Hot Now

My friend was in town from California. Her boyfriend came, too. It was the first time any of us had seen him in person. He has the eyes of a Siberian Husky. His arm hair is burned deeply into my mind in neat and obedient rows. Arm hair varies. Mine is good, but there's no order to it, and that's fine. I recently found out some men use straightener in their beards. I have vanity, but it's a lazy vanity. I probably won't try to straighten any hair on my body.

I was late to the bar. When I got there, someone told me I'd gotten hot, which is one of those compliments that's also an insult. A man with a blue drink stood behind my California friend and kept his eyes on her ass for a while. Someone said a silver fox was watching me, but I didn't believe it. I'm in denial about strangers finding me attractive. My California friend's boyfriend came back from the restroom and told us he was standing at the urinal and a drunk man came up and sniffed the air and said, "Asparagus, huh?"

There have been a lot of toads lately. I picked one up and it peed all over my hand in a sort of water balloon explosion. I used to have this dream of keeping a garden and making a toad house. A toad house is an overturned flower pot full of damp moss. I did keep a garden once, but I didn't make a toad house. It never occurred to me.

I wrote a book. You can pre-order it at Tiny Hardcore Press. One of my friends asked me what you do when you finish writing a book, and I said, "You start writing another book." I have a new project going, but that's all I can say.

There are people talking in my yard. Hush now. I'm going to make a peanut butter and apple pie.

Is There Anything

The joke on my family is God is trying to end our genetic line. Three of us grandchildren are out homosexuals. My cousin and I came out to each other at the same time on a family vacation. We said we had secrets we wanted to tell, and we dicked around all afternoon trying to tell them. We resorted to pen and paper. I told my cousin I was gay, and she told me she was a lesbian. I was sad because I'd wanted us to check out guys together. Sometimes men would come by the dock in fishing boats or on jet skis and try to flirt with my oldest cousin. She's straight. The men were sometimes attractive and often shirtless, and I would have to write it down somewhere how hot I thought they were. One summer, a man with hairy legs accused me of trying to look up his shorts. He was not wrong.

My brother came out years later. In the extended family, there are even more gay cousins. Out of the three of us gay grandchildren, there's an assumption we'll never have children of our own. Someone in my family was telling me about raising kids, and they said, "But you'll never have to worry about that mess." It's something I let slide because I've never wanted kids. I'm lucky if I get home once a year. One year, though, I might show up with a kid. You never know. Next year, I'll show up with the book I wrote. I'll let you know how that goes, especially after my family sees the back cover. It's a sexy back cover. I told you I appreciate a man's hairy leg, and on this back cover there is a man's hairy leg.

Josh and I went to a bookstore tonight. There was a couple on a date. Go into any bookstore and there's a couple on a date. The woman had an armful of cheap DVDs. The man was taking books off the shelf and telling the woman she should read them.

He said, "Read the first page of that," and he put a book on her stack of DVDs.

She said, "Open it for me. I literally have no hands."

I looked to see. She had hands.

The man told her about more books.

She said, "Why don't you write?"

He said, "Because I can read."

The woman went to sit down and sort through her stack. She fanned everything out like she was playing cards. I looked back at the shelf and found a book one of my teachers wrote. It was on sale for a dollar. A mother and daughter were looking at cookbooks an aisle or two over. The daughter got excited about a cookbook with just recipes for rice and potatoes. The mother wanted to know if there were any recipes in there for sweet potatoes.

The daughter said, "Not as many as you'd think."

She started making fart noises with her mouth.

The mother said, "You can just tell me if you want to go."

The daughter said, "I want to go."

But they didn't leave. It is hard for some people to leave a bookstore.

Sent

There's been a document open on my desktop for a year and a half, and now that document is closed. I turned in my first book tonight. I was told by one of my editors to sit there quietly a few minutes after I pressed SEND and absorb what I'd just done. When I was through absorbing, I got up and went to the kitchen and ate a handful of cashews. I looked at the floor. I store onions on a shelf in a mesh bag, and the onion skins still escape the bag and get on the floor. If we talk about my book, and you say, "What's next?" I'll tell you I'm going to figure out a better way to store my onions. And then I'll say I'm going to write a novel.

Josh and I take walks most nights. It's getting a little cooler, and the large crickets are coming out. They sound like lizards in the dead grass. There's one block on our walk where people smoke on their porches and fan their faces and stare at us like we just stumbled onto their farmland. That's my favorite block.

I have a story in the last issue of Dark Sky, but Dark Sky closed before they could put up their last issue, so you can find my story at Barrelhouse. It's like when you see your friend with her ex, and she's drinking with him, and she's kissing him, and she sees you looking, and she says, "Shut up, Casey Hannan. It's complicated." 

I shaved off all my facial hair the other day. I looked in the mirror and said, "I look younger." Josh said, "No, you look older." I looked in the mirror again and I saw it, but that's OK.

Friend of a Friend

One of my friends had a housewarming party in a city where I've only ever bought gas. It's a fine city. There's this busted up brick church for sale a few houses down from my friend's new place. Josh and I want to live in that church. You could say something about our childhoods and how we grew up in churches and how maybe that means something specific about us as adults, but I don't know. The last time we were visiting my hometown, we drove around and looked at the historic houses for sale. They all had great porches. We have an OK porch, but we don't have porch furniture. The thing about an old church is maybe it doesn't have a porch, but it does have huge front steps and high ceilings and a bell tower and a lot of skinny windows and ghosts, jeez, so many ghosts.

The housewarming party happened the one day of the summer it tried to rain. We sat outside anyway, and this guy who lives in the basement next door kept coming out in his pajamas and walking around. He'd look up at the sky and then go back in his basement a while and come back out wearing a different pair of pajamas. And that doesn't mean a thing. It was a Saturday, and this is a free country.

Speaking of a free country, I'm reading for SmokeLong Quarterly this week, and you're free to send me a story. I get to choose one for publication. I'm reading blind, which means I won't know who sent which story. If you have it in you, please send me something amazing.

My best internet friend, xTx, has been running a series on her blog called Supermodel Summer. She's had some great contributions from artists and writers, and my story, Thin and Then, ran a couple days ago. There's a horse in it, and that's all some of you need.

After the housewarming party, we all walked a couple blocks to do karaoke in the only bar downtown. Everyone in the bar was wearing boots. The only empty tables were by the restrooms. A couple of cowboys were playing pool back there, and they were stern and curious about our group of mostly gay guys and women. They kept looking at us, and they were both attractive in a really scary, country way, so I kept looking at them. They had two spectators, sisters I guess, who were older and wearing denim jackets. This was a bar where you could still smoke, so the sisters were smoking, and I swear to God, chewing gum at the same time. I wanted to see the cowboys naked, but I wanted the life story on those sisters.

The drunkest guy in our party came over and wanted to have a serious talk about dating in Kansas City. He wanted our advice. Josh and I met over eight years ago in a tea shop, and we haven't stopped being together since. There isn't much advice there. There's no math. My friends say I'm very lucky, and I say it's not luck; it's a choice. We choose to love each other and be together. It's not romantic or magical, but it's the best choice I've ever made. I tried to tell the drunk guy that, but he said, "I don't know. It feels like there's more to you guys than that." And of course he was right.

I like this song.

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary

You will have heard it's hot. It's so hot a woman pulled out her right breast to get some air. Josh and I were taking a walk, and we were about to cross paths with this woman. I thought she had her arms crossed, and I was seeing her elbow, but that meant she had three arms, and no, it was a smooth black boob. The woman didn't look at us. It's just so hot out there. I've been dreaming about scorpions.

Josh is in a play about DADA. It's about the literary DADA, not the visual art DADA. Josh and I went to art school, so we know the material. It's hard with history. I feel like it dies getting to me, and all I have to look at are the bones. That's fine, though. I wanted to be a paleontologist. I like bones. This play is better than bones. It's set up like a cabaret. The actors have a lot of fun with sound poetry and manifestos. Everyone is attractive and excited. There's one more show on Friday, so go, please go.

I took my shirt off and swam in a pool for the first time in maybe two years. There are Speedos, and then there are Speedos. Speedos are the illusion of clothing, and I'm on-board with that illusion. One man in a Speedo climbed out of the pool, and his Speedo slipped enough for some well-made ass to fall out. Speedos are like Band-Aids in that they always fall off when they're wet. I looked at my friend and said, "I got what I came for," and she said, "I know, right?" It's good to be in agreement. Two other men had Speedos, and they apologized for them, but we all waved our hands and said, "Oh no, it's fine." And it was. It was very fine indeed.

Molly Laich interviewed me. I forgot to tell you about it, but here you go. She came dangerously close to saying my name three times in a row. We know what comes of that. Nothing good.

Burter and Erl

I don't know many of the men in my neighborhood, but I've given a lot of them honorary boyfriend status. There's the pizza boyfriend, because he works at the pizza place and walks by my house to get to work. He smokes and always wears shorts and never wears socks. Pizza boyfriend looks like a young Allen Ginsberg by way of James Franco. I know, I know, and I could say I'm sorry, but I'm not.

There's an entire house of new boyfriends across the street. I haven't seen any of them up close. They wear soccer jerseys and sit on their porch and read a lot. That's all I need. They share a motorcycle. One of them mows the lawn in khakis. It's ridiculous, but that's fine because he has to mow uphill, and those khakis do favors.

It's the hottest summer on record, and I'm really into bread baking. There's bread in the oven right now. I can't breathe when I go in the kitchen. I'm losing my belly, so I'm walking around the house shirtless in the heat. I'm very pale, like the underside of a snake, if you're into that sort of thing. I touch my arms all the time. I like to feel progress being made.

Josh is in a show about DADA. If you're local, you should see it. If you're not local, well, I can't help you.

I haven't talked about the book in a while. I'm almost done. Don't worry about it. It's a good book.

One of my best little stories is at matchbook. They're excited about it. I'm excited about it. We're all excited about it. It's time you got excited about it, too. It's another in a long line of penis tales. Go read. 

Oh my G. I hate telling people what to do.

Here Is Where

I hate running about as much as I hate making small talk about pets, but I ran this weekend, and I liked it. My legs are sore, and I like that, too. It reminds me of when I worked at the museum and stood there in a rental suit and got my nose dirty in other people's business. I had to say no a lot, and I hate saying no. There were other good guards who liked saying no. There were no guards who looked good in their suits. I had no idea about anyone's body shape, but there was this one guy who had a big, beautiful writing desk of an ass, and he stretched that nasty pant fabric as far as it would go.

My body is going through changes. I stretched my arms over my head the other day, and my friend said, "Do I see muscles?" This is fun because I've never had muscles. Now I have a few. I put a tank top in the rotation, and it got me a few good stares from this hot guy at the Indian buffet. We can blame the holiday. Fireworks look like electric pubes, and everyone was in the mood.

Josh's birthday was yesterday, too. The highlight of that was walking around the neighborhood last night and smelling the fireworks. The trees were too tall to see anything, but Josh loves the smell of fireworks, so happy birthday Josh.

I have some stories coming out this summer. You'll read them or you won't. They'll be there anyway.

My family is getting together in Virginia this weekend. There's no way it'll happen for me to be there this year, and that's a real shame. The Missouri River has nothing on the James River.

Once, when I was afraid of my body, I wore a white polo shirt to cover my belly at the beach. I was in the direct sun, and it was so hot. I was keeping an eye on my cousins while my grandmother took a break under the trees. My cousins wanted to walk down the beach, and I said they could go as long as they didn't go too far. They went too far. I couldn't see them anymore. I looked back to the parking lot. My grandmother was smoking and sitting on a rock wall and reading a book.

The beach was on the James River. A replica colonial ship was coming in to dock. The ship had cannons. I was scared I'd really messed up, but my cousins came back, and they were fine. They'd picked up some crab claws and wanted to keep them as souvenirs. I said no. I said they'd fall apart and start to smell.

My cousins wanted me to swim after lunch. I kept my shirt on and said it was because I didn't want to burn. We went to a lake later that week, and there was a guy who finally convinced me to take my shirt off. He said it was too hot for me to be wearing heavy cotton. I couldn't see his eyes behind his sunglasses. I could just see the puddle of my belly reflected back at me. There are pictures on Facebook. You can see me pale and happy to be in the dirty water. You can see me drunk and wincing, soft and shirtless in the sun.