Thrown in the Throat by Benjamin Garcia

Author:Benjamin Garcia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Toast to the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

The waitress tending our party of three dips her tanned

torso over the table as she grabs the menus from us men. Well,

men minus one, since it appears that I’m the only guy

not looking. Not looking at women anyway. The gold

crucifix on her necklace rubs against my brother’s straw

as she withdraws and Jesus ascends again to the heaven

of her breasts. The Motorboat is what I order, described

as something between a porter and a stout—now that’s

my kind of cross. My father says there’s no such thing as sin

that’s large and sin that’s small. Drinking too much, he says,

is the sin, not the drinking, as he peers through our waitress’

gingham crop top. There’s no such thing as small or large

sizes here, the waitress says, man-size is large, girl is small.

Do you really want to order the girl-size? Fine, I want the girl-

size. My brother laughs and my father looks away. It’s stupid,

my brother says. But are you really telling me her body

did nothing for you? My father looks at me like God

looking for the smallest redemption in Gomorrah, looking

for any reason in Sodom not to raze it. There is no reason

for how things are sometimes—better to accept. My father

didn’t raise me to be a girly man, a fact that might bother him,

except for the other fact: he didn’t raise me. It bothers him.

Some people are beyond saving. Me, I tell my brother, as I look

over his shoulder at the bearded roughneck going gaga

for our waitress as he sips from his bottle, there is nothing

straight about me, except maybe my hair, and even that

has gotten kinky with age. I drink beer because I’m thirsty

eating salted pretzels. I don’t have a prayer when I say amen.

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