My lover’s smile was brighter than the sun at first light,
still fighting its way through the early morning mist. He wiped his eyes,
blinking away the last remnants of sleep, revealing the bright sparkle that
caught my eyes months before, and held me for countless, sleepless nights
since.
My lover took the metal steps in his brisk stride, made
barely a sound before landing on the long platform and sauntered the short
distance towards my waiting arms. I’d kept the seat next to me vacant all
morning, anticipating his destined arrival, the moment when he would take his
rightful place next to me and the rest of the world would melt way.
Perhaps we would share something sweet today; a crisp,
buttery delicacy that would awaken our still slumbering senses and pave the way
for the carnal ecstasy bound to follow. I kept several such delicacies close,
and tested them often for the perfect buttery crispiness. My lover had a
delicate palette, and I had to be sure not to disappoint him.
He was an older man, so I’d have to move slowly to match his
wizened pace. Four years of hard-won life experience were already under his notched
belt when I was but an unexpected accident twixt my parents’ loins. Four years
of worldly wisdom. Four years of pain, and passion, and longing had my lover
over me, but I was a fast student. I would learn quickly, eager to devour every
morsel of my angel’s knowledge to get closer to his valiant beating heart.
My lover approached. I held my breath. Would he speak to me
today?
No, today he’d play hard to get. He would pass by me without
a word, choosing instead to keep to our secret language, words spoken in silence
and transmitted through the gift of touch. Discretion was my lover’s favorite
game, and I played my part faithfully. To the untrained eye, the brush of his
heavy book-bag against my delicate shoulder was a slight. But I knew better;
this was his excuse to look at me with that smile that could melt glaciers
around the most cynical of hearts. “Watch your arm, kid” was his way of telling
me that he too shared the heat of my forbidden desire.
I had to be careful in my response. The bus was almost full
by the time we arrived at my lover’s stop that morning, and prying eyes were
everywhere. Do I wink at my lover to let him know that I understand his thinly
veiled meaning? I hold back; too pedestrian. Perhaps a verbal reply was in
order. Is this the day that I finally speak to my beloved? Do I tell him that
his gentle book-bag kiss hurts enough to make me yell bad words, especially the
thick, sixth-grade textbook bulging beneath the barely fastened zipper?
But too late, my lover continued to the back of the bus,
followed by his witch of a twin
sister, who secretly whispered in his ear against me and once again took my
celestially ordained spot by his side for the long, winding ride to school.
Seven thousand year old pyramids rose from the distant sands
outside my window. Our bus made its way beyond the city, along the rural canals
outside Giza where children younger than I bathed next to the water buffalo.
“Lucky you,” I thought when I saw them. “You don’t know that cold sting of
love.”
My thoughts drifted to Queen Nefertiti, whose beautiful
busts - cheap knock-offs meant to exude distinction - were all over the city.
What would she do if she were in my seven year-old shoes? Had she a lover as radiant
and mysterious as my own? Were she alive today, would she lust after my one and
only, prompting me to wrestle her to the ground, snap her little man-stealing neck
and then face the royal executioner with quiet dignity while my lover wept
silently next to my bereaved mother and the dozens of my classmates each
wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with my heroic visage? “He fought, and he died…for
love,” they would tell their grandchildren on the holiday bearing my name.
The bus came to a screeching halt in the school driveway. I
waited in the front seat for my time alone with Prince Charming. Another
buttery delicacy melted between my lips – this one wasn’t good enough for my
lover, anyway. Nor were the eight before it, their wasted crumbs scattered down
the scarred battlefield that was the front of my shirt. Crumbs could be brushed
away. Not so, the longing for my destined.
My lover passed by without a word. That game again, was it?
He descended the stairs. Surely he would glance my way…
Surely he would ask me why I was sitting there like a dumb
fuck with biscuit crumbs all over myself…
Surely…
I walked, head bowed into my second grade classroom. Mrs. P,
our British-born teacher with perm blonde hair and big glasses was passing out
some sort of worksheet. I suddenly woke from my lovelorn state. “Screw me
sideways with a 2-by-4 on a trolley (insert second grade equivalent of said
expletive here), I forgot about the math test!”
I put my little book bag on top of the cubbies on one side
of the room, and sat next to Maha, the smartest girl in our class. I liked Maha
a lot. She was sweet, and gentle, and beautiful, and she didn’t cover her paper
the way the other kids did when they took tests in Mrs. P’s class. She had the
common courtesy to cover her answers only after I’d had a chance to copy them
down, and I had the common sense to copy down a few of the answers wrong lest I
attract too much attention to my newfound mathematical wizardry, or worse yet,
the envy of jealous curs who had thus far only marveled at my success.
Even then I knew that cheating in math was only cheating
ones self. But I had no choice. My mother told me that I could have anything my
heart desired if I made perfect grades on my report card, and I had thus far
succeeded in all but this one subject. And since my lover seemed immune to my
subtle advances, I would have to resort to Plan B, also known as Mommy Power,
to make him mine.
Halfway through the test, however, I came to my senses. I
couldn’t cheat in math, I had to learn this stuff so I could grow up to be a
doctor and make lots of money and buy a big house in America where I could have
parties with J.R. from “Dallas” and the motorcycle cops from “Chips”. Mommy
Power was off the table. If the dingbat that had been ignoring me for the
better part of the last year while I got fat playing front of the bus food
taster was gonna be mine, I had to walk right up and get him…today…at recess.
Not first recess, mind you. That was a mere ten minutes to
scarf down a sandwich and rehearse what I was going to say to a guy four years
older than me and twice my height to convince him that he should hang with
little me.
Social studies came next. The day’s Arabic lesson was a
blur. I recited all the assigned verses from the Quran like I’d been nursed in
a seminary. Science class was child’s play. When the bell rang for 2nd
recess I whipped out of that room like I was on my way to stop the Sadat
assassination. I had 30 minutes to find one six grader, confess my undying
love, live happily ever after, resume a very important game of vampires and
victims with my friends, and return 3 library books.
I decided that the best way to do it all was to go in
reverse order. Twenty-five minutes later, I stood on the precipice. I’d stopped
to eat grass, because I’d never tried it before and it happened to call my name
on that particular day, and I think I may have bitten some kid along the way, but there was no time to linger on such taste profiles. I had arrived in the nick of destiny. Up on the short wall in the distance I could already see the assistant principal clutching her
brass bell and checking her watch. I’d have to work quickly.
A swirl of sixth graders ran before me, like a herd of
stampeding oxen from a National Geographic documentary in the midst of some
advanced, undecipherable upper classman's game winding to a desperate close. The
proceedings were violent, and, unlike the innocent games of my peers where we
occasionally nibbled on field greens or human flesh, these kids were knocking each other
down, on purpose. They were getting each others clothes dirty right before
they had to go back to class. This was utter savagery, and it was as
frightening as it was exciting.
The assistant principal raised her arm and rang the first
bell. “Oh no! I’m out of time.”
Like Pavlov’s dogs they ran, all the good kids in packs I
usually led, back to their little classes and their little loveless lives. Half
the field emptied in mere seconds. But my lover had a rebellious spirit. He
remained, apparently in the throes of some victory celebration, for he held the
shoe of some unseen adversary with glee.
“This is my moment,” I thought. “I’ll catch him on a high.”
I ran forward, past running children and the giant strewn
bodies of fallen sixth graders.
When I reached him, his back was turned. He was yelping with joy.
“Ahmed,” I called.
He didn’t hear me. I called again.
“Ahmed.”
He turned,
looked down to see me. I shook when I spoke next.
“Will you be my friend?”
He smiled…
Then he laughed.
Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and cried like a spent
harpee, “Hey, he wants to be my friend.” and he pushed me into the arms of
another sixth grader with a missing shoe that I recognized even then as a lesbian
and said, “Here, go be friends with her.”
He never said another word to me again.
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