I was fifteen.
He was nineteen.
We had drama class together.
We went to the same school.
He invited me over.
"We'll hang out", he'd said.
He answered the door in
"tighty whities".
I followed him into the dark in-
terior of his house.
In his room, a super 8 projector machine-gunned silent 70's porn onto his wall.
He sat on the floor, his back against the
metal closet door.
In his lap, he'd placed a
two-handed vibrating massager,
the kind, I remember thinking,
Burgess Meredith might have run over Rocky's back before a fight.
He asked if I wanted to help.
He'd framed it as a question,
An option,
A request, but
It wasn't.
Afterwards,
He made me hide
crouched down on the floor of the frontseat of his parked car,
Under the steering wheel
In his unlit driveway,
for four and a half hours, until after midnight.
Until his parents were home,
until they were in bed,
until they were asleep.