'Headstone' is included in Heterophobia

Fucking him was like Waiting for Godot;
he never came and I was happy when it ended.
I may be gay, Jay, but I don’t play lay games with men who send out an
“ooh-baby, baby, what can you do for me?” vibe;
frankly, Frank, I would rather be bored and single than paired and annoyed.
I don’t give a flying fuck if it doesn’t “feel the same” with it on, Jon;
Jim’s jimmy best be wrapped lest he inspire me to
cut it off
at the sac.

This message of appropriate massage is dedicated to all the Jays, Franks, Jims, Jons, Jerrys, Steves, Sams, and Sylvesters who screw their souls into their own coffins.
Two decades of AIDS education goes swirling down a vacuous drain in the Bates motel because a condom clasps Dick’s dick,
wraps itself like a straight jack-et around his shaft as he expects me to back-it up.
My brother-lover, apathy and AIDS are two words that don’t belong in the same sentence.

I punctuate this moment in history
because we have been duped by dopes into believing three-letter words are less powerful than four;
HIV-fuck me,
we have forgotten that there’s a quilt large enough to swallow cities,
gobble up yellow brick roads, trick us into warmth, steal the water from Dorothy before she throws it on the Wicked Witch of West Hollywood,
but rainbows bend, my friend;
we pop our eyes into compliance and a reliance on drugs to bury in our head the number of men and women dead,
as we lay in our bed,
send lusty looks,
and pretend we’re livin’ in 1970s disco Technicolor San Francisco.
But, boy, save your stupid bet;
I don’t gamble with uncertain sex—
I will not forget or let any lover convince me that he’s a wizard instead of a man behind a curtain.

In 2003, I, after a decade of not testing anything but the limits of my own sanity,
learned that I was HIV-
only a single day after finding out that a man I love and adore will live his life branded by the gay scarlet “A”;

I’ve tried to believe in justice,
but the world started lookin’ a lot less blue that day,
lost its hue and beauty.
HIV and me will never be fair pairs or a couplet at the end of a Swan Song gone wrong.

I have spent days running trembling fingertips over lymph nodes praying that they don’t turn into Braille;
hell, for ten years I confused my skinny frame for pulling the card of death from the tarot,
Pharaohs singing soothsaying whispers to me as I fuck one last time without caring about the risks;

those days are gone Jon, Jay, Frank, Jim, Jerry, Steve, Sam, and Sylvester;
I will wrap myself in the quilt, respect the living and remember the dead—
because (no) head (is worth its weight in) stone.

 

© 2005 Ragan Fox - Contributor's Bio