The bar was packed, but the press of bodies
was welcome, unlike the cramped apartment
I shared with four others to be able to afford
the rent, which was why I’d texted a friend
and begged him to meet me here for a drink
and mutual commiseration over our roommates
and about a hookup I had over the weekend.
“It sounds idyllic,” he remarked, after I told him
about visiting the spacious apartment
of a guy I called Plant Daddy in my retelling
of our encounter, because he was not just
a hot top, but his entire place was lush with
greenery–spider plants spilling like a canopy
over the bed, hydroponic shelves of fragrant
herbs like a library of tastes in the kitchen,
so many pots of standing plants (many taller
than me!) creating a labyrinth of rooms—
and I couldn’t tell which aspect I found
more attractive. “Sounds like it was a hothouse,
in all meanings of hot. So why are you
sad?” Before I could answer, a twink behind me
interrupted. “I couldn’t help overhearing…
This the guy on 15th street?” Turned out
that he, too, had once been granted a visit
to Eden. He warned me, “He doesn’t ever do
repeats.” We shared a look, this stranger and I,
seeing not one another but the steamy sex we’d
each had with that same man in his urban garden.
For a moment I thought—hoped—I might be
different, then realized that he, too, had also
previously felt that same unfulfilled desire.
“That’s why I’m sad,” I answered my friend.
“Because he made us dream of going
back.”
Lawrence Schimel is a multilingual author and literary translator based in Madrid, Spain. He has translated into Spanish books such as Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead, and George Takei’s They Called Us The Enemy, and into English Ángelo Néstore’s Impure Acts (a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award), Luis Panini’s Destruction of the Lover, and Johanny Vázquez Paz’s I Offer My Heart as a Target (winner of the Paz Prize from the National Poetry Series). Photo by Nieves Guerra-Blue.