TUESDAY
05 NOVEMBER, 1996
ISAIAH

               If my muscles didn't love to parody granite and my stamina wasn't as awful as it is, I would be pacing right now. Frenzied laps back and forth in front of my poetry wall with fingers rooted in my locs, desperately sucking a cigarette as I spit out insipid arguments for why I should go through with this and cogent ones to call it off.

One: I don't bring people here. I might have had sex with a third of the student body at Oxford but never in my bed. The single mattress doesn't have a frame or a headboard but even that is a monumental upgrade from the one on the floor I slept on until last year.

Two: this is Dorian. There's no version of tonight that flows into a regret-free morning. After six years of rehearsing loathing, why do I face him with a chest I've torn open myself and say here, destroy me all over again?

Three: this is Dorian. He's not a stranger who'll be sated with any body. He comes with four suitcases of reveries and "remember when"s that will go off like a smoke alarm when I head for the path of least resistance, which is actually the path of forgetting myself and getting it over with. He'll know when I'm faking, and worse yet, when I'm sincere.

And what if I can't live up to Isaiah-from-six-years-ago? Memory has a tendency to embellish, like a translator who rewrites a novel to their taste and is never caught until someone else who also speaks both languages and happened to read both versions comes along and exclaims but these don't even resemble each other! Dorian might have a divine version of me he expects me to perform but how can I if I'm not given a character brief?

As though summoned, Dorian appears in the door frame. He holds his towel, not at the waist like most men, but around his shoulders so he'd be naked from the navel down if I hadn't splurged in bath sheets twice the size of an average towel to make the plunge from the shower to the arctic air beyond it less fatal.

I drop my gaze to the carpet between my socks and don't move from the edge of the bed. I still buy unscented cleaners — hand soap, body wash, shampoo, and detergent. It'd be perfidious to think he didn't notice. I want to assert it's not because of him but the protest is exactly what will confirm that as the sole reason; a criminal caught red-handed blurts it wasn't me!

I still buy unscented soaps and it's entirely because of him. Just as the five packets of camomile tea hidden out of my sight on the top shelf of my pantry are entirely because of him, because when I go to the shops a degree too tired, my hand reaches for it on its own. Because of him or for him? What's the difference?

Dorian's bare feet scuff the wooden threshold. 'Is the mood over?'

'What mood?' I ask without looking up.

'Um... the mood?' It comes out as a question. 'Americans are always talking about "setting the mood".'

I drag my palms down my face. 'Dorian... my attraction to you isn't some pendulum controlled by fate. There is no mood.'

Despite the statement, I don't look at him, not even when he sits next to me and I sense him studying the poetry taped onto the wall across the bed. It's not the same poetry I had in my bedroom in Halsett — not that he ever saw my bedroom in Halsett to have a point of reference.

'Did you write these?'

It's an easy mistake to make: each poem is in my handwriting. I transcribe them from library books to have copies I can annotate and the author names are jumbled into my notes.

I shake my head. 'Don't write anymore.'

'Why not?'

'Nun to write about.'

I always swore I'd never become a cynical artist and if the only way to avoid it is to stop being an artist, I'll stop writing. That doesn't mean I won't drown myself in heartbreak poetry by others.

We sink into silence as into a swamp. It's thick and sodden around our feet. The longer it stretches, the harder it will be to get out. We have no idea what predators inhabit it.

Dorian dries it up to a meadow of wild hay. 'Are you nervous?'

A shrill laugh rakes from my chest. 'I think I'm past the point of getting nervous bout sex.'

'You only seem a little nervous...'

He doesn't, I realise. He doesn't sit pin straight, doesn't tap at his thighs, doesn't screw up his face or blink repeatedly. All he does is draw an arch into the carpet with his big toe which is a sign of the opposite.

Something is severely wrong in the world if Dorian is calm and I'm a tangle of anxieties.

'Are you worried about God? Because–'

'I'm definitely past the point of worrying about God.'

I hunch deeper and, with elbows digging into my knees, knot my fingers into my locs again. I'm worried about you, Dorian. I'm going to regret this. I'm going to hate myself for doing this tomorrow and I'm going to hate myself if I don't do this, so what am I supposed to do?

I want time to stop. I want tonight to be infinite and tomorrow to never knock at the door. The past is a logbook of consequences for the future and I've never before yearned for both to seize existence as intensely as I do now. What good has memory done for anyone? Amnesiacs are the victors in life.

'Okay.' A moment of hesitation. Unless it's just a moment of silence. 'Can I touch you?'

I finally look at him. His tenderness blurs behind my tears. I can't remember the last time someone asked me that. That's not true, the last time someone asked me that was Dorian the day he left. I don't care — whatever pain will come tomorrow, I don't care. This fluttering warmth in my chest will be worth it.

You killed me. The least you can do is bring me back to life for one night.

My consent dies in my throat when Dorian reaches for me and releases one corner of the towel so it slips from his shoulder. The orange light of the streetlamps outside my window sculpts him, carves out his abdomen and the veins that lace his arms. The muscle isn't obtrusive but worthy of gawking nonetheless. He still shrinks himself in public; nobody would guess he hides this under his clothes. The Dorian who left six years ago had a cushioned stomach and twigs as limbs.

'The fuck happened to you?'

He smiles sheepishly and shrugs in that way Dorian does, not with his shoulders but a twitch of his neck. 'I started going to the gym. Turns out, not all exercise is like elementary PE.'

Guess he has a lot of spare time when I don't take it all up.

He hovers his hand above my thigh. 'So... Can I?'

I turn my attention back to the carpet as my leg starts to bounce. 'I don't have a six-pack to show you... Six ribs maybe.'

Dorian has always been the most beautiful person I've seen. Now he's also the hottest person I've seen.

What am I in comparison to the American boys he's had his choice of? Dorian has the perfect "British accent", perfect skin, perfect body. I've got permanent dark circles that, on my worst days, look like someone's punched me in the face. My skin hasn't seen a tan since I left Halsett. I've always been ill but now I look it too.

His hand retracts to his own lap. 'Yakiri... What's going on?'

You. You're being too kind. It's too much. There's no pocket in my body to keep it, there's no space between my bones for anything but shame and bruises. My stomach will reject it like rat poison.

'Do you want me to leave?'

'No.' When he doesn't seem convinced, I add, 'I want you to stay.'

'Okay.' A moment's pause. 'Can I put my hand on your leg?'

Every variation of tonight flashes behind my eyes in the span of a single second, as if this moment is the pivotal one that forks my life into a million alternatives. Yes, you can, and yes, you can stay for a second night, yes, you can stay forever. Or yes, you can, but don't think I've changed my mind about hating you, I want you gone before I wake up. Or no, not my leg, skip the foreplay and get it over with. Or no, I changed my mind, you should leave. Or no, we can do something else, no, you can stay, I can make you tea, but no, no sex.

'Yes.'

So Dorian places his hand on my leg and it stops bouncing. His palm is warm even through my jeans. 'What's going on?'

I nail my stare to his hand. His hand on my thigh. It's real and it's warm and it's gentle.

'I won't look like your American boys.'

'What American boys?'

'Your American boys.'

'I don't understand what you mean when you say it like that.'

I exhale sharply and gesture wildly with my hands. 'American boys who're always happy and smiling with their perfect teeth, perfect straight white teeth that definitely ain't got no gaps, who say, "oh my God, I just love your accent". American boys.'

Dorian stammers a moment as he struggles to unpack the ramble and decide what part to respond to. Eventually, he says, 'I love your tooth gap.' And when I raise an eyebrow, insists, 'I do. Shay– Sorry. Isaiah, you're the most beautiful person I've ever seen. You could make filing taxes look attractive.'

My laughter carries all my worries with it from my stomach and out of my mouth until I'm clean. When Dorian smiles, squinting and with dimples deep in his cheeks, he's the same Dorian I knew six years ago.

Our shared laughter is a seam that draws us closer until, smiling still, we're centimetres away.

His top lip is as dark as the rest of his skin which contrasts with the pink on his bottom lip. The skin is flawless: balmed and without a single crack. It beckons me. I can't peel my eyes away — I'll have to close them.

'Kiss me.'

He does. His lips fall on mine, so gentle they're hardly there, like a dream you have whilst aware you're dreaming. There are two options: immerse yourself or wake up, yet both of us — unwilling to admit this is a dream — test the boundary between the two. Soft pecks coalesce into waves that push and retreat at a steady rhythm. Still, our mouths remain shut. How wonderful to be this shy when we all but tore each other's clothes off in his room an hour ago.

With habitual ease, Dorian cups my jaw to incline my face upward and slightly to the left. Our mouths slot together. At the first touch of his shower-fresh skin, I sigh.

Dorian takes it as permission to pull away and, with his thumb lodged into the corner of my jaw, tilt my head further. His mouth finds every bit of skin on my cheek and temple, behind my ear, down my neck, and the valley above my collarbone, which he uncovers by shifting the neckline of my shirt. My fingers dig into the soft muscle of his back as I leave my throat unguarded, free to spill whatever sounds he draws out of me.

For the second time tonight, he pries my shirt from my jeans to slip his hand under it. Now, he crosses the path to the piercing that dangles from my belly button without rest stops.

Freeing his lips from my clavicle, Dorian stares at me like he still can't quite believe I pierced my belly button of all places. He stares at me how he used to when I read him my poetry, how I'd expect someone to stare if they'd been gifted a star plucked from the sky.

He tugs at my blouse. 'May I take this off, please?'

My heart hammers paranoia into my veins. Whatever this is, it's not fucking. This is the furthest thing from "just sex". I need to fix this, fix myself, fix the cage around my heart that keeps it from beating.

But not tonight. Tonight, I don't have the restraint. Tonight, I'll make love with him.

I nod. Because he's Dorian, rather than tear it over my head and toss it on the floor, he undoes the buttons, eases the silk down my shoulders, and lays it on the foot of the bed. I'm warmer without it...

The kind of sex I'm used to doesn't involve undressing. It's trousers puddled around ankles and shirts twisted into makeshift handles to avoid touching skin. Nakedness has rebuilt its novelty. As Dorian's gaze trails from the Star of David low on my chest to my dangling belly button jewel which becomes an extension of starlight, it feels the same as the caress that follows.

Rather than undo my belt, he lifts his hands to my hair to ease the cuffs and spirals from my locs. He collects them into his palm and stands to leave them on my dresser. When he turns around to see me shock, he explains, 'They could cause breakage.'

I leap from the bed — my vision swipes to black but I stride through it until I feel his skin — and yank his mouth to mine. I welcome the taste of camomile and honey — more; I scour every hint of it from his throat.

I concede. Take me home.