My uncle was delighted by my immediate acceptance of his unexpected request that I fly at once from my small home city in North China to assume temporary guardianship of his luxurious apartment on the flanks of Hong Kong's towering Peak. Married to a beautiful Belgian lady, he and his wife had been called to Europe to deal with a tragedy in her family. He said that I was one of the few people he would trust to be custodian of his exquisite collection of Chinese furnishings and art while they were away.

It was a generous gesture on his part for I had not yet taken on any adult responsibilities in my life, spent almost entirely as a student until graduation from university in Beijing a short while before. He knew it would please my father to hear that his only brother had bestowed such trust upon me. They were twins and were thus closely knit together in heart, but the years had separated them in other ways. Instinctively, I understood that I was being gently maneuvered into position to fill in the gap that time, geography and politics had wrought between them.

I must confess that my enthusiasm for the journey was partly inspired by the fact that I would be arriving in Hong Kong during celebrations of the New Year of the Dragon. Having never been there, I was thrilled beyond measure at the prospect of experiencing one of the most seductive cities in the world at its most vibrant during the colorful festivities.

As my uncle and his wife would already be en route to Brussels before my plane landed, he had arranged for someone to meet me at the airport and drive me to his place high on Hong Kong Island. I knew only that I was to wait outside the baggage claim area and watch for a black car with the name of my uncle's company emblazoned on the side. The flight was crowded. The wait was long for my luggage, so when it came, I dashed outside with it, wondering if whoever was coming had been patient enough to wait.

Just as I exited the building, a black limousine pulled up to the curb. I had no difficulty recognizing it as my uncle's property. The company name was imprinted, indeed, but I fell back in stark surprise when I saw the large head of a dragon situated prominently above the windscreen, its fabric body draped on all sides with artificial claws hanging down the doors!

When it came to a stop, a youngish Chinese man informally dressed leapt out and looked around. I hailed him, calling my name. He was pleased to have found me so quickly and took my bag, hastily tossing it in the boot of the car. A traffic inspector was approaching us with an angry grimace while the driver fairly pushed me into the back seat of the limo, holding aside the mesh fabric of the dragon's flanks. He shut the door and raced around to the driver's side and set off before the policeman reached us.

The tinted windows, further darkened by the dragon's mock skin, let in minimal light. The shadows were so deep at the rear of the wide passenger compartment in which I sat that my eyes had not yet adjusted sufficiently to make out anything inside.

Suddenly, a voice seemingly no more than inches from my ear said, "Welcome, son."

Taken aback, I turned my head. In the far reaches of the wide seat, I could barely discern the man who shared it with me. I could tell only that he was foreign, as he spoke in English, and was not young, for his hair seemed to glow in the dark, as if it were white.

"Your uncle thought this might provide an interesting introduction to Hong Kong. He always participates in the New Year celebrations. It's good advertising for his firm. The limo is large enough that he and your aunt often invite friends to ride along through the crowds, rather like a New Year's party. There is a bar up there behind the driver's compartment. He is sealed off from us by that special window so he can concentrate on the driving. Would you like a drink?"

Insufferably shy under the best of circumstances and now speechless from surprise, I managed to mumble that I would not care for a drink.

"Nor, then, will I," he replied. "We'll be driving through the crowds of Kowloon. Our progress may be slow, but you will see remarkable sights. We can see out, but they can't see in.

Exciting, don't you think?"

I must have nodded my head, but still could scarcely speak. His deep voice had penetrated me to the core, its resonance resounding within me to strike chords inescapably sensual. It chimed like bells ringing in my brain. I had never experienced such a reaction to anyone. I felt my cheeks flushing, my mouth suddenly drying, my palms moistening with unexpected sweat.

"I am an associate of your uncle's and spend most of my time traveling to make appraisals of the estates from which his firm buys paintings and objects of art representing the skills of the finest artisans in Chinese history. Thus, we are helping the government in Beijing to restock the museums of China which have been emptied of treasures in former times. I would be keeping an eye on things when your uncle leaves town, but it happens that this time I, too, must go away. I leave for Sydney tomorrow. Then you will be entirely in charge." His voice was as soothing as a caress. Although we moved through a whirlwind of traffic outside, it was is if we were cruising through space in the utmost privacy.

"Your uncle has told me a little about you. I know that you were an excellent student and that your family is very proud of your scholastic achievements. I have a grandson about your age, in Melbourne. I shall be seeing him next week. I enjoy the company of a young man." Without seeming to patronize me for my youth, he nudged my thigh gently in an affectionate way.

"You chaps have your lives before you. I don't envy that, but I wouldn't mind going back and changing a thing or two, provided I had the advantage of knowing all I know now." He touched me again, this time with his whole hand spread gently across my knee.

I was amazed at myself for not withdrawing my leg from his range, or at least shaking off his hand as if such intimacy were an affront, but I could not. His hand was hot and weighed heavily on my knee, but I liked it.

"Yes, I would do things differently if I went back in time," he continued. "I would be more aware of opportunities I had missed and be more aggressive about seizing the moment, about not letting it get away. I would be less concerned about what others think of me because in the end, it is not they, but I, who must live with what I did or did not do." His hand moved slightly higher on my leg.

No one had ever touched me quite like that. I remembered a soccer coach at school who had occasionally flung his arm around my shoulders and tickled my arm slightly with his fingers on the way to the showers after practice, in a gesture of approval for my accomplishments on the field. The coach had not been a slim man, being quite fleshy, and my head had reached no higher than his chest. I remembered being struck by his manly smell and leaning closer to drink it in, and the gentle shove he gave me toward the shower room and the friendly tap on my behind. I remembered pausing to watch him walk away from me as I went in to bathe, loving the rounded contours of his shape and how all his parts moved together so harmoniously to propel him forward with an athlete's effortless grace.

On such occasions, a warmth had spread through me which only a cold shower could assuage, and I remembered lying in bed at night with a vision of the coach in my brain and the smell of his armpits in my nostrils while my lonely hand lent comfort to my groin.

There, in the limousine entering the crowded streets of Kowloon, I suddenly had a vision of the coach again, brought on by the stranger's grasp, and with it came the old swelling in my loins. Perhaps I should at that moment have pushed his hand away, but instead I felt my arm lifting, breaching the space between us, and my hand coming to rest on his thigh even higher than his rested on mine. I turned my eyes toward him. He, too, was looking directly at me.

Our gazes were like two dragons breathing fire.

The insulation of the limo kept the noise of the teeming masses at bay. The crowd formed a sea of humanity through which our car plowed slowly like a trawler through a school of fish. Most of them scattered, but some pressed their faces against the windows trying to see through the dragon-skin mesh and the tinted windows, probably thinking they might catch a glimpse of a high official or a film star. No such luck for them, but lucky for us there was no way they could penetrate the shadows of the rear compartment. Still, we could see them clearly, had we a mind to look.

Not so. We had eyes only for each other, and in those moments of self-realization it came to me for the first time in my life that my only route to sexual fulfillment led through the dark passage of homosexual love, and only with a senior man. My heated thoughts about the soccer coach and one or two other older men whom I admired had seemed to me a fleeting fantasy that could not possibly take root in my life.

I was the only son in my generation of children. My father's twin brother had no children of his own, and there were no sons in their generation. It had fallen to me to carry on the name. Yet not even the power of family tradition or fear of the terrible consequences of being gay in Chinese society could stop my heart from thumping wildly as I felt the Australian's fingers clutching at my stone-hard erection still pressed against me by my fly, nor could anything have halted my hand's progress in quest of my first time's touching of another man's throbbing, pre-cumming tool of love, but there was no time to feel his response to me.

Neither could any authority of heaven or earth blockade the rush of semen boiling up my budding manhood's stem. In a rush that overcame all sense of propriety or fear, I rolled over and threw myself on him for a passionate kiss, our tongues plunging into our mouths while my penis squirted in the confinement of my trousers, messing me worse than diapers in the first year or two of my life.

When it was over, I lay across him panting. I heard firecrackers popping faintly in the world outside. He unbuckled my belt, and I felt him gently stroke the cum from my abdomen and pubes. He then lifted his hands to his face and rubbed the creamy paste from my gonads into his plump cheeks.

"Very good for the skin," he murmured with a smile. "It is said that a Hungarian countess in the 19th century who was famous for her smooth complexion had peasants brought into her boudoir each morning. Manipulating their cocks between her large, beautiful breasts, she brought them to orgasm and then spread the fresh cream on her breasts and shoulders and face, the parts of her body exposed in formal dress. Maybe it will keep me from getting more wrinkles!"

I sighed. "Wrinkles are beautiful. There is nothing more wonderful than age in a man's face, the features molded by the many experiences of life, the eyes glowing with wisdom, the sweet lips that I now discover have the taste of honey."

"Ah!" he murmured. "You have not been with a man before. I am so glad. When you got into the car, I briefly saw your face in the light from outside. I thought it more handsome than any Chinese I have ever seen. I am an authority on the porcelains of Ming. Your flesh is as smooth as a Ming vase. A priceless beauty! Is the rest of your body that way?"

I rolled away from him to undo my trousers and shirt. "You are sure neither the driver nor the crowd can see us back here?"

He grinned. "No one. We're in a world apart from theirs."

I lifted my backside and hitched my underpants and trousers down to my ankles, then stripped off my shirt. "See?" I said. "Do I pass the test?"

For the first time in my life, I was unashamed to lay myself bare before another human being. Somehow, this stranger was a part of me now.

His palms and fingertips caressed my body with long, light strokes. His warm touch brought my member to quick attention. His head fell to my groin. I felt a gentle nipping at the corona of my penis, like a cat lapping at a saucer of milk. Then he took it all in, his head rising and falling as his mouth and lips offered wetness and suction that soon transported me into ecstasy again.

"I am cumming, now!" I moaned. He lifted his head away.

This time, with my cock free of restraint except for the steadying grip of two of his fingers, the spray of semen shot upward in a great arc that rose as high as my face and splashed down in a shower of droplets spattering across my chest like hot ash from an erupting volcano. Afterward, the Australian hovered over me gathering beads of cum with his fingertips and soothing them into his cheeks. He still wore his suit and tie.

"It's not fair," I whispered. "Here I lie stripped naked, and there you sit fully clothed. Is that the way the game is played?"

He smiled and shook his head. "Not really, but you don't want to look at me! Yours is a young man's trim vessel sailing proudly with its mast standing tall. Mine is the wreck of an ancient mariner battered and tossed by the storms of time. No tall mast marks me anymore. I have little to offer you, son, but a warm and hungry mouth."

His self-deprecation twisted my heart. "Don't talk about yourself that way! Everything about you is beautiful to me. I never saw a more appealing man!"

It was true. More, I was surprised at how good I felt about what had happened with him. In the school's locker room after soccer, revolted by the sight of my young teammates changing clothes, even those in well-toned, muscular condition, I had tended to avert my eyes until the coach passed through, and then I felt the firecrackers go off inside me and heat me up so fearfully I could have popped right there on the spot. The difference between the slim young men and the older chub was so pronounced that I marveled that anyone could find a young man attractive.

On one very special afternoon, he invited me to join him and three of the senior boys in the steam room for a discussion of various new ideas he had in mind for the team. Decorum demanded that we cover ourselves with a towel. The coach sitting so close to me stark naked but for the smidgen of cloth cast over his genitals quite drove me out of my mind. I was too overwhelmed even to achieve an erection, thankfully, as it would have made me lose face in such august company. However, the image of the coach I carried home at the back of my brain led me to exercise my member in the bathroom within seconds of entering the house. Yet, after cumming, with my fluids running through my fingers and coating my belly with slime, I felt such self-disgust and loathing for the image that had brought me to this that each time I vowed never to look at the coach again.

Not so with the Australian. I wanted to examine every part of him closely. I already cherished every wrinkle and sag I might find. He was my first old man. He could be nothing short of perfection. I thought myself in love.

The Australian suddenly shifted his attention to a scene beyond the limo's windows. "Look! A dancing dragon! See it snaking around the corner? It must have at least 200 people inside! What a sight!"

It was huge, its ferocious head towering far above. Had it been a real dragon, were there such a creature, it could have gobbled up in one bite the dragon-decorated limousine in which we slowly made our through the crowd which could not see us because of the dark tint of the car windows and the mesh of the false dragon scales hanging over the sides.

I moved closer to him. Still naked except for the trousers gathered around my ankles, I tugged gently at his tie.

"There is another dragon I want to see," I whispered. "Let me peel away his scales." My fingers worked deftly to unbutton his shirt once the tie was removed. I slipped my hand across his broad, well-cushioned chest.

He sat very still, faintly resisting my efforts to explore further. "Not smooth as a Ming vase, young man. I'm a different breed," he said.

I luxuriated in the tangled forest of hair furring his stomach and chest. I had never given much thought to that. All the older men I admired had been Chinese, each of them presumably as hairless of body as I. It was like finding buried treasure. His nipples were spongy and thick, like succulent wonton afloat in seaweed soup. I leaned down and licked each in turn. They stiffened and grew larger. "Who says you are a ship without a mast?" I whispered. "You have two good ones right here."

He chuckled. "Spars, perhaps, but the mainmast on the far side of the poop deck is broken down."

My wandering hands coursed over the top of his ample belly and coasted down to a navel deep-set and buried, like his nipples, in tufts of soft hair. "I should like to place my tongue in this orifice," I said. "Is that allowed?"

He grunted. "I love that you do this, but I must tell you that it is distressing to me because I find the thought of such beautiful young man exploring my ugly body in this intimate way quite disconcerting. It is I who should be exploring you."

I rested my head on his beefy shoulder. "Not so. The New Year is the most important holiday on the Chinese lunar calendar. At this time, we perform many ceremonies we do not on other occasions. At this very moment in my family home, my father is leading my sisters and their husbands and children - all girls, for I am the only boy - in special prayers to the gods, among whom is one you resemble. He is my favorite, the god of wealth and prosperity. We kowtow to him and to our elders and ancestors tonight before we dine on special foods. I am only being respectful when I ask you to allow me to fall on my knees before you."

He turned slightly to kiss me lightly on the cheek. "You are so beautiful, son, and so wonderfully Chinese. Despite the intimacy we have shared thus far, I sense the respect you continue to give me. I must return the same to you. Yes, you may kowtow before me and do as you will."

I slipped off the seat and knelt before him, leaning forward to probe his sweet bellybutton with my tongue. Like everything about him, it was so fresh and clean. A faint fragrance led me to believe that he had bathed with expensive soap just before leaving for the airport to pick me up, as had I before boarding my plane.

"Oh," he murmured as my mouth's juices flowed from his navel in a tiny stream, "you do this with such elegance! I sense all the millennia of Chinese history personified in you. You kneel to drink from me like a honeybee seeking nectar from the last, wilting peach blossom on the tree. I have found such a treasure in you! I have got my wish to turn back in time and seize an opportunity I might have missed. I could not resist you from the moment I saw you. I had to know how you would respond if I were to throw all caution to the wind and lay my hand upon you. Had you recoiled, I would have withdrawn and made a joke of it somehow, but no, you allowed it. I thank you for that." He stripped himself to the waist

I listened, but continued savoring his flesh in a widening circle until I had to loosen his trousers and pull his underpants away. Silently, I undressed him below the waist, as I had myself, tugging his pants and shorts to his ankles so he could spread his knees.

There it lay, uncovered at last, staring back at me with its single eye. Thrilled, I could not resist a chuckle. "Jiaozi! Two of the special dumplings we eat at New Year's in my northern town! And a large noodle for good measure!"

The Australian roared with laughter. His belly shook, driving me wild. I covered it with laps and kisses and finally brought my lips to rest on the withered manhood of my precious old man. I heard him sigh when they touched his penis and took it instinctively into my mouth.

I had never dreamed of doing such a thing. My fastidious nature would have recoiled at thought of it. Yet here I knelt before my New Year's god with the sudden-born knowledge of my tongue as a tool of love. I probed with it into the foreskin pocket, finding that, like everything on this man, honey-sweet and clean swept as the traditional New Year's kitchen hearth! I could not stop. Soft as he had lamented it would be, I took it in deep till it touched the back of my oral cavity. I swished it around in my spittle, salivating copiously to drench it with wetness as I imagined a woman's nether cavity to be, for was it not made to enter there and reproduce its kind, no matter how my own needs might turn it to other use?

It was lovely that way. His hands stroked my hair, my cheeks, my chin. He sighed and occasionally moaned. He pushed up against my face and buried my nose in his wiry pubes. He seemed as much transported as I. It was heaven for us both. I could tell. It mattered not at all that he could not get hard. I loved the taste of him, the smell of him, the texture of his flesh, the softness of his belly hair and the wire-brushiness of his pubes. I could have gone on that way forever.

That, however, was not to be. After several minutes of my drooling over his parts and lapping at them like the household cat, the soft noodle began to stiffen.

The Australian's hands ceased caressing my head. He sucked in his breath with what could only have been surprise. "You've brought it to life!" He cried out in a strangled whisper. "Son, son, do not stop! You have indeed taken me back in time! I am becoming ME again! Oh, son, I beg you. Go on!"

Exhilarated beyond all expectation, I felt his noodle harden to an egg roll under my ministration and then rise up to meet my lips like a raging dragon ready to take on the world. I engorged it beyond my palette. Had it been any longer or any stiffer, it would have bored through the back of my head. This was a miracle!

His knees clutched me like a vise. His hands gripped my shoulders. I pumped harder with my lips and fingers. Rivers of spittle ran down the inner creases of his thighs. His penis grew hotter and hotter and suddenly changed its smell. An inexhaustible supply of pre-cum lent a rich flavor that had not been apparent before. I felt his whole body stiffen. He exuded the strong odor of a man in heat.

"I am cumming!" he cried. "Take your head away!"

His snatched his penis from my mouth. His ecstatic cry filled the passenger chamber of the limousine like the bellow of a bull. I sat back on my heels to watch the unbelievable splendor of this magnificent dragon I had conjured into life. It spewed out a continuous stream of cum that shot to the ceiling of the car. Some of it clung there, but much of it rained back upon us in a shower of hot pellets like snowflakes in hell. The dragon was breathing fire.

His body rose with it in an arc and settled back with a thud. He gasped and reached for me and pulled me up from the floor to his lap and embraced me and kissed me passionately. I felt like a rag doll buffeted about in his fleshy arms.

The moment passed. We were calm again. "You have kissed the fiery dragon and brought it back to life," he said softly. "I could cancel my trip to Sydney tomorrow and stay in Hong Kong while you are here. Would that please you, son?"

It would, indeed. We dressed ourselves quickly and had returned to a presentable state before the limousine pulled up before my uncle's place, and the driver came back to usher us out of the car.

As the driver opened the door, I whispered to the Australian: "You are positive we were not seen or heard by this man? My uncle must never know what took place in here tonight."

"Positive, son."

The door opened on the Australian's side. He stepped out first. The driver bowed low to him as a gesture of respect. I followed him out.

"Happy New Year of the Dragon!" the driver said, rising from his bow.

Having already turned away, the Australian did not see the driver's knowing wink at me or his next gesture that set my startled heart at ease - an indication that whatever he may have heard or seen, he would never tell.