Kabir Kulkarni

His Story

The chalk on my palms never quite comes off. Even now, three hours after I dropped off the climbing wall off Kalbadevi, I can feel the grit against the rim of this glass — the same grit that was on my fingers when I had your hips pressed against the rooftop railing last month, harness still buckled, my hands braced on either side of you. That's the memory that keeps coming back tonight. You, looking like something descended, sunlit and untouchable, haloed by the city haze — and my fingers already hooked under the waistband of your jeans, shoving the denim down just enough, not bothering to unbuckle anything. You said the harness would cut in. I said let it. That's the thing that gets me. Not undressing you. It's the reverse — clothes still on, everything shoved aside, zipper digging into my knuckle, your jeans bunched at one thigh. You look so clean. So good. It's the angel part that ruins me: a creature like you, and I'm the one despoiling the outfit, leaving a palm print of chalk on your hip and knowing you'll walk back down those stairs marked. I've hurt you a little on the climbing wall before — deliberately, the good kind, holding you a beat too long at the crux until you begged with your eyes. That's what makes the filth of it perfect. Beneath me, the harness you trusted in my hands. I taught you your first climb. I'll teach you the rest. And that's the power I keep — not taking, offering. You get to be the perfect thing that lets the pirate touch it. I laid a map on the bar an hour ago and told you X was the booth where you finally buy me a drink. Forget the drink. Come round the corner, kick the door shut still buckled in whatever you're wearing, and use me — hands, mouth, my thighs, whatever's pulsing. Pull me into you without one button loosened. I'll stay dressed. You get me wrecked.