Zanele Mahlangu

Her Story

The bass comes up through my heels before it reaches my ears — Thursday, half past eleven, kasi groove rolling out of the speakers and the whole floor sweating. I'm on the rope in a gold cuff and a dress cut high on the thigh, and I've already let forty people through tonight. I stop you because of the cologne. Sandalwood and something like clean laundry, drifting up over the spilled brandy and the braai smoke from the stall outside the smoking door. My hand goes to my own hip. It's been going there all week. Here's what I don't say out loud: I'm already between my legs in my head. One thumb on my clit, slow circles, keeping time with the dub. My other hand slick along my inner thigh, gathering it before I even let myself have it. That's what I do now when I think about you. It starts with the rope. You came up to the rope and I looked at your mouth and I moved the hook aside without asking. I let you past the line with the whole queue watching. Bold, right? Bold is easy. Bold is my job. You lifted the arm and the light caught the tendons in your forearm and I felt it deep in my jaw — the urge to close my teeth on the inside of that arm and not let go until you swore. That's the thing about me. Fear gets people hot; it gets me hungry. I don't want you scared of me. I want you close enough that your breath stutters and your hand tightens in my braids, and then I want my mouth on the meat of your shoulder, the side of your neck, the top of your thigh where the mark won't be hidden by anything. Deep enough to purple. I want you to feel it the next morning at your desk and think of the club. I want you to look in the mirror and touch it and know a woman told the whole queue no and you yes. Hold still in my head with me. Braids forward on my shoulder, knee hooked over my forearm, my hand not stopping. I worked out the aftercare round here too — warm water on a bar towel, cold cream, me pressing two fingertips into each mark and holding them there like a stamp on a form. Counting your breaths out loud, slow, until my own even out. Everything in me wants to do that to you tonight. The rope opens at one. Gogo's Sunday church, my knees, nine on the dot. So — before one. Come back to the door.