It was my second visit to ‘Twist,’ one of the two largest gay complexes in Miami Beach.
I went straight to the outdoor cocktail bar in the courtyard area, next to the shed where the male strippers danced. I had not actually intended to go out that night. It was Sunday and I wanted to go to bed early to try and get over my jetlag. However, since the tasty Thai restaurant where I had had dinner was just a few meters away from Twist, on Washington Avenue, I thought I’d drop in the club for a few minutes. As usual, I was vain enough to be disappointed for not being asked to show my I.D at the door. That meant I looked old enough or gay enough to be allowed in without any hassle. Ha, ha.
I went straight to the outdoor cocktail bar in the courtyard area, next to the shed where the male strippers danced. I had not actually intended to go out that night. It was Sunday and I wanted to go to bed early to try and get over my jetlag. However, since the tasty Thai restaurant where I had had dinner was just a few meters away from Twist, on Washington Avenue, I thought I’d drop in the club for a few minutes. As usual, I was vain enough to be disappointed for not being asked to show my I.D at the door. That meant I looked old enough or gay enough to be allowed in without any hassle. Ha, ha.
At the courtyard bar, the young topless barman was blond, smooth and skinny. He greeted me with a glamorous demeanour that would make Kate Middleton’s grandmother-in-law look decidedly republican.
I asked: ‘What cocktails do you do?’
‘What would you want? Just tell me what you want. I can make any cocktail you like,’ he replied with a flirtatious tone.
Needless to say, the one cocktail I wanted was precisely one he was not able to make because he was missing an ingredient. Forced to compromise, I ordered a caipirinha, which was close enough to what I fancied. I can’t remember all the details now but I don’t think I left a tip.
Caipirinha in hand, I walked into the strippers’ shed. The place was busy. Semi-naked muscled boys in skimpy underwear mingled among punters of mixed ages. Only a handful of the customers were women. Apart from the spotlights on the podiums where the strippers danced, the room was dimly lit. All the seats by the long bar in the centre were taken and many of the punters stood against the walls. On the microphone, a drag queen from Colombia described in English the sensual virtues of the go-go boys. In the shadier corners, one could see the odd semi-naked dancer rubbing his buttocks against the crotch of some fully clothed older customer. As part of the “private dance”, it looked like the punter was allowed to stroke the boy’s muscley chest and nipples, his flat stomach, his tight belly, his strong thighs, and so on, but hands always stopped at the crotch. I never saw a punter feeling a dancer’s genitals, not even over the briefs. And the briefs never slipped out (or down).
‘This is Eduardo, 26 years old. He just arrived from Caracas a couple of weeks ago. He likes playing football. Look at his huge strong thighs.’ On the podium, Eduardo lowered slightly the top of his red briefs, revealing his trimmed pubic hair and the top of his limp penis, which he covered up again almost immediately while teasingly shaking his hips. He dedicated a wide, frank smile to his potential dollar-bill-shoving admirers.
To be honest, I was already getting bored. I was tired and willing to go back to my hotel. But I had a cocktail to finish. It was difficult to find a spot where one could stand comfortably, with a good view of the action, without feeling too conspicuous. I finally saw a free stool against the wall in a corner not too far from the main stage and rushed to sit there. I was half-looking at the young man who had replaced Venezuelan Eduardo on the podium when I suddenly felt someone’s hands on my shoulders.
‘Hi!’ An athletic man in his late twenties was greeting me with a charming smile. He was only wearing a pair of orange trunks, which definitely looked good on him. Admittedly, he was rather gorgeous. A handsome man with brown hair, fair eyes and a trim muscley body. From the semi-naked boys at the bar that night he was probably one of the most attractive, or at least the one whose face was closest to ‘my type.’ As regards the bodies, really, there were no big differences among the dancers. They were all buff and smooth (or shaved, at least). Furthermore, the bodies of the strippers I had seen when visiting Twist two days earlier had seemed to me more – let’s say – spectacular than what one could see on this (slightly quieter) Sunday evening.
I first felt flattered by him approaching me in such a friendly manner. And I am sure my smile betrayed this feeling. But almost immediately I realised he was just doing his job and, as soon as it sank on me that his action was not spontaneous or motivated by his interest in ‘getting to know me better’, I backed off and smiled politely.
‘I’m fine… I’m fine. Thanks.’
I thought my polite rejection was unambiguous enough. But probably I was still too smiley. He persisted in his hands-on approach. Having his strong hands on my shoulders was sexy but my original excitement was rapidly turning into annoyance as he did not seem to take no for an answer.
I said again: ‘I’m fine!’ But this time I probably didn’t smile quite as much. I twisted my body to slip out of his clutch and – gently but firmly – I pushed my hands in the air, without touching him, to indicate I wanted him away from me. Taken aback, he released my shoulders and held his arms in the air as though he had received an electric shock. With a butch angry huff, he said: ‘OK! OK!’ and left me alone.
I felt very awkward; somewhat guilty for being so abrupt and… ungrateful? From his perspective, I imagine, he was just trying to make a customer happy and I could see how he could feel aggravated. I reasoned that it was likely that, by sitting at that particular spot, I was implicitly (though unintentionally) giving away the message that I was up for being approached by the ‘friendly’ semi-naked staff. But he had been too pushy. I was distressed. Of course, I could always deceive myself into thinking that, if he had targeted me among all the customers, it could have partly been because he thought I was more attractive than the others; or something like that. After all, it was him who ‘chose’ me (so to speak). I had not even noticed him before he came to me. This thought, though, was no consolation at that point. In fact, I was upset by the more plausible explanation, namely, that if a boy like this was coming on to me it was because he thought that I was old enough or unattractive enough or desperate-looking enough to rely on this kind of interaction in order to get sexual gratification. I strive to be open minded (and I know that some of the customers who were using ‘the services’ of these boys were far from ugly or unfit) but, if I get sexual attention from somebody, I prefer it to be because they fancy me in some way and not just because they expect a handful of dollar bills slipped into their minimalistic underwear. Or if I were ready to pay for a ‘massage’ from one of these boys, I would prefer it if it was I who chose the boy and not the other way round.
Part of the problem was that I was not feeling particularly attractive that night. When leaving the beach earlier in the day, after swimming in the ocean, I had taken a digital photograph of myself to check the state of my hair and I had not liked what I had seen. My face was unevenly tanned because I had been wearing all day my oversized UVA-protective prescription sunglasses. Besides, the American suntan spray I had bought in Miami had mixed with the salt from the sea to leave unpleasant marks on my face that the camera picked out mercilessly. I was unshaved and my skin looked hard and uneven. That unsightly, double-chinned, sun-burnt bugger who was staring back at me from the LED screen on my digital camera looked unambiguously over 30, a notion which is in stark contrast with my self-image as (cough, cough) a boy in his mid-twenties...
Back at the hotel, I had trimmed my beard, taken a long shower and sprayed on some after-sun lotion. I had put on a new sexy shirt and a trendy pair of shorts. But I still felt unworthy of the exuberant gay youth of South Beach.
The experience with the stripper had obviously not contributed to raise my self-esteem.
In any case, I reasoned as I moved away from the spot where I was seating, I tend to prefer ‘normal types’ rather than muscle-marys with hyper-defined bodies. There were punters that night who were more attractive for me than the over-proactive dancer who had just startled me. ‘That’s a good example, in fact,’ I thought as I watched this dark haired slim man in his late twenties/early thirties, walking through the crowded room in his khaki shorts and white linen shirt. He was definitely attractive. Even if not muscley, at least on first impressions, he was still fit, with a very sexy face and nice hairy legs. To my surprise, I noticed he was staring at me, intensely. I was confused. As I looked back at him, he turned his head and walked away. Well, at least (I tried to console myself) he had paid some attention to me in the first place... I glanced around and I could spot at least two or three other punters in the venue who were more my type than any of the skimpily-clad dancers. But those punters were busy chatting to their friends, without taking any notice of me.
I finished my cocktail and I was ready to go. I left the strippers’ shed, still wondering why they called them strippers as they were always almost naked from the start and never removed any item of clothing. Never mind.
Before heading back to the hotel, I decided to do a tour of the club, check the other spaces. The patio was quiet as were the two other indoor bars on the ground floor. I walked up the stairs. From my previous visit, I remembered there were two or three more bars and a couple of dance floors on the upper part of the club.
I strolled along a labyrinth of corridors, past tiny toilets with mixed gender attendants and mysterious looking ‘staff-only’ doors. I entered the most crowded of the three bars. As Rihanna stopped yelling ‘I like it, like it, come on, come on, come on!’ Lady Gaga came on to explain that she was born this way while Jennifer Lopez was shaking her bootie on the multiple TV screens splattered on the walls next to the dance floor, where only two or three Latino boys and their fag hags were dancing.
I was heading towards the dance floor when suddenly someone got on my way and shouted: ‘Hey!’ putting his arm in front of me. I stopped and looked back. I found myself in front of the young man with whom I had made eye contact earlier downstairs, at the strippers’ shed: the boy in khaki shorts and a white shirt.
‘Hi…’ I was surprised. Hesitant, I added: ‘how are you?’
I smiled back. He didn’t say anything but looked at me intently.
Awkwardly, I asked: ‘What’s your name?’
He didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at me with his big dark eyes and said: ‘You’re so cute.’
He got closer and closer to me. I reciprocated. Our faces were now right next to each other. Our lips touched briefly.
He asked: ‘Are you from here?’
‘No. I’m visiting.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Ernesto. How about you?’
He shrugged cutely failing again to answer. He got closer to me again. His fleshy lips pressed against my welcoming lips. He placed one hand on my waist and the other on my head. I stroked his chest hair, which showed through his partly unbuttoned shirt. The gentle lip-to-lip contact gave way to a playful entanglement of the tongues: my tongue pushing through his teeth, the tip of his tongue against the tip of my tongue, my lips pressing greedily against his lips, tongues reaching each other’s throats. I almost gagged but enjoyed it. The fact that he licked his own lips with relish after his tongue had been inside my mouth suggested that he was enjoying it too. Our lips rubbed gently against each other again.
I was starting to become aware, but only subliminally, that we were in the middle of a fairly busy club, standing next to a well lit dance floor, surrounded by a mostly male clientele, some of whom were no doubt keeping a close look on our interaction. But these nebulous punters were a distraction. My personal (anonymous) Steven Bauer was keeping me busy.
We paused for a second, smiling and staring at each other’s eyes. He said again:
‘You’re so cute.’
I was tempted to reply that it was him who was cute. But I thought it would not sound very original and kept quiet. I stroked his hairy chest. I placed my hand on the top of his tight buttocks, his back cleavage showing above his low-slung shorts. I played with his small nipples through his thin white shirt.
We kissed again. More intensely this time.
He said: ‘Let’s go back home.’
I said nothing. We continued snogging. He put his hand through the back of my shorts and beneath my underpants. He grabbed my buttocks. I stroked his hairy chest once again.
‘Let’s go back home,’ he said with an imposing tone.
‘To your home?’ I asked.
‘No, yours.’
‘I am in a hotel.’
‘Let’s go back to your hotel.’
We continued kissing. He put his hand through the front of my shorts and underpants. He seemed pleased to hit upon the stiffness that was greeting him. He briefly grabbed my balls and played with my fully fledged erection.
As he pulled his hand out of my pants, our tongues took a rest and we stared at each other.
‘You’re so cute,’ he said again.
With one hand, I played with his nipples while stroking, with the other, his pubic stubble, which showed above the elastic of his fashionable underpants. He grabbed my hand and directed it towards his crotch. I placed it over his fly. He shook his head. Grabbing my hand again, he shoved it inside his underpants. The palm of my hand found itself pressed against his heavy, shaved balls. After briefly playing with them, I attempted to seize what some would describe as a… ‘trouser snake?’ His long hard cock did indeed feel like a twisted snake trapped in a narrow space, trying desperately to unravel and get out of its confinement to assault its prey.
As I stroked the head of his phallus, he groaned approvingly. ‘Yeah!’ We both acted oblivious to the punters surrounding us.
‘Let’s go back to your hotel!’
‘I’m not sure… I don’t know if it’s OK to bring someone back to my hotel,’ I lied.
We kept on kissing, rubbing against each other, chest against chest, crotch against crotch, mouth against mouth. Panting, he insisted:
‘Let’s go back to your hotel. Shall we go?’
‘OK…’
‘OK. Let’s go!’
He walked in front of me looking back every other second to ensure I was following him. We entered an empty corridor that lead to the downward stairwell. He grabbed my hand. Then he stopped. He looked at me, doubtful. He asked again: ‘Are we going to your hotel?’
I visualised us getting to the guesthouse together, disrobing under the moonlight and dipping naked in the outdoor jacuzzi. The prospect was appealing but, despite the anticipated excitement of sharing my bed or a hot tub with him, fear and apprehension were holding me back. There was a glint of madness in his beautiful dark eyes and a whiff of danger in his domineering demeanour. I was taken aback by his strangely hermetic behaviour. Given his reluctance to share any personal information thus far, I was not looking forward to the 20 minute walk from the club to my hotel. Something told me that he was under the influence of alcohol or some other substance. To a large extent, as well, I was held back by guilt, thinking of my boyfriend back in Scotland.
So I hesitated when he asked if we were going back to my hotel. I hesitated for too long. I said: ‘I’m not sure.’ I repeated it twice. He didn’t like my indecision and he lowered his gaze. I was breathing heavily, partly aroused, partly scared. I reached for his chest but he rejected my hand and walked away with a disappointed frown, looking down, never glancing back at me. He disappeared, never to be seen again. I stood for a moment in the middle of the corridor, frustrated but relieved at the same time.
I walked back to the hotel on my own.
I clung to the memory of those instants of fleeting intimacy with this handsome dark stranger for the rest of my trip.
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