Picture an erotic encounter in London's #Shangri-La on the Shard Hotel in London.
For the audio (that sounds like a British robot and not the best of the videos for this story but if you're brave, click here)
“Okay, I get it,” Angus interrupted, “she’s hot as hell and he’s unattractive but a bloody sexual intuit.” Angus neatly folded the newspaper and affirmatively placed it on a nearby side table. “Did you do it in the car or at their hotel? What was the hotel like?” He got up then walked over and stood above me in a commanding manner. “Don’t leave out any details,” he said, extending his hand to me as an invitation for me to stand. “I want to know everything - all of it.”
I stood up crisply with stiff notice. I nodded definitively. “Of course, Your Grace,” I said. When he asserted his authority, it was as if his role as superior was destined by G-d. It is one of the things that attracts me to him – it fits what makes my soul Jewish; an attachment to the specialness that underlies ‘chosenness’. “Is there anything else I can help you with as you listen to the apex of the story?”
Angus looked me up and down several times, finally settling on the ties for my sweats. He pulled at one end, slightly disappointed that once loosened, the trousers didn’t simply fall at his command. He feigned a sigh, “Yes, my standard appetizer, Deetz, please,” meaning his warm, home-made pretzels and my special recipe martini’s. He turned and went in the house, knowing I was watching every muscle move and strand of hair blow in the air like something off the cover of a horny slapper’s Friday night bodice ripper. And by the time he was inside, I had beefed up the story to ensure I not only got laid back then but that I’d get some now – with equal firmness.
∞∞∞∞
Their London Suite at the Shangri-la Hotel was 117 square meters of floor to ceiling glass luxury. The spotting scope gave you an advantage in the voyeuristic world of skyscraper living. I’d heard this kinda shit led to serious competitions in Mumbai and Hong Kong, with millionaires and billionaires betting big money on which of their wives looked hotter getting anal while being pressed up against a window. People spent hundreds of thousands of euros ensuring that the background furniture in the window frame was the right Feng shui or matched their partner’s hair color. Yeah, I wasn’t naïve in the world of the rich and famous. I grew up on a 400 plus year-old estate, the son of an Earl’s valet and a house maid. I often visited places like this as a child when my father, who hoped to train me to follow in his vocation, forced me to join staff in organizing business meetings in town. At least this time I’ll be able to lay on the 1,000-thread count Frette sheets.
Now fully in the living room, I stood back a bit from the purples, blues with streaks, redish orange sunset lights that cut across the sky while individual white LED city street lamps combined to reinforce man’s place in the order of planetary motions. Poking up were St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, and the Tower Bridge above the River Thames. “Nice view,” I said. To my left was an Asian-inspired leather sofa, walnut cocktail tables, and matching beige plush chairs. The dining set nearby still had their dinner dishes. On the opposite side of the room was the laptop with printer paper piled around the work table. It confirmed that the old man wasn’t lying – at least part of this trip was business.
I don’t recall how or when she poured drinks, but she blew by me now wearing more wind than clothes. I almost missed grabbing the glass. Her body was so perfectly Rubenesque, so full of cushiony wonder that a Jewish prayer of thanksgiving nearly fell out of my mouth. She smiled back at me coyly, winking an acknowledgment of my visual admiration. It is what I love about women who have grown into their sexual maturity – they’re not offering perfection but practice. As she walked away from me to hand her husband his glass, her bum shimmied like Beyoncé dancing on methamphetamines. Count on me to never be a 100% gay man ‘cause I’ll never find a man’s ass as inviting as a woman’s. But, then again, my dick never did care much for social politics.
Before I got thirstier, dreaming of sinking my cock deep, the old man voice broke in, “Well, before you get carried away visually fondling my wife’s fine behind, I should finish telling you what I saw.” His wife looked at me and nodded as if to confirm. She went into what I presumed was the bedroom where a few seconds later, I heard high pitched French – some family gossip about a foolish young cousin - from what few words I could pick up. “Unless you have someplace to be?” the old man asked.
Realizing he was standing close to me now, I recalled my previous curiosity. “Do you need to touch me again?”
“Soon,” he chuckled before inviting me to sit on the sofa across from him as if we were in the midst of some business deal. Someone had turned on a table lamp and lite a few candles, otherwise, the only illumination in the room where the street lights and flashing traffic signs, communicating to no one in particular. The shadows carved valleys on the old man’s face, making him seem more trusting in that old prophet kind of way. I wasn’t certain if I was going to have sex with him or be left standing at some ancient Athenian street corner waiting for the next thought probing question. But, as I said before, I’d been taught to respect my elders and every time except one when I did so, I got something more out of it than a good lay.
He reached for the remote resting on the coffee table between us. He clicked a few times until he reached the CD he wanted and a tenor sax explained what ‘a love supreme’ looked like. “Coltrane, nice,” I said smiling. When I first really started escaping my father’s iron gaze, I was frequenting jazz clubs in Cardiff like Dempseys. I must have looked pitiful because the bartender would sneak me a few beers and a sandwich, as long as I “kept quiet and didn’t bother the punters”. It was there that I learned to love the sound and soul of American jazz and blues. When I got to university in London and I wasn’t trolling the bars for sex, I’d listen to up-and-coming bands at Ronnie Scotts. Although no longer hosting the legends from the heydays in the 50s and 60s, being there gave me a peace I found nowhere else.
“You’re an old spirit, Desmond Mac Innes.” His voice brought me back from a meditation hoisted on Coltrane’s tenor sax lyrically offering a psalm as if jazz could take you to heaven. “You have responsibilities and duties to attend to but they will not present themselves, you will have to choose them.” I had never told him my name and no one except my parents called me ‘Desmond’.
Slightly irritated, as I was being forced back to Earth by a cryptic prophecy, I said, “Right. And some fairy godmother is going to take care of me.”
“Something like that.” He got up and sat close to me as he did at the bar. The old man took my right hand then ran his fingers along the lines in my palm. Ignoring my snarky comment, he continued, “You know that song by The Hollies, ‘The Air That I Breathe’? It talks about a love making that is so complete, so satisfying that it blots out everything – nothing else is important, not the usual rushes nor the daily whims. Sex so good, it leaves you breathless and grateful.” His strokes were light like my hand was a piano and he was Chopin performing. “You like sex. That’s good. There’s a lot to like about it. But the genuine sensation, the one that comes after the thigh shattering orgasm, only happens when one truly lets himself be free and shares that freeness with someone he completely trusts. Good sex can start off hot and panting but must end in peace otherwise you can’t call it good.”
“I guess up to now, I haven’t had good sex then.”
“And you won’t have that kind of sex tonight.” Before he stood up, I thought I caught wind of some disappointment in that last statement. “We can’t give you that peace.” He offered his hand as if I was royalty being assisted off a throne. “However, you have some doors we can open, a preview, if you may.”
“A preview?” I asked, feeling a bit wobbly once I stood – wondering if I was drunker than I’d originally thought or if they had slipped me something.
“Give you a glimpse of what your body hungers for and what will quench that hunger.”
I knew what he meant. Edges of it sometimes crept into my hook ups. I would come close – I tried visiting dungeons and gangbang parties - dallying near the edge but always pull back just in time to protect myself should things go south. Things had gone south, horribly, once before and I nearly didn’t get out of it fully alive. “And I’m supposed to trust you . . . because?”
“Because if I was going to hurt you, it all would have happened already.” He smiled and put my hand on his chest so I could feel his sincerity. His heart beat was slower than it should have been, like some yogi or Buddhist master who could slow their cardiovascular function to the point of near death. My clairsentient skills were online but not well tuned. But they were good enough to confirm this man was doing me a favor. “Plus, I don’t believe anyone will be able to hurt you like that again.” “From now on, the pain you will feel or fear will be self-inflicted.”
“Sounds like blaming the victim.”
He unbuttoned his shirt, which invited my hand to explore his chest – tight, curly hairs in a small patch in the middle. “There are only two types of assault found outside of oneself – the marring of one’s innocence and the loss of a loved one – and you’ve already had both and survived.”
I wondered if I was talking to Roberta Flack and if in a moment he was going to burst into melodic wordless vocalese. And in those days, I was impatient - unable to appreciate his foreshadowing of my life with Angus now. “Since I’m such as big and strong boy now, why don’t we open those doors.” Standing close, I realized that he was shorter, stockier than what I noted back in the bar. So, when I pulled him by the shirt toward me, I had to bend down slightly to kiss him. Yet, although I’d made the first real move, if I thought to Dom in this situation, I was mistaken. With one hand, he cupped my chin as if showing me how he wanted things, his lips instructing me more than kissing me back. His other hand cupped my ass cheek and lifted my pelvis up then against him as if to properly position my penis. My arousal however was stifled because instead of feeling an erection to match mine, there was nothing there. As I pulled away, confused and bordering on angry, my hands dropped down his chest and I felt the scars on each side.
“You’re trans?” I asked.
“Uh yes. Is that a problem?”
“Ah, no,” I stumbled. “It’s just I’ve never been with a trans person before.”
“I would imagine at your age, there is a lot of things you haven’t experienced yet.” Unlikely unnerved by anything I could or would say or do, he took off his shirt and tossed it on the couch. His movements told me that even if I stormed out right now, he’d still screw his wife and be happy about it. “Most trans folk I’ve seen are not so, . . . “
“Unashamed?” he interjected. “Yes, well, at this point in my life, there is really nothing to prove and no one I’m interested in impressing.” He smiled at me again, more like a kindly parent than a potential fuck buddy. He took the last swig from his drink and replaced the glass on the side table. “I know LGBT rights are all the rage now but I don’t care to live my life as a social movement freak show.”
Like I said, nowadays I wouldn’t ask such an insensitive question as I was about to, “How come you didn’t get the bottom surgery? I mean, considering the limo and this hotel room, it’s not like you can’t afford it.”
I didn’t know if he was offended by my remark because suddenly his wife entered the room. Many years later, but before I reunited with Angus, I told this story to my best friend Toni – someone better versed in appropriate, social justice-informed, philosophically congruent terminology. Toni told me, full of haughty feminist derision, that I was exhibiting ‘cisim’ and ‘interpreting the situation through my cis privilege’. Although I’d agree now, at that particular moment, I was just trying to figure out if I was getting fucked and if so, who was gonna do it. “Did you naughty boys start without me? Tsk!” the wife snorted. “He didn’t buy a dick because mine was enough for the both of us.” An exaggerated twist of her hips created an audible thumping sound from a hefty but average length penis as it slapped against her thighs.
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