Turning Thirty-Three

Turning Thirty-Three "I met her on a corner in Duluth (that's the truth). She was tryin' to fix her shoe in a telephone booth (her name was Ruth). She said she was just waiting for a bus . . ." From Shel Silverstein's "Thumb Sucker's Song" World 42 Freaks 0 An old woman, immense in her black mini, waits on the #9, her thighs stuffed deeper than China into stockings three sizes too small. "Like rigatoni," I'm thinking, and I catch the #8, turn in my seat to get just one more glimpse—tonight, turn myself in slow circles of suspicion before the bedroom mirror. I used to run. To pit myself against the elements of my neighborhood: Joey's Doberman down the street, those black-leather boys on the corner hunched over Harleys, hooting sweet somethings I never allowed myself to hear ... for fear I'd end up married to the bearded one, his eyes artesian blue. Now I study Art Theory, sculpt squat little men from clay, line my shelves with them. They study me studying myself. They smirk because I couldn't sculpt them any other way. I forget about time when I work in clay, concentrate on carving-in that arrogant grin. Before the mirror time accelerates. Could I be turning thirty-three? This grey hair's maybe nothing more than drying clay. The summer I turned five I heard my mother speaking in hushed tones to my father, saying something about the crows, how they would come, legions of them, tracking age across her face, how more would follow. And I hid myself in the bedsheets, waiting for the faint flap of wings. At 19, I dated the Village Idiot, who was beautiful in his stupidity, and wild for women whippet-thin. I'd spend my days eating salads, sipping water; my nights, staring into the basement toilet, puking green. I'd like to sculpt myself old and grey, emerge cracked from the kiln. I could stand smirking from the bookshelf, park myself flat against Little Women or World 42 Freaks 0. It's possible that old age and dying are nothing more than a short trip on a long bus to a place where nothing's static, where nothing's indelibly carved. Season Harper Dowell Lincoln, Nebraska 44 ...