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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