Work Text:
“The world stretches boundlessly,
Grain falls,
Agamemnon dies.”
After slipping back into his robe, he reached over and twisted off the lamp. His arm found its way around my shoulder, sedate, effortless, and he started reciting something – lines of a poem. They came out soft, almost lost. He didn’t look at me, his gaze distant, focused on his pen-like fingers, straight and chillingly cold. It struck me then, the deal was long done, half the night passed, and I knew nothing of his profession. It’s a rule of the trade, you see, not to ask about a client’s business; private lives should remain private in these fleeting affairs. But I love to watch and guess. I’ve seen careless men leaving folders of contracts or financial statements out on tables and cautious ones who’d take their used condoms with them. I’d always study them, learning their habits, even mimicking their thoughts and speech, as if it would somehow benefit me – like I’d be good as a detective or a spy. Maybe it’s just to pass the monotony of physical entanglement, or to glean some small feeling of a stranger’s life. Someday, should I leave this line of work, and need to change my identity, play someone I’m not, this sort of database building could be useful, but that seemed too far from me then.
So, I just looked him over, spinning stories in my head like a way to kill time – what kind of client would make the subsequent plot most interesting? A police officer, a fugitive, a priest, perhaps? None of those felt like him.
“Hungry?” he sighed, stroking my hair. “If you want a late snack, just say so. Though I suppose McDonald’s is all that’s open.”
“I haven’t eaten all day,” I admitted, leaning in to give him a dutiful kiss. “But that’s not what I was thinking.”
“What then?”
“Poets, the down-and-out, pretentious kind, are usually not very popular with prostitutes,” I teased, pecking at his nose and quickly brushing his thin, sneering lips. “They have no money, yet always want something money can’t buy. But that’s not you. You dress like a proper company man, the kind who checks his emails three times, even for spelling mistakes. How could you be a poet?”
“There are different kinds of poets,” he smiled, his pale green eyes reflecting a cold glimmer. “Some are trapped by life, not lucky enough to live freely – but I’m not one of them. Since last year, nameless poems have been blocking my thoughts. If I don’t recite them, their rhythm beats in my nerves like little hammers, keeping me awake, even after making love with a beautiful boy like you.”
“An unheard-of mental symptom,” I replied, skepticism thinly veiled behind a mask of concern. “Maybe the Muse is suggesting a career change.”
“Thanks to her, I’ll consider it,” he finally looked at me. “Sure you don’t want to eat first? You’re clearly malnourished; your face is pale, even your hair is brittle.”
“Fine, as long as you’re paying.”
As I watched, he retrieved his phone from his coat pocket and scrolled through Uber Eats for McDonald’s. He selected a standard Big Mac combo and handed it over. My eyes glazed over as I scanned the menu, filled with burger and chicken options, unsure of what to choose. My appetite seemed to have abandoned me. By nine o’clock, as I left the house, hunger gnawed at me. I had taken a bag of beef bones from the fridge, left there for over half a month, and paired them with wilting tomatoes and onions to simmer in salted beer-water. My culinary plans were thwarted by the empty sugar jar on the stove. I recalled I had used the last spoonful in my morning instant coffee. A soup without sweetness was a culinary sin I couldn’t tolerate, so I turned off the stove, grabbed my jacket, and headed to the nearby convenience store for sugar. That day wasn’t meant for guests, but the store’s proximity to the long-distance bus stop led to our encounter.
He stood there, gaunt, clutching his suitcase, coat creased, hair a mess. As destitute as I, yet under the streetlamp, something warm framed him. The wind’s chill pushed me to ask, “Sir, might you have a cigarette?” His suspicion lingered a few seconds before he resolutely asserted I was too young to smoke – though later, his moral compass seemed more lenient – I was first taken aback, then amusedly explained it was a mere pick-up line. Fortunately, he understood quickly, and thirty minutes later, we were a tempest on the hard, damp, striped sheets of a roadside motel.
The motel, his prior booking, was both modest and run-down, painted in a garish shade of peach, and costing only sixty-five dollars a night. Romance was as lacking as the unsettling odors of dust, mold, and decaying insects were prevalent, all amplified by the pungent air freshener, causing my hunger to wane amidst waves of dizziness and disgust. Gradually, the intensity of our intimacy reached my limbs and filled the emptiness within me, leaving no room for the desire to eat.
“Sorry.” He seemed to read my mind, his tone apologetic. “I only decided on this trip yesterday afternoon. The decent hotels were nearly fully booked, and the available rooms were severely overpriced. I thought, even if it’s dismal, I could endure it for one night. I never expected to meet you.”
“Don’t mind it; I don’t scorn impoverished guests.” lay against his chest, my fingers idly scrolling the menu. “This is far from the worst place I’ve ever worked.”
I settled on an Oreo McFlurry, placed the order, and handed the phone back to him. He glanced at it, displaying a slight disapproval, and cautioned me against consuming ice cream on an empty stomach. I looked up, confronting him with a rebellious gaze, and curiously found his lecturing demeanor to be quite serious.
“Then share half your fries with me,” I pouted. “You’re meddling in small matters like you’re my father – or mother.”
He sat up, surprised, still meeting my eyes, but shifting the topic. “Little boy, where are your parents?”
“One’s dead, the other’s in a mental institution,” I said flatly. “It happened when I was eleven – five years ago. I’ve lost count of how many have asked me that question.”
“Sorry,” he stammered, using the word for the second time. “I hadn’t realized.”
“It’s okay,” I laid back. “You’re British, right? Your accent has a British edge to it. I bet you’ve never been here before. I mean, since your ancestors retreated from the port across town two hundred years ago, Baltimore has shut out all unwelcome guests – leaving only its own to kill each other in a gladiatorial arena. Considering that I’ve witnessed twenty-eight shootings in the streets, restaurants, or next door, my little family mishap seems trivial. When you see people die in front of you, leaking their last like punctured plastic bags, swept into trash cans by the wind, you stop believing in firm boundaries between life and death.”
“Yes, I’ve never been here,” he mused for a moment. “But I’ve been to New York and Chicago, cities of chaos and crime. I once saw a Hispanic girl with a knife in her chest, bloody, under ivy in a park. I called an ambulance, and she survived. The police said it was a random gang attack – today her, tomorrow me, or anyone. So I can somewhat imagine this place. But you’re right, Baltimore is different. Compared to those metropolises, it’s like a tent in the Silent Hill, where the blood doesn’t splash out, and the screams are mute.”
“Mmm.” I turned to face the narrow window, watching an indistinct plane fly through the foggy sky. “Everyone’s on the move, but it seems like no one ever really goes anywhere.”
“Have you never thought of leaving?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I’m a bit afraid of the outside world.”
I partly grasped the irrationality of my statement – why fear escaping a miserable life unless afflicted by Stockholm Syndrome? Finding a way out isn’t objectively difficult in this era. Blue states offer government welfare, churches operate charity schools, and scholarships exist for decent grades to attend public universities, find a job, and never return. I hesitated for a moment, and decided not to explain why I felt destined to stay amid the graffiti-covered, dilapidated houses and the violent streets – they had become a part of me.
Maybe he’d call it teenage pathos. In retrospect, it probably was.
A pang of pain and restlessness gripped me, as if my racing heart had become an inescapable childhood home, its pounding echoing like gunfire. I propped myself up against the headboard, seeking a more comfortable breath with a change of position. In the dim light, the blanket slipped from my chest, revealing something he shouldn’t have witnessed.
He frowned, reached for my wrist, and methodically unbuttoned the loosely hanging shirt. His actions carried an unspoken demand. “Why so many wounds?” he asked, his voice stern. “Who’s been harming you?”
“That was a long night, too many people involved,” I replied, dodging his question with a dry chuckle. “Normally, I could take five guys like you, no problem. If they’re strong, two or three.”
“So, how many that time?”
“Eight. It pays better.”
He fell silent again. I noticed he didn’t talk much, but when he did, his sentences were often long, formal, and complex.
“Another round?” After a while, he released me, his fingers tracing a path from my hip bone to my lower abdomen. “I can pay more.”
“Are you ready again?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s wait for the food first.” I turned my face, nuzzling his neck. “Wouldn’t want to be interrupted.”
We didn’t wait long before the delivery guy called. We went out together to pick it up, our clothes disheveled, hands intertwined, the marks on my exposed skin perhaps hidden in the night. It was clear we had just been in bed together, but nobody seemed to care at that time and place. As we descended the metal stairs, I noticed the first flakes of snow in the gray-blue sky, still illuminated by cold starlight, casting a glow over the motel’s enclosed yard as if showing a way out of the drudgery of daily life. Minutes later, the motorbike arrived, and after a brief “Good Night” in heavily accented English, we were back in our room, unpacking the food and turning on a rugby game replay on Sky Sports. He casually produced a small bottle of brandy from his suitcase. My envious stare earned me only a cold can of cola. He was merciless. A hypocrite, I thought, who could bed an underage prostitute without remorse but cling to the law over trivialities.
As I was pondering this, he suddenly pinned me down, kissing my forehead, then my lips, sharing his sharp, spicy brandy flavor that instantly overpowered the sweet taste of ice cream and Oreos.
When he gripped my ankles, parting my legs, an unexpected fear welled up within me. It was astonishing, considering we had been intimate just hours before, his presence still fresh, which should have been devoid of any embarrassment. However, his gaze had changed, carrying a strong hint of pity. This pity introduced a new form of relationship I struggled to comprehend – one where lust met resistance, where our conversations had transformed a short night from the raw, primal thrill of strangers into something more heavenly and unreal, like an infinite moment within a finite universe.
I closed my eyes, tuning in to the rhythm of my heartbeat and holding him close with my knees. His fingers began to explore, pressing slowly before increasing in speed and intensity, producing an eerie sound that reverberated through me. A sharp pain returned to my stomach.
“You like that?” he whispered.
I just nodded.
In this way, the roles of the server and the served seemed to switch. He kept checking in on my feelings, making sure that the carefully orchestrated destruction was just right. The overhead light I’d turned on upon entering was still on, its bright white flame revealing everything, making me feel like an object on display in a glass case. Even with my eyes closed, the light was blinding, until his smooth palm covered it.
“Come in,” I begged, as a rusty red lampshade appeared in my retina.
He stopped without agreeing or disagreeing. Strangely, emptiness made me more aware of his eyes, focused on my shameful secrets. It lacked sensuality, devoid of eros, making it seem like it could dissolve in a sinister blizzard. The late autumn wind howled outside, the sounds of the heating duct and rustling leaves urging me to forget, or more precisely, magically turning my current experience into a vanished memory.
“A dying stray cat,” he said, his voice soft and gentle, as though a smooth leather glove was caressing my face, “refusing to go to a shelter, even refusing to eat.”
“Don’t be so presumptuous,” I snapped, slightly angry. “A client should stick to his role. Do you think you’re some kind of savior?”
I glared at him and caught a mixed look of surprise and regret in his eyes. For a moment, I felt somewhat pleased, as if I had momentarily gained the upper hand. But then tears filled my eyes, which I had to blink back. He smiled slightly, looking at me with warmth and interest, like an owner observing a newly adopted cat. I decided to play along, demanding that he continue what he’d started. “Either give it your all or let me take control,” I said, grabbing him. “Or were you saving yourself for someone else?”
“Wouldn’t dare,” he answered, spreading my legs again, clearly pleased. “Didn’t expect you to be as temperamental as that strand of hair on your forehead.”
“How?”
“Defiant.”
Without further preamble, he was inside me, foregoing any lubrication and relying instead on what remained within. My response was tight, welcoming a long-awaited union and return to this carnival-like lovemaking. His skill was impressive, like wheels running over my drugged organs, a pleasure even in pain. I bit my lip to suppress a cry, then bit his shoulder repeatedly until he was marked, but he merely stroked my spine, unbothered. “Aren’t you afraid I might have a disease?” I asked. “Not at all,” he replied without even frowning, “or else I wouldn’t risk it with a street hooker.” I saw a reckless side to him. Could he be like me, not fearing death?
My thoughts turned to several recent news stories about prostitutes murdered in Baltimore, one of them in this very motel just two months ago – no wonder it was so desolate now. The splattered blood on the white wall flashing on the TV appeared before my vision darkened by a climax, igniting a strong desire to die, like a mental illness inherited from my mother. Could this man be here to kill me? I thought, almost calmly. If so, that would be what I wished for, but I wouldn’t die alone, like those pitiful colleagues who became pink gossips representing weakness and debauchery. I would take the murderer with me to relieve the loneliness of the grave and to avoid being entangled by a gluttonous demon with half my DNA...Imagining us rotting together in the mud, I couldn’t help but laugh softly. I inquired if he was willing. He asked, “Willing for what?” I said, “To go see hell.” He misunderstood and agreed, then changed position, expressionless but acting with ferocity. After hundreds of thrusts, he reached out to tightly choke my throat, pausing –
“It’s a bit cold,” I said.
“You’re just too hot inside,” he replied.
Afterward, he took me into the bathroom, guiding my eyes to the mirror, to the ravaged reflection of myself. Whispering, he spoke of a concept from Eastern traditions called “Red and White Bodhi.” My mind was still clouded, my abdomen felt as though it had sprouted something feminine, drunk with the fulfillment of acceptance. I contemplated with a detached part of my soul how some destinies are determined by this tragic animal joy, misperceived as a gift from heaven – necessary to induce various passive yet willing sacrifices. Being a mother is a sacrifice driven by lust (like my own), and so is being a prostitute who ends up murdered. God secretly tutors those seeking eternal connection with youth in the art of self-destruction. But was this the place where death had waited for me? It didn’t seem so.
In the mirror’s glinting surface, my unknowing lover of one night turned the faucet and wielded the showerhead, meticulously using a moist towel to wash away the bloody remnants of our coupling, while the white steam gradually engulfed our ghostly reflections – including the scarred marks on my skin that seemed cursed. Just then, laughter from other guests filtered in, and a Justin Bieber song started on the TV, abruptly shifting the solemnity into lowbrow comedy.
“You always treat stray cats this well?” I kissed his jaw and tried to clear some haze from the mirror, unveiling his reptilian yet strangely compassionate green eyes. “It could make me ravenous.”
“Your idea of ‘good’ is certainly unorthodox.”
“Indeed, I’m far from ordinary,” I retorted, ice in my voice. “If you haven’t discerned that, you’re blind.”
He cocked an eyebrow, not uttering a word, yet the corner of his lips subtly lifted. He leaned over to adjust the water temperature, then signaled for me to sit on the edge of the tub. As he began washing my hair, there was a clumsy elegance in his hands. It was clear he wasn’t adept at this – maybe he had never done it before. Despite his attempts at cautiousness, he unintentionally hurt me more than once. The ensuing ten minutes were excruciating, yet I fathomed what this gesture meant – it was something more. No john had to be this nice, and I had nothing to reciprocate. I recalled a winter three years ago when I met a more fervent man, only slightly older than me, who insisted on running away with me. We had arranged to meet at the station on Christmas midnight, but I wavered, took an earlier short-haul train, and squandered my monthly income on a solitary three-day sojourn in Pennsylvania.
“What motivated you to take up this job?” he asked casually as foam wove through my hair.
“I was abused by my father from fourth grade. He threatened that I’d end up a starving orphan if I went to the police,” I said, feeling the water trickle down my brow. “I got used to that role and took it wherever I went. Better to get paid for it than not, right?”
He paused before venturing, “You said your father’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“The cause of death was...”
I thought long and hard, then said, with calculated precision, “He was blown up. A gas leak ignited by a spark while he was asleep. I should have died then, too, if I hadn’t gotten up early to take out the garbage. Can you believe it?”
I never received his answer. Perhaps since the hot water was dwindling, the sensation in my hair turned frigid, and his wrist quivered as his fingers skimmed my head, affectionately massaging my scalp, neck, and ears. It was a touch evocative of the sort of care one might reserve for a stray cat.
Returning to the bedroom, I noticed a faint light piercing the ominous clouds outside the window, with sinking stars flickering intermittently among the falling snow. It seemed time to bid farewell. He dressed hastily, inquiring about the payment method: Venmo or Zelle? I responded that cash was the best option for our covert transaction. He looked a bit embarrassed, confessing that in these times, people do not carry paper money anymore.
I chuckled and told him I knew, then touched his thin lips with my hand. “Then give me this,” I said. He looked at me, unsure if another kiss was on the agenda.
I ignored his confusion, taking a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Lighting up and inhaling deeply, I stood on my toes to kiss him. The lingering taste of brandy was still there, faint yet distinct even mixed with smoke, like the lingering aroma of honeysuckle in dry lakeside grass. Bare, my body might have seemed disconcerting. I felt his hand hesitating over my hips before he simply rested it lightly on my waist.
“That’s it,” I exhaled. “We’re square.”
He looked troubled. “You want so little. It feels like a swindle.”
“Swindled what?” I smiled. “I can’t get pregnant. If I could, you’d have real worries, with someone seeking child support from infancy through college.”
“I’d rather raise the child myself. You’re a child too,” he said casually. “You blushed, even though you’re the one who started this conversation.”
I fixed him with a stare, “How long until you leave?”
“Ten minutes,” he shrugged. “I have a meeting downtown at eight. It’s a bit of a drive.”
“Then use these ten minutes to fetch a cup of coffee. Turn right as you leave the motel; you’ll find a shop at the corner,” I replied coldly, returning to bed and enveloping myself in the crumpled sheets. “Goodbye.”
“Darling, could you do me one more favor? I have a somewhat impolite request.”
“The services have ended – but go on, let’s hear it.”
“I may not be a poet, but I share with them a certain penchant for documenting the beautiful. In the words of Rilke, ‘the beginning of terror which we are barely able to bear’ – only I use images.” He pulled out a small, worn camera from his suitcase, probably a second-hand find on eBay. “I carry it always. Thought I might shoot the blue-light district after the meeting, capture a crime if lucky. But it seems the crime has already happened.”
His words were veiled but clear enough, placed the decision in my court. I had no real objection to private photos getting out, even ones that showed my face. Being forced on camera wasn’t new to me. These images couldn’t harm me, but I needed to know if he was sincere.
“Plug in the memory card. Show me what you’ve captured before,” I commanded, “I’m curious about your taste.”
He followed my instructions and handed me the camera. I quickly scrolled through the images, a painful suspicion driving me to see if there were other “prey” recorded in similar circumstances. But there was nothing of the sort. The frames were filled with trucks, silver lotus flowers, snakes crushed on the railroad tracks, scarlet rocks, thriving fences and trees, violins glistening in garbage heaps. The rare human figure was a ragged beggar, surrounded by bedding and feeding a flock of frenzied pigeons with crumbs of dry bread. It seemed that he was rather lonely. Caught off guard by a sudden mix of panic and empathy, I passed the camera back, consenting to his request. “Photograph wherever you like,” I said as plainly as I could, “I’m unclad, and without a shred of shame.”
“No, you’re the shyest person I’ve ever met,” he spoke in an even, muted tone. After a pause, he closed the curtains and switched off the lights, leaving only the glow of a burning cigarette. His shutter clicked fast, the picture taken before I realized it. I saw a vague image – likely the area around my last right rib, where ash had fallen on an overlapping scar. But the ash didn’t look like ash, and the scar didn’t look like a scar.
“Give me an address,” he zipped up his case, “I'll send you the prints.”
I thought this might be a play for another meeting, otherwise an email would’ve done the job. But I didn’t probe. I took a moment, grabbed the hotel notepad and pen, and jotted down a made-up address. He accepted it without a question.
This sparked a twinge of guilt in me, leading me to abandon my plan to stay and sleep until checkout time. I got dressed to see him off. We returned the room key together and stood on the damp, leaf-strewn street, waiting for his hired car. The snow had stopped; the dim morning light made the city seem still, creating an illusion that our tryst hadn’t yet concluded. I wanted to hug him but was restrained by the cigarette pinched between my fingers. He must have noticed, for he pulled out another smoke, lit it from mine, and started puffing. Our smoky trails twisted in the crisp, cold post-snow air, as if leading us back into the transient world of the warm, yellow bathroom reflected in the mirror.
“Guess what I’m thinking?” I asked.
“What?”
“Look at all these parked cars. The owners are probably still asleep. We could steal one and escape to...Oh, your driver’s here.”
He paused for a few seconds: “Next time?”
“Next time.”
The taxi pulled over, and as he hoisted his slender shoulders to put the luggage in the trunk, I turned away, stepping on the crisp corpses of leaves and heading in the opposite direction.
Since then, I never saw him in the flesh again. But he came to me in dreams several times – peculiar scenarios far removed from everyday life. Wars from another era, or doomsdays on some distant galaxy. In these dreams, we rarely spoke. And if we did, the words would evaporate by the time I awoke. These dreams puzzled me. Amongst all my visitors, he wasn’t the most exceptional. His entrance and exit from my life had been more than ordinary. I had known men far more charming, men who had left deeper imprints. But none of them ever visited my dreams.
Four years later, I’d left Baltimore. I was in Broadway, playing bit parts in theatre. There, I met a girl with a past similar to mine. She was a former prostitute who later modeled in New York City. One evening after a show, we sat down over drinks and began sharing stories about old encounters. She spoke of a wealthy but shady Southern European migrant. I told her about him – about that night and the subsequent dreams.
She swirled the ice in her glass, smiling curiously. “What was so good about him?” she teased.
“What wasn’t?” I muttered, more to myself. “On the outside, he was like those uniformly-bound thick books in libraries. But inside, there was a kind of danger. Sometimes I think, if he turned to writing and adapted those poems into plays, I’d want to act in them. I’d imagine something like ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ or ‘Magpie Murders.’"
“Do you wish to see him again?”
“I don’t.”
I shook my head, thinking of the neat fold of that note he’d tucked away. Was the fake address ever discovered? Perhaps not. Perhaps he never planned to contact me, or perhaps that frustration with an untraceable address never happened in this universe. All those murky tests, those half-hearted promises, nothing but echoes after a moment of raw closeness.
After the bar closed, I found myself in an all-night internet café. To dispel the jumbled lights and music in my mind, I started a ritual I had been doing for years – watching explicit videos taken by abusive clients, while simultaneously reading a math book I’d downloaded on my Kindle. I was deeply intrigued by number theory. It seemed to hold some ultimate truth unrelated to humanity. Yet I could never concentrate. In those instances, the lurid, violent videos, filled with blood and cries intended only for perverse pleasure, would soothe my restless nerves. They were both familiar and foreign, casting twisted shadows like a hazy brass bell jar. They enveloped me, like a kaleidoscope built on mathematical principles, covering the “me” still bound by time with the multiple forms of the timeless “me.”
When I finally realized that all I had been viewing were gravitational pulls from an unnamed black hole, the healing effect of those videos waned, dwindling in frequency until I stopped altogether. That was the year I turned twenty-three.
In the waning days of that year, on an afternoon so utterly mundane it felt like an eternity, I stumbled into a small art gallery in Greenwich Village, where a photography exhibition was being held. It was the moment of my life when I truly, shockingly reencountered him, a cataclysmic conclusion as if scripted by a divine playwright. The display introduced the photos as coming from the Google drive of a deceased journalist, shared as per his last wish. Mostly they were from this “contemporary adventurer and humanitarian” – Arthur Kirkland was the name (written in a chiseled font reminiscent of Time Magazine’s covers). He had attended Warwick University and Northwestern’s school of journalism, worked for Bloomberg, then freelanced. During the last two years of his life, he’d photographed a dozen Middle Eastern countries. He’d died in an explosion like my biological father, a victim of a commonplace terrorist attack targeting civilians. Solemn words seemed to add a layer to this hitherto unknown non-fiction artist, a halo designed to comfort those mourning too late, enhancing the dark barbarity of his works with the supposed soulful tendency to memorialize greatness.
Bored, I scanned over the images – skeletal remains outside a mosque, human legs in a granary, torture tools discarded beside tires, bedbug-infested clothing of the displaced living in cemeteries, flowers on graves, insane asylums conducting hymn choirs clad in shrouds. For an instant, I found myself wondering, in God’s eyes, aren’t people much like greasy disposable utensils in a kitchen? But upon closer scrutiny, there was one image unrelated to death.
It was the photograph he’d taken of me, framed modestly and hung on the back of a pillar. Under daylight, the marred patch of skin looked like a terrain sprinkled with fine sand, marked by geological activities, meteorites, and solar storms. Compared to the surrounding works, it exuded a spectral atmosphere of tranquility. A long title, seemingly taken from the original filename and printed like a rest symbol beside a brief description, read: “A Traveler Visits a Small Planet that Was Not the Destination.”