One evening, Mauro invites me to his gig at Marypili, a lesbian bar on Joan Tarrida. I sit close to the small improvised stage and watch him play and sing—swinging his locks, his headscarf around his neck; the music a mixture of head-banging and Springsteen and it’s sad and young and wild and yes, full of teen spirit—and every now and then he catches my eye and smiles in a way one smiles at admirers, the way he’s probably seen men on screen smile at the women who fall in love with them. I feel vast and disloyal. As if Gabriel isn’t waiting for me at home, as if I hadn’t been having thoughts of him being The One.
Mauro and I get drunk and land up at his place where we have to be quiet because his flatmates have gone to bed and what lands up happening is that after he falls asleep with a joint in his hand, I stroke his stomach, tracing the treasure trail down to his pubes and his cock, and when his cock is hard, I put it in my mouth and suck until he comes and I swallow and he sighs and in just a few seconds he’s breathing slowly, snoring lightly. And I sit there smiling to myself, because it’s been years (twenty-two, to be exact!) since I’ve seduced a straight boy. I watch him sleep, his body unguarded, his stomach exposed, his thick dark pubic hair, his cock soft and plump and shining with spit and his own ejaculate.
I take the circuitous route back to the hotel to increase my chances of picking someone up, which I do, a waiter who lives with his boyfriend and is out for a late-night stroll with their dog. We jerk each other off in an alleyway in the old part of town, our cum dotting the cobblestones.
Straight boys like to show you things. Young straight boys in particular. And of those, the ones without fathers the most. Look what I’ve made, Daddy. Look what I’ve found. The young man teaches the older man about grunge; he’s eager to introduce him to the soundtrack of his life. There is something very close to sublime about the body of a young man almost twenty years younger than you. It’s a new thing I’m discovering, now that I’m at an age where the world is overflowing with grown men much younger than me.
Mauro has come up to my room so he can play me The Banx on his iPod dock. We’re stoned and naked and it’s three in the morning; I can see he’s regretting having said yes. He lies on the bed staring up at the ceiling and I kneel beside him, my head level with his body. He is silent and I am silent; there is nothing to say. I can tell from his eyes, from the way his mouth is shut, that he is beyond caring. The streetlamps cast a dull light onto everything—his skin, the bed linen, the wallpaper—a kind of doughy yellow.
“It’s not going to work,” he says.
“What’s wrong with the way it is?”
“It’s not what I want,” he says, and turns onto his side to look at me, his locks fanning out across the pillow like a kid’s pencil drawing of the sun’s rays.
“Why did you come up?” I say.
“I like being with you,” he says.
“Then why can’t we keep doing this?” I say.
I gather his hair into a sheaf so that his face and neck are exposed.
“You want more than I can give,” he says.
“You have to fuck someone,” I say. “So why not let it be me?”
“I don’t,” Mauro says, and turns back to face the ceiling. “Now stop, please.”
“Okay,” I say. “Can I come and lie next to you?”
He says nothing, but moves over to make room for me on the bed. I tell him about the painter I am writing about, a man who killed himself in his late forties, around the time of his son’s seventh birthday. I tell him he used to come to Sitges with his wife and other writers and painters, that he’d tried to meet Picasso, but Picasso had taken the train back to Barcelona before Gertler had the chance to see him. Eventually we fall asleep, Mauro facing one way, me the other, the edges of our buttocks touching.
In the morning—just three hours sleep!—the sun comes up over the sea and shines onto the bed. The only sound is waves, a metronomic lapping, gently falling and falling and falling. Mauro goes downstairs for breakfast duty and I sit on the edge of the bed and watch the water and the palm trees beyond the balcony’s railings. A man is cycling along the promenade to work. People are walking their dogs along the shore. The sea is calm and silver; the sun so bright the water dazzles. In the distance there’s a dark smudge: a boat? a clump of seaweed? seagulls? the light playing tricks on the water? The landscape is celadon and aquamarine. In the terra-cotta pots on the edge of the balcony, the gerberas are bright yellow. Soon I’ll be back home again; Gabriel will be there to meet me. Mauro will do breakfast and play grunge for the lesbians. From the room next door I can hear what sounds like a couple making early-morning love.
TRANSLATIONS
Roscoe Hudson
I hadn’t been in Mannheim forty-eight hours and I was already being screamed at. The passengers on the Strassenbahn looked up from their books, newspapers and grocery lists and stared at me while I fumbled through my pockets and backpack for my Fahrkarte, the tiny ticket stub that proved I wasn’t a fare jumper. The Fahrkartenkontrolluer, a hunky man dressed in a navy-blue train conductor’s uniform adorned with shiny gold buttons and a matching blue cap, glowered at me, his gunmetal eyes vacant and intractable like those of a hawk. He stood in front of me rigid and silent with his lips tightly pursed in a thin line as he breathed through his nose. His pale white cheeks flared.
“Keine Fahrten fus freies!” he demanded.
“I just had it. It’s here somewhere.”
“Die Strassenbahn ist nur fur zahlende Passagiere.”
The Fahrtenkontrolluer sighed and turned his head from side to side until he heard his neck crack. His slightly bent Roman nose and chiseled square jaw gave him a classic Teutonic profile. He scanned the faces of the other passengers while I turned my pockets inside out.
My passport and directions to Hans Krieger’s apartment were the only items in the pocket of my blazer. Aside from a couple of euros and the wrapper from a pastry I ate for breakfast, the pockets of my jeans were empty. I wiped sweat from my forehead and continued searching. I had been warned by friends and a few colleagues at the university where I taught that Germans prized efficiency, strictly adhered to rules and had little tolerance for those who made excuses for violating them. Ticketless passengers on public transportation suffered severe penalties.
The transit system in Germany was like nothing we had in Chicago. German rails were immaculate and ran on time. Back home a person couldn’t access the El without paying first. Here one could casually board the tram and ride for free without anyone knowing. The driver didn’t ask for a fare or check tickets. That was the job of a special group of law enforcement who hopped on and off the Strassenbahn and asked for tickets with the same diligence as militiamen patrolling the border between the United States and Mexico demanding verifiable proof of citizenship. I had purchased my ticket just after I left the bakery, and spotting the tram approaching a couple of blocks away, sprinted to the stop. The officer boarded two stops after I got on. Burly and broad, his uniform clung to him like second skin and left little to the imagination. His biceps, deltoids and quadriceps, massive and round, seemed ready to burst out of his clothes with each movement he made. His face was frozen in a scowl that enhanced his authoritative, ultramasculine allure. I felt I was being berated by a Tom of Finland drawing and imagined him shouting at me while dressed only in lace-up Jobmaster boots and a metal cock ring. My hard-on bulged in my jeans the entire time he was yelling at me; I placed my backpack in my lap so neither he nor the other passengers could see. I rifled through my bag while the fantasy played out in my mind.
“Ich verliere die Geduld. Zeigen Si emir Ihre Karte.”
“I can’t understand you. I bought a ticket. Just give me a minute to find it.”
“Alle Passagiere mussen eine Karte kaufen oder eine Geld-strafe zahlen!”
I started emptying the contents of my backpack onto the seat next to me: my diary, an English-German dictionary, a gay German travel guide and two novels by Dixon Weatherby, the reclusive ex
patriate black gay author I had come to Germany in hopes of interviewing for my new book. The bag also contained lots of protein bar wrappers and various receipts, but no tram ticket.
“Stellen Sie Ihre Karte her oder gehen Sie herzlich die Stras-senbaun aus.”
“Look man, I’m not a fare jumper. I just got here. Let me check my backpack again.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. Silence settled over the idling tram. The longer the search for my ticket took the smaller I felt. My horny fantasy faded and my penis became flaccid. It was eight o’clock on a drowsy gray October morning, and the irate German officer barking at me had reached his limit. His eyes widened and a large vein appeared in his throat like a lightning bolt shocking the sky.
“In Deutschland you will speak Deutsch!” he roared.
Sweat trickled down my back. “It’s in here. I’ll find it.”
“Produce your ticket now, sir!”
“I will if you give me a chance.”
“Your passport, sir.”
I gave him my passport and after he checked it he whipped out a pad holstered on his belt, scribbled on it, tore off a page and stuffed it into my palm. “You owe the city of Mannheim five hundred Euros. You will please pay by month’s end.”
He bounded off the tram and walked along the crowded sidewalk, taking long confident strides with his back straight and his chin high. Drenched in sweat and trembling, I kept my eyes on his tree trunk thighs and beefy bodybuilder’s ass until the Strassenbahn turned a corner and he was out of sight.
One of my colleagues in the English department was born and raised in Berlin. When I told him I was going to spend a few weeks in Mannheim trying to persuade Dixon Weatherby to share his life story with me, rather than express doubts that I would ever be able to connect with the stubbornly reclusive writer, he laughed and said, “Mannheim? Don’t blink, you’ll miss it.” He was right. The city has a population of over three-hundred thousand, and though many of its imposing granite and limestone Baroque buildings predate the seventeenth century, even the gay travel guide I toted in my backpack had little to recommend in the city. The only two places for gays to hang out were a bar called Connexion and a bathhouse.
After my unsuccessful first attempt to arrange a meeting with Dixon Weatherby, I went back to my cramped studio apartment near the Luisenpark, wrote in my diary and listened to Rosetta Stone, but I couldn’t concentrate. Attempting to study German only made me think of the officer on the tram and how the situation both demeaned and aroused me. Though the officer’s caustic behavior enraged me, I couldn’t deny how turned on I was by him. If ever a body was made for fucking, it was his. I fantasized about him stomping into the studio and pinning me down on the bed, his massive body slamming against me while his long, fat dick drilled my asshole. I took the travel-sized bottle of lube from beside my bed, slicked up my palm and let my hand do what the officer couldn’t. I tugged and squeezed all nine hard inches of my cock, mixing my precome with the lube so my dick would be slicker. The more I fantasized about the officer cursing me out in German while he raped my ass from behind, the more furiously I stroked my hard-on, tightening my hand, twisting and flicking my dick from root to tip. My butt bounced on the sweat-soaked sheets. I imagined the officer rolling me onto my back and plunging every stiff inch of his love muscle into my quivering ass while I locked my thighs around him tightly and held on to his oversized shoulders. My hips bounced off the mattress, my balls jumped toward my pelvis, and a fountain of come shot into the air, glazing my stomach. Released, I fell into a nap, waking just as twilight was darkening to night. I dined on schnitzel at a small restaurant around the corner, then walked to Connexion.
What the travel guide described as a bar was actually an upscale coffee shop that also served beer and other alcoholic beverages. Furnished as it was with polished mahogany tables and chairs and high stools at the bar, I was more likely to meet a grad student studying Hegel than the brick-house muscle daddies I had hoped to find there. Around fifteen men, most of them beanpoles in skinny jeans and polo shirts, sat around smoking and drinking lager. When I, the only black man in the place, walked in, they abandoned their conversations and watched me as I picked up a bar magazine from a rack by the door and took a seat the bar. A pulsating remix of Lady Gaga songs played through the speakers and the murmur of casual conversation gradually increased.
The bartender, a scrawny sweet-faced guy with twinkling eyes and a gauge in each ear, gave me a quick nod. I ordered a lager, a Konig; he set a foamy pilsner glass in front of me. I took one sip and scrunched up my face.
The bartender chuckled. “You don’t like this beer?”
I was grateful he spoke English. “It’s not my favorite.” I wiped my mouth with the side of my hand.
A husky voice from behind said, “You should try a radler. It’s sweeter.”
I turned and came face-to-face with the Fahrkartenkontrolluer from that morning. He was wearing a red muscle T-shirt, snug jeans that showed off his meaty thighs and butt, white and red Pumas and a leather wristband. His shiny blond hair was short and wavy. Since our interaction earlier that day, he had grown a five o’clock shadow. Even in casual clothes he appeared menacing, as likely to crack my windpipe as give me a firm handshake.
“A radler?” I asked with a sneer, still nursing my anger from the incident on the tram. “Is that another lager?”
“Lager with Sprite.” He looked past me to the bartender and said, “Bilden Sie es zwei,” before sitting on the stool beside me and propping his elbows on the bar, flexing football-sized biceps.
The bartender mixed the radlers and set them in front of us on green felt pads.
As I reached for my glass, the officer gently put his hand on my wrist. “We must have a toast first.” He lifted his glass. “Willkommen nach Deutschland.”
“Danke,” I said, grudgingly and took a sip. He was right, the radler was sweet.
“Good?” the bartender asked.
I nodded and the bartender waited on a customer at the other end of the bar.
I thought about ignoring the officer and moving, but I didn’t want him to know how irritated I was. Since he had already paid for my drink abandoning him would have been rude, and in spite of our earlier confrontation I was still fiercely attracted to him. He was the hottest man in the bar by far; my dick started to get hard imagining what he packed in those tight jeans.
“So what do you do when you aren’t harassing foreigners on the tram?”
He chuckled. I was glad to see he had a sense of humor. “I don’t think I was harassing you. I had a job to do; you violated the rules.”
I tried to be nice but I could feel anger bubbling within me. “I wasn’t lying. I bought a ticket.”
“And where was that phantom ticket, my friend? Hmm? I never saw it.”
He was a smug bastard. But the image of him naked in boots and a cock ring formed in my mind again.
“I am Rolf,” he said.
“Vaughn.”
His hand was thick and strong, not like my slim, artistic hand, which he squeezed tightly, establishing himself as the alpha male. Rolf was being congenial now: the muscles in his face softened and his eyes had lost their steely gaze. He behaved like two completely different men—a burly asshole in the morning and a flirtatious muscle stud at night.
He gulped his radler then asked, “What has brought you to Mannheim, Vaughn? Military work?”
“I’m a professor in the U.S., and I came here to locate an expatriate writer. I was on my way to see his former editor when you gave me that undeserved ticket.”
“What does this man write?” he asked before he took another drink.
“Fiction. He published three novels back in the 1980s.”
Rolf chuckled and wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “I’m sorry. I don’t see much point in making up stories.”
His laugh faded quickly after he looked at my face.
“I apologize if I have offended you.”
/> “We just can’t seem to get off to a good start, can we?” I sipped my radler and thought about going back to my apartment.
Rolf scratched his scruffy chin. “He must be a very important writer if you are leaving your work at university.”
“Dixon Weatherby. He’s a black gay writer. Not as famous as James Baldwin but just as influential.”
“I am sure you will find him. There are many gay black men in Deutschland, though none quite as handsome as you.” He winked at me and took another drink.
The bar had become crowded and noisy. Rolf patted me on the back and said, “Finish your drink. We will take a walk.” The timbre of his voice lowered under the weight of furtive plans I could only guess at. He squeezed my thigh, and the tiny lines around his eyes arched.
A few minutes later Rolf and I were strolling down the dark streets of Mannheim. I zipped up my jacket and walked with my hands deep in my pockets. Rolf’s bullet-sized nipples grew erect beneath his tight shirt. We made our way along the dark avenues past closed flower shops, cafés, produce stands and Apothekes. The facades of the Gothic buildings looked like ogres grimacing in their sleep. We passed the apartment building where I stayed and Rolf pointed out places of interest that I should see, but I hardly heard him. My attention was focused on his bodybuilder’s physique. He was a walking stack of hefty, robust muscle, and as we walked down the sidewalk an occasional passerby gave him an incredulous wide-eyed stare—and his crotch was just as humpy as the rest of him. I imagined a flaccid cock the size of a bratwurst coiled inside of those jeans, straining against the rough, unyielding denim, eager for my plump moist lips and wide mouth.
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