It would be an error to think
you have finished imagining
your own history.
—Susan Gevirtz
I’ll have no face left
tomorrow
if the papers print.
—Ronald Palmer
We all drank and drank.
Some,
the brown liquors currently de
rigueur (in San
Francisco, at
least). Others, the
afternoon.
I, however, slid my sex into
second gear. I’d never
reach
third, of course.
Except upon
the occasional inadvertent case
of an accidental reverse.
Then
Yong went home. Then
Kim,
Otto, and I had dinner at Grub-
stake. Later, the Cinch
was a
funky drag show. Some
fun.
Plus, there was the memorial
for the months beforehand.
You know that I had the
nugget. I rarely missed
the
occasion there to call up my
usual: a bacon cheeseburger
sandwich inlaid w/a large
fried egg. Plus, the vampire
vanilla milkshake, another must!
Did I even mention the highlight,
though? He was blond,
so I
haven’t heard from him since.
I wonder what color it is this
time, as Ken smooch-dances
in two places at once. Or
it
could be one place directly
after another, how could one
possibly know, given his vel-
ocity. Either way, I can say
this: it comes out to two days
(forty-eight hours) since I dis-
covered that thing I could have
been more decently told person-
ally some fourteen months ago.
I’d never even thought of the word
coward in its
presence. It was
one of those new things that just
creep up on you, like Halloween,
or a surprise
birthday party.
