Curtis
Occasionally, Curtis appears in dreamworld, where he’s the plug for drugs. When we were kids, we didn’t do drugs, but he was a bad boy and while sweet at heart, bad news for all girls unless they wanted to get pregnant fast and then again until he’d move on. I used to to talk to him on the cord phone in mom and dad’s bedroom and he’d tell me about all kinds of things I couldn’t imagine, gangs, people getting curb stomped, drama at 1st Avenue, which had all-ages dance parties on Sundays in downtown Minneapolis in the 90’s. Curtis was the first boy who shoved his whole tongue down my throat when I “kissed” him and grabbed both sides of my booty, while standing up wearing cut off shorts in the alley down the block from my house, in summer, I probably sneaked away. Curtis was my best friend’s cousin, that’s how we met. She lived on 38th and 11th. Me on 10th. Curtis lived in a home for delinquent boys on Chicago ave past the cemetery and McCray Park, where we ate free lunch in the summer times. I snuck out and met up with Curtis in the graveyard one afternoon (he sneaked out from the home for bad boys). As we walked in the graveyard, I thought both that it was PERFECT to do a gothic thing as a date, and also unsure about my next move. There was this idea that Curtis was going to buy me a Raiders Starter jacket (like I said, this was the 90’s). I know I wanted that jacket but also wasn’t sure if I’d really get it. Curtis climbed the side of our household wall to suprise me at the bedroom window. This isn’t going where you think, though. He just jumped back off, laughing. I really liked Curtis voice on the phone, but physically he was scary like a monster. He was light skinned with gap teeth (like me) and huge blue eyes (like me) and blond, black-people’s hair (mixed). The blue eyes were clearly malevolent and insane. Which he was. But also nicey nice, outgoing, confident. I didn’t choose Curtis to take me over the virgin bridge, but another hack, similarly young, mixed, but a much more smirky, amused face with normal and warm brown eyes. Blue eyes always scared me. I have blue eyes, which look normal on me. But Curtis never had a chance to pass for normal with those pale psychotic eyes. I saw once again in like 1999, as adults, he was genial and friendly. He actually didn’t turn out scary at all. But was a menacing 14 year old he was! And now I dream that he’s the plug for my drug hookup. And then last night I dreamed his old face appeared before me, like a 75 year old face, not 50 or so, his actual age, like an old man face (repeating myself). And it was hard to find him in it, actually looked nothing like him, but it was. And then I dreamed I kissed a black man (I probably kissed hundreds of boys in the 90’s), and it was vivid. When lips are softer, larger, and warmer than your own. And you kind of hate yourself for being inadequate.