We’d brought everything we needed. The candles, the gloves, the bee and the bird catcher.
We’d brought everything we needed but not everything we might need. No drugs, no therapist, no good way out.
The gloves, of course, made it easier, same as the costumes. Something about getting in slowly. About one step at a time. Because through a shirt I could feel too much. Because in our normal clothes we mattered too much. And when she said Clothes off? I closed off. And when she said Who are you? I said I’m a lot of people. And when she said Will any of them fuck me? I thought about it and finally said Some would but none will. Those are minority me’s. And while I thought about how clever that was she said Oh my God and spun away, knocking me in the side with her stinger.
I leaned back on the headboard, relieved. She swiped a candle off the nightstand and chucked it out the window.
It’s dry, I said.
She shrugged.
You wanna burn down the neighborhood?
She shrugged.
I thought about getting up to check for fire but didn’t. I thought about the kids who seemed happy hugging in the street and about bridging the gap.
I said You knew this going in.
Nothing.
We talked about it and you said fine.
Without turning around she grabbed my net and threw that out the window too.
Which was no biggie. It’d been worse. I sat up and pulled off my safari hat and frisbeed it onto the carpet, prepping my speech. But before I could tell her again the havoc an upbringing in The Church could wreak on one’s sexual esteem, before detailing the gross distortions of mind that shame inevitably engendered, she launched at me and we tumbled off the mattress, into the wall.
