Still Sauced
The first time I laid eyes on you, you’d already made up your mind about me.
Walking toward me from the woods, each one of your barefooted steps landed with intention on the dusty earth. Naked people all around us, you told me you thought it was refreshing to see someone wearing clothes.
I couldn’t remove my gaze from the deep wells which you looked out to me from. Your eyes glistened like black cups of coffee gone cold under a porch shade on a sunny day. I watched as they dressed me like the others, undressed. You were thin but defined. Your dark hair and scruffy beard complimented the darkness of your eyes. When you smiled at me, you had me and you knew it.
I drive a white 95’ Chevy van which I’ve converted into a home. The only one I’d known for three and a half years, rolling around America. People poke fun and joke about it being a “rape van,” to which I politely rebut with Bessie’s nickname, The Consensual Sex Van. It’s never I who attempts to pull strangers into Bessie’s sweet embrace, it’s always them asking me if I have any candy. Of course I have candy, Cindy, just get in already.
Weeks after our meeting, the man who’d walked out from the woods and I had begun spending every night together. One night, after many drinks, we stumbled into the back of Bessie with a styrofoam container of wings. We sat on the floor and we smoked cigarettes while our feet dangled out over the edge on the Meigs St. bridge. We looked up the 490 at downtown Rochester. We watched as the night swept through the city and we licked bleu cheese from our fingers while we dripped sauce on each other. You could have heard us laughing, drunk on booze, and me, drunk on you, all the way from Monroe.
I don’t remember us falling asleep but I remember being startled awake by a scratchy voice outside the van. “Hey,” it pulled us from our slumber. “Hey,” it repeated, rough from a life living on the street. You slumped off the bed and pulled the curtain back in a grog; we’d fallen asleep with the side door still open. I felt the cool night breeze sweep through the van. I cracked my eyes open to see that the sun was beginning to creep back for another day. The sky glowed pale green and a deep navy blue. “You got a cigarette?” the crusty voice jabbed. “What? No,” you asserted with annoyance as you grabbed the handle and slammed the door shut in the man’s face. Your body was still filled with sleep as you climbed back into the bed. I giggled when I’d noticed that my bare ass was in full view of the back window and that the chicken wing container was still next to us on the bed. I repositioned the window shade and fell back into the comfort of your arms, smiling, still sauced by last night’s wings and your trash love.