The first time my parents caught me lying
it was summer & I told them I was sleeping
at Spencer’s when I really slept in a car parked
in a field next to the leftovers of a bonfire
& woke up to a bee flying into my forehead
over & over. My mom called Spencer’s house
to tell me the girl I had a crush on was looking
for me & Spencer’s mom said we had gone out
& weren’t coming back. By August I was sick
of it so I admitted I’d started drinking & then
ran out of the house & hopped over a neighbor’s
fence. The neighbor came out & I called her
a cunt & she said she’d call the police but my
mom drove up the driveway in her pickup & I
went home. My parents thought they’d keep
me safe by sticking me in a private school
somewhere but Hartford leaks its way in no
matter what you learn & this winter I’ve come
to know the worst people the city has in it.
Tommy went to wrestle Big Sully on my birthday
& I said I’d help but Dicky grabbed me & I
ended up on my face with my shirt pulled over
my head like a hockey jersey & my boss saying
Don’t feel bad buddy. You just got pinned by one
of the top fighters in the NHL. I never thought
I’d know pro-athletes but I do & they’re just
as bad as you’d expect them to be. What happens
when you give a bi-polar Canadian two-million
dollars for a broken knee & tell him he can
never skate again? A lot of windows get broken.
He gives himself a black eye whenever anyone
tells him he can’t. He gets naked in the club
& swirls his cock around over a crowd & when
he gets kicked out he comes over to my house
to break another window. He’s not the only one.
Everyone around here’s a pro even the bouncer
who got picked up by the Jets for a week of
preseason & who went to my high school
& once in practice I blew him off the line but
he’s a lot bigger now so I don’t mention it
& I don’t invite him over either since I figure
I already have enough at home to be afraid of.
One morning I took a hand-poll of who in our
living room had gone to private school & all
six of them raised their hands but when I asked
who was doing crystal-meth right now they
were so excited by the question they set their
drug-dish down so everyone could raise both
hands. It’s snowing tonight & my roommate
who claims he could’ve played for the Whalers
if they hadn’t left town & he hadn’t become
a drug-dealer wakes me up & wants to borrow
my car to make some money skidding it around
town on the ice. It’s easier to say yes so I say it
though I know I’ll spend the whole time he’s
gone watching for the car out the window
where the snow won’t stop falling as it always
seems it won’t though the way this winter’s
been going there’s reason to think the seasons
are a little longer now than what they used to be.