My mother laughing, saying, Boys will be boys, when she gets me at school the day I cannot pull my body off the dirty cafeteria floor after the new kid grabs my tits and calls me ugly and the girl kicks my legs and calls me lesbo and the crowd of kids is screaming, Lesbo lesbo, and the science teacher walking through and all the kids walking away and the science teacher leaning over me, saying, What is it, and, Can you get up, and then, when I do not get up, the science teacher calling down the hall to the school nurse, and the school nurse lifting me up from the floor as one would lift a heavy box and dragging me to her office and calling my mother and saying, Can you come up to school, saying, A boy teased her, then laughing at whatever it is my mother says and looking at me and laughing again, and my mother coming to get me from school, shaking her head, laughing, saying, Boys will be boys, trying to make me laugh on our walk past his house, past his mother stooped in her backyard garden, past the woods where I have rolled on the ground collecting dirt on my skin and hair, and my mother making faces to try to make me laugh, saying, Those dumb boys, and, I bet he likes you, and, I bet he's in love, patting me on the back, saying, Of course he's in love.
The two friends trying to wake the hostess who is not waking despite their occasional tapping, despite a harder prodding, despite the swift kick I deliver to her knee as a way to help her friends, and the hostess waking from my second kick and looking at me, furious, her hair a mess in her face, the hostess about to rise and destroy me she is so furious that I, the most unwanted guest, have kicked her in the knee, but saying, when she sees her friends, What, and the friends saying, The cat, and the hostess sobering up despite what she has had to drink and screaming, I don't have to say like what, suffice it to say loudly.
Rising from my bedroom floor, feeling perverted, uninvited, as if I have somehow fucked the hostess without her wanting to be fucked by me.
Telling my mother on our walk home that this girl makes me play this game, What game, that she makes me suck in my lips and kiss, that she makes me feel up her tits, That lesbo, What do you mean, Or she will kick my legs black and blue, my mother looking like she is going to yell or cry and covering her mouth and saying, What else does she make you do, Nothing, and me saying, Don't tell her mother, and her saying, You are not to play with her again, and me saying, Don't tell anyone anything, and my mother calling her mother when we get home and telling her mother that her daughter is a sicko lesbo, and me never telling my mother how it's often me who initiates CB radio, bored out of my head, saying, Breaker breaker, into my fist, saying, What's your handle, over, always thinking of getting off, never telling my mother how the girl has girl tits but a face like a boy, how it feels like something dirty when I'm with her, how I squeeze shut my eyes and think of the new kid and make her touch me harder down there until she gets bored which she always does and so I never get off, never telling how good it feels, later, in my bedroom, alone, rocking against a pillow or a stuffed animal or the pile of dirty laundry on my bedroom floor with flashes of being felt up by her or of being felt up by the new kid or of the new kid feeling her up in the woods with me watching and getting off watching or of her feeling him, even with her mouth, even with his sugarwater spurting out the campfire, all of it the same, a many-headed faceless groping sucking thing serving just one purpose, nothing holy, nothing with love, all of it science, some odd protrusion against some odd protrusion, then a burst of sparks, then a hollowness after the sparks go out, sitting blind, a girl again, waiting alone for dinner.
Calling the cops, despite the friends' attempts to disconnect the telephone, despite their screaming, Who are you even, as I say into the telephone to whoever answers when I call the cops, A cat was hurt, giving my address, despite the friends' attempts to get the telephone from my hand, despite the names they call me after I hang up, and I don't have to say what they scream or how they surround, the last guest not watching us but watching out the window for the cops.
Not having to finish school that year before my mother moves me somewhere else, and walking around in the daytimes like I am old or like I am some kind of ghost or something, translucent, walking past houses, walking past his house and past his house and past his house wearing his shirt, hoping the crossing guard does not see the edges of me walking around if she is digging in her garden or if she is standing on the corner in her blue cop-pants and hat, hoping I get to see him coming home from school, wanting to see him walking by himself down the street in that graceful fuck-you walk I fall for, the loose way he holds his books as if he wants to drop them, as if he wants to leave them there on the sidewalk and come with me into the woods.
The cops standing at the door, saying, Come with us, and the hostess and the two friends following the cops outside, one of the friends holding the cat, wrapped like an infant in her coat.
Watching from the chair the last guest walk from room to room, picking up bottles and dropping them into paper bags.
Deciding whether or not to come out of hiding, before he sees me standing there only half-hiding behind the tree in the neighbor's front yard like some kind of pervert, like some kind of sicko pervert wearing his shirt before he stops on the sidewalk so he does not have to pass me, so he does not have to face whatever sick thing it is I want, before he turns and runs back to school.
Watching the last guest put on his coat and open the door.
Knowing I should say, Stop.
Knowing he is scared of me, knowing he is scared of what I am thinking of doing with him because it's scary, I know, to be watched, but it's scarier, even, to be caught watching, and I cannot avert my eyes.
Wanting to say, Okay, it's you and me now, or, Let's split this scene, looking at the way his hair molds to his neck in those small flame-shaped waves, and wanting to say, Come with me now, but saying, instead, as he pulls the door to fully open, Who are you, and him saying to me with no perceptible emotion, except, perhaps, annoyance, and not even looking at me as he says it and not even wanting an answer, I can tell, Who are you, with the stress on the word you, as in Who the fuck are you annoying me, watching me, following me from room to room, though I didn't mean to annoy him, and meant, if anything, to work things through, and I still have the shirt.
Wanting to say, as if to explain, Look, and wanting to answer his question of who I am, to tell him who I am, to say something holy, something that will blow his fucking mind, as in, I am the one you ruined, as in, I am the one who ruined you, but saying nothing as he crosses the threshold and crosses the vestibule and disappears somewhere in the rain.
Invitation
Doors locked, he says, and windows up, radio off to be safe, but why, just off, he says, and, wear my jacket, but why, just wear it, your dress is too thin, my dress is fine, your dress, it's fine. But he warns, it's rough where I'm from, this place, a dumb city, you'll be looked at, gawked at, like mother like girl, the spitting image, don't treat me dumb. He says, it's not like home where I'm from, they're rough all these ones. And he knows these ones and these streets around here, that market, that church, that lighted tavern he knows like the back of his hand. He says, that's where we played, me and my pals, and that's where we parked, the things we did, you should ask your mother, so what your pals, we were crazy. The sun slips behind the rows of buildings, and the buildings are rundown, all boarded up, and who isn't hungry, it's night already. He says, here's a tavern,