My Sex Life
by Diane Seuss
published in Rattle, #16, Winter 2001: Tribute to Boomer Girls
Having a threesome with Jack
Daniels and Billie Holiday.
Garden sex with the dumb serpent.
Sex at the Wailing Wall, the Berlin Wall,
the Great Wall, the Wall of Names. Sex
with Sonny Corleone against the wall during
the wedding. Having horse sex with Mr. Ed
reruns. Olive oil sex with the Big Cook.
Clothesline sex with the chickens hanging there;
with the bodies without heads running through
the pumpkin vines. Having gardenia sex
with my father’s romantic notions of how to get
a girl. Educated sex with the New York Times
paper carrier. Grandfather sex with a swivel
rocker. Camel sex with the butts in the ashtray.
Hot sex with the air conditioner. Having nostalgic
sex with the guy who embalmed my father. Vietnam
sex with Doug, who’s paranoid and gives good head.
Dirty sex with the potato farmer’s daughter. Having
Bob’s Country Club sex with one of the Drake
brothers. The good looking one. Not the smart
one. Not the one who went on to make something
of himself. Chuck, the one with a hi-fi ass. Tamale
sex, going to Juanita’s on a booty call hoping to get
Gabriel’s attention while he leans over the fryer.
Having halfway sex at a rest stop halfway between
here and there, meaning Michigan City, the town
where I was born. Ore boat sex. Mall parking lot
sex. Nun doll sex. Rock me like a baby sex.
The Reverend Al Green sex. Sex in the black groove
of an old record album, sex in the scratch on the vinyl,
sex in the skip, in the skip, in the skip, sex in the applause
of the long dead audience thrilled with Miss Billie Holiday
in a single spotlight singing Strange Fruit. Sex in the dark
after she leaves the stage. Sex on her grave; sex that
blasphemes death. Arrowhead in the heart sex. Sex on the body
of the last buffalo. Sex on God’s welcome mat, in Mother
Hubbard’s cupboard, sex with her poor dog’s bone.
