Behind the curtains of your childhood
are hidden games and fantasies
that you walk with into adulthood,
like the times when you play doctor
with Cindy, in her dark basement.
Once a week after school,
she invites you for lemonade—
code for mutual sexual exploration.
Shirts left on, pants and undies
tossed to the floor,
Cindy opens a kit of tools
collected from her parent’s bar.
There are ice grabbers,
shot glasses, stirrers and ice cubes.
She uses the small end of a shot glass
to enter you, and mixer to pat your clit.
With the grabbers she pulls your labia
in different directions. Once, she
puts an ice cube inside you—
you tell her you don’t like that.
You take turns lying on the red vinyl settee
playing doctor and patient.
The doctor: dominant; the patient: surrenders.
You both explore labias, clits and vaginas.
You talk dirty about touching yourselves
at night, alone in the dark,
and how good it feels.
You teach one another
what feels good.
One day she tries to hurt you
by pulling your nipple with a grabber.
Stop! you say, but she tells you to shut up,
holds you down with one hand,
fingers you with the other, until you cum.
When it’s your turn to touch her,
Cindy tells you she likes it;
after a few minutes of writhing,
she makes a sound you’d never heard before.
You played doctor every week
for a year, until the day someone
opens the basement door
and starts walking downstairs.
“What’s going on?” Cindy’s mother asks.
You still remember her smell,
a tangy odor mixed with secretions.
Once you asked your mother why girls’
underwear smells funny.
Vagina’s need to breathe, she said.
