Mother taught me flight.
Father, hover.

I learned haunt, whine,
bother,

From looking at men
stripped down to their tidies
in those Avon magazines, I found out
I liked them. Look at that paunch.
Also that crotch. And the studio light twinkle
on skin & eyes.

I looked at the *****. You have to know:
this was no sin. I covered my head
with lace antimacassar as I traced
this man’s junk with my fingertips;
I was covered.

Save for that,
I did right by rules,
most of the time.
Scraped knee, split lip,
didn’t cry at those, no,
as so ordered.

We never tell girls this, but did
you know us boys have a rite of passage
supposed to be kept secret? It goes:
Your father takes you to a hardware store.
You ask why, and he only says “this is day,
the mark of the man.” You nod.
He takes you to the aisle
with all the blades:
shears, scissors, awls, ice picks, whatever.
He lets you pick one. He pays for it.
Father takes you home, gives you the cutting tool
of your choice, and tells you to go to the bathroom,
face yourself in the mirror, and
“aim for the tear ducts.”

It’s kept secret because
it doesn’t work. Not always, anyway.
I’ve heard about other boys that missed,
both eyes damaged.

Not all, not all.
My gentle father didn’t:
he bought me Flu Game Air Jordans,
the one with maroon slithering around black.
Boys always got expensive basketball shoes.
I suppose he loved his boy, is all.

Father’s not that bad. Mother, neither.
Only clueless, maybe.
One time I came home too happy,
head-drunk thinking about this schoolboy crush,
and they never knew.
The first time I jacked off I felt the entire sky
strike my pelvis with a typhoon fizz,
and they never knew.
During prom a boy slashed my heart with a
scalpel (his cutting tool?),
and they never knew.

You can’t teach boys some things,
like how to whisper to another boy
when the light is out.