“Do you love me, Metro?”

“Call me baby,” he said drowsily.

“Is that why you asked me here? Just to call you baby?”

It wasn’t always like this, I told myself. A quick fuck in an abandoned warehouse. It wasn’t always like this. Once, we strolled across campus holding hands. Once, underneath the streetlamp behind the library at the marble stairs leading onto the quad, he kissed me. Once, anyone studying all night in the reserve room or just getting high late that night could have seen us. Once, someone did. Once, we marched together in the commencement procession. Then I arrived in New York first because Metro went to Louisiana to visit his family. When he came back North he seemed different, as if the change of place had given him new eyes and a different voice. Then there was something strange and desperate about him. But I showed him, didn’t I? I showed him who the real nigger was. I kept my hand closed over my palm. I wouldn’t let him smell it. And I didn’t have to dance that time, did I? Like I’m dancing now that he’s gone, Dancing, dancing…

And he was in my arms…was in my arms…

One step, two steps, three steps together…

One step, two steps…

The footsteps were real. Shadows. Presences. Body smells. A door opened somewhere close by. I felt air all over my body, all on my skin as if someone were blowing kisses. Then, as if all the breathable air inside was sucking out, a long human gasp came from somewhere behind me. Only a choke of horror remained. “Jesse!” I was too scared to look.

Lonny

Lonny

It wasn’t just me,” I told the police. Red leaves are tiny mouths falling through the sky. They dry on the ground and talk back in a scratchy, girlish voice. They say things like, “You ain’t never had a chance. You ain’t never had a chance.” And they dirty my sneaks saying, “My boy. My boy, Christ Jesus!” Shit. You have to step on them to shut them up. You got to keep on stepping sometimes until they come off the ground and come off your shoes with a sigh. Leaves leaving. Ain’t that a bitch? And then they brush back, leaving the chalk outline of a guy you want to fuck. But leaves leaving in November say, “No. No. No.” And you talk back to those lips crackling underfoot, saying, “Shit man. I make my own chances. I make them myself.” And they lay there scattered like blood in the street, shocked, brittle, open, and hard, like pulled teeth that won’t shut up. And I get to asking myself why Moms had to be there cackling at me like that. I told her once how things happened the way they did. I told everybody and signed my name in ink where they told me to sign. Even the doctor promised me clean sneaks.