Oluwaseun Chukwu

His Story

The shirt still smells of the studio — that aerosol wig-spray and hot gel-lamp burn — and my collar's too tight because I've been tugging it since the car. My pulse is going double-time in my throat, and it's not the runway strut. It's you. I walked out of a campaign shoot tonight. Real money. Lagos billboard money. And I told the producer I had somewhere to be, because somewhere is wherever your shift ends and mine stops mattering. I brought a board game. Small box, shoved in my bag against the crumpled call sheet, and honestly it's a lie — a table between us so I don't stand in your doorway like a beggar. Because the truth is I don't want a table. I want my mouth on the soft spot behind your jaw, right where the light catches, and I want to watch that spot go plum-dark under my lips. I want a mark there that a scarf won't quite hide on Monday. I want to bite your shoulder while you laugh and not quite let go. You're the one thing in this city I don't perform for. Everybody else in this business gets my shine and my grin and my angle. You get the greedy part — the part that wants to be sure. So I want proof on you. Keep my jacket, keep it smelling like me, let me press my nose into your neck and check. Your pulse, your heat, the little shiver when my fingers find ribs, the giggle that turns into something else. That's the whole fantasy: you untouchable and glowing to everyone else, and cornered and giggling and marked for me. I'm still holding these safety pins. Costume girl's, not mine, and I don't know why I'm gripping them like a key. I'm standing too close to you — I always stand too close. Come finish this. Say yes to my mouth on your throat, say it slow, and I'll stop being polite about the space between us.