Edge Running Ch. 02

I arrived in Bangkok two months later under the name of Doug McClure. I was still a doctor, though, and I still had a prescription pad that gave me, as a documented Doctor Without Borders physician, worldwide access to pharmacies. I was treated like gold by Tony Scarlotti, the troupe manager, and all of the other dancers. That was a good thing, being able to make more than the other dancers in the troupe, because I could be pickier when men showed up at the stage door after a performance looking for paid companionship.

We were settled in substandard rooms, two guys to a small room, at the Babylon Bangkok Hotel in the Silom red-light district part of Bangkok--one of several red-light districts there--between the large Lumphini Park and the Klong Toy industrial Chao Phraya River wharf district. None of us spent too many nights in our own hotel room, though. The club dancing was more a cover for how money really was made in this business. Girlie clubs predominated in the area but there were more than enough gay night spots too. We were booked to do two Chippendales Dancer-type shows three times a week at DJ Station, a night club with a stage off Silom road. Our hotel was off Satorn Road, which ran parallel with Silom, with the red-light district between them. We also did three shows at a smaller and seedier venue, Roger's, off Silom Road. three nights a week.

At DJ Station, we performed on stage in a revue at 10:00 p.m. and midnight. In between, three of us had to be go-go dancing in glass cages elevated around the dance floor, where the dancing was to band music alternating with a DJ spinning records on a sound system. This was the classiest of our venues, as we were on stage or in glass cages out of the reach to the patrons.

The gig at Roger's was more demanding than this, but this is where we dancers made money above basic sustenance. In the small print of our contracts that none of us had seen was a stipulation that the bulk of our contracted fees was not due until the end of every second month of dancing. This was to keep us from disappearing on our own as soon as we got to Bangkok. We were doled out just enough advance money to keep us from starving by eating street food--there were street food carts out all over the area. Anything above that was earned by tips while we were dancing or tricks taken on our own time. I fared better than the others as the lead dancer and troupe doctor, but even I had to make nice-nice with the patrons while I was dancing to encourage them to stuff money in my thong and I had to take a trick now and again.

At Roger's the patrons were close to the stage and could pass tips for "feels" and between shows we went down on the club floor in just our skimpy costumes and were supposed to mingle with the customers and get them to order drinks for us and more drinks for them. We also could more intimately mingle with them and arrange hookups either off the premises after our night was done or in rooms behind the stage when we weren't performing, where the house took half the take.

The patrons at DJ Station rarely got close enough to us to pass tips and we weren't required to come down into the club during the intervals--though we could by invitation of a patron, who paid for the privilege. The patrons at DJ Station were much wealthier, though, than those at Roger's. They could send an invitation to an individual dancer to go with them after the show was over. Bangkok never closed, so the dancers in the troupe got their best meals by going with a patron after a DJ Station show. They got fed and watered, but they had to either hump a guy or lay on their back and open their legs afterward. We had to be flip-floppers in this business. We were studs either way the patron wanted it. This wasn't a problem for any of the guys in our troupe. They often got a much nicer bed to sleep in for the night than the shared hotel room at the Babylon Bangkok hotel.

Sex was definitely not a problem for the members of our dance troupe. We were all oversexed versatile studs--and in pristine shape--or we wouldn't be in such a dance troupe to begin with. Most of us had paired up before leaving New York, and when we didn't have a patron to service for money and benefit, we fucked each other. I had paired with a younger, olive-complexioned and dark-haired Mediterranean-stock Greek god by the name of Panos Stifano. We roomed together, flip-flopped each other, telling each other it was nothing personal, just for practice, and occasionally hunted together even in New York before arriving in Bangkok.

Thus, we had no trouble agreeing to go with a drug dealer after a gig at Roger's at the end of our first week in Bangkok. I was willing to dispense some downers or uppers to the guys in the troupe and most definitely pills to prevent STDs, but I wouldn't give them any of the really hard stuff. Bangkok was famous for readily available pure heroin and cocaine, though, and Panos was into that. On a Friday night he'd hooked up with a Thai-Chinese dealer, Kevin Lu, who also had some black American soldier in him. He was in his thirties, rangy, but hard bodied--a hard-used body too, having been in some knife fights. Panos had agreed to go with him before consulting with me. The best I could do was go with them to watch out for Panos. Lu didn't seem to mind it being a threesome.

Lu took us to a gay hotel, the BBB Inn on Rama IV Road, near Lumphini Park. The rooms there were basic and could rent for $35 a night or $10 an hour. They preferred U.S. currency. The room as good as we had at the Babylon Bangkok and Lu was paying, so that was fine. Lu was also dispensing the cocaine in exchange for the fucking, so that was fine too--for Panos. I made clear I wasn't interested in that. I might have left when it came out, but I wanted to be around to help Panos if he had a medical emergency.

Panos took his hit, as did Lu. It transpired that Lu really didn't care that I came with Panos. After Lu watched Panos and me having sex for a while, he wanted to be doubled by us. Panos and I fucked him together, Panos, already in dreamworld, lying on his back on the bed, Lu on top of him, pointed to the ceiling, in the crab position, and me, sober and monitoring the situation, on top of the pile, holding Lu's legs raised and spread, as Panos held his cock steady inside Lu's passage and I pounded him.

This wasn't all that unusual for our Friday nights other than we didn't often double a patron. What was notable about it was that Lu apparently was impressed with me. This led to me being hooked up with a higher-level Thai drug lord, Dusit Thanat, who approached me, not at Roger's, but at the DJ Station, and who almost became the undoing of me.

* * * *

"You know I don't like going out and sitting with patrons between sets, Amnot," I said. I was at the mirror in the dressing room, already beginning to line up the face paint to start making myself up for the next show. The paint didn't go on my face.

"No choice, I'm afraid," the manager of DJ Station said. I turned and looked at him. He did seem to look concerned and I saw a little sweat beading along his hairline. Amnot was usually cool and ready for anything. A lot could happen at DJ Station. "Dusit Thanat is out front with some businessmen and he wants you to come sit with them for a while. They like the way you dance and wanted to meet you. He said he could arrange that."

"Who the fuck is Dusit Thanat?" I asked.

"You don't want to know all that Dusit Thanat is in Bangkok. He's said he can bring you out to the table and neither one of us wants to see what happens when he can't deliver. He said to give you this."

Amnot was extending a hand stuffed with a wad of high-denomination Thai baht bills.

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?" I asked. I smiled. "Give me a couple of minutes to pull some clothes on and then show me where this table is." All I was wearing was silky red bikini briefs.

"You're just fine the way you are," Amnot said, now all smiles. "But be really careful with this guy, Doug. You don't want him to want too much from you." The smile has been erased from Amnot's face as quickly as it had painted itself there.

I could tell which one Dusit Thanat was as we approached the table. He had a Thai name. The three men at the table were middle-aged Japanese businessmen types--two slender and bespectacled and one shorter, younger, and heavy, all in expensive suits. All of them let their tongues hang out as I approached their table. I was dressed to be ogled--which meant I was just wearing the red silky bikini briefs.

The Thai was dressed expensively too. There were Thai bodyguard types at the adjacent tables on either side. I got the distinct impression they were there for Dusit Thanat, who I would have assumed was a Class A thug, even if Amnot hadn't alerted me to that on the way to the table. He also was a solid-looking hunk. There was a class of underworld chieftains in Bangkok who did as they liked and got away with whatever it was. Amnot had clearly signaled that Dusit Thanat was one of those.

Just what I needed. A connection with yet another drug trade crime lord.

I was seated across from Dusit Thanat, who drilled me with his eyes as the Japanese businessmen, who spoke impeccable English, which the Thai didn't speak at all, talked about me to each other, the two sitting on each side of me touching me here and there--wherever they wanted. I didn't mind them assessing me, though, as everything they said was complimentary. I didn't have any trouble understanding that I was supposed to impress the Japanese businessmen. I'd been paid enough up front not to argue with that. When one placed a hand on my basket and traced my shaft through the material, I dutifully turned my face to him and gave him a smile. If they'd been to the last show, they'd seen what was inside the pouch there, although they hadn't been permitted to touch it.

I wasn't too worried. The Japanese businessmen, although nothing to arouse me sexually, appeared to be very easy to handle when it came down to sex. It was Dusit Thanat himself who both sexually aroused me and scared the shit out of me as he sat at the table, observing the Japanese businessmen appreciating what he had brought to the table in me for their enjoyment. It was Dusit who I was unsure of handling. I had visions of being bound and spread-eagled, with him using me hard sexually.

They let me go in time to prepare for my next show--the last of mine that night--but Dusit Thanat's thugs were there, at the stage door, with the back door of a long, black Mercedes limousine open to greet me after I'd finished my set and gotten dressed. I passed the money Amnot had given me, plus what he came back with at the end of my last set, on to Panos, whose eyes went really big when he saw how much it was.

"You've hit the jackpot tonight," he said.

"Or the end of the road," I said. I told him what the setup looked like it was going to be.

"You do like to run along the edge, don't you?" he asked.

"From what Amnot told me, I don't really have a choice. The rules don't seem to be all that different here than they were back in Chicago. If I don't get back, you can keep the money," I said. "10 percent just for holding it for me if I can hobble home."

"Hobble home?" he asked.

"There are four of them," I said. I didn't have to explain further.

By trusting him with the stash, I think I left Panos happier with that than when I fucked him.

I got fucked in the back of the limousine as we drove down Silom Road toward the Chao Phraya River. I sat on the cock of one of the slimmer Japanese businessmen in the center of the bench seat at the very back of the limo. I was stripped down. He wasn't. I was bent over, hands on the floor of the vehicle while he opened me up with his long, sensuous fingers and then his tongue. He pulled me back into his lap and onto the cock, and helped me to rise and fall on it while Dusit Thanat and the other two Japanese businessmen sat in the rear-facing seats and watched me being fucked with slitted eyes. I easily understood that if we got into a traffic jam, I'd be gang banged back here. The two thugs were up front.

Bangkok traffic moves slowly and is tightly packed on the streets at all hours of the day and night. The windows of the limo were tinted and it was late in the night. I could see out, where the three-wheel samlor taxis and the motorcyclists were right up against the windows, but even though those in and on the vehicles looked into the windows of the limo, I knew they couldn't see me. They would have had a definite change in expression if they could.

The Japanese man was long, but not thick. He knew what he was doing, though. He palmed my pecs and thrumbed my nubs while I bobbed up and down on his shaft. The other two Japanese businessmen talked while we drove down the road and the third businessman drove me, and it was clear the three of them were talking about me--my body and how well I was taking the fuck--but now they were conversing in Japanese. Somehow, although I went to a perfectly good college, Japanese hadn't been on my course schedule. Throughout, Dusit Thanat sat, stoically, watching me with dead-fish eyes, and said nothing. He was holding himself aloft, exhibiting that what the Japanese were doing with me was elementary stuff--that when and if he had me, I would suffer.

The fuck was finished and I'd redressed in the slacks and T-shirt I'd come out in by the time we'd reached the entrance of the five-star high-rise Shangri-la Hotel on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. A twelfth-floor suite had already been booked and the door was opened for us by a young European guy--probably German or Danish--who was covered by a blue silk hotel robe and nothing else. The second impression I got from him was that he was sex on a stick and must be someone's boy toy by how saucy he was acting. My first impression, however, was that he'd been through hell. He looked beat up--cuts and welts all over his body, much of which I could see, and he had a black eye, a cut lower lip, and a bruised chin. There was bruising around his throat too, as if he'd been choked to within an inch of his life.

Still, he acted happy to see us, especially Dusit Thani, who drew the young man to his side, placing a hand on his opposite hip, while the Japanese businessman, starting to pull off their clothes, guided me to the bedroom beyond. The two bodyguards stayed with Dusit Thanat and the European youth in the living room, which opened into the bedroom through a double door.

While the businessmen were stripping in the bedroom, one of the bodyguards delivered packets of cocaine to the bedroom. The Japanese men imbibed, engaging in recreational imbibing in a round-robin fashion--two trying out the drugs, which I took to be some sort of sampling for bulk buying--and one fucking me on the bed. When one finished with me on the bed, he went to the table where the lines of cocaine were set up, and another of the businessmen came up on the bed, manipulated me into the position he wanted, mounted me, and fucked me.

I could see into the other room, where Dusit Thanat was sitting on a sofa and the European youth was in his lap, facing him, and bouncing up and down on the Thai's cock. The young man's back was crisscrossed with angry red welts.

Later, I lay on the bed, tired and exhausted, splayed on my back, while the men did whatever deal they were doing in the other room. The European youth came through, went into the bathroom, and took a shower. He smiled wanly at me in passing.

We left the Japanese businessmen in the hotel suite. The European youth was left there too, naked, on his back, on the bed. The businessmen's entertainment wasn't over. Two of the Japanese men were climbing up on the bed, moving into a position where they could double the European guy.

I assumed Dusit Thanat would let me off at the DJ Station or my hotel, The Babylon Bangkok, although I wouldn't have been wild about him knowing where I was staying, or that I would be left to get back to the hotel on my own. He didn't however. We were driven back across town, beyond Lumphini Park, to the Sukhumvit Road area and then down a back soi--street--to the banks of one of the main canals that laced through the city, once the primary paths of transportation that gave Bangkok the name of the Venice of the East.

We drove into a walled compound of a series of traditional Thai-style teak pavilions raised on columns to keep the living areas above the perpetual flooding from the canals.

It took nearly an hour to get to the compound from the Shangri-la. Once again I sat in the center of the bench seat at the very back of the limo, with Dusit Thanat sitting, facing me, and looking thuggish and stoic. The two bodyguards were in the front seat. I assumed the drug lord would fuck me while we were driving, but he didn't. I was getting the idea that maybe he wasn't going to do that--that I was maybe just a whore he hired to help him sell his drugs in bulk to Japanese marks.

But I was wrong. He did want to fuck me. And he did fuck me.

He took me to his bedroom in one of the interlinked teak pavilions on thick wooden stilts, pushed me down on a massive bed, stripped me of my trousers and T-shirt, slapped my legs open, knelt and ate my ass out, and then came down between my thighs, pinning me to the bed, mounted me, and fucked me with a huge cock--vigorously, hard, deep, brutally, athletically, and into and beyond the dawn.

He manipulated me into whatever position he wanted, and like a good little well-paid whore--one who was scared spitless of this thug--I docilely went into whatever configuration turned him on and gave him what he signaled he wanted. Did he ask me what I wanted at any time? No, indeed he did not. Thailand was a man's world in that sense, and Dusit Thanat clearly was The Man. Somewhat to my surprise, he didn't torture me. He slapped me around a bit, but he didn't reach the level of taking that I thought he might and that it looked like he did with the young man he fucked at the hotel.

At least he wasn't violent that first time.

* * * *

Nothing was said about taking me back to my hotel. I didn't have another show to do for the next two days, but I didn't think Dusit Thanat knew that. Neither did I get the impression that he cared whether or not I had a schedule of my own. He didn't do much talking at all. He did do fucking, though--and he did it well. He was maybe in his forties, but he worked his body hard. He worked my body hard too. There was no question I was going to give him what he wanted. He wanted me to lay back, open my legs in a V and provide something warm and spongy for him to stroke his cock in, and that's what I gave him. Whenever I wasn't fast enough to provide what he wanted, he slapped me around. I learned to figure out what he wanted quickly.

The violence in his fucking progressed as he moved from one fuck to the next.

I did feel a bit like a prisoner in the compound, like if I'd made a sudden move toward the driveway gate, which was guarded, that there would be a roving guard to stop me, but they hadn't taken my cellphone. I called the troupe manager, Tony Scarlotti, to report that I was still alive--if stiff and sore--although I didn't have the least notion where I was. I wasn't familiar enough with Bangkok to know where we had driven from the Silom area.

"All taken care of," Tony said as if all I cared about was money and my stage performances. "You're covered in fees for the next two days."

"I don't know where I am."

"And we don't want to know where you are either," the manager said. "This is all being handled through Amnot at the DJ Station, and he says we don't really want to know what the arrangement is. I believe him. I think you should too."