Men
Jeremy Radin
My mom’s friend Adam threw me down the stairs
because I threw the cat down the stairs to show him
it could land on its feet but I was eleven & Adam
was I think in his mid-twenties & had a thing for
my mom who wasn’t home that night so he was
babysitting me. I ran, crying, up the stairs, locked
the door & tried to call my mom. I’ve kept a few
male friends & generally not for long. There seems
always a to be a kind of betrayal—a disappearing
or something having to do with some girl neither
of us could see clearly enough to understand she
too was making decisions. Once a friend dated
a girl he knew me to have feelings for & I needed
some space but then they started telling our friends
things about me. Most things were untrue & some
were versions of the truth & some were true. I’m
not sure whether I fulfill something in the national
imagination but I know to move to the other side
of the street at night when walking in the path
of a lone woman. So this is masculinity. When
my child body tumbled down the stairs I think
there was mostly confusion but also a sort of
wonder at a sort of rite of passage. To be folded
into the secret language of men whose bodies
until then had been locked alphabets. I’m not like
other men I said for many years but we were all
being whispered to, we all had suggestions made
to us. My mom had lots of male friends at the time.
She was recovering from cocaine & a man & went
back to school. We spent every other weekend
with her & there was Randy & Adam & a dude
with long hair strumming a guitar in the kitchen
& sweet Brent who taught me how to fry a steak
& played Perfect Dark with me & I couldn’t have
known it then but I felt my mom was choosing
these men over me so I sought for years affection
from women who wanted it from other men.
I spent hours on the toilet, surrounded by comics,
snuck into the kitchen in the middle of the night,
made the alarm clock bomb with Matthew G.
but only as an experiment & because I thought
it would make him happy. My mom signed me up
for theater camp & I try not to think about who
I might have become if she hadn’t. Perhaps I’m
making a kind of progress. I can’t remember what
happened to Adam but I know for a while he
worked as a nurse & lived in a van & my mom
catches up with him from time to time.
Love Poems
I churned them out for women I was in acting class with, women
I had fretted over in school, women living in European countries
I had met one night after work. I am going to write you poems until
you fall in love with me. Primary romantic strategy of my twenties.
Today I think about Wayne Koestenbaum, who writes that,
as a young man, he sent a young woman a love letter, & waited,
breathless, until receiving this reply: “Next time, write to me.”
What is a love poem? While in eating disorder treatment I run
a workshop for the others in which we write odes to the foods
that frighten us most, & so doing, stumble on an uneasy truth: we
are writing odes not to the food, but to our own capacity to ode,
to make furious with meaning something as innocuous as zucchini
bread, a hot dog, sushi, a burrito—using only our imaginations.
What is an eating disorder if not the sign of a vast imagination?
What is love if not an eating disorder? I have stuffed myself
sick with it, & purged. Once I cried so hard after a girl moved,
I threw up. Declan Donnellan speaks about the difference
between saying I love you, which is about you, & I’m in love with you,
which is about me. Love is a bridge of behavior, a straight line,
a verb, bell hooks reminds us, not an opera flocking the heart.
When has it not been about me? I love you, & so I wrote you
a poem. This is not a gift. It’s a sales pitch. I spoke one in front
of the acting class, written, clearly, for a woman in that class,
& she wept, & I thought, I’ve done a good job, though she had
told me that she didn’t share my feelings—but wished
she could. All she needs is a push, I thought. & so I pushed,
but she did not fall. Thank goodness. I would have broken
every promise. She loved the poem, she told me, & I told her
I loved that she loved the poem, even though the poem
was written for me, & I didn’t believe a word.
The First Night
May I touch you here, she says. Okay
I say, & she folds her palm into
the trench beneath my belly—we
lay this way as time parades around
the room. The moon like a headlight
through the curtains illuminates
our skin. I imagine our sex—
she on top—rippling, lips
pressed to my ear, summoning
visions into me; she arcs, currents,
coils, opens, & so on, & so on
until the imagining changes—
I am on top—wheezing heap
of an engine. Assortment of heaving
heavinesses. I can summon nothing, focus
only on gasping for breath. She, concealing
her pity as I fail & fail against her. & so
no & so no. & then she is
caressing my cheek. Wondering
Where did you go, my creature? Palm
still tucked between the panels
of my flesh. Do you feel how here
you are, she whispers, kissing my
ears, my eyelids, falling upon
my body like a deer
on the hood of a car.
about the writer
Jeremy Radin is a poet, actor, playwright, teacher, and extremely amateur gardener. His poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, The Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012) and Dear Sal (Not A Cult, 2017/2021). He was born and lives in Los Angeles where he recommends, should you find yourself here, the black pastrami reuben and cheese blintzes at Brent’s Delicatessen. Follow him @germyradin.