A Fond Farewell to a Friend

you write about your
loneliness
so publicly, and in a
careless rhyme
about all this love you have
when you don’t even have a dime—
a shoestring wedding
on the city streets
because you have half a heart
and don’t we all suppose
it’s supposed to trump
your empty hands

i’d like to hope if this is true
and not a ploy for the attention
you treat this imaginary girl
better than the ones who really cared
and hope if you wish hard enough
she’ll grow—
a flower in the sidewalk crack
and she’ll thrive
she’ll never wilt
under the pressures of your touch

but i doubt you have it in you
not this green thumb
a love like that,
so rare
needs respect and tender care
but you’d neglect a friendship
and watch its painful death
so i’d be surprised if
your sidewalk seedling
even makes it to a bud
before you let her get trampled
when something new comes along

I think I might be on hiatus for a few days.

Don’t worry, I’ll still be lurking and responding to things but I’m not going to be posting a bunch.

I wanna stop and work on some more stuff first.

Stay tuned.

what if someday we
collectively—
could shed the sticky-sweet
romance from our skin
and emerge
somewhat taller or
somewhat lighter and
answer for ourselves
that ever present
question:

why
is it called
“making love”
even when we
turn out the lights to
fuck
and what does
fucking have to do
with making
“love”
in the first place

but in the silence of
a sunday afternoon or
the closeness of a night
wrapped up safe in
somebody’s arms
i think i have learned the
complexities
of human anatomy
in the pulse points
on a wrist
and the
off-time drum beat
of the heart

but beyond this
what if someday we—
collectively
could learn the barest
simple lesson that

love
is not just
a kiss
that feels like coming home
love
is as much
a hand
to help you feel much less alone

link to part one
link to part two
link to part three
link to part four
link to part five

One day, Gavin was supposed to walk home from school with Debbie.  They were supposed to work on their English project together.  Gavin waited for two hours outside on the front steps to the school.  Gavin waited and waited but Debbie was nowhere to be found.  He took out his flip phone and called her, but she didn’t answer.  Debbie didn’t usually keep her cell phone on.  Gavin waited a few more minutes before giving up and walking home.  He thought maybe Debbie had gone home sick or something and had forgotten to tell him.

Gavin walked into his empty house.  He put his book bag down on a chair by the kitchen table.  Gavin opened up the fridge and saw that it too was empty.  He walked into his room and lay down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling.  Gavin liked to stare up at the ceiling.  It was comforting to find the different patterns in the cracks.

Gavin felt tired, so he closed his eyes.

He opened them to find that Moira had stopped blowing him.  She was climbing on top of him.  She was on her hands and knees, hovering her ass above his hard cock.  She looked down at him and bit her lip.

“Don’t you want to fuck me, Gavin?”

“I don’t think we should do thi—” Gavin was cut off.  Moira had leaned down and kissed him very hard.  He could not say anything else.

Moira was pinning him down.  Gavin wormed his arms out from underneath her.  Gavin pushed her off of him.

“Please stop,” Gavin begged.  “Please stop.”

Gavin woke up to muffled noises from the other room.  Gavin got up from his bed and walked out into the hall.  The noises were coming from Eric’s room.  Gavin made a mistake.  Gavin made a big mistake.  He opened the door to Eric’s room and there was Debbie on her knees, sucking his older brother’s cock.  Debbie was sucking Eric’s dick when she and Gavin were supposed to be doing their English project together.  Debbie was supposed to be with Gavin.  She was supposed to be sucking Gavin’s dick.

Gavin was in love with Debbie.

He wasn’t sure he could be in love with her anymore.

Debbie didn’t love him back.

“Shit,” Debbie said when she looked up and noticed Gavin standing in the door, except Eric’s dick was in her mouth so it sounded more like, “mmmrph”.  She pulled away and said,

“This isn’t what it looks like, Gavin,” and when Eric heard Gavin’s name he turned to look over his shoulder and said,

“Jesus Christ, kid, can’t you ever fucking knock?  Get out of here!”

But Gavin was already gone.  Gavin was back in his room, lying on his bed.  Gavin was crying hysterically.  He was shaking.  He heard someone screaming and realized later that he was the one who was screaming.

Gavin’s mother came running into his room.  She ran to Gavin and she held him until he stopped shaking and she said,

“Gavin, Gavin, what’s wrong?” and he shouted and shouted,

“It’s Eric, he’s ruining my life.  He’s ruining my fucking life.”

“Gavin,” his mother said, still holding him to calm him down, “Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

His mother was crying now.

“Eric died.  Last year,” she said.  “He died last year of an overdose, Gavin.  Don’t you remember?  I told you not to go in his room, Gavin.  You know what happens.”

“Please stop,” Gavin begged.  “Please stop.”  He felt tired, so he closed his eyes.

When Gavin opened his eyes again, he was alone in his bed.  He was alone in his dorm room in his bed.  His pants and shirt were on the floor.   Gavin was shaking.  There was no sign of Moira anywhere, no sign that she’d even been there.  The Elliott Smith playlist burnt on the Memorex CD-R was still spinning in his computer’s disk drive.

Was it real, or was it Memorex?

Gavin didn’t know.

Gavin went out to smoke a cigarette.  It was 4 AM.  He walked outside in just his boxers.  No one said a word because no one else was awake.

Back inside, he sighed to himself, and lay back down on his bed.  He stared up at the ceiling.  Gavin thought about Debbie.  He thought about Moira.  While the music still played, Gavin touched himself.  He masturbated for an hour, and came all over his boxer shorts.  He didn’t feel any better though.

Lately, Gavin hadn’t been feeling so well.

“Fuck,” Gavin thought to himself, “just, fuck.”

Exhausted, Gavin fell back to sleep.

link to part one
link to part two
link to part three
link to part four

Gavin was still a virgin.  This was as good a reminder as any.

And Moira kissed him, she kissed him.  Even with her weird hair in her face and her bleary eyes she was still somehow pretty.  Maybe she was more pretty now.  Maybe they were both high but her kisses were almost not bad.  She didn’t kiss like any other girl that Gavin knew.  Gavin wasn’t sure how he felt.  Gavin wasn’t sure if it was good, but he also wasn’t sure it was bad.  And he was sure he was aroused.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be aroused.

Moira pressed her body against his.  He was sure she felt his erection by now.

Gavin pulled himself away from Moira.  She looked confused and a little hurt and he felt like shit.  Gavin thought to himself that this was how guys got into trouble.  He thought he was taking advantage of her.  He didn’t really know.  Maybe she was taking advantage of him.

“I’m sorry,” Moira said.  “That was really dumb of me.”

“No, its… nothing,” Gavin said.  “You’re stoned.  Let me put some music on.”

Gavin didn’t ask Moira what she wanted to listen to.  He got up and he found another Memorex CD on his desk.  This one had “Elliott Smith” written on it in Sharpie.  Gavin ejected the mathy CD from his computer’s disk drive and put this one on instead.

When Gavin got back into bed, Moira had taken off all of her clothes.

“When did this happen?” Gavin asked her.

“It’s hot in here,” Moira said, not answering the question.  Gavin agreed that it was hot in there.  The dorms here were notorious for always being too hot.  Gavin took off his pants but left his shirt and boxers on.  He got under the covers next to Moira and lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling.

“Now, what kind of man ignores a naked girl in his bed?”  Moira asked.  She turned towards Gavin and did this thing with her eyes.  Gavin assumed that this was what people meant when they said someone was “making eyes” at them.

A very confused man, Gavin thought.  A boy.

“I thought you had a boyfriend,” Gavin said, trying not to look at Moira.  Her tits were pretty big.  They didn’t really droop to the sides when she lay on her back like he expected them to.  Part of him wanted to touch them.  The rest of him had no idea what to do.

“Gavin, I told you, my boyfriend’s a fuckface,” Moira said.  She turned and placed one hand on his chest, tapping her fingers on his chest the way one taps their fingers on a table when they’re waiting and bored, one right after the other.  Moira looked at Gavin expectantly.

Gavin tried his hardest not to look at Moira.  He tried his hardest to look at the ceiling.  He kept thinking about how much he hated her name.  He kept thinking about how he thought her haircut looked stupid.  Gavin tried very hard not to look at her tits, even though they were inches away from him.  Moira inched her hand closer to the hem of his shirt, right above the the waistband of his boxers.  Gavin tried very hard to ignore this.  Gavin felt his erection coming back.  Gavin wished he had another joint to calm down.  He felt very excited.  He also felt ill.

Gavin was still a virgin.

“I’m—I’m still a virgin,” Gavin said.  Why did I say that, he thought immediately.  Gavin didn’t know why he said that.  Gavin felt very small, and mortified.  He looked down and saw that Moira was staring at his very prominent erection through his boxers.

“I’m not surprised, Gavin,” Moira said. She laughed and she grabbed his junk and he didn’t know why people called it junk anyway.  Wasn’t junk bad?  It was just a dick and balls and right now it was hard and he almost wished it wasn’t.  He twitched involuntarily when she grabbed it.

“But it’s okay,” Moira said again.  “I’ve got enough experience for the both of us.”

“Won’t,” Gavin started, clenching his teeth as she started touching more, “your boyfriend be upset?”

“Fuck him,” Moira said.

I’d rather not, thought Gavin.

“Okay, look,” Gavin began as Moira reached under the waistband of his boxers to touch his dick.  “You’re really nice and you’re really pretty—no, incredibly pretty—but I don’t think—”

“Shut up, Gavin,” Moira said, pulling his boxers down.

Moira started blowing Gavin.  He gasped.

“I think you should stop,” Gavin said, but Moira didn’t listen.  Gavin closed his eyes.

When Gavin was sixteen, when he was a Junior in high school, Gavin was in love with a  girl named Debbie.  Gavin was in love with this girl.  Gavin didn’t think that Debbie loved him back.  He tried not to think about that when she was blowing him.

link to part one here
link to part two here
link to part three here

Gavin was starting to get high.  Moira was too.

They lay next to each other on the bed in silence.  Moira finally broke it with her words.

“Gavin, do you want to know why I was crying?  Do you want to know why I am so sad?”

“If you want to tell me,” he said, in between another hit, “I would like to know.”

“Okay, okay.  It’s silly, though.  Don’t laugh, please?”

“I promise not to laugh.”

“I’m sad because my boyfriend back at home broke up with me, and I want to have sex with someone else, but my boyfriend is making me feel bad.”

“Wait, what?  That doesn’t even make sense.”

Moira turned to look Gavin in the eyes.

“But I still love my boyfriend, and he loves me.  He still wants to be with me.”

“Then why did he break up with you?”

“I don’t know.  He said that he just is having too many problems to be in a relationship right now, but he still loves me and he still wants to see me.  We hooked up right before I left for school, and then he stopped talking to me for days.  I want to move on but I feel bad for moving on.  He doesn’t want me to move on, you know?”  Moira took the joint from Gavin’s fingers and took a very long hit from it.  She coughed as she handed it back to him.

“That’s fucked up of him,” Gavin said.  He didn’t really know what else to say.

“You want to know what else is fucked up?”  Moira asked.  Gavin wasn’t really sure if he wanted to, but he said, “sure” anyhow.

“My boyfriend forces me to have sex with him sometimes, even when I don’t want to.”

Gavin’s eyes must have widened because Moira quickly backtracked.

“No, no, it’s not like that.  He doesn’t really force me.  He just…he gets mad when I say no to him sometimes.  I don’t like saying no, though.”

Gavin didn’t know what to say.

He passed the joint back to Moira and closed his eyes.

When Gavin was thirteen and his brother Eric was nineteen, Gavin’s mother made him bring a pile of clean laundry to Eric’s room.  Eric was in there with the door shut.  Eric had been in his room all morning.  Gavin’s mother had left to run errands and she left a note on the counter saying, Gavin, please fold the laundry and bring it to Eric’s to his room.  Gavin was doing what the note said.

Gavin made a mistake.  Gavin made a big mistake.  He didn’t knock on the door before opening it, no, he just opened it.  Eric was in his room, on his bed.  There was a girl underneath him.  She was naked.  She was crying.  Eric was naked too.  Eric was naked, on his bed, fucking a crying girl.

Eric looked over his shoulder when he heard the door open.

“Fuck, what are you doing kid?  Get out of here!”

Gavin didn’t say a word, but he shut the door behind him when he left.

Later that day, Eric came up to Gavin and apologized for what the poor kid had seen.  He explained that the girl needed a bit of an attitude adjustment. 

Now Gavin opened his eyes to find Moira in his bed, laying next to him with her legs dangling off the edge, body shifted so her head was resting on his shoulder.  He wondered when she had moved herself closer.  The joint was long gone.

“We’re laying the wrong way, you know,” Gavin said.

“Should we move?”

“Completely up to you,” Gavin said, but he had a feeling that she was going to want to move.

Sure enough, without a word, she did.  Moira lay her head down next to his pillow, up against his wall.

And when Gavin moved himself parallel to Moira, she kissed him.  Moira kissed him.  She moved her hands towards his body and her hands towards his face and his face towards hers and she kissed him and everything he tried to do to make his erection go away had failed because it was back, Jesus Christ it was back.