Friday, September 10, 2021

The door of the building closes behind Riad with a long and tired creaking. The stairwell is immersed in a sick yellow light. On the walls, old writings in felt-tip pen, a skirting board that has detached from its seat, a vague smell of sautéing. From an apartment on the ground floor comes the broken screams of a mother scolding a baby, then the baby's dry cry, then an Arab song fired from a phone. A guy in slippers, with the “Boat Party Staff” shirt, smokes on the balcony on the first floor.

The third floor is the realm of noise. From the half-open door of their apartment, voices arrive with a tone that changes constantly, bursts of television, an Arab commentator who certainly screams following a sporting event. Riyadh enters and is hit by a wave of warm and vaguely stagnant air, as if no one had ever really opened the windows.

That it is a men's apartment in a still touristic period, it is clear immediately: empty plastic bottles on the table, some dishes waiting in the sink for a good soul that puts an end to the agony, football shirts practically on all the backs of the chairs, boxes of sports shoes, cats of dust that They roll away on the floor when doors or windows are opened.

In the kitchen, Uncle Nabil, with a very different belly from the days when he was a full-back with good results in Morocco, watches a game in streaming on the laptop, commenting on every action with broken, screamed phrases, which Riad understands only at times. His Arabic is rough, mixed with a life away from his country of origin and a vocabulary built more in traffic than in books.

On the sofa, Younes, Riad's older brother, is sprawled with the phone in his hand, the other scratching his belly which is instead polished for someone who works in a kitchen. He wears sweatpants pulled up almost to the knee and a T-shirt with the logo of a tourist pizzeria.

-Look here.- he says aloud, showing a photo of a girl in a bikini. -This girl followed me on Insta. She says we are gonna met tonight. Eh, despite everything, see? I'm still on the market.-

-Fish market.- Riad replies, but repents immediately, after the violent look that his brother reserves for him. He takes off his shoes, avoids a plastic bag with the residue of an expense that has never found its place in the wall units, and goes to the kitchen. A pot with rice remained on the stove, next to a dish with beans and scrambled eggs. They almost always eat like this in summer: standing, one at a time, what happens. He collects the dishes, rinses them, throws the leftovers into a black sack that smells of wet left too hot.

The bathroom is in presentable condition, especially since there is nothing that can be messed up: only a shower gel and a soap. But three males and a toilet are not the ideal solution for a fragrant place.

-Oh, and tomorrow you go to Uncle Said.- Younes yells from the living room. -The one for the permit. I have a double shift and the boss is already pissed off.-

Riad squeezes the jaw. He ties a knot in the garbage bag then puts it next to the door. Nobody asked him. Nobody says thank you.

He returns to his room. It is a three-and-a-half-metre-by-half hole that he shares with his brother. The bed is a net with the mattress on it, the soccer bag in the corner above the school backpack that takes dust from June, benzema poster, PSG mesh held as a relic. A bluetooth speaker, a window overlooking the back.

He puts on headphones. The music starts: dark trap, French because for good or bad he knows that language. Words speak of domination, money, hate, flesh. But he also hears something else underneath, a sound that comes from further away. Something that is out of place, that never really aligns. As if there was a rhythm that everyone else follows and escapes him instead.

Then he throws himself on the bed: an Instagram profile of a girl who comes to school where he goes. Short shorts, studied poses, gaze fixed in the camera. Someone say that she is also on OnlyFans, surely she makes him think things that on the site for adults would fit perfectly.

He flows, flows, stops, touches himself, an eye to the door because he does not want to find himself having to talk about those topics with his brother. Not because the latter is a bigot, but because he usually begins to ask, ask, ask, until he is exhausted. And he just wants to look at that girl's ass in peace.

But then his brother punctually appears and he is forced to change kinds of videos. Motivational tutorials on how to "impose one's leadership", video montages of footballers who train until they feel bad, such as those of Real, phrases like "kill the weak inside you" that flash superimposed.

On the wall, a checkered sheet with a pen inscription in block letters, under the title "OBJECTIVES":

-Strength
-Endurance
-Set kick
-Respect

He sighs and knocks his cell phone down.

He hears the shouting of his uncle from the other room, swearing at a center forward who "Riad you marked this too!". A sharp blow from the bathroom pipe. Outside, a siren.

And something that squeezes his chest. It has no name. But it looks like hunger. Not the one that subsides with rice or scrambled eggs. a thinner one. Colder.

He wakes up from a kind of half-sleep due to a message on his cell phone.

Riccardo: boiled ram, tomorrow evening reggaeton Wave evening.

Riccardo: fair of big asses 🤤

He isn’a fan of wave, it's a bit like a jock but when the reggaeton passes the girls turn into glans hunters.

Riad: Count me bro

Hdoesn't have time to close the call that returns to Instagram to look for the hashtag #WaveReggaetonNight and gets lost in photos, short videos and other content uploaded by the girls. The uncle sleeps there, his brother is working.

He lets himself go touching himself intensely and dedicating new strong thoughts of domination over girls he has already seen around Cervia or even at school: Tamara, with those absurd boobs, Jesykha who was certainly no less but that he preferred for that sumptuous butt, and all others that made him stir his blood.

He has no peace, he wants them, he wants them intensely, he wants them brutally, he dreams of them pushed against the walls, floors, shower enclosures, columns, and he behind him hammering, as they deserve.

And then the photos of Meg, Martin's girl, also happen to him. She too is a lot of stuff, and he doesn't understand how he manages to be with his teammate, who is anything but a real strong and decisive male, as every male should be.

Yet something is out of place there too. A nuisance that is not only envy, but not even respect. It's a confusing, deaf, hard to grasp stuff. He doesn't like to think of Martin, yet he always comes back. Maybe because Martin doesn't seem to want to dominate anything. Yet it has her. Has Meg. And he laughs.

He ends up in frustration watching some porn videos, but he still doesn't give himself peace. He would like something that not even he knows what it is. And it's not just the anger that continually feels circulating in the veins.