Joseph O’Neill - The Dog

(How clearly I remember my first exposure to this superior polyglot race, which is how these ethnically elusive women with smiling creaseless faces first struck me. They seemed indigenous to the skies. Uncannily Eurasian- or Afro-Asian- or Latin-Asian- or Eurafrican-looking specimens in red pillbox hats and white headscarves, they made me think of the calm interstellar travellers familiar to us from the Star Trek entertainment franchise. When it was announced that the ‘team’ of flight attendants between them spoke English, Arabic, French, Latvian, Russian, Malay, German and Tagalog, I fell into a state of admiration that has, if anything, only been deepened by the passage of time, which has of course seen a decline in the fortunes of almost all economic things Emirati and, unless I’m mistaken, has led to an adjustment in the profile of Emirates passengers, who these days would appear to be drawn largely from the same market the Dubaian migrant working-class is drawn from, a development, dare one say it, that puts into question the image of the airline as the transporter of choice of the voyaging elite: yet our indomitable multilingual female highfliers still go about their work as brightly as ever. One evening not that long ago, in circumstances that are beside the point, I found myself on the roof of The Situation’s parking lot, which is located about fifty yards behind the residential proposition itself. I had an accidental view into the lower floors of The Situation, and I could not help seeing the young women in their illuminated apartments as they pedalled on exercise bikes and watched television and cooked dinner. How courageous they were! How young and adventurous! I must have been fascinated, because a good few minutes went by before I became conscious of myself as a voyeur cloaked in the dark of night; whereupon I left. I have since felt, and fought off, the urge to return to that roof and take another look. What is this urge? What would I be looking for? What could I possibly be hoping to see?)

All that said, no residential proposition should be dominated by any single class or demographic, and ‘Tampax Towers’ is not a value-adding moniker. For the good of all, the situation must be monitored with care.

It’s as I’m turning my gaze away from Project X that out of the corner of my eye I see, or half-see, or imagine, a small dark dropping motion to my left. My guess is, a gull or other large bird. Bird life in the emirate is booming, by all accounts. Migrant birds pass through in great numbers. Tweeting and cooing may be heard every morning, in every neighbourhood. I’ve heard tell that, some decades ago, the Dubai authorities netted a large quantity of our feathered friends from around the Gulf region and released them in the city. This sounds apocryphal, but you never know. The abduction of an entire avian population is by no means beyond our Rulers.

My bowel movement is normally followed by an internet-fuelled episode of self-pleasuring. This coy verb comes to mind ironically, I’m sad to say. Although I’m not going to deny the element of sensational gratification, I register with dismay the growing difficulty I’m having in sticking to my goal of jerking off at least four or five times a week, without which I would be in danger of not extinguishing, or not keeping in check, the natural desire to copulate and then mate. Including my time with Jenn, I’ve spent over a decade going from one dirty website to another, and at this point, I’m running out of juice. I must acknowledge that, as an ultramarathoner of masturbation, my devotion to amateur or homemade pornography, which kept me going during the Jenn years, has in Dubai been swept away by the never-ending search for novel and effective stimulation. There isn’t a porno twist, tweak or twang I haven’t exhaustively gone into. Asian babes, MILFs, BBWs, celebrities, extremists, Africans, naturists, insertion specialists, acrobats, horny bosses, straponistas, Italians, mature lesbians, vintage sluts, cuties, horny boot wearers, randy yachtswomen, exhibitionists, busty teens, hairy cougars, anal queens, cum gobblers, wife-swappers, nerds, bottle-fuckers, beauties, strangers, bored natural housewives, brunettes — I’ve been through all of these and many more. I don’t like the way this is trending. Some months ago I went through a phase of jerking off to scenes of (grown-up and, I honestly believe, consenting and professional) women being penetrated by enormous dildos attached to what were called fucking machines. That was a grey area.

A week ago, I had an unambiguously very bad experience. What can I say? I was watching a woman and four men doing various things. It was all proceeding as one might expect, until one of the men punched the woman in the face, and then another pulled on her ponytail so that she could be punched again in the face, which she was, by the other men, and the female performer was crying and bleeding at the mouth and trying to not be punched, and in the blink of an eye the fake orgy had turned into a gang sexual assault — and yet I couldn’t stop the movie, my hands were full, I was about to ejaculate, there was no stopping that, and even though I did turn my eyes away from the screen, I kept jerking off until I was done. Only then did I shut the laptop and quit the scene of the crime. Too late. I had already acted in concert with the sexual assaulters. It will be objected that the crime victim, as I believe her to be, was an actor, as were the other actors in the filmed events: they, too, were actors; I’d seen the performance of a crime. My retort: Actors are in the first place persons. It cannot be forgotten that the phase of public pretending is preceded by an initial private phase of pretence in which the person assumes the part of actor. When I revisualize the video in question, I see that the female actor ceased to pretend to be an actor. She reverted to naturality with the first or second punch; and it seems clear that after that reversion she did not consent to being punched repeatedly in the face and to having sexual interaction, vaginal and oral and anal, with the men punching her. It follows that the female actor was not an actor pretending to be raped. She was a person being raped. This isn’t automatically to incriminate the men as rapists; their relevant mental states are open to argument; one would need to hear from them. Me, I have heard from myself. I know what I did. I saw the rape happen and used my seeing of it for my own sexual benefit.

What am I supposed to do now? Turn myself in? To whom? Where are the authorities when you need them?

And I cannot jerk off any more because I’m afraid that, if I do, I will see the female person being punched and I will want to see that.

What do I do? I go back to work. I turn myself in to Alain and Ali.

Where is Ali, though? Not in the office. Only Alain is here, and he is in my chair, and on my computer. What the fuck.

‘Excuse me?’ I say.

The kid smoothly closes his windows and, if I’m not mistaken, clears his history. He says, ‘I was finding out about Black Death,’ and goes back to his desk and opens his Green Belt Sudoku book as if nothing has happened and it’s all been my bad dream and not his bad.

I take the responsibility. I forgot to shut down the computer, and boys will be boys. Still, the kid and I need to talk.

‘That’s my computer, Alain. You need my permission to use it. You don’t have my permission unless I say so.’

I get nothing back from him. He stares at the wall. Fair enough. I’ve said what needed to be said. Regarding exactly what he was doing on my computer, I’m not going to get into it with him, even though his explanation was brazenly false. He would deny falsity, and there would be a factual dispute and a battle of wills, and that’s too much to ask of me. I’m not his parent. His parents are his parents.