Chapter 4 – Chapter 4

September 1, 1940

"There is no money available in that account. That account has been impounded."

"Impounded? What the hell does that mean?" Paul asked. He could feel himself tightening up. He lived from check deposited from home to check deposited from home. He was tapped out. Today was the day of the check deposited from home.

"The United States has impounded all money being sent into France because of the . . . because of the occupation," the bank official said, looking oh so sad for Paul's predicament. "I'm sorry. The German presence here has officially been condemned by the United States, and it doesn't want any funds from its country to be made available here."

"They can't do that," Paul said. But clearly they could and they had. This was the second blow in a week. When he'd gone back to the loft from the Ritz on the morning of August 29th, he'd found that Noell Giroux had cleared out. He had taken some of his artwork with him, but a group of men—men claiming they didn't know where Giroux had gone—had come to move the rest of his stuff out two days later. Paul had been able to keep his own paintings and supplies, such as they were, back, but everything else was gone. The workmen were only able to say that Giroux' stuff was going into storage.

Paul had initially thought that Giroux' disappearance somehow was because he hadn't come home to the loft on the night of the 28th, but Giroux hadn't shown jealousy before in Paul's occasional going with other men and he'd virtually thrown the man named Claude at him at the party. There was no reason for him to know about the SS officer. But then the workmen said that the move had been arranged several days earlier, so whatever caused Giroux to leave was decided before the party at the Ritz. And he had intended for him to be the one to leave. If he was mad at Paul, he could have just pitched Paul out of the flat.

Well, fuck him, Paul thought as he trudged back to the loft from the bank. He'd left without telling Paul he was going and he'd been mysterious and secretive of late. The whole bit about going to the party but really wanting only to talk to the senior bartender at the Ritz bar was baffling to Paul.

It mainly was baffling to Paul because he was completely apolitical. He hadn't seen Giroux' going underground ahead of time. He didn't anticipate that American funds would be cut off to occupied France. He hadn't even considered leaving France in advance of the occupation. And he was only mildly concerned that no sooner had the Germans arrived then he had had sex with a German military officer—and not just any German officer; a Gestapo captain. To the extent that there was concern there it was because it was a little hard, even for a young, prowling man like Paul, to have missed the reports of brutality by the SS Gestapo.

But the German officer hadn't been brutal. He'd been rough and demanding at times but he had also been the best, most attentive lover Paul had ever had. And he'd been witty and polite and solicitous, even when taking Paul hard in taxing positions . . . and, yes, loving.

And thinking of the German officer surfaced remembrance of the five-franc note he had left for Paul and Paul hadn't taken. He could use that five francs now. It would feed him for four days. What was he going to do for money and food now?

* * * *

The building concierge met Paul at the street door.

"It's the first of the month," he said, smacking his lips and giving Paul a licentious stare. "The rent on the loft is due today."

Leon Segal had long been adept at being in the hallway, smacking his lips and giving Paul a lustful stare when Paul was coming and going.

Segal was a fat, hairy, sweaty pig—at least in Paul's eyes. And there was nothing artistic or literary about him. He gave the young American the creeps. He wore vests rather than shirts that exposed a V of matted black hair on his chest and hairy arms. Although fat, he also was muscular and a good foot taller than Paul was. Paul always felt intimidated in his presence. His intent could be seen in his sneer and he smelled of garlic and beer and cheap cigarettes.

"I see that Noell Giroux has moved out. But he did nothing about the rent," Segal said.

"This has been unexpected," Paul said. "I may need some time to cover the rent."

"There is no time to give in these perilous days," Segal said. "But money is not the only way to pay the rent."

Segal fucked Paul from behind over the dining table in his first-floor apartment with a cock that wasn't particularly long but was challengingly thick. The fuck was swift and brutal, with, at first, Segal grabbing a handful of hair at the back of Paul's head and arching the young man's back painfully to him, instructing Paul to jut his buttocks out to receive the penetration deeper and to provide a shelf for Segal to rest his stomach on while he pumped. As the fuck progressed, Segal released Paul's hair, but he grabbed both of the young man's wrists and jerked his arms back to maintain the bow in Paul's back.

At ejaculation, the man brought his cock out to the surface to cream Paul's rim and just inside the hole and then slid back in for several more minutes of sucking-noise thrusts. Triggering a reserve of seed, he came again inside Paul's passage.

Paul couldn't look the man in the face as he gathered up his trousers and undergarments. He wouldn't put them back on here. He couldn't stand to be here, in this apartment, with this gorilla for a second longer than he had to be. He was dejected and disgusted at what he'd already had to do to maintain his existence in Paris without even the opportunity to assess and plan.

As he headed for the door, Segal said. "That's only good until the 15th. If you want to stay beyond that either bring me the money or come and knock on my door."

Paul did look at the man now, showing him a flash of hatred. But Segal just stared him down with amusement in his eyes and smacked his lips. It was the tail he wanted. Paul didn't have to enjoy it as long as Segal got his rocks off on a cute young trick.

The young man rushed upstairs and used all of the water in the apartment house's tank to try to wash the smell of the concierge off his body. Being fucked by the working classes wasn't nearly as much fun as by an artist.

* * * *

Two weeks. The 15th of September. That was how long Paul had to find someplace else to live and to find the means of living there. Nothing like the pressure of this had come down on him before. He'd never been poor and he'd never been backed into a corner to have to fight his way out of. But he'd never lie under a fat, smelly, pig like that concierge again. That he vowed, and the vow steeled his back and motivated him to plan.

He had some paintings completed and he knew they were good. Maybe not quite good enough to get in most Paris galleries, but he also knew a gallery owner or two who had wanted to get into his pants. It would mean prostituting himself yet again, but it at least would be with an artist and he hadn't been hesitant to give it away when he wanted to when he was rich. There was no reason for him to hold back now that he was poor.

The big-boned, pony-tailed Algerian owner of a gallery on the Left Bank fucked Paul up against a wall in the back of his shop after taking five canvases from the young man on consignment. But he did give Paul an advance of fifteen francs on the lot.

Both Paul and the Algerian knew that Paul was being paid for the fuck the gallery owner had wanted to give him for months. The deal was that Paul was to come in monthly to check on possible painting sales, to go with the Algerian to the back of the shop, and to leave with ten francs in his pocket.

It was a start.

Paul was backed against a wall, his legs hooked on the Algerian's hips and his arms around the gallery owner's neck, while the Algerian pushed him up and down the wall with the strength of his cock thrusting up in Paul's ass passage.

Afterward Paul stopped at a sidewalk café for a coffee and a pastry. He couldn't really afford it, but he at least had some money in his pocket and the first selling of himself by himself under his belt. Life was looking up, and he felt he needed the reward. He'd always been pampered; it was hard to switch dramatically from that.

His luck held.

"Are you alone? May I sit?"

Paul looked up. It was Claude from Laura Mae Corrigan's party at the Ritz. "Yes, please, I'm alone," he answered. The man looked as good, elegant, and "together" in street clothes as he did in a evening clothes at the Ritz. The image of the man that kept coming up in Paul's mind, though, was nakedness, his body long, lean, wiry, his cock to match. Paul hoped that he himself could look as good and sexy at the man's age. Paul had no idea what it was, but the man was gray and, although he still was in good shape, there had been telltale liver spots on his hands and arms and a slight loosening in his muscle definition that Paul had noticed while the man was lying between his legs. There had been nothing wrong with the hardness, length, and strength of his cock, though.

It was disconcerting to be sitting here across the table from him at a sidewalk café when Paul's image of him was crouching, naked, between Paul's legs and feeding a long cock into his passage.

"Yes, I heard that Noell has dropped out of sight," Claude said. He touched Paul's arm with two, long, sensuous fingers, his middle finger elegantly crowned with the thick gold ring he had punished Paul's rim with while finger fucking him, and Paul felt a slight charge go up his limb.

How was one supposed to act, he wondered, in public at a café with an older man who was virtually a stranger, but who had been lying between your legs, both of you naked, and working your ass with his cock? The kicker was the stranger part. Paul knew nothing about this man. Before he had known his lovers fairly well before having sex with them. This man—this "no surname" Claude—was sitting there, almost a stranger, elegantly dressed and acting so proper and civilized, when the vision of him going through Paul's mind was of that silver ring in his right nipple and of him staring into Paul's eyes as he entered, entered, entered Paul's passage with his long cock.

"He didn't tell me he was leaving," Paul said. "He's left me in a bit of a lurch, I must say."

"He introduced you to me at the party the other night at the Ritz, so he didn't really leave you in the lurch," Claude said, giving Paul a sympathetic smile. "That was no accident. He brought you to the party specifically to meet me. He was worried for you, but it would only be dangerous to you for you to have known he was leaving or where he was going or what he would be doing."

"I don't understand," Paul said.

"I recognize that you don't understand. You aren't French. This isn't your national disgrace. Noell said you were completely apolitical and naïve to the world as it is here now. He worried about you. He desperately wanted you to leave before the occupation, although he said he ached at the thought of losing you. He said you were the best lover he had—that it perpetually was like the first time with you. I must say I agree with him. He has to do what he has to do—and he was frustrated that you wouldn't leave before he had to."

"You say he took me to the party specifically to meet you."

"And my encountering you here today is no coincidence either," Claude said. "I know you are strapped for funds. I know your allowance has been cut off by events. That was quite predictable. If you come home with me now—for the night, to use as I want, with whomever else I want to use you—I will pay you fifty francs. How badly do you need fifty francs?"

How bad and taxing could a night with this man be, Paul wondered. He indeed needed the money.

Pretty taxing, as it turned out.

Claude took him to an elegant townhouse where they were ushered in by a huge black attendant and where Paul could hear quiet conversation in men's voices coming from the closed-door parlors on either side of the foyer. Paul was taken to a sumptuously appointed bed chamber on the second floor and fucked both by Claude and the black attendant in more exotic positions than the SS captain had taken him in the Ritz. Paul was fucked in limb-challenging missionary positions, from behind with his legs in the splits, half way on and half way off the bed with his torso reclining toward the floor and with his shoulders on the floor taking his weight as Claude pile drived his ass, with Claude on his back and Paul riding his cock, in a crab position with Paul suspended over Claude's body, on the top of the dresser, his legs in splits, and on the floor, Claude taking him in reverse.

When Claude needed a breather, the black attendant took over the fucking.

And if this weren't enough, Paul was taken to the basement of the building, where there was a sexual torture chamber of a sort and where he was hung and bound and yoked and fucked by the black attendant and lightly whipped and fucked by Claude and his now-gaping passage invaded with graduated beads and dildos—nothing too painful or that would leave a mark, but far, far beyond where Paul had ever been taken before.

He endured it all. Paul needed the fifty franks and he reveled in the variety and challenge of it—and especially in the jet-black cock of the attendant. Paul had never been with a black man before. He endured and responded in ways that visibly astounded and pleased Claude and that kept Claude hard and thrusting and spouting.

Paul woke in Claude's bed in the morning to a side-split fuck and Claude whispering in his ear, "You did magnificently. You went through the paces like a seasoned champion despite your aura of youth and freshness. You could be the star of the stable—such yielding innocence. I can assign you to one of the best rooms, assure you of limited assignations with the most affluent and cleanest of men and half of the profit from your luscious body. Here you will live in the lap of luxury once more. The Germans and the occupation need not impinge on your life any more than it does on the lives of those at the Ritz whose assets, unlike yours, are still liquid. I will take care of you. Leave everything to me. Noell saw this as your best option. I see you as my best find of the year."

Thus it was that Paul entered into a life of male prostitution at Claude's, an exclusive male-on-male brothel just steps—and a secret passageway—away from one of Paris' most exclusive private men's sports club.