a wednesday afternoon - alexandria, va

We went to Fort Hunt Park for frisbee golf.  My sister brought me there with a tall redhead whose last name was Goode and, like a Bond girl, she was.  I was young and unsure about my stomach’s death rolls but sure that I liked good things. We drove in Mom’s yellow Reliant station wagon that had been handed down to my older sisters, its only passenger entrance by that point was through the hatch. It ferried many loaded high schoolers to harmless shenanigans and back for more, harmless until retold ten years on with eye-opening realizations of just how lucky they all had been.

I was in my polyester school uniform, it was a PE day which lessened the plaid. I had been picked up in the yellow wagon, unembarrassed by the state of it, proud that I had older kids to come get me.  The others at my Catholic school just waited for mothers and nannies but I had better and more, if lucky, subtly dangerous things to do.

I jumped in the trunk and stayed there; my limbs too unwieldy to roll me into the back seat.  My sister and the tall Goode were playing Joy Division, talking about Ian Curtis and a block of ice. I watched the trees go by wondering if love would ever tear me apart, assuring myself that nothing that precious could and not understanding that it was.

We got to the park and they smoked.  The itchy hand-me-down pants made me sweat and tingle as I flung the frisbee out to nowhere. I tried to show them how to throw it like skipping a rock and entice them into playing but they blamed Camus or something. So I chased it myself for awhile, letting it lead me deeper into the woods.  The sunlight no longer able to keep up with my pace and I lost sight of it.  Ambling along, downy and thick leaves clung like magnets underfoot as I was startled by his voice.  He shouldn’t have been there.  We were miles from the Circle.  He was in a Skins jersey with the number eighty-one. 

“Art Monk is your favorite player, right…”. 

I blinked and swallowed an acknowledgement. 

“What are you doing back here?” he asked.

“Looking for my frisbee.” 

I shifted my focus just beyond him to a maple tree and found the outline of a cicada shell.

“So is he?”

My thoughts were focused on how something could leave its body behind, how could it leave behind something so perfect, how could the mind just go.

“Art Monk,” he persisted, inching closer, “is he your favorite Redskin?”

My sister called out and my eyes snapped to the grounded frisbee, I moved past him to pick it up.

Head lowered, I gasped “I have to go” as I built to a sprint.  My lungs reached around my heart for air as I raced into the sunlight and back toward the yellow wagon.  I neared the clearing by the WWII interrogation center and without knowing it, the game had turned to smear the queer.  I get tackled and tickled.  My sister knew my weak points.  She and Goode went at me without relent despite my pleas.

I am ten and I pissed my pants.

on repeat

Her gait has a rhythm as if the refrain from her favorite song is always playing in her mind - on repeat for purely her own enjoyment though she knows the world is watching. Lips slightly upturned in a self-protective smile, holding secrets dear and tempting me into the crave.

a thursday night - new york city

It was at the Odeon, the bathroom. I thought it should've smelled better than it did given the clientele. I was in there with her - my third and some girl we'd picked up from Bryant Park. The fetid air snapped me back to the woods, her hand on the back of my neck as I leaned down over the rails suddenly becoming yours. I closed my eyes and took the bill. And when I rose up and opened them, that world and you smashed away; replaced with tungsten. I needed to go and I was holding, even at sixteen I knew they would follow. 

norton

I had a Norton in high school. Only no one knew except for that family in West Virginia whose son backed in to me as he reversed out of their quarter mile driveway. They offered me iced tea on their porch as treatment while I explained to them the concept of a collect phone call.

the festival i. - cannes, fr

A handful of springs were spent in Cannes for work, where I was often running. Always to or from - rarely towards. I saw you there once, we were on a yacht. She was naked and he saw white. You were standing just past his shoulder, beyond the gun in his hand and the coke. I leapt and met the sea. Set off racing down the Croisette back to the Majestic, stopping only to piss on the front steps of Dior.  

without wool

The work wife returned from her three week jaunt to New Zealand on Wednesday.  She neglected to bring me back a gift.  I remain sheep-less.

topical

It started. The itch. The itch for her. It should come with instructions - a prescribed dosage. It was weird and familiar. She was right there, right there next to me but I needed more, more of of her. She was right there and I was; and so was her family and my family; and my past and her past and the right now, the fucking right now. I thought she was there. I thought she would know. I wanted her to know. That she’d know and want to be there and I thought she did. I kept thinking that she did.