In Their Own Words
Kieron Walquist on “Isobutyl Nitrite”
Isobutyl Nitrite
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.
Previously published in Gulf Coast and appears in Our Hands Hold Violence (Beacon, 2025). Reprinted with the permission of the author.
On “Isobutyl Nitrite”
In writing Our Hands Hold Violence, I would consider and circle my childhood gay awakening[s] and these moments of bizarre beauty often in my self-discovery. Shoveling city compost only to uncover trash, being cornered in a local haunted house, a beloved hit in the eye by a bottle rocket—
I remember, still, the first time I saw Remember the Titans on tape and realized what was cut from TV programming [I’d seen it at least twice before] was the kiss between Kip Pardue [Sunshine] and Ryan Hurst [Bertier]. On TV, for the channel that reached Mid-Missouri anyways, the scene shows Sunshine lunging at Bertier in the locker room, then Bertier’s reaction of disgust—I had assumed, before, such a response was from the lunge itself, though I struggled to make sense of line that came later, It’s too much male bonding for me—
With “Isobutyl Nitrite”—all my poems, really—I wrote small sounds, small details, and from there started to collage until the piece fused/Frankenstein-ed together. The process brought to mind, from the back of my mind, the act of teasing toward homoeroticism, or the idea and play at homosexuality as a punchline. [In Remember the Titans, Sunshine smirks after the kiss and brief brawl with Bertier. My young gay-heart broke then, watching the tape, having believed in its sincerity and later embarrassed that I had missed the joke.] While writing, lines and sonic siblings/echoes kept returning. Light that is like this and that. The pool and its chlorine smell. Poppers. Kissing. Almost drowning. Always longing.
