September 23: Boys, Terry Godbey, "The Purity of Boys"

Yes, I've been thinking about little boys a lot these last couple of days.  Boy stuff.  I've never been a typical guy, especially in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I grew up.  I don't like to fish.  The idea of shooting any living thing with a rifle makes me a little sick to my stomach.  I don't like the taste of most wild game meat.  Not my thing.  I'd rather read a good novel, watch a documentary on PBS, or read a poem.

Terry Godbey has a great poem about boys in her collection Flame.  The boys in the poem are trying to impress the girls.  The girls are trying to attract the boys.  There's much showing off by both genders.  But, in the end, they remain on their respective sides, wanting each other, but not knowing how to say so.

Saint Marty prefers that arrangement at the moment, especially for his teenage daughter.

The Purity of Boys

by:  Terry Godbey

Water glints and sparks as they spill
from the pool and smash the sunlight to bits,
every movement designed to impress,
each glance a measure of our meager curves.
They dive and ride their bodies,
bark like seals as we chatter
and make lacy splashes in the shallow end.
Each long day drips honeysuckle.
We burn with impatience,
count out coins for ice cream cones
that drizzle our striped towels.
Sulky, drowsy in the heat, we oil
our caramel skin, watch the boys
watch us and lay side by side,
arranging our long-stemmed legs
in the blue vase of afternoon.

Just another Yooper guy

June 27: Topper, Daughter's Friend, Boys

"Well!  I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I haven't any great faith in these young housekeepers.  What do you say, Topper?"

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.  Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister--the plump one with the lace tucker; not the one with the roses--blushed.

Topper is Scrooge's nephew Fred's best friend.  He also seems to be pretty horny, since he spends most of the party at Fred's house chasing after the young woman above.  It's a charming little detail in the book, and certainly Topper seems harmless enough.  He just wants to grab himself some Christmas cheer, put a little nog in his egg, if you get my meaning.

Which brings me to my subject for this morning:  boys.  Particularly, horny boys.  My daughter's best friend is a boy.  Notice that I didn't say, "my daughter's boyfriend."  My daughter has been hanging with this boy since she's been seven or eight years old.  They're the same age and get along well, when they're not annoying the shit out of each other, which they frequently do.  Just this past weekend, they unfriended themselves on Facebook on Saturday, and then friended themselves again on Sunday.

I'm not naive.  I know my daughter is reaching the age where boys start coming into the picture.  (She's eleven years old.)  One of my friends (who is of the opposite gender) said to me yesterday, "Oh, yeah.  They're going to end up dating," speaking of my daughter and her best friend.

My initial reaction to her statement was, "Over my dead body."  Even though I really like this kid, and have for several years, I just can't make that leap in my mind from best friend who is a boy to boyfriend.  Of course, I'm still in the mindset that my daughter is going to be too focused on dancing or music or collecting comic books or anything else besides hanging out with someone who has a penis.

It didn't help that my daughter sent me a picture she took of herself yesterday:

Saint Marty is in big trouble.