Copulant: Theft and Sex (DRAFT)

 By Jem Ashton

I stole Lady Gaga’s Artpop from the FYE across the street from my highschool. It was a gift for my highschool boyfriend, who credited Lady Gaga with saving his life - a classic gay boy story of the time. I’ll refer to him by his first initial, M. M once tackled me in the parking lot of his highschool when he was trying to get into my pants. He was aggressively horny - he sexually assaulted me, really -  but that wasn’t what led me to dump him. I dumped him after he gave me a promise ring. It was clear that what I thought was a silly highschool relationship looked like something else from his perspective - not a match. I kept the ring, but I never wear it. It’s too big. Perfect for his own chubby fingers, but a bad match for my bony hands.

The FYE I stole from is now the gym I go to. After breaking up with my most recent boyfriend - a relationship that lasted nearly seven years - I moved back to the suburban town where I spent my latter teenage years. It’s as suburban as I remember it being. The grocery store is filled with the elderly, the middle-aged who wear Cookie Monster sweatpants, and children who are unattended. The strip malls are filled with chains, whether national or regional. There’s a thick layer of patriotism spread over the neighborhoods. I’ve stolen from the gym now, too. Just one towel so far. Every time I go, I consider taking another one. They’re a good size - modest enough for the sauna while still being small enough to require a good portion of one thigh to be visible when you’re seated with any degree of spread. It gives me the opportunity to be a tease - something I insist I’m not but love to be at any given opportunity. Countless times, I’ve been signalled or directly asked by men in the sauna to show off my dick and I’ve gladly complied. Gladly, because it means I’m wanted. Gladly, because it puts me in a position to reject somebody, which means I have power. And I like having power. Thank you for giving me power, here you go.

One week this summer, I was propositioned each time I went to the gym. The first was on a Sunday. The man sitting next to me whispered to me déjame mirarte. Por favor. I know just enough Spanish to understand. I let him look. The next day, the same man was there. I showed him again and he used his phone to show me a picture of his boner. On Wednesday, a man followed me from a bench into the sauna after we made prolonged eye contact with each other during our workouts - a ripped, hairy, bald man. We then left the sauna together and jerked each other off in his car. His phone was connected to his car’s bluetooth and I learned his name was Greg. Greg’s iPhone. The day after that, there was a tall man who followed me in. We groped each other a little before some other men joined us in the sauna, which forced us into couthness. I later learned this tall man is the current boyfriend of a man who I once went on a date with. They’re a cute couple. For my last workout of the week, I didn’t intend to visit the sauna, but I was persuaded by an older man. At first, I rejected his advances by saying I didn’t bring a towel, which wasn’t true. Then, he offered me his extra towel. We sat together in the sauna. Eventually, a friend of his came in. They both jerked off while looking at me. I didn’t. I still have the towel. It’s green and large - intended to be a beach towel probably.

Since that week, I’ve been propositioned less frequently. I now go to the gym at times when it’s less busy. Overall, the gym is less busy than it was early in the summer. Maybe it’s because people gave up on getting their summer body, resigning themselves to their suburban truths. Maybe they’re busy living it up on lavish vacations. There are dozens of excuses I can come up with for them - both denigrating and kind. 

At the gym today, I sat in the sauna and I was wishing the perverts were back. Being horny after a workout is an animalistic pleasure - a simple, physical state of being - and it’s easy to satisfy. I’m craving that simplicity, the uncomplicated act of helping a man you’ll never see again get off. Everything else in my life feels like an insurmountable problem. At every turn, I have to ask myself if I can make it work. Grad school. Relationships - WHICH relationships? Money. Managing my time. Becoming SOMETHING. Compared to all that, making some guy cum feels so easy. If I ask myself if I can make that work, I know the answer is yes. There’s nothing to worry about. There’s no financial risk. I have no emotional hang ups. It only takes a few minutes. Like petty theft, I often think. Just a low-risk, convenient, moderately satisfying action that is always available. If the choice is between being a kleptomaniac or a nymphomaniac, which would you rather have me be? 

I appreciate the material benefit of theft. I appreciate the more innocent delights of sexuality. However, the right answer, of course, is neither. The right answer is to confront life’s complications, as inconvenient as they might be, rather than riding them out until life makes choices for me while I distract myself with the simple pleasures. To me, these confrontations often feel as though they’re pushing me towards psychosis. While I’m fairly sure it’s not psychosis, just the WHACK of stress that comes with life-hood, I can’t count out the possibility that it could be psychosis (it’s common enough in my family). The mature thing for me to do is to engage in those complicated feelings and then get a grip on my feelings while I push through, whether those feelings are psychotic or not.

I’ve recently been on a borrowing kick. It’s like stealing, but I promise myself I’ll bring the things back. Back to the ex who I was with for close to seven years. The life we had together was who I’ve been for as long as the relationship lasted and I feel like I’ve been struggling to give birth to my new identity - one that’s mine alone. The things I borrow are things we shared. Things that are his, but were also mine for seven years, but are now just his again. His CDs, which I’ve borrowed for road trips with potential friends, lovers, exes. His hiking boots, which we always shared because we wear the same size. I felt bad about borrowing those and have since purchased my own - just mine - hiking boots. His microplane, which my family gifted to him, so it certainly is his, but I needed to zest a lemon. Shortly after this borrowing, a friend asked what they could buy me for my birthday and I asked for a microplane. The microplane void in my kitchen has been filled now. I won’t need to borrow his again. I’m glad to say I have so far returned everything I’ve borrowed from him. The myriad voids in my life have been slowly erased by my own versions of his things.

As I build a fuller version of my life by replacing what’s been lost with things that are my own, my borrowing and theft become less necessary. Same goes for my frivolous sexual encounters. While I was with my long-term same-sex sexual/romantic partner of nearly seven years, being a tease for the perverts at the gym was an escape from my dissatisfaction. It was an escape from my inability to confront necessary amendments or a dissolution. I was once again using the simple pleasures available around every corner to distract myself from the more complicated issues in my life - from reality. Now that sex is just sex instead of a distraction from displeasure, I’m seeking it out less. It feels less necessary. Being in a long-term relationship expanded my life. While that expansion felt good, it also created more gaps. I didn’t have enough within myself to fill those voids on my own. Single again, my life has shrunk and returned to a size that’s manageable for my little nut of a brain. If a pervert at the gym asks to see my dick, it’s there for them, but I’m not going out of my way to increase the odds of that occurring. If I find myself in a rut because I don’t have the right tools in my kitchen, I can solve that problem myself.

Three Poems, Three Stanzas Each

 By Jem Ashton

Good Bird

Tangled between lines

I say to myself good bird

What was meant to be girl

almost became boy

blurred 

and was bird instead

For my dentist, I am so

Sweet candy

you say I’m good

You can see I’m flossing

and indeed that’s what this is

Flossing for you

and I will not stop my flossing

For the job you want

Dressed

alone in my apartment

Straight up and down

chest to thighs, flat

What do you want to be

        and I wish I could say dentist

Minutes on Asphalt (DRAFT)

By Jem Ashton

In the second month of a new relationship while on a weekend road trip to a small town in the desert - one that’s more of a byproduct of tourism than an earnestly charming podunk - my then-new boyfriend dragged me to the one bar in town where fags might not get stared down. That weekend, fags were actively welcomed, actually. The local queers put a bare-armed effort into staging a full-fledged Pride Festival that drew queers in from all over the region. It also lured in some queers who intended to “just pass through town” but couldn’t resist the timeless charm of pop music barely audible through amped up bass and rowdy, drunk homosexuals. 

One was a rugged man with gray hair, tanned skin, and a beard that reached his sternal notch - bare, only hidden by the same chest hair that would guide your eye down to a vertex held together by a shirtbutton below his chest. He said we - me and my then-new boyfriend - fit the vibe for his company, which was looking for models. We should consider modeling, he said. He didn’t say what his company was and we didn’t ask, but we enjoyed his company enough to make him our friend for the evening. We kept talking and he stood behind me during the long wait for drinks at the crowded bar. He was passing through town with his husband, who was somewhere else in the crowd, and they caught wind of the party. They liked road-tripping on their motorcycles, they liked meeting new people. He liked our look - or maybe or looks, as distinct and separate as they are. 

He brushed his rough, asphalt hand along my wiry forearm and I shifted my weight back to lean fractionally closer to the affectionate man standing behind me at the bar. With the gentle movement of our bodies - shifting to drink or make way for the flowing crowd - his belt pressed into me. His body pressed against mine. My fraction of a step became whole and I pressed myself against him, signaling I welcomed his belt, his body. Signaling I welcomed his body pressing into me. 

He asked for my number, saying he wanted my number to keep in touch about the modeling suggestion, but I caught a glimpse of a more familiar invitation in his eye. His cheeks were rosy with lust and beer. His eyes were heavy like ripe fruit, plump and ready with visions of seeding fertile earth. 

I gave him a fake, because I wasn’t sure I wasn’t crossing the boundaries of my then-new relationship. Would my boyfriend mind my minute flirtation with this stranger? I both cared and didn’t. My fake phone number felt like the middle ground. 

I was saying “yes.” 

I was saying “no.” 

I was getting what I wanted and I was giving it up.

Because I took the lazy way out of a tricky situation, that was the end of the road.

A Great Flood

By Jem Ashton 

My knuckles are rubbed thin by my persistent, aggressive, maybe unnecessary handwashing. 

In the cold weather, the thinned skin cracks and my knuckles bleed. Sometimes, I don't notice for awhile, only realizing my injury when I finally have reason to look at my hands and see the frozen blood dew - dark red and sticky - on my knuckle peaks. As soon as I can, I wash my hands again. I rub the blood away along with more skin. 

In the following days, I'm more careful. I treat my hands gently. I talk myself out of believing every surface is so nasty that I need to rub away my skin after touching anything. I remind myself I need a healthy dermal layer to protect myself from germs. I moisturize, do what I can to retain the oil my skin needs to survive. Scabs form, my skin heals. 

My hands look good, as if I never washed my skin away.

Night's Approach in Willow Gulch

By Jem Morgenstern

            Under Broken Bow Arch, there’s a creek that falls into a muddy pond. A muddy pond with crawdaddies paddling their way across the floor, pushing their ancient bodies under rocks to hide from my eyes peering down at them. I could crush them like the 13 Boy Scouts who were crushed by a rolling truck 20 miles and 55 years back at Carcass Wash, but I am much kinder than the God they prayed to. I drop a couple spinach leaves into their water – just enough for me to feel like I might be feeding them but not enough for me to feel like I’m polluting. I don’t know if they eat spinach, but I like feeling like I might be making their lives easier for one moment.
            Aside from the crawfish and the ghosts of western tragedies, there are only two others in the gulch with me. Right now, they’re back at our camp that’s nestled in the dunes of an alcove directly across from the arch. Their feet rest in the cold red sand while they share a portion of the one bottle of liquor we managed to fit in our packs. The echoes of their conversation breaks the perfect silence, but I don’t mind the noise because I like listening to them talk.
            I hike back up the dunes to join them and share their dry spit and booze from that same bottle of liquor. The night slowly drips into the sky as the burning dusk falls below the desert walls of the gulch. The black birds swimming in the darkening sky look like they’re knit from their own shadows.  We talk about those birds and the stars that speck their shadow figures, because the moonlit sky is all we can see in the blackness that reigns over desert floors at night.

Green River Autumn

By Jem Morgenstern


Roaches settle under milkweed patterned floors
Summer sets on churning bodies, wilting  
  daisies nestle on garden stones
Wooden homes along dirt roads, stretching 
  only from the one-eyed man's home 
  to the farthest point his eye spies

Quiet folk keen on speaking with pointed eyes
   and locking their doors before the gloam
To the well, they do not send their children fetching
   or else the beast will chew their bones
Passerbys' screams keep mother from her quilting
   and the locks stay on the doors

Family Above All

By Jem Morgenstern

In our Father’s Arms

Blood on the linoleum. Muffled crying. I could picture the scene in the other room clearly – I had seen it before, I had been in her position before. Children, like us, are dangerously likely to make small mistakes. He didn’t like small mistakes, he didn’t like children.

            Blood on the linoleum. Muffled crying. She could picture the scene in the other room clearly – she had seen it before, she had been in my position before. He had one hand over my boiling mouth and the other pressed down on my neck.

He said, “stop, you little bitch, be quiet.”

So we would be quiet.

In our Mother’s Arms

            She put an arm around me and told me it was okay, so I believed it was okay. Blood would stop leaking from my nose. Bruises would come and go. The room was bright with the sun’s light. I believed this was a good place.

            She put an arm around her and told her it was okay, but she knew it wasn’t. Blood would stop leaking from her nose. Bruises would come and go. The sun’s light poured through the windows from outside. She knew a better place was out there.

            She said, “he won’t do it again.”

            But he would do it again.

Tunnel Shears

By Jem Morgenstern

The walls were once slick with condensating excrements and the scent of feces was an inescapable force that lingered in the air at all times. Now, the sewer corridors are as dry as the desert above them. Putrid scents come and go as the winds blow through galleries of semi-petrified masses of ancient feculence - or the scents are carried from fresher excrement after the wind passes through corners of the sewers reserved for stews of waste and rotting dead of the present day.

These corridors, once solely the home to pests and shifting excretion of the old age, now house the people who could not bear the striking heat of the dual suns and the jagged sand winds. All who abandon the arduous journeys above for the security of the sewer passageways face the questionable hospitality of the indigenous craftspeople known as The Sewers.

The Sewers are the last remaining people of the Northwestern Landmass who have the skills needed to manufacture clothing. Because it is the only skill that offers them an advantage in the trading networks, they cruelly guard the secrets of their techniques. Without their secrets, the only product they could offer to the markets would be the petrified manure of the ancients. With only that to offer, they would find themselves starved and dying because so few ask for the petrified manure.

The Sewers reserve all garments they make to be sold in the world above them. Because of this, they all live their lives disrobed. The docile underground wind wraps its fingers around their bare bodies, refugees from the desert avert their gaze until they finally become accustomed to uncovered skin, nudity is only interrupted when they dress themselves in newly made clothing to ensure it will fit similar bodies in the dusty world above.

The Sewers’ utilize their nudism to distinguish themselves from the refugees whose bodies are veiled by clothing. Although those who are clothed are not treated poorly, they are excluded from greater sewer events. They are not invited to the occasional dinners afforded to The Sewers by their monopoly on skills of clothing production, but they are treated to the leftovers from these feasts.

The Sewers are kind enough to allow outsiders to participate in their industry, too. For a long period of time before they are truly considered part of the sewer community, the outsiders work as liaisons to the desert markets. They bring the clothing up and the traded goods down in exchange for gradual acceptance - plus, they are compensated for their labor with popular currencies and necessary comforts.

Eventually, some outsiders become Sewers and are offered the privilege of learning the skills hoarded by underground dwellers since the beginning of this age. There have been attempts by desert travelers to infiltrate the indigenous sewer communities by stripping their rags from their bodies and entering the tunnels while pretending to already be Sewers. The Sewers, having exceptional eyes for details, are able to distinguish a dust dweller’s skin from their own. With exposure to the desert, patches of skin are rugged with scars that do not occur in the sewers. If The Sewers discover intent to steal their secrets, the former potential thief is quickly tied and brought to an empty corridor that is strictly used for immolation. Afterwards, the body is transported to a waste corner where it is left to decay.

This brutality towards thieves is the only violence found in the sewers. There is no other place that provides the same asylum from barbarism. Above, even the air is savage. Below, the world is gentle enough for nakedness to be commonplace and for inhabitants to be so untroubled by their surroundings that they are able to socialize without irritation piercing through their interactions. Couriers, wealthy travelers, and even the Dust Raiders rest in the company of Sewers - to escape the suns, to rest without worry of Horrible Centipedes emerging from the sands, and to disrobe and refresh in gentle air.

A Poem About Cement and Me

By Jem Morgenstern

The cement
has more personality than I do
because its history is vocalized

It's strong and present
the water stains
the cracks
the gum

Mine is internal

It's swallowed and drowning
in my stomach
the intestines
the cracks
the crevices

I hoard my words
as if they're more valuable
inside of me
than outside
to be eaten by the people
who are hungry
for my words
and my presence

Shallow Beaches

Shallow Beaches 
-LB
Explain: why listening to you worry about the state of the world—you cover climate change, presidential elections, academic strains, starvation (beginning in the first person), and career goals in a matter of minutes—and watching your hope deflate and despair consume you in your particular ease, nonchalance, and embracing way makes me want to believe that it will all actually be okay.

Explain: why these things I never cared about suddenly make me tremor and all I want to do is know everything, learn everything, fix everything, or maybe just fix you dinner and listen to you talk and never stop listening and listen to you sing if you sing because I think that you sing and I don't care if you listen to Bieber—which is big for me because things like that have always mattered to me in the most gravely important way—or if your voice sounds like screeching but I'd probably prefer that over the slow nervous warmth in your voice that matches the blue in your eyes that makes me crumble and smile without meaning to in the most high school girlish way (and I don't admit that proudly).

Explain: why the structure of your mind—or maybe lack thereof—is a hug to my tired, dark heart, and why it's been ready to leap on any collection of words for once that aren't my own or that one person's whose name is no longer claimed, but yours, and why every time I read your thoughts spewed out on the page I want to write more of my own, I want to believe that I can.
Explain why: it's 3:00 a.m. and I'm still thinking about that dinner—can I make you a vegetarian lasagna? Are you opposed to vegetarians? Do you have a secret affinity for Elsa and that stupid-looking snowman? Is it frightening to you in an I-don't-understand-it-so-I'm-either-going-to-overinstate-my-"masculinity"-or-just-try-to-avoid-it-at-all-costs sort of way that some men wear dresses and like other men or some people are just people who don't identify as either / or, just want to be seen as people? All these things and more I should learn before I make you dinner, I suppose, but I guess I just assumed that all the answers must be the answers I wanted because my previous paragraphs can't seem to be explained in any other way. Well, that and your hair falls just perfect and your eyes glimmer the dreamiest shade of blue.

Vague Introspection

By Jem Morgenstern

Footsteps sunk into the room from the apartment above and dialogue from a movie playing down the hall was muffled by the walls. Crickets played their repetitive music. Cars drove by intermittently, with traffic slowed from the daytime flow to the nighttime lull. A man was shouting down the street, interjecting his voice into the otherwise calm summer fade. The screaming city was getting as much rest as the people inside it would let it have.

Keeping my eyes closed took more effort than leaving them open. I couldn’t sleep, so I stared at the ceiling and listened to the dry breeze make passes through the small gap between the window and the sill. I had a lot of unresolved worries and questions; without closure, my day didn’t feel conclusive.

When there’s a show with episodes that usually end with resolved stories and one episode suddenly comes up with a “to be continued” notice at the end, there’s an urge to immediately move onto the next episode. At that moment, I felt like my day was the equivalent to an episode like that and I wanted to watch the next one right away to get the answers I needed, but I had to wait. All I could do was obsessively think over the moments that were stuck in my head and guess what the answers to my questions might be.

I got up from the bed and  redressed myself: a grey shirt, standard blue jeans, and a pair of black leather shoes. After putting on my shoes, I stayed on the floor for a minute more to look around and to set up a vague plan for the walk I would take myself on. I thought about going to that stone staircase at the end of the neighborhood a few blocks north, the steep road with a contemporarily geometric house surrounded by classic victorians, maybe to the top of the hill.

I made my way out the door, down the hall, down the stairs, and out the building. I turned West and started walking. The yelling man had stopped. The crickets were still playing their songs. The the streets were still being illuminated by the occasional car driving by. I walked down the street, no detours, no change of direction. I didn’t go to the staircase, to the steep road, or to the top of the hill. The path I was walking on felt pneumatic. Setting myself in motion expedited my train of thought, providing me with the right level of distraction to cut away the thought patterns that were hindering progress through my overgrown field of worries.

There were definitive answers to some of the questions I had, but I was left with plenty more that I would have to wait for the continuation of the story to answer for itself. I set them aside, kept walking, and put my focus back on the night. I felt the freshly chilled air brush against my dry skin and fill my lungs. I took pleasure in the muffled city sounds. I was enamored by the cityscape that changes so completely from sunshine to moonlight and I was thankful that it offered me the meditative milieu I needed to ease my aggressively active thoughts.