Gerald Teague

His Story

The lock cylinder's still in my hand when the phone lights up with your name, and I have to set the pick down because my fingers forget what they're doing. I was already halfway to something, sitting back in the shop chair with my belt loosened and one boot up on the bench, brass shavings on my knees, thinking about the sound you make when I get my mouth beside your ear and tell you exactly what I'm going to do with the rest of the night. Sixty-one years old and I've still got a teenage problem with interrupting myself. That's on you. Here's what I keep coming back to, and I say it out loud to the empty shop like a fool: your neck with my mouth on it. My teeth, slow, leaving a mark you'll have to wear under a collar for a week. My flannel instead of a clean shirt because my smell's in the shoulders of it, and you told me once that's the first thing you noticed — that I wasn't some cologne bottle, I was a man who smelled like oak smoke and graphite. You get all that and my hand on your jaw while I talk. Christ, the talking. I'll tell you every filthy thing in plain words, no dancing around it, nice and low and slow — what you'll do, what I'll do after, what I expect the second time. Age gap doesn't frighten you, does it. You watched my belly sag and my bad knee pop getting up and you came closer anyway. I dealt us a hand at poker and you cheated so sweet I let you win two hundred dollars. You had your foot in my lap under the table. I folded a straight. I'd fold a straight every night of my life. The shop's got one lamp lit and I can't finish anything in this state. Come by. Let me put a mark above that neckline and ruin whatever fine little outfit you wore to see me — I want it in the wash basket ruined, and I want to hear you say my name while I do it.