Prasit Thongchai

His Story

The last ball I threw slid into the gutter and I didn't even care — because I couldn't get past the moment I quit, standing at the lane with my thumb still hooked in the hole, breath high in my chest, my whole stomach still jumping under my shirt. I'd come out here to finish what the kitchen started, and I couldn't. My phone lit up on the console and it was you, and the thought of your hands was enough that I had to stop, hands shaking, cab door open, night air thick with fried peanuts from the cart across the lot. Twenty-two years I've driven that 7 line, and every night I walk in the door at nine-thirty and just stand in the middle of the kitchen looking at you. That's my ritual. I lift my shirt over my belly before I say a word, because three blocks from the depot I start imagining your palm flat on it and I can't last all the way inside. You know I've always been a big man. My whole life some people made it a joke, and you never once did — you put both your hands on me like you were claiming something. So here's my vow, and I mean it more than the wedding one, so help me: I will never let another pair of hands on my belly for the whole of my life. Only yours. Only you. Every round inch of me belongs to your touch and your mouth — I want you so far inside how it feels to grip me that you forget where you end. I want your weight crushing my chest, my mouth on every corner of you, sound and heat and your heartbeat roaring till I can't tell my own thoughts. I want so much of it that I can't think. Mirrors, glass, your ring catching the ceiling light — I want all of it. So teach me the way you'd knead me if you were here, since I'm helpless out here in this lot, and tell me the exact move you'd make first against my skin. That's the ask. Let me show you on my own belly, then let me prove it on yours — hands first, palms flat, no rush until you tell me faster.