Free The Art Of The Heart by Dan Skinner Page A

him. To be able to hang out with him. To have him as my friend. And so much more…
    We were two completely different youths. He was naturally athletic. I was not. He was boyishly muscular. I was thin. He was outgoing; I was introverted. There was a lot I didn’t know back then, and you can only imagine my confusion when I woke the next morning with my underwear and pajamas stuck to me. The body knew of what the mind had no knowledge.
    Here is what is odd to me in my retrospection. The rest of that entire school semester I cannot tell you the name of anyone else in the class other than my teacher. I cannot remember any other faces of my classmates. I can’t tell you what I studied, what I was good at, or what I was not. But I can place me in my desk and I can place him in his. I can tell you what he wore every day; what he looked like when he got a haircut and when he got his first pair of glasses—which I thought only made him more handsome.
    I remember wanting a pair of glasses after that, even though my eyes were fine. But that was what was happening to me. I wanted jeans like him, a pair of black Converse ball shoes like his, the striped pullovers he was fond of wearing. I wanted to emulate him in every way.
    The one memory that stands most vivid was during a gym class softball game. I always dreaded these things because I was so poor at sports ; anything athletic. But I can still picture Greg standing at the plate with his bat, swinging it back and forth like he knew what he was doing.
    Confident. Determined. He wore the white tee and short white shorts that were typical of that time long ago. I was on the bench, hoping the bell would ring before it was my turn, gazing at him. His curly blond hair dangled over his ears. The naturally tanned skin that I am sure only glows because of the biased shade of my recollection. His legs were lithe. Golden. Everything about him boasted strength. I don’t know how I could have admired anyone more.
    Before that school year ended, I experienced one more thing that announced another significant change in myself. By this time, I was dressing as much as I could as my hero, Greg. The shoes, the shirts, and the jeans. Our family couldn’t afford the Chuck Wagon lunch boxes he carried, or the back packs, or the Timex watch he was inclined to wear on the underside of his wrist. But I was as close an imitation as a skinny boy can be.
    My locker was around the corner of a corridor from his. I remember the floors as if they were cork. You barely heard footfalls on them. It was the end of the school day. I walked from my locker with my books and was first cognizant of the scent of one of those perfumes I’d smelled walking past the women’s counter in the Katz drugstore in Maplewood. It carried on the light breeze from an open window at the end of the hall. It wasn’t an expensive perfume. It was one of those that catered to teenaged girls who wanted to be thought of as more “mature.” I know it had a silly name, but I can’t remember it. I can remember turning the corner and finding its source: the girl who was standing in front of Greg’s locker, holding his hands. They stood close. He smiled at her. He rubbed his thumbs over the tops of her hands. I was polarized by the sight of that hand on hers.
    Light and air were choked from the corridor. I had no breath in my lungs. My heart missed beats. My legs were unsteady. I leaned against the wall with my books clutched to my chest. My head filled with searing hurt. My eyes stung sharply, and I realized I was blinking through a salty waterfall.
    How I got out of the building is a recollection burned away by that moment. But I found myself in the small park between the school and the apartment I lived in with my folks. I cried uncontrollably into my jacket. I felt violated. And it was all beyond the scope of my understanding. It was only inside that inconsolable pain that I finally realized what it was that I’d wanted, and what it was