I had been down and just marking time ever since I'd left Beirut three years earlier. I hadn't really been able to write that whole time either; I was just floating on the royalties from my earlier novels, written in the passion of my youth—passion that I just couldn't find in me anymore. Perhaps it was having hit that deadly age of fifty; perhaps passion naturally dissipated from that point. But, again, perhaps it was the radical change in my lifestyle. I'd loved teaching at the American University of Beirut, but I'd been warned it was time to leave Lebanon—that it was just too dangerous there for Americans at that time—and I knew in my heart that this was a reasonable assessment—that placing myself in danger placed others around me in danger as well, people I cared deeply for. I'd loved—in every sense of the word—my young protege, Riyad Munif, now a celebrated novelist throughout the Arab world in his own right.
Three long years later now, and I hadn't had anyone since that last, memorable evening in Riyad's arms before I boarded my last flight out of Lebanon. The glorious memory of possessing him, my cock churning around inside him, and him moaning and sighing for me in that beautiful melodic voice of his—just a slowly receding memory. Now all I had was dry dust: mornings as an occasional guest lecturer at a creative writing class over at the university and afternoons and evenings sitting in front the blank, blinking window of my computer, spent of both words and passion.
It was on a cold, dreary morning in one of those creative writing classes that my Palestinian came into my life and thawed my frozen heart. He was bright eyed, hanging on my every word and nuance. And he was beautiful, all dark and steamy good looks. I was lost to men of the Levant; that, quite frankly was why I had landed in Beirut to begin with. In my youth, all you had to do is troop a young Arab beauty by me, and my cock would flip up to attention. But as beautiful as this young Palestinian student, Samir, was, my cock was just nestled there, limply down my right pant leg on this morning. I was feeling so old. So useless and empty.
But these feeling apparently didn't convey to Samir. As class was breaking up, he asked me if he could show me the manuscript he was working on, that he was blocked on how to proceed and really could use some help. I hesitated a few moments, knowing full well that I didn't have anything else to do that day—or the next day—or the day after that. He looked so eager and stroked my ego so hard with comments on the effect my novels had had on him, that I relented and took him back to my home with me that day.
While I sat in my wing chair, scanning through passages from his manuscript, Samir stretched out on my sofa, his eyes glued to mine, looking for any evidence of response, negative or positive to his writing.
Samir's style was vaguely failure and was getting more and more familiar as I continued. His phrasing was elegant and sparse and the content was warming my blood, as I was pulled into the tale of a young student's love affair with his professor—his male professor. The character of the professor had such familiarity to it; it was almost as if I already knew this person. And Samir himself obviously was the narrator of the tale, the young student of the manuscript. I felt a stirring inside me that I hadn't felt for three years.
I looked up sharply at Samir. He was favoring me with a sensuous-lipped smile. I was a little shocked and confused. This was strongly homosexual material. Wonderfully written, but leaving little to the imagination. I'd never written anything but the most mainstream novels. Yet, this student was sitting here, watching me read his explicit prose without the least bit of embarrassment about how I might be reacting to the material.
"Excellent work, Samir," I said. "But these characters . . . some of this phrasing. They seem so familiar. Is this all your work? I can't place it, but . . ."
"Perhaps it is because of who I . . . studied . . . under."
