I gave myself exactly one minute before ringing the bell again, examining the flowers outside his fence, which were prim and green and lively. Then I tried to look about; in any new place beside my anxieties I craved experience, but nothing was novel. This was simply another gentrified Lagos estate, too quiet, the roads paved with interlocking stones and the buildings nearly all giant duplexes, closed off with their tall gates and steep-triangle roofs, more displays of wealth in the current fad than aesthetic triumphs. Ekene’s house, as if to reflect his specialness, was different: first, the trees, which even from where I stood were lavish, and then the pre-colonial grandeur of the building, all solid white walls and brown shingled roof. I imagined him disheveled as he usually was whenever we called each other in the mornings, his face a beautiful mosaic of fluster and lethargy and happiness to see me, to be in conversation with me; I imagined him running through the house on his way to me now. I began pacing, trying to ignore the danger intimacies of our sort were never totally immune to, given the country. The gate could open to a police van, to any number of men ready with their sticks and tires, even in this neighborhood that seemed to repel the mere thought of such occurrences.
My phone blared; I rang the bell. I considered he didn’t want to meet anymore, that he’d spied on me from a window and was abhorred. I told myself I was being silly, that although I worried over the angles and lighting in the pictures I’d sent him, he had seen my real face multiple times, my worst faces: Awakening,
Munching, Crying. I imagined that later this would all be reduced to an anxiety about directions and newness, that he would hit me playfully on the arm and say, See, you should believe in yourself more. I reached up to the bell again, staring at the receding numbers on my phone and pressing softly, but something tipped me off balance, or I tipped myself, and I pressed the bell.
“Coming!” I heard, and froze. His voice’s precise quality I cannot for the life of me recall, accompanied by sounds of brisk walking, and a padlock turning.
Be still, be cool, I commanded myself, say something. But I could not. I had dreamed continually of what this proximity would make possible but here I was, stunned, dizzy with the amendments to imagination. He is here, my body kept saying to me, he is here. We’d been planning this for about two weeks now, since I got back from university, and something had always come up from his side or mine, and now, finally –
“Hey,” he said to me, smiling, shifting so I could move in so he could close the gate. He was shirtless and in grey shorts, water in his hair. I’d seen the scar from his appendicitis surgery so many times, the sleek curves of his chest and the bright brown of his lips. I’d seen his unruly hair and his svelte ears and I’d seen him naked and yet I was filled with a purity of desire, a distilled breeze, a cool argent feeling to know him, to conquer the manifold obstructions of distance. And with this, as he smiled at me and could not stop smiling, his hands on the gate still, me unmoving still, all of time a hoax, an anxiety that I would flounder, that although we had talked consistently for the past four months, I would reveal a deficiency masked by the internet.
My throat felt thick and my feet were numb, as if I’d been sitting on a toilet for too long. “It’s not very noticeable,” I said, moving in, “Your third nipple.” The goal being to build on established knowledge. I wanted to say something about his sister, his father, the empty doghouse, I wanted to be sure that what had been communicated virtually had consequence, but it felt to me like I was falling and there wasn’t much to stop my fall.
“I will definitely remember this was the first thing you said to me in person,” he said, locking the gate.
“Oh my God,” I said, laughing.
“A very you-first-thing-to-say, to be honest.” He laughed.
We walked side by side, away from a gold embellished green door, towards a back or side entrance. He smelled fresh, and I noted the damp around my armpits. I was right about the trees; their plenitude and beauty, they summoned for me the tranquility of the village.
“I’m so sorry for making you wait,” he said. “I was having my bath. You know I drove my mum to the airport and I was so tired when I got back I just started sleeping.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, I know how waiting makes you feel, especially since this is your first time here. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, really, I figured out the directions.”
“Yes you did! So proud of you!”
I felt a fluttering in me to receive his praise. I turned to look at the compound, its expanse of interlocking stones, a red Honda near the clothes lines, and all the flowers in large stone vases. Then I turned to him and saw a look of amazement which made me turn my face away again.
“I’m anxious too,” he said. “I could barely sleep yesterday, that’s part of why I was so tired. I kept thinking, what if he doesn’t come, what if something happens?”
“Like what?”
“Like, I dunno, maybe something would come up, my parents would decide to return from their trip impromptu, I don’t know. Something.”
“Well, here I am!” I said, laughing, a little too dramatically.
“Here you are!” He reached out to a railing that girded the narrow verandah. He hopped up the single marbled step. The door was to the left, metallic green too but less heavy-looking; I removed my shoes and placed them side by side, next to a green rug that said WELCOME in astonishingly white letters. Ekene had come to the gate with bare feet, I noticed then. When I looked up, he put his hands to his back and coughed, and I laughed, the gesture reminding me of something inarticulately precise, a detail sharp about how it made me love him, and it made me laugh.
He opened the door and said, bowing, “My prince, I am most pleased to welcome you to my humble abode.”
As I walked in, I felt something in me rise to saturation. To profusion. I felt of a similar substance to the flowers, a kin composition, arranged here in joyous whites and yellows, accompaniments to the small golden chandelier in the center of the sitting room and the pristine white walls.
“Why thank you,” I said, playing his game. “It is a rather fine home.”
“I prepared it for your coming.”
I hummed in appraisal. It was a feat of organization. The large and ultrathin television, large glass center table, cream-colored couches, golden chandeliers. But I suspected they were always this crisp. Ekene’s had the ever-fresh smell of moneyed homes. The floors were wooden, or some wood-like composite. The stairs were glass.
There was a large mirror just to the left of the door, and a large wooden table underneath it. On the table were various framed photographs, the family across decades, against the backdrop of several countries. I ignored my reflection. “You look like your mum,” I said, picking up a frame, although I’d said this many times before when he sent throwbacks, and he’d said many people said so too. But I really liked the picture. He’s of a gushing freshness, wearing a crisp cream shirt and blue shorts and a blue cap and smiling at his mother who’s smiling at him as they both eat ice cream.
“Yeah.” He came in front of me, very close, I had to drop the pictures and look at him. I could smell his soap or lotion or deodorant or the combination of all three. I realized he hadn’t hugged me at the gate, hadn’t touched me when he made his joke, and I realized too I was withholding an impulse to poke him, to tap any part of his exposed torso.
“You’re here,” he said, smiling. “You’re really here.”
I remembered how he’d stood just moments ago, and without meaning to I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” he asked. “I’m sure I brushed.”
“No, no, it’s not your breath,” I said.
“What then?”
“Nothing. Serious, nothing.”
“Okay,” he said. He coughed again. “You’ve had a long day in traffic today, as have I, so I’ll get right to it. I have Scrabble, Chess, baking stuff, music, all the tragic white gay romances, and some funny romcoms too; the car’s available so we can go out later if you want. But first, let me make breakfast and then we’ll go upstairs and chill? There’s another parlor there. I don’t like being down here and my room is scattered, although my room is, in my opinion, the ideal site for sexual immorality, being a bedroom and all.”
He never spoke this fast on the phone, this cluttered. “Someone’s jumping the menu,” I said, although I shivered at those words, to hear them produced by his lips. “Get me a glass of water, and then we could watch one of these films?”
His face was one of amused surprise. “Okay, argh sorry, one glass of water coming right up.” He walked into the kitchen and I followed him, noting the long island, the large stainless-steel refrigerator with a tap in front, the clean marble surfaces, the full pantry. These were the things a more truthful person would notice loudly, exclaim over, but I took it all in like I was used to it, like I did not imagine what it was like to be surrounded constantly by this ease. Suddenly unable to breathe, I asked him to show me to the toilet, and he led me to a sleek door just off the sitting room. I sat on the WC and held my face. I recalled all the other times we had planned to see, times when he bemoaned his parents’ eternal presence and embarrassing interrogation of his visitors, and I falsely bemoaned likewise, knowing it was for a permanent defect of space, not a temporary hindrance of privacy, that he could not come see me, and if he had insisted I would have lied, even though it tarnished something of our relationship’s foundation of generous understanding. He knew that I lived in a less-savory part of Lagos, that I hated the house; it had released something in me to share those details with him, it had brought us closer, but I discovered the true shame I felt about my small smoldering flat, my yearly-decreasing standard of living, lay in present observation; with just my parents and my siblings, it was merely the site of whatever held us, as flimsy as that word family.
Online or with acquaintances I often said, “I’m so poor”, but poverty had become a kind of parody, a temporary state, and I said the ‘poor’ properly, as I’d learned in phonetics class when there was money for good schools, and I said it with such a passive, tired drawl that I suppose was all the falsehood I could bear. This was real money, all around me, money which brooded no frightful calculations or balances. When Ekene first asked why I was online only at night I told him it was an act of discipline – and indeed it was, if I let myself I’d finish my data money for the month in two days, and then I would be forced to come to terms with insufficiency and poverty and I hated the person I became then, rabid, destructive, terrified – but then I told him it was also because I did not have money to buy data, neglecting the word ‘poor.’ How early in our conversation had I done that? I’d always felt so safe with him. Perhaps it wasn’t the true shame but a deeper layer of the shame, one he couldn’t permeate, one I wouldn’t let him permeate, at least not yet; in time. Hadn’t there been countless other insecurities that were to me now like a dried insect on the wall, weightless?
I flushed the toilet. Ekene stood as soon as I got into the kitchen, holding out the glass of water. “Thank you.”
I drank greedily. Swiveling on the chair next to the island, he said, “I was going to make toast. Do you want some?”
“Nah. I already ate bread and eggs.”
“Hmm. Filled the bread quota for the day?”
“Yep,” I said. “You don’t have to make any for me, I can just watch you. I feel like I can watch you make anything for eternity.”
“I’m blushing,” he said.
“But you know you’re fine. You don’t need me to tell you.”
I drank more water. He waited till I set the glass on the island and said, looking into my eyes, “You make it truer every time.”
“Mr. Seduction,” I said.
“That’s me.” He rose and kissed me on the forehead. It was a quick kiss: he was off to the fridge now, extracting bread, butter, eggs. I could feel him smiling away from me; surely, he had to be aware of what he’d roused in me. I was engulfed by a humid heat. What little it took to have me roaring in that direction, I thought. Online, we always read funny, horny meaning into our words, and I thought of them now, as I’d thought of them on the bus and all week since we decided we would meet today. But I would comport myself; I would not stir things before their time; I would be civil.
“Your house is really beautiful,” I said. “I could live here forever.” Through one window, I could see a large orange tree in the backyard, around which were chairs, a well-kept lawn. Birds chirped in it. “Like, it’s so much more serene in person. And the trees – it’s just so beautiful.”
“Thank you,” he said, turning to smile at me. He was whisking eggs with a fork. “I know how much you like trees. I was like, if you don’t like me at first, I can count on the trees.”
What wouldn’t I like, I thought, what could be true about what he’d just said? “I think I can get my parents to let you stay for some days,” he continued, “I think they’ll like you, and we can spend the time together when they’re at work. I don’t know what I was afraid of. They won’t suspect anything.”
“It’s a little far,” I said. “That Ikotun road is flooding again.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s why like a weekend is better. Or maybe even one week.” He dropped the bowl of eggs on the island. “I already don’t want you to leave. This house is so fucking boring.”
“Let’s see,” I said, trying to sound neutral. I would get too comfortable, I would take it farther than him – a little slip was all I needed – and it was his house, he would get impatient.
“You know, you could come again tomorrow, we can start with this holiday. I don’t even know why I didn’t think of that at first.”
“Yeah…”
“No, like, of course it can’t be impromptu, I’m jumping things, I’m sorry, I’m just… I’m just really happy to see you, like, you know that thing where you know someone in school and then you see them at the mall and you’re just happy, even if you guys aren’t friends? Except that we’re friends, we’re more than friends, I don’t know, like, the moment you came in, like, yeah – you know, I’m rambling. I’m happy you’re here is the point. I’m really happy.”
“I’m really happy too,” I said, walking to him and taking the bread out of the wrapper. We were so close. “How many slices do you want?”
“Eight.”
I took ten out. He must have been counting along with me, because he laughed. “I knew you would cave. Are you sure two would be enough?”
I laughed too, nudged his shoulder and said yes. We began talking about the different ways we liked bread toasted. I buttered the slices and he seasoned the eggs. As we moved about – carrying eggshells to the trash, dropping things in the sink, returning the milk to the fridge, setting up the toaster – we collided intentionally with each other: a rub of skin here, a gentle bump there, and all the touch, together with the grass and flowers which were easily visible through the windows, the smell of toasting bread, his conspiratorial smile, made me want to cry. It was so simple, this, to exist near someone you liked, knowing you liked each other. How had this happened to me, and what had I done to deserve it, and how wouldn’t it now slip through my fingers? He was handsome, yet it had played out nothing like in my fantasies, which centered about accidental situations, stolen glances, grand benevolences: the whole gamut of scripted romance. He asked me questions about myself, endlessly, he was so curious about me, which I’d never imagined at all. In no time, I ended my days before bed reciting his name, turning aspects of our conversations in my mind, a nearly naked picture he’d sent. I had felt that I found someone with whom there was no need to be cool. Any dissatisfactions I felt about myself came solely from within me.
The toaster made a small chime. He ran to it, taking out the browned pieces and setting a pair of bread slices, lathering them with the egg mixture, topping them with another pair, buttering up the surface and closing the toaster. “First fruits,” he said, taking a bite.
“This is how you’ll finish everything before it’s even done,” I said.
“That’s the trick.”
“Patient dog eats the fattest bone,” I said. I was trying to build a healthier relationship to food. I’d taken to watching men on the roads going about their day, trying to recast in my head what a normal male body looked like. It seemed to me that the root of my problems came from a belief, instilled early on, that there was only one way for a man’s body to be, and anything else was a moral failure. I’d told Ekene about these boys I grew up with, how they’d taunted me. He was typically so agile when we texted, that I felt the terrifying, exciting prospect of eyes loving into my dark head.
I felt it now, in his single unelaborated offering, the way he sunk into the pleasure of the toast. “You know it takes food like three hours to digest so nothing you eat now will affect you.” He winked. Oh, I loved him. I wanted to knock the piece away from his hands, kiss him wildly against the marble top. I thought up multiple responses but none came forth. I was staring at him. I thought that I could kiss him – of course I could. And he must have known how badly I wanted to, looking at me as he did, his smile mischievous. I thought about how his tongue would taste pleasantly of toast. The sun fell behind him, dappling the tiled walls and the kitchen counter. The ordinary beauty of daytime.
I wanted to wait. I wanted to be deprived knowing at any point my deprivation could be annulled. I wanted to want in the presence of certainty of satisfaction. I wanted this so much I trembled. When I looked at his crotch I saw he was hard. It was one scene: to discard the food and clear a rollicking path to our climax. I could see it so clearly it made it easier to resist.
We talked around our desire until the toasts stacked high on a plate, and I was convinced, carrying our food upstairs, watching him open the curtains in the small parlor, a great thing was happening to me. “Hey,” I said, as he returned to the couch, “I love you so much.” I said it slowly, so there was no doubt that I’d said it. I felt natural. There was a momentary, queer displacement when after I said the words I felt as if I were him, looking at me. He was the only person I’d ever told of the true extent of my father’s discipline, the true extent of my poverty, my stupid feuds, my falsehoods, inconsistencies – now he looked at me as if I’d said something devastating to him. He hugged me, the faint bristles of his facial hair caresses, whispering, “You brought light into my life”, tightening around me, confusing me – it was the other way round I was sure: all the times we talked, when he asked questions like ‘wyd’ or ‘how was today?’ and I launched into sermons on how horrible my existence was, my issues with school and home, each time needing to be reminded that he didn’t mind consoling me or inspiring optimism, that I could never make him tired, his own problems had seemed benign, even his deepest torments were easily resolved. I knew everyone had dark sides, but his never felt so weighty. I started to think that I was a bad lover, too selfish, someone more perceptive than me would come along and it would be alright, I deserved lovelessness, but then he started kissing me, gentle, chaste kisses, first my ears, his tongue ticklish inside my ears, then my throat, my head tilted back so that his lips felt dire. My fingers started an aimless trail along his back, starting and halting, tiny staccatos of yearning. We looked at each other for a second, two, then he kissed me again, only our lips for some time, so slow we could stop and return to the languor of our embrace, and then he ventured forward with his tongue and I thought okay, things will proceed wildly now, and at once I was aware of how much space we had, how much freedom to yell or cause objects to clatter. I roamed his body greedily, seeking to engulf him or be engulfed by him. He was the ocean; when he withdrew his lips, I made a forward motion, disturbing our equilibrium and causing us to knock teeth, and he laughed and I laughed and he kissed me again, pushing me back so I was fully laid on the couch, his erection a distended throb against my thigh, his hands firm around my lower back and migrating downwards, insufficient for the span of my ass but ambitious. His fingers, slim and long, somehow reminded me of a boy in secondary school for whom I’d wished I had proper breasts, because that was all that was said about him, how winningly promiscuous he was, how triumphant over the largest breasts.
Ekene trumped that boy and every boy I had ever desired, here, beautiful, and I grabbed his penis through his shorts, not stroking him but merely holding the heft of it, soaring in my understanding of what I had been granted. He emitted such grunts, athletic and robust as he pulled on my lower lip, squeezed repeatedly my ass, and I moved faster than I could think, dissolving, smashing lips, scratching skin, in his every touch an electrifying amnesia, something astounding and oppressive in how much desire it roused out of me. I had required in the porn I liked a benchmark of realism or tenderness and always there was that gap between what would finally enrapture after long assessing minutes and the sensations I provided myself, but now that gap was smithereens. I fucking loved him, the thought he touches me equaling his touching me and it ached, it ached, it was all so much, he was, steady and repetitive with his motions, intense in the little ground he covered – what full body consequence, what whimpers and shudders he pried out of me, shiverings of homecoming, what artful deliquescing of distance: here at my neck here at my ears here at my nipples, oh! my penis revolting against my jeans, grinding against him, seeking to be absorbed by him; oh Ekene, oh, our tongues, my lips, kissing – pushing him underneath and grinding furiously now through our clothes, consumed by one single desire, searching, thrusting, breaking the kiss, unable to breathe quietly – God, you’re so beautiful, and then the fire! High, and raw; panting, dying, collapsing against him, I would baa I felt, I was temporarily a sheep. For seconds I thought nothing, nothing at all, then, I’ve stained my underwear now, and I felt the dampness start to spread, but I would go home without wearing underwear, it was nothing, greater concessions would be made for this boy here, my boy.
“Someone is excited,” Ekene said, laughing, shifting backwards as I stood and examined my trouser, trying to still my breathing. “I think you want to remove it before it gets stained.” He sat up, his stomach rippled into smooth folds. I turned and I saw him rubbing his erection gently, like he was easing a slight itch.
“I’m sorry,” I said. He laughed again at my apology.
“Why? You passed the one-minute mark, and we still have all day.” He kept laughing. I remembered loving him in the early days for this quality of laughter. Everything I knew about him heightened, but in my coming to know his generosity he had come to know my anxieties too, and I worried that they could only engorge in time. Fine, I thought. If that’s how it went, fine.
“Do you want to wear something else?” he asked. “I have these shorts that will fit you.”
“Okay.”
He ran out of the room. He returned a few moments later, before I could make any clear thoughts, and handed me a striped, black short. “Thanks,” I said.
We talked while we ate. We laughed. Sunlight came through the windows, and I felt impossibly happy. When we finished, we lay on the tiles, half his body on mine. Neither of us spoke. The sun warmed us. We lay that way for a while, his strong body bathing me in shadow and comfort, and he asked if he could sing a song in my ear.
“What song?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t know it.”
“Try me.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be surprised?”
I grunted and shrugged. “As long as your voice sounds better in person.”
“What does that mean!” he said, shifting his palm slightly to hit me. We laughed, and he started to sing. He was right, I didn’t know the song; the lyrics were cheesy, his voice was croaky, broken – and then he stopped, saying I was laughing at him and now he was shy.
“I did a good job maintaining composure as long as I did!” I said.
“You’re supposed to reassure me!”
“You’re asking me to compromise my integrity?”
He didn’t say anything. I looked up; my eyes had been closed for his singing, his voice so seductive in the total dark; he was looking at me in a way I’d never been looked at.
“Jesus Christ I’ve wanted this day for so long now,” he said.
“Me too. It’s so weird how much anxiety I felt. When I was at the gate I even considered you might kito me.”
“What?” He laughed.
“I don’t know. You know. I hate this country so much. It’s so ridiculous how much power they have over us. When like, there’s so much else they can do with that energy. I hate it so much.”
“Me too,” he said. And although his tone now bore none of my sudden sadness and anger I knew he felt it too; although whenever we talked about how we couldn’t wait to leave Nigeria, I’d always felt a fear that this reality was possible for him more than it was for me, now that we were done with university he would surprise me with news of a Master’s program fully paid for by his father, and despite all of his goodwill we would have to break up, I’d watch on Instagram as he went to gay bars with his new friends and hot boyfriend, until unable to take it anymore I would block him.
Typical of me to vault into the future, I thought, excavate all potential for suffering. So what if we broke up and he left me for America or Canada or the UK? So what?
“Knock knock,” he said. “Kobo for your thoughts?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No no, it’s sexy watching you think, you get very focused,” he said. “You’re beautiful.” The moment I heard the words, they fit. I homed in the soft of the words. I am beautiful. He had made me so. He had taken the material of my days and inflated it with an ordinary joy, like egg whites, whipped into clouds.
“I’m happy,” I said. “You’ve made being happy so easy,” and I started to cry, saying “I’m happy, I’m happy, I really am, this is so stupid, I’m happy I know you, I’m happy you’re someone I could trust to reveal myself to, even if we, and –” And then I could no longer speak. I was crying, and he was holding me.
“Hey, babe, hey, stop,” he said, stroking my head.
I kept crying, trying and failing to stop.
“Are we going to be like this throughout today? There’s lots of items on the menu, as you say.”
I laughed and cleaned my eyes, leaning into his embrace. I could be here forever, I thought. I felt enough, that word people tried to convince others of all the time on the internet. I felt, despite my good sense arguments, the dangerous fatalism of the feeling, that I had made a series of good decisions, none of my suffering had been for nothing. And inasmuch as I thought it wiser to orient from the tragic, my true impulse was for happily ever after. And even if it was not to be had, to be alive was to want it; for so long I had stamped back all my impulses, shrunken myself for survival, the real gift of him was in returning me to someone who could risk in order to live more fully.
I felt myself getting heated again, and I began taking off his shorts. He smiled but maintained that gentle look from earlier, when we confessed love to each other. It was a beach’s sunset tranquil, I thought, he was as peaceful as a teacup. I wanted to give him endless happiness. When he saw me move towards the ice-cream he laughed loudly, falling against the couch. “You’re not serious,” he said, ringlets of his laughter shimmering in the air. But I was. I planned on placing tiny spoons of ice-cream at several indents in his body, but the ice-cream was warmed already and ran quickly to the ground so that I was forced to lick it off him faster, the whole thing starting to feel like a game rather than sexual exploration, which made us laugh, made him tease me gently. Then I sprinted downstairs and came up with the bottle of honey, and smiling, poured a trail up his semi-soft penis, into a small gathering of pubic hair. I set the bottle down on one of the stools, away from our frolicking, and returned to find his penis almost doubled in size, a magnificent magic, and I went down on it certainly, employing all that I knew, or believed I knew. I gazed up occasionally to find his hands behind his head, or over his eyes, that clichéd, beautiful look of disbelief. I knew I had to be done quickly – I had a terrible gag reflex – and I dwelled on the spice of the honey, the aroma of vanilla. Blindly, with my hands, I reached out for his hands and placed them on my head, and getting the gist he clamped me down, held my head with his five fingers firm around it. I kept going at his dick without pause, sensitive to his twitching, to anything that would indicate a spike in pleasure, although he remained constant, and my jaw started to hurt.
“My jaw hurts,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said, coming to meet me where I laid, catching my breath on the floor. He kissed me from my chest to my groin, pulling down the shorts. It made me heady to have worn something of his, to have it removed by him, knowing that one termination of intimacy was a graduation into a higher one. Before he went down on my dick he looked up at me and gave me a thumbs up, smiling, and I smiled too, which made my facial transition into pleasure quite abrupt.
“Don’t get too excited,” he said, pulling away. “I know my head game’s irresistible.”
I laughed, though I worried he’d been displeased that I just came. Then he said, “Want me to eat you out?”
“I’ve never done that before.”
“Well, you don’t have to do anything, really. Very low requirements on your part.” He was grinning. His voice was like a party. I felt again the pure stupefaction of his presence.
I sat up. “Okay… how do I stay? All fours?”
“Anyhow, that’s comfortable for you. You could sit on my face.”
It was one of those phrases we traded to each other online, one of his favorites – I can eat ass for hours, he’d said – he was the pro and I the novice. I got on all fours. He kneaded my ass gently, slowly, fingering my asshole in tune with my moans, and when he spat in my ass I thought I’d feel his tongue, but he merely hovered, and I was glad this was a reservation, despite his enthusiasm, I was looking forward to when he would surmount it. But it was not a reservation, it was supplication, perhaps, I felt his nose – its deep inhalation – before I did his tongue. It tickled, and then became entire pleasure.
“You taste so good,” he said, turning me around to kiss him. I was briefly hesitant, which was silly because whatever I tasted would be my own ass. It was a curious faint taste. He turned me around and went deeper and I began stroking myself, stopping when I realized I was getting too caught up again, I would cum before he even did anything. But he was indeed great at it, he kept asking what felt good and intensifying his efforts, and I began jerking off, trying to expunge what manifested to me like a vacuum in the pit of my belly, a strange satiation than what drove me when I masturbated so that I found myself saying “I’m going to come” and he said gruffly, Hold on, and I flung my hands away and sucked in my breath hard, as if holding off a door against armies, an act that was harder for the command behind it, my own fantasies of restraint, of being subject to his authority in every way. I felt his right hand working towards his own ejaculation, and when he began cumming, letting out a deep rumble and clutching me tightly, I resumed my efforts, expelling, for all my furor, tiny little pellets of cum.
“God,” I said.
“That’s called stellar tongue game.”
“You’ll never stop feeling yourself.”
He kissed me, two quick kisses, and got up, and I turned to look at his ass, which I thought would be nice to fuck. Something about that word, game, reminded me of an ideal of masculinity I could never measure up to, and which ordinarily would bring about a surge of insecurity, but all I found myself really thinking of was the next time my mouth would be thick with his penis, the swift, yielding motions required for lovemaking. There was no gathering of hair I’d rather clutch, no other hands I’d permit around my throat; in several places my skin stung from bite marks and scratch marks. But if I did feel any dismalness, it was not from what had occurred, but for what might prevent its reoccurrence.
I followed him drowsily to the bathroom, where we had a shower together and I had to lean against him to stop myself from falling. “My baby,” he said to me, both as romantic endearment and as guardian, both prospects filling me with deep happiness. I thought about it repeatedly: my baby, my baby. I’d have to leave in a few hours to beat traffic and get home before dark, but I was too tired to think of this. I kept myself awake as he put me in his shorts and went downstairs to put a load in the washing machine. Then he came to me and kissed my eyes, smiling, snuggling behind me and asking if I was asleep already. I shook my head. He started talking about what had just happened, and other humorous things that had happened. Soon, he noticed my replies dulled and said he’d let me sleep. I said I wasn’t sleeping, and he should go on. As he talked, I recalled a memory from when I was young, going under the duvet as thunder roared outside and cold gusts of wind cambered my curtains; a memory of a happiness that seemed so full in your body you shook to expel some of it. “You know you can stay the night. We’ll watch a movie, eat junk food, relax, gist, maybe even fuck again,” Ekene was saying, but I was barely awake and could only hum.
About the Author:
David Emeka is a graduate of the Washington University in St. Louis MFA program. His my writing has appeared in The Republic, Lolwe, Epiphany, and Adroit Journal. His work has been supported by Tin House and Outpost. He is currently working on a novel and story collection.
Photo by DAVE NETTO on Unsplash