7^th Grade

If you start dressing like this for
anything other than Halloween, we’re 

gonna have to talk, she said, as she used
a foreign brush on my aqua-blue

eyelids. I stood up and faced my step-sister’s
mirror – the one that had seen me so many

times before in her thongs and robes while
she was at cheerleading practice. I adjusted

the hair tie on my left pig tail and smoothed
out the socks stuffed in the polka-dot

blouse I had so carefully chosen at
Wal-Mart. Hoping to bring home bigger candy bars, my

brother and I went to our rich friend’s neighborhood,
which I eventually walked barefoot, my heels in my

pillowcase. However, even they did not make me
feel as unstable as the unassuming mother who

asked me if I was supposed to be Kelly Clarkson
or something. When I came home, I slipped off my

fishnets and put them in a grocery bag beneath my bed –
the one that I would rise from at 6:30 the next morning to

get on the school bus with the boys to whom I was
faggot, was buy some looser jeans, was get a haircut.

Happy Hour

He picked up the tab when the bartender
said he had put it all on one check.
I offered to throw some cash, but
he insisted. This was after he
told me the “three things I needed
to learn in life,” one of which was to
drive a stick shift. He was about ten
years older than me and I think he was
pulling the macho-man shtick ‘cause
his girlfriend and I had been hitting it off.
I got the vibe that they spent most of
their nights watching the news together.
He said I might need to drive someone
to the hospital someday in another car.
After he paid, he left and she and I
kept talking.