It’s midnight and I’m angry.
I am very angry. I am so angry and confused and vulnerable that I’m quaking in my skin. I hate him. I hate him and I want him to come to my room and I’m sick of thinking about him. I’m tired of reaching out and I’ve gone over to his room enough and I’m so ANGRY I could just kill him! We’re supposed to be dating and he’s IGNORING me! And I care! I’m mad that I care, and I’m mad that he’s ignoring me! I’m so angry I’m literally shaking.
So I journal. I’m a G.O. at Club Med, which is a fancy term for overworked employee, and I don’t have time to journal, but I journal anyway. I don’t have time to do anything. I shouldn’t be up right now. It’s 2am and I’m up and I want to be asleep, I want to be able to sleep, and I can’t, and it’s pissing me off. So I write about it.
Max is a G.O. as well, and he is why I’m pissed off. Because he’s on the circus team, which means he constantly lifts people in the air and does crazy tricks on the flying trapeze which means, among other things, that he has a sick body. A SICK body. Fuck. I write about that.
And it was nice at the beginning. He sort of propositioned me in the gym, essentially asking if I’d like to go steady. I had only been at the club for a week and a half and was still adjusting to the ridiculously weird environment. I wasn’t sure. At Club Med, all the G.O.s live on site, and they’re all young (as young as 18, actually), hot, and ready to party, so the place is basically a reality TV show every single night of the week. What makes it even more interesting is the fact that the guests, the G.M.s (gentil membre, “gentle members”) know about the Club’s reputation for its crazy, hook-up-able staff, so a lot of them come there for that.
So you have young, beautiful, tanned, G.O.s, many of whom date each other, who also have constant access to a stream of sex-starved tourists who think that all G.O.s are hot for it and ready to go. No joke, Max and other G.O.s have women literally knock on their doors at night expecting to just be let in to get fucked. I write about that too.
I write about how at the beginning it was sweet. Max helped me adjust to life at the Club, which was weird for a number of other reasons besides the G.M.s. He was there the night I broke down from the stress and sleep deprivation. He was there to comfort me on the beach, when I sighed and cried and wondered if I would make it. We met each other in spare moments and he came to my room and I went to his when we could and sometimes we spent our day off together. I write about that.
Then I write about how it got weird, as things inevitably do. How it got really weird, the kind of weird where you just don’t talk about it. How we never talk, as in NEVER talk. You see each other and you don’t talk about it and then it just gets weirder and weirder until it’s a pressure cooker, there is a pressure cooker inside you just from all of the not knowing. As if all of the not knowing were one big event, when really it’s a series of smaller ones that compress themselves on top of one another; moments of not being seen, not being cherished. Not even knowing what’s going on – whether something’s going on? Moments of not even feeling respected, or like you even exist. Moments of wondering whether you’re the one who’s crazy, or whether this is just how it goes, whether this is a relationship, whether you made up the part where we decided to HAVE a relationship (did that happen? Was it all in my head? No, it HAPPENED. What the FUCK?). Moments of resenting connection and the disappearance and the constant questioning and mostly the sense of disappointment and uncertainty about whether you were every supposed to trust him in the first place, trust him to listen or care or just at the very least acknowledge –
There is a tap at my window. I have been writing for two hours. I am all worked up and now there is a stealthy sound at my window, accompanied by the low susurro I associate with him. I know it’s him before I even go to look, and I’m annoyed with myself for being pleased that he has come. He is whispering to me, outside with his body, in the dark. He has come for me.
He is wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt. The night is black, it is a dark night and he is dark. Black as black as black. But the white is stark and shows up fine, fitting around his body perfectly. The contrast glows against the night and the shadows and the trees and the wind.
Photo by Matt Kolf
Photo by Matt Kolf
When I look out the window and see him there, I don’t smile. I don’t gesture, I just drop the curtain. I go around to the door and open it to the tropical air. I wait for him.
When he approaches he says something softly, something low. I don’t care. There will be no talking. The time for talking is past. It has been weeks and it has been nonexistent and it has been clear that Max is not good at talking. He’s not good at talking or being there or acknowledging or relating and I’m over it. But I’m not over the rage. And it has been converted into energy that is coursing through my body and has finally found an outlet. It is electric and insistent. I pull him inside.
I pull him in and push him onto the bed. Down, boy. Down. Then I’m biting and pushing and scraping and rubbing and hitting and spitting out all the vicious rage I have inside, out, towards him. On him. No talking, no words, no muffled sounds, no crying, no questioning, just biting and scuffling and fresh, hard energy from muscles that have been held tense and taut and frantic. All the moments of not being heard, of not saying anything, of stuffing things back and holding things in and keeping things out, rise stupendously to the surface as I rain blows upon him, scratching and biting and kissing and slicing.
I want to hurt him. I want him to feel it. He does feel it. I tear off the shirt, the white shirt, and push down everything else hard and fast and all is black and hard angles and me on top.
Then I’m pushing and biting and it goes fast and long and there is no stopping and I don’t care anymore and my hands are on the wall or on him as I fight, battling him with my own strength, the strength of the steel core I have within me that matches his – overpowers his and could burn down any house, any town, any day of the week. I push him down and in and he pushes back. But I’m stronger and faster and while we are quiet, the intensity burns like whiskey as it scorches its way down inside, all the way inside. Now my hurt is your hurt, I think. Now you can see how it feels. You like how that feels?
I don’t care if he likes it. I don’t care if he wants it. I don’t care what he thinks of it or what he thinks of me or whether he thinks of me or what will happen tonight or tomorrow or in five fucking minutes. It’s hate sex, and it’s perfect. It’s a miracle.
When it’s over he has welts that don’t show up in the dark. They do the next day. He jokes with the tourists, tells people the mosquitoes were vicious the night before. He says it in front of me, says they got him all over, that he has marks bordering on wounds. He does have wounds. Max has all kinds of wounds.
At the end he sums it up succinctly, as he is wont to do, in that steady Jamaican accent that belies the depth underneath. Donning his white shirt he says simply, “You was rough tonight.”
At first I don’t reply. I don’t even acknowledge he has spoken. I don’t want him to stay. I don’t want him to go. Then I get up and turn around and look him straight in the eyes, in the dark with the earth at my back.
“You deserved it.”
