Kissing at the red light you’d pull your scrubs

to your knees and let me inhale. What’s one

more stain to a nurse? Hints of Doms and Subs

had hit a nerve. “My husband isn’t fun

like that,” you murmured. After the drive-thru

I’d go down on you, tonguing inner thighs,

belly folds, cleavage and cleft. “Make me spew.”

And you did. A scent of girl cum, French fries

and pine would cling to me all day. Sluice rhymes.

Anxious breath. Things that adults did, I thought,

were weird. Was this cool? Fonzie-level cool?

Who knew? It was how we spent our lunchtimes.

You with this anxious child. “It’s our secret,”

you’d say, dropping me back at middle school.

][][

Notes:

With his trademark, “Ayyy,” dressed in a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle, Arthur Fonzarelli, better know as Fonzi or The Fonz, was a character from the 1970-80s TV show, Happy Days … and I was at that age where the pinnacle of cool had to be either David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust or Fonzi, even with that episode where he jumped the shark.