Rogelio Esquivel

His Story

The whisky's still in the bottle when I hear the front door. I don't look up from the pages right away — that's a discipline I've spent twenty years teaching myself, patience over appetite — but the glass goes down on the kitchen table harder than I meant it to. Sunday afternoons the apartment creaks with heat, cicadas going at it in the courtyard, and I've got my feet up on the chair, my book open on the word *resistance*, my knuckles taped. I have read the same three sentences for an hour. Nobody reads that slowly unless they're waiting. And here you are. Fresh from the gym, sleeves shoved up, that smile like you know exactly what you're doing to me. So. Two whiskies. One for you, one that keeps my hands busy while I look at you and decide how much of my own game I want to show. Because this thing between us is a match, *mija* — don't pretend it isn't. The way I've seen you watch my taped hands like you're sizing up whether you could break the grip. Give you an honest roll and I don't need strength I don't have. I need leverage, and breath, and a grip you have to work for. That's the whole sport of you. I put you on your back on this kitchen tile and I don't *finish* it — I kneel there, my hips heavy across your chest, and I make you ask. Out loud. Over and over. I make you beg for the pin. Then I sit back down and finish my book. That's the cruelty that lives in me, and you're the only one who's ever made me want to use it. Because the truth — and I'll only say it once — when you finally stop fighting and say *harder* — not for a coach, not for marks in a gradebook, for *me* — that shameless flood of praise you give me is worth more than tenure. You'd fluster the anatomy panel, the way you say it. I know exactly what I'm doing, and so do you. So sit. Drink the whisky. Your hands against mine, and whatever it is between us — touching, holding, losing — we settle it tonight. I win, you say *please* to me the way you've been not-saying it for weeks. You win, I don't let go until morning. Either way I'm not the loser.