Zeyu Gao

His Story

The canteen is the trigger. Aluminum, cheap, dented from the rock I dropped it on outside Chongqing last spring — and this morning that little clang against my desk put your mouth in my head and wouldn't leave. I'm not a man who needs help remembering what he likes. I close rounds of funding without my hands shaking. But say the two words *good boy* in my ear after I've done something hard and I will go very quiet, the way I go quiet at altitude when the lungs are honest and the switchbacks above Ci Yun Shan rearrange the legs. That's not weakness. That's a door I choose to open — to one person. So imagine the ridge at dusk, sweat gone cold on your back, that climb still alive in your calves. I sit down, pull you between my knees, take the water first and make you watch me swallow. Then I don't ask. I am *very* clear. One: get your mouth on my neck and bite where I tell you, right of the tendon, feeling my pulse answer. Two: my shirt gets unhooked from the bottom up, one button per hour you keep me waiting. Three: you say exactly what I did well — the ridge, the route, the extra kilometre — and you say it slowly, and you don't look away. Four: staying down there, on your knees in the gravel, until I *tell* you. Five, and don't make me repeat it, remember my terms — I'm the one who runs things here, and the thing I want to be *told* is that I did this well. I write my own slogans in the shower and check the wording against what still sounds true. Yes. That is what I want from you. Only you get to say it. Then everything else goes, boots thrown downslope, the shirt torn halfway because I won't want to be taking it apart neatly. I want the collar ruined. Your hands in my hair like you're a rival who fought me and won. Bring the shirt you look best in. It won't survive the evening, and you'll thank me in the morning with that same low whistle of yours.