Shayno

By Marten Weber

You are a gay man approaching mid-life in the Silicon Valley: disillusioned, unhappy, bored with life. You have a monotonous job and can count your friends on one hand; you have given up on finding love for good. Along comes the perfect man: an Australian hunk. He is intelligent, witty, suave, well-bred and stunningly good-looking. Only problem: he is straight.

Nevertheless a friendship develops based on a common interest in fitness, books, philosophical speculation...and a strange sexual tension.

He makes you a witness to his conquests of women.

Step by step he gains control over you, and the relationship changes... until one day, disaster strikes...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marten Weber
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9783950305814

Marten Weber

I am of mixed parentage (a man and a woman) and have lived in more countries than I can count on hands and feet together. I speak several languages, and believe in multiculturalism, tolerance, and free champagne also in economy class. I dislike bigots and fanatics of all denominations. I am hugely uncomfortable with labels, even seemingly benign ones such as 'gay,' 'straight,' or 'sugar-free' and prefer instead to judge people by their sense of humor and shoe size. I believe that everybody, regardless of race or gender, income or size of genitals, should be gay for a year. Over the past two decades, I have published hundreds of stories and novellas and set them free on the Internet, not always under my real name. Some of them have mated with other texts, music and videos, to produce the most curious offspring. One story has left the known universe and is currently a best-seller on Pharus II. Most of my recent books concern the lives and adventures of men, both today, in history, and in the future.

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Shayno

A novel by Marten Weber

Copyright 2010 by Marten Weber

All rights reserved.

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Aquarius Publishing

London · Vienna · Taipei

978-3-9503058-1-4

www.martenweber.com

On an island north of home, far from the beach where tourists play, there is a tent, not too close to the water, yet far enough from the road; a small, olive green tent, torn at the edges, army surplus maybe, but it is too dark to see the pattern clearly.

This is the land of the mangroves, gray and yellow and red; the land of the gum tree, the swamp box, and the paperbark, with bracken fern groves at the edges. Somewhere on the island is a forest of giants, satinay and brush box, names you would not know unless you belonged here, unless you’d seen it in all its beauty.

The birds here have strange calls. Some sound electronic, like little flapping robots with synthesized voices, others, like the kookaburra, eerily human. Some can only be seen high up in the cerulean sky: the Brahminy kite and the white-breasted sea eagle soar above the primeval forest.

Judging by the noises they make, the ground around the tent is alive with small animals; little furry things running, fleeing from silent snakes, but even those move loudly in the quiet night. Further up, the mangroves are filled with the croaking of frogs, and dingoes prowl stealthily through the grass beyond the road. The ocean is full of turtles, dugongs, and sharks, and even humpback whales during their season. You can hear them blow in the darkness, if you sit quietly at the edge of the water. Somewhere behind them, the great reef begins.

A man and a boy have come here to hike, to walk for a day through awe-inspiring nature and ancient landscapes. They have pitched their tent in a safe place: the man knows where, and how. The rising tide won’t get to it, and neither will the animals.

—Here it is safe, he has told the boy.

The man is tall with broad shoulders and heavy arms. His body is toned and well-sculpted from the exercise: the climbing, the walking, the running, the throwing of olive-shaped balls, and long, languid weeks of surfing in paradise.

The boy’s body is small and fragile, the face fresh and eager, the eyes trusting, and an alluring blue. His hair looks bleached, but is only dried out from the long summer. He has the muscles of a teenager: fine, still hidden under soft, velvety skin. The limbs are long and strong, and will get stronger still; the neck is thin, almost feminine, the shoulders weak.

They return in a car from the nearest community, many kilometers away. They have been to the empty pub, sitting alone by the bar, celebrating their hike, their adventure on the island, their bonding. They have talked of school days and future plans, of girls and fishing trips. The boy has had his first whiskey.

Walking back to the tent, the man puts his arm on the boy’s shoulder, and both stagger down the bank, drunk and laughing too much. As they get ready for bed, they fall onto their sleeping bags, a disorderly tumble, maybe a playful fight, before they lie down to sleep. The sound of the tent’s zip tears through the warm night.

Soon after, the boy emerges, breathing heavily. The tent is small, the heat must be stifling! He almost stands erect, when a hairy hand reaches from inside to pull him back in.

It is quiet for a while, as quiet as it can be on this blessed island of a thousand creatures. There is always some noise, an animal cry, a rustling in the grass; a howl, far away.

But when the screams start, even those noises stop.

Screams from inside the tent, loud and piercing, until a big, calloused hand muffles them roughly.

1

The red kangaroo—white, actually, but few people notice, for it is the red that counts—descends past 1600 feet, four roaring engines blasting over the rooftops of the flat city, two decks of passengers, seatbelts fastened, eyes glued to the windows staring into the Californian night. Lights beam up into the cloudless sky from rental car parking lots, stadiums, gas stations, as the heavy plane sinks far away from the sign of dreams, close to the congested freeway, onto the long snake of landing lights; a plane landing every minute on four runways, plus the occasional interloper, here we go: things that go bump in the night, four wheels under each wing and two sets of six-wheel bogies under the fuselage: screeching, screaming, smoking, finally slowing to a halt.

—Welcome Ladies and Gentleman to Los Angeles, chirps the loudspeaker in a jaunty Australian accent. We ask you to stay seated until the ‘Fasten Seatbelt’ sign…, whining wheels on the worn-down tarmac, flaps retracting, and a rather violent lurch to the left.

The red-and-white giant is taxiing past, then away from, the terminal and those in the know yawn, and then of course, curse, some in the mellow tones of southern Australia, or the broad speech of the north, others in the harsh vowels of the city, until the voice confirms what all had feared,

—Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be parking at an apron position tonight, she says, and Kevin doubts that most people even know what that means, but she explains further, and you will be chauffeured to the gate in a bus.

—I’d hardly call taking the bloody bus being ‘chauffeured,’ it’s a joke, says a Scottish voice a few rows back, like at fucking Heathrow, always the same, one would think with a plane like this they would have a gate for us!

—Maybe the gates aren’t ready for this baby, says an American.

—Anyway, it’s been exciting, says his Australian neighbor. It’s quite a plane, isn’t it? Doesn’t feel that big on the inside though!

—We apologize for the inconvenience caused and hope you enjoyed your flight with Qantas. The temperature is twenty-one degrees Celsius or…crackle, mumble, squelch, and ka-boom! The voice falls silent, and all the electricity is gone.

Utter darkness. A diesel tug outside, harrumphing.

People shut up, wait apprehensively.

—We’re gonna need that in Fahrenheit, says an elderly gentlemen, somewhere further back in the seated crowd.

Kevin, a keen-faced, light-limbed young man in adolescent attire, that is to say, the attire of all Americans of all ages: shorts, polo, yes, even sandals on the plane, so he’ll fit in better on arrival, sinks back in his uncomfortable shell seat, which has been his home for over twelve hours, lifting up his knees again to wrap his lanky arms around them, then placing his puckered white lips and blowing raspberries against the lone patch of miraculously brown skin just above the knee cap. He is bored. He’s been bored for a whole night and a day, and now it is night again. He’s never been on a transoceanic flight before, and the sensation to emerge from one night and plunge into the same night again, is strange.

The woman beside him, visibly exhausted, rests her head against the window, and someone says,

—Now what? Are the lights out? What the bloody hell is going on?

—Always the same here in L.A.! They forgot to plug her in, but they have to turn the engines off. Some security bullshit, explains the widely traveled American in the striped shirt.

—I wish they would hurry. I need to use the loo!

Kevin adjusts his crotch, thinks of his little adventure on board, when he notices the very same flight attendant standing next to him, the one who’s offered him the tour, shown him the crew quarters on the massive new Airbus 380, and placed his thick, dark red Mediterranean lips on Kevin’s thin, Nordic ones, and his muscular forearm covered in thick black hair, onto Kevin’s golden surfer arm, the dark and the light, the coarse and the fine, the South and the North united in an all-too-quick kiss, embrace, a frantic fondling, a kneeling, a wet and deep engulfment and a stifled, silent release, while climbing way past Fiji due to the heavy load, at last to 33000 feet. My first real blow-job, thinks Kevin, and it happened in an airplane. Cool! He wants to smile at his high-altitude lover, but he’s gone again, too busy to flirt.

Ten seconds, twelve, and crash, ka-ching, with a thud the lights come back on. A few more seconds, and the seatbelt signs are off. Kevin, and everyone around him, gets up. He retrieves his only bag: a small rucksack, nothing else, from the overhead compartment, and waits, sandwiched between the grandmother and the fat bloke who shared his narrow row. They are so far back in the belly of the beast, it takes a full twenty minutes before the queue starts moving. When they pass the center door, Dark-red Lips is standing there smiling, holding a piece of folded paper in his hand, and patting Kevin on the shoulder, slips it into his breast pocket in a suave attempt to stay in touch.

—It was good to see you again, he says, trying to hide the nature of their tryst. Kevin smiles, understanding, but the paper doesn’t fit in the small polo shirt pocket, and drops to the floor. The flight attendant bends his knees like a girl, legs closed, to retrieve it, but Kevin is faster; their heads bump audibly in mid-air.

—Ouch, says not Kevin, but the grandmother behind him.

Kevin looks at the paper in his hand. Just a phone number. Then a clear, Australian voice rubbing its bruised head says,

—We’ll be in L.A. for three days before heading back.

Someone behind them shoves, another one shouts,

—What’s going on there? Why aren’t we moving? Embarrassed, Kevin turns and steps out of the aircraft onto the stairs.

The fresh night air rushes into his face.

—It’s always sunny and warm in California, the grandmother says, to no one in particular.

—It’s been a pleasure meeting you. I hope you find him!

Kevin, paying too much attention to the stairs and anxious not to slip on the blank metal, realizes she is talking to him. He seizes her arm to support her, but she waves him off.

—You go ahead, young man. I’ll be fine!

But then the fat bloke with the big mole under his nose bumps into grandmother from behind, mumbles an apology, and Kevin catches her just in time, as the man pushes by, and squeezes into the closing doors of the first bus, which takes off in a wide circle with a motor louder than the massive engines that had been right next to them all flight and are now still spooling down. They are quite a sight, Kevin thinks, as he helps the old lady descend the last few steps. Quite a sight, these engines.

—They are enormous, says grandmother with an appreciative look, you can fit my whole house in there. Now, I’ll be alright, you run ahead, and you be careful, Kevin. Los Angeles isn’t a place for young kids!

—I’ve nowhere to run to, says Kevin. I’m not in a hurry. We’ll have to wait for the second bus anyway…, but the second bus, or is it the third? he thinks, it must be the third, there are too many people aboard a 380, and we are the very end of the deck, the very last to emerge, there are only fifty, sixty people behind him, so there must have been two buses at least, if not four, if you count the people from the upper deck, but where did they get off? How many exits does this monster have, he tries to remember.

Kevin looks back at the double stairs. Only one set of stairs. Many more exits, but airports are unprepared. Not enough stairs, that’s why it took so long. So most have come down to the lower deck and disembarked from there, he thinks, and takes a seat on the bus, helps grandmother stow her bag, and picks up the passport she has dropped.

—You are quite brave to travel alone, so young, she says to Kevin, and he giggles.

Half the crew is already leaving, coming down the passenger stairs, but the hairy Greek is not among them. Greek-Australian, Kevin thinks, while being spoken to. Americans love these weird hyphenations.

—I am not that young, he says, I am almost twenty, after all. I admire you much more…

—I am not that old, young man! she says, all of a sudden in a sharpish tone, but then the smile returns, the kind, old, warm, nonthreatening smile that has kept him company for so many hours, at times comforting, at times annoying, but at least distracting from the pain of his memories and the boredom of the long flight. His knees feel wobbly as the ground shakes beneath him and somewhere off to the left another aircraft lands.

—Then we are both not what we seem, says Kevin, sounding very grown-up, and enjoying the feeling, as the bus drives off.

And to himself he hums a song from a children’s TV program, ‘have you ever…ever felt like this?’

I have arrived! This is America! He must be here somewhere!

But Kevin hasn’t arrived yet. Not quite. There is still the interminable drive to the gate in the claustrophobic bus, the walk down the hall-like aisle, past the mosaics and the crowded toilets, into the Federal Arrival Area, which sounds grand on the loudspeaker, but is pure chaos, the worst of any civilized country, with agents speaking no second languages and only barely English directing people to the wrong queues, not orderly lines but throngs of people, undulating in the stiflingly bad air, queues that will close in three minutes. They ask them to have the wrong forms ready, then reproach them for having shown the wrong form to the wrong customs official, standing in the wrong queue, told to move further down by stodgy Mexican women who carry signs saying ‘Se habla español,’ and snap at the Vietnamese couple trying to get past them with one form only for two passengers, ‘DOS! NECESITAN DOS!’ As if Vietnamese, by the mere merit of their darker skin, were more likely to comprehend Spanish than English, but of course, they speak neither, and the frail woman is close to crying, so Kevin says in very slow, precise, unaccented English,

—You…need…this…form, and pointing at them, then holding up two fingers, two forms, and pointing at the form, and then they understand, and Kevin is waved to the customs desk. The agent says,

—So you speak Chinese? and Kevin shakes his head in frustration. This is not how he imagined his arrival in America. There should have been short, precise queues, with friendly, sexy agents, tall and handsome, and smiling, in freshly starched uniforms and…

The immigration official orders him to put his finger on the scanner, one, two, the other hand, one, two, and now look into the camera, Kevin smiles, the agent says,

—You don’t have to smile, and what is the purpose of your visit to the United States of America?

Only he doesn’t say ‘United States of America,’ he says ‘Uny-ed Esta-ehsomehica’ and Kevin thinks how much less grand it sounds when you say it like that, and the agent asks again, because he hasn’t answered, stood frozen instead, staring into the camera.

—You don’t have to look at the camera anymore! What is the purpose of your visit? Business? Travel? Tourism? Relatives? Immigration?

Kevin has stopped listening at ‘travel,’ and ‘tourism,’ what’s the difference, what kind of purpose is ‘travel,’ aren’t these all ‘travelers,’ and he says nothing at first, then bursts out, thrown back by his thoughts into his native accent,

—Tourism! My first time! Is it always this busy?

The agent smiles amiably enough, yet Kevin still gets the impression he is being interrogated.

—Your first time, really? You lucky boy! And what are you going to see? Hollywood? Beverly Hills I’m sure! You wanna be the next Robert de Niro?

Kevin wonders why Robert de Niro, who looks nothing like him, and is not Australian. Kevin is blond, very much so, and thin, and lanky, could be an actor, even if he has never even thought about it before. The immigration officer is after all holding an Australian passport in his hands, and if anything should have made some hackneyed comment about kangaroos and crocodiles. Lots of Australian actors over the past years, very successful, but even they were older, much older than Kevin, had nothing in common with the sweet young surfer and runaway, who says in a flash of inspiration,

—Everything! I want to see everything! Then repeats, in what he thinks is closer to an American accent,

—I wanna see everything! I am so excited!

Which is a lie. He is just tired. And he doesn’t want to see America. He is only searching for one man.

—Well, you go and have fun! Welcome to the United States, says the agent, only this time it’s almost a ‘you ny-ed’ even aspirated. He seems, Kevin thinks, to pronounce it differently each time. The grandmother is behind him, already handing over her passport, winking at Kevin, and offering one last, cordial smile.

—Welcome Ma’am! If you could place your right index finger…

Kevin is off. He passes through the customs inspection without a hitch, only the queue seems to get longer and longer, as crew and VIPs and a group of Asians are cutting in from the right, but then, after mindlessly standing for another twenty minutes, he hands a form to the officer, who says nothing, nods distractedly, thinking of his porch, a cold beer, and…what do Americans dream of, at work, wonders Kevin, and can for a brief moment, as a draft reaches him, smell the big new city.

The officer points to a door with an enormous sign on it: EXIT, and through it Kevin walks, and up a ramp, timidly emerging from the underbelly of the airport into a sparsely lit, surprisingly small arrivals hall, before he remembers that in America all airports have separate terminals, so this would not be the arrivals hall of all LAX, but only of the international flights, from Asia, Europe, and from his own continent, the round, barren land he has left behind in his search for…revenge? Love? Absolution? Or, as they said in American movies, ‘closure.’ What does ‘closure’ mean, anyway? Was it all worth it?

—Do you mind!

—Excuse me! Excuse me!

—You are blocking…thank you!

Standing in the way, again, he is, as the family and two Asians press past him with suitcases the size of refrigerators, shouting and waving, being swallowed up by their stream, and pushed towards the waiting people, the meeters and greeters, the chauffeurs and wives, the husbands and boyfriends with flowers, a woman shouting ‘Brenda! Brenda! Over here!’, the police type with dark sunglasses and a picture in his hand, like Kevin, he also carries a picture everywhere he goes; now out into the cold, for it is not always warm in California, especially not in the nights of L.A.

There are taxis and buses, passenger cars honking, when Kevin realizes he has nothing to do and nowhere to go, for the moment. What stranger sensation than to get off a plane after thousands of miles and not know where to take the next step.

—I have arrived, he says to himself, but out loud, whistling again that children’s song he can’t place anymore, and pulls out cigarettes, but no lighter, which he couldn’t bring on the plane, so he trashes the whole packet, and vows never to smoke again. A new beginning. Running after an old problem.

Then he walks, away from the lights, away from the cars and buses, the airport with its roaring planes, its thundering take-offs, the permanent rumble and whirring, so different from the sounds of his rural home; the parking lots, the hotels, and the city around him fall quiet remarkably easy; one more turn and he is in a dark street and follows it to what he instinctively knows must be north, where he reckons Santa Monica is, and West Hollywood to the northeast, which on the map looked not too far away, and promising.

But maps of California are very deceptive. Everything looks close, and yet there are miles, miles—for he has begun to force himself to think in miles and inches and pounds and leave the kilometers and centimeters and kilos at home, inches are already so familiar to him from the Internet, where cocks are always measured in inches, the universal measure of cock length, America’s greatest export—miles and miles of streets, one big urban jungle between the mountains and the sea.

He walks for a mile along the road, the planes roaring beside him, only then he remembers the chart of the airport he’s used in his PC game, where the runway points westwards, and the runway is to his left, so he must be walking west, towards the ocean, not north, towards the city. In the darkness, there is only one road now, with lamp posts so far apart one could disappear in the shadows between them and not be seen from anywhere else, yet the light is so strong that upon reaching a lamp, from high above he can still feel the heat; like standing on a dark stage with a single spotlight on him.

A truck passes, and another one, carrying waste.

He walks on, happy to move after so many hours on the plane, happy to feel his feet again; his knees are not weak anymore, and only the largest bruises on his body still hurt.

He reaches a small hill with houses, behind which, he reckons, there must be a street, and hotels, and restaurants, only everything looks closed as he descends on the other side, with the smell of seawater mingling with the oil and exhaust from the airport.

A 747 with a flower on the tail takes off as he reaches the road, and there, in front of him, is the beach, and the pitch-black ocean.

Beaches he likes, the wide open sandy beaches of his home. Beaches with boys and girls his age, and tourists and surfers from all over the world, and waters so clear yet often so dangerous, they have become a part of his psyche, of his very being, the tearing off of clothes, the stepping out of jeans, the feel of the swimming trunks on his taut body, the lifeguard’s cap on his head, the surfboard under his arms…he’s done that all his young life, but wants no more of it, or wanted no more of it when he decided to leave, yet even in the bitter darkness, this beach looks inviting. ‘This is the beach on the other side of the world,’ he is thinking and ‘if I swim far enough I could swim back to Queensland from here, only I don’t want to, I don’t want to go back there, ever.’

—I would, he says out loud, run into Hawaii on the way, and probably be eaten by sharks.

He clutches his rucksack and fishes out an almond apricot bar, sits on a stone post overlooking the street, and eats it, bite after bite, chewing carefully, gusts of wind playing with his too long hair. He had enough to eat on the plane, he’d thought, but his young body is hungry again, so soon. It should be morning, breakfast time, but here it is night, just as dark and cold as the night he has left behind.

Another bite, then he crosses the street. A car passes by, before he descends the overgrown escarpment down to the sandy beach: there are people grilling, drinking, and laughing. He can see them and hear them, and thinks he can smell the food, but the air only reeks of gasoline, motor oil, and rubber.

Over his head, an aircraft takes to the sky in a massive, deafening roar. It is so big, so loud, Kevin falls to the ground in awe. It seems so close, so incredibly low, that he could probably touch the wheels of the undercarriage. Within seconds, it is far away, and the night is quiet again. A gust from the other direction: now he can smell the food.

The fragrant odor of grilled meat enters his nostrils, as it has done in countless barbeques at home: in the backyard, by the river, next to the ocean, on the island, always large steaks, shrimp, potatoes, always beer, even when he was much younger, held clandestinely behind his back, or hidden in his boardshorts from his mother’s prying eyes.

In the dark, he watches a figure running on the concrete track from south to north, and when the runner passes a fire, sweat glistens on his naked torso, and sinewy muscles shine against the black sand. It is only April, and the wind is cold enough to make Kevin shiver, despite his new sweater: for the runner to sweat like this, he must have come far already; a true athlete, long-distance, as the lean, almost to the point of skinny frame shows; they run off all the fat first, then the muscle, then… Kevin’s thoughts die a quick death in the roar of a Cathay Pacific triple-seven, climbing elegantly into the night sky above his head, its elongated body slightly quivering, its wings bending far beyond what seems reasonable, then swerving like an insect, to the right. Looking closely, he can see the massive nacelles vibrate, can see the people in the aircraft looking out onto the bright lights of the flat city. Laughter from afar distracts him, and voices in Spanish.

There is a hut, a small concrete structure. Kevin burrows back into his rucksack and pulls out a picture, a large, blown-up photograph of a man. He sits down, leaning against the wall, hugging the picture and his rucksack as tears well up in him, and the exhaustion of air travel pours out through every pore, and his skin and his mind absorb the first wave of briny sea air.

This is the West Coast of America.

This is, it will soon feel like, the end of the world, and yet, at the same time, the very beginning, of all that is important for him. Living in Australia sometimes feels like being on the edge of everything, the very first, and the very last. But being here does too: the ocean is dark and wide, and beyond it are things Kevin knows little about: Asia, Japan, China, all faraway places he’s never been to, has no concept of. But also his home Australia. He will come back here, to this dark beach behind LAX, he decides somewhat prematurely, when he’s lonely, and homesick.

But not now. Now he will look east, toward the city. The city is where the movies are, the dreams are, the computers are, the games he grew up playing are, that’s where the people he adored went, the actors and actresses his young mind spins countless stories around, and here they made it big. People who came from where he comes from, from the unknown country, the vast and red country at the edge of the world’s consciousness. People who changed names and identities, gave up their embarrassed Australian accents for the American drawl that has become the standard of movies, got facelifts, and stayed twenty-nine forever.

But Kevin hasn’t come to make it big. He has no plans to become an actor, or a star. He has no ambitions beyond those of his immediate task. He is well aware that he has not the talent, nor the inclination. He’s come for one thing and one thing only. One man.

To search and to find.

To talk and forgive.

To love, maybe, or be discarded for good.

There are tears in his eyes; from the wind, he reckons, or the exhaustion. But then it hits him, like a tsunami: he is homesick already!

Bloody hell! Get a grip! You’ve only been away from home for a day. Whining little wuss.

But the tears keep coming, and the planes keep roaring overhead, and the smell of the meat makes him hungry again.

He pulls himself together, and hides behind the concrete hut. He will be strong, he thinks, and says it out loud to convince himself. He will search, and search, and find. In a bar, in a store, somewhere in the jungle he has seen during landing: over forty minutes the plane banked and glided and soared as if it were lighter than air and not thousands of tons—pounds, Kevin corrects himself, hundreds of thousands of pounds of metal and plastic composites of course, must be, over the lights and the lives of millions, in the urban sprawl that is Los Angeles, and much more of it, around it, all the lives and houses and cars and trees between the mountain range and the coast, between the film studios and…how far south does it extend? Somewhere down there is San Diego, but he has no idea how far, and what there is in between, and how far it is to the Mexican border, so the tears slowly subside, then dry up completely, extinguished by the wind as much as the exhaustion.

Another plane roars off into the night sky: baby blue, with a red and white tail, but the colors are barely distinguishable now. He pulls out a bottle of airline water from the rucksack, and drinks from it, tells himself that here would be too cold, too wet, and too dangerous, right next to the ocean, in this strange city, with so much crime, but how much crime is there, really, how dangerous is it to stay here, he doesn’t know, how likely was he to freeze to death, in April, on April 18, precisely, so soon after his

Reviews for Shayno

[bembo_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story follows two men, or rather a man and a boy: Kevin, a nineteen year old gay Australian boy who escapes the America after being brutally beaten by his father following his coming out; and a thirty something gay English man who has been working in America for some time as a computer programmer and who strikes up a friendship with Shayne, a handsome well built Australian he meets at the gym. Kevin is in the States looking for the man he met back home and whom he thinks he is in love with, in the course of his search he makes a name for himself with his exceptional looks and beautiful body. In the mean time our English man's relationship with Shayne becomes more and more strange and looks to be heading in a dangerous direction. Eventually, and near the conclusion of the book, the paths of the two main protagonist finally meet, revealing an inevitable touch of irony.The story deals with among other things violence, abuse, submission and humiliation, both seemingly consensual and non-consensual, and also includes some descriptive passages of both gay and straight sex which from an essential part of the account.At first I found the story, which is told alternately in the third person when following Kevin, but in the first person by the English man, a little irritating, for I could not find the link between the two characters. I also found the English man difficult to respect although over the course of the book my view of him changed for the positive. There are some long passages of discussion at times between Shane and the English man which inevitably hold up the narrative and almost seemed self indulgent. I did find it confusing that speech quotation marks were not used in the text, an unnecessary affectation.However on the plus side, the story is exceptionally well written, in fact it was purely the quality of the writing that kept me with it for the duration, otherwise on more than one occasion I might have lost patience with the story for one reason or another. The outcome is positive, and includes a brief epilogue providing an update on the later progress of the protagonists.