Punch.

What if I have to stand my ground?

Or my boyfriend who I stand with:

1. my hand up the back of his shirt tracing the arc of his shoulder blade smooth and warm and gentle while his arm wraps around my waist under the streetlight as we lean to the brick wall outside the bar after closing,
a. standing with our small cluster of friends for a last smoke –
b. what if he does?

What if:

1. any of us decide we simply don’t want to deal with it?
2. this other man – this stranger – his wife on his arm and both notably shitfaced,
a. following St. Patrick’s Day revelry at this Irish pub in this aging Catholic mill town where I grew up,
b. hadn’t approached?
3. she hadn’t dragged him over to pleadingly, slurringly bum a cig off Matty,
a. who’d give her the last in his pack to hopefully shut her up?
4. Drew hadn’t caught
a. my glance from across our small huddle;
b. my slip into the crack between flight and entropy?
5. this man’s fists weren’t sopping with the whiskey I saw him downing inside?
6. they were dry and sturdy enough to follow through with what’s the usual sequence following their wobbled raise following his shifted weight following shaking his wife off his arm?
7. the man and his wife hadn’t stood at the fringe of our cluster for a few moments longer,
a. seconds stretching too thin as his eyes scan up and down my body,
b. as his wife stands closest to me,
i. arguably Lilithian,
ii. teetering?
8. he hadn’t pulled her arm back just as she started to tip,
a. clearly too many green Jell-O shots at play,
b. and I had caught her?

Would:

1. he accuse me of… something?
2. that be his justification?

But he doesn’t need justification, right?

Can’t he just walk right up to us and say whatever the fuck he wants,

Just because:

1. he’s a drunk middle-aged straight white man,
2. his head is barely to my shoulder,
3. he’s in a knit sweater and ill-fitting jeans and flip-flops
a. in mid-March,
b. in New Hampshire;
c. so he obviously has little care for approval from strangers,
i. right?
4. he can?

He doesn’t need justification:

1. to follow his wife’s staggering wander down the sidewalk across the bridge,
a. sideswiping the guardrail that keeps her from plunging two stories down into the river,
b. all to bum a cig off Matty,
c. right?

2. to approach our circle of young men in jeans and hoodies,
a. boots and beards,
b. laughing,
c. locals –
i. because maybe he thought we were like him?

But when did he notice:

1. our sinful intimacies?
a. My serpentine hand disappeared under the fold of another man’s shirt;
b. Drew across from me, bearded and gruff but bright-eyed,
i. leaning into Matty’s shoulder with
1. a tenderness;
2. an earthliness, driven out to this riverbank?
2. our self-made hope?

Is this:

1. brave love?
2. why I was told so fucking often that I was so brave to be loud about being a gay man when I was still Catholic?
3. why I was told I would be the change the Church needed,
a. and I would bring that change from the inside?
4. why the damage is expected to be fixed by those who it hurts the most?

Because what if this man,

This drunk and staggering buffoon we will laugh about later,
Knowing:

1. he’d be booed off stage at some sloppy weekday evening karaoke,
2. he’d be of no harm to us in the daylight,
a. had actually gone through with what we feared?

If he:
1. had actually swung the fists he planned to use?
a. To defend his wife from the men who she’d asked for a smoke?
2. had actually swung,
a. maybe I wouldn’t be so indignantly rambling about this,
b. or we wouldn’t reconvene at the same bar the next night,
i. to recap and process what the fuck happened,
ii. right?

What if this man

hadn’t:

1. grabbed his wife by her forearm,
2. yanked her back towards him,
3. spat at my boots,
4. looked me in the eye and,
a. far too articulately for the expected capacity of his peat-soaked lips,
b. barked out
i. “see you in church, faggot”
1. ?

What then?

Would I still be allowed:

1. to be angry?
2. to be frustrated that I was starting to feel like my hometown was better than I left it,
a. finally better than the reason I left in the first place,
b. and yet the first time I stand with a group of queer men like myself
c. we have our sense of safety threatened
i. by a drunk homophobe with a Napoleon complex?

Am I allowed to:

1. be angry at that?
2. ask that question?
3. say that that man likely knows no church that cares about anyone
a. but their own ilk?

If:

1. I hadn’t bit my tongue,
2. I hadn’t silently, wishfully held back the man I stand with,
3. our cluster of queer men hadn’t looked so heteronormative,
a. passing as who this drunk man thought we were –
i. of his ilk –
b. would I still be shaking my head,
i. dumbfounded by all of this?

I know:

1. we wouldn’t have laughed [nervously] at that man still drunk,
a. sitting awkwardly on a stoop in the rain,
b. his wife nowhere to be seen,
c. as we rushed past him to my car,
i. I the soberest to drive of the bunch,
ii. I the only one to notice the knife in his hands
1. burning
2. silver
d. feeling like we’d somehow bested him.
2. he wouldn’t have shouted garbled profanity at us as we passed,
a. though he likely would still have wanted to.
3. I wouldn’t be writing this.