Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Breasts and Catechisms

Circumstances first began chipping away at my innocence during a Catholic Youth Organization field trip, and there wasn't a priest in sight. It was Frances McGraw who was the agent of my descent into mortal sin.

She looked a lot like you would expect someone named Frances McGraw to look. She was one of those unfortunate seventh grade girls whose breasts developed long before her classmates'. Seventh grade girls back then were supposed to be skinny, athletic, and flat chested. Frances was none of these. But to my junior high eyes her breasts were things of wonder. I would catch myself staring at them, mouth agape, when the rest of the class was working on long division or parsing particularly knotty sentences. I dreamed about them at night, not quite sure what one was supposed to do with breasts, but somehow aware of their significance. The boys in class had a joke about Frances. We didn't know how she was going to die, but we were sure it would not be by drowning.

She, of course, wore glasses perched on a too big nose and even at thirteen the traces of a mustache showed faintly on her upper lip. Her glasses were pink things with pointy frames like a cat's eyes. Her dad was a rancher in Estes Park, a real outdoorsman, and Frances took after him. She had her own horse and often wore cowboy boots. And she wore Austrian sweaters, the kind with tightly knit wool still greasy with lanolin and patterned with a series of pine trees or deer parading across her chest. I was always expecting her to yodel or go off like Heidi, looking for her grandfather.

In spite of her physical attributes, or because of them, she was a wonderful girl, always laughing and fun to be around. She was also the class brain and a star in our weekly catechism class in the basement of Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church. She and I shared the star role in CYO. I was the head altar boy and she was president of the youth group. Rest assured, we both knew our catechism.

"Who made you?"

"God made me."

"Why did God make you?"

"God made me to know, love, and serve Him in this world and the next," we would trumpet back in unison.

I used to go to her ranch and we would go riding together. We spent one whole day in sixth grade riding up and down Fish Creek casting for brookies and talking about school and church and friends. As much as it was possible for a twelve year old boy and girl, we were best friends.

But then the CYO started taking field trips to Denver to see movies, or to go bowling at Celebrity Lanes, or to visit a museum. And the field trips took place on a bus. And the bus had a back seat. And the ride back up to Estes was long and dark. I noticed on one trip back from a showing of "The Robe" at the Denham Theater, Mike Kleineider and Carol Landis sat in the back of the bus and made out. The sponsors for that trip, ironically Mike's parents, sat in the front seat sound asleep while Mike and Carol sunk lower and lower in the back. I could hear my fellow Catholic youths giggling as they snuck furtive peeks at the goings on and I could only imagine the kinds of illicit things that Mike and Carol were up to. That was the year, after all, that I started reading James Bond novels and kept saying the name Pussy Galore over and over to put myself to sleep.

I saw Mike the next day and asked him to tell me all about his adventure. He smiled and told me he had unhooked her bra. Well, I could imagine the rest. And the rest of the summer I thought about riding back to Estes in the back of the bus hooking and unhooking Carol Landis' bra. I even snuck one of my mother's bras out of the laundry and practiced on it, the Oedipal ramifications of this act never occuring to me. Mostly, I saw it as an insurmountable obstacle. My mother's bra had two rows of four hooks each and it was stiff and armor-like. When she went to the dentist and got X-rays, the lead apron they put over her chest must have been a redundancy, I figured.

My friendship with Frances and girls in general started fading that summer. I had other things on my mind besides horses and fishing for trout. It is hard to be best friends with someone you only want to ravish.

School started again and the CYO planned a fall trip to Celebrity. Most of the kids went swimming, but I spent the day with Mike shooting pool and sneaking cigarettes. I was becoming a man. And it was with that new feeling that I made a mad dash for the back seat when we got on the bus for the return trip, patiently waiting for Carol Landis to join me.

"Can I ride back here Jimmy?" They were the words I wanted to hear, but it was Frances who sidled up next to me, Frances and her wooly sweater with the silver pine cone buttons and the wonders that lay beneath.

--James D. Starkey

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Upon Hearing Reactions to Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Mr. Green." The New Yorker, January 23, 2007

"That's pie in the sky thinking," the critics retort
And thus new ideas are often sold short.

Ultra light cars are just one case in point
Of gas saving plans that we might anoint.

Solar panels and fluorescent lights
Both can ease environmental plights.

Renewable fuels come also to mind
As potential solutions of a different kind.

And the list goes on in its futile way;
Avant Garde thinking has never held sway.

--James D. Starkey