Three Wrong Turns in the Desert

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Copyright 2009 Neil S. Plakcy. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This book was originally published by Loose Id. Maryam Salim did an awesome job of editing this book, and the rest in the series:

  2: Dancing with the Tide

  3: Teach Me Tonight

  4: Olives for the Stranger

  5: Under the Waterfall

  6: The Noblest Vengeance

  7: Finding Freddie Venus

  8: A Cold Wind

  9: The Same Page

  1 – The Bar Mamounia

  If Aidan Greene had stuck to the main streets, he probably would have been fine. But he was restless, walking all day, killing the three days between his arrival in Tunisia and the start of his teaching job. Though he loved the contrast between the stark white buildings and the bright blue, often cloudless sky, the plazas strung with tiny red flags, and the narrow cobblestone streets of the medina, he didn’t want to think of himself as merely a tourist; he was going to be living in Tunis, working there, starting a new life.

  He passed the broken remnants of the Roman aqueduct, confusing signs in Arabic that might have been warnings or simply directions, pavements stained with centuries of sewage, rows of low whitewashed buildings with exposed wires leading to decaying poles.

  Men approached him asking for cigarettes, children for baksheesh. He ignored them all, and wasn’t even nervous, until the dark-skinned boy in the torn T-shirt approached him as he walked down a narrow alley. The two and three-story buildings leaned in toward him, blocking the sky, making him feel like a caged animal. “American?” the boy asked. “You give me dollars?” He was eight or nine, wearing sandals and a pair of ragged shorts.

  Aidan shook his head, said “No” in a firm voice, and kept walking. Behind him, he heard a second voice, speaking what he assumed was Arabic. When he glanced back, he saw a second boy in his early teens.

  He remembered the way he’d felt sometimes walking through the gay neighborhood of Philadelphia, afraid of being bashed by random toughs. But in other parts of the city, he’d felt safe—he was often mistaken for Italian or Greek because of his olive skin, and his deep-set eyes and dark eyebrows made people think he was more dangerous than he really was.

  At the end of the alley, two more boys were waiting, both in their early teens. “American,” one of them said. “Dollars.”

  Aidan’s heart accelerated. The street ahead was wider than the alley, but nearly deserted. It was late in the afternoon, the sun broiling above, and most sensible people were inside somewhere waiting for the night to cool things down. Somewhere in the distance he heard the heavy back beat of Arabic music. A man’s voice, high and almost whiny, twisted through the rhythm of the strings. It reminded him that he was in a foreign place, one with lurking dangers.

  He had no idea where he was. His usual strategy was to keep walking, and eventually he’d run across a landmark, refer to his guidebook, and orient himself.

  Looking ahead, he saw one of the older boys holding something that glinted in the bright sun—probably a knife. Another alley branched to the right, toward a broad plaza, so he took off at a run. He was wearing sneakers, carrying his passport and a few dollars’ worth of dinars in a travel wallet strapped to his waist under his shorts, so he could be light on his feet.

  Back in Philadelphia, Aidan had walked everywhere—to his job, teaching English as a Second Language to recent immigrants at a private college in Center City, to the grocery, the dry cleaner, the gay bookstore where he went to readings now and then. But he hadn’t run much, and he knew he couldn’t hold out for long, especially not in the heat, when he was dehydrated from a day on the pavement.

  What a stupid idea it had been, he thought as he sped toward the plaza, the boys behind him. Giving up everything he had known back home to run away to a strange country, just to distract his broken heart. He had thought he could put aside the waste of eleven years on Blake Chennault, a man who had probably never loved him.

  Years before, right after graduating with his master’s degree in English as a Second Language, he had traveled through Europe teaching, jumping from job to job and country to country as the mood took him. Then he had gone back to the States to visit his family, met Blake, and settled into a succession of tedious part-time jobs and a dull life that had never satisfied his desire for adventure. Once Blake had kicked him to the curb, he’d thought he could resume that itinerant life. But had he gotten too settled, too sedate, to survive on his own again?

  The boys shouted and chased him, and it was sheer panic that kept him moving. He rounded a corner onto the plaza and saw that it was nearly empty, too.

  His heart was pumping, and sweat was pooling under his arms, dripping across his forehead, streaming down his back. Where could he go? He didn’t know a soul in the city—he hadn’t even met his boss-to-be, Madam Habiba Abboud, having communicated with her through email.

  Aidan kept running, his heart thudding, his feet slamming against the rough concrete pavement. He rounded another corner and saw a blessed sight—a neon beer bottle glowing beside a curtained doorway.

  One of the teenagers was gaining on him. Aidan could almost feel the boy’s breath on his back as he reached the beadwork curtain that led into the bar, and pushed through. His guidebook had indicated that the few bars outside hotels were often seedy, and not recommended for tourists. But it was too late to be squeamish.

  The walls of the dim, high-ceilinged room were whitewashed stucco, the floor an indecipherable mosaic tile pattern. Three slim-hipped Tunisian men in jeans and cotton shirts sat at rickety metal chairs around a small square table painted bright blue and inlaid with chipped tile patterns.

  He flashed onto high school, the way he’d often run into the library to escape bullies. He felt the same sense of sanctuary. The men looked up as he burst into the room, panting and sweating. He rushed to the bar, where a dark-skinned bald man in a clean white t-shirt was working behind an elaborate brass coffee urn. Aidan slid onto one of the three barstools and pointed at a bottle of lemon soda.

  He looked behind him. None of the boys had dared follow him inside, which was good. He worried that they might be waiting outside, though. It would be dark in a few hours, and he had no idea where he was or how he could get back to the little apartment he’d rented.

  He took a long drink of lemon soda and waited for his racing heart to calm. How could he have been so stupid? Not just to get himself lost and in trouble in Tunis—but to have ended up there in the first place? He didn’t speak the language, didn’t know more about the country than he’d read in his Lonely Planet Tunisia Travel Guide. It had all been a knee-jerk reaction to being dumped.

  When his heart rate had returned to a manageable level, he paid for his soda, then walked over to an opening in the back wall—you could have called it a window, if there had been a frame around it, a piece of glass. But it wasn’t that kind of bar.

  He looked out at a small dirt courtyard—and a naked man standing under an open showerhead, water cascading off his muscled body. The sight was startling enough that for a moment Aidan forgot the boys who had been chasing him. His dick surprised him with an erection as he watched the water cascade over muscles and gleaming skin. The man had close-cropped brownish blond hair, high cheekbones, and a few days’ growth of beard. One small gold ring pierced each fat brown nipple, which sat on a pair of almost square pecs. From there, his body formed a V down to a narr
ow waist. He was tanned a deep brown, all over, almost as dark as the Tunisian men in the bar.

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to fall in love again? Aidan lounged against the wall, enjoying the sight of the naked body, daydreaming about touching and being touched. The roughness of another man’s cheek against his, the taste of another man’s lips. That initial intoxication with someone new, learning the ins and outs of his body, what turned him on, and the things he would do that would surprise Aidan with his own responses.

  But that led him to the pain of breaking up. Was it worth it? To have your heart torn open when a man you thought loved you enough to last forever walked in one day and said it was time for you to move out?

  Aidan looked into the courtyard again. Damn, the guy in the shower was sexy. His biceps flexed as he bent to soap himself. His groin was flat, with a mound of bushy black hair at the root of his thick, semi-hard dick. He scrubbed himself with no self-consciousness, enjoying the soap and the clean water. When the man turned his back, Aidan salivated over a perfect bubble butt, with a narrow trail of dark hair running between the cheeks.

  He closed his eyes and imagined the man’s big hands roving over his own naked body, the feel of fingers wrapped around his dick, a tongue lapping at his puckered asshole. Bee-stung lips on his, kissing him, in a way he hadn’t been kissed in years. The scent of another man filling his nostrils. The taste of a man, as his tongue roved from collarbone to belly button. And how much more wonderful all that would be if he was in love.

  Then he remembered he was in a Muslim country. They stoned gay people here, didn’t they? He turned away from the window, afraid someone would see him staring, and realized that his erection had given him away, tenting his shorts. He adjusted himself, but one of the men at the table had already noticed.

  As the man approached, Aidan marked his bushy eyebrows, gold front tooth, black hair slicked back from his forehead. He was older than he’d appeared at first; lines creased his dark skin. Muscles bulged from his upper arms. Aidan’s pulse raced again. Would the man accuse him? Hit him?

  Instead, the man smiled broadly and placed his hand on Aidan’s groin. He said something in a language that had its roots in French. Though the words were unknown, the meaning was clear.

  Equally clear was Aidan’s reaction to the man’s touch. His dick deflated faster than an escaping hot air balloon. The man looked puzzled, and Aidan dropped the soda bottle on a nearby table and hurried out of the bar, forgetting the danger that lurked outside.

  2 - Two Glasses of Vieux Magon

  Fortunately, by the time Aidan left the bar, the boys who had chased him had given up and disappeared, and after walking a few blocks he found a sign leading to the Avenue Bourguiba, a broad boulevard with thick stands of trees along one side. The presence of tall buildings and taxicabs was reassuring, and he walked the remaining blocks back to his apartment without incident.

  The next morning, he awoke with an erection, and realized he’d been dreaming of the naked man showering behind the bar. He’d seen handsome men in Philadelphia, of course, and sometimes been physically attracted to them, particularly when it had been a while since he and Blake had made love.

  But those men had never invaded his dreams, never engendered the sense of longing Aidan felt when he remembered that naked body under the cascade of water. As he went into the bathroom to relieve himself, he thought it was probably just a knee-jerk reaction to losing Blake. It was silly, but he needed to feel he could be attractive again.

  Then why had his dick deflated the minute the Tunisian man had touched him? Was he only interested in the unavailable? The naked man had looked as straight as any Aidan had ever seen—from his short military-style haircut to his muscled body. None of the gay men he knew back in Philadelphia had physiques like that, even the ones who spent every available minute at the gym.

  He sighed. He thought he’d gotten over longing for straight guys when he found Blake, who was tough and demanding, a football fan who disdained opera and ballet. In a way, Blake was a gay man’s fantasy—a straight-appearing guy who was willing to have sex with another man.

  But the naked man behind the bar was another story. He was a show-off; why else shower in a quasi-public place? But there had been a “look, don’t touch” message from his body language.

  Maybe that was what he found attractive, Aidan thought, as he fixed himself breakfast. A man who could satisfy his fantasies without any danger of emotional involvement. Sex without all the messiness of love. No more heartbreak. Just a little fun in an exotic location. Would his fantasy man, when dressed, wear one of the hooded white robes Aidan had seen on men in the medina? Did men wear anything under those robes?

  He kept thinking of the naked man all morning, and at least to shut up his subconscious he retraced his steps to the place he discovered was called the Bar Mamounia. A pair of Tunisian men sat in one corner of the bar as he pushed through the beadwork curtain once again; he couldn’t tell if they were the same men who’d been there the day before. The same bald bartender was behind the bar, this time working on what looked like accounting, rows of numbers interspersed with sprawling Arabic script. He looked up at Aidan and said, “Salaam Alaikum.”

  Aidan knew that meant hello, and that the proper response was “Alaikum Salaam.” But just so the bartender didn’t get the wrong idea, he said the only other Arabic phrase he knew, “Mish bakalum arabee,” which meant “I don’t speak Arabic.”

  The bartender just looked at him. Aidan pointed at a bottle of Sidi Rais, which the guidebook had said was a dry white wine, and asked for a glass in his schoolboy French.

  The bartender seemed to understand. Aidan asked, continuing in French, about the man he’d seen the day before.

  “Monsieur Liam,” the bartender said, pronouncing it Lee-ahm. In French, he said, “Yes, he stays across the yard.” He pointed out the window to a small stucco one-story house, hemmed in on both sides by taller buildings. A faded off-white, it had rough walls and windows that were merely slits. Closer examination showed a cistern on the roof, with a hose that ran to the shower.

  Aidan drank his wine while thinking how stupid he was to have come back this way. He had a picture of the sexy, naked man imprinted in his brain, and that would have to be enough for a while. He sipped from his glass and then a voice behind him said, “The white wine in this place tastes like horse piss. You’ve got to drink the red.”

  He turned around and saw Liam there. He was even better-looking up close than he had been across the yard, sexier somehow in clothing than he had been naked. His sheer physicality was awesome—his height, his brawn. Aidan’s dick sprung to attention. “Have you tried it?” he asked. “Horse piss?”

  Liam laughed. “You bet. Camel piss, too. Horse is saltier.” He beckoned to the bartender and said something in Arabic. Aidan caught the words Vieux Magon, which he assumed was the name of the wine.

  Then Liam turned to Aidan. “Don’t get many Americans down this way. I’m always pleased to meet another.” He extended his hand. “Liam McCullough.”

  Aidan was too astonished to even tell the man his name. The fact that his fantasy had come to life, and was talking to him, was so surprising, so erotic, that all he could do was nod along. The bartender brought two balloon glasses of rich, ruby-colored wine, and Liam said, “Let’s take a table.”

  He led Aidan across the room to the far corner and sat down, straddling the metal-backed wooden chair. He wore a vest of supple leather, which hung open, exposing his muscular chest, though Aidan noted that the two nipple rings were gone. Liam’s dun-colored cotton drawstring shorts reached just below his knees. On his feet, he wore a pair of brown leather sandals.

  Up close, he smelled like lavender. Aidan could see that Liam’s hair was longer than he’d thought the day before, and a fuzz of light brown hair covered his chin, like a scruffy Hollywood movie star. Aidan took a sip of his wine. It tasted as rich as it looked, with notes of cherry and lemon. He’d taken a wine appreciatio
n course back in Philadelphia, but he didn’t remember tasting anything like that.

  “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together,” Liam said. He smiled, and Aidan’s heart did a quick flip-flop. “So let me spell out some ground rules. I have to know where you are all the time, and if I say you can’t go somewhere, you can’t go. You don’t know Tunisia like I do.”

  He took a drink of wine. Aidan just stared at him. Who the hell did he think he was? And he’d thought Blake was controlling. Maybe he’d been wrong the day before. Suppose this handsome god of a man was gay, and he’d noticed Aidan staring at him. Or not—Blake had always said Aidan’s mannerisms gave him away as gay. The guy could have come into the bar and pegged Aidan for a quick fuck.

  He had goose bumps up and down his arms at the thought of this man touching him, holding him, entering him, and he couldn’t help smiling back. It was gaydar, he thought. A straight man wouldn’t look you in the eyes, wouldn’t return a glance of interest.

  Aidan’s dick, which had stiffened as soon as he laid eyes on Liam, was still jammed against the fabric of his shorts. He longed for some physical contact to confirm his feelings—perhaps just pressing his leg against the other man’s in passing, the casual touch of Liam’s fingers on Aidan’s shoulder.

  They talked for a few minutes—what Aidan thought of Tunis, the sirocco wind, the taste of the wine. It had been a long time since a man flirted with him, and Aidan felt like one of the Roman ruins the guidebook said had been covered by centuries of sand, finally exposed by the desert wind. His heart beat faster and his dick pulsed in his shorts. The wine was going to his head, and he enjoyed the sense that he had no idea what was going to happen next.

  Then Liam drank the last few ounces of his wine in a single gulp. “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to see your place.”

  He stood up. Aidan couldn’t help it; he thought the guy was incredibly sexy. He’d always been attracted to take-charge men, though Liam was coming on stronger than any guy he’d ever met. But hey, he’d been out of the dating pool for eleven years, so maybe the rules had changed. He tossed down the rest of his wine and stood himself, unsteady on his feet.