I've always been a moll

I recently rode on a motorcycle for the first time--I hope I don't embarrass Tom by saying this (because I want more rides!) but it was totally hot. I impressed Tom with my skills as a biker bitch, not getting on until he told me to, sitting like a sack of potatoes, etc. I wore a sparkly red helmet and held tight to Tom's sides, feeling his abs flex when he shifted.

I was vividly reminded of a childhood friend I had when I was growing up north of Duluth...we'll call him Blair. Blair was two years older than me, a blond shock of a god with blue eyes and bright white teeth, lithe like a farmhand. We hung out only because our parents were friends and brought us together; on the school playground he feigned cool, junior high indifference...me, the pasty white pudgy boy with the blacktopped driveway and the above ground pool and prefab house and Blair with the rambling old farmhouse, the pig pen, the field full of rusted-out cars. He shot deer and went camping and worked on trucks outside with his dad. He was hickish and quick-handsome, an angler, hunter, and off-roader in ripped up tight jeans and tank tops who pissed in plain view. I was totally in love with him before I even knew what that was--not in some soap opera of t.v. kisses i-wanna-be-your-wife kind of way but a full-on homoerotic bond of brotherhood in which man fused with nature er something. When he was shirtless out in the sun, even my mitochondria sighed.

We would have sleep overs. He had an 8-track tape or sometimes we would listen to the local rock station... Warrant and Poison and Pear Jam. We slept in the same bed, which was either his: high up in the dormers, rusty bedframe, or mine: double-bed in the cold basement with the television on. I remember we were watching Growing Pains one night...maybe I was twelve years old...it was the point in the show when they had that character named Boner (how did they ever get away with that?) and Blair asked me what it was. I said I didn't know, and when he told me what it was, mine instantly did. To my passivity, he always turned his back.

But he would take me for rides on his snowmobile or on his four wheeler. Never was I so happy as a kid. The power under our thighs and the speeds we'd reach on the snowmobile as he whipped shitties, tossing little kids of the tobogan he pulled. I would put my hands around his waist, and on the bumps or high-speed turns bury my face his shoulder blades so the wind wouldn't lash across my eyes. He felt so strong to hold.

I remember riding on the back of his four wheeler one late autumn day--it was cold out, maybe early November I think I had just turned 13. He turned his head and told me he was gonna fart on me. I remember I wasn't grossed out at all. I said I would like it, that the heat would spread out from his butt and warm me up. He turned to me and said, "You fag." The words cut out my tongue. Now he's married with two daughters; I heard he recently had a vasectomy.

But Blair never took me on the interstate, where, on the back of Tom's bike, I fell into a kind of existential revery at the closeness of everything: the hot blow dryerish air, the smooth passing of traffic, the long streaks of concrete at my feet. At first I was unable to help myself from imagining the trajectories of various crashes. But then I just fell in love with barebacking the world like this.

original willy wonka children all growed up; food chain barbie; colorful condom packaging from japan; stop prisoner rape; karl rove may be an odious man but he did breed a hottie; doesn't bush look like he's wearing a big fancy dress in this photo?