Khamis Almazroui

His Story

The bass is still in my teeth. Two hours ago I was forty centimetres from a subwoofer the size of a fridge, smiling at strangers with a walkie-talkie in my collar, and now I'm standing in this carpeted hallway in the same shirt hearing my own door click shut behind me and wondering how long the hinge takes — because I swore I heard your floorboard creak two seconds before my knuckles hit the wood, and I don't knock until I'm sure. So I didn't. I stood there with a cold thermos of tamarind and cardamom, fingers going tacky on the steel, listening to the little sounds a wall gives away. Bass through the boundary, I told the plaster. I made you an excuse and then I held it in front of me like a shield. Here's the thing about loud rooms: nobody flinches in them. Out there I keep three hundred people from breaking themselves on the lighting rig, so I've learned exactly how a body moves right before it decides to do something stupid — the half-second of freeze, the breath held too long. That half-second is the flavour of everything I want. I want to be the reason your breath catches. I want to stand too close in this narrow hallway, my forearm to the frame so you have to turn sideways to get past me, and tell you with a straight face that I'm not moving yet. I want my mouth on the place where your neck meets your shoulder — not a soft kiss, the other thing, teeth closing before the thought finishes, a mark you'll catch in the bathroom mirror tomorrow and remember who put it there. It's the not-knocking that gets me. Close enough to be heard from your hallway at 3 a.m., close enough that a stranger might round the corner and see how little distance I've left you. It's the neighbour thing — the quiet car park, the two doors on one landing, the fact that you'll hear me come home and know exactly what I'm coming home to. Play with me. I won't bite first unless you hold still like you want me to. Put your hand on my chest in the hallway and don't step back. Then finish what you started.