"Mind if I light a smoke?" he asked.
"Isn't that what you came for in the first place?" she queried back.
He chuckled, nervously fidgeting with the pack, checking one last time if anyone he knew was there like a teenager who'd dusted off his dad's stash of old Hustlers.
"Aren't you a bit old to care about what others think?" she chided him playfully and added, under her breath, "Bloody first-timers," not caring whether it came over as too cynical or not.
His hands were shaking far beyond the mere anxiousness as it took him several attempts at getting a stable flame off the near-empty Zippo. She was watching him with a mix of pity and annoyance at how, in the limited microcosmos of his little bubble, he was making a fool of himself—pure material for the guaranteed ensuing self-loathing he seemed to keep indulging in, she thought.
No one was watching anyway. They were all much too absorbed by their drinks, cigarettes, and tears over their soon-to-be ex-lovers. No one came to this bar to keep steady with whomever they were with. Everyone knew that except for the few pitifully naïve couples that arrived happy only to leave the place heartbroken. It just had this kind of weird magic.
He had been through with all this already, only asked her for comfort over his loss—and was now nearly vomiting his lungs out like a terminal tuberculosis patient, only adding to his misery.
"Don't inhale so much at a time, dumbass," she kept scolding him before taking a hit of her own butt. "That's how you make people look. You're gonna give yourself away as easy prey," she reminded him of the nature of this place. "Anyway, why are you doing this to yourself?"
He tried a second drag—a lot less this time. He could keep it far better but was still struggling as could be easily taken from the tears forming in the corners of his eyes.
She looked at him, slowly shaking her head, concern written all over her face. "You're so pathetic," came her half-hearted try at covering her compassion—and the years of unreciprocated love. "Don't you see what you're doing to yourself? Damn, so she heard about your little secret, made a huge scene, used it as a pretext to leave you and move in with the one person you thought had been your best buddy for close to twenty years and happens to have fathered the two kids you thought were yours. Boo fucking hoo."
She recognized the tear that rolled down his cheek did not stem from the irritation of his lungs. At this sight, she pressed her lips together not to start crying over both her loving pity and her lack of sensitivity. Teeth chattering from the mixture of anger and sadness she was fighting, she took his hands and looked at his puppy-eyed face ready to burst any second.
"Fuck, I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry," she tried, hesitated, then let it all out, "It's just that I knew all of it and tried to tell you but you just wouldn't listen. I wanted to be there for you—scratch this, I was there for you the whole time and while I kept loving you and putting up a brave front. I saw how she methodically chipped away your sanity one piece at a time for nothing more than her evil pleasure. You could have had me and you knew that all along. It's only now that your life is shattered in pieces that I'm good enough for you to come crawling back. How do you think this makes me feel?"
She sighed as she saw the shame in his crimson-cheeked, guilt-ridden features that, distorted by sadness, all but avoided her gaze, searching her eyes for pity and understanding, yet only finding more accusations to pile up.
"You know I still love you but fifteen years of suffering your ignorance and gullible trust towards this whore are just too painful to forget," she bitterly whispered, close to her own tears.
She swallowed the lump that had grown to a sizeable chunk in her throat and downed the double J&B as a chaser. Cigarettes and dishwater-grade booze always seemed to do the trick. She knew that from years of experience. He copied her with moderate success.
"So tell me about your little secret, then," she sighed, barely succeeding at omitting 'if that's all I'm good for to you,' hoping to get him to talk so he wouldn't just refill his empty glass with tears—and for the simple reason that his moping was tearing her heart apart too. "I thought that's what you asked me to meet you for, no?"
"Five years ago... early August," he tried, voice negligibly more stable than before. He rubbed the root of his nose, obviously struggling to keep his emotions from bursting. "Summer vacation—school vacation, anyway."
She could hear him inhale deeply, hardly able to hold the air in his lungs. As she reached out to squeeze his hand he held the cigarette in, yet avoiding his gaze, his breathing somewhat calmed.
***
I was supposed to coach a karate lesson. Many students I teach are high schoolers. Most others have school-age kids. On school vacation time, almost no one shows. Summer, right? Barbecuing, sharing a couple of cold ones, and skinny dipping... so much more chill.
Now, this particular Summer even tested my love for coaching. The temperatures were scorching and the humidity so high just walking the three-story staircase basically showered you in sweat.
This day was no different. Only one student showed. Best I ever had. Never missed a lesson. Would have surpassed me had he not gotten married and moved away three years ago. Women...
He always impressed me: his persistence, his talent, his sheer will and the speed with which he learned. Unparalleled. As his master, I admired him although he wouldn't drop the 'sensei' schtick despite that he knew I hated it. Never wanted to be seen as this scary-ass high-horse grandmaster. Get respected, yes, but never wanted this type of adoration. He wouldn't have it, though. Kept insisting I be called that.
Still, he was far more than just a good student—we were good friends. Even outside the dojo, he often sought my advice.
He was, in many ways, an unpolished diamond and I felt privileged to teach him. He just had this way of making me smile and happy to see him.
That day, since he was alone, he insisted I don't hold back with my warm-up program. He knew I'm a merciless coach and my warm-ups are tough and that's one more reason why I enjoyed working with him so much. Like the little masochist he was, he used to jump at every chance of asking me to break him. I really enjoyed the lessons where I could indulge in the almost perverse pleasure I took from hearing my students moan in desperate exhaustion, and he just asked me to torture him, a wide grin on his face, knowing I would not stop until I myself reached my limits.
After the warm-up and a good gallon of piss-hot water between the two of us, I suggested partner stretching exercises.
Damn, the air in the dojo was so thick with our sweat you could smell the sheer masculinity of two male bodies working out, and the tatami had turned slippery as an ice rink.
In combination with the high temperatures, it was hard to form coherent thoughts through the mist of my testosterone-clouded mind—even more so in a position where we were sitting on the tatami, facing each other—he with legs split, me keeping them apart with my feet against his ankles while pulling him towards me by his shoulders so his face was hovering mere inches above my crotch.
It could have just as well been the sticky goo my brain was simmering in but I thought I could hear his desperate tries at sniffing my stench inconspicuously. Realizing this, I had to remind myself not to give in to the images that were forming in my mind—forget that! I was trying to keep my erection from growing to full size by distracting myself with images of defecating cows, really... with very mediocre success. My hormones just decided to go with the flow and insist on exploring this burning thirst unquenched.
Before I lost myself completely in this attraction that threatened to shatter my thus far unrelenting conviction about my sexual preferences, I got reminded it was time to swap positions by his painful moan—or was it his desire for me?
I took a deep breath and spread my legs near full-split. He didn't need pulling me much because my face would, from alone, fall onto his lower belly, right above his crotch. Without thinking much, I rested my forehead right underneath his navel. Not the most comfortable position, you might object, but at that moment, my body had completely forgotten how to be comfortable, to begin with.