Convergence

How different this man was from Gunnar. The fucking bastard had involved the police that night at the Z Club, I knew that for a fact. We had been lovers, although love had little to do with what we shared with each other. The door had been good; we had taken in over 10,000 Euros in covers that night. (I always had to calculate that into Deutsche marks to understand how much that actually was, I just couldn’t get used to this European Community crap.) The big money was being made on the balcony. The leather-clad locals called it “The Pharmacy“, for obvious reasons. The tip-off should have been when I saw a nervous Gunnar leaving quickly through the back door. Seconds later the lobby was crawling with police. I escaped just seconds before they sealed the club. I could still feel the ache from the broken rib, a souvenir of the cop’s heavy billy-stick as I pushed past him into the cold night air. If caught, this would have been strike three and I would be in Deutsche Bundesrepublik Correctional right now instead of here in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate eating Hasenpfeffer.

So I was back. The stew was delicious, and I had a very hot man sitting opposite me obediently waiting for me to finish my meal, ready and willing to do whatever I wanted. Life is funny, sometimes.

“You don’t like the stew?” Kurt asked, scraping the last bits of stew from his bowl.

Shaun wrinkled his nose and shook his head. Kurt pushed his bowl aside and dragged Shaun’s half-eaten meal up to his chest. He dug into it like he had the two bowls before that. Shaun had never seen one person eat so much in one sitting, especially someone Kurt’s size. He wasn’t skinny or frail – he just had a very lean, tight body with no visible signs of fat anywhere.

“I can order you another bowl if you’d like,” Shaun offered.

Kurt looked up from the bowl. “No, this should fill me nicely.” He hadn’t bothered to swallow the mouthful of potage he’d ladled up. He saw the look of aversion on Shaun’s face and lowered his eyes in shame. “Thanks,” he muttered.

Shaun shrugged. “You looked hungry and I knew you didn’t have any money...”

“Not just for the food... you know... for everything,” he said into the empty dish.

A smile crept across Shaun’s face. He reached across the table to take Kurt’s hand. Kurt pulled his hand away and reached into the pocket of his leather jacket. He pulled out a wrinkled slip of paper and read it.

“I have a cousin who lives not too far from here. Maybe he’ll let us stay with him tonight. We can get a good night’s rest before leaving for Vienna tomorrow.”

“Vienna? We’re going to Vienna? What’s in Vienna?”

“I have some friends in Vienna. I can stay there for a while until I get back on my feet. I know we hadn’t discussed it, but it’s not that far and I didn’t think you’d mind. I promise, once I get there, I won’t bother you anymore.”

Shaun’s tightly knotted eyebrows relaxed when he saw the pleading look in Kurt’s eyes. He was already way off schedule. As much as he wanted to help his downtrodden friend out, he couldn’t afford to spend another day driving in the opposite direction of where he was supposed to be.

“I have to get back to Moscow,” Shaun replied. “I’m catching the first plane out of here tomorrow. I can get you on a flight to Vienna if you’d like, but I can’t take you there.”

Kurt shook his head vehemently. “No flying.”

“Fine. Then how about a train?”

“Can’t you just go with me to Vienna and catch a plane to Moscow from there?” Kurt put his hand on Shaun’s knee. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Shaun’s dick jumped in his briefs. He tried to ignore it, knowing it would steer him wrong, but he couldn’t. He was usually stronger than that. In his line of work, he had to be. But there was something about men – especially the Kurts of the world – that made him act and react differently... weakly. Against his better judgment, he agreed to drive Kurt to Austria. Kurt smiled and gave Shaun’s knee a firm squeeze. It occurred to Shaun that, before then, he’d never seen Kurt smile. It made his heart sink into his stomach to see him happy.

“Let’s get out of here,” Shaun said.

“I have to go to the bathroom first.”

“Okay, but hurry up.”

Kurt leaned across the table and gave Shaun a deep, sloppy kiss. His tongue wormed its way into his benefactor’s unsuspecting mouth. “I’ll be right back.”

Shaun licked the spit from his lips and let out a sigh. He reached for his cell phone again and dialed some numbers.

“Hello, Dmitri? Listen, I’ve been delayed in Vienna for a couple of days; I need you to do me a favor... Yes, I know I already owe you, but this is really important... I need you to tail someone. He’s very sneaky so you can’t let him out of your sight, not for a single second... Yeah... His name’s Gunnar... Gunnar Rasmussen... Okay, keep me posted. I owe you my life, buddy.”

Berlin is divided into subsections, each neighborhood with it’s own character and attitude. My cousin lived in Schoneburg, the most vibrant and most gay. It is similar to Chelsea in New York, or Castro in San Francisco. To get there, we entered the U-bahn, and took the train to the Muhlen Strasse stop. We strolled from the station to my cousin’s flat, passing the colorful bars, dance clubs and restaurants. Cute guys everywhere, everyone having fun and enjoying themselves. Why did I feel so out of touch with life? Why wasn’t I able to enjoy sweet, handsome Shaun’s company, and forget everything that happened with Gunnar, was it just two months ago?

Z had been very crowded that last night in Berlin. Gunnar and I were working the crowd, looking for any signs of undercover police. The owner had hired us for our image and our attitude. Bad boys, not to be messed with, dangerous and aloof from the wild fetish scene playing out around us. The club was fetish with a capital “F“. The bar consisted of a sex shop, a dark room, a dance floor and of course a leather room. The waitresses were all enormous drag queens, who would happily serve up a face full of boobs with every drink. The legitimate bar had great receipts, but the big money was in the illicit traffic going on in noisy corners and intimate booths. Drugs, paraphernalia, and flesh trade were the order of business, and our job was to keep it an open marketplace, free from governmental influences. That night Gunnar had been unusually nervous. He was looking around the club furtively, searching for something or someone elusive. I saw a man tap him on the shoulder, and he jumped out of his skin. He shook with anger at the poor man, who only wanted to know where the restroom was.

What I didn’t understand at the time became clear to me later. Gunnar was playing both sides of the fence, working for the owners of Z and also the “Lavender Mafia”, a loose association of gay thugs who tried to make Berlin underground their personal cash cow. They were offended by the club, a powerful moneymaker that eluded their control. They would do anything to close the place down, to either take it over as is or crush it out of existence. I didn’t resent Gunnar’s duplicity... hell; I’ve double-crossed more than a few dupes in my time, too. I resented the fact that he didn’t tip me off to what he planned to do that night, and didn’t warn me to stay away from Z Club. He didn’t seem to care if I were arrested in the choreographed sting, and would be forced to finish the three-year sentence that I had just recently been paroled from.

Earlier, Gunnar and I lay in each other’s arms, exhausted from a serious bout of sexual aggression. Gunnar liked it rough. I had tied him diagonally across the bed, his hands stretched up and looped around the bedpost, his legs belted tightly together and strapped to the footboard. He got off on mild pain, and I found that if I clamped his nipples in ordinary wooden clothespins and sucked him off, he would reward me with a generous stream of hot sticky cum that I savored and loved to swallow. He came as usual that night, but something was different. He didn’t respond to my torment with the same passion as usual. His groans were unenthusiastic, his back arched a little less than usual, and his screams of encouragement were lacking any real intensity. I had no way of knowing that later he planned to set me up, along with the rest of the staff at Z Club.