Pretending in Pasties

Me and Molly wear cherry pasties under mesh-metal tank tops. We like the go-go dancers at the fetish club and pretend we're them. Molly is Ronita, the drag queen with poodle fringe down her pecks; and I am Sin-a-buns. Molly says I'll like cocaine, but I never do.

Me and Molly meet a guy like Smashing Pumpkins at the club and I sit on his lap. She e-mails him later and they exchange photos and hang nail remedies.

Me and Molly have a lot of cleavage and we bring it to the clubs. Even the gay ones. Me and Molly don't dance together; she drinks oatmeal cookies and I bring her the toys I'm tired of. Once they see double drinks and her burdened blouse, they forget all about me. I like that.

Me and Molly don't "give up the goods" to just anyone; mostly we just take E and borrow their suckers.

One day, Molly tells me to stop feeling so damn much, as she shrinks to zero and forgets her pasties. Molly gets herpes in Vegas and I move out to the swamps. I hear about her stepkids in Barstow, young and faceless, and think of her voice as the katydids in Spanish Moss. Watching my long and sweaty legs swung on a lawn chair, deep until morning.