Folks often tell me of late that I do not show signs of the man
they once know. These are well intentioned people who have
known me for decades, if not my entire life. There are fewer
and fewer of these particular kinds of friends and family around.
What they tend to actually say is something seemingly innocent
like "Where's that easy smile you used to sport?" or "You seem
so serious and dark...Lighten up!" and the message is clear.
They genuinely do have interest in my well being. They do perhaps
fear I have been swallowed by a new and less affable design which
threatens to engulf the old me.
Like grandparents bemoaning the loss of sweet little babies to
young hellions, and then again sweet young hellions' loss to abrupt
teenagers, and so on, it is the loss of innocence that we all seem
to miss. Perhaps because witnessing such transformations remind
us of the often dire and unrelenting nature of this world.
I sometimes grieve myself for the loss of my innocence and naivete.
I sometimes sit in bed, unable to reach sleep while perplexed by
the burrowing questions, and I ache for simpler times.
I debate with my eldest friend the great hypothetical of whether
we would prefer to be ignorant and blissful, or if we are better
off for the supposed knowledge we command.
I try hard to recall the perfect, primal essence of true love, as
experienced oh so long ago for the very first time. For the years
have jaded me and sometimes I imagine I will never be able to
look past the reality of people (or the armored veil of my distrust)
in order to experience such unbounded--and unfounded--joy
and freedom in this lifetime.
So I allow my friends the openness to grieve my 'Little Boy Lost,'
for I know it is not a personal attack of what I have become.
Of what I had to become, in order to survive.
They are grieving their last vestiges of hoping someone could
maintain doe-eyed optimism. They are grieving their own simpler,
easier times, too. I know their sadness comes from a place of
having wanted more for me than this thing they wished would not
come. It is also quite likely a bittersweet acknowledgement of
the passage of time, and one of those disturbingly recurrent
reminders of our own mortality.
They say I don't smile as much as I used to, and I cannot deny
it is true. My innocence is gone. But not my contentment, and
not my capacity to dream. Certainly not my compassion or my
wit or my humor.
I had to grow up, at least somewhat. Take a reality check,
assessing what was and was not realistic any longer. It was, to
put it deceptively mildly, a painful process. But I am not just
wounded...I'm grateful. I'm better.
For friends, who see only periodic splotches of the changes in
my darkened gaze and my strident poses, it is of course more
jarring. The change did not have the good taste to be witnessed
in steady, staccato regularity as the old was chipped away to
prepare for the new. It seems more blunt and abrasive for them.
Brutality was the only mans of dislodging the childlike credulity
I had too long maintained at the expense of hard lessons.
Sooner or later, we all lose a bit of our smile. If it helps at all,
I'm still smiling on the inside. I'm not done yet. And by the way....
Thanks for the concern! It does bring a smile to my face.
**************************************************
Setting: A major unholy chain store for crappy retail schlock
in the fair-to-middling sized hole-in-the-wall (No pun intended!)
town of Irredeemable, South Carolina.The Date: Voting Day for Republican Primaries (not that there's
any significance to that!)
The Time: Lunch time! And all good little Christian parodies of
real men are washing their hot and horny little hands like the
barn's afire; OCD harsh scrubbings and self-flagellation aplenty.
Meanwhile, in the Men's room.....
Ricky sings to himself while he fumbles with his tiny pecker, fervently
working it free of the chastity belt he had modified for himself. Too
many damned cute interns to take chances. What are they feeding
those young mid-western boys these days? He sings, not for joy
of touching the withered and neglected member, but because he has
to distract himself whilst physically acknowledging he has one.
Don't want to sin and notice genitalia!
Ricky is at once relieved by the swishing sound of the men's room
door, and also aggravated that he may have to work hard at keeping
his composure. These bitter-sweet moments were what he lived for,
and dreaded.
Once he turned slightly to catch a glimpse of his acquaintance,
Mitty, he was actually disappointed. No school boys today, he
thought, dismissing the aged gentleman. In truth, Mitty looked
and acted far younger than he truly was, born eons ago for the
plow and hearth crowd he was part of, sheer desperation feigning
his youthful zeal. Funny enough, this was in direct contrast to
Ricky, who looked far older than his Micky Mouse Club
childishness and immaturity, who sought to maintain the illusion of
decorum and stability.
Methuselah and Peter Pan, coming together to shake their bitter,
useless pickles. Avoiding their own, while hoping to control all others.
Mitty pretended not to notice Ricky was even standing next to him
now; children are to be neither seen nor heard, and his power play was
in full swing. He tweezered out his Vienna sausage and thought long and
hard about the lean young men his boys had become.
Mitty is feeling his oats, today, and flips a coin in his head, deciding
to take the low road. Familiar territory. "Lovely sweater vest," he
lays out to Ricky in a snarky huff.
Ricky is not too quick or too adept, but his angry inner child,
longing for reconciliation with his absent Daddy (whom Mitty
certainly reminds him of,) has him blurt out a schoolyard retort
of "What are you doing here? Stocking up on your Crisco hair
supplies?"
He's clearly vexed while stoic Mitty just keeps that stiff upper
lip clench in play, hoping eventually someone will be impressed
by it and think him a badass. He pictures Heaven in his mind, as
he often does when he plays with himself. He sees himself in the
throne at the top of the clouds, reshaping the environs in his image.
Both men fight their carnal urges to at least look over and size up
their competition. But fear wins out. Fear that if they initiate such
a spectacle, the other will follow suit, and their secret will be out,
definitely in the wrong hands. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
There is a long glassy stare of insolence that passes between the
two pompous, posturing, pedantic boys-in-men's-bodies....this
octogenarian and this fetus, so far apart, and yet...so much in common?
That soulful discomfort....that detachedness...the slow-wittedness....
the earnestly pleading lost boys who cannot get answers.
In a moment of mad giving in to all that they suppress daily, they
are mauled by their passions, knowing now that they were two sides
of the same coin. Self-hating lapsed into reasoned denial.
"We both have everything to lose! It's the perfect outlet!" they
both thought in unison.
Sure, it wasn't cabana boys, hustlers, interns, or their own barely
legal nubile flesh they were plundering on the cold, dirty, tile floor,
but it would do. After all, that's what fantasy is for. Robotic,
shame-filled, they groped and fudged around until they had both
squirted forth their worthlessness. They quickly made themselves
back into their normally disheveled forms and began their charade
anew.
"Ahem! Well, these voters are sure to back me and my solid core
values. God has made a plan for my Presidency, Ricky. I hope you
don't have too much invested in winning." Mitty's caricature of a
caricature was nauseatingly obvious, but so long as he never ceased
the ruse, could anyone actually expose it?
"These aren't New Englanders here, Mitty. We may have a surprise
or two in store. Don't get ahead of yourself!" charged the little
cheerleader, surprising himself with his gusto even as he prepared
which Bible verse he would recite for the Southern crowd.
"Maybe, if you're a good boy," Mitty said with a lecherous wink,
"I'll save a special spot in my cabinet for you!" With that gauntlet
thrown, Mitty tightened his tie noose-like around his throat and
stomped out of the latrines, enough of an angry air to wilt flowers
and scare children.
Meekly, Ricky splashed water on his face and contritely gave
himself affirmations in the mirror, puffy-eyed and fearful. He sighed
mightily and scurried behind his errant Papa, just as the janitor was
sauntering in for the mid-day cleaning.
He wondered to himself why the floors were always stickiest after
the married men finished their lunchtime constitutions, and figured
that it must just be the glue that holds America together.
**************************************************
