Life of a Manchild Chapter 48 – Theft, Herpes & Maybe Even Sodomy

Chapter 48 – Theft, Herpes & Maybe Even Sodomy

The first Saturday night of the three weeks I spent in Turkey had started off at a place called World House Hostel near the Taksim area of Istanbul. Earlier in the day, I’d been hanging out and watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother on the computer alongside my new Iranian friends, a brother and a sister, that I’d met there a few days beforehand. That evening, after going out for a doner kebab dinner, the three of us went for a little walk around the neighborhood and ended up sitting down on a park bench at the base of a landmark called Galata Tower.

Until that point, it had been a pleasant evening free of alcohol but as we sat on said park bench surrounded by a bunch of youthful Turks who’d been pounding beers and ripping cigs, I could feel my grip on lucidity fleeting. Not even bothering with a futile attempt to resist my overpowering desire, I temporarily excused myself to walk over to a nearby convenient shop. Since they are good Muslims who turn away from the evils of alcohol, I grabbed my friends some boozeless beverages and some Snickers bars to enjoy as I sat with them and went to work on a pack of Winston’s and a black plastic bag full of tall boy Efes.

As I coasted along on the express train to blackout city, my tongue became quite loose and I broached several topics I perhaps shouldn’t have considering my audience. Although they both laughed and swore to me that they were in no way offended, when I eventually sobered up a couple days later, I couldn’t help but feel there were better things for me to have talked about with a girl in hijab and her younger brother than a homeless black man named Cosmo that I used to get hammered with up in college who once told me he used to stick a pinky full of earwax “up in a bitch pussy” every time before having sex to test whether or not his potential partner had been infected with STD’s.

“Yeah, and he said, ‘If da bitch git to squirmin’ ‘round like she gittin’ mo’ aroused than you think she should, lookin’ all like this,’” I did my best impression of Cosmo making a smiley-ass, female orgasm face, “‘you go ‘n’ git yaself the fuck up outta there. Know why that is? It ‘cause the earwax have a chemical reaction with the disease that cause the woman too much pleasure. It means ya gotchyaself a pig in the blanket – a dirty bitch who got some shit goin’ on down there that you don’t wanna be a part of, nahmean?’”

Not long after I imparted that life lesson, sometime around midnight, my newly enlightened friends returned to the hostel to get ready for bed. Instead of preserving the next day by calling it a night myself, I opted to stay out and kick the bender into high gear. With no particular destination in mind, it soon turned into one of those aimlessly-wander-the-streets-drinking-whatever-I-can-get-my-hands-on-until-I-don’t-know-where-I-am-or-who-I’m-talking-to kind of nights. During this time, I remember little more than a few pathetic attempts at talkin’ to beautifully bodacious Turkish women and being denied from pretty much every bar I tried to get into.

Next thing ya know, the sun’s out and I found myself wandering into random cafes trying to sit down with people who’d been drinking morning coffee and eating breakfast, trying to start conversations that I was hoping would either lead to sex and/or more drinking. Needless to say, no one I came in contact with wanted anything to do with this here drunk-ass motherfucker.

My mind had been such a toxic waste that morning that I remember not even being able to recall which city and/or country I was in let alone the name or location of my hostel. As such, I just kept staggering around looking for somewhere I could keep drinking. At some point I weaseled my way into some underground bar where it was dark as night and they’d still been serving drinks – or maybe they’d closed the night before and opened up again that morning. I don’t know. Either way, my first order of business once I’d gotten in there had been telling the barkeep to shag me a beer for each hand.

While sitting there and making out with the pair of ice-cold Efes, I started looking around the room for people I could stick my penis into and noticed there’d been a few women sitting at the other end of the bar who, unfortunately, already seemed to be taken. They’d been sitting alongside some older lookin’ mustache dudes who’d been grindin’ on ‘em and feelin’ up their thighs and whatnot. Upon closer inspection, however, I noticed that said women had actually been skinny little men wearing wigs, dresses and heels.

“Hey there, boss,” I nodded at the middle-aged man who’d been sitting next to me. “You speak any English?”

“Little,” he said, “I speak a little English.”

“Alright, cool,” I said and leaned in close so no one else would hear me. “What’s up with those old dudes over there getting their dicks rubbed by the young dudes in wigs? That shit’s too fuckin’ weird, man.”

“What is weird about it?”

“Uh, I dunno dude. It’s just fuckin’ weird, ya know? It’s uh, kinda gay.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s weird. No one else here seems to think it’s weird. Maybe you shouldn’t be here if you think it’s weird.”

“Yeah,” I added as it suddenly became clear to me the place I was at had been a gay bar, “you’re right. I shouldn’t be here.”

After guzzling the pair of beers as fast as I could and returning to the light of day, I finally gave in to the notion that I needed to go to bed. The problem with that notion, however, was that I didn’t recognize anything around me and had still been having trouble putting a finger on what part of the world I was in.

To help me get a grip on reality, I lurched into several businesses and hotels to ask for help but was turned away in disgust each time as if I was some sort of leper. I guess public intoxication is viewed as something highly disgraceful in Turkey – that, or they hate gingers.

With no other ideas on how to find my way back to my hostel, I continued with my aimless wandering until I was approached by some friendly young dude on the street.

“Hello,” he said with a smile. “Can I help you?”

“Yes! Oh my god, please! Will you help me find my hostel?”

“Yes, yes, I will help,” he nodded. “How much money do you have?”

“Uh, that I don’t know,” I murmured as I began wrestling my wallet from my back pocket. “Hold on, just gimme one second…”

Without even considering why he’d been asking this question, I pulled out my wallet to see how much I had and fumbled around with it while trying to get it open. Once I got it open but before I could even begin counting my cash, the guy quickly reached in it, grabbed all my Lira then turned around and started running away down the street as fast as he could. Since he was smaller than me and I figured I could beat his ass, I decided to run after him and lay down the law. The first ten or so steps of the chase went really well but I soon after tripped on my own feet, stumbled forward to the sidewalk and scraped the skin off my palms, my knees, my chin and even my stomach as I went sliding across it.

“Fuck you!” I shouted as I laid there, looking after the man who’d just stolen my shit as he turned a corner and disappeared from my sight.

After basking for a few moments in self-pity, I used my stigmata hands to push myself off the ground while a few more disappointed Turks in the vicinity tisked at me in my helplessly drunken state. As I had several times earlier in the evening/morning, I once again began wandering around the city like a zombie when those two beers I just chugged at the gay bar suddenly kicked in and erased all further memory. I never figured out how I eventually got back to the hostel or how long it took. The only thing I can tell you is that I woke up in the bed designated as mine almost a full twenty-four hours after the memory of being robbed.

About two-and-a-half weeks after the date of the theft – two of which I’d spent buzzing around the western half of Turkey visiting historical sights – I returned to Istanbul expecting to have been able to just show up and get a bed at the same hostel without making a reservation in advance. As it turns out, that wasn’t the case and I ended up spending the whole afternoon of my last full day in the country wandering around Taksim, looking for a place to stay before eventually finding an open bed at a hostel which doubled as a shelter for undomesticated stray cats. Needless to say, the joint reeked of cat piss which is most likely why there’d been so many vacancies.

Since they were the only people I knew in Turkey and I wanted to say goodbye to them before I jumped on a plane to Tehran to begin an eight-day tour through their homeland the following day, I made plans to go out to dinner with the same Iranian friends with whom I spent the first half of the drunken evening previously discussed. With about twenty minutes to kill before I needed to leave for our scheduled rendezvous, I decided to pop in the lobby real quick to check my email using the WiFi connection of Cat Piss Hostel before taking off.

Having replaced the thirty-something-year-old dude who’d been there when I checked in, sitting at the front desk of the place had been some young, attractive, slightly Middle Eastern-looking chick with the type of body the guys in The Commodores must’ve had in mind when writing the lyrics to “Brick House.”

“Hey,” I smiled. “How’s it goin’?”

“Good,” she said. “And you?”

“Same, yeah. I’m good. Uh,” I’m terrible at talking to attractive women when I’m sober, “where are you from?”

“France. You?”

“America.”

We sat in silence for a few moments as she stared at a screen and tapped away on a keyboard while I pretended to be interested in my iPod when, in actuality, I couldn’t stop looking over at her.

“So, uh, what’s your name?”

“Maha. And yours?”

“Tim.”

“Here Tim,” she held out some kind of confection, “would you like a sweet?”

“Okay, sure,” I stood up and took it from her. “Uh, should I just like, rip a piece off or something?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” she smiled and looked back at the computer.

“So, how old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” she said. “You?”

“Twenty-five.”

We returned to silence for several minutes before I stood up.

“Uh,” I didn’t have to leave yet, but I was struggling to find things to talk about and I didn’t want her to think I was stupid or dull so I tried to make myself sound important with my plans, “I’m gonna go out to dinner right now with some friends. What um, what time does your shift end later?”

“I finish here at eleven o’clock.”

“Alright, cool,” I said, tryin’ to act all suave ‘n’ shit. “I should be back before then to keep you company. Nice meeting you.”

“Okay. See you later. Bye-bye.”

Despite what I said, I ended up hanging out with the Iranians longer than planned but still managed to return to the lobby of Cat Piss right around eleven. Gearing up to go out, a group of people who’d been staying at the hostel were all congregating in the lobby to go on a pub crawl. Maha wasn’t at her desk so I figured I missed her and decided to head upstairs to hide from the temptation of drinking so I wouldn’t have a repeat of the first night out and be considered too drunk to be let in Iran the following evening.

“Hey! Tim!” Maha called me back after she’d appeared out of nowhere. “We are going out for drinks. Would you like to come with us?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said as all common sense and careful planning flew right out the window, “sure. I’ll be right back. I just gotta run up to my room real quick.”

“Okay. Great.”

After leaving the hostel, we went as a group to go meet Maha’s friends – another French girl and a French-speaking black dude from Guinea – at a bar where they offered a shot and a beer for the equivalent of two US dollars which, for booze in Turkey, is laughably cheap.

“Okay,” Maha said as she and her two friends poured their shots of tequila into their beers, “this is what we do every time we’re here. We put these together and have a race. You can do it too if you’d like. But if not, it’s no problem.”

I and everyone else at the table decided to partake. Maha, who sat just to my right, had been the first one finished during the first group chug-off.

“Holy shit,” I said, “where’d you learn to drink like that?”

“Eh, I have lots of practice,” she replied as she went digging through her purse. “We come here quite often. Would you like a cigarette?”

“Yeah, sure,” I took one out of the pack she’d been holding up. “Thanks.”

Maha and I continued to chat as the group competed in chug-off after chug-off until we’d all been about five beer/tequila combos deep and ditched that bar to head over to some dance club where I immediately lost everyone I’d went there with. At the time, it didn’t bother me because I jumped in the middle of the dance floor and found some smokin’ hot Turkish girl to whom I’m eternally grateful for letting me bump and grind my limp dick on her hips, thighs and ass cheeks for the better half of an hour.

After the sexy dancing, I left that ho on the flo’ to step outside for a cigarette and to go chug two quick and much cheaper beers purchased from the tiny convenient shop across the street. Upon my return to the packed-ass club during which I’d already had a head-spinning buzz, I didn’t much feel like dancing anymore and went out to the designated smoking area in the back so I could rip another one. There, as luck would have it, I once again ran into Maha. While talking over a smoke, she informed me how tired she was and told me of her immediate plans to leave and go to bed.

“Aw, really? Already?” I responded with an exaggerated tone of disappointment. “But I just met you and I have to leave tomorrow. You can’t be leaving already.”

She shrugged.

“Why don’t you come with me?”

It didn’t take me much time to think it over.

“Alright, alright,” I nodded, trying my best to act all cool again. “Let’s do it. I’m ready when you are.”

On our way out – which was a time that I’d been rockin’ a half-chub thinking about all the bonin’ I was about to do – we somehow got distracted in saying our goodbyes to the rest of the group from the hostel and ended up sticking around for longer than planned. During this time, mon cherie bought each of us two more shots before leaving. Eventually, when we finally found our way to the exit, I left that club drunker than a proverbial mofo.

Before heading back to Maha’s place, we stopped into a convenient store where I – as if I hadn’t had more than enough already – found it necessary to buy a big bag full of tall boy Efes cans and another pack of cigarettes. Once having arrived at her apartment, on account of how intoxicated I’d been, I don’t remember exactly how the fucking commenced but, oh boy, did we do some fucking. She s’d my D, I licked her V and we banged in almost every angle imaginable. I usually carry two condoms with me in my wallet and that night had been no exception. After those two had served their purpose and the interest in continuing to bone remained high, I said what the hell and sent the troops in without backup.

Throughout the course of the boner-jamming marathon, I slammed five or six more beers in bed while tearing through a pack of cigarettes, all of which had left me completely fucked outta my gourd. At one point, I remember having Maha on her hands and knees on the side of her bed with her ass towards me as we shagged like dogs. It was at this point that I took notice of the bottle of hand lotion on her nightstand and figured it would be a good time to try out anal sex. Once I’d removed my pathetically floppy drunken equipment from the sacred temple and started to lather it with lotion, Maha rolled over and told me to lay down on my back.

“Okay,” I mumbled, “but I wanted to put it in your ass though.”

She didn’t say anything and I assumed my position on the bed. She straddled me like a cowgirl and began fumbling around with my sword unsheathed, positioning it for insertion.

“Hey,” I reiterated, “make sure to put it in your ass, okay? I wanna try it in the ass.”

She jammed it somewhere warm and started bouncing up and down. Wherever she put it, it felt pretty damn good. Nevertheless…

“Hey, hey Maha,” I asked like a curious kindergartener, tugging on his mother’s dress for her attention, “what hole is it in right now?”

She panted in response and kept on humping. My question was left unanswered.

Somehow it suddenly became seven in the morning. The birds were up and chirping and a Sunday bazaar had been set up about three stories below Maha’s apartment down on the street. While we laid in bed wasted with the room spinning around us as we talked about God-knows-what, mademoiselle somehow segued into a line that really caught my attention and managed to stick with me through the borderline blackout haze I’d been in.

“…and that is when the doctor told me I have herpes…”
“Wait, wait – WHAT!?” I sat the fuck up with my heart suddenly pounding, wishing I’d remembered to carry out Cosmo’s earwax test prior to penetration. “What the fuck did you just say?”

“Yeah, I got herpes when I was a child. I must’ve gotten it from a toilet seat or something…”

“YOU CAN’T GET HERPES FROM A FUCKING TOILET SEAT! Who fucked you when you were a kid!?”

“No one fucked me when I was a child. It was definitely from a toilet seat because…”

“What the fuck!?” I cut her off. “Why are you telling me this now? It didn’t occur to you to tell me this minor detail before we had unprotected sex?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I never do this sort of thing but I thought we had a connection and I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d reject me the way you are right now. But it’s not contagious and I haven’t had a problem since I was twelve…”

“Ahhhhhh!” I cut her off again with an exasperated groan.

I was so flustered, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t ready to leave yet but needed to step away from Frenchy for the time being to sort out my thoughts. So, I left her room butt-ass naked and went into the kitchen where I lit up a cigarette and started spinning in circles as I pissed on all her cabinets, walls, oven and the interior of her refrigerator. After this, I took a bowl of fruit I’d found and went over to a window overlooking the aforementioned Sunday bazaar. From there I started swearing and angrily throwing tomatoes and bananas down at people as I stood in my complete penis-flopping nakedness.

After a little steam had been blown off, I decided I had nothing left to say to this girl and figured it was time to go. Back in her room, while struggling to put my legs through my crumpled-ass pair of jeans, cussing about this and that, Maha started crying.

“Don’t leave,” she sobbed as she lay in bed naked, half-covered by her blanket. “Please, just come over here and rest with me! You won’t get herpes, I’m not contagious! I promise you!”

Although part of me wanted to climb back in bed because I actually did like her and didn’t wanna be so cold, my self-righteous side told me to steal the forty-five Euros that’d been scattered on the floor and fuckin’ bail. I decided to listen to the instructions of the latter.

It took me about two hours to find my way back to Cat Piss Hostel ‘cus I was still totally hammered and when I eventually got there, a couple people from the bar crawl had been sitting in the lobby and asked how the rest of my evening went. Much to their disgust, I informed them that I drank all night and that, technically, my evening was still going.

“Really?” gasped one of the dudes who obviously hasn’t spent much time around alcoholics. “You really drank all night long?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged, said nothing more and headed up the stairs.

Before going to bed, I stopped in the bathroom and dropped my drawers to make sure that nature’s game of connect-the-dots hadn’t begun to appear on my fun zone. In addition to there being no sign of herpes, there also hadn’t been any poo on the exterior of my dick or coming out my wiener-hole like a PlayDoh mold which led me to believe that my penis had most likely not entered Maha’s anus during the romp. I’d also bent over and put my face as close to my dick as possible to try and smell for evidence of butt-ramming but got no scent of feces. I concluded the examination by rubbing a handful of anti-bacterial hand-sanitizer on my dick before taking a nice deep nap to sleep off the booze prior to my flight.

When I woke up around 3pm with a slightly clearer head, I felt extremely sore about the whole incident. While I remained a bit salty towards Maha for dropping her weird confession on me after boning down all night long, I was even more pissed at myself for acting like such a heartless bastard. As such, I went to the lobby and began writing a letter of apology that I planned on leaving at the front desk for her to retrieve during her next shift when she unexpectedly walked in the door. After she said hello to some people who’d been hanging out, she and I made eye contact.

“Uh, hey,” I mumbled.

“Hey,” she replied.

“Uh, you wanna like, go for a walk or something?”

“Yeah,” she said, “let’s take a walk.”

While on said walk, the two of us sat down at an outdoor café along the Bosphorus and talked about the evening previous over a glass of tea. During this time, with my tail between my legs, I gave her her money back and admitted to the tomato rainstorm I unleashed on the Sunday market in front of her apartment. Strangely, she didn’t even seem that mad about either offense. By strategic choice, however, I left out the little part about me pissing in her fridge and whatnot because I kinda felt that there’s no justifiable reason for doing something that passive-aggressive.

After apologies had been imparted by both parties, Maha and I sat in silence, holding hands and looking out on the water for a solid thirty minutes. Although I felt like this would have been the perfect time to ask her whether or not I’d plugged her pooper with my pee-pee the night before, I decided to leave it a mystery. We then walked back to the hostel where we said our goodbyes. I flew off to Iran and the two of us never talked again.