Mustache. The kid sadly invisible gets kudos from the hippie chick every 4th Street Starbucks employee wanted to bang, or hand-feed gluten-free grain—Nice ‘stache!—you’d have thought I’d shot heroin, patrons staring. Seeing a far cooler me. Had it been actual heroin, I would surrender wholly.
Sister, Maria, pixie cut, early-April, Bloomington where morals and hairdos stand rigid, compliant. Effect on 11th grade like she’d appeared on LSD naked with a hand between her knees.
Curves of life took mustachional proportions. Impish. Deviant. Necessities of a good ‘stache—my ingredients into early-20’s. Magic lost once Terry Allens cavaliered his turquoise, white station wagon on our 11th-grade groins. The stage met a hero.
To become anything, if I wanted the thing I wanted. Sex. Tightening my hand around her throat, I’d become anything. I thought it pathetic. I came, harder than ever. Thought it pathetic. “That’s hot,” she said. We watched porn and ate Funyuns.
Fake it to make it. Fortune 500. Credit. Kids. Wife, Bettie. Last year, I pretended to still be the person to love their family.
Told people, “I love you.”
Told anyone.
Ask the question? “Who commits murder?”
You want to know?
The imaginative.
Harmless thrill seekers.
Steam blurs the mirror. Hairs slick, lathered but the downturned crescent. Life deciding who you are, you might cross a line one day. You saw a dog.
Tyler Dempsey has work forthcoming or most recently appearing in Back Patio Press, Lammergeier Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, and Gone Lawn. Find him on Twitter @tylercdempsey.