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It’s his dark honey that kills me. That skin. Utter conflagration of pure      sunkissed ginger   rose dusk   human musk   he wears like a coat of chocolate I can’t lick off.

A cigarette dangles from his shapely lips. The top lip marked by two sharp points. Somehow the lips of my lovers are always like this, unlike my round ones.

His eyes always seem to be laughing. I ask him if he’s laughing at me. I can’t say what makes me suspicious. Insecure. The quiet masculinity, the gentleness about him. Those muscled caramel limbs.

He takes pictures. He likes women. Men. He chooses to keep silent the names connected to the bodies he enjoys. Sometimes, there is a photo to remember.

His favorite place to find them is on public transportation. It’s easy in San Francisco, where beautiful, well-dressed, bright people fill the seats and aisles of MUNI and BART each morning, afternoon, and night — lonely people he talks to easily before discreetly passing a card with only his first name and number on one side.

Ahmed. Coconut brown all year round. How does he manage to always glow that way? His features are tragic, broad, dramatic. They take after his mother.

His eyes are too dark to read. He doesn’t know that when I meet him –always on the sidewalks flanking Mission Street — I see how his eyes get soft. Looking at me. Staring at the concrete when I say his name.

We spent the night together once, after we went out dancing at Little Baobab. Covered in one another’s sweat. He twirled me in the middle of the tiny dancefloor, the swirl of women and men moving around us. I laughed all night as he swang me around, my hips burning figure eights into the crowd. And his eyes. They just stared at my lips as his hands held me up by the small of my back. I leaned hard into them.

Once under his covers, he turned to me, dragged his lashes across mine, exhaling softly. I felt knocked out.

He asked for a kiss and I said no, only to wait until he fell asleep to wake him up with my mouth on his. Those lips, those lips like rosebud salve all over my body. He’s not exactly a gentleman. He likes to use his hands. He never apologizes for that.

Old island songs were playing the night we danced. He crept up behind me, his chest bumping my back slightly. He didn’t ask, just did it.

It wasn’t strange, exactly.

He was only supposed to be here a month. Then back to Tehran. But San Francisco became a haven in ways he found difficult to leave. That cinnamon sex appeal made him a hit in the Mission, thousands of miles from his parents and the eyes of his five younger siblings. The hipsters wanted to fuck him. The Mexican girls, the Chinese FTMs, the elder leather-clad women who worked at the local dungeon all wanted a taste of his Farsi flavors.

They gave him a chance to practice his English, flirting wildly in public places, ducking into nearby bathrooms or hourly motels for a quick ride. Ahmed’s throaty accent and flawless skin, luminously dark, rare, smooth as agate, drew them in droves.

Men presented an intriguing challenge. Ahmed preferred the shy ones, the undecided ones, the heartbroken ones. I think he could have been heartbroken himself. He loved sex but said he never “fucked with love.”

“That’s fine,” I quipped. “You’re not exactly marriage material.” Which was obvious. Even though I didn’t want it to be true. Despite the compulsive wedding fantasies I had between the moments I got to observe him. Be near him.

“I’m just sampling. You know, before winter comes. I want to taste all the blossoms I can, man.” His laugh again, chiming against the gray Mission district sky. Motorcycle keys jangling from a belt loop, another cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The backdrop of Christmas lights and the Bay Bridge etch that night into forever memory.

“Here, I can’t take this with me.” Ahmed hands me a small plastic container half-full of chronic emeralds, my favorite strain. He leaves for Tehran in less than 10 hours. I don’t know why he wants to say good-bye. I haven’t seen him in weeks, had thought he’d forgotten me or left the city already.

He says he had just been busy with all the preparations. The new show. And…he had wanted me to decide I missed him, before he was actually gone. Only a few hours left until a long flight through Hong Kong and on to Iran, where his mother is waiting. A week after his touchdown in Tehran, he’ll be married. To a stranger.

“Spend my last night with me,” he whispers. And here are his hands again, finding the places behind my ear and along my waist where I hide the signs of my desire.

All I remember about him comes back to me as a dream, divided into frames like the still images on his sublet bedroom walls. His fingers inside my skirt, my body against a gutter wall, witness to my silent consent.

When I open my eyes, I am alone.

© 2008 tahminah zaman