zahir's profile

He says “I love you” too easily, she knows, when the vodka haze and prescription fog wrap themselves around him. But she’ll believe him because he feeds her soup after blowing it cool. She’ll believe him because he’ll make love to her before she washes the stink of 24 hours in jail from her skin. She’ll believe that his made-up words are real, that his half-lies are true, that his painful truths are not. She’ll believe him just so she can watch him strut catlike across the room garbed only in...

An eclectic cast of characters attended the soiree – a virtual parade of unresolved issues and repressed fantasies that would’ve made Freud blush. A group of outcast teenagers acknowledged my presence with unconvincingly surly nods, secretly eager for their favorite teacher to bear witness to their surreptitious beer in paper cups and the incomplete metamorphosis of their social skills. A well-known artist winked at me mischievously over his whiskey. Later, he bit my earlobe hard and told me ...

His room is a sanctuary; a haven from my obligations. Packed full of rich antique wood and eclectic odds and ends, it is a million worlds away from the pre-fab furniture and strewn-about toys of my real life. The hint of stale cigarette smoke lingers under the masculine-citrus smell of his cologne. Ice clinks in a glass, and the bite of vodka on my tongue is smoothed by pink grapefruit juice. My lips and fingers, cold from the drink, are warmed by his mouth and skin; he shivers as I run a fro...

A tiny white scar lifting from the right side of his upper lip; his lips straight and strong and sensual-- good man-lips. I'm embarrassed that I can't remember how he got that scar -- I know I asked. . . A fight with his brother? I'll have to ask again. Its origin matters little; what does matter is that its image is burned into my brain. That image along with the jet black hair that feels so much softer than it looks, his green eyes fixed on me only partially clothed, as though he is a B mag...

Lost, somewhere between freedom and despair I met a muse with a Hemingway twinkle in his eye; white beard and driving cap to match. His paintings made me homesick both for where I’ve been and where I want to be. In a November cold warehouse-turned-art-studio, drunk on the bitter scent of oil paints and turpentine, he kissed me and I kissed him back— more passionately than I expected— and the moan of a teenager escaped from his middle-aged throat while I, panicked at the thought of losing myse...