Ars Poetica

*

You are a cancer, he says to me

By he, I mean the fat fortyish fuck with nicotine stained fingers and beer breath who calls himself my friend

I am 13, and my parents’ marriage is a stale broken cookie on the floor

I have very few friends my age and can never quite figure out the rules

I like to perform; am comfortable on a stage

My dad signs me up for classes at what I will come to call “the playhouse” (my stomach still turns at the intersection of 4th and Wilshire)

It is fun for a while and I learn and grow

Then the Christmas party comes

And there is mistletoe and the unwanted, unexpected, inappropriate foreign taste of this man’s coated tongue in my throat

And the probing of those yellowed fingers

And I want to ask for help

But when I look around I see I am not the only prey here

Many of the vulnerable children who have nobody to talk to are in the same boat as me, and other adults are doing it too

He is 30, she, only 15

She is 30, he, only 12

My teacher, you are supposed to show me how to behave onstage and back

I do not wish to learn the texture of your erection through the front of your soiled khakis

or feel of the fragile cushion of my innocent trust ripped from beneath my size 5 sneakers

And where the hell are my mom and dad?