By Ani King
One time after a funeral I slept with someone I hated, by slept with I mean fucked him in the front seat of his big stupid truck behind the public tennis court, which was behind the mobile home park, which was behind the KMart, which was behind the times and would close in a few years, and by funeral I mean my sixteen year old brother and his best friend had died in a car accident, driving too fast in the rain, the driver lived thank god someone did, and anyway I’d already spent three days consoling teenagers who just couldn’t believe this had happened and not letting anyone console me, who also couldn’t believe this had just happened, plus there was my dad showing up just long enough to not believe this had happened and I kept looking for my dead brother to ask him can you believe this shit and of course not finding him.
And by not finding him, I mean yes he was there in the coffin, wrong-looking and too young with a bad Eminem haircut, but I didn’t know what he would have said about all this since I’d been busy touring country jails after graduation and he’d been busy making friends in juvie and we didn’t talk much anymore, and I was already forgetting what his voice sounded like and by the end of the day, I was soft-muscled, half-boneless from the pills my ex-girlfriend had given me, and there he was, man-boy, twenty two looking thirty five like half the guys in my graduating class, offering me a ride though even he had to know I hated him.
And by hated, I mean he was the kind of person who treated high school like a movie, shoving queers like me into lockers or tripping us down the stairs, and my brother hated him too, but I still said let’s go somewhere quiet, and I still kissed him first and I still unzipped his jeans, I still said oh yeah just like that, don’t stop, until it was over, because at least I wasn’t at the funeral anymore, but then he said he was so sorry about my brother and I hated him for it, by him I mean my brother: I hated him for making a funeral out of me.
Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer, artist, and activist from Michigan. They can be found at aniking.net, or trying to find somewhere to quietly finish a book without any more interruptions.
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