MY BULGARIAN BOYFRIEND 

—for Alex Dimitrov

I  met him—at a four-star hotel
in the sofa-filled lobby—one night
in Turgovishte—northern Bulgaria

Slavic eyes—always turn me on
and those bedroom—drooping eyelids
what a—somnambulistic beauty

The hotel didn’t—ban the women
from the lobby—it would be bad for
business—customers paid for rooms

He was a young pimp—among all the
usual clients—cops, politicians, dealers
professors, actors—foreigners like me

Some came to Bulgaria—just for that
but the sex trade—didn’t interest me
I was more interested—in architecture

Lovely cathedrals—in Varna, Burgas
Razgrad, Dobrich, Shumen—but also
Albania, Romania—and Moldova too

He gave me—the sob story of course
he pimped to support—his ill mother
and his crippled—14-year-old sister

“If I stopped pimping—who’d support
my family?”—he said lying thru his
teeth—knowing I didn’t believe him

.

His name was—Svetoslav Spasov
and he looked—under 18 like all the
young girls in the—nice swanky lobby

The flow of drugs—and disease made
life inevitably risky—unfettered sex
trafficking—made life short and hard

He didn’t believe—me either about
church architecture—and all that jive
smoking a cigarette—nude in bed

Young Svetoslav Spasov—got spastic
a couple of times—for me that night
his girls in the lobby—didn’t miss him