.

“I think I’m going to turn into a goat.  Yeah. That’ll do it,” said Zeus.

Harry, Wingman to the Gods, sighed into his bourbon.

“Just talk to her,” he said. “You always do this.”

“No, I think she’d be into it.”

“They’re never into it.”

“That last chick was totally into it.”

“She ran screaming! Plus you trashed the whole bar! No one wants to sleep with a hippopotamus, you have to know that. Just talk to her, like a person.”

“No, seriously, I read in this book that you want to be weird and stand out, it’s called peacocking.”

Harry blinked. “Wait, have you been reading The Game?”

“Oh! I should do a peacock”

“Don’t do anything, just talk to her. Aren’t you all-seeing? Do you really think some hybrid of pickup artistry and bestiality is a better choice than just talking to her like a person?”

“…”

“What?”

“It’s just hard, man. Breaking the ice. It was easier when I could just turn into a bull and have Eros-”

“No, we are not doing the roofie arrow thing. First of all, gross, and second you promised Hera when she finally agreed to the open marriage.”

“I know, I know. It’s just… she’s so pretty. It’s intimidating”

“You are the literal king of the sky. You throw lightning bolts from your hands. You have all of human knowledge.”

“Yeah, but-”

“No buts! She’ll be into it! Or she won’t, and you’ll move on, but stop dithering and just do it.”

Zeus looked over at her, knocked back the last of his ouzo, and stood up. “I’m gonna do it.”

“Good! Go! I’m here if you need backup.”

Zeus began striding toward her with a confident walk, a god’s walk, a real hell of a strut for a guy wound up in that much cloth. Harry saw him lean in and say something to her. She turned and smiled, and said something that looked like “sure”, but Harry couldn’t read lips.

Zeus turned into a peacock.

She screamed.

Xes

The slogan of so many kids in my class was
“You wear your X and I’ll wear mine”
Despite the fact that we only had one black kid
And Jay wasn’t sporting Malcolm’s gear

I wanted to shake them, should have shook them
Should have shouted “It’s not! Your! X”
This was a northern state
This was a Quaker town
The Friends Church where my scout troop met
Had a little room with its own lock
Where they used to hide runagates
Every old house here has hidey holes
We were founded for the Underground Railroad
This town was the opposite
of your X

And when shots were fired on Sumter
So many Quakers set aside their peaceful ways
Stood up
Said “If I fight for anything it will be this”

These kids want pride so bad they’ll
Wring it from the rags of slavers
But not so bad they’ll crack a book
Not so bad they’ll look at themselves
Their houses
Their church
And see that they could have been proud of the right things

Growing up in a red state you fight or you break or you leave
And I fought until it was leave or break and I left

But the Xes stayed.
As my years on the Brain Game turn to years spent as brain drain
I go back to my old high school
And they’ve put up a shiny new main street
They tore down all the old Quaker houses
Tore down that holy place with its hidey hole
Tore down all our history
Tore down a place where the people stood up

Side Character

A.
I think Fatty Bolger was the bravest hobbit.
He knew that someone had to stay behind,
And that straggling halfing would have just as much at stake
With no glory. I mean he wasn’t even in the movie.

When we met you were already moving but you said,
“It’s okay, I move fast” and you did, and then you left
And we stayed in contact for a while
And then we didn’t, and I know why, and it’s fine
But the internet is a whale’s song
In my distant sea it sings me sonar snippets of you
I am always glad to know you’re well

But when they make a movie of you, I won’t be in it

M.
I wish Oberyn Martell had more time
He just seems so important, right up until the last
But that’s the way those books go
Sometimes you just get one moment

We were months of messages and one weekend
And you said “If my history is anything to go by
We’ll either see each other a lot or never again”
And it was that last one, of course
The whalesong brought me news of your tumor
Years after I could have done anything
Which of course I couldn’t, and you did just fine without me

It’s just that I thought we’d have more moments

E.
I think Aberforth Dumbledore was the better brother
He only comes in at the end, but he’s clear with Harry
He doesn’t hide anything in riddles, he doesn’t keep secrets
But he doesn’t have much time

It was three months before I talked to you
The only other whale in my naptown sea
And three more months before I asked you
When we were chatting on a Thursday evening, the way we always did
And you said yes, and then you drifted off
I didn’t hear from you on Friday
On Saturday your ex called me because I was the last number in your phone and

What do you mean she’s dead?!
How is that possible?!
How did she get it?!
What kind of doctor gives an ex-junkie morphine?
What do you mean, I can’t save her? The hero always looks like me!

He says they found you on Friday morning, dead for hours
And I count backward to Thursday night
When I thought you fell asleep

I had all the trappings of a main character
I thought we’d have more time, but no one told me
That I’d only meet your parents at your funeral
No one told me I should have spoken sooner
No one told me it was your last chapter
And I was the wrong Dumbledore

open letters from an openly bisexual man

To whom it may concern,

I’m told invisibility is the superpower that everyone would choose
And I think that’s funny because they could just, like,
Indicate an attraction to more than one sex and
Abrcadabra

And maybe they’re right, it is a power
I will never know how many dates would flee
If they knew
How many
Beatings
I’ve been saved because it does not say “man love” on my sleeve
I only know how strange it is to be this
Big, loud, corn-fed farmboy cum hipster and
Sometimes be so hard to see

To the people who ask “why did you come out? I’d never have known”,

You answered your own question.

To Michael Hutchence,

Your videos are where I first realized. I was a teenager. I am, indeed, one of your kind. Rest in peace.

To Grandpa Simmonds,

I wish I came out before you died. You’d have gotten over it, just like the hair, which is to say mostly, slowly, grudgingly.

To Grandma Zeigler,

I wish I came out before you died. You’d have been so proud.

To the American Red Cross,

Take my money
As you will not take the blood from these veins
Too tainted by too much love
I never knew how to draw your lines
Would that I could do the same good somewhere else
But
I will pay thy poverty, o
Thou bigot Apothecary

To the people who ask if my wife knows,

Yes.

To my wife,

I love you.

To Grandpa Zeigler,

Thank you for the support. Get over the hair.

To Grandma Simmonds,

We’re cool, I just didn’t want to leave you out. I love you.

To those who say the word should be “pan” or “omni”, not “bi”,

I don’t care for your words, but I agree with you that attraction is not a coin flip. When I say “bisexual”, I am using it as a shorthand for:

Humanity isn’t one binary, it is a spectrum, it is spectra, it is a grand sky stretching out in all directions and all dimensions
and for some people attraction is the sun, bright and focused
and they know that to see their light they can look in one direction
for me attraction is the night sky, and everywhere there are pinpricks of light

Maybe they collect in patterns, and
over here is the constellation riot grrl
over here the constellation glitter boy
and here in the middle are librarian, musician, scientist, all
straddling what some would pretend is a dividing line
but if it’s there I don’t even see it

I don’t begrudge anyone their basking in the sun
knowing where their light will be
but I would never trade it for my night sky
where my light comes to me from all directions all at once
unpredictably and beautifully

I also think maybe more of you should admit that even on the brightest sunny day
occasionally
you can see the moon.

I am real

The death of Chivalry

They say “chivalry is dead”, but they don’t know
I was there, we saw him come
Galloping up to, I don’t know, hold open a door or something, and
Sick of his shit we
Grabbed his ankles and dragged him from his shiny steed who
Turns out to be a horse named Mark he’d spraypainted silver and
Mark was pretty chill so we washed off the paint and we sent him on his way and then we
Turned back to Chivalry, sitting there, in his fucking armor and we
Kicked and kicked him, all
“WHAT IS YOUR DEAL WITH DOORS?!” and
“WHY DO YOU CARE WHO PAYS FOR DINNER?!” and
A fat femme with a pierced septum stripped his cloak off a mud puddle and
We dragged him there and pushed his face in it and
An androgynous queer kid with spiked purple hair stood on Chivalry’s head until the
Last
Bubble
Popped

We picked up the body and bore his pall to
The Cemetery of Outmoded Creatures where
We walked past the grave of Trickle-Down Economics and
The tomb of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, and
We buried Chivalry between a Megatherium and a Trilobyte
And carved a headstone of coprolite so we could write
“Here lies shit so old and tired it has fossilized” and
On the way out we bought plots for
Evolutionary Psychology and
Sociobiology, so
You two should know
We’re coming for you

When we got home, we had a wake
Not out of respect for the dead but just because we like a party and we
Held doors for each other because it’s nice and not because
Women are too weak and frail to manage doorknobs or whatever and we
Bought each other food and drink just because we love each other and want to see each other fed and
We freed the mud puddles of their cloaks and we jumped joyously into them with no care for our shoes

The legends say that to this day
On dark and moonless nights
Chivalry still stalks these streets
You can hear him around corners and in dark alleys
M’lady….. m’laaaaadyyyyyy
But we have been buying garlic
And we have been carving wooden stakes
And we are waiting

Fling

Someone asked me what you were

“Is that your girlfriend? I saw you with.”

And I’m like… maybe?

Mostly she was important talks and giggles and… you know

And someone who needed things I had to give and to teach

We weren’t long (well, I was)

We were flea markets and ice cream and one damn fine summer

And that one night with the two of us and my friend

Late night walks and learning each others quirks

We were that salted caramel and the salted duck eggs she left me

We were salt, and sweat, and central air

We were the Mayan chicken salad at Olga’s and she was picking out the crumbs with those tiny little hands I like so much because sometimes I’m embarrassed to say “celiac”

We were a late night poetry reading on a bench in the park

We were invested–I was invested–in a way I didn’t expect and wasn’t prepared for

We weren’t around each other for long enough

We were… something.  I don’t know what the word is.

I don’t think it’s “girlfriend”, but I know what you mean

I know what you’re really asking behind the words and the answer is

We were a thing, for a while, but she had to leave

Maybe we will be a thing again

We’re a different thing now

The answer, I guess, is

Maybe?

Listening to the audio book of Fire on the

Listening to the audio book of Fire on the Prairie, which is an excellent book read by a terrible narrator.  Get it in print.

Anyway, I wanted to find a cite for a statistic that’s mentioned in it, because it startled me in one of those this-shouldn’t-startle-you-Nick sort of ways.  One of those moments where one realizes ones own subtle racism.

Anyway, found a reference here which had a slightly different number but is close enough:

The term “black on black” crime is a destructive, racialized colloquialism that perpetuates an idea that blacks are somehow more prone to violence. This is untrue and fully verifiable by FBI, DOJ and census(pdf) data. Yet the fallacy is so fixed that even African Americans have come to believe it.

What Will, Steele and O’Reilly failed to mention is the exacting truth that white Americans are just as likely to be killed by other whites. According to Justice Department statistics (pdf), 84 percent of white people killed every year are killed by other whites.

Look, I try, but I had no idea how staggeringly more likely it was for a white person to be victimized by another white person.  Despite it being obvious with a moment’s thought.  Despite the only time I’ve ever been a victim of a real crime, it having been perpetrated by a guy who looked like me (eerily so, down to the goatee and windbreaker at the time). I’d just never checked.

Every time I find another one of these, it’s a shock.  There must be a million more in there, little toxic pods leaching poison in my mind. That part of my brain that throws up a black face when the word “thug” is uttered.  The part that’s relieved when I walk into a Mexican restaurant and there’s at least one other non-Hispanic white person. The bit that thinks “black on black crime” is an understandable result of economic conditions but never gets around to asking whether it’s actually a thing at all in comparison to anyone else.

There is ugliness in me. I’ll never be done digging it out.

Grandma Zeigler Stories

When they moved the books out of the Carnegie library in the center of her tiny town of 10,000 to a new place on the outskirts, she was furious. Not for the history, but because she was worried that poor kids living in the middle of town wouldn’t be able to get to them any more.

Casanova’s Lament

It’s where we contacted that I’m bruised
Where I ground your bones against me
A small, secret mark I made with you
It has stung for days
(They always do)
And each sting is like being
With you
Again

There is always a mark
Each one different
Each a souvenir
Each encounter, new
Each leaving me new
Leaving me different
There are no notches here
But there are bruises, there are wounds
The thing I’m not supposed to say is
This is never
Meaningless
To me

I have a file of faces
And I conjure you from it
With a scent
A sound
A wound
Components of a spell
To bring you to me
(Illusion, of course)

I wonder if you know
If any of you know
How long you stay with me

I’m not afraid to die, you know. But I am terrified of growing old.