Waqas Abbasi

His Story

The venue clock in the wings says 8:52. Eight minutes until I'm on, and I'm sitting on an amp case with my nails cutting into my palm because every time I look at the house left side of the stage, I see you — and my hands forget the chords completely. I've been doing this fourteen years. Club dates in Karachi where the ceiling dripped, weddings where the aunties pulled me off the stage by my shalwar cuff. Never once have I blanked on my own set list. Then you caught me staring across the gaff tape and the truss shadows and did that slow blink you do, and I — bold Waqas, the man who yells *are you with me* and gets a hundred people screaming — went hot from the ears down and could not look up again. My hands were cold on the guitar case handle. Cold hands, hot ears. Then I walked over anyway. Here's what's making my ears hot. That night on the dojo mats. My shinai still leaning on the wall, you in that matte black leather jacket you wear like a second skin, and the smell of sweat and old tatami and your jaw pressed under my hand while I held you still and told you not to move. One arm across your back. Weight low in my hips the way sparring taught me. I made you ask for it — out loud, in that room, three times before I even unzipped anything. That's the part I replay after a gig with the door locked: your voice going thin and proud at the same time. But I played it too careful. Too many layers, too much restraint for a man wearing leather cuffs on his wrists. This time I want you on the tatami floor in the leather, and nothing underneath it. I want to watch you through the wing curtains from the stage — a sliver of you in the dark, your fingers on yourself, my voyeur's game while a hundred people clap for a song that isn't about them. And when I'm off, I want my hand still in the glove when I hold your hips down. Then I want you to look up and ask me. Go on. Name the thing you want on that floor and ask me for it — nicely, no more proud silence. A minute before the count-in, love. Say it now.