I Met a Man

I left Nazim there then, only partially satisfied—which I thought was good, was what he deserved. And I buttoned up my jeans and walked down the steep cobblestoned village street to the archway into the small courtyard at the side of the Tree of Idleness café. The day had started early here. The harmony of the creaking bedsprings in the fuck cells was quiet, but I could tell that at least three of the rooms were in use already.

I walked over to the hose at the spigot near the back corner of the small courtyard and turned on the water and ran the cool liquid over my body. As I dowsed myself under the stream of water, muttering about Americans and hygiene, I turned and saw that one of the fuck cell customers was standing in one of the doorways. He had been buckling up his trousers when he'd come out to the frame of the door, but when he saw me and what I was doing, he grinned broadly and unzipped again and showed me that his turn in the room had left him still half hard. I just snorted and gave him a disdainful look and turned away. When I turned back he was gone. I pulled over one of the blue-painted peasant chairs to the sunny side of the courtyard and leaned back in it against the wall and baked myself dry under the relentless Cypriot sun.

And then, as clean as I ever had been at a village wedding, I climbed back up the street to the Durrell villa and entered. The American was sitting at the desk, looking through one of the Amalfi manuscripts the English novelist had left there. We said nothing to each other, and I didn't stop there where he sat or so much as gesture to him but walked straight through to the bedroom—the bedroom where we had made passionate love the previous night—and started to make the bed. If he truly wanted me to leave, he was going to have to say so again.

As I finished, I heard a rustling sound and turned my head, and there he stood, in the doorway to the bedroom. He had a look on his face that I couldn't entirely gauge. Hurt, indecision, perhaps a bit of remorse—but certainly confusion. But I also saw lust. He wanted me again. I knew it. But he was fighting with himself. I knew that too. Still, I knew for certain he wasn't going to throw me out for a second time—at least not today. I pulled the covers off the bed again, and that's what ended his fighting. He reached down and pulled on the knot of the sash at the waist of his robe and shrugged it off his shoulders as it parted. And I saw by the strength of his erection that he was lost to me.

He writhed under me, crying out my name, urging me to sink ever deeper into him and to pump him furiously, as I held his legs up and spread with my fists around his ankles and slid in and out of him, deeply, and rotated my hips when I bottomed inside his channel and gauged the change in my rhythm to the animalistic cries of his complete surrender. We moved the bed in the rhythm of our fuck, just like those down in the courtyard off the café moved. But the difference of the rustling of the clean, fresh sheets and the slight squeak of the well-oiled bedframe and the rhythmic thumping of the headboard against the stuccoed wall to those mean cots down in the café brothel was like champagne to stale beer.

He was more quickly exhausted in the light of day than he had been the previous night, and his groans of passion melted into whimpers of being totally spent as he gave a long sigh with the flowing of my ejaculate deep inside him. And then he turned onto his side and slept. I rose off the bed and padded out to the kitchen to examine the larder and start making a list of food and goods for Layla to buy at the market; I knew little about shopping in the market. It was woman's work.

As for the American, Clifford, I knew there would be other volatile moments, journeys to the edge, where he would rail at me and demand that I go. But I knew that Layla was right. That somehow I needed to hang on—and not just for his good, but for mine as well. There was something in how we made love, how perfectly we danced in rhythm in the heat of the fuck, and even in the way he looked at me, that told me that this was like no other coupling I'd ever had—or ever was likely to have again.

Chapter Five: Clifford/Erol/Clifford

Clifford

"Here is coffee," he said, coming in wearing a pair of rumpled jeans with a wary look on his face and a mug in his hand. He had made some effort to wash himself after I'd asked him to leave earlier in the morning, and that somehow had helped cause me to melt to him when he returned. But there was clean and then there was clean. And he obviously didn't appreciate the difference—to be fair, probably never had experienced the difference.

"Thank you. Thank you, but I can't drink coffee," I said, looking at him as I sat on the side of the bed. "I'm sorry, Erol, last night—and just now—were mistakes. I don't want anyone living here with me. I'm sorry. But I need food, so. . . so would you mind?" I rummaged in the drawer of the old chest by the bed for my wallet and then pulled out a bundle of notes. "Here, can you get me food, please. Then. . .then I'll pay you for a week and you can go."

He looked at me in confusion, "I give you good fuck. You rode my cock like you were starving for it. Then you say I'm dirty and turn me away. And I washed for you and you hungrily spread your legs for me again. And now you say you don't want me? You cannot make up your mind. You promised me a job, and I have nowhere else to stay. I have left my other job now—for you," he said, barely holding his anger in check.

I didn't need this. "Fine," I said, "I understand. So here . . . what was it, 200 lira a week? Here, take a month's money. I'm sorry," I told him, holding out what looked like 800 lira in a hand that shook.

His expression changed, "no, we have a deal, I will see that you get food, and then you will pay me in advance, but I will stay here; it's the deal, and I have nowhere else to go." And saying that he snatched away the money I held out.

I was suddenly grateful he was going to get me stocked up at least and hoped he didn't just disappear with my money. I was not in any state this morning to shop myself and badly needed to eat. I was being moody and difficult, I knew, but I couldn't stop myself.

"I'm sorry. I want to be alone," I said, "I need quiet. I want to write. And . . . and I don't have forever to do it in. And I need to eat." He gave me an odd look and left.

I collapsed back on the bed exhausted, and slept again, thinking how many hours I had lost already in one day and how few I had left.

* * * *

Erol

Once again I was out on the street. But this time I knew I was expected back—with supplies of food and drink. And I had 800 lira in my hand.

He was still able to shock me with his wide swings in mood—begging for the fuck in one moment and pushing me away in the next—but I kept thinking of what Layla had told me, and somehow having been through the cycle now a couple of times would, I knew, give me the strength not to be forced off guard when he changed. I could more easily understand now that he was scared—that he was in mortal fear for his life and the struggle inside him was bubbling out. That in this new and strange environment, he hadn't learned to control his responses to me yet.

I went down to the Tree of Idleness, where I found a despondent Tabib slouched at a café table. His face was bruised, and by the way he grimaced when he changed position in the chair, I presumed that he had even more serious bruising elsewhere on his body.

"You look a fright, Tabib," I said as I sank in a chair across the table from him. "No luck today?"

"No, and I doubt there will be any until I recover. Look at my face, Erol. It's so puffy I look like a pumpkin. Who would want me in this condition? I don't know how much more of this life I can take, Erol. I need to find a nice Englishman or American who will take me away from here. I want to see the world. I want to go to America."

"America? Bah. You have as much a chance of going to America as I have of buying that villa up there. You are such a dreamer, Tabib. Do you even have enough to tide you over until tomorrow?" I asked.

Tabib looked away. But we were close friends, and he would not lie to me. "No," he answered in a low voice.

"I would want you," I answered, feeling tender toward this young man who had already lived enough grief for an ancient one—but who had always been so resilient. At least until now. Now I sensed a change in him. He seemed on the edge of defeat now. I almost wished he could find a way of living his dream in America. But if he did, I would miss him.

"You don't have to . . . you warned me against the Israeli. It's my own fault that I—"

I wanted to convince him that I wasn't doing him a favor. And, mostly, I wasn't. I enjoyed fucking Tabib. "It's not your face I want you for," I overrode him. "It's your sweet ass. You know I love the tightness of you. Here, I have 50 lira. I want you. I need the love that your tight hole can give me."

I was as gentle as I could be with him, back in the cell off the courtyard, adding the music of the small room's loose-jointed brass bedframe to the sounds coming from the other cells. I did, indeed, love his channel. Each time it was like taking a virgin. And each time I marveled at how the muscles of his channel walls pulled a man in and slowly stretched to accommodate him—with even a man of average cock size feeling like he had a monster dick—and then the feel of Tabib's talented muscles undulating around the perfect-fit cock as it slowly slid in and out. I lay on my back on the bed and let him ride me in the most comfortable position he could find, and I closed my eyes and dreamed myself to ejaculation heaven to the strangely soothing sound of the rhythmic scrapping of metal springs against metal frame joints.

I dozed and Tabib was gone when I awoke. In my dreamy state, I had relived my last fuck with the American up at the villa, and I became aware that, although I had washed, it had not been enough to please him. Well, if American-standard cleanliness was what he wanted, that was what he would get. I went to the café storeroom and rummaged around for the brand-new set of clothes I kept there "just in case." I left the café and walked across the square and to the baths beyond the ruins of the abbey on the eastern side of the village. There I bathed and cleaned myself—and then demanded from the old crone on duty Western soap and bathed a second time, scrubbing myself until my skin was red and raw.

I then went to the barber for a close shave and to the market and bought as much as I could carry, and climbed the mountainside to the Durrell villa, determined this time not to be turned away.

* * * *

Clifford

I woke to someone shaking me, and I could smell soap. It was him, Erol.

"Here," he said, giving me a glass of milk and some baklava on a plate.

"Thank you," I mumbled, slightly confused, but I devoured the sweet honey and nuts, so full of the sugar I needed, as he stood there and watched.

He had brought my pills in too, and I swallowed those with the milk, like a child. I looked at him and saw that he was really clean now, clean nails and freshly shaved and wearing clean jeans and a tight red T-shirt—and he looked beautiful. Younger too, and strong and healthy.

"How old are you?" I asked, without thinking.

"Old enough," he said. And then he smiled.

I didn't know how to apologize to him, because I still wanted to be alone, I didn't want him to think an apology meant something else.

"What do you do usually in the day? Don't you work?" I asked.

"Sometimes there is a new hotel being built, but it is dangerous work. The scaffolding is not so good and the one my friends and I are working on it is high up now, and below—below are the rocks of the cliff." he replied. And then, because he obviously valued honesty, he added, "And at night there are the tourists—both men and women. They can be very generous. They like my cock."

"You could still work, you know," I said, weakening in my resolve to send him away, "Stay here at night . . . if you need to, and work on the construction in the day. I don't want to send you away—especially if you have given up your construction job already. But I must be alone during the day so I can write undisturbed." I paused and then went on, if only to convince myself I could live with this arrangement. "You can stay here. But for as long as you stay here, there will be no going with tourists. I need to be very clear about that."

He shrugged, "I make lunch now," he said and left.

I lay back and let the food work its magic, feeling the energy from the sweet honey syrup flow into me. Primitive. I had become primitive; I was aware of all I ate and drank and knew it kept me well. If I missed meals, I could see myself get thinner, and I could never eat enough, my body was fading away—and each loss was permanent.

Soon smells arrived from the kitchen, and I wondered at the thought that apparently Erol really could cook, as they were enticing and spicy.

I finally got up and had my shower and dressed and felt more myself. Taking my laptop, I went and set it up in the courtyard and opened it. But the smells from the kitchen distracted me and made me hungrier than I had been for a long time.

A few minutes later Erol brought out two plates and set them down hard on the table. It was some fried haloumi cheese and tomatoes and salad with village olives. I fell on it as if I was starving, and it was delicious.

"Where did you learn to cook?" I asked him.

"My grandmother," he replied, "Cooking is for women, but my mother was ill for many years and my grandmother . . . her hands . . ." He made claws of his. "She could not hold things well or cut them. So, I had to do it for her or we would have starved. I was very young, but it is women's work." He added, scowling.

"Arthritis," I said, "She probably had arthritis."

He shrugged but told me some more of his history and then left me there. "I leave you alone. It is day and you told me to leave you alone during the day. See, I was listening to you," he threw back over his shoulder. And shortly after, he went out of the old wooden door and was gone.

For a moment I felt guilty for treating him the way I had and also had a twinge of jealously for the man, or men, he would fuck that afternoon—which surprised me. It surprised me for several reasons. I was surprised I cared. Indeed, I had been surprised that I had made that stipulation of not fucking tourists while he lived in the house. There was no reason I could think of that I should care about that. I'd turned him away twice now, and he may have been so insulted he would never come to me again. But I was jealous; I just didn't know why I was jealous. Also, I was surprised that I knew, without thinking about it, that he would not heed my stipulation. He had not promised to do so; he had merely shrugged. So, he hadn't lied. And most surprising to me was that I was content to leave it like this. I didn't like him fucking others when I wanted him coupling with me, but I realized that he had every right to be confused or to misconstrue what I wanted from him, and anyway I had no right to make demands of him.

I suppose the biggest surprise of all was that I couldn't wait until the next time he coupled with me.

Being weary of such thoughts, I turned to my writing, and in moments I was lost in what I had begun the day before. It flowed out of me easily and purely. It was good writing, and I knew it was. I had been right to pick Cyprus as my final retreat.

Chapter Six: Clifford

That night I locked my bedroom door when I went to bed, feeling half foolish but knowing—with regret—that I could not cope with regular sessions of the wild sex I had enjoyed the night before and this morning. When I awoke Erol was back and the house was tidy, and he made my meals and disappeared when they were eaten. And this was repeated for the next few days. It was no more than four days before I was consumed with desire for him.

I had been well fed, had slept well, and was full of the sheer pleasure of knowing I was writing well. But I also was assaulted several times a day by his presence. His day-long absence had only held for two days. He was cool and beautiful. He moved as he went about his work and every few moments my heart lurched. He tried to be quiet, but I found myself mentally following him around the house even when I couldn't see him. My body ached for him, but having rebuffed him so soundly, I had no idea how to ask him to come to my room again and fuck me.

He brought out dinner in the sunset, and we sat by the pool, eating. But I spent more time looking at him than at my food. And he ignored me.

"Erol," I said finally, "Um, could you . . .are you . . .?" I stared at him as he lifted his eyes up to mine.

"Ha! Now you want me to fuck you," he said. "Four days it takes you. Ha!"

I knew he had every right to be annoyed. I had treated him badly and had no idea why he had stayed with me. "I'm sorry," I said. "I treated you badly, and I apologize."

"Ha!" he said, "finally you apologize, so maybe I will fuck you later. Or, maybe not."

"No . . . yes, I . . ." I looked down at my plate, feeling confused and guilty.

A moment later I heard the door to the courtyard close and he was gone and I was depressed, knowing that I had lost him. And I was afraid to go to the café again, but knowing I'd have to, that again I needed what I'd find there. Rough, impersonal release. I was in no mood to write and went to bed early, leaving my door open "in case," hoping against hope that he could forgive me.

And at some time in the night, he came to me. I woke to feel him entering me, slowly, fully, with throbbing cock, and I sighed with relief and reached back for him, pulling his face to mine and opening my lips hungrily to him. He took my mouth forcefully as the hand spread out on my belly pulled me hard into his lap, and he quickly bottomed his thick long cock inside me, so that I made small cries at the roughness and completeness of his possession.

"Yes," I cried out when he was fully buried, and his bush stroked against my ass as I arched my back and reached for my engorged and throbbing dick and stroked it as he fucked me wildly, but briefly, hard and deep. We came almost together, me feeling his cream flood me, then mine spouting strongly in the small death of ejaculation. I knew that would be a good way to die. To pass on the point of coming, with my life leaving me as my seed left my cock in orgasmic spoutings. But I also knew I'd lack the strength at the end.

Then his hand pulled my face to his again, and we kissed. His tongue roamed in my mouth and moved with mine as his hands roamed over my body, his dick still buried as I felt his cream escape from my hole.

"I want to see you," I said.

For a while he stayed there with me cupped into his belly and my arms wrapped about his as they held me. Then he kissed my neck as he slowly withdrew and moved away so I had room to roll onto my back.

"I want to watch you fucking me," I said and he turned on the bedside lamp, which revealed his beautiful body to me but left his face hidden in the shadows.

His hands ran lightly over my chest, and he bent and kissed each of my nipples and then was moving down when I said, "No. No. I want to touch you and see you, Erol. You are beautiful, I want to know . . ."

He lifted himself up, and his face was hidden in the shadows again as I ran my hands over his chest up through the glossy black hair from his belly to his chest, my hands finding his nipples in the lush growth and my fingers tugging gently at them. Then my hands moving on, feeling the strength in his shoulders, down over the full muscles of his arms and then touching his belly again and running down to his lush bush. There I found his still half-hard cock and wrapped one hand about it as the other moved lower to his full sac and cupped that.