Classrooms

“This has been 30 years in the making,” he told me. I’ve yet to figure out—I’ll never figure out—why men who like feet are so deeply ashamed. He’d never kissed a foot before. (I thought, not even as a joke? Why not just grab a girlfriend’s foot…. Like an idiot. Like I don’t know about shame, what it allows and what it denies.)

So now he kissed, licked, sucked for hours. The look on his face wasn’t ecstasy. It was almost an expression of exhaustion. He came. We sat on his bed and listened to the sound of water running.

“You have a fountain?” I asked.

“Oh no, it’s these classroom turtles,” he said. He was looking after them for a friend, a teacher on vacation. “I don’t know that I’m doing a good job of taking care of them. Am I supposed to let them out? I don’t want one to get away.”

“Classroom turtles!” I loved the phrase. “Can I see them? I can’t remember the last time….”

In the next room, they bobbed in the water of their tank, scrambling back and forth against the glass, eager as dogs. I wanted to take them out and play but didn’t ask. He gave me a generous tip. I walked down the road a bit, then sat on a slide in an empty elementary school playground and waited for a cab. It rained lightly and no one noticed me. The sky stayed resolutely gray, like it was trying to teach us a lesson.