John Stossel

Lying face down on the hotel duvet was a bad idea but now enough time has passed and it feels too late to make a move in a different direction. What’s worse than the feeling of my jeans being stuck to the backs of my knees? But I’m distracted by the thought of tiny germs and their contact with the surface of my skin. Still I’m unmotivated for relocation and now there’s a soft breeze coming through the shutters facing the church outside of our window and it’s moving my dead ends north to south against my neck like maybe that’s the way the germs would feel.

Thinking about that 20/20 special with John Stossel and the hotel rooms and the handheld black light exposing us to everything we were never meant to see. Mostly strangers’ cum if I’m remembering correctly though he never explicitly said ‘cum’ because it was ABC and the 90s and do you even know what I’m talking about? Sitting at the edge of the bar where we first met and going on and on about John Stossel’s career. And maybe it was just 10 minutes you tell me but 10 minutes can feel like forever if you want it to.

It’s whenever I forget how to dig myself out of a conversation when the temperature of my skin paints itself to my face in shades of pink and red as in I was warm as in that’s how you know when I’m having a visceral reaction to the sound of your voice or rather the sound of your patience waiting for me to finish discussing expired 20/20 specials. Do you know if this memory has been buried with the rest? It doesn’t have to be 6 feet maybe it’s best measured in inches. Lying face down on the hotel duvet ungluing my thumb from screen thinking about how the only way over is through doing what I can to let my mind go blank not in a good or bad way. Just in a way. Maybe something neutral something clean something new swept in by the breeze.