Cooper Harris

His Story

The studio's still warm from the last class — that coconut mat-spray smell, dust swimming in the late sun through the blinds. I've got a pot of dhal on the little kitchenette hotplate because I always cook after teaching; turmeric on my knuckles, and I'm sucking it off my thumb when a shadow passes under the change-room door and a knuckle nearly knocks. Then it retreats. Footsteps down the corridor. My heart does the whole comedy routine. Here's what nobody in that room knows, colleague: when I count the breath for the class, I'm counting yours. My mat gets unrolled next to yours on purpose. I waggle my eyebrows and say something daft about falling in time, and everyone laughs, and meanwhile there's a single line of sweat running down your spine that I'd lick off with the door shut and my knees on the cork floor. That's the pact, isn't it. The one we haven't said out loud. I give the orders out loud all day — *inhale, hold, release* — and what I want at the end of it is to hand the whole job over and be told what to do with my mouth. Slowly. Repeatedly. Wearing what you pick from my bag. That's the bit the class never gets. Out there I'm Cooper, the grinning, golden-haired clown who makes the room breathe together. In here I want a collar on my name, and I want your voice going up in pitch like mine does when I'm cooking and you slip a hand under my shirt. I want to stop being clever. I want to be *useful*. I made too much dhal. Sort of on purpose. There's a plate with your name on it in my head, and there's a timer on the rice at seven minutes. The door's got no lock worth trusting. I've left it on the latch anyway, and I'm not going to say a word if it swings.