The Moon Poem by Emma Hansen (she/her)

the moon still favors you

she loves us both 

to be sure

blessed us before our us

even left the ground

but she leaves you extra light

on the doorstep when she leaves,

paints you in gauzy lavender and silver blue

she loves it most when you sing,

she told me 

in one of our long conversations 

that somehow always lead back to you

about your honey green voice

that sounds of the earth, 

and how they all love you in the cosmos.

you are the perfect bridge you see

just this side of ethereal 

you mingle with the stars

since you are one

but the grass and leaves grow up around you 

with just as much ease

ever so happy to be near your light.

and i am too. 

A Love Poem to the Girls We Used to Be by Emma Hansen (she/her)

We spent spring after spring

years stacked on years

biting our cheeks 

and staining our mouths red

in bittersweet anticipation of 

Summer.

Proper noun. 

Our personal god who we hoped would finally,

given enough prayers

in the form of sunburn

and hair stained chlorine green,

provide us with that perfect warmth, 

the ever idolized freedom

we always craved. 

Ravenous for any ounce of Special 

we could squeeze out of ourselves

like our swimsuits dripping on the concrete,

I’m certain we were convinced 

that one too many days

drowned in the bottom of the deep end

would reward us with 

the glimpse of scales formerly under skin

of gills previously hidden. 

We wanted proof

that we were different. 

Good enough to be magic

that had simply been biding its time. 

Though our circumstances never changed

between the last day of school

and Memorial day, 

we always believed that beautiful, 

mythicalgolden,

most perfect of summers, 

would come along and take us

somewhere new, 

somewhere better,

and maybe it did,

or maybe we just grew up.

not out of magic, 

but into it. 

June by Betsy Phillips (she/her)

Driving on wet summer streets

Thinking to myself the way I always have 

I cradle my legs 

Like a baby and think of you

I know why ghosts stay in the same place 

Like a favorite pair of pants

Solemn and Patient 

And pantomiming a memory. 

You showed me what an empty city feels like 

Remote by Betsy Phillips (she/her)

For thirty days and thirty nights 

I sat atop a pillar 

And when I came down and into the arms of sinners 

Is when You spoke 

And when your perfect love was known to me

And now the sinners are scattered 

As the sheep by the wolf 

And I am climbing again 

And I do not know what I will see up here 

And if the stylites were right

And if there really is some way 

To love You 

From atop a pillar

Wisteria by Betsy Phillips (she/her)

Wisteria unannounced 

And for a quiet moment 

Bleeds from the trees delicate 

And lovelier than the night which produced it. 

But when you return perhaps a week later

to have of her again

She is no more 

And won’t be 

Until some unknowable day next year.

My unknowable day is unknown to me

But I think

It is not this

And will be 

Like the wisteria hour 

The most beautiful thing 

For one breath only. 

The Star by Betsy Phillips (she/her)

I feel just like a star

A hurling ball of energy 

Pure existence never really formed 

Literally cosmic but never tethered 

Never known but by a hidden creator 

Loved by you for a moment 

Until I burned you up 

It’s in my nature 

To yearn never satisfied 

Doubled up and eating myself 

Catching glimpses 

Shining fire

For a moment outside of my orbit 

Meaningless

But very very real.

Where do stars go when they die?

August 2009 by Marianna Staff

I float in my mom’s quilt while the sticky saccharine sun 

flows through the blinds until the moon 

begins to cut through the day 

but the room is still soupy 

and the air wraps around me like toilet paper on a mummy 

Is eight too old to sleep in my mom’s bed? 

The sun shakes yes on the horizon but the moon understands the darkness it brings And tries to shield me in the soft of its beams 

But they don’t quite reach 

the windows so I’m left just looking 

So my mom cracks the door to her bathroom open 

So there’s a yellow strip of light on the ceiling and the floorboards that stretches against the wall and halos the edges of the door 

And I think if I really wanted to I could climb up it 

And sit on the ridge 

To dangle into a forever light 

Maybe then I could blow out the sun 

And it would understand the darkness too

Shadow Portrait. Cam Napier. Photography series. 2020.

A Sunday Afternoon—March 29, 2020 by Justin Williams

In McCarthy’s The Road,

the Smokies have all faded

from lush green to ashen gray.

The leather faces of the father and son 

emerge onto the apocalyptic panorama,

waking in a nightmare life.

They rummage through the landscape,

with no feast in sight; everyone is hungry,

the violence of the world made manifest.

This is what I thought it would look like.

But here in Memphis, each lawn is so rife

with wildflowers that my morning walk 

does nothing to clear my head.

Every scene is so urban pastoral: squirrels 

in a ruckus, pro-lifers picketing Choices,

cyclists in Spandex, chatty bystanders.

Overton Park looks like a Seurat painting,

the one where a field of bourgeois bask in

the not-too-hot spring day, a sea of parasols 

dotting the landscape. Here, the fathers and sons

have sunbeams illuminating their faces, and words

like “hungry” and “thirsty” are as benign as 

“What do you want to do today?”

Dogs wag their felicitous tails 

in the drooling ease of Spring.

In the background, Gene Wilder croons, 

if you want to view paradise, simply 

look around and view it.

For a moment, Memphis in bloom 

is more compelling than the memento mori

of death, rising. 

Each day, my brother texts me the numbers,

and the statistical grimness makes me think

America has found a new sporting event—

The losses pile up, and we never win. 

Once home, I kick off my shoes, 

open the windows, and try to parse 

what McCarthy got wrong. That a plague

doesn’t happen in a Seurat painting.

What horrific beauty is this. 

Rideshare. Cam Napier. Photography series. 2020.

one day you'll know they're growing pains by Emma Stark

sometimes you cry on the bathroom floor 

or in the backseat of your own car. 

sometimes you’re so numb that 

everything echoes inside you.  

 (your sides are two mountains, towering,  

   built to hold in the winter-dead valley of your guts, 

     and blanket the screams)

some days you are spent, 

when your thoughts whir and grind like a film reel 

and your body aches for 

anything but this. 

there is soft grass waiting for you; 

there is a springtime meadow,  

and honeysuckle flowers, 

and life;  

there is soft grass waiting for you

July, 2019. Grayson Burke. Photography. 2019.

chinese new year by Emma Stark

i am shedding the skin that knew you 

every day. 

constants are painful 

but it is still hard to breathe at 

the beginning of fall. 

i am rewriting the rules for moving forward, 

free of the heavy weight of stillness 

and complacency. 

my heart will burn a hole right through my chest, 

but i have spent a long time learning how to tend a flame.

Meets End. Ema Wagner. Mixed media (magazine, ink on scratch paper). 2020.

For Sale by Emma Stark

You Love It and I Like It. Gunner Smith. Acrylic paint. 2021.

my body is an open house 

with a sign staked out front in the way i pitch my voice. 

no one bothers to leave the lights on when they go, 

and a girl is scared of the dark 

and the way her heart settles and aches when she is alone. 

some houses are not meant to be homes without first being torn to the ground. 

Sick by Emma Stark

i am nauseous 

from the summer heat, 

the metal stench of my own blood,  

and my flesh caught in your teeth. 

i laugh in the face of my reflection, 

her with the eyes of someone in control but i know 

a lamb’s heart torn to shreds. 

my ribcage sits wide open, 

muscle and sinew hanging off the bone. 

i always imagined drowning to be peaceful, like sleep; 

but i am here, drowning,  

and i imagine it would be just as bad if flames licked my bones, 

so i unhinge my jaw & swallow whole. 

A Text from the Pool by Gunner Smith

Empty Rooms and Empty Conversations. Molly O’Neill. Collage. 2020.

Blue, the color I wake up to every morning. The pool you stand inside to tell everyone how immoral they are. 

Edna from The Awakening— knowing she can never truly be happy.

I’m a feminist now, and I write when I feel like it—

Why did I wake up thinking about you?

Carton from A Tale of Two Cities.

I draped my body over your shoulders like tired chains—

Until I became one of the jeweler’s creations.

Once upon a time—

Scribble and scratch, manifestation of the mind.

I speak.

To him, to him, and to him.

Sometimes to her.

“I could never be in a monogamous relationship”

I’m some country boy who doesn’t know how to say compass.

Would a cowboy hat perform well for you in the bedroom?

Yee haw. 

I could scream.

While your toes and fingers wrinkle like a prune—

Calling out injustices from a luxury home.

Blessed are the bourgeois—

Lucie Manette.

My books are color coded. Dante’s Inferno to the Iliad. From hell to dying for it and calling it honor.

White- St. Thomas Aquinas, we are natural born sinners—

Are you tired of text yet?

yuckmouth by Tyrese Jamison

The Opening Curtain. Grayson Burke. Photography and photoshop. 2020.

the best part of every story is when it doesn’t start. 

black-rimmed fingers clench the neck of an unwanted beer. 

he’s not supposed to be 

 this much of a f a _ l u r e 

he’s not supposed to be 

the cicadas are booing him 

again. 

loose eyelids try to ignore 

what’s keeping them from closing 

in on why he can’t keep a w _ m _ _, or a toothbrush, 

or a brush, 

or a fuck; 

there’s an empty prescription of anti-disappointments on the desk 

in front of him. 

It’s behind him now. 

a microwave was stopped at ? : ? ? a while ago maybe; 

the booing rises 

as the commonly cursed groan of 

his wooden chair lurches in 

side his ears as he _ _ _ _ _ to get up.

his pestilent essence always knows better than to separate from the last thing 

that would put Up with 

his dusty ass.

Spitters by Jake

The message I received at 8:23 from J, 5’10, included the address of a location that Maps told me would be twenty minutes away. In the Bywater! Eccentric. Already questioning if I was actually horny enough to be venturing out this far, I took the Claiborne exit and almost slammed into the Prius on my left as I tried to merge onto the highway. The scene opening up to my right was worse than even my rotten luck would normally warrant. It looked like every street in New Orleans had flooded. I groaned. The watery hellscape yielded few rays of hope. Inching forward, I eventually noticed that parts of St. Bernard weren’t as badly flooded. Cars that had reached the right place before the wrong time were scattered, lining unwanted pools like metal manatees in a zoo with no drainage. The rain stopped like two hours before I left mom’s house. How was it still this flooded? 

At 9:34 I pulled up to the house. By 9:45 my RAV-4 was fully parallel parked out front. Shotgun style. Wide ass porch lined with thin, yellow-and-red patterned columns. J, 5’10, had a little pillow on one of the chairs. A hanging succulent swung slightly in the breeze. That’s kinda cute. It’s charming when a man has a hobby that’s useless, but ultimately harmless.

The first time I tasted cum I puked. The guy didn’t yell or hit me or anything. Didn’t even say anything. Maybe he did. All I remember is seeing the orange-yellow contents of my guts and pulling my shirt back on before scrambling out into the cold of the parking garage. We haven’t talked since. We probably wouldn’t have anyway. He was twenty-three? maybe twenty-four. I was sixteen. That big of an age gap wasn’t even acceptable then.

I remember thinking, what if he has kids my age? That had me feeling real fucking icky. Then he started patting my head, I guess to encourage me. My thirsty little ego benefitted from this, but the part of me concerned about the kids—call it whatever: the superego, an ailing sense of dignity—found his pats too demeaning for me to appreciate compliments. We were in his really nice BMW, I mean really nice, with leather interior and seat warmers. The lower half of my body—twisted into a pretzel on the floor of the back seat—ached in a dull sort of way. When cramps came, it was no surprise. The vomit was, though. 

Some girls are spitters. Any spitter is inherently a quitter. In the world of gays, this is anathema. If Gaga herself were through some cruel twist of fate ever to take a knee and orally service a man, and she spat, the gays would be forced to find a new leader to YAS! at. Importantly, however, we can all agree: swallowing cum is repulsive. No matter what the man has eaten.

“Relationship expert” Hymn Michalka tells us that, in ancient China, there was a tantric technique called the White Tigress. Those who consumed their man’s semen lived longer, stayed more beautiful for longer, cleared their skin. In certain cases, these happy few spunk-consumers were rumored to have been able to tap into the fountain of youth.

Some of us are not so fortunate.

“It's only fair you do your part to make your semen taste better for that special someone so that oral sex and a blowjob can be more pleasurable for both of you,” says Hymn, an idiot who thinks that a weekend in Cabo and a smattering of Google searches gives her insight into your sex life. On Miss Michalka’s website, one can hire a Tantra Coach to personally come to one’s house and assist them. This coach arrives at their client’s home and, what exactly? Demonstrates deepthroat techniques on an eggplant? Drools into an Erlenmeyer flask until the client knows their perfect amount of saliva?

If one’s sex life is broken—or worse, boring—it’s either their fault or it’s his. Unfortunately, no amount of coaching can fix boring. No matter how sexy he is, even if the eggplant is a foot long, it’s not worth tepid sex. There is almost nothing more detrimental to the human condition. Before giving in to despair, one might remember: it’s ok that he’s boring. That’s probably just become a part of reality, and one probably thinks they can love him enough to accept that. Maybe that’s true. But if he’s boring, then it falls on the only other party involved. The sex cannot be boring.

Front door in hand, J, 5’10, smiles back at me. Two good omens. Fine motor skills, basic empathy. I walk in and after appropriate introductions he offers me champagne. Ah, oui! is what I think. Sure, thanks, is what I say out loud. Twirling my slender glass of Veuve Cliquot between my fingers, I ask J, 5’10—who is maybe 5’7 and whose name does not start with J; it’s Larry—what he does for fun. So like, what’s your deal? Are you into film? Men love being asked if they’re into film. They always are. The question alone gives their eye a twinkle that nothing else can. By 10:22 his manhood is in my mouth. The moaning is near-constant and annoying but it indicates that I am doing well, which I know. I had him pegged as a chomper as soon as he offered me the Veuve. I can’t tell you why, but it’s true: rich men often enjoy some teeth in the mix. Might be the monotony of luxury that brings out the masochism. Or maybe—and less likely—the rich are just freaky.

You’re really fucking good with that mouth, you know that?

I catch my eyes mid-roll, try to play it off as a sign of pleasure.

Now I’m at a sort of psychological crossroads: stop blowing this man for just a moment, so that I can give him a proper thank you, or try to show my acknowledgement in the form of some subtle sign. Maybe a wink upwards. Either way, I have to take an altogether avoidable risk. I decide to continue, winking, twisting slightly to show I heard him. It works, and we’re back. 

But not for long. You know you’re a little whore, right?

Larry’s really pushing it with this one.

By 10:34 I note that his moans have started to shake. He’s convulsing slightly. Almost done, I decide, relieved. Then it hits me.

I’m bored as shit.

The man is boring. When we started, he was just annoying. Now he’s irredeemable. The eyes open and he looks down at me expectantly, surprise forming on his face. 

Who said you could stop, whore? I bite down—balls and all. I do it in an annoyed bout of anger, maybe forgetting myself a little. But then I hear the same wounded but pleased moan as the first three or four. As I’m getting up I guess he falls off the bed. He starts saying whatever it is he wants to say. I’m already closing the door. Thanks for the champagne, I say, admiring the succulent one more time as I pass it.

In the car the radio proved to me that it knew exactly what I didn’t want to hear. “Semen is mostly comprised of water with fructose, sodium, some vitamins and minerals,” said Antonia Hall, a psychologist, relationship expert, sexpert, and the award-winning author of The Ultimate Guide to a Multi-Orgasmic Life. People love vitamins. Why do men’s particular combination of vitamins smell like ammonia and taste like saline drops mixed with mucus? Because as swallowers we have to stay humble. Were jizz to taste pleasant, those on the receiving end of the service would not know how to act. The appeal of being a spitter would drop dramatically, and girls and gays would find ourselves to be enjoying the job too much. Perhaps, I considered, the repulsive taste gives us a humility—a humanity that otherwise we would lack. Maybe the problem wasn’t the stuff itself, but the men. A younger man, one closer to my age, would he have better-tasting baby gravy? Without noticing, I’d drifted to the right. My car flipped over the I-10. Four of my ribs broke on impact, and a concussion threw my head into unconsciousness.

I decided on a hookup hiatus after that. Some wicked karmic force had surely punished me for the way I’d been living. Normally I might not have decided something so radical, but the pain was enough to keep me convinced. Interestingly, when you break a rib, they can’t do much for you. Three different doctors told me “just be patient,” and “don’t put pressure on them” and “they’ll heal over time.” I repeatedly expressed my anger at the lack of pain meds. Every doctor told me that the fractures weren’t threatening my spleen or my lungs or the blood vessels at the top of my ribs. One doctor was tall, with thick wavy black hair and that classic Greek smile. A few black chest hairs peeked out from the V in the shirt of his scrubs. Catching myself in the middle of this moment of weakness, I closed my eyes. Don’t even think about it, I commanded myself. So I didn’t. Each doctor recommended I take an ibuprofen, or maybe acetaminophen. I explained to each that I had been doing that, I had been downing both medicines in excess for the last three weeks. The pain was too severe.

Sometimes the pain you feel can make you feel more human. Maybe in the same way that cum tasting bad makes you feel more human. I don’t know either way. Mine was certainly never a comforting pain. For the next month I lived in near-constant fear of laughter. Laughing always brought the worst sensation, like a porcupine had wedged itself into my midsection. I stopped laughing. I tried to see things I would have found funny as annoying instead. It didn’t really work. One night, later on in the recovery process, I was agonizing in front of the living room TV when my mom came in. She informed me that I had to update my license if I wanted to continue driving once I’d healed. I said ok. She explained that the DMV across the river was the best in terms of wait time. You’ll be in and out, she said. I said ok. The next morning I drag myself to Hahnville, a real one horse town, and wait in line for a little over an hour. Two tweens are in front of me in line, loudly discussing their driving permit test and whatever else enters their minds. I am halfway through one of the girls’ Bachelor predictions when the Greek doctor enters the waiting room. The girls’ voices seem to rise as my mind races.

Why is he here? This must be a test. God’s testing me. She knows I’m weak, she knows and she wants me to understand it. 

“I follow a capybara on Instagram. Her name is Sweetie.”

“Yeah I follow Sweetie she’s dope. Did you know she’s vegan?”

“Yeah it’s in her bio.”

Greek doctor takes a number and sits down. I can’t help myself. I’m wondering how long it took him to do his hair. He probably wakes up like that every day. I don’t even think about his wonderful black chest hair. Or the cum thing. I wonder if he wakes up with someone or if he too is waking up alone.

Boys Will Be Boys by Jake

Photo from Clarissa Bird. 2020.

Lord knows Luke never witnessed any instances of abuse at Blake’s home. The then-twelve-year-old boy didn’t happen to be passing by the LeBlanc family home on the night that Blake’s father had come home from his golf game, inebriated and shouting. If Luke had been around that night, he might have heard Blake scream as Mr. LeBlanc slammed his wife’s head against the mirror in their living room. Luke had no concrete way of knowing that he himself was only the victim in his relationship with Blake because Blake’s misery needed some company. That day after school in the sixth grade, no concrete evidence appeared for Luke to explain how he’d realized that Blake was anything other than a bully. Yet, after that day, the bigger boy never bothered Luke again. Somehow this came as no surprise to either boy.

Luke Aster’s adolescence was not without silver linings. However, after three years of being thrown to four different public schools, his mother began to consider the possibility that her son should just find a school and stick with it. She chose Lake Castle Private School, presumably the best Slidell had to offer. Before he was to transfer, Luke’s mother told him that the school would be perfect. The principal, a trusty-looking man, assured her that every teacher at Lake Castle knew exactly how to instill in each pupil “a mutual respect for one’s classmates.” An unsurprised Luke quickly learned that the Lake Castle experience would provide him with the classic, tried-and-true experience for short, chubby boys who liked boys. He was shoved into lockers, pushed down stairs, called the standard, not-too-creative insults. More-or-less standard procedure for a boy who enjoyed Britney Spears and self-expression. But this was not new, not ever really personal, so nobody really got to him. Until Blake.

In the middle of the sixth grade, Luke loved reading in his secret spot between the school and the black top after school. On one particular day, Luke was reading The Hunger Games. The pages were coarse from bringing the book into the tub. His mother could never stop him from reading, even when he was forced to bathe. In his spot, seated behind the bush that concealed most of his body, Luke was giving the book his undivided attention. He was not paying attention to the group of lacrosse boys that had started playing Four Square with only three people just a few yards in front of his bush.

Luke had just reached the point in the novel at which the innocent 12-year-old Rue is murdered with a spear by Marvel, a horrible little jock, when he suddenly became vaguely aware of one of the boys yelling something. The kickball knocked into the book, launching it from Luke’s hands. They appeared through what he’d thought was the safety of his bush and, together, glared down at him maliciously. Did they think he had magnetized their ball to his book so he could ruin their game of Four Square? As he started to ask them this, Blake walked through the bushes. Luke stopped mid-sentence. The de facto leader of the group of sixth-graders, Blake LeBlanc—on whom Luke had a very guilty, angry crush—shoved Luke’s chest, hard, and asked loudly why Luke sucked so bad at sports. Then Blake asked why Luke couldn’t even catch a kickball coming straight for him. Then why he was such a bitch pussy. At “bitch pussy,” the other boys laughed their agreement.

Before Luke could finish responding they were moving around him, herding him like dogs to the south end of the big field, where teachers couldn’t see because of the trees. Luke could tell they were trapping him. Then, his stomach churning, he realized he could do nothing to prevent this. As they moved, Blake, speaking as though he were a wicked carnival barker, announced to the other boys that they were going to show the midget fag how to play Chicken. Not wanting to know what this meant, Luke sprinted to get past the smaller of Blake’s friends, but was shoved easily to the ground in front of Blake. Blake grabbed him and put Luke’s hand on Blake’s leg.

“What are you doing?” Luke asked, his voice barely audible over the other boys’ shouts.

“Go up,” Blake said, his eyes squinting. His mouth curled into a smile.

His grip tightened around Luke’s forearm as the smaller boy struggled to escape. Now full of adrenaline, Luke was able to rip his hand away. Reeling, confused, and scared, he fell flat on his back. If he stayed still, they might get bored and lose interest. Luke’s head filled for a second with that one scene in Jurassic Park, when the people stay still and the raptors can’t see them. Then the people were able to escape. Luke froze, facing Blake, trying to not breathe. He heard running from behind him before the smaller of Blake’s friends restrained Luke’s arms behind his back. Blake took this chance and elbowed Luke hard in the stomach. 

“Do what I say. You fat fucking faggot,” he yelled.

Luke felt tears form and fall in the same instant. This display of weakness pissed Blake off. The others laughed harder. Blake repeated himself, this time in almost a growl. The biggest of the boys, Luke thought his name might be Brady, grabbed Luke’s hand and forced it onto Blake’s upper thigh. Luke’s resistance was laughable. Now there was no chance—Brady was in varsity football and lacrosse. As he steadily pushed Luke’s hand up Blake’s leg, the other boys’ slurs and shouts increased in ferocity and frequency.

“Trying to touch Blake’s dick!? Fucking faggot,” shouted Zach.

Luke’s hand continued its ascent up Blake’s thigh, higher, higher, until Luke was shaking, really frantic now, pushing all his weight against his back in a last ditch effort to move Brady—and thus himself—away from Blake. Finally, unsure what else to do, Luke turned his head up and fixed his eyes on Blake’s. Blake’s eyes were sky blue. In that moment, something took Luke away from the field. In a second outside of time, Luke and Blake stared at each other and what had been happening just sort of fell away. From somewhere unknown, Luke felt anger replace his terror. Why did this boy have to be his enemy? His own eyes must have reflected this, because now Blake’s eyes tilted and his smile disappeared. Now Blake had the same look as Luke had before. No sooner did Luke notice this than the two were both back at the field, surrounded by Blake’s friends. Neither understood what had just happened.

As fast and as hard as he could, Luke made a fist and moved it forward rather than back, slamming into the bully’s groin. Blake shouted, clutching his shorts, as his chest hit the ground. Luke turned to hit Brady too, sure he would die at the end of this, but too full of adrenaline-fueled rage to run away. Before he could move his arm, Zach had tackled him to the ground. Blake, having partially recovered from Luke’s blow, was now pinning the small boy’s head and back down while the other boys restrained his arms. Blake’s grunt seemed to echo slightly as he pushed down on Luke, who cried out a little in pain. Luke couldn’t help but wonder, his head in the dirt, if the trio had practiced this before on someone else. Before he could wonder too long, a blunt black boot seared pain into his left cheek. He didn’t have to see his blood spreading through the grass to know that Blake had kicked him in the face. Then Blake put his face right next to Luke’s. Everything went quiet for a second and again it felt like it was just the two of them. Luke couldn’t pull his face away, and had to feel Blake’s hot breath in his ear. The captain of the lacrosse team’s tone was cool, a strangely loud whisper.

“If you ever fucking try and touch my dick again, Aster, you fucking faggot, I’ll kill you. O.K.?”

This was bizarre. There was typical stuff in his voice: anger, overzealous rage, the Self-Righteous Bigot Crusader. But it wavered at the end, when he said “O.K.?” Suddenly Luke realized that Blake had seen the change in his eyes before the punch. The other boys were laughing harder than before, but they sounded distant now. Luke strained to look up and saw that they were already running. Blake was up, sprinting after them. Luke hardly noticed the pang of pain in his face as he smiled into the wet red of the grass.

Blake LeBlanc had been scared of him. 

For the rest of middle school and all of high school, Blake didn’t approach Luke again. Maybe Blake lost interest because other kids were gayer, or fatter, or both. Or maybe, after that moment on the ground together, Blake knew he didn’t have power over that particular faggot anymore. Either way, the two almost never saw each other. 

Luke didn’t forget.

Years later, December of his junior year at Loyola, Luke got a Snapchat. When Blake’s name appeared in his Snapchat notifications, his face got hot. It felt like he wasn’t supposed to see this, like Blake had snapped the wrong person and Luke would certainly get nothing but trouble from opening it. It was a chat message, not a picture. It just said “wat up.”

The texts started simply enough. “Wyd” was most common. Soon enough it became clear that what Blake was looking for was an outlet. He would start with a “wyd” and slowly but surely spiral into a full-blown discussion about the details of anal sex or, if he let Luke steer the conversation, the beauty that could come from intimacy between two men. But the latter never lasted longer than a few half-assed responses on Blake’s part. It always came back around to sex. It didn’t take long for him to realize that what Blake LeBlanc wanted from him was phone sex. One night, Blake steered the phone sex into a place that was pretty vulgar, almost violent. It didn’t take long for Luke to start giving in, little by little, to Blake’s advances. After all, he had once had a crush on the boy. He also knew what closeted straight guys could do if they started to feel cornered. If they realize they’ve lost control. Bathing for a few minutes in the rich irony of this situation, Luke smirked. Then he sat down at the kitchenette in his apartment and thought, enjoying every second of it, “What would I have done in sixth grade?”

On the TV, Katniss Everdeen ran through the jungle, searching for Rue, but to no avail. Suddenly she started sprinting once Rue’s screams for help began. Luke got up from the bottom of the bed and walked into the tiny bathroom. He reentered the room wearing a pretty red lace nightgown and holding a shower rod. He was crying now, staring at the TV. Marvel had just thrown the spear, mortally wounding the little girl. Drool spilled down from the gag in Blake’s mouth. His ankles and wrists were encircled by bright red marks from all his thrashing. There was something profoundly funny for Luke, seeing Blake like this. But he knew better than to get distracted. As Katniss turned, firing an immediate arrow into Marvel’s chest, Luke leapt onto the Motel 6 bed, raising the sharpened shower rod high above his head. His voice rose, matching the bellow of Blake’s trembling shout. His heavier weight wasn’t a problem now; now it meant strength. Now it could only help him. Pausing, he let his eyes meet Blake’s. Nothing was new; just the same shallow blue he’d seen all those years ago. Luke’s arms plunged downward with inhuman power. The shower rod, which felt more like a heavy spear to Luke, descended with a crunch first through Blake, then the comforter, then the sheets, and finally the mattress. The bed frame shook dangerously, creaking as though threatening to give out. Luke, breathing heavily, slid off the bed and used two fingers to close Blake’s eyes.

“D’you want whip cream, sir,” the barista said to Luke, his voice exceedingly bored.

“Yeah, uh, please,” Luke said. He massaged the bridge of his nose and took his coffee, exiting the CC’s Coffee in his therapist’s office building. Sighing, Luke thought about what Danielle had told him about giving in to revenge fantasies. They were getting harder to resist. According to her it was fairly dangerous for Luke to even be speaking with Blake considering the toxicity of their relationship. Luke always emphatically agreed with her when she explained why this was, nodding his head and saying things like “exactly!” or “I know!” 

Then in two weeks he would return to Danielle, and she’d hear every detail he could recall about the sex he and Blake had had since their last session: how awful and hateful and phenomenal it had been. These conjugal visits had been occurring on and off for five months now. Luke truly felt like it was driving him insane. He’d tell Danielle that he was depraved, sick in the head, that he was reprehensible. She would listen, and then, after a pause, ask him why he continued to see Blake if he knew so well how bad it was for him. In each session, his reasoning changed. At first, he’d claimed he was “not denying Blake’s advances” simply for creature comfort, for the attention of an attractive man. When she brought it up for the third session in a row, he snapped, shouting at her that maybe Blake just had a big dick and she just didn’t know what that felt like. Luke immediately regretted this, noting that this outburst had created an awkward dynamic for the rest of the session. But when he subsequently broke down, she reassured him that he was making steady progress. As he confronted himself with Danielle’s help session after session, Luke eventually came to the conclusion that he looked forward to the texts he would get summoning him to Blake’s house. The ride from his place uptown to Blake’s truly shitty apartment in Slidell was always excruciating: a cocktail of nervousness, sexual tension, and frustration that erupted as soon as Blake would let him in. The sex itself rarely changed significantly. Blake was always very concerned about neighbors hearing them, so the first few visits were nearly silent. This bothered Luke more than he thought it should. First of all, they were grown men. Second, it felt egregiously wrong that Blake was the one who was more obviously embarrassed by their relationship. Then, one night, Blake texted Luke asking if they could hang out at Luke’s instead of the usual place. Luke rejected this suggestion. His apartment was a safe place. There, he could usually pretend that Blake had remained a shithead he’d once known. After a substantial amount of insisting on Luke’s part, Blake admitted that the reason for this suggestion was that Blake’s father was back in Slidell, and had demanded he be allowed to stay at Blake’s apartment. Luke told Blake that he could fuck his dad instead then, for all he cared, but that the two young men would certainly never be meeting at Luke’s.

It took three days for him to yield. As soon as Blake walked into the well-kept Uptown apartment, he grabbed Luke and threw him onto his own bed. 

“What the fuck!? Hello!” Luke said, genuinely upset that Blake hadn’t even acknowledged him in these circumstances before starting.

“Shut up faggot,” said Blake, shoving Luke’s head into his pillow.

“No. Fuck you! Get out!” as Luke shoved Blake off of him, he wiped some tears from his face. Standing up, he grabbed Blake by his collar and tried to yank him from the bed.

Blake objected slightly, still horny and unsure if this was part of it or not.

“I said get the fuck out!” said Luke, sobbing now. “Get out. Leave!” His voice shook before it broke completely.

Getting the idea that this was not, in fact, part of it, Blake began to laugh.

“Are you okay, James?” he said, his voice thick with mock concern. “You really are a stupid faggot, y’know that? Get back on the bed and let me fuck you. Dumb bitch.”

At this, Luke raised his head and locked eyes with Blake, staring into the sky blue he wished he never would have stared into. Then he shouted, his voice high-pitched and unhinged. “Blake, get out of my house right now or I swear to God I’ll fucking kill you.”

The smile evaporated from Blake’s face as Luke began to seethe, glaring at Blake with real hate in his eyes. Blake turned, stumbling, and almost fell down the stairs in his hurry to get back to his Toyota Corolla.

Slumped in a heap against the bar of his kitchenette, Luke felt too exhausted to cry. Eventually he noticed the sun seeping through the blinds. He peered up at the clock on the stove. 6:21 am. This was not the first time he had broken down because of Blake. Feeling tears forming again, Luke heard a stubborn voice tell him that it would have to be the last. He pictured Blake’s eyes as they had been hours before. They were beautiful, but by now Luke could see the shallowness in them. Blake, Luke decided then, was the kind of person who existed in the restrictive comfort of the closet—in ways not just concerning his sexuality. Blake had been in the closet so long that it had become part of him, part of his identity. For Blake, there was no closet to come out of. The suppression, the crudeness, that was all he’d known since long before their first meeting all those years ago. Coughing, Luke realized with a strange melancholy that it didn’t matter how much control he had over Blake. Danielle had said to him two sessions before: why did it matter if he controlled any aspect of Blake’s life, if he didn’t control his own? Quickly, Luke shot to his feet. Taking his phone from his pocket, he first blocked, then deleted Blake’s number. 

“That’s it,” he said to himself. He walked to his bed and lay down on top of the covers, his eyes swollen and still wet.

That’s it.

Luke smiled.