Death in Girne

My eyes went to the water of the harbor just below and to the right of where I was sitting on a sultry, glorious evening in the Mediterranean. There, between the bows of two bobbing small yachts, I saw them in the water and smiled to myself—two spent condoms, floating there, like gelatinous jelly fish, on the surface of the slightly oil-slicked water. Had I remembered to come out with rubbers, they reminded me. I ran a hand into the pocket of my linen trousers. Yes, three rubbers and a small tube of lube. Never leave home without them. Not in my business.

"I'm so happy you were available this evening," Rifaat said, sitting across from me at the harborside restaurant table. "I found I needed to come to Girne from Lefkosa at the last moment. I wouldn't have wanted to miss the opportunity of laying you again."

He reached across the table and touched the silver bar in my left nipple, visible and touchable because I'd come out in the evening wearing a black mesh athletic T. I was seeing Rifaat Ilham by appointment in the picturesque Girne harbor, but it never hurts to advertise for other business as well. Rifaat was one of the more affectionate of my regulars. He liked touching me here and there as assurance, I think, that a young, blond American would go with him and open his legs for him.

I did it for pay, but that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy the company and cocks of men I did it for.

He'd just shown me the latest photo of his family—a wife, two boys, and a girl, the children preteens, the wife not looking all that old herself—certainly a lot younger than Rifaat. And when I'd handed the photo back to him, he'd taken my hand from across the table and was still holding it, rubbing my palm with his thumb.

We were being fairly obvious, I suppose, out here on the stone quay moving in a nearly full circle around the inner harbor of the northern Cyprus Byzantine-period town held down at one end by a medieval castle and at the other by the Dome Hotel. The Turks, who controlled this part of Cyprus, called the picturesque harbor town Girne, and the Greeks, on the southern two-thirds of the island, called it Kyrenia. All of the restaurateurs with tables swirling around the harbor knew what I was about, though, so it didn't matter of Rifaat Ilham showed some affection.

He was an interesting man. This was the third time he'd engaged me. He'd come from mainland Turkey and had, I was told, an import business here. He lived in the capital city at the center of the island, a divided city that the Turks, in the north, called Lefkosa and the Greeks, in the south, Nicosia. Ilham must be fifty or more and he was a beefy man, but he was in great shape for his age, both hard bodied and hung, as I already well knew. His face was more one of character than of good looks, but he was all smiles and enthusiasm and was what one would call charismatic. A good salesman, I was sure. He had a body I liked too—brown, muscular, and hirsute.

He was gregarious and easy to talk to. He was giving me a leisurely dinner beside the water in the Girne harbor. We ate, drank, and chatted amicably into the hours of the early night that I liked so much here. It was a magical, ageless setting. The string of twinkling tea lights decking the tables, buildings, and bobbing yachts in the inner harbor floated a glow over the stone facades of the encircling buildings, their ground floors former shops and storage areas turned toward the harbor and their upper stories residences turned toward the upper road encircling the harbor.

I didn't resent it then when he said, "Shall we go up to my room now? I'm booked at the Dome Hotel again." Most of the men I served here began the night with the "Let's go up to the room now" direction.

* * * *

There was no use sneaking by anyone at reception in the Dome. I was well known there—and tolerated. They all got their cut. There was a young man sitting in the lobby giving Ilham and me close scrutiny when we came in—he was still there, reading a newspaper, when I left. If he was a policeman, he was new to the beat. But there wasn't so much as a murmur from those at the reception desk and Ilham guided me, hand on my butt, to the elevator.

The room was facing the inner harbor and had a floor-to-ceiling window.

"Do you want to join me?" Ilham asked. We'd both stripped and had done a bit of standing kissing and fondling inside the door. I could see that he was already set up for pleasure, with lines of Coke laid out on a sheet of paper on the desk. He was offering a couple of lines to me.

"No, thank you," I said. "Let me know where and when you want me." I went over to the window, leaned into the frame, and watched the late-night activity in the harbor, while he snorted some lines.

"I'll sit at the end of the bed," he said at length. When I turned, I saw that he was in full erection. He had what was called a beer-can cock—extraordinarily thick. He was longer than average too. That was one of the things I liked about servicing him. Average cocks did little for me anymore. I liked to be stretched and tested. Ilham did that for me. I wasn't that wild about the drugs, though. I avoided that shit. I'll have to say it gave him a magnificent erection though—and he'd be able to keep it for hours. With Ilham, it would be at least an hour. He took his time and wanted it more than once.

He settled on the bed and I came to him, went down on my knees between his spread thighs, took him in my mouth, and gave him slow head. Humming, he leaned over my body, moved both of his hands to my butt cheeks, and squeezed, kneaded, and pulled them apart. A finger from each of his hands went to my hole and he started the opening up process while I sucked him off.

At length, he gently pushed me off him, rose, helped me up, turned me, and laid me on my back on the bed. I led him manipulate my legs—he liked positioning me. He wanted total, unresisting surrender from the get go. He put a pillow under the small of my back to elevate and roll my pelvis up, bent and spread my legs, and pressed my feet flat on the edge of the bottom of the mattress.

For a half hour or more, he worked me over. He wanted me to come before he fucked me. He knelt below me and ate my ass out, reaming me with his tongue. He produced a cock sleeve and fucked my cock with it while he was eating me out. This was followed with work with a thick dildo. The workout was fine with me. I knew I had to be monstrously open to take his cock.

He worked me until I came for him, lathering his face with my cum—another glorious climax in death,

la petite mort

, a little death, the goal for me, both for me and the man I was with, any man I let inside me. Laughing, he rose, went back to the desk, and snorted a few more lines of the Coke.

He came back to the bed, still in monstrous erection. Standing over me at the foot of the bed, he made a ceremony out of slowly rolling the condom on and lubing it and my ass channel up before crouching over me, capturing my eyes with his, pressing his fists into the mattress on either side of my shoulders and slowly, ever so slowly, working his cock into me, deep and thick. I grasped his biceps in my hands, panted hard, and gave him moans that weren't in the least bit feigned as they were with some of my customers. This was when it was for more than the money—when I was fully possessed by a man's shaft. He was big, all-consuming inside me. He had a gold medallion on a thick gold chain around his neck. The medallion dangled in front of my face, and I took it into my mouth, sucking on it to stifle my incentive to scream, as his hips began to move, fucking me in long, hard, deep strokes.

As he lowered his muscular, hirsute chest onto to mine, becoming more intimate in the embrace, and buried his face in my throat, my hands went, first to his shoulder blades, and then as the pace of his thrusts increased and my pelvis began to gyrate to meet the rhythm of the fuck, my hands glided down his back, and I palmed and clutched his bulbous, bouncing buttocks cheeks to me, ensuring that he remain inside me with the maximum access possible.

This. This was why I did this—give myself to men, become open and vulnerable to them, lie on my back and open my legs for them, letting them cover me, use me. I didn't do it just for the money, or even mostly for the money—there were other, less vulnerable, less painful, ways of making money. It was having a man want me, need to be inside me, covering me. A hard-bodied man on top of me, enslaving me, mastering me, becoming one with me, inside me . . . fucking me.

He came, again and again, killing me with each jerk and release,

la petite mort

—a little death by fuck. As I could feel him pumping the bulb of the condom full of his cum, I raised and spread my leg in a V for his victory and my satisfied, total surrender.

It wasn't just for the money.

He pulled out of me and went back to the desk and to the Coke. I lay there, panting and watching him. He rolled the rubber off his cock and dropped it in the wastebasket next to the desk. The hotel maid the next day wouldn't be the least surprised. Girne was a party town—especially in the summer. He turned his face to me, smiling. There was a residual smudge of white powder on his nose.

"You sure?" he asked, gesturing to the paper on the desk, with two lines of Coke remaining on it.

"No thanks," I answered.

He shrugged, went to the en suite bathroom, pissed in the toilet with the door open so that I could still watch him. I knew he liked me to follow him with my eyes when we fucked, knowing that he was in great shape for his age, and so I did. He returned to the desk and gave me another "You sure?" look, but he didn't offer the Coke again. Instead, he snorted it himself. He picked up another condom disk and crowned himself.

"Turn over on your belly, please," he said, as he walked back to the bed.

I did so, and he covered me from on top, putting the bulb of his cock in position with one of his hands while the other one glided up my left arm and gripped my wrist. I jerked and gave a little cry as he mounted and penetrated me, going deep. He could get deeper access in this position than in the missionary we'd already done. His right hand glided up my right arm and he gripped that wrist as well.

Then he fucked the shit out of me.

* * * *

The bar at the British Club, tucked back in a corner of the harbor promenade between the castle walls and one of two cobblestone streets descending down into the harbor from the upper town, was still open when I left the Dome. I had a room and bath on the third floor of the building the bar was in. It wasn't a club for Brits anymore, but it once had been, so the expatriate Brits and other Westerners on the island liked to come here when they came to Girne.

Being a rent-boy in the harbor wasn't my only—or even my principle—job in Cyprus. I had come here as a student in archeology in my undergraduate days, and had just stayed here—two years past graduation now—afterward because the island was so rich in history and archaeological excavations—and, yes, because both Turkish and Greek men were, as a whole, gorgeous, and all man. I signed on for a dig three or four times a year, earning enough to keep me. The rent-boy work was gravy, providing my pleasure money. I was highly sexed, so often the work provided me pleasure as well, as it had done that evening with Rifaat Ilham. This was high season—the summer—for me in the rent-boy business.

For some reason. the male-on-male rent-boy business out of the Girne harbor, with men willing to take what was still the social risk in Cyprus of engaging other men for sex, wasn't as prevalent in seasons other than summer. Perhaps it's because there were more foreign tourists here in the summer, or it was too hot to work in fields or offices, or something else. This, strangely, contrasted with female prostitution in the harbor. Men wanted women here in all seasons and were willing to pay for it any time of year. It was mainly summer that men who wanted men were randy and frisky enough to seek out another man for pay. So, in general, during fall, winter, and spring, I worked elsewhere around the island on archaeology digs and I spent the summer here, in Girne harbor, selling my body to men. Summer here was for loving—it was part of the magical atmosphere of the inner Girne harbor.

Tanju Hamdi, my pimp and the manager of the British Club, was sitting at the end of the bar when I came in. Sami, one of my friends, but a submissive like me, so not a fuck buddy, was tending bar. He too was one of Tanju's boys.

When I entered and Sami had pulled me a mug of Efes beer, Tanju gestured toward the back of the bar, where two pool tables held court. A couple of blond hunks were playing pool there. Chances were very good they were Danes—soldiers in the UN peacekeeping contingent that had manned the Green Line between the Greek and Turkish zones of the island since the Turkish invasion of 1974 had established the battle line running the full width of the island.

"The tall one was asking about action," Tanju muttered.

I took my beer and walked to the back, where the tables were. I made nice with the guys and worked my way into the pool action. The tall one was Dieter. His stockier sidekick was Kurt. They were both body beautiful and had money to burn. It was Kurt who touched me as we played the table and who dirty talked me. Tall Dieter was quieter, more standing off and signaling to me with his eyes. I gauged the Dieter would be more forceful, longer lasting, in bed, and I was right.

The next morning I woke up, on my back, in the bed in my room upstairs at the British Club. Dieter somebodyorother, was between my legs, doing his morning pushups on my body. He wasn't so big that he was taxing, but he was virile and vigorous.

At 2:30 Dieter had been on his back on my bed and I was straddling him, riding his shaft. Kurt, who had fucked me first, in a missionary, when we'd come up to my room, was saddled behind me, embracing me in his strong arms, riding me, riding Dieter. Thank God for Ilham's preparations and beer can cock. Kurt was gone then, but Dieter remained, doing his exercises on me, as I lay on my back, legs open to him, and getting shuteye as I could. Dieter, all stamina, all man, full of cum, had done his pushups at 4:00 a.m., 7:00 a.m., and now at 9:00.

I got more rest than Dieter did. He was the one on a short furlough and pushed to get his pleasure done in one lump sum. All he needed me to do was lay on my back, my channel open to his specifications, my heels rubbing the backs of his calves, my hands caressing his biceps or shoulder blades, moaning appropriately, and whispering that he was the best cocksman in the world—and he certainly was in the running.

Used condoms littered the floor by my bed. I didn't mind. The Danes had paid Tanju well before we'd come upstairs, and they were both gorgeous studs—nothing more fit for action than a northern European UN soldier. Elham had reamed me well open before them, so I'd had no trouble taking them both.

Dieter was stopped just short of his fourth ejaculation of the morning by pounding on the door. The door opened before I could get out from underneath Dieter to answer it. The appearance of Tanju there didn't pull the Dane off me, but the appearance of the guy in the Turkish police uniform behind the pimp did it. Dieter came off the bed, wrapping himself in the top sheet and headed for the bathroom. He picked up his clothes as he went, slammed the bathroom door behind him, and I heard the shower start as Tanju and the policeman, Balian Farki, came into the room.

I looked at them expectantly.

"Balian here says he needs to ask you some questions, Lucas—about last night."

"Yeah, OK? What questions?" I asked, giving Tanju a sharp look. He was supposed to take care of the police. This was one of those societies that looked strict on the outside but was highly tolerant at the soft core—as long as money exchanged hands. The authorities, at all levels, were eminently corruptible. Balian Farki was a case in point. He was a senior official in the harbor but he was well paid off by Tanju, and, on top of that, he had privileges with me, which he wasn't shy about invoking. He was in his late thirties, handsome as a Turkish movie star, bodybuilder fit, and hung. What else could a boy want, when a boy wanted a cock inside him, as I often did? My relations with him were not so much in the protection racket realm—Tanju paid him well for all of us. If there were anyone on the island that I could call a steady lover, it was Balian.

He had never confronted me as a prostitute before.

"Were you with a man at the Dome last night?" he asked, his voice gruff, all business. "Don't bother to say you weren't, Mr. Moore, because you were observed entering the hotel with him. Seen leaving by yourself too."

Of course, I was seen, I thought. In many ways this is a small town, anybody's business is everybody's business. And, also, Balian had addressed me by surname. This must be serious business. It

was

serious business. When I'd admitted I'd entered the hotel with one of the guests and gone up to his room, Balian remained in an official stance.

"The man's name was Rifaat Ilham, an importer living in Lefkosa."

"Yeah, so?" I asked. Then it hit me. "You said 'was.'"

"Yes, I did. He's dead. Murdered in his room last night. You may have been the last one who saw him alive."

* * * *

"What killed Ilham?" I asked.

"What do you think killed him, Lucas?" Farki asked, giving me a sharp look.

I wasn't that dumb. "I have no idea," I answered. "He was very much alive when I left him."

"What did you and he do in the hotel room?" He was looking at the floor by the bed, where a small collection of spent condoms had accumulated.

"You know what we did, Balian. You know what I do with men here in the summer. You know what I did here, last night. I do it with you too—any time you want me." This official pose was beginning to irritate me. We had a relationship. I let the man put his cock in me whenever he wanted to.

That gave him pause. "Lucas was back here at midnight, Balian," Tanju interjected. "What time did this man in the Dome die?"

"We don't know yet, the policeman said." When I had spoken of him and me together, he had reached out and was touching the silver bar in my left nipple. I was completely naked still. "The medical examiner hasn't made a determination on that for us. But that jives with what the hotel clerks and my men said—that Lucas left the hotel at midnight."

"Your men?" I asked. "You were having me watched?"

"Not necessarily you, and we don't have to go into that now."

As he was saying that, Dieter, the Danish UN soldier, was surreptitiously—he hoped—sliding out of the bathroom, fully dressed now, and inching toward the door to the corridor behind Farki's back. Farki was a cop, though. He saw everything.

"Just a minute. You can't leave," he said, swinging around to face the big Dane.

"Let him go," Tanju said in a lower voice—and then in an even lower voice. "He's a UN soldier. I don't think you want to bring the UN into this." And in a louder voice, "He's no part of this, Balian. He was here when Lucas came back to the bar at midnight. He and Lucas have been together ever since. I can vouch for that. Whatever your case is, it doesn't involve this young man."

With a grunt, the policeman let the Dane go and turned and said, "You can leave too, Tanju. I'm sure you have business to do downstairs. I know where to find you if I need you."

Hamdi took the hint and departed behind the Dane.

When they were gone, Farki came close to me, took my lips in a kiss, and let his hand run down my chest and belly and into my thatch.

"I hope you aren't involved in this, Lucas," he said. "Come, sit beside me."