It’s summer in the global south (which is winter in the global north), and for the month of January Literatur.Review is bringing them all together, publishing previously untranslated or unpublished stories from the north and south of our world.

Philani A. Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born creative artist whose work spans literature, film and theatre. His work has been published in at least fifteen countries, some in translation in countries such as Brazil and Sweden. Since 2016, he has held a world record in the Shakespearean sonnet form, as well as over a dozen international award nominations for his literary work, including two for the African Writer's Awards (prose and drama) and most recently the 2022 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. He is the author of four award-winning books of poetry and the recipient of the 2016 National Arts Merit Award (Zimbabwe) for Spoken Word Poetry.

Victoria climbed out of my bed and went down to third floor to pack her suitcase. I went to see Wisdom, next door. Slightly older, late twenties and I was twenty then, but cool motherfucker, except for the time he said my last name means “vagina” in his language and he’d frequently insult me with some heathen intonations that sounded like, “Shamorta”. He was studying IT or some such shit, and consequently owned a computer, and had lots of movies and games on it. I can’t play a fucking game to kill an Iranian general with a drone, so we watched something, something ridiculous like Undisputed.

Wisdom also possessed a dick of legendary size, or so I gathered. There wasn’t much to gather though, the first time he said it we were chilling in his room, Victoria and some skinny apprentice to whoredom she was nurturing, me and the guy, when the skinny neophyte asked if what she’s heard about Tsonga men was true. He confirmed it with not even a hint of one chalant in his tone, like any man would. I had to have an opinion so I added that mine was bigger because I come from a place further up north and synthesised the hypothesis that the higher you climb towards the equator the larger the penile specimen, as evidenced by the abnormal load Nigerians are alleged to pack. I don’t know if it was credible but I had to have something to say: there were two women in there for fuck’s sake, and I knew which way he was leaning.

While we were at it, Victoria came in, sat for a while and said she was ready to go. We paused Undisputed, I rolled a blunt as we left. We carried her bags all the way to Park Station, she hugged us goodbye and fucked off to the asshole little shithole town she had been conjured from. All this time I couldn’t stifle the irony, so I said it on our way back. “I wonder how she does it.”

“What?”

“Wakes up in my bed and just goes about her day like it’s a regular Tuesday.”

Men who’d writhed in Victoria’s Netherlands found it hard to keep it to themselves. He didn’t say anything.

“That’s some good ass pussy right there. I mean, can anyone, really, like objectively, can anyone hit that from the back?”

He didn’t answer.
There was this nice thing in the building, nice in the sense of a rural girl with fucked up teeth but still smiled a lot; like some fucking halfwit doused on cheap liquor. Simple girl in the fast lane of the big city, if you’re into that sort of thing. My neighbour, Thando, was into that sort of thing. Apparently they were of the same tribe and she was teaching him their native language and that was cool except, she didn’t put out. One fucked up morning this kid comes into my room without knocking like the custom in all dens of iniquity. He’s got this smile on his face like he just fucking… left Robben Island... and pulls up his shirt: his belly’s whitewashed crusty halfway to his nipples and that was all the evidence I needed to know how good a night he had just escaped. It wasn’t his Simple Jill idiot girl, he’d fucked Victoria. Or she had fucked him. Looking back, we were all hunted; when the prey stopped running we were in her killbox and the Kool-Aid was stupid delicious.

“Fuck off.” I muttered and rolled back to sleep, hauling the blanket in time to catch the jealousy leaping into the 6 am air. He left, I cursed.

They kept at it for a while, I think the village girl dumped him a bit into the affair; it’s hard to keep a secret the size of Victoria’s ass, especially if the secret is burying yourself in that ass so hard you can see Jesus’s sandal with every thrust. Victoria was in his room most of the time anyway, and his room had a window that opened into the passageway and we heard a lot of shit. Eventually it stopped because of something they had in common: their dads were both pastors in the respective miniscule shithole towns they hailed from.

One time, on study break, this kid goes home and there’s this big service in his dad’s church with guest pastors and all that finicky. One of these guests decides to get on stage, right, and prophesy’s some, “There’s some boy from these-here parts who’s in the Big City studying. He’s kicking it with some girl from some other asshole-small shithole town. Now here’s the deal you debaucherous fornicating lil’ shit; I need to pray for you real quick.” I know right? The irony of a preacher looking down on other towns; religion is not what it used to be; back then you’d just pillage a town in the name of God instead of shittalking it. Anyhow, with his faculties as intact as they should be on a Sunday away from the lights of debauchery, this kid reasons the prophecy is about him, and he should take it seriously but he can’t go up there because it’s his dad’s church and he’d surely learn the alternate ending to the story of Abraham and Isaac if he confessed to fornicating with this prime Jezebel with an ass so big you couldn’t mount her in hound. So wiseboy decides he’s going to make amends with the god of his father behind closed doors and sever all ties with said Jezebel when he gets back to the city.

And he did. But Victoria was so used to chilling in that flat that she didn’t know exactly where to go when the affair ended. Compounding issues was Thando’s flatmate’s interests in her skinny friend, you know what, we shall call her Intethe. Since she was fledging into a full harlot and taking on apprentices, Victoria couldn’t hang out with her roommate who was a good village girl, ergo she had to recruit a running-mate from another flat. That’s where Intethe came in, and since the guy across the hall was inspired by the holy-ghost to stop all holey activities with said buxom wench, when we sat in Wisdom’s room that night, and I told them my dick size was somewhere between Giyani and Lagos, I was actually talking to her. We didn’t fuck that night, if anything my resolve to have her got stronger when got up and bade goodbye to Wisdom, and left him with the harlot who appears in pastors’ crystal balls hundreds of kilometres away and her acolyte.

That night, I gathered the next morning, lots didn’t go as allotted. The little skinny one we have decided to call Intethe so we don’t keep calling Skinny One dozed off while the three were watching a movie. She stretched out on the bed, a single bed; we all had single beds back then, single beds that often carried twice their designated load. Wisdom and Victoria stared at each other. Somehow they got to kissing, somehow she got to try out that size of legend on a chair while her friend who had been allocated to him slept soundly undisturbed by her mourns. Not mourns, she was a hisser, like the serpent she was, she was a goddamn hisser, a sexy fucking hisser. Maybe that night she mourned; so he had to cover her mouth once or twice, then she decided she wanted to let it all out so she suggested they went to her room. Intethe woke up alone. She was pretty smart; the basic arithmetic added up to two. She left, went to her flat; I never saw them together again, because apprenticeship done.

Because any man who dipped into that honeypot found it hard to keep his sticky fingers to himself, I found out about all this in the morning when Wisdom walked into my den of iniquity, without knocking of course, shook me from slumber and fed me the fetid tale.

“Fuck off.”

He didn’t say much in the brisk walk back from Park Station. I didn’t go back to his room that day, I didn’t go back for a while because of an angry message I got, sitting in my room wondering how Undisputed ends: HOW COULD YOU TELL MY BOYFRIEND WE FUCKED? I should have figured though, from the number of times I met her cooking on his stove; I just thought she was irresponsible and had spent all her food money on alcohol. Like women do. I applaud the way he took it, right on the chin like a champ. He took issue with her, not with me. Anyway, when she came back after the break things were different, I was a token of her infidelity, yet that wasn’t it, what kept me from them was my own guilt.

She was a good fuck, I understand why he stayed in there. But a woman like that is dangerous, a woman who hooks up with you after breaking up with your roommate and then fucks your neighbour and gets you to forgive her like it’s some Tuesday shit is a woman who will take you to the edge of death, if your luck is really shit she’ll send you all the way and you’ll do the rowing all by your lonesome. Bitches be bitches and the guilt was a motherfucker, yet we couldn’t help crossing in corridors and he’d crack a joke (that I was mandated to laugh at) with a dry throat, throw me a “Shamorta” or some other insult in his savage tongue just to show we were still cool.

So Thando occupied one of the three bedroom in the flat, Wisdom the other and Selassie was in the third. We started hanging out a lot because we both loved smoking and honestly, women man, fucking women… you know how it goes. His birth name was Silas, but you know how it gets when the piff proper gets you: not-so farfetched conspiracies about white people wanting to steal our shit, reggae, patois and finally some Ethiopian dictator who wore a hunting hat and commiserated with lions and bees and kicked Mussolini’s ass becomes your god.

And I’m a dirty nerd’s sock, high as a Wailer, not giving two shits. And there’s this little girl I chased for a while in the beginning, and let it go and she fluttered back to me. I always loved the cute ones. Rule of middle finger: never sleep with someone you wouldn’t mind waking up next to for a very, very long time. Or grinning like you just stole an African election when she tells you she’s knocked up. Wait till they see this…

She was cute as a panda, freckles and perfect crescent smile type of cute, and one day, leaning a cigarette by the elbow out of Sellassie’s window so Wisdom wouldn’t catch an asthma attack, we spoke for fifteen minutes. It had been a while and she wanted to know everything. First off, how are you? Blah to bluh then what are you doing?

“Smoking weed.”

“I always wondered how it feels to get high.”

“You should try.”

“I don’t know, I mean… I’d love to but I’ve got sinuses.” I can still see her nose and upper-lip rubbed raw with tissue in the fucking winter that always almost killed me. “I can’t smoke.”

“Ever tried muffins?”

Zie was a guy I met through Boobs. Boobs was a cool guy; hell, we still kick it now and then since the internet is less bougie and we all have computers in our back pockets, but Zie was fucking crazy. One time we met up with Zie in one of the countless bars on campus. Now I’m not one to be cranking out stereotypes and racially profiling motherfuckers, black as I am, but a coloured motherfucker with a goatee wrapped in insulation tape isn’t the kind of motherfucker you want to be taking a hit from. But fuck it, if the girls are pulling on the hubbly I refuse to be a pussy. Can’t remember the girl’s name, hell, I can’t remember how I got home that night, I know I walked through Hillbrow unharmed, must have been a sight to see even for the pharas must have looked at me like. I do remember though, that a good song came on and I wanted to dance. If I dance with a girl and she still doesn’t fall for me she’s gay. I think my granddad or some other wise fuck told me that shit. But I couldn’t get up.

“Shit.” I said.

“What?”

“I can’t feel my legs.”

She laughed her ass off. I wanted to join in but I really couldn’t feel my legs and was having Joe-Swanson-type intrusive thoughts. Then her cackling ceased as fast as it had crackled. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I can’t feel my legs.” That’s when I joined in the laughter. We chatted awhile, she recovered first. I watched her dance and wished I was Beatrice Kiddo in the back of my Pussy Wagon, but then again it took her like six hours to wiggle her big toe. It took me considerably less time, by then the night was over. 
But Zie taught me how to make space muffins.

“Maybe I could try those. My problem is with the smoke.”

“Cool, my place, tomorrow at seven?” The rest of our conversation we saved for the date.

When she came over I had all the ingredients in place: fish oil as Selassie and apparently the whole country calls cooking oil, eggs, and muffin premix courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood supermarket and the magic ingredient courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood sweet-vendor. What I missed in Zie-Goatee’s lecture was how much of the ingredient to mix in. I mixed up the dough and threw it in the oven, having figured two twists should be enough for two adults. In hindsight, smoking one twist takes me a while. I shouldn’t have done that.

I can still see her sitting up on my bed, the room is tidy for the occasion, I realise I’m still so fucking in love with this woman I can’t make any move. It still hits me sometimes, that thing where you respect a female and spare her the lecture about the equator and proportionate girth. We spoke a lot of shit. She was bubbly, god I wanted to shut her up with a kiss, but my feelings, emotions, handicapped me; I wanted to ‘respect’ her. We got to eating anyhow, we did one muffin each and sat for a bit.

“This shit is not working. I want to do like, a second one.” It wasn’t a discussion, she was onto it. I’d have another as well, camaraderie and shit, one pinch at a time. Never done this shit before so who knows how it might go? The thing with piff, I learnt from experience, it’s not like hooch: you can’t stick a finger down your throat and make it go away, or come out. That shit gets into your head, your blood your heart, your fucking spirit and it can kill you; like that time I got high on the fortieth floor of the tallest building in Africa and jumping made so much sense I survived by locking myself in, hiding the keys from myself and guzzling coffee like some… fucking… Hell, ask that kid who got so paranoid rolling with his mates he screamed, “fuck, you guys want to kill me!” and jumped off the balcony to save himself. From the fifth floor… I don’t know, I think what was left of him, that they scraped off the pavement could fit in a shoebox. She went in for a third. She was halfway into it and I was halfway into my second when I told her to stop.

The first time always hits you hard. Dlos and I had been sitting with Mdluli who smoked the shit like tobacco. We’d never been high and were part of that ‘this shit doesn’t do anything to me’ brigade. I drifted midway into the story, fell back and watched the stars, they were… sparkling. I caught the last part of the story anyway, I gather a mutual friend, we called him Rasta, was caught wandering about the dark by the nice vigilante folks who enjoyed violence and masqueraded our streets as the neighbourhood watch and asked where he was going.

“I’m going to see Mdluli.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Yes, I need something urgent from him.”

“What’s that something that can’t wait ‘til morning?”

“I can’t say.” It sounded silly and curious so they walked with him to verify his story. Mdluli opens his door to some knocking and a disturbing sight of armed men accompanying his friend in handcuffs.

“Well, we are here, tell him what you want.”

“Condoms.”

I’d tried with all my might to stop laughing but failed dismally. Damn thing had snuck up and sucker punched me and I’d laughed for a week. The more experienced I got the more I could sense an ambush and this stupid girl with her sinuses, this stupid girl I was so stupidly in love with, was rushing headlong into a mean thicket fitted with a shit-tonne of melee weapons.

“Stop eating.”

“What? I’m enjoying this. And it’s not doing anything to me. Actually, I think I’m done with these experiments. I can safely cross weed off my list. It doesn’t do anything to me. Maybe if I smoked it like other people, but I can’t because I have sinuses. Did I tell you about the sinuses? I mean, yeah, that’s why we're doing this right? I did and we tried baking and it’s so disappointing, like, I really wanted to get high and see what all the fuss about it is about, you know, people are always going on about weed… and getting high… but I’m okay... like… maybe... I don’t know… are there like different types of the stuff like… maybe next time we can try a different type, you know like… I don’t know man, you know what I mean like… what are the types even? You should know. You’re the expert here. I’m really not feeling anything right now. At all, not even at all. How am I supposed to feel anyway? Did you do it right? Isn’t there a step that you missed or something? Obviously you said it was your first time mixing it up, I don’t think you did it right. Okay, do you have any more weed left? I think I’m going to do it myself. I think I have to bake it myself so I can be sure that it works or doesn’t work rather so I can totally cancel it from my list forever and know that this is it for me.”

“You’re fucking high right now.”

“Am I?” She thought about it for a moment. Her eyes were glazed; it sure as fuck had snuck up on her. She laughed for a week. We laughed together, she more than I, she pulled my phone out of the speakers and plugged hers in, played her kak-awful music and danced while I watched: I sort of couldn’t feel my legs. But she danced like it was the sixties, one of my neckties tied Rambo around her head, twirled, threw her hands up, doubled up in laughter, waved like those blow-up thingies on the side of the highway, waved from side-to-side, swayed like a noisy storm, collapsed on my bed and giggled at the naked light bulb. I got up from my desk where I’d perched, sat beside her form and her glazed eyes peered through me into my soul. I drew her hair back and exposed her face, that cute little button of a nose, then I kissed her forehead. I sat up, she reached up in cloudy haze and touched my face. I closed my eyes and savoured the moment.

When I opened them I told her she had to leave. She didn’t understand but still, she let me half-carry her home. Her flat wasn’t far from mine, which was fine. I wanted her, I wanted to take her on that bed, and lord knows I did, but not like that, even Jehovah respects freewill… unless it’s Mary’s. And she wasn’t Mary.    

The call came, just as expected; I’m one of the good guys. That’s girl-code for ox. Well fuck off. Junkie bitch.

The next time we hung out, which I think was the last, we didn’t fry marijuana buds in oil and pour the mess into dough and cracked eggs. We chilled with Selassie and watched a back-of-the-cinema copy of the new A Team movie. For some reason I was determined to flush myself into the friend-zone, I don’t know why but I really liked that girl in a Don Quixote-meets-the-Virgin Mary awful kind of way. 
Selassie and I had flushed a good joint into our systems before we began, Hannibal was a beautiful man sucking his cigar in all those colours of intoxication, she, my button-nose princess, was the only one seeing the blur clearly. Occasionally we’d step out to smoke a cigarette to get that head rush; couldn’t do it in the room because she and her sinuses were in there and Wisdom had his asthma issues going on. Fucking factory-rejects.

Selassie stepped out and came back quicker than it takes to spark up a match.

“Neighbour,” only his head was leaning in through a slight gap, “Come quick.” I got up and found him in the kitchen. Wisdom’s door’s open, Victoria is standing in the doorway hysterical as fuck, Selassie is pointing that direction.

I’ve seen some shit in my life, maybe that’s why I’m hesitant to step inside. I do anyway, inch forward and turn into the room. He’s lying on his bed, convulsing, eyes like boiled fish. Yap, that fool’s dying. What actually happened? There will be two accounts: the first will be that Victoria had been smoking in the room, the second -don’t ask me how I know it’s the actual version of events- will be that they had a fight, like all normal couples do. And like women often do she hit him below the belt. You see, Wisdom didn’t come down from that province of manmade lightning packing just the big schlong his people are (in?)famous for; as his people are wont to do, he also came into the big city with his uniform: entire with its railways-security-looking cap, the silver Walker-Texas-Ranger-I’m-A-Sherriff-like badge along with the green cloth that goes under it, and the photo of the guy who’s whatever Pope-or-Khamenei-like-guy their sect recognised. Now I’m a son-of-a-bitch but I never make fun of a man’s religion until he works himself into a fit and catches an asthma attack. Apparently Victoria doesn’t share my sentiment of etiquette. Either way, this motherfucker’s dying.

Everyone’s outside the door but I step in, probably because I’m half-crazy and high as a steeple. Once upon a time before I fucked his girl and told him, Wisdom had shown me two inhalers.

“If I ever have an attack and you're nearby, pass me this one. If it gets really serious, use this one.” Never mind that I’m not paying attention while a man is telling me how to save his life in what - clearly - is an inevitable scenario, I’m also slightly dyslexic so right now I know we should be looking for an inhaler, but for the life of me - and him - can’t remember what colour we’re looking for.

“Find an inhaler.” Victoria can’t move. It’s not a pretty sight (thank god I’m high!) and she’s the cause of all this so I imagine she’s feeling pretty shitty right now. Selassie moves in, rummages through the drawers (it’s not a pretty sight, but thank god he’s high) and little miss sinuses makes her entrance.

“What’s going on?” I throw Miss Sinuses a rhetorical look that mumbles the fuck you think? “Call an ambulance.” I remember her mother’s a doctor. Have I spent so much time in the Third World I’ve forgotten ambulances work sometimes… in other places? Victoria fumbles her phone like some bad guy with his gun because the screenwriter lacks adequate creativity to get the guy shot convincingly.

“What’s the number?” The natives mumble among themselves, I’m looking at this guy, dying in front of me. He’s slipping into unconsciousness… Fuck it. I jump on top of him and slap the shit out of him.

It’s a proper wallop but nothing happens. I unwind another, grab him by his laundry and shake him like he’s the one that fucked my girl. He slurs something, welcome back among the living! Another slap will do him good, so I let him have it. His face is twitching now. The natives have figured out the ambulance number because Miss Sinuses’s mom is a doctor but nobody wants to talk to the operator so they hand me the phone. This guy’s head is dangling in the air from my grip on his collar, I’m sitting on top of him and holding the phone in the other hand.

“Hi, I need an ambulance on yap-yap-yap building corner yap and yap.”

“What’s the emergency?”

“Our friend, you see, is having an asthma attack.”

“What’s his condition?”

“He’s unconscious right now, I’m slapping him so he can wake up.” Then I notice the fool has gone limp in my hand. Is he finally dead? “Hold on…” I pin the phone between my shoulder and ear, crack him proper and add a Serena backhander for good measure. He groans. “Yes?”

“Have you tried administering the inhaler?”

“We can’t find the inhaler.” Now as soon as I say inhaler this guy gasps somewhat to life and hiss-grunts something. “What?”

“You can’t find it?”

“Yes, hold on… What?”

“I said you can’t find the inhaler?”

Grunt.

Did he say ‘bump’? “Shut up for a moment!”

“What?”

“What?”

“You can’t find the pump?”

Oh, he said pump.

I look back. “Has anyone found the pump?” Apparently I’m fucking entertaining like the rockstar I always knew I would grow up to be but nobody’s looking for the fucking inhaler anymore.

Shit. He’s gone limp again.

Smack!

“Okay, he’s talking now.”

“What happened?”

“I slapped him.”

“You slapped him?”

“A few times, yeah.”

“Why?”

“To save his life.”

“How?”

“Look, it worked.”

“Okay. What’s happening now?”

“We’re looking for the pump.”

“How is he doing?”

“He’s half awake, if he slips back into unconsciousness I’ll have to slap him again.”

“Why are you hitting him?”

“It’s first aid. Look, are you bringing an ambulance or not?”

“I don’t know, should I?”

“I’m worried about the country if people like you are answering emergency calls.”

“What?”

“Neighbour, I found it.”

“We’ve found the pump.”

“Okay.”

It’s the blue one.

“What’s happening now?”

Shit, is the blue one the right one for now? I figure there isn’t much of a difference, look, if a guy can’t reach his own breath-of-life device he’s pretty fucked already so there’s no blue-pill or red-pill shit to fuck with. We are not in The Matrix, this is real-life goddamnit; an inhaler is an inhaler although I distinctly recall him saying the wrong colour might finish him. Fuck it. I pop the lid off with my teeth and shove the thing into his mouth then squeeze… he heaves to the aerosol elixir and somehow I understand he wants another hit so I spritz him again… I hope I don’t kill this son-of-a-bitch…

“I just put it in his mouth.”

“Okay. What’s happening?”

Please god, I don’t want to be the guy who fucked his girl then killed the guy.

“I sprayed his throat.” I sit there on top of him, watch this bastard. He’s not going to die… he’s not gonna die he’s not gonna die... is he?

He raises his hand across his throat.

“I think he’s going to be fine, thanks for staying on the line. Can I call you back if anything happens?” If I kill the guy...

“Of course.”

“Thanks.”

I dismount the cuckold. He falls back onto the bed, takes the pump and gets a few hits out of it with Parkinson’s hands. I sit on a chair, watch him with the three other sets of eyes in the room. Not a word is said.

When he gets up a long moment passes. He just sits there, eyes to the floor like any man who’s just had a stare-off with death. And lived to tell the tale… in good time. The room is silent, all that fills it is the sound of outside: chattering, occasional traffic. After a week he drags his face upward, looks at me and hisses, “Shamorta.” We can all breathe now, we can all laugh.

“Hey,” he croaks, “why does my face hurt so much?”

Now we’re even.

She was horny after that, I went outside to smoke and she followed. Fuck her sinuses, I didn’t care which way the wind blew, I had just blown my buzz on a near-death-experience that wasn’t even mine. I didn’t get the hero’s fuck, I still wanted her, but not like that; even Yahweh respects freewill.

The last time I saw Victoria she had thrown a party and was just getting onto cocaine. She said she got it from the Nigerian she was fucking. There was a DJ in that little flat, a tonne of people and a tonner of booze. She was winding on my dick while I sat in a chair, she kissed the fucking DJ like that, ass on my balls and everything, and I think that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. I left, all fucked up, slung on Selassie’s arm. We stood outside for a minute while I took in the scene.

I remembered the first time, that sweet girl craning her head to the side and asking me what kind of a friend I was to leave without saying goodbye, telling me how fast her heart was pumping, and I felt her heartbeat, kneaded the tissue upon it, held her in my arms and kissed her like a motherfucker. She had unlocked her door, someone was fumbling the burglar-bar on theirs… would we be caught making out in the corridor? Not if I could help it! I threw her door open and lugged her into the kitchen, kissed her against the stove giving no two shits to the thought that maybe someone, one of her two flatmates had just cooked something and it was… we kissed like a collision of aeroplanes, she was nice I swear, I hurled her onto it, searched the pockets of her flesh like a prayer and ripped my shirt off. My disposable lighter leapt out of my jeans, exploded on contact with the floor and broke the moment.

“Stop.”

Cheap Chinese shit.

“What?”

“Not here.”

“Where?”

“Go to your room, I’ll follow you.”

“No.” I’d be damned if I fell for that shit at my age.

“I’ll follow you, I promise.” I don’t believe her. “Here, take my phone.”

I pocket it and dress up in shame, slither out of the room in defeat. Upstairs, I pull out my own phone, turn it off, turn hers off and throw both on top of the wardrobe. A shower will kill the erection. Hey, it could be worse, right?

I don’t dry myself when I step out, just my legs so I don’t mess up the communal floor. I left the heater on, these winters always almost kill me. I know my room is nice and warm, like a vagina, with red walls (painted in the glow), like a vagina, I’ll slip in, and find peace for the night. I walk in and shut the door, as I do I almost startle, but I don’t because nobody knocks in the den of iniquity, and she’s standing there, in her lingerie, all that curvaceousness, sensual youth, the fucking ass I’ll fail to mount in hound despite all my vigour and desire, imagination and poetry; she stands there, dear lord, a vision in red, red of velvety-scrumptious sin, a vision for eons, indelibly marked in the vastness of everything I’ve been and have ever known, brighter than Aludra.

Finally Selassie dragged me up the fire-escape. I may have been sobbing. I looked back onto the doorstep where it all began. “You know,” he said, “One day you’ll write about this place.”

“Fuck off.”