My best friend is an alcoholic

“You have time for me?”

“Pavel, I always have time for you,” I said.

“OK, my darling. See you Rudolfa 15 minutes, ok?”

“OK,” I said, and slid my mobile back into a cargo pocket.

I only see Pavel once or twice a month now, since he started working more-than full-time at his construction job. He’s bitter about it. Not just about not seeing me, but mostly about the fact that I’m going places without him. He said just that when I called him from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, hoping that he could take a few days off and join me in my tent.

“I want go ale every day work. You holiday. Big party. Me every day work.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I wanted to share the fest with him, since I always have a good time and since we hadn’t had the chance to be alone together sleeping in such a long time. It wasn’t my intent to flaunt my freedom, but rather to give him a chance to get away from his responsibilities.

I have a whole discarded post I wrote concerning problems between Pavel and me, particularly over his constantly asking me for money, even though I’d made it clear that there were certain times he should not ask for money. The night of my birthday being one of them, particularly after I’d been the one to buy all of mine, and all of his drinks. I’d made him cry that night by “breaking up” with him, telling him I never wanted to see him again, a feat I reveled in and regretted simultaneously. I also bullied him into admitting that he loved me.

Then I didn’t see him for 40 days and 40 nights.

(That was the first line, more or less, of the post that I wrote and left to mold and that now has been rendered irrelevant by this one.)

Never force a straight boy, even a straight boy as open as Pavel, to say something he’s not ready, may never be ready to admit. Still, everything’s all right between us now. More than all right. He hasn’t asked me for money the last three times we were together, and in fact, the other night he took me out to McDonald’s and paid my way at Club Temple, as well. And has told me he loved me at least a dozen times since. Not in a forced way, not as if he meant to say something else and then remembered he had to say “love” in order to please me, something that your run-of-the-mill rent boy could do without missing a beat. (After all, if it had been not been real, it would have been easy to admit and wouldn’t have shaken him up so badly. He’s made his peace with whatever that word means in his mouth about me.) But rather he says it spontaneously, and with plenty of sugar on top. I imagine we must make sick everyone at our table at Rudolfa. They all think we live together and are lovers. Czech regulars are shocked to discover that Pavel has a girlfriend and a baby. Pavel is gay, as far as they are concerned. Nothing I can say has been able to dissuade them of that.

For my part, I realize that I have made one enduring friend here in the Czech Republic and that’s Pavel. I don’t think I realized it until we were separated for so long, and until I noticed his behavior towards me had changed. I’d thrown down an ultimatum, of sorts, and he’d finally come around to meeting the challenge.

All of which makes horrible the fact that, for quite some time, I’ve been enabling an alcoholic to destroy his body with beer. Pavel confessed the other night, tearfully, that his doctor had told him that if he didn’t stop drinking he would be dead in three months. He said this after coming back from the toilet, after having spit up blood. Manchester Lee told me that he’d known this since before Christmas, that Pavel had collapsed at work once before the time I knew about. Pavel had kept the reason from me. Twice. Not surprising, since beer has been the fuel, the cement for our nights and fucks together since I met him.

I still don’t know what to think. He doesn’t look like someone who is going to die in three months, from alcohol or anything else. He’s big and strong. Robust, even. I’m assuming that the doctor has told him this to scare him into cutting down on the alcohol. I can’t imagine that the liver of a 21-year old boy is going to fail, no matter how much he’s drunk in the past. But I won’t know until I talk to the doctor. I made Pavel promise me to make an appointment so that he and I could go and I could hear exactly what the problem is and what could be done about it. We might have to go to Motol – the big, fancy hospital for foreigners – or somewhere else, to find a doctor who speaks English. But I’m determined not to be left in the dark about what’s going on.

Pavel also melodramatically insisted that when I come to his funeral I had to tell Dominik, his son, what a good father, and a good man, he’d been. I clucked and said, “If you are a good father, then you will stop drinking. For Dominik. You want Dominik have no papa?”

“Me have no papa!” he said. “Me no papa!”

Lots of consoling, as well as more tears, occurred after that, until finally I said that I would quit drinking with him if he would at least try. Inside I was thinking, what the hell am I saying? All we do is drink. But the offer was sincere. I would do most anything for Pavel.

But, ah hah! Will I, can I quit drinking?

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The Boy aka The Cocktease

After reading this post, Manchester Lee suggested a better nickname, Cocktease, or CT for short. Doh! I should have thought of that.

After all the tedious whingeing yesterday, Prague relented (or rather got sick of hearing me moan) and gave me a little gift. No, not money, but the next best thing: A boy. I didn’t even have to do any work at all to get his tongue in my mouth, his crotch to my crotch, his arms squeezing my butt and hugging me hard.

He chased me.

I don’t remember his name, though. He remembers mine. He yelled it across the bar in great happiness when he came into Rudolfa last night and saw me.

“Riki! Riki! I cannot believe you are here! Oh my god!” Then he sort of squealed, but in an almost butch way.

Anyone who knows me would be shocked that I would give this boy the time of day. Classic twink, a little bit feminine, a tad trizzy. Slim, narrow hips; small pecs but nice biceps and a cute, small, round butt. Oh, and 19 and WHITE. The only thing about his physical appearance that resembles my normal type is dark hair and dark eyes. But when I’m drunk and my eyes are closed, any hard, young body feels nice right up close against me.

We’d shared a couple of strange moments several weeks ago when I first met him. He had come in with Vašek, a young, hip-hop-loving, occasional rent boy that the expats in Rudolfa call 50 Cent. I used to call him the Fastest Blow Job in the East. 30-40 seconds, no lie. Both he and Vašek were accompanied by two 30-something Czech guys whom I assumed were punters. [Fuck, since I don’t remember his real name, I have to think of a nickname. Nothing snappy comes to mind. The Boy The Cocktease will have to do.] Vašek and The Boy The Cocktease danced all night to hip-hop and R&B, with Vašek constantly trying to kiss The Boy The Cocktease on the mouth, and The Boy CT constantly turning his cheek. They were having a good time, bouncing up and down on sneakered toes and swinging each other around; our table of expats had a good time watching them. Sometime during the night The Boy CT noticed me from across the room, said something in Vašek’s ear and then pushed through two people to sit next to me.

We ended up having a good long chat, in English and some Czech. I don’t remember the specific content of the conversation. Much of it was flattery coming from him, and incredulity coming from me. At several points I thought he was going to lean over and kiss me. He would just stop in the middle of a thought, cock his head, look at me and begin to lean forward. On that night, I wasn’t interested, and so didn’t move to meet his lips. Besides, he’d already told me he was there with his boyfriend. One of the first things he had told me was that the man loved him but he didn’t love the man, and that he hated that. In fact, it might have been the very first thing he told me. I had felt like he was asking to be rescued, or warning me, Don’t love me.

The last thing that happened that night: The Boy CT asked me to come back into one of the back rooms and talk to him. I asked him why.

“Just please come,” he said.

“Why can’t you talk to me here?”

“Because my boyfriend is watching,” The Boy CT said, and I saw that he was.

I shrugged and went with it. Although I’m not a poacher, this Boy intrigued me. He obviously intended to cause some drama, and the mischievous aspect of it appealed to me. I felt like a co-conspirator. So we went back together and stood next to the toilets. The Boy CT put his hand on my shoulder and opened his mouth to speak; then closed it and just looked at me, rather sadly. I almost laughed out loud. It was such a sincere and charming performance, though, I didn’t want to interrupt it. Instead, I just smiled.

“What is funny?” The Boy CT asked.

Before I could say, “You,” The Boy CT’s boyfriend and Vašek came around the corner and stood there looking at us.

[I’d realized earlier than Vašek was jealous of the attention that The Boy CT was paying me. It was also that night that I’d turned to one of my friends at our table and we’d both said exactly the same thing at the same time, after watching Vašek interact and follow The Boy CT around all night: Vašek’s gay! I don’t know why it had never occurred to me before, considering that Vašek was in Rudolfa almost every night and only rarely tried to get biznis. If a gay bar is your favorite bar, you’re probably gay? Unless you’re Pavel.]

The Boy CT and His Boyfriend said a few things to each other in Czech; then The Boy CT said to Vašek in English, “Please, one minute.” The Boy CT kept his hand on my shoulder and went back to looking into my eyes. By this point, I was near bursting with suppressed laughter. Everyone else was behaving so seriously and I felt like I’d stumbled into a soap opera and had been miscast in the role of The Other Woman.

I bowed out quickly and left the other participants to their own drama. I didn’t see The Boy CT again until last night:

When there was no drama, except a little playing-hard-to-get on my part. The Boy CT started the flattery up again, calling me “amazing” and “special,” for no discernible reason I could tell. Flattery really gets no where with me, not even when I’m drunk, so I just laughed whenever he said something particularly silly and fawning, which drove him crazy. I also made fun of his English, something I never do, but only because he argued with me about the pronunciation of a word, claiming that he spoke as well as a native speaker. I laughed loudly and sharply at that, and he blushed. He actually stomped off at one point when I returned to my conversation with Manchester Lee, and ignored him. Which made me laugh again.

But he came back a few minutes later. He leaned over, put his arm around my shoulder, kissed me forcefully, and made his point. I must have looked surprised because, around The Boy CT’s head I could see my friends smiling and raising their eyebrows. I resisted for a fraction of a second but when I did, The Boy CT just pushed his mouth on mine even harder, burrowing his tongue between my lips. That’s when I started to get hard, so I gave up and kissed him back.

Before all this had happened, I told Manchester Lee that I couldn’t read The Boy CT, and that that made him dangerous. Was he a rent boy? Just a gold digger? A gay boy who actually likes older men? Who was he? I’d decided that the best way to handle him would be to underplay my attraction to him, which was growing by the minute, not really because of his looks, but because of his boyish presumption and his obvious intelligence. He was damn clever, and paradoxically, easy to manipulate, and it was turning me on.

We spent the rest of the night as a couple. Our slow-dancing turned into standing in the middle of the floor, making out and grinding crotches. We both had hard-ons. The Boy CT leaned backward, holding onto my waist and rubbing his bulge against both my legs, back and forth. He turned me around and thrust into my butt. I should have been embarrassed but I wasn’t. People were watching and it didn’t matter.

But suddenly, around midnight, he told me he had to go. I asked him why and he looked at the clock and said, “I must sleep.” He kissed me goodbye and left.

I sat at the table with a fading erection and growing confusion.

“What the fuck was that all about?” I asked no one in particular. “He got me all horned up, in spite of myself, and then he leaves!”

Manchester Lee shrugged and smiled and then it occurred to me that The Boy CT had gotten exactly what he wanted and what I had been withholding from him: Attention. He got that, and that was enough.

Not for me. I had to go jack off in the toilet.

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home again

I’m about as excited to be back in Prague as I would be going to a Presbyterian prayer meeting. Maybe even less so. At least in the prayer meeting I’d get a chance to worship, something, anything, on my knees. Let’s see, when’s the last time I had sex? Oh yeah, Sasha. 5 weeks ago.

So, naturally, I’m pretty fucking cranky. I’m cranky if I haven’t had sex in a couple days, never mind OVER A MONTH. The sex shop has gone almost totally gay now. So that’s no fun. Valentino’s cabins are empty, even on the weekends, and I don’t really like the dark room downstairs, unless Pavel’s with me. Monty’s is fun only when my friends are there but I’m still forced to drink crappy beer. I haven’t even seen anyone in Rudolfa I’ve wanted in weeks and weeks. WTF? Station? Graveyard. Temple? Even the bubbly Joe is depressed, as he was last night when I went in there with Pavel. I really hate the place. Hate it. Wouldn’t have even gone in except that Pavel wanted to.

I had about two hours of fun with Pavel in Rudolfa last night – when he saw me come in, he literally grabbed me by the shirt, pulled me across the table and stuck his tongue down my throat – and for all that time, during all the sloppy kisses and crotch-grabs, I forgot that I hate my day-to-day existence here. Pavel even had his own money and treated me to McDonald’s and to a couple beers at Temple. He finally got paid for all the construction work he’s been doing.

But here I am, now, in KFC for 5 hours, on the Internet, because what else would I do in Prague right now? I checked the station, twice. Dead. The thought of traipsing over to Monty Bar fills me with dread. I’ll probably hit Rudolfa later, just to pass time and not feel so frakin’ lonely.

My tent’s wet, and other than setting it up and waiting around for the sun to come out, an unlikely prospect in rainy CR at the moment, I have no clue as to how to dry it out. Besides which, I suspect it would be spotted at night by the touring cop cars, because it’s so damn tall.  I don’t have the money anymore to store my stuff, so wherever I go, my life in my backpack goes with me. Which says HOMELESS PERSON just as loudly as stinky feet or stale sweat or wearing the same clothes several days in a row. All of which apply to me, or will in about a week.

So I’m hating my life at the moment. I hate every square inch of Prague. I feel as trapped as I did in Chicago six years ago and I’m saying the same things now that I did then. Feeling the same things, too. So intellectual arguments about how great Prague is aren’t going to cut it. Besides which I know more about Prague than the people making those arguments. I certainly know my own mind and heart better than anyone else.

Still, it’s my own fault. I’m to blame. One way or another, it will soon be time to pay the piper.

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Rent-boy charity

Sometimes I take a boy because he’s there. Because I’m drunk and horny in Rudolfa and he’s sitting next to me, clinking glasses and bitching about bad Czech music. In the case of Michael, a tall, lean dark-haired boy from the station, it was because he told me that, at 15, he cried at the end of Easy Rider; and also because he flattered me shamelessly:

“Better sex with you than with deez grandfadurs,” he said, when I suggested that he and I do 500 kc biznis rather than waiting around for non-existent punters in a deserted Monty Bar.

We left for Rudolfa, where the atmosphere was considerably more lively and the beer was oh, about a billion times better, not to mention 4 crowns cheaper for .1 liter more. Michael and I dominated the jukebox, with his choosing Aerosmith, and half-dozen other classic rockers, and my choosing The Clash, R.E.M. and AC/DC.

Michael’s not even my type. I think he’s cute enough, but he’s too tall (-20 points), too skinny (subtract another 20), too white (-50). But he’s articulate and speaks good, American-accented English (+20), has a nice happy trail (+50), and a hairy butt (+20). But boys who like guitars advance 75 points on my very idiosyncratic scale of attraction.

I’d already kissed Michael a little bit a couple weeks ago, and got a quick grope and a hand job from him. We’d hid behind one of the big cement vents outside the station (becoming a regular rendezvous point for me) and I tested him out for 200 kc. He kissed all right, if a little reticently, and he sure knew how to rub one out of me.

In Rudolfa’s toilets we did more of the same, getting completely naked, with some sucking thrown in and another great hand-job to finish me off. I licked my own jizz off Michael’s long fingers. He never got hard enough to cum, unfortunately, but I was feeling rather me-focused anyway and didn’t care. I was a little disappointed because he had told me that one punter’s amazing blow job had caused him to question his sexual orientation. My skills weren’t all that earth-shattering, that night?

With the money I gave him, he bought some weed from smoking bar Mello Mello, and we got high on the steps outside the station at 4 in the morning, both of us babbling about some very funny stuff, none of which I can remember now. Earlier in the evening, before we’d settled on a price, I’d told him I was homeless. He didn’t believe it at first, and then asked me how he could ask money for biznis from someone who didn’t even have a roof over his head. I explained: I had money, and was horny; he didn’t have money, and wanted to party a little. I told him it seemed like a perfectly reasonable exchange.

I guess he still didn’t feel it was quite equitable because after smoking two joints he invited me to come home with him and sleep in his flat in Podebrad, a small town about 50 km from Prague by train. I accepted, not because it was so important for me to sleep in a bed, but because I like traveling by trains, had really been enjoying hanging out with Michael, and because he said, smiling impishly with his big, round, brown eyes, that “Maybe we do some more stuff…”

More stuff didn’t happen. Michael got very sick on the train – he blamed it on the combination of marijuana and beer, which we’d both indulged in prodigiously – then threw up all over his tee-shirt and spent most of the train ride in the toilet recovering. By the time we got to his flat – a small but pleasant one-room apartment in a new building – we just collapsed on the mattress on the floor and konked out immediately. No cuddling, no desperate mid-morning sex, no kissing, despite the safe-sex packet I’d showed him I had in my pocket.

In the morning, I got to shower, shave – with one of those battery-powered 5-blade Gillettes – and Michael gave me one of his t-shirts, one printed with stupid English nonsense, which he’d never worn anyway. He also bought me a baguette for the train ride back to Prague. He was coming in later, he said, and maybe we’d get high again. If he managed to do biznis that day. I thanked him, and thanked him again, shaking my head and chuckling.

“What?” he asked.

“Well, we do biznis. I pay you and then you spend over half of that money on me, and also let me sleep in your flat plus give me a t-shirt. Seems a little crazy to me,” I said.

He laughed, scratched his chin, and said, “Maybe, but I think it’s correct.”

Maybe, but i think it’s kindness pity.

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Not missing Miki

Within 15 minutes I had my tongue down the throat of the boy who stole a blanket from me when I was homeless, and who had also aided and abetted swindling me out of 1500 crowns. Within 30 minutes we were in the toilet together and he was going down on me. In retrospect, I should have fucked him. Miki was always a good fuck and certainly needed a good seein’ to. Other than George, who was also there this night in Rudolfa, Miki’s ass was the most compliant of any boy I’d met in Prague and he was not a passive bottom. I’ll never forget the first time I I fucked him. I slid into him like a knife in butter.  Nope, not a particularly tight hole, but tight enough, and wet. He pushed back, and ground his butt into me, all while looking over his shoulder and kissing me and smiling. A biznis fuck that simulated making love, and I treated Miki that way then and always did after. George, who was also there at Rudolfa that night when I re-met Miki, was the one I pounded aggressively, for some reason.

Before Miki and I got to the toilet in Rudolfa, I spent some time trying to get him to admit to me that he stole the blanket. I realized at the time that it happened that there was a background story the details of which I didn’t quite understand. Something about the younger brother of the guy who took my money being dumped into their laps and therefore having to throw me out into the cold. The flat was only one room, and I’m sure they had probably spent the money I’d given them in advance for a week of staying in the flat. But they didn’t have to steal my blanket, did they?

Of course, Miki, like most Czech rent boys, could not admit that he was wrong. It was his friend, he said, not him, that had taken my money and my blanket. Never mind that it was Miki who had slammed shut the door to the wardrobe when I tried to retrieve my bag from where I had left it. Never mind that instead, my backpack was already packed for me and waiting by the door to the apartment. Neither of these two things made me suspicious at the time. But I had trusted Miki and had been burned for it. It wouldn’t happen again.

After the blow job – I didn’t cum – he asked me for money and I refused. I told him I didn’t owe him a damn thing. He took this better that I had expected he would. He tends to get aggressive when his loyalty is questioned or when a punter stiffs him. But this time, he’d stiffed me and I needed a little payback. Maybe that’s why he just shrugged and said, okay, when I told him I’d bought his beers all night and I thought that that was enough.

Sasha had left by the time I got back from the toilet. As soon as I started talking to and making out with Miki, I’d ignored my poor gypsy boy, other than turning to him and making sure he was all right or if he wanted another beer. The next day he told me he’d gone back to the station to sleep on the greensward. He’d been awakened by the cops and fined 2000 crowns for it. I felt bad about that, especially since, despite my erection and the good kissing, I felt rather blank towards Miki – neither glad to see him nor angry about past betrayals. I guess I’ve gotten over him, which, really, is kinda fucking sad.

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Ready to rumble at U Rudolfa

When I told the Finnish Filmmaker that I had made myself homeless again, he opened his mouth, started to say something, then closed it with a soft pop. He bowed his head slightly and looked at the floor for a few seconds. Then he looked up at me and smiled.

“You are a very strange person,” he said.

Can’t argue with that.

“But you seem to be handling it well.” He finished the sentence by shaking his head a couple times.

“I am, I guess. I mean, I’ve done this before and I’m pretty good at it by now.” He and I both laughed

We were sitting in the station’s Kavarna getting ready to shoot the final interview with me for the documentary he’s doing about people in and around the porn industry, including consumers and rent boys. The interview was supposed to conclude my part of the film, as I understand it, showing how I’d managed to “lift myself up” from being homeless and was now living a semi-normal life. So my revelation forced him to change tack. Being a good documentarian, he nimbly shifted focus. He wanted me to talk about what had happened to make me lose my flat again. I refused, and found myself unusually shy. I could feel my face heating up and probably turning red.

Before, when he shot me waking up in the park in the winter two years ago, it was just him with a small video camera. This time we were in the Kavarna, a boom microphone hovering over my head, held by a cute young Czech soundguy, and an assistant director manning a quite large professional video camera on a mammoth tripod. I felt small and exposed and more than a little ridiculous.

So, instead we sat in front of my MacBook and ran slideshows of my photographs of Kuba, Marek, George, Valentin, Vasile, Ovi and whichever other boy’s image lives in my hard drive. I made comments and reminisced. That was fun. It was also nice to get compliments, if not many, from people who are actually working artists. I never get that here on the blog.

The Finnish Filmmaker also wanted to shoot a mood scene in Rudolfa. He’d already shot some handheld stuff there last year, with me and Marek and Vasile. He’d captured Marek’s razzin’ insouciance and bawdy humor well, I thought. Vasile spent most of the time trying to hustle the filmmaker. I just got drunk and watched Marek dance.

Before heading for Rudolfa I rounded up Sasha, the glue-sniffin’ gypsy boy who cums buckets. I’d been wanting to take him with me to my favorite bar to see if he’s the missing bar/fuck buddy I’ve been looking to find. (Now that Pavel’s MIA. I’ve have to write that up sometime.) Sasha was more than happy to accompany us and also agreed to be part of the shoot.  I sniffed around his face before we went off to make sure he didn’t stink too much of glue. Rudolfa is a tolerant place but I thought they might draw the line at the often noxious fumes streaming out of Sasha’s lungs for much of the day.

When we got to Rudolfa, we were treated rather salutarily by Ruda, the big butch barman. The filmmakers hadn’t pre-arranged the shoot, but Ruda acted like he knew just what to do. He led us all to the backroom, chose the table for us, replaced the tablecloth and ashtray and sat just enough chairs around the table. I thanked him and he offered me a seat. It was really cute.

Manchester Lee got in on the act and the scene unfolded as if we were meeting Sasha for the first time. Sasha was cooperative but he didn’t contribute anything much himself, other than to ask basic questions. The filmmakers were happy with the results, I guess, and the smoky backit scene did look lovely in the viewfinder. After we wrapped, bar owner Rudy came back and demanded 100 Kc to put in the jukebox since we’d asked him to turn it off for the duration of the shoot. He’s always a little bit surly and had earlier expressed misgivings about the possibility of revealing Rudolfa’s name in the film. He was assured it wouldn’t be, took the 100 crowns and went back to the VIP table in the front.

Later, he came back to thank us, and invite us to the front for a drink; then he rubbed Sasha’s head, looked at me and smiled, saying in Czech something like: “I never know what you will do!” Then he shocked the hell out of me by rubbing my head. So instead of moving down in his estimation, I guess I’ve moved up. An unexpected result of the shoot.

I’d already sneaked a few kisses out of Sasha while we were filming. As I posted before, during our first biznis Sasha was reluctant to kiss me. But, if he’s going to replace Pavel, and reap all the benefits of that replacement, he’s going to have to learn to kiss, and not just passably. So, at first he just pecked, then I stopped him and indicated I wanted him to open his mouth. He did and I dove in. There were a few microseconds of resistance and then he gave back what I was giving. We did this a few times and each time he’d start giggling and duck his head shyly away. But he came back each time, too. Unlike Marek, who usually wiped his mouth immediately after he gave me one of his rare kisses.

Out in the front part of Rudolfa, I asked him if kissing me was okay: dobre nebo ne dobre. He said it was “Dobre,” and from then on out we had a good time. The filmmakers had already gotten us drunk, and then Manchester Lee got us more drunk, and a couple of my other bar buddies also bought us drinks. Sasha kept up with me. About an hour later, I had my hand down Sasha’s jeans. He sucked in his lightly hairy tummy to let me get inside and I started playing with his cock. And in, oh, about 15 seconds I’d gotten him hard. He just sprawled back on the bench, one hand pulling his shirt up and the other stroking his chin while I started tugging on his dick. I stopped; went back to drinking; then reached down his pants again. Still up, sweet boy.

We made out some more and then he abruptly stood. I thought maybe he was tired of being molested. He put his hand on my shoulder and I looked up at him.

“Je dem,” he said, jerking his head towards the toilet. “Let’s go.” You can tell how many points this boy scored with me that night. Hard in an instant. Instigates sex. Drinks beer. Kisses good, after some coaching. Butch but adorable.

We didn’t have much time in the toilet for more than a few minutes of sucking – but when I got his pants and underwear down he was still mostly hard – before there was pounding on the door. No fucking privacy. The bar was packed by this time. I know the queens in Rudolfa pretty well. If we spent too much time in the toilet – and everyone noticed our leaving – one of the barmen would come and politely ask us to speed up our orgasms, and I hate to hurry during sex. I cut our session short, kissed Sasha a little bit more and then went back with him to the front.

And found an old flame of mine, Miki, along with a short, butch straight friend of his, sitting at our table waiting for me.

Miki and I have a long history. (Curiously, I didn’t blog about it much.) At one time, he occupied a similar position of trust and adoration that Pavel occupied. His kissing skills were second only to Pavel’s, as well. Miki and I had lived together for several months in my Strasnice apartment, the one I eventually got thrown out of in the middle of the night. I could alway count on Miki to take care of me and my possessions when we went out drinking together, which was often, and he was always good at it, handling his pivo a lot better than I ever did. He also contributed to the household, cleaned and shopped, and behaved like a boyfriend. That is, as long as he was on the outs with his girlfriend, which, lucky for me, was often. Whenever they got back together, he cut down on time spent with me considerably, pestered me for money, something he rarely did when she wasn’t in the picture and most of all neglected to give me the fine, fine ass I loved so much. He would also take to lying and sneaking around to cover up the fact that he and the bitch were back together. But I always knew. And oh, she hated me, I’m sure. Our relationship had ended in drama, with his trying to take down pictures of himself off my wall, and my taking one of the frames and crashing it down on top of his head. Ah, Prague love.

All of that history went through my head when I saw him. A bit of a shock.

Yet I also hadn’t forgotten the worst of it, that back in my homeless days he had colluded with a friend to rid me of 1500 Kc that I had paid them for a week off the streets. But the slimiest thing was how he stole a wool blanket out of my backpack and then sent me out in the Prague winter without it. Can you forgive a person something like that?

I was about to find out.

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Fighting over the scraps

For the second time that weekend, Pavel almost decked a punter. We’d twice seen the guy that Bryan has called Islander. Once at Temple and again at our bar, U Rudolfa. Neither Pavel nor I were happy to see him but he sat down at our table in the back anyway and immediately put his arms around Pavel from the back. He pinched one of Pavel’s nipples and reached around and grabbed his crotch.

Pavel looked at me, clenched his fists and said, “Fighting,” hoarsely, not quite under his breath. Islander, whom I’ll dub “Island Girl” now, seemed not to get the point. Surprising, because Pavel had warned him off for the same behavior at Temple just two nights before. Back in the summer, he’d been taken to task for the exact same thing, when he tried to feel up Marius, my Romanian lover at the time. Breederboy had done the honors then, bless him.

Not taking the hint, Pavel finally turned his head and grunted into his face, “Stop!” As men like this tend to do, he responded as if he had no idea he had been offending anyone. In my experience, these pawers, these poaching Mr Whipples, are headed for a bad end and some drama. Either the boy they’ve felt up all night, for whom they haven’t paid and probably have no intention of paying, will get fed up and get violent, or the man whose boy he’s trying to steal, will get fed up and get violent. It’s coming. Mark my words.

I’ve had it happen to me, but in general, I don’t fight for boys. (Marek was the exception.) If a man is that pathetic then I let him make a fool of himself. There are always other boys and unless the boy is also stupid, the man won’t get what he wants anyway. Men like this never pay well. Never. It goes with the category.

Pavel didn’t hit him, and I’m not sure I would have done anything about it if he had. Island Girl has a bad reputation with the locals, both boys and men. Just yesterday in the station, someone asked me, joking, if we could take up a collection to put a hit out on him. I said that the man’s own behavior will ensure he gets what’s coming to him.

In Rudolfa, however, Pavel wanted a little revenge. So, when we migrated to the front room after a table opened up, and Island Girl followed us, without having been given an invitation, Pavel immediately began hanging on me, kissing me, rubbing my chest under my shirt, draping his leg over one of mine. Not that there’s anything unusual in any of that. But he wanted IG to know exactly what was up.

He leaned over me and said, in the Girl’s face: “Me Ricky’s boy. Tonight me and Ricky big sex.

And. FOR. FREE!” he finished, practically spitting on the hapless punter.

Oh my, I wish y’all could have seen the Girl’s face. One hour with a station boy? 500 Kc. The jealous, helpless look on a desperate punter’s face? Priceless. There are some things you can buy, asshole, and there are some things you earn.

Island Girl recovered as best he could, by feeding me some shit about how men warned him off me the other night in Temple. The bar had been full of friends of mine and one of them had asked me, full of concern and disbelief, “He’s not one of your clients, is he?” When I said, god no, this is not the sort of guy anyone makes money off of, he bought me a beer. Girl, everyone’s got your number; this is my town; you can’t play that game with me.

None of that was enough for me to be overtly unkind to him. I often get asked why I’m so tolerant of some of the assholes that come to Prague. My answer is always that it’s just good biznis. I may not like some of the men I meet and I don’t have to take their calls or go out of my way to help them, but if I get angry, or get mean, those men can still talk to other men. I’d rather have a good reputation. Guess this post blows my cover.

So I listened to Island Girl blather on about the boys he took advantage of on this trip. He told me a story about a Ukrainian boy he picked up outside of a potraviny, how he’d fucked him and how the boy didn’t ask for money. Now, the young man was cute and in the photos, photos of Island Girl’s cock going in the boy’s hairy asshole bare, he didn’t have a hard-on. I should carry around a mirror for times like those. Hold it up to the man’s face when they say, The boy didn’t want money! Really!

I wouldn’t say anything, I’d just hold up the mirror, meaning, That boy, that cute boy, let you fuck him, and he didn’t want money? Or didn’t expect it? You think he did it because he was hot for you? Maybe he was too shy or too inexperienced. Maybe he just assumed – no, depended on the fact – that since you are, to him, a rich, English-speaking tourist, you’d be correct and do the right thing. Do the right thing for a boy who was more than likely homeless. How anyone can reach his age in life and lack so much perspective and self-awareness, I have no idea. It’s sad, and infuriating.

Seeing those photos and hearing that story steeled me for what I tried to do later on in the evening.

A new boy came into Rudolfa. I’ve been telling people that young guys do come into the club looking for biznis. Not regularly, or predictably as in an established rent-boy bar like Temple, but enough that, if you went a couple times a week, you’d notice. This boy looked the type. He immediately headed to the back when he came in, which is where the new boys go. Island Girl followed him like a fly sensing fresh shit.

They both came back ten minutes later and sat at our table, biznis apparently having been negotiated. I have to give it to the Girl, he knows what he wants and he wastes no time trying to get it. I was shown a little piece of paper where the two of them had negotiated price. It went from the boy’s starting price of 2000, down to the final, agreed-upon price of 750, for Island Girl to fuck him without a condom. Seeing that, I’d had it. I looked the boy over, whose name was Michal, observed that he was cute and twinky, even with the two big crusty gashes on his nose gained from a fight with station gyspies (which butched him up in my eyes), and decided that, even if I couldn’t and wouldn’t take him, I could at least give him a place to sleep and later find him clients that would pay him well. I also thought I could do a jack-off video with him and pay him more than the Girl planned for doing a lot more.

I sent Pavel to negotiate, to tell the boy what sort of man he was dealing with and what to expect when dealing with me. I told Pavel to tell him that if he was determined to live this life, he should at least be paid what he’s worth. Pavel did, and the two of them seemed to get along well, eventually starting a shirtless arm-wrestling contest that got the whole bar whooping and hollering. Michal was twinky-thin and smooth but had big, baseball-sized biceps that would look good flexing on one of my videos. He fought Pavel to a standstill, which sort of pissed Pavel off, and surprised me.

Island Girl kept trying to insert himself into their interactions, putting his arm around Michal and trying to kiss him. Michal looked extremely uncomfortable at this, a fact that the Girl predictably didn’t notice, but made me all the more determined to get the boy away from him.

Pavel came back to my side of the table and said that the boy had agreed. Michal went so far as to get up and move to sit beside us instead of beside the Girl, which I thought was premature but the Girl, again, seemed clueless. I paid my bill early, hoping that the three of us could sneak out while the Girl was paying his.

We tried that, and were halfway down the street when the punter caught up with us, breathless and exasperated at Pavel for deceiving him. He pulled on Pavel’s coat, and tried to take the boy’s hand.

“Pavel said he was negotiating for me,” Island Girl said.

“Pavel lied,” I said.

“Look, Girl,” I said, finally spelling it out, as he tried to get around Pavel to grab Michal, “You’re going to pay him nothing. I have clients who will pay him a lot more. Plus, you’re leaving tomorrow, yes? Where is he going to sleep when you’re gone?”

“Please!” said the pathetic husk of a man, the man who’d already had enough boys this trip but who desperately needed to stick it to just one more.

“I’ll send him to you tomorrow when we’re finished!”

He was really upset at this point.

“You can have him tomorrow, Rick!”

“It’s not about my having him, Girl…”

We tried to leave then, but it was obvious we couldn’t get away from him without Pavel getting aggressive. I shook my head no as Pavel clenched his fists again. The situation had degenerated from being manageable to being embarrassing and was just about to become regrettable. By this time we were on the edge of Wenceslas Square.

Island Girl pulled Michal aside and asked him if he was hungry. Then he dug into his pockets and fished out some cash. I was slowly walking backwards down the Square, realizing that I had lost. If I’d had enough money on me, I might have outbid him. Maybe. Never underestimate the desperation of homeless boys or the tiny souls of fucked-up punters. Money talks and Rick walks.

Pavel tried to persuade the boy again but I called him back. Professional pride, I guess. We watched Island Girl and Michal walk across the street towards McDonald’s. Pavel and I went home and Pavel threw up violently in the toilet before getting into bed and wrapping himself around me. The big sex didn’t happen until the next morning but it was nice.

The next day I got a phone call from Island Girl. I had forgotten that he had my number, and his number wasn’t in my phonebook, otherwise I wouldn’t have answered.

I’m glad I did though. The boy didn’t put out. He had understood the Girl’s bribe to be only for his company. I thought about that, remembered that IG had said something like, Come with me and I’ll give you 1000. Michal had taken it literally. A boy after my own heart. One last revenge.

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Let Rick & Pavel Show You Gay Prague

Click the photos for details.

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Lost boys and bad behavior

Last night was one of those nights at Rudolfa that, in the morning, in the slow afternoon, when the details of it had emerged in memory, I had a hard time believing it. Did I really suck the big, beautiful brown dick of that average-looking gypsy guy with the awful mullet? In the toilet? Twice? And then go back out into the room and tongue Milan, the skinhead gypsy I’ve had a crush on for months? Did I really turn down the reciprocal blow job? What was wrong with me?

Did some desperate butch rent boy really suck my dick in the toilet and then beg me to get him biznis with my visiting American friend and blog reader? Did the boy really offer me free sex if I did? Did I really turn him down after it all worked out just fine?

Had there really been two fights in the bar, initiated by the barman, and including slaps and kicks and threats of police visits, one of which I almost joined because the barman had earlier been yelling at my butch rent boy? Did the one barman really treat me like a tourist last night and did the other one make up for it by kissing me all night in apology and drunken obsequiousness? How fast did I drink the two free shots – of whiskey! – he gave me? Did I really drink whiskey, which I hate?

Did I, really and truly, flirt with the gorgeous girl with the pierced lip on the tram, to the point of asking where she worked, and to the point where she felt uncomfortable enough to move away? Did I really throw a rock at a passing police car, for no good reason other than I’d slept past my stop, and then run like hell when they screeched to a halt in the middle of the street to come back and get me?

Did I – no, fuck it, I know I did – why did I pick up that homeless boy at the vaclavske namesti tram stop, take him home and then not fuck him as I had planned, but rather fell asleep? While he cleaned my entire apartment in a piko– I won’t say -fueled or frenzy – inspired and celebration were more like it. he was was the most plodding and yet ungrudging meth-head I’ve ever met in Prague.

So, yeah, after a couple cups of coffee and after shaking my head free of its haze, and after confirming that the boy was still cleaning, on his knees in the kitchen rubbing out stains on the linoleum, I admitted that the answer to all those questions above was yes. Well, except the one about the cops. I made that one up.

I sat reading my daily feeds and tried to ignore the boy’s slow and heavily-accented English as he berated me for allowing my kitchen to get so dirty, and wondered what it was going to take to get him out of my flat. Money wasn’t enough apparently. I’d already paid him and here he was waving around the cloth he’d used to mop, showing me how filthy it was. I made up some story about it not being me, but rather my former flatmate who had allowed the crumbs, and cigarette ash, and dust bunnies to build up and take over the kitchen. This, along with telling him that Pavel was coming over, seemed to dull his righteous indignation, if not entirely shut it down. He was still evidently a little pissed off at me for not doing biznis with him.

But the question I wanted answered was whether or not I’d imagined the state of the boy’s feet. I’d remembered putting him in the shower the night before and of his cautiously stepping inside the stall. Looking down had I really seen that his left foot was missing all its toes, and this right foot was missing the big one? I had completely forgotten about the single metal crutch he carried around with him, and in fact, while we were traveling home together, didn’t even think to ask why he had one. Maybe I had assumed that he used it as prop to elicit sympathy from tourists when he begged. He had told me that was his primary occupation now. He was too old, and too beaten down by the street, to sell his body reliably anymore. Except perhaps to seriously drunk and cheap bloggers who chat him up at tram stops in the middle of the night.

Once I had sneaked a look at his feet as he turned back to what remained of his work, not quite hobbling, but almost, I remembered the anguish I felt, and the anger, when I’d seen the reason for his crutch. Leaving him in the bathroom, I came back to my room, sat down on the side of the bed. I thought about how he might have came to this place in his life, and the sobs ripped out of me. I can’t remember crying as hard in years, not since I mourned my mother’s death, finally, sitting in front of the television and watching Buffy’s mom die.

Then I got angry and felt stupid. I got on Twitter and raged at the “privileged fucks” I assumed were listening. It made no sense but it made me feel a little better. I went back to bed and dug myself under the blankets and the 6 pillows. The boy stayed so long in the shower that I fell asleep before he was finished and didn’t wake up until much later in the morning.

I could say that I didn’t have sex with him because his deformity repulsed me. But it didn’t. In fact, such defects fascinate me, especially if the boy otherwise handles himself well. I could say that I didn’t want to be yet another man in his life who took advantage of his destitution. But I didn’t feel that way, and never have about rent boys, not even the down and out ones. I doubt the boy would appreciate, or even understand, such sentiment anyway. He’d rather have money. I could have just given him some money out of pity but I’m no longer the bleeding-heart liberal I once was. There is no dignity given in charity, and no virtue acquired either.

No, what kept me from fucking him was, now that the alcohol had been pissed away and/or metabolized, I looked at him, a boy whose name I didn’t even know, and thought, “How could I have found this ugly boy attractive at all?” His chest and his ass were skinny and flat and his dick looked like a short, misshapen tuber. I would have had to get drunk again to even consider touching him. So that question at least was answered easily.

The boy asked for my number. He wanted to come back next week and clean my flat again. “Very good job for me,” he said. It might need the attention again in a couple weeks, when my natural aversion to maintenance has created another mess, but I really didn’t want to see, or hear, this boy again, no matter how good a job he did on the floors. So I wrote down a number, all the digits accurate. Except for one.

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Maybes

If you listened to the silly series of Utterz posted below, you already know that Pavel and I found my old friend Miro drinking in Rudolfa when we came in. With him was another station colleague, Milan, whose birthday it was yesterday. Milan was already quite drunk, which for him isn’t so unusual, and full of affection for me, telling me he loved me and trying to make out. He’s straight, but as I said to a couple people last night, you might be straight when you walk into Rudolfa, but usually you’re transformed by a couple of Czech beers and the general messy queerness of the place. Marek certainly found that out a few times. Rudolfa was the only place where he ever kissed me on the mouth openly. Oh, except for that one time in Pinocchio…

The magic didn’t quite work on the three straight Czech guys who were seated across from us. Like many tourists do, they’d wandered in off the street, thinking it was just a “normal” pub. All the straight pubs they tried to get into had been too full. Still, it had taken them at least an hour, one of the guys told me, to figure out it was a gay pub at all. It is, after all, normal for a Czech hospoda to be full of men only. I looked around and didn’t see any of the bar’s normal queens, and big, butch Rud?k was tending bar – so I saw his point. In fact, all three of these guys looked quite at home where they were, as well. Two of them had shaved heads and scruffy faces. They looked like me. We chatted awhile and they left late in the evening.

It took an hour or so, after the straight guys had left, for our seating arrangement to settle down. Pavel and I had been separated by a table and other people. I could tell he was bored, not having me to entertain him. He came over, made Miro move and sat down next to me, a big smile on his face. And the kissing began. And the dancing. At some point during the night, I said to him, “Pavel, maybe I love you.”

He looked me in the eye, smiled and said, “I know.”

My arms were around his shoulders and our faces were together.

“And what, you don’t love me?”

“Yes, I love you. Ty viš. Maybe no Karolina and I go you home,” he said and frenched me. “100%,” he added. If only I had a vagina, I’m sure I could make him happy.

Although when a Czech boy says that, it usually means anything but one-hundred percent, Pavel makes it hard to be cynical.

Miro makes it hard to feel sorry for him. He makes plenty of money at his family’s hospoda in Pilsen but had, since his Tuesday arrival in Prague, spent all the money he brought with him. Yet he somehow found it acceptable to rack up a 600 Kc bill in Rudolfa last night, even though he knew he didn’t have two crowns to rub together. Rud?k the barman was dumbfounded, as we all were, and also angry. I offered to pay 200 Kc of Miro’s ticket but Rud?k said it wasn’t my problem. So we left Miro there at Rudolfa, along with a swaying, nearly asleep Milan, and among an increasingly hostile bar staff. Pavel said about the situation,”Maybe fighting.”

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Tags: Praguelife, Rudolfa, Prague gay bars

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