13thWR

FOR MY FRIEND AND HIS LOVE FOR PORN STAR INARI VACHS
for Bill Smith

It would have been Monday, always on Monday,
   hours before wrestling starts.
   We would drive his white mustang,
the middle class symbol of untested speed,
   to the local adult video establishment.
The radio's volume pumped up with
   some sample of that blind idiot god David Lee Roth
or that drunken priest Sammy Hagar-
   perfect empty loudness for the long bend before the Roller Rink.

   Like first lays or war stories,
   we would talk each other into frothy moments,
hopes of lust distilled through human touch,
   pornos, those black strings of images
that end in a balldance in our underwear.
      Just a prurient interest in friendship
as we approach the white store front,
      its adult film status guarded over
   by a small group of everyday Bruce Willis classics.
In this smell, like a real good hotel room,
   we would hug if it was natural or normal.

   He finds her on a box proclaiming
it as her first time with multiple partners.
He smiles, his lips pulsing the fantastic
   highway through her thighs.
Inari's picture is on the box, a pretzel pose,
   her flesh like a horse show.
She is smiling and I am not guilty.
   As I pinpoint her eyes all I can think about
is the filmmaker John Waters,
as my friend grabs a tape called, Moving Violations,
   John said that porno is the last outlaw cinema.
I imagine us as these black-masked outlaws,
   riding into the sunset in Inari's secret universe.

   We rent the tape and watch it
like most men watch football,
   cheering at her best parts,
   discussing it days later over a glass of beer.
My friend talks about Inari like he met her at Radio Shack.
   She seems to like what she is doing,
she is plastic free and her smutty words
sound better than most of my poems,
her high art is the slide of her freshly shaven leg,
   we sit in calm silence as her orgasm rattles the TV's speakers.
   I have never met anyone as pretty as Inari,
not someone who smiles so much as her privates bud open
   to two friends in an attic apartment in Southern New Jersey.
But what bonds is not the point, the bonding is.
   My friend has dark brown hair
and I love him to death.
    Inari has lighter brown hair
and a bellybutton like a cat's pupil
   as she squats against a backdrop painted like a wall.

We can't peel the grins from our faces
   and it all seems so damned alright.
Singers don't ever sing to us,
but somehow she does - a Pandora with an open box,
   weaving stories of beauty on bar stools
and of high schools filled with happy swingers.
   She gives us flashes of life,
we only see in the moments before our alarms erupt.

   But I don't feel dirty
or see the need to scrub my lips with soap,
we eat our extra value meals and talk about her eyes,
and as we sit on my trash-picked white couch,
the movie racks up millions of dollars.
   And somewhere Inari maybe screwing on camera,
or dressed in a blue blouse,
   or sleeping on newly bought white sheets,
or eating eggs at a corner diner,
and at the end of the night,
I thank her silently, and will one day write a poem about her.

- C.L. Liedekev