Just a squirrel tryin' to get a nut...

“Cherry” was brown, a deep mahogany brown with a warm auburn hue, and a rash of wrinkles and cracks. Alternately smooth then scratchy under your fingertips she had a glorious fragrance. She was about three feet long and made of leather. Her brass buckle settled into a rich patina and made a delicate tinkling sound. Two delicious sets of red cherries, still on the branch, flanked her namesake embossed on her sinewy hide. She was a source of power and pain. Her presence brought a tingling sensation to the tender skin of my bottom before she ever made contact. In the hands of my mother, “Cherry” could leave her mark in the form of two sets of dancing cherries, one set on each cheek, a “CH” and “RY” leapfrogging the valley. She was an often brutal extension of my misguided and angered mother.

It was “Cherry”’s fault I ended up in the tree. The very tree was a large decrepit oak. Two giant sections trying to escape each other succeeded approximately fifteen feet up a massive trunk with too many exposed roots thanks to our lack of grass and wealth of soil. Our predecessors had begun the project of building a tree house for their sons. Unfortunately they had only managed to construct a platform that straddled the divide and small sections of two by four screwed into the gnarly bark to form a precarious ladder. From this platform you could see over the chain link fence fitted with green slats to create privacy. This same fence bordered the rest of our yard as well which was pretty much comprised of a large patch of dirt, an old hot tub that clung to rainwater now green with algae, a crooked swing set with peeling decals and rusted chains, and an old doghouse. Over the fence to the south was a vacant lot, vacant save for an abandoned tractor trailer that had been used for B-B gun target practice.

My sisters and I had specific chores to accomplish when my mother left that day. I can’t remember what mine were but I was the youngest so it was usually something pretty easy. We had an allotted amount of time in which to finish them. If we didn’t finish by the time she returned we would get a visit from “Cherry”. Our pants and underwear at our ankles we would lay face down on the bed and absorb the punishment only to let it out elsewhere later.

I was a good kid. Cute and obedient, most people considered me a mama’s boy. Maybe I was before I was smart enough to know better. Thankfully for me I was still young enough to be doted on and believed when I told a lie. I was six then and decided that I didn’t need to do my chores. There were cartoons and Sea Monkeys in the living room demanding my attention. As the day wore on my sisters continued to tell me I needed to do what I was told or I knew what would happen. It wasn’t very often that I disobeyed my mother; I knew “Cherry” well and hated her. I was clever though, or at least I thought I was clever. My plan began to take shape in my mind as the hour of doom approached.

It was on the news all the time; A missing child discovered, safe after hours away from home, would return and be coddled by people thankful they had been found, teary eyed parents rejoicing. I was sure it would work but I had to find a place to go. Actually running away was a little too scary for me so I need something close. Then it dawned on me, the tree house! Nobody would think to look there. A sudden rush of excitement had taken over and I was confident I could pull off this massive coup.

When you have a secret plan you should not tell anybody else. What did I know? I was six. So I told my sisters that I was going to be in the tree house and not to tell mom. I would come down when I was ready. In my plan they feigned stupidity.

As I worked my way up the tree I was nervously excited to be outwitting everyone. I couldn’t stop smiling. When I reached the platform I rested against the scratchy bark and waited, and waited. I had probably been up there for an hour when I heard our car pull up in front of the house. Sure, that hour could have been spent taking care of my chores but at this point I was determined.

The screen door slammed shut and it was quiet for about one long minute. That is when I heard her yell,

- What tree?! Why isn’t his shit done? NICHOLAS JASON! If I find you up in that fucking tree, I swear to god!

I panicked, this was not the plan! What was I going to do? I had been double-crossed. As I scrambled across the platform, I heard the backdoor open. I had no time to climb down and find another hiding place. In a matter of seconds she would be around the corner and the tree would be in full view. Think! Ah ha, I had an idea. It was a stupid idea, but an idea nonetheless. I lunged to the side of the platform furthest from view of the door. In a moment of sheer genius I hooked my upper lip over a piece of bark. I had done it! How on earth could someone get in trouble for not doing their chores when they were actually stuck, by their lip, to a tree?

As she came into view I began to sob. Crying is a good way to garner sympathy. Her look of anger quickly subsided and gave way to confusion and fear. Seconds later my sisters came out behind her surprised to see how far I had taken this whole scenario. My mother was too large to climb the tree and discover my deceit. I was in the clear, except for the fact that I had no idea how to get out of the situation without uncovering my lie.

When I say I would rather suffer the vicious attack of a rabid squirrel than face the beating I would get from my mother if she found out the truth about what I was doing in that tree, I am serious. That fact was proven when a particularly curious squirrel made its way down to where I was. As I watched it descend I grew increasingly nervous. There was a choice to be made as it clung to the bark with its little claws and twitching tail. I began to wail when it came within a foot of my face. My lip was still on the bark and my mouth had begun to dry out. Still I screamed with all my might which not only scared the squirrel sufficiently to send it fleeing but it evoked audible gasps from the peanut gallery below.

This is where it got interesting. From what I could see my mother had disappeared leaving only my sisters who were still amazed at the spectacle I was able to create with a lip and some bark. The squirrel was just a twist of fate in my favor and I couldn’t have planned it better. Then I heard them - sirens. Sirens were a pretty common occurrence in our neighborhood since our house was a block from the projects. It wasn’t until the pitch and loudness became too much to bear that I saw the lights; a fire engine, bigger than I had ever imagined, pulled into view. Holy Shit! Bolt cutters were used to gain entrance to the vacant lot next door and the chain was slung to the concrete.

As they pulled the truck up to the fence and hoisted the ladder to the tree I almost wet myself. With the siren turned off I could hear the ladder being maneuvered into place but could not see it lest I move my head and the jig would be up. Then rubber boots climbed, squeaking nearer one rung at a time on the other side of the tree until I felt the extra weight on the platform and then a voice,

-Are you ok son? We are going to get you down? Are you hurt?
- Y wip hurths a wittle.

I felt his gloved hand on my back and his face came into view as he surveyed the situation. He was very quiet as he looked at my lip resting gingerly on the bark. The dirt pooled on my tongue and the dried moisture around my mouth. My eyes were puffy and red and my cheeks were streaked with moisture. And he smiled. He removed his glove and made a show of separating my lip from the tree. He scooped me up and moved over to the ladder. I asked,

-Are you gonna tell on me?

He responded with a laugh and made his way backwards down the ladder with me in his arm until we were close enough that he could hand me off. I was welcomed into my mother’s arms. We bid thanks and farewell to the firemen as their giant truck rattled out of the empty lot and onto real emergencies.

My chores didn’t get completed that night. In fact we all ended up making a barefooted pilgrimage to Dairy Queen for Dilly Bars and cherry-coated soft serves. The contempt my sisters felt quickly evaporated with their treats and I was doted on and coddled the way every six-year-old child should be. I did not go back up to the tree house again. I am pretty sure that squirrel had it out for me.

It’s a little more than two decades later and I am not as cute or as obedient as I used to be. I need next Wednesday off, there is nobody I can sweet talk, and I figure if it worked once it can work twice. I need a treehouse and a boost; I am not as young as I used to be.

Angel Among Us

It was the summer of 1986, Denver was as hot as Hades. We were living in an apartment just off Colfax. I was six that summer, waiting for fall to rush in and drag my lanky limbs to my seventh birthday. The hair on my head was remarkably blonde, made even more so by our frequent trips to the public swimming pool. I became addicted to cherry Chapstick that summer and began eating tubes of the stuff at a time. This made me sick and perplexed my chap lipped sisters, delicate skin dry and cracking from sun and chlorine with no relief to be found in the tiny purses I had raided.

It was upon returning from the pool that we first met an Angel. Where my mother met her I have no idea. How they became friends is even more confusing. She found her way into our lives nonetheless. An exotic flower unlike those common carnations that currently sprung up around us, she came with an air of glamour and refinement. Black jeans that seemed to be painted on were worn with high heels and very small blouses revealing, at the very least, a glimpse of her stomach and tattooed back. Hair jet black, stark in comparison to her startlingly pale complexion, it reached down past her butt with straight cut bangs teased and curled. Her nails matched her lipstick in a drowsy romantic red; they adorned ring-clad, delicate hands that were almost as small as my own.

It was beyond me to understand that Angel was a stripper and prostitute. The idea of such things does not exist to a child and so I thought she was actually sent from heaven because with a name like Angel, she must have been. She always had money with her in great wads of ones, fives and tens that she kept in her purse next to a small gun and shiny foil packets. Aside from the money she possessed a talking parrot, lots of empty promises, and a son named Joey.

Joey was three and almost my spitting image. Hair so blonde it would make a cotton bale shame at its color, round cherubic cheeks to match his demeanor, and our main difference was his deep brown eyes that contrasted the blue of my own. To see us together you would have thought us brothers and in fact we loved each other as such. Shortly after we were first introduced to Angel, Joey became a fixture in our home. It was a welcome change for me to have another boy to play with, particularly one who held me in the regard one normally has for an older brother at that age. We were inseparable for the most part, retreating often into our own little make believe world of dinosaurs and jungle adventures in the overgrown yard behind our building. I don’t really recall how long Joey was with us. As a child there are times when a day feels like a month and an hour feels like a minute. We are not good judges of time when we have not lived long enough to truly place value on it.

Summer surrendered to the chilly pitch of fall and brought along a host of issues for all of us. Namely what were we going to do with Joey? He was spending more and more time with us and his mother had stopped paying for his keep. We already lived welfare check to welfare check and another mouth to feed was growing difficult.

Heated words were heard emanating from the living room where my mother spat angrily into the phone. Joey and I were in my bedroom playing with my plastic dinosaur collection when I heard her slam the handset back into its cradle. When she stormed into my room, red-faced, she told me to take Joey home. Home for Joey was quite a distance away. Past the middle school, tennis courts, Lutheran church where the weekly flea market was held, and the nice yard with the thorniest rose bushes and prettiest blossoms.

I obeyed and we grabbed his backpack of belongings. What my mother was thinking sending a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old out alone is beyond me, but so it was. We arrived at the three story walk-up, in which Angel’s apartment was situated, approximately an hour after we left. I removed a key from Joey’s bag and we unlocked the door to the small cramped stairway that smelled of cooking food and mildew. We reached the top floor; I knocked on the only door. Joey held my hand as we waited. Annoyed whispers were followed by hushed footsteps. She flung the door open creating a small vacuum of air that swept my hair into my eyes. As I brushed it from my face she turned and took a few steps back into the apartment then faced us. Her look was pleasant enough but she forgot to get dressed. Barely covering her was a black see-through negligee with lacey borders and tiny red bows. Her normally smooth hair was tangled and not nearly as shiny. Even the lipstick normally applied in a manner of perfection was outside the lines making her appear clownish when she smiled. She was barefoot, propped against the door.

-Joey go to your room.

She said and he let go of my hand, ran quickly through the door and disappeared. Her small hand grabbed my arm, pulled me into the apartment and directed me to the sofa that sat in her nearly empty living room. The heat was stifling, I sat down, the scratchy upholstery rubbed against the back of my exposed thighs. Then a man’s voice came from another room asking how much longer, to which she replied,

-Don’t worry baby I will be right there, this will just take a minute.

Then she looked at me and I at her. My eyes were level with her crotch and I thought how peculiar it was that she had so much hair. It was coming out of the sides of her negligee. She laughed as she retrieved an envelope from the small coffee table and handed it to me, on the front was written a word I didn’t yet know the meaning of, Bitch it said.

-Now get outta here, I got stuff to do. And give that to your bitch mother.
-Can I say bye to Joey?
-Make it fast.

I had never been inside before and wasn’t sure where I was going so I just went through the only doorway. It led to the bedroom and her bed was the first thing I saw. Sprawled there was a man with an exposed torso. Under the sheet rose a protrusion that caused me to stare. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. He smirked at me causing the long ash to drop onto his chest. He matched my gaze while he wiped ash from his chest and the protrusion bounced. He chuckled, then retrieved a fedora from the floor beside the bed and placed it over his crotch. I turned around and saw a closet. Stuffed animals surrounded a small crib mattress and Joey sat on the floor. This was his room, a closet. I reached down and hugged him before pushing past Angel in the bedroom doorway and running out of the apartment.

I walked home confused and angry. My mother took the envelope upon my arrival and ranted for some time. She said Joey was never coming back. It crossed my mind to go back and get him. To rescue him from what he was being forced to see from the closet he lived in. But I was only six. Days of my asking if Joey could come back ended in a spanking more brutal than normal. There was a lot of anger behind each strike.
What ever became of that little boy? I don’t know. There are times in my life that I am grateful to have had the childhood I had despite the ever present bad memories. Leaving Joey there is an image I will never be able to be rid of and it serves as a reminder that it can always get worse. In a desperate world, full of desperate people, it can always get worse.

a lyrically bloated blahg.

A familiar knocking came from inside this morning. As I tread the cobblestone walkways littered with browning leaves and end of season grass clippings on my way to work. The boy of my adolescence began rapping on my bones. Pushing against the very skin that has betrayed him and to which he has become a total stranger. Urges to ride recklessly from a fading white-washed barn with the sweating speckled white steed beneath me, fleeing stables in need of a good mucking for the overgrown pastures encircled by rusty wire fencing, trailing the docile White-tail deer lapping up the last of the cool dew clinging to the remaining foliage through which we trot. Finding a shady spot near a small grove of trees and letting loose the reigns, releasing my glistening mare to graze as I gorge myself on the wild berries deep in thorny bushes; small spots of blood from my ravenous fury into the tangle of vines mixed with sweet juice of the bloated blackberries. Blazing flashes of white and rare rainbow reverberations of wild ring neck-pheasant and bobwhites dashing through the undergrowth giving a momentary start to my horse as she whinnies a small side-step in my direction. It is in this moment I feel the world could stop spinning and the light wind taking the burn from the sun is with me this ten year years later as I traverse the day-to-day that has changed immensely but little in the end. I still seek escape and solace from the muck in my life and find it in such glorious bright shining things around me as I wind from here to there.

Me, myself and Ty

The Smurfs almost got my ass kicked, seriously. As a result of the first day inspection at summer camp and a Smurf sleeping bag splayed on the grass for everyone to see I was instantly labeled as a fairy. It wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for the fact that is was Smurfette in all her golden haired glory emblazoned on the front. This did not bode well for the little towheaded blue-eyed boy who was a bit too emotional. In my defense it was not my sleeping bag. It belonged to my sister’s best friend Keisha. A girl whose family was strikingly similar to the Huxtables until they changed religions, started going by names that involved several clicking sounds and stopped talking to us.

They lent me the bag because I did not have one of my own. I never needed one before because I had never been camping. Had I known what lay ahead I would never have let Miss Plott down at the Boys Club talk me into it in the first place. She suggested to my mother that I might benefit from the social interaction with the other boys.

How fun it would be to go swimming every day, shoot bow and arrows, roast marshmallows, go on scavenger hunts and sit around bonfires. The one thing she forgot to mention was that the soul-less bastards who designed the campground forgot to make individual showers and toilets. Mind you I grew up in a house full of women and learned at an early age to cover my nakedness. One of my favorite childhood pictures is of me in the sink being bathed. Surrounded by sudsy water with my two little hands cupped over my penis I was a study in coyness and shame by the time I was three. I had no problem with the nakedness of women and saw it often but at some point I learned to be afraid of my own body and that of other men.

Ty was a short, fat black boy with a small afro and a big mouth. From the moment Smurfette made her opening day debut he was out to get me. Thankfully we were in two different troops and resided in two different cabins but every time I saw him he got in at least one or two good jabs. Not physical jabs but he had a very extensive vocabulary for a boy of five. I was a pussy, cunt, faggot, fudge-packer, ass-licker, bastard and the list went on and on. I didn’t know what half of these things were; after all we were only five. I did know what a bastard was and had been called one before. It was true though so what did I care?

Camp only lasted four days. It was four days from hell though. Most of my time was spent dodging my antagonist and avoiding the bathroom. On the second day we were required to shower. How in the hell was I supposed to shower with twenty other people in one big room? I will tell you how, in my underwear. That’s right, I walked in with my underwear on and quickly rinsed off while enduring the taunts of the other boys proud of their nakedness. The shower heads that lined the walls blasted out lukewarm water that quickly made my white Hanes transparent embarrassing me even more and causing me to run back to the cabin dripping wet with muddy feet.

I still hadn’t gone to the bathroom after two day and a half days. I was eating plenty and the cramps were starting to affect me in a serious way. The second night proved to be painful but there was no way I was going to crap in an open room with everybody watching. If anything I was waiting for a moment alone to scurry to the woods and steal some privacy. Never did that happen though because we were known mostly as problem kids from the ghetto and were not let out of sight for a moment. They don’t tend to let poor people have free reign anywhere, even in the middle of the mountains where the only things up for grabs are pinecones and deer droppings.

Day three should have been exciting but turned out to be excruciating. We got to take the canoes out on the pond and go on a scavenger hunt. It didn’t take long for the pond excursion to turn bad thanks to my canoe mate who thought it was funny to rock the boat and sent me over board into water. It seemed to go on forever but was probably six feet deep in reality and I was convinced there was something down there waiting to eat me so I flailed for my life. The pain in my stomach, made worse by my life jacket straps, hindered my doggie paddle and I was saved by a counselor with an oar. I was left searching for my inhaler and humiliated too early in the day.

Our troop was set to leave for about two hours with a small bagged lunch. We set off down a trail into the woods. I had never been on a scavenger hunt and would not make it far on this one. The goal was to perform trust-building exercises with the other kids in order to uncover a clue for the next item on the list. It was at a small obstacle course just after a rope climb that my stomach launched its un-ignorable revolt. Hundreds of punches to my abdomen is what it felt like. Tears began to stream down my face as I squeezed my cheeks and hobbled to the counselor and told him I had to go to the bathroom. I ran and ran amazed by my ability to find my way back through the half mile of woods while trying to contain myself. On sight of the campground I kicked into high gear racing to the lavatory building. There was a blindness to my mad dash as I ripped off my pants and plopped onto one of the many porcelain toilets lined against the wall. In what may have been one of the most glorious moments of my childhood, I let go. Wheezing and panting and smiling it was the singular moment of relief I had looked forward to.

That is when I heard laughing. Not just a giggle or a chuckle but a guttural belly laugh, the kind that involves uncontrollable bouncing jowls and makes your eyes water. My bubble had burst and my surroundings materialized once again. I looked over and perched like a gluttonous king on his own thrown was Ty, his robust chocolate thighs spread over the side of the seat. Where did he come from? How did I not see him? I don’t know and I don’t know. But there he was cracking up with his pants around his ankles. Empowered by my monumental release I spoke, looking past him at the tile wall sure of my impending doom,

-I couldn’t go with everyone else in here.

I had been caught literally with my pants down. Then a loud distinctive splash echoed across the room from his end of toilet row. On somewhat of a delay as though waiting for approval we both began to laugh uncontrollably at this. Moments later when our smiles had faded we began talking. Neither one of us had gotten up which kept us on the same playing field. Total exposure and total humiliation meant total understanding. After some time we found that we weren’t so different. Our families were exceedingly poor and we were both paid an allowance of food stamps. We were even both scared to poop in public. He was so embarrassed by his weight which led him to lash out at me. So it turns out while we both reacted to our problems differently we would discover that together we would find more fun in our commonalities.

We left the lavatory best friends. We had bonded over a turd and there was no going back. With him and his willingness to expose his oversize body beside me I found the strength to shower without my underwear the next day. Nobody made fun of me and while it would have been easy for the other campers to exploit the odd ebony and ivory couple in miniature that we had formed no one did.

So I guess that earlier when I said it was four days of hell I was telling a lie. There was one day and he was one person who looked and acted nothing like me but he understood me completely and we accepted each other for the dysfunctional five year olds we were.

Oops I did it again.

Oh Britney! I adore her. I adore her antics and shenanigans. I adore the fact that we are all so obsessed with her and her antics and shenanigans. The gasps of shock and dismay every time she takes a shit or drops her baby or flashes the paparazzi serve to prove the fact that it is us, the audience, who are the monsters in the cage and not the other way around. Given the way some of us were raised and the things we do it is no wonder we are infatuated. The easiest way to divert attentions from our own stupidity is to shine a light on someone else’s.
I am going to do Britney a favor and shine a light on myself. Expose something revolting, disastrous and ultimately entertaining.

My revolting disaster’s name was Tommy. I had just moved out of my mother’s home to live with my middle sister an hour away, leaving behind the tiny town of Amish baskets and collapsing businesses. My sister is something of a fan when it comes to gay men. She discovered a couple of gay magazines in my room and the rest is history.
Enter Tommy, her “If he were only straight!” best friend. Really who was I to question her? She knew more gay people than I even thought existed.
He was thirty-one. I was not yet eighteen when he came to pick me up for our first date. I was a virgin and had never kissed anyone in a romantic context.

I heard a lot about his car. It was an expensive model with leather seats and power windows. A far cry from the farm truck I was accustomed to.
The doorbell rang and before me stood my first big mistake in life. Pleated pants and a pressed polo with matching belt and shoes, parted hair and arched eyebrows that looked as though they were trying to escape were perched on taught dewy skin.

As I settled into the passenger seat I realized I was trembling. What would I talk to him about? Only weeks before I was slopping hogs and gathering eggs, now here I was in a fancy car with a man wearing makeup and wait are those really footprints on the windshield? No! Yes.
Strange I thought, thankful for the distraction. Conversation did not come easily and my talk of books was cut short at my mention of “The Ultimate Guide to Animal Husbandry for the Small Goat Farmer.”

The footprints he said were left by a “friend” he had given a ride home (plan to revisit) and left it at that.

No expense spared we found ourselves at Pizza Hut after a stop at an ATM which was exotic to me. I had never used one before and was amazed that it was spitting out money. We quietly enjoyed a thin crust pizza and orange sodas.

I was taken back to his place, still full of pizza and nervous enough to vomit. It was on his overstuffed black leather sofa I first kissed a man. My nerves kept us from anything more. I needed to go home and process the evening.
At that point my attraction was based on the fact that he had a penis and that he wanted to play with mine and it was overwhelming.

Date two, Evita and a roommate named James.

James came in halfway through our viewing of Evita. I was lost. Trying to get a seventeen-year-old gay boy on only his second date with a man to get past Madonna and understand the life story of a dynamic political icon must be much like training an alligator to separate the yolk from the white with his jaws.

James was my first lesson in gender ambiguity. The conversation between him and Tommy went something like this:

James: Hey girl, I just left the bookstore.
Tommy: Who was there?
James: Just some tired old queens. Adam was there and she was blasted trolling the booths.
Tommy: That girl needs some help.
James: Who is this?
Tommy: This is Nick, Allie’s little brother.
James: Nice to meet you. Don’t let Riva take advantage of you! She’s a dirty old man. -cackle-
Tommy: Bitch.
Exit James.

Problem one with the interaction was that there were no women or girls in the room. Problem two I wondered why this “bookstore” that evidently catered to royalty had booths. Problem three; Who the hell is Riva?

As the credits rolled and Evita continued to confound me, Tommy told me he had gotten me a gift. He led me through the kitchen to his sunken bedroom and sat me down on the bed. On the night stand sat a small brown bag. Cookies? I thought.

As I unrolled the crumpled paper bag he looked on with a knowing grin. Inside was an assortment of condoms and lube packets. No cookies. I had never touched a condom or lube. As I examined the contents of the bag he pushed me back into his plush pile of beaded pillows and we had sex. Rather he had sex and I fought back tears. Who knew this was involved? This was not in any of my magazines. My stomach hurt, my ass hurt and my legs were cramping. I didn’t know what was happening until it was over and I was in the bathroom.

When I returned to the bedroom he was smiling, sprawled on his bed like Nefertiti. I crawled over him and faced the wall trying to disappear. I felt him climb out of the bed and I was immediately dragged back to reality by Diana Ross. The music was just low enough for me to hear the rustle of fabric and shoes on the rug. My curiosity forced me over to what I can only describe as an unexpected spectacle, Riva, in a white dress, opaque stockings and ivory pumps transforming her self in the floor length mirror next to the bed. I was horrified. The man had just taken my virginity and was now lip syncing to “Stop in the Name of Love.”

As he sashayed and strutted, flung his arms about and cooed almost silently, I rolled back over. A small chip in the paint on the wall became my focus until my mind gave up and surrendered to my tired body.

If I had known that he had once lived as a woman and adopted the name Riva, or that he performed in a weekly drag show, I still wouldn’t have known better. We did not have sex again; in fact I never thought I would have sex with anyone again. I thought he had broken something.

A few weeks later he dumped me. On my birthday. I was now eighteen. He was going to return to his ex-boyfriend. As it turns out his were the footprints on the windshield, left after vehicular sex only a few days before our first date.

Tommy now works as a waiter in a gay bar in Indiana. He is 42 and those eyebrows have finally given up. They will never escape just the way he has never escaped. His skin is no longer dewy and he is wearing the same pleated pants and polo.

When he told me our tryst was over he asked me,

-So if it doesn’t work out with my ex, can we still continue to see each other?

I answered,

-Not on your life Tommy. Not on your life.

As I said, this story is for Britney. Really the day pictures of her in post-coital confusion, swaddled in a satin duvet as a forced audience at a private drag show ever surface I will be the first to sympathize and the second in line to by the magazine.

Polyamnot

Polyamory : the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time.

Meet Cleveland. Cleveland is a "polyamorite." Yes I made that term up. You may see the term "polyamory" listed above as Webster defines it. Here is my definition for a "polyamorite." You may notice one or two differences.

Polyamorite: delusional individual who believes (stupidly) that he/she can be "in love" with more than one person at a time.

Cleveland is the worst kind of polyamorite, he is irresistible, he has a boyfriend and he is honest. Yes I said honest. How can that be bad? Well let me tell you how it makes a person feel when they realize that after all is said and done and their heart is broken that it is their own fault.
It feels like shit.
My condensed story of Cleveland involves a wildly blissful weekend of work in a Midwestern metropolis where he was my on-site help and ultimate distraction. Cleveland is from Ohio and was flown in last minute based on a coworker's glowing referral. There was full disclosure and acknowledgment of his situation. I knew he had a boyfriend and found out very quickly after several drinks and a shared queen bed that they were "open" and that the magnetic attraction I felt was more than mutual from the moment our eyes met by the baggage claim carousel. I suppose if I believed in love at first sight I would qualify our first official meeting as such.

I was walking in very unfamiliar territory. Normally when I hear this type of scenario I run in the other direction. I have even told friends in similar situations "Don't be a moron! He has a boyfriend!" Despite my own warnings there was something about this man that lured me in and consumed me as though I were in quick sand. Maybe it was the blatant physical draw or the way he touched me but the rawness of it all was too much to deny. A more intense connection I have seldom felt. Reciprocated and complete we were both in somewhat of a daze, blinded by what we had stumbled upon in each other.

That first weekend laid the groundwork for his upcoming visit to Philly and no more than two weeks later he was with me again, staying in my house and working in my office as an annual temp for a week. Treating me as though we could never be apart and I was at complete mercy of my emotions. Despite my earnest efforts I could not stop my fiery descent into heartbreak hell. Particularly when he told me he was falling for me. How was that possible, hadn't he fallen for his boyfriend long ago? Wasn't he still in love with him and if not then why go back? Turns out I didn't really want to consider the responses to these questions. Surely the feelings we were nurturing were more potent and therefore more valid.

They weren't.

He left, returning to his boyfriend and I shut down. Oh it wasn't for too long but I was a melancholy and self-pitying schmuck for a while, too afraid to disclose every detail to any friend for fear of retaliation and declaration of my obvious mental retardation.

I did it alone and it took getting angry at him to get over it. Angry at the words he used "I love you both" or "I am so confused right now" then there is my favorite "I would love for you to meet him some day, I think you would really hit it off." What the fuck was going through his head? Better yet, what the fuck was going through MY head?

I grew up with the understanding that you can't have your cake and eat it too. Isn't that what polyamory boils down to though? What if we could all have deep emotional, sexual and mental bonds with several people at the same time? In theory the world would be much happier, or would it? My impression is not that these "polyamorites" have too much love and must dispense it to avoid bursting at the seams; but that they need to dilute the love they have and invest in many people trying to get the highest possible yield from each person to fill some void. In essence they try to trade up and get more love from people than they can or are willing to give in order to validate themselves on a very basic level.

I don't know if anyone ever is truly satisfied with one person. Or if one person can completely fill every single need in someone else. Does that give anyone the right though to be greedy? I don't think so. But I also don't think you can blame someone when they are honest. After all we are adults and educated decisions are ours to make.

I no longer feel like shit and as long as I know on what I am willing to compromise I intend on holding out for that one person who also happens to be looking for one, singular, unequivocal love in their life.