One day Lynne mentioned in class (in reference to Keats, lecture by Prof McMahon which should weep you dry) a poem in which the speaker wished he could go back in time to visit his twenty year old self, give him a hundred dollars and assure him everything was going to turn out okay. I remarked this lightly at the time and now I wished I would have taken down the poet's name, asked the title. Now it seems I would rather track down the poet himself, and crying prostrate admit to him that I am his twenty year old self. I am the rumpled broodster in a dirty t-shirt thumbing through old Updike prints. I prowl sheepishly at night. I drink diet sodas and have no back spin on my jump shot. I need to be told everything will be okay. With assurance.

Perhaps this poet has been badgered by the same young men since the poem's publication. My kind of breed has a tendency to harp and maraude. We tend to leach life and maliciously expect the same kind of over-emotional fawning we hate in ourselves.

I wonder what I would use the hundred dollars for. Maybe I'd bum my sister's, fill up the gas tank and go to a local show. Feeling overdressed I'd stand in the back trying to look lonesome. I'd buy coffee on the way home and wake up the next morning to buy a book I'd read too quick or not at all. Or maybe I'd get a nice shirt and tie, wash it once, iron it and lay it out in anticipation of my birthday. I would research the swanky bars and pick the most ridiculous one. I would shave a raw face, polish my eyes a turmoiled glean and order a glass of wine.

But that sounds a little too much for me; either scenario seems like too much work. I'd rather have the 'okay,' because right now I am none too sure.

Stepping off my front steps I take small jabs in the air. What a quaint prize fighter I would make! My jaw would square and flick tiny, hot muscles to stare meanly at whomever my opponent is (it is probably you and this is all a comedy). My shapelessness would now take the perception of long, powerful flanks giving shadow and breadth to the rest of a trim shape and the entire weight of my frame would build on a benevolent meanness. A shocking and fearful slowness, like watching rain fall or plants grow on a nature show; something you know should be either intensely fast or forever slow, but somehow both actions, my punches, seem heaven bound. These fists are blessed and unavoidable. I am the slowest boxer in the world and I step off the porch and into the street, my body now sluggish and sacked with the heat and rain. My pockets are suddenly immense and drowning me. I suck for air and I win, I suppose for to live is to be scribing this. These little notes I am constantly writing in my head for cleverness, for to stockpile thoughts (for future attempts at cleverness) and to shine a bit of light upon myself. To shove the lamp my way. Excuse me, but I need to see the words I am reading, I will say. And if a part of my cracked winning smile is now in view, who am I to blame, I think coyly. If but my rust stained shirt is given curve and candor to a nascent manhood, is it my fault?

I should hardly think so and I apologize to everyone.

So this is the self which catapaults into summer. This is the boy (yes, my stagnated term 'boy.' I still am hopelessly and bookishly comparing myself to my literary hero of the moment, Updike's Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom) who will droop endlessly into the doorframe, that dopey smiley demeanor. The kindness I've adopted, the wine still smacking in my mouth and my cheeks a consumptive rose. So an open apology to the boys downstairs. You will hear the clunking of my boots as I kick them off and socked I will bed. The time this will happen is subject to my mood and station (though it is assumed I will be penniless, sorry to the women hoping for a nice dinner on the river, a boy in a nice shirt, a gift of anything more than a bit of verse, or even a ride in a car that is mine). Perhaps you will hear my push up noises, the forever sounds of a tuning guitar (tinny and awful though in my mind epic and gorgeous). Maybe a foreign voice of a girl paying me the night's drinks in kind words or remonstrations for my place a mess. If you listen very quietly, my boys, you will hear definitely the sound of sweat from my forehead, arms and back hitting the gouged wood floor. If there is a time when you cannot hear this queer plink, please knock on my door, ask me if I want some tea and I will decline. But thank you for asking.