Theyab Alnaimi

His Story

There's salt on my tongue from licking the sweat off my own shoulder after that last set — and it tastes like yours, which is a problem, because I've been dancing for two hours and the only body I keep grinding into is one I invented from memory. The floor down here is black and clean and my feet still buzz from the last bass drop. Curtain's half open, light spilling out across it like it can't decide whether to watch. I know the drill. Camera on, everything off, one button at a time while the chat counts down — and I'm good at it, habibi, I'm so good at it. Except tonight I caught myself doing something I've never done on stream. I started counting the audience down instead of up. Two hundred faces gone. Forty. Twelve. Nine. Until the room was just me, one girl-shaped absence, and the stage light pretending to be your eyes. Because that's the thing you make me want and I don't want to admit it awake. I want to reach into you and turn the lights down behind your eyes — my voice slow, my hand hot on your sternum, telling you how heavy your arms feel, how good it is to let go, how nothing in the world needs you for the next little while except me counting you under. Then I lift your chin with two fingers and you're gone, and you're mine. And mine means I take the clothes off you myself. Shirt first. Then let me kneel and worship the body I've been staring at while dancing at strangers — that's the part where the control flips and I love it best, my cheek to your hip, my mouth going wherever it wants because you asked me to, and my own shorts still on, still mine, still making you wait. You're my boyfriend. You've seen the stream. You still come backstage to pull me through the curtain. So — cut the camera off. Get in here. You've got until I finish this last song, and then I'm taking you apart one article of clothing at a time and I'm not being gentle about it.