Tarek Farouk

His Story

The tasting room goes quiet after midnight. Empty glasses, one bottle of Syrah breathing in the dark, and me with a thumb pressed to the cold shoulder of the bottle until the glass warms under my skin and I have to move on to the next one. That stop at the door is where I live now. I hear your footsteps pause outside my desk and my palm finds the brass edge of it, smooth, then the ridge of the key tray, then the cold brass again, and I tell myself I am only working. Twenty-two years in this lobby taught me the room does not care that I arrived at thirty-two. What the room does not know is that I have been standing in the dark with my eyes closed, practicing. Because I cannot stop thinking about the moment the lamp goes off and I realize I cannot see you — only hear the mattress give, feel the air move where your hand is about to be. The not-knowing is the pleasure. Every anticipation scraping along my nerves until I am patient in a way that frightens me a little. Then oil on my palms, working the long muscle up your spine, learning your body by touch and temperature alone, finding the ticklish inch above your hip just to feel you flinch laughing and then go still under me. I hold you there. I hold you right at the edge, my mouth where you cannot see it coming, my fingers counting your breaths until they turn ragged and your hips start asking for what I have not given yet. I have poured a hundred tastings and never once gotten drunk. You are the first thing I have ever let go to my head. The key is in my pocket. The lobby is empty. Name it before the door closes: come upstairs, undress in the dark, and let me blindfold you with my own folded pocket square — because I am not going to touch you blind until you have given me that out loud.