"This is a finely felt sequel with strong images, dear Jamal, thank you." M.

*

"The explicit scene reads beautifully, ...'s essence breathes in it." M.

Resonant Spaces

In a closed system, entropy never decreases. This sentence from thermodynamics can also be applied to communicative systems in which desire, power, and language circulate. What begins as playful exchange necessarily intensifies, condenses, and demands ever-new stimuli, until the system reaches its limits.

You moved with ease through such labyrinths. You used hints, asides, and overlapping layers of language to hold attention without committing yourself. Sometimes, the performance itself mattered less to you than the prelude, the staging beforehand. To my relief, you preferred subtle, intricate constellations.

Language was our shared favorite medium. Language creates resonant spaces where others find, lose, and misread themselves. You knew how to allow projections without surrendering to them. What some interpreted as intimacy was for you a form of controlled openness. Transgressions were, naturally, matters of cognition.

Masterfully, you navigated this tension. Between us emerged condensations of suggestion, quotations, and theoretical references. We existed in a self-consuming intensity, fueled above all by language, glances, gestures.

We left Upington early in the morning. Mist clung to the landscape, barely more than a fleeting veil, a last breath of night. I drove. We spoke little. Was it melancholy? I was already shaping a version of events in which all of this lay in the past. I was remembering the desert even as I was still experiencing it. The asphalt of the R360 stretched ahead. Hours passed without any variation in scenery. Only heat and red Kalahari sand, clinging to everything. Camel-thorn trees, termite mounds, a bleached antelope skeleton. A sun-bleached cattle skull.

We reached the desert outpost of Rietfontein. The sun hung low, the sky shifting from flaming orange to hallucinatory violet. Night fell. Even in darkness, the day’s heat shimmered over the road surface.

I watched nothing but cinematic effects. Every scene felt like something out of a film, so unreal, so ghostly. The little town exhausted itself in a collection of corrugated iron roofs, closed petrol stations, and shuttered shops.

The motel parking lot was empty except for a few pickups, looking like they hadn’t moved in years. The bed was a narrow cot; a note stuck to the dead television screen read: “Enjoy the stars, not the screen.” The shower wasn’t inviting enough for an erotic interlude. The rusty showerhead delivered a disappointing trickle. I missed the satisfying feeling of being freshly washed.

As I tried to dress, you dropped your feigned indifference. One glance was enough. The room became the stage for a moment of complete presence. Our desire broke through. No performance, no foreplay. Your hands on my buttocks, my breath on your neck, our bodies found each other without detour. The bed squeaked in protest, as if the springs themselves objected, but it held. Our currents merged. We melted into the zenith of our desire and thanked each other with a bouquet of daisy-like post-coital tenderness. I was amused by the contrast with the traces of my fingernails on your back.

For dinner, we simply crossed the street to the Kroeg. From the outside, it looked like a workshop from the 1900s. A sign read:

“Koue Bier – Warm Etes – Net Lokale (Maar Jy’s Reg) / Cold Beer – Hot Meals – Locals Only (But You’re Alright).”

Behind the counter stood a woman with short gray hair, greeting us with a faded nod. It could mean anything. Perhaps it was even friendly. No jukebox, no television, no Wi-Fi. At the tables sat men in shorts and boots: truckers, miners, farmers. Some made do with canned beer, despite the foaming tap.

We joined in, drank Castle Lager on tap, and ordered steak with fries without consulting the menu. There was no choice anyway—just what was listed on the sign above the counter. No frills. The meat bled, the fries crackled, and the jumbo bottle of ketchup bore no label.