City man
He looked like the city personified. I had never before met anyone who so completely embodied the character of a place. A microcosm of my urban environment in one flesh-and-blood package. He was tall and well-built, like someone who had worked hard at something his whole life. His skin had an almost greasy patina to it, a mixture of his sweat and what he had picked up of the dust floating about the city. The way he dressed, not quite in fashion, not quite put together, but smart in a flashy, almost vulgar kind of way.
We should not have gotten along at all, but we did. We went head to head the day we met – not just pushing each other’s buttons, but pushing each other, to do more, think bigger, be more…spectacular. Yet somehow it was all so messy. He made my temper flare up in a way that is completely uncharacteristic. We seemed to multiply each other’s energy, and it was always overflowing, sloshing about dangerously (and wastefully), like water in a capsizing boat. That should have been a sign. Unfortunately, the generator effect was probably caused by the ridiculous magnetism between us. It sounds cheesy, but it’s the only accurate way to describe that uncontrollable, irresistible combination of attraction and repulsion. I realized it was the same way I feel about the city. Creepy as fuck.
It was inevitable though, the sex.
“I knew it at hello.”
His voice was hoarse as he unbuttoned my shirt in the dark. I had known too, I thought. I had thought I was imagining it but I’d known. His smell was filling my head like a cloud of opium. We were naked and attacking each other, ripping each other apart; it was salvation and retribution rolled into one. And it hurt like hell. He was huge, not just in length but in girth, and I had difficulty enough getting him into my mouth; I was screaming when he pushed into me, sitting in his lap, legs knotted around his convulsing form. I wanted to stay like that, impaled with his dick halfway to my heart, until we fused into some nightmare of Rodin’s.
His conversational choices were nightmarish too. First it was “Don’t touch my legs! No one touches my legs!” I froze in startled concern (What had I done?) until he explained how he had had a serious accident and was still shell-shocked by it. Moments later it was, in Arabic, “Make me a child.” Thrust. “I want a baby. “ Thrust. “I want you to have my baby.” Thrust. “I want to fuck a child into you.” Thrust. “We could have a home together.” Thrust. I commented with the stifled screams of a tangle of primitive emotions. There was something viscerally thrilling, somewhere deep down in my animal being, about hearing those words but I was desperately grateful for Durex nonetheless. Some part of me was stunned, maybe even scared. But this wave of abandonment, this loosened grip on sanity, was not going to last, and I did not want to think now about what I’d think about this later. That was a task for reason, and here was clearly none.
He cried afterwards, and said he was confused and sorry. I didn’t know what to do; the spell was broken and I was just as puzzled. I did not understand the way this man made me feel; the overwhelming simultaneous urges to kick him and kiss him, fight him and fuck him, were too much for me to handle. Plus I was now thoroughly disturbed. This was clearly a powder keg situation that needed to be stepped away from before it exploded all over us. He seemed just as panicked so I decided to be the man, save us both and step out.
“I don’t know what I want,” he called out after me.
I did. I wanted a cigarette and a stiff drink. I also had the inexplicable but embarrassingly overpowering urge to cry in my turn. Since I was out of eyeshot, and because I had been told it was healthy to let oneself do so occasionally, and because what the hell he was a nutjob too and surely it was pardonable under the circumstances? I allowed myself to crumple into a corner and bury my leaking dignity in a wad of toilet paper.
A few soggy minutes later I was dressed and had gotten my things. I went in to say goodbye.
“Will I see you again?”
“Yes of course. But not like this.” Only through glass, I thought. Only through glass.
