Chapter Text
When Omar first came in the house, I first saw his baggage, and then himself. A huge leather trunk with glaring sharp-looking metal edges that he balanced on his foot in order to transport it, and that crashed with a loud thump on my floor when he let it drop. He straightened up, breathless, and I was stunned. Not necessarily by his physical beauty or his sense of style or the way that he carried himself, but simply by the fact that he was a man – bone, flesh, skin, hair, and clothes, that I could touch, and not my internal voice as I read dismembered handwriting.
He didn’t look like his handwriting as I think many people do – his handwriting firstly was in all capital letters and with no edges, the dash across his A all the way down for good feng shui, and no slanting forwards nor backwards; a man living in the present, I thought. Omar the man was short and narrow, shockingly so, with perhaps his hair as the only part of his body with some sort of curve adjacent to his Os and Cs. He also had a spastic energy about him, when he removed his dress shoes softened to shapelessness by the front door, very tidily in a way that came across as a reprimand amidst the mess of my own shoes scattered across the narrow hallway, where I sometimes preferred wearing two different shoes to finding a whole pair. And the first thing he said with a nervous chuckle was, not quite looking at me, it’s boiling in here.
His jacket was a beige World War I-style trench coat that I took off by the shoulders, which I think he hated. I can lend you some shorts, I offered to mask my own nervousness; the faster he made himself at home the faster the tensions would resolve. I looked around for a spot to hang his jacket from; I had never owned such a long thing, and I ended up passing it over the sofa’s back cushion where Omar was to sleep. No, no thanks, he said.
The apartment was small enough for one person, very tight for two. A studio apartment is what it would come to be known as, in our time we called it a shithole, hole in the wall. It was about the size and layout of a cheap motel room, with a messy mattress underneath the double window, a low table framed by frayed cushions, a sunk sofa, and a kitchenette with portable burners. The bathroom sink was outside of the bathroom, which only comprised a toilet and a plastic tub that I stole from the chemist’s lab I briefly worked at, where I think formalin was originally stored.
In such a small space, odours were naturally concentrated enough to induce a headache, and the smell of Omar’s sweat was overpowering. I remember being fascinated by it because it didn’t smell bad, it smelled simply like sweat. Like whatever was excreted from the insides of his body was pure substance, without the added toxins that sullied the human existence from the things it consumed.
I have always maintained that love goes through the stomach, so I was eager to feed him.
How was your journey? I asked, while leading him through the room by the hand, lest he tripped on some loose cable or clothing item or bin bag. It was warm and clammy, and fit exactly in mine. You must be starving.
Adventurous, he replied. But that’s just my luck.
What happened?
Just the typical hurdles, my car broke down and so I missed the train, I took the coach instead but it got two flat tyres, then I had to hitchhike… My luggage was killing me, he said, letting go of my hand softly to inspect red chafes where the trunk’s handle cut into his skin. These things always happen. But then again I lose my shit disproportionately when they don’t go exactly the way I planned them.
Maybe it’s a lesson you need to learn.
To that he smiled, more to himself than to me, and for some reason it made me proud.
I knew from his letters that he was vegetarian, so I stacked the icebox with greens, cheese, and eggs. The concept was foreign to me, and although in later years it would become ordinary, at the time I found it very exotic, with connections in Eastern philosophy.
You have the day off tomorrow, I presume.
No, he said, in a tone between a chide and a whine, which was to become very familiar to me. At the time it made me smile, a crack of frustration through an eternally unbothered façade. Tomorrow is the first day, starting at 8 am.
Although I had indicated to him to relax at the cushions, he followed me to the kitchenette, making it clear early on he was not one to follow orders. At the time I thought it was something far less sinister than this, a gesture of consideration I found attractive, a proactive man, a man who thought it was equally a man’s duty to partake in kitchen activities.
I vocalised my intention of fixing him up a sandwich, but he suggested a Haitian soup recipe he knew by heart, because anything went in.
Soup in this heat?
It actually has a cooling effect, the way Bedouins have hot tea in the desert.
I always thought that was bullshit.
You’ll see.
I remember not doing much as a host on that day, and the days to follow – only gazing at him for long stretches of time. The light that filtered through the thin gauze curtains was dirty and grey because of the dust, and it defined his margins. I remember he was wearing a yellow shirt with brown stripes across it, sleeves rolled up to show off tattoos (associated with gangs at the time), and unbuttoned down to his chest: I didn’t know it would be from the few chances I would get to admire just how delicate and flat it was. He was wearing glasses, which I thought was appropriate, but not the kind I expected, and they slid all the way down his nose, curved up as it almost was. A droplet of sweat hung from his plump upper lip.
I found a loose bedsheet and shovelled the empty beer cans, makeshift ashtrays, lighters, notepads, crumpled tissue, paint brushes, and rings that were on the low table into it, except the hot sauces. We sat across each other and ate mostly in silence, a silence that was less about awkwardness than it was about reverence, of all the ingredients that were uprooted for our sustenance and the simple privilege of eating.
It was the best thing I had eaten in my life, possibly still to this day, matched only by Omar’s own cooking. It was fresh as it was spicy, crunchy and soft, obscenely salty in the only way I know how to enjoy food, and the absence of meat did not even cross my mind. It cooled me down, it warmed me up, it healed my cigarette-inflamed throat, it filled my senses with only just it. I slurped the whole fucking thing down in minutes.
Omar had about 1/4 of his bowl before he called it a day, defeatedly leaning back on his arms, perhaps too exhausted to eat was my theory. There was a flush dusting his cheeks, lips and chin glistening with fluid, and sweat all over his skin, down his chest, seeping through his shirt, and a completely lax posture that made him look like he had just finished fucking.
Startled by my own thought, unbeknownst to the many that were to come, I cleared the table and put his unfinished bowl in the icebox for something to do. Omar excused himself to the bathroom and through the shut door enquired about the tub situation. I found it funny that he was so intrigued he could not wait to come out before he asked, so I slid my back down the shut door and explained to him.
You never told me you were a chemist.
Because I wasn’t – I only delivered materials and reagents.
But that's not what you always did.
No, for most of my life it was the burger joint. Then the delivery agency. I was a broker one time… I was in construction briefly… Right before this I was in a moving agency…
You switched up a lot.
I took opportunity as it came, you know.
Which one was your favourite?
As a broker I made the most money.
That’s not what I asked.
I had to think about that. I was never one to dwell on the past or future. The moving agency, I think, I said in the end, back of my head tossed against the bathroom door. Something about handling other people’s furniture was…
I never finished that sentence, in hindsight.
If you relied on daylight at that time of year, and with this sort of air pollution, you would never realise it was nighttime. I peeked at Omar’s back over my shoulder as he changed into indoor clothes (never pajamas because such thing was consumerist propaganda), was once again gripped by how small and tidy his body was, how it gave me an urge to circle my arms around it just to feel how much space within me it would take. His muscles were thin as ropes under his sweaty skin, moving somewhat stiffly but with relish. We said goodnight, and I remember gazing at him as he drifted to sleep, in those loose white clothes that accentuated his bronze skin and revealed a little more about his body underneath, his sticky collarbones, the peaks of his small nipples and the tease of coarse pubic hair trailing down his waistband.
I touched him, not for any nefarious purpose, but simply to confirm the man in the letters was physical, that this was the body that belonged to the signed name. That this was the package that contained all these thoughts and ideas. It was beautiful, moving almost to tears. I traced the back of my fingers over the curve of his neck, then down his chest ever so lightly, feeling how he breathed shallowly like a cat. I was halfway down his ribs when he jolted and moaned softly, trying to turn to his side but being unable to due to lack of space. It was enough to make me retreat my hand sharply, but not extinguish my greed. This time with my palm I slid down his hip, his firm thigh, there was nothing there but bone, I dared to reach between his legs where heat seeped through the thin fabric tantalisingly.
I felt myself react so I stopped for the night, probably far less horrified than I should have been. Something about him, lying down there in my sofa for overnight guests, made him very naturally an object of sexual nature.
I could not settle when I slipped into my mattress, in fact I got increasingly excited by the sound of his soft breathing and occasional sighs, and of knowing he was there. The smell of him and his cooking was all over the place, soaked into my bedsheets and my skin. Between long days at work, exhausted days off, and prologued general social isolation, it had been a while since I was last turned on.
Sexual desire has a way of clouding the mind, perhaps by easing us into our primal instincts, where none of the societal customs apply. So when I turned to my side to look at Omar’s sleeping figure right over the low table and palmed myself through my trousers, I was not considering any ethical implications. I thought of the way he looked after dinner, of his plush lips, his short eyelashes, his naked body, that despite its apparent fragility it looked like it was made to be manhandled. My mouth watered with the thought of how easily my hand could wrap around his wrist, of the perfect purchase his coily hair would provide.
With my cock now pumped in my hand, I rolled on my back again, eyes squeezed shut as my fantasies ran wilder. Pressure built up low in my stomach as I replayed in my mind his little moan, imagined it escalated. In my view someone’s personality was magnified during sex, with little chance to hide who they truly are. What kind of person was Omar? His put-togetherness and desire for control suggested submissiveness in bed, someone who longed to let go and have someone else take the reins for at least a couple of hours, someone who could shut up his running thoughts, make him go dumb. I imagined him with his hands tied above his head, writhing helplessly in pleasure, those thighs shaking reflexively. I wondered what sort of sounds he would make - soft and occasional or whiny and high-pitched? Would he beg or would he demand? What sort of face would he make when he came?
I would find out.
Over the first several days of Omar’s sojourn, I actually believed I could wake up early enough to make him at least a cup of coffee before he left. I knew from his letters that he did not believe in breakfast and he denounced all substances, but coffee was something he relied on, despite not needing it even up to his late twenties. Just as well, perhaps, because I had no idea how he liked it – in my mind he was just as likely to have it extremely strong or extremely weak.
Instead I woke up to a jug of steaming coffee, dripping clean dishes, and organised shoes in the entrance. The smell of him lingered in the hallway, singalling he had not left long ago, and I wondered just how deeply I was sleeping not to have heard him clatter utensils in the sink. When I checked the icebox, I noticed that he had left his leftover soup from the previous day, which I immediately assumed was my fault as I had not showed him where I kept the food containers.
I’m realising now that I actually fail to remember what I was doing during the day when Omar was away at his school. There was a time when I worked, worked incessantly and blindly, you could almost say; a victim to the lifestyle society imposed on us as a purpose and not a means.
Those days I was doing nothing, mostly working on developing my own quiet ecosystem in the house and feeling little desire to leave it after more than two decades of chatting pointlessly to customers, managers, and co-workers. I decided to live for my own sake, largely independent from money as I was a champion at scavenging from my skint days, only really needing it to buy food and occasionally substances. I was well enough networked from my working days where I could run the odd errand for a little money when in need. Time unravelled in a beautiful way now, different to how I lost the days when at work.
You can imagine how suddenly having a guest over would have shaken me. I wanted desperately to be a good host, especially to someone like Omar, but I had never accepted visitors in my life before. My mother, who one may consider the primordial host, was a poor example of a caring person; I knew it even as a child on account for being denied far too many times, so the only thing I knew I had to do for a guest was to never say no.
My day started at 7 to 8 pm, when Omar returned to the house, always looking sweaty, shattered, and energised.
It smells good, I heard him call form the doorway. I liked that he felt comfortable to use a loud voice, even from the start. It reminded me that we were not strangers, really, we had been exchanging letters for almost a year now, and that I had nothing to be scared of.
He entered the kitchen, and I was surprised to see him still in the clothes he had arrived in a couple of days ago, the yellow shirt, the flared jeans. He slid his bag off his shoulder and let it drop on his sofa, where he kept his things.
It’s arroz a la cubana, I explained, pointing at the sizzling enamel pan which was embarrassingly big for a person who lived alone. There’s some coffee.
Omar didn’t smile in a genuine way often, so I remember every single time. This was one of them: the way his whole face lit up, the big stretch of lips, demonstrating shamelessly the joy of being known. He liked a coffee in the morning and a coffee at night.
We sat on our respective cushions on the floor and I asked about his school.
Officially it was an academy, practically it was a research laboratory, but Omar called it a school, and so that is what I also called it. To this day, I’m not entirely sure what the research project entailed, only that it related to physics and a particular type of particle that could pass through solid barriers. Omar failed to explain matters in a manner I could understand, but I think it was because he could not fathom that I was not nearly as smart as he was – a case where practicing equality is harmful.
I dropped out of school, I told him from the start, and I mean school, like high school.
That doesn’t mean anything. School is just put into place to consolidate a societal structure, not to propagate knowledge. You are smart, Cedric, maybe too smart for school.
What I found most embarrassing is when he asked my opinions on overcoming certain obstacles in his project. He tended to take notes on a battered notepad, where he seemed to really write down all sorts, from grocery lists to quotes he heard to calculations to thoughts and feelings. He didn’t look up from it as he transcribed my blunders and platitudes with a scholastically serious expression, glasses slid all the way down his nose.
When I confessed – as though it wasn’t immediately obvious – that I had mostly no idea what I was talking about, he said an outsider’s perspective is the best perspective.
I believe that was the same night we had our first accident. Omar came from a family of all men, three younger brothers and a father, so his concept of privacy was very different to mine, growing up with a sister and mother. He had something of a night routine, but unlike my own, it mostly consisted of spiritual care rather than physical: while I needed at least a shower per day, sometimes two in this sweltering heat, he rarely spent time in the bathroom. I thought it was a logistic issue, as bathing required filling repeatedly a small basin from the sink that was outside the bathroom, but I offered to help and he refused. It probably didn’t have anything to do with seeing him naked, because I want to say he rather disliked the feeling of clothes on him.
But that night, I suddenly realised that from the full pack of cigarettes I opened when Omar had entered the bathroom, only four had remained. I chucked my smoke out of the window and I called out to him.
Omar?
Omar?
I heard a sound like a thump. Cautiously, silently, I creeped to the shut door.
Omar.
I heard shuffling, swishing, faintly, and I stuck my ear against the wood, eyes squinted. Soon the shuffling acquired rhythm, and speed, and a wet quality to it, and I heard a soft gasp. I understood immediately what was going on and my instinct was to tear myself from the door and turn on the fan for some noise or something, but something kept me rooted there. His panting escalated, coloured with traces of his sweet voice, I heard his hand slap against his thighs and involuntarily imagined him sitting there on the toilet lid, legs spread, head tossed back in pleasure as he pumped himself erratically.
I felt my own erection strain against my jeans, and with a blend of horror and desperation, I palmed at myself, just for a bit of relief. Omar hissed a curse from the other side of the door as his pace switched up to longer strokes, and I scrambled to push my jeans and underwear down. Without explicitly intending to, I synchronised my strokes with his, trying hard to keep every sound in but struggling when I heard Omar spit down his cock, the sounds becoming increasingly slicker as the saliva made a mess of him. Omar was moaning softly through something that muffled him, sighs of unfiltered pleasure and gasps when he did something that felt particularly good, all pouring out, blending and interrupting each other. Me, I was leaning my forehead against the door, brain empty except for images of Omar and the sounds he was making, alternating between pumping my cock erratically and flicking my wrist at the tip, eyes shut and mouth hung open with a string of spit dangling to the floor. It was obvious Omar was close to coming by the way his moans turned into whimpers and whines, the slapping sounds wet and frantic and how he went fuck fuck fuck until a final shaky gasp - and it all stopped. I was seeing white, I was coming hard, the delicious pressure finally released as I fully leaned against the door, cum streaking the door thickly for what felt like whole minutes.
And then the door opened.
I fell forward on the bathroom tiles, ass out, everything. The clinically white light put every part of my shame under scrutiny with nowhere to hide. I stared for a few seconds at Omar’s bare feet by my face, recovering from the shock of coming and falling face-first onto the floor and of Omar staring at me from above. I don’t think I was breathing when I straightened up.
We stared at each other, myself wide-eyed and mortified. The light was behind him so I could not quite see the expression on his face, but I could just feel him staring at my rapidly shrinking dick and the ropes of cum trickling down the door.
I’m-
I'm-
I’m s-
In fact, I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea how to possibly excuse what I had just done. My brain was blank.
But Omar had no problem; in fact he looked almost amused.
If you were in such a hurry, you could’ve just come in.