Mentor (April 2009)

I guy once tried to teach me how to eat pussy

Something about making a person just slightly uncomfortable,

…sweeping them off their feet, then diving right in

and I wonder,

Does this make him a mentor?

If I had been less embarrassed

and more able to pay attention

I am sure I would be a stronger person today.

Instead my red face died in laughter,

tried in laughter to say I’m young and unready

But I did learn from him.

A giant intimidating, man among men, bar fights and sexcapades

Yet an artist, a potter

his trade, his love distanced

Had I met a man so lonely and less able to express it? Yet when he told me, how much he missed me, in embarrassed undertones but direct, my heart sank.

Sexist jokes and other forms of willful ignorance and other forms of forced disrespect to show who was in and who was not

Don’t dare compare to lonely strangers embracing, regardless of your political correctness.

Putting trust in a strangers’ purchase of “fruit punch”

that turns out to be fruit punch,

because he wants you to tag along…

somehow turns creepy back alley bars, pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers

into shared possibilities to acknowledge

all people are worthy.

… Something about making a person just slightly uncomfortable,

sweeping them off their feet, then diving right in.

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This will have spacing issues.