Hello there

[dewoestijnvos]

[pauldespijker]

Under the Water Surface

The rain started before I even turned onto the bridge, but halfway across it finally seemed to remember how to fall properly. Drops became lines, lines became a curtain that wrapped the city in a glistening skin. My hands slipped around the handlebars, cold and numb, while my breath came out in short clouds in front of me. The water in the canal lay still and yet seemed to move, as if something underneath it did not dare come up.

I had been inside for too long. Too long in that one light, that one rhythm, that asked for nothing and gave nothing. My body knew the way without needing me anymore. It was quick, mechanical, like closing a door that immediately swung open again. Afterward something always stayed behind. No relief, no peace. Only an empty space that filled itself again with the same urge.

He was standing under the awning of a brown café. As if he had been waiting there all that time, separate from the rain, separate from the evening. His coat hung heavily on his shoulders, dark with water, and his hair stuck to his forehead. He did not look at me right away. His gaze rested on the canal, as if he were trying to read something there that remained hidden from others.

When he looked up, it was not abrupt. It was a slow lifting of attention. Our eyes met the way fingers can meet without anyone moving. There was no smile in it yet. Only a kind of recognition that came from nowhere.

I cycled on.

Two streets later it felt as if I had left something behind that was not mine, but that I still had to pick up. I turned around without thinking. By then the rain had crept into my collar and down my back, but I barely felt it.

He was still there.

"You're soaked through," he said when I stopped.

His voice was low, thoughtful. As if he tasted every word first.

"That wasn't my plan," I said.

He nodded, as if that was a complete answer.

We stood for a moment under the narrow shelter. In the background came the muffled sound of Dutch sentimental songs from a jukebox. The air smelled of wet stones and of beer being poured inside behind us. I felt the warmth of him beside me without touching him.

"Roy," he said after a while.

I said my name. It sounded strange in that space, as if it was too loud.

He shifted a little so I could stand further under the awning. His shoulder brushed mine for just a second. I startled, a sharp, brief shiver. It was nothing. It was everything.

Later I would remember that moment as a shift that was barely visible but set everything in motion.

After that we saw each other as if it happened by itself. Not planned, rarely spoken. He appeared where I already was. We met in places I had never been before: the secondhand bookstore where he worked. It smelled of paper, dust, and something sweet I could not place. He moved between the shelves as if he carried time itself in his hands. I loved browsing there.

He spoke slowly, but not hesitantly. Rather carefully. As if words were something fragile that you could not simply use. I said little. I was good at saying little.

We drank beer in cafés where the windows were fogged up and the floor was sticky. We walked along the water with no purpose, listening to our footsteps and to the sounds of the city that never quite fell silent. He told me he had left his parents' house very young. Not bitter, not dramatic. More like someone stating a fact that still echoed.

"He said I might be too much," Roy said once, running his finger along the rim of his glass. "Too much past. Too many questions."

I shrugged. "Maybe he thought he was too little."

Roy looked at me, longer than necessary. There was something in his gaze that made me uneasy, as if he looked past my words to something behind them.

"And you?" he asked.

I took a sip, too big, too fast. "I work. I sleep. That's about it."

He nodded. He did not press. That was perhaps why I stayed.

The first time he came to my place, it was raining again. Not as hard as that first evening, but steady, as if the sky could no longer express itself any other way. My apartment on the Wibautstraat was small and always a little too warm. The gas heater ticked softly, the windows fogged from the inside.

We watched a film that I barely followed. My attention was in the space between us, in the centimeters that grew smaller without us moving. His knee touched mine. He left it there. I felt the pressure through the fabric of my trousers, a warm line that slowly spread.

My body reacted faster than my mind. Always faster. I wanted to pull away. I wanted to move closer.

The memory came not as an image but as a sensation. A hand that stayed too long. A smell that forced itself on me. The way my own body had once endured things I had not wanted. Under force. Terrible things.

I swallowed.

His hand came to my knee. Light. Not taking, not demanding. Waiting.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I nodded. It was neither a lie nor the truth. It was something in between.

He turned his hand, palm up. An open gesture. No demand.

My fingers moved before I could stop them. They slipped into his. His skin was warm, dry. He did not squeeze, just held. As if he wanted me to feel that I could let go again too.

We stayed like that until the film had long ended. That night nothing happened, and precisely because of that, everything happened.

After that, touching became a language we learned slowly. Small sentences first. His hand on the back of my neck while I made coffee. My arm along his back as we walked through the city. Sometimes I still froze. Sometimes something ran through me that had nothing to do with him. He always noticed, but he never made a scene of it. He waited until I came back. Slowly he learned to read me like a book.

One evening in December he sat across from me on the couch. The light was soft, almost yellow. Outside the city hung still in the icy cold.

"May I kiss you?" he said.

No hesitation. No game. Just a question.

My heart beat against my ribs as if it wanted to escape. I felt the old reflex: the urge to laugh, to say something else, to run away. To break the moment before it could break me.

Instead I moved toward him. The tension stayed. Too fast, too clumsy; our faces bumped lightly. His laugh was soft, without mockery. He laid his hand against my cheek, held me still for a moment, as if he were tuning me again.

Then he kissed me. Slowly and tenderly.

His lips were cool on the outside, warm underneath. There was no haste in it, no hunger that wanted to conquer something. It was an exploration, a careful touching, as if he asked: is this allowed?

When his mouth opened a little and I let him in, a shock went through me that had nothing to do with fear. Or perhaps it did. Fear that finally took on a different shape.

My hands found his shoulders, his neck. I felt the tension under his skin, the warmth building up. His fingers slipped under my shirt, along my back. Not all at once. Only where I could follow.

I trembled.

He stopped. "Am I going too fast?" he asked again.

This time I shook my head without doubt. "Stay."

That night the boundary did not lie in a place I knew. We moved toward it without naming it. Clothes did not disappear in one movement but piece by piece, as if every layer asked for and received permission. His skin was lighter than I had expected, warm, alive. With my hands I followed lines I did not know and yet recognized.

When my fingers slid along the edge of his underwear and stayed there, I felt his breath change. That small shift gave me more than anything I had done before. As if I had finally touched something that spoke back.

We did not go further. Not because we could not, but because it was enough. We slept against each other, his arm around me, my face in the hollow of his neck. His heartbeat under my ear was slow, steady. I fell asleep with the feeling that I was somewhere I had never been, and yet had always been looking for.

The weeks that followed everything became more intense without becoming heavy. We learned each other's rhythms. When he grew quiet. When I drifted away. When touch was a bridge and when it was a boundary.

One Sunday in January the city lay under a thick layer of snow that muffled all sound. My apartment felt smaller than ever, but also fuller. The world outside seemed far away, as if it had decided for a moment to leave us in peace.

We lay in bed, the sheets half off us. The coffee on the nightstand had gone cold, but its scent still hung in the room. His fingers drew circles on my chest, slow, almost absentminded. I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling, where the light from outside fell in a pale patch. I felt open in a way that had nothing to do with being naked.

"I want you so much," he said softly, close to my ear. "But only if you want it too."

The words hung there for a moment. They searched for a place in me that did not quite exist yet. The old voice returned. Not loud, but persistent. That touch was something you endured. That giving was the same as losing. That my body was not mine.

I turned my head toward him. His eyes were dark but clear. There was desire in them, yes, but also something I did not know without being afraid of it. Attention. Patience. Something that would not disappear if I let it in.

"I want it," I said. "Very much." My voice cracked a little, but I held his gaze.

He kissed me the way he always did when it mattered. Slowly, deepening, as if he gave me time to catch up with what was happening. His hands moved over my hips, pulling me closer against him. I felt his warmth, the tension building and at the same time staying controlled.

We moved toward each other without either of us taking the lead. It was not taking, not giving. It was a coming together that could not be rushed. My body responded, opened in a way that was new and yet felt familiar, as if it had known this but had forgotten.

When we came closer than ever, I held my breath for a moment. Not out of fear, but out of intensity. He waited, felt, gave me space within the movement itself.

I let him in.

Not all at once, but in small shifts. In trust that grew as it happened. The feeling was sharp and soft at the same time, strange and precise. I held on to him tightly, not to stop anything, but to stay with it. Our breaths found a rhythm that did not come from outside. The world withdrew until only the room, the bed, the place where our bodies kept seeking and finding each other remained. Every movement was a question and an answer, a confirmation that I was here, that he was here, that this was happening because we wanted it.

When the release came, it pulled something with it that had been stuck for years. A tension that had never really been released. My voice broke open without me realizing I was making sound. My hands gripped him as if I would drift away otherwise. He followed a few seconds later, pressed close against me, his forehead against mine. I felt how he fully let go and at the same time remained steady.

Afterward everything kept moving for a long time, even when we lay still. My breath was irregular, my heart beat too hard. My eyes were wet without me noticing when it had started.

He said nothing. He wiped the tears from my face with his fingertips. His hand moved through my hair, over my cheek, along my shoulder. Soft and tender. No questions. No interpretations. Only presence.

Outside the snow fell more gently than before. The city breathed on, but muted, as if it knew that inside something had shifted that should not be disturbed. I lay against him and tried to understand what had happened. Not in words, but in feeling. In the way my body did not immediately pull back. In the way the silence was not emptiness, but space.

Later we sat on the couch, dressed but still bare in another way. His hand lay around mine, his thumb moving slowly over my wrist, as if it had its own rhythm it wanted to share with me.

"You don't have to say anything," he said.

I nodded. What could I have said? I knew he was right.

The canal outside was white at the edges. A tram bell sounded somewhere in the distance, muffled by the snow. Life went on as it always did. Indifferent and yet reliable.

I laid my head against his shoulder. I felt how he breathed, how he was there without asking anything of me that I could not give. For the first time in a long time my body did not feel like a place where something happened that I had to endure. It felt like something that was mine. Something I could share without losing it.

I did not know what would come next. Whether everything that had opened would stay open. Whether I would ever find the words for what had been before. But I knew that something had begun that would not simply disappear again.

Under the surface of the city, under the water that reflected everything but held nothing, there was a movement slowly rising.

And this time I let it happen.

[fabriqueauxpaysbas]