In more recent years I look back on my mid-1970s (and then again early 1980s) Bangkok adventure and just shake my head, wondering what we were thinking we were doing then and how shallow we must have been to be so totally focused on beautiful bodies and the striving for perpetual orgasm. I think that for most of those I played with for two-and-a-half years...
I was making an effort, but if there was a rise to be had from Dominic Castilano, it wasn't happening for me. The well-known and hunky Italian had bought the Thai garment factories my company's line of men's fashion designs used as a major supplier. And the scuttlebutt was going around in San Francisco that Castilano was gay—and an aggressive top. But, thoug...
If the kitchen of Kasem's family in the upcountry jungle of Thailand hadn't burnt to the ground, I possibly never would have found out what the special Bangkok sports massage was all about. Kasem was my masseur at a fancy Bangkok gym, which was open for "men only" a couple of nights a week and which was a major pickup place for prime cuts of male meat. Of co...
I froze in the middle of talking about the next season of the Bangkok Chopin Society at the ambassador's residence, as the ambassador walked into and around the side of the room to get into another room. I don't know if I audibly gulped or not, but none of the women—and the few men—sitting in a circle of upholstered chairs and couches in the commodious room...
The most wonderful thing a lover has ever done for me was to give me my life. I didn't understand it at the time, but if he had loved me as I wanted him to—as I begged him to—I would be long dead today. The days of my sexual coming of age in Bangkok, Thailand, during the mid seventies through the mid eighties were paradise followed by a rude awakening, a re...
Chapter One: Mile-High Club I had thought that no one could see us when Kwame pulled me into his body and kissed me behind a column at the San Francisco airport departure lounge, but then I saw the built black dude sitting almost alone in a bank of chairs in the adjacent departure lounge. He was staring directly at us. Coming out of the kiss, I buried my fa...
Had he really drunk enough to be this woozy? His head was swimming, the sound of his ears being the rushing of water—real or imagined?—and he was having difficulty distinguishing teak walls from sienna brown curtains on the portholes and from separating his tremors from the slow bobbing of the yacht. Why, in this state of confusion, could he feel every lusci...
I could not have been in any steamier place or time for my sexual awakening. Bangkok, Thailand, in the eighties was sin city extraordinaire. Anything went there; everything was tolerated. It was a mai bin rai ("nevermind; whatever, it's OK") place, and everything was not only tolerated, but it also was on offer—and almost always for free or at a very good pr...
So there is graduation, eventually, and my old boyfriend doing hard time and me looking over my shoulder to see if the pigs are looking for his old fuck-toy. I wasn't political, there should have been no reason for them to come after me, but they say you are only paranoid if they are not out to get you. I laid low senior year, and interviewed well with the...
I landed a prime job in Bangkok about a decade ago. I had to travel back and forth to NYC (where I lived with my wife and kids at the time) - it was for 3 years but worth it because it would advance my career, as it has. So I had been doing this for over a year at the time and got into a good routine - work, gym, group of friends to hang out with, etc... was...