Matt McGee

The Dork Myth

 

I wish I could tell you

I was such a dork in high school,

that fraternity of instant street cred.

 

But that’s not how it was.

 

I had a good car, the cute girlfriend

the right friendships and social hook-ups,

the kickass skateboard, bike and job

not because my parents handed it to me

but because I was able to identify the one thing

that could made me cool, go get it

and come back with the girl

who’d tear at my Ratt concert tee

in a bedroom after school.

 

So the question that really persists,

what really won’t stop haunting me

is what the hell happened to me?

 

Where did I go so wrong

that I settle for women with rough hands

who work in gas stations

and cars that are just… cars?

 

I may not have been a dork in high school

but it caught up to me

because I started caring less about my clothes and posture,

and more about the quality of my thoughts and friendships.

And that girl at the gas station with the rough hands,

she’ll go down on me in the backseat of an average car

on a rainy night in a dark part of a rich neighborhood

where the residents are too busy staying on top of earnings reports

to wrap themselves around a cute stranger

the way it used to be.

 

Miss Daisy

 

Rain droplets fall on the windshield

as I stand by in the parking lot.

Inside room 308 of the Goodnight Inn,

Rico is sticking it to Miss Daisy, a pretty little hood-rat

who swung onto his lap at the right moment on the right night

fifteen minutes before closing at the gentleman’s club

the wad in his pocket thick with a week’s pay.

 

I was an idiot.

I didn’t bring money into the club,

and word soon spread thru the G-string ranks

of the moneyless douchebag in the front row

watching naked kooch swing on the skewer pole.

 

But the girls smelled Rico

and Miss Daisy was fastest on the draw

licking her right index finger and running it over his junk.

She won the $300 ride to the local motel

and the promise of a ride later on

forty miles back into the Valley.

 

It shouldn’t have been a surprise when Rico pointed at a gas station

on the corner of Topanga & Ventura,

beside the busiest Metro stop in the area.

“Just gotta run in and use the ATM,” he said,

then added, to her, “c’mon, why don’t you come with?”

 

“Come with?”

 

“Yeah, so I can tip you.”

 

She slid out of the backseat, entered the 76 station

while he pretended to be leaning in my window,

and once he saw she was indoors

jumped back in and yelled “drive, bro!”

and looked back only once to make sure

she hadn’t run after us.

 

A Metro Rapid bus passed us, going her direction.

I hoped she was quick enough to hop it,

and I didn’t worry, as I know

the Hood Rats first rule of survival

is survival itself.

 

 

MATT McGEE writes in the suburbs of Los Angeles. In 2020 his stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Sage and Gnashing Teeth. When not typing he drives around in rented cars and plays goalie in local hockey leagues.