Danny

Eat your hearts out, guys.

In my line of work I spend most of my time travelling around the world.

So I guess that being gay is an advantage. With no family, I can do what I please - or, rather, whatever my employer pleases - so I’m often sent off to somewhere on the other side of the world at the drop of a hat.

As a result, I’ve probably got a better knowledge of all the bars, discos, clubs, saunas and escort services from New York to Novisibirsk than virtually anyone you care to mention.

But once in a while I get to stop off at a place I’ve never visited before, and then I rely on my trusty gay guidebook. Trusty, at any rate, in the sense that it was accurate once upon a time.

As we all know, a bar - just like a boy - can appear, dazzle and then completely vanish in just a few weeks. As a result I’ve lost all count of the time I’ve spent looking for clubs that are no longer there and even whole streets that turn out to have been demolished since the book was published just a year before.

But as I drew up in the car from Bucharest airport - that’s Romania, for you guys without an atlas to hand! - I was relieved to see that the Hotel Apollo (rather inappropriately illustrated in the guidebook by a drawing of Michaelangelo’s David) still appeared to be in place.

Not, that’s to say, that it was the sort of place you’d want to stay except for the glowing report in the gay guide which promised highly attentive and accommodating staff who will personally go out of their way to ensure that your every physical need is instantly met.

Now that sounds like customer service to die for.

Apart from that, though, the state of the reception area - slightly untidy, with a worn and dusty feel about it all - wasn’t too promising. I began to suspect that maybe a couple of letters had fallen off the big, garish sign over the front of the hotel. Maybe, after all, the Hotel Apollo was really the Hotel Crapollo?

My initial doubts were confirmed when the bellboy took me to my room. This one could only have been a boy of any sort when Josef Stalin last checked in. My room, too, looked pretty much as though it hadn't changed a bit since the 1940s.

And from he way he leaned over the chair, I guessed that Danny was used to posing too. It occurred to me that many European porno makers came to Bucharest to shoot their skinflicks and I made a mental note to take a good look at the bit-part performers in my East European videos when I got home.

Presumably waiting for any instruction to slow down or stop, Danny carried on his seductive striptease. But, probably to his surprise, I didn’t stop him. I was determined to get a good, full look at the goods on offer.

And when I did get that, I was more than pleased. “Dressed” only in a medallion which he wore on a long gold chain around his neck - which I guessed, given the low income levels in Romania, was probably a gift from an earlier admirer - Danny far exceeded my expectations.

Just as he had first seemed, Danny was not like the other Romanians I’d seen so far. His small bush of pubes, surmounting a cute dick which offered great promise of things to come, was as light brown as the hair on his head. With those blue eyes in the occasion too, I guessed his ancestry was probably German - maybe the result of an encounter by his grandmother in World War Two.

But then I did nothing.

Or, rather, I picked up the phone which appeared to be my room’s sole concession to twentieth century technology.

No TV, no radio, no air conditioning, no mini-bar. It looked like there was going to be no fun either.

Until the old guy spoke.

He was pretty upfront.

“Sir, I am bellboy Anton. I serve you. You like I find lady for you?” he asked, with far more animation than his hitherto decrepit appearance had led me to expect.

And, after I’d politely declined the offer, “Sir, Anton think maybe you like boy?”

Less than ten minutes later I opened the door to my room to find a nervous-looking Daniel standing there against the walls of peeling blue paint which decorated the corridor.

Daniel may have looked nervous, but, then again, I guess that’s only to be expected. After all, the guest requiring his services might be 300 lbs in weight, 80 years old, a cross dresser or the proud possessor of a fine collection of whips and paddles which he’d brought along on vacation just for this very opportunity.