Charlie Leppert
Gas Money
Hey there, handsome, you looking for a good time tonight?
Mr. 7-11 tells me I have a fine ass
so I tell him that, if he pays the right price,
we can take this to the freezer and heat things up.
I think I catch him off guard with that
because he doesn’t take me up on my offer,
but that’s okay—I’m on my way across town, anyway,
to meet a man who pays me well enough
to call him
Daddy
and pretend he is not balding.
One might consider this “skilled labor,”
this oldest profession in the world,
though I am under no illusions about what I am.
There is no real fortune to be had here,
no one to
be my very own Richard Gere tonight?
I know that the barrel of a gun tastes dirtier
than I imagined, but I’ve had worse tastes
in my mouth this week,
I’m sure
Usually, it is just like any other job—
do you really think your therapist
wants to listen to you whine all the time?
—except for when it feels like I am outgrowing my skin,
or maybe just paying the wages of sin.
It’s not like
I like it
Or that
it makes me feel good,
it’s just that
my body
feels less
like an empty house when it is tied
to someone else’s bed,
my body
less like a room for rent when I can rent
intimacy by the hour,
my body, my body, my body—
I am so tired of unpacking that old suitcase,
but a trick never asks me to.
He peels my clothes off like bandages
or rose petals, opening the bud of my shame
and calling it
beautiful
and I believe him,
because, really,
what else can I do?
He has no reason to lie to me,
I’m a sure thing.
Besides, if he’s the one who goes too far,
who panics, who slips, won’t I be glad
to have been beautiful before I was dead?
Right, sir?
Isn’t that worth believing?
Hey there, handsome, you looking for a good time tonight?
Charlie Leppert’s work has appeared in Mind Over Gender, The Labyrinth, and the Validation Project, among other websites and publications. He has been awarded the Stephen W. Chung Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and a Center for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation Scholarship from Bergen Community College. Leppert is queer poet and student from northern New Jersey whose poetic work focuses on queerness, the complexity of American identity, mental health, faith, and resistance.
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