First Kiss/Under Capitalism

When I learned I had power to build

on this market, I took it. The currency

placed on the mouth

of a seventeen-year-old girl is startling

to the girl herself. Child of the 80s, I understood

you don’t get anything for free, baby.

So when the brother of my best friend

reached gently for my right hand and

placed it, delicately, with his left—

the way one might set linens and china

on the table for an important guest

—atop his hard dick

after I’d just helped him fold his family’s laundry,

I saw an opportunity. A wrestler at school,

I knew he would follow me up the stairs

because he liked to practice pinning me.

Already the autumn of my senior year, I was afraid

of what leaving high school with untouched

lips might indicate about my human capital.

Understand, when I pulled my hand away,

to retreat from the den to the upstairs kitchen,

this was not an act of self-preservation

but exhilaration. A private minute.

I told myself I was ready

when he found me, held my waist and walked me

into the family pantry, where he asked me

to suck his dick. Presumably a standard deviation

of the market. I said, I’ve never even been kissed.

He pushed his weight on top of me, my body

knocking the parcels off the pantry shelves.

It was almost over as soon as it began, when he pressed

again, pulling it out, before I had a chance to consider

whether or not it was worth a first kiss. I guess

it was better than nothing, even if I had to haggle for it.