Twenty-Nine—Men Who Come
We haven’t spoken for a few minutes. Haven’t needed to. The conversation has gone somewhere below words and we’ve let it stay there.
He’s touching himself. Slowly, without urgency, the way a man does when he’s stopped thinking about what he looks like. His hand moves to me as well—my arm, my leg, the simple contact of another body present and warm and not pulling away. And then a certain quality enters the silence. A question that hasn’t been asked yet.
He looks at me with the expression I’ve come to know well. Slightly sheepish. Hoping I’ll understand without him having to say it, because saying it out loud would require him to want it out loud, and he’s not quite there yet.
So I ask. Do you want to blow?
The words matter. Plain, direct, his language not mine, no clinical distance and no performance of sensitivity. Just a question between two men in a room. And the effect is immediate—not the release itself but the permission for it. His whole body settles. The sheepishness leaves his face and something simpler takes its place.
He comes in his own time. Sometimes quietly, turned inward, private even now. Sometimes noisily, more physical than he’s been all afternoon, as if something that has been contained for a very long time is finally done containing itself. I say what feels right—not much, just enough. A voice in the room that isn’t alarmed, isn’t performing, is simply present with him while this happens.
Afterward, fresh towels. A shower if he wants one. The ordinary practical kindness of that.
And then he sits back down and the room is different. He is different, though he might not have words for how. The conversation resumes easily, naturally, often with a lightness that wasn’t there before. He’s cheerful in a way that surprises him.
Talkative. Unhurried.
The questions have quieted. The performing has stopped. The body that arrived apologising for itself two hours ago is just his body now—present, ordinary, sufficient.
He has become his body. He may not know that’s what happened. But it’s what happened.
You are here: Naked But