By Ropta. Photos by Pete Sherrard

1.THE FUCKING

It starts with a kiss. Two lips meeting at the perfect time, tongues interlocking, releasing titillating sensations, and deep below, much below, love swims in a dark ocean – a leviathan. A whole universe locked in a beating heart.

When he bites, his teeth are crispy and cold, making my skin retreat and curl as if it has a life of its own. Somewhere along the way, as he kisses the protruding shoulder bone on my back, I think: my house is untidy.

I say: perhaps we should switch off the lights.

He does not respond. He is a life oozing in its own dimension, a puddle amidst dry ground. He is that rough, rubbery feeling of his skin against mine, that firmness of his stomach. He is a forest. He is a tree in the forest. A sagacious, old, podo tree, unseeing, unable to judge, sitting in the comfort of its shadow, surrounded by fog. He has brought the smell of dank, fetid leaves, the scent of mushrooms popping as birds chirp away, sending out melodies like well-aimed lances, to pierce the forest floor. I tremble as I feel myself disintegrating.

I think: Not with the lights on.

I say: I need to switch off the lights (brief pause) please!

He retreats from my body and sits down. A human being now, with something vulnerable about the way he settles his thickly-veined arms on his lap. His back is a bit bent, but the eyelashes are the longest I have ever seen, and his lips rattle my chest. The short walk to the switch gives me a rude reminder of my poor housekeeping skills. I am a slob. There are unwashed utensils on the table, mixed with mango peels on which a giant snail is luxuriantly trailing. I hold my breath, waiting for his disgusted comments. None come. He is an angel. He sees only me. My house is envious.

I switch off the lights and walk back to him. Come, I insist. I grab his arm and pull him away from the sofa and into my bedroom, which is just around the corner, and the kissing begins in earnest. The room is suddenly hot, and prickly sweat collects at a groove on my body as he holds me down at an impossible angle. I feel a sudden urge to rush to the bathroom and wash. And clean my house, no, sanitize my house from top down. But then there is the feel of his pelvis curved against mine, the warmness of it. His erect penis, as wide and firm as a regular-size torch, follows the parting of my buttocks with seasoned confidence. Blood rushes to my forehead, making it ache.

He turns me over and I look at him, or the outline of him. His physicality is overwhelming, as if a boulder of granite is on top of me. But he lies gently on me, and his nipples tease my chest. I trail my hands on his chest. He has little hair, and there are rough bumps on his skin. His breath is hot and a bit rancid. I hate the flow of it directly onto my nose, and I turn aside and find that I am breathing very hard too. I read somewhere that I should always be conscious of my breathing, and conscious of my thoughts.

Oprah said: The one who observes is the one who has control.

I trail my fingers from his chest and stretch them to find the end of his shoulders, then I slide them down, all the way down to where the rim of his boxer shorts is congealing with his sweat. I push the shorts down and slap his buttocks, then reach under him, getting tickled by his pubic hair as I grab his member. I am unable to wrap my palm around it, and that scares me. I start stroking him, and his breath turns more ragged.

I ask: is it sweet?

He answers: Stop asking stupid questions.

I add: What does God think about what we are doing?

He says: Let us leave God out of this

He is kissing me now, probably to make me stop asking questions, but he is not a gentle kisser and I like gentle. His teeth are knocking against mine with such force that I begin to worry they will loosen mine, and his tongue, with the slithery force of a snake, seems to want to suck out my throat. And he bites, he pulls out my lower lip and bites. The metallic taste of blood floods in. Quickly he turns me over. Spiky, scaly sensations tingle my legs and arms and my knees and elbows start to hurt. I tuck my hands under my chest and turn my head to the side. I cannot take it anymore and try to twist back to face upward, but he pushes me back.

He says: Stop doing that, what is it now? I want to get in.

I think: I don’t want to do this. Why are the lights out? I should be sitting on my couch watching the Monique show on BET. Today she is actually interviewing D’Banj.

I say: I am uncomfortable.

He says: Relax, it is going to be ok. I am good. The prostate gland can only be massaged from the anal orifice. The men I have been with tell me that I am really good at that.

I say: Co …

He says: I will never sleep with you without a condom.

I think of an outdoor toilet with a drop hole. I had one which was my sanctuary back home in the village. It was always clean and dry, apart from the days when my father would get drunk and shit carelessly, filling the toilet with the alcoholic fumes of his waste. It had a chimney, a fat, orange pipe, and I would lean against it, press my member against it until it grew hard and then grind myself against it, with total intensity until I came. I remembered how I would squat on the drop hole and squeeze out my faeces, the relief as they popped out and dropped in the hole below me with a dull thud. Did I ever insert my small finger inside my anus? Yes I did, once, but my hole was too tight and squeezed my finger.

He pulls my hands out from under my chest and straightens then on the bed, pinning them down with his hands. He tells me to squeeze my legs tightly together with such majesty in his voice that I obey without thinking, his voice like a stimulus-command to my body. I try to smell my bed sheets, but my nose is dead. I am crying, silently, for I don’t want him to hear me. It might make him go away. I want him to stop what he is doing, but I don’t want him to go away. I want to sit with him on my couch, me lying on him and a warm blanket over us, licking ice-cream together with one spoon as we watch The Monique Show on BET.

He says: Stop tensing, it will be painful if you tense up. Take it easy, you can handle me.

I ask: Do you love me? Am I going to see you again?

He says: I am always here for you baby, you are so sweet, I will always take care of you.

Is it possible for someone to shrink into single atom?

I feel myself grow small. My skull is retreating back to my neck and my arms and legs are diminishing. I turn into a small black square on the bed, and suddenly everything else is bigger than me. I hear the sound of the walls. The darkness is speaking to me, and its voice is not kind, it is hoary and loud. I am scared, and that is where the pain begins. The pain rips through my body like lightning, and I actually see a blinding flash sweep over my eyes. I am sure, because now I am a small black square on the bed, that he will rip right through me, pop out from the straight line that makes the top of my square. His penis is an independent, ruthless force. It conquers. It treks in like the ox-driven wagons of the Boers from South Africa, shooting everything in sight — lions, elephants, khoikhoi. It discovers Mount Kilimanjaro and names a waterfall in me Victoria. I am a continent now, no longer a square. I find that my outlines are not straight lines. I fear the conqueror. The conqueror brings disease – smallpox, syphilis, chicken pox, measles – the conqueror is made of steel and gunpowder, he destroys ancient forests and turns them into plantations. The conqueror kills your language and supplants it with his own.

His penis has made me forget my power of speech.

As he slams into me, like an engine at full throttle, as his erect penis churns the softness of my inside, blending fluids in an ancient rhythm, making him moan like a demon, I am surprised to find myself thinking about the Battle at Wounded Knee.

Chief Tecumseh said: When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

I am an Indian hero. I am the Last of the Mohicans. I worship Wakan Tanka.

He pulls out of me and a relieving coolness floods in, albeit still with pain, muscles and nerves stretched in a manner they never expected. Then I feel his shaft tickling me again, parting my buttocks.

He says: Do you like it when I tease you like that. You are so sexy, man. The curve of your ass.

He says this with his mouth close to the top of my head. The words have a force of their own and, like a flame, trail down over my body with burning heat. He bites my head as if we are cats mating, as he enters me again. This time he squeezes into me and holds me so tightly, gritting his teeth, that I cannot separate my mind from this act, and I feel only the firmness of his boiling penis, and jolts of ecstasy pouring down my thighs.

He says: I want us to come together, bro.

He flips me to my side. The sudden change of position brings pain again, and I protest.

He says: Don’t you dare push me out, am too deep insiiidee….oh shit….oh fuck….

I am being raped. I love the cruelty being meted on me. I smile like a villain, and relish the flood of his lust filling up my rectum as I vigorously stroke myself.

2. WHAT I TOLD MY BEST FRIEND THE FOLLOWING DAY

I love him.

We are going to live together, and the solidarity we share together is going to make me brave enough to confess to my parents and siblings that I am gay. My mother is my best friend, did I tell you that? We talk for hours on end, but there are some things that you do not tell even your best friends. You do not tell them that you pull down your pants for a man, for that leads to shame. Why should you suck on another man’s cock when you have your own?

But this is different. This is supreme destiny. I think we were meant for each other. It is so certain. There is a connection between us, and this is different. Stop looking at me with those “that is what you always say after you get laid” eyes. He is so gentle and he oozes masculinity in its best possible expression. The strength of him in the room draws my breath away. I think of him and me living together, spending idle weekends in the house, watching romantic comedies, as long as Jeniffer Aniston is in them. He could be kissing me and stroking my back as I cook for him. Oh my, I did not even ask him what his favourite food was.

Ok, I agree with you. I am being boring. You want me to speak about his penis, right? His cock.

I have to take a minute of silence as I think of it. It was an obelisk, a monument in its own right, more awe-inspiring than Cleopatra’s Needle. It deserves to be worshipped. A temple needs to be built for its honour.

I am not kidding Kiki, I am not embellishing the truth with lies. I will show you his hands to prove it, and I want you to stare keenly at his thumb. You know that Harvard-trained scientist have proven that an erect penis is three times as long as the thumb. Don’t worry, just make sure you give him the extended African handshake, keep holding onto his arm as you talk, and look at his thumb, Kiki, and multiply that by three, and tell me if you will not have a cataclysmic orgasm then and there. Make sure you are wearing cotton pants, something absorbent and not those nylon, easy to tear g-strings that you are fond of. Actually it is about time I throw all of them out of your closet, but I need to buy gloves and some major sanitizer first, because I feel there is something alien and disturbing growing and creating a colony on them.

I see him and me, driving down an empty road and. We are going to our farm. We have bought five acres. We should have bought a hundred, but we don’t have that kind of money. Anyway, five acres is enough, for two Ayshire or Brown Swiss cows, and throw in a couple of chickens or goats, and we have a singing Old McDonald farm. We will grow potatoes in April. Potatoes sell well during that period, and in September we will argue whether to grow beans or peas, and I see myself frowning and walking away to my room. God, the thrill of having my first real argument. You know I have never argued before with anyone, I have never ended it with anyone with a real scorching-hot tirade. All the men have just walked away, silently, as if nothing had ever been there.

It won’t be that way with him.

Now stop asking me more questions. I want to listen do a Don Williams song and cry.

3. IT IS A JUNGLE THAT KNOWS NO LOVE

I fart out loud. I love the thrill of it ripping through my body, and the fact that I cannot smell my own pong. The fridge is buzzing. It is the only thing with a semblance of life in my house. There are no flies, and the mosquitoes are hidden and unable to move. I wish there were some cockroaches too, but I have decimated them with that new spray.

There is a lot of fog outside. When I step onto the balcony, it wraps around me like a shroud. I like the power of it, the way it smears something magical on the landscape, something otherworldly.

I have not eaten my breakfast. I fried some eggs and heated some smokies, but my stomach was just not up to it. And I cannot stand the constant taste of Cerevita. So a little milk will do for me. I will not wash the cup, I only used it to drink juice the night before and I will simply rinse it.

I have been telling myself that I need to finish season eight of Desperate Housewives. I have only reached that place where Mike Delfino dies. I woke up at eight to watch it and I have not switched on the DVD player and it is now ten.

He has not called. And he has not replied to my text. At first I wrote it this way:

HI MICHAEL. WE HAD SO MUCH FUN LAST NIGHT. I MISS YOU SO MUCH. YOU ARE SO FINE-LOOKING BROTHER, AND YOUR LITTLE MAN MOSES REALLY PARTED MY RED SEA BEAUTIFULLY. IS IT POSSIBLE WE MEET AGAIN? WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS WEEKEND? WE COULD HAVE COFFEE OR BEER, ANYTHING, WHAT DO YOU LIKE? AM A REALLY GOOD COOK YOU KNOW. COULD YOU COME OVER FOR LUNCH?

Then I thought: he will think I am a freak, and I deleted the whole text, and wrestled words for thirty minutes before settling finally on:

HEY MICHAEL, HOW YOU BE? YOU HAVE BEEN QUIET

I think: lemme not call him, it will show I am desperate. I have to act like I do not care.

Two hours later.

I think: If I do not call him, I could lose him forever. The good things in life are worth fighting for.

I walk to the balcony and lean on the rails. My head is aching. I have been thinking quite a lot. I stare out into the distance. That always makes me feel better. Then I see him. It is not a made-up vision. I see him. He is at the turn of the tarmac road to my house, and he has a trench coat and a low hat and glasses, I never saw him with glasses before. He is walking in small hesitating steps, and his hands are not free, but placed firmly on his sides.

I feel an urge to call out at him, then our eyes lock. I want to go back to my house and hide, but it is too late, he has recognized him, and in that unholy moment, I know he is going to turn and walk away. I try to hold him where he is with my mental rays, but he turns and goes back, and I feel something salty in my mouth. My tears are dripping on my lips.

Seconds have never held an eternity between them, and the stairs down the house are a cruel conjurer’s trick, extending longer and longer as I run down, one trouser leg rolled up, flip-flops slamming on the floor, threatening to tear.

The watchman shouts at me, asking where I am going, asking what is the problem, and I feel like shouting back, I am rushing after Michael, I want him to fuck me, I want him to slam me against a wall and bite my lips off, I want him to chain me onto his bed like a dog.

The fog is not as thick as it looked from the balcony. Strips of it, tinier than shredded paper, stream out of my way as I run. I wish I had the courage to shout at him, to call him back. But my voice has no courage, all the courage is in my legs as I run after him. But that too disappears when I reach the turn of the road and he is nowhere in sight, just parked cars and fast-food joints. I want to lie down there on the ground. I want to go mad.

Then I see his car, a gray Subaru Impreza. He is inside Kuku Frys. I walk gingerly to the entrance. He is sitting down with a woman and two kids. The woman is rotund and eats the fries with her hands, there is a careless arrogance in her demeanour. The kids are shy and press against her on each side. Two boys in identical sweaters and identical shoes, probably worn for the first time that day. He possesses his space in a vague, disconnected way. He is careful and precise with his cutlery. The trench coat is laid on his chair and he is staring at his food with surgeon’s eyes.

“Michael.”

The reaction on his face when he sees me could not have been more intense if I suddenly grew wings and flew. He lays his cutlery aside, pushes away his chair and walks quickly to me. He grips my arm painfully and matches me outside.

“What are you doing here? What will my wife think if she sees you here?”

“You said you love me, Michael.”

“Let us talk about such things another time, boy. I need you to go.”

“I want you to cuddle me in bed as we listen to a Don Williams song.”

He slaps his hands.

“Ok, this has gone far enough. Go, go right now, or I swear it is going to turn ugly. As far as I am concerned, you were Friday’s fuck. Friday’s fucks don’t turn up as Sunday’s dates.”