You're the waiter at Steak 'n Shake, and you're personable.
Personable and attractive.
And you hit on me, so I hit back. "Hey, two things," I say. "First, you're hot. Can I have some ketchup?"
You love green.
It's the color of intellectuals and thinkers, you say.
You hate it when people assume that you're an asshole because you skate.
You could not be more fascinating to me,
even though you occasionally use words like "crib" and "tight" in casual conversation.
It pisses you off when people call you stupid,
and you'll tell them so.
You have ten-minute discussions about the
etymology behind words
like "quintessential" and "coterminous."
You hate it when I call you on your bullshit
because no one's ever done that to you before.
Your khakis always sag with just a hint of boxers peeking out.
You're such a tease.
Your long fingers feel so good right resting on mine. You have that innate sense when to move
close enough to make me ache,
barely touching me.
Your fingers grazing my hip,
your stocking foot rubbing nonchalantly against my bare leg.
It feels like you've been around forever, but your novelty hasn't worn off.
You feel like home to me.
Your room is like a reckless bordello, half extreme, half seductive...
Incubus meets Barry White
broken skateboards nailed to the wall, glow-in-the-dark skeletons, and caution tape meets
stained glass lamps you made in wood shop, sex dice, and a waterbed.
You goof off with my little sister, cracking up when she squirms at the 2- gauge plug in your ear.
You listen to her talk about her gym class.
You nod soberly as she talks about the eight-year-old at her school that died.
You're so pensive.
.
You look so sad,
feeling an empathy for a lost kid you never knew.
You come over at ten o'clock on a Wednesday night
to help me dye a theater wig,
get a scathing call from your bitching mother
about weeknight curfew,
and then sit in my truck for another half hour,
talking of everything
but saying nothing
.
You spit at broken parking meters, almost as if to say,
"I don't give a fuck."
But you do.
You're from
The Grove, the
Indiana cesspool of one-way streets,
both proverbial and otherwise,
yet you transcend the going-nowhere atmosphere.
You lie there, looking up at the ceiling.
"Do they speak Irish in Ireland," you ask.
"No. They speak Gaelic," I answer.
You ask questions like that.
I can still smell you on my pillow.