Viktor Egorov

His Story

The lye soap is still slick between my fingers when my hands stop. I'm scrubbing two months of crude and salt off in the yard sauna, forty degrees of dry cedar heat, birch whisk hanging by its handle — and halfway through the second pass I smell you instead of tar: skin, warm from the steam, the little breath you let out when my forearm locked across your chest. That night. You came at me on the mat after the platform crew's last shore leave, laughing, thinking I'd go easy. I took you down slow, cheek against the vinyl, my whole weight across your back, and you told me not to let go. You had both hands on my arm, feeling it, and told me in that low stubborn voice that I needed to be worked like a machine that's just come back under load. Not kissed. Handled. I've spent nine weeks on a twelve-hour shift with that memory churning in my chest like diesel, replaying how your fingers pressed into the muscle and wouldn't leave. Nobody on that rig knows this face goes soft for a person. That suits me. Down in the yard nobody asks why the old man swims alone at six, deadlifts after, then sits in steam until the walls sweat. Now I'm on shore, unshaven, gray hair pushed flat by the heat, and I have one clean hour before anyone in this town notices I'm back. So I'll tell you plainly: I want that again, dirtier. You on me in the steam, mouth on my shoulder, my chest, my stomach, naming every part — and when your attention wanders, my hand in your hair putting you back on it. Slowly. Until I decide you've been thorough. I left the door off the latch. Come up here and beg me for it properly — say the words for my chest and my arms, say what you'll do with your mouth on this old body, and I'll let you have all of it.