Hopeful Expectations
by Habu
27 Mar 2023 2024 readers Score 8.9 (37 votes) PDF Mobi ePub Txt
I didn’t mind Rao guiding me. He was taller, slimmer, and younger than I was—younger, I was sure by eight or nine years from my thirty-two, but he was a very attractive berry brown and he had a pleasant smile. I was surprised about the taller part. I had been under the impression that all Indians were much shorter than I was.
I would be lying if I claimed he didn’t arouse me sexually and that I didn’t have dreams of getting it on with him. That surprised me too. I normally shrank away from all things South Asian. But it was finding he was arousing that probably was why I picked him out of the mob of people at the airport who wanted to be my best friend and guide. He also seemed not able to be rattled by the situation—certainly not like I had allowed myself to become. I got the impression of not letting yourself become rattled and being patient—in fact, lowering your hopes and expectations—were a survival tactic in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, and that the locals had mastered it.
At times during the process, I found his calmness and control irritating, though, so I went hot and cold on whether I wanted to be in bed with him. My irritation came from a general prejudice I had about South Asians, which heightened my distaste for this assignment.
What DeWitts, a high-end European fashion house, wanted was cheap manufacturing of haute couture clothes to be sold with DeWitts London and Paris fashion house labels at stratospheric prices. We didn’t necessarily want the world to know they were being cheaply made, though, so my mission was hush-hush. The false impression to be made was that they’d been made by highly skilled and paid fashion professionals in London or Paris from priceless goods when they weren’t. We didn’t sell at large volume, so we had to squeeze the most profit possible out of each unit.
Having studied fashion design in Whitechapel, London’s vague answer for a garment district, in the practical, hands-on mode, making my way by modeling the clothes and lying on my back for older men while I was young enough to turn heads, I had managed to gain a foothold in the management of DeWitts. The upper managers of DeWitts, all former designers, were also all older men who liked to lay young man. Part of my student-period job of modeling their clothes was to open my legs to any or all of them as well. I would take umbrage at the assertion that I have made my way into a senior position on my back and taking cock, but I couldn’t say it didn’t help.
I was aiming for a move from the London house to the Paris one, where former male models of thirty-two seemed more in demand of wealthy older men not necessarily part of the fashion world than in the UK, where youth, rather than experience, held command. I made more personal profit out of the rewards of lying on my back and opening my legs for influential men than I did from my fashion house paycheck.
DeWitts wanted to open a supply factory in a cheap labor country, while leaving the impression that all of its fashions were made in London or Paris, and I had become trusted enough to open such a factory in the “nowhere” region of India. If I were successful in that and keeping it a secret, Paris was being dangled before me.
Now, after more than a week in Chennai, when I thought I would be in and out of south India in that time in an initial set-up visit, I hadn’t gotten even as far as in front of the desk of the state trade official. And I had agreed to engage Rao’s translation services only through today. I had found that he, in fact, was not from the translation service DeWitts had signed up for me and I had arranged to pick up that service’s agent the following Monday, this being Friday. I was disengaging Rao after this, once again unsuccessful, attempt to see the trade official. Yes, I did regret disengaging before dreams of being bedded by him had come into fruition. I hadn’t even had time and opportunity to determine that he was a top to my bottom. I did, though, think he was gay—and at least bi—and that he had some interest in me, if only to keep me paying him for what hadn’t yet been successful services.
“Perhaps there’s a better way,” Rao said to me from across the small table in the dimly lit bar. He gave me an all-white-toothed smile. He was a lovely young man. If he were significantly older, of greater stature, an identified dominator, demonstrably wealthy, and not a Tamil, I would have made a stronger bid for his sexual favors. But I had my prejudices, which included the South Asian race, which I considered cloying and effeminate, so agreeable and obsequious on the surface while constantly playing the angles for personal gain under the table. That I was in the world of these people now hadn’t helped my disposition in being sent to India . . .
“What do you mean there might be a better way?” I asked.
“Perhaps you would be better not to try to approach the trade official directly. It’s not really the Tamil way.”
“You mean I should cultivate someone who can get me in to see the trade official—that there’s a network approach here?” It was the Asian way, I knew, but I’d thought it was more the way of East and Southeast Asia than of India. Rao was suggesting that it was the best approach in southern India as well.
“Yes, and I think you need something to calm you more. If your business wants to become established in Tamil Nadu, a great deal of patience and calm is needed—especially if you don’t want too many people to know about it.”
“Something to calm me?” My, he was a clever lad. I hadn’t said anything about it needing to be in secret. I did say it should be done circumspectly until everything was signed. I had assumed Rao would be gone for the effort then.
“Yes, I probably shouldn’t say it, but I’ve found that release—release of tension, often through massage or sexual release, is calming.”
“I’m not sure even where to start on such an approach,” I said. If this was the beginning of a proposition, I wouldn’t close it out. I wouldn’t hop on it, either. I hadn’t decided the balance of Rao being sexy but Rao being Indian yet—or that he was a dominant. If he, like me, was a submissive, all setup work for a fuck would have been a waste.
“And this would help me get in to see the trade official?” I asked.
“It would be the roundabout way, yes. Try it out and see what can be done. Perhaps I can help, Mr. Collins,” Rao said. I looked down to see that he had dropped two business cards in front of me. One was for Krishna’s, an antique brass exporter. The other was for a barber and massage business, Golden Dreams, with the suggestive notation of “Gentlemen’s Relief” on the card. Both were for locations in the Kodambakkam district of the city, where my hotel was located, chosen because I’d heard it was the movie colony part of the city and as close to a red-light district as Chennai could provide. I had had hopes of doing some cruising while I was here—I’d heard the gay bars had a lot of Thai employees, and I didn’t have the prejudice against Southeast Asians that I had against Indians. Thus far that cruising hadn’t happened.
When I looked up to ask Rao for a further explanation of the two business cards, I found that he was gone. And thus, or so I thought, my association with the somewhat mysterious and prospectively arousing, if he weren’t younger, more inscrutable, and more Indian than I, Rao had ended.
* * * *
The visit to the Golden Dreams barber shop and massage parlor, on Station View Road in the “Kollywood” movie studios section of Chennai’s old quarter of Kodambakkam, had done the trick—at least in temporarily relieving the frustration tension of the last couple of weeks. The establishment was quite discreet; you couldn’t even see the Kodambakkam Railway Station, which dominated that district, from there. It was just a red door in a blank wall. Immediately inside the door was the barber shop, where my hair was shampooed and groomed and my chin shaved and they pampered me so long that I began to think that was all that was on offer in shop. But there was more.
Beyond the barber shop were the massage rooms that justified the “golden dreams” name. Nothing like an expertly edged hand, dildo, and blow job by a master of indeterminate age but great agility and skill to top off a deep-tissue sports massage, although it would have been even better if he’d been a handsome, muscular man and had climbed on top of me on the table and ridden me rather than working my ass with a flexible golden dildo while he was handing me off and finishing me with a blow job.
I think the masseur, fleshy, with a little pot belly, but clearly with powerful hands, who kept on a loincloth-like waist wrap, called a dhoti, I think, would have mounted and fucked me for a finish if I’d paid for that, but the fee was paid up front, with the services taken from a menu. The menu, the English version of which was deficient in English, had confused me, so, in the end, I’d just pointed to a service that seemed to have a price I thought a haircut, shave, and massage was worth. Although I hoped more than a hand job would come with it, what came with it was more than reasonable at the price.
The massage itself was prolonged and thorough, perhaps the best sports massage I’d gotten anywhere up to that point, but then it went beyond hopes and expectations, as the masseur moved me onto my back; wadded up a thick towel, which he put under the small of my back, tilting my pelvis up. He manipulated my legs, bending and spreading them, and placing my feet flat on the table. This was where, as mellow and needy as I was, if he’d whipped off the dhoti, climbed up on the table between my spread knees, and mounted and fucked me in a missionary position even as pudgy and uninteresting as he looked and even if his cock was small, I would have been a happy man.
He didn’t, but he still made me a happy man. He produced a thick rubber dildo, painted gold, and he stood beside me at the table, and, checking periodically to ensure that I approved, which I did, worked the dildo into my ass with his left hand and grasped my erection—I, of course, was quite hard at this point—with his right hand and stroked me off. He didn’t seem to mind that I worked my left hand into the folds of his dhoti, found him hard, and stroked him while he stroked me. He sensed when I was about to come and edged me off. He subsequently leaned over and took my cock in his mouth, edging me with that as well, while he worked my ass channel deep with the gold dildo. He did come for me, timing his ejaculation with mine, and I made a note to look more carefully at the menu the next time I visited and to ensure I got fuller service.
One thing was sure—if I had to stay in Chennai much longer in an effort to track the trade official down and establish the needed permissions to start up business here, I would be visiting the Golden Dreams weekly. I’d be the best hair-groomed man in the city.
When I left the front door of the Golden Dreams establishment and looked down the street away from where the tracks led into the Kodambakkam Railway Station, contemplating walking to the gay-friendly hotel I had found west on Station View Road, I was swamped by a swarm of boys and young men wanting to sell me something or just outright receive money from me to escape their harassment. Before learning of the Golden Dreams, I had almost sunk to the level of finding out whether any of the young men would sell me their bodies, but I would have had to scrub them hard before I felt I could risk that. I have little doubt that I could buy a young man or two here in Chennai, despite the claims that homosexuality was repressed, but precisely because the lifestyle seemed so underground here, most of the young men and boys offering themselves on the street were too emaciated and downtrodden for me to enjoy using. I was much more interest in being covered than covering.
There were exceptions, though, to all of the young men looking too slight and feminine to dominate me, and, as I was surrounded by boys and young men who wanted to sell me pirated Chinese pop song CDs or pornographic decks of cards or postcards or boxes of condoms or blow jobs or shoe shines, my eyes went to one slender, but substantial, berry-brown young man who wasn’t as cloyingly persistent as the others, but, for that reason was of more interest to me. He had an alluring look about him and was cleaner and more arousing than the others. I was just smiling and shaking my head at one boy insistent on polishing my shoes even though I clearly was wearing sneakers, when the more alluring, decidedly handsome and cleanly dressed young man caught my eye.
“You need guide in the city, sir?” he asked, flashing sparkling dark eyes at me and shrugging a lock of black hair off his handsome face. “I’m a very good guide,” he said. “A number one.” Looking up at the door of the Golden Dreams, discreetly set into an otherwise blank wall, I sensed that he knew exactly what could be had in the establishment I was exiting. “You want more than a guide? You want blow job and a fuck?” he asked. “Top or bottom. Whatever you want.” He was gesturing toward an alley running back from the side of the massage parlor building.
“How old are you?” I asked, the other boys and young men surrounding me fading a bit into the background as I concentrated on this one young man. Sensing they’d lost, the others gave ground, although they remained in the background in case my attention shifted.
“Nineteen,” he answered. “You like nineteen? Or you want someone older or younger? I have friends. I can get you what you want. You want girl? Or you want, maybe, a dog?”
My grimace told him I wanted neither of those. I had just come from a happy ending hand and blow job. That was nice but it keyed me up for wanting more. I was sorely tempted to enter negotiations with this grinning young man. But, as clean and as arousing as he looked, he was from the street. There was no telling how high the risk would be. He held up a few packets of condoms. He also was Indian. I was still struggling with my prejudice on that.
“All sizes, master. You are a big man, I’m sure. I have all sizes. I give you a blow job and you can fuck me.”
I involuntarily hesitated at that, long enough apparently for him to get why I would.
“Or I can fuck you. I would need a big one—a really big rubber. You like big-cocked men? I have very good rubbers. But cheap, for you. I go with you, yes, and give you good time? I fuck you good. You want me and another to fuck you, I have friend—a very, very big friend. And if you want guide for the city . . .”
His speech trailed off as he saw me smile but shake my head in regretted demur. He had named a ridiculously low price, though, and as it was common to pay off these street urchins just to keep them from following you around and pulling on your sleeves, I pulled out almost that much money and handed it to him. He misunderstand that we had struck a deal and came close to me, touching my basket with his fingers.
“No,” I said, smiling so he wouldn’t think I was being dismissive. “This is just because you have made me smile. I really can’t accept your offer, but I like you, so, please accept this.”
His pride didn’t go so far as not to take my money, and he did so, looked a bit confused, and stepped back.
“It’s just because I was fully satisfied back in the shop,” I said. “You are quite a nice young man. It isn’t because of you.”
That seemed to mollify him and he gave me a little smile and a salute. “Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow,” he said.
“Maybe,” I answered, not wholly just to keep him at bay. Maybe tomorrow it would be what I wanted.
To keep the others at bay, I spread coins around to them too. I intended on walking to my nearby hotel, where I had taken a suite of rooms rather than renting a flat near the airport and the firm’s office under the mistaken impression that my business in Chennai would be short, rather than taking a pedicab, As I distributed the coins, my gaze went to the other side of the street, and I saw my temporary translator—Rao—the young man who had given me the business card for Golden Dreams, standing there, watching me.
I pretended I didn’t see him.
I turned and smiled at the young man who had caught my attention as I walked off and he smiled wistfully back at me. All of the way back to my hotel, I thought about him and his sturdy but willowy, berry-brown body and of the sparkling dark eyes and the black curl of hair falling on his face. I sighed at what might have been—what surely would have been if he hadn’t been from the street and there was no risk of picking up such a young man.
En route, I looked around to see that the young man was following me—and some distance behind him, so was Rao. Fuck the risk, I thought, When I got to the entrance of my hotel, I held the door open for the young man. “You are a very nice young man,” I said, brushing my hand across his basket this time.
Fuck it, I thought.
“I am Khurana,” he said, giving me a shy look, as he walked by me and into the hotel lobby. There would be no trouble in taking him up to my room. I had purposely picked this hotel for its tolerance policies. I’d had fantasies about what I’d do during this trip—not with any real expectation of doing them, of course. But I had heard there were male Thai prostitutes in this town, and they very much were my style. Before following Khurana to the elevators, I looked down the street to see if Rao was still following us, but I didn’t see him.
In my hotel suite—I had both a sitting room and a bedroom, with a bath—I insisted that Khurana take a shower before we fucked. He, instead, said he preferred a bath in the tub. While he bathed, I stripped down and put on a hotel robe. He called me into the bathroom.
“I need a rubber. Can you please, mister, bring me one? I fuck you good then.”
“So, it’s you who will fuck me.” I needed to be sure he understood that.
“Yes, I think that is true. That is how you look to me; this is the message I get from you. Am I wrong?”
“No, you aren’t wrong.” I could have said that I went both ways, but I was in the mood to be fucked. The small Thai prostitutes I liked to fuck, but otherwise I liked the man to be bigger than I was and controlling.
I brought several condoms, not knowing what size he’d need. He said he was big, but I assumed that was just bravado. Although he had a perfectly proportioned and substantial body, it was somewhat small—smaller than that of most men I liked going under. But then this was India, and I had imaged all of the men to be small and emaciated. When I came close to him and put the condom packets on the nearby toilet seat, within his reach, he moved a hand into the folds of the robe I was wearing, grasped my cock, and stroked it. I already was in erection.
“Ah, so you are aroused by me,” he said.
“Yes,” I whispered back.
My made no move to disengage. Instead, I leaned over and kissed him on the lips. While we were kissing, he reached up with the other hand, unknotted the sash of the robe, let the sash fall to the bathroom tiles, and flared the robe open.
“And just so you know, I like the men dominating me to be controlling.”
He took the hint. “Take it off,” he commanded, and I did and stood there, naked. Even at my age, I knew my body was more than presentable and I could see the approval in his eyes.
“You go with men often?” asked.
“Yes. Often,” I answered. I didn’t know how experienced he was, but I wanted him to know I was well versed in this—and that there would be no problem with penetration.
When I had shucked the robe, he pulled me into the tub, turned me to where I was on my knees in the tub with my chest pressing into the rim and my head and arms draped over the foot of the tub. I was aware of what he was doing as he stood in the tub, retrieved a condom packet, spilt it open, and rolled it on his cock. I watched him do this, gasping, my eyes bugging out. The slightness of his body accentuated the extraordinary thickness and length of his shaft, the cock a deeper brown than the rest of his body, with a plump purple cap. He was in full erection. Because of how thick he was, he needed the largest of condoms available and I would need fortitude, patience, and a high threshold for pain to accommodate him. But I reveled in the ordeal that faced me. Psychologically, size did matter with me.
Regardless of the challenge he posed, I was glad there would be no confusion on who was going to fuck who. He mounted me from above and behind, picking the sash from my robe up from the floor and slipping it over my head to use as reins to pull my head back into his chest as he fucked me. Controlling me like I was a horse he was guiding, he penetrated and fucked me. I cried out in pain-pleasure at the ordeal of stretching to take him inside and celebrated the feat of finally being able to do so, gasping and huffing.
“Too much, too fast?” he asked.
“No. It’s huge but I love it. Screw me!”
Mounted, he began to pump me—making me fully his. I panted and gasped, my chest bowed back, my tail lifted to give him deep access, feeling every deep thrust of the shaft.
“Take it. Take it good,” he growled as he pumped.
I was taking it very good. I reached under my belly with one hand, leaving the other arm dangling outside of the tub, and stroked myself off. He was vigorous and experienced. It was a satisfying fuck and I held steady for it, murmuring my approval once that I had been able to sheath the monstrous member.
When he was finished, he got out of the tub, grabbed a towel, and dried himself off. “It’s true,” he said. “You are a good lay. You do like to take the cock. You opened for me good.”
Taking that as a compliment, I allowed myself a deep moan.
“We do it again when you want to. I get hard again fast. I’m young and virile, and I have no trouble getting hard for you. I ride you hard next time. We make wild sex. I think you are a player.”
Another compliment, although I thought he had ridden me hard enough the last time. “Maybe another day,” I answered. I wasn’t as young and quick recharge as he was.
He laughed. “Maybe another day.” He padded into the bedroom like he owned the place. He certainly owned me now. I followed, but not quickly—not quickly enough to get there before he’d dressed and left.
He had used the largest-sized condom, and my insides felt cavernous when he was done with me. If he hadn’t been so big and taxing, I think I’d been up for the repeat he had offered. Such a monstrous cock on such a small, willowy body. I had experienced the stretch and possession I craved. It had just been the one time, though, quickly moving to the ejaculation once the possession had been attained. Enough for today, but I wanted more—more passion, a longer time with him inside me. More Khurana—a night of riding the master cock. Hopes and expectations were high for finding and lying under him again.
I stumbled to the bed and lay, naked, on the silken sheets, handing my cock. I stroked myself and dreamed. What I dreamed of was of the small young man with the monstrous cock, lying on his bed, on his back, in gigantic erection. I was hovering over him, slowly descending on the huge phallus, my face close to his. watching the expression in his face as he watched the pained-pleasured expression on mine, as, stretched to his need, I began to raise and lower myself on the throbbing shaft.
And now I didn’t really give a shit that he’d be an Indian.
* * * *
The knock at the door in the other room, the sitting room, was so soft that I almost didn’t hear it, and, when I did, it perhaps wasn’t the first time it had come. It was just the first time it had brought me out of my reverie, somewhat irritatingly before I had ejaculated, before my wet dream was complete.
Rising, I picked up a hotel robe from a nearby chair, shrugged it around me, and knotted the sash as I came, otherwise naked, to the sitting room door.
It was Rao, the temporary translator I had become sorry I’d let go. He had followed me to the hotel after all. I wondered if he had encountered Khurana, leaving my room, and discussed with him what Khurana had done while here—with and to me—and perhaps whether Rao could do it too. Apparently so.
“I could not stay away,” he said, in a soft voice. “I could not stop thinking of what you wanted—what you needed. Will you let me in?”
I understood that he didn’t mean just would I let him enter my room and I was trembling, feeling the arousal flowing in—the need for what Khurana had set loose inside me to continue, to be consummated. I took three steps back into the room, which he took as assent for entry—in more ways than just access to the room—and he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. I just stood there, as he came up to me and unknotted the sash to the robe, which fell to the floor.
“Khurana tells me that you are very experienced and what it. He also tells me you wish to be commanded.”
I looked down at the sash with the realization of the role it had just played in a sex scene and had the fleeting hope that Rao would find a use for it to. He brushed the robe open, finding my nipples puffed up from arousal and tender to his touch, forcing a low moan out of me as he took one in his teeth, and me still in erection from my reverie. He dropped to his knees, taking my cock in his hands, and then in his mouth—giving me suck. Running my hands into the curly black hair of his head and setting my legs to hold steady, I groaned for him. His hands cupped my buttocks, holding me in his thrall as he made love to my cock. Then, as I had hoped, he pulled the sash out of my robe and pulled it around my thighs, positioning it just under my buttocks, and, grasping both ends, using it to hold me close into his mouth on my cock. I held his head in my hands and rocked gently against his consuming mastery.
After I’d come in his throat and he’d risen and we’d kissed, my essence shared between us, he whispered, “What do you know of the Kama Sutra positions between men?”
I answered, “Nothing.”
“It is all about melting into each other, becoming one—you enveloping me; me inside you fully. Me merging into you; you into me. Do you want to—?”
“Yes.”
He guided me to the bed and gently laid me down on my back at the foot of the mattress, on the silken sheets and undid the sash around my thighs.
“Spread your legs for me, place your feet on the bed, and lift your buttocks. Show me your hole and how Khurana left it—how ready you are to receive. Yes, good. He opened you well.”
I was panting, never before having entered sex this matter-of-factly and exotically. He came to the bed and rimmed my hole with his fingers. I gasped as he entered me with them, and we spent a few moments of my rocking the fingers as they moved up inside me, searching, finding, and stroking my prostate.
He handed my ankles, slowly, sensuously raising and spreading my legs further. He knelt on the carpet between my thighs. He brought my legs back together, holding them together with one hand. His tongue went to my tightened, pulsing hole as, groaning my need and my want, I arched my back, grasped his head between my hands, and moaned at the pleasure of his opening me up even more. He rose up, hovered over me, capturing my eyes with his so we both could revel in the expressions of passion and pleasure of our mutual taking and giving, raised and spread my legs wide, mounted me, penetrated, and slowly fucked me to heaven.
Through the pleasure my thoughts were that this wasn’t uniquely the Kama Sutra. I’d done this before, not usually as sensually as this, but this was the missionary position. But then, I couldn’t remember ever being this stretched and filled—and one with my partner—in this position like this before—one hung man after another. I didn’t remember ever before being able to feel the rippling effect of my channel muscles over the hard shaft inside me—of making love to the shaft as it was mastering me.
When he freed my ankles so that his hands could glide all over my body, exploring my mounds and creases, making me completely his, I rested my ankles on his shoulders and rocked with him in the fuck, all of my attention to the sensation of the mastering cock, gliding in and out, in and out, ever opening me more and more and my channel muscles undulating over the killing weapon. Trembling, I tensed and jerked and released, pressing my fingers into his shoulder blades with each release. Above me, laughing low in his gut, Rao squeezed and pulled my buttocks cheeks open, kneading them rhythmically, as he did the same—tensed, jerked, and release; tensed, jerked, and released.
As the afternoon wore on and we fucked and rested, fucked and rested, though, I understood how exotic the positions were that he placed me in. In all things, I gave control over to Rao and he manipulated and used me, working me and filling me raw, at his will. He taught me a position he termed the booster seat, with me crouched down on my bent knees, feet flat on the mattress at the foot of the bed, with him covering me from behind, one of his hands on my belly and the other stroking me off, my fists locked behind his neck, as he fucked me from behind.
We alternated positions, with him doing the thrusting and then me doing it. The second position he called the fusion, with us both sitting on the bed, facing each other and leaning back, our fists pressed to the mattress. My thighs straddled his, and I was skewered on his cock, doing the rising and lowering on the shaft.
To my quizzical look, he said, “Yes, these are positions of the Kama Sutra.”
After a respite, we engaged in the most taxing and exotic position of all, the bumper cars, with me prone on my belly on the bed, and he reversed on top of me, grasping my ankles, and fucking me in reverse. We ended, under Rao’s direction, in an Asian cowboy, when I had become more adventuresome, with him on his back on the bed, legs spread and bent, grasping my ankles and me on top, facing and crouched over him, cupping his head in my hands, our eyes locked on each other’s, as I rose and fell on his cock.
In each position, he was able to use the sash of my robe in some inventive way to symbolically control me and keep me close into his body.
Panting and exhausted on the bed in the waning light of the late afternoon, contemplating what came next, he whispered, “There is so much more we can do, if you remain in India and choose to see me again.”
I didn’t answer, but India indeed was growing on me now, and I was strongly reconsidering having let Rao go as a translator. There were so many other uses I could put him to—so much of the positions of the Kama Sutra I could learn.
We slept as the room grew dark, our arms entwined, his flaccid cock still inside me. When I woke, it was still dark, and Rao was gone.
I was exhilarated, for the first time happy to be in southern India. I pulled jeans and a T-shirt on, put my feet in sandals and left the hotel as the sky began to lighten up for a new day. I walked into the city, toward the shoreline of the Bay of Bengal, through streets that became more and more primitive, the surface dirt, sacred cows roaming at will—everything in peace and tranquillity with everything else—to the shoreline, where I watched the sun rise over the Indian Ocean.
I realized now that Chennai was both beautiful and primeval. It was the first time I appreciated that. And it was one with the basic rhythms of life. As I walked back to the hotel, the city was coming alive. The shops were being opened and the wares being put out by the locals who probably had done this, wearing these same clothes, back through the centuries.
I felt alive and completed. Rao had completed me. He’d left me no way to get in touch with him, but I had no concern there. When he fucked me, I became his. I knew that. I’m sure he knew that too. I had no fear of not seeing him again. He’d probably be back at the hotel, waiting for me, I thought.
But, when I returned to the hotel, Rao wasn’t there. And it was time for me to prepare myself for meeting the man I hoped would be the middle man for my connection with the Tamil Nadu State trade official. I was here to do the bidding of DeWitts. My new infatuation with both Rao and Khurana hung in the balance of completing my mission for DeWitts.
* * * *
The offices of the antique brass decor exporter Krishna were tucked away in a hodge-podge of rambling lanes close to Tambaram Airport—not far from the office I’d opened for DeWitts to be near the shipping centers at the airport. I was glad that I had the firm-supplied translator with me to find it. The translator was a dour old man, however, who had little to say about anything but the direction the taxi driver needed to drive in. I found myself wishing I still had the sensual, sexually experienced temporary translator Rao at my side, as I was still sexually buzzed from the previous night with him—and earlier with the young street guy, Khurana. As we drove in the taxi out to the southwest, manufacturing and warehouse section of the city, possible positions of the gay male Kama Sutra kept floating through my mind—my body enveloping Rao’s and Rao deep inside me, the two of us moving in rhythm and complete harmony.
I had never imagined that India—and sex with an Indian man—could be so satiating.
I needn’t have concerned myself with whether I’d ever see Rao again, though, because when we entered Krishna’s office, there he, Rao, was, sitting off to the side, smiling at me. Of course, I thought. This is South Asia. Rao had covered all of this with me himself. Everyone was on the take somehow and everyone was playing the angles with networking, all with a view to bettering themselves. And Rao led me to the Golden Dreams, and, thus, ultimately to the young Khurana and, himself, to the delights of exotic, fully melding sex. I knew I had to watch out for Rao, because Rao quite evidently was watching out for himself. I wondered if he had a connection to Khurana as well. Had I been set up when I walked out of Golden Dreams?
I didn’t have to wonder about that for very long, though, because when Krishna sent out for refreshments, they were brought in by my luscious street guy, Khurana.
“This is my son, Khurana,” Krishna proudly said as the young man, blushing a bit and avoiding my eyes, passed around glasses of whiskey.
I should have paid more attention to Khurana in the hotel room. I never had thought of him as part of the street crowd I was surrounded by outside of Golden Dreams. He had looked healthier and cleaner than the others, and he held back—the others didn’t seem to be interacting with him, like he wasn’t really one of them. And Rao had been there, watching it all. If I’d been paying attention and took into account the scheming ways I attributed to South Asians in my natural prejudices, I could have made the connection. The two young men had been working together—working me. I knew days ago that Rao would have some reason to put me into contact with Krishna. He obviously had reasons why he connected me with Khurana too. I decided to let this unfold and let them tell me what they wanted and what was in it for all of them. I was getting a new awareness and appreciation for the complex minds and capabilities of South Asians.
They wanted to make a deal with me—and with the fashion house of DeWitts. That was assuring that we could get someplace now. They’d help me with the trade officialdom and getting set up here in India.
I was definitely at a disadvantage here in term of control. I let it wash over me, though. So taken was I with both Khurana and Rao, that they were what I concentrated on, giving them priority over the interests of DeWitts. I had established with them that I wanted them to dominate, to control. So, as long as DeWitts was getting what they wanted—and I got what I wanted—I’d go with the flow here and let them do what they were doing.
Krishna gave a price for his cooperation, which wasn’t high by Western standards, but would be a fortune here in India. In addition, he wanted the export of his antique brass to be included in the DeWitts business here in India, including handling of them in the West wherever we could sell them. DeWitts was a fashion house, though, not a goods importer, so I knew they wouldn’t go with that part of the deal. But maybe they could be convinced to add a touch of India as a backdrop to their advertising and fashion shows and then sell the goods as well.
But then it came, the golden cock of the deal.
“Also, I want you to take my son, Khurana, under your guidance and get him to London for his university education and support for British citizenship.”
“Do you fully realize what—”
But Rao interrupted me. “Krishna understands what ‘under your guidance’ will be, Mr. Collins. He is hiring me to help with that guidance too, if you are interested. He understands what his son is and what he wants. Krishna wants to set him up in the West, though. That is the tradeoff. You using Khurana—and me—as you will in exchange for getting Khurana to the West.”
He didn’t fool me. This would be Krishna’s means to control me too—to use my need for what his son and Rao would give me in sexual favors. But, as long as I understood what they were doing here, I didn’t give a shit.
“It will take time, even with connections to the Tamil Nadu trade official, who is a friend of mine, to set up your business here in Chennai. As you are doing that, I wish Khurana to be with you—and then for you to have arrangement for him to go with you to London and become British.” This was the deal closer. He was giving me his luscious son to use for what he obviously would think would be long enough for me not to be able to live without Khurana.
He didn’t know, though, that, if I had success here, I was going to Paris, not London—or that I would have very little ability to make Khurana a British citizen. But that wasn’t my problem; it was theirs.
I suddenly decided that Chennai would be a marvelous place to spend the next few years. I didn’t think DeWitts would go for the full deal, but, as long as Khurana and Rao were in my house and in my bed, we could assume this would all work out. South Asians weren’t the only ones who knew how to stretch time out in the face of problematic conclusions. These men could have their hopeful expectations just as much as I had them.
I should have been amazed—but I wasn’t—that when Rao took me to the trade official’s office the next afternoon, I was ushered immediately into his office, and he was standing by his desk, all smiles, and with a welcoming hand of cooperation extended toward me.