Yasemın Aydinoğlu - Istanbul Noir

“What, you her fucking pimp or something? What’s it to you anyway, fucking scumbag!”

With a showy press of the button the switchblade opened — chaak . He liked that sound. The sparkle of the blade, there beneath the streetlamps as he moved it around in his hand, dazzled even him. By the time the man had begun to make his silent escape, the young woman was already on her feet.

“Thank you sooo much. You came just in time.”

The young man looked at the woman with a stunned expression as she said these words. She had a very deep voice. In fact, it wasn’t like a woman’s voice at all. Moreover, she was at least half a foot taller than he was. She put on quite the show as she coyly straightened out her skirt and hair. There was almost nothing left of the woman who’d just had her ass kicked moments before.

“Allah must have sent you to me. My hero. So tell me, where are you from?”

Now he was sure. The protrusion on her throat, her Adam’s apple, moved up and down as she talked.

“Goddamn you!”

His eyes were wide with disgust and he was looking for a hole, any hole, to crawl into. As he ran back toward the hotel, he saw his stepfather walk out and step into a taxi, which then disappeared down the street.

“Hey, where you goin’? Wait a minute!”

The woman man, the woman-like man, that blond-haired faggot in the miniskirt, just wouldn’t shut up. He, or she, chased after him, adjusting her clothing along the way. The young man ran after the taxi, cursing his bad luck, cursing his fate. He’d missed his prey. He had hoped that he wouldn’t have to wait another day, that he wouldn’t have to spend another night out on the cold stone pavement, that he would take care of this matter that evening, but now, because of some faggot’s ass-fucking money, his prey had gotten away.

Undaunted, the transvestite continued to chase after him. “Where are you running off to, sweets? You some kind of idiot or what? I won’t take any money from you. C’mon,” she said, her feminine wiles back in full gear.

He stopped and turned around; he glared at the transvestite, furious. But the look the transvestite was giving him was that of a smitten schoolgirl; she smiled bashfully.

She tottered backwards a step or two when the fist hit her chin. The amorous sparkle in her eyes was quickly replaced by something else entirely. “Are you crazy, man? Why are you hitting me?” she screamed. She glared at him, not like someone who’d just taken a punch to the chin, but like a disappointed lover. “I just thought I’d pay you back for your help is all.”

He was about to unleash another punch when he thought better of it. It occurred to him that he had never talked with a real woman, besides his mother. If it were a woman standing across from him, and not a man who looked like a woman, would he still beat her? Would he still have run to the woman’s rescue if he’d known when she was being beaten that she wasn’t a woman, not really? He didn’t know, his mind couldn’t handle it, couldn’t process it. He’d let his stepfather, his prey, that bastard, he’d let him get away! And for what, for who?!

“Come on, let’s make up, sweets,” the transvestite said, extending her hand.

His fists landed on her shoulders. The look in her eyes said she’d put up with anything, anything from him; with each blow to her shoulders she took a step back, but she didn’t resist. She didn’t say a word.

“Get the fuck out of here... Go! Don’t get me messed up in your fucking bullshit!”

Late that night, he lay in a cold bed in another bachelors’ room when his dick, the existence of which he was almost completely oblivious to except for when he had to pee, stood straight up in some kind of rebellion. It was screaming, defying him like some neglected child. The transvestite’s thick lips, painted blood-red, her sullen eyes peering out from beneath those long lashes, her legs shining beneath the streetlamp, her panties and ass peeking out from beneath the skirt that rode her hips, were all frighteningly real, right there before his eyes. That look she’d given him, as he’d been shoving and tormenting her, he thought it might rip a hole in his thin skin. Perturbed, he rolled over.

There he was, never having slept with a woman, never even having held a girl’s hand, and though there were dozens of female models, singers, artists that he could be dreaming of, it was the dream of some faggot that had awoken his lust, and this infuriated him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t banish those stubborn thoughts from his mind, couldn’t make his cock, which stood rock-hard before him as if to question his authority, submit to his will. A saying he’d heard during his military service came to mind just then: A soldier is like a cock: If you pet it, it stands up; if you beat it, it sits down . As the image of the transvestite danced before his eyes, he wanted to beat the shit out of his dick. But his sperm sought release; it wouldn’t stay put. In a huge explosion, the sound of which he could have sworn he heard, he came onto the transvestite’s face, his liquid flowing in streams like blood from a bullet wound. As the semen, its stifling scent rising to his nostrils, flowed down between the transvestite’s fake eyelashes, her entire body trembled in small spasms.

The next night, he had positioned himself at the corner of the street where the hotel was, feeling the malice in his bones, and the switchblade in his pocket, when he took a nasty blow to the neck and fell to the ground. Before he could even open his eyes, two thugs had beaten him unconscious, sending him on a slow descent into a deep well, lulled by a barrage of expletives.

In a dream, wrapped in tulle-like desire, he was innocently kissing and sucking his mother’s breasts, as he lay on her chest. Until the warm, peaceful dream was interrupted by the pain in the back of his neck and a salvo of bitter curses.

When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t tell right away if he was in the lap of reality or still in the lap of the dream. A hand with long red fingernails was wiping away his tears. His head was on the chest of the transvestite he’d wrestled with the other night, and his hand was on her breast. He looked at the transvestite’s large hands, her blond hair, and her eyes, both excited and content, radiating the confidence of a lover who only a few hours before had unveiled her repertoire of sultry games. Then he saw the transvestite’s naked body, and the shriveled cock in a mass of long pubic hairs. When he saw that he, too, was naked, he leapt out of bed. He wasn’t dreaming!

When had he gotten naked? Who had he ever shown his body to? To his mother, when he was a child and she used to wash him, and to the nurse at his physical before doing his military service. He’d never been naked in the presence of anyone else. Now here he was, the sparse hairs on his chest, his stomach shrunk with hunger, his loins all sticky.

He was both in pain from the beating he’d taken the previous night and in agony over finding himself in bed with a person who had a cock. He could have killed that transvestite right then and there. But first he had to find his switchblade. Where was it? Where were his clothes? His pants, his military underwear and undershirt... He began searching the room like a madman. The transvestite quickly pulled herself together; she drew the red bed sheet over her body and tried to explain. She said she’d found him near dawn, close to the hotel, in a pool of blood and urine, on the verge of freezing, delirious and mumbling. Of course she recognized him right away. She picked him up and carried him straight home. She figured since he’d been wandering around that hotel with a switchblade in his hand for days, he must have an enemy, a score to settle, someone he was after. And so that’s why she didn’t take him to the cops or the hospital. So... what? Had she done something wrong? Could he just calm down a little?