Revisited

Today I found a porno-magazine in the middle of the road. It was all alone on the asphalt. The pages were turning one over another, back and forth, exposing young girls and their breasts and asses and more. When my bike tire rolled over the magazine I thought I heard the crunching of dry leaves but as I looked down I saw her. I saw her two legs, pinned down by me now, spread eagled underneath the rubber of my tire. Held there, her legs disjointed, her smile gazing up at me, wet and pink, spread wide across her youthful face. She is clean and pristine and nice but undeniably dirty and corrupted on the page. She looked happy to me. She looks happy to me still. She looked ready to make someone else happy too. “This girl is a giver,” I thought. “Someone who really understands the meaning of altruism. A real tart of empathy.”

Suddenly, I’m passed it and before anything can register I’m hearing the leaves rustling again, pages turning quickly, full of nature and instincts and carnal matters. Did I just see that?

I did. Yes. Yes! And there it is again, and there again! It’s as if some little boys (maybe two or three, let lose from somewhere inside of me) are gathered greedily around it, the magazine, and are flipping glossy pages, silk slick first and then clammy with sweat against their blood-flushed fingers. The pages seem so dry though, so worn there in the road that one more turn by those invisible spit licked fingers might tear the pages, mutilating some poor girl’s body or face and bending staples out of this book’s binding.

I double back and there she is again, and again (or is it now her sister, or her lover?) They’re young and fresh and all different shades of the same well known (or well learned) pinkish hue. But I’m more struck by their faces- each is happy. Everyone is smiling up at me with perfect pearl teeth, high polished on the pages. “What’re you so happy about?” Even their looks of longing and hard-pressed, long waiting glimpses of anticipation seem more playful than anything else. There is nothing these girls are missing. Except, maybe, their clothing. But, I don’t think they even miss those all that much.

The pages keep turning at a heartbeat’s rate and I’m standing over them. My bike is in the grass and I’m in the middle of the road staring down at my feet and her face, and ass, and more, intently and not so unlike Mosses I’m on a mountaintop with God. After all, I’m staring down with my eyes averted from all the people walking past me, from all their disgust, from the drab sky and cold wind that was before in my eyes. But is this so much better or so much worse? I was content today, void of thoughts and feelings until these girls fell underfoot and under tire and flaunted their happy, content, fresh faces in my way. How can I feel sixteen and sexy and stupid all over again? And lost like John the Baptist awaiting god in wilderness untouched, uncontrolled, and all alone before all majesty, at once? How can I feel so old and stupid and decrepit too? These girls are running past me like all girls do, but flipping one by one past me, turning back flips and bending over, wide and low and long, across beds and barn doors and stable walls. They are taunting me and are unkind, and dance past my old, cold weathered stiff bones.

By the grace of God I’ll walk by all this and won’t take off my jacket and fold it over my lap today. Not today. I’m not all that young and uncontrollable and untouched. This isn’t freshman year again, not like every other day has been. I’ll walk by all of this today. Or, maybe I’ll roll it all up tight as her and stuff them in a black back pack. Maybe I’ll save it away not for pleasure, but as a tool, a reminder, a talisman of fall and sex and being young again, or never again, or always still.

Who knows really?


Caleb, 19