Old School
Part 2
It’s 1970. I’m walking on Sunset when a man in a Ferrari offers me $500 for an hour of my time. Back then, that was a lot of money.
It’s 1984 when my boss and her lover at the former Lincoln Heights jail are having sex standing up in a cell. C.Z.’s hand is under M.G.’s skirt. When asked to join in, I demur. I’m fired the week before Christmas.
It’s 1978. In the noir director’s Burbank hotel room, I audition for the lead. He rips my blouse in true tabloid style, the soundtrack for Deep Throat throbbing in the background. I decide to become a writer.
It’s 1975 and John Crockett, né Gianni Carelli gets me high on coke, then makes love to my feet. Afterward he does Tai Chi by candlelight, slips me a C-note, calls me a cab. Every Wednesday for a year.
It’s 1969. Eduardo drives me to the top of Topanga, parks on a cliff. After sex he whispers, Querida, if I push you off the edge, no one will know.
It’s 1976 and John Crockett né Gianni Carelli begs me to have a 3-way with Bobbie (the stripper we meet at the Body Shop). Afterward, John never calls me again. I begin dating Bobbie.
It’s 1979 when I run into the noir director at The Dresden, a nubile young thing on each arm. I lean in: Does he still like fucking to that Deep Throat soundtrack? The starlets are startled, a moue of recognition on their lips.
It’s 1990. Marcel E. trails me up the aisles of Pan Pacific Camera. I’m shopping for a remote, I say when he asks. For self-portraits. He licks his lips. If I were you I’d shoot myself every day!
It’s New Year’s Eve 1987, when Richard F. takes me to Vegas. Up ten grand at the craps table, he hands me $500, pats me on the ass, says, “Go play.” I go to Tiffany’s, buy gold earrings.
It’s 1977. Football star Eddie M. has non-consensual sex with me in my bedroom while my sister makes out with the fullback on my living room couch. We never speak of it again.
It’s still New Year’s Eve, Vegas, 1987. Richard F. takes me to the midnight show at the Hilton. Bill Cosby has never been funnier.
Lola The Human Vagina At UC Medical School
For 25 years, Lola spread her legs
for the gynecology rotation,
decades of eager interns staring
into her nether regions
like it was virgin territory.
Beginning with the labia,
the Attending physician explained their function,
pulled the lips apart like a flower,
then inserted the speculum,
so they could see all the way in.
Many had not seen a vagina
up close since birth.
Lola assured me she provided a service.
I make sure they see me
as a whole person, she said.
It paid well, and was almost respectable,
good money for a girl with no college.
I make a difference, she said proudly.
Not one of those young doctors
will ever look at a pussy
the same way, again.
I try not to laugh.
I too tell myself lies.
Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Verse Daily, Plume, Rattle, Literary Mama, diode, Pirene’s Fountain, Tinderbox, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. She’s the author of four poetry collections; How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), and Junkie Wife, (2018). Her chapbook, The Dead Kid Poems, is forthcoming in 2019. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com