IF THERE’S ONE thing we know for sure, it’s that nobody does banter quite like the British police. On the other hand, we also know that this banter is often heinously misinterpreted when it gets out into the wider world, so I’ll spare you the full details. Suffice it to say, they went in hard on my supposed orientation and fondness for sexual perversity.
New Beginning, Lost Love
The safest time to call the number you typed into your phone with sweaty fingers is at least six months after you first make fleeting eye-contact with the man across the bar who gave it to you. Six months is an adequate amount of time to show him how not-clingy you are, how nonchalant, enough time for him to forget that he gave you his number at all. You’ll have a laugh about it, then he’ll tell you that he’s gotten back together with an ex and you’ll say it didn’t matter anyway because you weren’t that interested in the first place.
Westward Flow
I got here by thumb. From Port Arthur in a cold rain. I worked there six weeks as a security guard. Before that, Dallas, stacking crates. Before that, Tallahassee. But I’m not running from anybody, if that’s what you’re thinking.
alone, together
There was a cluster of teenagers with their legs dangling off a boulder at the edge, smiling like lovers with their coy eyes and long hair for pictures they took of themselves. The woman considered herself a proper feminist, but she hated them a little, for being so pretty.
The Cliffs of Slieve League in November
Let the mist stir your blood from this percussion. Time so finite, brilliance so fleeting.
Chest Day
Leo lived in a residential neighborhood that connected Wrigleyville and Boystown, Chicago’s respective Meccas for straight and gay men. His apartment was equidistant from the baseball field on Addison and the strip of clubs that lined Halsted. As they walked up the front steps of Leo’s brownstone, Robbie saw a gaggle of gays exiting the building next door. Their tank tops and jean shorts seemed to deny the approaching winter solstice. Ten o’clock on a Friday, their night was just getting started.
“You don’t really hang out with that crowd, do you?” Leo asked as he led the way up to his second-floor unit.
“What do you mean?” Robbie asked.