Words by G.D
Photography by Ahmad Naser Eldein
This piece is a supplement within the “Sana wara Sana” issue
They each have given to all the others complete access to each other’s body. They massage each other until the secrets of tension and pain are revealed. Now they massage each other again to cure the pains. They learned to heal each other by saying magic words over and over again and they learned to bring loving vibrations to the body to make it strong again. All this they share with all those around them who want to know.
– Larry Mitchell, The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolution
They don’t know each other. They don’t even know each other’s name. Maybe they don’t need to. They still end up here, hearts pumping blood double-duty. They’ve both passed an inspection to get here. Maybe it was the ephemeral series of head-to-toe photos exchanged in orange and blue frames. Maybe it was a silent conversation prolonged by a calculated exchange of eye contact pregnant with expectation. Maybe a grin sealed the deal, or maybe it was an elbow and a knee that didn’t move when the other grazed it.
He leaves the door ajar and stands behind it, and the other walks down his hallway. The visitor pokes his hand through the door, and then his head. A nod welcomes him in, and he pushes him against the door to close it. What follows is the longest exchange their tongues have had so far.
They reveal themselves to each other in the best of ways. Raw skin exposed without a care, prickled by the excitement of vulnerability. After taking off his clothes, he walks forward, bending to the gravity of the bed in that room. He’s entered his space, and soon, space in him. Then, space with him, and by the end of it, space with(in) him. For now, though, the gravity turns electric and they sparkle.
Their nerves pulse out of their fingers as their hands get to know it all. They’ve learned never to underestimate how much they can know and learn and feel through touch alone. Abundant gentle touches that follow the turns of the other’s anatomy. His hands glide from his hips to the bridges of his ribs, caressing up and down his shoulder blades. Their grooves fit so well that they wonder if they were made to lock into each other, this thought quickly dissipating with a gluttonous lunge into the other’s neck.
The visitor learns a lot about the other, all at once. Half of his attention is drawn to the details of a life lived in this room. A corduroy jacket discarded on the chair, a flag hung up on the wall. The teabag label dangling from the rim of a mug with a cartoon character, partially scrubbed off. A pile of papers stacked high on the desk, and an empty ashtray sat atop. A line-up of books fallen over, their annoying book jackets removed and stacked on the shelf above. A birthday card and a parking ticket.
Photography by Ahmad Naser Eldein
The other takes him and the moment in. Talk tries to creep its way in. They distractedly exchange questions and confirmations and expressions of joy and gratitude between their interrupted moans and heavy breaths and kisses.
Chest hairs tangle like velcro. Fingers interlock. Legs braid together. Their breaths talk in alternating turns, pushing their bodies in rhythmic dialogue up and down together. It’s one of the many conversations they have without using their words, in a language they’ve spent years (re)learning. Ironically, as they learnt this language, feeling as though they were born knowing it and were made to forget it through sticks and stones and broken words.
It feels like an act of reclamation and resistance and camaraderie. This language refuses to die out, and they make sure of that. Every kiss, slip of the tongue, tug at the neck, caress of the ear, graze of the nipple and erect frot against each other is a reclamation. This crosses his mind, and so does the fact that he’s simply overthinking it in his routine habit of trying to make sense of it all, and that he shouldn’t be thinking about this right now.
Bodies tensed up in euphoric sensation never feel this tender outside of this room and the air between their two bodies. Throbbing never feels this gentle. Involuntary gasps for air never feel this welcomed. He pushes back against every thrust, but outside, a pushing back is never a welcome. Their bodies twist and turn so seamlessly and with so much heat that, to the naked eye, they seem like two bursts of rapture personified, rolling around in the sluttiest of daisy fields.
Grunts, sudden curves of the back, the scrunching of the toes become didactic tools. They’ve learned the tastes of the other. Their mouths making their way up and down their bodies teach them the taste of the other, their tongues confidently mapping out the terrain. Sweet, savory, the slightest bit salty.
Photography by Ahmad Naser Eldein
His tongue and hands work in such unison. He would never know that outside of this room, the man holding his consciousness hostage to the present moment with those instinctive twirls is the most uncoordinated and clumsy person he’s met thus far.
They’ve charged the air with such a dizzying and unassuming air of lust. Burdens like ego and pride seem so futile here, and they let each other enter and indulge in their tension of wills in the most careless of ways. One presses the other down and cathartically thrusts into him, spins him around to no offense. Every toss left and right, push up or down, is met with a grin. Perhaps it’s the same grin that first brought them here.
Synchronized as they are – a life-long-ease level of synchronization – they take each other to the peak of grateful ecstasy. The world around them now deemed irrelevant, what started out as whispers turned into loud cries of exhilaration. They get so high up that they drench each other in the highest display of mutual love. They don’t waste a drop and kiss once again, a kiss to relax, and a kiss to thank, part of the elaborate language they know.
They stay linked and braided together, staring at each other and the ceiling above. They could’ve sworn that, through it all, that ceiling had flown off. While they begin talking, their hands and bodies carry on in their special language of ours. His fingers tracing the whirlpools that coast across his chest, and the peaks and dips of the valleys of his pits.
They undress again, and details about themselves get pushed out with the same force and easy pleasure as when they first came in unison. Beautifully or painfully, depending on how their day had been going, this stranger seems to be the person they are most comfortable with.
Photography by Ahmad Naser Eldein
They talk through their pasts, excavating details to explain and re-explain. They discuss their family and their friends, the gratitude they hold for some of them, the anxiety of the conditional love they give them. They expose their fears about their futures, and the ruptures that the path they eventually choose might bring. They reflect on their present and the weight of it all. It’s a process of making sense of the past and future to gain the sanity to live in the present.
He recounts that his father used to always forget to pay his tuition – he was the last of 8 children and, like the tuition, largely forgotten about. The other discusses the dentistry exams he needs to pass soon, and how he needs to provide for his family. He responds with a story about his friend’s ex and the kinks those two got into, and another about the time he sucked off his gym coach. The other shares his dream to move abroad and run away, how he would fuck as many men as he could for the first year, but then settle down in his “happily ever after”.
Then talk about how much they needed this today, how they needed to be drained or filled or held or thrown, and giggle about how much they enjoyed it.
Between each anecdote and the moments they saw themselves reflected in the other, he puts on another article of clothing. He double-checks that he has his wallet, keys and phone, readjusts the legs of his boxers that were riding up his legs. The other keeps his hand held onto the crease of his knee as they wrap up their conversation. They walk to the door, back to their whispers. They reassure each other it was nice meeting up, and lean in to press their bodies and lips against each other one last time.
Their eyes meet with even more warmth than the first time, and that same grin of theirs returns to their faces. He rubs his thumb against the coarsely shaved jaw carrying that grin and tells him to text him when he’s home. He won’t text him, and he won’t check if he did. They both know that. And maybe, if at the end of it all, they had managed to turn the walls of that room tender enough, they ask for each other’s name. Or maybe, they don’t need to.