I am holding my friend Gino’s hand
and asking the army recruiter for more information –
About the Marines, please I say. He fidgets with his
cuff links, paws at his first communion crucifix through
his shirt, drags the back of his hand across the close-shaven
sandpaper of his chin. Gino is staring
him down through the eyeliner he wears
like a middle finger.
We watch this stranger. Caught between the trained
movements of a machine and the churned butter in his body.
Just like mine two months before when I said hell no
to a trip to the gay club.
I just don’t want to lead anyone on. It’d be, like, colonizing the space
I said. Which sounds a lot better than I’m uncomfortable. I wouldn’t
know how to stand.
What do I do when a song I like comes on?
In east Africa, I walked the dirt roads of a violent slum, my pinky finger
intimately wrapped around the smallest digit of the most infamous thug
on the block. He was my friend. It is how friends walk the streets.
When I greet my Iranian friend’s father, we embrace cheeks, twice.
In Thailand, my host casually patted my leg at the first family dinner.
I nearly jumped through the window, thinking he was reaching for something
else. Everyone laughed. Probably confused as to why this strange foreigner
had been trained to be so foreign to the gentle touch of a man.
A passerby gives Gino and I matching names. I tongue the word around in my
mouth. Feel the tender sting make a home in my torso. Stare at the word
Brotherhood splayed across a camouflage banner.
The recruiter stares down at the table, as though it holds the secret
code to life’s great questions. His corrected stutter and slightly overcompensating
stance, blends into the decorations behind him. So much so that I can barely even
tell he is still there. He pretends as if we are not. Begins sorting and then resorting
the three lonely pamphlets dwarfed by the large rectangular table where they now sit.
Boys, seriously, I’m just doing my job. Please . . . his mouth begs in a voice so small
and so human it makes me feel like I have just blurted out a secret this man has given
his life to guard, like freedom.