BROKE WITH EXPENSIVE TASTE (PRIDE: IN THE NAME OF LOVE)
dancing on my own at the bacchanal. the chapel at the abbey where it cost $20 to get in. with my too sweet 1st drink $15 margarita now behind me, I clutch an $11 beer, shimmy, shimmy ya, and contemplate taking off my shirt. to my left the topless, overjoyed bear brigade pass around a tiny baggie. noses in the vicinity sniffle and twitch. marijuana vapors billow here, there, and everywhere, and I dream of my refrigerated chow mein, 16.95 and some change, while uttering to myself
damn,
being gay is expensive.
Boys in the Hood
The shirt accents the chest. Works overtime to pump up
the biceps forever trying. But it can’t do a thing about the belly
that claps back continuously once buttons are fastened atop it. —the Queer Man’s conundrum. . . Summertime, and the living is easy. . . — Also,
it looks no good untucked. Fucking hips!, noted
upon standing in front of the mirror, refusing to change this shirt. Determined to
take this walk. Despite the late July, Friday afternoon heat, his body prone to perspiring, as it is now, as the cologne is applied and he looks himself over,
sealing the deal with a Fuck It! Why so concerned
with thoughts you can’t hear and looks you can’t see from open windows or cars
passing you by?. . .
Two blocks and the daytime reverie is broken. Baseball caps of a
masculine brigade spotted in the distance; Craig and Smokey on a porch. To cross or not cross the street. THAT is the question. Instead,
the steps go faster. Instead, found something to do with the hands; a gathering place for the downward facing gaze. Expecting the worst,
granted this instead: I see you got your Hoochie Daddy shorts on! —Wait,
are they flirting?. . .— It’s hot!,
the reply. Everybody all smiles. Trotted off
like Loretta Devine saying goodbye to Gregory Hines.
NOTES
Craig and Smokey, mentioned in Boys in the Hood, are the main characters from the Black Comedy Cinema Classic ‘Friday’. The closing Loretta Devine and Gregory Hines moment in the piece is a memorable scene taken from another classic piece of Black Cinema, ‘Waiting to Exhale’.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Hailing from South Central, Los Angeles, Tauwan Patterson is a recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina who, with his poetry, aims to, in the words of the great Poet and Thinker Marcus Jackson, announce his freedom and presence. Making a sound that echoes in the end that says Tauwan Patterson. No more. No less.
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