The plane from the Philippines to the Middle East--Abu Dhabi, I was told, the fifth time I asked someone--was transporting more Asian workers than it had from Cambodia to the Philippines. They had been taken good care of in the three weeks we were in Cebu City, though, if being held in captivity could be considered "good care." It probably was in better circumstances than they had come from, though. Benjie Reyes had admitted that they were a mixed bag--house servants mainly, but some prostitutes too. Almost all of those were women, although some prostitutes were men. Not many, though.
"Homosexuality is very much against the law where we're going. Even when they are being lenient--as when some prominent family is involved--it can mean five years. Death is what is on the books," Reyes told me. "If they are going to risk it, they generally want a courtesan rather than just any peasant from the fields who will say he'll lay down and open his legs."
By courtesan, you mean men like me, is what I thought, but I didn't say it. "By 'where we're going' you mean Abu Dhabi?" I asked.
He gave me a pained look, probably not pleased that I even knew a place called Abu Dhabi existed, but his expression verified the destination I had tricked out of one of the stewardesses. "If you say so," he uttered, pursing his lips.
I almost wished he hadn't acknowledged where we were going or where most of these people were destined to serve in real or virtual slavery. It meant he wasn't worried about what I'd tell anyone else. I pressed the issue, since it appeared I had nothing to lose.
"So, why am I going along? If homosexuality isn't tolerated where we're going, what need is there for a male revue dancer? Am I just here to ensure the health of your other passengers?" I didn't want to rile him by calling them slaves. "Will I be going back to the casino in Cebu with you or will you be releasing me from my contract to find my own way?" I didn't want to beg the nasty question of there being other choices.
"We shall see when we get there," he said. "You are far more than a dancer, and we both know it. For now, I suggest you pass through those in the back to ensure that no one needs medical attention."
I did do a pass and, thankfully, no one in steerage was in the need of doctoring. Steerage also wasn't that bad. Reyes was delivering his cargo in good condition. I didn't have any complaints in that department, either. He'd even given me some of the money he'd promised me, although not all, by any means. Of course, my original contract with Kenon Jackson that had taken me to Bangkok hadn't panned out financially as advertised either. That seemed to the be lot of Western dancers performing in Asia. I wondered if performing in the Middle East would be any different.
* * * *
Performing in Abu Dhabi was different from the casinos of Asia. I did dance and I did often get fucked afterward, but in Abu Dhabi it was to a much smaller, more select audience than it had been in Bangkok, Poipet, or Cebu City. What came after the dance was, in general, more cruel and demanding than I had experienced before, however. I was much more just a vessel for sexual exercise for Arab men, the fuck being impersonal and done almost as a guilty, "can't help myself" or victor-putting-the-enemy-to-the-sword act as much as homosexuality was publicly reviled in the Muslim religion. It might be publicly reviled but there were just as high a proportion of Arab men who wanted to have sex with other men than any other nationality I had observed first hand.
These Arabs, as rich and forward-thinking with technical modernization as the world they created in places such as Abu Dhabi were, were primitive and not long out of the desert in their sexual activity. This was a world in which the economically successful Arab man used others not as sexual partners but as sexual prey, vanquished enemies, and slaves.
Benjie Reyes unceremoniously parted ways with me as soon as we landed at Al Bateen Executive Airport. He went with the Asian workers being deplaned and I was escorted away by Arabs in pristine white robes I later learned these were called
thobes
and white head scarves called
ghutras
, held in place by a black rope band called an egal. I didn't learn much else in Arabic. They all spoke impeccable English, with a British accent, and they didn't want me to understand what they were saying when they spoke Arabic. Reyes didn't so much as say good-bye to me. I sometimes wonder how much of a profit he took in selling me to the Arabs.
In a trip through streets incongruously bordered by both traditional mud compounds and modern skyscrapers, an ongoing urban renewal effort in the extreme, I was driven, in a black Mercedes--there were black Mercedes everywhere--into the old souk area of the city. Here, within two hours of the plane I'd been in having touched down in the desert kingdom, I had been stripped and prodded in front of men sitting around in a circle, drinking and smoking from water pipes, and I had been sold to the highest bidder. The demonstration of "the goods" included me, naked save for my black boots, being fucked in the missionary position by a big black African bull on a padded ottoman, with the buyers gathered round. The African was very big and very good and I gave the voyeurs good value in my response to his attentions.
The highest bidder was a young Arab who was close to my age and who was a handsome, well-formed young man the others gave deference too. Although pronouncedly hawk nosed, he was hard-body trim, dark complexioned, with black hair and dark, flashing eyes. The sealing of the deal--his final acceptance of the transaction--involved him unbuttoning and flaring his thobe, covering me where I lay on my back on the ottoman, still panting from the African's demonstration, and fucking me himself to the entertainment of the losers in the bid. He was very, very good and I verified the bargain he got in digging my fingers in his shoulder blades, providing "I am being royally fucked" facial expressions--which were easy to provide in his case--and moving with him in the fuck.
As it turned out, the other voters didn't give my buyer much opposition in the bidding because losing to him didn't mean they couldn't use me at some time or other as well--but without having to maintain me.
I was hustled into another black Mercedes, with my buyer and me sitting at the back, a beefy bodyguard with a mean look sitting in a jump seat facing us, and two men in the front. As we drove into the city, the mud-walled compounds giving way to the more modern skyscrapers, the young man who bought me more thoroughly--very thoroughly--checked out what he bought. This extended to cavity searches and I was tempted to ask him if he'd found the bug the U.S. intelligence agent, Winterberry, had claimed I'd been outfitted with for the Thai insurgent gun running caper.
I held for him, under the eagle eye of the bodyguard and let myself open to the young man's touch. I lay back in the corner of the backseat, with him hovering over him, and spread my legs and lifted my tail. If he wanted to fuck me again there, I wouldn't struggle. He was young, handsome, appeared to be well-muscled and was, I thought, probably as good as I was going to get in Abu Dhabi.
In that I was right.
He opted to nearly fist me, leaning over me, with his hand up to the knuckles inside me, with me slitting my eyes and rocking on the knuckles, both of us, I surmise, wondering if he'd breach the sphincter and fist fuck me. He seemed a bit surprised that I was rocking on the hand rather than sobbing and begging him not to fist me. The ride was shorter than a decision was made to do it.
The Mercedes turned into a garage under what looked like a soaring skyscraper of fifty or sixty stories, I was gruffly told to put my clothes back on, and, when I had, I was escorted out of the car to a bank of elevators, an Arab on either side of me and the young man walking in front. We entered an elevator, and it whispered its way up into the heavens. I never, over the next few months, came back down to ground again. I wasn't in Abu Dhabi as a sightseer.
The three top floors and roof pool and caged tennis court of the skyscraper were occupied by a club--a very exclusive male-on-male entertainment club and brothel, which, no doubt was kept secret from anyone but its very select high-flying clientele. This clientele included most I'd seen at the auction for me, which meant they could rent what they hadn't been able to buy.
The lowest floor was for group entertainment. Here I and other young men danced for the older men coming to the club, then were selected and paid for, and were taken to the bedrooms in the next flight up and fucked. The top floor housed a gym, the offices of the club, and the corner apartment of Badr al-Bunduq, the young man who bought me and who was the manager and presumably owner of the club. It was here, spread-eagled and tied off at the four corners of a bed floating over the ancient-modern, water-surrounded capital city of the United Arab Emirates, where Al-Bunduq slapped me, helpless, into groaning submission and fucked the stuffing out of me immediately after I first entered the brothel where I was to be a lead dancer and favorite lay for the next three months. He was a cruel top, but not the most cruel of the Arabs who used me to get themselves off in that time--not by far. I think much of it was because I was an American and they felt empowered when they had put it to America.
Despite not being the cruelest, Al-Bunduq did, in the comfort of his own silk-pillow covered divan, put a greased and gloved fist inside me, and fucked me interminably with it. This was to prove to be a favorite Arab demonstration of domination of another man.
* * * *
I hung, naked, on the St. Andrews cross, spread-eagled and restrained at wrists and ankles, by aching back to the room, staring out beyond the apparatus through a full wall of glass down into the peninsular city of Abu Dhabi. I had been bound loosely enough that I could writhe as the whip laced into my back, buttocks, and thighs. The leathery-skinned old man of the desert standing behind me and welding the whip was teasing me, I knew, or was just at the beginning of a long ordeal. He was not striking me with the force behind it that I knew his sinewy-muscled body could muster, but there was the threat of that to come. His pauses, to run his hands down my flanks and to bring them around to stroke my nipples, belly, balls, and cock were longer in duration than the whippings were.
"Ah, still hard as a rock," he murmured. "Still want it. You're such a slut."
