Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

When we arrived at the hotel in Chennai, chosen for its proximity to the American consulate and because of its American brand name, Sheraton, I thought at first that a massive mistake had been made. The roads around it were nothing but mud and there was a cow in the lobby. I soon was to learn, though, that this was mainly the way it was in Tamil Nadu. I chalked that up to a plus for finding someone who qualified for the job I had and who wanted to get out of this area of the world.

On the whole, the people were shorter and smaller and browner than the Indians in the New Delhi area. Like many in the developing world, they tended to appear attractive when young but to age quickly when they reached their forties and, generally, to be completely spent by their fifties. On the way from the airport in an open-sided cab, Gupta pointed out several men to me who appeared to be in their mid-teens but who he said were in their late twenties. He apparently told me that as a warning of what to expect in looks from the translator prospects I would be interviewing and testing, but I'll admit that, already being heated up, I viewed them as potential sex partners. I liked to fuck smaller, young-looking men. I liked to overpower and fuck them hard. When away from New York and cruising for men to manhandle, I found I often gravitated to South and Southeast Asian men, as they generally were small—and tended to have tight channels.

I needed a hotel near the U.S. consulate on Gemini Street, which was also only a couple of blocks west of the Bay of Bengal and a long, narrow beach called Elliot's Beach, because the interviews and testing were to be conducted there. It wasn't public knowledge, but my news agency did work for U.S. intelligence. We were adding the Tamil translator because work we did for the Agency justified the added position. The intelligence section at the consulate was helping me by giving me interview space and by having already weeded the candidates down to twenty who not only had the skills but also could pass scrutiny on entering and working in the States. I was to be aghast when I arrived at the consulate and found out that there had been more than 200 applicants for the position, which lent credence to my thought that this was an area of the world that many wanted to get away from.

There was only one room booked for me at the Sheraton, and although the place seemed deserted the entire time I was there, the desk manager insisted that they had no more rooms available to accommodate Gupta. I had let Gupta go into the hotel ahead of me, not believing that it really was the hotel where I was booked and not wanting to lose the cab if we had to find another hotel. I've ever since thought he paid the desk staff to say they were booked up. Without consulting with me, Gupta told the desk manager it would be just fine for us to share the room. I said it would be only if it were just for the one night. Otherwise we'd go to another hotel. The desk staff sheepishly acknowledged that they could find a separate room for Gupta after the first one.

Gupta made the most of that one night. As everywhere I went in India, we had arrived hot and sticky and showers were in order as soon as we got to the room. I let Gupta shower first. When I emerged from the bathroom, with a towel around me, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, and pulling on his meat. His cock was long for his size when it was erect, but it wasn't thick. His sex talk on the plane had already had me hyped, so when he urged me over to stand in front of him, I responded. He stripped my towel off; got both of my wrists in an iron grip behind my back with one of his strong hands; moved the other between my thighs, with the heel of that hand under my balls and pushing them up and an index finger at my asshole; and he sucked me hard with his mouth. When he was ready to fuck, so was I.

I had never fucked up against a wall quite like he fucked himself on me then. I was backed up against a wall and he hung, facing me, on my front with his fists locked behind my neck. I was supporting and separating his buttocks with the palms of my hands, but, probably looking like a crab, he had his feet plastered to the wall, wide, on either side of my hips, and was pushing and pulling his channel on my cock, fucking himself until we both ejaculated.

I never felt more under his control, almost a prisoner, as I did at supper time, when we went out looking for a restaurant. The town was almost as teeming with people—and needy-looking people—as Old Delhi had appeared. They were just smaller and blabbered more, with almost no English to be heard. They also smiled and laughed more and were more expressive with their hands. But I felt totally lost, completely reliant on Gupta for everything. I could have eaten in the hotel dining room, of course, but he didn't really give me that option. He just ran ahead of me, out of the hotel entrance, urging me to follow.

That night was more of his controlling sex. I was providing the cock for his channel, but he was controlling how the cocking was done and was providing most of the pumping action. He kept telling me that he was giving me the best fucking I'd ever had, and I was just too polite to tell him otherwise. His mind and mouth were always running way ahead of me, like he wasn't even listening to anything I said anyway. In that I could definitely see the family resemblance between him and his cousin, Khurana, in New York. The more frustrated I got with Gupta here the more frustrated I got with the Khurana I knew I'd have to return to—and to tell how helpful his cousin had been to me—and to wonder what his cousin was telling him about the sex I had with men.

All of the candidates were excellent. The consulate had done well in reducing them to the most likely. My interest gravitated toward one in particular, a young man named Sanjay. He was so handsome and beautifully formed and had such a winning, shy smile, though, that after the first round of interviews, I had to tax my brain on whether he really was that much better as a candidate or did I focus on him because of sexual interest. I certainly couldn't deny the sexual interest. And the way he looked at me under long eyelashes and with sultry eyes made me think he had a sexual interest in me too. He wore his straight, black hair in a ponytail, and I fantasized unbinding and running my hands through it as it cascaded to his shoulders. My attraction to him worried me.

It didn't help that he scored the best in the initial language tests I gave the twenty candidates.

They had all stayed for the entire work day, and at the end of that day, I called them together to let them know which ten I wished to have come back the next day for a second round of interviews and testing.

Sanjay was one of the ten, and the look of gratitude he gave me when I told him that he was ripped at my heart. There was no question he wanted to get out of Tamil Nadu, and the look he gave me made me think he'd do almost anything to do so. I had no trouble fantasizing what he could do for me, but I knew I had to separate the personal from the professional.

Alone in the testing room, I poured over the test results and the personal folders, trying to pick out the best of the best—but really, I knew, also trying to find some way of legitimately disqualifying Sanjay. He made me feel like I'd rarely felt before about a man. And the few I'd felt about in that way had endangered my cushy life in New York. I could not have that. Still, looking at his photograph in his folder was like being a moth drawn to a flame for me. He looked entirely too young. But a check and a cross-check with other information revealed him to be twenty-three. It was the ideal age for who we were looking for for the translator's position. To have gained the language and area-knowledge skills he exhibited by the age of twenty-three marked him as highly intelligence and quick to process and assess.

No way could I put him lower than the top three.

When I left the consulate, I didn't want to go back to the hotel just yet. Gupta was supposed to have moved to his own room by now. But even if he had, I wasn't anxious to move back into his controlling sphere. I could hear the ocean from the street in front of the consulate, so I picked my way through the muddy streets there and, shortly, found myself at the edge of the beach overlooking the Bay of Bengal. From here the sea looked vast and the beach looked almost pristine, even though it bordered a teeming city of nearly five million. That figure alone made me shudder—a city that few in the West even knew about located near the end of the earth and with five million inhabitants.

There were only a few people out on the beach, most of them just standing and looking out to sea. I fancied they all were seeking a private moment, turning toward a vast emptiness and away from a human anthill.

He was standing about half way between the upper edge of the sand and the waves lapping up on the beach. For some reason I recognized him even from the back—out of all of those five million people in Chennai—and even though he no longer wore the clothes he'd been interviewed in.

He was short and a rich brown, but unlike so many in the north, he wasn't thin and emaciated looking. He was beautifully formed even by Western standards. He was bare above and wearing a white dhoti flowing down to his ankles. The dhoti was being ruffled in the sea breeze, and occasionally opened enough to show a well-turned, if miniature, calf. His feet were in thin-soled sandals. His biceps and shoulders were well muscled, and there was a dip from his shoulder blades and broad shoulders down to a thin waist before his buttocks flared out in back. Not his hips, though, he didn't have the hips of a woman.

When I came up beside him, I saw that he had his arms folded across his well-muscled chest. A gold medallion on a thick gold chain hung from his neck, the medallion nestled in the cleavage of his chest. He had a sweet, enticing scent about him. Of cloves and cinnamon, and I ever after was to think of the sweetness of these smells when I thought of him.

"Hello," I said. "It's Sanjay, is it not?"

"Yes, hello, Mr. Jenkins," he answered in a soft voice. "Did you hear the sea calling?"

"Yes, exactly," I answered, a bit surprised because only now I realized that this was so. "Did you as well?"

"Yes, I often come out here to listen to the sea. Often I need to withdraw."

"Withdraw?"

"Yes, from Chennai, from the taboos of Indian society."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," I answered, my heart beginning to beat faster, because I had a definite inkling that I did know what he meant.

He turned and gave me a sharp, knowing look that went to the quick of me. Then he returned his gaze to the sea. "I have a feeling that you do know."

My heart was racing. Should I just pretend I hadn't heard him say that? His voice was low. Could he believe that a statement that stripped all pretense from me had gone unheard?

"You did well in the interview and the testing today," I said.

"I'm glad to hear that."

"Very well."

"My heart soars at the sound of that."

There was silence between us for nearly a minute, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. It was more of a building of the senses and of a sensuality in just being close to each other. I certainly felt it, but I felt the heat of it coming off his body too, even though the sea breeze was getting chilly. I moved a hand out from my body, toward him, and although I didn't see him noticing I'd made that gesture, he placed his hand in mine.

"If I asked you to come with me, now, would you do it?" It was not of my own will that I said that; it just came out of me.

"Yes."

"I'm not talking about for more testing for the position."

"I know you're not."

After double locking my hotel door to bar a visitation by Gupta, I began the evening- and night-long fuck of Sanjay on the bed in my hotel room with the small of his back on the foot of the bed, his legs running up to my shoulders on either side, his feet only reaching the hollow under my shoulder bones and with my palms on his pecs and puffed-up nipples. As with the two Indians I previously had fucked, it was hard going getting the thickness and length of me into his tight channel. But with Sanjay I took my time, and we were both panting and breathing heavily and groaning at the effort. But I was inside and fully buried, amazed that he had taken all of me. He was trembling and watching my eyes with his, big and brown under think, long, black lashes, looking like a deer in the headlights. But I could see trust and acceptance in them as well.

I leaned my face down to his and ran my hands behind his head, lifting his face to mine. My fingers broke the band he was using to gather his hair into a ponytail and then ran through his long, dark hair as it cascaded down to his back. Our lips met in a tender kiss, which turned into one of mutual hunger and need . . . and I began, slowly to pump inside him in long, slow strokes. His cock wasn't small for a man his size, and it continued to harden as I fucked him. But he didn't ejaculate. He clutched my arms with his hands and moaned deeply, but he remained tense, not relaxing into the fuck, almost as if he was just enduring it.

I slowed the pumping, trying not to hurt him any more than necessary. Being surprised he had accommodated my cock in his confining channel, and feeling him so small, I wanted to maintain control of myself and was giving him a gentle, loving fucking.

For once I wasn't thinking only of myself and my own pleasures; I was thinking of his enjoyment as well—and his endurance.

I changed the position, moving him onto his belly on the bed, and I stretched out on top of him, bearing most of my weight on my elbows and knees, but my cock buried, again, to the hilt in his channel and me trying to touch him in as many places as I could—my lips in the hollow of his neck, my toes rubbing his calves—as I slow-plowed and he moaned and groaned.

But, to my surprise and concern, I soon realized that his trembling came from his soft sobs.

"Am I hurting you?" I whispered. "Am I possessing you too much?"

"No, not that," he murmured. "I just was expected something more—something different from a man your size. I'm not porcelain. I won't break. I want to be worn out, taxed to the limit, fucked hard. Punished. You have such a big cock that I expected more. I thought that you would . . . could . . . when I am taken I want to be taken totally, no prisoners spared. I want to know that I have been . . . fucked."

I fucked him then as I had done the rent boy in the tub, my knees jammed up under his buttocks, his torso flopped back in front of me, arms dangling down to the bed surface, head arched back, a cry and big "Oh" on his mouth, and, hands gripping his waist, pulling him hard off and on my cock.

I rode him doggy style with him bent over the arm of an easy chair and me using his gold chain as reins. I fucked him standing up with him draped on the front of me, fists locked behind my neck, knees hooked on my thighs and, me, palming his buttocks, brutally jamming him on and off my cock—and then still standing, with his torso bowed over the bed, me grasping his wrists and holding his arms taut, and him locking his ankles behind my thighs and me thrusting, thrusting, thrusting.

After his third ejaculation and my second, we fell in a heap on the carpet, panting and heaving and grunting and groaning. He cupped my face in his hands and we kissed deeply, after which he said in a hoarse voice, "Yes, just like that. You are a horse and your fury, your cruel, total taking, arouse and satisfy me fully. Most Indian men copulate too delicately. This, this is what I've wanted, what I've dreamed of getting."

I fucked him, brutally up against the shower wall under the streaming water with his knees hooked on my hips, my lips and teeth working over his mouth and his nipples, and thrusting up deep inside him again and again and again.

And I mounted and fucked him hard three times in the night. After the last time, I ached to possess him as fully as I had the first time, to become one with him, our minds and bodies fused for all time. Between fuckings we lay close together with our arms entwined and our hearts beating together in unison as I drank in the clove and cinnamon sweetness of his scent.

I left him in the morning, on his back on the bed, his knees bent and legs spread, an arm thrown over his eyes, and moaning softly.

I scheduled him ninth out of ten interviews and tests that day to give him a chance to recover and be there on time. With a heavy sense of regret, though, I had already decided I would not hire him.

Sanjay aced the second interview and got all of the test questions right. I didn't tell him that, though. At the end of the day, I told that he had done well on the tests but not nearly well enough. He seemed more resigned than crushed when I told him this, and it occurred to me that in a city of five million with less than a third of that many jobs, interview rejection must be the assumption of all candidates. I mourned that that was so. But mostly I mourned that I could not give Sanjay the job.

I looked for signs that he had expected to get the job because he'd let me fuck him. But I saw none. If I'd seen that, I would have offered to pay him a large sum. Not having seen that, I felt I couldn't insult him with suggesting he was a whore.

"Does that mean . . . that we won't be together again?" he asked with sad eyes.

"Probably. I'll make my final selection tomorrow and the consulate will handle the processing from there. I'll fly back to New Delhi and then back to New York." I tried not to make it sound too hard, but I also tried to make it sound final—and inevitable.

"Oh. Did you not like me? Did I ask for too much?"

"I liked you fine. It was good. Very good. We just won't be on the same continent." And that indeed was the crux of the matter. I certainly did like him. I thought that I might even love Sanjay. I knew that his body brought me great joy, and I loved fucking him. But he could not be in New York. I could not trust myself with him in New York. I could not rock the boat with Jennifer that way. My cushy life was too important to me. I steeled my heart and wished him luck. I said I would put in a good word for him to the consulate for the possibility that they someday might need an excellent translator.

He left quietly, and if it was a sob I heard when he got to the door, I pretended that I didn't.

That night, after he had ridden my cock, Gupta quizzed me on how the candidate search was going—and pointedly asked me if I'd found anyone who spoke better English then he did. Nearly half of them did, but I diplomatically brushed on, concentrating on what else he had asked.

"It was hard deciding. I still have work to do on it tomorrow, but I think I will be ready to leave the morning after that. You can go ahead and look into flight schedules back to New Delhi for us. There is one, named Sanjay, who is beyond excellent."

"The well-muscled, dark brown one with the pretty face and ponytail?" Gupta asked.

"Yes," I answered, disconcerted because I had no idea when Gupta might have seen Sanjay. Did he, perhaps, see him leaving my room this morning after I had left?

But he didn't pursue the point. And he didn't try to maneuver me into another fuck. He dressed and left the room. I double-locked the door behind him, showered, and got my first full night's sleep since arriving in India.

I woke up full of remorse. I couldn't do this to Sanjay just because he was such a good and willing lay. It wasn't just to him. I had to include him in the last set of candidates. I breakfasted with Gupta in the Sheraton coffee shop and called the consulate and asked them to send someone to inform Sanjay he was still in the running and should appear at the consulate for another test if he was still interested in the job. I had his folder and read his address over the phone to the secretary at the consulate.

Between the second and third interview of the five I'd called back—six, counting Sanjay, Gupta appeared at the consulate and called me aside.

"I went to this Sanjay's home to make sure he got the word you would test him today," Gupta said. He was wearing a sad face and spoke slowly and haltingly.

"Yes, and?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Clifford. Sanjay took his life last night."

"Took his life?" I heard him, but I rejected what he had said. It couldn't be. It was just too horrible.

"His family said he went down to the sea and just swam out into the water. They recovered his body this morning."

I sat down hard on a bench in the corridor, my ears buzzing. I felt like I was going to be sick.

"But I don't know why you need to continue the interviewing," Gupta said. "I think we both know I am the best man for the job. Khurana told me all about what was needed, and I have prepared myself. I have even let you make love to me. I think it's obvious the job should be mine. When I am in New York, you can make love to me as often as you want to."

I looked up at him dully, the horror of what had been happening to me sinking in. It all had been engineered by Khurana—to get his cousin the job. Just as upon hearing that Sanjay was beyond my touch now and realizing that I loved him and my heart had rent, hearing what Gupta had said—so crassly transitioning from telling me that Sanjay was dead to making a claim on the translator position—and saying that he had let me fuck him when he had controlled all of the fucking—I woke up and my heart snapped back together and hardened.

"You can't have the job, Gupta. Not only are you not as qualified as any of the five I'm interviewing today, but you cannot have the job precisely because we have fucked. I can't let you come back to New York with me as a man I'm fucking. I can't do any of that in New York. I am married. I have a reputation."

"But we have fucked, and I can say that all the way to New York if I must," Gupta said, his tone just as hard as mine.

"You want a job, I'll give you one. But here, in India," I said, realizing the truth of what he said about knowing already that I went with men and my mind already racing ahead to repair my folly. "We are opening an office in India. Khurana will come here as chief. And you can work in the office, but only as long as you keep your mouth shut—and your body in India."

We'd only talked at the corporate level of opening an office in India and no one had mentioned sending Khurana here, but I could make it so. I knew I could. Now I couldn't have Khurana in New York either.

"I think you should make your own way back to New Delhi," I said. "I will be traveling separately now."

I stood up and marched toward the entrance of the consulate, right by the receptionist, not seeming to hear her trying to tell me that the five remaining candidates were here now and ready to be interviewed again.

I walked to the beach and stood there, looking out to sea. And I wept. After I had no more tears, I opened my briefcase and fished out Sanjay's folder. It took effort to find flowers and to make my way on my own without help to the address Sanjay had given, but I did it not only because it was the right thing to do, but also as a token of atonement. Perhaps I personally hadn't caused Sanjay's death, but I had provided that last push over the edge for him, that last rejection, both sexually and as an opportunity to escape out into the larger, more forgiving and supportive world.

"Sanjay, he not here," the old crone said when she opened the door of a small shack in a sea of temporary hovels.

"Yes, I know. I am so sorry. I am a friend. I've come to—"

"He has gone to Mumbai, this morning. A man from New Delhi came and gave him money and Sanjay has gone to find job in Mumbai."

I swallowed my breath, almost choking. So that's how it was, what Gupta had been up to. I could have cursed him, but I was too elated in knowing that Sanjay hadn't died. "Mumbai? Where in Mumbai? How can I contact him there?"

But she was already closing the door on me. She had taken the flowers, though.

I had lost him once; I couldn't lose him again.

In the airport, after changing my ticket to Mumbai, I found a telephone and called Leonard's office in Delhi. My name was enough for me to be put directly through to him. It always had been. We had met periodically over the years, arranging our meetings by phone to our offices under the guise of being old, dear friends—which, of course, we were.

"Leonard. Yes, I'm fine. But I need something urgently. Even Indian citizens have to register when they move from city to city, don't they?"

"Yes, certainly, but it isn't really as draconian as you might—"

"I'm not judging that. Listen, can you, from your position, or from Manjula's, tap into that system and locate someone?"

"Yes, of course, for you, if that's what you—"

"Yes, good. I need a location for a Tamil Nadu citizen arriving in Mumbai today from Chennai." I gave him Sanjay's name and as much of the personal information from his folder that Leonard needed. "I'm headed for Mumbai myself and will give you a call from my hotel when I get there."

"No, nothing's wrong. I have selected him for a position and must get in touch with him as soon as possible."

My relationship with Leonard was such that I couldn't tell him that, although I would select Sanjay for the translator's job, his more significant position would be under me and that the touch I was looking forward to was that of my thick cock inside his tight channel.

I had no idea what I'd do about the life I led with Jennifer when Sanjay and I got back to New York. But I was reassessing my priorities as I chased the man I loved across India, and something would work out. I had to believe that it would. I pulled a handkerchief he had left behind in my hotel room out of my pocket and raised it to my face. I ingested the sweet smell of cloves and cinnamon, feeling Sanjay close beside me.