naked and half passed out after love, the strange man stretches out and maunders through his breath what he would give for a cold bottle of malta now.
right now, all i know, for sure, is i'd give anything just to stay longer in bed with this man begging, wishing for strange, inappropriate stuff. (of all things, after all we did, he hankers for a carbonated malt beverage brewed from hops and barley much like beer. what gives?)
other than this, everything else is a mystery with him. but the not knowing everything about this man is fine with me. not that i'm saying i'm forfeiting my entitlement to my little jealousies.
for i am jealous, right now, of the boy i do not know and will not ever, the first boy the strange man ever went to bed with. i am jealous of the sweet tentativeness of their touch as it gave way to the breathless clasping, the unheard moaning, the giddy drifting back and forth across the gauzy borders of their consciousness.
i am jealous how, after all these weighted confusion, they floated back together into the realm of thirst.
i am jealous, most of all, how in the eternal memory of the strange man there will never be a drink as cold as the one he and the first boy in his life must have drank that sultry afternoon while they sat on the steps of their apartment building in south bronx, too mortified to talk and look at each other after all they did, oblivious to the glistening wet beads clinging, never letting go like their desires, to the skin of their soda bottles.
