Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:07:17 +0800
From: Marten Weber <webmarten@gmail.com>
Subject: Public Procurement (Part 1)

His name was Romain, Romain Lavoisier, and if you know how to pronounce
that name in French, in its native language, with its original
sounds---the way it is meant to be spoken when beholding its bearer,
lean, suave, smart, with short black hair and an immaculate bespoke
suite---then it will melt on your tongue like a chocolate truffle, like
a delicate tarte, and by the time you reach the last syllable, your
mouth will be full of spongy sweetness and insuperable longing, and your
embarrassed, burning lips will stay slightly apart as you exhale a sigh
so deep it will be utterly surprising even to your own self.
Normally, you have great self-control, I am sure, but if you sat like me
at a conference on Public Procurement, in a sterile lecture hall on a
third-rate university campus, and then, after welcoming remarks by the
director of this and the vice-minister of that, and two boring
presentations on life-cycle cost and best practices, you watched
Monsieur Lavoisier, the keynote speaker on the financial aspects of
public procurement, not walk from his seat to the dais, no, dance,
float, glide, jump, run almost, elated and youthful with a feathery
lightness, then, like me that day, you would have willingly forsworn all
mastery over your own senses, and, like me, you would have stared,
obtrusively, uncontrollably and longed, and wondered, and desired, and
you would have felt your heart on fire.
He was barely thirty, I thought at first, but learned from the handout
that he had a middle name, 'L.', that he was already thirty-two, worked
for a major French bank, and had obtained a degree in finance; that he
had published numerous papers on the subject of 'risk distribution in
public procurement,' and that... but what did it matter? Who cares? What
did, for the moment, indeed, import his interesting subject of project
finance, which I had come here to learn about, along with three hundred
other eager government employees? Now, with that face, that smile, that
man before me, what did I care about risk distribution, about mezzanine
finance, about concessions and power production agreements, about BOT,
BTO and---save me!---DFBO, what mattered SPVs and EPCs when  these
acronyms spouted so eloquently from a mouth so sensual, from lips which
seemed to take such pleasure in forming these poignant vowels and
effervescent consonants? I heard every word he spoke, and I heard
nothing he said.
I was lost the moment I saw him, his well-shaped, even face, his
hair---not curled, but more than wavy---in its deep and lustrous black,
cut to perfection, I assumed, in a fashionable French salon---it must be
so, he was now a vice president there, a V.P., yes, V.P., a very pretty
man, yes indeed, the moment I beheld the dark and heavy brow, the sloped
forehead, the chiseled cheeks, and then, as if in trance, even before he
had started talking, his mouth, smiling now at the audience as he
inserted the USB stick into the notebook, realizing too late that his
Powerpoint lay already on the gadget's desktop, the file already open,
the slide already projected on the wall, and that from it, in mellow
green tones, already gleamed that name I now again took into my mouth,
my eager, wet and welcoming mouth, Romain, it spoke, Romain Lavoisier,
la-voah-zieh, say that, with your mouth left open,  waiting for him to
enter it, or seal it with a kiss.
Before he said the first word, he let his gaze wander over the audience,
from corner to corner, from side to side, through each row, smiling
professionally. Own the crowd, Romain, own the crowd. All eyes were on
him. Two rows behind me, giggling women from the research institute. I
watched two take a picture with their cell phone. Barely said a word,
and Romain was already all over cyberspace. No wonder, with that smile.
Then, in a gesture of deference, gratitude maybe, and styled politeness,
his eyes lingered at the front, his head nodded to the vice-minister,
the budget director, the secretary and the director-general of
statistics, budgeting and accounting, was it? And then, as his eyes
ascended two more rows of attentive listeners, they rested on me, and
his lips pursed for an instant and he smiled, at me? Really? I blinked
to clear my contact lenses, to see if he had noticed me indeed, looked
me in the eye, recognized me, maybe, from where? But he had moved on,
and now he bowed, and thanked us all for being here, and thought
it---how true it sounded from his elegant mouth!---such a great and
ill-deserved honor...of presenting at this venerable venue, at this
important conference, before such illustrious dignitaries.
Had he looked a me, really? How could he have noticed me? I am just
another Asian face in the crowd, a little younger maybe than the
average, a little taller maybe, perhaps slightly better dressed and
groomed, owing to my eight years working in New York, and Paris, for his
competitors. Did he know that? Had he maybe recognized me? From some
other conference---no, impossible. He was a hot shot in the banking
industry, I was an underling of no consequence and with no exposure. But
all through his subsequent talk, he seemed to look at me, yes, me! more
often than at the others, while speaking without fault or stammer in
that melodious, intoxicating voice.
Oh how he talked! What sweetness in his voice! Each syllable a delight
as he entered upon the enthralling subject of---uh---financial aspects
of---uh---public procurement contracts and the use of innovative
instruments for---uh---debt leverage and---uh---instruments, innovative
instruments, did he say instruments? Yes, violas, deep violins, a
Vivaldi spring and summer issued forth from his dark-red lips, a musical
dance, not violins, no, a cello, clamped between his legs, strong, hairy
legs, firmly... Oh! He could have talked about anything and everything,
and still it would have sounded like a heavenly choir.
He had, like so many European professionals these days, perfect command
of English, and was either spending a lot of his time in the presence of
Americans or had even worked there, in New York, I imagined, prompted by
the sudden turn of phrase. Yet again, like so many European young men,
his speech oscillated between a perfect, near-native accent in one
sentence, and a heavy foreign one in the next. He would say things like
'so if you've got the finance guy, and the operating guy, and the
construction guy on board,' and sound utterly American, and
top-of-the-game, master-of-his-subject; yet two phrases later, add
somewhat shyly, and more measured, 'but of course, zis is risk zat can
be leveraged,' stressing it 'leverAAged', having fallen back into an
endearing French school-accent which betrayed his Gallic origins.
How I loved the see-saw of his voice, completely oblivious to the actual
word spoken: in his English intonation, he sounded mature and
world-savvy, yet at time slightly childish and with that forced
youthfulness and peppiness so peculiar to Americans; but always manly,
and in-charge, as he elaborated on the options of debt versus equity,
and gearing and leveraging.
Every time he said 'gearing,' I pictured him naked on all fours, and
myself clutching his balls and cock, and pulling them back between his
thighs, and...
In his more mellow, Gallic paragraphs, he sounded sweet, and young, and
innocent, and girlish even, until I realized that his body language too
oscillated in the same curious manner. The American Romain held firmly
onto the rim of the dais, looked stately and sternly at the PowerPoint
display, pointed with authority and explained with erudition how
different incentives were created through  financial constructs, and how
it was such a bad idea, as it was done in Asia, too often, to make the
construction company the main equity holder of the PPP project, because...
The French persona, the Monsieur Lavoisier, who always emerged at the
end of a very technical section or a very professional expose, and
rendered in its melodious  patterns a critical commentary, a funny note,
a joke even, and always, always punctuated by smiles, and curious waves
of the hand, rotating at the wrist, now showing the palm, now the back
of the hand with its copse of coarse black hair in the center, waving
again towards the wall, and capering back through pockets of clouds
towards the keyboard, dancing, as did his whole body in those moments,
like an elvish creature, effeminate, sweet, child-like, utterly and
convincingly adorable and, I decided... gay. And a bottom to boot. Bingo!
His eyes rested more on the dignitaries as the presentation progressed
through its twentieth minute, but now, more often, they wandered upwards
and rested on me, I fancied, more often than on other people in my row.
It may have been that he found me attractive, I thought, but more
likely, it was because I so attentively stared at him, and smiled at
him, and generally must have had a look of complete rapture and
infatuation on my face. He must have thought I was actually listening to
what he said! Whereas in truth, I only heard fragments: those fragments
which were spoken when he smiled, when he showed his colors,  his
emotions, his allure, when between his wrong accents and misplaced
aspirations, I saw him willing, weak and wondrously handsome.
All around me, somber, boring men in gray played with their mobile
phones, their tablet PCs, or fiddled with recently collected name cards,
or their spectacles, or scribbled on the handouts, printed so
thoughtfully on recycled paper, and available, as the cover proclaimed,
online by going to the following website.
He coughed.
I looked up.
Romain Lavoisier had stumbled over the words 'Singapore Sports Center,'
and had turned away from the microphone to cough. Was he ill? A cold?
Immediately I had the instinct to run down, help him, pat him on the
back, embrace him, from behind, ask him, this: are you alright? Are you
OK? Do you need help? Shall I call a doctor? Will you live? You
vulnerable soul! Will you be fine if I embrace you thus? Live on? Live
with me? Will you love me, will you...?
He coughed again, and the face reddened perceptibly. His 'pardon,'
echoed through the hall, and a young girl, pretty, Asian, with sparkling
eyes, brought him a glass of water, which he took, not even noticing her
beauty, not beaming back at her.
Yes. Definitely gay. Absolutely. No straight male would treat an
Oriental beauty with such disdain, even in the grip of pharyngeal
convulsions. Check hands! No ring on finger either! That's three
indications. Now, get out the phone and look him up on Facebook. I
couldn't find him.
He drank, swallowed, apologized again, and continued his talk.
I looked up, just as he began to speak. Our eyes met for the briefest of
moments, but I knew he had been staring at me for longer. Our glances
met, for a microsecond, like two fencing swords: one clear tone in my
head, as the metal strikes. I had missed it, almost. Fidgeting with my
old-fashioned phone had distracted me from admiring him live, so I gave
it up. There were too many people, en fin, with the exact same name, and
not a single picture matched the swarthy, elegant beauty before me,
which entered now upon the intricacies of the Singapore situation, and
the government guarantees given in case of financial turmoils, and the
bridge loans, and the ten-year versus twenty-four-year structure, and
the ten-year miniperm, which sounds like a hair-do, but is something
ineffably complicated only financial minds understand.
All of a sudden, while I was still fantasizing, and had quite an
erection---so much I dreaded getting up at lunchtime---the talk was
over, quite precipitously, and my soft and sweet French presenter
capered away from the podium, and over to a desk on the stage, where
three other notables now assembled. The question and answer session
began. It took a while to arrange the microphones, to switch off the
projector, for the chairman to sum up what we had heard so far, and what
we could expect from these admired experts, for whose eloquent
presentations he thanked them again profusely. What had we heard? That
Romain was handsome, gorgeous, soft and sweet and hopefully still
available? That his name had the most erotic qualities, the sweetest
nasality, the deepest, kindest sighs incorporated in its sonorous
syllables?
Someone asked a question and someone on the stage answered: a woman.
 From Sweden. My eyes were on Romain. He was playing with a pen,
twirling it with his long fingers. His eyes caught mine, and he smiled
again, briefly, but looked away. Oh, he was a professional! He was, I
was sure, already in love with me as I was with him. Had he not
purposely looked at me more than at the other attendees? Had he not
thrown me secret glances throughout his presentation? Had he not winked
once, and spoken, for the last ten minutes, only to me? Was I not
already in his heart, as he was in mine? How could he keep his
composure? I dropped my phone, and scrambled to retrieve it from the
depths of the auditorium floor.
As I crawled up again, out of the space between the seats, his eyes came
back, and again rested on me, and he noticed me, yes, but he did not
dare act upon it! Or was he just looking because of the noise I had
made? No, his eyes flickered! He wanted me alright! He felt it too!
Would someone please ask him a question, so I could listen once more to
that delightful voice? Someone, please... now!
---I have a question for Monsieur Lavoisier, said the man next to me,
and the dark angel on the podium smiled, beamed virtually, at my
neighbor, but also---yes, clearly, at me. The question was asked, and
Romain answered it. He was now all French, all sweet and soft, and with
effeminate gestures, which increased, I thought, when I looked at him
firmly and his eyes caught mine, again! There! He misspoke, and once
more, he stumbled over a word, and another, mispronounced it entirely,
mangled---and was it even the right word?---just as I had caught his
gaze, had held it firmly and then smiled broadly. His answer came to an
end, and promptly someone else, much higher up in the auditorium asked.
The question was again directed at Monsieur Lavoisier. Again he
answered. The women above me giggled. The sound of another cell phone
taking a picture. He was cutest when he spoke, and everybody felt that.
And again, between looking at the person asking the question, and
addressing the entire audience, his eyes came floating back to mine. I
looked away---just a little to his left, at the chairman. For as long as
I avoided him, Romain's eyes were on me, clearly and unmistakably. I was
not wrong. When I looked at him, he smiled---there! Ha! He said
'fondling,' instead of 'funding!' Priceless!
But the answer was too short. Two more questions came, for other people
on the podium, but I saw now only him, and, I thought, he only me.
---Are there any further questions?
The chairman waited; looked up and down the aisles, through he benches,
over the heads.
---Any other questions, we still have two minutes before the break!
No hands were raised. Romain Lavoisier stared at me. I simply had to.
But with my innate shyness. What could I do. And speak in English?
Aloud? Oh Lord.
---If there are no other questions...
I raised my hand. Out of nowhere, courage came and a question shot into
my head, from the beginning of Monsieur Lavoisier's lecture, when I had
still been conscious of what he actually said.
---Yes, please, said the chairman, pointing at me with his pen. He
looked at me so sternly I almost lost my cool. I pressed the button on
the microphone built into the table before me.
---I think, I said, swallowed, then realized how thick my voice sounded,
and cleared my throat, all the while my eyes not leaving Romain's sexy
face. I think Monsieur Lavoisier owes us an explanation why Korea, as he
said at the beginning of his presentation, has been moving away from
traditional public-private partnership models in recent years.
I switched off the microphone, swallowed hard again. There was still a
lump in my throat.
He looked straight at me, and laughed.
---Yes, I am so sorry, he said, and with all the double entendre he
could manage in this public arena, under so many pairs of eyes, he said
submissively, and softly,
---Please, Sir, will you forgive my omission?
My cock pounded so hard it hurt. He was submitting to me in front of
four-hundred people. He ventured to explain in short, clear sentences,
the particulars of the Korean situation, and then ended by saying, with
the thickest French accent, no doubt intentionally laid on for my
benefit only,
---I hope I have satisfied you, Monsieur?
I nodded.
He smiled.
I smiled. I beamed.
He beamed.
I curled my lips.
He... what exactly was he doing with his lips there. He wasn't blowing
me a kiss, was he? I am hallucinating.
We looked at each other so long and deep, I think the chairman was
confounded and took a minute  to recover from the intimate exchange we
had laid on. We had existed, Romain and I, throughout the question and
the answer, in a world of our own, and only now did he return, he to his
podium, I melting into my chair, red-faced, and all warm and gooey inside.
---That's all the time we have for questions, said the stern moderator,
and something else, and then everybody got up on their feet and rushed
to the exit for lunch.

Except for me.
I sat nailed to my seat. I couldn't possibly get up without showing the
enormous tent in my trousers.
I observed Monsieur Lavoisier, speaking to the chairman, then to another
presenter, then being introduced to the vice-minister, his back to me.
Of course,  a young underling had nothing to do there, couldn't
interrupt, couldn't possible join the pre-lunch banter. But I had to do
something! I ruffled my hair in desperation, trying to figure out a way
to meet Monsieur Lavoisier, continue that passion which had so abruptly
overcome us, to catch his eye again, to see his mouth, his laugh, his...
He was surrounded half by gray-haired functionaries, half by fawning
women. A girl was pressing her name card in his hand now, but he showed
no interest. She took his hand, did not let go, until he withdrew it
abruptly, and as he did, his eyes floated over the heads of two men into
the audience, looked feverishly for an instant, then found me sitting
there, starry-eyed, still watching him. I could not look away. And he
smiled again.
But once more he was taken from me. The vice-minister pulled him away
from the podium, down the stairs, to his seat, introduced him to Mr.
Chen and Mr. Fan, and Mr. Whats-his-name, and Mrs. This-and-that, and
Mr. Couldn't-care-less and Mr. Help-me-and-Get-me-out-of-here! and he
smiled and laughed, and answered their questions and said, 'no, this is
my first time here,' and 'yes, very interesting,' and then 'I am sorry I
cannot be here for the afternoon session, but I have some very important
meeting,' this Gallic hunk, this loving, intoxicating smile, this beauty
of man, this little girl, who flirted with me, conscious or not, who had
so daringly announced his sexual preference, who had succumbed to me,
surrendered so willingly, this gorgeous god who should not be here
amongst these gray-haired boring masses, but in my bedroom, on his back,
his legs up the air... He was slipping through my fingers.
---Lunch for speakers and VIP guests will be on the fourth floor, if you
follow me, said the same girl with the luminous eyes Romain had so
wantonly ignored when she had brought him water. She too, I observed was
looking at him longingly. But he followed her bravely, taking his notes
and sliding his USB stick into his pocket, being guided by the
vice-minster, taken out of the auditorium, into the aisle towards the
exit under the spectator seats, away from me---there was his laughter,
one last time, resonating in the big hall, and then he was gone.

I sat alone, surrounded on all sides by a handful of older men who had
already finished their meal or brought their lunch boxes into the
conference hall, but I sat alone, and devastated.
I couldn't go up to the VIP  room. I couldn't walk up to him and slip
him my name card. I could do nothing but wait. But wait for what? Had he
not said that he would not be here in the afternoon? Would he not leave
after lunch, immediately, slip away unconquered, unkissed? Would he even
take lunch, or would he excuse himself in the lobby, slip into his black
limousine---no doubt such---and be whisked away to his bank HQ, or his
hotel, or anywhere else more important to him and his life than a young
Asian man in a suit, and a desperate smile on his face, and a cock still
so engorged he could---no way!---raise to his feet and leave the room!
I closed my eyes and saw him before me again, naked. I imagined the hair
on his chest, the dark purple of his tiny nipples, the soft, flat
stomach, with a thin, highly erotic layer of fat over his muscles, his
small cock, almost invisible in a thick bush of untamed pubic hair, his
heavy balls, his hairy thighs and legs. I would start to caress him
there, between his toes, lick them, take them in my mouth while I
entered him, and he would moan and groan, and I would rub his hairy
chest and push harder, and he would spread his cheeks for me and welcome
me, and call my name in his cute, girlish French voice, and simper a
soft 'oui' to me, and a calculated 'fuck me!'
But he was gone.
The whirring of the air condition resounded loudly in my head. Someone
at the dais copied the afternoon presentations onto the notebook PC. The
clicking of the USB stick in its slot echoed through the open
microphone. Already, somewhere high up in the hall a man snored,
enjoying his lunch siesta. And I was still hard.
I didn't want to fetch my lunchbox. I browsed through the messages on my
phone. I too would have to return to the office. There was an urgent
call from my boss. I clicked the name and the dial screen came up the
moment I heard a bang from deep down in the bowels of the hall, then
footsteps running.
I pressed the abort button to cancel the call.
The running feet sounded important, loud, some harbinger of catastrophic
events. I expected a gesticulating man screaming 'fire!' and 'evacuate,
now!' and 'Monsieur Lavoisier has collapsed, is there a doctor in the
house?' They approached quickly. In my mind, I followed them under the
stands, past the VIP room, the computer room, along the partition wall,
and now, they stopped, and I heard a man coughing. I looked towards the
sound as the footsteps continued their approach, now measured and slow,
and---timid? No emergency after all. Three, four, five, and there he
was, coming around the corner.
He walked straight to the seat where I had first noticed him, the first
chair in the first row. He bowed down, reached under the bench, but
looked up now, and straight at me.
His left hand groped at the floor. I thought for a moment he had lost
something, dropped a gadget, glasses, name card, keys, and my eyes left
his to look for the missing object. But immediately, as our gaze broke,
he cried out,
---No, I haven't lost anything!
He covered his mouth with his hand, realizing he had spoken too loud.
What a little girl he was, so easily embarrassed and shy. I understood
what he said, and looked quizzically at him. He was blushing! His face
was completely red, from the exertion of running too, from his awkward,
breath-constricting posture on the chair, from the contortion of his
neck as he looked up to me.
I smiled.
He beamed back at me, with shimmering eyes. He took a deep breath, and
then he said,
---I am at the Ambassador Hotel. Room 1214.

He said it 'twelve fourteen,' in the French way.



--
www.martenweber.com <http://www.martenweber.com>