A few days have passed now. I got some sleep and ate a few proper meals. My thoughts have slowed down to the point where I can try to understand them. I keep going over that night in my head. What happened and why the feelings were so strong. Why I asked for your sister and why you gave her to me.
I had seen her with you. Only once, for a moment. She had gotten into me that quickly. Into my thoughts when I slept.
I hoped we would all be happy in bed together. I didn’t know if you really loved me. Girls here seem to throw those words around because they know they mean something and have an effect on foreign men.
We were in bed for a long time before I touched her. Our legs bumped into each other when she lay back down. Then later our arms came to rest against each other. There was an energy there that wasn’t normal. It doesn’t feel like that very often. I love you, but it is more than love with her. She can create things inside of me.
She reminded me of myself. The aloofness and the distance she keeps herself away from people she doesn’t know and trust, which all melted away in the late hours of the night when whispering together in bed. Her simple and short speech, without affect or the trace of any word she did not truly feel. The way our eyes would meet and we’d smile like old friends with a long established humor and understanding.
I’m sorry I hurt you. You turned over onto your side to get away from what was going to happen. Then kept moving further away to the bathroom and then out the door. I told you that your sister loves you and I love you too, but it wasn’t enough. Tears in your eyes as you knelt down and hugged me before you left. You told me to take care of your sister. Then you left and we didn’t chase after you anymore. But I wasn’t happy and I didn’t like it.
She spent the next hours in my arms. Right up until the minute I had to leave. We didn’t eat and only slept a little. I was inside of her a few times. Her small body, beautiful and breakable, with the size of a girl and the breasts of a woman. The energy generated by our skin pressed together was as strong as I’ve ever felt. It was like all the sensations you might feel in a year combined together, pulsating up towards me from anywhere we touched. The warmth and goodness of it could have lifted me out of all the worst nights of my life.
I don’t understand it and don’t know whether it was real or if it will last. There will be other women between her and when I see her again, though they will likely seem comical in comparison.
It’s possible I saw my future in her. The form of the woman I will end up with in the next phase of my life. Maybe I am not ready for her yet, but need to grow in her direction, like a plant growing towards a spot of sunlight on the shadowy floor of the jungle. Maybe the feeling will dissipate or be shown to be false. She may never come to love all of me. The bad days and the days without any feeling at all.
I’m sorry I made you feel bad. You are a good lady and I care about you. I hope I meet you again.
Long walks around the island to the other beaches. Waking up early in the morning to see the sun breaking through the clouds onto the fishing boats out on the water. Fruit smoothies and the young girl who hangs around the restaurant where her mother works. Bright blue sky around the wooden pier where the boat docks twice a day. Walking up the steps to the cliffs on the western side to see the red sun melt into the sky at the end of the day.
She throwing herself onto me every moment we’re alone. Another tourist looking through the wooden shutters left open to see her nude kneeling body curled into mine as I have her from behind. I waking in the night to find she has taken me into her mouth.
Although our time together didn’t last beyond those days, the week has remained burnt into my memory. The images and the abstractions. Our bodies together in that room. It comes back quickly.
-February 2010
Mouth slightly open, I breathe in deeply. The air feels good coming in. My eyelids dip down and then open again. Light comes in at angles, urging the tired people on the train into motion. Girl blinks with melody. I look at her. Inspect her. I keep looking for quite a while. It makes her nervous. Eventually I relent and look elsewhere. There are other people who are somewhat interesting to look at. When I finish and look back at the original girl, she almost seems sad that I’d looked elsewhere. Sorry that my gaze had made her tense before. So I looked at her a while longer.
Her dress ripples as she pulls it up over her curves, snags which only hold it back for a moment or two. She bends and holds, and holds. Vulnerable, available. She perks up as she notices I’m watching. She likes being watched; it makes her feel more alive. You need to constantly find new ways of living or else you die. They’re like me, you know. Some women sell their bodies and some men sell their souls. I have no moral superiority. She comes to me, sits on my lap, smiles. Bare skin thighs pressed against me. Bite my lips bite my shoulder.
{I’ll be right by your side if you ever need someone whose thighs are open and ready to make you a stronger happier and more confident man. I’ll do it for you I’ll make you/you deserve it. Have my breasts have my thighs have my body have all of me. I’ll live through you I’ll live for you tell me what to do I’ll do anything you need just keep me here love me I want you to have me. I’ll get horny for you whenever you want you can bend me over the couch and do whatever you want to me grab me by the hair and bob me up and down. I feel more wanted the harder you fuck me the more you use me. Finish all over me mark your territory I won’t even wash it off so I’ll remember I’m yours.}
-April 2004
She said she wasn’t well. In the first message she had sent me in a year.
She hadn’t been answering me. She was angry. I had finished things with her. I hadn’t liked her talking to another boyfriend on the phone while she was in bed with me. After she had told me she loved me. She said he was a “difficult customer”. I said I didn’t want to see her again.
Now she wasn’t well and wanted to meet. We did like before. Ate something and saw a movie. Awkward conversation. Neither of us saying much. My sense of humor handcuffed by her poor English.
She told me her boyfriend had kicked her out. She didn’t really tell me why, but knowing her, there could have been many reasons. She didn’t have any money and was staying at her friend’s. I asked her if I could help her in any way. She wanted to stay with me, but she wasn’t saying it. She knew she couldn’t. So she said money. She told me she had a job interview on Friday, for a real job, and would pay me back. I didn’t say anything.
It was her feelings for me that she had been spending with her boyfriend. I had created love in her, and she had given it to someone else. That had angered me, but by now I had forgiven her.
I took her hand and held onto it. It didn’t feel good. When I let it go she pulled it away quickly. We felt tense together. The adrenaline was starting to dump.
We were the first ones to enter the theater. I took her hand again and pulled her towards me. She lay her head on my shoulder and started to cry. She apologized but I told her it was OK. She stayed there for a few minutes. I fell in and out of sleep.
After the movie we walked towards the road to look for a taxi. She asked me again if I could help her with money. I asked her if we could sleep together.
I held her as tightly as I could on the edge of the bed. I hadn’t felt her against me in a year and a half. I met her during my first month here. When I still had no idea what I was doing. When I was alone, an orphan with a suitcase. She an orphan dancing naked on a stage.
She felt as good as she had before. She was loud, yelling. I was inside of her.
I gave her some money afterwards. I didn’t feel resentful about it. I had accepted her. She would love me, physically and emotionally, but she wanted to be paid for it. To be taken care of.
-October 2011
The people are all gathered together, same as back home, in restaurants and bars, enjoying each other’s presence, standing nude in the windows. I am outside on a bench, writing on a page. Her fingers brushed against mine as she returned my change. Now she is behind me, sweeping the leaves, blowing her nose, sweeping the leaves. There is only one woman and she has many faces. Where is she? My body wants to know. How it moves, how it reacts, what it is, what it wants.
I look up at the fortress. She may be in there, sleeping in the harem chambers, strolling in the garden, sitting with the cats at the edge of the fountains. I will scale the walls and find her. I will cut through the forest and enter her. I will steal her from the king and bring her away. She will know that I do not yet have a kingdom and she will not turn away. She will cause me to build one in her honor. A blinding white temple. The place where I will know her body each night. Where others will look up on a lonely autumn night and hope to aspire to.
She sweeps leaves behind me. She stacks chairs. She goes inside. She goes inside she stomps her feet she twirls around. She feels such passion. She performs. I watch. I leave.
The sun comes up across the train tracks, reflecting into my eyes, warming the benches I sit on and making things more hopeful, which I need in the morning. The train is not here yet, so I must wait. When it arrives I will board, choose a seat, and glance around to see if there are any attractive females nearby. I will play my songs, looking out the window thoughtfully, thinking of her ass, and many others I have known. How they have at times bounced around with such glee, such rhythm, such life in them. The sun hits my right leg and it is warm. My chest is cold. I move my suitcase and the sun hits both legs. A woman sits on my left, but with an attractiveness I cannot vouch for. Fur lines her jacket; she is part human part animal. Others come to wait for the train also, speaking different languages. I can pick out words here and there. Such pretty girls, much prettier than at home, more style and culture, more to them to stimulate me, sleek and with such asses. A train from somewhere, look at all the people arriving, they are here, they have made it, such pretty girls, lovely little legs, alive and alert, desiring to know more, dark hair dark eyes, don’t block the sun please it is warming my legs, thank you, step to the side just a bit.
-December 2006
I’ve seen her plenty of times but we’ve never talked. The last time I saw her she looked at me differently. She looked into me. I remember it and so does she. She’s looking at me again now. We’re going to have each other tonight. I can tell.
She circles and approaches. She asks to sit down and then she does.
Hello. How are you? Name. Age. From. Why you not smile. (You not say something funny.) Smile. I see you before but I think you very serious. Where you stay. You want have fun together. (Ok.)
Smile. Want to see. Ahh ahh chuckatee. You see man look at me? Man look at me a lot. Have three man before, customer, want marry me go to his country but I not want. Difficult for marry and I not want leave my country. What you do here. You working?
She’s pretty. Prettier than I thought. Her entire self is built for sex.
We have sex now. (I know.) Do you like me. (Yeah.) Talk same you like me.
When I finish she spits me back onto my chest and pushes it around with her finger.
She is more than others, and she knows it. She feels things at a depth I no longer do as often as I did when I was younger and thought there was more at stake in life. She’s more fully alive in ways I am sometimes not now. Being around her makes me feel those things again. And also makes me fear for her. She does not yet know that it can flip around and begin to choke you. She’s still in awe of her energy. She’s not yet careful with it.
I don’t know what just happened but something did. Her presence flowing out the door behind her. She walks past the door frame and I can’t see her anymore. I close the door and am alone again. My consciousness has been shaped by her. She is still there, positioning her limbs in such a way that I can get deeper inside of her, positioning her soul in such a way that I cannot. She only allowed me to marvel at her. I did, quietly.
—January 2011
I met her outside of my hotel. We said hello and began walking to another hotel nearby more designed for our needs. In the lobby there was a machine on the wall with pictures of the different rooms. I pushed one of the buttons and paid the woman at the desk. We entered the room and exchanged our shoes for slippers. We took our clothes off and went into the shower. She rubbed soap on my body and then rinsed it off. I did the same to her. I put the soap in my hands and rubbed it first on her chest and breasts, and then onto her shoulders, arms and legs. She stood quietly as I did so.
We walked back to the bed. She talked nicely and shyly to me. We caressed each other’s bodies for several minutes and then she put all of me into her mouth. I touched her wet with my fingers. She was small when I entered her and I went only a little at a time. It felt enclosed and I came quickly as a result, like a teenager.
We talked a good amount during the time in bed afterwards. She said she was saving money to study abroad. She’d had a foreign boyfriend for several years, but had ended it the previous. She didn’t like the big city; it’s too noisy, too chaotic, too many people, nowhere to find peace.
I entered her again, with her on top to start with, but she seemed unsure of what to do. I laid her on her back - still not right. I laid her on her stomach and held her hands, my thumb in her palm, her fingers wrapped around it. At varying speeds, I gripped her ass, her thighs. Those thighs I had been staring at for 10 days. It is where their sexuality lies. I squeezed her tighter, her still on her stomach, my right hand grabbing her breasts, stronger now, stronger still, tighter and closer, I came. She cleaned me up, kissed my shoulder and my chest, and we went to shower once more. She was cold and wanted some heat in the room, so ran back towards the bed, hopped up on it like a child, excitedly, less reserved now, turned the machine on, then quickly back to me and into the shower. She washed me once more and I washed her, soap over her breasts, shoulders, arms and legs. We dried off and walked out of the hotel, said goodbye and walked away in different directions.
—March 2008
We sat outside in the summer at night on a bench carved into the stone of the building. That was always when I liked the city best. Not in the middle of the winter when the cold wind blew so hard between the buildings that it went right through you, and people only scurried about long enough to get where they were going. She talked to me like she used to when we were dating a few years ago before I left. That mix of strangeness and melancholia she liked to share with me. She asked me a lot of questions I didn’t know how to answer.
She had never slept with me before. She only allowed me the warmth of her body on a few occasions, and even then not as much as I would have liked. She was younger and hadn’t been with many men. And I never committed to her. I told her that if there was a naked woman in front of me I would sleep with her. It was honest. She had decided she didn’t want to see me anymore a few months before I left. That it didn’t make sense for her to stay involved. I said OK, and so we stopped seeing each other just as abruptly as we had begun. She wanted me to continue talking to her while I was gone. To pine away for her from the other side of the world. I never answered her messages.
I told her I would be around for a couple days and that I could see her. She said no initially. I talked to her and convinced her. She came in and we walked around awkwardly before we ended up on the stone bench. I tried to kiss her every so often but she wouldn’t. She had a boyfriend now. One she didn’t have strong feelings for, but a boyfriend nonetheless. I had checked him out and could understand why she didn’t feel strongly about him. She wouldn’t be able to talk to him like she talked to me.
Each time I tried to kiss her she allowed it to get closer and closer. She hugged me. We felt comfortable together. We always had. We sat there for an hour or two. It was getting late. Too late for her to make the last bus. She didn’t seem too concerned. I told her she could stay and she did. I took a walk around the block while she called her boyfriend. When she was finished we walked to my room.
We got into bed together and it didn’t feel right. She felt guilty. She was cold. The walls of my room were painted with imaginary scenes from some other world. There was just enough light coming into the window to make them out. Rocky pointy mountains with a solitary traveler walking up the road that winds around and around to the top. Grassy chunks of land floating in the sky above the water, connected by wooden bridges and ladders. A dirt path leading to a small red house amongst the streams and the trees. I looked at them while we lay there. I was tired and starting to dream while I was still awake. I tried to touch her but she wouldn’t get close to me and pushed me away. I turned over and fell asleep.
A few hours later she woke me up moving around. She gave herself to me. She was not ugly but not beautiful either. Somewhere in between, though capable of both at certain moments. But her body I had always loved. Her thin legs. The shape of her breasts. Her brown skin. How wet she was. I was too excited so I didn’t enter her. We fell back asleep. A feverish sleep. The type where you don’t know whether you’ve been sleeping or not, and filled with vivid dreams. She was in one of them.
We woke up when the daylight streamed through the window onto our faces. We lay there not knowing what had happened. I pulled her close to me and then entered her for the first time. Her thin legs wrapping around me and her eyes closed.
When we finished she had to go. I hugged her and kissed her and told her to take care of herself. I was going away again and probably wouldn’t see her for a long time.
—July 2011
When they sat me down next to her she took my hand and gently curled her body into mine. I put my mouth close to the hair covering her ear and said hello, her body stirring slightly in response. She stayed next to me, keeping my hands with her and our bodies comfortably together. She went to dance on stage with the other girls, and her seat was soon taken by an intoxicated Brit who offered me the same advice repeatedly for 10 minutes, asking my name and forgetting and asking again. The girl was sliding her body up and down in synch with her friend dancing next to her. She was small and dark like the poor peasants who work in the fields all day in the glaring sun. When she finished her dancing she sat again beside me. The man just kept talking to me until I grew annoyed and stopped responding or acknowledging him. I paid the mama and took the girl across the street to where I was staying.
She sat down in the chair and looked up at me waiting for me to do something. The women are different than they are back home. If you want them you must take them, and if you take them they will yield to you. I took her to my bed, caressed, kissed and undressed her. She was going cold, perhaps still shy about lying naked on a bed before a man, so I sat her on top of me and let her lead. She loosened and kissed me, my mouth twice the size of hers, her child’s body filling with life, squirming on top of me, and her eyes meeting mine and allowing me to see into her. Her mouth opened slightly as I entered her, our legs so entangled I thought we would not be able to separate later. I held her close against me.
Afterwards she did not rush out the door and leave, but stayed in my bed quietly. I didn’t have anything to say and she wouldn’t have understood me anyways, so I took her again, stronger this time. Contorting our limbs into strange positions, I took her and took her until our bodies steamed and she ran her hand along my brow to wipe the sweat away, over my chest to feel the wet, neither of us concerned at that moment with hygiene or decorum, I wanting her to love me. After we could take no more of the heat and were forced to stop, she again made no signs of moving to leave, so I gestured that we should sleep and turned out the light. She took my hand, as she had done when I first sat beside her, and I was asleep immediately. I woke later on, covered in sweat again, my pillow soaking wet and her asleep beside me. I wiped myself off, turned over the pillow and fell back into sleep.
Two nights later she came to see me again. A little thing lying on my bed on her side as I probed her with questions to help me try to understand her. When I was inside of her again she was different. Controlling, dominating, almost violent. Perhaps some pride of hers had been wounded by how fully I had taken her the last time. She wanted to take me. It didn’t feel right. I took her off me.
For the next day and a half she stayed there in my bed. She did not eat or drink and she spoke less and less as time passed. We drifted in and out of sleep, our bodies alternately together and apart. I did not know why she stayed so long with me.
Why is it you. Who are you. Why do I feel more with you. H o w a r e y o u w h a t d o y o u d o? <Aon> Hello where are you. Oom. What is oom. Where are you. I want to see you. Oom. I keep trying the others but they don’t feel like you do. They don’t make me write. When they look at me I don’t feel that strangeness I feel from you. I look at them all waiting for someone to inspire me but I feel nothing and my face falls and my eyes glaze over and I want to see you. Do you want to see me. Do you want to come. Where are you? Oom. Oh, home. I see you tomorrow. I can’t see you tomorrow I am going up north on the train. I will call you in one week. What time do you leave. In the night. I will call you tomorrow. OK.
I remember when I entered you the first time and your little mouth opened slightly and then later it pressed into mine and you kissed me and I held your body against me and you were sitting in my lap I ran my hands all over you and I was glad I still am alive so that I could experience you. I fall in love each day when I look at all the pretty girls I see. It lasts a moment or an hour or two but then it fades out and ceases to exist. I think I will forget you the same way but then it comes back in a wave and starts to gnaw at me and even just to talk to you in your broken english that I can’t understand because the music is too loud makes me feel better.
-January 2010
They’re all laughing and dancing and I’m having a good time with them. They’re kissing me and touching me and telling me to touch their bodies. Hours pass like seconds until the night is nearly gone.
She’s changed into a robe and tells me she’s ready. We walk down the hallway. It’s narrow and dimly lit and there are doors on both sides. She turns back and smiles at me. Her skin is brown and her legs are thin and she looks beautiful. She keeps walking towards the back, turning several times, and finally entering a room. The walls are bamboo and the room looks Japanese but we’re far from Japan. There’s only a bed and a night table with a dim light. She closes the door and we’re alone.
She takes off the robe and I take off mine. Her stomach is sticking out as she bends down. She senses me looking at it and straightens herself out. But she needn’t. Her body is beautiful. Those distinct round breasts that only they have. Quiet warmth emanates from her. I couldn’t imagine her ever being angry at anything. Only those soft eyes and that subtle smile. She’s naked now except for the metal cross on her chest. She keeps it on as I enter her.
I’m lying next to her. Time is moving slowly. I’m completely relaxed. No manic rushing from one thought to the next. No nagging doubts or fears. I’m happy and not worried about when it will end. Slight grin, soft body. She talks shyly and gently to me. I’ve never had someone like her before.
I ride the subway with her smell still lingering along with me, a friend an acquaintance, though I have forgotten now which her it was. They’re all beginning to blur together, their arms always draped all over me, so eager and willing, and the sweat never ceasing to flow out of my pores and mix with them, my fluid I have brought from far away now theirs, and theirs now mine.
They would not understand the first thing about me. I would make no sense to them. They feel only heat, warmth, every day every damn day, warmth and sex, bodies and touching, sweat, water, saliva and sperm, the need for constant physicality. Our summer is their whole reality. They know little of how cold and difficult it can get, the hibernation and the isolation. They understand only degrees of heat, and the rain that comes to provide occasional relief.
I also know as little about what it means to be them as they know of me, and I want to know more, to feel even more of them against me, to get to the source of what they are, what it’s like to know such heat, to constantly crave and feel flesh against you, endless flesh, so much that it blurs in your eyes as the sweat drips in, rules and precise configurations of romance no longer seeming to matter, morality long ago losing relevance, giving way to the simple belief that I should spend a few moments in as many of her arms as possible, her exact attributes and degree of perfection not important, each one having something to offer, and offering it, as it is all she has to work with. I accept, for it warms me, makes up for the days I had spent struggling, ripping myself to pieces, making changes through repetition, slowly growing new muscles, scanning internal and external sources for tricks, shortcuts, explanations as to why it affects me so, what about it, why I notice it, how it moves me, what happened to me, how did I get here. Each one along the way left her mark on me, left me with something, taught me a new idea, interested me in some way. They all threw themselves on me as she had, both loving and fearing me, and undoubtedly fascinated by the fact that I was different, very different from all they had grown up around. Those who had come to be the same way as I am sought escape just as I do, to move, to emigrate, to leave it all behind and become anonymous permanently. They made their plea, gave all they had, showed just how much they were capable of, and asked me to please love them and take them away.
-March 2006
