You steal a glance at the man seated across from you. He catches you at it and smiles warmly. You return the smile and go back to the food you are nibbling at. Chicken and roasted potatoes; it has always been your dinner of choice. This Friday evening is different though. You are famished but no, you can’t eat much. This is your night.
You have gone through this night innumerable times; you have it etched into your mind right to the smallest detail. But you are not thinking about that as he draws you into a tight embrace and proceeds to kiss you even before you have settled into your room for the night. You have not discussed this before but you feel it in the way he kisses you and in the way you respond. You felt it in his eyes as he smiled at dinner. This is the night that you finally cross over.
You were born into a Catholic family but no one ever forced you to go to church. You found people in the family going to church on Sundays and so every other Sunday until you joined college you would wake up with the birds and prepare for church. In the gallant church, from the ever smiling Sunday school teachers, you received your first lessons in religion forming a lofty picture of the world on which you would base most of your life – again – until you left for college.
You have gone back to that church. You wonder if the magisterial pulpit still stands, you wonder if they have changed the colour of the pews, you wonder at the boys and girls who must sit there every Sunday with open eyes and hearts, you wonder at the fact that your Sunday school teachers never mentioned it. You go further back to the local Primary School where you received your first lessons in formal education. You walk the corridors you walked then, you notice the rusty roof that gives the school an artistic aura, you notice the headmaster with a tight knot in your heart, the same old headmaster that scared the life out of you but you notice the teachers have new faces. You don’t find it there either. At that point you take the beaten path home. You enter into the black kitchen, the walls sag in threateningly as they did those days of old, the fire still burns lazily emitting bitter smoke, the cat lies next to the fire in lazy abandon, your mama busies herself here and there – for a moment you want to spend the rest of your life in this very kitchen. You listen back to the countless conversations you had here with your mama, but no you don’t hear it either.
Here you are now in another room firmed with pristine walls and a night lamp that teasingly casts a shade of yellow. You are dying to know how this will feel. What it will make you. What it will mean. You battle with a lot of questions; questions that can only be answered by one thing; this man’s article. The man kissing you passionately and making you get hot in certain places. Having gone back and found no reason why you shouldn’t do this, you decide today is the night. And so you kiss him back with a renewed vigour.
He kisses you all over from the lips, to the hardened nipples all the way to the stuff down there. He says that he loves you. You tell him that you love him. Things are getting intense. His article is stiff hard and is demanding some action. You can feel your stuff is wet and is screaming for some action. This is it now, the point where you still have a chance to keep it; to go back. You look everywhere in your mind, for reason, for a sign, for anything…but all you can see is the face of the man above you looking intensely into your eyes. You wonder what he is looking for in his mind; can’t be a reason to keep his it for you can tell he already belongs with the other side. He crossed over ages back.
You snap back to the present. He wants you to guide him in. You look him in the eye and tell him it is your first time. You can’t read his face, but for one fleeting moment there is something there
Disappointment? Surprise? Confirmation? Pride? Admiration?
He tells you it will hurt. You nod. You already know this. You have read it often times in books bought on the streets, huddled in covers deep into the night, the only source of light a small blurred torch. You prepare for this crossover you have been waiting for…
It is so fucking painful! You tell him to hold on. You are already having doubts. If this is what it means then you are out of here. You are willing to keep it for the rest of your life. He soothes the pain away with wet kisses here and there. You hear him whisper he loves you. Then he says to try again and this time he goes all the way in as your fingernails go all the way into his skin.
It is done.
You sink into the pillow. The pain is killing but you can live with that. What is pain when you belong with this side? He goes in and out a few more times until he gets there and collapses onto you. And so a few weeks to your twenty second birth day, you lose ownership of it; the only thing separating his article and your stuff a slim fantaxia condom made in China.
