the first time i saw a naked female breast
i was ten years old
or so
i had thrown a dictionary at a girl’s head in third grade
although i don’t remember that
(a piece of paper i found years later said it
so it must be true)
i was labeled ‘emotionally impaired’
which nobody knew what to do with
in my small town school
i got to go to the resource room
twice a week or whenever i felt ‘overwhelmed’
to spend time with kids i had already learned to call
by a word i’ve since committed not to use
i made a frog out of liquid latex
and a trilobyte with a plaster mold
and i tried to listen to moby dick on a cassette
but the teacher couldn’t match the book with the tape
once a month i would get on the bus with those kids
and go to a special high school
for kids who were more ‘impaired’ than we were
and we’d build stuff and play duck-duck-goose and
pretend
that the kids at our home school weren’t calling us
by a word i’ve since committed not to use
one summer the father who didn’t know how to deal
with my storm clouds
decided
to send me to a camp for children with problems
we played on the trampoline and hung out and did camp stuff
just like the church summer camps i’d been to before
and just like the church summer camps i’d been to before
most of the children weren’t like me
i was an outcast among outcasts
i was a gifted child who threw things
when eddie vedder told me years later about jeremy
he was singing about me
during the weekend between sessions
most of the children went home
the ones who didn’t were moved into two cabins
but
there was one too many boys for the boys’ cabin
so they put me in the girls’ cabin
because i was the most okay
because i was mature for my age
because i wasn’t like most of the children there
we were changing for a swim
the girls told me to put my face in the pillow
until they told me to look
the first time i slipped
i saw a girl’s socked foot
and she squealed in shame
and told me to put my face in the pillow
until they told me to look
then they ignored me and talked
like the middle schoolers they were
like the middle schooler i wasn’t
then the one whose socked foot i’d seen
said something to me
it had been so long i figured it was okay
so i lifted my head to speak
and there they were
her naked breasts
curved teardrops
hanging free as she bent over
a few feet away from me
and she smiled at me and said something else
and i buried my face in the pillow
and waited for them to tell me to look
she laughed
and the other girls laughed
as my cheeks burned and i pushed my face into the pillow
i wondered why it was terrible if i saw her shoeless sock
but funny if i saw her breasts
and decided it was because she was called
by a word i’ve since committed not to use
now i know that she was just a normal middle school girl
trying to figure things out
and i was a boy with dark stormclouds
who threw dictionaries at little girls’ heads
trying to figure things out
— ptkh 102117