Various Poetry/Writings Late 1990s
by Jeremy Gloff

ABSENCE
- from Nakedpoetry.com  

Years ago, before I was a whore.  Before I had more sexual partners a month than a case of beer has cans.  When the smell of the air seemed slightly more fresh and new, and when the wind blew, it didn't rattle my bones, it caressed them.   I am not sure exactly how I grabbed it, and I am still not quite sure exactly how I lost it either.    But I had it for awhile.  I had HIM for awhile.

The seeds of the storm began to form on a hot night in the innocent summer of 1995.  I was a street kid in a small town in New York.  My eyes were still wide, and my heart pumped blood with fire and passion through my ever-exploring body and ever developing mind.  The climate is much colder up there than where I live now, but the fire of life burned much hotter than I could ever imagine it burning now.
    
He walked into the room.  The coffee shop, to be exact.  I walked in nearly at the same time, with my motley crew of skateboarder neo-nazi wanna-be friends.
 He was dressed in drag following a costume party hosted by the art camp he was studying at.  I was dressed in cross-colors and gangster garb, following
an excommunication from my parent's house.  He was high on alcohol and I was high on adventure.  He was with two girls.  He didn't like boys.

My friend, Fry, called him a faggot.  I think I called him a faggot too.  Fry didn't know that I was a faggot…at the time I don't think even I knew I was a faggot.  Heated words volley-balled back and forth…between the tough skater crew we were…and the sensitive artsy crew him and his friends were.

The summer ended, and I returned to my family home.  I recorded some music, I thought about the boy in drag a few times…and I joyously took in the smells of the approaching autumn…inside of the bedroom that I grew up.

A month later the boy in drag was sitting in my room.  By way of mutual friends…or fate…or luck…he was in my room.  I had shed the gangster image and returned the more boring (or less boring) task of just being me.  It was a room full of friends, and him, listening to my new music.  It was mid September and the air was getting a bit chilly.  The mud puddles rippled all day long in my dirty driveway…as I watched and daydreamed about the boy in drag.

We started calling each other.  We started becoming friends.  I knew the charcoals burning in my chest were more than the result of friendship…and I knew I had to warn the straight boy who wore drag once that I was falling, plundering, stumbling….over him.

I wrote a letter…one of my crazy letters…one of my twelve page letters…telling him that I felt something ever so wild and dangerous for him…and that it was okay if he ran away.  I understood.  I understood that when you are a straight boy…it can be uncomfortable for a boy with a wild heart like mine to want to melt into you.  I was melting, melting fast.

I remember the most romantic moment in my 26-year life.  I was 19.  I was sitting in a parking lot of the college campus of my hometown.  The moon shined down in a light that was as warm and surreal as the autumn air was brisk and comforting.  It was the only kind of light and air that angels can truly let their faces be shown in.  I was in the front seat and he was in the back.  He was talking about working drive-through at Burger King.  I don't remember if he loved it or hated working that drive-through.  All I remember is the chills that crawled down my back, one by one by one, with every single sound that came out of his adorable mouth.  I will never forget that moment, or that feeling.  The feeling that someone is so fucking amazing talking about handing hamburgers out of a window.  I was in love, hard.

Things got rocky again.  I was once again kicked out of my house.  I was floundering and stumbling around for a week.  Sleeping in my car in the cold
cold November nights of approaching Winter.  I had to grow up really fucking fast,  And I did.

Within a week I had settled into my very first apartment, via a newspaper ad.  Here I was, nineteen, full of wonder for the world (still), living with some former marine having an affair with a married woman.  In a way, this was hell.  In a greater way, this was heaven too.

The straight boy who wore drag slept in the bednext to me in that apartment, a few times.  We didn't hold each other, but I didn't sleep either. I couldn't sleep.  I COULD NOT sleep with God laying next to me.  When the morning came, and his distant warm body left…the sparkle stayed in me for a good part of a day.  I never felt safer, warmed, happier, or more hopeful, then when his warm body would lay in the same bed as me, and not hold me.

We had one big fight before the huge fight.  He lied to me, and I called him on it.  We screamed and yelled in a bright sunny afternoon, in my four window bedroom with the windows shut tight.  After the fight ended, we held each other for the first time.  The only time.  We held each other and didn't let go…for at
least three minutes.  Or was it five?  Or was it forever?  A hug loses all sense of time when it is the most amazing thing that ever happened to you in your life.  With hugs like that, a fight almost seemed like something I would like to have more often.  He left down my stairs, in his Burger King uniform, wearing
the black beret I gave to him.  I told him he looked beautiful, and he did.  More importantly, I felt beautiful.  I felt the beauty of life's possibilities…in the bright brown eyes of a boy that was only in my life for a very short time.  He told me he had a secret to tell me, but he wasn't ready yet.

The last night we hung out it snowed.  We were driving to a friend's house and we took the long way, by choice.  It was the first snow…and the roads were
ever so slightly powdered and covered…   We were on dark, lonely back roads, talking about dark and lonely things such as the meaning of life, and our future together as friends.  He said we could be much closer in a few years…and as my wipers dealt with the mist of snow bouncing onto my wind shield…I dealt with the mist of hope bouncing from my heart, into my brain, and out of my eyes.  I knew this was someone I had to know forever.

A few nights later he hung up on me.  He couldn't take me anymore.  He couldn't take how I hated all his friends, how I took his artwork for granted, and how I loved him when "all we were was friends."  In the same room when he told me his favorite Madonna song was "Bad Girl" he told me, he could never, ever talk to me again.

"Something's missing and I don't know why..I always feel the need to hide my feelings…from you …Is it me…or you that I'm afraid of tell myself…I'll show you what I'm made of.. Can't bring myself…to let you go"- Madonna

I went to his house, because I told  him I wanted everything back I ever gave to him.  And as he shut the door in my face, I left his house with the beret in my hand.  I left a lot of myself inside of his house that day.  I tried many many times to reconnect but he held true to his promise…he would never talk to me again.  Only because in his words "we really didn't have much in common anyway." Perhaps he was right.

The air, the wind, the snow, and the sun still exist in cold Northern small towns.  They exist long before, and long after amazing conversations take place in cheap punk rock cars.  But sometimes trees lose their leaves, and for some unknown reasons, the leaves never ever grow back.  I left my bare branches in Fredonia New York years ago.  The only danger is, I left my clear blue skies there, too.

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