Memories of a Thwarted Coup

October 2016, but still humid and sultry, a primary reason I had remained here. The atmosphere as I sat at the counter of my gay male bar, viewing the hooking up going on around me, was as tense as it had been back in the even more sultry summer of 1976. Then, as now, the rumors were flying that the king was dead. The irony was that it was the same king now that it had been in 1976 when we were assured he was dying. I had been told to be here when the men came. I knew what they were coming for. I was ready to go now. I--and they--had had a good run. They couldn't say that I hadn't kept the faith and kept it all to myself for the last forty years, though. As I sat at the bar, looking over all I had established here, I waited and reminisced.

I looked in the mirror above the bar. Not bad. Still not bad at sixty.

* * * *

That summer night in 1976 was much more tense than this night, waiting for news of the death of the king. Rumors of the king's death were circulating then too but so was the gossip about the movement of the communist forces on the country's borders. The Vietnamese were said to be poised on the border, the neighboring kingdom having fallen to them the previous year and their victory in their own country having just been won--releasing their forces to move on to the falling of the next domino, the country I, at twenty, had wound up in.

My position was precarious in 1976. By day I was an assistant tennis pro at the Royal Sports Club in the capital. By night I danced a pole in a gay bar in the nearby red-light district and went home with any man who had the money for it. Overall, though, I did ad hoc information-gathering and special services for U.S. intelligence operating out of a military aide mission attached to the U.S. embassy. All very precarious. I could be uncovered and offed or sent away at any moment.

The locals laughed, albeit nervously, at the threat of the communist forces on the country's borders. "Let them invade," they said. "They'd get to the outskirts of the city and the traffic would put them at as much of a standstill as it puts the rest of us."

They didn't laugh at the thought of the demise of the king, though. The country was embroiled in palace intrigue and the country was on the brink of something or other--certainly chaos and bloodshed. The queen was rumored to be poisoning her husband to bring her own alternate royal line back into power. The ruling family, of course, was resisting this as best they could. I had no idea which direction my own country, the United States, was leaning in this struggle. I couldn't even say then what direction my own life would go in. I'd recently been drummed out of the active war in the region for having it on with men. I was contemplating how I could fold back into life in the United States with that on my record, when contacts I had in the intelligence world told me of the opportunity of staying in the region, coming here, where my preferences were tolerated and I could be helpful to my country. And, so, here I settled--at least until I made up my mind for the long term, which seems to have become forever.

But I did know that the night a black Mercedes, with tented windows, glided up outside the club I was dancing the pole in and summoned me. Inside the car were not only a contact of mine from the embassy but also a local-country military officer.

They drove me to a large compound on a canal with a rambling native palace on stilts perched over an Olympic-sized swimming pool and terrace draped with strings of fairy lights. I knew the house. I'd been here before, servicing a young, but high-ranked army general, a nephew of the queen. He was one of the principal information sources in my connection with U.S. intelligence. Whatever the arrangement, I could rest assured that I was serving my country's interest--and demands.

The Mercedes parked under an adjacent thatched-roofed building built of bamboo and raised on stilts was yellow. Only the royals here were permitted to have yellow vehicles.

I was guided down to the swimming pool terrace by a silent servant and brought into the presence of the young general and a male guest. The two men were sitting in lounge chairs next to each other, facing the pool, the submerged lights of which cast a wavy blue aura over the terrace area. A naked male youth of my age or a year younger--the men in this country looked young until suddenly they looked old and wrinkled--was draped over the lap of the general, so I surmised I wasn't there for the military man. A look on the youth's face and the way that his pelvis was languidly moving in the general's lap told me he was riding the general's cock.

I wasn't shocked. This is the world I had entered when I came to this city.

Both of the men were naked. Both them of them were in military fit. The general was nearly ten years older than my twenty, but the guest was closer to my age. I knew instantly who the guest was. If I was surprised that I was here for him--and there was every reason to believe I was--I didn't show up. He was known to be squirrelly and volatile. There was no reason not to believe that he'd fuck anything that moved.

Young, naked women were there too, hanging on the male guest, but I could tell they were incidental--for show. Photos had been taken in instances like this and leaked to the local press to "prove" the man was strictly hetero. I knew differently.

A table set between the men was laden with bottles of liquor, wine, and beer and with plates of fruit and other delicacies. The male guest's attention went to me immediately as I strode into the dim lighting on the terrace.

"Strip and show yourself for the crown prince," the general said. It was said softly, but there was no question it was said with full "don't question it, do it" authority. "He is very tense tonight. He needs to take his mind off affairs."

The young women who had been draped over him melted into the darkness.

Of course he was tense and had his mind on what was happening in his country. He was within a missed breath of being king and there was a communist army, fresh from victories, on his country's borders. But what was he doing at the general's compound on a night like this? His father was dying and his mother--the aunt of the general hosting him and providing, through U.S. intelligence, me--was rumored to having poisoned his father. I wasn't dumb. I certainly, no matter how hunky he was, was brighter than the crown prince. Western intelligence agencies had been shuttling him from one international military school program to the next for years not only because he thoroughly enjoyed them, but also to keep him from doing harm to himself and others. He wasn't considered to be the brightest bulb in the chandelier. He was quite a hunk, though.

I could smell a coup attempt. I could surmise that the nephew was keeping the crown prince at hand and under control against opportunities available that hung on the survival of the king. My handlers would want to know this. But it looked like I would be otherwise indisposed while whatever happened was happening.

I stripped and posed for them--for the crown prince. I did a sex routine in gay bars at night, popular in this Asian region because I was a blond American. I understood that they wanted a private performance of that. Bump and grind music began to be piped out to the terrace. Poles were holding up the lights of strings, and I moved to one of these, close to and off to the side where the crown prince was sitting, leaning forward and taking an erection--his erection--in his hand. I was providing a new focus of interest for him, continuing to keep his mind on anything but the state of the country. I languidly danced the pole for him, naked. Soft music from local instruments stirred the air and gave me a rhythm to move to. On the other side of him, the young man in the general's lap rose and fell on the young general's cock. Turning my eyes in that direction, I brought my movement into the rhythm of his rise and fall as well.

I didn't know if I was supposed to look at the crown prince--if I was supposed to know who he was and that he was here.

The short cry from the youth riding the general, marking that the general or he, or both of them had come, was a signal for the general to progress my role in the evening.

"Swim a couple of laps in the pool and then come out and service the crown prince," the general directed me. I swam the laps, and came out of the pool, wet and dripping of water, my long, blond hair cascading to my shoulders.

"Stand there. Stroke yourself off." The crown prince was speaking for the first time--his Oxford-education-provided diction perfect. The young women, who had moved from the crown prince's lap to the instruments that provided the soft background music for my pole dance, had disappeared, as had the young man who had been draped on the general's lap. The one in the spotlight now was me.

"Nice," the crown prince murmured. "Acceptable."

The general was leaning forward in his chair, his cock in his hand. But he was watching the crown prince more closely than he was watching me. His interests were clearly in keeping the crown prince occupied and under his sway on this night of all nights. There were armed guards in the background at the edge of the terrace lighting. They were watching every move the crown prince and the general made. They weren't interested in me--only in the attention I was getting. How much more loyal were they to the general than to the crown prince, I wondered. I found the atmosphere tense, dangerous, but I had my assignment. I played it out.

My mind was racing. I didn't think they were planning to kill the crown prince and make the power grab sweeping. I think their plan was to let him ascend to the throne to be controlled by them--but that he was so mercurial that they couldn't count on him staying with them en route to the throne. I could only believe that U.S. interest, if I couldn't do anything to keep the king alive, would be to let the crown prince ascend.

When I had come, splattering my seed on the terrace rock, the crown prince sighed and murmured, "Come. Blow me."

I went to him and knelt between his legs. I took his cock--a very nice one--in my mouth and made love to it. He groaned and engorged even further. But after a few moments of this, he grasped my biceps and pulled me up. "A lap dance. Give me a lap dance."

Someone turned a recording on. Bump and grind music, with the volume turned up. I danced for him above his lap, both facing away and facing him, with him stroking his erection with one hand. When he could take no more, he grasped my hips and pulled my channel down onto his hard cock.

I cried out in wounded pain-ecstasy, as I knew he would want me too. I was well used, though, and I spread for his demand, letting him slide deep up inside me. I gasped and groaned at the penetrating invasion, clutching his bulging biceps, digging my nails in, and grunting, "Yes, yes, fuck me," as I knew he'd want me to.

The main event had started. I understood that my job was to keep him focused on me--and what he was taking from me.

He was a strong young man--stronger than I was. He penetrated deep. Grasping his biceps as he held and guided my hips, I rode him and rode him and rode him, crying out, "Yes. Yes. Fuck, yes. Screw me hard!" to his ejaculation. I wasn't feigning it, and I think he realized I wasn't. He was thick and virile, cruel and vigorous, and royally prodigious in repeated sends off of cum. I collapsed in his lap, fully possessed, totally taken.

He may be pampered and a bit crazy and not nearly the leader his father had been, but he was sexy and he knew how to fuck. He may be a crown prince, but he was all virile man. And there was no question what he wanted from and could take from a young blond male whore--and he took it, slamming me, mercilessly up and down on his demanding, deep-penetrating shaft.

For some twenty minutes he owned me.

"Shit that was good, No, it was great," I murmured, causing him to smile, but, of course, he was the crown prince. He didn't care how I felt about it as long as he got off. But maybe he wasn't used to a genuine expression of appreciation from the one he was coupling with--and my remark had been a genuine one. He may be a crown prince, but he also was a real stud.

His sigh marked his own satisfaction. It wasn't a lasting satisfaction, though. He was a quick reloader and wanted more. This certainly would be quite fine with the general babysitting him. And he wanted to dominate. He became turgid again while I was still lapping him. He rose, turned me onto my belly inside the chair, mounted me from behind, penetrated, and fucked me again, taking his time and his pleasure. He cupped my chin, arching my back into his muscular chest, and thrust, thrust, thrust. I reached under my belly, grasped my shaft, and accomplished a second coming myself.

The general sat beside us, cock in hand, and watched with a knowing little smile on his face. Whatever was happening in the country beyond the compound walls--and we could hear now what was either fireworks, which often were set off here, or gunfire--the crown prince wasn't in on any of the planning or the preparation. He was here, under control--of the queen's nephew.

Time. As much time as possible was the thought running through my brain while the crown prince fucked me. Somehow I thought it was important that this continue--that the atmosphere and mood here not change drastically--and not just for my benefit.

But copulation can't go on indefinitely. It would eventually have to bring release or be aborted. On this night it ended in release--more than once. Saying he was satiated and tired then--and, not spoken, obviously at the edge of inebriation and clearly under the general's control whether he realized it or not--the crown prince permitted himself to be escorted off to a bedroom to sleep off his private party.

The general took me to his own bedroom and fucked the stuffing out of me, enjoying his own little victory party, before turning me back to the men in the black Mercedes. I was driven back to my flat as dawn was filtering in. The only thing said to me was, "You did well, Sean. I think that will do it."

I didn't have the guts to ask what "it" was.

I lay there on my bed through the following day, recovering from being--literally--royally fucked--a day in which I didn't have to go to work because both the sports club and the sex bars were shut down by martial-law decrees by the continuing threat--the status of the king still wasn't resolved, the communist troops were still poised on the border, and no new military cabal had staged a successful coup yet.

I'm not a dummy. A week later I knew I had been right on what I had figured out I was doing that night at the general's compound. In his scheme, he was controlling and preparing the crown prince to be his puppet ruler. In my employer's views I had done what I had to do. A week later, the communist forces were still on the border but not attacking. The king no longer was dying. The queen had departed for a prolonged shopping trip in Switzerland, her general nephew had unexpectedly died during a training exercise, and the crown prince was still the crown prince.

* * * *

October 2016 and now the king quite definitely was dead. There no longer were foreign troops on the country's borders. The queen--now the dowager queen--was living on the French Riviera. The kingdom was calm, although the mourning for the old king was deep and genuine. In a country where the generals were prone to rattle their cannons and exercise their ambition, the succession would be a peaceful one. The man I knew of for so long as the crown prince was king.

There always had been a chance that he had realized what his uncle was trying to do back when he'd brought me in and that he's think I was a witting player for the uncle. There always was a chance the crown prince-turned-king would come after me when he had the power in his hands. I understand now the inconvenience I had become. That night at the general's compound in the summer of 1976 had not marked the only encounter I had with the crown prince. For years after that, arrangements would be made--not by a member of the queen's extended family, of course--for me to meet in private with the crown prince. He was the one who made my owning this bar possible and who kept me living here.

We were now both pushing sixty hard, and the relationship wasn't as it once had been. It was, though, inconvenient now. If anything, U.S. intelligence thought I was too close to the new king for their purposes and there always was a danger of inconvenient exposure. This had already been explained to me. There would be a generous offer for my bar and a first-class plane ticket to anywhere I wanted to go in the United States.

I had been here for more than forty years. I had no idea where in the States I would want to go from here. I didn't have any idea how to open a gay bar there anyway. But I could see the writing on the wall. I was strongly considering Key West. It had to be someplace warm. I'd been someplace hot too long to change that.

That was if I would be permitted to leave here alive.

I looked out on the street and saw the black Mercedes from the embassy glide up to the curb. Whatever the offer was, I knew I would accept it and hope for the best. If I survived, I would always have my memories. There was no price tag or external control on those.