We had Heidi in the back of Bing's Buick,
out near the highway,
parked behind a municipal ball park,
hidden within a grove of apple trees
that someone she'd known had planted.

Fucked up on fortified wine,
Bing and I persuaded Heidi to part
with her clingy blue blouse and matching skirt.
And she gave us our first sexual sighting.
Drunk, we were hell-bent on having her.

Initially our desires came out as questions,
wondering when was her first time and did she or
didn't she like it or him or what he did to her.
And the longer we talked to her, our words became
suggestions, then pleas, then pleading.

Years before, my older brother had packed
his blue jean pockets with rubbers, but left them
packaged and unfurled next to Fran Mitchell's bed.
And even before then, my mother had fulfilled my father's
longing on a blanket beneath her parents' back porch.

Naked, Heidi seemed as distant
as the waxy, full-color pin-up women we'd smuggled out of
Den's Five & Dime in the sleeves of our winter jackets.
And, as best as she could, she opened herself up to us;
offering us a tomb in which to bury our virginity.

Peering past him riding bareback inside her;
past Heidi and out the passenger's side window,
waiting my turn, I sobered, listening to the half-tons and semis chugging
and screeching their way towards Scranton on I-81.