We got so much from one another.
I met you right after a weekend course called Power With Men. All I could talk about after this course with everyone was domme and sub. “Well that’s domme and that’s sub, you see.” I’d explain all of my friends.
You asked me what I wanted in a Tindr chat. I replied, “I want to be seduced and beguiled. I’m not saying I’m easy but I want you to make it easy for me to be easy. I want to be wooed, cooed, guided and led. I want to play the role that gets me what I don’t even know that I want. I want it to be all about me as you conquer and delight me. Tonight from seven to ten tonight or never.”
I’ve been thinking about you more recently. There’s been some stuck and sticky grief in me about you. We broke up in late 2019. That was a Saturn square ago. Saturn was in my house of intimacy then. I think the pandemic interrupted the movement of my grief about you. In 2019, you turned forty. Now I have, too.
You were my Egyptian lover. I was your ginger lover. There was some mutual tokenization happening. We both had curly hair. And made love in your luxurious lair. You were always meticulously oiling your hair up like your uncle taught you to in Cairo when you were little. I remember the smell. Almond. Resinous. Warm.
For your fortieth birthday, we went to see an artist named Egyptian Lover. He had come on through randomly on my Spotify the night after our first meeting. And then there he was, playing downtown on your birthday. You really can’t make this shit up.
I was talking about you recently and was surprised that the conversation elicited such a joyous state in me. I thought I’d been repressing some reservoir of shame, regret and humiliation from it all. But maybe what I hadn’t let move fully through me was the ecstasy of our exchange. Celebration and grief go together.
Our favorite Egyptian Lover song was the one where the lyrics go, “I’m mad. I’m bad. I’m sad.” in a sort of basal reclamative incantation. Once, you were so into it, driving up Amsterdam Avenue in your Maserati that you drove to 96th and I lived on 82nd. I noticed but I didn’t want the night to end, either. The simple lyrics reflected the direct emotional discussions we could have. Over a bottle of Dom Perignon because I was practicing being a dominatrix with you by demanding that every Friday, Venus’s day, remember?
There was real love exchanged between us. I think I grieved my parents’ divorce with you. That freaked you out but I understood. You were pretty crazy, too, after all. You catfished me. And used a different name. My hooker bestie found out your real name real quick on the internet. I didn’t care. I’d already decided I loved you before I met you.
*"What is life by a night like tonight?" from “Alf Leila wa Leila” performed by Umm Kulthum