Ponyboy by Eliot Duncan

Author:Eliot Duncan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

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8 *

The bar was tiny, it only had two tables. The walls and ceiling were red, the décor glistened. The woman at the bar liked him a lot, winking and talking about Bruce Springsteen in my direction. He looked like this was the last time. I feared it with agony. I tried to keep up with him. We talked about Keats’s poem “This Living Hand.” I sank into his eyes and told him the boy truth of me.

That makes sense, you’ve always felt so boy to me, he said. Between us I felt an unopened excitement, possible lives together, the one he knew I wanted with him. Like he was sorry, he said he and Charlotte were going to therapy, that they were going to try to work it out. Oh, I said, too smashed with shock to react.

I tried not to feel all the way but my eyes glossed over with tears. He paid for the beers. On the street, he looked at me too long and said, You’d be a really good boyfriend. The knife twisted. We kissed. He brought the inside of his hand over my skull and then held it firm on the back of my neck, protecting something we shared. Good night, he said. As I watched him become shadow, I became a cascade of sinking need. To Gabriel, I became superfluous. To myself, I became silent in loss.

Desolate, I turned back into the bar. I made myself vomit in the bathroom. I slowly washed my hands and avoided my reflection. I did what I knew to do and ordered another drink.

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