TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

Think back to your first crush. Not your first girlfriend or boyfriend, or the first classmate you asked to a dance or to the movies, but the first person you ever felt that way about. Chances are, it might not have been a classmate or a neighbor, but an actor or a musician. A celebrity.

I’ve had so many conversations with friends about the posters in our bedrooms and in our lockers when we were young. I’ll be dating myself by saying this, but I had a subscription to Teen Beat magazine in the ‘80s. I definitely had posters of Kirk Cameron on my bedroom walls, along with a lot of Beatles posters. John Lennon was my favorite back then.

John was way too old for me, and Kirk and I are completely incompatible ideologically — I know this now — but all of that was irrelevant when I was twelve. Crushes, after all, aren’t logical.

In today’s poem, the speaker feels something awaken in him while watching the film “Remember the Titans.” The poem weaves together the pain and the beauty of desire, which can become so knotted in our teen years. It leaves the reader a little breathless, like only a crush can.

Isobutyl Nitrite
by Kieron Walquist

but the house party’s 
thunderous, an indoor pool,
so I hear, I used to be alright,
right?  His lips to my ear,
yellow bottle + red bolt held out
like a wildflower. I sniff. A little
like nail polish, a little 
like chlorine. It scratches
back. It’s my first time.
                                My first time at the YMCA
pool, I almost drowned. Ladies rested
back on towels, dried turquoise
toes. I was pulled out of the water
like a sunken bicycle, by an older boy
who looked like Sunshine
from Remember the Titans.
After I cried
alone in the locker room.
                                At the party, we huff + become light-
headed. Cleaned by VCR cleaner. I kiss him
then kiss him harder. He grabs
my blond hair. We’re two boys, 
mouth to mouth, trying to rescue
each other. 
                                I couldn’t rescue Remember the Titans
from our VCR becoming cannibal—
the VHS eaten alive + the reel, all that black
ribbon, gutted out. What was left glittered
like party streamers. It rippled like light
upon a pool. 
                                I saw everything, though.
Sunshine + Bertier. When Sunshine,
the new kid, comes to football practice
with long, blond hair. When Bertier
says, Hey fellas, look at that fruitcake!
When, in a locker room, Sunshine tells Bertier,
You know what I want,  + lunges to kiss him.
The fight between them.
                                For a month, I’d lie in bed
+ face the cool wall. Repeat to myself, You
know what I want, you know—
Only later did I realize
the kiss, the fight, the smile
on Sunshine’s face as a tease,
the joke it was meant to be.  
                                When I was pulled out of the water,
I heard another—How do you drown a blond?
You put a scratch + sniff sticker
at the bottom of a pool. 

“Isobutyl Nitrite” by Kieron Walquist from OUR HANDS HOLD VIOLENCE © 2025 Kieron Walquist. Used by permission of Beacon Press.