“I guess one and a half hours.” He sighed and leant back, resting his palms on the rug.
“It is nine-thirty,” I said looking at the wall clock. “I think I need to go.”
I stood and glanced at the empty glass of wine still set near my bare feet, and a big doubt came to my mind about the possibility that the wine was drugged. Otherwise I wouldn’t have fallen asleep in such a strange home in the company of such a weird character.
“I would be pleased to introduce you to a friend of mine,” he added, and I felt so deadly bored of him and his oracle-like attitude. “This sister of mine wishes to see you. I have been talking to her a lot about your gentle character.”
Now my anger relaxed, and a beam of golden light emerged inside me. A girl, he mentioned, and I would be pleased to meet one. I had to conceal my sexual activities, even talking about them, in his presence. It had been almost two weeks since I had last encountered sex and pleased the beast inside me. I thought it was one more of his hidden tricks to play upon me, but I told myself that I wouldn’t fall into being alarmed now by his weirdness.
I accepted his proposal, and we went out. He walked in the smelly darkness of the neighbourhood night like a girl, shaking his bottom while walking, which filled me with disgust. His dark pink dress flashed in the darkness and showed him even more, especially in his tight shiny black leather pants. The cracks in the asphalt of the road were filled with water, sewage I guess, and different coloured dogs strolled around peacefully, barking occasionally. A few unattended old men were walking to their destinations unnoticed and without causing the slightest distraction to anyone. One blind man held a stick as old as he was, and a child, covered with sand and dust, gripped the middle of the stick to guide the old man, while his eyes followed the people dining and joking around him and the children running after one another, laughing.
The humid atmosphere brought beads of sweat to my skin. I wiped with a single finger a drop of sweat from my eyebrow and splashed it on the ground. As I looked straight ahead now, there was a bunch of young people sitting on the pavement, sipping liquor and looking straight at us and laughing with some words that I couldn’t understand. They meant nothing to me and my only option would have been to ignore if they hadn’t said something else.
“Gay John got a handsome gay,” one of those drinking cockroaches said.
I stopped, and anger boiled inside of me. I turned to that bunch of garbage of night.
“You got a problem, motherfucker?” I maintained a calm voice as I spoke.
They laughed, and I could see the whole group joking with the one who initially made that comment about me and encouraging him to take some action against me. The half-wet sweating guy stood and took a small knife from the man next to him, who had been cutting and swallowing a green apple a piece at a time. The guy approached me from the front, and so did John James from my back. I didn’t feel safe with the gay anyway, and my initial thought was that it was all a part of a plan between John James and that young drunk bunch. I didn’t care much about anything; there was no fear inside me, and I was an unfeeling creature. The guy pointed that small brown-handled knife in my face. I looked in his eyes for a while. There was a river of fear. With one hand I slapped his knife away, and with my other hand I gave him a half-strength punch on his cheek. I don’t know whether it was the force of the punch or just acting that made him lie on the ground, but I do suspect that there was an element of the latter. His dirty group vomited out dirty unpleasing laughter. I looked at the guy on the ground and waited for any further action from him, but he stayed quiet. I believe his fear didn’t allow him any more injection of ridiculous bravery.
“Let’s go, let’s… go, Gerald.” John James pulled me by my hand, and I followed him.
I cooled down, but his hand was still resting on my arm, and I had to shake it off.
He knocked on a door with a Christian cross on it. It took some time for somebody to approach and look through the door peephole. Finally, the door opened in front of me and a young girl the colour of light chocolate was standing there with big eyes and thick lips.
“Hi, sister,” John James said, and the girl asked us in, but before closing the door, she popped her head out and checked around. We sat on scratched out tiny round foam chairs and the girl sat on a small sofa bed.
There was a moment of quiet, and my eyes tested on the girl and her small room. Then I could see the girl looking at John James and nodding. I turned to the gay, and there was a smile on his face. The girl stood and went out to the tiny kitchen. I could see she was about to prepare some drink for me. Having learned a lesson from my earlier experience that night, I raised my voice and told her in rather a fierce tone that I was not in need of anything.
“Juice?” she said, and her eyes met John’s again.
I shook my head, and she sat back on her sofa bed. Again the dreadful silence came back for a couple of minutes, and my whole thoughts was frankly hoping that John James would leave the room and leave me alone with that simple mysterious girl. The girl kept looking at John James from time to time in some sort of secret request.
“The sister wants to bed you,” J. J. said.
I stared at him amazed. How bravely and easily he let that sentence out, as if asking for a simple favour or sharing a genuine thought. I was about to confirm the truth of his comment in her eyes, when I turned my face and a new symbol struck me—a medium-sized cross on the wall, below which were engraved the lines:
So do not fear, for I am with you.
Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
Initially a huge doubt entered my mind about the girl being in some sort of church service, but reassurance came when I noticed a nun’s black-and-white dress that she had failed to conceal among other long dresses hanging across the horizontal wall-hanger. A nun to taste! What surprises life brings upon us from sources where we expect nothing.
I looked at the girl, and her eyes suddenly shifted from me to John James. I could see the truth in his comment; she didn’t deny anything, and she didn’t seem to do want to do so with even a single expression. Her silence meant much to me; it gave me a warrant to arrest a servant of the church between my legs, permission to satisfy what I hadn’t been able to satisfy for the last two deprived weeks. What purity the church workers seek when they are still self-slaved for their lust!
“Will you leave us alone?” I asked John.
“Who? Me?” John looked at the girl and then at me. He produced a laugh, the sort that is filled with surprise at hearing something funny. “No, I am staying here. I am just a guest you shouldn’t worry about.”
I looked at the girl, and she gave a slight wink with both her eyes, a sign of approval.
Who would care about having a pet in a room while having sex? I believed him to be harmless unless left unattended. Ignoring the identity of the girl and the fact that there was a third eye in the room, I walked to the girl and stroked her face with the back of my hand. She took a deep breath, and I sensed the nerves on her face on alert. It was the result of the poverty of the church in providing what the hidden self needs and slyly seeks. My inner self longed for the warm touch of bare breasts against my chest. Placing my hands atop her shoulders, I gently pushed her onto her sofa-bed and peeled off, piece by piece, the unnecessary burden that stood between me and the period of limited joy. Her clawless fingers scratched my back with hot pleasure that she might have been deprived of for a long time.
I guess she was hungrier than me and in shameless need of sex. Why else would a simple nice-looking girl like her abandon whatever self-respect she possessed and step upon her religious path with the disgrace of a single night. And what a disgrace it was to allow another human to watch her transgress her fake loyalty to God. Any normal girl wouldn’t go as far as that girl, a servant of God. You sometimes get curious to learn more details about such widely spre
ad creatures on earth, to know the reasons behind their wild deeds. But at that moment, I didn’t. All I cared about was how to consume her to the fullest of my satisfaction and the extreme of her arousal.
I cleaned up my mess after me and wiped my genitals with the girl’s panties. I turned now to see a strange smile on John’s face. His eyes scanned certain parts of my body, which was covered with good-smelling perspiration that came from the girl lying asleep after being properly serviced and fed. I put on my clothes and walked out of the house.
“You see, all sinners are saints,” J. J. said as he closed the door behind him and started walking with me.
I didn’t reply. I stopped the first tricycle and went back to my hotel. That same night, I started planning to escape the country and that strange gay. I started feeling uncomfortable in his company. The next destination that struck me was Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. It came as an advertisement on the BBC news channel.
The next day John James called me and asked me to pick up the canvas from him to work on. Inside me I sighed, but I had given him my word and felt bound to fulfil it. I did pick up the canvas from his workplace and started working on it gain.
After a week or two of non-stop working on the portrait, there came gentle knocks on the door of my room. I didn’t remember having ordered anything for dinner that evening. I opened the door, and John James came in uninvited with a rolled Aida canvas in one hand. That evening he had a shawl wrapped around his neck, and I wished to suffocate him with it.
“Your room looks nice,” he commented, and his voice seemed softer than ever.
“How do you know where I live?” I questioned.
“People leave traces behind them. Collecting them may not be as hard as it seems.”
Again he seemed mysterious, or he just acted so, but I hated that part of him more than any other. He stared at me then, and for the first time when our eyes met for a couple of seconds, he didn’t lower his gaze. There was strange desire in them that I tried to turn off by turning my face away.
“So, why this sudden visit?” I asked.
“I got this for you,” he replied, stretching his hand along his shoulder.
“What’s this?” I said, and I took the rolled canvas from his hand.
I took a step or two away and rolled out the canvas. A wonderfully designed picture of my face was woven on the surface of that milky-coloured Aida canvas. It was so pleasing to look at the portrait, and it was a real piece of art. It was my face stitched on the canvas, so nicely and delicately. At the bottom corner of the picture J. J. had stitched his signature. Honestly speaking, I was so happy about it and I was ready to pay for it in cash even double what its real value might be.
I was about to turn to him and ask him its price, but then two hands were thrown lightly around my chest and a head was pressed against my back. I looked over my shoulder to see that gay pushing against me, and I could sense the surface of his penis pressed against the bottom of my ass.
“I love you, Ger,” he said.
Ger! Since when had I had a nickname? He made up things based on his desires, I guess. A wet drop seeped through a spot at the back of my T-shirt to touch my skin; I could sense he was emotionally crying.
“I have always desired you.” Now his nose was running.
I forced the bracelet-like hands around my chest to break apart, and I pushed that witch off my back. I fired a strong look at him. He was wiping his nose now with his black shawl. His tears made lines along his cheeks in a darker colour than the rest of his white-powdered face.
“Haven’t you loved somebody in your life?” He unwrapped the shawl now and dropped it on the floor and took off his black long-sleeved top and dropped it too on the floor. His skinny body looked so plain and unmuscled that I thought he looked like a real catwalk model. “Will you fuck me the way you fucked my sister the other night? Embrace me like a tender flower and sway me in your arms.”
As he started walking towards me, I slashed the canvas across his face, but though it hurt him, it didn’t stop him. He continued to walk, and I gave him a hard angry slap on his face across his nose, which started bleeding immediately.
“Get out of my room, you freak,” I shouted.
He stopped in shock and pain. I held him by his hair and neck and dragged him out and shut the door behind him. I picked up the canvas from the floor, opened the window, and threw it out. Immediately I packed up my bag and went online and booked my ticket for the next day morning. The ten month stay in the Philippines was over.
23
In the Rmeil district of Beirut I sat with a small basket of coloured balloons and a balloon pump. I was twisting the balloons into different shapes. This was a new hobby that I worked on after learning from Internet resources for the last couple of days. I practiced mainly on the streets for the enjoyment of children, who would stop and look with joy at me twist the balloons, and they would buy some of the shapes from me.
The interesting part of practicing that hobby wasn’t the presence of the young children, but the presence of white and creamy-skinned females with their short tight dresses. Even the old ladies had their faces coloured and their ears and hands embroidered with jewellery.
I had a piece of luck one Sunday on the street as I sat crafting my hobby when at mid-day a character started pacing quickly across my area of work, forcing me to shake my eyes along with the violent shakes of her mid-sized breasts. It was so amazing to look at those two dumplings on the surface of her chest jiggle in such a strange manner, given their normal size. My eyes were struck with the flash of the movements of this young blonde, a guest in the kingdom of my lust. I recall that at the moment I saw the girl I was working on a red teddy-bear balloon for a young boy who was standing by me. I just completely lost track of him and his presence. Who would be able to focus back on his work after noticing the vigorous tide of that human female?
My eyes narrowed, searching for the straps of her bra through the white shirt she had on, and I was more amazed when I found it. It still annoyed my head to think about those young breasts rebelling through the combined layer of shirt and bra. But that wasn’t the only special thing about that girl, for apart from her young face, there was the special scent she spread in the air that refreshed the humid atmosphere of the street. Every eye turned in the direction of that scented deer, but I was more greedy than most.
I left everything behind and walked with the wind, having my nose and my curious lust as my guides. I started weaving my daydream with that girl, even without being sure that she would be part of the true strings of the portrait. I followed her, mainly walking steps away at her side and pleasing my poor eyes with the fast motion of the girl’s two cups. At one point, she paused all of a sudden and gave me a quick gaze and a tiny smile, before continuing on her way. I realized that she knew that I was following her, and she simply allowed it for my ignorant gladness.
She stopped among some big houses and unlocked the small door of her house, which, compared to all those around it, seemed a veritable midget. Everything was decorated—from the green line of flowers in front, to the door and the doorsteps, to the light pink-white paint. She went inside the door and gave me one more look before closing the door.
I walked up to the door, and a rosy scent tickled my nose and welcomed me. I inhaled deeply and pressed the doorbell without thinking what I was doing. In a split second, the door was answered and one half of the bright moon was standing behind the half-open door. It was as if she was expecting a visitor.
“Yes?” she said in a tone that was more like a question.
“I…” I started, as I recall, but I didn’t know how to go about it until her eyes fell on the teddy-bear balloon in my hands. I grasped the clue and built on it.
“Do you wish to buy this?” I spoke.
And then I realized how remarkably silly it was to speak thos
e words in such circumstances. The silliness of that remark was mirrored in her face, and a smile appeared on her tiny red mouth. I could see now the blue of her eyes, oceanic and lovely. Two petite light-red patches embellished the white background at the top of her cheeks. She was very short, barely reaching my shoulders.
“How much for it?” She placed her hand on the head of the teddy bear.
I searched for an answer, and my eyes fell to the luxury of her bosom. I guess that was enough of an answer, because she asked me if I wished to come in and have a cup of tea. A cup of tea! I read it as a good sign to start with. Girls never ask you to come into their homes unless their inner selves yearn for something.
She walked in, but as I tried to step in after her, my forehead collided with the top of the door. It wasn’t designed, I guess, for people of my height. I quickly recovered, or at least I acted so. Once I was in, I realized that I was going to stick with the girl for longer than a day or night, and in the end it turned out to be a whole six months.
She pointed me to a tiny armchair and walked up the stairs, which were twisted a little and lacked a handrail, so that if you stumbled on them, you might end up on the flowery tiled floor with broken bones. The narrow stairs had tiny flower vases on alternate steps, and one very small white dustbin was placed at the corner of the third step. I had never seen such a tiny one in my whole life, but that wasn’t the only thing that was new to me with that girl. The home was as flowery in appearance and scent inside as it was outside. It was a very artistic home, I would say, but very full of stuff and very tiny, so that one couldn’t take a few continuous steps without tripping over something. The light yellow wall was mostly covered with beautiful paintings of nature. Next to the main door hung a square box that said in colourful letters “Lord Bless This Mess”. A delightful petite mini bar stood in the empty space under the stairs, with one gold-threaded decorated chair beside it. Adjacent to this was a small cabinet with glass doors that was stuffed with marble statues of people and animals. On top of the cabinet was a round silvery mirror wiped clean, and a big glass bowl in which two cat statues were placed. Close to the cabinet was the only armchair in the house, small and covered in light-red material. Opposite to this was a big-screen TV, and the space separating the two was mostly occupied by an oval-shaped glass table.
MEMORIES from the EAST Page 13