Man-whore realised

The room still holds his rosebush cologne. Tainted with the scent of my sweat on his, the transition from  cold night air to the warmth of two hours hits like a brick fog. I tell my friend two continents away and  his interest lies elsewhere, stepping down from this monthly conversation as his voice goes lower and  lower, executioner's steps from the chopping block with my heart in the basket. 

Aur kya bolun? What else am I supposed to say? I thought lovers suffered no awkward pauses just naked  ones, we redressed each time. As if the memories of his skin on mine were any less when hidden under  cloth. He doesn't believe me when I said I was fully prepared just to talk. He was nervous. He said 

Shut. Up. 

It’s been years for me, he said. A former high school dropout, former user, former lover, his blinding love  takes the form of tattoo on his bicep and near the V of his hip where I trailed and wandered and made him  shudder. I can almost taste her half decade tongue; it has been a while for me too.  

The door almost opens, almost creaks, almosts. He almost had me pinned against my aunt's cupboards  and boy, did I feel. The best perfume that ever smelled my neck, nothing less, nothing more.  

Children learn their lessons. One slap and they'll still dare, two they'll hesitate, three and they'll stop  trying. I've not learnt my lessons with one man, two, nearing thirty, and I tell of him of the men who  would rather love the million steps between us than try to overlook them. He listens. He tells me to wipe  the phone clean.  

The room holds his cologne as clear as my hand on his bearded cheek. They never stay the night. I am too  much all at once, this barrage of falling too fast, this weight dragging me down through the depths. I  never sleep the night, the terror of being caught in bed with men, with men and not boys. Who would  know them in the light of the pimping sun? He who brings role, age, and pics each passing night, to be  assaulted by flesh and bone who make new profiles, new faces day and day again. Who, tell me, can stay till the morning?