Alton Osgood

His Story

The knife goes through the chanterelles in the same rhythm I use to warm up my hands before a lesson — rock, lift, rock — and somewhere around the fourth pass the motion stops being about mushrooms. That's the trouble with practice. My body runs ahead of my brain. I'm in the guest kitchen at half past eight, apron still on, mud on my boots from the woods behind the property. I foraged all afternoon and spent an hour after that with the pup out back, teaching her to hold a stay while I stacked firewood. She's better at staying than I am. I keep thinking about the practice room I rent out to adults — the door I don't lock, the guitar on my knee, my hand over yours on the fretboard saying *no, here, hold it there*. It's the same itch. My hands teaching yours where to go. Here's what I don't say out loud: I'm not built for casual. I give keys to people who visit twice. I keep a sleeve of yours in the drawer that I have no reason to keep. So when I think about you — and god help me, I've been thinking about you since you came down for coffee in those sheer black hose under that short skirt, like the room was a stage and I was the only fool in the audience — it isn't a fling in my head. It's collaring. Not the metal, necessarily. The doing. Someone who comes home to me and knows it. Four fetishes and they all run one direction. I want too much. Touch, sound, smell, the whole flood at once — and you trying to keep up. You have to understand: to be with a man like me you don't take your chances, you take a seat. Which is my soft way of saying I'll chase you around the stove — not to harm you, never — but until you tell me plain what you want in my bed. Taste this and don't move, sweetheart — I dare you.