Man!
When Wasim's hand touched mine, my balls pumped testosterone into my brain, and my cock felt ready for action, but whom I wanted was Man:
"Till God will reckon us
Of love, the token is
The heart of the slave."
In case I would change my mind, Wasim wrote his name and address in clean, careful capitals on half a torn-out notebook page, and his e-mail address:
desertstud87@hotmail.com
At night, I sat in what you could call the 'lobby' of the Udai Guest House: A space the size of a bazaar shop, open to the alley, furnished with the manager's desk, two wire chairs, a TV fixed to the wall, a shelf weighed down with dusty phone directories. Above the manager's head hung a picture of, I guess, the owner's late father, decorated with a string of withering champak flowers. Everything was cheap, dirty, ugly. The wire chairs were too small to be comfortable for a man of my size. The TV showed a young actress bubbling over with excitement that despite her father and his five brothers all being movie moguls and studio bosses, and her mother's father owning the country's biggest private TV station, she had found her niche in Bollywood: Playing the beautiful, spoilt princess, who out of love and respect for the Maharaja, her grandfather, rather than giving in to her egoist, wayward, illicit love for a sexy, young, successful architect of Indian origin living in a Malibu beach house, marries the billionaire politician's son her generous granddaddy selected for her.
Every word the actress said made me hate her more. If at least her latest film were a flop, but no: It was a blockbuster. I tried to read the Illustrated Weekly but couldn't focus. It was ten p.m. and still hot. The air was laced with countless cooking curries, the smoke of tandoori stoves, the fumes of two-stroke and diesel engines, and the fragrance of burning incense and open drains.
Whether with luck, Man and One Ruffian had escaped the 'mother-pimping, sister-fucking' BSF, or without had got shot; Man had not made it to Khwaja Sharif's Holy Tomb. I had come for exotic sex and had had little sex and more than my fill of dangerous adventures. Now I would go home to tell my tale, lick my wounds, dream of Man, and masturbate.
While my heart tried to come to terms with having lost Man, my eyes scanned the young men passing in the alley: Black-maned, dark-eyed, slim young men like Wasim, but none had Man's spark. Man's eyes were live coals, his nose the beak of a hawk, his lips went from lascivious smile to knife-edge thin disgust in one tenth of a second, his hands… I missed his hands more than himself. Why had our destiny to be so cruel? To keep from crying, I stared at the rising moon over the alley.
The manager told me, "Sir, your feet, please!" I pulled my legs under my wire chair and let a couple enter the 'lobby'. The husband wore brownish too tight pants, an equally tight yellowish polycotton shirt, cheap dirty shoes. His coarse, greasy brown head crowned coarse, greasy black hair; he looked like One Ruffian spruced up as a hardware wholesales rep. Whatever was his business with the manager, the husband didn't care much for it. Instead, he questioned the manager about the White, i.e. me. The husband's affected nasal voice and the high tinny voice of the manager: I don't remember which one disgusted me more.
The wife wore a burqa, which covered her from head to large dusty feet and toes. Her husband didn't ask her a thing, and she didn't say a word. He let her stand where she was, and sat down next to me on the second wire chair.
"Hailing from?"
I felt like saying 'Galactica', but what if he turned out to work for the CBI? I named my country.
"Married?"
"No."
"Male progeny?"
"None."
After an exposition of the economic benefits of marital intercourse, and marriage at puberty – "the course of nature" – the husband forced me to listen to what family planning system he recommended for the subcontinent: Pulling out in time. In my heart, I wished his father had pulled out in time!
"Need a woman?"
I needed Man, "No!"
"A number one beauty?"
What woman could compare to Man? "No!"
"Beer?"
I hate the taste of beer, its piss color and vomit smell, "No!"
He ordered two bottles of beer, charging them to my account. The realization that I would never see Man again, had robbed me of the willpower to contradict a pimp.
"Oral, did you?"
From the book holding gesture of his left hand and the roll of air his right gripped in front of his crotch, I conjectured that he had perused the popular paperback 'Sexual Perversion Explained'.
"Anal, did you?"
During my second bottle, I began to consider the fellow's insolence a benevolent joke. He used my half-drunk forbearance to oblige me with a full account of his infertile sexual life, as repetitive as the travel log of a metropolitan bus driver…
"Animal, did you?"
After the third bottle…
"Boy, did you?"
… rather than follow my new friend unbelievable – but who cares? – twelve inches deep into all the holes he had come into, the numerous brothels he had visited, sparing me no disgusting detail… I agreed to buy his whatever for…
"Eight hundred, special price!"
"Hundred and fifty!"
"Five hundred, seasonal discount!"
"Two hundred!"
"Three hundred, last offer!"
… thirty dollars, take her up to the room and enjoy with her.
I was drunk.
My room was a small double room and as soon as I closed the door, her patchouli smell caused me nausea. I expected her to remove her burqa, but she told me rudely, "Wash!"
To escape her perfume, I retired willingly into the two square meter shower-cum-toilet. I knew that she would use my absence to go through my belongings, but what was there to steal? I owned the clothes I wore. Imagining maliciously her dismay at finding nothing worth stealing, I showered leisurely. When five minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom with a bathing towel around my hips, looking forward to and ready for a blowjob, she was still wearing the burqa.
"Should we take bath too?" Her high, whining voice betrayed the mountain girl.
"Yes please!"
She vanished into the shower. I lay down and began hands-on to think about sex. I guessed her to be a bony country maid. The burqa wasn't there to protect her beauty and innocence; it was a wrapper to hide the hideous whore until the money had changed hands. Why had I got myself lured into this stupid deal? I could have fucked Wasim!
When after fifteen minutes she hadn't finished her ablutions, I suspected foul play. I knocked at the thin plywood bathroom door, "All ok?"
No answer. I knocked more forcefully. No answer. I tried the door. It wasn't locked. Though she was a whore and I paid for her, I felt shy to enter. I opened the door an inch. The light was switched off and her burqa was hanging from a nail.
Should I call the pimp? Was it right to check myself what had happened to her? What if she had swooned? Or given birth, or died? Like a man who after a sumptuous dinner sits in front of his empty plate, and while he cleans his teeth with a toothpick, abruptly understands that the black dots on his last dish were not sesame seeds but mouse shit, the repulsive nature of what I was about to do hit me: Fuck a hairy, slimy, smelly cunt!
I opened the door another inch. Suddenly, strong hands pulled me into the dark, damp space. Wet fleshy lips kissed mine frantically; a large lascivious tongue wedged itself into my mouth. Had I fallen into the hands of a man-eating nympho? Couldn't she suck me without touching me? Disgusted, I kept my hands away from the horrible being, until against my lower belly; I felt the thrust of a massive rod. I grabbed it and knew: