Bangkok Makes a Hard Man Humble- 1970s- after college- Historical?

This is a story about sexual relationships in the mid-1970s. The behavior depicted is that of the times, not now. Be careful and be safe.

The Standard Disclaimer applies here: this story features graphic depictions of sexual activity between men. If such material is inappropriate for the jurisdiction where you live, please exit immediately.

This is a work of fiction, though I sigh when I recall how much of it is so painfully true. Names and events have been changed to protect the innocent (and guilty). This is copyrighted material and may not be used without explicit permission of the author. I don't mind if you save it to your hard drive and use the contents to enhance your own pleasure, but nothing for further dissemination without authorization.

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Bangkok Makes a Hard Man Humble

So there is college graduation, eventually, and my old boyfriend off at Joliet 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 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 café 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 façade 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 for 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. Moi 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, normally 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.

Moi went ahead and scheduled her surgery, and when the day came, I visited her in the hospital. She was wan after the operation. 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. 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.

From Aranyapathet, the border around six clicks away.

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.

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