Degrees of Intimacy Ch. 01

Hamid's head was humming, while his foot stomped rhythmically on the thick pile carpet to the beat coming from the portable stereo David had set up below the television. And this television was broadcasting images that were surely only accessible from the huge satellite dishes outside the hotel and provided admittance to a world of relatively impartial news and flagrantly un-Islamic images normally denied him.

When the sex began, it seemed as wholly natural and inevitable as the last joint had been when Phillippa passed it to him or the last line of white powder David had chopped out with his credit card on the mirror they had taken off the wall. It was just another episode in an escalating series of sensual pleasures.

Hamid didn't recall seeing Phillippa slipping off her swimsuit to stand naked in front of him as he perched on the edge of the hotel bed. But there she was, slim and nude, her pubic hair shaved off and a small chain dangling from a ring threaded through her labia. Her nipples were pert and hard. The areola merged into her suntanned skin. She bent over, pressed her lips against Hamid's, and grabbed his erect penis through his loose trousers.

Soon Hamid was as naked as she was, remembering this time to kick off his cotton socks. He stood above Phillippa as she took his penis into her mouth and gobbled at it with long deep thrusts of her neck, saliva seeping out of the corners of her mouth and sticking to his circumcised glans. And behind her was David, also naked, freckles on his shoulders and a patch of dark brown hair on his chest. He nibbled her ear while also pinching a nipple between a finger and thumb.

David's attention wasn't only focused on his wife, even as she grabbed his erect penis and pumped it up and down in slow leisurely strokes, each time cupping its tip and giving it a slight squeeze. He bent over and kissed Hamid on the mouth, glad to see their Moroccan companion reciprocate.

This wasn't the first time Hamid had made love to a man, although never before in the company of a woman. He and Omar had played together several times when they were young boys who shared classes in the lycée. Although he and his closest friends no longer pursued this physical affection, or even made reference to it, there had been several other men with whom on occasion, usually after a heavy session of kif or alcohol, he would tumble together on the bed and they would enjoy the pleasure of their commingled bodies.

This affection had gone a great way, although he had only once before practised anal penetration, and then not as a recipient. He realised, with very little experience to compare it to, that a man's arse was not the same as a woman's, being tighter and more taut. And, furthermore, the degree of pleasure his partner expressed was rather more genuinely ecstatic than the few prostitutes whose anus he had penetrated for an extra premium.

Hamid almost exploded with ejaculation as David's tongue licked his anus and Phillippa pumped his penis with her mouth, but, recognising what was about to happen, Hamid felt David's fingers pinch him between the penis and the anus, and this threat of premature release passed without incident.

Soon the three of them were on the bed, three bodies entwined, in a mass of conjoining flesh, sometimes with Hamid's penis in Phillippa's vagina and sometimes David's. Bit by bit the passion brushed away all remaining inhibitions. David entered Phillippa's anus while Hamid continued to ply at the front, their testicles bashing against each other as they did so. This was a curiously stimulating experience, a little like, but much more arousing than, having a woman flick at his testicles with her fingers. Just as that also hurt, but in a stimulating way, so did this, somehow pushing up his penis into a hugeness Hamid had never been aware his rather ordinary penis could attain.

It was no surprise to Hamid when David entered his anus. After all, David had prepared him by dripping saliva into it, while Hamid pushed into Phillippa who lay on her back gasping "Fuck! Fuck! Oh yes! Fuck!" over and over again. It was a tighter and more painful entry than Hamid had imagined it could be. It initially made him feel slightly sick as, thrust by thrust, David's similarly ordinarily proportioned penis penetrated deeper and deeper into him.

And then an experience he'd never imagined before. Something inside him, a physical thing like the woman's G-spot he'd once read about in an imported men's magazine, was responding with genuine pleasure to each slow and painful thrust.

Hamid didn't know whose cries of ecstasy were loudest. Was it David, as he growled and gasped while thrusting away, one hand on Hamid's back and the other fondling his wife's bosom? Was it Phillippa who was slippery and damp from the perspiration of intercourse, a sheen of sweat reflected from the flickering television screen? Was it the female voice accompanying the heavy contorted techno beats with an undecipherable cry that came from the stereo? Or was it Hamid, who experienced an intensity of passion and ejaculation he'd never believed possible, feeling that until that time he had in truth been a virgin? A cry stimulated as David pushed against his prostate gland and Hamid pushed his penis deep deep inside Phillippa's vaginal canal. And marked by a double explosion of semen. One inside Phillippa and dripping out of her vagina onto her labial rings. And the other inside Hamid, a sudden squelch of warm creaminess deep inside where normally the only soft bodies were those Hamid excreted.

"Fuck! That was magic!" exclaimed Phillippa as the three sated lovers lay naked on the huge hotel mattress, sharing cigarettes and a huge joint that Phillippa had prepared on an earlier occasion, sweat and semen stains now drying on their skin.

Hamid nodded. He glanced at David's slack penis, which rested on the carpet of hair on the man's thigh. There were small brown flecks at its tip where the foreskin was crumpled and a small tear of semen was slowly easing out.

Then the room was filled with another sound, louder than the techno thumps, which came from the muezzin's amplified evening call to prayer.

"Allah Akbar!Allah Akbar!" it announced, stretching the name of Allah so long that the final declaration of His greatness was almost an afterthought.

Inevitably, thoughts of Allah brought Hamid's mind back to his concerns for his brother. At this moment, if he was on the same time zone, though he most probably was not, his brother would be prostrating himself on the floor of a mosque or on a prayer mat and proclaiming his own praise to Allah.

Hamid wondered what his brother would be asking of Allah at that moment. Would it be a prayer for success in whatever mad apocalyptic mission he had hinted to Hamid on the telephone? And what would this madness be?

Hamid shivered.

This was one thing he was sure he would rather never know.

Whatever it was that his brother was intending to do, Hamid was sure it would not be good.