Page 18 - Finding Tulsa - Preview

10 Jim Provenzano

2. can’t have milk

I was a theatre queen before I had pubes. My teen summer tans were
as pale as unwashed muslin and my skin as cool as the air-conditioned
theater where I hid. In secret moments, wrapped in musty curtains or old
costumes, my heart fluttered with uncontrollable surges of heat, passion,
and hope.
Some may say a life in the theatre can ruin you. I say it was my salva-
tion. In the days when walking down the street or by a playground might
leave me with a bloody nose or a hurled insult that hurt even more, the
theatre was my refuge, my shelter.
Although it may have given me a bit too much of a flair for the styl-
ish and symmetrically designed, I still can’t shake the flush of desire at the
scent of sawdust or a freshly painted flat. I remember what those summers
taught me: how to hold myself up amid despair and ridicule, how to light
a room, how to see art, where to find the right clever quote, and if that
failed, how to improvise.
Theater schooled me in Varsity Fagdom.

I stole a canvas once.
Welcome to Circe Airlines. Our arrival time is five hours or twenty
years.
I’m typing on the plane, clacking away at my speech while the busi-
nessclone next to me pretends to sleep, his thick-fingered hand near-cra-
dling his crotch. I look down occasionally, then out the window, regarding
the rumpled blanket of earth, wishing I’d taken another glance at my city
before leaving.
I turn down Frank Black on the headphones, now that the thrill of
jetting over Los Angeles is over.
I’m uncomfortable in my seat, but being a visual type of person, I
always want the window. Besides, plane seats are meant to annoy guys like
me. I’m a bit large, not fat, but tall, what in my youth would have its own
section in the Sears catalog: husky. Now I’d be a bear if I weren’t natu-
rally smooth. I wonder if I can start my own gay subcategory of chunky,
smooth gays: Dolphins?
As I resume typing, the businessclone shifts his weight. Our legs graze.