“The Stars of Our Ancestors”

Published by YourLifeIsATrip.com (January 2015).

The Stars of Our Ancestors

For Dad

In March, I visited my parents in Virginia from my home in New Mexico: twenty-four full hours of driving over three days and across six states, from desert mesas to grassy flatlands to the wooded Appalachian Mountains where I grew up. I stepped through the kitchen door just as dim night settled over the nearby barn where my mother was feeding horses. My dad, whose name I share, walked toward me smiling but breathing hard, an effect of the lung disease he had been diagnosed with months before. It had already restricted his existence, keeping him from the veterinary work he loved and the active, exuberant lifestyle he had always enjoyed. Watching it happen from over halfway across the country—like snippets of a harrowing home movie, distance a gnawing hunger—was feeding a mix of anxiety and relief within me: anxiety that I’d be too far away to make it home if something happened, relief that I was far enough away to deny the disease’s effects on him.

Dad, thinner now, huffed as he hugged me. “I had your sister drop off the old pictures we found in the basement so I could show them to you.” He stepped back but kept his large hand on my shoulder. My older sister, already interested in genealogy and scrapbooking, had gotten the photos because of how mold affected Dad’s lungs.

As I opened a beer and sat down at the kitchen table, Dad pulled out an old shirt box that smelled faintly of aged paper and mildew. In it, atop the pile of faded pictures with neat handwriting on the back of each—handwriting with strange similarities to my own—were once-colored shots of Dad as a baby, his eyes now faded to white-blue but still showing jubilation. Deeper down below those photos, before my father’s time, his mother Mabel at nineteen years—her skin smooth and hazel eyes sharp, the edges of the photos soft and wrinkled the way her skin was in my few memories of her. Alongside Mabel, sepia snapshots of a woman with porcelain skin and black curly hair tucked low behind her head, eyes as dark as mine—“My Aunt Gladys,” Dad said—her parents’ German-Jewish origins more evident than in her sister Mabel.

“She was an English teacher, like you,” Dad said, smiling, as I plucked a portrait from the box—the waxy feel of a worn glossy photo made my touch light, my fingertips sensitive. In the picture, Gladys sat at a desk with a book open before her, her strong nose and jaw delicately shadowed.

“Gladys was one of my favorite people as a kid. She taught me to read after school. The other woman there is Miss Ida. They loved to travel.”

I looked down at Gladys standing beside a woman with a plain but sweet face, each of them in a simple black dress in every photo: standing beside a giant redwood far from their Pennsylvania home, before moonlit palms on a stretch of sand in Florida, laughing and holding fast to their hats on a mountaintop out West. “Ida was Aunt Gladys’s constant companion.”

Moving across the kitchen—always my dad’s favorite room, a place where he expressed the passion he would’ve pursued had medicine not been an option—he pulled out ingredients for dinner, which my little brother would help cook when he got home from work.

“I know now they were lesbians, of course.” Dad paused and sighed heavily, held up a single finger as his chest slowly heaved, his full weight leaned against the counter.

I feigned intent interest in tiny details of the photo in my hand, and thought back to when I came out as gay over a decade ago: Mom’s uncontrolled tears, Dad’s wavering voice and steady eyes, his strong fingers gripping my knee. I looked to the pile of photos spilled on the table before me, at Gladys, her face like something long hidden somewhere deep in my memory.

“Anyway,” Dad sighed, “she would’ve liked you.” He took a final halted breath and came back over to sit beside me. “I wish you could’ve met.” He eased back in the chair, his eyes almost closing as his breathing relaxed and he cleared his throat. In a photo before me, Gladys reclined in a wicker chair as a toddler, her head of raven curls resting on her hand. “I remember when you were that—,” he paused, tried to clear his throat. “Were that a—”

Dad’s voice faded into a raspy cough. Ice coated my stomach as I watched him turn red, a fist held in front of his mouth.

“Do you need anything?” I asked.

He swallowed, leaned back. “I’m okay.” His eyes were weary but still glinting. “Oh, I got the results back from that genome project that tells you where your ancestors migrated. Tracks the whole thing and tells you about significant genetic markers.” He smiled, breathing still heavy, as I looked toward the darkened window and imagined all the night skies our family genome had witnessed, how far we had travelled for Dad and me to get here, now. “You have to see it,” he said as he hopped up faster than he should’ve, stopped to lean on the back of his chair.

I stood. “Let me get it, Dad.” I put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his lowered eyes. “In the family room?”

“Yeah.” A heavy breath. “In a manila packet.”

My feet moved quickly to the adjacent room, to the next thing that could help me stretch out those few minutes and fall into the past with my father, closer to our ancestors and further from his diagnosis and the inevitable end of his disease, from the distractions of my work, from the politics and passions that came between the two of us. Behind me, Dad coughed and my heart shuddered, our smoldering denial like sparks of a dying fire against our ancestors’ night skies.

“Why to Act Straight at a Urinal”

Published in Houston & Nomadic Voices Magazine Vol. 1, No. 2 (December 2013).

Why to Act Straight at a Urinal

Because it’s the only place in this bar where men look at one another when they speak; because in the bathroom—on the cracked once-white squares of tile, the corners chipped and grout black, standing before the walls decorated with graffiti and dried droplets of paint—someone can hit you from behind, into the enamel and metal mold, and the reflection in the flusher isn’t large enough to see them swinging; because it makes the stream sound stronger, like “a man” would piss; because the mirror is the best place to catch a curious man looking, but they never look if you do first; and because by the end of the night, you’ll have had too many vodka tonics to even try and fake it.

“On Having Faith”

Published by The Bookends Review (May 2014).

On Having Faith

Mid-afternoon sunlight filtered into the Hayfords’ living room, throwing long, thin shadows across the carpet and softly illuminating objects in the room: the bookshelf, creased spines of mysteries and romances lined up beside photo albums, auto repair manuals; the plaid couch, matching crocheted doilies on each arm; the wood laminate china cabinet, glass doors protecting the shelves of plates, cups and saucers inherited from parents, aunts, a great uncle; and the padded rocking chair where Maureen sat, her body still except for her slowly pushing legs and tense, restless hands—which moved between fluttering about her lap and twisting the gold cross around her neck until the chain went taut—as she watched the light touch the objects around her.

Maureen looked from her and Gerry’s wedding photo on the wall to the cold, quiet street out the window, and then at the half-table that was pushed up against the aging wallpaper facing her, willing the cordless phone sitting on the smooth wooden surface to ring. The table was one of the only things Maureen still had from her childhood home—her grandfather had made the table for her mother, carving the edges to look like the elegant, lacy trim that the bank manager and mayor had ordered for their homes—and she kept it nice by polishing the hardwood surfaces, hammering in a new nail when one of the legs got loose. The table being older than herself comforted Maureen, let her believe that if a tiny little table could withstand the world for that long, then so could she.

Gerry had said he would call her the night before—he was hauling the rig cross-country in five days, and she hated when he’d try to get ahead of schedule by not sleeping, so she made him promise to call when he stopped each night—but as she sat up waiting on the third night, twisting and tugging on the cross hanging from her neck, the phone never rang. She had tried calling him around eleven thirty, an hour after he usually turned in, but his pay-as-you-go cell phone hadn’t even rung. Not unusual, she had thought while replacing the receiver, he turns it off while driving so he won’t be bothered—he’ll probably turn it on in a minute. After half an hour in the rocking chair, her sore knee began to loosen up a little and Maureen dozed off only to wake up seconds later, frantic that she had missed him. Once she saw the red LED zero on the answering machine, she got herself a glass of water and laid down in the bed.

But today, rocking slowly forward and back, her index finger rubbing the small freckled indent between her clavicles, she was worried, because the last time he’d taken this long to call, he’d been with another woman the night before, one of the lot lizards that stalk through truck stops. Maureen had never figured out if it was guilt or fear that she would somehow know—as if her feminine senses told her all his secrets—that had kept him from calling that time, but now that he still hadn’t called, she was just sure that it had happened again. She had spent the last hour racking her mind, mumbling to herself as she tried to recollect some clue in their recent lifestyle that would or even could allude to him considering such a thing—perhaps something he had said he’d do but didn’t, a mysterious tension when saying “I love you,” or maybe a foul remark she had tossed out in anger—but there was literally nothing that she could come up with. Still, though, if it happened once, it could happen again. “Bastard,” she said to the empty room as her fingertips moved against her chin, her lips. Her stomach felt suddenly hollow as she thought of the tearful look he had given her when he had confessed months later, sobbingly telling her it was the only time and that it would never happen again, and that really, he hadn’t even enjoyed it. She glanced up as she heard the wheeze and rumble of an old pickup truck turning the corner outside, then looked back to the phone. Nothing. That just has to be it, she thought, because he always calls when I ask him to.

She tried to come up with excuses for him: that maybe his pay-as-you-go cell phone had died, though he had a charger in the rig, or maybe had run out of minutes; that the pay phones at the stop where he spent the night had all been out of order; that the rig had broken down last night in the middle of nowhere and he had been trying desperately to call her, but was in a place with no reception—“And,” she said dreamily, as if only half-focused on the words, “in this cold, it’d be too dangerous to walk anywhere to try to call.”

A cool, dizzy feeling crept over her chest and head as she imagined Gerry walking through snowy banks on the side of a deserted road in the middle of the night, coat and scarf bundled around his hunched frame as he held his cell phone in the air, trying to get even the weakest signal to contact her. She could see the rig behind him, the hood propped up, oily rags hanging off the sides—evidence that he had tried to fix it himself, hoping desperately that someone would drive by, someone who could help. No, she thought, there couldn’t have been another woman. Not again. Her stomach groaned and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything today—hadn’t even had coffee, though she didn’t want anything anyway—as from the snowy banks of the darkened road, Maureen’s mind moved to memories more solid than the fleeting image she darkly hoped was true: the time after the second miscarriage, when Gerry had held her on the couch until she stopped crying and told her that he knew it hurt, but she had to keep fighting, that she always had to keep fighting, because that was the only way to make it to better times; the spring night when he planted an entire garden of daisies, wildflowers and geraniums while she slept, how when she woke up and looked outside, the blooms and hummingbirds in the golden morning light surprised her so much that she dropped her coffee mug onto the kitchen’s linoleum tile; and how when they were first dating—the firm strength of his hands and that bright laughter—Gerry would slip notes into her purse when she wasn’t around or paying attention, little treasures that smelled of his aftershave for her to find later on. “No,” she said firmly, surprised at the strength of her own voice in the empty living room, “not my Gerry.”

Maureen looked over at the little wooden table—shafts of sunlight gilded the legs, but the phone was wrapped in shadow—and exhaled sharply, her fingers now resting on the cross hanging around her neck. The inside of her chest had begun to burn slightly, as if a cold was coming on, the same way her lungs used to burn when she was a smoker and would cough too hard. She looked opposite the front window, toward the kitchen, past the sink that held her single dirty plate and cup from last night, and pictured the wilted wildflowers outside, the empty bird feeder lying prone on the ground. Before she could stop herself, she was imagining Gerry with another woman, some whore named Desiree or Kasandra, who looked young in that cheap way—frizzy dyed hair and skin too loose from sun exposure, chunks of slowly greening imitation silver nestled on her fingers—someone whose hands had run along the same spots on Gerry’s body that Maureen loved, those secret places that only she was supposed to know about: the strawberry birthmark at the top of his right bicep, a freckle just beneath his waistline, the scar that ran like a shooting star across his thigh. No, she thought as she felt the corners of the cross dig into the middle of her fist, drawing lines and angles into her palm, No, that can’t be it. Please, let it be anything but that, anything at all but that. She looked down at the cross and asked again, pleading with her distorted reflection to show her some sign, something to prove that Gerry would never, ever do that to her again.

As if to answer her, the cordless phone across the room lit up and chirped. Maureen jumped up and crossed the room at a quick clip, noticing that her vision seemed very sharp—more precise than it had been in years: she could see the dust motes moving around her, the tiny cracks in the porcelain teacups beyond the doors of the glass cabinet—and she thought to herself, This must be what miracles feel like. She felt her knee strain and try to slow her, but she fought against it, sure that the good Lord would sooth the pain later on, since it was—after all—her reaction to a sign from Him that made it hurt. When Maureen looked down at the caller ID and saw that the number was in fact her cousin Tina and not Gerry’s cell phone, she raised an eyebrow. Why would she call at a time like this? She probably just wants to talk about the latest thing that dirt bag Chip called her. As Maureen shook her head and turned from the phone, her knee suddenly felt swollen and her leg began to shake a little.

“Gerry, my Gerry,” she mumbled, once again scouring her memories of the past few months for any disruption in their routine, anything she’d done wrong by anyone that would make her deserve this, “Why haven’t you called?” About halfway back to her chair, she glanced at the bookcase by the door, pausing to focus on the glinting pattern on the top shelf that had caught her eye: Gerry’s family Bible. She stepped toward the wooden structure and reached out to run a finger down the fading gold letters on the leather spine, thinking back to their wedding day, when Gerry’s mother had given the book to Maureen, holding onto it even as Maureen stood with it in her hands. “It’s very old,” his mother, God rest her soul, had said. “Very old. Has the entire family line all the way back to my great-great-great-great grandfather.” His mother had pulled it from Maureen’s gloved hands and flipped open the cover to show her the hand-drawn family tree inside, the careful cursive of every first, middle and last name. “You can add your name in now,” his mother had said, closing the book slowly and handing it back to Maureen. “Just keep it nice. It’ll remind you to have faith.” His mother had leveled her hazel eyes with Maureen’s and poked the cover of the Bible, her index finger covering the “o” in holy. “Always have faith.”

Maureen stepped back from the bookshelf, her left hand tugging at the cross around her neck. She pictured Jerry rifling through the rig’s cab for his cellphone charger, an “Out of Service” sign hanging across the row of pay phones at the only truck stop for fifty miles, snow drifts and closed roads and broken brake lines, even as the phone behind her sat quiet, the little wooden table and sun-faded wallpaper the only witnesses to her curled fist and trembling leg.

“How to Take It Like A Man”

Published by The Santa Fe Writer’s Project Journal (December 2013).

How to Take It Like A Man

Jason steps back, across the off-white kitchen tiles, his mouth slightly open and his eyes darting to the floor and the cabinets around him. “Naw, man,” he mumbles, then takes a swig of his Pabst and walks out of the room. I blink as my vision suddenly becomes crisp and my mind sobers, look around the dirty frat house kitchen and raise my beer to my lips despite the weight that’s churning in my stomach. Stupid, that’s what I am, fucking stupid. The edge of the counter feels sharper than before, like it’s digging into my back and pressing against the bones of my spine, so I shift forward, standing rigid and alone in Jason’s kitchen.

I drop my shoulders—how long have I been hunching them up like that?—as my left hand tugs at the hem of my baggy t-shirt. Just fucking stupid. I turn around to the sink and pour my beer on top of his crusty stacked dishes. Laughter and music from the party bounce into the kitchen from the living room and I set the Pabst can softly beside the sink as I keep still, trying to listen for any footsteps coming my way.

I close my eyes and breathe out hard from my nose, run a hand through my hair and roll my shoulders. Why won’t this fucking tension go away? My eyes pop open as Jason’s dopey, forced laugh joins the din of conversations and music coming from the party. Fuck this, fuck Alana Turner, and if Katie isn’t here now, she isn’t coming, so fuck her too.

I give a quick glance down the short hallway to the living room before turning to the back door, placing a hand on the cold glass knob and shoving my weight against the solid wood. The summer air billows inside, brushing against my face and bare arms as I step out onto the wooden stoop and take my first steps toward home.

***

Richard lights a cigarette and leans a shoulder on the bathroom wall, his hip jutting out. He blows smoke out his nose and says, “You know, Andy, for such a dumpy place, Empire has really nice bathrooms.”

I look around the simple, narrow bathroom. Richard is right: there’s not even dust in the white corners or smudges on the mirrors, but out in the club, the floor is sticky and all the vinyl barstools are duct-taped. I look back at Richard. “Isn’t this place no smoking?”

“Yes, Andy,” he huffs, rolling his eyes, “it’s no smoking, but what the hell are they gonna do? Ask me to put it out? Fine.” He nods his head toward the urinal facing us. “I’ll just flick it in there and that’ll be that.” Smoke trickles upward from his lips and curls in front of his face. “We’re here to pick up guys, not follow the goddamn rules.”

I smile at him as genuinely as I can manage and twist my head to pop my neck, which doesn’t work.

“That’s gross, I don’t know why you do it,” Richard says, his lips curling out.

“Because it feels good.” I straighten my back and put my hands on my hips. The door opens, letting in the pump of bass and the treble of gossips’ shrieks. A tall guy with a slim face, long legs and gelled hair—he kind of reminds me of Jason—walks in and glances at Richard before slipping past us and into the stall in the corner.

“He must be pee-shy,” Richard giggles. He taps his cigarette and the ash falls to the floor; he takes another long drag.

I fold my arms in front of me, my palms on the bare skin of my forearms. I want to go home already and we’ve only had one drink; I hate it when Richard drags me here. I tilt my head and cock one hip as the sound of pissing starts in the stall. “So are we going to Jason’s later? Katie said she would be there.”

Richard looks at me, pure dramatic shock on his face. “Why, Andy, would we want to go there? Frat boys suck. Besides,” he inhales through his cigarette, the tip burning orange, “you’re the only gay guy they like over there. It’s probably because you dress just as sloppy as they do.” He blows out smoke. “Besides, Katie’s a slut. She fucks every straight man I want.” The whoosh of a toilet flushing fills the small room and the man steps out from the stall and over to the sinks.

I watch the guy in the mirror, letting my arms drop and hang at my sides, twisting my hips toward him, and dropping my head a little bit, my eyes trained on the reflection of his lowered face. He waves his wet hands, water flying back into the sink, and wipes them on his jeans as he goes back out the door into the loud, humid club. Not even a fucking glance. I fold my arms again and look at Richard. “Are you done yet?”

Richard sucks down the last of his cigarette and flicks it across the white room and squarely into the urinal. It hisses for a second as the cherry turns black. He wiggles his head side to side and rolls his eyes at me. “Andy, you’re such a queen sometimes.”

I shake my head as Richard’s hips sway side to side on the way to the door.

***

I park my ’93 Nissan in my parents’ driveway. I’ll just walk to Jason’s, it’s only like five or six blocks; and that way I can get hammered and not have to drive back. I take my keys from the beeping ignition and step out of the car onto the pavement.

I shove my hands into my pockets and look up at the side of my parents’ dark house—it seems larger than usual, and the side windows sit as lowlights of inky black—and start to picture an oil pastel of the house from this angle—Mom might like the sweeping lines of ivy and extreme slant of the roof. As I walk down the driveway to the sidewalk, I take wide, careless steps and concentrate on hunching my shoulders to appear unconcerned with my appearance. When on the street, especially at night, the best thing that could happen is for someone to not recognize me—blending is the main objective.

I stare down at the uneven slabs of sidewalk as I walk, my fingers rubbing on the sharp edge of my apartment key. Richard is so negative sometimes. I hope the guy he wakes up with is way less attractive in the daylight. After a quick glance both ways, I cross Maple Avenue, my eyes still on the ground. At least it’s a warm night.

The light from Jason’s house leaks out onto the sidewalk and I see the glow before I can hear the music. It’s so weird that a frat has a house in this little residential area; the Greek letters above the porch look so out of place among the thick oak trees and manicured gardens. I cut across the yard, pull my hands from my pockets and straighten my back as I jog up the steps and to the front door. Since Katie said she’d be here, I just walk in.

The TV is playing some new music video and a group of six girls are on the Wal-Mart rug in the center of the living room, doing the dance from the video and laughing at each other’s mistakes. I look around at the frat guys watching the girls and smoking cigarettes, at the girls in their heavy make-up, and remember to slouch a little bit; blending is still the name of the game, especially since I don’t see Katie. Across the room, Jason looks up and raises his beer like he’s toasting me. He’s so cute when his eyes droop from drinking so much so early. I wave and he points to the staircase that leads up to his bedroom.

I follow him up the stairs and into his room, where some guys and a few girls are sitting in a circle, passing around a colorful glass bong. “Want a beer?” he asks.

“Sure.” I stuff my hands into my back pockets and glance around the room, at the pictures of women—none of whom are really all that attractive—taped to the walls, the hot rod calendar and the glass tank that houses his pet iguana.

He pulls a Pabst Blue Ribbon from the mini-fridge by his bed and hands it to me.

One of the girls in the circle looks up at me, smirking lazily, as I pop open the can. “Hey Andy,” she says, one hand around the swirled glass of the bong, the other pushing her blonde hair behind her ear. I think we had Bio together forever ago, before I dropped out, but I have no idea what her name is.

“Hey, girl,” I say as I walk over to her, swinging my hips a little. If I know one of these girls then I’m safe, in this room at least. I lean down and give her a loose hug. “How are you?” I take a slow sip of Pabst and bat my eyes flirtatiously at her—girls love that shit.

“I’m good.” She grins wider. “Wanna hit?”

I shake my head. “Nah, but thanks.” I smile widely, showing all my teeth, and turn back to Jason, who is standing by his bed. The way he’s standing makes it look like he’s about to do something, like his body is about to go into motion, but he just stands there. I relax my right leg. “How’ve you been, Jason?”

He blinks and smiles. “I’ve been good, just hanging around here, drinking.”

I laugh. “That sounds fun.”

He kicks at the blue carpet with one of his sneakers. “Yeah, I guess.”

I nod toward the sleeping iguana. “How’s Rudolph doing?”

Jason spins to face the dry aquarium. “He’s been good, I guess. He’s been sleeping a lot, but he’s been eating more, too, so I guess he’s just in summer-mode.”

“Yeah.” We stand silent for a minute as the girl who spoke to me receives the bong again, takes a hit and sputters out smoke. “Well,” I say, looking straight into his dark brown eyes, “I’m going to go downstairs and mingle.” I take a step toward the door, still letting my waist rock loosely.

“Yeah,” Jason says, “I’m right behind you.”

***

Outside the bathroom, among the crowd of men dancing, making out and drinking, Richard and I pause to let two drag queens—one in shimmering green, the other in bright pink—get past us to the bar.

Richard leans back to me. “I’ve been thinking about doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Drag, dummy,” he says, nodding toward the two who just passed us. We start walking behind them, single-file past the DJ stand to the bar, and I drop my arms so I can lean forward and hear him over the vintage Madonna and the screaming laughter of a cramped gay bar. “It seems fun,” he says. “I love to dance and performance is my forte.”

I make a show of rolling my eyes as I picture Richard’s many exes telling me, themselves still astounded, stories about theatrical arguments and sex acts.

“And besides, the whole ‘alternate persona’ thing would be fun,” he says. We stop just outside the mass of bodies at the tiny wooden bar, some shirtless, and Richard turns to me. I stick my ass out a little bit as I cock one hip. He raises one hand theatrically. “I think I would call myself Enya.”

I screw my face up to show him that the idea sucks. “Like the singer?”

His hand drops to his hip and he glares at me. “Yes, like the singer, but I wasn’t done.” Richard raises his hand again and leans back, his expression suddenly soft and angled toward the ceiling. “Enya. Enya Face!” As he says the last word, he bucks at me, pushing his shoulders and head dangerously close to mine. Then Richard bursts into giggles, covers his nose and mouth with his hands as the girls’ t-shirt he’s wearing rides up his waist and shaved stomach.

I laugh as he turns back to the bar and pushes past a rugged, hairy man in a leather chest harness. “Besides,” he calls over his shoulder, “have you seen the fucking tips those bitches make? Even the fat ones! I’d have no problem making mad money shaking my ass on stage. You want anything?” The man Richard pushed past looks down Richard’s slim hips and then looks out at the dancers, his expression completely neutral.

I put a hand on Richard’s upper back and lean in. “Get me a Cape Cod.”

Richard smiles sweetly at the bartender, whose blue eyes have that same sad, down-curving shape as Jason’s. I can barely hear him over the music, but I swear I hear Richard say, “I need a Heineken and a shot of Southern Comfort.” I straighten back, prop my hand against my right hip and raise an eyebrow at Richard, who leans back and shrugs. “Whatever,” he says, “it’s not like you don’t like it. And besides, you need to loosen up, Andy. You’ve been sucking lately.” He smiles at me like he did the bartender and bends over the bar to wait for the drinks.

The leather man gets up from his barstool, and as soon as he does, I jump past him onto the patched vinyl. I feel something bump against my back and when I look over my shoulder, the pink drag queen is glaring at me. Whatever, I got here first.

The bartender crosses in front of the wide mirrors and rows of liquor behind the bar and slides a shot of Southern Comfort in front of me. He pauses just long enough for me to order a Cape Cod. Richard smiles at me.

“Shut up,” I say. “You’re such an ass sometimes.”

“Andy,” Richard croons, his face drawn in mock-sadness, “I order your favorite shot and that makes me an ass? Fine,” he reaches for the shot, “then I’ll take it.”

I snatch up the So Co and laugh, rocking back on the stool. “Fuck you, it’s mine.”

Richard smiles at me and takes a sip from his green Heineken bottle. He tips his head down and scans the club crowd over his shoulder. “A lot of fuglies tonight.” He looks down the bar. “And they don’t even have the strobe lights going to mask it, just those multi-colored pieces of shit that every fifteen-year-old acid head has in their room.”

I down the shot and feel my face contort. It’s good, but it’s nasty. The bartender places a clear plastic cup filled with pink liquid in front of me. “Thanks,” I say, hunching my shoulders forward like all those classic pictures of Alana Turner. I imagine my skin immaculate, my lips full and round, and wink at the bartender. He turns to the drag queen beside me and listens intently as she orders. Well, then, fuck you too.

My pocket starts vibrating as I take a sip of my vodka and cranberry and I pull my cell phone out to read the text from Katie. I tap Richard’s shoulder, distracting him from the shirtless stud on the dance floor whose muscles are gleaming as he writhes to some random remix. “Katie said she’s about to head over to Jason’s. Do you want to come, or should I tell her it’ll just be me?”

Richard rolls his eyes. “Tell her it’ll just be you, Andy. I hate that place.” He looks back to the man on the dance floor.

I text her a quick reply—that I’ll be leaving in five and she should meet me at Jason’s. I take a gulp from the Cape Cod. So much smoother than So Co. I tap Richard again. He turns to me, his jaw jutting out. “I’m leaving in just a minute, as soon as I finish this. Do you need a ride, or are you good?”

“I’m fine, Andy.” He looks back over at the shirtless man, who’s panting and walking toward the bar as the song changes. “Besides, I think my ride is coming right now.” He smirks.

“You’re such a slut,” I laugh. I raise the Cape Cod to my mouth and swallow the rest, then pull a ten from my pocket and toss it on the bar. “Here,” I say into Richard’s ear, “give him my seat.” He nods and we hug each other quickly. “Bye.” I slide off the stool as the man walks up and grins at Richard.

“Bye,” he says, not even looking at me. Whatever, I’ll see him tomorrow after I finally get off from the glamorous world of Kinko’s. I shift aside so the sweaty man can sit and then I squeeze my way through the people crowding up to the small bar. When I finally find a space to walk to the door, I let my hips move loosely side to side with each step. My head is slightly down, my eyes open wide and flickering to each man’s face as I imagine Ms. Turner’s would.

As I reach the front door and push down on the metal bar, I glance back at the throngs of men staring at the guys who are staying at the bar and ignoring the one who’s leaving. Well. Fuck all of you, then. I press my weight against the door and slouch my shoulders as I take the first heavy steps out of the safe-zone of the club and into the sticky air of a summer night.

***

As I go back down the stairs to the party, Jason’s footsteps pad along behind me; he taps my shoulder about halfway down. “Hey,” he says, his lips closer to my ear than I realized, his breath moving humid and hot on my neck, “can I ask you about something?” His words are a little slurred, but he seems pretty coherent.

“Yeah,” I say, “can we go into the kitchen?” I look down to the opening of the stairs, where the hip-hop is inspiring a dry-hump party between three girls and two guys. “It’ll be quieter.”

“Yeah,” he says as we descend the last few steps.

I try to make sure my hips aren’t swinging as I lower my head again, glancing up at the boys as I pass, smiling at the girls I’ve met before. I always wonder why more straight guys don’t realize the amazing networking opportunities I could open up for them.

In the dingy kitchen, I lean my lower back against the metal edge of the counter in front of the sink and fold one arm over my chest as I look at Jason. “What’s up?”

“It’s that,” he says, his eyes moving across the nicotine-yellowed cabinets, “I mean….”

I move my head forward, trying to coax him further, but he just looks around the room and then takes a sip of his Pabst. I straighten my back, my eyes on his face. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he takes a shaky step back and slowly moves his hands back and forth in front of him before gesturing toward me, “but there’s something I need to tell you, and you can’t tell anyone.”

No way. No way is Jason about to say what I think he is. I lean forward a little bit like Alana Turner would and square my feet on the faux tile floor. “Sure, I promise. What is it?” I take a sip of my beer. Oh please, oh please, oh please say what I think you’re going to say.

Jason glances back down the short hallway to the living room. “See, it’s…just that,” he looks back at me, those big sad brown eyes looking straight into mine, “I’m gay.”

Thank you God, thank you Jesus, thank you Buddha and Allah and anyone I forgot. Thank you. I promise to be at church this Sunday—early, even—and to pray to each of you before bed from now on. I drop my arm from across my chest.

“Really?” I ask, knowing full well that no heterosexual male in a Bible Belt town would ever confess to homosexuality unless he was sure.

Jason looks down at the floor. “Yeah. I haven’t ever told anyone. You’re the only person I’ve felt comfortable enough with who I thought would understand.”

A little quiver starts in my chest as I take another sip of beer, my eyes still on that lean, masculine face. “I’m glad you did, Jason. Thank you.” I reach forward and pat his shoulder.

He looks up at me and smiles shyly.

“Does it feel better to tell someone?”

“Yeah.” He grins.

I stand up straight, a few inches closer to him, close enough that I can smell the soft heat of his cologne. I glance down at my beer can. “Now can I tell you something?”

Jason’s face scrunches but he keeps smiling. “Sure. What is it?”

Well, can’t stop now. “Jason, I kind of…well.” I pause and then lean forward and kiss him. Like, straight up on the mouth kiss him. Every muscle is screaming with tension and I almost forget to hang onto my beer, but the quiver in my chest is suddenly still. I wonder for a second if it’s what a heart attack feels like.

I feel the pressure of his palm flat on my chest—he doesn’t press hard, but enough to move me—just before my back strikes against the metal rim of the kitchen counter top.

“Comfort Food”

Published by FlashFlood National Flash-Fiction Day Journal (UK) (April 2013).

Comfort Food

Grilled colby cheese sandwiches on homemade sourdough like Dad would make whenever I was sick as a kid; Mom’s baked chicken, lightly browned and flecked with herbs, crisp sheen of fine oil on the skin; cobbler made from the wildberries my sister Naomi and I used to pick in the shallow woods behind our childhood house; either a venison steak with mashed red potatoes on the side, venison sausage with stout biscuits sopping in gravy, or venison stew every single night through the middle of the frosty deer season, Dad smiling about his trophy at each gamey bite; the soft, fudgy pot brownies my bunkmate smuggled into summer camp when we were 15; green peppers, carrots and snap peas crunching sweetly as Mom and I stood over the kitchen sink, wiping dark soil from our hands and looking out the window at her backyard garden; a dab of cream cheese icing on my lips like the one from my first real boyfriend’s thick fingers, crumbs of devil’s food cake clinging to the sugary surface; Grandma’s green beans, cooked with ham hock and then steeped in the juices like a jar of sun tea; the soft spice of shrimp stirred into red beans and rice like I took to Mom on her first night in the hospital; an olive’s salty bite after bathing in a Bloody Mary with extra Tabasco; ham biscuits, cornbread and chicken-fried steak made just like at Mom’s funeral; char of a dry jerk rub, dimples from the sea salt pressed into the chicken’s blackened skin; the tart burn of wine that soured just the night before; the blackberries Naomi and I used to crush into fresh syrupy jam on Sunday mornings, Mom’s robe cinched at the waist as she stirred moist scrambled eggs and diced red potatoes in cast iron, telling Naomi and I jokes we’d already heard while beside her Dad dipped heavy slices of sourdough in yolks, flipped them in a pan, his laughter bright and magic as he acted out the funny papers spread before Naomi and I, or snuck up behind Mom to kiss her neck, then pull her away from the stove’s aura of warmth, Mom’s eyes smiling into his as she turned, her fine hands reaching, running along his shoulders, clasping together behind his broad neck.

“Dreams Without Sleep (Notes)”

Published in Gone Lawn 10 (Summer 2013).

Dreams Without Sleep (Notes)

I.S.O. Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“And I will always feel, like those great damned souls,
that thinking is worth more than living.”
Fernando Pessoa, Always Astonished: Selected Prose, 1988

1.
Immediately, I notice how big the sky is: so wide, and eternally deep. On mornings like this, when I notice things like these—the yellow that reflects in the fountain, the grey-green of trees at dawn—I often feel more vibrant, my fingertips cool but my core smoldering. But on today’s morning walk, after having slept for twenty minutes just before the sun rose, the people seem uniquely shadowed, their features blurring into monotony before my steady eyes; the leaves, however, the appearing sun, even the lampposts lining the blocks and roads gleam in a way that only I can feel.

2.
One often wonders, when caught in streams of thought so unprovoked that they must be followed, how exactly the eagle—which dropped the fatal tortoise onto Aeschylus—mistook his bald head for a jagged rock in the first place.

3.
Where else in the world could I ever conceive of being except where I wish I was? My ordinary surroundings are so repetitious that they are ingrained in my mind—therefore, however—disappearing from my mind’s eye. The few postcard pictures I do retain—filed away together in a far-off corner of my consciousness—are of places I have heard of where I will never walk: long-destroyed cities, the scorch of leather sandals under my feet, volcanoes and icebergs which shift and change, islands that exist only on ancient maps. No life exists in daydreams—nothing more real than this clay and flesh—but the only thing left in my waking life is dreaming.

Even the stars change over time, maturing like we do: growing brighter and duller until we fade, our glow only seen light years away from our remaining substance.

4.
I spend hours in front of a mirror: one hangs above my desk, crisp and lightly dusted, the depths of which contain shapes I can never seem to find on the opposing walls. I stare behind myself, thinking of where these stains, visible only to the mirror’s eyes, may have come from: the wallpaper is smooth and clean.

More often than not, I resolve to take a walk after this mirror business ensues, pursuing the same route on which my mornings take me: past the bus station, the power plant’s chimneys, the darkened downtown buildings—all locked. The world seems hidden behind a veil of dust, catching light in ways that it usually does not; I walk with the same heavy, lucid eyes as in my dreams, trying to discern the stains lining the sidewalks.

5.
There is an intensity that lives constantly in the present moment when one has lost the time for dreaming and those stories begin to steal your waking attention: the mind’s survival games….

My dreams are easier to translate than reality. Isn’t it only normal that they would bring more comfort?

6.
A strange heaviness is resting in my belly, stretching its long legs, rubbing its swollen stomach. It spreads to my head, a hazy recollection of what I have not done: the scattered stones that should be resting securely in concrete along with the others I have stacked, and not in the wet dirt where they still lie. There is a tightening deeper in my gut that twists my torso and hollows my legs, immobilizing my terrified aspirations before they have a chance to take breath….

An impending beginning is tiring: the suffocation of ambition by the bony hands of fear.

7.
Wherein

I have found the beginning; now I must dig up the rest of my ripening words.

8.
An air of mischievous glee always accompanies me to a friend’s house, when I get to experience a new place for the first time. I will wait until I have entered the house: from there, I begin to plan out the rest of their abode—down to the trim color—before I have seen even another doorway. I walk through the rooms just before we arrive in them—on the “official tour,” of course—and try to fix arrangements done incorrectly, each wall erected in the wrong place, pictures which don’t suit the colors in my head.

A certain delight finds its way into my fingers and I touch objects that I like, labeling them mine—by the rule of finders-keepers—even if I allow the objects to stay with their now-former owners. Just before the front door is again opened and closed for me, I look around and imagine my things—the ones formerly theirs and currently mine—clearing the floors, brightening the walls, filling the rooms.

I always leave smiling—my vision crisp—at having found a new place for my restless dreaming legs to roam.

9.
When I wish to sleep, my eyes never tire; when I must forge ahead, my mind decides to hastily fade: before I notice, I am waking up, minutes or hours later, panicked, work still to be done—as there always is, threads left unwoven, paths never sojourned.

Something magic rests in the moment of tired realization, though—something that presses its warm neck against our hanging hand, rubs its calico face against our cheek—when I can feel my dreams swelling within my mind, pushing lean fingers into my attention span: disabling it. I often catch myself with my eyes averted, bleary with thought, my pen hovering above the page, until I realize my unconsciously-conscious state; I sit sculpted: a bent, distracted tree.

I clutch those moments of tired erasure—internal, expansive nothingness—as if my arms are spread and I feel no barriers, just a low, steady breeze that is cunning and warm touching every part of me. Just when I sacrifice my remaining mind to the tired intrusion, my eyes brighten, thoughts lucid, the zephyr having grown and moved the fog from those reaching arms, closed eyes: a dream begins, the dreamer building as he goes.

“On Lux”

Published in Cleaver Magazine Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 2013).

On Lux

Janene stood watching the swinging light bulb that hung in the unfinished laundry room of her empty little house, the pull-chain that released volts into the socket clinking against the burnt out bulb’s brittle glass with each sideways motion. In her left hand, she held a new sixty watt bulb, one which could replace the one still hanging, and solve all the problems she’d been having lately with her laundry: when she accidentally dropped a single red shirt in with all her whites, which dyed her work blouses, socks and white dress pants a dull pink; or when she folded clothes together because she could not see that she held both a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in the dark warmth just in front of the dryer, and then searched for half an hour before unfolding and refolding everything in her drawers; or, more recently, when she pulled from her pant pocket the piece of paper, now sopping and illegible, on which she had written the time of a job interview with a research facility looking for candidates with B.S.’s in Physics, and realized that she perhaps shouldn’t have screamed at the visiting district manager before walking out of the bank earlier that day.

Janene knew that these events could be avoided and that all the effects—the frantic shopping trips just before running to the office, tags still hanging off her clothes; the time spent redoing chores; the stress of trying to explain to a very skeptical and probing graduate assistant that yes, she was responsible and a good candidate for the job, she simply wanted to double-check the appointment date—all of these could be eliminated, or at least lessened, if she would just change the bulb. But every time she reached up toward the rocking socket with her right hand, a blue flame would ignite in her chest and illuminate her stomach, lungs, esophagus, heart, while images of Davis changing that same light bulb would project in her mind—that one day, as the plaid button-up shirt she loved lifted above the jeans that had worn spots on the pockets from his wallet, keys, cell phone. She had been leaning in the doorway, studying the image of his thick knuckles and splayed fingertips in the curved surface of the glass. He had turned and smiled at her when he was done, greyed bulb in his hand, and had kissed her forehead before turning to the bin to throw the old light bulb away. Janene had stepped into the room and watched him leave as she turned the picture of him changing the light bulb over and over in her mind, imagining the tiny packets of light—the “potons,” as her Laotian professor used to say—immersing Davis from the new light bulb, flooding down his arms, over his clothes and the slight paunch of his belly, right down to that patch of luminous skin over his hipbone. After that, her mind hadn’t been able to help but pull up the pictures of Davis that she held closest: the images she retained from the first night she met him, his profile haloed by headlights reflected in the cab’s side mirrors; his shaggy hair and thick arms bathed in fluorescent light as he cradled her hands in the E.R. the night Janene broke her leg after she slipped on a spilled drink and down the front stairs of a bar; the streetlights and stars reflecting off the snow all around them and shining in Davis’s eyes the previous New Year’s Eve, when they’d taken a walk after watching the ball drop and ended up drinking a bottle of cheap champagne by the river until they were both too cold to stay out any longer.

Davis had moved out within a month of changing the light bulb, but Janene as yet hadn’t cried once—not even to her mother over the phone—because, she said, when you expect something for long enough, its arrival should come as no surprise. “After all of the arguments, the broken dishes and other women,” Janene sighed to her co-worker at lunch one day, “how could I ever think we would stay together?” When, two months after he left, the same light bulb he had replaced burned out, Janene had shrugged in the sudden darkness, folded the shirt she was holding in half, and mumbled, “Things come, things go.”

Three long months after that shrug, Janene scuffed her foot on the carpet and shifted the light bulb in her sweaty left hand so that she held the metal threads rather than the slick glass. She closed her eyes and huffed, ashamed even in solitude of her desire to wait, of the temptation to never replace the bulb, despite the consequences. Janene reached up again—this time quickly, as if she could race the reflection and not be faced with the image of Davis, that crescent glimpse of his waist as his solid arm lifted—and even as she told herself it would be the last time she would go through this, the back of her mind wandered to the delicate cardboard box the new light bulb had come in, sitting daintily in the bottom of a fresh trash bag, and how easy it would be to retrieve, even in darkness.

“The Importance of Experience”

Published in Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine 3.1 (April 2010).

The Importance of Experience

In the middle of the empty bar, the place where they play the Coasters at full volume and already know me ‘cause I have to drive Dad home sometimes, Starla—at least that’s the name she told me—gripped the empty neck of her brown bottle behind a shield of red fingernails. She had told me her name three Buds earlier, before she started analyzing the reasons someone sixteen-years-old would be at a smoky bar just off the highway. “You already told me you have the money, but all kids your age wanna do is treat me like shit,” she leered, and tossed her stick-straight blonde hair over her shoulder.

Heat rose up my throat from my chest, and as it stung along my cheeks I looked down at the wooden bar, at my water with lime, and pulled a Camel from the pack my brother bought me. He had told me it might be a little tough to convince one of them, but he’d never said I’d get embarrassed, or that she’d know the nasty things I’d want to try with her. I pushed the barstool back, across the uneven floor, as I lit the cigarette with matches the bartender had given me.

“You promise to?” She winked, the bottle on her outlined lips, and tipped it up until it pointed down her throat, her dark eyes still on me. I thought of pinning her down, fingers wrapped on her neck, and nodded as she wiped her mouth on her wrist—leaving a delicate stain of pink lipstick and beer foam—and tossed her purse over her shoulder as she stood and took my arm.