I was costumed in a white tiger stripped bodysuit when I found out

I’d been accepted into the graduate creative writing program at the University

of British Columbia. The bodysuit was one size too small

and my labia majora squeezed out from either side of the gusset

whenever I sat down. 
I sat with the other sluts, most of whom I loved like stopped clock

around a vinyl topped card table inside a corrugated steel barn

in Huntsville, Alabama. Our hosts brought warm tamales

wrapped in tinfoil and homemade moonshine. 
From the moonshine

I expected what I expect of every spirit

stronger than seventy proof. I expected a methanol spice akin to grappa

and I yearned for the zippered mountain road between Sulmona and Pacentro

along which I once vomited in the passenger side footwell of an Alfa Romeo. 
The Italian word for vomit is vomito. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but vomito sounds so cute.

Cute enough to name a small pet.
Moonshine flint behind my ears. My cell phone lit with a 604 area code.

The admissions secretary’s voice was bright and high

despite her calling from four thousand plus kilometres away.

She said “I’m so happy for you”

and “your acceptance letter is in the mail”

and “you should apply for a scholarship.”

The secretary knew my livelihood was pussy tap.

It’s likely the entire selections committee knew.

One can only write so many poems about men’s billfolds.
Our MC, Rose Anna, announced my big news to the audience. Their clanging

applause surprised me. It shouldn’t have because a whore that goes to collage is adorable.

Live-nude-crook turned hit-the-books is a narrative string

any fella can feel good about tucking a fiver into. 
The rough decked stage caught my stiletto. The sound of my knees

pounding plywood was barely audible against the sonic boom of burlesque. 
And besides what’s another bruise?

What’s a bruise? What’s a bruise? What’s a blue moon bruise

to do but pull young blood to and fro like the tide? What’s a bruise

but a testament to the sharp art of surrendering to place and time?  
And how I surrendered to that stage. Quit the clamor

of spectator expectancy, the scream-pitch ringing in the round and instead

bowed down to the ageless filth of glitter and leaked fluid. Oh, hallowed ground

oh striptease stage, I prayed to spirits of every hustler who turned rock ballads

into rent, turned grind into gold. Face-downed belly-rolled until I met god

or a staph infection. Same difference.  
This is definitely nostalgia talking. Don’t let me (and my propensity

for glorification) fool you. The truth

is I uprighted myself

and finished my routine

just like any other night.
I sometimes wonder, though do not care in the slightest, if pity

was the reason I was accepted into the creative writing program

at the University of British Columbia.
An anagram for “creative writing” is “tragic interview”
The one concrete detail I recall about the mother, who after the show

presented me with her virgin teenage son, was her pearls. Nacreous

is the adjective that describes the specific lustre of a pearl.

Her pearls had flawless nacre. Not like the poor flaking strand

passed down to me by my Nonna.

And we were in Alabama. 
The mother in pearls was interested in buying sex for her teenage son.

“He has to become a man before going off to college.”

She was certain it was his virginity that hindered him

from the kingdom and the power of predestined manhood.

What she was unsure of was how much I should be paid for my service. 
I would have to veer into fantasy to continue.

There’s nothing I remember about the teenage son.

To write what little appears on this page, I’ve superimposed the Geek

from the 1984 film Sixteen Candles and alternatively

Brian from The Breakfast Club.

A John Hughes-constructed outcast crying

over thwarted masculinity and a tenuous ability

to subjugate young women’s bodies.

I grew up with movies that taught me the meek

shall inherit the prom. Or, according to John Hughes

the Geek shall inherit access to a blackout-drunk cheerleader. 
But life rarely mimics a Hollywood ending and sex work isn’t going anywhere.

I took my pussy tap money and went to Pacentro for the 553rd Corsa degli Zingari.

In the village dialect Zingari describes he who is barefoot.
Barefoot young men walk the mule tracks up Mount Marrone

past malnourished stray dogs that haunt the village cemetery, past

their ancestors resting in the high walls

past cicadas keening in the warped heat. Higher still, past

stone huts where shepherds have slept since time immemorial

past drags of scorched secondo dopoguerra earth, past

brown bear and antelope tracks, past prayer caves, past

consecrated bedrock, past unmarked graves. For the past

five and a half centuries barefoot young men have waited at the top

of Marrone rock for starting bell to echo through Peligna Valley.
This ringing bell made me cry for reasons I still do not understand. 
I lined up with the other spectators to watch barefoot young men race

to the finish line. Bloody footprints on the church floor: a rite of passage.

Those who reached the Virgin became good men, heroes

spread in a dusty huddle before the altar. The Virgin of Loreto (or the Virgin

in this particular church) was pale blue, gold and haloed

in the kind of electric lights that reminded me

of a golden age of Hollywood dressing room.

And because I’ve seen every Fellini film,

I too knelt before Her and prayed.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been afraid of what I’ve seen and what I know

and now that I’ve refashioned this memory into a poem I choose not to show myself

praying the rosary, psalms or any grace I learned as a girl.
I prayed “Please, I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I’ll do anything, please

Ho paura. Paura lasciami. Please. Unafraid. Please.”                         
You (literally you) are reading queer and desperate poetry, and so

I already love you like a stopped clock, but if you’re wondering whether or not

I took that Alabamian mother’s money to fuck her virgin son then you too better

kneel down and pray. 
The other sluts in dropped me and my bag full of small bills and animal

print lingerie off at O’Hare airport in Chicago. They travelled on to Milwaukee

maybe onto Minneapolis, and eventually into lonesome sphere

of memory. (These days, if I can’t find an old friend through google

I assume they are dead.) I flew back to Vancouver to attend the University

of British Columbia, where more than one professor warned me

not to confuse creative writing with therapy.