Pegasus

You didn’t take me for a ride, you gave me wings, Pegasus.
A stallion not here for my service, I know better than to lead the charge.
You make sure your stubble doesn’t catch my skin,
Moving my body like an art installation,
An item to be worked with care and discipline,
Sketching me landscape, taking me portrait,
Dancing the road well-travelled, well, travelled.
I wonder whether this display is showboating or affection,
What the fuck does that matter? Stop being a sissy,
You know it matters.
‘He doesn’t need to treat me this well’ I think to myself, ‘I’d accept less’,
Is this what self-care is?
Once the parade is over we decide to go for cheap eats,
He feels like burgers but I would kill for Thai, we go for burgers.
Don’t push your luck kiddo, you’re one lucky son of a bitch,
Thanks Clint Eastwood.
We pull up into the car park of a gourmet burger joint,
You love burgers remember, the way that the grease bleeds down your hands,
The graft of demolishing and rebuilding with every unstable bite,
And you especially take pleasure in discovering that mystery mayonnaise stain,
That somehow found it’s way to the back of your jeans.
Jesus Christ I hope he didn’t see it!
He begins to leave breadcrumbs of the conversation to come,
‘I’ve decided I’ve pretty much given up on relationships’, I prepare myself.
He orders first, I take a little time to ponder the Thai food I could’ve had,
We take a seat and look past some magazine pages until finally the food arrives.
Finally we can talk about emptiness, with physical nutrition in our hands.
He introduces the sadness of the way we speak to each other, us queers,
Concealing our honesty as an exercise of the liberty we fought for,
I don’t remember the placard that read ‘You’re just not what I’m into, sorry’.
He moves onto the loneliness of our cause, our rebellion
‘How many happy gay couples do you know?’
I of course do not know any,
But I chalk this down to the ability to count my friends on my fingers.
I threw back ‘How many straight, bitter, sexless couples do you know?’
The official partyboy line,
Examples were given but there was no conviction in my tone,
I truly never believed in conflating misery and normality,
My love of pizza and a game of Laserquest forbade it.
Backed into a corner I referred to the rulebook,
The heteronormative manual that we tossed into the fireplace,
While spread out romantically on a faux fur rug,
Draining a glass of Pinot.
‘You have to get married!’
‘You have to have a baby!’
‘You have to fuck the same person forever!’
Once my wish list, if only it was vogue.
‘Those are the things I want’ he said,
‘It just all seems so much easier when you’re straight.’
I had no arguments left.
It was a statement that could be proven by looking over at the neighbouring table,
Or peeking out the window,
As a husband unloads shopping bags into the boot of a Mazda,
And a wife straps their baby into a car seat and dutifully kisses it’s forehead.
What you have is sometimes beautiful,
Even when I sound so sure that it’s blasphemous.
I will die telling the world I’d rather be stranded on a desert island with a good book,
Than be trapped in a safe house with a cunt I love.
I stayed with Pegasus that night, and I took my wings with me in the morning,
But he made sure he’d clipped the fuckers before I left.