Summer 2012 - Vol. 9, Issue 3

Darkness swims viridian

this time of year. Hollow,

and you taught me nothing

except how to hold nothing...

His index finger drawing on the blanket

like a silly schoolboy,

he soon detects ants along the wall and

turns into a traffic warden angry

at transgressing vehicles...

She squeezes my hand, her fingers lightly damp from sweat. I squeeze back in reply, my hands cold and chapped. I think the way our hands physically react to stress tells a lot about us. As we sit in the overly white room, we ignore the discarded bag and wrappers of the Big Macs we just ingested as the nameless doctor with ridiculously wavy dark hair walks in. I swallow thickly as he sits down on the leather-covered stool. I squeeze her hand and she squeezes back.

“Mommy, it’s the guy who made our kitchen!” exclaimed Cara, running over to greet Walt.

I smiled. Cara wasn’t good at remembering names, but she never forgot a face.

After a quick hug and kiss, he released himself from Cara’s seven-year old enthusiasm and introduced Donna, his fiancée.

Everett and Reid are young-adult men finding love in the late ‘70s. In addition to the drama surrounding coming out for the first time, the thrill of first sex is rendered in sometimes exquisite, and always explicit detail. (Readers of delicate sensibilities should be prepared, even though it never strikes me as exploitative or gratuitous). There is a class divide between Reid the scholarship student and Everett the casual preppie.

It was a good day to fleece treats off the customers coming out of the 7-11. The hot weather brought them in for beer and chips, and I sat outside pretending to be someone’s pet. Sitting calmly, looking like I was waiting for my master to return from inside the store with a six-pack for him and a bone for me. Pet dogs were safe to feed. Moms didn’t have to worry about their kids trying to talk them into bringing home the stray. Don’t feed the stray, they’d say, he’ll follow us home. I’d heard that one a lot. So I put on my act of belonging to someone and it worked for me.

A bloody sunset bluesman,

you're down and out, with

a sound of punk and fifties grit.