eulogy for my two-night stand
This is a story about casual sex and debt - what do we owe to each other?
My first encounter with Marwan is on Hinge, the birthplace of all my best anecdotes. He has one good photo, two medium-okay ones and two really bad ones, so naturally I send him a rose.
He matches with me almost immediately, and sends a message: ‘You have beautiful eyes Dounia.’
Boring and unoriginal. I give him one more shot, because I am more bored than he is boring: ‘Can’t go wrong with a classic line like that, Marwan.’
He doesn’t take the hint.
‘I believe honesty’s always the best approach. Plus your eyes are just too striking not to mention...’
I roll my eyes, really hard. How disappointing. I think I have nice eyes, but they are certainly not striking, so Marwan clearly doesn’t get out much. I exit the app and delete Hinge.
St Paddy’s Day arrives with great fanfare. Ironically, nobody loves St Paddy’s Day here more than the English. I am drunk, and crumbling under the weight of my own boredom, so I redownload Hinge to browse for entertainment.
After three weeks, I message Marwan with a proposition. He replies immediately, and we come face-to-face for the first time at 3am, on a side street off Mill Road. He calls my name as I hurry down the street, coyly pretending not to have seen him. He pronounces it the Arabic way - hot, ten points to Gryffindor.
We approach each other and I scan him quickly. Black adidas tracksuit bottoms, black trainers, black hoodie, nice face, cute glasses - I approve. I am still in my long white dress from formal - maybe this gave him ideas - black Sambas, a navy overcoat, and red lipstick.
After an awkward hug, we start walking. He has told me he lives in the area, and we’re about forty minutes from mine, so I am following him. After ten minutes of idle chat, I ask him how close we are, and he turns to me with genuine surprise: ‘Are we not going to yours?’
I am thinking ‘Why would we be going to mine, you fucking moron?’, but if I am rude to him, he might leave and I will be bored again, so instead I say ‘Um, no?’
He tells me we cannot go to his place, because he lives with a conservative Iranian family. I think this is really funny. An Iraqi boy in an Iranian home - the fridge magnets are probably arranged to spell out ‘Death to America!’
For whatever reason, I’ve decided I quite enjoy him by now, so I huff and I puff, but I agree to take him to mine. Although his energetic chat in a thick Mancunian accent is endearing, and I am listening, I am also preoccupied by the mess I know to be in my room at this very moment. I take a mental inventory, and I am pretty sure there is a bowl of half-eaten pasta next to my bed, several pairs of knickers on the floor, and a lot of my hair in the bin.
When we arrive, I leave him outside for ten minutes, like a dog tied to a lamppost, while I go and remedy the situation as quickly as I can. By the time I return, he is in exactly the same spot, humming softly to himself and gazing up at the stars.
I wave my hand in front of his face and we go upstairs. He doesn’t make a move, so we sit on the floor and share. I learn about his family, his city, his degree, his music taste, and he learns about mine. One hour goes by, then two, then three, and I am becoming acutely aware that the sun is coming up. He is talking as if it is midday and his morning coffee has just kicked in.
The wine has worn off now, so I only really want to fuck him because it’s weirder if I don’t. I interrupt him to ask: ‘Are you going to kiss me or not?’
He looks genuinely shocked, again. I don’t like this - it screams earnest, and I generally find earnest people to be deeply annoying.
He hurriedly explains that he had been hesitant to do so because I’d mentioned that I’d been drinking. I don’t like this either. I find overly cautious boy-scout types to be quite exhausting - why does he think I met up with him on a dark street at 3am? Arrogant of him really, to think himself interesting enough for me to be satisfied with conversation.
In any case, he only needed a little nudge. He kisses me then, and we get to it, on the floor. The sex is alright, but, my god, he does not stop talking. He talks about anything that comes to mind, and he sings. He sings Imogen Heap, and Horrible Histories, and, while he’s inside me, he asks me what my relationship history is like.
When he’s done - not with the talking - he pushes his face into my neck and asks me what my favourite movie is. I am trying really hard to fall asleep, so I say ‘Atonement’ and offer no more information. He does not take the hint, and instead pulls me closer and asks me why. Exasperated, I reply: ‘It’s my go-to when I need a cry. I cry a lot. I like Titanic too.’
I yawn cartoonishly then, looking him right in the eye, as if to say ‘Ask me another question, I dare you’, and then I turn away from him and scrunch my eyes closed.
He considers himself a daredevil, it seems, because just as my mind finally stops whirring and sleep strokes me softly, he wakes me again: ‘Are you not going to ask me what my favourite film is?’
It was stupid of me, really, to think that this giant in my bed, who so loves words, might be able to pick up on my distinctly non-verbal signals, let alone act on them. I sigh loudly, pointedly, plaster a smile on my face, then turn to look at him over my shoulder.
‘What is it?’
‘Superbad.’
I consider throwing him out. According to the laws of the jungle (Hinge), fuckboys with authority issues say American Psycho, spineless boys who fancy themselves gangsters say The Godfather, and ‘nice guys’ with manipulative tendencies say Superbad.
If he had given me any other answer, there might have been hope for him still, but he died for the first time right then and there.
And yet, I humour him for five more minutes, before taking a more hard-line approach. I have glanced at the clock: 7.36am. Time to stop being kind.
‘Dounia, do –’ ‘No.’
I kiss him on the cheek to soften the blow, but this only seems to confuse him further.
‘Habebty, what do you think –’ ‘I said no.’
‘Hayati, tell me about –’ ‘Shut up.’
I stop replying and let him tire himself out, like I am a first-time mother training an infant to self-soothe. I later learn that the boy does not, in fact, sleep. Like, ever. What I had orchestrated so clearly as a very, very late night booty call, appeared to him only as, God forbid, a date.
To Marwan, 3am is as 3pm, is as midday, is as midnight.
In the morning (two and a half hours later), he asks me when he will see me again, and I candidly tell him: ‘I will be drunk again on Friday night, so maybe then.’ He had once said that honesty was the best approach, after all.
I can see how you all might read this and think me mean. I could see it in the moment too. My only defence before a jury would be that even though the wine had worn off, I was silly drunk on his obsession with me. For the first time, I really wasn’t trying, and his unrequited devotion seemed like compensation, like something that I was owed for a million humiliations by the boys that came before him, by the ones that were embarrassed to be seen with me among friends who knew we were together anyway, and the ones that couldn’t defend me when it really mattered.
I didn’t want to break the boy’s heart, but I didn’t mind enjoying the attention, for a bit. The universe was paying me a karmic debt, and who was I to refuse?
On Friday night, I am at another formal, wearing the same dress, and the same shoes, and the same jacket. It’s our last one, so we get a little overzealous with the wine, and before I know it, they have dragged me out to a club. I dance a little bit, and smoke a lot.
Marwan has called a few times. ‘You said Friday, right? Where are you?’
I tell him I am at the club, but leaving soon because I am tired.
‘Be there in twenty.’
I don’t have the energy to stop him, to tell him no, and honestly I am not even sure whether I do or don’t want sex tonight.
When I get back from the kebab van with the girls, he is outside our accommodation. I am very sweaty, but he looks very pleased to see me. That was nice, I suppose.
I take him upstairs, and he’s quicker to make a move this time. He must have been training in my absence though, because somehow he speaks even faster this evening, with even less tact. It is 3am, again, and he is still asking me 3pm questions.
Mid-kiss: ‘What is your relationship with your family like?’
Clothes are coming off: ‘Do you think your parents are proud of you, being here?’
Hands on my chest: ‘What’s your favourite colour? No, wait! Let me guess!’
Curveball question. (He guesses yellow. Favourite colour of very happy morons. It is not yellow.)
Unzipping his jeans: ‘I love the people and the people love me, so much that they restored the English monarchy…’
Unwrapping a condom: ‘I haven’t kissed anyone since 2022, when I broke up with my girlfriend. She was Algerian, like you. I thought we were gonna get married, but she’s with my cousin now.’
Oh boy.
The next morning, I have slept less than last time, and I feel disgusting. He takes far too long to leave - I shower and make coffee and get dressed and do my makeup, and he is still sprawled in my tiny bed, giant feet hanging off the side, as if we are going to see each other again.
He texts me about twenty minutes after I hug him goodbye: ‘When do you want to go to the botanical gardens?’
I am quite impressed by this. I’ve been talking about a trip with my friends for weeks. Maybe he is worth keeping around. Maybe he really does like me, really see me, really get me.
‘Did I tell you I’ve been wanting to do that, or did you just guess?’
‘You don’t remember?’ Several crying emojis. Not the full crying ones, but the exponentially whinier ones with a single tear rolling down their faces. Often found in a male-manipulator’s arsenal. ‘I asked you if you wanted to go on a date there last night, and you said that nothing would make you happier.’
Well, fuck. I have no recollection of this at all, but it does sound an awful lot like something I would say - in jest, but we already know that he struggles to pick up on anything remotely unpronounced. In fairness, I was drunk, and he was holding my sleep hostage, so what was I to say?
I tell him I don’t remember this conversation (honesty), but that this sounds nice (dishonesty).
‘Let’s do that when the weather is nice, okay?’
‘Okay!’ He says. ‘Great.’
The weather is shit at the moment, so this is calculated. I am thinking that this will give me a week, at least, to get increasingly distant, tell him my deadlines are approaching, let him lose sight of the perfect image of me he’s holding in his head.
I was wrong.
He continues to text me incessantly for the next two days, and when I reply after two hours or more, he hits me with: ‘Dounia what the fuck is up with these replies?’
Okay, bitch boy.
The weekend arrives, and I wake up on Saturday morning to find sun streaming through my windows, and about four missed calls from Marwan. Oh dear - he wants to go to the botanical gardens today.
I text him ambiguously: ‘Everything alright darl?’ No mention of our date, but just checking that there’s no emergency, that he hasn’t been diagnosed with chlamydia or scabies or something.
He replies immediately: ‘Yep fine. All fine. Don’t worry about it.’
So he’s pissed at me now. Cool. Great. Ideal, actually. Better he realise that I’m a massive bitch now than force me to waste time demonstrating any further. I do not reply to that message.
He calls me about six times more by the following afternoon. I don’t pick up, but I text to say that I’m in the library.
In fact, I am at the pub, chatting shit about him with my friends.
We analyse the entire situation, and I decide I should tell him that we are never going to the botanical gardens, and that I don’t think we should see each other again because I am not what he is looking for (honesty, again!).
With two glasses of wine in me for courage, I call him on the walk home. I have it planned out in my head. We will say ‘Hello!’ and ask ‘How are you?’, and we will both say ‘Good!’ and ‘Fine!’, and then I will say ‘Are you sure? You called quite a few times this weekend.’ And then he will say ‘Oh, no I am all good. I just missed you, and I wanted to go to the gardens.’ And then I will say ‘Okay, I thought you might say that. Actually, we should talk about this. I don’t think we should see each other again.’ The conversation would go from there, and I would be kind but firm, and then this saga would be over.
In real life, the story plays out a little differently.
I call him. ‘Hello?’ ‘Hey Marwan! How are you?’ ‘Yes, good, good. How are you?’ ‘Oh, I’m fine, just working hard. Are you sure you’re okay? You called quite a few times this weekend.’
I have laid the trap, and now I am waiting for him to take the bait.
He does not take the bait.
As it turns out, Marwan had been hit by a car on Friday evening. A hit-and-run. Broken a couple of limbs and fucked up his face, his favourite jacket, and the skin on his elbows and hands. He had been calling me for the past two days because he was concussed, and needed someone to sign him out of the hospital.
Somehow, after two nights of very mediocre sex, way too much talking, and very little sleep, I had become Marwan’s emergency contact.
What a brutal knock to my karmic debt. I’d been obsessing over how to let him down easy, how to part ways without antagonising him because he was a giant who knew where I lived, and he’d been lying in a hospital bed, crippled and confused - about everything but me.
He tells me he’s halfway to Manchester now. He’s driving himself to his family home - concussed and one-handed, the maverick - because he can’t look after himself at present. His mum has been crying on FaceTime for the past couple of hours, so hearing my voice is a welcome change, he says.
I tell him I feel like a bitch for not picking up now. He says it’s okay, the nurse was just asking if there was anyone in the city that he could stay with for a few weeks, who could look after him and help him with washing and dressing, and cook for him until he recovered.
I feel much less like a bitch after that. Thank fuck I didn’t pick up, or I’d have struggled to say no, and then I’d have had a son to look after for the rest of term, as well as a degree to complete.
We chat for a bit, and I express my condolences, telling him half-heartedly to let me know if he ever needs anything. He says his favourite jacket has a massive hole in it now, after the accident, and although his sister has offered to sew it up for him, he’s not letting her because he wants me to do it. How romantic.
He promises that he’ll be back after Eid and we can finally go to the botanical gardens. Sure.
On the morning of Eid, he sends me a selfie. I give it a 6/10. He asks for one in return, and I tell him I didn’t take any. He begs. I am struggling to strike a balance between real pity for him, and crippling frustration - no pun intended.
Then, he makes some stupid comment about forgetting what the moon looks like if I don’t send him a photo. This wrenches the scales towards annoyance, and my pity almost dissipates entirely. Romantic tropes in Arabic don't translate well, and now he looks very foolish.
Even more foolish than when he made me his next-of-kin.
While I am home for Eid, I keep replying sporadically, just to check that he is not dead. When I get back to university, however, I get busy, and then I can’t be bothered anymore. He is still in Manchester, so I am not worried about him turning up at my door.
A couple of weeks go by, and in a moment of wine-induced weakness, I suddenly get really worried about his silence, so I text: ‘Hey, how are you feeling?’
He replies immediately: ‘Hey, I’m back in the hospital. I didn’t want to worry you, so I’ll text you when I’m out.’
He never texted me again.
I hope that his last message was his way of excusing himself from me, and that his rehospitalisation was not that serious, but I’m doubtful. I always figured that when he got back to Cambridge, he would make it known to me, but he hasn’t, so I can only assume he is still in Manchester, hopefully above ground, but possibly below.
I really try not to be too pessimistic, or too self-centred - obsession by definition is short-lived, and I know that - but sometimes, when I am in the shower or in the kitchen or slowly falling asleep, it occurs to me that if he were dead, I would never know.
He doesn’t have any social media, and I don’t know his surname. He wouldn’t have told his family about me - I’m nobody. If I text him, I’ll either remind him that I exist and invite him back into my life, or someone I don’t know might reply to tell me that, unfortunately, there were fatal complications, and I wouldn’t know what to do with that.
If he were dead, it would matter to me, but, funnily enough, the only person who would know to tell me is Marwan himself.
So, when we’ve had a few, and we’re feeling silly, and someone asks for this story at the pub, I’m unsure if I’m giving a eulogy, if we should raise our glasses at the end and toast to his memory, if I’m racking up an incredible hubris by speaking ill of the dead, or if it’s really just a funny story and nothing more.
I’ve told it so many times now. I’ve got the timing down, and the punchlines are flawless - definitely one of my best. And yet, even though I acquiesce every time, there’s this funny feeling in my stomach upon every request. Am I trading in the memory of a dead boy for a good laugh at the pub?
I think he was my last two-night stand. One-night stands are probably still on the cards, but now I feel I should tread more carefully around sex and debt. All this thinking makes it distinctly less fun. Kind of defeats the point, actually.
But how much did I owe Marwan, really? Kindness, surely. But my undivided attention in an emergency? Maternal care and cooking when he couldn’t look after himself? Perhaps. A warm welcome to my tiny room for an indefinite amount of time while he recovered? Surely not.
If he’s alive and well, I think it’s fair to say that I owed him nothing, or very little. But, if he’s dead, does that change? Do I owe him more now, in that case, precisely because he’s dead?