PUERTO VALLARTA

 

The seaside village of Puerto Vallarta sits on what is little more then a wide beach just where the mountains drop into Banderas Bay.   Anyone my age first heard of Puerto Vallarta when Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Ava Gardner went there with John Huston to film “Night of The Iguana” sometime in the sixties.  Tennessee Williams lived and wrote in Mexico off and on for many years as well, he may have been through the little village in his travels, in any case it was Huston who set William’s story in Puerto Vallarta.   Even today you can catch the bus from ‘PV’ down the highway to the village of Mismaloya and walk along the beach to the stairs that lead up to the location of Ava Gardner’s little hotel in the film.  The foundations of the hotel are still there, a little below the actual crest of the bluff, no longer recognizable. 

Poking around the ruins of the film set I wondered where the location of the beach was where Ava Gardner cavorted with coital intent with her two handsome Mexican beach boys.   According to the legends of the time, Ava Gardner cavorted with real life Mexican beach boys much as she did in the film!  Today a nice restaurant that offers beer at cost twice as in the rest of Mexico sits on the top of the bluff and looks down on the remains of Ava’s hotel and the beach below and a wonderful view of the Southern part of Banderas Bay. 

The publicity surrounding the making of the film was intense.  Burton and Taylor, who had just completed making “Cleopatra” in Egypt where they had began their world famous affair, had come to Mexico to make “Night of the Iguana” so that Burton would not have to go home to his wife.  They bought a house on the mountain side overlooking what is now the Malecon – today a section of Puerto Vallarta - but then an empty stretch of sea coast.  

The contemporary world press, breathlessly following the lurid goings-on described the village of Puerto Vallarta as an Eden of tropical splendor, undiscovered by the outside world.  Of course, after the film was released, Puerto Vallarta became the vacation destination of Choice, surpassed only by Acapulco.  

Because the original village was hemmed in so closely between the mountains and the bay the new  tourist city could not expand around it, and gradually destroy it, as other Mexican beach towns have been destroyed.  Instead, the  development moved toward the north leaving the Village, intact. The newly famous village gradually become a small city and spread north up the beach from where the original village, called Olas Altas stood, spread across the Rio Ameca and up the coast.  .  The first part of the new development, just across the Ameca river from Olas Altas, is called the “Malecon” above which the Burton- Taylor house still stands. 

The Malecon area has no good sandy beaches so a sea wall was built with a broad walkway at its top and a street full of shops across the street from the sea wall. 

The tourists that the now famous little city began to attract were housed in large hotels that were quickly built further up the beach to the north of the Malicone, but still along the inner curve of the clam shell shaped Banderas Bay. 

The houses in which the Mexican people would live and from whence they would come everyday to work in the shops along the Malecone, and the big new hotels on the Northern beach, were built across the main highway and inland, to the east. 

Several months after my first visit to PV on my way North I would rent one of these little houses for two long happy months.

 I arrived in Puerto Vallarta on the bus from San Blas, a coastal village north of Puerto Vallarta where development had made no inroad and where the bus station remained across the street from the Zocalo.  I had been in San Blas some time, became used to its slow way of living, and finally bored with its Mexican beach life I decided to move on south to Puerto Vallarta. 

As had become used to the sleepy Mexican villages of the Baja Peninsula and along the coast of the Galfo de California  it was a surprise to find the large new bus station of Puerto Vallarta, newer even then the airport and further out to the North of the town.  Unlike most Mexican towns it was necessary to take a bus form the bus station to the old part of the town.  On the phone from the bus station I had trouble getting a hotel room, the first such trouble I had traveling in Mexico.  After calling several hotels from my “Lets Go” guide, I settled on a hotel that was recommended by the "Spartacus Guide" to gay venues around the world.  The hotel that the Spartacus Guide recommended, the Vallarta Cora Hotel, was the hotel that I had been most attracted to when I first started to read about Puerto Vallarta in my guide books.  In San Blas I had rejected it as to expensive.  The Vallarta Cora, according to the guide, was exclusively gay.  I wasn’t sure what that meant but one of the hotels attractions was identified by the “R” symbol, which means, in Spartacus, “Rent Boys”.  Spartacus also listed rooms with separate bedrooms and a kitchen.  I decided that I would afford the price of over three hundred pesos, and looked forward to cooking for myself.   

 

          The Vallarta Cora Hotel is located up a steep hill on the Main Street of the old town, a street also called Olas Altas, at the extreme Southern end of the old village.  Now the hotel is looked down on by houses and even smaller hotels that have been built on narrow winding roads that lace the mountain slopes overlooking the beach. But when I arrived it was still the last building up the hill where the main street ended. 

The Vallarta Cora is a small hotel with four floors built around an interior court yard containing a miniature swimming pool, which, the Spartacus guide told me was “clothing optional” from sunset to sunrise (after the Mexican maids are gone for the day).

There was no one in the hotel office when I arrived.  I wondered deeper into the complex, around the pool and into what appeared to be a restaurant where a French woman fed me breakfast and coffee while I waited for Mario, the owner, to return and get me settled in one of the apartments.

  

           In the afternoon I set out to discover what I had read was the “gayest town in Mexico”.  I saw nothing that confirmed that description until I found “Porque No?” a gay bar noted in Spartacus just north of the river. 

         The Porque No? was quiet in the late afternoon.  I talked to the bar tender, a tall, sweet, skinny, kid named Carlos as I drank a beer.  I bought a second beer and climbed the stairs to the top floor roof bar to drink it in the late afternoon sun.  It was as I was crossing the roof toward a table overlooking the street that I first noticed Jose Luis sitting at the point of the outer curve of the empty U shaped bar. 

 

          Jose Luis was to become, for the rest of my year long trip in Mexico the man against whom all others would be measured. 

 

I sat down at my table overlooking the street and watched him.  He sat on the bar stool with his elbows on the bar. He apparently had not noticed me although we were alone on the roof as the roof bar had not yet opened.  He was tall and full bodied, his frame was not light as most young Mexicans are, his shoulders were broad in his work shirt and his chest was thick and muscular.  His hair was not shinny black but more a soft black-brown.  He looked more European or American then Mexican.  He sat leaning on the bar, slowly drinking a beer, seemingly lost in thought.  I watched him wondering if any purpose could be served by trying to break in on his silent consideration of the bottles on the back bar.  At last,  Unable to resist,  I walked over to the bar and sat across around the nose of the curved bar from Jose Luis.

          He was so concentrated on the back bar that I was able to study him with little attempt to conceal my interest. 

He wore glasses, rather heavy glasses with wire rims that made his eyes look enlarged looking at them through the thick lenses.  This, slightly owlish, somewhat intellectual look was a fascinating contrast to his broad shoulders and workman close and posture.  His face was rather more round than usually suggests great handsomeness to me in a man or a woman.  But there was something about Jose Luis!   He was handsome in only a certain way, but, to me, he was much more then handsome, much more!  To me he was stunning, fascinating! 

Perhaps it was his grin, for when I first sat down at the bar he shyly looked up and grinned at me. I smiled back and he returned to his reverie. 

After a while I asked him what time the bar opened and learned that he spoke almost no English.  When the bar tender finally did show up and opened the roof bar I introduced myself and bought Jose Louis a beer.  I felt shy with him as he was shy with me. I knew I was risking making a fool of myself trying to get him to pay attention to me.  But gradually we became comfortable and joked and teased one another as we made light work of communicating in Spanish and English, relying more on my Spanish then his English. 

Jose Louis was bright and he knew how to engage, to charm, in the sense that a beautiful child charms, and teaches the skill to the man or woman they will become.

He was from the coastal town of Cardenas, a town down the coast a little more then half way to Acapulco, he told me.   He was working in Puerto Vallarta temporarily.  I tried to get him to talk about his work but he refused to be descriptive.  I was left to assume he did manual labor as his close did not suggest any other kind of work. He told me he had just stopped in for a drink after work.  Possibly he thought of himself as an intellectual, or in some other way, better then a common laborer, and did not want to admit to me that he did manual work. He talked to me, and he smiled at me, and he was shy with me.  I would almost describe him as ‘sweet’, or kind, or sensitive but in such an energetic, masculine way that those words fall short!  I knew it would be easy to fall in love with this young man!  I knew at that moment that Jose Louis was why I was traveling - he was what it was that I needed!  As we talked I forgot about wanting his big handsome body!  Forgot any thing that might take me away from this moment at the roof bar, a moment that I had every reason to expect was all I would ever know of him.  I was happy just looking through his distorting glasses into his big brown eyes  while he glanced over across the corner of bar at me, I was happy watching as a thoughtful grin spread down his face.  First his eyes would catch it, then the lift of his ample cheeks pull up the corners of his big full mouth and finally his mouth opened.  When he was amused, even his big white teeth would part and a laugh would roll up out of his deep muscular chest.  I had no need for more of him.  I could have sat talking to him, looking at him, getting him to look directly into my eyes, getting him to laugh, then to go shy of our growing intimacy and look away from me. I could have sat there for the rest of my life!

   

          We drank a lot of beer, sitting there at the roof while evening fell slowly over the Olas Altas.  We were unnoticed by the men coming up to the bar, so it seemed to me.  Nor did Jose Louis look around or seem to notice who was coming in or leaving.  Other men must have admired Jose Luis, but he paid attention only to me.  His eyes strayed no further from mine then his glass of beer – even when I ordered another round he did not look up at the bar tender but waited for my attention to turn back to him.  Then he would look over at me and speak of what he had been thinking while I ordered.  We let the roof bar slowly fill up around us without noticing. 

Jouse Luis never lost his focus as we talked.  His magic grin was never shared with passers by.  We were like this for the late afternoon and the evening, intensely together, letting the elixir of beer help us merge deeper into each other.  I must have asked him about his life, perhaps I asked him if he was gay or bisexual, weather he liked older men, I sometimes do ask those questions.  I probably asked him about his family, his mother, brothers and sisters, his father, I usually do.  But if I did ask about all of that I don’t remember what he said after he told me he was from Cardenas. 

Language problems, if there had been any slipped away.

When it was late and we were quite on the way to drunk I invited him down two floors to the disco to dance.   As we danced and drank I was able to feel his body, my hand on large muscles of the small of his back, my hands holding his, his hands on my shoulders holding me at arms length, looking at me!  He knew the affect he was having on me and I have never been more full of desire for a man, and only one women!  I wanted the feel of his flesh in my hands and now even hoped for the look of his naked body under my eyes.

          We were resting under the fan, at the edge of the dance floor, leaning together, the sweat cooling our bodies as we talked, when the woman that I met in the hotel, the French woman from the hotel, came by with a friend. I saw her recognize me and then look at Jose Louis!  She saw in him what I saw, she saw a woman’s man!  I could tell.  She introduced herself looking at Jose Louis then grinned at me and drifted on, I hardly noticed.

          I told him that the woman worked at my hotel and I asked Jose Louis to go there with me.  He hardly said anything; maybe he just looked at me and smiled.  It was as though it were perfectly obvious, as though I had invited him for yet another beer, or for yet another dance. 

I could not tell if his obvious, relaxed manner suggested great experience or simple denial of my intent. This strange uncertainty was one I was to feel often that year full of Mexican men. 

At the hotel I persuaded him with some difficulty that the pool permitted naked swimming after dark and he undressed, slowly and with some care!  We dove into the pool and splashed for several moments before he came toward me through the black water and I put my hands out and slid them around his ribs, under his arms. I put my hands onto his flesh, seen now only as a gray shadow against the water and the dark of the interior of the courtyard.  I let my hand settle down his sides and over his buttocks (it was round and solid) and then down and slowly up between his legs to fill my hand with great pendent testicals!   Then onto the magnificent roundness of his cock, already thick with the flow of blood, it hardened in my hand!  

I was mad for it! 

I settled him against the edge of the pool and lifted his legs so that the front of his body, supported on my hands, floated up out of the water and I lowered my mouth onto his cock, cold and tasteless from the water, but soon the warmth of it spread over my tounge.  He lay back, his elbows drawn back on the edge of the pool and closed his eyes.

In the room I laid him out on the bed on his back, with me on the floor on my knees between his legs.  I continued the sucking!  Sucking his cock and his balls, I used my teeth on the hard roots of his cock under his balls and then, pushing his knees up I explored with my tongue between the cheeks of his ass, settling his legs gradually over my shoulders.  The tip of my tongue reaching for his culjo!   Suddenly his head jerked up off the pillow I had put down for him.  “No!” he said.  “Si!” I answered and licked and tickled the tight muscles of his ass, looking up over his balls, and his cock hard and standing at an angle over his belly.  A frown fluttered softly over his face and he let his head back down on the pillow, and he must have closed his eyes.  Never had my mouth produced such juices, never have I wet a man so that my whole face slid effortlessly up, out of his ass to his testicals to capture his cock.  Now his own hands held his knees high and his ass open for me. 

I have often enjoyed a man body, open and wanting and loving my mouth, but I have never seen the absolute beauty of open cheeks and upraised legs as I did with Jose Louis.

He had put one hand on my head and directed where I would lick, and when to suck, moving my mouth from hole to cock to balls, then, when he could take no more, he pulled his cock out of my mouth with a wrench of his body and pulled me onto the bed while he himself got to its edge and stood.  He pushed me down onto the bed on my belly!  But I lay over onto my back and pulled my own legs up as his had been.  He came over me, hooking my ankles on his shoulders and hardly having to guide himself he pushed onto me without hesitation!  If he took care pushing up inside me I do not remember it, nor any pain.  I remember only the look on his face when he did it, the sensation of his big body undulating from knee to neck, thrusting, hotly, his head back his eyes shut, his mouth open, sounds of his pleasure dripping down into my consciousness. 

His orgasm seemed to start with a sudden opening of his eyes, a sharp looking down at me, a bulging, muscular, tension in his shoulders!  Then a shudder that convulsed his back and shocked his rhythm.   Then, hard inside me and deep as he could push, he stopped, absolute!  His frame shook and his sounds became guttural as though some scorching pain was tearing and convulsing his body and his face!  His belly and shoulders writhed and shuddered as his loins pressed hard down, into my ass!  

Stunned, and in love, lost to his overwhelming rhythms and the power and the force of his need, I wanted desperately for him to lie down on me and let my arms and hands and my wet kisses tell him what he had been for me, but he pushed up on his arms over me and slowly recovered himself, with his hands behind my knees he pushed himself back and out of me and stood upright.  I lay looking up at him!  I remember he shook his head and snorted in an odd way, like a stallion! He grinned down at me a grin that spoke of some embarrassment and some satisfaction, but mostly of a recovery of himself, and a withdrawal from me.  He laughed, almost derisively, and pointed toward my ass and said:  “Condom!”  I realized that he had used a condom and that it was still in my ass!

 

He began looking for his close.  I asked him to stay but knew it was of no use.  At the door I gave him a hundred pesos.  “por el taxi,” I said, “no por el sexo!”  He grinned and accepted it as though it were to trivial to speak of. I walked him to the front gate and unlocked it, asking him to come back - I would have pleaded but it was no use.  He agreed that he would come back but I knew he would not!  He had already told me he would be returning to Cardenas within a day or two.  He grinned at me in a new, distant, way and said, “Adios”.   I watched him walk down the hill toward the Olas Altas and turn the corner into the village and away. 

 

 

 

CROSSING TO MAZATLAN

Wednesday, July 15, 1998

Mazatlan, Mexico

 

   The crossing of the Bay De Cortez last night and this morning was magnificent!  Dolphin jumping and pacing the boat, flying fish skimming across the water in schools!  And a large manta ray, phosphorescent, in green and blue!

 

      I met a man from La Paz who was traveling to Puebla to take his daughter to visit her Grandmother In Puebla.  Louis told me he has a small monthly magazines in La Paz.  Interesting man!  Bright, lots of energy, he seemed to like me and I liked him.  He told me lots about Mexican politics and he knew Mexican history!  And he was ‘Woman crazy!’ He told me.

 

“Guuls!”  “You like Guuls, Lardy!”  “You come back to La Paz, I meet you to my friend Rosita!  She say to me, ‘I like an American! You meet good American you tell me!’ She be vedy good for you!  Vedy pretty, vedy hot.”  I say: “Quantos Anos?”  He says: “Rosita?”  I say:  “Si!” he is stilled for moment, then he says with vigorous certainty: “Rosita is twenty seven! Vedy pretty! You like!  You just say nice tings to her, she fuck you!”  I say:  “What kind of nice things?”   he says: “I love you!”  “You have most beautiful hair!”  “I tink about you all the time!”   I tell him that the more I like a woman the more difficult it is to lie to her.  “NO!” he says, “You treat a woman good she will not like you!  You have to lie to dem and ignore dem and be cold to dem. “be good to them day will tink something is wrong with you!  But if you lie to them and are cold to them and then you say: ‘Come here Rosita, I fuck you!’ Then she will come to you to make you happy!”

             

Louis was really a very bright and mad fellow I enjoyed talking to him and asked him many questions about Mexico politics. La Paz – he was born in La Paz and lived there all  his life.  He mentioned the girls of Cuba. He said he went to Cuba often. I had the impression his magazine was dependent on Cuban money. I liked him. 

            When it was late and dark he and his daughter went to bed down on the floor in a hallway I wondered off and began my night of wondering the decks of the ship. 

    I tripped over Louis and his daughter about four in the morning asleep.  I stepped over them.

            I could not sleep!  It was too exciting and I felt exotic! The Sea of Cortez!  Louis and I had talked all the way from the departure at 3:00 pm till about 1:00 am (when he found a very sophisticated mother with two beautiful daughters to talk to).  Out of  the Bay de La Plaz, into the Mar De Cortez, the water was so magnificent and clam and wonderfully colored - that deep translucent blue green that the water there has.  I guess I was transported in lots of ways.  This was the sort of thing I travel for!  The romantic kick, the odd, the wonderful and the unusual!  In this case the simple magnificence!  The views of the huge twisted desert mountain island moutains and the quite, white-sand bays and beaches and Louis at my shoulder saying.  “Ah, Laudy, Dat es my favorite beach!”  Pointing to some white strip of a cove beach only just accenting the moment of the mountains entry into the sea!  I take you daer when you come back!  You come back to La Paz?”  I say: “Si! La Paz es magnifico!”  He says: “like no other place in Mexico!  Baja es best!”  “Es gorgioso!” I say. 

There are islands that complete the outer perimeter of the Bay of La Paz and Louis has been on these islands and he had told me of the wild goats and sheep and coyotes and some small thing that is like a rabbit but is not rabit, and the other animals that live on the islands.  He tells me that a meteorite stuck at the very end of one of the largest islands in 1996.  He shows me where it hit, and indeed that part of the island is rubble compared to the rest, like something enormous and important has rolled down its side, and he tells me that the meteorite caused earthquakes in La Paz.  He says that the authorities never told the people of La Paz about the meteorite but told them the island had “settled!”

Louis is much into being an insider in La Paz and may be, I have no way of knowing!  He writes up the PRI candidate for Governor of La Paz Sur in his paper and says that if the man wins he, Louis, will get six more years of a government subsidy for his news paper.  I ask him what if the other party wins and he looks at me and grins and says “Den - I am fucked!” 

When Louis and his daughter go to bed down I wonder up to the foremost top deck where I can best see the forward course of the ship.  This is the biggest ship I have ever been on – bigger by far then the one I crossed the English Channel on!  There are four decks and the very tallest and most forward one is where I go to watch our progress toward Mazatlán! The night is dark and I can see little save the great whirling of white water the ship creates, in a scalloped pattern, across the surface of the water and becomes the ships wake as it passes behind.  All of this dynamic and curling and churning away from the bow – the only thing to be seen on the water in the night.  And of course I do that which I do and I fall in love with a moment and say that I will return! I will let Louis show me his coves and beaches and climb the mountains of these islands of his (I suspect) imagination. Maybe I will even meet Maria.

Two boys, in their twenties, tall and slim and lovely as swans come to the deck looking for a place to be together.  They settle on the bench behind me.  One sits and the other lays out and puts his head on his friends lap - and the sitting boy strokes his friends face  and hair – they were beautiful. It rains a little and the boys leave (I don’t see them again).  When the rain is done – it is now maybe 2:00 am.  I decide I will not even try to sleep but will wonder the ship for the rest of the night and learn it.  I go down a deck and another  until I recognize the “selon” where all the  people - save those in “Tourist” who have cabins - are seated and asleep in rows and rows of seats.   Then I go back up and wonder to the back of the ship on a deck overlooking a work area.  The Work Deck below me is sorted out with reals of rope and other nautical equipment that I don’t recognize!  I go to the back as far as I can out of the light and lean on the railing.  It seems I am alone save for a hugely fat man on the edge of the passenger deck below me who has brought blankets and pillows and is laid out on a bench in front of the work deck like a great mess of flesh taking it’s needed sleep!

I lean on the railing and look back at the wake of the ship!  Only that in the darkness – I drift away for a long tired revere. 

“What time is it.” I hear.

I look to see if this could be addressed to me!  On the railing to my right I see a tall figure in white pants and a brown head under a leather cap and he is looking at me.  I look at my watch but cannot see the time.  I hold my arm out to him to read it for himself if he can.  He moves toward me and reads the time out loud. 

He does not look at me and so I am able to look at him while he reads the time and when he leans on the railing and looks out to sea.  He is tall and thin, his neck is long and the curve of his back and hips suggests a boy, shy and not able to say more now that he has asked the time.  I look at his long elegant body.  See how his legs merge into his long torso and how his slim shoulders provide efficiently for his long neck and then to his head which is smaller in the bottom, the jaw, but blossoms widely up into the cranium.   He has great large eyes and seems to be a young man of mind more than appetite!       

“Es dificial a dormir” I say

He does not answer but it is not out of any sense of calmness or certainty but rather because he does not know what to say.  He does not look at me or react in any way.  I have the strong sense that he has started something but has not an idea what do with it now.

“Usted a Mazatlán?”  I ask.

He looks at me straight in the face for the first time and with no reserve, like a boy who is addressed by an elder.  He quickly agrees he is going to Mazatlán.  He grins and I can see the large white Mexican teeth and his unusually large eyes and the whites seem strikingly white and the brown seems black in the dark against the sea. 

We strike up a conversation in this method, Me speaking in Spanish when I can, resorting to English out of frustration, his being fluent at moments in English and helpless at others, resorting to rapid Spanish that I don’t understand.  He grins at me, worm but  reserved grins, and gives me shy smiles and he asks me questions.  Am I alone?  Am I married?  Do I have children? Where am I going? How long will I be in Mazatlán?  These are questions that I recognize.  They are the questions of someone who is trying to see who you are and if your life may mean anything to themselves – if only for a day or a few hours.  But I am aware as well that he does not really know why he is asking these questions and would be shocked if he knew what he had already reveled to me.  He does not look at me very often but looks out to sea as he talks.  I find that if I don’t look at him but look out to sea as well, he will turn his head and watch me as I answer his questions.  Then I discover that if I let him look at the side of my face without disturbing him by looking at him, I can, when I want to see how he is reacting or what his mood is as he speaks, turn suddenly toward him when he is looking at me and his eyes will hold mine.  I discover further that these few moment of full eye contact get longer and more meaningful as we continue to talk. 

I ask him if he has a girl friend and he says yes he does, her name is ‘Betty’.  'Betty' I almost say out loud, but I don’t?   How long? I ask.  Six months.  He says that she is very much in love with him – he does not say that he is very much in love with her.  I ask him if he will marry Betty, he shrugs lightly as though it is not an important question.    He asks me if I want to ask him any questions: “Usted tiene un pragunta por me?”  When ever he can’t think of something to say he says this.  I look at him and I ask him if he wants to have babies.  His answer is again a shrugged one.  He wants to know if I have a girlfriend.  I tell him that I was married for many years and that I had a long relationship with a woman after that but that I haven't had a girlfriend for a few years now.  “Porque?”  he says.  “Porque yo tengo un boyfriend” I say.   I look over at him and his eyes hold mine but reveal nothing, he is quite still, careful not to react.  After a while he looks away and I wonder if, after all, I have said to much and frightened him.  After a long silence he asks “Que es el nombre”.   “El nombre?” I say.  “Su ‘boyfriend’”.  “Es Kelvin”  I say.  “No Mexicano?” he says.  “No en La Paz?”  “No.”  I say, “Kelvin es Americano, es Puerto Rican”  “Que color?” he asks.  I don’t have a word for brown!  The boy says: “Es blanko?  Es Negro?”  “No” I say.  He uses the Spanish word for brown and points to his own forarm and says with some satisfaction: “like me!”  “Si!” I say, “exactamente mismo usted.”  “you like!” he says.  I catch his eyes and say slowly in English, “Yes, I like! very much.”   

A man comes out on deck to smoke and stands nearby.  The boy looks at his own watch this time.  It is nearing 4:00am.  The boy looks at the smoking man and goes quiet.  When the man finishes his cigarette he does not leave but continues to stand nearby.  I wonder myself if the man is interested in our conversation – or if he can hear it at all since we are back further on the boat then he is and the breeze is blowing clearly toward us not him- the wind will carry our words away.  The boy keeps glancing at the man.  After a while I suggest that we walk and lead the way to the forward deck where I had seen the two boys earlier.   The deck is empty now.

The boy is tired, as am I.  We both lean over with our arms on the top railing which is quite high and with our heads on our arms and our faces toward each other – in this position it is almost necessary to stand up to break eye contact.  “Un pregunta por me?” he says.  “Si” I say, “Usted y Betty – Sexo?”  “Sexo?” he says.  “Si, sexo!”  He says, “me y Betty? Si!” then he stands up and moves back from the railing by an arms length.  I do not move but remain with my head on my arms looking up at him.  He seems to be thinking about something that has broken the mood.  Then he says “No” but does not seem to be addressing me.  “No?” I say.  “No!” he repeats.  “No que?” I say.  “No sexo”. He says.  “No sexo con Betty?” I say this softly so that he will not think I am laughing at his little fib.  “Comprendo.” I say.  He looks down at me sternly.  I repeat: “Comprendo. Es bueno”  After a moment he grinns the sweetest grin I have seen on his face and leans back down into the railing looking at me.  “Curioso?” I say. “Curioso?”, he answers.  “Si” I say.  He is pretending he does not understand, then gives it up.  “Curioso, Si.”  He takes this very seriously and looks at me so that I will know that he does.  “Curioso por sexo con hombre?” I say directly into his eyes.  He does not look away but nods quickly – he has given away the secret away now, he knows he can’t take it back or play with it further.   “Me gusto usted.” I say to him.  “gustame?” he says looking at me.  “Si.” “Me gusto sexo con usted.”  “Si.” He says, “sexo. Si, es bueno.”                    

But of course it is out of the question since we are on a ship and neither of us has a state room.  I tell him that we can find a hotel in Mazatlán.   He says he has no money for a hotel and I say that I have to have a hotel anyway.  He looks out to sea in the direction the ship is heading, as though visualizing and tells me he must catch his bus to his hometown, which is not Mazatlán, as I was assuming, at eleven o'clock" he says.  I say when will you be back in Mazatlán.  He says, that he may be able to come back in to Mazatlán tomorrow.  We agree that we will meet at the famous statue of the fisherman out on La Playa at 10:00.  He says that he does not know if he will be able to come and I say it does not matter, I will be there, if he is not I will understand.

This morning I was at the famous statue of the fisherman and  of course he was not.  I was relieved actually, that he did not show up, and not at all surprised. 

AMSTERDAM'S "HOUSES WITH BOYS"

 

Nothing I expected to see in Europe intrigued me more then the boy brothels (or as they are called in guides 'Houses with boys') of Amsterdam.   Indeed seeing the brothels was the reason I had taken the early  bullet train from Paris (leaving much of the Louver unseen), and headed for Amsterdam.  

What would a male bordello be like?  Planning a trip of gay Europe for a gay magazine I was writing for, I had spent a good deal to time and imagination on this question.  I had envisioned skuzzy little rooms full of hard looking straight boys, straddle-legging tin folding chairs, trying to look like James Dean;  and I had envisioned  elegant tall rooms decked in gold guilt and red velvet sofas sporting languid queens in various stages of undress!

What would it really be like?  I was about to find out.

Standing on a downtown Amsterdam sidewalk facing a simple street door, I tried to relax the muscles that squeezed my larynx and I knew would make my voice a small high wail.  As collected as I was likely to become, I quickly took one last gulp of still innocent street air, opened the door, and stepped into one of the rarest of the worlds institutions: a male brothel.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I found myself in a small, simple, bar, not unlike the kind of place you would be pleased to find off the dining room of a county hotel some place in rural America.  Windowless, it was a comfortably lit room of some fifteen by twenty five feet.   Across from the door where I stood was the bar itself, the mirrored back-bar reflecting bottles in neat rows, it was like a hundred bars I had been in, a thousand. 

There were ten or twelve stools at the bar itself and across from it, by the entry door, was a sofa which sat facing it.  Beyond this sofa at the end of the room was a smaller sofa and one or two large stuffed chairs.  The general ambiance of the place was that of an agreeably masculine and, while not elegant,  in no way seedy, drinking establishment

There were some eight or nine men in the bar including a middle aged gentleman sitting talking to the bartender. The bartender was a nice looking young man perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties.   I headed for the safety of the bar before I risked a glance back toward the boys themselves.

Sorting themselves out on the sofas and chairs was an assemblage of some half dozen or so young men.  They had the slow, relaxed and slightly self-conscious movements of those with great energy and no place particularly to go.  I smiled as amiably as I could, my drink in hand, and looked them over.

Each young man met my eyes and each, according to his temperament, grinned or smiled or in some way acknowledged me as my eyes fell on him.  One stood out.  He was an extremely handsome boy, probably the youngest of the group.  He was short and dark with glossy black hair and  his skin showed the rich highlights of a Southern Mediterranean complexion.  Even across the room I could see that he had extraordinary eyes, dark and filled with mischief and boyish humor.  Like the other boys he was casually and fully dressed.

I turned back to the bar and tried to settle down with a beer. 

Slowly, almost without intent, the short dark boy drifted over to the bar and stood next to me, seeming concentrated on getting the bar tenders attention.  I turned slightly on my stool and looked at him close range.  I smiled.   He tipped his face toward me only a little and smiled carefully, as one will who encounters a stranger to whom he has not yet decided he wants to talk. 

Uncertain, I turned away.  As I did so the boy abandoned what had apparently been an effort to entice me by seeming disinterest and, leaning on his forearm, slid up the bar toward me.  His smile, now devoid of coquetry, was a full, youthful grin, which seemed to say: 'well now, we've played hard to get, so let’s talk!'.

"Hello" he said in an accent that seemed to speak words of  the syllables as if there were both the words "hall" and "low" in the word “Hello”.  I turned a little toward him and looked through the lush foliage of his long lashes into his splendid dark eyes.  I nodded and smiled slightly.  The handsome boy seemed not to know what to say next so he just grinned at me. 

Seeming not to know what else to do, he reached out and took my hand from the bar and held it between his: "I am Carlo." He said, leaning closer to me.  

"Hello Carlo" I said, "What brings you here?" 

The question was foolish and ingenious but I had not expected it would through Carlo as completely as it seemed to do.  He looked at me, to stumped even to grin.  He opened his mouth as if to say something,  closed it again, and then grinned.  

"He works here" said another, taller, boy with bleached-to-white hair who had been lingering just near enough to hear our conversation.  "So do I", he said.  And then: "Carlo doesn't speak much English".  This blond boy spoke in a perfect Midwestern accent.  

"He doesn't have to" I said.  But the blond boy withdrew from the boy and I. 

"What do you do here?" I asked Carlo.  I was feeling somehow bolder and this had become a serious question, a way of getting to the business of the place. 

"I fuck!"  Carlo seems to delight in this good foreign word 'fuck'.   "I fuck you!" he says, "right now!".   

"But Carlo I just got here." 

Now Carlo leans toward me and laughs softy in my ear.  "I fuck you in the ass till you can stand up!"  This had the sound a learned phrase, and he had missed the contraction for 'can't'

"No, Carlo", I said,  "I need to have a drink and relax.  Maybe later."  Carlo put his hand on my thigh and letting it slide down to my knee, squeezed before he reluctantly pulled it away. 

When Carlo had gone.  The blond boy sat down on the bar stool beside me.  I turned to him.  His white hair was cut short, almost a crew cut, 50s style.   He asked the bar tender for something I did not recognize and when he was served looked over at me.  He was a nice looking boy, with an honest and straightforward American face.  He was slim and dressed casually.  His movements were slow and thoughtful.  He spoke in a manner that suggested some understanding between us, probably because we were both Americans.  "Carlo is Italian" he said.  "He hasn't been here very long." 

"He's in the right business," I said, "He's absolutely beautiful." 

The blond boy smiled and nodded, happy to acknowledge Carol's good looks.   He put his hand out to me:  "My name is Terry." He said.

"Where you from Terry?"  I asked.

"You can't guess?"

I grinned,  "Where in Americas?"  

"Cleveland" he said.  I went to school in Chicago.  He turned and studied the glass in his hand for a moment and then said: "You like Carlo?" he was offering to make the needed arrangements.

"Do you speak Italian?" I asked.

"No, but I can tell Carlo anything you want me to."  He said. 

"No that's all right. I'm going to have a drink and relax, I've been sight seeing all day."

After Terry had appreciated my choice of Amsterdam sights he said: "You don't have to rush you know." He looked away from me, over at the other boys.  "In fact you can just have a drink and talk to the boys if you want to, you don't have to go with anyone."  In this way Terry set himself up to be my guide. 

I asked him if he liked working here and other questions about himself.  He was twenty four he told me, he had a degree in philosophy from Northwestern.  He had held various jobs he said but had always been sexually compulsive.  He loved what he was doing now, he loved the work and hanging out with the other boys.   He made quite a bit of money he told me.  Most of all, he loved the sexuality of this work.  Terry was a serious and bright young man and I came to believe his claim that he had a degree in philosophy from Northwestern..

I asked him if he didn't get tired sitting around all day like he seemed to be doing on this day.  Sure, he said, but some days he was very busy.  I asked him how he kept it up on busy days.   He grinned, appreciating my simple minded reference to the tool of his trade but answered the question straightforwardly.  Not all his clients insisted that he cum, he said, indeed many did not care or didn't want him to orgasm during sex. 

"But if they want you to you will?" I asked. 

"O yes.!"  He shrugged, "What ever the client wants, he gets."  

"Anything?" I asked. 

"Sure," Terry said,  "It isn't cheap.".  

"What does it cost?" I asked. 

"Two hundred Guilder."  It took little math to translate that into approximately $100,  American.  "It's got to be safe."  Terry said, "otherwise anything". 

"So Carlo meant it when he offered to fuck?"  

"Sure" Terry grinned warmly.  "I would to." 

"And you get fucked too?" I asked. 

"With a condom, sure." He said.  "Almost all of us do."   

"But not all?" I pressed. 

"No." He said firmly, "Carlo doesn't." 

"Carlo Doesn't?" 

"No," Terry leaned toward me confidentially, "Carlo is dead straight, he's got girlfriends all over Amsterdam."  Terry and I chuckled over this and I bought him a beer. 

"Carlo probably will later, but he doesn't now" 

This was an intriguing statement. "Why later?" I asked. 

"Well he has to give up clients."  Terry said.  "If that's what a client wants he won't go with a boy that won't do it." He explained. 

"But you think Carlo will change?" 

"Probably.  Someone will offer him a big tip or one of the boys will get him past the first time."  

I was envisioning this exotic scene.  "You would do this for Carlo" I asked? 

Terry grinned at me, his first really enthusiastic grin, this was not the first time he had thought of Carlo's cherry ass.  

Terry swung around on the bar stool.  "See anyone you like?" he said.

"Sure, I like them all."  I said.  "I like you."

"No, you don't like me, not that way."

Terry was right and his acknowledgment of it let us drop our roles of 'boy' and, 'perspective client.'

"What's that big blond like." I said looking at a large bodied kid with a knee over the arm of  sofa.  "He's good" Terry said, "got a big cock.  He dances in the theater".   

"You have a theater?"

"Yeah we have live shows on Friday and Saturday night and on special occasions."  I noted that this was Thursday afternoon. 

"His name is Frederick, he likes the S&M room,"  Terry's gaze drifted back from Frederick to me, "You like S&M?" he asked.

"Never tried it." I said truthfully.

"You should, we have a good set up here."  I looked at Frederick's large hard body.   I wondered what it would be like being disciplined by Frederick?  Or, more interesting, disciplining Frederick.  Terry and I talked about some of the other boys, one was Canadian, two were German.  There were no Asians or black boys.  I asked Terry about it.  "We have a couple of black boys,"  Terry said, "I don't think any Asians."  This question about Asian boys seemed to interest Terry.  He turned to the barman and asked if they had any Asian boys.  The barman considered this.  "Not right now," he said, "We could probably get one." He glanced at me.  "No," Terry said, "We were just talking."

"I'd like to talk to the manager". I said. 

Terry looked at me focusing "Why?" he asked. 

"I'd like to do an article on the place." I said. 

"Your a writer?" This seemed to cast me in a different light in Terry's eyes and he looked at me for a moment perhaps adjusting his notion of why I was here, then called to the barman.  "He's a writer, he wants to talk to Tommy.  Will Tommy see him?"

"I don't think Tommy dose interviews anymore."  The barman said, addressing me directly.

"Why not?"

"It seems like every time he does he gets fucked over.  You know they come in here and every thing is great then you get the article and its all this trash and sensationalism.  Expose stuff.  He just decided not to give anymore interviews" 

"Your talking about the straight press." I said, "I write for a gay American magazine." 

"Which one?"  The barman asked.  I told him: "The Guide"  out of Boston".  The barman nodded noncommittally.  "You can ask." He said. 

We arranged that the Barman would mention me to Tommy and that I would return the next night after the Friday show to see if Tommy would talk to me.   Terry introduced me to a couple more of the boys as I prepared to leave.  They looked warmly into my eyes as they shook my hand and gave their names and smiled, hoping I would relieve the boredom of the long quite afternoon and put a little cash in their pockets.

 

 

I returned at 19:00 the next night, in time for a drink before the show in the theater at 20:00.   The bar was full of men waiting for the show and boys chatting with them.   I paid the barman FL 30.00 to see the show and ordered a drink.   I didn't ask if he had spoken to Tommy about the interview.   I watched the boys as they moved among the older men talking, smiling intimately into their eyes, but moving on easily.  The men chatted with the boys and each other, drank comfortably and one went off with a boy through the door at the end of the bar.    Most, however seemed to be waiting for the show.

I took a front seat in the small theater.   The stage was not more then nine feet wide by six feet deep.  As the lights dimmed an unseen announcer introduced "Danny and Frederick".    The lights faded up on a young man of perhaps twenty five, dressed in a glittering G-string.  His oiled skin was the color of hickory wood, dark and lustrous, his body was superbly proportioned and  perfectly sculpted,  the natural muscularity of a dancer, lacking gym-worked bulk.  Strictly speaking his face was strong featured and masculine rather than handsome.  Backed against a narrow curtain Danny moved to the music with rhythmical slowness in the embrace of a second set of arms and hands which came from behind a curtain so that their owner could not be seen.  This second set of hands,  along with his own, slid over the ripples and muscular intricacies of Danny’s body from knee to neck.  Soon, however, the Frederick I had met in the bar the previous afternoon, dressed also in a small G-string, emerged from behind the curtain. After some undulating sexual simulations, both boys stepped down from the low stage and came into the audience.  Each boy moved among and briefly engaged the audience members, a brushing hand, a lascivious grin, even a light kiss.   When they reached the rear of the small auditorium  they seemed to hesitate briefly, I could not tell what they were doing.  When they came back down the isle toward the stage however both boys had removed their G-strings. Danny had achieved a full erection.  Perhaps since I was sitting directly in front of the stage  Danny lay briefly across my lap, as he had not on others, and leaned back so that his enormous erection pointed directly at my face.  His grin acknowledged the enormity of the temptation he was placing before me.  He teased me by wiggling the first knuckle of his forefinger between my lips before he withdrew. 

Then the two young men remounted the stage, and dancing to the music, played at fucking and then took turns sucking  each other.  Through it all Danny's erection remained enormous and reliable.  Frederick's penis was huge, as Terry had promised, but did not maintain so rigid a standard as his partner.

When the show was over I returned to the bar which was once again full and active.  The men were excited and the boys eager.   There was now a second man behind the bar whom I realized was Tommy.  I ordered a drink and waited on opportunity to talk to him.  

When he brought me the second beer I introduced myself and asked him if he was Tommy.  He nodded that he was.  It seemed the barman had mentioned me.   Tommy was, tentatively, willing to talk to me.  

It seemed important to Tommy that I was from the American gay press.  He said:  "As soon as we're not so busy I'll show you around."  Then: "You want to look at the book?"

I didn't know what 'the book' was but I said I wanted to see it and took my beer through the doorway that separated one end of the bar.  I took a stool against the wall and Tommy laid a photo album on the bar in front of me.  "The Book" had a page devoted to each boy that the place had to offer.  I looked through its luxury of perhaps twenty or twenty-five boys pictured in various appealing posses, non were fully nude.  As I sat there, I began to appreciate what was going on at that end of the bar.  If the bar itself was a place for the men and boys to meet and pair up this end was 'dispatch'.   A boy, having been chosen by a client, brought him back to that end of the bar where he was given a key to a room, towels and whatever else was needed.  The room assignments were done for the most part by Tommy.

"S&M room" a tall sturdy boy with sandy hair said in English heavily accented with Dutch.  Tommy and I both glanced at the man with him.  He was a tall lean fellow, nice looking, perhaps forty.  Tommy pulled a box from under the counter and placed it in front of the boy, then placed  a short back whip down beside the box.  "Hat's in the box" Tommy said to the boy.  "You can pay now." He said to the man. "The room is being cleaned, it will be a few minutes." 

This request for payment in advance was said easily and was meant as a connivance, something to fill the time that the man had to wait for the room.  I had observed earlier  customers paying on leaving, not on entering.

 I didn't know what the "Thai room" was but I noticed that it and the "S&M room" were more expensive, at two hundred and ninety guilders, but for an hour and a half not just an hour. 

Finally a boy brought a man to the counter and was told that all the rooms were in use.  This seemed to distress the boy, he fidgeted and glanced at his customer.  He  had made his date and now had no place to take him.  "Take him in the Theater and entertain him."  Tommy said.  And then to the customer:  "I'm sorry it'll be a few minutes, you can wait with Peter in the theater if you want."  The man seemed perfectly happy with this arraignment and followed Peter into the small theater.

It was perhaps an hour before Tommy got back to me, though we did in that hour, as he performed his dispatch duties at my end of the bar, exchange comments and generally strike up an easy relationship.

 Finally Tommy said:  "Come on, I'll show you the rooms."

I had a number of questions for Tommy and I asked them as he escorted me through the building.

"How do you select the boys" I asked.

"We look for good clean cut boys"  Tommy held the door to a large room open for me,  "They don't have to be super good looking, they have to be nice, good to talk to.  They need to have an average to good body.  We talk to boys between 18 and up to about 30 or so."

We were standing in a large windowless room which had a queen size bed on one wall, a large television against the wall facing the bed and a nicely tiled open shower in the corner. "This is an average room." He said, "most of  the rooms are busy so I can't show you more right now, but there are all about like this."    He flipped a switch on a small panel above the bed and the room was flooded with romantic mood music, turning the switch the music became rock then, with one more twist of the knob, western.   With the exception of the missing window the room was reminiscent of an upper-end hotel room.  Still there was sexiness!  The only thing to which I could attribute this was the fact that the big bed had only a bottom sheet and two big pillows.

I asked the question that had been on my mind from the time I first thought of coming here:  "How do you know if a boy will work out?  Dose someone try them out?"

I was concerned that this question was somehow to 'intimate' but Tommy was not offended.  "No," he said easily, "The boys come here and ask for a job, we never advertise or solicit boys to work here.  They come to us.  If I like them I have them fill out an information form and I take them to a room and interview them.  If I'm not sure about the boy's body I may ask him to take off his close, but not usually.  If  everything is all right then we give them a few days trial, usually three days."  Thus, Tommy finished off my favorite fantasy job, hiring boys for a bordello.

"Could I get a copy of the information form?" I asked.  Tommy thought about this for a moment then told me to remained him when we got back to the  bar.

"Do you have to train them?"  No, Tommy said, the boys knew what they were doing, if they didn't it would soon become obvious, the customers would tell him.   We do have a video they can look at before they go into the Thai room.  With the S&M either they did it or they didn't, it was up to the boy.

"How long do the boys usually stay". 

"Usually about six months."  Tommy said.  He opened a drawer in the little table beside the bed and revealed all the simple tools of the trade, condoms, lubricants,  some massage oil.  He demonstrated the versatility of the lighting, which dimmed and grew brighter at the turn of a second dial beside the bed.  "Some boys stay a year or two."  He said. 

"How do you handle the health problems."

"A government health worker comes here to test the boys for STDs every three weeks.  The boys are very clean and healthy, if we didn't keep them healthy we would be shut down."  He said simply.  I had the growing impression that Tommy was showing me around this House With Boys out of a sense of pride. That when he opened a door to a room he knew I would be impressed, when he talked about the behavior he required of his boys it was with the same sense of accomplishment and standard that any good business man would have in a successful and recognized business.  "If the boy wants to get tested for AIDs he can get the test from the health worker, its all a government program, the boys don't pay."

"The boys aren't all tested for AIDs then?”  I asked.

"No, we can't require it, its against the law.  They have to practice safe sex anyway so it doesn't matter"  I asked him what was regarded as safe sex.  He said that sucking was considered safe but cumming in the mouth was discouraged.  Anal sex with a condom was regarded as safe.  Unprotected anal sex was forbidden.

"The boys do anal sex then."

"They don't have to." Tommy told me.  It's up to them and what they and client agree to.  The rule is that the boy has to find out what the client wants while they are still in the bar.  “If the boy doesn't want to do what the client says he wants, then the client is free to find a different boy.” Tommy explained, “But the boy has to say what he will do or won't do while they are still in the bar, he has to tell the client in advance, so there is no disagreement in the room.”

“Can the boy charge more for different things?" I asked.

                Tommy told me emphatically that this was strictly forbidden.  All the negotiation was done in the bar before the boy takes the man into the room, what ever is agreed on is what the boy must do in the room and he cannot ask for more money.   The man can tip if he likes the boy, but the boy cannot pressure the customer for tips or sell extra service.  This seemed to be an absolute rule of the house.

"Do your customers fall in love with the boys?"  I asked.  Tommy seemed to misunderstand the question.   He told me that any outside relationship between a boy and a client he meets in the business is absolutely forbidden.  A boy who dates a customer on the side, Tommy said, would be fired.

The S&M room, which Tommy told me had recently been  refurbished, was a new experience for me.  Some of the devices were obvious enough, a rack for neck and wrists, leaving the body bent double at the hips and the ass exposed, was easy to understand, so was the rack with black leather straps for wrists and ankles to spread-eagle a man.  A collection of whips, restraining equipment, plastic and leather phallus and other devises to be strapped on a body were hung neatly on one wall or lay enigmatically. On a row of shelves.  A kind of gymnasts side horse, but fitted out with manacles and straps, intrigued me.  It was not impossible to visualize my friend Carlo strapped across it.

"What Is that?"  I asked pointing at a cage, about the size of a traveling crate for a medium sized dog, but made of heavy iron bars.  This device  was hung from a ceiling-anchored pulley by a rope system that allowed it to swing a few inches off the floor.   Tommy detached the rope from a hook on the wall and raised it up so that the cage floor was above knee height.   This he seemed to offer as an explanation.  I looked at it still unable to apprehend what was apparently so obvious to Tommy.   "But what does it do?"  I asked.

"You get inside it."  Tommy said, suddenly realizing the extent of my ignorance, “or the boy does”.   It seemed impossible to me for a man to get inside so small a cage.  But then I realized that if a man were to be forced inside the cage his head would be  crowded against the bars at one end and his ass helpless against the other.  The bars, while close, were not so close as to preclude the body of anyone in the cage from being enjoyed from outside it.  Again I thought of Carlo learning one of the tricks of his trade, the one he has so far not mastered, through the bars of this ingenious devise.

               The Thai Room was much like the other rooms only next to the shower was a large shallow soft water mattress.  It was here that a customer could enjoy the Thai massage which, Tommy told me, involved the full length rubbing together of oil slathered naked bodies.

"How long have you been in the business."  I asked Tommy.

"Ten years."  He seemed quite satisfied with this.  I didn't have the courage to ask if he had once been a 'boy', he certainly was a good looking man, though maybe a little old now.  

Tommy began to talk about Dutch Politics and his expectation that his would become the first fully licensed male brothel in the world.   Contrary to what Americans seemed to believe, Tommy told me,  the brothels of Amsterdam, his own included, are still illegal.  He was not sure when legalization  was to happen but seemed to think it a natural result of a rather complex political realignment that was taking place in the Netherlands.   Legitimization of prostitution, including male prostitution, in Amsterdam, according to Tommy, was to be the result of an unlikely coalition of the left and right wings of Netherlands politics, which, in coming together, would form a presumably more radical government then that of the long ruling centrist party.   He told me, with obvious pride, that the Federal  Minister of Health of the current government had come here (rather then a heterosexual brothel), to see how a brothel should be run.  

Several Houses With Boys had been closed, Tommy said, because they employed boys under eighteen, or permitted drugs, some even were accused of importing boys from the Balkans and holding them more or less as sex slaves.   In general, he told me, the government was getting the industry ready for legalization.

I asked him about his relation with the Police.  There was a special unit of the Police that dealt with  the red light establishments he said, if he needed Police he called them just like any other business.    He had only done so twice in ten years." He told me.  "I had one guy who would not pay and another that was drunk and disorderly. 

Tommy led me back to the bar and set up a beer.  I asked him about the questionnaire he had mentioned.  He got me a copy from under the bar.

"This is what we ask the boys to fill out when they first come here" Tommy said:

The title at the top of the single sheet was:  "SEX BOYS"   Directly under that was the first principle of employment spelled out in capital letters: 

 

"WE WILL ONLY EMPLOY BOYS WILLING TO ENGAGE IN FULL GAY SEX ACTIVATES WITH THE CLIENTS, BOYS WHO SIMPLY WISH TO LIE THERE AND LET THE CUSTOMER DO THE WORK CAN WORK ELSEWHERE.

 

Further down and underlined it read:

 

ALL OUR BOYS:

MUST BE PREPARED TO KISS, CUDDLE, LICK, & SUCK COCK AND BALLS.  MUST BE ABLE EITHER TO FUCK, GET FUCKED OR BOTH.

 

Under a double line was the questionnaire section of the form which asked for the Name of the boy (first name only), Age,  Height,  weight, cock size (when erect) and whether the boy was circumcised or uncircumcised.

 

Under the heading:      "SUCKING:"  Was a notice which informed the boy that: 

 

"ALL BOYS MUST BE PREPARED TO SUCK COCK, WITHOUT CONDOM IS PERFECTLY SAFE."

 

And under the heading  "FUCKING"  the new boy would learn that:

 

"BOYS WILLING TO GET FUCKED WILL ALWAYS EARN MORE MONEY"

 

Then the boy was asked if he were:  ACTIVE, PASSIVE OR BOTH  And told that only boys who are willing to get fucked will be sent on outside escorts.   The last question on the sheet asked about the boy's interest and experience with S&M.

I folded the questionnaire into my note pad and tuned on the bar stool to survey the room.   I had wanted to watch the pairing off process in more detail.  I assumed this would happen after the show but I had been glad to go instead with Tommy on the tour.  Now I watched as several men sat drinking at the bar.  It was as though the gliding past, the friendly and lingering smiles, had all been exchanged and the men at the bar were being left to their drinks.  The boys lounged on the sofas waiting, bored, and talking to each other.   

Carlo was there, his devastating grin and his beautiful dark eyes snapping as ever, but we had already talked, he would not approach me again unless I invited him.   I studied each of the boys.  Each boy smiled as I look at him, but I invited none to approach me.  Except Carlo none of the boys available now had been here in the afternoon . Terry had told me that there was the afternoon shift (12:00 to 19:00), and the night shift, which was on now and would work till all clients had gone, sometime after 2:00 AM.

At the far end of the room a door opened and the blond dancer, Frederick, came into the bar.  He was followed a moment later by Danny who was dressed as if for the street, including a light jacket.  This seemed to be their first entrance after their performance in the theater.  Frederick settled comfortably on a sofa with the other boys.  Danny stopped just inside the door and looked down the bar at the seated men.  When his eyes came to me I held his look and so he came round the bar and down to me.

"You like the show?" he said in clear but heavily accented English .   "Very much." I said.

Danny grinned at me and then nodded his head in the direction of the end of the bar and the hall that led to the rooms.  He let the set of his eyebrows and his slightly opened lips ask the silent question:  Did I want to go to a room with him?

I looked at him for  a long moment and then said.  “No, I have a big day tomorrow.