Refuse
If it hadn't been for bumps that looked like measles,
my parents might not have known for years. Sure, they
had found my copy of Consenting Adult, and they knew
I didn't dress out in PE anymore, and they knew I stayed out
later than they thought a 15-year-old should. But they didn't
Know:
I had done things they thought were sinful, things that, 10 years
later, would kill my friends because they did them in places
less mundane than Alabama. And those are the pictures their minds
painted, I guess, my parents: dark rooms, back seats, hairy old
men's tongues in my young crevasses. What's funny is
that the night
I got those measles bumps, I was a perfect
gentleman. Didn't drink. Too tired and amazed to cruise. I
danced, but kept my clothes on (unlike a couple we saw). My shirt
outed me. Dacron polyester (Don't groan. It was 1976.), black
yoke-front cowboy print, it didn't go well with smoke and sweat.
I broke out
in flaming red bumps that scared my 20-year-old
friend into hysterics, and his hysterics were hysterics.
Of course, it was nothing. Of course, I was fine. And of course,
my parents threw me out, like garbage, into the straight-laced
Sunday morning: refuse to be forgotten. But
they didn't.
01-24-99