Sex In My Parents’ House

I was 19 before I had sex in my parents’ house.
Serious sex, not exploratory masturbation with Bruce,
my first best friend, when we were 12 and naked
in the woods behind his house.
What would Mom and Dad have done if they had found me
face down on the living room floor? Lee’s ass pumping air,
deep drilling, the baby blue shag carpet giving me rug burns.
Lee, who I treated badly, because he was just a stand in
for the one who got away, breath laden with I love you’s
that were more than just orgasms talking.
Later, I feigned insanity, indifference, incompatibility
to make him go away. Could hear the hurt in his voice
over the phone and wished I could snatch rejection back
down the snake-coiled line twisted like a tourniquet around my arm.
No one has ever made love to me quite like Lee did
those short months we were together.
He was an adult, knew how to please, wanted to please me,
tried over and over.
My mother liked Lee, said he was pretty, would have forgiven
the stains on the carpet, the image of her son impaled on the floor
in the room we only used when company came.
I can still smell that carpet, old and dusty with disuse,
stretching out before me like a cartoon ocean.
I floated upon it, disembodied, seeing what my parents might
see from the doorway. The truth they had always known,
no longer at the edge of their thoughts, but overtaking them
like a baby blue shag tidal wave.

 

Sweat (Mr. Manhattan)

Mr. Manhattan knocks, saves me
from an evening of watching TV
or roaming the humid streets.
He’s my age, dressed in linen,
and lean like an actor I can’t recall
or maybe a stripper I tipped once.

He lets me undress him,
the way we discussed on the phone,
until he’s naked on my bed, in recline,
model posing, pulling me on top of him,
flipping me over

Too clean for my taste,
not a hair out of place and smelling
of deodorant, shampoo and cologne.
I’m spoiled for the sweat of some college kid,
who shows up at my door half-dressed, un-bathed,
walks me backwards with urgent kisses
to the couch or bed or floor,
our clothes coming off
in a tangle of limbs and moans.

Mr. Manhattan drove his Mercedes,
didn’t sweat a drop,
and now we’re having by the book sex
(not fucking, which I prefer),
his breath pitch perfect, not ragged with desire.
He cums politely, a light sheen on his forehead
the only indication of his exertion.
He wants to rinse off, towel dry un-mussed hair.

I should have gone out.
Found a hungry boy who would
have ridden me until we were drowning,
who would have talked dirty in my ear,
bucked and howled into his orgasm.
Kissed me while putting his sticky cock
back into boxers and baggy jeans, used his shirt
to mop sweat off his chest.
Then he would have said: Thanks, bro or
that was hot, dude as he tucked messy hair
under a cap.

But not Mr. Manhattan.
He kisses me on the cheek like he’s leaving
a dinner party. He says, Enjoy your stay,
disappears down the hall.
I could go out, but I did cum,
thinking of some other stranger,
only more rough and maybe from Brooklyn.
Someone who had to take the F train
and was hard all the way to midtown.

 

Riot

Last night I remembered 1992,
that spring night I drove you home
with a butcher knife on my lap.
You lived in an unsafe area,
the TV and radio said Los Angeles
was on fire and we were next.
All day broadcasts of looting, beatings,
stealing and the verdict was in:
I could only think of you.

Of getting you into my bed
for 15 minutes before you had to be home.
You were too young,
I should have known better.
We existed on a diet of sweat, cum
and the hunger pains of separation.
Our furtive nights together were so few
and far between that the night LA burned,
we stopped to fuck in the parking lot of a church,
but there was no sanctuary involved.

Shadows moved from every direction,
sounds of distant sirens, too close voices,
a gunshot shattering the unrest.
None of this mattered in 1992.
We would disintegrate in a few weeks,
the clandestine affair wearing us down
to accusations and tears.

I can still see that blade propped on the dash,
within easy reach, and the thrill of discovery
and death fogging the windows.
I can still see, reflected in the knife’s edge,
the image of you going down on me
for the last time.

 

© 2005 Collin Kelley - Contributor's Bio