PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Today is the forty-eighth anniversary of the most traumatic event of my life:  on September 9th, 1976, my parents transported me from our small town to an also small private college almost an hour northeast, where I would have to spend the next eleven or so weeks.

The summer of 1976, the most delightful summer I have ever experienced was over.  The Friday and Saturday nights of drive-in movies, pizza and salad bar, and then hours of driving on our township's rural roads to talk on the c.b., channel twenty-two where I had found acceptance with the handle, Starwatcher.  But the worst separation was to be parted from my best friend (with whom I had fallen in love), BlueShift.  I knew I would miss BlueShift's habit (during the films and the rural drives) of unbuttoning his shirt to frontally bare his beautiful torso, and kicking his shoes off to show off his midnight blue socks (fragrant and flavorful), not quite concealed beneath his baggy jeans frayed, bell-bottom cuffs.  I knew that the Friday and Saturday nights in my immediate future would be incredibly hollow and empty.

At times, daylight has a certain quality that I have called "that light."  I have seen it in person and I have seen it in photographs; it is highly significant to me.  It bookended the summer of 1976:  on June 19th (twenty-two days before I was led, with BlueShift's help, to my handle), the first time I ever saw it; and, the second time, on September 9th, in the parking lot of a small bank branch.  I was not the mature enough to understand the meaning of these signs.

The first night in the dorm, I wept for the pain of the separation.  On Sunday of that weekend, my roommate, a failed athlete, informed me curtly that we were not friends, would not become friends, and would not take any meals together.

I felt very isolated, cut off from the place in which I had spent all of my eighteen years; cut off from the first community that had accepted me unconditionally and had helped me rejoice in my handle; and, especially, cut off from my best friend, whom I loved romantically, and whose bared torso and shoeless, midnight blue socks had provided me many desires and fantasies.

The college was smugly indifferent to my emotions. 

I did not share my handle, Starwatcher, with anyone.  That privacy also provided me an assurance of being held together against the onslaughts of my present situation.  My parents, who knew my handle, could not wrest it from me; and the college could not either---through the four years I attended classes there.  The handle reminded me of the very best parts of my existence, those things that vivified existence to become a real and viable life.   In time, Starwatcher evolved to Starward and then J-Called its final form (which I hope will also be inscribed on my headstone); but, though the words have changed, the functions and significances remain exactly the same.

Night after night I fantasized about BlueShift, his shoes off and shirt open; or both of us naked ---except for his socks---together.

On November 23rd of this year, I hope to write a celebration of the forty-eighth anniversary of my return to my home, to channel twenty-two, and to my Beloved BlueShift, his beauty and his fragrant and flavorful (and very provocative) midnight blue socks.

J-Called