Wallet? No. Cellphone? No. Keys? No…
All the pickpocket found in my pocket was me, no matter how deep he fumbled—
Oh!
And that was enough, for the time being, for the both of us. More than enough.
Artist’s Statment: "I am an older gay guy who endured a time when gay men were explicitly criminal in 49 states and DC. So I wanted to write a pride piece that acknowledged the sex at the core of gay male identity without writing a sex story. I hope I succeeded."
Jim Eigo (he/him) is a writer-activist living in New York City. His work on ending the AIDS epidemic is profiled in the documentary “How to Survive a Plague.” His short fiction, novel excerpts, concrete poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared online and in print. His latest flash fiction appears in recent issues of The Woolf, Coalitionworks Online Journal, Antler Velvet Arts Magazine, Drift & Dribble Miscellany, ROPES Literary Journal, TrashLight Press, Bleating Thing Magazine, The Medley, Troublemaker Firestarter, and Interrobang!
