Several Daniels
by Christopher Murray
Last night I lay in bed, suddenly awake
at half-past four. Pissed, then lay down again,
thinking of you. Daniel, you're such a flake.
Don't return my calls, then lure me to your den,
then blame your epilepsy as you shake
me off. Last night I stared and smoked and when
I wondered if you, too, were sleepless,
saw us dancing, your warm hand on my ass.
My hopeful morning dream, your hard caress,
lulled me back to sleep. Then a nightmare, crass
and lewd, overtook my mind, made a mess
on the sheets. When I woke again, the mass
of my body felt weighty and real.
I don't know where you are or how you feel.
Christopher Murray is a Brooklyn writer whose work has appeared on NPR and in Bloom, Lambda Book Report, Advocate.com, Gay City News and the New York Blade. He is a counselor at NYC's LGBT Community Center.
Kate with an Eight
by Anna Pulley
Once, when Logan was still impressionable enough to think rhythmic breathing would somehow align the cosmos, her roommate 'persuaded' her to join an online dating service. Actually, the roommate invented an online personality and used Logan's e-mail address. Only after Logan began receiving explicitly sexual e-mails from strangers did she finally catch on.
'Your tagline is 'I'm K8, wanna date?' Isn't that clever?'
'It's brilliant, Jenn. You should put it on a bumper sticker.' Logan sighed into her herbal tea. Passivity was her present form of spiritual currency.
'What's the big deal? It's not like I put your phone number on a billboard next to a naked picture of you masturbating to boy-band posters.'
'What?'
'Never mind. Just try it out for a while. Chat. Be yourself.'
'But I'm not myself. I'm K8, remember? Kate with an eight! The blonde D.J. from Topeka who enjoys science-fiction movies, blow jobs and miniature ceramic turtles.' Logan began blowing on her tea with a startling flurry of huffs. She was winded.
'God, you're so uptight.'
'Uptight?' she said. 'I'm Kate with a fucking eight!'
Logan did end up responding to one of the e-mails, from a slightly older woman who bred dressage horses in New York and pronounced her name swiftly and breathy, emphasizing the first syllable a little more than necessary, LOW-guhn, which made her feel like part of the line of military governors who ruled Japan until the revolution of 1867-68. Logan also liked the idea of making love in a barn, a red barn that was badly in need of a paint job and with the slightly exhibitionistic feeling that might come from the blank expressions of farm animals napping and looking in on them from the dying pasture nearby. Logan wasn't sure if the Internet woman had any farm animals besides horses, or a barn for that matter, but the idea of it! Oh, the idea!
They met at a fruit stand near the county court house. They each bought a mango and ate them with their bare hands on the sidewalk while they talked. The fruit stand was Logan's idea. She'd hoped that the animalistic and tactile combination of hunger and produce would hasten the arrival of their impending coition.
'You look familiar,' said Logan.
'I was hoping you'd say that.'
'Do I know you from somewhere?' Logan scanned her brain files from the last couple months—customer service reps, passersby, people on differing floors of her apartment complex, celebrity gossip magazines—but couldn't place her. Then, the woman shifted her round-framed glasses and brushed a few strands of short, darkish brown hair from her forehead, to reveal a mauve-colored lightning bolt.
'And?' the woman said, her excitement stifled only slightly by Logan's terrifically pastiche facial expressions.
Logan hesitated, twisting her lips into a kind of facial pull-up.
'Harry … Potter?' she said, diving face first into her mango.
'Yes!' she squealed and clapped, just once. 'The lightning bolt does it every time. Once, I had to break out the wand, but I knew you were going to be one of the sharp ones!'
Anna Pulley is an AmeriCorps volunteer working at a charter high school in West Town. She's going to be teaching gym in summer school, bringing her that much closer to completing the lesbian stereotype.
Elder Hostel
by Katherine A. Gleason
When I returned to the city, I was sent to jail for four weeks because I didn't know that, under the new regime, menopause, wrinkles, and gray hair were all illegal. My hair, its natural silver cascading down my back, attracted attention. I was stopped, taken into custody and booked for looking my age.
'Haven't you heard of dye?' the jail matron said and shoved me into a cell.
'I was just going to my studio,' I said, 'to paint.' The cell was not at all what I expected. No cold concrete, no cinder blocks, no bunk bed. No, this cell looked exactly like a dressing room at Bloomingdale's. And then I realized that I was in Bloomingdale's and I would be required to serve my sentence inside.
My hair was dyed a light chestnut. Facial unguents, balms and salves were applied. My laugh lines, crows feet, marionette furrows and forehead creases faded into a smooth mask. I struggled to hold on to myself—my flaws, my character, my memories. The night before my release, I was waxed, bathed, plucked, perfumed and dressed in new clothes. A group of us, prisoners about to be sprung, huddled together, whispering through the night. Others had been treated more harshly—electrolysis, exfoliation, poisonous injections, dermabrasion. In the morning, when I hit the street, I was unrecognizable and ready to start my life of crime. I went underground, shaved off my chestnut tresses, had them crafted into wigs—a youthful shag and a cute bob. Wearing the bob, I masquerade as a Bloomingdale's employee, the extra wig stashed in my shiny nylon bag. One by one, I smuggle prisoners out of the store, into the subway and down—down to where we can all be our gray and wrinkled selves.
Katherine A. Gleason is a Manhattan-based freelance writer. Her work has appeared Best American Erotica 1996 ( Simon & Schuster ) , Best Lesbian Erotica 1997 ( Cleis Press ) , Cream City Review, The First Word Bulletin, and on-line in Ducts.org and La Petite Zine.
