My Aunt Sue would strip violently in the back yard especially during a thunderstorm.
She said the flowers were watching her so they could learn how to live. I just remember scribbling madly into my sketchbook the weird contours of her; the pale ***** that was her skin coming into close proximity with the mud in the field. Each page was cluttered with the switch of her wrist, the scream of her torso lolling in drip-drip weather. This obsession led my lips to bleed and I couldn’t stop biting. The blood that streamed down the side of my mouth tasted like lead pipes. Just like the ones in our house that creaked every time the wind whistled. Like a man who sold his manners at the gas station for a pack of those cheap cigarettes, one on top of the other so the roof of his mouth became the chimney that soothed him on cold nights. Rain droplets becoming shower sprit in a damp basement-like locker room where men stepped out of steam like in dreams. Feet sloshing on wet tiles and all I could think of were reptiles swimming through swamps, tails slapping the humidity for that sweet scent of coastal ****.
Laughter penetrates through hot breath.
“My favorite dreams are the ones where I wake up in a sweat. The ones where the sheets are as wet as the hand that I use to achieve success.”
The eyes all around go up in full swing and there’s handshakes tossed about.
There’s a secret here that’s reserved only for the ears that happen to hear it and it’s doused with pride.
This circle of jerks, this atmosphere of a citrus kiss laid upon only for masculinity.
This shrine for men that I’ve been so accepted into, so inclined a seat I’ve been given without even a glimpse makes one feel like being inside the small intestine or living inside the bladder.
I am disheveled nervousness as I think of women in a house full of men.
The condensation blurs the mirrors all around and another one finally speaks again.
“One of my biggest sins is not realizing that I only went to church to see the preacher’s wife. They sold peaches out by the highway but all I remember was the gooey goodness I imagined she tasted like.”
The torrent of wild shrieks that undulated out of the Adams’ apples of this congregation would have made Adam himself proud. An avalanche would surely follow as I stared up at the blinding lights of
this sweltering hell that was more a mother’s breast than a place where muscles flourished.
As the halls began to empty the door revealed yet another sunny day. My corneas unable to handle the brightness that was denied to me sitting there in the deluge of delusion I was reminded once again where I was. We walked to the parking lot all in line like a dam not yet ready to break.
There were women everywhere now and my cheeks flushed reminding me again of Aunt Sue slapping me in the face for recording her indiscretions inside a yellow notebook wedged underneath my bed.
Shame was not there with me that day though and neither was it today.
Until someone in our group bellowed “those legs could make a bad man good” to the lady walking on the sidewalk.
Except her response was not one I would have imagined or fantasized about. There was no girly giggle or ****** thankfulness. Only unapologetic annoyance and a slit of fear stuck between her teeth.
Everyone immediately felt the humiliation that came unannounced, felt the ferocious attack of a gratitude that was expected and yet not received. I can only imagine the hot steel of this man’s clock grinding bone to bone and the excruciating betrayal of all he was promised.
His brows furrowing together into his face that I thought they would get ****** into his brain was replaced by a stoic neuroticism I only witnessed in films and yet here it was just a couple of feet from my face. This remorse I had seen before disguised as indistinguishable fastidiousness.
“*******, lady. I bet the only way someone would ******* is if you were *****.” He pitched, like a frenzied cow in a pasture of green and as he proceeded to follow her we followed him. His disciples in
a war not even declared. I began to feel the trickle of what was to be a tropical storm. The rain here making the sound of our boots more echoed while the woman up ahead began to walk faster but not fast enough for the fist of a bruised ego; his hands making contact with beautiful features that did not deserve an audience of sadists. The sound of skin against skin in water is the most painful of all.
Like a shark feasting on bait infiltrating the waters with the sound of music. The atrocity was not in the crime but in the art of not being able to look away as something is turned into nothing more than mysterious meat.
I skip the deli aisle in the grocery store every time but
boys
will
be
boys.
commentary on "locker-room talk"
