Go cut me a slice of lemon meringue pie. Be quick about it. Don’t go rummaging in the cutlery drawer for some dainty dessert fork. I’ll just eat it with my hands. I’m going to sit here on the floor and eat it with my hands and watch this infomercial for a CD collection of songs from the 60s and 70s. It’s called Hit Memory Lane. 1-800-922-HITS. The song titles roll up the screen. See how they highlight the ones that are playing with yellow? I’ll sway side to side and shove a two by four inch piece of pie crust into my mouth. My hands are covered in crumbs and grease and if you don’t want me to wipe them on your fancy rug you’d better get me a square of paper towel. Until then I’ll just sit here with my hands in the air, like a surgeon who has just been scrubbed in and gloved and is getting ready cut into somebody’s heart. Now turn on that lamp I like, the one that makes the room all golden and sit with me here on the floor. I want to put my butt in your lap. Push my hair away and kiss my neck like you did in the olden days, the days I won’t make reference to.

I appreciate your hospitality on nights like this, when I’m bored and hungry. You could have stayed in bed and ignored the obnoxious rendition of “Wipe Out” that I pounded out on your poor front door. You could have ignored my obvious stares in Loblaws the other day, and not said hello, and just went about your adorable grocery shopping (cantaloupes? Awww). You could have ignored that bold invitation to smoke pot in my mom’s car at lunch during our twelfth grade summer school math class, and once you were in there you definitely could have ignored my naked thighs. But I thank you for your attention.

Take your hands off my waist so I can sprawl out on the floor. So I can lie on my back in front of you and put my feet up on your shoulders and so I can watch television upside down, my hands resting on my pie belly. More yellow words. Listen to that sound the guitar makes at the beginning of “The Air That I Breathe.” That warbled, psychedelic, drawn out vibration. Let’s gaze into each other’s eyes like the pie was packed with love drugs, because I’m thinking that maybe it was. Maybe I love you in this golden lamplight. Sprawled out like this on your floor with my limbs all over you, I feel like a hog-tied calf at the love rodeo, where stoic, dreamy cowboys like you chase down silly baby animals like me. Chased, caught, roped. Lean over and let me touch your arm muscles now. When I stare into your eyes, you remind me of the older sons in the Swiss Family Robinson movie. The blonde ones with arm muscles who water-wrestle the anaconda and save everyone. I want to wrestle your anaconda. Let’s do it here on the fancy rug and let me suck on your fingers when I’m top of you, and don’t be afraid to give my face a little slap here and there, so I can think to myself “whattawallop!” and pick up my pace and watch those same fingers dig into my sides. Wrap it up, end and as I end, as I happily crumble to bits like an oh-so-flakey pie crust in the hands of the rugged, golden cowboy.

Fall asleep with me. And do not say anything. Not now, not in the dessert section of the Loblaws, not when you’re manhandling and kissing my naked teenager thighs on hot, drugged days. Not when I’m demanding lemon pastries, lamplight or light slaps. Not when I’m whispering over the phone in the kitchen, ordering Hit Memory Lane with your credit card.