Finally, the highway again. Here, the world gets into deep movement. Like a river hollowing itself out. Fresh tarmac keeps rolling in from the distance. The vanishing point ahead of you keeps puffing out air. He, the stranger who offered you a ride, taps the steering wheel with his finger, looks at the road, at you, at the road, at you.
You’re thinking: I lapsed into emptiness again, so I went into the night, am happy to see the world moving again. Because the world is getting into deep movement.
Terrace. He’s invited you. ‘What city are we in?’ you ask. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says, you spot his gold tooth. All you know is that on every corner of every square there are statues of happened-to-be-here historical figures with plaques describing their fifteen minutes of local heroism. That’s how you know you’re nowhere noteworthy, not really anywhere. No place at all if it weren’t for some Debussy-guy with a delayed train who was presumably whistling some part of a prelude on his way to get a cup of coffee.
Afternoon, museum. He comes up behind you, your hand searches for his hand, finds his upper leg, which you grab, and then you walk away. This is repeated. Until you turn a corner. Five dogs, outstretched mid-jump, pouncing on a shot deer. In the background some crooked-legged, blue-clad, gun-pointing hunters, and in the foreground a pond, reflecting the deer. The deer casts a furtive glance at you, twice, he makes you complicit in something, a death, a disappearance. Then he comes up behind you and kisses your jaw.
Dark. You’re eating. There’s pleasure in eating, for sure, but you find it’s the same pleasure as not eating.
‘Where I grew up,’ you say, ‘there was a pond I couldn’t go into, because if I did, I would shrink until I’d disappear. One day, the pond was as smooth as a mirror. At the edge, wanting to go in, afraid I would shrink – I went in anyway. I was alone, it was warm.’ ‘And then?’ he asks. ‘They were right, I shrank and shrank until I was nothing.’
Later, in the evening, in the mirror of the elevator, going up. You look at him and ask: ‘What do you see?’ He looks and says: ‘I’ve folded my anger and shame into a handkerchief, that’s what I see, and now, years later, I’m carefully peeling it open. I want to be with someone who will catch me; my arms and legs are strong – what do you see?’ You take a look at yourself. You see a body with two forces. One wanting to disappear, one wanting to stay. You don’t know what that means, to stay. You carry your long limbs uneasily. He kisses you, you kiss him back.
I can hear him singing in the bathroom, taking his time. You picture him covering the little blue dispenser in lubricant. Inserting the narrow, white end of the dispenser, pumping lukewarm water into himself. You even feel the strange thrill of warm liquid not coming out of you but flowing into you, like swallowing hot milk. You picture yourself alone.
Soon you’ll have to make your way through his bodily structure. Like through water or sand, which has its own laws. It can only be done if you yourself are there, too. With your own structure. Usually, you’re metres behind your own body, watching it move from a distance. Been in this moment often. How to assemble yourself now? You know the possibility of not touching has passed, the possibility of leaving impossible.
Now he enters the room. The feigned solemnity with which he keeps drying his hair. It’s pretty. What you’re seeing is not new but it’s clearer.
Now he’s on his hands and knees, straight back, head sideways deep in the pillow. You’re behind him, move your head closer and lean in to kiss his behind, right by his anus, which glistens, smells like soap and something metallic, something unconcealable beneath, something like skin itself, which you want to taste with your tongue, but you don’t lick. Your hand passes underneath and you find it, carefully take hold of his dick, start licking his balls, try to grab them with your tongue, as the soft skin pulls tight around his glans and you hold off every time you brush past the edge of it. The rhythm of pulling backward and gently pushing forward, he seems to be enjoying it, is moving in sync with hips, he reaches back and finds your head, runs his fingers through your hair. You want him to come on the sheets, there’s something gluttonous about letting someone come on your sheets, like taking too-large sips of water, despite all of it running down your chin and your neck for the sake of your thirst. You sit up straight, move your dick up and down across the folds of his anus, where his skin is darker, while clutching him tighter and jerking him off faster, your other hand reaches for his stomach, his balls, and carefully grabs. ‘Do it,’ he says, ‘enter me,’ hoarse, panting, from another world.
You want to but you’re too scared, for practical reasons, because of how narrow it is, how deep it is, pain and pleasure at the same time. But even more so because you’re scared of becoming a summary of this movement, of, for a moment, being one, of disappearing into someone’s depths. ‘Do it,’ he moans, riding your hand with an absent-minded motion of hips, ‘please.’
He comes. First on everything, then dripping warm down the back of your hand. You kiss his back. You wait for him to look over his shoulder, then lick your fist clean.
What you’re thinking of now is not the pleasure of touching, being touched. It makes you feel good, it really does, you can feel it in your fingers, you know it, your fingers know it and the taste in your mouth, body-sweet and salty, knows it too. But you’re thinking of the highway. The white lines quietly slipping away. You imagine looking out the rear window and seeing everything rush towards the end. In your movement, the world will retreat into itself. It will become less and less, everything will wash away down the vanishing point behind you, the tarmac, the air, and the hissing of the tires turns into whispering, turns into nothing.