Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Bookends June 14, 2015

 

I still have the pic she sent of her mixing drinks at her father’s party, when she had to travel north, telling me she would not see me again for a while, and all I wanted at that time when I saw that picture was to be there with her, leaning close as she stirred up the ingredients as if a witch’s brew I did not need to imbibe to fell intoxicated, and how much later I sent her a text wishing her a happy birthday, as the whole world changed, collapsing in on itself like a black hole, and how I felt the need to run and hide from the mob she set loose, their torches and pitchforks full of vengeance, and now, years later, I think of those two moments as bookends, my brain bouncing back and forth between the two extremes, the good memory side by side with a bad one, though after the second she seemed to show mercy on me, aware that I was up to my neck in quicksand, and how I should not fight the inevitable, the more I struggled the faster I would sink, when even now I know, I’ll still way over my head, but wise enough not to send any more birthday wishes.

 


email to Al Sullivan

The illusion of flight Dec. 2013 f

 

 



She is on the verge

Of something even

She doesn’t know,

After a year living

In a painful cocoon,

Led her to believe

She is not,

She must feel her

Wings aching

For flight

But where to,

And how high

Will she need

To go to escape

The firmament

That clings to

Her now,

Space men speak

Of escape velocity

Leaving her

With questions

How fast must

She go to finally

Get liftoff,

And just who

It is that holds

Her back,

Trying to clip

Her wings so

She can’t,

She has lived

A year of her life

With the illusion

She had ascended

High enough

Above the ground,

While the whole time

People piled stones

Over her as if

In a grave,

With her having

Barley strength enough

To pick up stone

After stone

After stone

And still unable

To unfurl her wings

Where does she

Fly off to

After she has risen?

To what destination

Can she make it to

That someone

Won’t try

To bury her

Again.

 


email to Al Sullivan

a sip of wine 2013

 

It comes back

 each time I close my eyes,

Her lips poised on the rim of a wine glass,

Her long fingers gripping the stem,

She having hold of something deep inside me,

Leaving me to guess what happens next,

A slow stroke as her touch

 touches already steamed glass

I stare at her as if through fog,

Inebriated not on the wine we drink

But the reflection in her deep, 

dark, terrifying eyes,

All leads up to them,

 above the finger that clutch

(the glass, my throat, my heart),

Above the lips that sip not wine, but me,

Eyes staring back at me

Full of promise,

Full of expectations of pain

And pleasure

 


email to Al Sullivan

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Like a hotdog wrapped in a bun June 23, 2015

  

I don’t want to bang against you every time, though sometimes, I just want to stay inside you, feeling you move when I move, filling you up until it seems we are one in the same, injected so deeply, we can’t fell but feel it all, even when we barely move, and I wonder, how it must feel to you, to have me there inside you, the swell of me against you, you swallowing me whole, when I can’t tell which part is me and which part if you, and I don’t care. I could stay like that forever, like a hotdog wrapped in a bun, so tight we can’t tell which one of us is moving when we move, where one of us ends and the other begins, though eventually, we must surrender, I just don’t want it to be right now.

 


email to Al Sullivan

Becoming Bi

 

My best friend Dave tells me we’d get a lot more sex if we went bi.

Since I’m 14 and he’s 13 and we haven’t had any sex at all, this would be a vast improvement.

We’re not even sure exactly what Bi is, and our understand of sex is what we glimpse sneaking peeks at my uncle’s copy of Playboy.

I’m jerked off exactly twice. Dave does it more than he will admit.

I vaguely connect Bi with being gay, a word Dave would never use, even in private, but we both know gay means having sex with another man.

How does someone get to be Bi, I ask.

Dave says he knows someone who might teach us, a woman his mother knows, who he has come to call his aunt, though she’s not related.

Teach us? Are there rules to being Bi? And will be really get more sex if we learn how?

On the off change he may be right, I accompany him. I definitely want to get some sex before I get too old.

His aunt lives in an old house on the east side of town, in a once respectable neighborhood that since gone to seed.

We need to take two buses to get there, and up a very high hill on top of which the house sits.

It looks haunted.

I tell Dave I want to go home.

He calls me chicken; so, I change my mind.

When we get to the porch Dave rings the bell, the echo of which resounds deep inside, followed by the clatter of footsteps. When the door opens, we see a very pretty girl, older than us, maybe 20, Dave giving me a shit-eating grin and says, “See, things are already looking up.”

Only it all feels a bit strange to me, especially the girl, but before I can put my finger on exactly what, she skips off to get the “mistress,” who turns out to be a much older woman (maybe in her 40s), dressed almost all in black, with black hair, black eyelashes and a penetrating stare.

Dave says this is his aunt; I think she is a witch.

She smiles when she recognized Dave – but it is a cold smile, and I’m uncomfortable with the sideward glance she gives me.

I leave it to Dave to explain what we want.

Her smile changes, not any more friendly, but amused, as her eyes dialate and I see our reflection in them, we, looking very much like the lost sheep we are.

I nudge Dave again, titling my had towards the door as if to make my case again to go home.

He ignores me.

The woman tells us to follow her as she takes us up a large set of stairs, overhead there is a chandieller and I think of the horror movies Dave and I sometimes watch on TV at home.

The room might have been a living room once, but has since been converted to something darker, racks of clothing in one corner, and an assortment of tables, chairs, benches and such around the room, chains hanging from some of these.

The woman pauses near the racks of clothing and looks back at us, her dark brows rising like question marks on her forehead.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asks.

Before I can say no, Dave jumps in and says “Definitely,” perhaps thinking if we do this we might actually meet someone from the pages of Playboy.

“It will take some time,” the woman said. “You’ll have to return her often to get trained.”

“Trained?” I ask, thinking maybe Dave had actually hit on something, when in the past all his schemes came to naught.

“We’ll start you off simply, with the basics, and later we can move on to the more sophisticated things.”

She studies us for a moment, then reaches onto one of the racks, coming up with two pink panties.

“Try these on,” she says. “They look like they will fit.”

“Those are girls panties,” I say.

“”Exactly,” the woman says. “You’ll wear them under your regular clothing to get used them. Later, we can fit you for sleeker things, dresses and braziers.”

“Why would we want to do that?” I asked, my voice shrill.

“To get used to become girls. You did say you were serious about this, didn’t you?”

I want to say that I want a girl to have sex with, not to become a girl, more than a little confused.

Did Bi mean becoming a girl? Or did it mean something else?

She seems to want to make us into something other than what we assumed, and I nudge Dave again, who is like a deer caught in headlights, is staring at the panties as if he’s tempted to put them on.

“Dave!” I said tugging at his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

But still he doesn’t move, even when I try to pull him. He just stares.

She’s his aunt, not mine, so I don’t have to stay. Giving him one more chance to come with me, I then head back the way we came.

I don’t want to be bi, I tell myself as I rush out the front door and down the long hill back to the bus stop.  I don’t want to wear girl’s panties. I just want to have sex.

I don’t hear from Dave for a couple of days, then see him on our way to school. He looked uncomfortable. He would not meet my gaze, but kept tugging on his jeans as if they were too tight. I don’t want to know why, and we never talk about it again, although sometimes when I stop at his house his mother tells me he’s not home.

“He went up to see his aunt,” she says.


email to Al Sullivan

Being bad June 2, 2017

  

She would be bad rather than forgotten, this dark angel I still sometimes dream about, hearing her voice in the dead of night, recounting her exploits over which I remain jealous, wishing I could have taken part in them, even though they happened long ago, this dream sequence in which she remains the principal character, waking at dawn overwrought with guilt, when she had no reason to feel guilty, being bad because she needs to be something, and better bad than nothing at all


email to Al Sullivan

Slowly dying love Oct. 24, 2013

 

 

Whatever it was back then

when it started in her head

 is over now,

 even though she clearly doesn’t like it

 the end of the affair

the painful conflict between love and life,

when she needs him most,

 he’s not there,

 the space beside her

 with dented sheets

and the fading memory

 of what was and now can never be again,

 her words thick with anguish

and desperate pleas

 he seems to ignore,

 love sometimes dies all at once,

 yet not in this case,

watching it die little by little

 is like feeling the pin pricks

 of dying again and again,

 aching to put it out of its misery,

 only uncertain as to how,

reluctant in case the dying

can be reversed

so, she endures it,

feeling each sting,

 knowing death is inevitable

 but gambling in case it’s not.


email to Al Sullivan