Time passes and you forget. He was small, that you do remember, no more than 5′. His name was… what was his name? A Chinese name. Two characters. I think he said his name was William. Yes, I said, but is that your name in Malaysia, too? I showed off my ten words in Mandarin, a couple of which he said were wrong. You’re saying “Fat Guy,” he said, when what I thought I was saying, what the guy in Hong Kong had taught me when I bullshitted him about something or other, was “The King of Bullshit.”
Wei Lian approached me in the dry sauna. He was persistent. Sometimes all I need is persistence – it depends on how long I’ve been in the sauna, or my mood, or what the guy looks like. More than likely, a combination of all three. I am not proud of this, but I’d imagine I’m not alone in the way my desire behaves – every once in a while, any body will do. I wanted sex on that day… was it Thursday? Today is Tuesday. When he first came up to me – stood close to me, touched me – in another part of the sauna, I removed his hand. There were other men I wanted. He looked old, downtrodden. Only later would I discover that it might have been the light; he was younger than me, strong.
The second time he tried to make out with me was around the time I was planning to leave; I’d decided that nothing was going to happen. No… it was a Sunday (the dead Jew’s grandson was on the Thursday, but I’ll come back to that). So, Wei Lian, the sauna room, him moving closer to me, coming to sit next to me so that our knees touched. The sauna was full – yes, it was the Sunday – and as so often happens when the sauna is full, there’s a lot of walking around, a lot of waiting for the perfect man to come along, lots of posing. Sunday, on the whole, is a boring day for the sauna, and by boring I mean not much happens. It’s a figure-eight narrative, going round and round, eventually caving in on itself from inertia and the death of all libidinous urges. It’s the dodgem cars running out of steam. Whatever.
I like small guys. Small fit hairless guys are nice. Wei Lian was nice. By the time we started making out, I had to stop myself from scooping him up and putting him on my lap. For affection more than fucking. By that time, my libido was shrinking, but my desire for a cuddle was strong. I had the feeling he wouldn’t have objected. He was a good kisser. His body was firm, compact, and completely hairless. His discreet bush was all the hair I could see. He had a nice cock. Okay… skipping ahead. Scene Two. A cubicle. The two men are alone. The big guy stands behind the little guy and puts his arms around him, runs his hands along the little guy’s chest. And what I thought was this: How does one tell the difference between a little guy and a child. It’s not just about the body, is it? Just because someone is the size of a child doesn’t make them a child. Of course not. It’s like the psyche recognises an adult, the presence of a substantial cock, the way the years shape a body, a mind, a psychology.
But the size of him, his smallness, nagged at me. And then I thought: Well, straight guys deal with this all the time; many of them have partners who are much smaller than them. And , if we ignore the penis for a bit, what makes Wei Lian’s body different in feel to a woman’s body? When I run my hands over his body, his skin so smooth, his arse smooth, his crack, his face, everything. What turned me on the most was this smoothness, the complete exposure and vulnerability of the skin. He was strong, too, and he clearly liked to fuck.
“But not you,” he said. “You’re too big.”
“My arsehole isn’t,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “I could see it was very tight.”
We’ve come by then, and are lying together on the mattress, me on top of him, my almost 100kg to his 60kg or so. I’d come with his tongue licking my arse and him playing with my nipples. I’d knelt over his face. It’s not a position I get into often, but it’s a position I like.
Wei Lian’s a window-dresser (didn’t one used to meet more of those?). He’s been with his French boyfriend for the past eighteen years, and when the boyfriend’s away on business – a banker, I think he said he was – then Wei Lian goes out to play. He says he doesn’t come to the sauna often, so it’s unlikely we’ll see each other again; he says this because I say I don’t want to meet up again. In the past, good sex might have been reason enough to entertain the possibility of a re-meet, but now that I’m seeing this cute German guy on a regular basis, a playdate about once a week – can Mikey come out to play? – I’m less inclined to hook up with guys at my place just for sex. If I want just sex I’d rather go to the sauna. Home – and this has happened organically – is for making some kind of more meaningful connections. There’s too much danger in inviting men into one’s home – so many of them have nothing interesting to say, and/or they carry around so much psychic baggage. It’s not always like that, but many times it is.
Cue the grandson of the Jewish guy who was killed in a concentration camp. Stefan came round last Thursday. His story astounded me. It bordered on a denial of the Holocaust. But more about that next time.
Michael Wynne 