I’ve never done this before, the man types.
They often say that. More often than not, it’s not true. Kai takes it all with a pinch of salt. Sometimes, not even that much. The man could be a virgin or a total manwhore, for all Kai knows.
Doesn’t matter, types Kai. What do you have in mind?
Full package, types the man.
But safe. I’m always safe.
You say so on your profile, the man types. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
When? I’m available tomorrow.
Thumbs up. You don’t want to know what I look like? How old I am? types the man.
No.
You’re beautiful, the man types, but this is not the kind of thing Kai ever responds to. Tomorrow, then, types the man, signs off.
It takes forever. Getting ready. He doesn’t know what to expect. It’s a full package, after all. Could be anything.
The guy last night wasn’t even queer. Just wanted to take a dump on a faggot, the guy had said. Like some sort of political statement. Kai doesn’t have many lines not to cross. But he has some. And that turned out to be one of them. He walked out.
He went to a pub afterward. Had some drinks. Told a friend about it. The friend laughed. Thought the whole thing was hysterical. Said he would let someone take a dump on him for two thousand quid.
Kai’s usually pretty well-shaved. All over. But he does some touch-ups. He needs a haircut, but that’ll have to wait. He makes sure he’s well-evacuated, douches. He’s been to the gym earlier. He’s still quite sweaty and smelly and takes a long shower. He lines his eyes with a touch of mascara. It’s part of his look. It’s what they see on his profile.
His hair is shoulder-length and pitch-black wavy, and he brushes it back for what a client once called a ‘European-boy-of-privilege-look’.
It’s his brand. The rent boy who doesn’t look like a rent boy. The rent boy you can take home to meet your parents. To charm them. To say things in French and show off on the piano. Afterward, whatever nasty tickles your fancy.
He gives himself a good butt naked top to bottom look-over. Back and front.
Then he gets dressed.
Someone once asked him whether he likes what he does.
He said, “Yeah, it’s OK. It’s not bad.”
It’s not OK. But a European-boy-of-privilege-look doesn’t make you such a boy.
And it more than pays the bills.
It also pays for a future.
Besides, he’s good at it.
Beats waitering.
It’s freezing outside, but he walks to the hotel. To clear his mind. It’s calming.
The lobby is nice. That’s usually the case. Guys who can pay what he asks tend to live high-end.
And of course the receptionist knows him. They almost always do. They’ve seen him around. He’s the pretty boy that appears after dark asking for room such-and-such. No, they never see any relation to the nephew or son they were told to expect.
They don’t mind him. Most of them also have better looks than bank balances. One does what one must. To most of them, being a receptionist at a hotel seems no better than being a rent boy. Similar bullshit. Occasional abuse. Get paid much less. In exchange, though, you get to keep your clothes on.
Besides, he fits their profile. He doesn’t stand out. He’s swanky enough for a place like this.
“Hey,” he says.
The receptionist grins. “616?”
“Good guess,” he says.
“I checked him in,” says the receptionist. “He had the look, if you know what I mean.”
Kai knows what he means. Older guy. Traveling alone. Rich. He’ll call on someone sooner or later. Boy or girl. In this case a boy.
The receptionist gives him a card so he can access the lifts, so the client doesn’t have to come down. Before Kai turns to go, the receptionist says, “Looking hot,” winks.
Someone once asked him what he wanted to be when he was a kid.
Loaded question. Stupid question.
“I always wanted to be a rent boy,” Kai had told him.
Dream come true.
Knock-knock. At the door. 616.
He always plays this game where he tries to guess what the client will look like before they open up.
This time he puts the client in his sixties, gives him a potbelly, makes him skinny-fat, flabby-armed, bow-legged. He goes with long gray hair, bald at the crown. Short. Five-five. Hungry-eyed and horny.
Most of them are hungry-eyed and horny. Just want to get going.
But, he’s mostly wrong, he sees, when the man opens the door.
The man is probably in his eighties, he guesses. Jeez! Skinny, for sure. No potbelly. There’s not enough to him to make up a potbelly. His gray hair is sparse and cropped short. He doesn’t look particularly hungry-eyed. Just hungry.
The old man stands there looking at him for quite some time, his eyes brimming with emotion. Some conjoining of sadness and joy. Not untypical for old people.
“Hi,” says Kai, not sure he should take this on. The guy’s really old. It could be risky. Rent boys don’t like explaining things to ambulance paramedics.
The old man seems stuck. Like he doesn’t know what to say.
“You were expecting me, right?” asks Kai.
“I’m sorry,” says the old man. “Of course. Come in. Have a drink.”
Good thing about the old ones, Kai knows, is that they’re probably not dangerous.
Probably won’t hurt you. Probably can’t do much at all.
Probably.
Not bad for business.
This job can get scary at times.
Someone once asked him whether he’s ever been attracted to a client.
This guy sounded like an academic of sorts because he actually said, “I mean, objectively attracted. Like you would fuck them because you want to.”
He asked, Kai figured, because he was actually quite good-looking and wanted the validation. Like he wanted to tell his friends he could have fucked Kai for free. He was also an asshole. Talked down to the waiter at dinner. Tried to sneak off the condom during sex.
“No. Never,” Kai had said.
The guy didn’t like that.
The old man asks what he wants to drink. Kai says Lagavulin. He loves Lagavulin. Must be the dirtiest and most exquisite of all whiskies. Gets him in the mood.
The old man calls down, orders a bottle, asks for ice and water. Then he excuses himself, goes to the bathroom, stays there a long time.
Maybe he comes out dressed as a wombat, thinks Kai. You never know. He’s had stranger.
Kai gets the whisky when it comes, tips the waiter a fifty.
“Can I open it?” he shouts, because he might as well have a drink while the old man does whatever he’s doing in there.
But the old man’s back (not dressed as a wombat), and he says it’s fine and opens the bottle and pours them each nearly half a tumbler. He seems nervous. He’s shaking a bit.
Kai takes a sip that’s more of a gulp. It burns hot and pleasant down his gullet. “What do you have in mind,” Kai asks.
The old man kind of squints, smiles. He seems sweet. Harmless. Like a grandpa who likes telling stories. Not the gropy kind.
“You have me the whole night or until we’re done,” says Kai. “I’m just wondering what you have in mind.”
“Oh, we can talk a while,” says the old man. “Just talk.”
Kai doesn’t like the talkers.
He once asked a guy, “When you looked at my profile, were you drawn to my mind?”
Because there’s really nothing about his mind on there.
Totally different focus areas.
The guy didn’t get it. He was a stupid guy.
A stupid guy that just wanted to talk.
Lucky Kai.
But the old man and Kai talk for a long time. And it’s actually not half bad.
He says he’s John, but Kai doesn’t think that’s true. The old man doesn’t look like a John.
But, that’s fine, thinks Kai. Names are meaningless, really. We have to call each other something.
The old man doesn’t ask Kai about himself. Which is awesome. Kai hates that. Would rather fuck the wombat. But the old man tells Kai quite a bit about himself.
He tells Kai he had a husband, but his husband died four years ago.
Kai says he’s sorry, and he means it. The old man pours some more whisky because Kai’s already finished his first glass. Kai keeps an eye on the old man, of course. He’s been slipped things before. Usually he catches them out. But not always. Happens so often he’s set his watch’s panic alert to a friend, in case he feels something bad taking hold of him.
“Not trying to get you drunk,” says the old man and laughs. “Not trying to drug you either,” he says.
“That’s exactly what you’d say if you were,” says Kai, winks. “How long had you been married?” He likes hearing about married gay guys. Gives him hope. For himself. For when he’s old and not hot at all. For when sex is not anywhere near the most important thing.
For love, Kai supposes.
“A bit more than fifty years,” says the old man. He says it softly, like it’s difficult to say. “But we met long before we got married,” he says.
“Impressive,” says Kai. “Open relationship?” he asks.
The old man laughs wryly. “No,” he says. “We tried that for a short while. Wasn’t for us. Just about the only time we really had an argument. Not worth it.”
Kai nods. He sips. “If I were married, I wouldn’t,” says Kai. “I think you shouldn’t get married until you’ve scratched all your itches.”
There’s a smile on the old man’s lips. Just a little twitch, really. “Easy for you to say,” he says. “You’re twenty, right?” he says, which is actually part of Kai’s profile that’s true.
Kai nods.
“Well,” says the old man. “We also thought that when we got married. But fifty years is a long time to have sex with the same person. There’s purity in the primal,” he says. “Sex for the sake of sex. Surely you’ve been with a lot of couples, not so?”
Kai shrugs a yes. Of course. Many. Married guys with wives back home and married gay couples make up a lot of his work. Both tricky. Both fraught with very different but real tensions and dynamics. The single ones get their freak on elsewhere. Use their apps or go to a bathhouse. No need to pay. No need for discretion.
“Sure,” Kai says. “And sometimes they fight,” he says. “When they think they’ve got it figured out but don’t. When they get jealous,” he says.
“Don’t I know it,” says the old man. “Puts you in a strange position, doesn’t it?” he says, and now it’s his turn to wink.
“This is fabulous,” says Kai, meaning the whisky.
The old man leans over, pours some more.
Kai once had this couple. The one guy had had cancer but he’d recovered. Thing was, whatever they’d done to save his life had left him impotent.
They actually told Kai all this. Online. Before they met up. To make sure he understands.
It was sad and when Kai met them he could see their sadness.
The impotent guy wanted someone to fuck his partner because he was worried his partner was getting frustrated, may go behind his back. He thought it was what he wanted. What they wanted. It wasn’t. What they wanted was the past. To turn back the clock. To get back what they’d shared and could no longer share and would never share again.
Kai thought they’d both meant well by renting him, both wanting to assuage the guilt of the other, even though neither of them were guilty of anything as far as Kai could tell.
Kai did what they wanted and then they started arguing. They threw things. It was pretty dramatic.
They said a lot of things to each other, none of which was true, Kai had thought.
Truth was they loved each other. Truth was they didn’t want Kai. They wanted each other.
But that’s not what they said to one another. They said sharp, broken things. Things meant to cut and hurt as they’d been cut and hurt.
Kai left quietly. Didn’t bother to get paid.
He went downstairs, had a couple of drinks in a bar, went home, took a shower and wept.
He kept on hoping they would make it through in the end.
Together.
Because the world seemed very brutal to him right then, and he couldn’t help but wonder whether it would ever get that brutal for him.
Kai’s well past tipsy now. Feeling warm and sleepy.
The old man is slurring a bit. He tells Kai about his husband who’d died. It seems to Kai that this is really all the old man wants to do. To tell. To share. To remember. To be heard.
The old man talks about how he and his husband came up together to do really well for themselves, and how they would not have managed that without each other.
He tells Kai of the trips they’d been on, and how much they loved it. The old man smiles and his gaze drifts, his eyes alight as memories take him back and away.
It’s a bit corny, thinks Kai. But he likes the old man. The old man’s a romantic. He’s lonely. He’s kind of waiting to die. Seems to Kai like he’s here to listen. To remind the old man of youth and beginnings, to help him forget about ends.
And Kai realizes he doesn’t want to have sex with the old man. Not because he’s old, but because he likes the old man and knows he won’t afterward.
So, “What do you have in mind?” Kai asks again. It seems to him if the old man wants to do something they better do it before they get any drunker.
The old man looks at Kai for a while, as though to place Kai back in the context of his mind. Very softly, almost indiscernibly, the old man says, “I miss the old you.” Or that’s what Kai thinks the old man said. He isn’t sure. It seems like a weird thing to say.
“Pardon?” says Kai.
“Just to hold you,” says the old man. “It’s all I want. To hold you again.”
“You’ve never held me,” says Kai, rather sharply. The old man just looks at him in a wounded way.
“I’m sorry,” says the old man. “You’re right, of course. But that’s all I want. To go to bed and hold you and fall asleep and wake with you in my arms,” he says. “That’s it.”
“That’s fine,” Kai says, trying not to look relieved.
“More?” asks the old man, bottle in hand.
“Sure,” says Kai.
Kai had once been with a guy. Pretty good looking. Beautiful, actually. When he got to the guy’s room the guy looked tense as a violin string. Like the smallest thing would make him snap.
On the down-low. Kai knows the type. The untanned spot where the wedding band goes.
They had sex and the guy was pretty sweet about everything. Nervous and new. Tender like he was scared to break Kai or to be broken.
“Have never done this before,” said the guy afterward.
“No shit,” said Kai, but smiled, trying to put the guy at ease. He looked so worried. Like the world was waiting to crash down on him.
Then he went all weird on Kai.
Said, “I could love someone like you.” Said, with his hands in his face, “Oh, my God! Oh God! oh Jesus!” Said, “I can look after you if you want to quit this.”
Kai asked the guy for his money, trying to be nice about it, left.
Kai meets many men like him. Men who’d gone into hiding. In part, at least. Men who’d got caught in a lie too costly to untell. Sometimes they have babies back home. Sometimes they lie so that those that care about them will continue caring.
But such men can be desperate, and desperate men frighten him.
It goes exactly like the old man had said.
Sometimes guys lie, Kai knows. Say they want to cuddle, then try to stick it to you while you’re asleep.
But not the old man. They finish the whisky and the old man takes a bath while Kai showers.
The old man watches Kai while he showers, and Kai gets hard, does a soapy little display, takes his own good time jerking off. Value for money, thinks Kai.
The old man just grins. Stays right where he is.
Then to bed. He holds Kai the whole night. He feels all skin and bone, his breath is a bit funky, and he snores like a motherfucker.
But, all in all, Kai sleeps like a baby, or like a young man who had half a bottle of whisky.
Once, in a bar, a guy told Kai Kai’s job is “just nasty”. It was amusing since the guy was trying to pick Kai up, get some services for free.
“I don’t know about that,” Kai had said. “I’ve seen people in Parliament say and do nastier things,” he said.
The guy liked that. He laughed, said, “Can’t disagree with that,” drank to Kai’s health.
Kai wakes before dawn.
The alarm clock blinks red: 5:36.
The old man is sitting in the dark in a tub chair by the blackout curtain, drinking a cup of coffee.
Kai’s pretty hung over. He sits up, rubs his eyes, says, “I should go.”
“One day,” says the old man, rather deadpan, “we’ll know each other.”
Weirdo, thinks Kai. His world is full of weirdos. “I already know you,” says Kai, gets up, stands by the bedroom doorway.
“You’ll know me better than anyone,” says the old man. “You’ll love me,” he says. “We’ll be together and in love,” he says.
Kai snorts derisively. He doesn’t mean to. It just sort of comes out. “The age gap,” says Kai. “It’s a bit of a problem.”
“No,” says the old man. “Your future, my past,” he says.
“Yeah,” says Kai, but he’s thinking, great, fucking dementia.
“I was also young back then,” says the old man. It’s dark where he’s sitting, but his eyes flicker golden, and his voice sounds strong, deliberate. “I was also young and beautiful,” he says. “Just like you. We were gorgeous together,” he says.
Now Kai’s age shows, and maybe also the fact that he’s just woken up with a hammering headache, because all he can come up with is, “Whatever, dude,” as he turns to get dressed.
The old man follows Kai as Kai leaves. Kai keeps an eye on him but tries not to be obvious about it. He takes the money on the minibar. There’s more than they’d agreed. Quite a bit more.
“Bye,” says Kai. “Let me know if you want to meet up again,” he says. He always says this. To keep things pleasant. To keep his options open. He doesn’t always mean it. He’s not sure he means it this time.
Kai opens the door. Just before he steps out, the old man takes his arm, says, “I just wanted to hold you. One last time. I’m sorry,” he says. “I know it ended awkwardly. I wish it hadn’t, but I missed you.”
“It’s fine,” says Kai, eyes cold, tone flat.
“I love you,” says the old man. He has tears in his eyes, his gaze seems like black water, and Kai feels himself drawn into something unknown but familiar.
He shakes himself from the old man’s grip. But gently. He doesn’t want to hurt the old man. He turns and decides to take the stairs down. So the old man can’t follow.
Not the weirdest night of my life, thinks Kai. Not by any measure. Just a sad lonely old man slowly losing his grip on things.
Could have been a lot worse.
Six flights down.
Kai feels like he’s unraveling. Like he’s walking through an invisible gossamer curtain.
Maybe the old man had slipped him something, it occurs to him.
He walks.
Down, down, down.
Kai once had a woman client.
Once.
Said she wanted to know what it’s like to be fucked by a gay guy.
Go figure, he’d thought at the time. Takes all kinds to make up a world. He found the proposal intriguing and agreed.
Couldn’t get his dick up.
She laughed. He remembers her laugh, full-throated and joyful. They watched romcoms together until the sun came up and had a long fancy breakfast.
It was a good night.
Kai comes to. Feels like shit. Worst fucking headache ever.
He must have passed out or fallen asleep.
He’s in a stairwell.
He worries he might have been drugged, but that doesn’t feel right. Probably went to a party, had too much to drink, he thinks.
Later today, after I’ve had some sleep, thinks Kai, someone will call and say great party, and I’ll remember and we’ll laugh about it.
He walks a flight down, exits into the reception of a hotel, walks through a revolving door into an angry-cold morning.
No one calls the next day.
He finds nearly double his full fee in his coat pocket, which makes him wonder what he’d done to earn that.
He checks out his profile but something’s gone wrong and most of his history is gone. That’s never happened before.
He calls some of his friends, asks whether they know where he went last night.
Unsurprisingly, they don’t. If it was work, he wouldn’t have told them.
Most of them tell him what he already knows. Some iteration of, dude, you really need to find a different line of work.
He has himself checked out to make sure everything’s fine.
Everything’s fine.
Thank God.
He hasn’t worked in weeks. He’s decided to take some time. He has enough money to last him a while. Maybe a year.
Fact is, his lost night really freaked him out. Still does. His memory of that night is just an empty hole. Like someone just scooped it all out. Doesn’t make sense. He should have remembered something by now.
It’s time for a change, he’d concluded. But he’s still trying to figure out what shape such change may take.
He met a guy. He really likes this guy. He has known the guy a week, and they’ve been out together a few times, but it feels like they’ve known each other longer. They sort of ‘flow’, is what he tells his friends when they ask about it.
He doesn’t want to tell the guy he’s a rent boy. Who wants to date a rent boy? And since he hasn’t been working, Kai just told him he’s between jobs, which is perfectly true, and the guy seemed fine with that, didn’t ask any questions.
If we work out, Kai tells himself, I’ll tell him about that. And about my lost night.
Time will tell.
Kai met the guy at a café. The guy’s a waiter there. Not a very good one. The kind that flirts with clients.
Kai was having a drink when the guy caught his eye. Like gay guys do when they want to catch your eye. That long lingering look, full of intent.
And then the guy winked, and Kai thought, Cute!, and the guy came over and dropped a Post-it on Kai’s table with his name and number.
Hackneyed, but it worked.
It’s funny. The moment Kai saw him he thought “John”, like maybe they’d met before. But the Post-it said “Timothy”.
He really looks like a Timothy.
