by Mark Halliday
He stands up there reading us his story
all about this guy who can’t stop thinking about sex
and how he goes after this younger woman
even though he’s married to a social worker
and how he wants to get the younger woman drunk
and unzip her blue dress while his wife is out of town
and we get this comical exaggerated paragraph about the unzipping
which does happen because she thinks he is so witty
though first they have all these amusing worries and doubts
all over town but then they do it in her tiny apartment
while a Hank Williams record plays and I love Hank Williams
because his voice is the opposite of pretending
which is why he did not belong in this story
and there’s a sentence about glowing skin, how their skin glows
and then at the end he’s all Beautifully Confused
and we just sit and listen and we understand
that it’s all about expressing the reality of human desires
because we need to face the wild elements of our nature
and literature gives us a safe place to do this
and then we applaud him and then there’s the reception
with wine and little chunks of cheese
and everybody just sort of chats pleasantly
like “We enjoyed it so much, it was such a funny story”
and “Do you like write every day or only when you’re inspired?”
Because we understand the story wasn’t really true
the way life is true because if it was
then I think we would be thinking about his wife in real life
and how does she feel about him expressing the reality of human desires,
and what is the promise that a man makes
when he pushes so far deep inside you
and what is a promise at all anyway
and how does that woman with the blue dress feel
the day after the sexy story with her cold Defenders of Wildlife coffee mug
and we would ask him some real questions
instead of just nibbling cheese and telling him
how funny his descriptions were.