Like Father Like Son

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.