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Drunk, her eyes would water and sparkle
and she'd hold my jaw in her palm
as though I were her child or dog, saying,
Listen to me, Douglas. Don't dare turn
into one of these aging bachelor teachers.
Then she'd reel off names of half a dozen
doddering men in the physics and social
studies departments who wandered the halls
in stained shirts and chalked-up pants
frayed at the pockets, men first in line
every day in the faculty cafeteria,
men who stared deadpan into the lens
of the yearbook photographer.
Come with me, she said. We took a cab
to her gay guy in the Village. She said
I needed once and for all a decent
haircut. She was first. Barry
put a tight rubber cap on her head
and used a hooked needle to pull
strands of her wet hair through holes
until she looked like a shock therapy patient,
her face pale and tired in the light,
and suddenly she was a woman
twenty years older than me getting
highlights. Though she looked damn
good when it was over, climbing
down from the chair in her red shoes.
We found a bar on Bleecker Street.
She put a hand through my new haircut
while I complained about the girls in American
Literature who were giving me problems.
She said they were in love with me,
and wondered at how blind I was
to miss it. Then she told me, finally,
where she went every weekend: Tampa,
to stay with an auto parts salesman
who paid her fare. A man her age, a man
who used to be married to her sister.
— Douglas Goetsch
from What's Worse