Every age is like a different flavor.
The changes in texture can be delicate or pernicious;
at every annual increment there comes a blending,
a harmony of vintage soul and cutting edge splendor,
shades of winter chills and sprays of summer sunsets.
Some years stay with us longer than others
and can be overpowering,
melding lilting notes ferocious and graceful,
deadly and dominating.
Others are so stealthy and discreet
as to seem completely illusory.
I ponder such things
as the librarian unbuttons my shirt again.
Clark Kent tells me I’m cute and smart while I blush,
imagining the taste of his 31 year old Kryptonian asshole,
which will germinate once again one month from yesterday.
Every gesture, hint of desire, every longing whisper
is patterned on a needlessly shameful lust,
disguising an eroticized guilt
that all beasts, alien or otherwise
must one day come to endure.
Need as aphrodisiac.
Weakness presented as strength.
A world of the senses where nothing makes sense
and all answers are contradictory.
The kissing is subtle,
blurred water color shimmer
of thoughts and sensations.
I suspect I will only ever be his friend,
despite our movements to the contrary;
I overcomplicate things, you see?
People in relationships are threatened by complexity.
Keep things simple. Keep sex simple.
Only sex is never simple for me and never has been.
I can pretend that it is.
I can say that it is.
But I must be more than a trick to access such depths.
It has been ages since I even attempted to reach such profundity
without conversation, connection, correlation…
Yet even I know this pleasure is simple, while
all that writhes beneath and behind
is exceedingly complicated.
I’ve just never been good at wearing masks.
Aaron would understand this, I think. He knows me,
yes, but he would connect with my questions
because he now asks them himself.
Zsolt was anything but simple,
and yet he was simple all the same.
A brave, defiant act that I can both admire and detest, encourage and deny;
I feel for that man. Under different circumstances, a change of location,
I likely wouldn’t have been nearly so troubled.
Animals howling in the night.
Lonely, reassuring, reclaiming their places by the fire.
The geography of sex,
the distance between two hearts
in the aftermath of such a journey,
is a mathematical equation
revealing how much I will hurt…
which is seemingly diametrically opposite
of what others seem to achieve or experience.
“Are you okay?”
he asks me 12,000 times.
I ask him about Lois Lane
and I listen to his smile about Grindr,
his love for their home in Boystown,
and I know that he loves her.
I let him know
I’m not having sex with him tonight.
It’s not because of Lois. Well it is. But’s it’s not.
It’s not even because of Aaron,
who has said that I’m allowed
to sleep with any superhero of my choosing.
It’s really just because of my need for,
and love of, complication.
I never want to be just a trick.
The librarian
with the interestingly spelled middle name
who has complimented me
on my seemingly youthful features
and the size of my photographed cock
walks with me to the Metropolis subway,
begs me to text him all night,
and sings me to slumber
beneath poetry scrawls
in my stoned drunken handwriting.
Written by Jason Wright
August 19, 2017
For Kevin
