Ode to Andrew McCarthy and Your Hand on My Thigh

    "If I won a gameshow, I'd adopt a panda"is the best pickup line I've heard in my life    because it's not a line or a joke or a storyrecounted at a party where they're out of chips,    and who even makes punch for parties anymore,except in the movies—and if movies are the guide    to life, where we learn how to kiss, how to smokea cigar, how to tempt a lover in a Red Corvette:    LA, 3 AM, the wind in your hair, down to yourbreasts, braless under a low-v dress,    stroking the driver who's your lover, he relents,stops the car, the motorcycles circling around you    because this is young love and everyone, everyonemust make way, and there's so many lights,    and maybe we're not listening to the movies enoughbecause we're not in a convertible in LA,    a young Andrew McCarthy stroking my thigh, no,it's Christmas morning, not thinking about what    comes next, speaking of which, I'd marry that manwho said, "If I won a gameshow, I'd adopt a panda,"    no hesitation, travel to Chengdu with him or Ocean ParkAmusement Park, Hong Kong, home to    Ying Ying and Le Le, and tourists and localssupply them with an endless count of cardboard    to rip, which is like a gameshow:the grocery cart runs—you win a lifetime    supply of Blue Moon Ice Cream or hot dogs,and say hello to wiener bits and mac and cheese    for lunch for the whole next year,and what about those babes in sparkly dresses,    the glitz and glamour of spinning that wheel,letting it determine your entire fate,    hoping it'll land on the boat or the trip to Paris,but maybe what I want isn't the real-life pandas,    but the things I cannot have, the things out of this world,no not UFOs or the chocolate martinis on Mars,    but that feeling, like how one night in TallahasseeI chant my dead dog's name: Buzzie, Buzzie, Buzzie    over and over again, and I feel him sleeping nextto me on the bed, and you've got to admit:    some creatures really are irreplaceable, and the once-in-a-blue-moon-nightly visits    aren't enough, and I think about Andrew McCarthyin Mannequin, how Kim Cattrall just comes to life    for his eyes only, and he wants to keep holdingon to every moment, and maybe we do spend    more hours of the day looking at someonerather than listening to them, but what's the point    if we can't feel their soft skin on our handsevery day, and can I just keep holding on?