Like a Texan.

Like a redneck Texan.

Once when I was making licuados for breakfast, he said,

Great, I love smoothies!

One knew what a woman wants above all else is words.

To be told he loves her.

To be told how he is going to love her as he is loving her.

To be told there is no woman like her.

I can’t forget him.

I don’t remember his name.

He is not my ex,

Nor my y, nor even my z.

He is my eterno.

One night on a bed of sand, under a canopy of falling stars,

One, who wanted to make love to him,

Made love to me.

He to him. I to they.

And afterwards I concluded a ménage à trois is useless because:

I need love.

A semblance of love at least.

Eternity.

And how can you ignite eternity if preoccupied with—How do I look?

One didn’t care what he looked like, and this was precisely why

He was sexy.

He was as impeccable and godly as GQ.

But the more exquisite he grew, the more I turned into a rodent.

He was my own height and weight.

It was easy to flip him over in bed, and the fact that I could

Made me feel powerful.

And I liked this power.

One was big as a redwood, and when he lay on top

Of me, I felt like hollering: Timberrrrrrrrrrr!

One was violet like the ink from a sea creature, beautiful but deadly.

The skin beneath his clothes glowed from within like a lamp of alabaster.

His thing was a blue baby born without air.

His thing was pink like an angry child holding its breath.

I don’t remember his thing. I don’t remember anything.

One confessed, after making love to me, he was still in love

With a ballerina who had moved away to Kansas. Then,

He bought me pancakes.

One confessed he was still in love with an actress he’d dumped when

She was an unknown but was now celebrated in Cannes

And Paris. And this was killing him.

One bought me:

A five-pound typewriter.

A white Izod polo shirt I never wore because it was too Dallas.

A bag of pan dulce and put me to bed as if I was his only child.

But,

I was in love with a sex-puto who made

Love like a water-hose drowning a riot.

One took pictures of me nude when I was too shy to be nude.

I took pictures of me nude when I was too old to be nude.

It was obvious one had an Oedipal complex.

I was forty. He was twenty-one.

I lost interest in one, because I thought he looked like an old man.

He was forty. I was twenty-eight.

Pee on me, one demanded, and I knew I had to get out of there.