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Drive
    R ICHIE AND E D, John John and I stand in the Pit with Tammy and Mina and Bekah smoking cigarettes, passing a pint bottle of Boones around, waiting for the lunch bell to ring.
    â€œThis shit tastes of mouthwash,” Mina says.
    â€œIt’s only a buck fifty,” John John says. “I got four bottles.”
    We pass the bottle and the sick vibrations of a wine buzz work their way out from my belly to my hands and eyes.
    â€œI have class in ten minutes,” I say.
    â€œLet’s go to the lake,” Ed says. “I have the car.”
    We walk through the parking lot and pile in, the girls on our laps. The engine is rough and loud. We drive to the edge of town, out to Dilley and beyond. We drive into the forest and Ed punches the gas. Wind folds the smoke from our cigarettes back into our faces. Rob Halford screams on the radio.
    Over a hump in the road, over a small dirt dam, and the lake is there, green and brown, dead trees rising fromthe shore like the bony fingers of the earth itself. The beach is mud and stone and the water ripples in the wind.
    â€œI’m not going in there,” Renee says.
    â€œWhere’s the rest of the wine?” Richie asks.
    We build a fire at the edge of the grass and the rain starts to fall, cold and mean. No one wanted to be the first to turn back. No one wanted to be the first to give in.
    A cop comes and blocks us in.
    â€œCan you say the alphabet backwards?” he asks.
    â€œI couldn’t do that sober,” I said.
    â€œDidn’t think so.”
    We all ride back to town in cuffs. The girls are pissed. No one’s getting laid tonight. No one’s going anywhere but home.

Picnic
    B EKAH MAKES A picnic. I build a fire. There’s chicken and wine, chips and fruit. The wood cracks and laughs in the pit. The sky is thick with clouds, but there’s no wind. We sit in the grass smoking cigarettes.
    â€œIt’s going to rain,” she says.
    â€œWe can go.”
    â€œNo.”
    She has a sharp face, a chin pointed and her eyes wide and green. I touch her hand. She’s warm and soft. Veins run blue and thick through the pale, pale skin. Her teeth are crooked and small. I kiss her. She smiles.
    â€œWhy here?” she asks.
    â€œHere?”
    â€œYou have a house,” she says. “A room.”
    â€œGrandparents,” I say. “My mom.”
    â€œPushy?”
    â€œCurious.”
    She opens the wine, dark and thick. We talk. We talk about Poe and Hawthorne, Ginsberg, Simic and Edson.
    The rain comes. A drop, two, then a sheet of hard pellets.
    â€œNext time, my room,” she says.
    â€œYour room?”
    â€œYou can’t expect me to get naked out here,” she says.
    â€œNot at all.”

Clubbing
    L IGHTS BURN THROUGH the darkness. Cars rumble and growl on the street. Rain, again, washes away the oil from the engines. Bats return to their roosts under the bridges and in the hollows of trees growing thick and green on the hills. Beggars and runaways ask for money on the street where the train stops to let me off.
    The Silverado is a club on Burnside. The music from the dance hall is electric and loud, carrying into the night whenever the door opens. Tonight, the line is short and I only wait thirty, maybe forty minutes before getting to the door.
    Drag queens, old men looking for young ass, underage queers dance and shout, drinking soda pop and juice, smoking dope in the corners. Everyone’s out hunting for someone to take home. Pretty boys shout their numbers at me through the smoke and the lasers lancing out from the corners. Strobes chop everyone up. Nothing seems real.
    In the bathrooms, the stalls are filled with couples and threesomes, sucking and fucking, moaning and laughing in the dim, yellow light from the exposed bulbs in the ceiling.A beautiful queen in red silk reaches around my waist and lays her hand on my dick.
    â€œI know what to do with this,” she says.
    We