By Barclay Totten
Copyright ©2025
The birds in the tree outside had stopped their evening squabble chattering as they do in their cacophonous twittering in the Tunisian dusk. Was it at the same time as evening prayers? All these sounds blended in Jake's mind and echoed through his cavernous cerebral chambers until they dissipated into silence with no trace of history or time. What was then was now. Nothing seemed to separate him from the fates of those in the past.
Lalla reached back with both hands and pulled herself apart. "Hard," she pleaded. "Hard now." He focused on his thrust, feeling her fingers meet his pelvis over and over and over.
"Aeywae," he heard her moan. Her head and chest now resting on the mattress. Her head now uttering this word.
Taking the cue, Jake got partially up, resting his weight on her waist. Her curly black locks glistened in arrayal upon the mattress around her head. He then placed his hands on her shoulders so that all his upper weight was there. He was able to drive down deeply. He was afraid this might hurt her, but she cried out with pleasure.
"Aeywae, aeywae," came her chorus now partly muffled by the mattress against her mouth.
Jake came back to knowing his own time and space and the ever-persistent reality of his member moving in and out, of hers snuggly encapsulating him. He loved to feel the vaginal flesh clinging as it moved in and out. He reached with his fingers and felt the membrane of the labia being pulled, then pushed, pulled, then pushed. To him, it meant that her body was sealing itself onto his body. Even during movement, this seal was maintained. His seed would be protected inside her and sheltered in a special secure dark place.
Lalla had begun a crying sound now – over and over from her gut. She sounded hurt, although he knew that she wasn't. And then she uttered a guttural as if she were lifting a heavy object and then putting it down - over and over. Each time she put it down, her grunt tapered off into a sigh.
The hot desert drafts of the evening moved through the room. The candle flickered and threw shadows of light bouncing off the walls. Jake smelled the fresh air as it worked its way across their bodies, soaked with sweat, cooling them even though it smelled musty and full of time.
"How many prophets had breathed this ancient air?" Jake thought. "Martyrs for faiths he neither had nor understood. Martyrs that lived their lives and died their deaths for principals. Principals, which he may very well be violating right now. He felt surrounded by an old world and its old beliefs - a modern expression in an ancient world.
An old nursery rhyme kept going through his mind. "Head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes, eyes and ears and mouth and nose, head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes." The nursery rhyme accelerated them with each "knees," each "toes," each "eye," each "ear," and with each "mouth" and "nose." Jake imagined himself penetrating her to the eye or ear or mouth and filling them completely. Over and over, he went into her shoulders, her head, and down into her knees and toes.
Deep feathery guttural cries now came in breathy bursts from the back of her throat upon each impact until these little cries became panting breaths of fire. Jake could see her tongue sticking out slightly over her bottom teeth as she panted. She was muttering something in Arabic that he couldn't understand, like "danwootu" over and over between her pants. He could see her eyes tearing. But he knew that pleasure often looked like this. Her little cries became louder and louder little squeals. Again he was afraid someone was listening. She started to add a yelp as if she was calling to or for someone. He realized she had reached the uncontrollable place where a brutal instinctual force totally circumvents social niceties.
Each swing of Jake's hips met Lalla's butt which continued to sway forward and back - faster and faster. And with each increment of acceleration, her muffled screams became more intense, more desperate in their desire to in any way facilitate the endpoint of their expression. The sweat that now beaded their faces also ran down their backs on this sultry Mediterranean evening.
It must have been August, Jake remembered. Although being on his long summer breaks, he often forgot the date, and now he wasn't even recalling the month. He often went on what he considered journeys into other lives, other personas, different lifestyles. He became what he could never be in American academia's conservative, modulated setting. He and other teachers often had contests to see who could go the furthest out and still make it back in the fall. Would he win bragging rights this time? Would he dare to brag?
Lalla and Jake were like a well-oiled machine - piston and cylinder. On and on, they would go until tanks were empty, energy spent. Lalla had quieted down now. But Jake began to sense that old feeling of something beginning to take him over. He felt panic and the sound of "yes" coming from his mouth. His groans became louder. Who knew how many ears were listening out in the courtyard? Definitely, it would raise some eyebrows if Arabic and English exclamations of pleasure were heard echoing together.
As she kept swaying her butt back to meet him, he saw a glint of the candlelight in the corner of her eye. It sparkled as though some gem had been caught inside and transmitted its brilliance. But then something happened that changed him forever. Lalla turned her head so that she was looking directly at him through the corners of her eyes. Her mascara was running down her cheeks in trails of sweat. Yet the sparkling brilliance of her eyes flashed at him unabated by any physical exhaustion. They penetrated him, and doing so, occupied him. He felt as though he was looking into timelessness. Then she sneered at him by curling her lips into the expression of power and control. Gone was the persona of the little girl from the country, the clerk selling rugs, or the temptress getting a little action on the side. Here he had a person of power and authority. But then, as soon as he understood what he was looking at, she noticed that he had seen and looked away.
Icy-hot shot through him, but the rush now crashing through him cleared his mind of any concern. Jake opened his mouth with renewed tenacity and gave his all.
"Fuck me, Jake," she said. "Fuck me! Do it! Do it good!"
His face was getting hot, then his whole body. Lalla responded to his muffled cries with soft high feathery sighs.
"Fuck me, fuck me good," she kept repeating.
Jake couldn't delay it one more second. "I'm – going – to – f-u-c-k – you," the words escaped him slowly and deliberately with stuttering gasps. His hands clutched Lalla's hips, using them for the last rapid throws of pleasure.
Sensations attenuated, and the pace slowed as the runners finished their race – hands on their heads gasping for breath. Understanding that the significance of all great things was not physical endurance but their dissipation into hope.
Pulling out of her, Jake remained on his knees, panting. Still swaying, she rolled on her shoulder and collapsed. He leaned on her hip and ran his fingers through her hair. His eyes narrowed on her stomach. Her navel had a tattoo around it he had not noticed. It was the primitive henna variety. Her navel was fashioned much differently than his; he noted as it went in and out. "Under what circumstances was it fashioned?" he wondered. He placed his fingers on it lightly and felt it as it moved in and out.
"You like?" Lalla said.
"Yes, Lalla is beautiful," Jake paused to think what else she was but was silent.
Jake lay down beside her, facing her back – his hand still on her stomach. The candle wick flickered wildly in the stump of the candle, leaving wild shadows dashing across the ceiling. He kissed her back. Taking his hand, she moved his fingers down between her legs.
Down through Lalla's pubic hair, down across the labia and to the rectum slowly moved Jake's fingers. He rested his fingers there and shifted them back and forth, feeling the concoction that had accumulated – semen, vaginal fluid, and sweat.
"I like," she said. "I like much." Again - soon."
The experience they just had together almost lasted all night, and Jake wondered how this would all work out. He had to return to his hotel and eventually return to the States. He didn't want to hurt her, but that's the way it was. She must have known.
A jazz riff drifted in off the Bay of Tunis in the early hours of that Tunisian morn so incongruous, but so apropos. Lalla reached over and touched his cheek and it was then that Jake knew even as he was known.
About Barclay Totten:
Many years ago, I published poetry, but my focus is now on prose. I have a previous story, "When When" published in Bare Back Magazine's November 2024 issue. Currently, I host a short story collection at tottentales.wordpress.com.
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