Genie in a Vodka Bottle

Chapter 1-2

He was talking about the storm outside, I supposed. Me, I was praying for the one inside. “Let’s hope so,” I said as I flung my backpack over my shoulder and headed down the aisle. Allah willing.

* * * *

I checked in to our hotel—my hotel, now—and shook the water off like a wet dog. The storm, if it was at all possible, grew thicker, denser, grayer. Somewhere, someone was taking an ark out of dry dock. I stared around at the fancy digs, card key now in hand. We’d paid in advance, received a ten percent discount. It was the one saving grace to this debacle of a trip, and the only way we could afford it was to split the bill. Luke hadn’t asked for his half back. Maybe because he already had half of my heart as collateral. And fine, bitter party, table for one, but a thirty-year-old single man traveling alone on what would’ve been his anniversary deserves a little bitterness. Or, you know, a lot. Or, more befitting, mucho.

I walked into the elevator. Music was playing. Sounded familiar. No lyrics, just a melody, a jazzy version of…no, couldn’t be. I blinked. I gulped. “Genie in a bottle.” The elevator door closed behind me. “Seems Christina is universal.” And it seemed this weirdly new theme of mine had followed me across the Atlantic.

I got off at the fifth floor. My room was a few doors down. Nice room. Standard stuff. Could’ve been any hotel in any country. I set my luggage in the corner and parted the curtains. The rain pelted outside. I hadn’t seen much of Malaga on my taxi ride there; I saw even less of it now.

I turned around, sat on the bed, stared ahead at the blackened TV. I’d come all this way for what? Closure? Yeah, good luck with that. There are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance. Me, I somehow managed to get simultaneously mired in the first four. I was neck-deep in slow-sand, the quick version somehow alluding me. All that is to say, closure was nowhere on the Malagan horizon. Besides, I didn’t love Luke; I loved the idea of loving him. Which meant there was nothing to close.

I reached for the remote, turned on the TV. The weather was being reported. In Spanish. What with me being in Spain, and all. Anyway, didn’t matter. There was the map of Spain on the screen. There was the massive storm. There was the weatherman circling his finger around and around the coast. Which meant that the storm wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Still, “Huh,” I said as I hopped up and got a closer look, my own finger soon pointing where his was not, namely to the left of the screen. “Gibraltar,” I said. “Seems the storm stops right about…” Eeny, meeny, miny, and the mo pointed, “There.” And so, “Huh,” I repeated.

I reached for my cell, went to Weather.com, and typed in the mountain of rock swarming with monkeys. No rain. Warm and sunny for the foreseeable future. Seemed that only Spain was being hit by a storm. Was that normal? I shrugged. Was any of this normal, really? I mean, I was in a foreign land all alone. Trust me, that was not normal. At least not for me. Still, that hope of mine returned. I’d been promised that I wouldn’t be disappointed if I visited Gibraltar, and Gibraltar was the only dry place in driving distance. I shrugged yet again. “Monkeys, here I come!”

* * * *

I slept well. My apartment back home was a constant reminder of my suddenly halved life. The only thing not split were my bills. Ergo, the reason I really couldn’t afford this trip, let alone that aforementioned and clearly needed therapy. But here, here it was just me. No reminders of him. Except for when my brain was thinking of him. Which I was trying ever so hard not to do.

I tried not to think of him when I showered. I tried not to think of him when I brushed my teeth. I tried not to think of him when I got dressed, then undressed, then jacked off, which is when it was especially hard—emphasis on the hard—to not think of him, mainly because when I closed my eyes, there he was.

Still, balls newly empty, my head momentarily cleared. Such could not be said for the sky outside. If it had suddenly started hailing frogs, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Moses had an easier time of it than Malaga. I craned my neck to the side to perhaps catch a glimpse of one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but all I saw was a brick wall. All in all, it seemed apt.

“Well,” I said, “this is lovely.”

I sighed as I stuffed my backpack with some snacks, a bottle of water, a bottle of sunscreen. Sure, that last item was wishful thinking, but the alternative was depressing, and I was already depressed enough without adding fuel to the fire. Through good luck starting one of those while the deluge outside was, um, deluging.

I took the stairs to the lobby in case the elevator was playing music to my current fragile state’s dislike. I ran, eager for the day’s adventure. I ran when I shouldn’t have ran. Meaning, I ran down and then ran into someone else who was also running, except up. Into me. Or me into him. Either way you put it, two people were quite suddenly tumbling down said stairs until, splat, two people landed outside the door to the second floor, various limbs entangled, various snacks now smooshed in the backpack that was digging into my spine.

“f**k,” I moaned, my hand running to my head, my chest, my legs, to make sure there was no blood, nothing broken. Did my health insurance work in Spain? Heck, it barely worked back home. When I craned my neck toward my chest, I noticed my hand had landed on the stranger I’d collided with. Or, that is to say, on his crotch. His eyes locked with mine and then wandered to his nether regions, to his shorts, which were rather on the skimpy orange nylon side.

“That seems to be the appropriate word for it,” he managed to squeak out. “f**k, I mean.”

Guy was Middle Eastern. Guy looked strikingly like Omar. Guy had chocolatey eyes and a molasses-thick accent that would’ve put a tent in my shorts had I not been in the precarious position I was in, namely entangled with a stranger with potentially any number of broken bones. Oddly, my hand remained on his crotch. I chalked it up to being in shock and/or because he had a rather fetching-looking crotch. Mostly and, far less or.

“You okay?” I managed. “So, so sorry. I didn’t see you there.” In fact, I didn’t see him or hear him until we were tumbling together. He wasn’t there and then he was.

He nodded, moved his neck, his legs, his arms, wiggled his feet, his hands. “Nothing appears broken. A bit sore, perhaps. You?”

I moved my neck, my legs, my arms, wiggled my feet, my hands. Only, of course, one hand was where one hand should not have been, and so, when I wiggled, I jiggled his junk. “Um, sorry, again.” Not sorry enough to remove my hand from said junk, but that was because, for one, he hadn’t asked me to remove it, and, for two, the lump seemed to be growing beneath my jiggling. This, I supposed, was that silver lining one often hears mentioned. And since there were so many clouds outside, I seemed to have found an entire mine of said silver. In fact, I’d be minting coins pretty soon. “But no, also nothing broken. I think. Hard to tell.” Once again, emphasis on the hard. Him and me both, it seemed.

“Think we should try and get up?” he asked.

I shrugged. I was good with staying put. It was dry there. I had a hardening d**k in my hand—which, for sure, beat a bird in a bush any time—so yeah, put seemed a viable option. I wondered if room service delivered to the stairwell. “Sort of afraid to,” I said. “Just started my vacation. What if there’s unseen damage?” FYI, I couldn’t afford a shrink. FYI, ditto for a chiropractor.

He also shrugged. “Good point. And welcome to Spain then. Sorry about the weather. You should have waited a couple of months before visiting.”

I pushed myself up onto my elbows. Only, when I pushed up, I also again pushed down onto his thickening willy. He moaned, which was a far better sound than a groan—of the pain variety, that is.

He also pushed up. As did the lumpage in the orange nylon.

“Paul,” I said, holding out my free hand.

“Omar,” he said as our hands united and a kaboom akin to the Big Bang exploded in my chest.

“Your name is Omar?” I coughed out.

He nodded. “Yes, why? You look surprised. Have you never met an Omar before?”

I also nodded, knowingly. In fact, I had. Recently. “Is that a common name where you’re from?”

“Is Paul?”

Well, there was my answer. Just coincidence. Only, coincidences seemed to be following me around like a shadow as of late. “Nice to meet you, Omar,” I said, my hand in his, my other now fondling his d**k, seeing as he still wasn’t objecting.

“Nice to meet you, too, Paul.” He also had a free hand. And I also had shorts on, though mine were some sort of blended cotton. In any case, his free hand soon found a better place to be, namely not so free. “Where were you headed?”

I removed my hand, the one not in his, but only to slide it down to the gap between nylon and dark, hairy thigh. Omar seemed to be going commando, and so my hand was soon twiddling a hefty ball. “Gibraltar.”

He smiled. “You only just got to Spain and you’re already leaving for Gibraltar? I hope that’s not my fault. I promise, Spain is beautiful, even when wet.”

Spain might have been beautiful but not half as much as Omar—either one of the two I thus far had met, but especially this one. I reached higher. I grabbed his pole of a prick. The moan again escaped from between his full lips. “There’s sunshine in Gibraltar,” I told him. “And monkeys.”

He smiled. “Sunshine is good. Monkeys are good, too. Perhaps you need a driver. A tour guide.”

“Are you a tour guide, Omar? Do you know Gibraltar well?” I stroked his d**k. It grew impossibly thick in my grip. Omar stroked mine through the cotton. I was beginning to reconsider my disappointment in coming to Spain. Mainly because I was about to come in Spain. Albeit in a Spanish stairwell. On the second floor. Behind a door I was pretty sure was not locked.

He shrugged. “Never been to Gibraltar. Not as far as I can remember, anyway. But you are far from home. I am not. I have a car. Do you have a car?”

I shook my head. I shook his head, too. The one down below. “I have a backpack full of crushed Doritos and more than likely broken Slim Jims.”

“I do not know of these things, Paul. They do not sound like types of cars, though, so I will take that as a no. And so, I will drive you to Gibraltar.” I started to object, however half-heartedly, when he sealed the deal with the softest, sweetest, most heavenly kiss.

When we at last came up for air, I said, “But weren’t you already headed somewhere, Omar? Are you a guest at the hotel? Do you work here?”