Because he had a sparse moustache
growing across his upper lip, a thin
precursor to manhood, an almost man—

because he smelled like cigarettes,
I loved Chris Muller that year.
I loved Chris Muller the day he asked

me into the locker room,
beyond the urinals and benches,
through the narrow hallway

of sweat and gym socks and the words
we used that would send us straight
to hell: Dickhead. Asshole. Fudgepacker.

We used words that would send us
straight to hell, but he had found one
that would get us there quicker,

had heard his father use it once,
a word so dirty it’d make you serve
twice your time in hell:

Pervert, he said his father said.
How his lips puckered at the word,
the hairy lip cowering over the mouth

like a stretched animal, a salt
pucker: A man who smells the seats
of bicycles, he said his father said.

And I believed him, saw him grab
the world as I knew it and drag a line
through the middle, between men

who smelled the seats of bicycles
and those who did not. It would follow
me the rest of that day: Pervert,

out to the concrete parking lot,
in the long line of locked bicycles,
in each wire spoke, it tensed—

Pervert, over the handlebar grip,
up the aluminum post, until I found
myself face first against the leather

seat of his bicycle, the nose of it
worn and soiled with use,
and because the line was drawn,

because the voice from within
was his, I listened: Go ahead,
sissy boy, take a whiff.

Text: The Fifth Grade, Angelo Nikolopoulos
Poem published in Ganymede, Issue 7, Spring 2010
Image: Subjects and photographer unknown, via Schwar/flickr

Click to hear song:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
I fell in love with your sound
Oh I love to sing along with you…

Babe we both had dry spells
Hard times in bad lands
I’m a good man – for ya
I’m a good man…

Last night there was a horse in the road
I was twisting in the hairpin
My hands held on my mind let go
And back to you my heart went skipping

I found the inside of the road
Thought about the first time that I met you
All those glances that we stole
Sometimes if you want them then you’ve got to…

You’re not a good shot but I’m worse
And there’s so much where we ain’t been yet
So swing up on this little horse
The only thing we’ll hit is sunset…

Babe we both had dry spells
Hard times in bad lands
I’m a good man for ya
I’m a good man

Editor’s Note: Whenever I hear Josh Ritter’s ‘Good Man,’
there are two men from the old West in my mind’s eye. In love.
Excerpted here is a selection from the lyrics that take me there.
Josh Ritter is a lovely singer and gifted lyricist.
I hope you’ll listen to the song. – kh

Text: Good Man, lyrics by Josh Ritter
Music: Music, lyrics and performance by Josh Ritter
Image: Late 19th century; sitters, photographer, unknown

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly

we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.

(So,when kiss Spring comes
we’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don’t make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me)

text: e. e. cummings
image: subjects, photographer unknown, Germany 1930s
via miss magnolia thunderpussy/flickr

I never had you, nor will I have you
ever, I daresay. A couple of words, a closeness
as in the bar two days ago, and nothing else.
It is, I don’t deny it, a pity. But we who belong to Art
sometimes — with intensity of mind, and of course only
for a little while — create a pleasure
that gives the impression of being almost real.
So it was in the bar two days ago — with a good deal of help,
besides, from some merciful alcohol –
I had half an hour that was utterly erotic.
And it seems to me you understood,
and you stayed somewhat longer purposely.
It was rather necessary, that. Because
for all the imagination, for all the liquor’s a magician,
I needed to see your lips as well,
needed to have your body close to me.

Text: Half an Hour, 1917, unpublished poem
from C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn
Image: photographer, subject unknown, via exupery/ipernity

image: photographer, sitters unknown
text: excerpt, Easter Parade, Irving Berlin, 1933

Click for musical accompaniment:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

…I was stationed at Tinker Field in Oklahoma, and assigned a job in the command headquarters on the airbase. Evenings and weekends, I was now free to go into Oklahoma City, and when I was checking out the men’s room of one of the big movie houses downtown, I met two soldiers who were just hanging around in the lounge. They were show-offs, and when they saw me watching them, they both whipped powder puffs from their regulation shirt pockets and flamboyantly powdered their noses, which, considering that they were in uniform, I found hilarious. It was my first introduction to camp, though I still hadn’t learned the word…

…I also went out drinking at a tavern with with a bunch of regular army men from my barracks…

…One night, a master sergeant joined us from the next booth. A baby-faced youth with a southern accent who smoked cigars… Glenn, as it turned out, lived in one of the private rooms at the end of my barracks reserved for noncoms, and I began joining the bull sessions in his room, during which he tied trout fishing flies, his favorite hobby…

…I knew he liked me when he gave me one of his trout flies, which I pinned to my shirt. Sometimes we would walk around the base at night, he’d light a big cigar, and in the darkness I’d be moved by the brilliant desert sky to philosophize, which he would tolerate with grown up amusement, though he was only nineteen himself.

We soldiers were transported back and forth between the airbase and Oklahoma City in the backs of personnel carrier trucks, and it was always a dash to catch the last run around 11:30 P.M.  One night, after a double date with a couple of civilian girls we worked with at HQ, so many GIs piled into the truck that I had to sit on Glenn’s lap, and in the pitch blackness, hanging onto each other as the vehicle bounced over potholes, his lips nuzzled mine and buyddyhood turned into a love affair.

Text: Excerpt from Gay In the Army, by Edward Field (b. 1924),
from a longer excerpt which appears in Gay American Autobiography,
Edited by David Bergman
Image: Army Buddies, 1944, subjects/photographer unknown
via miss magnolia thunderpussy/ipernity
Music: My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time, 1945
music by Vic Mizzy, lyrics by Manny Curtis,
performed by the Les Brown Orchestra with vocals by Doris Day.

       person for miles around approach unawares,

Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or

      some quiet island,

Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,

With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,

For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.

Text: Walt Whitman,
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand (excerpt), 1881-82

Image: Subjects, photographer unknown,
via miss magnolia thunderpussy/ipernity

Text: Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle, lyrics
Photo: Subjects unknown, via varones/flickr

                                                                  i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

text: ee cummings
image: subjects/photographer unknown,
via varones/flickr

Thanks Stacy and Michele