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@ 27.055 MHz: Ad Astra; Exultation In Mid-June, 1972
Today, I saw a contemporary photograph that reminded
me of a weekday morning in June, nineteen-seventy-two,
just before the summer solstice. My parents, putting a
certain amount of trust in me (just newly fourteen years
old), had already departed for the better part of the
day---one of their interminable shopping sprees at every
furniture store in three surrounding counties that season.
Starwatcher was still two years future. I liked my hair with long
curls---disparaged parentally as subversive, and in need of
barber's clippers. I had put on a light green polo shirt with
faded, bell-bottom blue jeans; and, in the absence of my
parents' presence, and enforcement of their complexity of
rules, neither shoes nor socks were desirable: eagerly,
delightedly barefoot was always exponentially desirable,
fantasized no longer but immediately realizable,
despite their prohibition against it for cringing fear of
what the neighbors might think (though, at the time, I
seriously doubted if the neighbors knew how to think).
Dew had drenched the back lawn as dawn's first light
became full morning. I stepped outside, bringing with
me two texts borrowed from the local library: the
Septuagint Old Testament, and the Good Gray Poet's
volume, Leaves Of Grass (with my interest especially
attracted to the Calamus poems on those pages). My
unkempt hair, already damp bare feet, and the book of
poems would have raised in my parents' minds the dread
specter and accusation . . . of . . . Homosexuality.
Terrified by available, and then common, nomenclature,
they had already put a definition to my soul's nature,
acceptable to me as privilege not concession,
though I could not then give that truth joyous expression.
Meanwhile, five residential lots south of our house at 30,
GingerThereToo, in his house at 20, decided to join me for an
extended visit. He had put on a tie-dyed mesh tee with
velour bell-bottoms and midnight blue socks, which were
not to be concealed or confined by shoes for the length of
that day. Soon, he made that short walk northward and
convened the beauty of that day for me. I thought of
Joseph's dream of the sun's, moon's, and stars' homage to
him; and I (becoming, even then, a poet, but not yet
aware of the process) wanted the same for GingerThereToo . . .
because, even then, I loved him . . . .
Starwardized
