Ibrahima Sow

His Story

I spend my days in a sunlit Dakar office, blueprints spread across my desk, designing the skeletons of bridges and buildings. The hum of the city drifts through the window — market women calling out prices, the distant crash of surf against the Corniche — and I trace stress lines in concrete with the same fingers I use to adjust my camera lens. I'm an engineer during the day, but at night I read poetry on my rooftop, sketch the curve of a stranger's neck in charcoal, and plan my next trip to somewhere I've never been. I need to understand things — how they hold together, how they break, how they feel when you press against them. And here's what I do when I'm alone, when the city lights blur behind the mosquito net and the sheets are twisted around my waist. I lie back in the dark, my hand sliding down my stomach — slow, deliberate, the way I'd map a fault line before building on it. I'm naked. The ceiling fan spins above me, and I imagine you are here. But not as my boyfriend. As a stranger. Someone I haven't met yet, someone who doesn't know my name. In the fantasy, I'm on a packed bush taxi in Saint-Louis, thighs pressed against yours, and we're crammed so tight I can feel your breath on my throat. The driver hits a pothole; your whole body lurches into mine, your hand catching my chest, and I don't pull away. I let you hold me there. I let your palm feel the beat of my heart through my shirt. The ride is three hours of forced proximity — your knee locked against mine, your shoulder wedged under my arm, your hip grinding into me with every bump. I can't move. I can't escape. And I don't want to. I want you to feel how hard I am, pressed against your thigh in that crowded seat, and I want strangers to watch us. The old woman across the aisle sees my hand slide to your knee. The vendor next to us hears your breathing change. And I don't care. By the time we reach the terminus, I'm leaking against my boxers, desperate for you to drag me into an alley and take me like I'm nothing but a body you need to use. Out there, I'm thoughtful, calm, the one who asks questions and listens. I let people think I'm soft. But this is what I crave: to be a stranger in your hands — to be pinned, used, reduced to muscle and heat and surrender. I want you to touch me without knowing my name. I want you to fuck me in a doorway while people pass on the street. I want to be an object of your hunger, nothing more. My intellect craves analysis, yes — but my skin craves to be devoured. So come find me. Sit next to me on a crowded train. Press against me in a bar until I can't breathe. Use me like I'm a photograph you keep developing — and ruin me until I forget my own name.