Other Fugitives and Other Strangers

Other Fugitives and Other Strangers

by Rigoberto González

The nightclub's neon light glows red with anxiety

as I wait on the turning lane. Cars blur past,

their headlights white as charcoal.

I trust each driver not to swerve. I trust each stranger

not to kill me and let me cross

the shadow of his smoky path.

Trust is all I have for patrons at the bar:

one man offers me a line, one man buys the kamikaze,

another drinks it. Yet another wraps his arm

around my waist. I trust him not to harm my body

as much as he expects his body to remain unharmed.

One man asks me to the dance floor, one asks me

to a second drink, another asks me home.

I dance, I drink, I follow.

I can trust a man without clothes.

Naked he conceals no weapons, no threat

but the blood in his erection. His bed unfamiliar,

only temporarily. Pillows without loyalty

absorb the weight of any man, betray

the scent of the men who came before.

I trust a stranger's tongue to tell me

nothing valuable. It makes no promises

of truth or lies, it doesn't swear commitments.

The stranger's hands take their time exploring.

Undisguised, they do not turn to claws or pretend

artistic skill to draw configurations on my flesh. They

are only human hands with fingertips

unsentimental with discoveries, without nostalgia

for what they leave behind. I trust this stranger

not to stay inside me once he enters me.

I trust him to release me from the blame

of pleasure. The pain I exit with no greater

than the loneliness that takes me to the bar.

He says good night, I give him back

those words, taking nothing with me that is his.

The front door shuts behind me, the gravel

driveway ushers me away. The rearview mirror

loses sight of threshold, house, sidewalk, street.

Driving by the nightclub I pass a car

impatient on the turning lane. My hands are cold

and itch to swerve the wheel, to brand

his fender with the fury of my headlights.

But I let this stranger live

to struggle through the heat and sweat

of false affections, anonymous and

borrowed like the glass that washed my prints

to hold another patron's drink.