Translation: Livia Franchini.
Another winter had passed and I had done nothing but age. It was just over seven months to my fortieth birthday. I resisted it, I had changed the lightbulb in the bathroom to conceal the signs of decay. I took good care of my body. I went to the gym three times a week, with an annual pass I had bought on sale. I wasn’t looking for friends; kept the music loud in my headphones as I lifted weights, stood in the back row during group classes. In the changing rooms I got dressed quickly and went to shower at home. I had no money but ate well, having a taste for fresh and lightly seasoned meals. On some nights I drank too much. I’d buy a bottle of wine from the market and leave it in the fridge until late afternoon, when I sat on the sofa with a glass and a plate of olives, and slowly drank it all. I was trying to make up a kind of melancholy, shed tears for no one in particular, then dragged myself off to bed, forgetting to set an alarm. In the morning I’d open my eyes feeling already late for something, but could never remember what it was. I was always behind on the things that I needed to do. I supported myself with translation and editing work, as well as dog sitting for the neighbours who had no time to look after their dogs. I spied on their lives through the front door, silently admiring the newborn baby they were holding in their arms and observing the dark circles under their eyes due to the lack of sleep. I had no business of my own, familiar or sentimental, and spent most days at home, alone. I wasted the hours, fell behind with the pages that needed translating, daydreamed of adventures within reach. I liked a boy who lived in my building. He was about twenty-five and lived with his parents. Often he crossed the courtyard while speaking on the phone, and hearing his voice I went to peer at him from behind my window. He had switched to wearing shorts a few weeks prior; his dark, unshaven legs attracted me. I fantasized about accosting him with an excuse: a punctured bike tyre, heavy grocery bags. Whenever he appeared before me, though, all I was able to do was rummage in my bag, pretending to look for something, or otherwise act as if I were absorbed in reading a text message on my phone. One evening, as I was coming home from the gym, I spotted him as he crossed the yard, carrying a suitcase. A small car was parked outside the gate, its lights off, the interior lit up from inside. In the driver’s seat was a girl with short hair, waiting for him with a tense smile on her face. The boy was smiling too; he walked past me without noticing I was there. I kept watching, as he threw his suitcase onto the back seat and grabbed the girl by the neck, to kiss her on the mouth. I imagined them outside, in the night, holding onto each other on the deck of a ship. I lowered my eyes and turned away, trying to think of somebody who might want to touch me with the same kind of urgency. I went upstairs to my flat, feeling embarrassed for wanting a person who was so clearly out of my reach. I pulled down the shutters and promised myself I’d never peep through them again. I realized I had nothing to drink, tried to comfort myself by scraping out the bottom of a tub of ice cream. Within moments the ice cream had melted, losing its colour. It tasted way too sweet. I remembered I hadn’t had dinner, but didn’t feel like eating anyway. I rinsed my mouth in the kitchen sink, took my computer and went to my room, leaving the gym clothes on the floor and leaning on two pillows on the bed. I opened the internet. For some time, I had been reading through the announcements on dating message boards. I had downloaded a couple of apps, but hadn’t been in touch with anyone yet. I didn’t even have my own profile. Yet, over the last few days I had become obsessed with trying. A stranger couldn’t threaten my disposition for solitude, and so I decided to try. I picked a random app, searched through my photos and uploaded one in which I wore no make-up and had my hair bundled up. I deliberately chose an inconspicuous image, I didn’t want to diffuse the sense of embarrassment I had experienced earlier. Shame can be a helpful catalyst, particularly when you’re lacking other resources.
I began to trawl through men’s profiles. After a few minutes, all the faces looked the same. I just couldn’t get into the game, I didn’t believe that any of those stares in the camera could be directed towards me. My attention was caught, eventually, by a pictureless profile. In place of a user photograph was the sketched outline of two hands, tied at the wrists with a ribbon. Underneath, the caption said: p., master, 31yo. get in touch if you’re curious. The vacant space in my stomach suddenly shrunk. I couldn’t tell if it was hunger or fear. I thought about the hundreds of nights I had been spending alone, and pictured a run of future nights, fraught with insomnia. I tapped on the message tab. I was trying to come up with something clever to say, considered changing my picture to a more fascinating one. But I couldn’t be bothered. I had always been dominated by apathy, always thought of the right thing to say once it was too late to say it. I felt tired, all I wanted to do was drift into sleep. I wrote, ‘Good Evening,’ then deleted it, then wrote ‘Hello’ and pressed send. Straight after, I shut my laptop, placed it on the floor and switched off all the lights. I dreamt of nothing. The following morning, a notification awaited. It was P’s reply. He had sent me a photograph: a selfie of him standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Black hair and eyes – but his gaze contained a lighter reflection. He wore a black polo shirt with no logo and the top button open. His hands were small and square, his arms soft, with only a minimal outline of muscle. In the background, there were white tiles decorated with a row of tiny green flowers. It looked like an apartment that had been renovated years before, by people who no longer lived there. I desired to find out more. We started exchanging messages. P. asked questions, I’d reply without hiding anything from him. I sent him my number and after a few days he called me. I was thinking about the strangeness of the situation and the possibility that anyone at all could be at the other end of the phone line. I made up an excuse to hang up after a few minutes, but his voice kept resounding in my head. I asked for permission to write to him. In my emails, I told him about my childhood fantasies, stories that went back to the time I played with dolls. They were always games of submission. The dolls were giving out orders one couldn’t help but obey. I said that most times it had happened in the morning, when I would feel defective for not wanting to get up, like I deserved to be straightened through being punished. He replied with brief, considerate statements, throwing in a few more questions. One day he asked how far I felt I’d be able to go now. I thought about it for a while, and then said I could do anything he wanted. I wanted to meet him. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘Don’t look for me. Just wait.’
I pretended to carry on with my life. I walked the neighbours’ dogs and wasted entire afternoons in front of my computer. I went out drinking, acting as if I cared to participate in conversations. I hadn’t told anyone about P. People would be discussing work, which had changed, and now barely existed as it used to. They said excessively good or bad things behind successful people’s backs, or made idle talk. When they moved on to complaining about things, I became distracted. For the vast majority of the time my mind was occupied by P.’s hands. I had studied them at length in the only picture he had sent me. Large palms, square tips, fingernails bitten down to the quick. I could picture him sticking his fingers in his mouth and chewing on his nails to soothe his nerves. I fantasized about the flavour of his saliva, imagined tasting it. I was trying to forget my own hands. P. had ordered me not to masturbate until our first meeting, but time passed, and he wasn’t getting in touch. I had given myself one rule: I couldn’t look at his photograph more than once a day. I did it before I got on my bicycle to go shopping at the market. I’d take out my phone, put in my earbuds, and choose a random track among the ones I had saved. I’d let the song begin playing as I unlocked my bicycle and tapped on the image gallery, looking for his picture. If I stared at it long enough, I’d catch a spark in the dark eyes observing me, and felt invisible forces at play in the shadow to bring us together. But I had never really believed in such things, I just hoped P. had saved my number. I’d force myself to calm down, lock the keypad, shove the phone in my pocket, and get on the bicycle with music playing in my ears. I leaned my foot on the pedal for the first time, then I pushed down, and like that, one breath after the next, I convinced myself I could go another day without him. One Saturday morning I woke up early and found a text from him. It said: ‘You’ll come to me this afternoon.’ He gave me precise instructions on how to get ready. Black lingerie, suspender belt, red nail polish, cherry red lipstick and a natural eye, loose hair. He’d send me the address later. I was in my pants, sitting in front of a cup of coffee. I had just poured almond milk over my bowl of rice puffs. I left the cereal fizzing on the table, getting soggy as I checked my bank account on the website and looked for a beauty centre where I could get nail polish applied to my hands and feet. Afterwards, I went to a store to buy a suspender belt. I’d never owned one before. I was a person with no taste for clothing; my wardrobe was full of old jeans and washed out tshirts. I had only encountered men interested in full nudity before. The store specialized in lingerie and the assistants were nice, used to dealing with customers’ insecurities. In the changing room, I looked at myself in the mirror and felt strange. Whatever was up with me? I had made a decision to go to the house of a total stranger. As far as I knew, it could’ve been a different man altogether from the one I had seen in the photograph. It could’ve been another man, or it could’ve been more than one man. The changing room lights were designed to blur out the contours. I looked at myself for a couple of minutes, turning left and right. I concluded I didn’t look like myself after all. As I cycled back to my flat, I passed a pizza place where I sometimes ordered a plain margherita. On any other Saturday, I would have been thinking about what film to watch on the sofa, eating my rapidly cooling pizza. Later, I would have been listening to the voices of people who crossed the small square below, picturing banks of fish swimming unthinkingly, unaware of what it meant to be free. Eventually, I would have stood up and closed the window to make it dark. Maybe I would have felt a sudden arousal and I would have masturbated in front of a random porno. At some point, I would have shut my eyes. All I needed to come was the sound, though I kept it on low, afraid that the neighbours might hear. I was sweaty when I got home. I ran a shower, setting the handle in the middle between cold and hot, then checked my phone for new messages. P. hadn’t written. I still had time to block his number. I could take back the words I had said, archive the things I had written and relearn to live without ambition. While I thought about that, I had been washing, drying and moisturizing myself and had sprayed a Japanese vanilla and sandalwood perfume – a friend’s gift – onto my wrists and neck. My outfit was ready on the bed so that I wouldn’t forget anything. I put it on calmly, one item after the other. After a few attempts, I managed to clip the suspender belt onto the sheer black stockings. I pulled up the zip of my ankle boots. I looked at my outline in the glass door of the living room and then I realized I needed to pee. I reapplied the lipstick and dabbed at it with a piece of toilet paper. My telephone flashed. It was a message with his address. I felt ready to go. The neighbourhood was on the other side of the city. Before leaving, I checked the bus route on my phone. There was one change I didn’t have enough time for, so I decided to take a rental car with an app. I followed the route on google maps. There wasn’t much traffic and the city looked empty, sedated by the heat. I stopped in a square about one hundred metres from the address P. had given me. I didn’t drive often and I wasn’t very good at parking. I didn’t want him to see me from the window and think me awkward.
As I walked the last stretch to his house I began to sweat. Two of the suspender clips had come loose and a stocking was slipping down my thigh. I kept pulling it back up, taking care not to stumble in my heels, as I reread his message to check the door number. It was a short, one way street, with no shops. On one side was a row of garages with their heavy doors closed. I tried not to look. They filled my mind with images of metal latches and butchering hooks. I turned around, the right place was at the other end: an anonymous building, residential planning from the 1960s and typical of this part of the city. Grey cement and narrow, light colored bricks. Next to a small metal gate was the doorbell plaque. There were printed-out names next to each of a handful of buttons – except for one, which simply carried two handwritten initials. I composed a text message: ‘I’m here.’ The gate clicked open before I received a reply: ‘Third floor. Take the stairs.’ I stepped into a private courtyard. At the back was a front door, ajar. I hesitated, then went past it. I took off my sunglasses and waited a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the light inside. One side of the corridor was covered with a smoked glass mirror that concealed my blemishes. I paused. I didn’t have a full-length mirror at home and wasn’t used to seeing myself in high heels. I liked what I saw. For a moment I thought about turning around and walking away, but then I took a deep breath and began climbing the stairs. I went up on my tiptoes to avoid making any noise, holding onto the turquoise green handrail, thinking about the leftover buckets of sea coloured paint brought in by the renovation company to save money repainting. My anxiety fed on such random thoughts, enhancing my hearing. I could hear the clicking of cutlery, flushes of water and washing machines spinning. I reached the third floor and stopped before a door that was open only a crack. I held my breath as I wondered whether it was better to knock, ring or walk directly in. The door opened. It was P., he was smiling. His teeth were small and regular. The hair, black and shiny, was cropped short. He wore tight jeans, trainers and a white t-shirt. I caught a vision of a thin gold chain around his neck. His gaze was the same as that of the picture, as if to say: so long as you’re here, don’t take anything too seriously. He said, ‘Please, come on in.’ I recognized the voice but spotted a southern accent that I had missed on the phone. The house was small and neat. A corridor led from the doorway, lined with well lit mirrored wardrobes on one side: I didn’t dare to look at myself this time. Further on was a living room with a sofa, a rug, a TV and a dining table with four chairs. The room had two windows with white curtains open by three-quarters. I saw the sky, a few scattered clouds, other buildings and balconies, antennae and air conditioners’ engines. In the background, a piece of the dome of Saint Peter.
P. was circling around me, studying me. I kept still, letting him do it. At one point, I noticed I was resting my entire weight on the left side of my body. I tried to shift back onto my right foot, but it felt strange. I had the impression I had accidentally ended up in a student’s flat, dressed inappropriately for an afternoon visit. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a math copybook open on the table, next to the leftovers of an afternoon snack. All there was, though, was a bottle of red wine, unopened, with two glasses and a corkscrew. ‘Do you want a drink?’ P. said. I asked for some water. P. turned around and went into a small, windowless kitchen. I watched the way he walked, telling myself I had made the right choice. He came back almost immediately with a bottle of water, clutching it in his square hand. He said, ‘It’s cold.’ My throat dried up with thirst. P. filled a glass to the brim and passed it to me. ‘Thank you,’ I said, trying to ignore the voices in my head that had taught me to be wary of ice cold liquids since I had been a child. I drank the water and began to tremble. ‘Are you scared?’ he asked. He came closer. He asked, ‘Can I hug you?’ I said yes and closed my eyes. I smelled the perfume on the fabric of his t-shirt. It smelled like young male sweat, fabric softener and deodorant spray. We stayed like this for a few moments, then P. took two steps back and said, ‘We’ll start when you’re ready.’
He guided me into the room next door. I was trying to remember the last time I’d had sex. With whom? I had forgotten. In any case, the idea of meeting someone, going to the cinema, to a bar, or out to eat, seemed to me, in that moment, like something distant and utterly unlikely. P. shut the door behind me and we were in his bedroom, in the half-light. There was a large bed with chequered sheets – I had nearly identical ones at home. On the left, a chest of drawers and a window, with its shutter half down; on the right, a door left ajar, which gave onto a bathroom. He was standing by the window, observing me in silence. He said, ‘Take off your dress. Just the dress.’ It had thin straps. It was dark blue and just under the knee. I slipped it down, balled it up, and placed it on the bed. The presence of P. gave me an unusual feeling. It was unknown and familiar at the same time. It was unlikely we could have met before due to our age, and because for years I’d been carefully avoiding this part of the city. I used to come here before, for another room. When I was seventeen, I had been dating a boy so I could run away from my home, and take shelter in his. In those days, I moved diagonally, telling lies, always one thing in place of another. But I was the only one who ultimately fell for the plots I invented. On that occasion, I had convinced myself that I wanted that boy just so I could spend time with his family. I hadn’t known what pleasure meant, when it was shared with another person, and didn’t know how to ask for it. Sex, with him, had always been in a hurry. His company bored me, but it meant I could have lunch with his parents and feel like a part of something. Like all the other sentimental relationships I’d entertained during my teen years, it had ended badly.
In that moment P.’s voice brought me back to the present. He was saying, ‘Perhaps you’re not even aware of this, but you were late. Nineteen minutes. I told you to be here at four. You came at four-nineteen. I have to punish you now. Come here.’ He pointed at the chest of drawers. His hands shook lightly. His eyes were glowing with a different light. I saw myself from the outside: my stockings barely held up by the suspender belt, the black lingerie, my loose, perfumed hair, the lipstick. I felt like the incarnation of a fantasy that wasn’t entirely mine. P. seemed so ordinary in his plain cotton shirt, jeans, no tattoos. He reminded me of the post office employee I exchanged a couple of lines with whenever I went to pay off my bills, or the young shop assistant who I always smiled to for too long when I went to buy chewing-gum or batteries at the tobacconist’s. I could have mistaken him for any of the boys in beige uniform who delivered boxes with their vans, or for the postman on his electric moped. I kept looking at P. without being able to form an idea about what line of work he might be in. I didn’t know his name. The truth was that in that moment I felt like I had even forgotten mine. P. said, ‘Bend over, place your hands open against the chest, show me your ass. Look at my hands. Can you see? They are small but they know how to hit. You will feel it in a moment. Count for me. Count to nineteen, like the minutes you made me wait. No. Count to twenty.’ He said: ‘I will give you an extra one for free.’ He was smiling, then he stopped talking. I did what he had asked. I found myself with my right cheek leaning against the chest, my legs wide apart, my ass exposed. He was behind me. He leaned in close to my ear and whispered, ‘Count.’ I shut my eyes to feel the shift in the air as he brought his hands close to my body for the first time. He waited to touch me, hesitating for a few seconds that felt interminable. I heard the noise of the slap first. The pain rushed up after it, carried by the blood that ran under my skin, to the place where his right hand would leave a collection of red marks, revealing themselves gradually like polaroids. This was the beginning. Then he put his fingers in me and began to move them lightly. He alternated gentleness with my most tender parts with slapping and spitting in my face, my nipples squeezed between his fingers. He took me to the limit, but he didn’t allow me to come. He called me bitch, slut, then bitch again. He said, ‘Good girl,’ and I laughed. He said, ‘What are you laughing for?’ and slapped me again. I felt happy as he dragged me around the room on all fours, pulling me by the hair. Maybe that was why he had wanted it loose. At one point, he stopped right in front of me and said, ‘I feel like coming.’ I was down on my knees at his feet, staring up at him as he unbuttoned his jeans and slid them down his thighs, to fall at his ankles. We looked into each other’s eyes, and I marvelled at his solid calves, his five-a-side quadriceps. I ran my hands along his legs. That moment stirred up a new adoration in me, the epiphany of a fetish I didn’t know I had. I loved his flesh, his muscles and his body hair. I lowered my head and began to lick the top of his suede Adidas, taking the tip of a lace in my mouth and holding it between my teeth. I looked up at him. P. gave me a nod, and said, quietly, ‘Yes.’ I pulled on the lace with my mouth and the knot fell apart. He said, ‘If you want you can use your hands.’ So I slipped off his shoes and socks, and he sat down on the bed and kicked off his jeans. His feet were like his hands. Short, squat and beautiful. The bottom was smooth. I took one between my hands and kissed it while he kept holding me by the hair. I kissed him in the soft places between his toes. Then, P. stopped me, saying, ‘Enough. Now I really want you to suck me off.’ He took a perfect cock out of his pants: not too big, dark and straight. I began to lick it, letting him push my head down, letting him push it right down my throat until my eyes filled up with tears. At one point, P. pulled out of my mouth. Squeezing my hand around his cock and moving it quickly, he said, ‘I’m going to come all over your face.’ I closed my eyes and ran my fingertips gently against my clitoris. I came like that, like when you touch yourself at fifteen, while P.’s hot cum slid down my face.
Afterwards, he switched on the lamp on the bedside table and took out a towel from a drawer. It was rough and smelled of lavender. He cleaned me up. He helped me to my feet and checked my knees. They were red and he brushed two fingers tenderly across them. He ran his hands along my buttocks and said, ‘You might have a few bruises tomorrow.’ I twisted my head to see. My bottom was covered in small red spots. P. stretched out on the bed and asked me to lay down next to him. I let myself go. His closeness was loosening the subterranean tension that vibrated since a long time through my body. His armpits had a stronger smell now, and it went to my head. My mind ran through all sorts of images. I could hear a voice in my mind, it whispered that this afternoon could have lasted forever. P. was holding me in his arms. He asked, ‘Are you ok? We can talk now if you want.’ I wanted to ask him how he had first discovered that he liked certain things. How many people had been here before me. Who had taught him how to fit a clothes peg onto a nipple in the place that hurt the most when you pulled it away. I didn’t know anything about his life and I preferred not to ask questions. I felt like time had stopped altogether. I didn’t wear a watch and had left my phone on a side table in the hallway. We embraced like that for a long time in silence, as I let myself be lulled by the darkness that came in through the window, fantasizing about hiding here in his flat, where no one could find me. In my head, I made a list of the people I’d miss the most. I felt sorry for my bicycle. I had tied it up outside in the courtyard of my building and it’d get rusty after the first day of rain.
After some time, P. said, ‘You can go now.’ I held my tongue between my teeth to avoid asking him whether we’d see each other again. I got up, gathered my clothes. I zipped my boots up, onto my naked ankles, folded the stockings and placed them into my bag with my phone and house keys. For an instant, I fantasized about forgetting them there, leaving behind a trace of my scent, but couldn’t stand the idea that P. might throw them away or give them to someone else. He was following my movements with his eyes, sitting on the bed. I finished getting ready, went up to him and said, ‘I’m going.’ P. led me back to the door with his slouchy walk. As I looked at him, I felt I had learnt something about the way to take up space. We embraced once more, without talking. Then I turned around, stepped out of his flat, and began climbing down the stairs, no longer worrying about the noise of my heels. The evening was welcoming and smelled like summer. I was in no rush to get home and didn’t feel like isolating myself in the plasticised interior of a car, so I walked towards the metro station. The train arrived in just a few minutes, I got in the first carriage. It was covered in graffiti and with no air conditioning. I weaved my way through groups of boys and girls who were off to spend the night in the city centre. The air smelled like fruit shampoo, spiced aftershave and candy. I wanted to press my mouth against fragrant skin. I felt like a newborn vampire who had just discovered the possibility of insatiable hunger. I imagined P. in that moment. He hadn’t put the lights on. He remained on his sofa, sitting in the dark, his hands splayed on his thighs, going through each moment with me, wanting more of it. I looked for my reflection in the glass above the seats, hoping to spot a sign, a different expression on my face. I only looked disheveled. I was happy; the metro train hurtled ahead, wobbling on its tracks, as I fantasized about a future of romance.
vale 