The Blister in the Bone

White Man says

“Out there the ground is rich as gophers

and the flesh goes on for miles,

wave after wave of alabaster and hair,

and the hunting is thick and quick and fierce.”

So I say goodbye to the Antfarm and the backroads

and a nice little town like ours,

and ride out, still wet behind the ears,

on a white horse until it blisters blood red

and bursts.

Hide out at night under floorboards

and in the dust

the entire time the White Man’s words come back

in echoes and in whispers

and in a hot, sweet taste in my mouth.

Ever onward, braving nightmares drawn to my shadows

like sharks to blood,

challenging great gynopshinxes

with their seductive riddles and enigmatic deaths,

the whole time burning with a fever

that eats me like a hunger and wears down my fiber.

Forever after the Great Land of the White Man’s words,

where the streets stink with opportunity

the Centipedes are huge and abundant

and the snails leave trails as thick as clay.

I push on, past the blister in the bone

till I bleed light, and all that I have left

are the holes where things are taken from me,

knowing it’s got to be near,

this land past the desert

past the Frontier

where the ships come in on a lysergic sea.

their sails full of the breath of life

“Ou la sont le merde ou la sont le vie!”

Knowing I can find it, I can make it,

I’ll get there,

if I can just get past this flesh,

if I can just get past memory

if I can just melt away in hot lumps,

if I can just bash myself apart,

IF

if I could just get up and walk…

This Stain From My Notebook: May 6, 1993

 

Today is my day off from work and I’m in Central Park.  The weather is absolutely beautiful:  the sun is shining and the temperature is around 85 degrees.  Several workmen in blue uniforms mowed the grass earlier, so the intoxicating scent of summer still lingers in the air.  I’ve taken off my shoes and socks in order to feel the cool ground beneath my feet, an experience that always makes me feel like a kid again.

A young man with headphones and no shirt is catching some rays just two picnic tables away.  I don’t know what his deal is.  He’s made eye contact a couple of times already, and he even smiled at me once.  Perhaps that means he’s interested.  He’s certainly cute enough, but his sporadic outbursts are beginning to pluck my last nerve: “Lights out! …Contagious! …Mulatto!”  I’d still do him though.

Now there’s a fine looking dark-skinned man leaning against the wall by the men’s restroom, and judging from the way his eyes keep darting about, he’s definitely on the prowl.  I keep making suggestive gestures with my pen and my mouth, in hopes that he’ll take the hint.  I don’t think he’s paying me any attention, though; his eyes are set on Turret’s Boy.

Two college-age jocks are playing hackey sack in the clearing just below us.  They both have their shirts off, and their sweat-glistened, furry torsos literally sparkle in this noonday sun.  There should be a law against hunky men with no underwear wearing their shorts that tight.  Of course, I can’t say for sure-because distance and tact prevent me from making any further assessments-but I think the tall guy might be Jewish.

I met a really nice older man in the park last night.  We sat on this very picnic table and talked for over three hours, while some kid by the amphitheatre played jazz music on his saxophone.  The strange concoction of mellow music and moonlight mixed with the sounds of park life and passing cars really put me in a mood, and it seemed as though everything the man said was profound and mysterious.  In fact, the whole scene was surreal, like some long-lost edit from Manhattan or Annie Hall.  Then again, we kept taking shots (vodka) from the flask he carried in his back pocket, and there’s a possibility that we might have, you know, burnt one while we were talking, but still….       

Well, I’m not doing a very good job of staying focused, so I guess I’ll just call it a day.  If I’m smart, I’ll rush home right now and douse myself with a bucket of ice water before I do something stupid.

Then again, when did I ever claim to be smart?

Robert

Bringing it all back home again

I take him down the backstreet and up the fire escape to my backdoor. I am thinking I don’t want him to find my place again after tonight, nevermind that I’m bringing some stranger I just met in the park to my apartment, where no one knows me and I have no phone, and no one at work will miss me for another day if….I have to know. 

For the first time ever I feel total empathy for a character in a novel, that the book was written to say for me what I cannot say for myself.  I even tell James about it, since he let me borrow the book.  “I wish I could be like Simmu, that I could change my sex back and forth.  That would make things easier.” James is amazingly understanding.    

I try to tell my friends by making jokes.  Or rather by phrasing everything as a joke.  Of course they expect me to be vulgar, bizarre, shocking.  I don’t know if they take me seriously or not.

I have a steady girlfriend for the first time.  We have sex often.  As soon as we’re alone in my dorm room I’m on her, often leaving James in awkward positions.  Sometimes I wonder what I might have done if I didn’t have a girlfriend, if I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life with her.  Perhaps I could have been with a man….I guess I’ll never know.

I don’t know if I realized what type of magazine it was before I picked it up. When I saw the picture, a drawing of two shoulders with muscles like melons under their skins, lying in a ditch belly to back with the trousers down and their firm asses exposed, I shut the magazine and quickly put it back on the shelf.  I went cold and my head started to spin.  

My first weekend at college Teresa takes me to the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time. I’m a little shocked and confused by it all.  I’m not homophobic, just I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s so decadent, so morally ambiguous.  I am, however, awed by the swimming pool scene, and the words “Don’t Dream It, Be It” strike a powerful chord in me.  We’ve been running around quoting Dead Poet’s Society all Summer, this takes the notion of seizing the day a bit further. How far am I willing to go?

College is amazing! So many people, so many hot girls! I start my first journal just to keep up with it all.  Walking across campus is an intoxicating wonderland of sensual pleasure, it’s more than my mostly virgin mind can grasp.  Walking down the hallway in my dorm, I see a gorgeous ass in front of me, wearing thin cotton shorts. I raise my eyes to take in the rest of this lovely creature and am shocked to discover it’s a guy.

Everyone says, and every sign seems to indicate, that Viv is a lesbian, but she flirts with me at work all the time. I don’t really care what she and Cindy get up to in their trailer, the porn and the Wild Irish Rose have made me bold.  Next thing I know we’re drunkenly fumbling around on the couch. Then we’re naked. Then I’m inside her. Then it’s over.  

I don’t have any friends at this new school, so I’ve take long walks in the evenings down the gravel road across from the house.  The neighbor kid, Greg, has started joining me.  He’s quite a bit younger than me, but I enjoy the company.  We memorize Beastie Boys songs together and belt them out at the top of our lungs.  We sit together on the bus. I never think about the age difference, I just enjoy having someone I can talk to.  I’m shock and confused one night when I have a wet dream about him. I eventually forget about it. I always do.

My crush on Lisa is in it’s third year now. I have talked to her, lots of times.  We’ve had several classes together. I don’t guess that she suspects that I have such a crush on her. I have fantasies about taking her to prom.  I don’t know why I bother, a black haired voluptuous beauty like her would never have time for an awkward nerd like me, but I just want to be near her, to talk to her, to see her smile.

I keep thinking it’s over, but then we start up again.  We never talk about it, ever, and after awhile I begin to wonder if it even happened.  The whole thing seems like a dream.  We’ve been nearly caught a few times, and I’m sure we’re going to get in trouble but no one says anything.  We’ve moved past looking and touching and are kissing and sucking.  I’m old enough now to know what gay means, and that’s scary enough, but his dad’s also a preacher so it’s a lot like shitting where you eat.   I feel so ashamed, so dirty, always, even if I can’t remember why anymore.  I just know there’s something wrong with me, something abnormal.

Glenn is the best athlete in gym class. He does a dozen chin ups while I couldn’t move at all.  I watch in admiration and awe as his biceps swell and contract. I note how his lip quivers and his abs grow taunt as he lifts himself again and again.

In the first episode of Riptide, Rick and A.J. are chasing a thief off their boat.  They are both wearing nothing but white jockey shorts.  I am shocked by such raw sexuality on TV, but am thrilled by the image. It excites me and makes me want more. 

Buck Rogers is on a planet run by women, the men are slaves.  Buck is being auctioned off to the ladies.  He stands in an auditorium, all eyes upon him, hands bound behind his back.  The auctioneer rips his skin tight jumpsuit, exposing Gil Gerrard’s broad, muscled and very hairy chest.  I feel a flush of excitement run through me like electricity.  My heart starts racing and my hands go sweaty.  It’s not the same as seeing Mary Ann in her night shirt, hanging loosely, suggestively, so close to her groin, drawing the eye to her delicate legs, though I can still recall the image as if it were yesterday.

His dad’s a preacher too so he comes around a lot.  I often think he’s a cousin or something, my family being very extended and difficult to navigate.  He’s just a little older than me, but an only child so that makes him a little bolder.  It started out as a game, alone in my room with the house quiet.  I don’t have a clue what gay means, or even what sex means, but I do know what I’m feeling, my body alive and yearning, my mind filled with questions that have no words. I ache with it.  I’m terrified, partially because I don’t understand my own body, my own feelings.   My trembling hands take down the elastic of his waistband, touch his hot body, squeeze.  I know we should stop and part of me wants him to stop, but I have to know.              

A Letter Written While Having an Existential Crisis

It has been so dark today.  Around noon, the clouds parted just enough and the rain fell to the Earth in sheets, baptizing the tree in my front yard with nourishment and hope– sort of like that day we sat at a picnic table in Central Park, and I told you I was leaving.  I tried to be so brave that day; doing everything I could not to hurt you.  I even lied a little and told you that I loved you, when all I really wanted was to leave.

I’ve been listening to Dylan– I know that will make you laugh, but I can’t help wondering what it would feel like if we were still married; or how our song would sound if my words were articulate and clear, like Dylan, on a soft, spring morning.

I received a postcard from S. today, with a photograph of a mountainside.  The morning fog is thick and gray as it clings to the rocks at the base of the mountain; and it all looks so stationary and free.  I wanted to share that photograph with you and let you know what it feels like to be out here on my own– floating aimlessly through the mist and the fog, unencumbered by the weight of your absence, stumbling free form down this mountainside of existence– like a rolling stone.

The Games People Play

No matter which game we played—Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, or War—the scenario was always the same.  I was to be taken captive and tortured by the enemy camp, while Todd had to simultaneously plot and execute my escape.  And since there was just the two of us playing these games, Todd had to administer the torture as well. 

Holding a makeshift gun to my head, he would first order me to strip.  Then, with just my standard-issue Fruit of the Looms hiding my nakedness, he would grab a piece of his father’s burlap twine and tie my hands to whatever post presented itself at the time:  his bed frame, a tree in the woods behind his house, or one of the support beams in his father’s old tobacco barn.  As a young boy, the very act of exposing myself was always enough to “get me excited,” and Todd was not one to waste an embarrassing moment. 

“You always get like that when I tie you up,” Todd would whisper, his face so close that I could smell the sourness on his breath.  “You’re worse than a girl sometimes.” 

By the time we reached our teenage years, phone sex had replaced Cowboys and Indians, and every night Todd and I would spend hours talking on the phone.  However, it wasn’t until I would announce that I needed to hang up that the games would really begin.

 “Tell me that you want to kiss me, and that you want to see me naked.”

“No.  I’m not going to say that.  Someone might hear.”

“Say it or I won’t hang up!” 

I don’t think it ever occurred to me that I didn’t need his permission to hang up the phone, but I’m sure that it wouldn’t have made a difference. 

Our friendship came to an abrupt end in the summer of 1982.  I was spending the night at Todd’s house, when he instructed me to crawl beneath the covers and to remove my clothes.  Then, after removing his own clothes, he rolled on top of me and began to rub his naked teenage body against mine.  

 “It’s like I’m the boy and you’re the girl,” Todd moaned, “and we’re ‘doing it’.” 

Even though our games had always been risqué, we had never reached such a level of intimacy, and there is no telling where our fumbling might have led had Todd’s dad not suddenly shown up and started banging on the locked door. 

“I don’t know what you boys are doing in there, but it needs to stop right now!  I have to go to work in the morning, and I can hear you all over the fucking house!” 

Needless to say, I was never invited to spend the night at Todd’s house again. 

My family moved away three months later, when my dad started pastoring a church in another part of the state; however, Todd managed to call one last time, on my first visit home to my grandparents’. 

“I have a girlfriend now,” he announced.  “We went to the Eighth Grade Dance together and everything.”

“So.  Big deal.”

“Well? Do you have a girlfriend?” 

I suppose I could have lied at that point.  I mean it wasn’t like Todd was going to drive to my new school and stage an investigation.  However, I could sense that he was only calling in order to be mean and confrontational, and to make it perfectly clear that I was to keep my big mouth shut. 

“I’m not like you,” he continued.  “What we did together was wrong, and it was all your fault.  I don’t ever want to see you or to speak to you again.” 

The next thing I heard was the click of the receiver, and my best friend was gone. 

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of that telephone call, and Todd has certainly held true to his word.  I did run into his parents a few years back though.  They told me that Todd now works on a maintenance crew for The State Highway Department, and they showed me pictures of his beautiful wife and two lovely daughters.  I lied and said that I was glad things had worked out for him, all the while anxiously scanning the photos for some sign that Todd was still haunted by the things that we did.  You know…if he ever walks into his childhood bedroom and imagines a twelve year old boy tied to his bedpost, or if the smell of an old tobacco barn makes him burn with unspeakable desires.  I seriously doubt it, though.  After all, Todd is not like me. 

Robert