Erasure

Eating beside the wives of all his friends, I quietly order three oysters. Disgusting, the person beside me laughs when the half shells come over ice on a little glass plate. That smells like a dirty woman. Leaning together, they wonder how nauseating it must be for their husbands to go down on them. I am sitting across from a man who, in bed, turns to ask, Are you ready? Sometimes I am. Other times he reminds me of all the women who came so quickly with him. There is no productivity in imagining the people of my lover’s past. Or to saying, here, that I am queer in a way that might puncture the conversation.

Taneum Bambrick