I had given up expectations a week ago and I was close to losing all hope. Rao, the translator who had attached himself to me when I arrived at Tambaram Airport in Chennai, formerly Madras, at the end of the earth, in India, had sensed I was losing it and, smiling and bobbing up and down, declared he would save me. He took me off to a small bar near the Tamil Nadu State trade official offices after we'd sat for more than an hour for the third time outside the official's office in unrequited optimism that having an appointment time would get us in to see the trade official. I was not quite sure if Rao had any standing with my London and Paris fashion house firm of DeWitts when he latched himself on to me at the airport, but I was too wrung out then to care or object--and after the failed attempts to see the trade official I still was rung out with an added burden of dejection, so I let Rao guide me out of the Trade Ministry Tamil Nadu offices and to the secluded bar.
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.
