Overwhelmed by the weight of the silence and the sight of nothing but naked bodies, the blond man fixed his eyes on Derdâ’s breasts. Then he placed his palms somewhere near her shoulders. Everybody in the room held their breath. And the boy lowered himself over her. But it was no good. He couldn’t get himself into her. Everyone in the room huddled closer to get a better look at Derdâ, the flower choosing death over blooming, and the boy whose face had gone pale. First there was heated discussion, and then a box was handed down to the blond. A little bit of Vaseline went a long way and convinced Derdâ despite her resistance. The blond replaced his palms back near her shoulders, held his breath, and pushed himself into her. And lost himself. It took four minutes for the harsh lines on his face to dissipate. For Derdâ, it felt like a little less than four years. He took off the filled condom and raised it triumphantly in the air like a champagne glass, making sure everyone could see it. Twenty thunderous claps and thirty screams.
After the first eight men, Derdâ began to confuse the faces and felt like none of it was real. Only in the darkness under her eyelids did she become aware of what she was doing. She wanted to die. She couldn’t close her eyes again but she couldn’t look at the faces dripping beads of sweat onto her face. So she looked directly into the camera held by the boy with the glasses, but he was moving all over the place. As best she could she kept her eyes fixed on the camera lens. After all, it was the only thing that wasn’t foaming at the mouth. She lifted her head like a professional porno star and followed the small, black circle of the lens, never losing eye contact. Of all the things in that room, the only one that couldn’t harm her was that lifeless object. So when the boy with the glasses discovered he was a natural porno director and disappeared out of Derdâ’s view to take close-ups, Derdâ shouted out to him, “Come over here, come back!” She was surrounded by fifty-two slabs of flesh, one inside her and the remaining fifty-one being made ready manually. No surprise she chose to look at the camera, because Bezir wasn’t there to stare at.
After the first twenty men, she started hitting the newcomers as they lowered themselves over her. She hit them on the face, on the shoulders, wherever she could. She didn’t even look to see where slaps and punches were landing. But her eyes still followed the camera. And she swore at the ghosts in Turkish.
“Fuck you all! Fuck you! You sons of bitches! What the hell are you doing now? Why don’t you come and do something? I’m here, where are you? Where are you?”
After the first forty men, she started crying and begging the camera with her eyes.
She cried, “Please save me! Please someone get me out of here! Help me …”
And after fifty-two, she lay unconscious on the linoleum mat, drenched in sweat and tears. She came to when Stanley shook her. Her eyelashes were glued together by her tears and with every breath little balloons formed in her nostrils. It was as if she’d been washed in glue. Fifty-two men had poured themselves into her. Who knows how many kilograms of their white, translucent cum were inside her. How much did it all weigh? Maybe that was why she couldn’t stand up. Because of the weight of the bodily fluid all over her face and inside her. She couldn’t move, so Stanley took her in his arms.
He went to the bathroom and set her in the bathtub as if laying her in her grave. First he adjusted the water temperature and then he bathed her. Derdâ thought of how Rahime had washed her. Rahime washed her like Stanley was washing her now. And she thought of Vezir, and the conversations that they had had in Rahime’s house. She thought of all those fantasies when she’d slip her hand down her şalvar, hiding between the yellow armchair and the wall. In her fantasies, she was often surrounded by naked men and Bezir was forced to watch. She thought of all her myriad fantasies. But only one of them had come true, the one that never should have become reality. She had dared to dream it because she was sure it would always remain a dream. Then her mind fell upon a question: Who’s the one to choose which dreams will come true? The one who dreams the dream or the one who makes you dream that dream?
She looked at Stanley as he dried her face with a big, white towel and she asked, “Did you know?”
Stanley remained silent and continued to dry her shoulders. She raised her voice.
“Did you know there would be so many men?”
“Yes,” Stanley answered her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What difference would it have made?”
No one was left in the living room apart from four already dressed students packing up the linoleum cover. Everyone else was already gone. There was something strange in the faces of the men still there, something that made them inarticulate. A heaviness akin to regret, a terrible weight that prevented them from lifting their heads. It was a weight a few thousand times heavier than the white and translucent heaviness that was all over Derdâ, and the color was much darker.
While Derdâ dressed she tried to look each one of them in the eye but she couldn’t. They shifted their eyes and escaped into themselves, pretending to be busy rolling up the linoleum cover.
Stanley took out a wad of money from his pocket and said laughingly, “Life starts now.” Derdâ stepped into the entrance hall, opened the door, and turned around to look at Stanley before going through the door.
“Fuck
