@ 27.055 MHz: Ad Astra; Aetia, A Remembrance Of My First Experience Of Beauty [Repost]

Homogeny---Muse of this poem:  say first of that young man

whose name I never ascertained, in the adjacent "fitting 

"room" in the major department store to which my mother 

had brought me, just before Labor Day, just before my fifth 

grade year began.  While I was waiting for her to return---

bitterly muttering as usual, her slaphappy arms laden with 

clothing to try on---he entered the next compartment:  The 

separating wall did not descend to the floor, so I had a view of 

about six inches:  I could see him remove ratty loafers from 

his bare feet, and how the cuffs of his brown bell-bottom slacks--- 

sure sign, my mother would have said, that something was 

seriously "not right" about him---pooled around his ankles, 

proocatively covering the beauty of his feet, which even at my 

ten years of age  was an "arouser" (as instructors would term it 

during our preliminary "sexual education" courses to be 

conducted on Friday afternoons' last class when the academic 

year commenced after the Monday holiday).  For some purpose 

unclear to me, he bent over, and I could see the long, sillen 

strands of his probably waist length hair (something else, my 

mother would have judged as indicating serious problems with 

his fitness to enjoy the privileges of being American).  He exited 

very quickly, therafter, and, afterward, as my mother continued to 

browse through shelves and stacks for the most conservative 

"outfits" she could assemble in which to confine me, I searched for 

some glimpse---a complete glimpse---of his implied beauty, which 

failed.  But what had not failed was a surge of unknown sensations in 

my flesh---in parts of my flesh associated only with bathing and toiletry. 

Nexr after that was Mike W---stoutly built, two years ahead of me in the 

school system, and believed by many to be descended from Native 

American tribes from the Great Plains (or that was as much as I was 

able to learn from my parents' disapproving discussion of his rare visits to 

our neighborhood).  One brightly lit September afternoon, he visited a 

friend who lived on our dead-end street, and, shoeless and shirtless, 

joined our kickball game for a little while.  His new jeans had not yet 

faded nor broken in; his jet black hair cascaded around his very tan, 

very muscular torso, and midnight blue crew socks sheathed his feet. 

He could kick the ball further than any of us---without shoes at that---and 

I marveled at the beauty of his agility, and I also envied the dilapitated 

ball that made momentary contact with those beautiful, soft-sheathed feet. 

Once again, the unusual sensations---which had revealed themselves to 

my body in that department store cubicle---responded, unbidden, to 

his natural beauty; and the image of that, like a sequence of eagerly 

taken photographs, continued to move like a slideshow through my 

mind as I lay, defiantly awake, in my narrow bed, replaying, reviewing, and 

recombining the afternoon's moments that Mike W---had beautified. 

After that, I began to notice---though not so speak of---others:  Anthony 

V---(who slipped his shoes off during fifth period English); Bob B---, an 

athlete who, every Friday, wore a pink shirt, pink dress slacks, and pink 

socks (mostly, I regret, shod); Trent S---, whose blond tresses were 

deemed too long to qualify for a starting position on the basketball team 

(Junior High), but whose adroit skill at that sport compelled the coaches 

and administration to determine, after several consultations, that his 

abilities were not negatively affected by his parents' refusal to compel 

regular visits to Mr. Haney the Barber; so that Trent led our team new 

district and conference championships.  At the same time, Tommy M--- 

like me, unathletic and bookish, and who had been my best friend since 

kindergarten---initiated me, one July evening of the summer after my 

seventh grade year, into my pubescence in a discussion that, having 

begun with certain entertainment magazines (directed, for the most 

part toward teenage girls, and heavily featuring very glossy, often 

colorized, photographs of male singers, actors, and models toward 

whom our "crushes" gravitated with weekly, even daily, changes) quickly 

became a friendly, and then an awkwardly romantic, demonstration. 

He taught me that the pleasures I had only dimly suspected could be, 

with very little provocation, summoned, controlled, and directed---at my 

own volition (a radical concept for one so dependent upon parental 

directives)---to provide me multiple opportunities "to get happy" as he 

described it.  Even then, ambitious to poetry (which my parents 

believed was an unnecessary pursuit fit only for "subversives, 

"communists, and hOmOsekshuls"), I thought of my first metaphor: 

stars, iridescently glowing, surging through towers of nebulized gas to

emerge with streaks of light upon the sable softness of outer space.  My 

life, at that time, was filled with such beauty---much appreciated 

but (sadly in that time and place) unable to be articulated 

(neither language nor permission to use such language than available).

But I had been admitted, at least for a moment, to the "fitting room," the

site made "fit" by time and circumstance to reveal to me that

sort of exquisite beauty; and I am grateful to have been found fit to

receive it . . . .


J-Called

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