Once I had a rash. It appeared one morning in red bumps on my feet and ankles, it spread to my shins and wrists. It didn't itch unless I looked at it. Then it was unbearable. The mysterious rash appeared two days after going to the beach, and three days after a surprising and bizarre sexual encounter with someone I had been after for . . . years, you could say. The bizarre quality of the encounter came from its shear unexpectedness, but also by the fact that it took place in my parents house with my mother sleeping next door, my father sleeping in the trailor right outside my curtainless window, and my 85 year old grandparents sleeping down the hall. Before the scandalous part even started, however, my mother walked into my room very confused, where I and an odd looking lanky dirty boy were singing about chickens and reeking of wine weed and cigarettes. Half asleep, she asked us would we please go to bed, the music was very pretty but she was very tired. We complied. In the morning, however, I had to deal with a tricky situation (even trickier than a few hours earlier, when mid-sex my phantom c.d. player turned on autmatically to a radio station playing "Barracuda"). I must have been drunk when I said, "mom, *he* is still here..." She considered the situation. Ten minutes later she knocked on my door, and said, "All right, the grandparents are on the back porch, can you get him out of here now so I don't have to explain to my parents why there is a mysterious boy coming out of your bedroom?" So I had to sneak him out of the front door and make a break for downtown while my grandpa was watering the hydrengeas, not so I wouldn't get in trouble with MY parents, but so my mother wouldn't get in trouble with HERS. Anyway, I had a rash now and it had come from the beach or the man, it had to be one or the other. Then I developed a fever. Fearing meningacocal, my mother insisted on taking me to the emergency room and accompanying me into the interrogation offices. My mother has worked at the hospital for twenty years, therefore, when we were finally taken by a nurse, a youngish man, he turned out to be an old friend whom she had worked with ten years ago. Once the reminiscing ceased, this line of questioning followed; The doctor said, “Have you been kissing anyone with a rash?” “I . . . don’t think so?” I said. “What do you mean, you don’t ‘think so,’” my mother said. “I mean, no, no, I think I would know if I’d been kissing someone with a rash, ha.. “ My mother nodded suspiciously. “Well, I mean, is this, contagious or something then?” I asked the doctor. “Not really. I wouldn’t be sharing bedsheets with anyone, though.” “That won’t be a problem,” said my mother. “For how long?” I said, “I mean, nevermind, I . . .” “It was probably more contagious before you saw evidence of the rash, anway” said the doctor. Ah. So I had now given HIM the rash. It was an omen, I say in retrospect. Of weirder shit to come.
