He smiled. "Since Dien ben Phu," he answered. "I had a taste for men, but
there was no overt homosexual tradition amongst the Western Community. Oy
was a very pretty boy, from upcountry near Chaing Mai. She was not known
here except as a woman. When we were seen together, they could whisper but
never know for sure. It was a useful relationship for us both."

I raised the glass to my lips and sipped the astringent liquid. "Was?" I
said, heart fluttering.

He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Yes. I used the past tense
deliberately. Oy has come to an age where she wants to complete the surgery
that will make her fully a woman. Out public life will continue, of course,
but with the effects of the hormones, and the coming operation, our sexual
relationship has dwindled. We have agreed it will come to an end after
nearly twenty years. She will, of course, remain my public escort and
business partner."

"And that is how this comes to me, I suppose." I think I looked at him with
the same fascination that a rabbit looks at a cobra. He leaned forward
again, and took my right hand in his.

"Precisely, my young friend. You are precisely what I need. I have found
that your tastes are the mirror image of my own, and that you can
accommodate a man of some size."

"You set me up with Amazon to find out what I was like in bed?" I asked
incredulously. "You are a fucking monster." I looked up in anger, the words
coarse against my tongue and inconsistent with the plush chairs in which we
sat.

"No," he said. "My young friend, I am a careful man and I am a survivor. I
deeply regret what happened with Amazon. She was only supposed to sleep
with you and make you happy. I swear I will make it up to you."

I looked at him, again like the rabbit in front of the cobra. This was
probably going to be a big mistake. But, oh! those smoldering eyes...

He gazed at me for a minute or a half hour, I don't know. Finally I shook
my head. He gestured for the check and just like magic it was in his
hand. He scrawled something on it with a fountain pen and threw some bhat
on the table as a tip. He rose and extended his hand to help me out of the
cushions. I was a little light headed. His hand brushed the small of my
back as he guided me not towards the door, but back to one of the corridors
that led to the guest rooms.

We passed a palm and were out of view of the lobby almost
instantly. Totally discrete.

"Management and I have an arrangement for the use of a suite here when I
require it," he said softly, and then we were at one of the mahogany doors
with the shiny brass hardware and then we were through it and I have
absolutely no idea how it happened. I stood dumbstruck as he unbuckled his
belt and stepped out of his slacks. He unbuttoned his loose shirt and
gestured for me to pick up the slacks. "Fold then so they do not wrinkle,"
he said as he pulled down the waistband of his silk boxer shorts and let
them fall to the floor. He left his socks on and walked over to a club
chair upholstered in dark leather.

I silently picked up the trousers and held them by the belt-loops so that
his wallet and keys would not fall out, and aligned the creases properly
and laid them carefully on the bed. When I turned around his legs were
spread naturally, revealing his manhood. His shirt hung open. His chest was
carpeted with black hair flecked with gray, tapering to his navel, and them
spreading in a path to his groin. His cock was pale against the color of
his hair, and uncut. It hung down, flaccid, about five inches, and I
imagined it was going to be a monster when it was engorged.

He waited patiently. I walked to him and took my place on my knees between
his legs. I ran my hands over the wiry hair of his muscular legs. This
close I could smell his musk, and the sweat from the steamy streets on his
skin. And the leather of the chair. It was utterly male and utterly
seductive. I looked him in the eyes.

"What do you want to do, Rob?" he asked softly.

"I suck cocks. I think you have heard that. The cock-sucking part."

"I do. I have had good reports, and much more. But for now, let's explore
that. Please, go right ahead." I leaned forward and gave the shriveled tip
a kiss. I ran my right hand up between his legs to I could feel his balls
in his hairy sack. I would take those in my mouth, too, but for now I
gently caressed them. They slipped through my fingers, soft and slippery
and brimming with a million sperm that soon would swim across my tongue and
into my belly.

I began to lick at his foreskin, and with my left hand raised his
stiffening shaft to my lips. I teased a drip of clear pre-cum from the slit
of his helmet and ran my tongue over it. Rick sighed above me. I pressed
his foreskin back over the bulbous head, a dark angry purple. He was
stiffening in my hand and I saw that he indeed had a generous cock, thick
and substantial. He was not as big as Amazon, but he was big enough that he
would extend past the back of my throat. If he fucked my face he could get
that fat tip lodged in esophagus and shoot his load direct to my stomach.

I didn't want that just yet. For now this was a new cock to explore and
make happy, and I licked him from base to tip and then took him deep in my
soft palate and sucked him, bobbing my head and jacking him with my left
hand as my right continued a gentle manipulation of his ball-sack.

He seemed to like what I was doing, and I was gratified that my service was
appreciated by my new lover. "I'm not going to last long" he groaned. "I
have wanted your young face on my dick for a month."

I kept working him, steadily, bobbing and tasting his wonderful nectar,
wrapped in a sea of musk. I could feel his balls jerk as he bubbled toward
me, and I pulled back so that just the tip of his cock was in my mouth. I
wanted to taste every drop of him.

When his hips bucked I knew he was there, and I got three warm jets of
man-juice on my tongue. His aftershocks brought more warm sperm to my
tongue, his jets were rich but did not erupt like Amazon or my other,
younger lovers.

As I rolled his seed on my tongue and gently lapped his residue from the
tip of my new cock I realized I had never sucked the cock of a man this
old. His seed tasted rich, a little hint of chlorine and cloves, not
unpleasant at all. In fact, delicious.

His hands on the back of my head signaled me to stop any motion, and as he
softened he kept the pressure there, so that I slowly sank into the black
thicket of his pubic hair.

I lapped him until his was clean. Then he pushed my head away, gently, but
firmly.

"I need to go the restaurant and I need at least part of my siesta. I will
see you later. Stop by around 10:00 pm. He rose and stepped over me. I
turned, still on my knees. I was as hard as a board. I loved the taste of
his semen. He picked up his boxers and stepped into them, and just as
briskly into his slacks. He buckled them and then began to button his
shirt. His hair was un-mussed and he looked crisp. A drip of his cum had
run down the side of my mouth, and I looked for it with my tongue, tasting
him again.

"Let yourself out, just close the door behind you. See you tonight, my new
lover." He gave me a smile that said if I was not already on my knees I
would be there again soon. He walked to the door and vanished into the
hall.

I licked my lips, still on my knees. I had something I had wanted to do,
but I had completely forgotten what it might be. Then it struck me. I
wondered if Joe was having the same sort of day I was.

On the Border

If you have to be on your knees, the plush carpet of a suite in the
Oriental Hotel is a fine place to be.

Rick had departed abruptly, not long after my longing lips milked his
softening cock and drawn my face into his crotch. I liked the feel of him
in my mouth, since I could take all of him and suckle ever so gently,
nursing the last of his jism from his flaccid dick like a baby at the
breast.

As he left, I suddenly felt depression stealing over me. This seemed like
some of the other men I had been with lately. Where was the love that went
along with the passion? Why was I still here, dick hard and aching, while
my new lover was off to his siesta or his restaurant or his katoy mistress?

Maybe it was time to think this thing through. Why was I getting into
another potentially abusive relationship? Was it something in me that cried
out for it? What was the matter with me. Was it the craving for cock that
kept me on my knees? The sometimes fatal attraction that I had for a
commanding, confident man?

I thought of Joe. Funny how he always floated through my thoughts at
moments of passion, gentle and fey. I always wondered what would have
happened if I had been courageous enough to befriend him in person as I so
often did in my fantasy world. I would have been the strong one in that
relationship, I often thought, though it did not seem to be the way things
had worked out for me. I always wound up on my knees or my back, one way or
another.

I got up off my knees and decided to take a shower. That would show them I
still had my self-respect, even if there was semen on my face and in my
belly.

I would even use the complimentary shampoo and all the towels. So There.

After I cleaned up, I went home to my little apartment and had a cold beer
from the little refrigerator. I turned up the window-mounted air
conditioner as high as it would go. Then I took off my pants and sat in my
underwear in a chair in front of it. I drank the beer and it tasted good. I
finished it and had another. Should I go to the restaurant, or not?

It seemed that Rick could do me some trouble in town if I did not
cooperate, and I must say that the decisive way he treated me made my cock
twitch. I love a strong man, and I simultaneously realized that I was
headed down another road to romantic disaster.

It was times like this, pensive, that I wondered how Joe had adapted to
changing circumstances. Maybe things would have been different for me if I
started with him, his soft doe-eyes and luscious lashes.

It was one of my favorite masturbatory fantasies of Joe when we were young,
and this strange life was not so compellingly real.

I had another beer and laid down for a catnap that lasted long enough for
the sky to turn black, and for the dinner crowd to start to emerge on the
streets. And then I was in a pedicab, headed for Rick's. He seemed glad to
see me, and so did Moi. We dined and chatted, and Moi seemed to welcome me
into the family with little possessive touches.

And later, when Rick was shutting things down, she led me upstairs by the
hand to her bedchamber, and she gracefully disrobed while I stood
uncertain. She removed her blouse and her pert breasts beckoned to me, and
she skinned off the soft satin panties and shook her flaccid little cock
free of the confines of her smooth thighs.

It was a tiny thing, vulnerable, and almost feminine against her shaven
pubic bone. She gestured for me to get undressed, and I did, in a dreamy
sort of submission. She was nothing that I wanted, but I could see that
this was something she wanted, or needed. She walked over to me and
caressed my balls and got a twitch from my limp cock.

She kissed me on the lips, gently, and said "This is the last time I will
use what used to be me. I appreciate it if you humor an old Katoy, Rob."

I nodded, and again she took me by the hand. She slipped onto the bed with
her head at the foot and tugged me onboard with her. She made me straddle
her on hands and knees facing toward the head, my cock in her face, and her
little dick before my eyes. It was clear that she wanted me to suck her,
and I lowered my head and took the little soft member into my mouth. It was
soft and perfumed. She raised her head and took me into her as well, and
damn me, the softness of her tongue began to get me hard, and her expert
suckling got me going.

I began to warm to the little cock, nuzzling it and suckling on it not so
much as I would to a proud hard man, but like a baby. It was a perfect fit
for my palate, and I swear it began to enlarge in my now-eager mouth. I
heard the door open behind us, but she did not stop her ministrations of my
now solidly hard member. Whatever happened here was going to happen.

I hoped Rick would not be angry, but there was only the sound of a zipper,
and of soft things hitting the floor.

Sure enough, soon I felt strong hands caress my ass, opening my crack, and
then a soft chill as some sort of lubricant was applied to my asshole. I
moaned around the soft little worm in my mouth. I did not even blink when
the flash went off, and I thought of nothing much at all when a hard,
insistent cock pressed itself against me.

I was still sore from my ordeal with the Amazon, but I wiggled in delight
as he shoved himself past my sphincter and deep into my bowels. He waited
there for a moment, and then began a steady long stroking. Each time the
knob of his cock brushed my prostate I gasped. He was a perfect fit.

After the events of the day, I was not long in disgorging myself into Moi's
greedy lips, and she swallowed me down whole. I kept her little dick in my
mouth and Rick thrust into bowels like a charger. Moi suckled my limp cock
and I suckled hers. Then we both waited for the master of the house to
empty the fruit of his balls deep into my ass.

And then, there we were. Home together. We all slept on the bed after
that. For a while, I even thought it was even normal.

Ghosts

The land crossing into Cambodia from Thailand is at a place called
Aranyapathet. There is a ghost town across the line called Poipet. From
Bangkok, it took us six hours to rattle up the road. We could have taken
the train- there was one that left just before six in the morning, but Rick
was vague, and he pulled up in front of the restaurant in a relatively new
Nissan pick-up truck with a taught canvas cover across the bed.

This was the first time Rick had taken me on one of the mysterious little
disappearances he made from the capital. I told the Bureau that I was going
on assignment, and wired the same message to Chicago.

We arrived in the bustling village and Rick pulled the truck over to a
muddy parking complex. There was a Land Rover there of indeterminate age,
and three thin but muscular individuals standing by it.

One of them had an air about him, and the face was broad and smooth. I
thought he might be Cambodian, and if there was any such thing as rank in
the Khmer Rouge, he would have been a Colonel, or a General.

Rick seemed to know him well. They gripped each others hands and Rick
walked around the truck. There were tarpaulins in the back, and nothing
else in the bed.

He walked all the way around and returned to me. He said that one of the
"guests" was going to stay with me as a sort of ambassador of good will to
ensure that he returned with some special cargo.

I told him it was all right with me, but was I supposed to guard him? Rick
smiled.

"Just take care of him," he said gravely. "I will be back before
daylight. There are supplies in the Nissan. You can boil tea."

I nodded and looked at my new friend. He was young, but his eyes were
empty, sucking great black pools that had seen something, or many things.

He sat stoically by the Nissan, holding a camera. As Rick roared off with
the other two Cambodians, I thought it would be quite the challenge to get
him to open up.

I was wrong on that. I sat down next to him and asked him his name in
Thai. He answered in French, and I had enough of that so that we could
communicate. He said his name was Nhem En, and he was a photogrpaher at a
special school.

I wasn't aware that there were any schools left in Cambodia. He sighed
deeply and said there were not. It was his job to peer at the prisoners
That were paraded in front of the lens of his box camera, barely giving
then a second glance.

It was important for the Rouge to record their faces, though the reason had
been forgotten someplace along the way. It was just part of the bureaucracy
of torture and death.

We smoked in the heat and sweat ran down inside my shirt. The jungle sun
declined and the air buzzed with insects and birds flying madly to catch
them. Once photographed, Nhem told me, the prisoners were taken to their
cells inside the former schoolhouse they called S-21.

No one lived.

I had never met a party to mass murder before, and the journalist in me
made me pepper him with questions. He sighed, and closed his eyes. He was
in a safe place for a few hours, and he had just turned 18.

I wondered if he should someday be prosecuted for being part of the system,
or if he was just a victim, too. He said he was watched all the time, and
no one was safe. "I would not be afraid to be judged," he said. I wait for
it always. Toujours. My work is to take pictures only. But if I refuse, I
will be killed along with the rest."

I kept feeding him Rick's fine Dunhill cigarettes, fascinated with being
with death himself. His features were delicate in a broad placid face. Only
his eyes were empty. I got come cognac and fed him that, too.

You can think what you want of me, but I imagine that if you had a chance
to have death stick his thin resilient dick up your ass, you would have
done it that night, too, and sucked the cum from his cock that tasted
vaguely of fish sauce.

My thought was that The Reaper was not there to take me that night, and
maybe I could buy some advance peace. Or maybe I was just horny. I cannot
remember at this distance.

Rick and the Colonel returned as advertised before dawn, and we struggled
large chunks of stone wrapped in the tarps from the Land Rover to the
Nissan. If there was money passed, it had been done somewhere else.

There were no farewells, and Nhem climbed in the Rover with his Boss, and
he did not acknowledge me as the roared away in a cloud of partly-burned
oil.

We in turn bumped south as the light began to come up.

"You didn't fuck him, did you?" Asked Rick, puffing a Dunhill.

"Of course not. What did you get over there?"

"I think you did. I am bringing part of Ankor Watt to someone who
recognizes art when they see it. Make sure you shower well when we get
home."

After the Parade

Life in Bangkok had settled into a sort of normalcy. Oy moved her things to
another bedroom down the hall, and I kept my little apartment off Soi
4. Rick invited me into his bed three or four times a week, which seemed to
be the limit of his need for a brisk fucking. Sometimes he would call me in
the day for some spontaneous sex, which normally meant a blow job for him.

I was satisfied, for the most part, though I could have made love with him
daily, or more. Sometimes I jerked off in my own bed at night, dreaming of
Rick's thick tool. But he used my ass well enough, and when he was stroking
deep into me, ankles on his shoulders and the tip of his cock dragged
across my prostate and I shuddered in climax across my belly, I truly
believed I might have found the right man for me.

Oy went ahead and scheduled her surgery, and when the day came, I visited
her in the hospital. She was wan and almost translucent after the
operation, just like a China doll. Rick had spared no expense, and had
retained the best of the dozen or so plastic surgeons who were plying their
trade in Bangkok. Rick had secured the best of them, and he was assured
that her recovery into a full woman was assured.

I visited her at the hospital when Rick was on his little "business trips,"
and soon enough she was home, and now really the queen of the house.

We dined late one night- a week night- and talked about the King. The
Vietnamese were threatening to intervene. There would be a new and
formidable military force on the border.

I had been around long enough to appreciate the flexibility and pragmatism
of the Thai rulers. The word "Thai" means "free," which is why some of the
local Chinese continue to call the place Siam.

By the time Pol Pot and his deputy, Leng Sary were sentenced to death in
absentia for genocide, I was home again. The falling out between the
Russians and the Vietnamese meant that some of Rick's subsidies dried
up. He talked about closing the restaurant, packing it up and moving on.

Our relationship became perfunctory, although the sex was never better. He
loved it when I went down on him in the morning, and never slept better
than after giving me a vigorous fuck as we went to bed. He would throw a
pillow on the bed and have me lie on it, my cock imprisoned in its
softness. He liked my butt positioned just so for him. He would lube the
crack of my ass and take me roughly. I liked it. Sometimes I ejaculated
into the pillow if he hit my prostate just right, and sometimes I didn't.

Rick would roll off me, his semen leaking from my asshole and be asleep in
a minute.

It is funny how men can separate sex and love, but I was having plenty of
the former and began to realize that I was did not understand what the
latter was. I was certainly not in love with Rick, but the attraction and
the danger of him were intoxicating. I loved to look up at him, with his
cock in my mouth and see how he took me for his possession, his instrument
of pleasure.

In a strange way I found it empowering. But as that year wore on I knew
that what we had was not destined to survive and Oy seemed to resent my
presence. No one back home gave a rat's ass about what had happened under
Pol Pot, and the wire service decided they could afford to close the
"bureau" in Bangkok. I got a letter saying I could come back to Chicago, if
I chose, but come back or not my days in Bangkok were about done.

I showed Rick the letter one night before bed, and he shrugged. I wondered
if he would ask me to stay with him there, but he didn't. He fucked me with
a great deal of intensity that night, though, so in his way I think he was
telling me he would miss me.

I saw in the papers nearly a decade later that the National Museum was
re-opened in Phom Penh. I wondered if they ever got back any of the
artifacts that Rick had helped to spirit out of the country ever made it
home again.

I wouldn't know. I have never been back, though I think about it a lot. I
think Joe would have liked the place. It can be pretty exotic. It was about
that time that the detailed story of the Khmer Rouge genocide was
"discovered" and copied for storage in American libraries. The Khmer Rouge
took refuge on the border and fought on for another 19 years. As far as I
know, none of the leadership ever paid a penny for their crimes. It was
pure irony that their presence made the Government stay away, and the area
acted as a preservative for the natural wildlife.

I sometimes wonder about the Khmer Rouge photographer who made love to me
on the border that time. I don't know if he lived or not. I read in the
paper that Phnom Penh is the pit of Asia, with prostitution and drugs
abounding. Robbery at gunpoint is common after dark, and tourists are being
molested, dragged off their motorbikes. I don't imagine staying out after
dark is a good idea.

But I already knew that. Nothing worth doing happens in the light of day.

The Reunion

If this is going to make any sense, and I am not sure that it does at this
long distance, dear reader, we have to get from graduation in 1969 to the
ten year re-union. That is when most people figure it out, or don't, and
see one another after life has put its stamp on them.

I was still in Asia when the bi-centennial came, and with it the tall ships
to New York, and the news about a troubling person called Patient Zero.

The first news of the plague began to spread, but I didn't pay much
attention to it. They called it Sarcosi's Carsoma- an odd and fatal
sickness among Gay men- and then there was the growing awful dread back
home of this monstrous unknown.

Joe and I met again at our tenth high school reunion.

He looked so hot in jeans and an old Hawaiian shirt.

He was radiant. I approached him, chiding him that he had beaten me for
coming the largest distance to attend.

He was more handsome than ever. His face was long and elegant and his hair
was straight, and brushed off to the side of his face. I stumbled over the
words at the end of my mock-chastisement.

He had come from Africa where he was a Peace Corps volunteer. We began to
talk and the words flowed around and over, all the places and all the
things we had seen.

I was captivated. I told him that I had a huge crush on him in Junior
High. He smiled, a little sadly, and said he had liked me, too. From a
distance. It had been very lonely for him. I hugged him right then, a bold
thing for a high school reunion in 1979, though we did not dance.

Not there, anyway. We left together that night, and we talked for hours in
my room at the Hyatt and became lovers at last.

We talked about mass-murder, in Cambodia, and starvation and the dignity of
the human spirit. Joe had worked hard in local feeding programs, in
agriculture and building schools. He was earnest and witty and wry about
his experiences in the Third World, and I was utterly captivated. There was
something about him that made me want to pull him too me, a life force that
was so sweet yet did not cloy.

Deep blue eyes in which I lost myself.

He was my guy named Joe. My love of a lifetime.

I gazed into his eyes, hearing his story. He told me of the African men he
had met, of their soft lips and massive cocks and the way they liked to
fuck for hours. I told him how sexy that sounded, and how my first lover
had been a black man, but how I wished we had known what we knew this
minute when we were still kids.

He took my face in his slim hands, and he asked me to do what I had wanted
to do then, when the African men had him do for them, and he guided my face
down to his slim cock, a neat little helmet on the top, and placed it on my
lips.

"Suck me like I suck the Africans, Robert."

I said nothing, but opened my mouth and took him in, over my tongue and
lodged him deep in my gullet, filled with the smell of him and the warm
musky taste of his pre-cum, and then bobbed my head on him until he spewed
warm acrid sperm in my mouth. I sucked him until he softened, and
throughout he kept his hands on my face, stroking my cheeks, telling me
what a wonderful cock-sucker I was, and how happy he was to have found me
again after all those hard years.

He couldn't stay with the Africans, he said. He had to come home. In the
morning, waking with him in my arms, I told him I hoped he would come home
to me.

He did not fuck me, though I wanted him to, desperately. Instead we
pleasured each other with eager mouths, and he lifted his legs for me and
took me home inside him. It is not my favorite thing, but with Joe it
seemed to complete me.

When I spent my seed inside him and saw the contentment in his eyes, I was
whole, maybe for the first time in my life. We spent another day, mostly in
the room at the Hyatt, and I realized I was head over heels in love with
him.

We had to part, since his tour in Gabon was not over yet, but we resolved
to be together as soon as we could. We wrote often, making plans to get him
home and when he told me he was sick I became desperate.

I went to Gabon to bring him home. When I saw him in the hospital I was so
scared. He was too weak to be moved. When he died I was distraught, and
frightened. So frightened at my passion that I gave up men for a while.

This is one of those disolve-to-black transitions, or maybe the one where
the calendar in the wind rips the pages off in a blur or the clock spins
madly on the wall....

I married, like a coward, afraid of myself and afraid of my kind. I enjoyed
the idea of being a couple, even if family was too great a reach. But I
never stopped dreaming of Joe's cock, and the fact that he never was going
to make me truly his.

But it was a hoax, of course, and it ended badly. The hunger was there, and
the image of him, always. And of course there were other men, some nice and
some not so. Like Alfredo the slim Spaniard, and Rick II the entrepreneur,
and Joel the Doctor, and Gentle Giant Fred, with the massive cock and the
lightest touch.

Oh, when he took me, crushing me with delicacy, intruding with soft
insistence, that was love.

But I'm not sorry that the one I see in my dreams is always Joe.