Print This PostLeatherbar in Louisville (owed)
The city hums traffic through lights, blinking
eyes right before sleep, a flatline pattern,
automated efficiency designed
to pull cars through midnight into dawn.
I fall inside, privy to dulled movement,
beer foaming to a quiet stasis, smoke
veiling the bartender and patrons.
Smells of gin, sweat, amyl, tool and product
of lifestyle manufacture, the market
for primacy, the dank and dark of cave
signifying spaces where men belong
to men, belie the confidence of pose,
migraine smiles suggesting satisfaction.
Don, the shirtless bartender, jovial
and smirking at me, dangerously out
of place, nudges me with jokes and beer
into talking, a thaw that draws other
moths to the light of the HD big screen
porno flashing raw tension behind my stool.
Maladroit, I can’t navigate a way
between communion and commodity,
a simple new guy that laughs politely,
declines shots, thank you, declines dance, thank you,
out of place in the sanguine atmosphere
of easy sex in public, among friends.
They offer me beer, friendship, a blowjob.
In this space constructed by and for men to pose, to pretend like
the word faggot doesn’t exist, a highly studied safe zone,
rules sit simple: pleasure transcends the body’s
politics and the cattle grind of out there. To cum is to arrive.
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Airek Beauchamp is attending Binghamton University where he is working on his PhD in English, studying writing pedagogy and sound. He is a Binghamton resident, although he really hates winter.
