Mickie Kennedy
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Mickie Kennedy (he/him) is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland with his family and two feuding cats. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in The Bangalore Review, The Pinch, Plainsongs, Portland Review, Wisconsin Review, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA from George Mason University.
Chronology of the Closet
I liked guys. I liked guys
before apps made finding men
easy. In the fifth grade,
I kissed my best friend
in the coat closet. He punched me
and we stopped speaking.
I kissed more jocks
than I could count,
straight boys who pretended
I was one of the girls
they were too afraid to touch.
I liked guys who never knew
my name—a bookish man
who kneeled before me
deep in the library stacks,
a back-alley boy, a bathroom
prowler. I liked guys so much
I dated one in grad school.
Three weeks in, I caught him
in bed with someone else.
This was 1994. AIDS
was still a headline.
I took a vow of abstinence,
then took a wife
who didn’t want sex.
I learned to like guys
from a distance, cruising
porn sites, craning
to see my shirtless neighbor
prune his box hedges.
I didn’t just like guys.
No, I hated them. I hated
the brush of stubble
on their faces. Hated
their calloused hands.
And I hated how I wanted
to be one of them.
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