Competition
An odd contradiction appears
Maybe not a contradiction at all
What do you make of the memories
Lived by a girl you’ve desperately tried to shed?
How do you tell
The stories of a girl
You have to explain away?
It was the last one I ever got
That stiff polyester vest
Bright mint green
Still bare of any achievement.
They make you start over every year.
I lean over the washer
Picking at the streaks of acrylic paint
The dots of forgotten hot glue.
I roll a stray bead of glue between my fingers.
Its rubbery, becoming more malleable
In the warmth from between my digits.
The paint flakes in pieces too small to be satisfying
And the glue peels with a metallic thud as suction is released,
My mom irons.
The room smells of leftover starch,
And warm,
Like that burnt orange brown
The same one staining bottom of the iron,
She uses to apply my first patch.
Sweat rolls down the bridge of my nose
I’ve leaned too close but barely noticed,
“Don’t trust the iron on. I’m going to sew it on later.”
She says, not looking up,
Like she knew exactly how they’d curl and peel
Just at the edges, threatening to fall off.
I was always jealous my brother was a boy scout,
I always whined that they did way cooler things,
I wished I could be a boy scout instead.
I held the fact that at sixteen anyone could join,
Even if they were a girl,
Close to my chest and let it fill the hallow there.
I longed for something I could not verbalize,
All I could do was compete,
As if proving how good of a boy scout I’d be,
Would somehow change how they saw me,
Correct it.
I sit on the edge of the large creek,
We all call it a river,
Prepubescents know no better,
Nor do most of them care,
The difference between one body of water,
And another.
The rod is slack in my hands,
My feet damp and hot, surely swollen
My seat soaked with mud and cold.
Later I’d be exiled to sit on a towel in the car
Then have to change my bottoms all the way down
To my cold and wet skin,
Exposed like a hermit crab changing shells,
Revealing pale skin that should not be seen.
Family members are welcomed to join
And even compete.
I win no prizes
Other than the swell of pride
When my bucket is more full
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Of squirming and writhing fish than the
Others in my internal competition for boyhood.
I measured my masculinity against
My brother and my father,
Looking for some worthiness,
Some permission to be like them.
The thing I was looking for
It was not taken
But assigned.
I knew this even then.
For as long as I’d remembered,
My father started the fires.
I had no measure for how well,
How efficiently.
My mother ribs and I follow.
My father, the man on whom,
I based my archetypal masculine ideal,
Could not start a fire with any haste.
That was the one skill I really learned,
In my time as a wannabe boy scout.
I didn’t have derbies of my own,
But I could start a fire.
Not allowed to use the stove,
Because of an incident
I still beg to light the fire,
Proudly brandishing a small stick of flint,
And the knowledge of the brief fire safety lesson,
Surely required for liability reasons.
Stubborn as always,
I finally get my mother to budge.
On the day of our next fire I carefully arrange
The logs with their dry cracking flesh
And rough peeling bark.
It lights in no time and just a few strikes on the flint.
My mother quickly quips that I should be
The new fire starter,
It had been much quicker than my father’s method,
And required much less gasoline.
It was innocuous,
Not a true reflection or evaluation,
Of my fire starting skills,
But it didn’t matter.
I locked the memory away,
Buffed and shone
That steel sliver of masculinity,
As if it were silver.
Worth much more to me,
Than anyone else would evaluate it to be,
But durable enough to withstand,
Even the most dire situations,
Unlike the soft silver it resembled.
It protected me,
The coin in your breast pocket,
Warped and coated with gunpowder,
Presented as the only reason,
The flattened bullet,
Didn’t tear into your flesh.
Warped and abused,
I still run my thumb over the smooth surface,
And feel the evidence of what it’s survived,
Like a worry stone.
A promise to that long dead girl,
Who wanted to be a boy scout.
