My Reluctant Lover


Maybe he was bi
and didn't want to say so.

Once. he told me he'd promised
to be faithful, but that just
applied to not fucking
other women.
He might try a man
if he was desperate enough
for variety.

When the male stripper visited
his out of the closet gay friend
in our commune for three months.
the one who stripped as a woman,
took hormones
grew boobs
tucked his penis so tight
into his dancing strap
that nobody knew the difference.
he wooed my reluctantly
faithful lover.

The night of the gay parade
in downtown Boston
the seasonal stripper
and his friend
dressed him in women's clothes, 
applied lipstick
fluffed up his curly brown hair,
loped arms around his shoulders.
He beamed,
happy to be made center stage
in this madcap rerun
of Birdcage Meets The Commune.

I cried in the bathroom
at the sight of the man
who'd sworn his love
shared his body
in every way a man and a woman
can make love together.
I cried seeing him so pleased
to be part woman, to LOOK
so much like a woman that
I half expected him to join
the parade, try gay sex
and lose, or find himself in it.

The giant of a black man consoling me
in the bathroom owned
the commune.
Forget it, he said.
Robert always did like to be a star
even if it means wearing lipstick
and cavorting in the scent
of two gay men in heat.

Manny's wife climbed telephone poles
for a living, walked nude
through the hallways to her bath,
popped into the shower
with us one day, along 
with her giggling friends.

Maybe I was picky, but
I liked to choose who
I shared my bath
and my lover with.

Another commune mate,
limbs crippled with arthritis
confronted me the second week:
the single men living here before
always serviced me. Her words.
I don't know why your lover can't, too.
Unmarried monogamy didn't rate
a page bend in her book.

We moved to another commune,
adopted a cat,
bought a small boat,
watched fellow commune mates come and go.

My lover finally finally 
opened his trousers
to a nurse I once knew. 
He only confessed they
were 'thinking about it'
when I was on a rave about
how glad I was we were straight
with each other.

I guess he felt guilty
and needed to throw me a bone.

He told me two weeks later
he'd changed his mind.
Her thighs were too pasty white. 
Said he'd caught a peek of them,
though it was dead winter.

He must've been checking
her for frostbite.

We married to save our relationship.
He left barely over a year later.
He was the best lover I ever had.
I thought that part was our glue.
He left me for a woman with one inch long
hair and a rear end the size of a bar stool.
He'd always told me that my 'almost not there'
figure was far too fat for his taste.

We made love twice more
after he left, the connection
as strong as the first time.

I thought it meant
he still loved me, but

the last thing he said
was that our sex had never been
great, that
I'd been operating under
some sort of illusion.

I think he decided he had to be unkind
in order to move on, to bend
reality so he could
fuck another woman
guilt free
and with nobody left
weeping in the bathroom.



Pris Campbell
©2006


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