Without a Helmet
In our home, a magnet held a polaroid of my father’s penis on the fridge: a ghostly phallus wearing a novelty Patriot’s football helmet. He advised me: Never trust a dick without a helmet. Later, I wondered who to trust in public restrooms while standing with my legs spread apart at the shortest urinal. Beneath the sleeping bag, my cousin and I compared ourselves. Outside, our parents were naked and bubbling in the hot springs. Good, he said, yours is like mine. But his was bigger. As we grew, he would sneak up behind and flub me with his penis, or rest it like a rodent on my shoulder. I wanted to hold the girth of it like a pool cue in my hands, or not his, but another, any other. The first one I touched after mine was long, narrow at the tip like the lip of a beer bottle. And like the loose skin on a bone of cooked meat, when I pulled down the skin slid back. In his French accent he asked as he grabbed me, Why do they do this to boys in America?
TV Dreams
As we collect garbage by backlot cargo ramps between department stores and banks, a child in a blue coat picks up newspapers scattered on the cement. I reach the back of your neck and pinch the tiny hairs. I’d kiss you but we only kiss drunk. Rain is falling now, the child makes mud splatter paintings—damp pants, he looks like two depths of ocean. His mother is smoking under a blue bus terminal. He brings her a paper and she says, She's with Jesus now. Way up there, like the moon? Yes, son. Do you need a spaceship in heaven? No, son. I laugh and look into your eyes and you ask if my bag is full.
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