Hotline Grandma
You've reached the Back Door, the recorded voice
growled—a butch queen greeting I skipped.
I didn't want reminding the cost of leaving
my body behind. I could go to Voice Mail Jail
—where the "inmates" recorded 30 seconds
of inmost desires. I could be found in the Dark
Rooms: 9 chat chambers maxing out at 13 men.
Some nights I was lost in the anonymous mist
of moaning. I loved it when a guy climaxed,
triggering one or two more, field spilling
into bloom. But mostly, I dialed in to talk
like an old lady, talk in a creaky high voice
to guys who dreamed up aliases, handsomer
lives. People called me names: transvestite,
crossdresser. You think I put on my pearls for you
baby? I'd say in my pinched-purse voice. Oh, no,
babysitter precious. We were what we invented.
I was their clowning wise crone, Grandma
Moses, dispensing advice when Jake tested
positive, when Jeremy went away for heroin,
when Gary died but no one found his body
until Chris called his sister. Chris wasn't even
mentioned in the obituary, where he saw
Gary's real face for the first time—older,
chubbier than he'd let on, a picture of a man
looking out a window from a French
country kitchen, utterly unrecognizable
if you'd heard him laugh or come.
Hunger
I was the only first-year in The Composite Novel,
Dr. Morris's late-night seminar, spring semester.
I stayed silent, in awe of the seniors' insights,
said succinctly, jaggedly. They were jousting
for approval. After class, the best of them would continue
the debate over coffee and burgers in the all-night diner
in that tiny college town. I went there to write
when I did not know what else to do with my body.
As if the hostess knew, we were always sat
on separate wings: the writers, the critics.
The night in class we discussed Winesburg, Ohio,
how desire illuminated people, I finally spoke up.
It was late February. I don't remember exactly how
I defended Wing Biddlebaum—the novel's queer,
a fat and bald man who dreamed about young men,
and whose hands were constantly unrested—
fidgeting, Anderson writes. I immediately regretted
my voice in the charged air. I could feel them lean
away from me. He's a pervert, Serge said, he should be beaten
for wanting to touch those kids.
He's dreaming of other men, I said, not his students. And try
as she might, Dr. Morris could not steer us away
from the expected discussion: pedophilia as synonym
for queer. Later at the diner, Dex invited me to carry on
with the five of them, to talk more about Wing
and his hands. I slid next to Serge, whose body visibly
steeled. You could almost hear his neck tighten.
Sit over there, he hissed, and I moved, making a joke
weak as the coffee. I paid for everyone's coffee
with my parents' Visa. I was never summoned again.
At the end of the story, Wing kneels at the sight
of crumbs on his kitchen floor. He gathers them
one by one on a wet fingertip. He licks his finger,
the penitent on his knees, cleaning his dirty floor
with his hands, with his mouth.
