Interrupted Escape

"Yes, I think that was the name. Oo, I'm sorry I missed the mixed boxer. Was he sexy?"

"Yes, he was," I said, turning before we could get further into that and leaving—although I wanted to give Chester his due. He was very sexy indeed. As I left the flower shop, I saw the cruise director from the riverboat, Horst, across the street. Had he seen me? Was he following me, I wondered. But when I looked up again, he was gone. I walked on.

I needed to know more about what had happed to Chester. Thermos was still here, so I let my steps carry me in that direction. This time the young man at the desk was sexy as hell. He quickly assessed me too and registered interest, showing a bit of disappointment that I wanted information rather than all of the other pleasures Thermos had to provide.

"Yes. Chester's," he said, with conviction. "Nice guy. A great bod. A weight lifter I think. Did you think he was a real looker?"

"Yes, very sexy," I said. "He was a middle-weight boxer. I knew his father and that is the reason I'm looking for him." I wanted to establish that I knew Chester in a larger context than just sex—as good as that had been. But I thought it would help to extend that to having known him biblically for what I wanted to ask. "I'd like to hook up with him again. I've come from the States and have a day in Amsterdam. Do you have any idea where he went?"

The receptionist laughed. "A day in Amsterdam won't help you, I'm afraid. I believe he married—a Dutch girl. Got her knocked up and did the right thing, although I'd guess that put a crimp in his style with men. I've also heard that his father owned a string of bars in Bangkok and, when he died, Chester inherited them—that he closed up here and went to Bangkok. I do know that he left the country, though."

"Pity," I said.

"You say you knew his father?"

"Yes," I answered.

"But you didn't know he'd died?"

"No, I didn't. I knew him in Bangkok." And he knew me—every inch of me.

"I'm sorry," the attendant said.

"So am I. He was a good man." Cowboy had, in fact, been a good man—on several levels. There was a moment of silence, but it was companionable enough.

"If it's someone like Chester you're interested in, we have plenty of men here at Thermos today. I don't know if you want one half black, but I think we can match you up with a good body. Men who are fit." He posed his body to show that he was fit—and most likely that he was on offer. "I'd be happy to show you a thing or two in back. You're American here for a day? I'm sure we could waive the entrance fee for you if you give us good recommendations."

I thanked him but he could see I was not in the mood, not having found Chester.

When I left Thermos, I went back to the flower shop and bought a long-stem rose, which I placed by the door outside as I left. I'm sure the shop assistant hoped that it was a gesture of flirting with him, but it wasn't for him. It wasn't for Chester, either. It was for his father, Cowboy. Somehow, I wasn't surprised he'd died. He'd lived so large that an early death was understandable. But I hadn't known before now that he had passed on, thus ending one of the stories of my life.

As I was walking back to where the River Princess was berthed, I was thinking that maybe looking for Chester had brought me closer to a decision to just hang it all up and become a sexless, middle-aged music professor. Otherwise, I might have taken the cute young Thermos receptionist up on his offer.

Chapter Two: Top?

As I walked up the gangway and into the River Princess, there was Horst, standing with a line of other welcoming ship's officers, to greet me. Horst had a little, knowing smile on his face. As a guest boarded and reached the end of the reception line, one of the officers would step forward to show them to their cabin. Horst stepped forward for me. I could tell from the surprised look on the face of the woman standing beside him that it was her turn as guide, not his, but she didn't object and the switch went smoothly.

I had one of the two-bunk staterooms on the deck below where the suites and the dining room were. It wasn't the most expensive or commodious of the ship's cabins, but this was a river boat. None of the cabins were commodious, and mine, by no means, was the least expensive cabin class. As it was, though, it was snug. A small, but adequate bath was located off to the left as I entered the cabin. Unlike even smaller ships or Amtrak sleepers, though, the shower was separate from the half of the compartment with a toilet and sink. A very large picture window dominated the outer wall of the cabin itself. Bench seats, with padded sofa backs fixed to the wall, abutted the inner side walls, and there was a detachable table between them. In the night the benches would change into single beds. The table could stay or be taken away. Mine remained in place throughout the cruise.

A closet was located on the wall between the bathroom and the main compartment. It was adequate to hold two suitcases and to hang a limited number of clothes in, with the upper part of one side taken up with shelves to stack clothes in. Again, snug, but adequate for an eight-day trip for two who weren't trying to be fashion plates on vacation. I was a single occupancy of a double cabin, so there was plenty of room for everything.

As we were approaching the cabin, a couple—an older man, quite older, probably in his late fifties, and a younger man in his twenties—were entering the cabin before mine.

"My cabin is just down this way, at the end of this hallway," Horst said as he nodded and smiled to these men. "It's only a single, though. Yours is quite large in comparison."

My suitcase was already in the room, pushed up against the end of the table, leaving it for me to unpack into the small closet. Thanking Horst for showing me to the cabin, I was still looking around it when I realized he hadn't left—that he was still standing in the door, smirking a bit.

"Did you have the afternoon in the city that you wished to have? Was your appointment satisfactory?" he asked.

"In some ways it helped me made a decision I'm working on, but in other ways it was disappointing," I answered. "I was glad we had time in Amsterdam for me to become reacquainted with the city."

"You didn't have any trouble finding the Kerkstraat area, did you?"

I had been looking around, but I turned my eyes on him at that point. Of course, he'd said he wanted to have lunch in the gay area of the city and had volunteered to take me there. He'd continued with his plans and had seen me while I was trying to find Chester's club. "No, no trouble. I've been to Amsterdam before."

He didn't pursue that any further. He didn't have to. "We'll be in Cologne all afternoon and into the evening tomorrow. I'm sorry that only cruise guests are allowed on the ship. You won't be able to bring anyone on board." He paused and added, "If you are paying for a double because you thought you might be able . . . at our various stops . . ."

I didn't let him go further. "I didn't have anything like that in mind. As I told you before, I thought I'd have a travel companion, but the plans changed too late for me to cancel the trip or change to a single cabin."

"I understand," Horst said, smoothly moving on. "There will be time for you to enjoy Cologne off the ship. The place to go for a hookup in Cologne is the cathedral square. We'll be tied up on the bank not more than a seven-minute walk to there. What to look for is young men loitering or doing something that lets them stay and wander within the square. They often sit on the cathedral steps in twos and threes."

He briefly went over the pricing structure of hookups—without calling them hookups—in German cities and towns, the fees being higher in the city than outside it. It was all matter-of-fact, if specific words weren't used, the two of us now being beyond the "Is he or isn't he?" stage of enlightenment. Knowing for sure now made Horst more casual and familiar in speaking with me.

"That's good to know," I said, knowing what he was advising but having no intention at this point of taking him up on anything. Neither would I cut him off either. He had me to rights. He just didn't know what I was struggling with and that his information wasn't helping. He'd even been subtle about letting me know I couldn't bring anyone back on the ship to enjoy in this room that I'd booked as a single. As far as he really did know I'd booked it with that intention.

"I can recommend the A&O Koln Dom on Komoedienstrasse, not more than a five-minute walk from the cathedral square. It's quite friendly. It's only two stars, but it's adequate, and you can rent a room for $40 U.S. for half day."

"Again, good to know," I said.

"All of that said, it might be fortuitous that you do have this cabin to yourself. If you wish to say on board, at any time, for your pleasure, I can help. There are a couple of young men on the crew who—"

"Thank you, but I doubt that will be necessary." He wasn't helping. I knew he was just trying to be of service but . . .

"Button 5 on your telephone goes to my cellphone. I carry it always. Quite nice boys. Leo is one of the waiters. You'll see him at dinner. He's Greek. David is Congolese; he's part of the deck crew . . . if rough and size are of interest. But, these are just suggestions . . . just so you know. We wish to serve. I'll leave you now. I hope to see you at the Welcome Aboard cocktail hour before dinner, which is at 5:00—less than an hour from now—as we are casting off. I'll be giving a talk on what we have to look forward to for the next eight days."

And then, without needing any more terse "that's good to know" responses from me, he was gone and greeting an elderly couple in the corridor who somehow had slipped the guide from the welcome line who should be showing them where their cabin was and were wandering around in a daze.

"Ah, you must be the Wilsons. Let me look at your badges. Yes, one deck down, I think. Let me show you to your cabin. You'll just have time to wash up and then we'll love to see you in the Rhine Lady lounge for cocktails and a welcome. I'll be giving a talk on what we'll be doing for the next eight days. I think you'll be delighted."

His voice became increasingly distant as he herded the couple back up toward the center of the ship. I shut the door and went back and sat down on one of the benches, looking out and watching the deck crew preparing the ship for casting off. I couldn't help myself. I was looking hard at each of the men moving around, trying to see which ones were black and young, wondering if one of them was the Congolese named David—the young man Horst pimped who liked it rough—according to Horst. I also found myself wondering how big he was. I'd heard that Congolese men were worldwide champions on size—not that the other man's size had been something I wondered much about for the past nine years as a top. I did see such a young man, and I had to shake my head and force myself to unpack, because, as I was watching him, I was fantasizing him as naked—and low hung.

As I sat, I realized that there was a rhythmic bumping against the wall behind me. Then I heard it, not too loud, but loud enough to discern the words and to know what was happening in the cabin next door.

"Oh, shit. You're so big. Yes, Daddy, ride me. Ride me hard. Give it to me. Stick it in deeper! Yes, Yes! YES! Come in me, Daddy!"

The men next door were already celebrating the cruise with a fuck. I didn't know for sure who was on the top and who on the bottom. The use of the word "Daddy" by the apparent bottom gave me a clue, but the older man I'd seen go into the cabin didn't seem to look like the power top type.

"Shit," I exclaimed, immediately hoping they didn't hear me as well as I could hear them, and then stood in disgust with myself, took one swipe at the bathroom, left the cabin, and headed forward, looking for the Rhine Lady lounge. This was getting to me, putting me on edge.

The two men in the neighboring cabin didn't show at the cocktail hour, but they were there, at a table for two, at dinner, being pretty obviously taken with each other. They were both expensively, if casually, dressed, and I assessed them as a successful businessman and his boytoy. The man wasn't ancient, but he was on the old side and he was gaunt.

So, maybe there was sex beyond forty, I thought.

There were other tables with couples, but there were also tables of six and eight. I was seated, by assignment, at a table for eight, with mainly singles. The other singles were gray-haired ladies, some of them evidently rooming together. They gathered and floated in groups during the cruise and I thought of them, as a group, as the gray and blue hairs. They were, though, by and large, a congenial and harmless group, and they were deferential to me, especially so after they discovered I was a college professor—and that I specialized in German music. I got plenty of attention, and I was as polite and charming as I could be. It was going to be an eight-day cruise. I didn't know at that point if these were my tablemates for the cruise or if they would move us around or let us seat ourselves. I could tell that for this night, at least, I was being seated with the apparently richer and better educated of the vacationers.

My table also was being served by a cute, curly headed, big-smile Greek waiter who couldn't have been older than twenty. His nametag said he was Leo. I don't know if Horst had set this up or not, but Leo apparently knew I was someone to be cultivated. Despite my intention of being celibate on the cruise and not using Horst's pimping services, I found the young man arousing.

After dinner I went to the lounge with most of the others and had drinks, chatted with maybe six people who were all very nice and wanted to know all of the basics about me—not my sexual preference of course, which would have made for quite a memorable conversation—and were delighted that I was a music professor on my way to the Bayreuth music festival. We were entertained by a piano player playing show tunes and I was asked constantly to talk about the music she was playing even though I'd tried to make clear that my specialty was Richard Wagner and other German composers, not Stephen Sondheim or Hoagy Carmichael. I did what I could to charm them, and the older ladies twittered and fluttered their eyelashes for me, so I guess I succeeded with them.

When I got back to the cabin, the bunks had been turned down for the night. The world of the Netherlands, at some point changing to Germany, was sliding by, the river bank really quite close, giving me glimpses of daily life in the early night by the river. The wall to the right was rhythmically bumping again. The couple next door was fucking once more. I could pretty clearly follow the progress of the fuck. Either the old man was very, very good, or the young man was an extremely good actor, doing everything he could to assure his way through this portion of his life. I found myself thinking of the older man. Was he perhaps hard-bodied more than gaunt? He certainly seemed to have more than enough stamina in the performance.

The two had been in the lounge for a half hour after dinner before departing. They had been social. Horst tried to maneuver me to them at one point, whispering that the older man was a widower, an oil executive from Texas.

"His name is Tom. The young man is Sean. They're couple—you know, gay. And they are married. This is their honeymoon. You really should meet them. I could arrange special tours for you together at our stops, if you three hit it off."

We never made it over to the men, which was fine with me, as we each were accosted by someone different for attention. That doesn't mean we didn't relate. I caught them both glancing at me occasionally, both with an appraising look in their eyes. We who are in the lifestyle develop a sense for this. The younger man was assessing me as a top and I don't I think I was a disappointment to him. I thought the same was true of the older man assessing me as a bottom. I couldn't say I hadn't taken both roles in my life. That was part of my problem now; I didn't know which role, if any, I should be taking as I moved into my forties.

So, Tom, free of a regular marriage, was fucking Sean, and they were married. Nice. They also were making the most of their honeymoon.

"Fuck it," I said out loud. The pressure is too much, at least for tonight. I went to the shipboard phone and punched 5.

Leo was a honey. I lay on my back—purposely on the bunk just on the other side of the cabin wall where Tom was still fucking Sean. I held Leo's narrow waist between my hands, as, saddled on my pelvis, the young, smiling waiter, his curly black hair bouncing on his forehead, rode my cock to a mutual, quite satisfying ejaculation. He was a tight fit, which just made him moan louder and more deeply and gave me a more satisfactory release. I told him he didn't have to stifle his vocal response—he could let it all out, if he wished. I'd be just as pleased if he did, I said. What I really was being was a bit catty. Let Tom and Sean, on the other side of the wall, know they weren't the only ones who could enjoy themselves. And Leo was a little mouthy as I worked his channel.

Although he said he was twenty, Leo had a smooth-skinned, lightly muscled boy's body, and not having had sex for weeks, the first time we fucked, with me on my back and him riding me, I came quickly. He didn't indicate any desire to leave me quickly or even for me to slip out of him while I went flaccid, so there was a second fucking, in the missionary position, which I took my time with and brought him off, panting, moaning, and, upon release, crying out as loud as Sean could do, twice.

I didn't care if Tom and Sean could hear Leo call me Daddy and tell me how big I was and declaring that he wanted to feel me come inside him. I'm sure they could. I was a little irritated, though, that Horst had been right. Subconsciously, at least, I had kept a double cabin so that I could bring young men there and fuck them.

Which now, on the very first night, I had done.

Chapter Three: Or Bottom?

The next morning when I woke, Leo was gone. He of course had duties to perform for the breakfast service. We had arrived in Cologne and were tied up directly next to the stone-walled riverbank between two bridges right in the thick of the downtown area. The spires of the cathedral loomed just beyond the three-story stately building across a green patch and a street from the riverside.

I saw that Leo was in the dining room when I went upstairs, but I wasn't in the mood to eat with a bevy of elderly ladies with Leo being there, serving us and responding to me however he would so soon after I'd fucked him. He'd been all sighs and moans and "You're so big" and "Please. Again" last night, but I didn't think I would use him again. I had paid him. And so as far as I knew, he just took it as an extra-money part of the job. Turning to him again would make me feel needy, as if all I needed was physical release, and fucking Leo was just that—scratching the need for physical release. I wanted more from a young man than that. I wanted him to want me.

I'd been told I could have breakfast and lunch up on the upper deck anytime I wanted it, and that's where I went this morning. When I got up there, I saw that my neighboring couple, Tom and Sean, were the only other ones up there. Tom was at a small table on the city-side rail, facing a full breakfast, but Sean, in a Speedo, was stretched out on a lounge bed, taking in the sun. He was a gorgeous young man.

I was about to turn and go back downstairs, but Tom saw me and waved me over.

"Come, you are Craig Simpson, aren't you, in the cabin next to ours? Come and join me for breakfast."