I was walking the streets of Lutherville, which weren’t really streets or roads either, just a dirt path carved out in the early fall, before the ground froze; by the steel blades of the bulldozer that ripped open the earth in between the surveyors flags that showed the boundaries.

Then the gouge (in what was originally a pasture) was covered with crush and run that was spread on the virgin surface by men with shovels casting the stones as the fell from the tilted bed of the dump truck; in a housing development that was being built by more men wearing t-shirts with the short sleeves rolled up on one arm to cover the pack of cigarettes they smoked as they worked with the concrete footers, or eight foot long boards of pine, or sheets just as big of plywood, or sheetrock, or spools of wire, or sections of pipe.

Where my parents had purchased one of the first houses they completed and I had sex with Matt after the workman left a three pm, in a half built house whose doors had not been installed and had at least a floor to lie down on.

Where I took off my clothes and put them in a spot I had cleaned off with my foot and Matt would put his clothes there too with mine in the cleaned off spot and lie down on the floor with me and we would do what something inside told us we should do that felt so good when we did it.

I remember the battle I felt inside afterwards, when Matt and I had gotten dressed; the wanting to run away to NYC or San Francisco. And how much relief I felt lying on my bed listening to Jimi or Jefferson Airplane, headphones on, volume penetrating the world around me, a world that told me what I had done with Matt was wrong and I was bad and going to Hell; until, the adolescent hormones rebounded and silenced the voice if only temporary; as I put my hand in my pants, thinking about what Matt and I had done, teasing my insides, until I felt that desire so strong and relief came.

My name is Jason Clark.