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Just found this half-a-story in my Google Docs. I had forgotten about it.

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“Co delaš, skin?”

Marek asked this as I was digging and clawing into his abs with my fingers, slowly but not particularly gently. We had just gotten into bed but hadn’t yet slipped out of our underwear.

“What are you doing, skinhead?”

He grinned and looked at me, then turned on his side, trying to get away.

“Getting you in the mood,” I said. He didn’t understand but he would.

Then I grabbed for one of his nipples. He didn’t flinch when I pinched it. Just laughed and smiled and asked again, “Co delaaaaašš?”

“You want me to hurt you?” he asked in Slovak. “Yeah?”

I didn’t answer but just pulled him across the bed and over on my side of it. He immediately snuggled up against me and threw his arm over my back. It’s started to be a ritual, a warm-up, this wrestling and roughhousing, as soon as we get in bed together. I know he’s horny by the way he breathes and whenever he puts an arm around me. He positions his body – belly down and sometimes with his head turned to the side, sometimes turned towards me with a grin on his face – to give me contradictory signals. He wants to be close to me, but he can’t quite bring himself to let his body say, take me and do what you want.

For most of the time we’ve been sleeping together, I’ve honored his reticence. But fuck the waiting I’ve extolled in a previous post. On the night I’m describing I couldn’t wait anymore. I snuggled closer to him and he did the same. I moved my own arm down to the hollow of his back and, testing him, rubbed his ass through his slipy; ran one finger over the crack. His undies were tight. He flexed his cheeks and then unflexed them. Again, I didn’t know what to make of it. Was he letting me in or keeping me out or just showing off? His butt is small but muscular and whenever he pulls on tight jeans they pop audibly over his little bubble.

I decided to risk it and put my hand under his slipy. He didn’t flinch or tense up, not even when I dipped one finger into his crack, moved it down across his perineum, tickling it, and then put a couple more fingers in to play around with his balls, sticking out as they were from beneath him. I thought that if he weren’t up for it, playing around with, or near, his asshole would elicit some negative response. It didn’t; but he asked me if it was good. I told him, yes, it was very good, especially since I had felt just enough fuzziness and hair in his crack and on his balls. I wasn’t as familiar with that area of Marek’s body as I would become later.

I had noticed that his balls had not been loose but had begun to tighten. It was definitely time to start something more interesting. I turned him on his side — sloughed off a moment of resistance — and pulled him into me, chest to chest, crotch to crotch. His breath snagged and restarted; he put his arms around me and squeezed. I reached down and slipped my hand in his underwear, just to make sure I was doing the right thing.

He was hard. All right.

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Reading this story fragment two years later, it’s hard to remember when sex-play between Marek and me had still been easy, exploratory, fun. But it was before anything bad had happened between us, when he was less confused, before either of us had made any serious mistakes or had taken advantage of the others’ weaknesses. Although there are sex scenes I still use when I masturbate — like, for instance, any of the times when he jackrabbit-fucked me — it’s moments like this one I can think about without feeling conflicted, and sometimes with a sense of wonder.

Whenever I would ascend into self-pity or complain too insistently about Marek’s betrayals, a few commenters on this blog went out of their way to point out that Marek didn’t love me. I’ve looked, but I have yet to find any post in which I so much as implied that he did. Before we even get to love, let’s pause. I’ve found liking someone to be hard enough. Never mind loving me.

Still, times like I’ve described above happened; I didn’t make them up:  The feelings and arousals were real. Are they evidence of something deeper? I don’t know. I suspect the loneliness and emotional fatigue of street life facilitated Marek’s ability to be sexual and affectionate with me. He had no one at all who looked at him and saw something other than “gypsy” or “thief” or “homeless.” Many times he asked what I saw in him, why I liked him so much. I did my best to answer, but he was never satisfied. I was never satisfied with my own answers.

Maybe he just didn’t believe me, or maybe he wanted to hear me say why I liked him, again and again. How deep or significant you consider that need depends on how valid you think such emotions are, and more than likely, on your life-experiences. After five years in Prague and a year and a couple months on its streets, and facing criticism from haters on the blog and in real life, I learned that quick judgment comes from the blithely, bitterly privileged. Those people have nothing to teach me, or anyone else.

But, Marek taught me much. How to wait for it, how to seduce a straight boy (mostly with laughter, flattery and really great blow jobs), how to make one happy (hot, fresh, spicy food; bukkake porn; those blow jobs again) how not to care as much about things as I do about forgiveness. And this last bit must be why he forgave me, as I forgave him: How to settle for less while holding out for something more.

How to be a fool.

Marek had stood me up, oh, at least twice before — once when he failed to come back to the flat in Nusle and once when he… wait, he’d stood me up three times. The second was when I made a date with him and Sasha to go swimming. (To be fair, it was cold and rainy that day.) And once again when I asked him if he wanted to go drinking with me later, one day when I found him alone at the station. We’d had a long chat about the girl I always see him with, The Fat-Hipped Albino. The Fat-Hipped Albino who hates me, judging from the looks she shoots me whenever Marek says hello. In loud English, showing off.

“Where is your girlfriend?” I’d asked him.

“She no my girlfriend; she my girl for fuck,” he’d replied, with a small smile.

“She likes you,” I’d said.

“I know. She like me too much.”

“Pozor,” I’d advised.

“Many people speak me this,” he’d replied, but I let it be.

I’d known that I couldn’t ever get his full attention when he was with her — despite his protestation that he didn’t love her, he certainly behaved like a pussy-whipped straight boy when they were together, hand-in-hand always and ostentatiously — but I didn’t have time, at the time, to drag him off. Making appointments with station boys is like expecting good service in the Czech Republic. You expect you’re not going to get it, so when it happens you can be pleasantly surprised.

I had not been pleasantly surprised that day, and since it was a little over a week until I was supposed to be out of the country, self-deported, I resigned myself to never getting a chance to spend time with Marek again.

But I did. And the next time I saw him at the station — two days before my flight out, and with the ticket in my backpack to show him — he was alone again on the benches outside hlavní nádraží and without The Albino. I found out later that they had been fighting. I sat down, chatted him up, and showed him the ticket, my new passport, and then asked him if he wanted to spend some time with me. The last bit of time together, for who knew how long.

“I want,” he said, “But where?”

It was too early for Rudolfa so I suggested Montys. He shrugged, took a quick puff on one of my menthols, cocked his head at me, and said, “Go?”

On the way, we reminisced, or rather, he did. As usual, he brought up Vánoce, a word he always sing-songs, and the long fuck that Christmas Eve, as well as the first time we’d done biznis. In Pinocchio, where he’d tried to fuck me in one of the back rooms. He seemed to remember it in its details, finally, as I had. I was mostly silent as he talked. I smoked nervously, not really knowing what to say, but turned my head to look at him in the face, smiling at him as he spoke. Marek, in the present, always had a lock on my attention, but this conversation shut me down instead of opening me up. I couldn’t really think about the past and had not been able to since I’d known I’d have to leave. I tried to say something meaningful then, but gulped for air. My mouth felt full up but there was nothing inside, nothing to come out.

At Montys he surprised me by ordering a beer.

“You want I drink beer, no?”

“If you want,” I said.

“I want…” he said, and paused.

“You want suck me, no? You want sex Rudolfa la-tur?”

Here’s the thing. I knew one of us was bound to bring the subject up, and it was what I’d been thinking whenever I found myself wondering where he was, and if I’d ever see him again. But hearing him offer what I thought I wanted, I wasn’t sure I was up for it. I only wanted to spend time with him, but I did want a little something more.

“Yes, OK, sex. But I want you kiss me,” I finally said, turning on the sofa to look him.

“No problem. Ale no here.”

“You are stydlivý,” I said, knowing that he had always been too shy, or ashamed, to kiss me in public. Not that he’d ever done it very often.

“Yes,” he admitted, “Ale stoh percent I kiss you to-day… poslední krát, no?”

The last time, yes?

I scooted closer to him. He put his arm around me and rubbed my head. Told me he was sorry for stealing from me, that he was grateful for the help I’d given him. That embarrassed me, because I thought that I’d done very little that hadn’t mainly benefited myself. I hadn’t even manged to help him get his Slovakian ID, or facilitate some kind of reunion with his parents. That would have been real help. I told him so, and apologized in my turn. He just clucked and pulled me into him.

“You big help. I yam sorry, Rick. You are good man,” he insisted.

At that, I popped a boner.

I leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, and he roughly pulled my head down into his lap. He laughed.

“Co?” I asked him.

“I know you have erection,” he said, reaching down to grab my crotch and squeeze. I couldn’t remember his ever having done such a thing. Certainly not in public. Montys wasn’t empty and a couple punters and a boy were watching us from across the room; but I guess the three beers had loosened him up. Still, it confirmed what I already knew: He knows me better than I know, or understand, him.

We reminisced some more, the accounting of which here would only embarrass me more, and had another beer. He reiterated what he had told me before, that he would never take money from me, because I had so little, and that he would never do biznis with me again. He had, in fact, turned me down on every occasion since we’d separated.

“This no good for me. Not my st- st- steel [he meant style],” he’d said. Yet here he was, promising to kiss me, and massaging my hard cock through my jeans.

Once we got to Rudolfa, I had second thoughts about sex in the toilet, as we used to do, and had basically decided to forgo that one last suck. It didn’t feel right. Marek had other ideas.

While he was at the jukebox, I sneaked into the toilet, hoping to get a piss in without his noticing. But he knocked on the door, spoke my name as a question. What could I do except let him in?

He did kiss me then, wildly, and with a wide open mouth, and with his arms around me, and I knew that that was what I’d wanted before I left Prague: Marek and me alone together, embracing, dicks together — his half-soft, maybe; mine hard — affirming this strange relationship whose mysteries, vagaries and contradictions tumbled out then in a confused mess. But not without tenderness, not without lust.

I’ll keep to myself what else happened between Marek and me. A tiny memory held fast but away from the body, unwrecked by the rest of my Prague life.

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I woke up the other morning to find a slug stuck to a lens of my glasses.

***********

I told Marek the other day at the station about my being homeless again. I wasn’t going to bring it up but he had already asked me if he could sleep with me that night, a question prompted when I asked him if he wanted biznis. At first he said, “Kdo?” or Who? When I said, Me, he said, “No biznis; zdarma“ or free. ”Proto you and me friends, no?“

He said that last bit with muted mockery, a tone he layers on top of just about everything he says. I have never known how to interpret that tone, and so have just assumed that he doesn’t want anyone to know what he really feels about anything, or that he finds bemusing the needs of other people, particularly the ones that implicate his own needs, and so to counter that bemusement, has to make fun. But I really don’t know. All I know is that I’ve only ever paid for sex once with him, and that less than an hour later he was buying me lunch with it. ‘Course, I’ve paid in other ways.

After I confessed my indigence, he said it was no problem for him to sleep with me in Stromovka, as we used to do. He said he was tired of the hot & cold nature of his relationship with the homely albino girl. When I told him I didn’t have a sleeping bag or a pad for him to use, he paused, scratched his chin, licked his lips and dropped the subject. What a strange and sometimes wonderful kid.

*****

I am remembering that I have just as big an aversion to showering when homeless as I do when not homeless.

*****

I can’t avoid the fact that I would feel stupid and self-conscious in the kinds of shoes most people wear. Big E gave me a pair of brown, leather sandals from Brazil, ones with wrap-around velcro straps, and although they are not bad, and much less ugly than I expected them to be when he told me about them, and I will likely wear them again when/if it ever gets hot again, I could only wear them a couple days before the personal embarrassment overwhelmed me. I’m back wearing my big, black boots that are too hot and not as comfortable, but don’t contradict my self-image as the sandals did. I guess this is part of what they call ”personal dignity.“ I won’t even go into how I felt wearing the white NIKE socks (WHITE SOCKS! GASP!) that a kindly blog reader gave me to keep the chill off my toes the other night. I wore them with the sandals, and was filled with shame.

****
I’m supposed to meet Pavel for the first time since May 5, on my birthday. I will not be surprised if he doesn’t show. He’s already stood me up once, for the first time ever in our friendship.

****

Prague is still a beautiful city.

Remember that everything you buy and every site you join through homo superior blog literally helps the homeless.

Pavel starts a new job today, working in what Americans would call “heating & air conditioning” except there aren’t many air conditioners in Prague. He quit Tesco because, at the end of 10 days of 12-hour shifts, his take-home pay was 3000 Kc. I can’t blame him. He says he gets paid every day in cash, which I assume means under-the-table. Good. Maybe he can take me out drinking for a change. These 500 crown-a-night binges are killing my budget.

The weather was sunny and mild yesterday in Prague. Outside the station, I counted at least 10 boys doing biznis.

Unfortunately, most were OKs, or Old Kurvas. That’s actually not a Czech plural but don’t blame me; it’s not my acronym. It’s Miro, my old pimping partner who’s back in Prague with a shaved head. Looks good, actually. He almost looks butch, at least from a distance.

There was one new boy: A petite, cute-as-a-button light-skinned gypsy boy who said he would do toilet sex for 400 Kc. I saw a short introductory video of him shot by the Count. His ass is hairy, he has a lovely happy trail and his dick, uncut and pretty damn big. Maybe it was just the perspective. He can’t be more than 5′4″.

Oh wait, there were two nother new boys – very new, as in they’ve only done biznis twice – introduced to me by Camp Chris. Both were sexy to me, but they weren’t the types I could introduce to most clients I know. One was a trashy punk kid with a really sweet and friendly attitude and the other was a white-trashy, skinny construction worker. The latter was about 25 and the former 20. I was more interested in the construction worker’s dark-haired, hairy-chested friend, who sat all day with his legs spread advertising his bulge to everyone. Unfortunately, he said he was not doing biznis.

Yes, we all added when he said this. Give him a few days.

As we were walking by on our fifth circuit of the afternoon, Radovan called Craig and me over to sit with him on a bench. He was wearing the dirtiest pair of cut-off shorts I have ever seen. He claims not to be homeless but is hanging out with some clearly homeless, drunk low-lifes. He lost his job in Alcatraz because “I didn’t wash my clozez [clothes] for like, 14 days.” I can believe that. He started begging us for beer and so we left.

I saw Marek outside on a bench and I can now conclude that he has the worst taste in women of any boy I know. Calling her a cow would be too kind, I think. She appeared to have no eyebrows, to outweigh Marek by about one hundred kilos, to be pigeon-toed and albino. I’d like to think his taste in men is a little more discerning. He said hi to me, the girl shot me a hateful yet quizzical glance, then they walked off hand-in-hand. It made me shudder.

There are three blog readers in town. We all gathered at U Rudolfa for a drink. The twink with the baseball-sized biceps appeared in Rudolfa and quickly met up with a client. He looked just as uncomfortable with this guy as he did with Island Girl the week before. The whole back room of Rudolfa was filled with rent boys I’d never seen before.

I was bored in Rudolfa but wanted to stay until a few friends appeared. Craig left for Montys with another blog reader but I didn’t have the stomach – literally, for the crappy beer – nor the patience for it. I will have to be enticed with either payment, a boy (preferred) or free beers all night (mandatory) to get me back into those places. If I started blogging about the boy-bars in Prague again I would rename the blog to “Diary of the Dead.”

That’s all for now. Follow me on Twitter.

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.

Marek on the sofa, arms up on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

For the first time, my stomach didn’t churn, my heart didn’t leap, my hands didn’t tremble. Nothing happened at all really, except a small spike in interest, when I saw Marek come out of the station’s second hand shop, pause at the top of the stairs and then go down. One hand was slipped inside a pocket, the other rubbed his chin. His legs pulled him along in front of him and his shoulders rolled a bit.

“You don’t get much more butch than that,” Clint said. He and I and The Quiet American were sitting in the Kavarna bitching about how fucking boring the station had become. Several gypsy druggies sat at the foremost tables, openly shooting up. Everyone but us ignored them, including the cops and the servers. I was relieved that Mark wasn’t among them. The lowest of the low now sits in the Kavarna every day. I’ve never seen it so bad, or so open.

“You never see him anymore?” The Quiet American asked me.

“No, but then I’m never in the station,” I said.

“I see him here maybe two or three times a month now. He never really was a biznis boy,” Clint said.

“No…” I answered, and thought, that really was true. He’d turn a trick now and then when he needed to buy piko, but I’d only given him money for sex once. The first time. Most of his money came from thieving – shoplifting and purse-snatching.

Our group didn’t talk much after that. We instead finished up our drinks and went our separate ways. I needed to shop for groceries and once outside headed off in the direction of namesti Republiky, towards Old Town. On the path, just before the Big Love statue, I ran into Marek, coming back to the station, after making the rounds, I guess. He saw me coming and smiled, both hands in his pockets, shoulders still rolling in a slow, syncopated roll. He was wearing sunglasses, which I’d never seen on him before.

He walked right up to me and said, “I’m thinking I see you today. Station.” And laughed.

“I see you Kavarna,” I said.

“Uh, and why you no speak?”

I shrugged. I’ve never run after Marek, except after he stole something from me, and I hadn’t expected to see him. I have to admit, though, standing close to him affected me physically, if only slightly. Like feeling the breeze through an open window from across the room.

I think about Marek a lot, but had been patting myself on the back for not looking for him at the station. He’d so thoroughly turned me off him with his mercenary behavior the last time I’d seen him that I wasn’t looking forward to ever seeing him again. But standing in front of me, scratches on his face, fat chapped lips grinning and looking glad to see me, I didn’t do what I’d imagined I’d do – a little revenge – which was chat a bit and then take off.

Nope, I felt sorry for him. I asked him what he was doing. He said, “Nothing,” and so I hesitated and asked him if he wanted to go drinking at Rudolfa later on.

“You want?” he said. He looked like he thought I might say no, or that I was baiting him.

“Yes, you want?

“Yes,” he said and cocked his head at me.

“OK, but I need to shop first and eat. OK?”

“OK,” he said, and we began walking again.

Coming back from the grocery store, I got an SMS from Pavel. We were supposed to meet up for beers later in the evening but he was getting shit from his girlfriend for spending so much time with me. He wanted to meet earlier rather than later. I texted back that would be OK.

“My friend Pavel want see me now. No problem?” I asked Marek.

“No problem…Kdo?” he said.

“Very good friend. Pavel. You see me and Pavel Rudolfa,” I answered, referring to the night Marek came into Rudolfa unexpectedly and caught Pavel and me dancing and making out.

“Dobre,” Marek said.

During the tram ride, Marek showed himself as being the perfect gentleman. Whenever an old lady would enter the tram — it was midday and quite crowded — he would give up his seat for her, which made me smile. It happened twice and finally he gave up trying to sit down at all.

He stood over me, one hand grabbing onto the metal pole, his body rocked by the tram, and grinned back at me.

“Rick, you happy see me. I know,” he jibed.

“Ty take, Mark,” I said. You, too.

“I know.”

He added 30 seconds later, “Every day my life…” and here he raised his palm to shoulder-height and lowered it in stages past his waist, “Go down, down, down.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Instead, I turned my head and lost my smile. I may have been thinking, I’ve given you so many chances, Marek, and I know you’re not a stupid boy, but you act stupid, and I can’t help you anymore. You’re lost. I may have also been thinking that I might try again with him. As so often happens when I’m around him, even sitting down, I lost my balance.

We met up with Pavel near his flat in Vyšehrad. I had thought that Pavel and Marek didn’t know each other. But I had forgotten that Pavel had met Marek around the time Marek and I had first gotten together, back when we were sleeping in Vystavište park. The most generous words I could use to describe their interaction would be cool and cautious.

One thing I learned from being with the two of them at the same time is that when you’re communicating with non-native English speakers one-on-one, both of you adapt to one another’s diction, speech patterns, vocabulary, etc. in idiosyncratic ways. If someone were to ask me, who speaks better English, Pavel or Marek, I would say Marek. Marek learns new words very quickly, and is better able to think abstractly and make connections intuitively and on-the-fly. Pavel’s English skills have basically stalled. He speaks about as well as he did when I first met him and never remembers new words when I try to teach him. When Marek and I have been together for awhile, I notice significant advances, in his comprehension especially, but he also uses English words in creative ways. He’s a bit of a philosopher and can talk my ear off if he’s in the mood. If we’ve been apart for awhile, I can see the wheels turning and he hesitates before he speaks, but he has no problem getting up to speed. I find this sexy.

Headed towards the hospoda, I could tell that Marek felt left out, that he wasn’t following our conversation. He went silent. Pavel, on the other hand, didn’t like the way Marek spoke Czech. He told me this the other day. I reminded him that Marek was Slovak and gypsy. Pavel said that it was better for him to speak in English to Mark, and that he actually liked him better when he did. Whatever.

I could only afford two beers apiece for the three of us but, as usual, that’s all it took for Marek to start talking about sex. I had noticed that Marek was drinking his beer faster than either Pavel or me.

“Wow, Mark, rychle!” I said.

“I know,” then he paused and laughed. “100% you me go home and you suck me. 100%!”

Pavel laughed, but shushed him.

“Please, this me bar,” he said, worried about his hetero reputation, I guess. The hospoda sits within 50 meters of his flat.

“I horny,” Marek added, a little less loudly. Unlike Pavel, Marek gets pronouns. More or less.

By the time Marek and I got back to my flat, the beer had made him more tired than horny. He said he usually got to sleep a little bit every night, on the trains, but not a full night’s rest. He did have enough energy to take a shower and to parade around naked in front of me. I got a chance to run my hands through his pubes and sniff his pits, as he walked into the room with the sandwiches he’d made for the both of us.

“For you my chlupy is Jesus, no?” he said, accurately [chlupy is any body hair that's not on the head], and it cracked both of us up.

I was happy to have him in the flat but I had work to do on the blog. So I laid down next to him for a bit and we cuddled, or rather, I cuddled him and he snuggled up under my arm like he used to do — with a grin on his face; with his eyes closed. Although I’m still attracted to him, I didn’t want him to ever think that sex with me was the price for a shower and a good night’s sleep. For other boys, yes, it is, but not for Marek, not even after all the shit he’s pulled. I was also feeling inexplicably shy. Regardless, there was no more sex-talk and he fell asleep.

For me, it had been one of those nights when I couldn’t sleep, transfixed by Twitter, feed-reading and literarily noodling. He woke up a couple times during the night, found me still up, asked me what I was doing, yawned and got up to take a piss. Back in bed, he put his hands behind his head and watched me for awhile and then dozed off again.

The next day I shooed him out of the flat. I had told him I had work to do but that if he wanted to spend the night again, he could.

“You want?” he said, standing on the sidewalk outside the potraviny, smoking the menthol I’d just given him. Marek’s face without a smile or his voice without sarcasm disconcerts me. He doesn’t look butch anymore; he looks like a sad boy.

“Yes, you want?” I said.

“You want?” he asked again.

I suppose I was determined to let this be his decision and to let him know that I didn’t care that much. He was equally determined to let me know he could take or leave my charity.

“Your life, Mark. No my life,” I said.

“Yes, OK, I want.”

We agreed to meet later that night at 7 PM at the tram stop. He asked me the name of the stop. I told him and then said I would wait ten minutes for him and no more.

So, of course, he didn’t show up. Maybe he couldn’t. I could’ve waited longer, but maybe I didn’t want him to come back. Still, I must have looked out the window, from where I can see the stop, a dozen times. Like a junkie, waiting for my muse.

For new readers: If you need to catch up on what Marek means to me, check out the 81 posts labeled Marek in my old blog.

Amazing, my body’s reaction to seeing him. Autonomic and merciless, and because of that, damn scary. My stomach hollows out and the back of my throat feels full, like a fist shoved back there, or… But fuck him; it makes me angry and that, combined with embarrassment, makes as thick a shield as I can manage right now. I didn’t run after him when I saw him come up the stairs into the Kavarna last week with his dyke friend and thieving partner, Daša, but my heart still did flip-flops. Last night when he came, unexpectedly, into Rudolfa, I didn’t go to him. He didn’t see me, apparently, or Manchester Lee, although we were sitting at the front table. He stopped and did a double-take on those who were sitting across from us. He was looking for somebody, yet was typically unobservant, which probably meant he was high. He likes to smoke. I’ve walked past him before at the station, within a couple inches of him, his hand holding a joint, and he couldn’t see me until I had grabbed him by the shoulder.

I’d never seen him in Rudolfa before, on his own, without me, and no one’s ever reported back to me that they’ve seen him either. Last night he was with two gypsy friends whom I didn’t recognize, one of them quite cute. They sat in the back and took a table facing the hallway that separates the two rooms. What were they doing there? Looking for biznis? Rudolfa is a gay bar, and there are plenty of straight hospody to go to in the center of Prague. Rudolfa’s not known as a place to either sell or buy drugs. So…

Manchester Lee and I exchanged a glance and a few words.

“He blanked you?” he asked. “He looked right at me and…nothing.”

“I don’t think he noticed me either,” I said.

I had no urge or desire to talk to him, but I had that awful feeling in my gut. I went back to kissing Pavel.

Ten minutes later, I had to pee. From my table, I could see one of his friends but I couldn’t see Marek. As soon as I got up, however, I saw him. Right now, writing this, I have a clear memory of the spotlight in the back room lighting up his face. I didn’t look directly at him, so the image in my mind is blurry, but persisting. When you get to know someone well, you don’t have to see them clearly to read their body language. His face was tipped up and he was looking directly at me. He recognized me, I’m sure. Without any sort of acknowledgment that I knew he was there, I turned left into the corridor that leads to the women’s toilet, the same one where I’d sucked him off the last time we were in Rudolfa together.

Back in the front room, Pavel had been playing a bunch of sappy Czech music on the jukebox. When I returned, Pavel wanted to dance, as he usually does around the fifth or sixth beer. Showing off in front of Marek had not been on my mind and I didn’t want to be seen as a silly queen, trying to make the ex jealous. Pavel would not be dissuaded and pulled me up and out onto the empty floor. Then he and I did what we always do, which is kiss and hug and act retarded. He made me happy. I knew Marek could see us but that’s not why I did it. Whatever rise I might get out of him would just be a bonus.

Pavel and I danced to two songs and it was very easy not to look into the back room until we’d sat down again. That’s when I saw one of his friends get up, take his beer and move to another table out of the line of sight. So it had worked, and I didn’t have to scheme to make it happen. It felt good.

Not long after, I looked up to notice Marek’s two friends going out the door. Without Marek. I turned to look in the back room and didn’t see him. Had he left ahead of them? More stupid physical responses that I couldn’t control. Then I saw Manchester Lee pointing. I turned again and there was Marek, putting on his coat and primping in front of the mirror in the hallway. It’s always the last thing he does before he leaves anywhere, if there’s a refection of himself to regard. I began talking to Manchester Lee and then felt a slap on my back. Walking by on his way out the door, Marek said – right now I can’t remember what he said exactly – and then left, shooting a glance backwards, not at me, but towards the bar.

“Well, I guess that’s better than a ‘fuck you,’” Lee said.

I resisted the urge to follow him out and talk to him. I had been missing him, no question. But really what is the point? There’s a reason why I haven’t invited any boys into my little kitchenette-with-a-bed in Bryan’s flat, and it’s not just because it’s too small. I have had it with stupid boys – stupid piko boys, especially. I’ve watched the messes they’ve made on Bryan’s side of the flat and I don’t miss dealing with them. Not at all. I’m relieved and pleased to be alone right now. If I invited Marek home with me, even for a night, it wouldn’t end there. He’d drag all the baggage that comes from being an addict and a thief in here with him. Not for me. Not anymore.

Much more happened that night, but really they are unnecessary nails, and I could tell the story if I had the heart for it. It might even be more interesting than the one I just wrote, certainly it would present even more decisive evidence that he’s no good for me. It would definitely be less, I dunno, feminine? I’ll leave it for later. For the next time I see him and my gut roils, and I need to remind myself again what he’s really like.

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Tags: gypsies, Prague, hlavní nádraží, Rudolfa, Marek