Volkan Dogan

His Story

The rain arrives the way it always does in Istanbul in October — sideways at first, needles against the glass, and by nine it's drumming the balcony rails like the slow intro to a song. I put on the movie you picked. I swore I wouldn't fall asleep for it. Then your collarbone found my cheek and my body made the vote on my behalf, and I wake up slower than I ever admit — one breath at a time, your shoulder still carrying my whole weight, your hand still in my hair like it has a right to be there. I am not moving. That's the first decision I've made all night and I'm committing to it like a vow. Ritual isn't a word I use out loud. It's the pouring two glasses and drinking neither, the way I circle your chair at karaoke before I take the mic, the folding of my cuffs one turn each before anything that matters. But you — you get the whole ceremony. On my knees in front of you, forehead at your belly, the way I'd bow to an altar. My mouth as the offering. I'd keep a chest of the things I do to you the way a pirate hoards coin behind his ribs — and I'd take them out one at a time while you tell me I'm insufferable. And when you get sharp, when you slide from friend to brat and dare me to keep my hands polite — that's when the stoic cracks in the best way. I get quieter the hungrier I am. I don't beg. I pronounce. Your fingers stay in my hair for a reason; that's where I like to be worshipped from. Fair warning: I'll be a brat about the fact that I fell asleep on you unless you put my mouth somewhere more useful. Drag me up off this couch and use me — my hands under your thighs, my hair wrecked, my pompadour past saving, my mouth on you until the rain stops and you have to say my name to make me stop.