Kapitoil Read online

  On my turn I take more time observing the table before I shoot and deciphering the optimal ball to hit. I link my stick between Dan’s number 6 and the pocket, as I’ve seen Dan and Jefferson do, and aim at where the stick bisected the number 6 ball, and strike slowly and deposit it. I am also now in position to get another one, but this time I miss, and I leave my last ball vulnerable.

  Dan has an easy shot, and he lines up and retracts and extends his stick several times, then he looks at me from the corner of his eye quickly as if he is certifying that I’m watching, and shoots. It misses, very slightly, and the white ball rolls into a strong position for me. He says, “Can’t believe I missed that,” and shakes his head, and now I know he missed on purpose, because when people are truly upset with themselves for making an error they are either more angry or mute.

  I pocket Dan’s number 9 ball, which leaves his last one. Now it is easier to focus, because (1) there are fewer variables (fewer balls), and (2) there is less need for prediction (I don’t have to worry about placing the white ball after this). I strike the ball cleanly and Dan’s number 7 ball rolls into the pocket.

  Dan puts the three $20 bills in my hand and holds it above our heads and says I am the winner and still undefeated, even though I have never played before so of course I am still undefeated, but I don’t feel triumphant, as it was a fraudulent win and Dan intentionally lost to me because I am now a higher-up.

  Then Jefferson invites the two females to play against him and Dan, and I find Rebecca, who stands behind the two females. She compliments my pool skills.

  “You could perform as well if you tried,” I say. “It is merely a combination of geometry-based strategy and hand-eye coordination.”

  She smiles and says, “You certainly have a distinctive way of seeing the world.”

  I smile as well, but it is forced, because while I do enjoy the use of numbers and logic, her comment suggests that it’s all I have to offer others and that, parallel to Dan, I have a narrow worldview.

  Possibly Rebecca recognizes I’m offended because when I ask how the pod is, she says, “It’s something to listen to Dan and Jefferson’s repressed flirtations without any other witnesses. A truly unique experience.” I want to tell her that I would like to have other witnesses in my office as well, but I don’t want the risk of her asking what I’m working on or to appear ungrateful for receiving a private office. Then she adds, “Except you can’t say something is ‘truly’ unique. It’s either unique or it’s not. Like pregnancy.” I had not previously considered this idea. Placing an adverb before “unique” is similar to multiplying a number by zero: It will remain zero no matter what the modifier is.

  I consult with her about the Y2K project, but she instead asks how my sister is. I tell her Zahira has developed an interest in biology and is performing well in school. “But I wish she displayed more interest in economics,” I say. Rebecca asks why. “It is an interesting field and one that she would excel at.”

  “Maybe it’s more important for her to find out what she’s interested in and what she excels at,” Rebecca says.

  I do not reply, but it is a valid point, and possibly Zahira is not truly stimulated by my conversations and emails about finance and programming.

  Rebecca lights a cigarette and accidentally exhales smoke in my face. “Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry,” she says as she waves her hands to push it away, although once smoke has touched you it has already inflicted its odor and damage.

  But I say, “You do not need to apologize to me. You should apologize to your own body.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” she says. “I was in the mood for a lecture about something I only get reminded of 50 times a day.”

  “Then why do you not stop smoking?” I ask.

  “Stop smoking,” she says as if she is considering the idea for the first time. “Why didn’t I think of that? I should just quit—it’s so easy to do!”

  I look directly at her and say, “That is an attitude of defeat. Your body is more powerful than cigarettes, and your brain is more powerful than your body, and you can overpower them if you truly want to.”

  Her eyes move slightly as they stay with mine. She deposits her cigarette inside her beer bottle. “Sounds a little Tony Robbins, but what the hell, nothing else has worked,” she says. She looks at the long line for the restroom. “Save my spot?” I tell her I will, although I don’t think anyone will occupy her spot to talk to me.

  But soon a man in a costume with wings on his back that mirror light bumps into me. “Excuse me,” he says, and from his voice I decipher he is a homosexual.

  “It is not a problem,” I say.

  “Let me make it up to you,” he says. “What are you drinking?” I tell him Coke and vodka, and he says, “My kind of guy.”

  I hope Rebecca returns before he does, but he’s back quickly. “One vodka and Coke for Mr.?” he asks.

  “Karim Issar,” I say, and I shake his hand with great force.

  “Easy, tiger,” he says. “I need that. Jamie Spalding.”

  He asks where I’m from and what I do and how long I’ve been in New York, and I answer each question in a calm and quiet voice, which is simple because my normal voice is not very stimulated and is a facet I’m working on, as business people respond to enthusiasm and energy.

  When I tell him that I don’t mind working long hours, and in fact I prefer them because sometimes I’m uncertain what to do with myself when I don’t have a project, he laughs very hard, even though nothing in my statement is humorous. Then he touches my chest and says, “Do you consider dancing a project?”

  I must remind myself that I am a guest at this party and in this country. “No, I do not,” I say. “But I have to rejoin my friends now.” Before I depart I shake his hand even though I don’t truly want to.

  At the pool table, Jefferson introduces me to the cat (Melissa) and the English Middle Ages waitress (Bonnie). He says, “Karim works with us at Schrub. The boss fucking loves him—he took him to the World Series the other night.” I don’t know how he knows this, and I wish he didn’t know it. Then he whispers in my ear, “Bonnie’s been asking about you. Talk to her.”

  I don’t believe him, and I also think he wants me to talk to her so that he and Dan can possess Melissa exclusively for themselves, and it frustrates me that Jefferson always secures the optimal female, but Rebecca is still waiting for the restroom and I do not want to be alone or have Jamie converse with me again, so I engage Bonnie. She is studying for a master’s degree in sociology at a university in New York, and although she is friendly and intelligent and I do not think females who are slightly overweight are unattractive, as Jefferson and Dan do, I keep looking over at Melissa and partially listening to her, even though what she is saying is vapid (she is discussing where she bought her costume and how the idea launched from a television show), but Jefferson and Dan pretend to be very stimulated.

  Dan continues refilling my drink and I become dizzier but I don’t want to appear like a boring socializer so I continue drinking, and then Dan and Jefferson pour us all small amounts of tequila and we consume them as a group project. The liquid produces flames in my throat and my eyes hydrate and when I open them everyone has a compressed face. At one point Dan says quietly to me “Karim,” and because he uses only one syllable I can tell he is also drunk. “I know I can be a dick. I can’t help it. It’s not personal. I’m just that way sometimes.” When I say it is okay, he squeezes my shoulder and says, “No, really. I’m a bastard. I can’t stand myself most of the time.” I tell him he is a better person than he credits himself, and I think I see a tear in one of his eyes before he deletes it with his fingers but it may be a result of the alcohol, and he hugs me with force and makes me drink another small glass of tequila with him.

  The remainder I don’t remember with clarity. I know that soon Melissa began talking to me, possibly because I was pretending not to pay attention to her, and people act according to a supply-and-demand equilibrium like price
s do, and then she was touching my arm frequently and laughing at my jokes that I knew weren’t very humorous and licking her lips just below a small birthmark that looked like a decimal point, and she asked to hold my wrench and then pocketed it in my pants, and we all drank more tequila, and soon we were all dancing in the middle of the room and Melissa was dancing with her back to me but adjacent to my waist and her neck had the most delicious smell of vanilla and felt like silk sheets against my cheek, and when I turned around at one point I saw Rebecca standing in our former spot, and we looked at each other briefly although she was blurry but I could see she was smoking a cigarette again.

  Melissa went to get another drink, and Rebecca came up to me and said, “Sorry to interrupt. Maybe I’ll see you on Monday, if you make it in,” and left. Sometimes I wish my voice recorder didn’t record everything.

  Then Melissa returned and kissed me and tasted simultaneously like a soft dessert and alcohol.

  Dan and Jefferson were both dancing with Bonnie dividing them, and she was alternating in kissing both of them, and then I saw Dan bend down with his President Clinton mask off and kiss Jefferson with his tongue and Jefferson permitted it for many seconds before he pushed Dan away and called him a fucking fag.

  Melissa licked the inside of my ear and whispered, “Do you want to get out of here?” and I said yes and licked her ear but instead contacted her hair with my tongue.

  In the elevator we kissed more as we descended, and she also put her hand inside my pocket and said she was looking for my wrench and laughed, because it was the pocket without the wrench. When we exited the building it was much colder than before and my body was vibrating from the temperature and the alcohol. She said we could go to her apartment in the East Village. We waited for several minutes but couldn’t receive a taxi because they were in such high demand. Then a white man driving a bicycle with an attached carriage came down the street. Melissa stood in the street and waved her hand, and when he stopped she entered the carriage.

  I couldn’t believe the man was going to transport us with his legs all the way across Manhattan. But Melissa said, “What are you waiting for?” and I got in.

  The man pedaled to her address. He looked like he was my age and wore a wool hat for the cold, but soon he perspired from the work. Melissa continued kissing and touching me. I looked at the driver’s legs periodically and tried not to pay attention to people on the street observing us.

  When we arrived at Melissa’s apartment, I gave her my wallet because I couldn’t focus on the numbers on the bills. She paid and returned it to me and exited the carriage, and I gave him another bill whose denomination I couldn’t read.

  Her apartment was on the fourth floor, and I was breathless at the top because I have had little challenging exercise in New York. Her bedroom and kitchen were in the same room. “I guess it’s not quite what you’re used to?” she said.

  In fact, it was similar to what I was used to in Doha. “It is sufficient accommodations,” I said, although I did not pronounce the words clearly.

  She took my hand and led me to the bed, and soon we discarded all our clothing. She said she liked my body and that my skin had “such beautiful coloring.” I said I liked how smooth hers was (although one small section of her left leg was not because of a shaving error) and how soft her hair was, and we spent a long time touching each other’s skin and faces and hair and I forgot all about Kapitoil and work and being a foreigner and everything else, and all I thought about was how luxurious my body felt next to Melissa’s and that I had won the cream of the cream female at the party.

  Finally she opened a drawer next to her bed and removed a condom. I had a moment of clear thought in which I truly understood what I was about to do and what it would mean and how I might feel after it, and my initial reaction was to tell her that I needed to go home, but then she exhaled warm air on my neck and my body defeated my brain and the thought deleted and I asked her to place it on me.

  I don’t remember all the details. I wasn’t as nervous as I always predicted I would be, probably because of the alcohol, but when I had difficulty releasing her bra she slightly laughed and made me feel like a novice. I don’t believe I was very skilled, because I didn’t truly know what actions to take, and at one point I remembered what I had done to Rebecca and I temporarily lost the desire to continue.

  But it was still mostly pleasurable, and I spent much time touching her left breast and observing how it felt like nothing else on my body and nothing else I had ever remembered touching, and the pleasure reached its peak at the end, when it was as if my system crashed but in a delightful way, and for several seconds all my thoughts were voided, which never happens to me. After we finished, we rested on our backs without contacting and she said, “I came really hard, twice.”

  She fell asleep quickly, but I didn’t, because my body no longer had power over my brain and my thoughts were becoming clearer and the effects of the alcohol weren’t as robust. I placed myself under the blanket, but Melissa’s body was facing up on top of it. There was no method to place her under without waking her. But she seemed like she would be careless if I saw her without clothes.

  And then I truly started to think about what I had done. I wondered what my mother would say. Possibly she would understand, because she was modern, but she might also say that I was rejecting not only Muslim values but also personal values, e.g., I didn’t know or even respect Melissa very much and the main reason I was with her was because she was sexy and I wanted to prove that I could obtain her so that I would also feel sexy, which was never something I was invested in before.

  Although we had done an act that was the opposite of violence, in some ways I understood how a person might feel after committing murder. In my brain I kept hearing my voice repeat the word “aasef,” but I simultaneously knew that apologizing achieved nothing, which only increased the volume of my interior voice in a cycle.

  I remained awake because of these thoughts and also because I was not used to sleeping next to anyone, especially not someone I met just a few hours before. In some ways that part presented more highly privileged information about another person than intercourse itself. At 5:00 a.m. my mouth felt like chicken bones and sand were blended inside it, and I removed myself from the bed slowly and fell down when my weak legs contacted the ground.

  I drank cold water from the sink faucet in her restroom for a full minute. I had never valued water as much. Her sink was covered with long blonde hairs that were black on one end and white toothpaste remainder like lines of writing in the sky from airplanes. When I lifted the toilet seat, I almost ejected when I saw how dirty it was on the reverse side, so I closed it and used the toilet while sitting down. It was difficult to believe such a dirty restroom could produce such a clean body.

  I considered leaving my email address with her, but I knew we didn’t have many intersected subjects of interest and another meeting would not be profitable. So instead I wrote on a piece of paper: “TO: MELISSA—Thank you for an enjoyable night. FROM: Karim.”

  It was dark and cold outside and I was still partially drunk. A taxi drove down the street and I raised my hand, but when it stopped I told the driver, “My bad—please resume.” He cursed at me in his language and left. I walked north and west, and with every step I wanted to eject, but I told myself I merited walking home. Bags of trash sat along all the sidewalks like palm trees in Doha and the smell made me feel even unhealthier, so when it was possible I walked in the dividing islands of the streets to avoid the smell and other people. In one hour I was at my apartment, where finally I did eject everything I drank the previous night in my restroom, and I then drank water until I felt I had consumed an equal quantity to the alcohol, and showered for a long time and washed myself well but was too exhausted to pray.

  high roller = gambler with significant funds at his disposal

  mechanic = worker who repairs machines

  pocket = deposit an object inside a pocket

  p
re-game = drink alcohol in the apartment before external parties to reduce panicked feelings

  redneck = negative term for someone who lives in the southern U.S.

  repressed = emotions that a person attempts to restrict

  tool = someone who is leveraged by others

  NOVEMBER

  JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 4

  When I woke up after Halloween, I was still ill. I hydrated on my couch and watched American football on television, which was less stimulating than baseball even though there was more continuous action, and I also failed to cover the point spread in one of the three games I bet on and lost my $5.

  I considered calling Rebecca, but I was uncertain what to express.

  After two hours of not moving from the couch, I forced myself to take the subway to the mosque on the Upper East Side.

  There were again many people inside. I performed wudu, and felt especially refreshed after rinsing my mouth and inhaling and ejecting the water into and out of my nose. Wudu is like defragmenting a bottlenecked hard drive: You do not realize how enhanced you will feel until you do it.

  I found an area in which to pray. When I stood to leave, an older man with dark skin and long eyelashes wearing a white robe walked over. “As-Salāmu ‘Alaykum,” he said.

  “Wa ‘Alaykum As-Salam,” I said. It felt strange to speak Arabic to someone in New York.

  “This is your first time here?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to admit that I had been there before but had never talked to anyone in nearly a month in New York. “I recently transferred here for work at Schrub Equities,” I said.