to stop her eyes from
seeing me staring at her breasts;
because I couldn’t
stop staring at her breasts
and she finally
called me out on it, but in the
most gentle way,
telling me not to be ashamed,
it’s ok to watch,
and later, it’s ok to touch;
because Don suddenly
can’t stand any trysts that might
make me a man,
so we pack up and go to San
Cristóbal a day early;
because all I want is to march
insects between her
breasts and squeeze her nipples
till milk comes
pouring out (or so I imagine it);
because I get bitchy
and kick J. out of my bed
that night, telling Don
I’m not sharing anymore;
because Don thinks he can
calm me with his mouth;
because I push him
away at first but finally give in;
because the woman’s
skin is soft and smells nice
and Don smells of
armpit, crotch, and unwashed
scalp, like fish guts;
because the tickle of his beard
makes it take forever
and by the end of it his mouth
is in pain (good, I think)
because J., whose mouth is soft,
gets tired quicker
than I can come; because I can’t
come anymore
with my hand or anyone else’s;
because for some reason
my body and my imagination
won’t work together,
all I see are hands and mouths
and a body I don’t want;
San Cristóbal, 1993 – Spring
Because the room is a bathroom
in an old colonial hotel
with tiny tiles arranged in a drunk
mosaic, varying shades
of blue with no discernible pattern;
because my fever has
not yet reached its pitch and my
delirium is merely
building; because Don thinks
I can ride it out,
and doesn’t call a doctor until
the third night;
because I am hallucinating —
blocks of time
come at me like massive, three-
dimensional cubes,
one per flick of the radio clock,
till sunlight breaks
through the frosted glass
and Don wakes up
and lifts me off the floor;
because I ordered
the hamburger at the “western”
café next to the old
colonial hotel; because
the burger came with
crisp, fresh lettuce, freshly cut
onions and a tomato
still beaded with the water
it had been rinsed in;
because the water, drunk by half
a million people a day,
is not safe to drink unless you
grew up with it;
because at fourteen I am totally
out of my element,
and I say horrible things to Don
whenever he crosses me,
which is almost always;
because I imagine
the horrible things that might
happen to him
and think of ways to make them
happen; because I wake
in a fever to find Don’s wrist
flailing at my hips;
because Don is drenched in sweat
and smells like a man
who doesn’t know how to bathe;
because the hard knocking
of his hand against my pelvis
shakes me awake,
and I push him away so violently
he hits his head on the
bed frame and comes back bleeding
from his scalp; because
it feels good, almost victorious,
to have hurt him so badly;
Chiapas, 1993 – Spring
Because the room is an Aztec
panic room where
sacrificed children were bound
with rope and had
their hearts cut out then burned
in cups of flames,
Temple of Doom style;
because I won’t talk
to him, won’t talk to anyone now
and he declares he’s
had enough, says, I’m sick
of this shit and I give up;
because I say, give up what?
then hate him
and shut him out even more;
because he feels
wronged, says,
How many other
teenagers have someone who
will suck their cock
on command?
and it shocks me,
he has never referred to it
so coarsely before,
not a beautiful organ, or
a part of your body
but a cock; because everything
that was once forbidden
is now commonplace, like
the legs of a piano,
bare as a mirror after a death;
because he asked
me once, Why is any of this
taboo?; because when
we get back to the hotel I am
no longer a nice young
man but a mean kid and it’s true,
I don’t really care
about Don, or the other boys,
because we’re all
just trying to survive each other
any way we can;
Topeka, 1993 – Summer
Because the room is his old room
in the house where he
grew up; because it contains
the wreckage of his younger
self, boxes filled with pictures,
graded papers, report cards,
passport photos in which only
his mouth is recognizable;
because his mother insists his
father was a gentle man;
because Don insists his father
was not, so the truth
of who his father was and what
he may have done
is rather obscured;
because it is summer again
and I just want to be outside
with the others,
I don’t care if a storm is coming;
because he insists
I stay with him at his mother’s
and not at his sister’s
like everyone else;
because I am older now,
and angry enough to kill him;
because his niece
does things to the others
I’ve only heard about
and offers to do them to me, too,
but Don won’t let me
spend the night at her house;
because I try to make it
over there on my own and get
caught in a storm
so terrible it makes the news,
and when Don finally
finds me hiding beneath a tree
he puts his arm
around me, takes my bike
and loads it onto the rack
and puts a towel on my neck;
because I just wanted
to get off, with anyone, it hardly
mattered who; because,
for once, he offers me money,
and so I finally cave,
fuck him
the way he wants me to;
Santa Fe, 1993 – Summer
Because the room is the deck
of a house belonging
to Don’s old friends w
ho are also
my parents’ old friends,
who love him and won’t believe
the charges that will
be leveled against him, who will
write letters on his behalf
saying Don truly loves children;
because Don babysat
their own children back when
all of us lived here
in this perpetual amber light
under which everything
is beautiful; because Don is still
a hero to everyone;
because he is still considered sane
and hasn’t lost
his shit yet, though his face,
if you look closely,
betrays the strain; because he still
bothers to be charming,
to be the good old Don who might
not have the academic
acuity of his friends, but whose
gift for friendship they
can only marvel at — how easily
troubled boys take to him,
how quickly they mature
under his attention,
how confident they are, how
authoritative they become
in matters of the body and the mind;
because it’s dinnertime —
tonight we will eat burritos
with red and green
chile and afterwards sleep
under the stars;
because I am determined
to sleep alone tonight,
but Don insists I sleep next to him;
because to protest
is to call attention to myself;
because I can tell
he is trying desperately
to keep his hands off
the others; because he is nearing
the end of his ability
to maintain his fiction;
because I understand,
I am the important one,
the only one;
Forest Glen, 1993 – Winter
Because the room is the entire
second floor of the cabin
where everyone sleeps together
and downstairs is the place
where everyone eats and it is
the most normal place
in the world until you visit,
already fifteen and
not really surprised that Don
can’t keep it together
anymore; because everything
is unbelievably
fucked up now, he isn’t even
trying to hide it — one kid,
a husky, powerful twelve-year-old,
is so giddy he pulls
out his willy at the table,
and later, complaints
spill out over the talking feather —
in this way, they
appeal to me for help; because
I am now the oldest,
the one who can say fuck you
to Don, so can you please
tell him to stop?;
because I take him
down to the river for a walk,
just the two of us
with a flashlight, and ask him
what the fuck
he is doing, don’t you know
what you are doing
will get you into trouble?;
because he says I know,
I know and sounds sad
the way a man being
reprimanded for trying to help
those less fortunate
than himself sounds sad;
because he knows
what’s coming, what’s always
been coming — it is
just a matter of time before it
comes and takes
all that he has built away;
1994
Vancouver, 1994 – Summer
Because the room is a campsite
near Vancouver, BC,
where you meet D. for the first time;
because he’s the first
sane person you’ve met all summer;
because he is a genuinely
nice person, a desert child
from Southern
California, and you love how
blown away he is by
the sight of trees beside blue water,
the Northern Pacific
pushing into the coast, the cool inlets
peppered with green
islands, bristling with pine trees
as tall as buildings;
because D. is completely non-toxic,
pure in his happiness
to be here, to spend a year
in Cape Breton with Don
and the other students we plan
to pick up on the way
back to Nova Scotia; because he saw
Don’s ad in a home-
schooling magazine and asked
his mother if he could go;
because all he’d wanted
for years was to go back
to Indiana, the most beautiful place
he’d ever seen, because
of the trees; because I’ve finally made
a friend, and I can’t wait
to show him the best spots in the
woods near Don’s place;
because we promise each other
we’re totally gonna
hang out this year, and in my mind
I’m already convincing
my mother to drive me to the island
more often, once a
month at least; because an hour
after we meet we’re
already planning to build a fort,
and two days later,
after a fight breaks out, we ditch
the idiots and follow
the train tracks until a train
comes, about a mile
from where we’ve pitched our tents,
and dare each other
to stand close enough to feel
the train’s vacuum
as it whips past us, opening
our arms to its tremendous
creaking power, screaming
until the last car
clatters past us;
J.H. Gillis, 1994 – Fall
Because the room is an airless
classroom in a school
with no windows where a voice
calls your name over
the PA so everyone assumes
you’re in trouble;
because it is French class, fifth
period, and it’s your
mother on the phone, wanting
to know if you’ve heard
from Don, but not telling you
why she wants to know,
telling you I’ll tell you later
and I just need to know
where Don might go —
though why would you?
Don doesn’t call you, you can’t
remember a single
occasion on which either of you
talked by phone;
because you knew him better
than anyone, she says;
because the truth is clear even if
the logistics aren’t,
it’s so obvious what happened:
somebody held on
to the feather, kept talking;
Sydney, 1994 – Fall
Because the room is a Motel 6
where three boys
are waiting for Don to finish
his meeting or was it
his dental appointment?; because
the story keeps changing
every hour that he calls to keep
them calm and patient
and make them wait without
wandering — just a few more
hours he tells them, things are
a little more complicated
than I thought; because the boys
get restless and one of
&
nbsp; them is old enough to be
suspicious, something
is wrong he says, something isn’t
right, so he calls
the desk manager, who calls
the police, who want
to file a missing person report;
because a day has passed
into night and night into
morning and Don has still
not returned, has stopped
calling even; because
the only number the oldest boy
knows to call is mine,
so the police reach my mother,
who calls me at school,
wanting to know where Don is
and where he might
have gone; because there is no
chain of custody —
all three boys are foreign citizens
and must be returned
immediately to their countries
of origin — and my mother,
being a responsible woman,
a parent of three,
drives three and a half hours
northeast to Sydney,
at the lung tip of Cape Breton
Island, to fetch the boys
while the RCMP contact
Immigration who liaise
with New Mexico State Police
and California State
Police and the U.S. Embassy
in Saudi Arabia;
because plane tickets need
to be arranged and
one of the parents doesn’t have
any money; because
the whole thing takes about
a week, maybe longer,
so the two older boys and I
drink stolen bitters
on my bedroom floor while
the rules of adult
uncertainty roll forward;
J.H. Gillis, 1994 – Fall
Because the room is the men’s
room just outside
the teachers’ lounge which has
the cleanest seats
and I need to think about
what’s clearly going
to happen next; because all eyes
will turn to me, the one
who knew him best, and there
will be no denying
anything, unless . . . ; because
my mind has been
trained to make exceptions, nothing
is ever absolutely true;
because human beings apply
their aberrations
unwittingly, inconsistently,
judiciously; because
I can always say it didn’t happen
to me and who could
prove it did?; because I’ll say
I was the exception,
the one whose trust couldn’t be
violated — or rather,
better, it was my father whose
trust even Don
wouldn’t violate; because that
will appeal
to my father’s vanity;
because my mother
will blame herself in parallel
to everyone else;
because her blame will be
obvious, will be a truth
impossible-not-to-accept;
because I know
one day I’ll have to come clean,
but not yet;
North Grant, 1994 – Fall
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