I had given up expectations a week ago and I was close to losing all hope. Rao, the translator who had attached himself to me when I arrived at Tambaram Airport in Chennai, formerly Madras, at the end of the earth, in India, had sensed I was losing it and, smiling and bobbing up and down, declared he would save me. He took me off to a small bar near the Tamil Nadu State trade official offices after we'd sat for more than an hour for the third time outside the official's office in unrequited optimism that having an appointment time would get us in to see the trade official. I was not quite sure if Rao had any standing with my London and Paris fashion house firm of DeWitts when he latched himself on to me at the airport, but I was too wrung out then to care or object--and after the failed attempts to see the trade official I still was rung out with an added burden of dejection, so I let Rao guide me out of the Trade Ministry Tamil Nadu offices and to the secluded bar.
I didn't mind Rao guiding me. He was taller, slimmer, and younger than I was--younger, I was sure by eight or nine years from my thirty-two, but he was a very attractive berry brown and he had a pleasant smile. I was surprised about the taller part. I had been under the impression that all Indians were much shorter than I was.
I would be lying if I claimed he didn't arouse me sexually and that I didn't have dreams of getting it on with him. That surprised me too. I normally shrank away from all things South Asian. But it was finding he was arousing that probably was why I picked him out of the mob of people at the airport who wanted to be my best friend and guide. He also seemed not able to be rattled by the situation--certainly not like I had allowed myself to become. I got the impression of not letting yourself become rattled and being patient--in fact, lowering your hopes and expectations--were a survival tactic in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, and that the locals had mastered it.
At times during the process, I found his calmness and control irritating, though, so I went hot and cold on whether I wanted to be in bed with him. My irritation came from a general prejudice I had about South Asians, which heightened my distaste for this assignment.
What DeWitts, a high-end European fashion house, wanted was cheap manufacturing of haute couture clothes to be sold with DeWitts London and Paris fashion house labels at stratospheric prices. We didn't necessarily want the world to know they were being cheaply made, though, so my mission was hush-hush. The false impression to be made was that they'd been made by highly skilled and paid fashion professionals in London or Paris from priceless goods when they weren't. We didn't sell at large volume, so we had to squeeze the most profit possible out of each unit.
Having studied fashion design in Whitechapel, London's vague answer for a garment district, in the practical, hands-on mode, making my way by modeling the clothes and lying on my back for older men while I was young enough to turn heads, I had managed to gain a foothold in the management of DeWitts. The upper managers of DeWitts, all former designers, were also all older men who liked to lay young man. Part of my student-period job of modeling their clothes was to open my legs to any or all of them as well. I would take umbrage at the assertion that I have made my way into a senior position on my back and taking cock, but I couldn't say it didn't help.
I was aiming for a move from the London house to the Paris one, where former male models of thirty-two seemed more in demand of wealthy older men not necessarily part of the fashion world than in the UK, where youth, rather than experience, held command. I made more personal profit out of the rewards of lying on my back and opening my legs for influential men than I did from my fashion house paycheck.
DeWitts wanted to open a supply factory in a cheap labor country, while leaving the impression that all of its fashions were made in London or Paris, and I had become trusted enough to open such a factory in the "nowhere" region of India. If I were successful in that and keeping it a secret, Paris was being dangled before me.
Now, after more than a week in Chennai, when I thought I would be in and out of south India in that time in an initial set-up visit, I hadn't gotten even as far as in front of the desk of the state trade official. And I had agreed to engage Rao's translation services only through today. I had found that he, in fact, was not from the translation service DeWitts had signed up for me and I had arranged to pick up that service's agent the following Monday, this being Friday. I was disengaging Rao after this, once again unsuccessful, attempt to see the trade official. Yes, I did regret disengaging before dreams of being bedded by him had come into fruition. I hadn't even had time and opportunity to determine that he was a top to my bottom. I did, though, think he was gay--and at least bi--and that he had some interest in me, if only to keep me paying him for what hadn't yet been successful services.
"Perhaps there's a better way," Rao said to me from across the small table in the dimly lit bar. He gave me an all-white-toothed smile. He was a lovely young man. If he were significantly older, of greater stature, an identified dominator, demonstrably wealthy, and not a Tamil, I would have made a stronger bid for his sexual favors. But I had my prejudices, which included the South Asian race, which I considered cloying and effeminate, so agreeable and obsequious on the surface while constantly playing the angles for personal gain under the table. That I was in the world of these people now hadn't helped my disposition in being sent to India...
"What do you mean there might be a better way?" I asked.
"Perhaps you would be better not to try to approach the trade official directly. It's not really the Tamil way."
"You mean I should cultivate someone who can get me in to see the trade official--that there's a network approach here?" It was the Asian way, I knew, but I'd thought it was more the way of East and Southeast Asia than of India. Rao was suggesting that it was the best approach in southern India as well.
"Yes, and I think you need something to calm you more. If your business wants to become established in Tamil Nadu, a great deal of patience and calm is needed--especially if you don't want too many people to know about it."
"Something to calm me?" My, he was a clever lad. I hadn't said anything about it needing to be in secret. I did say it should be done circumspectly until everything was signed. I had assumed Rao would be gone for the effort then.
"Yes, I probably shouldn't say it, but I've found that release--release of tension, often through massage or sexual release, is calming."
"I'm not sure even where to start on such an approach," I said. If this was the beginning of a proposition, I wouldn't close it out. I wouldn't hop on it, either. I hadn't decided the balance of Rao being sexy but Rao being Indian yet--or that he was a dominant. If he, like me, was a submissive, all setup work for a fuck would have been a waste.
"And this would help me get in to see the trade official?" I asked.
"It would be the roundabout way, yes. Try it out and see what can be done. Perhaps I can help, Mr. Collins," Rao said. I looked down to see that he had dropped two business cards in front of me. One was for Krishna's, an antique brass exporter. The other was for a barber and massage business, Golden Dreams, with the suggestive notation of "Gentlemen's Relief" on the card. Both were for locations in the Kodambakkam district of the city, where my hotel was located, chosen because I'd heard it was the movie colony part of the city and as close to a red-light district as Chennai could provide. I had had hopes of doing some cruising while I was here--I'd heard the gay bars had a lot of Thai employees, and I didn't have the prejudice against Southeast Asians that I had against Indians. Thus far that cruising hadn't happened.
When I looked up to ask Rao for a further explanation of the two business cards, I found that he was gone. And thus, or so I thought, my association with the somewhat mysterious and prospectively arousing, if he weren't younger, more inscrutable, and more Indian than I, Rao had ended.
* * * *
The visit to the Golden Dreams barber shop and massage parlor, on Station View Road in the "Kollywood" movie studios section of Chennai's old quarter of Kodambakkam, had done the trick--at least in temporarily relieving the frustration tension of the last couple of weeks. The establishment was quite discreet; you couldn't even see the Kodambakkam Railway Station, which dominated that district, from there. It was just a red door in a blank wall. Immediately inside the door was the barber shop, where my hair was shampooed and groomed and my chin shaved and they pampered me so long that I began to think that was all that was on offer in shop. But there was more.
Beyond the barber shop were the massage rooms that justified the "golden dreams" name. Nothing like an expertly edged hand, dildo, and blow job by a master of indeterminate age but great agility and skill to top off a deep-tissue sports massage, although it would have been even better if he'd been a handsome, muscular man and had climbed on top of me on the table and ridden me rather than working my ass with a flexible golden dildo while he was handing me off and finishing me with a blow job.
I think the masseur, fleshy, with a little pot belly, but clearly with powerful hands, who kept on a loincloth-like waist wrap, called a dhoti, I think, would have mounted and fucked me for a finish if I'd paid for that, but the fee was paid up front, with the services taken from a menu. The menu, the English version of which was deficient in English, had confused me, so, in the end, I'd just pointed to a service that seemed to have a price I thought a haircut, shave, and massage was worth. Although I hoped more than a hand job would come with it, what came with it was more than reasonable at the price.
The massage itself was prolonged and thorough, perhaps the best sports massage I'd gotten anywhere up to that point, but then it went beyond hopes and expectations, as the masseur moved me onto my back; wadded up a thick towel, which he put under the small of my back, tilting my pelvis up. He manipulated my legs, bending and spreading them, and placing my feet flat on the table. This was where, as mellow and needy as I was, if he'd whipped off the dhoti, climbed up on the table between my spread knees, and mounted and fucked me in a missionary position even as pudgy and uninteresting as he looked and even if his cock was small, I would have been a happy man.
He didn't, but he still made me a happy man. He produced a thick rubber dildo, painted gold, and he stood beside me at the table, and, checking periodically to ensure that I approved, which I did, worked the dildo into my ass with his left hand and grasped my erection--I, of course, was quite hard at this point--with his right hand and stroked me off. He didn't seem to mind that I worked my left hand into the folds of his dhoti, found him hard, and stroked him while he stroked me. He sensed when I was about to come and edged me off. He subsequently leaned over and took my cock in his mouth, edging me with that as well, while he worked my ass channel deep with the gold dildo. He did come for me, timing his ejaculation with mine, and I made a note to look more carefully at the menu the next time I visited and to ensure I got fuller service.
One thing was sure--if I had to stay in Chennai much longer in an effort to track the trade official down and establish the needed permissions to start up business here, I would be visiting the Golden Dreams weekly. I'd be the best hair-groomed man in the city.
When I left the front door of the Golden Dreams establishment and looked down the street away from where the tracks led into the Kodambakkam Railway Station, contemplating walking to the gay-friendly hotel I had found west on Station View Road, I was swamped by a swarm of boys and young men wanting to sell me something or just outright receive money from me to escape their harassment. Before learning of the Golden Dreams, I had almost sunk to the level of finding out whether any of the young men would sell me their bodies, but I would have had to scrub them hard before I felt I could risk that. I have little doubt that I could buy a young man or two here in Chennai, despite the claims that homosexuality was repressed, but precisely because the lifestyle seemed so underground here, most of the young men and boys offering themselves on the street were too emaciated and downtrodden for me to enjoy using. I was much more interest in being covered than covering.
