Seeing Stars

When I first moved down here, Miss J.'s parents still lived just south of here and so I would go down there whenever I could, whenever Miss J and the Divine Ms. B were in town. They had a friend who had a pool out in the country and we would get drunk and [...]* and float around naked in the pool, gazing up at the stars. Ha, I bet their friend's husband was glad about that! Anyway, it was so beautiful, all those stars, and it made me happy to be floating around with my friends. Once when I went to visit Miss J up at school, way before she got married, we got drunk and decided to get tattoos: constellations that were important to us. For me, Orion and for her, Cassiopeia. Now, we weren't going to get the images folks imagine when looking at the stars; we were just going to get a series of properly aligned black dots. I know, it's brilliant! Alas, by the time we'd formulated our plan and made sure that both constellations were visible for the tattoo artist to view, we couldn't find an open tattoo parlor. So, we both remain, as far as I know, constellation-free. *This portion redacted to protect folks from the tax collecting arm of the Tennessee government.