My gay boyfriend is driving me
to a job I think I want.
It's in the rural Midwest.
We're coming from coastal California
in the winter, so you do the math.

My gay boyfriend is at the U-Haul's wheel.
We've slept in separate beds
this entire trip, me straight, him homo, no chaser.
I'm trembling on the bench seat. I'm shaken and stirred
and I say Mikel - it's spelled M-I-K-E-L -
Mikel, I say, pull over. I heard something weird.

Neurotic, he says. I know where he learned this:
this word, this cut, this abrasion, this psychology
that, frankly, strips the limited limits of his imagination.
When he met my mother they liked each other.
They huddled and told secrets. She said you're not ugly,
he told me, driving the 101 back home after that trip,
wrists fine and gold-wrapped, light-haired and limp,
and I thought I wanted to grab one but didn't.
I just wanted some warmth, any.

We drove from Oxnard to Ventura to Carpinteria
and points north, him telling me to change my clothing
and use mousse. Now we're outside
the Eisenhower Tunnel, Vail Pass, Colorado.
We've never been here together and we're not enjoying it.

Pull over, I repeat, and surprisingly he does.
I press out the door, jump into the snow.
There's smoke rising from the back of our truck.
We've blown a tire. I laugh. Tears freeze on my cheeks.
He minces over: Oh-my-god. It actually sounds manly.
Maybe it's just the wind. We flag down a driver.

We ask them to go to town and call for help.
We trust they'll assist in our rescue.
We settle back into the truck, play the radio and heat intermittently.
This would be the time for him to turn un-gay,
to grab me and fuck me at roadside, rough
with the newness of it, both our cherries blossoming.
Instead he jumps back out, pisses into the snow.
Wish you could do that, he says. Don't you?

Right now all I want is to get to Nebraska.
I want to leave behind the forest of his rejection,
or is it olive? The olive green of his denying eyes?
I can't color-coordinate. I can't stand in the snow,
holding my dick like a Mont Blanc, writing piss-poetry.
I'm barely a girl but not enough man for him.
Travis Tritt is singing. I snap shut the radio
to hear the nothing sound of falling flakes.
Get used to this, I think. I haven't masturbated in days.
I tried last night, him snoring the next motel bed over,
my hand moving without shame under covers, but it didn't take.
Instead I knelt at his exposed feet, and eventually kissed them.
I would miss him. I knew that.

Two months later I'll have settled in that temporary way
of living in a place I hate.
Each morning he'll dial area code 308
over his toast, filling me in on his dull life
until one day it isn't, a blow job in the Nordie's underground garage.
Did you get a discount? I'll ask. But he won't get it.
Instead we'll sit on opposing ends of our phone line,
our talk stalled, snow making a racket outside my house,
a slick carpet awaiting my own piss-writings.

I'm scared of it. I check in with it every day,
clockwork, a timid teenager with a curfew.
I follow my bank balance, track that bitch
from the beach to the slopes, from fortune
down through pain. I talk to her on the phone.
We chat online. Every month she mails
me a love letter, fat with negative promise,
sealed with a kiss and a threat.

I qualified for a credit card yesterday
and said: Ha! Fuck you, bank balance.
I'm getting better. I'm learning to dance
the FICO-score foxtrot, good dog, pretty pooch.

Only I can be reponsible for her
and she knows it, watching me
with jagged eyes at the ATM,
hiding around the corner
until my next check-in.