A Long Way Down

For the last Monday of the year, Louis had planned a simple activity for his classes. He asked the tenth and eleventh graders to go through their notebooks, their worksheets and papers, and pick out three insights they wanted to remember. Louis’s subjects were unconventional, an experiment in merging the hard sciences and humanities––approved by the charter school overlords, but unconnected to any long-term curriculum, and therefore at risk of abrupt dismantling. Not to mention disintegration in the minds of his students, who longed mostly for the next thing. And so he would encourage a bullet point approach, a salvaging of meaningful highlights, which could double as evidence of his success for the overlords.

One of his students was Justin, a surly sixteen-year-old who spoke quickly and under his breath, but who at least participated intermittently. Louis tried not to expect too much from these kids. He was one authority figure among a hundred, so the occasional display of respect and engagement seemed like enough. An acknowledgment that a conversation was worth having and not a waste of their precious and waning days. “That’s interesting” instead of “pff.”

On this Monday in June, Justin asked to speak first. He stood at his desk––no one had asked him to stand. His sweatshirt bore the slogan “Death is Self Care,” something he could only get away with in the final week of school when his one hundred authority figures were too fatigued and absent-minded to monitor outbreaks of militant nihilism, their thoughts in escape mode, planning the finer details of their freer summer lives. Louis himself had one foot out the door, a phantom limb strolling down cobblestone streets in Berlin––but Justin yanked it back.

“What I’ll remember most from this class, Mr. Goldman,” he said, reading from a leather-bound notebook, no doubt an expensive gift, “is that no matter what we do, we can’t escape our nature. Sex, aggression, violence, envy––these are the things that have kept us alive. Our survival is linked to our worst instincts and ultimately to our demise. Our fate is clear, and the rest is noise. Thank you for teaching me this.”

The class was called “Biology in Culture.” They read authors like E.O. Wilson and Oliver Sacks. It took the students a couple months, usually, to get comfortable thinking outside the bounds of modern history. There was one religious student who had asked to be excused from the class, a request that was granted, of course. Parental choice was a virtue here. Some parents had no interest in having their child in earshot of a monologue from the likes of Justin.

Suddenly Louis was not so sure about the value of this exercise. He looked around and noticed the eyes of his students––searching and bright. Emboldened by this little display of––what? It wasn’t just militant but mocking nihilism. Justin knew, he must have, that the future of Louis’s lessons rested on their association with some degree of positivity. That’s how everything was judged. Justin placed a single sheet of paper––ripped from the monogrammed notebook––onto Louis’s desk, like he was handing in his thesis with a flourish.

Louis thought––deep down where the unspeakable thoughts oozed like molten sludge––that he was a piece of shit. There was plenty of surface evidence of his goodness, sure, but not enough to penetrate down to the sludge. So when this kid was being a little shit, too, he felt a warm and unwelcome surge of self-identification. He wondered if he didn’t encourage this type of outburst from his students, or want them to give up their hope and confidence. There was enough mind numbing convention lording over them. He looked out at his students sometimes to find a sea of sameness, a cultivation of success, pupils like crops worried over for signs of weather damage or invasive infiltration. It was pleasing to consider himself the infiltrator, slipping them a bit of forbidden fruit and wearing away their sharp and shiny edges––to hell with his positive, productive output, he could measure subversion and propensity for mutiny, the kind most likely to boil over once they were out of his class and under another poor steward’s care. With a gentle gesture, a merely curious arch of his brow, Louis accepted the one-sheet thesis and deposited it into his right hand desk drawer like he’d been expecting it all day.

“Thank you, Justin,” he said, looking out at the rest of the budding insurrectionists. “I do hope your own demise is not imminent. Who’s next? Just shout it out, and when you do, why don’t you stand, like our standard bearer here?”

––

On the plane ride, Louis tried to slip into a mindset free of school-thoughts. He drew sketches of a few of his fellow passengers, taking care not to stare too hard. This had the result of making his figures somewhat generic, with cartoonish features. He leaned back and sighed. His drawing had taken a hit from school, the curriculum and the kids nudging out the progress he’d made from practicing during less absorbing periods of his career––jobs where empty space had required him to either invent tasks for himself or lose his mind. Now the opposite was true, he had few self-driven goals and all imposed ones. This trip would have to suffice for the year––he’d set out to do it, and here he was doing it. A personal success. The trick now was to shake loose his ruminations about Justin and Alice and Clark. He was nothing to them. He closed his eyes and stretched his long legs under the seat in front of him, but before his mind could wander far, he fell asleep in his seat, his head dangling into the aisle, his notebook slipping onto the floor, drool pooling slowly but surely at the left corner of his dry lips. He dreamed of the bathhouse in Berlin––Lush––the one toward which his phantom limbs had been angling. Hallways long and shrouded, branching off toward steam-filled rooms and pools of bubbling sludge. But the thick, interwoven bodies seemed immune to the molten heat in his dream, they hardened and glistened; he joined them, first a toe, a foot, a leg felt safe, and finally his whole torso submerged in the slick, inviting darkness.

Louis had been to Berlin once before, with an ex-boyfriend. He was very particular, that man, always frowning at buildings and grumbling about aesthetics. Whole segments of the city were discounted as drab and unappealing. Louis had let him curate and complain, occasionally validating his commentary. Even towering Soviet monuments failed to widen his eyes. He had seemed bored by history, as if he’d predicted it all. That was before he was a teacher, but looking back, the man reminded Louis of some of his students––simply too sophisticated to ever be impressed.

This time Louis rented an apartment in the neighborhood of his choosing, a two-bedroom, fifth-floor walkup with far too much space for one person. The family renting it out used their friend Daya to communicate. Well, Louis wasn’t sure if she was a friend or a property manager, but she called herself their friend. Maybe the line between a favor and a transaction was blurrier here. He was supposed to text her for the key when he arrived.

The ride to the flat was admittedly drab and unappealing––it was raining and Louis could hardly make out the road signs. Daya took thirty minutes to arrive, but thankfully a mute, stooped older man opened the front door for Louis without asking any questions. He stood waiting with his duffel and backpack in a dim foyer with burned out bulbs. A small, frowning boy of about ten bounced a fluorescent ball up and down the first flight of stairs without acknowledging Louis, so Louis stared at him shamelessly.

“So sorry,” Daya said in her soft, indeterminate accent when she finally arrived. She had short, black hair and wore large red glasses that overwhelmed her face. “I read 3:30 and not 3! I don’t know where my head was.” She grabbed his duffel without asking and they climbed the stairs, squeezing by the boy, who chucked his ball down into the foyer space Louis had just vacated.

“You’re a teacher?” Daya asked. This caught Louis off guard. How would she know this? They’d barely spoken.

“Excuse me?” he said, a bit too defensively, panting his way up the final flight.

“Sorry––Masha, the owner, she told me about your profile. She is also a teacher. Of psychology. What do you teach?”

Louis was groggy and annoyed. He did not want to discuss his work, he wanted to forget about it, he wanted the keys to the apartment and a lie-down before deciding what to do next.

He waited until they were inside. “I teach high school science, or philosophy of science, you could say.” The apartment, unlike the building’s common areas, was light and airy, with unusually high ceilings. A hallway opened up on the right to a large kitchen with butcher block fixtures, and on the left to a living room lined with books, leading to a small balcony teeming with overlapping potted plants. He moved through the rooms, pleased with his choice. In the back was the bedroom suite, which had an attached room with a sprawling bay window and bunk bed. The children slept here, he assumed.

“Is that right?” said Daya. “That seems unlikely for an American high school.”

“Well, I’m not lying to you.”

“I’m sorry, forgive my English. Unconventional, I meant.”

“I suppose,” Louis replied, trying his best to soften his tone. Anything for the key. “It’s an unconventional school.”

There were no pictures of the family anywhere, though the evidence of their lives was abundant––books of all sizes, sheet music on the keyboard, a jar full of seashells and a collection of tiny wooden planes. Louis wondered if the pictures were all stored in some locked cupboard, to which Daya also held the key.

“They are nice people,” she said. “They go near Dresden for the summers. There are beautiful hot springs.”

Louis didn’t know where that was in relation to Berlin, or that there were hot springs in Germany. In fact he understood very little about this country. He spoke no German. He knew no one who lived here. He didn't particularly like beer or schnitzel or wurst. But the transformation of Berlin intrigued him, a place inverted, it seemed, from where it had been eighty years prior.

Louis came to the kitchen again. Rain tapped loudly at the window behind the sink. Or maybe it was the branches of a drenched linden tree that shrouded the view of the courtyard.

“Let me show you some things,” Daya said.

“Recycling, trash, compost.” There were coffee grounds and what looked like small shreds of carrot caught in crevices.

“Here are extra towels. Cleaning supplies. The vacuum.” The closet was packed tight, but had the logic of busy parents putting priority items within reach and stacking the rest for later.

“Be careful with the shower, not to get water everywhere.” There was no curtain. Louis stopped himself from asking for an explanation, feeling foreign enough.

“You can use these,” she said, pointing to miniature bottles of shampoo and soap sitting on the lip of the tub. A cabinet above the toilet was locked haphazardly with a zip-tie.

“The washing machine, you think it’s closed, but you must push it hard again, like this––” She leaned her hip against the door until it clicked. “Only a little soap is necessary, you Americans like to use so much,” she added, and winked, an unlikely gesture intended, he assumed, to take the sting out of the insult. Instead he felt infantilized––you silly, wasteful Yankee! She doubted his common sense, imagined him incapacitated by every small inconvenience.

Daya brought him to a wicker basket next to a bench by the door, filled with what looked like pamphlets, brochures, and maps. She plucked one from the top and unfolded it, holding it up against the wall.

“We are here,” she said, pointing to a clearly marked black splotch in the southeast quadrant. “The nearest U-Bahn stop is five blocks toward––”
“Daya,” Louis interrupted. “Thank you for the tour. But I can read the map myself. I’m sure I’ll find my way around. Is there a key I should have?”

She looked at him blankly for a few seconds, blinking as if taking him in for the first time. She let the unfolded map fall on top of the basket.

“There are two,” she said, finally breaking eye contact and unfastening the jumble of keys that clung to one of her belt loops. “For the front door.” She pushed the key against his chest, surprisingly familiar. Their fingers had to fumble against each other for him to take possession of it. “And for the apartment.” Again, the chest, the finger fumble.

“There’s an older man,” she said, looking around for something. “He lives across the hall. He has dementia, gets confused. Might come to knock on your door, even at strange hours, thinking this is his room. Best to simply tell him no, that he moved, that he lives with his daughter now, and walk him back across the hall.”

She found what she was looking for––a dusty umbrella caught among some boots under the bench. Louis realized he hadn’t brought one of his own, and almost reached out to try and claim it, but she’d turned her back to him.

“If you’d be kind enough to help him,” she said before shutting the door firmly behind her and leaving him alone.

––

Louis spent an hour unpacking his things, walking between rooms, stopping and staring into drawers that he opened and shut, opened and shut. He rifled through books on photography, some in English. The apartment was imbued with many languages, he found notes and postcards in German and Russian stuck to the fridge and on a bulletin board by the front door. “Geh nicht zu weit,” one read, written in a large, sloping script. He looked it up on his phone. Don’t Go Far Away.

He needed groceries for the week. He envisioned picking up a man at the bathhouse, bringing him home and whipping up French toast after they slept until noon. Strange––he saw Daya’s face in his mind’s eye, disapproving of this prospect, the afterimage of her chaperoning presence. He wondered if he ever lived like that in the minds of his students, his arched brow appearing before them unexpectedly when they indulged in their small but constant acts of plagiarism. It shouldn’t––he couldn’t have cared less.

He found a large tote bag stuffed behind the vacuum and a baseball cap with the word “oui” on it. He attached the two keys Daya had given him to his own, folded the map she’d let fall to the floor into his back pocket, and set out to find supplies.

Just outside his door was the stooped old man, the one who’d let him into the building without asking any questions. He looked past Louis into the apartment and then attempted to scooch by and inside.

“No no, sir,” Louis said, blocking his way. “Your place is just across the way, see?” He pointed to the opposite side of the hall, but the man stared instead at Louis’s cap. His eyes were a cloudy blue. “Oui,” he said.

“Oui, yes, that’s right.” Louis tried to gently guide the man by the arm towards his door, a more intimate act than he’d intended, the man’s skeleton right there under the thin cotton of his button-down. Louis tried his luck and yes indeed the man’s apartment was left unlocked; he continued to apply pressure on the shuffling body in the proper direction until both of the man’s feet were on the right side of the threshold. Just then Louis spotted a long, sturdy umbrella leaning against the inside of the man’s door frame. Thankfully he had continued walking further into his home without any more guidance. “You moved in with your daughter, remember,” Louis said as he grabbed the umbrella. He would bring it right back. “Oui,” the man said faintly, disappearing into another room. No reason to get drenched, Louis thought. He left quietly and hurried down the five flights, his stomach rumbling, his conscience clear.

It was really coming down now. People dashed around unintelligibly. Louis set out in the direction of a nearby square where he believed there was a bakery and a small supermarket. His sneakers were soon dark at the toe and around the edges. He watched it spread as he walked. Someone ran by him with a newspaper held above their head.

Louis had rented this apartment for a week. He had vague plans: bike in Tiergarten, shop in Mitte. The Jewish Museum, Tempelhofer, a nude lake in Grunewald. A few gay bars before Lush. Lush Lush Lush.

The last time in Berlin he’d felt followed, overseen. Granted, he’d liked playing the ingenue in past relationships, trotted out to soak up the world like their compliant sponges. He could follow directions, follow along with their alternating expressions of disdain and sparing approval. Louis’s taste had developed in the eyes of other men, and it was tough now to distinguish his own preferences––opinions on style and cuisine, art and architecture––from those he’d memorized. Also tough, still, to stop himself from saying anything to reel a man in. What came out of his mouth was immaterial. It was the eye contact he was after, the first glancing touch, the erections under stiff denim, the tongues flirting, then enveloped.

He’d gone to Lush with the ex, but Louis lost him, wandering in the dark. He followed a Russian hunk with massive thighs and a tidy beard at a distance, watched him get sucked off by a young German in the steamy maze––came all down his own leg just from watching. Recovered briefly in the courtyard and went looking for the Russian again, found him in the dry sauna. Sucked his balls and his asshole for ten minutes until the man shoved him aside and said “enough.”

Louis didn’t know how his ex had spent that time. He’d been happy not to care, his reward for his usual compliance.

Louis was hard thinking about it. Maybe he would go tonight, his first night, and establish a presence there for the week; he bet it would be busy on a stormy night. It had everything you needed––easier to shuffle between pool, hot tub, and sauna for a few hours than follow the pack between wet-floored bars, guessing at who was taken, available, open, modest, explicit. He remembered a sense of clarity in the bathhouse that he was often craving. Guys were there to fool around, and if they looked away without glancing back, it was you they weren’t interested in, so keep roaming, logging miles in loops around the premises.

After three more turns in quick succession, Louis reached the square he was looking for. In the center of it, a group of friends was attempting to play ping pong in the rain, shrieking. Louis felt a pang of loneliness, a habitual response to witnessing the unbridled joy of others. He turned toward the line of storefronts, their names obscured or not displayed. As he approached, he made out the bakery. Large loaves of many shapes appeared to be dripping behind glass. The door was locked, though Google assured him it was open. His sneakers were now completely drenched, and he hadn’t brought another pair of shoes to Germany. Eventually he moved on to the market next door. Also closed. He knocked and knocked, just for the hell of it, even started to bang with his palm. He didn’t understand. It was 5:30 on a Sunday––was it the storm? The friends cackling nearby enhanced his humiliation. He returned to the apartment in a hurry, desperate all of a sudden to get out of the elements and into the swaddle of the psychologist’s home.

He tracked water up the five flights, he couldn’t help it. Once inside the apartment, he stripped down immediately to his underwear, left the clothes in the foyer, and let out a satisfying groan as he dragged himself to the fridge. It was more stocked than he expected––the family must have just recently left. Hanging from the top shelf was a note that said “Help yourself”.

The fridge’s surfaces had various rings of residue, orange and blue. There were two bottles of old soy sauce. These people were not fussy. How could they be? To let others sleep in their bed, rifle through their things. The fact that there were no pictures around was amusing to Louis. That’s where they draw the line? You can see my moldy cheese but not my likeness.

He unwrapped something in foil––a cheese, indeed. Looked like Gouda. And not moldy. There was also a loaf of multigrain bread, no expiration date in sight. Butter was left out on the counter under a small glass dome. This would do. He shouldn’t judge these fine, generous people for their haphazardness––they focused on the essentials. Bread and cheese for guests, a time-honored tradition, he thought, looking for the cutting board. There were three, stored between the toaster and the side of the fridge. He chose the most rutted, most worn, wooden one, and put a piece of bread in the toaster.

A knife, a knife, where were the knives? Here, thrown together in a drawer that couldn’t be safe for children. He imagined a man prowling around his kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, making a mess of coffee in the grinder, cutting cheese with a steak knife. No, he could never rent out his place. He’d spend weeks upon his return anticipating unpleasant surprises. People are disgusting in their own homes, let alone someone else’s. His stomach rumbled loudly at the big chunks of Gouda, and then, with a slight slip of his wrist, he cut straight into his left index finger.

Blood spattered the counter and pooled on the board. He stared dumbly at it for seconds too long, letting it worsen and spread onto the fleshy cheese. Shooting, stinging pain finally snapped him out of it, and he raised his hand so the blood streamed down his arm instead. Wheeling around, he searched for a paper towel roll, but there were only dish towels, a stack of them with cute, alternating patterns––a walleyed llama and a beach bucket stood out starkly, as if magnified. He grabbed one and wrapped up his pathetic finger, noticing small food splotches and crusty stains on the fabric as he went. He held it firmly in place with his other hand, hoping to staunch the bleeding, feeling the warmth of it under his palm. Tap, tap, tap went the windy linden tree against the window. He had a vision of himself from the outside: standing there dumbstruck in his briefs, streaked with blood, ruining this family’s kitchen. The toaster dinged, an old-fashioned sound from a far-away world he wasn’t a part of. He thought of an essay he’d made his students read about perceived slow-motion in emergencies––a cascade of moments, unfolding like a movie. The blood gushed, the tree tapped, the llama stared, the hand wrapped, all in the blink of an eye. He was fumbling around again, looking for the junk drawer. He managed to find some tape, rip off a piece with his teeth, and secure the towel in place. Frame by frame he made his way to the bedroom––progressively paler and more lightheaded as he went––before landing supine on the bed. Its plush comfort took him by surprise, and with his hand held safely across his chest, he soon fell asleep.

––

His finger throbbed, his head too, and his mouth was unusually dry. For a moment he forgot where he was, his mind clinging instead to a receding dream, some sort of ill-fated student rebellion he was leading. Not the first.

An unfamiliar bed, an injured finger––he was on vacation, of course. He checked his phone: 11 p.m. No messages. He was on his own, an old sponge in need of a good wringing out. He made his way to the bathroom, barely opening his eyes. Once in front of the mirror he squinted disapprovingly at his reflection and then down at his hands, one gloved in a dish towel. He’d have to inspect the cut, he couldn’t ignore it. Where was Daya when he needed her, with clear directions to the disinfectant and the bandages? The generic ones for moronic American guests, not the charming children’s kind he imagined inside the zip-tied, off-limits cabinet above the toilet. No illustrated superheroes would come to save this day, no gentle pat and now it’s okay. Was the family enjoying the hot springs? How long until they were homesick and thought of their next meal in their own kitchen, tainted and blood-stained? Ever so slowly he unwound the cloth, looking for the spot where it stuck to his skin, holding two sides together. Thankfully the bleeding wasn’t quick to resume. He could tug at it gently to assess the length and depth of the cut. From what he could tell it had stopped raining outside, it was quiet as he searched the hall closet for bandages. Quiet as he tended to himself. Too quiet.

The apartment watched him in his sad state: he sulked on the floor, his foot caught up in a clump of dust. It had been too long since he’d eaten. The pain of this day took on a monstrous presence. He imagined burying himself in the boxes to escape it. An injured child, left behind in a tantrum, awaiting his intrepid family’s return––how could you leave me, traitors? The desperation reeking. Clumps of dust in his hair now, too. There was nothing better than to wallow in self-pity and scorn. This home was different in the dark. Unfamiliar and unkind. It was his embarrassment echoing off the walls. He couldn’t return to the kitchen just yet, he’d devour the bloody cheese if he saw it.

Ravenous, Louis dressed. He caught himself in the mirror on his way out, a scowl that couldn’t have been his own. Don’t forget the neighbor’s umbrella, thought the man in the sullied shoes, before tucking his claw in his coat pocket and slipping out of sight.

The slick air cooled and tickled his skin. The city was steeped in a low fog, like the storm had quieter, more insidious business to attend to now, moistening and molding. The street he traveled down was a thoroughfare, buses passing frequently in both directions, even at midnight. So he got on one, realizing at once that he’d forgotten how to pay. But he found a seat with little fanfare. There were people scattered around, hushed conversation peppered with the staccato complaints of a toddler up past his bedtime. Two women in hijab sat close together; one of them eyed Louis with alarm on his way by. He’d let his injured hand show. Best to tuck away your bandages. Louis sat in the back, watching Berliners enter and exit from a safe distance, everyone huddled protectively against the wet foam of the night.

He got off two blocks from Lush. A bit of time to collect himself. His hunger became an asset, he relished the emptiness he felt, the gnawing rumble in his gut. It was 12:15 a.m. when he arrived. The man checking him in was bored, he’d seen hundreds of horny men come and go this weekend. Louis fought the urge to explain himself: this is my vacation. I deserve to be indulged.

“Busy night?” he asked instead, hoping for a preview of the scene.

“More or less,” the man replied, handing over two towels and flip flops in exchange for Louis’s phone. He had no interest in Louis, in how long it had been, in his ready, needy emptiness, his hungry eyes and desire to please.

The venue had three descending floors: locker rooms, a small bar, and the pools and saunas below. The layout came back to him easily, he’d imagined it accurately enough in his dreams, it seemed. With one towel fastened around his waist and another slung over his shoulder, he made his way to the backlit bar, a neon blue giving the skinny, tattooed bartender’s frame a pleasant halo.

“A newcomer,” he said to Louis with a smile. Louis felt his towel slipping and readjusted, hiking it up above his belly button to cover his small pouch.

“How’d you know I speak English,” Louis asked, eyeing the clump of colorful balloons on the bartender’s biceps, dragging a small elephant painted on his wrist.

“I could hear your English thoughts,” he said. “A vodka cranberry soda, am I right?”

Louis couldn’t resist, he was glad to be guided through this trip. “You nailed it,” he said. He explored the rest of the man’s body as he made the drink, muscles taut and straining at the slightest reach or rotation. All that exercise to draw attention to form and function, to bring the effort underneath to the surface. If our bodybuilding revealed the pump of our hearts and lungs, he thought, the pulsing of our glands, would we swell at the sight of organs doing their slow and steady work?

“Look alive down there,” the bartender said, handing over the drink.

His shoes clopped down the final flight, no matter how he tried to step lightly. His towel kept slipping. The drink dribbled and sploshed. You had to enter the milieu like a debutante and he felt his coming out proceeding clumsily.

Two round, balding men sat in the nearest pool with their heads lolling back, enjoying the pressure of some bubbling jets. Another two with luscious locks faced away from Louis, their hair and mouths entwined. Like with like. It was reasonably busy, but his entrance had turned no heads. He was starting out when others had already found their groove, and would have to carefully weave his way into some existing storylines. He made his way across the main tiled floor to the dry sauna, his pulse quickening and his erection growing as he eyed the possibilities. A naked couple held the door for him before making their way to the darker maze of back rooms.

The sauna was long, like a crowded city bus, with two tiers of slotted benches on either side. But it smelled of pleasant eucalyptus. A tall, burly man with a large, pockmarked ass was tending to the stones, pouring water in small scoops over the grill, blocking Louis’s view further back into the hot, cedar cavern, towards which others near him, close to the door, directed their gaze. When the man finally sat down, Louis got the full panorama––he had missed the initial stretching out, the coy stroking, the sizing up, the first grips and feints, the gradual division of more and less desired; it was in full swing now. In the back were the hard bodies––tough at first to distinguish––at play.

A fair-skinned, compact man lay on the bottom bench, his back slightly arched, receiving a handsome Black man’s dick into his mouth from above; that man in turn was getting fucked by the most attractive specimen, the sauna’s top dog. His dark hair fell just above his eyes, which glared at the fair-skinned man on the bottom of the pile. Sweat dripped from his jaw. There was a seamlessness to his thrusting; his dick was well sized for the man he was entering, who moaned with pleasure as the head slid all the way out and back in, out and back in, managing the transition with ease.

Louis envied that ease, the pleasure, the attention they attracted, the balls of it all. It was a scene unlike anything he’d yet witnessed in person, even the last time he was here. He knew of no sanctioned business like this back home, nowhere he could stumble into a den of sexual decadence for the price of flip-flops and a couple rough towels––just billions of hours of porn back in America. It became overwhelming to watch it happen in the flesh, he had to look away.

To his left, splayed out on a towel rather shamelessly, was an older man, perhaps in his sixties, with short, thin white hair standing at attention. He feverishly stroked himself, though all Louis could see was his leathery, red hand. Louis felt that if he touched himself at all he’d be done for, he didn’t know what it might do. But this man was able to rub and rub and rub, his small eyes unblinking, his focus fixed. His nipples were wide and sagging, and there was a slight rash climbing up his neck and cheeks, a general sickliness to him. Louis felt disgust bubbling up in him, a fear that if he stayed too long in this position near the door, he’d be one with the spectators, lustful and pouting on the outskirts. Meanwhile, he’d been staring––the man turned to Louis, paused his rhythmic pleasure, and said blankly: “You’re bleeding.” This caused a few more nearby to notice Louis, jolted from the reverie of watching. “Go fix yourself, man,” someone said in a heavy, unhappy German accent.

He looked down and saw drops of red on the slotted, wooden floor. The bandage had failed him––too much warm blood rushing everywhere. He grabbed his hand reflexively, getting more of it on himself. Shoulder-first, he pushed his way out of the sauna and back to the main room with the pools. Now a line of it ran down his arm. The cut was wide awake.

Louis was still and uneasy. He wanted a quick solution, but none presented itself. He wanted to ignore it, slip into a pool unnoticed. Let blood mix and mingle with the other fluids, cardinal among them. Let it wash away. He couldn’t leave already. He crept closer to the nearest shallow steps. The two couples remained as they’d been, one lazing and the other intertwined. As Louis eyed the water, once again his towel began to slip. It fell to the floor, half of it in the pool. He stood helpless, clutching his bandage, heat rising in his face.

“Mister Goldman?” he heard. Some trick of the moment, it must have been, an unfortunate dissociation. Or association, perhaps, between the outrageous figure he cut, standing there bare and bleeding, and that caricature of a Mister he inhabited in his classroom through countless flubs and dishonors. But no–– “Mr. Goldman? Louis?”

One of the luscious locks waded over to him and his face came into focus. It was a former student named Harry. Must have graduated two or three years ago––a fairly flamboyant teen, a benevolent, well-dressed clown in the classroom, with long arms and expressive hands. He was broader now, but had that unchanged, delicate face. Alarmingly blue eyes. A look of concern and suppressed laughter in them now as he stood naked, half-erect, in front of his former teacher.

Louis at that moment had an attack of tinnitus, the ringing adding insult to injury. He tried to suffer through it, saying “Harry, what a surprise” while he bent down to retrieve his towel, protect his hand, and cover himself all at once.

He wrapped himself up in the wet cloth, unable to catch a break. “What are you doing here, Harry?” He didn’t understand why Harry wouldn’t pretend not to see him, averse to awkwardness like most of the others. Instead he seemed completely at ease.

“I’m studying here this summer,” he said. “Getting some credits while I travel, it’s been amazing so far.”

Amazing.

“Are you alright?” Harry asked, his dick shriveling as he stood eyeing Louis's trickle of blood. “Did you hurt yourself?”

The man he’d deserted swam off in another direction, disinterested in whatever benevolence Harry felt compelled to exhibit.

“I’m fine, yeah, some wounds just won’t close, you know? I hope I haven’t made you lose your friend.”

“Oh him, no, I just met him.” He leaned in close to Louis’s face, sweat visible on his upper lip, his scent of chlorine and cologne inducing a slight head rush.

“Doesn’t know how to use his tongue,” he whispered.

Louis stayed still, aware that this might be the closest he came to another man’s lips tonight. By the time he looked up at Harry's eyes, it was clear the boy had registered this delay. It’s unsettling what memory conjures up without notice, the expressive blue-green of those eyes reminding Louis of an actor he follows closely and lusts after in private––some close-up on his chiseled face, his come-hither look when there’s nowhere to go but to smash your face into the screen. Now Harry’s eyes shifted to a kind of coy disapproval. Louis once again had the urge to explain himself––I never looked at you like that when you were my student, never saw you like this––but he remained mute while Harry found himself a towel.

“Would you like to get a drink with me upstairs?” Harry asked. “We can see if they have bandages.”

Louis was in no condition to turn down help, but tried to be as casual in his response as he could, hoping to dispel his paralysis of mind and body and conceal his desperate desire for this twenty-year-old to take him under his wing.

“Sure, I could use a drink,” he said, turning and spotting his last one on a ledge outside the sauna. He decided to forfeit it to avoid appearing even more disordered, the oaf who litters the place with his things, leaving behind smells and liquids and the pulped remains of his pride.

“So, what are you doing here Mr.––Louis?” Harry asked as they climbed the stairs, touching Louis’s untarnished forearm when he caught himself using the unnecessary title.

“Just a little vacation. Got here last night.” He could feel the blood hardening, a strange crusting on the skin’s surface, stemming from his small, wiry hairs getting caught and curling. Always another sensation lurking beneath the experience––reminders of the body’s constant churn. Like an unruly soundtrack to living, the volume controlled by countless indecipherable knobs and dials and levers. Louis wondered what dials were turned up for Harry as they exited the fray and he began to unravel his thoughts––about his engineering major, about college “in general.” How different it was from high school, the value of it compared to the cost.

Harry spoke with a confident curiosity, an interest in where his own sentences would lead him that Louis recognized as a symptom of early intellectual pursuits, when arguments are new and one’s mental paths aren’t yet trampled and muddied. Louis imagined laying his head on Harry’s bare chest and hearing a heart thumping along at a rigorous trot, the inner drive and stamina of a racehorse.

Harry ordered them two tequila sodas. The bartender eyed Louis with amused suspicion as he made them and Harry carried on, his hands conducting the cadence of his speech, drawing out and punctuating his words with a flourish. Louis could only register half of what Harry said, he was too aware of himself and the bartender’s quizzical look, like he hadn’t taken Louis for a pederast. It bothered him––he traveled across the Atlantic to avoid that look, this flirtation with impropriety. He resented it, too—Harry had no interest in him, after all, his demeanor was self-centered, the student in search of validation before hurrying off to find the sexual domination that Louis couldn’t give him, something Harry could likely intuit. Louis assumed all his savvy, gay students guessed at his orientation; it was an easy way to bring a teacher down to size, reducing his authority to giving or receiving, characterizing his behaviors and ticks as attributable to that central, amplified desire. Louis would have done it, too, anything to distill the motivations of another, especially someone who professes to guide you and judge your degree of success. A bottom’s inclination, you could say, even overcompensation: to give a grade.

“Here you go gentleman,” the bartender said. “Everyone playing safely down there?”
“He’s a former student,” Louis said rather abruptly, as if the others had been following his train of thought. The bartender tilted his head, unsure of how to take this.

“Yeah, isn’t that funny?” said Harry. “What are the odds?”

“Higher than you’d think,” the man replied.

Harry, too, seemed to want to clear the air. “Best teacher I had,” he said. “Taught me I could be interested in the world and a pessimist at the same time.”

Louis’s stomach dropped, these words punched him in the gut. Suddenly he wanted to hear more clearly everything else the boy had said.

“Cheers to that,” the barman said. “But you’re too young to be a pessimist.” He poured them three terrible tequila shots.

“He’s too young to drink,” Louis said.

“Not here!” cried Harry, and they all three downed the tequila.

Louis was quickly drunk. The others helped him re-dress his bandage using supplies from a first aid kit the bartender––Chris––had never opened. So there was much fumbling, and then much forgetting. The rest of the night was foggy. Harry monologued, for certain, and gesticulated, and surprised Louis with more practiced praise, like he’d thought of him often in the two years since graduating, or else had already learned well how to say the things that other adults were longing to hear.

Harry had come up once or twice for Louis, a reminiscence in another student’s boisterousness or emotionality, a reminder of the time Harry got worked up when the class read a letter from Freud to an anxious mother about her son’s homosexuality, dripping heavy teardrops over the psychoanalyst’s words, “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness….” It was the most a student had cried in his class; he’d seen them choke up during an argument, but never fall apart like that. Harry had kept repeating, “In 1935! In 1935….” in disbelief.

Louis may have asked Harry about this when the memory sprang forth after another drink, pressed him too insistently about the nature of his response to that letter, presented it too much like a joke instead of something sensitive and tender. This may have driven Harry away, back down into the baths and the strong embrace of some quiet German with wide hands, hands that would envelop Harry’s voicebox while his eyes rolled back in his head. Pleasure instead of talk to fill the silence. Louis sat there imagining it on a bench in the locker room with his head between his knees, and in his imagining the throat became his own, the hand came from behind, delicate and firm, stained with graphite, leaving smudges on Louis’s neck like he’d been manipulated by a sculptor or a draftsman. Told how to sit, where to put his limbs, at which angle to hold his head and neck, and then squeezing the wickedness out of him. A man approached him in slow motion––Louis was blocking his locker––and the wickedness came back to him like inhaled smoke: a disdain for this man who didn’t want to fuck him; a dull, drunken version of the hunger he came in with.

He prowled the lower level, less self-consciously this time, circling the back rooms at an urgent pace. But he disliked being this drunk, it was hard to focus. He felt like he was hurtling around corners, and the scenes he encountered of dimly lit sex behind curtains didn’t excite him in this state, they were distorted and unreal, rippling before him. Harry had disappeared, or maybe that was him there, face against the wall, his long limbs obscured, arching himself toward the top dog from the sauna, steps away from Louis and in another world.

Louis hurtled out of there. His head was spinning now, he’d had three drinks and two shots and nothing to eat. He managed to find his apartment on his phone’s map, which mercifully filled in the gaps in his memory. He’d be lost without it. He tried to memorize the series of turns but his sieve brain couldn’t hold onto the geography, his mental map was blurry and then gone. So he followed the blue line for forty minutes through the dark. Warm air was rolling in, and moisture was evaporating off the cobblestones. It smelled like wet bark. That smell would remain clear in his memory of this day, even if he couldn’t remember any of the glistening trees, or the people he passed as night became morning, or how exactly he made it back to his rented bed.

Best for his fragile self-image to ignore the fragments that returned to him later, refrain from piecing together the full picture:

His relief at reaching the building turned to horror at his empty pockets. No wallet, no keys. His view of the old man upstairs, lit up in his fifth-floor window, unresponsive to Louis’s pathetic whistles. His desperate call to Daya to come help him as his finger once again started to throb.

Thankfully Daya was up, watching episodes of some terrible, sordid American dating show to fall asleep, knowing full well it made her heart race and her thoughts rattle. Louis’s drunken plea for help and forgiveness piqued her curiosity, but when she arrived twenty minutes later he was not the entertaining character she’d imagined, ready to admit the error of his ways and divulge his dirty secrets. He was an injured tourist on a borrowed stoop, dozing with his head on his fist, waiting for someone to come and care for him.