"I always look on the sunny side," Polly leaned over breathing beer in my ear.

I was still too scared to venture even a furtive panoramic of the place. Nevertheless, I couldn't imagine what sunny side my sister saw in this thoroughly dark and dank dive.

"You always were a regular Pollyanna," I managed to mumble back.

Got a regular elbow-in-the-ribs for that observation.

On the long drive down from New York, I'd half-jokingly frightened myself with the notion that when I finally arrived at Polly's, that, well--he-woman in Florida that she was--she'd want to take me 'gator- wrestling as entertainment. Instead she'd dragged me out to the Gator Bar. From my perspective, it was an even more dangerous sport.

I was sure Polly wasn't the only woman in the place, but I couldn't tell the other women apart from the men. They all looked like big beefy carnivores, put in a permanently sour mood by a lack of teeth. Ready enough to gum you to death and swallow you whole for the nourishment. Dice you up and pack chunks of you in their jaws like chaw.

I just did not get why Polly would come to such a Cro-Magnon watering hole. Nor why she would wear poured-on jeans and a shrunken t-shirt and openly flirt with every guy in the place. She could have had any guy in the place within a minute--and every guy inside of an hour--but if she wanted to be the gang-bang queen of the pool hall, why settle for a cess-pit like this? She could easily do better.

He-woman was the wrong phrase. Polly was She-Ra. She could whip the shit out of any guy around--and they all seemed to respect her for this--but in that albeit self-limiting sense, Polly was all-woman. A rather striking looking woman. Always had been. Though she'd never been the type to fret about her waist--and granted, genetics and a physical lifestyle were on her side--she took pride in her looks and would never let herself devolve into the sort of butt-in-front physique that seemed to be the neighborhood standard.

The question lingered unanswered: what the hell were we doing here? I was tired and feeling somewhat uncharitable at being perceived as some sort of threat. Even though everyone in the bar knew who I was--"My long-lost brother, the poet from New York!"--it really was as though I'd become a chip on everybody's shoulder. As though if I'd just evaporate, then the blanket could be tossed over the scarred pool felt, and the real party could begin.

"What's the matter?" I sneered. "Polly wanna cracker?"

She turned to me coolly. "You bet. One with a big thick sausage."

I blinked. I wasn't really shocked, just shocked into remembrance. It'd been a few years since I'd been around Polly-in-the-flesh, as opposed to the Polly-of-anecdote. She'd always been family-famous for her direct and untempered bawdiness. But Polly's words coming straight from Polly's mouth had a whole different intonation then when whispered down the phone line second- or third-hand.

The last time I'd seen her was at a cousin-of-sort's wedding. Some poor maiden great-aunt had made the miserable mistake of asking Polly how soon she intended to settle down with a man. It was one of those moments where, in a room crowded with people all talking at once, there's a sudden lull of complete silence. Which Polly filled fully with her sharp laugh. "Why would I want to settle down with one man when I can stay riled up and have them all? Hell, keep my pussy elastic, one-size-fits-all; and I intend to have them all!"

Back in the dreary here and now, I fiddled with my beer and shrugged as if to say whatever.

"Shit yea, I want some. Fucking Friday night--you expect me to lay at home and spread my legs like the goddamn Yellow Pages, let my fingers do the walking. I don't think so! You drove me to the store; I intend to do some serious shopping."

That, really, was the crux of the problem. I didn't give a shit what she wanted to do with her night. But Polly had fancied my rental car from its first crunch on the gravel of her drive. She'd insisted we leave her battered old pick-up at home. And now I was feeling stuck.

And sort of sick with myself because I'd brought on the situation myself.

Though it would have been all homey to have stayed in--or gone somewhere I might have felt comfortable--and had an evening of sibling chatter, we'd never really had that many hours of things to talk about. Which of course opened the door to my own culpability.

I was due in to Miami the following day for a significant poetry slam, where I was high enough on the roster to make the drive worthwhile, but not high enough to warrant an airplane ticket. I'd fucked up and gotten a late start out of New York--I hated driving long distances anyway--and I'd already eaten the price of a motel in Virginia. It would be a good gesture, I'd thought, to drop in on Polly. But it was well with the consideration that if I had to spend another night in an uncomfortable bed, I might as well get it for free.

I made Polly buy me another beer before she again flitted off looking for a fuck. My sister the social butterfly.

No long under the protection of her wings, I wanted to run. I had the keys. And I was tired of the glares. The thing was, I didn't think I could make it out the door, into the car, and way down the road without the glares catching up and turning into fists.

I watched, shaking my head, as Polly's fine form sauntered from table to table, shaking her rear.

But then my reverie was interrupted.

"Then you the poet-boy from New York, huh? The spoiled apple," the bleaty voice laughed long at its stupid joke. "So, you must be pretty faggoty, that right?"

The man speaking sat several stools away. I was relieved, and certainly not worried, directly. His stool was like a rotten stump, drenched by a week of rain, and with a day of sunshine there he had swollen alive, some gigantic fungus. The man was such a mountain of fat I doubted he could get up and move even to pee. In the next few days he would either wither in the heat or explode with spores.

I scratched the side of my nose, inviting danger as I spoke. "Yea. The sort of faggot poet from New York that got more pussy last week than you'll see in your entire life."

The guy sort of sputtered, so I continued. "In case you're trying to count, that's genuine human pussy. Chickens don't count. Especially not the kind you buy in the supermarket already plucked."

I took a genuine satisfaction in the way he began to wilt, but then a far scarier guy on the stool closer to me spoke up, "So, you're like the Rimbaud of your generation, huh?"

A chill ran up my spine even as the mushroom-man spluttered a mouthful of beer all down his front, "Damn Jake, that's a good one. Like him like Rambo, like he's fucking Rocky, sitting there goddamn Sly himself, the only real man what lives in all New York?"

This Jake guy didn't bend his neck at all towards his companion. In a conversational monotone he answered, "No."

I knew I was in trouble, of a type I couldn't even imagine.

Me the modern Rimbaud. I hated that appellation, but it had stuck. And it had increased my fragile cachet.

"I've been called that," I chose my words carefully, "though the assessment is far from mine."

Who doesn't love the French Symbolists? That is, of those who know who they are.

Jake gave me a full pan, again without moving a muscle.

"So where's Paulie, huh?"

My mind drew a blank. "What?"

"Well," he guffawed, "if you're Arthur Rimbaud, then why don't you bend over and take my big Verlaine." He cupped his crotch as if the point needed to be made.

What the fuck?! Oh, fuck! Variation on the suck my dick you goddamn faggot line I'd been hearing for years. But with quite the unexpected twist. Then, as if things couldn't get anymore unnerving, he began reciting, all namby-pamby,

"Les anciens animaux saillissaient, même en course,
Avec des glands bardés de sang et d'excrément... "

Immediately I recognized the sounds he was saying, though I couldn't translate a word of French if my life depended on it. The moment contained the greatest stroke of luck I ever dared hope to see. Just a few months prior, an older poet and myself had had parts in a short film, trading off the alleged voices of Verlaine and Rimbaud between the quatrains and tercets of the "Defilements". The French I spat back was pure phonetics:

"Mon réve s'aboucha souvent à sa ventouse;
Mon âme, du coït matériel jalouse,
En fit son larmier fauve et son nid de sanglots.
"C'est l'olive pâmée et la flûte câline,
Le tube d'où descend la céleste praline,
Chanaan féminin dans les moiteurs enclos."

Jake snorted, then gave a short nod. "So your plug isn't polarized--big deal."

I was immediately off at Polly's elbow. It took me forever to interrupt.

"What?" she cried.

"I'm going home. I mean, back to your place."

"Huh? Sure. That's fine... that was the plan, right?"

"No, I mean. No, that is, yes. The plan, yea. But I mean like right now. I'm going."

"What? But I'm not ready."

"Fine! But, you know, I'm out the door. Passing through on the way out. To let you know."

Polly put on a pout. "But I don't wanna leave yet."

"You don't have to."

"But how will I get home?"

"Well," I just sort of rolled my eyes, "I'm sure you can get all the rides you want right here all night long."

I didn't know why, but she gathered her stuff in a huff and followed me out. As though she was doing me some sort of favor. As though I was doing her some sort of wrong.

When, in fact, I kept my observation to myself, the Gator was her favored bar at least because it was within easy walking distance of home.

Polly was still in a snit when we got back to her place. Her shack. I wasn't quite sure how to deal with her mood. I mean, sister wants some dick. That wasn't part of my accustomed vernacular. Snippy this, snippy that--I got sick of it!

"Hey listen, Polly. You don't need to baby-sit me anymore. Go out and get what you want; bring it on home... I don't fucking care. Geez! Hop in your pick-up and ride the roads 'til dawn, fill up the bed with all the trash you want. It really doesn't matter to me. I certainly don't want to cramp your style or anything. I can take care of myself. I know how to tuck myself in. And if my presence is a hindrance, hell, point me to the closest motel."

She shot me an evil look. It was answer enough. I remembered it from years back. She wasn't going to do a thing. Martyr-time. And guess who would get to pay?

It was just like old-home time. Polly stormed off into her room. The only difference was she didn't beat the shit out of me first. No, there was a critical other difference as well: she didn't slam the door to her room behind her. I supposed she was afraid it might make the whole damn house collapse.

So there I sat in the livingroom twiddling my thumbs. The chair facing the doorway to her bedroom. With Polly in full view as she reached to her waist and savagely pulled the hem of her t-shirt out of her pants. Then lifted the garment upwards, inside-out, baring her torso as she obscured her head. My guess was confirmed: Polly hadn't bothered with a bra. Fortunately she was turned so that her breasts were out-of-sight if not quite out-of-mind, but there was that sudden moment, as she tugged her head through the neck of the shirt, where the supple maneuverings of her back revealed a beauty and tenderness that left me inwardly gasping.

Women's backs, my god! that's the very reason the doggy position was invented; otherwise such sinewy loveliness would be forever hidden flat against the mattress!

Finally pulled free, Polly gave her head a shake, waving her hair all around, before she flung the shirt to the floor like a discarded lover. She kicked off her shoes, then she reached over and rummaged around the rumpled bedding, pulling free and pulling on one of those oversized t- shirts that sell as sleepwear. It covered her rump well enough, so I couldn't see if she'd neglected her other underwear as she wriggled out of her jeans.

Tight jeans indeed. What'd been poured on had to be peeled off. Polly spent quite a bit of time and motion shimmying out of those things. So much that I found myself wishing--appalled!--that she'd taken the pants off first, without the cover of the long-hemmed nightshirt.

Such a thought left me mortified, and more than a little petrified between the legs.

This was not good; this was not good at all.

Though Polly had always been pleasing to the eye, I'd never entertained any such excitement. Even in the hormonal onslaught of teendom, my fantasies about Polly had never involved sex, not even rape. I'd skipped to the chase and simply slit her throat, ridding my life of hers.

When she returned, I maintained my composure as best I could. Hell, it wasn't like we came from a family of mind-readers. Half the kinfolk couldn't even read; nor was there a surfeit of great minds.

Polly sort of floated back into the room without talking to me, without even looking at me. She picked the t.v. guide up off the coffee table, flipped through it, then tossed it back down as she turned to go in the kitchen. I heard a bit of rustling, a few slams, then a sort of whirring noise. Following this were some distinctive pings, then a sound like machine-gun fire. Nearly immediately, the entire shack was filled with the thick sticky stench of heavily buttered popcorn.

She came back with a huge bowl of the stuff, which she set down over on the coffee table along with a can of beer before she plopped down on the couch and grabbed the remote.

"May I have a beer?" I asked.

"Help yourself," she replied. Then the t.v. blasted on to cure us of further conversation.

I marveled at the conditions as I made my way into the kitchen. It was fucking amazing--here in this ramshackle hut, where even the couch looked like some large scale culturing project at the Center for Disease Control, and yet she had this huge shiny new t.v. that made every other t.v. in the world look small. And then in the kitchen there's the stove that looked like it postdated the discovery of fire by only a handful of years, while on the counter sat this huge shiny new microwave that, well, that made every other t.v. in the world look small.

The fridge, I quickly discovered, didn't work, except as a sort of pantry for canned goods. Fortunately I spied the cooler tucked under the table. Cans of beer were sunk in vaguely cool water amid swirls of plastic bags labeled ICE in a chilly font. No danger to the Titanic in there.

I plucked out a can, opening it as I sat down at the table. The can and I gave out equally expressive sighs. And there I sat and sipped. Listening to the t.v. shout away in the other room.

Finally fortified by the beer, I grabbed another, having decided to be brave and good and go back in the livingroom to make nice.

I didn't even make it into my former chair. I just stood there, hovering behind it, realizing the views I might have for the next several hours. If I didn't want to stare at the t.v. screen, I could look to the left and exchange it for a blank wall. Or to the right was Polly on the couch. Polly lying on the couch. Polly belly down on the couch. Polly lying belly down draped over some small pillows on the couch. Or to be specific, Polly's plumped-up ass smiling at me from under the hem of her nightshirt. Shirts, shit, they ride up on their own volition. I was sure Polly had no clue how much she was putting on display. And though I still couldn't say for sure what she'd had under her jeans at the bar, the skimpy bit of pink silk slipping up through her ass cheeks was a good bet.

An evening of viewing an empty wall, a boring screen, or a cute ass; my cock quickly voted its choice. The front of my pants went stiff against the back of the chair. I decided it best to take the beer into my bedroom and go over some notes for the next day.

"Well," I drawled. "Um. Hate to be the party pooper. Big day tomorrow. So... I think I'm going to turn in early. Okay?"

Polly didn't even budge in reply. Not a grunt of recognition. I turned and went down the small hall to my room, my erection leading the way.

Curiously, the air conditioning was one item that Polly hadn't updated. There was just the one gasping little window unit in the livingroom, though I thought I detected a slightly higher pitched sputtering coming from her bedroom. My room had a ceiling fan, turning lazily, with a creak on each rotation as a taunt: hot! hot! hot! I opened the pair of windows in my room. There was certainly no danger of letting any cold air out. My hope was that, eventually, later in the evening, some cooler air might be coaxed inside. But any immediate effect was unnoticeable. I bared the bed to the top sheet, then sat on top of it, myself peeled down to just jockeys and a t-shirt. A tiny, worn-out pillow cushioned my back against the wall as I began rifling through my papers.

Fucking words on paper. Words fucking on paper. Fucking as words on paper. I had no attention span.

My beer was quickly room temperature. I took the can on tip-toe into the bathroom-in-a-closet and poured it out. As long as I was there, I brushed my teeth and had a goodnight pee. Back in my room I turned out the light, stripped to my skin and slipped under the sheet.

Not that I could sleep. My erection had returned in full force. I thought briefly about jerking off, but I didn't want to do that with my sister in the next room. I certainly didn't want to do that because of my sister in the next room. I tried to fathom out what was going on, why all the blood in my body had turned to some thickened carnal fluid, why--for god's sake--the intimations of Polly's sexuality had me all stirred up.