Gay in the KKK
March thinks no one knows.
We all know.
We’ve always known.
We’re all kinda over March and his Big Secret.
When March wants to go get fucked, he heads off to Atlanta in his pickup.
March thinks no one in Atlanta knows.
They all know.
They’re kinda over March as well.
But we all do like fucking March in that pickup he’s owned since high school. 3,564 yeas ago during the royal reign of Seti Huptumililicon who built the Pyramids. That truck is mainly brown-green mummydust.
I would never drive it to Atlanta.
March is not only gay, he’s a member of the KKK. If you think it odd, it is.
I fucking do not get how I still know this idiot. I blame his daddy. When March was in the third grade, Old Daddy starting taking his son to Clan rallies. I think March was scared but he will not talk about it. He had the sheets. He had the cone hat. I still ignore all of this. The world has passed March by. I shut my mouth.
Because every time we have articulated our thoughts, I am confronted with Clan Nitty about as smart as a millipede with no philosophy, and we end up in a war of words. I am seriously not at all sure March believes a word that comes out of his cocksucker’s stupid mouth. There is just something about it that is not authentic. Shit. The only reason I still know that fool is because he gives me free Blue Ridge weed. March has seen four tours in Iraq. Four tours in that place can unhinge anyone. His scars are scary to look at. And they still hurt. You don’t even want to know about what March has seen. His story about how he had to clean up a mess of feet, hands, arms, legs, and heads from the middle of a road where everything had been bombed only makes inference as to the rest of what March has seen. I don’t want to know any more than that.
Basically, March feels powerless, and always has.
He voted for Trump. This pissed me off no end.
“Who do you think ended your family food stamps,” I asked him.
We were driving that idiot mummy truck to Memphis because it was my turn to get fucked. I do not get fucked in Atlanta.
Memphis is the South. But it’s not as South as Atlanta. I deplore the South. I deplore a lot of things. These are things I mainly keep to myself something considerable or they will hang me. The truth is that the American South scares me half to death.
You think I’m kidding. I never kid.
We had no luck getting fucked in Memphis. It was just one of those nights.
We went back to that flea bag hotel we had checked into. We were on the fifth floor. There was a fire escape outside a window that featured a little wrought iron balcony you could step out on if you had occasion to step out onto the balcony that loomed over an alley the Memphis whores used to reach Beale. How hot was it. Hot as a baptist buzz wasp’s mama sleeps and prays to Jesus she can find a vein this time.
All of Memphis still smells of kerosene.
We dragged the mattress out to the balcony. “I have always wanted to fuck you.”
“Does this mean you’re gay,” I asked.
“No.”
This was a mercy fuck.
We had an audience of whores below on the street who hollered and screamed and clapped and jumped up and down and smashed rum bottles on the sidewalk.
March was gentle. We pretended the whores were not there.
It takes a day to return to the Blue Ridge.
“I’ve always been a little bit in love with you.” I had never heard March talk this way. The heat melted Tennessee like a steamship.
“I’m not worth it,March.”
“You are.”
“Am not.”
“You are to me. I’m not just some stupid white trash dog who answers to a whistle.”
“I’m just the first guy you ever fucked.” My eyes to the sky.
It was dark by the time we pulled up to March’s mummydust house. He lived alone. Even his family had been glad to see him go. How he found this house was only known to the gods. Seti Huptumililicon who built the Pyramids had slaves build him a house made from tin and straw. We had to change the truck plugs with a flashlight that kept blinking on and off. “You have not bought a new battery for this flashlight since Elenor Roosevelt came to town.”
“I want you to move in.”
“I have a house.”
“It’s a trailer with an out house.”
“So.”
“So move in with me.”
“You can’t fuck me all the time.”
“I will fuck you some of the time.”
“Your politics are stupid people politics and you voted for Trump.”
“Fuck Trump.”
“What.”
“Fuck Trump. If you have to really know, I didn’t vote.”
We were on the driveway looking up at the Blue Ridge stars. Billions and billions of them.
“We could haul a mattress out here.”
I say nothing.
“You’d have to give up the Clan. I hate the Clan. Everything about them is sick shit.”
“You think I don’t know that.”
“Then WHY the fuck did you go to all those rally things.”
“With your fingers, name me five people I am really friends with.”
“Counting myself, that left me with four fingers.”
“They liked me. They’re wrong. They’re wrong about everything they believe in. It’s nonsense. It’s mean. It’s how stupid people think and we got a lot of those in these hollers and hills. I know that. But they liked me. It was all I had.”
The Grand Dragon’s Bones.
We built a bonfire that night out back, and we burned those goddamn fucking sheets and that goddamn Confederate flag.
We slept in his mummy house. In his room. In his bed. Not outside with the snakes. Like normal people. We were normal people.
Right.
And sunlight yearning desperately like the whites of mama’s eggs through the cracked curtains sweating yellow in the room. I slept wild again.