Professor Lawngkok

It was the start of 2003 and I’d just returned from the Navy. A crate had arrived containing all of my belongings. It occupied the entire floor of my bedroom.

I’d returned to find my mother shacked up with our neighbour. She’d divorced my stepfather and dated his best friend out of desperation (this is how I perceived it, anyway: she’d lost her job in Miami and taken one in Boca—like two hours away—someone had to pick up the kids from school).

She’d moved out of my childhood home in Kendall (with the pool and rocky waterfall, encased by a protective screen) and he’d moved out of his (two doors down), and together they moved into the most beautiful house I’d lived in.

Strangely enough, he was the father of my childhood best friend. I can’t remember why she and I stopped being friends. Funny how these things, once so important, are erased totally from memory. It must’ve been so important to me back then. But now… now, I can’t remember at all.

The house had two floors and a laundry chute from which dirty clothes (ropa sucia) could be dropped from upstairs into the laundry room. My room was on the ground floor, facing out, with large bay windows—the best room in the house. Still, I remember so little about that house; I had other things on my mind (I’d just left the Navy, heavily traumatised).

One night, I was on AOL (in pre-Facebook days when AOL monopolised the World Wide Web and dial-up made screeching sounds) in a chat room and stumbled across my next boyfriend.

His name was Rob and he was studying to be a dentist. We actually had mutual friends (the Alcantaras), among other desirable characteristics like Cuban heritage. The first time we met, on the sidewalk near his house, he walked towards me—sweaty and hairy, shirt tucked tight over his immutable belly—and I was nervous, giving him the power men so held over me.

We didn’t like each other at first. We ended up at the beach. Sitting side-by-side, motionless, staring at the moon reflected on still water and disappointed that it were fruitless. Suddenly (in a tale we often recounted), the tide changed and we tangled in a sweaty embrace, sand flying, belts buckling… the rest is history.

Rob was the hairiest man I’ve ever known. A carpet of hair ran up his neck and coated his butt. Hair everywhere—on the pillows and sheets—black corkscrew hairs. We dated for a couple of years and, ashamed of having met online, never deviated from the made-up story of our introduction (through Vivian). Though native to Miami, he was enrolled in Dental School in Boston. I visited several times (once gaining a free flight by fishing promotional stickers off hundreds of used cups from a bin behind Wendy’s Drive Thru) and watched him conduct his earliest dental procedures on desperate volunteers.

One Valentines Day, we stayed in all day and duly made a sex tape (a mutual and happy first) starring Professor Lawngkok and star pupil. From what I remember, it was pretty good. I’d developed an interest in BDSM, but lacked the vocabulary to express it. It was throughout my relationship with Rob that I began to research and instigate my fetishes.

Unfortunately, his mother was absolutely insane. A feng shui maddict that lived to meddle, even so far as spiking his orange juice with mystery pills and pinning dollar bills to the walls. She lived in a sort of tacky palace with a fleet of imaginary angels and a white yorkie named Sasha—nibbling the bread off chicken nuggets before feeding them to her daughter.

Funny, how these are the things I remember.

We went to Sarasota once, to the beaches. Young Rob and I, horny as ever, spent the entire trip angling for a moment alone (without avail). We went for "a walk" along the beach at night, but were devoured by mosquitos before our clothes came off. We locked Sasha in the motel bathroom, but her mother—miles away on the beach—heard the familiar sound of relentless and high-pitched yapping and flew to the bedside before our pants reached our ankles.

Finally, during the long drive home—his parents in the front seat, Rob to my right, grandmother snoozing to my left, the moon full and bright—I laid my head on his lap and covered it with my hoodie. Soundlessly, I unzipped his tight jeans, extracted his chubby cock, and licked it with darting tongue and craning neck. As it grew, his elbows dug into my back and his grandmother wheezed alongside.

I remember their home being unbearable—simply out of the question—filled with dread and dominance and gold leaf decor. I could never end up in that family. We split up shortly after his graduation from Dental School. He married his next girlfriend.