Casual — L.A. Montana
short story ☆
short story ☆
I used to see him on Mondays or Tuesdays after work. It would be late, around nine, ten, eleven p.m. I used to say to my friends, we only see each other at midnight, as if this rendered both of us wild and mysterious. The truth, of course, wasn’t nearly as romantic—it rarely is. We weren’t a couple; we weren’t even dating. In the end, we were just a pair of lonely, horny, emotionally unavailable adults who didn’t know what the hell we were going to do about our loneliness.
His name was Majid, and he was from Paris by way of Algeria. He quit his soul-crushing corporate job a year ago and flew to North America to start anew. First to Quebec, then to Boston to live with his great-aunt for a spell, until he finally settled in Harlem, New York, where he worked in a boutique French restaurant.
“I like being in the background of things, behind the scenes,” he shouted into my ear the night we met, dancing in the corners of a shadowy rave somewhere in deep Brooklyn. I could barely see his figure through the foggy air, but I could sense him, could feel our bodies syncing and sweating to the music together. I felt an energy emanating from him that felt irresistible, inevitable. He looked at me with such unguarded desire; it unlocked something within me. It made me feel brave.
Sleeping with him was the first time I felt alive in months, which wasn’t healthy, but it was the truth. It was how I lived then, how I measured my life, in the men I slept with. At the time I was twenty-two: everything was desirous. Even that word, desire, stirred something in me. Words like curved, fluid, voluptuous left me wanting. I felt greedy for warm bodies in the night, like some kind of wayward vampire. I wanted to consume and be consumed. I thought, does anyone else feel this aching that I do?
One night, I asked Majid the name of the restaurant where he worked. I figured I could pay him a quick trip, maybe steal him in the bathroom between shifts, an idea we entertained with childlike glee the last time we were in bed together.
“I don’t like the people I know seeing me work,” he explained, a sorry excuse if I ever heard one, but I didn’t push it. I could tell we were already establishing boundaries. These boundaries said: We do not expose the addresses of the places we work.
That was fine by me. I liked the story in my head better, anyway. I liked imagining him there in that dimly lit bar after hours, his strong hands preparing cocktails better than the bartender could. I had never seen the restaurant in real life, but I could see it in my mind clear as day, could envision it down to the rapid-fire French he’d unleash in the kitchen, his strong eyebrows contorting with feeling. Oh, how I loved watching his eyebrows, his whole face tangled with emotion. It was an openness that both shocked and seduced me.
I had a list of traits I liked about him, qualities that determined a man’s character but did not need to be defined aloud. I liked how he said fuck it to the corporate world and came to New York alone, like I did. He was so boyish, I thought, to be living such a haphazard life at thirty-two; it gave me hope. I liked how his eyes smoldered whenever he was near me, how we would warm up to each other slowly and then all at once. I liked how he told me to look at him, as if my eyes were naughty, beautiful things instead of the small pools of darkness I hated for years of my adolescent life.
Even though he was a busser, Majid made twice as much money as I did, a realization that shocked me.
“I stay behind late at the bar every night,” he told me. “The bartender lets me close up, and he pays me more later. Dessous-de-table, or how do you say...”
“Under the table,” I finished for him, willing my expression to stay neutral as my brain worked lightning-speed computations to figure out how much he really made, tax-free.
I whistled appreciatively.
“Guess I got into the wrong industry,” I joked.
“No. You’re okay.” He said, eyes probing me deeply.
“You’re okay,” I repeated, and, not wanting to forget the reason I was there, stuck my hand down his pants.
I loved this part, the leadup to it. Seeing the heat in his eyes calcify into something tangible, feeling his want for me. It was like floating in slow motion, each moment seeming to stretch time beyond its earthly capabilities. It was why I kept returning to his bed each week. Not so much for his body, but for this frozen bubble of time that allowed me to stop overthinking for once and just be.
The physical for me has always been tinged with love. And in the end, is it so bad for a body to yearn to be touched as many times as it can, to glean as much pleasure as it can, while it is still here?
What draws desire? What tempts it? How do you determine if you desire someone, or if you are acting out a script of previous desire? But then how does one know what one wants without trying it first?
—
And then one day I blinked and woke up and I didn’t miss him. I didn’t miss any of them. I missed the nights—the long, unpredictable nights, the slivers of vulnerability I shared with strangers. But I never missed the men. I was very grateful, if only for a few hours a few nights a week, to escape myself.
They say those who move to the city are either running away from something or running toward it. Oftentimes it is both at once. Me, I went to the city to forget, and in the endless chaos I lost myself.
L.A. Montana’s work has been previously published in various online magazines. She is based in Boston.
