Do you remember ten springs ago? Back in that season of renewal, I remember gulping down IPAs at a now-closed dive bar with my roommates. At Market & Fremont, we wobbled onto the crosswalk in a pack of testosterone as a klatch of estrogen strode toward us.
Under this intersection’s red light, a woman offered me $20 for my corduroy pants. Would you plunge this transaction forward? I stripped down in San Francisco headlight glare gawking at my melanin whiteness.
My brain can’t wrestle down the truth though I’m certain I used my newfound money for a special dinner of either Rocky Mountain oysters or dos tacos de lengua.
I still have my tongue so I’ll slingshot you this story I’ve hashed out
pantless with tacos or testicles digesting inside. You decide. Did I stop there? I danced on the plague marking the division between landfill and bedrock, between sleepwalking and an awakened state.
Before a hotel window painted with vomit, I hugged the doorwoman as if she was my mother. I remember a memory I never had when I suckled milk from her breast. Down the block, a drum-and-guitar band played “Like a Rolling Stone” for BART riders to toss in change.
Under a bus stop shelter, I found security beside a man waiting for a 38 bus. With a smoke resting on his lips, he bought my Psycho T-shirt for $10.
Pantless and shirtless over at 6th & Powell, a black high heel sliced my own heel. Flat on my ass, I gaped up at a woman shrieking what can I do? Well she bought my boxer briefs for $25. When she rang her boyfriend, Donovan came right over. I sold him my dick for $50 — he now sports two dicks.
Naked in weekend shadow, I shook their hands with blood smeared on my palm.
Under the Tenderloin Museum awning, my skin, sinew, and muscle went for a penny to a soul shivering under their thin blanket. I clutched the sum of my body’s value as I rushed past without staring at a homeless vet sleeping in his wheelchair at Everywhere & Taylor. Clank clanking on shit-stained concrete,
I snaked up into Nob Hill where I finally found my heaven after an employee removed an old mannequin from a storefront display. The owner hired me without even an interview.
How glorious! Swing by soon — I feel alive whenever a customer nods in approval and purchases the business casual attire my skeleton frame advertises.
Hired hands undress me every night. In the morning, I’m propped back up with a clean suit gleaming in affluent sunlight.