Took a break. Creeping back into rhythm. If you’re still reading PIG, I’m sending love.
It was a series as far as series go. “Do you ever write about anything other than your life or sucking cock?” asks a man whose cock was just in my mouth. I let him keep his arm around me while he harasses me with questions. Shortly after, while fleshing out my next narrative, I dress myself, admire the print he has of Klimt’s The Kiss, and let him call me an Uber.
“For –––––?”
“Yes.”
I think about making myself throw up in her car, feigning an utter lack of coherence, and allowing the man whose waist tasted like starched linen pay the bill for an interior reupholstery in a 2016 Toyota Camry. I’m stupid enough, but my capacity for spite is already limited. Plus, the woman driving is clearly a single, working-class mother of three. That’s the narrative I’ve created for her, at least.
An image; in it, Jeffrey tells me that I was crying in my sleep.
“Do you remember crying in your sleep?”
“No.”
“Well you were. I tried talking to you, but you didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to do. Has it happened before?”
“I don’t know. Did it sound like a good cry?” I want to know, but I haven’t considered the rest of the plot.
I sat next to an older gentleman at a show the other week. In another life, he was a husband, a lover, a light-hearted fuck, a co-star of this miserable era. His clothes fall plainly except for when his cock gets hard. When I look at his hair, I think that this must be what David felt like looking at Giovanni in Giovanni’s Room. An anticipated appreciation of the mundane is a reflection of poor character, but I’m not interested in seeing the world for what it is. I’m looking for the space between things, the proximity of two distant points, the collection before dispersal.
“I tell you all the time, but you’re the most beautiful dancer I’ve ever seen.”
“But I’m not skinny.”
“Of course you are.”
“Sure, I’m not fat, but I’m not six-foot-two and 150 pounds.”
“Okay. But you’re not supposed to be.”
“Of course, I am.” I say, snapping my neck with pride. “I’ve paid my dues, I deserve to be skinny and sought after and followed and harassed and… and… I don’t know.”
Il me jette un petit coup d’œil discret. We arrive at a restaurant and he puts the car in park, but leaves it running as he and the valet trade places. For years, I make nothing. I make no attempt at art, save for my short tenure as the director of a local community theater’s production of The Glass Menagerie. I take a bow when the audience applauds me in the lobby, and order a bottle of Bordeaux with my dinner. I take my husband, lover, costar’s cock in my mouth to celebrate my accomplishments.
A skater-boy in the face of disaster, plucked from the sky, and tossed into the abbreviated width between my palms, tells me that he would like to get fucked by a man. “I let my girlfriend peg me once. I liked it, but I want the real thing.”
“Are you asking me to fuck you?” I respond.
“Would you?” he asks.
“I don’t usually do the fucking.”
“Oh. So you’re like gay gay?”
I respond with a shrug, and an “I guess.” I don’t bother asking him what he means because I’m sure that I already know. I’m tired of being the bearer of bad news. Tread lightly but at an uncompromising pace.
Everything is composed of the same purview in this body. Like looking out the same window everyday, while the seasons change. You are not looking at a different tree, regardless of it’s dressings. Speaking of which, I take my salad without, of course, to stay skinny by which I ultimately mean to stay sane. I’m like a man who is like a woman, but not a fag. I’ve fucked men gayer than me. On the ride home they field calls from their girlfriends and drop me off at Target. They always ask to meet there so when they drop me off they can pick up a few things to fly under the radar. No one is ever interested in coming back to my house. The only silver lining to any of these experiences was when I gave a married man head in his Tesla, I pretended I was giving the first blowjob in space.
I walk the same city blocks, my vision cloudy with my own tears and the squall in my stomach sounding like a siren. I’m too tired to be miserable, but I’m too miserable to be happy. In effect, I’m like the Klimt print that I saw at that man’s house. A composition of unbecoming figures, all demanding something from one another. A tilt in my head so as to let myself grace myself with a kiss on the cheek, at the same time, I fall, exhausted, into a bed of blue and violet flowers that actually compose the garden outside of my husband’s fenced in backyard. Like a lady, I let it unfold unto me without judgment. Like a gentleman, I grab the bull by the horns and thrust.
“Tread lightly but at an uncompromising pace.”
My favorite line.
I like this one, too. Almost added more directly after, but settled for its restraint.