I can’t believe it is November. Many of the bushes here are still green. The chill in the air would be September in Canada. In four months I will be home.
Coen is feeling better today. He has more colour in his peaches-and-cream complexion and he definitely has more energy. It is a grey day outside but it isn’t raining. Coen and Vincent have gone off looking for maps of Turkey and especially of Asia. I have already been looking for maps for points east of Turkey with no success. After WW I, under the guidance of Ataturk, Turkey became obsessed with fitting in with Europe. They changed their alphabet from Arabic to Roman and built European buildings and adopted Western clothing. In spite of being 98% Muslim, the country has chosen to be a secular state. Turks vacation in Europe and seem to loathe associations with Asia at a personal level. So I can buy maps from all over Europe here, but not ones of Asia.
For my part, I am tired of Europe, or at least eager to see something different. That includes Istanbul. I arrived in Besiktas 18 days ago, by far the longest stay anywhere on my trip – six times the length of my stay in Paris, triple my stay in Amsterdam and more than double my time in Berlin. I sense a trend, but one cannot ever really fit in when he is traveling. Even if I can make friends (which I have not done here) and ‘settle down’ for a month, without a job or purpose I cannot belong anywhere. At best, I am like a piece of lint in the breeze that has been caught on something for a while before blowing away again. The lack of belonging bothers me deeply and has me wondering who I am.
But I will have to let that question incubate longer. Today I have decided to go on my own to the Canadian Consulate, which I have managed to locate (to my surprise) a kilometre of less from Mario’s place in Besiktas. It’s a bit further away from the Bosphorus on the 22nd floor of an office tower. I make my way there on a bus from the Eminonu station. It only takes half an hour or so.
The bus lets me off at large, open square. The address I am looking for isn’t immediately clear. I ask a local business man who thinks I want the American Consulate. He points to a huge, ugly concrete bunker on a hilltop a kilometre away. It looks like a prison or a military establishment, imposing and dangerous. No, no, I tell him. I want the Canadian Consulate. He has never heard of it. I show him the address and then he knows which high rise I want. 
Outside the entrance there are half a dozen protesters holding a banner that says “Stop the slaughter!” and “Shame of Canada!” with photos and drawings of baby seals be bludgeoned to death. “You’re wasting your effort,” I tell them. “This city doesn’t even care about their poor.” They look at me with contempt. Truth rarely receives a warm reception. They certainly wouldn’t want to hear that I once bought a stuffed baby seal toy for a friend’s daughter for Christmas and a plastic baseball bat for their son so they could play together.
The Consulate office is non-descript, a plaque on the door and a small reception room. There is a photo of Queen Elizabeth with a diminutive maple leaf flag on a staff beside it, a more ominous photo of PM Brian Mulroney on another wall, a reception desk, three stuffed armchairs and a stack of Canadian newspapers. I ask the receptionist if she would mind me spending an hour reading them. I am eager to hear a refreshing Canadian accent. “Elp yo selv,” she replies. She is from the Gaspe, so neither French or English could possibly understand her.
Time flies by as I get absorbed in the news, the rarest of commodities when outside of Canada. Not even British or American papers give Canadian news. In it wasn’t for the seal hunts and Canada Dry (the champagne of ginger ales) they wouldn’t know we exist. We’d just be an oversized pink ice cap at the top of North America.
On my way back, I have planned a detour to the only gay sauna listed in Spartacus. Officially, it is not a gay sauna because of the anti-sex laws here, but it men only and its painted pink on the outside. Go figure. Actually, for centuries male-only saunas were where men went for gay sex here, and as I mentioned before, sex with women was not permitted until marriage so if you wanted sex it was going to be with other guys.
The sauna is not a traditional hamam. It is rather small and short on facilities when compared to the Cagaloglu Kadinlar Hamami to went to with the Dutch boys. The staff here are helpful and friendly, or perhaps I was just expecting the same treatment I got at the disco.
The young man at the reception desk, Dimi, likes me. He lets me take his photo and gives me his address so I can sent him a postcard from India. “Have fun. There are just old men here today but I am finished in an hour,” he winks at me. He’s right. There are no scrub boys here, understandably but unfortunately. There are mostly old men who are quite insistent and disrespectful at times, but I hang around to leave with him when he’s off.
When the hour is up, I gather my clothes from my locker and go to look for him. I meet him coming towards me with only a towel around him. He smiles and leads me back to m my locker so I can put back my clothes. Then he leads me into the dry sauna where he necks with me in front of the old men I had been fending off. They respect him when he tells them to leave us alone. I presume they don’t want to mess with an employee who could ban them the establishment. He kisses beautifully and the opposing swirls of black hair around his muscular pecs are beautiful to the touch. He fucks me slowly and passionately in front of the others, then cuddles and caresses me for an hour after we are finished. Gawd, I needed that.
I have a glow on for the rest of the day. Vincent asks what I have been up to. I tell him that I visited a sauna and my smile tell him the rest. I need a good lay too, he tells me, but I tease him that he is in Muslim territory now. Only the men are available. But I know this may be my last time for quite a while. Love with men is a double edged sword in Asia with gayness being illegal. One could be blackmailed, beaten or end up in jail, but today with Dimi was a treat.
PHOTO 1: Canadian Embassy is on this tower
PHOTO 2: American Embassy is a 'fortress' glowering over the city
PHOTO 3: Aquarius Sauna
PHOTO 4: Dimi
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