I played Iago once.
This was after college.
I already had a career,
but after opening night,
a crowd of Louisvillians
flocked me and asked
where I’d trained.
I told them it was
a tired cliché—
I had worked my way
through school
via the night shift
at a semi-trailer factory,
stringing lights down the naked
steel frames of truck beds.
With a standup screw gun,
I attached wood panels
to flooring. With steel shards
lodged in blue jeans and boots,
each night I ate 3 am lunch
with men who questioned
my sexual orientation. I recall
it was on a moonlit night
on the dock when they last asked,
and I had to tell them—
I wasn’t gay yet,
but I’d let them know
when I started to long for them,
as long as they kept their hardhats on
the whole time.
