Homeland Elegies(42)

We desire the desire of the other.



…and thought: Was Emily’s narration of the previous night’s splendors arousing a desire in Julia that I, perceiving it, desired? And was it my desire for her desire that she saw on my face—and seeing it, desired in return? Sounds like nonsense, I know. Yet what came to pass next was nothing like nonsense:

Emily got up to go to the restroom. Julia stared at me as I shifted in my seat again, a subtle smile on her lips. Behind us, the lock on the bathroom door snapped shut. Then Julia whispered: “Take me somewhere.”

It was after six. The next show wasn’t for two hours. I took her by the hand and led her through the double doors that opened onto the back of the stage. As we crossed behind the set’s flats, I felt her want to stop me.

“Not here,” I said. “I know a place.”

The rehearsal room upstairs was dark and furnished as we’d left it when we’d moved to the stage—the dinner table at one end, the living-room ensemble at the other. Julia led me to the couch, where every day for weeks I’d watched Ashraf rehearse hitting Emily across the face. I would watch her tumble to the floor and cower, looking for cover—all the while her hand furtively seeking a blood packet she would stick between her teeth. Seething, heaving, anguished, Ashraf would find her here, cornered against the cushions, and he would hit her again. And again. When he finally stopped, we would see the blood pouring from her mouth.

Against the backrest, Julia kissed me now, her breath moist and hot, her thin, strong tongue seeking mine. All at once, she was naked below the waist and I was on my knees, my head between her legs. She was soaked. I kissed at her knob and pressed past to lick inside. Her moans were tight and short; her grip against the back of my head was strong. She thrust herself against me—against my nose, my teeth, my tongue—grinding now as she swelled, her sex dripping with my saliva. My fingers disappeared inside her, searching for her spot. She clucked as I ate, and my fingertip found her barely raised rough patch. I pressed. She moaned. I played and pushed and slobbered, my nose wet with her pleasure. I felt her nails in my head, and her body grew still against my mouth. Her noises were different now, quiet sobs, like muted cries for help. And then her pleasure seemed to change again, her grip on my head loosening now as the order of her sounds coalesced into a high-pitched squeal, an alarm of disbelief. She pulled me up. “I want you inside,” she whispered into my ear, her hands already searching for me.

“I don’t have a condom.”

“I’m on the Pill.”

“But—”

“Why? Do you have something I don’t want?”

“No, no,” I said.

No sooner had I said that than her lips were on mine. She unbuckled and released me. I pushed her back, and she fell onto the ocher cushions, stained with stage blood. Her legs were parted; she was doused and gleaming.

I wanted to eat her again, but she wouldn’t let me.

“Fuck me. Hard. Now.”

I saw myself in the rehearsal mirror across the room. I thought I looked scared. I looked away and poked at her, rubbing myself along her wetness. She pulled her shirt over her head, then grabbed me from behind and pushed me in. Her heat was electric. I started gently, but this was clearly not what she wanted. She pushed herself against me. “Harder,” she said.

I tried.

“Harder,” she said again.

“I don’t want to come.”

“Then don’t come.”

Her forbidding tone freed me. I started to move now more like I thought she wanted me to. “Fuck me like you hate me,” she hissed quietly. “Fuck me like I’m garbage.” I held her against the couch, my face inches from hers, and started to drive against her harder than I thought I should. “Like I’m garbage,” she said again and again.

I looked up and saw us in the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. My face was flush, my eyes wide with anger and need. I saw my dark body and, beneath it, the heap of her glimmering whiteness. I watched myself drive into her over and over. “Yes, yes, yes…” I heard her chant as I played at rage. I stared down at her body. It glowed and mocked me. I suddenly needed more of it. I pawed and groped. I gripped her ribs and shoved and knocked and pushed. No purchase on her white flesh was enough to satisfy me. I wanted to own it. I wanted to destroy it.

She stared up into my eyes now, her head tilted, her upper lip curled, a searching, helpless look on her face. I fucked her with a fury I didn’t know I could muster, and as I did, whatever she was seeing on my face appeared to be what she wanted to see. The refrain of her unruly sounds now began, words dissolving into the host of almost animal sounds she started to make, the croak and blare of a climax breaking forth from somewhere much deeper inside her than before. She came, and I came, too, but my orgasm didn’t end with my release. Impossibly, I stiffened further, long with lust as I kept at her. The more I did, the more I wanted, the more she came, the harder I got, the harder I gave. I lost track of time. I don’t know if we were at it four minutes or forty. All I know is I never experienced anything like it before. Or since.





3.


I wouldn’t hear from Riaz until six months later, in the spring of 2013, when the play he’d come to see was awarded a Pulitzer. His congratulatory note to me was warm. I responded in kind. He replied with what seemed a halfhearted invitation to meet up for a drink: he was busy; never the master of his schedule; could we look to a night week after next or sometime before Memorial Day? As the appointed evening approached, an inevitable excuse was made, another date proposed, followed by another excuse and request—now sent from his secretary’s email account—to reschedule.