8 pm Friday Night

I'm out with my lesbian friend,
it's cold and there
should be cigarettes
to hold between our teeth.

There are strip malls,
the horizon of suburbia,
the orange halo glowing in the
November chill.
We drove away from there,
hoping to get farther away than
was possible. 

Strip malls and a sex store.
She is fifteen
but it doesn't matter
because lying through your teeth
is training from the second grade upward.
So we don't need ID
are left to be anonymous 
in a white walled store
with red neon in the window.

Below the counter
are condoms lined up like 
candy, bright latex colors
glittering under dirty fluorescents.
This is empowerment.

The thick smell of rubber,
walls lined with candy colored
phalluses- two steps from
suburbia and I am exercising
my womanhood,
weighing vibrations in my hand.

Christmas music on the dim speakers
raining down on our innocent heads,
plunk plunk plunk
knocking our halos askew,
bending the cheap metal coat hanger
headbands.

We are objectifying ourselves,
shopping the racks of lacy clothes
sewn to please the eyes of men.
As men on their way home stop
in and stand in the room full of
sin, and sad women. 
Their hands grazing
with predatory skill
the slick DVD covers
on sale.
3 for $20.

We meander the aisles twice
and three times.
Confusion under the white lights,
brighter than they should be.

This should be a dark corner of the
universe, shying away
from the highway,
no big sign
"ADULT".
No, it is simpler, clean and tidy.
The cashier asks us where
we go to high school.

I can't bring myself over
to lie, fingering plastic square
packaging, sliding around
latex in between my fingers
as I tell her the truth.

We stand looking at the wall of
dildos. She is not even legal.
She says she couldn't sleep with blondes,
so I'm safe.
Which is funny, I'd never even thought
of it that way.
Instead I am wondering
why these cyberskin penises
are so big.

We are not objectifying ourselves,
comparing the width of these
fake dicks to our thin forearms.
Is this what porn is supposed to be?

Or is this poetry 
in the lowest form,
are the flavored condoms supposed
to be allusions,
and am I missing the theme hiding
behind negliges? 

My palms don't sweat,
because I don't have a name here.
Under the humming lights we are nameless
women, not girls with shaking hands.
We discuss with poise the
idea of buying.

She tells me I'm her new hero,
exercising my rights of womanhood
outside the cinderblock building 
where I can let my hands wander free
without shame.

No regrets
because I am empowered,
I am a woman with clarity,
epiphany.