I.

For your birthday I bought you a lap-dance.

You didn't want it at first, you were afraid to witness

my watching you watching them, but you followed me

anyway into the place that smelled

like recycled beer, urine and the plumerias that quiet pheromones.

Old men ogled body parts at the catwalk with arms folded, their eyelids

parted to catch a breast, an inner thigh—things that sparkle in the dark.

You tripped on the carpet.

Women scaled the poles like clefs on a music sheet, or ribbons

around spinning pencils, muscles willing to do it

without thinking in high heels. You told me later,

you dreamed of a mid-air fuck.

“My name is Pandora,” she said with parted lips, and blew

you a kiss while you flushed at the ceiling.

“What’s your fantasy?” she asked.

Instead of telling her your wildest dream,

you asked if she had a day job.

 

II.

She slithered out of her Sailor Moon costume.

"I

don’t serve a boss his cup of coffee, I stroke egos in a more,

creative way and this way, I can afford my own tuition,

I’m workin’ to make my own dreams come to fruition.

I offer you my skin with cream and honeysuckle.

Come here, honey—undo that buckle.

I

am a student of psychology. I funk around in the micro

of biology. I am the amoeba of this cosmic soup.

I materialize what you don’t want to realize: that sex is glue.

It’s pointless to construe—give us our due. If more people

felt this way, there’d be less hell to pay. So, get on your knees.

I am the goddess of your foggy dreams. I give

light to your shadows and your ecstatic, hushed screams.

I’ve been around for a million years—me and the queers.

You like to blame us for your incompetence, sometimes for your imagined

impotence but you won’t make us go overnight. There’s too much about us

that fits you just right.”

She winked at you, sighed in your ear and I thought: SHIT

I can’t even carry on a conversation with my clothes on.