Tequila the First Time by Steve Passey

I ask her to marry me all the time and
she never says yes.
She tells me she wants to get married but
she feels in control of at least one thing
in her life when she says no.

She’s forty-nine years old and
she tells me she’s never tried tequila.
I buy tequila.
She does four shots and
she tells me that she likes it a little,
no,
she likes it a lot, and
maybe next time she can do six,
then she lights up her bong and rips some MK Ultra.
It’s not as good as Northern Lights she tells me,
but it’s still pretty fucking good, and
she can have multiples when she’s high.
She’s taken her clothes off now but
she doesn’t want the lights on.
I tell her no forty-nine-year-old woman
should have an ass like that and
she laughs, and
I think that not many forty-nine-year-old women laugh like that either.
We lie down but she’s up in five minutes to throw up.
Tequila, man. You need to be careful with Tequila.
She comes back and
I didn’t hear her brush her teeth, but whatever, because
she asks if she can suck my cock.
I say nothing but I am thinking about her ass.
I lie on my back and
I am glad I am not too drunk, and
I don’t care that the lights aren’t on but
I would really like to see her in the light.
She does that for a while and
then we make love for a very long time with her on top.
The soles of her feet are warm,
hot even,
against the back of my calves and
I am happy in the darkness with her and
glad I was there the first time that she tried tequila.

                             The End

Steve Passey is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the short-story collections "Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock" (Tortoise Books, 2017), "Cemetery Blackbirds" (Secret History Books, 2019), and many other things. He is a Pushcart and best of the Net Nominee and is part of the Editorial Collective at The Black Dog Review.