Monday, August 6, 2007

A blowjob just when I needed it most

I met Luciano a few weeks ago on gay.com. He messaged me and opened our chat with "give me money, i'm homeless and live on the street so don't throw away your food, I'll reheat it, and I need money to buy medicine for my poor sick aunt" (in Spanish, of course). I literally laughed out loud. I had updated my profile a couple of days before and added stuff about how I was looking for genuine friends, not losers who give me sob stories and are looking for handouts. Obviously he had read that and was tomando el pelo (pulling my hair which is how you say pulling someone's leg in castellano). I gave him instant bonus points for showing wit and humor.

Early Friday evening he and I met up at Alto Palermo Shopping, a large mall about 8 blocks from my apartment. Luciano has a small shop in a mall in Belgrano and asked me to accompany him to an exposition/trade show related to his business. He loves to walk, and he walks as though the demons of hell are chasing him, so we semi-sprinted about two miles from the mall to Centro Costa Salguero, a convention center next to the Rio de la Plata. We only stayed there about an hour, enough time for him to survey the available products and meet some new contacts. Then we headed back out into the rain for a dash to Paseo Alcorta, a shopping mall in Palermo Chico, so he could show me the fast food place he worked at in the food court a few years ago when he moved to the capital. It was time for dinner but, needless to say, Luciano wasn't eager to eat in the mall amidst memories of lousy wages and even worse managers.

So, we headed back uptown to Belgrano and ate in a cafeteria-style restaurant, Fame, near his store. It's not fancy but the food is decent and inexpensive and I remembered it from the first time we met when we went there for a coffee. At that time I was pretty nervous, as I often am when meeting new people here. Not only do I worry whether I'm meeting a new con artist or a potential good friend, I'm also anxious about the language gap. In English I think I'm a relatively bright and interesting person but I fear that my Spanish isn't good enough to keep a new acquaintance amused or involved. Of course, that just starts a cycle: I worry about my Spanish so I'm tense which makes it harder to speak and listen which makes me worry more.

Luciano is a pretty high-energy guy but he also has been very good about putting me at ease. We communicate very well most of the time, except when it's way late and my brain is too tired to process castellano any longer. As you'll see in the rest of this post, I more or less spent several days with him using castellano continuously day and night (he speaks little English) and my communication level increases dramatically as I become accustomed to someone's voice, intonation, and vocabulary.

After dinner, we walked around Belgrano a while and he gave me a crash course on public sex cruising in Buenos Aires. I got the lowdown on which subway station restrooms are cruisy and he even demonstrated how it all works at one of them. Then we went to visit his friend Javier at his apartment. They have been friends since they were young in Salta (northwest Argentina) and are close enough that Luciano has a key to his apartment (which is indeed a high level of trust here). During our conversation, among other things, they decided I haven't yet seen enough of the racier parts of BA night life, which set the stage for Saturday's activities. Eventually I left for home and a good night's rest since we were planning a late outing on Saturday night.

On Saturday, Luciano and I once again made Alto Palermo Shopping our rendezvous point. It's conveniently located a few blocks from Parque Las Heras, a public park enjoyed by families during the day but dedicated to cruising at night, as he eventually showed me. We walked down Avenida Santa Fe and Luciano pointed out which restaurants, cafés, and bars are mostly gay at night and the corners where the taxiboys (male prostitutes) ply their trade. Conveniently enough, many of them coincide so a would-be patron can enjoy a meal or drink in a restaurant while watching the taxiboys through the window, a kind of reverse window shopping.

Ultimately we arrived at our primary target about 1:00 AM, Zoom, a gay sex club. It has a small bar area as well as a lounge to relax or watch TV. Most of the space is given over to the driving purpose of the venue: cruising and semi-public sex. It's not like a bathhouse where people strip and walk around with towels. You can check coats, daypacks, and such, but you keep your clothes on as you troll around for prey.

There are lots of dimly lit passageways throughout the club, many lined with private booths. The booths are big enough for two people, have a video monitor with porn playing, mirrors, and strategically placed holes so one can observe or interact with whomever is in adjacent booths. There's also a pitch-black maze where one is forced to grope one's way, obviously with the intention of feeling much more than the walls. Luciano clearly found that arousing, as he proved by grabbing my hand to put in his pants so I could feel just how much he was enjoying it in there. The maze itself didn't do much for me but I certainly had no objection whatsoever to groping and grinding with Luciano for a while.

Our outing was more of a sightseeing tour rather than a night of debauchery. We stuck together, popping into empty cabins to see what was going on next door, meandered the maze a number of times, checked out the swelling (in more ways than one) crowd, and even chatted with a few people he knew. Eventually we got tired and walked back to my apartment which is only about a dozen blocks away and finally got to sleep around 5 AM.

Prices for Zoom: admission 12 pesos (US $3.87), soft drinks 4 pesos (US $1.29), beer 7 pesos (US $2.25)

The next morning, Sunday, we slept in and then got a kick start with cappucinos and a shower, then headed to the supermarket because my cupboards were truly bare. Luciano loves to cook so we got what we needed and he whipped up a delicious chicken cacciatore. After lunch, we talked and napped and then wanted coffee but discovered that my espresso machine was not putting out. I assumed the dispersion screen was blocked but I didn't have a screwdriver to remove it for cleaning. We headed for Easy, a superstore similar to Home Depot in the US, to find a screwdriver. As I said before, he loves to walk, so walk we did, a good 3 miles but it was a brisk evening, not overly cold, so it was fine. Along the way, Luciano continued my cruising education by showing me where the hot spot is in the Bosque de Palermo (Forest of Palermo), a woodsy park along Avenida de Libertador. We took the subway home and once again he demonstrated his culinary skills by making us a couple of savory pizzas.

It turned out the dispersion screen wasn't the problem with my Ariete. It was the outlet hole of the portafilter basket, a very tiny hole indeed. A paper clip was too big, a straw from the broom was too flimsy, and I didn't have any wooden toothpicks. Luciano is a clever boy. He took the filter basket, put his mouth around the hole, and blew. Nothing happened. He blew some more. He turned red in the face. Finally, he felt the blockage give way. We put it all back together, crossed our fingers, and happily watched frothy brown crema flowing into the cups. Luciano's expert blowjob had done the trick.

Later that night I rewarded him for his excellent cooking and hole-clearing success with an hour long massage. OK, who am I kidding? He seemed to love it but I bet enjoyed it even more. He's the typical Argentino beauty so who wouldn't enjoy rubbing a hot naked guy?

When he left this morning to go open his shop, I felt better than I had in weeks. I'd had such a fun few days and felt so comfortable and relaxed with him. I know what some of you readers are thinking. Why would I trust a relative stranger again, letting him not only visit my home but stay overnight for two nights? Part of it is I don't want to become a total victim, incapable of trusting anyone, living a sequestered life. Also, the situation is different with him. Unlike the problematic guys in my recent past, I actually know a lot about him. I have been in his store, in his office, in his home, in the home of his friend. He's not someone with a tabula rasa life, where false facts are painted to give me the illusion of knowing the person. So perhaps it's still a risk but at least it's grounded in some verified experiences. I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope that it turns out as well as Luciano's blowjob did.

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