Marking the Decades

Nils Ek, second in command on the Rhine River cruise ship, the Lorelei, led his small band of men off the boat tied up the Frankenwerft river wall near the Cologne Cathedral, the largest cathedral north of the Alps. The excursion was setting off early so they could be back on board, at the top of the ship, to watch the New Year’s fireworks over the river. They would be spectacular this year as they were ringing in a new decade as well as a new year.

Ken Curtain was following close behind the leader, and the big, blond Swede kept looking back to ensure that the very sexy twenty-nine-year-old American novelist was with the group. Ek had been cultivating the American since they had embarked on the German Christmas Market river cruise seven days earlier. All did not seem right with the young man and his partner, the best-selling novelist, Clifford Langston, and Nils, always on the hunt for luscious submissives to dominate, thought he could take advantage of that. He almost always found someone worthy of spiking on special gay cruises like this one, and with his body and looks he was in high demand. His interest in Curtain was at the base of his suggestion that they go gay baths cruising in Cologne, where they were tied up for the night, on the evening of New Year’s Eve. He assured the cruise guests they would be back before the fireworks display over the river.

The idea had been met with enthusiasm. This was a gay man’s cruise and the core group on board was there for pleasure as well as on business. The celebrated twenty-four-years young German filmmaker, Klaus Heineman, was making a film of the best-selling novel, Spoils of the Victor, by Clifford Langston, and those two, plus Langston’s literary agent, Ted Sullivan; Ted’s partner, the set and costume designer, Jeff Malone; and the lead actor contracted for the film, Russ Jackson, were meeting to settle on the film’s concept. The usual appendages were along, including the German, Felix Untermeyer, a cameraman Klaus had along to make a gay man’s documentary of the meeting cruise, and Ken Curtain, the novelist and initial manuscript editor, who had been living with Langston for nearly a decade. Curtain had come along for a last-ditch effort to shore up his relationship with Langston, whose eye, at fifty-three, was straying to younger men than Curtain’s twenty-nine. Curtain was laboring over his third novel—again one given to him in outline by Langston—and could work on that anywhere. He knew that, if he’d let Langston go on this cruise alone, his one-time lover—they didn’t often couple anymore—and mentor would be lost to him. Curtain didn’t feel self-confident enough to fly on his own yet.

Noticeably absent, to Ken Curtain’s obvious irritation, from the club excursion were Clifford Langston and Klaus Heineman. It had been the evident growing attraction between those two, Klaus being five years younger than Curtain, that had put the young novelist on edge. Ken had thought Langston was going cruising with them right up to the moment when they left and he wasn’t there.

Ek, a tall, big-boned, muscular and commanding sunny Swede, took the group, with included a Turkish man of particularly satyrish appearance and demeanor, Altan Hulugu, to the Roman Baths, on Hohe Strasse, not far from the Cologne Cathedral, and thus away from the ship, for an early-evening “letting loose,” as he put it. It was a special gay men’s cruise. Stopping at gay bars and brothels in towns along the Rhine had been on the agenda—and the guests had taken advantage of the opportunities. If the ship was to stay docked in the town overnight, the cruise guests were free to bring a hookup on board with them.

The Roman Baths were just that—a gay bath house established on the footprint of a Roman bath that originally had been on this spot. The original subterranean pool still existed and was in use. Altan Hulugu, a shipping czar, who was based out of Naples, Italy, had been tagging along close to the movie group since the town of Rudesheim am Rhine, where he had come close to nailing Ken Curtain in a gay club. Close wasn’t achievement, however. And he wasn’t accustomed to not getting his way. He still was intent on nailing Ken Curtain, as was Nils Ek.

That everyone who saw Hulugu thought of him as a satyr at first sight was natural. He had a certain scheming, feral look in his face, which was ugly but arresting. Even in his fifties, he wore his wavy hair long and kept it an auburn brown with two clumps of gray at the temples, resembling horns and adding to his satyr image. He wasn’t a tall man, but his muscular torso was long, leaving his hair-pelted legs appearing to be shorter than normal and bowed. He pushed the image by maintaining an auburn brown goatee, and he had a glint in his eyes that achieved both amusement and malevolence. He moved with authority. Those who had lain under him could attest to the appropriateness of the satyr identification. His chest was very muscular, but mostly hairless, shaved. A line of auburn hair began just below the cleft of his pecs, though, and broadened out as it descended to this belly. From there on down, his body—his buttocks and legs—was pelted with short, curly hair. Those who saw him in the buff invariably looked down to see the cloven hooves, but he did not have those. What he did have in the vein of a satyr, though, were low-hanging, bulbous balls that, when he had a man under him, pumped cum endlessly, and a thick, long, upcurved cock that was well out of proportion for a man his size. He also had the strength to hold a man in thrall while he was pumping him full of cum.

The rumor was that among the enterprises he owned was one that produced secret sexual enhancement pills that made him able to maintain an erection forever and pump cum almost endlessly in frequent ejaculations. He was said to be supplying these to the rich and famous—which made him rich, but famous only among the very rich.

At the Roman Baths, those on the club crawl saw the Turk in action. They had been led, as a group, to the party room, which included dancing, with many of the other patrons already having been to the baths and now dancing only in towels, where they mingled and were served generous amounts of liquor and pills. The pills quickly had them mellow and uninhibited. From there they went to the baths, not far from the entrance to the club, where they stripped down, checked each other out, and slipped into the tiled Roman pool that had been there for two thousand years.

Hulugu, in monstrous erection and wasting no time, put an attendant under him on the edge of the shallow pool, hovering over the attendant between the young man’s thighs, his legs waving in the air. The attendant’s belabored cries echoed through the baths as Hulugu overfilled him with his hard cock and fucked him into moaning semiconsciousness. The young man jerked and his eyes flashed as Hulugu, holding the attendant in a close, controlling embrace, tensed and shot off, tensed and shot off, tensed and . . . The others, spaced out on liquor and drugs, languidly watched, murmuring to each other about the rumors of the special pills he manufactured. To be fucked like this by rich patrons was what the attendant was there for, albeit he didn’t usually get totally taken like Hulugu was taking him, and others were coupling and copulating all over the chamber. The conversations among the cruise group thus were about Hulugu’s stamina and the cum flowing out of the attendant’s hole and down his inner thighs rather than the young man’s semiconciousness.

In the baths, Nils managed to pull Ken to him, the muscular blond Swede by far overreaching Ken in size and bulk. He whispered, “You are, by far, the sexiest man in the bath. I want to top you.”

Having watched Hulugu’s performance with trepidation, Ken, bitter that Langston wasn’t there, was much more prone to succumb to Ek’s interest. They kissed, Ken, at a psychologically dangerous twenty-nine, flattered by the beautiful big Swedes intent, and the kiss warmed as Nils reached down and frotted their cocks together, but Ken broke away with a laugh and climbed out of the pool. That was when their designated host returned and ushered the group, clothed in Turkish towels now, back into the party room for more liquor, pills, and dancing.

Partners appeared and disappeared in front of Ken until there was Nils and there was a slow song. They danced close together, Nils enclosing the smaller Ken in his arms until they were just standing there, swaying against each other and Nils had worked a hand into the folds of both of their towels, gotten the two erect cocks together, and was frotting them again. Nils bent Ken back and took his lips in a deep kiss.

“Will you?” Nils whispered in Ken’s ear.

“Yes,” Ken answered, wishing Langston was there to see the result of his flirting with the movie director.

The music stopped and the two men stepped away from each other, their eyes locked in a gaze of lust. Nils laughed, turned, and faded back into one of several arch-entranced alcoves around the periphery of the stone-clad chamber. A beaded curtain covered the entrance. He turned and smiled at Ken and disappeared between the strands of beads.

High on alcohol, drugs, and flattery at the vulnerable age of twenty-nine and seething that Clifford and Klaus weren’t there with them—that Clifford wasn’t with him—Ken followed Nils into the alcove. Others nearby, having observed the heat between the two gorgeous men, followed to watch through the beaded curtain. And seeing the others form up, more gathered.

At the entrance of the alcove, past the beaded curtain, Ken found the Swede reclining on a silk-covered divan, his back propped up on exotic-colored pillows. His towel was spread open, leaving the big, muscular man naked. A hand was on his cock, slowly stroking it. He was in magnificent erection.

“Come here. Come service me,” he said, his eyes boring into Ken. He was gauging that Ken was susceptible to forceful men giving clear direction. In this, he wasn’t mistaken.

As in a trance, Ken moved to the divan, sat down beside Nils’s calves, leaned over, fisted the root of Nils’s cock, and took it into his mouth. Nils placed his hands on Ken’s head and moved his fingers into the man’s still-golden curls, massaging the scalp and sighing while Ken gave him an expert, deep-throating blow job.

A sigh went up from those who were watching through the spaces between the strings of beads of the curtain.

Nils didn’t let this go on for long. He reached down, unknotted Ken’s towel, and let it fall to the side. Then he leaned down, took Ken’s waist between his hands, and lifted and turned the smaller, lighter man until Ken was hovering over him, still sucking his cock, but now giving Nils’s mouth access to Ken’s cock and, ultimately to Ken’s crack and hole. He alternated between sucking Ken’s shaft and eating out his hole as Ken continued servicing the massive erection at this end.

Eventually, as the audience gasped, Nils took Ken’s slender waist between his hands again and pushed Ken’s body down to where Ken lost the Swede’s cock and balls from his mouth and slid down the man’s long, muscular legs to grab his ankles, while Nils moved the American down his legs and back up to where the bulb of his shaft was resting at the rim of the hole. Ken was panting and murmuring, “Yes, yes, yes,” ripe now for the fuck he had been denying Nils for several days.

Nils slowly pulled the passage onto his cock, Ken arched his head and, eyes flashing, yawned widely in pain-pleasure to the stone ceiling. Grasping, squeezing, and spreading Ken’s buttocks Nils pulled the passage on and off the cock until a rhythm was reached. Thereupon, Ken pressed his knees into the divan on either side of Nils’s chest and took over the rocking of his channel on the buried cock.

Coming closer to ejaculation, Nils reached down and repositioned Ken’s body again, with Ken stretched out on top of him, the back of his head pressed into the hollow of Nils’s shoulder. Nils laced his legs through Ken’s legs and raised and spread them. He had one arm around Ken’s neck, holding the smaller American into his body and he was jacking Ken off with the other hand—as he fucked up into Ken’s ass, faster and deeper. With a cry from Ken and a gasp and chatter from those watching, Ken arced his cum up into the air. It splashed down on his belly, and, with a shudder and then another and then yet another, Nils pumped Ken’s channel full of Swedish cum.

Altan Hulugu had watched the performance through slitted eyes and with a slight frown, from a prominent place on the dance floor side of the beaded curtain. He wanted to see the naked Ken being taken, but he wanted to be the one doing the taking. After viewing Ken’s cum arching up from his body and counting the number of times Nils’s grimace indicated he had shot off a load, Hulugu turned, went searching for his clothes, and returned to the Lorelei on his own.

He had heard the Swede tell Ken in the pool that Ken was the sexiest man in the baths. Hulugu didn’t disagree with him. The best of everything, though, was meant for him, not some giant of a Swede who was a mere member of the cruise ship staff. Altan did note, with a grim smile, that the Swede had a big cock and the American was able to sheath it without too much difficulty. That promised some good sport for him. He knew that he could work Ken to exhaustion in ways the Swede couldn’t. He could also see that the sexy American wanted the cock and would revel in the much longer time Hulugu could stay hard giving it to him.

* * * *

When the group got back to the Lorelei shortly before 10:00 p.m., Ken went directly to the cabin he shared with Clifford Langston to confront his mentor on not paying attention to him and to salvage what he could of the relationship. He was aghast that he’d behaved the way he had at the Roman Baths. He knew much of that was the liquor and pills he’d consumed, but he also knew he was pushed over the edge by frustration and jealously with Cliff. Something needed to give.

But when he got to the cabin, Langston wasn’t there. Ken moved around the cabin in frustration, eventually noticing that Langston had left the manuscript out of the novel he currently was writing. Both of them were writing drafts of novels while they were on this trip. Langston’s were guaranteed to be best-sellers now. He worked fast and independently. Ken’s first two novels, the one paralleling Thomas Wolfe’s life, Homeward Bound, and a coming of age novel, Journey to Mirage, both had done well. But both were based on outlines provided by Langston and neither had been the best-seller that Langston seemed able to produce in his sleep. Ken was trying his own hand completely for his current work, but it wasn’t going well. That was part of his frustration. He realized he depended too much on Langston, even now, after two successful novels, a bit of notoriety of his own, and having been out of the university for six years. He was pushing thirty and still wasn’t able to function fully by himself. He was still a kept man by Langston, and there was a danger that that was coming to an end.

Langston was secretive about his writing, not wanting anyone to see it until he’d done two drafts at least. As Ken was the initial editor for the manuscript when Langston was ready to release it, Langston didn’t want him to have seen any earlier drafts. He’d hinted in better days between them that it was about their relationship—disguised, of course, so that no one but Ken would know it was. Ken picked up the manuscript and started scanning through it. It wasn’t long before he was trembling and had to sit down. It was true that the novel being written included circumstances that paralleled his life story with Langston. But the manuscript was about the dying of a relationship, not the building of it. There was an insert of a prospectus for another novel that concerned the development of a relationship. But that was about a young German artist. An artist, like a filmmaker. Like Klaus Heineman.

Suddenly the atmosphere in the cabin was stifling. Cliff Langston wasn’t here. There wasn’t anything here for Ken. Without giving it thought, without having any plan, Ken went around the cabin gathering his things and packing them up. He carried them up to reception, where a concierge was on duty full time to help the guests and asked him to store his stuff. He knew he had to leave Cliff’s cabin but he had no idea where he’d go. They would sail tonight and arrive at their departure point, Amsterdam, tomorrow. He could just sleep on a sofa in the lounge.

The concierge obviously was surprised, but he efficiently acceded to Ken’s request. He’d try to do anything Ken wanted. The concierge too thought Ken was the sexiest man on the boat and he wanted to bed him as badly as anyone else on the cruise did.

Ken decided to go to the ship’s lounge, but Jeff Malone, arm around the actor Russ Jackson, who Ken had known for a decade since they had both been rent-boys in New York, passed him and Jeff said, “Felix Untermeyer has done a first cut on the documentary he’s doing on this cruise and is showing it in the private dining room. You should come see it.”

Ken followed them, finding that all the rest of them in his group were gathered in the private dining room, including Cliff and Klaus, who were sitting up front, not seeing Ken enter and sit in the back. They were sitting together and Cliff had an arm around Klaus’s shoulder.

The film was a montage of the group’s activities, and Felix, who somehow had managed to creep around and film without people noticing him, had not avoided capturing sexual activity. Not far into the filming, there was coverage of Nils and Ken’s sex scene at the Roman Baths earlier that evening. At this point Cliff and Klaus left the dining room. They passed Ken in exiting and Cliff now knew Ken was sitting in the back row, but he avoided looking at him.

Later were scenes of Cliff and Klaus having sex as well. Felix somehow had managed to get all of the group in compromising poses—Jeff Malone fucking Russ Jackson, Ted Sullivan fucking the young man Altan Hulugu had brought on the cruise but had banished from the ship at an earlier stop; Nils Ek fucking Russ Jackson; Russ Jackson being fucked by a satyrish Altan Hulugu to exhaustion; Altan Hulugu trying to fondle Ken, but Ken deftly moving away—interspersing with those with scenes of the men actually working on the movie concept and tramping along on sightseeing excursions.

It was close to midnight and the ringing in of 2000, close enough that a smattering of fireworks over the Rhine running through Cologne had started. Ken went up to the open deck on the top of the ship.

Guests, mostly in pairs, were at the rails on the river side of the ship, ready for the fireworks to begin. The ship was long, so the rails weren’t crowded. Those who wanted semiprivacy got it. As Ken stood there alone and very much feeling alone, the literary agent, Ted Sullivan, came up behind him and wrapped his arms around Ken.

“Hey there, Ken.”

“Hi, Ted,” Ken answered. “As you can see, I’m alone,” he added. He’d known Ted for a decade. It had been Ted who had hooked Ken up with Clifford Langston. Ken had been a rent-boy hired to service guests at Ted’s New York New Year’s Eve Party that had rung in the previous decade. Ted had used Ken’s services himself and then he’d used Ken to get business, pimping him to Langston in a successful effort to become Langston’s literary agent. He’d been good to Ken ever since, taking representation of Ken’s novels on as well, which were published by the London office of HarperCollins. It was natural for Ken to be open with Ted about the problems in his deteriorating relationship with Langston.

“You’re not alone. I’m here,” Ted said. “God, you’re sexy tonight. That fuck with the ship’s second officer at the baths was hot stuff. Seeing it just now on film has me revved up.”

He nuzzled his face into the hollow of Ken’s throat. The two had fucked before—but not since Ken had moved in with Langston. Ken could feel that the sexual heat coming off the man now. At forty-five, Ted was still in the hunt and regularly using rent-boys. Neither of them had ever forgotten that Ken had been a rent-boy or that Langston was keeping Ken now.

“Thanks, Ted. It’s hell, though, turning thirty. Langston wants a younger man. This just isn’t working out between us. I’m over the hill.”

“You most certainly are not over any hill. You’re one of the sexiest men alive. I’d happily put you over this rail right here and fuck you.”

Ken laughed. “That’s what Nils, the ship’s officer, said.”

“And I saw what it got him. The two of you were smoking at the Roman Baths.”

“I think it was mostly the pills.”

“I don’t. I think it’s because you’re sex on a stick. Can’t you feel it? I’m pressed into you. Can’t you feel that I’m hard for you.” He was. They were fully dressed, but it was obvious that Ted had an erection and that it was running up Ken’s lower back.

“Cliff doesn’t want me. We rarely have sex now.”

“I want you. When you come back to New York, come to me whenever you want attention—whenever you want a man to fuck you. Take me now. Here. Let me have you. You’re so fucking hot.”

He cupped Ken’s cheek from behind him and coaxed his face around for a kiss. Ken didn’t resist, and he melted to the kiss.

“Yes. Here. Now. If I don’t have time to think about it,” Ken whispered when they came out of the kiss.

Ted didn’t waste time. He unbuckled and unzipped Ken and pushed the younger man’s trousers and briefs down below his buttocks. “Widen your stance. Grip the handrail and jut your ass back.” Ken did so and then gasped as Ted spit on his fingers and started working them into Ken’s ass. Ken arched his back into Ted’s chest and turned his face to Ted for a sustained kiss while Ted opened him up.

Ken heard Ted’s fly being unzipped and felt the head of Ted’s cock being slapped on his butt cheeks and then brushed across his hole.

Widening his stance and rolling his pelvis up more, Ken murmured, “Now, now, now.”

And then the cock was moving up inside him. The fireworks started in earnest above their heads over the river. They both looked up, watching them, the back of Ken’s head pressed into the hollow of Ted’s shoulder. They made fireworks of their own. Ted palmed Ken’s belly, and Ken jutted his ass back into the cock and spread his arms wide, gripping the railing. Ted did what he could to time his thrusts with the bursts of the fireworks overhead, but the bursts of color increased in speed and coverage over the city, becoming frenetic. The hand on Ken’s belly moved to grasping his cock and stroking him. Ken raised his feet, widely spread, to the rail, and Ted held him tight as Ken rocked up and down on the shaft. They came separately, but each at the point of a crescendo of sound and color in the sky.

Others at the top of the ship knew the two men were having sex, but that’s what this gay cruise was meant for, and some of them were fucking with a partner too.

No one on the top deck of the Lorelei, at least, cared that Ted and Ken were celebrating the advent of a new decade in this fashion. From time to time a bright light came on around the open upper deck. Felix Untermeyer and his video camera were at work. He caught Ted and Ken in the throes of their climaxes. Ken knew they were being filmed, but at this particular moment Ken didn’t give a shit that they were. He turned his face to the camera, eyes flashing and tongue hanging out, as he rocked on Ted’s cock and gave the camera a grin, a grimace, and a yawning cry as he popped his load.

Afterward he went to the ship’s lounge, deciding to get some sleep on a sofa there. They would disembark tomorrow and he and Cliff were scheduled to be taken to the airport in a limousine and then to fly back to New York in adjoining business class seats. That would be awkward and straining through six time zones, but he’d worry about that tomorrow.

Sleeping on a sofa in the lounge wasn’t going to be an option, Ken found. There were sofa’s available but none that weren’t close, in view and sound, to the two occupied by fucking couples. Jeff Malone was on top of Russ Jackson on one sofa, taking him in the missionary position. More disturbing to Ken was that Cliff and Klaus were on another sofa, Cliff on his back and Klaus straddling him in a cowboy-position fuck.

Altan Hulugu was sitting at the bar near the door when Ken entered, and Nils Ek, the ships second officer, stopped in the doorway behind Ken. Ken looked from one to the other, but as Hulugu came off his stool and walked over to Ken and put a hand out, Nils took a step back. His duty was to give way to the guests, and Hulugu was in the owner’s suite. As a guest, he was more equal than most. Ken let Hulugu take his hand, and the satyr walked Ken past Nils and to the owner’s suite.

The Turk proved to be a true satyr. He ravished Ken for what was left of the night, making good on his boast that he could remain hard inside Ken for hours and to the American’s exhaustion. Ken, who had kept going back to the fat walrus of a publisher, Jason Mason, several years ago until the man had a heart attack and died because Jason specialized in exotic positions, learned that Hulugu was even more experienced in the exotic ways of taking a man. And he lasted forever.

Naked, Hulugu was every inch the satyr—long, mostly smooth, muscular torso and short, bowed hair-pelted muscular legs; a cruel sneer on his lips, white-gray clumps of hair at his temples resembling horns, and a goatee; and a monster, upcurved, ever-erect, frequently exploding cock.

For a half hour the satyr sucked Ken dry, in athletic positions, first making Ken do a headstand, facing the satyr on the bed, taking his weight on his forearms, his body arched back, feet against the headboard, while Hulugu knelt in front of him and sucked his cock and Ken simultaneously sucked the satyr’s shaft. This position moved into Hulugu holding Ken suspended over him, holding up the young man’s spread legs, while Ken supported himself on hands pressed into the mattress by Hulugu’s spread thighs and sucked on the satyr’s cock.

Hulugu made Ken climb the headboard, gripping the top with his hands and bending and spreading his legs to grip the front of the headboard with his feet in a crab position so that Hulugu could recline under him, eat him out, and prepare his entrance for the monster cock. From there, he just pulled Ken down onto the cock and maneuvered him in various athletic positions that allowed him to fuck him deep and vigorously—for hours. Literally hours. Never losing his erection, frequently able to produce multiple ejaculations, always able to control and manipulate Ken’s moaning and groaning body until, totally exhausted, Ken lost consciousness. But he had a smile on his face and the satyr continued feasting on the young man’s body. And his buried cock exploded and flowed and flowed and flowed, drowning a revived and moaning Ken in his cum.

* * * *

When Ken woke in the morning and turned over onto his back with a groan, he saw that Altan Hulugu was already up, showered, and dressed. Ken hadn’t gotten more than an hour of sleep, but he was sexually satiated as he never had been before. When he’d turned over, he’s automatically spread and bent his legs, taking the pressure off his sore passage. His thighs were still slick and sticky from the satyr’s flowing cum, as were the sheets around him. He’d never been worked so hard and so long before.

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” Hulugu said. “You have time to shower and there is breakfast for you here on this serving cart. If you don’t dawdle, we can be away before the others start disembarking. We can avoid unpleasantries that way.”

“Unpleasantries? Disembark? Where are we? I mean where is the boat now? We’re tied to the bank, but this isn’t Cologne.” He was looking out the cabin window. Yesterday the spires of the Cathedral dominated. Now it was just a dock area.

“We’re tied up conveniently near the De Wallen district of Amsterdam.”

“De Wallen?”

“The famous red-light district. It’s New Year’s Day and they will have had quite a night. All will be quiet. We have reservations at the Hotel 83 Amsterdam on the edge of the district. They are a very accommodating hotel. I have had the liberty of having your luggage placed in the limousine. I found they were holding it at the reception desk, which is convenient for us. I would like to walk to the hotel, though, to take in the air and for the exercise. The luggage can go on ahead.”

The exercise? Ken groaned. What had Hulugu been getting all morning already? “We? Hotel?”

“You will not deny me,” Hulugu said. “Your body is delightful and you need to have it well worked. Langston hasn’t been taking care of you as he should. I can take care of all of your needs.”

They slipped off the ship without being noticed by any of the other guests. Ken had hoped Clifford would see them and would put up a fuss. Hulugu was being controlling and forceful. He had seen that this had worked for Nils Ek at the Roman Baths in leashing Ken and it worked with Hulugu now. Ken needed some show of care and proprietary rights to fight just giving in to Hulugu. He didn’t receive them. None of the guests saw them go.

The Turk had been right about the red-light district being dead on New Year’s morning. It was littered with red confetti, which was related more to Chinese New Year’s than the Western one, but almost no one was on the street and even the second-story glass enclosures where the prostitutes advertised themselves were deserted. Incongruously, the only activity on the street was a Chinese dragon propelled by a multitude of thin legs in jeans weaving its way in a zig-zag pattern through the morning mist in front of them in the same direction in which they were walking.

Clifford Langston was in a limousine en route to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport for the trans-Atlantic flight to New York City, wondering where Ken Curtain was, why he hadn’t appeared for the limousine ride, whether he already was at the airport waiting for Clifford, and whether perhaps he, Clifford, had pressed forward too quickly on the two of them parting. At the same time, the satyr was parting Ken’s legs and resuming his ravishment of Ken’s body in a missionary-position fuck in a suite at the Hotel 83 Amsterdam. A floor-to-ceiling window rose up the wall beside the hotel room bed. Arching his back and grimacing at the first penetration of the cock, Ken looked down into the street below. The street was still misty in the early morning of first day of the twenty-first century save for the undulating Chinese dragon still weaving its way through the Amsterdam red-light district.