A Whole Nother Experience
As if having sex, regularly and often,
weren’t already a new, unfamiliar sensation –
against the gymnasium wall at midnight,
in the stairwell of Josie’s dorm,
in the seats of the movie theater,
she in my lap as we both faced the screen
watching Last Tango in Paris,
in the stacks at the library, the lounge,
under the elm trees on the quad,
in beds, cars, parks, swimming pools –
when my girlfriend invited me to spend
the Thanksgiving holiday with her family
in rural North Dakota, she warned:
“It’ll be a whole nother experience.”
A girlfriend! Never before going to college
had I paired off in such intimacy
with another person, sharing secrets, plans,
enjoying the sheer physical reality of it.
Always it had been a hunt, a furtive one-night deal,
an oasis in the desert, but when I met Josie
at a mixer the start of sophomore year –
coup de foudre! Love at first sight! –
we were inseparable as two chemicals
swirled together in a beaker in a lab.
When we land in Bismarck, from Chicago,
her dad picks us up at the airport,
hugs Josie, shakes my hand;
we climb into the Buick.
“Your mother’s going to die when she sees
the guy who’s sticking his cock in your mouth,”
Dale comments out of the corner of his mouth
to his daughter in the backseat
as we drive west on 94 toward Killdeer,
as if I weren’t even there.
“Oh, Daddy!” Josie admonishes,
as if he’s just said something a little foolish.
Did he just say what I think he said?
I expect an explosion, war to break out,
tears, shouting, recriminations, violence,
but when that doesn’t happen,
just the car scrolling west into the fading sun,
all at once, I wonder:
Why will her mother die?
©2022 Charles Rammelkamp All rights reserved.
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. Also, a poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.