As I walked into the city on the main street, Damrak, leading directly from Amsterdam's central train station, I nervously fingered the folded e-mail I'd been carrying tucked in my wallet for the past month and a half. Damrak changed into Rokin, and at the end of canal off the Amstel River, I made a right onto Heiligeweg.
I had thought of this possibility on and off for the whole cruise down the Rhine from Mainz to Amsterdam, but I hadn't really taken the chance it would work out as having the whisper of a prayer. We were at the end of our cruise and—magically—the opportunity had just clicked into place. We had a free afternoon in Amsterdam; our ship was docked right next to the Central Station, well within walking distance of the center of the city; and my wife had declared that she was off on a shopping spree with other women from the cruise and that I jolly well could find something to entertain myself for the afternoon.
Little did she know just how right she was.
I hadn't had an encounter with another man the entire two weeks of the voyage, and I was pent up with confused urges—I wanted to take someone and at the same time I also wanted to be taken. I'd been cooped up on a luxury river boat with a gaggle of aging widows too long. I needed release. And now all of the opportunities had fallen into place.
I passed the Bloemen Markt—the area of the morning wholesale flower market—and crossed two canals, and there, just as the e-mail had told me, was Kerkstraat and the prominent sign for Thermos, the renowned gay bar and sauna. I'd been able to tell for several streets that I was in the center of gay life in Amsterdam.
I stood there and swallowed hard. Until now I'd told myself I was just checking out where Cowboy's son's club was. I'd even decided I would have innocently passed by here if my wife and I had taken a walk through the streets of Amsterdam this afternoon—just to be able to tell Cowboy I had seen his son's place. My wife had voiced interest in seeing the red light district, which stretched between here and where the ship was docked, so continuing on to here would seem natural enough, and I could plausibly claim I didn't even know about this section of the city.
Cowboy was a legend in Bangkok, where we had twice lived before. He was an imposing and charismatic black former professional U.S. basketballer who had run afoul of the law and retreated to Thailand, where he had opened a chain of highly successful bars catering to the whole range of preferences—as he himself had done. He and I had had our moments in which he had demonstrated that the whispered claim that he had the biggest cock in Thailand could be credibly defended. But my wife had also known him as well, as he was one of the stars of the embassy bowling league and was celebrated throughout the international community in Thailand for his good humor and generosity in charity work.
We had continued to correspond over the years, and when our Christmas letter for this past year had informed him we were taking a Christmas and New Years cruise down the Rhine, ending in Amsterdam, Cowboy had messaged me that a son he'd sired on a Dutch woman, one of many by-blows, I was sure, owned and operated a gay club in the city and would, Cowboy was sure, love to meet and accommodate me. The son had had enough success as a middle-weight boxer in Europe that he'd managed to follow his father's footsteps as a club owner. I was sure there would be no opportunity to follow up on Cowboy's invitation, but I had folded the e-mail and stowed it away in my wallet and then just put the whole matter in the back of my mind.
But here I was. The e-mail had told me the club, named Chester's, the son's first name, could be found just steps from Thermos on Kerkstraat—and here, by the alignment of the stars and thanks to two weeks on a ship with people reminding me how fleeting life and desirability were, I stood, conflicted. I knew what I wanted, but I had resolved to behave myself on this vacation.
It wouldn't hurt just to see what kind of place the son had, though. I walked more than a block beyond Thermos but saw no evidence of the club. Almost relieved, I retraced my steps, ready to return to the ship. I'd let Cowboy know I looked for the club but couldn't find it.
And then the sign materialized as I got closer to Thermos. It didn't look like a club, though—more like a storefront gay porn shop specializing in magazines, videos, and DVDs. I went in just to make sure, asking the heavily tattooed and pierced clerk behind the register whether this was where the Chester Club was supposed to be. He assured me I was in the right place and guided me to the back of the shop, pulling aside a beaded curtain and ushering me into a small bar area that probably looked a lot better at night, filled with young men, than it did empty in the middle of the afternoon.
There was, however, a good-looking, well-built guy behind the bar, cleaning glasses, who seemed to know who I was when I asked him if Chester was around and that his father in Bangkok had suggested I look him up. The young man poured me a beer and showed me to a nearby banquette.
While I waited for whatever would happen next, a few middle-aged men drifted through, entering from the shop area through the beaded curtain and disappearing through another curtained door on the opposite wall.
The beer half gone, two men materialized from this second doorway. One, the bartender, returned to his duties and soon brought two more beers over to the banquette. The other young man, however, took my breath away. It was almost as if I had been transported back more than two decades in time. The man who came over to my table was a near duplicate of the Cowboy I had known, locked in the time when we both were twenty-five years younger. But he was even more studly than I remembered his father as having been. He was heavily muscled in keeping with his boxing background in contrast to his father's thinner stature and greater height, and he benefited from the softer features and color that came from the mixed American black and Dutch parentage. Chester had the same open, winning smile that served his father so well, though. And he was just as charismatic and welcoming as his father was.
We sat for a good half an hour, talking of his father and of Bangkok and of the son's life in Europe as well. It was clear that Cowboy hadn't just abandoned the son that his no doubt had so casually sired. And it was equally clear that the son worshipped the father. Chester's mannerisms and expressions were honestly inherited from the father, and I found myself beginning to ache for him as I had for his father decades earlier. Memories of his father's legendary cock working inside me flooded into my consciousness, and I was becoming quite horny.
While we talked, a few more men entered from the shop door and exited directly through the door at the rear. I watched this progression and my curiosity was piqued. Chester discerned not only that I was curious but also that I was in the need of attention. I have no doubt that when Cowboy informed his son that an old friend from Bangkok might be coming by, he had clearly spelled out the nature and extent of our friendship.
"Would you care to come back through that door those men have entered?" Chester asked me. "I think you might enjoy what we have back there."
I would have followed Chester anywhere at this point. The room he then took me into was darker than the club area, at least the half of the room he sat me in. The other half of the room, which was behind what might have been a one-sided glass window, was brightly lit. It was lined with a rich, blue velvet material—floor, walls, and ceiling—and there were divans of the same blue velvet scattered about on three levels rising to the back of the room. And draped on these divans were nearly a dozen naked, handsome young men, easily discoursing with each other, not paying any attention to what was happening on the dimly lit side of the glass.
Two of the men I had just previously seen entering this room while I was talking and drinking beer with Chester in the bar area were deep in conversation and negotiation with another man, who obviously was some sort of host. As I watched, fascinated, the host picked up a wall phone. All of the naked young men looked over to toward what appeared to be a speaker hanging on the wall, and a young blond smiled to the others, rose and blew them kisses, and exited through a door at the side of the room. One of the men on this side of the glass was ushered out of a door on the same side of the room. It didn't require much of my imagination to figure out what business was being conducted in this room.
"Do you see anything you like?" Chester asked me. "I can offer you any of these young men for half price—which we mark in these little packets." He held up silver-foil packets of condoms. "Because you are a friend of my father's, I can wave the house fee. It wouldn't be fair to wave the young man's fee as well, though. I apologize for that, but I'm sure you understand. For you, it would be 50 euros for one packet and another 25 for each succeeding one. More than three, though, and you would have to make an additional selection and pay the base 50 euro-fee again. I'm sure you can understand the need for that as well. We can't work our boys too hard. And for you, we needn't talk about session time limits. Are you interested? I would be very pleased to accommodate you."
My head was reeling. I'd never paid for sex before in my life and vowed I never would. But the circumstances were compelling here. Not only was my need great—and quite obvious to Chester as I watched the luscious young men on the other side of the glass move languidly around—but it also would be an insult to both father and son, I thought, if I refused the offer. Still, my mind was racing to surface all of the reasons to chicken out.
