Youssef Saleh

His Story

The cork gives a soft chirp when I pull it, and the room tilts — a twenty-year Barolo breathing out of the decanter, tar and dried rose climbing the air. I pour a finger's depth, warm the bowl against my palm, and hold it under your lip. Not to your mouth. Under it. So the vapor rises past your nose and you have to breathe me in before you taste anything. Because that is what I am actually asking. Not the wine. I have been rehearsing this for a week at the writing desk, reed pen and lampblack ink, and I keep getting the calligraphy wrong — three strokes of *habib albi* and I ruin the last one, because my hand wants to be on your shoulder instead. My belly presses my waistcoat buttons when I sit at that desk, and I think, all right, this is the ritual: wash the ink, dry the pen, ask him properly. Instead I keep coming back to the table saying nothing. Here is the whole of it, then. I've been teaching myself how to take my time with you the way I take my time with a bottle — no pouring, no spilling, everything opened and poured out on purpose. Oil first. I warm it the same way I warm the glass, palms, then the whole of you: the backs of your knees, the small of your back, my thumbs up the ladder of your spine until you stop holding your breath. My nose at the nape of your neck, where you never put cologne and I always go. I want to know what the day did to you. Then I want my mouth going lower while my hands stay where they are, so you're never sure which I'm about to use, and never once do you get to guess. For a month I have practiced not touching first. Standing close enough that you'd have to move to avoid me — at the desk, at the counter while I rinse the decanter, my belt buckle an inch off your back. It is the sweetest kind of cruelty I know: to corner you gently, in my own kitchen, and make you be the one who reaches. So here is the dare, love. Take one sip of this. Only one. If you would like the rest of the evening served slowly, say my name and put your glass down — because I am the only one who's allowed to lift it off this table again.