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swallowing
savoring sweetly, so lush upon my tongue
this insatiable thirst
only ever quenched by her
It’s the closest I will ever come to a confession, my poetry. My filthiest pining on a very public stage, but with thecomplete anonymity of the internet. It’s mostly fine, except for the one time my sister reposted one of my less evocative lines to her stories and I realized she follows the account, and I couldn’t tell her not to. So there’s that.
Better than my mom, I suppose. I may be a grown-ass man in my mid-thirties, but there are lines you don’t cross, and parents reading your erotic poetry account is one of them.
Arlo returns and I drop my feet to the floor, straightening up the space and making sure everything’s turned off before locking up and walking out into the humid night air. It’s late summer, so still warm enough that no one needs a jacket, even in the middle of the night.
He jingles his keys, aiming at his car parked behind our building and unlocking it with a beep. Even a few blocks off Broadway, downtown Nashville never really gets dark. Or quiet. For hours yet, the sound of a hundred open-air bars featuring the most talented musicians in the world vying for their chance at fame will float over pedaling bar carts filled with revelers celebrating everything from divorces to bachelorette parties. For the first few years, I used to pace these streets night after night. Sometimes with Drake, when we were young and dreaming of our shot, and still later by myself. Something about being surrounded by all this creative energy has always fed my soul. It’s why when I moved back, I found a place not too far from the center of it all.
Arlo is quiet as he drives. It’s late and he’s had a long weekend and we’re both worn through. I tell him to take his time coming in on Monday. Our first appointment isn’t until after one. No reason to be there earlier.
Besides, with a new baby coming, I imagine the days he and Josh have left to sleep in are few and far between.
I studiously ignore Lorelai’s lavender front door, extra pale in the moonlight, while unlocking the bright robin’s-egg blue one that leads into my place and latching it closed behind me before climbing the creaky wood stairs up to my loft. When I get to the top, I flick on the dim kitchen light and toss my keys on the wood-block island next to my glasses, wallet, and phone. Pockets emptied, I circle the counter to my sparsely stocked fridge and pull out a container of takeout and a fork and eat in silence. Then I open a new bottle of Malbec and pour a generous glass, carrying it out through the sliding glass door of my balcony. Two stories up, I lean my forearms on the railing and sip the semidry red while taking in the glittering lights of the city.
On one hand, I love this. It’s everything I’ve dreamed of. I have a job I can’t believe I get to do every day. I live in the greatest city in the country, maybe even the world. I have supportive and talented friends and tons of nieces and nephews to spoil and even an asshole cat somewhere around here. If kid-me could see all of this, he’d fucking freak. He’d never believe it.
I can hardly believe it sometimes.
I’m so lucky. I’m also fucking lonely.
Only missing one fiery thirty-three-year-old drinker of the bubbliest champagne.
6LORELAI
IF I WAS A COWBOY
I knew I should have stopped. The literal minute the opening chords of “Ohio” lifted into the atmosphere, it was as though an enormous vacuum had sucked all the air out of the amphitheater, except for my lone voice. A hush swept over the crowd and sweat trickled into my eyes. This hadn’t been in the show notes. Carissa and Lanie were offstage grabbing a drink and catching their breaths before the encore and I just… well. I don’t really know what made me do it. It’s not as though I set out to obliterate my career tonight.
Things started innocent enough. Okay, that’s not true. “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is not exactly innocuous. It’s pretty on the nose, in fact. There would be no mistaking my intent. But for fuck’s sake, things were out of control in the headlines, and if I don’t use my voice to make a point, what am I even here for?
I digress. “Ohio” was not exactly approved by my tour manager, Cassidy Faulkner, but it also wasn’tnotapproved either. When I explained earlier in the day that I maybe wanted to do something possibly related to playing a cover of “Ohio,” cool grayeyes dipped in that unnerving way from the tip of my head to my toes and then to the side, as she dismissively took a drag from her cigarette.
“Christ,” she muttered, exhaling Marlboro Lights into the pink-hued Colorado sky. “Fine. Leave it at the song, though. For fuck’s sake, Neil Young’s Canadian.”
“Canadian American, and also gun control is universal.”
My manager glares, replacing her sunglasses. “Not in country music.”
I let her go, not really fussed, since she’s all bark and I never in a million years imagined things would turn out the way they would.
So there I was, in the middle of the stage, alone under the spotlight, holding my guitar for dear life. “Ohio” is about history, chronicling the moment in time during Vietnam when National Guard soldiers opened fire on a campus in Ohio, murdering four students during a peaceful protest. It’s relevant, but not if you don’t want it to be. Most of our songs are fun. And sassy. And rarely ruffle feathers. Here for a good time and all. We provide it.
But lately… well. Lately I’ve been feeling like I need to do more. Provide more than an escape. It probably stems from the years I spent just out of college, teaching elementary school. And the recent news of the latest school shooting in a middle school in a small town. Kids are being threatened and murdered in their schools and I want to do something about it.
At first the crowd was stunned, I think. Some of the younger fans likely weren’t familiar with the song. But the older ones, they understood perfectly what I was trying to convey, and by the time I got to the chorus, the crowd went nuts. They were singing, chanting, screaming along with years of fear and rage and helplessness and more than a little drunkenness, and when I opened my eyes forthe last verse, coming back to myself from the strange hazy plane of existence I escape to when I’m performing alone, a chill spirals up my spine and goose bumps flare on my bare arms and legs.
Fucking. Fuck. Fuck. What have I done?
The morning after the wedding, I wake up to one hell of a hangover, wicked rejection vibes, and someone licking my face.
“Ugh! Rogers! Gross!” I gather the slobbery wriggling mass of fur and puppy breath to my chest and sit up in the cozy guest bed I slept in. Then I tuck Maren’s new wirehaired pointer pup under one arm and spin to the side, dropping my feet to the thick woven rug that covers the hardwood. Rogers continues his assault on the small vee of cleavage exposed in my sleep tank as I find my way to the kitchen, where I can smell coffee brewing.
