#touchmove

It is a story that features two men and their different perspectives and opinions about women, one views them as prey and an object of sex, while the other one views them as women and humans.

by Peter Mayshley

I am playing chess with Roman when I tell him the story of the chick.

He looks up from the board. The real thing? he asks. He thinks his kuya is teasing him again.

The real thing, yes.

Go on, Roman says, breathing over my queen.

This is what I tell him.

One night in August, when typhoon What’s-Her-Name was beating down all over the city, when no customer had come knocking yet and we were all just sitting around with our balls hanging out, she came. She arrived quietly; no rumble of thunder, no flash of lightning marked her entrance. None of us guys would’ve realized she was there if not for the gasp that came from the old faggot Ruby. We all turned to the doorway and there she was, wet and shining from the rain. She was wearing a red blouse and skirt and clutching her shoes to her chest. She murmured something to Ruby and then turned to us. We never get any woman customers in the place, you know, so we straightened ourselves up as we had been taught and puffed our chests out and smiled broadly than necessary. Though she was soaked and maybe even freezing from the cold, only her eyes seemed to quiver as she stared at each one of us. Eventually her gaze rested on me. Her eyes traveled down and settled for a moment below my waist. I felt myself twitch. Then she raised her arm and pointed at me. I felt as if I had won in the races, leaving all the other stallions behind.

I quickly made my way up the stairs at the back. When I reached the top, I turned around to wait for her. She was still holding her shoes close to her chest when she appeared at the landing.

“Can you lend me a towel?” she said. Her voice was soft and hoarse, and she had this habit of flicking her tongue out to wet her lips before she spoke. I got her a fresh, warm towel from one of the rooms and led her to the bathroom. When I heard water running, I dashed off to my room to prepare.

In the small room where I usually work, a cubicle, you know, I patted the white sheet of the single bed and turned over the pillow. On the short side table, below the red bulb sticking out of the wall, I arranged the tiny bottles of oil, lotion and powder neatly in a line. I rubbed my hands together and put the air conditioner on low cool.

When I went back to fetch her, she was leaning against the bathroom door. She was tall, taller than me, Roman and maybe even older. She had straight black hair that rested on her bony shoulders. Her nose was small and upturned so there was a small wrinkle just below where her eyebrows met. Her eyes were round and bright and glassy, like the opening of a gin bottle. The way her face was put together you’d think she was on the verge of singing or spitting. She had covered her breasts and her stomach with the towel but her bush, moist and glistening, was showing.

“Your towel is too small,” she said when she saw me staring.

I stammered, “I could get you another one.”

“Don’t bother,” she said, walking past me. “I wouldn’t want to deprive your other clients.”

“There are no other clients.”

“Oh?” she said. “Slow night.”

She was suddenly so confident, so sure of herself. Minutes ago, she moved like a shy, unwelcome guest; now she walked as if she owned the place. She went to the room I had set up and waited for me to enter before she locked the door. For a moment, I felt I was the customer.

“So, what do you do?” she asked.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked back.

“For one thousand pesos, everything.” And she dropped her towel, just like that. She hurriedly stretched herself out face down on the low bed. In the glow of the red bulb, she looked like she was brushed with honey. I picked up her towel from the floor and spread it on her back. Then I got another towel and spread it across her ass.

How did her ass look? Roman says.

I don’t know, I say, irritated. Like huge balls of sago, I guess.

Hmmm, Roman says, wetting his lips.

So I spread the towel across her ass made of sago.

“Undress,” she said.

I thought I heard her wrong.

“What?”

She turned on her elbow to face me.

“Take your clothes off.”

With everything that had happened so far, I had forgotten to remove my clothes. If she had been one of those faggots that often visited the place, I would’ve entered the room wearing only my briefs, you know. I realized that she was, after all, a customer, and should be given the same treatment, too. Hurriedly I stripped off my shirt and maong.

“Don’t forget to remove your underwear.”

I blinked at her. “Why?”

“So, I wouldn’t feel so naked.”

After a thought, I pulled my briefs down. When she saw my cock erect, I couldn’t hide an embarrassed smile.

Roman giggles. Horny prick, he says.

“That’s okay,” she said. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Pointing at my cock, I asked, “Is this what made you pick me over the others?”

She frowned, not understanding.

“I saw you staring at it downstairs.”

Her forehead relaxed. “I was looking at your hands. They seem capable.” And with a quick movement she was lying face down again.

Though it was cold in the room, the lotion felt very warm in my hands.

Burning, you know, I tell Roman.

Like putting them over hot coals, he says, eyes wide.

So I started working on her. The first woman customer to walk into our place and I was working on her, Roman. I couldn’t stop shaking, you know, like I was born again, you know. Her smooth, creamy flesh under my hands was the most welcome sensation. I reached for her feet and held them to my chest. With my thumbs, I gently pressed the soft cartilage behind her knee. Using the ball of my palm, I rubbed the length of her thighs. And her ass, Roman, no, they were not made of sago; they were made of leche plan, the kind Lola used to make for us. I squirted lotion onto her back, and using my forearm I spread the lotion like a knife over soft bread. She was sighing and squirming with delight all the time, but there were moments I couldn’t figure out, when I thought she was crying into the pillow.

After about an hour of working her backside, I said, “Turn over,” and I noticed she jerked her head slightly, as if I had just woken her from sleep. She was hesitating, maybe thinking about whether to obey me or not, and then finally she turned to lie on her back. What I saw made me stop breathing.

You should have seen her, Roman. I didn’t see it before because she had been laying face down all the time and before that outside my room, she had her towel around her, you know. Her stomach had cuts all over; some of them were fresh and clotting. The skin above her bush was marked with what looked like a dozen cigarette burns. One of her breasts had a dark bruise the color of purple. It was a terrible sight; I wanted to get out of there.

“Go on,” she said. “Please.”

What else could I have done, Roman? My feet were telling me to run away, but I was fixed to that spot next to her. I did the only thing I could do; I used my hands. I massaged her thighs. I kneaded her stomach. I pressed the areas around her breasts, careful not to hurt her, if that was any more possible. When I finished, she held my hands and, gazing at them as if they were made of precious stone, she said, “Your hands, they were beautiful.”

“I never thought of them that way,” I said. This was true; I thought my hands belonged to a monster. My fingers are long and slender but they are attached to hands that have grown coarse from only five months of massaging hard muscles. My palms are dark with deep lines. The backs of my hands are darker with hair sprouting like caterpillar bristles. A woman’s fingers welded to manly hands, they’re not beautiful at all.

And then she did something that, even now, I can’t really put out of my mind. She took my ugly hands and placed one on her pussy and one on her breast with the purple bruise.

This is starting to get exciting, Roman says, leaning forward over the board. Then what happened?

Nothing, I tell him. I held her like that for a few minutes and that was it. She put on my shirt and maong, took her wet clothes from the bathroom and left the place. Disappeared in the rain again, you know.

Roman frowns. He stares at me for a few seconds, wondering if I’m playing a joke on him again. You’re an idiot; he says finally and turns his attention back to the chessboard. After a moment he says, Check! threatening my king, but clearly trying to capture my queen.

And I see that Roman doesn’t understand. As I rescue my queen from his dogged pursuit, I see that he is just a kid, untaught in the ploys of the heart.

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Note to the reader: This short fiction is one of my favorite in terms of expository of elements to describe scene and characters feeling, the writer projected the image right away in the reader's mind through words.

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Mayshle's Touchmove stirred up some big questions on kindness, self-image, morality, and objectification of women.

The story started steady, although foreshadowings are all over the place. Particularly on the first part when the setting was still at the present where the main character is playing chess with his younger brother, Roman. I actually reread the story and after rereading it, the lines hit me differently, like when Roman breathed over the main character's queen, there I realized that it is a foreshadowing infused by Mayshle to give hints about the personality of Roman and what's about to come.

The story had its first turning point when the woman brought up the thing about the short towel. The towel was mentioned repeatedly and it's not hard to notice that Mayshle is telling something there. The towel was used as a cover, both literally of metaphorically. Notice how the woman changed when the mc told her that there was no other customer, I think it symbolises a particular scenario that commonly happens even in real life. We've all been embarrassed of sharing ourselves when lots of people are around, we often use some kind of mask (as for the story, the towel) to hide our true selves. We've all been there, you know it.

The character development happened to mc was so fast that it didn't even feel like a development, it's more of a complete change of heart. Because at first, he completely thought that he'll get laid that night, that he'll have fun, but the moment he saw the scars and the bruises of the woman, all of sudden he realised that what the woman needs is to be treated with respect, and so he did.

More than a chess move, touchmove is deeper than that. The story is not just about woman but all the genders and how we should see them as a human and not a toy to play with.

A wrong move can lead to a another wrong which cannot be undone. We shouldn't do something that we will regret later so we need to be objective and not be slaves of our emotions and hormones. Just because a person is looking lustfully in front of us, it's not an invitation to lay our hands on them. Violence too is not good at all.

Do you know what I’m feeling right now? I’m getting the feeling like a person who is unable to swim in a deep, blue ocean drowning to death. It feels like the world is on me, feeling the weight of it and crushing me into broken pieces. I’m a shattered stone ready to become mud. I’m a useless garbage that smells like a rotten rat. I’m nothing but a crap.

Questions…questions…all questions…that I never ask. I am quivering to the coldness of your hold. You’re starting to change. You become different. I never even think that you will change…in just a snap…in just a very quick snap. What happened anyway? Why weren’t you calling me? Why weren’t you making your way to drop a call for me? Why were you different last night? Was there something wrong with me? Didn’t you like the way I treat you? Why did you ask me that stupid question?

Was it not enough to say to you the words you need to hear? I said “I love you,” but wasn’t that enough? I said “I like you,” but didn’t you even care? I said “I won’t leave you,” but didn’t you believe on that? I tried not to think of such but as the minute passed me by, I cared to think more and I dared to take the will of surpassing this kind of agony.

I hate this feeling. I really do. For all you know, I am afraid to feel this again. But right now, I am feeling this. And it crushes me. It breaks me into pieces. Worse, it’s killing me. Each moment, it’s killing me. All along, I’ve thought that I would never experience this dreadful feeling. But it’s starting to become a trepidation. The bad thing is the day I’m starting to unpack my past and burn it all is the day I’m starting to make a package for me to unpack and burn again in a different way. Such an ironic episode.