Fictional Brothers


I
He pushes paper in a corporate office and drinks beer
with all his colleagues after work. Later at night
he scours the public parks, seeking out rent boys

who are straight but only too willing to have
their palms and love-rods greased with loose change.
My other brother is married with two kids. Nightly,

after his wife has gone to bed, he gazes at the terminal,
his shorts down to his knees, his hands caught
in the throes of a wicked, five-fingered lust.

Another brother of mine sits at home on most nights
after work and watches every single movie on DVD
which he collects, without lending it to anyone.

He lives at home with his aging parents and unmarried
sisters and on weekends he teaches Sunday School.
Occasionally, he attends political rallies in the city.


II
Another brother spends most mornings sunbathing
and most afternoons in the gym; he wears
the latest designer shoes and revels

in clubbing and recreational substances. He calls
all his male friends sisters and female ones fag hags
and has his own support group who enjoy giving

each other facials while watching reality TV every week.
There’s another I know who lives with his boyfriend
of many years but picks up men in chatrooms

and brings them to hotels rooms rented by the hour
so that the sanctity of his marriage is never questioned.
On weekends, he sews clothes for upcoming parties

and sometimes performs in drag at company dinners.
He yearns for straight men but rarely gets any.
Even the married bears he likes seem to be all taken.


III
He watches all the latest MTV videos and loves
a good tipple every now and then, often by himself,
and occasionally wonders why no men ever find him attractive.

He lives in a daze of foreign men and exotic countries.
He loves to cook and entertain and the terms haute cuisine
and haute culture are signature phrases to anyone

who bothers to be sympathetic or understand.
He’s also to be seen on most weekdays and sometimes
on weekends bare-backing to all and sundry

in every gay sauna in town. Sometimes, just for fun,
he’ll tell everyone how he tops guys (but in his mind
he’s always pointing his legs to the ceiling).

On quieter nights, he stalks the guy in the cubicles
known as the marathon fucker: receiving endless pleasure
is not unlike some kind of endless romance for him.


IV
My blog-brother is usually in front of his terminal relating
to words, rarely with images. He blogs and blogs from
midnight till daybreak, essaying on every gay topic

imaginable, providing such insight and understanding,
helping build a community, rather than just a scene.
He tries so hard to create one and then maintain

its cohesive, though still undistinguished, identity.
However, he knows most of his fictional brothers online
are scouring other brightly lit webpages

filled with twinks and hunks, spreading their legs to moving
images, and never words. To them the word activist
means some kind of psycho-sexual position in bed.


V
Not all my brothers define themselves in terms
of their lusts and perversions. I know of one who
sits at the window, bewildered: he looks at the sky

as if searching for some transcendent piece
of himself so long gone missing. He has lost
his life-long companion to a cancerous illness.

He feels his life fractured, at times ghosted, by the grief.
He has no one to talk to about it meaningfully.
He sometimes joins his friends in idle chit-chat

over coffee as if talking were some kind of therapy,
but most of the time he feels they are just some petty,
public annoyance. Silent screaming would be better.

Then there’s another rare brother who feels confused
every time he sees heterosexual displays of love
and shies way from a society that is resistant, repellent,

one which breeds uncertainty about who he truly is.
There is less and less of him every day: one morning
he will wake to find the last layers of his self stripped away.


VI
My final brother is the one I like the most. He’s one
of those who rarely disparages others for their sexuality
and fights stereotypes wherever and whenever possible,

especially when such stereotypes create misunderstanding
and degrade people. He’s not limp-wristed and clubs
whenever the urge gets the better of him, though he doesn’t

believe in being part of the scene. He befriends all men
and women; sexual difference is for him a state of mind.
On weekends he devotes time to his religion

and to people he cherishes. He’s been in a monogamous
relationship for a decade now. He's bright, articulate... alas,
he doesn’t exist. He’s a fiction of my imagination.