in the '70s i mastered bernadette's weird arm thing, made a battlestar galactica mothership replica out of legos, and wrote a letter to jimmy carter asking him if he was still a peanut farmer now that he was president (to which in response i got a color booklet featuring pictures of amy carter giving a tour of the white house - where does her junior sized gold velvet smock dress end and the plus sized gold velvet curtains begin - nobody knows). however i never really invented anything. i wasn't an original. i wasn't the first late bloomer jewboy fagboy nerdboy in the suburbs. i wasn't the first kid to play dungeons & dragons, though i did have the very first edition when it was all booklets, not even books, to guide one along through group hallucinatory adventures.
i did not, unlike someone i met later in college, get famous as a kid actress on broadway for a hot minute for the line "give me the fucking keys", which is pretty damn funny when said by a 9 year old moppet. i did see tony randall at a museum once. you know the most amazing thing about seeing a famous person in public? they're just standing or sitting or talking or eating or doing nothing. nothing is happening. this is because "famous" is an adjective not a verb. they can't be standing there "famousing". if they could, that would really be something.
i didn't star in bad news bears, though i would have been perfect in it. i was only so-so at four square - the lemon drop got me every time. i could only recite pi to the sixth digit after the decimal point - less if i got punched in the face halfway through. i wasn't the only kid to have a star trek phaser squirt gun. i probably wasn't even the only boy who wanted to be nadia comaneci (as seen in the olympics and the leroy neiman series of olympic posters available through mcdonald's at the time), though i did have the best nadia pose in gymnastics class - arched back, hands straight up, i'm perfect attitude. yes that's it. i was the best boy nadia comaneci of the '70s.
no medals. no perfect 10s. no magazine covers. no bela karolyi giving me a bear hug. just me in a pose in gymnastics class at summer camp. feeling good. feeling strong. last night after her perfect short program performance, figure skater sasha cohen said to herself "this is me". i could read her shiseidoed lips clear as day. "this is me". said to herself after a triumph. in the '70s this is me. in the '00s this is me. i am in the same pose. presenting myself to the world. open. accepting. joyous. read my lips. this is me.
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