flat out funky grooves

Mr. Clean is trade, but not the scary kind. Not the kind you blow in the backseat of a Ford parked behind the Saint Paul Episcopal at four in the morning. It's been a long time since you were seventeen trawling Craigslist in your shoplifted Target dress. You're a grown woman now. You’re not that girl, and he's not that guy.

He doesn't try to get you to put out on the first date, or the second. Not even the third or fourth. But the fifth? Well, now you’ve gotta have him. You slip up and call him ‘daddy’ but he just rolls with it, real smooth. “Dirty girl,” he growls, and now you’re digging your acrylics in his shoulder. He can take it. “That’s my dirty fuckin’ girl.”

He’s ex-Navy, blue collar, not rich but he’s got his shit together. Stays at the trailer park down Dryer Street. It’s nice inside, cozy and neat. Man’s got better taste than all the other bachelors in their mid-forties you’ve tangled with. Bi, which is fine. Not exactly out and proud, but he never treats you like a secret. You wake up in his sheets and here he comes in that tight white T-shirt with a plate of bacon and eggs and a glass of OJ just for you. Tells you he’s got his VFW buddies coming over later to shoot the shit over some beers but it’s just a matter of fact, doesn’t have the ‘so you better get going’ sting to it. But you go home anyway, ‘cause it sure as shit doesn’t sound like fun. He gives you a ride and mom doesn’t think to ask where the hell you’ve been the past two days.

So you’ve been seeing him the past couple months now. The man’s so easygoing when you’re with him you feel like you can let your guard down for the first time in Christ only knows how long. Soon enough you’re tangled in his big arms every Friday and Saturday and you’ve got him watching Survivor and I Love New York with a big bowl of popcorn, a glass of wine for you and a can of Miller for him. You don’t need to watch how you laugh with him, or the way you cough or clear your throat. He doesn’t give a shit how you sound. Maybe he’s too good to be true, but you don’t care. He just makes you feel so safe.

‘Til one night you drive to the Love’s down the road, the one where you pick up Marlboro Lights for yourself and Pall Malls for mom. This time there’s a new guy at the register. “You a dude, or what?”, he says, right when he rings you up. Fuckin’ hick asshole. It’s been a minute since you got any of that bullshit and it puts you in a funk for the rest of the week. A real bad funk.

And now you’re damn near black-out drunk in his bathroom, puking your guts out, crying ‘til your eyes sting. You feel disgusting. Ugly. Damaged goods. Just a fuckin’ tranny. That’s all you’ll ever be.

But all you can choke out between the heaves is, “I’m a mess, I’m such a fuckin’ mess.”