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.
