The Art Of The Heart (8 page)

I’ve heard that, before we die, they’ll flash before our eyes again. But for the time being, we can thank Kodak and Polaroid.

1967. It would be the year of two poignant discoveries for me.
My sexual awakening. And that I was different because of that.

Being able to look back on those days with
a forty-odd year hindsight, the memories come back bathed in a golden glow like from a romance film with music by Ennio Morricone. I’ve colored them like that over the years, like a painting in progress.

The magnificent “event” that changed everything began with a hand.
The simple sight of a hand. To this day I can’t forget the exquisite beauty of that hand. Like a Michelangelo painting. It held a number two yellow pencil over a spiral notebook filled with almost perfect writing. The other hand traced words over a seventh grade American History book. I remember the olive-skinned hand now as if it’s bathed in luminous sunlight, even though I knew it couldn’t have been since the windows were to the back of the classroom.

But that hand mesmerized me. Made me look at my own and wonder why it wasn’t as perfect. I studied those flawless fingers diligently holding the pencil, the way it moved across the paper. And it seemed to me, at that moment, there was nothing on earth that had greater beauty.

And it was then I noticed something completely different in me. Some kind of sensation of longing and need. I felt instantly hot all over, sensed droplets of sweat in my hairline. They trickled to my collar with each heavy drumbeat of my heart. My mouth went dry. I wondered,
“What is this? What is this feeling? What is this fascination?”

I’ve no clue how long I sat hypnotized. I just remember the spell was broken when he turned to look at me with those bright brown eyes…and smiled.
The smile that changed everything. The smile that I can remember more than forty years later with concise clarity.

Forgive me for my sappiness, but it’s the only means I have to convey the molecular destruction I experienced caught in the vision of his smile. I felt myself vanish in it. When I returned from it, I would be someone entirely transformed. It was then I understood the meaning of
hand-holding and the kissing behind trees.

I dropped my eyes from his and stared at the pages of the book open on my desk. I don’t remember what book it was at all. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. All I could do at that moment…was feel. And the feelings were overwhelming…and out of control. I trembled, and it confused me. When I had trembled before, I’d been scared. Something else had made me shake. I wanted to look back up at him. I couldn’t. That did scare me. It scared me because it made me feel weak.
But I couldn’t get him out of my thoughts. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I saw my shirt moving under the thunderous thumping of my heart. I put my hand over it. This is what going crazy must feel like, I thought.

He didn’t know it, but I followed him on his way home. He lived just around the corner from me behind the lot of the Catholic Church. I don’t remember the name of the church, but I remember his house distinctly.
A duplex on the corner. 394 Osage Street. It was the only house that didn’t have trees in front of it. I watched him unlock the door, disappear inside.

I was half a block away, behind an oak tree. I stood there forever, staring at his house, wondering what had come over me. I’m sure people passed me on the sidewalks and cars drove by. The passersby probably all looked and wondered what was wrong with the gangly, blond boy standing behind a tree, staring into space, soaked by the early summer heat. I didn’t care.

What I was aware of was that I now understood that I was feeling what all the others felt when they talked about their girlfriends. But that I felt them for a boy. And that actually terrified me because I’d never seen or heard of that happening. But there it was, and I had no control or choice in the matter. I was helpless under its possession.

I haven’t given you his name because this is true. I’ll call him Greg. That isn’t his name. But it will do.

I’ve heard so many people refer to this as “puppy love” or your “first crush.” For me it was so much more than that. It was the single event that would forever change my life.

That night, the boy that lay in my bed, the boy who used to fantasize about building secret underground cave hideouts and super powerful spaceships that could take him to different planets, lay there visualizing the face, the hand…and the body of a boy named Greg. I fantasized what it would be like to be him.
To be able to hang out with him. To have him as my friend. And so much more…

We were two completely different youths. He was naturally athletic. I was not. He was boyishly muscular. I was thin. He was outgoing; I was introverted. There was a lot I didn’t know back then, and you can only imagine my confusion when I
woke the next morning with my underwear and pajamas stuck to me. The body knew of what the mind had no knowledge.

Here is what is odd to me in my retrospection. The rest of that entire school semester I cannot tell you the name of anyone else in the class other than my teacher. I cannot remember any other faces of my classmates. I can’t tell you what I studied, what I was good at, or what I was not. But I can place me in my desk and I can place him in his. I can tell you what he wore every day; what he looked like when he got a haircut and when he got his first pair of glasses—which I thought only made him more handsome.

I remember wanting a pair of glasses after that, even though my eyes were fine. But that was what was happening to me. I wanted jeans like him, a pair of black Converse ball shoes like his, the striped pullovers he was fond of wearing. I wanted to emulate him in every way.

The one memory that stands most vivid was during a gym class softball game. I always dreaded these things because I was so poor at sports
; anything athletic. But I can still picture Greg standing at the plate with his bat, swinging it back and forth like he knew what he was doing.

Confident. Determined. He wore the white tee and short white shorts that were typical of that time long ago. I was on the bench, hoping the bell would ring before it was my turn, gazing at him. His curly blond hair dangled over his ears. The naturally tanned skin that I am sure only glows because of the biased shade of my recollection. His legs were lithe. Golden.
Everything about him boasted strength. I don’t know how I could have admired anyone more.

Before that school year ended, I experienced one more thing that announced another significant change in myself. By this time, I was dressing as much as I could as my hero, Greg.
The shoes, the shirts, and the jeans. Our family couldn’t afford the Chuck Wagon lunch boxes he carried, or the back packs, or the Timex watch he was inclined to wear on the underside of his wrist. But I was as close an imitation as a skinny boy can be.

My locker was around the corner of a corridor from his. I remember the floors as if they were cork. You barely heard footfalls on them. It was the end of the school day. I walked from my locker with my books and was first cognizant of the
scent of one of those perfumes I’d smelled walking past the women’s counter in the Katz drugstore in Maplewood. It carried on the light breeze from an open window at the end of the hall. It wasn’t an expensive perfume. It was one of those that catered to teenaged girls who wanted to be thought of as more “mature.” I know it had a silly name, but I can’t remember it. I can remember turning the corner and finding its source: the girl who was standing in front of Greg’s locker, holding his hands. They stood close. He smiled at her. He rubbed his thumbs over the tops of her hands. I was polarized by the sight of that hand on hers.

Light and air were choked from the corridor. I had no breath in my lungs. My heart missed beats. My legs were unsteady. I leaned against the wall with my books clutched to my chest. My head filled with searing hurt. My eyes stung sharply, and I realized I was blinking through a salty waterfall.

How I got out of the building is a recollection burned away by that moment. But I found myself in the small park between the school and the apartment I lived in with my folks. I cried uncontrollably into my jacket. I felt violated. And it was all beyond the scope of my understanding. It was only inside that inconsolable pain that I finally realized what it was that I’d wanted, and what it was that I’d just lost. And it slammed me as hard as a fist. I doubled over with that assault and cried until my eyes were dry, my face was gritty.

The despair consumed me. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him anymore during the last few weeks of the school year. On the last day, I packed up my belongings from the locker and strolled past him with my head down. I walked out the door feeling like my life had ended.

That would have been the end of that tale if the summer hadn’t turned everything upside down on me again. I’d already forgotten all the nameless, faceless people of my class, and I’d pushed Greg as far out of my mind as I could. Our family couldn’t afford to take a vacation, so I had to amuse myself by myself as best I could.

We lived in the upper story of a two story brick flat in Saint Louis. Twelve feet of front yard with houses pressed in tight to each other. The backyards were larger lots that ended with an alleyway lined with trashcans, carports, and one-car garages.

Luckily, that summer, I discovered a hobby that comforted me. My dad gave me an old push-mower and some clippers, and put me in charge of taking care of the apartment’s yards. On first glance, it seemed like something that would be outside of my personality. But before long, it became something that brought peace to my thoughts. I learned techniques of mowing the lawn that made it look like a carpet: mowing it, first one way, then the other in tight, even rows. I trimmed the edges so they were all perfectly square; meticulously pulled every weed and cleaned the cracks in the walkway. I watered it regularly, and before long, we had the best lawn on the block. For five dollars, I did the same thing for neighbors and it wasn’t long before I had worked my way into a self-employed summer job that pulled in thirty dollars or more a week. And I loved doing it. I liked being alone.

In my free time, I’d grab my red Schwinn and ride through the neighborhood. I usually ended up at Marquette Park. It was a nice big park with lots of trees and bike paths, and it had the one community pool within ten miles. I’d go there and sit beneath the trees and watch the jocks toss a football to each other. I’d watch them run, then I’d sit near the fence at the pool and watch them parade around in their swim trunks.
I was fascinated by men. To see just one specimen that looked like a Greek god was worth a whole day of watching. I wished that I looked like them. I acknowledged my own average appearance. There’d be no one waiting on the sidelines to see me stride poolside in a pair of trunks. Not with my skinny legs, knobby knees, small chest, and boney arms. But my curiosity expanded every day. Particularly when the new lifeguard took a chair at the pool. I figured he was about my age; maybe a year older. He was tall and walked like some sleek animal on long legs. He was broad shouldered, perfectly sculpted. He had natural platinum hair that was long like most of the guys imitating the British rock groups of that time. He wore short, red trunks that seemed strained against his rounded butt. But I couldn’t take my eyes off how he absolutely filled the front of those trunks. In fact, none of the girls at the pool missed it either. They all gathered in giggling clumps around him. He was just that spectacular. I’d find myself sitting on the bench watching him and wondering what it would be like to see him slip out of those trunks and move with his gazelle grace into a shower. My consciousness of what appealed to me about guys also made me aware of my own deficiencies. One afternoon, after bathing, I stared at myself in the mirror as though I was taking inventory of the parts I would need to be like them; the one’s I liked. I needed them all. And they couldn’t be bought and added on.

I began doing all the things I didn’t care for.
Jogging, push-ups, squats. A whole exercise regimen. I wasn’t about to take off my shirt and expose myself to the world to get a tan. But I was, as my uncle used to say, as white as unpissed snow. So my solution was to wait for my parents to go to work and then go to their bedroom which had wide eastern windows, throw open the curtains and lay in my underwear on the floor to get a few minutes of tanning time. I learned quickly to not expose myself to too much at once. The first sunburn was a lulu and I peeled like a banana.

However, after a couple of weeks I had a nice color and noticed that it was lightening my normally dull brown, average hair. I needed more weight on my five-foot-nine-inch frame to really add muscle, but I was never a big eater, and with all the physical exertion of my lawn care chores for the neighbors and my exercise routine, I was burning off everything as I ate it. So I knew it was going to take time for someone like me who wasn’t born with genetic advantages. Even though I had broad shoulders they only accentuated that I was underweight. Without much facial or body hair I was, more or less, androgynous. Nothing like what I admired in others.

It was in the middle of June, one of the hottest days imaginable. Heat rose off the brick streets of our neighborhood. Birds seemed silenced in the humid oppression. I’d finished my one lawn chore of the day and decided to head to the park to check out the scenery at the pool where I knew everyone would be headed. In spite of the heat, I still wore a pair of long shorts and a white tee. I would get a cold soda at Bailey’s corner confectionery on the way.